I Austin Ruthyn, of Knowl, and His Daughter It was winterthat is, about the second week in Novemberand great gusts were rattling at the windows, and wailing and thundering among our tall trees and ivied chimneysa very dark night, and a very cheerful fire blazing, a pleasant mixture of good round coal and spluttering dry wood, in a genuine old fireplace, in a sombre old room. Black wainscoting glimmered up to the ceiling, in small ebony panels; a cheerful clump of wax candles on the teatable; many old portraits, some grim and pale, others pretty, and some very graceful and charming, hanging from the walls. Few pictures, except portraits long and short, were there. On the whole, I think you would have taken the room for our parlour. It was not like our modern notion of a drawingroom. It was a long room too, and every way capacious, but irregularly shaped. A girl, of a little more than seventeen, looking, I believe, younger still; slight and rather tall, with a great deal of golden hair, dark greyeyed, and with a countenance rather sensitive and melancholy, was sitting at the teatable, in a reverie. I was that girl. The only other person in the roomthe only person in the house related to mewas my father. He was Mr. Ruthyn, of Knowl, so called in his county, but he had many other places, was of a very ancient lineage, who had refused a baronetage often, and it was said even a viscounty, being of a proud and defiant spirit, and thinking themselves higher in station and purer of blood than twothirds of the nobility into whose ranks, it was said, they had been invited to enter. Of all this family lore I knew but little and vaguely; only what is to be gathered from the fireside talk of old retainers in the nursery. I am sure my father loved me, and I know I loved him. With the sure instinct of childhood I apprehended his tenderness, although it was never expressed in common ways. But my father was an oddity. He had been early disappointed in Parliament, where it was his ambition to succeed. Though a clever man, he failed there, where very inferior men did extremely well. Then he went abroad, and became a connoisseur and a collector; took a part, on his return, in literary and scientific institutions, and also in the foundation and direction of some charities. But he tired of this mimic government, and gave himself up to a country life, not that of a sportsman, but rather of a student, staying sometimes at one of his places and sometimes at another, and living a secluded life. Rather late in life he married, and his beautiful young wife died, leaving me, their only child, to his care. This bereavement, I have been told, changed himmade him more odd and taciturn than ever, and his temper also, except to me, more severe. There was also some disgrace about his younger brothermy uncle Silaswhich he felt bitterly. He was now walking up and down this spacious old room, which, extending round an angle at the far end, was very dark in that quarter. It was his wont to walk up and down, thus, without speakingan exercise which used to remind me of Chateaubriands father in the great chamber of the Chteau de Combourg. At the far end he nearly disappeared in the gloom, and then returning emerged for a few minutes, like a portrait with a background of shadow, and then again in silence faded nearly out of view. This monotony and silence would have been terrifying to a person less accustomed to it than I. As it was, it had its effect. I have known my father a whole day without once speaking to me. Though I loved him very much, I was also much in awe of him. While my father paced the floor, my thoughts were employed about the events of a month before. So few things happened at Knowl out of the accustomed routine, that a very trifling occurrence was enough to set people wondering and conjecturing in that serene household. My father lived in remarkable seclusion; except for a ride, he hardly ever left the grounds of Knowl; and I dont think it happened twice in the year that a visitor sojourned among us. There was not even that mild religious bustle which sometimes besets the wealthy and moral recluse. My father had left the Church of England for some odd sect, I forget its name, and ultimately became, I was told, a Swedenborgian. But he did not care to trouble me upon the subject. So the old carriage brought my governess, when I had one, the old housekeeper, Mrs. Rusk, and myself to the parish church every Sunday. And my father, in the view of the honest Rector who shook his head over hima cloud without water, carried about of winds, and a wandering star to whom is reserved the blackness of darknesscorresponded with the minister of his church, and was provokingly contented with his own fertility and illumination; and Mrs. Rusk, who was a sound and bitter churchwoman, said he fancied he saw visions and talked with angels like the rest of that rubbitch. I dont know that she had any better foundation than analogy and conjecture for charging my father with supernatural pretensions; and in all points when her orthodoxy was not concerned, she loved her master and was a loyal housekeeper. I found her one morning superintending preparations for the reception of a visitor, in the huntingroom it was called, from the pieces of tapestry that covered its walls, representing scenes,  la Wouvermans, of falconry, and the chase, dogs, hawks, ladies, gallants, and pages. In the midst of whom Mrs. Rusk, in black silk, was rummaging drawers, counting linen, and issuing orders. Who is coming, Mrs. Rusk? Well, she only knew his name. It was a Mr. Bryerly. My papa expected him to dinner, and to stay for some days. I guess hes one of those creatures, dear, for I mentioned his name just to Dr. Clay (the Rector), and he says there is a Doctor Bryerly, a great conjurer among the Swedenborg sectand thats him, I do suppose. In my hazy notions of these sectaries there was mingled a suspicion of necromancy, and a weird freemasonry, that inspired something of awe and antipathy. Mr. Bryerly arrived time enough to dress at his leisure, before dinner. He entered the drawingrooma tall, lean man, all in ungainly black, with a white choker, with either a black wig, or black hair dressed in imitation of one, a pair of spectacles, and a dark, sharp, short visage, rubbing his large hands together, and with a short brisk nod to me, whom he plainly regarded merely as a child, he sat down before the fire, crossed his legs, and took up a magazine. This treatment was mortifying, and I remember very well the resentment of which he was quite unconscious. His stay was not very long; not one of us divined the object of his visit, and he did not prepossess us favourably. He seemed restless, as men of busy habits do in country houses, and took walks, and a drive, and read in the library, and wrote half a dozen letters. His bedroom and dressingroom were at the side of the gallery, directly opposite to my fathers, which had a sort of anteroom en suite, in which were some of his theological books. The day after Mr. Bryerlys arrival, I was about to see whether my fathers water caraffe and glass had been duly laid on the table in this anteroom, and in doubt whether he was there, I knocked at the door. I suppose they were too intent on other matters to hear, but receiving no answer, I entered the room. My father was sitting in his chair, with his coat and waistcoat off, Mr. Bryerly kneeling on a stool beside him, rather facing him, his black scratch wig leaning close to my fathers grizzled hair. There was a large tome of their divinity lore, I suppose, open on the table close by. The lank black figure of Mr. Bryerly stood up, and he concealed something quickly in the breast of his coat. My father stood up also, looking paler, I think, than I ever saw him till then, and he pointed grimly to the door, and said, Go. Mr. Bryerly pushed me gently back with his hands to my shoulders, and smiled down from his dark features with an expression quite unintelligible to me. I had recovered myself in a second, and withdrew without a word. The last thing I saw at the door was the tall, slim figure in black, and the dark, significant smile following me and then the door was shut and locked, and the two Swedenborgians were left to their mysteries. I remember so well the kind of shock and disgust I felt in the certainty that I had surprised them at some, perhaps, debasing incantationa suspicion of this Mr. Bryerly, of the illfitting black coat, and white chokerand a sort of fear came upon me, and I fancied he was asserting some kind of mastery over my father, which very much alarmed me. I fancied all sorts of dangers in the enigmatical smile of the lank highpriest. The image of my father, as I had seen him, it might be, confessing to this man in black, who was I knew not what, haunted me with the disagreeable uncertainties of a mind very uninstructed as to the limits of the marvellous. I mentioned it to no one. But I was immensely relieved when the sinister visitor took his departure the morning after, and it was upon this occurrence that my mind was now employed. Someone said that Dr. Johnson resembled a ghost, who must be spoken to before it will speak. But my father, in whatever else he may have resembled a ghost, did not in that particular; for no one but I in his householdand I very seldomdared to address him until first addressed by him. I had no notion how singular this was until I began to go out a little among friends and relations, and found no such rule in force anywhere else. As I leaned back in my chair thinking, this phantasm of my father came, and turned, and vanished with a solemn regularity. It was a peculiar figure, strongly made, thickset, with a face large, and very stern; he wore a loose, black velvet coat and waistcoat. It was, however, the figure of an elderly rather than an old manthough he was then past seventybut firm, and with no sign of feebleness. I remember the start with which, not suspecting that he was close by me, I lifted my eyes, and saw that large, rugged countenance looking fixedly on me, from less than a yard away. After I saw him, he continued to regard me for a second or two; and then, taking one of the heavy candlesticks in his gnarled hand, he beckoned me to follow him; which, in silence and wondering, I accordingly did. He led me across the hall, where there were lights burning, and into a lobby by the foot of the back stairs, and so into his library. It is a long, narrow room, with two tall, slim windows at the far end, now draped in dark curtains. Dusky it was with but one candle; and he paused near the door, at the lefthand side of which stood, in those days, an oldfashioned press or cabinet of carved oak. In front of this he stopped. He had odd, absent ways, and talked more to himself, I believe, than to all the rest of the world put together. She wont understand, he whispered, looking at me enquiringly. No, she wont. Will she? Then there was a pause, during which he brought forth from his breast pocket a small bunch of some halfdozen keys, on one of which he looked frowningly, every now and then balancing it a little before his eyes, between his finger and thumb, as he deliberated. I knew him too well, of course, to interpose a word. They are easily frighteneday, they are. Id better do it another way. And pausing, he looked in my face as he might upon a picture. They areyesI had better do it another wayanother way; yesand shell not suspectshell not suppose. Then he looked steadfastly upon the key, and from it to me, suddenly lifting it up, and said abruptly, See, child, and, after a second or two, Remember this key. It was oddly shaped, and unlike others. Yes, sir. I always called him sir. It opens that, and he tapped it sharply on the door of the cabinet. In the daytime it is always here, at which word he dropped it into his pocket again. You see?and at night under my pillowyou hear me? Yes, sir. You wont forget this cabinetoaknext the dooron your leftyou wont forget? No, sir. Pity shes a girl, and so youngay, a girl, and so youngno sensegiddy. You say, youll remember? Yes, sir. It behoves you. He turned round and looked full upon me, like a man who has taken a sudden resolution; and I think for a moment he had made up his mind to tell me a great deal more. But if so, he changed it again; and after another pause, he said slowly and sternlyYou will tell nobody what I have said, under pain of my displeasure. Oh! no, sir! Good child! Except, he resumed, under one contingency; that is, in case I should be absent, and Dr. Bryerlyyou recollect the thin gentleman, in spectacles and a black wig, who spent three days here last monthshould come and enquire for the key, you understand, in my absence. Yes, sir. So he kissed me on the forehead, and said Let us return. Which, accordingly, we did, in silence; the storm outside, like a dirge on a great organ, accompanying our flitting. II Uncle Silas When we reached the drawingroom, I resumed my chair, and my father his slow and regular walk to and fro, in the great room. Perhaps it was the uproar of the wind that disturbed the ordinary tenor of his thoughts; but, whatever was the cause, certainly he was unusually talkative that night. After an interval of nearly half an hour, he drew near again, and sat down in a highbacked armchair, beside the fire, and nearly opposite to me, and looked at me steadfastly for some time, as was his wont, before speaking; and said he This wont doyou must have a governess. In cases of this kind I merely set down my book or work, as it might be, and adjusted myself to listen without speaking. Your French is pretty well, and your Italian; but you have no German. Your music may be pretty goodIm no judgebut your drawing might be betteryesyes. I believe there are accomplished ladiesfinishing governesses, they call themwho undertake more than any one teacher would have professed in my time, and do very well. She can prepare you, and next winter, then, you shall visit France and Italy, where you may be accomplished as highly as you please. Thank you, sir. You shall. It is nearly six months since Miss Ellerton left youtoo long without a teacher. Then followed an interval. Dr. Bryerly will ask you about that key, and what it opens; you show all that to him, and no one else. But, I said, for I had a great terror of disobeying him in ever so minute a matter, you will then be absent, sirhow am I to find the key? He smiled on me suddenlya bright but wintry smileit seldom came, and was very transitory, and kindly though mysterious. True, child; Im glad you are so wise; that, you will find, I have provided for, and you shall know exactly where to look. You have remarked how solitarily I live. You fancy, perhaps, I have not got a friend, and you are nearly rightnearly, but not altogether. I have a very sure friendonea friend whom I once misunderstood, but now appreciate. I wondered silently whether it could be Uncle Silas. Hell make me a call, some day soon; Im not quite sure when. I wont tell you his nameyoull hear that soon enough, and I dont want it talked of; and I must make a little journey with him. Youll not be afraid of being left alone for a time? And have you promised, sir? I answered, with another question, my curiosity and anxiety overcoming my awe. He took my questioning very goodhumouredly. Wellpromise?no, child; but Im under condition; hes not to be denied. I must make the excursion with him the moment he calls. I have no choice; but, on the whole, I rather like itremember, I say, I rather like it. And he smiled again, with the same meaning, that was at once stern and sad. The exact purport of these sentences remained fixed in my mind, so that even at this distance of time I am quite sure of them. A person quite unacquainted with my fathers habitually abrupt and odd way of talking, would have fancied that he was possibly a little disordered in his mind. But no such suspicion for a moment troubled me. I was quite sure that he spoke of a real person who was coming, and that his journey was something momentous; and when the visitor of whom he spoke did come, and he departed with him upon that mysterious excursion, I perfectly understood his language and his reasons for saying so much and yet so little. You are not to suppose that all my hours were passed in the sort of conference and isolation of which I have just given you a specimen; and singular and even awful as were sometimes my tteattes with my father, I had grown so accustomed to his strange ways, and had so unbounded a confidence in his affection, that they never depressed or agitated me in the manner you might have supposed. I had a great deal of quite a different sort of chat with good old Mrs. Rusk, and very pleasant talks with Mary Quince, my somewhat ancient maid; and besides all this, I had now and then a visit of a week or so at the house of someone of our country neighbours, and occasionally a visitorbut this, I must own, very rarelyat Knowl. There had come now a little pause in my fathers revelations, and my fancy wandered away upon a flight of discovery. Who, I again thought, could this intending visitor be, who was to come, armed with the prerogative to make my stayathome father forthwith leave his household goodshis books and his childto whom he clung, and set forth on an unknown knighterrantry? Who but Uncle Silas, I thoughtthat mysterious relative whom I had never seenwho was, it had in old times been very darkly hinted to me, unspeakably unfortunate or unspeakably viciouswhom I had seldom heard my father mention, and then in a hurried way, and with a pained, thoughtful look. Once only he had said anything from which I could gather my fathers opinion of him, and then it was so slight and enigmatical that I might have filled in the character very nearly as I pleased. It happened thus. One day Mrs. Rusk was in the oakroom, I being then about fourteen. She was removing a stain from a tapestry chair, and I watched the process with a childish interest. She sat down to rest herselfshe had been stooping over her workand threw her head back, for her neck was weary, and in this position she fixed her eyes on a portrait that hung before her. It was a fulllength, and represented a singularly handsome young man, dark, slender, elegant, in a costume then quite obsolete, though I believe it was seen at the beginning of this centurywhite leather pantaloons and topboots, a buff waistcoat, and a chocolatecoloured coat, and the hair long and brushed back. There was a remarkable elegance and a delicacy in the features, but also a character of resolution and ability that quite took the portrait out of the category of mere fops or fine men. When people looked at it for the first time, I have so often heard the exclamationWhat a wonderfully handsome man! and then, What a clever face! An Italian greyhound stood by him, and some slender columns and a rich drapery in the background. But though the accessories were of the luxurious sort, and the beauty, as I have said, refined, there was a masculine force in that slender oval face, and a fire in the large, shadowy eyes, which were very peculiar, and quite redeemed it from the suspicion of effeminacy. Is not that Uncle Silas? said I. Yes, dear, answered Mrs. Rusk, looking, with her resolute little face, quietly on the portrait. He must be a very handsome man, Mrs. Rusk. Dont you think so? I continued. He was, my dearyes; but it is forty years since that was paintedthe date is there in the corner, in the shadow that comes from his foot, and forty years, I can tell you, makes a change in most of us; and Mrs. Rusk laughed, in cynical goodhumour. There was a little pause, both still looking on the handsome man in topboots, and I said And why, Mrs. Rusk, is papa always so sad about Uncle Silas? Whats that, child? said my fathers voice, very near. I looked round, with a start, and flushed and faltered, receding a step from him. No harm, dear. You have said nothing wrong, he said gently, observing my alarm. You said I was always sad, I think, about Uncle Silas. Well, I dont know how you gather that; but if I were, I will now tell you, it would not be unnatural. Your uncle is a man of great talents, great faults, and great wrongs. His talents have not availed him; his faults are long ago repented of; and his wrongs I believe he feels less than I do, but they are deep. Did she say any more, madam? he demanded abruptly of Mrs. Rusk. Nothing, sir, with a stiff little courtesy, answered Mrs. Rusk, who stood in awe of him. And there is no need, child, he continued, addressing himself to me, that you should think more of him at present. Clear your head of Uncle Silas. One day, perhaps, you will know himyes, very welland understand how villains have injured him. Then my father retired, and at the door he said Mrs. Rusk, a word, if you please, beckoning to that lady, who trotted after him to the library. I think he then laid some injunction upon the housekeeper, which was transmitted by her to Mary Quince, for from that time forth I could never lead either to talk with me about Uncle Silas. They let me talk on, but were reserved and silent themselves, and seemed embarrassed, and Mrs. Rusk sometimes pettish and angry, when I pressed for information. Thus curiosity was piqued; and round the slender portrait in the leather pantaloons and topboots gathered manycoloured circles of mystery, and the handsome features seemed to smile down upon my baffled curiosity with a provoking significance. Why is it that this form of ambitioncuriositywhich entered into the temptation of our first parent, is so specially hard to resist? Knowledge is powerand power of one sort or another is the secret lust of human souls; and here is, beside the sense of exploration, the undefinable interest of a story, and above all, something forbidden, to stimulate the contumacious appetite. III A New Face I think it was about a fortnight after that conversation in which my father had expressed his opinion, and given me the mysterious charge about the old oak cabinet in his library, as already detailed, that I was one night sitting at the great drawingroom window, lost in the melancholy reveries of night, and in admiration of the moonlighted scene. I was the only occupant of the room; and the lights near the fire, at its farther end, hardly reached to the window at which I sat. The shorn grass sloped gently downward from the windows till it met the broad level on which stood, in clumps, or solitarily scattered, some of the noblest timber in England. Hoar in the moonbeams stood those graceful trees casting their moveless shadows upon the grass, and in the background crowning the undulations of the distance, in masses, were piled those woods among which lay the solitary tomb where the remains of my beloved mother rested. The air was still. The silvery vapour hung serenely on the far horizon, and the frosty stars blinked brightly. Everyone knows the effect of such a scene on a mind already saddened. Fancies and regrets float mistily in the dream, and the scene affects us with a strange mixture of memory and anticipation, like some sweet old air heard in the distance. As my eyes rested on those, to me, funereal but glorious woods, which formed the background of the picture, my thoughts recurred to my fathers mysterious intimations and the image of the approaching visitor; and the thought of the unknown journey saddened me. In all that concerned his religion, from very early association, there was to me something of the unearthly and spectral. When my dear mamma died I was not nine years old; and I remember, two days before the funeral, there came to Knowl, where she died, a thin little man, with large black eyes, and a very grave, dark face. He was shut up a good deal with my dear father, who was in deep affliction; and Mrs. Rusk used to say, It is rather odd to see him praying with that little scarecrow from London, and good Mr. Clay ready at call, in the village; much good that little black whippersnapper will do him! With that little black man, on the day after the funeral, I was sent out, for some reason, for a walk; my governess was ill, I know, and there was confusion in the house, and I dare say the maids made as much of a holiday as they could. I remember feeling a sort of awe of this little dark man; but I was not afraid of him, for he was gentle, though sadand seemed kind. He led me into the gardenthe Dutch garden, we used to call itwith a balustrade, and statues at the farther front, laid out in a carpetpattern of brilliantlycoloured flowers. We came down the broad flight of Caen stone steps into this, and we walked in silence to the balustrade. The base was too high at the spot where we reached it for me to see over; but holding my hand, he said, Look through that, my child. Well, you cant; but I can see beyond itshall I tell you what? I see ever so much. I see a cottage with a steep roof, that looks like gold in the sunlight; there are tall trees throwing soft shadows round it, and flowering shrubs, I cant say what, only the colours are beautiful, growing by the walls and windows, and two little children are playing among the stems of the trees, and we are on our way there, and in a few minutes shall be under those trees ourselves, and talking to those little children. Yet now to me it is but a picture in my brain, and to you but a story told by me, which you believe. Come, dear; let us be going. So we descended the steps at the right, and side by side walked along the grass lane between tall trim walls of evergreens. The way was in deep shadow, for the sun was near the horizon; but suddenly we turned to the left, and there we stood in rich sunlight, among the many objects he had described. Is this your house, my little men? he asked of the childrenpretty little rosy boyswho assented; and he leaned with his open hand against the stem of one of the trees, and with a grave smile he nodded down to me, saying You see now, and hear, and feel for yourself that both the vision and the story were quite true; but come on, my dear, we have further to go. And relapsing into silence we had a long ramble through the wood, the same on which I was now looking in the distance. Every now and then he made me sit down to rest, and he in a musing solemn sort of way would relate some little story, reflecting, even to my childish mind, a strange suspicion of a spiritual meaning, but different from what honest Mrs. Rusk used to expound to me from the Parables, and, somehow, startling in its very vagueness. Thus entertained, though a little awfully, I accompanied the dark mysterious little whippersnapper through the woodland glades. We came, to me quite unexpectedly, in the deep sylvan shadows, upon the grey, pillared temple, fourfronted, with a slanting pedestal of lichenstained steps, the lonely sepulchre in which I had the morning before seen poor mamma laid. At the sight the fountains of my grief reopened, and I cried bitterly, repeating, Oh! mamma, mamma, little mamma! and so went on weeping and calling wildly on the deaf and the silent. There was a stone bench some ten steps away from the tomb. Sit down beside me, my child, said the grave man with the black eyes, very kindly and gently. Now, what do you see there? he asked, pointing horizontally with his stick towards the centre of the opposite structure. Oh, thatthat place where poor mamma is? Yes, a stone wall with pillars, too high for either you or me to see over. But Here he mentioned a name which I think must have been Swedenborg, from what I afterwards learnt of his tenets and revelations; I only know that it sounded to me like the name of a magician in a fairy tale; I fancied he lived in the wood which surrounded us, and I began to grow frightened as he proceeded. But Swedenborg sees beyond it, over, and through it, and has told me all that concerns us to know. He says your mamma is not there. She is taken away! I cried, starting up, and with streaming eyes, gazing on the building which, though I stamped my feet in my distraction, I was afraid to approach. Oh, is mamma taken away? Where is she? Where have they brought her to? I was uttering unconsciously very nearly the question with which Mary, in the grey of that wondrous morning on which she stood by the empty sepulchre, accosted the figure standing near. Your mamma is alive, but too far away to see or hear us. Swedenborg, standing here, can see and hear her, and tells me all he sees, just as I told you in the garden about the little boys and the cottage, and the trees and flowers which you could not see, but believed in when I told you. So I can tell you now as I did then; and as we are both, I hope, walking on to the same place just as we did to the trees and cottage, you will surely see with your own eyes how true the description is which I give you. I was very frightened, for I feared that when he had done his narrative we were to walk on through the wood into that place of wonders and of shadows where the dead were visible. He leaned his elbow on his knee, and his forehead on his hand, which shaded his downcast eyes. In that attitude he described to me a beautiful landscape, radiant with a wondrous light, in which, rejoicing, my mother moved along an airy path, ascending among mountains of fantastic height, and peaks, melting in celestial colouring into the air, and peopled with human beings translated into the same image, beauty, and splendour. And when he had ended his relation, he rose, took my hand, and smiling gently down on my pale, wondering face, he said the same words he had spoken before Come, dear, let us go. Oh! no, no, nonot now, I said, resisting, and very much frightened. Home, I mean, dear. We cannot walk to the place I have described. We can only reach it through the gate of death, to which we are all tending, young and old, with sure steps. And where is the gate of death? I asked in a sort of whisper, as we walked together, holding his hand, and looking stealthily. He smiled sadly and said When, sooner or later, the time comes, as Hagars eyes were opened in the wilderness, and she beheld the fountain of water, so shall each of us see the door open before us, and enter in and be refreshed. For a long time following this walk I was very nervous; more so for the awful manner in which Mrs. Rusk received my statementwith stern lips and upturned hands and eyes, and an angry expostulation I do wonder at you, Mary Quince, letting the child walk into the wood with that limb of darkness. It is a mercy he did not show her the devil, or frighten her out of her senses, in that lonely place! Of these Swedenborgians, indeed, I know no more than I might learn from good Mrs. Rusks very inaccurate talk. Two or three of them crossed in the course of my early life, like magiclantern figures, the disk of my very circumscribed observation. All outside was and is darkness. I once tried to read one of their books upon the future stateheaven and hell; but I grew after a day or two so nervous that I laid it aside. It is enough for me to know that their founder either saw or fancied he saw amazing visions, which, so far from superseding, confirmed and interpreted the language of the Bible; and as dear papa accepted their ideas, I am happy in thinking that they did not conflict with the supreme authority of holy writ. Leaning on my hand, I was now looking upon that solemn wood, white and shadowy in the moonlight, where, for a long time after that ramble with the visionary, I fancied the gate of death, hidden only by a strange glamour, and the dazzling land of ghosts, were situate; and I suppose these earlier associations gave to my reverie about my fathers coming visitor a wilder and a sadder tinge.


IV Madame de la Rougierre On a sudden, on the grass before me, stood an odd figurea very tall woman in grey draperies, nearly white under the moon, courtesying extraordinarily low, and rather fantastically. I stared in something like a horror upon the large and rather hollow features which I did not know, smiling very unpleasantly on me; and the moment it was plain that I saw her, the grey woman began gobbling and cackling shrillyI could not distinctly hear what through the windowand gesticulating oddly with her long hands and arms. As she drew near the window, I flew to the fireplace, and rang the bell frantically, and seeing her still there, and fearing that she might break into the room, I flew out of the door, very much frightened, and met Branston the butler in the lobby. Theres a woman at the window! I gasped; turn her away, please. If I had said a man, I suppose fat Branston would have summoned and sent forward a detachment of footmen. As it was, he bowed gravely, with a Yes mshall, m. And with an air of authority approached the window. I dont think that he was pleasantly impressed himself by the first sight of our visitor, for he stopped short some steps of the window, and demanded rather sternly What ye doin there, woman? To this summons, her answer, which occupied a little time, was inaudible to me. But Branston replied I wasnt aware, maam; I heerd nothin; if youll go round that way, youll see the halldoor steps, and Ill speak to the master, and do as he shall order. The figure said something and pointed. Yes, thats it, and ye cant miss the door. And Mr. Branston returned slowly down the long room, and halted with outturned pumps and a grave inclination before me, and the faintest amount of interrogation in the announcement Please m, she says shes the governess. The governess! What governess? Branston was too wellbred to smile, and he said thoughtfully Praps, m, Id best ask the master? To which I assented, and away strode the flat pumps of the butler to the library. I stood breathless in the hall. Every girl at my age knows how much is involved in such an advent. I also heard Mrs. Rusk, in a minute or two more, emerge I suppose from the study. She walked quickly, and muttered sharply to herselfan evil trick, in which she indulged when much put about. I should have been glad of a word with her; but I fancied she was vexed, and would not have talked satisfactorily. She did not, however, come my way; merely crossing the hall with her quick, energetic step. Was it really the arrival of a governess? Was that apparition which had impressed me so unpleasantly to take the command of meto sit alone with me, and haunt me perpetually with her sinister looks and shrilly gabble? I was just making up my mind to go to Mary Quince, and learn something definite, when I heard my fathers step approaching from the library so I quietly reentered the drawingroom, but with an anxious and throbbing heart. When he came in, as usual, he patted me on the head gently, with a kind of smile, and then began his silent walk up and down the room. I was yearning to question him on the point that just then engrossed me so disagreeably; but the awe in which I stood of him forbade. After a time he stopped at the window, the curtain of which I had drawn, and the shutter partly opened, and he looked out, perhaps with associations of his own, on the scene I had been contemplating. It was not for nearly an hour after, that my father suddenly, after his wont, in a few words, apprised me of the arrival of Madame de la Rougierre to be my governess, highly recommended and perfectly qualified. My heart sank with a sure presage of ill. I already disliked, distrusted, and feared her. I had more than an apprehension of her temper and fear of possibly abused authority. The largefeatured, smirking phantom, saluting me so oddly in the moonlight, retained ever after its peculiar and unpleasant hold upon my nerves. Well, Miss Maud, dear, I hope youll like your new governessfor its more than I do, just at present at least, said Mrs. Rusk, sharplyshe was awaiting me in my room. I hate them Frenchwomen; theyre not natural, I think. I gave her her supper in my room. She eats like a wolf, she does, the great rawboned hannimal. I wish you saw her in bed as I did. I put her next the clockroomshell hear the hours betimes, Im thinking. You never saw such a sight. The great long nose and hollow cheeks of her, and oogh! such a mouth! I felt amost like little Red RidingHoodI did, Miss. Here honest Mary Quince, who enjoyed Mrs. Rusks satire, a weapon in which she was not herself strong, laughed outright. Turn down the bed, Mary. Shes very agreeableshe is, just nowall newcomers is; but she did not get many compliments from me, Missno, I rayther think not. I wonder why honest English girls wont answer the gentry for governesses, instead of them gaping, scheming, wicked furriners? Lord forgi me, I think theyre all alike. Next morning I made acquaintance with Madame de la Rougierre. She was tall, masculine, a little ghastly perhaps, and draped in purple silk, with a lace cap, and great bands of black hair, too thick and black, perhaps, to correspond quite naturally with her bleached and sallow skin, her hollow jaws, and the fine but grim wrinkles traced about her brows and eyelids. She smiled, she nodded, and then for a good while she scanned me in silence with a steady cunning eye, and a stern smile. And how is she namedwhat is Mademoiselles name? said the tall stranger. Maud, Madame. Maud!what pretty name! Eh! bien. I am very sure my dear Maud she will be very good little girlis not so?and I am sure I shall love you vary moche. And what av you been learning, Maud, my dear cheailemusic, French, German, eh? Yes, a little; and I had just begun the use of the globes when my governess went away. I nodded towards the globes, which stood near her, as I said this. Oh! yesthe globes; and she spun one of them with her great hand. Je vous expliquerai tout cela  fond. Madame de la Rougierre, I found, was always quite ready to explain everything  fond; but somehow her explications, as she termed them, were not very intelligible, and when pressed her temper woke up; so that I preferred, after a while, accepting the expositions just as they came. Madame was on an unusually large scale, a circumstance which made some of her traits more startling, and altogether rendered her, in her strange way, more awful in the eyes of a nervous child, I may say, such as I was. She used to look at me for a long time sometimes, with the peculiar smile I have mentioned, and a great finger upon her lip, like the Eleusinian priestess on the vase. She would sit, too, sometimes for an hour together, looking into the fire or out of the window, plainly seeing nothing, and with an odd, fixed look of something like triumphvery nearly a smileon her cunning face. She was by no means a pleasant gouvernante for a nervous girl of my years. Sometimes she had accesses of a sort of hilarity which frightened me still more than her graver moods, and I will describe these byandby. V Sights and Noises There is not an old house in England of which the servants and young people who live in it do not cherish some traditions of the ghostly. Knowl has its shadows, noises, and marvellous records. Rachel Ruthyn, the beauty of Queen Annes time, who died of grief for the handsome Colonel Norbrooke, who was killed in the Low Countries, walks the house by night, in crisp and sounding silks. She is not seen, only heard. The tapping of her highheeled shoes, the sweep and rustle of her brocades, her sighs as she pauses in the galleries, near the bedroom doors; and sometimes, on stormy nights, her sobs. There is, beside, the linkman, a lank, darkfaced, blackhaired man, in a sable suit, with a link or torch in his hand. It usually only smoulders, with a deep red glow, as he visits his beat. The library is one of the rooms he sees to. Unlike Lady Rachel, as the maids called her, he is seen only, never heard. His steps fall noiseless as shadows on floor and carpet. The lurid glow of his smouldering torch imperfectly lights his figure and face, and, except when much perturbed, his link never blazes. On those occasions, however, as he goes his rounds, he ever and anon whirls it around his head, and it bursts into a dismal flame. This is a fearful omen, and always portends some direful crisis or calamity. It occurs, only once or twice in a century. I dont know whether Madame had heard anything of these phenomena; but she did report which very much frightened me and Mary Quince. She asked us who walked in the gallery on which her bedroom opened, making a rustling with her dress, and going down the stairs, and breathing long breaths here and there. Twice, she said, she had stood at her door in the dark, listening to these sounds, and once she called to know who it was. There was no answer, but the person plainly turned back, and hurried towards her with an unnatural speed, which made her jump within her door and shut it. When first such tales are told, they excite the nerves of the young and the ignorant intensely. But the special effect, I have found, soon wears out, and the tale simply takes its place with the rest. It was with Madames narrative. About a week after its relation, I had my experience of a similar sort. Mary Quince went downstairs for a nightlight, leaving me in bed, a candle burning in the room, and being tired, I fell asleep before her return. When I awoke the candle had been extinguished. But I heard a step softly approaching. I jumped upquite forgetting the ghost, and thinking only of Mary Quinceand opened the door, expecting to see the light of her candle. Instead, all was dark, and near me I heard the fall of a bare foot on the oak floor. It was as if someone had stumbled. I said, Mary, but no answer came, only a rustling of clothes and a breathing at the other side of the gallery, which passed off towards the upper staircase. I turned into my room, freezing with horror, and clapt my door. The noise wakened Mary Quince, who had returned and gone to her bed half an hour before. About a fortnight after this, Mary Quince, a very veracious spinster, reported to me, that having got up to fix the window, which was rattling, at about four oclock in the morning, she saw a light shining from the library window. She could swear to its being a strong light, streaming through the chinks of the shutter, and moving. No doubt the link was waved about his head by the angry linkman. These strange occurrences helped, I think, just then to make me nervous, and prepared the way for the odd sort of ascendency which, through my sense of the mysterious and supernatural, that repulsive Frenchwoman was gradually, and it seemed without effort, establishing over me. Some dark points of her character speedily emerged from the prismatic mist with which she had enveloped it. Mrs. Rusks observation about the agreeability of newcomers I found to be true; for as Madame began to lose that character, her goodhumour abated very perceptibly, and she began to show gleams of another sort of temper, that was lurid and dangerous. Notwithstanding this, she was in the habit of always having her Bible open by her, and was austerely attentive at morning and evening services, and asked my father, with great humility, to lend her some translations of Swedenborgs books, which she laid much to heart. When we went out for our walk, if the weather were bad we generally made our promenade up and down the broad terrace in front of the windows. Sullen and malign at times she used to look, and as suddenly she would pat me on the shoulder caressingly, and smile with a grotesque benignity, asking tenderly, Are you fatigue, ma chre? or Are you colda, dear Maud? At first these abrupt transitions puzzled me, sometimes half frightened me, savouring, I fancied, of insanity. The key, however, was accidentally supplied, and I found that these accesses of demonstrative affection were sure to supervene whenever my fathers face was visible through the library windows. I did not know well what to make of this woman, whom I feared with a vein of superstitious dread. I hated being alone with her after dusk in the schoolroom. She would sometimes sit for half an hour at a time, with her wide mouth drawn down at the corners, and a scowl, looking into the fire. If she saw me looking at her, she would change all this on the instant, affect a sort of languor, and lean her head upon her hand, and ultimately have recourse to her Bible. But I fancied she did not read, but pursued her own dark ruminations, for I observed that the open book might often lie for half an hour or more under her eyes and yet the leaf never turned. I should have been glad to be assured that she prayed when on her knees, or read when that book was before her; I should have felt that she was more canny and human. As it was, those external pieties made a suspicion of a hollow contrast with realities that helped to scare me; yet it was but a suspicionI could not be certain. Our Rector and the Curate, with whom she was very gracious, and anxious about my collects and catechism, had an exalted opinion of her. In public places her affection for me was always demonstrative. In like manner she contrived conferences with my father. She was always making excuses to consult him about my reading, and to confide in him her sufferings, as I learned, from my contumacy and temper. The fact is, I was altogether quiet and submissive. But I think she had a wish to reduce me to a state of the most abject bondage. She had designs of domination and subversion regarding the entire household, I now believe, worthy of the evil spirit I sometimes fancied her. My father beckoned me into the study one day, and said he You ought not to give poor Madame so much pain. She is one of the few persons who take an interest in you; why should she have so often to complain of your illtemper and disobedience?why should she be compelled to ask my permission to punish you? Dont be afraid, I wont concede that. But in so kind a person it argues much. Affection I cant commandrespect and obedience I mayand I insist on your rendering both to Madame. But sir, I said, roused into courage by the gross injustice of the charge, I have always done exactly as she bid me, and never said one disrespectful word to Madame. I dont think, child, you are the best judge of that. Go, and amend. And with a displeased look he pointed to the door. My heart swelled with the sense of wrong, and as I reached the door I turned to say another word, but I could not, and only burst into tears. Theredont cry, little Maudonly let us do better for the future. Theretherethere has been enough. And he kissed my forehead, and gently put me out and closed the door. In the schoolroom I took courage, and with some warmth upbraided Madame. Wat wicked cheaile! moaned Madame, demurely. Read aloud those threeyes, those three chapters of the Bible, my dear Maud. There was no special fitness in those particular chapters, and when they were ended she said in a sad tone Now, dear, you must commit to memory this pretty priaire for umility of art. It was a long one, and in a state of profound irritation I got through the task. Mrs. Rusk hated her. She said she stole wine and brandy whenever the opportunity offeredthat she was always asking her for such stimulants and pretending pains in her stomach. Here, perhaps, there was exaggeration; but I knew it was true that I had been at different times despatched on that errand and pretext for brandy to Mrs. Rusk, who at last came to her bedside with pills and a mustard blister only, and was hated irrevocably ever after. I felt all this was done to torture me. But a day is a long time to a child, and they forgive quickly. It was always with a sense of danger that I heard Madame say she must go and see Monsieur Ruthyn in the library, and I think a jealousy of her growing influence was an ingredient in the detestation in which honest Mrs. Rusk held her. VI A Walk in the Wood Two little pieces of byplay in which I detected her confirmed my unpleasant suspicion. From the corner of the gallery I one day saw her, when she thought I was out and all quiet, with her ear at the keyhole of papas study, as we used to call the sittingroom next his bedroom. Her eyes were turned in the direction of the stairs, from which only she apprehended surprise. Her great mouth was open, and her eyes absolutely goggled with eagerness. She was devouring all that was passing there. I drew back into the shadow with a kind of disgust and horror. She was transformed into a great gaping reptile. I felt that I could have thrown something at her; but a kind of fear made me recede again toward my room. Indignation, however, quickly returned, and I came back, treading briskly as I did so. When I reached the angle of the gallery again. Madame, I suppose, had heard me, for she was halfway down the stairs. Ah, my dear cheaile, I am so glad to find you, and you are dress to come out. We shall have so pleasant walk. At that moment the door of my fathers study opened, and Mrs. Rusk, with her dark energetic face very much flushed, stepped out in high excitement. The Master says you may have the brandybottle, Madame and Im glad to be rid of itI am. Madame courtesied with a great smirk, that was full of intangible hate and insult. Better your own brandy, if drink you must! exclaimed Mrs. Rusk. You may come to the storeroom now, or the butler can take it. And off whisked Mrs. Rusk for the back staircase. There had been no common skirmish on this occasion, but a pitched battle. Madame had made a sort of pet of Anne Wixted, an underchambermaid, and attached her to her interest economically by persuading me to make her presents of some old dresses and other things. Anne was such an angel! But Mrs. Rusk, whose eyes were about her, detected Anne, with a brandybottle under her apron, stealing upstairs. Anne, in a panic, declared the truth. Madame had commissioned her to buy it in the town, and convey it to her bedroom. Upon this, Mrs. Rusk impounded the flask; and, with Anne beside her, rather precipitately appeared before the Master. He heard and summoned Madame. Madame was cool, frank, and fluent. The brandy was purely medicinal. She produced a document in the form of a note. Doctor Somebody presented his compliments to Madame de la Rougierre, and ordered her a tablespoonful of brandy and some drops of laudanum whenever the pain of stomach returned. The flask would last a whole year, perhaps two. She claimed her medicine. Mans estimate of woman is higher than womans own. Perhaps in their relations to men they are generally more trustworthyperhaps womans is the juster, and the other an appointed illusion. I dont know; but so it is ordained. Mrs. Rusk was recalled, and I saw, as you are aware, Madames procedure during the interview. It was a great battlea great victory. Madame was in high spirits. The air was sweetthe landscape charmingI, so goodeverything so beautiful! Where should we go? this way? I had made a resolution to speak as little as possible to Madame, I was so incensed at the treachery I had witnessed; but such resolutions do not last long with very young people, and by the time we had reached the skirts of the wood we were talking pretty much as usual. I dont wish to go into the wood, Madame. And for what? Poor mamma is buried there. Is there the vault? demanded Madame eagerly. I assented. My faith, curious reason; you say because poor mamma is buried there you will not approach! Why, cheaile, what would good Monsieur Ruthyn say if he heard such thing? You are surely not so unkain, and I am with you. Allons. Let us comeeven a little part of the way. And so I yielded, though still reluctant. There was a grassgrown road, which we easily reached, leading to the sombre building, and we soon arrived before it. Madame de la Rougierre seemed rather curious. She sat down on the little bank opposite, in her most languid poseher head leaned upon the tips of her fingers. How very sadhow solemn! murmured Madame. What noble tomb! How triste, my dear cheaile, your visit ere must it be, remembering a so sweet maman. There is new inscriptionis it not new? And so, indeed, it seemed. I am fatiguemaybe you will read it aloud to me slowly and solemnly, my dearest Maud? As I approached, I happened to look, I cant tell why, suddenly, over my shoulder; I was startled, for Madame was grimacing after me with a vile derisive distortion. She pretended to be seized with a fit of coughing. But it would not do she saw that I had detected her, and she laughed aloud. Come here, dear cheaile. I was just reflecting how foolish is all this thingthe tombthe epitaph. I think I would av noneno, no epitaph. We regard them first for the oracle of the dead, and find them after only the folly of the living. So I despise. Do you think your house of Knowl down there is what you call haunt, my dear? Why? said I, flushing and growing pale again. I felt quite afraid of Madame, and confounded at the suddenness of all this. Because Anne Wixted she says there is ghost. How dark is this place! and so many of the Ruthyn family they are buried hereis not so? How high and thick are the trees all round! and nobody comes near. And Madame rolled her eyes awfully, as if she expected to see something unearthly, and, indeed, looked very like it herself. Come away, Madame, I said, growing frightened, and feeling that if I were once, by any accident, to give way to the panic that was gathering round me, I should instantaneously lose all control of myself. Oh, come away! do, MadameIm frightened. No, on the contrary, sit here by me. It is very odd, you will think, ma chreun got bizarre, vraiment!but I love very much to be near to the dead peoplein solitary place like this. I am not afraid of the dead people, nor of the ghosts. Av you ever see a ghost, my dear? Do, Madame, pray speak of something else. Wat little fool! But no, you are not afraid. I av seen the ghosts myself. I saw one, for example, last night, shape like a monkey, sitting in the corner, with his arms round his knees; very wicked, old, old man his face was like, and white eyes so large. Come away, Madame! you are trying to frighten me, I said, in the childish anger which accompanies fear. Madame laughed an ugly laugh, and said Eh, bien! little fool!I will not tell the rest if you are really frightened; let us change to something else. Yes, yes! oh, dopray do. Wat good man is your father! Verythe kindest darling. I dont know why it is, Madame, I am so afraid of him, and never could tell him how much I love him. This confidential talking with Madame, strange to say, implied no confidence; it resulted from fearit was deprecatory. I treated her as if she had human sympathies, in the hope that they might be generated somehow. Was there not a doctor from London with him a few months ago? Dr. Bryerly, I think they call him. Yes, a Doctor Bryerly, who remained a few days. Shall we begin to walk towards home, Madame? Do, pray. Immediately, cheaile; and does your father suffer much? NoI think not. And what then is his disease? Disease! he has no disease. Have you heard anything about his health, Madame? I said, anxiously. Oh no, ma foiI have heard nothing; but if the doctor came, it was not because he was quite well. But that doctor is a doctor in theology, I fancy. I know he is a Swedenborgian; and papa is so well he could not have come as a physician. I am very glad, ma chre, to hear; but still you know your father is old man to have so young cheaile as you. Oh, yeshe is old man, and so uncertain life is. As he made his will, my dear? Every man so rich as he, especially so old, aught to av made his will. There is no need of haste, Madame; it is quite time enough when his health begins to fail. But has he really compose no will? I really dont know, Madame. Ah, little rogue! you will not tellbut you are not such fool as you feign yourself. No, no; you know everything. Come, tell me all aboutit is for your advantage, you know. What is in his will, and when he wrote? But, Madame, I really know nothing of it. I cant say whether there is a will or not. Let us talk of something else. But, cheaile, it will not kill Monsieur Ruthyn to make his will; he will not come to lie here a day sooner by cause of that; but if he make no will, you may lose a great deal of the property. Would not that be pity? I really dont know anything of his will. If papa has made one, he has never spoken of it to me. I know he loves methat is enough. Ah! you are not such little gooseyou do know everything, of course. Come tell me, little obstinate, otherwise I will break your little finger. Tell me everything. I know nothing of papas will. You dont know, Madame, how you hurt me. Let us speak of something else. You do know, and you must tell, petite durette, or I will break a your little finger. With which words she seized that joint, and laughing spitefully, she twisted it suddenly back. I screamed while she continued to laugh. Will you tell? Yes, yes! let me go, I shrieked. She did not release it immediately however, but continued her torture and discordant laughter. At last she finally released my finger. So she is going to be good cheaile, and tell everything to her affectionate gouvernante. What do you cry for, little fool? Youve hurt me very muchyou have broken my finger, I sobbed. Rub it and blow it and give it a kiss, little fool! What cross girl! I will never play with you againnever. Let us go home. Madame was silent and morose all the way home. She would not answer my questions, and affected to be very lofty and offended. This did not last very long, however, and she soon resumed her wonted ways. And she returned to the question of the will, but not so directly, and with more art. Why should this dreadful womans thoughts be running so continually upon my fathers will? How could it concern her? VII Church Scarsdale I think all the females of our household, except Mrs. Rusk, who was at open feud with her and had only room for the fiercer emotions, were more or less afraid of this inauspicious foreigner. Mrs. Rusk would say in her confidences in my room Where does she come from?is she a French or a Swiss one, or is she a Canada woman? I remember one of them when I was a girl, and a nice limb she was, too! And who did she live with? Where was her last family? Not one of us knows nothing about her, no more than a child; except, of course, the MasterI do suppose he made enquiry. Shes always at huggermugger with Anne Wixted. Ill pack that one about her business, if she doesnt mind. Tattling and whispering eternally. Its not about her own business shes atalking. Madame de la Rougepot, I call her. She does know how to paint up to the ninetyninesshe does, the old cat. I beg your pardon, Miss, but that she isa devil, and no mistake. I found her out first by her thieving the Masters gin, that the doctor ordered him, and filling the decanter up with waterthe old villain; but shell be found out yet, she will; and all the maids is afraid on her. Shes not right, they thinka witch or a ghostI should not wonder. Catherine Jones found her in her bed asleep in the morning after she sulked with you, you know, Miss, with all her clothes on, whatever was the meaning; and I think she has frightened you, Miss and has you as nervous as anythinkI do, and so forth. It was true. I was nervous, and growing rather more so; and I think this cynical woman perceived and intended it, and was pleased. I was always afraid of her concealing herself in my room, and emerging at night to scare me. She began sometimes to mingle in my dreams, tooalways awfully; and this nourished, of course, the kind of ambiguous fear in which, in waking hours, I held her. I dreamed one night that she led me, all the time whispering something so very fast that I could not understand her, into the library, holding a candle in her other hand above her head. We walked on tiptoe, like criminals at the dead of night, and stopped before that old oak cabinet which my father had indicated in so odd a way to me. I felt that we were about some contraband practice. There was a key in the door, which I experienced a guilty horror at turning, she whispering in the same unintelligible way, all the time, at my ear. I did turn it; the door opened quite softly, and within stood my father, his face white and malignant, and glaring close in mine. He cried in a terrible voice, Death! Out went Madames candle, and at the same moment, with a scream, I waked in the darkstill fancying myself in the library; and for an hour after I continued in a hysterical state. Every little incident about Madame furnished a topic of eager discussion among the maids. More or less covertly, they nearly all hated and feared her. They fancied that she was making good her footing with the Master; and that she would then oust Mrs. Ruskperhaps usurp her placeand so make a clean sweep of them all. I fancy the honest little housekeeper did not discourage that suspicion. About this time I recollect a pedlaran odd, gipsifiedlooking mancalled in at Knowl. I and Catherine Jones were in the court when he came, and set down his pack on the low balustrade beside the door. All sorts of commodities he hadribbons, cottons, silks, stockings, lace, and even some bad jewellery; and just as he began his displayan interesting matter in a quiet country houseMadame came upon the ground. He grinned a recognition, and hoped Madamasel was well, and did not look to see her here. Madamasel thanked him. Yes, vary well, and looked for the first time decidedly put out. Wat a pretty things! she said. Catherine, run and tell Mrs. Rusk. She wants scissors, and lace tooI heard her say. So Catherine, with a lingering look, departed; and Madame said Will you, dear cheaile, be so kind to bring here my purse, I forgot on the table in my room; also, I advise you, bring your. Catherine returned with Mrs. Rusk. Here was a man who could tell them something of the old Frenchwoman, at last! Slyly they dawdled over his wares, until Madame had made her market and departed with me. But when the coveted opportunity came, the pedlar was quite impenetrable. He forgot everything; he did not believe as he ever saw the lady before. He called a Frenchwoman, all the world over, Madamaselthat wor the name on em all. He never seed her in partiklar afore, as he could bring to mind. He liked to see em always, cause they makes the young uns buy. This reserve and oblivion were very provoking, and neither Mrs. Rusk nor Catherine Jones spent sixpence with him;he was a stupid fellow, or worse. Of course Madame had tampered with him. But truth, like murder, will out some day. Tom Williams, the groom, had seen her, when alone with him, and pretending to look at his stock, with her face almost buried in his silks and Welsh linseys, talking as fast as she could all the time, and slipping money, he did suppose, under a piece of stuff in his box. In the meantime, I and Madame were walking over the wide, peaty sheepwalks that lie between Knowl and Church Scarsdale. Since our visit to the mausoleum in the wood, she had not worried me so much as before. She had been, indeed, more than usually thoughtful, very little talkative, and troubled me hardly at all about French and other accomplishments. A walk was a part of our daily routine. I now carried a tiny basket in my hand, with a few sandwiches, which were to furnish our luncheon when we reached the pretty scene, about two miles away, whither we were tending.


We had started a little too late; Madame grew unwontedly fatigued and sat down to rest on a stile before we had got halfway; and there she intoned, with a dismal nasal cadence, a quaint old Bretagne ballad, about a lady with a pigs head This lady was neither pig nor maid, And so she was not of human mould; Not of the living nor the dead. Her left hand and foot were warm to touch; Her right as cold as a corpses flesh! And she would sing like a funeral bell, with a dingdong tune. The pigs were afraid, and viewed her aloof; And women feared her and stood afar. She could do without sleep for a year and a day; She could sleep like a corpse, for a month and more. No one knew how this lady fed On acorns or on flesh. Some say that shes one of the swinepossessed, That swam over the sea of Gennesaret. A mongrel body and demon soul. Some say shes the wife of the Wandering Jew, And broke the law for the sake of pork; And a swinish face for a token doth bear, That her shame is now, and her punishment coming. And so it went on, in a gingling rigmarole. The more anxious I seemed to go on our way, the more likely was she to loiter. I therefore showed no signs of impatience, and I saw her consult her watch in the course of her ugly minstrelsy, and slyly glance, as if expecting something, in the direction of our destination. When she had sung to her hearts content, up rose Madame, and began to walk onward silently. I saw her glance once or twice, as before, toward the village of Trillsworth, which lay in front, a little to our left, and the smoke of which hung in a film over the brow of the hill. I think she observed me, for she enquired Wat is that a smoke there? That is Trillsworth, Madame; there is a railway station there. Oh, le chemin de fer, so near! I did not think. Where it goes? I told her, and silence returned. Church Scarsdale is a very pretty and odd scene. The slightly undulating sheepwalk dips suddenly into a wide glen, in the lap of which, by a bright, winding rill, rise from the sward the ruins of a small abbey, with a few solemn trees scattered round. The crows nests hung untenanted in the trees; the birds were foraging far away from their roosts. The very cattle had forsaken the place. It was solitude itself. Madame drew a long breath and smiled. Come down, come down, cheailecome down to the churchyard. As we descended the slope which shut out the surrounding world, and the scene grew more sad and lonely. Madames spirits seemed to rise. See ow many gravestonesone, two hundred. Dont you love the dead, cheaile? I will teach you to love them. You shall see me die here today, for half an hour, and be among them. That is what I love. We were by this time at the little brooks side, and the low churchyard wall with a stile, reached by a couple of steppingstones, across the stream, immediately at the other side. Come, now! cried Madame, raising her face, as if to sniff the air; we are close to them. You will like them soon as I. You shall see five of them. Ah, a ira, a ira, a ira! Come cross quickily! I am Madame la MorgueMrs. Deadhouse! I will present you my friends, Monsieur Cadavre and Monsieur Squelette. Come, come, leetle mortal, let us play. Ouaah! And she uttered a horrid yell from her enormous mouth, and pushing her wig and bonnet back, so as to show her great, bald head. She was laughing, and really looked quite mad. No, Madame, I will not go with you, I said, disengaging my hand with a violent effort, receding two or three steps. Not enter the churchyard! Ma foiwat mauvais got! But see, we are already in shade. The sun he is setting soonwhere weel you remain, cheaile? I will not stay long. Ill stay here, I said, a little angrilyfor I was angry as well as nervous; and through my fear was that indignation at her extravagances which mimicked lunacy so unpleasantly, and were, I knew, designed to frighten me. Over the steppingstones, pulling up her dress, she skipped with her long, lank legs, like a witch joining a Walpurgis. Over the stile she strode, and I saw her head wagging, and heard her sing some of her illomened rhymes, as she capered solemnly, with many a grin and courtesy, among the graves and headstones, towards the ruin. VIII The Smoker Three years later I learnedin a way she probably little expected, and then did not much care aboutwhat really occurred there. I learned even phrases and looksfor the story was related by one who had heard it toldand therefore I venture to narrate what at the moment I neither saw nor suspected. While I sat, flushed and nervous, upon a flat stone by the bank of the little stream, Madame looked over her shoulder, and perceiving that I was out of sight, she abated her pace, and turned sharply towards the ruin which lay at her left. It was her first visit, and she was merely exploring; but now, with a perfectly shrewd and businesslike air, turning the corner of the building, she saw, seated upon the edge of a gravestone, a rather fat and flashilyequipped young man, with large, light whiskers, a jerry hat, green cutaway coat with gilt buttons, and waistcoat and trousers rather striking than elegant in pattern. He was smoking a short pipe, and made a nod to Madame, without either removing it from his lips or rising, but with his brown and rather goodlooking face turned up, he eyed her with something of the impudent and sulky expression that was habitual to it. Ha, Deedle, you are there! an look so well. I am here, too, quite alon; but my friend, she wait outside the churchyard, byside the leetle river, for she must not think I know youso I am come alon. Youre a quarter late, and I lost a fight by you, old girl, this morning, said the gay man, and spat on the ground; and I wish you would not call me Diddle. Ill call you Granny if you do. Eh, bien! Dud, then. She is vary nicewat you like. Slim waist, wite teeth, vary nice eyesdarkwat you say is bestand nice leetle foot and ankle. Madame smiled leeringly. Dud smoked on. Go on, said Dud, with a nod of command. I am teach her to sing and playshe has such sweet voice! There was another interval here. Well, that isnt much good. I hate womens screechin about fairies and flowers. Hang her! theres a scarecrow as sings at Curls Divan. Such a caterwauling upon a stage! Id like to put my two barrels into her. By this time Duds pipe was out, and he could afford to converse. You shall see her and decide. You will walk down the river, and pass her by. Thats as may be; howsoever, it would not do, nohow, to buy a pig in a poke, you know. And spose I shouldnt like her, arter all? Madame sneered, with a patois ejaculation of derision. Vary good! Then someone else will not be so ard to pleaseas you will soon find. Someones bin alookin arter her, you mean? said the young man, with a shrewd uneasy glance on the cunning face of the French lady. I mean preciselythat which I mean, replied the lady, with a teasing pause at the break I have marked. Come, old un, none of your d old chaff, if you want me to stay here listening to you. Speak out, cant you? Theres any chap as has bin alookin arter heris there? Eh, bien; I suppose some. Well, you suppose, and I supposewe may all suppose, I guess; but that does not make a thing be, as wasnt before; and you tell me as how the lass is kep private up there, and will be till youre done educating hera precious good un that is! And he laughed a little lazily, with the ivory handle of his cane on his lip, and eyeing Madame with indolent derision. Madame laughed, but looked rather dangerous. Im only chaffin, you know, old girl. Youve bin chaffinwy shouldnt I? But I dont see why she cant wait a bit; and whats all the dd hurry for? Im in no hurry. I dont want a wife on my back for a while. Theres no fellow marries till hes took his bit o fun, and seen lifeis there! And why should I be driving with her to fairs, or to church, or to meeting, by jingo!for they say shes a Quakerwith a babby on each knee, only to please them as will be dead and rotten when Im only beginning? Ah, you are such charming fellow; always the samealways sensible. So I and my friend we will walk home again, and you go see Maggie Hawkes. Goodaby, Dudgoodaby. Quiet, you fool!cant ye? said the young gentleman, with the sort of grin that made his face vicious when a horse vexed him. Who ever said I wouldnt go look at the girl? Why, you know thats just what I come here fordont you? Only when I think a bit, and a notion comes across me, why shouldnt I speak out? Im not one o them shillyshallies. If I like the girl, Ill not be mug in and mug out about it. Only mind ye, Ill judge for myself. Is that her acoming? No; it was a distant sound. Madame peeped round the corner. No one was approaching. Well, you go round that away, and you only look at her, you know, for she is such foolso nairvous. Oh, is that the way with her? said Dud, knocking out the ashes of his pipe on a tombstone, and replacing the Turkish utensil in his pocket. Well, then, old lass, goodbye, and he shook her hand. And, do ye see, dont ye come up till I pass, for Im no hand at playacting; an if you called me sir, or was coming it dignified and distant, you know, Id be sure to laugh, amost, and let all out. So goodbye, dye see, and if you want me again be sharp to time, mind. From habit he looked about for his dogs, but he had not brought one. He had come unostentatiously by rail, travelling in a thirdclass carriage, for the advantage of Jack Briderlys company, and getting a world of useful wrinkles about the steeplechase that was coming off next week. So he strode away, cutting off the heads of the nettles with his cane as he went; and Madame walked forth into the open space among the graves, where I might have seen her, had I stood up, looking with the absorbed gaze of an artist on the ruin. In a little while, along the path, I heard the clank of a step, and the gentleman in the green cutaway coat, sucking his cane, and eyeing me with an offensive familiar sort of stare the while, passed me by, rather hesitating as he did so. I was glad when he turned the corner in the little hollow close by, and disappeared. I stood up at once, and was reassured by a sight of Madame, not very many yards away, looking at the ruin, and apparently restored to her right mind. The last beams of the sun were by this time touching the uplands, and I was longing to recommence our walk home. I was hesitating about calling to Madame, because that lady had a certain spirit of opposition within her, and to disclose a small wish of any sort was generally, if it lay in her power, to prevent its accomplishment. At this moment the gentleman in the green coat returned, approaching me with a slow sort of swagger. I say, Miss, I dropped a glove close by here. May you have seen it? No, sir, I said, drawing back a little, and looking, I dare say, both frightened and offended. I do think I must a dropped it close by your foot, Miss. No, sir, I repeated. No offence, Miss, but youre sure you didnt hide it? I was beginning to grow seriously uncomfortable. Dont be frightened, Miss; its only a bit o chaff. Im not going to search. I called aloud, Madame, Madame! and he whistled through his fingers, and shouted, Madame, Madame, and added, Shes as deaf as a tombstone, or shell hear that. Gie her my compliments, and say I said youre a beauty, Miss; and with a laugh and a leer he strode off. Altogether this had not been a very pleasant excursion. Madame gobbled up our sandwiches, commending them every now and then to me. But I had been too much excited to have any appetite left, and very tired I was when we reached home. So, there is lady coming tomorrow? said Madame, who knew everything. Wat is her name? I forget. Lady Knollys, I answered. Lady Knollyswat odd name! She is very youngis she not? Past fifty, I think. Hlas! Shes vary old, then. Is she rich? I dont know. She has a place in Derbyshire. Derbyshirethat is one of your English counties, is it not? Oh yes, Madame, I answered, laughing. I have said it to you twice since you came; and I gabbled through the chief towns and rivers as catalogued in my geography. Bah! to be sureof course, cheaile. And is she your relation? Papas first cousin. Wont you presenta me, pray?I would so like! Madame had fallen into the English way of liking people with titles, as perhaps foreigners would if titles implied the sort of power they do generally with us. Certainly, Madame. You will not forget? Oh no. Madame reminded me twice, in the course of the evening, of my promise. She was very eager on this point. But it is a world of disappointment, influenza, and rheumatics; and next morning Madame was prostrate in her bed, and careless of all things but flannel and Jamess powder. Madame was dsole; but she could not raise her head. She only murmured a question. For ow long time, dear, will Lady Knollys remain? A very few days, I believe. Hlas! ow onlucky! maybe tomorrow I shall be better. Ouah! my ear. The laudanum, dear cheaile! And so our conversation for that time ended, and Madame buried her head in her old red cashmere shawl. IX Monica Knollys Punctually Lady Knollys arrived. She was accompanied by her nephew, Captain Oakley. They arrived a little before dinner; just in time to get to their rooms and dress. But Mary Quince enlivened my toilet with eloquent descriptions of the youthful Captain whom she had met in the gallery, on his way to his room, with the servant, and told me how he stopped to let her pass, and how he smiled so ansom. I was very young then, you know, and more childish even than my years; but this talk of Mary Quinces interested me, I must confess, considerably. I was painting all sort of portraits of this heroic soldier, while affecting, I am afraid, a hypocritical indifference to her narration, and I know I was very nervous and painstaking about my toilet that evening. When I went down to the drawingroom, Lady Knollys was there, talking volubly to my father as I entereda woman not really old, but such as very young people fancy agedenergetic, bright, saucy, dressed handsomely in purple satin, with a good deal of lace, and a rich pointI know not how to call itnot a cap, a sort of headdresslight and simple, but grand withal, over her greyish, silken hair. Rather tall, by no means stout, on the whole a good firm figure, with something kindly in her look. She got up, quite like a young person, and coming quickly to meet me with a smile My young cousin! she cried, and kissed me on both cheeks. You know who I am? Your cousin MonicaMonica Knollysand very glad, dear, to see you, though she has not set eyes on you since you were no longer than that paperknife. Now come here to the lamp, for I must look at you. Who is she like? Let me see. Like your poor mother, I think, my dear; but youve the Aylmer noseyesnot a bad nose either, and, come! very good eyes, upon my lifeyes, certainly something of her poor mothernot a bit like you, Austin. My father gave her a look as near a smile as I had seen there for a long time, shrewd, cynical, but kindly too, and said he So much the better, Monica, eh? It was not for me to saybut you know, Austin, you always were an ugly creature. How shocked and indignant the little girl looks! You must not be vexed, you loyal little woman, with Cousin Monica for telling the truth. Papa was and will be ugly all his days. Come, Austin, dear, tell heris not it so? What! depose against myself! Thats not English law, Monica. Well, maybe not; but if the child wont believe her own eyes, how is she to believe me? She has long, pretty handsyou haveand very nice feet too. How old is she? How old, child? said my father to me, transferring the question. She recurred again to my eyes. That is the true greylarge, deep, softvery peculiar. Yes, dear, very prettylong lashes, and such bright tints! Youll be in the Book of Beauty, my dear, when you come out, and have all the poet people writing verses to the tip of your noseand a very pretty little nose it is! I must mention here how striking was the change in my fathers spirit while talking and listening to his odd and voluble old Cousin Monica. Reflected from bygone associations, there had come a glimmer of something, not gaiety, indeed, but like an appreciation of gaiety. The gloom and inflexibility were gone, and there was an evident encouragement and enjoyment of the incessant sallies of his bustling visitor. How morbid must have been the tendencies of his habitual solitude, I think, appeared from the evident thawing and brightening that accompanied even this transient gleam of human society. I was not a companionmore childish than most girls of my age, and trained in all his whimsical ways, never to interrupt a silence, or force his thoughts by unexpected question or remark out of their monotonous or painful channel. I was as much surprised at the goodhumour with which he submitted to his cousins saucy talk; and, indeed, just then those blackpanelled and pictured walls, and that quaint, misshapen room, seemed to have exchanged their stern and awful character for something wonderfully pleasanter to me, notwithstanding the unpleasantness of the personal criticism to which the plainspoken lady chose to subject me. Just at that moment Captain Oakley joined us. He was my first actual vision of that awful and distant world of fashion, of whose splendours I had already read something in the threevolumed gospel of the circulating library. Handsome, elegant, with features almost feminine, and soft, wavy, black hair, whiskers and moustache, he was altogether such a knight as I had never beheld, or even fancied, at Knowla hero of another species, and from the region of the demigods. I did not then perceive that coldness of the eye, and cruel curl of the voluptuous liponly a suspicion, yet enough to indicate the profligate man, and savouring of death unto death. But I was young, and had not yet the direful knowledge of good and evil that comes with years; and he was so very handsome, and talked in a way that was so new to me, and was so much more charming than the wellbred converse of the humdrum county families with whom I had occasionally sojourned for a week at a time. It came out incidentally that his leave of absence was to expire the day after tomorrow. A Lilliputian pang of disappointment followed this announcement. Already I was sorry to lose him. So soon we begin to make a property of what pleases us. I was shy, but not awkward. I was flattered by the attention of this amusing, perhaps rather fascinating, young man of the world; and he plainly addressed himself with diligence to amuse and please me. I dare say there was more effort than I fancied in bringing his talk down to my humble level, and interesting me and making me laugh about people whom I had never heard of before, than I then suspected. Cousin Knollys meanwhile was talking to papa. It was just the conversation that suited a man so silent as habit had made him, for her frolic fluency left him little to supply. It was totally impossible, indeed, even in our taciturn household, that conversation should ever flag while she was among us. Cousin Knollys and I went into the drawingroom together, leaving the gentlemenrather illassorted, I fearto entertain one another for a time. Come here, my dear, and sit near me, said Lady Knollys, dropping into an easy chair with an energetic little plump, and tell me how you and your papa get on. I can remember him quite a cheerful man once, and rather amusingyes, indeedand now you see what a bore he isall by shutting himself up and nursing his whims and fancies. Are those your drawings, dear? Yes, very bad, Im afraid; but there are a few, better, I think in the portfolio in the cabinet in the hall. They are by no means bad, my dear; and you play, of course? Yesthat is, a littlepretty well, I hope. I dare say. I must hear you byandby. And how does your papa amuse you? You look bewildered, dear. Well, I dare say, amusement is not a frequent word in this house. But you must not turn into a nun, or worse, into a puritan. What is he? A FifthMonarchyman, or somethingI forget; tell me the name, my dear. Papa is a Swedenborgian, I believe. Yes, yesI forgot the horrid namea Swedenborgian, that is it. I dont know exactly what they think, but everyone knows they are a sort of pagans, my dear. Hes not making one of you, dearis he? I go to church every Sunday. Well, thats a mercy; Swedenborgian is such an ugly name, and besides, they are all likely to be damned, my dear, and thats a serious consideration. I really wish poor Austin had hit on something else; Id much rather have no religion, and enjoy life while Im in it, than choose one to worry me here and bedevil me hereafter. But some people, my dear, have a taste for being miserable, and provide, like poor Austin, for its gratification in the next world as well as here. Ha, ha, ha! how grave the little woman looks! Dont you think me very wicked? You know you do; and very likely you are right. Who makes your dresses, my dear? You are such a figure of fun! Mrs. Rusk, I think, ordered this dress. I and Mary Quince planned it. I thought it very nice. We all like it very well. There was something, I dare say, very whimsical about it, probably very absurd, judged at least by the canons of fashion, and old Cousin Monica Knollys, in whose eye the London fashions were always fresh, was palpably struck by it as if it had been some enormity against anatomy, for she certainly laughed very heartily; indeed, there were tears on her cheeks when she had done, and I am sure my aspect of wonder and dignity, as her hilarity proceeded, helped to revive her merriment again and again as it was subsiding. There, you mustnt be vexed with old Cousin Monica, she cried, jumping up, and giving me a little hug, and bestowing a hearty kiss on my forehead, and a jolly little slap on my cheek. Always remember your cousin Monica is an outspoken, wicked old fool, who likes you, and never be offended by her nonsense. A council of threeyou all sat upon itMrs. Rusk, you said, and Mary Quince, and your wise self, the weird sisters; and Austin stepped in, as Macbeth, and said, What ist ye do? you all made answer together, A something or other without a name! Now, seriously, my dear, it is quite unpardonable in Austinyour papa, I meanto hand you over to be robed and bedizened according to the whimsies of these wild old womenarent they old? If they know better, its positively fiendish. Ill blow him upI will indeed, my dear. You know youre an heiress, and ought not to appear like a jackpudding. Papa intends sending me to London with Madame and Mary Quince, and going with me himself, if Doctor Bryerly says he may make the journey, and then I am to have dresses and everything. Well, that is better. And who is Doctor Bryerlyis your papa ill? Ill! oh, no; he always seems just the same. You dont think him illlooking ill, I mean? I asked eagerly and frightened. No, my dear, he looks very well for his time of life; but why is Doctor Whatshisname here; Is he a physician, or a divine, or a horsedoctor? and why is his leave asked? II really dont understand. Is he a what dye callema Swedenborgian? I believe so. Oh, I see; ha, ha, ha! And so poor Austin must ask leave to go up to town. Well, go he shall, whether his doctor likes it or not, for it would not do to send you there in charge of your Frenchwoman, my dear. Whats her name? Madame de la Rougierre. X Lady Knollys Removes a Coverlet Lady Knollys pursued her enquiries. And why does not Madame make your dresses, my dear? I wager a guinea the womans a milliner. Did not she engage to make your dresses? II really dont know; I rather think not. She is my governessa finishing governess, Mrs. Rusk says. Finishing fiddle! Hoitytoity! and my ladys too grand to cut out your dresses and help to sew them? And what does she do? I venture to say shes fit to teach nothing but devilmentnot that she has taught you much, my dearyet at least. Ill see her, my dear; where is she? Come, let us visit Madame. I should so like to talk to her a little. But she is ill, I answered, and all this time I was ready to cry for vexation, thinking of my dress, which must be very absurd to elicit so much unaffected laughter from my experienced relative, and I was only longing to get away and hide myself before that handsome Captain returned. Ill! is she? whats the matter? A coldfeverish and rheumatic, she says. Oh, a cold; is she up or in bed? In her room, but not in bed. I should so like to see her, my dear. It is not mere curiosity, I assure you. In fact, curiosity has nothing on earth to do with it. A governess may be a very useful or a very useless person; but she may also be about the most pernicious inmate imaginable. She may teach you a bad accent, and worse manners, and heaven knows what beside. Send the housekeeper, my dear, to tell her that I am going to see her. I had better go myself, perhaps, I said, fearing a collision between Mrs. Rusk and the bitter Frenchwoman. Very well, dear. And away I ran, not sorry somehow to escape before Captain Oakley returned. As I went along the passage, I was thinking whether my dress could be so very ridiculous as my old cousin thought it, and trying in vain to recollect any evidence of a similar contemptuous estimate on the part of that beautiful and garrulous dandy. I could notquite the reverse, indeed. Still I was uncomfortable and feverishgirls of my then age will easily conceive how miserable, under similar circumstances, such a misgiving would make them. It was a long way to Madames room. I met Mrs. Rusk bustling along the passage with a housemaid. How is Madame? I asked. Quite well, I believe, answered the housekeeper, drily. Nothing the matter that I know of. She eat enough for two today. I wish I could sit in my room doing nothing. Madame was sitting, or rather reclining, in a low armchair, when I entered the room, close to the fire, as was her wont, her feet extended near to the bars, and a little coffee equipage beside her. She stuffed a book hastily between her dress and the chair, and received me in a state of langour which, had it not been for Mrs. Rusks comfortable assurances, would have frightened me. I hope you are better, Madame, I said, approaching. Better than I deserve, my dear cheaile, sufficiently well. The people are all so good, trying me with every little thing, like a bird; here is cafMrs. Ruska, poor woman, I try to swallow a little to please her. And your cold, is it better? She shook her head languidly, her elbow resting on the chair, and three fingertips supporting her forehead, and then she made a little sigh, looking down from the corners of her eyes, in an interesting dejection. Je sens des lassitudes in all the membersbut I am quaite appy, and though I suffer I am console and oblige des bonts, ma chre, que vous avez tous pour moi; and with these words she turned a languid glance of gratitude on me which dropped on the ground. Lady Knollys wishes very much to see you, only for a few minutes, if you could admit her. Vous savez les malades see never visitors, she replied with a startled sort of tartness, and a momentary energy. Besides, I cannot converse; je sens de temps en temps des douleurs de tteof head, and of the ear, the right ear, it is parfois agony absolutely, and now it is here. And she winced and moaned, with her eyes closed and her hand pressed to the organ affected. Simple as I was, I felt instinctively that Madame was shamming. She was overacting; her transitions were too violent, and beside she forgot that I knew how well she could speak English, and must perceive that she was heightening the interest of her helplessness by that pretty tessellation of foreign idiom. I therefore said with a kind of courage which sometimes helped me suddenly Oh, Madame, dont you really think you might, without much inconvenience, see Lady Knollys for a very few minutes? Cruel cheaile! you know I have a pain of the ear which makes me orribly suffer at this moment, and you demand me whether I will not converse with strangers. I did not think you would be so unkain, Maud; but it is impossible, you must seequite impossible. I never, you know, refuse to take trouble when I am ablenevernever. And Madame shed some tears, which always came at call, and with her hand pressed to her ear, said very faintly, Be so good to tell your friend how you see me, and how I suffer, and leave me, Maud, for I wish to lie down for a little, since the pain will not allow me to remain longer. So with a few words of comfort which could not well be refused, but I dare say betraying my suspicion that more was made of her sufferings than need be, I returned to the drawingroom. Captain Oakley has been here, my dear, and fancying, I suppose, that you had left us for the evening, has gone to the billiardroom, I think, said Lady Knollys, as I entered. That, then, accounted for the rumble and smack of balls which I had heard as I passed the door. I have been telling Maud how detestably she is got up. Very thoughtful of you, Monica! said my father. Yes, and really, Austin, it is quite clear you ought to marry; you want someone to take this girl out, and look after her, and whos to do it? Shes a dowdydont you see? Such a dust! And it is really such a pity; for shes a very pretty creature, and a clever woman could make her quite charming. My father took Cousin Monicas sallies with the most wonderful goodhumour. She had always, I fancy, been a privileged person, and my father, whom we all feared, received her jolly attacks, as I fancy the grim FrontdeBoeufs of old accepted the humours and personalities of their jesters. Am I to accept this as an overture? said my father to his voluble cousin. Yes, you may, but not for myself, AustinIm not worthy. Do you remember little Kitty Weadon that I wanted you to marry eightandtwenty years ago, or more, with a hundred and twenty thousand pounds? Well, you know, she has got ever so much now, and she is really a most amiable old thing, and though you would not have her then, she has had her second husband since, I can tell you. Im glad I was not the first, said my father. Well, they really say her wealth is absolutely immense. Her last husband, the Russian merchant, left her everything. She has not a human relation, and she is in the best set. You were always a matchmaker, Monica, said my father, stopping, and putting his hand kindly on hers. But it wont do. No, no, Monica; we must take care of little Maud some other way. I was relieved. We women have all an instinctive dread of second marriages, and think that no widower is quite above or below that danger; and I remember, whenever my father, which indeed was but seldom, made a visit to town or anywhere else, it was a saying of Mrs. Rusk I shant wonder, neither need you, my dear, if he brings home a young wife with him. So my father, with a kind look at her, and a very tender one on me, went silently to the library, as he often did about that hour. I could not help resenting my Cousin Knollys officious recommendation of matrimony. Nothing I dreaded more than a stepmother. Good Mrs. Rusk and Mary Quince, in their several ways, used to enhance, by occasional anecdotes and frequent reflections, the terrors of such an intrusion. I suppose they did not wish a revolution and all its consequences at Knowl, and thought it no harm to excite my vigilance. But it was impossible long to be vexed with Cousin Monica. You know, my dear, your father is an oddity, she said. I dont mind himI never did. You must not. Cracky, my dear, crackydecidedly cracky! And she tapped the corner of her forehead, with a look so sly and comical, that I think I should have laughed, if the sentiment had not been so awfully irreverent.