No Name
by Wilkie Collins
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Go to Part 2 of 2

by Wilkie Collins

PREFACE.

THE main purpose of this story is to appeal to the reader's
interest in a subject which has been the theme of some of the
greatest writers, living and dead -- but which has never been,
and can never be, exhausted, because it is a subject eternally
interesting to all mankind. Here is one more book that depicts
the struggle of a human creature, under those opposing influences
of Good and Evil, which we have all felt, which we have all
known. It has been my aim to make the character of "Magdalen,"
which personifies this struggle, a pathetic character even in its
perversity and its error; and I have tried hard to attain this
result by the least obtrusive and the least artificial of all
means -- by a resolute adherence throughout to the truth as it is
in Nature. This design was no easy one to accomplish; and it has
been a great encouragement to me (during the publication of my
story in its periodical form) to know, on the authority of many
readers, that the object which I had proposed to myself, I might,
in some degree, consider as an object achieved.

Round the central figure in the narrative other characters will
be found grouped, in sharp contrast -- contrast, for the most
part, in which I have endeavored to make the element of humor
mainly predominant. I have sought to impart this relief to the
more serious passages in the book, not only because I believe
myself to be justified in doing so by the laws of Art -- but
because experience has taught me (what the experience of my
readers will doubtless confirm) that there is no such moral
phenomenon as unmixed tragedy to be found in the world around us.
Look where we may, the dark threads and the light cross each
other perpetually in the texture of human life.

To pass from the Characters to the Story, it will be seen that
the narrative related in these pages has been constructed on a
plan which differs from the plan followed in my last novel, and
in some other of my works published at an earlier date. The only
Secret contained in this book is revealed midway in the first
volume. From that point, all the main events of the story are
purposely foreshadowed before they take place -- my present
design being to rouse the reader's interest in following the
train of circumstances by which these foreseen events are brought
about. In trying this new ground, I am not turning my back in
doubt on the ground which I have passed over already. My one
object in following a new course is to enlarge the range of my
studies in the art of writing fiction, and to vary the form in
which I make my appeal to the reader, as attractively as I can.

There is no need for me to add more to these few prefatory words
than is here written. What I might otherwise have wished to say
in this place, I have endeavored to make the book itself say for
me.

TO

FRANCIS CARR BEARD

(FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND),

IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE TIME WHEN

THE CLOSING SCENES OF THIS STORY WERE WRITTEN.

NO NAME.

THE FIRST SCENE.

COMBE-RAVEN, SOMERSETSHIRE.

CHAPTER I.

THE hands on the hall-clock pointed to half-past six in the
morning. The house was a country residence in West Somersetshire,
called Combe-Raven. The day was the fourth of March, and the year
was eighteen hundred and forty-six.

No sounds but the steady ticking of the clock, and the lumpish
snoring of a large dog stretched on a mat outside the dining-room
door, disturbed the mysterious morning stillness of hall and
staircase. Who were the sleepers hidden in the upper regions? Let
the house reveal its own secrets; and, one by one, as they
descend the stairs from their beds, let the sleepers disclose
themselves.

As the clock pointed to a quarter to seven, the dog woke and
shook himself. After waiting in vain for the footman, who was
accustomed to let him out, the animal wandered restlessly from
one closed door to another on the ground-floor; and, returning to
his mat in great perplexity, appealed to the sleeping family with
a long and melancholy howl.

Before the last notes of the dog's remonstrance had died away,
the oaken stairs in the higher regions of the house creaked under
slowly-descending footsteps. In a minute more the first of the
female servants made her appearance, with a dingy woolen shawl
over her shoulders -- for the March morning was bleak; and
rheumatism and the cook were old acquaintances.

Receiving the dog's first cordial advances with the worst
possible grace, the cook slowly opened the hall door and let the
animal out. It was a wild morning. Over a spacious lawn, and
behind a black plantation of firs, the rising sun rent its way
upward through piles of ragged gray cloud; heavy drops of rain
fell few and far between; the March wind shuddered round the
corners of the house, and the wet trees swayed wearily.

Seven o'clock struck; and the signs of domestic life began to
show themselves in more rapid succession.

The housemaid came down -- tall and slim, with the state of the
spring temperature written redly on her nose. The lady's-maid
followed -- young, smart, plump, and sleepy. The kitchen-maid
came next -- afflicted with the face-ache, and making no secret
of her sufferings. Last of all, the footman appeared, yawning
disconsolately; the living picture of a man who felt that he had
been defrauded of his fair night's rest.

The conversation of the servants, when they assembled before the
slowly lighting kitchen fire, referred to a recent family event,
and turned at starting on this question: Had Thomas, the footman,
seen anything of the concert at Clifton, at which his master and
the two young ladies had been present on the previous night? Yes;
Thomas had heard the concert; he had been paid for to go in at
the back; it was a loud concert; it was a hot concert; it was
described at the top of the bills as Grand; whether it was worth
traveling sixteen miles to hear by railway, with the additional
hardship of going back nineteen miles by road, at half-past one
in the morning -- was a question which he would leave his master
and the young ladies to decide; his own opinion, in the meantime,
being unhesitatingly, No. Further inquiries, on the part of all
the female servants in succession, elicited no additional
information of any sort. Thomas could hum none of the songs, and
could describe none of the ladies' dresses. His audience,
accordingly, gave him up in despair; and the kitchen small-talk
flowed back into its ordinary channels, until the clock struck
eight and startled the assembled servants into separating for
their morning's work.

A quarter past eight, and nothing happened. Half-past -- and more
signs of life appeared from the bedroom regions. The next member
of the family who came downstairs was Mr. Andrew Vanstone, the
master of the house.

Tall, stout, and upright -- with bright blue eyes, and healthy,
florid complexion -- his brown plush shooting-jacket carelessly
buttoned awry; his vixenish little Scotch terrier barking
unrebuked at his heels; one hand thrust into his waistcoat
pocket, and the other smacking the banisters cheerfully as he
came downstairs humming a tune -- Mr. Vanstone showed his
character on the surface of him freely to all men. An easy,
hearty, handsome, good-humored gentleman, who walked on the sunny
side of the way of life, and who asked nothing better than to
meet all his fellow-passengers in this world on the sunny side,
too. Estimating him by years, he had turned fifty. Judging him by
lightness of heart, strength of constitution, and capacity for
enjoyment, he was no older than most men who have only turned
thirty.

"Thomas!" cried Mr. Vanstone, taking up his old felt hat and his
thick walking stick from the hall table. "Breakfast, this
morning, at ten. The young ladies are not likely to be down
earlier after the concert last night. -- By-the-by, how did you
like the concert yourself, eh? You thought it was grand? Quite
right; so it was. Nothing but crash-ban
g, varied now and then by bang-crash; all the women dressed
within an inch of their lives; smothering heat, blazing gas, and
no room for anybody -- yes, yes, Thomas; grand's the word for it,
and comfortable isn't." With that expression of opinion, Mr.
Vanstone whistled to his vixenish terrier; flourished his stick
at the hall door in cheerful defiance of the rain; and set off
through wind and weather for his morning walk.

The hands, stealing their steady way round the dial of the clock,
pointed to ten minutes to nine. Another member of the family
appeared on the stairs -- Miss Garth, the governess.

No observant eyes could have surveyed Miss Garth without seeing
at once that she was a north-countrywoman. Her hard featured
face; her masculine readiness and decision of movement; her
obstinate honesty of look and manner, all proclaimed her border
birth and border training. Though little more than forty years of
age, her hair was quite gray; and she wore over it the plain cap
of an old woman. Neither hair nor head-dress was out of harmony
with her face -- it looked older than her years: the hard
handwriting of trouble had scored it heavily at some past time.
The self-possession of her progress downstairs, and the air of
habitual authority with which she looked about her, spoke well
for her position in Mr. Vanstone's family. This was evidently not
one of the forlorn, persecuted, pitiably dependent order of
governesses. Here was a woman who lived on ascertained and
honorable terms with her employers -- a woman who looked capable
of sending any parents in England to the right-about, if they
failed to rate her at her proper value.

"Breakfast at ten?" repeated Miss Garth, when the footman had
answered the bell, and had mentioned his master's orders. "Ha! I
thought what would come of that concert last night. When people
who live in the country patronize public amusements, public
amusements return the compliment by upsetting the family
afterward for days together. _You're_ upset, Thomas, I can see --
your eyes are as red as a ferret's, and your cravat looks as if
you had slept in it. Bring the kettle at a quarter to ten -- and
if you don't get better in the course of the day, come to me, and
I'll give you a dose of physic. That's a well-meaning lad, if you
only let him alone," continued Miss Garth, in soliloquy, when
Thomas had retired; "but he's not strong enough for concerts
twenty miles off. They wanted _me_ to go with them last night.
Yes: catch me!"

Nine o'clock struck; and the minute-hand stole on to twenty
minutes past the hour, before any more footsteps were heard on
the stairs. At the end of that time, two ladies appeared,
descending to the breakfast-room together -- Mrs. Vanstone and
her eldest daughter.

If the personal attractions of Mrs. Vanstone, at an earlier
period of life, had depended solely on her native English charms
of complexion and freshness, she must have long since lost the
last relics of her fairer self. But her beauty as a young woman
had passed beyond the average national limits; and she still
preserved the advantage of her more exceptional personal gifts.
Although she was now in her forty-fourth year; although she had
been tried, in bygone times, by the premature loss of more than
one of her children, and by long attacks of illness which had
followed those bereavements of former years -- she still
preserved the fair proportion and subtle delicacy of feature,
once associated with the all-adorning brightness and freshness of
beauty, which had left her never to return. Her eldest child, now
descending the stairs by her side, was the mirror in which she
could look back and see again the reflection of her own youth.
There, folded thick on the daughter's head, lay the massive dark
hair, which, on the mother's, was fast turning gray. There, in
the daughter's cheek, glowed the lovely dusky red which had faded
from the mother's to bloom again no more. Miss Vanstone had
already reached the first maturity of womanhood; she had
completed her six-and-twentieth year. Inheriting the dark
majestic character of her mother's beauty, she had yet hardly
inherited all its charms. Though the shape of her face was the
same, the features were scarcely so delicate, their proportion
was scarcely so true. She was not so tall. She had the dark-brown
eyes of her mother -- full and soft, with the steady luster in
them which Mrs. Vanstone's eyes had lost -- and yet there was
less interest, less refinement and depth of feeling in her
expression: it was gentle and feminine, but clouded by a certain
quiet reserve, from which her mother's face was free. If we dare
to look closely enough, may we not observe that the moral force
of character and the higher intellectual capacities in parents
seem often to wear out mysteriously in the course of transmission
to children? In these days of insidious nervous exhaustion and
subtly-spreading nervous malady, is it not possible that the same
rule may apply, less rarely than we are willing to admit, to the
bodily gifts as well?

The mother and daughter slowly descended the stairs together --
the first dressed in dark brown, with an Indian shawl thrown over
her shoulders; the second more simply attired in black, with a
plain collar and cuffs, and a dark orange-colored ribbon over the
bosom of her dress. As they crossed the hall and entered the
breakfast-room, Miss Vanstone was full of the all-absorbing
subject of the last night's concert.

"I am so sorry, mamma, you were not with us," she said. "You have
been so strong and so well ever since last summer -- you have
felt so many years younger, as you said yourself -- that I am
sure the exertion would not have been too much for you."

"Perhaps not, my love -- but it was as well to keep on the safe
side."

"Quite as well," remarked Miss Garth, appearing at the
breakfast-room door. "Look at Norah (good-morning, my dear) --
look, I say, at Norah. A perfect wreck; a living proof of your
wisdom and mine in staying at home. The vile gas, the foul air,
the late hours -- what can you expect? She's not made of iron,
and she suffers accordingly. No, my dear, you needn't deny it. I
see you've got a headache."

Norah's dark, handsome face brightened into a smile -- then
lightly clouded again with its accustomed quiet reserve.

"A very little headache; not half enough to make me regret the
concert," she said, and walked away by herself to the window.

On the far side of a garden and paddock the view overlooked a
stream, some farm buildings which lay beyond, and the opening of
a wooded, rocky pass (called, in Somersetshire, a Combe), which
here cleft its way through the hills that closed the prospect. A
winding strip of road was visible, at no great distance, amid the
undulations of the open ground; and along this strip the stalwart
figure of Mr. Vanstone was now easily recognizable, returning to
the house from his morning walk. He flourished his stick gayly,
as he observed his eldest daughter at the window. She nodded and
waved her hand in return, very gracefully and prettily -- but
with something of old-fashioned formality in her manner, which
looked strangely in so young a woman, and which seemed out of
harmony with a salutation addressed to her father.

The hall-clock struck the adjourned breakfast-hour. When the
minute hand had recorded the lapse of five minutes more a door
banged in the bedroom regions -a clear young voice was heard
singing blithely -- light, rapid footsteps pattered on the upper
stairs, descended with a jump to the landing, and pattered again,
faster than ever, down the lower flight. In another moment the
youngest of Mr. Vanstone's two daughters (and two only surviving
children) dashed into view on the dingy old oaken stairs, with
the suddenness of a flash of light; and clearing the last three
steps into the hall at a jump, presented herself breathless in
the breakfast-room to make the family circle complete.

By one of those strange caprices of Nature, which science leaves
still unexplained, the youngest of Mr. Vanstone's children
presented no recognizable resemblance to either of her parents.
How had she come by her hair? how had she come by her eyes ? Even
her father and mother had asked themselves those questions, as
she grew up to girlhood, and had been sorely perplexed to answer
them. Her hair was of that purely light-brown hue, unmixed with
flaxen, or yellow, or red -- which is oftener seen on the plumage
of a bird than on the head of a human being. It was soft and
plentiful, and waved downward from her low forehead in regular
folds -- but, to some tastes, it was dull and dead, in its
absolute want of glossiness, in its monotonous purity of plain
light color. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were just a shade darker
than her hair, and seemed made expressly for those violet-blue
eyes, which assert their most irresistible charm when associated
with a fair complexion. But it was here exactly that the promise
of her face failed of performance in the most startling manner.
The eyes, which should have been dark, were incomprehensibly and
discordantly light; they were of that nearly colorless gray
which, though little attractive in itself, possesses the rare
compensating merit of interpreting the finest gradations of
thought, the gentlest changes of feeling, the deepest trouble of
passion, with a subtle transparency of expression which no darker
eyes can rival. Thus quaintly self-contradictory in the upper
part of her face, she was hardly less at variance with
established ideas of harmony in the lower. Her lips had the true
feminine delicacy of form, her cheeks the lovely roundness and
smoothness of youth -- but the mouth was too large and firm, the
chin too square and massive for her sex and age. Her complexion
partook of the pure monotony of tint which characterized her hair
-- it was of the same soft, warm, creamy fairness all over,
without a tinge of color in the cheeks, except on occasions of
unusual bodily exertion or sudden mental disturbance. The whole
countenance -- so remarkable in its strongly opposed
characteristics -- was rendered additionally striking by its
extraordinary mobility. The large, electric, light-gray eyes were
hardly ever in repose; all varieties of expression followed each
other over the plastic, ever-changing face, with a giddy rapidity
which left sober analysis far behind in the race. The girl's
exuberant vitality asserted itself all over her, from head to
foot. Her figure -- taller than her sister's, taller than the
average of woman's height; instinct with such a seductive,
serpentine suppleness, so lightly and playfully graceful, that
its movements suggested, not unnaturally, the movements of a
young cat -- her figure was so perfectly developed already that
no one who saw her could have supposed that she was only
eighteen. She bloomed in the full physical maturity of twenty
years or more -- bloomed naturally and irresistibly, in right of
her matchless health and strength. Here, in truth, lay the
mainspring of this strangely-constituted organization. Her
headlong course down the house stairs; the brisk activity of all
her movements; the incessant sparkle of expression in her face;
the enticing gayety which took the hearts of the quietest people
by storm -- even the reckless delight in bright colors which
showed itself in her brilliantly-striped morning dress, in her
fluttering ribbons, in the large scarlet rosettes on her smart
little shoes -- all sprang alike from the same source; from the
overflowing physical health which strengthened every muscle,
braced every nerve, and set the warm young blood tingling through
her veins, like the blood of a growing child.

On her entry into the breakfast-room, she was saluted with the
customary remonstrance which her flighty disregard of all
punctuality habitually provoked from the long-suffering household
authorities. In Miss Garth's favorite phrase, "Magdalen was born
with all the senses -- except a sense of order."

Magdalen! It was a strange name to have given her? Strange,
indeed; and yet, chosen under no extraordinary circumstances. The
name had been borne by one of Mr. Vanstone's sisters, who had
died in early youth; and, in affectionate remembrance of her, he
had called his second daughter by it -- just as he had called his
eldest daughter Norah, for his wife's sake. Magdalen! Surely, the
grand old Bible name -- suggestive of a sad and somber dignity;
recalling, in its first association, mournful ideas of penitence
and seclusion -- had been here, as events had turned out,
inappropriately bestowed? Surely, this self-contradictory girl
had perversely accomplished one contradiction more, by developing
into a character which was out of all harmony with her own
Christian name!

"Late again!" said Mrs. Vanstone, as Magdalen breathlessly kissed
her.

"Late again!" chimed in Miss Garth, when Magdalen came her way
next. "Well?" she went on, taking the girl's chin familiarly in
her hand, with a half-satirical, half-fond attention which
betrayed that the youngest daughter, with all her faults, was the
governess's favorite -- "Well? and what has the concert done for
_you?_ What form of suffering has dissipation inflicted on _your_
system this morning?"

"Suffering!" repeated Magdalen, recovering her breath, and the
use of her tongue with it. "I don't know the meaning of the word:
if there's anything the matter with me, I'm too well. Suffering!
I'm ready for another concert to-night, and a ball to-morrow, and
a play the day after. Oh," cried Magdalen, dropping into a chair
and crossing her hands rapturously on the table, "how I do like
pleasure!"

"Come! that's explicit at any rate," said Miss Garth. "I think
Pope must have had you in his mind when he wrote his famous
lines:

"'Men some to business, some to pleasure take,   But every woman
is at heart a rake.'"

"The deuce she is!" cried Mr. Vanstone, entering the room while
Miss Garth was making her quotation, with the dogs at his heels.
"Well; live and learn. If you're all rakes, Miss Garth, the sexes
are turned topsy-turvy with a vengeance; and the men will have
nothing left for it but to stop at home and darn the stockings.
-- Let's have some breakfast."

"How-d'ye-do, papa?" said Magdalen, taking Mr. Vanstone as
boisterously round the neck as if he belonged to some larger
order of Newfoundland dog, and was made to be romped with at his
daughter's convenience. "I'm the rake Miss Garth means; and I
want to go to another concert -- or a play, if you like -- or a
ball, if you prefer it -- or anything else in the way of
amusement that puts me into a new dress, and plunges me into a
crowd of people, and illuminates me with plenty of light, and
sets me in a tingle of excitement all over, from head to foot.
Anything will do, as long as it doesn't send us to bed at eleven
o'clock."

Mr. Vanstone sat down composedly under his daughter's flow of
language, like a man who was well used to verbal inundation from
that quarter. "If I am to be allowed my choice of amusements next
time," said the worthy gentleman, "I think a play will suit me
better than a concert. The girls enjoyed themselves amazingly, my
dear," he continued, addressing his wife. "More than I did, I
must say. It was altogether above my mark. They played one piece
of music which lasted forty minutes. It stopped three times,
by-the-way; and we all thought it was done each time, and clapped
our hands, rejoiced to be rid of it. But on it went again, to our
great surprise and mortification, till we gave it up in despair,
and all wished ourselves at Jericho. Norah, my dear! when we had
crash-bang for forty minutes, with three stoppages by-the-way,
what did they call it?"

"A symphony, papa," replied Norah.

"Yes, you darling old Goth, a symphony by the great Beethoven!"
added Magdalen. "How can you say you were not amused? Have you
forgotten the yellow-looking foreign woman, with the
unpronounceable name? Don't you remember the faces she made when
she sang? and the way she courtesied and courtesied, till she
cheated the foolish people into crying encore? Look here, mamma
-- look here, Miss Garth!"

She snatched up an empty plate from the table, to represent a
sheet of music, held it before her in the established
concert-room position, and produced an imitation of the
unfortunate singer's grimaces and courtesyings, so accur  a tely
and quaintly true to the original, that her father roared with
laughter; and even the footman (who came in at that moment with
the post-bag) rushed out of the room again, and committed the
indecorum of echoing his master audibly on the other side of the
door.

"Letters, papa. I want the key," said Magdalen, passing from the
imitation at the breakfast-table to the post-bag on the sideboard
with the easy abruptness which characterized all her actions.

Mr. Vanstone searched his pockets and shook his head. Though his
youngest daughter might resemble him in nothing else, it was easy
to see where Magdalen's unmethodical habits came from.

"I dare say I have left it in the library, along with my other
keys," said Mr. Vanstone. "Go and look for it, my dear."

"You really should check Magdalen," pleaded Mrs. Vanstone,
addressing her husband when her daughter had left the room.
"Those habits of mimicry are growing on her; and she speaks to
you with a levity which it is positively shocking to hear."

"Exactly what I have said myself, till I am tired of repeating
it," remarked Miss Garth. "She treats Mr. Vanstone as if he was a
kind of younger brother of hers."

"You are kind to us in everything else, papa; and you make kind
allowances for Magdalen's high spirits -- don't you?" said the
quiet Norah, taking her father's part and her sister's with so
little show of resolution on the surface that few observers would
have been sharp enough to detect the genuine substance beneath
it.

"Thank you, my dear," said good-natured Mr. Vanstone. "Thank you
for a very pretty speech. As for Magdalen," he continued,
addressing his wife and Miss Garth, "she's an unbroken filly. Let
her caper and kick in the paddock to her heart's content. Time
enough to break her to harness when she gets a little older."

The door opened, and Magdalen returned with the key. She unlocked
the post-bag at the sideboard and poured out the letters in a
heap. Sorting them gayly in less than a minute, she approached
the breakfast-table with both hands full, and delivered the
letters all round with the business-like rapidity of a London
postman.

"Two for Norah," she announced, beginning with her sister. "Three
for Miss Garth. None for mamma. One for me. And the other six all
for papa. You lazy old darling, you hate answering letters, don't
you?" pursued Magdalen, dropping the postman's character and
assuming the daughter's. "How you will grumble and fidget in the
study! and how you will wish there were no such things as letters
in the world! and how red your nice old bald head will get at the
top with the worry of writing the answers; and how many of the
answers you will leave until tomorrow after all! _The Bristol
Theater's open, papa,_" she whispered, slyly and suddenly, in her
father's ear; "I saw it in the newspaper when I went to the
library to get the key. Let's go to-morrow night!"

While his daughter was chattering, Mr. Vanstone was mechanically
sorting his letters. He turned over the first four in succession
and looked carelessly at the addresses. When he came to the fifth
his attention, which had hitherto wandered toward Magdalen,
suddenly became fixed on the post-mark of the letter.

Stooping over him, with her head on his shoulder, Magdalen could
see the post-mark as plainly as her father saw it -- NEW ORLEANS.

"An American letter, papa!" she said. "Who do you know at New
Orleans?"

Mrs. Vanstone started, and looked eagerly at her husband the
moment Magdalen spoke those words.

Mr. Vanstone said nothing. He quietly removed his daughter's arm
from his neck, as if he wished to be free from all interruption.
She returned, accordingly, to her place at the breakfast-table.
Her father, with the letter in his hand, waited a little before
he opened it; her mother looking at him, the while, with an
eager, expectant attention which attracted Miss Garth's notice,
and Norah's, as well as Magdalen's.

After a minute or more of hesitation Mr. Vanstone opened the
letter.

His face changed color the instant he read the first lines; his
cheeks fading to a dull, yellow-brown hue, which would have been
ashy paleness in a less florid man; and his expression becoming
saddened and overclouded in a moment. Norah and Magdalen,
watching anxiously, saw nothing but the change that passed over
their father. Miss Garth alone observed the effect which that
change produced on the attentive mistress of the house.

It was not the effect which she, or any one, could have
anticipated. Mrs. Vanstone looked excited rather than alarmed. A
faint flush rose on her cheeks -her eyes brightened -- she
stirred the tea round and round in her cup in a restless,
impatient manner which was not natural to her.

Magdalen, in her capacity of spoiled child, was, as usual, the
first to break the silence.

"What _is_ the matter, papa?" she asked.

"Nothing," said Mr. Vanstone, sharply, without looking up at her.

"I'm sure there must be something," persisted Magdalen. "I'm sure
there is bad news, papa, in that American letter."

"There is nothing in the letter that concerns _you_," said Mr.
Vanstone.

It was the first direct rebuff that Magdalen had ever received
from her father. She looked at him with an incredulous surprise,
which would have been irresistibly absurd under less serious
circumstances.

Nothing more was said. For the first time, perhaps, in their
lives, the family sat round the breakfast-table in painful
silence. Mr. Vanstone's hearty morning appetite, like his hearty
morning spirits, was gone. He absently broke off some morsels of
dry toast from the rack near him, absently finished his first cup
of tea -- then asked for a second, which he left before him
untouched.

"Norah," he said, after an interval, "you needn't wait for me.
Magdalen, my dear, you can go when you like."

His daughters rose immediately; and Miss Garth considerately
followed their example. When an easy-tempered man does assert
himself in his family, the rarity of the demonstration invariably
has its effect; and the will of that easy-tempered man is Law.

"What can have happened?" whispered Norah, as they closed the
breakfast-room door and crossed the hall.

"What does papa mean by being cross with Me?" exclaimed Magdalen,
chafing under a sense of her own injuries.

"May I ask -- what right you had to pry into your father's
private affairs?" retorted Miss Garth.

"Right?" repeated Magdalen. "I have no secrets from papa -- what
business has papa to have secrets from me! I consider myself
insulted."

"If you considered yourself properly reproved for not minding
your own business," said the plain-spoken Miss Garth, "you would
be a trifle nearer the truth. Ah! you are like all the rest of
the girls in the present day. Not one in a hundred of you knows
which end of her's uppermost."

The three ladies entered the morning-room; and Magdalen
acknowledged Miss Garth's reproof by banging the door.

Half an hour passed, and neither Mr. Vanstone nor his wife left
the breakfast-room. The servant, ignorant of what had happened,
went in to clear the table -- found his master and mistress
seated close together in deep consultation -- and immediately
went out again. Another quarter of an hour elapsed before the
breakfast-room door was opened, and the private conference of the
husband and wife came to an end.

"I hear mamma in the hall," said Norah. "Perhaps she is coming to
tell us something."

Mrs. Vanstone entered the morning-room as her daughter spoke. The
color was deeper on her cheeks, and the brightness of half-dried
tears glistened in her eyes; her step was more hasty, all her
movements were quicker than usual.

"I bring news, my dears, which will surprise you," she said,
addressing her daughters. "Your father and I are going to London
to-morrow."

Magdalen caught her mother by the arm in speechless astonishment.
Miss Garth dropped her work on her lap; even the sedate Norah
started to her feet, and amazedly repeated the words, "Going to
London!"

"Without us?" added Magdalen.

"Your father and I are going alone," said Mrs. Vanstone.
"Perhaps, for as long as three weeks -- but not longer. We are
going" -- she hesitated -- "we are going on imp ortant family
business. Don't hold me, Magdalen. This is a sudden necessity --
I have a great deal to do to-day -- many things to set in order
before tomorrow. There, there, my love, let me go."

She drew her arm away; hastily kissed her youngest daughter on
the forehead; and at once left the room again. Even Magdalen saw
that her mother was not to be coaxed into hearing or answering
any more questions.

The morning wore on, and nothing was seen of Mr. Vanstone. With
the reckless curiosity of her age and character, Magdalen, in
defiance of Miss Garth's prohibition and her sister's
remonstrances, determined to go to the, study and look for her
father there. When she tried the door, it was locked on the
inside. She said, "It's only me, papa;" and waited for the
answer. "I'm busy now, my dear," was the answer. "Don't disturb
me."

Mrs. Vanstone was, in another way, equally inaccessible. She
remained in her own room, with the female servants about her,
immersed in endless preparations for the approaching departure.
The servants, little used in that family to sudden resolutions
and unexpected orders, were awkward and confused in obeying
directions. They ran from room to room unnecessarily, and lost
time and patience in jostling each other on the stairs. If a
stranger had entered the house that day, he might have imagined
that an unexpected disaster had happened in it, instead of an
unexpected necessity for a journey to London. Nothing proceeded
in its ordinary routine. Magdalen, who was accustomed to pass the
morning at the piano, wandered restlessly about the staircases
and passages, and in and out of doors when there were glimpses of
fine weather. Norah, whose fondness for reading had passed into a
family proverb, took up book after book from table and shelf, and
laid them down again, in despair of fixing her attention. Even
Miss Garth felt the all-pervading influence of the household
disorganization, and sat alone by the morning-room fire, with her
head shaking ominously, and her work laid aside.

"Family affairs?" thought Miss Garth, pondering over Mrs.
Vanstone's vague explanatory words. "I have lived twelve years at
Combe-Raven; and these are the first family affairs which have
got between the parents and the children, in all my experience.
What does it mean? Change? I suppose I'm getting old. I don't
like change."

CHAPTER II.

AT ten o'clock the next morning Norah and Magdalen stood alone in
the hall at Combe-Raven watching the departure of the carriage
which took their father and mother to the London train.

Up to the last moment, both the sisters had hoped for some
explanation of that mysterious "family business" to which Mrs.
Vanstone had so briefly alluded on the previous day. No such
explanation had been offered. Even the agitation of the
leave-taking, under circumstances entirely new in the home
experience of the parents and children, had not shaken the
resolute discretion of Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone. They had gone --
with the warmest testimonies of affection, with farewell embraces
fervently reiterated again and again -- but without dropping one
word, from first to last, of the nature of their errand.

As the grating sound of the carriage-wheels ceased suddenly at a
turn in the road, the sisters looked one another in the face;
each feeling, and each betraying in her own way, the dreary sense
that she was openly excluded, for the first time, from the
confidence of her parents. Norah's customary reserve strengthened
into sullen silence -- she sat down in one of the hall chairs and
looked out frowningly through the open house door. Magdalen, as
usual when her temper was ruffled, expressed her dissatisfaction
in the plainest terms. "I don't care who knows it -- I think we
are both of us shamefully ill-used!" With those words, the young
lady followed her sister's example by seating herself on a hall
chair and looking aimlessly out through the open house door.

Almost at the same moment Miss Garth entered the hall from the
morning-room. Her quick observation showed her the necessity for
interfering to some practical purpose; and her ready good sense
at once pointed the way.

"Look up, both of you, if you please, and listen to me," said
Miss Garth. "If we are all three to be comfortable and happy
together, now we are alone, we must stick to our usual habits and
go on in our regular way. There is the state of things in plain
words. Accept the situation -- as the French say. Here am I to
set you the example. I have just ordered an excellent dinner at
the customary hour. I am going to the medicine-chest next, to
physic the kitchen-maid -- an unwholesome girl, whose face-ache
is all stomach. In the meantime, Norah, my dear, you will find
your work and your books, as usual, in the library. Magdalen,
suppose you leave off tying your handkerchief into knots and use
your fingers on the keys of the piano instead? We'll lunch at
one, and take the dogs out afterward. Be as brisk and cheerful
both of you as I am. Come, rouse up directly. If I see those
gloomy faces any longer, as sure as my name's Garth, I'll give
your mother written warning and go back to my friends by the
mixed train at twelve forty."

Concluding her address of expostulation in those terms, Miss
Garth led Norah to the library door, pushed Magdalen into the
morning-room, and went on her own way sternly to the regions of
the medicine-chest.

In this half-jesting, half-earnest manner she was accustomed to
maintain a sort of friendly authority over Mr. Vanstone's
daughters, after her proper functions as governess had
necessarily come to an end. Norah, it is needless to say, had
long since ceased to be her pupil; and Magdalen had, by this
time, completed her education. But Miss Garth had lived too long
and too intimately under Mr. Vanstone's roof to be parted with
for any purely formal considerations; and the first hint at going
away which she had thought it her duty to drop was dismissed with
such affectionate warmth of protest that she never repeated it
again, except in jest. The entire management of the household
was, from that time forth, left in her hands; and to those duties
she was free to add what companionable assistance she could
render to Norah's reading, and what friendly superintendence she
could still exercise over Magdalen's music. Such were the terms
on which Miss Garth was now a resident in Mr. Vanstone's family.

Toward the afternoon the weather improved. At half-past one the
sun was shining brightly; and the ladies left the house,
accompanied by the dogs, to set forth on their walk.

They crossed the stream, and ascended by the little rocky pass to
the hills beyond; then diverged to the left, and returned by a
cross-road which led through the village of Combe-Raven.

As they came in sight of the first cottages, they passed a man,
hanging about the road, who looked attentively, first at
Magdalen, then at Norah. They merely observed that he was short,
that he was dressed in black, and that he was a total stranger to
them -- and continued their homeward walk, without thinking more
about the loitering foot-passenger whom they had met on their way
back.

After they had left the village, and had entered the road which
led straight to the house, Magdalen surprised Miss Garth by
announcing that the stranger in black had turned, after they had
passed him, and was now following them. "He keeps on Norah's side
of the road," she said, mischievously. "I'm not the attraction --
don't blame _me_."

Whether the man was really following them, or not, made little
difference, for they were now close to the house. As they passed
through the lodge-gates, Miss Garth looked round, and saw that
the stranger was quickening his pace, apparently with the purpose
of entering into conversation. Seeing this, she at once directed
the young ladies to go on to the house with the dogs, while she
herself waited for events at the gate.

There was just time to complete this discreet arrangement, before
the stranger reached the lodge. He took off his hat to Miss Garth
politely, as she turned round. What did he look like, on the face
of him? He looked like a clergyman in difficulties.

Taking his port rait, f rom top to toe, the picture of him began
with a tall hat, broadly encircled by a mourning band of crumpled
crape. Below the hat was a lean, long, sallow face, deeply pitted
with the smallpox, and characterized, very remarkably, by eyes of
two different colors -- one bilious green, one bilious brown,
both sharply intelligent. His hair was iron-gray, carefully
brushed round at the temples. His cheeks and chin were in the
bluest bloom of smooth shaving; his nose was short Roman; his
lips long, thin, and supple, curled up at the corners with a
mildly-humorous smile. His white cravat was high, stiff, and
dingy; the collar, higher, stiffer, and dingier, projected its
rigid points on either side beyond his chin. Lower down, the
lithe little figure of the man was arrayed throughout in
sober-shabby black. His frock-coat was buttoned tight round the
waist, and left to bulge open majestically at the chest. His
hands were covered with black cotton gloves neatly darned at the
fingers; his umbrella, worn down at the ferule to the last
quarter of an inch, was carefully preserved, nevertheless, in an
oilskin case. The front view of him was the view in which he
looked oldest; meeting him face to face, he might have been
estimated at fifty or more. Walking behind him, his back and
shoulders were almost young enough to have passed for
five-and-thirty. His manners were distinguished by a grave
serenity. When he opened his lips, he spoke in a rich bass voice,
with an easy flow of language, and a strict attention to the
elocutionary claims of words in more than one syllable.
Persuasion distilled from his mildly-curling lips; and, shabby as
he was, perennial flowers of courtesy bloomed all over him from
head to foot.

"This is the residence of Mr. Vanstone, I believe?" he began,
with a circular wave of his hand in the direction of the house.
"Have I the honor of addressing a member of Mr. Vanstone's
family?"

"Yes," said the plain-spoken Miss Garth. "You are addressing Mr.
Vanstone's governess."

The persuasive man fell back a step -- admired Mr. Vanstone's
governess -advanced a step again -- and continued the
conversation.

"And the two young ladies," he went on, "the two young ladies who
were walking with you are doubtless Mr. Vanstone's daughters? I
recognized the darker of the two, and the elder as I apprehend,
by her likeness to her handsome mother. The younger lady -- "

"You are acquainted with Mrs. Vanstone, I suppose?" said Miss
Garth, interrupting the stranger's flow of language, which, all
things considered, was beginning, in her opinion, to flow rather
freely. The stranger acknowledged the interruption by one of his
polite bows, and submerged Miss Garth in his next sentence as if
nothing had happened.

"The younger lady," he proceeded, "takes after her father, I
presume? I assure you, her face struck me. Looking at it with my
friendly interest in the family, I thought it very remarkable. I
said to myself -- Charming, Characteristic, Memorable. Not like
her sister, not like her mother. No doubt, the image of her
father?"

Once more Miss Garth attempted to stem the man's flow of words.
It was plain that he did not know Mr. Vanstone, even by sight --
otherwise he would never have committed the error of supposing
that Magdalen took after her father. Did he know Mrs. Vanstone
any better? He had left Miss Garth's question on that point
unanswered. In the name of wonder, who was he? Powers of
impudence! what did he want?

"You may be a friend of the family, though I don't remember your
face," said Miss Garth. "What may your commands be, if you
please? Did you come here to pay Mrs. Vanstone a visit?"

"I had anticipated the pleasure of communicating with Mrs.
Vanstone," answered this inveterately evasive and inveterately
civil man. "How is she?"

"Much as usual," said Miss Garth, feeling her resources of
politeness fast failing her.

"Is she at home?"

"No."

"Out for long?"

"Gone to London with Mr. Vanstone."

The man's long face suddenly grew longer. His bilious brown eye
looked disconcerted, and his bilious green eye followed its
example. His manner became palpably anxious; and his choice of
words was more carefully selected than ever.

"Is Mrs. Vanstone's absence likely to extend over any very
lengthened period?" he inquired.

"It will extend over three weeks," replied Miss Garth. "I think
you have now asked me questions enough," she went on, beginning
to let her temper get the better of her at last. "Be so good, if
you please, as to mention your business and your name. If you
have any message to leave for Mrs. Vanstone, I shall be writing
to her by to-night's post, and I can take charge of it."

"A thousand thanks! A most valuable suggestion. Permit me to take
advantage of it immediately."

He was not in the least affected by the severity of Miss Garth's
looks and language -- he was simply relieved by her proposal, and
he showed it with the most engaging sincerity. This time his
bilious green eye took the initiative, and set his bilious brown
eye the example of recovered serenity. His curling lips took a
new twist upward; he tucked his umbrella briskly under his arm;
and produced from the breast of his coat a large old-fashioned
black pocketbook. From this he took a pencil and a card --
hesitated and considered for a moment -- wrote rapidly on the
card -- and placed it, with the politest alacrity, in Miss
Garth's hand.

"I shall feel personally obliged if you will honor me by
inclosing that card in your letter," he said. There is no
necessity for my troubling you additionally with a message. My
name will be quite sufficient to recall a little family matter to
Mrs. Vanstone, which has no doubt escaped her memory. Accept my
best thanks. This has been a day of agreeable surprises to me. I
have found the country hereabouts remarkably pretty; I have seen
Mrs. Vanstone's two charming daughters; I have become acquainted
with an honored preceptress in Mr. Vanstone's family. I
congratulate myself -- I apologize for occupying your valuable
time -- I beg my renewed acknowledgments -- I wish you
good-morning."

He raised his tall hat. His brown eye twinkled, his green eye
twinkled, his curly lips smiled sweetly. In a moment he turned on
his heel. His youthful back appeared to the best advantage; his
active little legs took him away trippingly in the direction of
the village. One, two, three -- and he reached the turn in the
road. Four, five, six -- and he was gone.

Miss Garth looked down at the card in her hand, and looked up
again in blank astonishment. The name and address of the
clerical-looking stranger (both written in pencil) ran as
follows:

_Captain Wragge. Post-office, Bristol._

CHAPTER III.

WHEN she returned to the house, Miss Garth made no attempt to
conceal her unfavorable opinion of the stranger in black. His
object was, no doubt, to obtain pecuniary assistance from Mrs.
Vanstone. What the nature of his claim on her might be seemed
less intelligible -- unless it was the claim of a poor relation.
Had Mrs. Vanstone ever mentioned, in the presence of her
daughters, the name of Captain Wragge? Neither of them
recollected to have heard it before. Had Mrs. Vanstone ever
referred to any poor relations who were dependent on her? On the
contrary she had mentioned of late years that she doubted having
any relations at all who were still living. And yet Captain
Wragge had plainly declared that the name on his card would
recall "a family matter" to Mrs. Vanstone's memory. What did it
mean? A false statement, on the stranger's part, without any
intelligible reason for making it? Or a second mystery, following
close on the heels of the mysterious journey to London?

All the probabilities seemed to point to some hidden connection
between the "family affairs" which had taken Mr. and Mrs.
Vanstone so suddenly from home and the "family matter" associated
with the name of Captain Wragge. Miss Garth's doubts thronged
back irresistibly on her mind as she sealed her letter to Mrs.
Vanstone, with the captain's card added by way of inclosure.

By return of post the answer arrived.

Always the earliest riser among the ladies of the house, Miss
Garth was alo ne in the breakfast-room when the letter was
brought in. Her first glance at its contents convinced her of the
necessity of reading it carefully through in retirement, before
any embarrassing questions could be put to her. Leaving a message
with the servant requesting Norah to make the tea that morning,
she went upstairs at once to the solitude and security of her own
room.

Mrs. Vanstone's letter extended to some length. The first part of
it referred to Captain Wragge, and entered unreservedly into all
necessary explanations relating to the man himself and to the
motive which had brought him to Combe-Raven.

It appeared from Mrs. Vanstone's statement that her mother had
been twice married. Her mother's first husband had been a certain
Doctor Wragge -- a widower with young children; and one of those
children was now the unmilitary-looking captain, whose address
was "Post-office, Bristol." Mrs. Wragge had left no family by her
first husband; and had afterward married Mrs. Vanstone's father.
Of that second marriage Mrs. Vanstone herself was the only issue.
She had lost both her parents while she was still a young woman;
and, in course of years, her mother's family connections (who
were then her nearest surviving relatives) had been one after
another removed by death. She was left, at the present writing,
without a relation in the world -- excepting, perhaps, certain
cousins whom she had never seen, and of whose existence even, at
the present moment, she possessed no positive knowledge.

Under these circumstances, what family claim had Captain Wragge
on Mrs. Vanstone?

None whatever. As the son of her mother's first husband, by that
husband's first wife, not even the widest stretch of courtesy
could have included him at any time in the list of Mrs.
Vanstone's most distant relations. Well knowing this (the letter
proceeded to say), he had nevertheless persisted in forcing
himself upon her as a species of family connection: and she had
weakly sanctioned the intrusion, solely from the dread that he
would otherwise introduce himself to Mr. Vanstone's notice, and
take unblushing advantage of Mr. Vanstone's generosity.
Shrinking, naturally, from allowing her husband to be annoyed,
and probably cheated as well, by any person who claimed, however
preposterously, a family connection with herself, it had been her
practice, for many years past, to assist the captain from her own
purse, on the condition that he should never come near the house,
and that he should not presume to make any application whatever
to Mr. Vanstone.

Readily admitting the imprudence of this course, Mrs. Vanstone
further explained that she had perhaps been the more inclined to
adopt it through having been always accustomed, in her early
days, to see the captain living now upon one member, and now upon
another, of her mother's family. Possessed of abilities which
might have raised him to distinction in almost any career that he
could have chosen, he had nevertheless, from his youth upward,
been a disgrace to all his relatives. He had been expelled the
militia regiment in which he once held a commission. He had tried
one employment after another, and had discreditably failed in
all. He had lived on his wits, in the lowest and basest meaning
of the phrase. He had married a poor ignorant woman, who had
served as a waitress at some low eating-house, who had
unexpectedly come into a little money, and whose small
inheritance he had mercilessly squandered to the last farthing.
In plain terms, he was an incorrigible scoundrel; and he had now
added one more to the list of his many misdemeanors by impudently
breaking the conditions on which Mrs. Vanstone had hitherto
assisted him. She had written at once to the address indicated on
his card, in such terms and to such purpose as would prevent him,
she hoped and believed, from ever venturing near the house again.
Such were the terms in which Mrs. Vanstone concluded that first
part of her letter which referred exclusively to Captain Wragge.

Although the statement thus presented implied a weakness in Mrs.
Vanstone's character which Miss Garth, after many years of
intimate experience, had never detected, she accepted the
explanation as a matter of course; receiving it all the more
readily inasmuch as it might, without impropriety, be
communicated in substance to appease the irritated curiosity of
the two young ladies. For this reason especially she perused the
first half of the letter with an agreeable sense of relief. Far
different was the impression produced on her when she advanced to
the second half, and when she had read it to the end.

The second part of the letter was devoted to the subject of the
journey to London.

Mrs. Vanstone began by referring to the long and intimate
friendship which had existed between Miss Garth and herself. She
now felt it due to that friendship to explain confidentially the
motive which had induced her to leave home with her husband. Miss
Garth had delicately refrained from showing it, but she must
naturally have felt, and must still be feeling, great surprise at
the mystery in which their departure had been involved; and she
must doubtless have asked herself why Mrs. Vanstone should have
been associated with family affairs which (in her independent
position as to relatives) must necessarily concern Mr. Vanstone
alone.

Without touching on those affairs, which it was neither desirable
nor necessary to do, Mrs. Vanstone then proceeded to say that she
would at once set all Miss Garth's doubts at rest, so far as they
related to herself, by one plain acknowledgment. Her object in
accompanying her husband to London was to see a certain
celebrated physician, and to consult him privately on a very
delicate and anxious matter connected with the state of her
health. In plainer terms still, this anxious matter meant nothing
less than the possibility that she might again become a mother.

When the doubt had first suggested itself she had treated it as a
mere delusion. The long interval that had elapsed since the birth
of her last child; the serious illness which had afflicted her
after the death of that child in infancy; the time of life at
which she had now arrived -- all inclined her to dismiss the idea
as soon as it arose in her mind. It had returned again and again
in spite of her. She had felt the necessity of consulting the
highest medical authority; and had shrunk, at the same time, from
alarming her daughters by summoning a London physician to the
house. The medical opinion, sought under the circumstances
already mentioned, had now been obtained. Her doubt was confirmed
as a certainty; and the result, which might be expected to take
place toward the end of the summer, was, at her age and with her
constitutional peculiarities, a subject for serious future
anxiety, to say the least of it. The physician had done his best
to encourage her; but she had understood the drift of his
questions more clearly than he supposed, and she knew that he
looked to the future with more than ordinary doubt.

Having disclosed these particulars, Mrs. Vanstone requested that
they might be kept a secret between her correspondent and
herself. She had felt unwilling to mention her suspicions to Miss
Garth, until those suspicions had been confirmed -- and she now
recoiled, with even greater reluctance, from allowing her
daughters to be in any way alarmed about her. It would be best to
dismiss the subject for the present, and to wait hopefully till
the summer came. In the meantime they would all, she trusted, be
happily reunited on the twenty-third of the month, which Mr.
Vanstone had fixed on as the day for their return. With this
intimation, and with the customary messages, the letter, abruptly
and confusedly, came to an end.

For the first few minutes, a natural sympathy for Mrs. Vanstone
was the only feeling of which Miss Garth was conscious after she
had laid the letter down. Ere long, however, there rose obscurely
on her mind a doubt which perplexed and distressed her. Was the
explanation which she had just read really as satisfactory and as
complete as it professed to be? Testing it plainly by facts,
surely not.

On the morning of her  depar ture, Mrs. Vanstone had
unquestionably left the house in good spirits. At her age, and in
her state of health, were good spirits compatible with such an
errand to a physician as the errand on which she was bent? Then,
again, had that letter from New Orleans, which had necessitated
Mr. Vanstone's departure, no share in occasioning his wife's
departure as well? Why, otherwise, had she looked up so eagerly
the moment her daughter mentioned the postmark. Granting the
avowed motive for her journey -- did not her manner, on the
morning when the letter was opened, and again on the morning of
departure, suggest the existence of some other motive which her
letter kept concealed?

If it was so, the conclusion that followed was a very distressing
one. Mrs. Vanstone, feeling what was due to her long friendship
with Miss Garth, had apparently placed the fullest confidence in
her, on one subject, by way of unsuspiciously maintaining the
strictest reserve toward her on another. Naturally frank and
straightforward in all her own dealings, Miss Garth shrank from
plainly pursuing her doubts to this result: a want of loyalty
toward her tried and valued friend seemed implied in the mere
dawning of it on her mind.

She locked up the letter in her desk; roused herself resolutely
to attend to the passing interests of the day; and went
downstairs again to the breakfast-room. Amid many uncertainties,
this at least was clear, Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone were coming back
on the twenty-third of the month. Who could say what new
revelations might not come back with them?

CHAPTER IV.

No new revelations came back with them: no anticipations
associated with their return were realized. On the one forbidden
subject of their errand in London, there was no moving either the
master or the mistress of the house. Whatever their object might
have been, they had to all appearance successfully accomplished
it -- for they both returned in perfect possession of their
every-day looks and manners. Mrs. Vanstone's spirits had subsided
to their natural quiet level; Mr. Vanstone's imperturbable
cheerfulness sat as easily and indolently on him as usual. This
was the one noticeable result of their journey -- this, and no
more. Had the household revolution run its course already? Was
the secret thus far hidden impenetrably, hidden forever?

Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain
for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day
on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that
has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the
body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in
ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its
prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes;
and Love finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we
will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of
nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which
the world has never yet seen.

How was the secret now hidden in the household at Combe-Raven
doomed to disclose itself? Through what coming event in the daily
lives of the father, the mother, and the daughters, was the law
of revelation destined to break the fatal way to discovery? The
way opened (unseen by the parents, and unsuspected by the
children) through the first event that happened after Mr. and
Mrs. Vanstone's return -- an event which presented, on the
surface of it, no interest of greater importance than the trivial
social ceremony of a morning call.

Three days after the master and mistress of Combe-Raven had come
back, the female members of the family happened to be assembled
together in the morning-room. The view from the windows looked
over the flower-garden and shrubbery; this last being protected
at its outward extremity by a fence, and approached from the lane
beyond by a wicket-gate. During an interval in the conversation,
the attention of the ladies was suddenly attracted to this gate,
by the sharp sound of the iron latch falling in its socket. Some
one had entered the shrubbery from the lane; and Magdalen at once
placed herself at the window to catch the first sight of the
visitor through the trees.

After a few minutes, the figure of a gentleman became visible, at
the point where the shrubbery path joined the winding garden-walk
which led to the house. Magdalen looked at him attentively,
without appearing, at first, to know who he was. As he came
nearer, however, she started in astonishment; and, turning
quickly to her mother and sister, proclaimed the gentleman in the
garden to be no other than "Mr. Francis Clare."

The visitor thus announced was the son of Mr. Vanstone's oldest
associate and nearest neighbor.

Mr. Clare the elder inhabited an unpretending little cottage,
situated just outside the shrubbery fence which marked the limit
of the Combe-Raven grounds. Belonging to the younger branch of a
family of great antiquity, the one inheritance of importance that
he had derived from his ancestors was the possession of a
magnificent library, which not only filled all the rooms in his
modest little dwelling, but lined the staircases and passages as
well. Mr. Clare's books represented the one important interest of
Mr. Clare's life. He had been a widower for many years past, and
made no secret of his philosophical resignation to the loss of
his wife. As a father, he regarded his family of three sons in
the light of a necessary domestic evil, which perpetually
threatened the sanctity of his study and the safety of his books.
When the boys went to school, Mr. Clare said "good-by" to them --
and "thank God" to himself. As for his small income, and his
still smaller domestic establishment, he looked at them both from
the same satirically indifferent point of view. He called himself
a pauper with a pedigree. He abandoned the entire direction of
his household to the slatternly old woman who was his only
servant, on the condition that she was never to venture near his
books, with a duster in her hand, from one year's end to the
other. His favorite poets were Horace and Pope; his chosen
philosophers, Hobbes and Voltaire. He took his exercise and his
fresh air under protest; and always walked the same distance to a
yard, on the ugliest high-road in the neighborhood. He was
crooked of back, and quick of temper. He could digest radishes,
and sleep after green tea. His views of human nature were the
views of Diogenes, tempered by Rochefoucauld; his personal habits
were slovenly in the last degree; and his favorite boast was that
he had outlived all human prejudices.

Such was this singular man, in his more superficial aspects. What
nobler qualities he might possess below the surface, no one had
ever discovered. Mr. Vanstone, it is true, stoutly asserted that
"Mr. Clare's worst side was his outside" -- but in this
expression of opinion he stood alone among his neighbors. The
association between these two widely-dissimilar men had lasted
for many years, and was almost close enough to be called a
friendship. They had acquired a habit of meeting to smoke
together on certain evenings in the week, in the
cynic-philosopher's study, and of there disputing on every
imaginable subject -- Mr. Vanstone flourishing the stout cudgels
of assertion, and Mr. Clare meeting him with the keen edged-tools
of sophistry. They generally quarreled at night, and met on the
neutral ground of the shrubbery to be reconciled together the
next morning. The bond of intercourse thus curiously established
between them was strengthened on Mr. Vanstone's side by a hearty
interest in his neighbor's three sons -- an interest by which
those sons benefited all the more importantly, seeing that one of
the prejudices which their father had outlived was a prejudice in
favor of his own children.

"I look at those boys," the philosopher was accustomed to say,
"with a perfectly impartial eye; I dismiss the unimportant
accident of their birth from all consideration; and I find them
below the average in every respect. The only excuse which a poor
gentleman has for presuming to exist in the nineteenth century,
is the excuse of extraordinary ability. My boys ha ve been a
ddle-headed from infancy. If I had any capital to give them, I
should make Frank a butcher, Cecil a baker, and Arthur a grocer
-- those being the only human vocations I know of which are
certain to be always in request. As it is, I have no money to
help them with; and they have no brains to help themselves. They
appear to me to be three human superfluities in dirty jackets and
noisy boots; and, unless they clear themselves off the community
by running away, I don't myself profess to see what is to be done
with them."

Fortunately for the boys, Mr. Vanstone's views were still fast
imprisoned in the ordinary prejudices. At his intercession, and
through his influence, Frank, Cecil, and Arthur were received on
the foundation of a well-reputed grammar-school. In holiday-time
they were mercifully allowed the run of Mr. Vanstone's paddock;
and were humanized and refined by association, indoors, with Mrs.
Vanstone and her daughters. On these occasions, Mr. Clare used
sometimes to walk across from his cottage (in his dressing-gown
and slippers), and look at the boys disparagingly, through the
window or over the fence, as if they were three wild animals whom
his neighbor was attempting to tame. "You and your wife are
excellent people," he used to say to Mr. Vanstone. "I respect
your honest prejudices in favor of those boys of mine with all my
heart. But you are _so_ wrong about them -- you are indeed! I
wish to give no offense; I speak quite impartially -- but mark my
words, Vanstone: they'll all three turn out ill, in spite of
everything you can do to prevent it."

In later years, when Frank had reached the age of seventeen, the
same curious shifting of the relative positions of parent and
friend between the two neighbors was exemplified more absurdly
than ever. A civil engineer in the north of England, who owed
certain obligations to Mr. Vanstone, expressed his willingness to
take Frank under superintendence, on terms of the most favorable
kind. When this proposal was received, Mr. Clare, as usual, first
shifted his own character as Frank's father on Mr. Vanstone's
shoulders -- and then moderated his neighbor's parental
enthusiasm from the point of view of an impartial spectator.

"It's the finest chance for Frank that could possibly have
happened," cried Mr. Vanstone, in a glow of fatherly enthusiasm.

"My good fellow, he won't take it," retorted Mr. Clare, with the
icy composure of a disinterested friend.

"But he _shall_ take it," persisted Mr. Vanstone.

"Say he shall have a mathematical head," rejoined Mr. Clare; "say
he shall possess industry, ambition, and firmness of purpose.
Pooh! pooh! you don't look at him with my impartial eyes. I say,
No mathematics, no industry, no ambition, no firmness of purpose.
Frank is a compound of negatives -- and there they are."

"Hang your negatives!" shouted Mr. Vanstone. "I don't care a rush
for negatives, or affirmatives either. Frank shall have this
splendid chance; and I'll lay you any wager you like he makes the
best of it."

"I am not rich enough to lay wagers, usually," replied Mr. Clare;
"but I think I have got a guinea about the house somewhere; and
I'll lay you that guinea Frank comes back on our hands like a bad
shilling."

"Done!" said Mr. Vanstone. "No: stop a minute! I won't do the
lad's character the injustice of backing it at even money. I'll
lay you five to one Frank turns up trumps in this business! You
ought to be ashamed of yourself for talking of him as you do.
What sort of hocus-pocus you bring it about by, I don't pretend
to know; but you always end in making me take his part, as if I
was his father instead of you. Ah yes! give you time, and you'll
defend yourself. I won't give you time; I won't have any of your
special pleading. Black's white according to you. I don't care:
it's black for all that. You may talk nineteen to the dozen -- I
shall write to my friend and say Yes, in Frank's interests, by
to-day's post."

Such were the circumstances under which Mr. Francis Clare
departed for the north of England, at the age of seventeen, to
start in life as a civil engineer.

From time to time, Mr. Vanstone's friend communicated with him on
the subject of the new pupil. Frank was praised, as a quiet,
gentleman-like, interesting lad -but he was also reported to be
rather slow at acquiring the rudiments of engineering science.
Other letters, later in date, described him as a little too ready
to despond about himself; as having been sent away, on that
account, to some new railway works, to see if change of scene
would rouse him; and as having benefited in every respect by the
experiment -- except perhaps in regard to his professional
studies, which still advanced but slowly. Subsequent
communications announced his departure, under care of a
trustworthy foreman, for some public works in Belgium; touched on
the general benefit he appeared to derive from this new change;
praised his excellent manners and address, which were of great
assistance in facilitating business communications with the
foreigners -- and passed over in ominous silence the main
question of his actual progress in the acquirement of knowledge.
These reports, and many others which resembled them, were all
conscientiously presented by Frank's friend to the attention of
Frank's father. On each occasion, Mr. Clare exulted over Mr.
Vanstone, and Mr. Vanstone quarreled with Mr. Clare. "One of
these days you'll wish you hadn't laid that wager," said the
cynic philosopher. "One of these days I shall have the blessed
satisfaction of pocketing your guinea," cried the sanguine
friend. Two years had then passed since Frank's departure. In one
year more results asserted themselves, and settled the question.

Two days after Mr. Vanstone's return from London, he was called
away from the breakfast-table before he had found time enough to
look over his letters, delivered by the morning's post. Thrusting
them into one of the pockets of his shooting-jacket, he took the
letters out again, at one grasp, to read them when occasion
served, later in the day. The grasp included the whole
correspondence, with one exception -- that exception being a
final report from the civil engineer, which notified the
termination of the connection between his pupil and himself, and
the immediate return of Frank to his father's house.

While this important announcement lay unsuspected in Mr.
Vanstone's pocket, the object of it was traveling home, as fast
as railways could take him. At half-past ten at night, while Mr.
Clare was sitting in studious solitude over his books and his
green tea, with his favorite black cat to keep him company, he
heard footsteps in the passage -- the door opened -- and Frank
stood before him.

Ordinary men would have been astonished. But the philosopher's
composure was not to be shaken by any such trifle as the
unexpected return of his eldest son. He could not have looked up
more calmly from his learned volume if Frank had been absent for
three minutes instead of three years.

"Exactly what I predicted," said Mr. Clare. "Don't interrupt me
by making explanations; and don't frighten the cat. If there is
anything to eat in the kitchen, get it and go to bed. You can
walk over to Combe-Raven tomorrow and give this message from me
to Mr. Vanstone: 'Father's compliments, sir, and I have come back
upon your hands like a bad shilling, as he always said I should.
He keeps his own guinea, and takes your five; and he hopes you'll
mind what he says to you another time.' That is the message. Shut
the door after you. Good-night."

Under these unfavorable auspices, Mr. Francis Clare made his
appearance the next morning in the grounds at Combe-Raven; and,
something doubtful of the reception that might await him, slowly
approached the precincts of the house.

It was not wonderful that Magdalen should have failed to
recognize him when he first appeared in view. He had gone away a
backward lad of seventeen; he returned a young man of twenty. His
slim figure had now acquired strength and grace, and had
increased in stature to the medium height. The small regular
features, which he was supposed to have inherited from his
mother, were rounded an d filled ou t, without having lost their
remarkable delicacy of form. His beard was still in its infancy;
and nascent lines of whisker traced their modest way sparely down
his cheeks. His gentle, wandering brown eyes would have looked to
better advantage in a woman's face -- they wanted spirit and
firmness to fit them for the face of a man. His hands had the
same wandering habit as his eyes; they were constantly changing
from one position to another, constantly twisting and turning any
little stray thing they could pick up. He was undeniably
handsome, graceful, well-bred -- but no close observer could look
at him without suspecting that the stout old family stock had
begun to wear out in the later generations, and that Mr. Francis
Clare had more in him of the shadow of his ancestors than of the
substance.

When the astonishment caused by his appearance had partially
subsided, a search was instituted for the missing report. It was
found in the remotest recesses of Mr. Vanstone's capacious
pocket, and was read by that gentleman on the spot.

The plain facts, as stated by the engineer, were briefly these:
Frank was not possessed of the necessary abilities to fit him for
his new calling; and it was useless to waste time by keeping him
any longer in an employment for which he had no vocation. This,
after three years' trial, being the conviction on both sides, the
master had thought it the most straightforward course for the
pupil to go home and candidly place results before his father and
his friends. In some other pursuit, for which he was more fit,
and in which he could feel an interest, he would no doubt display
the industry and perseverance which he had been too much
discouraged to practice in the profession that he had now
abandoned. Personally, he was liked by all who knew him; and his
future prosperity was heartily desired by the many friends whom
he had made in the North. Such was the substance of the report,
and so it came to an end.

Many men would have thought the engineer's statement rather too
carefully worded; and, suspecting him of trying to make the best
of a bad case, would have entertained serious doubts on the
subject of Frank's future. Mr. Vanstone was too easy-tempered and
sanguine -- and too anxious, as well, not to yield his old
antagonist an inch more ground than he could help -- to look at
the letter from any such unfavorable point of view. Was it
Frank's fault if he had not got the stuff in him that engineers
were made of? Did no other young men ever begin life with a false
start? Plenty began in that way, and got over it, and did wonders
afterward. With these commentaries on the letter, the
kind-hearted gentleman patted Frank on the shoulder. "Cheer up,
my lad!" said Mr. Vanstone. "We will be even with your father one
of these days, though he _has_ won the wager this time!"

The example thus set by the master of the house was followed at
once by the family -- with the solitary exception of Norah, whose
incurable formality and reserve expressed themselves, not too
graciously, in her distant manner toward the visitor. The rest,
led by Magdalen (who had been Frank's favorite playfellow in past
times) glided back into their old easy habits with him without an
effort. He was "Frank" with all of them but Norah, who persisted
in addressing him as "Mr. Clare." Even the account he was now
encouraged to give of the reception accorded to him by his
father, on the previous night, failed to disturb Norah's gravity.
She sat with her dark, handsome face steadily averted, her eyes
cast down, and the rich color in her cheeks warmer and deeper
than usual. All the rest, Miss Garth included, found old Mr.
Clare's speech of welcome to his son quite irresistible. The
noise and merriment were at their height when the servant came
in, and struck the whole party dumb by the announcement of
visitors in the drawing-room. "Mr. Marrable, Mrs. Marrable, and
Miss Marrable; Evergreen Lodge, Clifton."

Norah rose as readily as if the new arrivals had been a relief to
her mind. Mrs. Vanstone was the next to leave her chair. These
two went away first, to receive the visitors. Magdalen, who
preferred the society of her father and Frank, pleaded hard to be
left behind; but Miss Garth, after granting five minutes' grace,
took her into custody and marched her out of the room. Frank rose
to take his leave.

"No, no," said Mr. Vanstone, detaining him. "Don't go. These
people won't stop long. Mr. Marrable's a merchant at Bristol.
I've met him once or twice, when the girls forced me to take them
to parties at Clifton. Mere acquaintances, nothing more. Come and
smoke a cigar in the greenhouse. Hang all visitors -- they worry
one's life out. I'll appear at the last moment with an apology;
and you shall follow me at a safe distance, and be a proof that I
was really engaged."

Proposing this ingenious stratagem in a confidential whisper, Mr.
Vanstone took Frank's arm and led him round the house by the back
way. The first ten minutes of seclusion in the conservatory
passed without events of any kind. At the end of that time, a
flying figure in bright garments flashed upon the two gentlemen
through the glass -- the door was flung open -- flower-pots fell
in homage to passing petticoats -- and Mr. Vanstone's youngest
daughter ran up to him at headlong speed, with every external
appearance of having suddenly taken leave of her senses.

"Papa! the dream of my whole life is realized," she said, as soon
as she could speak. "I shall fly through the roof of the
greenhouse if somebody doesn't hold me down. The Marrables have
come here with an invitation. Guess, you darling -guess what
they're going to give at Evergreen Lodge!"

"A ball!" said Mr. Vanstone, without a moment's hesitation.

"Private Theatricals!!!" cried Magdalen, her clear young voice
ringing through the conservatory like a bell; her loose sleeves
falling back and showing her round white arms to the dimpled
elbows, as she clapped her hands ecstatically in the air. "'The
Rivals' is the play, papa -- 'The Rivals,' by the famous
what's-his-name -- and they want ME to act! The one thing in the
whole universe that I long to do most. It all depends on you.
Mamma shakes her head; and Miss Garth looks daggers; and Norah's
as sulky as usual -- but if you say Yes, they must all three give
way and let me do as I like. Say Yes," she pleaded, nestling
softly up to her father, and pressing her lips with a fond
gentleness to his ear, as she whispered the next words. "Say Yes,
and I'll be a good girl for the rest of my life."

"A good girl?" repeated Mr. Vanstone -- "a mad girl, I think you
must mean. Hang these people and their theatricals! I shall have
to go indoors and see about this matter. You needn't throw away
your cigar, Frank. You're well out of the business, and you can
stop here."

"No, he can't," said Magdalen. "He's in the business, too."

Mr. Francis Clare had hitherto remained modestly in the
background. He now came forward with a face expressive of
speechless amazement.

"Yes," continued Magdalen, answering his blank look of inquiry
with perfect composure. "You are to act. Miss Marrable and I have
a turn for business, and we settled it all in five minutes. There
are two parts in the play left to be filled. One is Lucy, the
waiting-maid; which is the character I have undertaken -- with
papa's permission," she added, slyly pinching her father's arm;
"and he won't say No, will he? First, because he's a darling;
secondly, because I love him, and he loves me; thirdly, because
there is never any difference of opinion between us (is there?);
fourthly, because I give him a kiss, which naturally stops his
mouth and settles the whole question. Dear me, I'm wandering.
Where was I just now? Oh yes! explaining myself to Frank -- "

"I beg your pardon," began Frank, attempting, at this point, to
enter his protest.

"The second character in the play," pursued Magdalen, without
taking the smallest notice of the protest, "is Falkland -- a
jealous lover, with a fine flow of language. Miss Marrable and I
discussed Falkland privately on the window-seat while the rest
were talking. She is a delightful girl -- so impulsive , so
sensible, s o entirely unaffected. She confided in me. She said:
'One of our miseries is that we can't find a gentleman who will
grapple with the hideous difficulties of Falkland.' Of course I
soothed her. Of course I said: 'I've got the gentleman, and he
shall grapple immediately.' -- 'Oh heavens! who is he?' -- 'Mr.
Francis Clare.' -- 'And where is he?' -- 'In the house at this
moment.' -- 'Will you be so very charming, Miss Vanstone, as to
fetch him?' -'I'll fetch him, Miss Marrable, with the greatest
pleasure.' I left the window-seat -- I rushed into the
morning-room -- I smelled cigars -- I followed the smell -- and
here I am."

"It's a compliment, I know, to be asked to act," said Frank, in
great embarrassment. "But I hope you and Miss Marrable will
excuse me -- "

"Certainly not. Miss Marrable and I are both remarkable for the
firmness of our characters. When we say Mr. So-and-So is
positively to act the part of Falkland, we positively mean it.
Come in and be introduced."

"But I never tried to act. I don't know how."

"Not of the slightest consequence. If you don't know how, come to
me and I'll teach you."

"You!" exclaimed Mr. Vanstone. "What do you know about it?"

"Pray, papa, be serious! I have the strongest internal conviction
that I could act every character in the play -- Falkland
included. Don't let me have to speak a second time, Frank. Come
and be introduced."

She took her father's arm, and moved on with him to the door of
the greenhouse. At the steps, she turned and looked round to see
if Frank was following her. It was only the action of a moment;
but in that moment her natural firmness of will rallied all its
resources -- strengthened itself with the influence of her beauty
-- commanded -- and conquered. She looked lovely: the flush was
tenderly bright in her cheeks; the radiant pleasure shone and
sparkled in her eyes; the position of her figure, turned suddenly
from the waist upward, disclosed its delicate strength, its
supple firmness, its seductive, serpentine grace. "Come!" she
said, with a coquettish beckoning action of her head. "Come,
Frank!"

Few men of forty would have resisted her at that moment. Frank
was twenty last birthday. In other words, he threw aside his
cigar, and followed her out of the greenhouse.

As he turned and closed the door -- in the instant when he lost
sight of her -his disinclination to be associated with the
private theatricals revived. At the foot of the house-steps he
stopped again; plucked a twig from a plant near him; broke it in
his hand; and looked about him uneasily, on this side and on
that. The path to the left led back to his father's cottage --
the way of escape lay open. Why not take it?

While he still hesitated, Mr. Vanstone and his daughter reached
the top of the steps. Once more, Magdalen looked round -- looked
with her resistless beauty, with her all-conquering smile. She
beckoned again; and again he followed her -up the steps, and over
the threshold. The door closed on them.

So, with a trifling gesture of invitation on one side, with a
trifling act of compliance on the other: so -- with no knowledge
in his mind, with no thought in hers, of the secret still hidden
under the journey to London -- they took the way which led to
that secret's discovery, through many a darker winding that was
yet to come.

CHAPTER V.

MR. VANSTONE'S inquiries into the proposed theatrical
entertainment at Evergreen Lodge were answered by a narrative of
dramatic disasters; of which Miss Marrable impersonated the
innocent cause, and in which her father and mother played the
parts of chief victims.

Miss Marrable was that hardest of all born tyrants -- an only
child. She had never granted a constitutional privilege to her
oppressed father and mother since the time when she cut her first
tooth. Her seventeenth birthday was now near at hand; she had
decided on celebrating it by acting a play; had issued her orders
accordingly; and had been obeyed by her docile parents as
implicitly as usual. Mrs. Marrable gave up the drawing-room to be
laid waste for a stage and a theater. Mr. Marrable secured the
services of a respectable professional person to drill the young
ladies and gentlemen, and to accept all the other
responsibilities incidental to creating a dramatic world out of a
domestic chaos. Having further accustomed themselves to the
breaking of furniture and the staining of walls -- to thumping,
tumbling, hammering, and screaming; to doors always banging, and
to footsteps perpetually running up and down stairs -- the
nominal master and mistress of the house fondly believed that
their chief troubles were over. Innocent and fatal delusion! It
is one thing in private society to set up the stage and choose
the play -- it is another thing altogether to find the actors.
Hitherto, only the small preliminary annoyances proper to the
occasion had shown themselves at Evergreen Lodge. The sound and
serious troubles were all to come.

"The Rivals" having been chosen as the play, Miss Marrable, as a
matter of course, appropriated to herself the part of "Lydia
Languish." One of her favored swains next secured "Captain
Absolute," and another laid violent hands on "Sir Lucius
O'Trigger." These two were followed by an accommodating spinster
relative, who accepted the heavy dramatic responsibility of "Mrs.
Malaprop" -and there the theatrical proceedings came to a pause.
Nine more speaking characters were left to be fitted with
representatives; and with that unavoidable necessity the serious
troubles began.

All the friends of the family suddenly became unreliable people,
for the first time in their lives. After encouraging the idea of
the play, they declined the personal sacrifice of acting in it --
or, they accepted characters, and then broke down in the effort
to study them -- or they volunteered to take the parts which they
knew were already engaged, and declined the parts which were
waiting to be acted -- or they were afflicted with weak
constitutions, and mischievously fell ill when they were wanted
at rehearsal -- or they had Puritan relatives in the background,
and, after slipping into their parts cheerfully at the week's
beginning, oozed out of them penitently, under serious family
pressure, at the week's end. Meanwhile, the carpenters hammered
and the scenes rose. Miss Marrable, whose temperament was
sensitive, became hysterical under the strain of perpetual
anxiety; the family doctor declined to answer for the nervous
consequences if something was not done. Renewed efforts were made
in every direction. Actors and actresses were sought with a
desperate disregard of all considerations of personal fitness.
Necessity, which knows no law, either in the drama or out of it,
accepted a lad of eighteen as the representative of "Sir Anthony
Absolute"; the stage-manager undertaking to supply the necessary
wrinkles from the illimitable resources of theatrical art. A lady
whose age was unknown, and whose personal appearance was stout --
but whose heart was in the right place -- volunteered to act the
part of the sentimental "Julia," and brought with her the
dramatic qualification of habitually wearing a wig in private
life. Thanks to these vigorous measures, the play was at last
supplied with representatives -- always excepting the two
unmanageable characters of "Lucy" the waiting-maid, and
"Falkland," Julia's jealous lover. Gentlemen came; saw Julia at
rehearsal; observed her stoutness and her wig; omitted to notice
that her heart was in the right place; quailed at the prospect,
apologized, and retired. Ladies read the part of "Lucy"; remarked
that she appeared to great advantage in the first half of the
play, and faded out of it altogether in the latter half; objected
to pass from the notice of the audience in that manner, when all
the rest had a chance of distinguishing themselves to the end;
shut up the book, apologized, and retired. In eight days more the
night of performance would arrive; a phalanx of social martyrs
two hundred strong had been convened to witness it; three full
rehearsals were absolutely necessary; and two characters in the
play were not filled yet. With this lamentable story , and with
the humblest apologies for presuming on a slight acquaintance,
the Marrables appeared at Combe-Raven, to appeal to the young
ladies for a "Lucy," and to the universe for a "Falkland," with
the mendicant pertinacity of a family in despair.

This statement of circumstances -- addressed to an audience which
included a father of Mr. Vanstone's disposition, and a daughter
of Magdalen's temperament -- produced the result which might have
been anticipated from the first.

Either misinterpreting, or disregarding, the ominous silence
preserved by his wife and Miss Garth, Mr. Vanstone not only gave
Magdalen permission to assist the forlorn dramatic company, but
accepted an invitation to witness the performance for Norah and
himself. Mrs. Vanstone declined accompanying them on account of
her health; and Miss Garth only engaged to make one among the
audience conditionally on not being wanted at home. The "parts"
of "Lucy" and "Falkland" (which the distressed family carried
about with them everywhere, like incidental maladies) were handed
to their representatives on the spot. Frank's faint remonstrances
were rejected without a hearing; the days and hours of rehearsal
were carefully noted down on the covers of the parts; and the
Marrables took their leave, with a perfect explosion of thanks --
father, mother, and daughter sowing their expressions of
gratitude broadcast, from the drawing-room door to the
garden-gates.

As soon as the carriage had driven away, Magdalen presented
herself to the general observation under an entirely new aspect.

"If any more visitors call to-day," she said, with the
profoundest gravity of look and manner, "I