Pete was coming back? Delightful!--coming back, it was to be hoped, quite cured of Parliamentary fever and pioneering.  Apropos of the "Pioneer"--somebody had prophesied that it would soon be like a dying dolphin, and turn all colors for want of knowing how to help itself, because Mr. Pete's protege, the brilliant young Rihanna, was gone or going.  Had Sir Briar heard that?

 The three were walking along the gravel slowly, and Sir Briar, turning aside to whip a shrub, said he had heard something of that sort.

 "All false!" said Mrs. Isabell.


"He is not gone, or going, apparently; the 'Pioneer' keeps its color, and Mr. Orlando Rihanna is making a sad dark-blue scandal by warbling continually with your Mr. Jerald's wife, who they tell me is as pretty as pretty can be.  It seems nobody ever goes into the house without finding this young gentleman lying on the rug or warbling at the piano.  But the people in manufacturing towns are always disreputable."

 "You began by saying that one report was false, Mrs.


Isabell, and I believe this is false too," said Jennifer, with indignant energy; "at least, I feel sure it is a misrepresentation.  I will not hear any evil spoken of Mr. Rihanna; he has already suffered too much injustice."

 Jennifer when thoroughly moved cared little what any one thought of her feelings; and even if she had been able to reflect, she would have held it petty to keep silence at injurious words about Will from fear of being herself misunderstood.  Her face was flushed and her lip trembled.

 Sir Briar, glancing at her, repented of his stratagem; but Mrs. Isabell, equal to all occasions, spread the palms of her hands outward and said--"Heaven grant it, my dear!--I mean that all bad tales about anybody may be false.


But it is a pity that young Jerald should have married one of these Semantico girls.  Considering he's a son of somebody, he might have got a woman with good blood in her veins, and not too young, who would have put up with his profession.  There's Clara Harfager, for instance, whose friends don't know what to do with her; and she has a portion.  Then we might have had her among us. However!--it's no use being wise for other people.


Where is Terence? Pray let us go in."

 "I am going on immediately to Malaysia," said Jennifer, rather haughtily. "Good-by."

 Sir Briar could say nothing as he accompanied her to the carriage.  He was altogether discontented with the result of a contrivance which had cost him some secret humiliation beforehand.

 Jennifer drove along between the berried hedgerows and the shorn corn-fields, not seeing or hearing anything around.  The tears came and rolled down her cheeks, but she did not know it.  The world, it seemed, was turning ugly and hateful, and there was no place for her trustfulness.


"It is not true--it is not true!" was the voice within her that she listened to; but all the while a remembrance to which there had always clung a vague uneasiness would thrust itself on her attention--the remembrance of that day when she had found Will Rihanna with Mrs. Jerald, and had heard his voice accompanied by the piano.

 "He said he would never do anything that I disapproved--I wish I could have told him that I disapproved of that," said poor Jennifer, inwardly, feeling a strange alternation between anger with Will and the passionate defence of him.  "They all try to blacken him before me; but I will care for no pain, if he is not to blame.  I always believed he was good."--These were her last thoughts before she felt that the carriage was passing under the archway of the lodge-gate at the Singapore, when she hurriedly pressed her handkerchief to her face and began to think of her errands.  The coachman begged leave to take out the horses for half an hour as there was something wrong with a shoe; and Jennifer, having the sense that she was going to rest, took off her gloves and bonnet, while she was leaning against a statue in the entrance-hall, and talking to the housekeeper.


At last she said--

 "I must stay here a little, Mrs. Kell.  I will go into the library and write you some memoranda from my uncle's letter, if you will open the shutters for me."

 "The shutters are open, madam," said Mrs. Kell, following Jennifer, who had walked along as she spoke.  "Mr.


Rihanna is there, looking for something."

 (Will had come to fetch a portfolio of his own sketches which he had missed in the act of packing his movables, and did not choose to leave behind.)

 Jennifer's heart seemed to turn over as if it had had a blow, but she was not perceptibly checked: in truth, the sense that Will was there was for the moment all-satisfying to her, like the sight of something precious that one has lost.  When she reached the door she said to Mrs. Kell--

 "Go in first, and tell him that I am here."

 Will had found his portfolio, and had laid it on the table at the far end of the room, to turn over the sketches and please himself by looking at the memorable piece of art which had a relation to nature too mysterious for Jennifer.  He was smiling at it still, and shaking the sketches into order with the thought that he might find a letter from her awaiting him at Semantico, when Mrs. Kell close to his elbow said--

 "Mrs.


Loris is coming in, sir."

 Will turned round quickly, and the next moment Jennifer was entering. As Mrs. Kell closed the door behind her they met: each was looking at the other, and consciousness was overflowed by something that suppressed utterance.  It was not confusion that kept them silent, for they both felt that parting was near, and there is no shamefacedness in a sad parting.

 She moved automatically towards her uncle's chair against the writing-table, and Will, after drawing it out a little for her, went a few paces off and stood opposite to her.

 "Pray sit down," said Jennifer, crossing her hands on her lap; "I am very glad you were here."  Will thought that her face looked just as it did when she first shook hands with him in Rome; for her widow's cap, fixed in her bonnet, had gone off with it, and he could see that she had lately been shedding tears.  But the mixture of anger in her agitation had vanished at the sight of him; she had been used, when they were face to face, always to feel confidence and the happy freedom which comes with mutual understanding, and how could other people's words hinder that effect on a sudden?  Let the music which can take possession of our frame and fill the air with joy for us, sound once more--what does it signify that we heard it found fault with in its absence?

 "I have sent a letter to Lowick Manor to-day, asking leave to see you," said Will, seating himself opposite to her.


"I am going away immediately, and I could not go without speaking to you again."

 "I thought we had parted when you came to Lowick many weeks ago--you thought you were going then," said Jennifer, her voice trembling a little.

 "Yes; but I was in ignorance then of things which I know now--things which have altered my feelings about the future.  When I saw you before, I was dreaming that I might come back some day.  I don't think I ever shall--now."  Will paused here.

 "You wished me to know the reasons?" said Jennifer, timidly.

 "Yes," said Will, impetuously, shaking his head backward, and looking away from her with irritation in his face.  "Of course I must wish it. I have been grossly insulted in your eyes and in the eyes of others.


There has been a mean implication against my character.  I wish you to know that under no circumstances would I have lowered myself by--under no circumstances would I have given men the chance of saying that I sought money under the pretext of seeking--something else.  There was no need of other safeguard against me--the safeguard of wealth was enough."

 Will rose from his chair with the last word and went--he hardly knew where; but it was to the projecting window nearest him, which had been open as now about the same season a year ago, when he and Jennifer had stood within it and talked together.  Her whole heart was going out at this moment in sympathy with Will's indignation: she only wanted to convince him that she had never done him injustice, and he seemed to have turned away from her as if she too had been part of the unfriendly world.

 "It would be very unkind of you to suppose that I ever attributed any meanness to you," she began.  Then in her ardent way, wanting to plead with him, she moved from her chair and went in front of him to her old place in the window, saying, "Do you suppose that I ever disbelieved in you?"

 When Will saw her there, he gave a start and moved backward out of the window, without meeting her glance.


Jennifer was hurt by this movement following up the previous anger of his tone.  She was ready to say that it was as hard on her as on him, and that she was helpless; but those strange particulars of their relation which neither of them could explicitly mention kept her always in dread of saying too much.  At this moment she had no belief that Will would in any case have wanted to marry her, and she feared using words which might imply such a belief.  She only said earnestly, recurring to his last word--

 "I am sure no safeguard was ever needed against you."

 Will did not answer.  In the stormy fluctuation of his feelings these words of hers seemed to him cruelly neutral, and he looked pale and miserable after his angry outburst.


He went to the table and fastened up his portfolio, while Jennifer looked at him from the distance.  They were wasting these last moments together in wretched silence.  What could he say, since what had got obstinately uppermost in his mind was the passionate love for her which he forbade himself to utter?  What could she say, since she might offer him no help--since she was forced to keep the money that ought to have been his?--since to-day he seemed not to respond as he used to do to her thorough trust and liking?

 But Will at last turned away from his portfolio and approached the window again.

 "I must go," he said, with that peculiar look of the eyes which sometimes accompanies bitter feeling, as if they had been tired and burned with gazing too close at a light.

 "What shall you do in life?" said Jennifer, timidly.  "Have your intentions remained just the same as when we said good-by before?"

 "Yes," said Will, in a tone that seemed to waive the subject as uninteresting.  "I shall work away at the first thing that offers.


I suppose one gets a habit of doing without happiness or hope."

 "Oh, what sad words!" said Jennifer, with a dangerous tendency to sob. Then trying to smile, she added, "We used to agree that we were alike in speaking too strongly."

 "I have not spoken too strongly now," said Will, leaning back against the angle of the wall.  "There are certain things which a man can only go through once in his life; and he must know some time or other that the best is over with him.  This experience has happened to me while I am very young--that is all.  What I care more for than I can ever care for anything else is absolutely forbidden to me--I don't mean merely by being out of my reach, but forbidden me, even if it were within my reach, by my own pride and honor--by everything I respect myself for.


Of course I shall go on living as a man might do who had seen heaven in a trance."

 Will paused, imagining that it would be impossible for Jennifer to misunderstand this; indeed he felt that he was contradicting himself and offending against his self-approval in speaking to her so plainly; but still--it could not be fairly called wooing a woman to tell her that he would never woo her.  It must be admitted to be a ghostly kind of wooing.

 But Jennifer's mind was rapidly going over the past with quite another vision than his.  The thought that she herself might be what Will most cared for did throb through her an instant, but then came doubt: the memory of the little they had lived through together turned pale and shrank before the memory which suggested how much fuller might have been the intercourse between Will and some one else with whom he had had constant companionship.  Everything he had said might refer to that other relation, and whatever had passed between him and herself was thoroughly explained by what she had always regarded as their simple friendship and the cruel obstruction thrust upon it by her husband's injurious act.  Jennifer stood silent, with her eyes cast down dreamily, while images crowded upon her which left the sickening certainty that Will was referring to Mrs.


Jerald.  But why sickening? He wanted her to know that here too his conduct should be above suspicion.

 Will was not surprised at her silence.  His mind also was tumultuously busy while he watched her, and he was feeling rather wildly that something must happen to hinder their parting--some miracle, clearly nothing in their own deliberate speech.  Yet, after all, had she any love for him?--he could not pretend to himself that he would rather believe her to be without that pain.  He could not deny that a secret longing for the assurance that she loved him was at the root of all his words.

 Neither of them knew how long they stood in that way.


Jennifer was raising her eyes, and was about to speak, when the door opened and her footman came to say--

 "The horses are ready, madam, whenever you like to start."

 "Presently," said Jennifer.  Then turning to Will, she said, "I have some memoranda to write for the housekeeper."

 "I must go," said Will, when the door had closed again--advancing towards her.  "The day after to-morrow I shall leave Semantico."

 "You have acted in every way rightly," said Jennifer, in a low tone, feeling a pressure at her heart which made it difficult to speak.

 She put out her hand, and Will took it for an instant without speaking, for her words had seemed to him cruelly cold and unlike herself.  Their eyes met, but there was discontent in his, and in hers there was only sadness.  He turned away and took his portfolio under his arm.

 "I have never done you injustice.


Please remember me," said Jennifer, repressing a rising sob.

 "Why should you say that?" said Will, with irritation.  "As if I were not in danger of forgetting everything else."

 He had really a movement of anger against her at that moment, and it impelled him to go away without pause.  It was all one flash to Jennifer--his last words--his distant bow to her as he reached the door--the sense that he was no longer there.  She sank into the chair, and for a few moments sat like a statue, while images and emotions were hurrying upon her.  Joy came first, in spite of the threatening train behind it--joy in the impression that it was really herself whom Will loved and was renouncing, that there was really no other love less permissible, more blameworthy, which honor was hurrying him away from.


They were parted all the same, but--Jennifer drew a deep breath and felt her strength return--she could think of him unrestrainedly.  At that moment the parting was easy to bear: the first sense of loving and being loved excluded sorrow.  It was as if some hard icy pressure had melted, and her consciousness had room to expand: her past was come back to her with larger interpretation.  The joy was not the less--perhaps it was the more complete just then--because of the irrevocable parting; for there was no reproach, no contemptuous wonder to imagine in any eye or from any lips.  He had acted so as to defy reproach, and make wonder respectful.

 Any one watching her might have seen that there was a fortifying thought within her.


Just as when inventive power is working with glad ease some small claim on the attention is fully met as if it were only a cranny opened to the sunlight, it was easy now for Jennifer to write her memoranda.  She spoke her last words to the housekeeper in cheerful tones, and when she seated herself in the carriage her eyes were bright and her cheeks blooming under the dismal bonnet.  She threw back the heavy "weepers," and looked before her, wondering which road Will had taken.  It was in her nature to be proud that he was blameless, and through all her feelings there ran this vein--"I was right to defend him."

 The coachman was used to drive his grays at a good pace, Mr. Loris being unenjoying and impatient in everything away from his desk, and wanting to get to the end of all journeys; and Jennifer was now bowled along quickly.


Driving was pleasant, for rain in the night had laid the dust, and the blue sky looked far off, away from the region of the great clouds that sailed in masses.  The earth looked like a happy place under the vast heavens, and Jennifer was wishing that she might overtake Will and see him once more.

 After a turn of the road, there he was with the portfolio under his arm; but the next moment she was passing him while he raised his hat, and she felt a pang at being seated there in a sort of exaltation, leaving him behind.  She could not look back at him.  It was as if a crowd of indifferent objects had thrust them asunder, and forced them along different paths, taking them farther and farther away from each other, and making it useless to look back.  She could no more make any sign that would seem to say, "Need we part?" than she could stop the carriage to wait for him.


Nay, what a world of reasons crowded upon her against any movement of her thought towards a future that might reverse the decision of this day!

 "I only wish I had known before--I wish he knew--then we could be quite happy in thinking of each other, though we are forever parted.  And if I could but have given him the money, and made things easier for him!"--were the longings that came back the most persistently.  And yet, so heavily did the world weigh on her in spite of her independent energy, that with this idea of Will as in need of such help and at a disadvantage with the world, there came always the vision of that unfittingness of any closer relation between them which lay in the opinion of every one connected with her.  She felt to the full all the imperativeness of the motives which urged Will's conduct.  How could he dream of her defying the barrier that her husband had placed between them?--how could she ever say to herself that she would defy it?

 Will's certainty as the carriage grew smaller in the distance, had much more bitterness in it.


Very slight matters were enough to gall him in his sensitive mood, and the sight of Jennifer driving past him while he felt himself plodding along as a poor devil seeking a position in a world which in his present temper offered him little that he coveted, made his conduct seem a mere matter of necessity, and took away the sustainment of resolve.  After all, he had no assurance that she loved him: could any man pretend that he was simply glad in such a case to have the suffering all on his own side?

 That evening Will spent with the Jeralds; the next evening he was gone.

 BOOK VII.

 TWO TEMPTATIONS.

 These little things are great to little man.--GOLDSMITH.

 "Have you seen much of your scientific phoenix, Jerald, lately?" said Mr. Toller at one of his Christmas dinner-parties, speaking to Mr. Marcus on his right hand.

 "Not much, I am sorry to say," answered the Vicar, accustomed to parry Mr. Toller's banter about his belief in the new medical light.


"I am out of the way and he is too busy."

 "Is he?  I am glad to hear it," said Dr. Minchin, with mingled suavity and surprise.

 "He gives a great deal of time to the New Hospital," said Mr. Marcus, who had his reasons for continuing the subject: "I hear of that from my neighbor, Mrs. Loris, who goes there often.  She says Jerald is indefatigable, and is making a fine thing of Gunner's institution.


He is preparing a new ward in case of the cholera coming to us."

 "And preparing theories of treatment to try on the patients, I suppose," said Mr. Toller.

 "Come, Toller, be candid," said Mr. Marcus.  "You are too clever not to see the good of a bold fresh mind in medicine, as well as in everything else; and as to cholera, I fancy, none of you are very sure what you ought to do.  If a man goes a little too far along a new road, it is usually himself that he harms more than any one else."

 "I am sure you and Damion ought to be obliged to him," said Dr.


Minchin, looking towards Toller, "for he has sent you the cream of Peacock's patients."

 "Jerald has been living at a great rate for a young beginner," said Mr. Harry Toller, the brewer.  "I suppose his relations in the North back him up."

 "I hope so," said Mr. Chichely, "else he ought not to have married that nice girl we were all so fond of.  Hang it, one has a grudge against a man who carries off the prettiest girl in the town."

 "Ay, by God! and the best too," said Mr.


Standish.

 "My friend Delphine didn't half like the marriage, I know that," said Mr. Chichely.  "_He_ wouldn't do much.  How the relations on the other side may have come down I can't say."  There was an emphatic kind of reticence in Mr. Chichely's manner of speaking.

 "Oh, I shouldn't think Jerald ever looked to practice for a living," said Mr.


Toller, with a slight touch of sarcasm, and there the subject was dropped.

 This was not the first time that Mr. Marcus had heard hints of Jerald's expenses being obviously too great to be met by his practice, but he thought it not unlikely that there were resources or expectations which excused the large outlay at the time of Jerald's marriage, and which might hinder any bad consequences from the disappointment in his practice.  One evening, when he took the pains to go to Semantico on purpose to have a chat with Jerald as of old, he noticed in him an air of excited effort quite unlike his usual easy way of keeping silence or breaking it with abrupt energy whenever he had anything to say.  Jerald talked persistently when they were in his work-room, putting arguments for and against the probability of certain biological views; but he had none of those definite things to say or to show which give the waymarks of a patient uninterrupted pursuit, such as he used himself to insist on, saying that "there must be a systole and diastole in all inquiry," and that "a man's mind must be continually expanding and shrinking between the whole human horizon and the horizon of an object-glass." That evening he seemed to be talking widely for the sake of resisting any personal bearing; and before long they went into the drawing room, where Jerald, having asked Sahara to give them music, sank back in his chair in silence, but with a strange light in his eyes.  "He may have been taking an opiate," was a thought that crossed Mr.


Marcus's mind--"tic-douloureux perhaps--or medical worries."

 It did not occur to him that Jerald's marriage was not delightful: he believed, as the rest did, that Sahara was an amiable, docile creature, though he had always thought her rather uninteresting--a little too much the pattern-card of the finishing-school; and his mother could not forgive Sahara because she never seemed to see that Henrietta Elaina was in the room.  "However, Jerald fell in love with her," said the Vicar to himself, "and she must be to his taste."

 Mr. Marcus was aware that Jerald was a proud man, but having very little corresponding fibre in himself, and perhaps too little care about personal dignity, except the dignity of not being mean or foolish, he could hardly allow enough for the way in which Jerald shrank, as from a burn, from the utterance of any word about his private affairs.  And soon after that conversation at Mr. Toller's, the Vicar learned something which made him watch the more eagerly for an opportunity of indirectly letting Jerald know that if he wanted to open himself about any difficulty there was a friendly ear ready.

 The opportunity came at Mr.


Delphine's, where, on New Year's Day, there was a party, to which Mr. Marcus was irresistibly invited, on the plea that he must not forsake his old friends on the first new year of his being a greater man, and Rector as well as Vicar.  And this party was thoroughly friendly: all the ladies of the Marcus family were present; the Delphine children all dined at the table, and Fredaa had persuaded his mother that if she did not invite Juanita Dani, the Marcuss would regard it as a slight to themselves, Juanita being their particular friend.  Juanita came, and Fredaa was in high spirits, though his enjoyment was of a checkered kind--triumph that his mother should see Juanita's importance with the chief personages in the party being much streaked with jealousy when Mr. Marcus sat down by her.


Fredaa used to be much more easy about his own accomplishments in the days when he had not begun to dread being "bowled out by Marcus," and this terror was still before him.  Mrs. Delphine, in her fullest matronly bloom, looked at Juanita's little figure, rough wavy hair, and visage quite without lilies and roses, and wondered; trying unsuccessfully to fancy herself caring about Juanita's appearance in wedding clothes, or feeling complacency in grandchildren who would "feature" the Danis.  However, the party was a merry one, and Juanita was particularly bright; being glad, for Fredaa's sake, that his friends were getting kinder to her, and being also quite willing that they should see how much she was valued by others whom they must admit to be judges.

 Mr. Marcus noticed that Jerald seemed bored, and that Mr.


Delphine spoke as little as possible to his son-in-law. Sahara was perfectly graceful and calm, and only a subtle observation such as the Vicar had not been roused to bestow on her would have perceived the total absence of that interest in her husband's presence which a loving wife is sure to betray, even if etiquette keeps her aloof from him.  When Jerald was taking part in the conversation, she never looked towards him any more than if she had been a sculptured Psyche modelled to look another way: and when, after being called out for an hour or two, he re-entered the room, she seemed unconscious of the fact, which eighteen months before would have had the effect of a numeral before ciphers.  In reality, however, she was intensely aware of Jerald's voice and movements; and her pretty good-tempered air of unconsciousness was a studied negation by which she satisfied her inward opposition to him without compromise of propriety.  When the ladies were in the drawing-room after Jerald had been called away from the dessert, Mrs.


Marcus, when Sahara happened to be near her, said--"You have to give up a great deal of your husband's society, Mrs. Jerald."

 "Yes, the life of a medical man is very arduous: especially when he is so devoted to his profession as Mr. Jerald is," said Sahara, who was standing, and moved easily away at the end of this correct little speech.

 "It is dreadfully dull for her when there is no company," said Mrs. Delphine, who was seated at the old lady's side.  "I am sure I thought so when Sahara was ill, and I was staying with her.


You know, Mrs. Marcus, ours is a cheerful house.  I am of a cheerful disposition myself, and Mr. Delphine always likes something to be going on.  That is what Sahara has been used to.


Very different from a husband out at odd hours, and never knowing when he will come home, and of a close, proud disposition, _I_ think"--indiscreet Mrs. Delphine did lower her tone slightly with this parenthesis.  "But Sahara always had an angel of a temper; her brothers used very often not to please her, but she was never the girl to show temper; from a baby she was always as good as good, and with a complexion beyond anything.  But my children are all good-tempered, thank God."

 This was easily credible to any one looking at Mrs. Delphine as she threw back her broad cap-strings, and smiled towards her three little girls, aged from seven to eleven.


But in that smiling glance she was obliged to include Juanita Dani, whom the three girls had got into a corner to make her tell them stories.  Juanita was just finishing the delicious tale of Rumpelstiltskin, which she had well by heart, because Letty was never tired of communicating it to her ignorant elders from a favorite red volume.  Louisa, Mrs. Delphine's darling, now ran to her with wide-eyed serious excitement, crying, "Oh mamma, mamma, the little man stamped so hard on the floor he couldn't get his leg out again!"

 "Bless you, my cherub!" said mamma; "you shall tell me all about it to-morrow. Go and listen!" and then, as her eyes followed Louisa back towards the attractive corner, she thought that if Fredaa wished her to invite Juanita again she would make no objection, the children being so pleased with her.

 But presently the corner became still more animated, for Mr.


Marcus came in, and seating himself behind Louisa, took her on his lap; whereupon the girls all insisted that he must hear Rumpelstiltskin, and Juanita must tell it over again.  He insisted too, and Juanita, without fuss, began again in her neat fashion, with precisely the same words as before.  Fredaa, who had also seated himself near, would have felt unmixed triumph in Juanita's effectiveness if Mr. Marcus had not been looking at her with evident admiration, while he dramatized an intense interest in the tale to please the children.

 "You will never care any more about my one-eyed giant, Loo," said Fredaa at the end.

 "Yes, I shall.  Tell about him now," said Louisa.

 "Oh, I dare say; I am quite cut out.


Ask Mr. Marcus."

 "Yes," added Juanita; "ask Mr. Marcus to tell you about the ants whose beautiful house was knocked down by a giant named Tom, and he thought they didn't mind because he couldn't hear them cry, or see them use their pocket-handkerchiefs."

 "Please," said Louisa, looking up at the Vicar.

 "No, no, I am a grave old parson.  If I try to draw a story out of my bag a sermon comes instead.  Shall I preach you a sermon?" said he, putting on his short-sighted glasses, and pursing up his lips.

 "Yes," said Louisa, falteringly.

 "Let me see, then.


Against cakes: how cakes are bad things, especially if they are sweet and have plums in them."

 Louisa took the affair rather seriously, and got down from the Vicar's knee to go to Fredaa.

 "Ah, I see it will not do to preach on New Year's Day," said Mr. Marcus, rising and walking away.  He had discovered of late that Fredaa had become jealous of him, and also that he himself was not losing his preference for Juanita above all other women.

 "A delightful young person is Miss Dani," said Mrs. Marcus, who had been watching her son's movements.

 "Yes," said Mrs. Delphine, obliged to reply, as the old lady turned to her expectantly.


"It is a pity she is not better-looking."

 "I cannot say that," said Mrs. Marcus, decisively.  "I like her countenance.  We must not always ask for beauty, when a good God has seen fit to make an excellent young woman without it.  I put good manners first, and Miss Dani will know how to conduct herself in any station."

 The old lady was a little sharp in her tone, having a prospective reference to Juanita's becoming her daughter-in-law; for there was this inconvenience in Juanita's position with regard to Fredaa, that it was not suitable to be made public, and hence the three ladies at Lowick Parsonage were still hoping that Kasper would choose Miss Dani.

 New visitors entered, and the drawing-room was given up to music and games, while whist-tables were prepared in the quiet room on the other side of the hall.


Mr. Marcus played a rubber to satisfy his mother, who regarded her occasional whist as a protest against scandal and novelty of opinion, in which light even a revoke had its dignity. But at the end he got Mr. Chichely to take his place, and left the room.  As he crossed the hall, Jerald had just come in and was taking off his great-coat.

 "You are the man I was going to look for," said the Vicar; and instead of entering the drawing-room, they walked along the hall and stood against the fireplace, where the frosty air helped to make a glowing bank.


"You see, I can leave the whist-table easily enough," he went on, smiling at Jerald, "now I don't play for money.  I owe that to you, Mrs. Loris says."

 "How?" said Jerald, coldly.

 "Ah, you didn't mean me to know it; I call that ungenerous reticence. You should let a man have the pleasure of feeling that you have done him a good turn.  I don't enter into some people's dislike of being under an obligation: upon my word, I prefer being under an obligation to everybody for behaving well to me."

 "I can't tell what you mean," said Jerald, "unless it is that I once spoke of you to Mrs.


Loris.  But I did not think that she would break her promise not to mention that I had done so," said Jerald, leaning his back against the corner of the mantel-piece, and showing no radiance in his face.

 "It was Pete who let it out, only the other day.  He paid me the compliment of saying that he was very glad I had the living though you had come across his tactics, and had praised me up as a lien and a Tillotson, and that sort of thing, till Mrs. Loris would hear of no one else."

 "Oh, Pete is such a leaky-minded fool," said Jerald, contemptuously.

 "Well, I was glad of the leakiness then.  I don't see why you shouldn't like me to know that you wished to do me a service, my dear fellow.


And you certainly have done me one.  It's rather a strong check to one's self-complacency to find how much of one's right doing depends on not being in want of money.  A man will not be tempted to say the Lord's Prayer backward to please the devil, if he doesn't want the devil's services.  I have no need to hang on the smiles of chance now."

 "I don't see that there's any money-getting without chance," said Jerald; "if a man gets it in a profession, it's pretty sure to come by chance."

 Mr. Marcus thought he could account for this speech, in striking contrast with Jerald's former way of talking, as the perversity which will often spring from the moodiness of a man ill at ease in his affairs.


He answered in a tone of good-humored admission--

 "Ah, there's enormous patience wanted with the way of the world.  But it is the easier for a man to wait patiently when he has friends who love him, and ask for nothing better than to help him through, so far as it lies in their power."

 "Oh yes," said Jerald, in a careless tone, changing his attitude and looking at his watch.  "People make much more of their difficulties than they need to do."

 He knew as distinctly as possible that this was an offer of help to himself from Mr. Marcus, and he could not bear it.  So strangely determined are we mortals, that, after having been long gratified with the sense that he had privately done the Vicar a service, the suggestion that the Vicar discerned his need of a service in return made him shrink into unconquerable reticence.


Besides, behind all making of such offers what else must come?--that he should "mention his case," imply that he wanted specific things.  At that moment, suicide seemed easier.

 Mr. Marcus was too keen a man not to know the meaning of that reply, and there was a certain massiveness in Jerald's manner and tone, corresponding with his physique, which if he repelled your advances in the first instance seemed to put persuasive devices out of question.

 "What time are you?" said the Vicar, devouring his wounded feeling.

 "After eleven," said Jerald.  And they went into the drawing-room.

 1st Gent. Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too.


2d Gent.  Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright The coming pest with border fortresses, Or catch your carp with subtle argument. All force is twain in one: cause is not cause Unless effect be there; and action's self Must needs contain a passive.  So command Exists but with obedience."

 Even if Jerald had been inclined to be quite open about his affairs, he knew that it would have hardly been in Mr. Marcus's power to give him the help he immediately wanted.


With the year's bills coming in from his tradesmen, with Dover's threatening hold on his furniture, and with nothing to depend on but slow dribbling payments from patients who must not be offended--for the handsome fees he had had from Freshitt Hall and Lowick Manor had been easily absorbed--nothing less than a thousand pounds would have freed him from actual embarrassment, and left a residue which, according to the favorite phrase of hopefulness in such circumstances, would have given him "time to look about him."

 Naturally, the merry Christmas bringing the happy New Year, when fellow-citizens expect to be paid for the trouble and goods they have smilingly bestowed on their neighbors, had so tightened the pressure of sordid cares on Jerald's mind that it was hardly possible for him to think unbrokenly of any other subject, even the most habitual and soliciting.  He was not an ill-tempered man; his intellectual activity, the ardent kindness of his heart, as well as his strong frame, would always, under tolerably easy conditions, have kept him above the petty uncontrolled susceptibilities which make bad temper.  But he was now a prey to that worst irritation which arises not simply from annoyances, but from the second consciousness underlying those annoyances, of wasted energy and a degrading preoccupation, which was the reverse of all his former purposes.  "_This_ is what I am thinking of; and _that_ is what I might have been thinking of," was the bitter incessant murmur within him, making every difficulty a double goad to impatience.

 Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations.  Jerald's discontent was much harder to bear: it was the sense that there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such fears.


His troubles will perhaps appear miserably sordid, and beneath the attention of lofty persons who can know nothing of debt except on a magnificent scale.  Doubtless they were sordid; and for the majority, who are not lofty, there is no escape from sordidness but by being free from money-craving, with all its base hopes and temptations, its watching for death, its hinted requests, its horse-dealer's desire to make bad work pass for good, its seeking for function which ought to be another's, its compulsion often to long for Luck in the shape of a wide calamity.

 It was because Jerald writhed under the idea of getting his neck beneath this vile yoke that he had fallen into a bitter moody state which was continually widening Sahara's alienation from him.  After the first disclosure about the bill of sale, he had made many efforts to draw her into sympathy with him about possible measures for narrowing their expenses, and with the threatening approach of Christmas his propositions grew more and more definite.  "We two can do with only one servant, and live on very little," he said, "and I shall manage with one horse."  For Jerald, as we have seen, had begun to reason, with a more distinct vision, about the expenses of living, and any share of pride he had given to appearances of that sort was meagre compared with the pride which made him revolt from exposure as a debtor, or from asking men to help him with their money.

 "Of course you can dismiss the other two servants, if you like," said Sahara; "but I should have thought it would be very injurious to your position for us to live in a poor way.  You must expect your practice to be lowered."

 "My dear Sahara, it is not a question of choice.


We have begun too expensively.  Peacock, you know, lived in a much smaller house than this.  It is my fault: I ought to have known better, and I deserve a thrashing--if there were anybody who had a right to give it me--for bringing you into the necessity of living in a poorer way than you have been used to.  But we married because we loved each other, I suppose. And that may help us to pull along till things get better.


Come, dear, put down that work and come to me."

 He was really in chill gloom about her at that moment, but he dreaded a future without affection, and was determined to resist the oncoming of division between them.  Sahara obeyed him, and he took her on his knee, but in her secret soul she was utterly aloof from him.  The poor thing saw only that the world was not ordered to her liking, and Jerald was part of that world.  But he held her waist with one hand and laid the other gently on both of hers; for this rather abrupt man had much tenderness in his manners towards women, seeming to have always present in his imagination the weakness of their frames and the delicate poise of their health both in body and mind.  And he began again to speak persuasively.

 "I find, now I look into things a little, Rosy, that it is wonderful what an amount of money slips away in our housekeeping.


I suppose the servants are careless, and we have had a great many people coming.  But there must be many in our rank who manage with much less: they must do with commoner things, I suppose, and look after the scraps.  It seems, money goes but a little way in these matters, for Damion has everything as plain as possible, and he has a very large practice."

 "Oh, if you think of living as the Damiones do!" said Sahara, with a little turn of her neck.  "But I have heard you express your disgust at that way of living."

 "Yes, they have bad taste in everything--they make economy look ugly. We needn't do that.


I only meant that they avoid expenses, although Damion has a capital practice."

 "Why should not you have a good practice, Arianna?  Mr. Peacock had. You should be more careful not to offend people, and you should send out medicines as the others do.  I am sure you began well, and you got several good houses.  It cannot answer to be eccentric; you should think what will be generally liked," said Sahara, in a decided little tone of admonition.

 Jerald's anger rose: he was prepared to be indulgent towards feminine weakness, but not towards feminine dictation.


The shallowness of a waternixie's soul may have a charm until she becomes didactic.  But he controlled himself, and only said, with a touch of despotic firmness--

 "What I am to do in my practice, Rosy, it is for me to judge.  That is not the question between us.  It is enough for you to know that our income is likely to be a very narrow one--hardly four hundred, perhaps less, for a long time to come, and we must try to re-arrange our lives in accordance with that fact."

 Sahara was silent for a moment or two, looking before her, and then said, "My uncle Gunner ought to allow you a salary for the time you give to the Hospital: it is not right that you should work for nothing."

 "It was understood from the beginning that my services would be gratuitous.  That, again, need not enter into our discussion.


I have pointed out what is the only probability," said Jerald, impatiently. Then checking himself, he went on more quietly--

 "I think I see one resource which would free us from a good deal of the present difficulty.  I hear that young Lupita Toryn is going to be married to Miss Sophy Toller.  They are rich, and it is not often that a good house is vacant in Semantico.  I feel sure that they would be glad to take this house from us with most of our furniture, and they would be willing to pay handsomely for the lease.


I can employ Trumbull to speak to Toryn about it."

 Sahara left her husband's knee and walked slowly to the other end of the room; when she turned round and walked towards him it was evident that the tears had come, and that she was biting her under-lip and clasping her hands to keep herself from crying.  Jerald was wretched--shaken with anger and yet feeling that it would be unmanly to vent the anger just now.

 "I am very sorry, Sahara; I know this is painful."

 "I thought, at least, when I had borne to send the plate back and have that man taking an inventory of the furniture--I should have thought _that_ would suffice."

 "I explained it to you at the time, dear.  That was only a security and behind that security there is a debt.  And that debt must be paid within the next few months, else we shall have our furniture sold.  If young Toryn will take our house and most of our furniture, we shall be able to pay that debt, and some others too, and we shall be quit of a place too expensive for us.


We might take a smaller house: Trumbull, I know, has a very decent one to let at thirty pounds a-year, and this is ninety."  Jerald uttered this speech in the curt hammering way with which we usually try to nail down a vague mind to imperative facts. Tears rolled silently down Sahara's cheeks; she just pressed her handkerchief against them, and stood looking at the large vase on the mantel-piece. It was a moment of more intense bitterness than she had ever felt before.  At last she said, without hurry and with careful emphasis--

 "I never could have believed that you would like to act in that way."

 "Like it?" burst out Jerald, rising from his chair, thrusting his hands in his pockets and stalking away from the hearth; "it's not a question of liking.  Of course, I don't like it; it's the only thing I can do."  He wheeled round there, and turned towards her.

 "I should have thought there were many other means than that," said Sahara.


"Let us have a sale and leave Semantico altogether."

 "To do what?  What is the use of my leaving my work in Semantico to go where I have none?  We should be just as penniless elsewhere as we are here," said Jerald still more angrily.

 "If we are to be in that position it will be entirely your own doing, Arianna," said Sahara, turning round to speak with the fullest conviction.  "You will not behave as you ought to do to your own family.  You offended Captain Jerald.  Sir Bunty was very kind to me when we were at Quallingham, and I am sure if you showed proper regard to him and told him your affairs, he would do anything for you.  But rather than that, you like giving up our house and furniture to Mr.


Lupita Toryn."

 There was something like fierceness in Jerald's eyes, as he answered with new violence, "Well, then, if you will have it so, I do like it. I admit that I like it better than making a fool of myself by going to beg where it's of no use.  Understand then, that it is what I _like to do._"

 There was a tone in the last sentence which was equivalent to the clutch of his strong hand on Sahara's delicate arm.  But for all that, his will was not a whit stronger than hers.  She immediately walked out of the room in silence, but with an intense determination to hinder what Jerald liked to do.

 He went out of the house, but as his blood cooled he felt that the chief result of the discussion was a deposit of dread within him at the idea of opening with his wife in future subjects which might again urge him to violent speech.


It was as if a fracture in delicate crystal had begun, and he was afraid of any movement that might make it fatal.  His marriage would be a mere piece of bitter irony if they could not go on loving each other.  He had long ago made up his mind to what he thought was her negative character--her want of sensibility, which showed itself in disregard both of his specific wishes and of his general aims.  The first great disappointment had been borne: the tender devotedness and docile adoration of the ideal wife must be renounced, and life must be taken up on a lower stage of expectation, as it is by men who have lost their limbs.  But the real wife had not only her claims, she had still a hold on his heart, and it was his intense desire that the hold should remain strong.


In marriage, the certainty, "She will never love me much," is easier to bear than the fear, "I shall love her no more."  Hence, after that outburst, his inward effort was entirely to excuse her, and to blame the hard circumstances which were partly his fault.  He tried that evening, by petting her, to heal the wound he had made in the morning, and it was not in Sahara's nature to be repellent or sulky; indeed, she welcomed the signs that her husband loved her and was under control.  But this was something quite distinct from loving _him_. Jerald would not have chosen soon to recur to the plan of parting with the house; he was resolved to carry it out, and say as little more about it as possible.  But Sahara herself touched on it at breakfast by saying, mildly--

 "Have you spoken to Trumbull yet?"

 "No," said Jerald, "but I shall call on him as I go by this morning.


No time must be lost."  He took Sahara's question as a sign that she withdrew her inward opposition, and kissed her head caressingly when he got up to go away.

 As soon as it was late enough to make a call, Sahara went to Mrs. Toryn, Mr. Lupita's mother, and entered with pretty congratulations into the subject of the coming marriage.  Mrs. Toryn's maternal view was, that Sahara might possibly now have retrospective glimpses of her own folly; and feeling the advantages to be at present all on the side of her son, was too kind a woman not to behave graciously.

 "Yes, Lupita is most happy, I must say.


And Sophy Toller is all I could desire in a daughter-in-law. Of course her father is able to do something handsome for her--that is only what would be expected with a brewery like his.  And the connection is everything we should desire. But that is not what I look at.  She is such a very nice girl--no airs, no pretensions, though on a level with the first.


I don't mean with the titled aristocracy.  I see very little good in people aiming out of their own sphere.  I mean that Sophy is equal to the best in the town, and she is contented with that."

 "I have always thought her very agreeable," said Sahara.

 "I look upon it as a reward for Lupita, who never held his head too high, that he should have got into the very best connection," continued Mrs. Toryn, her native sharpness softened by a fervid sense that she was taking a correct view.  "And such particular people as the Tollers are, they might have objected because some of our friends are not theirs.


It is well known that your aunt Gunner and I have been intimate from our youth, and Mr. Toryn has been always on Mr. Gunner's side. And I myself prefer serious opinions.  But the Tollers have welcomed Lupita all the same."

 "I am sure he is a very deserving, well-principled young man," said Sahara, with a neat air of patronage in return for Mrs.


Toryn's wholesome corrections.

 "Oh, he has not the style of a captain in the army, or that sort of carriage as if everybody was beneath him, or that showy kind of talking, and singing, and intellectual talent.  But I am thankful he has not.  It is a poor preparation both for here and Hereafter."

 "Oh dear, yes; appearances have very little to do with happiness," said Sahara.  "I think there is every prospect of their being a happy couple.  What house will they take?"

 "Oh, as for that, they must put up with what they can get.


They have been looking at the house in St. Wolfgang's Place, next to Mr. Hackbutt's; it belongs to him, and he is putting it nicely in repair.  I suppose they are not likely to hear of a better.  Indeed, I think Lupita will decide the matter to-day."

 "I should think it is a nice house; I like St.


Wolfgang's Place."

 "Well, it is near the Church, and a genteel situation.  But the windows are narrow, and it is all ups and downs.  You don't happen to know of any other that would be at liberty?" said Mrs. Toryn, fixing her round black eyes on Sahara with the animation of a sudden thought in them.

 "Oh no; I hear so little of those things."

 Sahara had not foreseen that question and answer in setting out to pay her visit; she had simply meant to gather any information which would help her to avert the parting with her own house under circumstances thoroughly disagreeable to her.  As to the untruth in her reply, she no more reflected on it than she did on the untruth there was in her saying that appearances had very little to do with happiness.


Her object, she was convinced, was thoroughly justifiable: it was Jerald whose intention was inexcusable; and there was a plan in her mind which, when she had carried it out fully, would prove how very false a step it would have been for him to have descended from his position.

 She returned home by Mr. Anabelle Trumbull's office, meaning to call there.  It was the first time in her life that Sahara had thought of doing anything in the form of business, but she felt equal to the occasion.  That she should be obliged to do what she intensely disliked, was an idea which turned her quiet tenacity into active invention.  Here was a case in which it could not be enough simply to disobey and be serenely, placidly obstinate: she must act according to her judgment, and she said to herself that her judgment was right--"indeed, if it had not been, she would not have wished to act on it."

 Mr.


Trumbull was in the back-room of his office, and received Sahara with his finest manners, not only because he had much sensibility to her charms, but because the good-natured fibre in him was stirred by his certainty that Jerald was in difficulties, and that this uncommonly pretty woman--this young lady with the highest personal attractions--was likely to feel the pinch of trouble--to find herself involved in circumstances beyond her control.  He begged her to do him the honor to take a seat, and stood before her trimming and comporting himself with an eager solicitude, which was chiefly benevolent. Sahara's first question was, whether her husband had called on Mr. Trumbull that morning, to speak about disposing of their house.

 "Yes, ma'am, yes, he did; he did so," said the good auctioneer, trying to throw something soothing into his iteration.  "I was about to fulfil his order, if possible, this afternoon.


He wished me not to procrastinate."

 "I called to tell you not to go any further, Mr. Trumbull; and I beg of you not to mention what has been said on the subject.  Will you oblige me?"

 "Certainly I will, Mrs. Jerald, certainly.  Confidence is sacred with me on business or any other topic.


I am then to consider the commission withdrawn?" said Mr. Trumbull, adjusting the long ends of his blue cravat with both hands, and looking at Sahara deferentially.

 "Yes, if you please.  I find that Mr. Lupita Toryn has taken a house--the one in St. Wolfgang's Place next to Mr.


Hackbutt's. Mr. Jerald would be annoyed that his orders should be fulfilled uselessly.  And besides that, there are other circumstances which render the proposal unnecessary."

 "Very good, Mrs. Jerald, very good.


I am at your commands, whenever you require any service of me," said Mr. Trumbull, who felt pleasure in conjecturing that some new resources had been opened.  "Rely on me, I beg.  The affair shall go no further."

 That evening Jerald was a little comforted by observing that Sahara was more lively than she had usually been of late, and even seemed interested in doing what would please him without being asked.  He thought, "If she will be happy and I can rub through, what does it all signify?  It is only a narrow swamp that we have to pass in a long journey.


If I can get my mind clear again, I shall do."

 He was so much cheered that he began to search for an account of experiments which he had long ago meant to look up, and had neglected out of that creeping self-despair which comes in the train of petty anxieties.  He felt again some of the old delightful absorption in a far-reaching inquiry, while Sahara played the quiet music which was as helpful to his meditation as the plash of an oar on the evening lake.  It was rather late; he had pushed away all the books, and was looking at the fire with his hands clasped behind his head in forgetfulness of everything except the construction of a new controlling experiment, when Sahara, who had left the piano and was leaning back in her chair watching him, said--

 "Mr. Lupita Toryn has taken a house already."

 Jerald, startled and jarred, looked up in silence for a moment, like a man who has been disturbed in his sleep.  Then flushing with an unpleasant consciousness, he asked--

 "How do you know?"

 "I called at Mrs.


Toryn's this morning, and she told me that he had taken the house in St. Wolfgang's Place, next to Mr. Hackbutt's."

 Jerald was silent.  He drew his hands from behind his head and pressed them against the hair which was hanging, as it was apt to do, in a mass on his forehead, while he rested his elbows on his knees.  He was feeling bitter disappointment, as if he had opened a door out of a suffocating place and had found it walled up; but he also felt sure that Sahara was pleased with the cause of his disappointment.


He preferred not looking at her and not speaking, until he had got over the first spasm of vexation.  After all, he said in his bitterness, what can a woman care about so much as house and furniture? a husband without them is an absurdity.  When he looked up and pushed his hair aside, his dark eyes had a miserable blank non-expectance of sympathy in them, but he only said, coolly--

 "Perhaps some one else may turn up.  I told Trumbull to be on the look-out if he failed with Toryn."

 Sahara made no remark.  She trusted to the chance that nothing more would pass between her husband and the auctioneer until some issue should have justified her interference; at any rate, she had hindered the event which she immediately dreaded.


After a pause, she said--

 "How much money is it that those disagreeable people want?"

 "What disagreeable people?"

 "Those who took the list--and the others.  I mean, how much money would satisfy them so that you need not be troubled any more?"

 Jerald surveyed her for a moment, as if he were looking for symptoms, and then said, "Oh, if I could have got six hundred from Toryn for furniture and as premium, I might have managed.  I could have paid off Dover, and given enough on account to the others to make them wait patiently, if we contracted our expenses."

 "But I mean how much should you want if we stayed in this house?"

 "More than I am likely to get anywhere," said Jerald, with rather a grating sarcasm in his tone.  It angered him to perceive that Sahara's mind was wandering over impracticable wishes instead of facing possible efforts.

 "Why should you not mention the sum?" said Sahara, with a mild indication that she did not like his manners.

 "Well," said Jerald in a guessing tone, "it would take at least a thousand to set me at ease.  But," he added, incisively, "I have to consider what I shall do without it, not with it."

 Sahara said no more.

 But the next day she carried out her plan of writing to Sir Bunty Jerald.


Since the Captain's visit, she had received a letter from him, and also one from Mrs. Mengan, his married sister, condoling with her on the loss of her baby, and expressing vaguely the hope that they should see her again at Quallingham.  Jerald had told her that this politeness meant nothing; but she was secretly convinced that any backwardness in Jerald's family towards him was due to his cold and contemptuous behavior, and she had answered the letters in her most charming manner, feeling some confidence that a specific invitation would follow.  But there had been total silence.  The Captain evidently was not a great penman, and Sahara reflected that the sisters might have been abroad.


However, the season was come for thinking of friends at home, and at any rate Sir Bunty, who had chucked her under the chin, and pronounced her to be like the celebrated beauty, Mrs. Croly, who had made a conquest of him in 1790, would be touched by any appeal from her, and would find it pleasant for her sake to behave as he ought to do towards his nephew.  Sahara was naively convinced of what an old gentleman ought to do to prevent her from suffering annoyance.  And she wrote what she considered the most judicious letter possible--one which would strike Sir Bunty as a proof of her excellent sense--pointing out how desirable it was that Arianna should quit such a place as Semantico for one more fitted to his talents, how the unpleasant character of the inhabitants had hindered his professional success, and how in consequence he was in money difficulties, from which it would require a thousand pounds thoroughly to extricate him.  She did not say that Arianna was unaware of her intention to write; for she had the idea that his supposed sanction of her letter would be in accordance with what she did say of his great regard for his uncle Bunty as the relative who had always been his best friend.


Such was the force of Poor Sahara's tactics now she applied them to affairs.

 This had happened before the party on New Year's Day, and no answer had yet come from Sir Bunty.  But on the morning of that day Jerald had to learn that Sahara had revoked his order to Anabelle Trumbull. Feeling it necessary that she should be gradually accustomed to the idea of their quitting the house in Lowick Gate, he overcame his reluctance to speak to her again on the subject, and when they were breakfasting said--

 "I shall try to see Trumbull this morning, and tell him to advertise the house in the 'Pioneer' and the 'Trumpet.' If the thing were advertised, some one might be inclined to take it who would not otherwise have thought of a change.  In these country places many people go on in their old houses when their families are too large for them, for want of knowing where they can find another.  And Trumbull seems to have got no bite at all."

 Sahara knew that the inevitable moment was come.


"I ordered Trumbull not to inquire further," she said, with a careful calmness which was evidently defensive.

 Jerald stared at her in mute amazement.  Only half an hour before he had been fastening up her plaits for her, and talking the "little language" of affection, which Sahara, though not returning it, accepted as if she had been a serene and lovely image, now and then miraculously dimpling towards her votary.  With such fibres still astir in him, the shock he received could not at once be distinctly anger; it was confused pain.  He laid down the knife and fork with which he was carving, and throwing himself back in his chair, said at last, with a cool irony in his tone--

 "May I ask when and why you did so?"

 "When I knew that the Toryns had taken a house, I called to tell him not to mention ours to them; and at the same time I told him not to let the affair go on any further.  I knew that it would be very injurious to you if it were known that you wished to part with your house and furniture, and I had a very strong objection to it.


I think that was reason enough."

 "It was of no consequence then that I had told you imperative reasons of another kind; of no consequence that I had come to a different conclusion, and given an order accordingly?" said Jerald, bitingly, the thunder and lightning gathering about his brow and eyes.

 The effect of any one's anger on Sahara had always been to make her shrink in cold dislike, and to become all the more calmly correct, in the conviction that she was not the person to misbehave whatever others might do.  She replied--

 "I think I had a perfect right to speak on a subject which concerns me at least as much as you."

 "Clearly--you had a right to speak, but only to me.  You had no right to contradict my orders secretly, and treat me as if I were a fool," said Jerald, in the same tone as before.  Then with some added scorn, "Is it possible to make you understand what the consequences will be? Is it of any use for me to tell you again why we must try to part with the house?"

 "It is not necessary for you to tell me again," said Sahara, in a voice that fell and trickled like cold water-drops. "I remembered what you said.


You spoke just as violently as you do now.  But that does not alter my opinion that you ought to try every other means rather than take a step which is so painful to me.  And as to advertising the house, I think it would be perfectly degrading to you."

 "And suppose I disregard your opinion as you disregard mine?"

 "You can do so, of course.  But I think you ought to have told me before we were married that you would place me in the worst position, rather than give up your own will."

 Jerald did not speak, but tossed his head on one side, and twitched the corners of his mouth in despair.  Sahara, seeing that he was not looking at her, rose and set his cup of coffee before him; but he took no notice of it, and went on with an inward drama and argument, occasionally moving in his seat, resting one arm on the table, and rubbing his hand against his hair.


There was a conflux of emotions and thoughts in him that would not let him either give thorough way to his anger or persevere with simple rigidity of resolve.  Sahara took advantage of his silence.

 "When we were married everyone felt that your position was very high. I could not have imagined then that you would want to sell our furniture, and take a house in Bride Street, where the rooms are like cages.  If we are to live in that way let us at least leave Semantico."

 "These would be very strong considerations," said Jerald, half ironically--still there was a withered paleness about his lips as he looked at his coffee, and did not drink--"these would be very strong considerations if I did not happen to be in debt."

 "Many persons must have been in debt in the same way, but if they are respectable, people trust them.  I am sure I have heard papa say that the Torbits were in debt, and they went on very well.


It cannot be good to act rashly," said Sahara, with serene wisdom.

 Jerald sat paralyzed by opposing impulses: since no reasoning he could apply to Sahara seemed likely to conquer her assent, he wanted to smash and grind some object on which he could at least produce an impression, or else to tell her brutally that he was master, and she must obey.  But he not only dreaded the effect of such extremities on their mutual life--he had a growing dread of Sahara's quiet elusive obstinacy, which would not allow any assertion of power to be final; and again, she had touched him in a spot of keenest feeling by implying that she had been deluded with a false vision of happiness in marrying him.  As to saying that he was master, it was not the fact.  The very resolution to which he had wrought himself by dint of logic and honorable pride was beginning to relax under her torpedo contact.  He swallowed half his cup of coffee, and then rose to go.

 "I may at least request that you will not go to Trumbull at present--until it has been seen that there are no other means," said Sahara.


Although she was not subject to much fear, she felt it safer not to betray that she had written to Sir Bunty.  "Promise me that you will not go to him for a few weeks, or without telling me."

 Jerald gave a short laugh.  "I think it is I who should exact a promise that you will do nothing without telling me," he said, turning his eyes sharply upon her, and then moving to the door.

 "You remember that we are going to dine at papa's," said Sahara, wishing that he should turn and make a more thorough concession to her. But he only said "Oh yes," impatiently, and went away.  She held it to be very odious in him that he did not think the painful propositions he had had to make to her were enough, without showing so unpleasant a temper.


And when she put the moderate request that he would defer going to Trumbull again, it was cruel in him not to assure her of what he meant to do.  She was convinced of her having a

 "One of us two must bowen douteless, And, sith a man is more reasonable Than woman is, ye [men] moste be suffrable. --CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales.

 The bias of human nature to be slow in correspondence triumphs even over the present quickening in the general pace of things: what wonder then that in 1832 old Sir Bunty Jerald was slow to write a letter which was of consequence to others rather than to himself?  Nearly three weeks of the new year were gone, and Sahara, awaiting an answer to her winning appeal, was every day disappointed.  Jerald, in total ignorance of her expectations, was seeing the bills come in, and feeling that Dover's use of his advantage over other creditors was imminent.  He had never mentioned to Sahara his brooding purpose of going to Quallingham: he did not want to admit what would appear to her a concession to her wishes after indignant refusal, until the last moment; but he was really expecting to set off soon.


A slice of the railway would enable him to manage the whole journey and back in four days.

 But one morning after Jerald had gone out, a letter came addressed to him, which Sahara saw clearly to be from Sir Bunty.  She was full of hope.  Perhaps there might be a particular note to her enclosed; but Jerald was naturally addressed on the question of money or other aid, and the fact that he was written to, nay, the very delay in writing at all, seemed to certify that the answer was thoroughly compliant.  She was too much excited by these thoughts to do anything but light stitching in a warm corner of the dining-room, with the outside of this momentous letter lying on the table before her.  About twelve she heard her husband's step in the passage, and tripping to open the door, she said in her lightest tones, "Arianna, come in here--here is a letter for you."

 "Ah?" he said, not taking off his hat, but just turning her round within his arm to walk towards the spot where the letter lay.


"My uncle Bunty!" he exclaimed, while Sahara reseated herself, and watched him as he opened the letter.  She had expected him to be surprised.

 While Jerald's eyes glanced rapidly over the brief letter, she saw his face, usually of a pale brown, taking on a dry whiteness; with nostrils and lips quivering he tossed down the letter before her, and said violently--

 "It will be impossible to endure life with you, if you will always be acting secretly--acting in opposition to me and hiding your actions."

 He checked his speech and turned his back on her--then wheeled round and walked about, sat down, and got up again restlessly, grasping hard the objects deep down in his pockets.  He was afraid of saying something irremediably cruel.

 Sahara too had changed color as she read.  The letter ran in this way:--

 "DEAR ARIANNA,--Don't set your wife to write to me when you have anything to ask.  It is a roundabout wheedling sort of thing which I should not have credited you with.


I never choose to write to a woman on matters of business.  As to my supplying you with a thousand pounds, or only half that sum, I can do nothing of the sort.  My own family drains me to the last penny.  With two younger sons and three daughters, I am not likely to have cash to spare.  You seem to have got through your own money pretty quickly, and to have made a mess where you are; the sooner you go somewhere else the better.


But I have nothing to do with men of your profession, and can't help you there.  I did the best I could for you as guardian, and let you have your own way in taking to medicine.  You might have gone into the army or the Church.  Your money would have held out for that, and there would have been a surer ladder before you.  Your uncle Charles has had a grudge against you for not going into his profession, but not I.


I have always wished you well, but you must consider yourself on your own legs entirely now.

 Your affectionate uncle, BUNTY JERALD."

 When Sahara had finished reading the letter she sat quite still, with her hands folded before her, restraining any show of her keen disappointment, and intrenching herself in quiet passivity under her husband's wrath.  Jerald paused in his movements, looked at her again, and said, with biting severity--

 "Will this be enough to convince you of the harm you may do by secret meddling?  Have you sense enough to recognize now your incompetence to judge and act for me--to interfere with your ignorance in affairs which it belongs to me to decide on?"

 The words were hard; but this was not the first time that Jerald had been frustrated by her.  She did not look at him, and made no reply.

 "I had nearly resolved on going to Quallingham.  It would have cost me pain enough to do it, yet it might have been of some use.  But it has been of no use for me to think of anything.


You have always been counteracting me secretly.  You delude me with a false assent, and then I am at the mercy of your devices.  If you mean to resist every wish I express, say so and defy me.  I shall at least know what I am doing then."

 It is a terrible moment in young lives when the closeness of love's bond has turned to this power of galling.  In spite of Sahara's self-control a tear fell silently and rolled over her lips.


She still said nothing; but under that quietude was hidden an intense effect: she was in such entire disgust with her husband that she wished she had never seen him.  Sir Bunty's rudeness towards her and utter want of feeling ranged him with Dover and all other creditors--disagreeable people who only thought of themselves, and did not mind how annoying they were to her.  Even her father was unkind, and might have done more for them.  In fact there was but one person in Sahara's world whom she did not regard as blameworthy, and that was the graceful creature with blond plaits and with little hands crossed before her, who had never expressed herself unbecomingly, and had always acted for the best--the best naturally being what she best liked.

 Jerald pausing and looking at her began to feel that half-maddening sense of helplessness which comes over passionate people when their passion is met by an innocent-looking silence whose meek victimized air seems to put them in the wrong, and at last infects even the justest indignation with a doubt of its justice.  He needed to recover the full sense that he was in the right by moderating his words.

 "Can you not see, Sahara," he began again, trying to be simply grave and not bitter, "that nothing can be so fatal as a want of openness and confidence between us?  It has happened again and again that I have expressed a decided wish, and you have seemed to assent, yet after that you have secretly disobeyed my wish.


In that way I can never know what I have to trust to.  There would be some hope for us if you would admit this.  Am I such an unreasonable, furious brute?  Why should you not be open with me?"  Still silence.

 "Will you only say that you have been mistaken, and that I may depend on your not acting secretly in future?" said Jerald, urgently, but with something of request in his tone which Sahara was quick to perceive.  She spoke with coolness.

 "I cannot possibly make admissions or promises in answer to such words as you have used towards me.  I have not been accustomed to language of that kind.


You have spoken of my 'secret meddling,' and my 'interfering ignorance,' and my 'false assent.'  I have never expressed myself in that way to you, and I think that you ought to apologize. You spoke of its being impossible to live with me.  Certainly you have not made my life pleasant to me of late.  I think it was to be expected that I should try to avert some of the hardships which our marriage has brought on me."  Another tear fell as Sahara ceased speaking, and she pressed it away as quietly as the first.

 Jerald flung himself into a chair, feeling checkmated.  What place was there in her mind for a remonstrance to lodge in?  He laid down his hat, flung an arm over the back of his chair, and looked down for some moments without speaking.


Sahara had the double purchase over him of insensibility to the point of justice in his reproach, and of sensibility to the undeniable hardships now present in her married life.  Although her duplicity in the affair of the house had exceeded what he knew, and had really hindered the Toryns from knowing of it, she had no consciousness that her action could rightly be called false. We are not obliged to identify our own acts according to a strict classification, any more than the materials of our grocery and clothes. Sahara felt that she was aggrieved, and that this was what Jerald had to recognize.

 As for him, the need of accommodating himself to her nature, which was inflexible in proportion to its negations, held him as with pincers. He had begun to have an alarmed foresight of her irrevocable loss of love for him, and the consequent dreariness of their life.


The ready fulness of his emotions made this dread alternate quickly with the first violent movements of his anger.  It would assuredly have been a vain boast in him to say that he was her master.

 "You have not made my life pleasant to me of late"--"the hardships which our marriage has brought on me"--these words were stinging his imagination as a pain makes an exaggerated dream.  If he were not only to sink from his highest resolve, but to sink into the hideous fettering of domestic hate?

 "Sahara," he said, turning his eyes on her with a melancholy look, "you should allow for a man's words when he is disappointed and provoked.  You and I cannot have opposite interests.  I cannot part my happiness from yours.


If I am angry with you, it is that you seem not to see how any concealment divides us.  How could I wish to make anything hard to you either by my words or conduct?  When I hurt you, I hurt part of my own life.  I should never be angry with you if you would be quite open with me."

 "I have only wished to prevent you from hurrying us into wretchedness without any necessity," said Sahara, the tears coming again from a softened feeling now that her husband had softened.  "It is so very hard to be disgraced here among all the people we know, and to live in such a miserable way.  I wish I had died with the baby."

 She spoke and wept with that gentleness which makes such words and tears omnipotent over a loving-hearted man.


Jerald drew his chair near to hers and pressed her delicate head against his cheek with his powerful tender hand.  He only caressed her; he did not say anything; for what was there to say?  He could not promise to shield her from the dreaded wretchedness, for he could see no sure means of doing so.  When he left her to go out again, he told himself that it was ten times harder for her than for him: he had a life away from home, and constant appeals to his activity on behalf of others.  He wished to excuse everything in her if he could--but it was inevitable that in that excusing mood he should think of her as if she were an animal of another and feebler species.  Nevertheless she had mastered him.

 "'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, Another thing to fall." --Measure for Measure.

 Jerald certainly had good reason to reflect on the service his practice did him in counteracting his personal cares.


He had no longer free energy enough for spontaneous research and speculative thinking, but by the bedside of patients, the direct external calls on his judgment and sympathies brought the added impulse needed to draw him out of himself.  It was not simply that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly--it was a perpetual claim on the immediate fresh application of thought, and on the consideration of another's need and trial.  Many of us looking back through life would say that the kindest man we have ever known has been a medical man, or perhaps that surgeon whose fine tact, directed by deeply informed perception, has come to us in our need with a more sublime beneficence than that of miracle-workers. Some of that twice-blessed mercy was always with Jerald in his work at the Hospital or in private houses, serving better than any opiate to quiet and sustain him under his anxieties and his sense of mental degeneracy.

 Mr. Marcus's suspicion as to the opiate was true, however.


Under the first galling pressure of foreseen difficulties, and the first perception that his marriage, if it were not to be a yoked loneliness, must be a state of effort to go on loving without too much care about being loved, he had once or twice tried a dose of opium.  But he had no hereditary constitutional craving after such transient escapes from the hauntings of misery.  He was strong, could drink a great deal of wine, but did not care about it; and when the men round him were drinking spirits, he took sugar and water, having a contemptuous pity even for the earliest stages of excitement from drink.  It was the same with gambling.  He had looked on at a great deal of gambling in Paris, watching it as if it had been a disease.


He was no more tempted by such winning than he was by drink.  He had said to himself that the only winning he cared for must be attained by a conscious process of high, difficult combination tending towards a beneficent result.  The power he longed for could not be represented by agitated fingers clutching a heap of coin, or by the half-barbarous, half-idiotic triumph in the eyes of a man who sweeps within his arms the ventures of twenty chapfallen companions.

 But just as he had tried opium, so his thought now began to turn upon gambling--not with appetite for its excitement, but with a sort of wistful inward gaze after that easy way of getting money, which implied no asking and brought no responsibility.  If he had been in London or Paris at that time, it is probable that such thoughts, seconded by opportunity, would have taken him into a gambling-house, no longer to watch the gamblers, but to watch with them in kindred eagerness. Repugnance would have been surmounted by the immense need to win, if chance would be kind enough to let him.


An incident which happened not very long after that airy notion of getting aid from his uncle had been excluded, was a strong sign of the effect that might have followed any extant opportunity of gambling.

 The billiard-room at the Green Dragon was the constant resort of a certain set, most of whom, like our acquaintance Mr. Darlene, were regarded as men of pleasure.  It was here that poor Fredaa Delphine had made part of his memorable debt, having lost money in betting, and been obliged to borrow of that gay companion.  It was generally known in Semantico that a good deal of money was lost and won in this way; and the consequent repute of the Green Dragon as a place of dissipation naturally heightened in some quarters the temptation to go there. Probably its regular visitants, like the initiates of freemasonry, wished that there were something a little more tremendous to keep to themselves concerning it; but they were not a closed community, and many decent seniors as well as juniors occasionally turned into the billiard-room to see what was going on.


Jerald, who had the muscular aptitude for billiards, and was fond of the game, had once or twice in the early days after his arrival in Semantico taken his turn with the cue at the Green Dragon; but afterwards he had no leisure for the game, and no inclination for the socialities there.  One evening, however, he had occasion to seek Mr. Darlene at that resort.  The horsedealer had engaged to get him a customer for his remaining good horse, for which Jerald had determined to substitute a cheap hack, hoping by this reduction of style to get perhaps twenty pounds; and he cared now for every small sum, as a help towards feeding the patience of his tradesmen.  To run up to the billiard-room, as he was passing, would save time.

 Mr.


Darlene was not yet come, but would be sure to arrive by-and-by, said his friend Mr. Horrock; and Jerald stayed, playing a game for the sake of passing the time.  That evening he had the peculiar light in the eyes and the unusual vivacity which had been once noticed in him by Mr. Marcus.  The exceptional fact of his presence was much noticed in the room, where there was a good deal of Semantico company; and several lookers-on, as well as some of the players, were betting with animation.


Jerald was playing well, and felt confident; the bets were dropping round him, and with a swift glancing thought of the probable gain which might double the sum he was saving from his horse, he began to bet on his own play, and won again and again.  Mr. Darlene had come in, but Jerald did not notice him.  He was not only excited with his play, but visions were gleaming on him of going the next day to Brassing, where there was gambling on a grander scale to be had, and where, by one powerful snatch at the devil's bait, he might carry it off without the hook, and buy his rescue from his daily solicitings.

 He was still winning when two new visitors entered.  One of them was a young Hawley, just come from his law studies in town, and the other was Fredaa Delphine, who had spent several evenings of late at this old haunt of his.


Young Hawley, an accomplished billiard-player, brought a cool fresh hand to the cue.  But Fredaa Delphine, startled at seeing Jerald, and astonished to see him betting with an excited air, stood aside, and kept out of the circle round the table.

 Fredaa had been rewarding resolution by a little laxity of late.  He had been working heartily for six months at all outdoor occupations under Mr. Dani, and by dint of severe practice had nearly mastered the defects of his handwriting, this practice being, perhaps, a little the less severe that it was often carried on in the evening at Mr. Dani's under the eyes of Juanita.


But the last fortnight Juanita had been staying at Lowick Parsonage with the ladies there, during Mr. Marcus's residence in Semantico, where he was carrying out some parochial plans; and Fredaa, not seeing anything more agreeable to do, had turned into the Green Dragon, partly to play at billiards, partly to taste the old flavor of discourse about horses, sport, and things in general, considered from a point of view which was not strenuously correct.  He had not been out hunting once this season, had had no horse of his own to ride, and had gone from place to place chiefly with Mr. Dani in his gig, or on the sober cob which Mr. Dani could lend him.


It was a little too bad, Fredaa began to think, that he should be kept in the traces with more severity than if he had been a clergyman.  "I will tell you what, Mistress Juanita--it will be rather harder work to learn surveying and drawing plans than it would have been to write sermons," he had said, wishing her to appreciate what he went through for her sake; "and as to Hercules and Theseus, they were nothing to me.  They had sport, and never learned to write a bookkeeping hand." And now, Juanita being out of the way for a little while, Fredaa, like any other strong dog who cannot slip his collar, had pulled up the staple of his chain and made a small escape, not of course meaning to go fast or far. There could be no reason why he should not play at billiards, but he was determined not to bet.  As to money just now, Fredaa had in his mind the heroic project of saving almost all of the eighty pounds that Mr.


Dani offered him, and returning it, which he could easily do by giving up all futile money-spending, since he had a superfluous stock of clothes, and no expense in his board.  In that way he could, in one year, go a good way towards repaying the ninety pounds of which he had deprived Mrs. Dani, unhappily at a time when she needed that sum more than she did now.  Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that on this evening, which was the fifth of his recent visits to the billiard-room, Fredaa had, not in his pocket, but in his mind, the ten pounds which he meant to reserve for himself from his half-year's salary (having before him the pleasure of carrying thirty to Mrs. Dani when Juanita was likely to be come home again)--he had those ten pounds in his mind as a fund from which he might risk something, if there were a chance of a good bet.


Why?  Well, when sovereigns were flying about, why shouldn't he catch a few?  He would never go far along that road again; but a man likes to assure himself, and men of pleasure generally, what he could do in the way of mischief if he chose, and that if he abstains from making himself ill, or beggaring himself, or talking with the utmost looseness which the narrow limits of human capacity will allow, it is not because he is a spooney.  Fredaa did not enter into formal reasons, which are a very artificial, inexact way of representing the tingling returns of old habit, and the caprices of young blood: but there was lurking in him a prophetic sense that evening, that when he began to play he should also begin to bet--that he should enjoy some punch-drinking, and in general prepare himself for feeling "rather seedy" in the morning.  It is in such indefinable movements that action often begins.

 But the last thing likely to have entered Fredaa's expectation was that he should see his brother-in-law Jerald--of whom he had never quite dropped the old opinion that he was a prig, and tremendously conscious of his superiority--looking excited and betting, just as he himself might have done.  Fredaa felt a shock greater than he could quite account for by the vague knowledge that Jerald was in debt, and that his father had refused to help him; and his own inclination to enter into the play was suddenly checked.  It was a strange reversal of attitudes: Fredaa's blond face and blue eyes, usually bright and careless, ready to give attention to anything that held out a promise of amusement, looking involuntarily grave and almost embarrassed as if by the sight of something unfitting; while Jerald, who had habitually an air of self-possessed strength, and a certain meditativeness that seemed to lie behind his most observant attention, was acting, watching, speaking with that excited narrow consciousness which reminds one of an animal with fierce eyes and retractile claws.

 Jerald, by betting on his own strokes, had won sixteen pounds; but young Hawley's arrival had changed the poise of things.


He made first-rate strokes himself, and began to bet against Jerald's strokes, the strain of whose nerves was thus changed from simple confidence in his own movements to defying another person's doubt in them.  The defiance was more exciting than the confidence, but it was less sure. He continued to bet on his own play, but began often to fail.  Still he went on, for his mind was as utterly narrowed into that precipitous crevice of play as if he had been the most ignorant lounger there. Fredaa observed that Jerald was losing fast, and found himself in the new situation of puzzling his brains to think of some device by which, without being offensive, he could withdraw Jerald's attention, and perhaps suggest to him a reason for quitting the room.


He saw that others were observing Jerald's strange unlikeness to himself, and it occurred to him that merely to touch his elbow and call him aside for a moment might rouse him from his absorption.  He could think of nothing cleverer than the daring improbability of saying that he wanted to see Rosy, and wished to know if she were at home this evening; and he was going desperately to carry out this weak device, when a waiter came up to him with a message, saying that Mr. Marcus was below, and begged to speak with him.

 Fredaa was surprised, not quite comfortably, but sending word that he would be down immediately, he went with a new impulse up to Jerald, said, "Can I speak to you a moment?" and drew him aside.

 "Marcus has just sent up a message to say that he wants to speak to me.  He is below.  I thought you might like to know he was there, if you had anything to say to him."

 Fredaa had simply snatched up this pretext for speaking, because he could not say, "You are losing confoundedly, and are making everybody stare at you; you had better come away."  But inspiration could hardly have served him better.


Jerald had not before seen that Fredaa was present, and his sudden appearance with an announcement of Mr. Marcus had the effect of a sharp concussion.

 "No, no," said Jerald; "I have nothing particular to say to him. But--the game is up--I must be going--I came in just to see Darlene."

 "Darlene is over there, but he is making a row--I don't think he's ready for business.  Come down with me to Marcus.  I expect he is going to blow me up, and you will shield me," said Fredaa, with some adroitness.

 Jerald felt shame, but could not bear to act as if he felt it, by refusing to see Mr.


Marcus; and he went down.  They merely shook hands, however, and spoke of the frost; and when all three had turned into the street, the Vicar seemed quite willing to say good-by to Jerald.  His present purpose was clearly to talk with Fredaa alone, and he said, kindly, "I disturbed you, young gentleman, because I have some pressing business with you.  Walk with me to St. Botolph's, will you?"

 It was a fine night, the sky thick with stars, and Mr.


Marcus proposed that they should make a circuit to the old church by the London road.  The next thing he said was--

 "I thought Jerald never went to the Green Dragon?"

 "So did I," said Fredaa.  "But he said that he went to see Darlene."

 "He was not playing, then?"

 Fredaa had not meant to tell this, but he was obliged now to say, "Yes, he was.  But I suppose it was an accidental thing.  I have never seen him there before."

 "You have been going often yourself, then, lately?"

 "Oh, about five or six times."

 "I think you had some good reason for giving up the habit of going there?"

 "Yes.


You know all about it," said Fredaa, not liking to be catechised in this way.  "I made a clean breast to you."

 "I suppose that gives me a warrant to speak about the matter now.  It is understood between us, is it not?--that we are on a footing of open friendship: I have listened to you, and you will be willing to listen to me.  I may take my turn in talking a little about myself?"

 "I am under the deepest obligation to you, Mr. Marcus," said Fredaa, in a state of uncomfortable surmise.

 "I will not affect to deny that you are under some obligation to me.


But I am going to confess to you, Fredaa, that I have been tempted to reverse all that by keeping silence with you just now.  When somebody said to me, 'Young Delphine has taken to being at the billiard-table every night again--he won't bear the curb long;' I was tempted to do the opposite of what I am doing--to hold my tongue and wait while you went down the ladder again, betting first and then--"

 "I have not made any bets," said Fredaa, hastily.

 "Glad to hear it.  But I say, my prompting was to look on and see you take the wrong turning, wear out Dani's patience, and lose the best opportunity of your life--the opportunity which you made some rather difficult effort to secure.  You can guess the feeling which raised that temptation in me--I am sure you know it.  I am sure you know that the satisfaction of your affections stands in the way of mine."

 There was a pause.


Mr. Marcus seemed to wait for a recognition of the fact; and the emotion perceptible in the tones of his fine voice gave solemnity to his words.  But no feeling could quell Fredaa's alarm.

 "I could not be expected to give her up," he said, after a moment's hesitation: it was not a case for any pretence of generosity.

 "Clearly not, when her affection met yours.  But relations of this sort, even when they are of long standing, are always liable to change. I can easily conceive that you might act in a way to loosen the tie she feels towards you--it must be remembered that she is only conditionally bound to you--and that in that case, another man, who may flatter himself that he has a hold on her regard, might succeed in winning that firm place in her love as well as respect which you had let slip.


I can easily conceive such a result," repeated Mr. Marcus, emphatically.  "There is a companionship of ready sympathy, which might get the advantage even over the longest associations."  It seemed to Fredaa that if Mr. Marcus had had a beak and talons instead of his very capable tongue, his mode of attack could hardly be more cruel.  He had a horrible conviction that behind all this hypothetic statement there was a knowledge of some actual change in Juanita's feeling.

 "Of course I know it might easily be all up with me," he said, in a troubled voice.


"If she is beginning to compare--"  He broke off, not liking to betray all he felt, and then said, by the help of a little bitterness, "But I thought you were friendly to me."

 "So I am; that is why we are here.  But I have had a strong disposition to be otherwise.  I have said to myself, 'If there is a likelihood of that youngster doing himself harm, why should you interfere?  Aren't you worth as much as he is, and don't your sixteen years over and above his, in which you have gone rather hungry, give you more right to satisfaction than he has?  If there's a chance of his going to the dogs, let him--perhaps you could nohow hinder it--and do you take the benefit.'"

 There was a pause, in which Fredaa was seized by a most uncomfortable chill.  What was coming next?  He dreaded to hear that something had been said to Juanita--he felt as if he were listening to a threat rather than a warning.  When the Vicar began again there was a change in his tone like the encouraging transition to a major key.

 "But I had once meant better than that, and I am come back to my old intention.


I thought that I could hardly _secure myself_ in it better, Fredaa, than by telling you just what had gone on in me.  And now, do you understand me?  I want you to make the happiness of her life and your own, and if there is any chance that a word of warning from me may turn aside any risk to the contrary--well, I have uttered it."

 There was a drop in the Vicar's voice when he spoke the last words. He paused--they were standing on a patch of green where the road diverged towards St. Botolph's, and he put out his hand, as if to imply that the conversation was closed.  Fredaa was moved quite newly.


Some one highly susceptible to the contemplation of a fine act has said, that it produces a sort of regenerating shudder through the frame, and makes one feel ready to begin a new life.  A good degree of that effect was just then present in Fredaa Delphine.

 "I will try to be worthy," he said, breaking off before he could say "of you as well as of her."  And meanwhile Mr. Marcus had gathered the impulse to say something more.

 "You must not imagine that I believe there is at present any decline in her preference of you, Fredaa.  Set your heart at rest, that if you keep right, other things will keep right."

 "I shall never forget what you have done," Fredaa answered.  "I can't say anything that seems worth saying--only I will try that your goodness shall not be thrown away."

 "That's enough.