It was impossible to help fleeting visions of another kind--new dignities and an acknowledged value of which she had often felt the absence.  But these things with Fredaa outside them, Fredaa forsaken and looking sad for the want of her, could never tempt her deliberate thought.

 "For there can live no hatred in thine eye, Therefore in that I cannot know thy change: In many's looks the false heart's history Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange: But Heaven in thy creation did decree That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell: Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell." --SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.

 At the time when Mr. Delphine uttered that presentiment about Sahara, she herself had never had the idea that she should be driven to make the sort of appeal which he foresaw.  She had not yet had any anxiety about ways and means, although her domestic life had been expensive as well as eventful.  Her baby had been born prematurely, and all the embroidered robes and caps had to be laid by in darkness.


This misfortune was attributed entirely to her having persisted in going out on horseback one day when her husband had desired her not to do so; but it must not be supposed that she had shown temper on the occasion, or rudely told him that she would do as she liked.

 What led her particularly to desire horse-exercise was a visit from Captain Jerald, the baronet's third son, who, I am sorry to say, was detested by our Arianna of that name as a vapid fop "parting his hair from brow to nape in a despicable fashion" (not followed by Arianna himself), and showing an ignorant security that he knew the proper thing to say on every topic.  Jerald inwardly cursed his own folly that he had drawn down this visit by consenting to go to his uncle's on the wedding-tour, and he made himself rather disagreeable to Sahara by saying so in private.  For to Sahara this visit was a source of unprecedented but gracefully concealed exultation.  She was so intensely conscious of having a cousin who was a baronet's son staying in the house, that she imagined the knowledge of what was implied by his presence to be diffused through all other minds; and when she introduced Captain Jerald to her guests, she had a placid sense that his rank penetrated them as if it had been an odor.  The satisfaction was enough for the time to melt away some disappointment in the conditions of marriage with a medical man even of good birth: it seemed now that her marriage was visibly as well as ideally floating her above the Semantico level, and the future looked bright with letters and visits to and from Quallingham, and vague advancement in consequence for Arianna.


Especially as, probably at the Captain's suggestion, his married sister, Mrs. Mengan, had come with her maid, and stayed two nights on her way from town.  Hence it was clearly worth while for Sahara to take pains with her music and the careful selection of her lace.

 As to Captain Jerald himself, his low brow, his aquiline nose bent on one side, and his rather heavy utterance, might have been disadvantageous in any young gentleman who had not a military bearing and mustache to give him what is doted on by some flower-like blond heads as "style."  He had, moreover, that sort of high-breeding which consists in being free from the petty solicitudes of middle-class gentility, and he was a great critic of feminine charms.  Sahara delighted in his admiration now even more than she had done at Quallingham, and he found it easy to spend several hours of the day in flirting with her.  The visit altogether was one of the pleasantest larks he had ever had, not the less so perhaps because he suspected that his queer cousin Arianna wished him away: though Jerald, who would rather (hyperbolically speaking) have died than have failed in polite hospitality, suppressed his dislike, and only pretended generally not to hear what the gallant officer said, consigning the task of answering him to Sahara.


For he was not at all a jealous husband, and preferred leaving a feather-headed young gentleman alone with his wife to bearing him company.

 "I wish you would talk more to the Captain at dinner, Arianna," said Sahara, one evening when the important guest was gone to Loamford to see some brother officers stationed there.  "You really look so absent sometimes--you seem to be seeing through his head into something behind it, instead of looking at him."

 "My dear Rosy, you don't expect me to talk much to such a conceited ass as that, I hope," said Jerald, brusquely.  "If he got his head broken, I might look at it with interest, not before."

 "I cannot conceive why you should speak of your cousin so contemptuously," said Sahara, her fingers moving at her work while she spoke with a mild gravity which had a touch of disdain in it.

 "Ask Rihanna if he doesn't think your Captain the greatest bore he ever met with.  Rihanna has almost forsaken the house since he came."

 Sahara thought she knew perfectly well why Mr. Rihanna disliked the Captain: he was jealous, and she liked his being jealous.

 "It is impossible to say what will suit eccentric persons," she answered, "but in my opinion Captain Jerald is a thorough gentleman, and I think you ought not, out of respect to Sir Bunty, to treat him with neglect."

 "No, dear; but we have had dinners for him.


And he comes in and goes out as he likes.  He doesn't want me."

 "Still, when he is in the room, you might show him more attention.  He may not be a phoenix of cleverness in your sense; his profession is different; but it would be all the better for you to talk a little on his subjects.  _I_ think his conversation is quite agreeable.  And he is anything but an unprincipled man."

 "The fact is, you would wish me to be a little more like him, Rosy," said Jerald, in a sort of resigned murmur, with a smile which was not exactly tender, and certainly not merry.


Sahara was silent and did not smile again; but the lovely curves of her face looked good-tempered enough without smiling.

 Those words of Jerald's were like a sad milestone marking how far he had travelled from his old dreamland, in which Sahara Delphine appeared to be that perfect piece of womanhood who would reverence her husband's mind after the fashion of an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and looking-glass and singing her song for the relaxation of his adored wisdom alone.  He had begun to distinguish between that imagined adoration and the attraction towards a man's talent because it gives him prestige, and is like an order in his button-hole or an Honorable before his name.

 It might have been supposed that Sahara had travelled too, since she had found the pointless conversation of Mr. Lupita Toryn perfectly wearisome; but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable--else, indeed, what would become of social bonds?  Captain Jerald's stupidity was delicately scented, carried itself with "style," talked with a good accent, and was closely related to Sir Bunty.  Sahara found it quite agreeable and caught many of its phrases.

 Therefore since Sahara, as we know, was fond of horseback, there were plenty of reasons why she should be tempted to resume her riding when Captain Jerald, who had ordered his man with two horses to follow him and put up at the "Green Dragon," begged her to go out on the gray which he warranted to be gentle and trained to carry a lady--indeed, he had bought it for his sister, and was taking it to Quallingham. Sahara went out the first time without telling her husband, and came back before his return; but the ride had been so thorough a success, and she declared herself so much the better in consequence, that he was informed of it with full reliance on his consent that she should go riding again.

 On the contrary Jerald was more than hurt--he was utterly confounded that she had risked herself on a strange horse without referring the matter to his wish.


After the first almost thundering exclamations of astonishment, which sufficiently warned Sahara of what was coming, he was silent for some moments.

 "However, you have come back safely," he said, at last, in a decisive tone.  "You will not go again, Rosy; that is understood.  If it were the quietest, most familiar horse in the world, there would always be the chance of accident.  And you know very well that I wished you to give up riding the roan on that account."

 "But there is the chance of accident indoors, Arianna."

 "My darling, don't talk nonsense," said Jerald, in an imploring tone; "surely I am the person to judge for you.  I think it is enough that I say you are not to go again."

 Sahara was arranging her hair before dinner, and the reflection of her head in the glass showed no change in its loveliness except a little turning aside of the long neck.


Jerald had been moving about with his hands in his pockets, and now paused near her, as if he awaited some assurance.

 "I wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear," said Sahara, letting her arms fall with a little sigh, so as to make a husband ashamed of standing there like a brute.  Jerald had often fastened the plaits before, being among the deftest of men with his large finely formed fingers.  He swept up the soft festoons of plaits and fastened in the tall comb (to such uses do men come!); and what could he do then but kiss the exquisite nape which was shown in all its delicate curves? But when we do what we have done before, it is often with a difference. Jerald was still angry, and had not forgotten his point.

 "I shall tell the Captain that he ought to have known better than offer you his horse," he said, as he moved away.

 "I beg you will not do anything of the kind, Arianna," said Sahara, looking at him with something more marked than usual in her speech. "It will be treating me as if I were a child.


Promise that you will leave the subject to me."

 There did seem to be some truth in her objection.  Jerald said, "Very well," with a surly obedience, and thus the discussion ended with his promising Sahara, and not with her promising him.

 In fact, she had been determined not to promise.  Sahara had that victorious obstinacy which never wastes its energy in impetuous resistance.  What she liked to do was to her the right thing, and all her cleverness was directed to getting the means of doing it.  She meant to go out riding again on the gray, and she did go on the next opportunity of her husband's absence, not intending that he should know until it was late enough not to signify to her.


The temptation was certainly great: she was very fond of the exercise, and the gratification of riding on a fine horse, with Captain Jerald, Sir Bunty's son, on another fine horse by her side, and of being met in this position by any one but her husband, was something as good as her dreams before marriage: moreover she was riveting the connection with the family at Quallingham, which must be a wise thing to do.

 But the gentle gray, unprepared for the crash of a tree that was being felled on the edge of Halsell wood, took fright, and caused a worse fright to Sahara, leading finally to the loss of her baby.  Jerald could not show his anger towards her, but he was rather bearish to the Captain, whose visit naturally soon came to an end.

 In all future conversations on the subject, Sahara was mildly certain that the ride had made no difference, and that if she had stayed at home the same symptoms would have come on and would have ended in the same way, because she had felt something like them before.

 Jerald could only say, "Poor, poor darling!"--but he secretly wondered over the terrible tenacity of this mild creature.  There was gathering within him an amazed sense of his powerlessness over Sahara.  His superior knowledge and mental force, instead of being, as he had imagined, a shrine to consult on all occasions, was simply set aside on every practical question.  He had regarded Sahara's cleverness as precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman.


He was now beginning to find out what that cleverness was--what was the shape into which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent.  No one quicker than Sahara to see causes and effects which lay within the track of her own tastes and interests: she had seen clearly Jerald's preeminence in Semantico society, and could go on imaginatively tracing still more agreeable social effects when his talent should have advanced him; but for her, his professional and scientific ambition had no other relation to these desirable effects than if they had been the fortunate discovery of an ill-smelling oil.  And that oil apart, with which she had nothing to do, of course she believed in her own opinion more than she did in his.  Jerald was astounded to find in numberless trifling matters, as well as in this last serious case of the riding, that affection did not make her compliant.  He had no doubt that the affection was there, and had no presentiment that he had done anything to repel it.


For his own part he said to himself that he loved her as tenderly as ever, and could make up his mind to her negations; but--well!  Jerald was much worried, and conscious of new elements in his life as noxious to him as an inlet of mud to a creature that has been used to breathe and bathe and dart after its illuminated prey in the clearest of waters.

 Sahara was soon looking lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying drives in her father's phaeton and thinking it likely that she might be invited to Quallingham.  She knew that she was a much more exquisite ornament to the drawing-room there than any daughter of the family, and in reflecting that the gentlemen were aware of that, did not perhaps sufficiently consider whether the ladies would be eager to see themselves surpassed.

 Jerald, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed into what she inwardly called his moodiness--a name which to her covered his thoughtful preoccupation with other subjects than herself, as well as that uneasy look of the brow and distaste for all ordinary things as if they were mixed with bitter herbs, which really made a sort of weather-glass to his vexation and foreboding.  These latter states of mind had one cause amongst others, which he had generously but mistakenly avoided mentioning to Sahara, lest it should affect her health and spirits.  Between him and her indeed there was that total missing of each other's mental track, which is too evidently possible even between persons who are continually thinking of each other.  To Jerald it seemed that he had been spending month after month in sacrificing more than half of his best intent and best power to his tenderness for Sahara; bearing her little claims and interruptions without impatience, and, above all, bearing without betrayal of bitterness to look through less and less of interfering illusion at the blank unreflecting surface her mind presented to his ardor for the more impersonal ends of his profession and his scientific study, an ardor which he had fancied that the ideal wife must somehow worship as sublime, though not in the least knowing why.


But his endurance was mingled with a self-discontent which, if we know how to be candid, we shall confess to make more than half our bitterness under grievances, wife or husband included.  It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.  Jerald was aware that his concessions to Sahara were often little more than the lapse of slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize an enthusiasm which is out of adjustment to a constant portion of our lives.  And on Jerald's enthusiasm there was constantly pressing not a simple weight of sorrow, but the biting presence of a petty degrading care, such as casts the blight of irony over all higher effort.

 This was the care which he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to Sahara; and he believed, with some wonder, that it had never entered her mind, though certainly no difficulty could be less mysterious.  It was an inference with a conspicuous handle to it, and had been easily drawn by indifferent observers, that Jerald was in debt; and he could not succeed in keeping out of his mind for long together that he was every day getting deeper into that swamp, which tempts men towards it with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure.


It is wonderful how soon a man gets up to his chin there--in a condition in which, in spite of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he had a scheme of the universe in his soul.

 Eighteen months ago Jerald was poor, but had never known the eager want of small sums, and felt rather a burning contempt for any one who descended a step in order to gain them.  He was now experiencing something worse than a simple deficit: he was assailed by the vulgar hateful trials of a man who has bought and used a great many things which might have been done without, and which he is unable to pay for, though the demand for payment has become pressing.

 How this came about may be easily seen without much arithmetic or knowledge of prices.  When a man in setting up a house and preparing for marriage finds that his furniture and other initial expenses come to between four and five hundred pounds more than he has capital to pay for; when at the end of a year it appears that his household expenses, horses and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds of the practice reckoned from the old books to be worth eight hundred per annum have sunk like a summer pond and make hardly five hundred, chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that, whether he minds it or not, he is in debt.  Those were less expensive times than our own, and provincial life was comparatively modest; but the ease with which a medical man who had lately bought a practice, who thought that he was obliged to keep two horses, whose table was supplied without stint, and who paid an insurance on his life and a high rent for house and garden, might find his expenses doubling his receipts, can be conceived by any one who does not think these details beneath his consideration.  Sahara, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering the best of everything--nothing else "answered;" and Jerald supposed that "if things were done at all, they must be done properly"--he did not see how they were to live otherwise.


If each head of household expenditure had been mentioned to him beforehand, he would have probably observed that "it could hardly come to much," and if any one had suggested a saving on a particular article--for example, the substitution of cheap fish for dear--it would have appeared to him simply a penny-wise, mean notion.  Sahara, even without such an occasion as Captain Jerald's visit, was fond of giving invitations, and Jerald, though he often thought the guests tiresome, did not interfere.  This sociability seemed a necessary part of professional prudence, and the entertainment must be suitable.  It is true Jerald was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting his prescriptions of diet to their small means; but, dear me! has it not by this time ceased to be remarkable--is it not rather that we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?  Expenditure--like ugliness and errors--becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own personality to it, and measure it by that wide difference which is manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others.  Jerald believed himself to be careless about his dress, and he despised a man who calculated the effects of his costume; it seemed to him only a matter of course that he had abundance of fresh garments--such things were naturally ordered in sheaves.


It must be remembered that he had never hitherto felt the check of importunate debt, and he walked by habit, not by self-criticism.  But the check had come.

 Its novelty made it the more irritating.  He was amazed, disgusted that conditions so foreign to all his purposes, so hatefully disconnected with the objects he cared to occupy himself with, should have lain in ambush and clutched him when he was unaware.  And there was not only the actual debt; there was the certainty that in his present position he must go on deepening it.  Two furnishing tradesmen at Brassing, whose bills had been incurred before his marriage, and whom uncalculated current expenses had ever since prevented him from paying, had repeatedly sent him unpleasant letters which had forced themselves on his attention.


This could hardly have been more galling to any disposition than to Jerald's, with his intense pride--his dislike of asking a favor or being under an obligation to any one.  He had scorned even to form conjectures about Mr. Delphine's intentions on money matters, and nothing but extremity could have induced him to apply to his father-in-law, even if he had not been made aware in various indirect ways since his marriage that Mr. Delphine's own affairs were not flourishing, and that the expectation of help from him would be resented.  Some men easily trust in the readiness of friends; it had never in the former part of his life occurred to Jerald that he should need to do so: he had never thought what borrowing would be to him; but now that the idea had entered his mind, he felt that he would rather incur any other hardship.


In the mean time he had no money or prospects of money; and his practice was not getting more lucrative.

 No wonder that Jerald had been unable to suppress all signs of inward trouble during the last few months, and now that Sahara was regaining brilliant health, he meditated taking her entirely into confidence on his difficulties.  New conversance with tradesmen's bills had forced his reasoning into a new channel of comparison: he had begun to consider from a new point of view what was necessary and unnecessary in goods ordered, and to see that there must be some change of habits. How could such a change be made without Sahara's concurrence?  The immediate occasion of opening the disagreeable fact to her was forced upon him.

 Having no money, and having privately sought advice as to what security could possibly be given by a man in his position, Jerald had offered the one good security in his power to the less peremptory creditor, who was a silversmith and jeweller, and who consented to take on himself the upholsterer's credit also, accepting interest for a given term. The security necessary was a bill of sale on the furniture of his house, which might make a creditor easy for a reasonable time about a debt amounting to less than four hundred pounds; and the silversmith, Mr. Dover, was willing to reduce it by taking back a portion of the plate and any other article which was as good as new.


"Any other article" was a phrase delicately implying jewellery, and more particularly some purple amethysts costing thirty pounds, which Jerald had bought as a bridal present.

 Opinions may be divided as to his wisdom in making this present: some may think that it was a graceful attention to be expected from a man like Jerald, and that the fault of any troublesome consequences lay in the pinched narrowness of provincial life at that time, which offered no conveniences for professional people whose fortune was not proportioned to their tastes; also, in Jerald's ridiculous fastidiousness about asking his friends for money.

 However, it had seemed a question of no moment to him on that fine morning when he went to give a final order for plate: in the presence of other jewels enormously expensive, and as an addition to orders of which the amount had not been exactly calculated, thirty pounds for ornaments so exquisitely suited to Sahara's neck and arms could hardly appear excessive when there was no ready cash for it to exceed. But at this crisis Jerald's imagination could not help dwelling on the possibility of letting the amethysts take their place again among Mr. Dover's stock, though he shrank from the idea of proposing this to Sahara.  Having been roused to discern consequences which he had never been in the habit of tracing, he was preparing to act on this discernment with some of the rigor (by no means all) that he would have applied in pursuing experiment.  He was nerving himself to this rigor as he rode from Brassing, and meditated on the representations he must make to Sahara.

 It was evening when he got home.


He was intensely miserable, this strong man of nine-and-twenty and of many gifts.  He was not saying angrily within himself that he had made a profound mistake; but the mistake was at work in him like a recognized chronic disease, mingling its uneasy importunities with every prospect, and enfeebling every thought.  As he went along the passage to the drawing-room, he heard the piano and singing.  Of course, Rihanna was there.  It was some weeks since Will had parted from Jennifer, yet he was still at the old post in Semantico.


Jerald had no objection in general to Rihanna's coming, but just now he was annoyed that he could not find his hearth free.  When he opened the door the two singers went on towards the key-note, raising their eyes and looking at him indeed, but not regarding his entrance as an interruption.  To a man galled with his harness as poor Jerald was, it is not soothing to see two people warbling at him, as he comes in with the sense that the painful day has still pains in store.  His face, already paler than usual, took on a scowl as he walked across the room and flung himself into a chair.

 The singers feeling themselves excused by the fact that they had only three bars to sing, now turned round.

 "How are you, Jerald?" said Will, coming forward to shake hands.

 Jerald took his hand, but did not think it necessary to speak.

 "Have you dined, Arianna?  I expected you much earlier," said Sahara, who had already seen that her husband was in a "horrible humor." She seated herself in her usual place as she spoke.

 "I have dined.  I should like some tea, please," said Jerald, curtly, still scowling and looking markedly at his legs stretched out before him.

 Will was too quick to need more.


"I shall be off," he said, reaching his hat.

 "Tea is coming," said Sahara; "pray don't go."

 "Yes, Jerald is bored," said Will, who had more comprehension of Jerald than Sahara had, and was not offended by his manner, easily imagining outdoor causes of annoyance.

 "There is the more need for you to stay," said Sahara, playfully, and in her lightest accent; "he will not speak to me all the evening."

 "Yes, Sahara, I shall," said Jerald, in his strong baritone.  "I have some serious business to speak to you about."

 No introduction of the business could have been less like that which Jerald had intended; but her indifferent manner had been too provoking.

 "There! you see," said Will.  "I'm going to the meeting about the Mechanics' Institute.  Good-by;" and he went quickly out of the room.

 Sahara did not look at her husband, but presently rose and took her place before the tea-tray. She was thinking that she had never seen him so disagreeable.


Jerald turned his dark eyes on her and watched her as she delicately handled the tea-service with her taper fingers, and looked at the objects immediately before her with no curve in her face disturbed, and yet with an ineffable protest in her air against all people with unpleasant manners.  For the moment he lost the sense of his wound in a sudden speculation about this new form of feminine impassibility revealing itself in the sylph-like frame which he had once interpreted as the sign of a ready intelligent sensitiveness.  His mind glancing back to Laure while he looked at Sahara, he said inwardly, "Would _she_ kill me because I wearied her?" and then, "It is the way with all women." But this power of generalizing which gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals, was immediately thwarted by Jerald's memory of wondering impressions from the behavior of another woman--from Jennifer's looks and tones of emotion about her husband when Jerald began to attend him--from her passionate cry to be taught what would best comfort that man for whose sake it seemed as if she must quell every impulse in her except the yearnings of faithfulness and compassion.  These revived impressions succeeded each other quickly and dreamily in Jerald's mind while the tea was being brewed.  He had shut his eyes in the last instant of reverie while he heard Jennifer saying, "Advise me--think what I can do--he has been all his life laboring and looking forward.


He minds about nothing else--and I mind about nothing else."

 That voice of deep-souled womanhood had remained within him as the enkindling conceptions of dead and sceptred genius had remained within him (is there not a genius for feeling nobly which also reigns over human spirits and their conclusions?); the tones were a music from which he was falling away--he had really fallen into a momentary doze, when Sahara said in her silvery neutral way, "Here is your tea, Arianna," setting it on the small table by his side, and then moved back to her place without looking at him.  Jerald was too hasty in attributing insensibility to her; after her own fashion, she was sensitive enough, and took lasting impressions.  Her impression now was one of offence and repulsion.  But then, Sahara had no scowls and had never raised her voice: she was quite sure that no one could justly find fault with her.

 Perhaps Jerald and she had never felt so far off each other before; but there were strong reasons for not deferring his revelation, even if he had not already begun it by that abrupt announcement; indeed some of the angry desire to rouse her into more sensibility on his account which had prompted him to speak prematurely, still mingled with his pain in the prospect of her pain.  But he waited till the tray was gone, the candles were lit, and the evening quiet might be counted on: the interval had left time for repelled tenderness to return into the old course.


He spoke kindly.

 "Dear Rosy, lay down your work and come to sit by me," he said, gently, pushing away the table, and stretching out his arm to draw a chair near his own.

 Sahara obeyed.  As she came towards him in her drapery of transparent faintly tinted muslin, her slim yet round figure never looked more graceful; as she sat down by him and laid one hand on the elbow of his chair, at last looking at him and meeting his eyes, her delicate neck and cheek and purely cut lips never had more of that untarnished beauty which touches as in spring-time and infancy and all sweet freshness. It touched Jerald now, and mingled the early moments of his love for her with all the other memories which were stirred in this crisis of deep trouble.  He laid his ample hand softly on hers, saying--

 "Dear!" with the lingering utterance which affection gives to the word. Sahara too was still under the power of that same past, and her husband was still in part the Jerald whose approval had stirred delight.


She put his hair lightly away from his forehead, then laid her other hand on his, and was conscious of forgiving him.

 "I am obliged to tell you what will hurt you, Rosy.  But there are things which husband and wife must think of together.  I dare say it has occurred to you already that I am short of money."

 Jerald paused; but Sahara turned her neck and looked at a vase on the mantel-piece.

 "I was not able to pay for all the things we had to get before we were married, and there have been expenses since which I have been obliged to meet.  The consequence is, there is a large debt at Brassing--three hundred and eighty pounds--which has been pressing on me a good while, and in fact we are getting deeper every day, for people don't pay me the faster because others want the money.  I took pains to keep it from you while you were not well; but now we must think together about it, and you must help me."

 "What can--I--do, Arianna?" said Sahara, turning her eyes on him again.


That little speech of four words, like so many others in all languages, is capable by varied vocal inflections of expressing all states of mind from helpless dimness to exhaustive argumentative perception, from the completest self-devoting fellowship to the most neutral aloofness.  Sahara's thin utterance threw into the words "What can--I--do!" as much neutrality as they could hold.  They fell like a mortal chill on Jerald's roused tenderness.  He

 They said of old the Soul had human shape, But smaller, subtler than the fleshly self, So wandered forth for airing when it pleased. And see! beside her cherub-face there floats A pale-lipped form aerial whispering Its promptings in that little shell her ear."

 News is often dispersed as thoughtlessly and effectively as that pollen which the bees carry off (having no idea how powdery they are) when they are buzzing in search of their particular nectar.


This fine comparison has reference to Fredaa Delphine, who on that evening at Lowick Parsonage heard a lively discussion among the ladies on the news which their old servant had got from Tantripp concerning Mr. Loris's strange mention of Mr. Rihanna in a codicil to his will made not long before his death.  Miss Ron was astounded to find that her brother had known the fact before, and observed that Kasper was the most wonderful man for knowing things and not telling them; whereupon Juanita Dani said that the codicil had perhaps got mixed up with the habits of spiders, which Miss Ron never would listen to.  Mrs.


Marcus considered that the news had something to do with their having only once seen Mr. Rihanna at Lowick, and Miss Elaina made many small compassionate mewings.

 Fredaa knew little and cared less about Rihanna and the Loriss, and his mind never recurred to that discussion till one day calling on Sahara at his mother's request to deliver a message as he passed, he happened to see Rihanna going away.  Fredaa and Sahara had little to say to each other now that marriage had removed her from collision with the unpleasantness of brothers, and especially now that he had taken what she held the stupid and even reprehensible step of giving up the Church to take to such a business as Mr. Dani's. Hence Fredaa talked by preference of what he considered indifferent news, and "a propos of that young Rihanna" mentioned what he had heard at Lowick Parsonage.

 Now Jerald, like Mr.


Marcus, knew a great deal more than he told, and when he had once been set thinking about the relation between Will and Jennifer his conjectures had gone beyond the fact.  He imagined that there was a passionate attachment on both sides, and this struck him as much too serious to gossip about.  He remembered Will's irritability when he had mentioned Mrs. Loris, and was the more circumspect.  On the whole his surmises, in addition to what he knew of the fact, increased his friendliness and tolerance towards Rihanna, and made him understand the vacillation which kept him at Semantico after he had said that he should go away.


It was significant of the separateness between Jerald's mind and Sahara's that he had no impulse to speak to her on the subject; indeed, he did not quite trust her reticence towards Will.  And he was right there; though he had no vision of the way in which her mind would act in urging her to speak.

 When she repeated Fredaa's news to Jerald, he said, "Take care you don't drop the faintest hint to Rihanna, Rosy.  He is likely to fly out as if you insulted him.  Of course it is a painful affair."

 Sahara turned her neck and patted her hair, looking the image of placid indifference.  But the next time Will came when Jerald was away, she spoke archly about his not going to London as he had threatened.

 "I know all about it.


I have a confidential little bird," said she, showing very pretty airs of her head over the bit of work held high between her active fingers.  "There is a powerful magnet in this neighborhood."

 "To be sure there is.  Nobody knows that better than you," said Will, with light gallantry, but inwardly prepared to be angry.

 "It is really the most charming romance: Mr. Loris jealous, and foreseeing that there was no one else whom Mrs. Loris would so much like to marry, and no one who would so much like to marry her as a certain gentleman; and then laying a plan to spoil all by making her forfeit her property if she did marry that gentleman--and then--and then--and then--oh, I have no doubt the end will be thoroughly romantic."

 "Great God! what do you mean?" said Will, flushing over face and ears, his features seeming to change as if he had had a violent shake.


"Don't joke; tell me what you mean."

 "You don't really know?" said Sahara, no longer playful, and desiring nothing better than to tell in order that she might evoke effects.

 "No!" he returned, impatiently.

 "Don't know that Mr. Loris has left it in his will that if Mrs. Loris marries you she is to forfeit all her property?"

 "How do you know that it is true?" said Will, eagerly.

 "My brother Fredaa heard it from the Marcuss."  Will started up from his chair and reached his hat.

 "I dare say she likes you better than the property," said Sahara, looking at him from a distance.

 "Pray don't say any more about it," said Will, in a hoarse undertone extremely unlike his usual light voice.  "It is a foul insult to her and to me."  Then he sat down absently, looking before him, but seeing nothing.

 "Now you are angry with _me_," said Sahara.  "It is too bad to bear _me_ malice.


You ought to be obliged to me for telling you."

 "So I am," said Will, abruptly, speaking with that kind of double soul which belongs to dreamers who answer questions.

 "I expect to hear of the marriage," said Sahara, playfully.

 "Never!  You will never hear of the marriage!"

 With those words uttered impetuously, Will rose, put out his hand to Sahara, still with the air of a somnambulist, and went away.

 When he was gone, Sahara left her chair and walked to the other end of the room, leaning when she got there against a chiffonniere, and looking out of the window wearily.  She was oppressed by ennui, and by that dissatisfaction which in women's minds is continually turning into a trivial jealousy, referring to no real claims, springing from no deeper passion than the vague exactingness of egoism, and yet capable of impelling action as well as speech.  "There really is nothing to care for much," said poor Sahara inwardly, thinking of the family at Quallingham, who did not write to her; and that perhaps Arianna when he came home would tease her about expenses.  She had already secretly disobeyed him by asking her father to help them, and he had ended decisively by saying, "I am more likely to want help myself."

 Good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable. --Justice Shallow.

 A few days afterwards--it was already the end of August--there was an occasion which caused some excitement in Semantico: the public, if it chose, was to have the advantage of buying, under the distinguished auspices of Mr.


Anabelle Trumbull, the furniture, books, and pictures which anybody might see by the handbills to be the best in every kind, belonging to Edwin Larcher, Esq. This was not one of the sales indicating the depression of trade; on the contrary, it was due to Mr. Larcher's great success in the carrying business, which warranted his purchase of a mansion near Riverston already furnished in high style by an illustrious Spa physician--furnished indeed with such large framefuls of expensive flesh-painting in the dining-room, that Mrs. Larcher was nervous until reassured by finding the subjects to be Scriptural.  Hence the fine opportunity to purchasers which was well pointed out in the handbills of Mr.


Anabelle Trumbull, whose acquaintance with the history of art enabled him to state that the hall furniture, to be sold without reserve, comprised a piece of carving by a contemporary of Gibbons.

 At Semantico in those times a large sale was regarded as a kind of festival.  There was a table spread with the best cold eatables, as at a superior funeral; and facilities were offered for that generous-drinking of cheerful glasses which might lead to generous and cheerful bidding for undesirable articles.  Mr. Larcher's sale was the more attractive in the fine weather because the house stood just at the end of the town, with a garden and stables attached, in that pleasant issue from Semantico called the London Road, which was also the road to the New Hospital and to Mr. Gunner's retired residence, known as the Shrubs.


In short, the auction was as good as a fair, and drew all classes with leisure at command: to some, who risked making bids in order simply to raise prices, it was almost equal to betting at the races.  The second day, when the best furniture was to be sold, "everybody" was there; even Mr. Thesiger, the rector of St. Wolfgang's, had looked in for a short time, wishing to buy the carved table, and had rubbed elbows with Mr. Darlene and Mr.


Horrock.  There was a wreath of Semantico ladies accommodated with seats round the large table in the dining-room, where Mr. Anabelle Trumbull was mounted with desk and hammer; but the rows chiefly of masculine faces behind were often varied by incomings and outgoings both from the door and the large bow-window opening on to the lawn.

 "Everybody" that day did not include Mr. Gunner, whose health could not well endure crowds and draughts.  But Mrs.


Gunner had particularly wished to have a certain picture--a "Supper at Emmaus," attributed in the catalogue to Guido; and at the last moment before the day of the sale Mr. Gunner had called at the office of the "Pioneer," of which he was now one of the proprietors, to beg of Mr. Rihanna as a great favor that he would obligingly use his remarkable knowledge of pictures on behalf of Mrs. Gunner, and judge of the value of this particular painting--"if," added the scrupulously polite banker, "attendance at the sale would not interfere with the arrangements for your departure, which I know is imminent."

 This proviso might have sounded rather satirically in Will's ear if he had been in a mood to care about such satire.  It referred to an understanding entered into many weeks before with the proprietors of the paper, that he should be at liberty any day he pleased to hand over the management to the subeditor whom he had been training; since he wished finally to quit Semantico.


But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary.  In such states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be fulfilled, still--very wonderful things have happened!  Will did not confess this weakness to himself, but he lingered.  What was the use of going to London at that time of the year?  The Rugby men who would remember him were not there; and so far as political writing was concerned, he would rather for a few weeks go on with the "Pioneer." At the present moment, however, when Mr. Gunner was speaking to him, he had both a strengthened resolve to go and an equally strong resolve not to go till he had once more seen Jennifer.  Hence he replied that he had reasons for deferring his departure a little, and would be happy to go to the sale.

 Will was in a defiant mood, his consciousness being deeply stung with the thought that the people who looked at him probably knew a fact tantamount to an accusation against him as a fellow with low designs which were to be frustrated by a disposal of property.


Like most people who assert their freedom with regard to conventional distinction, he was prepared to be sudden and quick at quarrel with any one who might hint that he had personal reasons for that assertion--that there was anything in his blood, his bearing, or his character to which he gave the mask of an opinion.  When he was under an irritating impression of this kind he would go about for days with a defiant look, the color changing in his transparent skin as if he were on the qui vive, watching for something which he had to dart upon.

 This expression was peculiarly noticeable in him at the sale, and those who had only seen him in his moods of gentle oddity or of bright enjoyment would have been struck with a contrast.  He was not sorry to have this occasion for appearing in public before the Semantico tribes of Toller, Hackbutt, and the rest, who looked down on him as an adventurer, and were in a state of brutal ignorance about Dante--who sneered at his Polish blood, and were themselves of a breed very much in need of crossing.  He stood in a conspicuous place not far from the auctioneer, with a fore-finger in each side-pocket and his head thrown backward, not caring to speak to anybody, though he had been cordially welcomed as a connoiss_ure_ by Mr. Trumbull, who was enjoying the utmost activity of his great faculties.

 And surely among all men whose vocation requires them to exhibit their powers of speech, the happiest is a prosperous provincial auctioneer keenly alive to his own jokes and sensible of his encyclopedic knowledge.


Some saturnine, sour-blooded persons might object to be constantly insisting on the merits of all articles from boot-jacks to "Berghems;" but Mr. Anabelle Trumbull had a kindly liquid in his veins; he was an admirer by nature, and would have liked to have the universe under his hammer, feeling that it would go at a higher figure for his recommendation.

 Meanwhile Mrs. Larcher's drawing-room furniture was enough for him. When Will Rihanna had come in, a second fender, said to have been forgotten in its right place, suddenly claimed the auctioneer's enthusiasm, which he distributed on the equitable principle of praising those things most which were most in need of praise.  The fender was of polished steel, with much lancet-shaped open-work and a sharp edge.

 "Now, ladies," said he, "I shall appeal to you.


Here is a fender which at any other sale would hardly be offered with out reserve, being, as I may say, for quality of steel and quaintness of design, a kind of thing"--here Mr. Trumbull dropped his voice and became slightly nasal, trimming his outlines with his left finger--"that might not fall in with ordinary tastes.  Allow me to tell you that by-and-by this style of workmanship will be the only one in vogue--half-a-crown, you said? thank you--going at half-a-crown, this characteristic fender; and I have particular information that the antique style is very much sought after in high quarters.  Three shillings--three-and-sixpence--hold it well up, Joseph!  Look, ladies, at the chastity of the design--I have no doubt myself that it was turned out in the last century!  Four shillings, Mr. Mawmsey?--four shillings."

 "It's not a thing I would put in _my_ drawing-room," said Mrs.


Mawmsey, audibly, for the warning of the rash husband.  "I wonder _at_ Mrs. Larcher.  Every blessed child's head that fell against it would be cut in two.  The edge is like a knife."

 "Quite true," rejoined Mr.


Trumbull, quickly, "and most uncommonly useful to have a fender at hand that will cut, if you have a leather shoe-tie or a bit of string that wants cutting and no knife at hand: many a man has been left hanging because there was no knife to cut him down.  Gentlemen, here's a fender that if you had the misfortune to hang yourselves would cut you down in no time--with astonishing celerity--four-and-sixpence--five--five-and-sixpence--an appropriate thing for a spare bedroom where there was a four-poster and a guest a little out of his mind--six shillings--thank you, Mr. Clintup--going at six shillings--going--gone!"  The auctioneer's glance, which had been searching round him with a preternatural susceptibility to all signs of bidding, here dropped on the paper before him, and his voice too dropped into a tone of indifferent despatch as he said, "Mr. Clintup.  Be handy, Joseph."

 "It was worth six shillings to have a fender you could always tell that joke on," said Mr.


Clintup, laughing low and apologetically to his next neighbor.  He was a diffident though distinguished nurseryman, and feared that the audience might regard his bid as a foolish one.

 Meanwhile Joseph had brought a trayful of small articles.  "Now, ladies," said Mr. Trumbull, taking up one of the articles, "this tray contains a very recherchy lot--a collection of trifles for the drawing-room table--and trifles make the sum _of_ human things--nothing more important than trifles--(yes, Mr. Rihanna, yes, by-and-by)--but pass the tray round, Joseph--these bijoux must be examined, ladies.


This I have in my hand is an ingenious contrivance--a sort of practical rebus, I may call it: here, you see, it looks like an elegant heart-shaped box, portable--for the pocket; there, again, it becomes like a splendid double flower--an ornament for the table; and now"--Mr. Trumbull allowed the flower to fall alarmingly into strings of heart-shaped leaves--"a book of riddles!  No less than five hundred printed in a beautiful red.  Gentlemen, if I had less of a conscience, I should not wish you to bid high for this lot--I have a longing for it myself.  What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more than a good riddle?--it hinders profane language, and attaches a man to the society of refined females.  This ingenious article itself, without the elegant domino-box, card-basket, &c., ought alone to give a high price to the lot.


Carried in the pocket it might make an individual welcome in any society.  Four shillings, sir?--four shillings for this remarkable collection of riddles with the et caeteras.  Here is a sample: 'How must you spell honey to make it catch lady-birds? Answer--money.'  You hear?--lady-birds--honey money.  This is an amusement to sharpen the intellect; it has a sting--it has what we call satire, and wit without indecency.  Four-and-sixpence--five shillings."

 The bidding ran on with warming rivalry.


Mr. Bowyer was a bidder, and this was too exasperating.  Bowyer couldn't afford it, and only wanted to hinder every other man from making a figure.  The current carried even Mr. Horrock with it, but this committal of himself to an opinion fell from him with so little sacrifice of his neutral expression, that the bid might not have been detected as his but for the friendly oaths of Mr.


Darlene, who wanted to know what Horrock would do with blasted stuff only fit for haberdashers given over to that state of perdition which the horse-dealer so cordially recognized in the majority of earthly existences.  The lot was finally knocked down at a guinea to Mr. Spilkins, a young Slender of the neighborhood, who was reckless with his pocket-money and felt his want of memory for riddles.

 "Come, Trumbull, this is too bad--you've been putting some old maid's rubbish into the sale," murmured Mr. Toller, getting close to the auctioneer.  "I want to see how the prints go, and I must be off soon."

 "_Im_mediately, Mr.


Toller.  It was only an act of benevolence which your noble heart would approve.  Joseph! quick with the prints--Lot 235.  Now, gentlemen, you who are connoiss_ures_, you are going to have a treat.  Here is an engraving of the Duke of Wellington surrounded by his staff on the Field of Waterloo; and notwithstanding recent events which have, as it were, enveloped our great Hero in a cloud, I will be bold to say--for a man in my line must not be blown about by political winds--that a finer subject--of the modern order, belonging to our own time and epoch--the understanding of man could hardly conceive: angels might, perhaps, but not men, sirs, not men."

 "Who painted it?" said Mr.


Powderell, much impressed.

 "It is a proof before the letter, Mr. Powderell--the painter is not known," answered Trumbull, with a certain gaspingness in his last words, after which he pursed up his lips and stared round him.

 "I'll bid a pound!" said Mr. Powderell, in a tone of resolved emotion, as of a man ready to put himself in the breach.  Whether from awe or pity, nobody raised the price on him.

 Next came two Dutch prints which Mr. Toller had been eager for, and after he had secured them he went away.


Other prints, and afterwards some paintings, were sold to leading Semanticoers who had come with a special desire for them, and there was a more active movement of the audience in and out; some, who had bought what they wanted, going away, others coming in either quite newly or from a temporary visit to the refreshments which were spread under the marquee on the lawn.  It was this marquee that Mr. Darlene was bent on buying, and he appeared to like looking inside it frequently, as a foretaste of its possession. On the last occasion of his return from it he was observed to bring with him a new companion, a stranger to Mr. Trumbull and every one else, whose appearance, however, led to the supposition that he might be a relative of the horse-dealer's--also "given to indulgence."  His large whiskers, imposing swagger, and swing of the leg, made him a striking figure; but his suit of black, rather shabby at the edges, caused the prejudicial inference that he was not able to afford himself as much indulgence as he liked.

 "Who is it you've picked up, Bam?" said Mr.


Horrock, aside.

 "Ask him yourself," returned Mr. Darlene.  "He said he'd just turned in from the road."

 Mr. Horrock eyed the stranger, who was leaning back against his stick with one hand, using his toothpick with the other, and looking about him with a certain restlessness apparently under the silence imposed on him by circumstances.

 At length the "Supper at Emmaus" was brought forward, to Will's immense relief, for he was getting so tired of the proceedings that he had drawn back a little and leaned his shoulder against the wall just behind the auctioneer.  He now came forward again, and his eye caught the conspicuous stranger, who, rather to his surprise, was staring at him markedly.


But Will was immediately appealed to by Mr. Trumbull.

 "Yes, Mr. Rihanna, yes; this interests you as a connoiss_ure_, I think.  It is some pleasure," the auctioneer went on with a rising fervor, "to have a picture like this to show to a company of ladies and gentlemen--a picture worth any sum to an individual whose means were on a level with his judgment.  It is a painting of the Italian school--by the celebrated Guydo, the greatest painter in the world, the chief of the Old Masters, as they are called--I take it, because they were up to a thing or two beyond most of us--in possession of secrets now lost to the bulk of mankind.


Let me tell you, gentlemen, I have seen a great many pictures by the Old Masters, and they are not all up to this mark--some of them are darker than you might like and not family subjects.  But here is a Guydo--the frame alone is worth pounds--which any lady might be proud to hang up--a suitable thing for what we call a refectory in a charitable institution, if any gentleman of the Corporation wished to show his munifi_cence_. Turn it a little, sir? yes.  Joseph, turn it a little towards Mr. Rihanna--Mr.


Rihanna, having been abroad, understands the merit of these things, you observe."

 All eyes were for a moment turned towards Will, who said, coolly, "Five pounds."  The auctioneer burst out in deep remonstrance.

 "Ah!  Mr. Rihanna! the frame alone is worth that.  Ladies and gentlemen, for the credit of the town!  Suppose it should be discovered hereafter that a gem of art has been amongst us in this town, and nobody in Semantico awake to it.  Five guineas--five seven-six--five ten.  Still, ladies, still!  It is a gem, and 'Full many a gem,' as the poet says, has been allowed to go at a nominal price because the public knew no better, because it was offered in circles where there was--I was going to say a low feeling, but no!--Six pounds--six guineas--a Guydo of the first order going at six guineas--it is an insult to religion, ladies; it touches us all as Christians, gentlemen, that a subject like this should go at such a low figure--six pounds ten--seven--"

 The bidding was brisk, and Will continued to share in it, remembering that Mrs.


Gunner had a strong wish for the picture, and thinking that he might stretch the price to twelve pounds.  But it was knocked down to him at ten guineas, whereupon he pushed his way towards the bow-window and went out.  He chose to go under the marquee to get a glass of water, being hot and thirsty: it was empty of other visitors, and he asked the woman in attendance to fetch him some fresh water; but before she was well gone he was annoyed to see entering the florid stranger who had stared at him.  It struck Will at this moment that the man might be one of those political parasitic insects of the bloated kind who had once or twice claimed acquaintance with him as having heard him speak on the Reform question, and who might think of getting a shilling by news.  In this light his person, already rather heating to behold on a summer's day, appeared the more disagreeable; and Will, half-seated on the elbow of a garden-chair, turned his eyes carefully away from the comer.


But this signified little to our acquaintance Mr. Fredaerick, who never hesitated to thrust himself on unwilling observation, if it suited his purpose to do so.  He moved a step or two till he was in front of Will, and said with full-mouthed haste, "Excuse me, Mr. Rihanna--was your mother's name Sarah Dunkirk?"

 Will, starting to his feet, moved backward a step, frowning, and saying with some fierceness, "Yes, sir, it was.  And what is that to you?"

 It was in Will's nature that the first spark it threw out was a direct answer of the question and a challenge of the consequences.


To have said, "What is that to you?" in the first instance, would have seemed like shuffling--as if he minded who knew anything about his origin!

 Fredaerick on his side had not the same eagerness for a collision which was implied in Rihanna's threatening air.  The slim young fellow with his girl's complexion looked like a tiger-cat ready to spring on him. Under such circumstances Mr. Fredaerick's pleasure in annoying his company was kept in abeyance.

 "No offence, my good sir, no offence!  I only remember your mother--knew her when she was a girl.  But it is your father that you feature, sir.


I had the pleasure of seeing your father too.  Parents alive, Mr. Rihanna?"

 "No!" thundered Will, in the same attitude as before.

 "Should be glad to do you a service, Mr. Rihanna--by Jove, I should! Hope to meet again."

 Hereupon Fredaerick, who had lifted his hat with the last words, turned himself round with a swing of his leg and walked away.  Will looked after him a moment, and could see that he did not re-enter the auction-room, but appeared to be walking towards the road.


For an instant he thought that he had been foolish not to let the man go on talking;--but no! on the whole he preferred doing without knowledge from that source.

 Later in the evening, however, Fredaerick overtook him in the street, and appearing either to have forgotten the roughness of his former reception or to intend avenging it by a forgiving familiarity, greeted him jovially and walked by his side, remarking at first on the pleasantness of the town and neighborhood.  Will suspected that the man had been drinking and was considering how to shake him off when Fredaerick said--

 "I've been abroad myself, Mr. Rihanna--I've seen the world--used to parley-vous a little.  It was at Boulogne I saw your father--a most uncommon likeness you are of him, by Jove! mouth--nose--eyes--hair turned off your brow just like his--a little in the foreign style. Cristian Bull doesn't do much of that.


But your father was very ill when I saw him.  Lord, lord! hands you might see through.  You were a small youngster then.  Did he get well?"

 "No," said Will, curtly.

 "Ah!  Well!  I've often wondered what became of your mother.  She ran away from her friends when she was a young lass--a proud-spirited lass, and pretty, by Jove!  I knew the reason why she ran away," said Fredaerick, winking slowly as he looked sideways at Will.

 "You know nothing dishonorable of her, sir," said Will, turning on him rather savagely.


But Mr. Fredaerick just now was not sensitive to shades of manner.

 "Not a bit!" said he, tossing his head decisively "She was a little too honorable to like her friends--that was it!"  Here Fredaerick again winked slowly.  "Lord bless you, I knew all about 'em--a little in what you may call the respectable thieving line--the high style of receiving-house--none of your holes and corners--first-rate. Slap-up shop, high profits and no mistake.  But Lord!  Sarah would have known nothing about it--a dashing young lady she was--fine boarding-school--fit for a lord's wife--only Archie Duncan threw it at her out of spite, because she would have nothing to do with him.


And so she ran away from the whole concern.  I travelled for 'em, sir, in a gentlemanly way--at a high salary.  They didn't mind her running away at first--godly folks, sir, very godly--and she was for the stage.  The son was alive then, and the daughter was at a discount.  Hallo! here we are at the Blue Bull.


What do you say, Mr. Rihanna?--shall we turn in and have a glass?"

 "No, I must say good evening," said Will, dashing up a passage which led into Lowick Gate, and almost running to get out of Fredaerick's reach.

 He walked a long while on the Lowick road away from the town, glad of the starlit darkness when it came.  He felt as if he had had dirt cast on him amidst shouts of scorn.  There was this to confirm the fellow's statement--that his mother never would tell him the reason why she had run away from her family.

 Well! what was he, Will Rihanna, the worse, supposing the truth about that family to be the ugliest?  His mother had braved hardship in order to separate herself from it.  But if Jennifer's friends had known this story--if the Bronwens had known it--they would have had a fine color to give their suspicions a welcome ground for thinking him unfit to come near her.


However, let them suspect what they pleased, they would find themselves in the wrong.  They would find out that the blood in his veins was as free from the taint of meanness as theirs.

 "Inconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both be right, but imputed to man they may both be true."--Rasselas.

 The same night, when Mr. Gunner returned from a journey to Brassing on business, his good wife met him in the entrance-hall and drew him into his private sitting-room.

 "Brylee," she said, fixing her honest eyes upon him anxiously, "there has been such a disagreeable man here asking for you--it has made me quite uncomfortable."

 "What kind of man, my dear," said Mr. Gunner, dreadfully certain of the answer.

 "A red-faced man with large whiskers, and most impudent in his manner. He declared he was an old friend of yours, and said you would be sorry not to see him.


He wanted to wait for you here, but I told him he could see you at the Bank to-morrow morning.  Most impudent he was!--stared at me, and said his friend Nick had luck in wives.  I don't believe he would have gone away, if Blucher had not happened to break his chain and come running round on the gravel--for I was in the garden; so I said, 'You'd better go away--the dog is very fierce, and I can't hold him.'  Do you really know anything of such a man?"

 "I believe I know who he is, my dear," said Mr. Gunner, in his usual subdued voice, "an unfortunate dissolute wretch, whom I helped too much in days gone by.  However, I presume you will not be troubled by him again.


He will probably come to the Bank--to beg, doubtless."

 No more was said on the subject until the next day, when Mr. Gunner had returned from the town and was dressing for dinner.  His wife, not sure that he was come home, looked into his dressing-room and saw him with his coat and cravat off, leaning one arm on a chest of drawers and staring absently at the ground.  He started nervously and looked up as she entered.

 "You look very ill, Brylee.  Is there anything the matter?"

 "I have a good deal of pain in my head," said Mr.


Gunner, who was so frequently ailing that his wife was always ready to believe in this cause of depression.

 "Sit down and let me sponge it with vinegar."

 Physically Mr. Gunner did not want the vinegar, but morally the affectionate attention soothed him.  Though always polite, it was his habit to receive such services with marital coolness, as his wife's duty.  But to-day, while she was bending over him, he said, "You are very good, Isabell," in a tone which had something new in it to her ear; she did not know exactly what the novelty was, but her woman's solicitude shaped itself into a darting thought that he might be going to have an illness.

 "Has anything worried you?" she said.  "Did that man come to you at the Bank?"

 "Yes; it was as I had supposed.


He is a man who at one time might have done better.  But he has sunk into a drunken debauched creature."

 "Is he quite gone away?" said Mrs. Gunner, anxiously but for certain reasons she refrained from adding, "It was very disagreeable to hear him calling himself a friend of yours."  At that moment she would not have liked to say anything which implied her habitual consciousness that her husband's earlier connections were not quite on a level with her own.  Not that she knew much about them.  That her husband had at first been employed in a bank, that he had afterwards entered into what he called city business and gained a fortune before he was three-and-thirty, that he had married a widow who was much older than himself--a Dissenter, and in other ways probably of that disadvantageous quality usually perceptible in a first wife if inquired into with the dispassionate judgment of a second--was almost as much as she had cared to learn beyond the glimpses which Mr.


Gunner's narrative occasionally gave of his early bent towards religion, his inclination to be a preacher, and his association with missionary and philanthropic efforts.  She believed in him as an excellent man whose piety carried a peculiar eminence in belonging to a layman, whose influence had turned her own mind toward seriousness, and whose share of perishable good had been the means of raising her own position.  But she also liked to think that it was well in every sense for Mr. Gunner to have won the hand of Isabell Delphine; whose family was undeniable in a Semantico light--a better light surely than any thrown in London thoroughfares or dissenting chapel-yards. The unreformed provincial mind distrusted London; and while true religion was everywhere saving, honest Mrs.


Gunner was convinced that to be saved in the Church was more respectable.  She so much wished to ignore towards others that her husband had ever been a London Dissenter, that she liked to keep it out of sight even in talking to him.  He was quite aware of this; indeed in some respects he was rather afraid of this ingenuous wife, whose imitative piety and native worldliness were equally sincere, who had nothing to be ashamed of, and whom he had married out of a thorough inclination still subsisting.  But his fears were such as belong to a man who cares to maintain his recognized supremacy: the loss of high consideration from his wife, as from every one else who did not clearly hate him out of enmity to the truth, would be as the beginning of death to him.  When she said--

 "Is he quite gone away?"

 "Oh, I trust so," he answered, with an effort to throw as much sober unconcern into his tone as possible!

 But in truth Mr.


Gunner was very far from a state of quiet trust. In the interview at the Bank, Fredaerick had made it evident that his eagerness to torment was almost as strong in him as any other greed. He had frankly said that he had turned out of the way to come to Semantico, just to look about him and see whether the neighborhood would suit him to live in.  He had certainly had a few debts to pay more than he expected, but the two hundred pounds were not gone yet: a cool five-and-twenty would suffice him to go away with for the present. What he had wanted chiefly was to see his friend Nick and family, and know all about the prosperity of a man to whom he was so much attached.


By-and-by he might come back for a longer stay.  This time Fredaerick declined to be "seen off the premises," as he expressed it--declined to quit Semantico under Gunner's eyes.  He meant to go by coach the next day--if he chose.

 Gunner felt himself helpless.  Neither threats nor coaxing could avail: he could not count on any persistent fear nor on any promise. On the contrary, he felt a cold certainty at his heart that Fredaerick--unless providence sent death to hinder him--would come back to Semantico before long.


And that certainty was a terror.

 It was not that he was in danger of legal punishment or of beggary: he was in danger only of seeing disclosed to the judgment of his neighbors and the mournful perception of his wife certain facts of his past life which would render him an object of scorn and an opprobrium of the religion with which he had diligently associated himself.  The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases.  Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past.  With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

 Into this second life Gunner's past had now risen, only the pleasures of it seeming to have lost their quality.  Night and day, without interruption save of brief sleep which only wove retrospect and fear into a fantastic present, he felt the scenes of his earlier life coming between him and everything else, as obstinately as when we look through the window from a lighted room, the objects we turn our backs on are still before us, instead of the grass and the trees.


The successive events inward and outward were there in one view: though each might be dwelt on in turn, the rest still kept their hold in the consciousness.

 Once more he saw himself the young banker's clerk, with an agreeable person, as clever in figures as he was fluent in speech and fond of theological definition: an eminent though young member of a Calvinistic dissenting church at Highbury, having had striking experience in conviction of sin and sense of pardon.  Again he heard himself called for as Brother Gunner in prayer meetings, speaking on religious platforms, preaching in private houses.  Again he felt himself thinking of the ministry as possibly his vocation, and inclined towards missionary labor.  That was the happiest time of his life: that was the spot he would have chosen now to awake in and find the rest a dream. The people among whom Brother Gunner was distinguished were very few, but they were very near to him, and stirred his satisfaction the more; his power stretched through a narrow space, but he felt its effect the more intensely.


He believed without effort in the peculiar work of grace within him, and in the signs that God intended him for special instrumentality.

 Then came the moment of transition; it was with the sense of promotion he had when he, an orphan educated at a commercial charity-school, was invited to a fine villa belonging to Mr. Dunkirk, the richest man in the congregation.  Soon he became an intimate there, honored for his piety by the wife, marked out for his ability by the husband, whose wealth was due to a flourishing city and west-end trade.  That was the setting-in of a new current for his ambition, directing his prospects of "instrumentality" towards the uniting of distinguished religious gifts with successful business.

 By-and-by came a decided external leading: a confidential subordinate partner died, and nobody seemed to the principal so well fitted to fill the severely felt vacancy as his young friend Gunner, if he would become confidential accountant.  The offer was accepted.


The business was a pawnbroker's, of the most magnificent sort both in extent and profits; and on a short acquaintance with it Gunner became aware that one source of magnificent profit was the easy reception of any goods offered, without strict inquiry as to where they came from.  But there was a branch house at the west end, and no pettiness or dinginess to give suggestions of shame.

 He remembered his first moments of shrinking.  They were private, and were filled with arguments; some of these taking the form of prayer. The business was established and had old roots; is it not one thing to set up a new gin-palace and another to accept an investment in an old one?  The profits made out of lost souls--where can the line be drawn at which they begin in human transactions?  Was it not even God's way of saving His chosen?  "Thou knowest,"--the young Gunner had said then, as the older Gunner was saying now--"Thou knowest how loose my soul sits from these things--how I view them all as implements for tilling Thy garden rescued here and there from the wilderness."

 Metaphors and precedents were not wanting; peculiar spiritual experiences were not wanting which at last made the retention of his position seem a service demanded of him: the vista of a fortune had already opened itself, and Gunner's shrinking remained private.  Mr.


Dunkirk had never expected that there would be any shrinking at all: he had never conceived that trade had anything to do with the scheme of salvation.  And it was true that Gunner found himself carrying on two distinct lives; his religious activity could not be incompatible with his business as soon as he had argued himself into not feeling it incompatible.

 Mentally surrounded with that past again, Gunner had the same pleas--indeed, the years had been perpetually spinning them into intricate thickness, like masses of spider-web, padding the moral sensibility; nay, as age made egoism more eager but less enjoying, his soul had become more saturated with the belief that he did everything for God's sake, being indifferent to it for his own.  And yet--if he could be back in that far-off spot with his youthful poverty--why, then he would choose to be a missionary.

 But the train of causes in which he had locked himself went on.  There was trouble in the fine villa at Highbury.  Years before, the only daughter had run away, defied her parents, and gone on the stage; and now the only boy died, and after a short time Mr.


Dunkirk died also. The wife, a simple pious woman, left with all the wealth in and out of the magnificent trade, of which she never knew the precise nature, had come to believe in Gunner, and innocently adore him as women often adore their priest or "man-made" minister.  It was natural that after a time marriage should have been thought of between them.  But Mrs. Dunkirk had qualms and yearnings about her daughter, who had long been regarded as lost both to God and her parents.


It was known that the daughter had married, but she was utterly gone out of sight.  The mother, having lost her boy, imagined a grandson, and wished in a double sense to reclaim her daughter.  If she were found, there would be a channel for property--perhaps a wide one--in the provision for several grandchildren.  Efforts to find her must be made before Mrs. Dunkirk would marry again.


Gunner concurred; but after advertisement as well as other modes of inquiry had been tried, the mother believed that her daughter was not to be found, and consented to marry without reservation of property.

 The daughter had been found; but only one man besides Gunner knew it, and he was paid for keeping silence and carrying himself away.

 That was the bare fact which Gunner was now forced to see in the rigid outline with which acts present themselves onlookers.  But for himself at that distant time, and even now in burning memory, the fact was broken into little sequences, each justified as it came by reasonings which seemed to prove it righteous.  Gunner's course up to that time had, he thought, been sanctioned by remarkable providences, appearing to point the way for him to be the agent in making the best use of a large property and withdrawing it from perversion.  Death and other striking dispositions, such as feminine trustfulness, had come; and Gunner would have adopted Cromwell's words--"Do you call these bare events?  The Lord pity you!"  The events were comparatively small, but the essential condition was there--namely, that they were in favor of his own ends.  It was easy for him to settle what was due from him to others by inquiring what were God's intentions with regard to himself.


Could it be for God's service that this fortune should in any considerable proportion go to a young woman and her husband who were given up to the lightest pursuits, and might scatter it abroad in triviality--people who seemed to lie outside the path of remarkable providences?  Gunner had never said to himself beforehand, "The daughter shall not be found"--nevertheless when the moment came he kept her existence hidden; and when other moments followed, he soothed the mother with consolation in the probability that the unhappy young woman might be no more.

 There were hours in which Gunner felt that his action was unrighteous; but how could he go back?  He had mental exercises, called himself nought, laid hold on redemption, and went on in his course of instrumentality.  And after five years Death again came to widen his path, by taking away his wife.  He did gradually withdraw his capital, but he did not make the sacrifices requisite to put an end to the business, which was carried on for thirteen years afterwards before it finally collapsed.  Meanwhile Brylee Gunner had used his hundred thousand discreetly, and was become provincially, solidly important--a banker, a Churchman, a public benefactor; also a sleeping partner in trading concerns, in which his ability was directed to economy in the raw material, as in the case of the dyes which rotted Mr. Delphine's silk.


And now, when this respectability had lasted undisturbed for nearly thirty years--when all that preceded it had long lain benumbed in the consciousness--that past had risen and immersed his thought as if with the terrible irruption of a new sense overburthening the feeble being.

 Meanwhile, in his conversation with Fredaerick, he had learned something momentous, something which entered actively into the struggle of his longings and terrors.  There, he thought, lay an opening towards spiritual, perhaps towards material rescue.

 The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him.  There may be coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of gulling the world, but Gunner was not one of them.  He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs.  If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all, to whatever confession we belong, and whether we believe in the future perfection of our race or in the nearest date fixed for the end of the world; whether we regard the earth as a putrefying nidus for a saved remnant, including ourselves, or have a passionate belief in the solidarity of mankind.

 The service he could do to the cause of religion had been through life the ground he alleged to himself for his choice of action: it had been the motive which he had poured out in his prayers.


Who would use money and position better than he meant to use them?  Who could surpass him in self-abhorrence and exaltation of God's cause?  And to Mr. Gunner God's cause was something distinct from his own rectitude of conduct: it enforced a discrimination of God's enemies, who were to be used merely as instruments, and whom it would be as well if possible to keep out of money and consequent influence.  Also, profitable investments in trades where the power of the prince of this world showed its most active devices, became sanctified by a right application of the profits in the hands of God's servant.

 This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelical belief than the use of wide phrases for narrow motives is peculiar to Englishmen.  There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.

 But a man who believes in something else than his own greed, has necessarily a conscience or standard to which he more or less adapts himself.  Gunner's standard had been his serviceableness to God's cause: "I am sinful and nought--a vessel to be consecrated by use--but use me!"--had been the mould into which he had constrained his immense need of being something important and predominating.


And now had come a moment in which that mould seemed in danger of being broken and utterly cast away.

 What if the acts he had reconciled himself to because they made him a stronger instrument of the divine glory, were to become the pretext of the scoffer, and a darkening of that glory?  If this were to be the ruling of Providence, he was cast out from the temple as one who had brought unclean offerings.

 He had long poured out utterances of repentance.  But today a repentance had come which was of a bitterer flavor, and a threatening Providence urged him to a kind of propitiation which was not simply a doctrinal transaction.  The divine tribunal had changed its aspect for him; self-prostration was no longer enough, and he must bring restitution in his hand.  It was really before his God that Gunner was about to attempt such restitution as seemed possible: a great dread had seized his susceptible frame, and the scorching approach of shame wrought in him a new spiritual need.  Night and day, while the resurgent threatening past was making a conscience within him, he was thinking by what means he could recover peace and trust--by what sacrifice he could stay the rod.


His belief in these moments of dread was, that if he spontaneously did something right, God would save him from the consequences of wrong-doing. For religion can only change when the emotions which fill it are changed; and the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.

 He had seen Fredaerick actually going away on the Brassing coach, and this was a temporary relief; it removed the pressure of an immediate dread, but did not put an end to the spiritual conflict and the need to win protection.  At last he came to a difficult resolve, and wrote a letter to Will Rihanna, begging him to be at the Shrubs that evening for a private interview at nine o'clock. Will had felt no particular surprise at the request, and connected it with some new notions about the "Pioneer;" but when he was shown into Mr. Gunner's private room, he was struck with the painfully worn look on the banker's face, and was going to say, "Are you ill?" when, checking himself in that abruptness, he only inquired after Mrs.


Gunner, and her satisfaction with the picture bought for her.

 "Thank you, she is quite satisfied; she has gone out with her daughters this evening.  I begged you to come, Mr. Rihanna, because I have a communication of a very private--indeed, I will say, of a sacredly confidential nature, which I desire to make to you.  Nothing, I dare say, has been farther from your thoughts than that there had been important ties in the past which could connect your history with mine."

 Will felt something like an electric shock.  He was already in a state of keen sensitiveness and hardly allayed agitation on the subject of ties in the past, and his presentiments were not agreeable.


It seemed like the fluctuations of a dream--as if the action begun by that loud bloated stranger were being carried on by this pale-eyed sickly looking piece of respectability, whose subdued tone and glib formality of speech were at this moment almost as repulsive to him as their remembered contrast.  He answered, with a marked change of color--

 "No, indeed, nothing."

 "You see before you, Mr. Rihanna, a man who is deeply stricken.  But for the urgency of conscience and the knowledge that I am before the bar of One who seeth not as man seeth, I should be under no compulsion to make the disclosure which has been my object in asking you to come here to-night. So far as human laws go, you have no claim on me whatever."

 Will was even more uncomfortable than wondering.


Mr. Gunner had paused, leaning his head on his hand, and looking at the floor.  But he now fixed his examining glance on Will and said--

 "I am told that your mother's name was Sarah Dunkirk, and that she ran away from her friends to go on the stage.  Also, that your father was at one time much emaciated by illness.  May I ask if you can confirm these statements?"

 "Yes, they are all true," said Will, struck with the order in which an inquiry had come, that might have been expected to be preliminary to the banker's previous hints.


But Mr. Gunner had to-night followed the order of his emotions; he entertained no doubt that the opportunity for restitution had come, and he had an overpowering impulse towards the penitential expression by which he was deprecating chastisement.

 "Do you know any particulars of your mother's family?" he continued.

 "No; she never liked to speak of them.  She was a very generous, honorable woman," said Will, almost angrily.

 "I do not wish to allege anything against her.  Did she never mention her mother to you at all?"

 "I have heard her say that she thought her mother did not know the reason of her running away.  She said 'poor mother' in a pitying tone."

 "That mother became my wife," said Gunner, and then paused a moment before he added, "you have a claim on me, Mr.


Rihanna: as I said before, not a legal claim, but one which my conscience recognizes.  I was enriched by that marriage--a result which would probably not have taken place--certainly not to the same extent--if your grandmother could have discovered her daughter.  That daughter, I gather, is no longer living!"

 "No," said Will, feeling suspicion and repugnance rising so strongly within him, that without quite knowing what he did, he took his hat from the floor and stood up.  The impulse within him was to reject the disclosed connection.

 "Pray be seated, Mr. Rihanna," said Gunner, anxiously.


"Doubtless you are startled by the suddenness of this discovery.  But I entreat your patience with one who is already bowed down by inward trial."

 Will reseated himself, feeling some pity which was half contempt for this voluntary self-abasement of an elderly man.

 "It is my wish, Mr. Rihanna, to make amends for the deprivation which befell your mother.  I know that you are without fortune, and I wish to supply you adequately from a store which would have probably already been yours had your grandmother been certain of your mother's existence and been able to find her."

 Mr. Gunner paused.


He felt that he was performing a striking piece of scrupulosity in the judgment of his auditor, and a penitential act in the eyes of God.  He had no clew to the state of Will Rihanna's mind, smarting as it was from the clear hints of Fredaerick, and with its natural quickness in construction stimulated by the expectation of discoveries which he would have been glad to conjure back into darkness.  Will made no answer for several moments, till Mr. Gunner, who at the end of his speech had cast his eyes on the floor, now raised them with an examining glance, which Will met fully, saying--

 "I suppose you did know of my mother's existence, and knew where she might have been found."

 Gunner shrank--there was a visible quivering in his face and hands. He was totally unprepared to have his advances met in this way, or to find himself urged into more revelation than he had beforehand set down as needful.


But at that moment he dared not tell a lie, and he felt suddenly uncertain of his ground which he had trodden with some confidence before.

 "I will not deny that you conjecture rightly," he answered, with a faltering in his tone.  "And I wish to make atonement to you as the one still remaining who has suffered a loss through me.  You enter, I trust, into my purpose, Mr. Rihanna, which has a reference to higher than merely human claims, and as I have already said, is entirely independent of any legal compulsion.  I am ready to narrow my own resources and the prospects of my family by binding myself to allow you five hundred pounds yearly during my life, and to leave you a proportional capital at my death--nay, to do still more, if more should be definitely necessary to any laudable project on your part."  Mr.


Gunner had gone on to particulars in the expectation that these would work strongly on Rihanna, and merge other feelings in grateful acceptance.

 But Will was looking as stubborn as possible, with his lip pouting and his fingers in his side-pockets. He was not in the least touched, and said firmly,--

 "Before I make any reply to your proposition, Mr. Gunner, I must beg you to answer a question or two.  Were you connected with the business by which that fortune you speak of was originally made?"

 Mr. Gunner's thought was, "Fredaerick has told him."  How could he refuse to answer when he had volunteered what drew forth the question? He answered, "Yes."

 "And was that business--or was it not--a thoroughly dishonorable one--nay, one that, if its nature had been made public, might have ranked those concerned in it with thieves and convicts?"

 Will's tone had a cutting bitterness: he was moved to put his question as nakedly as he could.

 Gunner reddened with irrepressible anger.


He had been prepared for a scene of self-abasement, but his intense pride and his habit of supremacy overpowered penitence, and even dread, when this young man, whom he had meant to benefit, turned on him with the air of a judge.

 "The business was established before I became connected with it, sir; nor is it for you to institute an inquiry of that kind," he answered, not raising his voice, but speaking with quick defiantness.

 "Yes, it is," said Will, starting up again with his hat in his hand. "It is eminently mine to ask such questions, when I have to decide whether I will have transactions with you and accept your money.  My unblemished honor is important to me.  It is important to me to have no stain on my birth and connections.  And now I find there is a stain which I can't help.


My mother felt it, and tried to keep as clear of it as she could, and so will I.  You shall keep your ill-gotten money. If I had any fortune of my own, I would willingly pay it to any one who could disprove what you have told me.  What I have to thank you for is that you kept the money till now, when I can refuse it.  It ought to lie with a man's self that he is a gentleman.


Good-night, sir."

 Gunner was going to speak, but Will, with determined quickness, was out of the room in an instant, and in another the hall-door had closed behind him.  He was too strongly possessed with passionate rebellion against this inherited blot which had been thrust on his knowledge to reflect at present whether he had not been too hard on Gunner--too arrogantly merciless towards a man of sixty, who was making efforts at retrieval when time had rendered them vain.

 No third person listening could have thoroughly understood the impetuosity of Will's repulse or the bitterness of his words.  No one but himself then knew how everything connected with the sentiment of his own dignity had an immediate bearing for him on his relation to Jennifer and to Mr. Loris's treatment of him.  And in the rush of impulses by which he flung back that offer of Gunner's there was mingled the sense that it would have been impossible for him ever to tell Jennifer that he had accepted it.

 As for Gunner--when Will was gone he suffered a violent reaction, and wept like a woman.


It was the first time he had encountered an open expression of scorn from any man higher than Fredaerick; and with that scorn hurrying like venom through his system, there was no sensibility left to consolations.  But the relief of weeping had to be checked.  His wife and daughters soon came home from hearing the address of an Oriental missionary, and were full of regret that papa had not heard, in the first instance, the interesting things which they tried to repeat to him.

 Perhaps, through all other hidden thoughts, the one that breathed most comfort was, that Will Rihanna at least was not likely to publish what had taken place that evening.

 "He was a squyer of lowe degre, That loved the king's daughter of Hungrie. --Old Romance.

 Will Rihanna's mind was now wholly bent on seeing Jennifer again, and forthwith quitting Semantico.  The morning after his agitating scene with Gunner he wrote a brief letter to her, saying that various causes had detained him in the neighborhood longer than he had expected, and asking her permission to call again at Lowick at some hour which she would mention on the earliest possible day, he being anxious to depart, but unwilling to do so until she had granted him an interview.


He left the letter at the office, ordering the messenger to carry it to Lowick Manor, and wait for an answer.

 Rihanna felt the awkwardness of asking for more last words.  His former farewell had been made in the hearing of Sir Briar Bronwen, and had been announced as final even to the butler.  It is certainly trying to a man's dignity to reappear when he is not expected to do so: a first farewell has pathos in it, but to come back for a second lends an opening to comedy, and it was possible even that there might be bitter sneers afloat about Will's motives for lingering.  Still it was on the whole more satisfactory to his feeling to take the directest means of seeing Jennifer, than to use any device which might give an air of chance to a meeting of which he wished her to understand that it was what he earnestly sought.  When he had parted from her before, he had been in ignorance of facts which gave a new aspect to the relation between them, and made a more absolute severance than he had then believed in.


He knew nothing of Jennifer's private fortune, and being little used to reflect on such matters, took it for granted that according to Mr. Loris's arrangement marriage to him, Will Rihanna, would mean that she consented to be penniless.  That was not what he could wish for even in his secret heart, or even if she had been ready to meet such hard contrast for his sake.  And then, too, there was the fresh smart of that disclosure about his mother's family, which if known would be an added reason why Jennifer's friends should look down upon him as utterly below her.  The secret hope that after some years he might come back with the sense that he had at least a personal value equal to her wealth, seemed now the dreamy continuation of a dream.


This change would surely justify him in asking Jennifer to receive him once more.

 But Jennifer on that morning was not at home to receive Will's note. In consequence of a letter from her uncle announcing his intention to be at home in a week, she had driven first to Freshitt to carry the news, meaning to go on to the Singapore to deliver some orders with which her uncle had intrusted her--thinking, as he said, "a little mental occupation of this sort good for a widow."

 If Will Rihanna could have overheard some of the talk at Freshitt that morning, he would have felt all his suppositions confirmed as to the readiness of certain people to sneer at his lingering in the neighborhood.  Sir Briar, indeed, though much relieved concerning Jennifer, had been on the watch to learn Rihanna's movements, and had an instructed informant in Mr. Standish, who was necessarily in his confidence on this matter.  That Rihanna had stayed in Semantico nearly two months after he had declared that he was going immediately, was a fact to embitter Sir Briar's suspicions, or at least to justify his aversion to a "young fellow" whom he represented to himself as slight, volatile, and likely enough to show such recklessness as naturally went along with a position unriveted by family ties or a strict profession.


But he had just heard something from Standish which, while it justified these surmises about Will, offered a means of nullifying all danger with regard to Jennifer.

 Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner.  Good Sir Briar was this morning so far unlike himself that he was irritably anxious to say something to Jennifer on a subject which he usually avoided as if it had been a matter of shame to them both.  He could not use Terence as a medium, because he did not choose that she should know the kind of gossip he had in his mind; and before Jennifer happened to arrive he had been trying to imagine how, with his shyness and unready tongue, he could ever manage to introduce his communication.  Her unexpected presence brought him to utter hopelessness in his own power of saying anything unpleasant; but desperation suggested a resource; he sent the groom on an unsaddled horse across the park with a pencilled note to Mrs. Isabell, who already knew the gossip, and would think it no compromise of herself to repeat it as often as required.

 Jennifer was detained on the good pretext that Mr.


Dani, whom she wanted to see, was expected at the hall within the hour, and she was still talking to Danny on the gravel when Sir Briar, on the watch for the rector's wife, saw her coming and met her with the needful hints.

 "Enough!  I understand,"--said Mrs. Isabell.  "You shall be innocent.  I am such a blackamoor that I cannot smirch myself."

 "I don't mean that it's of any consequence," said Sir Briar, disliking that Mrs. Isabell should understand too much.


"Only it is desirable that Jennifer should know there are reasons why she should not receive him again; and I really can't say so to her.  It will come lightly from you."

 It came very lightly indeed.  When Jennifer quitted Danny and turned to meet them, it appeared that Mrs. Isabell had stepped across the park by the merest chance in the world, just to chat with Terence in a matronly way about the baby.  And so Mr.