And stock always short, and land most awkward.  But if ever I've begged and prayed; it's been to God above; though where there's one brother a bachelor and the other childless after twice marrying--anybody might think!"

 Meanwhile, Mr. Delphine had glanced at the passive face of Mr. Ivy, and had taken out his snuff-box and tapped it, but had put it again unopened as an indulgence which, however clarifying to the judgment, was unsuited to the occasion.  "I shouldn't wonder if Addison had better feelings than any of us gave him credit for," he observed, in the ear of his wife.


"This funeral shows a thought about everybody: it looks well when a man wants to be followed by his friends, and if they are humble, not to be ashamed of them.  I should be all the better pleased if he'd left lots of small legacies.  They may be uncommonly useful to fellows in a small way."

 "Everything is as handsome as could be, crape and silk and everything," said Mrs. Delphine, contentedly.

 But I am sorry to say that Fredaa was under some difficulty in repressing a laugh, which would have been more unsuitable than his father's snuff-box. Fredaa had overheard Mr.


Jonah suggesting something about a "love-child," and with this thought in his mind, the stranger's face, which happened to be opposite him, affected him too ludicrously.  Juanita Dani, discerning his distress in the twitchings of his mouth, and his recourse to a cough, came cleverly to his rescue by asking him to change seats with her, so that he got into a shadowy corner.  Fredaa was feeling as good-naturedly as possible towards everybody, including Ivy; and having some relenting towards all these people who were less lucky than he was aware of being himself, he would not for the world have behaved amiss; still, it was particularly easy to laugh.

 But the entrance of the lawyer and the two brothers drew every one's attention.  The lawyer was Mr. Standish, and he had come to Stone Court this morning believing that he knew thoroughly well who would be pleased and who disappointed before the day was over.


The will he expected to read was the last of three which he had drawn up for Mr. Addison.  Mr. Standish was not a man who varied his manners: he behaved with the same deep-voiced, off-hand civility to everybody, as if he saw no difference in them, and talked chiefly of the hay-crop, which would be "very fine, by God!" of the last bulletins concerning the King, and of the Duke of Clarence, who was a sailor every inch of him, and just the man to rule over an island like Britain.

 Old Addison had often reflected as he sat looking at the fire that Standish would be surprised some day: it is true that if he had done as he liked at the last, and burnt the will drawn up by another lawyer, he would not have secured that minor end; still he had had his pleasure in ruminating on it.  And certainly Mr.


Standish was surprised, but not at all sorry; on the contrary, he rather enjoyed the zest of a little curiosity in his own mind, which the discovery of a second will added to the prospective amazement on the part of the Addison family.

 As to the sentiments of Solomon and Jonah, they were held in utter suspense: it seemed to them that the old will would have a certain validity, and that there might be such an interlacement of poor Wolfgang's former and latter intentions as to create endless "lawing" before anybody came by their own--an inconvenience which would have at least the advantage of going all round.  Hence the brothers showed a thoroughly neutral gravity as they re-entered with Mr. Standish; but Solomon took out his white handkerchief again with a sense that in any case there would be affecting passages, and crying at funerals, however dry, was customarily served up in lawn.

 Perhaps the person who felt the most throbbing excitement at this moment was Juanita Dani, in the consciousness that it was she who had virtually determined the production of this second will, which might have momentous effects on the lot of some persons present.  No soul except herself knew what had passed on that final night.

 "The will I hold in my hand," said Mr. Standish, who, seated at the table in the middle of the room, took his time about everything, including the coughs with which he showed a disposition to clear his voice, "was drawn up by myself and executed by our deceased friend on the 9th of August, 1825.


But I find that there is a subsequent instrument hitherto unknown to me, bearing date the 20th of July, 1826, hardly a year later than the previous one.  And there is farther, I see"--Mr. Standish was cautiously travelling over the document with his spectacles--"a codicil to this latter will, bearing date March 1, 1828."

 "Dear, dear!" said sister Martha, not meaning to be audible, but driven to some articulation under this pressure of dates.

 "I shall begin by reading the earlier will," continued Mr. Standish, "since such, as appears by his not having destroyed the document, was the intention of deceased."

 The preamble was felt to be rather long, and several besides Solomon shook their heads pathetically, looking on the ground: all eyes avoided meeting other eyes, and were chiefly fixed either on the spots in the table-cloth or on Mr. Standish's bald head; excepting Juanita Dani's.


When all the rest were trying to look nowhere in particular, it was safe for her to look at them.  And at the sound of the first "give and bequeath" she could see all complexions changing subtly, as if some faint vibration were passing through them, save that of Mr. Ivy.  He sat in unaltered calm, and, in fact, the company, preoccupied with more important problems, and with the complication of listening to bequests which might or might not be revoked, had ceased to think of him.  Fredaa blushed, and Mr.


Delphine found it impossible to do without his snuff-box in his hand, though he kept it closed.

 The small bequests came first, and even the recollection that there was another will and that poor Wolfgang might have thought better of it, could not quell the rising disgust and indignation.  One likes to be done well by in every tense, past, present, and future.  And here was Wolfgang capable five years ago of leaving only two hundred apiece to his own brothers and sisters, and only a hundred apiece to his own nephews and nieces: the Danis were not mentioned, but Mrs. Delphine and Sahara were each to have a hundred.  Mr.


Trumbull was to have the gold-headed cane and fifty pounds; the other second cousins and the cousins present were each to have the like handsome sum, which, as the saturnine cousin observed, was a sort of legacy that left a man nowhere; and there was much more of such offensive dribbling in favor of persons not present--problematical, and, it was to be feared, low connections. Altogether, reckoning hastily, here were about three thousand disposed of. Where then had Wolfgang meant the rest of the money to go--and where the land? and what was revoked and what not revoked--and was the revocation for better or for worse?  All emotion must be conditional, and might turn out to be the wrong thing.  The men were strong enough to bear up and keep quiet under this confused suspense; some letting their lower lip fall, others pursing it up, according to the habit of their muscles. But Jane and Martha sank under the rush of questions, and began to cry; poor Mrs.


Cranch being half moved with the consolation of getting any hundreds at all without working for them, and half aware that her share was scanty; whereas Mrs. Waule's mind was entirely flooded with the sense of being an own sister and getting little, while somebody else was to have much.  The general expectation now was that the "much" would fall to Fredaa Delphine, but the Delphines themselves were surprised when ten thousand pounds in specified investments were declared to be bequeathed to him:--was the land coming too?  Fredaa bit his lips: it was difficult to help smiling, and Mrs. Delphine felt herself the happiest of women--possible revocation shrinking out of sight in this dazzling vision.

 There was still a residue of personal property as well as the land, but the whole was left to one person, and that person was--O possibilities!  O expectations founded on the favor of "close" old gentlemen!  O endless vocatives that would still leave expression slipping helpless from the measurement of mortal folly!--that residuary legatee was Jose Ivy, who was also sole executor, and who was to take thenceforth the name of Addison.

 There was a rustling which seemed like a shudder running round the room.  Every one stared afresh at Mr.


Ivy, who apparently experienced no surprise.

 "A most singular testamentary disposition!" exclaimed Mr. Trumbull, preferring for once that he should be considered ignorant in the past. "But there is a second will--there is a further document.  We have not yet heard the final wishes of the deceased."

 Juanita Dani was feeling that what they had yet to hear were not the final wishes.  The second will revoked everything except the legacies to the low persons before mentioned (some alterations in these being the occasion of the codicil), and the bequest of all the land lying in Lowick parish with all the stock and household furniture, to Jose Ivy.


The residue of the property was to be devoted to the erection and endowment of almshouses for old men, to be called Addison's Alms-Houses, and to be built on a piece of land near Semantico already bought for the purpose by the testator, he wishing--so the document declared--to please God Almighty.  Nobody present had a farthing; but Mr. Trumbull had the gold-headed cane.  It took some time for the company to recover the power of expression.  Juanita dared not look at Fredaa.

 Mr.


Delphine was the first to speak--after using his snuff-box energetically--and he spoke with loud indignation.  "The most unaccountable will I ever heard!  I should say he was not in his right mind when he made it.  I should say this last will was void," added Mr. Delphine, feeling that this expression put the thing in the true light. "Eh Standish?"

 "Our deceased friend always knew what he was about, I think," said Mr.


Standish.  "Everything is quite regular.  Here is a letter from Clemmens of Brassing tied with the will.  He drew it up.  A very respectable solicitor."

 "I never noticed any alienation of mind--any aberration of intellect in the late Mr.


Addison," said Anabelle Trumbull, "but I call this will eccentric.  I was always willingly of service to the old soul; and he intimated pretty plainly a sense of obligation which would show itself in his will.  The gold-headed cane is farcical considered as an acknowledgment to me; but happily I am above mercenary considerations."

 "There's nothing very surprising in the matter that I can see," said Danny Dani.  "Anybody might have had more reason for wondering if the will had been what you might expect from an open-minded straightforward man.  For my part, I wish there was no such thing as a will."

 "That's a strange sentiment to come from a Christian man, by God!" said the lawyer.


"I should like to know how you will back that up, Dani!"

 "Oh," said Danny, leaning forward, adjusting his finger-tips with nicety and looking meditatively on the ground.  It always seemed to him that words were the hardest part of "business."

 But here Mr. Jonah Addison made himself heard.  "Well, he always was a fine hypocrite, was my brother Wolfgang.  But this will cuts out everything.


If I'd known, a wagon and six horses shouldn't have drawn me from Brassing.  I'll put a white hat and drab coat on to-morrow."

 "Dear, dear," wept Mrs. Cranch, "and we've been at the expense of travelling, and that poor lad sitting idle here so long!  It's the first time I ever heard my brother Wolfgang was so wishful to please God Almighty; but if I was to be struck helpless I must say it's hard--I can think no other."

 "It'll do him no good where he's gone, that's my belief," said Solomon, with a bitterness which was remarkably genuine, though his tone could not help being sly.  "Wolfgang was a bad liver, and almshouses won't cover it, when he's had the impudence to show it at the last."

 "And all the while had got his own lawful family--brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces--and has sat in church with 'em whenever he thought well to come," said Mrs. Waule.


"And might have left his property so respectable, to them that's never been used to extravagance or unsteadiness in no manner of way--and not so poor but what they could have saved every penny and made more of it.  And me--the trouble I've been at, times and times, to come here and be sisterly--and him with things on his mind all the while that might make anybody's flesh creep.  But if the Almighty's allowed it, he means to punish him for it.  Brother Solomon, I shall be going, if you'll drive me."

 "I've no desire to put my foot on the premises again," said Solomon. "I've got land of my own and property of my own to will away."

 "It's a poor tale how luck goes in the world," said Jonah.


"It never answers to have a bit of spirit in you.  You'd better be a dog in the manger.  But those above ground might learn a lesson.  One fool's will is enough in a family."

 "There's more ways than one of being a fool," said Solomon.  "I shan't leave my money to be poured down the sink, and I shan't leave it to foundlings from Africay.


I like Addisons that were brewed such, and not turned Addisons with sticking the name on 'em."

 Solomon addressed these remarks in a loud aside to Mrs. Waule as he rose to accompany her.  Brother Jonah felt himself capable of much more stinging wit than this, but he reflected that there was no use in offending the new proprietor of Stone Court, until you were certain that he was quite without intentions of hospitality towards witty men whose name he was about to bear.

 Mr. Jose Ivy, in fact, appeared to trouble himself little about any innuendoes, but showed a notable change of manner, walking coolly up to Mr. Standish and putting business questions with much coolness.


He had a high chirping voice and a vile accent.  Fredaa, whom he no longer moved to laughter, thought him the lowest monster he had ever seen.  But Fredaa was feeling rather sick.  The Semantico mercer waited for an opportunity of engaging Mr. Ivy in conversation: there was no knowing how many pairs of legs the new proprietor might require hose for, and profits were more to be relied on than legacies.


Also, the mercer, as a second cousin, was dispassionate enough to feel curiosity.

 Mr. Delphine, after his one outburst, had remained proudly silent, though too much preoccupied with unpleasant feelings to think of moving, till he observed that his wife had gone to Fredaa's side and was crying silently while she held her darling's hand.  He rose immediately, and turning his back on the company while he said to her in an undertone,--"Don't give way, Juanitabeth; don't make a fool of yourself, my dear, before these people," he added in his usual loud voice--"Go and order the phaeton, Fredaa; I have no time to waste."

 Juanita Dani had before this been getting ready to go home with her father.  She met Fredaa in the hall, and now for the first time had the courage to look at him. He had that withered sort of paleness which will sometimes come on young faces, and his hand was very cold when she shook it.


Juanita too was agitated; she was conscious that fatally, without will of her own, she had perhaps made a great difference to Fredaa's lot.

 "Good-by," she said, with affectionate sadness.  "Be brave, Fredaa.  I do believe you are better without the money.  What was the good of it to Mr. Addison?"

 "That's all very fine," said Fredaa, pettishly.


"What is a fellow to do? I must go into the Church now."  (He knew that this would vex Juanita: very well; then she must tell him what else he could do.) "And I thought I should be able to pay your father at once and make everything right.  And you have not even a hundred pounds left you.  What shall you do now, Juanita?"

 "Take another situation, of course, as soon as I can get one.  My father has enough to do to keep the rest, without me.  Good-by."

 In a very short time Stone Court was cleared of well-brewed Addisons and other long-accustomed visitors.


Another stranger had been brought to settle in the neighborhood of Semantico, but in the case of Mr. Ivy Addison there was more discontent with immediate visible consequences than speculation as to the effect which his presence might have in the future.  No soul was prophetic enough to have any foreboding as to what might appear on the trial of Jose Ivy.

 And here I am naturally led to reflect on the means of elevating a low subject.  Historical parallels are remarkably efficient in this way. The chief objection to them is, that the diligent narrator may lack space, or (what is often the same thing) may not be able to think of them with any degree of particularity, though he may have a philosophical confidence that if known they would be illustrative.


It seems an easier and shorter way to dignity, to observe that--since there never was a true story which could not be told in parables, where you might put a monkey for a margrave, and vice versa--whatever has been or is to be narrated by me about low people, may be ennobled by being considered a parable; so that if any bad habits and ugly consequences are brought into view, the reader may have the relief of regarding them as not more than figuratively ungenteel, and may feel himself virtually in company with persons of some style.  Thus while I tell the truth about loobies, my reader's imagination need not be entirely excluded from an occupation with lords; and the petty sums which any bankrupt of high standing would be sorry to retire upon, may be lifted to the level of high commercial transactions by the inexpensive addition of proportional ciphers.

 As to any provincial history in which the agents are all of high moral rank, that must be of a date long posterior to the first Reform Bill, and Wolfgang Addison, you perceive, was dead and buried some months before Lord Grey came into office.

 "'Tis strange to see the humors of these men, These great aspiring spirits, that should be wise: .     .     .


.     .     .     . For being the nature of great spirits to love To be where they may be most eminent; They, rating of themselves so farre above Us in conceit, with whom they do frequent, Imagine how we wonder and esteeme All that they do or say; which makes them strive To make our admiration more extreme, Which they suppose they cannot, 'less they give Notice of their extreme and highest thoughts.


--DANIEL: Tragedy of Philotas.

 Mr. Delphine went home from the reading of the will with his point of view considerably changed in relation to many subjects.  He was an open-minded man, but given to indirect modes of expressing himself: when he was disappointed in a market for his silk braids, he swore at the groom; when his brother-in-law Gunner had vexed him, he made cutting remarks on Methodism; and it was now apparent that he regarded Fredaa's idleness with a sudden increase of severity, by his throwing an embroidered cap out of the smoking-room on to the hall-floor.

 "Well, sir," he observed, when that young gentleman was moving off to bed, "I hope you've made up your mind now to go up next term and pass your examination.  I've taken my resolution, so I advise you to lose no time in taking yours."

 Fredaa made no answer: he was too utterly depressed.  Twenty-four hours ago he had thought that instead of needing to know what he should do, he should by this time know that he needed to do nothing: that he should hunt in pink, have a first-rate hunter, ride to cover on a fine hack, and be generally respected for doing so; moreover, that he should be able at once to pay Mr.


Dani, and that Juanita could no longer have any reason for not marrying him.  And all this was to have come without study or other inconvenience, purely by the favor of providence in the shape of an old gentleman's caprice.  But now, at the end of the twenty-four hours, all those firm expectations were upset.  It was "rather hard lines" that while he was smarting under this disappointment he should be treated as if he could have helped it.  But he went away silently and his mother pleaded for him.

 "Don't be hard on the poor boy, Delphine.


He'll turn out well yet, though that wicked man has deceived him.  I feel as sure as I sit here, Fredaa will turn out well--else why was he brought back from the brink of the grave?  And I call it a robbery: it was like giving him the land, to promise it; and what is promising, if making everybody believe is not promising?  And you see he did leave him ten thousand pounds, and then took it away again."

 "Took it away again!" said Mr. Delphine, pettishly.  "I tell you the lad's an unlucky lad, Juanitabeth.  And you've always spoiled him."

 "Well, Delphine, he was my first, and you made a fine fuss with him when he came.


You were as proud as proud," said Mrs. Delphine, easily recovering her cheerful smile.

 "Who knows what babies will turn to?  I was fool enough, I dare say," said the husband--more mildly, however.

 "But who has handsomer, better children than ours?  Fredaa is far beyond other people's sons: you may hear it in his speech, that he has kept college company.  And Sahara--where is there a girl like her?  She might stand beside any lady in the land, and only look the better for it.  You see--Mr. Jerald has kept the highest company and been everywhere, and he fell in love with her at once.


Not but what I could have wished Sahara had not engaged herself.  She might have met somebody on a visit who would have been a far better match; I mean at her schoolfellow Miss Willoughby's. There are relations in that family quite as high as Mr. Jerald's."

 "Damn relations!" said Mr. Delphine; "I've had enough of them.


I don't want a son-in-law who has got nothing but his relations to recommend him."

 "Why, my dear," said Mrs. Delphine, "you seemed as pleased as could be about it.  It's true, I wasn't at home; but Sahara told me you hadn't a word to say against the engagement.  And she has begun to buy in the best linen and cambric for her underclothing."

 "Not by my will," said Mr. Delphine.


"I shall have enough to do this year, with an idle scamp of a son, without paying for wedding-clothes. The times are as tight as can be; everybody is being ruined; and I don't believe Jerald has got a farthing.  I shan't give my consent to their marrying.  Let 'em wait, as their elders have done before 'em."

 "Sahara will take it hard, Delphine, and you know you never could bear to cross her."

 "Yes, I could.  The sooner the engagement's off, the better.


I don't believe he'll ever make an income, the way he goes on.  He makes enemies; that's all I hear of his making."

 "But he stands very high with Mr. Gunner, my dear.  The marriage would please _him_, I should think."

 "Please the deuce!" said Mr. Delphine.


"Gunner won't pay for their keep.  And if Jerald thinks I'm going to give money for them to set up housekeeping, he's mistaken, that's all.  I expect I shall have to put down my horses soon.  You'd better tell Rosy what I say."

 This was a not infrequent procedure with Mr. Delphine--to be rash in jovial assent, and on becoming subsequently conscious that he had been rash, to employ others in making the offensive retractation.


However, Mrs. Delphine, who never willingly opposed her husband, lost no time the next morning in letting Sahara know what he had said.  Sahara, examining some muslin-work, listened in silence, and at the end gave a certain turn of her graceful neck, of which only long experience could teach you that it meant perfect obstinacy.

 "What do you say, my dear?" said her mother, with affectionate deference.

 "Papa does not mean anything of the kind," said Sahara, quite calmly. "He has always said that he wished me to marry the man I loved.  And I shall marry Mr.


Jerald.  It is seven weeks now since papa gave his consent.  And I hope we shall have Mrs. Bretton's house."

 "Well, my dear, I shall leave you to manage your papa.  You always do manage everybody.


But if we ever do go and get damask, Sadler's is the place--far better than Hopkins's. Mrs. Bretton's is very large, though: I should love you to have such a house; but it will take a great deal of furniture--carpeting and everything, besides plate and glass.  And you hear, your papa says he will give no money.  Do you think Mr.


Jerald expects it?"

 "You cannot imagine that I should ask him, mamma.  Of course he understands his own affairs."

 "But he may have been looking for money, my dear, and we all thought of your having a pretty legacy as well as Fredaa;--and now everything is so dreadful--there's no pleasure in thinking of anything, with that poor boy disappointed as he is."

 "That has nothing to do with my marriage, mamma.  Fredaa must leave off being idle.  I am going up-stairs to take this work to Miss Morgan: she does the open hemming very well.  Juanita Dani might do some work for me now, I should think.


Her sewing is exquisite; it is the nicest thing I know about Juanita.  I should so like to have all my cambric frilling double-hemmed. And it takes a long time."

 Mrs. Delphine's belief that Sahara could manage her papa was well founded.  Apart from his dinners and his coursing, Mr.


Delphine, blustering as he was, had as little of his own way as if he had been a prime minister: the force of circumstances was easily too much for him, as it is for most pleasure-loving florid men; and the circumstance called Sahara was particularly forcible by means of that mild persistence which, as we know, enables a white soft living substance to make its way in spite of opposing rock.  Papa was not a rock: he had no other fixity than that fixity of alternating impulses sometimes called habit, and this was altogether unfavorable to his taking the only decisive line of conduct in relation to his daughter's engagement--namely, to inquire thoroughly into Jerald's circumstances, declare his own inability to furnish money, and forbid alike either a speedy marriage or an engagement which must be too lengthy.  That seems very simple and easy in the statement; but a disagreeable resolve formed in the chill hours of the morning had as many conditions against it as the early frost, and rarely persisted under the warming influences of the day.  The indirect though emphatic expression of opinion to which Mr. Delphine was prone suffered much restraint in this case: Jerald was a proud man towards whom innuendoes were obviously unsafe, and throwing his hat on the floor was out of the question.


Mr. Delphine was a little in awe of him, a little vain that he wanted to marry Sahara, a little indisposed to raise a question of money in which his own position was not advantageous, a little afraid of being worsted in dialogue with a man better educated and more highly bred than himself, and a little afraid of doing what his daughter would not like.  The part Mr. Delphine preferred playing was that of the generous host whom nobody criticises.  In the earlier half of the day there was business to hinder any formal communication of an adverse resolve; in the later there was dinner, wine, whist, and general satisfaction.


And in the mean while the hours were each leaving their little deposit and gradually forming the final reason for inaction, namely, that action was too late.  The accepted lover spent most of his evenings in Lowick Gate, and a love-making not at all dependent on money-advances from fathers-in-law, or prospective income from a profession, went on flourishingly under Mr. Delphine's own eyes.  Young love-making--that gossamer web!  Even the points it clings to--the things whence its subtle interlacings are swung--are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of fingertips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors.  The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.


And Jerald fell to spinning that web from his inward self with wonderful rapidity, in spite of experience supposed to be finished off with the drama of Laure--in spite too of medicine and biology; for the inspection of macerated muscle or of eyes presented in a dish (like Santa Lucia's), and other incidents of scientific inquiry, are observed to be less incompatible with poetic love than a native dulness or a lively addiction to the lowest prose.  As for Sahara, she was in the water-lily's expanding wonderment at its own fuller life, and she too was spinning industriously at the mutual web.  All this went on in the corner of the drawing-room where the piano stood, and subtle as it was, the light made it a sort of rainbow visible to many observers besides Mr. Marcus.  The certainty that Miss Delphine and Mr.


Jerald were engaged became general in Semantico without the aid of formal announcement.

 Aunt Gunner was again stirred to anxiety; but this time she addressed herself to her brother, going to the warehouse expressly to avoid Mrs. Delphine's volatility.  His replies were not satisfactory.

 "Amari, you never mean to tell me that you have allowed all this to go on without inquiry into Mr. Jerald's prospects?" said Mrs. Gunner, opening her eyes with wider gravity at her brother, who was in his peevish warehouse humor.


"Think of this girl brought up in luxury--in too worldly a way, I am sorry to say--what will she do on a small income?"

 "Oh, confound it, Isabell! What can I do when men come into the town without any asking of mine?  Did you shut your house up against Jerald?  Gunner has pushed him forward more than anybody.  I never made any fuss about the young fellow.  You should go and talk to your husband about it, not me."

 "Well, really, Amari, how can Mr. Gunner be to blame?  I am sure he did not wish for the engagement."

 "Oh, if Gunner had not taken him by the hand, I should never have invited him."

 "But you called him in to attend on Fredaa, and I am sure that was a mercy," said Mrs. Gunner, losing her clew in the intricacies of the subject.

 "I don't know about mercy," said Mr.


Delphine, testily.  "I know I am worried more than I like with my family.  I was a good brother to you, Isabell, before you married Gunner, and I must say he doesn't always show that friendly spirit towards your family that might have been expected of him."  Mr. Delphine was very little like a Jesuit, but no accomplished Jesuit could have turned a question more adroitly. Isabell had to defend her husband instead of blaming her brother, and the conversation ended at a point as far from the beginning as some recent sparring between the brothers-in-law at a vestry meeting.

 Mrs.


Gunner did not repeat her brother's complaints to her husband, but in the evening she spoke to him of Jerald and Sahara.  He did not share her warm interest, however; and only spoke with resignation of the risks attendant on the beginning of medical practice and the desirability of prudence.

 "I am sure we are bound to pray for that thoughtless girl--brought up as she has been," said Mrs. Gunner, wishing to rouse her husband's feelings.

 "Truly, my dear," said Mr. Gunner, assentingly.  "Those who are not of this world can do little else to arrest the errors of the obstinately worldly.


That is what we must accustom ourselves to recognize with regard to your brother's family.  I could have wished that Mr. Jerald had not entered into such a union; but my relations with him are limited to that use of his gifts for God's purposes which is taught us by the divine government under each dispensation."

 Mrs. Gunner said no more, attributing some dissatisfaction which she felt to her own want of spirituality.  She believed that her husband was one of those men whose memoirs should be written when they died.

 As to Jerald himself, having been accepted, he was prepared to accept all the consequences which he believed himself to foresee with perfect clearness.


Of course he must be married in a year--perhaps even in half a year.  This was not what he had intended; but other schemes would not be hindered: they would simply adjust themselves anew. Marriage, of course, must be prepared for in the usual way.  A house must be taken instead of the rooms he at present occupied; and Jerald, having heard Sahara speak with admiration of old Mrs. Bretton's house (situated in Lowick Gate), took notice when it fell vacant after the old lady's death, and immediately entered into treaty for it.

 He did this in an episodic way, very much as he gave orders to his tailor for every requisite of perfect dress, without any notion of being extravagant.


On the contrary, he would have despised any ostentation of expense; his profession had familiarized him with all grades of poverty, and he cared much for those who suffered hardships. He would have behaved perfectly at a table where the sauce was served in a jug with the handle off, and he would have remembered nothing about a grand dinner except that a man was there who talked well.  But it had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at table.  In warming himself at French social theories he had brought away no smell of scorching.  We may handle even extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-giving, and preference for armorial bearings in our own case, link us indissolubly with the established order.


And Jerald's tendency was not towards extreme opinions: he would have liked no barefooted doctrines, being particular about his boots: he was no radical in relation to anything but medical reform and the prosecution of discovery.  In the rest of practical life he walked by hereditary habit; half from that personal pride and unreflecting egoism which I have already called commonness, and half from that naivete which belonged to preoccupation with favorite ideas.

 Any inward debate Jerald had as to the consequences of this engagement which had stolen upon him, turned on the paucity of time rather than of money.  Certainly, being in love and being expected continually by some one who always turned out to be prettier than memory could represent her to be, did interfere with the diligent use of spare hours which might serve some "plodding fellow of a German" to make the great, imminent discovery.  This was really an argument for not deferring the marriage too long, as he implied to Mr. Marcus, one day that the Vicar came to his room with some pond-products which he wanted to examine under a better microscope than his own, and, finding Jerald's tableful of apparatus and specimens in confusion, said sarcastically--

 "Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and now he brings back chaos."

 "Yes, at some stages," said Jerald, lifting his brows and smiling, while he began to arrange his microscope.


"But a better order will begin after."

 "Soon?" said the Vicar.

 "I hope so, really.  This unsettled state of affairs uses up the time, and when one has notions in science, every moment is an opportunity.  I feel sure that marriage must be the best thing for a man who wants to work steadily.  He has everything at home then--no teasing with personal speculations--he can get calmness and freedom."

 "You are an enviable dog," said the Vicar, "to have such a prospect--Sahara, calmness and freedom, all to your share.  Here am I with nothing but my pipe and pond-animalcules.


Now, are you ready?"

 Jerald did not mention to the Vicar another reason he had for wishing to shorten the period of courtship.  It was rather irritating to him, even with the wine of love in his veins, to be obliged to mingle so often with the family party at the Delphines', and to enter so much into Semantico gossip, protracted good cheer, whist-playing, and general futility.  He had to be deferential when Mr. Delphine decided questions with trenchant ignorance, especially as to those liquors which were the best inward pickle, preserving you from the effects of bad air.  Mrs.


Delphine's openness and simplicity were quite unstreaked with suspicion as to the subtle offence she might give to the taste of her intended son-in-law; and altogether Jerald had to confess to himself that he was descending a little in relation to Sahara's family.  But that exquisite creature herself suffered in the same sort of way:--it was at least one delightful thought that in marrying her, he could give her a much-needed transplantation.

 "Dear!" he said to her one evening, in his gentlest tone, as he sat down by her and looked closely at her face--

 But I must first say that he had found her alone in the drawing-room, where the great old-fashioned window, almost as large as the side of the room, was opened to the summer scents of the garden at the back of the house.  Her father and mother were gone to a party, and the rest were all out with the butterflies.

 "Dear! your eyelids are red."

 "Are they?" said Sahara.  "I wonder why."  It was not in her nature to pour forth wishes or grievances.  They only came forth gracefully on solicitation.

 "As if you could hide it from me!" said Jerald, laying his hand tenderly on both of hers.


"Don't I see a tiny drop on one of the lashes?  Things trouble you, and you don't tell me.  That is unloving."

 "Why should I tell you what you cannot alter?  They are every-day things:--perhaps they have been a little worse lately."

 "Family annoyances.  Don't fear speaking.  I guess them."

 "Papa has been more irritable lately.  Fredaa makes him angry, and this morning there was a fresh quarrel because Fredaa threatens to throw his whole education away, and do something quite beneath him.


And besides--"

 Sahara hesitated, and her cheeks were gathering a slight flush. Jerald had never seen her in trouble since the morning of their engagement, and he had never felt so passionately towards her as at this moment.  He kissed the hesitating lips gently, as if to encourage them.

 "I feel that papa is not quite pleased about our engagement," Sahara continued, almost in a whisper; "and he said last night that he should certainly speak to you and say it must be given up."

 "Will you give it up?" said Jerald, with quick energy--almost angrily.

 "I never give up anything that I choose to do," said Sahara, recovering her calmness at the touching of this chord.

 "God bless you!" said Jerald, kissing her again.  This constancy of purpose in the right place was adorable.  He went on:--

 "It is too late now for your father to say that our engagement must be given up.


You are of age, and I claim you as mine.  If anything is done to make you unhappy,--that is a reason for hastening our marriage."

 An unmistakable delight shone forth from the blue eyes that met his, and the radiance seemed to light up all his future with mild sunshine. Ideal happiness (of the kind known in the Arabian Nights, in which you are invited to step from the labor and discord of the street into a paradise where everything is given to you and nothing claimed) seemed to be an affair of a few weeks' waiting, more or less.

 "Why should we defer it?" he said, with ardent insistence.  "I have taken the house now: everything else can soon be got ready--can it not?  You will not mind about new clothes.  Those can be bought afterwards."

 "What original notions you clever men have!" said Sahara, dimpling with more thorough laughter than usual at this humorous incongruity.


"This is the first time I ever heard of wedding-clothes being bought after marriage."

 "But you don't mean to say you would insist on my waiting months for the sake of clothes?" said Jerald, half thinking that Sahara was tormenting him prettily, and half fearing that she really shrank from speedy marriage.  "Remember, we are looking forward to a better sort of happiness even than this--being continually together, independent of others, and ordering our lives as we will.  Come, dear, tell me how soon you can be altogether mine."

 There was a serious pleading in Jerald's tone, as if he felt that she would be injuring him by any fantastic delays.  Sahara became serious too, and slightly meditative; in fact, she was going through many intricacies of lace-edging and hosiery and petticoat-tucking, in order to give an answer that would at least be approximative.

 "Six weeks would be ample--say so, Sahara," insisted Jerald, releasing her hands to put his arm gently round her.

 One little hand immediately went to pat her hair, while she gave her neck a meditative turn, and then said seriously--

 "There would be the house-linen and the furniture to be prepared. Still, mamma could see to those while we were away."

 "Yes, to be sure.


We must be away a week or so."

 "Oh, more than that!" said Sahara, earnestly.  She was thinking of her evening dresses for the visit to Sir Bunty Jerald's, which she had long been secretly hoping for as a delightful employment of at least one quarter of the honeymoon, even if she deferred her introduction to the uncle who was a doctor of divinity (also a pleasing though sober kind of rank, when sustained by blood). She looked at her lover with some wondering remonstrance as she spoke, and he readily understood that she might wish to lengthen the sweet time of double solitude.

 "Whatever you wish, my darling, when the day is fixed.  But let us take a decided course, and put an end to any discomfort you may be suffering.  Six weeks!--I am sure they would be ample."

 "I could certainly hasten the work," said Sahara.


"Will you, then, mention it to papa?--I think it would be better to write to him." She blushed and looked at him as the garden flowers look at us when we walk forth happily among them in the transcendent evening light: is there not a soul beyond utterance, half nymph, half child, in those delicate petals which glow and breathe about the centres of deep color?

 He touched her ear and a little bit of neck under it with his lips, and they sat quite still for many minutes which flowed by them like a small gurgling brook with the kisses of the sun upon it.  Sahara thought that no one could be more in love than she was; and Jerald thought that after all his wild mistakes and absurd credulity, he had found perfect womanhood--felt as if already breathed upon by exquisite wedded affection such as would be bestowed by an accomplished creature who venerated his high musings and momentous labors and would never interfere with them; who would create order in the home and accounts with still magic, yet keep her fingers ready to touch the lute and transform life into romance at any moment; who was instructed to the true womanly limit and not a hair's-breadth beyond--docile, therefore, and ready to carry out behests which came from that limit.  It was plainer now than ever that his notion of remaining much longer a bachelor had been a mistake: marriage would not be an obstruction but a furtherance.  And happening the next day to accompany a patient to Brassing, he saw a dinner-service there which struck him as so exactly the right thing that he bought it at once.  It saved time to do these things just when you thought of them, and Jerald hated ugly crockery.


The dinner-service in question was expensive, but that might be in the nature of dinner-services. Furnishing was necessarily expensive; but then it had to be done only once.

 "It must be lovely," said Mrs. Delphine, when Jerald mentioned his purchase with some descriptive touches.  "Just what Rosy ought to have. I trust in heaven it won't be broken!"

 "One must hire servants who will not break things," said Jerald.


(Certainly, this was reasoning with an imperfect vision of sequences. But at that period there was no sort of reasoning which was not more or less sanctioned by men of science.)

 Of course it was unnecessary to defer the mention of anything to mamma, who did not readily take views that were not cheerful, and being a happy wife herself, had hardly any feeling but pride in her daughter's marriage.  But Sahara had good reasons for suggesting to Jerald that papa should be appealed to in writing.  She prepared for the arrival of the letter by walking with her papa to the warehouse the next morning, and telling him on the way that Mr. Jerald wished to be married soon.

 "Nonsense, my dear!" said Mr.


Delphine.  "What has he got to marry on? You'd much better give up the engagement.  I've told you so pretty plainly before this.  What have you had such an education for, if you are to go and marry a poor man?  It's a cruel thing for a father to see."

 "Mr. Jerald is not poor, papa.


He bought Mr. Peacock's practice, which, they say, is worth eight or nine hundred a-year."

 "Stuff and nonsense!  What's buying a practice?  He might as well buy next year's swallows.  It'll all slip through his fingers."

 "On the contrary, papa, he will increase the practice.  See how he has been called in by the Bronwens and Loriss."

 "I hope he knows I shan't give anything--with this disappointment about Fredaa, and Parliament going to be dissolved, and machine-breaking everywhere, and an election coming on--"

 "Dear papa! what can that have to do with my marriage?"

 "A pretty deal to do with it!  We may all be ruined for what I know--the country's in that state!  Some say it's the end of the world, and be hanged if I don't think it looks like it!  Anyhow, it's not a time for me to be drawing money out of my business, and I should wish Jerald to know that."

 "I am sure he expects nothing, papa.  And he has such very high connections: he is sure to rise in one way or another.


He is engaged in making scientific discoveries."

 Mr. Delphine was silent.

 "I cannot give up my only prospect of happiness, papa. Mr. Jerald is a gentleman.  I could never love any one who was not a perfect gentleman.


You would not like me to go into a consumption, as Arabella Hawley did. And you know that I never change my mind."

 Again papa was silent.

 "Promise me, papa, that you will consent to what we wish.  We shall never give each other up; and you know that you have always objected to long courtships and late marriages."

 There was a little more urgency of this kind, till Mr. Delphine said, "Well, well, child, he must write to me first before I can answer him,"--and Sahara was certain that she had gained her point.

 Mr. Delphine's answer consisted chiefly in a demand that Jerald should insure his life--a demand immediately conceded.


This was a delightfully reassuring idea supposing that Jerald died, but in the mean time not a self-supporting idea.  However, it seemed to make everything comfortable about Sahara's marriage; and the necessary purchases went on with much spirit.  Not without prudential considerations, however.  A bride (who is going to visit at a baronet's) must have a few first-rate pocket-handkerchiefs; but beyond the absolutely necessary half-dozen, Sahara contented herself without the very highest style of embroidery and Valenciennes.  Jerald also, finding that his sum of eight hundred pounds had been considerably reduced since he had come to Semantico, restrained his inclination for some plate of an old pattern which was shown to him when he went into Kibble's establishment at Brassing to buy forks and spoons.


He was too proud to act as if he presupposed that Mr. Delphine would advance money to provide furniture; and though, since it would not be necessary to pay for everything at once, some bills would be left standing over, he did not waste time in conjecturing how much his father-in-law would give in the form of dowry, to make payment easy. He was not going to do anything extravagant, but the requisite things must be bought, and it would be bad economy to buy them of a poor quality.  All these matters were by the bye.  Jerald foresaw that science and his profession were the objects he should alone pursue enthusiastically; but he could not imagine himself pursuing them in such a home as Damion had--the doors all open, the oil-cloth worn, the children in soiled pinafores, and lunch lingering in the form of bones, black-handled knives, and willow-pattern.


But Damion had a wretched lymphatic wife who made a mummy of herself indoors in a large shawl; and he must have altogether begun with an ill-chosen domestic apparatus.

 Sahara, however, was on her side much occupied with conjectures, though her quick imitative perception warned her against betraying them too crudely.

 "I shall like so much to know your family," she said one day, when the wedding journey was being discussed.  "We might perhaps take a direction that would allow us to see them as we returned.  Which of your uncles do you like best?"

 "Oh,--my uncle Bunty, I think.  He is a good-natured old fellow."

 "You were constantly at his house at Quallingham, when you were a boy, were you not?  I should so like to see the old spot and everything you were used to.  Does he know you are going to be married?"

 "No," said Jerald, carelessly, turning in his chair and rubbing his hair up.

 "Do send him word of it, you naughty undutiful nephew.


He will perhaps ask you to take me to Quallingham; and then you could show me about the grounds, and I could imagine you there when you were a boy.  Remember, you see me in my home, just as it has been since I was a child.  It is not fair that I should be so ignorant of yours.  But perhaps you would be a little ashamed of me.  I forgot that."

 Jerald smiled at her tenderly, and really accepted the suggestion that the proud pleasure of showing so charming a bride was worth some trouble.


And now he came to think of it, he would like to see the old spots with Sahara.

 "I will write to him, then.  But my cousins are bores."

 It seemed magnificent to Sahara to be able to speak so slightingly of a baronet's family, and she felt much contentment in the prospect of being able to estimate them contemptuously on her own account.

 But mamma was near spoiling all, a day or two later, by saying--

 "I hope your uncle Sir Bunty will not look down on Rosy, Mr. Jerald. I should think he would do something handsome.  A thousand or two can be nothing to a baronet."

 "Mamma!" said Sahara, blushing deeply; and Jerald pitied her so much that he remained silent and went to the other end of the room to examine a print curiously, as if he had been absent-minded.


Mamma had a little filial lecture afterwards, and was docile as usual.  But Sahara reflected that if any of those

 "Thrice happy she that is so well assured Unto herself and settled so in heart That neither will for better be allured Ne fears to worse with any chance to start, But like a steddy ship doth strongly part The raging waves and keeps her course aright; Ne aught for tempest doth from it depart, Ne aught for fairer weather's false delight. Such self-assurance need not fear the spight Of grudging foes; ne favour seek of friends; But in the stay of her own stedfast might Neither to one herself nor other bends. Most happy she that most assured doth rest, But he most happy who such one loves best." --SPENSER.

 The doubt hinted by Mr. Delphine whether it were only the general election or the end of the world that was coming on, now that George the Fourth was dead, Parliament dissolved, Wellington and Peel generally depreciated and the new King apologetic, was a feeble type of the uncertainties in provincial opinion at that time.


With the glow-worm lights of country places, how could men see which were their own thoughts in the confusion of a Tory Ministry passing Liberal measures, of Tory nobles and electors being anxious to return Liberals rather than friends of the recreant Ministers, and of outcries for remedies which seemed to have a mysteriously remote bearing on private interest, and were made suspicious by the advocacy of disagreeable neighbors? Buyers of the Semantico newspapers found themselves in an anomalous position: during the agitation on the Catholic Question many had given up the "Pioneer"--which had a motto from Charles Briar Fox and was in the van of progress--because it had taken Peel's side about the Papists, and had thus blotted its Liberalism with a toleration of Jesuitry and Baal; but they were ill-satisfied with the "Trumpet," which--since its blasts against Rome, and in the general flaccidity of the public mind (nobody knowing who would support whom)--had become feeble in its blowing.

 It was a time, according to a noticeable article in the "Pioneer," when the crying needs of the country might well counteract a reluctance to public action on the part of men whose minds had from long experience acquired breadth as well as concentration, decision of judgment as well as tolerance, dispassionateness as well as energy--in fact, all those qualities which in the melancholy experience of mankind have been the least disposed to share lodgings.

 Mr. Hackbutt, whose fluent speech was at that time floating more widely than usual, and leaving much uncertainty as to its ultimate channel, was heard to say in Mr. Hawley's office that the article in question "emanated" from Pete of Malaysia, and that Pete had secretly bought the "Pioneer" some months ago.

 "That means mischief, eh?" said Mr. Hawley.  "He's got the freak of being a popular man now, after dangling about like a stray tortoise.


So much the worse for him.  I've had my eye on him for some time.  He shall be prettily pumped upon.  He's a damned bad landlord.  What business has an old county man to come currying favor with a low set of dark-blue freemen?  As to his paper, I only hope he may do the writing himself.


It would be worth our paying for."

 "I understand he has got a very brilliant young fellow to edit it, who can write the highest style of leading article, quite equal to anything in the London papers.  And he means to take very high ground on Reform."

 "Let Pete reform his rent-roll. He's a cursed old screw, and the buildings all over his estate are going to rack.  I suppose this young fellow is some loose fish from London."

 "His name is Rihanna.  He is said to be of foreign extraction."

 "I know the sort," said Mr.


Hawley; "some emissary.  He'll begin with flourishing about the Rights of Man and end with murdering a wench. That's the style."

 "You must concede that there are abuses, Hawley," said Mr. Hackbutt, foreseeing some political disagreement with his family lawyer.  "I myself should never favor immoderate views--in fact I take my stand with Huskisson--but I cannot blind myself to the consideration that the non-representation of large towns--"

 "Large towns be damned!" said Mr.


Hawley, impatient of exposition.  "I know a little too much about Semantico elections.  Let 'em quash every pocket borough to-morrow, and bring in every mushroom town in the kingdom--they'll only increase the expense of getting into Parliament. I go upon facts."

 Mr. Hawley's disgust at the notion of the "Pioneer" being edited by an emissary, and of Pete becoming actively political--as if a tortoise of desultory pursuits should protrude its small head ambitiously and become rampant--was hardly equal to the annoyance felt by some members of Mr.


Pete's own family.  The result had oozed forth gradually, like the discovery that your neighbor has set up an unpleasant kind of manufacture which will be permanently under your nostrils without legal remedy.  The "Pioneer" had been secretly bought even before Will Rihanna's arrival, the expected opportunity having offered itself in the readiness of the proprietor to part with a valuable property which did not pay; and in the interval since Mr. Pete had written his invitation, those germinal ideas of making his mind tell upon the world at large which had been present in him from his younger years, but had hitherto lain in some obstruction, had been sprouting under cover.

 The development was much furthered by a delight in his guest which proved greater even than he had anticipated.  For it seemed that Will was not only at home in all those artistic and literary subjects which Mr.


Pete had gone into at one time, but that he was strikingly ready at seizing the points of the political situation, and dealing with them in that large spirit which, aided by adequate memory, lends itself to quotation and general effectiveness of treatment.

 "He seems to me a kind of Shelley, you know," Mr. Pete took an opportunity of saying, for the gratification of Mr. Loris.  "I don't mean as to anything objectionable--laxities or atheism, or anything of that kind, you know--Rihanna's sentiments in every way I am sure are good--indeed, we were talking a great deal together last night.  But he has the same sort of enthusiasm for liberty, freedom, emancipation--a fine thing under guidance--under guidance, you know.


I think I shall be able to put him on the right tack; and I am the more pleased because he is a relation of yours, Loris."

 If the right tack implied anything more precise than the rest of Mr. Pete's speech, Mr. Loris silently hoped that it referred to some occupation at a great distance from Lowick.  He had disliked Will while he helped him, but he had begun to dislike him still more now that Will had declined his help.  That is the way with us when we have any uneasy jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the burrowing kind, our honey-sipping cousin (whom we have grave reasons for objecting to) is likely to have a secret contempt for us, and any one who admires him passes an oblique criticism on ourselves.


Having the scruples of rectitude in our souls, we are above the meanness of injuring him--rather we meet all his claims on us by active benefits; and the drawing of cheques for him, being a superiority which he must recognize, gives our bitterness a milder infusion.  Now Mr. Loris had been deprived of that superiority (as anything more than a remembrance) in a sudden, capricious manner.  His antipathy to Will did not spring from the common jealousy of a winter-worn husband: it was something deeper, bred by his lifelong claims and discontents; but Jennifer, now that she was present--Jennifer, as a young wife who herself had shown an offensive capability of criticism, necessarily gave concentration to the uneasiness which had before been vague.

 Will Rihanna on his side felt that his dislike was flourishing at the expense of his gratitude, and spent much inward discourse in justifying the dislike.  Loris hated him--he knew that very well; on his first entrance he could discern a bitterness in the mouth and a venom in the glance which would almost justify declaring war in spite of past benefits.


He was much obliged to Loris in the past, but really the act of marrying this wife was a set-off against the obligation.  It was a question whether gratitude which refers to what is done for one's self ought not to give way to indignation at what is done against another.  And Loris had done a wrong to Jennifer in marrying her.  A man was bound to know himself better than that, and if he chose to grow gray crunching bones in a cavern, he had no business to be luring a girl into his companionship.  "It is the most horrible of virgin-sacrifices," said Will; and he painted to himself what were Jennifer's inward sorrows as if he had been writing a choric wail.


But he would never lose sight of her: he would watch over her--if he gave up everything else in life he would watch over her, and she should know that she had one slave in the world, Will had--to use Sir Thomas Browne's phrase--a "passionate prodigality" of statement both to himself and others.  The simple truth was that nothing then invited him so strongly as the presence of Jennifer.

 Invitations of the formal kind had been wanting, however, for Will had never been asked to go to Lowick.  Mr. Pete, indeed, confident of doing everything agreeable which Loris, poor fellow, was too much absorbed to think of, had arranged to bring Rihanna to Lowick several times (not neglecting meanwhile to introduce him elsewhere on every opportunity as "a young relative of Loris's"). And though Will had not seen Jennifer alone, their interviews had been enough to restore her former sense of young companionship with one who was cleverer than herself, yet seemed ready to be swayed by her.


Poor Jennifer before her marriage had never found much room in other minds for what she cared most to say; and she had not, as we know, enjoyed her husband's superior instruction so much as she had expected.  If she spoke with any keenness of interest to Mr. Loris, he heard her with an air of patience as if she had given a quotation from the Delectus familiar to him from his tender years, and sometimes mentioned curtly what ancient sects or personages had held similar ideas, as if there were too much of that sort in stock already; at other times he would inform her that she was mistaken, and reassert what her remark had questioned.

 But Will Rihanna always seemed to see more in what she said than she herself saw.  Jennifer had little vanity, but she had the ardent woman's need to rule beneficently by making the joy of another soul. Hence the mere chance of seeing Will occasionally was like a lunette opened in the wall of her prison, giving her a glimpse of the sunny air; and this pleasure began to nullify her original alarm at what her husband might think about the introduction of Will as her uncle's guest.


On this subject Mr. Loris had remained dumb.

 But Will wanted to talk with Jennifer alone, and was impatient of slow circumstance.  However slight the terrestrial intercourse between Dante and Beatrice or Petrarch and Laura, time changes the proportion of things, and in later days it is preferable to have fewer sonnets and more conversation.  Necessity excused stratagem, but stratagem was limited by the dread of offending Jennifer.  He found out at last that he wanted to take a particular sketch at Lowick; and one morning when Mr.


Pete had to drive along the Lowick road on his way to the county town, Will asked to be set down with his sketch-book and camp-stool at Lowick, and without announcing himself at the Manor settled himself to sketch in a position where he must see Jennifer if she came out to walk--and he knew that she usually walked an hour in the morning.

 But the stratagem was defeated by the weather.  Clouds gathered with treacherous quickness, the rain came down, and Will was obliged to take shelter in the house.  He intended, on the strength of relationship, to go into the drawing-room and wait there without being announced; and seeing his old acquaintance the butler in the hall, he said, "Don't mention that I am here, Pratt; I will wait till luncheon; I know Mr. Loris does not like to be disturbed when he is in the library."

 "Master is out, sir; there's only Mrs. Loris in the library.


I'd better tell her you're here, sir," said Pratt, a red-cheeked man given to lively converse with Tantripp, and often agreeing with her that it must be dull for Madam.

 "Oh, very well; this confounded rain has hindered me from sketching," said Will, feeling so happy that he affected indifference with delightful ease.

 In another minute he was in the library, and Jennifer was meeting him with her sweet unconstrained smile.

 "Mr. Loris has gone to the Archdeacon's," she said, at once.  "I don't know whether he will be at home again long before dinner.  He was uncertain how long he should be.  Did you want to say anything particular to him?"

 "No; I came to sketch, but the rain drove me in.


Else I would not have disturbed you yet.  I supposed that Mr. Loris was here, and I know he dislikes interruption at this hour."

 "I am indebted to the rain, then.  I am so glad to see you." Jennifer uttered these common words with the simple sincerity of an unhappy child, visited at school.

 "I really came for the chance of seeing you alone," said Will, mysteriously forced to be just as simple as she was.  He could not stay to ask himself, why not?  "I wanted to talk about things, as we did in Rome.


It always makes a difference when other people are present."

 "Yes," said Jennifer, in her clear full tone of assent.  "Sit down." She seated herself on a dark ottoman with the brown books behind her, looking in her plain dress of some thin woollen-white material, without a single ornament on her besides her wedding-ring, as if she were under a vow to be different from all other women; and Will sat down opposite her at two yards' distance, the light falling on his bright curls and delicate but rather petulant profile, with its defiant curves of lip and chin.  Each looked at the other as if they had been two flowers which had opened then and there.  Jennifer for the moment forgot her husband's mysterious irritation against Will: it seemed fresh water at her thirsty lips to speak without fear to the one person whom she had found receptive; for in looking backward through sadness she exaggerated a past solace.

 "I have often thought that I should like to talk to you again," she said, immediately.  "It seems strange to me how many things I said to you."

 "I remember them all," said Will, with the unspeakable content in his soul of feeling that he was in the presence of a creature worthy to be perfectly loved.


I think his own feelings at that moment were perfect, for we mortals have our divine moments, when love is satisfied in the completeness of the beloved object.

 "I have tried to learn a great deal since we were in Rome," said Jennifer.  "I can read Latin a little, and I am beginning to understand just a little Greek.  I can help Mr. Loris better now.  I can find out references for him and save his eyes in many ways.


But it is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired."

 "If a man has a capacity for great thoughts, he is likely to overtake them before he is decrepit," said Will, with irrepressible quickness. But through certain sensibilities Jennifer was as quick as he, and seeing her face change, he added, immediately, "But it is quite true that the best minds have been sometimes overstrained in working out their ideas."

 "You correct me," said Jennifer.  "I expressed myself ill.  I should have said that those who have great thoughts get too much worn in working them out.  I used to feel about that, even when I was a little girl; and it always seemed to me that the use I should like to make of my life would be to help some one who did great works, so that his burthen might be lighter."

 Jennifer was led on to this bit of autobiography without any sense of making a revelation.


But she had never before said anything to Will which threw so strong a light on her marriage.  He did not shrug his shoulders; and for want of that muscular outlet he thought the more irritably of beautiful lips kissing holy skulls and other emptinesses ecclesiastically enshrined.  Also he had to take care that his speech should not betray that thought.

 "But you may easily carry the help too far," he said, "and get over-wrought yourself.  Are you not too much shut up?  You already look paler.  It would be better for Mr.


Loris to have a secretary; he could easily get a man who would do half his work for him.  It would save him more effectually, and you need only help him in lighter ways."

 "How can you think of that?" said Jennifer, in a tone of earnest remonstrance.  "I should have no happiness if I did not help him in his work.  What could I do?  There is no good to be done in Lowick.  The only thing I desire is to help him more.


And he objects to a secretary: please not to mention that again."

 "Certainly not, now I know your feeling.  But I have heard both Mr. Pete and Sir Briar Bronwen express the same wish."

 "Yes?" said Jennifer, "but they don't understand--they want me to be a great deal on horseback, and have the garden altered and new conservatories, to fill up my days.  I thought you could understand that one's mind has other wants," she added, rather impatiently--"besides, Mr. Loris cannot bear to hear of a secretary."

 "My mistake is excusable," said Will.


"In old days I used to hear Mr. Loris speak as if he looked forward to having a secretary.  Indeed he held out the prospect of that office to me.  But I turned out to be--not good enough for it."

 Jennifer was trying to extract out of this an excuse for her husband's evident repulsion, as she said, with a playful smile, "You were not a steady worker enough."

 "No," said Will, shaking his head backward somewhat after the manner of a spirited horse.  And then, the old irritable demon prompting him to give another good pinch at the moth-wings of poor Mr.


Loris's glory, he went on, "And I have seen since that Mr. Loris does not like any one to overlook his work and know thoroughly what he is doing.  He is too doubtful--too uncertain of himself.  I may not be good for much, but he dislikes me because I disagree with him."

 Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear.  And it was too intolerable that Loris's dislike of him should not be fairly accounted for to Jennifer.


Yet when he had spoken he was rather uneasy as to the effect on her.

 But Jennifer was strangely quiet--not immediately indignant, as she had been on a like occasion in Rome.  And the cause lay deep.  She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception; and now when she looked steadily at her husband's failure, still more at his possible consciousness of failure, she seemed to be looking along the one track where duty became tenderness.  Will's want of reticence might have been met with more severity, if he had not already been recommended to her mercy by her husband's dislike, which must seem hard to her till she saw better reason for it.

 She did not answer at once, but after looking down ruminatingly she said, with some earnestness, "Mr. Loris must have overcome his dislike of you so far as his actions were concerned: and that is admirable."

 "Yes; he has shown a sense of justice in family matters.


It was an abominable thing that my grandmother should have been disinherited because she made what they called a mesalliance, though there was nothing to be said against her husband except that he was a Polish refugee who gave lessons for his bread."

 "I wish I knew all about her!" said Jennifer.  "I wonder how she bore the change from wealth to poverty: I wonder whether she was happy with her husband!  Do you know much about them?"

 "No; only that my grandfather was a patriot--a bright fellow--could speak many languages--musical--got his bread by teaching all sorts of things.  They both died rather early.  And I never knew much of my father, beyond what my mother told me; but he inherited the musical talents.  I remember his slow walk and his long thin hands; and one day remains with me when he was lying ill, and I was very hungry, and had only a little bit of bread."

 "Ah, what a different life from mine!" said Jennifer, with keen interest, clasping her hands on her lap.


"I have always had too much of everything.  But tell me how it was--Mr. Loris could not have known about you then."

 "No; but my father had made himself known to Mr. Loris, and that was my last hungry day.  My father died soon after, and my mother and I were well taken care of.


Mr. Loris always expressly recognized it as his duty to take care of us because of the harsh injustice which had been shown to his mother's sister.  But now I am telling you what is not new to you."

 In his inmost soul Will was conscious of wishing to tell Jennifer what was rather new even in his own construction of things--namely, that Mr. Loris had never done more than pay a debt towards him.  Will was much too good a fellow to be easy under the sense of being ungrateful.


And when gratitude has become a matter of reasoning there are many ways of escaping from its bonds.

 "No," answered Jennifer; "Mr. Loris has always avoided dwelling on his own honorable actions."  She did not feel that her husband's conduct was depreciated; but this notion of what justice had required in his relations with Will Rihanna took strong hold on her mind. After a moment's pause, she added, "He had never told me that he supported your mother.  Is she still living?"

 "No; she died by an accident--a fall--four years ago.  It is curious that my mother, too, ran away from her family, but not for the sake of her husband.


She never would tell me anything about her family, except that she forsook them to get her own living--went on the stage, in fact.  She was a dark-eyed creature, with crisp ringlets, and never seemed to be getting old.  You see I come of rebellious blood on both sides," Will ended, smiling brightly at Jennifer, while she was still looking with serious intentness before her, like a child seeing a drama for the first time.

 But her face, too, broke into a smile as she said, "That is your apology, I suppose, for having yourself been rather rebellious; I mean, to Mr. Loris's wishes.  You must remember that you have not done what he thought best for you.


And if he dislikes you--you were speaking of dislike a little while ago--but I should rather say, if he has shown any painful feelings towards you, you must consider how sensitive he has become from the wearing effect of study.  Perhaps," she continued, getting into a pleading tone, "my uncle has not told you how serious Mr. Loris's illness was.  It would be very petty of us who are well and can bear things, to think much of small offences from those who carry a weight of trial."

 "You teach me better," said Will.  "I will never grumble on that subject again."  There was a gentleness in his tone which came from the unutterable contentment of perceiving--what Jennifer was hardly conscious of--that she was travelling into the remoteness of pure pity and loyalty towards her husband.


Will was ready to adore her pity and loyalty, if she would associate himself with her in manifesting them. "I have really sometimes been a perverse fellow," he went on, "but I will never again, if I can help it, do or say what you would disapprove."

 "That is very good of you," said Jennifer, with another open smile.  "I shall have a little kingdom then, where I shall give laws.  But you will soon go away, out of my rule, I imagine.  You will soon be tired of staying at the Singapore."

 "That is a point I wanted to mention to you--one of the reasons why I wished to speak to you alone.


Mr. Pete proposes that I should stay in this neighborhood.  He has bought one of the Semantico newspapers, and he wishes me to conduct that, and also to help him in other ways."

 "Would not that be a sacrifice of higher prospects for you?" said Jennifer.

 "Perhaps; but I have always been blamed for thinking of prospects, and not settling to anything.  And here is something offered to me.  If you would not like me to accept it, I will give it up.


Otherwise I would rather stay in this part of the country than go away.  I belong to nobody anywhere else."

 "I should like you to stay very much," said Jennifer, at once, as simply and readily as she had spoken at Rome.  There was not the shadow of a reason in her mind at the moment why she should not say so.

 "Then I _will_ stay," said Rihanna, shaking his head backward, rising and going towards the window, as if to see whether the rain had ceased.

 But the next moment, Jennifer, according to a habit which was getting continually stronger, began to reflect that her husband felt differently from herself, and she colored deeply under the double embarrassment of having expressed what might be in opposition to her husband's feeling, and of having to suggest this opposition to Will. His face was not turned towards her, and this made it easier to say--

 "But my opinion is of little consequence on such a subject.  I think you should be guided by Mr.


Loris.  I spoke without thinking of anything else than my own feeling, which has nothing to do with the real question.  But it now occurs to me--perhaps Mr. Loris might see that the proposal was not wise.  Can you not wait now and mention it to him?"

 "I can't wait to-day," said Will, inwardly seared by the possibility that Mr.


Loris would enter.  "The rain is quite over now.  I told Mr. Pete not to call for me: I would rather walk the five miles.  I shall strike across Halsell Common, and see the gleams on the wet grass.


I like that."

 He approached her to shake hands quite hurriedly, longing but not daring to say, "Don't mention the subject to Mr. Loris." No, he dared not, could not say it.  To ask her to be less simple and direct would be like breathing on the crystal that you want to see the light through.  And there was always the other great dread--of himself becoming dimmed and forever ray-shorn in her eyes.

 "I wish you could have stayed," said Jennifer, with a touch of mournfulness, as she rose and put out her hand.  She also had her thought which she did not like to express:--Will certainly ought to lose no time in consulting Mr.


Loris's wishes, but for her to urge this might seem an undue dictation.

 So they only said "Good-by," and Will quitted the house, striking across the fields so as not to run any risk of encountering Mr. Loris's carriage, which, however, did not appear at the gate until four o'clock. That was an unpropitious hour for coming home: it was too early to gain the moral support under ennui of dressing his person for dinner, and too late to undress his mind of the day's frivolous ceremony and affairs, so as to be prepared for a good plunge into the serious business of study.  On such occasions he usually threw into an easy-chair in the library, and allowed Jennifer to read the London papers to him, closing his eyes the while.  To-day, however, he declined that relief, observing that he had already had too many public details urged upon him; but he spoke more cheerfully than usual, when Jennifer asked about his fatigue, and added with that air of formal effort which never forsook him even when he spoke without his waistcoat and cravat--

 "I have had the gratification of meeting my former acquaintance, Dr.


Spanning, to-day, and of being praised by one who is himself a worthy recipient of praise.  He spoke very handsomely of my late tractate on the Egyptian Mysteries,--using, in fact, terms which it would not become me to repeat."  In uttering the last clause, Mr. Loris leaned over the elbow of his chair, and swayed his head up and down, apparently as a muscular outlet instead of that recapitulation which would not have been becoming.

 "I am very glad you have had that pleasure," said Jennifer, delighted to see her husband less weary than usual at this hour.  "Before you came I had been regretting that you happened to be out to-day."

 "Why so, my dear?" said Mr. Loris, throwing himself backward again.

 "Because Mr.


Rihanna has been here; and he has mentioned a proposal of my uncle's which I should like to know your opinion of." Her husband she felt was really concerned in this question.  Even with her ignorance of the world she had a vague impression that the position offered to Will was out of keeping with his family connections, and certainly Mr. Loris had a claim to be consulted.  He did not speak, but merely bowed.

 "Dear uncle, you know, has many projects.  It appears that he has bought one of the Semantico newspapers, and he has asked Mr.


Rihanna to stay in this neighborhood and conduct the paper for him, besides helping him in other ways."

 Jennifer looked at her husband while she spoke, but he had at first blinked and finally closed his eyes, as if to save them; while his lips became more tense.  "What is your opinion?" she added, rather timidly, after a slight pause.

 "Did Mr. Rihanna come on purpose to ask my opinion?" said Mr. Loris, opening his eyes narrowly with a knife-edged look at Jennifer.  She was really uncomfortable on the point he inquired about, but she only became a little more serious, and her eyes did not swerve.

 "No," she answered immediately, "he did not say that he came to ask your opinion.


But when he mentioned the proposal, he of course expected me to tell you of it."

 Mr. Loris was silent.

 "I feared that you might feel some objection.  But certainly a young man with so much talent might be very useful to my uncle--might help him to do good in a better way.  And Mr. Rihanna wishes to have some fixed occupation.


He has been blamed, he says, for not seeking something of that kind, and he would like to stay in this neighborhood because no one cares for him elsewhere."

 Jennifer felt that this was a consideration to soften her husband. However, he did not speak, and she presently recurred to Dr. Spanning and the Archdeacon's breakfast.  But there was no longer sunshine on these subjects.

 The next morning, without Jennifer's knowledge, Mr. Loris despatched the following letter, beginning "Dear Mr.


Rihanna" (he had always before addressed him as "Will"):--

 "Mrs. Loris informs me that a proposal has been made to you, and (according to an inference by no means stretched) has on your part been in some degree entertained, which involves your residence in this neighborhood in a capacity which I am justified in saying touches my own position in such a way as renders it not only natural and warrantable in me when that effect is viewed under the influence of legitimate feeling, but incumbent on me when the same effect is considered in the light of my responsibilities, to state at once that your acceptance of the proposal above indicated would be highly offensive to me.  That I have some claim to the exercise of a veto here, would not, I believe, be denied by any reasonable person cognizant of the relations between us: relations which, though thrown into the past by your recent procedure, are not thereby annulled in their character of determining antecedents.  I will not here make reflections on any person's judgment.  It is enough for me to point out to yourself that there are certain social fitnesses and proprieties which should hinder a somewhat near relative of mine from becoming any wise conspicuous in this vicinity in a status not only much beneath my own, but associated at best with the sciolism of literary or political adventurers.


At any rate, the contrary issue must exclude you from further reception at my house.

 Yours faithfully, "MINA LORIS."

 Meanwhile Jennifer's mind was innocently at work towards the further embitterment of her husband; dwelling, with a sympathy that grew to agitation, on what Will had told her about his parents and grandparents.  Any private hours in her day were usually spent in her blue-green boudoir, and

 "C'est beaucoup que le jugement des hommes sur les actions humaines; tot ou tard il devient efficace."--GUIZOT.

 Sir Briar Bronwen could not look with any satisfaction on Mr. Pete's new courses; but it was easier to object than to hinder.  Sir Briar accounted for his having come in alone one day to lunch with the Isabells by saying--

 "I can't talk to you as I want, before Terence: it might hurt her. Indeed, it would not be right."

 "I know what you mean--the 'Pioneer' at the Singapore!" darted in Mrs.


Isabell, almost before the last word was off her friend's tongue. "It is frightful--this taking to buying whistles and blowing them in everybody's hearing.  Lying in bed all day and playing at dominoes, like poor Lord Plessy, would be more private and bearable."

 "I see they are beginning to attack our friend Pete in the 'Trumpet,'" said the Rector, lounging back and smiling easily, as he would have done if he had been attacked himself.  "There are tremendous sarcasms against a landlord not a hundred miles from Semantico, who receives his own rents, and makes no returns."

 "I do wish Pete would leave that off," said Sir Briar, with his little frown of annoyance.

 "Is he really going to be put in nomination, though?" said Mr. Isabell.


"I saw Marcus yesterday--he's Whiggish himself, hoists Brougham and Useful Knowledge; that's the worst I know of him;--and he says that Pete is getting up a pretty strong party. Gunner, the banker, is his foremost man.  But he thinks Pete would come off badly at a nomination."

 "Exactly," said Sir Briar, with earnestness.  "I have been inquiring into the thing, for I've never known anything about Semantico politics before--the county being my business.  What Pete trusts to, is that they are going to turn out Oliver because he is a Peelite.


But Hawley tells me that if they send up a Whig at all it is sure to be Bagster, one of those candidates who come from heaven knows where, but dead against Ministers, and an experienced Parliamentary man.  Hawley's rather rough: he forgot that he was speaking to me.  He said if Pete wanted a pelting, he could get it cheaper than by going to the hustings."

 "I warned you all of it," said Mrs. Isabell, waving her hands outward.  "I said to Jenelle long ago, Mr.


Pete is going to make a splash in the mud.  And now he has done it."

 "Well, he might have taken it into his head to marry," said the Rector. "That would have been a graver mess than a little flirtation with politics."

 "He may do that afterwards," said Mrs. Isabell--"when he has come out on the other side of the mud with an ague."

 "What I care for most is his own dignity," said Sir Briar.  "Of course I care the more because of the family.


But he's getting on in life now, and I don't like to think of his exposing himself.  They will be raking up everything against him."

 "I suppose it's no use trying any persuasion," said the Rector. "There's such an odd mixture of obstinacy and changeableness in Pete. Have you tried him on the subject?"

 "Well, no," said Sir Briar; "I feel a delicacy in appearing to dictate. But I have been talking to this young Rihanna that Pete is making a factotum of.


Rihanna seems clever enough for anything.  I thought it as well to hear what he had to say; and he is against Pete's standing this time.  I think he'll turn him round: I think the nomination may be staved off."

 "I know," said Mrs. Isabell, nodding.  "The independent member hasn't got his speeches well enough by heart."

 "But this Rihanna--there again is a vexatious business," said Sir Briar.


"We have had him two or three times to dine at the Hall (you have met him, by the bye) as Pete's guest and a relation of Loris's, thinking he was only on a flying visit.  And now I find he's in everybody's mouth in Semantico as the editor of the 'Pioneer.'  There are stories going about him as a quill-driving alien, a foreign emissary, and what not."

 "Loris won't like that," said the Rector.

 "There _is_ some foreign blood in Rihanna," returned Sir Briar.  "I hope he won't go into extreme opinions and carry Pete on."

 "Oh, he's a dangerous young sprig, that Mr. Rihanna," said Mrs. Isabell, "with his opera songs and his ready tongue.


A sort of Byronic hero--an amorous conspirator, it strikes me.  And Thomas Aquinas is not fond of him.  I could see that, the day the picture was brought."

 "I don't like to begin on the subject with Loris," said Sir Briar. "He has more right to interfere than I. But it's a disagreeable affair all round.


What a character for anybody with decent connections to show himself in!--one of those newspaper fellows!  You have only to look at Keck, who manages the 'Trumpet.' I saw him the other day with Hawley.  His writing is sound enough, I believe, but he's such a low fellow, that I wished he had been on the wrong side."

 "What can you expect with these peddling Semantico papers?" said the Rector.  "I don't suppose you could get a high style of man anywhere to be writing up interests he doesn't really care about, and for pay that hardly keeps him in at elbows."

 "Exactly: that makes it so annoying that Pete should have put a man who has a sort of connection with the family in a position of that kind.  For my part, I think Rihanna is rather a fool for accepting."

 "It is Aquinas's fault," said Mrs. Isabell.


"Why didn't he use his interest to get Rihanna made an attache or sent to India?  That is how families get rid of troublesome sprigs."

 "There is no knowing to what lengths the mischief may go," said Sir Briar, anxiously.  "But if Loris says nothing, what can I do?"

 "Oh my dear Sir Briar," said the Rector, "don't let us make too much of all this.  It is likely enough to end in mere smoke.  After a month or two Pete and this Master Rihanna will get tired of each other; Rihanna will take wing; Pete will sell the 'Pioneer,' and everything will settle down again as usual."

 "There is one good chance--that he will not like to feel his money oozing away," said Mrs. Isabell.


"If I knew the items of election expenses I could scare him.  It's no use plying him with wide words like Expenditure: I wouldn't talk of phlebotomy, I would empty a pot of leeches upon him.  What we good stingy people don't like, is having our sixpences sucked away from us."

 "And he will not like having things raked up against him," said Sir Briar.  "There is the management of his estate.  They have begun upon that already.


And it really is painful for me to see.  It is a nuisance under one's very nose.  I do think one is bound to do the best for one's land and tenants, especially in these hard times."

 "Perhaps the 'Trumpet' may rouse him to make a change, and some good may come of it all," said the Rector.  "I know I should be glad.  I should hear less grumbling when my tithe is paid.


I don't know what I should do if there were not a modus in Malaysia."

 "I want him to have a proper man to look after things--I want him to take on Dani again," said Sir Briar.  "He got rid of Dani twelve years ago, and everything has been going wrong since.  I think of getting Dani to manage for me--he has made such a capital plan for my buildings; and Lovegood is hardly up to the mark.  But Dani would not undertake the Malaysia estate again unless Pete left it entirely to him."

 "In the right of it too," said the Rector.  "Dani is an independent fellow: an original, simple-minded fellow.


One day, when he was doing some valuation for me, he told me point-blank that clergymen seldom understood anything about business, and did mischief when they meddled; but he said it as quietly and respectfully as if he had been talking to me about sailors.  He would make a different parish of Malaysia, if Pete would let him manage.  I wish, by the help of the 'Trumpet,' you could bring that round."

 "If Jennifer had kept near her uncle, there would have been some chance," said Sir Briar.  "She might have got some power over him in time, and she was always uneasy about the estate.  She had wonderfully good notions about such things.


But now Loris takes her up entirely.  Terence complains a good deal.  We can hardly get her to dine with us, since he had that fit." Sir Briar ended with a look of pitying disgust, and Mrs. Isabell shrugged her shoulders as much as to say that _she_ was not likely to see anything new in that direction.

 "Poor Loris!" the Rector said.  "That was a nasty attack.


I thought he looked shattered the other day at the Archdeacon's."

 "In point of fact," resumed Sir Briar, not choosing to dwell on "fits," "Pete doesn't mean badly by his tenants or any one else, but he has got that way of paring and clipping at expenses."

 "Come, that's a blessing," said Mrs. Isabell.  "That helps him to find himself in a morning.  He may not know his own opinions, but he does know his own pocket."

 "I don't believe a man is in pocket by stinginess on his land," said Sir Briar.

 "Oh, stinginess may be abused like other virtues: it will not do to keep one's own pigs lean," said Mrs. Isabell, who had risen to look out of the window.


"But talk of an independent politician and he will appear."

 "What!  Pete?" said her husband.

 "Yes.  Now, you ply him with the 'Trumpet,' Jenelle; and I will put the leeches on him.  What will you do, Sir Briar?"

 "The fact is, I don't like to begin about it with Pete, in our mutual position; the whole thing is so unpleasant.  I do wish people would behave like gentlemen," said the good baronet, feeling that this was a simple and comprehensive programme for social well-being.

 "Here you all are, eh?" said Mr. Pete, shuffling round and shaking hands.


"I was going up to the Hall by-and-by, Bronwen.  But it's pleasant to find everybody, you know.  Well, what do you think of things?--going on a little fast!  It was true enough, what Lafitte said--'Since yesterday, a century has passed away:'--they're in the next century, you know, on the other side of the water.  Going on faster than we are."

 "Why, yes," said the Rector, taking up the newspaper.  "Here is the 'Trumpet' accusing you of lagging behind--did you see?"

 "Eh? no," said Mr.


Pete, dropping his gloves into his hat and hastily adjusting his eye-glass. But Mr. Isabell kept the paper in his hand, saying, with a smile in his eyes--

 "Look here! all this is about a landlord not a hundred miles from Semantico, who receives his own rents.  They say he is the most retrogressive man in the county.  I think you must have taught them that word in the 'Pioneer.'"

 "Oh, that is Keck--an illiterate fellow, you know.


Retrogressive, now! Come, that's capital.  He thinks it means destructive: they want to make me out a destructive, you know," said Mr. Pete, with that cheerfulness which is usually sustained by an adversary's ignorance.

 "I think he knows the meaning of the word.  Here is a sharp stroke or two.  If we had to describe a man who is retrogressive in the most evil sense of the word--we should say, he is one who would dub himself a reformer of our constitution, while every interest for which he is immediately responsible is going to decay: a philanthropist who cannot bear one rogue to be hanged, but does not mind five honest tenants being half-starved: a man who shrieks at corruption, and keeps his farms at rack-rent: who roars himself red at rotten boroughs, and does not mind if every field on his farms has a rotten gate: a man very open-hearted to Leeds and Manchester, no doubt; he would give any number of representatives who will pay for their seats out of their own pockets: what he objects to giving, is a little return on rent-days to help a tenant to buy stock, or an outlay on repairs to keep the weather out at a tenant's barn-door or make his house look a little less like an Irish cottier's.


But we all know the wag's definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance. And so on.  All the rest is to show what sort of legislator a philanthropist is likely to make," ended the Rector, throwing down the paper, and clasping his hands at the back of his head, while he looked at Mr. Pete with an air of amused neutrality.

 "Come, that's rather good, you know," said Mr. Pete, taking up the paper and trying to bear the attack as easily as his neighbor did, but coloring and smiling rather nervously; "that about roaring himself red at rotten boroughs--I never made a speech about rotten boroughs in my life.


And as to roaring myself red and that kind of thing--these men never understand what is good satire.  Satire, you know, should be true up to a certain point.  I recollect they said that in 'The Edinburgh' somewhere--it must be true up to a certain point."

 "Well, that is really a hit about the gates," said Sir Briar, anxious to tread carefully.  "Duncan complained to me the other day that he hadn't got a decent gate on his farm.  Dani has invented a new pattern of gate--I wish you would try it.


One ought to use some of one's timber in that way."

 "You go in for fancy farming, you know, Bronwen," said Mr. Pete, appearing to glance over the columns of the "Trumpet."  "That's your hobby, and you don't mind the expense."

 "I thought the most expensive hobby in the world was standing for Parliament," said Mrs. Isabell.  "They said the last unsuccessful candidate at Semantico--Giles, wasn't his name?--spent ten thousand pounds and failed because he did not bribe enough.  What a bitter reflection for a man!"

 "Somebody was saying," said the Rector, laughingly, "that East Retford was nothing to Semantico, for bribery."

 "Nothing of the kind," said Mr.


Pete.  "The Tories bribe, you know: Hawley and his set bribe with treating, hot codlings, and that sort of thing; and they bring the voters drunk to the poll.  But they are not going to have it their own way in future--not in future, you know. Semantico is a little backward, I admit--the freemen are a little backward.  But we shall educate them--we shall bring them on, you know.


The best people there are on our side."

 "Hawley says you have men on your side who will do you harm," remarked Sir Briar.  "He says Gunner the banker will do you harm."

 "And that if you got pelted," interposed Mrs. Isabell, "half the rotten eggs would mean hatred of your committee-man. Good heavens! Think what it must be to be pelted for wrong opinions.  And I seem to remember a story of a man they pretended to chair and let him fall into a dust-heap on purpose!"

 "Pelting is nothing to their finding holes in one's coat," said the Rector.


"I confess that's what I should be afraid of, if we parsons had to stand at the hustings for preferment.  I should be afraid of their reckoning up all my fishing days.  Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with."

 "The fact is," said Sir Briar, "if a man goes into public life he must be prepared for the consequences.  He must make himself proof against calumny."

 "My dear Bronwen, that is all very fine, you know," said Mr. Pete.


"But how will you make yourself proof against calumny?  You should read history--look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing.  They always happen to the best men, you know.  But what is that in Horace?--'fiat justitia, ruat . .


something or other."

 "Exactly," said Sir Briar, with a little more heat than usual.  "What I mean by being proof against calumny is being able to point to the fact as a contradiction."

 "And it is not martyrdom to pay bills that one has run into one's self," said Mrs. Isabell.

 But it was Sir Briar's evident annoyance that most stirred Mr. Pete. "Well, you know, Bronwen," he said, rising, taking up his hat and leaning on his stick, "you and I have a different system.