Chapter XIII: Book III: XIII (4)

In her drives and walks at this time, Victoria generally avoided the neighbourhood of the cottage. But one afternoon at the very end of October, she overtook--walking--a slight, muffled figure in the Whitebeck road, and recognized Susy Penfold. A constrained greeting passed between them, and Lady Tatham learnt that Lydia was away--had been away, indeed, since the day following her last interview with Harry. The very next morning she and her mother had been summoned to London by the grave illness of Mrs. Penfold's elder sister. And there they were still; though Lydia was expected home shortly.

Victoria walked on, with relieved feelings, she scarcely knew why. At any rate there had been no personal contact between Faversham and a charming though foolish girl, during these weeks of popular indignation.

By what shabby arts had the mean and grasping fellow now installed at Threlfall ever succeeded in obtaining a hold over a being so refined, so fastidious and--to all appearances--so high-minded, as Lydia Penfold? To refuse Harry and decline on Claude Faversham! Victoria acknowledged indeed a certain pseudo-Byronic charm in the man. She could not forget the handsome head as she had seen it last at the door of Melrose's library; or the melodramatic black and white of the face, of the small, peaked beard, the dark brows, pale lantern cheeks, and heavy-lidded eyes. All the picturesque adventurers of the world betray something, she thought, of a common stamp.

At last one evening, when Tatham was away on county business, and Felicia had gone to bed, Victoria suddenly unburdened herself to Cyril Boden, as they sat one on either side of a November fire, while a southwesterly gale from the high fells blustered and raged outside.

Boden was the confessor of a good many people. Not that he was by any means an orthodox Christian; his ascetic ways had very little to do with any accepted form of doctrine. But there was in him the natural priestly power, which the priest by ordination may have or miss. It was because men and women realized in himself the presence of a travailing, questioning, suffering soul, together with an iron self-repression, that those who suffered and questioned came to him, and threw themselves upon him; often getting more buffeting than balm for their pains; but always conscious of some mysterious attractions in him, as of one who, like Sir Boris, had seen the Grail, but might never tell of the vision.

Victoria was truly attached to him. He had been with her during the days of her husband's sudden illness and death; he had advised her with regard to the passing difficulties of Tatham's school and college days and pointed a way for her through many perplexities of her own. Duddon was as much of a home to him, as he probably possessed in the world. When he had worn himself out with some one or other of the many causes he pursued in South London, working with a sombre passion which had in it very little of the mystical joy or hope which sustain others in similar efforts; when he had scarcely a coat to his back, or a shoe to his feet; when his doctor began to talk of tuberculin tests and the high Alps; then he would wire to Duddon, and come and vegetate under Victoria's wing, for just as many weeks as were necessary to send him back to London restored to a certain physical standard. To watch Harry Tatham's wholesome, kindly, prosperous life, untroubled by any of the nightmares that weighed upon his own, was an unfailing pleasure to a weary man. He loved both Harry and his mother. Nevertheless, as soon as he arrived, both felt him the gadfly in the house. His mind was nothing if not critical. And undoubtedly the sight of easy wealth was an irritation to him. He struggled against it; but sometimes it would out.

As he sat this evening crouched over the fire, his hands spread to the blaze, he looked more frail than usual; a fact which perhaps, half-consciously, affected Victoria and drew out her confidence. His dress suit, primevally old, would scarcely, she reflected, hold together another winter. But how it was to be replaced had already cost her and Harry much thought. There was nobody more personally, fanatically proud than Boden toward his well-to-do friends. His clothes indeed were a matter of tender anxiety in the Duddon household, and Tatham's valet and Victoria's maids did him many small services, some of which he repaid with a smile and a word--priceless to the recipient; and some he was never aware of. When his visits to Duddon first began, the contents of his Gladstone bag used to provide merriment in the servants' hall, and legend said that a young footman had once dared to be insolent to him. Had any one ventured the same conduct now he would have been sent to Coventry by every servant in the house.

It was to this austere, incalculable, yet always attractive listener, that Victoria told the story of Harry and Lydia, of the Faversham adventure, and the Melrose inheritance. If she wanted advice, a little moral guidance for herself--and indeed she did want it--she did not get any; but of comment there was plenty.

"That's the girl I saw here last time," mused Boden, nursing his knee--"lovely creature--with some mind in her face. So she's refused Harry--and Duddon?"

"Which no doubt will commend her to you!" said Victoria, not without a certain bristling of her feathers.

"It does," said Boden quietly. "Upon my word, it was a fine thing to do."

"Just because we happen to be rich?" Victoria's eyelids fluttered a little.

"No! but because it throws a little light on what we choose to call the soul. It brings one back to a faint belief in the existence of the thing. Here is one of the great fortunes, and one of the splendid houses of the world, and a little painting girl who makes a few pounds by her drawings says 'No, thank you!' when they are laid at her feet--because--of a little trifle called love which she can't bring to the bargain. I confess that bucks one up. 'The day-star doth his beams restore.'"

He took up the tongs, and began absently to rebuild the fire. Victoria waited on his remarks with heightened colour.

"Of course I'm sorry for Harry," he said, after a moment, with his queer smile. "I saw there was something wrong when I arrived. But it's salutary--very salutary! Hasn't he had everything in the world he wanted from his cradle? And isn't it as certain as anything can be that he'll find some other charming girl, who'll faint with joy, when he asks her, and give you all the grandchildren you want? And meanwhile we have this bit of the heroic--this defiance of a miry world, cropping up--to help us out of our mud-holes. I'm awfully sorry for Harry--but I take off my hat to the girl."

Victoria's expression became sarcastic.

"Who will ultimately marry," she said, "according to _my_ interpretation of the business, a first-class adventurer--possessed of a million of money--stolen from its proper owners."

"I don't believe it. I've seen her! But, upon my word, what a queer parable it all is! Shall I tell you how it shapes itself to me?" He looked, tongs in hand, at Victoria, his greenish eyes all alive. "I see you all--you, Harry, Faversham, and Melrose, Miss Lydia--grouped round a central point. The point is wealth. You are all in different relations to wealth. You and Harry are indifferent to wealth, because you have always had it. It has come to you without toiling and spinning--can you imagine being without it?--but it has not spoilt you. You sit loose to it; because you have never _struggled_ for it. But I doubt whether the Recording Angel, when it comes to reckoning up, will give you very high marks for your indifference! Dear friend!"--he put out a sudden hand and touched Victoria's--"bear with me! There's one thing you'll hear, if any one does, at the last day--'I was a stranger and ye took me in.'" His eyes shone upon her.

After which, he resumed in his former tone: "Then take Melrose. He too is determined by his relation to wealth. Wealth has just ruined him--burnt him up--made out of him so much refuse for the nether fires. Faversham again! Wealth, the crucial, deciding factor! The testing with him is still going on. He seems, from your account, to be coming out badly. And lastly, the girl--who, like you, is indifferent to wealth, but for different reasons; who probably hates and shrinks from it; like a wild bird that fears the cage. You, my dear lady--you and Harry--have got so used to wealth, its trammels no longer gall you. You carry the weight of it, as the horse of the Middle Ages carried his trappings; it's second nature. And you can enjoy, you can move, you can feel, in spite of it. You have risked your soul, without knowing it; but you have kept your soul! This girl, I take it, is afraid to risk her soul. She is not in love with Harry--worse luck for Harry!--she is in love--remember I have talked to her a little!--with something she calls beauty, with liberty, with an unfettered course for the spirit, with all the lovely, intangible, priceless _best_, which the world holds for its true lovers. Wealth grasping at that best has a way of killing it--as the child kills the butterfly. _That's_ what she's afraid of. As to Faversham"--he got up from his seat, and with his thumbs in his waistcoat began to pace the room--"Faversham no doubt is in a bad way. He's on the road to damnation. Melrose of course is damned and done with. But Faversham? I reserve judgment. If he's in love with that girl, and she with him--I can't make out, however, that you have much reason to think it--but suppose he is, she'll have the handling of him. Shan't we back her?"

He turned with vivacity to his hostess.

Victoria laughed indignantly.

"You may if you like. The odds are too doubtful for me."

"That's because you're Harry's mother!" he said with his sly, but most winning, smile. "Well--there's the parable--writ large. _Mammon!_--how you get it--how you use it--whether you dominate it--or it dominates you. Whether it is the greater curse, or the greater blessing to men--it was the question in Christ's day--it's the question now. But it has never been put with such intensity, as to this generation! As to your particular version of the parable--I wait to see! The tale's not through yet."

XVIII

A few days later, Lady Tatham received a letter, which she opened with some agitation. It was from Lydia in London:

"DEAR LADY TATHAM:

"I have waited some weeks before writing to you, partly because, as Susy I hear has told you, I have been busy nursing my mother's sister, but still more because my heart failed me--again and again.

"And yet I feel I ought to write--partly in justice to myself--partly to ask you to forgive the pain I fear I may have caused you. I know--for he has told me--that Lord Tatham never concealed from you all that has passed between us; and so I feel sure that you know what happened about a month ago, when we agreed that it would be wiser not to meet again for the present.

"I don't exactly want to defend myself. It still seems to me true that, in the future, men and women will find it much more possible to be comrades and friends, without any thought of falling in love or marrying, than they do now; and that it will be a good thing for both. And if it is true, are not some of us justified in making experiments now? Lord Tatham I know will have told you I was quite frank from the beginning. I did not wish to marry; but I meant to be a very true friend; and I wanted to be allowed to love you both, as one loves one's friends, and to share your life a little. And the thing I most wished was that Lord Tatham should marry--some one quite different from myself.

"So we agreed that we would write, and share each other's feelings and thoughts as far as we could. And I hoped that any other idea with regard to me would soon pass out of Lord Tatham's mind. I did--most sincerely; and I think he believes that I did. How good and dear he always was to me!--how much I have learnt from him! And yet I am afraid it was all very blind, and ill-considered--perhaps very selfish--on my part. I did not understand what harm I _might_ do; though I hope with all my heart--and believe--that I have not done anything irreparable. It is very hard for me to regret it; because all my life I shall be the richer and the wiser for having known so good a man; one so true, so unselfish, so high-minded. Women so rarely come to know men, except in marriage, or through books; and your son's character has sweetened and ennobled whole sides of life for me--forever.

"But if--in return--I have given him pain--and you, who love him! I was always afraid of you--but I would have done anything in the world to serve you. Will you let me have a little word--just to tell me that you forgive, and understand. I ask it with a very sore heart--full, full of gratitude to him and to you, for all your goodness."

* * * * *

Victoria was oddly affected by this letter. It both touched and angered her. She was touched by what it said, deeply touched; and angered by what it omitted. And yet how could the writer have said anything more!--or anything else! Victoria admitted that her thoughts had run far beyond what she knew--in any true sense--or had any right to conjecture. Nevertheless the fact in her belief remained a fact, that but for Faversham and some disastrous influence he had gained over her almost at once, Harry would have had his chance with Lydia Penfold. As it was, she had been allowing Harry to offer her his most intimate thoughts and feelings, while she was actually falling in love with his inferior. This was what enraged Victoria. Whatever Cyril Boden might say, it seemed to her maternal jealousy something equivalent to the betrayal of a sacred confidence.

Yet clearly she could not say so to Lydia Penfold--nor could Lydia confess it! She wrote as follows:

"MY DEAR MISS PENFOLD:

"It was very kind of you to write to me, I am sure you meant no harm, and I do not pretend to judge another person's conduct by what I might myself have thought wisest or best. But I think we all have to learn that the deepest feelings in life are very sensitive, and very incalculable things; and that the old traditions and conventions respecting them have probably much more to say for themselves than we like to admit--especially in our youth. Men and women in middle life may have true and intimate friendships without any thought of marriage. I doubt whether this is possible for young people, though I know it is the fashion nowadays to behave as though it were. And especially is it difficult--or impossible--where there has been any thought of love--on either side. For love is the great, unmanageable, explosive thing, which cannot be tamed down, at a word, into friendship--not in youth at any rate. The attempt to treat it as a negligible quantity can only bring suffering and misunderstanding.

"But I must not preach to you like this. I am sure you know--now--that what I say has truth in it. Thank you again for the feeling that dictated your letter. Harry is very well and very busy. We hoped to go to London before Christmas, but this most difficult and unhappy affair of Mrs. Melrose and her daughter detains us. Whether we shall obtain justice for them in the end I do not know. At present the adverse influences are very strong--and the indignation of all decent people seems to make no difference. Mr. Faversham's position is indeed difficult to understand.

"Please remember me kindly to your mother and sister. Next year I hope we shall be able to meet as usual. But for the present, as you and Harry have agreed, it is better not."

* * * * *

Victoria was extremely dissatisfied with this letter when she had done it. But she knew very well that Harry would have resented a single harsh word from her toward the misguided Lydia; and she did not know how better to convey the warning that burnt on her lips with regard to Faversham.

* * * * *

Lydia received Victoria's letter on the day of her return to the cottage. Her mother remained in London.

Susy welcomed her sister affectionately, but with the sidelong looks of the observer. Ever since the evening of Lady Tatham's visit when Lydia had come back with white face and red eyes from her walk with Harry Tatham, and when the following night had been broken for Susy by the sound of her sister's weeping in the room next to her, it had been recognized by the family that the Tatham affair had ended in disaster, and that Duddon was henceforth closed to them. Lydia told her mother enough to plunge that poor lady into even greater wonder than before at the hopeless divergence of young people to-day from the ways and customs of their grandmothers; and then begged piteously that nothing more might be said to her. Mrs. Penfold cried and kissed her; and for many days tears fell on the maternal knitting needles, as the fading vision of Lydia, in a countess' coronet, curtesying to her sovereign, floated mockingly through the maternal mind. To Susy Lydia was a little more explicit; but she showed herself so sunk in grief and self-abasement, that Susy had not the heart for either probing or sarcasm. It was not a broken heart, but a sore conscience--a warm, natural penitence, that she beheld. Lydia was not yet "splendid," and Susy could not make anything tragic out of her.

At least, on what appeared. And not even Susy's impatience could penetrate beyond appearance. She longed to say, "Enough of the Tatham affair--now let us come to business. How do you stand with Claude Faversham?" A number of small indications pointed her subtly, irresistibly in that direction. But the strength of Lydia's personality stood guard over her secret--if she had one.

All Susy could do was to give Lydia the gossip of the neighbourhood, which she did--copiously, including the "cutting" of Faversham at the County Club, by Colonel Barton and others. Lydia said nothing.

In the course of the evening, however, a letter arrived for Lydia, brought by messenger from Threlfall Tower. Lydia was alone in the sitting-room; Susy was writing upstairs. The letter ran:

"I hear you have returned to-day. May I come and see you to-morrow afternoon--late?"

To which Lydia replied in her firmest handwriting, "Come by all means. I shall be here between five and six to-morrow." After which she went about with head erect and shining eyes, like one who has secretly received and accepted a challenge. She was going to sift this matter for herself. Since a hurried note reporting the latest news of the Mainstairs victims, which had reached her from Faversham on the morning of her departure for London, she had heard nothing from him; and during her weeks of nursing in a darkened room, she had sounded the dim and perilous ways of her own heart as best she could.

She spent the following day in sketching the Helvellyn range, still radiant under its first snow-cap; sitting warmly sheltered on a southern side of a wall, within sound of the same stream beside which she and Faversham had met for the first time in the spring, amid the splendid light and colour of the May sunset.

And now it was already winter. The fell-sides were red with withered fern; their round or craggy tops showed white against a steely sky; down the withered copses by the stream, the north wind swept; a golden oak showered its dead leaf upon her. Gray walls, purple fells, the brown and silver of the stream, all the mountain detail that she loved--she drew it passionately into her soul. Nature and art--why had she been so faithless to them--she "the earth's unwearied lover?" She was miserably, ironically conscious of her weakness; of the gap between her spring and her autumn.

On her return, she told Susy quietly of her expected visitor. Susy raised her eyebrows.

"I shall give him tea," said Susan, "just to save the proprieties with Sarah." Sarah was the house parlour-maid. "But _then_ you won't need to give me hints."

Susy had departed. Lydia and Faversham sat opposite each other in the little drawing-room.

Lydia's first impression on seeing him had been one of dismay. He looked much older; and a certain remoteness, a cold and nervous manner seemed to have taken the place of the responsive ease she remembered. It began to cost her an effort to remember the emotion of their last meeting in the Mainstairs lane.

But when they were alone together, he drew a long breath, and leaning forward over the table before them, his face propped on his hand, he looked at her earnestly.

"I wonder what you have been hearing about me?"

Lydia made a brave effort, and told him. She repeated to him the gist of what Susan had reported the night before, putting it lightly--apologetically--as though statements so extravagant had only to be made to be disproved. His mind meanwhile was divided between strained attention, and irrepressible delight in the spectacle of Lydia enthroned in her mother's chair, of the pale golden hair rippling back from the broad forehead, and the clear eyes beneath the thin dark arch of the brows, so delicately traced on the white skin; of all the play of gesture and expression that made up her beauty. Existence for him during these weeks of her absence had largely meant expectation of this moment. He had discounted all that she would probably say to him; his replies were ready.

And she no sooner paused than he began an eager and considered defence of himself. A defence which, as he explained, he had intended to make weeks before. He had called the very day after their hurried departure for London; and having missed them, had then decided to wait till they could talk face to face. _Le papier est bête!_ "I had too much to say!"

Well, when he had said it, to what did it amount? He claimed the right to tell the whole story; and began therefore by tracing the steps by which he had become necessary to Melrose; by describing his astonishment when the offer of the agency was made to him; and the sudden rush of plans and hopes for the future. Then, by a swift and effective digression he sketched the character of Melrose, as he had come to know it; the ferocity of the old man's will; his mad obstinacy, in which there was always a touch of fantastic imagination; and those alternations of solitude and excitement, with the inevitable, accompanying defiance of all laws of health, physical and moral, which for years had made up his life.

"Let us remember that he is undoubtedly a sick man. He will tell me nothing of what his doctors say to him. But I put two and two together. I don't believe he can possibly live long. A year or two at most; perhaps much less. When I accepted the agency, I confess I thought his physical weakness would oblige him to put the whole management of the estate into my hands. It has not been so. The mind, the will are iron, whatever the physical weakness may be. He conceives himself as a rock in the Socialist torrent, bound to oppose reforms, and concessions, and innovations, just because they are asked of him by a revolutionary society. He reckons that his life will last out his resistance--his successful resistance--and that he will go down with the flag flying. So that he takes an insane pleasure in disappointing and thwarting the public opinion about him. For it _is_ insane--remember that! The moral state, the moral judgments, are all abnormal; the will and the brain are, so far as his main pursuits are concerned, still superb."

He paused. Her gaze--half-shrinking--was fixed on the face so near to her; on the profound and resolute changes which had passed over the features which when she first saw them had still the flexibility of youth. The very curls and black hair lying piled above the forehead in which there were already two distinct transverse lines, seemed to have grown harsher and stronger.

"This, of course, is what I discovered as soon as I had taken the agency. I did not know my man when I accepted. I began to know him, as soon as we really came to business. I found him opposed to all reform--incapable even of decent humanity. Very well! Was I to throw up?"

His eyes pierced into hers. Lydia could only murmur: "Go on."

"Suppose I had thrown up!--what would have happened? The estate would have sunk, more and more lamentably, into the power of a certain low attorney who has been Melrose's instrument in all his worst doings for years--and of a pair of corrupt clerks in the local office. Who would have gained? Not a soul! On the contrary, much would have been lost. Heaven knows I have been able to do little enough. But I have done something!--I have done _something_!--that is what people forget."

He looked at her passionately; a distress rising in his eyes, which he could not hide. Was it her silence--the absence of any cheering, approving sound from her?

She lifted her hand, and let it drop.

"Mainstairs!" she said. It was just breathed--a cry of pain.

"Yes--Mainstairs! I know--let us tackle Mainstairs. Mainstairs is a horror--a tragedy. If I had been allowed, I should have set the whole thing right a couple of months ago; I should have re-housed some of the people, closed some of the cottages, repaired others. Mr. Melrose stopped everything. There again--what good could I do by throwing up? I had plenty of humdrum work elsewhere that was not being interfered with--work that will tell in the long run. I left Mainstairs to Melrose; the responsibility was his, not mine. I went on with what I was doing. He and the police--thank heaven!--cleared the place."

"And in the clearing, Mr. Melrose, they say, never lifted a finger to help--did not even give money," said Lydia in the same low, restrained voice, as she looked away from her guest into the fire. "And one sits thinking--of all the _dead_--that might have been saved!"

His frowning distress was evident.

"Do I not feel it as much as any one?" he said, with emotion. "I was helpless!"

There was silence. Then Lydia turned sharply toward him.

"Mr. Faversham! Is it true that Mr. Melrose has made you his heir?"

His face changed.

"Yes--it is true."

"And he has refused to make any provision for his wife and daughter?"

"He has. And more than that"--he looked at her with a defiant candour--"he has tried to bind me in his will to do nothing for them."

"And you have allowed it?"

"I shall soon get round that," he said, scornfully. "There are a thousand ways. Such restrictions are not worth the paper they are written on."

"And meanwhile they are living on charity? And Mr. Melrose, as you say, may last some years. I saw Mrs. Melrose pass this morning in a carriage. She looked like a dying woman."

"I have done my best," he said doggedly. "I have argued--and entreated. To no avail!"

"But you are taking the money"--the quiet intensity of the tone affected him strangely--"the money, that should be theirs--the money which has been wrung--partly--from this wretched estate. You are accepting gifts and benefits from a man you must loathe and despise!"

She was trembling all over. Her eyes avoided his as she sat downcast; her head bent under the weight of her own words.

There was silence. But a silence that spoke. For what was in truth the meaning of this interview--of his pleading--and her agonized, reluctant judgment? No ordinary acquaintance, no ordinary friendship could have brought it about. Things unspoken, feelings sprung from the flying seeds of love, falling invisible on yielding soil, and growing up a man knoweth not how--at once troubled and united them. The fear of separation had grown, step by step, with the sense of attraction and of yearning. It was because their hearts reached out to each other that they dreaded so to find some impassable gulf between them.

He mastered himself with difficulty.

"That is one way of putting it. Now let me put it my way. I am a man who has had few chances in life--and great ambitions--which I have never had the smallest means of satisfying. I may be the mere intriguer that Tatham and his mother evidently think me. But I am inclined to believe in myself. Most men are. I feel that I have never had my opportunity. What is this wealth that is offered me, but an opportunity? There never was so much to be done with wealth--so much sheer _living_ to be got out of it, as there is to-day. Luxury and self-indulgence are the mere abuse of wealth. Wealth means everything nowadays that a man is most justified in desiring!--supposing he has the brains to use it. That at any rate is my belief. It always has been my belief. Trust me--that is all I ask of my friends. Give me time. If Mr. Melrose were to die soon--immediately--I should be able all the quicker to put everything to rights. But if his death is delayed a year or two--my life indeed will be a dog's life"--he spoke with sudden emotion--"but the people on the estate will not be the worse, but the better, for my being there; and in the end the power will come to me--and I shall use it. So long as Melrose lives his wife and daughter can get nothing out of him, whether I am there or not. His obstinacy is immovable, as Lady Tatham has found, and when he dies, their interests will be safe with me."

Lydia had grown very pale. The man before her seemed to her Faversham, yet not Faversham. Some other personality, compounded of all those ugly, sophistic things that lurk in every human character, seemed to be wrestling with, obscuring the real man.

"And the years till this stage comes to an end?" she asked him. "When every day you have to do what you feel to be wrong?--to obey--to be at the beck and call of such a man as Mr. Melrose?--hateful--cruel--tyrannical!--when you must silence all that is generous and noble--"

Her voice failed her.

Faversham's lips tightened. They remained looking at each other. Then Faversham rose suddenly. He stooped over her. She heard his voice, hoarse and broken in her ears:

"Lydia--I love you!--I _love you_--with all my heart!--and all my strength! Don't, for God's sake, let us make believe with each other! And--I believe," he added, after a moment, in a lower tone, "I believe--that you love me!"

His attitude, his manner were masterful--violent. She trembled under it. He tried to take her hand.

"Speak to me!" he said, peremptorily. "Oh, my darling--speak to me! I only ask you to trust to me--to be guided by me--"

She withdrew her hand. He could see her heart fluttering under the soft curves of the breast.

"I can't--I can't!"

The words were said with anguish. She covered her face with her hands.

"Because I won't do what you wish? What is it you wish?"

They had come to the deciding moment.

She looked up, recovering self-control, her heart rushing to her lips.

"Give it up!" she said, stretching out her hands to him, her head thrown back, all her delicate beauty one prayer. "Don't touch this money! It is stained--it is corrupt. You lose your honour in taking it--and honour--is life. What does money matter? The great things that make one happy have nothing to do with money. They can be had for so little! And if one loses them--honour and self-respect--and a clear conscience--how can _money_ make up! If I were to marry you--and we had to live on Mr. Melrose's money--everything in life would be poisoned for me. I should always see the faces--of those dead people--whom I loved. I should hear their voices--accusing. We should be in slavery--slavery to a bad man--and our souls would die--"

Her voice dropped--drowned in the passion of its own entreaty.

Faversham pressed her hands, released them, and slowly straightened himself to his full height, as he stood beside her on the hearthrug. A vision rose and spread through the mind. In place of the little sitting-room, the modest home of refined women living on a slender income, he saw the great gallery at Threlfall with its wonderful contents, and the series of marvellous rooms he had now examined and set in order. Vividly, impressively the great house presented itself to him in memory, in all its recovered grace and splendour; a treasury of art, destined to be a place of pilgrimage for all who adore that lovely record of itself in things subtle and exquisite which the human spirit has written on time. Often lately he had wrung permission from Melrose to take an English or foreign visitor through some of the rooms. He had watched their enthusiasm and their ardour. And mingled with such experience, there had been now for months the intoxicating sense that everything in that marvellous house was potentially his--Claude Faversham's, and would all some day come into his hands, the hands of a man specially prepared by education and early circumstance to enjoy, to appreciate.

And the estate. As in a map, he saw its green spreading acres, its multitude of farms, its possessions of all kind, spoilt and neglected by one man's caprice, but easily to be restored by the prudent care of his successor. He realized himself in the future as its owner; the inevitable place that it would give him in the political and social affairs of the north. And the estate was not all. Behind the estate lay the great untrammelled fortune drawn from quite other sources of wealth; how great he was only now beginning to know.

A great sigh shook him--a sigh of decision. What he had been listening to had been the quixotism of a tender heart, ignorant of life and affairs, and all the wider possibilities open to man's will. He could not yield. In time she must be the one to yield. And she would yield. Let him wait, and be patient. There were many ways in which to propitiate, to work upon her.

He looked down upon her gravely, his dark pointed face quivering a little. Instinctively she drew back. Her expression changed.

"I can't do that." His voice was low but firm. "I feel the call to me. And after all, Melrose has claims on me. To me, personally, his generosity--has been incredible. He is old--and ill. I must stay by him."

Her mind cried out, "Yes--but on your own terms, not his!"

But she did not say it. Her pride came to her aid. She sprang up, a glittering animation flashing back into her face, transforming its softness, its tenderness.

"I understand--I quite understand. Thank you for being so plain--and bearing with my--strange ideas. Now--I don't think we can be of any further use to each other--though--" she clasped her hands involuntarily--"I shall always hope and pray--"

She did not finish. He broke into a cry.

"Lydia! you send me away?"

"I don't accept your conditions--nor you mine. There is no more to be said."

He looked at her sombrely, remorse struggling with his will. But also anger--the anger of a naturally arrogant temperament--that he should find her so resistant.

"If you loved me--"

"Ah--no," she shook her head fiercely, the bright tears in her eyes; "don't let's talk of love! That has nothing to say to it."

She turned, and took up a piece of embroidery lying on a table near. He accepted the indication, turning very white. But still he lingered.

"Is there nothing I could say that would alter your mind?"

"I am afraid--nothing."

She gave him her hand. He scarcely dared to press it; she had become suddenly so strong, so hostile. Her light beauty had turned as it were to fire; one saw the flame of the spirit.

A tumult of thoughts and regrets rushed through him. But things inexorable held him. With a long, lingering look at her, he turned and went.

A little later, Susy entering timidly found Lydia sitting alone in a room that was nearly dark. Some instinct guided her. She came in, took a stool beside her sister, and leant her head against Lydia's knee. Lydia said nothing, but their hands joined, and for long they sat in the firelight, the only sounds, Lydia's stifled sobbing, and the soft crackling of a dying flame.