Chapter XVI: Mina Rushes on Her Fate

It might have been imagined that Ernest Ivraine would hardly have been the man voluntarily to make a fresh care and anxiety for himself, nor had he voluntarily, in the first instance, sown the seeds of a troublesome crop, promising, if fostered, to bring forth trials abundantly; no—that inexplicable something which moulds our life’s experiences into a definite shape—fate, chance, accident, call it by what name you will—cast the germ into the ground, and he—half-unconsciously, perhaps—instead of nipping and crushing it in the bud, nursed and tended the plant, so that, at length, after it had grown, when he came to see the evil of it—when he discovered the sorrow it was likely to prove, he found its roots had twined themselves so around his heart that he could only eradicate the one by tearing out the other.

The soil of his rugged nature was one in which it was difficult to get any tender emotion to flourish; but that obstacle once surmounted, the rest was easy. It stayed there, spite of himself, spite of circumstances, spite of prudence, through life; and so, since her uncle’s death, since he came to understand how poor Mina actually was, since he had found that, like himself, she was penniless, he had never listened to the voice of prudence at all. He felt, so long as Mina was likely to be an heiress, that to her he was—must always be—nothing; but now, though he might not marry, he could care for her, and he would have done anything in the world to make her care for him: but Mina would not; she had been annoyed, not by, but through him; her pride was wounded, her vanity offended; her womanly feelings were insulted; they never seemed destined to “get on” together. Mina went back with him to what she had been with others as a child: but that made no difference to him; he was fond of her, though he never exactly knew why he was so; though he could not have given a single reason for his apparently extraordinary choice, there could not be a single doubt of the matter: he, Ernest Ivraine, a prudent, practical, silent, uncommunicative man, was, nevertheless, so totally deficient in worldly sense and worldly caution as to form a very sincere affection for a girl without a shilling, of whose real nature he had not the faintest idea, many years younger than himself, not handsome—merely pretty, with a strange wayward mood, and a not especially placid temper. In one word, he had made one cold plunge into the stream of his fate, and found himself—sometimes to his pleasure, oftener to his sorrow—decidedly in love.

Sir Ernest, shrewdly suspecting this, wrote a confidential missive to Messrs. Smeek and Scott, inquiring about John Merapie and his family; but the solicitors, not being detective officers, merely informed him, by return of post, that they understood Mr. Merapie was dead, and his widowed sister removed from London: wherefore the baronet was once more thrown off the scent, and he did not find it again till too late to benefit by it.

Colin Saunders, who had now been for a considerable period “useful man” about Paradise, indeed heard occasionally from his daughter—who lived near Miss Caldera, and had established a sort of patronizing intimacy with that lady’s servant—how Mr. Ivraine was great friends with Mr. Malcolm Frazer, and spent half his time with him when in London; but Colin never guessed the truth—never thought so “dark-browed a young gentleman” would dream of marrying any one but some great heiress; and, even if he had known all, and the baronet had stretched him on the rack, he would have divulged nothing. He was a worthy descendant of the stiff old Covenanters, who worshipped on the bare hill sides, and skulked in caves, and braved death and persecution and torture for conscience sake. “The man was a mass of sterling steady principle,” so Ernest once said, and he was right.

“When the heart gives the will, the devil gives the way,” is one of those aphorisms people never care to speak, because it can lay no claim to beauty of thought and elegance of expression; but still, one which nobody can deny, because it generally proves so strictly true. Far be it from me to say that his Satanic majesty had any share in sending Ernest Ivraine so often to London, but surely it was an evil genius which drove him so perpetually across Mina’s path: excuses were never wanting to render a visit to the metropolis needful, for Henry was married now—married to an heiress, rich in goodness, beauty, friends, and ancestors. The young officer inundated his brother with lists of commissions he desired executed,—every third or fourth Indian mail brought with it the necessity for a journey to town; and the sum Ernest had accumulated on Henry’s behalf, but which Henry had exultingly returned to him, enabled the miser’s elder son to protract his visits a little longer than it would otherwise have been possible for him to do: so he was always coming to see Malcolm, perpetually being announced as “in the drawing-room, sir,” by the maid-of-all-work, after the fashion recorded towards the conclusion of the preceding chapter, before this explanation of his feelings was commenced.

On the day in question, however, he did not see Mina; she had a bad headache, went to her own room, and, moreover, to put it out of Malcolm’s power to torment her further, went determinedly off to bed.

Perhaps her brother really thought she was ill; perhaps he regretted annoying the pale-faced girl, his only near relative; perhaps he felt there was much blameable in his own conduct; perhaps some words Ernest Ivraine had spoken, during the course of their interview, might have induced him to look more affectionately at her—less angrily on the world; perhaps it was only the usual reaction, which generally occurred after he had been particularly pettish towards her; perhaps her concluding sentence had touched his heart and aroused his pride; at all events one thing was certain, that he was so kind to her the following morning, so different from usual, so much like the wild good-natured youth of other times, that Mina forgot her vexation, and felt for the moment happy to see him so; and that afternoon, when the baronet’s son walked in with her brother, she did not go to bed again, but remained in the room, not talking herself, but listening to them doing so,—for, at last, Malcolm had appealed to Mr. Ivraine for advice, and Mr. Ivraine, for the first time since Mina had known him, spoke long, earnestly, energetically; he grew absolutely eloquent whilst looking at the young man’s position, and exhorting him to do what he had not been brave enough to do himself. The difference between them was, however, that he was waiting and longing for something, and Malcolm was not,—unless, indeed, for absolute beggary, which he had unintentionally confessed was stalking towards them. Ernest at length comprehended how they were situated, and he first advised strenuously, and then proffered assistance.

It was a painful conversation throughout; Mina felt it to be so, as, step by step, word by word, it approached the end; but there was a fascination about it for her: even had a sufficient pretext arisen for her to leave the apartment, she could not have done it, so strongly were her interest excited, her feelings aroused: there was a fate in it, as there is in all things in earth below, in heaven above.

“I will tell you,” said Mr. Ivraine, by way of conclusion to the many arguments he had advanced, in order to induce Malcolm to go forth and battle manfully,—for he felt a sort of sympathy for and interest in him, and desired to warn the youth, ere it was too late, to avoid the quicksand on which he was stranded,—“I will tell you,” he repeated, rising and leaning against the corner of the mantel-piece, his face turned towards both his auditors, “what course a friend of mine adopted, whose case was not, apparently, nearly so hopeless as yours. Would to God I had followed his example a dozen years since, my lot would have been a happier one; but let that pass. He was not qualified for a business man; he had not received an education fitting him to be a professional one; his father would not push him forward in any way: he had friends, it is true, possessed of some influence; but they thought, and naturally, it was his parent’s duty to provide for him; and, even had such not been the case, he was too proud and self-reliant to seek their assistance. He disliked home for many sufficient reasons; but still, recollect he had a home—and—so long as he remained there, a species of support, which you have not. That fact makes all the difference between your cases. He was not absolutely compelled to work; you ought to have been doing so long ago.

“He thought for a time, and then he acted. Starting from his father’s house one gloomy morning in November, with a money capital of a few shillings, and none other, save an energetic determined spirit, which will accomplish more for a man than any moderate amount of money, high birth, or connexion.

“People said he was mad, for his father was rich, an old man, likely to die soon; they affirmed, if he had only waited a little longer he would have found wealth ready made to his hand, whereas, by his rashness, he had flung the chance of fortune—save by his own exertions—from him for ever; but he replied, he had rather make a fortune than wait for one, that he desired the death of no man, and that he would not waste the best years of his life lounging about home, and putting himself in the way of being tempted to commit a great sin, viz. that of wishing for his father’s death: he said, that those who stayed might gain; that, for his part, he would either win a happy home for himself on the earth, or else seek it in the grave; that, if he earned a name, his father should hear of him again,—if not, he would never return to the land of his birth more.”

The speaker paused for a moment, but neither Malcolm nor Mina interposed a word. Unconsciously, whilst recalling the events of that night, he had grown desperately in earnest, and that earnestness flung such a stamp of reality upon the narrative, that the listeners felt, in hearkening to it, almost as though the hopeful, ardent, brave adventurer were standing there before them, recounting with his own lips the story of his trials, resolves, struggles. Mina’s gaze became rivetted on the miser’s eldest born; she wanted to hear what one so situated had done: to learn, for a certainty, what her brother might do. Ernest Ivraine met that anxious, eager glance, and felt it pain, even while it calmed, him. With a half sigh, turning his eyes on Malcolm and striving to forget the straining look he knew was fastened on his face, he resumed:

“He went as I have said, enlisted in the army as a common soldier in a regiment just about embarking for India, never informed his father of the step he had taken, never repented him of it,—but sailed,—a gentleman in the uniform of the ranks.

“Years rolled away, and in England there was only one who knew accurately what had become of him; and when that friend was at length enabled to send him out a sum sufficient to purchase a commission, it was returned with the proud boast that he had bought one with his blood; that he had fought his way up to the point where he stood, and could show for every step some severe wound, some long deep scar. Note the result of his rash folly, as people termed it. His father is still living: he might have grown grey-haired waiting for the wealth which could only be his through the death of a parent, and was then contingent on the old man’s will; he might have moped and dawdled and murmured away the best years of his existence, of no use to mortal being, a burden to himself, and have, finally, died first or gained nothing after all. He made a better and a manlier choice, has won name, position, honour, some money, much love. If you, Malcolm Frazer, will go and do likewise, I think I can promise to give you the first step, which he had to hew out for himself: make up your mind to go out to India; I will obtain an ensigncy or something for you there: after that, all depends on yourself: only resolve to be great, and you may become so,—only determine to rise, and that determination will give you wings to soar almost to any height you please.

“Will you at once take courage and example from a true story of life? cease waiting and watching and vaguely hoping, and finally act. I do not proffer assistance through officiousness, but solely because I imagine you require, and perhaps might not object to accept it. If you do not like the plan, say so frankly; if you decide to follow it, only speak the word and I will aid you by every means in my power. Will you go or stay?”

Who, with poverty on the one side and the realization of his boyish hopes on the other, would have hesitated to choose? Not Mina’s brother, for, without an instant’s reflection, he cried,

“Go, with a hundred thousand thanks.”

“You have spoken wisely and well,” remarked Ernest.

“Mina, what say you?” demanded her brother in a kind eager tone, and with sparkling eyes; “I have been little of a comfort, little save a trouble for a long time; still you will miss me: what say you?”

“That you must go,” she answered, speaking firmly, even though she could not prevent tears springing to her eyes at the prospect of this last break.

“You are right, Miss Frazer,” said Mr. Ivraine; “your brother ought not to waste his life either here or in Scotland,—he must go to India: and you,” he added, after a pause, “you will return to Craigmaver, I presume.”

The blood came rushing up into Mina’s face, and a sort of agonized remembrance of what that place had once been, of what it had lately become, sweeping unbidden through her soul, checked her utterance; but Malcolm, who liked not the appearance of aught being amiss betwixt himself and the wealthy head of their clan, answered promptly, “Of course.”

Ernest Ivraine looked at her for a moment almost despairingly; he thought of her desolate position, of his wretched home, of a choice between none and that, of whether his father would receive her and what difference it might make in his future prospects, of being separated from her for ever, of having her beside him always, of which would be the worst for her,—to be a wife amongst his friends or a dependant amidst her own—with one in the world to love her tenderly, or all perhaps looking coldly upon her. He could not leave her—he feared to take her. He saw there was a something which prevented _her_ thinking of a return to Scotland as of a happy event. Was it that her proud spirit brooked not the idea of being a pauper in the house of her rich cousins? or was it—could it be—that she cared for him?

If so, she would not value the smiles or the frowns of relatives; she would endure privation, grief, annoyance, for a brief space, for his sake. All swept through his mind with the velocity of light: the old barriers of prudence, consideration for her happiness, dread of the result, were broken down instantaneously as he gazed upon her troubled face, and then came rapidly forth the words,

“I know little, it is true, of your affairs; but believe there is no other home open for her, unless—she will marry me.”

He spoke to Malcolm, but he looked towards Mina; he could read nothing from her face; he saw she tried to speak, but could not; he felt he cared for her more than ever, whilst his destiny thus hung quivering in the hands of fate.

The second which ensued after his abrupt question without his receiving an answer, seemed such an eternity of torture that, to shorten its duration, he said to Malcolm, in a tone tremulous with suppressed emotion,

“Do you think she would?”

“I answer yes for her,” returned Malcolm boldly, though he felt half conscious he was tampering with her fate, solely that he might win his own game; “if you wish to hear it from her lips, she will say so too: Mina, speak.”

One quick despairing glance into the past, an equally rapid and hopeless one towards the two futures now presented for her choice, a thought of the selfishness of clouding Malcolm’s prospects again—of flinging him once more friendless and helpless on the barren shore where he had till that morning been lying,—a dream of all he might rise to, if she would just do that which she had for so long been told she ought, a reckless sensation concerning her own destiny, a feeling of gratitude towards the man who offered so much to both—who must have a regard for her,—and then Mina, at the command of her brother, pronounced the monosyllable she had long vowed she would not speak, but which now, as it was pronounced, she would have died ere recanting, unless he—Ernest Ivraine—wished it. And oh! how many a time did she pray that he might desire it.

But he did not: once or twice he thought of telling her frankly and fairly what a life lay before her; but then the dread that she might repent, and the conviction that her position as his wife would be better than any other which presented itself added to the hope that hereafter he could give her all he might only wish for her now, kept him silent. He entered the house that day resolved not to drag her into misery, vowing never to utter a single syllable till he was independent—Sir Ernest Ivraine, his own master—a fortune-hunter no longer; and he left it with the little word of assent ringing in his ears, alternately with the sound of a blessing and the power of a curse.

“Mina is finally settled, Miss Caldera,” said Malcolm to that lady, with a light laugh, which, however, only partially concealed his troubled feelings; “kiss the child,” he added, “for being good at last.”

But Mina angrily pushed him away, and escaping from them both, fled to the solitude of her own chamber, where she could think and weep in peace.

She felt bewildered, terrified, overwhelmed; she thought of his unknown relatives, of his uncomprehended self; she reflected alternately concerning his silence, his kindness, and his reserve; she tried to see where she was going, and with whom; wondered if he felt he were condescending to her, and whether he would not be sorry hereafter, and how he ever came to care for and to think of marrying her; she remembered Miss Caldera’s advice, and Alfred Westwood’s words, and Malcolm’s speculations, and, bowing her flushed face in her hands, shed scalding tears of mortified pride to reflect that some people might say she had striven to catch a baronet’s son—that he himself might fancy so sometime.

The idea haunted her so that she could not endure for long to hear his name uttered by either her friend or her brother; she shrunk from the mention of the subject as if she had been a party to some guilty transaction; she did not comprehend how poor and unhappy he was, and consequently attributed all sorts of proud haughty feelings to him, of which he was completely innocent; she was always glad when he was there, because then they could not talk about the proposed match, and what a good one it was; her soul sickened at the idea of marrying for a position—for money, of being a mere mercenary calculating creature.

“I am not that,” she cried aloud, communing in solitude with the feelings of her heart, “I am not that, and I have not deceived him, or ever tried to make him care for me; and, if I am doing wrong, I cannot help it. I strove to do right, and they would not let me, and I cannot see what is right—only—only—I wish he were poor like myself;” and then she grew utterly wretched, reflecting how foolishly he would feel he had acted when he found out more about what she actually was, and how estranged they were from all rich connexions, and what a lonely desolate little wanderer he had taken home.

Home! where was it? what sort would it prove? Had he sisters who would sneer at her like Cecilia, brothers who would frown darkly on her, parents who would be angry at his choice? and, as she thought of these chances, and knew how she had said “yes,” and remembered she might be of use to Malcolm, that her husband would be sure to help her brother, she nerved herself up to a kind of hardened determination, steeled and fortified her soul for the event, tried to reconcile herself even to the idea of coldness, pride, neglect, haughty relatives, a comfortless home, superciliousness and contempt. “It will be a home at any rate,” she said, “and if I marry I have a right to it.” She never told others all the wild fears she entertained, all the sorrow she endured, but she sat for hours by herself—pondering and struggling and pining—and sometimes she grew quite calm externally, and, in fact, looked listlessly at the whole affair from beginning to end. The end, ah! she could not see that. It lay far away among those fens, whither she was to journey with him. He once told her the country there was very flat, ugly, and uninteresting; but that was all she knew about it, and she did not care to hear more: she fancied she should be in possession of all quite soon enough.

He had asked her, not to love, but to marry him; and she said “yes,” because Malcolm had first spoken it for her, and then ordered her to repeat the word after him,—because she was sick of striving, tired of being perpetually told she ought to marry, weary of seeing her brother inactive, murmuring, discontented. She had no home—no definite expectation, present or future, of providing a happy one for herself: she imagined it was best for her to listen, at least, to advice; she sometimes argued that as she had never previously followed counsel, when it clashed with her own wishes or ideas, she must now be acting prudently in yielding to the persuasions of friends, whilst every feeling of her heart said “no” to the step they proposed.

Many trials, successive disappointments, and actual ill health had finally reduced her to that state of utter hopelessness in which many persons fly to convents, and place the irrevocable barrier of a vow betwixt them, the world, and its cares for ever; and just, in like manner, she was rushing into matrimony, as she one day told Miss Caldera, with something between a sneer and a sob, “to have done with it.”

“To have done with what, my dear?” mildly inquired that lady.

“The theme matrimonial,” returned Mina; “after I take this man for better for worse, you can never, thank goodness, ask me to marry again. When once I am Mrs. Ivraine, I shall at last be ‘settled,’ shall I not?”

“Heaven send!” devoutly murmured Miss Caldera, who sincerely entertained doubts whether the girl would ever be at rest—even in her coffin. “Heaven send!”

“Amen,” said Mina, bitterly.

“You have never been settled or at peace since I knew you,” remarked Miss Caldera.

“You have never let me be at peace since I knew you,” retorted Mina; “but now, at length, I hope you and Malcolm are satisfied. I have accepted a man for whom I do not care a straw; am about to enter a family of which I know nothing; am marrying from purely prudential motives: what girl could do more, even if brought up by a worldly managing mother? I have proved an apt pupil in the noble art of match-making, and yet you give me no credit for my proficiency in the science.”

“I think, Mina,” returned Miss Caldera severely, “that you are, without exception, the strangest, most unreasonable, most dissatisfied person I ever met with. Here you, a portionless girl, without any extraordinarily rich or high relatives, are on the eve of espousing a handsome, agreeable, elegant-looking, country gentleman, son to a baronet, rich, amiable, apparently qualified to make any woman happy; in fact, it is in every way a much better match than you could possibly, even during your uncle’s lifetime, have expected.”

“But good gracious!” here broke in her auditor, “I never expected, I never wanted to make a grand or a good, or any kind of a match at all; I only wanted to be let alone, and, as I always said: and as you have just now confessed, had I been rich, you never would have so tormented me; and—and,” she added hastily, “I wish I were dead.”

“Solely, I believe, because you cannot die just at present,” responded her friend; “if you could, you would not wish it, and if you could not marry, I daresay you would think a home of your own a very haven of happiness. Mina, you are a perfect enigma to me: why, most girls would think themselves fortunate if, in your position, they could settle one half so well, and yet you talk, or rather rave—for I do not think you mean one half what you say—incessantly, as if you were a sort of martyr; in fact, I half suspect you feel as if you were one, don’t you, dear?”

“I feel as if my heart were breaking,” returned Mina, as she left the room, in a tone so cold and steadfast, that somehow it carried more conviction to the mind of Miss Caldera than had ever entered there before.

“Things have gone very cross with her lately, poor darling, and she can see no happiness in anything just at present,” she soliloquized, for in her heart she loved the girl better than any one else on earth; even whilst she scolded and lectured and worried her life out, she felt a near and tender interest in the child of a wayward temper and a wayward destiny. She did it all for her ultimate good; she sincerely and rationally enough believed that to marry Mr. Ivraine was the very best thing the orphan could do, both for herself and her brother; and, accordingly, she left no stone unturned to induce her to become, as Mina had once pettishly said, “a country squire’s country wife.”

But still there was a something so fixed, so unchangeable in Mina’s mood, that the lady at length began to marvel if the marriage really would turn out as happy an affair as she had at one time anticipated it might.

She once wondered “if it were prudent;” and then again she said, “of course,” because, if the girl did not wed him, what else was she to do? Work she could not, beg she might not, teach she would not—to make money as she desired, by writing, was a farce; and her brother,—no, no, there was nothing for it but a golden wedding ring: she was securing a home for herself,—employment, promotion, perhaps a brilliant destiny, for Malcolm. “It would be all right in time, quite right;” so Miss Caldera hoped, so she tried to believe, yet the doubt which had crossed her mind, made her feel vaguely, strangely uncomfortable.

The interval which elapsed from the time of Ernest’s sudden proposal was truly a miserable one for all; in after days, not one of the trio ever liked to look back upon it. When, in answer to a question regarding the period for the marriage, Mina responded, she did not care—the sooner the better, adding her customary “then it will be done with,” her friend felt strongly inclined to read her a lecture concerning the sin of ingratitude generally, and hers particularly; but a look at the face of one whom she had known as a child and watched through all the struggles and sorrows of her later life,—whose story, vague, unsatisfactory, and foolish though it might have been, she had pondered on and sighed over, drove back the words as she would have uttered them, and she refrained.

Yes, they were growing very patient with, and fond of, and lenient towards her now, when patience and fondness and leniency availed not; Mina felt that, and sometimes it softened and sometimes it chafed her: she was seldom ten minutes in the same temper, though she never varied on one point,—regret that, against her will, she had been forced, as she said, into an unequal union.

One night, after a brief conversation in the usual style, to which Malcolm, sitting more thoughtful than was his wont by the fire, listened in silence, Miss Caldera said, as they arose to separate for the night,

“If you are so very averse to him, Mina, would it not be better for you to pause—to break off the marriage?”

“Yes, it’s all very well to ask me that _now_,” returned the girl almost fiercely; “as I have gone so far, I will go still further,—settle my destiny and myself for ever. It is too late to draw back; and, even if I could, it would be of no use: it must come to this, or something very like this, some time sooner or later, and perhaps the sooner the better.”

She uttered the sentence in one rapid breath as she stopped for a moment on the staircase; and when she concluded, without waiting for answer of any kind, she ran hastily towards her own room and locked and bolted the door behind her.

“I wonder if it be a right thing,” murmured Miss Caldera, half aloud, “I wonder how it will ‘turn out.’”

“If evil come of it,” said Malcolm sternly, in answer, “will either of us be free from blame in the matter?”

The lady coloured deeply at the unexpected remark; she seemed as if about to reply, but the words died away on her lips, and the young man, with a gloomy look in his usually thoughtless eyes, left her to her own reflections—pleasant or the reverse—as successive ideas, fears, and visions floated through her brain.

Malcolm paused, ere proceeding to his own apartment, by the door of his sister’s room, and listened for a moment. He heard no sob, no sigh—nothing but the sound of her light tread, and the rustle of her mourning dress, as she moved restlessly backwards and forwards, measuring with hurried footsteps the length and breadth of the small chamber; scarcely knowing what she was doing, but walking on a sort of mental treadmill, to which she had bound herself, as she fancied, for life.

“Mina,” cried her brother softly, “Mina, dear, speak to me one word.”

She unfastened the door and asked him what he wanted.

“It is not for me, Mina,” he said, in a sort of choking way, “not for me you are doing this.”

“Doing what?” she demanded.

“Marrying Mr. Ivraine; I have not forced you into this, have I?”

There was a self-reproach, a sorrow in his words that brought back the girl’s love and affection for him, recalled her to a remembrance of their actual position, revived her dreams of a bright future for him, made her almost forget herself, brought their childhood vividly to mind. The light fell full on his pale troubled face; she saw he was willing, at that instant to give his consent to the match being broken off, to renounce his darling hopes rather than incur the responsibility of pushing on the marriage; she perceived he had repented of his share in the business, that he longed for her to say it was not he who was forcing her to take a step she dreaded. A strong revulsion of feeling chased all angry emotions from her soul: she would have done anything in the world for him then; so, putting her arms about his neck, she said in a low hushed voice,

“I am marrying for a home, Malcolm; do not distress yourself: I am not very unhappy, and you shall never hear me complain more; we have both of us much reason to be thankful.”

He kissed her when she concluded with a tenderness and reality of affection one could scarcely have imagined him capable of feeling: one depth of his heart had at last been sounded; and thenceforth he seemed changed, improved, subdued. And Mina,—she had effected a sort of victory over herself, and became quite calm: whatever she felt or thought, she never said. At last she was granted perfect peace on the subject,—“left,” as she had often wished to be, “alone.”

If they had always done that, she might have been made to care for him long before; but she was not conscious of that fact—only humbly thankful for the silence Malcolm and Miss Caldera now generally maintained.

I wonder, however, what silence could keep an impending marriage a secret from a London maid-of-all-work. Not that, at all events, which was preserved in Miss Caldera’s abode, for the young damsel who officiated in that capacity in the governess’ domicile, took occasion to have a confidential chat with Mrs. Frith concerning the whole affair, and Mrs. Frith wrote down an account of the same to her father, Colin Saunders, who would, the worthy Scotchwoman fancied, be overwhelmed with joy to hear Miss Mina was to be wedded to his master’s son: but the news did not seem altogether to rejoice the old man; he moped about the place for some time after receipt of that letter without speaking to anybody, during which period Mina never suspected an humble friend was grieving deeply, though silently, for her.

END OF VOLUME II.

LONDON:
Printed by SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15, Old Bailey.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.