MR. WELBORE'S country seat lay so near Muddlebury that his lodgegate was inside the borough boundary. A few miles beyond the little seaport and the Laurels stood Chadleigh Manor. Seen from the Muddlebury-road the Manor was hardly more than the picturesque suggestion of a house-an ivied gable and one tall chimney vaguely visible, across green meadows, through breaks in dense and brooding foliage. It looked at the distance as cosy, peaceful, and sheltered as a nest; one of those homes of which we have sweet memorial glimpses, with their setting of grass and glade, the balm of their summer fields, the sundown motion and murmur of rooks, the figures of man and beast moving like blest tenants of some happy land.

The house had something sombre in its nearer aspect. It was old and weather-stained; the shrubbery of dark evergreens which surrounded it had been allowed to thicken to the luxuriance of a jungle, while deep elm and deeper lime spread over it in the season of leaves a shade which, partly shutting in the light and the air, made

VOL. XXXI.

perpetual twilight, and gave the habitation a look of gloom and mystery. The demesne was parklike in extent and character; the dependent territory was a compact estate, of some five thousand pounds rental. A wayward inlet of the sea ran up behind the wooded height which formed the background to the house. This tongue of water, which the tide sent up and withdrew along a deep narrow ravine, opening from the cleft rocks of the coast, was dammed by the demesne wall, which bounded a sort of mardyke-a solid bank or terrace, faced with masonry at the side next the water, which was many feet deep at full tide, and in times of storm attacked the bulwark with such fury as often to breach and rend it. The sea-wall was maintained by the Manor people, but was also a short way between Muddlebury and the hamlet of Chadleigh.

Chadleigh Manor had been for generations the inheritance of the family whose name it retained. Mr. Welbore's sister had married the last of the line; and when he perished, with his only child, by a strange, inexplicable misadventure,

B

and his widow married Arthur Darkin, the property passed into alien ownership. Mrs. Darkin, as Caroline Welbore, had been a toast of the bailiwick. It was local report that she might have married a lord-in fact, the noble head of the Proudfoots. But this is a common option of beauty. It was more certain that both Squire Chadleigh of the Manor and Lieutenant Darkin of the famous Line regiment, whose record has been cloaked by Mr. Childers under the title of the King's Own Clodshire Fencibles, were profoundly smitten by the damsel. Darkin was son of a veteran retired on halfpay and a brevet of lieutenantcolonel. The spent warrior hung up his sword in a modest retreat between the Laurels and the Manor. Soon after he settled down in Chillianwallah Cottage his son visited him on leave, met Miss Welbore, and was captive and victor in the first meeting. The young soldier, with the dusk bloom of his far Indian birthplace ingrained in his cheek, his gallant air and manner, so different from those of the squirearchy, realised Miss Welbore's maiden dream. She welcomed the reality, but with discretion. Nature had given her a pretty mask of pink and white, the grace and symmetry of a wild animal, and that expression of sweetness and innocence which is often the mere charm of a fresh dull girlhood. Nature had also bestowed upon this wild flower a provident instinct, which her sisters acquire by the process of social forcing. Her mother was dead; but her enthusiasm was as governed as if a managing mother had the guidance of it.

Thus Darkin was her hero. He was adorable, and he adored her; but he was poor. Now, if only he were rich, like Chadleigh, or rich enough to reconcile her matter-of

fact brother to the union of two fond hearts, she would have gladly waited till her lover had reached that fulness of rank and pay for which he longed, in order, as he said, that he might claim her, in contempt of all rivalry. But meantime she would not listen to his desperate suggestion of elopement. That would be a dreadful impropriety and a disgrace to the family. And her brother was right, alas, when he warned her that everlasting love was impossible in a baggage-wagon or in a barrack-room in country quarters on six shillings a day.

First love in this case had heavy odds against it. Mr. Chadleigh was not, perhaps, personally formidable. He was old enough to be the young lady's father; but he was a stately handsome gentleman, very popular, and a consequential figure among the gentry of the shire. When the word went round that Mr. Chadleigh had declared himself among the suitors of the bewitching Caroline, there was an outcry of bitter envy against the doll's face and shallow graces, which had secured the noblest prize hooked by any female fisher of men in that region within living memory.

Caroline was proud of her conquest which she had made shortly before she met Darkin. Such a preference was very flattering, and was the more agreeable, because it was a triumph won against enormous competition. Her brother was delighted with this splendid prey, and pleaded for the lord of Chadleigh in the same spirit as later on he pleaded in the interest of his own son. His sister was very reasonable. No passion up to that time had troubled her. She was grateful to Mr. Chadleigh, she respected and liked him. He tried to force these feelings to a warmer stage of sentiment. The effort gave her a consciousness in

his company, which she mistook herself, and which had for him a delicious but deceitful meaning. Chadleigh Manor was in full view from the Laurels; she was a frequent visitor there with her brother; and the fine old residence, the warm woods and pleasant lawns, the elegance of the whole establishment-these things, to which her brother gave voice, wrought upon his sympathetic sister, whose heart had been touched by no less material influences. Believe it, Danaë did not disregard that shower of gold. While Caroline Welbore wondered was this love she felt for Mr. Chadleigh, she met Arthur Darkin, and the spurious emotion turned to real flame.

But

The pair contrived several meetings during the few weeks of the young soldier's leave, and thought they kept the tender secret. in the country the trees have tongues, the running brooks are books in which the public eye reads private history.

It was soon common gossip that the pretty Caroline had jilted Mr. Chadleigh for the penniless son of old Colonel Darkin-a wild youth, who had been already obliged to exchange his regiment for-so the rumour went some gambling transaction, out of which he had come with tarnished credit. Mr. Chadleigh himself had met the pair, and winced; for the incident gave colour to the report of a goodnatured friend. But what could he do except grin and bear it? Should he show jealousy of that youngster, and warn the boy off? Impossible! The girl was young, and this was a piquant coquetry of her years, for which allowance must be made. All the same, this meeting put him about; and as he walked home he resolved to ask the girl to marry him one of these days. If she refused, it would be the bitterest

calamity of his life. But he was too old now to break down for the loss of a woman.

Mr. Grantley Welbore did not treat the matter in the like philosophical spirit. When he had extorted from his sister confirmation of the local chronicle, he wrote an immediate and indignant letter to Lieutenant Darkin. The note was not acknowledged; but a few days afterwards, as Mr. Welbore was returning by the mardyke road. from the Manor, where he had dined with Chadleigh, he came upon his sister and Darkin, side by side on a rock above the estuary. He halted at the sight and flung away his cigar. Darkin had his arm round the girl's waist. The girl, seeing her brother, tried to disengage herself and rise, but her lover held her sitting by him.

'I thought so, madam,' said Welbore. This is the way you bring disgrace upon your family. Be good enough to quit your present position, and come home with me at once. Let her go,' he added, turning a menacing front upon Darkin, who met his angry challenge with provoking cool

her brother, stepping forward, seized her arm and drew her with some rudeness to him.

'You hit me with my hands tied,' said Darkin. 'I cannot forget that I am in the presence of a lady. I know what you want, and if she were not here you should have it.'

Welbore dropped his stick, buttoned a button of his short coat, and advanced, a stalwart figure, upon his slim antagonist, who would have come off without honour in the presence of his ladylove, but that she threw herself upon her angry brother, pleading like the fond young thing she was.

'O no, Grantley dear; no, no! You shall not. You must not, for my sake, Grantley dear. O, what shall I do ? Dear Arthur, go away!'

Thus the poor damsel wailed in a commonplace expression of sore extremity. Her brother glowered over her head at Darkin.

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'If this girl were not here,' said he, I'd thrash you like a dog. If I catch you haunting her after this-if you presume to waylay her, to write to her, or otherwise attempt to take advantage of her youth and silliness-I'll thrash you wherever I meet you. That's a warning you'll do well to heed. I mean it.'

Drawing his sister's arm through his, he was marching off.

Stop!' said Darkin. • One word. You are a bruiser, I daresay; you look it. Well, if a bruiser thinks to display his talent at my expense, I'll know how to equalise the affair. Your threats are idle, I assure you. I shall do what I think proper; my action won't in the least depend on you.'

He glanced at Caroline as he said this, but failed to catch that terrified creature's eye.

Welbore's anger rose at the contemptuous defiance with which his

menace was retorted, and the quarrel might have had a serious ending, but that the appearance of certain homebound country folk made a timely diversion, and, exchanging ominous and hostile regards, the principals in this scene parted.

Darkin rejoined his regiment. A few days later, Mr. Chadleigh proposed. It was a sharp ordeal. His restrained and courtly ardour had in it a relish of the saltness of age. It was of the temperate zone, and made a strong contrast in the girl's mind with the radiance and beauty and glow of another passion, more natural and more agreeable for a young heart to receive and to return. Little as Caroline Welbore was given to introspection and the weighing and measurement of her emotions, she learnt from the test of this interview that her feeling for Mr. Chadleigh was not love. But though she could not accept him for her husband in such a mood, she did not reject him. Her brighter dream was as vain as it was sweet. To marry Mr. Chadleigh was sensible, was nice, was a grand chance which twenty baffled rivals grudged. Only her spirit was a little sore for the moment on account of dearest Arthur, and she could not bring herself to speak the fatal word. So she besought a month to make up her mind in.

Half the interval had not expired, when there arrived a piece of news like thunder from a clear sky. Darkin had been dismissed the service. He had been detected in a gross trick at cards, which would have won money had it passed. The flagrant default confirmed all suspicions. Darkin was permitted to resign his commission. The terrible euphuism of the Gazette was no screen to his offence.

Caroline Welbore took her lover's

misfortune much to heart, and wept over it those ready tears with which women meet calamity small or great. Darkin wrote to her in the first frenzy of despair, proclaiming his ruin and infamy, and asking her not to take it for the insolence of the criminal if he besought a pitying memory for the dishonoured wretch, who fled to hide his broken life, not daring to face her or friends less dear. This was very shocking; but the girl was blessed with that felicitous blunt organisation which suffers under the blows of Fate the shallow and transient anguish of the child under the correcting palm.

When the month expired Caroline Welbore accepted John Chadleigh, and they were married shortly after. Colonel Darkin died while the wedding-bells were ringing. He had never held up his head since the shame and flight of his

son.

After her marriage, Mrs. Chadleigh found herself obliged to do wifely battle against unbidden images of her dead love. She had promised herself to put it quite out of her mind and heart, or rather to bury it so deep in both that it should never rise to haunt her. She had counted on being able to do this all the easier, when to forget the dead would be her duty to the living. The tender ghost would not be laid. Her child in her arms, the young wife and mother would start and blush to catch herself brooding over that brief past, so exquisite, so unhappy. But these unbidden memories did not seriously trouble the calm monotony of a married life which crept on in a humdrum round, in which her nature would have found content as soon as time should have carried her beyond these small repinings of a sentimental recollection.

Nearly three years had passed, when the news went round that

Arthur Darkin had returned from his wanderings. Mr. Chadleigh rallied his wife upon the tidings; she laughed, as people laugh at follies out-grown or sorrows that pain no longer. But this was for her a day of thought and tears. It was a surprise and somewhat of an alarm to her to find how quickly the faded memory revived. How he must have suffered, she thought, that poor exile! Poor Arthur-at least it was no sin to pity him.

Darkin made no attempt to test the local feeling on his escapade. He lived a solitary life at Chillianwallah Cottage, with no society but that of the veteran who had followed his father from the colours, and kept the cottage and the few fields attached in the absence of the son.

One day Mrs. Chadleigh, driving home from the Laurels, met Darkin on the road. She tried to turn her eyes and pass him as one unknown, but his face, so sad and wasted, yet the face of old, fascinated her. She checked the horse by a motion made, it seemed to her, without her will. Darkin, not less affected, drew up also. A few words passed between them, and then, stepping off the path, he took a note from his pocket and handed it to her. She seemed reluctant to take it; but he laid it on the cushion of the pony-carriage beside her, and went off hurriedly. The servant sitting behind related afterwards how his young mistress, having driven some distance, suddenly stopped, and, pointing at the note, where it still lay as if it were a thing to be afraid of, ordered him to take it and run back with it to the gentleman she had just spoken with. But though he ran half a mile he could not see the person, and so had to bring it back.

From this day a change came over the young wife. She grew reserved and melancholy. She