LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 653, 22 July 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

WHITE SATIN;

{ Concluded ,)

In the meanwhile Baldwin had contrived one night to carry the box with all the other deeds and papers safely away to his house ; and he began to give hints that it was time my lady and master Harry found their way into Derbyshire ; Mr Woolner might make up his mind to arrest them. At last, one evening, Lady Lisle had a few words with Baldwin at the foot of her little staircase.

‘My lady,’ said the old man, ‘ I’m in fear for Mr Richard. Mr Woolner has laid hands on a little valise of his with a few letters in it, and has them with him now in the parlour. I think—l think they must be ’

*Ah 1’ said Lady Lisle. It was a cry suddenly choked. Were her pains wasted then, after all ?

* I dare not advise the risk. Mr Woolner is asleep in his chair,’ Baldwin went on. ‘ But listen to me, madam. You can do no more. Come away to my house to-night. You have done wonders, but there must somewhere be an end.’

*lf I do come Jto your house to-night,’ said Lady Lisle, ‘it will be with those letters in my hand. Courage, Baldwin! one more charge for the old name.’ She looked at him and smiled. The old man took her hand and kissed it, for he could say no more. Lady Lisle ■ glided off on her dangerous errand with a sudden recovery of all her old spirit. The hall was empty; she met no one, but stole along the passages, and gently pushed open the door of the winter parlour. There, opposite to her, in the very place where she had listened that night for Sir James’s return, sat MrJWoolner fast asleep. On the table beside him lay three letters. Lady Lisle moved slowly round to his left side, half behind him, bent over the table, looked at them, and gathered them into her hand with a sudden movement. Then she looked up at him again, and saw that he was awake, staring at her with the confused uncertainty of a sudden return from dreams. Lady Lisle drew slowly back, crumpling the letters in her hand.

* I wish you a good night, Mr Woolner !’ she said in a soft, quiet voice, curtseyed low and gracefully, glide! to the door and was gone. But he had recognised her : the eyes that, forgetting their character, had stared at him so naturally, the voice, the manner—he sprang up shouting from his chair. * I’ll be hanged if that’s more of a ghost than I am. What infernal cheat is this ? My Lady Lisle I hallo, where are you, my lady ?’ But she was gone. An active, spirited young woman who had gained her object was not likely to stay and be caught at last. Baldwin heard the noise and prudently popped out at the back of the house. She flew, with the letters clasped in her hands and her train swimming after her, along two or three passages and straight out of the garden door into the snow, plunging away into the shawdows with her uncovered head, among the trees in the park where she could glide more ghostlike than ever from one dark mass of shade to another, and found her way at last to the house where little Harry was waiting for her. Ido not think she felt cold or fright or loneliness, now that her work was done.

Chapter VII AFTERWARDS.

This is all the story, as far as it is conhbrary. "#ut the us over the long years that stretch themselves between now and then, A summer evening : climbing roses hanging their pink heads and looking in at the narrow library windows; green and shade and flowers outside, a sleepy secure tranquility inside the cool old house. A handsome sunburnt young man_ was leaning lazily back in the great chair opposite the picture, holding a boy of ten years old on his knees.

‘ But, Uncle Dick, why did the King pardon you ?’ said Harry Lisle.

* You seem to think I came off better than I deserved,’ said his uncle. ‘ I tell you they had nothing to prove against me, except the fact that I was at Preston ; and there were too many of us in that case to have all our heads cut off. You know all the rest. You know who collected heaps of letters and burnt them, so that there might be no witness against me or your father.’ ‘ Yes, I know !’ cried Harry enthusiastically. ‘ The bravest woman in the world — and that my mother. But why did you go off to the East ?’ ‘Because I wanted to see the world. Now all’s quiet, and the Fiften has blown over, here lam again, you see. Hallo, Harry, who comes hero ? A picture out of its frame.

Harry jumped away from hia uncle and ran to meet the lady in white satin who was coming slowly along the room, followed by Sir James, whoso grave face was smiling, and his manner quite lighthearted as he called out behind her, ‘ Room for her ghostship, my Lady Lisle!’ Dick Lisle got up and went forward to meet his sister-in-law with a low bow, and bent to kiss her hand with a reverence which was not all assumed.

* Our dear and beautiful ghost !’ he said, standing up and smiling as he looked at her. ‘ And was it exactly in this dress ? Why, where did you find it ?’ ‘ln your grandmother’s wardrobe, Dick,’ said Lady Lisle. She sat down, and the two looked at each other; the dim, soft-eyed lady in the picture, in her gleaming folds, and her wonderful likeness with the bright dark eyes and slight active figure, whose face was grave in her recovered happiness, and her lips a little tremulous, as she remembered that strange week in her life.

‘ She looks at me reproachfully,’ said Lady Lisle. * She says I need not figure any longer in this imitation of her.’

‘Not at all, Kate; you misjudge her,’ said Sir James. ‘ She loves to look at y ‘ And so do we all, bless your ladyship !’ said the voice of Mrs Farrer, who had come into the room on tiptoe, while all their eyes were bent on Lady Lisle and the portrait. ‘ Here’s Mr Baldwin wants to know if he may have a look at you in the satin gown,’ Old Baldwin came hobbling in ; he was getting rather infirm now; and then Dick began to ask him questions, and so the whole story had to be told over again.

And still, when the servants were gone,' and when the soft summer twilight had deepened in the room, so that the lady on the wall only looked out a faint grey shadow from her background, those four remained in her presence, till their talk dropped into a word now and then, and presently into silence. Little Harry had fallen asleep sitting on the ground by his mother’s side, his head resting safely and peacefully on the white satin petticoat. They are all gone now; and presently they will be forgotten, with the ruin of the old house that was so dear to them. Only the picture remains. The lady looks down still with a sweet solemnity, meeting our eyes as she did those of Kate, Lady Lisle, in her great trouble a hundred and fifty years ago. So it is ; ‘ the generations pass away y and a picture here and there tells some story of the past. So it will be also with these lives of ours that are going on now.

Sir Henry talks of sending his Vandyck, one of these years, to the Exhibition of Old Masters at Burlington House. I hope he will carry out his intention, and I hope that any one who sees it there will recognise it, and remember my story of Lady Lisle.-