A Wonderful Woman.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 440, 25 January 1890, Page 6

A Wonderful Woman.

Bt MAY AGNES FLEMING,

Author ot “Guy Earlescourt’s Wife,” “A Te» .ible Secret,’* “ Lost for a Woman,” “A Mad Marriage,’’ eto

BOOK 11.

CHATTER 111. SIB ARTHUR TREGENNA,

Fab away, along the north coast of Lornwall, not fai from ‘ the thundering shores of Bmie and Boes,’ there stands a huge piie of masonry, looking old enough and hoary enough to have been built by the hands of tiie Druids, and called Tregenna T..wers. It- lofty battlemented circular towers pierced the blue air at a dizzy height —its beacon a land-mark fifteen miles up and do*n the coast. From its sea wall you look -beer down three hundred feet of black tm I slaty cliff? into the white surging sea below. And to the right, three miles off, lying in a wa*m green hollow, is Tregenna village, with its ivied church and vicarage, its clusters of stone cottages, with roses, myrtle, and fuchsias blooming out of-doors the year round. Orey, lonely, weather-beaten Tregenna T livers stands, with the steady sea gale howling a ound it, miles of foamvrhiie sea, and alow, dusk, fast-drifting sky o e all. Right and left as far as you can see, and farther, spread moors, and mines, and fisheries, all claiming tor their lord Sir Arthur Tregenna, twelfth baronet of his line, and one of the very wealthiest in the United Kingdom. You may wander on for miles over those purple ridgy moors. You may ask the brown fishermen or the black miners wh rever you meet them, and the answer will be the same—Sir Arthur Tregenna is lord of all. Only once in seven long years has the master's footstep rung through the grey, lo c-some rooms of Tregenna. He is a wanderer over the earth from the North Sea to Oceanica. Since hi- father s death, ten years before, when he was three-nrid-ibwentv, Tregenna has seen but little of him —England either, tor that matter. And still with loving fidelity the old servants, the old tenants and retainers look forward to the day when Sir Arthur will bring a bndeto old Tregenna, and renew its ancient splondours. For they love him very dearly. The gentlest of masters, the most (Christian of gen ! lemon, the kindest of landlords—that is what they will tell you of him. He might have been one of good King Arthur’s knights, so stainless a reerrd, so high a code of honour, so unblemi-hed a life lav behind him. He had loved his father with n, i are and great love, and upon that fath* r’s death had gone abroad, and been an exile and a wanderer since. On the second da of July, among the passengers who arrived at the London bridge terminus, straight from Tasmania wis Tregenna. His luggage was scant, there was nothing about him to betoken the owner of fabulous wealth, and he drove at once to a certain old-fashioned West End hotel that his family had user] for generations. He dined, dressed, and drove to Lowndes Square. But the shutters of that aristocratic mansion were closed.the furniture gone into Holland shrouds, and an old woman in pattens, who opened the rloT, informed him that the family had left only that morn ng for Sussex. ‘ Then there is nothing for it but to follow,’ Sir Arthur thought. ‘lt is due to her —to my promise. 1 shall go down tomorrow.’ He went back to his hotel in the sil- ■ pry summer dusk. London seemed new to him after the years of wandering t inongh Canadian wildernesses, Mexican tropic-, Indian jungles and American prairie- ; it? roaring, surging, ceaseless Bahel stunned him. He sat in an aimchair near the open window, the last pink flush of the dying day upon him, and a gravity habitual to it lyi g upon his face. He was a very tall, very fair man, this Corui-h baronet, with deep-set grey eyes, dose-cropped blonde hair, blonde whiskers, mid—not handsome. The face of a sunburnt student, perhaps, never that of a handsome man—a face that could set itself p-ern as death, a face at once proud and grave, but a face that men might trust and women love, for all that. A face that lit into wonderful warmth and geniality when he smiled, but Sir Arthur Tregenna did not smile often. The thoughtful gravity of his face was a shade graver even than usual this soft summer evening as he sat here alone. His eyes lo- ked wearily over the surging sea of strange faces, with something of a tired londy light. ‘Nine and-twenty,’ he was thinking, ‘and I feel as alone in England this first day of mv return as though I had never set foot in it before. It is time 1 gave up thi c Bedouin sort of life, this wandering, gipsyish, vagabond kind of existence and ranger, as ourlively Fiench neighbours phrase if, and set.ttedVlown to civilised life. And yet - I do l’t know —the normad life suits me after all, and I may be glad to return to it. If I find her as 1 half expect to find her, I most assuredly shall. A London coquette i- no wife for a plain, practical man like me. And I want a wife, not a butterfly.

•••Who would live with a doll, though its hair should be dres-pd. • . .. And its petticoats trimmrd m the fashion T ‘A London belle of three yearn’ standing and a fl>rt— no such woman as that is hardly liie'y to be a wife of mine or mistre*s of Tregenna. But it was my father’s wish that at least I should marry no one before seeing her, and everv wi-h of his is sacred. It is surprising, though, that she remains single still—with all that beauty and grace and fatal witchery they say she possesses. Many men haveoflered, but she has refused all—men with rank and power and wealth.’ Bor Sir Arthur had returned home on most matrimonial thoughts intent. His Jute father and the present Earl of Ruysland, dissimilar in many things, were yet close friends and comrades. The plain Corniph baionet had been dazzled by the more brilliant peer, and when that peer fell into poverty, his purse and sympathy were ever at his surface. And one having an only son, the other an only daughter, what more natural than that they should sink their bond of friendship in the closer bond of relationship ? Old Sir John had loved and admired Jitt e Ladv Cecil, next to his boy, above all earth lv things. Her fair face and golden ringUts, arid bioxvn, luminous eyes made sunshine often in the dim, dusky-storied old rooms of Tregenna, her clear girl’s tonesthesweetest music. Shehad met young Arthur on these visits —he had been up at Oxford. Casually, however, once or twice they had come together. But somehow the friendship of the fathers was not reproduced in the children. Little Lady Cecil in her white' ft ricks and blue sashes, her flowing curls, and dancing eyes, was but a frivolous, tiresome child in the pedantic gaze of the tall, Greek-speaking, Latin-loving undergrad ; while this uplifted severe, silent young Oxonian was an object of awe and terror to the earl’s daughter. But Sir John diedj'ahd on his death-bed he had asked hie ion, V«triCk9ff to jjiake, if Jie

could win her consent, Lady Cecil Clive the lutnre mistress of Tregenna. | ‘You will love her,’ the old man said ; ■ * who could help it ? She is as beautiful as ' the day, and as good as she is beautiful, j No one lives whom I would a? soon see your I wile as my old friend’s child.’ Arthur had given his promise, and when did a Tregenna ever break his word to a frien tor foe? He went abroad then, and for three years remained abroad. Lady Cicil wa- in her nine eenth year upon his return, and it was her first season, death in the family having kept her back. They met in that gay, gracious, brilliant, Mayfair world, and he began to realise that Lady Cecil Clive was by no means the woman of women he wished to take to wife. She was lovely—no doubt of that—sweet, gentle, pure and proud. But she loved admiration—many men sought her, pressed forward eagerly in the chase, and Sir Att'-ur Tregenna stood in the background and saw her smi e upon them all; very few of those smiles were for him. She had I heai-d nothing of that death-bed compact, and her father chanced to be ab«ent from England that first season. But before it had ended Sir Arthur had mann- d his yacht, and set out for the Mediterranean. And now after three year- he was back on the same errand. One last effort he would make to obey his father ; if he found her the sort of woman he half suspected, then she should never bo wife of his. Two men were talking near him as he sat lost in ihought. Their conversation fell on his ear—they did not seem to heed him—and lost in his reverie, he did not comprehend a word. ‘Left this morning, did you say, Wyatt?’ one of them was saying. ‘ Somewheredown in Sussex, is it ? Then I shall not go to the Chagres-street reception to-night. London is a howling wilderness without her. The sun shines on nothing half so lovely a 3 La Reive Blanche .’ ‘So poor Buccleth used to say until she refused, and sent him headlong to perdition. It’s a curious fact in natural philosophy that all the men who lose their heads for the White Queen go straight to the bad after it. Boor she is as a church mouse, and yet I believe she has rejected m re proposa’s thip season than the Duke of Belviour’s daughter herself, with her beauty, her blood, and her splendid dot. What do yon suppose she is waiting for—a ducal coronet ?’ * Old Buys is an inscrutable card, and there’s some one in the background, depend upon it. Wasn’t there a whisper at Pratt’s of an enormously rich Cornishman for whom the old bird is reserving her. She is charming— La.Reineßlanche —and nothing under thirty thousand a year stands any chance there. “ ‘ Praise as we may when Iho tale is done. She is but a maid to be wooed and won." ’ ‘I envy the Cornishman, whoever h is.’ * His name is Tregenna Sir Arthur Tregenna—worth no end in tin mines and fisheries and that, but a deuce of a prig, so I am told.' The n9xb instant the two young dandies were startled by the tall, sunburnt, siient gentleman in the arm-chair rising up and facing them. ‘ I beg your pardon,’ he said in haughty surprise. ‘ I am that deuce of a prig—Sir Arthur Tregenna. Had I known I was the object of your conversation I would have interrupted you sooner. And you scarcely honour the name of the lady you praise by making it the public property of a coffeeroom.’ With which, and a frown of haughty anger, the tall, tanned gentleman stalked away, leaving the two friends aghast. ‘ Gad !’ Wyatt said ; ‘ and that’s Tre-genna-like a reconnfiitre on the stage where the hero, supposed to beat the antipodes, turns up at a minute’s notice. 1 took him to be a sailor, merchant, captain, or something of that sort. Has his arrival, I wonder, anything to do with the little Clive’s flight from London ?’ More and more dissatisfied, the young baronet left the room and the hotel. And this was the girl he had come to marry—a girl who drew men only to refuse them and send them to perdition, as that perfumed puppy in the coffee-room phra-ed it—a fair Circe, born to work evil and destruction on earth. ‘I shall go down and see for myself,’ he thought stern'y ; * that at least my promise hinds me too, but no hardened coquette shall ever be wife of mine. If I find Lady Ceci Cdve what I know I shall, I will leave England again within a week, and try once more the plains of Texas, the buffalo, and the Indians. I will take some dusky woman ; she shall rear ray savage brood. Well, not quite so bad as that, perhaps I'm not in love and the fellow in Locksley Hall wa-—but I'll go to my grave alone, and Tregenna shall pass to the next-of-kin soonerthun marry aw >manoftheworld who is a woman of the world and no more. How lightly these flippant fops took her name on their lips. And my poor father believed her an angel because she had an angel face. It’s enough to make a man fore wear the sex ’ CHAPTER IV. AT SCAKSWOOD. Late in the afternoon of that sunny Jun e day, at the very hour indeed in which Sir Arthur Tregenna sat listening to Wyatt and his companion in the coffee-room of his hotel, Lady Dangerfield, her uncle, cousin, governess, servants. etc.—an imposing procession—arrived from London a- Scarswood Park. Scarswood ! With tbo rose flush of the setting sun upon it, with the glades, the lawns, the shrubberies steeped in gold, with the stone urns on the stone terraces turned to silve”, the scarlet roses like sparks of fire, every leaf of the copper beeches blood-red rubies, the windows glancing through the trees like sheets of burnished go’d, Scarswood Park and the turreted old mansion came upon them—a marvellously fair picture. Trackless depths of fern waved away and away, the great fish-pond spread out like a silver mirror. Landscape gardeners under my lady’s orders had done their work ; the parterres, the tropic bloom, the wealth of myrtle and mignonette, of roses and geraniums, were like unto some modern garden of Eden. ‘How lovely—what a magnificent old place : Lady Cecil exclaimed ; ‘ and you call it dull as death, as dismal as a tomb, Ginevra!

It was her first visit to the ancestral home of her cousin’s rich husband, and in her heart of hearts the belle of London dearly loved the country. Lady Dangerfield glanced around her with a little sour air. * So it was, so it is, so it will be- if I let it. Why can’t the London season last forever? I like rural life and rustic scenes in pictures —in real life give me Belgravia, year in, year out.’ ‘ And balls, soirees, operas, drawingrooms, and drives—the old, weary treadmill, tiresome, endless round. You are fearfully and wonderfully vital, Ginovra, and stand the wear and tear well; but if these little breathihg spaces did not come, even you would have to go under speedily. For mvself six weeks of London, if you will, foui of Paris, and the rest 1 of the year in just such a dear old country-house as this, half a dozen-pice people to live with, one’s

country neighbours to visit, and Mrs ! Grundy forgotten.’ j ‘ Well, my dear, you shall have all that ‘ and more, when you are lady Tregenna. Tregenna Towers is as old again a 9 Scarawood and cwice as truly rural. Is that my lord and master I see on the portico steps ? Really he shrivels up and grows smaller with every passing day ! And here comes Pearl and Pansy flying down the steps like little wild Indians. Miss Herncastle, what do you think of your future home and your future pupil?’ The governess, in charge of my lady’s fat King Charles, had taken the third seat in the carriage. The earl had not driven with the ladies from the station. Miss Herncastle's large calm eyes had taken in everything, and Miss Herncastle’s calm tones replied: ‘ltis a beautiful place, my lady. But I have seen Scarswood before.’ 4 Indeed ! This is not your first visit to Sussex, then? Was it in Sir Peter’s time or before? Pnnsy—Pea.-l ! Little wretches, do you want to run under the carriage wheels? Stand back and be still! Sir Peter, how stupid of you to let those children run wild in this boisterous manner !’ It was my lady’s first greeting to her husband as she was assisted out. Sir Peter had come down the steps to meet her ; she gave him two gloved fingers, then gave the twins first a-shake, then a kiss. The little nine-year olds were miniatures of herself—the same round, black eyes, the same crisp, black hair, the same petite features and proportions, and so much, also, like one another, that it seemed impossible at first glance to tell them apart. ‘ You disobedient little midgets !’ their mamma said. ‘ how often have I told you not to rush to meet anyone in that hoydenish way? What is your maid thinking of to let you ?’ ‘ ’Twasn’t Susan’s fault, mamma,’ piped one black-eved twin. * She told me to stay in the nursery, but me and Pansy saw the carriage, and you and Auntie Cecil, from the window, and we couldn’t stay. We’re awful glad you’ve come. Auntie. Our dolls haven’t got a summer dress to their backs.’ 'Lady Cecil laughed and kissed the twins. Children always fell in love with her at sight. ‘Not a summer dress to their backs, Pearl, and the season so far advanced ! A harrowing case, which must be attended to immediately. Sir Peter will you endorse Pearl’s welcome, and say that you are glad to see me likewise?’ She gave him her hand with a smile that thawed even the frozen nature of Sir Peter Dangerrield. To be glad to see anyone who was a visitor and a daily expense was not in his nature, but as such things had to be under the rule of his very much better half, be shook Lady Cecil’s delicate grey glove and said something about his pleasure in welcoming her to Scarswood. ‘ And Scarswood is a home to be proud of,’ Lady Cecil said— ‘ my idea of a earthly paradise, as I told Ginevra coming up. Papa stayed behind.SirPeter.talkingtoa friend he will be here for dinner. Permit me— Miss Herncastle, Sir Peter. Ah, Pansy’ ah, Pear l ! No more dolls and dress-making. Here is a lady come all the way from London to train you in the way you should go.’ The twins fixed four big, bright, black eyes full on the new governess. Sir Peter bowed —the governess was at some little distance—then stopped, put up his eyeglass, and stared again. The governess came a step nearer, fixed her eyes upon his ace, tna <e a graceful obeisance, and turned to her pupils. ‘Will you give me a kiss, my dear? You are Pan*y, are you not?—you Pearl? Ah ! I thought I could tell the diflerence, though you are so much alike.’ ‘ I trust, Sir Peter, you saw that the upholsterers fitted up the drawing and diningrooms according to my orders ? Have the pictures ar— ’ She stopped shorL ‘Good gracious. Queenie, what is that man staring at ? Sir Peter !’

He never heard her. His eyes behind his double eye-glass were fixed upon Miss Herncastle ; his face had turned to a dull yellow pallor from brow to chin. His wife stood and stared at him aghast. ‘For Heaven’s sake, look at him, Queenie ! Is he going to have a fit, or— Sir Peter Dangerfield, what on earth are you agape at ?’ ~he caught his arm impatiently, and gave him no gentle shake, *H--’« staring at you, Miss Herncastle. What is the matter with him ?’ Mis.- Herncastle turned calmly from the children, and again looked at the baronet. ‘He certainly looks very ill. Is there anything 1 can do ?’ ‘ Her voice !’ the baronet said, in a horror-struck whisper ; ‘ her eyes, her face ! Oh, Heaven ! Who is this ?’ ‘Who?’ his wife cried, with a second angry shake. ‘ Are you mad ? Whom are you looking at? What do you mean? Who ?’ ‘That woman that girl! Who is she ?’ ‘ Miss Herncastle, the children’s governess, you lib* le idiot !’ Lady Dangerfield actually called that noble baronet a‘little idiot,’ and gave him a second shake into the bargain. * What is there about her to frighten you into fits, I should like to know ?’ * Miss Herncastle, the governess,’ he muttered, falling back ; * and for a moment —I thought—l could have sworn it was—it was— 1 ‘ Well - whom ?’ ‘ One dead and buried six long years.’ He turned his back upon her abruptly, and with that ghastly answer walked into the house. My lady turned angrily upon her new governess. ‘Really, Mi?s Herncastle,' she began, haughtily, ‘ this is very extraordinary, I must say. The Earl of Ruysland sees you last night in the moonlight and takes you for a ghost. Sir Peter Dani-erfield sees you to-day in the sunshine, and takes you for another. Who are you, pray ?' The faintest symptom of an amused smile dawned on the tranquil face of the tall nursery governess. ‘ I am Helen Herncastle, my lady, and the ghost of no one that I know of.’ Lady Cecil laughed outright—her sweet, mellow laugh. * How absurd yon are, Ginevra. Ghost, irdeed ! Only evil consciences see ghosts, and Miss Herncastle is much too substantial for ghost or fairy. She resembles someone Sir Peter has once ; known—dead six years he said. Was there not a cousin—a young lady who died suddenly an— ’ ‘lmpostor,’ said Lady Dangerfield. * Yes, there was—l daresay it is she ! It’s not Miss Herncestle’s fault, I suppose, that she must resemble dead people, but it’s very extraordinary and very unpleasant. Mv nerves have received a shock they will not rpcover from lor a week. I hate scenes 1’

And then, with a last backward, distrustful look at the governess, my lady swept away upstairs in a very bad temper indeed. But bad temper had years ago become a chronic complaint of Lady DangerfieM’s. The world had gone wrong with her in the days of love’s young dream* and soured the milk of human kindness within her for all time. It was.not M iee Hernca-tie's fault,, perhaps, that people should mistake

her at first sight for a ghost, still it wp.3 j vexatious and exasperating, and if her nerves were to be unstrung in this manner, it would perhaps have been better to have paid a higher price for a commonplace person, who would nob have startled earls and baronets into mistaking her for a spirit of their loved ones gone. Lady Cecil lingered for a moment behind She laid her slender gloved hand on the arm of the governess and looked into her face with that rarely sweet smile that had driven so many tnen fathoms deep in love. ‘ You will not mind Lady Dangerfield, Miss Herncastle ? she is nervous and easily irritated ; sho has had a great deal of trouble in her lifi-time, and little things annoy her. These momentary irritations pass with her as quickly as they come. Do nob let them annoy you.’ Sweet and gracious words, 3poken • w>th sweet and gracious meaning. Miss Herncastle, sHll standing with Bijou humbly in her arms, b-oked up and their eyes met, the eves of the work-ing-woman and the delicate, high-bred patrician. Y\ hat was in the gaze of these steady grey eyes that made Lady Cecil recoil a step? What in the expression of the quiet fa- e that made her remote her hand hastily and shrink away? She could never have told ; the eyes were calm, the face emotionless. and yet—‘You are very kind, my lady. I am not annoyed—l have no right to be. People in my position are nob apt to be too sensitive, still I thank you very much.’ Lady Cecil bent her head, caught up her grey silk skirts and swept away. 4 Whoever Miss Herncastle is, I think she must have seen what they call better days. She is a lady evidently, in spite of her position. She attracts me and repels me at once. They are handsome eyes, but how coldly, how hardly they look at you. A striking face, the face of a clever woman, and vet I can’t like it. Something in the look she gave me just now made my flesh creep, and she doesn’t resemble any dead person ever 7 Papa book her for a ghost, and Sir Peter, too. How very odd.’ Perhaps she would have thought it yet more odd could she have seen Sir Peter still lingering farther down the entrance hall, screened bv a porphyry case ta’ler than himself, and watching the governess, as one of the servants conducted her to her chamber. Still more odd, could she ha\e ?een him follow, as though drawn by some irresistible fascination, up along corridors and galleries, until he stood in the passage leading to the nursery, and the rooms of the Eroverness and children. While he stood irresolute, hardly knowing what he wanted or why he had come, the nursery door opened, one of the twins came bouncing out, and ran headlong again-t him in the evening twilight of the hall. ‘Don’t scream, Pansy—it’s I.’ Sir Peter clapped his hand over her mouth. ‘ I only came uo here to to—Pansy, where’s the governess ?’ Pansy pointed to the nursery door with wide eyes of wonder. ‘ What is she doing ?’ ‘ Looking out of the window and looking grumpy. I hate grumpy governesses. I hate Miss Herncastle. Why didn’t mamma fetch us a governess like Aunt Cecil.? She’s nice. She plays blind man's buff with us, and battledore. I hate poky people. So does Peatl. Mis? Herncasble’s poky, and solemn, and stiff. Papa Peter, do you watfcher? I’ll tall her.’ ‘ Oh ! no, I don't want her -you mustn’t tell her. I I’m going down again. Don’t say anything about my being up here, Pansy —there’s a good girl.’ He turned in a nervou?,irresolute manner a manner that had become habitual to him of late years—and groped his way downstairs. Six years had psssed since that tragic day when he had looked upon Katherine Dangerfield’s dead face, and those six years had made him an old man. Remorse, terror, nerves, dysj epsia, be it what it might—the fact remained : Sir P* t«r Dai gerfield at six-and-thirty was an old man. He was one of your fleshless, sallow people, who naturally age fast, and since his marriage the change for the worse had been twice as apparent as before. His pale, sunken eyes looked paler and dimmer than ever, he walked with a habitual stoop, he shut himself up with drv-as-dust books, and insects and fossils, and had little to say to anybody. The resident gentry of the neighbourhood had inxtinctively shunned him since his accession to Scarswood. Strang' rs looked wi h a sorb of contemptuous pity at the dried-up, shrivelled, pitiful master of < this grand domain, and he shrank away from those humiliating glances with morbid pride. The desire of his heart was his— Katherine Dangerfield was in her gra\-6 he had his revenge and his triumph —hut , never in the days of his most abject poverty had he been half so miserable as now. Of Mrs Vavasor he bad never heard since that night upon which he had paid her price, and they had parted. In Paris or Baden, doubtless under some new nom-de-fantasia, she was enjoying herself after her own fashion upon the proceeds of her plotting. Of ail the actors in that dark tragedy of Scarswo'd, only himself remained. Mr Henry Otis shortly after removed to London wi’h all his belongings, and with Gaston Da- tree. ‘ Katherine Dangerfield left him in my charge,’ the young assistant said. ‘ In my charge he remains until he is able to take care of himself.’ Whether or no that time had ever come, Sir Peter had never discovered. Mr Otis had never returned to Castleford, and it was a subject he was charv of mentioning, or thinking of even. It came to him in dreams —bad, disturbing dreams, engendered partly by an evil conscience, partly by heavy English dinners. In his waking hours the aitn of his life was to banish it. And lo ! in one of the hours when he had most succeeded, a woman, a stranger, stood before him, like- horribly, unnaturally like —Katherine Daneerfield. * Living , I will pursue you to the end of the earth. Dead , I will return, if the dead can !’ He had never forgotten those words—words only spoken in a girl’s impotent passion, in her knowledge of the cowardly and superstitious nature she had to deal with. Words that were but a weak woman’s meaningless threat, but which from the hour he had looked upon her dead face had returned to him with ghastly force. Would Mis? Herncastle be at dinner? That was the one thought uppermost in his mind as he made his own toilet. He kept no valet or body servant of any kind. Valets were expensive, thievish, and prying. None of the tribe should spy upon him, and help devour hi? substance. My lady was enormously extravagant. Retrenchment must begin somewhere. Rich with silver, sparkling with crystal, white with linen, gay with flowers, the round dinner-table looked a picture as he came in. Through the 1 mg French window, open to the lawn, the perfume of my lady’s rose garden, the magnolias, and clematis came. A silver grey mist lay over the park, a faint new moon glimmered up in the blue, a nightingale sang its plaintive vesper-chant in the green gloom of the trees, and far off the shine of the summer stars lav upon the sea. And within the gas was lit in all the crystal globes and silver branches, and my lady,

drested in one of Worth’s most ravishing: masterpieces, though there were no cent, emen to admire but her uncle and husband, looked a fit goddess to preside at the feast. Lord Ruysland, bland, urbane, suave, smooth, was faultlesssly attired, and with a rose in his button-hole. I ady Cecil, in go d-brown silk, the hue of her eyes, was also there ; but not Miss Herncaatle. Ho drew a long breath of relief. * I might have known it,’ he muttered. ‘My lady i-n’t the one to dine with her nursery governess, company or no company. ” I shall see very little of her, that’s evident, and I’m glad of it. What the devil does the woman mean looking like—like ?’ H - did not care to speak the name even to himself; but ignore them as we may, theie are things that will net be forgotten. This was one. Miss Herncastle wa« not present at the dinner-table, but the phantom face of the dead wan. In spirit Katherine Dangertield was at his elbow, and he ate and drunk like a man in a gloomy dream. ‘ You’re not looking well, my dear Dangerfield,’ my Lord of Ruysland said. ‘You positively are nob.. You lose flesh, you lose spirits, you lose appetite. It is evident that the air of Scarswood does not agree with you. Take my advice, and go abroad.’ His lordship was right. The air of Scarswood did not agree with Sir Peter D,ngertield, and never would. ‘Go to Germany, and try the mineral waters. Change of scene and tonics are what you want. By all means, Dangerfield, go abroad and try the waters. Beastly stuff, I admit, but of use, sir—of use.’ He needed waters certainly—the waters of Le he—had that fabled rivei existed in Germany. He was almost entirely silent at dinner silent still * across the walnuts and the wine,’ bub in the drawingroom, after dinner, he suddenly found his tongue. His wife was practising some new music sent her by Major Frankland, whose one weakness it was to fancy himself a modern Mozart and bore his friends to death with his own compositions. Lord Ruysland had composed himself for a comfortable slumber in a sleepy, hollow arm-chair, and Lady Cecil, pensive and pale, stood gazing out' at the luminous starry dusk, listening to the nightingale’s song, to the call of the deer in the park, to the soft summer murmur of the trees. ( 7o be Continued.)