Two on a Tower

XXXIII.

NEXT morning, Viviette received a visit from Mr. Cecil himself. He informed her that the box spoken of by the servant had arrived quite unexpectedly, just after the departure of his clerk on the previous evening. There had not been sufficient time for him thoroughly to examine it as yet, but he had seen enough to enable him to state that it contained letters, dated memoranda in Sir Blount’s handwriting, notes referring to events which had happened later than his supposed death, and other irrefragable proofs that the account in the newspapers was correct as to the main fact, — the comparatively recent date of Sir Blount’s decease.

She looked up, and spoke with the irresponsible helplessness of a child. “ On reviewing the circumstances, I cannot think how I could have allowed myself to believe the first tidings ! ” she said.

“ Everybody else believed them, and why should not you have done so ? ” said the lawyer.

“ How came the will to be permitted to be proved, as there could, after all, have been no complete evidence ? ” she asked. “ If I had been the executrix, I would not have attempted it. As I was not, I know very little about how the business was pushed through. In a very unseemly way, I think.”

“ Well, no,” said Mr. Cecil, feeling himself called upon to defend law practice from such imputations, whatever might be its defects in the present instance. “ It was done in the way customary in all cases where the proof of death is only presumptive. The evidence, such as it was, was laid before the court by the applicants, your husband’s cousins, and the servants who had been with him deposed to his death with a particularity that was deemed sufficient. Their error was, not that somebody died, — for somebody did die at the time affirmed, — but that they mistook one person for an other ; the person who died not being Sir Blount Constantine. The court was of opinion that the evidence led up to a reasonable inference that the deceased was actually Sir Blount, and probate was granted on the strength of it. As there was a doubt about the exact day of the month, the applicants were allowed to swear that he died on or after the date last given of his existence, — which, in spite of their error then, has really come true now, of course.”

“ They little think what they have done to me by being so ready to swear ! ” she murmured.

Mr. Cecil, supposing her to allude only to the pecuniary straits in which she had been prematurely placed by the will taking effect a year before its due time, said, “ True. It has been to your ladyship’s loss, and to their gain. But they will make ample restitution, no doubt; and all will be wound up satisfactorily.”

Copyright, 1882, by HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co.

Lady Constantine was far from explaining that this was not her meaning, and after some further consultation of a purely technical nature Mr. Cecil left her presence.

When she was again unencumbered with the necessity of exhibiting a proper bearing, the sense that she had greatly suffered in pocket by the undue haste of the executors weighed upon her mind with a pressure quite inappreciable beside the greater gravity of her personal position. What was her situation as a legatee to her situation as a woman ! Her face crimsoned with a flush which she was almost ashamed to show to the daylight, as she hastily penned the following note to Swithin at Greenwich, — certainly one of the most informal documents she had ever written: —

WELLAND, Thursday.

O Swithin, my dear Swithin, what I have to tell you is so sad and so humiliating that I can hardly write it, and yet I must! Though we are dearer to each other than all the world besides, and as firmly united as if we were one, I am not legally your wife. Sir Blount did not die till some time after we in England supposed. The service must be repeated instantly. I have not been able to sleep all night. I feel so wrong and unseemly that I can scarcely collect my thoughts. The newspaper sent with this will explain, if you have not seen particulars. Do come to me as soon as you can, that we may consult on what to do. Burn this at once. Your

VIVIETTE.

When the note had been dispatched, she remembered that there was another hardly less important question to be answered,— the proposal of the Bishop for her hand. His communication had sunk into nothingness beside the momentous news that had so greatly distressed her. The two replies lay before her : the one she had first written, simply declining to become Dr. Helmsdale’s wife, with out giving reasons ; the second, which she had elaborated with so much care on the previous day, relating in confidential detail the history of her love for Swithin, their secret marriage, and their hopes for the future, — asking his advice on what their procedure should be to escape the strictures of a censorious world. It was the letter she had barely finished writing when Mr. Cecil’s clerk announced news tantamount to a declaration that she was no wife at all. This epistle she now destroyed, and with the less reluctance in knowing that Swithin had been somewhat averse to the confession as soon as he found that Bishop Helmsdale was also a victim to tender sentiment concerning her. The first, which she had been unable honestly to sign “ Viviette Constantine,” and could not openly sign “ Viviette St. Cleeve,” she sadly filled in with the former surname, and sent the missive on its way. Strange it was to her, and yet in keeping with the tenor of human affairs, that the difficulty of signing that letter should have resolved itself by the only means which at the time of writing she would have deemed non-existent. There had been a thousand reasons why she should sign “ Viviette Constantine,” even when believing herself no longer owner of that name ; that she should ultimately sign it because it had never ceased to be hers was a result that distanced all conjecture.

The sense of her undefinable position kept her without much repose on the second night also; but the following morning brought an unexpected letter from Swithin, written about the same hour as hers to him, and it comforted her much. He had seen the account in the papers almost as soon as it had come to her knowledge, and now sent this line to reassure her, in the perturbation she must naturally feel. She was not to be alarmed at all. They two were husband and wife in moral intent and antecedent belief, and the legal flaw which accident had so curiously uncovered could be mended in half an hour. He would return on Saturday night at the latest ; but as the hour would be far advanced, he would ask her to meet him by slipping out of the house to the tower any time during service on Sunday morning, when there would be few persons about likely to observe them. Meanwhile, he might provisionally state that their best course in the emergency would be, instead of confessing to anybody that there had already been a solemnization of marriage between them, to arrange their remarriage in as open a manner as possible, as if it were the just-reached climax of a sudden affection ; prefacing it by a public announcement in the usual way.

This plan of approaching their second union with all the show and circumstance of a new thing recommended itself to her strongly, but for one objection,— that by such a course the wedding could not, without appearing like an act of unseemly haste, take place so quickly as she desired for her own peace of mind. It mightoccur somewhat early, say in the course of a month or two, without bringing down upon her the charge of levity ; for Sir Blount, a notoriously unkind husband to her, had been out of her sight four or five years, and in his grave nearly one. But what she naturally desired was that there should be no more delay than was positively necessary for obtaining a new license, — two or three days at longest: and in view of this celerity it was next to impossible to make due preparation for a wedding of ordinary publicity, performed in her own church, from her own house, with a feast and amusements for the villagers, a tea for the schoolchildren, a bonfire, and other of those proclamatory accessories which, by meeting wonder half-way, deprives it of much of its intensity. It must be admitted, too, that she even now shrank from the shock of surprise that would inevitably be caused by her openly taking for her husband such a mere youth as Swithin still appeared, notwithstanding that in years he was by this time within a trifle of one and twenty.

The straightforward course had, nevertheless, so much to recommend it, and so well avoided the disadvantage of future revelation which a private repetition of the ceremony would entail, that, assuming she could depend upon Swithin, as she knew she could do, good sense counseled its serious consideration. She became more composed at her queer situation : hour after hour passed, and the first spasmodic impulse of womanly decorum not to let the sun go down upon her present state was quite controllable. She could regard the strange contingency that had arisen with something like philosophy. The day slipped by : she thought of the awkwardness of the accident rather than of its humiliation ; and, loving Swithin now in a far calmer spirit than at that past date, when they had for the first time rushed into each other’s arms and vowed to be one, she ever and anon caught herself reflecting, “ Were it not that, for my honor’s sake, I must remarry him, I should perhaps be a nobler woman in not allowing him to hamper his bright future by a union with me at all.”

This thought, at first artificially entertained as little more than a mental exercise, became by stages a genuine conviction ; and while her heart enforced, her reason regretted, the necessity of abstaining from self sacrifice, — the being obliged, despite his curious escape from the first attempt, to lime Swithin’s young wings again, solely for her credit’s sake However, the deed had to be done : Swithin was to be made legally hers. Selfishness in a conjecture of this sort was excusable, and even obligatory. Taking brighter views, she allowed herself to hope that upon the whole this yoking of the young fellow with her, a portionless woman and his senior, would not greatly endanger his career. In such a mood night overtook her, and she went to bed reflecting that Swithin had by this time arrived in the parish,— was perhaps even at that moment passing homeward beneath her walls, — and that in less than twelve hours she would have met him, have ventilated the secret which oppressed her, and have satisfactorily arranged with him the details of their reunion.

XXXIV.

Sunday morning came, and complicated her previous emotions by bringing with it a new and unexpected shock to mingle with them. The postman had delivered, among other things, an illustrated newspaper, sent by a hand which she did not recognize ; and on opening the cover the sheet that met her eyes filled her with a horror which she could not express. The print was one which drew largely on its imagination for its engravings, and it already contained an illustration of the death of Sir Blount Constantine. In this work of art he was represented as standing with his pistol to his mouth, his brains being in the act of flying up to the roof of his chamber, and his native princess rushing terror-stricken away to a remote position in the thicket of palms which neighbored the dwelling.

The crude realism of the picture, possibly harmless enough in its effect upon others, naturally overpowered and sickened her. By a curious fascination she would look at it again and again, till every line of the engraver’s performance seemed really a transcript from what had happened. For the first time, on these grounds, she felt it to be a trying position that, with such details so fresh in her thoughts, she was obliged to go out and make arrangements for confirming, by repetition, her marriage with another. No interval was available for serious reflection, or for allowing the softening effects of time to operate in her mind. It was as though her first husband had died that moment, and she were keeping an appointment with another in the presence of his corpse.

So revived was the actuality of Sir Blount’s recent life and death by this incident, that the distress of her personal relations with Swithin was the single force in the world which could have coerced her into abandoning to him the interval she would have first set apart for getting over these new and painful impressions of her former husband. Selfpity for ill-usage afforded her good reasons for ceasing to love him, but he was yet too closely intertwined with her past life to be destructible on the instant as a memory.

But there was no choice of occasions for her now, and she listlessly waited for the church bells to cease chiming. When all was still, and the surrounding cottagers had gathered themselves within the walls of the adjacent building, and Tabitha Lark’s first voluntary had pealed from the tower window, Lady Constantine left the garden in which she had been loitering, and went towards RingsHill Speer.

The sense of her situation obscured the morning prospect. The country was unusually silent under the intensifying sun, the songless season of birds having arrived. Choosing her path amid the efts that were basking upon the outer slopes of the plantation, she wound her way up the tree-shrouded camp to the wooden cabin in the centre. The door was ajar, but on entering she found the place empty. The tower door was also partly open, and, listening at the foot of the stairs, she heard Swithin above, shifting the telescope and wheeling round the rumbling dome, apparently in preparation for the next nocturnal reconnoitre. There was no doubt that he would descend in a minute or two to look for her, and, not wishing to interrupt him till he was ready, she reëntered the cabin, and patiently seated herself among the books and papers that lay scattered about.

She did as she had often done before when waiting therefor him; that is, she occupied herself in turning over the papers, and examining the progress of his labors. The notes were mostly astronomical, of course, and she had managed to keep sufficiently abreast of him to catch the meaning of a good many of these. The litter on the table, however, was somewhat more profuse and miscellaneous in character this morning, as if the paper had been hurriedly overhauled. Among the rest of the sheets lay an open note, which, in the entire confidence that existed between them, she glanced over and read as a matter of course.

It was a most business-like communication, and beyond the address and date contained only the following words : —

DEAR SIR, — We beg leave to draw your attention to a letter we addressed to you on the 26th ult., to which we have not yet been favored with a reply. As the time for the payment of the first moiety of the four hundred pounds per annum, settled on you by your late uncle, is now at hand, we should be obliged by your giving directions as to where and in what manner the money is to be handed over to you, and shall also be glad to receive any other definite instructions from you with regard to the future.

We are, dear sir, yours faithfully,

HANNER & RAWLES.

SWITHIN ST. CLEEVE, ESQ. An income of four hundred a year for Swithin, whom she had hitherto understood to be possessed of an annuity of eighty pounds at the outside, with no prospect of increasing the sum but by hard work ! What could this communication mean ? He, whose custom and delight it was to tell her all his heart, had not breathed a syllable of this matter to her, though it met the very difficulty towards which their discussions invariably tended, — how to secure for him a competency which should enable him to establish his pursuits on a wider basis, and throw himself into more direct communion with the scientific world. Quite bewildered by the lack of any explanation, she rose from her seat, and, with the note in her hand, ascended the winding tower steps.

Reaching the upper aperture, she perceived him under the dome, moving musingly about, as if he had never been absent an hour, his light hair frilling out from under the edge of his velvet skull-cap as it had always been wont to do. No question either of marriage or not marriage seemed to be disturbing the mind of this juvenile husband of hers. The be-all and end-all of his existence was apparently before him, namely, the equatorial telescope, which he was carefully adjusting by means of screws and clamps, till, hearing her movements, he turned his head.

“ Oh, here you are, my dear Viviette ! I was just beginning to expect you ! ” he exclaimed, coming forward. " I ought to have been looking out for you ; but I have found a little defect here in the instrument, and I wanted to set it right before evening came on. It is not a good thing to tinker your glasses, but I have found that the diffraction rings are not perfect circles. I have learnt at Greenwich how to correct them,—so kind they have been to me there ! — and so I have been loosening the screws of the cell, and gently shifting the glass, till I think that I have at last made the illumination equal all round. I have so much to tell you about my visit. One thing is that the astronomical world is getting quite excited about the coming transit of Venus. There is to be a regular expedition fitted out. How I should like to join it! ”

He spoke enthusiastically, and his eyes sparkled at the mental image of the said expedition. As it was rather dark in the dome, he rolled it round on its axis till the shuttered slit for the telescope directly faced the morning sun, which thereupon flooded the concave, touching the bright metal work of the equatorial, and lighting up Lady Constantine’s pale, troubled face.

“But Swithin,” she faltered, “my letter to you— our marriage ! ”

“ Oh yes, — this marriage question,” he hastily added. “ I had not forgotten it, or at least only for a few minutes.”

“ Can you forget it, Swithin, for a moment ? Oh, how can you ! ” she said reproachfully. “ It is such a distressing thing. It drives away all my rest.”

“ Forgotten is not the word I should have used,” he apologized. “Temporarily dismissed it from my mind is all I meant. The simple fact is that the vastness of the field of astronomy reduces every terrestrial thing to atomic dimensions. Do not trouble, dearest. The remedy is quite easy, as I stated in my letter. We can now be married in a prosy, public way. Yes, early or late, next week, next month, six months hence, just as you choose. Say the word when, and I will obey.” His face, with its absence of all anxiety or consternation, contrasted strangely with hers, which at last he saw, and, looking at the writing she held, inquired, “ But what paper have you in your hand ? ”

“ A letter which to me is actually inexplicable,” said she, her curiosity returning to the letter, and overriding for the instant her immediate concern. “ What does this income of four hundred a year mean ? Why have you never told me about it, dear Swithin ? Or does it not refer to you ? ”

He looked at the note, flushed slightly, and was absolutely unable to begin his reply at once. “ I did not mean you to see that, Viviette,” he murmured.

“ Why not ? ”

“ I thought you had better not, as it does not concern me further, now. The solicitors are laboring under a mistake in supposing that it does, I have to write at once and inform them that the annuity is not mine to receive.”

“ What a strange mystery in your life ! ” she said, forcing a perplexed smile. “ Something to balance the tragedy in mine. I am absolutely in the dark as to your past history, it seems. And yet I had thought you told me everything.”

“ I could not tell you that, Viviette, because it would have endangered our relations, — though not in the way you may suppose. You would have reproved me, — you, who are so generous and noble, would have forbidden me to do what I did ; and I was determined not to be forbidden.”

“ To do what ? ”

“ To marry you.”

“ Why should I have forbidden ?”

“ Must I tell — what I would not ? ” he said, placing his hands upon her shoulders, and looking somewhat sadly at her. “ Well, perhaps, since it has come to this, you ought to know all, since it can make no possible difference to my intentions now. We are one forever, legal blunders notwithstanding,— for happily they are quickly reparable ; — and this question of a devise from my uncle Jocelyn concerned me only when I was a single man.”

Thereupon, with obviously no consideration of the possibilities that were reopened by the nullity of their marriage contract, he related in detail, and not without misgiving for having concealed them so long, the events that had occurred on the morning of their weddingday ; how he had met the postman on his way to Warborne, after dressing in the cabin, and how he had received from him the letter from his dead uncle through his family lawyers, informing him of the bequest and of the important condition attached, — that he should remain unmarried until his five-and twentieth year ; how, in comparison with the possession of her dear self, he had reckoned the income as nought, abandoned all idea of it there and then, and had come on to the wedding as if nothing had happened to interrupt for a moment the working out of their plan ; how he had scarcely thought with any closeness of the circumstances of the case since, until reminded of them by this note she had seen, and a previous one of the sort, received from the same solicitors.

“ Oh, Swithin, Swithin ! ” she cried, bursting into tears as she realized it all, and sinking on the observing-chair. “ I have ruined you, — yes, I have ruined you! ”

The young man was dismayed by her unexpected grief, and endeavored to soothe her ; but she seemed shaken by a poignant remorse, which would not be comforted.

“ And now,” she continued, as soon as she could speak, “ when you are once more free, and in a position —actually in a position to claim the annuity that would be the making of you, I am compelled to come to you, and beseech you to undo yourself again, merely to save me ! ”

“ Not to save you, Viviette, but to bless me. You do not ask me to remarry; it is not a question of alternatives at all, —it is my straight course. I do not dream of doing otherwise. I should be wretched if you thought for one moment I could entertain the idea of doing otherwise.”

But the more he said, the worse he made the matter. It was a state of affairs that would not bear discussion at all, and the unsophisticated view he took of his course seemed to increase her responsibility.

“ Why did your uncle attach such a cruel condition to his bounty ! ” she cried bitterly. “ Oh, he little thinks how hard he hits me from the grave, — me, who have never done him wrong; and you too. Swithin, are you sure that he makes that condition indispensable ? Perhaps he meant that you should not marry beneath you ; perhaps he did not menu in such a case as your marrying (forgive me for saying it) a little above you.”

“ There is no doubt that he did not contemplate a case which has led to such happiness as this has done,” the youth murmured with hesitation ; for though he scarcely remembered a word of his uncle’s letter of advice, he had a dim apprehension that it was couched in terms alluding specifically to Lady Constantine.

“ Are you sure that you cannot retain the money, and be my lawful husband too ? ” she asked piteously. “ Oh, what a wrong I am doing you ! I did not dream that it could be as bad as this. I knew I was wasting your time by letting you love me, and hampering your projects ; but I thought there were compensating advantages. This wreck of your future by me I did not contemplate. You are sure there is no escape ? Have you his letter with the conditions, or the will ? Let me see the letter in which he expresses his wishes.”

I assure you it is all as I say,” he pensively returned.

“ But how does he put it ? How does he justify himself in making such a harsh restriction ? Do let me see the letter, Swithin, I shall think it a want of confidence if you do not. I may discover some way out of the difficulty, if you let me look at the papers. Eccentric wills can be evaded in all sorts of ways.”

Still he hesitated. “ I would rather you did not see these papers,” he said.

But she persisted, as only a fond woman can. Her knowledge that she, who as a woman many years his senior should have shown her love for him by guiding him straight into the paths he aimed at, had (though in some respects unwittingly) blocked his attempted career for her own happiness, made her more intent than ever to find out a device by which she might retain him, while he also retained the life-interest under his uncle’s will. Her entreaties were at length too potent for his resistance; and, accompanying her downstairs to the cabin, he opened the desk from which the other papers had been taken, and, against his better judgment, handed her the ominous communication of Jocelyn St. Cleeve, which lay in the envelope just as it had been received, three quarters of a year earlier.

“ Don’t read it now,” he said. “ Don’t spoil our meeting by entering into a subject which is virtually past and done with. Take it with you, and look it over at your leisure, — but merely as an old curiosity, remember, and not as a still possibly operative document. I have almost forgotten what the contents are, beyond the general advice and stipulation that I was to remain a bachelor.”

“At any rate,” she rejoined, “do not reply to the note I have seen from the solicitors till I have read this also.”

He promised. “ But now about our public wedding,” he said. “ Like certain royal personages, we have had the religious rite; and now comes the civil contract. Will you fix the day ? When is it to be ? And shall it take place at a registrar’s office, since there is no necessity for having the sacred part over again ? ”

“ I ’ll think,” replied she. “ I ’ll think it over.”

“ And let me know as soon as you can how you decide to proceed.”

“ I will write to-morrow, or come. I do not know what to say now. I cannot forget how I am wronging you. This is almost more than I can bear.”

To divert her mind he began talking about Greenwich Observatory, and the great instruments therein, and how he had been received by the astronomers, and the details of the expedition to observe the transit of Venus, together with many other subjects of the sort, to which she had not power to lend her attention.

“I must reach home before the people are out of church,” she at length said wearily. “ I wish nobody to know I have been out this morning.” And forbidding Swithin to cross into the open in her company, she left him on the edge of the isolated plantation, which had latterly known her tread so well.

XXXV.

Lady Constantine crossed the field and the park beyond, and found on passing the church that the congregation was still within. There was no hurry for getting indoors, the open windows enabling her to hear that Mr. Torkingham had only just given out his text. So instead of entering the house, she went through the garden door to the old bowling-green, and sat down in the arbor that Louis had occupied when he overheard the interview between Swithin and the Bishop. Not until then did she find courage to draw out the letter and papers relating to the bequest, which Swithin in a critical moment had handed to her.

Had he been ever so little older he would not have placed that unconsidered confidence in her which had led him to give way to her curiosity. But the immense influence over him which seven or eight outnumbering years lent her was again increased by her wider experiences, and he had yielded the point, as he yielded all social points ; while the same juniority freed him from much consciousness that it was his duty to protect her even from herself.

The preamble of Dr. St. Cleeve’s letter — in which he referred to his pleasure at hearing of the young man’s promise as an astronomer—disturbed her not at all; indeed, somewhat prepossessed her in favor of the old gentleman who had written it. The first item of what he called “ unfavorable news,” namely, the allusion to the inadequacy of Swithin’s income to the wants of a scientific man, whose lines of work were not calculated to produce pecuniary emoluments for many years, deepened the cast of her face to concern. She reached the second item of the so-called unfavorable news; and her face flushed as she read how the doctor had learnt “ that there was something in your path worse than narrow means, and that that something was a woman.”

“ To save you, if possible, from ruin on these heads,” she read on, “ I take the preventive measures detailed below.” And then followed the announcement of the four hundred a year settled on the youth for life, on the single condition that he remained unmarried till the age of twenty-five, just as Swithin had explained to her. She next learnt that the bequest was for a definite object: that he might have resources sufficient to enable him to travel in an inexpensive way, and begin a study of the Southern constellations, which, according to the shrewd old man’s judgment, were a mine not so thoroughly worked as the Northern, and therefore to be recommended. This was followed by some sentences which hit her in the face like a switch : —

“ The only other preventive step in my power is that of exhortation. . , . Swithin St. Cleeve, don’t make a fool of yourself, as your father did. If your studies are to be worth anything, believe me, they must be carried on without the help of a woman. Avoid her, and every one of the sex, if you mean to achieve any worthy thing. Eschew all of that sort for many a year yet. Moreover, I say, the lady of your acquaintance avoid in particular. . . . She has, in addition to her original disqualification as a companion for you (that is, that of sex), these two serious drawbacks : she is much older than yourself ” —

Lady Constantine’s indignant flush forsook her, and pale despair succeeded in its stead. Alas, it was true : handsome and in her prime she might be, but she was too old for Swithin !

“ — and she is so impoverished. . . . Beyond this, frankly, I don’t think well of her. I don’t think well of any woman who dotes upon a man younger than herself. ... To care to be the first fancy of a young fellow like you shows no great common sense in her. If she were worth her salt she would have too much pride to be intimate with a youth in your unassured position, to say no worse.” (Viviette’s face, by this time, tingled hot again.) “ She is old enough to know that a liaison with her may, and almost certainly would, be your ruin ; and, on the other hand, that a marriage would be preposterous, — unless she is a complete fool, and in that case there is even more reason for avoiding her than if she were in her few senses.

“ A woman of honorable feeling, nephew, would be careful to do nothing to hinder you in your career, as this putting of herself in your way most certainly will. Yet I hear that she professes a great anxiety on this same future of yours as a physicist. The best way in which she can show the reality of her anxiety is by leaving you to yourself.”

Leaving him to himself! She paled again, as if chilled by a conviction that in this the old man was right.

. . . “ She 'll blab your most secret plans and theories to every one of her acquaintance, and make them appear ridiculous by announcing them before they are matured. If you attempt to study with a woman, you ’ll be ruled by her to entertain fancies instead of theories, air-castles instead of intentions, qualms instead of opinions, sickly prepossessions instead of reasoned conclusions. . . .

“ A woman waking your passions just at a moment when you are endeavoring to shine intellectually is like stirring up the mud at the bottom of a clear brook. All your brightness and sparkle are taken away ; you become moping and thick-headed ; obstructions that before only brought out your brilliancies now disfigure your each dull attempt to surmount them.”

Thus much the letter; and it was enough for her, indeed. The flushes of indignation which had passed over her from time to time, as she gathered this man’s opinion of herself, combined with flushes of grief and shame when she considered that Swithin, her dear Swithin, was perfectly acquainted with this cynical view of her nature ; that, reject it as he might, and as he unquestionably did, such thoughts of her had been implanted in him, and lay in him ; stifled as they were, they lay in him like seeds too deep for germination, which accident might some day bring near the surface and aerate into life. The humiliation of such a possibility was almost too much to endure ; the mortification — she had known nothing like it till now. But this was not all. Those tingling emotions were succeeded by feelings in comparison with which resentment and mortification were happy moods, — a miserable conviction that this old man, who spoke from the grave, was not altogether wrong in his speaking ; that he was only half wrong; that he was, perhaps, virtually right. Only those persons whom nature has unhappily endowed with that appreciativeness of others’ positions which empowers them to observe themselves from the outside can understand the smart of such convictions against self, — the wish for annihilation that is engendered in the moment of despair at feeling that at length we, our own last firmest friend, cease to believe in our own cause.

Viviette could hear the people coming out of church on the other side of the garden wall ; their footsteps and their cheerful voices died away. The bell rang for lunch, and she went in. But her life during that morning and afternoon was wholly introspective. Knowing the whole circumstances of his situation as she knew them now, as she had never before known them, ought she to make herself the legal wife of Swithin St. Cleeve, and so secure her own honor, at any price to him ? Such was the formidable question which Lady Constantine propounded to her startled understanding. As a subjectively honest woman alone, beginning her charity at home, there was no doubt that she ought. Save thyself was sound Old Testament doctrine, and not altogether discountenanced in the New. But was there a line of conduct which transcended mere self-preservation, and would it not be an excellent thing to put it in practice now ?

That she had wronged St. Cleeve by marrying him, that she would wrong him infinitely more by completing the marriage, there was — in her opinion — no doubt. She in her experience had sought out him in his inexperience, and had led him like a child. She remembered, as if it had been her fault, though it was in fact only her misfortune, that she had been the one to go for the license, and take up residence in the parish in which they were wedded. He was now just one and twenty. Without her, he had all the world before him, four hundred a year, and leave to cut as straight a road to fame as he should choose. With her, this story was negatived. Beyond leading him to waste the active spring-time of his life in idle adoration of her as his sweetheart, and depriving him of his inestimable independency by allowing him to make her his wife, she had indirectly been the means of ruining him in the good opinion of Bishop Helmsdale,—a man who was once his father’s acquaintance, and who had been strongly disposed to become the younger man’s friend. Encouragement and aid from the Bishop would have been of no mean value to a youth without backers of any kind.

On the other hand, what had he gained by his alliance with her ? Well, an equatorial telescope, — that was about all: while to set against this there was the disinclination to adventure further which her constant presence had imparted ; the yoke with a woman whose disparity of years, though immaterial just now, would operate in the future as a wet blanket upon his social ambitions ; that content with life as it was which she had noticed more than once in him latterly, and which was imperiling his scientific spirit by abstracting his zest for progress.

It was impossible, in short, to blind herself to the inference that marriage with her had not benefited him, as a man who — in her fond belief — had a great work to do, to the extent they both had expected. Matters might improve in the future; but to take upon herself the whole liability of Swithin’s life, as she would do by causing him to sacrifice the help his uncle had offered, was a fearful responsibility. How could she, an unendowed woman, replace such assistance ? His recent visit to Greenwich, which had momentarily revived that zest for his pursuits that was now less constant than heretofore, should by rights be supplemented by other such expeditions. It would be true benevolence not to deprive him of means to continue them, and so to keep his ardor alive, regardless of the cost to herself.

It could be done. By the extraordinary favor of a unique accident, she had now an opportunity of redeeming Swithin’s seriously compromised future, and restoring him to a state no worse than his first. His annuity could be enjoyed by him, his travels undertaken, his studies pursued, his high vocation initiated, by one little sacrifice, — that of herself. She only had to refuse to legalize their marriage by repeating it, to part from him forever, and all would be well with him thenceforward. The pain to him would after all be but slight, whatever it might be to his wretched Viviette.

Such passion as he had shown for her, boyish and never, perhaps, very strong, had, in the inevitable course of marriage on such terms, been softened down to mild affection. She had seen only too clearly this morning that, owing to his Greenwich visit, she had again sunk to a second place in his heart, if she had ever occupied a higher; his darling science reasserting its right to the first. It was the ordinary fate of scientific men’s wives; she should have thought of it before. Was there not, then, something reactionary and selfish in her persisting to clinch a union for the assurance of her individual composure, now that her conception of that course as an advantage to him had been proved wildly erroneous?

The horror of retaining him at her side lay not only in the fact itself of injury to him, but in the likelihood of his living to see it as such, and reproaching her for selfishness in not letting him go, in this unprecedented opportunity for correcting a move proved to be false. He wished to examine the Southern heavens, — perhaps his uncle’s letter was the father of the wish, — and there was no telling what good might not result to mankind at large from his exploits there. Why should she, to save her narrow honor, waste the wide promise of his ability ? True, an objector might have urged, on her side, that her dear Swithin’s wondrous works among the children of men existed as yet only in her imagination, while the present quandary was an unquestionable fact.

But Lady Constantine would have been the first to deprecate the ungenerousness of such a skeptical reasoner.

That in immolating herself by refusing him, and leaving him free to work wonders for the good of his fellowcreatures, she would in all probability add to the sum of human felicity consoled her by its breadth as an idea, even while it tortured her by making herself the scape-goat or single unit on which the evil would fall. Ought a possibly large number, Swithin included, to remain unbenefited because the one individual to whom his release would be an injury chanced to be herself? Love between man and woman, which in Homer, Moses, and other early exhibitors of life is mere desire, had for centuries past so far broadened as to include sympathy and friendship ; surely, it should, in this advanced stage of the world, include benevolence also. If so, it was her duty to set her young man free.

Thus she labored, with a generosity more worthy even than its object, to sink her love for her own decorum in devotion to the world in general and Swithin in particular. To counsel her activities by her understanding, rather than by her emotions, as usual, was hard work for a tender woman ; but she strove hard, and made advance. The self-centred attitude natural to one in her situation was becoming displaced by the sympathetic attitude, which, though it had to be artificially fostered at first, gave her, by degrees, a certain sweet sense that she was rising above self-love. That maternal element which had from time to time evinced itself in her affection for the youth, and was imparted by her superior ripeness in experience and years, appeared now again as she drew nearer the resolve not to secure propriety in her own social condition at the expense of this youth’s earthly utility.

Unexpectedly grand fruits are sometimes borne of mean roots. The illiberal letter of Swithin’s uncle was suggesting to Lady Constantine a more comprehensive morality than the highest efforts of direct instructors had ever been able to instill. To love him so far better than herself as this was to surpass the love of woman as conventionally understood, and as mostly existing.

Before, however, clinching her decision by any definite step, she worried her little brain by devising every kind of ingenious scheme, in the hope of lighting on one that might show her how that decision could be avoided, with the same good result. But to secure for him the advantages offered, and to retain him likewise,—reflection only showed it to be impossible ! Yet to let him go forever was more than she could endure, and at length she jumped at an idea which promised some sort of improvement on that design. She would propose that reunion should not be entirely abandoned, but simply postponed, — namely, till after his twenty-fifth birthday, when he might be her husband without, at any rate, the loss to him of the income. By this time he would approximate to a man’s full judgment, and that painful aspect of her as one who deluded his raw immaturity would have passed forever.

The plan somewhat appeased her disquieted honor. To let a marriage sink into abeyance for four or five years was not to nullify it; and though she would leave it to him to move its substantiation at the end of that time, without present stipulations, she had not much doubt upon the issue.

The clock struck five. This silent mental debate had occupied her whole afternoon. Perhaps it would not have ended now, but for an unexpected incident., — the entry of her brother Louis. He came into the room where she was sitting, or rather writhing ; and after a few words to explain how he had got there, and about the mistake in the date of Sir Blount’s death, he walked up close to her. His next remarks were apologetic in form, but in essence they were bitterness itself.

“ Viviette,” he said, “ I am sorry for my hasty words to you when I last left this house. I readily withdraw them. My suspicions took a wrong direction. I think now that I know the truth ! You have been even madder than I supposed ! ”

“ In what way ? ” she asked distantly.

“ I had lately thought that unhappy young man was only your too-favored lover.”

“ You thought wrong: he is not.”

“ He is not, — I believe you, — for he is more. I now am persuaded that he is your lawful husband. Can you deny it?”

“ I can.”

“ On your sacred word ! ”

“ On my sacred word, he is not that, either.”

“ Thank Heaven for that assurance ! " said Louis, exhaling a breath of relief. “ I was not so positive as I pretended to be, but I wanted to know the truth of this mystery. Since you are not fettered to him in that way, I care nothing.”

Louis turned away, and that afforded her an opportunity for leaving the room. Those few words were the last grains that had turned the balance, and settled her doom. She would let Swithin go. All the voices in her world had seemed to clamor for that consummation. The morning’s mortification, the afternoon’s benevolence, and the evening’s instincts of evasion had combined to carry the point.

Accordingly, she sat down and wrote to Swithin a summary of the thoughts above detailed. “ We shall separate,” she concluded : “ you to obey your uncle’s orders and explore the Southern skies ; I to wait as one who can implicitly trust you. Do not see me again till the years have expired. You will find me still the same. I am your wife through all time. The letter of the law is not needed to reassert it at present; while the absence of the letter secures your fortune.”

Nothing can express what it cost Lady Constantine to marshal her arguments ; but she did it, and vanquished self-comfort by a sense of the general expediency. It may unhesitatingly be affirmed that the only ignoble reason which might have dictated such a step was non-existent; that is to say, a serious decline in her affection. Tenderly she had loved the youth at first, and tenderly she loved him now, as time and her conduct after proved.

Women the most delicate get used to strange moral situations. Eve probably regained her normal sweet composure about a week after the Fall. On first learning of her anomalous position Lady Constantine’s cheek had blushed hot, and her instincts prompted her to legalize her marriage without a moment’s delay. Heaven and earth were to be moved at once to effect it. Day after day had passed ; her union had remained unsecured, and the idea of its nullity had gradually ceased to be strange to her, till it became of little account beside her generous resolve for the young man’s sake.

XXXVI.

The immediate effect upon St. Cleeve of the receipt of her well-reasoned argument for retrocession was, naturally, a bitter attack upon himself for having been guilty of such cruel carelessness as to leave in her way the lawyer’s letter that had first made her aware of his uncle’s provision for him. Immature as he was, he could realize Viviette’s position sufficiently well to perceive what the poor lady must suffer at having suddenly thrust upon her the responsibility of repairing her own situation as a wife by ruining his as a legatee. True, it was by the purest inadvertence that his pending sacrifice of means had been discovered ; but he should have taken special pains to render such a contretemps impossible. If, on the first occasion when a revelation might have been made with impunity, he would not put it in the power of her good nature to relieve his position by refusing him, he should have shown double care not to do so now, when she could not exercise that benevolence without the loss of honor. With a young man’s inattention to issues, he had not considered how sharp her feelings as a woman must be in this contingency. It had seemed the easiest thing in the world to remedy the defect in their marriage, and that therefore there was nothing to be anxious about. And in his innocence of any thought of securing the bequest, by taking advantage of the loop-hole in his matrimonial bond, he undervalued the importance of concealing the existence of that bequest.

The looming fear of unhappiness between them revived in Swithin the warmest emotions of their earlier acquaintance. Almost before the sun had set he hastened to Welland House in search of her. The air was disturbed by a stiff summer wind, productive of windfalls and premature descents of leafage. It was an hour when unripe apples shower down in orchards, and unbrowned chestnuts descend in their husks upon the park glades. There was no help for it this afternoon but to call upon her in a direct manner, regardless of suspicions. He was thunderstruck when, while waiting in the full expectation of being admitted to her presence, the answer brought back to him was that she was engaged.

This had never happened before in the whole course of their acquaintance. But he knew what it meant, and turned away with a vague disquietude. He did not know that Lady Constantine was just above his head, listening to his movements with the liveliest emotions, and, while praying for him to go, longing for him to insist on seeing her and spoil all. But the faintest symptom being always sufficient to convince him of having blundered, he unwittingly took her at her word, and went rapidly away.

However, he called again the next day ; and she, having gained strength by one victory over herself, was enabled to repeat her refusal with greater ease. Knowing this to be the only course by which her point could be maintained, she clung to it with strenuous and religious pertinacity.

Thus immured and self-controlling she passed a week. Her brother, though he did not live in the house (preferring the nearest watering-place at this time of the year), was continually coming there; and one day he happened to be present when she refused Swithin for the third time. Louis, who did uot observe the tears in her eyes, was astonished and delighted : she was coming to her senses at last. Believing now that there had been nothing more between them than a too plainly shown partiality on her part, he expressed his commendation of her conduct to her face. At this, instead of owning to its advantage also, her tears burst forth outright.

Not knowing what to make of this, Louis said, ;l Well, I am simply upholding you in your course.”

“ Yes — yes — I know it! ” she cried. “ And it is my deliberately chosen course. I wish he — Swithin St. Cleeve — would go on his travels — at once, and leave the place. Four hundred a year has been left him for travel and study of the Southern constellations; and I wish he would use it. You might represent the advantage to him of the course, if you cared to.”

Louis thought he could do no better than let Swithin know this as soon as possible. Accordingly, when St. Cleeve was writing in the hut, the next day, he heard the crackle of footsteps over the fir spikelets outside, and jumped up, supposing them to be hers; but to his disappointment it was her brother who appeared at the door.

“ Excuse my invading the hermitage, St. Cleeve,” he said in his careless way. “ But I have heard from my sister of your good fortune.”

“ My good fortune ? ”

“Yes, in having an opportunity for roving : and with a traveler’s conceit I could n’t help coming to give you the benefit of my experience. When do you start ? ”

“I have not — formed any plan as yet. Indeed, I had not quite been thinking of going ” —

Louis stared. “ Not going ? Then I may have been misinformed. What I have heard is that a good uncle has kindly bequeathed you a sufficient income to make a second Isaac Newton of you, if you only use it as he directs.”

Swithin breathed quickly, but said nothing.

“ If you have not decided so to make use of it, let me implore you, as your friend, and one nearly old enough to be your father, to decide at once. Such a chance does not happen to a scientific youth once in a century.”

“ Thank you for your good advice, — for it is good in itself, I know,” said Swithin, in a low voice. “ But — has Lady Constantine spoken of it at all ?”

“ She thinks as I do.”

“ She has spoken to you on the subject ! ”

“ Certainly. More than that, it is at her request — though I did not intend to say so — that I come to speak to you about it now.”

“ Frankly and plainly,” said Swithin, his voice trembling with a compound of scientific and amatory emotion that defies definition, “does she say seriously that she wishes me to go ? ”

“ She does,”

“ Then go I will,” replied Swithin firmly. “ I have been fortunate enough to interest some leading astronomers, including the Astronomer-Royal; and in a letter received this morning I learn that the use of the Cape observatory has been offered me for any Southern observations I may wish to make. This offer I will accept. Will you kindly let Lady Constantine know this, since she is interested in my welfare?”

Louis promised, and when he was gone Swithin looked blankly at his own situation, as if he could scarcely believe in its reality. Her letter to him, then, had been deliberately written : she meant him to go. But he was determined that none of those misunderstandings which ruin the happiness of lovers should be allowed to creep in in the present case. He would see her, if he slept under her walls all night to do it, and would hear the order to depart from her own lips. This unexpected stand she was making for his interests was winning his admiration to such a degree as to be in danger of defeating the very cause it was meant to subserve. A woman like this was not to be forsaken in a hurry. He wrote two lines, and left the note at the house with his own hand : —

THE CABIN, RINGS-HILL.

DEAREST VIVIETTE, — If you insist, I will go. But letter-writing will not do. I must have the command from your own two lips; otherwise I shall not stir. I am here every evening at seven. Can you come ? S.

This note, as fate would have it, reached her hands in the single hour of that week when she was in a mood to comply with his request, — whilst moved by the reflex emotion that had followed Louis’s praise of her for dismissing Swithin. She went up-stairs to the window that had so long served purposes of this kind, and signalled “yes.”

St. Cleeve soon saw the answer she had given, and watched her approach from the tower as the sunset drew on. The vivid circumstances of his life at this date led him ever to remember the external scenes in which they were set. It was now early autumn, — the time of phenomenal irradiations. To-night the west heaven gleamed like a foundry of all metals, common and rare ; the clouds were broken into a thousand fragments, and the margin of every fragment shone. Foreseeing the disadvantage and pain to her of maintaining a resolve under the pressure of a meeting, he vowed not to urge her by word or sign ; to put the question plainly and calmly, and to discuss it with her on a reasonable basis only, like the philosophers they assumed themselves to be.

But this intention was scarcely adhered to in all its integrity. She duly appeared on the margin of the field, flooded with the metallic radiance that marked the close of this day ; whereupon he quickly descended the steps, and met her at the cabin door. As the evening grew darker and darker, he listened to her reasoning, which was precisely a repetition of that already sent him by letter, and by degrees accepted her decision, since she would not revoke it. Time came for them to say good-by, and then

It was the misery of her own condition that showed forth, hitherto obscured by her ardor for ameliorating his. They closed together and kissed each other, as though the emotion of their whole year and a half’s acquaintance had settled down upon that moment.

“ I won’t go away from you,” said Swithin, huskily. “Why did you propose it for an instant ? ”

Thus the nearly ended interview was again prolonged. Time, however, was merciless, and the hour came when she was compelled to depart. Swithin walked with her towards the house, as he had walked many times before, believing that all was now smooth again between them, and caring, it must be owned, very little for his fame as an expositor of the Southern constellations just then.

When they reached the silent house he said what he had not ventured to say before: “Fix the day. You have decided that it is to be soon, and that I am not to go ? ”

But youthful Swithin was far, very far, from being up to the fond subtlety of Viviette this evening. “ I cannot —• decide here,” she said gently, releasing herself from his arms. “ I will speak to you from the window. Wait for me.”

She vanished; and he waited. It was a long time before the window opened, and he was not aware that, with her customary complication of feeling, she had knelt for some time inside the room before looking out.

“ Well?” said he.

“ It cannot be,” she answered. “ I cannot ruin you. But the day after you are five and twenty our marriage shall be confirmed, if you choose.”

“ Oh, my Viviette, how is this ? ” he cried.

“ Swithin, I have not altered. But I feared for my powers, and could not tell you whilst I stood by your side. Take the bequest, and go. You are too young—to be fettered. I should have thought of it! Do not communicate with me for at least a year ; it is imperative. . . . Do not tell me your plans. If we part, we do part. I have vowed a vow not to further obstruct the course you had decided on before you knew me and my puling ways; and by Heaven’s help I ’ll keep that vow. . . . Now go. These are the parting words of your own Viviette ! ”

Swithin, who was stable as a giant in all that appertained to nature and life outside humanity, was childishly flexible in social matters. He was quite awed by her firmness, and looked vacantly at her for a time, till she closed the window. Then he mechanically turned, and went as she had commanded.

XXXVII.

A week had passed away. It had been a time of cloudy mental weather to Swithin and Viviette, but the only noteworthy fact about it was that what had been planned to happen therein had actually taken place. Swithin had gone from Welland, and would shortly go from England. Lady Constantine became aware of it by a note which he posted to her on his way through Warborne. There was much evidence of haste in the note, and something of reserve. The latter she could not understand, but it might have been obvious enough if she had considered.

On the morning of his departure he had sat on the edge of his bed : the sunlight streaming through the early mist; the house-martins scratching the back of the ceiling over his head, as they scrambled out from the roof for their day’s gnat-hunting ; the thrushes cracking snails on the garden stones outside with the noisiness of little smiths at work on little anvils. The sun in sending its rods of yellow fire into his room sent, as he suddenly thought, mental illumination with it. For the first time, as he sat there, it had crossed his mind that Viviette might have reasons for this separation which he knew not of. There might be family reasons, — mysterious blood necessities, which are said to rule members of old musty-mansioned families, and are unknown to other classes of society ; and they may have been just now brought before her by her brother Louis, on the condition that they were religiously concealed.

The idea of some family skeleton, like those he had read of in memoirs, having been unearthed by Louis, and held before her terrified understanding as a matter which rendered Swithin’s departure and the neutralization of the marriage no less indispensable to them than it was an advantage to himself, seemed a very plausible one to Swithin just now. Viviette might naturally have taken Louis into her confidence at last, for the sake of his brotherly advice. Swithin knew that of her own heart she would never wish to get rid of him; but coerced by Louis, might she not have grown to entertain views of its expediency ? Events made such a supposition on St. Cleeve’s part as natural as it was inaccurate, and, conjoined with his own excitement at the thought of seeing a new heaven overhead, influenced him to write but the briefest and most hurried final note to her, in which he fully obeyed her sensitive request that he would omit all reference to his plans. These, at the last moment, had been modified to fall in with the winter expedition formerly mentioned, to observe the transit of Venus at a remote southern station.

The business being done, and himself plunged into the preliminaries of an important scientific pilgrimage, Swithin acquired that lightness of heart which most men feel in forsaking old love for new adventure, no matter how charming may be the girl they leave behind them. Moreover, in the present case, the man was endowed with that school-boy temperament which does not see, or at least consider with much curiosity, the effect of a given scheme upon others than himself. The bearing upon Lady Constantine of what was an undoubted predicament for any woman was forgotten in his feeling that she had done a very handsome and noble thing for him, and that he was therefore bound in honor to make the most of it.

His going had resulted in anything but lightness of heart for her. Her sad fancy could, indeed, indulge in dreams of her yellow-haired laddie without that formerly besetting fear that those dreams would prompt her to actions likely to distract and hinder him. She was wretched on her own account, relieved on his. She no longer stood in the way of his advancement, and that was enough. For herself, she could live in retirement; visit the wood, the old camp, and the column, and, like Œnone, think of the life they had led there, —

leaving it entirely to his goodness whether he would come and claim her in the future, or desert her forever.

She was diverted for a time from these sad performances by a letter which reached her from Bishop Helmsdale. To see his handwriting again on an envelope, after thinking so anxiously of making a father confessor of him, startled her out of her equanimity. She speedily regained it, however, when she read his note.

THE PALACE, MELCHESTER, } August 15, 18—.

MY DEAR LADY CONSTANTINE, — I am shocked and grieved that, in the strange dispensation of things here below, my offer of marriage should have reached you almost simultaneously with the intelligence that your widowhood had been of several months’ less duration than you and I and the world had supposed. I can quite understand that, viewed from any side, the news must have shaken and disturbed you; and your unequivocal refusal to entertain any idea of a new alliance at such a moment was, of course, intelligible, natural, and praiseworthy. At present I will say no more beyond expressing a hope that you will accept my assurances that I was quite ignorant of the news at the time of writing, and a sincere desire that, in due time, and as soon as you have recovered your equanimity, I may be allowed to renew my proposal.

I am, my dear Lady Constantine,

Yours ever sincerely,

C. MELCHESTER.

She laid the letter aside, and thought no more about it, beyond a momentary meditation on the errors into which people fall in reasoning from actions to motives. Louis, who was now again with her, became, in due course, acquainted with the contents of the letter, and was satisfied with the promising position in which matters stood all round.

Lady Constantine went her mournful ways as she had planned to do, her chief resort being the familiar column, where she experienced the unutterable melancholy of seeing two carpenters dismantle the dome of its felt covering, detach its ribs, and clear away the inclosure at the top, till everything stood as it had before Swithin had been known to the place. The equatorial had already been packed in a box, to be in readiness if he should send for it from abroad. The cabin, too, was in course of demolition, such having been his directions, acquiesced in by her, before he started. Yet she could not bear the idea that these structures, so germane to the events of their romance, should be removed as if removed forever. Going to the men, she bade them store up the materials intact, that they might be reerected if desired. She had the junctions of the timbers marked with figures, the boards numbered, and the different sets of screws tied up in independent papers for identification. She did not hear the remarks of the workmen when she had gone, to the effect that the young man would as soon think of buying a halter for himself as come back and spy at the moon from Rings-Hill Speer, after seeing the glories of other nations, and the gold and jewels that were found there, or she might have been more unhappy than she was.

On returning from one of these walks to the column, a curious circumstance occurred. It was evening, and she was coming as usual down through the sighing plantation, wending her way between the ramparts of the camp towards the outlet giving upon the field, when suddenly, in a dusky vista among the trunks, she saw, or thought she saw, a golden-haired toddling child. The child moved a step or two, and vanished behind a tree. Lady Constantine, fearing it had lost its way, went quickly to the spot, searched, and called aloud. But no child could she perceive or hear anywhere around. She returned to where she had stood when first beholding it, and looked in the same direction ; but nothing reappeared. The only object at all resembling a little boy or girl was the upper tuft of a bunch of fern, which had prematurely yellowed to about the color of a fair child’s hair, and waved occasionally in the breeze. This, however, did not sufficiently explain the phenomenon, and she returned to inquire of the man whom she had left at work removing the last traces of Swithin’s cabin. But he had left with her departure and the approach of night. Feeling an indescribable dread, she retraced her steps and hastened home, doubting if she had been mistaken, yet half believing that her imagination must have played her some trick that day.

The tranquil mournfulness of these few days of solitude was terminated in a most unexpected manner. The morning after the above-mentioned incident, Lady Constantine, after meditating a while, arose with a conviction. She realized a condition of things that she had never anticipated, and for a moment the discovery so overwhelmed her that she thought she must die outright. In her terror she said she had sown the wind to reap the whirlwind. Then the instinct of self-preservation flamed up in her like a fire. Her altruism in subjecting her self-love to benevolence, and letting Swithin go away from her, was demolished by the new necessity, as if it had been a gossamer web.

There was no resisting or evading the spontaneous plan of action which matured itself in her mind in five minutes. Where was Swithin ? How could he be got at instantly ? That was her single thought. She searched about the room for his last short note, hoping, yet doubting, that its contents were more explicit, on his intended movements than the few meagre syllables which alone she could call to mind. She could not find the letter in her room, and came downstairs to Louis as pale as a ghost.

He looked up at her, and with some concern said, “ What’s the matter ? ”

“ I am searching everywhere for a letter, — a note from Mr. St. Cleeve ; just a few words, telling me when the Occidental sails, that he goes in ! ”

“ Why do you want that unimportant document ? ”

“ It is of the utmost importance that I should know whether he has sailed or not! ” said the poor lady, in agonized tones. “ Where can that letter be ! ” Louis knew where that letter was, for, having seen it on her desk, he had, without reading it, torn it up and thrown it into the waste-paper basket; thinking that the less that remained to remind her of that young philosopher the better. “ I destroyed it,” he said.

“ Oh, Louis, why did you ? ” she cried in despair. “ I am going to follow him, — I think it best to do so, — and I want to know if he is gone, and now the date is lost! ”

“ Going to run after St. Cleeve ! ”

“ Yes, I am!” she said, with vehemence. “ I must see him. I want to speak to him as soon as possible.”

“ Good God, Viviette, are you mad ? ” “ Oh, what was the date of that ship ? But it cannot be helped. I start at once for Southampton. I have made up my mind to do it. He was going to his uncle’s solicitors in the north first; then he was coming back to Southampton. He cannot have sailed yet.”

“ I believe he has sailed,” muttered Louis, sullenly.

She did not wait to argue with him, but returned up-stairs, where she rang to tell Green to be ready with the pony to drive her to Warborne station in a quarter of an hour.

Thomas Hardy.