Squire Arden; volume 3 of 3

Clare did not come down stairs to meet him, as he expected, which gave him a little chill and check in the warmth of his affectionate pleasure. He had to go up by himself, somewhat startled by the quietness of the house; feeling as if there was nobody in it, or at least nobody to whom his return was an event. And then he bethought himself of what Dr. Somers had said of Clare. He had been so angry about the allusion to Arthur Arden that the report of the state of his sister’s health had escaped his attention. When he thought of this he ran hastily up stairs and made his way to the favourite sitting-room, where she had always received him. But there was nobody there. Clare was in the big ceremonious drawing-room—the place for strangers, with many lights, and the formal air of a room which was not much used. He rushed forward as she rose from the sofa at his entrance. He was about to take her into his arms, but she held out her hand. Her cheeks were flushed, her brow cloudy; she did not meet his eye, but averted her face from him in the strangest way. “You are come at last! I had almost given up thoughts of you,” she said, and sat down again on her sofa, constrained and cold;—cold, though her hand was burning and her cheek flushed crimson. Could it be possible that she was merely angry at his delay?

“I am late, I know,” he said, “but I will tell you why—or, I suppose, you have heard why, as I met Sally Timms coming down the avenue. But, Clare, are you ill? What is the matter? Are you not glad to see me? I lost no more time than I could help in obeying your summons, and this little detention to-night is not my fault.”

“I have not blamed you,” said Clare. “Thanks—I am quite well. It is rather late, however, and I fear your dinner–”

“Oh, never mind my dinner,” said Edgar, “if that is all. I am delighted to get back to you, though you don’t look glad to see me. I met Somers in the village, and he told me you had been ill. You must have been worrying yourself while you have been alone. You must not stay here alone again. I begin to think it is bad for everybody. My dear Clare, you change colour every moment. Have I frightened you? I am so grieved—so sorry;” and he stooped over her, and took her hand in his and kissed her cheek. Clare trembled, body and soul. She could not shrink from him—she could not respond to him. She wanted to break away—to shut herself up, never to see him more; and yet she wanted to lay her head down upon his shoulder, and cry, “Oh, my brother! my brother!” What was she to do? The end was that, torn by these different impulses, she remained quite motionless and unresponsive, giving to Edgar an impression of utter coldness and repulsion, which he struggled vainly against. He looked at her for a moment with unfeigned wonder. Then he let her hands drop. He had seen her out of temper, and he had seen her sorrowful; but this was more than either, and he could not tell what it meant.

“I have worried you by being so late,” he said quietly; “I am very sorry, Clare. I did not think you would be anxious. But to-morrow I hope you will be all right. Must I go and dine? I am not hungry; but surely you will come too?”

“Yes, I will come, if you want me,” said Clare, faintly, and Edgar walked away to his dressing-room with the strangest sense of desertion. What had he done to separate his sister from him? It was obviously something he had done; not any accidental cloud on her part, but something he was guilty of. Poor Edgar put himself in order for dinner with a feeling that the weather had grown suddenly cold, and he had arrived, not in his own but in a strange house. When he went down Clare was in the dining-room, already seated at the opposite end of the great dining-table. “Where is our little round table that we used to have,” he asked, with distress that was almost comical. “You forget that we had been having visitors when you went away,” said Clare. Was she angry still that he had gone away? Was it the dismissal of the visitors which had made her angry? Was it—Arthur Arden? Edgar was too much distressed and amazed to speak. He told her the story of the accident, feeling as if it was necessary to raise his voice to reach her where she sat half-a-mile off, with her face now pale and fixed into a blank absence of expression, as if she were determined to give no clue to her meaning. But even this history which seemed to him a perfectly innocent and impersonal matter, having nothing to do with themselves, and therefore a safe subject for talk, was received with a certain chill of incredulity which drove poor Edgar wild. Did they not believe him? He said “they” in his mind, because even Wilkins had put on an air incredulous and disapproving, as he stood behind Clare’s chair. Finally Edgar grew half amused by dint of amazement and discomfiture. The oddness of this curious tacit disapproval struck him, in spite of himself. He felt tempted to get up and make them a serio-comic speech. “What have I done that you are both sitting upon me?” he felt disposed to say; but after all the atmosphere was terribly chilly and discouraging, and even a laugh was not to be obtained.

After the servants had retired it was worse than ever. Clare sat in the distance and made her little set speeches, with an attempt at indifferent conversation. And when he got up and brought his chair and his glass of claret close to her, she shrank a little, insensibly. Then for the first time he perceived a sealed packet which lay beside her on the table. This is the cause of my offending, Edgar said to himself. Some nonsense verses or letters about my youthful pranks. But these youthful pranks of his had not been at all serious, and he was not much afraid. He smiled to himself, to see how his prevision was verified when she rose from the table.

“I am very tired,” said Clare. “I don’t know why I should be so stupid to-night. Here are some papers which I found in the bureau—in the library. I have not opened them as you will see. I read one sentence through a tear in the envelope– and I thought—it appeared to me– I imagined—that you ought to see them. I think I shall go to bed now. Perhaps you will take them and—examine them—when you feel disposed. I am so stupid to-night.”

“Surely I will examine them—or anything else you like me to do,” said Edgar. “My sister ought to know I would do anything to please her. Must it be done to-night? for do you know I am unhappy to see you look so strangely at me—and a little tired too.”

“Oh, not to-night, unless you wish—when you think proper. They have never been out of my hands,” said Clare, with growing seriousness. “I should like you, please, till you look at them, to keep them very safe.”

“Certainly,” he said, with the promptest goodwill, and put the parcel into his breast pocket, which was scarcely large enough to contain it, and bulged out. “It does not look very graceful, does it?” he said with a smile as he lighted her candle for her, and then looked wistfully into her eyes. “I hope you will be better, dear, to-morrow,” he said tenderly. “I am so sorry to have annoyed you to-night.”

“Not annoyed me,” Clare said, choking, and made a few steps across the threshold. Then she came back quickly, almost running to him, where he stood holding the door in his hand looking wistfully after her. “Oh Edgar, forgive me. I can’t help it!” she moaned; and held up a pale cheek to him, and turned and fled.

Edgar sat down again by the table, very much puzzled indeed. What did she mean? what could be the matter with her? Poor Clare? Could it be this Arthur Arden, this light o’ love—this man who was attractive to women, as Dr. Somers said? Edgar’s pride in his sister and his sense of delicacy revolted at the idea. And then it occurred to him that the packet she had given him might contain Arden’s letters, and that Clare was struggling with her feelings and endeavouring to cast him off. He took the packet out of his pocket, and opened the envelope. But when he found the original enclosure inside, old and brown, and scorched, with yellow letters showing through the worn cover, this idea faded from Edgar’s mind. He put them back into the outer cover with a sigh of relief. Of course, had Clare exacted it, he said to himself, he would have read them at once; but they were old things which could not be urgent—could not be of much weight one way or another. And he was anxious and tired, and not in a state of mind to be bothered with old letters. Poor Clare! She had been a little unkind to him; but then she had made that touching little apology which atoned for everything. To console himself, Edgar got up, and, lighting a cigar, strolled out upon the terrace; for as most men know, there is not only consolation, but counsel in tobacco. Clare’s window was on that side of the house, and he watched the light in it with a grieved and tender sympathy. Yes, poor Clare! She had no mother to tell her troubles to, no sister to share her life. Her lot (he thought) was a hard one, notwithstanding all her advantages. Her father had been her only companion, and he was gone, and his memory, instead of uniting his two orphan children together, hung like a cloud between them. Perhaps there might even now be memories belonging to the old Squire’s time which troubled Clare, and which she could not confide to her brother. His heart melted over her as he mused. Would Gussy, he wondered, take a sister’s place, and beguile Clare out of herself? And then he thought he would talk the matter over with Lady Augusta, and ask her motherly advice. As this crossed his mind, he realised more than ever how pleasant it would be to have such people belonging to him. He who had been cast out of his family, and had in reality nothing but the merely natural bond, the tie of blood between himself and his only sister, felt—much more than a man could who had been trained in the ordinary way—how pleasant it would be to be adopted by real choice and affection into a family. Perhaps it seemed to him more pleasant in imagination and prospect than it ever could be in reality—perhaps Gussy’s brothers, who were prone to get into scrapes, might, indeed, turn out rather a bore than otherwise. But he had no thought of such considerations now. And, when he went to his room, he locked up carefully out of the way of harm Clare’s papers. To-morrow, perhaps, when his mind was more fresh, he would look them over to please her, or, if not to-morrow, some day soon. He was quite tranquil about them, while she was so anxious. His sister’s good-night had soothed him, and so, to tell the truth, had his cigar. He had a peaceful, lovely Sunday before him, and then the arrival of the Thornleighs, and then– Thus it was, with a mind much tranquillised, and the feeling of home once more strong upon him, that Edgar went to rest in his own house.

CHAPTER IV

Next morning was a calm bright summer Sunday, one of those days which are real Sabbaths—moments of rest. It was like the “sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,” of George Herbert’s tender fancy. Nothing that jarred or was discordant was audible in the soft air. The voices outside, the passing steps, were as harmonious as the birds and the bees that murmured all about—everything that was harsh had died out of the world. There was nothing in this Sunday but universal quiet and calm.

Except in Clare Arden’s face and voice. She came down stairs before her brother, long before him, as if she had been unable to sleep. Her brow was drawn in and contracted as if by some pressing uncertainty and suspense. Her voice had a broken tone in it, a tone like a strained string. With a restlessness which it was impossible to conceal, she waited for Edgar’s appearance, gliding back and forward from the library to the dining-room where breakfast was laid. The round table had been placed for them in the window not by Clare’s care, but by Wilkins; a great vase of late roses—red and white—stood in the centre. The roses were all but over, for it was the second Sunday in July; but still the lawns and rosebeds of Arden produced enough for this. How strange she thought that he should be so late. Was it out of mere wantonness? Was it because he had been sitting up late over the enclosures she had given him; was it that he feared to meet her after– She suggested all these reasons to herself, but they did not still her restlessness nor bring Edgar down a moment earlier. She could not control her excitement. How was she to meet him for the first time after this discovery, if it was a discovery? How would he look at her after such a revelation? And yet Clare did not know what manner of revelation it was; or it might be no revelation at all. It might be her fancy only which had put meaning into the words she had seen. They might refer to something entirely indifferent to her brother and herself. Clare said so in her own mind, but she could not bring herself to believe it. The thought had seized upon her with crushing bewildering force. It had left her no time to think. She did not quite know what she fancied, but it was something that would shake her life and his life to their foundations, and change everything in heaven and earth.

Edgar came down at his usual hour, bright and light-hearted, as his nature was. He went up to the breakfast table with its vase of roses, and bent his face down over it. “How pleasant Sunday is,” he said, “and how pleasant it is to be at home! I hope you are better this morning, Clare. Could any one help being better in this sweet air and this lovely place? I never thought Arden was half so beautiful. Fancy, there are people in town just now wasting their lives away! I am sure you are better, Clare–”

“I—think so,” she said, looking at him anxiously. Had he read them? Had he not read them? That was the question. Her whole soul was bent upon that and that alone.

“You are not looking well,” he said, with tender anxiety. “What have you been doing to yourself? I would say I hoped you had missed me; but you don’t look so very glad to see me now—not nearly so glad as I am to see you. If you had come with me to town it might have done you good. And I am sure it would have done me good. It is dreary work living alone—in London above all–”

“Not for a man,” said Clare. Her voice was still constrained; but she made a desperate effort, and put away from her as much as she could her disinclination for talk. How unlike he was to other men—how strange that he should not take pleasure in things that everybody else took pleasure in; dreary work living alone, for a young man of his position, in London—how ridiculous it was!

“Well, I assure you I found it so,” said Edgar; “if you had been with me, I should have enjoyed it. As it was, I was only amused. The Thornleighs are coming back to-morrow. I saw a great deal of them—more than before they went to town–”

Here he paused, and a warmer colour, a certain air of pleasure and content diffused itself over his face. A thrill of pain and apprehension ran through Clare. The Thornleighs!—were they to be brought into the matter too? She half rose from the seat she had taken at the table. “Have you read those letters?” she asked, in a hasty, half-whispering, yet almost stern voice.

“What letters? Oh, those you gave me last night! No, not yet. Do you wish me to do it at once? You said it did not matter, I think; or, at least, I understood there was no haste.”

“Oh, no haste!” said Clare, with a certain sense of desperation stealing over her; and then she took courage. “I don’t mean that; they have troubled me very much. The sooner you read them, the sooner I shall be relieved, if I am to be relieved. If it would not trouble you too much to go over them to-night?”

“My dear Clare, of course I will read them directly if you wish it,” said Edgar, half-provoked. “You have but to say so. Of course, nothing troubles me that you wish. I sent down to ask after poor little Jeanie this morning,” he added, after a pause, falling into his usual tone; “and the doctor says she has had a tolerably good night. I must go and see Miss Somers after church. She will have learned all about it by this time, and that story about Arthur Arden and the Pimpernels. Miss Pimpernel, I told you, was thrown out of the carriage as well as Jeanie–”

“I think you told me,” said Clare faintly. “I know so little about Miss Pimpernel; and I do not like that other girl. It may be prejudice, but I don’t like her. I wish you would not talk of her to me.”

Edgar looked up at his sister with grave wonder—“As you please,” he said seriously, but his cheek flushed, half with anger, half with disappointment. What could have happened to Clare? She was not like herself. She scarcely looked at him even when she spoke. She was constrained and cold as if he were the merest stranger. She had again avoided his kiss, and never addressed him by his name. What could it mean? Scarcely anything more was said at breakfast. Clare could not open her lips, and Edgar was annoyed, and did not. It seemed so very mysterious to him. He was indeed as nearly angry as it was in his nature to be. It seemed to him a mere freak of temper—an ebullition of pride. And he was so entirely innocent in respect to Jeanie! The child herself was so innocent. Poor little Jeanie!—he thought of her with additional tenderness as he looked at his sister’s unsympathetic face.

“I suppose we may walk together to church as usual,” he said. It was the only remark that had broken the silence for nearly half an hour.

“If you have no objection”—said Clare formally, with something of that aggravating submission which wives sometimes show to their husbands, driving them frantic, “I think I shall drive—but not if you object to the horses being taken out.”

“Why should I object?” he said, restraining himself with an effort, “except that I am very sorry not to have your company, Clare.”

Then she wavered once more, feeling the empire of old affection steal over her. But he had turned away to the window, grieved and impatient. It was like a conjugal quarrel, not like the frank differences between brother and sister. And this was not how Clare’s temper had ever shown itself before. Edgar left the table, with a sense of pain and disappointment which it was very hard to bear. Why was it? What had he done? His heart was so open to her, he was so full of confidence in her, and admiration for her, that the check he had thus received was doubly hard. His sister had always been to him the first among women. Gussy of course was different—but Gussy had never taken the same place in his respect and admiring enthusiasm. Clare had been to him, barring a few faults which were but as specks on an angel’s wing, the first of created things; and it hurt him that she should thus turn from him, and expel him, as it were, from her sympathies. He stood uncertain at the window, not knowing whether he should make another attempt to win her back; but when he turned round he found, to his astonishment, that she was gone. How strange—how very strange it was. As she had abandoned him, he saw no advantage in waiting. He could go and ask for Jeanie, and see how things were going on, at least, if he was not required here. He gave Wilkins orders about the carriage with a sigh. “My sister proposes to drive,” he said; and as he said it he looked out upon the lovely summer Sunday morning, and the wonder of it struck him more than ever. She had liked to walk with him down the leafy avenue, under the protecting shadows, when he came home first, and now she changed her habits to avoid him. What could it mean? Could this, too, be Arthur Arden’s fault?

Thus it was that Edgar left the house so early, ill at ease. His sister thought that probably the effect of her constraint and withdrawal of sympathy would be that, tracing her changed demeanour to its right cause, he would hasten to read the packet she had given him. But Edgar never thought of the packet. It did not occur to him that a parcel of old letters could have anything to do with this most present and painful estrangement. While he went out, poor fellow, with his heart full of pain, Clare looked at him from the window with anger and astonishment. What did he care? Perhaps he had known it all along—perhaps he was a conscious– But no, no. Not till the last moment—not till evidence was before her which she could not resist—would she believe that. So the carriage came round, and she was driven to church in solitary state—sometimes excusing, sometimes condemning herself. It was a thing which happened so rarely that the village folks were in a state of commotion. Miss Arden was ill, they thought—nothing else could explain it; and so thought the kind old Rector and even Dr. Somers, who knew, or thought he knew, better than any of the others. As for Arthur Arden, who had gone to church with the hope of being invited by Edgar to accompany him home, he was in despair.

Edgar, for his part, walked down very gloomily through the village to ask for Jeanie, and had his news confirmed that she had spent a tolerably good night. “But in a dead faint all the time,” said Mrs. Hesketh, who had taken the place of nurse. “She breathes, poor dear, and her heart it do beat. But she don’t know none of us, nor open her eyes. It’s awful to see one as is living, and yet dead. T’ou’d dame, she never leaves her, not since she was a-talking to you, sir, last night.”

“Could I see her now?” said Edgar; but Mrs. Hesketh shook her head; and he could not tell why he wanted to see her, except as some relief to the painful dulness which had come over him. The next best thing he could do seemed to be to walk to the Red House, and ask after Alice Pimpernel. There he found no lack of response. Mr. Pimpernel himself came out, and so did Mrs. Pimpernel, with profuse and eager thanks. “If it had not been for you Mr. Arden, my child might have perished,” said the mother. “No, no, not so bad as that,” Edgar could not but say with surprise. “And the person who was most to blame never even gave himself the trouble to inquire till all was over,” the lady added with a look of rage. They wanted to detain him, to give him breakfast, to secure his company for Mr. Pimpernel, who was going to drive to church with the younger children. But Edgar did not desire to join this procession, and suffer himself to be paraded as his cousin’s successor. Somehow the village and everything in it seemed to have changed its aspect. He thought the people looked coldly at him—he felt annoyed and discouraged, he could not tell why. It seemed to him as if the Thornleighs would not come, or coming, would hear bad accounts of him, and that he would be abandoned by all his friends. And he did not know why, that was the worst of it; there seemed no reason. He was just the same as he had been when Clare received him as her dearest brother. What had happened since to change her mind towards him he was totally unable to tell. The sourd and obscure atmosphere of family discord was quite novel to Edgar. For most of his existence he had known nothing about family life; and then it had seemed to him so warm, so sweet, so bright. The domestic life, the warm sense of kindred about him had been his chief attraction to Gussy. His heart was so full, he wanted sisters and brothers and quantities of kinsfolk. And now the discovery that those good things could bring pain as well as pleasure confused him utterly. Clare! his only sister, the sole creature who belonged to him, whom nature gave him to love, to think that without a cause she should be estranged from him! When he fairly contemplated the idea, he gave himself, as it were spiritually, a shake, and smiled. “It takes two to make a quarrel,” he said to himself, and resolved that it was impossible, and could not last another hour.

CHAPTER V

Mr. Fielding preached one of his gentle little sermons upon love to your neighbour on that especial morning. The Doctor had been quiet, and had not bothered the Rector for some time back. There had been a good deal of sickness at the other end of the parish, and his hands had been full. It was a sermon which the Arden folks had heard a good many times before; but there are some things which, like wine, improve in flavour the longer that they are kept. Mr. Fielding produced it about once in five years, and preached it with little illustrations added on, drawn from his own gentle experience. And each time it was better than the last. The good people did not remember it, having listened always with a certain amount of distraction and slumberousness; but Dr. Somers did, and had noted in his pocket-book the times he had heard it. “Very good, with that story about John Styles in the appendix,” was one note; and four or five years later it occurred again thus—“Little sketch of last row with me put in as an illustration—John Styles much softened; always very good.” Next time it was—“John Styles disappeared altogether—quarrel with me going out—old Simon in the foreground; better than ever.” The Arden folks were not alert enough in their minds to discern this; but the gentle discourse did them good all the same.

And there in front of him, listening to him, in the Arden pew, were three who needed Mr. Fielding’s sermon. First, Clare, pale with that wrath and distrust which takes all happiness out of a woman’s face, and almost all beauty. Then, sitting next to her, with a great gap between, now and then looking wistfully at her, now casting a hasty glance to his other side—anxious, suspicious, watchful—Arthur Arden, at the very lowest ebb, as he thought, of his fortunes. He had been as good as turned out of the Red House. He had no invitation nearer than the end of August. Clare had passed him at the church door with a bow that chilled him. Edgar, coming in late, had taken scarcely any notice of him. Nothing could appear less hopeful than his plan of getting himself invited once more to Arden, covering the Pimpernels with confusion, and showing publicly his superiority over them. Alas! he would not look superior, he could not be happy in the Arden Arms. Accordingly he sat, anxious about his cousins, hating all the world besides. Could he have crushed Mrs. Pimpernel by a sudden blow he would have done it. Could he have swept Jeanie out of his way he would have done it. Even underneath his anxiety for their favour, a bitter germ of envy and indignation was springing up in his heart towards his kinsfolk, Edgar and Clare.

And next to him sat Edgar, whose heart was heavy with that sense of discord—the first he had ever known. He had not been the sort of man with whom people quarrel. If any of his former comrades had been out of temper with him, it had been but for a moment—and he had no other relation to quarrel with. The sense of being at variance with his sister hung over him like a cloud. Edgar was the only one to whom the Rector’s gentle sermon did any good. He was guiltless in his quarrel, and therefore he had no amour-propre concerned, no necessity laid upon him to justify himself. He was quite ready to say that he was wrong if that would please any one; yes, no doubt he had been wrong; most people were wrong; he was ready to confess anything. And though he was not a very close listener generally to Mr. Fielding’s sermons, he took in this one into his heart. And the summer air, too, stole into his heart; and the faint fragrance of things outside that breathed in through the open door, and even the faint mouldy flavour of age and damp which was within. The little village church, when he looked round it, filled him with a strange emotion. What was it to others? What was it to himself? A little break in life—a pause bidding the sleepy peasant rest in the quiet, dropping warm langour on the eyelids of the children, giving to the old a slumberous pensiveness. He saw them softly striving to keep themselves awake—sometimes yielding to the drowsy influence—sometimes open-eyed, listening or not listening—silent between life and death. Such sweet, full, abounding life outside; hum of insects, flutter of leaves, soft, all-pervading fragrance of summer roses. And within, the monuments on the wall glimmering white; the white head in the pulpit; the shadowy, quiet, restful place where grandsires had dozed and dreamed before. What an Elysium it was to some of those weary, hardworking old bodies! Edgar looked out upon them from the stage-box in which he sat with a thrill of tender kindness. To himself it might have been a mental and spiritual rest before the agitations of the next week. But something had disturbed that and made it impossible. Something! That meant Clare.

When they all left the church Arthur Arden made a bold stroke. “I will walk up with you to the Hall if you will let me,” he said. Clare was within hearing, and she could not restrain a slight start and tremor, which he saw. Was she afraid of him? Did she wish him to come or to stay away? But Clare never turned round or gave the slightest indication of her feelings. She walked out steadily, saying a word here and there to the village people who stood by as she passed to the carriage, which was waiting for her at the gate.

“I am going to see Miss Somers,” said Edgar, “and Clare is driving—but if you choose to wait–”

It was not a very warm invitation, but Arden accepted it. He wished the Pimpernels to see him with his cousin. This much of feeling remained in him. He would have been mortified had he supposed that they knew he was only at the Arden Arms. He would go to the Doctor’s house with Edgar, and declared himself quite ready to wait. “I don’t think Miss Somers likes me, or I should go with you,” he said, and then he went boldly up to Mr. Pimpernel and asked for his daughter. “I am sorry I had to leave so abruptly,” he said, “but I could not help myself,” and he gave his shoulders a shrug, and looked compassionately with a half smile at the master of the Red House.

“Yes,” said Mr. Pimpernel, accepting the tacit criticism with a certain cleverness. “Mrs. Pimpernel expresses herself strongly sometimes. Alice is better. Oh, yes! It was an affair of scratches only—though for a time I was in great fear.”

“I never was so afraid in my life,” said Arthur, and he shuddered at the thought, which his companion thought a piece of acting, though it was perfectly genuine and true.

“You did not show it much,” he said, shrugging his shoulders in his turn, “at least so far as we were concerned. But, however, that is your affair.” And with a nod which was not very civil he called his flock round him, and drove away. Arthur followed Edgar to the Doctor’s open door. He went into the Doctor’s sacred study, and took refuge there. Dr. Somers did not like him he was aware; but still he did not hesitate to put himself into the Doctor’s easy chair. Why didn’t people like him? It was confounded bad taste on their part!

In the meantime Edgar had gone up stairs, where Miss Somers awaited him anxiously. “Oh, my dear Edgar,” she said, “what a sad, sad– Do you think she will never get better? My brother always says to me– but then, you know, this isn’t asking about nothing—it’s asking about Jeanie. And Alice, whose fault it was– Oh Edgar, isn’t it just the way of the world? The innocent little thing, you know—and then the one that was really to blame escaping—it is just the way of the world.”

“Then, it is a very disagreeable way,” said Edgar. “I wish poor little Jeanie could have escaped, though I don’t wish any harm to Miss Pimpernel.”

“No, my dear,” said Miss Somers; “fancy my calling you ‘my dear,’ as if you were my own sister! Do you know I begin now to forget which is a gentleman and which a lady—me that was always brought up– But what is the good of being so very particular?—when you consider, at my time of life. Though some people think that makes no difference. Oh, no, you must never wish her any harm; but a little foolish, flighty—with nothing in her head but croquet you know, and– Young Mr. Denbigh has so fallen off. He used to come and talk quite like– And then he would tell my brother what he should do. My brother does not like advice, Edgar. Doctors never do. They are so used, you know– And then about these German baths and everything. He used to tell my brother– and he was not nice about it. Sometimes he is not very nice. He has a good heart, and all that; but doctors, you know, as a rule, never do– And then your cousin—do you think he meant anything?– I once thought it was Clare; but then these people are rich, and when a man like that is poor–”

“I don’t know what he meant,” said Edgar; “but I am sure he can’t mean anything now, for he has left the Pimpernels.”

“And I suppose he is going to you?” said Miss Somers, “for he can’t stay in the Arden Arms; now, can he? He is sure to be so particular. When men have no money, my dear—and used to fine living and all that– And I don’t believe anything is to be had better than a chop– Chops are greasy in such places– And then Arthur Arden is used to things so– But my dear, I think not, if I were you—on account of Clare. I do think not, Edgar, if you were to take my advice.”

“But I fear I can’t help myself,” said Edgar, with a shadow passing over his face–