A Woman Perfected

"It was unconscious. Are you-are you sure that they are Peter Piper's Popular Pills in that box?"

"Sure? As if I could be sure about a thing like that! what do I know about such filth? look for yourself."

Mr. Nash examined the box with a show of interest which its contents scarcely seemed to warrant.

"How extremely-curious."

"Fancy a man like Lindsay harbouring such stuff as that! I should think it was curious!"

Though both men used the same adjective one felt that each read into it a different meaning.

When Mr. Nash started to leave the house he found that the dogcart, which he supposed was still in waiting, had disappeared. He asked no questions, but drew his own conclusions. As he passed down the avenue, and perceived that Miss Harding was strolling among the trees, he smiled. So soon as the lady saw him she began to ply him with questions.

"Well, what's happened?"

"One thing's happened, you've sent away my dogcart."

She looked at him with mischief in her eyes.

"Walking will do you more good than driving; and it will cost you less. Besides, it will give you an opportunity of exchanging a few words with me. I hope you don't mind."

"On the contrary, I'm delighted."

"What have you found?"

"I've found his will; he's left his daughter everything."

"Everything! How splendid! I'm so glad he's left her everything!"

Miss Harding's face could not have been more radiant had she received a personal benefit.

"I shouldn't be over hasty in offering her your congratulations if I were you; it's quite possible that everything won't amount to very much."

She seemed struck by his tone even more than by his words.

"Herbert! What do you mean?"

Mr. Nash kicked a pebble with his toe; then he whistled to himself; then he said, just as her patience was at an end-

"It's a bit awkward to explain, but it's this way; Banyard and I have been going through his books and papers, and everything there was to go through; and there was a good deal, as you know; and we haven't come on anything which points to money or money's worth. I've been putting two and two together, and I rather think I understand the situation; when all's over and settled I shouldn't be surprised if Miss Lindsay would be very glad indeed to have your little fortune."

"My-my little fortune?"

"I'm alluding to the snug little legacy left you by your venerated aunt."

"It's-it's impossible!"

"More impossible things have happened; and I think I'm almost inclined to bet twopence that her fortune's nearer two thousand shillings than two thousand pounds."

"Herbert! Herbert!"

"What's the matter? Why, little girl, you mustn't take on like that; what a sensitive little thing it is! it'll be through no fault of yours if she's left penniless! She's never been over nice to me, and I'm sure I shan't worry myself into an early grave if she is."

"You don't understand!" she wailed. "You don't understand."

By the domestic hearth that evening Dr. Banyard addressed to his wife some more or less sententious remarks, as he puffed at his pipe.

"There's something wrong up at Cloverlea, confoundedly wrong. I don't understand what it is, and I don't like what I do understand. There's a riddle somewhere, and I'm half afraid we're not going to find the answer. Mind you, I've actually no grounds to go upon, but I don't trust that man, Nash; I've all sorts of doubts about the fellow."

Mrs. Banyard looked up from her sewing, and smiled; as is the way with wives of some years' standing she did not always take her husband so seriously as she might have done.

"Poor Mr. Nash! you never do like good-looking men."

"It isn't only that."

"No; but it's partly that. You funny old man! It doesn't follow because you're ugly yourself that all good-looking men are necessarily worthless."

"Generally speaking, a certain type of good-looking man is worth nothing."

"And Mr. Nash represents the type? And do you represent Christian charity? What do you suspect him of now? of having the answer to that mysterious riddle?"

"I don't know; that's just it, I don't know; but I doubt him all the same."

CHAPTER VI

HER LOVE STORY

That night Nora dreamed again-the same dream. It was more real even than before. She was lying in bed-she knew she was in bed, and her father came in at the door. In some strange fashion she had expected him; it was not that she heard him moving along the passage, yet, somehow, she knew that he was there, that he was coming. And, before he actually appeared, she knew that he was in great trouble; when he opened the door, so noiselessly, and without a sound came in, and closed the door again, also without a sound, she knew it even better than before, and his trouble communicated itself to her. In such trouble was he that he was even afraid of her. He remained close to the door, looking timidly towards her as she lay in bed, not daring to approach. So moved was she by his strange timidity that she sat up, and held out her arms to him, calling-

"Father!" She was sure she called, because she heard her own voice quite clearly; not as it mostly is in dreams, when one hears nothing. But yet he came no closer. Then she saw that he was crying. She called to him again, more eagerly. Then he went, step by step, timidly towards her; until she had her arms about him, and whispered, "Father, tell me what it is that troubles you." And he tried to tell her, but he could not; he was speechless, and to him his speechlessness was agony. If he only could speak she felt that all might be well with him-and with her; but he was tongue-tied. She tried to think of what it could be that he wished to say to her, and to prompt him; whispering into his ear first this, then that; but it was plain that none of her hints had anything to do with what was in his mind, though once she thought that she might not be far off. When she whispered, "Is it about what I am to do in the future?" his face changed; a sort of convulsion passed all over him; he drew himself away from her, and stood up, raising his arms, seeming to make a frenzied effort to achieve articulation; it even seemed that speech had come to him at last, when, just as words were already almost issuing from his lips, he vanished, and she was alone in the darkness.

Not the least strange part of it was that she was wide awake, having no consciousness of being roused out of sleep; she was sitting up in bed, the tears were streaming down her cheeks, her arms were held out, with about them the oddest feeling of somebody having just been in them. Indeed for a moment or two she could not believe that there was not some one in them still. When she did realize that they were empty she threw herself face downwards in the bed, crying as if her heart would break, because of her father's woe.

Donald Lindsay was buried on the Thursday-exactly a week after he had been stricken with his death. On the Tuesday and Wednesday she had variations of the same dream, and on the Thursday, the day of the funeral, it was so terrible a dream that the agony of it remained with her until the morning. For a long time afterwards some form of that dream would come to her at intervals. She said nothing of it to any one, though there was a moment when she was on the point of speaking of it to Elaine Harding; but she had it sometimes even in her waking thoughts. The course of events induced in her a kind of dormant conviction not only that the dream was sent to her for some special purpose, and that it had a meaning; but, also, that some day both the purpose and the meaning would be made clear. She knew that it is written that, of old, God spake to men in dreams; she believed it to be possible that, in a dream, God might speak to her. The dream always ended at the same point: just as her father, after an agonizing effort, seemed to be about to speak. She fancied that, some night, it might go on further, and that he might speak to her in his dream, and that with his speaking the purpose and the meaning of it all would be discovered.

On the morning of the funeral, among the other letters, Mrs. Steele, the housekeeper, called her attention to one in particular. No doubt she was aware that, during the last few days, either letters had been left unopened, or the task of opening them relegated to Elaine Harding, who communicated their contents if she pleased.

"Miss Nora," she said, "this is a letter from Mr. Spencer."

The girl caught eagerly at it; it was the first sign of eagerness she had lately shown. So soon as Mrs. Steele had gone she opened it. It was from her lover, Robert Spencer; a long letter, on three closely written sheets of foreign note-paper. He was in Sicily; had sent her a gossipy narrative of his wanderings among its ancient places, and among its scenes of beauty. It was full of love, and life, and high spirits; the sort of letter which makes a girl's heart beat happily; which she cherishes amid her most precious possessions. He told her how he wished that she was with him; that she at least was close at hand, that they might see and enjoy, together, what was so much worth seeing, and enjoying. In mischievous mood he added that when the great day came, on which the sun would rise in their sky for ever, and they were married, he humbly ventured to suggest that part of their honeymoon might be spent where he was then-"that would be to invest Taormina, which is already nearly all halos, with another, the brightest and the best."

To a girl's thinking there could be no pleasanter reading than such a letter; she could desire nothing better of the future than that its savour might remain unchanged, and that, throughout the years which were to come, the love of which it was a sign might walk always by her side.

So great was its power that, for a moment, it charmed her to forgetfulness. She saw in it her lover's face, and looked into his eyes; his voice spoke to her from the pages, and sounded sweetly in her ears. When he wrote of honeymooning the blood came to her cheeks; her lips were parted by a smile; her heart seemed speaking unto his. Even when she remembered, and recalled what day it was, and what shortly was about to happen, the light did not quite fade from her eyes, and the world was not all darkness. The match had been one of the few things respecting which her father had expressed to her his audible satisfaction. It was tacitly understood that the marriage was to take place during the current year. Both lovers were young-Robert Spencer had only just turned twenty-four. The only thing which could be said against him was his lack of means. He had done well both at school and at the university. Without being the least bit of a prig, he was exempt from those vices which the facile standard of the world in which he lived associates with youth. He was tall and strong and handsome; easy-mannered, more than is apt to be the case with the young Englishman of twenty-four; of fluent speech-he had been, in his time, one of the stars of the Union; there was no apparent reason why he should not make for himself, among the men of his own generation, a great name for good. The chief obstacle with which he would have to contend might be, as has been said, the eternal question of pence.

He was the fourth, and youngest, son of the Earl of Mountdennis. Everybody knows that his lordship had more children than money; four sons and five daughters is a liberal allowance for any man; the Earl and the Countess have that number living, and three of their children are dead. At the period of which we are writing all the five daughters were married, though by no means, from their mother's point of view, all satisfactorily married. The Countess never attempted to conceal the fact that only the first and third had done really well for themselves. According to the same authority, the boys had not done all that they might have done; the heir, Lord Cookham, in particular, had been a bitter disappointment, having been-his mother called it-wicked enough to marry a girl who had no money, and, practically, no family, merely because he loved her. He had been perfectly well aware that, in his case, marriage must mean money; it had been drummed into his ears from his earliest childhood; – family was of no consequence; he had family enough of his own. The one thing wanted was money-sacks full. And the thing was made more cruel by the fact that he might have had any amount of money, had he chosen. He might have had an English girl with a hundred thousand a year, to say nothing of several Americans with a great deal more; instead of which he married a young woman whom he met, as the Countess put it, at "some horrid foreign place," whose only qualification was that she was generally admitted, by some excellent judges, to be delightful. What, as the Countess pungently inquired, was the use of being delightful if she and her husband had not enough money between them to pay off the family debts, to say nothing of keeping up the family seats. And then they actually started by having three children in less than six years-all girls. It was too perfectly ridiculously absurd!

Montagu, the second son, had refused to marry at all, so his mother said; though it was not known that any girls had ever actually asked him. It was understood that he had made money in Africa, though he showed not the slightest inclination to squander it among his relatives; he had even declined to what his mother termed "lend" her five thousand pounds to be spent on "doing up" Holtye, which was the seat the Earl and the Countess principally favoured. Such conduct, she declared, was inhuman, but "so like Montagu." Arthur, the third son, had done best for himself from at least a financial point of view. He had married Mrs. Parkes-Peters, the widow of the contractor who left three millions. It was true that nasty things had been said of some of his most successful contracts; but, after all, the man was dead. It was also true that no one knew who, or what, his widow was before he married her; it was, if possible, even more true that she was older than her second husband. She herself admitted that she was his senior by ten years-the world said it ought to be twenty. But as she proved to be an ideal wife from the point of view of the man who marries for money, such trifles could hardly be said to count. Their friends asserted that she gave him a thousand pounds every time he kissed her-really no husband could want more.