'It does, Paula. But there are motives of delicacy which prevent my acting on what is suggested to me.'

'Delicacy is a gift, and you should thank G.o.d for it; but in some cases it is not so precious as we would persuade ourselves.'

'Not when the woman is rich, and the man is poor?'

'O, George Somerset--be cold, or angry, or anything, but don't be like this! It is never worth a woman's while to show regret for her injustice; for all she gets by it is an accusation of want of delicacy.'

'Indeed I don't accuse you of that--I warmly, tenderly thank you for your kindness in coming here to see me.'

'Well, perhaps you do. But I am now in I cannot tell what mood--I will not tell what mood, for it would be confessing more than I ought. This finding you out is a piece of weakness that I shall not repeat; and I have only one thing more to say. I have served you badly, George, I know that; but it is never too late to mend; and I have come back to you.

However, I shall never run after you again, trust me for that, for it is not the woman's part. Still, before I go, that there may be no mistake as to my meaning, and misery entailed on us for want of a word, I'll add this: that if you want to marry me, as you once did, you must say so; for I am here to be asked.'

It would be superfluous to transcribe Somerset's reply, and the remainder of the scene between the pair. Let it suffice that half-an-hour afterwards, when the sun had almost gone down, Paula walked briskly into the hotel, troubled herself nothing about dinner, but went upstairs to their sitting-room, where her aunt presently found her upon the couch looking up at the ceiling through her fingers. They talked on different subjects for some time till the old lady said 'Mr. Somerset's cottage is the one covered with flowers up the lane, I hear.'

'Yes,' said Paula.

'How do you know?'

'I've been there.... We are going to be married, aunt.'

'Indeed!' replied Mrs. Goodman. 'Well, I thought this might be the end of it: you were determined on the point; and I am not much surprised at your news. Your father was very wise after all in entailing everything so strictly upon your offspring; for if he had not I should have been driven wild with the responsibility!'

'And now that the murder is out,' continued Paula, pa.s.sing over that view of the case, 'I don't mind telling you that somehow or other I have got to like George Somerset as desperately as a woman can care for any man. I thought I should have died when I saw him dancing, and feared I had lost him! He seemed ten times nicer than ever then! So silly we women are, that I wouldn't marry a duke in preference to him. There, that's my honest feeling, and you must make what you can of it; my conscience is clear, thank Heaven!'

'Have you fixed the day?'

'No,' continued the young lady, still watching the sleeping flies on the ceiling. 'It is left unsettled between us, while I come and ask you if there would be any harm--if it could conveniently be before we return to England?'

'Paula, this is too precipitate!'

'On the contrary, aunt. In matrimony, as in some other things, you should be slow to decide, but quick to execute. Nothing on earth would make me marry another man; I know every fibre of his character; and he knows a good many fibres of mine; so as there is nothing more to be learnt, why shouldn't we marry at once? On one point I am firm: I will never return to that castle as Miss Power. A nameless dread comes over me when I think of it--a fear that some uncanny influence of the dead De Stancys would drive me again from him. O, if it were to do that,'

she murmured, burying her face in her hands, 'I really think it would be more than I could bear!'

'Very well,' said Mrs. Goodman; 'we will see what can be done. I will write to Mr. Wardlaw.'

IV.

On a windy afternoon in November, when more than two months had closed over the incidents previously recorded, a number of farmers were sitting in a room of the Lord-Quantock-Arms Inn, Markton, that was used for the weekly ordinary. It was a long, low apartment, formed by the union of two or three smaller rooms, with a bow-window looking upon the street, and at the present moment was pervaded by a blue fog from tobacco-pipes, and a temperature like that of a kiln. The body of farmers who still sat on there was greater than usual, owing to the cold air without, the tables having been cleared of dinner for some time and their surface stamped with liquid circles by the feet of the numerous gla.s.ses.

Besides the farmers there were present several professional men of the town, who found it desirable to dine here on market-days for the opportunity it afforded them of increasing their practice among the agriculturists, many of whom were men of large balances, even luxurious livers, who drove to market in elegant phaetons drawn by horses of supreme blood, bone, and action, in a style never antic.i.p.ated by their fathers when jogging thither in light carts, or afoot with a b.u.t.ter basket on each arm.

The buzz of groggy conversation was suddenly impinged on by the notes of a peal of bells from the tower hard by. Almost at the same instant the door of the room opened, and there entered the landlord of the little inn at Sleeping-Green. Drawing his supply of cordials from this superior house, to which he was subject, he came here at stated times like a prebendary to the cathedral of his diocesan, afterwards retailing to his own humbler audience the sentiments which he had learnt of this. But curiosity being awakened by the church bells the usual position was for the moment reversed, and one of the farmers, saluting him by name, asked him the reason of their striking up at that time of day.

'My mis'ess out yonder,' replied the rural landlord, nodding sideways, 'is coming home with her fancy-man. They have been a-gaying together this turk of a while in foreign parts--Here, maid!--what with the wind, and standing about, my blood's as low as water--bring us a thimbleful of that that isn't gin and not far from it.'

'It is true, then, that she's become Mrs. Somerset?' indifferently asked a farmer in broadcloth, tenant of an estate in quite another direction than hers, as he contemplated the grain of the table immediately surrounding the foot of his gla.s.s.

'True--of course it is,' said Havill, who was also present, in the tone of one who, though sitting in this rubicund company, was not of it. 'I could have told you the truth of it any day these last five weeks.'

Among those who had lent an ear was Dairyman Jinks, an old gnarled character who wore a white fustian coat and yellow leggings; the only man in the room who never dressed up in dark clothes for marketing. He now asked, 'Married abroad, was they? And how long will a wedding abroad stand good for in this country?'

'As long as a wedding at home.'

'Will it? Faith; I didn't know: how should I? I thought it might be some new plan o' folks for leasing women now they be so plentiful, so as to get rid o' 'em when the men be tired o' 'em, and hev spent all their money.'

'He won't be able to spend her money,' said the landlord of Sleeping-Green. ''Tis her very own person's--settled upon the hairs of her head for ever.'

'O nation! Then if I were the man I shouldn't care for such a one-eyed benefit as that,' said Dairyman Jinks, turning away to listen to the talk on his other hand.

'Is that true?' asked the gentleman-farmer in broadcloth.

'It is sufficiently near the truth,' said Havill. 'There is nothing at all unusual in the arrangement; it was only settled so to prevent any schemer making a beggar of her. If Somerset and she have any children, which probably they will, it will be theirs; and what can a man want more? Besides, there is a large portion of property left to her personal use--quite as much as they can want. Oddly enough, the curiosities and pictures of the castle which belonged to the De Stancys are not restricted from sale; they are hers to do what she likes with. Old Power didn't care for articles that reminded him so much of his predecessors.'

'Hey?' said Dairyman Jinks, turning back again, having decided that the conversation on his right hand was, after all, the more interesting.

'Well--why can't 'em hire a travelling chap to touch up the picters into her own gaffers and gammers? Then they'd be worth sommat to her.'

'Ah, here they are? I thought so,' said Havill, who had been standing up at the window for the last few moments. 'The ringers were told to begin as soon as the train signalled.'

As he spoke a carriage drew up to the hotel-door, followed by another with the maid and luggage. The inmates crowded to the bow-window, except Dairyman Jinks, who had become absorbed in his own reflections.

'What be they stopping here for?' asked one of the previous speakers.

'They are going to stay here to-night,' said Havill. 'They have come quite unexpectedly, and the castle is in such a state of turmoil that there is not a single carpet down, or room for them to use. We shall get two or three in order by next week.'

'Two little people like them will be lost in the chammers of that wandering place!' satirized Dairyman Jinks. 'They will be bound to have a randy every fortnight to keep the moth out of the furniture!'

By this time Somerset was handing out the wife of his bosom, and Dairyman Jinks went on: 'That's no more Miss Power that was, than my niece's daughter Kezia is Miss Power--in short it is a different woman altogether!'

'There is no mistake about the woman,' said the landlord; 'it is her fur clothes that make her look so like a caterpillar on end. Well, she is not a bad bargain! As for Captain De Stancy, he'll fret his gizzard green.'

'He's the man she ought to ha' married,' declared the farmer in broadcloth. 'As the world goes she ought to have been Lady De Stancy.

She gave up her chapel-going, and you might have thought she would have given up her first young man: but she stuck to him, though by all accounts he would soon have been interested in another party.'

''Tis woman's nature to be false except to a man, and man's nature to be true except to a woman,' said the landlord of Sleeping-Green. 'However, all's well that ends well, and I have something else to think of than new-married couples;' saying which the speaker moved off, and the others returned to their seats, the young pair who had been their theme vanishing through the hotel into some private paradise to rest and dine.

By this time their arrival had become known, and a crowd soon gathered outside, acquiring audacity with continuance there. Raising a hurrah, the group would not leave till Somerset had showed himself on the balcony above; and then declined to go away till Paula also had appeared; when, remarking that her husband seemed a quiet young man enough, and would make a very good borough member when their present one misbehaved himself, the a.s.semblage good-humouredly dispersed.

Among those whose ears had been reached by the hurrahs of these idlers was a man in silence and solitude, far out of the town. He was leaning over a gate that divided two meads in a watery level between Stancy Castle and Markton. He turned his head for a few seconds, then continued his contemplative gaze towards the towers of the castle, visible over the trees as far as was possible in the leaden gloom of the November eve. The military form of the solitary lounger was recognizable as that of Sir William De Stancy, notwithstanding the failing light and his att.i.tude of so resting his elbows on the gate that his hands enclosed the greater part of his face.

The scene was inexpressibly cheerless. No other human creature was apparent, and the only sounds audible above the wind were those of the trickling streams which distributed the water over the meadow. A heron had been standing in one of these rivulets about twenty yards from the officer, and they vied with each other in stillness till the bird suddenly rose and flew off to the plantation in which it was his custom to pa.s.s the night with others of his tribe. De Stancy saw the heron rise, and seemed to imagine the creature's departure without a supper to be owing to the increasing darkness; but in another minute he became conscious that the heron had been disturbed by sounds too distant to reach his own ears at the time. They were nearer now, and there came along under the hedge a young man known to De Stancy exceedingly well.

'Ah,' he said listlessly, 'you have ventured back.'

'Yes, captain. Why do you walk out here?'