"There on the table over against the window," she replied.

Bertie ran and fetched them, and presently a curl shiny and bright fell in Jane's lap.

"There, that's my present," he said, "now won't you give me kitty?"

"She's too small; she mustn't go from her mother," said Jane, lifting the curl and smoothing it softly.

"Would her mother cry?"

"Oh my G.o.d!" exclaimed Jane, burying her face in her hands, "you'll break my heart!"

"But would her mother cry? Would she cry very much?" persisted Bertie, striving to draw her hands away.

"Yes," replied Jane, "cry and go mad, and curse those who took him. But curses don't kill, ah no! they don't kill; they only wear the heart away."

The child drew away, half frightened.

"Bertie! Bertie! are you coming?" called Frances.

"Good bye," he said, shyly. "You'll send me kitty by and by, won't you?"

"Yes,--for the sake of the curl," she replied, wrapping it in paper, and placing it in her bosom.

But Bertie only heard the "Yes." "Send it for me; only for me," he said.

"Yes, for Master Bertie."

"Bertie Vavasour," he said.

"What?" screamed Jane, starting to her feet with a shriek that startled even Mrs. Marks, asleep in the room above. "Don't touch me! Don't come nigh me! Stand off! I'm crazed, I tell you, and don't know nothing. Oh!

I'm deaf, and didn't hear it! No, no, I didn't hear it! I won't hear it!

I'm crazed."

"That yer are, yer she devil!" exclaimed Matthew, striding up to where she stood, as it were at bay, before some deadly enemy. "Are these yer manners, when gentry come to visit yer?" and he half thrust, half threw her out on the stairs.

"She's crazed, Miss," said Matthew, returning, "and has got one of her fits on her; but she's as harmless as a fly. Don't 'ee cry, young Master," said he to Bertie, who with his arms clasped round Frances'

neck, was sobbing violently. "She ain't well neither, Miss," continued he, "I thought, days ago, she were a-going to have the fever."

"The fever!" exclaimed Frances, "what fever?"

"I don't know, Miss, my wife have been sick of it for days past."

"And how dare you!" cried Frances, pa.s.sionately, seizing him by the arm; "how dare you let the boy come in. Don't you know it is murder. Oh, if he should get it! If he should get it!" and she flew from the cottage, leaving Matthew bewailing his thoughtlessness and folly.

Frances disliked children, and had made up her mind to thoroughly hate Amy's child, long before she saw him; but the boy's determined will, so congenial to her spirit, and then his partiality to herself, overcame this resolution. Her object had been to conciliate the father through the boy; but in attaining this object she had taken a liking for the child, which she in vain tried to surmount; Bertie wound himself into that cruel heart, somehow, and held his place there in defiance of all obstacles.

Her heart sank within her at Matthew's words, and felt strangely stirred as she drew away the little arms so tightly encircling her neck. "For Heaven's sake, Bertie, don't cry so, you'll make yourself so hot," and then she felt his hands and forehead to a.s.sure herself he had not already caught the fever.

"She's a naughty woman," sobbed Bertie.

"Yes, yes, she's a naughty woman;" and then by dint of coaxing and persuading there was little trace, when they reached Hannah at the further end of the village, of the fright or violent cry he had had; still, his nurse was not to be deceived.

"What's the matter with Master Bertie?" she asked.

"A poor idiot in one of the cottages frightened him," replied Frances; but she said not a word of the fever, or that the cottage was the one at the turnpike gate, and Bertie's version of the story was a great deal too unconnected to be understood, and merely seemed a corroboration of the one Frances had given.

CHAPTER X.

DOWN BY THE LAKE.

"At length within a lonely cell, They saw a mournful dame.

Her gentle eyes were dimm'd with tears, Her cheeks were pale with woe: And long Sir Valentine besought Her doleful tale to know.

'Alas! young knight,' she weeping said, 'Condole my wretched fate; A childless mother here you see; A wife without a mate'"

VALENTINE AND URSINE.

Frances was nervous and anxious for days after her walk with Bertie; the sudden opening of a door made her start and tremble lest it should be some-one come to announce the boy's illness. Sometimes she watched and waited at the window half the morning to catch a glimpse of him going out for his daily walk, or if he did not come would seek him in the nursery, and bring him downstairs. She became Bertie's shadow, and he, in consequence, fonder of her than ever. But the days crept on and there was no symptom that he had taken the fever: so by degrees Frances forgot her fears--or rather they slumbered--and went back to her old ways. But it had become more difficult to deal with Amy now, she appeared to have changed so entirely; there was no making her jealous, even if she could manage to make Robert devote himself half the evening to her hostess.

Amy seemed just as happy; she either was not jealous or was jealous and concealed it, and rode with her husband, let who would be of the party, or deserted Bertie and walked with him, even learnt to play billiards when she found Robert was fond of it; so that it was rarely chess now, but all, even Mr. Linchmore, joined of an evening in the former game.

Still Robert's love was not what it had been. His wife felt that it was not; he loved her by fits and starts, while some days he was moody and even touchy; but Amy did not despair. How could she when she felt he still loved her? In another fortnight they would be back at Somerton, and away from Frances, who, Amy feared, was fast weaning her boy's as well as her husband's love from her, though how she had managed it she knew not.

"I have just been talking with Mr. Grant, your head keeper," said Robert to Mr. Linchmore about a fortnight after the memorable walk to the turnpike, "he tells me the poaching goes on as sharp and fast as ever."

"Worse," was the reply, "they are the same set we have always had, that is to say, we suppose so from their cunning and rashness."

"You got rid of two or three of them at the Sessions, if you remember, when I was here nearly four years ago."

"Yes, but the example does not appear to have done much good."

"You want Charley here," said Frances, "to excite you all into going out in a body again and exterminating them. Do you remember your fears, Mrs. Vavasour."

Amy looked up to reply, and meeting Frances' gaze, she grew confused and coloured deeply. "I should be more afraid now," said she with an effort at composure.

"I was sorry to hear you had never succeeded in tracking that man?" said Vavasour, with his eyes fixed on his wife's now pale face.

"You mean the man that wounded you? No, several were taken up on suspicion, but we were unable to prove anything against them, and the watcher, the poor man who was so frightfully bruised and otherwise ill-treated, swore, that none of them resembled his or your a.s.sailant."

"I could have sworn to the man, too, I think."

"You were abroad, and so I did not press the matter, and in time the affair blew over altogether."

The conversation ended, and was perhaps forgotten by all save Robert Vavasour, and he could not forget it, but s.n.a.t.c.hed his hat and strolled out hastily into the Park. What had made his wife's face flush so deeply? Had it anything to do with Charles, whom Frances was so constantly throwing at his teeth? He began to hate the very name, and was daily growing more madly suspicious of his wife, and yet had his thoughts framed themselves into words he would have shrunk from the bare idea of suspecting his idol. That she had not loved him with all her heart when he married her he knew: she had told him so; and how easy he had thought the task of winning the heart she had a.s.sured him none other had ever asked to have an interest in; but then had she loved none other? perhaps this very man of whom for one half hour he remembered being jealous long ago. When she told him the first, why if it was so, had she not told him the second? Why give him only half her confidence?