"Lucky there's no kids," quoth his companion, bluntly; "and, 'Poor la.s.s'

or no, we've got our work to do. Where had we got to now? Look sharp, and let's clear out of this before she comes back,"--and spurred to activity by the suggestion, the interlude came to an end forthwith.

They need not have hurried; Leonore was not going to interrupt again.

She had come to take a last look round, as she was not now dwelling there; but the sight just witnessed was enough to preclude any desire for further investigation, and she almost ran across the threshold which she was never more to enter.

It may be wondered at that none of her own people were with the hapless girl at such a moment--but a few words will explain this. A very few days before G.o.dfrey Stubbs' sudden death, an outbreak of influenza, which was rife in the neighbourhood, had taken place at Boldero Abbey; and to the intense vexation of the general, he found himself laid by the heels, when it was above all things necessary and desirable that he should appear, clad in the full panoply of woe, at the funeral of his son-in-law.

He would go, he was sure he could go,--and he rose from his bed and tried, only to totter, trembling, back into it again.

Then he ordered up Sue, and sent messages to the younger ones. When it appeared that all were either sick or sickening, and that the doctor's orders were peremptory, he was made so much worse himself by wrathful impotence, that thereafter all was easy, and by the time the epidemic had abated, Leonore was no longer in her own house.

She was still, however, to her father's view a personage, and as such to be treated. Messages of affectionate condolence and sympathetic inquiry were despatched daily. Though he did not actually write with his own hand, he composed and dictated, and every epistle had to be submitted to him before it was sent--while each and all conveyed the emphatic declaration that, the very moment he was fit to travel, General Boldero would fly to his dear girl's side, to give her the benefit of his counsel and experience.

He had been for his first walk on the day Leonore's letter arrived which changed the face of everything.

Thereafter his influenza and all the other influenzas a.s.sumed astonishing proportions, and the trip to Liverpool which he had formerly a.s.sured Sue would do him all the good in the world, was not to be thought of. The weather was milder, but what of that? She had been against his going all along; and now when he had given in to her, she must needs wheel about face, and try to drive him to do what would send him back to bed again as sure as fate.

Sue had next suggested that she herself, or Maud should go. Sybil, the last to be attacked, was still in the doctor's hands.

The second proposition, however, met with no better fate than the first.

It was madness to think of it; sheer madness to take a long, expensive--the speaker caught himself up and subst.i.tuted "exhaustive"--journey, when there was no end to be attained thereby.

Had he not said that Leo could come to them? Since she was coming, and since it appeared there was nothing to prevent her coming immediately, that settled the matter.

"You can put it civilly," conceded he; but on this occasion he sent no message, and did not ask to see the letter.

We perceive therefore how it chanced that the solitary, pitiful little figure came to be haunting the precincts of her former home as narrated above; she had been housed by friends who, struck by her desolation, were not wanting in pity and sympathy,--but confused, dazed, bewildered, she moved about as in a dream, her one conscious desire to be alone--and no one, she thought, would follow her on the present occasion.

No one did, but we know the sight that met her eyes on opening the drawing-room door, and she knew in a moment who and what the two men were, and what they were doing. And she fled down the garden path and pa.s.sed from their view; but ere she reappears, we will present our readers with a brief glimpse of our heroine up to the present crisis in her life.

In appearance she was small, soft, and inclined to be round-about--while her face, what shall we say? It was a face transmitted through generations of easy, healthy, wealthy ancestors, who have occasionally married beauties,--and yet it had a note of its own. Her sisters were handsome, but it was reserved for her, the youngest, to strike out a new line in the family looks and one which did not ripen quickly. So that whereas the three elder Miss Bolderos had high noses and high foreheads, and long, pale, aristocratic faces, varying but little from each other--(for somehow Sue, by resembling her father, had no separate traits)--the funny little Leonore, with her rogue's eyes, and thick bunch of swinging curls, her chubby cheeks and dimpled chin, was for a time entirely overlooked. It was certain she would never be distinguished nor imposing--consequently would never contract the great alliance General Boldero steadily kept in view for Maud or Sybil.

[_N.B._--He never contemplated a husband for Sue--never had, though she was the handsomest of the three. Briefly, he could not do without her.]

But although he was presently obliged to confess to himself that the little snub-nosed schoolgirl was developing some sort of impudent looks of her own, he held them to be of such small account that it was as much a source of wonder as of congratulation when it fell out that they had fixed the affections of a suitor with ten thousand a year. It was luck--it was extraordinary luck--that Mr. G.o.dfrey Stubbs could be content with Leo, when really if he had demanded the hand of any one of the three it would have been folly to hold back.

We need not, however, dwell on this period. Suffice it to say that on each recurring occasion when the general welcomed his married daughter beneath his roof, he was secretly surprised and even faintly annoyed to behold her prettier than before. She glowed with life and colour. She radiated vitality. She had a knack of throwing her sisters, with their far superior outlines, into the shade.

Even Sybil, who had something of Leo's vivacity, had none of Leo's charm. Even Maud, rated highest in the paternal valuation, had a heavy look. What if he had been over-hasty after all? What if the little witch could have done better? Once or twice he had to reason with himself very seriously before equanimity was restored.

In mind Leonore was apt, with the intelligence, and it must be added with much of the ignorance, of a child. She was ready to learn when learning was easy--she would give it up when effort was needed.

As G.o.dfrey was no reader, she only read such books as pleased her fancy or whiled away a dull hour.

G.o.dfrey told her what was in the newspapers, she said. It did not occur to either that G.o.dfrey's cursory perusal merely skimmed the surface of events.

Again, Leonore protested that she had no accomplishments, but that her husband could both sing and draw--and she would hasten to place his music on the piano, and exhibit his sketches. She thought his big ba.s.s tones the finest imaginable; she framed the sketches as presents for her father and sisters;--and so on, and so on.

In short the poor little tendril had wound itself round a st.u.r.dy pole, and with this support had waved and danced in the sunshine for three years,--and now, all in a moment, with cruel suddenness and finality, the pole had snapped, and the tender young creature must either make shift thenceforth to stand alone, or fall to the earth also. Which will Leonore do?

The present, in so far as she was concerned, was a grey, colourless vacuum.

She had of course to give audiences to her solicitor, an elderly, grizzled man, whose coat, she noted, was shockingly ill-made, and who had a heavy cold in the head, which brought his red bandana handkerchief much into play,--but though she dreaded his visits, and kept as far away from him as possible, with a fastidious dislike of his husky utterances, and heavy breathing, he relieved her of all responsibility, and in fact earned a grat.i.tude he did not get.

His was a thankless task. Leonore only wondered miserably what it was all about? Of course she would do whatever was right; she would give up anything and everything--so what need of details?

Indeed she offered to surrender cherished possessions which Mr. Jonas a.s.sured her were not demanded and might lawfully be kept,--but this point clear, she had no interest in the rest, and his broad back turned, nothing else presented itself to fill up the dreary days which had to elapse before her presence could be spared and her departure arranged for.

"Your father will provide for you, I understand, Mrs. Stubbs?" ("And a good job too," mentally commented the lawyer, shutting his bag with a snap. "There's many a poor thing has no father, close-fisted or no, to fall back upon.")

"Yes--yes," said Leonore, hurriedly. She looked so young, and vague, and helpless, that as he held out his hand, and mumbled conventionally, his voice was a shade more husky than before.

"Oh, yes, thank you; thank you, yes."

"Now what is she thanking me for?"--queried Jonas of himself. For very pity he felt aggrieved and sardonic, and Leo perceiving the frown, and unable to divine its cause, was thankful anew that release was at hand.

Every interview had been worse than the previous one. She had had to go in to the terrible old man all by herself, and be asked this and that, and begged to remember about things which had made no impression at the time, and been entirely wiped from memory thereafter.

Could she tell--oh, how she came to hate that ominous "Can you tell?"

seeing that she never could, and that the confession invariably elicited the same dry little cough of dissatisfaction, followed by a pause.

What did it--what could it all mean? "Then I think I need not trouble you further, Mrs. Stubbs," said Mr. Jonas slowly,--and Mrs. Stubbs almost jumped from her seat.

Nothing could ever be as bad as this again. In her own old home no one would disparage poor G.o.dfrey by inference and solemn silences as this grim old Jonas did. Every statement wrung out of her, even though the same simply amounted to a non-statement, a confession of utter ignorance and trustfulness, had somehow d.a.m.ned her husband in the eyes of the man of business--but her own people would feel differently.

G.o.dfrey had always been treated well, indeed made rather a fuss about at Boldero Abbey. Her father would run down the steps to meet the carriage which brought the young couple from the station on a visit. His hearty, "Well, here you are!" would accompany the opening of the door by his own hand. Then there would be an embrace for herself, and the further greeting of a pleased and affectionate host for her husband.

The pleasant bustle of welcome outside would be amply followed up within doors, where her sisters would cl.u.s.ter round, making as much of G.o.dfrey as of herself--perhaps even a little more--remembering his tastes, his proclivities, his love of much sugar and plenty of cream in his tea, his partiality for warmth and the blaze of a roaring fire. "Ah, you Liverpool gentlemen, you know what comfort is!"--the general would jocularly exclaim, the while both hands pressed his son-in-law down into his own armchair. "I like to stand;" he would protest,--but Leonore had a suspicion that he did not like to stand for most people.

G.o.dfrey was a favourite; for G.o.dfrey there would be horses and dogcarts at command, keepers and beaters in the shooting season, (when such visits annually took place), and elaborate luncheons and dinners. "We don't do much in the way of entertaining, you know," the general would explain casually, having delivered himself on the subject to Sue, beforehand--("Hang it all, he can't expect _that_--but he shall have everything else, everything that we can do for him ourselves")--"We don't go in for that sort of thing, except now and again,--but after all, a family gathering is more agreeable to us all, I take it, eh, G.o.dfrey? _That's_ what you and Leo come for, not to be bothered by a parcel of strangers you know nothing about?"

But if strangers, _i.e._, old neighbours whom Leo remembered from her youth up, and whom she would have liked very well to meet again, if these did accidentally cross the path of the Bolderos and their guests, nothing could be handsomer than the way in which G.o.dfrey Stubbs was presented by his father-in-law. G.o.dfrey would tell his wife about his meeting with Lord Merivale or Sir Thomas b.u.t.ts with an air of elation.

"Nice fellows; so chatty and affable." Once he let fall the latter word in public, and n.o.body winced openly,--so that Leo, who had often heard it in her married home, and never dreamed of thinking it odd, listened and smiled in all innocence.

It must be remembered that she had barely emerged from the schoolroom when G.o.dfrey Stubbs carried her off as his bride, and that when the last blow fell, and there was a sudden demand on the forlorn little creature for qualities she either did not possess or was not conscious of possessing, she only felt with a kind of numb misery that it was all strange and terrible, and that if G.o.dfrey had been there to help her--and a burst of tears would follow.

But at least she was going home; she had never yet got quite over the feeling that Boldero Abbey was "home," and always spoke of it as such, even in the days when her stay there was limited to visits. How much more then now--now, when she had no foothold anywhere else, and when the past three years took in the retrospect the shadowy outlines of a dream.

It was odd how distinctly behind the dream stood out the days of childhood. As the train bore her swiftly through the open country she knew so well, on the mellow, misty October afternoon, which came at last, Leonore's throbbing bosom was a jumble of emotions, partly, though of this she was unaware, pleasurable. Until now she had been dwelling in the past--the near past--the past which was all loss and sadness,--but as one familiar scene after another unfolded itself, involuntarily they awakened interest and a faint antic.i.p.ation. Of a nature to be happy anywhere, and to cull blossoms off the most arid soil, the necessity for living in a villa among other villas on the outskirts of a great manufacturing town, had never called for lament and depreciation: no one had ever heard Boldero Abbey descanted upon,--indeed Leonore had sharply criticised the taste of a new arrival on the scene, a girl transplanted like herself by marriage, who was for ever telling her new a.s.sociates what was done in B--shire.

All this young lady's endeavours could not win an adherent in Mrs.

Stubbs, who simply put on a wooden face, and said, "Indeed?" when the other threw out: "It's all so different here from what I am accustomed to. I have never lived in any place like this before."

Leo moreover had her triumph which she kept for G.o.dfrey's ear. "You know how that girl brags, and what an amount of side she puts on? Would you believe it, G.o.dfrey, she's only a sort of stable-keeper's daughter!

Well, I don't know what else you call it; her father is a trainer of race-horses, and that's how she knows about them; and the big people she quotes, of course they are all about such places--and--oh, I think it's sickening, even if it were no sham--that running down of nice James Bilson, who never sets up to be anything, and is a hundred thousand times too good for his wife."

"_You_ don't buck, anyway," said he.

"I'd be ashamed," said Leonore proudly.

Her father and sisters thought the villa with its luxurious, well-kept surroundings, met her every aspiration; they liked it very well themselves as a _pied-a-terre_,--and though of course the grounds might have been more extensive, and the smoke of tall chimneys farther off, the general was remarkably sensible on the point. "Land is valuable hereabouts, and a man must live where he can keep an eye on his business."