"I told you as much as I dared, when I was in London."

"As much as you _dared_?"

"Dear father would not let me tell very much. He laid his commands on me to say nothing."

"You should have disobeyed him," said Sydney marching up and down the darkened study, in which this conference took place. "It was your duty to have disobeyed him, for his own good----"

"Oh, Sydney, how can you talk to me of duty?" said Lettice, with a sob.

"Why did you not come and see for yourself? Why did you stay away so long?"

The reproach cut deeper than she knew. "I thought I was acting for the best," said the young man, half defiantly, half apologetically. "I did what it was the desire of his heart that I should do--But you, you were at home; you saw it all, and you should have told me, Lettice."

"I did try," she answered meekly, "but it was not very easy to make you listen."

In other circ.u.mstances he would, perhaps, have retorted angrily; and Lettice felt that it said much for the depth of his sorrow for the past that he did not carry his self-defence any further. By and by he paused in his agitated walk up and down the room, with head bent and hands plunged deep into his pockets. After two or three moments' silence, Lettice crept up to him and put her hand within his arm.

"Forgive me, Sydney, I spoke too bitterly; but it has been very hard sometimes."

"I would have helped if I had known," said Sydney gloomily.

"I know you would, dear. And he always knew it, too. That was the reason why he told me to keep silence--for fear of hampering you in your career. He has often said to me that he wished to keep the knowledge of his difficulties from you, because he knew you would be generous and kind----"

Tears choked her voice. Her brother, who had hitherto been quite unresponsive to her caresses, put out his right hand and stroked the trembling fingers that rested on his left arm. He was leaning against the old oak table, where his father's books and papers had stood for so many years; and some remembrances of bygone days when he and Lettice, as boy and girl, sat together with their grammars and lexicons at that very place, occurred a little dimly to his mind. But what was a dim memory to him was very clear and distinct to Lettice.

"Oh, Sydney, do you remember how we used to work here with father?" she broke out. "How many hours we spent here together--reading the same books, thinking the same thoughts--and now we seem so divided, so very far apart! You have not quite forgotten those old days, have you?"

"No, I have not forgotten them," said Sydney, in a rather unsteady voice. Poor Lettice! She had counted for very little in his life for the last few years, and yet, as she reminded him, what companions they had been before he went to Cambridge! A suddenly roused instinct of compa.s.sion and protection caused him to put his arm round her and to speak with unusual tenderness.

"I won't forget those old times, Lettice. Perhaps we shall be able to see more of each other by and bye than we have done lately. You have been a good girl, never wanting any change or amus.e.m.e.nt all these years; but I'll do my best to look after you now."

"I began to think you did not care for any of us, Sydney."

"Nonsense," said Sydney, and he kissed her forehead affectionately before he left the study, where, indeed, he felt that he had stayed a little too long, and given Lettice an unusual advantage over him. He was not dest.i.tute of natural affections, but they had so long been obscured by the mists of selfishness that he found it difficult to let them appear--and more difficult with his sister than with his mother. Lettice seemed to him to exact too much, to be too intense in feeling, too critical in observation. He was fond of her, but she was not at all his ideal woman--if he had one. Sydney's preference was for what he called "a womanly woman": not one who knew Greek.

He made a brave and manly effort to wind up his father's affairs and pay his outstanding debts. He was so far stirred out of himself that it hardly occurred to his mind that a slur would be left on him if these debts were left unpaid: his strongest motive just now was the sense of right and wrong, and he knew, too late, that it was right for him to take up the load which his own acts had made so heavy.

The rector had died absolutely penniless. His insurance policy, his furniture, the whole of his personal effects, barely sufficed to cover the money he had borrowed. What Sydney did was to procure the means of discharging at once all the household bills, and the expenses connected with the funeral.

"And now," he said to Lettice, when the last of these dues had been paid off and they took their last stroll together through the already half dismantled rooms of the desolate old Rectory, "I feel more of a man than I have felt since that terrible night, and I want to get back to my work."

"I am afraid you will have to work very hard, dear!" said Lettice, laying her hand on his arm, rather timidly. How she still yearned for the full measure of mutual confidence and sympathy!

"Hard work will be good for me," he said, his keen blue eyes lighting up as if with ardor for the fray. "I shall soon wipe off old scores, and there's nothing like knowing you have only yourself to look to. My practice, you know, is pretty good already, and it will be very good by and bye."

"I am so glad!"

"Yes. And, of course, you must never have any anxiety about mother and yourself. I shall see to all that. You are going to stay with the Grahams for a while, so I can come over one day and discuss it. I don't suppose I shall ever marry, but whether I do or not, I shall always set apart a certain sum for mother and you."

"I have been thinking about the future," said Lettice, quietly. She always spoke in a low, musical voice, without gesture, but not without animation, producing on those who heard her the impression that she had formed her opinions beforehand, and was deliberate in stating them. "Do you know, Sydney, that I can earn a very respectable income?"

"Earn an income! You!" he said, with a wrinkle in his forehead, and a curl in his nostrils. "I will not hear of such a thing. I cannot have my sister a dependent in other people's houses--a humble governess or companion. How could you dream of it!"

"I have not dreamed of that," said Lettice. "I do not think I should like it myself. I simply stay at home and write. I earned seventy pounds last year, and Mr. Graham says I could almost certainly earn twice as much if I were living in London."

"Why was I not told of this?" said Sydney, with an air of vexation.

"What do you write?"

"Essays, and now and then a review, and little stories."

"Little stories--ouf!" he muttered, in evident disgust. "You don't put your name to these things!"

"I did to one article, last March, in _The Decade_."

"That is Graham's magazine, and I daresay Graham asked you to sign your name. When I see him I shall tell him it was done without sufficient consideration."

"All articles are signed in _The Decade_," said Lettice. She did not think it worth while to mention that Graham had written her a very flattering letter about her article, telling her that it had attracted notice--that the critics said she had a style of her own, and was likely to make her mark. The letter had reached her on the morning before her father's death, and she had found but a brief satisfaction in it at the time.

"I think you had better not say anything to Mr. Graham," she continued.

"They have both been very kind, and we shall not have too many friends in London."

"Why do you want to live in London?"

"I think I should like it, and mother would like it too. You know she has fifty pounds a year of her own, and if what Mr. Graham says is right we shall be able to live very comfortably."

"I can't say I like this writing for a living," he said.

"I suppose we cannot have everything as we like it. And, besides, I do like it. It is congenial work, and it makes me feel independent."

"It is not always good for women to be independent. It is dangerous."

She laughed--a pleasant little rallying laugh.

"I hope you will not be shocked," she said. "I have set my heart on being perfectly independent of you and everybody else."

He saw that she would have her way, and let the subject drop.

A few weeks afterwards, Lettice and her mother had packed up their belongings and went to London. The Grahams were delighted to have them, for Lettice was a great favorite with both. James Graham was a literary man of good standing, who, in addition to editing _The Decade_, wrote for one of the weekly papers, and reviewed books in his special lines for one of the dailies. By dint of hard work, and carefully nursing his connection, he contrived to make a living; and that was all. Literary work is not well paid as a rule. There is fair pay to be had on the staff of the best daily papers, but that kind of work requires a special apt.i.tude. It requires, in particular, a supple and indifferent mind, ready to take its cue from other people, with the art of representing things from day to day not exactly as they are, but as an editor or paymaster wants them to appear. If we suffered our journalists to sign their articles, they would probably write better, with more self-respect and a higher sense of responsibility; they would become stronger in themselves, and would be more influential with their readers. As it is, few men with vigorous and original minds can endure beyond a year or two of political leader-writing.

Graham had tried it, and the ordeal was too difficult for him. Now he had a greater scope for his abilities, and less money for his pains.

Clara Graham was the daughter of a solicitor in Angleford, and had known Lettice Campion from childhood. She was a pretty woman, thoroughly good-hearted, with tastes and powers somewhat in advance of her education. Perhaps she stood a little in awe of Lettice, and wondered occasionally whether her husband considered a woman who knew Latin and Greek, and wrote clever articles in _The Decade_, superior to one who had no such accomplishments, though she might be prettier, and the mother of his children, and even the darner of his stockings. But Clara was not without wits, so she did not propound questions of that sort to her husband; she reserved them for her own torment, and then expiated her jealousy by being kinder to Lettice than ever.

Lettice's plans were far more fixed and decided than Sydney knew. She had corresponded very fully and frankly with the Grahams on the subject, and Mr. Graham was already looking about for a place where she could set up her household G.o.ds. It was no use to consult Mrs. Campion on the subject. Her husband's death had thrown her into a state of mental torpor which seemed at first to border upon imbecility; and although she recovered to some extent from the shock, her health had been too much shaken to admit of complete recovery. Thenceforward she was an invalid and an old woman, who had abnegated her will in favor of her daughter's, and asked for nothing better than to be governed as well as cared for.

The change was a painful one to Lettice, but practically it left her freer than ever, for her mother wanted little companionship, and was quite as happy with the maid that Lettice had brought from Angleford as with Lettice herself. The visit to the Grahams was an excellent thing both for Mrs. Campion and for her daughter. Clara managed to win the old lady's heart, and so relieved her friend of much of her anxiety. The relief came not a moment too soon, for the long strain to which Lettice had been subjected began to tell upon her and she was sorely in need of rest. The last three or four years had been a time of almost incessant worry to her. She had literally had the care of the household on her shoulders, and it had needed both courage and endurance of no ordinary kind to enable her to discharge her task without abandoning that inner and intellectual life which had become so indispensable to her well-being. The sudden death of her father was a paralyzing blow, but the care exacted from her by her mother had saved her from the physical collapse which it might have brought about. Now, when the necessity for immediate exertion had pa.s.sed away, the reaction was very great, and it was fortunate that she had at this crisis the bracing companionship of James Graham, and Clara's friendly and stimulating acerbities.

Lettice had reached the age of five and twenty without experiencing either love, or intimate friendship, or intellectual sympathy. She had had neither of those two things which a woman, and especially an intellectual woman, constantly craves, and in the absence of which she cannot be happy. Either of the two may suffice for happiness, both together would satisfy her completely, but the woman who has not one or the other is a stranger to content. The nature of a woman requires either equality of friendship, a free exchange of confidence, trust and respect--having which, she can put up with a good deal of apparent coldness and dryness of heart in her friend; or else she wants the contrasted savor of life, caressing words, demonstrations of tenderness, amenities and attentions, which keep her heart at rest even if they do not satisfy her whole nature. If she gets neither of these things the love or friendship never wakes, or, having been aroused, it dies of inanition.

So it was with Lettice. The one oasis in the wilderness of her existence had been the aftermath of love which sprang up between her and her father in the last few years, when she felt him depending upon her, confiding and trusting in her, and when she had a voice in the shaping of his life. But even this love, unsurpa.s.sable in its tenderness, was only as a faint shadow in a thirsty land. Such as it was, she had lost it, and the place which it had occupied was an aching void.