Lady Mason, as soon as she was alone, sat herself down, and her thoughts ran back over the whole course of her life. Early in her days, when the world was yet beginning to her, she had done one evil deed, and from that time up to those days of her trial she had been the victim of one incessant struggle to appear before the world as though that deed had not been done,--to appear innocent of it before the world, but, beyond all things, innocent of it before her son.

For twenty years she had striven with a labour that had been all but unendurable; and now she had failed, and every one knew her for what she was. Such had been her life; and then she thought of the life which might have been hers. In her earlier days she had known what it was to be poor, and had seen and heard those battles after money which harden our hearts, and quench the poetry of our natures. But it had not been altogether so with her. Had things gone differently with her it might afterwards have been said that she had gone through the fire unscathed. But the beast had set his foot upon her, and when the temptation came it was too much for her. Not for herself would she have sinned, or have robbed that old man, who had been to her a kind master. But when a child was born to her, her eyes were blind, and she could not see that wealth ill gotten for her child would be as sure a curse as wealth ill gotten for herself. She remembered Rebekah, and with the cunning of a second Rebekah she filched a world's blessing for her baby. Now she thought of all this as pictures of that life which might have been hers pa.s.sed before her mind's eye.

And they were pleasant pictures, had they not burnt into her very soul as she looked at them. How sweet had been that drawing-room at The Cleeve, as she sat there in luxurious quiet with her new friend!

How sweet had been that friendship with a woman pure in all her thoughts, graceful to the eye, and delicate in all her ways! She knew now, as she thought of this, that to her had been given the power to appreciate such delights as these. How full of charm to her would have been that life, in which there had been so much of true, innocent affection;--had the load ever been absent from her shoulders! And then she thought of Sir Peregrine, with his pleasant, ancient manner and truth of heart, and told herself that she could have been happy with the love of even so old a man as that,--had that burden been away from her! But the burden had never been away--never could be away. Then she thought once more of her stern but just son, and as she bowed her head and kissed the rod, she prayed that her release might come to her soon.

And now we will say farewell to her, and as we do so the chief interest of our tale will end. I may, perhaps be thought to owe an apology to my readers in that I have asked their sympathy for a woman who had so sinned as to have placed her beyond the general sympathy of the world at large. If so, I tender my apology, and perhaps feel that I should confess a fault. But as I have told her story that sympathy has grown upon myself till I have learned to forgive her, and to feel that I too could have regarded her as a friend. Of her future life I will not venture to say anything. But no lesson is truer than that which teaches us to believe that G.o.d does temper the wind to the shorn lamb. To how many has it not seemed, at some one period of their lives, that all was over for them, and that to them in their afflictions there was nothing left but to die! And yet they have lived to laugh again, to feel that the air was warm and the earth fair, and that G.o.d in giving them ever-springing hope had given everything. How many a sun may seem to set on an endless night, and yet rising again on some morrow--

"He tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky!"

For Lady Mason let us hope that the day will come in which she also may once again trick her beams in some modest, una.s.suming way, and that for her the morning may even yet be sweet with a glad warmth.

For us, here in these pages, it must be sufficient to say this last kindly farewell.

As to Lucius Mason and the arrangement of his affairs with his step-brother a very few concluding words will suffice. When Joseph Mason left the office of Messrs. Round and Crook he would gladly have sacrificed all hope of any eventual pecuniary benefit from the possession of Orley Farm could he by doing so have secured the condign punishment of her who had so long kept him out of his inheritance. But he soon found that he had no means of doing this.

In the first place he did not know where to turn for advice. He had quarrelled absolutely with Dockwrath, and though he now greatly distrusted the Rounds, he by no means put implicit trust in him of Hamworth. Of the Rounds he suspected that they were engaged to serve his enemy, of Dockwrath he felt sure that he was anxious only to serve himself. Under these circ.u.mstances he was driven into the arms of a third attorney, and learned from him, after a delay that cut him to the soul, that he could take no further criminal proceeding against Lady Mason. It would be impossible to have her even indicted for the forgery,--seeing that two juries, at the interval of twenty years, had virtually acquitted her,--unless new evidence which should be absolute and positive in its kind should be forthcoming. But there was no new evidence of any kind. The offer made to surrender the property was no evidence for a jury whatever it might be in the mind of the world at large.

"And what am I to do?" asked Mason.

"Take the goods the G.o.ds provide you," said the attorney. "Accept the offer which your half-brother has very generously made you."

"Generously!" shouted Mason of Groby.

"Well, on his part it is generous. It is quite within his power to keep it; and were he to do so no one would say he was wrong. Why should he judge his mother?"

Then Mr. Joseph Mason went to another attorney; but it was of no avail. The time was pa.s.sing away, and he learned that Lady Mason and Lucius had actually started for Germany. In his agony for revenge he had endeavoured to obtain some legal order that should prevent her departure;--"ne exeat regno," as he repeated over and over again to his advisers learned in the law. But it was of no avail. Lady Mason had been tried and acquitted, and no judge would interfere.

"We should soon have her back again, you know, if we had evidence of forgery," said the last attorney.

"Then, by ----! we will have her back again," said Mason.

But the threat was vain; nor could he get any one even to promise him that she could be prosecuted and convicted. And by degrees the desire for vengeance slackened as the desire for gain resumed its sway.

Many men have threatened to spend a property upon a lawsuit who have afterwards felt grateful that their threats were made abortive.

And so it was with Mr. Mason. After remaining in town over a month he took the advice of the first of those new lawyers and allowed that gentleman to put himself in communication with Mr. Furnival.

The result was that by the end of six months he again came out of Yorkshire to take upon himself the duties and privileges of the owner of Orley Farm.

And then came his great fight with Dockwrath, which in the end ruined the Hamworth attorney, and cost Mr. Mason more money than he ever liked to confess. Dockwrath claimed to be put in possession of Orley Farm at an exceedingly moderate rent, as to the terms of which he was prepared to prove that Mr. Mason had already entered into a contract with him. Mr. Mason utterly ignored such contract, and contended that the words contained in a certain note produced by Dockwrath amounted only to a proposition to let him the land in the event of certain circ.u.mstances and results--which circ.u.mstances and results never took place.

This lawsuit Mr. Joseph Mason did win, and Mr. Samuel Dockwrath was, as I have said, ruined. What the attorney did to make it necessary that he should leave Hamworth I do not know; but Miriam, his wife, is now the mistress of that lodging-house to which her own mahogany furniture was so ruthlessly removed.

CHAPTER Lx.x.x.

SHOWING HOW AFFAIRS SETTLED THEMSELVES AT NONINGSBY.

We must now go back to Noningsby for one concluding chapter, and then our work will be completed. "You are not to go away from Noningsby when the trial is over, you know. Mamma said that I had better tell you so." It was thus that Madeline had spoken to Felix Graham as he was going out to the judge's carriage on the last morning of the celebrated great Orley Farm case, and as she did so she twisted one of her little fingers into one of his b.u.t.tonholes. This she did with a prettiness of familiarity, and the a.s.sumption of a right to give him orders and hold him to obedience, which was almost intoxicating in its sweetness. And why should she not be familiar with him? Why should she not hold him to obedience by his b.u.t.tonhole? Was he not her own? Had she not chosen him and taken him up to the exclusion of all other such choosings and takings?

"I shall not go till you send me," he said, putting up his hand as though to protect his coat, and just touching her fingers as he did so.

"Mamma says it will be stupid for you in the mornings, but it will not be worse for you than for Augustus. He stays till after Easter."

"And I shall stay till after Whitsuntide unless I am turned out."

"Oh! but you will be turned out. I am not going to make myself answerable for any improper amount of idleness. Papa says you have got all the law courts to reform."

"There must be a double Hercules for such a set of stables as that,"

said Felix; and then with the slight ceremony to which I have before adverted he took his leave for the day.

"I suppose there will be no use in delaying it," said Lady Staveley on the same morning as she and her daughter sat together in the drawing-room. They had already been talking over the new engagement by the hour, together; but that is a subject on which mothers with marriageable daughters never grow tired, as all mothers and marriageable daughters know full well.

"Oh! mamma, I think it must be delayed."

"But why, my love? Mr. Graham has not said so?"

"You must call him Felix, mamma. I'm sure it's a nice name."

"Very well, my dear, I will."

"No; he has said nothing yet. But of course he means to wait till,--till it will be prudent."

"Men never care for prudence of that kind when they are really in love;--and I'm sure he is."

"Is he, mamma?"

"He will marry on anything or nothing. And if you speak to him he tells you of how the young ravens were fed. But he always forgets that he's not a young raven himself."

"Now you're only joking, mamma."

"Indeed I'm quite in earnest. But I think your papa means to make up an income for you,--only you must not expect to be rich."

"I do not want to be rich. I never did."

"I suppose you will live in London, and then you can come down here when the courts are up. I do hope he won't ever want to take a situation in the colonies."

"Who, Felix? Why should he go to the colonies?"

"They always do,--the clever young barristers who marry before they have made their way. That would be very dreadful. I really think it would kill me."

"Oh! mamma, he sha'n't go to any colony."

"To be sure there are the county courts now, and they are better. I suppose you wouldn't like to live at Leeds or Merthyr-Tydvil?"

"Of course I shall live wherever he goes; but I don't know why you should send him to Merthyr-Tydvil."

"Those are the sort of places they do go to. There is young Mrs.