"I thought of writing to Gratian and Ralph, and Harry is still at Fair Acres. Aunt Let.i.tia thinks a great deal of what Gratian says."

"Better write to Aunt Let.i.tia, and I will tell you what to say. Get my mother to write also, and surely you have been honest with the girl?"

"Very honest indeed," Joyce said, laughing; "a little too honest!"

The letter was dictated and posted, with one from Mrs. Arundel. Postage was an object in those days, so that the two letters went under one cover, carefully sealed by Gilbert's hand.

For some days there was silence, and no one knew what turn events had taken, and there was no answer to the letters.

A week pa.s.sed, and then came a letter from Charlotte herself.

"MY DEAR JOYCE,--You will see by the date of this letter I am at Bath. I was married to dear Lord Maythorne yesterday. He wished for a very quiet wedding, and he had a special license, and the ceremony was performed at St. Cuthbert's. Dear auntie was present, and dear Gratian and Melville came in from Fair Acres. We went to the 'Swan,' and had an elegant breakfast, and then we posted here.

It is very strange to me to feel I am Lady Maythorne; but with such a _dear_, _kind_, delightful husband, I ought to be happy. Pray accept kind love from us both.

"Your truly affectionate cousin, "CHARLOTTE MAYTHORNE.

"Pulteney Street, Bath, "_November 14th, 1831._"

This, then, was the end of Miss Falconer's training, this the reward for all her care; and the strange part of it was that, though Lord Maythorne's own relations were distressed and sad, at the thought of Charlotte's folly in committing herself to the tender mercies of such a man, Miss Falconer was _not_ distressed.

Gratian, who came in to spend a day or two in Clifton with her husband soon after, gave a graphic description of the whole affair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Wells Cathedral from Bishop's Fields]

Miss Falconer, she declared, was tearful, but in her secret heart elated. Charlotte would grace any position, Lord Maythorne said. She was strikingly like in manner and voice and bearing to a reigning beauty at one of the German baths.

"We are none of us likely to go there, you know," Gratian said, "so we can't vouch for the truth of this."

Then he told Miss Falconer that Charlotte should be placed in the "book of Beauty" next season, and that a friend of his had promised to write a little sketch of her.

Aunt Let.i.tia said she was _glad_ to be able to a.s.sure Lord Maythorne that the Falconers were an ancient race, and had been landed gentry for generations.

"Poor dear old lady," Gratian continued, "the only note of lament was, 'What will Mrs. Hannah More say?' She took such a deep interest in dear Charlotte and, perhaps, I may wish, as _she_ will, that Lord Maythorne was more strictly a religious man. But we cannot hope for everything, and dear Charlotte's training has been so careful, that I am not anxious on that score."

"Poor dear old auntie!" Melville exclaimed, when, after listening to his wife's rapid chatter, he succeeded in getting in a word.

"She'll soon find cause to be anxious when Maythorne comes to her for a bit of thin paper with a good round sum in the corner."

Joyce could not speak so lightly of this as Gratian did. She almost reproached herself for not being more honest with Charlotte in days long past, rousing her from dreams of fancied bliss to the great "realities"

of life.

As she clasped her Baby Joy in her arms that night, she murmured over her tender words, and prayed that she might lead her three little daughters in the right way, and teach them that the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised, and that anch.o.r.ed to those words, they might escape the rocks and quicksands in which so many like poor Charlotte had foundered.

For the present, indeed, Charlotte was satisfied. Lord Maythorne bought her, or rather procured for her, many of the fine things she had often longed for. He felt a certain pride in her graceful manners, and perhaps, a little grateful affection for her intense admiration of himself--that romantic admiration which had not yet had time to grow faint!

He bought her the last complete edition of Lord Byron's poetry, and Charlotte bathed in that not very wholesome stream, and produced some imitative stanzas, which were printed in the _Bath Chronicle_, with a little paragraph by the editor, that they were from the pen of "a charming lady of t.i.tle."

A copy of the paper, delivered in the Close at Wells, went the round of the little community, and, fluttered with delight, Miss Falconer told admiring friends that dear Charlotte's husband was a man of cultivated taste and encouraged her muse.

The days of dearth and barrenness will come, _must_ come, to those who sow their seed upon the stony ground. The bright sky must cloud over, the winds and waves roar and swell, and the house that is builded on the sand must fall, and great shall be the ruin of it. Secure in the present calm, poor little frail barks skim the surface and are content. Thus we leave Charlotte, and will not look at her again, lest we see that saddest of all sad sights, the falling of the prop on which she leaned in her blindness and foolishness, the breaking of the staff which shall surely pierce her hand with a wound which no earthly power can avail to heal.

PART III.

CONCLUSION.

"As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, Leads, by the hand, her little child to bed, Half willing, half reluctant, to be led, And leave his broken playthings on the floor, Still gazing at them through the open door; Nor wholly rea.s.sured and comforted By promises of others in their stead, Which, though more splendid, may not please him more; So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and, by the hand, Leads us to rest so gently, that we go Scarce knowing if we wished to go or stay, Being too full of sleep to understand How far the _unknown transcends the 'what we know._'"

"For now we see through a gla.s.s, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."--1 Cor. xiii. 12.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER THE LAST.

AT ABBOT'S LEIGH.

The old year, which had been so full of trouble and sorrow, was pa.s.sing gently away in calm and unusual brightness.

The air was soft and balmy, and the sunshine lay upon the picturesque village of Abbot's Leigh, and threw out every yellow lichen on the red roofs of the houses, and every leafless branch of the trees in full brightness and defined outline.

The year was full of grace and beauty on this its last day; and Gilbert Arundel, walking up and down the sunny terrace path before his house, on the left of the road leading to the church, felt the pleasant sense of returning strength and health, which is always so sweet.

The garden was at the back of the house, and before him lay a goodly prospect. The lowlands, sloping down to the mouth of the Severn, were bathed in the sunshine, and beyond, in clear outline, was the great encircling range of blue mountains on the opposite coast of Wales. In the clear atmosphere of the winter morning, everything was distinctly seen. The wooded headland of Portishead shot out to the left, and was rounded at full tide by many ships, outward bound for the rolling waters of the Atlantic.

Snowy gulls dipped and whirled on airy flight near the sh.o.r.e, and small crafts, with all sails set, danced and curtseyed beneath them as they made for the harbour.

"It is a place to rest and get well in," Gilbert thought; and then he turned at the sound of footsteps.

His wife was coming through the maze of deep-set, box-bordered flower-beds to speak to him.

"Mother and Piers will be here early," she said, putting her hand through her husband's arm; "and Gratian, and Melville, and Ralph will be later."

"Where are you going to put them all? You forget your country seat is not as accommodating as our Great George Street house."

"Oh! I will make room," she said; "it is so restful and lovely here. I wish----"

"What do you wish?"

"That we lived here. I know it is impossible while you are in the office every day. I only meant it is so delightful to be in the country; winter or summer, it is the best place."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Abbot's Leigh]