The more she ran and the more she called, the less did there appear to be anybody to respond to it. Utterly at a nonplus, she at length returned to the donkey--that is, to the spot, so far as she could judge, where she had left it. But the donkey was gone.

Was Mrs. Peckaby awake or asleep? Was the past blissful dream--when she was being borne in triumph to New Jerusalem--only an imaginary one? Was her present predicament real! Which _was_ imagination and which was real? For the last hour she had been enjoying the realisation of all her hopes; now she seemed no nearer their fruition than she had been a year ago. The white donkey was gone, the conducting brothers were gone, and she was alone in the middle of a wood, two miles from home, on a wet night. Mrs. Peckaby had heard of enchantments, and began to think she must have been subjected to something of the sort.

She rubbed her eyes; she pinched her arms. Was she in her senses or not?

Sure never was such a situation heard of! The cup of hope presented palpably to her lips, only to vanish again--she could not tell how--and leave no sign. A very disagreeable doubt--not yet a suspicion--began to dawn over Mrs. Peckaby. Had she been made the subject of a practical joke?

She might have flung the doubt from her, but for a distant sound that came faintly on her ears--the sound of covert laughter. Her doubt turned to conviction. Her face became hot; her heart, but for the anger at it, would have grown sick with the disappointment. Her conductors and the donkey were retreating, having played their joke out! Two certainties forced themselves upon her mind. One, that Peckaby and his friends had planned it; she felt sure now that the biggest of the "brothers" had been nobody but Chuff, the blacksmith: the other certainty was, that she should never be sent for to New Jerusalem in any way. Why it should have been, Mrs. Peckaby could not have told, then or afterwards; but the positive conviction that Brother Jarrum _had_ been false, that the story of sending for her on a white donkey had only been invented to keep her quiet, fixed itself in her mind in that moment in the lonely wood. She sunk down amidst the trees and sobbed bitterly.

But all the tears combined that the world ever shed could not bring her nearer to New Jerusalem, or make her present situation better. After awhile she had the sense to remember that. She rose from the ground, turned her gown up over her shoulders, found her way out of the wood, and set off on her walk back again in a very humble frame of mind, arriving home as the clock was striking two.

She could make nobody hear. She knocked at the door, she knocked at the window, gently at first, then louder; she called and called, but there came no answer. Some of the neighbours, aroused by the unwonted disturbance, came peeping at their windows. At length Peckaby opened his; thrusting his head out at the very casement from which Mrs. Peckaby had beheld the deceitful vision earlier in the night.

"Who's there?" called out Peckaby.

"It's me, Peckaby," was the answer, delivered in a forlorn tone. "Come down and open the door."

"Who's 'me'?" asked Peckaby.

"It's me," repeated Mrs. Peckaby, looking up.

And what with her height and the low casement, their faces were really not many inches apart; but yet Peckaby appeared not to know her.

"You be off, will you!" retorted he. "A pretty thing if tramps be to come to decent folks' doors and knock 'em up like this. Who's door did you take it for?"

"It's me!" screamed Mrs. Peckaby. "Don't you know me? Come and undo the door, and let me come in. I be sopping."

"Know you! How should I know you? Who be you?"

"Good heavens, Peckaby! you must know me. Ain't I your wife?"

"My wife! Not a bit on't. You needn't come here with that gammon, missis, whoever you be. My wife's gone off to New Jerusalem on a white donkey."

He slammed to the casement. Mrs. Peckaby, what with the rain and what with the disappointment, burst into tears. In the same moment, sundry other casements opened, and all the heads in the vicinity--including the blacksmith Chuffs, and Mrs. Chuff's--were thrust out to condole with their neighbour, Mrs. Peckaby.

"Had she been and come back a'ready?" "Did she get tired of the saints so soon as this--or did they get tired of her?" "What sort of a city, was it?" "Which was most plentiful--geese or sage?" "How many wives, besides herself, had the gentleman that _she_ chose?" "Who took care of the babies?" "Did they have many public dances?" "Was veils for the bonnets all the go?" "Was it a paradise or warn't it?" "And how was Brother Jarrum?"

Amongst the many questions asked, those came prominently, tingling on the ears of the unhappy Mrs. Peckaby. Too completely prostrate with events to retort, she suddenly let drop her gown, that she had kept so carefully turned, and clapped both her hands upon her face. Then came a real, genuine question from the next door casement--Mrs. Green's.

"Ain't that your plum-coloured gownd? What's come to it?"

Mrs. Peckaby, somewhat aroused, looked at the gown in haste. What _had_ come to it? Patches of dead-white, looking not unlike paint, covered it about on all sides, especially behind. The shawl had caught some white, too, and the green leather gloves looked, inside, as though they had had a coat of whitewash put on them. Her beautiful gownd! laid by so long!--what on earth had ruined it like that?

Chuff, the blacksmith, gave a great grin from his window. "Sure that there donkey never was painted down white!" quoth he.

That it had been painted down white and with exceedingly wet paint too, there could be little doubt. Some poor donkey humble in his coat of gray, converted into a fine white animal for the occasion, by Peckaby and Chuff and their cronies. Mrs. Peckaby shrieked and sobbed with mortification, and drummed frantically on her house door. A chorus of laughter echoed from all sides, and Peckaby's casement flew open again.

"Will you stop that there knocking, then?" roared Peckaby, "Disturbing a man's night's rest."

"I _will_ come in then, Peckaby," she stormed, plucking up a little spirit in her desperation. "I be your wife, you know I be, and I will come in."

"My good woman, what's took you?" cried Peckaby, in a tone of compassionating suavity. "You ain't no wife of mine. My wife's miles on her road by this time. She's off to New Jerusalem on a white donkey."

A new actor came up to the scene--no other than Jan Verner. Jan had been sitting up with some poor patient, and was now going home. To describe his surprise when he saw the windows alive with nightcapped heads, and Mrs. Peckaby in her dripping discomfort, in her paint, in her state altogether, outward and inward, would be a long task. Peckaby himself undertook the explanation, in which he was aided by Chuff; and Jan sat himself down on the public pump, and laughed till he was hoarse.

"Come, Peckaby, you'll let her in," cried he, before he went away.

"Let her in!" echoed Peckaby, "That would be a go, that would! What 'ud the saints say? They'd be for prosecuting of her for bigamy. If she's gone over to them, sir, she can't belong legal to me."

Jan laughed so that he had to hold his sides, and Mrs. Peckaby shrieked and sobbed. Chuff began calling out that the best remedy for white paint was turpentine.

"Coma along, Peckaby, and open the door," said Jan, rising. "She'll catch an illness if she stops here in her wet clothes, and I shall have a month's work, attending on her. Come!"

"Well, sir, to oblige you, I will," returned the man. "But let me ever catch her snivelling after them saints again, that's all! They should have her if they liked; I'd not."

"You hear, Mrs. Peckaby," said Jan in her ear. "I'd let the saints alone for the future, if I were you."

"I mean to, sir," she meekly answered, between her sobs.

Peckaby in his shirt and nightcap, opened the door, and she bounded in.

The casements closed to the chorus of subsiding laughter, and the echoes of Jan's footsteps died away in the distance.

CHAPTER LXXV.

AN EXPLOSION OF SIBYLLA'S.

Sibylla Verner sat at the window of her sitting-room in the twilight--a cold evening in early winter. Sibylla was in an explosive temper. It was nothing unusual for her to be in an explosive temper now; but she was in a worse than customary this evening. Sibylla felt the difference between Verner's Pride and Deerham Court. She lived but in excitement; she cared but for gaiety. In removing to Deerham Court she had gone readily, believing that she should there find a large portion of the gaiety she had been accustomed to at Verner's Pride; that she should, at any rate, be living with the appliances of wealth about her, and should go out a great deal with Lady Verner. She had not bargained for Lady Verner's establishment being reduced to simplicity and quietness, for her laying down her carriage and discharging her men-servants and selling her horses, and living again the life of a retired gentlewoman. Yet all these changes had come to pass, and Sibylla's inward spirit turned restive. She had everything that any reasonable mind could possibly desire, every comfort; but quiet comfort and Sibylla's taste did not accord. Her husband was out a great deal at Verner's Pride and on the estate. As he had resolved to do over John Massingbird's dinner-table, so he was doing--putting his shoulder to the wheel. He had never looked after things as he was looking now. To be the master of Verner's Pride was one thing, to be the hired manager of Verner's Pride was another; and Lionel found every hour of his time occupied. His was no eye-service; his conscience was engaged in his work and he did it efficiently.

Sibylla still sat at the window, looking out into the twilight. Decima stood near the fire in a thoughtful mood. Lucy was downstairs in the drawing-room at the piano. They could hear the faint echo of her soft playing as they sat there in silence. Sibylla was in no humour to talk: she had repulsed Decima rudely--or it may rather be said fractiously--when the latter had ventured on conversation. Lady Verner had gone out to dinner. The Countess of Elmsley had been there that day, and she had asked Lady Verner to go over in the evening and take a friendly dinner with her. "Bring any of them that you like with you,"

had been her careless words in parting. But Lady Verner had not chosen to take "any of them." She had dressed and driven off in the hired fly alone; and this it was that was exciting the anger of Sibylla. She thought Lady Verner might have taken her.

Lucy came in and knelt down on the rug before the fire, half shivering.

"I am so cold!" she said. "Do you know what I did, Decima? I let the fire go out. Some time after Lady Verner went up to dress, I turned round and found the fire was out. My hands are quite numbed."

"You have gone on playing there without a fire!" cried Decima.

"I shall be warm again directly," said Lucy cheerily. "As I passed through the hall, the reflection of the blaze came out of the dining-room. We shall get warm there. Is your head still aching, Mrs.

Verner?"

"It is always aching," snapped Sibylla.

Lucy, kind and gentle in spirit, unretorting, ever considerate for the misfortunes which had come upon Mrs. Verner, went to her side. "Shall I get you a little of your aromatic vinegar?" she asked.

"You need not trouble to get anything for me," was the ungracious answer.

Lucy, thus repulsed, stood in silence at the window. The window on this side of the house overlooked the road which led to Sir Rufus Hautley's.