I write to beg a favour of you, and you are decidedly the one woman alive I could ask it of. There is no question of me in the matter, I assure you; I know how little you owe to a foolish old aunt, and would on no account tax your forbearance so far as to assume the very least air of dictation. You will hardly remember what good friends we used to be when you were a very small member of society indeed. If I ever tried then to coax you into making it up with your brother after some baby dispute, I recollect I always broke down in a lamentable way. The one chance at that time was to put the thing before you on rational grounds. I am trying to act on that experience now.

If you had taken my advice you would have arranged either to stay up at Oxford during the vacation, or at least to be back by the beginning of next term. Of course, we should like of all things to have you here as long as you chose to stay, and it would be nicer for you, I should think, than going back to fog and splashed snow in London; but our half engagement to Lidcombe upsets everything. Ernest is perfectly restless just now; between his dislike of moving and his wish to see the old Lidcombe museum again, he does nothing but papillonner about the house in a beetle-headed way, instead of sticking to his cobwebs, as a domestic spider should. Are you also bent upon Lidcombe? For, if you go, we go. Make up your mind to that. If you don’t, I can easily persuade Ernest that his museum has fallen to dust and tatters under the existing dynasty, which, indeed, is not so unlikely to be true. Amicia writes very engagingly to me, just the sort of letter one would have expected, limp, amiable, rather a smirking style; flaccid condescension; evidently feels herself agreeable and gracious. I am rather curious to see how things get on there. You seem to have impressed people somehow with an idea that during your last visit the household harmony suffered some blow or other which it has not got over yet. Is there any truth in the notion? But of course, if there were, I should have known of it before now, if I were ever to know it at all.

You are nervous about your husband’s part in the business; cela se voit; but I hardly see why you are to come crying to an old woman like me about the matter. Tears on paper are merely blots, please remember; you cannot write them out gracefully. Try to compress your style a little; be as sententious as you can—terse complaints are really effective. I never cried over a letter but once, and then it was over one of my husband’s! Poor good Sir Thomas was naturally given to the curt hard style, and yet one could see he was almost out of his mind with distress. I suppose you know we lived apart in a quiet way for the last ten years of his life. It was odd he should take it to heart in the way he did; for I know he was quite seriously in love with a most horrid little French actress that had been (I believe she was Irish myself, but she called herself Mlle des Grèves—such a name! I’m almost certain her real one was Ellen Greaves—a dreadful wretch of a woman, with a complexion like bad fruit, absolutely a greenish brown when you saw her in some lights); and the poor man used to whimper about Hélène to his friends in a perfectly abject way. Captain H. told me so; he was of my friends at that epoch; he was courting your mother, and in consequence hers also. Indeed, I believe he was in love with me at the time, though I am ten years older; however, I imagine it looks the other way now. When I saw him last he was greyer than Ernest Radworth. That wife of his (E. R.’s, I mean) is enough to turn any man’s hair grey; I assure you, my dear child, she makes my three hairs stand on end. Her style is something too awful, like the most detestable sort of young man. She will be the ruin of poor dear Redgie if we don’t pick him up somehow and keep him out of her way. He was quite the nicest boy I ever knew, and used to make me laugh by the hour; there was a splendid natural silliness in him, and quantities of verve and fun—what Mrs. Radworth, I suppose, calls pluck or go. Still, when one thinks she is breaking Ernest’s heart and bringing Captain Harewood’s first grey hairs to the grave with vexation, I declare I could forgive her a good deal if she were only a lady. But she isn’t in the least, and I am ashamed to remember she is my niece; her manners are exactly what Mlle Greaves’s must have been, allowing for the difference of times. I am quite certain she will be the death of poor Redgie. He was always the most unfortunate boy on this earth; I dare say you remember how he was brought up—always worried and punished and sermonized, ever since he was a perfect baby; enough to drive any boy mad, and get him into an infinity of the most awful scrapes when he grew up : but I did think he might have kept out of this one. Clara Radworth must be at least six years older than he is. I believe she has taken to painting already. If there was only a little bit of scandal in the matter! but that is past praying for. It is a regular quiet amicable innocent alliance; the very worst thing for such a boy in the world.

I am off to Lidcombe in a fortnight’s time, and shall certainly not return to Oxford (if I do at all) till the summer term. I really wonder you should think it worth while to dwell for a second on what Lady Midhurst may choose to say : for I cannot suppose you have any other grounds to go on than this letter of hers; and certainly I do not intend to alter my plans in the least on account of her absurdities. You must remember what our father used to say about her ” impotent incontinence of tongue.” I should be ashamed to let a vicious, virulent old aunt influence me in any way. I am fond of our cousins, and enjoy being with them; it is a nice house to stay at, and, as long as we all enjoy being there together, I cannot see why we should listen to any spiteful and senseless commentaries. To meet you there will of course make it all the pleasanter; I need not fear that you will take the overseer line with me, whatever our aunt’s wisdom may suggest. As to Amicia, I think she is very delightful to be with, and fond of us all in a friendly amiable way; and I know she is very beautiful and agreeable to look at or talk to, which never spoils anything; but as to falling in love, you must have the sense to know that nobody over eighteen, or out of a bad French novel, would run his head into such a mess : to say nothing of the absurdity or the villainy of such a thing. It all comes of the ridiculous and infamous sort of reading which I have no doubt the dear aunt privately indulges in. I do hope you will never quote her authority to me again, even in chaff. I never can believe that she really had the bringing up of Amicia in her own hands; it is wonderful how little of the Midhurst mark has been left on her. I suppose her father was a nicer sort of fellow to begin with; for as to our cousin Mrs. Stanford, one can hardly suppose that she bequeathed Amy an antidote to her own blood. I am sure her son has enough of the original stamp on him: I do not wonder at Lady M.’s liking for him, considering. You decidedly need not be in the least afraid of any excessive intimacy between us. Redgie Harewood has been some weeks in town it seems, and I have met him two or three times. I agree with you that he is just what he used to be, only on a growing scale. At school I remember he used simply to flâner nine days out of ten, and on the tenth either get into some serious row, or turn up with a decent set of verses for once in a way. I dare say he will be rather an available sort of inmate at Lidcombe : you will have to put up with him at all events if you go, for I believe he is there already. Really, if you can get on with him at first, I think you will find there are worse fellows going. It appears, for one thing, that his admiration of you is immense. He does me the honour to seek me out, rather with a view I suppose of getting me to talk about you. That meeting here in London, after his final flight from Oxford mists in the autumn term, seems to have done for him just now. So, if you ever begin upon the subject of Amicia to me, I shall retort upon you with that desirable brother of hers. I should like to see old Harewood’s face if his son were ever to treat him to such a rhapsody as was inflicted upon me the last time Reginald was in my rooms here.

You know, I hope, that we expect your sister and Mr. Radworth in the course of the week? I have had the kindest letter from her, and it will be a real pleasure to see something more of them at last. I have always liked your brother-in-law very much; I never could understand your objection to scientific men. They seem to me the most quiet, innocuous, good sort of people one could wish to see. I quite understand Clara’s preferring one to a political or poetical kind of man. You and Reginald are oppressive with your violent theories and enthusiasms, but a nice peaceable spirit of research never puts out anybody. I remember thinking Mr. Radworth’s excitement and delight about his last subject of study quite touching; I am sure I should enter into his pursuits most ardently if I were his wife. It is strange to me to remember I have not seen either of them since they called last at Ashton Hildred, a few months before my marriage. I suspect your sister has a certain amount of contempt for my age and understanding; all I hope is that I shall not disgrace myself in the eyes of such a clever person as she is. Clara is one of the people I have always been a little in awe of; and I quite believe, if the truth were known, you are rather of the same way of feeling yourself. However, I look to you to help me, and I dare say she will be lenient on the whole. Her letter was very gracious.

Oh, if you were but five or six years younger (you know you were at school six years ago, my dear boy)! what a letter I would write your tutor! Upon my word I should like of all things to get you a good sound flogging. It is the only way to manage you, I am persuaded. I wish to Heaven I had the handling of you: when I think how sorry we all were for you when you were a boy and your father used to flog you! You wrote me the comicallest letters in those days; I have got some still. If I had only known how richly you deserved it! Captain Harewood always let you off too easily, I have not an atom of doubt. How any one can be such a mere schoolboy at your age I cannot possibly conceive. People have no business to treat you like a man. You are nothing but a great dull dunce of a fifth-form boy (lower fifth, if you please), and ought to be treated like one. You don’t look at things in a grown-up way.

Did you see last year in the Exhibition a portrait by Fairfax of my cousin Mrs. Radworth? You know of course I am perfectly well aware the man is an exquisite painter, with no end of genius and great qualities in his work; but I declare he made a mull of that picture. It was what fellows call a fiasco—complete. Imagine sticking her into a little crib of a room with a window and some flowers and things behind her, and all that splendid hair of hers done up in some beastly way. And then people say the geraniums and the wainscot were stunning pieces of colour, or some such rot; when the fellow ought to have painted her out of doors, or on horseback, or something. I wish I could sit a horse half as well; she is the most graceful and the pluckiest rider you ever saw. I rode with her yesterday to Hadleigh, down by the sea, and we had a gallop over the sands; three miles good, and all hard sand; the finest ground possible; when I was staying here as a boy I used to go out with the grooms before breakfast, and exercise the horses there instead of taking them up to the downs. She had been out of spirits in the morning, and wanted the excitement to set her up. I never saw her look so magnificent; her hair was blown down and fell in heavy uncurling heaps to her waist; her face looked out of the frame of it, hot and bright, with the eyes lighted, expanding under the lift of those royal wide eyelids of hers. I could hardly speak to her for pleasure, I confess; don’t show my avowals. I rode between her and the sea, a thought behind; a gust of wind blowing off land drove a wave of her hair across my face, upon my lips; she felt it somehow, I suppose, for she turned and laughed. When we came to ride back, and had to go slower (that Nourmahal of hers is not my notion of what her horse should be—I wish one could get her a real good one), she changed somehow, and began to talk seriously at last; I knew she was not really over happy. Fancy that incredible fool Ernest Radworth never letting her see any one when they are at home, except some of his scientific acquaintances—not a lady in the whole countryside for her to speak to. You should have heard her account of the entertainments in that awful house of theirs, about as much life as there used to be at my father’s. Don’t I remember the holiday dinners there!—a parson, a stray military man of the stodgier kind, my tutor, and the pater; I kept after dinner to be chaffed, or lectured, or examined—a jolly time that was. Well, I imagine her life is about as pleasant; or worse, for she can hardly get out to go about at all. People come there with cases of objects, curiosities, stones and bones and books, and lumber the whole place. She had to receive three scientific professors last month; two of them noted osteologists, she said, and one a comparative ichthyologist, or something—a man with pink eyes and a mouth all on one side, who was always blinking and talking—a friend of my great-uncle’s, it seems, who presented him years ago to that insane ass Radworth. Think of the pair of them, and of Clara obliged to sit and be civil! She became quite sad towards the end of our ride; said how nice it had been here, and that sort of thing, till I was three-quarters mad. She goes in three or four days. I should like to follow her everywhere, and be her footman or her groom, and see her constantly. I would clean knives and black boots for her. If I had no fellow to speak or write to, I can’t think how I should stand things at all.

You don’t suppose I want you to quarrel with me, my dear Clara? It is folly to tax me with trying (as you say) to brouiller you with the Stanfords or with Redgie Harewood. As to the latter, you know we are on good enough terms together; I never was hand and glove with him that I recollect. Do as you like about Portsmouth. I will join you if I can after some time.

So you have made a clear house of them all, my dear child, and expect my applause in consequence? Well, I am not sure you could have done much better. And Cheyne is perfect towards you, is he? That is gratifying for me (who made the match) to hear of, but I never doubted him. As for the two boys, I should like to have them in hand for ten minutes; they seem to have gone on too infamously. I retire from the field for my part; I give up Redgie; he must and will be eaten up alive, and I respect the woman’s persistence. Bon appétit! I bow to her, and retire. She has splendid teeth. I suppose she will let him go some day? She can hardly think of marrying him when Ernest Radworth is killed off. If I thought she did, I would write straight to Captain Harewood. Do you think the Radworth has two years’ vitality left him?

Well, I have been to London and back, my dear child, with an eye to the family complications, and have come to some understanding of them. When I wrote to you last month I was out of spirits, and no doubt very stupid and obscure. I had a dim impression of things being wrong, and no means of guessing how to get them right. Now, I must say I see no real chance of anything unfortunate or unpleasant. You must be cautious, though, of letting people begin to talk of it again. I have a project for getting both the boys well out of the way on some good long summer tour. Frank is very nice and sensible; I would undertake to manage him for life by the mere use of reasoning. As to Reginald, c’est une tête fêlée; it may get soldered up in ten years’ time, but wants beating about first; I should like to break it myself. Actually, I had to encourage his verse-making—pat that rampant young Muse of his on the back—and stroke him down with talk of publication till he purred under my fingers. It is a mercy there is that escape-valve of verse. I think between that and his sudden engouement for foreign politics and liberation campaigns, and all that sort of thing, he may be kept out of the worst sort of mess: though I know one never can count upon that kind of boy. I should quite like to enrol him in real earnest in some absurd legion of volunteers, and set him at the Quadrilateral with some scores of horrid disreputable picciotti to back him. I dare say he would fight decently enough if he were taken into training. Imagine the poor child in a red rag of a shirt, and shoeless, marching au pas over the fallen dynasties to the tune of a new and noisier Marseillaise! It would serve him right to get rubbed against the sharp edges of his theory; and if he were killed we should have a mad martyr in the family, and when the red republic comes in we might appeal to the Committees of Public Safety to spare us for the sake of his memory. His father would die of it, for one thing; I do think Redgie is fated to make him crever with rage and shame and horror; so you see I shall always have a weak side in the boy’s favour. But if you knew how absurd all this recandescence of revolution in the young people of the day seems to me! My dear Amy, I have known men who had been dipped in the old revolution— J’ai connu des vivants à qui Danton parlait. You remember that great verse of Hugo’s; I showed it to Reginald the last time he was declaiming to me on Italy, and confuted him out of the master’s mouth. It is true of me, really; both my own father and my dear old friend, Mr. Chetwood, had been in Paris at dangerous times. They had seen the great people of the period, and the strange sights of it.

You promised me a letter twice; none has come yet. I want the sight of your handwriting more than you know. Sometimes I lie all night thinking where you are, and sometimes I dare not lie down for the horror of the fancy. If I could but entreat and pray you to come away—knowing what I do. Even if I dared hope the worst of all was what it cannot be—a hideous false fear of mine—I could hardly bear it. As it is I am certain of one thing only in the world, that this year cannot leave us where the last did. If I must be away from you, and if you must remain with him, I cannot pretend to live in the way of other men. It is too monstrous and shameful to see things as they are and let them go on. Old men may play with such things if they dare. We cannot live and lie. You are brave enough for any act of noble justice. You told me once I knew you to the heart, and ought to give up dreaming and hoping—but I might be sure, you said, of what I had. I do know you perfectly, as I love you: but I hope all the more. If hope meant anything ignoble, could I let it touch on you for a moment? I look to you to be as great as it is your nature to be. It is not for myself—I am ashamed to write even the denial—that I summon you to break off this hideous sort of compromise you are living in. What you are doing insults God, and maddens men who see it. Think what it is to endure and to act as you do! I ask you what right you have to let him play at husband with you? You know he has no right; why should you have? Would you let him try force to detain you if your mind were made up? You are doing as great a wrong as that would be, if you stay of your own accord. Who could blame you if you went? Who can help blaming you now? I say you cannot live with him always. If I thought you could, could I think you incapable of baseness? and you know, I am certain you do in your inmost heart know, that you have shown me by clear proof how infinitely you are the noblest of all women. Do all prefer a brave and blameless sorrow, with the veil close over it, to a shameful sneaking happiness under the mask? There was a time when I thought I could have worn it if I had picked it up at your feet. The recollection makes me half mad with shame. To have conceived of a possible falsehood in your face is degradation enough for me. Now that you have set me right (and I would give my life to show you how much more I have loved you ever since) I come to ask you to be quite brave. Only that. I implore you now to go without disguise at all. You cannot speak falsely, I know; but to be silent is of itself a sort of pretence. Speak, for Heaven’s sake, that all who ever hear of you may adore you as I shall. Think of the divine appeal against wrong and all falsehood that you will be making!—a protest that the very meanest must be moved and transformed by. It is so easy to do, and so noble. Say why you go, and then go at once. Put it before your brother. Go straight to him when you leave the hateful house you are in. He is very young, I know, but he must see the greatness of what you do. Perhaps one never sees how grand such things are—never appreciates the reality of their greatness—better than one does at his age. I think boys see right and wrong as keenly as men do; he will exult that you are compelled to turn to him and choose him to serve you. As for me, I must be glad enough if you let me think I have taken any part in bringing about that which will make all men look upon you as I do—with a perfect devotion of reverence and love. I believe you will let me see you sometimes. I would devote my whole life to Radworth—give up all I have in the world to him. Even him I suppose nothing could comfort for the loss of you; but if it ought to be? At least we would find something to do. I entreat you to read this, and answer me. There can be but one answer. I wish to God I knew what to do that you would like done, or how to say what I do know—that I love you as no woman ever has been loved by any man. What to call you or how to sign this, I cannot think. I am afraid to write more.

One word at starting. I must not have you think I feel obliged to answer you at all. I do write, as you see; but not because I am afraid of you. And I am not going to pretend you put me out. You shall not see me crane at the gaps. Your fences are pretty full of them. Seriously, what can you mean? What you want, I know. But how can you hope I am to listen to such talk? Run away from nothing? I see no sort of reason for changing. You take things one says in the oddest way. I no more mean to leave home because Ernest and I might have more in common, than I should have thought of marrying a man for his beaux yeux or for a title. I hate hypocrisy. You are quite wrong about me. Because I am simple and frank, because I like (for a change) things and people with some movement in them, you take me for a sort of tied-up tigress, a woman of the Sand breed, a prophetess with some dreadful mission of revolt in her, a trunk packed to the lid with combustibles, and labelled with the proof-mark of a new morality : not at all. I am neither oppressed nor passionate. I don’t want delivering in the least. One would think I was in the way of being food for a dragon. Even if I were, how could you get me off? We are born to what we bear; I read that and liked it, a day since, in de Blamont’s last book. I mean to bear things. We all make good pack-horses in time : I shall see you at the work yet. Suppose I have to drudge and drag. Suppose I am fast to the rock with a beast coming up “out of the sad unmerciful sea.” Better women live so, and so they die. Can you kill my beast for me? I suspect not. It is not cruel. It means me no great harm : but you it will be the ruin of. It feeds on the knight rather than his lady. Do you pass by. Be my friend in a quiet way, and always. I shall be gratefuller for a kind thought of yours than for a sheer blow. The first you can afford; the last hardly. All goodwill and kindly feeling does give comfort and a pleasure to natural people who are not of a bad make to begin with. I am glad of any, for my part : and take it when I can. What more could you do for me? what better could I want? Can you change me my life from the opening of it? It began before yours was thought of; you know I am older; have been told how much, no doubt; something perhaps a thought over the truth—what matter?

You are, without exception, the best fun I know. I have been laughing for the last two hours over your letter and its enclosure. You are not to fly out at me, mind; I regard you with all just esteem, I think all manner of good things of you, but you are fun, you will allow. Old friends may remark on such points of character, and yet draw no blood.

Do not write, and do not persist in trying to speak to me again. If you care for any of us, you will not stay here. I can do nothing. When my husband speaks to me, it turns me hot and sick with fear. I am ashamed of every breath I draw. If you cannot have mercy, do, for God’s sake, think of your own honour. If you stay here, you may as well show this letter at once. I wish Cheyne would kill me. But, even if he saw what I am thinking of when I look at him, I believe he would not. He is so fearfully good to me. Oh, if I were to die, I should never forget that! I don’t know that it matters much what I do. I have broken my faith to him in thought, and, if justice were done, I ought to be put away from him. I look at my hand while I write, and think it ought to be cut off—my ring burns. I cannot think how things can be as dreadful as they are. I suppose, if I can live through this, I shall live to see them become worse. If I could but see what to do, I should be content with any wretchedness. I never meant to be a bad wife. When I woke this morning, I felt mad. People would say there was nothing to repent of; but I know. It is worse not to love him than it would be to leave him. What have you done to me? for I never lied and cheated till now. After such horrible falsehood and treason I don’t see what crime is to stop me. If I had known that another woman was like me at heart I could not have borne to let her look at me. I feel as if I must go away and hide myself. If only something would give me an excuse for going home! At least, if I must stay with my husband, I implore you to leave me. Tell your sister you must go. Say you are tired. Or go to London to-morrow with Cheyne, and don’t return. You can so easily excuse yourself from the sailing party. He stays in town one night, and comes down in time for it the day after. You can make a pretext for remaining. If you have any pity, you will. I have nothing to help me in the world. It would kill me to appeal to Reginald. No one could understand. I am sure, if you knew how I do want and trust to be kept right, and what a fearful life I have of it with this sense of a secret wearing me out, you would be sorry for me. And if you love me so much, knowing what you know now, you ought to be sorry. It is too late for me to get happy again, but I may come not to feel such unbearable shame as I do now, and shall while you stay. Promise you will not try to see me. I wonder if God will be satisfied, supposing you never do see me again? I shall have tried to be good. I think He ought to have pity on me, too. But, if I live to grow old, I shall want to see you then.

You will have heard, my dear aunt, of our wretched loss, and the fearful bereavement of poor Amicia. I wish I could give a reassuring account of her, but she appears to be quite broken; it is miserable to see her. She sits for whole hours in her own room; I did hope at first it was to seek the consolation of prayer, but that comfort, I fear greatly, she is not yet capable of feeling. She looks quite like death. I suggested she should go into the room where he is lying, and take her last look of him, but she turned absolutely whiter than she was, shuddered, and seemed quite sick. My brother is hardly less overcome. On a servant addressing him yesterday by his title, he actually sank into a chair, and gave way in a manner which I could not but regret. I am certain he would sacrifice worlds to restore his cousin to life. Mr. Harewood has been throughout most kind. He has done all that the best friend of our poor child could do. Amicia will hardly see anyone but him. Mr. Radworth offered to relieve him of some part of the wretched trouble and business he has undertaken to spare dear Amicia (Francis, I must tell you, seems incapable of moving); but he refuses to share it. I cannot express to you the admiration we all feel for his beautiful management of her, poor child. Who could remember at such a time the former folly which he must himself have forgotten? I am constantly reminded that you alone always did him justice.

I would not let your mother go, or she would have been with you before this. It must have done her harm. She is not well enough even to write; we have had to take her in hand. It is a bad time for us all; we must live it down as we best may. I thought of advising your father to be with you before the funeral, but she would hardly like him to leave her. I shall start myself to-morrow, and take you home with me. You had better not go to Lidcombe. With us you will at least have thorough quiet, and time to recover by degrees. Now no doubt you are past being talked to. I only hope those people do their best for you. It is well now that nothing ever came between poor Cheyne and you. I suppose you have had as quiet and unbroken a time since your marriage as any one ever does get. The change is sharp; all changes are that turn upon a death. I know, too, that he loved you very truly, and was always good, just, and tender to all he knew; a man to be seriously and widely regretted. It may be that you are just now inclining to believe you will never get over the pain of such a loss. Now, in my life, I have lost many people and many things I would have given much to keep. I have repented and lamented much that I have done, and more that has happened to me—sometimes through my own fault. But one thing I do know, and would have you lay to heart—that nobody living need retain in his dictionary the word irretrievable. Strike it out, I advise you; I erased it from mine long ago. Self-reproach and the analysis of regret are most idle things. Abstain at least from confidences and complaints. Bear what you have to bear steadily, with locked teeth as it were. This minute may be even graver than you think. I know how expansion follows on the thaw of sudden sorrow. I am always ready to hear and help you to the best of my poor old powers; but, even to me, I would not have you overflow too much. I write in all kindness and love to you, my poor child, and I know my sort of counselling is harsh, heathen, mundane—I can hardly help your way of looking at it. No one is sorrier than I am; no one would give more to recall irrevocable things. But once again I assure you what cannot be recalled may be retrieved. Only the retrieving must come from you: show honour and regard to Cheyne’s memory by controlling and respecting yourself to begin with. If you have some floating desire to make atonement of any kind, atone in that way. But if you have any such feeling, there is a morbid nerve; you should labour to deaden it— by no means to stimulate.

I would not have you write to Amicia about those minor arrangements you speak of. Matters had better be settled with me, or by means of your sister. We know you will do all you can in the best possible way; and she is not yet well enough to bear worry. I fear, indeed, that she has more to bear physically than we had thought of. She keeps getting daily more white and wretched, and we hardly know how to handle her. When she arrived, she had a sort of nervous look of strength, which begins now to fail her completely; spoke little, except to me, but fed and slept like a rationally afflicted person. Now I see her get purplish about the eyes, and her cheeks going in perceptibly. It will take years to set her straight if this is to go on. She is past all medicine of mine. I dare say she will begin to develope a spiritual tendency—she reads the unwholesomest books. The truth is, she is far too young to be a widow. That grey and cynical condition of life sits well only upon shoulders of thirty or forty. She is between shadow and sun, in the dampest place there is. Mist and dew begin to tell upon her brain : there is the stuff of a conversion in her just now. I tell you this because you have known her so well, and were such good friends with her that you will be able to take my meaning. I am sure you do want to hear, and sincerely wish all things right with her again. I hope they may be in time—we must take them as they are now. Meantime, it is piteous enough to see her. She comes daily to sit with me for hours, and has a way of looking up and sighing between whiles which is grievous to me. Again, at times, I seem to have glimpses of some avowal or appeal risen almost to her lips, and as suddenly resigned. Her words have tears in them somehow, even when she talks peaceably. I had no suspicion of so deep or keen a regard on her part. Our poor Edmund can hardly have given her as much, one would say. But who knows what he had in him? He was strange always, with his gentle cold manner, and had rare qualities. “I forget things,” she said one day on a sudden to me—I never know what she does think of. Another time, “I wish one could see backwards.”

I do not see how I can possibly stay here. If you had not gone so soon we might have got on; now it is unbearable. There is a network of lawyers’ and over-lookers’ business to be got through still. I go about the place like a thief, and people throw the title in my face like a buffet at every turn. And I keep thinking of Amicia; her rooms have the sound of her in them. I went down to the lake at sunset and took a pull by myself. The noise of the water running off and drawing under was like some one that sobs and chokes. I went home out of all temper with things. And there was a letter waiting from Aunt Midhurst that would have made one half mad at the best of times. She is right to strike if she pleases; but her sort of talk hits hard. I felt hot and sick with the sense of meanness when I had done. These things are the worst one has to bear. She tells me what to do; gives news of Amicia that would kill one to think of, if thought did kill; mixes allusions in a way that she only could have the heart to do. I believe she knows or thinks the worst, and always has. And there is nothing one can say in reply to her. It is horrid to lie at her mercy as we do. Their life in that house must be intolerable. I can see Amy sitting silent under her eyes and talk; sick and silent, without crying, like a woman held fast and forced to look on while some one else was under torture. I know so well by myself how she must take the suffering; with a blind, bruised soul, and a sort of painful wonder and pity; divided from herself; beaten and broken down and tired out. If she were to go mad I should know why. And I cannot come near her, and you know how I love her. I would kill myself to save her pain, and I know she is in pain hourly, and I sit here where she used to be. If I had never been born at all she would have been happy enough with her husband alive. I tell you, God knows how good she was to him. If only one of their people here would insult me, I should be thankful. But the place seems to accept me, and they tolerate a new face; I did think some one would show vexation or sorrow—do or say something by way of showing they remembered. I was Quixotic, I suppose, for all the old things made way for me. Except the one day when Redgie Harewood came over with his father; he did seem to think I had no business here, and I never liked him so well. You recollect how angry it made you. People ought to remember. I was glad he would not stay in the house. That was the only time any one has treated me as I want to be treated. I shall come and stay with you if you will have me. I cannot go about yet, and I hate every comer of this house. When I ride I do literally feel now and then tempted to try and get thrown. Last winter we were all here together, and she used to sing at this time in this room. The voice and the sound of her dress come and go in my hearing. I see her face and all her hair glitter and vibrate as she keeps singing. Her hands and her throat go up and down, and her eyes turn and shine. Then she leaves off playing and comes to me, and I cannot see her near enough; but I feel her hands touch me, and hear her crying. I can do nothing but dream in this way. I want my life and my love back. I am wretched enough now, and she must be unhappier than I am; she is so much better. Her beautiful tender nature must be a pain to her every day. I suppose she is sorry for me. I would die to-day if I could make her forget. My dear sister, you must let me write to you as I can, and not mind what I say. I could not well write to a man now; and I never was friends enough with any one to open out as I can to you. I must get strength and sense in time, or make an end somehow. I wish to God I could give all this away and be rid of things at once.

I was over at Lidcombe again last week. Frank was to leave to-day for his sister’s: the Radworths have asked him for some time. I am also pressed to go, but I hardly like being with him. Unfair, I suppose, but reasonable when one thinks of it. He is a good deal pulled down, and makes very little of his succession : asks after you always, and seems rather to cling to company. All the legal work is over; and I hope you will not be bothered with any more letters. If you care to hear, I may tell you there is some chance of my getting to work after all. They want to diplomatize me : I am to have some secretaryship or other under Lord Fotherington. If anything comes of it I shall leave England next month. I shall have Arthur Lunsford for a colleague, and one or two other fellows I know about me. A. L. was a great swell in our schooldays, and used to ride over the heads of us lower boys with spurs on. I wonder if Frank remembers what a tremendous licking he got once for doing Lunsford’s verses for him without a false quantity, so that when they were shown up he was caught out and came to awful grief. I don’t know if I ever believed in anything as I did once in the get-up of that fellow. To have him over one again will be very comic; he never could get on without fags. Do you think the service admits of his licking them? I suspect he might thrash me still if he tried: you know what a splendid big fellow he is. Audley says he is attaché to Lady F., not to the embassy; and makes his way by dint of his songs and his shoulders. People adore a huge musical man. Muscles and music matched will help one to bestride the world. Aimè! I wish I could buy either of them, cheap.

I wish my news were of a better sort; but I can only say, in answer to your nice kind letter, that Amicia is in a very bad way indeed. At least, I think so; she has not held up her head for weeks, and her face seems to me changing, as some unusually absurd poet of your generation has observed, “from the lily-leaf to the lily-stem.” Stalk he might at least have said, but he wanted a sort of villainous rhyme to ” flame.” A letter from Reginald the other day put some light and colour into her for a minute, but seemed to leave her worse than ever when the warmth was taken off. Next day she could not come down: I, with some conventional brutality, forced a way into her room and found her just asleep, her face crushed into the wet pillow, with the fever of tears on the one cheek uppermost—leaden and bluish with crying and watching. I tell her that to weep herself green is no widow’s duty, and no sign of ripeness; but she keeps wearing down; is not visibly thinner yet, but must be soon. Her eyelids will get limp and her eyelashes ragged at this rate; she speaks with a sort of hard low choke in the notes of her voice which is perfectly ruinous. Very few things seem to excite her for a second; she can hardly read at all: sits with her chin down and eyes half drawn over like a sleepy sick child. I should not wonder to see her hair beginning to go: she actually looks sharp : one might expect her brows and chin to become obtrusive in six months’ time. Even the rumour we hear (not at first hand you know) about a Rochelaurier revival did not seem to rouse or amuse her. If there is anything in the chatter, one can only be glad of such an improvement in the second generation; for I cannot well conceive Frank’s marrying, or your approving, a new edition of Mademoiselle Armande de Castigny. Fabien de Rochelaurier was the most victimized, unhappiest specimen of a husband I ever saw: a Prudhomme-Coquardeau of good company, if you can take—and will tolerate—the Gavarni metaphor. The life she led him is unknown; half her exploits, I believe devoutly, never reached the light—many I suspect never would bear the air. You must know what people say of that young M. de Saverny, who goes about with them—the man you used to get on so well with two years ago? He never turned up during Madame de Saverny’s life anywhere—and months after the poor wretched lady’s death his father produces this child of four, and takes him about as his orphaned heir, and presents him—notamment to the Rochelauriers, who make an infinite ado about the child ever after. Why, at one time he wanted to marry the girl himself—had played with her in childhood—plighted troth among budding roses—chased butterflies together—Paul et Virginie, nothing less. This was a year ago, just after he went back to France, she being barely out of her convent. Do you want to know why, and how, it was broken off? Look in the table of affinities.

You will at once begin preparing for your work, unless you wish to throw this chance too over, and incur my still more serious displeasure. That is all the answer I shall make you. You must be very well aware that for years back you have disgracefully disappointed me in every hope and every plan I have formed with regard to you. Of your school and college career I shall have a few words to say presently. It is against my expressed wish and expectation that you are now in London instead of being here under my eye : and even after all past experience of your utter disregard of discipline and duty, I cannot but feel surprise at your present proposal. If you do visit the Radworths before returning home, you will do so in direct defiance of my desire. That course, understand, is distinctly forbidden you. After our last interview on the subject I can only consider the very suggestion as an act of an insolent and rebellious nature. I know the construction to which your conduct towards your cousin has not unnaturally exposed you; and you know that I know it. Upon her and upon yourself your inexcusable and puerile behaviour has already drawn down remark and reproach. I am resolved, and I intend that you shall remember I am, to put an end to this. I have come upon a letter from your grandmother, dated some time back—I think before the miserable catastrophe in which you were mixed up at Portsmouth—bearing immediately in every line upon this affair : and I have read it with attention. Secrets of that kind you have no right to have or to keep; and I have every right and reason to investigate them. Another time, if you intend to pursue a furtive line of action, you will do well to make it a more cautious one : the letter I speak of was left actually under my hand, not so much as put away among other papers. Upon the style of Lady Midhurst’s address to you I shall not here remark; but you must expect, I should think, to hear that my view of such things is far enough from being the same as hers. Rightly or wrongly, I consider the sort of relationship she appears to contemplate in that letter as at once criminal and contemptible: and I cannot pretend to observe it with indifference or toleration. You seem to me to have written and acted childishly indeed, but not the less sinfully. However, I am not now about to preach to you. The One safeguard against natural evil and antidote to natural unwisdom you have long been encouraged to neglect and overlook. All restrictions placed around you by the care of others and of myself you have even thus early chosen to discard. It is poor comfort to reflect that, as far as I know, you have not as yet fallen into the more open and gross vices which many miserable young fools think it almost laudable to indulge in. This can but be at best the working of a providential accident, not the outcome of any real self-denial or manly self-restraint on your part. Without this I count all fortuitous abstinence from sin worth very little. In a wiser eye than man’s many a seemingly worse character may be purer than yours. From childhood upwards, I must once for all remind you, you have thwarted my wishes and betrayed my trust. Prayer, discipline, confidence, restraint, hourly vigilance, untiring attention, one after another, failed to work upon you. Affectionate enough by nature, and with no visibly vicious tendencies, but unstable, luxurious, passionate, and indolent, you set at naught all guidance, and never in your life would let the simple noble sense of duty take hold of you. At school you were incessantly under punishment; at home you were constantly in disgrace. Pain and degradation could not keep you right; to disgrace the most frequent, to pain the most severe, you opposed a deadly strength of sloth and tacit vigour of rebellion. So your boyhood passed; I have yet in my ear the remark of one of your tutors—” Severity can do little for the boy; indulgence, nothing.” What the upshot of your college career was you must remember only too well, and I still hope not without some regret and shame. Absolute inert idleness and wilful vanity, after a long course of violated discipline in small matters, brought you in time to the dishonourable failure you had been at no pains to avoid.

I have just read your letter. Come by all means next month, and stay as long as you can. Every day spent here by myself is a heavier and more subtle irritation to me than the one before. Reginald will come for a few days, at least; his foreign outlook seems to have fallen back into vapour and remote chance. The Captain was over here lately, looking pinched and hard—a head to make children recoil and wince at the sight of it. He is still of great help to me. As to Madame de Rochelaurier, to be quite open, I had rather not meet her just now; so you will not look for me before the day they leave you. Afterwards I may come over to escort you and Ernest, if it turns out worth while. Anything to get about a little, without going out of reach. News, I suppose, must come from Ashton Hildred before very long. At such a time I have no heart to spare for thinking over plans or people. Your praise of Mademoiselle de Rochelaurier is, of course, all right and just. She is a very jolly sort of girl, and sufficiently handsome; and if Redgie does marry her I shall just stop short of envying him. Does Madame really want me to take such a gift at her hand? Well and good; it is incomparably obliging; but then, when I am looking at Mademoiselle Philomène, and letting myself go to the sound of her voice like a song to the tune, unhappily there gets up between us such an invincible exquisite memory of a face ten times more beautiful and loveable to have in sight of one; pale when I saw it last, as if drawn down by its hair, heavily weighted about the eyes with a presage of tears, sealed with sorrow, and piteous with an infinite unaccomplished desire. The old deep-gold hair and luminous grey-green eyes shot through with colours of seawater in sunlight, and threaded with faint keen lines of fire and light about the pupil, beat for me the blue-black of Mademoiselle de Rochelaurier’s. Then that mouth of hers and the shadow made almost on the chin by the underlip—such sad perfect lips, full of tender power and faith, and her wonderful way of lifting and dropping her face imperceptibly, flower-fashion, when she begins or leaves off speaking; I shall never hear such a voice in the world, either. I cannot, and need not now, pretend to dissemble or soften down what I feel about her. I do love her with all my heart and might. And now that, after happy years, she is fallen miserable and ill, dangerously ill, for aught I know, and incurably miserable—who can say?—it is not possible for me, sitting here in her house that I have had to drive her out of, to think very much of anything else, or to think at all of any other woman in the way of liking. This is mere bare truth, not sentiment or excited fancy by any means, and you will not take it for such a sort of thing. If I can never marry the one woman perfectly pleasant to me and faultlessly fit for me in the whole beautiful nature of her, I will never insult her and my own heart by marrying at all. Aunt Midhurst’s view of the Rochelaurier family has no great weight with me; but I have a little hope now, after reading what she says to you, that, as she is clearly set against the chance of any other marriage for me, she may, perhaps, be some day brought to think of the one desire of my whole life as a possible thing to fulfil. Even to you I dare not well hint at such a hope as that; but you must now understand for good how things are with me; if not that, then nothing. You take her reference to Redgie Harewood to be a feint, and meant spitefully. I think not; she has the passion of intrigue and management still strong; likes nothing so well, evidently, as the sense of power to make and break matches, build schemes and overset them. I should like to see Harewood married, and peace again at Plessey; he is not a bad fellow; and she was always fond of him. I will say he earned that at Portsmouth, but I hate to hear of his being able to write to her now, and then see and think how much there is between us to get over. If I could get at her by any way possible, I could keep her up still—but I can hardly see how he is to help her much. Then, again, if he were to marry, they might see each other; and in no end of ways it would be a good thing for him. His idolatry is becoming a bore, if not worse; you should find him an ideal to draw his worship off you a little. I know so well now how miserable it is to feel on a sudden the thing turn serious, and have to fight it before one has time to see how. If it were fair to tell you all I have had to remember and regret only since this year began, and only because I knew how, after Cheyne’s death, her gentle goodness would make her wretched at the thought of past discontent with him—and Heaven knows she could not but have felt him to be less than she was; and perfect she was to him always. I wish people would blame her to me, and let me fight them. I can’t fight her for blaming herself. I write the awfullest stuff, because I am really past writing at all. If I could fall to work and forget, leave off thinking for good, turn brute, it would be only rational for me. I, who have helped to hurt her, and would have set myself against the world to spare her, what do you conceive she thinks of me? This air that has nothing of her left it chafes me to breathe. I know how sometimes somewhere she remembers and misses things that she had got used to—little chance things that were about her in her husband’s time. A book or two of hers were left; you will see them when you come; I cannot write, and cannot send them without a word. I am more thoroughly afraid of hearing from Lady M. again than I ever was of anything on earth—no child could dread any torture as I do that. It is quite clear, you know, that they expect a confinement—in some months’ time, perhaps. God knows I wish there had been a son! Only they will not say it; so I must stay here and take my trouble. It does not startle me; nothing can well be worse for me or better than it is now. There is no such pleasure to be had out of my name or house that I need want to fight for it or hold to it. I do hope they will make things good to her. You need hardly express anger about the poor aunt. Those two are her children, and she always rather hated us for their sakes. Indeed, as about Reginald, I am not sure she is so far out of the way. You must see that Ernest flinches now and then when he is talked of; and, without any fear of scandal, one may want to avoid the look of it. He is not the sort of fellow to be sure of; not that he is a bad sort. Enfin (as she says), you know what it means—Ernest is not great in the way of company, and Redgie and you are just good friends; the woman is not really fool enough to think evil, though she is rather of the vulturine order as to beak and diet. For the rest, I know how wise and kind you are—it is a shame to lean on you as I do, but you are safe to come to.

I have got leave to write and thank you. Nothing has made me so happy for a long time as to know how kind you have been, and that you are still such good friends with me. It was no want of thankfulness to you that made me leave Portsmouth in that horrid way to get home here. I knew how good you had been, and you are not to make me out too bad. To hear from you, even such a little word, was nicer than to get the things you sent. But I was as glad as I could be to have some of them back. I would never have let any one send for them to Lidcombe, so it was all the kinder of you to do it this way. I hope you will all be well there, and quite happy while you stay. It is nice to think of people about the poor house. They are all bent on making me out ill. I am not ill in the least; only faint now and then, and always very tired. I am terribly tired now all my life through, awake and asleep. I feel as if there was nothing nice to think of in the world, and as if it were easier to begin crying than thinking. It is only because I am foolish naturally and afraid to face things. If people were less good to me I should be just as afraid to feel at all, or at least to say I did. But good as they are now, my own nearest friends here could not have been better to me than I know you were then—writing letters and nursing and saving me all sorts of wretched things. You were as good as Reginald, and I had only you two to help me through, but you did all that could be done, both of you, and I knew you did. When I am most tired and would like to let go of everything else, I try to hold on to my remembrance of that. If I had not been a little worthy to be pitied, I hope now and then you would not have been quite so good.

I am not coming out at all. I can’t now; the whole concern is blown up. I have had a most awful row with my father; you know the sort of way he always does write and talk; and two months ago he gave me the most incredible blowing up—I suppose no fellow ever got such a letter. So I just dropped into him by return of post, and let the whole thing lie over. He chose to pitch into her too, in the most offensive way. Now I’m not going to behave like a sneak to her because she is too good for them. She trusts me in the most beautiful way. I would give up the whole earth for her. Frank would have made an end of that fellow long ago if he had the right sort of pluck. And you see a man can’t let himself be bullied into skulking. It’s all fair chaffing about it if you please, but you don’t in the least know what the real thing is like. Here she is tied down and obliged to let that sort of animal talk to her, and go about with her, and take her by the hand or arm—I tell you I have seen it. It was like seeing a stone thrown at her. And she speaks to him without wincing. I do think the courage of women is something unknown. I should run twenty times a day if I couldn’t fight. He brings her specimens of things. You can’t conceive what a voice and face and manner the fellow has. She lets him talk about his symptoms. He tells me he wishes he could eat what I can. It would be all very well if he had anything great about him. I suppose women can put up with men that have; but a mere ingenious laborious pedant and prig, and a fellow that has hardly human ways, imagine worshipping that! I believe he is a clever sort of half-breed between ape and beaver. But the sort of thing cannot go on. I found her yesterday by herself in the library here, looking out references for him. The man was by way of being ill upstairs. She spoke to me with a sort of sad laugh in her eyes, not smiling; and her brows winced, as they never do for him, whatever he says. She is so gentle and perfect when he is there; and I feel like getting mad. Well, somehow I let her see I knew what an infernal shame it was, and she said wives were meant for the work. Then I began and told her she had no sort of right to take it in that way, and she couldn’t expect any fellow to stand and look on while such things were—and I would as soon have looked on at Haynau any day. I dare say I talked no end of folly, but I was regularly off my head. Unless she throws me over I will never give her up. She never will let her brother know how things are with her. But to see him sit by her ought to be enough for a man with eyes and a heart. I know you were a good deal in love last year, but Miss Charnworth couldn’t have put anybody into such a tender fever of pity as this one puts me; you can’t be sorry for her; and I don’t think you can absolutely worship anything you are not a little sorry for. To have to pity what is such a way above you, no one could stand that. It gives one the wish to be hurt for her. I think I should let him insult me and strike me if she wanted it. Nothing hurts me now but the look of her. She has sweet heavy eyes, like an angel’s in some great strange pain; eyes without fear or fault in them, which look out over coming tears that never come. There is a sort of look about her lips and under the eyelids as if some sorrow had pressed there with his finger, out of love for her beauty, and left the mark. I believe she knew I wanted her to come away. If there were only somewhere to take her to and hide her, and let her live in her own way, out of all their sight and reach, that would do for me. I tell you, she took my hands sadly into hers and never said a word, but looked sideways at the floor, and gave a little beginning kind of sigh twice; and I got mad. I don’t know how I prayed to her to come then. But she turned on me with her face trembling and shining, and eyes that looked wet without crying, and made me stop. Then she took the books and went out, and up to him. Do you imagine I can be off and on, or play tricks with my love, for such a woman as that? Because of my father, perhaps, or Ernest Radworth? She has a throat like pearl-colour, with flower-colour over that; and a smell of blossom and honey in her hair. No one on earth is so infinitely good as she is. Her fingers leave a taste of violets on the lips. She is greater in her mind and spirit than men with great names. Only she never lets her greatness of heart out in words. I don’t think now that her eyes are hazel. She has in her the royal scornful secret of a great silence. Her hair and eyelashes change colour in the sun. I shall never come to know all she thinks of. I believe she is doing good somewhere with her thoughts. She is a great angel, and has charge of souls. She has clear thick eyebrows that grow well down, coming full upon the upper lid, with no gap such as there is above some women’s eyes before you come to the brow. They have an inexplicable beauty of meaning in them, and the shape of the arch of them looks tender. She has charge of me for one. I must have been a beast or a fool if there had not been such a face as that in the world. She has the texture and colour of rose-leaves crushed deep into the palms of her hands. She can forgive and understand and be angry at the right time : things that women never can do. You know Lady Midhurst is set dead against her, and full of the most infernal prejudice. The best of them are cruel and dull about each other. I let out at her (Lady M., that is), one day when we spoke of it, and she stopped me. “She is always very good to you,” she said; which is true enough. “You and your sister are her children, and she always rather hated Frank and me for your sakes. I like her none the worse, for my part. I don’t know that she is so far wrong about you. Once I could have wanted her to like me, but we must put up with people’s deficiencies. It is very unreasonable, of course, but she does not like me in the least, I quite know “: and the way she smiled over this no one could understand without knowing her. “Only there is one thing to be sorry about: that hard pointed way of handling things leaves her with the habit of laughter that shrinks up the heart she has by inches.” Those words stuck to me. “If she believed or felt more than she does, her cleverness and kindness would work so much better. As it is, one can never go to her for warmth or rest; and one cannot live on the sharp points of phrases. She has edges in her eyes, and thorns in her words. That perpetual sardonic patience which sits remarking on right and wrong with cold folded hands and equable observant eyes, half contemptuous in an artistic way of those who choose either—that cruel tolerance and unmerciful compassion for good and bad—that long tacit inspection, as of a dilettante cynic bidden report critically on the creatures in the world, that custom of choosing her point of view where she can see the hard side of things glitter and the hard side of characters refract light in her eyes, till she comes (if one durst say so) to patronize God by dint of despising men—oh, it gets horrid after a time! It takes the heart out of all great work. Her world would stifle the Garibaldis. It is all dust and sand, jewels and iron, dead metal and stone, and dry sunshine: like some fearful rich no-man’s land. I could as soon read the ‘Chartreuse de Parme’ as listen to her talk long; it is Stendhal diluted and transmuted; and I never could read cynicism.” You see how her thoughts get hold of one; I was reminded of her first words, and the whole thing came back on me. She said just that; I know the turn of her eyes and head as she spoke, and how her cheeks and neck quivered here and there. Then she made all excuses, the gentlest wise allowances; you see what a mind and spirit she has. She keeps always splendid and right. She can understand unkindness to herself, you see; never dreaming that nothing can be so unnatural as that; but not a dry ignoble tone of heart and narrow hardness of eye. Not to love greatness and abhor baseness, each for its own sake—that is the sort of thing she finds unforgivable and incomprehensible. She would make all things that are not evil and have not to be gone right at and fought with till they give in brave and just, full of the beauty of goodness and a noble liberty : all men fit men to honour, and all women fit women to adore. That is what she is. Only if I were to write for ever, and find you in heavy reading for centuries, I should never get to express a thing about her. Fancy any one talking about that little Rochelaurier girl. She does, and to me, or did till I made her see it was no use, and I didn’t like it as chaff. Philomène is a good pretty child, and as to heart and mind believes in Pius Iscariot and the vermin run to earth this year at Gaeta. They think my father might put up with that. He used to admire the men of December till they did something to frighten the ruminant British bull at his fodder, and set that sweet animal lowing and thrusting out volunteer bayonets, by way of horns, in brute self-defence. I remember well how he spoke once of the Beauharnais to me, à propos of my reading the Châtiments one vacation. It was before you went down, I think, that we had a motion up about that pickpocket. My father believes in the society that was saved; he holds tight to the salvation-by-damnation theory. “A strong man and born master “—all that style of thing, you know. Liberty means cheese to one’s bread, then honey, then turtle-fat. Libre à vous, MM. les doctrinaires! What infinite idiocy and supreme imbecility to get hanged, burnt, crucified, for one’s cause! You want proof you are a fool?—you are beaten; all’s said. The smoke of the martyr’s pile is the refutation of the martyr—in the nostrils of a pig. And when people have ideas like that, and act on them, how can one expect them to see the simplest things rightly? How should they know a great spirit or noble intellect from a base little one? Souls don’t carry badges for such people to know them by; and whatever does not walk in uniform or livery they cannot take into account. As to me, and I suppose all men who are not spoilt or fallen stolid are much the same, when I see a great goodness I know it—when I meet my betters I want to worship them at once, and I can always tell when any one is born my better. When I fall in with a nature and powers above me, I cannot help going down before it. I do like admiring; service of one’s masters must be good for one, it is so perfectly pleasant. Then, too, one can never go wrong on this tack. I feel my betters in my blood; they send a heat and sting all through one at first sight. And the delight of feeling small and giving in when one does get sight of them is beyond words—it seems to me all the same whether they beat one in wisdom and great gifts and power, or in having been splendid soldiers or great exiles, or just in being beautiful. It is just as reasonable to worship one sort as the other; they are all one’s betters, and were made for one to come down on one’s knees to, clearly enough. Victor Hugo or Miss Cherbury the actress, Tennyson or a fellow who rode in the Balaklava charge when you and I were in the fifth form, we must knock under and be thankful for having them over our heads somewhere in the world; and small thanks to us. But when men who are by no means our betters won’t do so much as this, and want to walk into us for doing it, I don’t see at all that one is bound to stand that. So that if I am ever to be turned out of my way, it won’t be by anything my father may say or do.

I am writing to-day instead of our grandmother. She is very unwell, and wants you to hear from us. They will not let her trouble or exert herself in any way, but she is bent on your getting a word; so, as I am well enough to write, I must take her place. I am afraid she is upset on your account. I think she has even exchanged letters with your father about it. They seem to fear something very bad for you. You know by this time how much we both love you, and ought to care a little for us. I know I must not talk now as if I could fall back on self-esteem or self-reliance. I don’t the least want to appeal in that style, but just to plead with you as well as I may. I am stupid enough, too, and can’t put things well; only, except the people here at home, you are the one person left me that I may let myself love. I am very grateful to you, and I beg you to let me come in this way to you. You must see that there is nobody now that I love as well. I want you to remember as I do how good you were once. If I am ill it comes of miserable thought. You talk of her compassionate noble nature. Dearest, if she has any mercy, let her show it and save you. It is cruel to make people play with poison in this way. I would not blame her for worlds. I want to thank her and keep good friends, but she must not let you run to ruin. Think what imaginable good end can there be to this? I suppose she is infinitely clever and brave, as you say, but how can she face things for you? Every one would say the horridest things. Do you want shame for her? It would break your life up at the beginning. I have no right to accuse—should have none anyhow—but one has always a right to be sorry. I see you could not be happy even if all were given up on both sides. Don’t let her give all up. I dare say she might; and that of course is braver than any treason. If you knew my own great misery! Sometimes I feel the whole air hot about me; I should like to cry and moan out loud, or beat myself. I am not old, and if I live all my time out I shall never feel as if my face had a natural look. I wish I were very old, and gone foolish. I was false in every word and thought I had. I cannot kill myself, you see, even by writing it down. Thinking of it only hurts, without doing harm; I want to be done harm to. I never spoke to you at Portsmouth. If you never did know, you see now. I thought you all knew. I seemed to myself to have the eyes of a woman who has been cheating and lying to some one just dead. I was penitent enough to have had the mark on me. It would be better than playing false, to leave her husband. But then she takes you—your life and all. I do think she must not be let. I hate repeating what was said viciously; and God knows I must not talk or think scandal: but Madame de Rochelaurier, her own friend and yours, says things about her and M. de Saverny; it is no unkindness of my grandmother’s. She does not like Clara now, but she is clear of all that, quite. And there were letters, certainly. Madame de Rochelaurier said so; they were the cleverest she ever saw, but not good to write. It was two or three years ago; M. de Saverny let her see them. It was base and wretched, and he keeps them. He is a detestable man; but you cannot get over that. I believe no harm of her; only you will not let her take you from us. You must see it would be the end of all our pleasure and hope. People would laugh too. If you want to stand by C., as you say, how can you begin by helping people to scandal? I am so sorry for you, I know you are too fond of her and good to her, and would never give her up; and I am not fit to help. Still, whatever I am, I do know there must be right and wrong somehow in the world. You should not make so much misery. I don’t mean as to the people nearest you both. On your side of course I cannot tell you how to look at things; and as to hers I can only be sorry, and am very. But you know, after all, my mother is something to you while she lives; you are my very own brother and dearest one friend. I wish you might see her. She is so full of the tenderest beautiful ways. I know what she hears hurts her. She shows little, but she cried when our grandmother gave her letters to read. You might be so good to us, for we can never do anything or be much to you. If evil comes of this I shall think we were all born to it. There will be no one left to think of or speak to without some afterthought or aftertaste of memory and shame. The names nearest ours will have stings in them to make us wince. It is not good for us to try and face the world. It has beaten all that ever took heart to stand up against it. Surely there is something just and good in it, whatever we think or say, let it look ever so unfair and press ever so hard. I write this as well as I can, but it is very hard to write. I cannot make way any further: my head and hand and eyes ache, and the sight of the words written down makes me feel sick; the letters seem to get in at my eyes and burn behind them. You must be good and bear with my letter.

I will wait for you till your own time; only, my dearest, I will not have you wait out of pity or fear. All that is done with: my time is here, with me; I have the day by the hand, and hold it by the hair. We have counted all and found nothing better than love. I do just hope there may be something for me to give up or go without: I see nothing yet. You are so far much better to me than all I ever knew of. I sit and make your face out between the words, and stop writing to look. You ought to have given me that broken little turquoise thing you used to have hung to your watch. I wonder all men who ever saw you do not come to get you away from me—fight me for you at least; for I shall never let you out of my hands when I have you well in them. If one had seen you and let you slip! I knew I should get you some day or die. Because I was never the least worth it. Because you need not have been so good, when you were so beautiful that nothing you did could set you off. But you know I loved you ages first. When I was a boy, and got sight of you, I knew stupidly somehow you were the best thing there was. You were very perfect as a child; I know the clear look of your temples under the hair; and the fresh delicious tender girl’s hair drawn off and made a crown with. I want to know what one was to have done without that? I don’t think you cared about me a year ago—not the least, my love that is now. I had to play Palomydes to your Iseult a good bit; but are you ever going to be afraid of the old king in Cornwall after this? as if we were not any one’s match, and anything we please.

Je serai grand, et toi riche, Puisque nous nous aimerons.

I have not yet made up my mind whether or no you will be taken at unawares by the news I have to send you. You must make up yours to accept it with fortitude. Amy has just enriched the nation, and impoverished your brother, by the production of a child—male. In spite of her long depression and illness, it is a very sufficient infant, admirable in all their eyes here. Frank, I am sure, expected to hear of this in time. While there was any doubt as to the child’s (I mean Amy’s, and should say the mother’s) state of health, we could not resolve on publishing the prospect of her confinement. I may all but say it was a game of counter-chances. That it has come to no bad end you will, I am sure, be as glad as we are. Eight months of mourning were enough to make one thoroughly anxious. The boy does us as much credit as anything so fat and foolish, so red and ridiculous, as a new baby in good health can do. I suppose we shall be inundated with troubles because of this totally idiotic fragment of flesh and fluff, which my daughter has the front and face to assert resembles its father’s family—such is the instant fruit of sudden promotion to grandmotherhood. And I am a great-grandmother; and not sixty-two till the month after next. Armande will never allow me my rank as junior again; yet I recollect her grown-up patronage of your father and me when we were barely past school age, and she barely out—la dame aux belles cousines I called her, and him le petit Jean de—what is it?—Saintré? I suppose my son-in-law will be guardian. I do hope nobody will feel upset at this—our dear Frank is too good a knight to grudge the baby its birth. Poor little soft animal, one could wish for all our sakes some of its belongings off the small shoulder of it; but as it has chosen to come, they must stick to it. Amy is in a noticeable flutter of impatience to get the christening of it well over; she has high views of the matter, picked up of late in some religious quarter. Edmund Reginald we mean to have it made into, and I must have Redgie Harewood to come and vow things for it—he will make an admirable surety for another boy’s behaviour; and the name will do very well to be washed under—unless, indeed, Frank would be chivalrous enough to halve the charge; then we might bracket his name with the poor father’s. Don’t ask him if you think he would rather keep off; we don’t want felicitation, only forgiveness; that we must have. If I had not been tricked and caught in the springe of a sudden promise to take the weighty spiritual office on myself, I should implore you to be godmother. As it is, I suppose the sins and the sermons must all come under my care. Break the news as softly as you can; there must always be something abrupt, questionable, vexatious, in a business of the sort. It is hard to have to oust one’s friends and shift one’s point of view at a week’s notice. However, here the child is, and we must set about the management of it. I shall make Frederick undertake the main work at once as guardian and grandfather. He writes to Lidcombe by this post. Amy is already better than she has been for months, and very little pulled down, in spite of a complete surprise. She makes a delicious double to her baby, lying in a tumbled tortuous nest or net of hair with golden linings, with tired relieved eyes and a face that flashes and subsides every five minutes with a weary pleasure—she glitters and undulates at every sight of the child as if it were the sun and she water in the light of it. You see how lyrical one may become at an age when one’s grandchildren have babies. I should have thought her the kind of woman to cry a fair amount of tears at such a time, but happily she refrains from that ceremonial diversion. She is the image of that quivering rest which follows on long impassive trouble, and the labour of days without deeds—quiet, full of life, eager and at ease. I imagine she has no memory or feeling left her from the days that were before yesterday. She and the baby were born at one birth, and know each as much as the other of the people and things that went on before that.

I shall be clear of this place to-morrow; I am going for a fortnight or so to Blocksham. I quite agree it will be best for me not to have the pleasure of seeing Amicia. You will, I hope, tell her how thoroughly and truly glad I am; and that if I could have known earlier how things were to turn out it would have simply saved me some unpleasant time. As to meeting, when it can be pleasant to her, I shall be very grateful for leave to come—and till then it is quite good enough to hear of her doing well again. Only one thing could add to my perfectly sincere pleasure at this change—to know I had been albe to bring it about by my own will and deed; as I would have done long since. I hope she will get all right again, and the sooner for being back here. I shall not pretend to suppose you don’t know now that I care more about her and what happens to her than about most things in the world. If all goes well with her nothing will go far wrong with me while I live. I dare say I shall do well enough for the professions yet, when I fall to and try a turn with them; and I cannot say, honestly, how thankful I am to be well rid of a name and place that I never could have been glad of.

First salute the fellow-baby in my name, and then you shall have news. I assume that is done, and will begin. Two days here with your father have put me up to the work there is to do. I shall not take you into council as to estate affairs, madame la baronne. When the heir is come to ripe boyhood you may take things in hand for yourself. Meantime we shall keep you both in tutelage, and grow fat on privy peculation; so that if you find no holes in the big Lidcombe cheese when you cut it, it will not be the fault of our teeth. So much for you and your bald imp; but you want news, I suppose, of friends. I called at Blocksham, and saw the Radworths in the flesh—that is, in the bones and cosmetics; for the male is gone to bone, and the female to paint. The poor man calls aloud for an embalmer: the poor woman cries pitifully for an enameller. They get on well enough again by this time, I believe. To use her own style, she is dead beat, and quite safe; viciously resigned. I think we may look for peace. She would have me racked if she could, no doubt, but received me smiling from the tips of her teeth outwards, and with a soft dry pressure of the fingers. Not a hint of anything kept back. Evidently, too, she holds her brother well in leash. Frank pleased me: he was courteous, quiet, without any sort of affectation, dissembled or displayed. I gave him sufficient accounts, and he was grateful; could not have taken the position and played a rather hard part more gracefully than he did. We said little, and came away with all good speed. The house is a grievous sort of place now, and likely to stay so. I have no doubt she will set all her wits to work and punish him for her failure. She will hardly get up a serious affair again, or it might be a charity to throw her some small animal by way of lighter food. It would not surprise me if she fell to philanthropic labour, or took some devotional drug by way of stimulant. The bureau d’amourettes is a bankrupt concern, you see : her sensation-shop is closed for good. I prophesy she will turn a decent worrying wife of the simpler Anglican breed; home-keeping, sharp-edged, earnestly petty and drily energetic. Negro-worship now, or foreign missions, will be about her mark; perhaps too a dash and sprinkle of religious feeling, with the chill just off; with a mild pinch of the old Platonic mixture now and then to flavour and leaven her dead lump of life: I can imagine her stages well enough for the next dozen or score of years. Pity she had not more stock in hand to start with.