CHAPTER XXV.

The next morning, when, ill with crying, Pauline opens her swollen

eyes, she finds a letter from Robert lying on the table by her bedside.

Its contents bring on a fresh outburst of grief that lasts far into the

day.

"You are to forget," he writes, "that you ever had an elder sister;

you are to blot her out from your life as if she had never been, to

remove all traces of her existence from your sight, never to sully your

lips by uttering her name, if you wish still to call me brother."

Then he tells her that among the list of passengers that have sailed

that morning for Melbourne in the "Chimborazo" they have seen the names

of "Mr. and Mrs. Edward Lefroy."

* * * * *

When, late in the afternoon, Pauline creeps down-stairs, she finds the

stillness of the grave shrouding the house.

Armstrong has not returned; he does not cross the threshold of

Nutsgrove. Lottie has been sent up to Sallymount Farm to spend the

day, and most of the servants, with Mrs. Turner's approval, have

leave granted during the absence of the master and mistress, who, she

elaborately explains, have gone to the seaside for a few weeks' change

of air. A futile explanation. They all know, as well as if the news

were published in that morning's "Times," that the establishment is

broken up for good, and that they will never gather again in cheerful

circle round the roomy hearth of the servants' hall, discussing the

goings on of the folk upstairs, laying jocular bets as to which of Miss

Pauline's lovers will win the day, and as to how long the master will

stand Mr. Lefroy's imperious ways, _et cætera_, and other topics of a

like personal but highly interesting nature.

When the long spring day is coming at last to a close, Pauline dries

her eyes, rings for a cup of tea, and then, drawing her desk to the

couch on which she is lying, after some troubled deliberation writes a

note, which early next morning is put into the hands of Mr. Everard,

then smoking a cigar on the deck of the "Sea-Gull," lying at anchor

between Southsea and Ryde.

"NUTSGROVE, Thursday.

"I am alone, and in deep distress. All day long I have sighed for the

sound of a true friend's voice, for the clasp of a comforting hand on

mine. I thought of you--I don't know why. Can you come to

PAULINE?"

"No, Pauline, I can't come! Sorry to disoblige a young lady; but I

can't come to you. Certainly not!" he mutters stoutly, pacing the

deck with hurried step, the letter fluttering in his hand. "Certainly

not, Miss Pauline! You've signaled too late--too late, young lady;

you must get some other hand than mine to clasp you in your distress.

Saunderson's paw ought to do the business; it's big enough, at any

rate. 'Alone and in deep distress.' By Jove, I wonder what it means?

She must have quarreled with her sister, or with Armstrong. Well, well,

it's no business of mine; I won't bother any more about it. Ah, here's

the morning paper! I wonder if Carleton has won his race? Hang it, I've

thrown away my cigar! Let me see--Cambridgeshire meeting. Ah, here it

is!"

But, alas, Everard can extract no information from the sporting-column

this morning, for all up and down the page the words are dancing in

letters of fire--

"Can you come--can you come--can you come to Pauline?"

He throws down the newspaper in disgust, and exclaims irritably--

"I can't, I can't, I tell you--I can't!"

Half an hour later two sailors are pulling him as hard as they can to

Portsmouth Harbor, whence an express bears him northward to Pauline in

her distress.

Long before he arrives, the first half hour after he enters Nutshire,

he knows the reason of her hurried appeal, and the news of the

scandal--with which the whole of Kelvick is ringing--stupefies the

young man almost as much as it did poor Robert. He sits staring blindly

at the flying landscape, trying to realize the startling truth; but he

can only picture Addie as he last saw her but one week before, standing

under the big magnolia, her hand clasped in his smiling up into her

husband's placid face.

"They're a bad lot--a bad lot!" he mutters weakly. "What's bred in

the bone comes out in the flesh! A bad lot, those Lefroys! Thank

Providence, I've had nothing to say to them. Poor Armstrong, what an--"

"Jack--Mr. Everard--won't you say good morning to me? My hand has been

outstretched for the last two minutes."

He turns quickly, to find a young lady seated opposite to him, a young

lady with whom he has been on terms of almost brotherly intimacy since

he was a long-legged youth in knickerbockers and she a chubby-faced

child in stiff-tucked shirts--Miss Cicely Deane, his rector's model

daughter.

She is a small, prim little person, with pretty brown eyes and a soft

drawling voice that makes very sweet music in her father's church, and

draws many wandering spirits from things of earth, from contemplation

of their neighbors' bonnets, to thoughts of Him whom they have met to

praise in concert.

"Saint Cecilia, you here?" he exclaims in surprise. "You must have got

in at Kelvick. I was looking out of the window, and never heard you."

"Yes, Jack, you were wrapped up in a 'referee,' as Mr. Weller would

call it--I hope it was a pleasant one. I went over to Kelvick early

this morning to consult Miss Challice about the children's school-feast

on Thursday; it is to be a great affair this year."

"Ah, indeed! And how are you all doing since I saw you last, Cicely?

Father, mother well? Sisters and brothers ditto? That's right, I

needn't ask about the rest--the sick, the old, the maimed, the

grumbler, the impostor; they--"

"We always have them among us. Yes, Jack, I thank you on their

behalf for kind inquiries, and also for the check you sent me before

leaving; it is that which has enabled me to invite four hundred little

Kelvickites to enjoy the green fields and woods of Broom Hill on

Thursday with our own flock. But tell me--what has brought you to this

part of the country again? I thought you intended spending the summer

yachting with your--"

"And so I do. I only ran up to-day on a matter of--of urgent business.

I'm returning to the 'Gull' in the morning, and we sail for Norway at

the end of the week."

"You will dine with us this evening, won't you, Jack? I dare say

you won't find things very comfortable at Broom Hill, returning so

unexpectedly."

"Thank you, Cicely; I'll dine with you with much pleasure. Seven

o'clock, isn't it?"

"Yes--here is our station. Hand me those parcels--tenderly, please.

What--are you not getting out too?"

"Ah, yes--no--yes! By Jove, I'm too late! Returning by next train!" he

shouts.

The carriage door is banged, there is a shrill whistle, and the train

is moving smoothly to the next station, Nutsford.

"I--I meant to have got out," he mutters blankly--"of course I did.

Hanged if I know what came over me. However, I suppose I had better go

on now, after having come so far. Who's afraid? I'll pretty soon let

her understand the light I view her distress in, let her know she can't

make a cat's-paw of me to get back to respectability, comfort, and

position! Who's afraid? Not I!"

Thus plumed with self-confidence, his doughty arm braced to meet Miss

Lefroy's hand in the cool platonic grasp of friendship and vague

sympathy, Mr. Everard reaches Nutsgrove. There is not a sound of life

about the place; the blinds are all down, and old Sally Turner, the

erst dignified housekeeper, opens the hall door for him and bids him

enter.

"You wish to see Miss Lefroy, sir? Yes, she is at home. To the left, in

school-room, sir, she will receive you."

He finds himself standing in a darkened room, and for a few moments,

after the glare of unshadowed day, can distinguish nothing; then he

sees a tall willowy figure dressed in black advancing toward him.

Pauline, pale as a ghost, her starry eyes full of unshed tears, her

mouth quivering and uplifted, looking more beautiful in her abashed woe

than she looked crowned with diamonds, flushed with triumph, as he saw

her last, lays her hand timidly on his shrinking shoulder.

"You have come, my friend, my friend!"

* * * * *

Some six hours later Everard is seated in the Rectory garden, helping

Miss Deane to pin small bits of numbered paper on a miscellaneous

collection of articles that are to delight four hundred smoky little

souls on Thursday; but his thick lazy fingers do but little work

compared with those of his companion, who watches his movements with

some anxiety.

"Jack," she exclaims at last, in temperate expostulation,

"please--please don't put a pin through her nose! That doll is a

special prize, and the number will be found quite as easily on any part

of her skirt. Perhaps you had better let me finish--"

"Cicely," he says hurriedly, his face flushing, "I want to tell you

something. I--I thought I should like to tell you first. You remember

when we were children I always came to you--"

"Yes, I remember. What is your news, Jack? Something nice--and

important I can see by your face."

"I am going to be married, Cicely, to the dearest, sweetest, loveliest

girl in England!"

"To Miss Lefroy?"

"Yes, yes--to whom else?"

"I--I congratulate you, Jack, most sincerely," says Cicely, in her

little prim measured accents, putting her hand in his, first waiting

to adjust the position of the pin in the doll's polonaise. "I saw you

admired her very much all last winter; she is very beautiful. You have

not been long engaged?"

"Only since this afternoon, and--and I don't want to make any secret

of my great happiness and--luck," he says warmly, almost pugnaciously,

looking her in the face.

"Of course not," she answers; but, under his steady questioning gaze a

faint pink stains her cheek, and he knows that the story of the fallen

sister has reached even this sheltered little vestal.

"Well, Cicely, I think I'll take myself off and tell your parents of my

happiness. I'm not of much use to you, I fear."

"Not much in your present state of mind certainly," she says, with a

bright cold smile.

"And, besides, there are two sons of Leviticus prowling outside, gazing

at me, their eyes glowing with most unholy fire. I hope their fists

will prove steadier than mine, though I doubt it. Oh, Saint Cecilia,

Saint Cecilia, I wonder how many slaughtered curates lie on your soul!

Who would be your father's henchman in the cloth?"

He goes, humming a rollicking love-song of old Tom Moore's, and the

curates come in and bravely stick, stitch, plaster, and sort the

charitable chattels, and make discreet but eager love to their rector's

daughter--a young lady who, besides her many moral and personal

attractions, inherits a snug little fortune of fifteen thousand pounds

from a maternal aunt, and is the granddaughter of a mighty earl with

two fat livings in his gift. But their vows and smiles are all in vain,

for Cicely bestowed that otherwise well-ordered piece of mechanism, her

heart, one January noon, some three years before, on a fresh-faced Eton

lad who, at the imminent risk of his life, unaided, rescued her and

a school-friend of her own age from a cruel death on the day the ice

broke so unexpectedly on the lake in Saunderson Park--and this young

gentleman was, alas, the lucky lover of Miss Lefroy!