"Do speak to her yourself, mother, and make her obey you," said poor Lady Emily.

At this very alarming proposition, Lady Southmolton came. back to earth again with the most startling rapidity; she actually tumbled down, headlong. Her first act on arriving on this earth, after a serene contemplation of the deterioration of the human species since the days of Hannah More, after falling suddenly, from a height of moral speculation, down on to the floor of extremely disagreeable personal practice, was, so to speak, to sit up and look round her, to see if her daughter was in earnest, or was daring to make game of her. Poor Lady Emily was perfectly in earnest, there was no doubt in that. Lady Southmolton said, quietly scornful,

"She is not my daughter; she is yours. I am not her mother, any more than my sainted Southmolton was her father. I wash my hands of her! Do not drive me to say that I wash my hands of you, - of my own daughter!”

The idea of Lady Southmolton washing her hands of her was so dreadful to Lady Emily, that she went through the action of washing her own, and moaned and wailed herself into silence, as ladies do in such cases. When everything had been quite quiet for a quarter of an hour, from Lady Emily's last sob, Lady Southmolton, solemnly, but, on the whole, in a conciliatory manner, said,

"Emily !"

Lady Emily threw herself on her mother's bosom, and went through the sobbing business again, but three octaves lower, and many minutes shorter; after which they talked together in a reasonable manner. But all that they arrived at was, that girls were not as they used to be, and that dear Laura was very strange; that, on the whole, they — they were both horribly afraid of her, could not in the least degree calculate what she would do next, and so had better leave her to herself; which they did.

CHAPTER XLI.

SIR HARRY POYNTZ was sitting at his library-table turning over his papers. This became, day after day, a more difficult and tiresome business for him. He knew that his brain was softening, and he had submitted to his fate in that matter with that quaint godless fatalism which possibly was part of his disease. He had told Hilton that the only thing which annoyed him was, that those fits of irritability were beyond his control. He said, in his queer way, that it was so unutterably exasperating to find that he could n't keep his temper. But these fits had grown milder as the disease went on, and had altogether ceased; but as they ceased a new cause or irritation seemed arising. He had always been the most methodical as well as the most cat-like cleanly of men, and now he began to find that his papers got wrong, and that he was getting untidy in his dress. This vexed him considerably.

He was in a mess with his papers this morning. He had found himself getting angry, and, being fearful of one of his old fits of fury coming on, had dismissed the steward with a sweet smile, on pretence of a headache. He had made an effort to bring his mind to a focus, and to get his papers in order; but he found that the effort was beyond him, and there was no one to help him.

"The game is very nearly up," he thought; "I wish Bob was here."

Suddenly there came, as there will in such cases, a sudden activity of brain, a more rapid passage of blood, or if not that something else. He suddenly saw, in one instant, that he was all alone, without a single friend in this world, and utterly without hope or belief in the next. The first effect of this flash of intelligence was infinitely mournful, the second most ghastly and most horrible. There came on him, for one moment, that sense of illimitable distance from others, which no man can feel for many seconds and keep his reason. The nightmare passed away, and left him sitting there, careless, stupid, and desperate.

When the brain quickened again, he began thinking about his brother Robert, and wishing that he would come back, and that he might hear that Robert had forgiven him from his own lips. He did not acknowledge to himself that he had been to blame in their life-long quarrel; he only wished that Robert would tell

him they were good friends. "I wish we could start afresh. How was I to know that Bob was a hero? I suppose," went on the poor fellow, "that I must be wrong. Every one loved him, and every one hated me. one hated me. Why did he always hate and despise me so? Why did he irritate me, and make me hate him! Well, Master Bob, I have brains enough to be even with you yet!”

Some one laid a light hand on his shoulder. He said, “Bob, I'll be even with you. You'll be devilish sorry for me when I am gone." And then he looked up and found his wife standing over him.

Maria, I am glad to see you; I have had the nightmare. Do you wish me dead?"

"Harry! Harry! give up talking so wildly."

"I am not talking wildly at all. Maria, do you think, for the short time we have left to live together, that you could be friends with me? It is so horrible to die without one single friend!"

“I will be a faithful and good wife to you, Harry. We have both made a mistake. You have so often, and, let me say, so coarsely put that before me, times innumerable, that I have no delicacy in speaking about it. I have been saved from unutterable woe by God's providence, and my heart is tender towards you, my poor Harry, very tender! Why are you so hopelessly wicked as to make it impossible for me to love you?"

"What have I been doing so unutterably wicked lately?”

Harry, why have you ruined Laura Seckerton? Why did you write that horrible letter? I have just been with her; she seems the same to the world, but you have driven her half-mad. We have come together again after all our misunderstandings, and I tell you, Harry, that she is broken-hearted.”

"Serve her right!" said Sir Harry Poyntz, laughing; "she wanted a lesson. Let her keep her tongue between her teeth another time.”

Maria was so exasperated by this brutality that she rose up, and paced up and down the room in furious heat, denouncing him. There was nothing she did not say of him. When she had somewhat cooled, she, in a very imperial manner, without in the least degree thinking what she was about, declared she would live with him no longer and formally demanded a separation. Meanwhile Sir Harry laughed louder and louder as she went on, which, however she might conceal it, drove her nearly wild. Separation!" he said at last, amidst his laughter. “Why,

66

Sir Charles Seckerton came over here once to represent to me your goings-on with Hilton. I knew and trusted you, Maria, and I sent him back shorn. Come, Maria, be sensible; come and hear all about it. Let us have no nonsense."

Poor Lady Poyntz had nothing more to say. She was obliged

:

to listen, however indignantly innocent as she was, she was obliged to be calm. She came and sat down beside him.

"Maria," he said, "I did write that letter."

"No one doubts it; you signed your name to it. I came in here to-night in a softened mood, to behave as a wife to you; and you, by your hopeless wickedness, have exasperated me to that extent that I have utterly lost my temper with you. Why have "You mean, why have I broken off her engagement to that Guy Fawkes booby, Hatterleigh? "

you ruined Laura ?”

"You may put it as you will. Why have you involved her name with Hammersley, sir?"

"Because,” said Sir Harry, calmly, "I want her to marry my brother Bob. I have bought up every mortgage on that estate, and I could sell Sir Charles up to-morrow. By my arrangements, Laura, with her damaged reputation-"

“Her damaged reputation, sir!" blazed out Lady Poyntz. "How dare you, sir?”

'I am aware of her perfect discretion, but I was not speaking of that; I was speaking of her reputation. With her reputation she will be glad to marry Bob, and the two estates will be joined, you see; and her father's creditor will be his own son-in-law, and they will all live happy for the rest of their lives."

"It is a cunning scheme," she said, "and I so far like your part in it as to see that you mean well by your brother. But you little know Laura; she would sooner be burnt alive than marry a man under such circumstances."

"But I have put her reputation at zero; I have told others about it. I tell you she will be glad to marry any one."

"I have no patience with you! You have ruined her for nothing. All she will do will be to go into a convent.”

"I thought she was a sound church woman."

"A desperate woman soon gets over a few little difficulties of creed. Besides, another thing will show you the absolute folly of your plan. Your brother Robert he this heroic man, with all the pride and bloom of his heroism fresh upon him, is to marry this woman whose reputation you have so carefully undermined. You have gone muddling and scheming on, until you have done irreparable mischief, and ruined a noble woman."

She turned and left him in indignation, and looked back after she passed the door. Sir Harry was looking at her with a halfsilly, half-sly expression, and was laughing at her. There was more about him than she could understand. She was sorry to have lost her temper with him, and she went back and kissed him. After that she passed out, and left him sitting in his chair.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE next morning Laura had risen early, had taken her sketchbook, put some food in her hunting canteen, and walked away alone through the park to the Vicarage.

The Vicar was away that morning,

she knew that well enough; but she only wanted the Vicar's wife, whom she found alone.

"I only want the key of the church."

Mrs. Vicar hardly spoke, but seemed to think the more. She had actually given the key to Laura, and Laura was turning away, when the two scarlet gloves were whipped suddenly round her neck; and she found herself violently kissed, and the next instant "The Umbrella was standing before her, flourishing a scarlet fist within an inch of her nose.

"O, if I only had the trouncing of some of them! O, if I could get Tom Downes to play Benedict to a certain gentleman's Claudio!"

"Hush! hush!" said Laura; "there is no one to blame. Just think of what you are saying; how very dreadful !

"I am not an image," said the Vicar's wife. "I am not a stone gargoyle, to have a mouth and never speak. I am furious, I tell you."

"Quiet, quiet, old friend," said Laura; "you should help me to be quiet, and not make me angry."

"I should, but I can't," said she of the red gloves. "O Laura, if I only had Lord Hatterleigh here!"

"What would you do with him?

"I would give him such a piece of my mind. O Laura, they have used you so shamefully!"

“Indeed, my dear, I cannot see that at all. In the first place, Lord Hatterleigh: Do you know that I might be Lady Hatterleigh now, in spite of all that has passed, and rule him with a rod of iron? Do you know that Lord Hatterleigh is the most perfect gentleman and the most high-minded man I have ever met? My dear soul, I have committed an indiscretion, and am suffering for it, that is all!”

"There is a villain somewhere, Laura.”

"I don't see why Sir Harry Poyntz should have been so cruel. But it is all for the best. Now, give me the key."

Why are you going into the church ?'