Читать книгу Supernatural Mysteries - Ultimate Collection - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 64

Table of Contents

"They are not to be spoken of; they dwell in darkness!"

Laura answered swiftly:

"They dwell in this house!"

Her brother looked at her with gloomy rebuke.

"Why must you go over these old stories? I told you before you came here that such things were not to be discussed."

"Remember," retorted the girl, rising nervously and with rebellion in her narrowed eyes, "that I did not wish to come here at all. I told you that. I wrote down my protests in a letter. Mrs. Sylk knows—"

Her brother interrupted:

"There is no need to call witnesses or to make a scene, my dear Laura. I know quite well the objections you made to coming to Leppard Hall, and I recall with equal clarity my answer. Pray let us have no more of this discussion. As to the portraits, it is my wish that they should remain."

Laura hesitated. She moved from her brother and looked out from the tall window across the landscape that she found so distasteful. At the bottom of the gentle slope on which the house stood the grey waters of the Avon, gleaming from between the dull leaves of the willows, flowed smoothly by with, to her, an air of sad monotony.

She tried to control herself, for the young brother to whom she had spoken was her master and might easily be, she knew, her tyrant. She had to play the game that women have learned during the ages to be so skilful at, to watch her opportunity, to cajole; if need be, to deceive. She was not yet very clever at any of these slavish arts and she had to bite her lip now and to clench her hands in her palms before she had sufficient control to reply in the soft tone she wished to assume.

Before she spoke she looked over her shoulder at Theodosius. He had returned to his manuscripts with an air of absorption as if he had forgotten her presence or was contemptuous of it. His fine, pale profile was clearly outlined against the dark panelling of the room. His dress, correct and severe, was too old for his years, which were not above five and twenty. Everything about him was grave and stately, and to Laura disagreeable and pedantic; but she bent her pride, and turning towards the desk humiliated herself to thrust her problems upon her brother's attention.

"Theo, pray listen to me. You never give me a chance of talking to you, you know."

"There are the evenings, my dear girl," he replied, raising his tired, dark eyes with a cold and impatient glance. "I have my work now. Pray excuse me, I am much occupied."

Laura longed to reply that this absorption in his translations from the Encheiridion Epictète of Arrian was not work but a pastime, and a sickly, unwholesome pastime at that, for a young man. But she smiled and said:

"In the evenings you are closeted here, or you expect me to go and sit with Mrs. Sylk in my own apartment; or you are going over the accounts with Lucius."

"My dear sister," said Sir Theo firmly, with a slight sigh of resignation as he leant back in his chair, "all this is wasting my time and yours. I can guess what you want to say to me. You wish to put in a plea for leaving Leppard Hall. You want to spend the money that I can ill afford in going abroad. You want to enjoy the season, as they term it, in some gay capital—London or Paris, or even Rome."

"I have no such absurd ideas," put in Laura quickly. "I am quite content to live modestly, as long as it be in a town, with some company of my own age."

"My dear child," replied Theo, with exasperating calm, "you are nineteen years of age only. It will be time enough for you to go out into the world when you have learnt in my home some of the feminine arts that you seem at present to lack. You have much wasted, I fear, the two years that you have been at Leppard Hall."

"All that I have wasted here has been myself," replied Laura in a low tone, glancing down at the shining floor.

"You have wasted the opportunity of learning how to run a fairly large establishment," remarked her brother severely. "You have not made yourself familiar either with my servants, my tenants, or with the neighbours. There are a hundred and one things that you should have learnt but have taken no notice of."

"I was bred in the town," protested Laura with a convulsive sigh. "I do not like rustic surroundings. Pray, Theo, give me my portion and let me go."

She made the request so suddenly that it seemed crude and violent, like a blow interrupting polite conversation.

Sir Theo raised his heavy eyebrows, which were like slender black wings.

"You speak as if you were out of your senses," he replied sternly. "Our parents being dead and we having no relations, where would you go from my house?"

"I don't know," replied Laura hurriedly. She felt that she had startled him and therefore gained some small advantage and she was anxious to follow this up. "Mrs. Sylk and I could go somewhere; I suppose we could take rooms or hire a house with servants. I have a few friends in London—Aunt Mary's friends," she added anxiously; "something could be contrived."

"And why, pray, should there be all this contrivance?" asked Sir Theo with rising anger.

She had often complained and protested before, but never put the matter so plainly, and his authority rose to meet her rebellion. His personality was impressive and forceful far beyond his years and Laura had an ado to stand her ground. The contempt in his voice brought the colour to her face, but she did not dare to allow this opportunity to slip. She had at least got him roused, interested, if in a hostile manner, in what she was saying; that was better than the long cold silences, the dull self-absorption that she could never penetrate.

"I suppose I want a few companions of my own age," she hastened on; "I should like a few entertainments, an opportunity of going to the opera, to concerts and theatres, of get ting books, of seeing pictures, of giving parties of my own."

"And the end of this, I suppose," he interrupted sarcastically, "is to be your marriage to some adventurer whom I shall be supposed to pension for life."

"I have no thought of marriage with an adventurer," said Laura. The colour came again to her face and faded. "But I suppose that some day you will permit me to marry?"

"Only when I approve your choice, some long years hence. I do not consider you fit for marriage," he replied impatiently. "You want a good deal of schooling and training first."

"Well," said she desperately, "maybe I could obtain that out in the world. In London! I tell you I am used to London. I knew Aunt Mary and I lived in Hampstead only very modestly, but we did see people. We went about. I have lost the few friends I had there, for you never would allow them to come and stay here, or me to visit them."

"You lead the life that is fitting to your station and disposition," replied Sir Theo, rising at last and speaking with a weight uncommon in one of his youth; cold and formidable, he stared her down. "I never agreed with the designs of your staying with your Aunt Mary Tolls. She was a frivolous woman, I dislike the fashion in which she brought you up. I always intended to exert my authority as soon as I came of age to take you from under her charge. Remember that you were always reported as wild and wilful, even when you were at school."

Laura drew a short breath, then said in a whisper:

"Our parents did not disapprove of me, at least they did not say so. It is only you, Theo, who are always so censorious."

"Call me censorious if you will, I am acting for your own good," replied the young man dryly. "I do not intend to allow you to go to town, I do not intend to allow you to have the friends you made when you were under Aunt Mary Tollis's charge down at Hampstead, and I have no sympathy with your petulant impatience with the life you lead here. There are neighbours whom you can visit."

"They are all elderly people and they live miles away," broke out Laura. "I tell you I detest this place! I always did from the moment I came into it. I can't understand—it certainly seems unreasonable, I know..."

"Your feelings are running away with you, Laura," replied Theo with a contemptuous air of finality.

She was glad that he had stopped her, much as she hated him for his continued exercise of authority. She knew that she had said too much, had tried to express the intangible. Not to him, so unfriendly, so hostile, could she unfold these fearful and delicate feelings.

"Well, then," she said, "that is my fate. I must stay at Leppard Hall. One other thing, while you are listening to me, Theo, even in so cruel a spirit—if I were to come to you and say I wished to be married, that I wanted to escape that way, what would you do?"

He looked at her keenly, suspecting that she was fooling him, trying to entrap him into some admission that she might twist to her own use, for he was perfectly sure that she had not the acquaintance of any man whom she could desire to marry.

"Your husband," he replied immediately, "would have to meet with my complete approval. Remember the terms of our father's will. I think at the end he was alarmed himself about your frivolous disposition. He left your future entirely in my hands. If you marry without my consent, I need not pay a penny of dowry."

"Well," said Laura, still holding her head high, "I might find a man who had enough money to keep me."

"Such talk is unbecoming," replied the baronet. He began to show signs of impatience; the interview had been long and exhausting. He really disliked his sister, who in everything was different from himself. He intended to do his duty by her, and that exasperated his ill-feeling towards her. For she was a burden, a responsibility, a constant vexation.

"Pray," said he, "let us have no more of this. I am not to be moved."

She believed him, and being too well-bred and too proud to break out into reproaches, she merely said:

"Can I once more ask you to have the two portraits moved?"

"I shall refuse," he replied. He in his turn was flushed, his well-shaped lips quivered slightly; he had not much reserve of physical strength, and these disputes with Laura, in whom he sensed a hidden spirit as strong as his own, always in the end slightly unnerved him. "If I begin to give way to your follies, I should strip the Hall from attic to cellar and still not please you. The portraits remain where they are."

Laura turned away. From the door she said in a low voice, looking over her shoulder:

"I wish you would strip the whole place, I wish it would be burnt down. It ought to have been destroyed years ago."

He gave her a startled look at that, but controlled himself quickly and turned again to his thick piles of papers.

Laura closed the door and stood in the dark corridor, agitated and desperately angry, surprised too. Why had she said those last words? She knew no good reason why Leppard Hall should have been destroyed. It was a fine building that had been in the possession of the Sarelles for many hundreds of years. No legend of horror, no ghostly fable attached to it so far as she knew. She had spoken, she supposed, out of mere spite because she disliked the place so much, because she had been so unhappy there for two years—two long, dragging years of her youth that should have been so bright and happy.

Not only did she detest Leppard Hall and the park, the gloomy mill and the stone farmhouse, the winding river with the Georgian bridge; she detested also the flat, dull pastoral landscape with the alders and the willows and the continually browsing black cattle, the thorn-trees and the water meadows. She disliked the church, which half a mile or so along the river rose clear grey into the grey skies, with the clustered lichened graves rising above the sloping banks where the black, ragged cedar cast a shade into the water. Gloomy to her was the small grey village and the small, dark inn, the Sarelle Arms; dull and stupid seemed the rustic inhabitants; fiercely she regretted the day that her parents had come into an inheritance that had meant to her a life so melancholy and, as she thought, unnatural.

She and her brother had both been born in Jamaica, where her father had owned considerable property. As his elder brother was childless he had long known that he was likely to come into the English castle-estate, and for that reason Theo had been sent as a child to England and educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford, while her mother's sister, Mrs. Mary Tollis, had taken her, when she had left the boarding-school for gentlewomen at Clapham, and brought her up as her own daughter at Hampstead, when Laura's mother had died of the fever at Kingston.

Her husband had not long survived Elizabeth Sarelle, and Theo had been educated well, as became the heir-presumptive, but with a sparing hand, by his uncle, a quiet, eccentric man fond of travelling, who had not often resided himself at Leppard Hall.

The estate, however, had been well maintained by a succession of well-chosen stewards, and on the death of Sir John Sarelle, when Theo was nineteen years of age, the estate and the fortune had been administered with scrupulous efficiency and honesty by the two guardians whom he had appointed for his young nephew.

At first this change of fortune had made no difference to Laura. Her life with good-natured and charming Mary Tollis was as pleasant as that of a nervous, introspective and sensitive girl, bereaved of both her parents and without a home of her own, could be.

When Sir Theo had attained his majority he had decided to take up his residence at Leppard Hall, and, Mary Tollis being then recently dead, he had brought his sister to live with him, after some delays, when he was twenty-three and she seventeen years of age.

They had now no near relations, but a distant cousin of Mary Tollis, a Mrs. Hetty Sylk, the childless widow of an Army officer, 'who had left her in "straitened circumstances', as the genteel phrase went, was engaged as companion for Laura.

This was her life, all that had happened to her in her nine teen years. An early childhood in Jamaica that she could remember merely as a flash of brilliant, strange colour, the quiet, unsatisfying, but tolerable life in the boarding-school at Clapham, the pleasant days with Mrs. Tolls in the flat-fronted brick house at Hampstead, and the two hateful years at Leppard Hall.

The girl could not have told why she disliked her ancestral home. She supposed it was merely because it was lonely and she was cut off from her usual friends and interests. There was no railway station nearer than Rugby and no carriage ever at her disposal to drive her so far, even if she had been able to obtain her brother's consent to a visit to London.

It was true that a few miles farther along the river there was a handsome Palladian mansion inhabited by a noble family that was disposed to be friendly. But they were usually in town or abroad, and there was none of them of the age of Laura.

When she had first taken up her residence at Leppard Hall, people had called, leaving their visiting-cards. And she, setting out in the brougham with the Sarelle arms on the panels, had returned these calls in the respectable company of Mrs. Sylk. But no friendships, no acquaintances, no intimacies had grown out of these formalities. Laura believed that Sir Theo had let it be plainly understood that he did not wish to have the routine that he had laid down for himself disturbed by any social activities. Besides, the neighbours all lived far away and seemed entirely absorbed in their own interests and only too ready to respect Sir Theo's wishes for solitude. He did not hunt now or join in any of the local activities of Sarelle.

The Vicar was a dull man with a sickly wife who seemed, to Laura's young vitality, scarcely alive. Dr. Selby came from Warwick and made his rounds in a smart gig twice a week. There was no other company whatsoever of her own station or class, and Laura, who had the timid reserve of the townswoman, was never able to get on friendly terms either with the servants, some of whom had been in the service of Sir John Sarelle, her uncle, or with the tenantry.

The people at the stone mill and the home farm had no more character and individuality of their own in the eyes of the lonely girl than had the sheep and cattle that browsed on the lush water-meadows. They were to Laura merely part of the landscape.

Her brother's reproach that she had taken no interest in the running of his large and precise establishment had been just. Trained in a small though genteel household, she had no taste for the management of a large mansion. Besides, it was all done very efficiently without her interference. There was a housekeeper, there was a cook, there were maids, there were other servants, gardeners and stablemen, a household of twenty-five and sometimes thirty people.

Proud and shy about her own intimate affairs, she had refused a personal maid, but Mrs. Sylk, who had advanced as far in her friendship as anyone had been able to do, contrived to wait on her while preserving the relationship of a friend.

Once during one of the scenes in which she had tried to force her brother to allow her to alter her way of life, Laura had extracted from him the promise that when she was twenty-one years old she should be allowed a season in town and that he would then use his influence to procure her introductions to people who might present her at Court, allow her some reasonable pleasure, and finally choose for her a husband suitable to her pretensions.

But Laura was only nineteen years of age, and to be told to endure two more years of this life at Leppard Hall seemed to her like a death sentence.

Besides, she had already settled for ever, as she knew, the question of where she should dispose her heart, and, when opportunity arose, her person and her fortune.

She went slowly up the stairs to the apartments that she occupied with Mrs. Sylk. She had chosen them carefully because she believed that they were the least gloomy in the house. Yet she had never liked them, the more especially as she had not been allowed to alter the furnishings. Even the very curtains of the bed and at the windows were those that came out of the closet at Leppard Hall. They were well-preserved, beautiful in texture and design, but had to Laura an old-fashioned air that was, she could not tell why, repellent.

Mrs. Sylk was by the window, employed in the eternal occupation of well-bred, idle women: she was embroidering on a tambour frame a bell-rope of lilac silk, quickly working a lily with chalk-white leaves.

"Oh, Mrs. Sylk," said Laura in a flat voice, "I had no success again. He will not listen to me. He will not even have the two portraits removed."

"Sir Theodosius is certainly a very determined young man," remarked Mrs. Sylk.

She put down her frame with a little sigh of boredom, quickly restrained and turned into a smile; she never allowed herself to forget that she was in a dependent position. She, too, found Leppard Hall galling in its gloom and loneliness, but she was a woman who had known what it was to be very uncomfortable, in every sense of the word, through poverty, who had often been humiliated and frightened by sheer lack of money. She had had a glimpse, though a glimpse only, of what the world might look like to a useless gentlewoman. At Leppard Hall she was at least comfortable and respected. She had, even, a slight sense of importance, of power. Laura was fond of her and she believed she had a certain influence over the girl. Perhaps one day Laura Sarelle would make a good, even a splendid, marriage, and she, Mrs. Sylk, might enjoy a more exciting kind of life. But for the moment she might have been very much worse off, therefore she was careful never to complain and always to make herself as pleasant as possible to her young employer, though behind his back sometimes, cautiously, she encouraged Laura in rebellion.

"I shouldn't concern myself so much about the portraits, dear," she said mildly. "That is really very fanciful on your part. You know your Aunt Mary Tollis was always concerned over that—"

"Over my fancies?" said Laura quickly. "But I never told her any of them."

"Didn't you?" queried Mrs. Sylk, still very quietly. "But she used to talk to me about them sometimes; I think perhaps you revealed more than you knew, Laura."

"What do you mean?" asked the girl. "Did she say that I used to talk in my sleep, or have fits, or something of that kind?"

"Why, no, dear, of course not. But I suppose your aunt was very fond of you and studied you very carefully. And—well, really, Laura, I don't know what we're talking about."

She broke off, smiled, and began to pick up the small chalk-white beads one by one and-thread them on to her fine needle.

"We're talking about those two portraits in the dining-room," persisted Laura. "Let everything else go. I suppose it's hopeless to try to get away from here. I can't even make out a good case for myself, but he might remove the portraits, since he knows how much I dislike them."

Mrs. Sylk mentally agreed, but tried to compromise by pointing out that the paintings were quite pleasing and that no sinister kind of tale was attached to them.

"But there is," cried Laura, "to one at least—that of my namesake. Theo himself said just now, 'They dwell in darkness'. And what did I answer? I answered, 'They dwell in this house!'"

"Oh, that old tale," smiled Mrs. Sylk comfortably. "I should not take any notice of it, probably it's not even true."

"But I'm quite sure it's true," cried Laura impatiently. "Theo doesn't even deny it. She had my name, you know; it makes it so strange—Laura Sarelle."

"But she was hardly a relation, you know," said Mrs. Sylk. "She died unmarried and the estate went to a distant cousin. You might say that with her that line of the Sarelles ended. Yours was another branch, it came from Yorkshire, I think."

"I don't know," said Laura sullenly; "I've never seen the family tree or any papers. You see, I was very young when I left Jamaica and nobody talked to me about these things. Theo's always most reserved, and seems so angry when I want to know. Not that I do much," she added idly; "what does it matter? It's only our having the same name—that dead woman and myself."

"Well, that's usual in families. People are often very proud of those things. It's always been Laura and Theodosius and John, I think, and Anne, with the Sarelles."

"She was very unhappy. She died young, and I don't care to have her portrait hanging on the wall."

"My dear child," said Mrs. Sylk, "in those days so many people died young. They didn't know how to look after themselves and the science of medicine wasn't even in existence then."

"But you know there was a scandal. Someone in the house, either someone who was staying there, or the cousin—I don't know, I can't get the story straight—died of an overdose of a sleeping-draught and there was an inquest. And even"—Laura lowered her voice—"some suspicion that she, this girl, had given it to him—by carelessness. I don't know the reason or the motive—whatever you would call it."

Mrs. Sylk stopped her at once.

"It's all nonsense, just some foolish gossip, as there always is in a place like this. I heard the same tale. I can assure you there's nothing in it. Of course there was an inquest. I tell you in those days they knew so little—"

Laura interrupted.

"Those days! You know when it was, then—the date?"

"Well, it's on the picture, isn't it?" said Mrs. Sylk with a touch of impatience.

"Yes, it is. It was painted in 1780, and that's the date of the inquest, and I suppose with the least trouble in the world one could find out all about it. But you know Theo keeps his books locked up, and as for his papers—one may never have a glimpse of them."

"My dear Laura, you're allowing your imagination to run away with you. You really should be a writer of fiction, you want to make a story out of everything. I tell you that Sir Theo himself doesn't know any more than I do. Seventeen-eighty, and this is the year eighteen-forty. Why, you must admit that it's a good long while ago."

"Only sixty years," said Laura. "She might have been alive now, and not such a very old woman either."

"But she isn't alive," urged Mrs. Sylk. "She died young, of a consumption in the lungs, as I suppose, and she's buried in the church and there's no need for anyone to, think any more about her. And as for the stupid story of the young man who died of the sleeping-draught, by accident, I think it's all quite commonplace. Such things happened very often, as I told you, when so little was known about medicine."

"Do you think the other portrait is the young man?"

"Why, no, I shouldn't suppose so."

Mrs. Sylk was trying to change the subject but did not know how to do it. She wished that Sir Theo would not be so inconsiderate; why not move the two pictures that exasperated his fanciful sister?

"No one knows who it is, do they? I suppose from the costume it's about the same period," she added nervously.'

"Well, it's not so long ago, only sixty years," repeated Laura impatiently, "and it's strange the name should have been lost. And I don't know who placed the picture there." She then went on to say hurriedly that the servants who had been with Sir John had told her that they had not noticed it during his lifetime. They thought that one of the stewards must have found it there, because it was such a fine piece of work.

"And a very splendid painting it is," said Mrs. Sylk critically, "and if I were you, my dear Laura, I shouldn't think any more of it. I believe that Laura Sarelle had a brother who died young."

"Died!" said Laura, on a rising note. "You see, they all died. No one at Leppard Hall seems to have lived very long."

"What perfect foolishness!" exclaimed Mrs. Sylk with upraised hands. "Why, Sir John was a good age."

"He didn't live here," Laura put in quickly. "Nor did his father. They were always abroad or in London. Yes, that's strange when you come to think of it. My father, my uncle and my grandfather hardly lived at Leppard Hall at all. Perhaps that's why I think it has such a melancholy air. It's never been lived in since Laura Sarelle died here sixty years ago."

"The stewards lived here, I suppose," countered. Mrs. Sylk suddenly, weary of the whole argument but aware that it was her duty and her interest to humour her charge.

"No, they didn't, they lived at the Dower House."

Laura moved to the window and looked across the flat water-meadows over which dusk was falling.

"Well, the place was very well kept up, anyhow," said Mrs. Sylk feebly. "But, Laura, my child, pray don't talk of it any more, you only exasperate yourself. You will work yourself into one of your difficult fits and have a fever, or bad dreams, or something. Now pray, my dear girl," she added earnestly, "be sensible. The portraits are the most ordinary things in the world, and if you affect to regard them so they will cease to irritate you."

"The portraits—oh, well, I suppose they are nothing. But when I said 'they dwell in darkness' Theo did not contradict me. There was some ugly story there. The young man died, and the young woman was—"

Mrs. Sylk interrupted:

"Was questioned at the inquest as to the sleeping-draught he had taken. Now, my dear Laura, forget all about it. Don't you see, my dear child, it would be very wise of you to try to please your brother, then perhaps he might be induced to take a more reasonable view of your situation?"

"Then you admit," cried Laura, "that he is not reasonable?"

"I think," said Mrs. Sylk, with a non-committal air, "he is rather a remarkable young man. He is a great scholar, you know, and that is very uncommon in one of his age. Then he takes his duties as squire very seriously. He looks after the estate in an excellent manner."

"No," said Laura with a queer look, "it's Lucius who does that."

"Well, Sir Theodosius directs him. I don't think Mr. Delaunay could do anything himself. It is a large estate, you know, and then there is the property in Warwick and in Rugby as well."

She glanced at the young girl's charming face and thought she saw a softer expression on the lovely features. So she hastily took the opportunity of saying:

"You know, you are a remarkable young woman, too, Laura. If your brother is not very reasonable, neither are you. It is not so very extraordinary for him to expect you to live here and learn to be the mistress of a great establishment. No doubt he hopes for a fine match for you and wishes to see you well trained. Why not be more patient and take the trouble to cultivate acquaintanceship of some of the neighbouring gentry? You know that when people have called you have very often been abrupt and aloof. You might mingle, too, more with the tenantry, hold a little singing class or sewing class for the children."

Laura did not listen as Mrs. Sylk rambled on, stitching her white beads on to her strip of stiff lilac silk. She startled the good lady by breaking suddenly into her pious discourse by saying:

"Why do you think I so dislike this place? You know, I have the sensation that I have been here before and under most evil circumstances."

"That is very common," replied Mrs. Sylk, slightly nettled at the interruption which showed that all her good counsel had been wasted. "Nobody knows quite what it means," she added vaguely. "Then, as I told you just now, Laura, you were always very fanciful and even fantastic."

"The moment I saw the place I hated it," mused Laura, with her chin in her hands and her elbow on her knees as she sat in the cushioned window-seat gazing out on the meadows and the river, now drowsing into grey mist. "When I saw the gates at the bottom of the park I said to myself: 'So I have to come back here again after all these years.' I didn't want to come, Mrs. Sylk, I detested the place. You know, I always resisted visiting it when Theo used to come on those rare occasions when Uncle John invited him. And I managed to get out of that because they said there was no suitable accommodation for a lady—" She paused sharply. "I wonder why I'm talking like this! I'm not usually so foolish, am I, Mrs. Sylk? But that interview with Theo upset me. I feel like a prisoner."

"You should conquer these feelings," said Mrs. Sylk. "And as for the place, it is a very fine mansion and very well kept, and you lack for nothing. And I cannot think," she added untruthfully, "that it is particularly gloomy, or particularly isolated."

Laura laughed in her face.

"It is the most melancholy, most solitary house in the world," she replied.

Mrs. Sylk murmured a protest, but privately she held that opinion also. There was no good reason why Leppard Hall should be more dreary than any other country house set in its own grounds, and Hetty Sylk had never tried to argue out with herself why this particular building gave an impression of gloom.

She did not know the age of it, but it had certainly been re-fronted in the eighteenth century, for the facade was of grey stone in a severe Palladian style with a porch and pillars. At the back was a gabled wing and the irregular buildings of the stables, which were furnished with a cupola and a clock-tower. Not far away was the stone mill on the quay river with a huge waterwheel and the date 1605 over the door. The door was also of dun-coloured stone and even older than the mill. The parkland stretched to the river's edge with a fringe of willows, alders and waterfiags at one side and to the village, the other. A broad treeless avenue led across this parkland to the front of the Hall.

What was there, Mrs. Sylk wondered, in all this to impart that sensation of intense melancholy even on a fine summer day? She certainly had felt it herself from the first moment that she had come to stay at Leppard Hall, and she could not wonder that Laura, quick, sensitive, and, as she had said herself, fanciful and even fantastical, was much oppressed by the atmosphere of her home.

She herself was not imaginative and often could shake off the gloomy impression given her by her surroundings; both by training and by necessity she was a practical woman.

"Laura, love," she said, "don't sit there brooding in the window. It is time to change for dinner. I shall ring to have some candles brought up and then perhaps you might, when the curtains are drawn, tell me how my embroidery looks by artificial light."

But Laura said sullenly:

"I'm not going down to dinner to-night. I have a headache, I feel sick."

* * *

That evening at dinner Mrs. Sylk scrutinized with a heightened interest the two portraits that Laura so much disliked. She had, of course, observed the pictures before, but never keenly, even though she had heard the girl frequently exclaim against them. But there had been a vehemence and a persistence in Laura's talk to-night that had pierced Mrs. Sylk's commonplace mind. She had been impressed, too, with the fact that the girl really did seem ill and that her refusal to come down to dinner was not a mere formal excuse.

At the same time the discreet woman had no wish to offend her employer, so it was only now and then, and furtively, that she glanced at the two pictures.

They hung side by side at the end of the long dining-room, each fitting exactly into one of the large polished panels. The picture that represented, without doubt, Laura Sarelle (the name was written in the top left-hand corner of the canvas) was not, Mrs. Sylk thought, of any particular artistic merit. Indeed, the painting was rather flat and drab, as if it had been varnished and then cleaned.

It showed a young woman, primly dressed in a long tight-waisted gown of the palest primrose colour with a bow of pale-blue-and-cream-striped ribbon tucked into her narrow bosom. Her hair was either very pale or powdered and gathered straight off her face. Her features were scarcely to be discerned, so lightly had the painter indicated them, but they appeared to be regular; the eyes, which had been put in with a firmer touch, were large and of a clean, clear brown colour. A fleeting harmony was given to this indifferent painting by the fact that the background was formed of a dark-green curtain looped away from a landscape bathed in a faint hazy light and that the lady held in her hand a branch of laurel. These dark-green hues, harmoniously chosen, set off pleasantly the pale hues of rose, primrose and blue that composed the lady's dress and complexion.

Nothing, Mrs. Sylk thought, could have been more inoffensive than this portrait, and she was really puzzled to know why Laura should regard it, as she undoubtedly did, with feelings of aversion and even horror.

'Really,' she thought, 'the child is extraordinarily fanciful, sometimes almost unbalanced.'

The portrait of Laura Sarelle was handsomely framed in carved oak, touched here and there with gold leaf, and the design of this frame was also of laurel leaves, boldly interlacing one another, making, therefore, a setting more fitting for the portrait of a warrior than of a gentle lady.

The other portrait was a very superior performance, and Mrs. Sylk, who affected to be something of a connoisseur, had always admired it. It was believed to be, she knew, by Thomas Gainsborough, and she was surprised that a picture by so famous an artist had neither a history nor a name.

It represented a young man in a blue coat, also against a background of green, this time thickly interlaced with trees, who had his hand on his hip lifting the skirts of his coat so that the light shone on the thick glossy azure satin and looking directly at the spectator. His hair was slightly powdered and negligently dressed; small ringlets broke loose from the ribbon and hung down either side his alert, handsome and impressive face. The portrait, which was most vital and arresting both in pose and impression, was lightly put in with a few masterly strokes and appeared to be unfinished. Mrs. Sylk was not so fortunate as to be able to conceal her curious interest in the pictures. Sir Theodosius suddenly remarked with more than his accustomed dryness:

"I see, Mrs. Sylk, that you are infected by poor Laura's passion for those two pictures. Do you also object to them and wish them removed?"

This remark was made in so dry and cutting a manner that a faint flush came into the cheeks of the poor dependant. She was a gentlewoman, and as an officer's wife had been used to some authority in her time. She knew how she would have answered such a remark had she been at her own table. She risked a slight coldness in her reply, allowing her pride for once to override her interest.

"Indeed, Sir Theodosius, Laura seemed very upset tonight. I think that's the reason of the headache that she made the excuse for not coming down."

Sir Theodosius interrupted:

"Ill-temper is always behind Laura's headaches."

"I believe," persisted Mrs. Sylk with a courage that surprised herself, "that it's not quite ill-temper to-night, sir. She was really distressed. I think that if you could oblige her by removing the portraits she would be much more at ease."

Theodosius smiled unpleasantly and leant back in the high chair with arms, the master's chair that he always occupied at the head of the table.

"I told Laura this afternoon, Mrs. Sylk, that she was talking a great deal of nonsense, and if I were to begin to remove the pictures in this house at her wish I should soon have nothing else to do. Surely you, madam, with your experience, must know how foolish it would be to give in to the whim of an undisciplined girl."

Mrs. Sylk felt rebuked. She pressed her lips together and sat silent. The meal was always slightly disagreeable; she never could feel entirely comfortable in the presence of Theodosius, though the room was so handsome, the food so expensive and well-served, the service so efficient.

She looked with a glance of unconscious appeal at the third person present, and he good-naturedly came to the rescue with:

"Yes, I heard Laura speak about the portraits. What's the matter with them? They look ordinary enough to me, though one's a fine piece of work—by Thomas Gainsborough, is it not? Do you know whom it represents, Theo?"

"No one knows," replied the master of the house, shortly. "Mr. Hewett, the steward before your time, Lucius, told me it had been found in the garret; there's no name or date on it and it's not a signed canvas. But it was shown to several cognoscenti in London and they thought it was a Thomas Gainsborough. So it was hung here, and very fine it looks. It happened to be the same size as the portrait of the former Laura Sarelle, and so it was placed there. They make, I think, a fine pair and a handsome ornament to the dining-room."

"Yes, except that one picture," said Mr. Delaunay good-humouredly, "is so superior to the other that the eyes are rather vexed in making the comparison. Why not take them down, Theo, and put them somewhere else, or even put them away altogether if they vex Laura? After all," he added lightly, "some people might object to seeing a portrait of a namesake who died years ago. And wasn't there some story about her—something rather questionable or unpleasant?"

Mrs. Sylk was very grateful that Lucius Delaunay had thus come to her help and given the conversation both a lighter and more pleasant turn. But she was dismayed by the effect of these remarks on Sir Theodosius Sarelle.

They had come to the end of the elaborate dinner, always too long and too elaborate, Hetty Sylk thought, for people who lived so quietly in such a solitary mansion, and the young baronet was leaning back in the high chair that rose above his head in foliated scrolls. Hothouse fruit, peaches, grapes, and nectarines had been placed on the table in a high epergne of silver-gilt, the candles in their massive silver sticks had just been snuffed by the footman. In front of Sir Theodosius was his plate of fine china painted with plums, the tall rosy golden Venetian wine-glass, which he had not used, for he was very abstemious, and the agate-handled dessert knife and fork.

Mrs. Sylk wondered why she noticed these details. There come moments, even in the lives of the most ordinary people, when they see their surroundings with a sudden clarity as if they were presented before them like a picture, something that has nothing to do with their lives, something that they are permitted to view as a disinterested spectator.

Such a moment had come to Mrs. Sylk. She sat erect in her chair, one hand raised to the bosom of her grey silk dress. No one spoke or moved for a moment and the illusion to her was perfect—that she had returned from another world and was looking in on this scene, wondering at it.

A scene that was commonplace enough, in which there was nothing to be amazed at, yet Mrs. Sylk knew that she was mere than amazed, she was filled with a certain inner horror.

The room had been for two years most familiar to her, for there, save on the rare occasions when Sir Theodosius had been in town and the ladies had dined or lunched alone, she had taken all her meals. She knew it so well, the long handsome apartment with the windows curtained in maroon velvet, which gave on to the sloping parkland stretched in gentle undulations to the river, the panelled walls, the wide hearth with the handsome overmantel, the ceiling older than the façade of the house with its plaster design of Jacobean workmanship, the two winged chairs of needlework that flanked the gleaming andirons, the other chairs placed along the straight carved dining-table, each with its embroidered cushions and polished leather seat, the sconces of deep silver on the walls not often used, for Theodosius preferred a table-light.

Yes, there was that thrice-familiar background and those two familiar figures seated at the table with the wine and the fruit, the sweets, the napkins, the silver and agate service before them; there was Theodosius in his black evening clothes, his black silk stock high up under his chin, the white point of his collar showing either side his pale face, one hand to his breast just as she held her own, the other on the arm of his chair, his attitude indolent but his expression alert.

And facing her, to the left of the young baronet, was the Irish steward, Lucius Delaunay, a man who frequently partook of these stately meals.

Mrs. Sylk did not know him very well, since his province never impinged on hers. All she saw of him was on formal occasions, or an odd glimpse when she might meet him riding across the park or the home fields, or staying his horse to talk to the miller or the man at the home farm. All she knew of him was that he had met Sir Theodosius at Oxford and that they shared a common love for ancient languages. And that Lucius Delaunay was 'the penniless cadet of a noble house', as the phrase shaped in her conventional mind, and she supposed that he had little or no fortune and had been glad to accept the post that his friend had offered him when he had come into his estate. Mrs. Sylk supposed, too, that Mr. Delaunay had friends and interests of his own, for not infrequently he left Leppard Hall for visits to Warwick, Rugby, or London; once he had gone to Ireland. But on the whole he seemed content to share the lonely and solitary life of the young baronet.

He must be, Mrs. Sylk imagined, a good scholar, since he spent a great deal of his leisure in the cabinet where Sir Theodosius kept his learned books piled. But he was not of the same type as the man who employed him, but an athlete, a Rood horseman, genial, serene, liked by all who knew him, and loved by any towards whom he unbent.

In her ordinary way, for she was usually far too preoccupied with her own affairs to give much attention to those of other people, Mrs. Sylk had wondered at Lucius Delaunay. He was extremely good-looking and had a quality of magnificence and splendour, yet these graces and gifts he seemed to keep concealed, as if he were purposely keeping himself down and might be in everything more emphatic than he was. She supposed, vaguely, knowing how it felt to be in a subservient position, that this was because, though of as good birth as Sir Theodosius himself, he was yet in the position of a paid servant.

She was conscious, though not very sensitive, of great reserves in the young man, though his manners were always easy and genial. She found him very pleasant to look at, not only because of his handsome features but because of his vital air and spirited glance.

Mrs. Sylk, whose own hair and eyes were of no particular colour at all, but hazel, also faintly disliked dark people, and both Sir Theodosius and Laura were very dark, with what Mrs. Sylk called vaguely to herself 'a foreign blackness' in hair and eyes. But Lucius Delaunay was blond, with a bright reddish lustre in his strongly growing hair that contrasted pleasantly with eyes of a greenish-blue, flecked, Mrs. Sylk thought in her sentimental mood, with gold.

She had often wondered, 'Why does Lucius Delaunay remain at Leppard Hall? I should have thought a young man like that could have done better for himself—the Army, for instance.' And then she remembered what her own husband's life had been in the Army without any money, and she checked the vague and wandering surmisings. No doubt a young man of a noble house, with expensive tastes and no money, could hardly do better for himself than Lucius Delaunay was doing, any more than she, Mrs. Sylk, could do better for herself.

Now she looked at him across the table, and from him to Sir Theodosius, who remained motionless, and the scene was imprinted with an odd grimness on her mind, and she thought, like somebody beginning to go into a hypnotic trance: 'Why am I here, what are we all doing? And who are these two people?'

The fair young man and the dark young man looking at each other without speaking and changing, or so she thought, while she looked at them. Not in their faces so much as in their costumes, which seemed to slip and blur into the fashion of another day, into the fashion of the man in the portrait at the end of the room. The candlelight was playing tricks, she was beginning to be infected with poor Laura's fancies. She moved abruptly and the scene seemed to shift into reality again, and Sir Theodosius said coldly:

"I don't know anything about any unpleasant story, Lucius. My father and my uncle were both set against all superstitions. I thought I told you that I inherited my admiration of the stoics."

'What's he talking about?' thought Mrs. Sylk. Then she remembered the former conversation. Of course, it must have been only a minute, perhaps, a second, ago that Lucius Delaunay had made his casual and pleasant remark, but it seemed to her as if a long time had passed.

She tried to regain her composure and cried at random and tactlessly:—

"Oh, but there was something, wasn't there, Sir Theodosius? Some trouble with an inquest and that. Laura Sarelle was supposed to have given an overdose of a sleeping-draught?"

Sir Theodosius' dark eyes were turned on her in angry amazement and the wretched woman wondered how she could have been so rash and foolish, she who had been so careful and knew that her very bread depended upon her prudence.

"I'm sure I don't know what I'm saying," she stammered, with an apology that emphasized her mistake; "it's only gossip. Of course, there are stories like these in all old families."

"Indeed, there are, madam," agreed the young baronet dryly. "This is nothing at all, I assure you. I think, also, I told you, when you first came into my employment, that I was entirely against the repetition of any nonsensical stories of this kind. This Laura Sarelle"—he glanced down the long room at the faint portrait in its pale harmonies against the dark background—"was, I believe, a very foolish young woman, ill-educated and eccentric as so many people were in those days."

They were all looking at the portrait now, and Mrs. Sylk thought that the thin smile on the narrow painted lips had an air of mockery, as if that Laura knew that she was being discussed and despised them for their ill manners.

"Was she foolish?" asked Lucius Delaunay frankly. "I think she looks charming. What did she do? I suppose I, too, am forbidden to pry into your family secrets, Theo?"

He spoke lightly and pleasantly, and the other young man made an effort to reply in the same tone, but there was a sombre undercurrent to his voice as he said:

"I can't think how Laura got hold of the tale. It was my father's and my uncle's wish that it should be kept from her. You see, that woman, that Laura Sarelle, was the last of the main line of the family. My grandfather was the first of the cadet branch from Yorkshire, she was the sole heiress of all the property, she died young. There certainly was"—he spoke with what seemed a doubt, a hesitation—"some stupid story, an inquest, yes, some mistake with a sleeping-draught—I suppose you've heard it, Mrs. Sylk?"

The question was like a challenge and the poor dependant was glad that she could reply truthfully:

"Indeed, no, I've heard nothing. Laura said something, but it was quite vague."

"Yes, I suppose my Aunt Mary Tollis may have told her. She wouldn't know much either. It's all a long time ago and, as I had hoped, forgotten."

"But surely it's the most trifling incident," remarked Lucius Delaunay. "An inquest! And who was it died from the overdose of the sleeping-draught?"

He interrupted himself to ask this abruptly, and again that silence of a second fell and again Mrs. Sylk had the impression that everyone in the room was fixed, immobile, with blurred outlines as if they were wavering into other personalities. Yes, even Jeffries, the servant, who had entered the room with fresh candles, seemed to take on another look, another habit.

"It was a cousin who was staying in the house at the time. He was extremely sickly, like Laura Sarelle herself," said the young baronet deliberately. "They did not know much about medicine in those days. I think they sent into Rugby to get some mixture of jalap for his cough. He either had the wrong mixture or took an overdose and died. This unfortunate girl had been the one who had administered it to him. She was questioned, I believe, rather sharply at the inquest. She was not strong herself, and the whole affair probably so impressed her that it hastened her own death. That is all the story."

"A piteous one," said Lucius Delaunay. "I can understand that it would irritate and sadden Laura, who bears the same name. I think, Theo—forgive me—but it is a curious thing, to name her Laura also. Your parents must have known that one day she, too, would come to Leppard Hall."

"I have told you, I think, Lucius, that my grandfather, my father, uncle and myself have set our faces against all superstitions. We have very little connection with the main branch of the family." He paused and said, as if angry with himself, "I really don't know why I'm giving these explanations or why we're talking on this subject. It's all Laura's nonsense. The name was given her," he added, and it seemed to Mrs. Sylk as though he were trying to justify himself, "merely because we don't believe in any foolish ideas or ill-omens, or family curses, or any nonsense of that kind."

"Why, no, of course not. And as you say, you have no very intimate connection with this other Laura Sarelle. But at the same time, one can understand on a sensitive girl—"

"Sensitive girl!" interrupted the baronet. "Say rather an idle and capricious one. There have been other Laura Sarelles, you will see their names in the mausoleum."

"Well, I don't know that that's very encouraging," smiled Lucius Delaunay, "for they must have all died young or unwed or they would have changed their names. Who," he added abruptly, "is the other portrait? It is a very fine picture. Not, I suppose, the sickly cousin who took the overdraught," he added with a smile.

"Not that, certainly," replied Sir Theodosius. "We don't know. I think it has no connection with the family at all, for it has no likeness to any of the other portraits. It is probably that of some friend of the family, presented to them years ago."

"It is strange that there should be no record of the name, no label on the frame."

"Something has been written behind," replied the other young man, "but blacked out. It is impossible to decipher what is behind the frame." He shrugged his shoulders. "What does it matter?—it is a very fine painting, and I consider that it suits the room. Pray let us talk of something else."

But the conversation was not so easily changed. Mrs. Sylk felt still a heavy mood, almost like an enchantment, over her. She wanted to leave the table, she wanted to go upstairs and see how Laura was, she felt uneasy about the girl, she wanted to stand between her and her brother, try to make him realize how dull life was for the young creature at Leppard Hall. She did not know how to set about this task. She hardly, indeed, seemed able to command her wits. She heard the two men talking and knew it was time for her to rise and leave them to their port; yet somehow she did not, as usual, go, but remained sitting at a table playing with a peach on her plate, stupid, at a loss for once, all her pretty social manners gone.

It was Sir Theodosius who left the room first. He asked his steward to come to his cabinet and help him with his translation, over which he was taking pedantic care. Mr. Delaunay replied that he had more commercial labours to attend to. The accountant was coming over from Rugby on the morrow and the steward had to get his books in order. He excused himself pleasantly enough and Mrs. Sylk knew that the two men were very good friends and that the elder (Mr. Delaunay was that by two years) had some domination over the younger. But she thought that Sir Theodosius seemed ruffled, even angry, as he left the room.

To her surprise, Mr. Delaunay rose and came and stood beside her chair, which was placed near the hearth. A wood fire was burning, though it was late in May, the evenings were chilly in the great hall. She was glad of the young man's company, glad to have him standing near her; there was something gay, gallant and pleasant about his presence. If she had had a son she would have wished him to be like Lucius Delaunay.

She looked rather wistfully up at his face that combined the firm lines of manhood with the bloom of youth. He said, suddenly and, as she thought, wistfully:

"I wish I could get those pictures moved for Laura, Mrs. Sylk. I'll try again, but you know what Sir Theo is, obstinate, and in so many small things that do not really matter."

The spell was broken. Mrs. Sylk spoke more naturally than she had spoken for months.

"Mr. Delaunay, do you really like Leppard Hall? Do you care about the life here? Isn't it in some way unnatural?"

"I think it is unnatural for Laura," he replied, without looking at her. "I can quite see her point of view. She's a sensitive, high-mettled creature, and the place must be dull and melancholy. As for me, of course I've my work to do. I go abroad the countryside a good deal."

"You're evading me," said Mrs. Sylk. She suddenly rose, her grey dress suddenly took on colour in the folds from the flames, for it was shot with blue and pink. "I mean, do you like the house? Laura, you know, detests it, so passionately, and speaks of it so openly that I am beginning to be affected too."

"Yes," he replied quietly, still not looking at her but down at the flames, the glow of which flushed his face with gold, "one can be infected by other people's likes and terrors."

Mrs. Sylk seized upon the last word.

"Terrors! Yes, that's it! Laura's terrified. You know these caprices and fancies that people will have, but these are not, what Sir Theo thinks, ordinary girlish nonsense. She's convinced that she's been here before, not in body but in spirit. And, of course, it is, from her point of view, an unpleasant coincidence that there should be that portrait of a woman of the same name who died young and so long ago, and, as I understand, in some trouble or scandal."

"Yes, I can't understand that. They're hard people, the Sarelles. They shouldn't have used that name again. I don't know the story myself. One doesn't care either to question Sir Theo or to try to find out things behind his back. But perhaps it's a little worse than we realize."

He lifted his vivid eyes and his handsome face was grave.

"Well, it's all over and done with," said Mrs. Sylk nervously, "and shouldn't be remembered. But it's of the effect on Laura that I'm thinking. And why should she dislike the other portrait?—it's that of a very fine young man. He appears amiable too."

"Does he?" Mr. Delaunay looked through the shadows at the portrait over which the candlelight flickered faintly. "I don't know. One can imagine almost anything into a portrait. The eyes will seem to follow one, the lips change, the expression, too. It's a matter of light and shade. One ought to be able to find out who he is, it's not so long ago."

"Who he was, you mean," corrected Mrs. Sylk hastily. "Pray don't speak of him in the present tense."

"Oh, you're not afraid of ghosts, are you? I never heard of any hauntings in Leppard Hall."

"Well, you've said quite a good deal to me," insisted Hetty Sylk, "but you've not answered my question. Do you like the place? Do you find life here, as Laura does, unpleasant, sinister?"

"Do you?" asked Mr. Delaunay.

They had spoken in lowered voices out of deference to the fact that they were in their employer's house. They would not be found, even discreetly, discussing him should he chance to return or should a servant suddenly enter.

"I don't know," said Mrs. Sylk, "I'm too busy—well, I dare say you think I lead an idle life, but there's a great deal to do keeping that poor girl company."

"Poor girl, you say! Is she really unhappy?"

"Yes, she's unhappy, Mr. Delaunay. She dislikes the place. You said the Sarelles are a hard race; well, Sir Theo's hard. He's the most extraordinary young man."

"He considers himself," said Mr. Delaunay with a smile, "a stoic philosopher. He is very much concerned to despise all manner of superstition, as you heard him say just now. But he has many excellent qualities. I owe him a good deal, I admire him, but I have told him, as I tell you now, Mrs. Sylk, that I do not think he's a fit guardian for his sister."

"Well," said Mrs. Sylk rather wearily, "try to persuade him, if you have any influence over him at all, Mr. Delaunay, to allow us at least to go to London, or to Rugby or Warwick for a day or so now and then. We are never allowed the brougham, we are never permitted to take a railway journey. People have given up calling and it is, indeed, dull for the child."

"When is she supposed to have her liberty—some measure of it at least?" asked the steward in a low tone.

"When she is twenty-one, Sir Theo says, but that's two years more. She's been here two years already as it is, but to her it's like two centuries. Think what it means to look forward to another measure of time so long, so hideous."

"I certainly wondered," said the steward, lifting his head again and looking round the room with narrowed eyes, "why she dislikes the place. And, for that matter, why you dislike it, and why I do."

This was frank speech, and Mrs. Sylk acquiesced in it by her silence. She wished that Mr. Delaunay had not expressed the feeling she dared not voice herself. It was true, but a truth she would rather have kept hidden. How dreadful to have it admitted that they all disliked Leppard Hall!

"Laura said this afternoon," she whispered with a little shudder, "it ought to have been all pulled down, destroyed years ago."

"And so it should," said Mr. Delaunay, "and so it should. And the strange part of it is that I can't tell you why. It's no gloomier or more solitary than many another old house. My own home in Ireland, for instance, is far more isolated, and I suppose more sombre and melancholy too, but no one feels sad there. The landscape here, what could be more charming?—the pastures, the water-meadows. I don't know." He put his hand over his forehead. "Sometimes I think I must be a very fanciful fellow, yet I do practical work all day and sleep soundly at night and was never given, I think, to dreaming."

"Why do you stay, Mr. Delaunay?" asked Mrs. Sylk cautiously and curiously. "Is it out of friendship for Sir Theo?"

"I suppose it is," answered the steward slowly. "It's to my own interest, of course; I mustn't minimize that part of it. But I'm fairly experienced now and I dare say there's work I could get elsewhere if the same kind. I might get financial help from my relatives, though I've always been independent. But Theo in a way looks to me, leans on me. Such a solitary fellow, one is sorry for him."

"It's a pity," said Mrs. Sylk, "that they have no relatives, none. That's what is unfortunate."

"There is only yourself, and you are a very distant connection, I believe, Mrs. Sylk."

"Very distant," said that lady. "She was happy with her aunt, Mary Tollis, you know, at Hampstead. They lived a very modest though genteel kind of life. I used to go and see them sometimes and Laura was like a bird, always moving and gay, in the company of some friend or doing some useful work in the neighbourhood. Why, you know, sir, that here she will not stir a step, yet in London she was always going abroad among her children and her old people, taking her singing lessons and trips up the river—why, anything that comes the way of a well-educated young girl." Mrs. Sylk finished rather lamely with a prim sentence as if she felt that she had been too loquacious to this young man to whom she had never spoken so freely before.

But Mr. Delaunay seemed to understand perfectly. He would not answer, but said:

"Theo wants me to come and live here, but I'm quite comfortable in the Dower House with the Pettigrews to look after me. I've got my own possessions there and I prefer the place."

"I wish you would come here," urged Mrs. Sylk. "I think Laura would feel easier. You know that now I have to share her room at night, she'll not sleep alone."

"There's nothing she need be afraid of," replied Delaunay, with a quick emphasis that was almost like a subdued violence. "There are at least ten menservants in the house and the place is well guarded by the dogs."

"Why, who would think of anything of the kind," protested Mrs. Sylk in genuine astonishment; "I mean, about anyone breaking in, or burglars? Of course it's perfectly safe, and she in the middle of her own lands and her own tenantry. It's not that, it's just her dislike of the place. Don't you see, it's almost crystallizing into something tangible, as if she could put out her hand, as she says herself, and touch it."

"A ghost, you mean?" asked the steward slowly.

"It's not a ghost, just her own fancy. I'm stupid at expressing myself."

"I understand. I don't see very much of Laura, but I think I understand her, too. I'll do what I can with Sir Theo to let her go to London."

"And now I must go upstairs," said Mrs. Sylk, "I've left her alone too long." She was embarrassed, she had lost a little of her usual poise, she had dropped her usual smooth, meaningless, rather hypocritical manners and so became confused and wished to escape.

The young man looked at her steadily and earnestly, and, she thought, with understanding and pity.

"I'll do what I can," he said, "rely on me for that. My position is difficult, too."

She murmured some agreement and left him standing by the hearth and looking up at the two portraits.

* * *

Mrs. Sylk found Laura Sarelle in bed but not asleep. Indeed, she had made Patty, the chambermaid, who had brought up her supper, keep her company.' The maid, pleased at this concession, was chattering about the doings, gossipings and customs of the servants' hall folk when Mrs. Sylk entered the room. Blushing and curtsying, the girl made her escape and Mrs. Sylk began to rebuke Laura.

"That is what you must never do here. You should not encourage the servants to come up and talk to you. You always do it when I am away from you. You make me feel that I must be on duty night and day."

To this Laura, tossing on her pillows, replied sullenly;

"You were away a long time and I had to have somebody to talk to. I tell you I won't be left alone in this house, not for one single moment."

* * *

It was a chilly month of damp winds, of low-flying loose clouds, of misty evenings and slowly opening flowers; even the white thorn blossoms came tardily that year and a deeper cloud of melancholy even than was usual seemed to settle over Leppard Hall.

After a few days of acquiescence in her fate, Laura, who had been most dutiful and quiet, asked her brother in the presence of the steward and Mrs. Sylk if she might go for a day to town. She declared meekly that her wardrobe needed much replenishing, and Mrs. Sylk, although she had not been warned before of the news, ably seconded her, saying that the girl needed indeed, say, a visit to her dressmaker and to order some more materials for her summer gowns, adding quickly that there was nothing to be had in either Rugby or Warwick that was fit for Miss Laura Sarelle.

With his usual reserve and yet exquisite good humour, Lucius Delaunay put in that he might escort the two ladies to town and look at the first editions offered at Messrs. Dawkins that Sir Theodosius desired him to value.

The young baronet was, for him, in an amiable mood. He admitted that it was reasonable that Laura should now and then go to town, especially when so well escorted and chaperoned, and he was further inclined to agree with the request when Laura said quietly that Mrs. Spryce had asked her to spend the night at her quiet Highgate home.

Mrs. Sylk was slightly surprised that Laura should seem not only willing but even keen to accept this dull invitation. Mrs. Spryce was the wife of Nathaniel Spryce, the lawyer and trustee of Laura's father; the man, too, who had handled the very small fortune that poor Mary Tolls left behind, most of which had gone to Laura, but that was, after all, only a pittance.

To so unexceptional a programme Sir Theodosius could offer no objection. He arranged that the little party should leave Rugby by a train early in the morning of the Monday and return on the Tuesday evening. He took occasion to tell Mrs. Sylk that he did not wish his sister to attend any conversaziones, parties, or concerts, considering her too young for such diversions.

But Mrs. Sylk, with some hidden sarcasm, replied that there would be no fear of any such temptations in the house of Mrs. Spryce, she being a childless lady who led a most austere life.

It was with an almost unaccountable rise in her spirits that Laura Sarelle left Leppard Hall for this short period of escape. She looked out of the brougham window back at the flat facade of the grey stone mansion, she looked at the sloping parkland, the grey willows, the grey-green alders and the slowly moving river.

"How good to go away, even for so short a time!" she said, and she pressed Mrs. Sylk's hand nervously.

Mr. Delaunay shared the carriage. He was in town attire and he looked quickly and curiously at the girl who had spoken with such deep and sincere passion. He made no comment on this, but pressed his lips together and then remarked lightly how strange it seemed to be travelling in a carriage after being for two years and more so constantly on horseback.

With such commonplaces they passed the time until they arrived at Rugby station.

There Laura Sarelle seemed to turn faint and had to lean on Mrs. Sylk's arm. She looked round eagerly, however, at the faces of the strangers about her, people bustling to and fro on their business. Even the darkness and the grime, the ugliness of the station, were to her refreshing and grateful after being shut so long in the place she detested.

Mr. Delaunay found a first-class carriage and escorted the ladies into it. It was lined with red plush finished with yellow fringe and only slightly soiled by the constant smoke of the engine.

Laura Sarelle sank at once into a corner, spreading her skirts about her. Despite her complaints as to the state of her wardrobe, she was handsomely dressed in a dark-and-light-blue-striped taffeta and a little velvet jacket of prune colour with a fringe of the same hue, and a hat with many ribbons floating at the back poised sideways on her smooth brow; her black curls, carefully arranged by the skilled fingers of Mrs. Sylk, hung down her back, her gloves and her reticule were on her knees. All these feminine appointments were rich and dainty. Her slender feet were crossed one over the other. She was a picture of luxury and idleness, but she sat there, still with a look of exhaustion, as if she were slightly faint, and her eyes were closed, her long lashes made dark semicircles on her cheeks.

She was pale and had a frail air; she reminded Mrs. Sylk of a lily-of-the-valley; there was something graceful, refined—what, Mrs. Sylk thought rather foolishly, is sometimes termed "hothouse"—about her. Yet her air of vitality was impressive and astonishing.

Mrs. Sylk herself was well dressed, looking forward with pathetic and childish expectancy to the two days of relief from the monotony of Leppard Hall.

Mr. Delaunay had brought a dispatch-case of papers with him and sat in his far corner appearing to be occupied with them, though very different thoughts from those that might have been inspired by the dry figures he contemplated were passing through his mind.

Laura Sarelle was regarding him from beneath that handsome fringe of dark lashes. She loved him deeply with, she firmly believed, an enduring passion. It was the great object of her life to keep this concealed. Not only did she know that it would meet with the sternest, most horrified opposition from her brother, she believed that Mrs. Sylk would be shocked, and Lucius himself would be probably surprised and alarmed into leaving his employment at Leppard Hall. Therefore she employed all her native feminine duplicity in concealing the passion that was the mainspring of her life, for with it was bound her desire to escape from Leppard Hall, from all the plans of living that her brother had woven round her. It was her scarcely formulated design to escape from Leppard Hall and begin a new life somewhere else, in a different part of the world, as far away as possible from Warwickshire, with Lucius Delaunay.

But she knew that to gain this end she would have to wait and be patient, subtle and strong. She hoped that she could call all these qualities to her aid; she did not yet understand the depths of her own character, but she believed she had considerable resources. Subterfuge came naturally to her, and young love can be most sharp and shrewd. She was quite sure that she had concealed from everyone that she had the least liking for Lucius Delaunay.

She was better able to keep her secret as the steward was regarded by her brother, friend and equal by birth as he might be, as a dependant, part of the furniture and trappings of his household. The narrow pride of Sir Theodosius' cold nature did not allow him to suppose for a moment that Laura, for whom a brilliant match had been intended since she was in her cradle, would take any notice of the steward, who was so quiet, too, and reserved, and seemed so absorbed in his duties or in the classical studies that he shared with his employer.

Mrs. Sylk had not suspected it either. She had once or twice thought: 'Well, there's a handsome young man and a pretty young girl. And the only handsome young man and only pretty young girl for miles around, as far as I can see, and as good as living under one roof.' Then she had decided that this very fact barred any romantic feeling between the two. Since she was seventeen Laura had been used to Lucius as if he had been a brother or a cousin with whom she had been brought up, and this familiarity, Mrs. Sylk supposed, had destroyed the possibility of any attachment between them. She knew that it was often so and that those who were in constant contact would take one another for granted, whereas any moment some chance meeting would set Laura's heart beating and send her head over heels in love.

Laura contrived a perfectly natural manner towards Lucius, whom, on account of his long friendship with her brother—a college friendship at that—she addressed by his christian name, sometimes foolishly but prettily terming him Luce. She was able to refer to him without embarrassment or hesitation before the servants and before Mrs. Sylk. She was clever enough to despise him lightly before her brother, not overdoing this attitude but treating him as a rather ordinary, poor-spirited fellow who might have done better for himself than plod along at Leppard Hall.

Now that she was shut up in the railway carriage with him and they were moving through space separated from the rest of the world she allowed her thoughts to flow out towards him with such intensity that it surprised her he did not raise his eyes and look at her. But no, he was intent upon his dull papers.

She marked every detail of his person, his attire, his stock, his linen, the links at his wrist, the well-shaped hands, the curl of his hair over his ears, the outline of his features, the bloom of youth and health upon his cheeks, the deeply indented upper lip, the full line of the lower.

She was able to assure herself with a certain tranquillity that she loved this man, and always would, and that somehow or other she would win him.

'He does not love me now,' she thought, 'and if he were to suspect what I feel for him he would be alarmed and perhaps disgusted. I must never speak first, but somehow I shall bring him to care for me as much as I care for him, and we shall go away together and be happy.'

Laura had tested her brother rather crudely the other day when she asked what he would say if she came to him with the suggestion of a marriage. Of course, he had rebuked her as she might have expected. He intended that she should marry to please him. She remembered that she had been trained for that, both when she had been at the boarding-school and when she had lived with Mary Tollis; that had always been the suggestion in the air, that she must lack no accomplishment, no grace, for as a Sarelle of Leppard Hall she would surely be able to command this brilliant marriage.

What did people mean by a brilliant marriage?—wealth, a title? These material benefits did attract Laura, she was not indifferent to worldly glitter. She would have liked the money and position to take her away from her odious life. She would have liked to marry a nobleman who would take her to Court, the great cities of the world, and give her every luxury. Yet, even to her who so valued these things, they were as nothing beside the possibility of a union with Lucius Delaunay.

"You still look faint, my dear," condoled Mrs. Sylk. "It is the motion and smell of this hideous train. How it rocks! And though we keep the window closed I swear one can hardly breathe for the stench and the soot."

She offered a handkerchief drenched in eau-de-Cologne to Laura, who took it, smiling softly to herself. How little any of them understood her! It was true that she was faint, giddy—but it was with the pleasure of being shut up in the railway carriage with Lucius Delaunay.

All kinds of daydreams and schemes went through her mind, that was both busy and fantastical, both fanciful and practical, as a woman's thoughts so often are. She could almost at the same time make some concrete and even sordid schemes and indulge in gold-tipped visions.

She faced facts coolly. Sir Theodosius would never give his consent to her marriage with Lucius. Even to suggest such a union would mean that the young man, stung in his pride and for all she knew still indifferent to her, would throw up his position and go away, perhaps, to farm in Ireland, where she would never see him again. Therefore she must move carefully, slowly, cautiously.

Laura believed that the best thing for her to do would be to move away from Leppard Hall herself and outside the influence of that place make her plans to catch Lucius. For she saw very little of him; often for days together he did not come to the Hall, or only came at hours when she could not see him. And in her walks abroad it was only by chance that she would meet him on his sorrel horse, "Pilgrim", going his rounds of the estate.

No, her instinct told her to get away from her brother, from his household, and somehow push out into the world for herself, see what it was composed of—she had so little experience—and what chance there might be for herself and for Lucius.

'It seems to me,' she thought, 'as if he were bewitched. Why should he stay there so long? He is a man, with everything before him.'

And then her heart began to ache dreadfully with yearning. Why did he not feel for her what she felt for him? She wished she might tell him of these feelings so that they might plan and scheme together to outwit her odious brother.

Mr. Delaunay suddenly raised his brilliant eyes and looked at her across the carriage.

"Do you really feel the motion of the train, Miss Sarelle? You are sitting with your back to the engine, you know. Perhaps if you were to change places with me..."

"I am very well," said Laura, smiling happily. "Indeed, I am so glad to be away from Leppard Hall that nothing would inconvenience me. And why," she asked, "do you call me Miss Sarelle? It's been Laura for a long time."

She convinced herself that she spoke naturally, but a look that she could not quite interpret, but that she thought meant she had said something imprudent, crossed the young man's face as he replied lightly:

"Oh, I thought it was a formal occasion. There is something about a railway journey that puts one on one's most ceremonious manners."

* * *

When they arrived at the large, dreary, dirty London terminus Mr. Delaunay found and hired a hansom carriage for them and then took leave of them. Laura Sarelle's pleasure had been short after all. But he was to come to Highgate on the morrow and take them back to Leppard Hall.

She did not say anything as she sat in the corner of the hired hackney in reply to Mrs. Sylk's comment that the Spryces might have sent a chaise for them, the hired vehicle was so dirty and jolted so much, almost as badly as the train.

"I rather wonder, Laura," she added, "that you chose to accept this invitation. Surely there are other friends in London? Why, I thought of one or two myself who would have been glad to entertain you and for a longer time than one night."

"Theo would not have allowed me to stay away longer than a night," replied Laura. "Besides, I wanted to see Mr. Spryce."

* * *

The lawyer lived in a handsome but gloomy house at Highgate that was well run by elderly servants. Mrs. Sylk found the atmosphere almost as depressing as Leppard Hall, and she was disappointed when the formal luncheon was over that the girl was not eager to go to town and begin to make her purchases. They had, indeed, an appointment with the dressmaker for early that afternoon.

But Laura said surprisingly that Mrs. Sylk must go alone and choose the patterns and the materials.

"It is a matter of indifference to me," she added, looking across at her host. "I want to speak to Mr. Spryce, now I have the occasion."

And the lawyer, a stout affable man, but dull, and having the air of being out of touch with the world, had returned, too, to his mansion for luncheon on purpose to do honour to Laura Sarelle. He seemed astonished, and a little flattered, Mrs. Sylk thought, to hear Laura's request and asked her at once to step into his study, which was on the ground floor.

"Business, my dear?" said Mrs. Spryce, a placid and insignificant person who seemed to take no interest in anything beyond the confines of her own well-run home.

And Laura, holding her delicate head high with a sly little mile, said:

"Yes, I think it is business. You know Mr. Spryce has some affairs of mine in hand."

The library was even gloomier than the other apartments in the sombre house. It was in a way a replica of Mr. Spryce's office in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The walls were lined with dispatch-cases and books on dark shelves, a heavy desk stood in the window-place against a background of dark-red curtains.

In London the spring had been chilly also and it was cold on these heights, therefore a coal-fire burnt in the polished steel grate.

Laura seated herself near to this, shivering a little: the fire had not been long lit and the air of the room was musty.

The old lawyer looked at her with a certain quickening of interest. How pretty, dainty and bright she was! He had always thought of her until now as a child, but there she was, a young woman, with her destiny before her, and perhaps her troubles too. Strange that she should want to speak to him on business and preferred an interview with a lawyer to a visit to a dressmaker. Strange that she should allow Mrs. Sylk to depart alone on what, surely, after a country life must be an exciting expedition.

"Well, my dear," said he, taking what he believed to be the most correct as well as the most kindly tone, "I was the friend of your uncle and your father—I hope you'll regard me as your friend also."

"I do, indeed, Mr. Spryce," returned Laura in her swift, eager way. "I want to ask you a few things about myself, about the estate."

Mr. Spryce's manner almost imperceptibly hardened, became slightly legal as he answered cautiously:

"Has not your brother, Sir Theodosius, told you all you wish to know about these matters?"

"No," replied Laura quickly. "He tells me nothing. He and I are not on the best of terms, Mr. Spryce. You may as well know it now as later. You know I don't wish to live at Leppard Hall. I don't like the place, I can't tell you why..."

She checked herself, instinctively knowing that to go into anything fanciful in the presence of this man would be a mere waste of time. Besides, it was for practical purposes that she had asked for this interview.

"I want to know," she said directly, "how my uncle's and my father's wills go."

"If you mean which is the most important of the wills, it is your uncle's, who outlived your father by several years," said Mr. Spryce gravely. "Your father's property was in Jamaica, and sold, you may remember. The capital thus acquired went to swell the Sarelle fortune, all of which was left to Sir Theodosius."

"All of it," said Laura swiftly. "Yes, I know. Nothing for me."

Mr. Spryce raised and let fall a fat, pale hand.

"There's no fear for you, my dear young lady," he replied with a certain professional pomposity. "Sir Theodosius is bound to maintain you according to your station so long as you remain unmarried, and to allow you—as I believe he does allow you—two hundred and fifty pounds a year for pin- or pocket-money, as the saying goes. And on your marriage he is to give you a dowry of a hundred thousand pounds. While, in the unlikely event of his death without heirs, you are to be the sole beneficiary of his estate."

"A hundred thousand pounds," repeated Laura eagerly, as if this were the only point of the information that impressed her. "I did not know we had so much money."

"There is a good deal of money in the Sarelle family," replied Mr. Spryce, smiling, "more perhaps than you would guess from the fashion in which your brother lives, though that is very handsome. I think he rather exaggerates the loss at which your father sold the Jamaica estate. Your mother was a well-dowered lady, too."

"Isn't it usual for a woman's dowry to go to her daughter?" asked Laura. "Mrs. Sylk told me so, so did my aunt, Mary Tollis."

"It may be usual, but it is not inevitable," said Mr. Spryce, "and in this case your mother, predeceasing your father, left him all her fortune, and that too goes to swell your brother's estate. Most of this money is safely invested in Consols. There are some plumbago mines in the north and the coal mines at Newcastle. You will recall that your branch the family came from Yorkshire. They were prudent people who made good investments."

"Why, then, with all this money," exclaimed Laura patiently, "must we live at Leppard Hall?"

"You must ask your brother that, my dear young lady. Everything is in his hands."

"It is not fair," said Laura with sudden vehemence. "He is not much older than I, only six years, and is he thus to be entirely my master!" Then without pausing for breath she hurried on: "What happens if I marry without his consent?"

"In that case he has the right to withhold your dowry, to cease to give you the maintenance that he is obliged to do while you remain single, and may content himself by paying you the two hundred and fifty pounds a year pin-money. But surely, Miss Sarelle, you knew all this before?"

"Theodosius has told me something of the kind, but I wanted to know it from you, I wanted to be quite sure about it. You see, Theo thinks I'm a fool, or pretends to think so. He never discusses the matter with me. He puts it off; he says, 'When you're twenty-one it's time enough.'"

"And so. I should think it would be," said Mr. Spryce in leisurely fashion. He could not understand and did not altogether approve of the girl's manifest impatience, which rather, to him, confirmed what he had heard of her during her childhood. Therefore as Laura still complained that her brother had thus been left guardian over her he added shrewdly:

"Well, my dear Miss Laura, you see you had the reputation as a child and a girl of being wilful. You did not have your mother's care when you were very young, I think the school you were sent to was rather lax—the reports from it were not altogether satisfactory—while Mrs. Tollis tended to pamper you. Your father was what we call a long-headed, rather stern man. There, there, my dear, don't look at me with those big, frightened eyes. I'm not saying anything dreadful. I can see for myself that you're a very charming, modest, and docile young lady. I'm merely trying to explain to you why Sir Theo, who was always precocious, was given this charge."

Laura paled during this long speech and sat staring at Mr. Spryce. Then she bit her lower lip and turned her head sideways, staring into the flames as if afraid what the lawyer might read in her eyes.

"There's nothing unusual in it, I assure you," said Mr. Spryce, leaning forward and patting her slender shoulder. "You really must not quarrel with your brother or think ill of him. He is a young man about whom nothing but good has been said, a really remarkable person, you know, my dear girl, who will probably be famous one of these days. He is a most extraordinary scholar—"

"What do I care about that?" interrupted Laura. "I'm not interested in his books, Greek and Latin, or in his studies in Persian and Hebrew. I'm not interested in Leppard Hall or the estate, I never wanted to live there."

She checked herself again. She knew that it was useless to talk to Mr. Spryce in this strain.

"I want to be free, I want to have my share of the money to do what I like with it."

"My dear lady, it's quite impossible, it could not be even discussed until you were twenty-one years of age. Besides, what's the need?" added the good lawyer easily. "There's no reason to suppose that Sir Theodosius will object to any reasonable match that you wish to make."

"I wish to make!" said Laura. "He will find a husband for me, and it will be that and none other that I must choose. How am I to endure it! Supposing I wish to marry a poor man?"

"It would be very unfortunate," said Mr. Spryce. "I do not think that Sir Theodosius would agree. Family pride is very strong in him. No doubt it is in yourself."

Laura controlled the hot speech that rose to her lips. 'There's no use,' she thought, 'of making an enemy of this man, who might yet be of some service to me.'

With a self-control that he admired and that showed him the sister shared something of the notable qualities of the brother, she replied after a brief pause:

"Very well, we will speak of it again in two years' time when I am twenty-one. Perhaps I shall be different then, perhaps Theo will have softened towards me."

"Softened towards you, Miss Laura! You have, I hope, nothing to complain of, no harshness, no severity?"

"Oh, none, none at all!" said Laura with a smile, rising swiftly and resting her elbow on the mantelpiece. "Why, indeed, I have everything, every luxury, a maid, a companion, horses, a carriage, a life of idleness..."

She paused a moment, while the lawyer looked at her out of narrowed eyes, and then added:

"But I cannot get as much as two portraits removed from the dining-room wall if I wish."

"I don't understand," said Mr. Spryce, a little coldly. "It is a great pity that you quarrel with your brother. There are only the two of you left in the world, you are the last of the cadet branch of the Sarelle family."

"And to whom will all this money go after we are dead?" asked Laura.

"That is your brother's affair, to leave it to whom he wishes. But why suppose that the Sarelle family will be extinct with you? No doubt Sir Theodosius will marry."

"I don't think it's likely. I don't believe you do yourself, Mr. Spryce."

"Well, it may be that he is the type of the scholarly recluse, prefers a bachelor existence," replied the lawyer easily. "In that case you will be a very fortunate lady, Miss Laura, for to you and your husband and children will devolve all the Sarelle estates in due course. Now why," he added with a heavy attempt at humour, "confuse your pretty head about these dull affairs? Why not go and enjoy yourself choosing dresses and laces and fal-lals? You say that life is gloomy at Leppard Hall; well, here is a chance for a diversion. You might even go to a concert."

"I want no diversions of any kind," replied Laura, looking full at the lawyer. "I want to know what my life means, how I stand. I realize now that I am entirely in my brother's power. There is only that two hundred and fifty pounds a year that he can never take from me. Well, I suppose there is no means of altering this will, no appeal from it? Sir Thomas Wakeley could do nothing?" She mentioned the man who had been her guardian until her brother came of age.

The lawyer assured her that Sir Thomas had now nothing whatever to do with the matter, for since Sir Theodosius attained his majority he was his own master.

"And mine," added Laura.

She stood silent for a moment, trembling. The lawyer looked at her with a sharp curiosity under his natural placidity and professional dryness.

He remembered his late client, the Jamaican merchant, and the elder brother, Sir John of Leppard Hall, how they had spoken of the girl whom they had watched, tenderly and keenly, though she never knew much of that, both when she was at school and when she had lived with Mary Tolls. They had been rather afraid of her character, that was full, they declared, of vagaries, fancies, and sudden caprices and staunch and constant passions. In everything she had been a contrast to that model of self-control and rectitude, Sir Theodosius, who had passed through school and college amid a chorus of commendation, winning scholarships and prizes as easily as other youths picked apples off trees.

Laura Sarelle is wild, Laura Sarelle is difficult, Laura Sarelle requires watching! Mr. Spryce remembered all these warnings and he was glad that the girl's fortune was carefully tied up.

'She's the type,' he thought, looking at her beauty, which even to his dull, unappreciative eyes was fresh as a rose-leaf blown into his dreary room, 'to fall into the hands of some adventurer, romantic, impulsive. It's a good thing that Sir Theodosius has got such a level head and his hands on the money.'

He was rather afraid that Laura might make some kind of a scene, pleading with him to use his influence with her brother to enable her to escape from Leppard Hall. Instead, she changed the subject entirely with bewildering swiftness and asked him:

"Can you tell me something of the history of my ancestors? I want particularly to know about Laura Sarelle. It was her portrait I wished to have moved. It hangs in the dining-room; she's holding a bough of laurel."

The lawyer's face remained impassive. Laura thought that it had a locked look, but perhaps that was her fancy.

"Oh, the laurel! Why, that would be a play upon her name. They were fond of those conceits, were they not, in those days? You know, of course, my dear, what your name means—the breeze in the bushes, L'aura," he continued fatuously, "a pun used by Petrarch in his sonnet to his Laura."

"Yes, I know," replied the girl indifferently. "The sound of the wind in the bushes makes my name—the laurel bushes. There is a large one beneath my window."

"Well, she was a very pretty young woman, I believe," continued the lawyer with, forced geniality. "I don't know very much about her, do you?"

"No," said Laura, frowning. "She died young. I've seen a tablet to her in the church, of course. She's buried in the church, not in the mausoleum with the others. There's only her name and the date, and two sprigs of laurel. That's unusual, isn't it? Not even a line of Scripture, no epitaph. In those days they had such long Latin epitaphs."

The lawyer sat silent, she sensed that he was watchful, on the alert, and could not understand why. Was something being concealed from her?

"Do you know anything else about her?" she asked quickly.

"My dear young lady, you must remember I have the affairs of a great many families besides yours to attend to, and I can't remember all the details of all their histories."

"But our business must be very important," remarked Laura shrewdly. "As you say yourself, Mr. Spryce, a great deal of money was handled by your firm for us, and it was rather unusual that the main branch should die out with a young unmarried woman and for the cadet branch from another county to inherit. All these things, I should have thought, would have fixed the details in someone's mind, yet no one seems to remember. I have seen," she added irrelevantly, "her funeral hatchment in the church, lozenge-shaped, you know." Then, seeing that he was not to be drawn, she put her own cards on the table. "There was some question of an overdose of a sleeping-draught, an inquest, some scandal."

"I believe there was," said Mr. Spryce smoothly. "It was nothing of any consequence. Laura Sarelle died suddenly."

"How?" asked the girl. "She was very young. Not more, I think, than two- or three-and-twenty."

"I think from a fever, a low fever. They were prevalent then, you know, in the marshes."

Laura said quickly:

"My brother said from a consumption in the lungs."

"Well," agreed Mr. Spryce, "so it was, a consumption in the lungs, I had forgotten."

"Do you know who it was died of the overdose?" asked the girl again, still keenly.

"My dear child, I'm afraid I don't. As I told you, all these are family details. A friend, I think, staying in the house."

"Do you know who was the original of that other portrait? You remember it, you must have seen it when you've come to Leppard Hall, hanging there in the dining-room."

"I don't recall it. I have no knowledge of art."

Laura turned on him impatiently.

"Indeed, sir, you are trying to deceive and confuse me. You must recall it, it is a very handsome painting. It is supposed to be by the great Gainsborough. A young man in a blue coat that he holds up on his hip, thus," she thrust her own small hand in her waist and let the folds of her velvet jacket fall over it.

Mr. Spryce's professional calm was a little ruffled.

"Yes, indeed, I recall it now," he allowed himself to be forced into saying. "No, I don't know who it is. A handsome and a pleasant face, as I thought. I suppose," and Laura thought he had the air of a man feeling his way, "it would be some distant relation, or perhaps merely a friend."

"Then why is it hanging there, nameless, menacing, staring down at me when I have my meals? And why won't Sir Theodosius move it?"

"My dear girl, you shouldn't allow these fancies to run away with you. Sir Theodosius is quite right in refusing to give in to your whims."

Checked by this, Laura withdrew into her usual reserve. Nothing more was to be gained from this man on this subject. She tried another, though with a more indifferent air.

"You think I am fanciful. Is it my fancy that we are rather avoided in the neighbourhood? I know the house is very isolated, but there are people living not so far away who might call. They did, as a matter of duty, once or twice, but they don't come again. And when I go among them there seems an air of reserve. And yet you say yourself I'm a great heiress, greater than I knew. I'm not ill-looking, not boorish, I have had a town education."

"My dear girl, you must certainly not allow these ideas to get into your head," said the lawyer with feeling. "Of course you are not avoided. If people do not come often to Leppard Hall it's because Sir Theodosius does not encourage them. I can see that that, perhaps, is wrong. You should have more company of your own age. I shall speak to Sir Theodosius and see if it cannot be arranged for you to come to London to stay with a friend, or he might even take a town house for you."

"You don't know him!" Laura laughed shortly. "He would not permit anything of the kind. But that's not the point that I'm trying to bring before you now, sir. I'm saying that we seem isolated there, as if people avoided us, as if the house wasn't liked. Do you like the house yourself?" she asked suddenly.

"It always seemed to me a very handsome mansion," replied the lawyer.

But Laura laughed in his face.

"I don't think you're so very clever after all, Mr. Spryce. I don't mean that discourteously. But you can't conceal from me that you do hate the place, that you do think there's something strange about it. I ought never to have been taken there."

Mr. Spryce was silent for a moment—seemed, she thought, moved, disturbed, perhaps to a considerable degree, though he tried hard to preserve his usual equanimity. It was quite a while before he seemed to have made up his mind what to say, and the girl waited patiently. When Mr. Spryce spoke it was in impressive accents.

"I warmly recommend you, Miss Laura, to pay no attention to stories, gossip, or superstition. You were given the name you bear by your father because it is a name that has always been honoured in your family. You will see it on many of the tablets in the mausoleum."

"Yes, on graves," said Laura quickly, "in the mausoleum, women of my family who died unmarried."

Mr. Spryce waved this aside.

"If you ever do hear any tales or gossip, and there's no old family without them, you must disregard them all. You must understand it was your father's wish that you and your brother should live at Leppard Hall and live down, as it were, and disperse any"—he hesitated—"any rumours or unpleasant tales, shall we say, that may have gathered round the mansion that has stood empty so long."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I never said anything about unpleasant tales or rumours. I haven't heard anything about a ghost. I asked you about a portrait, about my namesake, and why it was that the neighbours seemed to stay away willingly from Leppard Hall."

But she could get nothing more out of Mr. Spryce except:

"It is really all fancy, my dear young lady. I think this lonely country life is not good for your nervousness. I shall write to Sir Theodosius about it."

"It will do no good," said Laura, with a curling of the lip.

She had no more to say, she was suddenly silent as she had suddenly been talkative. She went to the grim bedroom that Mrs. Spryce had prepared for her, where everything was heavy, clean and old-fashioned.

And when Mrs. Sylk returned, flushed with the pleasure of her expedition among the shops, Laura was lying on the bed, her head pressed into the pillow, her hands clasped behind her dark curls.

As Mrs. Sylk entered, the girl said, with an air of triumph and in a low voice:

"They are concealing something from me, Mrs. Sylk. We must find out what it is, you and I."

She said no more on this subject, but her words alarmed Mrs. Sylk considerably. She took it upon herself to give the girl a sleeping-draught that she always carried with her in case of necessity. These tablets had been prescribed for Laura some months ago when she had had a sharp attack of illness at Leppard Hall followed by insomnia. Dr. Selby of Warwick had given these pills in charge of Mrs. Sylk, telling her not to use them until they were absolutely needed.

She gave them to Laura now in a glass of milk, but did not say she had mixed them with the drink because a sleeping-draught was one of the ingredients of Laura's fanciful tale, the overdose of a sleeping-draught given by her namesake to some young cousin.

'Dear me, sixty or seventy years ago, what does it matter now,' thought poor Mrs. Sylk, whose little pleasure had been spoiled by Laura's difficult mood.

She went to her own room when the girl was finally in her unnatural sleep, much depressed, dreading the return to Leppard Hall, and wishing she could find another employment.

* * *

On the return journey to Rugby Laura was very talkative in a fashion that startled and rather shocked Mrs. Sylk. The girl seemed anxious to tell her own affairs to Mr. Delaunay, who, Mrs. Sylk considered, was hardly, although an old friend of the family, a fit recipient for the girl's confidence. Indeed, the anxious lady pondered, was Lucius Delaunay an old friend of the family? Nay, he was but a college friend of Sir Theodosius, and though she thought it was quite proper that Laura should be friendly and even familiar with him, she did not understand why the girl was leaning forward in this excited way from her corner in the carriage reciting her conversation with Mr. Spryce.

But Laura had been strange during the whole of the London visit; even when Mrs. Sylk had at last succeeded in getting her to the dressmaker's and the large shops where she had chosen patterns and materials and been fitted with muslins and silk gowns for summer wear she had seemed indifferent to her surroundings, she who was usually so attracted by all manner of finery, and had talked vaguely of the future, and yet with what Mrs. Sylk called to herself a hectic look and accent, as if she were slightly touched with fever.

Was it possible, Mrs. Sylk wondered anxiously, that the girl was going to have one of her difficult fits or attacks and that when she reached Leppard Hall she would at once have to be put to bed while Dr. Selby would have to be fetched from Warwick?

But now Laura seemed in good enough health. It was her mind and her spirit only that were affected. She told Lucius Delaunay, in what affected to be a light tone, how she had been rebuked by Mr. Spryce.

"There is no hope for me, Lucius, none at all. I am to remain at Leppard Hall until I am one-and-twenty. And even then—why, I am entirely in the power of Theodosius. Did you know that?"

Forced to answer this abrupt and almost imperative question, the young man replied, with his usual serene good-nature:

"Miss Laura, I have never discussed your affairs with Theo. Why should I? I suppose it is quite a natural thing for him to be your guardian."

"Do you think it natural, Lucius? I am entirely in his power. If I disobey him, if, for instance, I marry somebody of whom he does not approve, I am to have but the two hundred and fifty a year that is now my pocket-money."

Mr. Delaunay evaded a direct answer to this complaint. He remarked that two hundred and fifty pounds a year was handsome pocket money for any young lady.

"But I don't get it," said Laura, frankly. "Theodosius keeps it to pay for my clothes. That will make you think," she added quickly, "that I must be very well dressed, too well dressed for Leppard Hall. But there are other expenses that are taken out of it also," she added, with sudden reticence, for she did not, in front of Mrs. Sylk, want to say that her chaperon's salary was paid out of her allowance.

What she did say was:

"My brother is extremely mean, Lucius; have you noticed that? He lives magnificently, but is very close with every halfpenny that is spent."

"That is more good management than meanness," parried Mr. Delaunay.

He looked out of the window at the landscape that was streaming past in lines of grey, green and blue, slightly fretted by this feminine, querulous complaint.

Mrs. Sylk felt uneasy, she did not know how to turn the conversation or how to check Laura. She felt that the whole thing was very improper. So she put in, rather feebly:

"I don't think Sir Theodosius will be pleased that you spoke so intimately to Mr. Spryce. He probably intended to tell you all these matters when you were twenty-one years of age, my dear."

"I had every right to know," replied Laura in a brooding tone, "and I am glad I do know. But think, Lucius, two more years of imprisonment!"

"I think you talk extravagantly, Miss Laura," said the young man with an effort, turning in his place; "you can hardly call a residence in your brother's Hall imprisonment."

"It is to me. My spirit's imprisoned. Don't you understand, or do you, too, think that I am fanciful, perhaps half-witted? But I'm sure you don't, Lucius. I am sure you understand really but you won't commit yourself." Then going off again at random, as was her custom when excited, she asked: "Could you ask Theodosius about those portraits? Perhaps for you he will have them moved."

"Indeed, I have no influence with Theo, Laura," replied Mr. Delaunay with a faint smile. "Though I am fond of him, of course, and I think he's fond of me."

"He values your services," remarked Laura shrewdly. "He knows that he wouldn't get anyone else very easily to undertake your double duties of secretary and steward. But you are a man and you have, I suppose, some sort of character. Can't you persuade him to take those two pictures away?"

"I'll ask him, Miss Laura."

"Well, pray do, for my sake. And there's another thing that you might do for me. You might find out the history of that woman, Laura Sarelle."

This direct appeal was too much for Mrs. Sylk's sense of decorum. She put her grey-gloved hand on Laura's arm and said:

"My dear, you should not make those direct appeals. You put a gentleman in a most embarrassing position when a lady thus openly asks a favour."

Laura laughed. She, too, looked out of the window, turning away from Lucius Delaunay. How foolish they all were, even her beloved; he was stupid, or reserved, to a maddening degree. How was it possible they could not read her, that they could not understand she wanted her freedom and her money that she might go away with him far from this hateful countryside, far from the loathsome house? She changed her tactics once again after a pause, during which all three sat in uncomfortable silence, and looking around said:

"No doubt you think I am very indiscreet. You feel it is the duty of women to suffer in silence. That is what we are bred and trained for, is it not, Mrs. Sylk? But I thought I had a right at least to know about my destiny. It is strange to think, is it not, how one's parents can dispose of one, of one's whole life, just by writing directions down on a scroll of paper? You see, I have discovered Theo is richer than we thought he was. There was a good deal of money made from the sale of that Jamaica estate, though Theo always told me that we had heavy losses there.

"There was my mother's dowry, too, that should have been reserved for me. But no, I am to have nothing. And all because while I was a schoolgirl I was supposed to be wild and fanciful."

At the end of this long speech she moved with the rustle of her stiff puce-coloured silk skirt and seated herself opposite Mr. Delaunay in the further corner of the carriage.

"Don't you think it's unfair? I appeal direct to you, whether Mrs. Sylk thinks it decorous or not."

He looked at her with a smile both in his eyes and on his lips. She was very finely dressed for her position. It was a strange caprice of the otherwise stern and straightforward Sir Theodosius that he liked to surround himself with so much splendour, and that Laura, who was denied even the most common diversions of her age, was always expected to go most richly dressed. She wore now a hat with dark purple feathers and a little jacket of dark green velvet laced with golden ribbons, a dress that was not only magnificent but had its touch of fantasy even as the girl who wore it. Indeed, Laura Sarelle could not put anything on without twisting or turning it to suit her own individuality.

"I'll speak to Theo, Laura," was all he said, but in his mind he was revolving several problems, coming abruptly to a decision about the future that he had long debated with himself.

* * *

Being a young man of tolerable determination and having that strength which those of a solitary and reserved character often possess in secret, Lucius Delaunay put this resolve into practice soon after the journey from London, and coming upon Sir Theodosius one evening in his library, where the baronet had called him to help him with a difficult passage in his Greek translation, he said:

"Theo, I am resolved to leave Leppard Hall. Not so soon as to inconvenience you, but as soon as may be."

He spoke pleasantly, almost affectionately, and put his fine hand on the thin shoulder of the friend whom he addressed. But Sir Theodosius turned on him a look that was not only startled but full of anger and even, the other young man thought, of hatred.

"You would leave me! But you have never hinted at such a thing! Lucius, it is impossible!"

The words were harshly and even tyrannically spoken, but the other answered mildly:

"We never had more than a business agreement, did we, Theo? I am of no more use to you here than any other would be. Indeed, the work should be divided, you should have a secretary and a steward."

"I am quite satisfied," replied Sir Theodosius, with a touch of violence. "I have arranged my time very pleasantly to myself. You look after the estate excellently, with my supervision," he added haughtily. "I have the kind of life that I most desire. Such time as you can give to our studies here is sufficient for me."

"I don't think that I shall be able to give so much time in future," replied the other, still gently but firmly and with his clear bright eyes slightly narrowed as he gazed at his friend. "When we were at college together I was able to be of some help to you. We had the same tastes and I suppose that made us friends, but there is a good deal that we have not got in common, Theo."

"Why are you bringing all this up now?" replied the baronet, who seemed much moved.

He rose from the smoothly padded leather chair after making an angry gesture with his hands, which pushed the manuscripts on his desk aside.

"You know that I am deeply engaged in this work. It will be another year before I've finished it. Cannot you," he added eagerly and impulsively, "remain until then?"

"I don't think I can, Theo. A relative of mine has offered me work in Ireland. Not so well paid as this, nor, I dare say, so interesting, but I think I should go."

"Why?" demanded Sir Theodosius. "I never thought that you were a capricious man, Lucius. I insist on a good reason for this sudden, this unaccountable resolution."

"It is not sudden. I have been debating it for some time. The days slip by very easily in a place like this. I have been here as long as you have—two years. During that time I have accomplished nothing—in the forwarding of my own life, I mean. You are too inclined to be solitary; this is rather an unnatural sort of existence."

"You mean it's dull?" asked the baronet; then answered himself immediately: "It will be more dull in Ireland."

"I don't know. My relative's estate is near Dublin. I have many friends there. I might not stay there long, either. I told you, if you remember, Theodosius, when I came first to Leppard Hall that I accepted the appointment only while I was considering what the future would be. You see," he added with a pleasant smile, "our positions were much the same, save that you had inherited a large fortune. We were both cadets of noble houses, we were both orphans. I felt drawn to you, and you, I think, to me."

"Well, what has come between us?" demanded Sir Theodosius. "Have I ever expressed displeasure? Do you wish your salary raised? I thought it was sufficient for your expenses. You live here more as my friend than my steward."

A faint colour touched the other young man's face:

"I have complained about nothing," he said. "What I do is on my own initiative. I shall leave in a month's time, I think. Nothing you say or do, Theo, will alter my resolution. I believe that I have been here too long."

Theodosius paced up and down the room; he was obviously exasperated, baffled and angry. Lucius Delaunay was sorry for him, but not moved to alter his determination. At last Sir Theodosius said:

"You've not been infected by any of this nonsense that Laura talks, about disliking the place? The girl's hysterical; what she says is enough to unnerve anyone. I think Mrs. Sylk encourages her too. I have spoken most sternly to the servants. This kind of feminine excitement spreads like wildfire."

"I have seen very little of either Miss Laura or Mrs. Sylk," replied the young steward with a tranquil look, "nor are they likely to affect me. But since you have brought up your sister's name, I shall venture to give you some advice, though I am quite sure it will be taken ill."

"Then why give it?" demanded the baronet sternly.

"Because sometimes even though advice is resented it lingers in the mind. Sometimes even the most obstinate will be impressed, and I want to impress you with the fact that it is not fair to keep Laura here. You may call her hysterical, excitable, fantastic, what you will, but remember that this girl is entirely in your power and that it may have a very ill effect on her to remain in a place she detests."

"She would detest any place," replied Sir Theodosius grimly, "where she was not allowed to have her own will. She is incurably frivolous, she wishes for nothing but excitement and pleasure."

"Well, that's natural enough," put in Lucius Delaunay. "Give her a little of it and she will cease to yearn so much after it. Let her stay in London; you must have friends, even connections, there."

"I think it's presumptuous in you to give me this advice," interrupted the baronet, "especially after you have told me in such an unkind manner that you are leaving me. I know how to deal with Laura."

"I do not think you do," replied Lucius coolly. "I think that you are laying up trouble for yourself there. As I told you, I have seen very little of the girl, and I am certainly not in her confidence, but I'm older than you, Theo, and have had more experience, and I do warn you that you should get other advice than mine about her. Whenever Dr. Selby comes to see you he advises you that she should have a change."

"And I say," replied Sir Theodosius violently, pausing by the handsome desk, "that she shall remain here, in my house, the house of my fathers, in her rightful place."

"Close to the graves of the other women who bear her name," said Lucius, his eyes still further narrowed, "constantly near that portrait which she so much dislikes? There's one thing I should like to ask you also, Theo: there's some mystery about that other Laura Sarelle. You make it worse by trying to keep it secret."

"Have you been trying to find out about it?" demanded the baronet, whose face now had an ugly, livid tinge.

"You know me better than that. Your intention is to insult, provoke me, not to discover the truth," replied Lucius Delaunay, still coolly. "I have made no inquiries about your family or the history of Leppard Hall in the neighbourhood. I think, too, Theo, that you hold your tenants down with so stern a hand that they would all be dumb if anyone did question them. But I think there was, or is, some mystery about that girl, and I think it's cruel to bring Laura, her namesake, here, to live, as it were, in the shadow of it. And though you cannot accuse me of being a fanciful, sick-tempered girl, I too think that the Hall is—well, gloomy. And sometimes, when I hear Miss Laura say that it ought to be destroyed, I am inclined to echo her opinion."

Sir Theodosius seemed violently struck by these words. He sat down in the chair, put his elbow on the table and dropped his face in his hands. But there was no sign of relenting in his pose or his face. He mumbled to himself and the words seemed vindictive.

The steward was somewhat surprised at this emotion on the part of his employer. He knew that what he had said himself was reasonable, and Sir Theodosius had always been towards him, if neither affectionate nor kind, at least equable and just. He therefore approached him and said with a note of regret:

"I am sorry to have vexed you, indeed I am. You'll easily find someone else to take my place. If you don't like my advice about Laura, well, forget it. It will be given you before long by someone else. It is true that the girl may grow out of her fancies—"

The sentence was broken off, for the door was opened abruptly and for a second both men, for Sir Theodosius had raised his head quickly at the interruption, thought that they beheld a ghost. For a tall, pale young woman stood in the doorway dressed in a gown of rubbed primrose silk with the palest of blue ribbons at the bosom, her hair powdered, her dark eyes shining with excitement and in her hand a spray of dark laurel.

She was the exact likeness of the portrait in the dining-room, save that the faint tint of the oil-painting here glowed with life in the warm though pale colourings of the girl, and the costume was bright and real in the stiff sparkle of the silk, in the glint of the bows of cracked ribbon.

"Laura!" cried Sir Theodosius at length. He set his lips and seemed unable to rise from the chair.

Lucius Delaunay had been startled too; though not a superstitious man, he had for more than a second believed that he saw a supernatural vision.

"Why, Laura, dressed up like the portrait! What a strange masquerade!" he remarked slowly, thoughtfully.

"I found the dress in the attic," smiled Laura, coming softly into the room and closing the door. "It fits me to perfection. She must have been like me after all. You see, I have powdered my hair, that is what she has on in the picture—powder—her hair, I expect, was as dark as mine, don't you see? It took me a long time to put it on. Mrs. Sylk found some old pomade, and then some fine sifted flour."

"You shouldn't have done this," exclaimed Sir Theodosius violently, rising. "What prank will you be up to next, Laura! You pretend to dislike the portrait, and then you dress yourself up in a likeness of it. Where did you find those clothes?"

"I told you, in the great bedchamber." Laura moved across the study floor, and the full dress that was arranged on hoops billowed about her. "There are several others there, too. And old writings, but they're so faded and cramped I can't decipher them. All manner of things in a haircord trunk."

"You had no business to be in that room," cried Sir Theodosius. "Who gave you the key?"

"I shan't tell you. I suppose I am the mistress of the house if there is one, and I shall get the keys if I wish. What harm is there in it? See, I picked this spray of laurel. That symbolizes my name and hers, doesn't it?"

Seeing that Theodosius was still not master of himself, Lucius Delaunay easily took the situation in hand.

"Well, Laura," he said, "now that you have found that charming gown and made yourself such a beautiful replica of the picture you will cease, perhaps, to dislike it?"

"Yes, I think I shall," smiled the girl. "I think I'm glad that, after all, I didn't have it taken away. There are other things of hers up there too, and I dare say that after a while I shall feel that I am in the past again and that I am the other Laura Sarelle. But I hope that I shan't die when she did, for that means that I should have no more than five years or so to live."

Theodosius, who seemed to have gathered his strength and courage but with difficulty, as if he had received a great shock, now rose and addressed his sister in the sternest tones:

"Laura, you will go upstairs immediately and you will take off all that mummery. You will bid one of the maids take it upstairs and lock it away in the trunks. You will return the keys, if they are still in your possession, to the housekeeper. You will never go in for this kind of masquerade again, you will never indulge your foolishness so wantonly again. It is the present and the future that you have to live in, not the past."

Laura seemed intimidated by her brother's harshness. She shrank away with a movement that brought her nearer to the side of Lucius Delaunay.

"You never will allow that anything I do is right, will you!" she protested, in a low tone. "I'm not to have any diversion at all—"

"This is an old subject," answered Sir Theodosius nervously, controlling himself with difficulty. "You know that there are manifold diversions to your hand if you would but use them. You are ill-educated, you have not many accomplishments—"

"I am out of the schoolroom," retorted Laura, "and don't intend to pore over schoolbooks."

Sir Theodosius made a gesture with his hand as if he gave up the subject as hopeless.

"There was an invitation from the Frobishers in Warwick the other day to a ball. You refused it—"

"They're stiff, rustical people. I don't like them," said Laura. She twirled the sprig of half-opened laurel leaves in her hand. "I gave you a shock when I came in just now, didn't I!" she added maliciously. "You really thought I was a ghost. And you, too, Lucius."

"Why, for a moment," he agreed good-naturedly, "so I did. I think you look charming in the costume, Miss Laura. Theo, do not be angry with her, it is but a natural play for a young lady to think of."

"For an idle girl to think of!" replied Theodosius vehemently. "It vexes me to the heart, Laura, that you should go in for these tricks when, as I say, there is so much that you could do. There are the villagers, and there are small children and the aged who would be glad of your help. The vicar's wife, too—"

Laura interrupted him with a wave of her hand.

"This is very dull for Lucius and I am sure he doesn't wish to hear us disputing. I don't intend to take the frock off," she added mischievously. "I feel that I am the other Laura Sarelle. I shall close my eyes and imagine what she was like and what she did. Perhaps her whole history will come back to me in a kind of trance, or dream."

Theodosius seized her wrist sternly, drew her close to him with a force that surprised both the girl and Lucius Delaunay, who stood alert with lips close together, as if ready to protect the sister from the brother. Sir Theodosius spoke quietly, though with intense force.

"You heard what I said just now, Laura! Go upstairs at once, take off all that mummery and try to live a sane and sober life. If you do not do so I shall have you confined to your room."

Lucius, considering this painful scene, saw that the girl was overawed but not frightened. Physically she submitted, spiritually she defied her master. Her eyes, that looked unnaturally dark beneath the powdered hair, flashed with a secret fury.

She said, with a thin smile:

"Very well, very well. I will do as you tell me, dear Theo, of course. You shall not be plagued with my nonsense again."

With that he let go of her wrist, and glanced down at the marks his fingers had made on her pale flesh. She looked lovely in the costume of the last century, no question about that. Her slender figure was well suited by the long-pointed tight bodice, by the low corsage that showed more of her delicate bosom than Lucius Delaunay had ever beheld before; the dressing of the hair away from the face was becoming too and set off in all their strong purity her fine features. She had put some rouge on her cheeks and lips that accentuated her naturally brilliant complexion, that had the colour and purity of a blush rose. The billowing skirts were charming too, so were the little bands of velvet she had fastened at her wrists...

Lucius thought that he had never seen her look so fair. He wondered if Theo recognized that his sister was beautiful and that in her youth was an appeal and a power that men would do well to recognize. Yet, looking at the girl, who seemed indeed so much the disputed portrait come to life, Mr. Delaunay felt a certain spiritual nausea, a sickness that after a while became almost physical. Something was wrong, he did not know what, in that exquisite and frail femininity, holding the laurel bough; he seemed to see the symbol of something that was doomed and evil. He had an impression that this was really the other Laura Sarelle, that she had returned to earth either to accomplish some desperate purpose or to avenge some desperate wrong.

He was angry with himself for allowing such fancies to touch him, but the likeness was very strong and the costume was actually the dress worn by the original of the picture; he broke up the ugly interview by taking Laura's hand and drawing her to the door that he opened for her and leading her into the corridor.

Then he returned to Theo and said firmly:

"This confirms my decision. I leave your employment at once. Frankly, I do not care for your treatment of Laura. She may be foolish, but you are unduly harsh."

Somewhat to his surprise, for he, had expected a violent defiance, Theodosius, who had again sunk into the chair and was passing his handkerchief over his forehead, damp with sweat, replied in low tones:

"You would not say that if you knew the whole story. You don't understand with what I am confronted."

"Then why not tell me?" asked Lucius eagerly. "I might be able to help you. As somebody who is outside all this, surely I could offer some assistance? What is it, some family legend, haunting, ghosts?"

"Do you think," replied Sir Theodosius, stern again, "that I should be affected by nonsense of that kind?"

"No, but perhaps Laura is—"

"She doesn't know anything about it," replied the baronet, still ghastly livid.

"No, maybe she doesn't know anything about it, but, she may sense or feel something. It might be in the atmosphere of the house, you know she's always loathed it—can't you tell me if anything did take place here? If that other Laura Sarelle was connected with anything that was horrible?"

"Why do you use the word 'horrible'? You know that old story. It's been repeated again and again, you must be weary of it."

"I don't know why I did use the word," replied Lucius Delaunay thoughtfully. "It came to me just now, when I saw Laura. She looked so charming, yet I just had that impression of something horrible."

"Then you certainly are becoming foolish too," replied the baronet sternly. "All these foolish, girlish, sick fancies. Perhaps it would be as well if you went, Lucius. I see that we are not likely to be able to work together."

"Not unless you alter your attitude towards Laura, Theo. It is disagreeable to stand by and see what one disapproves of and to be in the position of the paid servant to a man whose actions you dislike."

"So you presume to judge me!" exclaimed Theodosius, who was in an increased state of violent agitation. "But I tell you nothing can move me. Laura stays at Leppard Hall, and so do I. I was brought up with this one object—that I should rule here and Laura should stay with me until she made a suitable marriage."

"What," interrupted Lucius Delaunay, "do you consider, Theo, a suitable marriage for Laura? Don't you think that a man who could love her and understand her and take care of her would be a suitable husband?"

"You speak very romantically," sneered the baronet. "I consider a suitable marriage one that would increase the prestige of our family, that would give her an establishment equal to mine."

"And yet," replied Lucius curiously, "you have enough money, Theo, to set your sister up handsomely, to give her a fine dowry."

"It is the provision of my father's will that I dower her," said the baronet. "I might add to it, I am a wealthy man. No doubt you know that, Lucius?"

"Yes, I know, but it's never concerned me much. So Laura is to remain here until someone comes along sufficiently rich and noble to please you, to raise the prestige of the Sarelle family?"

"You're sneering at me, Lucius, I know."

"I never sneer, Theo, I hope. Perhaps there was some irony in my words. I think that you're going to sacrifice that girl for your own ambitions. And they're such strange ambitions, too. You live the life of a recluse here. Why don't you go abroad into the world and find a wife for yourself and found your own family?—and take Laura with you and let her meet people of her own station?"

"When Laura is twenty-one, steps will be taken to present her to London Society. And then no doubt there will be sufficient pretenders to her hand."

"No doubt, when the amount of her dowry is made known. But will she find among those pretenders someone whom she can really trust and love?"

Sir Theodosius returned to his papers, which he now put into order with quick, neat, nervous movements.

"So you wish to leave Leppard Hall at the end of the month?" he said coldly.

"Yes, Theo. I've given you my reasons as best I can. All my papers and accounts are in order. As for the translations—as I said before, you pass me in scholarship. I can't help you much there."

And as if he wished to say no more, the young man, with a brief salutation, left the room. He was at once relieved and disappointed, at having put his resolution into action. He would be very glad to be away from Leppard Hall and even from Theo, whose company he had found for several months now a burden. He had first felt affection towards the sickly lad whose tastes were so much like his own, whose position was also like his own, in so far that he was orphaned and solitary. But these warm springs of feeling had been dried up by the constant coldness of the baronet, who was certainly as affable towards him as his nature allowed, but who had never admitted him to a close intimacy and who had made use of him in every direction without offering any return.

Lucius Delaunay was too generous-hearted to resent this behaviour on his own account, but he much disliked Theodosius' attitude towards his tenants and most of all towards his sister.

Why, then, did he slightly regret his resolution to leave Leppard Hall? He hardly knew himself; it was probably because of the fact that the girl must be left behind to the cold tyranny in this unnatural life.

He walked through the park; a fine rain was falling and all the landscape was blurred in a pale, azure mist. He turned towards the river, since he had a brief leisure, to take the path that was bordered by wild mint, thyme, cresses and flags, and he was startled to see Laura ahead of him. And again he had the second's chilly feeling that it was a ghost he saw, for she still wore the fantastic, hooped yellow dress, but she was moving with a hurrying step towards the distant spire and the blot of grey that was the church and the graves that, huddled and leaning, overhung the sedgy banks of the Avon.

He hastened after her, and she looked at him with a glad surprise that he was relieved to see, as it proved her humanity.

"Why, Miss Laura, you must not come abroad like this! That ancient gown is very thin, I'll swear. You should have a cloak, it's raining."

"Yes, see how the drops stay on my powdered curls." She pulled one of these over her shoulder. "You see the pomade will not allow them to penetrate my hair. I don't know when I shall ever be able to brush this stuff out, but I like it. Don't you?"

"Yes, Miss Laura. As I told you, I think you look lovely indeed."

"More lovely than the portrait?" she questioned him. "I shall have to find out about her now, shan't I?" She put her hand in his and laughed. "You see what courage this disguise gives me. I can say things now that I could not have said in the ordinary way. Oh, Lucius, you protected me, didn't you, just now when Theodosius was so unkind?"

"I hope I didn't need to protect you, Laura."

"But you were on my side. You were there. If he'd threatened me, or struck me, you would have interfered."

"Theo would never have done that," replied Lucius, frowning. "You mustn't think such things, Laura." But in his own heart he was not too sure. There had been a dark violence under the young baronet's usually cold demeanour that had surprised and shocked him at the time. "But you'd best not play tricks. You'd best run home and take those clothes off and try to please your brother. The two years will soon pass and then—he's promised, you know—you are to go to London and have as much liberty as any young lady."

"Now you're treating me as a child," she said. She made a movement as if she brushed his words aside. "And you don't mean what you say. How strange that we should be walking together like this! You, in your riding-clothes, might be from the eighteenth century too. You should have powdered hair, or your hair long and tied in a ribbon. Like the other portrait. But you don't resemble that, I think."

She looked at him so anxiously that he became uneasy.

"Laura, you must not give so much importance to these fancies. I think those clothes, and everything else you found in the trunk, should be burnt or put aside. You mustn't think so much of this other girl. After all, she was no near connection of yours, the whole thing is a mere accident."

"A mere accident that I've come here, bearing her name! Well, I suppose so. I don't care!" She sighed. "Look! The clouds are passing!"

He glanced upwards where the faint wreaths of mist were sailing away over a sky of the most delicate blue.

"How lush the meadows are! When I come along to the river I don't dislike the place so much. Can you smell the thyme and mint as we walk along and crush it beneath our feet? I should like to have a boat here, then we might go together."

"Laura," he checked her suddenly, "we shall not go together anywhere much longer. I'm going away."

He felt the shock go through her, for she was still holding his hand. Then it seemed as if she were about to fall, and his arm went round her shoulders' to steady her.

"Laura! Dear child! Don't mind! I know that you can't afford to miss friends, but indeed I must go away. And there will be other people, I'll speak to other people. They must come and take you out—from that house you dislike."

Again she brushed aside his words, raising her hand and letting it fall.

"Lucius! You can't go away! You must remain! Do you understand?"

He took his arm from her shoulder and they stood side by side on the bank of the river. The flags with their gold-and-purple-striped flowers were in front of them and the river was moving with a slow sullen speed under the short alders and willows that dipped and trailed their long grey leaves in the sluggish water.

"You can't go away," she said, as if she stated a fact. "You can't go away, Lucius."

"My dear, I must. If I stayed I might become too fond of you."

"But I am too fond of you already. I tried very hard to conceal that, yet somehow I always hoped that you knew it. Now my plans are awry I must tell you."

"I mustn't listen to that, Laura," he interrupted with great tenderness, taking her hands, "nor consider it seriously. You are so young and inexperienced, dear, just a fanciful child. And I am the only person anywhere near your own age or station about here. Your liking is sure to have fallen on me. It doesn't mean what you suppose, Laura. You mustn't think of it again."

"You are being cruel, and even wicked," she responded, and there was a hint of her brother's sternness in her manner, "to put me aside so, when you know what I say is true. When you know that I—I'm not going to say it here...And this is not perhaps the place and the time. But you can't go away, Lucius."

"I must. Now, more than ever, I must. Say no more, but come back with me towards the house. Remember that the whole world is before you, and a wide choice of suitors, and that I am but a penniless man."

Laura laughed wildly.

"Go back to the house by yourself!" she cried, and ran from him along the flag-bordered river path.

Lucius felt obliged to follow the hurrying figure in the fading primrose silk, although it inspired him with a faint, almost supernatural horror so that he would, could he have followed his own, as he felt, cowardly instincts, have turned and left her in the mist to which she seemed to belong.

It was not long before he overtook Laura, who had paused, panting, where the bank was slightly steeper and was leaning against one of the bent willows. They had come much further than he had first supposed and were now not far from the churchyard.

She looked at him in the strangest way, her expression, he thought, was one of surprise and reproach touched still by wildness.

"I hope that you will not remember anything I said, Lucius. I speak, as you know, in a capricious fashion."

"I shall never remember anything of you but what is full of respect," he replied. He was not usually at a loss for words, but now he scarcely knew what to say or even how to be sure of his own emotions.

She gathered her breath and walked on ahead of him; she seemed resolute to reach the tall church and lichen-covered gravestones.

"Laura," he said, keeping beside her with difficulty, for she had broken into a run again and he did not wish to have an appearance of undue haste, lest they should be observed and he should be supposed to be pursuing her. And strange she looked, as he well realized, in her gown of the last century and her long powdered hair. "Laura, nothing of this has anything to do with you. Why are you hurrying towards those graves?"

"The mausoleum," she replied, "is even more melancholy, but let us not talk of that. You may leave me, Lucius, I do not desire your escort. I think I shall do what Theodosius so often bids me do—pay a duty call on the vicar's wife and ask her if there are any sick or poor in the parish whom I may visit with my basket of jellies and fruits."

He knew that she spoke in mockery, but she seemed to him to have quite regained her control, and that he was even inclined, though with a flat sense of disappointment, to believe her when she said she had meant nothing of what she had said in the earlier part of their conversation.

So he raised his beaver hat and turned and left her abruptly, admitting that both the girl and the moment had defeated him.

He had work to do, work for Theodosius, and for the first time since he had been in the young baronet's employment that thought galled. Repairs were needed to the wheel of the old stone mill, which always seemed, even to sunny-tempered Lucius Delaunay, a gloomy place. But Theodosius did not easily pay for his repairs to his property, and it was the business of the steward to see that all expenditure was well laid out. The thought of this task that he had to do for the brother hung strangely in his mind as he turned and watched the primrose-clad figure of the sister stealing towards the churchyard.

Well, no doubt he had spoken more truly than he had thought at the time when he had said that she was but an undisciplined girl and her fancies should be taken no notice of. She led an idle and perhaps a pampered life. He must harden himself against her, must not allow himself to feel too sympathetic and sensitive towards one who, after all, had so little to complain of. Her dislike of Leppard Hall must be but a petulant whim and what she had said to him but a whim too. Why, she was too young to know her own mind. The whole world was before her and in a year or two she would have changed entirely.

So he made his way to the mill that stood on a bend of the river about half a mile from the Hall in the opposite direction from the church. It was an ancient building, and he noted again the date 1605 cut above the doorway. The sound of the mill wheel was both soothing and melancholy in the ears of Lucius Delaunay. He watched it for a moment as it went round and round, the long weeds dangling dark and wet from the slats, the water racing and curling in brown foam in the mill-pool.

Then he looked up and down the river. So impressive had been his last interview with Laura Sarelle that he believed he would never be able to see the banks of the Avon without seeing, too, her figure in the pale silk gown hastening along the sedgy path.

What she had said about the landscape was true enough; it was melancholy, so flat, so faint in hues, so desolate. There was not a human being in sight and the constant mist from the river and the water-meadows seemed to enclose the landscape more surely than mountains.

Leppard Hall, too, the mill, the mausoleum, the church and the home farm, it was true that they were all grey and sombre in outline and in hue.

He tried to dismiss these thoughts, foolish as they seemed to him, from his mind; he tried to persuade himself that it was not because of the general isolation and melancholy of the place that he was leaving it. He felt like a man who was making an effort to throw off a spell, to get to his own kind, his own kin and friends in a country where there would be more company, more active work for him to do. He had been as if drugged by this long routine, a certain sloth had fallen upon him. It was true that he had plenty to do, both on the estate and in the study of Theodosius, yet the days Were so monotonous, each so like the other, that he felt that his faculties were becoming numbed.

* * *

After his business talk with Mr. Tampion, the miller, it occurred to Lucius Delaunay to ask him about the history of the Sarelles, a thing that he had never done since he had been in the employment of Sir Theodosius—first, out of indifference, then, during the last few months, out of delicacy; for since Laura had begun to protest about the portrait hanging in the dining-room of Leppard Hall and to make her nervous inquiries about the history of the original, since he had seen the dislike of Theodosius to touch upon this subject, the steward had felt that it was merely good manners to refrain from endeavouring to satisfy any curiosity he might himself have on this matter.

But so powerful had been the impression made on him that afternoon by his talk with Laura Sarelle, so shaken was he still inwardly by the emotion she had roused in him, that he put such fine considerations aside and asked the man bluntly (for he knew that his family had been long at the mill, since the days of Elizabeth, he believed) what was the story of the last heiress of the main branch of the family.

"There's something, I believe, and it's not easy to come at," he added.

The miller looked straight at him and made a surprising answer:

"We all hold our leases, sir, on condition we don't speak about that."

"Surely you have nothing so fantastic in writing?" demanded Lucius Delaunay.

"No, sir." The man seemed uneasy yet prepared to stand his ground stoutly. "But it was well understood in the time of Sir John. My father had his lease renewed by him, sir, but we were not to make any remarks or cause any gossip or scandal about what had happened at Leppard Hall. For it's a long time ago, sir, and nobody's concern now."

"No, and certainly not mine. If you're rebuking me, you're certainly in the right," said Mr. Delaunay. "But I'll tell you what made me ask you. Miss Laura is a very sensitive and nervous young lady, she's taken a great dislike to the Hall. I'm not telling you a secret, for I know she informs everyone of it. You must have heard it."

"Yes, she speaks freely in front of the servants, sir," agreed Mr. Tampion rather shortly, "and I've heard of it. She came down here herself one day and went all over the old mill and asked me a number of questions."

"And you answered her, I suppose, as cautiously as you're answering me now. Well, I'll not press the matter. But I thought perhaps that if I knew something I might be able to help her. She is, in a way, haunted," he added. "And if one knew the truth one might help to lay the ghost."

"To know the truth wouldn't help you in that task, sir," replied the miller grimly. "I can assure you that it's a story best forgotten. It's a long time ago," he repeated, "and it's such a dark business and one that no one knows the truth about, even now."

"There was an inquest, wasn't there?" said Mr. Delaunay, who was by no means prepared to relinquish this opportunity of finding out something about the dead Laura Sarelle. "This young woman—the heiress to the whole estate, wasn't she?—died soon after?"

"You may leave it at that, sir."

Lucius was inclined to laugh at this deep reserve.

"I understand the bottom of the whole business," he smiled. "Sir John, as I've learnt from Sir Theodosius, and his younger brother were both determined to be very stoic and philosophical. They were sceptics in all religious matters and resolved to allow no touch of superstition to weaken them in their beliefs. I think that's why they determined that Sir Theodosius and his sister should live at Leppard Hall. Although they must have known," he added, drawing a shot at random, "that it was a sinister place."

Richard Tampion looked sharply at the steward.

"They didn't live there themselves, sir, you'll notice. Both the old baronet and his brother were always away on one excuse or another. The younger had his estate in Jamaica, the elder was fond of travelling. And I heard say that that was why he never married. He said the Hall wasn't a fit place to bring a woman to."

"Now we seem to be coming to the heart of the matter," said Lucius Delaunay. "Why wasn't it a fit place to bring a woman to? You know, I'm inclined to agree with him. That's why I'm sorry for Miss Laura, and even for her companion, Mrs. Sylk."

"The maids don't like staying at the place, though some of them are not aware of what took place there," admitted the miller confidentially. "You notice, sir, that the girls are always changing, and then they'll get fresh ones from Warwick or Rugby who don't know anything about it. And then there'll be a whisper, or a look, or a noise heard at night—"

"Are you telling me the place is haunted?" interrupted Lucius Delaunay. "You'd better tell me the whole tale and have done with it."

But the miller seemed to think that he had already gone too far. Either from fear or honesty or from some ingrained taciturnity, for it seemed to have been impressed on both him and his father that they should be silent on this matter, he refused to say any more, and Lucius Delaunay had to turn away from the old mill unsatisfied.

'I am becoming infected by this place,' he thought, 'making something monstrous out of nothing at all. What have I learned from that good man? Merely that there is a lot of gossip and talk about something that happened in one's grandparents' time.'

He tried to reconstruct what possible stories of the dead Laura Sarelle there might have been. No doubt she was a nervous and sickly girl like the present bearer of the name. Sickly, that was, in her imagination, for he could not think of Laura Sarelle as suffering from any bodily malady; she seemed, indeed, to give out a radiant vitality.

Well, then, Miss Laura Sarelle in the year 1780 would be living in Leppard Hall. It must have been the same then as it was now, the façade would almost be new, for it had been put on by the sixth baronet in the middle years of the eighteenth century.

Would she have been living there alone? Delaunay puzzled over that. Sole heiress and mistress of the servants and the estate? It was not likely. She must, at least, even if she had been orphaned, and he did not know if that was so, have had a companion, a Mrs. Sylk. He smiled to himself, thinking of the two ladies in their eighteenth-century dresses in the house where Theodosius and Laura now lived. The furniture would be the same, and on the wall no doubt would hang the picture that Laura so disliked. It must have been painted when that Laura Sarelle was very young.

Had she gone to London for the sitting or had some journeyman painter—that was what the quality of the work seemed to indicate—come to Leppard Hall?

Then this cousin, who was he? Or was it even a man? Delaunay was not sure that he had heard the sex of the victim named. Indeed, it was only lately that he had begun to take an interest in the affair. Why had this cousin, male or female, taken the sleeping-draught? What was the malady that the drug was supposed to soothe, and how came it that the girl and not the victim himself or a servant had administered it?

And then an inquest—a rare thing in those days. Doctors, as Mr. Delaunay knew, were both ignorant and careless in the eighteenth century, and there must have been something glaring to arouse the suspicions of the local physician. And what had happened at the inquest?—something unpleasant, some prying into the privacy of the heiress of Leppard Hall, some hint, that she had, perhaps, been not only indiscreet but malicious?

And, when all was over, had she returned feeling blasted, tainted, to that lonely sombre house and died? Of what? 'Like the ermine, from the first stain upon her snowy fleece,' thought Lucius, indulging his fancy. 'Or, in more practical common sense, as I have heard, from a consumption of the lungs, speeded, perhaps, by the damp of the water-meadows?'

And so she was the last of her line, and they laid her in the churchyard—now, why the churchyard and not the mausoleum? And why no kind of epitaph or text upon her grave? That, for the period, was certainly unusual. Still, she had died and been carried out to her grave and a distant cousin had inherited the Hall and the grounds, and all the estates and the plumbago and the coal mines as well.

And he had married in due course and had his two sons—the younger had taken on the Jamaica estate that had been for so long in the family, and the elder, Sir John, had inherited, also in due course, Leppard Hall. But neither he nor his father had lived there, nor had his younger brother. Yet there had been this charge upon these two young people to do so.

'This is, no doubt,' thought Mr. Delaunay, 'a fantastic family.'

And he worked it out in his mind that the three men who had evaded living, save for the briefest space, on the Warwickshire estate had, as it were, soothed their consciences by laying a charge upon the present generation to do so.

"Perhaps they think that whatever happened has been dispersed by now, as an evil vapour slowly disperses by the action of time. Perhaps they think that anything melancholy or sombre about the place will have worn off through the passage of the years. Of course, there would be a great pride in the place that had been in their hands for so long, they would want to keep up the continuity of the family. I believe there was a stern injunction on Sir Theodosius from his father, though I doubt if he'll carry it out. The whole tale leads one into some curious corners of the human mind and I shall be glad to be away from it all."

* * *

The steward performed his other duties, routine and monotonous, and in the evening, instead of going as was his custom up to Leppard Hall for dinner, he went to his own house—the Dower House, that was on the opposite side of the Avon and reached by a small Georgian bridge. This house was far too large for Mr. Delaunay's use and he occupied but three rooms on the ground floor, the rest being shut up but kept aired and spotlessly clean by his good housekeeper, Mrs. Pettigrew.

In the apartments that he occupied he had put a good many of his own possessions. He came of as good a family as the Sarelles and had many relatives who were interested in him; therefore he did not lack for personal possessions of a certain value and richness, and the three rooms had been transformed into something far more pleasing, and in a way splendid, than the handsomely appointed rooms of Leppard Hall. Pictures, mirrors and carpets the steward had, with a lavish hand, arranged about the place, something to the resentment and even the sneers of Sir Theodosius. But that had been one of the understandings on which Mr. Delaunay had, rather reluctantly, taken up this post with his college friend—he must have his own possessions about him and, to a certain extent, lead his own life.

'And I was a fool,' he thought now, looking round the room that he had himself made pleasant, 'to undertake this work. I thought I was a solitary and I'm not. I thought I was a keen classical scholar, and I'm not. I thought that I was fond of Theo, and I'm not. And I thought I was going to be quite indifferent to his sister, and I am not.'

He looked round at his books, the bright and agreeable portraits of his father and mother, the bowls of early flowers, brightly coloured tulips, daisies and roses that his housekeeper had arranged on the highly polished furniture.

He realized—how was it that all of a sudden he had come to all these sharp realizations?—that life at Leppard Hall had only been endurable because he had had this retreat to come to, that he had just put through and made tolerable his visits to Leppard Hall by the thought of this retreat, where often he had the acquaintances he had made in Rugby and Warwick to visit him, and where the neighbouring gentry called far more frequently than they did at Leppard Hall, where the pedantic young master discouraged all visitors.

He had been there two years. There would be a certain amount of trouble in packing his possessions and taking them on the rail and ship to Ireland. But it would have to be done and he would be glad when it was over.

To give himself a sense of support he took from his desk the letters that his uncle had recently written to him, urging him to leave what seemed to be a paltry post and to rejoin his family and friends in Ireland. Though he had but little fortune he was not a pauper, his poverty was merely comparative to his rank.

His uncle urged marriage upon him, too, and mentioned the name of a lady whom he, Lucius, had once regarded with great admiration but whom he had never dared to approach owing to his lack of fortune. Now, reading her name, the young man felt cold towards her, she was but a pleasant memory, the perfume of a last year's flower.

When his housekeeper, Mrs. Pettigrew, came in to set the cloth for his elegantly served meal the steward asked her suddenly, as he had asked Mr. Tampion, the miller, if she knew anything of the former history of the Sarelles, and particularly of that of the last Laura Sarelle. And he outlined, as the woman stood attentive before him, all his reasons for putting these queries.

Her reply, given placidly enough, was that she knew nothing. She was a Londoner, and though she had been on the estate for some years she had only come there on her marriage. She had, it was true, questioned her husband on these very subjects herself—"but his mouth shut like a trap, sir, if you'll believe me. It seems that everyone here is under some bond or pledge not to talk about the past. I think something very scandalous or disgraceful happened." She lowered her voice discreetly. "The young lady, as I suppose, tried to run away with one who was much inferior to her in birth. She died of a broken heart when she was prevented."

This commonplace episode was not in the least what Lucius Delaunay had expected. His curiosity was sharpened. He asked Mrs. Pettigrew if she could tell him of anybody likely to give him any information about the Sarelle family. It seemed ill-bred to pry into the secrets of Sir Theodosius behind his back, but he thought of Laura, her loneliness, her fear, her distress. Only by some knowledge of the past could he help her, then he checked that excuse.

'Who am I, to be thinking of helping Laura Sarelle when I am leaving the place, and leaving so soon?'

Indeed the suddenness of his departure seemed to him almost like a flight, yet he meant to help Laura, even from a distance. He would write to Theodosius, he would see if she had friends and relatives in London; he could wait on them and tell them of the girl's plight. And how much easier it would be to present his case if he knew the grounds for her fear and distress! Yet there again there was confusion, because Laura herself did not know what was alarming and agitating her so profoundly.

'But I,' thought the young man, 'will find out'

The housekeeper, pressed, suggested that the Reverend Nathaniel Mist, the vicar of the Church of St. Nicholas, which was the family church of the Sarelles and also of the neighbouring village, might be able to tell him something...

'Of course,' reflected Lucius Delaunay, 'there will be records in the church, but nothing else. And I dare say the old man Will be as tight as an oyster. It will be more difficult to deal with someone of education than with these country people. The Reverend Nathaniel Mist would know how to evade me. I wonder how long he has had the living...He is an elderly man and seems retired to the point of moroseness.'

* * *

The following morning Lucius Delaunay, who had no particular business on hand, avoided the Hall and set out instead for the church. He went towards the path where his remembrance of his last meeting with Laura Sarelle was so clear that he could see her pale yellow-clad figure in front of him, and he met one of the men from Leppard Hall, who seemed to be returning from the village, making across the open parkland. This fellow stopped, and touching his hat respectfully asked the steward if he had heard of the illness of Miss Laura Sarelle.

"Sir Theodosius has been asking for you, sir, and I was coming up to the Dower House to see if you were there. He would like to see you as soon as you can get up to the Hall."

A curious sense of shock held Lucius Delaunay immobile. It was as if a long-expected calamity suddenly confronted him, but his breeding enabled him to pass the moment over with no more than a decorous show of alarm and sympathy.

He asked for details of Miss Laura's illness, but the man knew nothing save that Dr. Selby from Warwick had been sent for. He thought that the young lady had got chilled walking out late yesterday in the water-meadows.

"She had thin shoes and some kind of a fancy dress on, sir. Mrs. Sylk said that she got her feet damp. She's supposed to be better this morning. They do say as she was light-headed last night."

Lucius Delaunay considered rapidly: 'If I go to Leppard Hall I shall not be able to see her. Theodosius will be agitated, even angry. Better to let some little time go by.'

So he said, "You may tell Sir Theodosius that I shall wait on him this afternoon," and continued his way to the vicarage.

This was a low, grey stone house close to the churchyard, and the sombre melancholy of its outline was concealed by climbing roses, ivy and jasmine, and the garden was pleasant with the May flowers.

Martha Mist, the vicar's wife, a dreary woman who seemed to have no direct contact with life and in whom no one was interested, was not yet out of bed. She suffered from some kind of unnamed complaint that kept her, in the genteel phrase, "confined to her chamber." But Agnes, the comely maidservant, a little startled at seeing the handsome young steward in the doorway, as if she was not used to anything so vital and vivid in the drab house, said that her master would soon attend to Mr. Delaunay in the library.

In this shabby room the steward waited. He had seen the vicar only on formal occasions and knew little of him, though it had been necessary to go to church on Sundays and sometimes on other days as well; it had been necessary to endure the dull man's tedious sermons, and his slow and lagging administration of the Anglican ritual.

There was something about the old house that was full of this same flat personality. In the room everything was worn and cheerless, the books on the shelves were all of the most commonplace nature; but Mr. Delaunay, kept waiting some while, had nothing better to do than to look at these volumes, mostly ecclesiastical works, sermons and dreary diatribes on obsolete points of theological doctrines.

But as he glanced round the shelves he saw a few calf-bound books and some old pamphlets loosely stitched together on the history of Warwickshire and Northampton. Thinking there might be some reference to the Serene family in these, he took one down at random and turned the pages. He found nothing to hold his attention save a rudely executed print of a handsome man whose face seemed to him faintly familiar. He studied this for some time, trying to fix the resemblance in his mind, but could not do so. His curiosity, however, was sufficiently quickened for him to glance at the opposite page of browning yellow print.

This contained an account of the execution of a certain Captain Avershaw in the county town of Warwick. The unfortunate man was spoken of as "an elegant gentleman entirely dressed in black, who had a flower in his mouth and bore himself with the greatest punctilio on the scaffold."

Glancing higher up the page, Lucius Delaunay read that the criminal had contrived to get hold of a basket of black cherries while in prison and had made several drawings on the wall of his cell that were allowed to possess considerable artistic merits.

The steward had got thus far in his reading when he heard the shuffling steps of the vicar, and not wishing to be caught, as it might seem to be, prying, he shut the book up and returned it to its place. The image of the man in the cheap engraving still, however, hung in his mind as if it were a bad copy of some face that he knew. Although there was no name on the plate he believed it to be a portrait of the unlucky Captain Avershaw, and it at once excited and repelled him because it was so unlike the face that one would suppose a murderer to possess; for his hasty glance had told him that Edward Avershaw had been hanged for murder. The features were gay and even noble, and the curled powdered hair, the nicely knotted cravat and brocade coat were the height of luxury, though they had the melancholy of an old fashion.

The Reverend Nathaniel greeted his visitor with an embarrassed attempt at cordiality that barely concealed his surprise at this visit.

"I hope, sir," he asked uneasily, "you've not come on behalf of Miss Laura—to summon me to the Hall I mean?"

Lucius Delaunay understood that the clergyman thought the girl was seriously ill, perhaps dying. He quickly, and with a touch of horror, disclaimed any such errand.

"I know very little about the illness of Miss Laura. It was sudden and not, I think, severe."

"You haven't been up to the Hall, then, to-day?"

"No, sir, I'm going this afternoon."

"Why, I should have thought, Mr. Delaunay, with this news, you would have been up there this morning to see what help you could be."

"Well, sir, it's a large household."

"But Sir Theodosius lacks friends. I was going there myself." The vicar glanced down at his slippered feet as if annoyed with his own inertia. "My wife, as you know, takes a good deal of my attendance and my care, but I was certainly going up to the Hall myself. It's an isolated place," he added, scratching his chin, "and there are few neighbours."

"But Miss Laura's not seriously ill."

Lucius Delaunay, feeling that he had been rather remiss—but how could he possibly explain to the vicar the cause of his remissness?—repeated what the servant he had met on the banks of the river had told him, that Miss Laura was in no danger. "She's liable to these attacks, you know. She was out yesterday in thin shoes, in a fanciful dress, that of an ancestress, which she found in a chest."

The vicar gave him a sly look out of his dull eyes, took off his spectacles, polished and replaced them. Then he said, in a dry mumbling voice:

"Miss Laura was found in the river, close to the church. My gardener and the sexton pulled her out. It's no use making a secret of it, the whole village knows."

Lucius Delaunay had enough self-control to remain silent, but the words that flashed through his mind were: 'So she threw herself into the river a short time after I left her...'

The vicar, looking away from the young man, continued in his slow, stupid voice:

"It was an accident, of course. The river bank is very slippery just there. As you say, she had those thin shoes on, the soles were coated with sticky mud. She's a capricious young lady. It was raining at the time—a foolish thing to be out in those light clothes."

"A dangerous accident," agreed Mr. Delaunay quietly. "I had no suspicion—from what Halston said—"

"Well, she might have died. I suppose the weeds and rubbish would have held her up for a while; it's very thick there, you know, with undergrowth just underneath the churchyard. But the sexton was passing and he called my gardener's boy and they had her out in a trice. She swooned, but only from shock, I think. We did what we could for her here and sent up to the Hall, and Mrs. Sylk, the housekeeper, and her brother came and took her back. I don't wonder she's ill. If I were you, Mr. Delaunay, I should go and see Sir Theodosius."

Then he added suddenly: "But I forgot! Of course you came to ask me something. What is it? What can I do for you?"

Lucius Delaunay found his resolve quickened, not slackened, by the shocking news he had just heard. He put his case quickly, with well-chosen abrupt words, before the vicar, both in view of the state of Laura Sarelle's health and his desire to know what was the history that consciously or unconsciously tormented her uneasy mind.

The vicar did not dismiss the matter as easily as had the miller and the housekeeper. He said very gravely:

"I'm afraid, Mr. Delaunay, I'm not at liberty to answer your question. It's an old and it's an ugly story, and all of us round here who are in any way connected with Leppard Hall are pledged not to repeat it. The idea of Sir John and of his brother, the father of Sir Theodosius, was always that the tale should be forgotten."

"But you can't, you know!" exclaimed Lucius with vehemence. "It comes up, like burying a strong thing alive in a shallow grave—it will start up again. It's like trying to ignore a ghost, it must be laid—"

"Well, that sounds very superstitious sort of talk," returned the vicar with a sickly smile. "I don't know anything about hauntings or ghosts, there has never been anything so far as I know. And I'm inclined to believe that these old tragedies are best ignored. It's true that none of the three first heirs of the cadet branch of the Sarelles lived at Leppard Hall; no doubt they had their reasons. But I think it was the idea of both Sir John and his brother that the tragedy, whatever it was, is worked out now and that the family ought to take up residence here in the old place again."

"But they're dead, all of them," interrupted Lucius, "and I'm not concerned with them, sir, under your pardon."

"Whom are you concerned with?" asked the vicar slowly. "With Miss Laura Sarelle?"

"Yes, with the girl, and in a sense with her brother, too. Oh, I am not emotionally involved," smiled Mr. Delaunay. "In fact, I am leaving Sarelle. I think my life here is too easy and slothful. I have a more active turn than I thought I had. My relatives in Ireland want me also. They can find more energetic work for me. I might even go abroad. I'm not a man to stay in one place long."

"You make a great ado to excuse yourself, sir," replied the Reverend Nathaniel Mist. "I always wondered why a young man of your temperament remained at Leppard Hall. Well, though you're going away, you want to do something for Miss Laura? But I don't see that you can. And even if I were to tell you all the story I don't see how it could help you. Mind you, she knows nothing about it, so it can't be that that's making her melancholy or uneasy."

"But she senses it. Don't you understand? It's about the Hall, something quite intangible, like a haunting, or a dream. I don't care for the place myself. Of course, I've a great deal else to think about and work to do, and I absorb myself in my spare time in the Greek studies of Sir Theodosius, but I have felt it. And to an idle girl, shut up there all day, one can't doubt when one listens to her, sir, of her sincere desire to escape. I think she ought to be helped."

The vicar stretched out his chin and stroked it

"Perhaps," he said in a hesitating manner, "this illness will be an excuse. You should see Dr. Selby, or rather—what am I saying, you've not an authority. It would make mischief for you to interfere. I'll see him myself. I'll suggest that he urge Miss Laura is taken away. I suppose they've relatives somewhere?"

"Distant connections, I believe. Anyhow, friends could be found who would take the lady."

"It's a strange affair," sighed the vicar, "a very strange affair indeed. If I were to tell you the whole tale you would realize how strange it is."

"I've come here to urge you to tell me the whole tale, sir."

"Well, you're going away and I don't see why you should concern yourself with it," returned the vicar obstinately. "You won't be able to help Miss Sarelle any better if I tell you the story of her ancestress. And it isn't really her ancestress either; that other Laura Sarelle ended the first branch of the house. They are distant connections from Yorkshire, as I suppose you know."

"Yes, I know all that," replied Lucius Delaunay impatiently. "But I want to know what's at the bottom of the business. Why the whole house, the mill, the home farm, even the fields, seem hateful, haunted. The girl feels it, I know, in every nerve. You wouldn't want her to stay here until she was desperate and did herself a mischief, would you?" he asked direct.

He could see that the old man knew what he meant. Both of them were thinking of yesterday and the fantastically dressed figure that had slid through the alder and willow bushes into the turgid waters of the River Avon.

"No, it would be a shameful wrong," agreed the vicar reluctantly. "Her brother's a very strange young man, very learned and precocious no doubt, and I sometimes wonder—" he added with a shrewdness that was unusual in him. "Of course there are matters one must not talk of or even hint at, but the family has always been eccentric."

"Well," said Lucius Delaunay, exasperated, "I suppose I can ride into Warwick or Rugby and buy some local history, some antiquarian pamphlet on the place and find out the story of that Laura Sarelle. And this mysterious cousin—was it a man or a woman?—who took an overdose of a sleeping-draught?"

"You may buy histories, but you'll never get an account of that tale. The whole affair was too carefully hushed up, the family was far too powerful. It's known only to a few people. There was an account of it published and I've a copy here"—he nodded towards the bookcase—"but there was only a small number of examples issued from the press and they were withdrawn."

"Well, sir, will you lend me yours?" asked Lucius Delaunay eagerly.

"I should not think of doing so, my dear sir. And even if I were to it would not make any difference. You would not, as the saying goes, be able to put two and two together."

"Can you, at least, tell me," asked Lucius, "the identity of the person upon whom the inquest was held? Was the cousin male or female?"

"It was not a cousin at all," replied the vicar, turning his fingers inward and looking down reflectively at his nails. "It was not that girl's cousin—but her brother."

"Her brother!" cried Lucius Delaunay, startled. "I did not know that there was a male heir at that time."

"Yes, they were twins," said the clergyman. He looked out through the rather dingy cotton curtains of the vicarage into the garden, full of striped pinks and rose bushes beginning to show small glossy leaves. "I know there is a confusion in the minds of most people. They believe that he died several years before. As I tell you, that part of the Sarelle history is kept purposely obscure."

"I want to understand why," insisted Lucius Delaunay.

"But, my dear sir, it is really no matter of yours," said the clergyman. He looked up, and his pale face, which was slightly freckled, reminded the young man of the placid, sad, ugly countenance of a toad. "And I can't say I know a good deal of it myself. I have never, you understand, gone into details. I consider that it would be disloyal to do so. But perhaps what I have told you will induce you not to pursue your investigations. There were twins—brother and sister, Laura and Theodosius—"

"Theodosius, too?" interrupted Lucius Delaunay. "The same name?"

"Yes, a very sickly young man, not destined, I think, in any case, to live long."

"And he died through the overdose of a sleeping-draught?"

"He died through taking the wrong medicine," said Mr. Nathaniel Mist, still gazing out of the window. "His sister was a very nervous creature and did not long survive the shock. I think we could leave the matter at that, Mr. Delaunay. I believe I can congratulate you on leaving Leppard Hall."

"You do not, sir, care for the place yourself?" asked the young man sharply, with narrowed eyes.

"I believe no one does. I don't know why I've endured it so long. At least, I do know, but I don't care to admit the reason even to myself." The shabby clergyman gave him a sideways look. "I'm an old man, and I mustn't pick and choose where I spend my last years. I'm not much of a scholar and nothing of a preacher. I do my routine work, that's all, and look after my poor sick wife. My children are scattered, you know, one in India, one in America. Well, well, one mustn't complain."

Lucius Delaunay 'thought that the old man was rambling in his speech and wished to make his escape. But while he was considering how he could do so courteously Nathaniel Mist came straight back to the point.

"I have rather an odd little library collected during my leisure moments. I've been interested in strange happenings, queer subjects like necromancy, and phantoms and hauntings. I don't wish to talk about that now, but I might put one or two points before you, sir, that would perhaps help you to consider this case." He suddenly pointed a fat, pale finger at the young man. "Have you ever thought of this—the dreams of the dead?"

"Nay," replied Lucius, shaking his head. "It sounds horrible. Impossible, too," he added impatiently.

"I don't know. Wasn't it our great poet, our Swan of Avon himself, who said 'in that sleep, what dreams come'? I sometimes think that this whole place is infected with the dreams of the dead, that they can project them into very powerful forms, phantoms perhaps—whispers—suggestions. My wife," he added, "insists that she has seen these spectres, though I bid her be very cautious how she speaks of them."

'A sick woman's fancy,' thought Lucius, and he turned away towards the door, saying civilly:

"I suppose, sir, there are few old houses, or churches, or villages in the country that do not have their ghosts or phantoms. I confess I have no opinions on this point. I would be neither rashly sceptical nor blindly credulous. I came to you for some knowledge of the history of the Sarelles."

"Don't inquire any further," warned the clergyman. "I have given you one or two hints. I think that Miss Laura should be taken away from Leppard Hall."

"I have no power to persuade Sir Theodosius," said Mr. Delaunay heavily.

"But you are his best friend. You help him not only to manage his estate but in his pastime, his classical studies that we all hear are so abstruse. Arrian, eh? A Stoic!"

"Still, I am not close in his intimacy. He is a strange young man, but my friend, therefore I must not discuss him. But I can tell you, sir, strange for his years."

Lucius Delaunay left the conversation at that, for the clergyman, though willing to ramble on about topics that interested him, for he was a lonely man and, given as solitaries are to inconsequent speech, was obviously not inclined to impart the information that Mr. Delaunay had come to gather.

As the steward passed into the passage, closing the door on his host, who did not accompany him, he saw the little maidservant, Agnes, a rustic girl hardly yet broken into the decorum of genteel service, standing by the newel-post and looking at him with shy intensity. As, he closed the study door she came forward and, dropping a curtsy, whispered:

"Please, sir, the mistress would like to see you. She can't leave her room, but she begs that you'll come up."

In a voice that was full of curiosity and awe the girl, who was little more than a child, added in a hoarse whisper:

"She saw you, sir, come up the path. We don't often get a visitor. Will you please to come up?"

Mr. Delaunay was very doubtful about the tact, or even the propriety, of accepting this invitation. He had but seldom seen the clergyman's wife, and then always with a sensation of distaste. Besides, this visit, that seemed to have a clandestine air, might displease the vicar. But it was not in his good-natured heart to refuse the importunity of the child, who looked a rather forlorn figure with her flat bosom, her dark kerchief and her mob cap that was too large for her small head.

"Very well, I will wait on your mistress with pleasure," he said, and followed the little maid up the winding and none too clean stairs, for his trained eye observed the dust on the wood that should have been clean and polished, the cobwebs that hung high up on the plastered walls.

Martha Mist had prepared herself for this visitor. She was wrapped in a large white shawl of intricate design and had drawn over her untidy hair a large erection of old Malines lace and black watered ribbon. Her hands, which seemed to tremble with a perpetual ague, were encased in coarsely knitted mittens and her feet were raised on a beaded stool.

As soon as the young man entered she motioned him, with a nervous gesture, to a rush-bottomed chair that stood near, sent the girl out of the room with a quick look and began without preamble:

"Did you come here today to see my husband about Laura Sarelle?"

"No, ma'am," replied Mr. Delaunay, wondering how she should have guessed at least something of the nature of his errand, but resolved to put no material in the hands of a woman who was probably loose-tongued and gossiping.

"I'm disappointed at your lack of candour," returned Martha Mist shortly. "I'm quite sure that you did come because of that. Is she very ill, is my husband wanted up at Leppard Hall? is he to attend her?"

"Indeed, ma'am," replied the young man warmly, "nothing of the kind. I came to see your husband on a matter of my own, a little curiosity I had about some local history."

"Well," replied the sick woman with a peevish look, "if you come to ask about the history of the Sarelles he won't satisfy you. Nathaniel will never tell you anything, nor will anyone in this place. It took me years to find out the little I know. When I first came here," she added regretfully, "I was able to get about. Before I had the paralysis. Of course, I found everyone as if their lips had been locked. And all the records destroyed too; even at Rugby and Warwick you couldn't find out anything."

"What made you think," interrupted Lucius Delaunay, who was revolted at the prospect that his curiosity might be satisfied in this vulgar manner, "that there was anything to find out, madam?"

"The tombs," said Madam Mist promptly. "The stone in the church. I said to myself the moment I saw it, it's the queerest thing in the world for there not to be any text or any inscription. You know," and she laughed unpleasantly, "the usual list of Christian virtues, the hope of the Resurrection and all the rest of it. But nothing—nothing at all. And then I went to the mausoleum, and I saw all the tombs of the Sarelles there and I wondered why she wasn't with them. And I found out that Sir Theodosius, who was buried there, was her twin. They were twenty-four years of age and she survived him six months only. You know the mausoleum? Too near the house I think."

"It's an old story," said Lucius Delaunay, with an effort, "and I'm concerned, ma'am, with the living, not the dead."

"Ah," replied Martha Mist shrewdly, "but the dead affect us, don't they? We can't forget them, we can't get away from them. What is the good of despising the past? Doesn't it colour everything we do in the present? You know it does, sir."

"One's own past, perhaps," he admitted, thinking of many things that he would have wished undone, and many things that he rejoiced at in his own life.

"The past of other people, too," persisted the old woman. "Those Sarelles, now, they can't come and live at Leppard Hall and try to ignore everything that happened before. Why did the father, the uncle and the grandfather stay away? Two wouldn't bring their wives here and the other had no wife to bring. I think Laura Sarelle's the first woman to live there since her namesake was carried out feet first, sixty years or so ago."

"That's an unpleasant thought, ma'am," said the young man warmly. "Miss Laura doesn't realize that, I'm sure. She shouldn't be reminded of it."

"She realizes something," insisted the clergyman's wife with spite and malice; "she was pulled out of the river, close by here, at the bottom of our garden where it abuts on the churchyard, yesterday."

"I know. She was wearing thin, fancy shoes—she slipped and fell." Lucius Delaunay was angry with himself, angry with the woman; he felt he had been trapped into a disloyalty to the Sarelles, and in particular to Laura.

But Nathaniel Mist's wife laughed on a harsh note.

"She threw herself in, of course, poor fool! She's haunted. She came to see me once or twice. She explained her pains and tribulations. Of course, my mouth was closed, I wasn't going to be the one to start spreading anything. Let her, I thought, find out for herself."

The woman went on talking in a loose, vindictive style, her head and her hands slightly shaking with the palsy that afflicted her. Lucius Delaunay was thinking hotly: 'So everyone will believe, and I suppose it is the truth. After she parted from me the poor girl did throw herself into the river. She ought to be taken away, and there's no one to rescue her but myself.'

"I could tell you a few things about the Sarelles," the thin, acid voice of the vicar's wife penetrated his heated, hurrying thoughts; "perhaps you could make sense of them. I'm bedridden now, but if I could get about a bit I think I could find out some things."

"There's nothing I wish to know, ma'am," said Mr. Delaunay. "I am delighted to find you in such excellent health. I will not intrude my company upon you any longer."

And he was gone swiftly through the garden with the pinks, the budding roses, the stocks and wallflowers, while the little maid ran to the door and gaped after him, and Nathaniel Mist came heavily on his lumbering, gouty feet to the study window and stared after him, and the clergyman's wife dragged her wheeled chair along also to the window and drew aside the dimity curtains and gazed down as if he were an object of fearful curiosity.

The steward skirted the churchyard, with its huddled, crowded lichen-covered graves where the humble folk lay neglected, grey and gold mosses obliterating their names and dates, and looked at the trodden weeds and trash on the slippery mud of the river bank where last night the sexton and the vicar's gardener had pulled Laura Sarelle in her draggled finery from the slow river.

He was aware that the Mists were staring after him, from the quay parsonage, but he did not intend to be intimidated by what he felt to be their malicious curiosity.

The dreams of the dead! He wished the vicar had not spoken those words, they had an ugly sound.

He turned across the humped churchyard instead of going direct back to Leppard Hall and walked between the pollarded limes that formed an avenue from the river to the church. He had often glanced casually and with but a faint interest at the white marble mural tablet which the vicar's wife had called "the tombstone" of Laura Sarelle.

Now Lucius Delaunay wanted to look at it again, with some distracted idea that it might afford some clue to the identity of the person whom it commemorated. There was a certain potency in the thought that her grave was so near the house where she had lived, it was but a short walk from the room where her portrait hung to the church where this tablet bore her name, the date of her birth and death and nothing more.

Why had she not been buried in the mausoleum beside her twin brother? Perhaps by her own desire she lay in the cool, remote shadows of the church, not in that grey lonely charnel-house by the river bend.

It was a small church, the atmosphere damp and musty, badly kept, too: there was dust on the faded cushions in the pews, the brass lectern was dim for lack of polish, the altar furnishings were shabby, cobwebs darkened the dirty glass of the cracked windows. Sir Theodosius, who attended the services as seldom as possible and would not have attended them at all had not decorum obliged him to do so, was not generous in his contributions towards its support, and the living was poor, while the people of Leppard village shared their pastor's slothful indifference towards religion as typified by the Anglican Church.

Lucius Delaunay paused before the mural tablet. It was of fine white Italian marble and therefore had a ghastly whiteness in the dim greenish shadows and was for that reason livid and ugly. The name "Laura Sarelle", and the dates were well cut in graceful lettering and Lucius Delaunay observed what he had never noticed before: that underneath in low bas-relief were two boughs of laurel, the stems crossing, the leaves and berries pointing upwards around the name and date. Had Laura spoken of this and he forgotten?

He supposed that this design was in the nature of a rebus, as was the branch of laurel that the lady held in her hand in the portrait, but the date was late for this mediaeval practice and did not seem to him to be, somehow, in the best of taste; why, he could not have told. But it seemed to him that they who were buried in Christian churches should have some Christian text to grace and sanctify their memorial, and this might well have been a heathen decoration.

Lucius walked round the shabby, dim-lit church, trying to compose his thoughts and to strengthen his resolution, that had been taken while Madam Mist had been speaking to him. He was not a man to do anything hastily or impulsively. At twenty-eight years of age his character was formed and he had made up his mind on all the important questions that were likely to come his way. But neither was he a man to go back on something that had been decided in a moment of impulsive generosity, of ardent feeling, for his nature was both magnanimous and romantic.

He glanced up at the funeral escutcheons of the Sarelles that hung above the short, thick Norman pillars. The elaborate coats-of-arms repeated in the various black-and-white lozenges, white on the right hand if it was a husband who lamented a wife, white on the left hand if it was a wife who lamented her husband. That of Laura Sarelle was all white and that of Theodosius, her brother, all black—unmarried, then, both of them. Beneath were the mottoes, written in heavy letters, and coming, as he thought, mockingly, in that place—"We live in one another."

Like most of these old mottoes, it was so mutilated that it had no meaning, yet he knew that the Sarelles had borne it for generations with some pride and had even got a certain satisfaction out of the fact that it was in English, not, as usual, Latin.

The Sarelle arms most familiar to Lucius, though not ostentatiously displayed at the Hall, appeared again and again in these hatchments quartered with those of heiresses whom the Sarelles had married, and that they had for a generation at a time used.

These arms were unusual, and seemed now to the young man who studied them to have a melancholy significance: qu. a fesse or, between three goshawks displayed, az. guttée du larmes.

The knight's belt on the red shield, the three birds of prey, keen and cruel, and the azure tears dropping down.

Lucius walked again round the church, so dusty and neglected; Sir Theo, for all his pride of family, had not even concerned himself to attend to the ancient Sarelle chantry, or the tombs of his armoured ancestors, with their pointed mail-clad feet resting on the stiff backs of the three goshawks, and the tears cut on the shields placed round the stone bases of the tombs.

Grey with dust was the tilting helm, hung high over one of these tombs; all the Sarelles had been buried here until the early years of the eighteenth century, when a Sir Theodosius Sarelle, returning from Italy, had built on a classic model the grey mausoleum that had seemed so elegant and modish at the time, but which now seemed so gloomy and dreary.

Lucius paused again before the funeral hatchment of Laura Sarelle where the quarterings showed dimly on the dingy white of the lozenge, and his anxious yet preoccupied glance traced the motto.

"We live in one another." Idly, as men will when their thoughts are deeply troubled, he repeated the words; then the meaning came to him with a dismal shock. They might be interpreted as meaning that one generation would live on in another...yet how fantastic was the supposition that the dead Laura Sarelle might be haunting the living bearer of her name!...

Lucius Delaunay quickly left the church. There were now no prying eyes at the vicarage, the curtains hung limp at the black windows, in the neglected garden the river wind was blowing the pinks, the stocks, the wallflowers.

He averted his eyes from the trampled earth that showed where Laura had slipped into the river and been dragged out last night and hastened along the path set with lush thyme, parsley, and mint, where he had followed her in her pale-yellow gown, and went directly to Leppard Hall, and directly to the rich library where he hoped to find Sir Theodosius; and the young baronet was there in his usual chair. Dr. Selby had just left him, he was in an angry mood and he greeted his steward curtly, not rising.

"I hope," he began at once, "you have reconsidered your decision, but you understand that now, in my present trouble, I cannot possibly dispense with your—" he seemed about to finish the phrase in a conventional way and say "services", but changed his mind ungraciously and added, "friendship."

"I hope you will not have to dispense with my friendship, Theo," replied Lucius quietly. "But I have not changed my mind about leaving Leppard Hall. First, how is Laura's health?"

"Laura is much restored; it was nothing but the prank of a foolish girl. I suppose she wanted to attract attention to herself, to become a melodramatic or romantical figure." Lucius Delaunay interrupted sternly.

"You do not think, do you, Theo, that she threw herself in the river?"

"Threw herself in! No, of course not! I think that she wetted her feet and her skirts and then set up an outcry to attract attention. Of course, you may be sure that before she put herself in the least danger she was quite aware that the sexton was in the graveyard and the gardener outside the vicarage."

"I do not think she was," replied Lucius quietly. "I do not think she knew of anything that was about her. Besides, the dusk was falling, it would not have been very easy for her to see them, though they, on the height above, could easily have observed her. No, you can imagine the two men, grey like the tombstones and trees in their drab clothes, would not have been very noticeable, but she, in that extravagant pale dress—"

"What are you talking about?" interrupted the baronet angrily. "It seems to me, Lucius, as if you, too, were infected by Laura's nonsense. Dr. Selby tells me that I'm liable to have a deal of trouble with her. She needs very firm handling. Of course, those clothes have been taken away from her. I've given orders to have all the things that were found in the great bedchamber destroyed. None of them was of any value, except a small miniature," he added, "which I shall send to London to be appraised."

"You will not do much good by destroying those things, whether they were of value or not; the past has too strong a grip on Laura for you so easily to absolve her from its spell."

"You're talking in a strange and, as I think, ridiculous manner, Lucius." Sir Theo sat in an exhausted attitude in his great chair, resting his elbow on his handsome desk, his thin face in his thin hands. "What have we to do with the past?"

Lucius recalled the words of the vicar's wife; she was a foolish woman, but she had spoken the truth there, he knew.

"You cannot get away from it, Theo, especially in an old place like Leppard Hall. You're living in those dead people's house, using their furniture, sleeping in their beds, with their portraits hanging on your walls. Everything you spend or have was theirs, or earned by them, or left by them. Their graves are only a few yards away, and there is some story about them that you very carefully conceal. That's a mistake, you know, Theodosius, you should bring it up into the daylight."

"There's no story!" declared the baronet angrily, glancing up. "I've told you again and again, it is a small nucleus of unhappy facts only on which all this gossip is founded."

"You never told me," returned Lucius swiftly, "that it was not a cousin of that first Laura Sarelle on whose body the inquest was held, but a brother."

The young baronet rose at once; his face was blotched, his dry lips drawn back from his teeth. Lucius Delaunay was startled by the ugly transformation to raw passion so seldom seen on a human face.

"For God's sake, Theodosius!" he exclaimed, and the force of the exclamation caused the baronet to compose himself. He drew out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. Then he got out, with a painfully obvious effort at control, these accusing words:

"You have been spying. You've been going round among my people trying to find out things. I thought it was understood that nothing of this kind was to be done."

"You seem to have made it fairly well understood," replied Lucius hotly. "Nobody will talk. That's what makes what is probably quite an ordinary story into something monstrous—the very silence of your tenantry, of the vicar and his wife, everyone whom one meets, gives this place a haunted air and ill repute. Why? If there was nothing to conceal everyone would be open."

"When you came into my employment," said Sir Theodosius, with an ugly stress on the last word, "I think I warned you, Lucius, that I would have no talk about my family."

"If you did, I forgot, I took the matter casually. I did not know then how it was going to affect me, or Laura."

"You had better, sir, leave my sister Laura out of the conversation. You are taking, it seems to me, too deep an interest in her and her whimsies."

"You'll understand my interest," replied Lucius Delaunay in a steadier tone, "when I tell you that I have come to ask you for her hand in marriage."

If Sir Theodosius had looked livid before, he now turned a countenance that expressed nothing but evil on the young man who spoke, and Lucius, seeing and almost shrinking from that dark and ugly look, exclaimed:

"Don't speak, Theo, till you have thought a little! Don't say anything that I must resent."

Sir Theodosius put his thin white hand over his eyes and Lucius saw the finger-tips press into the flesh of the cheeks. He wondered even at that moment why the young man was so deeply moved at what perhaps was a most unexpected and even an unwelcome proposal, but that could not, surely, be the cause of so much anger and discomfiture.

He began, more to gain time and allow them both to control themselves than in the hope that his words would have any effect, to explain himself. His family was good, he was not a pauper, he had relations who would help him and many offers of employment; he did not believe that Laura cared much for luxury. He wished to marry her immediately and take her away from Leppard Hall, to Ireland, where his relatives—and there were many pleasant women among them—would cherish her and give her all that brightness and pleasure in her life that she had lacked.

When he had finished it was plain that Sir Theodosius had again complete command of himself. He took his hand down from his eyes and said in a hard voice:

"I suppose you know how much dowry she has?"

"I do not, and I do not expect more than a reasonable sum that shall be settled on her, and her only, and spent on her, and her only, as a marriage portion. I'm well able to support my wife—yes, and my children also—in an honourable position."

"You're talking great nonsense, Lucius. I am following out my father's plan with regard to Laura. She is to make a marriage that will increase the prestige of the family. I thought I had made that clear to you before. And she is not to marry at the age of nineteen years. I will not even think of such a thing until she is of age. You know that she is unable to contract a marriage without my consent, and I absolutely refuse it."

"You are very sharp. I should have thought you knew me too well, Theodosius, to speak to me thus abruptly. Why should you use your sister so cruelly?"

"And why should you dare, so suddenly and unexpectedly, to ask for her hand? How I have been deceived!" And again Sir Theodosius' passion almost escaped his control. "I've allowed you to see her without supervision, you have come freely into this house, and all the time behind my back you—a man many years older than she is—were insinuating yourself into her good graces, turning her romantical head."

"No love passages whatever have passed between me and Laura," interrupted Lucius Delaunay firmly. "It is only lately that I have come to understand the deep regard in which I hold her."

"Have you told her of that same regard?" sneered the baronet. "Have you persuaded her on some moonlit night to pledge some foolish schoolgirl vows to you?"

Lucius Delaunay kept his temper. He had expected the interview to be an unpleasant one, though he had not been prepared for quite such insolence and violence on the part of Theodosius. He said quietly:

"I tell you nothing has passed between me and Laura. She is, as you have reminded me, very young. I think she may come to care for me, I think I can make her happy. Better leave it at that. I have made my offer as you are her guardian, as again you have reminded me. You cannot control her heart or her feelings, and if you refuse her to me I would warn you that you keep her here at your peril."

"My peril?" Theodosius repeated softly, and with a look, Delaunay thought, of fear.

"I mean peril to your own conscience, for I think that she may become a very sick woman, perhaps a half-crazed woman, if you subject her to these influences that are at work here."

"You are talking like someone who is crazed yourself," retorted the baronet hotly. "What influences? Are you going to pretend that you have seen spectres or phantoms, that you have heard ghosts shrieking?"

"It is you who are talking nonsense," replied Lucius, with an air of contempt. "I thought that your mind was finer than that, Theo, your spirit more alert. What do you think is going on in this old house? You affect to despise the past, but what of those?"—he pointed to the books piled up on the floor and desk. "Do you not bury yourself in the past when you read your stoics? You will not tell me the story of your family, of your ancestor, you will not tell Laura. But she will find out, and then perhaps it will be the worse for both of you."

"So you threaten me! You will leave the Hall, Lucius, never to enter it again. You will remove your property from the Dower House as quickly as you can, and while it is being removed you will take lodgings in Warwick or Rugby—or in Hell for all I care. You have proved a traitor to me; because I thought you sober and steadfast, because I thought you spent your leisure in learning instead of with drink or women, or games, or racing, I allowed you here. I picked you very carefully for this post, Lucius. I was not unmindful of the fact that I had a young and romantic sister."

He rose and moved with a threatening step towards Lucius, and that young man, standing his ground, thought curiously: 'It is not so many years ago we should have fought a duel on this, and one, or perhaps both of us, would have been slain.'

He tried to reason with the angry man.

"Is there any need for this violence, Theodosius? I think I have served you well."

"What monies I owe you," said the young baronet, "will be sent to your bankers. I wish to have no communication with you. And if I see you in the grounds of Leppard Hall my keepers will turn you off as if you were a vagabond."

Lucius Delaunay smiled sadly.

"You talk of Laura being romantical. You are ranting like a play-actor. Doing it, I think, to hide an uneasy conscience, Theodosius. Well, there is nothing for me to do but go. When Laura is of age and her own mistress perhaps I shall seek her acquaintance again."

"I should have thought, sir, that if you had a sparkle of pride you would have been gone by now."

"I have not so much pride but that I ask that I may say good-bye to Laura, and in your presence if you will. But I should beg that it might be in that of Mrs. Sylk only."

"In the presence of no one! The girl is ill and I do not doubt that it is your insinuating tongue that has put all these childish notions into her head. You shall not see her! All her letters will be intercepted; if you try to write your epistles will fall into my hands."

"All this," said Lucius Delaunay at the door, very pale, his lips pressed together between his speech and his eyes narrowed, "seems to me almost incredible. I never liked you very much, Theodosius, though I tried to persuade myself into the attitude of your friend. I tried to think of you even as a benefactor, but I did not realize, what is revealed now, the kind of man you are."

The young baronet still standing by the desk gave him a glance of bitter hatred and contempt, and Lucius Delaunay left the room, closing the door softly behind him.

For a moment he stood in the corridor, trying to control himself in order that he might behave both with dignity and prudence. He scarcely felt humiliated by the insults of one who was, in everything, his inferior, save in the detail of wealth, but he was bewildered, stung, as a man might be who has been struck suddenly by one whom he thought, if not his friend, at least just and honourable.

Lucius had not hoped for much success from the interview, but he had supposed that Sir Theodosius might give some grudging consent to a continued friendship with Laura, that he might allow that, if no better suitor came along, she might one day marry Lucius Delaunay...Theo had never asked, that hard, narrow boy, how Laura's heart was set.

'And how is it?' thought the young man, looking up the wide, shallow, silent staircase that led to the girl's room. Was it but the dewy vision of youth, but the fancy of her opening years, that made her turn to me yesterday? I hope it was no more, and yet indeed I have long felt, I belive now, as secretly towards her as perhaps she has long been drawn towards me.'

Lucius raised his hand and let it fall. 'Alas! Dream or reality, it is over.'

He was quite powerless. Sir Theodosius had the authority to turn him, as he had turned him, out of his house and estate like a dog. 'There'll be some talk, some scandal, especially coming on top of poor Laura's accident. I can best serve her by going quietly and with a casual air.'

And he thought as he left the Hall that he would make up some tale of his relative in Ireland and a sudden call home, while some excuse must be given for his instant vacation of the Dower House and his residence in Warwick.

When he reached the middle of the drive he looked back at Leppard Hall. The grey straight façade of the house seemed to him monstrous, as if it blotted out all the peace of the sky, all the tranquil beauty of the landscape. And yet, on a second look, there was neither beauty nor peace in either sky or landscape, all was veiled by a sullen and sinister mist; all was silent, yet, to the young man's excited imagination, full of expectancy, as if the stage were set for some ghastly drama.

The past was indeed impinging upon the present, and across those parkland slopes he seemed to see moving forward the figures that had once played some dismal tragedy in this melancholy scene.

What were they like—those twin brother and sister, that other Theodosius and Laura? Was the unknown portrait that had excited Laura Sarelle's intense dislike that of the former Sir Theodosius? Lucius Delaunay did not think so; there was no family likeness to his companion in that alert and vivid face. Besides, it was that of a man of at least thirty years of age and one who was robust, whereas that Theodosius Sarelle had died young and was of a sickly habit.

Lucius Delaunay returned to the Dower House. He was perplexed and vexed; he was sorry that he had no better knowledge of human nature than to approach Sir Theodosius with a straightforward proposal for his sister's hand. It would have been better to have been a little crafty, to have waited, to have sounded the girl's mind and heart a little further, to have induced her brother to allow her to come to London and then to have an opportunity for her better acquaintance, and so to have won her over...He paused at this part of his reflections; there was no need to win her over. Had she not offered herself with sweet, half-unconscious surrender but yesterday? And he had put her by and allowed her to run from him, and in her despair and her melancholy loneliness she had cast herself into the river beneath the churchyard. It was because he had been aware of that that he had gone to her brother with his request.

It was impossible for his honourable and open nature to have taken advantage of what was perhaps a passing, girlish caprice and to have married the heiress without her brother's consent. Besides, and here again he pulled himself up, he could not have married Laura without Theodosius' consent, since her brother was her legal guardian until she was twenty-one years of age.

It would have been better, however, to have been cautious and prudent and to have waited, and begged Laura to wait too, since he was above the mean fear of being considered a fortune-hunter; he was quite prepared—and believed that Laura would be also—as he had assured the young baronet, to give up her dowry, save a small portion that for her own safety should be settled on herself. Yes, they should have waited, got to know each other better, consolidated, as it were, their affections, which, he believed, on his part would have bloomed into a deep love.

Now his precipitate action had destroyed all those hopes, and he must either endeavour to beguile the girl into leaving her guardian and her home or abandon her to whatever dreary fate was in store.

Lucius tried, as he put his few necessities together in his valise and told his manservant to saddle the horses, for they were riding into Warwick at once, to persuade himself that Laura would forget him. He knew how often young love vanished, quickly as the golden bloom on a butterfly's wing when June is past.

'In two years' time,' he tried to console himself, 'when she has her freedom she will have forgotten me. And then, I suppose, perhaps this young fool will relent and allow her to go to London, or even Paris or Vienna. And there she'll meet suitors enough.'

He wondered quite how much money she had, for he had never troubled to inquire. She had said something in the train that day they had come back from London—a hundred thousand pounds, he believed. He did not know if she had spoken the truth. Anyhow, it was clear that she was the heiress to a very considerable fortune and therefore would not lack pretenders to her hand. And she was lovely, in a strange and sad fashion—lovely.

He wondered if Sir Theodosius himself would marry. It seemed unlikely. The black-browed young man was a born celibate. Who would he get now to help him with his books and estates? There would be candidates enough for both offices.

In the twilight of that day Lucius Delaunay and his servant rode into Warwick and put up at the hostelry near the Castle—the Bear and Ragged Staff.

* * *

That evening he waited on Dr. Selby, chancing by luck to find the physician at home, and without telling him any of his own circumstances asked him directly of the condition of Miss Laura Sarelle. The other looked at him queerly as if questioning his right to question him. He had no doubt, Lucius thought, heard something of the tale already. But he was a good-natured, just-minded man and did not seem disposed to be unduly loyal to the young baronet. He said that he thought the young lady had received some severe shock. She had, he thought, barely escaped a brain-fever. Oh, she was now out of danger; he had just returned from Leppard Hall. She had been given a strong sedative...

Lucius interrupted: "Brain-fever?"

"Well, she was raving last night. She had strong fits of delirium. She declared that a young girl, in every way like herself, was by her side, encouraging her to something dreadful—self-destruction, I suppose. She should, of course, be taken away from that old house. Why, I don't believe," added Dr. Selby with emphasis, "they've changed a single piece of furniture since my grandfather's day. He was the physician who attended that other Laura Sarelle. But there is a story there, as I dare say you know, that's not to be told."

"I'm going away," replied Lucius Delaunay heavily. "Perhaps it's better that I should know nothing. But if you think fit, tell me. If I can help—"

"Laura Sarelle?" interrupted the doctor shrewdly. "Is that, sir, what you mean?"

"Yes. But while she is under her brother's guardianship I feel powerless."

"Is it impossible for you to remain in your employment?"

"Quite impossible. Pray ask no more on that point."

"Then, sir, if you must go away, I see no reason in telling you what I might chance to know of an old story."

"I hope to renew my acquaintance with Miss Sarelle when she is free—of age."

"Two years is a long time."

"So I have thought," answered Lucius, raising his bright glance frankly. "Therefore I was inclined to leave—even without a question or a demur—yet I was anxious, too, and so could not forbear coming to you."

Dr. Selby seemed gratified by this candour, but remained cautious; his family had had a long connection with Leppard Hall, but Miss Laura he had known for two years only, and he could scarcely undertake to pronounce upon his case. He thought that she enjoyed bodily health and had shown but little signs of nervous disturbances until she came to Leppard Hall, though he had heard that she had always been what her guardians termed wilful and passionate.

"I suppose, like most young ladies, she had her fill of novels and romantic tales, and so was keen to know the story of that old house, especially as she soon discovered both the grave and the portrait of her namesake. Then," added the physician, labouring carefully at his explanation, "there was the atmosphere of the house, nothing changed for two generations or more, save in the smallest details; the great chamber, as they call the marriage-room on the first floor, locked up, with that chest of clothes within—"

"She should never have been exposed to this," said Lucius Delaunay sternly.

"Yet you must allow, sir, that she made a good deal about very little. The principal bedchambers, as you well know, of these fine mansions are never used save on the marriage of the master, and it is common enough to preserve old portraits and old costumes."

Yes, so it seemed now to Lucius Delaunay when he looked round the comfortable room of the country doctor, with the beaupots of tulips and daisies, the shining furniture, the well-swept hearth, the prints of English worthies on the panelled walls—common enough—yet there was something behind that was not so common.

"Why should all this have so wrought on Miss Sarelle?" he asked gravely.

Dr. Selby glanced at him quizzically and did not remind him that he had agreed, obliquely at least, to leave Warwickshire with the story of the Sarelles untold.

"She was lonely, Mr. Delaunay, melancholy at being in the country, she began to dream—"

"To dream—"

"Yes—when she first came here. Mrs. Sylk consulted me about that. One can understand how her state of mind came about—until some shock"—he paused deliberately—"sent her headlong on an attempt to escape, from I scarcely know what, some destiny that she fears. Of course it is all fanciful and this illness may be the end of it—"

While Dr. Selby was speaking, Lucius Delaunay was considering, most earnestly, if Laura had indeed made the attempt on her life for this reason or because she believed that he had repulsed the passionate affection she had been surprised into offering him—surprised by the news of his departure. Or was Sir Theodosius correct—that Laura had but made the petulant gesture of a romantic girl, chagrined and disappointed, intending to do no more than "wet her feet"?

Dr. Selby had been closely absorbing the young man's handsome, clouded face.

"I don't deny," he added, "that they are odd people—Sir Theodosius will become very eccentric if he don't change his way of life, and Miss Laura will always be excitable."

'Is he trying to tell me,' thought Lucius, 'that there is insanity in the family? The last baronet was a recluse and little is known of him—or of this Yorkshire branch.'

Aloud he said:

"I can do nothing. Try to persuade Sir Theo to let his sister go away. As for this old story—"

"Don't make too much of that," advised Dr. Selby. "It is very obscure and should not be given much importance. Once Miss Laura leaves the place she will forget all about it, I do not doubt—"

'And forget me also, I suppose,' thought Lucius Delaunay. 'I'm infected by her fanciful follies to think otherwise.'

He left, with many compliments, the courteous physician and returned to the Bear and Ragged Staff. As he went into the parlour to speak to his manservant he noticed, what he had noticed before on his visits to the old inn, a heavy gold-handled riding-crop in a glass case over the long mantelpiece. It had always been as indifferent to him as were the stuffed birds and fishes that cumbered the walls; he had vaguely supposed that the trophy had belonged to some notable Nimrod, now he glanced at it with a sudden heightened, almost sharp interest. But quickly, like one conscious of a folly, he put it out of his mind, and addressed himself to the business in hand, that of his removal from the Dower House and the neighbourhood of Laura Sarelle.