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A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF

BY

MES OLIPHANT

IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. L

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

EDINBUEGH AND LONDON

MDCCCLXXXVI

/./

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

^
f-\
ex	CHAPTEE I

The day was warm, and there was no shade ; oout of the olive woods which they had left **-behind, and where all was soft coolness and

freshness, they had emerged into a piece of

V road widened and perfected by recent improve-

V ments till it was as shelterless as a broad street.

"^ High walls on one side clothed with the green

I ^ clinging trails of the mesembryanthemum, with

palm-trees towering above, but throwing no ^^ shadow below ; on the other a low house or ^1 two, and more garden walls, leading in a broad ^ curve to the little old walled town, its cam- ^ panile rising up over the clustered roofs, -in

VOL. I. A

2 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

which was their home. They had fifteen min- utes or more of dazzling sunshine before them ere they could reach any point of shelter.

Ten minutes, or even five, would have been enough for Frances. She could have run along, had she been alone, as like a bird as any human creature could be, being so light and swift and young. But it was very different with her father. He walked but slowly at the best of times ; and in the face of the sun at noon, what was to be expected of him ? It was part of the strange contrariety of fate, which was against him in whatever he attempted, small or great, that it should be just here, in this broad, open, unavoidable path, that he encoun- tered one of those parties which always made him wroth, and which usually he managed to keep clear of with such dexterity — an English family from one of the hotels.

Tourists from the hotels are always objection- able to residents in a place. Even when the residents are themselves strangers — perhaps, in- deed, all the more from that fact — the chance visitors who come to stare and gape at those scenes which the others have appropriated and

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 3

taken possession of, are insufferable. Mr War- ing had lived in the old town of Bordighera for a great number of years. He had seen the Marina and the line of hotels on the beach created, and he had watched the travellers arriving to take possession of them — the sick people, and the people who were not sick. He had denounced the invasion unceasingly, and with vehemence ; he had never consented to it. The Italians about might be complacent, thinking of the enrichment of the neighbour- hood, and of what was good for trade, as these prosaic people do ; but the English colonist on the Punto could not put up with it. And to be met here, on his return from his walk, by an unblushing band about whom there could be no mistake, was very hard to bear. He had to walk along exposed to the fire of all their unabashed and curious glances, to walk slowly, to miss none, from that of the stout mother to that of the slim governess. In the rear of the party came the papa, a portly Saxon, of the class which, if comparisons could be thought of in so broad and general a senti- ment, Mr Waring disliked worst of all — a big

4 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

man, a rosy man, a fat man, in large easy morning clothes, with a big white umbrella over his head. This last member of the family came at some distance behind the rest. He did not like the sun, though he had been per- suaded to leave England in search of it. He was very warm, moist, and in a state of general relaxation, his tidy necktie coming loose, his gloves only half on, his waistcoat partially un- buttoned. It was March, when no doubt a good genuine east wind was blowing at home. At that moment this traveller almost regretted the east wind.

The Warings were going up - hill towards their abode : the slope was gentle enough, yet it added to the slowness of Mr Waring's pace. All the English party had stared at him, as is . the habit of English parties ; and indeed he and his daughter were not unworthy of a stare. But all these gazes came with a cumulation of curiosity to widen the stare of the last comer, who had, besides, twenty or thirty yards of vacancy in which the indignant resident was fully exposed to his view. Little Frances, who was English enough to stare too, though in a

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 5

gentlewomanly way, saw a change gradually come, as he gazed, over the face of the stranger. His eyebrows rose up bushy and arched with surprise ; his eyelids puckered with the intent- ness of his stare ; his lips dropped apart. Then he came suddenly to a stand-still, and gasped forth the word " Waeing ! " in tones of sur- prise to which capital letters can give but faint expression.

Mr Waring, struck by this exclamation as by a bullet, paused too, as with something of that inclination to turn round which is said to be produced by a sudden hit. He put up his hand momentarily, as if to pull down his broad -brimmed hat over his brows. But in the end he did neither. He stood and faced the stranger with angry energy. ''Well?" he said.

" Dear me! who could have thought of seeing you here ? Let me call my wife. She will be delighted. Mary I Why, I thought you had gone to the East. I thought you had dis- appeared altogether. And so did everybody. And what a long time it is, to be sure ! You look as if you had forgotten me."

b A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

" I have," said tlie other, with a supercilious gaze, perusing the large figure from top to toe.

" Oh come, Waring ! Why — Mannering ; you can't have forgotten Mannering, a fellow that stuck by you all through. Dear, how it brings up everything, seeing you again ! Why, it must be a dozen years ago. And what have you been doing all this time ? Wandering over the face of the earth, I suppose, in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, since nobody has ever fallen in with you before."

"I am something of an invalid," said Waring. " I fear I cannot stand in the sun to answer so many questions. And my movements are of no importance to any one but myself."

" Don't be so misanthropical," said the stranger in his large round voice. '* You always had a turn that way. And I don't wonder if you are soured — any fellow would be soured. Won't you say a word to Mary ? She's looking back, wondering with all her might what new ac- quaintance I've found out here, never thinking it's an old friend. Hillo, Mary! What's the matter ? Don't you want to see her ? Why, man alive, don't be so bitter ! She and I have

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 7

always stuck up for you ; through thick and thin, we've stuck up for you. Eh ! can't stand any longer ? Well, it is hot, isn't it ? There's no variety in this confounded climate. Come to the hotel, then — the Victoria, down there."

Waring had passed his interrogator, and was already at some distance, while the other, breath- less, called after him. He ended, affronted, by another discharge of musketry, which hit the fugitive in the rear. ''I suppose," the indis- creet inquirer demanded, breathlessly, '^ that's the little girl?"

Frances had followed with great but silent curiosity this strange conversation. She had not interposed in any way, but she had stood close by her father's side, drinking in every word with keen ears and eyes. She had heard and seen many strange things, but never an encounter like this ; and her eagerness to know what it meant was great ; but she dared not linger a moment after her father's rapid move- ment of the hand, and the longer stride than usual, which was all the increase of speed he was capable of. As she had stood still by his side without a question, she now went on, very

8 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

much as if she had been a delicate little piece of machinery of which he had touched the spring. That was not at all the character of Frances Waring ; but to judge by her move- ments while at her father's side, an outside observer might have thought so. She had never offered any resistance to any impulse from him in her whole life ; indeed it would have seemed to her an impossibility to do so. But these impulses concerned the outside of her life only. She went along by his side with the movement of a swift creature restrained to the pace of a very slow one, but making neither protest nor remark. And neither did she ask any explanation, though she cast many a stolen glance at him as they pursued their way. And for his part, he said nothing. The heat of the sun, the annoyance of being thus interrupted, were enough to account for that.

This broad bit of sunny road which lay be- tween them and the shelter of their home had been made by one of those too progressive municipalities, thirsting for English visitors and tourists in general, who fill with hatred and horror the old residents in Italy ; and after it

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 9

followed a succession of stony stairs more con- genial to the locality, by which, under old arch- ways and through narrow alleys, you got at last to the wider centre of the town, a broad stony piazza, under the shadow of the Bell Tower, the characteristic campanile which was the landmark of the place. Except on one side of the piazza, all here was in grateful shade. Waring's stern face softened a little when he came into these cool and almost deserted streets : here and there was a woman at a doorway, an old man in the deep shadow of an open shop or booth unguarded by any window, two or three girls filling their pitchers at the well, but no intrus- ive tourists or passengers of any kind to break the noonday stillness. The pair went slowly through the little town, and emerged by an- other old gateway, on the farther side, where the blue Mediterranean, with all its wonderful shades of colour, and line after line of headland cutting down into those ethereal tints, stretched out before them, ending in the haze of the Ligurian mountains. The scene was enough to take away the breath of one unaccustomed to that blaze of wonderful light, and all the de-

10 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

lightful accidents of those purple hills. But this pair were too familiarly acquainted with every line to make any pause. They turned round the sunny height from the gateway, and entered by a deep small door sunk in the wall, which stood -high like a great rampart rising from the Punto. This was the outer wall of the palace of the lord of the town, still called the Palazzo at Bordighera. Every large house is a palace in Italy ; but the pretensions of this wea*e well founded. The little door by which they entered had been an opening of modern and peaceful times, the state entrance being through a great doorway and court on the inner side. The deep outer wall was pierced by windows, only at the height of the second storey on the sea side, so that the great marble stair up which Waring toiled slowly was very long and fatiguing, as if it led to a mountain- top. He reached his rooms breathless, and going in through antechamber and corridor, threw him- self into the depths of a large but upright chair. There were no signs of luxury about. It was not one of those hermitages of culture and ease which English recluses make for themselves in

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 11

the most unlikely places. It was more like a real hermitage ; or, to speak more simply, it was like, what it really was, an apartment in an old Italian house, in a rustic castle, furnished and provided as such a place, in the possession of its natural inhabitants, would be.

The Palazzo was subdivided into a number of habitations, of which the apartment of the Eng- lishman was the most important. It was com- posed of a suite of rooms facing to the sea, and commanding the entire circuit of the sun; for the windows on one side were to the east, and at the other the apartment ended in a large loggia, commanding the west and all the glori- ous sunsets accomplished there. We North- erners, who have but a limited enjoyment of the sun, show often a strange indifference to him in the sites and situations of our houses ; but in Italy it is well known that where the sun does not go the doctor goes, and much more regard is shown to the aspect of the house.

The Warings at the worst of that genial climate had little occasion for fire ; they had but to follow the centre of light when he

12 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

glided out of one room to fling himself more abundantly into another. The Punto is always full in the cheerful rays. It commands every- thing— air and sea, and the mountains and all their thousand effects of light and shade ; and the Palazzo stands boldly out upon this the most prominent point in the landscape, with the houses of the little town withdrawing on a dozen different levels behind. In the warlike days when no point of vantage which a pirate could seize upon was left undefended or assail- able, it is probable that there was no loggia from which to watch the western illuminations. But peace has been so long on the Kiviera that the loggia too was antique, the parapet crum- bling and grey. It opened from a large room, very lofty, and with much faded decoration on the upper walls and roof, which was the salone or drawing-room, beyond which was an ante-room, then a sort of library, a dining- room, a succession of bed-chambers ; much space, little furniture, sunshine and air unlimited, and a view from every window which it was worth living to be able to look out upon night and day. This, however, at the moment of which

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 13

we write, was shut out all along the line, the green persiani being closed, and nothing open but the loggia, which was still cool and in the shade. The rooms lay in a soft green twilight, cool and fresh ; the doors were open from one to another, affording a long vista of picturesque glimpses.

From where Waring had thrown himself down to rest, he looked straight through the apart- ment, over the faded formality of the ante-room with its large old chairs, which were never moved from their place, across his own library, in which there was a glimmer of vellum binding and old gilding, to the table with its white tablecloth, laid out for breakfast in the eating-room. The quiet soothed him after a while, and perhaps the evident preparations for his meal, the large and rotund flask of Chianti which Domenico was placing on the table, the vision of another figure behind Domenico with a delicate dish of mayonnaise in her hands. He could distinguish that it was a mayonnaise, and his angry spirit calmed down. Noon began to chime from the campanile, and Frances came in without her hat and with the eagerness subdued in her

14 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

eyes. " Breakfast is ready, papa," she said- She had that look of knowing nothing and guessing nothing beyond what lies on the sur- face, which so many women have.

She was scarcely to be called a woman, not only because of being so young, but of being so small, so slim, so light, with such a tiny figure, that a stronger breeze than usual would, one could not help thinking, blow her away. Her father was very tall, which made her tiny size the more remarkable. She was not beautiful — few people are to the positive degree ; but she had the prettiness of youth, of round soft con- tour, and peach-like skin, and clear eyes. Her hair was light brown, her eyes dark brown, neither very remarkable ; her features small and clearly cut, as was her figure, no sloven- liness or want of finish about any line. All this pleasing exterior was very simple and easily comprehended, and had but little to do with her, the real Frances, who was not so easy to understand. She had two faces, although there was in her no guile. She had the coun- tenance she now wore, as it were for daily use — a countenance without expression, like a

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 15

sunny cheerful morning in which there is neither care nor fear — the countenance of a girl calling papa to breakfast, very punctual, determined that nobody should reproach her as being half of a minute late, or having a hair or a ribbon a hair's-breadth out of place. That such a girl should have ever suspected any- thing, feared anything — except perhaps gently that the mayonnaise was not to papa's taste — was beyond the range of possibilities ; or that she should be acquainted with anything in life beyond the simple routine of regular hours and habits, the sweet and gentle bond of the ordi- nary, which is the best rule of young lives.

Frances Waring had sometimes another face. That profile of hers was not so clearly cut for nothing ; nor were her eyes so lucid only to perceive the outside of existence. In her room, during the few minutes she spent there, she had looked at herself in her old-fashioned dim glass, and seen a different creature. But what that was, or how it was, must show itself farther on. She led the way into the dining-room, the trimmest composed little figure, all England embodied — though she scarcely remembered

16 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

England — in the self-restrained and modest toilet of a little girl accustomed to be cared for by women well instructed in the niceties of feminine costume ; and yet she had never had any one to take counsel with except an Italian maid-of-all-work, who loved the brightest prim- itive colours, as became her race. Frances knew so few English people that she had not even the admiration of surprise at her success. Those she did know took it for granted that she got her pretty sober suits, her simple un- elaborate dresses, from some very excellent dressmaker at "home," not knowing that she did not know what home was.

Her father followed her, as different a figure as imagination could suggest. He was very tall, very thin, with long legs and stooping shoulders, his hair in limp locks, his shirt-collar open, a velvet coat — looking as entirely adapted to the locality, the conventional right man in the right place, as she was not the conventional woman. A gloomy look, which was habitual to him, a fretful longitudinal pucker in his fore- head, the hollow lines of ill health in his cheeks, disguised the fact that he was, or had been, a

^

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 17

handsome man ; just as his extreme spareness and thinness made it difficult to believe that he had also been a very powerful one. Nor v^as he at all old, save in the very young eyes of his daughter, to whom forty-five was venerable. He might have been an artist or a poet of a misanthropical turn of mind ; though, when a man has chronic asthma, misanthropy is un- necessary to explain his look of pain, and fatigue, and disgust with the outside world. He walked languidly, his shoulders up to his ears, and followed Frances to the table, and sat down with that air of dissatisfaction which takes the comfort out of everything. Frances either was inaccessible to this kind of dis- comfort, or so accustomed to it that she did not feel it. She sat serenely opposite to him, and talked of indifferent things.

"Don't take the mayonnaise, if you don't like it, papa ; there is something else coming that will perhaps be better. Mariuccia does not at all pride herself upon her mayonnaise."

" Mariuccia knows very little about it ; she has not even the sense to know what she can do best." He took a little more of the dish,

VOL. I. B

18 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

partly out of contradiction, whicli was the re- sult which Frances hoped.

"The lettuce is so crisp and young, that makes it a little better," she said, with the air of a connoisseur.

"A little better is not the word; it is very good," he said, fretfully ; then added with a slight sigh, '' Everything is better for being young."

" Except people, I know. Why does young mean good with vegetables and everything else, and silly only when it is applied to people ? — though it can't be heljDed, I know."

*' That is one of your metaphysical questions," he said, with a slight softening of his tone. " Perhaps because of human jealousy. We all like to discredit what we haven't got, and most people you see are no longer young."

" Oh, do you think so, papa ? I think there are more young people than old people."

*' I suppose you are right. Fan ; but they don't count for so much, in the way of opinion at least. What has called forth these sage remarks ? "

" Only the lettuce," she said, with a laugh.

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 19

Then, after a pause, ^' For instance, there were six or seven children in the party we met to- day, and only two parents."

" There are seldom more than two parents, my dear."

She had not looked up when she made this careless little speech, and yet there was a pur- pose in it, and a good deal of keen observation through her drooped eyelashes. She received his reply with a little laugh. '' I did not mean that, papa ; but that six or seven are a great deal more than two, which of course you will laugh at me for saying. I suppose they were all English ? "

" I suppose so. The father — if he was the father — certainly was English."

'' And you knew him, papa ? "

'' He knew me, which is a different thing."

Then there was a little pause. The conver- sation between the father and daughter was apt to run in broken periods. He very seldom originated anything. When she found a sub- ject upon which she could interest him, he would reply, to a certain limit, and then the talk would drop. He was himself a very silent man,

20 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

requiring no outlet of conversation ; and when he refused to be interested, it was a task too hard for Frances to lead him into speech. She on her side was full of a thousand unsatisfied curiosities, which for the most part were buried in her own bosom. In the meantime Domenico made the circle of the table with the new dish, and his step and a question or two from his master were all the remarks that accompanied the meal. Mr Waring was something of a gourmet, but at the same time he was very temperate — a conjunction which is favourable to fine eating. His table was delicately fur- nished with dishes almost infinitesimal in quantity, but superlative in quality ; and he ate his dainty light repast with gravity and slowly, as a man performs what he feels to be one of the most important functions of his life.

" Tell Mariuccia that a few drops from a fresh lemon would have improved this ragout — but a very fresh lemon."

*^Yes, Excellency, freschissimo,'' said Do- menico, with solemnity.

In the household generally, nothing was so important as the second breakfast, except, in-

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 21

deed, the dinner, which was the climax of the day. The gravity of all concerned, the little solemn movement round the white - covered table in the still soft shade of the atmosphere, with those green persiani shutting out all the sunshine, and the brown old walls, bare of any decoration, throwing up the group, made a curious picture. The walls were quite bare, the floor brown and polished, with only a square of carpet round the table ; but the roof and cornices were gilt and painted with tarnished gilding and half- obliterated pictures. Opposite to Frances was a blurred figure of a cherub with a finger on his lip. She looked up at this faint image as she had done a hun- dred times, and was silent. He seemed to com- mand the group, hovering over it like a little tutelary god.

22

CHAPTEE 11.

The Warings liad been settled at Bordighera almost as long as Frances could remember. She had known no other way of living than that which could be carried on under the painted roofs in the Palazzo, nor any other domestic management than that of Domenico and Mariuc- cia. She herself had been brought up by the latter, who had taught her to knit stockings and to make lace of a coarse kind, and also how to spare and save, and watch every detail of the 5pe5(3 — the weekly or daily accounts — with an anxious eye. Beyond this, Frances had received very little education : her father had taught her fitfully to read and write after a sort ; and he had taught her to draw, for which she had a little faculty — that is to say, she had made little sketches of all the points of view round about,

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 23

which, if they were not very great in art, amused her, and made her feel that there was something she could do. Indeed, so far as doing went, she had a good deal of knowledge. She could mend very neatly — so neatly, that her darn or her patch was almost an ornament. She was indeed neat in everything, by instinct, without being taught. The consequence was, that her life was very full of occupation, and her time never hung heavy on her hands. At eighteen, indeed, it may be doubted whether time ever does hang heavy on a girl's hands. It is when ten years or so of additional life have passed over her head, bringing her no more important occupa- tions than those which are pleasant and appro- priate to early youth, that she begins to feel her disabilities ; but fortunately, that is a period of existence with which at the present moment we have nothing to do.

Her father, who was not fifty yet, had been a young man when he came to this strange seclusion. Why he should have chosen Bor- dighera, no one had taken the trouble to inquire. He came when it was a little town on the spur of the hill, without either hotels or tourists, or

24 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

at least very few of these articles — like many other little towns which are perched on little platforms among the olive woods all over that lovely country. The place had commended itself to him because it was so completely out of the way. And then it was very cheap, simple, and primitive. He was not, however, by any means a primitive-minded man; and when he took Domenico and Mariuccia into his service, it was for a year or two an interest in his life to train them to everything that was the reverse of their own natural primitive ways. Mariuccia had a little native instinct for cookery such as is not unusual among the Latin races, and which her master trained into all the sophistications of a cordo7i hleu. And Domenico had that lively desire to serve his padrone '' hand and foot," as English servants say, and do everything for him, which comes natural to an amiable Italian eager to please. Both of them had been encouraged and trained to carry out these inclinations. Mr Waring was difficult to please. He wanted attendance continually. He would not tolerate a speck of dust anywhere, or any carelessness of service ; but otherwise he was not a bad master.

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 25

He left them many independences, which suited them, and never objected to that appropriation to themselves of his house as theirs, and asser- tion of themselves as an important part of the family, which is the natural result of a long service. Frances grew up accordingly in franker intimacy with the honest couple than is usual in English households. There was nothing they would not have done for the Signorina — starve for her, scrape and pinch for her, die for her if need had been ; and in the meantime, while there was no need for service more heroic, correct her, and improve her mind, and set her faults before her with simplicity. Her faults were small, it is true, but zealous Love did not omit to find many out.

Mr Waring painted a little, and was disposed to call himself an artist ; and he read a great deal, or was supposed to do so, in the library, which formed one of the set of rooms, among the old books in vellum, which took a great deal of reading. A little old public library existing in another little town farther up among the hills, gave him an excuse, if it was not anything more, for a great deal of what he called work.

26 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

There were some manuscripts and a nmnl^er of old editions laid up in this curious little hermi- tage of learning, from which the few people who knew him believed he was going some day to compile or collect something of importance. The people who knew him were very few. An old clergyman, who had been a colonial chaplain all his life, and now ''took the service" in the bare little room which served as an English church, was the chief of his acquaintances. This gentleman had an old wife and a middle-aged daughter, who furnished something like society for Frances. Another associate was an old Indian officer, much battered by wounds, liver, and disappointment, who, systematically ne- glected by the authorities (as he thought), and finding himself a nobody in the home to which he had looked forward for so many years, had retired in disgust, and built himself a little house, surrounded with palms, which reminded him of India, and full in the rays of the sun, which kept off his neuralgia. He, too, had a wife, whose constant correspondence with her numerous children occupied her mind and thoughts, and who liked Frances because she

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 27

never tired of hearing stories of those absent sons and daughters. They saw a good deal of each other, these three resident families, and reminded each other from time to time that there was such a thing as society.

In summer they disappeared — sometimes to places higher up among the hills, sometimes to Switzerland or the Tyrol, sometimes " home." They all said home, though neither the Durants nor the Gaunts knew much of England, and though they could never say enough in dis- paragement of its grey skies and cold winds. But the Warings never went "home." Frances, who was entirely without knowledge or associa- tions with her native country, used the word from time to time because she heard Tasie Durant or Mrs Gaunt do so ; but her father never spoke of England, nor of any possible return, nor of any district in England as* that to which he belonged. It escaped him at times that he had seen something of society a dozen or fifteen years before this date ; but otherwise, nothing was known about his past life. It was not a thing that was much discussed, for the intercourse in which he lived with his neigh-

28 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

bours was not intimate, nor was there any particular reason why he should enter upon his own history ; but now and then it would be remarked by one or another that nobody knew anything of his antecedents. '' What's your county, Waring ? " Greneral Gaunt had once asked ; and the other had answered with a languid smile, " I have no county," without the least attempt to explain. The old general, in spite of himself, had apologised, he did not know why ; but still no information was given. And Waring did not look like a man who had no county. His thin long figure had an aristo- cratic air. He knew about horses, and dogs, and country-gentleman sort of subjects. It was im- possible that he should turn out to be a shop- keeper's son, or a bourgeois of any kind. How- ever, as has been said, the English residents did not give themselves much trouble about the matter. There was not enough of them to get up a little parochial society, like that which flourishes in so many English colonies, gossiping with the best, and forging anew for themselves those chains of a small community which everybody pretends to hate.

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 29

In the afternoon of the day on which the encounter recorded in the previous chapter had taken place, Frances sat in the loggia alone at her work. She was busy with her drawing — a very elaborate study of palm-trees, which she was making from a cluster of those trees which were visible from where she sat; A loggia is something more than a balcony; it is like a room with the outer wall or walls taken away. This one was as large as the big salone out of which it opened, and had therefore room for changes of position as the sun changed. Though it faced the west, there was always a shady corner at one end or the 'other. It was the favourite place in which Frances carried on all her occupations — where her father came to watch the sunset — where she had tea, with that instinct of English habit and tradition which she possessed without knowing how. Mr Waring did not much care for her tea, except now and then in a fitful way; and Mariuccia thought it medicine. But it pleased Frances to have the little table set out with two or three old china cups which did not match, and a small silver teapot, which was one of the very

30 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

few articles of value in the house. Yeiy rarely, not once in a month, had she any occasion for these cups ; but yet, such a chance did occur at long intervals ; and in the meantime, with a pleasure not much less infantine, but much more wistful than that with which she had played at having a tea-party seven or eight years before, she set out her little table now. She was seated with her drawing materials on one table and the tea on another, in the stillness of the afternoon, looking out upon the mountains and the sea. No ; she was doing nothing of the sort. She was looking with all her might at* the clump of palm-trees within the garden of the villa, which lay low down at her feet between her and the sunset. She was not indifferent to the sunset. She had an admiration, which even the humblest art- training quickens, for the long range of coast, with its innumerable ridges running down from the sky to the sea, in every variety of gnarled edge, and gentle slope, and precipice ; and for the amazing blue of the water, with its ribbon- edge of paler colours, and the deep royal purple of the broad surface, and the white sails thrown

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 31

up against it, and the white foam that turned up the edges of every little wave. But in the meantime she was not thinking of them, nor of the infinitely varied lines of the mountains, or the specks of towns, each with its campanile shining in the sun, which gave character to the scene ; but of the palms on which her attention was fixed, and which, however beautiful they sound, or even look, are apt to get very spiky in a drawing, and so often will not " come " at all. She was full of fervour in her work, which had got to such a pitch of impossibility that her lips were dry and wide apart from the strain of excitement with which she struggled with her subject, when the bell tinkled where it hung outside upon the stairs, sending a little jar through all the Palazzo, where bells were very uncommon ; and presently Tasie Durant, pushing open the door of the scdone, with a breathless little "Permesso?" came out upon the loggia in her usual state of haste, and with half-a-dozen small books tumbling out of her hand.

" Never mind, dear ; they are only books for the Sunday-school. Don't you know we had

32 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

twelve last Sunday ? Twelve ! — think ! — when I have thought it quite large and extensive to have five. I never was more pleased. I am getting up a little library for them like they have at home. It is so nice to have everything like they have at home."

" Like what ? " said Frances, though she had no education.

"Like they have — well, if you are so parti- cular, the same as they have at home. There were three of one family — think ! Not little nobodies, but ladies and gentlemen. It is so nice of people not just poor people, people of educa- tion, to send their children to the Sunday-school."

" New people ? " said Frances.

"Yes; tourists, I suppose. You all scoff at the tourists ; but I think it is very good for the place, and so pleasant for us to see a new face from time to time. Why should they all go to Mentone ? Mentone is so towny, quite a big place. And papa says that in his time Nice was everything, and that nobody had ever heard of Mentone."

" Who are the new people, Tasie ? " Frances asked.

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 33

"They are a large family — that is all I know; not likely to settle, more's the pity. Oh no. Quite ivell people, not even a delicate child," said Miss Durant, regretfully ; " and such a nice domestic family, always walking about to- gether. Father and mother, and governess and six children. They must be very well off, too, or they could not travel like that, such a lot of them, and nurses — and I think I heard, a courier too." This, Miss Durant said in a tone of some emotion; for the place, as has been said, was just beginning to be known, and the people who came as yet were but pioneers.

" I have seen them. I wonder who they are.

My father " said Frances ; and then stopped,

and held her head on one side, to contemplate the effect of the last touches on her drawing ; but this was in reality because it suddenly occurred to her that to publish her father's acquaintance with the stranger might be un- wise.

"Your father?" said Tasie. "Did he take any notice of them ? I thought he never took any notice of tourists. Haven't you done those palms yet ? What a long time you are taking

VOL. I. c

34 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

over them ! Do you think you have got the colour quite right on those stems ? Nothing is so difficult to do as palms, though they look so easy — except olives : olives are imj)ossible. But what were you going to say about your father ? PajDa says he has not seen Mr Waring for ages. When will you come up to see us ? "

" It was only last Saturday, Tasie."

" Week," said Tasie. " Oh yes, I assure

you ; for I put it down in my diary : Saturday week. You can't quite tell how time goes, when you don't come to church. Without Sunday, all the days are alike. I wondered that you were not at church last Sunday, Frances, and so did mamma."

" Why was it ? I forget. I had a headache, I think. I never like to stay away. But I went to church here in the village instead."

" 0 Frances, I wonder your papa lets you do that ! It is much better when you have a head- ache to stay at home. I am sure I don't want to be intolerant, but what good can it do you g-oino; there ? You can't understand a word."

"Yes, indeed I do — many words. Mariuccia has shown me all the places ; and it is good to

see the people all saying their prayers. They are a great deal more in earnest than the people down at the Marina, where it would be just as natural to dance as to pray."

" Ah, dance ! " said Tasie, with a little sigh. "You know there is never anything of that kind here. I suppose you never was at a dance in your life — unless it is in summer, when you go away ? "

" I have never been at a dance in my life. I have seen a ballet, that is all."

" 0 Frances, please don't talk of anything so wicked ! A ballet ! that is very different from nice people dancing — from dancing one's own self with a nice partner. However, as we never do dance here, I can't see why you should say that about our church. It is a pity, to be sure, that we have no right church ; but it is a lovely room, and quite suitable. If you would only practise the harmonium a little, so as to take the music when I am away. I never can afford to have a headache on Sunday," Miss Durant added, in an injured tone.

'* But, Tasie, how could I take the harmonium, when I don't even know how to play ? "

36 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

" I have offered to teacli you, till I am tired, Frances. I wonder what your papa thinks, if he calls it reasonable to leave you without any accomplishments ? You can draw a little, it is true ; but you can't bring out your sketches in the drawing-room of an evening, to amuse people ; and you can always play "

"When you can play."

" Yes, of course that is what I mean — when you can play. It has quite vexed me often to think how little trouble is taken about you ; for you can't always be young, so young as you are now. And suppose some time you should have to go home — to your friends, you know ? "

Frances raised her head from her drawing and looked her companion in the face. " I don't think we have any — friends," she said.

" Oh, my dear, that must be nonsense ! " cried Tasie. " I confess I have never heard your papa talk of any. He never says ' my brother,' or ' my sister,' or ' my brother-in-law,' as other people do — but then he is such a very quiet man ; and you must have somebody — cousins at least — you must have cousins ; nobody is with- out somebody," Miss Durant said.

" Well, I suppose we must Imve cousins," said Frances. " I had not thought of it. But I don't see that it matters mucli ; for if my cousins are surprised that I can't play, it will not hurt them — they can't be considered re- sponsible for me, you know."

Tasie looked at her with the look of one who would say much if she could — wistfully and kindly, yet with something of the air of mingled importance and reluctance with which the bearer of ill news hesitates before opening his budget. She had indeed no actual ill news to tell, only the burden of that fact of which everybody felt Frances should be warned — that her father was looking more delicate than ever, and that his " friends " ought to know. She would have liked to speak, and yet she had not courage to do so. The girl's calm consent that probably she must have cousins was too much for any one's patience. She never seemed to think that one day she might have to be dependent on

these cousins ; she never seemed to think

But after all, it was Mr Waring's fault. It was not poor Frances that was to blame.

"You know how often I have said to you

38 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

that you ought to play, you ought to be able to play. Supposing you have not any gift for it, still you might be able to do a little. You could so easily get an old piano, and I should like to teach you. It would not be a task at all. I should like it. I do so wish you would begin. Drawing and languages depend a great deal upon your own taste and upon your oppor- tunities ; but every lady ought to play."

Tasie (or Anastasia, but that name was too long for anybody's patience) was a great deal older than Frances — so much older as to justify the hyperbole that she might be her mother ; but of this fact she herself was not aware. It may seem absurd to say so, but yet it was true. She knew, of course, how old she was, and how young Frances was ; but her faculties were of the kind which do not perceive differ- ences. Tasie herself was just as she had been at Frances' age — the girl at home, the young lady of the house. She had the same sort of occupations : to arrange the flowers ; to play the harmonium in the little colonial chapel ; to look after the little exotic Sunday-school ; to take care of papa's surplice ; to play a little

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 39

in the evenings when they "had peo]Dle with them " ; to do fancy-work, and look out for such amusements as were going. It would be cruel to say how long this condition of young-lady- hood had lasted, especially as Tasie was a very good girl, kind, and friendly, and simple-hearted, and thinking no evil.

Some women chafe at the condition which keeps them still girls when they are no longer girls ; but Miss Durant had never taken it into her consideration. She had a little more of the housekeeping to do, since mamma had become so delicate ; and she had a great deal to fill up her time, and no leisure to think or inquire into her own position. It was her position, and therefore the best position which any girl could have. She had the satisfaction of being of the greatest use to her parents, which is the thing of all others which a good child would naturally desire. She talked to Frances with- out any notion of an immeasurable distance between them, from the same level, though with a feeling that the girl, by reason of having had no mother, poor thing, was lamentably backward in many ways, and sadly Ijlind,

40 A HOUSP: divided AGAmST ITSELF.

though that was natural, to the hazard of her own position. What would become of her if Mr Waring died ? Tasie would sometimes grow quite anxious about this, declaring that she could not sleep for thinking of it. If there were relations — as of course there must be — she felt that they would think Frances sadly deficient. To teach her to play was the only practical way in which she could show her desire to benefit the girl, who, she thought, might accept the suggestion from a girl like herself, when she might not have done so from a more authoritative voice.

Frances on her part accepted the sugges- tion with placidity, and replied that she would think of it, and ask her father ; and perhaps if

she had time But she did not really at all

intend to learn music of Tasie. She had no desire to know just as much as Tasie did, whose accomplishments, as well as her age and her condition altogether, were quite evi- dent and clear to the young creature, whose eyes possessed the unbiassed and distinct vision of youth. She appraised Miss Durant exactly at her real value, as the young so

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 41

constantly do, even when they are quite sub- missive to the little conventional fables of life, and never think of asserting their superior knowledge ; but the conversation was sugges- tive, and beguiled her mind into many new channels of thought. The cousins unknown — should she ever be brought into intercourse with them, and enter perhaps a kind of other world through their means — would they think it strange that she knew so little, and could not play the piano ? Who were they ? These thoughts circled vaguely in her mind through all Tasie's talk, and kept flitting out and in of her brain, even when she removed to the tea-table and poured out some tea. Tasie always admired the cups. She cried, " This is a new one, Frances. Oh, how lucky you are ! What pretty bits you have picked up ! " with all the ardour of a collector. And then she began to talk of the old Savona pots, which were to be had so cheap, quite cheap, but which, she heard at home, were so much thought of.

Frances did not pay much attention to the discourse about the Savona pots ; she went

42 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

on with her thoughts about the cousins, and when Miss Durant went awa}^, gave herself up entirely to those speculations. What sort of people would they be ? Where would they live ? And then there recurred to her mind the meeting of the morning, and what the stranger said who knew her father. It was almost the first time she had ever seen him meet any one whom he knew, except the acquaintances of recent times, with whom she had made acquaintance, as he did. But the stranger of the morning evidently knew about him in a period unknown to Frances. She had made a slight and cautious attempt to find out something about him at breakfast, but it had not been successful. She won- dered whether she would have courage to ask her father now in so many words who he was and what he meant.

CHAPTER III.

As it turned out, Frances had not the courage. Mr Waring strolled into the loggia shortly after Miss Durant had left her. He smiled when he heard of her visit, and asked what news she had brought. Tasie was the recognised channel for news, and seldom appeared without leaving some little story behind her.

" I don't think she had any news to-day, except that there had been a great many at the Sunday-school last Sunday. Fancy, papa, twelve children ! She is quite excited about it."

" That is a triumph," said Mr Waring, with a laugh. He stretched out his long limbs from the low basket-chair in which he had placed him- self. He had relaxed a little altogether from the tension of the morning;, feeling; himself secure and at his case in his own house, where

44 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

no one could intrude upon him or call up ghosts of the past. The air was beyond expression sweet and tranquillising, the sun going down in a mist of glory behind the endless peaks and ridges that stretched away towards the west, the sea lapping the shore with a soft cadence that was more imagined than heard on the heights of the Punto, but yet added another harmony to the scene. Near at hand a faint wind rustled the long leaves of the palm-trees, and the pale olive woods lent a softness to the landscape, tempering its radiance. Such a scene fills up the weary mind, and has the blessed quality of arresting thought. It was good for the Ijreathing too — or at least so this invalid thought — and he was more amiable than usual, with no harshness in voice or temper to introduce a discord. "I am glad she was pleased," he said. " Tasie is a good girl, though not perhaps so much of a girl as she thinks. Why she goes in for a Sunday-school where none is wanted, I can't tell ; but anyhow, I am glad she is pleased. Where did they come from, the twelve children ? Poor little beggars, how sick of it they must have been ! "

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 45

'' A number of them belonged to that English family, papa "

" I suppose they must all belong to English families," he said, calmly ; " the natives are not such fools."

" But, papa, I mean — the people we met — the people you knew."

He made no reply for a few minutes, and then he said calmly, "What an ass the man must be, not only to travel with children, but to send them to poor Tasie's Sunday-school ! You must do me the justice, Fan, to acknowledge that I never attempted to treat you in that way."

" No ; but, papa — perhaps the gentleman is a very religious man."

" And you don't think I am ? Well, perhaps I laid myself open to such a retort."

"0 papa ! " Frances cried, with tears starting to her eyes, " you know I could not mean that."

'' If you take religion as meaning a life by rule, which is its true meaning, you were right enough, my dear. That is what I never could do. It might have been better for me if I had been more capable of it. It is always better to put one's self in harmony with received notions

46 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAIN8T ITSELF.

and the prejudices of society. Tasie would not have her Sunday-school but for that. It is the right thing. I think you have a leaning towards the right thing, my little girl, yourself."

"I don't like to be particular, papa, if that is what you mean."

" Always keep to that," her father said, with a smile. And then he opened the book which he had been holding all this time in his hand. Such a thing had happened, when Frances was in high spirits and very courageous, as that she had pursued him even into his book ; but it was a very rare exercise of valour, and to-day she shrank from it. If she only had the courage ! But she had not the courage. She had given up her drawing, for the sun no longer shone on the group of palms. She had no book, and indeed at any time was not much given to reading, except when a happy chance threw a novel into her hands. She watched the sun go down by imperceptible degrees, yet not slowly, behind the mountains. When he had quite disappeared, the landscape changed too ; the air, as the Italians say, grew brown ; a little momentary chill breathed out of the sky. It

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 47

is always depressing to a solitary watcher when this change takes place.

Frances was not apt to be depressed, but for the moment she felt lonely and dull, and a great sense of monotony took hold upon her. It was like this every night ; it would be like this, so far as she knew, every night to come, until perhaps she grew old, like Tasie, without be- coming aware that she had ceased to be a girl. It was not a cheering prospect. And when there is any darkness or mystery surrounding one's life, these are just the circumstances to quicken curiosity, and turn it into something graver, into an anxious desire to know. Fran- ces did not know positively that there was a mystery. She had no reason to think there was, she said to herself. Her father preferred to live easily on the Kiviera, instead of living in a way that would trouble him at home. Perhaps the gentleman they had met was a bore, and that was why Mr AVaring avoided all mention of him. He frequently thought people were bores, witli whom Frances was very well satisfied. Why should she think any more of it ? Oh, how she wished she had the courage

48 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

to ask plainly and boldly, Who are we ? Where do we come from ? Have we any friends ? But she had not the courage. She looked towards him, and trembled, imagining within herself what would be the consequence if she interrupted his reading, plucked him out of the quietude of the hour and of his book, and demanded an explanation — when very likely there was no explanation ! when, in all prob- ability, everything was quite simple, if she only knew.

The evening passed as evenings generally did pass in the Palazzo. Mr Waring talked a little at dinner quite pleasantly, and smoked a cigar- ette in the loggia afterwards in great good- humour, telling Frances various little stories of people he had known. This was a sign of high satisfaction on his |)art, and very agreeable to her, and no doubt he was entirely unaware of the perplexity in her mind and the questions she was so desirous of asking. The air was peculiarly soft that evening, and he sat in the loggia till the young moon set, with an overcoat on his shoulders and a rug on his knees, some- times talking, sometimes silent — in either way

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 49

a very agreeable companion. Frances had never been coojDed up in streets, or exposed to the chill of an English spring ; so she had not that keen sense of contrast which doubles the enjoy- ment of a heavenly evening in such a heavenly locality. It was all quite natural, common, and everyday to her ; but no one could be in- different to the sheen of the young moon, to the soft circling of the darkness, and the reflec- tions on the sea. It was all very lovely, and yet there was something wanting. What was wanting ? She thought it was knowledge, acquaintance with her own position, and relief from this strange bewildering sensation of being cut off from the race altogether, which had risen within her mind so quickly and with so little cause.

But many beside Frances have felt the wist- ful call for happiness more complete, which comes in the soft darkening of a summer night ; and probably it was not explanation, but some- thing else, more common to human nature, that she wanted. The voices of the peaceful people outside, the old men and women who came out to sit on the benches upon the Punto, or on the

VOL. I. D

50 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

stone seat under the wall of the Palazzo, and compare their experiences, and enjoy the cool of the evening, sounded pleasantly from below. There was a softened din of children playing, and now and then a sudden rush of voices, when the young men who were strolling about got excited in conversation, and stopped short in their walk for the delivery of some sentence more emphatic than the rest ; and the mothers chattered over their babies, cooing and laughing. The babies should have been in bed, Frances said to herself, half laughing, half crying, in a sort of tender anger with them all for being so familiar and so much at home. They were entirely at home where they were ; they knew everybody, and were known from father to son, and from mother to daughter, all about them. They did not call a distant and unknown country by that sweet name, nor was there one among them who had any doubt as to where he or she was born. This thought made Frances sigh, and then made her smile. After all, if that was all I And then she saw that Domenico had l)rouo;ht the lamp into the salone, and that it was time to go indoors.

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 51

Next morning she went out between the early coffee and the mid-day breakfast to do some little household business, on which, in con- sideration that she was Eng;lish and not bound by the laws that are so hard and fast with Italian girls, Mariuccia consented to let her go alone. It was very seldom that Mr Waring went out or indeed w^as visible at that hour, the expedition of the former day being very exceptional. Frances went down to the shops to do her little commissions for Mariuccia. She even investigated the Savona pots of wdiich Tasie had spoken. In her circumstances, it was scarcely possible not to be more or less of a collector. There is nobody in these regions who does not go about w^ith eyes open to any- thing there may be to "pick up." And after this she walked back through the olive woods, by those distracting little terraces which lead the stranger so constantly out of his way, but are quite simple to those who are to the manner l)orn — until she reached once more the broad piece of unshadowed road which leads up to the old town. At the spot at which she and her father had met the English family yesterday.

LfBRARY

UNIVERSmr OF IIUN0«

52 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

she made a momentary pause, recalling all the circumstances of the meeting, and what the stranger had said — "A fellow that stuck by you all through." All through what ? she asked herself. As she paused to make this little question, to which there was no response, she heard a sound of voices coming from the upper side of the wood, where the slopes rose high into more and more olive gardens. "Don't hurry along so ; I'm coming," some one said. Frances looked up, and her heart jumped into her mouth as she perceived that it was once more the English family whom she was about to meet on the same spot.

The father was in advance this time, and he was hurrying down, she thought, with the in- tention of addressing her. What should she do ? She knew very well what her father would have wished her to do ; but probably for that very reason a contradictory impulse arose in her. Without doubt, she wanted to know what this man knew and could tell her. Not that she would ask him anything ; she was too proud for that. To betray that she was not acquainted with her father's affairs, that she

had to go to a stranger for information, was a thing of which she was incapable. But if he wished to speak to her — to send, perhaps, some message to her fatlier ? Frances quieted her conscience in this way. She was very anxious, excited by the sense that there was something to find out ; and if it was anything her father would not approve, why, then she could shut it up in her own breast and never let him know it to trouble him. And it was right at her age that she should know. All these sophistries hurried through her mind more rapidly than lightning during the moment in which she paused hesitating, and gave the large English- man, overwhelmed with the heat, and hurrying down the steep path with his white umbrella over his head, t^e to make up to her. He was rather out of breath, for though he had been coming down hill, and not going up, the way was steep.

" Miss Waring, Miss Waring I " he cried as he approached, " how is your father ? I want to ask for your father," taking off his straw hat and exposing his flushed countenance under the shadow of the green-lined umbrella, which en-

54 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

hanced all its ruddy tints. Then, as lie came within reach of her, he added hastily, " I am so glad I have met you. How is he ? for he did not give me any address."

" Papa is c[uite well, thank you," said Frances, with the habitual response of a child.

" Quite well ? Oh, that is a great deal more than I expected to hear. He was not quite well yesterday, I am sure. He is dreadfully changed. It was a sort of guesswork my re- cognising him at all. He used to be such a powerful-made man. Is it pulmonary ? I sus- pect it must be something of the kind, he has so wasted away."

" Pulmonary ? Indeed I don't know. He has a little asthma sometimes. And of course he is very thin," said Frances ; *' but that does not mean anything ; he is quite well."

The stranger shook his head. He had taken the opportunity to wipe it with a large white handkerchief, and had made his bald forehead look redder than ever. " I shouldn't like to alarm you," he said — " I wouldn't, for all the world; but I hope you have trustworthy ad- vice ? These Italian doctors, they are not much

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 55

to be trusted. You should get a real good English doctor to come and have a look at him."

" Oh, indeed, it is only asthma ; he is well enough, quite well, not anything the matter with him," Frances protested. The large stranger stood and smiled compassionately upon her, still shaking his head.

" Mary," he said — " here, my dear ! This is Miss Waring. She says her father is quite well, poor thing. I am telling her I am so very glad we have met her, for Waring did not leave me any address."

" How do you do, my dear ? " said the stout lady — not much less red than her husband — who had also hurried down the steep path to meet Frances. '^ And your father is quite well ? I am so glad. We thought him look- ing rather — thin ; not so strong as he used to look."

" But then," added her husband, "it is such a long time since we have seen him, and he never was very stout. I hope, if you will pardon me for asking, that things have been smoothed down between him and the rest of

56 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

the family ? When I say ' smoothed down,' I mean set on a better footing — more friendly, more harmonious. I am very glad I have seen you, to inquire privately ; for one never knows how far to go with a man of his — well — peculiar temper."

" Don't say that, George. You must not think, my dear, that Mr Mannering means any- thing that is not quite nice, and friendly, and respectful to your papa. It is only out of kindness that he asks. Your poor papa has been much tried. I am sure he has always had my sympathy, and my husband's too. Mr Mannering only means that he hopes things are more comfortable between your father

and Which is so much to be desired

for everybody's sake."

The poor girl stood and stared at them with large, round, widely opening eyes, with the wondering stare of a child. There had been a little half-mischievous, half-anxious longing in her mind to find out what these strangers knew ; but now she came to herself suddenly, and felt as a traveller feels who all at once pulls himself up on the edge of a precipice. What

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 57

was this pitfall which she had nearly stumbled into, this rent from the past which was so great and so complete that she had never heard of it, never guessed it ? Fright seized upon her, and dismay, and, what probably stood her in more stead for the moment, a stinging sensation of wounded pride, which brought the colour burn- ing to her cheeks. Must she let these people find out that she knew nothing, at her age — that her father had never confided in her at all — that she could not even form an idea what they were talking about ? She had pleased herself with the possibility of some little easy discovery — of finding out, perhaps, something about the cousins whom it seemed certain, according to Tasie, every one must possess, whether they were aware of it or not — some little revelation of origin and connections such as could do nobody any harm. But when she woke up suddenly to find herself as it were upon the edge of a chasm which had split her father's life in two, the young creature trembled. She was frightened beyond measure by this unex- pected contingency ; she dared not listen to another word.

58 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

" Oh," she said, with a quiver in her voice, " I am afraid I have no time to stop and talk. Papa will be waiting for his breakfast. I will tell him you — asked for him."

"Give him our love," said the lady. "In- deed, George, she is quite right ; we must hurry too, or we shall be too late for the table d'hdte.''

" But I have not got the address," said the husband. Frances made a little curtsey, as she had been taught, and waved her hand as she hurried away. He thought that she had not understood him. " AVhere do you live ? " he called after her as she hastened along. She pointed towards the height of the little town, and alarmed for she knew not what, lest he should follow her, lest he should call some- thing after her which she ought not to hear, fled along towards the steep ascent. She could hear the voices behind her slightly elevated talking to each other, and then the sound of the children rattling down the stony course of the higher road, and the quick question and answer as they rejoined their parents. Then gradually everything relapsed into silence as the party disappeared. When she heard the

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voices no longer, Frances began to regret that slie had been so hasty. She paused for a moment, and looked back; but already the family were almost out of sight, the solid figures which led the procession indistinguish- able from the little ones who straggled behind. Whether it might have been well or ill to take advantage of the chance, it was now over. She arrived at the Palazzo out of breath, and found Domenico at the door, looking out anxiously for her. " The signorina is late," he said, very gravely; "the padrone has almost had to wait for his breakfast." Domenico was quite orig- inal, and did not know that such a terrible possibility had threatened any illustrious per- sonage before.

GO

CHAPTEK IV.

It was natural that this occurrence should take a great hold of the g-irrs mind. It was not the first time that she had speculated concerning their life. A life which one has always lived, indeed, the conditions of which have been familiar and inevitable since childhood, is not a matter which awakens questions in the mind. However extraordinary its conditions may be, they are natural — they are life to the young soul which has had no choice in the matter. Still there are curiosities which will arise. General Gaunt foamed at the mouth when he talked of the way in which he had been treated by the people " at home " ; but still he went " home " in the summer as a matter of course. And as for the Durants, it was a subject of the fondest consideration with them when they

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could afford themselves that greatest of de- lights. They all talked about the cold, the fogs, the pleasure of getting back to the sun- shine when they returned ; but this made no difierence in the fact that to go home was their thought all the year, and the most sali- ent point in their lives. " Why do we never go home ? " Frances had often asked herself. And both these families, and all the people to whom she had ever talked, the strangers who went and came, and those whom they met in the. rambles which the Warings, too, were forced to take in the hot weather, when the mistral was blowing — talked continually of their county, of their parish, of their village, of where they lived, and where they had been born. But on these points Mr Waring never said a word. And whereas Mrs Gaunt could talk of nothing but her family, who were scat- tered all over the world, and the Durants met people they knew at every turn, the Warings knew nobody, had no relations, no house at home, and apparently had been born nowhere in particular, as Frances sometimes said to her- self with more annoyance than humour. Some-

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times she wondered whether she had ever had a mother.

These thoughts, indeed, occurred but fitfully now and then, when some incident brought more forcibly than usual under her notice the diff'erence between herself and others. She did not brood over them, her life being quite pleas- ant and comfortable to herself, and no necessity laid upon her to elucidate its dimnesses. But yet they came across her mind from time to time. She had not been brought face to face with any old friend of her father's, that she could remember, until now. She had never heard any question raised about his past life. And yet no doubt he had a past life, like every other man, and there was something in it — something, she could not guess what, which had made him unlike other men.

Frances had a great deal of self-command. She did not betray her agitation to her father ; she did not ask him any questions ; she told him about the greengrocer and the fisherman, these two important agents in the life of the Riviera, and of what she had seen in the Marina, even the Savona pots ; but she did

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not disturb his meal and his digestion by any reference to the English strangers. She post- poned until she had time to think of it, all reference to this second meeting. She had by instinct made no re23ly to the question about where she lived ; but she knew that there would be no difficulty in discovering that, and that her father might be subject at any moment to invasion by this old acquaintance, whom he had evidently no desire to see. What should she do? The whole matter wanted thought. Whether she should ask him what to do ; whether she should take it upon herself; whether she should disclose to him her new- born curiosity and anxiety, or conceal them in her own bosom ; whether she should tell him frankly what she felt — that she was worthy to be trusted, and that it was the right of his only child to be prepared for all emergencies, and to be acquainted with her family and her antecedents, if not with his, — all these were things to be thought over. Surely she had a right, if any one had a right. But she would not stand upon that.

She sat by herself all day and thought, put-

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ting forward all the arguments on either side. If there was, as there might be, something wrong in that past — something guilty, which might make her look on her father with differ- ent eyes, he had a right to be silent, and she no right, none whatever, to insist upon such a revelation. And what end would it serve ? If she had relations or a family from whom she had been separated, would not the reve- lation fill her with eager desire to know them, and open a fountain of dissatisfaction and dis- content in her life if she were not permitted to do so ? Would she not chafe at the banish- ment if she found out that somewhere there was a home, that she had " belongings " like all the rest of the world? These were little feeble barriers which she set up against the strong tide of consciousness in her that she was to be trusted, that she ought to know. Whatever it was, and however she might bear it, was it not true that she ought to know ? She was not a fool or a child. Frances knew that her eighteen years had brought more ex- perience, more sense to her, than Tasie's forty ; that she was capable of understanding, capable

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of keeping a secret — and was it not her own secret, the explanation of the enigma of her life as well as of his ?

This course of reflection went on in her mind until the evening, and it was somewhat quick- ened by a little conversation which she had in the afternoon with the servants. Domenico was going out. It was early in the afternoon, the moment of leisure, when one meal with all its responsibilities was over, and the second great event of the day, the dinner, not yet imminent. It was the hour when Mariuccia sat in the ante-room and did her sewing, her mending, her knitting — whatever was wanted. This was a large and lofty room — not very light, with a great window looking out only into the court of the Palazzo — in which stood a long table and a few tall chairs. The smaller ante-room, from which the long suite of rooms opened on either side, communicated with this, as did also the corridor, which ran all the length of the house, and the kitchen and its appendages on the other side. There is always abundance of space of this kind in every old Italian house. Here Mariuccia established her-

VOL. I. E

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self whenever she was free to leave her cook- ing and her kitchen-work. She was a comely middle-aged woman, with a dark gown, a white apron, a little shawl on her shoulders, large earrings, and a gold cross at her neck, which was a little more visible than is common with Englishwomen of her class. Her hair was crisp and cm^ly, and never had been covered with anything, save, when she went to church, a shawl or veil ; and Mariuccia's olive complexion and ruddy tint feared no encounter of the sun. Domenico was tall, and spare, and brown, a grave man with little jest in him ; but his wife was always ready to laugh. He came out hat in hand while Frances stood by the table inspecting Mariuccia's work. "I am going out," he said ; " and this is the hour when the English gentlefolks pay visits. See that thou remember what the padrone said."

" What did the padrone say ? " cried Frances, pricking up her ears.

"Signorina, it was to my wife I was speak- ing," said Domenico.

"That I understand; but I wish to know as well. Was papa expecting a visit? What did he say?"

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"The padrone himself will tell the signorina," said Domenico, " all that is intended for her. Some things are for the servants, some for the family ; Mariuccia knows what I mean."

"You are an ass, 'Menico," said his wife, calmly. " Why shouldn't the dear child know ? It is nothing to be concerned about, my soul — only that the padrone does not receive, and again that he does not receive, and that he never receives. I must repeat this till the Ave Maria, if necessary, till the strangers accept it and go away."

"Are these special orders?" said Frances, " or has it always been so ? I don't think that it has always been so."

Domenico had gone out while his wife was speaking, with a half-threatening and wholly disapproving look, as if he would not involve himself in the responsibility which Mariuccia had taken upon her.

" Carina, don't trouble yourself about it. It has always been so in the spirit, if not in the letter," said Mariuccia. "Figure to yourself Domenico or me letting in any one, any one that chose to come, to disturb the signer pa-

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drone ! That would be impossible. It appears, however, that there is some one down there in the hotels to whom the padrone has a great objection, greater than to the others. It is no secret, nothing to trouble you. But 'Menico, though he is a good man, is not very wise. Che! you know that as well as I."

'•'And what will you do if this gentleman will not pay any attention — if he comes in all the same? The English don't understand what it means when you say you do not receive. You must say he is not in ; he has gone out ; he is not at home."

" Che ! ehe ! ehe ! " cried Mariuccia ; " little deceiver ! But that would be a lie."

Frances shook her head. " Yes ; I suppose so," she said, with a troubled look ; " but if you don't say it, the Englishman will come in all the same."

" He will come in, then, over my body," cried Mariuccia with a cheerful laugh, standing square and solid against the door.

This gave the last impulse to Frances' thoughts. She could not go on with her study of the palms. She sat with her pencil

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in her hand, and the colour growing dry, thinking all the afternoon through. It was very certain, then, that her father would not expose himself to another meeting with the strangers who called themselves his friends — innocent people who would not harm any one, Frances was sure. They were tourists — that was evident ; and they might be vulgar — that was possible. But she was sure that there was no harm in them. It could only be that her father was resolute to shut out his past, and let no one know what had been. This gave her an additional impulse, instead of discourage- ment. If it was so serious, and he so deter- mined, then surely there must be something that she, his only child, ought to know. She waited till the evening with a gradually grow- ing excitement ; but not until after dinner, after the soothing cigarette, which he puffed so slowly and luxuriously in the loggia, did she venture to speak. Then the day was over. It could not put him out, or spoil his appetite, or risk his digestion. To be sure, it might interfere with his sleep ; but after consider- ation, Frances did not think that a ver}^

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serious matter, probably because she had never known what it was to pass a wakeful night. She began, however, with the greatest caution and care.

" Papa," she said, " I want to consult you about something Tasie was saying."

'' Ah ! that must be something very serious, no doubt."

" Not serious, perhaps ; but she wants

to teach me to play."

"To play! What? Croquet? or whist, per- haps ? I have always heard she was excellent at both."

^' These are games, papa," said Frances, with a touch of severity. "She means the piano, which is very different."

'* Ah ! " said Mr Waring, taking the cigarette from his lips and sending a larger jDuff of smoke into the dim air ; " very different indeed, Frances. It is anything but a game to hear Miss Tasie play."

" She says," continued Frances, with a cer- tain constriction in her throat, " that every lady is expected to play — to play a little at least, even if she has not much taste for it.

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She thinks when we go home — that all our relations will be so surprised "

She stopped, having no breath to go further, and watched as well as she could, through the dimness and through the mist of agitation in her own eyes, her father's face. He made no sign ; he did not disturb even the easy balance of his foot, stretched out along the pavement. After another pause, he said in the same indif- ferent tone, "As we are not going home, and as you have no relations in particular, I don't think your friend's argument is very strong. Do you?"

" 0 papa, I don't want indeed to be inquisi- tive or trouble you, but I should like to know ! "

" What ? " he said, with the same composure. " If I think that a lady, whether she has any musical taste or not, ought to play ? Well, that is a very simple question. I don't, whatever Miss Tasie may say."

''It is not that," Frances said, regaining a little control of herself " I said I did not know of any relations we had. But Tasie said there must be cousins ; we must have

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cousins — everybody has cousins. That is true, is it not ? "

" In most cases, certainly," Mr Waring said ; " and a great nuisance too."

" I don't think it would be a nuisance to have people about one's own age, belonging to one — not strangers — people who were interested in you, to whom you could say anything. Brothers and sisters, that would be the best ; but cousins — I think, papa, cousins would be very nice."

" I will tell you, if you like, of one cousin you have," her father said.

The heart of Frances swelled as if it would leap out of her breast. She put her hands together, turning full round upon him in an attitude of supplication and delight. " 0 papa ! " she cried with enthusiasm, breathless for his next word.

" Certainly, if you wish it, Frances. He is in reality your first-cousin. He is fifty. He is a great sufferer from gout. He has lived so well in the early part of his life, that he is condemned to slops now, and spends most of his time in an easy-chair. He has the temper of a demon, and swears at everybody that comes near him. He

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is very red in the face, very bleared about the eyes, very "

" 0 paj)a ! " she cried, in a very different tone. She was so much disappointed, that the sudden downfall had almost a physical effect upon her, as if she had fallen from a height. Her father laughed softly while she gathered all her strength together to regain command of herself, and the laugh had a jarring effect upon her nerves, of which she had never been conscious till now.

" I don't suppose that he would care much whether you played the piano or not ; or that you would care much, my dear, what he thought."

" For all that, papa," said Frances, recovering herself, "it is a little interesting to know there is somebody, even if he is not at all what one thought. Where does he live, and what is his name ? That will give me one little landmark in England, where there is none now."

"Not a very reasonable satisfaction," said her father lazily, but without any other reply. " In my life, I have always found relations a nuisance. Happy are they who have none ; and next best is to cast them off and do without them. As

74 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

a matter of fact, it is every one for himself in this world."

Frances was silenced, though not convinced. She looked with some anxiety at the outline of her father's spare and lengthy figure laid out in the basket-chair, one foot moving slightly, which was a habit he had, the whole extended in per- fect rest and calm. He was not angry, he was not disturbed. The questions which she had put with so much mental perturbation had not affected him at all. She felt that she might dare further without fear.

" When I was out to-day," she said, faltering a little, " I met — that gentleman again."

"Ah!" said Mr Waring — no more; but he ceased to shake his foot, and turned towards her the merest hair's-breadth, so little that it was impossible to say he had moved, and yet there was a change.

"And the lady," said Frances, breathless. " I am sure they wanted to be kind. They asked me a great many questions."

He gave a faint laugh, but it was not with- out a little quiver in it. " What a good thing that you could not answer them ! " he said.

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" Do you think so, papa ? I was rather un- happy. It looked as if you could not trust me. I should have been ashamed to say I did not know ; which is the truth — for I know nothing, not so much as where I was born ! " cried the girl. "It is very humiliating, when you are asked about your own father, to say you don't know. So I said it was time for breakfast, and you would be waiting ; and ran away."

"The best thing you could have done, my dear. Discretion in a woman, or a girl, is always the better part of valour. I think you got out of it very cleverly," Mr Waring said.

And that was all. He did not seem to think another word was needed. He did not even rise and go away, as Frances had known him to do when the conversation was not to his mind. She could not see his face, but his attitude was unchanged. He had recovered his calm, if there had ever been any disturbance of it. But as for Frances, her heart was thumping against her breast, her pulses beating in her ears, her lips parched and dry. " I wish," she cried, "oh, I wish you would tell me something, papa ! Do you think I would

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talk of things you don't want talked about ? I am not a child any longer ; and I am not silly, as perhaps you think."

" On the contrary, my dear," said Mr Waring, " I think you are often very sensible."

'' Papa ! oh, how can you say that, how can you say such things — and then leave me as if I were a baby, knowing nothing ! "

" My dear," he said (with the sound of a smile in his voice, she thought to herself), " you are very hard to please. Must not I say that you are sensible ? I think it is the highest compli- ment I can pay you."

" 0 papa ! " Disappointment, and mortifica- tion, and the keen sense of being fooled, which is so miserable to the young, took her very breath away. The exasperation with which we discover that not only is no explanation, no confidence to be given us, but the very occasion for it ignored, and our anxiety baffled by a smile — a mortification to which women are so often subject — flooded her being. She had h^rd ado not to burst into angry tears, not to betray the sense of cruelty and injustice which over- whelmed her ; but w^ho could have seen any

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injustice or cruelty in the gentleness of his tone, his soft reply ? Frances subdued herself as best she could in her dark corner of the loggia, glad at least that he could not see the spasm that passed over her, the acute misery and irritation of her spirit. It would be strange if he did not divine something of what was going on within her : but he took no notice. He began in the same tone, as if one theme was quite as important as the other, to remark upon the unusual heavi- ness of the clouds which hid the moon. ''If we were in England, I should say there was a storm brewing," he said. "Even here, I think we shall have some rain. Don't you feel that little creep in the air, something sinister, as if there was a bad angel about ? And Domenico, I see, has brought the lamp. I vote we go in."

" Are there any bad angels ? " she cried, to give her impatience vent.

He had risen up, and stood swaying indolently from one foot to the other. " Bad angels ? Oh yc^," he said ; " abundance ; very different from devils, who arc honest — like the fiends in the pictures, unmistakable. The others, you know, deceive. Don't you remember ? —

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' How there looked him in the face An angel beautiful and bright ; And how he knew it was a fiend, That miserable knight.' "

He turned and went into the salone, repeating these words in an undertone to himself. But there was in his face none of the bitterness or horror with which they must have been said by one who had ever in his own person made that discovery. He was quite calm, meditative, marking with a slight intonation and movement of his head the cadence of the poetry.

Frances stayed behind in the darkness. She had not the practice which we acquire in later life ; she could not hide the excitement which was still coursing through her veins. She went to the corner of the loggia which was nearest the sea, and caught in her face the rush of the rising breeze, which flung at her the first drops of the coming rain. A storm on that soft coast is a welcome break in the monotony of the clear skies and unchanging calm. After a while her father called to her that the rain was coming in, that the windows must be shut ; and she hurried in, brushing by Domenico, who had come to close everything up, and who looked

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at her reproachfully as she rushed past him. She came behind her father's chair and leaned over to kiss him. " I have got a little wet, and I think I had better go to bed," she said.

"Yes, surely, if you wish it, my dear," said Mr Waring. Something moist had touched his forehead, which was too warm to be rain. He waited politely till she had gone before he wiped it off. It was the edge of a tear, hot, miserable, full of anger as well as pain, which had made that mark upon his high white forehead. It made him pause for a minute or two in his reading. " Poor little girl ! " he said, with a sigh. Perhaps he was not so insensible as he seemed.

80

CHAPTEE V.

It is a common impression that happiness and unhiappiness are permanent states of mind, and that for long tracts of our lives we are under the continuous sway of one or other of these conditions. But this is almost always a mis- take, save in the case of grief, which is perhaps the only emotion which is beyond the reach of the momentary lightenings and alleviations and perpetual vicissitudes of life. Death, and the pangs of separation from those we love, are permanent, at least for their time ; but in everything else there is an ebb and flow which keeps the heart alive. When Frances Waring told the story of this period of her life, she represented herself unconsciously as having been oppressed by the mystery that over- shadowed her, and as having lost all the ease

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of lier young life prematurely in a sudden encounter with shadows unsuspected before. But as a matter of fact, this was not the case. She had a bad night — that is, she cried herself asleep ; but once over the boundary which divides our waking thouo;hts from the visions of the night, she knew no more till the sun came in and woke her to a very cheerful morning. It is true that care made several partially successful assaults upon her that day and for several days after. But as everything went on quite calmly and. peacefully, the impression wore off. The English family found out, as was inevitable, where Mr Waring lived, without any difficulty ; and first the father came, then the mother, and finally the pair together, to call. Frances, to whom a breach of decorum or civility was pain unspeakable, sat trembling and ashamed in the deepest corner of the loggia, while these kind strangers encountered Mariuccia at the door. The scene, as a matter of fact, was rather comic than tragic, for neither the visitors nor the guardian of the house possessed any language but their own; and Mr and Mrs Mannering liad as little VOL. L F

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understanding of the statement that Mr Waring did not " receive " as Frances had expected.

"But he is in — e in casa — e ix?" said the worthy Englishman. " Then, my dear, of course it is only a mistake. When he knows who we are — when he has our names "

" Non riceve oggi" said Mariuccia, setting her sturdy breadth in the doorway ; " oggi non riceve il signore " (The master does not receive to-day).

"But he is in?" repeated the bewildered good people. They could have understood "Not at home," which to Mariuccia would have been simply a lie — with which indeed, had need been, or could it have done the padrone any good, she would have burdened her con- science as lightly as any one. But why, when it was not in the least necessary?

Thus they played their little game at cross- purposes, while Frances sat, hot and red with shame, in her corner, sensible to the bottom of her heart of the discourtesy, the unkind- ness, of turning them from the door. They were her father's friends ; they claimed to have " stuck by him through thick and thin ; " they

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were people who knew about liim, and all that he belonged to, and the conditions of his for- mer life ; and yet they were turned from his door !

She did not venture to go out again for some days, except in the evening, when she knew that all the strangers were at the inevitable tahle d'hote; and it was with a sigh of relief, yet disappointment, that she heard they had gone away. Yes, at last they did go away, angry, no doubt, thinking her father a churl, and she herself an ignorant rustic, who knew nothing about good manners. Of course this was what they must think. Frances heard those words, '' Non riceve oggi" even in her dreams. She saw in imagination the aston- ished faces of the visitors. " But he will re- ceive us, if you will only take in our names ; " and then Mariuccia's steady voice repeating the well-known phrase. What must they have thouofht? That it was an insult — that their old friend scorned and defied them. What else could they suppose ?

They departed, however, and Frances got over it : and everything went on as l^cfore ;

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her father was just as usual — a sphinx in- deed, more and more hopelessly wrapped up in silence and mystery, but so natural and easy and kind in his uncommunicativeness, with so little appearance of repression or con- cealment about him, that it was almost im- possible to retain any feeling of injury or displeasure. Love is cheated every day in this way by offenders much more serious, who can make their dependants happy even while they are ruining them, and beguile the bitterest anxiety into forgetfulness and smiles. It was easy to make Frances forget the sudden access of wonderment and wounded feeling which had seized her, even without any special exertion ; time alone and the calm succession of the days were enough for that. She resumed her little picture of the palms, and was very successful — more than usually so. Mr Waring, who had hitherto praised her little works as he might have praised the sampler of a child, was silenced by this, and took it away with him into his room, and when he brought it back, looked at her with more attention than he had been used to show. " I think," he said, " little

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Fan, that you must be growing up," laying his hand upon her head with a smile.

" I am grown up, papa ; I am eighteen," she said.

At which he laughed softly. " I don't think much of your eighteen ; but this shows. I should not wonder, with time and work, if — you mightn't be good enough to exhibit at Mentone — after a while."

Frances had been looking at him with an expression of almost rapturous expectation. The poor little countenance fell at this, and a quick sting of mortification brought tears to her eyes. The exhibition at Mentone was an exhibition of amateurs. Tasie was in it, and even Mrs Gaunt, and all the people about who ever spoilt a piece of harmless paper. " 0 jDapa ! " she said. Since the failure of her late appeal to him, this was the only formula of reproach which she used.

"Well," he said, ''are you more ambitious than that, you little thing ? PerhajDS, by-and- by, you may be fit even for better things."

" It is beautiful," said Mariuccia. " You see where the light goes, and where it is in the

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shade. But, carina, if you were to copy the face of Domenico, or even mine, that would be more interesting. The palms we can see if we look out of the window ; but imagine to your- self that 'Menico might go aw^ay, or even might die ; and we should not miss him so much if we had his face hung up upon the wall."

*^ It is easier to do the trees than to do Domenico," said Frances; "they standstill."

''And so would 'Menico stand still, if it was to please the signorina — he is not very well educated, but he knows enough for that ; or I myself, though you will think, perhaps, I am too old to make a pretty picture. But if I had my veil on, and my best earrings, and the coral my mother left me "

"You look very nice, Mariuccia — I like you as you are ; but I am not clever enough to make a portrait." ^

Mariuccia cried out with scorn. "You are clever enough to do whatever you wish to do," she said. " The padrone thinks so too, though he will not say it. Not clever enough ! Magari ! too clever is what you mean."

Frances set up her palms on a little stand of

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carved wood, and was very well pleased with herself; but that sentiment palls perhaps sooner than any other. It was very agreeable to be praised, and also it was pleasant to feel that she had finished her work successfully. But after a short time it began to be a great subject of regret that the work was done. She did not know what to do next. To make a portrait of Domenico was above her powers. She idled about for the day, and found it uncomfortable. That is the moment in which it is most desirable to have a friend on w^hom to bestow one's tecliousness. She bethought herself that she had not seen Tasie for a week. It was now more than a fortnight since the events detailed in the beginning of this history. Her father, when asked if he would not like a walk, declined. It was too warm, or too cold, or perhaps too dusty, which was very true ; and accordingly she set out alone.

Walking down through the Marina, the little tourist town which was rising uipon the shore, she saw^ some parties of travellers arriving, which always had been a little pleasure to her. It was minorled now with a certain excitement.

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Perhaps some of them, like those who had just gone away, might know all about her, more than she knew herself — what a strange thought it was ! — some of those unknown people in their travelling cloaks, which looked so much too warm — people whom she had never seen before, who had not a notion that she was Frances Waring ! One of the parties was composed of ladies, surrounded and enveloped, so to speak, by a venerable courier, who sAvept them and their possessions before him into the hotel. Another was led by a father and mother, not at all unlike the pair who had "stuck by" Mr Waring. How strange to imagine that they might not be strangers at all, but people who knew all about her !

In the first group was a girl, who hung back a little from the rest, and looked curiously up at all the houses, as if looking for some one — a tall, fair-haired girl, with a blue veil tied over her hat. She looked tired, but eager, with more in- terest in her face than any of the others showed. Frances smiled to herself with the half-superi- ority which a resident is apt to feel : a girl must be very simple indeed, if she thought the houses

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Oil the Marina worth looking at, Frances thought. But she did not pause in her quick walk. The Durants lived at the other end of the Marina, in a little villa built upon a terrace over an olive garden — a low house with no particular beauty, but possessing also a loggia turned to the west, the luxury of building on the Eiviera. Here the whole family were seated, the old clergy- man with a large English newspaper, which he was reading deliberately from end to end ; his wife with a work-basket full of articles to mend ; and Tasie at the little tea-table, pouring out the tea. Frances was received with a little clamour of satisfaction, for she was a favourite.

" Sit here, my dear." " Come this way, close to me, for you know I am getting a little hard of hearing."

They had always been kind to her, but never, she thought, had she been received with so much cordiality as now.

" Have you come by yourself, Frances ? and along the Marina ? I think you should make Domenico or his wife walk with you, when you go through the Marina, my dear."

"Why, Mrs Durant ? I have always done it.

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Even Mariuccia says it does not matter, as I am an English girl."

" Ah, that may be true ; but English girls are not like American girls. I assure you they are taken a great deal more care of. If you ever go home " /

"And how is your poor father to-day, Frances ? " said Mrs Durant.

" Oh, papa is very well. He is not such a poor father. There is nothing the matter with him. At least, there is nothing neiv the matter with him," said Frances, with a little impatience.

" No," said the clergyman, looking up over the top of his spectacles and shaking his head. " Nothing neiu the matter with him. I believe that."

" If you ever go home," resumed Mrs

Durant ; " and of course some time you will go home "

'' I think very likely I never shall," said the girl. " Papa never talks of going home. He says home is here."

"That is all very well for the present mo- ment, my dear; but I feel sure, for my part, that one time or other it will happen as I say ;

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and then you must not let them suppose you have been a little savage, going about as you liked here."

" I don't think any one would care much, Mrs Durant ; and I am not going ; so you need not be afraid."

"Your poor father," Mr Durant went on in his turn, " has a great deal of self-command, Frances ; he has a great deal of self-control. In some ways, that is an excellent quality, but it may be carried too far. I wish very much he would allow me to come and have a talk with him — not as a clergyman, but just in a friendly way."

" I am quite sure you may come and talk with him as much as you like," said Frances, aston- ished ; " or if you want very much to see him, he will come to you."

" Oh, I should not take it upon me to ask that — in the meantime," Mr Durant said.

The girl stared a little, but asked no further questions. There was something among them which she did not understand — a look of curi- osity, an air of meaning more than their words said. The Durants were always a little apt to be

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didactic, as became a clergyman's family ; but Tasie was generally a safe refuge. Frances turned to her with a little sigh of perplexity, hoping to escape further question. "Was the Sunday- school as large last Sunday, Tasie?" she said.

" Oh, Frances, no ! Such a disappointment ! There were only four ! Isn't it a pity ? But you see the little Mannerings have all gone away. Such sweet children ! and the little one of all has such a voice. They are perhaps com- ing back for Easter, if they don't stay at Eome ; and if so, I think we must put little Herbert in a white surplice — he will look like an angel — and have a real anthem with a soprano solo, for once."

" I doubt if they will all come back," said Mr Durant. "Mr Mannering himself indeed, I don't doubt, 07i business ; but as for the family, you must not flatter yourself, Tasie."

''She liked the place," said his wife; "and very likely she would think it her duty, if any- thing is to come of it, you know."

" Be careful," said the clergyman, with a glance aside, which Frances would have been dull indeed not to have perceived was directed

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at herself. " Don't say anything that may be premature."

Frances was brave in her way. She felt, with a little rising excitement, that her friends were bursting with some piece of knowledge which they were longing to communicate. It roused in her an impatience and reluctance mingled with keen curiosity. She would not hear it, and yet was breathless with impatience to know what it was.

" Mr Mannering ? " she said, deliberately — " that was the gentleman that knew papa."

"You saw him, then?" cried Mrs Durant. There was something like a faint disappointment in her tone.

" He was one of papa's early friends," said Frances, with a little emphasis. " I saw him twice. He and his wife both ; they seemed kind people."

Mr Durant and his wife looked at each other, and even Tasie stared over her teacups. " Oh, very kind people, my dear ; I don't think you could do better than have full confidence in them," Mrs Durant said.

" And your poor father could not have a truer

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friend," said the old clergyman. "You must tell him I am coming to have a talk with him about it. It was a great revelation, but I hope that everything will turn out for the best."

Frances grew redder and redder as she sat a mark for all their arrows. What was it that was a "revelation"? But she would not ask. She began to be angry, and to say to herself that she would put her hands to her ears, that she would listen to nothing.

"Hemy !" said Mrs Durant, "who is it that is premature now ? "

" I am afraid I can't stay," said Frances, ris- ing quickly from her chair. " I have something to do for Mariuccia. I only came in because — because I was passing. Never mind, Tasie ; I know my way so well ; and Mr Durant wants some more tea."

" Oh but, Frances, my dear, you really must let me send some one with you. You must not move about in that independent way."

" And we had a great many things to say to you," said the old clergyman, keeping her hand in his. " Are you really in such a hurry ? It •wdll be better for 37^ourself to wait a little.

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and hear something that will be for your good."

" It cannot be any worse for me to run about to-day than any other day," said Frances, almost sternly ; '' and whatever there is to hear, won't to-morrow do just as well ? I think it is a little funny of you all to speak to me so ; but now I must go."

She was so rapid in her movements that she was gone before Tasie could extricate herself from the somewhat crazy little table. And then they all three looked at each other and shook their heads. "Do 3^ou think she can know ? " "Can she have known it all the time?" "Has Waring told her, or was it Mannering ? " they said to each other.

Frances could not hear their mutual ques- tions, but something very like the purj)ort of them got into her agitated brain. She felt sure they were wondering whether she knew — what ? this revelation, this something which they had found out. Nothing would make her submit to hear it from them, she said to herself. But the moment was come when she could not be put off any longer.. She would go to her father.

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and she would not rest until she was informed what it Avas.

She hastened along, avoiding the Marina, which had amused her on her way, hurrying from terrace to terrace of the olive groves. Her heart was beating fast, and her rapid pace made it faster. But as she thought of her father's unperturbed looks, the calm with which he had received her eager questions, and the very small likelihood that anything she could say about the hints of the Durants would move him, her pace and her excitement both de- creased. She went more slowly, less hopefully, back to the Palazzo. It was all very well to say that she must know. But what if he would not tell her? What if he received her ques- tions as he had received them before ? The circumstances were not changed, nor was he changed because the Durants knew something, she did not know what. Oh, what a poor piece of friendship was that, that betrayed a friend's secret to his neighbours ! She did not know, she could not so much as form a guess, what the secret was. But little or great, his friend should have kept it. She said this to herself

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bitterly, when the chill prol3abilities of the case began to make themselves felt. It was harder to think that the Durants knew, than to be kept in darkness herself.

She went in at last very soberly, with the intention of telling her father all that had passed, if perhaps that of itself might be an inducement to him to have confidence in her. It was not a pleasant mission. Her steps had become very sober as she went up the long marble stair. Mariuccia met her with a little cry. Had she not met the padrone ? He had gone out down through the olive woods to meet her and fetch her home. It was a brief reprieve. In the evening after dinner was the time when he was most accessible. Frances, with a thrill of mingled relief and disappoint- ment, retired to her room to make her little toilet. She had an hour or two at least before her ere it would be necessary to speak.

VOL. I. G

98

CHAPTER VI.

When one has made up one's mind to reopen a painful subject after dinner, the preliminary meal is not usually a very pleasant one ; nor, with the tremor of preparation in one's mind, is one likely to make a satisfactory dinner. Frances could not talk about anything. She could not eat ; her mind was absorbed in what was coming. It seemed to her that she must speak : and yet how gladly would she have escaped from or postponed the explanation ! Explanation ! Possibly he would only smile and bafEe her as he had done before ; or per- haps be angry, which would be better. Any- thing would be better than that indifference. She went out to the loggia when dinner was over, trembling with the sensation of suspense. It was still not dark, and the night was clear

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with the young moon already shining, so that between the retiring day and the light of the night it was almost as clear as it had been two hours before. Frances sat down, shivering a little, though not with cold. Usually her father accompanied or immediately followed her, but by some perversity he did not do so to-night. She seated herself in her usual place, and waited, listening for every sound — that is, for sounds of one kind — his slow step coming along the polished floor, here soft and muffled over a piece of carpet, there loud upon the parquet. But for some time, during which she rose into a state of feverish expectation, there was no such sound.

It was nearly half an hour, according to her calculation, probably not half so much by com- mon computation of time, when one or tw^o doors were opened and shut quickly and a sound of voices met her ear — not sounds, how- ever, which had any but a partial interest for her, for they did not indicate his approach. After a while there followed the sound of a footstep but it was not Mr Waring's ; it was not Domenico's subdued tread, nor the measured

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march of Mariuccia. It was light, quick, and somewhat uncertain. Frances was half dis- appointed, half relieved. Some one w^as com- ing, but not her father. It would be impos- sible to speak to him to-night. The relief was uppermost ; she felt it through her whole being. Not to-night; and no one can ever tell what to-morrow may bring forth. She looked up no longer with anxiety, but curiosity, as the door opened. It opened quickly ; some one looked out, as if to see what was beyond, then, with a slight exclamation of satisfaction, stejDped out upon the loggia into the partial light.

Frances rose up quickly, with the curious sensation of acting over something which she had rehearsed before, she did not know where or how. It was the girl whom she had re- marked on the Marina as having just arrived who now stood looking about her curiously, with her travelling-cloak fastened only at the throat, her gauze veil thrown up about her hat. This new-comer came in quickly, not with the timidity of a stranger. She came out into the centre of the loggia, where the light fell fully around her, and showed her tall slight

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figure, the fair liair clustering in Iier neck, a certain languid grace of movement, which her energetic entrance curiously belied. Frances waited for some form of apology or self-intro- duction, prepared to be very civil, and feeling in reality pleased and almost grateful for the interruption.

But the young lady made no explanation. She put her hands up to her throat and loosed her cloak with a little sigh of relief. She undid the veil from her hat. " Thank heaven, I have got here at last, free of those people ! " she said, putting herself sans fagon into Mr Waring's chair, and laying her hat upon the little table. Then she looked up at the astonished girl, who stood looking on.

" Are you Frances ? " she said ; but the question was put in an almost indifferent tone.

" Yes; I am Frances. But I don't know "

Frances was civil to the bottom of her soul, polite, incapable of hurting any one's feelings. She could not say anything disagreeable ; she could not demand brutally, Who are you ? and what do you want here ?

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" I thought so," said the stranger ; " and, oddly enough, I saw you this afternoon, and wondered if it could be you. You are a little like mamma. — I am Constance, of course," she added, looking up with a half-smile. "We ought to kiss each other, I suppose, though we can t care much about each other, can we ? — Where is papa ? "

Frances had no breath to speak ; she could not say a word. She looked at the new-comer with a gasp. Who was she ? And who was papa ? Was it some strange mistake which had brought her here ? But then the question, "Are you Frances?" showed that it could not be a mistake.

''I beg your pardon," she said; "I don't understand. This is — Mr AVaring's. You are looking for — your father ? "

" Yes, yes," cried the other impatiently ; "I know. You can't imagine I should have come here and taken possession if I had not made sure first ! You are well enouo-h known in this little place. There was no trouble about it. — And the house looks nice, and this must be a fine view when there is light to see it by. — But

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where is papa ? They told me he was always to be found at this hour."

Frances felt the blood ebb to her very finger- points, and then rush back like a great flood upon her heart. She scarcely knew where she was standing or what she was saying in her great bewilderment. "Do you mean — my father ? " she said.

The other girl answered with a laugh : " You are very particular. I mean our father, if you prefer it. Your father — my father. What does it matter ? — Where is he ? Why isn't he here ? It seems he must introduce us to each other. I did not think of any such formality. I thought you would have taken me for granted," she said.

Frances stood thunderstruck, gazing, listen- ing, as if eyes and ears alike fooled her. She did not seem to know the meaning of the words. They could not, she said to herself, mean what they seemed to mean — it was impossible. There must be some wonderful, altogether unspeakable blunder. " I don't understand," she said again, in a piteous tone. '' It must be some mistake."

The other girl fixed her eyes upon her in the waning light. She had not paid so much atten-

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tion to Frances at first as to the new place and scene. She looked at her now with the air of weighing her in some unseen balance and find- ing her wanting, with impatience and half con- tem23t. " I thought you would have been glad to see me," she said ; " but the world seems just the same in one place as another. Because I am in distress at home you don't want me here."

Then Frances felt herself goaded, galled into the matter-of-fact question, "Who are you?" though she felt that she would not believe the answer she received.

" Who am I ? Don't you know who I am ? Who should I be but Con ? Constance Waring, your sister ? — Where," she cried, springing to her feet and stamping one of them upon the ground — " where, ivhere is papa ? "

The door opened again behind her softly, and Mr Waring with his slow step came out. " Did I hear some one calling for me ? " he said. — *' Frances, it is not you, surely, that are quar- relling with your visitor? — I beg the lady's pardon ; I cannot see who it is."

The stranger turned upon him with impa-

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tience in her tone. " It was I who called," she said. " I thought you were sure to be here. Papa, I have always heard that you were kind — a kind man, they all said ; that was why I

came, thinking I am Constance ! " she added

after a pause, drawing herself up and facing him with something of his own gesture and attitude. She was tall, not much less than he was ; very unlike little Frances. Her slight figure seemed to draw out as she raised her head and looked at him. She was not a suppliant. Her whole air was one of indignation that she should be subjected to a moment's doubt.

" Constance ! " said Mr Waring. The day- light was gone outside ; the moon had got be- hind a fleecy white cloud ; behind those two figures there was a gleam of light from within, Domenico having brought in the lamp into the drawing-room. He stepped backward, opening the glass door. " Come in," he said, " to the light."

Frances came last, with a great commotion in her heart, but very still externally. She felt herself to have sunk into quite a subordinate place. The other two, they were the chief

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figures. She had now no explanation to ask, no questions to put, though she had a thousand ; but everything else was thrown into the back- ground, everything was inferior to this. The chief interest was with the others now.

Constance stepped in after him with a proud freedom of step, the air of one who was mistress of herself and her fate. She went up to the table on which the tall lamp stood, her face on a level with it, fully lighted up by it. She held her hat in her hand, and played with it with a careless yet half-nervous gesture. Her fair hair was short, and clustered in her neck and about her forehead almost like a child's, though she was not like a child. Mr Waring, looking at her, was more agitated than she. He trembled a little ; his eyelids were lifted high over his eyes. Her air was a little defiant ; but there was no suspicion, only a little uncertainty in his. He put out his hand to her after a min- ute's inspection. '' If you are Constance, you are welcome," he said.

" I don't suppose that you have any doubt I am Constance," said the girl, flinging her hat on the table and herself into a chair. "It is

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a very curious way to receive one, though, after such a long journey — such a tiresome long journey," she repeated, with a voice into which a querulous tone of exhaustion had come.

Mr Waring sat down too in the immediate centre of the light. He had not kissed her nor aj^proached her, save by the momentary touch of their hands. It was a curious way to re- ceive a stranger, a daughter. She lay back in her chair as if wearied out, and tears came to her eyes. " I should not have come, if I had known," she said, with her lip quivering. " I am very tired. I put up with everything on

the journey, thinking, when I came here

And I am more a stranger here than any- where ! " She paused, choking with the half- hysterical fit of crying which she would not allow to overcome her. "She — knows nothino; about me ! " she cried, with a sharp accent of pain, as if this was the last blow.

Frances, in her bewilderment, did not know what to do or say. She looked at her father, but his face was dumb, and crave her no suff- gestion ; and then she looked at the new-comer, who lay l^ack with her head against the back

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of the cliair, her eyes closed, tears forcing their way through her eyelashes, her slender white throat convulsively struggling with a sob. The mind of Frances had been shaken by a sudden storm of feelings unaccustomed ; a throb of something which she did not understand, which was jealousy, though she neither knew nor in- tended it, had gone through her being. She seemed to see herself cast forth from her easy supremacy, her sway over her father's house, deposed from her principal place. And she was only human. Already she was conscious of a downfall. Constance had drawn the in- terest towards herself — it was she to whom every eye would turn. The girl stood apart for a moment, with that inevitable movement which has been in the bosom of so many since the well-behaved brother of the Prodigal put it in words, " Now that this thy son has come." Constance, so far as Frances knew, was no prodigal ; but she was what was almost worse — a stranger, and yet the honours of the house were to be hers. She stood thus, look- ing on, until the sight of the suppressed sob, of the closed eyes, of the weary, hopeless atti-

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tilde, were too much for her. Then it came suddenly into her mind, if she is Constance ! Frances had not known half an hour before that there was any Constance who had a right to her sympathy in the world. She gave her father another questioning look, but got no reply from his eyes. Whatever had to be done must be done by herself. She went up to the chair in which her sister lay and touched her on the shoulder. " If we had known you were coming," she said, "it would have been different. It is a little your fault not to let us know. I should have gone to meet you ; I should have made your room ready. We have nothing ready, because we did not know." Constance sat suddenly up in her chair and shook her head, as if to shake off the emotion that h?id been too much for her. "How sen- sible you are ! " she said. " Is that your char- acter ? — She is quite right, isn't she ? But I did not think of that. I suppose I am impet- uous, as people say. I was unhappy, and I thought you would — receive me with open arms. It is evident / am not the sensible one." She said this with still a quiver in her

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lip, but also a smile, pushing back her chair, and resuming the unconcerned air which she had worn at first.

*' Frances is quite right. You ought to have written and warned us," said Mr Waring.

" Oh yes ; there are so many things that one ought to do."

"But we will do the best we can for you, now you are here. Mariuccia will easily make a room ready. Where is your baggage ? Do- menico can go to the railway, to the hotel, wherever you have come from."

*'My box is outside the door. I made them bring it. The woman — is that Mariuccia? — would not take it in. But she let me come in. She was not suspicious. She did not 'say, ' If you are Constance.' " And here she laughed, with a sound that grated upon Mr Waring's nerves. He jumped up suddenly from his chair.

" I had no proof that you were Constance," he said, " though I believed it. But only your mother's daughter could reproduce that laugh."

'*Has Frances got it?" the girl cried, with an instant lighting up of opposition in her

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eyes; *'for I am like you, but she is the image of mamma."

He turned round and looked at Frances, who, feeling that an entire circle of new emotions, unknown to her, had come into being at a bound, stood with a passive, frightened look, spectator of everything, not knowing how to adapt herself to the new turn of affairs.

"By Jove!" her father said, with an air of exasperation she had never seen in him before, "that is true! But I had never noticed it. Even Frances. You've come to set us all by the ears."

"Oh no ! I'll tell you, if you like, why I came. Mamma — has been more aggravating than usual. I said to myself you would be sure to understand what that meant. And something arose — I will tell you about it after — a complication, something that mamma in- sisted I should do, though I had made ujj my mind not to do it."

"You had better," said her father, with a smile, " take care what ideas on that subject you put into your sisters head."

Constance paused, and looked at Frances with

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a look which was half scrutinising, half con- temptuous. " Oh, she is not like me," she said. "Mamma was very aggravating, as you know

she can be. She wanted me But I'll tell

you after." And then she began : "I hope, because you live in Italy, papa, you don't think you ought to be a medieval parent ; but that sort of thing in Belgravia, you know, is too ridiculous. It was so out of the question that it was some time before I understood. It was not exactly a case of being locked up in my room and kept on bread and water ; but some- thing of the sort. I was so much astonished at first, I did not know what to do ; and then it became intolerable. I had nobody I could appeal to, for everybody agreed with her. Markham is generally a safe person ; but even Markham took her side. So I immediately thought of you. I said to myself. One's father is the right person to protect one. And I knew, of course, that if anybody in the world could understand how impossible it is to live with mamma when she has taken a thing into her head, it would be you."

Waring kept his eye upon Frances while this

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was being said, with an almost comic embar- rassment. It was half laughable ; but it was painful, as so many laughable things are ; and there was something like alarm, or rather tim- idity, in the look. The man looked afraid of the little girl — whom all her life he had treated as a child — and her clear sensible eyes.

" One thinks these things, perhaps, but one does not put them into words," he said.

"Oh, it is no worse to say them than to think them," said Constance. " I always say what I mean. And you must know that things went very far — so far that I couldn't put up with it any longer ; so I made up my mind all at once that I would come off to you."

" And I tell you, you are welcome, my dear. It is so long since I saw you that I could not have recognised you. That is natural enough. But now that you are here — I cannot decide upon the wisdom of the step till I know all the circumstances "

" Oh, wisdom ! I don't suppose there is any wisdom about it. No one expects wisdom from me. But what could I do ? There was noth- ing else that I could do."

VOL. I. H

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"At all events," said Waring, with a little inclination of his head and a smile, as if he were talking to a visitor, Frances said to her- self— "Frances and I will forgive any lack of wisdom which has given us — this pleasure." He laughed at himself as he spoke. "You must expect for a time to feel like a fine lady paying a visit to her poor relations," he said.

" Oh, I know you will approve of me when you hear everything. Mamma says I am a Waring all over, your own child."

The sensations with which Frances stood and listened, it would be impossible to describe. Mamma! who was this, of whom the other girl spoke so lightly, whom she had never heard of before? AVas it possible that a mother as well as a sister existed for her, as for others, in the unknown world out of which Constance had come ? A hundred questions were on her lips, but she controlled herself, and asked none of them. Eeflection, which comes so often slowly, almost painfully, to her came now like the flash of lightning. She would not betray to any one, not even to Constance, that she had never known she had a mother. Papa

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might be wrong — oh, how wrong he had been ! — but she would not betray him. She checked the exclamation on her lips ; she subdued her soul altogether, forcing it into silence. This was the secret she had been so anxious to penetrate, which he had kept so closely from her. Why should he have kept it from her? It was evident it had not been kept on the other side. Whatever had happened, had Frances been in trouble, she knew of no one with whom she could have taken refuge ; but her sister had known. Her brain was made dizzy by these thoughts. It was open to her now to ask whatever she pleased. The mystery had been made plain ; but at the same time her mouth was stojDped. She would not con- fuse her father, nor betray him. It was chiefly from this bewildering sensation, and not, as her father, suddenly grown acute in respect to Frances, thought, from a mortifying con- sciousness that Constance would speak with more freedom if she were not there, that Frances now spoke. " I think," she said, " that I had better go and see about the rooms. Mariuccia will not know what to do till I

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come ; and you will take care of Constance, papa."

He looked at her, hearing in her tone a wounded feeling, a touch of forlorn pride, which perhaps was there, but not so much as he thought ; but it was Constance who replied : "Oh yes, we will take care of each other. I have so much to tell him," with a laugh. Frances was aware that there was re-

o

lief in it, in the prospect of her own absence, but she did not feel it so strongly as her father did. She gave them both a smile, and went away.

" So that is Frances," said the new-found sister, looking after her. " I find her very like mamma. But everybody says I am your child, disposition and all." She rose, and came up to Waring, who had never lessened the distance between himself and her. She put her hand within his arm and held up her face to him. "I am like you. I shall be much happier with you. Do you think you will like having me instead of Frances, father ? " She clasped his arm against her in a caressing way, and leant her cheek upon the sleeve of his

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velvet coat. " Don't you think you would like to have me, father, instead of her ? " she said.

A whole panorama of the situation, like a landscape, suddenly flashed before Waring's mind. The spell of this caress, and the confi- dence she showed of being loved, which is so great a charm, and the impulse of nature, so much as that is worth, drew him towards this handsome stranger, who took possession of him and his affections without a doubt, and pushed away the other from his heart and his side with an impulse which his philosophy said was com- mon to all men — or at least, if that was too sweeping, to all women. But in the same mo- ment came that sense of championship and pro- prietorship, the one inextricably mingled with the other, which makes us all defend our own whenever assailed. Frances was his own ; she was his creation ; he had taught her almost everything. Poor little Frances ! Not like this girl, who could speak for herself, who could go everywhere, half commanding, half taking with guile every heart that she encountered. Frances would never do that. But she would be true, true as the heavens themselves, and

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never falter. By a sudden gleam of perception he saw that, though he had never told her anything of this, though it must have- been a revelation of wonder to her, yet that she had not burst forth into any outcries of astonish- ment, or asked any compromising questions, or done anything to betray him.

His heart went forth to Frances with an in- finite tenderness. He had not been a doting father to her ; he had even — being himself what the world calls a clever man, much above her mental level — felt himself to condescend a little, and almost upbraided Heaven for giving him so ordinary a little girl. And Constance, it was easy to see, was a brilliant creature, accus- tomed to take her place in the world, fit to be any man's companion. But the first result of this revelation was to reveal to him, as he had never seen it before, the modest and true little soul which had developed by his side without much notice from him, whom he had treated with such cruel want of confidence, to whom the shock of this evening's disclosures must have been so great, but who, even in the moment of discovery, shielded him. All this

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went through his mind with the utmost rapid- ity. He did not put his new-found child away from him ; but there was less enthusiasm than Constance expected in the kiss he gave her. "I am very glad to have you here, my dear," he said more coldly than pleased her. " But why instead of Frances ? You will be happier both of you for being together."

Constance did not disengage herself with any appearance of disappointment. She perceived, perhaps, that she was not to be so triumphant here as was usually her privilege. She relin- quished her father s arm after a minute, not too precipitately, and returned to her chair. " I shall like it, as long as it is possible," she said. '' It will be very nice for me having a father and sister instead of a mother and brother. But you will find that mamma will not let you off. She likes to have a girl in the house. She will have her pound of flesh." She threw herself back into her chair with a laugh. " How quaint it all is ; and how beautiful the view must be, and the mountains and the sea ! I shall be very happy here — the world forgetting, by the world forgot — and with you, papa."

120

CHAPTER VII.

" She lias come to stay," Frances said.

"What?" cried Mariuccia, making the small monosyllable sound as if it were the biggest word in her vocabulary.

" She has come to stay. She is my sister ; papa's daughter as much as I am. She has come — home." Frances was a little uncertain about the word, and it was only "a casct'' that she said — " to the house," which means the same.

Mariuccia threw i\^ her arms in astonishment. " Then there has been another signorina all the time ! " she cried. " Figure to yourself that I have been with the padrone a dozen years, and T never heard of her before."

"Papa does not talk very much about his concerns," said Frances in her faithfulness. " And what we have got to do is to make her

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very comfortable. She is very pretty, don't you think ? Such beautiful blond hair — and tall. I never shall be tall, I fear. They say she is like papa ; but, as is natural, she is much more beautiful than papa."

"Beauty is as you find it," said Mariuccia. " Carina, no one will ever be so pretty as our own signorina to Domenico and me. — What is the child doing ? She is pulling the things off her own bed. — My angel, you have lost your good sense. You are fluttered and upset by this new arrival. The blue room will be very good for the new young lady. Perhaps she will not stay ver)^ long ? "

The wish was father to the thought. But Frances took no notice of the suggestion. She said briskly, going on with what she was doing, " She must have my room, Mariuccia. The blue room is quite nice ; it will do very well for me ; but I should like her to feel at home, not to think our house was bare and cold. The blue room would be rather naked, if we were to put her there to-night. It will not be naked for me, for, of course, I am used to it all, and know everything. But when Constance

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wakes to-morrow morning and looks round her, and wonders where she is — oh, how strange it all seems ! — I wish her to open her eyes upon things that are pretty, and to say to herself, ' What a delightful house papa has ! What a nice room ! I feel as if I had been here all my life. "

*'Constanza — is that her name? It is rather a common name — not distinguished, like our signorina's. But it is very good for her, I have no doubt. And so you will give her your own room, that she may be fond of the house, and stay and supplant you? That is what will happen. The good one, the one of gold, gets pushed out of the way. I would not give her my room to make her love the house."

" I think you would, Mariuccia."

" No ; I do not think so," said Mariuccia, squaring herself with one arm akimbo. " No ; I do not deny that I would probably take some new things into the blue room, and put up curtains. But I am older than you are, and I have more sense. I would not do it. If she gets your room, she will get your place ; and she will please everybody, and be admired, and my angel will be put out of the way."

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''I am such a horrid little wretch," said Frances, " that I thought of that too. It was mean, oh, so mean of me. She is prettier than I am, and taller ; and — yes, of course, she must be older too, so you see it is her right."

" Is she the eldest ? " asked Mariuccia.

Frances made a puzzled pause ; but she would not let the woman divine that she did not know. ^* Oh yes ; she must be the eldest. — Come quick, Mariuccia ; take all these things to the blue room ; and now for your clean linen and every- thing that is nice and sweet."

Mariuccia did what she was told, but with many objections. She carried on a running murmur of protest all the time. '' AVhen there are changes in a family; when it is by the visitation of God, that is another matter. A son or a daughter who is in trouble, who has no other refuge ; that is natural ; there is noth- ing to say. But to remain away during a dozen years, and then to come back at a moment's notice — nay, without even a moment's notice — in the evening, when all the beds are made up, and demand everything that is comfortable. — I have always thought that there was a great deal

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to be said for the poor young signorino of whom the priest speaks, he who had always stayed at home when his brother was amusing himself. Carina, you know what I mean."

" I have thought of that too," said Frances. " But my sister is not a prodigal ; and papa has never done anything for her. It is all quite different. When we know each other better, it will be delightful always to have a companion, Mariuccia — think how pleasant it will be always to have a companion. I wonder if she will like my pictures ? — Now, don't you think the room looks very pretty ? I always thought it was a pretty room. Leave the persiani open that she may see the sea ; and in the morning don't forget to come in and close them before the sun gets hot. — I think that will do now."

" Indeed I hope it will do — after all the trouble you have taken. And I hope the young lady is worthy of it. — But, my angel, what shall I do when I come in to wake her ? Does she expect that I can talk her language to her ? No, no. And she will know nothing ; she will not even be able to say ' Good morning.' "

" I hope so. But if not, you must call me

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first, that is all," said Frances cheerfully. — "Now, don't go to bed just yet; perhaps she will like something — some tea ; or perhaps a

little supper ; or I never asked if she had

dined."

Mariuccia regarded this possibility with equa- nimity. She was not afraid of a girl's appetite. But she made a grimace at the mention of the tea. ''It is good when one has a cold ; oh yes," she said ; " but to drink it at all times, as you do ! If she wants anything it will be a great deal better to give her a sir op, or a little red wine."

Frances detained Mariuccia as long as she could, and lingered herself still longer after all was ready in the room. She did not know how to go back to the drawing-room, where she had left these two together, to say to each other, no doubt, many things that could be better said in her absence. There was no jealousy, only delicacy, in this ; and she had given up her pretty room to her sister, and carried her indis- pensable belongings to the bare one, with the purest pleasure in making Constance comfort- able. Constance ! whom an hour ago she had

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never lieard of, and who now was one of them, nearer to her than anybody, except her father. But all this being done, she had the strangest difficulty in going back, in thrusting herself, as imagination said, between them, and inter- rupting their talk. To think that it should be such a tremendous matter to return to that familiar room in which the greater part of her life had been passed ! It felt like another world into which she was about to enter, full of un- known elements and conditions which she did not understand. She had not known what it was to be shy in the very limited society she had ever known ; but she was shy now, feeling as if she had not courage to put her hand upon the handle of the door. The familiar creak and jar of it as it opened seemed to her like noisy instruments announcing her approach, which stopped the conversation, as she had divined, and made her father and her sister look up with a little start. Frances could have wished to sink through the floor, to get rid of her own being altogether, as she saw them both give this slight start. Constance was leaning upon the table, the light of the lamp shining full

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upon her face, witli the air of being in the midst of an animated narrative, which she stopped when Frances entered ; and Mr Waring had been listening with a smile. He turned half round and held out his hand to the timid girl behind him. " Come, Frances," he said, "you have been a long time making your pre- parations. Have you been bringing out the fairest robe for your sister ? " It was odd how the parable — which had no signification in their circumstances — haunted them all.

"Your room is quite ready whenever you please. And would you like tea or anything? I ought to have asked if you had dined," Frances said.

" Is she the housekeeper ? — How odd ! — Do you look after everything ? — Dear me ! I am afraid, in that case, I shall make a very poor substitute for Frances, papa."

"It is not necessary to think of that," he said hastily, giving her a quick glance.

Frances saw it, with another involuntary, quickly suppressed pang. Of course there would be things that Constance must be warned not to say. And yet it felt as if papa had

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deserted her and gone over to tlie other side. She had not the remotest conception what the warning referred to, or what Constance meant.

" I dined at the hotel," Constance went on, " with those people whom I travelled with. I suppose you will have to call and be civil. They were quite delighted to think that they would know somebody at Bordighera — some of the inhabitants. — Yes, tea, if you please. And then I think I shall go to bed ; for twenty-four hours in the train is very fatiguing, besides the excitement. Don't you think Frances is very much like mamma ? There is a little way she has of setting her chin. — Look there ! That is mamma all over. I think they would get on together very well : indeed I feel sure of it." And again there was a significant look ex- changed, which once more went like a sting to Frances' heart.

" Your sister has been telling me," said Mr Waring, with a little hesitation, " of a great many people I used to know. You must be very much surprised, my dear ; but I will take

an opportunity " He was confused before

her, as if he had been before a judge. He gave

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her a look which was half shame and half grati- tude, sentiments both entirely out of place be- tween him and Frances. She could not bear that he should look at her so.

" Yes, papa," she said as easily as she could ; '' I know you must have a great deal to talk of. If Constance will give me her keys I will unpack her things for her." Both the girls instinctive- ly, oddly, addressed each other through their father, the only link between them, hesitating a little at the familiarity which nature made necessary, but which had no other warrant.

"Oh, isn't there a maid who can do it?" Constance cried, opening her eyes.

The evening seemed long to Frances, though it was not long. Constance trifled over the tea — which Mariuccia made with much reluctance — for half an hour. But she talked all the time ; and as her talk was of people Frances had never heard of, and was mingled with little allusions to what had passed before, — " I told you about him ; " " You remember, we were talking of them ; " with a constant recurrence of names which to Frances meant nothing at all, — it seemed long to her.

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130 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

She sat down at the table, and took her knitting, and listened, and tried to look as if she took an interest. She did indeed take a great interest ; no one could have been more eager to enter without arriere-pensee into the new life thus unfolded before her; and some- times she was amused and could laugh at the stories Constance was telling ; but her chief feeling was that sense of being entirely " out of it" — having nothing to do with it — which makes people who do not understand society feel like so many ghosts standing on the margin, know- ing nothing. The feeling was strange and very forlorn. It is an unpleasant experience even for those who are strangers, to whom it is a passing incident ; but as the speaker was her sister and the listener her father, Frances felt this more deeply still. Generally in the even- ing conversation flagged between them. He would have his book, and Frances sometimes had a book too, or a drawing upon which she could work, or at least her knitting. She had felt that the silence which reigned in the room on such occasions was not what ought to be.

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It was not like tlie talk which was supposed to go on in all the novels she had ever read where the people were nice. And sometimes she attempted to entertain her father with little incidents in the life of their poor neighbours, or things which Mariuccia had told her ; but he listened benevolently, with his finger be- tween the leaves of his book, or even without closing his book, looking up at her over the leaves — only out of kindness to her, not be- cause he was interested ; and then silence would fall on them, a silence which was very sweet to Frances, in the midst of which her own little stream of thoughts flowed on continuously, but which now and then she was struck to the heart to think must be very dull for papa.

But to-night it was not dull for him. She listened, and said to herself this was the way to make conversation ; and laughed whenever she could, and followed every little gesture of her sister's with admiring eyes. But at the end, Frances, though she would not acknowledge it to herself, felt that she had not been amused. She thought the people in the village were just

132 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

as interesting. But then she was not so clever as Constance, and could not do them justice in the same way.

''And now I am going to bed," Constance said. She rose up in an instant with a rapid movement, as if the thought had only just struck her and she obeyed the impulse at once. There was a freedom about all her movements which troubled and captivated Frances. She had been leaning half over the table, her sleeves, which were a little w^ide, falling back from her arms, now leaning her chin in the hollow of one hand, now support- ing it with both, putting her elbows wherever she pleased. Frances herself had been trained by Mariuccia to very great decorum in respect to attitudes. If she did furtively now and then lean an elbow upon the table, she was aware that it was wrong all the time ; and as for legs, she knew^ it was only men wdio w^ere permitted to cross them, or to do anything save sit with two feet equal to each other upon the floor. But Constance cared for none of these rules. She rose up abruptly (Mariuccia would have said, as if something had stung her),

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almost before she had finished what she was saying. " Show me my room, please," she said, and yawned. She yawned quite freely, naturally, without any attempt to conceal or to apologise for it as if it had been an acci- dent. Frances could not help being shocked, yet neither could she help laughing with a sort of pleasure in this breach of all rules. But Constance only stared, and did not in the least understand why she should laugh.

''Where have you put your sister?" Mr Waring asked.

" I have put her — in the room next to yours, papa ; between your room and mine, you know : for I am in the blue room now. There she will not feel strange ; she will have people on each side."

" That is to say, you have given her "

It was Frances' turn now to give a warning glance. "The room I thought she would like best," she said, with a soft but decisive tone. She too had a little imperious way of her own. It was so soft, that a stranger would not have found it out ; but in the Palazzo they were all acquainted with it, and no one — not even

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Mariuccia — found it possible to say a word after this small trumpet liad sounded. Mr Waring accordingly was silenced, and made no further remark. He went with his daughters to the door, and kissed the cheek which Constance held lightly to him. " I shall see you again, papa," Frances said, in that same little deter- mined voice.

Mr Waring did not make any reply, but shrank a little aside, to let her pass. He looked like a man who was afraid. She had spared him ; she had not betrayed the igno- rance in which he had brought her up ; but now the moment of reckoning was near, and he was afraid of Frances. He went back into the salone, and walked up and down with a restlessness which was natural enough, con- sidering how all the embers of his life had been raked up by this unexpected event. He had lived in absolute quiet for fourteen long years : a strange life — a life which might have been supposed to be impossible for a man still in the heyday of his strength ; but yet, as it appeared, a life which suited him, which he preferred to others more natural. To settle

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down in an Italian village with a little girl of six for his sole companion — when he came to think of it, nothing could be more unnatural, more extraordinary ; and yet he had liked it well enough, as well as he could have liked anything at that crisis of his fate. He was the kind of man who, in other circum- stances, in another age, would have made him- self a monk, and spent his existence very placidly in illuminating manuscripts. He had done something as near this as is possible to an Englishman not a Eoman Catholic, of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, Waring had no ecclesiastical tendencies, or even in the nineteenth century he might have found out for himself some pseudo-monkery in which he could have been happy. As it was, he had retired with his little girl, and on the whole had been comfortable enough. But now the little girl had grown up, and required to have various things accounted for ; and the other individuals who had claims upon him, whom he thought he had shaken off altogether, had turned up again, and had to be dealt with. The monk had an easy time of it in com-

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parison. He who has but himself to think of may manage himself, if he has good luck ; but the responsibility of others on your shoulders is a terrible drawback to tranquillity. A little girl ! That seemed the simplest of all things. It had never occurred to him that she would form a link by w^hich all his former burdens might be drawn back ; or that she, more won- derful still, should ever arise and demand to know why. But both of these impossible things had happened.

Waring walked about the salone. He opened the glass door and stepped out into the loggia, into the tranquil shining of the moon, which lit up all the blues of the sea, and kindled little silver lamps all over the quivering palms. How quiet it was ! and yet that tranquil nature lying unmoved, taking whatever came of good or evil, did harm in a far more colossal way than any man could do. The sea, then looking so mild, would suddenly rise up and bring havoc and destruction worse than an army ; yet next day smile again, and throw its spray into the faces of the children, and lie like a harmless thing under the light. But a man

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 13*7

could not do this. A man had to give an account of all that he had done, whether it was good or whether it was evil, — if not to God — which on the whole was the easiest, for God knew all about it, how little harm had been intended, how little anything had been intended, how one mistake involved another, — if not to God — why, to some one harder to face ; perhaps to one's little girl.

He came back from the loggia and the moon- light and nature, which, all of them, were so indifferent to what was happening to him, with a feeling that the imperfect human lamp which so easily got out of gear — as easily as a man — was a more appropriate light for his dis- turbed soul ; and met Frances with her brown eyes waiting for him at the door.

138

CHAPTEE VIIL

"It is not because of this only, papa — I wanted before to speak to you. I was waiting in the loggia for you, when Constance came."

''What did you want, Frances? Oh, I quite acknowledge that you have a right to inquire. I hoped, perhaps, I might be spared to-night ; I am rather exhausted — to-night."

Frances dropped the hand which she had laid upon his arm. " It shall be exactly as you please, papa. I seem to know a great deal — oh, a great deal more than I knew at dinner. I don't think I am the same person ; and I thought it might save us all trouble if you would tell me — as much as you think I ought to know."

She had sat down in her usual place, in her careful little modest pose, a little stiflf, a little

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prim — the training of Mariuccia. After Con- stance, there was something in the attitude of Frances which made her father smile, though he was in no mood for smiling ; and it was clear that he could not, that he ought not to escape. He would not sit down, however, and meet her eye. He stood by the table for a few minutes, with his eyes upon the books, turning them over, as if he were looking for something. At last he said, but without looking up, ''There is nothing very dreadful to tell; no guilty secret, though you may suppose so. Your mother and I "

" Then I have really a mother, and she is living ? " the girl cried.

He looked at her for a moment. " I forg;ot that for a girl of your age that means a great deal — I hadn't thought of it. Perhaps if you

knew Yes ; you have got a mother, and

she is living. I suppose that seems a very wonderful piece of news ? "

Frances did not say anything. The water ^ came into her eyes. Her heart beat loudly, yet softly, against her young bosom. She had known it, so that she was not surprised. The

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surprise had been broken by Constance's careless talk, by the wonder, the doubt, the sense of im- possibility, which had gradually yielded to a conviction that it must be so. Her feeling was that she would like to go now, without delay, without asking any more questions, to her mother. Her mother ! and he hadn't thought before how much that meant to a girl — of her age !

Mr Waring was a little disconcerted by hav- ing no answer. Of course it meant a great deal to a girl ; but still, not so much as to make her incapable of reply. He felt a little annoyed, disturbed, perhaps jealous, as Frances herself had been. It was with difficulty that he resumed again ; but it had to be done.

" Your mother and I," he said, taking up the books again, opening and shutting them, looking at the title-page now of one, now of another, " did not get on very well. I don't know who was in fault — probably both. She had been married before. She had a son whom you hear Constance speak of as Markham. Mark- ham has been at the bottom of all the trouble. He drove me out of my senses when he was a

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boy. Now he is a man : so far as I can make out it is he that has disturbed our peace again — hunted us up, and sent Constance here. If you ever meet Markham — and of course now you are sure to meet him — beware of him." Here he made a pause again, and looked with great seriousness at the book in his hand, turning the leaf to finish a sentence which was continued on the next page.

" I beg your pardon, papa," said Frances ; '' I am afraid I am very stupid. What relation is Markham to me ? "

He looked at her for a moment, then threw down the book with some violence on the table, as if it were the offender. "He is your step- brother," he said.

" My — brother ? Then I have a brother too ? " After a little pause she added, " It is very wonderful, papa, to come into a new world like this all at once. I want — to draw my breath."

"It is my fault that it comes upon you all

at once. I never thought You were a

very small child when I brought you away. You forgot them all, as was natural. I did

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not at first know how entirely a cliild forgets ; and then — then it seemed a pity to disturb your mind, and perhaps set you longing for — what it was impossible for you to obtain."

It surprised him a little that Frances did not breathe a syllable of reproach. She said nothing. In her imagination she was looking back over these years, wondering how it would have been had she known. Would life ever be the same, now that she did know ? The w^orld seemed to open up round her, so much greater, wider, more full than she had thought. She had not thought much on the subject. Life in Bordighera was more limited even than life in an English village. The fact that she did not belong to the people among whom she had spent all these years, made a diff'erence ; and her father's recluse habits, the few people he cared to know, the stagnation of his life, made a greater difference still. Frances had scarcely felt it until that meeting with the Mannerings, which put so many vague ideas into her mind. A child does not naturally inquire into the circumstances which have surrounded it all its life. It was natural to her to live in this

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retired place, to see nobody, to make amuse- ments and occupations for herself — to know no one more like herself than Tasie Durant. Had she even possessed any girl-friends living the natural life of youth, that might have inspired a question or two. But she knew no girls — except Tasie, whose girlhood was a sort of fossil, and who might almost have been the mother of Frances. She saw indeed the village girls, but it did not occur to her to compare herself with them. Familiar as she was with all their ways, she was still a forestiere — one of the barbarous people, English, a word which ex- plains every difference. Frances did not quite know in what the peculiarity and eccentricity of the English consisted ; but she, too, recog- nised with all simplicity that, being Englisli, she was different. Now it came suddenly to her mind that the difference was not anything generic and general, but that it was her own special circumstances that had been unlike all the rest. There had been a mother all the time ; another girl, a sister, like herself It made her brain whirl.

She sat quite silent, thinking it all over, not

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perceiving lier father's embarrassment — thinking less of him, indeed, than of all the wonderful new things that seemed to crowd about her. She did not blame him. She was not think- ing enough of him to blame him ; her mind was quite sufficiently occupied by her dis- coveries. As she had taken him all her life without examination, she continued to take him. He was her father ; that was enough. It did not occur to her to ask herself whether what he had done was right or wrong. Only, it was all very strange. The old solid earth had gone from under her feet, and the old order of things had been overthrown. She was looking out upon a world not realised — a spectator of something like the throes of creation, seeing the new landscape tremble and roll into place, the heights and hollows all changing ; there was a great deal of ex- citement in it, both pain and pleasure. It occupied her so fully, that he fell back into a secondary place.

But this did not occur to Waring. He had not realised that it could be possible. He felt himself the centre of the system in which his

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 1-45

little daughter lived, and did not understand ]iow she could ignore him. He thought her silence — the silence of amazement, and excite- ment, and of that curious spectatorship — was the silence of reproach, and that her mind was full of a sense of wrong, which only duty kept in check. He felt himself on his trial before her. Having said all that he had to say, he remained silent, expecting her response. If she had given vent to an indignant exclamation, he would have been relieved ; he would have allowed that she had a right to be indignant. But her silence was more than he could bear. He searched through the recesses of his own thoughts ; but for the moment he could not find any further excuse for himself. He had done it for the best. Pro- bably she would not see that. Waring was well enough acquainted with the human mind to know that every individual sees such a question from his or her own point of view : and he was prepared to find that his daughter would be un- able to perceive what was so plain to him. But still he was aware that he had done it for the best. After a while the silence became so irk- some to him that he felt compelled to break it

VOL. T. K

146 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

and resume his explanations. If she would not say anything, there were a number of things w^hich he might say.

" It is a pity," he said, " that it has all bro- ken upon you so suddenly. If I could have divined that Constance would have taken such

a step To tell you the truth, I have never

realised Constance at all," he added, with an impulse towards the daughter he knew. " She was of course a mere child : to see her so inde- pendent, and with so distinct a will of her own, is very bewildering. I assure you, Frances, if it is wonderful to you, it is scarcely less won- derful to me."

There was something in his tone that made her lift her eyes to him ; and to see him stand there so embarrassed, so subdued, so much unlike the father who, though very kind and tender, had always been perhaps a little conde- scending, patronising, towards the girl, whom he scarcely recognised as an independent entity, went to her heart. She could not tell him not to be frightened — not to look at her with that guilty, apologetic look, which altogether reversed their ordinary relationship ; but it added a pang

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to her bewilderment. She asked hastily, by way of concealing this uncomfortable change, a question which she thought he would have no difficulty in answering — " Is Constance much older than I am, papa ? "

He gave a sort of furtive smile, as if he had no right to smile in the circumstances. " I don't wonder at your question. She has seen a great deal more of the world. But if there is a minute or two between you, I don't know which has it. There is no elder or younger in the case. You are twins, though no one would think so."

This gave Frances a farther shock — though why, it would be impossible to say. The blood rushed to her face. " She must think me — a very poor little thing," she said, in a hurried tone. " I never knew — I have no friend except Tasie — to show me what girls might be." The thought mortified her in an extraordinary way ; it brought a sudden gush of salt tears — tears quite diff'erent from those which had welled to her eyes when he told her of her mother. Constance, who was so diff'erent, would despise her — Constance, who knew exactly all about it, and that Frances was as old, perhaps a few

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minutes older than she. It is always difficult to divine what form pride will take. This was the manner in which it affected Frances. The same age ! and yet the one an accomplished woman, judging for herself — and the other not much more than a child.

" You do yourself injustice," said Mr Waring, somewhat rehabilitated by the mortification of Frances. " Nobody could think you a poor little thing. You have not the same knowledge of the world. Constance has been very differ- ently brought up. I think my training a great deal better than what she has had," he added quickly, with a mingled desire to cheer and restore self-confidence to Frances, and to re- assert himself after his humiliation. He felt what he said ; and yet, as was natural, he said a little more than he felt. " I must tell you," he said, in this new impulse, " that your mother is — a much more important person than I am. She is a great deal richer. The marriage was supposed to be much to my advantage."

There was a smile on his face which Frances, looking up suddenly, warned by a certain change of tone, did not like to see. She kept her eyes

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upon liim instinctively, she could not tell why, with a look which had a certain influence upon him, though he did not well understand it either. It meant that the unknown woman of whom he spoke was the girl's mother — her mother — one of whom no unbefitting word was to be said. It checked him in a quite curious unexpected way. When he had spoken of her, which he had done very rarely since they parted, it had been with a sense that he was free to characterise her as he thought she deserved. But here he was stopped short. That very evening he had said things to Constance of her mother which in a moment he felt that he dared not say" to Frances. The sensation was a very strange one. He made a distinct pause, and then he said hurriedly, " You must not for a moment sup- pose that there was anything wrong ; there is no story that you need be afraid of hearing — nothing, neither on her side nor mine — nothing to be ashamed of."

All at once Frances grew very pale ; her eyes opened wide ; she gazed at him with sjDeechless horror. The idea was altogether new to her art- less mind. It flashed through his that Constance

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would not have been at all surprised — that pro- bably she would have thought it " nice of him " to exonerate his wife from all moral shortcom- ing. The holy ignorance of the other brought a sensation of shame to Waring, and at the same time a sensation of pride. Nothing could more clearly have proved the superiority of his training. She would have felt no conster- nation, only relief at this assurance, if she had been all her life in her mother's hands.

"It is a great deal to say, how^ever, though you are too inexperienced to know. The whole thing was incompatibility — incompatibility of temper, and of ideas, and of tastes, and of for- tune even. I could not, you may suppose, accept advantages purchased with my prede- cessor's money, or take the good of his rank through my wife ; and she would not come down in the world to my means and to my name. It was an utter mistake altogether. We should have understood each other before- hand. It was impossible that we could get on. But that was all. There was probably more talk about it than if there had been really more to talk about."

«

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Frances rose up with a little start. " I think, perhaps," she said, " I don't want you to tell me any more."

*' Well — perhaps you are right." But he was startled by her quick movement. " I did not mean to say anything that could shock you. If you are to hear anything at all, the truth is what you must hear. But you must not blame me over-much, Frances. Your very impatience of what I have been saying will explain to you why I thought that to say nothing — as long as I could help it — was the best."

Her hand trembled a little as she lighted her candle, but she made no comment. " Good night, papa. To-morrow it will all seem dif- ferent. Every thiug is strange to-night."

He put his hands upon her shoulders and looked down into the little serious face, the face that had never been so serious before. " Don't think any worse of me, Frances, than you can help."

Her eyes opened wider with astonishment.

" Think of you, worse But, papa, I am not

thinking of you at all," she said, simply; " I am thinking of it''

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Waring had gone througli a number of de- pressing and humbling experiences during the course of the evening, but this was the un- kindest of all — and it was so natural. Frances was no critic. She was not thinking of his conduct, which was the first thing in his mind, but of It, the revelation which had been made to her. He might have perceived that, or divined it, if he had not been occupied by this idea, which did not occupy her at all — the thought of how he personally had come through the business. He gave a little faltering laugh at himself as he stooped and kissed her. " That's all right," he said. " Good night ; but don't let It interfere with your sleep. To-morrow every- thing will look different, as you say."

Frances turned away with her light in her hand ; but before she had reached the door, returned again. ^'I think I ought to tell you, papa, that I am sure the Durants know. They said a number of strange things to me yes- terday, which I think I understand now. If you don't mind, I would rather let them suppose that I knew all the time ; otherwise,

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it looks as if you thought you could not trust me."

" I could trust you," he said, with a little fervour, — " my dear child, my dear little girl — I would trust you with my life."

Was there a faint smile in the little girl's limpid simple eyes? He thought so, and it disconcerted him strangely. She made no response to that protestation, but with a little nod of her head went away. Waring sat down at the table again, and began to think it all over from the beginning. He was sore and aching, like a man who has fallen from a height. He had fallen from the pedestal on which, to Frances, he had stood all these years. She might not be aware of it even — but he was. And he had fallen from those Elysian fields of peace in which he had been dwelling for so long. They had not, perhaps, seemed very Elysian while he was secure of their possession. They had been monotonous in their stillness, and wearied his soul. But now that he looked back upon them, a new cycle having begun,

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they seemed to him like the very home of peace. He had not done anything to forfeit this tranquillity ; and yet it was over, and he stood once more on the edge of an agitated and disturbed life. He was a man who could bear monotony, who liked his own way, yet liked that bondage of habit which is as hard as iron to some souls. He liked to do the same things at the same time day after day, and to be undisturbed in doing them. But now all his quiet was over. Constance would have a thousand requirements such as Frances had never dreamed of; and her brother no doubt would soon turn up — that step-brother whom Waring had never been able to tolerate even when he was a child. She might even come Herself — w^ho could tell?

When this thought crossed his mind, he got up hastily and left the scdone, leaving the lamp burning, as Domenico found it next morning, to his consternation — a symbol of Chaos come again — burning in the daylight. Mr Wariug almost fled to his room and locked his door in the horror of that suggestion.

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And this was not only because the prospect of such a visit disturbed him beyond measure, but because he had not yet made a clean breast of it. Frances did not yet know all.

Frances for her part went to the blue room, and opened the jpersiani, and sat looking out upon the moonlight for some time before she went to bed. The room was bare ; she missed her pictures, which Constance had taken no notice of — the Madonna that had been above her head for so many years, and which had vaguely appeared to her as a symbol of the mother who had never existed in her life. Now there seemed less need for the Madonna. The bare walls had pictures all over them — pictures of a new life. In imagination, no one is shy, or nervous, or strange. She let the new figures move about her freely, and delighted herself with familiar pictures of them and the changes that must accompany them. She was not like her father, afraid of changes. She thought of the new people, the new combinations, the quickened life : and the thought made her smile. They

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would come, and she would make the house gay and bright to receive them. Perhaps some time, surrounded by this new family that belonged to her, she might even be taken " home." The thought was delightful notwithstanding the thrill of excitement in it. But still there w^as something which Frances did not know.

157

CHAPTEE IX.

" What is this I hear about Waring ? " said General Gaunt, walking out upon the loggia, where the Durants were sitting, on the same memorable afternoon on which all that has been above related occurred. The General was dressed in loosely fitting light-coloured clothes. It was one of the recommendations of the Eiviera to him that he could wear out tliere all his old Indian clothes, which would have been useless to him at home. He was a very tall old man, very yellow, nay, almost greenish in the complexion, extremely S23are, with a fine old white moustache, which had an immense effect upon his brown face. The well-worn epigram might be adapted in his case to say that nobody ever was so fierce as the General looked ; and yet he was at bottom rather a mild

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old man, and had never hurt anybody, except the sepoys in the Mutiny, all his life. His head was covered with a broad light felt hat, which, soft as it was, took an aggressive cock when he put it on. He held his gloves dangling from his hand with the air of having been in too much haste to put them to their proper use. And his step, as he stepped off the carpet upon the marble of the loggia, sounded like that of an alert officer who has just heard that the enemy has made a reconnaissance in force two miles off, and that there is no time to lose. " What is this I hear about Waring ? " he said.

" Yes, indeed ! " cried Mrs Durant.

"It is a most remarkable story," said his Eeverence, shaking his head.

" But what is it ? " asked the General. " I found Mrs Gaunt almost crying when I went in. What she said was, ' Charles, we have been nourishing a viper in our bosoms.' I am not addicted to metaphor, and I insisted upon plain English ; and then it all came out. She told me Waring was an impostor, and had been tak- ing us all in ; that some old friend of his had been here, and had told you. Is that true ? "

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''My dear!" said Mr Durant in a tone of remonstrance.

"Well, Henry! you never said it was to be kept a secret. It could not possibly be kept a secret — so few of us here, and all so intimate."

"Then lie is an impostor?" said General Gaunt.

"Oh, my dear General, that's too strong a word. Henry, you had better tell the General, your own way."

The old clergyman had been shaking his head all the time. He was dying to tell all that he knew, yet he could not but improve the occa- sion. " Oh, ladies, ladies ! " he said, " when there is anything to be told, the best of women is not to be trusted. But, General, our poor friend is no impostor. He never said he was a widower."

"It's fortunate we've none of us girls "

the General began ; then with a start, " I forgot Miss Tasie ; but she's a girl — a girl in ten thousand," he added, with a happy inspiration. Tasie, who was still seated behind the teacups, give him a smile in reply.

" Poor dear Mr Waring," she said, " whether

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he is a widower or lias a wife, it does not matter mucli. Nobody can call Mr Waring a flirt. He might be any one's grandfather from his manner. I cannot see that it matters a bit."

"Not so far as we are concerned, thank heaven ! " said her mother, with the air of one whose dear child has escaped a danger. " But I don't think it is quite respectable for one of our small community to have a wife alive and never to let any one know."

" I understand, a most excellent woman ; besides being a person of rank," said Mr Durant. " It has disturbed me very much — though, happily, as my wife says, from no private motive." Here the good man paused, and gave vent to a sigh of thankfulness, establishing the impression that his ingenuous Tasie had escaped as by a miracle from Waring's wiles ; and then he continued, " I think some one should speak to him on the subject. He ought to under- stand that now it is known, public opinion re- quires Some one should tell him "

" There is no one so fit as a clergyman," the General said.

" That is true, perhaps, in the abstract ; but

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with our poor friend There are some men

who will not take advice from a clergyman."

"0 Henry! do him justice. He has never shown anything but respect to you."

" I should say that a man of the world, like the General "

" Oh, not I," cried the General, getting up hurriedly. " No, thank you ; I never interfere with any man's affairs. That's your business. Padre. Besides, I have no daughter : whether he is married or not is nothing to me."

"Nor to us, heaven be praised!" said Mrs Durant ; and then she added, "It is not for ourselves ; it is for poor little Frances, a girl that has never known a mother's care ! How much better for her to be with her mother, and properly introduced into society, than living in that hugger-mugger way, without education, without companions ! If it were not for Tasie, the child would never see a creature near her own age."

"And I am much older than Frances," said Tasie, rather to heighten the hardship of the situation than from any sense that this was true.

VOL. I. L

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''Decidedly the Padre ouglit to talk to him," said the Anglo-Indian. " He ought to be made

to feel that everybody at the station Wife

all right, do you know? Bless me! if the wife is all right, what does the man mean ? Why can't they quarrel peaceably, and keep up ap- pearances, as we all do ? "

" Oh no — not all ; ive never quarrel."

" Not for a long time, my love."

" Henry, you may trust to my memory. Not for about thirty years. We had a little dis- agreement then about where we were to go for the summer. Oh, I remember it well — the agony it cost me ! Don't say ' as we all do,' General, for it would not be true."

"You are a pair of old turtle-doves," quoth the Greneral. "All the more reason why you should talk to him. Padre. Tell him he's come among us on false pretences, not knowing the damage he might have done. I always thought he was a queer hand to have the education of a little girl."

"He taught her Latin; and that woman of theirs, Mariuccia, taught her to knit. That's all she knows. And her mother all the time in

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such a fine position, able to do anything for her ! Oh, it is of Frances I think most ! "

"It is quite evident," said the General, "that Mr Durant must interfere."

" I think it very likely I shall do no good. A man of the world, a man like that "

"There is no such great harm about the man."

" And he is very good to Frances," said Tasie, almost under her breath.

" I daresay he meant no harm," said the Gen- eral, " if that is all. Only, he should be warned ;

and if anything can be done for Frances

It is a pity she should see nobody, and never have a chance of establishing herself in life."

"She ought to be introduced into society," said Mrs Durant. "As for establishing herself in life, that is in the hands of Providence, Gen- eral. It is not to be supposed that such an idea ever enters into a girl's mind — unless it is put there, which is so often the case."

" The General means," said Tasie, " that seeing people would make her more fit to be a com- panion for her papa. Frances is a dear girl ; but it is quite true — she is wanting in conversation.

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They often sit a whole evening together and scarcely speak."

" She is a nice little thing," said the General, energetically — " I always thought so ; and never was at a dance, I suppose, or a junketing of any description, in her life. To be sure, we are all old duffers in this place. The Padre should interfere."

" If I could see it was my duty," said Mr Durant.

" I know what you mean," said General Gaunt. *' I'm not too fond of interference myself. But when a man has concealed his antecedents, and they have been found out. And then the little girl "

" Yes : it is Frances I think of most," said Mr Durant.

It was at last settled among them that it was clearly the clergyman's business to interfere. He had been tolerably certain to begin with, but he liked the moral support of what he called a consensus of opinion. Mr Durant was not so reluctant as he pro- fessed to be. He had not much scope for those social duties which, he was of opinion,

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were not the least important of a clergyman's functions ; and though there was a little ex- citement in the uncertainty from Sunday to Sunday how many people would be at church, what the collection would be, and other varying circumstances, yet the life of the clergyman at Bordighera was monotonous, and a little variety was welcome. In other chaplaincies which Mr Durant had held, he had come in contact with various romances of real life. These were still the days of gaming, when every German bath had its tapis vert and its little troup of tra- gedies. But the Eiviera was very tranquil, and Bordighera had just been found out by the invalid and the. pleasure-seeker. It was monotonous : there had been few deaths, even among the visitors, which are always varieties in their way for the clergyman, and often are the means of making acquaintances both useful and agreeable to himself and his family. But as yet there had not even been many deaths. This gave great additional excitement to what is always exciting, for a small community — the cropping up under their very noses, in their own immediate circle, of a mystery, of a dis-

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covery which afforded boundless opportunity for talk. The first thing naturally that had affected Mr and Mrs Durant was the miracu- lous escape of Tasie, to whom Mr Waring might have made himself agreeable, and whose peace of mind might have been affected, for anything that could be said to the contrary. They said to each other that it was a hair- breadth escape ; although it had not occurred previously to any one that any sort of mutual attraction between Mr Waring and Tasie was possible.

And then the other aspects of the case became apparent. Mr Durant felt now that to pass it over, to say. nothing about the matter, to allow Waring to suppose that everything was as it had always been, was impossible. He and his wife had decided this without the intervention of General Gaunt ; but w^hen the General appeared — the only other permanent pillar of society in Bordi- ghera — then there arose that consensus which made further steps inevitable. Mrs Gaunt looked in later, after dinner, in the darken- ing ; and she, too, was of opinion that some-

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tiling must be done. She was affected to tears by the thought of that mystery in their very midst, and of what the poor (unknown) lady must have suffered, deserted by her hus- band, and bereft of her child. " He might at least have left her her child," she said, with a sob ; and she was fully of opinion that he should be spoken to without delay, and that they should not rest till Frances had been restored to her mother. She thought it was " a duty " on the part of Mr Durant to inter- fere. The consensus was thus unanimous ; there was not a dissentient voice in the entire community. " We will sleep upon it," Mr Durant said. But the morning brought no further light. They were all agreed more strongly than ever that Waring ought to be spoken to, and that it was undeniably a duty for the clergyman to interfere.

Mr Durant accordingly set out before it was too late, before the mid-day breakfast, which is the coolest and calmest moment of the day, the time for business, before social intercourse is sup- posed to begin. He was very carefully brushed from his hat to his shoes, and was indeed a very

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agreeable example of a neat old clerical gentle- man. Ecclesiastical costume was much more easy in those days. It was before the era of long coats and soft hats, when a white tie was the one incontrovertible sign of the clergyman who did not think of calling himself a priest. He was indeed, having been for a number of years located in Catholic countries, very partic- ular not to call himself a priest, or to conde- scend to any garb which could recall the sou- tane and three-cornered hat of the indigenous clergy. His black clothes were spotless, but of the ordinary cut, perhaps a trifle old-fashioned. But yet neither soutane nor herretta could have made it more evident that Mr Durant, setting out with an ebony stick and black gloves, was an English clergyman going mildly but firmly to interfere. Had he been met with in the wilds of Africa, even there mistake would have been impossible. In his serious eye, in the aspect of the corners of his mouth, in a certain air of gentle determination diffused over his whole person, this was apparent. It made a great impression upon Domenico when he opened the door. After what had

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happened yesterday, Domenico felt that any- thiDg might happen. " Lo, this man's brow, like to a title leaf, foretells the nature of the tragic volume," he said to Mariuccia — at least if he did not use these words, his meaning was the same. He ushered the English pastor into the room which Mr Waring occupied as a library, with bated breath. " Master is going to catch it," was what, perhaps, a light-minded Cockney might have said. But Domenico was a serious man, and did not trifle.

Waring s library was, like all the rooms of his suite, an oblong room, with three windows and as many doors, opening into the dining-room on one hand, and the ante-room on the other. It had the usual indecipherable fresco on the roof, and the walls on one side were half clothed with bookcases. Not a very large collection of books, and yet enough to make a pretty show, with their old gilding, and the dull white of the vellum in which so many were bound. It was a room in which he spent the most of his time, and it had been made comfortable accord- ing to the notions of comfort prevailing in these regions. There was a square of carpet under his

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writing-table. His chair was a large old fau- teuil, covered with faded damask; and cur- tains, also faded, were festooned over all the windows and doors. The persiani were shut to keep out the sun, and the cool atmosphere had a greenish tint. Waring, however, did not look so peaceful as his room. He sat with his chair pushed away from the table, reading what seemed to be a novel. He had the air of a man who had taken refuge there from some embarrassment or annoyance ; not the tranquil look of a man occupied in so-called studies needing leisure, with his note -books at hand, and pen and ink within reach. Such a man is usually very glad to be interrupted in the midst of his self-imposed labours, and Waring's first movement was one of