"I cannot say that I expected to see you, Mr Edward," said Mrs Fred, lifting her handkerchief to her eyes; "indeed, when I remember the last time you were here, I wonder you could think of coming near us. But now my poor dear Fred is gone, we have nobody to protect us—and of course you don't mind how you hurt my feelings. If you had done your duty by my poor fellow when he was living, he might never—never——"

Here Mrs Fred paused, choked by spiteful tears.

"Dr Edward, don't mind what Susan says," said Nettie. "It is very kind of you to come after everything—— If you would only tell the people not to take any notice, but just to let us go on as usual. They all want to be kind, you know—they keep coming, and asking what they can do; and you understand very well there is nothing to do," said Nettie, with a little pride. "We are just as we were before—nothing is changed: one does not like to be unkind, but nobody needs to do anything. We shall get along all the same."

"So it seems, indeed," said Dr Rider, with irrepressible bitterness; "all the same! But, indeed, I came specially to ask what my sister-in-law meant to do," continued the doctor, bent on one last appeal. "Now that you are left to yourself, Mrs Rider, what do you think of doing? Of course you must have some plans about the children and your future life?"

Mrs Fred looked up at him with momentary alarm and dismay. She did not know what the question meant, but a certain vague terror seized her. It seemed to imply somehow that she was now to be left to her own resources. She gave a certain gasp of appeal to "Nettie!" and took refuge once more in her handkerchief. The doctor was desperate—he had no mercy in him.

"Nettie! always Nettie!" cried the young man. "And is it true, Nettie—is it all the same? Are you always to go on toiling for the miserable comforts of other people? What is to become of us? Have you sold yourself to this fate?"

Nettie laid down the little black frock out of her laborious hands. "You have been up all night, Dr Edward," she said, with a certain tenderness, looking at his agitated face; "you are tired out and sick at the heart. I know it makes you say things you would not say; but after all, you know, except poor Fred, whom none of you think of, everything is the very same. I cannot make it different—nothing can make it different. There is Susan plain enough to be seen—and there are the children. Sometimes it has come into my mind," said Nettie, "that as I shall never be able to afford a very good education for the children, it would be better to take them out to the colony again, where they might get on better than here. But it is a dreadful long voyage; and we have no near friends there, or anywhere else: and," concluded the steadfast creature, who had dropped these last words from her lips sentence by sentence, as if eager to impress upon her own mind the arguments against that proceeding—"and," said Nettie, with wistful pathetic honesty, not able to deny the real cause of the reluctance altogether, "I don't seem to have the heart for it now."

Dr Rider started up from his chair. He went to Nettie's side with a sudden thrill of agitation and passion. He clasped the hand with which Nettie was smoothing out that little frock, and crushed the delicate fingers in his inconsiderate grasp. "Nettie! if you must carry them always upon your shoulders, cannot we do it together, at least?" cried the doctor, carried away beyond every boundary of sense or prudence. He got down on his knees beside the table, not kneeling to her, but only compelling her attention—demanding to see the answer of her eyes, the quiver of her mouth. For that moment Nettie's defences too fell before this unlooked-for outburst of a love that had forgotten prudence. Her mouth quivered, her eyes filled. If it were possible—if it were only possible!—— They had both forgotten the spectators who gazed with curious eyes, all unaware how deeply their own fate was involved; and that fate was still trembling in the breathless interval, when a vulgar finger touched those delicate balances of possibility, and the crisis was over, perhaps never to return.

"Nettie!" cried Mrs Fred, "if Edward Rider has no respect for me, nor for my poor Fred—my poor, dear, injured husband, that helped to bring him up, and gave up his practice to him, and died, as I might say, by his neglect—Nettie! how can you be so cruel to your sister? How can you go taking his hand, and looking as if he were your lover? You never had any feeling for me, though everybody thinks so much of you. And now I know what I have to expect. The moment my poor dear Fred's head is laid in the grave—as soon as ever you have me in your own hands, and nobody to protect me!—oh, my Fred! my Fred!—as soon as you are gone, this is how they are using your poor helpless family!—and soon, soon I shall die too, and you will not be encumbered with me!"

Long before this sobbing speech was concluded, Dr Rider had risen to his feet, and was pacing through the little room with hasty steps of disgust and rage, and an agitation which overwhelmed all his attempts to master it; while Nettie sat supporting her head in her hands, pressing her fingers upon her hot eyes, beholding that fair impossible vision break and disappear from before her. Nettie's heart groaned within her, and beat against the delicate bosom which, in its tender weakness, was mighty as a giant's. She made no answer to her sister's outcry, nor attempted to comfort the hysterical sobbing into which Susan fell. Nettie gave up the hopeless business without being deceived by those selfish demonstrations. She was not even fortunate enough to be able to persuade herself into admiring love and enthusiasm for those to whom necessity obliged her to give up her own life. She said nothing; she knew the sobs would subside, the end would be gained, the insignificant soul lapse into comfort, and with a sigh of compulsory resignation Nettie yielded once more to her fate.

"Dr Edward, do not think of me any more," she said, resolutely, rising and going out to the door with him, in her simplicity and courage. "You see very well it is impossible. I know you see it as well as I do. If we could be friends as we once were, I should be very, very glad, but I don't think it is possible just now. Don't say anything. We both know how it is, and neither of us can help it. If we could get not to think of each other, that would be best," said Nettie, with another sigh; "but in the mean time let us say good-bye, and speak of it no more."

If the doctor did not take his dismissal exactly so—if Nettie's identification of her own sentiments with his did lead to a warmer tenderness in that farewell, which could not be final while such a bond united them, it was at least with an absolute conviction of the impossibility of any closer union that they parted. The doctor sprang into his drag and dashed away to his patients, plunging into the work which he had somewhat neglected during that exciting day. He was not without some comfort as he went about his business with Care behind him, but that very comfort embittered the pang of the compulsory submission. To think he must leave her there with those burdens upon her delicate shoulders—to believe her his, yet not his, the victim of an unnatural bondage—drove Edward Rider desperate as he devoured the way. A hundred times in an hour he made up his mind to hasten back again and snatch her forcibly out of that thraldom, and yet a hundred times had to fall back consuming his heart with fiery irritation, and chafing at all that seemed duty and necessity to Nettie. As he was proceeding on his troubled way it occurred to him to meet—surely everybody in Carlingford was out of doors this particular afternoon!—that prosperous wife, Mrs John Brown, who had once been Bessie Christian. She was a very pale apparition now to the doctor, engrossed as he was with an influence much more imperious and enthralling than hers had ever been; but the sight of her, on this day of all others, was not without its effect upon Edward Rider. Had not she too been burdened with responsibilities which the doctor would not venture to take upon his shoulders, but which another man, more daring, had taken, and rendered bearable? As the thought of that possibility occurred to him, a sudden vision of Mrs Fred's faded figure flashed across his eyes. In the excitement of the moment he touched too sharply with his whip that horse which had suffered the penalty of most of his vagaries of temper and imagination for some time past. The long-suffering beast was aggravated out of patience by that unexpected irritation. It was all the doctor could do for the next ten minutes to keep his seat and his command over the exasperated animal, whose sudden frenzy terrified Mrs Brown, and drove her to take refuge in the nearest shop. How little the Carlingford public, who paused at a respectful distance to look on, guessed those emotions which moved the doctor as they watched him subduing his rebellious horse with vigorous arm and passionate looks! Bessie, with a little palpitation at her heart, could not refrain from a passing wonder whether the sight of herself had anything to do with that sudden conflict. Mrs Brown knew little about St Roque's Cottage, but had heard of Miss Marjoribanks, who it was not to be supposed could hold a very absolute sway over the doctor. Meanwhile Dr Rider struggled with his horse with all the intensity of determination with which he would have struggled against his fate had that been practicable. With set teeth and eyes that blazed with sudden rage and resolution, he subdued the unruly brute, and forced it to acknowledge his mastery. When he drove the vanquished animal, all quivering with pain and passion, on its further course, the struggle had refreshed his mind a little. Ah, if life and adverse fortune could but be vanquished so!—but all Edward Rider's resolution and courage died into hopeless disgust before the recollection of Mrs Fred upon that sofa. Even with Nettie at one hand, that peevish phantom on the other, those heartless imps in insolent possession of the wonderful little guardian who would not forsake them, made up a picture which made the doctor's heart sick. No! Nettie was right. It was impossible. Love, patience, charity, after all, are but human qualities, when they have to be held against daily disgusts, irritations, and miseries. The doctor knew as well as Nettie did that he could not bear it. He knew even, as perhaps Nettie did not know, that her own image would suffer from the association; and that a man so faulty and imperfect as himself could not long refrain from resenting upon his wife the dismal restraints of such a burden. With a self-disgust which was most cutting of all, Edward Rider felt that he should descend to that injustice; and that not even Nettie herself would be safe against the effusions of his impatience and indignation. All through the course of this exciting episode in his life, his own foresight and knowledge of himself had been torture to the doctor, and had brought him, in addition to all other trials, silent agonies of self-contempt which nobody could guess. But he could not alter his nature. He went through his day's work very wretched and dejected, yet with an ineffable touch of secret comfort behind all, which sometimes would look him in the face for a moment like a passing sunbeam, yet sometimes seemed to exasperate beyond bearing the tantalising misery of his fate. A more agitated, disturbed, passionate, and self-consuming man than the doctor was not in Carlingford, nor within a hundred miles; yet it was not perfect wretchedness after all.

Nettie, on her part, went back to Mrs Fred in the parlour after she had parted from Edward Rider, with feelings somewhat different from the doctor's. Perhaps she too had indulged a certain pang of expectation as to what might follow after Fred was gone, in the new world that should be after that change; for Nettie, with all her wisdom of experience, was still too young not to believe that circumstances did change everything now and then, even dispositions and hearts. But before Dr Rider knew it—before he had even wound up his courage to the pitch of asking what was now to happen to them—the little Australian had made up her mind to that which was inevitable. The same Susan whose ceaseless discontents and selfish love had driven Nettie across the seas to look for Fred, was now reposing on that sofa in her widow's cap, altogether unchanged, as helpless and unabandonable, as dependent, as much a fool as ever. The superior wretchedness of Fred's presence and life had partially veiled Susan's character since they came to Carlingford. Now she had the field to herself again, and Nettie recognised at once the familiar picture. From the moment when Susan in her mourning came down-stairs, Nettie acknowledged the weakness of circumstances, the pertinacity of nature. What could she do?—she gave up the scarcely-formed germ of hope that had begun to appear in her breast. She made up her mind silently to what must be. No agonies of martyrdom could have made Nettie desert her post and abandon these helpless souls. They could do nothing for themselves, old or young of them; and who was there to do it all? she asked herself, with that perpetual reference to necessity which was Nettie's sole process of reasoning on the subject. Thus considered, the arguments were short and telling, the conclusion unmistakable. Here was this visible piece of business—four helpless creatures to be supported and provided and thrust through life somehow—with nobody in the world but Nettie to do it; to bring them daily bread and hourly tendance, to keep them alive, and shelter their helplessness with refuge and protection. She drew up her tiny Titania figure, and put back her silken flood of hair, and stood upright to the full extent of her little stature, when she recognised the truth. Nobody could share with her that warfare which was hard to flesh and blood. There was nothing to be said on the subject—no possibility of help. She was almost glad when that interview, which she foresaw, was over, and when Edward had recognised as well as herself the necessities of the matter. She went back again out of the little hall where, for one moment and no more, the lights of youth and love had flushed over Nettie, suffusing her paleness with rose-blushes. Now it was all over. The romance was ended, the hero gone, and life had begun anew.

"I can't say I ever liked this place," sighed Mrs Fred, when the lamp was lit that evening, and Nettie had come down-stairs again after seeing the children in bed. "It was always dull and dreary to me. If we hadn't been so far out of Carlingford, things might have been very different. My poor Fred! instead of taking care of him, all the dangers that ever could be were put in his way."

This sentence was concluded by some weeping, of which, however, Nettie did not take any notice. Making mourning by lamp-light is hard work, as all poor seamstresses know. Nettie had no tears in the eyes that were fixed intently upon the little coat which was to complete Freddy's outfit; and she did not even look up from that urgent occupation to deprecate Susan's tears.

"I tell you, Nettie, I never could bear this place," said Mrs Fred; "and now, whenever I move, the dreadful thoughts that come into my mind are enough to kill me. You always were strong from a baby, and of course it is not to be expected that you can understand what my feelings are. And Mrs Smith is anything but kind, or indeed civil, sometimes; and I don't think I could live through another of these cold English winters. I am sure I never could keep alive through another winter, now my poor Fred's gone."

"Well?" asked Nettie, with involuntary harshness in her voice.

"I don't care for myself," sobbed Mrs Fred, "but it's dreadful to see you so unfeeling, and to think what would become of his poor children if anything were to happen to me. I do believe you would marry Edward Rider if it were not for me, and go and wrong the poor children, and leave them destitute. Nobody has the feeling for them that a mother has; but if I live another winter in England, I know I shall die."

"You have thought of dying a great many times," said Nettie, "but it has never come to anything. Never mind that just now. What do you want? Do you want me to take you back to the colony all these thousands of miles, after so many expenses as there have been already?—or what is it you want me to do?"

"You always speak of expenses, Nettie: you are very poor-spirited, though people think so much of you," said Susan; "and don't you think it is natural I should wish to go home, now my poor Fred has been taken away from me? And you confessed it would be best for the children. We know scarcely anybody here, and the very sight of that Edward that was so cruel to my poor Fred——"

"Susan, don't be a fool," said Nettie; "you know better in your heart. If you will tell me plainly what you want, I shall listen to you; but if not, I will go up-stairs and put away Freddy's things. Only one thing I may tell you at once; you may leave Carlingford if you please, but I shall not. I cannot take you back again to have you ill all the way, and the children threatening to fall overboard twenty times in a day. I did it once, but I will not do it again."

"You will not?" cried Susan. "Ah, I know what you mean: I know very well what you mean. You think Edward Rider——"

Nettie rose up and faced her sister with a little gasp of resolution which frightened Mrs Fred. "I don't intend to have anything said about Edward Rider," said Nettie; "he has nothing to do with it one way or another. I tell you what I told him, that I have not the heart to carry you all back again; and I cannot afford it either; and if you want anything more, Susan," added the peremptory creature, flashing forth into something of her old spirit, "I shan't go—and that is surely enough."

With which words Nettie went off like a little sprite to put away Freddy's coat, newly completed, along with the other articles of his wardrobe, at which she had been working all day. In that momentary impulse of decision and self-will a few notes of a song came unawares from Nettie's lip, as she glanced, light and rapid as a fairy, up-stairs. She stopped a minute after with a sigh. Were Nettie's singing days over? She had at least come at last to find her life hard, and to acknowledge that this necessity which was laid upon her was grievous by times to flesh and blood; but not the less for that did she arrange Freddy's little garments daintily in the drawers, and pause, before she went down-stairs again, to cover him up in his little bed.

Susan still sat pondering and crying over the fire. Her tears were a great resource to Mrs Fred. They occupied her when she had nothing else to occupy herself with; and when she cast a weeping glance up from her handkerchief to see Nettie draw her chair again to the table, and lay down a little pile of pinafores and tuckers which required supervision, Susan wept still more, and said it was well to be Nettie, who never was overcome by her feelings. Thus the evening passed dully enough. Just then, perhaps, Nettie was not a very conversable companion. Such interviews as that of this day linger in the heads of the interlocutors, and perhaps produce more notable effects afterwards than at the moment. Nettie was not thinking about it. She was simply going over it again, finding out the tones and meanings which, in the haste and excitement of their occurrence, did not have their full force. The fulness of detail that lingers about such pictures, which are not half apprehended till they have been gone over again and again, is marvellous. The pinafores went unconsciously through Nettie's fingers. She was scarcely aware of Susan crying by the fire. Though it had been in some degree a final and almost hopeless parting, there was comfort behind the cloud to Nettie as well as to the doctor. She had forgotten all about the discussion with which the evening began before Susan spoke again.

"Richard Chatham came home with the last mail," said Susan, making a feeble effort to renew the fight. "He sent me a letter last week, you know. I daresay he will come to see us. Richard Chatham from Melbourne, Nettie. I daresay he will not stay out of the colony long."

Nettie, who was lost in her own thoughts, made no reply.

"I daresay," repeated Mrs Fred, "he will be going out again in a month or two. I do not believe he could bear this dreadful English winter any more than I could. I daresay he'd be glad to take care of us out—if you should change your mind about going, Nettie."

Nettie gave her sister a glance of resolution and impatience—a swift glance upward from her work, enough to show she marked and understood—but still did not speak.

"Richard Chatham was always very good-natured: it would be such a good thing for us to go in the same ship—if you should happen to change your mind about going, Nettie," said Mrs Fred, rising to retire to her room. "I am going to bed to try to get a little sleep. Such wretched nights as I have would kill anybody. I should not wonder if Richard Chatham came some of these days to see us. Poor fellow! he had always a great fancy for our family; and it would be such a thing for us, Nettie, if you should change your mind about going, to go in the same ship!"

With which Parthian shot Mrs Fred made her way up-stairs and retired from the field. Nettie woke with a startled consciousness out of her dreams, to perceive that here was the process of iteration begun which drives the wisest to do the will of fools. She woke up to it for a moment, and, raising her drooping head, watched her sister make her way, with her handkerchief in her hand, and the broad white bands of her cap streaming over her shoulders, to the door. Susan stole a glance round before she disappeared, to catch the startled glance of that resolute little face, only half woke up, but wholly determined. Though Mrs Fred dared not say another word at that moment, she disappeared full of the conviction that her arrow had told, and that the endless persistence with which she herself, a woman and a fool, was gifted, need only be duly exercised to win the day. When Susan was gone, that parting arrow did quiver for a moment in Nettie's heart; but the brave little girl had, for that one night, a protection which her sister wist not of. After the door closed, Nettie fell back once more into that hour of existence which expanded and opened out the more for every new approach which memory made to it. Sweet nature, gentle youth, and the Magician greater than either, came round her in a potent circle and defended Nettie. The woman was better off than the man in this hour of their separation, yet union. He chafed at the consolation which was but visionary; she, perhaps, in that visionary, ineffable solacement found a happiness greater than any reality could ever give.



CHAPTER XIII.

It was some months after the time of this conversation when a man, unlike the usual aspect of man in Carlingford, appeared at the inn with a carpet-bag, and asked his way to St Roque's Cottage. Beards were not common in those days: nobody grew one in Carlingford except Mr Lake, who, in his joint capacity of portrait-painter and drawing-master, represented the erratic and lawless followers of Art to the imagination of the respectable town. But the stranger who made his sudden appearance at the Blue Boar wore such a forest of hair on the lower part of his burly countenance as obliterated all ordinary landmarks in that region, and by comparison made Mr Lake's dainty little mustache and etceteras sink into utter propriety and respectableness. The rest of the figure corresponded with this luxuriant feature; the man was large and burly, a trifle too stout for a perfect athlete, but powerful and vigorous almost beyond anything then known in Carlingford. It was now summer, and warm weather, and the dress of the new-comer was as unusual as the other particulars of his appearance. In his broad straw-hat and linen coat he stood cool and large in the shady hall of the Blue Boar, with glimpses of white English linen appearing under his forest of beard, and round his brown sun-scorched wrists. A very small stretch of imagination was necessary to thrust pistols into his belt and a cutlass into his hand, and reveal him as the settler-adventurer of a half-savage disturbed country, equally ready to work or to fight, and more at home in the shifts and expedients of the wilderness than among the bonds of civilisation; yet always retaining, as English adventurers will, certain dainty personal particulars—such, for instance, as that prejudice in favour of clean linen, which only the highest civilisation can cultivate into perfection. He went off down Grange Lane with the swing and poise of a Hercules when the admiring waiters directed him to the Cottage. Miss Wodehouse, who was standing at the door with Lucy, in the long grey cloak and close bonnet lately adopted by the sisterhood of mercy, which had timidly, under the auspices of the perpetual curate, set itself a-going at St Roque's, looked after the savage man with an instinct of gentle curiosity, wondering where he was going and where he came from. To tell the truth, that tender-hearted soul could with more comfort to herself have stepped down a little on the road to St Roque's, and watched whether that extraordinary figure was in search of Nettie—a suspicion which immediately occurred to her—than she could set out upon the district-visiting, to which Lucy now led her forth. But Miss Wodehouse had tremulously taken example by the late rector, whose abrupt retirement from the duties for which he did not feel himself qualified, the good people in Carlingford had scarcely stopped discussing. Miss Wodehouse, deeply impressed in her gentle mind by the incidents of that time, had considered it her duty to reclaim if possible—she who had no circle of college dons to retire into—her own life from its habits of quiet indolence. She consented to go with Lucy into all the charitable affairs of Carlingford. She stood silent with a pitying face, and believed in all the pretences of beggary which Lucy saw through by natural insight. But it was no more her natural element than the long grey cloak was a natural garment for that spotless, dove-coloured woman. Her eyes turned wistfully after the stranger with suppressed impulses of gentle curiosity and gossip. She knew very well he did not belong to Carlingford. She knew nobody in Grange Lane or the neighbourhood to whom he could belong. She wanted very much to stop and inquire at the stable-boy of the Blue Boar, their own gardener's son, who and what this new-comer was, and turned back to look after him before she turned out of George Street following Lucy, with lively anxiety to know whether he was going to St Roque's. Perhaps the labours of a sisterhood of mercy require a special organisation even of the kind female soul. Miss Wodehouse, the most tender-hearted of human creatures, did not rise to that development; and, with a little pang of unsatisfied wonder, saw the unaccustomed Hercules disappear in the distance without being able to make out whither he was bound.

Nobody, however, who had been privileged to share the advantages of Mrs Fred Rider's conversation for some time back, could be at a loss to guess who this messenger from the wilderness was. It was Richard Chatham come at last—he with whose name Nettie had been bored and punctured through and through from the first day of his introduction into Susan's talk till now. Mrs Fred had used largely in the interval that all-potent torture of the "continual dropping;"—used it so perpetually as, though without producing any visible effect upon Nettie's resolution, to introduce often a certain sickness and disgust with everything into that steadfast soul. Nor did she content herself with her own exertions, but skilfully managed to introduce the idea into the minds of the children—ready, as all children are, for change and novelty. Nettie had led a hard enough life for these three months. She could not meet Edward Rider, nor he her, with a calm pretence of friendship; and Susan, always insolent and spiteful, and now mistress of the position, filled the doctor with an amount of angry irritation which his longings for Nettie's society could not quite subdue. That perpetual barrier between them dismayed both. Meetings which always ended in pain were best avoided, except at those intervals when longing love could not, even under that penalty, refuse itself the gratification; but the dismal life which was lighted up only by those unfrequent, agitating, exasperating encounters, and which flowed on through a hundred petty toilsome duties to the fretful accompaniment of Susan's iterations and the novel persecution now carried on by the children, was naturally irksome to the high-spirited and impatient nature which, now no longer heart-whole or fancy-free, did not find it so easy to carry its own way triumphantly through those heavy clogs of helplessness and folly. In the days when Miss Wodehouse pitied and wondered, Nettie had required no sympathy; she had carried on her course victorious, more entirely conscious of the supreme gratification of having her own way than of the utter self-sacrifice which she made to Fred and his family. But now the time predicted by Miss Wodehouse had arrived. Nettie's own personal happiness had come to be at stake, and had been unhesitatingly given up. But the knowledge of that renunciation dwelt with Nettie. Not all the natural generosity of her mind—not that still stronger argument which she used so often, the mere necessity and inevitableness of the case—could blind her eyes to the fact that she had given up her own happiness; and bitter flashes of thought would intervene, notwithstanding even the self-contempt and reproach with which she became aware of them. That doubtful complicated matter, most hard and difficult of mortal problems, pressed hard upon Nettie's mind and heart. In former days, when she scornfully denied it to be self-sacrifice, and laboured on, always indomitable, unconscious that what she did was anything more than the simplest duty and necessity, all was well with the dauntless, all-enterprising soul; but growing knowledge of her own heart, of other hearts, cast dark and perplexing shades upon Nettie, as upon all other wayfarers, in these complex paths. The effect upon her mind was different from the effect to be expected according to modern sentimental ethics. Nettie had never doubted of the true duty, the true necessity, of her position, till she became conscious of her vast sacrifice. Then a hundred doubts appalled her. Was she so entirely right as she had supposed? Was it best to relieve the helpless hands of Fred and Susan of their natural duties, and bear these burdens for them, and disable herself, when her time came, from the nobler natural yoke in which her full womanly influence might have told to an extent impossible to it now? These questions made Nettie's head, which knew no fanciful pangs, ache with painful thought, and confused her heart and dimmed her lights when she most needed them to burn brightly. While, at the very time when these doubts assailed her, her sister's repetitions and the rising discontent and agitations of the children, came in to over-cloud the whole business in a mist of sick impatience and disgust. Return to Australia was never out of Susan's mind, never absent from her pertinacious foolish lips. Little Freddy harped upon it all day long, and so did his brother and sister. Nettie said nothing, but retired with exasperated weariness upon her own thoughts—sometimes thinking, tired of the conflict, why not give in to them? why not complete the offering, and remove once for all into the region of impossibility that contradictory longing for another life that still stirred by times in her heart? She had never given expression to this weary inclination to make an end of it, which sometimes assailed her fatigued soul; but this was the condition in which Richard Chatham's visit found her, when that Bushman, breathing of the wilds and the winds, came down the quiet suburban road to St Roque's, and, filling the whole little parlour with his beard and his presence, came stumbling into the confined room, where Mrs Fred still lay on the sofa, and Nettie pursued her endless work.

"Sorry to hear of the poor doctor's accident," said the Australian, to whom Fred bore that title. "But he always was a bit of a rover; though it's sad when it comes to that. And so you are thinking of a return to the old colony? Can't do better, I should say—there ain't room in this blessed old country for anything but tax-gatherers and gossips. I can't find enough air to breathe, for my part—and what there is, is taxed—leastways the light is, which is all the same. Well, Mrs Rider! say the word, ma'am, and I'm at your disposal. I'm not particular for a month or two, so as I get home before next summer; and if you'll only tell me your time, I'll make mine suit, and do the best I can for you all. Miss Nettie's afraid of the voyage, is she? That's a new line for her, I believe. Something taken her fancy in this horrid old box of a place, eh? Ha! ha! but I'll be head-nurse and courier to the party, Miss Nettie, if you trust yourselves to me."

"We don't mean to go back, thank you," said Nettie. "It is only a fancy of Susan's. Nobody ever dreamt of going back. It is much too expensive and troublesome to be done so easily. Now we are here, we mean to stay."

The Bushman looked a little startled, and his lips formed into a whistle of astonishment, which Nettie's resolute little face kept inaudible. "Taken your fancy very much, eh, Miss Nettie?" said the jocular savage, who fancied raillery of one kind or other the proper style of conversation to address to a young lady. Nettie gave that big hero a flashing sudden glance which silenced him. Mr Chatham once more formed an inaudible whew! with his lips, and looked at Mrs Fred.

"But your heart inclines to the old colony, Miss Susan?—I beg your pardon—didn't remember what I was saying at that moment. Somehow you look so much as you used to do, barring the cap," said the Australian, "that one forgets all that has happened. You incline to cross the seas again, Mrs Rider, without thinking of the expense?—and very sensible too. There never was a place like this blessed old country for swallowing up a man's money. You'll save as much in a year in the colony as will take you across."

"That is what I always say;—but of course my wishes are little thought of," said Mrs Fred, with a sigh; "of course it's Nettie we have to look to now. If she does not choose, to be sure, it does not matter what I wish. Ah! if I don't look different, I feel different—things are changed now."

The Bushman gave a puzzled glance, first at one sister and then at the other. It occurred to him that Fred had not been so much of a strength and protection to his family as this speech implied, and that Nettie had been the person whom Mrs Rider had to "look to" even before they left that colony for which she now sighed. But Mrs Fred, in her sorrow and her white cap, was an interesting figure to the eyes which were not much accustomed to look upon womankind. He had no doubt hers was a hard case. Nettie sat opposite, very busy, silent, and resolute, flashing dangerous sudden glances occasionally at her languid sister and their big visitor. It was confusing to meet those brilliant impatient wrathful eyes; though they were wonderfully bright, they put out the wild man of the woods, and made him feel uncomfortable. He turned with relief to those milder orbs which Mrs Fred buried in her handkerchief. Poor little oppressed woman, dependent upon that little arbitrary sister! The sincerest pity awoke in the Bushman's heart.

"Well!" he said, good-humouredly, "I hope you'll come to be of one mind when Miss Nettie thinks it over again; and you have only to drop me a line to let me know when your plans are formed; and it will go hard with me, but I'll make mine suit them one way or another. All that I can do for you in the way of outfit or securing your passages—or even, if you would allow me——"

Here the good fellow paused, afraid to venture any further. Nettie looked up in a sudden blaze, and transfixed him with her eye.

"We have enough for everything we want, thank you," said Nettie, looking through and through his guilty benevolent intentions, and bringing a flush of confusion to his honest cheeks. "When I say I cannot afford anything, I don't mean to ask anybody's assistance, Mr Chatham. We can do very well by ourselves. If it came to be best for the children—or if Susan keeps on wishing it, and gets her own way, as she generally does," said Nettie, with heightened colour, dropping her eyes, and going on at double speed with her work, "I daresay we shall manage it as we did before. But that is my concern. Nobody in the world has anything to do with it but me."

"Oh, Nettie, dear, you're giving in at last!—do say you'll go! and Mr Chatham promises he'll take care of us on the way," cried Mrs Fred, clasping her hands. They were thin hands, and looked delicate in contrast with her black dress. She was very interesting, pathetic, and tender to the rough eyes of the Bushranger. He thought that imperative little creature opposite, with her brilliant glances, her small head drooping under those heavy braids of hair, her tiny figure and rapid fingers, looked like a little cruel sprite oppressing the melancholy soul. When Nettie rose from the table, goaded into sudden intolerance by that appeal, the climax of the "continual dropping," and threw her work indignantly on the table, and called Freddy to come directly, and get dressed for his walk, the impression made by her supposed arbitrary and imperious behaviour was not diminished. She went out disdainful, making no reply, and left those two to a private conference. Then Mrs Fred unbosomed her bereaved heart to that sympathetic stranger. She told him how different everything was now—how hard it was to be dependent even on one's sister—how far otherwise things might have been, if poor dear Fred had been more prudent: one way or other, all her life through, Susan had been an injured woman. All her desire was to take the children back to the colony before she died. "If Nettie would but yield!" sighed Mrs Fred, clasping her hands.

"Nettie must yield!" cried the Bushranger, full of emotion; and Susan cried a little, and told him how much the poor dear children wished it; and knew in her fool's heart that she had driven Nettie to the extremest bounds of patience, and that a little more persistence and iteration would gain the day.

In the mean time Nettie went out with Freddy—the other two being at school—and took him across the fields for his afternoon walk. The little fellow talked of Australia all the way, with a childish treachery and betrayal of her cause which went to Nettie's heart. She walked by his side, hearing without listening, throbbing all over with secret disgust, impatience, and despair. She too perceived well enough the approaching crisis. She saw that once more all her own resolution—the purpose of her heart—would be overborne by the hopeless pertinacity of the unconvincible, unreasoning fool. She did not call her sister hard names—she recognised the quality without giving it its appropriate title—and recognised also, with a bitterness of resistance, yet a sense of the inevitable, not to be described, the certain issue of the unequal contest. What chance had the generous little heart, the hasty temper, the quick and vivacious spirit, against that unwearying, unreasoning pertinacity? Once more she must arise, and go forth to the end of the world: and the sacrifice must be final now.



CHAPTER XIV.

"Well, it's to be hoped she's going to do well for herself—that's all we've got to do with it, eh? I suppose so," said Mr Wodehouse; "she's nothing to you, is she, but a little girl you've taken a deal of notice of?—more notice than was wanted, if I am any judge. If she does go and marry this fellow from Australia, and he's willing to take the whole bundle back to where they came from, it is the best thing that could happen, in my opinion. Sly young dog, that doctor, though, I must say—don't you think so? Well, that's how it appears to me. Let's see; there was Bessie——; hum! perhaps it's as well, in present circumstances, to name no names. There was her, in the first instance, you know; and the way he got out of that was beautiful; it was what I call instructive, was that. And then—why then, there was Miss Marjoribanks, you know—capital match that—just the thing for young Rider—set him up for life."

"Papa, pray—pray don't talk nonsense," said Miss Wodehouse, with gentle indignation. "Miss Marjoribanks is at least ten years——"

"Oh, stuff!—keep your old-maidish memory to yourself, Molly; who cares for a dozen years or so? Hasn't she all the old Scotchman's practice and his savings?—and a fine woman yet—a fine woman, eh? Well, yes, I think so; and then here's this little wretch of a sister-in-law. Why, the doctor's taken your role, Wentworth, eh? Well, I suppose what ought to be your role, you know, though I have seen you casting glances at the strange little creature yourself."

"Indeed, I assure you, you are entirely mistaken," said Mr Wentworth, hastily, with a sudden flush of either indignation or guilt. The curate glanced at Lucy Wodehouse, who was walking demurely by his side, but who certainly did prick up her ears at this little bit of news. She saw very well that he had looked at her, but would take no notice of his glance. But Lucy's curiosity was notably quickened, notwithstanding; St Roque's Cottage was wonderfully handy, if the perpetual curate of the pretty suburban church saw anything worth visiting there. Lucy drew up her pretty shoulders in her grey sister-of-mercy cloak, and opened her blue eyes a little wider. She was still in circumstances to defy her reverend lover, if his eyes had declined upon lower attractions than her own. She looked very straight before her with unpitying precision down the road, on which St Roque's Church and Cottage were becoming already visible. The whole party were walking briskly over a path hard with frost, which made their footsteps ring. The air was still with a winterly touch, benumbed with cold, yet every sound rang sharply through that clear cloudless atmosphere, reddened without being warmed by the sun as it approached the west. It was Christmas again, and they were wending their way towards St Roque's to assist at the holiday decorations, for which cartloads of laurel and holly had been already deposited within the church. Lucy Wodehouse was chief directress of these important operations. Her sister had accompanied her, partly to admire Lucy's work, and partly to call at the cottage and see how Nettie was going on. Mr Wodehouse himself had come merely for the pride and pleasure of seeing how much they were indebted to his little girl; and the attendance of the curate was most easily explainable. It was, indeed, astonishing how many extremely necessary and natural "calls of duty" should bring Mr Wentworth's path parallel to that of the Wodehouses. This is why they were all proceeding together on this particular afternoon in the week before Christmas towards St Roque's.

In the church, when the party arrived, a little group of workers were busy. The chancel arch was already bristling with glossy holly-leaves. At a little distance from the active group occupied with this pleasant work, and full of chatter and consultation, as was natural, stood one little figure pointing out to two children the wonders of that decorative art. Every one of the new-comers, except Mr Wodehouse, recognised Nettie before she was aware of their presence. She stood with her bonnet fallen a little back, as it generally was, either by encounter of the wind, or by the quantity and luxuriance of her beautiful hair, looking upwards to the point where she had directed the children's eyes. She looked a little forlorn and solitary, as was natural, all by herself, so near that group of busy girls in the chancel—so little separated from them by age, so entirely divided by circumstances. If a certain softening of half-tender pity shone in the curate's eye, could Lucy Wodehouse blame him? But the fact was, Lucy swept past the little Australian with a very brief salutation, and burst into sudden criticism of the work that had been done in her absence, which startled her collaborateurs, while Mr Wentworth followed her into the chancel with a meekness quite unusual to that young priest. Nettie noted both circumstances with a little surprise; but, not connecting them in the most distant degree with herself, turned round with a little twitch of Freddy's arm to go away, and in doing so almost walked into the arms of her older and more faithful friend. Miss Wodehouse kissed her quite suddenly, touching with her soft old cheek that rounder, fairer, youthful face, which turned, half wondering, half pleased, with the look of a child, to receive her caress. Nettie was as unconscious that Miss Wodehouse's unusual warmth was meant to make up for Lucy's careless greeting, as that Lucy had passed her with a positive flutter of resentment and indignation, and that she had been the subject of the conversation and thoughts of all the party. Miss Wodehouse turned with her, taking Freddy's other hand—a proceeding to which that hero rather demurred. They went out together to the frosty road, where the bare willow-branches rustled between the church and the cottage. When they reached the porch of St Roque's, Nettie instinctively held her breath, and stood still for a moment. Along the footpath in front of them a big figure was passing, and beyond that bearded shadow the doctor's drag flew past with all the separate tones of the horse's feet, the wheels, the jingle of the harness, ringing clear through the sharp unsoftened medium of that frosty atmosphere. The doctor himself had all his attention concentrated upon the windows of the cottage, in which the sun was blazing red. He did not see Nettie in the church porch. He was looking for her too intently in the crimsoned windows, to which he turned his head back as he dashed on. Unawares Nettie clasped the fingers of her little companion tighter in her hand as she watched that unexpected homage. The drag was out of sight in another moment; and in a few seconds more the bell of the cottage pealed audibly, and the door was heard to open, admitting the Bushman, who had come upon one of his frequent visits. That last sound disturbed Nettie's composure, and at the same time brought her back to herself.

"I cannot ask you to go in, for Mr Chatham is there, and Susan of course talking to him," said Nettie, with a quiet breath of restrained impatience, "but I should like to talk to you, please. Let me take the children home, and then I will walk up with you. Mrs Smith is very kind; she will take off their things for them: they behave better now, when I am out for a few minutes—though, to be sure, I never am out much to try them. Come, children; be good, and do not make a great noise till I come back."

"What do you want to talk to her for?" asked the little girl, gazing coldly in Miss Wodehouse's face.

"When Nettie went out to tea, we made as much noise as we liked," said Freddy, "but there was papa there. Now there's only mamma, and she's so cross. I hate Chatham—mamma is always crossest when Chatham's there. What do you want to talk to people for, Nettie? Come in, and say there's to be toast, and let us have tea."

"We never have any tea till Nettie comes back," added his sister, looking full once more into Miss Wodehouse's face. The calm childish impertinence disconcerted that gentle woman. She gazed at the wonderful creatures with dumb amazement. Her eyes fell before their steady stare. "I should be sorry to bring you out again, dear, if it's a trouble," began Miss Wodehouse, turning her face with a sense of relief from the hard inspection of the children to their little guardian.

Nettie made no reply, but carried off her children to the cottage door, turned them peremptorily in, and issued her last orders. "If you make a noise, you shall not go," said Nettie; and then came back alert, with her rapid fairy steps, to Miss Wodehouse's side.

"Does not their mother take any charge of them?" faltered the gentle inquisitor. "I never can understand you young people, Nettie. Things were different in my days. Do you think it's quite the best thing to do other people's duties for them, dear? and now I'm so sorry—oh, so sorry—to hear what you are going to do now."

"Susan is delicate," said Nettie. "She never had any health to speak of—I mean, she always got better, you know, but never had any pleasure in it. There must be a great deal in that," continued Nettie, reflectively; "it never comes into my head to think whether I am ill or well; but poor Susan has always had to be thinking of it. Yes, I shall have to take them away," she added again, after a pause. "I am sorry, very sorry too, Miss Wodehouse. I did not think at one time that I had the heart to do it. But on the whole, you know, it seems so much better for them. Susan will be stronger out there, and I have not money enough to give the children a very good education. They will just have to push their way like the others; and in the colony, you know, things are so different. I have no doubt in my own mind now that it will be best for them all."

"But, Nettie, Nettie, what of yourself? will it be best for you?" cried Miss Wodehouse, looking earnestly in her face.

"What is best for them will be best for me," said Nettie, with a little impatient movement of her head. She said so with unfaltering spirit and promptitude. She had come to be impatient of the dreary maze in which she was involved. "If one must break one's heart, it is best to do it at once and have done with it," said Nettie, under her breath.

"What was that you said about your heart?" said Miss Wodehouse. "Ah, my dear, that is what I wanted to speak of. You are going to be married, Nettie, and I wanted to suggest to you, if you won't be angry. Don't you think you could make some arrangement about your sister and her family, dear?—not to say a word against the Australian gentleman, Nettie, whom, of course, I don't know. A man may be the best of husbands, and yet not be able to put up with a whole family. I have no doubt the children are very nice clever children, but their manner is odd, you know, for such young creatures. You have been sacrificing yourself for them all this time; but remember what I say—if you want to live happily, my dear, you'll have to sacrifice them to your husband. I could not be content without saying as much to you, Nettie. I never was half the good in this world that you are, but I am nearly twice as old—and one does pick up some little hints on the way. That is what you must do, Nettie. Make some arrangement, dear. If he has promised to take them out with you, that is all right enough; but when you come to settle down in your new home, make some arrangement dear."

When Miss Wodehouse arrived breathless at the conclusion of a speech so unusually long for her, she met Nettie's eyes flashing upon her with the utmost surprise and curiosity. "I shall never marry anybody," said Nettie. "What do you mean?"

"Don't say anything so foolish," said Miss Wodehouse, a little nettled. "Do you suppose I don't know and see that Mr Chatham coming and going? How often has he been seen since the first time, Nettie? and do you suppose it's all been benevolence? My dear, I know better."

Nettie looked up with a startled glance. She did not blush, nor betray any pleasant consciousness. She cast one dismayed look back towards the cottage, and another at Miss Wodehouse. "Can that be why he comes?" said Nettie, with quiet horror. "Indeed, I never thought of it before—but all the same, I shall never marry anybody. Do you imagine," cried the brilliant creature, flashing round upon poor Miss Wodehouse, so as to dazzle and confuse that gentlewoman, "that a man has only to intend such a thing and it's all settled? I think differently. Twenty thousand Chathams would not move me. I shall never marry anybody, if I live to be as old as—as you, or Methuselah, or anybody. It is not my lot. I shall take the children out to Australia, and do the best I can for them. Three children want a great deal of looking after—and after a while in Carlingford, you will all forget that there ever was such a creature as Nettie. No, I am not crying. I never cry. I should scorn to cry about it. It is simply my business. That is what it is. One is sorry, of course, and now and then it feels hard, and all that. But what did one come into the world for, I should like to know? Does anybody suppose it was just to be comfortable, and have one's own way? I have had my own way a great deal—more than most people. If I get crossed in some things, I have to bear it. That is all I am going to say. I have got other things to do, Miss Wodehouse. I shall never marry anybody all my life."

"My dear, if you are thrown upon this Mr Chatham for society all the time of the voyage, and have nobody else to talk to——" said the prudent interlocutor.

"Then we'll go in another ship," cried Nettie, promptly; "that is easily managed. I know what it is, a long voyage with three children—they fall up the cabin-stairs, and they fall down the forecastle; and they give you twenty frights in a day that they will drop overboard. One does not have much leisure for anything—not even for thinking, which is a comfort sometimes," added Nettie, confidentially, to herself.

"It depends upon what you think of, whether thinking is a comfort or not," said good Miss Wodehouse. "When I think of you young people, and all the perplexities you get into! There is Lucy now, vexed with Mr Wentworth about something—oh, nothing worth mentioning; and there was poor Dr Rider! How he did look behind him, to be sure, as he went past St Roque's! I daresay it was you he was looking for, Nettie. I wish you and he could have fancied each other, and come to some arrangement about poor Mr Fred's family—to give them so much to live on, or something. I assure you, when I begin to think over such things, and how perverse both people and circumstances are, thinking is very little comfort to me."

Miss Wodehouse drew a long sigh, and was by no means disinclined to cry over her little companion. Though she was the taller of the two, she leant upon Nettie's firm little fairy arm as they went up the quiet road. Already the rapid winter twilight had fallen, and before them, in the distance, glimmered the lights of Carlingford—foremost among which shone conspicuous the large placid white lamp (for professional reds and blues were beneath his dignity) which mounted guard at Dr Marjoribanks's garden gate. Those lights, beginning to shine through the evening darkness, gave a wonderful look of home to the place. Instinctively there occurred to Nettie's mind a vision of how it would be on the sea, with a wide dark ocean heaving around the solitary speck on its breast. It did not matter! If a silent sob arose in her heart, it found no utterance. Might not Edward Rider have made that suggestion which had occurred only to Miss Wodehouse? Why did it never come into his head that Susan and her family might have a provision supplied for them, which would relieve Nettie? He had not thought of it, that was all. Instead of that, he had accepted the impossibility. Nettie's heart had grown impatient in the maze of might-be's. She turned her back upon the lights, and clasped Miss Wodehouse's hand, and said good-night hastily. She went on by herself very rapidly along the hard gleaming road. She did not pay any attention to her friend's protestation that she too was coming back again to St Roque's to join Lucy—on the contrary, Nettie peremptorily left Miss Wodehouse, shaking hands with her in so resolute a manner that her gentle adviser felt somehow a kind of necessity upon her to pursue her way home; and, only when Nettie was nearly out of sight, turned again with hesitation to retrace her steps towards St Roque's. Nettie, meanwhile, went on at a pace which Miss Wodehouse could not possibly have kept up with, clasping her tiny hands together with a swell of scorn and disdain unusual to it in her heart. Yes! Why did not Edward Rider propose the "arrangement" which appeared feasible enough to Miss Wodehouse? Supposing even Nettie had refused to consent to it, as she might very probably have done with indignation—still, why did it not occur to Dr Edward? She asked herself the question with a heat and passion which she found it difficult to account for. She half despised her lover, as woman will, for obeying her—almost scorned him, as woman will, for the mere constancy which took no violent measures, but only suffered and accepted the inevitable. To submit to what cannot be helped is a woman's part. Nettie, hastening along that familiar path, blazed into a sudden burst of rage against Edward because he submitted. What he could do else she was as ignorant of as any unreasonable creature could be. But that mattered little. With indignation she saw herself standing on the verge of that domestic precipice, and the doctor looking on, seeing her glide out of his reach, yet putting forth no violent sudden hand to detain her. All the impatience of her fiery nature boiled in her veins as she hasted to the cottage, where Susan was discussing their journey with her Australian visitor. No remnant of pathos or love-sickening remained about Nettie, as she flashed in upon them in all her old haste and self-reliance—resolute to precipitate the catastrophe which nobody took any measures to prevent.



CHAPTER XV.

It was not long before the doctor was made aware of the ghost in his troubled path. Nobody in Carlingford could meet the big Bushman in those streets, which always looked too narrow for him, without a certain curiosity about that savage man. Dr Rider had observed him with jealous interest on his very first appearance, but had hitherto connected no idea but that of a return to Australia, which he felt sure Nettie would never consent to, with the big stranger. With such a thought he had seen him making his way towards the cottage that very evening when he himself turned back, as long as those crimsoned windows were visible, to look for Nettie, who did not show herself. The doctor was bound to see a distant patient, miles on the other side of Carlingford. As he dashed along over the echoing road he had time to imagine to himself how Nettie might at that very moment be badgered and persecuted; and when he had seen his patient and done his duty, and with the lamps lighted in the drag, and the frosty wind blowing keen on his face, and the lights of Carlingford cheering him on in the distance, was once more returning, an impatience, somewhat akin to Nettie's, suddenly came upon the doctor. Akin, yet different; for in his case it was an impulse of sensation, an inspiration of the exhilarating speed and energy of motion with which he flew through the bracing air, master of himself, his horse, and the long sweep of solitary road before him. Again it occurred to Dr Rider to dash forward to St Roque's and carry off Nettie, oppose it who would. The idea pleased him as he swept along in the darkness, its very impossibility making the vision sweeter. To carry her off at a stroke, in glorious defiance of circumstances, and win happiness and love, whatever might ensue. In the flush of the moment the doctor suddenly asked himself whether this, after all, were not the wisest course? whether, whatever might come of it, happiness was not worth the encounter of the dark array of troubles behind? and whether to precipitate everything by a sudden conclusion might not be the best way of solving all the intricacies of the matter? He was still in this mood when he arrived at his own house, where dinner, as usual, was not improved by having been ready for an hour. The lamp was not lighted when he came in, and only the cold reflection of the street lights outside, with a particoloured gleam at the corner window from his own red and blue professional ensign at the surgery door, lighted the solitary little room, where he looked in vain even for so much as a note or letter to bring some shadow of human fellowship to his home; the fire smouldering dully, the big chair turned with a sullen back against the wall, as if nobody ever sat there—though Nettie had once and for ever appropriated it to her use—everything in such inhuman trim and good order disgusted the doctor. He rang his bell violently for the lights and refreshments which were so slow of coming, and, throwing himself into that chair, bit his nails and stared out at the lamplight in the rapid access of thought that came upon him. The first thing that disturbed him in this was the apparition of a figure outside peering in with some anxiety at the blank windows—somebody who was evidently curious to know whether the doctor had yet come home. The unhappy doctor started, and rang his bell once more with furious iteration. He knew what was coming. Somebody else, no doubt, had taken ill, without any consideration for young Rider's dinner, which, however, a man must manage to swallow even when tormented with importunate patients, and in love. But the knock of the untimely visitor sounded at the much-assailed door before Mary, sulky and resistant, had been able to arrange before the hungry doctor the half-warm half-cold viands which his impatience would not permit to be duly "heated up;" and he had just seated himself to dispose of the unsatisfactory meal when the little groom, who was as tired as his master, opened the door for Mrs Smith from St Roque's. Mrs Smith was a familiar periodical visitor at Dr Rider's. She had not ceased to hold to that hasty and unwise financial arrangement into which the doctor was persuaded to enter when Fred's pipe had exasperated the landlady into rebellion. He had supplemented the rent at that exciting moment rather than have Nettie disturbed; and now that poor Fred's pipe was extinguished for ever, the doctor still paid the imposition demanded from him—half because he had no time to contest it, half because it was, however improper and unnecessary, a kind of pleasure to do something for Nettie, little as she knew and deeply as she would have resented it. Dr Rider's brows cleared up at sight of Nettie's landlady. He expected some little private anecdotes of her and her ways, such as no one else could give him. He gave Mrs Smith a chair with a benignity to which she had no personal claim. Her arrival made Dr Rider's beefsteak palatable, though the cookery and condition of the same were, to say the least, far from perfect. Mrs Smith evidently was a little embarrassed with the gracious reception she received. She twisted the corner of her shawl in her fingers as if it had been that apron with which women of her class habitually relieve their feelings. She was in a false position. She came with the worst of news to the melancholy lover, and he treated her as if she brought some special message or favour from the lady of his thoughts.

"Well, Mrs Smith, and how are you all at the cottage?" said the doctor, applying himself leisurely to his beefsteak.

"Well, doctor, nothing to brag of," said Mrs Smith, fixing her eyes upon the fringe of her shawl. "I haven't nothing to say that's pleasant, more the pity. I don' know, sir, how you'll take it when you come to hear; but it's come very hard upon me. Not for the sake of the lodgings, as'll let again fast enough, now the poor gentleman's sad fate is partly forgotten; but you know, doctor, a body gets attached-like when one set of people stays long enough to feel at home; and there ain't many young ladies like Miss if you were to search the country through. But, now she's really give in to it herself, there ain't no more to be said. I never could bring myself to think Miss would give in till to-night when she told me; though Smith he always said, when the stranger gentleman took to coming so constant, as he knew how it would be."

"For heaven's sake, what do you mean?" cried Dr Rider, pushing away his plate, and rising hurriedly from that dinner which was fated never to be eaten. Mrs Smith shook her head and drew out her handkerchief.

"I know nothing more, doctor, but just they're going off to Australia," said the landlady, mournfully; "and Miss has started packing the big boxes as have been in the hattic since ever they come: they're going off back where they come from—that's all as I know."

"Impossible!" cried the doctor.

"I'd have said so myself this morning," said Mrs Smith; "but there ain't nothing impossible, doctor, as Miss takes in her head. Don't you go and rush out after her, Dr Rider. I beg of you upon my knees, if it was my last word! I said to Smith I'd come up and tell the doctor, that he mightn't hear from nobody promiscuous as couldn't explain, and mightn't come rushing down to the cottage to know the rights of it and find the gentleman there unexpected. If there's one thing I'm afeard of, it's a quarrel between gentlemen in my house. So, doctor, for the love of peace, don't you go anear the cottage. I'll tell you everything if you listen to me."

The doctor, who had snatched up his hat and made a rapid step towards the door, came back and seized hold of his visitor's shoulder, all his benignity having been put to flight by her unlooked-for revelation. "Look here! I want the truth, and no gossip! What do you mean—what gentleman? What is it all about?" cried Dr Rider, hoarse with sudden passion.

"Oh, bless you, doctor, don't blame it upon me, sir," cried Mrs Smith. "It ain't neither my fault nor my business, but that you've always been kind, and my heart warms to Miss. It's the gentleman from Australia as has come and come again; and being an unmarried gentleman, and Miss—you know what she is, sir—and I ask you, candid, Dr Rider, what was anybody to suppose?"

The doctor grew wildly red up to his hair. He bit his lips over some furious words which Carlingford would have been horrified to hear, and grasped Mrs Smith's shoulder with a closer pressure. "What did she tell you?" said the doctor. "Let me have it word for word. Did she say she was going away?—did she speak of this—this—fellow?" exclaimed the doctor, with an adjective over which charity drops a tear. "Can't you tell me without any supposes, what did she say?"

"I'm not the woman to stand being shook—let me go this minute, sir," cried Mrs Smith. "The Australian gentleman is a very nice-spoken civil man, as was always very respectful to me. She came into my back-parlour, doctor, if you will know so particular—all shining and flashing, like as she does when something's happened. I don't make no doubt they had been settling matters, them two, and so I told Smith. 'Mrs Smith,' said Miss, in her hasty way, enough to catch your breath coming all of a sudden, 'I can't stand this no longer—I shall have to go away—it ain't no good resisting.' Them were her very words, Dr Rider. 'Get me out the big boxes, please,' said Miss. 'It's best done quietly. You must take your week's notice, Mrs Smith, from this day;' and with that she kept moving about the room all in a flutter like, not able to rest. 'Do go and get me out those boxes; there's always a ship on the 24th,' she says, taking up my knitting and falling to work at it to keep her hands steady. 'The day afore Christmas!' says I; 'and oh, Miss, it's running in the face of Providence to sail at this time of the year. You'll have dreadful weather, as sure as life.' You should have seen her, doctor! She gave a sort of smile up at me, all flashing as if those eyes of her were the sides of a lantern, and the light bursting out both there and all over. 'All the better,' she says, as if she'd have liked to fight the very wind and sea, and have her own way even there. Bless you, she's dreadful for having her own way. A good easy gentleman now, as didn't mind much—Dr Rider—Doctor!—you're not agoing, after all I've told you? Doctor, doctor, I say——"

But what Mrs Smith said was inaudible to Edward Rider. The door rang in her ears as he dashed it after him, leaving her mistress of the field. There, where he had once left Nettie, he now, all-forgetful of his usual fastidious dislike of gossip, left Mrs Smith sole occupant of his most private territories. At this unlooked-for crisis the doctor had neither a word nor a moment to spend on any one. He rushed out of the house, oblivious of all those professional necessities which limit the comings and goings of a doctor in great practice; he did not even know what he was going to do. Perhaps it was an anxious husband or father whom he all but upset as he came out, with sudden impetuosity, into the unfrequented street; but he did not stop to see. Pale and desperate, he faced the cold wind which rushed up between the blank garden-walls of Grange Lane. At Mr Wodehouse's door he stumbled against young Wentworth coming out, and passed him with a muttered exclamation which startled the curate. All the floating momentary jealousies of the past rushed back upon the doctor's mind as he passed that tall figure in the wintry road: how he had snatched Nettie from the vague kindnesses of the young clergyman—the words he had addressed to her on this very road—the answer she had given him once, which had driven him wild with passion and resentment. Impossible! the Australian, it appeared, had found nothing impossible in those circumstances in which Nettie had intrenched herself. Had the doctor's wisdom been monstrous folly, and his prudence the blindest shortsightedness? He asked himself the question as he rushed on towards that lighted window shining far along the dark road—the same window which he had seen Nettie's shadow cross, which had been opened to light poor Fred upon the way he never could tread again. Within that jealous blind, shining in that softened domestic light, what drama, murderous to the doctor's peace, might be going on now?



CHAPTER XVI.

Nettie had taken her resolution all at once. Breathless in sudden conviction, angry, heated, yet seeing in the midst of her excitement no help but an immediate action, the hasty little woman had darted into the heart of the difficulty at once. Every moment she lingered wore her out and disgusted her more with the life and fate which, nevertheless, it was impossible to abandon or shrink from. Nothing was so safe as to make matters irrevocable—to plunge over the verge at once. All gleaming with resolve and animation—with the frosty, chill, exhilarating air which had kindled the colour in her cheeks and the light in her eyes—with haste, resentment, every feeling that can quicken the heart and make the pulses leap—Nettie had flashed into the little parlour, where all was so quiet and leisurely. There Susan sat in close confabulation with the Bushman. The children had been banished out of the room, because their mother's head was not equal to their noise and restlessness. When they came in with Nettie, as was inevitable, Mrs Fred sustained the invasion with fretful looks and a certain peevish abstraction. She was evidently interrupted by the rapid entrance, which was as unwelcome as it was hasty. Cold though the night was, Mrs Fred, leaning back upon her sofa, fanned her pink cheeks with her handkerchief, and looked annoyed as well as disturbed when her children came trooping into the room clamorous for tea behind the little impetuous figure which at once hushed and protected them. Susan became silent all at once, sank back on the sofa, and concealed the faded flush upon her cheeks and the embarrassed conscious air she wore behind the handkerchief which she used so assiduously. Neither she nor her visitor took much share in the conversation that rose round the domestic table. Nettie, too, was sufficiently absorbed in her own concerns to say little, and nobody there was sufficiently observant to remark what a sudden breath of haste and nervous decision inspired the little household ruler as she dispensed the family bread-and-butter. When tea was over, Nettie sent her children out of the way with peremptory distinctness, and stayed behind them to make her communication. If she noticed vaguely a certain confused impatience and desire to get rid of her in the looks of her sister and the Australian, she attached no distinct meaning to it, but spoke out with all the simplicity of an independent power, knowing all authority and executive force to lie in her own hands alone.

"When do you think you can be ready to start? My mind is made up. I shall set to work immediately to prepare," said Nettie. "Now, look here, Susan: you have been thinking of it for months, so it is not like taking you by surprise. There is a ship that sails on the 24th. If everything is packed and ready, will you consent to go on that day?"

Mrs Fred started with unfeigned surprise, and, not without a little consternation, turned her eyes towards her friend before answering her sister. "It is just Nettie's way," cried Susan—"just how she always does—holds out against you to the very last, and then turns round and darts off before you can draw your breath. The 24th! and this is the 19th! Of course we can't do it, Nettie. I shall want quantities of things, and Mr Chatham, you know, is not used to your ways, and can't be whisked off in a moment whenever you please."

"I daresay it's very kind of Mr Chatham," said Nettie; "but I can take you out very well by myself—just as well as I brought you here. And I can't afford to get you quantities of things, Susan. So please to understand I am going off to pack up, and on the 24th we shall go."

Once more, under Nettie's impatient eyes, a look and a smile passed between her sister and the Australian. Never very patient at any time, the girl was entirely aggravated out of all toleration now.

"I can't tell what you may have to smile to each other about," said Nettie. "It is no very smiling business to me. But since I am driven to it, I shall go at once or not at all. And so that you understand me, that is all I want to say."

With which words she disappeared suddenly to the multitudinous work that lay before her, thinking as little of Susan's opposition as of the clamour raised by the children, when the hard sentence of going half an hour earlier to bed was pronounced upon them. Nettie's haste and peremptoriness were mixed, if it must be told, with a little resentment against the world in general. She had ceased being sad—she was roused and indignant. By the time she had subdued the refractory children, and disposed of them for the night, those vast Australian boxes, which they had brought with them across the seas, were placed in the little hall, under the pale light of the lamp, ready for the process of packing, into which Nettie plunged without a moment's interval. While Mrs Smith told Edward Rider her story, Nettie was flying up and down stairs with armfuls of things to be packed, and pressing Smith himself into her service. Ere long the hall was piled with heaps of personal property, ready to be transferred to those big receptacles. In the excitement of the work her spirit rose. The headlong haste with which she carried on her operations kept her mind in balance. Once or twice Susan peeped out from the parlour door, and something like an echo of laughter rang out into the hall after one of those inspections. Nettie took no notice either of the look or the laugh. She built in those piles of baggage with the rapidest symmetrical arrangement, to the admiration of Smith, who stood wondering by, and did what he could to help her, with troubled good-nature. She did not stop to make any sentimental reflections, or to think of the thankless office in which she was about to confirm herself beyond remedy by this sudden and precipitate step. Thinking had done Nettie little good hitherto. She felt herself on her true ground again, when she took to doing instead. The lamp burned dimly overhead, throwing down a light confused with frost upon the hall, all encumbered with the goods of the wandering family. Perhaps it was with a certain unconscious symbolism that Nettie buried her own personal wardrobe deep in the lowest depths, making that the foundation for all the after superstructure. Smith stood by, ready to hand her anything she might want, gazing at her with doubtful amazement. The idea of setting off to Australia at a few days' notice filled him with respect and admiration.

"A matter of a three months' voyage," said Smith; "and if I might make bold to ask, Miss, if the weather ain't too bad for anything, how will you pass away the time on board ship when there ain't nobody to speak to?—but, to be sure, the gentleman——"

"The gentleman is not going with us," said Nettie, peremptorily—"and there are the children to pass away the time. My time passes too quick, whatever other people's may do. Where is Mrs Smith, that I see nothing of her to-night? Gone out!—how very odd she should go out now, of all times in the world. Where has she gone, do you suppose? Not to be ungrateful to you, who are very kind, a woman is, of course, twenty times the use a man is, in most things. Thank you—not that; those coloured frocks now—there! that bundle with the pink and the blue. One would suppose that even a man might know coloured frocks when he saw them," said Nettie, with despairing resignation, springing up from her knees to seize what she wanted. "Thank you—I think, perhaps, if you would just go and make yourself comfortable, and read your paper, I should get on better. I am not used to having anybody to help me. I got on quite as well, thank you, by myself."

Smith withdrew, not without some confusion and discomfort, to his condemned cell, and Nettie went on silent and swift with her labours. "Quite as well! better!" said Nettie to herself. "Other people never will understand. Now, I know better than to try anybody." If that hasty breath was a sigh, there was little sound of sorrow in it. It was a little gust of impatience, indignation, intolerance even, and hasty self-assertion. She alone knew what she could do, and must do. Not one other soul in the world beside could enter into her inevitable work and way.

Nettie did not hear the footstep which she might have recognised ringing rapidly down the frosty road. She was too busy rustling about with perpetual motion, folding and refolding, and smoothing into miraculous compactness all the heterogeneous elements of that mass. When a sudden knock came to the door she started, struck with alarm, then paused a moment, looking round her, and perceiving at one hasty glance that nobody could possibly enter without seeing both herself and her occupation, made one prompt step to the door, which nobody appeared to open. It was Mrs Smith, no doubt; but the sudden breathless flutter which came upon Nettie cast doubts upon that rapid conclusion. She opened it quickly, with a certain breathless, sudden promptitude, and looked out pale and dauntless, understanding by instinct that some new trial to her fortitude was there. On the other hand, Edward Rider pressed in suddenly, almost without perceiving it was Nettie. They were both standing in the hall together, before they fully recognised each other. Then the doctor, gazing round him at the unusual confusion, gave an involuntary groan out of the depths of his heart. "Then it is true!" said Dr Rider. He stood among the chaos, and saw all his own dreams broken up and shattered in pieces. Even passion failed him in that first bitterness of conviction. Nettie stood opposite, with the sleeves of her black dress turned up from her little white nimble wrists, her hair pushed back from her cheeks, pushed quite behind one delicate ear, her eyes shining with all those lights of energy and purpose which came to them as soon as she took up her own character again. She met his eye with a little air of defiance, involuntary, and almost unconscious. "It is quite true," said Nettie, bursting forth in sudden self-justification; "I have my work to do, and I must do it as best I can. I cannot keep considering you all, and losing my life. I must do what God has given me to do, or I must die."

Never had Nettie been so near breaking down, and falling into sudden womanish tears and despair. She would not yield to the overpowering momentary passion. She clutched at the bundle of frocks again, and made room for them spasmodically in the box which she had already packed. Edward Rider stood silent, gazing at her as in her sudden anguish Nettie pulled down and reconstructed that curious honeycomb. But he had not come here merely to gaze, while the catastrophe was preparing. He went up and seized her busy hands, raised her up in spite of her resistance, and thrust away, with an exclamation of disgust, that great box in which all his hopes were being packed away. "There is first a question to settle between you and me," cried the doctor: "you shall not do it. No; I forbid it, Nettie. Because you are wilful," cried Edward Rider, hoarse and violent, grasping the hands tighter, with a strain in which other passions than love mingled, "am I to give up all the rights of a man? You are going away without even giving me just warning—without a word, without a sign; and you think I will permit it, Nettie? Never—by heaven!"

"Dr Edward," said Nettie, trembling, half with terror, half with resolution, "you have no authority over me. We are two people—we are not one. I should not have gone away without a word or a sign. I should have said good-bye to you, whatever had happened; but that is different from permitting or forbidding. Let us say good-bye now and get it over, if that will please you better," she cried, drawing her hands from his grasp; "but I do not interfere with your business, and I must do mine my own way."

The doctor was in no mood to argue. He thrust the big box she had packed away into a corner, and closed it with a vindictive clang. It gave him a little room to move in that little commonplace hall, with its dim lamp, which had witnessed so many of the most memorable scenes of his life. "Look here," cried Dr Rider; "authority has little to do with it. If you had been my wife, Nettie, to be sure you could not have deserted me. It is as great a cruelty—it is as hard upon me, this you are trying to do. I have submitted hitherto, and heaven knows it has been bitter enough; and you scorn me for my submission," said the doctor, making the discovery by instinct. "When a fellow obeys you, it is only contempt you feel for him; but I tell you, Nettie, I will bear it no longer. You shall not go away. This is not to be. I will neither say good-bye, nor think of it. What is your business is my business; and I declare to you, you shall not go unless I go too. Ah—I forgot. They tell me there is a fellow, an Australian, who ventures to pretend—I don't mean to say I believe it. You think he will not object to your burdens! Nettie! Don't let us kill each other. Let us take all the world on our shoulders," cried the doctor, drawing near again, with passionate looks, "rather than part!"

There was a pause—neither of them could speak at that moment. Nettie, who felt her resolution going, her heart melting, yet knew she dared not give way, clasped her hands tight in each other and stood trembling, yet refusing to tremble; collecting her voice and thoughts. The doctor occupied that moment of suspense in a way which might have looked ludicrous in other circumstances, but was a relief to the passion that possessed him. He dragged the other vast Australian box to the same corner where he had set the first, and piled them one above the other. Then he collected with awkward care all the heaps of garments which lay about, and carried them off in the other direction to the stairs, where he laid them carefully with a clumsy tenderness. When he had swept away all these encumbrances, as by a sudden gust of wind, he came back to Nettie, and once more clasped the firm hands which held each other fast. She broke away from him with a sudden cry—

"You acknowledged it was impossible!" cried Nettie. "It is not my doing, or anybody's; no one shall take the world on his shoulders for my sake—I ask nobody to bear my burdens. Thank you for not believing it—that is a comfort at least. Never, surely, any one else—and not you, not you! Dr Edward, let us make an end of it. I will never consent to put my yoke upon your shoulders, but I—I will never forget you or blame you—any more. It is all hard, but we cannot help it. Good-bye—don't make it harder, you, who are the only one that——; good-bye,—no more—don't say any more."

At this moment the parlour door opened suddenly; Nettie's trembling mouth and frame, and the wild protest and contradiction which were bursting from the lips of the doctor, were lost upon the spectator absorbed in her own affairs, and full of excitement on her own account, who looked out. "Perhaps Mr Edward will walk in," said Mrs Fred. "Now he is here to witness what I mean, I should like to speak to you, please, Nettie. I did not think I should ever appeal to you, Mr Edward, against Nettie's wilfulness—but, really now, we, none of us, can put up with it any longer. Please to walk in and hear what I've got to say."

The big Bushman stood before the little fire in the parlour, extinguishing its tiny glow with his vast shadow. The lamp burned dimly upon the table. A certain air of confusion was in the room. Perhaps it was because Nettie had already swept her own particular belongings out of that apartment, which once, to the doctor's eyes, had breathed of her presence in every corner—but it did not look like Nettie's parlour to-night. Mrs Fred, with the broad white bands of her cap streaming over her black dress, had just assumed her place on the sofa, which was her domestic throne. Nettie, much startled and taken by surprise, stood by the table, waiting with a certain air of wondering impatience what was to be said to her—with still the sleeves turned up from her tiny wrists, and her fingers unconsciously busy expressing her restless intolerance of this delay by a hundred involuntary tricks and movements. The doctor stood close by her, looking only at Nettie, watching her with eyes intent as if she might suddenly disappear from under his very gaze. As for the Australian, he stood uneasy under Nettie's rapid investigating glance, and the slower survey which Dr Rider made on entering. He plucked at his big beard, and spread out his large person with a confusion and embarrassment rather more than merely belonged to the stranger in a family party; while Mrs Fred, upon her sofa, took up her handkerchief and once more began to fan her pink cheeks. What was coming? After a moment's pause, upon which Nettie could scarcely keep herself from breaking, Susan spoke.

"Nettie has always had the upper hand so much that she thinks I am always to do exactly as she pleases," burst forth Mrs Fred; "and I don't doubt poor Fred encouraged her in it, because he felt he was obliged to my family, and always gave in to her; but now I have somebody to stand by me," added Susan, fanning still more violently, and with a sound in her voice which betrayed a possibility of tears—"now I have somebody to stand by me—I tell you once for all, Nettie, I will not go on the 24th."

Nettie gazed at her sister in silence without attempting to say anything. Then she lifted her eyes inquiringly to the Australian, in his uneasy spectator position before the fire. She was not much discomposed, evidently, by that sudden assertion of will—possibly Nettie was used to it—but she looked curious and roused, and rather eager to know what was it now?

"I will not go on the 24th," cried Mrs Fred, with a hysterical toss of her head. "I will not be treated like a child, and told to get ready whenever Nettie pleases. She pretends it is all for our sake, but it is for the sake of having her own will, and because she has taken a sudden disgust at something. I asked you in, Mr Edward, because you are her friend, and because you are the children's uncle, and ought to know how they are provided for. Mr Chatham and I," said Susan, overcome by her feelings, and agitating the handkerchief violently, "have settled—to be—married first before we set out."

If a shell had fallen in the peaceful apartment, the effect could not have been more startling. The two who had been called in to receive that intimation, and who up to this moment had been standing together listening languidly enough, too much absorbed in the matter between themselves to be very deeply concerned about anything Mrs Fred could say or do, fell suddenly apart with the wildest amazement in their looks. "Susan, you are mad!" cried Nettie, gazing aghast at her sister, with an air of mingled astonishment and incredulity. The doctor, too much excited to receive with ordinary decorum information so important, made a sudden step up to the big embarrassed Australian, who stood before the fire gazing into vacancy, and looking the very embodiment of conscious awkwardness. Dr Rider stretched out both his hands and grasped the gigantic fist of the Bushman with an effusion which took that worthy altogether by surprise. "My dear fellow, I wish you joy—I wish you joy. Anything I can be of use to you in, command me!" cried the doctor, with a suppressed shout of half-incredulous triumph. Then he returned restlessly towards Nettie—they all turned to her with instinctive curiosity. Never in all her troubles had Nettie been so pale; she looked in her sister's face with a kind of despair.

"Is this true, Susan?" she said, with a sorrowful wonder as different as possible from the doctor's joyful surprise—"not something said to vex us—really true? And this has been going on, and I knew nothing of it; and all this time you have been urging me to go back to the colony—me—as if you had no other thoughts. If you had made up your mind to this, what was the use of driving me desperate?" cried Nettie, in a sudden outburst of that incomprehension which aches in generous hearts. Then she stopped suddenly and looked from her sister, uttering suppressed sobs, and hiding her face in her handkerchief on the sofa, to the Australian before the fire. "What is the good of talking?" said Nettie, with a certain indignant impatient indulgence, coming to an abrupt conclusion. Nobody knew so well as she did how utterly useless it was to remonstrate or complain. She dropt into the nearest chair, and began with hasty tremulous hands to smooth down the cuffs of her black sleeves. In the bitterness of the moment it was not the sudden deliverance, but the heartlessness and domestic treachery that struck Nettie. She, the champion and defender of this helpless family for years—who had given them bread, and served it to them with her own cheerful unwearied hands—who had protected as well as provided for them in her dauntless innocence and youth. When she was thus cast off on the brink of the costliest sacrifice of all, it was not the delightful sensation of freedom which occurred to Nettie. She fell back with a silent pang of injury swelling in her heart, and, all tremulous and hasty, gave her agitated attention to the simple act of smoothing down her sleeves—a simple but symbolical act, which conveyed a world of meaning to the mind of the doctor as he stood watching her. The work she had meant to do was over. Nettie's occupation was gone. With the next act of the domestic drama she had nothing to do. For the first time in her life utterly vanquished, with silent promptitude she abdicated on the instant. She seemed unable to strike a blow for the leadership thus snatched from her hands. With proud surprise and magnanimity she withdrew, forbearing even the useless reproaches of which she had impatiently asked, "What was the good?" Never abdicated emperor laid aside his robes with more ominous significance, than Nettie, with fingers trembling between haste and agitation, smoothed down round her shapely wrists those turned-up sleeves.

The doctor's better genius saved him from driving the indignant Titania desperate at that critical moment by any ill-advised rejoicings; and the sight of Nettie's agitation so far calmed Dr Rider that he made the most sober and decorous congratulations to the sister-in-law, whom for the first time he felt grateful to. Perhaps, had he been less absorbed in his own affairs, he could scarcely have failed to remember how, not yet a year ago, the shabby form of Fred lay on that same sofa from which Susan had announced her new prospects; but in this unexampled revolution of affairs no thought of Fred disturbed his brother, whose mind was thoroughly occupied with the sudden tumult of his own hopes. "Oh yes, I hope I shall be happy at last. After all my troubles, I have to look to myself, Mr Edward; and your poor brother would have been the last to blame me," sobbed Mrs Fred, with involuntary self-vindication. Then followed a pause. The change was too sudden and extraordinary, and involved results too deeply important to every individual present, to make words possible. Mrs Fred, with her face buried in her handkerchief, and Nettie, her whole frame thrilling with mortification and failure, tremulously trying to button her sleeves, and bestowing her whole mind upon that operation, were discouraging interlocutors; and after the doctor and the Bushman had shaken hands, their powers of communication were exhausted. The silence was at length broken by the Australian, who, clearing his voice between every three words, delivered his embarrassed sentiments as follows:—

"I trust, Miss Nettie, you'll not think you've been unfairly dealt by, or that any change is necessary so far as you are concerned. Of course," said Mr Chatham, growing red, and plucking at his beard, "neither your sister nor I—found out—till quite lately—how things were going to be; and as for you making any change in consequence, or thinking we could be anything but glad to have you with us——"