/ RED 
 
 SISTER 
 
 B 
 
 C. L. PIRKJS 
 
 / 

 
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 A RED SISTER 
 
 ^ Stffrg ijf tijm gags mh W^xn IS'ffwfl);; 
 
 C. L. PIRKIS 
 
 AUTHOR OF "lady LOVELACE," "A DATELESS BARGAIN," " AT THE MOMENT OF 
 VICTORY," ETC., ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COxMPANY 
 
 LIMITED 
 
 Fetter Lane, Fleet Street 
 i8qi
 
 8^^ 
 
 ' V 1 
 
 TO MY FRIENDS, 
 
 SIR MYLES AND LADY FENTON, 
 
 OF RIDGE GREEN, 
 
 1 Bttifcau tftis 23oo]k, 
 
 WITH SINCERE REGARD, AND IN THE HOPE THAT 
 
 THE FORTUNES OF "A RED SISTER" 
 
 > 
 
 ^ MAY SERVE TO AVHILE AWAY 
 
 ^ A LEISURE HOUR. 
 
 "> C. L. PIRKIS. 
 
 N tit field, 1 89 1. 
 

 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/redsisterstoryof01pirk
 
 A RED SISTER. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 ^' Heee we must part, my friends," said the 
 priest, resting his hand on the stile which 
 divided the high road from a footway running 
 across fields. '^ This must be the ' short cut ' 
 of which the inn-keeper spoke. It will be easy 
 enough for me, with only this light bag to 
 carry, to make the rest of my journey on foot." 
 The speaker was a tall, dark man, between 
 fifty and sixty years of age, with aquiline 
 features, and clear, penetrating grey eyes ; the 
 persons whom he addressed were a man and a 
 young girl. The former was standing beside 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 A RED SISTER. 
 
 a dog- cart, with his hands still grasping reins 
 and whip ; his healthy, bronzed face, and his 
 appearance generally, seemed to denote that 
 he belonged to the small-farmer class. The 
 girl, who was standing beside the priest on 
 the footway, bore a rather more refined appear- 
 ance. She was small and slight in figure, her 
 face looked worn and anxious, its pallor being 
 thrown into greater relief by the deep crape 
 she wore ; her large, grey eyes had a forlorn, 
 far-away look in them ; her hair was of a beau- 
 tiful, though colourless fairness. 
 
 ^^ I wish we could be of more service to you, 
 Father Elliot," said the young man ; ^' we owe 
 you a heavy debt of gratitude " 
 
 He broke off abruptly, giving a furtive 
 glance towards the girl. 
 
 '^ Thanks, my good friend," said the Father, 
 cheerily ; ^' I was delighted to be able to break 
 my long journey at your house. I hope times
 
 A RED SISTER. 3 
 
 will soon be better for you. There's something 
 egregiously wrong in the state of a country 
 when a farm, worked as yours has been, can't 
 pay its own expenses and yield a comfortable 
 income to two plain-living people like you and 
 your sister," 
 
 Then he turned to the girl : 
 
 ''Where was it you applied for a situation 
 as maid? I don't think you mentioned the 
 name of the people or the house." 
 
 ''The lady is Lady Joan Gaskell, wife of 
 Mr. John Gaskell, the millionaire coal owner, 
 of Longridge Castle," said the girl. 
 
 Here a sudden change of expression swept 
 over the Father's face ; his lips parted, as if 
 he were about to speak, but no words escaped 
 them. 
 
 '' Longridge Castle is just behind that clump 
 of trees," she went on ; '' but the trees hide it so 
 that you can't see it till you are close up to it."
 
 4 A RED SISTER. 
 
 The Father had by this time recovered him- 
 self. 
 
 ^'Ah, well," he said, ^'if you succeed in 
 obtaining the situation, I shall see you on Sun- 
 days at mass, for St. Elizabeth's Church is only 
 a mile and a half distant from the Castle." 
 
 He turned as he finished speaking and crossed 
 the stile, then, resting his arms on its topmost 
 rail, bent forward, and for a moment keenly 
 scrutinised the pale, sorrowful face which 
 fronted him. 
 
 The young man led his horse and cart 
 forward a little. He knew that the priest's 
 last words were to be spoken now, and they 
 were not words to be thrown on the empty 
 air. 
 
 The Father smiled kindly at him. 
 
 ^' Don't lose heart, Ealph," he said. -^Be 
 diligent — remember, you can put conscience 
 even into driving a plough — put your best
 
 A RED SISTER. 5 
 
 work into everything you do, and, sooner or 
 later, a blessing must follow." 
 
 Then he turned to the girl. 
 
 "And you, my child, whether your lot be 
 east in Longridge Castle or elsewhere, be 
 zealous in the performance of your religious 
 duties. Thank heaven that nothing more is 
 required of you than loving trust and child- 
 like obedience, and make no ejffort to discover 
 that which, providentially no doubt, has been 
 hidden from you." 
 
 His last sentence was said with a slow em- 
 phasis. The girl sharply turned her face away 
 from him as if she shrank from the scrutiny of 
 his keen though kindly eyes. Her fingers 
 twisting nervously one in the other showed 
 that she was greatly agitated. 
 
 "Once more, good-bye, my children both," 
 said the priest, "Dominus vobiscum !" 
 
 He stretched his hands towards them as he
 
 6 A RED SISTER. 
 
 pronounced his blessicg ; then turned, and 
 began rapidly to make his way along the foot- 
 way through the fields. 
 
 The brother and sister had bowed their heads 
 reverently. 
 
 '^Come, Lucy," said the man, turning his 
 horse's head and preparing to set off once more 
 along the dusty high road. 
 
 Lucy did not reply. She stood motionless 
 in the blazing sunshine, shading her eyes with 
 her hands, and watching the retreating figure 
 of the priest. 
 
 ^' Come, Lucy," called her brother again, 
 and this time a little impatiently, ^^ we shan't 
 be back any too soon if we set off at once. I've 
 a hundred and one things to see after when I 
 get home." 
 
 A bend in the footpath he was following 
 hid the priest from her view, and Lucy, letting 
 her veil fall over her face, rejoined her brother.
 
 A RED SISTER. 7 
 
 Father Elliot steadily pursued his road. 
 The surrounding country was not particularly 
 picturesque. It was flat, as if a gigantic 
 steam-roller had passed over it, and but scantily 
 wooded. The only point of interest in the 
 landscape was the clump of distant elms, 
 behind which Lucy had said stood Longridge 
 Castle. 
 
 As the Father drew near to the clump of not 
 very ancient trees, he could catch glimpses of 
 the frontage of the newly-built, many-towered 
 edifice. 
 
 ^'It is fatality," he thought. ^^Here am I, 
 exiled from London and the work I was doing 
 there, and thrown, as it were, into the arms of 
 these Gaskells once more. My superiors tell 
 me, forsooth, they are sending me out of the 
 way of temptation. ^ Through pride,' the Car- 
 dinal wrote, * the angels fell. Your pride in 
 your powers of oratory and the large and intel-
 
 8 A RED SISTER. 
 
 lectual congregations which you draw, is lead- 
 ing you to preach doctrines other than those 
 which have been taught by the Church in all 
 ages. Go now and minister to the poor and 
 ignorant colliers and cottagers, and, by plain 
 teaching — not the preaching of doctrines which 
 spring from the exercise of a subtle intellect — 
 win souls to the Church.' Yes, those were his 
 words. I know them by heart. The exercise 
 of a subtle intellect ! Is it that, I wonder, or 
 the exercise of clear vision and common sense 
 which leads a man, after staring for years at 
 the problems of life, to cry out from his pulpit, 
 ' My children, purgatory is present, not to 
 come ; this world is not our first start in exis- 
 tence — here we are sent for our sins ' '* 
 
 Here the Father suddenly paused, passing 
 his hand over his brow. Thoughts such as 
 these required curb and rein. 
 
 ^'Ah, well," those thoughts presently re-
 
 A RED SISTER, 9 
 
 sumed, ^'submission to my superiors is one of 
 the first of my duties, and I submit. They 
 little know how valueless to me is the praise or 
 blame of the multitude. All things are to me 
 shadows and hollow mockeries of what might 
 have been ! " Here his eye for a moment rested 
 on the facade of the Castle as it gleamed white 
 in the afternoon sun, between the shadowy 
 trees. '^ Thirty years," he went on, bitterly, 
 *' and I have not been able to kill the memory 
 of that ' might have been ! ' Thirty years of 
 battling with the ghosts of that past, and then 
 I am sent as it were to banquet with them — to 
 entertain, and be entertained by them ! Joan, 
 Joan, I wonder if your memory is clear and 
 strong as mine is to-day ! I wonder if, when 
 we meet, you will shake hands calmly as 
 with an utter stranger, or if you will start up 
 and cry aloud, as you did on the day I cursed 
 you for breaking faith with me, ' Go away,
 
 10 A RED SISTER. 
 
 Yauglian, go away, and never let me in this 
 life look upon your face again ' ? " 
 
 These were the priest's thoughts as he made 
 his way across the fields towards the cottage 
 which represented the Clergy-house of St. 
 Elizabeth's Church. At this point, however, his 
 visions of the past seemed suddenly to goad his 
 footsteps into a speed prohibitive of thought. 
 
 A countryman at that moment swinging 
 back the gate of an adjoining field, in order to 
 drive home his cows for milking, stood, open- 
 mouthed, gazing at the tall, dark gentleman 
 approaching at such a rapid pace. 
 
 ^'Be 'ee goan to th' merry-makin' ? " he 
 asked in broad Yorkshire dialect, in response 
 to the Father's passing nod and greeting. 
 
 ^^ I'm making for St. Elizabeth's Church or 
 rather Father Bradley's house ; I dare say you 
 know it," said the Father, resuming his usual 
 calm, frankly- courteous manner, which always
 
 A RED SISTER. H 
 
 seemed to open hearts towards Hm. ^' What 
 merry-making is taking place to-day ? Where 
 is it?" 
 
 ^' Wa'ay down yonder," answered the man, 
 jerking his head towards the Castle which had 
 conjured up such a tumult of memories in the 
 Father's mind. ^^ Th' old master's turned 
 ninety to-day, and there isn't a soul far or near 
 but what's to be the better for his living so nigh 
 upon a hundred ; so Muster John — that's his 
 son — says." 
 
 ^^What!" cried the priest; ^^s old Mr. 
 Gaskell stm alive ! " 
 
 He paused a moment. ^'Joan, Joan," his 
 thoughts ran during that pause, '^ you've 
 had to wait long enough for the good things 
 for which you sold yourself! " Then aloud to 
 the man he said : 
 
 '^ How far do you make it from here to the 
 Castle?"
 
 12 A RED SISTER. 
 
 ^^ A short half-mile as the crow flies. But 
 the merry-makin' is i' the fields you'll come 
 upon just after you've passed the heath ; that's 
 about a quarter-mile from here." 
 
 And then the man went on to say that the 
 whole country for miles round had turned out 
 to do honour to the nonagenarian's birthday ; 
 that the village was deserted ; that, after dark, 
 bonfires were to be lighted, and fireworks let 
 off; that there was to be a supper for the collier 
 lads, and a dance for them afterwards ; in a 
 word, the birthday celebrations were to out- 
 rival those which had taken place seven years 
 ago, when the young master had come of 
 age. 
 
 All this Father Elliot listened to attentively, 
 saying never a word until '•'- the young master " 
 was mentioned. Then he put a question as to 
 who this young master was. 
 
 '^ He's Muster Herrick, the son of Muster
 
 A RED SISTER. 13 
 
 John, and Lady Joan," the man explained. 
 '* Muster John married nigh upon thirty year 
 ago the Lady Joan Herrick — she came of grand 
 people down South, somewhere. She was poor 
 enough she was, and she's nae sich a kindly 
 body as " 
 
 ^^ Good day, my friend," here interrupted 
 the Father, brusquely. ^' Your cows are stray- 
 ing — see. I'm right for St. Elizabeth's, you 
 said?" 
 
 The man went after his cows ; the Father 
 went on his way, his brain filled now with 
 so many phantoms of the past that the 
 country through which he passed was a blank 
 to him. 
 
 He seemed to see himself once more in the 
 pretty Devonshire village, where his father had 
 been rector as long as he could remember. He 
 could see, also, as vividly as if days, not decades 
 of years, had since passed ; his constant play-
 
 14 A RED SISTER. 
 
 mate and companion by his side, the Lady Joan 
 Herrick, only daughter of the Earl of South- 
 moor. Now, they were scampering over breezy 
 moors together on their rough-coated little 
 ponies ; anon, they would be bending over 
 their books side by side in his father's study ; 
 or, he would be angling intheSouthmoor trout 
 stream, while she, on the bank, sat listening to 
 his ambitious hopes and projects to win name 
 and fame for himself in the Church by his learn- 
 ing and oratory. He could picture himself, 
 also, a little later on, a young fellow of twenty, 
 starting on his college career, and Lady Joan, 
 a handsome girl of fifteen, bidding him God- 
 speed. The scene changed, and he seemed to 
 see himself, four years after, returning from 
 college and about to enter the ministry, stand- 
 ing hand-in-hand with Joan, praying her to 
 wait for him till he could make a home and 
 position in life which he might fitly ask her to
 
 A RED SISTER. 15 
 
 share, and hearing in reply her vehement 
 promises of unswerwing constancy. 
 
 Last scene of all, he could picture himself, 
 some three months after this, alone, face to face 
 with Joan, hearing from her own lips the story 
 of her betrothal to John Gaskell, the only son of 
 the millionaire coal-owner. He could hear her 
 calm, passionless voice trying to prove to him 
 how much better it would be for him to begin 
 his career unfettered by a wife, and how un- 
 suited she was for being the wife of a poor man. 
 He could hear, too, his own vehement denun- 
 ciations of her falseness and worldly wisdom ; 
 and then her one bitter cry — startled out of 
 her, as it were, by his angry words — " Go 
 away, Yaughan, go away, and never in this life 
 let me look upon your face again." 
 
 Well, they never had looked upon each 
 other's face again. She had left her Devonshire 
 home to take her place among her husband's
 
 16 A RED SISTER. 
 
 wealthy, if parvenu, relatives ; and he, after 
 drifting aimlessly about the world for years, 
 had joined the Eoman Church, and had quali- 
 fied for the priesthood. And then life, like a 
 great ocean, had rolled in between the two. 
 
 Here a sudden break in the path which the 
 Father was following compelled him to give a 
 truce to his memories, and consider which road 
 it behoved him to take. 
 
 The country through which he had passed 
 had gradually been growing flatter and less 
 verdant, proclaiming in its general aspect the 
 propinquity of the coal country. He was stand- 
 ing now on the edge of a wide heath — not the 
 wildly-beautiful expanse of purple heather and 
 golden gorse which is frequently associated 
 with the name, but a bleak, stony, treeless 
 waste, with here a stunted juniper bush, there 
 a straggling bramble. On the left it was 
 bounded by a low, scrubby hedge, on the right
 
 A RED SISTER. 17 
 
 it stretched away endlessly to where, against a 
 night-sky, the sullen, red flare of furnaces and 
 forge-fires would show. A second thought told 
 him that his way lay in a direct line across the 
 very middle of this waste. 
 
 Straight ahead of him Longridge Castle 
 showed plainly enough now, and distinct sounds 
 of cheering and shouting proclaimed that he 
 was nearing the fields where the birthday fes- 
 tivities were taking place. 
 
 Half-way across the heath. Father Elliot 
 paused to note a deep pit, possibly a shaft 
 which had been sunk in search of coal, and 
 which was protected only by the slightest and 
 most inadequate of hand-rails. The grass 
 growing up its sides, the tangle of nettles 
 and weeds which covered the mounds of 
 earth thrown up beside it, showed that many 
 a spring had passed since it had been dug. 
 Prompted by a boyish instinct, the Father took 
 
 VOL I. c
 
 18 A RED SISTER. 
 
 up a stone and threw it into the pit. The 
 seconds which elapsed before it sounded the 
 the bottom told of the formidable depth of 
 the hole. 
 
 ^' It would be an ugly business to cross this 
 heath on a dark night," thought the Father, as 
 he once more went on his way. 
 
 This led him now along a narrow road with 
 high hedges on either side. After five o'clock 
 in the afternoon, towards the end of August, 
 the sun's rays begin to slant, and shadows to 
 lengthen. This road looked cool and shady by 
 comparison with the treeless heath. Through 
 the breaks of the hedge on one side he could 
 catch a glimpse of bright- coloured flags and 
 white tents in a not very distant field. The 
 sounds of a military band greeted his ear, 
 together with a hum and buzz of voices as of 
 many people assembled. 
 
 " In the midst of that crowd,- ' he thought.
 
 A RED SISTER. 19 
 
 will stand Joan with her young son, her elderly 
 husband, her ancient father-in-law. I wonder, 
 if I suddenly presented myself among them all, 
 would she turn pale and shrink from me as from 
 a ghost at her banquet, or would she come for- 
 ward and greet me in that stately way of hers 
 I used to know so well ? I can't fancy Joan 
 without her stateliness. I could as soon fancy 
 her without her voice ! That will ring in my 
 ears when I lie on my death-bed — soft, deep, mu- 
 sical, and slow in speech, the voice of a woman 
 who should have had a heart. Yet Heaven, in 
 place of a heart, planted a stone in her bosom ! " 
 Sounds of footsteps on the other side of the 
 hedge, almost at his elbow, at that moment 
 arrested his attention. Through the inter- 
 vening greenery, bushy here, scanty there, he 
 could catch a ghmpse of the small slight figure 
 of a young girl approaching with rapid steps. 
 She was evidently making for a gate which,
 
 20 A RED SISTER. 
 
 about twenty yards further on, led from the 
 field into the road. 
 
 The Father reached this gate just at the 
 moment that the girl was passing through it. 
 
 Her face attracted him strangely. It was of 
 a type he knew well enough. Scores of times 
 he had seen it, painted by different hands ; now 
 as that of baby cherubs on the panels of trip- 
 tychs ; anon as that of ascending and descend- 
 ing angels on some gigantic altar-piece. It was 
 round, child-like, with a tiny cupid's bow for 
 a mouth, and such brilliant gold on the hair, 
 such forget-me-not blue in the eyes, and such 
 rosy tints on cheeks and lips it seemed as if 
 the sun must be shining full upon it, in spite 
 of the protecting shade of a big sun-hat. It 
 seemed a face formed for happiness, innocence, 
 and a perpetual round of childish pleasures ! 
 and lo ! there were traces of tears on either 
 cheek.
 
 A RED SISTER. 21 
 
 The Father was touched. He accosted the 
 young girl. 
 
 '•'- 1 beg your pardon," he said, ^^ I am a 
 stranger here ; will you kindly tell me if I am 
 in the right road for St. Elizabeth's Church ? 
 I am the newly-appointed priest. I take 
 Father Bradley's place there." 
 
 The girl's manner matched her face, it was 
 frank yet shy, as a child's can be at one and 
 the same moment. The sound of tears in her 
 voice jarred upon the Father like a false note 
 in a sweet, gay melody. 
 
 '^ I am going towards St. Elizabeth's now," 
 she answered. ^^ I will show you the way 
 with pleasure."
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 Sounds of hearty and prolonged cheering fell 
 upon Father Elliot's ear, as, under the guid- 
 ance of his young companion, he made his way 
 along the road towards St. Elizabeth's. 
 
 '^It's the health-drinking," the girl ex- 
 plained. ^^They do it heartily. They think 
 there never was such a master as old Mr. 
 Gaskell, although, I suppose, no one there can 
 remember him at his best." 
 
 *^ There never was such a master ! " Those 
 words, or their equivalent in broad Yorkshire, 
 went the rounds among the collier lads, as, 
 with throats hoarse from their shouting, they 
 put down their empty tankards. 
 
 This health- drinking was the event of the
 
 A RED SISTER, 23 
 
 day, and it was drunk, one fashion or anothe/, 
 at the same moment, by every member of the 
 Gaskell family, and every man, woman, and 
 child on the Gaskell estate. Immediately 
 after the ceremony had been gone through, 
 old Mr. Gaskell was to withdraw from the 
 festivities, farther excitement being deemed 
 injurious to him at his advanced age. 
 
 In the field where this health-drinking took 
 place, Gaskells of three generations — fathor, 
 son, and grandson — stood side by side. There, 
 immediately in front of a bright-coloured silk 
 pavilion, which had been specially erected for 
 him in the midst of the meadow, stood the 
 old man, supported on one side by his son 
 John — a fine, soldierly man of fifty-five — on 
 the other, by his grandson, Herrick. A frail, 
 shrunken figure — with pallid, wrinkled face, 
 and scant, silver hair — he showed between 
 these two stalwart men.
 
 24 A RED SISTER. 
 
 Herrick owned to as many inclies in lieiglit 
 as his father, although to considerably less in 
 width; an agile, muscular young fellow he 
 was, with straight, clean-cut features, an 
 abundance of dark-brown hair and full-pupilled 
 grey eyes. There was no need to proclaim 
 his relationship to the tall, stately lady who 
 stood a little distance apart, on his left hand. 
 The most careless observer would have said, 
 '^Mother and son, not a doubt," when once 
 they had seen the two faces in profile. 
 
 In voice, in manner, in graceful walk, and 
 easy carriage of the head and shoulders, the 
 likeness between the two was not less remark- 
 able. 
 
 '^ I can't picture Joan without her stateli- 
 ness," Father Elliot had said to himself, when 
 trying to draw a fancy-portrait of his old love 
 as time had left her after thirty years of wear 
 and tear. He did not stand alone ; all who
 
 A RED SISTER. 25 
 
 had ever known her could as lief have pictured 
 a star without its light as Lady Joan without 
 that ^^ grand manner " of hers which kept alike 
 friends and foes at a ceremonious distance, and 
 which, if she had been dressed in homespun, 
 and had been compelled to feed off wooden 
 platters, would still have proclaimed her every 
 inch the aristocrat. 
 
 In Herrick this stateliness had been some- 
 what modified by education and circumstances, 
 but still it was there. Though he worked as 
 hard as his father in the management of the 
 colliery, and of the estate generally, there was 
 not a collier lad or farm labourer on the land 
 who would have approached him in the easy, 
 off-handed manner in which they approached 
 his father, sturdy democrats though they were 
 to their very marrow. 
 
 With physique and manner, however, the 
 likeness to his mother came to an end. A
 
 26 A RED SISTER. 
 
 veritable Southmoor he might be in appear- 
 ance, but in heart he was a Gaskell. His 
 interests and hopes in life were identical with 
 those of his father and grandfather ; and he 
 cared as little as they for the accidents of 
 birth and rank. 
 
 ^Now as Lady Joan watched his face kindling 
 into sympathy with the bright, ruddy faces 
 around him, and heard his clear voice joining 
 in what seemed to her coarse and vulgar cheer- 
 ing, she said to herself bitterly : 
 
 '' He has some of the best blood of England 
 in his veins, and he is at one with such a 
 crowd as that." 
 
 The cheering had scarcely died away, and 
 the hum and buzz of broad north- country 
 dialect re- commenced, when Herrick, turning 
 to Lady Joan, hurriedly asked : 
 
 ''Mother, where is Lois? Is she tired? 
 Has she gone indoors to rest?''
 
 A RED SISTER. 27 
 
 Lady Joan's brows contracted into a frown. 
 
 **Lois!" she repeated, coldly. 
 
 ^* Yes. Lois White, the young lady I intro- 
 duced to you and left in your charge while I 
 acted as umpire in the next field." 
 
 ^* I beg your pardon. The introduction was 
 so hurried I did not catch the young lady's 
 name. She left some little time ago. She 
 said she must get back to her pupils. She is 
 nursery governess somewhere in the neigh- 
 bourhood is she not?" 
 
 The young man did not notice her conclud- 
 ing sentences. 
 
 ^'Left," he repeated, blankly. ^*You let 
 her go without telling me ! I drove her here ; 
 of course I intended driving her back to Sum- 
 merhill. I don't understand it," and he walked 
 hurriedly away in the direction of the stables 
 as he finished speaking, leaving his mother tc 
 conjecture that he meant there and then either
 
 28 A RED SISTER. 
 
 to drive or ride after the young lady in ques- 
 tion. 
 
 Before, however, he could carry out his in- 
 tention, a note, brought over by one of the 
 smart young pages at Summerhill, was put 
 into his hand. 
 
 It ran as follows : 
 
 '-^ I have gone home with a bad headache. 
 Come and see me to-morrow morning.''
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 Lady Joan stood watcliiiig the retreating figure 
 of her son, the frown on her brow deepening. 
 Her husband's voice, loud, ringing, cheery, 
 suddenly interrupted the train of her angry 
 thoughts. He was returning thanks for old 
 Mr. Gaskell. 
 
 ^^My father wishes me to thank you, my 
 friends," he said, ''for the hearty manner in 
 which you have drunk his health. He bids 
 me say that such a day as this is worth living 
 ninety years to see, and to the last hour of 
 his life it will live in his memory. One with 
 you in heart he has ever been, and one with 
 you in heart he hopes to be to the end ; he 
 can never forget that where the Castle now 
 stands there once stood a little farm-house in
 
 30 A RED SISTER. 
 
 which he was born and reared, rinally, he 
 bids me say : * God bless every one of you, 
 and give you, one and all, lives as happy and 
 prosperous as his has been.' " 
 
 Prolonged and hearty cheering followed the 
 close of the speech. As it died away John 
 Gaskell whispered a word to his father ; an 
 order was then given, and a bijou pony chaise 
 was brought round. A little, grey, apple-faced 
 man came forward fussily. He was old Dr. 
 Scott, the village practitioner, to whom the 
 Gaskells paid a good yearly income for his 
 daily attendance on the nonagenarian. He on 
 one side, John Gaskell on the other, assisted 
 the old gentleman into the pony carriage 
 which stood waiting to take him back to the 
 house. 
 
 Lady Joan's lip curled slightly. 
 
 ^' It would have been far less trouble to have 
 taken him up in their arms and have lifted
 
 A RED SISTER. 31 
 
 him in," she said to herself. '' To think that 
 the opinions and whims of a man in this stage 
 of incapacity should be law in a household, 
 and that men like John and Herrick should 
 bend to it ! It is simply incomprehensible ! " 
 
 A message brought to her by a servant a 
 minute later accentuated the bitterness of the 
 thought. 
 
 ^'Mr. Gaskell wishes to know, my lady," 
 said the man, ^^if you have given directions 
 for the presentation picture to be at once hung 
 in the drawing-room, so that the subscribers 
 may have the pleasure of seeing it on the 
 walls before they leave." 
 
 This ^* presentation picture" was a large 
 painting of the identical farm-house to which 
 John Gaskell had just alluded, and which had 
 stood on the site of the present castle before 
 the lucky finding of coal on the land had 
 brought gold to the family coffers, and had
 
 32 A RED SISTER. 
 
 turned a pretty pastoral district into a grijny, 
 manufacturing one. 
 
 The painting had been made, on a consider- 
 ably enlarged scale, from a small water-colour 
 sketch of the old house, taken before it was 
 pulled down, and had been presented as a 
 birthday offering to old Mr. Gaskell by the 
 colliery workmen. 
 
 The look on Lady Joan's face as the servant 
 delivered his message might have been under- 
 stood to say : 
 
 ''I heartily wish the picture were behind 
 the fire." 
 
 She did not, however, give expression to 
 the thought. To ^' kick against pricks," to 
 •her way of thinking, was objectionable, less 
 for the pain it might bring than for the loss 
 of dignity it involved. So she replied merely : 
 
 ^' If it is to be placed there, no doubt your 
 master has already given the necessary orders.'^
 
 A RED SISTER. 33 
 
 And mentally she added: ^^ Henceforth the 
 drawing-room will become unpleasant to me 
 by reason of the plebeian reminiscences that 
 picture will perpetuate." 
 
 It was not that Lady Joan could, by any 
 chance, ever have been guilty of the essentially 
 plebeian offence of endeavouring to disguise 
 the mushroom-like origin of the Gaskell family. 
 On the contrary, she was in the daily habit of 
 laying stress upon it in her correspondence 
 with her own well-born relatives. All she 
 asked was, that in her own home, in the rooms 
 in which she was compelled to pass her daily 
 life, the fact should not be perpetually flourished 
 before her eyes as a thing wherein to glory. 
 
 That very evening there was to be a dinner- 
 party at the Castle. Certain guests would be 
 there whom naught but the patrician presence 
 of Lady Joan could have tempted within the 
 newly-built walls. The enormous painting, 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 o4 . A RED SISTER. 
 
 hung in a conspicuous position, would set 
 flowing a stream of talk as to the luck and 
 money- making qualifications of the Gaskell 
 family, a stream whose tide she knew well 
 enough neither Herrick nor her husband 
 would make the slightest effort to turn. 
 
 This dinner had already been a sufficient 
 cause of annoyance to her, in that it had been 
 fixed at a ridiculously early hour, in order 
 that old Mr. Gaskell, who dared not attempt 
 to sit down to table, might see and shake 
 hands with certain of the guests before he re- 
 tired to his room for the night. It was hard 
 to have its annoyances doubled and trebled in 
 this fashion. 
 
 Annoyances such as these were of almost 
 daily occurrence in the Castle, and Lady Joan 
 knew that so long as old Mr. Gaskell had 
 breath in his body there was no likelihood of 
 their coming to an end.
 
 A RED SISTER. 35 
 
 In heart, she bitterly rebelled against the 
 supremacy to which John and Herrick so will- 
 iogly bent their necks. 
 
 ^' If I had known," she would sometimes 
 say to herself, ''that for close upon thirty 
 years I should be condemned to play a strictly 
 subordinate part in the Gaskell household, that 
 my opinions on important matters would be 
 persistently ignored, and that this old man 
 would live on to keep alive in the country the 
 recollection of the newness of the gold which 
 built the Castle and sup2:)lied its luxuries, I 
 might have thought twice before I married 
 John Gaskell." 
 
 But, though thoughts such as these ran 
 as a steady under-current to the surface of 
 her life, her manner towards the old man 
 expressed nothing but a stately, calm indif- 
 ference. 
 
 That stately calm of manner, however, had
 
 36 A RED SISTER. 
 
 gone nearer to a collapse on the day of the 
 birthday festivities than it ever had before. 
 Perhaps Herrick's eccentric conduct, in 
 forcing upon her notice a young lady whose 
 existence she had hitherto steadily ignored, 
 might have been held responsible for the 
 fact. 
 
 Lady Joan's maid, as she assisted her mis- 
 tress to undress that night, thought she had 
 never before seen her look so like the ha- 
 rassed, hampered mistress of a large household, 
 fretted by many cares and responsibilities, so 
 unlike the stately lady who kept all trivial 
 and uninteresting matters — and people — at a 
 ceremonious distance. 
 
 The girl thought she might never get a 
 better opportunity for preferring a request she 
 had just then very much at heart, and seized 
 it accordingly. 
 
 She had, however, to repeat her request once
 
 A RED SISTER. 37 
 
 and again, before its full import reached Lady 
 Joan's preoccupied mind. 
 
 " Oh, you would like me to see the young 
 person who wishes to come as maid!" at length 
 said '^my lady," indifferently. "It seems to 
 me you are in a great hurry to leave." 
 
 The girl blushed, and began hesitatingly to 
 explain : 
 
 "I told you, my lady, that Eobert wanted 
 to get married at once, now that he has been 
 promised one of the new cottages, and " 
 
 Lady Joan cut short the plebeian details. 
 
 " Is this young person who wishes to come, 
 I forget her name, likely to suit me ? You 
 know my requirements." 
 
 *' Oh yes, my lady. Lucy Harwood is her 
 name. She is highly recommended, and she is 
 neat, and pale, and thin, and quiet-looking, 
 and doesn't speak broad Yorkshire ; she comes 
 from Devonshire."
 
 38 A RED SISTER, 
 
 The girl had hurried through her speech, 
 anxious to get to her final words, which she 
 knew would considerably enhance the possible 
 attractions of the new maid in Lady Joan's 
 eyes. 
 
 '^ From Devonshire ! " Lady Joan repeated. 
 ^* What part of Devonshire ? " 
 
 '^ Her father, my lady, at one time lived 
 within a few miles of Southmoor. He is dead 
 now ; and her brother, who has a farm near 
 Wrexford, can't make it pay, so she is obliged 
 to go out and get her own living. Will you 
 see her, my lady? " 
 
 '' Harwood,'^ repeated Lady Joan, slowly, 
 '-'- and her father lived within a few miles of 
 Southmoor. I can't recall the name. Yes, I 
 will see her to-morrow morning directly after 
 breakfast." 
 
 And then she dismissed the whole matter 
 from her thoughts ; for, to her way of think-
 
 A RED SISTER. 39 
 
 ing, a maid was not a creature like herself, 
 who could love or hate, rejoice or be sad, 
 but just a detail of daily life, needful, but 
 uninteresting, like the clocks which wanted 
 winding up, or the fires which needed replen- 
 ishing.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 On the morning after the birthday festivities 
 Lady Joan sat at her writing-table in her 
 boudoir with a very sore heart. 
 
 For one thing, her husband, instead of rid- 
 ing over to Wrexfordj the centre of the colliery 
 district, according to his wont immediately 
 after breakfast, had remained closeted with 
 his father for nearly two hours. That two 
 hours' talk with the old man Lady Joan knew 
 from experience meant mischief; in other 
 words the concoction and development of some 
 scheme of an essentially plebeian nature. 
 
 For another, Herrick had not presented 
 himself at the breakfast-table; and instead, 
 had left a message with the butler that he had
 
 A RED SISTER. 41 
 
 gone over to Summerhill to breakfast. That 
 meant that he had no intention of paying the 
 slightest regard to his mother's wishes in his 
 choice of a wife. 
 
 Hitherto, Herrick had shown himself sin- 
 gularly unsusceptible to feminine attractions, 
 and, on this slender foundation. Lady Joan 
 had built a castle sky-high. Her brother, the 
 present Earl of Southmoor, had but one child 
 — a daughter — who shortly would leave her 
 school, at Brussels, and make her debut in 
 society. To this young lady, in default of heirs 
 male, Southmoor, with its dilapidated mansion 
 and acres run to waste, would descend. Now, 
 what in life could be more suitable than that 
 Herrick should marry this cousin of his, and, 
 with the wealth that must eventually come to 
 him, restore and beautify the old place, and 
 settle down there among his mother's people ? 
 
 And this cherished plan of hers, which had
 
 42 A RED SISTER. 
 
 been growing and gathering strength as the 
 years went by and Herrick remained fancy 
 free, was to be all in a moment swept away by 
 a girl who had come — Heaven only knew 
 whence— to officiate in the family of a wealthy 
 iron-master in the neighbourhood as nursery 
 governess ! 
 
 The room in which Lady Joan was seated 
 was perhaps the only one in the Castle that 
 showed no touch of the Gaskeil hand in its 
 furnishing and arrangement. It was redolent 
 of another atmosphere. She had selected it on 
 account of a view it commanded, beyond the 
 newly-planted trees in the park, of a little 
 glade — a tangle of bracken and bramble 
 backed by a copse of hazel and wild plum — 
 which vividly recalled to her the wild Devon 
 scenery surrounding Southmoor. She had 
 crowded into the room abundant reminiscences 
 of her old home. Over the carved oak mantel-
 
 A RED SISTER. 43 
 
 piece liung the portrait of her dear old grand- 
 father, the tenth Earl of Southmoor. Side 
 by side, on the opposite wall, hung the like- 
 nesses of Lady Joan's father and mother, both 
 of whom had died in her early childhood. 
 Around the room hung other family portraits, 
 copied from those in the great gallery at South- 
 moor, by Lady Joan's own hand. 
 
 It would, however, have been rash to con- 
 clude from these evidences of her skill that 
 Lady Joan was a devotee of any one branch of 
 art. That davenport pushed close to the 
 grand piano, held the score of an unfinished 
 opera. The writing-table at which she sat 
 contained the beginnings, or endings, or middles 
 of at least a dozen essays on subjects which, 
 from time to time, had engaged her attention. 
 The bookcases in various corners of the room, 
 proclaimed what those subjects were. They 
 covered a wide range : political economy, social
 
 44 A RED SISTER. 
 
 science, modern religious thought, were all 
 abundantly represented in those well-filled 
 shelves. 
 
 A casual observer entering the room and 
 glancing round, might have expatiated upon 
 the high intellectual gifts and varied artistic 
 tastes of its occupier. A deeper thinker, pos- 
 sibly, would have surveyed it from another 
 point of view, and found in it evidences of a 
 mind restless and ill-at-ease; of a life which 
 had, somehow, missed its mark. 
 
 It was further characteristic of Lady Joan 
 that, although the writing-table at which she 
 sat contained, in an inner drawer, many prized 
 relics of the dear Devon days — so many, in 
 fact, that they seemed to make an atmosphere 
 all their own in the room, and she never sat 
 down to that table without being conscious 
 in a subtle sort of way of what it held— yet 
 among them all was there not a single me-
 
 A RED SISTER. 45 
 
 mento of Yaughan Elliot and his early love- 
 making. 
 
 ^' You must make your choice, Joan, and 
 make it finally, with no whining after-regrets/' 
 her grandfather, the old Earl, had said to her 
 when John Gaskell had made his ofi'er of 
 marriage. ^' If you want to marry Elliot, 
 marry him and be a country parson's wife. 
 You know what that means — there are many 
 typical examples in the neighbourhood. If 
 you marry John Gaskell, you will have all the 
 luxuries in life you desire, and, when the old 
 man is dead, your influence with your hi^sband 
 no doubt will be paramount. You can make 
 him shake off his plebeian associations, and live 
 where and how you please. There is no third 
 choice for you. I am too pooi to give you a 
 season in town, and as you know, when I die, 
 everything here must go to your brother." 
 
 So Lady Joan had made her choice, and had
 
 46 A RED SISTER. 
 
 been as resolute as her grandfather had wished 
 her to be in excluding all '^whining after- 
 regrets " from the scheme of her life. 
 
 After that passionate final interview with 
 Yaughan Elliot, in which he had seen fit to 
 conduct himself for all the world like a man 
 with a heart in his body, she had said to her- 
 self: ''This man must go utterly out of my 
 life now — as utterly as I, no doubt, shall go out 
 of his." For thirty years she had held to her 
 resolve, and though John Gaskell, no doubt, 
 might have had abundant reason to complain 
 of his wife's coldness and want of sympathy, 
 never for an instant had she given him cause 
 for jealous distrust. 
 
 Yet, although Yaughan Elliot and his pas- 
 sionate love had ceased even in memory to be 
 more to her than last year's blighted crop of 
 summer roses, Eate, throwing her shuttle 
 hither and thither, had cast the threads of his
 
 A RED SISTER. 47 
 
 life athwart the war]3 of hers. Here, to her 
 very doors, the man had comej silently as any 
 Nemesis '^shod in wool"; and by-and-by, so 
 Fate had decreed, he was to knock and ask for 
 admission.
 
 CHAPTEE Y. 
 
 Lady Joan found her correspondence that 
 morning uphill work. While her pen '' pre- 
 sented compliments" to Lady This or Mrs. 
 That, and accepted or refused this or that 
 invitation to dinner or '' at home," her thoughts 
 rang painful changes on Herrick and his ill- 
 advised love-making. It was something of a 
 relief when her maid came, with many humble 
 apologies, to ask if ^' my lady" would be 
 pleased to see Lucy Harwood, the would-be 
 new maid, who waited below. 
 
 The engagement of her maid was always a 
 matter of first importance with Lady Joan, 
 and one that she delegated to no one else. 
 Her standard, as regarded the maid's acquire-
 
 A RED SISTER. 49 
 
 ments, was a high one, and involved not only 
 thorough knowledge of her duties, but excep- 
 tional refinement of manner and appearance. 
 
 When Lucy Harwood was shown into the 
 room, Lady Joan's eye, as it lifted, saw that 
 her standard in these latter respects was 
 reached. Before, however, she had talked 
 with the girl five minutes, other things, beside 
 her pleasing appearance and gentle voice had 
 impressed her — the hurried, nervous manner, 
 the deep sadness of tone, and the wandering, 
 far-away look in the eyes of the young woman. 
 
 The nervousness of manner Lady Joan 
 thought natural enough. N"o doubt it was an 
 ordeal for a girl in her station to be suddenly 
 shown into the presence of a great lady ; the 
 sadness also, she thought, might be accounted 
 for by the black dress the girl wore ; but that 
 far-away, wandering look in the eye, puzzled 
 her. Only once before in her life did she 
 
 VOL. T. E
 
 50 A RED SISTER. 
 
 remember to have seen such a look, and that 
 was in the eyes of a girl charged before her 
 husband, in his official capacity as a local 
 magistrate with attempting suicide. She 
 closely questioned Lucy as to her bringing up 
 and present surroundings. 
 
 The girl's replies were simple and straight- 
 forward enough. Her father, she said, had 
 lived as butler at a rectory within a few miles 
 of Southmoor — Elliot was the name of the 
 Eector. 
 
 Lady Joan slightly smiled. 
 
 ''I knew him quite well," she said, easily, 
 as if the name conjured up no bitter remini- 
 scences. '^And your mother is dead?" she 
 added, glancing at the girl's deep black. 
 
 The girl's lip quivered ; she did not reply. 
 
 Lady Joan, desirous to avoid a display of 
 emotion, resumed her questioning at another 
 point.
 
 A RED SISTER. 51 
 
 ^'Yoii^ere born and educated at Sonthmoor, 
 
 I suppose?" she asked. 
 
 ^^ I was bom at Southmoor, my lady," 
 answered Lucy, ^'but was sent away when 
 I was very young to live with an aunt in 
 London, and only occasionally went home. 
 When I was about fifteen, my father broke 
 up his home in Sonthmoor and took a farm, 
 the one my brother has now near Wrexford. 
 When my aunt died I came home to Wrexford ; 
 then my father died " 
 
 ^' Yes, I know," interrupted Lady Joan, for 
 the story had but a scanty interest for her 
 when it diifted into the details of the girl's 
 private affairs. 
 
 Then she concluded arrangements. Lucy 
 might come for a week on trial, be initiated 
 into her duties by the present maid, and if 
 she gave entire satisfaction. Lady Joan would 
 engage her permanently. If she liked, now
 
 52 A RED SISTER. 
 
 that she was at the Castle, she might remain, 
 and one of the grooms would drive over to 
 the farm and fetch what she might require for 
 a week's stay. 
 
 This oflPer Lucy gratefully accepted. As 
 she left the room John GaskelPs firm, brisk 
 footsteps were heard in approach. 
 
 ^'I'm late," he said, as he came in. '^ Joan, 
 did you wonder what had become of me ? I 
 fear I can't get back from Wrexford now 
 much before dinner." 
 
 As a rule, John or Herrick, or sometimes 
 both, were in the habit of rising from the 
 breakfast-table and setting off straight for 
 "Wrexford, where every matter, small or great, 
 which concerned the working of the colliery 
 received their individual attention. Million- 
 aires they might be — these Gaskells of three 
 generations — but that, to their way of think- 
 ing, was no reason why they should neglect
 
 A RED SISTER. 53 
 
 the mill which ground out the gold, so long as 
 their names continued to be connected with it. 
 
 Lady Joan looked up from the writing- 
 table, where she was rearranging her corres- 
 pondence. 
 
 ^^Not till dinner!" she repeated, a little 
 absently, meanwhile trying to get her thoughts 
 together, and decide whether she should at 
 once consult her husband respecting Herrick's 
 foolish love-making, or whether she should 
 defer so doing till his return in the evening, 
 when business matters would be off his mind, 
 and he would be able to give her a more 
 undivided attention. 
 
 "I'm afraid not," her husband continued. 
 " My father and I had so many things to talk 
 about, that I hardly knew where to break off. 
 By the way, Joan, he's not looking at all as 
 I should like him to look. I'm afraid yester- 
 day was a little too much for him."
 
 54 A RED SISTER, 
 
 He paused, waiting for a reply from his 
 wife. 
 
 Although John Gaskell and his wife were 
 both past middle life, they still made a hand- 
 some couple. Tall as she was, he stood at 
 least half a head taller ; and though his 
 features might lack the aristocratic curves 
 and lines which hers owned — notably those of 
 the upper lip and nostril — there was yet in 
 his face a frankness of expression, a straight- 
 forward look from his blue eyes right at the 
 person he chanced to address, which abun- 
 dantly compensated for the deficiency. 
 
 His manner of addressing his wife was 
 perhaps a trifle more ceremonious than is that 
 of most men after a married life of close upon 
 thirty years. John Gaskell, however, before 
 he had been wedded a year, had discovered 
 upon what footing he and his wife must live, 
 if "peace were to dwell within their walls,"
 
 A RED SISTER. 55 
 
 and, like the sensible north-countryman that 
 he was, had looked the fact in the face, and 
 had shaped his course accordingly. 
 
 *^ I think it was a little too much for every 
 one," said Lady Joan, coldly, for the keeping 
 of this ninetieth birthday with such effusion 
 had seemed to her a ridiculous business 
 throughout. 
 
 "Well, it was too much for him, at any 
 rate," interrupted John, knowing that he and 
 his wife looked at this matter from different 
 points of view, " and I shall be glad if you'll 
 go in once or twice while I'm away and see 
 how he is getting on. Where's Herrick? 
 I've not seen him this morning." 
 
 "Ah, I wanted to speak to you about 
 Herrick," said Lady Joan, feeling how im- 
 possible it was to neglect this opportunity for 
 mentioning the subject which had caused her 
 such disquietude.
 
 56 A RED SISTER, 
 
 But her husband interrupted her again, 
 feeling that a lengthy discussion threatened 
 now. 
 
 ''When I come back, Joan, will do for that. 
 After dinner I will tell you exactly what I 
 think about Herrick and his love-making. 
 Just at this moment I've a good many things 
 in my head — small matters, perhaps — matters 
 of detail, most of them, but till they're got 
 rid of, my mind is not free to attend to other 
 things. Now, good-bye till dinner-time." 
 He turned towards the door as he finished 
 speaking, then paused a moment, with his 
 hand on the handle. " Oh, by the way, 
 Joan, I may as well give you a hint as to the 
 matter my father and I were discussing this 
 morning ; we've rather a big scheme on hand 
 just now. My father has always insisted 
 that the coal-seam dips under there"— here 
 he pointed to the little glade crowned by the
 
 A RED SISTER, 57 
 
 hazel copse — ^^and he wants to buy up that 
 slice of land, and a little bit that skirts the 
 heath, and sink a shaft. It'll bring the 
 colliery business rather close to our doors; 
 but, of course, the inconvenience to us will 
 be slight compared with the money it will 
 bring into the district ; it'll be the making of 
 Longridge." 
 
 Lady Joan drew a long breath. So, then, 
 the little hazel copse, which recalled the 
 wild Devon scenery, was to be uprooted, a 
 coal-shaft sunk, and the whole nasty, grimy 
 colliery business was to be brought to their 
 very doors ! And this at the suggestion of 
 the feeble old man who couldn't walk across 
 the room without help ! Was the greed of 
 these Gaskells for money-making never to be 
 satisfied ? 
 
 She drew her lips tightly together, but 
 never a word escaped them.
 
 58 A RED SISTER. 
 
 John GaskelFs mind, however, was so full 
 of other things that he did not see the look 
 which clouded her face. His eyes were fixed, 
 like hers, on the glade and hazel copse, and 
 in fancy he saw the wood cleared away, the 
 shaft sunk, truck lines laid down ; in a word, 
 the whole country around for miles astir and 
 at work. 
 
 He noted her silence, however, and said to 
 himself: 
 
 ^'As usual, she sees things from another 
 point of view, and is too honest — or too 
 proud — to affect a sympathy she does not 
 feel." 
 
 Aloud he said : 
 
 ^' Good-bye again, Joan. Don't forget to 
 look after my father and attend to all his 
 wishes while I'm away." 
 
 This was how John Gaskell left his home 
 on that bright August mornicg. Stalwart,
 
 A RED SISTER. 59 
 
 cheery, his heart full of kindly thought for 
 his wife and aged father ; his brain teeming 
 with visions of the increased prosperity which 
 would flow into the district so soon as his 
 ^' big scheme" began to work.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 '^ At last I get you to myself j" said Herrick, 
 drawing a long breath. ^'Now tell me, Lois, 
 what on earth made you run away, as you 
 did yesterday, without saying a word to 
 me?" 
 
 Lois, hanging her head like a naughty 
 child expecting a good scolding, answered 
 confusedly : 
 
 *^I was frightened, and so I ran away — I 
 didn't think about what I was doing — I ran 
 away just because I was frightened." 
 
 It was no wonder that Herrick should say 
 ^'At last!" Although he had arrived at 
 Summerhill before breakfast, in that most 
 irregular household, had come to an end, yet
 
 A RED SISTER. 61 
 
 it was not until after luncheon that he could 
 get five minutes' quiet talk with Lois. 
 
 Lois White not only officiated as nursery- 
 governess to Mrs. Leyton's seven small 
 children, but acted generally as that lazy 
 little woman's factotum and representative 
 on every possible occasion. This was no 
 sinecure in a household where, though wealth 
 abounded, order was at a discount. Summer- 
 hill was now full of guests, and Lois was 
 everywhere in request. Herrick, naturally 
 enough, chafed under a condition of things 
 he intended to bring to an end as speedily as 
 possible ; but, for the time being, he was 
 obliged to submit to seeing Lois at the beck 
 and call of every one except himself. 
 
 Mrs. Ley ton, so far as it was in her to look 
 with favour on anything disconnected with 
 herself and her own immediate pleasures, was 
 disposed to view with a friendly eye Herrick' s
 
 62 A RED SISTER. 
 
 love-making to her pretty governess. She 
 had bitterly resented Lady Joan's slight in 
 not calling at Summerhill when Josiah 
 Leyton, buying an old house that chanced to 
 be in the market and lavishing his gold upon 
 it, had made a bid for county society. To 
 put no bar to Herrick's intercourse with Lois 
 seemed to her an easy way of paying off this 
 debt. ^^ For if," as she confided to her maid, 
 with whom she was on very familiar terms, 
 '* anything should come of it, that proud 
 woman will be taken down a peg." 
 
 Herrick's passion for Lois had been of re- 
 markably rapid growth. The first time he 
 had seen her in church, his eye, wandering 
 from his mother's statuesque and inscrutable 
 features, had been struck by the girl's mobile 
 and childlike beauty. 
 
 He had made vigorous efi'orts to induce 
 Lady Joan to show some sort of civility to the
 
 A RED SISTER. 63 
 
 new arrivals; but, failing lamentably, bad 
 taken matters into bis own bands, and bad 
 got bimself invited to certain social gatberings, 
 at wbicb be knew tbey would be present. 
 Being a young man of strong will and very 
 decided opinions, be, naturally enougb, pre- 
 ferred tbe society of women in wbom tbese 
 cbaracteristics were kept well in abeyance. 
 Also, naturally enougb, since be stood some- 
 tbing over six feet in beigbt, and in face was 
 dark and pallid, be bad a strong predilection 
 for tbe society of tbe petite and tbe blonde. 
 Lois Wbite fulfilled all bis requirements in 
 tbese respects, and bis love-making to tbe 
 little governess bad been ardent and persis- 
 tent accordingly. IN'eigbbours, after a time, 
 bad begun to talk ; and tbeir talk bad even 
 reacbed Lady Joan's ears. Sbe, bowever, bad 
 at first tbougbt it wiser to disregard tbese 
 rumours, and bad not even deemed it necessary
 
 64 A RED SISTER, 
 
 to mention them to her husband, saying to 
 herself, that this must be a flirtation — nothing 
 more — on Heriick's part, and that, if no stress 
 were laid upon it, it must die a natural death. 
 
 Later on, however, her opinion had had to 
 be modified, for Herrick, in her presence, had 
 made one or two remarks which could not be 
 altogether ignored ; such as : ^' I think it is 
 nearly time I settled down as a married man ; " 
 or, ^^ Father, you were younger than I am, 
 when you married, weren't you?" 
 
 Lady Joan's fears, however, had not risen 
 to danger point until the morning of the birth- 
 day festivities, when Herrick, as he rose from 
 the breakfast- table, had said : 
 
 ^^ Mother, this afternoon, I am going to 
 introduce to you a young lady with whom I 
 hope you'll fall in love on the spot. I sha'n't 
 say any more till youVe seen her." 
 
 Lois had, with difficulty, been induced to
 
 A RED SISTER. 65 
 
 allow Herrick to drive her over to the Castle. 
 ^^I want them to see your beautiful face, my 
 darling, and to hear your sweet voice ; and 
 then, one and all, they'll say, '- Herrick, you're 
 a lucky fellow, get married at once,' " he had 
 had to say over and over again, before she had 
 yielded. 
 
 On arriving at the Castle, he had taken her 
 straight to the pavilion, beneath which sat old 
 Mr. Gaskell, and had introduced her to him 
 as his ^' darling little wife that was to be." 
 Whereupon, the old man had taken both Lois' s 
 hands in his, and had bidden ^^ God bless her," 
 in his kindliest tone. Then Herrick had 
 intended introducing her to his mother ; 
 but, before he could find Lady Joan, he had 
 come upon his father in the thickest of the 
 crowd, endeavouring to adjudicate upon the 
 rival claims of two competitors in a ^' consola- 
 tion race." 
 
 VOL I. F
 
 (j6 a red sister. 
 
 ''Here, Herrick, come and help as umpire," 
 he had cried, catching sight of his son. " You're 
 wanted here, there, everywhere." 
 
 Upon this, Herrick had gone through a 
 hurried introduction of Lois to his father, 
 from whom, amid so many distractions, little 
 more than a nod and a smile could be expected. 
 Then, promising to return speedily, he had, 
 very much against her will, taken Lois into 
 the adjoining meadow, where Lady Joan was 
 distributing sundry gifts to the old people, 
 and, introducing her with special emphasis, 
 had left her in his mother's charge, while he 
 returned to the village athletes. Lady Joan 
 had at once developed so arctic a manner that 
 poor little Lois could almost have fancied 
 herself in latitude eighty degrees north, in 
 spite of the blazing sun which poured down 
 on them. 
 
 ''I was frightened, and I ran away," was
 
 A RED SISTER. 67 
 
 all the account slie could give to Herrick of 
 what followed, as side by side they strolled 
 under the big branching oaks and beeches 
 with which the park at Summerhill abounded. 
 
 The explanation was not to Herrick's mind 
 entirely satisfactory. For a minute there fell 
 a silence between the two. Then he said : 
 
 ^'Lois, will you tell me, word for word, 
 what my mother said that scared you so ? " 
 
 ^^ Said ! Oh, she said nothing at all ! " 
 answered Lois, readily enough. 
 
 ** IN'othing ! And yet you were scared ! " 
 
 *' Oh, yes ; her silence was so dreadful, I 
 felt it — felt in a moment that she didn't like 
 me. Oh, and now I think of it, she did say 
 something. I made a remark about it being 
 so fortunate that the day was fine for the 
 sports, and she said : ^ I beg your pardon I ' " 
 
 Herrick'S grave look gave place to one of 
 amusement.
 
 68 A RED SISTER. 
 
 *' And that scared you ! " lie cried. Then 
 he added, not knowing what a prophetic 
 undertone rang in his light words : ^' Is that 
 the way in which you mean to get through 
 life, Lois, fleeing like a little bird to covert at 
 the first alarm? It is lucky for you you'll 
 have me to look after you, or I don't know 
 what would happen." 
 
 How like a child in disgrace she looked as 
 she walked on beside him in silence, her head 
 drooping so low that her big sun-hat hid her 
 face from him ! She was dressed in a simple 
 white frock tied with broad sash ribbons. In 
 her hand, the one that Herrick left free — she 
 carried a child's spade and a large bunch of 
 wild flowers. These she had been laden with 
 as she came out of the house by little four- 
 year-old Daisy Ley ton, with the injunction 
 that ^^Loydie" — as she most disrespectfully 
 styled her governess — would remember to
 
 A RED SISTER, 69 
 
 make the Adonis garden under the big beech- 
 tree as she had promised to do more than a 
 week ago. 
 
 Eight into the heart of a " regal red poppy " 
 there fell a big, round tear. 
 
 Herrick's arm was round her in a mo- 
 ment, and her big sun-hat, pressed against 
 his shoulder, suffered in shape accordingly. 
 
 *^My darling, what is it?" he cried. 
 '' What have I said — what have I done ? Tell 
 me." 
 
 When Lois found her voice, her words came 
 all in a rush : 
 
 '^ Oh, Herrick ! I see it all now — I did not 
 understand it at first when — when — you spoke 
 to me. But yesterday, as I stood beside your 
 mother, I seemed to feel what she thought, 
 and to see things with her eyes — and that 
 was why I wanted you to come to-day — 
 that I might tell you "
 
 70 A RED SISTER. 
 
 But she was not allowed to finish her 
 sentence, for Herrick's lips kissed her to 
 silence, and the sun-hat suffered in shape 
 again, 
 
 ''I beg your pardon, Lois," he said, pre- 
 sently, as she straightened her hat, ''but I 
 knew you were going to talk nonsense, and 
 took measures accordingly. My poor child ! 
 You are trembling from head to foot. Come 
 and sit down under this beech, and if you 
 don't mind we'll just quietly talk this matter 
 out together." 
 
 Under the spreading shade of this beech 
 there were one or two wicker seats. Lois 
 declined the one which Herrick placed for 
 her, and kneeling down on the turf, began to 
 make Daisy's Adonis garden. It was an 
 easy way of keeping her face turned from 
 Herrick,' for she was still bent on saying the 
 words he had so summarily cut short, and it
 
 A RED SISTER. 71 
 
 seemed to her easier to say them with her face 
 thus hidden from him. 
 
 He flung himself on the ground beside her, 
 handing her the flowers as she planted them. 
 
 A pretty scene it made — these lovers plant- 
 ing their Adonis garden — in the wide ex- 
 panse of russet-green sward, broken only by 
 the black blots of shadows cast by the oaks 
 and beeches. The stillness around them was 
 that of early autumn, when Nature — always 
 a strict economist of her wondrous forces — 
 bids bird-notes to cease, while she flings her 
 glorious reds and yellows athwart creation. 
 
 ^' In spring I called upon you to open your 
 ears," she seems to say; '^ now I say open 
 your eyes, stand still, and admire ! " 
 
 Herrick broke the stillness. 
 
 ^^ You said just now, Lois,'' he began, 
 gently, as he handed her a purple foxglove, 
 *^ that, when you stood beside my mother, all
 
 72 A RED SISTER. 
 
 in a moment you seemed to see things with 
 her eyes, and to feel as she felt. Will you 
 mind, now that you are beside me, seeing 
 things with my eyes, and feeling as I feel ? 
 I assure you it will be much more satisfactory 
 to me if you will." 
 
 Lois' s face turned brightly towards him ; 
 she was half-smiling now, though her eyes 
 still glistened with tears. 
 
 ^^ Your mother is older th^n you- '' she 
 
 began. 
 
 ''Naturally," interrupted Herrick. 
 
 "And, of course, knows better than you do 
 what is likely to make your happiness," she 
 said. But she said it in a wavering tone, as 
 if she were quite willing to be convinced to 
 the contrary. 
 
 "Pardon me, I can't admit that. My 
 mother has no more conception of what would 
 constitute my happiness, than she has of what
 
 A RED SISTER, 73 
 
 would make the happiness of any one of the 
 collier lads over at Wrexford. However, if 
 you are going in for the wisdom which 
 age brings with it, I'll tell you what my 
 father said yesterday when I wished him 
 good-night. ^ Herrick,' he said, ' I like the 
 look of that little girl you brought over to- 
 day. You must let us see more of her.' " 
 
 "Did he say that?" broke in Lois, im- 
 petuously, 
 
 " Ay. And he's five or six years older than 
 my mother; so of course, in your eyes, he 
 knows better than she. And there's the dear 
 old grandfather, he's forty years older than 
 my mother — think of that — and he said : 
 ' Thank Heaven I've seen your wife before I 
 go, Herrick. Now I know your happiness is 
 
 secure , " he broke oflP, exclaiming : 
 
 "What, darling, tears again! Why, you're 
 watering your flowers ! "
 
 74 A RED SISTER. 
 
 In very truth the girl's tears were falling 
 like a summer rain among the already drooping 
 blossoms. 
 
 But still, like a child who won't forego 
 repeating some speech which it has mastered 
 with difficulty, Lois set herself to say the words 
 which Herrick was so loth to hear. 
 
 " What I wanted to tell you, Herrick, was 
 that — if — if, on thinking things over, you 
 thought that— that you'd been hasty in — in 
 asking me to marry you ' ' 
 
 Again she was not allowed to finish her 
 sentence. She was planting a thick border of 
 heather round her minature garden. Herrick 
 laid both his hands on hers, stopped her work, 
 interrupted her speech. 
 
 '' My darling," he said, and his voice now 
 quivered a little, ^^ I know exactly what you 
 are wishing to say, and I beg of you before- 
 hand not to say it. Eemember, I'm not a
 
 A RED SISTER. 75 
 
 feather-lieaded boy who tumbles into love one 
 day and out of it the next. I knew perfectly 
 well what I was doing when I asked you to 
 marry me, and I say to you now what I said 
 to you then, that if only you love me, not 
 father, not mother, nothing in all creation, 
 nothing in this world, or in any other, shall 
 ever come between us." 
 
 Tor a moment after he finished speaking the 
 great stillness around them once more made 
 itself felt. Then suddenly^ sharply, break- 
 ing in upon it, came the sound of a tolling 
 bell. 
 
 It seemed to come inopportunely. They 
 started and looked at each other. 
 
 '^ Oh, I know," cried Lois, presently, ^' it's 
 St. Elizabeth's bell. I met the new priest 
 yesterday, and he told me he was going to start 
 afternoon and other services, and I should hear 
 the bell going at all sorts of hours. I had a
 
 76 A RED SISTER, 
 
 long talk with him. I fancy you would like 
 him, he seems such a nice man/* 
 
 ^^ Does he?" answered Herrick, indifferently, 
 not knowing what a factor in his life's history 
 that priest was to be.
 
 CHAPTEE YII. ^ 
 
 Although there was but little of the poet in 
 Herrick's composition, assuredly lie rode forth 
 that afternoon through Summerhill Park gates 
 into a very ideal world. 
 
 No common object but his eye 
 At once involved with alien glow 
 His ovm soul's iris-bow. 
 
 In other words, Lois' s simple, unselfish love 
 for him, which her hesitating attempts at self- 
 sacrifice had revealed, had awakened so deep a 
 joy in his heart that for the moment the com- 
 monplace stretch of country he traversed was 
 transformed into paradise. Surely never before 
 did afternoon sun spread abroad so golden a 
 glamour ; never before had the rough York-
 
 78 A RED SISTER. 
 
 shire air seemed so laden with the sweetness 
 of the hedgerows ! The very echoes which his 
 horse's leisurely hoofs woke in the dusty road 
 appeared to have a music all their own in 
 them, and to rise and fall to Lois' s tender, 
 halting phrases. 
 
 The echoes of another horse's hoofs clatter- 
 ing along the road at a tremendous pace was 
 only too soon to take the music out of these. 
 
 Herrick speedily recognised the approaching 
 rider as his own groom. As the man drew 
 nearer he saw that he held a telegram in his 
 hand. 
 
 •' For you, sir," said the man, drawing rein. 
 ^^ My lady has opened it and told me take it to 
 Summerhill." 
 
 Herrick ran his eye over the messsage. It 
 was from his father at Wrexford, and ran thus : 
 
 " Serious explosion of fire-damp. Come over 
 at once."
 
 A RED SISTER, 79 
 
 Herrick turned his horse's head at once 
 towards the Wrexford Eoad. 
 
 ''Tell Lady Joan Pm off at once,'' he said. 
 A second thought followed, a kindly one for 
 the old grandfather, and he added: '' Say also 
 that I think it would be better not to mention 
 this explosion in my grandfather's hearing ; it 
 would distress him terribly.'' 
 
 Old Mr. Gaskell, however, had unfortu- 
 nately heard the sad news even before Herrick. 
 The telegram containing it had, in Herrick' s 
 absence, been taken to Lady Joan as she sat 
 in the old gentleman's room, and her exclama- 
 tion of surprise, as she had read it, had apprised 
 him of the fact. 
 
 Lady Joan, as soon as her husband had set 
 off to Wrexford, had said to herself that, since 
 it was expected of her, she had better at once 
 pay her visit to her father-in-law's rooms and 
 get it over as quickly as possible. It had been
 
 80 A BED SISTER. 
 
 her habit all through her married life thus to 
 do '' what was expected of her," knowing well 
 enough that if she once let herself break into 
 rebellion, even in trifles, against the iron rule 
 of these Gaskells, there was no knowing where 
 that rebellion would end. 
 
 One thing, however, seemed to conspire with 
 another to prevent the proposed visit to the old 
 gentleman's quarters, and possibly the night 
 might have found it unpaid if she had not 
 received a somewhat urgent message from 
 Parsons — old Mr. GaskelFs attendant— saying 
 that he wished to see her at once. Parsons 
 was a privileged person in the house, and had 
 permission at any hour of the day or night to 
 communicate with any member of the family 
 
 on matters connected with the old gentleman's 
 comforts. 
 
 Parsons' s message was a written one, and to 
 
 it she had added a word on her own account to
 
 A RED SISTER. 81 
 
 the effect that Mr. Gaskell seemed very weak 
 that morning, and unable to rally from the 
 fatigue of the day before. 
 
 Lady Joan with a sigh put on one side an 
 essay she was writing with deep interest on 
 *' The Beautiful, as opposed to the Terrible, in 
 Art," and bent her steps to her father-in-law's 
 quarters. 
 
 These had been assigned to him on the sun- 
 niest side of the Castle, and consisted of a suite 
 of seven rooms leading one into the other, and 
 in addition communicating by a second door 
 with a long, narrow corridor which ran off the 
 big inner hall of the house. These seven 
 rooms had been most elaborately and luxuri- 
 ously furnished, and Lady Joan never passed 
 through them without thinking what an absurd 
 amount of time and thought and money had 
 been lavished in their fittings and decorations. 
 A bedroom, a dressing-room, a sitting-room, 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 A RED SISTER. 
 
 were of course necessities to the old man ; but 
 here in addition was a billiard-room in case he 
 might want to watch a game of billiards, a 
 library, a smoking-room, and a room set apart 
 as a sort of museum for patents connected with 
 the working of coal-mines. This last was a 
 room in which the old gentleman specially 
 delighted. x\.s a rule it was his sitting-room ; 
 and here he generally received his guests and 
 visitors. Xothing gave him greater pleasure 
 than to spend an hour or so in describing to an 
 attentive ear how this or that lamp, hanging in 
 one of the glass cases which surrounded the 
 room, worked, or in exhibiting the various 
 specimens of local coal which, carefully labelled 
 were ranged upon shelves. 
 
 Lady Joan, as she passed through these 
 handsome rooms, and let her eye wander around 
 on their artistic accessories — pictures, statuary, 
 embroideries — could not help contrasting them
 
 A RED SISTER. 83 
 
 a little bitterly with the room in which her 
 oiwn grandfather had died, and which, although 
 it rejoiced in relics and heirlooms of price- 
 less worth from an antiquarian point of view, 
 owned a carpet literally threadbare, and cur- 
 tains burnt to their woof with the sunshine of 
 over a hundred years. 
 
 Parsons came forward to meet her in the old 
 gentleman's sitting-room. 
 
 *'He is in an easy-chair in his dressing- 
 room, my lady,'' she said. U s ry 
 weak to-day, and says he vri _ : ii^to Led 
 
 soon." 
 
 
 
 
 
 The 0;.^v oL-.'r L :, 1, 
 
 ^ r: :1^ 
 
 old 
 
 gentleman's 
 
 orders. I 
 
 iLto a 
 
 sun; 
 
 Qv bow-Tvin- 
 
 dow; and, .j>.. :_■. 
 
 
 -: ' ■ 
 
 
 
 with the blinding V: 
 
 - T^-. 
 
 i"'" " 
 
 i-t-I in 
 
 re- 
 
 maining there, savii.2 
 
 tl.:.: '. 
 
 ^': - 
 
 \L-"^-:. ■ 
 
 - - r 
 
 warmth into Ms L . :. . 
 
 O.L. .^ ~'^'. 
 
 :: :.. . 
 
 , r ^ * -- - - - 
 
 
 or medicine to Kim. 
 
 
 

 
 84 A RED SISTER. 
 
 The sunshine lighted up pitilessly his 
 wrinkled face, half-shut sunken eyes, and thin 
 hands, as they rested one on either arm of the 
 chair. 
 
 When he opened his eyes, however, a change 
 so great, as almost to amount to a transforma- 
 tion, took place. The eyes were dark blue 
 like his son John's, and so clear and luminous, 
 so keen and searching, that one look from them 
 was enough to establish the fact that though 
 ninety years of wear and tear had reduced his 
 muscles to the weakness of a child's his brain 
 and his will remained strong as ever. 
 
 And sometimes another look, a look neither 
 keen nor searching, would come into those 
 clear blue eyes ; a look of sudden thoughtful- 
 ness, so deep as to amount to sadness, and 
 which, let her fight against the idea as she 
 might, never failed to bring back to Lady 
 Joan's mind her dear old grandfather's eyes
 
 A RED SISTER. 85 
 
 when, as he lay on his death-bed, he had turned 
 his face towards her and had said, ^*If life 
 
 were to come over again, Joan " and then 
 
 his eyelids had drooped, and the sentence had 
 remained unfinished. 
 
 Worn and aged though the old man looked 
 in the bright sunshine, his voice was cheery 
 and firm as ever, when, after acknowledging 
 Lady Joan's greeting, he said : 
 
 ^' Joan, I want you to send over to Summer- 
 hill the first thing after breakfast to-morrow to 
 fetch that pretty little girl who is to be 
 Herrick's wife. I want her to come and talk 
 to me." 
 
 Lady Joan started back aghast. Without 
 word of warning, that would enable her to 
 determine her course, to be met by such a 
 request as this ! For a moment she did not 
 speak. 
 
 The old man did not seem to notice her
 
 86 A RED SISTER. 
 
 surprise, and went on calmly and authorita- 
 tively as before. 
 
 ^' I don't want her to come to-day, because 
 I'm not feeling quite myself this afternoon ; 
 but to-morrow, immediately after breakfast, 
 send the dog-cart round and fetch her." 
 
 Lady Joan began to recover herself. 
 
 "' Would it not be as well to wait a day or 
 two?" she began, slowly. 
 
 It was at this moment that Parsons came 
 forward, bringing the telegram for Herrick. 
 
 Lady Joan, not a little glad of the diversion, 
 opened it at once. As her eye mastered its 
 contents, she uttered an exclamation of sur- 
 prise. 
 
 ''What is it?" said the old man, sharply, 
 turning towards her. 
 
 Then Lady Joan had to tell him the sad 
 news. He sank back in his chair, covering his 
 eyes with one hand.
 
 A RED SISTER, 87 
 
 '-'' Poor lads ! poor lads ! " lie moaned. 
 
 Presently he withdrew his hand from his 
 face, and letting his eyes for a moment rest 
 full on Lady Joan's, said : 
 
 " Joan, if I had my time to come over again, 
 I don't think I should thank Heaven for the 
 finding of coal on my land." 
 
 Lady Joan turned sharply away. At the 
 moment she almost hated the old man for the 
 rush of painful memories those words and the 
 look combined had brought to her.
 
 CHAPTEE YIII. 
 
 Lady Joan did not take the colliery disaster so 
 much to heart as did old Mr. Gaskell. The 
 mines at Wrexford were dangerous ones, and 
 during her married life had been the scene of 
 more than one dire calamity. No doubt it 
 would give her husband a good deal of worry, 
 and some positive hard work, since he took 
 such an exaggerated view of his duties as 
 master and employer. He, doubtless, would 
 spend days at the mouth of the pit; would take 
 a personal interest alike in the victims and 
 their desolate families. For weeks to come, 
 most likely, the only talk between him and 
 Herrick, whenever they sat down to table 
 together, would be of new methods of precau-
 
 A RED SISTER. 89 
 
 tion to be taken in working the mines, varied, 
 perhaps, by consultations as to how "Widow 
 This and her sons, or Widow That and her 
 daughters, could be best provided for in life. 
 
 Personally, however. Lady Joan felt herself 
 chiefly touched by the tiresomeness of the 
 whole thing, a tiresomeness that was doubly 
 accentuated by the fact that it had happened 
 just at a moment when she wished to claim her 
 husband's undivided attention to a matter of 
 first importance — Herrick's ill-advised choice of 
 a wife. 
 
 To tell the truth, when she thought over old 
 Mr. Gaskell's request that Lois White should 
 be sent for to the Castle on the following day, 
 the thought of the twenty or thirty poor col- 
 liers scorched or suffocated out of their lives, 
 speedily faded from her mind. 
 
 The longer she dwelt on the old gentleman's 
 request, the more irritated and bewildered she
 
 90 A RED SISTER. 
 
 grew. If slie refused to comply with it she 
 had but little doubt that he would himself ring 
 his bell, transmit his orders to the stable, and 
 despatch a message to Summerhill, and she 
 would be placed in the undignified position of 
 being compelled to stand by and witness the 
 doing of a thing towards which she had assumed 
 an openly hostile attitude. 
 
 This request of his was, indeed, a danger 
 signal not to be disregarded, for it meant with- 
 out doubt, that in her opposition to Herrick's 
 folly, she would have to contend not only with 
 Herrick, but also with Herrick's father and 
 grandfather. 
 
 She sat far into the night thinking over 
 these things, trying to face her difficulties, 
 trying to answer the by no means easy ques- 
 tion : what must be her first step in the very 
 unequal battle she intended to fight ? A game 
 was often lost, she told herself, by a first false
 
 A RED SISTER. 91 
 
 move. [N'ow, would it be a false move, before 
 doing anything else, to appeal to Herrick to 
 show consideration to his mother's wishes in 
 his choice of a wife ? 
 
 A moment's thought answered this question 
 with a very emphatic affirmative. Tears ago, 
 when Herrick was quite a boy, it had been 
 borne into Lady Joan's mind in all sorts of 
 trivial ways, that he had taken her measure, 
 so to speak, by precisely the same standard by 
 which his father and grandfather had judged 
 her, and that her wishes and opinions carried 
 with him as much or as little weight as they 
 carried with them. 
 
 In this dilemma a bright thought came to 
 her. Why not make her appeal in the first 
 instance to the young girl who was supposed 
 to be in love with Herrick, and professed, no 
 doubt, to have his best interests at heart. A 
 talk of five minutes with her on the morrow,
 
 92 A RED SISTER. 
 
 before she could be shown in to old Mr. Gas- 
 keil, might convince her what those interests 
 really were, and bring that love of hers to 
 the test. Of Lois White Lady Joan knew 
 so little that she could not even conjecture 
 what might be the immediate results to such 
 an appeal ; but it was manifestly the thing that 
 stood first in order to be done, whatever else 
 might have to be done afterwards. 
 
 The night was creeping away while Lady 
 Joan was thus facing her anxieties and arrang- 
 ing her plans ; two o'clock was chimed by the 
 clock over her mantelpiece. The night was 
 intensely hot ; evidently a storm was threaten- 
 ing. Lady Joan, with her brain still teeming 
 with thought, felt that sleep for another hour 
 or two would be an impossibility. She recol- 
 lected a book which she had been reading on 
 the previous day — a collection of Elizabethan 
 lyrics, one of which had seemed to set itself to
 
 A RED SISTER. 93 
 
 music as she had read it. She thought she 
 would fetch the book, which she had left in one 
 of the drawing-rooms, and jot down the melody 
 which had run in her head before she forgot it. 
 It would clear her brain from painful thought, 
 and perhaps enable her to get a little sound 
 sleep before day dawned ; so she lighted a small 
 lamp, and went her way through the dark, 
 silent house to the rooms below. 
 
 That faint stream of light which her lamp 
 threw, now high, now low, lighted up a lavish- 
 ness of wealth, a sumptuousness of beauty 
 wherever it fell. Those pictures which hung 
 upon the staircase walls she herself knew the 
 value of, for her opinion had been asked in their 
 choice and purchase. That little niche on the 
 landing-place held an ail-but priceless statuette, 
 and there below in the hall stood a cabinet con- 
 taining china, for which a Eoyal Duke had bid 
 in vain at Christie's against the millionaire
 
 94 A RED SISTER. 
 
 coal- owner ; now the stream of liglit fell upon 
 a dainty Venetian glass tazza which, had been 
 pinched and moulded into its beautiful form by 
 fingers which loved their art ; and anon it 
 glinted upon — ah ! what was that ? Here Lady 
 Joan with a shudder turned her head sharply 
 away. She knew well enough that that 
 photographic album whose medigeval silver 
 cover caught and threw back the lamp -light, 
 contained portraits of the older members of the 
 Gaskell family in various stages of what she 
 was pleased to call vulgarity — John's mother 
 in a dress fearfully and wonderfully made ; 
 John's uncle in a coat of equally marvellous 
 cut. What an odd medley of luxury and art, 
 of vulgarity and refinement, the roof of the 
 Castle covered, she thought, as she entered the 
 drawing-room, and, holding high her lamp, 
 looked around her for her volume of poems. 
 Something else instead of the little book
 
 A RED SISTER. 95 
 
 greeted her eye as she stood thus — ^^ the 
 counterfeit presentment " of her own tall 
 stately figure in a pier-glass let into the oppo- 
 site wall. 
 
 For the moment she started, and drew back. 
 The mirror reached from floor to ceiling, and 
 with the lamp held high as she was holding it, 
 reflected not only every detail of her dress and 
 figure, but also, with a cruel exactitude, every 
 line, every feature of her dark, austere face, 
 rendered possibly a shade more dark and 
 austere than usual by the unpleasant train of 
 thought in which she had been indulging. 
 
 This sudden apparition of herself struck a 
 jarring note, and set her measuring not only 
 the years that had passed, but the years that 
 were to come. 
 
 Slowly, step by step, she drew nearer to the 
 mirror and steadily looked herself full in the 
 face.
 
 96 A RED SISTER. 
 
 Lady Joan's passage across the plain of Mars, 
 as the ancients loved to call the middle period 
 of life, had been easy and luxurious as wealth 
 could make it ; yet, assuredly, no hard-working 
 bread-winner or brain-worker, could have 
 owned to harder lines than those which marred 
 the beautiful outline of her mouth and cut 
 deeply across her low white brow. Making 
 due allowance for her hair, which still retained 
 its girlish hue, that rigid face of hers expressed, 
 uncompromisingly, every one of her fifty 
 years. 
 
 '-'- Yes,'' she said, aloud, ^^ that elderly woman 
 is me — me — Joan Herrick that was, who 
 thought she had so many young years at com- 
 mand that she could easily give a half-dozen 
 or so to be spent amid plebeian surroundings 
 for the sake of the decades of happiness that 
 would follow. And, instead of a half-dozen 
 years, you poor woman, you have had to give
 
 A RED SISTER. 97 
 
 your decades, and the promised happiness has 
 not arrived yet ! !N"ow, should a happier order 
 of things come about to-morrow, who will give 
 you back any one of those thirty years of yours 
 spent in bondage ? " 
 
 Lady Joan, possibly, might not have liked, 
 even in that night silence, to have put into so 
 many words that ^' the happier order of things," 
 towards which her aspirations had pointed year 
 by year, for the past thirty years, involved 
 primarily the death of old Mr. Gaskell, who, to 
 her fancy, kept afloat in the household notions 
 born with him in his cottage farm. Yet this 
 was the undercurrent of meaning her thoughts 
 carried with them. With the old man, who 
 kept alive the plebeian atmosphere of the Castle, 
 once out of the way, her own influence must 
 become paramount, and other things would 
 follow as a matter of course. The detestable 
 colliery business would be given up ; the money 
 
 VOL I. H
 
 98 A RED SISTER. 
 
 made in the North, would be spent in the South ; 
 and Herrick, taking his right position among 
 his mother's people, would be free to choose a 
 well-born wife for himself. 
 
 Lady Joan turned sharply away from the 
 mirror. "Make the most of the time that is 
 left to you, Joan,^' that sombre, austere face 
 seemed to say to her as a last word. " Soon 
 the dark days will be on you, in which you 
 will care little enough for anything, good or 
 bad, that life can bring." 
 
 A slight sound of movement in the hall 
 outside at this moment caught her ear, and 
 brought her bitter thoughts to a halt. 
 
 What could it have been ? A sound of rust- 
 ling ; a light footfall was it ? 
 
 She went hastily out into the hall. Though 
 an ill-made dress would set her shuddering, 
 and a bit of crude colouring make her cover 
 her eyes with her hand, yet she would have
 
 A RED SISTER. 99 
 
 gone out into her own hall, at any hour of the 
 day or night, and faced a dozen armed burglars 
 or any other danger that might be there, for 
 physical fear was unknown to her. 
 
 1^0 sight so terrible, however, as armed 
 burglar met her view as she peered hither 
 and thither in the darkness ; nothing more 
 alarming than a slender, white-robed figure 
 coming slowly, step by step, down the big 
 staircase. 
 
 At first. Lady Joan did not recognise the face 
 of this white-robed figure. As it approached, 
 however, and the light from her lamp fell full 
 upon it, she recognised the features of the girl, 
 Lucy Harwood, whom she had in the morning 
 engaged as her maid. She was dressed in her 
 white night-gown; this, together with her 
 slow, dreamy movements, proclaimed the fact 
 that she was walking in her sleep. 
 
 Lady Joan advanced towards her as she
 
 100 A RED SISTER. 
 
 touched the lowest stair. Slowly and dreamily 
 the girl came along the hall, feeling the wall 
 with one hand as a blind person might, and 
 the other outstretched in vacancy. Her face 
 was slightly upturned, her eyes wide open and 
 stonily fixed. There was a look of pain upon 
 her face which seemed to suggest that the 
 errand on which she was bent was a sad one. 
 
 '^ Where? Where? Where in the world ? " 
 Lady Joan heard her say slowly and sadly as 
 she came along. 
 
 Without thinking much of what she was 
 doing, Lady Joan laid her hand on the shoulder 
 of the girl, who started violently and awoke. 
 Then she burst into a flood of tears, and clasp- 
 ing her hands together, cried : 
 
 " Oh, where am I ? What have I done ? " 
 
 Lady Joan's quiet manner somewhat reas- 
 sured her. 
 
 '' You had better take my lamp and go back
 
 A RED SISTER. 101 
 
 to your room," she said; ^^ and to-morrow I 
 should like you to see a doctor. I^o," she 
 added, as the girl began to protest, ^^I can 
 find my way upstairs easily enough in the 
 dark ; but you, as a stranger, would lose your- 
 self in this big house without a light." 
 
 And as Lucy departed, looking white and 
 frightened. Lady Joan found herself wonder- 
 ing, with a degree of interest that surprised 
 herself, what was the mystery this apparently 
 commonplace life held.
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 Lady Joan's rest was a short one that night, 
 and her appetite for breakfast the following 
 morning was taken away by a message from 
 her father-in-law, which greeted her as she sat 
 down to table, to the effect that he hoped the 
 dog-cart had already been despatched to Sum- 
 merhill to fetch Miss White. 
 
 The old gentleman had the — to Lady Joan's 
 way of thinking — reprehensible habit, not only 
 of expressing in decisive fashion any wishes 
 that might occur to him over night, but of 
 sending down the first thing the next morning 
 to ascertain if those wishes had been carried out. 
 
 Annoyance was to follow annoyance that 
 morning. The first post brought with it a
 
 A RED SISTER. 103 
 
 very big annoyance indeed, in the shape of a 
 letter from the Lady Honoria Herrick. 
 
 It was dated from Sonthmoor, and ran as 
 follows : 
 
 ^' Dearest Aunt, — Yon will be surprised to 
 hear we are all at home again. Father and 
 mother returned last week from Belle-Plage, 
 and I have been sent for from Brussels, because 
 I'm told I'm finished, whatever that means. 
 I have wonderful news to tell you— father says 
 he hasn't the heart to write it, so I must — 
 Sonthmoor is to be sold ! Father says the 
 place is going to utter ruin, and there is not 
 the slightest likelihood of his ever being able 
 to keep it up. So I have had to sign a lot of 
 papers, and the thing will soon be an accom- 
 plished fact. Between ourselves — I'm awfully 
 glad. I hate the place ; it's so mouldy and 
 dilapidated, and there's such a horrible odour of
 
 104 A RED SISTER. 
 
 ancestors hanging about it one feels as if one 
 were living in a vault. I will write again 
 soon and tell you all our plans so soon as we 
 have any. At present, things are very unset- 
 tled. Mother is about as usual : that is to 
 say, the weather doesn't suit her, and she is 
 living on crumbs of chicken and egg-spoonfuls 
 of jelly. Give my love to my uncle and cousin. 
 
 Your loving niece, 
 
 '' Honor." 
 
 Southmoor was to be sold! That was the 
 only idea Lady Joan brought away from her 
 niece's letter. Southmoor, the home of her 
 childhood; the house where generations of 
 Herricks had been born and had died was to 
 come into the market to fall to the lot, perhaps, 
 of some millionaire tradesman of democratic 
 ideas and plebeian tastes; or, worse fate still, 
 perhaps, be seized upon by some speculative 
 building society, and the old park, with its
 
 A RED SISTER. 105 
 
 stately trees, be parcelled into lots, upon which, 
 in due course, red-brick middle-class villas 
 would spring into existence. 
 
 Lady Joan had not visited the place much 
 of late years. Her brother, the present Earl 
 of Southmoor, married to an invalid, though 
 high-born lady, and, haunted by the family 
 spectre of poverty, had spent the past fifteen 
 years of his life wandering about the Continent 
 in search of health for his wife and cheap 
 education for his only child. In tastes, he was 
 Lady Joan's counterpart ; in intellect, consider- 
 ably her inferior. His pride had had to be 
 largely deferred to in all Lady Joan's efforts 
 to be of service to him. It went without say- 
 ing that he and the Gaskells had nothing in 
 common ; and though Lady Joan would gladly 
 have adopted her niece and brought her up as 
 her own daughter, the Earl preferred for the 
 Lady Honoria an atmosphere of aristocratic
 
 106 A RED SISTER. 
 
 poverty to the plebeian luxury of Longridge 
 Castle. 
 
 If the young lady herself had been consulted 
 on the matter, she would undoubtedly have 
 made a different choice, for, the truth must be 
 told. Lady Honoria was that anomaly in nature, 
 a child as unlike its race as if it had been born 
 in another planet. The one or two glimpses 
 she had had of Longridge Castle in her child- 
 hood, even now contrasted pleasantly in her 
 mind with the life she had since been com- 
 pelled to lead in cheap continental hotels, or 
 in later years in a cheap school at Brussels. 
 
 Lady Joan in making plans for Herrick's 
 future, had freely admitted the fact that her 
 niece was not everything that an aristocratic 
 damsel should be. She comforted herself, 
 however, with the thought of Honoria' s youth, 
 and the possibility that her faults of charac- 
 ter, though glaring, were purely superficial.
 
 A RED SISTER. 107 
 
 Married to Herrick, settled down at South- 
 moor, under her own immediate eye, what 
 might not be hoped for in the way of reforma- 
 tion for so young a girl ! 
 
 She did not care to dwell upon the girPs 
 undisguised satisfaction at the thought of the 
 sale of the old home. The bitter fact alone 
 riveted her attention. 
 
 "It shall not be," she exclaimed aloud, as 
 she folded the letter, and laid it on one side. 
 ^'If I have to go down on my knees to my 
 husband to make him buy the place, it shall 
 not come into the market ! " 
 
 A second thought followed — that of the 
 feeble old grandfather, who, once before when 
 the purchase of Southmoor had been hinted at 
 by Lady Joan, had exclaimed : "Don't touch 
 it, John, it would be a non-paying invest- 
 ment." 
 
 Surely never did messenger bring more ill-
 
 108 A RED SISTER. 
 
 timed tidings than the servant who at this 
 moment entered and announced that Miss 
 White had arrived. 
 
 Lois White, in her schoolroom at Summer- 
 hill, surrounded by her small pupils, had been 
 not a little surprised at the message brought 
 to her that morning ^^with Lady Joan's com- 
 pliments." 
 
 '^ Wishes to see me ? " she repeated, blankly, 
 as she fetched her hat and gloves, and des- 
 patched a message to Mrs. Leyton, asking 
 to be released from schoolroom duties that 
 morning. 
 
 Her heart beat fast as she thought of a 
 second ordeal, even more terrible than the one 
 which, two days back, she had gone through 
 under the legis of Herrick's presence. Now, 
 neither Herrick nor his father would, she 
 knew, be at Longridge to receive her, and 
 alone she would have to face Herrick's mother
 
 A RED SISTER. 109 
 
 in her rigid stateliness. Her fears increased 
 upon her as she sat waiting for Lady Joan in 
 one of the big drawing-rooms. 
 
 ^' Oh, if Herrick had but been born to 
 poverty instead of to wealth such as this ! " 
 was her thought, as her eye took stock of the 
 beauty and luxuriousness of her surround- 
 
 ings. 
 
 Another thought trod on the heels of this 
 
 one : 
 
 ''What silly presumption for me to think 
 for a moment that Herrick' s mother, with her 
 aristocratic blood, in addition to her wealth, 
 would ever receive poor, little me as a fit wife 
 for her son." 
 
 Lady Joan's manner when, after about a 
 quarter of an hour, she entered the room, was 
 not reassuring : 
 
 " I hope my sending for you in school-hours 
 has not inconvenienced you," she said, after a
 
 110 A RED SISTER. 
 
 formal bow, and a touch with the tips of her 
 fingers. *^ Mr. Gaskell, however, was anxious 
 to see you, and one feels compelled to defer to 
 the wishes of one at his great age." 
 
 Lois murmured a string of polite common- 
 places in reply, and Lady Joan resumed : 
 
 '^I am glad on my own account, as well as 
 on Mr. GaskelPs, that you were able to come, 
 for there is something I particularly wish to 
 say to you — something, in fact, that must be 
 said ; could not be written." 
 
 The methodical manner in which she spoke 
 showed that she had not kept Lois waiting 
 fifteen minutes for nothing. 
 
 Lois flushed crimson. She felt that the 
 thucder-cloud she had dreaded ^was about to 
 break now. 
 
 Lady Joan went on : 
 
 '-'- But before I speak what necessity has laid 
 upon me to speak, may I ask one question — a
 
 A RED SISTER. Ill 
 
 very important one — do you really consider 
 yourself to be engaged to be married to my 
 son?'' 
 
 The words were spoken now. Lois started, 
 iter lips opened ; but never a word escaped 
 them. Did she consider herself to be engaged 
 to be married ? I^o, not in the sense in which 
 most young girls consider themselves to be 
 engaged to be married after the momentous 
 question has been asked and answered. That 
 Herrick looked upon marriage as the inevitable 
 ending to his courtship there was not a doubt. 
 Lois, however, before the day on which Herrick 
 had slipped a diamond and ruby ring on her 
 finger had come to an end, had said to herself: 
 "There is such a thing as loving and letting 
 go. If I thougTit my love for Herrick might 
 be detrimental to him in the days to come, I 
 would take myself out of his life at once and 
 for ever."
 
 112 A RED SISTER, 
 
 Lady Joan, waiting for her answer and 
 looking down into that frank, childlike face, 
 read it as easily as she would have read an 
 open book. 
 
 Lois had put on a small round hat that 
 morning, and neither drooping brim nor veil 
 hid the pained, bewildered look which said, as 
 plainly as words could : ^^ I am brought face 
 to face with a matter beyond my capabilities. 
 Where shall I look for help and guidance ? '^ 
 
 Lady Joau — with a slight feeling of wonder 
 over the girl's simplicity — said to herself 
 that her course lay plain before her now. An 
 appeal to the girl, founded on her love for 
 Herrick, a few words of advice, some golden 
 guineas, and the thing was dene. 
 
 '-'- A pretty enough child," she thought ; 
 *^the very wife for a struggling artist — she 
 would save him a small fortune in models. 
 But a wife for Herrick ! "N"o ! "
 
 A RED SISTER. 113 
 
 Aloud she said : 
 
 ^^ I am sorry if my question has given you 
 pain. Pardon my abruptness in asking it. 
 Let me put it in another form. Do you love 
 my son ? " 
 
 Lois knew well enough how to answer that 
 question. 
 
 " Love him ! " she cried passionately, clasp- 
 ing her hands together, ^' oh, I woukl lay 
 down my life, gladly, at any time, to save him 
 a moment's pain." 
 
 ^' Then of course," said Lady Joan, coldly, 
 and with great decision, ^^you have given 
 careful thought to the question whether his 
 marriage with you would be likely to conduce 
 to his real happiness in life ?" 
 
 ^' Careful thought ! " cried Lois, im- 
 petuously. ^' I have thought of nothing 
 else from morning till night since the day 
 he— he asked me — to be his wife; but how 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 A RED SISTER. 
 
 can I — how is it possible for me to decide 
 "what will or what will not make his happi- 
 ness ? " 
 
 ''No self-seeking there, no ambitious views 
 for herself, so I may as well speak out 
 plainly," thought Lady Joan. So she said, 
 with great deliberation : 
 
 ''And I, too, as Herrick's mother, have 
 thought of nothing else from morning till 
 night since I knew that marriage was in his 
 thoughts; but I have had no difficulty in 
 forming a decisive opinion on the matter. 
 Shall I tell you what it is?" 
 
 Lois turned her face eagerly towards her. 
 
 "It is this," said Lady Joan, coldly, 
 bluntly, cruelly. "That a marriage between 
 you and him would be about the most dis- 
 astrous thing that could happen to him ; for 
 the twofold reason that it would sow dissen- 
 sion between him and his relatives, and prevent
 
 A RED SISTER. 115 
 
 him making a marriage suitable to his station 
 in Ufe." 
 
 A sharp cry, such as a child cut with a 
 knife might utter, broke from Lois's lips. She 
 grew pale; her hands clasped together con- 
 vulsively. 
 
 ^' Help me, help me ! " she cried piteously. 
 '' What am I to do ? " 
 
 "If^you are asking the question, really 
 wishing for an answer, I will tell you," said 
 Lady Joan, calmly and coldly as before. '-^ Go 
 away at once. Leave Longridge at once and 
 for ever. Don't go into hysterics over it and 
 talk about a breaking heart and such like — ah, 
 pardon me — nonsense ; but write, after you 
 have left here, a plain, common-sense letter to 
 my son, telling him that, having well thought 
 over the matter, you have come to the con- 
 clusion that unequal marriages are good for 
 neither party concerned, and that consequently
 
 116 A RED SISTER. 
 
 of yourself, of your own free will — kindly lay 
 stress on that — you have taken steps to end the 
 engagement." 
 
 ^' Go ! where shall I go ! " said Lois, plain- 
 tively. I haven't a friend in the world, except 
 Mrs. Ley ton." 
 
 Lady Joan looked at her incredulously. 
 
 ^'!N'ota friend!" she repeated. ^^ Where 
 were you living before you came to Summer- 
 hill ? " 
 
 *' I was brought up at a big orphanage. My 
 father was a naval officer, he and my mother 
 both died when I was a child. I went straight 
 from the orphanage to Summerhill when I was 
 old enough to teach." 
 
 ^' And had you no relatives save father and 
 mother?" asked Lady Joan. '^Pardon my 
 questions ; but I am trying to see my way to 
 helping you in the future, in any manner you 
 may like to choose."
 
 A RED SISTER. 117 
 
 " My father had a cousin I used to see at 
 one time ; but he went to America long ago. 
 I have not heard from him for years." 
 
 ^' I dare say you could find out his present 
 address in some way. It seems to me that 
 America would be a very desirable destina- 
 tion for you, all things considered. It would 
 involve complete change of scene and sur- 
 roundings — a very great consideration — and 
 
 But Lady Joan's sentence was not to be 
 finished; for at this moment Dr. Scott's voice, 
 in loud tones, was heard immediately outside 
 the door. 
 
 ^^ Never mind about announcing me," he 
 was saying, no doubt to a servant. " I must 
 see her without a moment's delay." 
 
 Then he pushed open the door and entered 
 without ceremony. 
 
 "Lady Joan," he said abruptly, "I have
 
 118 A RED SISTER. 
 
 just received a telegram from your son con- 
 taining sad news. There is no time to tell 
 you as you ought to be told, for the telegram 
 has unfortunately been delayed in trans- 
 mission, and the news will announce itself 
 unless I make haste. So far as I understand 
 the message, there has been a second terrible 
 explosion at the Wrexford mines, and your 
 
 husband there, I see you understand me — 
 
 no, not killed ; severely injured. They are 
 bringing him now. The ambulance is almost 
 at the door. More than this I do not know."
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 Herrick's account of tlie terrible occurrence, 
 given in short, disjointed, sentences, was easy 
 enough to understand. His father had not 
 been indulging in any Quixotic deeds of 
 heroism, but had simply been doing his duty 
 at the pit's mouth, and in the mines, as he 
 had ever done in similar circumstances, orga- 
 nising search-parties, and seeing that the men 
 already rescued were properly attended to. 
 A second explosion had not been anticipated, 
 and he, and his father also, had several times 
 descended the shaft in the miner's cage. 
 Help had been greatly needed in all quarters, 
 and he himself had helped to bear away the
 
 120 A RED SISIER. 
 
 last ambulance of rescued men in default of 
 sufficient bearers. 
 
 Meantime bis father, in company with the 
 chief engineer, had descended the shaft in 
 order to ascertain if a certain improved system 
 of ventilation which had been submitted to 
 him were practicable. When the cage was 
 within twenty feet of the bottom, the second 
 explosion had occurred; his father and the 
 engineer had both been violently precipitated 
 from the cage, the engineer had been killed 
 on the spot, and his father had sustained — so 
 far as could be ascertained — terrible bruises 
 to his limbs, and serious injuries to the 
 spine. 
 
 '^ Terrible bruises to his limbs, and serious 
 injuries to the spine ! '' The verdict of the 
 doctors, after a more prolonged examination 
 had been made, was simply the translation 
 into technical language of Herrick's words.
 
 A RED SISTER. 121 
 
 They expressed their gravest fears as to his 
 chances of ultimate recoyery. 
 
 Old Dr. Scott went a step farther than the 
 Wrexford Doctors who had accompanied the 
 ambulance home, and confided his opinion 
 to the nurse whose services had been hastily 
 called into requisition, that " twenty-four 
 hours must see the end of it." 
 
 In order to avoid additional jolting, John 
 Gaskell had been carried on the mattress on 
 which he had lain in the ambulance, into a 
 room on the ground-floor — one of old Mr. 
 GaskelPs luxuriously-furnished suite of apart- 
 ments. Here they had hastily placed a bed- 
 stead, and here, within two rooms from where 
 his aged father was lying, it was fated that 
 John Gaskell' s last hours should be spent. 
 
 Lady Joan had borne the shock of the ill 
 tidings better than Herrick could have antici- 
 pated. At first, possibly, she had scarcely
 
 122 A RED SISTER, 
 
 realised the full import of Dr. Scott's words ; 
 but when, about five minutes after, the slow 
 ambulance-bearers had brought in the once- 
 stalwart John, one single glance at his white, 
 drawn face, must have told her the whole 
 terrible truth. 
 
 "Come in here, mother," Herrick said, 
 drawing her back into her boudoir, which 
 opened off the Hall. " There are several 
 doctors — you will be in the way just now. I 
 shall remain beside my father." 
 
 Then he looked up and saw Lois standing, 
 looking pale and scared, at the farther end of 
 the room. He did not at the moment realise 
 the strangeness of the fact of her presence in 
 the house — only hailed it with delight. In the 
 terrible sorrow which had come upon them, 
 who so likely to be helpful and sympathetic 
 as the sweet girl so soon to be one of the 
 family ?
 
 A RED SISTER, 123 
 
 *^ You will look after my motlierj Lois," was 
 all he said, as he hastily withdrew. 
 
 Lois's heart sank ; her instincts warned her 
 that she would be the last person in the world 
 to whom Herrick's mother would turn for con- 
 solation. 
 
 She made one step from out her corner. 
 
 ^^ Shall I go — shall I stay— can I be of any 
 use ? " she asked, timidly. 
 
 Even with the shadow of a great sorrow 
 falling upon her, Lady Joan's brain was quite 
 clear to decide whether the girl whom she had 
 judged to be no fit wife for Herrick was to be 
 admitted to that position of friendliness in the 
 house which alone justifies the acceptance of 
 service in a time of need. 
 
 "You could not by any possibility be of 
 any — the slightest — use in the circumstances," 
 she answered coldly. " I would suggest that 
 you return at once to Summerhill and think
 
 124 A RED SISTER, 
 
 well over the conversation we have had this 
 morning. "When yon have thoroughly con- 
 sidered the matter, I feel sure " 
 
 But at this moment the door opened, and 
 Herrick entered the room as hastily as he had 
 quitted it. 
 
 ^^ Mother," he said "my father has for a 
 moment recovered consciousness, and has 
 spoken your name. I think he wishes you to 
 sit beside him."
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 ^^ My father lias spoken your name ! " To 
 John Gaskell, with the first faint gleam of 
 consciousness, came the thought of his wife. 
 Nearly thirty years of wedded life forges 
 something of a bond between a man and wo- 
 man. The mere fact that two people have 
 thus long walked side by side through life is 
 in itself a guarantee that a bond of companion- 
 ship has been formed. More than this there 
 may be, but this at least there must be. At 
 times, one of the two may have wished to turn 
 to the left when the other would fain go to the 
 right, and each may occasionally have given a 
 sigh for more congenial companionship. In 
 spite of thisj however, the sense of comradeship
 
 126 A RED SISTER. 
 
 remains unbroken, and when at last death, 
 
 with sharp touch, smites the hands of the two 
 
 asunder, the loss is measured by what might 
 
 have been rather than by what actually has 
 
 been. 
 
 g;.Thus, at least, it was with John Gaskell 
 
 now as he lay upon his death-bed. 
 
 He had not been married a month before 
 his shrewd common-sense had laid bare to him 
 the fact that Lady Joan had married him for 
 his wealth, not for himself. Characteristically, 
 he had surveyed the ^'situation," and had 
 done his best to save his life, as well as his 
 wife's, from shipwreck. 
 
 '^ There never again can be any talk of love 
 between us," he had said to himself, " but we 
 can at least remember that we are an educated 
 lady and gentleman bound to live together for 
 life, and treat each other with proper respect 
 and consideration."
 
 A RED SISTER. 127 
 
 Lady Joan he was inclined to pity rather 
 than to blame. He laid the blame of their 
 ill-advised marriage entirely on the shoulders 
 of the courtly and impecunious old Earl, her 
 grandfather. 
 
 Of Yaughan Elliot he knew nothing, or, 
 possibly his estimate of Lady Joan's conduct 
 might have suffered some modification. His 
 acquaintance with the Southmoor family was 
 but slight : a tramp on the Devon moors after 
 snipe in company with Joan's brother, a sub- 
 sequent introduction to the fascinating sister, 
 a stay of three days at Southmoor, and. the 
 thing was done. 
 
 John Gaskell was very young at the time. 
 His gold had not opened all doors to him ; 
 and the flattering attentions showered upon 
 him by the ancient aristocrat, for the moment 
 had dazzled and blinded him. Later on, when 
 disillusion came, he was not the one to sound
 
 128 A RED SISTER, 
 
 the town-crier's bell and cry : ^^ Oyez, oyez, 
 oyez. I've been tricked into a marriage for 
 the sake of my gold. Come and pity me 
 every one who passes by." 
 
 The utmost that outsiders could note was, 
 that after his marriage, John became devoted 
 to his business in a manner not to be expected 
 of so wealthy a man. Also, that Lady Joan's 
 opinions or advice were never on any occasion 
 sought for by him, though he would spend 
 hours closeted with his old father, discussing 
 all matters, great or small, that concerned 
 the welfare of his household or that of his 
 workpeople. All, however, who knew John 
 Gaskell intimately, were forced to admit that 
 he treated his wife from year's end to year's 
 end with the most unvarying politeness, lav- 
 ished his gold upon her, saw that every one of 
 her whims and wishes was gratified so soon as 
 formed, although possibly he did not seem to
 
 A RED SISTER. 129 
 
 trouble himself mucli as to wliat went on in 
 her heart. 
 
 Lady Joan, on her part, had seemed to 
 acquiesce in a condition of things she was 
 powerless to alter. To tell the truth, it very 
 well suited her cold and unsympathetic tem- 
 perament that no exhibitions of ardent feeling 
 should be required of her. To do her justice, 
 she was incapable of the small hypocrisies by 
 which so many women make their household 
 wheels to work smoothly. !No flimsy self- 
 deception hid from her eyes the fact that she 
 was as much a stranger and an alien in her 
 own home as if she had been born in another 
 clime, and had been taught to speak a tongue 
 different from that which her husband, her 
 son, and her father-in-law spoke. 
 
 Even now as she entered the darkened 
 room and took her seat at the head of the bed, 
 whereon her husband lay stricken to his death, 
 VOL. I. z
 
 130 A RED SISTER, 
 
 there were no tears on lier face, and not for a 
 moment did she say in her heart, as so many 
 wives in similar circumstances would have said : 
 
 ^'Life ends for me to-day, though I may 
 breathe and eat and drink for another fifty 
 years to come." 
 
 Her husband made no sign, by so much as 
 a quiver of the eyelid, that he was conscious 
 of her presence. After one brief gleam of 
 consciousness he had relapsed into insensi- 
 bility ; his heavy stertorous breathing pro- 
 claiming the fact. 
 
 "It is partly the effect of the oj^iate we 
 have been compelled to administer," said the 
 old doctor, coming forward. " You need not 
 remain, unless you choose, Lady Joan, Your 
 husband will not be conscious of your pre- 
 sence." 
 
 Lady Joan, however, chose to remain. She 
 leaned back in her chair with her hand pressed
 
 A RED SISTER. 131 
 
 over her eyes, her face by only one degree 
 less white and rigid than that of the suffering 
 man beside whom she sat. 
 
 '^Poor soul!" thought the doctor, pity 
 ingly, ^'she is thinking of what lies before 
 her in the future." 
 
 Yes, that was exactly what Lady Joan was 
 doing, although not quite in the fashion which 
 the doctor imagined. She was thinking what 
 a miserable position hers would be, by-and- 
 by, when John was gone and Herrick and 
 the old man reigned paramount at the 
 Castle. 
 
 She knew exactly the financial position of 
 the Gaskells, one towards each other, for John 
 had never been reticent on the matter. "I 
 am my father's administrator, head-steward, 
 general manager, what you will," he had been 
 wont to say, when his friends had made com- 
 plimentary allusions to his wealth or position.
 
 132 A RED SISTER. 
 
 as the largest landowner in the county. It 
 was true that yearly, as a matter of conveni- 
 ence, a large sum of money was placed to 
 John's banking account, so that cheques might 
 be drawn and payments made by him; but 
 this in no wise affected the fact that Long- 
 ridge and the mines at Wrexford, and all 
 other land and investments — great and small 
 — belonged in their entirety to old Mr. Gas- 
 kell, and only at his death could become 
 John's. 
 
 Kow, if the old man had died, as he might 
 reasonably have been expected to do, some 
 twenty years back. Lady Joan's thoughts ran, 
 all this wealth and property would have been 
 John's. He, no doubt, would have made 
 liberal provision for her by will, and 
 
 Ah! here a sudden recollection Hashing 
 across her mind put all other thoughts to 
 flight. John had once, long ago, made a will ;
 
 A RED SISTER, 13d 
 
 SO long ago, indeed, that until that moment 
 she had forgotten all about it. Some twenty 
 years back, John had been called upon to 
 undertake a tour of inspection among certain 
 South American mines, in which he possessed 
 an interest. The will which he then made, 
 on the eve of his departure, had been framed 
 to meet two contingencies — old Mr. Gaskell's 
 death during his absence, and his own sub- 
 sequent death through misadventure. Both 
 these events were within the range of the 
 possibilities ; for the old gentleman had passed 
 his threescore and ten years, and John was 
 about to run the gauntlet of all sorts of 
 dangers amid mines and machinery. 
 
 The will though elaborated by the lawyers into 
 folios and sheets, was, in itself, a very simple 
 document, and merely gave all the property — 
 ^'real, landed, or personal"— of which John 
 might die possessed to Lady Joan for life, with
 
 134 A RED SISTER. 
 
 reversion to Herrick on her death. Old 
 friends of John Gaskell's were appointed trus- 
 tees to this will, and, until Lady Joan's death, 
 Herrick could only draw a certain fixed in- 
 come from the estate. At this time Lady 
 Joan's health was very fragile, and there 
 seemed to be little likelihood of her living to 
 see Herrick grown to manhood. 
 
 ^^Eead it, Joan, and let me see that you 
 understand it," her husband had said to her 
 Tith a look, half-pitying, half- contemptuous, 
 in his eyes, which she had found even more 
 easy to read than the sheets of parchment 
 which he handed to her. 
 
 ^'Here, you poor woman, who have sold 
 yourself for wealth and luxury," that look 
 seemed to say, '^ I have taken care that Fate 
 shall not cheat you of your dues." 
 
 ^' Eemember, Joan," he had said, as he 
 folded the will and placed it in an envelope
 
 A RED SISTER, 135 
 
 addressed to his solicitors, ^'this is only so much 
 waste paper, unless my father dies before me." 
 
 No other will, to Lady Joan's certain know- 
 ledge, had since been made by him ; for, until 
 the death of his father, no necessity for so 
 doing could arise. N'o doubt, if the thought 
 of this will had ever come into John's mind, it 
 must simply have figured to him, as he had 
 before phrased it, as ^^ so much waste paper." 
 
 " So much waste paper," thought Lady Joan 
 bitterly, the echo of her husband's words, 
 spoken twenty years back, ringing sharply in 
 her ears now. ^' My thirty years of bondage 
 served to no purpose ! Southmoor to be sold, 
 and the will that would enable me to buy 
 Southmoor twice over with ease, so much waste 
 paper ! And all because an old man's useless 
 life has been unnaturally prolonged ! If the 
 two must die, it is a thousand pities that the 
 old man should not go first ! "
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 ^^ It will be better for me to creep quietly 
 away now," said Lois, speaking huniedly, as 
 the door closed on Lady Joan, and she found 
 herself alone with Herrick. ^^I can be of no 
 use to any one. I should only feel myself in 
 the way." 
 
 Herrick' s face showed simple blank aston- 
 ishment. 
 
 ^'In the way!" he repeated. ''Going! 
 You mean to leave us in the very midst of 
 our sorrow." 
 
 He felt as one might feel who, overtaken 
 by a flood, and planting his feet on what he 
 thinks a rock, suddenly feels it crumbling into 
 sand beneath them.
 
 A RED SISTER. 137 
 
 Lois tried to explain. 
 
 ^' I would give worlds — worlds if I could be 
 of use — of comfort to — to you all ; but — but 
 " sbe faltered, and broke off abruptly. 
 
 With a heart filled as hers was at the mo- 
 ment with conflicting emotions, it was difficult 
 to let forth even one little scrap of feeling 
 without suffering all to escape. 
 
 Herrick stood for a moment, steadily looking 
 at her, trying to gather the real meaning of her 
 words from her flushing tearful face. There 
 could be but one, it seemed to him. 
 
 ^' I don't think you quite understand, dear," 
 he said, sadly, '' the greatness of the sorrow of 
 that is coming upon us. It has not been made 
 clear to you that by this time to-morrow death 
 will have entered our house." 
 
 That must be what it was; she did not 
 realise the blackness of the overhanging cloud. 
 It was not only that she was little more than a
 
 138 A RED SISTER. 
 
 child in years, she had been so secluded from 
 the world, knew so little of the deeper joys or 
 sorrows of life, that she was even below her 
 years in development. 
 
 Her mouth quivered, great tears rolled down 
 her cheeks. 
 
 ^' Oh, Herrick," she cried, clasping her 
 hands, and looking np in his face, '''- if only I 
 could bear it for you I " 
 
 Herrick's calmness began to give way. 
 
 ^^ISTo one could do that. No one knows 
 what my father has been to me all my life 
 through," he said, unsteadily. And then he 
 sank into the chair which she had just quitted, 
 hiding his face in both hands. 
 
 Lois could see the tears trickling through 
 his fingers. She bent over him, putting her 
 arm round his neck ; words failed her. 
 
 '-'- Oh, Herrick, my poor boy, my poor boy ! " 
 was all she could find to say.
 
 A RED SISTER. 139 
 
 The difference in their years seemed to 
 vanish. She felt mother-like over him, strong 
 and protective, ready to fight sorrow — death 
 itself, with her little hands, should either 
 dare to approach him. 
 
 For a few minutes Herrick wrestled silently 
 with his grief, and Lois stood bending over 
 him, caressing his dark -brown hair, and find- 
 ing no better words of comfort than : 
 
 '^ My poor, poor boy I If only I could bear 
 it for you ! " 
 
 Deep down in her heart was another and 
 bitterer cry. 
 
 " Can I go away and leave him to bear his 
 sorrow alone ? Can there be another in the whole 
 world who could comfort him as I would ? " 
 
 It was altogether a new experience to see 
 Uerrick thus overcome with grief. As a rule, 
 his young vigour and masterfulness were the 
 things that first and foremost made themselves
 
 140 A RED SISTER. 
 
 felt when lie entered a room. Pace to face 
 with him and his masterfulness it had been 
 comparatively easy for her to persuade herself 
 that he could get on very well through life 
 without the aid of such a poor> little, insigni- 
 ficant creature as herself. But now, with 
 him brought thus low, her heart had but one 
 cry in it: '^I love him so, I cannot, cannot 
 give him up." 
 
 The room was so still that the loud ticking 
 of a clock on a pedestal in a corner seemed to 
 speak as with a warning voice : ^^ I am telling, 
 one by one, the seconds of that life which so 
 soon will have run itself out." Herrick could 
 fancy it cried aloud to him. He withdrew 
 his hands from his face. It looked haggard 
 and aged by a dozen years. 
 
 ^^ Forgive me, Lois," he said, brokenly. ^^ I 
 ought not to give way like this— so much 
 devolves upon me."
 
 A RED SISTER. 141 
 
 Even as he spoke his words were to be 
 yerified, for a servant entered, bringing him a 
 message. The manager from the "Wrexford 
 mines was wishing to see Mr. Herrick ; he 
 apologised very much for intruding at such a 
 time ; but to-morrow would be pay-day for the 
 miners, and it would cause great inconvenience 
 to the men if they were not paid. Did Mr. 
 Herrick know if the cheque which was handed 
 over regularly every month had been signed, 
 so that he. could draw upon it ? 
 
 With the message the servant delivered a 
 note from Parsons, asking if Mr. Herrick 
 would, as soon as possible, pay a visit to his 
 grandfather. The terrible news had not as 
 yet been told him, and his enquiries as to what 
 had detained Mr. Gaskell so long at Wrexford 
 were incessant. 
 
 Herrick stood for a moment in thought over 
 this note. '' Yes, he must be told,'' he said
 
 142 A RED SISTER. 
 
 presentl}^, Avith a sigh. The message from the 
 "Wrexford manager, coming simultaneously 
 with the note from Parsons, brought before his 
 mind the fact that business relations might 
 render it imperative that the painful tidings 
 should be broken to the old man. 
 
 ''But Dr. Scott must be present," he 
 decided. Then he turned to Lois : 
 
 "Wait here, Lois. I shall like you to 
 come in to my grandfather presently. You 
 may be able to say some word of comfort to 
 him. I will come for you in a few minutes." 
 
 Lois, in silence, shrank back into her corner 
 once more. With Herrick gone, the room 
 seemed to resume its distinctive character as 
 Lady Joan's boudoir. She felt strangely out 
 of place amidst these ancestral surroundings. 
 
 The aristocratic portraits on the walls seemed 
 with their thin lips, to repeat Lady Joan's cold, 
 cruel words: ''I consider that a marriage
 
 A RED SISTER. 143 
 
 between you and my son would be about the 
 most disastrous thing that could happen to 
 him ; " while all the four corners of the room, 
 with their luxurious fittings and works of art, 
 seemed to cry out at her in chorus : ^^ It would 
 sow dissension between him and his relatives ; 
 it would prevent him making a marriage suit- 
 able to his station in life." 
 
 Even the loud-voiced marqueterie clock on 
 its high pedestal, which had seemed to bring 
 a message to Herrick, had one for her now, 
 and ticked away to a refrain — what was it, the 
 ending of a poem, or of an old song she had 
 heard somewhere?— ^' I love thee so, dear, that 
 I only can leave thee."
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 Hereick performed his dreary task as gently 
 as possible. 
 
 At first old Mr. Gaskell did not seem to 
 catch, the full import of Herrick's silence in 
 response to his eager question : ^' But tell me, 
 his injuries are not serious ? " 
 
 Then, as the truth flashed into his mind, he 
 fell back in his easy- chair moaning pitifully : 
 
 ^^ My boy John, my stalwart laddie to go 
 first after all ! " 
 
 Dr. Scott came forward with a cordial 
 draught, but the old man waved him on one 
 side, saying that he was tired, and would go 
 to bed. 
 
 " Let me get to sleep, let me get to sleep," 
 he said; " it's all I want."
 
 A RED SISTER, 145 
 
 *^ Come now, Lois," said Herrick, about ten 
 minutes after, beckoning Lois to follow him to 
 his grandfather's room. 
 
 It seemed to the young man that everyone, 
 aged or youthful, could not fail to respond to 
 sweet Lois's gentle sympathy. 
 
 Lois followed him readily enough ; where- 
 ever he led it was easy enough for her to follow; 
 but alas for her, if he were not there to lead, 
 and her fears or her love chose to show the way ! 
 
 When they entered his room, the old man 
 was lying back on his pillows with closed eyes ; 
 his thin fingers beat restlessly on the coverlet ; 
 while ever and anon a feeble moan, as from one 
 in pain, escaped his lips. 
 
 Herrick noted sadly that a change had 
 passed over the aged, shrunken face, even 
 during the brief space of time that he had 
 been out of the room. 
 
 ^'Grandfather," he said, gently, ''I have 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 A RED SISTER. 
 
 brought Lois to see you. Don't you remem- 
 ber — I introduced her to you on — on your 
 birthday?'' 
 
 It needed an effort of memory on the young 
 man's part to fix the date of that birthday. 
 It seemed to him that a lifetime, not barely 
 two days, had elapsed since, light-hearted 
 and full of hope, he had brought Lois to 
 his grandfather's side to receive and to offer 
 congratulations. 
 
 The old man slowly opened his eyes ; there 
 was a dreamy, far-away look in them. 
 
 ''Take off your hat, dear," whispered 
 Herrick, ''and let my grandfather see your 
 face." 
 
 Lois did so ; then, as if moved by a sudden 
 impulse, she laid her soft cheek, all wet with 
 tears, upon the old man's thin hand. 
 
 " God bless you, my child ! " he murmured 
 softly.
 
 A RED SISTER. ' 147 
 
 There came a sudden look of deep tender- 
 ness into his eyes ; it as suddenly faded, 
 swept away by one of keen annoyance — one 
 might almost say of anger — which overspread 
 his countenance. 
 
 Old Mr. Gaskell's bedroom led into his 
 dressing-room, this again opened into the 
 room to which his son had been hastily 
 carried. 
 
 Suddenly and softly the door of this dress- 
 ing-room had been opened, and Lady Joan 
 had looked in. 
 
 Lois's instincts must have been strangely 
 at one with those of the old man beside whom 
 she sat, for though her back was towards 
 this door, and the handle had been turned 
 without a sound, she felt Lady Joan's presence 
 on the threshold, and in a flash of thought 
 she attributed old Mr. Gaskell's sudden change 
 of expression to its right cause.
 
 148 A RED SISTER. 
 
 Silently, as she had come, Lady Joan 
 closed the door and departed, saying never 
 a word. 
 
 Herrick, not possessing Lois' s quickness of 
 perception, heard and saw nothing. 
 
 ^'Does Lady Joan want you — me — any- 
 thing, do you think?" Lois asked him in a 
 low tone. 
 
 ^^ Perhaps my father may have recovered 
 consciousness, and wishes to see me," an- 
 swered Herrick, eagerly, a wild hope spring- 
 ing up in his heart that, after all, this 
 much of mercy might be granted him, and 
 he might, once again, hear his father's loved 
 voice. 
 
 He beckoned to Parsons to place a chair 
 for Lois beside the grandfather's bed, and 
 hastened to his father's room by way of the 
 corridor. 
 
 His hope was but short-lived. A glance
 
 A RED SISTER. 149 
 
 at John GaskelPs face — on which one 
 moment of agony had set its seal — convinced 
 him that his heavy insensibility remained 
 unbroken. 
 
 Dr. Scott was in the room. 
 
 ''It is partly the result of the opiate," 
 he said, ''which we have been compelled to 
 administer." Then looking hurriedly round 
 to see that they were alone, he added : " Get 
 your mother out of the room into the fresh 
 air for a few minutes. Her strength is being 
 severely taxed. She has been wandering 
 restlessly from room to room for the past 
 quarter of an hour." 
 
 While he was speaking, Lady Joan re- 
 entered. Her step was slow and uncertain. 
 To Herrick's fancy, she seemed strangely pre- 
 occupied. He could almost have imagined 
 her to be some soulless piece of machinery 
 wound up to go through certain performances
 
 150 A RED SISTER. 
 
 for a given time, so automatic and unnatural 
 her movements seemed. 
 
 "Mother," he said, drawing her away from 
 the sick-bed to a window recess, "I'll stay 
 here while you get a little fresh air. Your 
 strength won't stand this for long together." 
 
 She scarcely seemed to hear him; but, 
 looking beyond him, addressed Dr. Scott : 
 
 "Have you seen old Mr. Gaskell, lately — 
 since he heard the bad news, I mean ? " she 
 asked. "Has it had a bad effect upon him, 
 do you think ? " 
 
 "I was present when your son broke the 
 news to him," answered the doctor. " I can 
 scarcely say yet what effect it may have had. 
 I am going in to see him again shortly." 
 
 " Go now, if you please ; I am anxious to 
 know," she said in low tones. 
 
 "Mother," said Herrick, "I wish Lois to 
 stay in the house now she is here. "Will
 
 A RED SISTER, 151 
 
 you send a message to Summerhill, or sliall 
 
 I ?" 
 
 " I wish. Lois ! " 
 
 Lady Joan repeated the words. It seemed 
 to h.er that the young man had spoken them 
 with a good deal of authority, as if he were 
 already preparing to take up his position as 
 master of the house. 
 
 ^^Yes," said Herrick with great decision, 
 "I wish Lois to stay in the house. Her 
 presence here is a comfort to me and to my 
 grandfather; I hope it will be also to you. 
 Shall I send a man over to tell Mrs. Leyton 
 not to expect her back to-day?" 
 
 Lady Joan did not reply for a moment, and 
 Herrick had to repeat the question. 
 
 " Shall I send to Summerhill, or will 
 you ? " 
 
 "You will do as you please/' presently 
 she answered, coldly and formally. " The
 
 152 A RED SISTER, 
 
 house is large. If she remains here, pray 
 keep her away from these rooms.'' 
 
 Then she turned away from him and went 
 into the adjoining room — the one intervening 
 between the two sick-rooms — and stood wait- 
 ing there for Dr. Scott's reappearance. 
 
 Herrick took her place beside his father's 
 bed. "She is unlike herself to-day, and no 
 wonder/' he thought. "She shall not be 
 distressed by word or deed of mine. Ey-and- 
 by I can fight Lois's battles easily enough. 
 My poor father, my poor father, he is the 
 only one to think of now ! " and the young 
 man laid his head on the pillow on which 
 lay John Gaskell's white face in its whiter 
 bandages, and sent up a heart-broken prayer 
 to Heaven that those dear, blue eyes now so 
 closely sealed might, if only for a moment, 
 open once again and rest on his face with a 
 gleam of recognition in them.
 
 A RED SISTER. 153 
 
 Presently, the voices of Lady Joan and 
 the doctor in the adjoining room fell upon 
 his ear. 
 
 '' Yon think a change has set in ? " Lady 
 Joan was saying. 
 
 ^^ I do," was the doctor's reply, in sad tones. 
 "A very marked change for the worse. His 
 
 pulse is by many degrees feebler ; his temper- 
 ature is lower." 
 
 ^^Is there any immediate danger?" asked 
 Lady Joan. 
 
 The doctor paused before replying. Then 
 he said, slowly: 
 
 ^^ It is a difficult question to answer. I 
 have seen him very low before, and he has 
 rallied. A great deal depends upon the 
 amount of nourishment he can be induced 
 to take. At his great age, one cannot expect 
 much warning of the approaching end. I 
 know you like me to be frank with you, Lady
 
 154 A RED SISTER. 
 
 Joan ; my own impression is that his last hour 
 will be sudden and painless." 
 
 Lady Joan's voice was unlike her own as 
 she asked the next question : 
 
 ^^Will he go before my husband, do you 
 think ? " 
 
 ^^ Heaven only knows," replied the doctor, 
 solemnly. " Send for another doctor, and 
 have a second opinion, Lady Joan." He 
 broke oflP for a moment, and then added, 
 sadly : '' I may be wrong ; but it seems to 
 me, as I go from one sick-room to the other, 
 that it is a race between the two, with death 
 for the goal. Heaven only knows who'll 
 reach it first ! "
 
 CHAPTEE XIY. 
 
 The twenty-four hours that were, as the 
 doctor had phrased it, ^^ to see the end of 
 it," were swiftly and surely ebbing them- 
 selves out ; the hot morning wore away into 
 a hotter afternoon ; the storm seemed to 
 draw near and nearer, but still it did not 
 break. 
 
 No appreciable change took place in John 
 Gaskell's condition ; the narcotics acted 
 powerfully upon him, and he appeared slowly 
 and imperceptibly to be passing over the 
 border which divides sleep from coma. 
 
 Old Mr. Gaskell also remained in much the 
 same condition. He had ceased to moan over 
 his "stalwart laddie," and now lay still and
 
 156 A RED SISTER. 
 
 quiet J with his hand clasping Lois' s^ like some 
 tired child being soothed to sleep. 
 
 Lois's presence at his bedside was so evi- 
 dently a comfort to him, that Herrick, in spite 
 of his mother's request that the young girl 
 should be kept away from that suite of rooms, 
 did not like to disturb her. 
 
 It was a difficult subject to mention to 
 Lady Joan, without a display of feeling which 
 would be most unseemly in the circumstances. 
 So he let matters take their course, hoping 
 and belieying that when his mother saw how 
 manifestly Lois had won his grandfather's 
 favour, her request would not be repeated. 
 
 His presence for the nonce was not needed 
 in either sick-room. All sorts of tiresome 
 business details claimed his attention that 
 afternoon; the state of confusion into which 
 the colliery at Wrexford had been thrown by 
 the explosion, called for the presence of one
 
 A RED SISTER, 157 
 
 of the proprietors on the spot. As this, how- 
 ever, in the present sad condition of things 
 was an impossibility, Herrick did what he 
 could by means of telegrams, and all through 
 the early afternoon the wires between Long- 
 ridge and Wrexford were working inces- 
 santly. 
 
 It was not until close upon five o'clock that 
 he found himself free to return to the dying 
 beds of his father and grandfather. When 
 he entered his grandfather's room the old man 
 appeared to be dozing. The look on Lois's 
 face — always so easy to read — puzzled him. 
 She looked startled and pained at one and the 
 same moment, as if something had occurred 
 which had frightened and troubled her. 
 
 ^'You have been sitting here too long, dar- 
 ling," he said, in a low voice ; " come for a 
 few minutes out on the terrace." 
 
 Then he whispered a word to Parsons, that
 
 158 A RED SISTER, 
 
 if his grandfatlier aroused, and enquired for 
 Miss White, she was to send for her imme- 
 diately. 
 
 The terrace was easily reached by any one of 
 the long French windows of the grandfather's 
 suite of rooms. The sun was on the other side 
 of the Castle now, and the slanting shadows 
 gave refuge from the intense heat. 
 
 " What is it, Lois — what has troubled you?" 
 was, naturally enough, Herrick's first question, 
 when they found themselyes alone in the open 
 air. 
 
 Lois seemed greatly disturbed. 
 
 " Oh, Herrick," she said, in low, vehement 
 tones, ^' I feel — I know — I ought not to speak 
 as I am going to speak — but tell me, has your 
 grandfather any reason to dislike Lady Joan?" 
 
 Herrick's face changed. 
 
 *' There has never, to my knowledge," he 
 answered, ''been any open quarrel between
 
 A RED SISTER. 159 
 
 tliem, althougti, I am surey you will easily 
 understand tliat two people so opposite in 
 character could never be expected to get on 
 particularly well together. But why do you 
 ask, dear ? What has happened to put such a 
 thought into your head ? '' 
 
 ^^!N'othing much has happened. I dare say 
 I'm wrong to lay stress on such a simple thing ; 
 but twice, while I have been sitting beside Mr. 
 Gaskell, Lady Joan has opened the door lead- 
 ing from the dressing-room, and looked in." 
 
 ''Well?". 
 
 ''And each time I knew that she was there 
 without turning my head, by the look which 
 passed over Mr. Gaskell' s face and the way in 
 which he clutched — yes, clutched my hand." 
 
 Herrick did not speak for a moment. Lois 
 went on : 
 
 "He looked — I scarcely know how to ex- 
 plain — like some one who was havini^ a bad
 
 160 A RED SISTER, 
 
 dream. He only opened his eyes for half a 
 moment the first time ; the second time he did 
 not open his eyes at all, only seemed to feel 
 that she was there looking at him ; and he 
 held my hand so tightly and muttered some- 
 thing. I could scarcely hear what it was ; but 
 I think it was, ^ Don't leave me, my child.' " 
 ^' Did my mother say anything ? " 
 " Not a word ; but oh, Herrick, when I 
 turned and looked at her she looked so dark 
 and so — so unlike herself, that I could have 
 fancied that another soul had taken possession 
 of her body." 
 
 Herrick could see a reason, of which Lois 
 knew nothing, for what she called a ^' dark " 
 look on his mother's face. To his mind, it was 
 evident that Lady Joan had looked into the 
 room to see if her wishes had been attended 
 to, and Lois had been requested to withdraw. 
 Finding the contrary to be the case, her feeling
 
 A RED SISTER. 161 
 
 of annoyance had no doubt showed in the ex- 
 pression of her countenance. The look on his 
 grandfather's face, as described by Lois, was to 
 him inexplicable. Surely she must have 
 allowed her imagination to run away with 
 her. 
 
 He felt perplexed. It seemed to him that 
 the slightest wish of the old man, now lying at 
 the gates of death, should be complied with. 
 Yet his mother, with this terrible sorrow 
 hanging over her, must have due considera- 
 tion shown to her. It was hard to know 
 what to do for the best. The next moment 
 his course was to be decided for him. 
 
 '' My lady wishes to speak to you, sir. She 
 is in the library," said a servant at that mo- 
 ment approaching. 
 
 "' Wait here for me, Lois ; the fresh air will 
 do you good," said Herrick, as he prepared to 
 comply with his mother's summons. ^^ Don't 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 A RED SISTER. 
 
 be afraid, dear; I shan't betray your confi- 
 dences.'' 
 
 The library was on the ground floor. Her- 
 rick found Lady Joan standing just within the 
 room, with, what he was willing to admit, was 
 a very "• dark " look, indeed, on her face. 
 
 '' Is this a time to think of marrying and 
 giving in marriage ? " she asked, sternly, before 
 he had time to open his lips. '' Have you done 
 well, do you think, in forcing upon me, at such 
 a time as this, the presence of a young woman 
 who is distasteful to me ? " 
 
 Herrick felt his temper aroused. 
 
 '^Forcing upon you! Distasteful to you! 
 I do not understand ! " he cried, hotly. Then 
 his better angel conquered ; he bit his lip and 
 restrained himself. "This is not a time for 
 bickering and contention, at any rate," he said ; 
 '^ that at least can wait. Lois I found in the 
 house when I returned home — I supposed she
 
 A RED SISTER. 163 
 
 was brouglit here by your wish, or my grand- 
 father's. Whether this was, or was not, the 
 case, one thing is clear, my grandfather likes 
 to have her beside him, and I am sure you will 
 so far respect his wishes as to allow her to 
 remain in his room." 
 
 Lady Joan laid her hand upon his arm. 
 ^^ Listen, Herrick, I have only five minutes to 
 spare from your father's dying bed, and I have 
 something to say to you which must — must be 
 attended to. I suppose this young lady, of 
 whom we have already spoken, is to remain 
 here for the night ? " 
 
 '* Assuredly," answered Herrick; ^^I have 
 sent a message to Summerhill to that effact." 
 
 ^' Very well. You have acted in the way in 
 which, I suppose, you think you have a right 
 to act ; now I intend to act in the way in 
 which I have an undoubted right to act. The 
 sick-rooms are under my supervision — both of
 
 164 A RED SISTER. 
 
 them, in all their arrangements, and I posi- 
 tively forbid the entry of — of that young woman 
 into any one of that suite of rooms. I have 
 already given Parsons orders to that effect." 
 
 As she finished speaking she left the room, 
 and Herrick, exasperated though he might be 
 at her sentence, yet felt that in the circum- 
 stances there could be no appeal from it.
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 The sun went down a great ball of lurid fire 
 behind the young trees in the park. As its 
 flames died out of the stormily purple west, 
 rugged masses of cloud spread themselves 
 athwart the night sky. I^o refreshing cool- 
 ness came with the darkness. Every window 
 in the Castle stood open ; but air there was 
 none, outside the house nor within. 
 
 " Don't trouble about me, Herrick," said 
 Lois, as for a moment the two stood together 
 in the hall before separating for the night ; I 
 am not in the least tired. Ah, if you would 
 only let me sit up ! If I go to bed I shall 
 not be able to sleep." 
 
 Herrick had decided that the unseemliness
 
 166 A RED SISTER. 
 
 of a discussion between him and his mother at 
 such a time was a sufficient reason for yielding 
 to her wish that Lois should be kept out of 
 his grandfather's room. Furthermore, he had 
 decided that, all things considered, it would 
 be better for Lois to return to Summerhill on 
 the following morning. Later on he would 
 know well enough how to make good her 
 position in the house as that of his future wife, 
 and every living soul, mother included, should 
 be taught to respect it. But for the present 
 he resolved that not so much as a jarring look 
 between his mother and himself should ruffle 
 the serene atmosphere that ought to surround 
 a dying-bed. 
 
 He had spent the twilight hours now in one 
 sick-room, now in another, and anon in brief 
 five minutes in the library dictating telegrams 
 to the manager of the Wrexford mines. Now, 
 as eleven o'clock chimed, the Castle was begin-
 
 A RED SISTER. 167 
 
 ning to settle doTrn into quiet, and lie had 
 crept away to say a farewell word to Lois, and 
 and to bid her go to rest for the night. He 
 felt sorely at a loss how to refuse her request 
 without betraying his mother's ill-will towards 
 her. 
 
 " If you sat up, darling, you could be of no 
 possible use," was all he could find to say. 
 
 Lois did not speak for a moment. She was 
 standing immediately beneath one of the 
 swinging bronze lamps which lighted the hall 
 the soft yellow light falling full upon the 
 upturned, dimpled face, the straying gold of 
 her hair, the tremulous mouth. The simple, 
 infantine face might have been that of a child 
 praying to have the moon given it for a toy, 
 rather than that of one making a request whose 
 granting or refusal might carry life or death 
 with it. 
 
 She clasped her hands together imploringly.
 
 168 A RED SISTER. 
 
 ''Oh Herrick, Herrick," she cried, "why 
 won't you let me go near him? I beg, I 
 entreat you, let me see him once again ! " 
 
 Tears ran down her cheeks ; her voice gave 
 way with her last word. 
 
 Herrick was greatly distressed. 
 
 '' If I could I would, darling, you may be 
 sure ; but for some reason or other my mother 
 
 " Here he checked himself sharply, then 
 
 added: ''You shall see him the first thing in 
 the morning before you go back to Summerhill, 
 I promise you that. Dr. Scott told me only a 
 minute ago that he had slightly rallied, and 
 he thought that he might have a fairly good 
 night." 
 
 Lois guessed at the words he had so sharply 
 held back. 
 
 " Tell me Herrick," she said, in a low voice, 
 " why does Lady Joan wish to keep me away 
 from him ? He seemed so happy to have me
 
 A RED SISTER. 169 
 
 beside him. He held my hand so tightly ! I 
 can hear his poor weak voice now, saying : 
 ' Do not leave me, my child.' " 
 
 Here, again, tears choked her words. 
 
 Herrick's calmness nearly gave way. 
 
 " Do not add to my anxieties to-night, Lois," 
 he said. " Believe me, I feel already as if my 
 brains were leaving me. Will you take my 
 word for it that my grandfather is much better 
 left alone with his usual attendant for the 
 night? Dr. Scott has said, more than once, 
 that the slightest divergence of routine might 
 be bad for him. I beg of you, go upstairs to 
 rest now ; to-morrow, before you go back to 
 Summerhill ' ' 
 
 Lois suddenly laid her hand on his arm. 
 
 ^^Herrick," she pleaded, '' if you will not 
 let me go inside his room to-night, will you 
 let me sit outside his door in the corridor ? I 
 will be so quiet, I will scarcely breathe. Lady
 
 170 A RED SISTER. 
 
 Joan shall not know I am there Oh, do, do 
 
 let me ! " 
 
 She clasped her hands over his arm, her tears 
 falling in a shower now. 
 
 Herrick grew more and more distressed and 
 perplexed. 
 
 ^' Give me a reason, Lois, for such a strange 
 request," he said. 
 
 But he might as well have asked Lois to 
 fetch him down one of the stars at once. Her 
 eyes drooped. 
 
 '^ I wish I could," she said, falteringly. ^^ I 
 can't tell you why, but I feel as if I were 
 called upon to — take care of him to-nighi " 
 
 ^^ Oh, Lois, do you not think that my mother 
 and Parsons and I are enough to take care of 
 my dear old grandfather till morning ? I shall 
 sit in the dressing-room — that is, you know, 
 the room between my father's and grandfather's 
 rooms — and shall be going from one room to
 
 A RED SISTER. 171 
 
 tlie other all night. If anytliing should 
 happen, if my grandfather should express any 
 wish to see you, I promise you faithfully you 
 shall be sent for at once." 
 
 But Lois was not to be satisfied even with 
 this promise. Her entreaties grew more and 
 more vehement. Might she sit in the hall, if 
 not in the corridor? Might she come down 
 once in the middle of the night for a report as 
 to how things were going on ? 
 
 Herrick had to feign a sternness he did not 
 feel to silence her. If she could have given 
 him the shadow of a reason for her request, he 
 would have attached more importance to it. 
 As it was, the thought in his mind was that 
 she was overdone, hysterical, and was attach- 
 ing a significance to trifles which did not of 
 rights belong to them. 
 
 *^ Sleep will be the best thing for you to- 
 night, dear ; by-and-by you shall help me bear
 
 172 A RED SISTER. 
 
 the brunt of everything," he said with a deci- 
 sion that ended the matter. '^ You have had a 
 terribly fatiguing day — the intense heat, the 
 thunder in the air is telling on you. Don't 
 you know you told me you could feel a storm 
 coming a week before it broke ? " 
 
 '' Thunder in the air ! is it that I feel ? " 
 said Lois vaguely, dreamily. But she made 
 no farther opposition to Herrick's wishes. In 
 good truth, accustomed as she had ever been 
 to yield submission to the will of others, it had 
 cost her not a little to assert her own wishes in 
 the way she had already done. 
 
 There followed ^^ one long, strong kiss " 
 between the lovers, a kiss that could not 
 have had more of truth and passion in it if 
 they could have turned over a page of Time's 
 volume and read what lay before them in the 
 future. 
 
 Then Lois went her way up the broad oak
 
 A RED SISTER. 173 
 
 staircase to the room which had been assigned 
 to her on the upper floor ; and Herrick went 
 back to the sick-rooms. 
 
 His last word to her was a repetition of his 
 promise, that before she went back to Summer- 
 hill the next morning she should see and say 
 good-bye to his grandfather. 
 
 He stood at the foot of the staircase watching 
 the dainty little figure, with its flushed, tearful 
 face and straying golden hair, till it disap- 
 peared at the turn of the stairs ; taking it as 
 much for granted that he and she would meet 
 on the morrow as he did that the sun would 
 rise and the shadows flee away.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 '' She looks as if another soul had taken pos- 
 session of her body." 
 
 Lois' s word flashed into Herrick's mind as 
 he entered the corridor leading to his grand- 
 father's quarters, and found Lady Joan stand- 
 ing on the threshold of his father's room, with 
 a look on her face he had never seen there 
 before. 
 
 In view of the coming night-watch, she had 
 exchanged her tight-fitting dress for some 
 long, dark, clinging robe ; round her head and 
 shoulders she had wrapped a grey shawl of 
 light texture ; from beneath this her eyes 
 looked out at him, large and glittering, with a 
 strange light in them. A prophetess of old
 
 A RED SISTER. 175 
 
 time, a daughter of Jerusalem sitting beside 
 the waters of Babylon, and gathering herself 
 together to pronounce a curse upon the race 
 which had conquered and enslaved her Father- 
 land, might have had much such a look shining 
 out of her eyes and settling in rigid lines 
 about her mouth. 
 
 '' I have been waiting — waiting here to 
 speak to you, Herrick," she said, and her voice 
 sounded to him hard and unnatural, ^'to make 
 arrangements for the night. The quieter these 
 rooms are kept during the night hours, the 
 better for the invalids. Dr. Scott I have 
 already dismissed " 
 
 '' Dr. Scott dismissed ! " interrupted Herrick, 
 astonished beyond measure. ^' Why, he is the 
 one we may need most of all ! " 
 
 "You need not doubt my capacity for 
 managing the routine of a sickroom. Dr. Scott 
 himself told me that there was scarcely a likeli-
 
 176 A RED SISTER. 
 
 hood of any change taking place in your father's 
 condition before the morning ; so I suggested 
 to him that he should take his rest during the 
 early part of the night, and I have promised to 
 have him called at daybreak. I have had a 
 mattress placed for him in one of the sitting- 
 rooms — the first at the farther end of the cor- 
 ridor, so that in case of need he can be easily 
 aroused." 
 
 ^^It seems to me," said Herrick, steadily 
 eyeing his mother, ^^ that if rest is to be thought 
 of to-night for any one, it should be for 
 you " 
 
 ^' My place is here," interrupted Lady Joan, 
 with great decision ; ^^ no one can fill it, no one 
 shall fill it." 
 
 She added the last words excitedly, and 
 Herrick, knowing at what terrible tension his 
 mother's nerves must be held at that moment, 
 forebore to press the point farther.
 
 A RED SISTER. 177 
 
 ^^ Of course, you will have Parsons and 
 Jervis '' — the newly-engaged nurse — '-' in at- 
 tendance," he said. '''• And I will remain in 
 the dressing-room, and will be in and out both 
 rooms all night. But still " 
 
 ^^Ibeg you will do nothing of the sort," 
 interrupted Lady Joan — Herrick would have 
 thought angrily, if anger at such a time had 
 seemed to him possible— ^^ you would be greatly 
 in the way in the dressing-room ; it is re- 
 quired by the nurses for all sorts of purposes. 
 These rooms must be kept in perfect quiet. 
 It would be far wiser if you followed Dr. 
 Scott's example, and went to rest during 
 the early part of the night." 
 
 '^ I — rest I with my father lying at death's 
 door ! " was all that Herrick said in reply, but 
 the tone in which he spoke showed that he had 
 not by a long way attained the perfect control 
 over his feelings which his mother exhibited. 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 A RED SISTER. 
 
 ^- Why not ? " she asked. "• Two such sick- 
 rooms as these cannot possibly require the at- 
 tendance of more than three women. The 
 nursing duties are next to nothing ! " 
 
 It was only too true — the nursing duties were 
 *' next to nothing." The administration of 
 an opiate, the renew^al of bandages steeped in 
 aconite, was all that could be required of nurse 
 or doctor in John Gaskell's sick-room. 
 
 In old Mr. Gaskell's room the duties required 
 of the nurse were scarcely heavier. !N'ourish- 
 ment or a stimulant of some sort had to be 
 administered hourly to the feeble and tract- 
 able invalid, but beyond this nothing could be 
 done. 
 
 Herrick laid his hand on his mother's 
 arm. 
 
 '' Mother say no more," he said gently, but 
 with a decision as great as her own. '' ^o 
 living soul could keep me away from my father
 
 A RED SISTER. 179 
 
 to-niglit, SO pray give up the attempt. I will 
 fall in with any routine you may think best for 
 the night-watch ; but here I am, and here I 
 shall remain until " 
 
 Again he broke off. 
 
 It was unintentional that he spoke as if 
 his mother had, with deliberate purpose, done 
 her utmost to keep him from his father's bed- 
 side. 
 
 Lady Joan looked at him for a moment. 
 
 '' The Gaskell strong will again," was the 
 thought in her heart. Aloud she said : 
 
 " If your mind is made up, I waste time in 
 endeavouring to alter it. As I have already 
 told you, I wish both sick-rooms kept in perfect 
 quiet ; divergence of routine in your grand- 
 father's room, Dr. Scott tells me, will have a 
 bad effect on him, and it will be best for him 
 to be left till morning entirely to the care of 
 Parsons, who knows his requirements. In this
 
 ISO A RED SISTER. 
 
 room as I have already told you, your presence 
 can scarcely be needed. If you choose to sit 
 up, therefore, I should prefer your remaining in 
 the room opening off this on the other side — 
 the billiard room, that is." 
 
 This then was the arrangement of the suite 
 of seven rooms on that memorable night. Dr. 
 Scott, with his mattress, occupied the first of 
 the suite — the one at the extreme end of the 
 corridor. Herrick, in compliance with Lady 
 Joan's wish, took possession of the second — ^his 
 grandfather's billiard-room. John Gaskell, 
 attended by his wife and Jervis the nurse, lay 
 in the third. The fourth room, old Mr. Gas- 
 kell' s dressing room, which intervened between 
 the two sick-rooms, was left empty for the use 
 of the nurses, also in compliance with Lady 
 Joan's wish. In the fifth room lay old Mr. 
 Gaskell. Two sitting-rooms followed in suc- 
 cession, both untenanted. Each of these rooms.
 
 A RED SISTER. 181 
 
 in addition to the doors by which they commu- 
 nicated with each other, owned to a third door 
 opening direct into the corridor. This corridor 
 communicated at one end with the big inner hall 
 of the house, and at the other led by a staircase 
 to the upper floor.
 
 CHAPTEE XVII. 
 
 Herkick placed a chair for himself just within 
 the billiard-room, leaving the door ajar, so that 
 the slightest sound in the sick-room could be 
 heard by him. 
 
 He leaned back in his chair, a prey to the 
 sad thoughts which his familiar surroundings 
 summoned forth with relentless hand. What 
 pleasant games of billiards he and his father had 
 enjoyed at that table in the after-dinner-hour, 
 while the old grandfather looking on, gave 
 canny counsel, now to one side, now to the 
 other. Great Heavens ! how long ago it seemed 
 now ! He could have fancied that years, not 
 days, had elapsed since he last heard the old 
 man say in his thin, quavering voice, '^ Play
 
 A RED SISTER. 183 
 
 with caiitioiij laddie, one chance missed gives 
 two to your adversary " ; or listened to his 
 father's hearty tones saying, '^ Bravo, Herrick, 
 I never made a better break than that at my 
 best." 
 
 A passionate longing rose up in his heart, 
 there and then to look once more on those loved 
 faces ; to touch once again those kindly hands, 
 while yet the warmth of life remained to them. 
 He repressed it with the thought of his mother's 
 evident wish that he should keep away from the 
 sick-rooms during the night. It was a strange 
 wish on her part no doubt ; but still, as it was 
 her wish, he felt bound to respect it. As before 
 in the day, so now he resolved that his mother 
 should not be called upon through him to bear 
 any — the slightest — additional heart-ache to 
 those she now suffered. "After all," his 
 thoughts ran, " for all practical purposes he was 
 as near his father one side of the door as the
 
 184 A RED SISTER. 
 
 other." It might be that the solution to his 
 mother's apparently inexplicable conduct lay 
 in the fact that a sudden mood of jealous love 
 had taken possession of her ; and she wished no 
 living soul to share with her the last watch 
 beside her dying husband. Second thoughts 
 however refused to be satisfied with so simple 
 an explanation. As long as he could re- 
 member his father and mother had always 
 seemed on a fairly amicable and friendly 
 footing towards each other; but of love of 
 the sort that breeds jealousy, there had not 
 been a jot. 
 
 With his mother thus in the foreground of 
 his thoughts, other things in her conduct that 
 day struck as it were uncomfortable key-notes. 
 It was strange that Lois' s child-like instincts 
 had appeared to meet the old grandfather's at 
 this point, and that both should shrink from 
 Lady Joan as if — well as if she were unfit
 
 A RED SISTER. 185 
 
 for the onerous duties which had thus 
 suddenly devolved upon her. 
 
 " Well, what wonder ! " he thought, '' if she 
 were unfit for such duties. What wonder 
 if she had strangely altered during the past 
 twenty-four hours ; he himself had felt older 
 by at least a dozen years, and her frame, her 
 brain were not to be compared with his in youth 
 and strength — ah ! " 
 
 Herrick's thoughts here broke off abruptly 
 as a sudden ugly suspicion crossed his mind. 
 What if the true solution of the mystery was to 
 be found in the fact that her brain had not been 
 strong enough to bear the terrible strain put 
 upon it that day, and that her reason even now 
 tottered in the balance ! 
 
 Ugly as the suspicion was, Herrick forced 
 himself to look it in the face. 
 
 And the longer he looked at it the more likely 
 it seemed to grow. It gave a show of reason
 
 186 A RED SISTER. 
 
 alike to Lois's and the old grandfather's name- 
 less terrors. They had noted a change in Lady 
 Joan which his pre-occupied mind had debarred 
 him from perceiving, and had shrunk from her 
 in a manner unintelligible to themselves. 
 
 Herrick, still leaning back in his chair, 
 covered his eyes with one hand ; this, not to 
 shut out the terrible embodiment which his 
 fears had thus suddenly assumed, but the better 
 to answer the practical question: ''What 
 could he do for the best ? How was he to 
 meet this unexpected emergency ? " 
 
 One thing speedily made itself plain to 
 him : his mother must be watched as much 
 for her own sake as for the sake of those help- 
 less ones left in her charge. 
 
 '•'• I must keep eyes and ears on the alert 
 to-night," he said to himself. '^ And remem- 
 ber that I am keeping watch not over two, 
 but over three."
 
 A RED SISTER. 187 
 
 It was an appalling thought ; his brain 
 seemed to grow dizzy beneath it. A clock in 
 a corner of the room chimed the hour — one 
 o'clock. From different quarters of the Castle 
 the same hour was repeated, and then, to 
 Herrick's fancy, a great stillness seemed to fall 
 upon the house, a stillness which, combined 
 with the sultriness of the air, seemed to pro- 
 claim that the storm must be almost upon 
 them. Not a leaf stirred in the outside dark- 
 ness, nor so much as a buzzing fly or gnat 
 whirred in the hot air. Herrick, with his 
 hand still covering his eyes, felt oppressed 
 and stifled by the intense silence which, like 
 some heavy pall, seemed to overhang the house. 
 The heat was almost beyond endurance. Was 
 it possible, he wondered, that every one of the 
 windows was open ? He thought he would 
 softly make the round of that suite of rooms, 
 and see if a little more air was not to be had.
 
 188 A RED SISTER. 
 
 Before, however, he could put his resolve 
 into execution, tired nature asserted itself — 
 as well it might, after the heavy strain it had 
 that day been called upon to endure — his 
 head sank back upon the cushions of his high- 
 backed chair, his arm dropped limply to his 
 side, and he fell into a heavy, though uneasy 
 slumber.
 
 CHAPTEE XYIII. 
 
 Lois, on the upper floor, tossing restlessly on 
 her bed, felt, like Herrick, oppressed by the 
 great and sudden stillness which had seemed 
 to fall upon the house. 
 
 ^^ It is the coming of the Angel of Death,'' 
 she said to herself. " All creation sinks into 
 silence before him. Perhaps even now he 
 stands upon the doorstep." And acting as she 
 ever did upon impulses for which she could 
 offer no reason, she sprang from her bed, 
 flung wide her casement, and peered into the 
 outer darkness as if she expected her eyes 
 there and then to be greeted by some strange 
 and awful sight. 
 
 Lady Joan, keeping her drear night-
 
 190 A RED SISTER. 
 
 watch in the room below, was likewise con- 
 scious of the sudden lull which seemed to 
 have fallen upon creation, and which seemed 
 something other than the herald of an ap- 
 proaching storm. As she sat there, a mute 
 watcher beside the dying man, with eyes 
 fixed, strange to say, not upon his pain- 
 stricken features, but upon a small table at 
 the foot of the bed, the thoughts of her heart 
 seemed in that intense stillness to speak as 
 with living voice to her : 
 
 ^' Southmoor to be sold ! Only that feeble 
 useless life in the other room between you 
 and wealth that would buy Southmoor thrice 
 over ! Thirty years of bondage for nothing ! 
 And there in that little bottle on that table 
 is aconite enough to end that feeble life a 
 dozen times over." 
 
 This was about the pith of those thoughts 
 which, with ceaseless iteration, had rung in
 
 A RED SISTER. 191 
 
 her ears, and which now seemed to be, as it 
 were, proclaiming themselves from a housetop. 
 
 That hard-featured Yorkshire woman with 
 a handkerchief tied over her head, who sat 
 like a wooden piece of furniture in a farther 
 corner, must surely hear them, and would 
 presently start up and put that bottle under 
 lock and key. John, too, as he lay so white 
 and still, possibly caught the gist of them in 
 some troubled dream ; and that was why ever 
 and anon his breathing grew so painful and 
 laboured. Herrick, even, in the other room, 
 must be conscious of what was making such 
 a racket in her brain, and would presently 
 rush in and call her a ah ! 
 
 Lady Joan, with a start, put her hands over 
 her ears. "Would to Heaven the storm would 
 break, the thunder crash over the house, and 
 put to flight this awful stillness ! It seemed 
 to her as if all creation had suddenly ceased
 
 192 A RED SISTER. 
 
 its own work on purpose to spy in upon her 
 at hers. 
 
 This was a terror for which she had not 
 bargained when she had made ont her pro- 
 gramme for the night. 
 
 She rose unsteadily to her feet. She felt 
 she must break the spell of that terrible still- 
 ness, or else succumb to it utterly. A word 
 with Herrick in the next room might put all 
 her weird fancies to flight. Why was he, too, 
 so still and silent in there ? How was it that 
 never a sound of movement came from the 
 other side of the door ? 
 
 As she pushed open that door her question 
 was answered. There sat Herrick, leaning 
 back in his chair, locked in sleep. He looked 
 pale and worn ; his brow was knotted into a 
 deep frown. Most mothers, looking down thus 
 on a sleeping son, would have yearned to kiss 
 the sad young face.
 
 A RED SISTER, 19 
 
 o 
 
 ''My boy! my boy ! Would to Heaven I 
 alone could bear this sorrow!" would have 
 been the cry of most mothers' hearts. Not so 
 Lady Joan. Her thoughts flowed in another 
 current. She took his measure, so to speak, 
 and appraised him as calmly as if he were an 
 utter stranger. How like to her own people 
 he looked, with his handsome, clean-cut fea- 
 tures, and dark-brown wavy hair ! Why, 
 there were at least a dozen Herricks to be 
 found in the picture gallery at Southmoor ; 
 some in Elizabethan, some in Cavalier, and 
 others in Jacobean dress. "What in life could 
 be more suitable than that he should marry a 
 daughter of her house and settle down at 
 Southmoor as a representative of the race ? 
 What in life would have been more likely 
 to come about if he could have been earlier 
 separated from the baleful bourgeois influence 
 of the old grandfather who, even in his dying 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 A RED SISTER. 
 
 hour, was bent on encouraging the young 
 man's infatuated passion for a girl of no 
 birth and breeding ? 
 
 Here a sudden change of expression swept 
 over Lady Joan's face; for the light of the 
 one lamp which hung above Herrick's head 
 was caught and refracted by a half hoop of 
 diamonds and rubies on his finger exactly 
 similar to one she had noted upon Lois 
 White's hand as it had rested in old Mr. 
 Gaskell's clasp. 
 
 Her lips tightened. 
 
 "What would be the end of all this, if she 
 were to remain quiescent and inactive in this 
 crisis of his life and her own ? Kow, sup- 
 posing she were to go to him — not to-day nor 
 to-morrow, but at some future time — and say : 
 *' Herrick, Southmoor is to be sold." Would 
 he at once exclaim ; '^ Mother, let us give up 
 this odiously new place and detestable pic-
 
 A RED SISTER. 195 
 
 beian trade, buy the old acres, and settle 
 doTvn in your own county among your own 
 people!" No, a thousand times no ! Would 
 he not be much more likely to say, as his 
 father and grandfather had before him ; ^' it 
 would be Quixotic to invest money in such a 
 non-paying concern." 
 
 Lady Joan turned sharply away. Instead, 
 however, of going back direct to her hus- 
 band's room, she went out by another door, 
 and along the corridor towards old Mr. 
 Gashell's room. 
 
 And if one passing along that corridor had 
 chanced to meet her in her clinging grey 
 draperies, he would not have needed to say ; 
 '^ Who is this approaching with weird white 
 face and gleaming eyes ? " but would rather 
 have exclaimed ; '' Where is her knife hidden ? 
 Why, here is Atropos herself I " 
 
 Whether embodied or otherwise, Fate
 
 196 A RED SISTER, 
 
 assuredly must have been abroad in the Castle 
 tbat night. For there was Lois overhead 
 flinging wide her casement and peering out 
 into the dark, silent world for some invisible 
 nameless terror ; there had been Herrick say- 
 ing to himself over and over again : *^ I must 
 keep watch to-night not over two, but over 
 three ; " and yet Lady Joan, with steady, silent 
 footsteps, went her way without let or hin- 
 drance to old Mr. GaskelPs room. 
 
 Parsons lifted her head as Lady Joan entered 
 and rubbed her eyes, for the old body had 
 been indulging in a quiet nap in her easy- 
 chair between the intervals of her attendance 
 upon her patient. 
 
 She made a little stumble and a rush towards 
 the table on which stood cups and glasses con- 
 taining beef-tea, eggs and milk, or other nutri- 
 tive food. 
 
 Lady Joan laid her hand upon her arm.
 
 A RED SISTER. 197 
 
 ^^Wait a moment, don't disturb liim. I 
 want you to go downstairs for me — give him 
 that when you come back. What is it ? " 
 
 ^' Beef-tea, my lady ! Downstairs, my lady ? 
 It won't keep me away from the sick-room 
 long, will it, my lady ? For Dr. Scott he did 
 say to me the last thing, my lady, ^Parsons,' 
 he said, ^ everything depends on you to-night 
 — give the food and medicine regularly, 
 and ' " 
 
 '' It won't keep you five minutes out of the 
 sick-room ; and I will stay here till you re- 
 turn. There is a storm coming, as perhaps 
 you know." 
 
 *^ Yes, my lady." 
 
 "Very well. Mr. Herrick's dog, Argus, 
 has no doubt as usual been left by him in the 
 outer hall ; the dog has a terror of thunder- 
 storms, and with the first peal will begin to 
 howl so terribly we shall hear him here. I
 
 198 A RED SISTER. 
 
 want you to take him down to the servants' 
 hall at the other side of the house, and shut 
 him in for the remainder of the night. Stay 
 a moment ! Jervis can go with you if you are 
 afraid to go about the house alone in the 
 middle of the night. I would ask Mr. Herrick 
 to do this, but he has fallen asleep in the 
 other room, and I do not like to disturb him." 
 
 As Parsons and the other nurse departed 
 in company, Lady Joan, softly looking in upon 
 Herrick, saw that he still soundly slept. 
 
 After this her movements became hurried 
 and nervous; one look she gave to her still 
 unconscious husband. Was it her fancy, or 
 was his breathing growing fainter and less 
 regular than it had been before ? She took 
 possession of the small phial of aconite which 
 stood on the bedside table, and made her way 
 once more to old Mr. Gaskell's room ; this 
 time passing, not by way of the corridor, but
 
 A RED SISTER, 199 
 
 through the intermediate room. Time was 
 precious; three minutes it would take those 
 two women to reach the outer hall, ten 
 minutes must be allowed to their slow middle- 
 aged movements for reaching the servants' 
 hall on the other side of the house, fastening 
 in the dog, and returning to their post. But 
 no more; it would be rash to allow even a 
 half minute more than this. 
 
 She approached the bedside of the old man 
 slowly, stealthily. Mute, motionless, helpless 
 he lay ; his faint, hurried breathing much the 
 same as that of a tired child sinking to sleep 
 after a day of play which has over-taxed his 
 strength. His head and shoulders were 
 propped high on his pillows, his face showed 
 grey and sunken against the white linen ; his 
 silvery hair, pushed back from his brow, left 
 every wrinkle bare to view. The contour of 
 his head was noble and impressive, and was
 
 200 A RED SISTER. 
 
 thrown into bold relief by the purple satin 
 curtains which canopied the bed, and the 
 purple satin quilt which covered it. Lady 
 Joan could easily have persuaded herself that 
 she was looking down on some dead king 
 lying in state ; so regal and motionless the old 
 man looked amid his costly surroundings. 
 
 She took the cup of beef-tea which Par- 
 sons had placed ready for her patient, and 
 with the phial of aconite in her other hand, 
 went into the room which intervened between 
 the rooms of the two invalids. 
 
 This intermediate room was lighted only by 
 a single lamp, turned low. Lady Joan with 
 her cup and phial, stood beneath it. Her 
 hand was perfectly steady now; every nerve 
 in it seemed made of steel. 
 
 Yet that terrible stillness around, here, 
 there, everywhere ! Not so much as a ticking 
 clock within, nor '' lisp of leaves " without
 
 A RED SISTER. 201 
 
 to drown the clamour of her own thoughts, 
 which once more seemed to cry aloud to her. 
 
 "Now or never, Joan,'' those thoughts 
 seemed to say now. "Wait till the morning, 
 and your chance is gone ! Strike for your 
 freedom, Joan ; shake off your manacles ! 
 Why should you serve thii'ty years in bond- 
 age for nothing?" 
 
 One, two, three drops of the poison fell into 
 the cup. 
 
 Hush! What was that? For a moment 
 her hand paused, and her heart seemed to 
 stand still. She looked hastily round. Ah ! 
 it was only the big yellow rose in a jar on a 
 side-table falling to pieces. But her nerves 
 had been shaken; her hand trembled; and 
 now the poison drops fell uncounted into the 
 cup. 
 
 Hush ! Another sound. The door open- 
 ing, was it ? Once more Lady Joan looked
 
 202 A RED SISTER. 
 
 round with terror in her eyes. Assuredly the 
 door of the room — the door that opened into 
 the corridor — had been softly opened, and 
 softly, hurriedly closed again. 
 
 She set down her phial and cup, and went 
 out hastily into the corridor. It could not be 
 the nurses returned already, she thought, as 
 she strained her eyes right and left along the 
 long, dark passage. In view of possible emer- 
 gency, this passage had been left dimly lighted 
 at one end, the end at which she stood. Amid 
 the deepening shadows at the farther end she 
 thought she saw a fluttering white skirt dis- 
 appearing round the bend of the staircase. 
 
 Lady Joan's thoughts flew to Lucy Har- 
 wood and her somnambulistic tendencies. ISTo 
 doubt to-night, as on the previous night, the 
 girl had come down the staircase and gone 
 along the corridor, feeling her way, and look- 
 ing for the person or thing whereon her mind
 
 - A RED SISTER. 203 
 
 was set. Most likely the touch on the cold 
 door-handle had thrilled and awakened her, 
 and she had hastily fled, fearing to encounter 
 Lady Joan's anger. 
 
 "She must be taken in hand to-morrow," 
 said Lady Joan, setting her lips tightly to- 
 gether. " In the dim light, and in her half- 
 sleeping state, she can have seen nothing 
 defiDite." 
 
 Moments were getting precious now. Lady 
 Joan swiftly and softly went back to her phial 
 and cup of beef- tea; the one she replaced on 
 the bedside table, the other she carried 
 straight to old Mr. Gaskell's room. She 
 paused for an instant in the doorway to ascer- 
 tain if his slumber were still unbroken. Then, 
 swiftly and softly still, she approached his 
 bedside. With one hand she covered her 
 eyes, with the other she set down the cup of 
 beef-tea on the small table.
 
 204 A RED SISTER, 
 
 One wistful, pathetic look from those blue 
 eyes, which recalled at times so vividly the 
 look in another pair of dying eyes, and she 
 felt that her dread purpose might remain un- 
 fulfilled.
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 Two o'clock struck in succession softly and 
 sonorously, or briskly and blithely, from a 
 variety of clocks in different parts of the 
 Castle. 
 
 Herrick, with a start, awoke and jumped 
 from his chair. All his fears, anxieties, and 
 forebodings came back upon him in a rush. 
 He had been sleeping for an hour ! What 
 might not have happened in that hour ! He 
 went at once and hastily into the adjoining 
 room. 
 
 The nurse came forward to meet him. 
 
 *' I was about to call you, sir," she said. 
 ^^I fear Lady Joan's strength is giving way; 
 and I fear, too, a change has taken place in 
 your father."
 
 206 A RED SISTER. 
 
 ^'Go, call Dr. Scott immediately," was 
 Herrick's reply; and then he went to his 
 father's side and took his hand in his. 
 
 Yes, the pulse beat more feebly now ; a 
 slight change, a more rigid look, had come 
 into the grey, drawn face. His breathing, 
 however, was as before — hard and laboured. 
 
 Lady Joan, at the foot of the bed, seemed 
 clinging, as if for support, to the brass rail. 
 
 Herrick poured out a glass of wine and took 
 it to her. 
 
 '' Drink this, mother, or your strength will 
 altogether give way," he said. 
 
 Her face appeared to him strangely flushed ; 
 her eyes shone with an unnatural light. She 
 drank the wine — eagerly, it seemed to him — 
 and as she gave him back the glass he could 
 see that she was trembling from head to foot, 
 and that the support of the foot-rail of the 
 bed was a necessity to her.
 
 A RED SISTER. 207 
 
 At that moment his attention was diverted 
 from Lady Joan by a sudden, nneasy move- 
 ment of his father's arm which lay upon the 
 coverlet. His hard, laboured breathing, also,- 
 suddenly ceased ; his eyes opened wide, and 
 fixed, with an odd, startled look in them, on 
 the door which led through the ante-room to 
 old Mr. Gaskell's room. Slowly, slowly, his 
 eyes, still with the odd, startled look in them, 
 moved, as if following the motion of some one 
 walking from that door towards the other end 
 of the room. 
 
 Lady Joan, standing still at the foot of the 
 bed, seized Herrick's arm in a state of nervous 
 terror. 
 
 Clear, slow, and stern, at that moment came 
 John GaskelPs voice from the bed. 
 
 ^' Stand back Joan," he said, '^ and let my 
 father pass." 
 
 At the same instant the door of old Mr.
 
 208 A RED SISTER. 
 
 GaskelPs room opened, and Parsons, looking 
 white and flurried, came in. 
 
 " Oh, my lady," she whispered, in a quak- 
 ing voice, " Mr. Gaskell has just breathed his 
 last. I went to his side a moment ago, and 
 saw that he was sinking rapidly. I had not 
 time to call you or Mr. Herrick before he was 
 gone." 
 
 Lady Joan made a strange acknowledg- 
 ment of the sad tidings. She still trembled 
 from head to foot ; her hands, clay cold, still 
 clutched at Herrick' s arm ; but she contrived 
 to control her voice sufficiently to say : 
 
 "Let there be no mistake. Parsons. At 
 once write down the exact hour and minute at 
 which Mr. Gaskell died."
 
 CHAPTEE XX. 
 
 The storm which had so long threatened broke 
 before day dawned ; thunder, lightning, hail, 
 and rain came in one terrific outburst. The 
 sky had the whole of the grandeur and beauty 
 of the storm to itself; for in this low- lying 
 country there were no sharp-peaked mountains 
 to rip open the packed clouds and make them 
 discharge their cargoes of fire, nor amphi- 
 theatre of hills to throw back an echo to the 
 loud-voiced thunder. 
 
 The racket of the storm set the household 
 at the Castle stirring at an early hour. The 
 first crash of thunder sent Lois down on her 
 knees praying for all poor souls in danger or 
 distress; and there she remained, with hands 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 210 A RED SISTER. 
 
 covering her face, until the last peal had 
 growled itself out in the far distance where 
 daylight was faintly breaking. 
 
 There were two sleepers in the Castle that 
 night, however, for whom it mattered little 
 whether the thunder growled high or growled 
 low — John Gaskell and his aged father. 
 
 After those brief, stern words addressed to 
 his wife, John Gaskell never spoke again, and 
 within two hours from the time at which his 
 father had died he breathed his last. 
 
 Lois, coming downstairs, dressed ready to 
 set off for Summerhill, had the sad news told 
 her by Lucy Harwood, who chanced to be 
 crossing the corridor at the moment. 
 
 A door on her right hand suddenly opening, 
 led her to hope that her eager longing to clasp 
 Herrick's hand, to look up in Herrick's face 
 with eyes that spoke their sympathy, was to 
 be gratified. She turned hastily round, and
 
 A RED SISTER. 211 
 
 her heart fell, for not Herrick, but Lady Joan 
 stood before her. 
 
 ;N'o pale, heavy-eyed watcher this, such as 
 one might expect to see issue forth from a 
 chamber of death, but a woman with bright, 
 tearless eyes, hard-set mouth, and two brilliant 
 spots of red on either cheek. 
 
 She closed the door behind her with a steady 
 hand. The room she had just quitted was old 
 Mr. Gaskell's room; she had nerved herself 
 to pass through it on her way to the corridor, 
 without so much as turning her head away 
 from the white-swathed form lying still and 
 silent beneath the purple- curtained bed. 
 
 Thirty years ago Lady Joan, as she had 
 heard the door close behind Yaughan Elliot, 
 had said to herself, "' That man must go at 
 once and for ever out of my life." Now as 
 she closed this door behind her, the same 
 words were in her heart. '^What is past is
 
 212 A RED SISTER. 
 
 past," she said to herself. *' This man must 
 go as utterly out of my life as that other 
 did." 
 
 But the remorselessness of the tearing, 
 ravening beast of prey is not attained by the 
 human animal without cost. Lois, as she 
 looked at the hectic spots on either cheek, and 
 noted the feverish, dancing eyes, said to her- 
 self: 
 
 ^^ She will break down before night. Ah, 
 if only I could be a help and comfort to 
 Herrick's mother ! " 
 
 Lady Joan's first words were addressed to 
 Lucy, not Lois. 
 
 ^' You are up singularly early — how is this? " 
 was all that she said; but the voice which 
 spoke the words had a ring of iron in it. 
 
 Both the girls shrank from her instinctively. 
 Lucy looked confused and frightened. 
 
 Lady Joan repeated her question, fixing
 
 A RED SISTER. 
 
 213 
 
 what seemed to Lois a hard, scrutinising look 
 
 upon the girPs face. 
 
 ''I had bad dreams, my lady— I could not 
 
 sleep," answered Lucy, '^and so I thought it 
 
 better to get up, and come down." 
 
 ^' Quite so. I shall have something to say 
 
 to you presently about those bad dreams of 
 
 yours. Go into my boudoir, I will speak to 
 
 you there." 
 
 Lucy hurriedly departed. Then Lady Joan 
 addressed Lois : '^I see you are ready to go. I 
 will give orders for one of the grooms to drive 
 you to Summerhill. No doubt you have well 
 thought over the conversation I had with you 
 yesterday, and have come to the conclusion 
 that the course I advised was the right one." 
 
 " Come to the conclusion! " She might as 
 well have asked a rain-cloud, with a hurricane 
 blowing, if it had come to a conclusion whether 
 it would travel east or west, as ask this poor
 
 214 A RED SISTER. 
 
 child with her heart counselling one thing, and 
 her conscience another if she had come to any 
 conclusion on the matter. 
 
 Words did not come easily to her, so Lady 
 Joan resumed : 
 
 ^' In the course of the day I will send you 
 a cheque that will amply provide for your 
 travelling and other expenses. America I 
 think you said was likely to be your destina- 
 tion. Of course you will lose no time in 
 leaving Summorhill, and I would farther sug- 
 gest that your letter to my son, breaking off 
 your engagement — that is if one has ever 
 existed — should not be written until after your 
 departure." 
 
 Lois looked all around her helplessly. Where 
 was Herrick? How was it that Lady Joan 
 dared speak in this way, as if Herrick were 
 miles away, instead of under the same roof, 
 and perhaps not twenty yards distant ?
 
 A RED SISTER. 215 
 
 But Lady Joan kne^ well eROugh where 
 Herrick was — kneeling in a stupor of grief 
 beside his dead father, with his warm young 
 hand clasping the clay-cold one, as he had 
 clasped it in the moment of death. 
 
 Again she waited for Lois to speak; but as 
 never a word escaped the girl's lips, she went 
 on once more : 
 
 ''Any details on this matter which may em- 
 barrass or trouble you, I shall be very pleased 
 to arrange for you ; but I would suggest that 
 all our communications should be by letter — 
 to any letters you may send me I will promptly 
 reply.'^ 
 
 Lois gave another hurried look around her. 
 With all those doors in sight, Avas there no 
 hope of any one of them opening, and Herrick 
 coming forth ? 
 
 Her eyes drooped beneath Lady Joan's fixed 
 gaze, and she said, timidly, '' Before I go this
 
 216 A RED SISTER. 
 
 morning, may I say good-bye to old Mr. 
 Gaskell? Herrick promised me last night 
 that I should do so." 
 
 A peculiar expression passed over Lady 
 Joan's face. *^He was too free with his 
 promises," she said, coldly. ^^ 'Old Mr. GaskelP 
 is dead." 
 
 '^ Dead ! " repeated Lois, blankly. Her eyes 
 grew round and startled. She staggered 
 against the wall of the corridor as if her limbs 
 had suddenly failed her and she needed 
 support. 
 
 Lady Joan frowned. 
 
 ''There is nothing surprising in the fact, I 
 suppose. Will you be good enough to tell 
 me what there is in it to affect you so 
 strangely ? " 
 
 Eut Lois only grew white and whiter, and 
 kept repeating, with her large startled eyes 
 fixed on Lady Joan's face :
 
 A RED SISTER, 217 
 
 ^^Dead! dead!" 
 
 Lady Joan lost patience. 
 
 *^ My words are easy enough to understand, 
 I imagine. At any rate, I have neither time 
 nor inclination to repeat them. I will wish 
 you good morning. I suppose you are leaving 
 at once?" 
 
 Lois clasped her hands together impetu- 
 ously. 
 
 *' And you are Herrick's mother ! " she cried 
 in a low, passionate voice. *^ Go ! Yes — I 
 will go ! I will never look upon your face 
 again in this world if I can help it ! " 
 
 Then, with an effort, she seemed to gather 
 her strength together, and, with feet that 
 stumbled as she went, she crossed the corridor 
 and went towards the hall-door. 
 
 It had already opened that morning to admit 
 and despatch messengers in spite of the storm 
 and the early hour, so its heavy bolts were
 
 218 A RED SISTER. 
 
 drawn back, and she could let herself out with- 
 out difficulty. 
 
 Lady Joan for a moment stood watching 
 her. 
 
 "An ill- trained, hysterical young woman," 
 she said to herself. "Madly in love with 
 Herrick, not a doubt! Well, so much the 
 better in one way; it gives me a sort of 
 guarantee that she will not mar his future for 
 him ! '' 
 
 And without so much as a thought of what 
 
 Lois might suffer in the effort " not to mar 
 Herrick's future for him," Lady Joan went on 
 her way to her boudoir, there to question Lucy 
 as to her " bad dreams." 
 
 Outside the deluge of rain had ceased, and 
 only a heavy drizzling mist fought with and 
 quenched the brilliance of the early dawn. 
 
 It was about half-past five when Lois passed 
 through the park-gates and gained the high
 
 A RED SISTER. 219 
 
 road, wliicli ran a very river of mud. Her feet 
 were wet throiigh. before she had gone a 
 quarter of a mile towards Summerliill. She 
 shivered from head to foot, yet her cheeks 
 burned and her eyes glowed and danced as if 
 from fever. Her steps grew swift and swifter, 
 as if a matter of life or death hung upon her 
 speed. Her breath came in quick gasps ; the 
 drizzling, heavy mist seemed to choke her ; all 
 sorts of strange noises were humming and 
 buzzing in her ear, yet on and on she went 
 with ever-increasing speed till she gained the 
 cross-roads which lay between the Catholic 
 church of St. Elizabeth and the private road 
 leading to Summerhill. 
 
 Then, from sheer want of breath, the girl 
 was compelled to pause. So far along her 
 road she had met no one, not even a farm- 
 labourer or gipsy tramp. Now, as she leaned 
 for a moment against a wet, mossy fence, and
 
 220 A RED SISTER, 
 
 tried to think where she was going, what she 
 meant to do, she could distinctly hear the 
 sound of approaching footsteps. 
 
 Something else, besides approaching foot- 
 steps, made itself heard above the rush and 
 murmur of strange sounds in her ear — the 
 tolling of St. Elizabeth's bell. 
 
 She started, and for a moment felt puzzled 
 and bewildered. Then, as her thoughts began 
 to clear themselves, she recollected what 
 Father Elliot had said to her about the early 
 and other services which he intended hold- 
 ing daily. And, lifting her eyes, she saw 
 the Father himself approaching by a lane 
 which led from his cottage straight to his 
 church. He saw and recognised her imme- 
 diately. 
 
 ^' Good morning ! You are an early 
 riser ! " he said, as he crossed the road 
 towards her. Then as her tearful, scared
 
 A RED SISTER. 221 
 
 face caught his eye, he added, in a changed 
 tone : "My child, what is it? What has 
 happened ? Tell me.'' 
 
 Lois clung to his arm. 
 
 " Help me ! help me ! " she cried, piteously. 
 " I want a hiding-place ! "
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 At whatever cost secured, Lady Joan's calm- 
 ness, as she cross-questioned Lucy as to her 
 ^' bad dreams," presented a marked contrast 
 to the manner of the girl, who was flurried 
 and nervous to a degree, and seemed utterly 
 incapable of giving a clear account of her 
 broken rest of over-night. 
 
 '^ I have no recollection whatever what my 
 dreams were, my lady," she reiterated. " In- 
 deed, indeed, they have quite gone out of 
 my mind." 
 
 ^' Do you ever have any recollection of your 
 bad dreams when the morning comes ? " 
 asked Lady Joan, bending a curious look on 
 her.
 
 A RED SISTER. 223 
 
 " Oh, yes, my lady, when I wake up and 
 find myself in a strange place." 
 
 '' Then you are in the habit of walking in 
 your sleep ? " 
 
 The girl grew confused. She had evi- 
 dently been surprised into making this admis- 
 sion. 
 
 " Not in the habit. Oh no, my lady. I 
 have done so once or twice in my life," she 
 said, after a moment's pause. 
 
 '' When did you last walk in your sleep — 
 I mean before you came here ? "pursued Lady 
 Joan. 
 
 '^ About a year ago, my lady." 
 
 '^ Well, and you woke up and found your- 
 self — where ? " 
 
 '^ In the churchyard, my lady," said tlie 
 girl, and her eyelids drooped ; her colour 
 changed again. 
 
 '^ In the churchyard ! Then, of course.
 
 224 A RED SISTER. 
 
 you recollected the dream which had sent 
 yon there ? " 
 
 The girl hung her head lower still. She 
 was evidently too frightened of Lady Joan 
 to refuse to reply, and too truthful to pre- 
 varicate. So she answered, falteringly : "I 
 dreamt I was looking for — for some one's 
 name on a gravestone, and I suppose in my 
 sleep I got up, put on my hat and cloak, and 
 walked to the churchyard — it was the touch 
 of the cold gravestones which woke me.'' 
 
 She nearly broke down as she finished 
 speaking. Lady Joan, however, went on 
 mercilessly as before. 
 
 "And I suppose, when I met you two 
 nights ago in the hall walking and talking in 
 your sleep, you had been dreaming of the 
 same person, and had come down from your 
 room in search of him or her ? " 
 
 " Ye-es, my lady."
 
 A RED SISTER. 225 
 
 ^^Now be so good as to fix your mind 
 steadily for a moment on the thoughts which 
 filled your brain when you went to bed last 
 night, and see if you cannot recall some 
 vestige of those bad dreams which made you 
 get up so unconscionably early this morning ?" 
 
 But the question was a useless one. Lucy's 
 only rejoinder to it was a repetition of her 
 assertion that here her memory failed her alto- 
 gether. 
 
 So Lady Joan resumed her cross-examina- 
 tion at another point. 
 
 ^'Have you ever," she said, still steadily 
 eyeing the girl, ^^ walked in your sleep, and — 
 having no recollection of so doing — been told 
 of it afterwards by some one who had seen 
 you?" 
 
 "Yes, my lady," answered Lucy hesitatingly. 
 " If I wake up in my bed in the morning I 
 have no recollection of what I have done in 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 A RED SISTER. 
 
 the night — I mean, I cannot tell whether I 
 have really done a thing or have only dreamt 
 it" 
 
 ^^ Ah-h.'^ And here Lady Joan drew a long 
 breathj and thought awhile. After all, the 
 danger might be less than she had imagined it 
 to be. Lncy had perhaps opened and shut the 
 dressing-room door in her sleep, and in her 
 sleep had returned to her room and got into 
 bed. It might be this, or it might be that the 
 girl was so accustomed to prevaricate and tell 
 falsehoods as to her somnambulistic propen- 
 sities — about which she appeared to be very 
 sensitive — that she was able to give an air of 
 veracity to her narrative which a less-practised 
 story-teller would have found an impossibility. 
 In any case, it would be as well to keep an 
 eye on the girl for the present, and in a 
 variety of ways at different intervals to test 
 the truth of her narrative.
 
 A RED SISTER. 227 
 
 So, after a few moments of thought, she said 
 in a less stern voice than that in which she had 
 pursued her interrogations : 
 
 ^^ You may go now. Later on I will speak 
 to you again. I think, as I told you before, 
 that you should have medical advice. And I 
 will like to see your — your— I forget, father or 
 brother, was it? " 
 
 '* Brother, my lady." 
 
 *^ Your brother, and speak to him on the 
 matter. Write to him in the course of the 
 day, and tell him I wish him to come here to 
 see me." 
 
 ^^ As the girl withdrew, Herrick's voice was 
 heard outside the door, asking her : 
 
 ^' Is Lady Joan here? " 
 
 The question gave Lady Joan time to with- 
 draw her thoughts from Lucy to the matter 
 on which, without a doubt, Herrick had come 
 to interrogate her.
 
 228 A RED SISTER. 
 
 Most mothers and sons meeting thus within 
 a few hours of the death of husband and 
 father, would have been in each other's arms 
 in a moment, and tears and kisses would have 
 done duty for any amount of spoken sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 Not so this mother and son. Their common 
 sorrow had been no ^^ cord of love " to draw 
 them nearer to each other, but rather a 
 measure that enabled them to gauge the dis- 
 tance they stood apart. When, at the moment 
 of his father's death, Herrick's voice had rung 
 forth its one passionate cry of rebellion against 
 the iron law which made death, not life, the 
 ruler of the Universe, Lady Joan had stood by 
 saying never a word ; and when he had knelt 
 in a stupor of grief, clasping his dead father's 
 hand, she had quietly left the room, bent on 
 her own business and on dismissing from the 
 house the girl he loved.
 
 A RED SISTER. 229 
 
 The young man looked white, dazed, for- 
 lorn as he entered the room. He bent one 
 long, scrutinising look on his mother. The 
 terrible suspicion of her wavering reason 
 which he had found himself compelled to 
 entertain overnight had not yet faded from 
 his mind, and he was in hopes that the morn- 
 ing light might put it to flight. 
 
 Lady Joan's flushed face and brilliant eyes 
 were scarcely reassuring. 
 
 "I thought you had gone to your room to 
 lie down, mother," he said, still prepared to 
 show her any amount of kindness, though 
 tenderness in the circumstances could scarcely 
 be expected of him. 
 
 Then he put the question she was prepared 
 for. 
 
 " Have you seen Lois this morning ? Or is 
 she not stirring yet ? " 
 
 '* Pardon me, Lady Joan. One moment ! "
 
 230 A RED SISTER. 
 
 said Dr. Scott, coming into tlie room in a 
 great hurry, '-'- -vvill you kindly tell me 
 what has become of the aconite and other 
 liniments which were in use in the sick-room 
 overnight ? The nurses seem to know nothing 
 about them." 
 
 '^ I have locked up all the medicines and 
 liniments in my medicine-cupboard," said 
 Lady Joan, calmly ; ^^ I do not like such 
 deadly poisons lying about." 
 
 ^^ Ah, quite so ! Then it is all right," said 
 the doctor, as he withdrew. 
 
 Then Lady Joan turned to Herrick : 
 
 ^' I saw her about half-an-hour ago," she 
 replied, ''just as she was leaving." 
 
 " Leaving ! " exclaimed Herrick, incredu- 
 lously ; ^^ she surely cannot have gone without 
 a word to me ! " 
 
 '^ She seemed in a hurry to get home. She 
 came down with her hat on. I told her I
 
 A RED SISTER. 231 
 
 would give orders for some one to drive her 
 home ; but she evidently preferred walking." 
 "With an exclamation of annoyance, Her- 
 rick turned and left the room. The thing 
 seemed to him easy enough to understand. 
 Lois, in compliance with his wish that she 
 should return to Summerhill that day, had 
 come down stairs prepared to depart ; and, on 
 the look out for him, had been met by Lady 
 Joan. Some cold and formal speech had 
 scared the timid girl, and she had fled precipi- 
 tately. Lady Joan's stately ^^I beg your 
 pardon," had sufficed to put her to flight on a 
 former occasion; most likely some equally 
 trivial speech, spoken with equally frigid 
 emphasis, had done the deed now. "What a 
 nervous, impulsive child she was ! How 
 marvellous it seemed that his mother's heart 
 had not opened towards her, and her strong 
 nature yearned to protect her, as most
 
 232 A RED SISTER. 
 
 strong natures yearn to protect the fragile 
 and weak ! 
 
 Sick at heart, and sick at brain, and though 
 the muscles of his hand almost refused to 
 guide his pen, he nevertheless sat down at 
 once and despatched a few loving lines to 
 Lois — a tender chiding for her hurried flight, 
 a hint of his own weariness and sadness and a 
 promise that, when his week of dreary duties 
 had come to an end, he would at once repair 
 to Summerhill, for he had many things to talk 
 over with her. 
 
 The " many things " to Herrick's mind 
 represented Lois's resignation of her post in 
 Mrs. Ley ton's household, and the selection of 
 a suitable home for her, in the house of some 
 intimate friends of his own, until the wedding- 
 day could be definitely fixed. 
 
 He did not expect a reply to this letter ; 
 for as yet he and Lois had not fallen into the
 
 A RED SISTER. 233 
 
 habit — so dear to lovers — of making trifles an 
 excuse for correspondence. 
 
 Before nightfall his vexation at Lois' s 
 abrupt departure had to give way to other 
 and more pressing claims upon his time and 
 thought ; for Lady Joan had broken down 
 utterly, and the arrangement of all matters, 
 small and great, devolved upon him. Lady 
 Joan was found by her maid lying upon her 
 bed in a high state of fever, and half uncon- 
 scious. Before evening delirium set in. Upon 
 which, Parsons, the faithful old creature that 
 she was, at once took possession of the sick- 
 room, carefully keeping every one, except Dr. 
 Scott, on the other side of the door. 
 
 ^^ Poor soul, poor soul," said the doctor 
 next morning to the old nurse. '^ It's only 
 what one might expect. I suppose, last 
 night, Parsons, she raved incessantly about 
 her dead husband ? '*
 
 234 A RED SISTER. 
 
 ^' My lady's ravings," answered the discreet 
 Parsons, ^^ were mostly incoherent ; and when 
 she did say a word I could understand, it was 
 not worth remembering.'' 
 
 And the shrewd look which she gave the 
 doctor as she said this, might have been under- 
 stood to mean : 
 
 ^^ I know my place, Dr. Scott, and I know 
 yours ; and I don't intend to make my lady 
 the talk of the town in order to gratify your 
 curiosity." 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 PRINTED BY J. S. VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITV ROAD, LONDON,