L IB^ARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVLRS ITY 
 
 Of ILLI NOIS
 
 8-*" 
 
 ^ 
 
 f
 
 THE SISTERS LAWLESS, 
 
 31 £Lotel 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES.
 
 THE SISTERS LAWLESS 
 
 & fiabzl 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF "ROSA NOEL. 
 
 ' For in every breast that liveth 
 Is that strange mysterious door;- 
 The forsaken and betangled, 
 Ivy-gnarled and vveed-bejangled, 
 Dusty, rusty, and forgotten." . . 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON • 
 
 RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON 
 
 1874. 
 
 [All Rights Reserved:]
 
 #£3 
 
 THE SISTERS LAWLESS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FATHER AND SONS. 
 
 [TTLE Mrs. Lawless had an idea 
 that it sounded more loving 
 to call her relations something 
 which ended in ,"ie," than to give them 
 their full first names. So her sister 
 Rosalind changed into Rosie, her brother 
 Elphinstone became Elphie, and after she 
 married, her husband, Francis, never got 
 his real name from her, but was Frank or 
 Frankie ; appellations peculiarly unsuited 
 to him, since he was dark, and rather 
 sinister looking. 
 
 Her first-born having been christened 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 Bertrand, Mrs. Lawless naturally called 
 him Bertie ; and from her pink lips the fine 
 name of the second son, Adrian, dwindled 
 into the paltry and comic diminutive, Adie. 
 For a third son, several years younger 
 than Adrian, poor little Mrs. Lawless had 
 not time to fix on a pet name, for she died 
 soon after he was born. Fox he was 
 christened, and Fox he was called to his 
 last day. Of course, if his poor, pretty 
 mother had lived, he would have been 
 Foxey. 
 
 Between his first day and his last, he 
 was sorely chastened, for he was lame, 
 hopelessly lame, and with the sensitive, ex- 
 acting, quick-perceiving, shrewdly-judging 
 mental condition that one frequently finds 
 in the crippled, or in those whom Provi- 
 dence has seen fit to deprive of one pain 
 and delight giving sense. 
 
 Fox was a pretty fellow ; hazel-eyed, 
 and chestnut-haired, with hands white and 
 slender as a woman's. His teeth sparkled 
 from under the sweetest, most curling 
 upper lip in the world, when he spoke,
 
 F.ilhzr and Sons. 
 
 while his brown eyes had the perplexed 
 and troubled gravity of one who has never 
 tasted the bright realities of youth. 
 
 Weak and delicate, doomed never to 
 run and leap, nor to bestride man's beauti- 
 ful four-footed servant, nor to enjoy any of 
 boyhood's active, joyous games, Fox 
 Lawless, probably, derived as much satis- 
 faction from life, in the long run, as did his 
 two stalwart elder brothers, to whom, in 
 the matter of description, precedence 
 should properly have been given, for it is 
 with them that our story has mostly to do. 
 
 Bertie, the eldest, verges on eight and 
 twenty ; he is Adrian modified and em- 
 bellished. Shorter, slighter, fairer, with 
 deep, gray eyes, and hair that is pure, un- 
 gilded brown; he is slender, agile, deft 
 with his hands, light on his feet, the 
 treasure of his cricket club, the gem of foot- 
 ball players at Harrow, when he was a 
 few years younger. See him on his little 
 yacht, and you would say that he was born 
 to be a sailor ; watch him bestride his 
 horse, and gallantly ride as the crow flies 
 
 i — 2
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 and you would vow that pity 'twas Fate 
 had not ordained him a place lower in the 
 social scale, that the turf might claim him 
 as the jockey of jockeys. See him vault 
 that high railing, and the conviction would 
 be yours, that in acrobatic feats, he would 
 have made a mark and a fortune. He is 
 frank and light hearted. He is charming. 
 You admit it before you have spoken to 
 him for ten minutes. You endorse your 
 own opinion of him the second time you 
 meet him, and you go on endorsing it, to 
 the end of your acquaintance with him. 
 
 Adrian, a year younger, is darker, taller, 
 less charming, and far less handsome than 
 his brother. The first time you see him, he 
 strikes you as being repellent. As you 
 talk with him, however, you find that he 
 says what you want him to say at the right 
 moment, that he is quick to take half- 
 expressed meanings ; as you get to know 
 him better, you discover that he glows 
 under kindness, and blazes under cavalier 
 treatment, that there is no smoulder of 
 vindiefciveness, no chill of surly resentment,
 
 Father and Sous. 
 
 no magpie hiding of revengeful intentions 
 in all his liberal nature. He would be an 
 honest friend, and a clear sighted ; a fair 
 foe, and a warm lover enough. 
 
 Down in one of the southern counties is 
 -Creyke Park. The old house stands 
 staring out at the thick timber surrounding- 
 it, with many window eyes, innocent of 
 plate glass ; modern improvements not 
 being the order of the day at Creyke. 
 There are no artificial lakes, no orchid 
 houses, aviaries, few flowering shrubs and 
 specimen trees. What picturesque walks 
 there are, have been made by nature, 
 unassisted by the owner of Creyke. 
 
 The park palings are in many places 
 broken and dilapidated, the lodge-gates 
 have a look of powerful old age, and the 
 ivy graciously covers the short-comings of 
 the lodges themselves. 
 
 Inside the house there was a strange 
 confusion of majolica bowls and decrepit 
 furniture, of cloisonne enamel caskets, and 
 cracked Queen's ware, of deal tables 
 and midiaeval chests of drawers, of art
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 treasures and of trumpery. The dining- 
 room was the worst room of all, and in it, 
 on a February morning, winterish and 
 gray, the brothers were seated at break- 
 fast. It was a room to shudder at always, 
 and to become attached to never. Horse 
 hair, abominably slippery and unpleasant, 
 covered its furniture. A towering screen, 
 ornamented with every conceivable scratch 
 and daub, in the shape of ill-coloured, ill- 
 drawn print and engraving (the pasting on 
 of which had been one of the late Mrs. 
 Lawless's life works), stood by the fire- 
 place, where smouldered the smallest, 
 most sullen of fires. Grim men and 
 women of the tribe of Lawless, stared and 
 scowled from the walls. Even the pic- 
 tured children, who had once borne the 
 name of Lawless, had the determined 
 family knitting of the brows. No smile 
 brightened one of the fat, baby faces. 
 With an admirable gravity, they caught 
 the eye of the spectator with their own 
 dark and solemn ones, and the spectator 
 was fain to turn discomfited away.
 
 Father and Sons. 
 
 There was a buffet of great antiquity 
 and ugliness between the windows, and 
 this, with an old sofa, the table, and the 
 necessary chairs, comprised the furniture. 
 
 The young men were breakfasting in 
 almost complete silence. Fox was play- 
 ing at eating, while his two elder brothers 
 gratified a most substantial appetite. 
 Shortly, the door opened, and the master 
 of the house made his appearance, and, 
 rubbing his thin, gentleman's hands to- 
 gether, to chafe the chill of a fireless room, 
 gave some unintelligible word of greeting. 
 He seated himself at the table, but in a 
 moment he was up again, and going to the 
 fire, he tried to coddle it into burning 
 slower, by making a little cover of ashes 
 for it. He returned, and taking his chair, 
 looked eagerly down at the scanty break- 
 fast, longing for it to be less not more. 
 
 It was quite five minutes before he 
 spoke ; then he said, " A week from to- 
 day, Maria. Three weeks from to-day 
 the young women, the nieces, your cousins, 
 boys. There will be — ha — some changes
 
 77ie Sisters Lawless. 
 
 necessary for them ; I am very far from 
 saying many, or great changes. Ties of 
 blood, ties of blood, are — ha — a " 
 
 " Nuisance," struck in Fox. 
 
 " I was very far from saying that," re- 
 turned his father, " very far indeed — a tax 
 I might be allowed, even by the most cen- 
 sorious, to consider them ; yes, two young 
 women who must have a chaperon ; 
 another tie of blood, another tax ; my sister 
 Maria is poor, she tells me, so am I, so am 
 I ; the rents are irregular in coming, things 
 are out of joint with me always, I am a 
 poor man, a very poor man, with no hope 
 of ever being a richer one." 
 
 He paused, with a stealthy upward 
 glance from under his thick brows at his 
 three sons, who in their various ways 
 showed a natural, if unfilial impatience, 
 and a half- veiled scepticism as to their 
 father's words. 
 
 " No ; no hope of ever being better off, 
 unless one of my sons is a fortunate son, or 
 an enterprising, and a clever, and an able. 
 A happy thing — ha — to have a fortunate
 
 Father and Sons. 
 
 child, a sort of family success. Aclie, how- 
 goes it with you in town ? scope, eh ? op- 
 portunity ?" 
 
 " Perhaps," answered the young man, 
 " for anybody equal to the occasion, any- 
 body with the proper capacity for law work. 
 The fact is, father, I believe that to have 
 been a success I should have come here a 
 few centuries earlier. I ought to have 
 been a Troubadour; I'm sure that I could 
 have touched a guitar gaily — very gaily ; 
 and I look the character, don't you think ?" 
 He rose from the table as he spoke, laugh- 
 ing, expanding his broad chest, and stretch- 
 ing out his athletic arms. 
 
 His father observed him with dissatis- 
 faction ; evidently in his belief the moneyed 
 success of the family was not personated by 
 his second born. 
 
 To Bertie, who was still crunch- 
 ing crisp toast, he now turned. Bertie, 
 the beauty, the inveterately lazy one — 
 he turned to him. Bertie persistently 
 acted the part of fine gentleman, and 
 idled at home, running into debt whenever 
 it suited his convenience, and handing in
 
 io The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 his unpaid bills to his father, in a very- 
 jaunty and engaging way, from time to 
 time. Bertie owned a small cutter yacht, 
 had a fine saddle horse in the dilapidated 
 old stable, was not without a gratified taste 
 for jewellery, and was altogether the most 
 obstinate of drones. Mr. Lawless ad- 
 dressed him with a sneer. " The beau, 
 the buck, the butterfly, Bertie, will be, ha — 
 the successful spendthrift of the family ; is 
 your yacht paid for, Bertie ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Your horse ?" 
 
 " No ; pay for them when you please, 
 father, Lewis and Franks are perfectly 
 willing to wait ; they don't mind ; the 
 money will be forthcoming some day or 
 another, they rest assured. Yes, I'll be the 
 successful spendthrift of the family with all 
 the pleasure in life," he went on gaily, and 
 with a most melodious laugh, " I want no 
 better employment, it suits every inch 
 of me." 
 
 His father struck his still strong and 
 white teeth together with a sudden, sharp
 
 Father and Sons, 1 1 
 
 click ; his every feature betraying a violent 
 irritation, a very fever of vexation, for 
 Bertie's unconquerable extravagance was a 
 grievance, sore and of long duration. 
 
 Bertie hastily concluding his breakfast, 
 made a rush for the door, eager to escape, 
 and running through the hall, inhaled the 
 clear winter outside air with the keenest 
 relish. Mr. Lawless's long, meagre, mean 
 chin sunk upon his breast. His pinched 
 nostrils, with their crafty elevation at the 
 end nearest the cheek, grew more depressed, 
 as he watched his eldest son's departing 
 form. 
 
 Adrian, too, watched his brother, but 
 with what inner comment is not known, 
 for the clear tones of Fox, who had been 
 silently regarding them both, were now 
 heard, and they said unconcernedly: "What 
 a bitter bad failure I am, father, ain't I ?" 
 
 Mr. Lawless screwed up one shoulder to 
 meet his ear, elevated his eyebrows, and 
 drew down the corners of his mouth with- 
 out replying in words. 
 .__ " Wait," Fox went on. " Some day I
 
 1 2 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 may make myself famous by ' blood or 
 ink ' " 
 
 " When do you mean to begin ?" de- 
 manded his father in a tone of depress- 
 ing facetiousness, of mournful pleasantry. 
 
 " I am waiting," said Fox, " for the ig- 
 nition of that furor poeticus, which I am 
 convinced I possess." 
 
 The boy leaned back, as he finished 
 speaking, clasping his thin hands together 
 under his head. 
 
 His father waved his hand; " There, 
 poor boy, go back to your fairy tales, go 
 back to your Waverley novels ! Nothing is 
 expected of you — ha — nothing — our chast- 
 enings are good for us, yes, no doubt." 
 He paused, then went on, " But the trial 
 that can least stand alone, is poverty — 
 want of means. Death and disgrace are 
 both bad, very bad ; but we weather 'em 
 if we have money ; yes, we live 'em down ; 
 but poverty we can't live down, no, it 
 starves us out, it pulverizes us, it brings 
 with it a numerous progeny of evils that the 
 other afflictions somehow don't seem able
 
 Father and Sous. i $ 
 
 to collect. It has a terrible beak and 
 claws, want ; it is an able assistant to the 
 inherent vileness of the human heart ; it 
 brings out crime as rain does the earth 
 worms, as a clear sky, the stars, as a 
 match to powder brings an explosion — 
 yes." 
 
 " Apt," said his youngest son under 
 his breath, " fine illustrations, glowing 
 similes !" 
 
 His father did not hear. Wrapt in 
 meditation, he sat motionless long after 
 Fox had taken his crutch and limped out 
 of the room to his usual haunt, the library ; 
 and Adrian had gone to pack, or rather to 
 pitch, his effects into a portmanteau pre- 
 paratory to going up to town, and waiting 
 amongst spiders, must, cobwebs, law-books,, 
 and comfortable furniture, for his maiden 
 brief. 
 
 He disliked his profession, and those 
 cramped rooms of his, looking out upon 
 house-tops infested by predatory cats — * 
 who found , poor things, little enough to 
 prey upon ! — his very soul loathed.
 
 14 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 Bertie, meanwhile, had sauntered out into 
 the moist, cold air, and had betaken him- 
 self to the stables, where his mare, scent- 
 ing his approach, gave him a welcoming 
 whinny. 
 
 He entered her loose box, stroked her 
 velvet coat, and telling the stable boy to 
 saddle her, stood watching the operation, 
 and at its conclusion mounted the thing he 
 loved best in the world, and went clattering 
 away over the paved stable-yard, and out 
 a ramshackle gate. 
 
 He wore a black necktie, and black 
 gloves, out of respect to his uncle, who, 
 nine months ago, had finished his earthly- 
 campaign. An uncle not in the least 
 known to him ; for, many years ago, Charles 
 Lawless had been ordered to Canada with 
 his regiment, and, although in due course 
 the regiment had returned, he had not, for 
 he sold out, and established himself in the 
 quaint and mean Lower Canadian town 
 of St. Dominic, with his wife and two 
 daughters. His wife had died a few months 
 after his arrival, leaving these two children,
 
 Father and Sons. 1 5 
 
 separated in age by a gap of four years. 
 At this present, therefore, the eldest was 
 two and twenty, the younger but eighteen. 
 
 Very speedily they were to leave their 
 home, and come out to their natural 
 guardian and protector, their father's elder 
 and only brother, Francis Lawless of 
 Creyke Park. 
 
 With what glee their advent was antici- 
 pated, we have seen a little. Perhaps of 
 the four Bertie dreaded them least ; his was 
 a blithe, and insouciant temperament, 
 prone to depict future events in bright tints 
 rather than dark, and to have dismal 
 presages concerning very few things this 
 side of the grave. 
 
 Two young laiy-cousins domiciled with- 
 in the gray walls of Creyke, seemed to him 
 an agreeable variation of the ordinary 
 quarrel-infested home- life. He chirruped 
 to his horse as he reached the main road, 
 and cantered gaily away.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SISTERS. 
 
 FIELD of cloth of silver, a sky 
 of sapphire, a radiance of sun- 
 shine unsurpassable ; a still, and 
 glittering, and lonely scene, and bitter, ah 
 bitter cold. 
 
 A winter landscape in Canada ; an 
 expanse of ermine snow stretching to right 
 and left as far as eye can see ; an air so 
 motionless that not the smallest twig is 
 stirred ; a sunlight that dazzles, here and 
 there making some sharp icicle emit pris- 
 matic rays, or throwing off from a heaped 
 drift such a glare of frozen white light, that 
 one involuntarily contracts one's eyebrows 
 and eyelids.
 
 The Sisters. 17 
 
 What odd marks are these, indenting the 
 crisp and polished surface of the snow ? 
 Are they foot-prints of two strange 
 enormous-claw'd birds ? . 
 
 Follow them along the lonely tract, 
 skirting the frozen and marble river, over 
 the beautiful desolate white fields, and 
 we presently overtake their cause — two 
 women's figures, tall, and slender also in 
 spite of their fur jackets and thick woollen 
 skirts. They are snow-shoeing ; plodding, 
 foot over, foot under, in the unimaginably 
 awkward gait that must be the snow-shoer's, 
 be she graceful as any fawn at more 
 ordinary slippered times. Their little fur 
 caps are pulled low on their foreheads, and 
 wound about throat, mouth, and nose, are 
 fleecy white woollen wrappings, over which 
 their two pairs of eyes peep, as if they were 
 cherubically surveying life over a cloud. 
 
 " Angela," the taller of the two is saying, 
 u it is a dangerous month to cross." 
 
 " If you were philosophical you would 
 find all months dangerous alike for the 
 
 vol. 1. 2
 
 1 8 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 matter of that," returned the other with a 
 muffled laugh. 
 
 " But I am not philosophical, and I pre- 
 fer crossing the ocean in a month that is 
 not proverbially stormy. If I cannot make 
 you think of the danger — and I know I can- 
 not — think of the discomfort. Do you re- 
 member when wecameout? Everything mov- 
 able seemed gifted with more than human, 
 with impish vivacity, and power of locomo- 
 tion. Do you recollect how mamma's 
 coil of false hair wriggled off like a 
 snake, and was found in the cabin of the 
 old gentleman opposite ? And how boots 
 and shoes, seizing the opportunity, eloped 
 with their neighbour's mates, and were 
 never more found ?" 
 
 " I have misty memories of a chaotic 
 two weeks," was the reply. 
 
 What contrasts were the two voices. 
 The last speaker never changing her key, 
 or elevating her voice, or emphasizing in 
 the least degree, the other, full of swift and 
 harmonious changes, of varieties of tone, of 
 deep notes, and silvery.
 
 The Sisters. 19 
 
 There was a pause broken only by the 
 scratch, scratch of snow-shoes. 
 
 " How do you think we shall like our 
 baby-faced cousins ?" the last speaker be- 
 gan again. 
 
 " How do you know that they are baby- 
 faced ?" 
 
 " Of course they are. Could the names 
 Adie and Bertie belong to anything 
 that had not a baby face ?" 
 
 " How can I tell ?" 
 
 "/ can tell. Instinct assures me that 
 any truly manly man would have freed 
 himself from the odium of a name like 
 either of those." 
 
 " I am not instinctive any more than I 
 am philosophical, and I could remind you, 
 Angela, of dozens of people to whom nur- 
 sery names have clung, and will cling as 
 long as they live. The hardest thing in 
 the world to get rid of, is a nick-name. 
 What a shame it is to give children nick- 
 names, for they are generally either ugly 
 or silly sounding." 
 
 " Clemence, a man of parts (am I not 
 
 2 — 2
 
 20 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 quaint ?) would have thrown off such a 
 name as Adie, directly he was out of his 
 teens ; not that it matters in the least to 
 us ; but I do so hate to bully ; and I must 
 bully these feeble ones, I know I must. 
 How unkind circumstance is to us r what 
 scope is given us, what tempting oppor- 
 tunity for the display of our pet, yet most 
 self-condemned, faults. You know how 
 domineering I am — I say it is unkind of 
 Fate to throw me at the head of two in- 
 evitable victims." 
 
 "Why unbridle your imagination, 
 Angela ? There is nothing inevit- 
 able " 
 
 "Spoken like myself!" cried her sister 
 tapping her approvingly on the shoulder 
 with her muff; "right, my commonplace 
 one, quite right — don't finish your sentence* 
 leave it accidentally epigrammatic." 
 
 The elder girl laughed good temperedly,. 
 and in a few minutes their plodding had 
 brought them into the principal street of a. 
 queer old French Canadian town, where 
 shrill French voices prevailed, and
 
 The Sisters, 21 
 
 shrivelled cedar-coloured French faces pre- 
 dominated. 
 
 St. Dominic was dirtier than it was dull* 
 -and uglier than it was dirty. Now, it 
 showed a fair front, being smoothly 
 covered with snow, until it was white and 
 shining as a wedding-cake. Low carrioles, 
 often with the fur robes trailing out at the 
 side and making a glittering white dust as 
 they drag along, come at a perilous speed 
 down the narrow steep street, drawn by 
 rough ponies with long fetlocks and wild 
 eyes, and driven by muffled men or women, 
 of whose faces nothing but the eyes is 
 visible, giving a baffling and mysterious 
 look to them, as they rush past. Some- 
 times a rough sledge tears by, the French 
 Canadian driver standing upright on it, 
 giving a wild cry, as he urges his horse 
 down into a cahot, and up again ; his bells 
 jingling madly, as he plunges down into 
 the snowy hollow. The whole air is filled 
 with the sound of sleigh-bells ; chiming in 
 with one another with something like har- 
 mony, clashing discordantly with one
 
 2 2 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 another ; or — but this happens rarely — 
 tinkling out merrily alone. 
 
 The western sun glints on the pressed- 
 down, polished surface of the snow, and 
 along the smooth lines that the last runners 
 have left, makes a track like a little 
 straight, flat-lying rainbow. 
 
 Arrived at the porch of a quaint-looking 
 little house, the sisters slipped off their 
 snow-shoes, and in their four pairs of stock- 
 ings apiece, and their soft doe-skin moc- 
 casins, entered the house with velvet foot- 
 steps : the elder gaily humming a tune, the 
 younger in silence. 
 
 A blazing fire welcomed them, and 
 wooed the red blood to the cheeks of the 
 elder sister ; to the younger, it brought 
 only a pink, pale as the blossom of the 
 Canada thistle, which brightened her face 
 for three minutes and then fled. They 
 went upstairs to their rooms, talking to- 
 gether in their usual diversity of style and 
 voice and manner. Dinner, with the two 
 young faces opposite one another, the two 
 dissimilar appetites (Angela's so dainty,.
 
 The Sisters. 23 
 
 Clemence's so hearty), was quickly de- 
 spatched, and a long evening came, like 
 unto many and many another that had gone 
 before it. 
 
 They drew their chairs close by the 
 blazing coal, and for ten minutes neither 
 spoke. It was the elder who broke the 
 silence. 
 
 " Angela, a new phase of life is about 
 to begin for us " 
 
 " Clemence," interrupted the other, with 
 the usual half tolerance which marked her 
 tone when addressing her sister, " don't 
 be fantastic in your wording of common- 
 places ; it doesn't suit you. We are going 
 to our uncle in England, yes ; away from 
 these odious patois talkers with their 
 wooden faces and raisin eyes, and thankful 
 am I. I long for to-morrow morning that 
 I may, with some pretence of necessity, 
 begin packing, and feel that I am placing 
 the fact I long for safely outside my imagi- 
 nation. I am so imaginative, Clemence. 
 You, with your clock's precision and qui- 
 etude, could not realize what flights my
 
 24 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 fancy takes when you are sound asleep, 
 and breathing those enormously long 
 breaths that I often think are never coming 
 
 to an end ; so — Clemence " with an 
 
 exaggerated respiration. 
 
 " I do sleep very soundly," replied 
 Clemence, apologetically, " but do you 
 know," she hesitated and paused, " I have 
 sometimes waked and heard you — snor- 
 ing." 
 
 " Snoring ?" repeated her sister, with 
 unfeigned indignation ; " I snore, Clem- 
 ence ? what life-like dreams you must 
 have r 
 
 " Very life-like indeed," Clemence an- 
 swered, with her delightful, rippling laugh ; 
 " very much so, indeed, Angela, dear ; but 
 don't frown at me like that — look in the 
 glass, and see how unbecoming it is to 
 
 you." 
 
 Angela, on the instant, sprang from her 
 chair, and taking great pains to keep her 
 expression unchanged, gazed, rapt, at her- 
 self in the mirror between the windows. 
 
 " It does not suit me," she said, thought-
 
 The Sisters. 25 
 
 fully, and thereupon smoothed her counte- 
 nance into its usual charming placidity. 
 
 Being a skilful and experienced pilot 
 among the rocks and shoals of her sister's 
 humours, Clemence steered direct for an- 
 other, and undoubtedly safe topic. 
 
 " Angela," she said, looking at her with 
 the wholesome admiration of one pretty 
 woman for another, " what a pretty sur- 
 prise you will be to them. I do hope the 
 sea-voyage will not have left its ugly traces 
 upon you." 
 
 " I hope not, I am sure," coincided 
 Angela, with fervour ; "but don't they say 
 that it makes one doubly fair and clear to 
 be very ill at sea ?" 
 
 " Oh, a long time afterwards," returned 
 the other, shaking her head, but adding 
 cheerily, warned by the real consternation 
 depicted on her sister's face, "the pretty 
 time will come after we have been there a 
 while. Now let us have tea." 
 
 She turned as she spoke, and with ex- 
 treme care poured out her fastidious sister's 
 post-prandial cup, and helping herself in a
 
 26 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 manner far more hasty, drew up again to 
 the fire, satisfying herself with the draughty 
 corner, while Angela snuggled up against 
 a protecting curtain on the other side. 
 
 It was easy to guess that the all-absorb- 
 ing theme of thought and conversation 
 with them just now, was their approaching 
 exodus from the only home they had ever 
 known. Angela be^an at once : 
 
 " I have superb fancies of an old 
 English home," half-closing her eyes, and 
 looking very imaginative, " avenues of 
 stately trees, with groups of startled deer 
 beneath them. Mullions (what are mull- 
 ions ?), gables, ivy, old armour, old ser- 
 vants, terraces with urns, rooms with 
 names, old portraits (one of which I am 
 sure to be like), family jewels, family trees, 
 dogs that have grown old in the service, a 
 staircase black and slippery with age and 
 care — and all the rest of it," she wound 
 up, waving her hand exhaustively. " I 
 want to be gone." 
 
 "It is all very right and nice to go," 
 answered the elder sister, with a shade of
 
 The Sisters. 27 
 
 hesitation and doubt in her full, clear tones, 
 " but it is leaving home after all ; and, 
 Angela, don't you think that you may be 
 imagining a place far grander than we 
 have any reason to suppose Uncle Francis' 
 will be ? I somehow — don't " 
 
 Angela interrupted her. 
 
 " Don't dishearten me. If you are 
 commonplace, you can at least be sympa- 
 thetic ; do be sympathetic. Why are you 
 so willing to pother among the sordid 
 realities of life, when you might as easily 
 soar to fine, agreeable objects of — of — 
 elevation ? You know how easily dis- 
 couraged I am ; you know how vividly I 
 picture future events to myself, and you 
 delight in rubbing out my pictures with 
 your matter-of-fact hands." 
 
 " Oh, Angela," cried Clemence, laugh- 
 ing, " oh, Angela, no one is more unwilling 
 than I am to chill you by my — well, as 
 you say — my commonplaces. But, dear, 
 I should so hate for you to be disappointed; 
 I should so hate for you to find that the 
 contrast presented by your future to your
 
 28 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 past home — this home — was less sharp 
 and complete than you had fancied it 
 would be. I am sure I hope as much as 
 you possibly can do, that Uncle Francis 
 place is beautiful, and exactly what one 
 pictures " 
 
 " You never picture anything," said 
 Angela, with a pout. " You wait for 
 things to jump down your throat. You 
 never exercise your mind in that prettiest, 
 most fantastic of ways, building Castles in 
 Spain." 
 
 " No I don't," assented Clemence, 
 honestly ; " aerial architecture is not in the 
 least my metier." 
 
 Then she drew up to the table, and 
 engaged herself in calculations of how to 
 spread out their tiny income very thin, 
 that it might last until they sailed. An- 
 gela read a page of poetry, and then, 
 closing her eyes, dreamed a page of most 
 mawkish prose — opened them, and read 
 another page, and so on until the clock 
 struck ten, and being weary — snow-shoeing 
 is tiring play, and they had snow-shoed
 
 The Sisters. 29 
 
 long and far — the two sisters rose from 
 their different employments and betook 
 themselves gladly to bed. 
 
 On the Liverpool dock, stand two 
 figures, battered, wobegone, almost un- 
 tidy, and quite limp. Can these be the 
 two trim damsels, who, twelve days ago, 
 departed from Portland ; one, in tears for 
 her old home, that notwithstanding its 
 meagreness, its dinginess, she loved, the 
 other like a wild bird escaped from a cage? 
 Even so. Angela and Clemence step on 
 English ground for the first time since 
 babyhood. 
 
 " They might have sent a servant or 
 some one, to meet us," said Angela dole- 
 fully as she drooped over her large box, 
 and waited for the custom-house official to 
 examine it. " How can we ever go from 
 here to Barport alone ?" 
 
 u Perfectly well," rejoined Clemence 
 reassuringly. " I am such a tall, big, 
 strong-minded looking person " 
 
 " Fortunately !" interpolated her sister
 
 30 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 assentingly, and drooping more like a wil- 
 low than ever. 
 
 " Come here," she cried appealingly to 
 the custom-house officer, " look into my 
 box, oh, pray do, and let us go." 
 
 The man, touched by her piteous accents, 
 her paleness, and her fair, angelic hair, 
 turned from his intended examination of 
 another box— the property of a sexless 
 looking person in spectacles, and a water- 
 proof down to its heels — and raising the 
 top of the box which Angela hastened 
 to unlock, apprised himself of a crape col- 
 lar, an ivory Prayer-book, and some black 
 gloves, and professing himself satisfied, 
 marked the box, and went on his way, 
 followed by Angelas faint thanks. 
 
 Without tarrying at any hotel, the sisters 
 took train, and proceeded immediately on 
 their journey southwards, and, without let 
 or hindrance on the way, arrived duly at 
 the station where they would be, towards 
 five o'clock on a blustering March after- 
 noon. A waggonette awaited them ; their 
 l u gg a g e ty n g where it was, to be taken up
 
 The Sistt 
 
 7TS. 
 
 a bit later on. The waggonette was seedy 
 and unkempt ; the horses harnessed to it, 
 seedier and more unkempt. 
 
 Angela's bright blue eyes clouded, her 
 sensitive mouth drooped ominously. The 
 luxurious carriage, the attentive footman, 
 and perhaps a baby-faced cousin or two 
 coming to meet her, remained unrealities of 
 her imagination, whose offspring they 
 were. They clambered in, with only the 
 assistance of a railway porter, who thereby 
 expected a shilling, and got it ; and the 
 cadaverous, badly-got-up old coachman, 
 perceiving slowly that they were in, and 
 the door closed, slashed his horses awake, 
 jerked up their heads, that had been droop- 
 ing in senile slumber, and they jogged 
 away. 
 
 Clemence watched her sister with con- 
 cern. Angela, pouting, and sulky, and 
 cruelly disappointed, gazed moodily, and in 
 silence, over the wintry landscape of wet 
 pasture land, field and copse, and labourer s 
 cot. The sight of the handsome old gates 
 through which they prepared to turn,
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 warmed again in her heart the self-pleas- 
 ing notions that had become chilled and 
 dubious. She bent eagerly forward, and 
 looked along the damp avenue with its 
 rows of trees and shrubs growing suffocat- 
 ingly close together, and its scanty red 
 gravel. 
 
 Shortly, they drew up before the door, 
 which upon its dull old front bore traces of 
 having gone unvarnished for many a long 
 year ; the sun had blistered it, the damp 
 had dimmed it. It was opened with a 
 slowness and stealthiness quite ludicrous, 
 seeing that they were two to be admitted, 
 who should be inmates for an indefinite 
 time. 
 
 " Ugh !" shuddered Angela, alighting^ 
 11 this is depressing." 
 
 They entered, and from a neighbouring 
 door, emerged a woman's figure, which ad- 
 vanced to meet them with something- 
 approaching a stiff stride. 
 
 " How do you do, Clemence and 
 Angela ?" said an unsympathetic voice in 
 measured accents. " I would have come to
 
 The Sisters. 33 
 
 meet you, but that I was not at all sure 
 which train you would come by. I am 
 glad to see you, my dear girls." 
 
 " This is Aunt Maria, I suppose ?" said 
 Clemence in her deep, rich tones. 
 
 " Yes, Aunt Maria," responded the other, 
 and led the way into a small sitting-room, 
 where a large fire was making a fierce 
 struggle to blaze out from under its crust of 
 ashes. (Mr. Lawless gave directions 
 about these ashes to the housemaids.) 
 
 There were dark shelves running along 
 three sides of the room filled with china of 
 Mrs. Lawless's collecting (for this had 
 been her special retreat) china that was 
 mostly trumpery, and that no connoisseur 
 would have given house room, and that 
 here, was a disfigurement rather than an 
 adornment. 
 
 Over the mantelpiece hung the repre- 
 sentation of a large, languishing blue eye ; 
 one of Mrs. Lawless's eyes— or a likeness 
 of it — which she had caused to be painted 
 with an overwhelming sense of having 
 done something startlingly novel, and 
 
 vol. 1. 3
 
 34 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 original ; eccentric to the verge of genius 
 in fact. 
 
 There it hung ; smiling at every in- 
 comer, from out its wide and massive 
 gilt frame. 
 
 Angela regarded it with unmixed horror, 
 and turned her back upon it, as if it had 
 been gifted with sight, poor painted 
 thing. 
 
 " Your uncle," said Miss Maria, hastily 
 ensconcing herself in her favourite chair, 
 fearful lest either of the two girls should 
 appropriate it unawares, — " is at Barport, 
 and will only be back in time for dinner, sit 
 down; throw off your jackets, and hats and 
 tell me of yourselves ; tell me, in fact, all 
 about yourselves ; and then I will ring for 
 Martha to show you your rooms." 
 
 " What a friendly, not to say aunt-like, 
 proceeding is this V thought Angela ; 
 " why could she not take us up herself, 
 and at once ?" 
 
 Angela had yet to learn her aunt's short- 
 comings. They were not of the sort that 
 elude detection, and are only known by
 
 The Sisters, 3 5 
 
 careful observation ; they came to the fore, 
 and were soon seen. Determination never 
 to have indigestion was one ; for, ruth- 
 lessly, Miss Lawless sacrificed the comfort 
 and convenience of other people to those 
 requirements which she considered neces- 
 sary to the preservation of her now fault- 
 less gastric juice. The art of throwing 
 dust in her own eyes was another ; a great 
 fear of losing her own little superfluities 
 of ease and luxury another ; and they did 
 not end here. She was one of those un- 
 comfortable people who are rich for them- 
 selves, and poor for everybody else. She 
 was too, one of those uncomfortable people 
 who make that ill-used word duty, a shield 
 and buckler against very many of the ills 
 of life. The ingenuity displayed by Miss 
 Lawless in the self-advantageous use (or 
 abuse) of the noble word, the dignity with 
 which she entrenched herself behind it, 
 would have been amusing if there were not 
 something sad, always, in calm self-decep- 
 tion. 
 
 Angela, contracting her brows like a 
 
 3—2
 
 36 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 very short-sighted person (which she was 
 not), surveyed her new relative closely. 
 She saw a woman of medium height, sub- 
 stantially well-formed ; she saw a dark 
 face with a coarse skin, a nose inclined to 
 be retrousse, and a long tight upper lip ; 
 black eyes with very thin lids, and no 
 under eye-lashes ; black hair elaborately 
 arranged. She was dressed in very slight 
 mourning, and when she moved, her gar- 
 ments rustled like the garments of ten. 
 
 After kissing them, or rather, after 
 allowing them to bend their tall heads and 
 kiss her, Miss Lawless looked at her 
 nieces with interest and curiosity. She 
 found her elder niece to be a tall, and 
 large-framed young woman, with dark, 
 rich hair growing low upon her forehead, 
 deep Irish gray eyes, and a very lovely 
 mouth. 
 
 Angela seemed to her a thread paper 
 thing, with enormous, glittering blue eyes, 
 and a quantity of pale silken hair in 
 curious, and unbecoming confusion. 
 
 For an hour the three talked together ;
 
 The Sisters, 3 7 
 
 relating, asking questions, making family 
 revelations. 
 
 Then Miss Lawless rose to touch the 
 bell, but Clemence, springing up, rang it 
 for her, with her long white fingers ; fingers 
 how different from Miss Lawless's ten 
 square-tipped, broad, digits ! Miss Maria's 
 blood showed in her hands, truly, for they 
 were of a most rural red. That they were 
 so, and that not all the polissoirs, and 
 poudre pour les ongles, would give her 
 pretty nails, was a trial in chief to her. If 
 Miss Maria had been put on oath to tell 
 you what she most desired in life, she 
 would answer, " Half-moons." 
 
 " Tell Martha to show Miss Lawless 
 and Miss Angela their room," she said to 
 the servant who answered the bell. " You 
 have but one room," turning to the sisters, 
 " we thought that you would probably be 
 in the habit of occupying the same room, 
 two sisters so often are." 
 
 " We have not been," said Angela, in 
 her listless tones, " except now and again 
 for fun, or when we have been nervous.
 
 38 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 It doesn't matter ; indeed, perhaps it is 
 better that we should, for I am sure to be 
 nervous; come, Clemence. What time does 
 my uncle dine ? I suppose we shall be busy 
 in our rooms — room — until dinner-time." 
 
 " We dine at seven," replied Miss Maria, 
 taking up her novel from where it lay, 
 upon its face, and grasping a large gold- 
 mounted flacon of eau de cologne. As 
 the door closed upon her nieces, she fixed 
 her lacklustre eyes upon her interrupted 
 tale, and applied eau de cologne vigorously 
 to her jaw-bone, for she was suffering from 
 a tooth-ache. 
 
 " Clemence, Clemence," said Angela rue- 
 fully, when they had entered their room, 
 " this is not what I expected V She sank 
 down upon a hard, upright-backed chair, 
 and looked dolorously at her sister, who 
 answered the glance with a bright con- 
 soling smile. 
 
 " How often things that begin uncom- 
 fortably, end comfortably, Angela, dear," 
 she replied. 
 
 " Why don't you say at once, a ' bad
 
 The Sisters. 39 
 
 beginning makes a good ending/ " said 
 Angela crossly. " Those homely ' saws 
 were made for you, I really believe." 
 
 " Come," cried Clemence, with some 
 spirit, " get up, and help me to unpack, for 
 it is only fair that you should, they are 
 evidently not going to send any one to us. 
 I will lift out all the heavy things, but 
 indeed you must do your share in folding 
 some of them away." 
 
 " I shall be afraid to go in there, even in 
 the day-time," answered Angela, pointing to 
 a cupboard door with a wizened little old 
 key drooping out of its keyhole. 
 
 Clemence's only reply was to fly to the 
 door, and, jerking it open, retreat a step or 
 two, and survey its old pegs, hooks, and 
 shelves. 
 
 " Now will you be afraid ?" she said in 
 her clear and cheery tones. 
 
 " N — no," rejoined Angela, " oh, no, not 
 now." And she thereupon proceeded to 
 afford her sister some languid help, such 
 as carrying away one collar, and shutting it 
 up alone in a drawer, bearing off a porce-
 
 40 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 lain box of hair-pins, and on her way to the 
 dressing-table, stopping to extract one or 
 two wherewith to pin up her recreant locks. 
 
 Angela's assistance was the most purely 
 nominal thing possible, yet both sisters 
 seemed to be satisfied, and as the dinner 
 hour was on the stroke, most of their 
 effects were in place, and the boxes nearly 
 emptied of their contents. With some 
 slight preparations the two girls descended 
 the stairs, and entered the room where 
 they had left their aunt. 
 
 " Fancy her not coming with us, her 
 own nieces, to show us our rooms," 
 whispered Angela, as they stood together 
 on the threshold. 
 
 " Miss Maria had endued herself with a 
 gown richer, more rustling, more be- 
 flounced and more be-furbelowed than the 
 other. She came forward, sounding like 
 the sails of a yacht as the wind flaps them, 
 and drawing her nieces in, said, " Here is 
 your uncle, my dears." 
 
 "My dears" were confronted by Mr. 
 Lawless in a scrimped and rusty evening
 
 The Sisters. 41 
 
 suit. He kissed them each on the cheek, 
 and bade them welcome kindly. To a youth 
 with a crutch he then led them, and Fox held 
 out his hand, with a flush suffusing his usually 
 pale features, and with down- cast eyes. 
 
 Angela took the listless hand in one 
 equally listless, and with some faint word 
 of greeting, turned away. But Clemence, 
 grasping his slender, cold fingers strongly, 
 stooped and kissed his cheek, an attention 
 he seemed hardly to know whether to 
 resent or to like. Then dinner was pro- 
 nounced to be ready, and they went into 
 the dining-room. 
 
 " You will find us — ha — simple people, 
 plain people," remarked Mr. Lawless as 
 they took their places. " A little money 
 goes such a little way, such a very little way." 
 
 " How thankful I am that we have our 
 own meagre, yet independent income," 
 thought Angela with inward rejoicing. 
 She bowed her head slightly in token of 
 assent, and saw all her day-dreams of the 
 beauty and completeness of an English 
 gentleman's home, giving up the ghost.
 
 42 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 They had half-finished soup, when the 
 door was opened, and a young man walked 
 hastily into the room, making his goal 
 Angela's shining head. 
 
 " I am sorry not to have been here be- 
 fore to welcome you," he said, in most 
 agreeable accents. " I have been to the 
 station to meet you," he laughed, " but, 
 unfortunately, it was the wrong train. 
 You, it seems, came by the 4.40." He 
 paused, with an air of hesitation, his lips 
 nearly touching Angela's white and blue- 
 veined temple. Finally, they touched it ; 
 and, going over to the other sister, he 
 greeted her in the same fashion. 
 
 Angela fixed her large and brilliant eyes 
 upon his charming face with a sense of 
 restored glamour. Clemence, too, scanned 
 her cousin with her long, soft eyes, and 
 seemed to find him an agreeable object of 
 contemplation. 
 
 Then the new comer subsided into his 
 seat, and hurriedly swallowed his soup, 
 while Mr. Lawless maundered on to every- 
 body in general. " A good passage you
 
 The Sisters. 43 
 
 say you had ? That was fortunate ; and in 
 March ! They used to have immense pla- 
 cards, ' Beware of Pickpockets/ on the 
 Liverpool Dock ; have they them there 
 still ?" 
 
 " Yes," said Clemence, " they have." 
 
 "What a sense of insecurity those words 
 give one. Yes ; to discover that one's 
 purse is gone cannot be an agreeable 
 sensation. The tricks of their trade are so 
 numerous, and so ingenious. Wooden 
 hands — ha — a large plaid thrown over the 
 arm ; a saw-knife ; accomplices." 
 
 "It is an art, is it not ?" observed An- 
 gela, with a smile. " I believe, among 
 each other, they are very proud of being 
 proficients." 
 
 " I should be very sorry to have any 
 means of knowing," said Miss Maria, in a 
 strong-minded manner, although the re- 
 mark had not been addressed especially to 
 her. 
 
 " I am quite willing to be told in print, 
 Aunt Maria," returned Angela. 
 
 " Are you fond of riding ?" said Bertie,
 
 44 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 changing the subject, and speaking to 
 Angela. 
 
 " After the fashion of knowing very little 
 about it, and only being willing to ride a 
 very quiet horse, and never going very far, 
 or without having some one close beside 
 me, and never trotting, — yes, I am." 
 
 Bertie, who had had full-fledged plans of 
 changing the pair of lean carriage horses 
 for tolerable ones that could be either rid- 
 den or driven, now felt the keen edge of 
 his determination to be blunted. 
 
 " Clemence is a much braver horse- 
 woman than I am," Angela continued, 
 glancing over at her. 
 
 Bertie, being less attracted by the more 
 ordinary features and colouring of the elder 
 sister, expressed little interest in her horse- 
 manship. Anything more exquisite than 
 the white and delicate loveliness of his 
 younger cousin, he thought he had never 
 seen. Angela, for her part, thought that a 
 better-looking man than her cousin Bertie 
 could not exist. For his sake, she recon- 
 ciled herself to the shrivelled, haggard
 
 The Sisters. 45 
 
 sexagenarian, her uncle, and the self- 
 engrossed, self-considering, self-cossetting 
 spinster, her aunt ; and to the grim and 
 hideous room, and the queer old servants, 
 and the ramshackle waggonette, and the 
 weird and dreamy boy opposite her, who was 
 at that moment devouring her with his eyes. 
 
 Yet the barrack-like furniture here, and 
 the shabby furniture of the sitting-room, 
 the plain food, the impoverished fires, filled 
 her with unquenchable amazement. Their 
 father had been in the habit of speaking of 
 his elder brother as a man very well off. 
 What was the meaning of it ? Had his 
 money gone the way of all flesh ? or — 
 striking thought — was it stuffed up chim- 
 neys, in old stocking-legs, or secreted be- 
 neath the roots of trees in old preserved- 
 apricot cans ? 
 
 And this debonnair and thorough-going 
 gentleman, Bertrand, was it not possible 
 for him to right the ricketty and shambling 
 household ? In after days, she understood 
 how powerless Bertie was, and how de- 
 pendent upon his father.
 
 46 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 This party of stranger-kindred took the 
 rapid strides towards intimate relations that 
 kin must and will take, according to the 
 natural law of things. Before the two girls 
 had risen from the table, they found them- 
 selves in possession of an assured and 
 homelike feeling, a ready habilitation of 
 the manners and customs of Creyke. 
 
 Bertie lingered but ten minutes at the 
 table with his father ; and, leaving him and 
 Fox having a little altercation together, 
 entered the small sitting-room where his 
 mother's beautiful blue eye looked melt- 
 ingly at him, and seating himself be- 
 side Angela, continued a conversation 
 that her rising from the table had inter- 
 rupted. 
 
 Clemence listened to her aunt's narra- 
 tion (which included pathological details) 
 of an " attack " of a friend of hers, with a 
 patience that left nothing for the narrator 
 to desire. 
 
 Angela, looking like a lovely white 
 porcelain transparency, leaned back in a 
 shabby chintz-covered chair, and pretended
 
 The Sisters. 47 
 
 to follow the intricate windings of a point- 
 lace pattern, while she said pretty things 
 to her cousin Bertrand. 
 
 Bertie considered his young relatives 
 gifts of the gods to their dull household, 
 and the thought that they were permanent 
 inmates, and no bright birds of passage, 
 filled him with secret joy. 
 
 " How long will it be before you begin 
 to feel yourself at home in this ' Abomi- 
 nation of Desolation ?' " he asked lightly, 
 yet waited eagerly for the reply. 
 
 " I begin to feel already as if my tendrils 
 clasped," answered Angela, laughing at her 
 own expression. 
 
 " I am delighted," he said earnestly, 
 " delighted. Perhaps you will be at last 
 able to forget the decrepid furniture, the 
 shabby carpets, the general air of miserli- 
 ness, which — I can own to you — attaches 
 itself to the whole place. You will be 
 good and gracious enough, I hope, not to 
 convict me of aiding and abetting the 
 strange, the unaccountable penuriousness 
 that seems to clutch the old house, and the
 
 48 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 old land, and ourselves, like the grasping 
 claw of a bird of prey." 
 
 " Be sure that I acquit you now, here, 
 this moment," rejoined Angela, with quick- 
 sighted, quickly-apprehending sympathy. 
 
 Then, by tacit consent they allowed the 
 subject to fall away from them, nor was it 
 one to be resumed for many, many a long 
 day. 
 
 Clemence was heartily pleased when her 
 crippled cousin, followed by his father, 
 entered the room. It was not Mr. Law- 
 less's practice to add himself to the family 
 circle after dinner. He usually secreted 
 himself in a grim justice-room, and bur- 
 rowed amongst papers in every stage of 
 yellowness and antiquity, and rattling new- 
 ness. To-night, however, it seemed obli- 
 gatory for him to spend an hour or so with 
 his newly-arrived nieces ; he owed it to 
 their consanguinity, besides, they appeared 
 to him inoffensive and agreeable as young 
 women could well be. He was going to 
 be fond of them, he told himself. He 
 seated himself at the other side of Cle-
 
 The Sisters. 49 
 
 mence, while Fox, with eyes that shamed 
 the lynx, watched Angela's shining fair 
 hair, her white straight features and glisten- 
 eyes and teeth. He liked her dress, too, 
 of a tint that Angela affected, and now, in 
 her half-mourning, indeed, she seldom wore 
 any other. A a gris perle mourant" she 
 would have told you it was. 
 
 " She is like a strip of moonshine," 
 thought the boy ; " if she watched a fel- 
 low in his sleep, I believe she would strike 
 him mad, as the moon is sometimes 
 known to do — mad or foolish ! I dare 
 not go nearer to her and speak to her, 
 though she is my first cousin. How coldly 
 she took my hand ; the other kissed me — 
 a cool, unimaginative kiss. If she kissed 
 one, it would be with an unworded thought, 
 or wish, or fancy ; there is a fancy be- 
 hind every glance of those blue eyes of 
 hers." 
 
 The object of the boy's musing, regarded 
 him not. Once or twice she addressed 
 some gentle word to his father, and then 
 resumed her conversation with Bertie. 
 
 vol. 1. 4
 
 50 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 And so the evening passed ; novel, yet 
 made familiar by the certainty that it was 
 only the first of many that would follow. 
 They partook of tea ; an unwonted luxury, 
 and one that was doomed not to be con- 
 tinued, for Mr. Lavvless's heart ached at 
 every sip ; and it was bad for his nieces' 
 nerves; bad, too, for Fox, who was nervous; 
 bad for his own pocket. Why, it would 
 cost him four shillings a week! and four 
 shillings, he would have told you, was no 
 inconsiderable sum. 
 
 " Clemence," said Angela that night to 
 her sister, when they were locked into their 
 room, " it is all so different from what I 
 had imagined, and yet, do you know, I 
 don't mind it ! There is something so 
 bizarre, so weird, in the scrimping and 
 grinding of Uncle Francis ; he's a sort of 
 miser, don't you think ? or else he has lost 
 all his money — but no, it cannot be that 
 from something Bertrand said to me to- 
 night. Oh, Clemence, he is a miser I 
 Imagine having a real miser for one's own 
 uncle ! Let us look in impossible places,.
 
 The Sisters. 5 1 
 
 and see if we shall find a boot with the 
 foot filled with bank-notes ; or an unsus- 
 picious teapot in a suspicious place, filled 
 with sovereigns." 
 
 " Now, Angela, are you beginning a 
 new set of fancies ? What did Bertie tell 
 you r 
 
 " Oh, don't call him Bertie ; call him 
 Bertrand — charming name." Then she 
 repeated her cousin's words. 
 
 " There is nothing of the miser about 
 him, at all events, that I am sure," said 
 Clemence. " And I really never should 
 think of calling- Uncle Francis 'a real 
 miser,' as you say. He is saving, ava- 
 ricious, penurious, grudging every penny, 
 perhaps. But as for hiding sovereigns, 
 and burying bank-notes, that is nonsense ! 
 Miser — why what a word it is ; connected 
 in one's mind with monstrosities." 
 
 " Yes," broke in Angela, eagerly, and 
 standing bathed in her silken hair, " filthy 
 creatures, squalid, wretched, and loathsome 
 beyond belief; — perhaps, one day, Uncle 
 Francis, sliding from bad to worse, may come 
 
 4—2
 
 5 2 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 to be like them. Can't you fancy him 
 dressed in old coal sacks, and eating tallow 
 candle-ends, without shoes and stockings, 
 with finger-nails long, hooked, pointed, 
 and yellow as a condor's ?" 
 
 " No, no," cried Clemence, genuinely 
 shocked, " do not be fantastic ; remember, 
 Angela, he is our father's brother." 
 
 " I could wish that ' our father's brother' 
 owned drawers that would open," was all 
 Angela's reply, as she struggled with one 
 of those obstinate receptacles. " Clemence, 
 girl of thews and sinews, help me to pull !" 
 And the young lady like a strip of moon- 
 shine set her teeth hard, and shook the 
 obdurate handles fiercely. 
 
 Clemence came immediately to her as- 
 sistance, and having opened it, returned to 
 her evening devotions, for she numbered 
 amongst her other " commonplace " excel- 
 lences, a most true and simple piety. 
 Angela, in her gray dressing-gown, pre- 
 sently flung herself down upon her knees, 
 and breathed a short, a very short prayer ; 
 and during it, absolute silence reigned.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ( A RAGGED COLT." 
 
 MOST untempting morning- 
 was their lot, as they saw 
 when they looked out of their 
 window. Clouds, as dark as the embodi- 
 ment of evil wishes, drifted heavily over- 
 head, sending down occasional violent 
 showers that chilled the air, and soaked the 
 ground, and obscured the waving outline 
 of the distant hills. 
 
 Precisely at eight o'clock, they had been 
 waked by a sound on the other side of the 
 wall, mysterious at first, but soon explicable. 
 A sound that made them shiver and gasp 
 sympathetically, and fancy that they heard 
 a strangled wheeze. It was Miss Lawless
 
 54 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 taking a shower-bath, which she was cele- 
 brated for doing with great bravery. Every 
 morning, with the utmost regularity, their 
 ears were greeted by the same sound, and 
 it came to be the signal for Clemence to 
 spring from her small iron bedstead, and 
 begin her toilette. 
 
 On this, the first day, there was much of 
 expectancy and anticipation to the two girls. 
 They stood upon the threshold of a new 
 and untried life, and, moreover, a life that 
 was to continue for an unknown length of 
 time. 
 
 Fireless they had gone to bed, and fire- 
 less they arose, and with numb fingers 
 and blue, appeared in the dining-room. 
 On their way, Angela had clutched her 
 sisters arm with dramatic fervour, and, 
 drawing her to a window on the landing, 
 bade her look out. 
 
 " See the reality of my day-dreams," she 
 whispered ; " see the realization of my 
 dream-pictures, of the home that I was 
 coming to I" She pointed as she spoke 
 to ragged hedges, and dilapidated out-
 
 U A Ragged Colt? 55 
 
 buildings, and a forlorn summer-house, like 
 an overgrown mushroom, which disfigured 
 a spot that in summer was thickly shaded 
 by a fern-leaved beech, and a fine lime. 
 
 " Strange ! I am not so heartsore about 
 the quashing of my agreeable fancies as I 
 should have judged that I would be." 
 
 " I am so glad," answered Clemence, 
 kindly ; " indeed, I never saw you bear 
 one of your disenchantments so well." 
 
 Then they went on down the creaking 
 staircase. 
 
 Miss Maria in a dark magenta serge gown, 
 over which black snaky patterns crawled, 
 interlacing each other, and curling about 
 each other like a reptilian tea-party, was 
 breakfasting according to unvarying regi- 
 men. Fox had not yet appeared ; Bertie 
 was there, reading the newspaper. 
 
 " How I hope the day will turn out fine, 
 after all," he said ; " I had hoped that you 
 would be able to drive, walk, or something. 
 Not that there is anything very tempting 
 to be seen — ruins, Carre Abbey — do you 
 like ruins ?"
 
 56 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " Never having seen any, we don't pos- 
 sess the proper qualification for judging 
 whether we like them or not," replied 
 Clemence, " but we shall be charmed to see 
 them ; shall we not, Angela ?" 
 
 "Yes, of course," responded Angela, 
 " but, remember, Bertrand, we are not to- 
 be made objects of entertainment, as if we 
 were strangers." 
 
 " The weather to-day is not going to be 
 fit to do anything in," remarked Miss 
 Maria, as if she were the weather's mouth- 
 piece, or interpreter. " Are you not very 
 cold in that dress, dear ?" she continued, in 
 an aggressive tone, turning to Angela, who 
 had on a gray gown, fine and clinging, but 
 thick in texture. 
 
 " My dress is very much warmer than it 
 looks," returned Angela, quickly. 
 
 " It is too pale for winter," said Miss Law- 
 less, who really was eminently truthful and 
 outspoken. No one had ever heard her 
 deviate one hair's breadth from the bald 
 fact. Certainly, sometimes, there was a 
 kind of grandeur in her unswerving vera-
 
 " A Ragged Colt r 57 
 
 city, for she forced into the piercing light 
 of day truths concerning herself that might 
 quite as easily have been suppressed. All 
 the slights she had ever endured, all the 
 great and petty rudenesses that she had ever 
 been subjected to, all the blunders she had 
 ever committed, all the malapropos speeches 
 that she had ever made, she told without 
 flinching. But if she was hard on her- 
 self, she was ten times more unsparing of 
 others. 
 
 " I like these pale and delicate tints," 
 Angela continued, in her even tones ; " I 
 am not fond of coarse, strong colours." 
 
 " H'm," said Miss Maria, crackling her 
 newspaper as she took it up from beside 
 her plate. Then Mr. Lawless entered, 
 with a frosty tip to his nose, and greeted 
 his nieces kindly. 
 
 " A bad day," he said. "Weather is where 
 England fails ; yet we are not shrivelled 
 with heat, nor can any one say that it is un- 
 wholesome to go without a fire in one's 
 bedroom in the winter. No, no, we are 
 moderate, if disagreeable. What is the
 
 58 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 name of to-day? Ha! Saturday; Adie 
 comes down this evening to spend Sunday; 
 he has not been before for a considerable 
 time. Another cousin for you, yes." 
 
 " Adie," repeated Angela; " I am afraid, if 
 he looks at all like you," turning to Bertie, 
 " that I shall not be able to call him by 
 that infantile name." 
 
 "He is very much darker, and a good 
 deal taller," said Bertie, laughing ; " it is 
 astounding how nursery names cling. I 
 could not call Adie anything but Adie any 
 more than I could call Fox, John. Adrian 
 is such a showy name, too ; I could never 
 manage it." 
 
 " And is Adrian himself showy ?" in- 
 quired Angela. 
 
 "He is rather good-looking," answered 
 Bertie, and as he spoke, Fox, on his crutch, 
 came slowly into the room. Clemence 
 gave him good-morning in her usual gra- 
 cious and genial tones ; Angela, in her list- 
 less and faint ones. 
 
 "Do they know no people about here?" 
 she was saying to herself just at that
 
 A Ragged Colt!' 59 
 
 moment ; " have they no neighbours who 
 are also friends ? Has my handsome cou- 
 sin no object within riding or walking 
 distance ?" 
 
 As if in answer to her thoughts, Mr. 
 Lawless said, " Somewhat tame, and same, 
 your life here will be, my dear children ; 
 the people about honour me with that — ha 
 — that amount of attention, consideration, 
 and hospitality which is usually accorded 
 the poor and unpopular man." 
 
 " Hospitality to give, wants hospitality 
 to get," said Fox, bravely; " yet Bertie 
 might get on well enough if he chose — 
 if he was not such a proud file-gnawer." 
 
 Both sisters turned a little towards 
 Bertie, who said nothing. It was a moment 
 of slight embarrassment; disclosures of a 
 disagreeable nature are difficult things to 
 make conversational playthings of. 
 
 " Anything will seem gay to us, after St. 
 Dominic, where we only existed," said 
 Clemence ; " lived, we could not have been 
 said to do, we had so few friends, so few
 
 6o The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 amusements, so little that was congenial 
 
 to us." 
 
 " Pray what did you do ?" demanded 
 Fox, looking at Angela. 
 
 " We snow-shoed, we skated, we whirled 
 over the roads in a small carriole, drawn 
 by a Canadian pony with a mouth of ada- 
 mant, and a temper of Judas ; once, I 
 froze an ear, by way of variety, and one 
 evening Clemence came home with her 
 chin white as chalk — frozen, of course. 
 We had a few pet cats and dogs, but they 
 quickly went the way of all flesh, were 
 frozen generally. They would run away 
 and get themselves lost, and the next 
 morning, or the one after, would be dis- 
 covered on the door-step, stiff and stark." 
 
 " Then your life here will certainly bear 
 to be contrasted with the old one," said 
 Bertie. 
 
 " Doubtless," she replied, with a smile 
 and gracious look. 
 
 How lovely she was when she smiled, 
 Fox thought ; her lips were not red and 
 full, like her sister's, but they were so curl-
 
 "A Ragged Coltr 61 
 
 ing and flower-like ; they reminded him of 
 pale pink geranium petals. 
 
 " Have you any commands for Barport," 
 said Bertrand as he rose from the table, 
 " for I am going to ride there presently ?" 
 
 No, the sisters had no command for Bar- 
 port. 
 
 " Are you going for a ride through that 
 excellent imitation of the deluge ?" asked 
 Angela petulantly, " why you will come 
 home Bertie-and-water." 
 
 " Weather is nothing to me," he an- 
 swered, " and I promise not to return in 
 a diluted state." 
 
 They went into the sitting-room then ; 
 at least, the two girls, Miss Maria, and 
 Fox did so. Mr. Lawless was left to 
 whatever avocations he usually followed in 
 the morning. 
 
 Angela, going to the window, watched 
 her cousin mount and ride away. He 
 espied her white and lovely face peeping 
 out, and lifting his hat with a bright smile, 
 walked his horse down the neglected 
 -avenue.
 
 62 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 11 ' Wandering companionless,' " quoted 
 Angela in a whisper to her sister, as he 
 vanished from sight ; " don't you see 
 exactly how it all is ? He is too proud to 
 accept hospitality from the people about 
 here, when his father is qualified in every 
 respect to return it, yet, from the horrid 
 blot of miserliness, will not do so." 
 
 "He is quite right, I mean Bertie is 
 quite right," answered Clemence quietly. 
 11 Angela, I wish that you would not lean 
 your whole weight on me, and buzz 
 whispers into my ear, like that ; come, let 
 us talk to Aunt Maria." 
 
 " Aunt Maria is in act of devotion," 
 said Angela. 
 
 It was true ; Aunt Maria read the Psalms 
 for the day, and the lesson, not in the re- 
 tirement of her own apartment, but before 
 the public eye, as represented by whoever 
 happened to be in the room with her. 
 
 In her easy-chair, with her large, hand- 
 some Church Service in her large, unhand- 
 some hand, Miss Maria was allowing the 
 words of Holy Writ to mirror themselves
 
 " A Ragged Colt" 6$ 
 
 upon her retina ; whether they sank to 
 her inner consciousness or not, forbid that 
 one should judge. 
 
 For the servants at Creyke there were 
 no morning prayers. During their per- 
 formance, if they had had them, Mr. Law- 
 less would have fidgeted himself into a 
 nervous fever. They cost nothing — true ; 
 but they never opened the day for those 
 few and hard-worked retainers at Creyke. 
 It was not the way. 
 
 The time seemed very long to both 
 girls upon that rainy morning ; to Bertie, 
 it passed with a tolerable celerity. Is it 
 not always so ? The man, rides away — ■ 
 and forgets. The woman, remains — and 
 remembers. 
 
 With the rain glid : ng off his india-rubber 
 coat, and trickling down his face as it fell 
 from the brim of his hat, he entered the 
 village, or rather small town, of Barport, 
 and making direct for the saddlers shop, 
 dismounted, and holding his horse Elspeth's 
 bridle, cast his eyes about him for a suit- 
 able small boy to lead the animal to the
 
 64 The Sisters Law less. 
 
 shelter of the inn yard round the corner. 
 As he flung his leg over her back, and 
 lightly descended to the ground, he was 
 aware of a pair of immense, babyish brown 
 eyes, elevated at about the height of five 
 feet three inches from the ground, which 
 were steadily regarding him. It was a 
 child ; or, half-child, half- woman ; as for 
 her garments, Bertie could honestly have 
 declared that they were one great tatter, and 
 of the nameless ecru tint, not of fashion, 
 but of extreme poverty. The little face, 
 peeping above the tatterdemalion's shawl, 
 was pink as a cyclamen ; made to blush 
 perpetually by the too ardent kisses of the 
 last summer's sun and wind. 
 
 The same sun had bleached the hair 
 that should have nearly approached black, 
 to a rich, mahogany brown, and the locks, 
 curling in the moist air, shaded a forehead 
 infantile and guileless as that of a cherub. 
 
 Bertie noted the quaint, the indescrib- 
 able, the piteous and squalid prettiness of 
 face and form, and muttered, half to him- 
 •self, half to the child, who had not ceased
 
 " A Ragged Colt ." 65 
 
 to regard him with a fixed, marmoset's 
 stare : " Strange ! a fellow never can see a 
 boy when he happens to want one." 
 
 " Please, sir, d'ye want your horse held ?" 
 this, in a rustic's voice, untinctured by the 
 slightest rustic shyness, from her of the 
 rags. 
 
 " I do want my horse held, certainly," 
 said Bertie with a smile, " or rather, I want 
 her taken round to the ' Bugle' yard." 
 
 " I'll take he," cried the child with 
 alacrity, " gi'e me hold." She laid four 
 gipsy fingers on Elspeth's bridle as she 
 spoke, beside Bertie's soaked, dog-skin 
 covered ones. 
 
 " Not so fast !" he cried, trying to shake 
 them off, while Elspeth expanded her nos- 
 trils, and snuffed, and snorted, over the 
 torn brown straw hat that almost touched 
 her velvet muzzle. " Not so fast ; girls are 
 not supposed to do this kind of thing ; run 
 round the corner, and see if you cannot see 
 a boy." 
 
 The child shook her head. 
 
 " Gi'e it to me," she cried again, with a 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 broad smile ; " I'll take him every bit as 
 good as a boy could do, and bring him 
 again when you whistles for I." 
 
 " Ain't you afraid of horses ?" asked 
 Bertie, looking at the little reed, with her 
 mignonne and delightful face. 
 
 " No." 
 
 Bertie still clung to the bridle that the 
 four childish fingers had not for an instant 
 relaxed their hold of. The rain poured in 
 torrents, the gutters were running rivers ; 
 there was not one human creature visible ; 
 no one sallied from the saddler's shop to 
 his assistance; finally he relinquished the 
 rein, and entered the shop ; yet he could 
 not refrain from watching the slight young 
 figure, and the hand that was laid caress- 
 ingly on Elspeth's black neck. 
 
 " I must give her a shilling ; by George 
 I will ! A girl to hold my horse !" Then 
 turning to James, the saddler, who had also 
 heard the foregoing remark, he entered 
 upon the transaction for which he had 
 come. He concluded it, running in debt 
 for a lady's saddle with all the sans souct
 
 " A Ragged Colt" 67 
 
 in the world, and going to the door, gave a 
 shrill whistle. 
 
 The rain for the moment had ceased, 
 and black, jagged, low-lying clouds racked 
 swiftly overhead. In three minutes he 
 heard the sharp clatter of his horse's hoofs, 
 and Elspeth and her attendant came quickly 
 round the corner ; the child keeping up to 
 the horse's trot, with flying feet. 
 
 " You have both been quite sheltered 
 from the rain ?" inquired Bertie, looking 
 into the child's large, hazel eyes. 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "He's a pretty fellow," she volunteered, 
 touching Elspeth's shoulder with a rever- 
 ential admiration. 
 
 " Would you like to know her name ?" 
 asked Bertie with his engaging smile. The 
 child nodded again. 
 
 " Elspeth," said Bertie. 
 
 She repeated the word after him twice 
 or thrice, and clung still to the creature, 
 relinquishing the bridle, but clutching the 
 mane that was tossing in the wind, as 
 though loath to let her go. 
 
 5—2
 
 68 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " Have you ever seen me before ?"" 
 asked Bertie, waxing a bit inquisitive, 
 although the child was but one of the 
 shreds of humanity, for whom circumstance 
 seems to have as little mercy as has the 
 wind for a broken straw. 
 
 " Plenty o' times," returned the child 
 without hesitation, " plenty, plenty." 
 " And do you like horses very much ?" 
 " I do. One o' these days Til ride 'em." 
 Bertie laughed, and tossed her a shilling 
 not caring to prolong the conversation, and 
 discover the germ of inborn proclivity, of 
 which this roughly-expressed intention and 
 desire were the upspring. He was not 
 one to probe into the occult, as regards 
 humanity; he was a careless young man 
 who mentally touched one degree above 
 mediocrity, that was all. 
 
 The girl seemed considerably amazed at 
 a douceur so beyond her expectations, or 
 indeed her desert. But the look of astonish- 
 ment was quickly succeeded by one of de- 
 light, as she threw the shilling into the air, 
 and caught it in her brown hand.
 
 " A Ragged Colt? 69 
 
 Then Bertie mounted, and she regarded 
 him, so doing, with unmixed admiration. 
 
 " What is your name ?" he said, amused 
 by the look, and lingering. 
 
 " Elspeth," replied the child with a grin. 
 
 " Nonsense — is it ?" 
 
 " Noa." 
 
 " Then why did you tell me such a fib ?" 
 
 " 'Cause I likes the name." 
 
 " But I didn't ask you what you liked, I 
 asked you your name." 
 
 The child began to fondle the horse, 
 which received the attention with indiffer- 
 ence, as it was a stranger's hand. 
 
 " Elspeth," she repeated as if to herself. 
 
 " Good-bye, I must go home. — My 
 name's Doll." — This suddenly over her 
 shoulder, as she scudded away. 
 
 He watched her run down a lane, that 
 led he knew to the mill, and to a certain 
 grimy cottage which stood close by the 
 osiers that grew on the verge of the mill- 
 stream. Often he had fished in that same 
 stream above the mill, and slaked his thirst 
 in it lower down, where it rushed noisily
 
 jo The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 between its confines, shaded by the trem- 
 bling willow branches. 
 
 He watched her until she was out of 
 sight, and then took his homeward road, 
 going at a smart pace that he might be in 
 time for luncheon. 
 
 There never were girls so winning, so 
 companionable, so amusing as his two 
 cousins, Bertie thought, as, having tested 
 them during that entire long, wet after- 
 noon, he had now come to his room to 
 dress. Never were there dearer, sweeter 
 young women ; as for Angela, she was 
 fascination itself. What a magnolia white 
 skin, what large and bright blue eyes, what 
 glittering teeth. And could any one in the 
 world have such sweet ways about them as 
 Clemence had ? Such tender and sympa- 
 thetic tones of voice. " Adie !" — he ex- 
 claimed aloud, as the thud of a portman- 
 teau in a neighbouring room snapped the 
 thread of his reflections — " he said he should 
 be in time for dinner." 
 
 He ran down to greet his brother, and 
 accompanied him to his room while he
 
 " A Ragged Colt." 71 
 
 made his preparations for dinner. He 
 struck into the subject of the cousins, 
 without loss of time. 
 
 " They are such capital girls, Adie," he 
 said ; " and excessively good looking, 
 especially the younger, Angela ; though 
 Clemence is very handsome ; in a ball- 
 room she would probably be the more 
 striking of the two. We are all delighted 
 with them ; governor, Aunt Maria, and all. 
 They are fresh to everything, but not 
 rustics ; they are amusing, but not slangy ; 
 full of ' go,' but not fast. The governor is 
 pleased with them because they seem to 
 expect nothing, or want nothing but what 
 they have ; there has been no change made> 
 as you have probably seen for yourself 
 already. Aunt Maria likes them because 
 they are evidently going to allow her to 
 assume the dictatorial with them ; Fox 
 likes them because they are new, have 
 sweet voices, and are good to look at." 
 
 " And you ?" asked his brother carelessly. 
 
 " I ? I like them because they are jolly 
 girls, and cousins, of course."
 
 72 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 Adrian, who at that instant was regard- 
 ing his own dark visage in the glass, turned, 
 and looked at his brother's bright and sym- 
 metrical one. 
 
 " I'm ready to go down," he said, ab- 
 ruptly, and turning, marched out of the 
 room and downstairs. 
 
 There was no one in the drawing-room 
 when they entered it, but presently the 
 rustle of a woman's garments was heard on 
 the stairs, and Angela, by herself, made 
 her appearance. 
 
 She saw the spirited profile of her new 
 cousin, defined against the faded amber 
 window-curtains ; dark, bold, full of energy 
 and fire. He turned, and she extended her 
 small, pale hand, which he grasped in his 
 own, saying (for Bertie had not thought of 
 going through with any such formality as 
 mentioning their names to one another), 
 
 " You are Angela ?" 
 
 "And you," replied Angela with an 
 answering smile, " are Adrian ?" 
 
 She looked especially lovely that even- 
 ing, although she was all in black, save for
 
 " A Ragged ColC 73 
 
 a ruffle of tulle round her neck ; so high 
 that it touched the lobes of her little waxen 
 ears. 
 
 It was not five minutes before Clemence 
 appeared ; fresh, red-lipped, radiant, with 
 drops of cold water sparkling like diamonds 
 among her dark hair where it grew upon 
 the temples. She greeted her cousin 
 warmly and with an agreeable air of having 
 had a previous acquaintance with him — 
 perhaps not in this life — but in a state of 
 pre-existence. Then Miss Maria appeared, 
 and Mr. Lawless ; and Fox straggled in 
 with evidences of much brain-work, and 
 no fresh air, upon his spare and delicate 
 countenance, and then they all went into 
 the dining-room. 
 
 " And how is town, Adie ?" inquired 
 Mr. Lawless, frowning a little, as he ex- 
 amined his long filbert nails, with the air of 
 a connoisseur. 
 
 " The city," said Adie, a shade bitterly, 
 44 is as rich in mud and smoke, and as des- 
 titute of light, and air, and sunshine as it 
 usually is at the end of March."
 
 74 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 "Spring is coming — ha — and the Lon- 
 don season, and taxes to the Londoners, 
 and spring lamb and asparagus for those 
 who can afford to buy 'em ; and the poor- 
 rates ; and Lady Day will soon be here. 
 So runs time away." 
 
 " Father," said Bertie, with the decision 
 of tone that springs not from a sudden im- 
 pulse, but from a well-considered deter- 
 mination, " I should like to sell those 
 abominable screws of ours, and, by adding 
 a moderate sum, get a pair of horses that 
 shall be neither gone in the fore-legs, nor 
 in the enjoyment of a bone-spavin, as the 
 two pretty creatures in the stable are." 
 
 Mr. Lawless exhibited a painful medium 
 between extreme irritation with his son for 
 the evil suggestion and determination not 
 to infringe the decencies and betray his 
 vexation. 
 
 " Another time, another time," he said, 
 waving his hand, " we will talk about it ; 
 the maladies of the horse are not agreeable 
 subjects for dinner-table discussion. I do 
 not know that I care to part with the — ha
 
 "A Ragged Colt." 75 
 
 — the carriage horses ; they seem to me 
 passable enough nags. Keep what you've 
 got, and get what you can," he added, sud- 
 denly turning to Clemence, with a slight 
 grimace and smile, " if you can ; if you 
 can't, be the object of your own sincerest 
 compassion." 
 
 " The idea might be dressed up to sound 
 attractive," said Angela, listlessly ; " or a 
 sort of verbal rose-velvet mask, you know, 
 trimmed with point lace, and the idea under 
 it." 
 
 " Very well ; dress it, or mask it, and 
 present it to us," he answered, darting an 
 approving look at her. 
 
 " Faith ! I am not half quick enough, or 
 clever enough," she replied, laughing. 
 
 " Enjoy what you've got, and give what 
 you can, would sound more attractive to 
 many people," said Clemence. 
 
 " It is the duty of everybody to live well 
 within their income, and not think too much 
 of enjoyment," observed Miss Maria, look- 
 ing up, and joining in the conversation. 
 "Well within it," she repeated; "and I should
 
 7 6 7 7ie Sisters Lawless. 
 
 feel that I was not doing my duty towards 
 myself — indeed, that I was doing myself 
 great injustice to give in anything but the 
 smallest sums." 
 
 Miss Maria often gave the broadest 
 generalities the closest personal application, 
 which was both embarrassing and irritat- 
 ing. 
 
 " Oh, of course !" returned Clemence, in 
 confusion ; " oh dear, yes ! I had no idea 
 of meaning — of thinking " 
 
 " I must rescue my floundering relative," 
 thought Angela. " And it is so odious to 
 do ones self injustice, is it not ?" she said, 
 looking at her aunt ; " it is like striking 
 one's own dear head a resounding thump 
 against something, or stepping up a step 
 which does not exist, or going to a dinner- 
 party the day before, or being the first per- 
 son at a ball, or treasuring up a retaliative 
 speech to say to some one we hate and then 
 forgetting it when we do see them ; there 
 is no one to blame but ourselves " 
 
 Miss Maria cut her short; she was swell- 
 ing with offence ; claptrappy, frivolous,
 
 " A Ragged Colt." 77- 
 
 girlish chatter she detested ardently, and 
 she summoned her hardest tones, and her 
 most dog-fishy glances, as she replied, 
 
 " You talk so low and so fast, my dear, 
 that I have only been able to catch a word 
 here and there; but I think that before ser- 
 vants one should be careful of what one 
 says." 
 
 ''Servants — careful!" repeated Angela, 
 elevating her eyebrows, and drawing down 
 the corners of her sensitive mouth. 
 
 " Poor old Stainer," cried Fox, bursting 
 out laughing, " would be pleased, Aunt 
 Maria, if he could know that you gave him 
 credit for walking off with a tray, and 
 understanding a foreign tongue at the same 
 time." 
 
 " Angela is very fanciful," said Clemence 
 to her aunt, half apologetically. 
 
 " So I should judge, " L [rejoined Miss 
 Maria, in metallic tones. 
 
 " Yes, I am," remarked Angela, for her- 
 self. " Let me write you] a fairyTtale, and 
 come in and read you to sleep with it ; you 
 know you were complaining this morning
 
 yS The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 of lying awake so long after you went to 
 bed." 
 
 " Thank you," responded Miss Maria, 
 not ill-naturedly, " I won't trouble you. I 
 was brought up by my grandmother," she 
 continued, after a moment's pause ; " I was 
 thought very well, and properly educated, 
 and brought up ; but no doubt my ideas 
 are old-fashioned." 
 
 "If they are our great-grandmothers*, 
 I suppose they would hardly be called ad- 
 vanced now," returned Angela, imperti- 
 nently ; and no one in the room liked her 
 better for that impertinence. To Bertie it 
 seemed an unpleasant glimpse of the real 
 woman hidden away behind the sweet girl's 
 face, and sheltered by the sweet girl's 
 manner. 
 
 Miss Maria made no retort ; but she 
 turned very purple, and the veins in her 
 temples throbbed. Before long, she had 
 forgotten the slight to her grandmother, 
 though, and was eating her dinner with her 
 usual mixture of fear and joy.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HAME IS A HAMELY WORD." 
 
 OROTHY, or Doll, went flutter- 
 ing along through the rain, sun- 
 dry scraps and ends of raiment 
 flapping damply against her ankles as she 
 ran. It was not far to that combination of 
 dog-kennel, hen-house, and human habita- 
 tion which she called "home." Ah! indeed, 
 it was " ever so humble ;" and it was addi- 
 tionally ever so dirty, and ever so damp, 
 and ever so poverty stricken ! Being the 
 " sole daughter " of her father's " house and 
 heart," there were no Dolls, male and fe- 
 male, smaller than herself to share her 
 scrimped and forlorn existence. 
 
 Her father, a labourer, did not come
 
 8o The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 home to a midday meal, and so Doll, who 
 was to-day somewhat late, dined at a shelf 
 in the cupboard, without going through the 
 ceremony of placing her cold bacon and 
 potatoes on the table. 
 
 Having satisfied her hunger, she went 
 back to where she had laid her shilling ; 
 and regarding it with a loving eye (for it 
 represented to her food and amusement), 
 picked it up, and went out into a disorderly 
 back yard, where she dipped a battered tin 
 saucepan into the hogshead full of rain- 
 water, and scrubbed the precious piece with 
 soft-soap and a small tatter (torn from her 
 own personal apparel for the purpose), until 
 it shone white and clean. One or two ab- 
 ject hens, with feathers that were feathers 
 in naught but the name, came and stood 
 drearily on one leg and watched her. She 
 darted into the house, and returning with 
 scraps of potatoes in her wet hands, flung 
 them to them ; and they squabbled, and 
 scratched, and clucked over them, and for- 
 got their wet misery. 
 
 As she was throwing the soapy water
 
 " Hame is a Hamely Wordy 8r 
 
 away, a labourers heavy, unelastic thump 
 of a step sounded in the kitchen inside, and 
 Doll knew that her father had returned 
 from his day's work a mile away. 
 
 There were no greetings exchanged be- 
 tween them ; amenities seem to die, suffo- 
 cated in the atmosphere of extreme poverty, 
 fragile exotics that they are, shedding per- 
 fume and brightness over life, blending a 
 slight, bright woof, with the dull warp of 
 daily worries, vexations, and cares. Alas ! 
 the poor, amongst the " shards and thorns 
 of existence," have them not. 
 
 None of the small, pleasant, gilded de- 
 ceits that smooth and sweeten that smoother 
 and sweeter life of which they know no- 
 thing, are theirs. The truths of life thev 
 have ; and they are always to them hard, 
 rough, and ugly. 
 
 John Drake had at his heels the dog who 
 habitually guarded the tin-pail containing 
 his master's bacon and potatoes — his din- 
 ner, in fact — a nondescript animal, with a 
 canine cark and care written upon his 
 ragged and wobegone countenance. In 
 
 vol. i. 6
 
 82 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 his brown eyes was the fidelity, the un- 
 swerving loyalty that nothing could shake. 
 The kicks and blows that would long ago 
 have alienated a fellow human being from 
 surly John Drake, seemed only to attach 
 him the more firmly. 
 
 It was one of Doll's life-efforts to win the 
 same devotion from Jack that her father 
 gained ; but she failed. All her entice- 
 ments of scraps for his hungry maw, ca- 
 resses for his rough, much pommelled head, 
 were in vain. Jack was John's to kick, to 
 abuse, to kill if need be. 
 
 Doll ran into the kitchen, tossing her 
 shilling in the air as she went, and catching 
 it, making no comment to her father re- 
 garding it ; she knew that it would not be 
 necessary. 
 
 "Wot yer got there ?" quoth honest J ohm 
 grasping her arm with one hand, while with 
 the other he deprived her fingers of their 
 prize. 
 
 "What's the good of my telling yer," 
 answered Doll, " if yer bound to see for 
 yourself ?"
 
 "Hame is a Hamely Wo7'd." &$ 
 
 " Where did it come from ?" 
 
 "It come from a gentleman's pocket, 
 where it had been alonger his handker- 
 cher." 
 
 " Well, and how did it get out a his 
 pocket and into yourn ?" 
 
 " I ain't got a pocket !" observed Doll 
 with a laugh. 
 
 He shook her, to let her know that an 
 answer must be given without delay ; and 
 she spoke at once, and rapidly, 
 
 " I held his horse for him ; I held it for 
 more'n ten minutes ; when I come out, he 
 gi' it to me." 
 
 John, with the grudge of a magpie that 
 is being robbed of its " loot,'' restored the 
 shilling to his child, and bade her set the 
 kettle on the fire (for there was a small 
 fire in the little stove). 
 
 Doll obeyed, and seating herself upon 
 the cindery hearth, dried her ragged self as 
 best she could. John Drake, who was also 
 well drenched, took off his coat, kicked off 
 his hob-nailed, mud-encrusted shoes, and 
 waited with impatience for the kettle to boil 
 
 6—2
 
 #4 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " Happen the gentleman was one o 
 Squire Lawless's sons ?" he said, interro- 
 gatively, after a long pause. 
 
 Doll nodded, but somewhat doubtfully, 
 and watched a look, darker than the lowering 
 clouds outside, creep over her father's face; 
 for Mr. Lawless was John's landlord, and 
 not loved by John, who had found him a 
 man of flint. 
 
 "The young 'un is noliker hisfeyther than 
 
 is " John paused ; his mental resources 
 
 not being great enough to produce, an 
 illustration at a moment's notice. 
 
 " Than is a rat to a horse," supplied 
 Doll, taking the kettle off. " Kittle's bilin', 
 feyther," she added, and proceeded there- 
 upon to make tea. She helped her father to 
 consume it, and also sundry fat, thick rashers 
 of the inevitable bacon, and thicker slices of 
 brown bread. After her father had stuffed 
 his clay pipe with tobacco, and begun his eve- 
 ning refreshment and solace, she tumbled the 
 cups, and spoons, and plates into a wooden 
 bowl of hot water, and running gaily out of 
 the house, left them to soak.
 
 " Hame is a Hamely Word!* 85 
 
 The rain was over and gone ; the eve- 
 ning sky was crowded with clouds of varie- 
 gated, stormy hues — lurid and russet, and 
 dun, and livid, and lead-coloured, and here 
 and there faint primrose as some jagged 
 corner caught a stray ray of sunshine. 
 
 Doll went nimbly down to the mill- 
 stream, which was near enough for her to 
 hear it at night, even with the window 
 shut, and stood looking at the little brawl- 
 ing strip of water that had such a clear and 
 treble voice out under the open sky, and in 
 the free air, and such a perturbed and 
 hollow gurgle as it rushed between the 
 stone walls that fettered it here, and under 
 the dark and solid archway, from which 
 issued, even in the hottest days, a cool, 
 damp smell that Doll loved. 
 
 She had brought out with her a thick 
 slice of bread, scalloped with bites ; and, 
 notwithstanding that it was winterish, and 
 she was cold, stood, according to habit, 
 munching and staring down into the 
 limpid water. 
 
 As she finished the last remaining scrap
 
 86 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 of crust, she ran in again and began her 
 hated task of taking the dishes from their 
 bowl, and drying them on a towel that had 
 grown threadbare in the service. 
 
 Then Doll's housewifery was over for 
 the day. Her father needed none of her 
 service in mixing and draining the small 
 glass of gin and water upon which he 
 usually retired. It was the signal for Doll 
 to take herself off — the trickling of the 
 strong white liquid into their one cracked 
 glass — and, jumping to her feet, she gave a 
 good-night nod to her father, and flew up 
 the crazy stairs, which were little better than 
 a ladder, to her small sleeping place, an 
 ugly loft enough, with its flock-bed, and 
 tattered print quilt, and one unsafe chair. 
 
 Doll possessed an India-rubber comb, 
 with half the teeth gone ; and once, a very 
 long time ago, so long that she had almost 
 outlived the memory of it, she had owned 
 a brush : it had vanished in some untoward 
 manner, she forgot now what the manner 
 had been. The comb was a patriarch, and 
 served but poorly to disentangle the tresses
 
 " Hame is a Namely Word. 1 ' 87 
 
 of Doll's tri-coloured hair. For Doll's 
 abundant locks were, by turns, deep brown, 
 pale brown, and, at the ends, were bleached 
 to what nearly approached gold. 
 
 The one chair was useless, as to its legi- 
 timate purpose, for on it stood a coarse 
 china basin, and a dented pewter ewer, 
 which were the just causes of Doll usually 
 having an average clean face and hands. 
 
 Doll delighted in going to bed — the delight 
 of a young beast of the field that perishes. 
 To-night, she was not long in kicking off 
 her rain-stiffened shoes, in divesting herself 
 of her still damp rags, and seeking and 
 finding " sweet repose " upon the flock- 
 bed, and beneath the quilt, through whose 
 gaps and rents the stuffing was oozing. 
 
 As she closed her eyes, she heard the 
 familiar voice of the mill-stream, brawling 
 at, and complaining of, its fetters. In 
 summer, when the little casement was 
 thrown open, she could hear the osiers 
 murmuring and sighing, and whispering 
 laments to one another — not now — this 
 was the deaf and dumb time of the year,
 
 88 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 and Doll liked it but little. No wonder 
 that summer was her favourite season, 
 it always is the favourite season of the 
 poor.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 GHOST STORIES. 
 
 ATURE dried her tears, gave 
 smiles of sunshine, and most 
 balmy breaths of wild west 
 wind the following morning, which was a 
 Sunday, and led to the putting on of new 
 gloves, and pretty little bonnets, and a 
 search for little violet Prayer-books on the 
 part of the sisters. 
 
 They walked down the terrace steps, 
 across the not too well kept lawn, and 
 through the wild and uneven park, to the 
 small gray church, with its ancient flint- 
 stone tower, and deep, shady porch. They 
 felt some curiosity to see the vicar, for they 
 knew that in a day or two his wife would
 
 90 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 call. They entered the large pew — a good 
 deal stared at by what congregation there 
 was — behind their Aunt Maria, and followed 
 by Bertie and Adrian. Then Adrian closed 
 the pew-door, and the sisters sank upon 
 their knees, and hid their faces on their 
 little purple Prayer-books. 
 
 When they lifted up their heads, the 
 curate had entered the reading-desk ; and 
 him they found to be a placid and pretty 
 young man, about whom it was impossible 
 to harbour anything even as mild as a con- 
 jecture. When Mr. North took his place 
 in the pulpit, a sensation took the place of 
 the calm, half-apathy with which they had 
 regarded, and listened to, Mr. Burnaby. 
 
 Mr. North was a tall, spare man of fifty, 
 with a fine, almost perfect, head, and pale, 
 noble features. He wore spectacles, but 
 Clemence thought that he owed to them a 
 more complete air of erudition. His voice 
 was deep and clear, yet with the occasional 
 uncertain thrill of a man of very deep 
 feeling. 
 
 As he commenced his sermon with a
 
 Ghost Stories. 9 1 
 
 quotation from Socrates, Angela felt sure 
 that he was removed from that thing she 
 detested — the commonplace — and conse- 
 quently was prepossessed in his favour. 
 
 It was a service, neither fantastically 
 high, nor deadly low — a juste milieu — 
 which satisfied Angela, who was advanced 
 in her ideas of how the liturgy should be 
 conducted, yet did not offend Aunt Maria, 
 who was ultra low-church. 
 
 Clemence had hoped that the)' might 
 have an opportunity of exchanging a few 
 words with Mr. North, but he was not 
 visible, nor was Mrs. North, his wife, in 
 church. She was not in strong health, 
 Bertie told them. 
 
 The cousins walked down the gravelled 
 path between tomb-stones, recording the 
 (in many instances) surprising names, and 
 the best qualities of those who lay be- 
 neath. 
 
 A low phaeton lined with shabby green 
 awaited Miss Lawless at the gate, and the 
 girls having both pronounced their pre- 
 ference for walking home, Miss Lawless
 
 92 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 was driven off by old John, with the reins 
 sawing past her fine bonnet, with her flacon, 
 and her gossamer handkerchief, and her 
 handsome Church-service on her lap. 
 
 The cousins walked slowly up the hilly 
 road, and presently entered the park. It 
 was warm and pleasant enough to tempt 
 them to linger under the close-growing old 
 trees, and to hunt for the wild violets which 
 were beginning to spring up and hide them- 
 selves with their usual modesty. Angela 
 walked delicately by Bertie's side, her fair 
 head a little drooped towards him, while 
 the active tenant of that fair head spun a 
 cobweb of fancies to catch itself in here- 
 after, suicidally. 
 
 Adrian not being satisfied with the un- 
 divided companionship of his elder cousin,, 
 hurried her along, until at last they found 
 themselves abreast of Bertie and Angela, 
 and listeners to the concluding words of a 
 few very sweet lines that Angela was taking 
 the opportunity to quote to her cousin. 
 
 " I am glad that you were not an instant 
 earlier," she said with a glance at her
 
 Ghost Stories. 93 
 
 sister, half-malicious, half self-complacent 
 11 Clemence has not patience to hear me 
 quote gems of genius. Now, really Cle- 
 mence, I do not believe that you could 
 quote two lines of poetry, to save yourself 
 from instant execution, could you ?" 
 
 " Indeed, yes," replied the other with 
 that delightful manner of hers, that was so 
 far removed from whimsicality, and yet so 
 buoyantly light-hearted, " I can quote a 
 distich famously, Angela, that shall be ex- 
 actly appropriate to you : — 
 
 " There was a little girl, 
 
 And she had a little curl 
 
 That hung in the middle of her forehead, 
 And when she was nice, she was very, very nice, 
 And when she was not, she was horrid" 
 
 Bertie laughed, Angela shrugged her 
 shoulders with a scornful "Is that ori- 
 ginal ?" 
 
 But Bertie said, " Come, let us have 
 another." 
 
 M Are you equal to another of the same 
 calibre ?" inquired Angela with an airy
 
 94 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 contempt for her senior, to which Clemence, 
 fortunately, was hardened. 
 
 " Of course I am," answered Clemence 
 promptly, and looking at her sister with a 
 little laugh : 
 
 " Billy Bolaine, he jumped out of bed, 
 He flew at his sister and cut off her head, 
 Which caused his mother a great deal of pain, 
 Let us hope that dear Billy won't do it again." 
 
 " What marvellously different young- 
 women !" thought Bertie, remembering 
 Angela's 
 
 " The flower that smiles to-day 
 To-morrow dies ; 
 All that we wish to stay, 
 Tempts and then flies," &c. 
 
 As for Adrian, his younger cousin seemed 
 to him a curious study. There was a sort 
 of self-admiration about her, not demon- 
 strated by word or act, yet perceptible to 
 him, nevertheless. 
 
 Just now she seemed to be allowing 
 Bertie to share that self-admiration, for she 
 was gazing up at him with an odd blend-
 
 Ghost Stories. 95 
 
 ing of consciousness of self, and approval 
 of him. She remembered to keep her face 
 at the becoming angle, and yet she studied 
 his carefully. 
 
 " Love to give, finds ever love to get," 
 says the translator, yet one cannot help 
 but doubt him. What a wise provision of 
 Nature it would seem, were it really the 
 case ; yet how it would rob individual 
 histories of the melancholy charm and 
 pity-suffused interest with which they are 
 now invested. 
 
 Angela persistently addressed herself to 
 Bertie ; not conscious that he was far from 
 showing the same absorption in her, that 
 she did in him ; but she had always con- 
 trived to weave a kind of spell about the 
 few men with whom she had been thrown. 
 And the introspective view she took of 
 herself was altogether flattering. 
 
 " Has the vicar sons and daughters ?" 
 she said. 
 
 "He has one son ; no daughters." 
 " Ah, a fortunate man not to be obliged 
 to add to a supply that exceeds the de-
 
 96 The Sisters Lazvless. 
 
 mand, to swell an unwanted majority. It 
 is not nice to be a drug in the market, and 
 a coal at Newcastle, is it ?" she demanded. 
 " Individually, I don't think you are 
 likely to be made to feel like a Newcastle 
 coal, Angela," he answered. 
 
 Angela was pleased, and showed it. 
 Then he went on. 
 
 " Henry North is a capital fellow ; he is 
 
 in the " 
 
 " Oh, a soldier," said Angela parenthe- 
 tically. " I don't want to hear about him," 
 she added, " unless it is something in con- 
 nection with yourself. Were you boy 
 friends together ? Did you rob bird's 
 nests, torture cats, stick pins through but- 
 terflies, tie tin cans to the tails of outcast 
 dogs, steal cherries, and tumble off coach- 
 house roofs together ?" 
 
 " Is that your idea of boy friendships ?" 
 asked Bertie laughing. 
 
 " It is my idea, yes ; not based on any 
 personal observation, please remember. I 
 have known nothing in all my life of boys 
 or their friendships, but I always think this
 
 Ghost Stories. 97 
 
 of them : mischief, thy name is boy. But 
 you have not answered me, was this Henry 
 North a friend of your childhood ?" 
 
 " Yes, he was," replied Bertie ; "he was 
 very near my own age, and we were great 
 allies as boys, but we never practised the 
 enormities you have catalogued." 
 
 " No, I am sure you would not torture 
 a cat, even in the pitiless days of child- 
 hood," said Angela. 
 
 u Nor would North as a boy have 
 tortured anything that lived," rejoined 
 Bertie. 
 
 " Oh !" observed Angela vaguely, not 
 feeling much interest in Henry North, or 
 Henry North's good points. 
 
 " Were you more pitiless as a child than 
 you are now ?" inquired Adrian, joining 
 in the conversation, and showing that he 
 had been an attentive listener to what had 
 eone before. 
 
 " Ask Clemence," said Angela care- 
 lessly, and stooping down to pluck a wild 
 hyacinth that she immediately gave to 
 Bertie. 
 
 vol. 1. 7
 
 98 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " Was she ?" he asked obediently, turn- 
 ing to the older sister. 
 
 " She was very cruel to her dolls," said 
 Clemence, "and I think I remember a 
 terrible offence of giving a cat a bit of 
 meat tied to the end of a shoe-string, that 
 she once committed at a tender age. Yes, 
 I think she was more cruel as a child. 
 Why?" 
 
 " I — I don't know," answered Adrian at 
 a loss, and using those limp and flabby 
 words, that so often sound the flattest in 
 the language. Then he rallied ; " and 
 she has never substituted men of dust, for 
 puppets of sawdust ?" 
 
 " She has never had an opportunity/' 
 said Clemence calmly. 
 
 Angela pouted. " We did not know a 
 great many people in St. Dominic, for 
 there were not many to know. There was 
 a regiment stationed there for a short time 
 on account of Fenian disturbances, Angela 
 was about sixteen and a half then ; and I 
 have a dreamy recollection of a scarlet face 
 that used to grow redder when it saw her,
 
 Ghost Stories. 99 
 
 and a hat with a ' puggry ' that was taken off 
 with a flourish when it met her. I suppose 
 they belonged to a man." 
 
 " How hypocritical you are, Clemence, 
 to pretend you don't remember Frank 
 Osgood !" 
 
 " You remember him very well, it seems," 
 said Adrian. 
 
 " Of course I do : he brought me any 
 number of typical lilies and cherries. His 
 face was the colour of pink may, all over. 
 He made a laugh do duty for a speech, 
 whenever it was possible ; he had a lemon- 
 coloured moustache and saffron hair, and 
 eyes as blue — no, almost as blue as 
 Bertie's." 
 
 " Are Bertie's eyes blue ?" said Adrian 
 with a fraternal carelessness ; "I thought 
 they were gray." 
 
 " Irish gray; and Irish gray always 
 means blue." 
 
 " That is something like ' auburn ' being 
 pretty-polite for red hair," said Adrian. 
 
 " Or like ' tip-tilted like a flower,' being 
 
 7—2
 
 ioo The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 the poetical equivalent for a turned-up 
 nose," subjoined Clemence. 
 
 " I hate eyes so dark that the pupil is 
 indistinguishable," said Angela. 
 
 Adrian, whose eyes were as dark as they 
 could well be, smiled grimly at this artless 
 speech of his cousin. But as he considered 
 that he did not in the least wish to establish 
 a claim upon her interest, it did not matter 
 to him. By this time they had reached the 
 house, and the sisters went upstairs to take 
 off their little black bonnets. 
 
 " Amuse me this whole, long afternoon," 
 said Angela, coming up to Bertie with a 
 smile, soon after luncheon, as, with Adrian, 
 he stood smoking at a side-door that gave 
 upon the terrace. It was open now, and a 
 brother ornamented either side. 
 
 " How am I to set to work ?" he in- 
 quired ; " show you picture-books " 
 
 " Tell me a ghost story," she interrupted 
 imperatively ; " a long, dree, ghost story ; 
 if it is about our own family, and this house, 
 so much the better ; I should like to feel 
 that I am living in a house which owns a
 
 Ghost Stories. 101 
 
 tenant whom the servants only dare speak 
 of in whispers, and who is only known by 
 sighs, and rustlings, and mysterious tap- 
 pings." 
 
 Bertie shook his head ; " I fear it is not 
 one of the Lawless possessions," he said. 
 
 " No ? Then one of us should make a 
 grim tradition for the family ; turn into the 
 family ghost for the benefit of future 
 generations. Now, Bertie," she cried with 
 her faint laugh, and striking her hands to- 
 gether, " don't you think that I have origi- 
 nated an idea ? If you want to have your 
 memory treasured, turn into the family 
 spectre. Don't be the Bertrand who was 
 mediocre, and is only a name ; an essentially 
 human creature, who went down into the 
 dust leaving no story behind him, but be 
 the ghostly Bertrand, who had some un- 
 imaginable woe, or committed some un- 
 known crime, and whose perturbed spirit 
 declines to altogether abandon the old 
 haunts known to it while in the flesh, and 
 obligingly turns itself into the family phan- 
 tom.
 
 102 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " Oh, charming, to be — not Angela the 
 commonplace, who married in the common- 
 place way — and there is her portrait ; oh, 
 yes ; light hair, not too good looking — that 
 was Angela. Not to be that, but to be the 
 lovely Angela (female phantoms are in- 
 variably lovely) who drooped like a frost- 
 nipped flower, and ' grew white as the pearl 
 that was hung at her ear.' Cause, mys- 
 terious. Who, beginning by being a trifle 
 weird, went on growing weirder and weirder, 
 until at last in some romantic manner she 
 died, and was considered weird enough, 
 and romantic enough, and unhappy enough 
 to be handed down to posterity as the 
 blood - chilling thing, whose mysterious 
 sounds are heard at midnight, and whose 
 silken skirts rustle for the benefit of timid 
 maidservants, and sceptical guests." 
 
 " Come into the morning-room — there is 
 no one there — and I will tell you a ghost 
 story," said Adrian smiling. 
 
 They closed the door with alacrity, 
 and all trooped into the deserted morn- 
 ing-room, and taking possession of the
 
 Ghost Stories, 103 
 
 chair farthest from Angela, Adrian began 
 abruptly. 
 
 " A bishop was once staying in a 
 house " 
 
 " Come," interrupted Bertie, " that is an 
 awfully unartistic beginning — where should 
 a bishop stay ?" 
 
 "In a house," proceeded Adrian, not 
 heeding ; " he slept in a room which was 
 * grand,' and also 'gloomy and peculiar.' 
 He saw the grandeur at once, but the 
 gloominess and the peculiarity he was not 
 made aware of, until exactly a quarter-past 
 twelve o'clock. Then " 
 
 " Then what ?" asked Angela impatiently 
 as he paused. 
 
 " Then he was waked by what seemed 
 to him a stealthy footstep, and the jangle of 
 metal. Calling his own active imagination 
 every manner of hard name, the bishop 
 lighted the candle beside his bed, and saw 
 what caused him to cease vituperating his 
 own fancy, and made him grow chilly with 
 terror. A tall young gentleman stood 
 before the dressing-table, with his face
 
 104 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 carefully turned away from the glass, and 
 also from him, while with a restless hand 
 he fumbled amongst the brushes and 
 combs, and little dressing-case boxes, be- 
 longing to the bishop. 
 
 " The young gentleman was faultlessly 
 attired in a radiant dress of two centuries 
 ago. His peach-blossom coloured stock- 
 ings, and high-heeled shoes with diamond 
 buckles, were unexceptionable ; so were his 
 claret-coloured coat, and white watered silk 
 waistcoat. In a word, two centuries ago, 
 he would have been thought no end of a 
 swell. 
 
 " His hair was powdered as white as 
 snow. ' What do you want, my good sir ?* 
 said the bishop, sitting up, and speaking 
 with a dry, and half-paralyzed tongue. 
 
 " The young man turned, and with one 
 hand upon his rapier-hilt, advanced with 
 matchless ease and grace ; the diamonds on 
 his instep twinkling like glow-worms, as he 
 moved. 
 
 " ' This ! ' he said, striking his face. 
 Then the bishop saw that his eyes were
 
 Ghost Stories. 105 
 
 large, and dark, and that but for one blemish, 
 he would have been eminently handsome. 
 Being noseless, is of course a blemish, a 
 drawback to symmetry, a bar to comeli- 
 ness ; and he had no nose. Apparently it 
 had been slashed off. 
 
 ' k 4 This !' he repeated ; ' I cannot rest 
 in my coffin without it. Look F he went 
 on, coming close beside the bishop's bed, 
 whose hangings shook, so excessively 
 did he tremble with dismay. ' Look !' — 
 and he drew from among the Spanish 
 lace frills on his breast, an old-fashioned 
 miniature, in an open gold frame. ' Here 
 am I, before that hound (may he feel 
 the grave- worms gnawing him !) mutilated 
 me. And here ' — turning it over — ' is 
 she, who, but for my loss, would have 
 mouldered by my side. (May she be con- 
 scious of the disintegration of her own false 
 heart ; may she feel it to be nourishing 
 some rank growth of nettles that only a 
 half-starved ass shall eat F) 
 
 " The bishop mechanically turned his 
 eyes from the maimed face of his grisly
 
 106 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 visitor, to the painted one of a girl, very 
 young and fair, with twin-blue devils for 
 eyes, and a particularly mocking and wicked 
 smile. The artist had represented her in 
 the dishevelled style of the period, and if 
 Art had done its work faithfully in depicting 
 her, Nature had not been less faithful. 
 
 " ' We drew swords for her, and as his 
 keen blade slashed across my face, the 
 flame of my life's hope went out. He 
 maimed me, and marred me ; he made my 
 beauty to consume away ; he laughed as he 
 did it (may all the dogs of hell claim him 
 as brother!) He looked into my mutilated 
 and bleeding face, and laughed. 
 
 " < " When you have it again, you shall 
 have her," ' he fleered. 
 
 " ' Then darkness closed in on me. She 
 shrieked out, when she first saw me ; she 
 drew her gold curls over her eyes, and held 
 them there with her white fingers to shut 
 out the horrid sight of my changed face. 
 She said with a shudder, " This is not 
 
 Ranicar Hungerford ! — I cannot go, 
 
 go!'"
 
 Ghost Stories, 107 
 
 " * So I lost my beauty and her. I look 
 for it through the long hours of each night ; 
 I shall be looking for it when you are 
 palsied and old ; I shall be looking for it 
 when you are laid cold and low.' 
 
 "He covered the greater part of his face 
 with his white and jewelled hand, and with 
 his thrilling dark eyes glancing eagerly 
 over the diamonds, he took a searcher's 
 zig-zag course through the room and 
 vanished." 
 
 "Very good," said Angela listlessly, as 
 he ceased to speak. " Is it true ?" 
 
 " To the foot of the letter." 
 
 " Ah, then it is only not bad ; I thought 
 you had invented it on the spur of the 
 moment." 
 
 " I believe I could invent one that would 
 make the very down on your cheek stand 
 on end," replied Adrian, in a somewhat 
 miffed tone. 
 
 " Oh, Bertie !" said Angela, not paying 
 much attention to him, " can't you really 
 think of one ?" 
 
 H Yes," answered he, " I've thought of
 
 io8 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 one ; you'll find it abominably bad, and it is 
 literally true, but I'll tell it. 
 
 " After I had left Cambridge, the gover- 
 nor munificently allowed me to take three 
 hundred pounds and frisk over to the 
 Continent with it. As it happened, my 
 great ally at that time was an artist of more 
 than semi- Bohemian tendencies ; he pro- 
 posed himself as my companion, and more- 
 over suggested Germany, and the Black 
 Forest, as a gite. I agreed. At Paris we 
 added to ourselves a couple of thorough- 
 going Bohemians ; an actor, Leonce, and 
 a scribbler, Caillard. I shall not tell 
 anything of our journey until we arrived 
 at a tiny village in the valley of the Alb ; 
 a little place hiding itself among the dark 
 pines, and at the hour at which we arrived 
 (about eight o'clock) very solemn and 
 gloomy. 
 
 " Over our wine, after dinner — or supper 
 — we were joined by a couple of vagrant uni- 
 versity students, with the prescribed scar 
 across the cheek, or on the lip. They were 
 of the usual type ; talking a fellow down,
 
 Ghost Stories. 109 
 
 striking a fellow on the shoulder, or thump- 
 ing the table with their fists to give 
 additional force to what they said ; winding 
 their booted legs round the legs of their 
 chairs, and leaning forward with their 
 elbows on the table and looking at a fellow 
 through their spectacles with their faces an 
 inch from one's own, as they growled out 
 their gutturals. 
 
 " They were ferociously in earnest over 
 the story (which they both tried to tell 
 together) of a dilapidated old house, stand- 
 ing with a green ditch round it, that we 
 remembered to have passed as we came 
 along. It was haunted, of course ; and by 
 such an extra-gruesome ghost, that those 
 who lived to tell the tale of a night passed 
 within the walls of its special haunt, told 
 it in the incoherent words of madness. 
 These violent vagrants told the tale with 
 relish, but they admitted more Germanico, 
 that they dared not spend a night alone 
 within the room that was afflicted by the 
 spectre. 
 
 " ' I will sit up there this night, alone,'
 
 no The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 said Leonce, the actor, briskly. The stu- 
 dents exchanged glances of admiration at 
 this prowess. 
 
 " ' Himmel ! Will you ?' 
 
 "'Mon Dieu, yes.' 
 
 " ' But what are we to do ?' inquired my 
 friend Ruthven. 
 
 " ' Stay here, in this room, and wait for 
 me.' 
 
 " Getting permission, and the key of the 
 forsaken house, was a prolonged operation. 
 So lengthy, that it was half-past twelve 
 before we watched our hero unlock the 
 door for himself, by the light of the good 
 lantern which he carried ; and with an 
 easy face, and wave of the hand, vanish, 
 closing the door with a clang after him. 
 
 " We waited until we saw his light shine 
 out from the window of the room that had 
 been designated to him as the right one, 
 and then returned to the inn. We did not 
 keep ourselves awake with our brilliant 
 conversation. For in all sorts of cramped 
 and uneasy positions we dozed. I must 
 except from an uneasy position the elder of
 
 Ghost Stories, 1 1 1 
 
 the students, who coiled himself on the 
 floor, and covering himself with a con- 
 venient tablecloth to invisibility, seemed' 
 to give himself to real repose, while his 
 Wallachian dog crouched beside him. 
 
 " And now, Angela, I shall tell you what 
 Leonce did as if I were with him ; you 
 don't care for exactitude, you know. 
 
 " With his lantern throwing a clear and 
 broad stream of light in front of him, he 
 made his way upstairs, found the haunted 
 room without any difficulty, and entering, 
 placed the lantern so that its shaft of light 
 should strike the open door, and lighting 
 a cheroot, took a libretto from his pocket, 
 and scanned his part in a play of which 
 he was to be star upon his return to 
 Paris. 
 
 "It was perfectly still, but for the murmur 
 of the tall pines, as the night wind swept 
 over them. He waited with a contemptuous 
 patience. Not in vain ; for the spectre was 
 courteous enough to keep him in suspense 
 but a little while. 
 
 " A few sighs, a moan or two, a few rust-
 
 ii2 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 lings of ghostly garments in the corridor 
 outside, and an apparition was visible in 
 the open doorway, its mouldy wrappings 
 looming white against the blank darkness 
 of the long, unlighted corridor. 
 
 " It stood motionless, grinding its teeth. 
 Its eyelids were red as blood, its eyebrows 
 white ; the lower part of its face was 
 hidden. 
 
 " Leonce's heart gave one great bound, 
 and he rose to his feet ; then the foregone 
 conclusion which he had been in possession 
 of ten minutes before, came back to him in 
 its entirety. Used to every theatrical trick, 
 he assumed facial contortion to express the 
 extremest anguish of terror, and with one 
 hand a little behind him, clutched the table 
 on which flared the lantern. 
 
 " Fearest thou me ?" rolled from the 
 spectre's lips in terrible accents. 
 
 " ' No!' gasped Leonce, extending a rigid 
 hand, and pointing into the corridor with a 
 long fore-finger. ' Grand Dieu ! it is the 
 ghost behind you that I fear! It advances ! 
 — it is close upon you ! — there is Death
 
 Ghost Stories. 1 1 3 
 
 upon its face!' His well-trained voice sank 
 to a hoarse and rattling whisper. 
 
 4 'The apparition made no effort to turn and 
 look behind it into that long and gloomy 
 gallery. It shuddered for an instant, like 
 a ship in a hurricane, then tumbled head- 
 long to the ground. As the gruesome 
 swathings fell from round its face and jaw, 
 Leonce saw that he was human, and, more- 
 over, recognized him, 
 
 " Leonce raised him — he was speechless; 
 ran for and obtained assistance — he was 
 dead. Whether killed by the force of the 
 blow upon his forehead, or by the force of 
 his own boundless and causeless terror, or 
 a combination of both, was never known, 
 and never will be known, 'jusqu'au jour ou 
 tout parlera.' 
 
 " The elder student's dog was found be- 
 neath the woollen table-cloth, awaiting his 
 dead master's word of command to move ; 
 for the practical-joking ghost was the elder 
 student." 
 
 " Capital !" said Angela, with some 
 energy. 
 
 vol. i. 8
 
 1 1 4 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " You do not ask me if I am indebted 
 to my own imagination for it," he remarked, 
 with a smile. 
 
 " No, I feel that you were not." 
 
 " You are right ; it is really quite true. 
 And now tell us one in return." 
 
 " I will not," said Angela, ingenuously, 
 " because I should invent mine, and there- 
 fore you would not care to hear it." 
 
 " No," said Bertie, emulating her frank- 
 ness, " I have no appetite for ghost stories 
 that are not vouched for as being perfectly 
 true." 
 
 11 Then, of course, I shan't relate one," 
 said Angela, sulkily, " if you tell me that 
 you will not like it." 
 
 " I am afraid that it would not fetch me." 
 
 "How can one ' fetch ' you ?" she in- 
 quired, not without a sentimental inflection 
 of voice. 
 
 Adrian looked disgusted. "What a 
 beastly slang word you have taught her, 
 Bertie," he said. 
 
 " I think that tone of voice very fetch- 
 ing," Bertie replied to his cousin, without 
 attending to his brother.
 
 Ghost Stories. 1 1 5 
 
 But Angela turned upon Adrian in- 
 stantly. " Do you think ■ beastly ' a gain 
 upon fetching ?" she asked. 
 
 " You have not repeated it after me as if 
 you intended to adopt it," he returned. 
 
 " Indeed, no. Here is tea ; then it must 
 be five o'clock. How the ghost stories 
 have made Time shorten himself. Let me 
 see, Bertie, was I offended with you, or 
 not, because you would not have my own 
 ghost story ? Yes, I was ; and I will pour 
 out tea, and you shall not have sugar. I 
 notice that you generally abstract two more 
 lumps after you have tasted your tea." 
 
 She ran to the ugly little wooden table 
 — very different from those round and club- 
 shaped jewels of upholstery — which every 
 afternoon was produced from a hiding-place 
 behind the door by old Stainer ; was un- 
 folded, had its shaky legs made as much of 
 supports as possible, and, before it had time 
 to tumble down, was steadied by the de- 
 posit on it of the heavy tray, that Stainer 
 managed should balance it, after the fashion 
 of a rope-dancer's weighty pole. 
 
 8—2
 
 1 1 6 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " Are you not going to give me some ?"' 
 asked Adrian, as, having helped her sister,. 
 Bertie, and herself, Angela began daintily 
 to sip. 
 
 " Pardon ; I forgot you. Do you take 
 cream — or rather milk " — peeping into the 
 jug — " and sugar ?" 
 
 " Neither." 
 
 " A ' Heathen Chinee !' How are your 
 nerves ?" 
 
 She carelessly poured the tea into the 
 cup, and left it for him to take. He did 
 so, looking fixedly at her, as though her 
 face were merely a transparent case to the 
 mechanism of her mind, a mechanism which 
 required study. 
 
 Angela unconcernedly turned her profile, 
 44 Now how am I in profile ?" she said, with 
 her chilly little laugh. 
 
 Adrian, without replying, walked away 
 from her. 
 
 At this point, a strong puff of eau de 
 cologne entered the room, followed by Miss 
 Lawless. Clemence started up, like an 
 electrified eel, from Aunt Maria's chah\
 
 Ghost Stories. 1 1 7 
 
 Bertie retreated still farther from the fire, 
 Adrian hastily laid down a pretty gold 
 letter-weight, with which he had been play- 
 ing, for it was a special pet of his aunts, 
 who was perpetually weighing her letters 
 and newspapers, and would have endured 
 a night of torment to think that she had 
 put on a half-penny's worth more of stamp 
 than was needful. 
 
 Miss Maria ensconced herself, and began 
 promptly : " Angela, I hope that you have 
 not been walking through the park in those 
 thin boots ?" 
 
 " I have, indeed ; they are the thickest 
 boots I ever owned in my life." 
 
 " No wonder, then, that you are so 
 pale." 
 
 "It is not boots, believe me, that make 
 me so." 
 
 Miss Lawless took up a book. Angela 
 ostentatiously extended her slight feet on a 
 footstool in front of her, and surveyed them 
 with complacency. 
 
 " Shall I give you a cup of tea, Aunt 
 Maria ?" said Clemence.
 
 1 1 8 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " I do not approve of tea, on account of 
 the tannin." 
 
 " But shall I give it to you ?" asked 
 Clemence, puzzled. 
 
 M Oh, no." 
 
 " What is tannin ?" demanded Angela. 
 u Will you please tell me what it is, Aunt 
 Maria ?" 
 
 "It is a leathery substance, formed by 
 the combination of tea and milk, very in- 
 jurious to the coats of the stomach." 
 
 "Coats!" repeated Angela; "that sounds 
 masculine. Do you go to Poole, Aunt 
 Maria ?" 
 
 Miss Lawless stiffened herself, and 
 drenched her handkerchief afresh before 
 replying. " I do not think that needs an 
 answer, my dear." 
 
 " No," said Angela, looking a little 
 ashamed of herself, " I don't think it does. 
 Do you know any ghost stories, Aunt 
 Maria ?" 
 
 " Certainly I do ; several." 
 
 " Oh, give us one !" 
 
 She shook her head, and taking up a.
 
 Ghost Stoi ics. 1 1 9 
 
 volume of sermons, plunged into its con- 
 tents. 
 
 It was an aggravating way of hers, to 
 pursue her religious readings in places 
 where she was liable to distraction and in- 
 terruption, and to make the distracters and 
 interrupters smart with a sense of their 
 offence. 
 
 Now she sat among those four young 
 people, conscious that, when she entered 
 the room, they were all chattering like teeth 
 on a frosty morning, and that she had 
 silenced and was boring them with her 
 hard, old face, and her ostentatiously-held 
 good book. 
 
 After ten tiresome minutes, Angela, 
 making a little grimace to her cousin Ber- 
 trand, jumped up from her seat, and went 
 noiselessly out of the warm morning-room 
 into her own cold bedroom. An hour later, 
 Clemence found her there, seated by the 
 window, her blue fingers clasped round her 
 knees, upon which lay a volume filled with 
 her own girlish scribblings, partly diary, 
 partly effusions of a sans back-bone cha-
 
 1 20 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 racter, and with a conspicuous absence of 
 the art of prosody. 
 
 " What a ' happy family ' we are, in the 
 menagerie sense of the word, Clemence," 
 she began at once. " I am a white Per- 
 sian cat, you are a common English rab- 
 bit " 
 
 " Oh, don't bother me with such non- 
 sense!" said Clemence, a little impa- 
 tiently ; " you do talk such nonsense some- 
 times." 
 
 " Nonsense is a product of advancement, 
 don't you see, Clemence. Man, in a primi- 
 tive state, of course, had enough to do in 
 talking of the hardest and baldest facts — 
 they were such novelties to him — but as 
 fact and sense became a little used up, and 
 stale, and flat, why, of course, some clever 
 originators introduced fiction and nonsense, 
 and, like other weeds, they ramped, and 
 spread, and became ineradicable ; and man- 
 kind took kindly to them, and they took 
 kindly to mankind, and so long as mankind 
 runs his race, I suppose they will run it 
 with him. Ah, yes ; they are sure to keep
 
 Ghost Stories, 1 2 r 
 
 pace with the double-quick of progress. 
 The gong ! — thanks, brazen one. I find 
 myself the happy possessor of an appe- 
 tite. Are you ready, Clemence ? Come, 
 then."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A HORSE : AND A HORSE-SOLDIER OF THE 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 ^TffiHIS is spring; ethereal mild- 
 ness !" said Angela, shiver- 
 ingly, on Monday morning, as 
 she finished dressing. 
 
 She looked disapprovingly out of the 
 window as she spoke at the misty moist 
 atmosphere which was causing the ragged 
 rhododendrons, edging one of the walks, 
 to droop with an increased air of dejec- 
 tion. 
 
 " Drink your tea at boiling-point, then 
 put on your warmest jacket, and gallop 
 over the lawn — on your own feet, I mean/' 
 suggested the practical Clemence.
 
 A Horse-Soldier. 123 
 
 Angela condescended not to inform her 
 sister that she heard her speak, but tying 
 a black scarf round her shoulders, and 
 looking out frostily over her little stand- 
 ing frill, opened the door and left the 
 room. 
 
 At breakfast some excitement was caused 
 by Bertie's announcing his intention of 
 riding over to see a pair of horses that 
 had lately been in the possession of a 
 neighbouring squire, and now were owned 
 by a farmer who lived some five miles off, 
 who, in his turn, wished to sell them. 
 Bertie made it evident that he should be 
 the probable purchaser, looking at his 
 father with resolution as he did so. 
 
 ' ' Come to me — ha — after breakfast, 
 Bertie," said Mr. Lawless, in palpable dis- 
 tress of mind. 
 
 Bertie complied, and what the result of 
 the interview was they knew not. Bertie 
 was seen to mount Elspeth and ride away, 
 and though Angela darted out to speak to 
 him, she was too late, and returned disap- 
 pointed. Adrian had gone back to town
 
 i 24 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 early that morning, but on Wednesday was 
 to come again for the Easter recess. 
 
 Angela, seating herself in the most dis- 
 tant corner of the room, began scribbling 
 in her diary with a fanciful gold pencil, 
 shaped like a pistol. Clemence produced 
 a handkerchief, that she straightway began 
 to embroider. Miss Lawless, having 
 closed her Church -service with a dull thud, 
 rose up to prepare for her morning walk. 
 
 With her skirts hitched up until they 
 presented the singularly graceful appear- 
 ance of being much longer in front than 
 behind, with her gentlemanly-looking um- 
 brella, and her bonnet with the sprangling 
 purple flower (which the Flora of every 
 country should have disowned), she was 
 presently to have been seen promenading 
 amongst the unhappy-looking rhododen- 
 drons, with a martial tread. 
 
 Bertie did not make his appearance at 
 lunch, and Angela was observed to be 
 petulant. 
 
 Shortly after luncheon Mrs. North was 
 ■announced, and the sisters found them-
 
 A Horse-Soldier. 125 
 
 selves being presented to their clergyman's 
 wife, a pale and fragile creature, with pre- 
 tensions to an exquisite tact and great 
 charm of manner, but none to beauty. 
 
 The two young women were captivated 
 with her in ten minutes ; she, in her turn, 
 gratified by their ready appreciation of 
 her inconspicuous, yet subtle graces, was 
 inclined to be almost equally captivated 
 with them. 
 
 " Mr. North would have done himself 
 the pleasure of coming with me this after- 
 noon/' she said, as she rose up to depart, 
 " but most unhappily he was called away 
 to one of his most distant parishioners 
 who is ill, and needed him. I wish he 
 could have come with me ; youth and 
 gaiety are so refreshing to a man who is 
 wearied with brain and heart-work. It 
 would be very good of you if you would 
 come over and take a cup of tea with us 
 to-morrow afternoon," she went on, ad- 
 dressing herself to Miss Lawless. " My 
 boy — my son is coming home to-night on 
 a few days' leave, and I think he will bring
 
 126 The Sisters Laiv less. 
 
 a friend with him. It will be very nice of 
 you if you will come over." 
 
 "It will be very nice for us," answered 
 Clemence, warmly, and then, having made 
 and received one or two more little speeches, 
 Mrs. North took her leave. 
 
 " Well, Bertie," said Clemence, inquir- 
 ingly, as her cousin entered the room an 
 hour or two later, " have you bought the 
 horses ?" 
 
 "My father forced me to a compromise," 
 he replied, not too good-temperedly. " I 
 was to buy one horse, and keep the pair of 
 weedy Methuselahs that have been in 
 the stable for the last seven years. You 
 can't ride together ; for I think any man 
 who would bestride one of the carriage- 
 horses (save the mark !), would be guilty 
 of oppressing the aged and poor, to say 
 nothing of the ignominy of such a posi- 
 tion. Why, riding a monkey backwards 
 would be child's play to it ! I have bought 
 a chestnut that seems to me to be a good 
 thing. A light chestnut, almost sorrel!. 
 I tried her, and liked her paces, and got a
 
 A Horse-Soldier. i?j 
 
 vet. to look her over. He pronounced 
 her to be sound, and I could see that she 
 was free from blemish. The man says she 
 is a clever hunter — that's as may be — she 
 is young, and seems almost as fanciful and 
 sensitive for a horse as yon are for a 
 woman, Angela." 
 
 Angela blushed and smiled. 
 
 " Then, unless she already has a name, 
 perhaps you will name her for me." 
 
 " No, name her ' Moonshine,' " said Fox, 
 who had entered the room a few minutes 
 ago. 
 
 "She is a good colour to be named 
 Moonshine," returned Bertie. 
 
 " Then let it be Moonshine !" said 
 Angela, with a frown, " by all means. It 
 was very forward of me to propose having 
 my own name given to your horse, Bertie." 
 
 " She will be far more yours than mine," 
 he answered, with some resentment, " for 
 I shall always ride Elspeth, of course. 
 All right then, she shall be Moonshine, for 
 at present she is only the ' Wild Rose 
 filly.' I particularly asked if she had ever
 
 128 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 been ridden by a lady, and Rayner told 
 me yes ; his daughter, a girl of fifteen, had 
 been riding her every day for the last six 
 months. Then he had a side-saddle put 
 on her, and little Miss Rayner was spirited 
 from the poultry-yard, and hoisted up in 
 her crinoline and red woollen gown, and 
 she went off in capital style, the filly be- 
 having with the gentleness of a lamb and 
 the manners of a fine lady. She is to be 
 sent over to-morrow morning bright and 
 early. I hope you will like her." 
 
 " I shall like to look at her very much 
 indeed," said Angela, who had recovered 
 her lost equanimity, "and Clemence will- 
 like to get on her back, I dare say." 
 
 Clemence looked most brilliantly expec- 
 tant of pleasure from the new mare. 
 
 " Then I will give her a long trial to- 
 morrow afternoon, and Clemence shall ride 
 her first " 
 
 " No, Bertie, you cannot go to-morrow 
 afternoon," said Angela, dictatorially, "for 
 Mrs. North was here this afternoon, and 
 we are all to go to tea to-morrow. I said
 
 A Horse-Soldier. 129 
 
 that I was sure you would be charmed. 
 Why your Henry North is to be there ; 
 would you do anything but go ?" 
 
 "Is Henry to be at home ? I will go then, 
 and Moonshine can be tried afterwards. 
 Mrs. North is a cheery, winning sort of 
 woman, is she not ?" 
 
 " Oh, very ; we were delighted with her. 
 She is a perfect model of tact and grace, 
 and it is twice as admirable from her hav- 
 ing no beauty to help her -out." 
 
 Clemence was the speaker. Bertie 
 turned to Angela to hear her verdict. 
 
 " She is, as you say, Bertie, very win- 
 ning. She is the sort of woman who 
 could talk you into believing that the sun 
 rose in the west, or that straw was straw- 
 berries, or a coal was a diamond. Is 
 Henry like her ?" 
 
 " Strikingly, as regards his appearance ; 
 I don't know that mentally they are the 
 same. Fox, boy, take my arm and come 
 out on the terrace — the side away from the 
 wind — for a few turns before dinner." 
 
 " I want to come, too," cried Angela. 
 
 vol. 1. 9
 
 130 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " I have not been out all day. Aunt 
 Maria and Clemence, more enterprising, 
 have been." 
 
 " Come, then," said Bertie readily. An- 
 gela ran away, and speedily reappeared, 
 looking as pale as a tomb-stone saint, in 
 her black hat and wrappings. While Fox 
 leaned heavily on his brother s arm, and 
 also supported himself with his crutch, 
 Angela walked at Bertie's other side, her 
 blue eyes scarcely leaving his handsome 
 face as she talked to or answered him. A 
 flush, pale as a winter sunrise, stole into 
 her cheeks, her tongue ran on gaily, she 
 often laughed. At last, prompted by what 
 seemed an irresistible impulse, she clasped 
 his arm, looking into his face with a smile. 
 11 I must be commonplace enough to say, 
 1 between two thorns/ " she said. 
 
 Clemence, who had come to the side 
 door, and was looking out upon them, 
 watched her with a sorrowful gentleness 
 resting on her face. The sorrow was for 
 herself, the gentleness for her sister. 
 Presently she closed the door, with a long
 
 A Horse-Soldier. J31 
 
 sigh. They had passed and re-passed her 
 many times, and given her no word ; they 
 were engrossed with each other and she 
 went unnoticed. 
 
 Henry North was a tall and plain young 
 man, with his mothers ill-defined, ill- 
 chiselled features ; and hair, which only by 
 the utmost courtesy and partiality, could 
 be called auburn. His skin, Nature had 
 intended should be fair and pale ; the sun 
 decided differently, burning him raw sienna, 
 except for one stripe across his forehead, 
 which was protected by his forage-cap, and 
 was white as ivory. 
 
 He had such a melancholy face, such a 
 pre-occupied manner, and such a far-away 
 look in his eyes, that many people sup- 
 posed him to be deaf as an adder, and 
 shouted at him accordingly, a proceeding 
 that entertained him very much. He 
 approached Angela and Clemence in a 
 leisurely fashion, and more like a valetudi- 
 narian, than the strapping, sound, and sane 
 individual that he really was. Angela, 
 
 9—2
 
 132 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 half turning her pretty profile towards him, 
 met him with an exaggeration of his own 
 manner. Clemence opposed to it her own 
 strikingly genial, and therefore dissimilar 
 one. Yet Angelas aspect was so charm- 
 ingly that of a creature breathing a rarefied 
 atmosphere, and " made by glamour out of 
 flowers," that Henry North, although he 
 had a reputation for fastidiousness and nil 
 admirari to sustain, could not help but 
 give her a place in his estimation that no 
 woman had ever held, and could not refrain 
 from giving her a far longer look than it 
 had often been any other woman's lot to 
 obtain from him. 
 
 He introduced his friend, a yachting 
 man of note, the fortunate possessor of 
 fifteen thousand pounds a year. A man, 
 who, to use his own words, " did not go in 
 for girls, fought shy of them," and was 
 given to adorning his yacht with married 
 women whose husbands, or perhaps sons, 
 were friends of his own, who could not 
 possibly have designs on him, and whose 
 friendship was pleasant to him.
 
 A Horse-Soldier. 133 
 
 He was a fair, good-looking fellow 
 whose appearance Angela found to her 
 mind, and accorded him a smile so broad, 
 that it displayed two little dimples which 
 paid her cheeks only angel's visits, so 
 seldom did she stretch her pretty lips to 
 their widest extent. Henry North saw, 
 inwardly digested, and was piqued thereat. 
 " By Jove !" said his worse half — his 
 foolish, vain, spoilt boy half — " I'll be 
 given those teeth and dimples, hanged if I 
 won't be, before she goes !" 
 
 He took the damsel a cup of tea, which 
 she received with civility undoubtedly, but 
 with little more than a side face turned to 
 him, and a " thanks," both of the most un- 
 impeachable gravity. Seating himself be- 
 side her, he devoted himself to her in an 
 inert clinging, star-fish kind of way that it 
 was impossible to elude. Not that Angela 
 wished the least in the world to elude it, it 
 was very agreeable to her, partly for its 
 own sake, partly because she was foolish 
 and deluded enough to think that it put the 
 unconscious Bertie in a state of tantalism.
 
 134 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 Henry North had been stationed in 
 Canada two winters ago, and they soon 
 began to exchange confidences on the sub- 
 ject of rinks, toboginning, snow-shoeing, 
 sleighing. Henry had been upset from a 
 sleigh three times, sprained his wrist 
 toboginning on St. Helen's Island, frozen 
 his chin and one ear while snow-shoeing, 
 and never learnt the Dutch roll. Angela 
 had been upset once, had frozen one ear, 
 and no chin, had had many hair-breadth 
 escapes, but no damages in toboginning, 
 and had learnt the Dutch roll. 
 
 " When I am in a tobogin, I scream 
 from the time we leave the top of the hill, 
 until we arrive at the bottom." 
 
 " Dear me ! and do you enjoy it then ?" 
 he said. 
 
 " Oh, excessively. The very danger is 
 exhilarating. How exciting it is just graz- 
 ing a tree, just leaping a ditch, just not 
 coming to grief in fact." 
 
 He agreed with her. And a community 
 of interest became established between
 
 A Horse-Soldier. 135 
 
 them at once. They seemed loath to part 
 from the subject and one another. 
 
 " And what do you think of my friend 
 North ?" inquired Bertie, as they took 
 their way homewards. 
 
 " He gave me the impression of being 
 in debt, and in love, and homesick, 
 and hungry," answered Angela with 
 alacrity. 
 
 " I don't think that you gave him the 
 impression of having given you that im- 
 pression," remarked Bertie. 
 
 " I hope not !" exclaimed she. " It 
 would grate on me to feel that he thought 
 his sleepy attentions thrown away. I like 
 men to think that they bring their com- 
 plimentary wares to a connoisseur, and a 
 grateful recipient, even though the grateful 
 recipient makes no return in kind." 
 
 To this Bertie accorded no reply, but 
 hung back, until his aunt and Clemence 
 caught him up, and watched Angela steal- 
 ing over the grass in front of him, her 
 dress carrying with it a host of little 
 followers in the shape of loose twigs and
 
 136 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 sticks, and dead leaves, and grasses. How- 
 pretty and winning she was, he thought ; 
 and in what a rare and original fashion. 
 She had not one grain of common sense. 
 Perhaps to some fellow that would not 
 matter though ; she was spoilt, capricious 
 and wilful ; perhaps that same " some 
 fellow" would be one to think perfection 
 undesirable, unlovable, not captivating. 
 Certainly perfection and fascination seldom 
 go together. Then he hurried on " lighter 
 footed than the fox," to mount and try the 
 new horse, which had duly arrived in the 
 morning, and been pronounced a thing 
 that did credit to his eye and judgment. 
 As she behaved with the utmost discretion 
 and prettiness under him, he declared her 
 to be quite fit for Clemence to mount the 
 next day. And Clemence did mount her, 
 and rode her gracefully and well. But 
 Angela dared not get on her back. Hating 
 herself for her cowardice, yet unable to 
 conquer it, she would stand with Adrian 
 day after day, wistfully watching Bertie 
 and her sister until they were out of
 
 A Horse-Soldier. 137 
 
 sight, and feeling- herself punished, robbed, 
 and ill-used. Such a frame of mind did 
 not conduce towards smoothness of inter- 
 course between herself and Adrian. 
 
 Stormy and rough were many of their 
 conversations together ; for, cheated of 
 Bertie, Angela, faute de mieux, fell back 
 upon Adrian, to whom she was antagonistic 
 as well as to her aunt. 
 
 While Henry North's leave lasted, she 
 amused herself with him ; for Mrs. North 
 often came in her pretty pony-carriage to 
 take her for a drive, afterwards carry- 
 ing her back to tea. On these occasions 
 Angela left her aunt, and the equine 
 crawlers, in the lurch, while she learnt 
 from Mrs. North how fascination-fraught a 
 woman can be who has not so much good 
 looks as you could put in your eye, and 
 from her son how danger-fraught a very 
 ugly man can be, who is clever and be- 
 guiling by inheritance, and who has reduced 
 the art of pleasing to a system. 
 
 When it was possible, she attached her- 
 self to Bertie. She was quite a spoilt
 
 138 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 child enough to cry for the possession of 
 an embodied fancy ; and failing to achieve 
 that possession, quite passionate and ill- 
 balanced woman enough to die of disap- 
 pointment and chagrin. The Fates had it 
 that she should merge all the vagrant pre- 
 ferences, all the wandering fancies, all the 
 stray prepossessions and whimsical loves of 
 her earlier youth, into a passion grand and 
 serious, which should bias her own conduct, 
 and affect the destiny of herself and others, 
 and be in effect the life of her life.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 H I N 1ST H I N !" 
 
 $f^$^0 ti me glided on, and the verge 
 <^H?^fe of early summer was reached 
 
 Pk^&fVM lit- i 
 
 i^@^l2 — tnat loveliest season when 
 "a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's 
 breast," and " a young man's fancy lightly 
 turns to thoughts of love." The season 
 when youthful creatures' hearts are putting 
 forth young tendrils, and the tendrils 
 must needs have something to wind them- 
 selves about, and when older hearts ache 
 because of the vivid — ah! too vivid — 
 remembrance of past summer times, when 
 the birds' notes appealed less to the ear, 
 and more to the heart, and when early 
 flowers could be gathered with a sense of
 
 140 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 appropriateness to self, which is gone now, 
 never to return. Little by little, the fit- 
 ness of this sweet season, in regard to our- 
 selves, seems to vanish as the years go by. 
 Youth, rambling in lanes full of quivering 
 lights and shades, and damp, delicious, 
 earthy scents, brings back handsful of 
 flowers, and a heart full of rejoicing, and 
 innocent pleasure in the fairness of God's 
 Earth. Middle age, wandering in those 
 same lanes, is apt to bring back only a bad 
 cold, flowers that grow only in most acces- 
 sible places (they are never the prettiest), 
 and a heart full of vain regrets. 
 
 " Venture to go on a ride to-day, 
 Angela ?" said Bertie to his cousin. 
 " I think it is now two months since 
 Clemence began riding the new mare, and 
 Moonshine has never once done a thing to 
 be cavilled at ; you will be as safe on her 
 back as you are sitting there." 
 
 Angela meditated. " I should like it," 
 she said, slowly — " oh ! dear — so much. 
 I do so envy Clemence every day when I 
 see you jump her up in that clever way,
 
 Hin ist Hin" 
 
 141 
 
 and ride off with her. You will watch my 
 face, to see if I am going to faint, and ar- 
 range the reins in my hand, and dispose 
 my habit so that it will not catch, should I 
 tumble off — and keep close beside me, and 
 watch the horse's manners, so that if it has 
 premonitory symptons of shying, or rearing, 
 you can jump off and hold it ; and promise 
 not to be cross if I drop my whip (as I 
 once did), and you have to get down and 
 pick it up ; and go only in rustic lanes, and 
 not tell me that I don't ride one quarter as 
 well as Clemence ; and not laugh at me for 
 being nervous, and not be nervous your- 
 self, and not want to ride fast — will you 
 promise me all that, Bertie ? for if you will, 
 I intend to go." 
 
 " Of course I will ; promise anything 
 you like. And when once you assure your- 
 self by taking a good ride, and coming back 
 safe, and with a stunning appetite, you will 
 not need to be persuaded to go, I'll bet 
 anything you please." 
 
 To tell how Angela wasted a useful hour 
 in arranging herself in her sister's habit —
 
 142 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 howshe arranged and re-arranged her flaxen 
 hair, with an eye to combining the becom- 
 ing and the compact, how charming she 
 looked when at last she left her room; how 
 she balanced herself on the top step, and 
 went in pulling off her gloves, and declaring 
 she could not go ; how she came out again, 
 putting them on again, and declaring that 
 she would go. How the whole family 
 (servants at upper windows included) as- 
 sembled to see her start ; how she peremp- 
 torily insisted on their vanishing. How, 
 finally, she was lifted up by Bertie, how 
 absurd she was in her twitter of nervous- 
 ness when once on Moonshine's back ; and 
 how, at last, she went off at a snail's pace. 
 All this has taken long enough in the bare 
 mention, and, to be enlarged upon, would 
 fill a chapter. 
 
 It was a lovely day. After she ceased 
 to hear the frightened beating of her own 
 heart, and knew that her hands and lips 
 trembled less, Angela felt attuned . to it. 
 There was an exhilaration in being mounted, 
 and feeling conscious of looking fairer than
 
 1 ' Hin ist H171. " 143 
 
 the May flowers, and of having undivided 
 possession of her cousin in those peaceful 
 lanes where they were peeped at by num- 
 berless " little Cyclops with one eye," 
 nodded to in a friendly way by fox-glove, 
 in myriads ; sighed to, and whispered to, 
 by the young green leaves overhead which 
 had but for little time been open to the 
 light. Told a short and simple story that 
 began and ended with love, by the many 
 bird-voices which made the air teem with 
 primitive music, as the early spring flowers 
 made it teem with primitive perfume. 
 
 " If a day in early summer could only 
 typify life !" sighed Angela. " A rosy 
 dawn, a breezy mid-day, a still, and scented, 
 and golden afternoon, with long, bright 
 hours, and long, cool shadows, and bars, 
 and bars of amber sunshine, then a crimson 
 sunset, and a short, gray, quiet evening, 
 and the day over. What bliss that would 
 be ; eh, Bertie ?" 
 
 " No one has ever given an experience of a 
 life like that to the world," he answered, 
 " and therefore who can tell whether it
 
 144 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 would be more desirable than the chequered, 
 and stormy, and dull, and rainy ones that 
 fall to our lot. A life like this very pretty 
 day is not in the scheme for us. Still, my 
 cousin, I can hope that yours will be as 
 much like it as it is possible. Some fellow 
 writes that ' into all lives some rain must 
 fall ;' may yours be as droughty, and sun- 
 shiny as anybody's can well be." 
 
 " What do you and Clemence talk about 
 when you ride together ?" she asked, irre- 
 latively. 
 
 " That is one of the unanswerable ques- 
 tions everybody asks," he replied. " How 
 can I possibly remember ? Every manner 
 of subject has been touched on, I believe. 
 Clemence is very sensible." 
 
 " Oh dear ! yes ; she is one of that sort 
 of people to whom all kinds of obsolete 
 old proverbs can be applied. She would 
 always ' make hay while the sun shone;' be 
 ' early to bed and early to rise ;' be ' the 
 early bird that catches the worm.' For 
 my part, I consider that bird a knave, and 
 the worm a fool."
 
 Hin ist Hin!' 145 
 
 " You are very complimentary to your 
 sister, Angela." 
 
 " I believe I meant to be half-compli- 
 mentary to her when I began to speak, but 
 as I finished I had forgotten her. Am I 
 sitting square ?" 
 
 11 A little more to the right, and farther 
 back in your saddle." 
 
 " Is that better ?" 
 
 " Much better." 
 
 " We are to dine at the Norths' to- 
 night, remember ; Henry has come home 
 for Sunday." 
 
 " Take care that from calling him Henry 
 so constantly, behind his back, that you do 
 not slip into calling him it to his face." 
 
 " I should not be very angry or shocked 
 at myself if I did." 
 
 " I should be very angry to hear you." 
 
 " Oh ! Bertie, should you ? Then I 
 shall infallibly do it. I should like to 
 quarrel with you, only for the pleasure 
 of making friends with you afterwards." 
 
 11 But suppose I would not make friends 
 with you ?" 
 
 vol. I. 10
 
 146 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " Then it would be almost as great a 
 pleasure — though of a totally different sort 
 — to be melancholy and miserable because 
 I was at variance with you. I should soon 
 cry and starve myself into being so pathe- 
 tically ugly that you would relent merely 
 for the sake of beautifying me." 
 
 " A work of supererogation.'' 
 
 " Oh ! you should see me when I am 
 unhappy." 
 
 " I hope devoutly that I never may 
 do so." 
 
 "What, not even if you were the dis- 
 turbing cause ?" 
 
 " My dear child, no ; that would be ten 
 times harder for me to see. Why, what do 
 you take me for ?" 
 
 ' A traveller from the cradle to the grave, 
 Through the dim night of this immortal day,' 
 
 as I am myself; and we immortal tra- 
 vellers indulge in such ugly propensities 
 by the way. We don't, in the least, 
 mind beholding a fellow-voyager clothed
 
 4 ' Hin ist Hin. " 147 
 
 in figurative sackcloth and ashes, al- 
 though we pretend that we do. Bertie, 
 I am afraid I should enjoy seeing you 
 unhappy, and knowing myself to be the 
 cause." 
 
 " Take care what you say " 
 
 " Take care, for the second time within 
 five minutes," said Angela, gravely. 
 
 " Yes, take care ; for what is said in jest 
 often comes true in earnest." 
 
 " Bah ! can't you think of some more 
 modern and original way of telling me ? 
 You know there is nothing more hateful to 
 me than are old saws." 
 
 " No ; and if I could think of a more 
 modern way I should still prefer the old. 
 1 like good old ways. I will say if you 
 like though, that a time may come when 
 you will be gratified by seeing me unhappy 
 and knowing yourself to be the cause. 
 But I would rather be made unhappy by 
 you, than happy by most other people," 
 he went on, looking at her with a proprie- 
 tary sort of admiration, quite free from any 
 special warmth, however. He had not in 
 
 10 — 2
 
 148 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 the least calculated the effect of his words ; 
 she looked so pretty, that it seemed as if 
 she deserved to have a pretty speech made 
 to her ; and he was not averse to making 
 pretty speeches ; nor was he in the habit 
 of weighing his words. 
 
 He never knew — he never knew, that 
 this afternoon's episode struck out the key- 
 stone of his life, and left him in after-time 
 with a " wounded name." Poor Bertie ! 
 
 He bent a little towards his cousin as he 
 spoke ; and on that, Angela's face grew 
 suddenly grave, yet at the same time 
 bright, and took on a look which plainly 
 said, " It has come then, at last !" It was 
 the face of a woman not in the least 
 startled, and quite, quite happy, as she 
 said with a flower-like droop of the head 
 towards him : "I believe I could truth- 
 fully say that to you in return." She 
 raised her eyes to his ; they were steeped 
 in a light, and intensified by an expression, 
 which, far from intoxicating, sobered him. 
 
 For he understood with a bound of the 
 heart, that his cousin loved him. And she
 
 Hiu ist Hiu. 149 
 
 had misunderstood him ! What had he 
 said ? What had he done ? Must he £0 
 
 o 
 
 on playing a part now, that her pride need 
 not be humbled, and she rudely awakened 
 from her strange hallucination ? Foolish 
 words ! He hated them. Ah, what a 
 gulf in our lives a few foolish words make ! 
 " And I will say it, if you tell me to do 
 so," she continued in a half-whisper. 
 
 And although he dreaded the sound of 
 his own voice ; although he felt his heart 
 sink as it had never done before, and his 
 cheek grow hot with self-condemnation ; 
 although he felt all this, his want of moral 
 courage, his faint-heartedness at causing 
 pain, made him murmur, " Say it — if you 
 like." 
 
 " I do like." And then she repeated 
 his words, and they were quite silent ; but 
 with the birds carolling lays of love, and 
 the blossoms and leaves whispering sweet 
 messages to one another, and the light 
 wind wooing the waving grasses and deli- 
 cate wild roses with his fitful breaths, there 
 hardly seemed to be any need for speech.
 
 150 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 i < 
 
 " Ah !" said Angela, — the first to speak, 
 — " I almost feel now as if my life was 
 going to be one long bright summer's 
 day.' 1 
 
 " I trust with all my soul that it may 
 be," he answered earnestly. " Believe me, 
 that I shall do my best, always, to make it 
 so. I will imitate your dear sister, in 
 smoothing and making it easy for you. 
 She is a good sister, is she not, Angela ?" 
 
 " Oh yes ; of course. Tell me, Bertie, 
 when you have been riding with Clemence 
 have you ever wished for me to be in her 
 place ?" 
 
 A look of terrible embarrassment crossed 
 Bertie's face, he flushed hotly as he answered, 
 " No." 
 
 Angela's face grew crimson, and her 
 lips quivered. 
 
 " Why should I have wished it, dear 
 cousin," he went on, looking at her with 
 compassion, " when I knew that Clemence 
 was happy on the mare's back, while you 
 would probably be unhappy ? My rides 
 with Clemence have been delightful "
 
 Hin ist Hiii" 1 5 t 
 
 * Have I been unhappy to-day ?" 
 
 " Ah, but we have not gone off a walk 
 yet. You don't expect to complete a ride 
 at a snail's pace, do you ? Come, try a 
 canter." 
 
 " No, no, I am so afraid that the canter 
 will turn into a gallop, and I am so fright- 
 ened at a gallop." 
 
 " You little muff," he answered laughing, 
 and in a coaxing tone, " Come." 
 
 He touched his horse, and incited his 
 companion to follow him. Angela ven- 
 tured upon a canter, and finding Moon- 
 shine Amenable to the feeblest touch (she 
 could have been ridden with a silken 
 thread) went bravely on, looking very 
 pretty and self-pleased, and with a becom- 
 ing tinge of colour brightening her some- 
 what pallid beauty. 
 
 It was not long before she reined up, 
 however, for she could only talk whilst 
 going at a walk, and she wished to be fed 
 on the flattery of loving words. In addi- 
 tion she wanted Bertie to say something 
 more definite, more tangible — something
 
 152 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 that would make of this lovely idyl a bit 
 of the sound and unromantic prose she 
 had hitherto found unpalatable, make a 
 recognizable fact of the sweetest fancy 
 that had ever occupied her visionary mind 
 and self-engrossed heart. 
 
 " Bertie," she said timidly, " I am not 
 in a happy dream, am I ? You are in 
 earnest." 
 
 " Certainly ; I can truthfully say that 
 you are the sweetest creature that ever led 
 a man's fancy captive." 
 
 " As the French Canadian children say, 
 do you mean it, ' indeed, in double deed, 
 across your heart and soul ?' " 
 
 " Oh, I will swear to that, by the French 
 Canadian children, or anything else that 
 you like." 
 
 " Thanks ; I am satisfied ; who could 
 look into your face and doubt you ?" 
 
 He winced. 
 
 " Did you and Henry North ever look 
 into the glass together as boys ?" 
 
 " Not that I remember ; why ?" 
 
 " Hyperion and a Satyr," she returned.
 
 "Urn ist Hin. v 153 
 
 u Fancy Hyperion being jealous of a 
 Satyr." 
 
 " Did I ever say that I was jealous ?" 
 
 44 Did I ever say you were Hyperion ?" 
 she retorted with a nettled laugh. 
 
 44 You implied it." 
 
 44 And you implied that you were jealous, 
 Do acknowledge that you were,, the merest 
 scrap, just to please me." 
 
 44 If you know it already why should I 
 tell you ?" he answered. 44 I certainly did 
 not like the idea of your slipping into call- 
 ing him Henry." He tried to laugh, but 
 he looked horribly discomposed, perplexed, 
 utterly uncomfortable. 
 
 44 Then I am to take that as an ac- 
 knowledgment ? I shall. You are so 
 thoroughly honest and truthful, that things 
 implied by you are as much to be be- 
 lieved as solemn asseverations from other 
 people." 
 
 She spoke from her heart. 
 
 44 Do not make a sort of Dr. Watts of 
 me !" he exclaimed, while a sense of igno- 
 minious failure in sustaining the high moral
 
 154 The Sisters L aw less . 
 
 integrity that he had thought his, over- 
 whelmed him. He felt like a man in a 
 troubled dream, who is slipping down 
 some vague decline, and who cannot go 
 back although it seems easy enough of ac- 
 complishment, and a needless and unac- 
 countable thing to be slipping at all. 
 
 " You evidently don't like to be told my 
 opinion of you," she answered ; " you 
 would rather have it left to your imagina- 
 tion, that you may exaggerate it into a thing 
 ten times better than it really is." 
 
 " Not at all " 
 
 " Ah, well ; perhaps I am judging you 
 by myself; but I interrupt you." 
 
 " Oh, it was of no consequence ; I was 
 merely going to say that I would promise 
 not to fancy that you thought me a Crich- 
 ton. I don't want you to do so, Angela, 
 heaven knows !" 
 
 Angela looked slightly disappointed. 
 " Don't you ?" she said, wistfully. " Then 
 I will not — or I will try not ; but I im- 
 pose the law of no such wish on you, Bertie. 
 On the contrary, I shall be thankful for
 
 " Hin ist Hin" 155, 
 
 you to think me what [I long to be — a 
 thousand times prettier, and cleverer, and 
 better." 
 
 She spoke with a little mock air of self- 
 disparagement, that made Bertie smile, 
 and say what was expected of him to 
 say— 
 
 " You could not be prettier, you would 
 be more formidable than fascinating if you 
 were cleverer, and what you would gain by 
 being better you would lose in being be- 
 witching ; so, if you please, I'll think of 
 you just as you are." 
 
 " You will turn my head," she answered 
 with a bright smile. " Oh, dear !" she 
 thought, " if I was only not ' mounted to 
 ride!' I can neither be graceful, coquettish, 
 touching, nor even at ease. I am tired," 
 she said, abruptly, " let us turn, and go 
 home. " 
 
 They did so ; and Moonshine, with her 
 nose pointed homewards, was a more light- 
 hearted and fractious thing than Moonshine 
 outward bound; therefore, most of the time, 
 until they reached Creyke, was occupied by
 
 156 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 Bertie in encouraging and reassuring the 
 timid horsewoman, and by the timid horse- 
 woman in appealing to her cousin with 
 every art of which coquettish terror is sus- 
 ceptible. 
 
 They reined up at the door, and, jump- 
 ing off, Bertie assisted his cousin to alight. 
 What a feather-weight she was ! What 
 fragility was hers, when compared to her 
 sister's substantiality. And Clemence, from 
 greater practice, could be both unfettered 
 and graceful in her habit, while Angela, 
 on the other hand, stumbled into the 
 house more like an inexperienced inebri- 
 ate, than an inexperienced young horse- 
 woman. 
 
 " Have you enjoyed your ride ?" asked 
 Clemence, who was dressing for the Norths', 
 when her sister entered the room. 
 
 " Enjoyed it !" repeated Angela, with a 
 vigorous emphasis. " Yes ; it marks an 
 era in my life ; it makes this the day of 
 days ; it is my birthday into the woman's 
 Paradise ; it has given me the realization 
 of that which I have thought of by day,
 
 Hin ist Hin. " 157 
 
 and dreamt of by night ; it has made a fact 
 
 of my dearest, most treasured fancy 
 
 Why, Clemence, what is it ?" 
 
 For the gray look of a person in deep 
 mental or physical pain, had overspread 
 Clemence's usually glowing face. 
 
 " Nothing," she answered, with a brave 
 quietude. " Tell me what you mean after 
 we come home, and can talk unrestrainedly. 
 I am going to leave you now, for I know 
 that you like having the room to yourself, 
 and only by making the greatest haste will 
 you have time to dress." 
 
 She hurried from the room, having spoken 
 fast and low ; and left Angela staring after 
 her, with her shallow, bright blue eyes. 
 Presently she smiled — a smile that, though 
 it did not draw down her mouth at the 
 corners, yet had all the effect of a sneer. 
 Then, ringing the bell for one of the house- 
 maids to come and help her dress, she 
 took off her hat, and immediately became 
 engulphed in a new sensation ; for a wide 
 crimson indentation disfigured her forehead, 
 and her whole mind was for the next half-
 
 158 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 hour absorbed in efforts to make it yield to 
 treatment and vanish. Cold cream, violet 
 powder, toilet vinegar, glycerine, were tried 
 in turn, with only a partial success ; and to 
 the fear that she should have to go to the 
 Norths' with a blemish on her fairness, 
 every other feeling succumbed. 
 
 Clemence, with a less glad and rapid step 
 than usual, went downstairs into the draw- 
 ing-room, and throwing herself into a chair 
 near the open window, clasped her hands 
 upon the sill, and gazed, with a profound 
 melancholy in her eyes, out over the leafy 
 trees and shrubs, and into the heart of the 
 golden sunset. 
 
 It was half-past seven o'clock, and the 
 perfect moment of what had been a very 
 delicious day. Clemence was more un- 
 peaceful, more troubled in spirit, wearier- 
 hearted than she had ever been in her life ; 
 yet she doubted that she was to be made 
 entirely miserable. Angela was at times 
 so scatter-brained, and threw unweighed 
 words so lavishly and carelessly to her, that 
 she was to be pardoned for a certain seep-
 
 Hin ist Hin." 159 
 
 ticism, that would not give under until her 
 sister had, as it were, authenticated herself. 
 But she was conscious of being very per- 
 plexed and shaken, as she sat there, look- 
 ing fixedly out, yet seeing nothing that her 
 eyes rested on. 
 
 It was almost with the start and look of 
 a roughly awakened noctambulist, that she 
 turned at her sister's voice, and confronted 
 her and Bertie standing together. 
 
 " Come, we are waiting for you." 
 
 " I wonder how many imperious ' comes ' 
 and ' goes ' you have said to me in your 
 lifetime ?" she answered, with her own 
 bright smile, and touching Angela softly 
 on the shoulder. 
 
 " Well, we won't stop to count now. Are 
 you ready ?" 
 
 11 Quite ;" and Clemence took up a white 
 cloak that was thrown over the back of her 
 chair, and stood up to put it on. 
 
 " Let me help you," said Bertie, starting 
 forward, and taking it from her. He, too, 
 looked as if he might have been gazing out 
 over a fair summer landscape and seeing
 
 160 The Sisters Lazvless. 
 
 nothing of it. Very unlike his usual self 
 he seemed. 
 
 " Ah ! well he may," she thought. 
 
 She thanked him, and tried to steal a 
 keen glance at him unobserved by him. 
 His hand, when for an instant it touched 
 her shoulder, was very cold she noticed. 
 
 Then they went out of the room, and 
 joined Miss Lawless, who was already 
 seated in the waggonette, and waiting im- 
 patiently for them. 
 
 Mr. Lawless and Fox were to be left 
 at home.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SAY, IS IT HEARTFELT ?" 
 
 T was the birthday of Henry,, 
 the beloved of his mother, and 
 a party of twelve was assem- 
 bled to celebrate the anniversary with their 
 mouths and digestions. 
 
 When the Lawlesses entered the cool,, 
 rose-scented drawing-room, they found 
 themselves the last, and dinner was in- 
 stantly announced, thereby making them 
 feel delinquents. Angela was the tardy 
 one, and said so, in a sort of self-compli- 
 mentary way. She fell to the lot of 
 Henry's yachting friend, who was again at 
 the Vicarage, en passant, having had Henry 
 
 VOL. I. II
 
 1 62 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 with him on his yacht for a day or two. 
 Not a beautifying day or two to Henry, for 
 he was more radiantly red than any field- 
 poppy, and evinced an anguineal tendency 
 to cast his skin. 
 
 The dinner was an agreeable one, for 
 both host and hostess were charming, and 
 the yachting man was the kind of wag 
 who, in default of making people laugh 
 with him, was satisfied if they laughed at 
 him. 
 
 Henry North sought Angela directly 
 he returned to the drawing-room, seating 
 himself beside her with an air of appro- 
 priation that to-night seemed absurd to 
 her. 
 
 "What a pretty woman you took in," 
 she said ; " is she not ?" 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders, and elevated 
 his eyebrows. 
 
 " She has about as much animation as 
 a stuffed bird," he replied. 
 
 " But she is excessively pretty ; and look 
 — she is going to sing now !" 
 
 The lady in question was divesting her-
 
 " Say, is it Heartfelt /" 1 63 
 
 self of her gloves, and with a most stolid 
 and unmusical face turned towards the 
 room, presently began to sing — 
 
 " Do not forget me ! do not forgot me ! 
 Think of me sometimes still ; 
 When the dawn breaks, and the throstle awakes, 
 Remember the maid of the mill !" 
 
 " And what do you think of that ?" asked 
 Henry. 
 
 " I think the song charming, the singing 
 of it execrable." 
 
 " Yes, it is intended to be a song, of 
 course. One might call it a masquerading 
 song. What a tone-gift it would have been 
 to its composer, could he only have entered 
 the room five minutes ago. I see my 
 mother telegraphing to me with her eyes 
 to ask you to sing — will you ?" 
 
 " If you like." 
 
 " I do like ; and let it be a German song, 
 for German songs suit your voice best, if I 
 am any judge." 
 
 " I will sing ' Ich denke dein,' " rejoined 
 she, getting on her feet, and allowing him 
 to take her to the piano. On her way 
 
 11 — 2
 
 164 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 thither, she passed by two terribly dis- 
 turbed faces — her sisters and Bertie's. 
 Clemence was seated in a low chair, her 
 head a little thrown back, her long white 
 hands clasped loosely on her lap. Bertie 
 was standing near her, leaning upon the 
 high, erect back of a prie-dieu. 
 
 They were talking earnestly together, 
 and Angela with the hopeless self-engross- 
 ment of a thorough egotist, and with the 
 boundless imagination which was one of 
 the delusive gifts that Fate had apportioned 
 to her, instantly decided, in her own mind, 
 that Bertie had flown to Clemence with a 
 desire to confide his disapprobation of 
 Henry North's devotion to her, and her ac- 
 ceptance of it. She smiled on them as she 
 went by, and took her place at the piano, 
 Henry North hovering over her like a 
 gentlemanlike and well-intentioned bird of 
 prey. 
 
 " Will not your sister come and sing a 
 duet with you ?" asked he, as Angela con- 
 cluded her song. 
 
 " I dislike singing duets," she said, " and
 
 " Say, is it Heartfelt f " 165 
 
 Clemence sings so very much better than I 
 do, that I always think it a pity for my 
 voice to be marring the effect of hers." 
 
 " Your voice and hers are certainly of a 
 very different timbre," he observed, "but 
 I think they sound charmingly together. 
 However, since you don't like duets, pray 
 sing again alone." 
 
 " I will not, indeed," she returned ; her 
 tiresome sensitiveness, that a touch wounded, 
 being wounded now — " go, ask Clemence 
 to come and sing." 
 
 " No, no ; I pray you not to do so, and 
 implore another song." 
 
 But Angela had risen from her seat, and 
 taken her gloves, and was looking at him 
 with her peculiarly cold and insolent smile, 
 while her eyes told him that she was 
 nettled. 
 
 Thereupon, with an almost imperceptible 
 shrug of the shoulders, he left her, ad- 
 vanced a few steps towards Clemence, but 
 saw in an instant that some point of deep 
 import was being discussed between the 
 -cousins, and, wheeling round, returned to
 
 1 66 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 Angela, who had been narrowly observing 
 him. 
 
 " Really," he said, " I do not like to 
 break in upon your sister's conversation, 
 for it is so evidently of a profoundly inter- 
 esting nature." 
 
 Angela laughed. " I would wager all 
 my large possessions that I know what 
 they are talking about," she replied. 
 
 " What, pray ?" he inquired, with some 
 curiosity, and watching Clemence's grave, 
 bright-hued face, rather than Angelas 
 laughing white one. 
 
 " About me." 
 
 " Oh ! then I hope that the depression 
 visible on Bertie's countenance does not 
 strike deeper." 
 
 " You are quite detestable and unlike 
 yourself to-night," said Angela; "you know 
 that I do not depress Bertie or any one 
 else." 
 
 " The thought of you depresses me, I 
 assure you, when I am present in the body, 
 in my grilling-machine of a tent at Alder- 
 shot, and am longing to be bodily with my
 
 "Say, is it Heartfelt f 167 
 
 absent spirit. If all the regrets, and heart- 
 burnings, and jealousies, and miserable 
 longings, and aching disappointments that 
 even one very charming woman has caused, 
 were to assume visible form, and array 
 themselves before her startled eyes, what 
 a formidable host they would be I" 
 
 " Yes," answered Angela, who always 
 preferred, and was more fully prepared to 
 fancy things that were impossible, rather 
 than to think of those that were not, " but 
 it would not prevent her doing her very 
 best to have that accusing host arrayed be- 
 fore her. To be the cause of the deepest 
 pain a man is capable of, that is what a 
 woman most desires, I believe. She prizes 
 it far more than a corresponding amount of 
 love. For a man to love her and be happy 
 is pleasant, but a little tame. For a man 
 to love her and be exceedingly unhappy, is 
 delightful to her." 
 
 " I hope that all women are not like that, 
 however," answered young North a little 
 sceptically. 
 
 Now Angela practically knew very little
 
 1 68 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 of masculine or feminine human nature, 
 and although feeling thoroughly capacitated 
 to reply that all women were like that (ac- 
 cording to the ideas evolved out of her 
 inner consciousness), deemed it better not 
 to commit herself, and was silent. 
 
 " I don't think that your sister would be 
 that kind of person," he said, abruptly, 
 forced, as it were, into recognizing a 
 womanly honour and grace of feeling by 
 the proximity of Clemence's face, and the 
 singularly lovely and admirable expression 
 at that moment beautifying it. 
 
 11 Clemence ?" echoed Angela, in great 
 astonishment ; " no, I dare say not She 
 would blow out the candle and leave her- 
 self in the dark, in a thunder-storm, rather 
 than see an obstinate moth commit felo de 
 se. When we were children, I used to 
 catch flies and put them in hungry spiders' 
 webs, and she would take them out again 
 just as the spider was about to pounce. 
 She is a dear and good creature, my sister, 
 and was born to take care of me, I verily 
 believe."
 
 "Say, is it Heartfelt f i 69 
 
 11 Selfish, pretty little midge," thought 
 North, looking at her in admiration 
 tempered by disapprobation. 
 
 <; Don't flatter yourself that is all the 
 share she is to have in the grand scheme," 
 he said. " Before you know where you 
 are, some fellow will be assuring himself, 
 you, and her, that she was made for the 
 express purpose of taking care of hint" 
 
 Angela laughed with a sort of lazy tole- 
 rance of his absurdity. 
 
 " It might happen, yes," she thought, 
 but long after she herself was happily dis- 
 posed of, and needed no further care at her 
 sister's hands. 
 
 "If you are so ablaze with admiration 
 of my sisters excellences, why have you 
 hitherto kept it under a bushel ? Why 
 have you not been nice to her as you have 
 been — have been — well, to me ?" 
 
 " Because you are twice as pretty, and 
 ten times more amusing," was his mental 
 reply. Aloud, he said, "Can you ask why? 
 Who sees the stars by sunlight ?" 
 
 " If xhdX is a conundrum, I give it
 
 1 70 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 up. If it is a tribute, I thank you ; astro- 
 nomical compliments are always favourites. 
 The sun, moon, and stars are in even 
 greater request when a pretty speech is to 
 be made, than roses, lilies, and violets, or 
 any description of bird or beast." 
 
 "if my speech was a pretty one, it was 
 a particularly ambiguous one," he rejoined, 
 in his emotionless, musical voice ; " and it 
 is quite like your usual kindness to take it 
 at its best. Here comes Osborn over to talk 
 to you ; I wish he were farther and faring 
 worse ; but I shan't leave you to a tete-a- 
 tete with him. Do you hear me ?" 
 
 " Oh ! yes ; I hear ; do not. I shall be 
 very glad for you to stay." 
 
 Indeed she would be. She would have 
 liked to collect about her every male thing 
 in the room (there were six), four of them 
 she presently did monopolize. Bertie and 
 Mr. North were the two exceptions. 
 
 "Clemence," Bertie said to his cousin, 
 immediately on his return to the drawing- 
 room, " has Angela yet said anything to 
 you r
 
 "Say, is it Heartfelt ?' 1 7 1 
 
 " She has told me that she is very 
 happy," replied Clemence, quietly; "and 
 I know very well why she is so." 
 
 " What can you think of me ? — but there 
 is only one thing to think, and that is what 
 I think of myself — that I am a pitiable 
 combination of fool, and knave, and sneak. 
 Yet my words — Clemence, how can I say 
 it ? — she is your sister, and my cousin. 
 My words misled her most unhappily. 
 You see, she is so much in the habit of 
 fancying things ; and I did not think — I 
 did not mean " 
 
 Clemence held out her hand with an impe- 
 rious movement to him to stop. 
 
 " I cannot be silent," he went on, flushing 
 crimson. " The instant I had said what I 
 did say — I'll tell you exactly what it was — 
 I felt that I had committed a folly and a 
 blunder, that would come to be chargeable 
 to me as a deep offence. She must be 
 made to understand how it is — Clemence, 
 for heaven's sake, help me ; tell her how it 
 really is." 
 
 " But I do not know myself ' how it really
 
 172 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 is.' You have been a very dear and charm- 
 ing cousin to me." 
 
 " Clemence ! when you know that I love 
 you !" he exclaimed reproachfully. 
 
 She smiled sadly. " Yes, Bertie, when 
 I know that you do, it will be time enough, 
 quite, to give Angela the cruel benefit of 
 that knowledge." 
 
 " Then the time is now. The hours 
 that I have spent with you in these long 
 bright afternoons can never be unspent; 
 and the lesson learnt in them never un- 
 learnt, and the heart given away in them 
 never taken back again. Clemence, you 
 have it ; it's yours through life and death, 
 not Angela's, not any one's but yours. 
 You are my cousin, my love ; my wife that 
 must be or I will have none." 
 
 " I cannot hurt Angela," murmured 
 Clemence, with the dark-fringed eyelids 
 drooping over her tender gray eyes. 
 "Never, never! She is happy in the belief 
 that you — oh, most cruelly ! — have caused 
 her to have. I blame you, Bertie," she
 
 " Say, is it Heartfelt f" 1 73 
 
 said, with grave simplicity, and lifting her 
 eyes suddenly to his face. 
 
 " Blame me ? that is gently said. I 
 execrate myself. Yet Angela must know- 
 that I meant nothing beyond the wonder- 
 ing admiration that she extorts from every 
 man. Tell me, Clemence, do you care for 
 me r 
 
 " I shall not answer you," she rejoined, 
 with a resolute shake of the head. 
 
 " Good heavens ! don't let me think that 
 you intend to be one of those monstrously 
 mistaken ones, who do not scruple to sacri- 
 fice themselves, and the man who loves 
 them, for the sake of giving another 
 woman the hollow, rotten satisfaction of 
 marrying that same man, who to them is 
 unloving. Don't tell me that you are 
 going to immolate me upon the altar of 
 sisterly affection." 
 
 Clemence was silent, weighing probabili- 
 ties carefully in her mind ; while Bertie, 
 rigid with suspense, waited for her to 
 speak again. 
 
 " No," she said at last, " they are mis-
 
 1 74 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 taken ones ; I will not be one of them. I 
 will not give you up to Angela, much as I 
 love her. Bertie, this is true that you 
 have told me ? It is heartfelt ?" 
 
 " No wonder that you do not believe 
 me," he said, gloomily, " I don't deserve 
 to be believed. Yet, nevertheless, I am 
 to be. Your feminine acumen — instinct — 
 whatever it should be called — must have 
 told you long ago that I love you. Now 
 my lips repeat what my heart has so often 
 said, and I am to be believed. You are 
 my first love, and will be my last. You 
 are ' nobly planned ;' you have a heart so 
 tender, deep, and true, that a man would 
 need no other home could he feel himself 
 cherished in it." 
 
 " Angela," murmured Clemence, although 
 her cheek flushed with pleasure, " I can- 
 not allow myself to feel happy when I 
 think of Angela, who by my happiness 
 must be made miserable. Bertie !" she 
 went on, with a swift and sudden inflection 
 of anger in her voice, " I realize ! — you 
 have acted a miserable part. You cannot
 
 44 Say, is it Heartfelt ?" 1 75 
 
 really care for either of us poor sisters. 
 Good-bye to you. I want my own lover ; 
 I do not want my sister's." 
 
 44 / am not your sister's lover ; I am 
 yours." 
 
 " And what does my sister think ?" 
 
 He did not answer. 
 
 " You know what she thinks ; and so do 
 I. But you do not know as I do, with 
 what tenacity she can cling, and with what 
 passionate fervour she can attach herself 
 to her own fancies ; and this is not a fancy; 
 you have made it a reality to her. My 
 dearest cousin," and her voice softened 
 irresistibly, " for your own sake, and for 
 hers, and for mine, you must learn to love 
 her." 
 
 44 To do that I must first learn to unlove 
 you ; and nothing could be more impos- 
 sible than that," he said, with vehemence. 
 14 Tell her so." 
 
 "It would sound selfish and cruel! I 
 cannot. She would never forgive me." 
 
 " Then I must ; and I would rather be 
 bastinadoed."
 
 176 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " You will not find the courage," said 
 Clemence, with a slight, sad smile. "When 
 alone with Angela, and looking into those 
 dazzling blue eyes of hers, you will never 
 have the courage to say to her, ' I did not 
 mean what I said to you ; I do not care 
 for you, nor shall I ever ; I am a coward ; 
 despise me as you must, and forgive me if 
 you can.' " 
 
 " I will," he returned, resolutely, " and 
 you have taught me the words to use. 
 She shall ride with me to-morrow, and she 
 will leave the door fancying that she cares 
 for me, and will come home knowing that 
 she detests and contemns me. Clemence, 
 one little word to cheer me !" 
 
 " Not one," she said, turning her face 
 away from him. " For to-night you are 
 Angelas, and perhaps may be always. 
 For I tell you again, Bertie, that the knot 
 you have tied with your own tongue, you 
 must untie with your own teeth ; I shall 
 do anything rather than help you. My 
 sister has been my most precious possession 
 ever since I can remember, and no word
 
 " Say, is it Heartfelt f 1 7 7 
 
 of mine shall help to alienate her from 
 
 me." 
 
 " You shall say that you care for me — I 
 long to hear you — you shall !" 
 
 " Indeed I will not. I wish some one 
 would come and ask me to sing. Captain 
 North came towards me a little while ago 
 as if he was going to do so, but he re- 
 treated, and went back to Angela." 
 
 " How calmly you can go on talking," 
 he said, bitterly, " while I am not even 
 master of my thoughts. Yet I know that 
 you would not willingly torment me. 
 Thank Heaven for the knowledge! Only 
 tell me, Clemence, do you love me, or do 
 you not ?" 
 
 " That is a question which every woman 
 is bound to answer, provided the man has 
 a right to ask it. I am not bound to an- 
 swer you, for you have no right to ask 
 me. 
 
 " Why have I not ?" 
 
 " Because you know perfectly well how 
 truly I love my sister ; and if you do not 
 know that my love for hei, and my sense 
 
 vol. i. 12
 
 1 78 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 of justice towards her, prevent my answer- 
 ing you, why learn it now." 
 
 He could not urge her. And although 
 many of the words she had used had been 
 hard, the manner was so gentle in which 
 they had been spoken, that they did not 
 irritate him. 
 
 He bowed to her as " a perfect woman 
 nobly planned," he, in his own estimation, 
 seeming to be a most imperfect man, very 
 ignobly planned. 
 
 Then they came and asked her to sing, 
 and going to the piano she sang with con- 
 summate grace and feeling, " Say, was it 
 heartfelt ?" and Bertie, listening and watch- 
 ing her fine and noble face, answered the 
 vocal appeal in his heart with a strong 
 affirmative. 
 
 Angela, having at last said good-night 
 to the imperturbable and persistent Henry, 
 took her place in the waggonette. 
 
 " Are you very angry ?" she whispered, 
 with an air of exhilaration about her, to 
 Bertie, by whose side she had placed her- 
 self.
 
 " Say, is it Heartfelt ? " 1 79 
 
 "With myself? yes," he answered 
 gravely. 
 
 Poor little blinkard ! How little she 
 comprehended his meaning. How she 
 devised out of his words a flattering tribute 
 to her own power over him. 
 
 " Do not be," she said, coaxingly. "I 
 suppose you mean that you are angry with 
 yourself for caring, because Nature has 
 made me a coquette. I can't help it. 
 And men are such fools, you know " 
 
 " They are." 
 
 " You are not !" she breathed into his 
 ear, earnestly. " You are a lion amongst 
 jackals." 
 
 He turned away from her, saying hastily 
 to old John : 
 
 11 Hold up ; I want to get out — and 
 smoke," he added, to his aunt and 
 cousins. (i Aunt Maria will not let 
 me smoke here ;" this last in reply to a 
 vexed and disappointed look from An- 
 gela. 
 
 " There is nothing that I should like so 
 much to do as to walk across the park in 
 
 12 — 2
 
 180 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 this lovely half moonlight," said Angela, 
 eagerly. 
 
 But Bertie apparently did not hear her, 
 for he made no reply, going off alone at a 
 quick pace. 
 
 " Quite a proper ending to so blissful a 
 day," said Angela, after they entered their 
 room. 
 
 She pushed Clemence gently away from 
 the lighted glass, that she might examine 
 her own happy face. 
 
 " I hope my head will not be turned. 
 Mr. Ruthven has asked me to let him name 
 a horse that is to be a famous steeple- 
 chaser, after me. Mr. Vane is going to 
 make Uncle Francis let me go for a little 
 cruise on his yacht ; you too, I dare say. 
 As for Henry North, you see how he is 
 Bertie is mine. Oh, you poor Clemence " 
 (with a compassionate look, under which 
 Clemence winced), " drink vinegar, dye 
 your hair fair, live on bon-bons and pastry, 
 and perhaps that aggressively healthy look 
 will wear away, and you will fine down, 
 and "
 
 Say, is it Heartfelt ?" 1 8 1 
 
 " I don't want to fine down," said 
 Clemence. 
 
 " But don't you want to be the kind of 
 
 thing that men prefer ? 
 
 " ' Like a lily which the sun 
 Looks through in his sad decline/ " 
 
 " Most of them do not prefer it," an- 
 swered Clemence stoutly. " The Byronic 
 passion for starved, ' ethereal ' women, lan- 
 guishing, sentimental beings, is quite old- 
 fashioned, and ridiculed now. They don't 
 prefer it." 
 
 " Oh, don't they ?" returned Angela with 
 a little incredulous shrug, and a long look 
 in the glass, followed by a triumphant 
 smile. " Well, perhaps you are right. I 
 did not think Bertie was capable of such 
 absurd jealousy as he has shown to-night. 
 Do you know he would hardly speak to me 
 this evening. You noticed that, I suppose? 
 And shook hands just now, when he said 
 good-night Foolish, jealous, dear boy. I 
 love him all the more for being so tenacious 
 of his rights ; but can't you see what a 
 temptation it is to tease him ?"
 
 1 82 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 " No." 
 
 "Heavens! I did not know that two 
 letters could be made to sound so sepul- 
 chral. What has gone amiss with you, 
 Clemence ? I noticed something odd 
 about you when I came in this afternoon. 
 Are you angry with me because I am so 
 happy ?" 
 
 "Oh, no, no." 
 
 " If I ever get the reins here, how I shall 
 idealize this place. It has all the rudiments 
 of beauty. What will Uncle Francis think 
 of this, I wonder ? I do not believe he 
 will object very much. And then he is 
 powerless, you know. Oh, I am a staunch 
 upholder of the law of primogeniture. 
 Dear old Francis is tied by the leg, as 
 regards the entail. He can make it nasty 
 enough for us while he lives ; but I believe 
 I can cajole him into good-nature — don't 
 you think it ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " You are prodigal of negatives to-night." 
 
 " I am sure that nothing is yet definitely 
 arranged between you and Bertie, Angela."
 
 " Say, is it Heartfelt f ' 1 83 
 
 " Oh, he has been confiding his affairs to 
 you, has he ? One of the ill-effects of his 
 friend Henry North. No ; nothing is coup- 
 sur yet. It is in that intermediate state 
 than which nothing can be more delicious. 
 It will not be half so charming when it is 
 bruited abroad, and one is beringed and 
 betrothed." 
 
 " Wine poured out is not swallowed," 
 said Clemence, taking refuge among her 
 stock of proverbs. 
 
 " To the scaffold with your old saws ! I 
 hate them, and you know that I do. What 
 can you think of yourself, to be trying to 
 make uncertainties of my half-fulfilled 
 hopes ? What do you mean, Clemence ?" 
 
 " Oh, Angela, dear Angela, are you sure 
 that Bertie's love for you is more than 
 cousinly ?" 
 
 " You detestable, insulting, ill-natured, 
 envious, ' proud sister ' — you deserve the 
 plurality of epithets I have given you. 
 Leave the subject alone, please. I will not 
 
 be very angry with you, because 1 am 
 
 sorry for you."
 
 1 84 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " And I for you," said Clemence softly. 
 
 " Bah !" cried Angela angrily, " you are 
 envious of me. Leave the subject alone." 
 
 " Very well." 
 
 There was a long, long pause. Then 
 Angela suddenly broke into speech. 
 
 " Aunt Maria's dress was exquisite ! 
 Altogether too exquisite for her. What a 
 delicate mauve ! and Chambery gossamer ! 
 I could not help picturing how I should 
 have looked in it. Very silly of me. It 
 was quite lovely ; no wonder that she 
 cackled about ' what she should wear/ 
 yesterday. She should wear ! Why she is 
 as ugly as one of the nondescript animals 
 that support the shield at the gate. If I 
 had had my way, she should have gone in 
 a gown made of old pudding-bags looped 
 with mushrooms, and with a wreath of 
 dried onions on her head." 
 
 " Then you could have worn the mauve 
 gauze." 
 
 " Exactly ; and wisterias in my hair. 
 Oh, how tired and sleepy I am ; pray do 
 not talk to me any more ; if you do, I shall
 
 " Say, is it Heartfelt f 
 
 be snappish with you, I warn you." And 
 Angela nestled her head down upon the 
 pillow, bade her sister put her watch at the 
 head of the bed, and extinguish the candle. 
 Clemence obeyed her, and sought her own 
 couch in silence and darkness, and with a 
 heavy heart.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "A HURRY OF HOOFS IN A VILLAGE STREET." 
 
 ^pl^OLL was rejoicing in the sunshine, 
 i ^fMh down ^y tne miH-pond. And 
 ^JS^Mi her rejoicing took the form of 
 a song that had no longer scale than a 
 blackbird's whistle, and a dance, whose 
 measure was trod no more gracefully than 
 were the gambols of the long-legged, short- 
 bodied lambs in the neighbouring mea- 
 dows. 
 
 Doll was meditating a frolic a little later 
 on in the day, in those same meadows, 
 which were sprinkled thick with daisies, 
 " pearled Arcturi of the earth." Were 
 there not colts in them, with legs even 
 more preposterously lengthy than the
 
 A Hurry of hoojs. 187 
 
 lambs' ? If Doll had a passion for any- 
 thing in the world, it was colts. Two of 
 these that she was about to chase and 
 fondle, were not aristocratic horselings, 
 they were but the rough and sturdy chil- 
 dren of rough and sturdy dams and sires ; 
 born to the plough, and the heavy waggon, 
 boasting no pedigree, but very engaging, 
 in their extreme youth, to Doll, who was 
 an adept in coaxing and chasing them into 
 corners, and then cossetting them to her 
 heart's content. Stroking and kissing their 
 velvet noses, looking into their large 
 brown, bright eyes with her own, which 
 were nearly as brown and large and 
 bright. 
 
 When the miller's waggon, with its 
 orange body and yellow wheels, went lum- 
 bering away, Doll also departed, and went 
 up the lane at a dog- trot ; yet pausing at 
 intervals to pluck the largest, most velvety, 
 and greenest clovers, such as she fancied 
 would be prized by the equine palate. 
 Under the shade of the leafy elms, where 
 a spring, trickling musically, bathed them,
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 grew the biggest and best ; these she 
 gathered : forming them into a kind of 
 nosegay. 
 
 They were a love-offering to the oldest 
 colt of the three ; a little creature as to 
 whom a passing rustic had stabbed Doll to 
 the heart only a week ago by saying that 
 " it war good for naught ; and had best 
 have had the bullet through its brain a 
 goodish bit ago, that it must soon have : 
 for it war good for naught." 
 
 It was malformed. Its fore hoofs, in- 
 stead of being of the orthodox " horse- 
 shoe " shape, were prolonged, turned up- 
 wards, uneven and rough, like an old man's 
 shoe. It was, because of them, a mon- 
 strosity. Doll's heart bled for this colt. 
 While the other foals, babies still, gam- 
 bolled about the thick-set, rough-hided, 
 lumbering mares their dams, he, already 
 arrived at equine hobbledehoyhood, stood 
 still looking at them out of his brilliant 
 hazel eyes, in which Doll fancied that she 
 could see a sorrow for himself. 
 
 His mother was no thick-legged, heavy-
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 189 
 
 headed cart-horse ; she was a " ladye of 
 high degree," dainty and sleek ; and was 
 separated from her little son, and forgot 
 him. He, with his delicate head, and his 
 rudiment of a perfect form, was a failure ; 
 and in the daisied field hobbled with pain 
 and difficulty, and watched the foals of the 
 rude brood mares gambolling and frisking 
 at their will. Poor little colt ! Doll's heart 
 grieved for him. 
 
 It had been a pleasant moment to her, 
 when, having chased him round the 
 meadow, she had easily hemmed him into 
 a corner, and had made his eyes change 
 their look of dilated terror to one of plea- 
 sure and confidence, as she fed him with a 
 handful of hardened oatmeal porridge, 
 saved from her own spare breakfast ; and, 
 smoothing his black mane, kissed his soft 
 tan muzzle, calling him fond and pitying 
 names, and loving him because he was 
 worthless, and half-helpless, and altogether 
 different from the other two lusty foals 
 who, with their mothers, shared the field 
 with him.
 
 190 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 Every day she went to the meadow, and 
 every day since meeting the farm-hand her 
 heart had beaten so that she could hear it, 
 fearing that the colt would be no longer 
 there. To-day was no exception. Any 
 one watching Doll as she came within 
 sight of the meadow, would have seen a 
 look of tension, almost of distress, creep 
 over her pretty brown face, as, with a con- 
 traction of lids and brows, to see the far- 
 ther, she peered over the hedge, to assure 
 herself of the little creature's presence or 
 absence. 
 
 He was there! Doll's fingers, that had 
 relaxed their hold of the bunch of juicy 
 clover, now tightened it ; and she sprang 
 over the wire fence, and privet hedge, and 
 made for the object of her affection, who 
 was standing quietly, with his charming 
 head erect, and his black mane blowing in 
 the soft summer wind. 
 
 He pricked up his ears as he descried 
 Doll and her green bouquet, and, dragging 
 his great fore-feet clumsily along, did his 
 poor best to meet her half-way.
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 191 
 
 " Coltie, coltie," said Doll, in the ten- 
 derest accents ; and while she separated 
 his mane with her brown fingers, she held 
 the bunch of clover for him to nibble and 
 devour, and called him a "pet," and a 
 " duck," and a " dear," for Doll's vocabu- 
 lary of endearing epithets was a limited 
 one. 
 
 As she had become fonder of this little 
 creature, her attentions to the two foals 
 had considerably diminished, and to-day 
 she only watched them flourishing their 
 spindle hind legs in the air, or lying flat 
 upon their sides asleep in the sun, and 
 contented herself with talking to, and 
 caressing the little cripple. 
 
 By certain little signs and tokens Doll 
 managed to have a sketchy notion of how 
 time was going, and, as her father counted 
 on her to be at home when he came, to 
 make and pour out his tea for him, she 
 was very nearly certain to attend to his 
 wishes ; for they were usually wishes in 
 the imperative mood, and contravention to 
 them he occasionally made visitable with a
 
 192 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 cuff, or a push, or a coarse — and I must in 
 justice say, an unmeaning — oath. 
 
 She turned more than once to look back 
 at her four-footed miserable, and was grati- 
 fied to observe that he watched her intelli- 
 gently and regretfully until she was out of 
 sight. 
 
 It was a day worthy of Eden before 
 temptation entered in ; balmy, perfumed ; 
 the air gently in motion, yet not windy. 
 The smoke ascending straight and quiver- 
 ing, the sunbeams lying slanting and still 
 over the buttercups and dry, bright grasses, 
 gilding the homely gray of the hay-ricks, 
 flecking the mill-stream with golden rays 
 and lozenges. And Nature at her best 
 was not dumb ; in the voices of a thousand 
 birds she told her sweet, yet pitiless story : 
 
 " Such as I seem to you to-day, mortal, 
 I seemed to your twice great-grandsire, as 
 he took his way along the path that your 
 feet are treading now, and so will I seem 
 on just such another day to your great- 
 grandson. Your fathers fathers father, 
 and you, and your son's son's son are all
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 193 
 
 alike to me. I will smile on your dead 
 and bloodless face as kindly as I smile 
 upon your living and lusty one. My tens 
 of thousands of birds sang a century ago 
 as they sing now, and as they will sing a 
 century hence. My countless young leaves 
 thrill and sigh, and my west wind woos 
 them to-night as it did a decade ago, or 
 will a decade from now. The great agent, 
 I am relentless and unsympathetic ; yet, 
 nevertheless, in every generation I have 
 my innumerable adorers. Insensate is he 
 who does not lay the love-offering of a 
 softened mood, a tribute of deepest, most 
 wondering admiration, at my universal 
 shrine." 
 
 Doll, in after-years, recollected the fulvid 
 light, and the scented air, and the fresh 
 waving green of that early summer even- 
 ing. The Doll that then was, had only an 
 imperfect knowledge that the face of nature 
 was that evening very fair : and " Sursum 
 corda" a faint voice said to her in an un- 
 known tongue. 
 
 She began to sing out of very light- 
 vol. 1. 13
 
 1 94 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 heartedness ; and. singing, turned her back 
 upon the meadows, with their grazing 
 flocks and ruminating kine, and upon the 
 topaz sunset, and crossing the strong old 
 bridge over the stream that here began to 
 swell into a river, entered the shady village 
 street. In an instant, her quick eyes fas- 
 tened upon a pair of equestrians coming at 
 a walk over the uneven stones. In one, 
 she recognized Mr. Bertie Lawless, the 
 squire's heir. In the other she recognized 
 nothing of such humanity as it had been 
 her lot hitherto to be brought in contact 
 with. Nor was this person of such stuff 
 as Doll's dreams were made of. For Doll 
 drew only upon past experiences in her 
 wanderings in the " Debatable Land." 
 
 She saw a face whiter than the chalk at 
 the village school ; and from that face 
 looked a pair of eyes, very large, and very 
 vividly blue and bright. The young lady 
 seemed hardly to be enjoying herself ; she 
 sat forward, and up in her saddle holding 
 the reins and whip as one who would 
 gladly be without them. Her tall hat had
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 195 
 
 slipped back, leaving visible much more 
 disordered fair hair than was seemly. 
 
 It was Angela, of course ; taking her 
 second ride upon Moonshine, and in conse- 
 quence of the mare's unexpected light- 
 heartedness, very miserable. They had 
 ridden five miles, yet Bertie had been 
 quite unable to maintain anything like a 
 connected conversation with his cousin. 
 As for explanation, self-condemnation, or 
 earnest appeal, it was totally out of the 
 question ; and he could not help but feel 
 himself reprieved. 
 
 " Oh," he said, reining up (an example 
 which his companion was only too glad to 
 follow^, " here is the little girl I was telling 
 you about the other day." 
 
 "What, little Miss Scare-the-birds ?" 
 was the reply, quite audible to Doll, who 
 reddened angrily. " I wish she would ride 
 this creature back for me and let me walk 
 home ; or, I suppose the village boasts one 
 fly ?" she spoke pettishly. Her ride had 
 been more penance than pleasure to her ; 
 and Bertie had been unaccountably chilly. 
 
 13—2
 
 196 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " Pray ride home," he answered ; " I 
 have something most especial to say to 
 you ; something that I had planned to say 
 before we set out." 
 
 "It curvets, and caracoles so ! It did 
 not do so yesterday, it went straight." 
 
 " You have not ridden her with so light 
 a hand, and she resents it ; and besides, for 
 some reason or other, she is much fresher 
 than she was yesterday ; but it's only play ; 
 she has not an atom of vice. Clemence 
 would enjoy her little sidelong airs and 
 graces, for they are nothing more." 
 
 As for Dolls face, when she caught the 
 young lady's suggestion, no words can give 
 an adequate idea of the illumination that 
 overspread it. That she, Doll, should 
 actually be elevated to the back of a living 
 horse, and placed in the orthodox position 
 upon a real lady's saddle ! No, no ; out of 
 a dream that could never be. Fulfilment 
 of an inborn desire comes not often in a 
 life-time ; and Doll and the horse were by 
 Destiny linked together. 
 
 Was she to be elevated to that seat,
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 197 
 
 which occupying, she would envy no throned 
 potentate ? Capricious as the wind, Angela 
 willed otherwise. 
 
 " Clemence !" she repeated angrily, " I 
 wish she was in my place. Very well, 
 since you have words of weight to say to 
 me, I will venture back. Get out of the 
 way, child," she cried half nervously, half 
 imperiously to Doll, whose mouth had 
 drooped, and whose face had lost its glow 
 of expectation. 
 
 "Poor little chicken," said Bertie, "she 
 thought that you were really in earnest when 
 you spoke of her riding Moonshine 
 home." 
 
 " And so I was then? returned Angela. 
 * Do get out of the way, little girl — she's 
 going to rear ! oh, help me, Bertie, she's 
 going to rear !" 
 
 " Let go her curb," said Bertie, trying to 
 speak very quietly, yet forcibly at the same 
 time. 
 
 But Angela, not attending to him literally, 
 hung on by the reins, a proceeding that 
 the horse was not slow in resenting, snort-
 
 198 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 ing and plunging, nearly unseating her in- 
 experienced rider, who with no thought of 
 guiding her away from the immobile little 
 bit of humanity that stood with tear- 
 dimmed eyes in the middle of the street, 
 let her take her reckless way. 
 
 The mare's half- run-away, half- playful 
 bounds brought her to an opposing 
 object ; her cruel fore-feet met the unresist- 
 ing air for an instant, as, with the sudden- 
 ness of a steel-spring she raised them, then 
 they met something resistant, she knew 
 not what, nervous and excitable creature 
 that she was — Doll knew what, for a throe 
 of keenest pain struck through her poor 
 brain, and her shattered side. Then to 
 Doll a strange, dreamless night came. 
 To Moonshine came a sense of having 
 successfully beaten down that opposing 
 object, and of being galloping ventre-a- 
 terre, down the rough resounding street, 
 with a shrieking something on her back. 
 To Bertie came a sickened horror. The 
 terrible picture burnt itself upon his recol- 
 lection of a slight, ill-clothed form lying
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 199 
 
 prone, and a brown and rosy face turning 
 ashy and agonized as it struck sideways 
 upon the uneven stones, quivered for an 
 instant, and then was still ; a second picture 
 of his cousin galloping furiously down the 
 village street, with a sharp and terrified 
 cry, although not horrible, was certainly 
 somewhat alarming. Then came a vision 
 of the doorways of the village shops 
 quickly filling with faces ; of some one 
 dashing out, and waving a hat at the bolt- 
 ing steed ; how Bertie imprecated that same 
 incapable ! 
 
 " The child !" he shouted, as he galloped 
 past his friend, the saddler, who felt a 
 deeper interest in the run-away horse, and 
 the run-away-with girl from the fact that 
 his saddle was on the back of the one, and 
 convulsively clutched by the other. 
 
 " See to the child !" shouted Bertie, as he 
 spurred Elspeth on. He turned his head, 
 notwithstanding the pace at which he was 
 going, when he neared the bend in the 
 street, and saw forms of both men and 
 women stooping kindly over the prostrate
 
 2 co The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 child. Then he raced on after his 
 cousin. 
 
 He watched her hair break from its re- 
 straining pins, and uncoiling, stream flutter- 
 ing out like a banner of cloth of gold. At 
 intervals he heard her give an hysterical 
 cry, and wondered why she did it ; for the 
 road was perfectly flat and smooth, it was 
 only two miles to the park, and Moon- 
 shine's fleet gallop was smooth and elastic 
 as a deer's. There was nothing to dread ; 
 and for any one, who like Clemence en- 
 joyed a burst at racing speed, there was 
 much to enjoy. The road was clear as far 
 as eye could see, and flat as one's hand. 
 I am afraid that Bertie called his fair- 
 haired cousin a muff, as he heard her 
 shrieking out his name every minute or 
 two. " Don't be frightened," he shouted, 
 " there's nothing to be frightened at. Just 
 keep a firm, light hand, and sit still ; she's 
 going straight home." 
 
 And she did run straight to her stable ; 
 and Bertie was able, in the stable-yard, to 
 catch in his arms an Angela of snow,
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 201 
 
 speechless and gasping, whom he carried 
 into the house, where Clemence promptly 
 did everything most judicious for her 
 sister, and before long Angela's blue eyes 
 opened, and she welcomed herself back to 
 consciousness with a faint exclamation. 
 
 " And I am not killed," she saidj " oh, 
 Bertie, why did you not save me ?" 
 
 " My dear Angela," he answered, 
 " would I not willingly have done so, if I 
 could ?" 
 
 " It was your fault, and the fault of that 
 staring stupid child," Angela went on, 
 raising herself upon one slight arm, while 
 the faintest, most exquisite briar-rose pink 
 stole over her face. 
 
 " The ' stupid child ; has almost more 
 reason to blame you, than you her, if there 
 is any blame in the case," he answered, 
 flushing hotly. 
 
 " How can you say that ?" answered 
 she, flinging herself back on the sofa 
 cushions, and raising a pair of angry eyes, 
 with a frown above them, to his face. " If 
 you had not stopped to speak to her, and
 
 202 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 she had not terrified Moonshine, by being 
 directly under her feet, I should never 
 have been run away with." 
 
 " Angela !" cried Clemence, clasping her 
 hands, " you have not run over any one ? 
 Not a child ? Has she ?" appealing to 
 Bertie. 
 
 Bertie briefly stated what had occurred. 
 
 " It was not my fault," said Angela, 
 sniffing at a vinaigrette and closing her 
 eyes. " Poor little thing ! What a pity ! 
 Is it not dreadful ? Come up to my room 
 with me, Clemence. Bertie, you won't 
 mind giving me your arm upstairs, will 
 you ? Well, if I had not been a lucky 
 young woman, I should not be here safe 
 and sound at this moment, eh, Clemence ?" 
 
 " I am thankful/' replied Clemence, 
 briefly, but with heartfelt earnestness. 
 " Do you know, I think that I must send — 
 or better still — go into the village myself, 
 and see how it fares with the poor unlucky 
 one who is not safe and sound. Oh, if she 
 should be " 
 
 Angela stopped her with a scream.
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 
 
 " How unfeeling you are, Clemence !" 
 she said, as she raised herself, and taking" 
 Bertie's arm, clung to it. " Do you think 
 that I have no nerves ? no sensibilities ?" 
 
 " I am not unfeeling, and you know it," 
 replied Clemence, and there stopped short ; 
 her sisters want of heart struck her with a 
 terrible sense of newness, and with keen 
 pain. 
 
 As for Bertie, he looked from one sister 
 to the other as one who intelligently, yet 
 dumbly, separates the wheat from the 
 chaff. He was no beauty worshipper, his 
 warm and loving heart demanded from the 
 object of his choice a sympathy and ten- 
 derness that Angela had it not in her 
 
 o 
 
 power to give. 
 
 " I pictured to myself, even as I tore 
 along like a rifle ball, twenty horrid deaths 
 for myself," said Angela, with a faint pride 
 in her own invincible imagination. " I 
 fancied myself dashed against a tree. I 
 fancied myself whirled over that steep bank 
 just by Fermor's Cottage ; I fancied Bertie 
 coming up with me just as I swayed from
 
 504 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 the saddle, and finding that it was too late; 
 that my poor heart had ceased to beat 
 from sheer " 
 
 " If you go into the village, I will go 
 with you, but you will have to walk, for 
 Aunt Maria has not come home yet," said 
 Bertie, cutting her short without a particle 
 of rudeness, but with an inattention which 
 caused her to open her blue eyes their 
 widest, and regard him with mingled as- 
 tonishment and offence. She relinquished 
 his arm at her door without a word. 
 
 " I am glad your bolting horse did not 
 come to grief, Angela," he then said very 
 kindly. " I have seen heaps of women 
 run away with, and they never came to 
 any harm, especially if they had such a 
 nice flat clear road before them ; but," he 
 went on, with an increased gravity of tone, 
 " they never had the grievous misfortune 
 to bowl anybody over as they went 
 along." 
 
 Angela, turning her head away, suddenly 
 began to shed an abundance of tears. 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you blame
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 205 
 
 me for letting that child take care of her- 
 self, and get out of the way, when it was 
 all I could do to take care of ;;/jj/self, and 
 not be thrown ? It would never have 
 happened, but for her. You and she have 
 yourselves to thank for the whole thing, 
 and that I have escaped with my life 
 seems anything but a matter for congratu- 
 lation to you and Clemence. You are bar- 
 barously cruel." 
 
 Then she stumbled into her room, and 
 shut the door hard, not only in his face, 
 but in that of Clemence, who had listened 
 to her in dismay. 
 
 " Angela ! Angela !" she cried shaking 
 the handle of the locked door, "pray let 
 me in ! pray do !" 
 
 There was no response ; and as the 
 sound of sobs had altogether ceased, and a 
 noise of the opening and shutting of 
 drawers was audible, Clemence concluded 
 that her sister felt equal to changing her 
 attire at once, and so turned unwillingly 
 away. 
 
 " I'll get on my hat directly," she said
 
 206 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 hurriedly to Bertie. " You'll wait for 
 me?" 
 
 He nodded, and while she ran into her 
 aunt's dressing-room, where she had that 
 morning left her hat, he descended the 
 stairs. She found him at the door, staring 
 into space, while he absently played with 
 the ear of Skip, a fox-terrier belonging to 
 Fox, that had stationed itself on a wooden 
 chair beside him. 
 
 Without speaking, they hastened down 
 the avenue, taking every short cut feasible. 
 It was two miles and a half to the village, 
 but Clemence, a lithe, and strong, and 
 active creature, made nothing of it, and 
 turned down the lane leading to the mill, 
 perfectly unfatigued. 
 
 John Drake, who had come home from 
 his work to find his sadly injured and suffer- 
 ing Doll stretched upon his own rough bed, 
 heard the story of the accident from the 
 village doctor, who was attending to the 
 child, and heard it with a species of fury. 
 
 So the squire's niece had ridden over 
 his girl ! They interrupted him to tell
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 207 
 
 him that the young lady was a poor, 
 thread-paper thing, with weak wrists, and 
 weak nerves. He must not blame her too 
 much. Mrs. James, the saddler's wife, 
 who had seen the accident, was gently 
 laying wet cloths about the child's injured 
 head ; she was a good sort of creature, and 
 had done all she could, and would continue 
 to do so, she assured Drake and the 
 doctor. 
 
 " Will the girl die ?" said John in a 
 husky whisper, raising his head and con- 
 fronting the doctor. 
 
 " No, no ; most probably not ; oh, dear, 
 no ! in all probability not," answered Mr. 
 Hurst reassuringly. " Two of her ribs are 
 fractured — that is to say broken — and 
 there is an injury to the skull — the head, 
 but she will swing round, my friend, in time. 
 With care, she will be quite the same 
 bright and active lass again in due 
 time/' 
 
 Here Clemence and Bertie entered, and 
 Bertie, going up to the doctor, said in a 
 low voice-—-
 
 208 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " I heard those last words of yours, Mr. 
 Hurst, and I am thankful that you are able 
 to say them. Drake, my good fellow," he 
 continued to John, who with a sullen 
 gesture turned away his head, " I feet 
 very badly to see this cheery child lying 
 like that ! I'd give my right hand almost 
 for it not to have happened. But no blame 
 must attach to my cousin, mind, for she is 
 nothing of a horsewoman, and could not 
 manage her horse, Everything that can 
 be done for Dolly shall be done, that you 
 may be sure of — everything." 
 
 Drake muttered something more inimical 
 than grateful ; but when he caught sight of 
 Bertie's face, bending with heartfelt distress 
 and regret over Doll, the expression of his 
 own rugged countenance changed and 
 softened. 
 
 Clemence, saying " It was my sister who 
 who was so unfortunate — you must let me 
 do everything I can," looked at him with 
 her deep and tender eyes, and raising 
 Doll's brown hand very tenderly, laid
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 209 
 
 her cheek softly against it for an in- 
 stant. 
 
 Her tone, her looks, this little act, were 
 all so genuine, so thorough in their kindli- 
 ness, that John could not be altogether 
 obdurate ; and he knew that he must take 
 help, let it come from what quarter it 
 might — it was a necessity that could not be 
 dodged nor avoided. 
 
 Long after their dinner-hour the cousins 
 lingered on in the labourer's mean room, 
 watching the suffering child ; for that she 
 did suffer, was testified by a faint moan 
 from time to time, and the occasional 
 quivering of her white lips. 
 
 At length Clemence said, " Shall we go 
 now, Bertie ? I am coming again in the 
 morning. To-night Mrs. James is going 
 to stay — the poor child has no mother and 
 no women relations, it seems — good of her, 
 is it not ?" 
 
 " Not half as good as it is of you to think 
 of coming back again," said Bertie warmly ; 
 " for something in your tone tells me that 
 when you come, you will stay a long while." 
 
 vol. 1. 14
 
 2io The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " I shall, for I am grieved ; I cannot bear 
 to think of her — motherless and sisterless, 
 and with only her labourer father, who must 
 go on all the same with his rough work, 
 — lying here suffering by such a terrible 
 accident. I am ready ; let us go." 
 
 The foregoing conversation had been 
 held in the outer room, which they had 
 had to themselves ; for, on Clemence's 
 entrance, Drake had gone into the room 
 where his daughter lay, shoeless, with the 
 tread of a well-intentioned elephant. 
 
 Clemence and her cousin went out of the 
 ill-conditioned room into the gloaming, and 
 as they did so, the father, with his toil- 
 roughened face, bent over little Doll. 
 What a changed Doll, from the slip of 
 pretty radiant life that had come rushing 
 down the steep, ladder-like staircase only 
 that morning. What a pathetic appeal, 
 even to the sympathies of Jack, were those 
 moans of half-conscious suffering. 
 
 " Dang the horse what did it !" said 
 John Drake, as he gazed with an angry 
 sympathy ; " and dang the madam a-riding
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 2 1 1. 
 
 the hoss — cuss her, a- riding over the 
 innocent — damn her !" So he made the 
 three steps of imprecation, looking all the 
 while upon Doll's drawn, yet pretty, oh so 
 pretty face. 
 
 " Thank you kindly, ma'am," he said, 
 going over to Mrs. James, and as he spoke 
 clumsily pulling his forelock ; " its right 
 good of you to stay i' the lass." 
 
 Mrs. James felt within her own soul that 
 it was certainly not bad ; but, as is the 
 custom, she made light of the truly meri- 
 torious deed, and fussed noiselessly about 
 the mean room, making sundry preparations 
 for her own and Doll's comfort. Poor 
 Doll, with her shattered head and fractured 
 ribs, lay benumbed with pain, and stupefied 
 with ether, and deaf and blind to all 
 external influences. 
 
 " I was not able to tell Angela, as I had 
 intended doing," Bertie said, after they 
 had walked a few steps of their way home 
 in silence. He uttered the words with an 
 abruptness that was ejaculatory. He had 
 hoped that Clemence would question him ; 
 
 14—2
 
 212 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 but Clemence was too delicately proud a 
 woman, and too fond a sister to do so. 
 
 " Have you not ?" she replied quietly, 
 then added, " I suppose that it was im- 
 possible to have anything like connected 
 talk if the horse was gay, and Angela 
 frightened." 
 
 "It was exactly so," he answered eagerly, 
 coming nearer to her ; " it was altogether 
 out of the question. Angela was frightened 
 out of all coherence or attention ; but to- 
 morrow it shall be got over." He set his 
 teeth, and drew his eyebrows together, with 
 the expression of a man preparing for an 
 ordeal ; for the poison of a woman's re- 
 criminating words. Clemence expressed 
 no doubt nor uncertainty of his doing as 
 he said, even if she felt it. 
 
 " Pray take my arm," were his next words, 
 a short pause having ensued ; " you must 
 be very tired." 
 
 " Thanks, no ; I do not feel at all 
 tired." 
 
 " Eyes right !" he cried half jestingly, 
 half entreatingly, for she had turned her
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 2 1 3 
 
 head away, and was pensively looking 
 down at the sleeping daisies. The eyes 
 did not obey him ; but she raised them, 
 and looked straight forward now, and he 
 could see the long lashes defined against 
 the faded primrose sky. 
 
 " What an odd thing love is 1" he ex- 
 claimed impulsively ; " mine for you was 
 not ' a love at first sight' weed. No, 
 Clemence, you sowed the seed in my 
 heart, and it grew slowly to be the deepest- 
 rooted and most tenacious of plants. It 
 was inadvertently sown, dear cousin ; any 
 one more wanting in the malice prepense 
 of feminine wiles than you are, never 
 existed." 
 
 11 You are not right in naming that gift of 
 pleasing ' malice prepense,' " she answered ; 
 " it is a charming gift, of which its possessors 
 are often unconscious. Take my sister 
 Angela, for instance. Any one can see 
 the impression she produces upon every 
 living creature with whom she is thrown ; 
 yet I know that she makes no sort of effort 
 to please."
 
 214 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " Angela is fascinating, but you are 
 lovable/' returned Bertie. " Clemence," he 
 went on thoughtfully, " it is the fashion I 
 know in fiction to represent the good young 
 woman as having everything to fear from 
 her wicked sister in the way of appropriating 
 lovers ; but I think that in real life the 
 good sister wins it over the wicked. I say 
 1 good' and ' wicked ;' that needs qualifi- 
 cation, of course. But I mean that the 
 girl of pretty ' traits,' generally finds more 
 earnest lovers at the last, than the girl of 
 pretty features ; the girl of warm heart and 
 deep feeling, gains more enduring affection 
 than she of deep intellect and shallow 
 heart/' 
 
 " I cannot agree with you," she rejoined ; 
 " when I think of the great enslavers who 
 have driven men mad." 
 
 " Oh, the great enslavers had heart 
 enough for one fellow," said Bertie ; then 
 the talk drifted into personalities as it will 
 inevitably do, if one of two people is 
 determined that it shall. 
 
 It was that time of the day, which is
 
 A Hurry of Hoofs. 2 1 5 
 
 sweet to the eye, as the echo of a clear 
 musical strain is delightful to the ear. The 
 sun had gone ; but the after-glow was there. 
 Many of the flowers were closing their 
 petals ; the daisies had closed theirs with a 
 blush — but they had given the warm air 
 an intenser perfume. It seemed to Bertie 
 that Clemence must say one little kind, 
 encouraging word to him now ! An 
 affection couched in sturdy Saxon words 
 and demonstrated by liberal caresses, she 
 would never give, he knew ; but one little 
 tender look ; one responsive word ? 
 
 No ; Clemence gave neither : and her 
 dignity to-night seemed to be an armed 
 dignity. Bertie would have been assuaged 
 could he have known that she was in part 
 armed against herself. Clemence felt that 
 unless she was loyal to her sister in deed, 
 and in truth, at this time, she should never 
 cease to reproach herself. 
 
 She was gentle ; that she always was ; 
 and with gentleness, her cousin was obliged 
 to be satisfied. A star, like a bright light 
 held by a trembling hand, quivered in the
 
 2 1 6 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 empyrean. Clemence felt that if Angela 
 had been there, she would have wished to 
 it, for she was superstitious. Poor Angela ! 
 what never-to-be-gratified wish might she 
 not have wished, Clemence thought sadly ; 
 and, although the evening was lovely 
 enough to be a poet's theme, and although 
 Bertie was with her, she was glad when the 
 walk was over.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The wind is still, the stars are fled, 
 The melancholy moon is dead." 
 
 HEN they reached home they 
 found dinner nearly over. An 
 gela, apparently none the worse 
 for her fright, was eating cherry-tart with 
 no visible absence of appetite. A story 
 of her own manufacture had greeted 
 the ears of Miss Lawless, the squire, and 
 Fox — also of Adrian, who had arrived 
 shortly before dinner — therefore there was 
 little for Clemence and Bertie to add, but 
 to report the condition of the unfortunate 
 child. 
 
 Angela turned to them as they entered,
 
 2 1 8 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 and her lips got a trifle paler as she asked, 
 " How is the child ?" 
 
 " She is very much hurt," answered 
 Clemence, " but she is unconscious now, 
 and, except for an occasional moan of pain, 
 one would not think that she was suffering 
 at all. We found Mr. Hurst there, and a 
 good creature, a Mrs. James, wife of the 
 saddler." 
 
 " But she will not die f interrupted 
 Angela, for once laying a fervent stress 
 upon one word. 
 
 " They think not ; oh, no — console your- 
 self, Angela, they quite think not ; she is 
 so young, and hardy, and full of animal 
 strength ; she will pull through, never 
 fear." 
 
 " All that I can say is, that it is a most 
 unfortunate affair," remarked Miss Lawless. 
 
 Everybody at the table looked as if her 
 non-ability to say more was a relief to 
 them. 
 
 " Poor child, — it comes hard on you, 
 very," said Mr. Lawless, with a compas- 
 sionate glance at his fragile niece, who at
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 219 
 
 that moment was looking as if she could 
 lean her parian forehead upon the table, 
 and faint, or die, with the utmost ease. 
 
 " Half the accidents from runaways that 
 one hears of are caused by either children 
 or dogs frightening the horses," said Adrian, 
 decisively. 
 
 " But this child did not frighten Moon- 
 shine," replied Bertie, with equal decision ; 
 " it was one of those cases where a little 
 nerve would have made it all right. An- 
 gela pulled the curb rather more sharply 
 than she was aware of, and the mare was 
 bad-mannered enough to rear. I told 
 Angela to drop the curb, but she did not 
 understand — " 
 
 " You cruel fellow !" cried Angela, strik- 
 ing in. " After the agony of fright that I 
 have suffered, to reproach me — to blame 
 me when I only escaped with my life — " 
 
 " And limb," said Clemence, calmly. 
 
 " Heartless ! both of you," exclaimed 
 Angela, with a choking sob. " Oh, I 
 would not have believed it." 
 
 " I assure you," replied Bertie, with so
 
 2 20 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 much feeling that any one could see that 
 Angela was mollified, " I was awfully sorry 
 for you, as I rode behind you, and watched 
 your hair shake down, and heard you 
 scream. But, my dear child, never scream 
 again when a horse seems inclined to bolt. 
 And there was nothing in life to be fright- 
 ened at ; come, now, — think — was there ? 
 Only to keep your saddle ; no very difficult 
 feat ; for a horse going at that speed al- 
 ways is smoother in its gait than when at 
 a slower pace. I'm not a bit unfeeling; 
 neither is Clemence. You have my sin- 
 cerest sympathy — if you feel that you re- 
 quire it !" And he laughed good-naturedly. 
 " Poor little girl !" he went on, with a com- 
 pression of his lips, " everything must be 
 done for her that can be done. We must 
 send her broths, and jellies, and things of 
 that sort every day." 
 
 Mr. Lawless's face fell several degrees. 
 " We had better have doctor's orders for 
 soups and jellies before we send 'em," he 
 said irascibly. " Nothing that the sun 
 shines on should be wasted."
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 221 
 
 " The jelly that the sun shines on would 
 not be long in being wasted," Fox remarked 
 with a boyish laugh. His father looked 
 minaciously at him, and continued his 
 dinner. 
 
 Strive as they might to bring other 
 topics to the fore, that of the afternoon's 
 catastrophe was sure to stray in like an 
 unwanted poor relation. Angela winced 
 at it, Bertie frowned, the corners of Cle- 
 mence's mouth drooped, Mr. Lawless 
 scowled, yet in it would persist in coming. 
 Runaway horse ; knocked-down child ; 
 would she recover ? would she be dis- 
 abled ? how old was she ? Why need so 
 untoward an event have happened to the 
 family of Lawless ? (This last Miss Law- 
 less's plaint.) They rang the changes on 
 it, the ill-luck of it, and the pity of it, until 
 Angela — all nerves — was on the point of 
 fainting — at least so she frankly announced 
 — and that unless the subject was tabooed, 
 she should be obliged to leave the table 
 and go to her room, she said. 
 
 So at last they made a leper of the topic,.
 
 222 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 and by their marked avoidance of it, or 
 anything that might by chance lead up to 
 it, Angela was satisfied. 
 
 Her nerves were not quite so unstrung 
 that she could not, upon reaching the 
 drawing-room, take up the long blue strip 
 of lace- work that wound its slow length 
 along, going at about the average of one 
 inch a night. 
 
 Pale as Angela always was, to-night her 
 pallor was terrible. Adrian, going over 
 to her, looked commiseratingly down upon 
 her, an unwonted gentleness softening the 
 fire of his dark eyes. 
 
 " You look just a little shattered by your 
 fright," he said. 
 
 She leaned back in her chair, let the 
 blue strip fall, and raised her blue eyes to 
 his. 
 
 " Yes, I am a little shattered," she re- 
 plied, repeating his own words, " and I feel 
 strangely chilled ; fingers of snow seem 
 touching me ; icy breaths seem to fan me. 
 And I feel so dreamy ; you look miles 
 away from me."
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 223 
 
 " Do let me send for a glass of wine for 
 you ; you look very pale." 
 
 " I am always pale, you know," she re- 
 plied, " and I won't have any wine, thanks. 
 Do sit down. It tires me to see you 
 standing, even though you do not shift 
 from one leg to the other, which I hate to 
 see a man do. And it tires me to look up 
 at you." 
 
 Adrian seated himself as desired. 
 
 " I am horribly sorry for this poor little 
 girl," said Angela, doing one intricate stitch 
 in a leisurely manner. 
 
 " Oh, naturally ; — of course. But she 
 must have been rather stupid, and not at 
 all 'spry,' as the Yankees say, — not to 
 have got out of your way, if you gave her 
 time enough." 
 
 " Oh, a perfect owl, I do assure you," 
 returned Angela, tranquilly. " I shouted 
 to her ; I implored her to move. But she 
 is pretty ; oh, so pretty ; I do hope that 
 her face is not hurt;" and Angela shud- 
 dered, for she had a morbid horror of per- 
 sonal disfigurements. Yet she was the
 
 224 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 kind of woman who, in visiting Paris, 
 would not have failed to seek the Morgue* 
 and would have extracted from that bourne 
 of exanimate horrors a shocking, yet 
 genuine, satisfaction. Over it she could 
 have her fill of shudders, could grow hy- 
 sterically moved. 
 
 Adrian echoed her hope, and then a 
 short pause fell between them, wherein 
 Angela knit her delicate brows over the 
 intricacies of her Spanish rose. Not so 
 intricate was it but that she could steal a 
 glance at her cousin and lover ; her fer- 
 vidly-loved Bertrand, who, seated beside 
 Clemence, was talking to her with a strange 
 air of absorption. Angela watched him 
 with complacency, however, for to fear her 
 sister would have made her suspect herself 
 of approaching mental aberration. What ? 
 Bertie prefer sunshine to moonshine, 
 prose to poetry, realism to ideality, girlish 
 comeliness to Nixie loveliness, fact to fancy, 
 human nature's plain " daily food" to the 
 witch-like repast that she was always ready 
 to spread ? No, the thing was impossible \
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 225 
 
 She had sent Adrian across the room to 
 fetch her a reel of thread, when the door 
 was opened, and Henry North was ushered 
 in, with a very faint suspicion of cigar- 
 smoke about him. 
 
 " I thought that I might venture to stroll 
 over," he said, apologetically ; " I believe 
 we are not supposed to be on terms of 
 ceremony together." 
 
 11 Certainly not," answered Bertie ; " of 
 course not." 
 
 Then Henry seated himself near Angela, 
 and before long was entertained by her 
 with a detailed account of the accident of 
 the afternoon. 
 
 " Poor little girl !" he exclaimed with 
 much compassion, as Angela paused. 
 
 " I am ' poor/ certainly, but I don't know 
 that I can allow you to call me ' little girl,' " 
 she returned, with languid coquetry, and a 
 little smile. 
 
 " Oh, I did not mean you" he said, 
 opening his eyes, rather. " You are all 
 right, thanks be. I meant the poor little 
 girl that you knocked over." 
 
 vol. 1. 15
 
 226 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " I wish," said Angela with irritation, 
 " that you would not talk of me as if I 
 were a prize-fighter — poor little thing," she 
 continued, with a dawning uneasy con- 
 sciousness that he was weighing her in 
 some balance of his own, and finding her 
 wanting. " I am going to send over the 
 very first thing to-morrow morning to know 
 what I can do for her." 
 
 Henry North was weighing her, and he 
 could not help but find her wanting in one 
 of womanhood's most touching gifts — ten- 
 derness. 
 
 14 I congratulate you on your own good 
 luck," he said in a conventional tone* 
 " You had a capital, quiet road, and a nice 
 cool time of the day for a bolt, had you 
 not r 
 
 n You talk of it very much as Bertie 
 does," she rejoined, with a defined sulki- 
 ness. "What would have been play to 
 you, was something very like death to 
 me. 
 
 " Oh, dear, no ; impossible. Why you 
 are looking uncommonly well to-night, So
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 227 
 
 is your sister," glancing over at her ; " that 
 expression of proud gentleness, like a beau- 
 tiful wild creature mal apprivoise, with 
 which she is looking up at Bertie, is spe- 
 cially becoming to her, and so he seems to 
 think, by Jove !" 
 
 " What astonishing discoveries you make 
 in regard to my sister," exclaimed Angela, 
 while a faint ray of colour stole into her 
 face. 
 
 " I don't think what I have just said 
 can be called an astonishing discovery," he 
 replied. 
 
 Angela regarded her cousin and her 
 sister earnestly for a moment, and then 
 said emphatically, " I am quite willing for 
 my Bertie to approve of my sister." 
 
 " So ?" he breathed out. " That posses- 
 sive pronoun, as you pronounce it, holds a 
 world of meaning." 
 
 " I intend it to do so," she rejoined, 
 glancing proudly over at Bertie's handsome 
 face. " I do not care to hide as a secret 
 what I am contented that all the world 
 should know." 
 
 15—2
 
 228 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 Although he was not in love with her, 
 he yet could not take this revelation with 
 indifference, and after murmuring, " Most 
 fortunate of fellows !" drew Angelas gaudy- 
 work-basket towards him, and began turn- 
 ing over its contents, his eyes following his 
 hands, so that he need not look her in the 
 face. Proud and pleased was she at this 
 proof of her might. 
 
 Presently he began to be amused at the 
 varied stores of that feminine receptacle on 
 his knees. Here was a little flat pincushion 
 cut out of violet silk, and painted to repre- 
 sent a pansy. He felt that he should like 
 to appropriate it ; it was so pretty, so small, 
 and so flat. 
 
 " Bertie admires that," observed Angela. 
 " I am going to give it him." 
 
 " Ha !" said Henry, and continued his 
 search. He found a shark's tooth mounted 
 in gold now, and a pink satin bag next, 
 filled with poudre d'iris. A little thimble 
 surrounded by turquoises, evidently kept 
 for holiday occasions, for she had a plain 
 one on her finger now. A pair of small,
 
 The Sisters Lazvless. 229 
 
 gilded scissors ; a little mother-of-pearl box 
 containing a flower that had long ago de- 
 parted this life. 
 
 " I suppose Bertie once wore that in his 
 coat ?" he said, interrogatively. She blushed 
 very deeply, and was significantly silent. 
 He caught a sigh half way breathed, and 
 changed it into a little laugh. Why should 
 he care, he thought, whether or not this 
 girl, whose heart was as cold as a toad em- 
 bedded in a rock, sentimentally cherished 
 a flower which her betrothed had once 
 worn ? He went on ransacking the basket. 
 Here was a little blood-stone seal with her 
 initials A. A. L. upon it. She never used 
 it. In these days of " chiffres," who does 
 use seals ? 
 
 " What does the second A stand for ?" 
 he asked. 
 
 " Amy ; I am Angela Amy ; Clemence 
 is Clemence Frances. Bertie thinks Amy 
 prettier than Angela ; I tell him to adopt 
 the name of Amy for me, if he likes, and 
 let it be used by him alone." 
 
 Henry dropped the seal suddenly back
 
 230 The Sisters Laic less. 
 
 again, and it fell clinking among the reels, 
 and stilettoes, and needle-cases. 
 
 " I determined that I would call him 
 Bertrand," Angela continued. " I dislike 
 diminutives so much for men ; but, as you 
 see, I have drifted into Bertie. I called 
 him Bertrand once, I think, and once only. 
 Then Bertie is a name of itself you know, 
 which betters matters. But Adrian I do 
 call Adrian, not Adie, a most ignominious 
 appellation, and about as suitable to him 
 as 'Fido' to the lady's hippopotamus in 
 that absurd picture that came out in ' Punch* 
 ages ago. I am angry just at this moment 
 with both Bertie and Clemence ; they made 
 so light of my being run away with. Bertie 
 I shall forgive to-night ; he will make me 
 do it, I know ; but Clemence I shall insist 
 upon having a silent feud with until to- 
 morrow ; then I shall kiss and be friends, 
 for I want her to make me a Dolly Varden 
 cap ; and it's inconvenient to ask a favour 
 of a person with whom you are having a 
 silent feud, isn't it ?" 
 
 " I dare say. I never had one, however."
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 231 
 
 " No ? Not with Bertie in other days ?" 
 " Oh, dear, no. Bertie is the last person 
 with whom it would be possible to have 
 one, as you have just admitted. You say 
 that he will make you forgive him to-night. 
 I know what that means." 
 " What ?" 
 
 " Oh, well, we'll call it moral suasion." 
 At this point, what had been a tete-a- 
 tete between them, was broken in upon 
 by Adrian, and soon Miss Lawless as well 
 included herself in the conversation. At 
 half-past ten the Lawless establishment 
 overstepped the bounds of stinginess to 
 the degree of providing rather warm claret 
 cup, which young North was chary of im- 
 bibing, and presently rising up, made his 
 farewells, not having spent quite as agree- 
 able an evening as he had anticipated 
 doing.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 NGELA," said Clemence, upon 
 
 reaching their room that night, 
 
 " my heart aches." 
 
 " Does it ? poor thing ! I am sorry that 
 
 you cannot have it painlessly extracted like 
 
 a tooth." 
 
 " It aches," Clemence went on, disre- 
 garding her sister's facetiousness, " to see 
 you so apparently unfeeling — apparently — 
 I am sure that in your heart you are as 
 sorry as possible for that poor little girl — 
 
 little Dorothy Drake " 
 
 " Oh, is that her name ? Yes, of course 
 
 I am sorry. Horribly sorry. What can 
 
 I do for her ? But don't tell me to-night. 
 
 I am so tired and sleepy, and I have such 
 
 a crawley, creepy feeling all down my back
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 233 
 
 I think I've heard that it was a precursor 
 of fever ; but you would not care ; you 
 have been abominably unfeeling about me, 
 your only sister. I think that you would 
 have been rather entertained if I had been 
 brought home this afternoon on a shutter." 
 
 " Oh, Angela, for shame ! How " 
 
 " I have told you once, Clemence, that I 
 don't feel equal to talking, and it is cruel 
 of you to persist. How can you look at 
 such a pathetic-looking thing as I see in 
 the glass, and not attend to what it says ?" 
 
 " Only say good-night to me, and I won't 
 bother you any more," answered Clemence, 
 humbly ; " and tell me that you know I 
 give you all my best sympathy and all my 
 best love." 
 
 "Good-night," responded Angela amiably, 
 touched by her sister's tender tone ; " I 
 know that you're fond of me, and are good 
 to me, and are glad that I am safe. There, 
 now you are contented, I am sure. Poor 
 Henry North," she went on suddenly, " he 
 was a portrait of a collapsed gentleman 
 when I told him about Bertie."
 
 234 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " What did you tell him about Bertie ?" 
 " That is not an intelligent question, 
 Clemence. What was I likely to tell him, 
 but that I was engaged to Bertie ? Of 
 course I did not say so in just those un- 
 burnished words, but it amounted to the 
 same thing ; he understands how it is, and 
 by this time I suppose his friend, his 
 mother, does as well." 
 
 " Oh, Angela! premature on your part." 
 " You certainly can be a most detestable 
 creature when you choose, Clemence. Be- 
 tween Bertie and me must a declaration 
 concise and arid as an act of Parliament be 
 made and accepted. Why, that would rob 
 me of half my pleasure ; and Bertie, with 
 his keen and quick insight into my cha- 
 racter, knows precisely how to deal with 
 me. However, to-morrow he will probably 
 insist upon saying something definite, I 
 am afraid (I wish he would leave affairs in 
 this most halcyon and unarranged state a 
 little longer) ; but he announced that he 
 must talk to me to-morrow morning, as 
 soon after breakfast as possible, and he
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 235. 
 
 made the request with the solemnity 
 of an Iroquois proposing to unbury the 
 hatchet. It is the step in life, of course, 
 and the only step. Birth and death can't 
 be called steps. In the one case we are 
 shuffled into life without our leave, and in 
 the other we are shuffled out of it. But 
 the selection of a wife is a very different 
 thing " 
 
 " I believe I am a coward I" interrupted 
 Clemence violently, and flinging herself 
 down on the rug beside her bed, she buried 
 her face in the pillow. 
 
 " I have been afraid that it was hard for 
 you to wish me joy," answered Angela, 
 easily. " It is a sad pity that you should 
 
 have been but don't let us put what we 
 
 mean into words. You must learn to 
 think of him as a brother, Clemence ; it is 
 very easy to tutor one's self into these 
 things ; and I will manage to keep him 
 apart from you, after, after — at first I 
 mean. Oh, don't howl and cry like that, 
 it is so unlike you." 
 
 " Bertie," began Clemence, when An-
 
 2 $6 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 gela held up her hand, and peremptorily 
 bade her stop. " No more talking to- 
 night, I don't want to hear what you have 
 to say, and I will not look like the ghost 
 of my great-grandmother to-morrow." 
 
 And with these good-night words, Miss 
 Angela Lawless extinguished the candle, 
 and hiding the match-box under her pillow, 
 left her partially-dressed sister on the floor 
 in the dark. 
 
 Long after Angela was asleep Clemence 
 .sat there. She was a moral coward, she 
 told herself. A very loving one, but a 
 coward all the same. And was a man 
 worth loving, who, by his thoughtlessness 
 and sentimentality, would cause two hearts 
 to ache grievously ? " Ah," came the 
 answer, " if only those worth loving were 
 loved, the boy-god might lay aside his 
 quiver and bow, and bury his arrows for 
 ^ver." A conflict went on within her, 
 down on the rug in the dark, and listening 
 to her sister's long respirations. 
 
 To allow Angela to persist in a fatal 
 mistake like this, and make no revelation
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 237^ 
 
 to her, was a kind of barbarity. Yet 
 should not the revelation come from 
 Bertie ? Yes ; it was all in his hands. 
 But was not she a poor faltering fool, to 
 permit her sister to go to the man she 
 fancied was her lover, unprepared, when 
 she might be in a measure prepared ? And 
 she saw distinctly, that to Angela, im- 
 prisoned in self as she was, and proud with 
 the pride of intense vanity, what she would 
 be called upon to undergo, to-morrow, 
 would be little short of torture. To be 
 supplanted by herself — Clemence — there 
 would be the excruciation to Angela, who 
 had ever ranked her sister so low ! 
 
 Impulsively Clemence got upon her feet,, 
 and groped her way towards her sister's 
 bed. The clock on the landing struck 
 one, sonorously ; then many smaller clocks 
 tinkled one from different parts of the 
 house. The window stood wide open,, 
 and in the distance she heard the little 
 fox-terrier howling for his master. And 
 she could hear the shrubs and trees rus- 
 tling and murmuring out in the dark, star-
 
 238 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 less night. A bird twittered feebly, as if 
 it was talking in its sleep. She touched 
 her sister caressingly on the arm. Angela 
 stirred. 
 
 " Angela," said Clemence. 
 
 " What do you want ?" answered An- 
 gela awaking with a start. " You know how 
 I hate you when you come and wake me 
 out of sound sleep like this. What is it ?" 
 
 " I want to speak to you ; I must speak 
 to you." 
 
 " Oh, heavens ! she wakes me out of a 
 deep first sleep, after a day spent in being 
 run away with by a horse, and then says 'she 
 wants to speak to me' You shan't," with a 
 snarl, " I won't listen to you ; the next 
 thing will be, that you will come and wake 
 me up to tell me that I am asleep ! Be off 
 with you." 
 
 "Oh, do attend to me ; it is about Bertie 
 that I want to speak." 
 
 " Ah, that is ' a trap,' not to catch a 
 'sunbeam,' but a sleepy listener. I will not 
 listen even to anything about him. Get to 
 bed, do." 
 
 " Angela, he is going to say something
 
 The Sisters Lazvless. 239 
 
 to you to-morrow, that you will hate to 
 hear." 
 
 11 The English of which is that he is 
 going to give me a jealous scolding about 
 Henry North. Why need you meddle in 
 my affairs ? Take your hand off my arm." 
 " No, no, he will do nothing of the sort," 
 cried Clemence in despair of making her 
 sister understand her ; " oh, Angela, you 
 are falling asleep ! You will not then 
 listen, when what I want to say is of vital 
 interest and importance to you." 
 
 Without replying, Angela produced the 
 match-box from under her pillow, lighted 
 the candle beside her bed, and taking her 
 sister's face ungently between both hands 
 stared into it. 
 
 " There is no moon to-night ? no ; and 
 I never heard of anybody being star- 
 struck ; besides, there are not any stars. 
 Now what is the matter with you, 
 Clemence ? And you are crying again ! 
 Here is a singular development ; tears, 
 sleeplessness, dramatic fervour, jealousy, 
 addled innuendoes and you so common-
 
 240 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 place ! Have you an inkling of what is 
 the matter with you ? If you have, I 
 should like to be told in two words, and 
 then I should wish to get inside the ivory 
 gates again. I shall count ten, and then 
 put the candle out ; the light disturbs me 
 very much, and you can manage perfectly 
 well in the dark ; / could. Come." And 
 Angela grasped the candle firmly in one 
 hand, and the extinguisher in the other, 
 having already replaced the match-box 
 under her pillow. 
 
 " I cannot, when you are in so mock- 
 ing, and uncomfortable, and inattentive a 
 frame of mind," returned Clemence, losing 
 her temper, and walking away. " I had 
 to screw myself up to the proper pitch of 
 courage to wake you, I assure you ; and 
 I would rather have been beaten, than say 
 what I thought it my duty to say." 
 
 " Bah ! Aunt Maria !" said Angela 
 slightingly, and, without going through the 
 proposed ceremony of counting ten, ex- 
 tinguished the candle, very pleased to snub 
 Clemence by not betraying the faintest 
 curiosity about what she had to divulge.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 SWEPT AND GARNISHED." 
 
 NGELA'S adornment of her fair 
 person was careful and pro- 
 longed the next morning, and 
 its result highly satisfactory to her when 
 she drew off and surveyed herself in the 
 glass. A Dolly Varden cap, which Cle- 
 mence had made for her, surmounted her 
 fine pale hair ; there were lavender bows, 
 matching its ribbons, at her throat and 
 waist ; and she wore a captivating little 
 black fichu. Finally, she ran downstairs, 
 and on her way snatched a white climbing 
 rose, which nodded good-morning to her 
 through the open window of the landing. 
 Adjusting it coquettishly, she considered 
 vol. i. 16
 
 242 The Sisters Lata less. 
 
 herself then complete, and, entering the 
 deserted breakfast-room (she was inva- 
 riably the last), rang for hot tea and rolls, 
 and made a sustaining repast. 
 
 She had arranged to meet Bertie at a 
 certain spot ; and to this trysting-place she 
 presently betook herself, singing his name 
 over and over as she went. 
 
 At the side of the house a wide walk 
 sloped away, clean, yellow, and smooth, 
 and lost itself among the shrubbery. Half 
 way, it was broken by a flight of three 
 stone steps, and upon each side of the 
 highest step stood a stone urn, filled now 
 with salmon-coloured geraniums. It was 
 by these urns that she had agreed to meet 
 her cousin, and there he waited, leaning 
 against one of them, and smoking. 
 
 He threw his cigar away as she tripped 
 towards him, singing and smiling. She 
 held out both hands to him, but he only 
 took one, and that one he held loosely for 
 a second, and then let it go. He saw the 
 brilliancy of vexation come into her eyes, 
 and she said petulantly —
 
 " Swept and Garnished." 243 
 
 " And now what is it that you are so 
 eager to say to me ? Is it something nice ? 
 or are you going to be foolish and jealous 
 enough to scold me again about Henry 
 North r 
 
 " I am neither going to do one thing nor 
 the other," he replied, gravely ; " not that 
 I am aware of ever having 'scolded' you 
 about Henry North. No, Angela, no ; I 
 am going to try and do what is right, ac- 
 cording to my light, and I have nerved 
 myself to endure your keen reproaches, 
 and the reproaches of my own conscience, 
 still more keen. 
 
 " Angela, how do you think I love you ? 
 What did your charm and bewitchment 
 lead me into saying the day before yester- 
 day ? I love you as the sweetest, most 
 fascinating of cousins — sisters; but I should 
 be a coward to allow t you to go on thinking 
 that I prize you beyond any creature that 
 the world holds. They were bungling half- 
 truths that I said to you ; I did not — not 
 — express myself aright; and the conscious- 
 ness of that has been driving me half mad 
 
 16 — 2
 
 244 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 since I said them. Seeing that you were 
 misunderstanding me, for one mad moment 
 I determined to be what you supposed me 
 to be, and never to make any confession of 
 this sort to you. Forgive me ! — you are 
 too charming, and too powerful in your 
 fascination and beauty not to be merciful ; 
 pray be so ! 
 
 " Angela, you love your sister ?" he went 
 on with a startling abruptness, longing to 
 make an end of the detestable scene. 
 
 " You do !" she answered in an icy 
 voice. " I see it all now. Spare yourself 
 and me further details of your miserable 
 vacillation, you despicable pendulum ! I 
 am sorry that my name is your name. 
 You bungler ! — to drag me out here that 
 you might suffocate me with that clumsy 
 patchwork of words !" 
 
 She sank down upon the highest step, 
 leaning her head back against the urn ; and 
 he watched her lovely face grow ashy, 
 while a fine line like a white cord became 
 denned along the outline of her upper lip. 
 
 " Angela ! Angela \" he cried, terrified.
 
 " Swept and Garnished!' 245 
 
 Then a crimson streak flamed into her 
 left cheek, and she burst into a torrent of 
 tears. 
 
 " I am sorry that I ever saw you," she 
 said, in an altered voice. " Oh ! I would 
 rather that you had killed me than brought 
 me so low as this ! Oh, Bertie ! Bertie! I 
 want my old pride to scorn you with, but 
 it is gone from me ! I want my bitter 
 tongue to punish you with, but it will not 
 speak for me ! I want my old, fiery temper 
 that a word kindled into a flame, but it 
 fails me. Clemence has been playing a 
 Judas' part towards me — the meek, sly 
 robber ! Yes, a Judas' part towards me ; 
 for you loved her long ago, did you not ? 
 And she knew it. She has been trium- 
 phant in her heart, knowing me to be the 
 vanquished one — woe to me ! — and de- 
 ceiving me with a placid face ! I know 
 now why I caught her last evening staring 
 at me like an owl in the sunshine : — she 
 was regarding me as a curious thing in 
 blights ; the possessor of a ruinous little 
 spot that she saw, but that I was uncon-
 
 246 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 scious of. You have acted a cruel part 
 towards me ; but I do not feel half as 
 hardly towards you as I do towards her." 
 
 " That is not the way to speak," said 
 Bertie, agitated to the point of only being 
 able to utter the most unsuitable common- 
 places. " I have not intended, I assure 
 you, to act a cruel part towards you. I 
 have always prized you as a most charming 
 companion and cousin. But I grew to 
 know Clemence so well, in the rides we 
 have taken together ; and from learning to 
 know her, I learnt to love her. 
 
 " She has neither been sly nor deceptive 
 — Clemence is incapable of beingeither — for 
 I have said nothing to her until last night. 
 She knows that she is not half so pretty 
 and charming as you are ; no one could be 
 more humble as to her own opinion of her- 
 self than she is. You will get over — this 
 — I believe." 
 
 He tried not to meet her eyes as he 
 spoke, but they followed his with an insist- 
 ence that drew his own unwillingly to meet 
 them. They were wobegone, and desti-
 
 " Swept and Garnished." 247 
 
 tute of one ray of hope. They were dry 
 and bright, yet they betrayed more misery 
 than is betokened by unquenchable tears. 
 
 " Tell me more of this carefully con- 
 ducted love-affair of yours," she said, in a 
 thin, hard voice. 
 
 He was about to refuse, when she leaned 
 forward, saying vehemently : — 
 
 " But I insist ; I will hear. I am in a 
 fever of curiosity. Come, when did you 
 first make up your mind to the fact that 
 your soul and Clemence's descended from 
 Heaven a pair ?" 
 
 i( I will not answer," he replied, grudg- 
 ingly ; " you are making a fool of me." 
 
 " Making a fool of you !" she repeated ; 
 " and what have you made of me ? Am 
 I not spirited to sit here, with my tears all 
 wiped away, and be able to question you 
 like this ?" 
 
 " It is because you don't care two straws 
 about me," answered he, in a tone of pro- 
 found thankfulness, that was heart-rending 
 to his listener. 
 
 11 Oh, you mistake ; I love you dearly —
 
 248 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 as a cousin. I think I mistook my feeling 
 
 in regard to you — oh " she cried, 
 
 breaking down utterly, "that this should 
 be // Hush — do not speak ! It will be 
 needless brutality to attempt further ex- 
 tenuation or blame of yourself. I under- 
 stand quite, quite well how it was — now. 
 I think I will go in. How glaring the sun 
 is ; how it beats down on this yellow 
 sand " 
 
 " You forgive me ?" Bertie interrupted ; 
 " you do not care ? Come, admit that you 
 do not" 
 
 " That is a cowardly question," she re- 
 plied, speaking through her clenched teeth. 
 " How is it that you can have such brave, 
 frank eyes, such firm and honest features, 
 be so tall and strong, and yet be so mean, 
 so cowardly, and so cruel ?" 
 
 " I suppose I must be dumb," he said, 
 in a stifled voice. 
 
 " I suppose you must be," she repeated, 
 " for you can have nothing really in self- 
 defence to say." 
 
 She turned to go.
 
 " Swept and Garnished" 249 
 
 " Stop," he said, detaining her ; " before 
 you go, say something to soften the insult 
 and reproach of those words of yours to 
 me. They rankle and burn like red-hot 
 arrows. To be called coward is that which 
 a man's whole nature revolts against." 
 
 " Men lose no prestige, nor no woman's 
 love, because they are moral cowards," 
 said Angela, with a piteous tenderness in 
 her voice, and in her trembling smile, as 
 she looked at him, " and that is all I ac- 
 cused you of being." 
 
 "AH!" he echoed, "all!" 
 
 " Yes, all. Did you not just tell me 
 that you were on the point of gliding into 
 a position that was false as false could be ? 
 I know what it was that held you back ; 
 the thought of Clemence. And the 
 thought of Clemence, whom you love, and 
 whom you would lose, else, has fortified 
 you to-day in saying what you have said. 
 I grow sick and faint when I think of how 
 I have spoken to her of you, and she, the 
 dumb adder, to hear me out without con- 
 tradiction. She, my sister, who I fan-
 
 250 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 cied loved me more than any one in the 
 world." 
 
 "She left it for me to say," he mur- 
 mured. 
 
 A refreshing thought flashed through 
 Angela's mind, that perhaps Clemence did 
 not feel sure of her lover ! While the 
 comfort of it was still with her, it were 
 best to go, she thought. 
 
 " Good-bye, Bertie " she stopped 
 
 abruptly, and walked rapidly away into 
 the house. 
 
 Bertie, folding his arms upon the rim of 
 the urn, bowed his head upon them, and 
 the luxuriance of the pink flowers hid his 
 quivering mouth and miserable eyes. 
 
 Many minutes he stood there, over- 
 whelmed with intense annoyance and self- 
 reproach, then, turning off from the path, 
 he walked away to where a magnolia in 
 full flower spread its broad leaves, and 
 flinging himself down in their shade, drew 
 his hat over his face, and tried to banish 
 from his mind that late disagreeable scene ; 
 but mental repetitions of it were all that
 
 ' ' Swept and Garnished. " 251 
 
 the thinking power could conjure. The 
 sweep of a woman's gown over the bright, 
 dry grass, roused him, and it was with an 
 almost childish delight, and an intense 
 sense of relief that he recognized Cle- 
 mence, with an unusually perturbed face, 
 advancing towards him. 
 
 " Is it over ?" she asked, anxiously, sink- 
 ing down on the grass beside him. 
 
 " Yes ; it is over," he answered, shortly. 
 " I wish you could see her before we go 
 to Barport ; and, Clemence, never ask me 
 to tell you any of the particulars of this 
 most trying scene that I have just had with 
 your sister." 
 
 " I will not," said Clemence, in hearty 
 assent. Then she rose up and returned to 
 the house. Bertie was in no mood for 
 talking, she saw, and it did not surprise 
 her. 
 
 At the door of her own room she en- 
 countered her sister face to face, who, with 
 hat, veil, and parasol, seemed to be starting 
 for a walk. Moreover, she had a sketch • 
 book under her arm.
 
 2 52 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " Angela," faltered Clemence, " you are 
 not angry with me, are you ?" 
 
 " Angry ? No," replied Angela, lifting 
 her veil, and fixing her burning blue eyes 
 upon her sister. " Angry ! that is not the 
 word. Clemence, if I were to bite you at 
 this moment, you would have some sort of 
 'phobia." 
 
 Clemence was intensely relieved to hear 
 a speech so like Angela's own whimsical 
 self, and tried to catch her sister in her 
 arms and kiss her. But Angela, eluding 
 her, stepped aside, and descended the 
 stairs. She laughed faintly as she went — 
 a sound sweet to Clemence's ears — but 
 there was Satanism in her face. 
 
 She went out of the house, and strayed 
 through the park like a lost dog, finally 
 creeping through the wire railing of a 
 thickly-grown plantation. Here, amongst 
 the murmuring pines and the hemlocks, 
 and the straight smooth beauty of superb 
 fern-leaved beeches, she was secluded, 
 quiet, and estranged from all human beings 
 but her dangerous self.
 
 " Swept mid Garnished!' 253 
 
 She did not cast herself down upon the 
 mossy ground, or mutter daft-sounding 
 ejaculations, or, sobbing, wind her fingers in 
 her soft fair hair. No; seating herself de- 
 corously as if eyes were upon her, at the 
 foot of a gloomy and sighing cedar, me- 
 chanically she placed her sketch-book on 
 her knees, and, opening it, dragged her 
 pencil across and across the page, with 
 such force that it pricked and tore the 
 strong elephant paper. Then she sat 
 stolidly staring at the jet black marks, until 
 her eyes ached and burned with the un- 
 winking fixedness of their gaze. She closed 
 the lids for an instant, and when she opened 
 them, she took in, for the first time, that 
 the leafy scene by which she was environed 
 was lovely, and that the sky was summer's 
 own tranquil blue, and the sunshine topaz, 
 and the birds' voices ear-caressing, as they 
 poured forth joyous epithalamium and jubi- 
 late. 
 
 " This sweeps and garnishes my soul," 
 she muttered to herself, with a frown, and 
 gazing up to where
 
 254 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " Heavily were drifting 
 White clouds to the shore of blue, away." 
 
 There were no graceful and pleasing 
 fancies now, nestling at her heart. Into it, 
 and into her garnished soul, stepped dan- 
 gerous usurpers, a powerful pack, of whom 
 reckless endeavour and costly sin might be 
 born. Fancies, clear and vivid as Dutch 
 pictures, occupied her mind. She did not 
 scruple to admit them ; they were welcome. 
 Vindictive and retaliative though they were, 
 she yet hugged them to her, as a mother 
 her deformed child. 
 
 The breezy, golden forenoon was fast 
 becoming languid, airless, burning; the 
 birds were almost still ; the leaves had 
 altogether ceased to murmur ; and the 
 downy clouds had sailed away to their 
 haven on the edge of the horizon, when 
 Angela bethought herself of such things as 
 home and luncheon; and marking in her 
 mind the hours spent amongst those sha- 
 dowy trees as the bitterest, the most nau- 
 seous of her life, she rose to her feet, 
 took her sketch-book, and began to loiter
 
 ' ' Swept ana Garnished. " 255 
 
 homewards, over the velvet knolls, and the 
 long strips of ardent sunshine, and the 
 ragged bits of shade, through the shrub- 
 beries, full of flowers as a London balb 
 room of women, and into the house. 
 
 "Let me see your sketch," said Clemence, 
 trying to speak easily, as Angela sank down 
 into a chair near her. (There was no one 
 at the table but the three women.) Angela, 
 with her indescribable smile, that seemed 
 always to press the circulation from out 
 her lips and turn them white, opened the 
 book, and in silence displayed to her sister 
 the jagged and unmeaning-looking black 
 scratches that she had made. Unmeaning ! 
 There was the meaning of a heart full of 
 repressed fury and torment in them. 
 
 " Nonsense !" said Clemence, looking 
 first at them, and then at her sister, with a 
 forced smile and a look of frightened per- 
 plexity in her eyes. " Is this really all 
 that you have done in all these hours ?" 
 
 " This is all," Angela replied, with an 
 iced ferocity of manner under which Cle- 
 mence shrank.
 
 256 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " I have been spending the morning with 
 Doll," she said, trying to make a little 
 conversation. " She is a shade better, 
 already." 
 
 " Is she ?" Angela repeated. " Aunt 
 Maria, have you praised Clemence for 
 going ? I hope so ; for she considers her- 
 self a consummate Samaritan, you may be 
 sure. Let us glorify her to her face, or 
 she will think us the most unappreciative 
 of sinners." 
 
 Miss Lawless eyed her younger niece 
 with the expression of a dog-fish surprised, 
 and made answer that she had told Cle- 
 mence " that it was a good sort of thing in 
 her to do." 
 
 " Oh ! but that won't satisfy her," said 
 Angela, rancorously ; " I mean to praise 
 her ad nauseam — she expects it." 
 
 " You shall do nothing of the sort," re- 
 plied Clemence, with a quiet dignity, and 
 rising from the table. " I cannot think 
 why you have chosen to talk in so absurd 
 a strain. Will you be less crooked after 
 lunch, think you ? And will you come out
 
 ' ' Swept and Garnished. " 257 
 
 under the rose-trellis for a short time, and 
 let me have a word with you ?" 
 
 " No," returned Angela, in a tone of 
 arduously repressed ire. 
 
 " Please do ?" 
 
 11 No," repeated Angela, in the same tone 
 as before. 
 
 Clemence, being anything but super- 
 mundane, could not find words wherewith 
 to coax and urge her. Therefore, taking 
 refuge in silence the golden, she left the 
 room, and, getting her work, went out 
 under the roses with it ; thus leaving An- 
 gela the undisputed possession of her room, 
 which Angela availed herself of, retiring 
 thither, and, in lonely abjectness, spending 
 the long hours of the breathless June after- 
 noon. Now and then the lightest murmur 
 of voices came to her from the rose-walk, 
 and she knew, she felt, that they belonged 
 to her sister and Bertie, who, in the enjoy- 
 ment of the first sweet and novel hours of 
 betrothal — unembittered, she feared, by any 
 thought of her — were talking together 
 amongst the tangled glow of the roses, 
 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 258 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 that crept over the trellis above their heads 
 and drooped crimson, and pale pink, and 
 pure white — all scented — in the airless sun- 
 shine. And she had never suspected ! had 
 never seen danger to Bertie in those long, 
 undisturbed rides — with Clemence ! Dan- 
 ger, and Clemence ! — the very combination 
 of the two words seemed gallingly ludicrous 
 to her. 
 
 Clemence ! with her gray eyes that 
 never did anything but see, and look straight 
 forward, or perhaps droop quietly like a 
 nun's telling her beads. Clemence, who 
 had no tricks or graces of manner, no 
 coquetries of gesture, no witcheries of 
 voice, or speech, or smile — who was only a 
 large, sensible, commonplace young woman, 
 with a cheerful temperament, a warm heart, 
 a total want of capriciousness and whimsi- 
 cality, no beauty to speak of, and only the 
 grace that springs from fundamental energy, 
 and thoroughly strong health. 
 
 Angela twisted herself from side to side 
 of her little Arabian bed, and bit her pale 
 lips, and lost herself in contemptuous won-
 
 " Swept and Garnished!' 259 
 
 der, and intense self-commiseration. She 
 to be slighted for Clemence ! She to make 
 an idiot of herself! It was unbearable ! 
 
 Out among the roses the affianced ones 
 made each other happy with acknowledged 
 mutual love. Clemence sewed on another 
 Dolly Varden cap for her sister, and Bertie 
 smoked a cheroot, mild-flavoured as they 
 usually are, and not in the least obnoxious 
 to either Clemence or the roses. 
 
 1 7- -2
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " Tanto gentile, e tanto onesta pare 
 
 Da donna mia quand' ella altrui saluta 
 Che ogni lingua divien, tremando muta 
 E gli occhi non ardiscon di guardare." 
 
 O occupy the room with one to- 
 wards whom we cherish jealousy, 
 rancour, and animosity, is a dis- 
 mal thing to do ; and so Angela found it 
 that night, and determined it should be 
 the last. She would petition for a room 
 to herself on the morrow, she promised 
 herself. 
 
 Poor Clemence ! she would rather have 
 had from her sister a storm of abuse, a 
 string of invectives, a downpour of re- 
 proaches, than the chill and ugly silence 
 that Angela obstinately maintained — An- 
 gela, who was ordinarily so voluble.
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 261 
 
 It was a wretched night for the younger 
 sister, and a sad one for the elder. Both 
 were glad when, the candle being extin- 
 guished, there was no further occasion 
 for timid, half-questioning, half-entreating 
 words on the one part, and frozen, mono- 
 syllabic responses on the other. 
 
 That night was the last, until their lives 
 ended, that they occupied the same room. 
 For Angela on the following day moved to 
 a room on the other side the house, and 
 Clemence was left to herself. 
 
 And the cousins were affianced, and 
 lived the full life of mutual love and trust. 
 
 Side by side with their lives, Angela's 
 " crept on a broken wing." Like a wounded 
 wild creature, she sought nothing half so 
 much as the loneliness of lonely places, 
 where the only sounds to be heard were the 
 sounds of insentient nature, — for hers was 
 the sort of suffering that must be as care- 
 fully hidden as if it were a sin. 
 
 Now and then the dull pain of disap- 
 pointment and thwarted love was changed 
 to the keener one of lacerated pride —
 
 262 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 lacerated by the most conventional of 
 words, uttered in the most conventional of 
 manners. 
 
 " Oh ! so it is your sister who is engaged 
 to Mr. Bertie Lawless ?" cried Miss De 
 Manley in the middle of a formal visit; 
 " odd, the garbled way in which things 
 reach one. Why, we heard that it was you 
 who were engaged to your cousin ; and not 
 only we heard it, but a lot of other people." 
 (Of course the " lot" should have been sub- 
 mitted to subtraction.) 
 
 Angela, pale as " snow on herbless 
 peaks" before, flushed that painful sudden 
 vivid flush which tells of a blow, or a sting, 
 or a wound received, yet concealed. 
 
 " Odd, indeed," she said, with a little 
 shrug of the shoulders. But Miss De 
 Manley thought the blush more worthy of 
 note than the reply, the cool tone, and the 
 careless shrug - . 
 
 " Angela !" said Clemence to her sister, 
 later on that same day, when the two hap- 
 pened to be for a moment left alone to- 
 gether, " is this to go on for ever ? Do
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 263 
 
 you intend never to be the same again to 
 me — my own sister, towards whom Provi- 
 dence has assigned me a hard part ?" 
 
 "Providence," echoed Angela, with scorn. 
 
 " What else ? Surely I would not have 
 selected it. But, Angela, I could not give 
 the man I loved, and who loved me, to my 
 sister, even if I had chosen. I could have 
 refused him — yes ; but it would have been 
 anything but a praiseworthy act. And 
 how could it have had any good result ? 
 No, I have done right ; I firmly believe I 
 have." 
 
 "It must be a grateful feeling to be so 
 self-satisfied," replied Angela, who had lis- 
 tened with scorn to a self-vindication so 
 commonplace. " Take care that Bertie 
 does not get to be a lover only at the point 
 of the bayonet." 
 
 Clemence visibly winced ; she did fear 
 her sister's power, although she trusted 
 Bertie as completely as she trusted herself. 
 
 Her nature was so dissimilar from her 
 sister's, that she could not understand the 
 havoc worked in Angela s by the mortifica-
 
 264 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 tion and disappointment that had overtaken 
 her. For herself, she could never have 
 fallen her own victim as Angela had done, 
 and even the prescience which warm love 
 gives failed to make her quite comprehend. 
 Often she tried to sound her sister as to 
 the depth and permanence of that regret 
 and humiliation which she knew her to have 
 endured. But Angela seemed to have 
 crystallized herself. Her words were few 
 and frozen to her sister ; her manner icy ; 
 her answers curt and misleading. Clemence, 
 baffled, ceased attempting to probe her, 
 and, sheltering herself within her requited 
 love, watched Angela still with anxious 
 sisterly eyes, but forebore to subject herself 
 to the chilling repulses that Angela was 
 such a proficient in giving. As for making 
 her the recipient of those confidences that 
 will outflow from the fulness of a happy 
 heart, that could never have come to pass, 
 even if Angela's heart had laid no claim 
 on her sister's lover ; for Angela was not 
 receptive, and would have been sure to 
 subtly give her sister to understand that
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 265 
 
 her confidences were " commonplace," and 
 that she was more ready to give sneers 
 than sympathy. Yet Angela herself had 
 not been self-sufficing. She had demanded 
 in her short lifetime much sympathy from 
 her sister, and Clemence had given it un- 
 sparingly. Sympathy, and admiration, and 
 almost maternal tenderness and self-sacri- 
 fice. Angela was unconscious that she 
 was receiving priceless spiritual gifts from 
 her sister, and certainly made no return in 
 kind. 
 
 To that young life that was battling with 
 the foe, Suffering, Clemence gave sympathy 
 warm and deep ; and when the languid 
 consciousness of convalescence replaced the 
 fevered lapse of mental perception, was 
 thanked for it. Day after day she drove, 
 or walked, or rode into Barport, and took 
 her place for a watch of hours beside Doro- 
 thy Drake's bedside. She grew to know 
 every line of the pretty child face, pinched 
 now, and crimson — every motion of the 
 arms, every line of the fingers and hands.. 
 A sense of proprietorship stole over her,
 
 266 The Sisters Lawless, 
 
 as it will over every watcher of an ill, and 
 helpless, and suffering fellow-creature, re- 
 gardless of age, or sex, or condition of life. 
 The day when Doll fixed faint languid 
 eyes upon her, and said " Who are you, 
 miss ?" was a very happy one to Clemence, 
 and, stooping over, she kissed the blue- 
 veined temple lightly, replying, " I am 
 Miss Lawless, Doll." From the utter 
 passivity of weakness, Doll soon stole into 
 the fuller life of regained strength and self- 
 wonder, and awakened recollection. It was 
 a strange, yet pleasant experience, to lie in 
 the old room, tidy and habitable-looking 
 now — thanks to Mrs. James and Clemence 
 — and be fed by white, gentle hands, that 
 touched her as tenderly as if she had been 
 a wounded bird ; to hear that agreeable 
 tinkle of a gold chatelaine with its won- 
 derful collection of trifles hanging on it, 
 close to her ear ; to be sensible of a vague 
 perfume that shook itself from the lace 
 encircling Clemence's round, violet-veined 
 wrists, and from her ribbons, and the hand- 
 kerchief in her pocket. And looking up
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 267 
 
 (if she felt the strength for such exertion) 
 to see a face that seemed to her half divine, 
 with its stamp of gentle womanhood, and 
 its grace of pity, and its beauty of soul, 
 and life, and heart. Doll was conscious 
 of an elevated tranquillity when the tall 
 lady, with her proudly-poised head and 
 assured movements, came into the room, 
 and, bending over her, asked her a heart- 
 felt question as to herself. 
 
 " Better, thank you, ma'am," was Doll's 
 invariable reply. It seemed to her a point 
 of honour to be "better," after all the kind- 
 ness and care that had been lavished on 
 her, and her grateful heart would allow 
 her lips to frame no other answer. Doll 
 felt translated in those languid days, when 
 her young strength was mustering, and the 
 half-severed ends of her life were knitting 
 themselves together again. 
 
 Although even more ignorant than the 
 typical rustic, she was not dull, or slow ; and 
 as her strength returned to her, her perti- 
 nent childish questions aroused in Clemence 
 a desire to free her clear young intellect, in
 
 268 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 a measure at least, from the fog of illiter- 
 ateness. When Doll was well enough to 
 crawl about like a fly in the March sun- 
 shine, Clemence still went on with her 
 daily visits ; and now she brought books 
 — books usually where learning was taught 
 pictorially, for though a great girl of four- 
 teen, Doll's instruction was obliged to be 
 such as would be given to a child of six. 
 Clemence found her very educable. Her 
 bright brown colt's eyes, which before her 
 illness had shown no docility, nor much 
 comprehension of anything save the most 
 animal and sordid details of life, now be- 
 gan to absorb from Clemence's teaching 
 and companionship, a most human beauty 
 of intelligence and awakened perception. 
 It seemed to Clemence that a more re-pay- 
 ing and agreeable task was never under- 
 taken than this nursing and teaching Doll. 
 The sense of proprietorship deepened, and 
 pride in her protegee sprang up in her 
 heart. For Nature had made Doll ex- 
 cessively pretty, and Clemence and books 
 were making her quite beautiful, although
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 269 
 
 she was at the proverbially ugly age of 
 girlhood. Clemence had a roseate plan in 
 her mind for translating Doll to Creyke, 
 after her own marriage, and of polishing 
 and educating her to a degree that should 
 fit her to be a governess of children. 
 Whose children, Clemence did not, to her- 
 self, of course, particularize. 
 
 Occasionally, in the morning, Bertie 
 would make his appearance at Drake's 
 cottage. Upon a certain Thursday he did 
 so, and a more charming picture than that 
 which met his eye cannot be imagined. 
 A casement with greenish glass panes 
 of the smallest, thrown wide open, and 
 straggling tendrils of woodbine trembling 
 on the edges. Clemence seated in an old 
 wooden chair, with the back so prepos- 
 terously rounded, that it was fitted to be a 
 spoiler of shoulders, with an open book 
 upon her knees, and at her feet, half lean- 
 ing against her, with a mingling of shyness 
 and confidence, Doll, in a new print gown, 
 sprinkled thickly with rose-buds. Then 
 there were to be heard distinctly the rush
 
 270 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 of the mill-stream, the whirr of the great 
 wheel, the happy notes of sun-warmed 
 birds, busy at bird-work amongst the trees 
 outside. Bertie entered, and seated him- 
 self on the window-ledge close to the pair. 
 The lesson went on, only interrupted by a 
 smile from Clemence, and a shy " good- 
 day, sir/' from Doll. 
 
 He waited, listening to the lesson, until 
 Clemence closed the book, saying, "■ Very 
 good, Doll ; you improve." 
 
 11 Very good, Doll," he repeated, looking 
 kindly at the child ; " I could not have 
 done better, myself, even with Miss Law- 
 less to teach me." 
 
 Doll laughed a little, displaying dimples, 
 and very strong little square teeth, while 
 she screwed herself backward behind 
 Clemence, with all her old rusticity. 
 
 " You have a good memory, have not 
 you, Doll ?" said Clemence, " and we don't 
 know, really, how good it is yet, for you 
 •are not strong enough to be taught half as 
 much as you are able to learn." 
 
 " Oh, I am very well," replied Doll,
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 2 7 1 
 
 stoutly, but with a nervous sense of de- 
 siring to hide her tell-tale, thin, blue- 
 veined hands. 
 
 " Well," said Clemence, glancing at 
 them, " but not quite strong yet. Soon you 
 will be, you know, very soon. You are 
 able to walk a little out in the open air 
 already, are you not ?" 
 
 " Yes," answered Doll ; " yesterday I 
 walked a bit after father came home. He 
 helped me. My knees didn't feel like my 
 knees, they shook so. Dad, he says it's 
 alwus the way, the time you've been sick 
 like to I ha' been, and are getting well 
 again." 
 
 " But your head feels all right ?' inquired 
 Bertie, lifting the hair from her forehead, 
 and exposing the large scar at the roots, 
 perilously near the temple. 
 
 " Oh, my head feels right," returned 
 Doll, " ever so right. My hearin's better 
 than ever it was, I think. I can hear the 
 osiers saying ' sh, sh/ to each other, the 
 last thing at night, beyant the splash of the 
 brook."
 
 272 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 " I love the sound," said Clemence, 
 closing her eyes for a moment to listen. 
 " I love that sound of the water as it 
 rushes over the dam, and then comes 
 gurgling down past the cottage, between 
 the willows and under the causeway. 
 Don't you love the sound, Doll ?" 
 
 It had never occurred to Doll before to 
 love a sound ; now, however, since it 
 seemed that it was practicable to do so she 
 decided that she did love it, and said so. 
 
 " When you grow to be a woman, Doll, 
 you will dream of it, and even remember 
 it quite well when you are awake. I dare 
 say it was rushing and babbling on just in 
 this way when you were born, and, per- 
 haps, told the sea, as it rushed into it, that 
 a new little pair of ears had come to listen 
 to it. You were born in this cottage, were 
 you not, Doll ?" 
 
 " Yes," said Doll, " and mother she died 
 the night." 
 
 " Poor mother I" said Clemence, in an 
 accent of exquisite tenderness. 
 
 The tears rushed to Doll's eyes. Most
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 273 
 
 unexpected visitors were they. To cry 
 for the mother who had died at her birth, 
 would have seemed to her before like cry- 
 ing because she had lost her own shadow. 
 But there was that in Clemence's tone 
 which made the tears start suddenly. 
 Mother ! — word so lovable. Poor mother 
 — of whose face she had not even the ghost 
 of a memory. Mother would doubtless 
 have been, living, a hard-worked drab, 
 with a worn visage, and horny hands, and 
 probably a very sharp voice ; but she would 
 have belonged to Doll, and Doll to her ; 
 and perhaps for her daughter would have 
 kept a certain tender tone, and an expres- 
 sion not for every-day use. A mother in 
 the land of shadows cannot be so lovable 
 to any young rustic, as the drudging help- 
 meet of the tiller of the soil, who calls her 
 " hussy," and gives her a shake here, and 
 a box on the ears there, and who exercises 
 a rough, but effectual supervision over her, 
 yet is to be found hard at work, always 
 ready to pause that she may tie up a bruised 
 head, or a cut hand, scolding vigorously 
 vol. i. 18
 
 274 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 meanwhile, and using hasty words, but 
 with fingers that touch tenderly, neverthe- 
 less. 
 
 Some such thought as this passed through 
 Clemence's mind, and it occurred to her to 
 try to endue the dead mother with a cer- 
 tain reality, which Doll might cling to, in 
 her thoughts during those lonely hours 
 when her father was at work. 
 
 " Who knows, Doll," she said with a 
 smile, " your mothers eyes may be often, 
 often on you as you wander over the fields, 
 or sit at home waiting for your father to 
 come ? Perhaps she has been grieving 
 over the pain that you have been obliged 
 to suffer, and is very happy now to see you 
 growing so well and strong again. Perhaps 
 when you have said something kind or nice 
 to your father, she has whispered to you 
 to say it ; who knows ?" 
 
 " Nobody," answered Doll, in a quaintly 
 solemn voice, " 'cause she's dead." 
 
 " No one knows how completely or in- 
 completely we may be severed from con- 
 sciousness of our old selves, or from interest
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 275 
 
 in our old happinesses, and pursuits, and 
 miseries. I can fancy a fellow being pretty- 
 restless in Hades if he left everybody that 
 he knew and was fond of behind him, and 
 felt sorry for his mouldering body that he 
 had been obliged reluctantly to abandon," 
 said Bertie to his cousin. 
 
 Clemence turned to Doll. " You must 
 not think of your mother as being under 
 the mould in the churchyard yonder ; you 
 must think of her near you, in the room 
 with you, with very loving and living eyes 
 fixed on you. Eyes that can see far more 
 clearly than ours — mine, Mr. Bertie's, and 
 yours — are able to do. The thought need 
 never frighten you — it would not, would it, 
 Doll ?" 
 
 Doll shook her head. " But rather make 
 you feel safe and happy." 
 
 Doll looked struck by the suggestion, 
 but there was a dismalness about the cor- 
 ners of her mouth that warned Clemence 
 to discontinue the subject ; feeling sure, 
 however, that she would not forget what 
 had been said to her, and that in lonely 
 
 18—2
 
 276 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 hours the thought of her dead mother would 
 come to her. 
 
 She chose for her topic now the one 
 dearest to Doll's heart — the horse. She 
 related to two very appreciative listen- 
 ers how the mare Moonshine allowed 
 the stable cat's kitten to sleep upon her 
 blanketed back. Of how a pony in Canada, 
 whose master (a clergyman) was freezing 
 to death in the sleigh to which the pony 
 was attached, had gone of his own free will 
 and accord — for the reins fell slack from 
 his driver's powerless hands — to a house 
 by the roadside where he had once before 
 been, and neighing loudly, thereby saved 
 his master s life, for they came out to his- 
 assistance, and finding the good parson 
 livid and senseless, plunged him into the 
 great hogshead of water standing within 
 the kitchen door, and thus restored him to 
 life and consciousness. 
 
 And to her full clear voice, and simple 
 words, the mill-stream sang an accompani- 
 ment, and her honest gray eyes only lifted 
 themselves to meet the loving gray ones of
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 277 
 
 Bertie, and the rapt brown ones of her little 
 nursling, friend, and pupil. 
 
 Clemence in her lifetime had had hardly 
 any other but that pitiable part of foil, 
 receptacle of disagreeables suffered, or 
 triumphs enjoyed. She had always had 
 driven home to her by Angela a sense of 
 being older, plainer, and altogether of very 
 common household stuff, compared with 
 that rare bit of Azulejo herself. 
 
 Her pride in her sister, and affection for 
 her, had saved her from being either em- 
 bittered or hardened. Angela's frail beauty 
 and erratic shallow cleverness, seemed to 
 her gifts which every member of a family 
 should be proud for one of its number to 
 possess, feeling no rancour that their special 
 self had not been the favoured one. 
 
 Angela, as a child, had always been shod 
 in blue shoes by an adoring father when 
 she was dressed for the afternoon ; Cle- 
 mence had never been the wearer of any- 
 thing more fantastic than those quaint, ugly 
 little black shoes that are called ankle- 
 ties.
 
 278 The Sistei's Lawless. 
 
 When Angela had been gowned in pure 
 white to go down to dessert, Clemence had 
 had striped and spotted gowns which had 
 once belonged to her mother, and which 
 hung upon little shoulders that were very- 
 dark and scraggy then. Angela had all 
 her life been white as that maiden of fairy 
 tale, whom the sun bleached like spun 
 cloth, until no white wax could rival 
 her. 
 
 The earnest attention which she always 
 received from Bertie, was a delightful 
 novelty to Clemence, and had that effect 
 upon her which it is a pity is not oftener 
 caused — of making her always desire to 
 say something worth the hearing. 
 
 Even Doll's delight in her very simple 
 discourse was grateful to her, and an 
 incentive. 
 
 " You will come again to-morrow, early, 
 early ?" said Doll, touching her dress 
 timidly as she rose up to go. 
 
 " By eleven I shall be here," answered 
 Clemence kindly, and laying two ungloved
 
 The Sisters Lawless. 2 79 
 
 fingers against Doll's velvet cheek as she 
 spoke. " Good-bye, Doll." 
 
 " Good-bye to you, Doll," said Bertie 
 also ; " you have picked up amazingly, pon 
 my word." 
 
 Doll stood up on her two somewhat 
 tottering legs to drop a little curtsey, 
 and say with grateful reverence, " Good- 
 bye ma'am good-bye sir," with never a 
 stop between. 
 
 They gave her another smile and fare- 
 well nod, and went out of the cottage to- 
 gether, crossed the causeway over the 
 stream, and went up the lane into the road 
 that should take them home. 
 
 Doll, walking feebly to the door, watched 
 them as far as she could see them ; two 
 tall figures with heads that inclined ever so 
 slightly towards one another ; a dress that 
 swept neglected ; a walking-stick that 
 trailed. They walked on through the mid- 
 summer sunshine, between the hedgerows, 
 over waving shadows, out into the glare 
 again, over the green ruts where the
 
 280 The Sisters Lawless. 
 
 daisies, keeping their dainty pink for the 
 stunted dry grasses to look at, turned 
 their pale, pale faces up to the bold, bright 
 sunlight. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 HILLING, PRINTER, GUILDFORD, SURREY.