 Book II. CHAPTER XI of Armadale. MISQUILED AMONG THE QUICK SENSE. 1. From the Reverend DeSimos Brock to Osia Smith Winter. 3. My dear Midwinter. No words can tell what a relief it was to me to get your letter this morning, and what a happiness I honestly feel in having been thus far proved to be in the wrong. The precautions you have taken in case the woman should still confirm my apprehensions by venturing herself at Thorpe Ambrose seem to me to be all that can be desired. You are no doubt sure to hear of her from one or other of the people in the lawyer's office whom you have asked to inform you of the appearance of a stranger in the town. I am the more pleased at finding how entirely I can trust you in this matter, for I am likely to be obliged to leave Alan's interests longer than I supposed solely in your hands. My visit to Thorpe Ambrose must, I regret to say, be deferred for two months. The only one of my brother clergyman in London who is able to take my duty for me cannot make it convenient to remove with his family to Somersetshire before that time. I have no alternative but to finish my business here and be back at my rectory on Saturday next. If anything happens, you will, of course, instantly communicate with me, and in that case, be the inconvenience what it may, I must leave home for Thorpe Ambrose. If, on the other hand, all goes more smoothly than my own obstinate apprehensions will allow me to suppose, then Alan, to whom I have written, must not expect to see me till this day to month. No result has, up to this time, rewarded our exertions to recover the trace lost at the railway. I will keep my letter open, however, until post time, in case the next few hours bring any news. Always truly yours, Decimus Brock. PS, I have just heard from the lawyers. They have found out the name the woman passed by in London. If this discovery, not a very important one, I am afraid, suggests any new course of proceeding to you, pray act on it at once. The name is Miss Guilt. 2. From Miss Guilt to Mrs. Oldochar. The cottage, Thorpe Ambrose, Saturday, June 28. If you will promise not to be alarmed, Mama Oldochar, I will begin this letter in a very odd way by copying a page of a letter written by somebody else. You have an excellent memory, and you may not have forgotten that I received a note from Major Milroy's mother, after she had engaged me as governess, on Monday last. It was dated and signed, and here it is, as far as the first page. June 23, 1851. Dear Madam, pray excuse my troubling you, before you go to Thorpe Ambrose, with the word more about the habits observed in my son's household. When I had the pleasure of seeing you at two o'clock today, in Kingsdown Crescent, I had another appointment in a distant part of London at three, and in the hurry of the moment, one or two little matters escaped me, which I think I ought to impress on your attention. The rest of the letter is not of the slightest importance, but the lines that I have just copied are well worthy of all the attention you can bestow on them. They have saved me from discovery, my dear, before it have been a week in Major Milroy's service. It happened no later than yesterday evening, and it began and ended in this manner. There is a gentleman here, of whom I shall have more to say presently, who is an intimate friend of young Armedes and who bears the strange name of Midwinter. He contrived yesterday to speak to me alone in the park. Almost as soon as he opened his lips I found that my name had been discovered in London, no doubt by the summer-sature clergymen, and that Mr. Midwinter had been chosen, evidently by the same person, to identify the Miss Gueld who had vanished from Brompton with the Miss Gueld who had appeared at Thorpe Ambrose. You've also this danger, I remember, but you could scarcely have imagined that the exposure would threaten me so soon. I spare you the details of our conversation to come to the end. Mr. Midwinter put the matter very delicately, declaring, to my great surprise, that he felt quite certain himself that I was not the Miss Gueld of whom his friend was in search, and that he only acted as he did out of regard to the anxiety of a person whose wishes he was bound to respect. Would I assist him in setting that anxiety completely at rest, as far as I was concerned, by kindly answering one plain question, which he had no other right to ask me than the right my indulgence might give him? The last Miss Gueld had been missed on Monday last, at two o'clock, in the crowd on the platform of the northwestern railway in Houston Square. Would I authorize him to say that on that day and at that hour the Miss Gueld who was Major Melroy's governess had never been near the place? I need to hardly tell you that I seized the fine opportunity he had given me of disarming all future suspicion. I took a high tone on the spot and met him with the old lady's letter. He politely refused to look at it. I insisted on his looking at it. I don't choose to be mistaken, I said, for a woman who may be a bad character, because she happens to bear, or to have assumed, the same name as mine. I insist on you reading the first part of this letter for my satisfaction, if not for your own. He was obliged to comply, and there was the proof in the old lady's handwriting that, at two o'clock on Monday last, she and I were together in Kingstown Crescent, which any directory would tell him is a Crescent in base water. I leave you to imagine his apologies and the perfect sweetness with which I received them. I might, of course, if I had not preserved the letter, have referred him to you or to the Major's mother with similar results. As it is, the object has been gained without trouble or delay. I have been proved not to be myself, and one of the many dangers that threaten me at Thorpe Ambrose is a danger blown over from this moment. Your housemaid's face may not be a very handsome one, but there is no denying that it has done us excellent service. So much for the past, now for the future. You shall hear how I get on with the people about me, and you shall judge for yourself what the chances are for and against my becoming mistress of Thorpe Ambrose. Let me begin with young Armadale, because it is beginning with good news. I have produced the right impression on him already, and heaven knows that is nothing to boast of. Any moderately good-looking woman who chose to take the trouble could make him fall in love with her. He is a rattle-pated young fool, one of those noisy, rosy, light-haired, good-tempered men whom I particularly detest. I had a whole hour alone with him in a boat the first day I came here, and I have made good use of my time, I can tell you, from that day to this. The only difficulty with him is the difficulty of concealing my own feelings, especially when he turns my dislike of him into downright hatred by sometimes reminding me of his mother. I really never saw a man whom I could use so ill if I had the opportunity. He will give me the opportunity, I believe, if no accident happens, sooner than we calculated on. I have just returned from a party at the Great House in celebration of the rendé dinner, and the squire's attentions to me, and my modest reluctance to receive them have already excited general remark. My pupil, Miss Miroy, comes next. She, too, is rosy and foolish, and, what is more, awkward and squat and freckled and ill-tempered and ill-dressed. No fear of her, though she hates me like poison, which is a great comfort, for I get rid of her out of lessen time and walking time. It is perfectly easy to see that she has made the most of her opportunities with young armadale, opportunities by the bay, which we never calculated on, and that she has been stupid enough to let him sleep through her fingers. When I tell you that she is obliged for the sake of appearances, to go with her father and me to the little entertainments at Thorpe Ambrose and to see how young armadale admires me, you will understand the kind of place I hold in her affections. She would try me past all endurance if I didn't see that I aggravate her by keeping my temper, so, of course, I keep it. If I do break out, it will be over our lessons, not over our French or grammar, history and globes, but over our music. No words can say how I feel for her poor piano. Half the musical girls in England ought to have their fingers chopped off in the interest of society, and, if I had my way, Ms. Miroy's fingers should be executed first. As for the major, I can hardly stand higher in his estimation than I stand already. I am always ready to make his breakfast, and his daughter is not. I can always find things for him when he loses them, and his daughter can't. I never yarn when he poses, and his daughter does. I like the poor dear harmless old gentleman, so I won't say a word more about him. Well, here is a fair prospect for the future, surely? My good older son, there never was a prospect yet without an ugly place in it. My prospect has two ugly places in it. The name of one of them is Mrs. Miroy, and the name of the other is Mr. Midwinter. Mrs. Miroy first. Before I had been five minutes in the cottage on the day of my arrival, what do you think she did? She sent downstairs and asked to see me. The message startled me a little, after hearing from the old lady in London that her daughter-in-law was too great a sufferer to see anybody. But, of course, when I got her message I had no choice but to go upstairs to the sick-room. I found her bed-ridden with an incurable spinal complaint, and a really horrible object to look at, but with all her wits about her. And, if I am not greatly mistaken, as deceitful a woman, with as violent temper as you could find anywhere in all your long experience. Her excessive politeness, and her keeping her own face in the shade of the bed-curtains while she contrived to keep mine in the light, put me on my guard the moment I entered the room. We were more than half an hour together, without my stepping into any one of the many clever little traps she laid for me. The only mystery in her behaviour, which I failed to see through at the time, was her perpetually asking me to bring her things, things she evidently did not want, from different parts of the room. Since then, events have enlightened me. My first suspicions were raised by overhearing some of the servant's gossip, and I have been confirmed in my opinion by the conduct of Mrs. Miroy's nurse. On the few occasions when I have happened to be alone with the major, the nurse has also happened to want something of her master, and has invariably forgotten to announce her appearance by knocking at the door. Do you understand now why Mrs. Miroy sent for me the moment I got into the house, and what she wanted when she kept me going backward and forward, first for one thing, and then for another? There is hardly an attractive light in which my face and figure can be seen, in which that woman's jealous eyes have not studied them already. I am no longer puzzled to know why the father and daughter started, and looked at each other when I was first presented to them, or why the servants still stare at me with a mischievous expectation in their eyes when I ring the bell and ask them to do anything. It is useless to disguise the truth, Mother Aldershow, between you and me. When I went upstairs into that sick room, I marched blindfolded into the clutches of a jealous woman. If Mrs. Miroy can turn me out of the house, Mrs. Miroy will, and, morning and night, she has nothing else to do in that bed prison of hers, but to find out the way. In this awkward position, my own cautious conduct is admirably seconded by the dear old Major's perfect insensibility. His wife's jealousy of him is as monstrous a delusion as any that could be found in a mad house. It is the growth of her own vile temper under the aggravation of an incurable illness. The poor man hasn't a thought beyond his mechanical pursuits, and I don't believe he knows at this moment whether I am a handsome woman or not. With this chance to help me, I may hope to set the nurses' intrusions and the mistresses' contrivances at defiance for a time at any rate. But you know what a jealous woman is, and I think I know what Mrs. Miroy is, and I own I shall breathe more freely on the day when young Armadale opens his foolish lips to some purpose and sets the major advertising for a new governess. Armadale's name reminds me of Armadale's friend. There is more danger threatening in that quarter. And, what is worse, I don't feel half as well armed beforehand against Mr. Midwinter as I do against Mrs. Miroy. Everything about this man is more or less mysterious, which I don't like to begin with. How does he come to be in the confidence of the Somerset Chair clergyman? How much has that clergyman told him? How is it that he was so firmly persuaded when he spoke to me in the park that I was not the misguilt of whom his friend was in search? I haven't the ghost of an answer to give to any of those three questions. I can't even discover who he is, or how he and young Armadale first became acquainted. I hate him. No, I don't. I only want to find out about him. He is very young, little and lean, and active and dark, with bright black eyes which say to me plainly, We belong to a man with brains in his head and a will of his own, a man who hasn't always been hanging about a country house in a tansence on a fool. Yes, I am positively certain Mr. Midwinter has done something, or suffered something, in his past life, young as he is, and I would give I don't know what to get at it. Don't resent my taking up so much space in my writing about him. He has influence enough of a young Armadale to be a very awkward obstacle in my way, unless I can secure his good opinion at starting. Well, you may ask, and what is to prevent you securing his good opinion. I am sadly afraid, Mother Olosha, I have got it on terms I never bargained for. I am sadly afraid the man is in love with me already. Don't toss your head and say, just like her vanity. After the horrors I have gone through I have no vanity left, and the man who admires me is a man who makes me shudder. There was a time I own. Poo, what am I writing? Sentiment, I declare, sentiment to you. Love away, my dear. As for me I neither laugh nor cry. I mend my pen and get on with my, what do the men call it, my report. The only thing worth inquiring is whether I am right or wrong in my idea of the impression I have made on him. Let me see, I have been four times in his company. The first time was in the Major's garden, where we met unexpectedly face to face. He stood looking at me like a man petrified without speaking a word. The effect of my horrid red hair, perhaps? Quite likely, let us lay it on my hair. The second time was in going over the Thorpe Ambrose grounds, with young armadale on one side of me, and my pupil in the socks on the other. Out comes Mr Midwinter to join us, though he had work to do in the Stuart's office, which he had never been known to neglect on any other occasion. Laziness, possibly? Or an attachment to Miss Mirroy? I can't say. We will lay it on Miss Mirroy, if you like. I only know he did nothing but look at me. The third time was at the private interview in the park, which I have told you of already. I never saw a man so agitated at putting a delicate question to a woman in my life. But that might have been only awkwardness, and his perpetually looking back after me when we had parted, might have been only looking back at the view. Lay it on the view. By all means, lay it on the view. The fourth time was this very evening at the little party. They made me play, and, as the piano was a good one, I did my best. All the company crowded round me, and paid me their compliments. My charming pupil paid hers with a face like a cat just before she spits, except Mr Midwinter. He waited till it was time to go, and then he caught me alone for a moment in the hall. There was just time for him to take my hand and say two words. Shall I tell you how he took my hand, and what his voice sounded like when he spoke? Quite needless. You have always told me that the late Mr Oldershow darted on you. Just recall the first time he took your hand, and whispered a word or two addressed to your private ear. To what did you attribute his behavior that occasion? I have no doubt, if you had been playing on the piano in the course of the evening, you would have attributed it entirely to the music. No, you may take my word for it. The harm is done. This man is no rattle-pated fool who changes his fancies as readily as he changes his clothes. The fire that lights those big black eyes of his is not an easy fire, when a woman has once kindled it, for that woman to put out. I don't wish to discourage you. I don't say the changes are against us. But with Mrs Mirroy threatening me on one side and Mr Midwinter on the other, the worst of all risks to run is the risk of losing time. Young Armadale has hinted already, as well as such a loud can hint, at a private interview. Miss Mirroy's eyes are sharp and the nurse's eyes are sharper, and I shall lose my place if either of them find me out. No matter, I must take my chance and give him the interview. Only let me get him alone, only let me escape the prying eyes of the women, and, if his friend doesn't come between us, I answer for the result. In the meantime, have I anything more to tell you? Are there any other people in our way at Thorpe Ambrus? Not another creature. None of the resident families call here young Armadale being, most fortunately, in bad odder in the neighborhood. There are no handsome, highly bred women to come to the house, and no persons of consequence to protest against his attentions to a governess. The only guests he could collect at his party tonight were the lawyer and his family, a wife, a son and two daughters, and a deaf old woman and her son, all perfectly and important people, and all obedient humble servants of the stupid young squire. Talking of obedient humble servants, there is one other person established here, who is employed in the Stuart's office, a miserable, shabby, dilapidated old man named Bashwood. He is a perfect stranger to me, and I am evidently a perfect stranger to him, for he has been asking the housemaid at the cottage who I am. It is paying no great compliment to myself to confess it, but it is not the last true that I produced the most extraordinary impression on this feeble old creature the first time he saw me. He turned all manner of colors and stood trembling and staring at me, as if there was something perfectly frightful in my face. I felt quite startled for the moment, for, of all the ways in which men have looked at me, no man ever looked at me in that way before. Did you ever see the boa constrictor fed at the zoological gardens? They put a live rabbit into his cage, and there is a moment when the two creatures look at each other. I declare Mr. Bashwood reminded me of the rabbit. Why do I mention this? I don't know why. Perhaps I have been riding too long and my head is beginning to fail me. Perhaps Mr. Bashwood's manner of admiring me strikes my fancy by its novelty. Absurd. I am exciting myself and troubling you about nothing. Ooh, what a very long letter I have written, and how brightly the stars look at me through the window, and how awfully quiet the night is. Send me some more of the sleeping drops, and write me one of your nice wicked amusing letters. You shall hear from me again as soon as I know a little better how it is all likely to end. Good night, and keep a corner in your stony old heartfall. LG. 3. From Mrs. Oldershaw to Miss Guilt. Diana Street, Pimlico, Monday. My dear Lydia, I am in no state of mind to write you an amusing letter. Your news is very discouraging, and the recklessness of your tone quite alarms me. Consider the money I have already advanced, and the interests we both have at stake. Whatever else you are, don't pay reckless for heaven's sake. What can I do? I ask myself as a woman of business what can I do to help you. I can't give you advice why I am not on the spot, and I don't know how circumstances may alter from one day to another. Situated as we are now, I can only be useful in one way. I can discover a new obstacle that threatens you, and I think I can remove it. You say, with great truth, that there never was a prospect yet without an ugly place in it, and that there are two ugly places in your prospect. My dear, there may be three ugly places, if I don't bestow myself to prevent it, and the name of the third place will be Brock. Is it possible, you can refer, as you have done, to the Summercetcher clergymen, and not see that the progress you make with young Armadale will be, sooner or later, reported to him by young Armadale's friend? Why, now I think of it, you are doubly at the parson's mercy. You are at the mercy of any fresh suspicion which may bring him into the neighborhood himself at a day's notice, and you are at the mercy of his interference the moment he hears that the squire is committing himself with the neighbor's governess. If I can do nothing else, I can keep this additional difficulty out of your way. And oh, Lydia, with what alacrity I shall exert myself, after the manner in which the old wretch insulted me when I told him that pitiable story in the street, I declare I tingle with pleasure at this new prospect of making a fool of Mr. Brock. And how is it to be done? Just as we have done it already, to be sure. He has lost Miss Guilt, otherwise my housemaid, hasn't he? Very well, he shall find her again, wherever he is now, suddenly settled with an easy reach of him. As long as she stops in the place, he will stop in it. And as we know he is not at Thorpe Ambrus, there you are free of him. The old gentleman's suspicions have given us a great deal of trouble so far. Let us turn them to some profitable account at last. Let us tie him, by his suspicions, to my housemaid's apron string. Most refreshing. Quite a moral retribution, isn't it? The only help I need trouble you for is help you can easily give. Find out from Mr. Midwinter where the past is now, and let me know by return of post. If he is in London, I will personally assist my housemaid in the necessary mystification of him. If he is anywhere else, I will send her after him, accompanied by a person on whose discretion I can implicitly rely. You shall have the sleeping drops tomorrow. In the meantime, I say at the end what I said at the beginning, no rightlessness. Don't encourage political feelings by looking at the stars, and don't talk about the night being awfully quiet. There are people, in observatories, paid to look at the stars for you, leave it to them. And as for the night, do what Providence intended you to do with the night when Providence provided you with eyelids. Go to sleep in it. Affectionately yours, Maria Oldochon. 4. From the Reverend Decimus Brock to Zia's Midwinter Bascom Rectory, West Somerset, Thursday, July 8 5. My dear Midwinter, one line before the post goes out, to relieve you of all sense of responsibility at Thorpe Ambrose, and to make my apologies to the lady who lives as governess in major Mirrae's family. The Miss Guilt, or perhaps I ought to say, the woman calling herself by that name, has, to my unspeakable astonishment, openly made her appearance here in my own parish. 6. She is staying at the inn, accompanied by a plausible looking man who passes as her brother. What this audacious proceeding really means, unless it marks a new step in the conspiracy against Alan, taken under new advice, is, of course, more than I can yet find out. My own idea is that they have recognized the impossibility of getting at Alan without finding me or you as an obstacle in their way, and that they are going to make a virtue of necessity by boldly trying to open their communications through me. The man looks capable of any stretch of audacity, and both he and the woman had the impudence to bow when I met them in the village half an hour since. They have been making inquiries already about Alan's mother here, where her exemplary life may set their closest scrutiny at defiance. If they will only attempt to extort money, as the price of the woman's silence on the subject of paromises armadales conduct in Madeira at the time of her marriage, they will find me well prepared for them beforehand. I have written by this post to my lawyers to send a competent man to assist me, and he will stay at the rectory in any character which he thinks it safest to assume under present circumstances. You shall hear what happens in the next day or two. Always truly yours, Decimus Brock. End of chapter. The Clouding of the Sky Nine days had passed, and the tenth day was nearly at an end since Miss Guilt and her pupil had taken their morning walk in the cottage garden. The night was overcast. Since sunset there had been signs in the sky from which the popular forecast had predicted rain. The reception rooms at the Great House were all empty and dark. Alan was away, passing the evening with the Milroy's, and midwinter was waiting his return. Not where midwinter usually waited, among the books in the library, but in the little back room which Alan's mother had inhabited in the last days of her residence at Thorpe Ambrose. Nothing had been taken away, but much had been added to the room since midwinter had first seen it. The books which Mrs. Armadale had left behind her, the furniture, the old matting on the floor, the old paper on the walls, were all undisturbed. The statuette of Naiobi still stood on its bracket, and the French window still opened on the garden. But now to the relics left by the mother were added the personal possessions belonging to the sun. The wall, bare hither too, was decorated with watercolourings. With a portrait of Mrs. Armadale supported on one side by a view of the old house in Somersetshire, and on the other by a picture of the yacht. Among the books which bore in faded ink Mrs. Armadale's inscriptions from my father were other books inscribed in the same handwriting in brighter ink to my son. Hanging to the wall, ranged on the chimney piece, scattered over the table, were a host of little objects, some associated with Alan's past life, others necessary to his daily pleasures and pursuits, and all plainly testifying that the room which he habitually occupied at Thorpe Ambrose was the very room which had once recalled to midwinter the second vision of the dream. Here, strangely unmoved by the scene around him, so lately the object of his superstitious distrust, Alan's friend now waited compositely for Alan's return. And here, more strangely still, he looked on a change in the household arrangements due in the first instance entirely to himself. His own lips had revealed the discovery which he had made on the first morning in the new house. His own voluntary act had induced the son to establish himself in the mother's room. Under what motives had he spoken the words? Under no motives which were not natural growth of the new interests and the new hopes that now animated him. The entire change wrought in his convictions by the memorable event that had brought him face to face with misquilt was a change which it was not in his nature to hide from Alan's knowledge. He had spoken openly and had spoken as it was in his character to speak. The merit of conquering his superstition was a merit which he shrank from claiming until he had first unsparingly exposed that superstition in its worst and weakest aspects to view. It was only after he had unreservedly acknowledged the impulse under which he had left Alan at the mirror that he had taken credit to himself for the new point of view from which he could now look at the dream. Then and not till then he had spoken of the fulfillment of the first vision as the doctor at the Isle of Man might have spoken of it. He had asked, as the doctor might have asked, where was the wonder of their seeing a pool at sunset when they had a whole network of pools within a few hours' drive of them? And what was their extraordinary in discovering a woman at the mirror when there were roads that led to it and villages in its neighborhood and boats employed on it and pleasure parties visiting it? So again he had waited to vindicate the firmer resolution with which he looked to the future until he had first revealed all that he now saw himself of the errors of the past. The abandonment of his friend's interests, the unworthiness of the confidence that had given him the steward's place, the forgetfulness of the trust that Mr. Brock had reposed in him all implied the one idea of leaving Allen were all pointed out. The glaring self-contradictions betrayed in accepting the dream as the revelation of a fatality and in attempting to escape that fatality by exertion of free will, in toiling to store up knowledge of the steward's duties for the future and in shrinking from letting the future find him and Allen's house who were in their turn unsparingly exposed. To every hour, to every error, to every inconsistency he resolutely confessed before he ventured on the last simple appeal which closed all. Will you trust me in the future? Will you forgive and forget the past? A man who could thus open his whole heart without one lurking reserve inspired by consideration for himself was not a man to forget any minor act of concealment of which his weakness might have led him to be guilty toward his friend. It lay heavy on midwinter's conscience that he had kept secret from Allen a discovery which he ought in Allen's dearest interests to have revealed the discovery of the mother's room. But one doubt still closed his lips. The doubt whether Mrs. Armadale's conduct in Medira had been kept secret on her return to England. Carefully inquiry, first among the servants, then among the tenantry, careful consideration of the few reports current at the time, as repeated to him by the few persons left who remembered them, convinced him at last that the family secret had been successfully kept within the family limits. Once satisfied that whatever inquiries the son might make would lead to no disclosure which could shake his respect for his mother's memory, midwinter had hesitated no longer. He had taken Allen into the room and had shown him the books on the shelves and all that the writing in the books had disclosed. He had said plainly, my one motive for not telling you this before sprang from my dread of interesting you in the room which I looked at with horror as the second of the scenes pointed at in the dream. Forgive me this also and you will have forgiven me all. With Allen's love for his mother's memory, but one result could follow such an avowal as this. He had liked the little room from the first as a pleasant contrast to the oppressive grandeur of the other rooms at Thorpe Ambrose. And now that he knew what associations were connected with it, his resolution was at once taken to make it especially his own. The same day all his personal possessions were collected and arranged in his mother's room. In midwinter's presence and with midwinter's assistance given to the work. Under those circumstances had the change now wrought in the household arrangements been produced and in this way had midwinter's victory over his own fatalism by making Allen the daily occupant of a room which he might otherwise hardly ever have entered actually favored the fulfillment of the second vision of the dream. The hour wore on quietly as Allen's friend sat waiting for Allen's return. Sometimes reading, sometimes thinking placidly he wiled away the time. No vexing cares, no boating doubts troubled him now. The rent day which he had once dreaded had come and gone harmlessly. A friendlier understanding had been established between Allen and his tenants. Mr. Bashwood had proved himself to be worthy of the confidence reposed in him. The pet gifts father and son had amply justified their client's good opinion of them. Wherever midwinter looked the prospect was bright the future was without a cloud. He trimmed the lamp on the table beside him and looked out at the night. The stable clock was chiming the half hour past eleven as he walked to the window and the first raindrops were beginning to fall. He had his hand on the bell to summon the servant and send him over to the cottage with an umbrella when he was stopped by hearing the familiar footstep on the walk outside. How late you are said midwinter as Allen entered through the open French window. Was there a party at the cottage? No, only ourselves. The time slipped away somehow. He answered in lower tones than usual and sighed as he took his chair. You seem to be out of spirits, pristered midwinter. What's the matter? Allen hesitated. I may as well tell you he said after a moment it's nothing to be ashamed of. I only wonder you haven't noticed it before. There's a woman in it as usual. I'm in love. Midwinter laughed. Has Miss Milroy been more charming tonight than ever? He asked gaily. Miss Milroy repeated Allen. What are you thinking of? I'm not in love with Miss Milroy. Who is it then? Who is it? What a question to ask. Who can it be but Miss Guilt? There was a sudden silence. Allen sat listlessly with his hands in his pockets looking out through the open window at the falling rain. If he had turned toward his friend when he mentioned Miss Guilt's name, he might possibly have been a little startled by the change he would have seen in midwinter's face. I suppose you don't approve of it, he said, after waiting a little. There was no answer. It's too late to make objections, proceeded Allen. I really mean it when I tell you I'm in love with her. A fortnight since you were in love with Miss Milroy, said the other in quiet measured tones. Pooh, a mere flirtation. It's different this time. I'm an earnest about Miss Guilt. He looked round as he spoke. Midwinter turned his face aside on the instant and bent it over a book. I see you don't approve of the thing, Allen went on. Do you object to her being only a governess? You can't do that, I'm sure. If you were in my place, her being only a governess wouldn't stand in the way with you. No, said Midwinter. I can't honestly say it would stand in the way with me. He gave the answer reluctantly and pushed his chair back out of the light of the lamp. A governess is a lady who is not rich, said Allen, in an oracular manner, and a duchess is a lady who is not poor. And that's all the difference I acknowledge between them. Miss Guilt is older than I am. I don't deny that. What age do you guess her at, Midwinter? I say seven or eight and twenty. What do you say? Nothing, I agree with you. Do you think seven or eight and twenty is too old for me? If you were in love with a woman yourself, you wouldn't think seven or eight and twenty is too old, would you? I can't say I should think it too old. If you were really fond of her, once more there was no answer. Well, if there's no harm in her being only a governess and no harm in her being a little older than I am, what's the objection to Miss Guilt? I have made no objection. I don't say you have, but you don't seem to like the notion of it for all that. There was another pause. Midwinter was the first to break the silence this time. Are you sure of yourself, Alan? He asked with his face bent once more over the book. Are you really attached to this lady? Have you thought seriously already of asking her to be your wife? I am thinking seriously of it at this moment, said Alan. I can't be happy. I can't live without her. Upon my soul I worship the very ground she trends on. How long his voice faltered and he stopped. How long, he reiterated, have you worshiped the very ground she treads on? Longer than you think for, I know I can trust you with all my secrets. Don't trust me. Nonsense. I will trust you. There is a little difficulty in the way which I haven't mentioned yet. It's a matter of some delicacy and I want to consult you about it. Between ourselves I have had private opportunities with Miss Quilt. Midwinter suddenly started to his feet and opened the door. We'll talk of this tomorrow, he said. Good night. Alan looked round in astonishment. The door was closed again and he was alone in the room. He has never shaken hands with me, exclaimed Alan. As the words passed his lips the door opened again. And Midwinter appeared. We haven't shaken hands, he said abruptly. God bless you, Alan. We'll talk of it tomorrow. Good night. Alan stood alone at the window looking out at the pouring rain. He felt ill at ease without knowing why. Midwinter's ways get stranger and stranger, he thought. What can he mean by putting me off till tomorrow when I wanted to speak to him tonight? He took up his bedroom candle a little impatiently, put it down again, and walking back to the open window stood looking out in the direction of the cottage. I wonder if she's thinking of me, he said to himself softly. She was thinking of him. She had just opened her desk to write to Mrs. Oldershaw, and her pen had that moment traced the opening line. Make your mind easy, I have got him. End of Book 2, Chapter 12, Armadale, by Wilkie Collins. Recording by Dawn. 13. Exit It rained all through the night, and when the morning came it was raining still. Contrary to his ordinary habit, Midwinter was waiting in the breakfast room when Alan entered it. He looked worn and wary, but his smile was gentler, and his manner more composed than usual. To Alan's surprise, he approached the subject of the previous night's conversation of his own accord as soon as the servant was out of the room. I am afraid you thought me very impatient and very abrupt with you last night, he said. I will try to make amends for it this morning. I will hear everything you wish to say to me on the subject of Miss Gueld. I hardly like to worry you, said Alan. You look as if you had had a bad night's rest. I have not slept well for some time past, replied Midwinter quietly. Something has been wrong with me, but I believe I have found out the way to put myself right again without troubling the doctors. Late in the morning I shall have something to say to you about this. Let us get back first to what you were talking of last night. You were speaking of some difficulty. He hesitated and finished the sentence in a tone so low that Alan failed to hear him. Perhaps it would be better, he went on. If, instead of speaking to me, you spoke to Mr. Brock. I would rather speak to you, said Alan. But tell me first, was I right or wrong last night in thinking you disapproved of my falling in love with Miss Gueld? Midwinter's lean, nervous fingers began to crumble the bread in his plate. His eyes looked away from Alan for the first time. If you have any objection, persisted Alan, I should like to hear it. Midwinter suddenly looked up again, his cheeks turning ashy pale, and his glittering black eyes fixed full on Alan's face. You love her, he said. Does she love you? You won't thank me vain, returned Alan. I told you yesterday I had had private opportunities with her. Midwinter's eyes dropped again to the crumbs on his plate. I understand, he interposed quickly. You were wrong last night. I had no objections to make. Don't you congratulate me? asked Alan a little uneasily. Such a beautiful woman, such a clever woman. Midwinter held out his hand. I owe you more than mere congratulations, he said. In anything which is for your happiness I owe you help. He took Alan's hand and wrung it hard. Can I help you? he asked, growing paler and paler as he spoke. My dear fellow, exclaimed Alan, what is the matter with you? Your hand is as cold as ice. Midwinter smiled faintly. I am always in extremes, he said. My hand was as hot as fire the first time you took it at the Old West Country Inn. Come to that difficulty which you have not come to yet. You are young, rich, your own master, and she loves you. What difficulty can there be? Alan hesitated. I hardly know how to put it, he replied. As you said just now, I love her and she loves me. And yet there is a sort of strangeness between us. One talks a good deal about oneself when one is in love, at least I do. I've told her all about myself and my mother, and how I came in for this place, and the rest of it. Well, though it doesn't strike me when we are together, it comes across me now and then, when I am away from her, that she doesn't say much on her side. In fact, I know no more about her than you do. Do you mean that you know nothing about Miss Gueld's family and friends? That's it, exactly. Have you never asked her about them? I said something of the sort the other day, returned Alan, and I am afraid, as usual, I said it in the wrong way. She looked, I can't quite tell you how. Not exactly displeased, but, oh, what things words are, I'd give the world midwinter if I could only find the right word when I want it as well as you do. Did Miss Gueld say anything to you in the way of a reply? That's just what I was coming to. She said, I shall have a melancholy story to tell you one of these days, Mr. Armadale, about myself and my family. But you look so happy, and the circumstance is also distressing, that I have hardly the heart to speak of it now. She can express herself with the tears in her eyes, my dear fellow, with the tears in her eyes. Of course, I changed the subject directly. And now the difficulty is how to get back to it, delicately, without making her cry again. We must get back to it, you know. Not on my account. I am quite content to marry her first and hear of her family misfortune's poor thing afterward. But I know Mr. Brock. If I can't satisfy him about her family when I run to tell him of this, which, of course, I must do, he will be dead against the whole thing. I'm my own master, of course, and I can do as I like about it. But the old Brock was such a good friend to my poor mother, and he has been such a good friend to me. You see what I mean, don't you? Certainly, Alan. Mr. Brock has been your second father. Any disagreement between you about such a serious matter as this would be the saddest thing that could happen. You ought to satisfy him that Miss Gueld is, what I am sure Miss Gueld will prove to be, worthy, in every way worthy. His voice sank in spite of him, and he left the sentence unfinished. Just my feeling in the matter, Alan struck in, glibly. Now we can come to what I particularly wanted to consult you about. If this was your case midwinter, you would be able to say the right words to her. You would put it delicately, even though you were putting it quite in the dark. I can't do that. I'm a blundering sort of fellow, and I'm horribly afraid, if I can't get some hint at the truth to help me at starting, of saying something to distress her. Family misfortunes are such tender subjects to touch on, especially with such a refined woman, such a tender-hearted woman as Miss Gueld. There may have been some dreadful death in the family, some relation who has disgraced himself, some infernal cruelty which has forced the poor thing out on the world as a governess. Well, turning it over in my mind, it struck me that the major might be able to put me on the right track. It is quite possible that he might have been informed of Miss Gueld's family circumstances before he engaged her, isn't it? It is possible, Allen, certainly. Just my feeling again. My notion is to speak to the major. If I could only get the story from him first, I should know so much better how to speak to Miss Gueld about it afterward. You advise me to try the major, don't you? There was a pause before midwinter replied. When he did answer, it was a little reluctantly. I hardly know how to advise you, Allen, he said. This is a very delicate matter. I believe you would try the major if you were in my place, return Allen, reverting to his inveterately personal way of putting the question. Perhaps I might, said midwinter, more and more unwillingly, but if I did speak to the major, I should be very careful, in your place, not to put myself in a false position. I should be very careful to let no one suspect me of the meanness of prying into women's secrets behind her back. Allen's face flushed. Could Heavens meet winter, he exclaimed. Who could suspect me of that? Nobody, Allen, who really knows you. The major knows me. The major is the last man in the world to misunderstand me. All I want him to do is to help me, if he can, to speak about a delicate subject to Miss Guilt without hurting her feelings. Can anything be simpler between two gentlemen? Instead of replying, midwinter, still speaking as constrainly as ever, asked a question on his side. Do you mean to tell Major Miro, he said, what your intentions really are toward Miss Guilt? Allen's manner altered. He hesitated and looked confused. I have been thinking of that, he replied, and I mean to feel my way first and then tell him or not afterward, as matters turn out. A proceeding so cautious as this was too strikingly inconsistent with Allen's character, not to surprise anyone who knew him. Midwinter showed his surprise plainly. You forget that foolish rotation of mine with Miss Miroi, Allen went on, more and more confusedly. The major may have noticed it and may have thought I meant, well, what I didn't mean. It might be rather awkward, mightn't it, to propose to his face for his governess instead of his daughter? He waited for a word of answer, but none came. Midwinter opened his lips to speak and suddenly checked himself. Allen, uneasy at his silence, doubly uneasy under certain recollections of the major's daughter, which the conversation had called up, rose from the table and shortened the interview a little impatiently. Come, come, he said. Don't sit there looking unutterable things. Don't make mountains out of molehills. You have such an old, old head, Midwinter, on those young shoulders of yours. Let's have done with all these pros and cons. Do you mean to tear me in plain words that it won't do to speak to the major? I can't take the responsibility, Allen, of telling you that. To be plainer still, I can't feel confident of the sadness of any advice I may give you in, in our present position toward each other. All I am sure of is that I cannot possibly be wrong in entreating you to do two things. What are they? If you speak to Major Milroy, pray remember the caution I have given you. Pray think of what you say before you say it. I'll think, never fear. What next? Before you take any serious step in this matter, write and tell Mr. Brock. Will you promise me to do that? With all my heart. Anything more? Nothing more. I have said my last words. Allen led the way to the door. Come into my room, he said, and I'll give you a cigar. The servants will be in here directly to clear away, and I want to go on talking about Miss Gwilt. Don't wait for me, said Midwinter. I'll follow you in a minute or two. He remained seated until Allen had closed the door, then rose, and took from a corner of the room where it lay hidden behind one of the curtains a knapsack ready packed for travelling. As he stood at the window thinking, with the knapsack in his hand, a strangely old, care-worn look stole over his face. He seemed to lose the last of his youth in an instant. What the woman's quaker inside had discovered days since, the man's lower perception had only realised in the past night. The pang that had rung him when he heard Allen's avowal had said the truth self-revealed before Midwinter for the first time. He had been conscious of looking at Miss Gwilt with new eyes and a new mind, on the next occasion when they met after the memorable interview in Major Miroy's garden. But he had never until now known the passion that she had roused in him for what it really was. Knowing it at last, feeling it consciously in full possession of him, he had the courage which no man with a happier experience of life would have possessed, the courage to recall what Allen had confided to him, and to look resolutely at the future through his own grateful remembrances of the past. Steadfastly, through the sleepless hours of the night, he had bent his mind to the conviction that he must conquer the passion which had taken possession of him for Allen's sake, and that the one way to conquer it was to go. No afterdoubt as to the sacrifice had troubled him when morning came, and no afterdoubt troubled him now. The one question that kept him hesitating was the question of leaving Thorpe Ambrose. Though Mr. Brock's letter relieved him from all necessity of keeping watch in Norfolk for a woman who was known to be in Somersetshire, though the duties of the Stuart's office were duties which might be safely left in Mr. Bashwood's tried and trustworthy hands, still admitting these considerations, his mind was not easy at the thought of leaving Allen at a time when a crisis was approaching in Allen's life. He slung the knapsack loosely over his shoulder and put the question to his conscience for the last time. Can you trust yourself to see her day by day as you must see her? Can you trust yourself to hear him talk of her hour by hour as you must hear him if you stay in this house? Again the answer came as it had come all through the night. Again his heart warned him in the very interests of the friendship that he held sacred to go why the time was his own, to go before the woman who had possessed herself of his love, had possessed herself of his power of self-sacrifice and his sense of gratitude as well. He looked round the room mechanically before he turned to leave it. Every remembrance of the conversation that had just taken place between Allen and himself pointed to the same conclusion and warned him, as his own conscience had warned him, to go. Had he honestly mentioned any one of the objections which he or any man must have seen to Allen's attachment, had he, as his knowledge of his friend's facile character bound him to do, warned Allen to distrust his own hasty impulses and to test himself by time and absence before he made sure that the happiness of his whole life was bound up in misguiled? No. The bare-doubt weather in speaking of these things he could feel that he was speaking this entrustedly had closed his lips and would close his lips for the future till the time for speaking had gone by. Was the right man to restrain Allen the man who would have given the world, if he had it, to stand in Allen's place? There was but one plain cause of action that an honest man and a grateful man could follow in the position in which he stood, far removed from old chance of seeing her and from old chance of hearing of her, alone with his own faithful recollection of what he owed to his friend, he might hope to fight it down, as he had fought down the tears in his childhood under his gypsy master's stick, as he had fought down the misery of his lonely youth time in the country bookseller's shop. I must go, he said, as he turned warily from the window, before she comes to the house again. I must go before another hour is over my head. With that resolution he left the room, and, in leaving it, took the irrevocable step from present to future. The rain was still falling. The silent sky all round the horizon, still lowered watery and dark, when midwinter, equipped for traveling, appeared in Allen's room. Good heavens! cried Allen, pointing to the knapsack. What does that mean? Nothing very extraordinary, said midwinter. It only means goodbye. Goodbye! repeated Allen, starting to his feet in astonishment. Midwinter put him back gently into his chair, and drew a seat near to it for himself. When you noticed that I looked ill this morning, he said, I told you that I had been thinking of a way to recover my health, and that I meant to speak to you about it later in the day. That latter time has come. I have been out of sorts, as the phrase is, for some time past. You have remarked it yourself, Allen, more than once, and, with your usual kindness, you have allowed it to excuse many things in my conduct, which would have been otherwise unpardonable, even in your friendly eyes. My dear fellow, interposed Allen, you don't mean to say you are going out on a walking tour in this pouring rain? Never mind the rain, rejoined midwinter. The rain and I are old friends. You know something, Allen, of the life I led before you met with me? From the time when I was a child, I have been used to hardship and exposure. Night and day, sometimes for a month together, I never had my head under a roof. For years and years, the life of a wild animal—perhaps I would say the life of a savage—was the life I led while you were at home and happy. I have the living of the vagabond, the vagabond animal or the vagabond man. I hardly know which, in me still. Does it distress you to hear me talk of myself in this way? I won't distress you. I will only say that the comfort and the luxury of our life here are, at times, I think, a little too much for a man to whom comforts and luxuries come as strange things. I want nothing to put me right again, but more air and exercise. Fewer good breakfasts and dinner, my dear friend, than I get here. Let me go back to some of the hardships, which this comfortable house is expressly made to shout out. Let me meet the wind and weather as I used to meet them when I was a boy. Let me feel wary again for a little while, without a carriage near to pick me up, and hungry when the night falls, with myse of walking between my sub-anime. Give me a weaker two-way, Ellen, up northward, on foot to the Yorkshire moors, and I promise to return to Thorpe Ambrose, better company for you and for your friends. I shall be back before you have time to miss me. Mr. Bashwood will take care of the business in the office. It is only for a fortnight, and it is for my own good. Let me go. I don't like it, said Ellen. I don't like your leaving me in this sudden manner. There's something so strange and dreary about it. Why not try riding, if you want more exercise? All the horses in the stables are at your disposal. At all events, you can't possibly go to-day. Look at the rain. Midwinter looked toward the window, and gently shook his head. I thought nothing of the rain, he said, when I was a mere child, getting my living with the dancing dogs. Why should I think anything of it now? My getting wet and your getting wet, Ellen, are two very different things. When I was a fisherman's boy in the Hebrides, I hadn't a dry thread on me for weeks together. But you're not in the Hebrides now, persisted, Ellen. And I expect our friends from the cottage tomorrow evening. You can't start till after tomorrow. Miss Guilt is going to give us some more music, and you know you like Miss Guilt's playing. Midwinter turned aside to buckle the straps of his knapsack. Give me another chance of hearing Miss Guilt when I come back, he said, with his head down and his fingers busy at the straps. You have one fold, my dear fellow, and it grows on you, remonstrated Ellen. When you have once taken a thing into your head, you're the most obstinate man alive. There's no persuading you to listen to reason. If you will go, added Ellen, certainly rising, as Midwinter took up his head and stick in silence, I have half a mind to go with you, and try a little roughing it too. Co-with me, repeated Midwinter, with a momentary bitterness in his tone, and leave Miss Guilt. Ellen sat down again and admitted the force of the objection in significant silence. Without a word more on his side, Midwinter held out his hand to take leave. They were both deeply moved, and each was anxious to hide his agitation from the other. Ellen took the last refuge which his friends firmness left to him. He tried to lighten the farewell moment by a joke. I'll tell you what he said. I begin to doubt if you're quite cured yet of your belief in the dream. I suspect you're running away from me after all. Midwinter looked at him, uncertain whether he was ingest or earnest. What do you mean? he asked. What did you tell me? retorted Ellen. When you took me in here the other day and made a clean breast of it. What did you say about this room and the second vision of the dream? By Jupiter, he exclaimed, starting to his feet once more. Now I look again. Here is the second vision. There's the rain pattering against the window. There's the lawn and the garden outside. Here am I where I stood in the dream. And there are you where the shadow stood. The whole scene complete, out of doors and in. And I have discovered it this time. A moment's life stirred again in the dead remains of Midwinter's superstition. His color changed, and he eagerly, almost fiercely, disputed Ellen's conclusion. No, he said, pointing to the little marble figure on the bracket. The scene is not complete. You have forgotten something, as usual. The dream is wrong this time. Thank God, utterly wrong. In the vision you saw, the statue was lying in fragments on the floor, and you were stooping over them with a troubled and an angry mind. There stands the statue safe and sound, and you haven't the vestige of an angry feeling in your mind, have you? He seized Ellen impulsively by the hand. At the same moment the consciousness came to him that he was speaking and acting as earnestly as if he still believed in the dream. The color rushed back over his face, and he turned away in confused silence. What did I tell you? said Ellen, laughing a little uneasily. That night on the wreck is hanging on your mind as heavily as ever. Nothing hangs heavy on me, retorted Midwinter, with a certain outburst of impatience, but the knapsack on my back and the time I'm wasting here. I'll go out and see if it's likely to clear up. You'll come back? interposed Ellen. Midwinter opened the French window and stepped out into the garden. Yes, he said, answering with all his former gentleness of manner, I'll come back in a fortnight. Good-bye, Ellen, and good luck with Miss Guilt. He pushed the window too and was away across the garden before his friend could open it again and follow him. Ellen rose and took one step into the garden, then checked himself at the window and returned to his chair. He knew Midwinter well enough to feel the total uselessness of attempting to follow him or to call him back. He was gone, and for two weeks to come, there was no hope of seeing him again. An hour or more passed, the rain still fell and the sky still threatened. A heavier and heavier sense of loneliness and despondency, the sense of all others which his previous life had least fitted to him to understand and endure, possessed itself of Ellen's mind. In sheer horror of his own uninhabitably solitary house, he rang for his head an umbrella and resolved to take refuge in the major Scottish. I might have gone a little away with him, thought Ellen, his mind still running on Midwinter as he put on his head. I should like to have seen the dear old fellow fairly started on his journey. He took his umbrella. If he had noticed the face of the servant who gave it to him, he might possibly have asked some questions and might have heard some news to interest him in his present frame of mind. As it was, he went out without looking at the men and without suspecting that his servants knew more of Midwinter's last moments at Thorpe Ambrose than he knew himself. Not ten minutes since, the Grocer and Butcher had called in to receive payment of their bills, and the Grocer and the Butcher had seen how Midwinter started on his journey. The Grocer had met him first, not far from the house, stopping on his way, in the pouring rain, to speak to a little ragged aim of a boy, the pest of the neighborhood. The boy's customary impudence had broken out even more unrestrainedly than usual at the sight of the gentleman's knapsack. And what had the gentleman done in return? He had stopped and looked distressed, and had put his two hands gently on the boy's shoulders. The Grocer's own eyes had seen that, and the Grocer's own ears had heard him say, poor little chap, I know how the winning nose and the rain wets through a ragged jacket, better than most people who have got a good coat on their backs. And with those words he had put his hand in his pocket, and had rewarded the boy's impudence with a present of a shilling. Wrong hereabouts, said the Grocer, touching his forehead. That's my opinion of Mr. Armaday's friend. The butcher had seen him further on in the journey, at the other end of the town. He had stopped, again in the pouring rain, and this time to look at nothing more remarkable than a half-starved cur, shivering on a doorstep. I had my eye on him, said the butcher, and what do you think he did? He crossed the road over to my shop, and bought a bit of meat fit for a Christian. Very well. He says good morning, and crosses back again. And, on the word of a man, down he goes on his knees on the wet doorstep, and out he takes his knife, and cuts up the meat, and gives it to the dog. Meat, I tell you again, fit for a Christian. I'm not a hard man, ma'am, concluded the butcher, addressing the cook. But meats, meat, and it will serve your master's friend right if he lives to want it. With those old, unforgotten sympathies of the old, unforgotten time to keep him company on his lonely road, he had left the town behind him, and had been lost to view in the misty rain. The grocer and the butcher had seen the last of him, and had judged a great nature, as all natures are judged from the grocer and the butcher point of view. The End of the Second Book End of Chapter Recording by Nadine Calboulet Book the Third, Chapter One of Armadayne This is a library box recording. All library box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librarybox.org. Recording by Nadine Calboulet Armadayne by Wilkie Carlins Book the Third, Chapter One, Mrs. Mirroy Two days after a midwinter's departure from Thorpe Ambrose, Mrs. Mirroy, having completed her morning toilet, and having dismissed her nurse, rang the bell again five minutes afterward, and on the woman's reappearance, asked impatiently if the post had come in. A post, echoed the nurse. Haven't you got your watch? Don't you know that it's a good half-hour too soon to ask for your letters? She spoke with the confident insolence of a servant, long accustomed to presume on her mistress's weakness and her mistress's necessities. Mrs. Mirroy, on her side, appeared to be well used to her nurse's manner. She gave her orders, composedly, without noticing it. When the postman does come, she said, See him yourself. I am expecting a letter which I ought to have had two days since. I don't understand it. I am beginning to suspect the servants. The nurse smiled contemptuously. Whom will you suspect next? she asked. There, don't put yourself out. I'll answer the gatebell this morning, and we'll see if I can bring you a letter when the postman comes. Saying those words with the tone and manner of a woman who is quieting a fractious child, the nurse, without waiting to be dismissed, left the room. Mrs. Mirroy turned slowly and warily on her bed, when she was left by herself again, and let the light from the window fall on her face. It was the face of a woman who had once been handsome, and who was still, so far as years went, in the prime of her life. Long-continued suffering of body and long-continued irritation of mind had worn her away, in the roughly expressive popular phrase, to skin and bone. The utter wreck of her beauty was made a wreck horrible to behold, by her desperate efforts to conceal the sight of it from her own eyes, from the eyes of her husband and her child, from the eyes even of the doctor who attended her, and whose business it was to penetrate to the truth. Her head, from which the greater part of the hair had fallen off, would have been less shocking to see than the heedlessly youthful wig by which she tried to hide the loss. No deterioration of her complexion, no wrinkling of her skin, could have been so dreadful to look at as the rouge that lay thick on her cheeks and the white enamel plastered on her forehead. The delicate lace and the bright trimming on her dressing gown, the ribbons in her cap and the rings on her bony fingers, all intended to throw the eye away from the change that had passed over her, directed the eye to it on the contrary, emphasized it, made it by sheer force of contrast more hopeless and more horrible than it really was. An illustrated book of the fashions, in which women were represented exhibiting their finery by means of the free use of their limbs, lay on the bed from which she had not moved for years without being lifted by her nurse. A hand-glass was placed with the book so that she could reach it easily. She took up the glass after her attendant had left the room and looked at her face with an unblushing interest and attention, which she would have been ashamed of herself at the age of eighteen. Older and older and thinner and thinner, she said, the major will soon be a free man. But I'll have that red-haired hussy out of the house first. She dropped the looking glass on the counterpane and clinched the hand that held it. Her eyes suddenly riveted themselves on the little crayon portrait of her husband hanging on the opposite wall. They looked at the likeness with the hard and cruel brightness of the eyes of a bird of prey. Red is your taste in your old age, is it? she said to the portrait. Red hair and a scruffula's complexion and a padded figure, a ballad girl's walk and a pickpocket's light fingers. Miss Gwild, miss with those eyes and that walk. She turned her head suddenly on the pillow and burst into a harsh cheering laugh. Miss, she repeated over and over again, with the venomously pointed emphasis of the most merciless of all human forms of contempt, the contempt of one woman for another. The age we live in is an age which finds no human creature inexcusable. Is there an excuse for Mrs. Mirai? Let the story of her life answer the question. She had married the major at an unusually early age and, in marrying him, had taken a man for her husband who was old enough to be her father. A man who, at that time, had the reputation and not unjustly of having made the freest use of his social gifts and his advantages of personal appearance in the society of women. Indifferently educated and below her husband in station, she had begun by accepting his addresses under the influence of her own flattered vanity and had ended by feeling the fascination which Major Mirai had exercised over women infinitely her mental superiors in his earlier life. He had been touched on his side by her devotion and had felt in his turn the attraction of her beauty, her freshness and her youth. Up to the time when their little daughter and only child had reached the age of eight years, their married life had been an unusually happy one. At that period the double misfortune fell on the household of the failure of the wife's health and the almost total loss of the husband's fortune and from that moment the domestic happiness of the married pair was virtually at an end. Having reached the age when men in general are reddier under the pressure of calamity to resign themselves than to resist, the Major had secured the little reddix of his property, had retired into the country and had patiently taken refuge in his mechanical pursuits. A woman nearer to him in age or a woman with a better training and more patience of disposition than his wife possessed would have understood the Major's conduct and have found consolation in the Major's submission. Mrs. Mirai found consolation in nothing. Neither nature nor training helped her to meet resinely the cruel calamity which had struck at her in the bloom of womanhood and the prime of beauty. The curse of incurable sickness blighted her at once and for life. Suffering can and does develop the latent evil that there is in humanity as well as the latent good. The good that was in Mrs. Mirai's nature shrank up under that subtly deteriorating influence in which the evil grew and flourished. Month by month, as she became the weaker woman physically, she became the worse woman morally. All that was mean, cruel and false in her, expanded in steady proportion to the contraction of all that had once been generous, gentle and true. All suspicions of her husband's readiness to relapse into the irregularities of his bachelor life, which, in her healthier days of mind and body, she had openly confessed to him, which she had always sooner or later seen to be suspicions that he had not deserved, came back, now that sickness had divorced her from him, in the form of that baser, conjugal distrust which keeps itself cunningly secret, which gathers together its inflammatory particles atom by atom into a heap and sets the slowly burning frenzy of jealousy alight in the mind. No proof of her husband's blameless and patient life that could now be shown to Mrs. Mirai, no appeal that could be made to her respect for herself or for her child growing up to womanhood, availed to dissipate the terrible delusion born of a hopeless illness and growing steadily with its growth. Like all other madness, it had its ebb and flow, its time of spasmodic outburst, and its time of deceitful repose, but, active or passive, it was always in her. It had injured innocent servants and insulted blameless strangers. It had brewed the first tears of shame and sorrow into her daughter's eyes, and had set the deepest line that scored it in her husband's face. It had made the secret misery of the little household for years, and it was now to pass beyond the family limits and to influence coming events at Thorpe Ambrose, in which the future interests of Alan and Alan's friend were vitally concerned. A moment's glance at the posture of domestic affairs in the cottage, prior to the engagement of the new governess, is necessary to the due appreciation of the serious consequences that followed Miss Gueld's appearance on the scene. On the marriage of the governess who had lived in his service for many years, a woman of an age and an appearance to set even Mrs. Mirai's jealousy at defiance, the major had considered the question of sending his daughter away from home far more seriously than his wife supposed. He was conscious that scenes took place in the house, at which no young girl should be present, but he felt an invincible reluctance to apply the one efficient remedy, the keeping his daughter away from home in school time and holiday time alike. The struggle thus raised in his mind once said at rest, by the resolution to advertise for a new governess, major Mirai's natural tendency to avoid trouble rather than to meet it had declared itself in its customary manner. He had closed his eyes again on his own anxieties as quietly as usual, and had gone back, as he had gone back on hundreds of previous occasions, to the consoling society of his old friend the clock. It was far otherwise with the major's wife. The chance which her husband had entirely overlooked that the new governess who was to come might be a younger and a more attractive woman than the old governess who had gone was the first chance that presented itself as possible to Mrs. Mirai's mind. She had said nothing, secretly waiting and secretly nursing her in veteran distrust, she had encouraged her husband and her daughter to leave her on the occasion of the picnic, with the express purpose of making an opportunity for seeing the new governess alone. The governess had shown herself, and the smoldering fire of Mrs. Mirai's jealousy had burst into flame in the moment when she and the handsome stranger first set eyes on each other. The interview over, Mrs. Mirai's suspicions fastened at once and immovably on her husband's mother. She was well aware that there was no one else in London on whom the major could depend to make the necessary inquiries. She was well aware that Ms. Guilt had applied for the situation, in the first instance, as a stranger answering an advertisement published in a newspaper. Yet knowing this, she had obstinately closed her eyes with the blind frenzy of the blindest of all the passions to the fact straight before her. And, looking back to the last of many quarrels between them which had ended in separating the elder lady and herself, had seized on the conclusion that Ms. Guilt's engagement was due to her mother-in-law's vindictive enjoyment of making a mischief in her household. The inference which the very servants themselves, witnesses of the family scandal, had correctly drawn that the major's mother, in securing the services of a well-recommended governess for her son, had thought it no part of her duty to consider that governess's looks in the purely fanciful interests of the major's wife, was an inference which it was simply impossible to convey into Mrs. Mirai's mind. Ms. Guilt had barely closed the sick-room door when the whispered words hissed out of Mrs. Mirai's lips. Before another week is over, you had my lady, you go. From that moment, through the wakeful night and the weary day, the one object of the bed-tread in woman's life was to procure the new governess's dismissal from the house. The assistance of the nurse in the capacity of Spai was secured, as Mrs. Mirai had been accustomed to secure other extra services which her attendant was not bound to render her by a present of a dress from the mistress's wardrobe. One after another, articles of raring apparel which were now useless to Mrs. Mirai had ministered in this way to feed the nurse's greed, the insatiable greed of a knugly woman for fine-cloth. Bribed with the smartest dress she had secured yet, the household Spai took her secret orders and applied herself with a vile enjoyment of it to her secret work. The days passed, the work went on, but nothing had come of it. Mistress and servant had a woman to deal with who was a match for both of them. Repeated intrusions on the major when the governess happened to be in the same room with him failed to discover the slightest impropriety of word, look, or action on either side. Stealthy watching and listening at the governess's bedroom door detected that she kept a light in her room at late hours of the night and that she groaned and ground her teeth in her sleep and detected nothing more. Careful superintendence in the daytime proved that she regularly posted her own letters instead of giving them to the servant. And that on certain occasions when the occupation of her hours out of lesson time and walking time was left at her own disposal, she had been suddenly missed from the garden and then caught coming back alone to it from the park. Once and once only the nurse had found an opportunity of following her out of the garden had been detected immediately in the park and had been asked with the most exasperating politeness if she wished to join Miss Grilled in her walk. Small circumstances of this kind, which were sufficiently suspicious to the mind of a jealous woman, were discovered in abundance. But circumstances on which to found a valid ground of complaint that might be laid before the major proved to be utterly wanting. Day followed day, and Miss Grilled remained persistently correct in her conduct and persistently irreproachable in her relations toward her employer and her pupil. Fouled in this direction, Mrs. Mira tried next to find an assailable place in the statement which the governess's reference had made on the subject of the governess's character. Obtaining from the major the minutely careful report which his mother had addressed to him on this topic, Mrs. Mira read and re-read it and failed to find the weak point of which she was in search in any part of the letter. All the customary questions on such occasions had been asked and all had been scrupulously and plainly answered. The one sole opening for an attack which it was possible to discover was an opening which showed itself after more practical matters had been all disposed of in the closing sentences of the letter. I was so struck, the passage ran, by the grace and distinction of Miss Grilled's manners, that I took an opportunity, when she was out of the room, of asking how she first came to be governess. In the usual way, I was told, a sad family misfortune in which she behaved nobly. She is a very sensitive person and shrinks from speaking of it among strangers, a natural reluctance which I have always felt in the matter of delicacy to respect. Hearing this, of course, I felt the same delicacy on my side. It was no part of my duty to intrude on the poor thing's private sorrows. My only business was to do what I have now done, to make sure that I was engaging a capable and respectable governess to instruct my grandchild. After careful consideration of these lines, Mrs. Miroy, having a strong desire to find circumstances suspicious, found them suspicious accordingly. She determined to sift the mystery of Miss Grilled's family misfortunes to the bottom, on the chance of extracting from it something useful to her purpose. There were two ways of doing this. She might begin by questioning the governess herself, or she might begin by questioning the governess's reference. Experience of Miss Grilled's quickness of resource in dealing with awkward questions at the introductory interview decided her on taking the latter course. I'll get the particulars from the reference first, thought Mrs. Miroy, and then question the creature herself and see if the two sorries agree. The letter of inquiry was short and scriptulously to the point. Mrs. Miroy began by informing her correspondent that the state of her health necessitated leaving her daughter entirely under the governess's influence in control. On that account she was more anxious than most mothers to be thoroughly informed, in every respect, about the person to whom she confided the entire charge of an only child. And feeling this anxiety, she might perhaps be excused for putting what might be thought, after the excellent character Miss Grilled had received, a somewhat unnecessary question. With that preface, Mrs. Miroy came to the point and requested to be informed of the circumstances which had obliged Miss Grilled to go out as a governess. The letter expressed in these terms was posted the same day. On the morning when the answer was due, no answer appeared. The next morning arrived, and still there was no reply. When the third morning came, Mrs. Miroy's impatience had broken loose from all restraint. She had rung for the nurse in the manner which has been already recorded, and had ordered the woman to be in waiting to receive the letters of the morning with her own hands. In this position matters now stood, and in these domestic circumstances the new series of events at Thorpe Ambrose took their rise. Mrs. Miroy had just looked at her watch, had just put her hand once more to the bell pole when the door opened and the nurse entered the room. Has the postman come? asked Mrs. Miroy. The nurse laid a letter on the bed without answering, and waited with unconcealed curiosity to watch the effect which it produced on her mistress. Mrs. Miroy tore open the envelope the instant it was in her hand. A printed paper appeared, which she threw aside, surrounding a letter, which she looked at, in her own handwriting. She snatched up the printed paper. It was the customary post office circular informing her that her letter had been newly presented at the right address, and that the person whom she had written to was not to be found. Something wrong? asked the nurse, dissecting a change in her mistress's face. The question passed unheeded. Mrs. Miroy's writing desk was on the table at the bedside. She took from it the letter which the major's mother had written to her son, and turned to the page containing the name and address of Ms. Guilt's reference. Mrs. Manneville, 18 Kingsdown Crescent, base water, she read eagerly to herself, and then looked at the address on her own written letter. No error had been committed. The directions were identically the same. Something wrong? reiterated the nurse, advancing a step nearer to the bed. Thank God! Yes! cried Mrs. Miroy, with a certain outburst of exultation. She tossed the post office circular to the nurse, and bet her bony hands on the bedcloth in an ecstasy of anticipated triumph. Miss Guilt's an imposter. Miss Guilt's an imposter. If I die for it, Rachel, I'll be carried to the window to see the police take her away. It's one thing to say she's an imposter behind her back, and another thing to prove it to her face, remarked the nurse. She put her hand as she spoke into her apron pocket, and, with a significant look at her mistress, silently produced a second letter. For me, asked Mrs. Miroy, no, said the nurse, for Miss Guilt. The two women eyed each other and understood each other without another word. Where is she? said Mrs. Miroy. The nurse pointed in the direction of the park. Out again for another walk before breakfast, by herself. Mrs. Miroy beckoned to the nurse to stoop close over her. Can you open it, Rachel? she whispered. Rachel nodded. Can you close it again so that nobody would know? Can you spare the scarf that matches your pearl grey dress? asked Rachel. Take it, said Mrs. Miroy, impatiently. The nurse opened the wardrobe in silence, took the scarf in silence, and left the room in silence. In less than five minutes she came back with the envelope of Miss Guilt's letter open in her hand. Thank you, ma'am, for the scarf, said Rachel, putting the open letter composedly on the counterpane of the bed. Mrs. Miroy looked at the envelope. It had been closed as usual by means of a adhesive gum, which had been made to give way by the application of steam. As Mrs. Miroy took out the letter, her hand trembled violently, and the white enamel parted into cracks over the wrinkles on her forehead. Rachel withdrew to the window to keep watch on the park. Don't hurry, she said. No signs of her yet. Mrs. Miroy still posed, keeping the all-important morsel of paper folded in her hand. She could have taken Miss Guilt's life, but she hesitated at reading Miss Guilt's letter. Are you troubled with scrabbles? asked the nurse with a sneer. Consider it a duty you owe to your daughter. You wretch! said Mrs. Miroy. With that expression of opinion she opened the letter. It was evidently written in great haste, was undated, and was signed in initials only. Thus it ran. Diana Street. My dear Lydia, the cab is waiting at the door, and I have only a moment to tell you that I am obliged to leave London on business for three or four days or a week at longest. My letters will be forwarded, if you write. I got yours yesterday, and I agree with you that it is very important to put him off the awkward subject of yourself and your family as long as you safely can. The better you know him, the better you will be able to make up the sort of story that we'll do. Once told, you will have to stick to it. And, having to stick to it, beware of making it complicated and beware of making it in a hurry. I will write again about this and give you my own ideas. In the meantime, don't risk meeting him too often in the park. Well, as the nurse returning to the bedside, have you done with it? Meeting him in the park, repeated Mrs. Miroy, with her eyes still fastened on the letter. Him. Rachel, where is the major? In his own room. I don't believe it. Have your own way. I want the letter and the envelope. Can you close it again so that she won't know? What I can open, I can shut. Anything more? Nothing more. Mrs. Miroy was left alone again to review her plan of attack by the new light that had now been thrown on Miss Gueld. The information that had been gained by opening the governess' letter pointed plainly to the conclusion that an adventurous had stolen her way into the house by means of a false reference. But having been obtained by an act of treachery, which it was impossible to acknowledge, it was not information that could be used either for warning the major or for exposing Miss Gueld. The one available weapon in Mrs. Miroy's hands was the weapon furnished by her own written letter, and the one question to decide was how to make the best and speediest use of it. The longer she turned the matter over in her mind, the more hasty and premature seemed the exaltation which she had felt at the first sight of the post office circular. That a lady acting as reference to a governess should have quitted her residence without leaving any trace behind her, and without even mentioning an address to which her letters could be form-warded, was a circumstance in itself sufficiently suspicious to be mentioned to the major. But Mrs. Miroy, however perverted her estimate of her husband, might be in some respects, knew enough of his character to be assured that, if she told him what had happened, he would frankly appeal to the governess herself for an explanation. Miss Gueld's quickness and cunning would, in that case, produce some plausible answer on the spot, which the major speciality would be only too ready to accept, and she would at the same time, no doubt, place matters in train by means of the post for the due arrival of all needful confirmation on the part of her accomplice in London. To keep strict silence for the present, and to institute, without the governess's knowledge, such inquiries as might be necessary to the discovery of undeniable evidence, was plainly the only safe course to take with such a man as the major, and with such a woman as Miss Gueld. Helpless herself, to whom could Mrs. Miroy commit the difficult and dangerous task of investigation? The nurse, even if she was to be trusted, could not be spared at a day's notice, and could not be sent away without the risk of exciting remark. Was there any other competent and reliable person to employ, either at Thorbembros or in London? Mrs. Miroy turned from side to side of the bed, searching every corner of her mind for the needful discovery, and searching in vain. Oh, if I could only lay my hand on some man I could trust, she thought despairingly. If I only knew where to look for somebody to help me. As the idea passed through her mind, the sound of her daughter's voice startled her from the other side of the door. May I come in? asked Niti. What do you want? returned Mrs. Miroy impatiently. I have brought up your breakfast, Mama. My breakfast? repeated Mrs. Miroy in surprise. Why doesn't Rachel bring it up as usual? She considered a moment, and then called out sharply. Come in. End of chapter. Recording by Nettini Kölbule.