‘You! Tell me all about it,’ said Lucilla, leaning forward to listen with the eager air of interest which, when not half so earnest, had been always bewitching.

Poor Robert looked away, and tried to think himself explaining his scheme to the Archdeacon. ‘The place is in frightful disorder, filled with indescribable vice and misery, but there is a shadow of hope that a few may be worked on if something like a mission can be organized. Circumstances seemed to mark me out as the person to be at the cost of setting it on foot, my father’s connection with the parish giving it a claim on me. So I purchased the first site that was in the market, and the buildings are in progress, chapel, schools, orphanage, and rooms for myself and two other clergy. When all the rest is provided for, there will remain about two hundred and fifty pounds a year—just enough for three of us, living together.’

He durst not glance towards her, or he would have seen her cheek white as wax, and her eye seeking his in dismayed inquiry. There was a pause; then she forced herself to falter—‘Yes. I suppose it is very right—very grand. It is settled?’

‘The Archdeacon has seen the plans, the Bishop has consented.’

Long and deep was the silence that fell on both.

Lucilla knew her fate as well as if his long coat had been a cowl. She would not, could not feel it yet. She must keep up appearances, so she fixed her eyes steadily on the drawing her idle hands were perpetrating on the back of a letter, and appeared absorbed in shading a Turk’s head.

If Robert’s motives had not been unmixed, if his zeal had been alloyed by temper, or his self-devotion by undutifulness; if his haste had been self-willed, or his judgment one-sided, this was an hour of retribution. Let her have all her faults, she was still the Lucy who had flown home to him for comfort. He felt as if he had dashed away the little bird that had sought refuge in his bosom.

Fain would he have implored her pardon, but for the stern resolution to abstain from any needless word or look, such as might serve to rivet the affection that ought to be withdrawn; and he was too manly and unselfish to indulge in discussion or regret, too late as it was to change the course to which he had offered himself and his means. To retract would have been a breach of promise—a hasty one, perhaps, but still an absolute vow publicly made; and in all his wretchedness he had at least the comfort of knowing the present duty.

Afraid of last words, he would not even take leave until Owen came in upon their silence, full of animation and eagerness to see how far his knowledge would serve him with the book that he had brought home. Robert then rose, and on Owen’s pressing to know when he might see the engineer, promised to go in search of him the next day, but added that they must not expect to see himself till evening, since it would be a busy day.

Lucilla stood up, but speech was impossible. She was in no mood to affect indifference, yet she could neither be angry nor magnanimous. She seemed to have passed into a fresh stage of existence where she was not yet at home; and in the same dreamy way she went on drawing Red Indians, till by a sudden impulse she looked up and said, ‘Owen, why should not I come out with you?’

He was intent on a problem, and did not hear.

‘Owen, take me with you; I will make a home for you.’

‘Eh?’

‘Owen, let me come to Canada, and take care of you and your child.’

He burst out laughing. ‘Well done, Cilly; that beats all!’

‘Am I likely to be in play?’

‘If not, you are crazy. As if a man could go surveying in the backwoods with a woman and a brat at his heels!’

Lucy’s heart seemed to die within her. Nothing was left to her: hopes and fears were alike extinct, and life a waste before her. Still and indifferent, she laid her down at night, and awoke in the morning, wishing still to prolong the oblivion of sleep. Anger with Robert would have been a solace, but his dejection forbade this; nor could she resent his high-flown notions of duty, and deem herself their victim, since she had slighted fair warning, and repelled his attempts to address her. She saw no resource save the Holt, now more hopelessly dreary and distasteful than ever, and she shrank both from writing to Honor, or ending her tantalizing intercourse with Robert. To watch over her brother was her only comfort, and one that must soon end.

He remained immersed in trigonometry, and she was glad he should be too much engrossed for the outbreaks of remorseful sorrow that were so terrible to witness, and carefully guarded him from all that could excite them.

Mrs. Murrell brought several letters that had been addressed to him at her house, and as Lucilla conveyed them to him, she thought their Oxford post-marks looked suspicious, especially as he thrust them aside with the back of his hand, returning without remark to A B and C D.

Presently a person asked to speak with Mr. Sandbrook; and supposing it was on business connected with the funeral, Lucilla went to him, and was surprised at recognizing the valet of one of the gentlemen who had stayed at Castle Blanch. He was urgent to see Mr. Sandbrook himself; but she, resolved to avert all annoyances, refused to admit him, offering to take a message. ‘Was it from his master?’

‘Why, no, ma’am. In fact, I have left his lordship’s service,’ he said, hesitating. ‘In point of fact I am the principal. There was a little business to be settled with the young gentleman when he came into his fortune; and understanding that such was the case, since I heard of him as settled in life, I have brought my account.’

‘You mistake the person. My brother has come into no fortune, and has no expectation of any.’

‘Indeed, ma’am!’ exclaimed the man. ‘I always understood that Mr. Owen Charteris Sandbrook was heir to a considerable property.’

‘What of that?’

‘Only this, ma’am,—that I hold a bond from that gentleman for the payment of £600 upon the death of Miss Honora Charlecote, of the Holt, Hiltonbury, whose property I understood was entailed on him.’ His tone was still respectful, but his hand shook with suppressed rage, and his eye was full of passion.

‘Miss Charlecote is not dead,’ steadily answered Lucilla. ‘She is in perfect health, not fifty years old, and her property is entirely at her own disposal.’

Either the man’s wrath was beyond control, or he thought it his interest to terrify the lady, for he broke into angry complaints of being swindled, with menaces of exposure; but Lucilla, never deficient in courage, preserved ready thought and firm demeanour.

‘You had better take care,’ she said. ‘My brother is under age, and not liable. If you should recover what you have lent him, it can only be from our sense of honesty. Leave me your address and a copy of the bond, and I give you my word that you shall receive your due.’

The valet, grown rich in the service of a careless master, and richer by money-lending transactions with his master’s friends, knew Miss Sandbrook, and was aware that a lady’s word might be safer than a spendthrift’s bond. He tried swaggering, in the hope of alarming her into a promise to fulfil his demand uninvestigated; but she was on her guard; and he, reflecting that she must probably apply to others for the means of paying, gave her the papers, and freed her from his presence.

Freed her from his presence! Yes, but only to leave her to the consciousness of the burthen of shame he had brought her. She saw why Owen thought himself past pardon. Speculation on the death of his benefactress! Borrowing on an inheritance that he had been forbidden to expect. Double-dyed deceit and baseness! Yesterday, she had said they were humbled enough. This was not humiliation, it was degradation! It was far too intolerable for standing still and feeling it. Lucilla’s impetuous impulses always became her obstinate resolutions, and her pride rebounded to its height in the determination that Owen should leave England in debt to no man, were it at the cost of all she possessed.

Re-entering the drawing-room, she had found that Owen had thrust the obnoxious letters into the waste-basket, each unopened envelope, with the contents, rent down the middle. She sat down on the floor, and took them out, saying, as she met his eye, ‘I shall take these. I know what they are. They are my concern.’

‘Folly!’ he muttered. ‘Don’t you know I have the good luck to be a minor?’

‘That is no excuse for dishonesty.’

‘Look at home before you call names,’ said Owen, growing enraged. ‘Before you act spy on me, I should like to know who paid for your fine salmon-fly gown, and all the rest of it?’

‘I never contracted debts in the trust that my age would enable me to defraud my creditors.’

‘Who told you that I did? I tell you, Lucilla, I’ll endure no such conduct from you. No sister has a right to say such things!’ and starting up, his furious stamp shook the floor she sat upon, so close to her that it was as if the next would demolish her.

She did not move, except to look up all the length of the tall figure over her into the passion-flushed face. ‘I should neither have said nor thought so, Owen,’ she replied. ‘I should have imputed these debts to mere heedless extravagance, like other people’s—like my own, if you please—save for your own words, and for finding you capable of such treachery as borrowing on a post-obit.’

He walked about furiously, stammering interrogations on the mode of her discovery, and, as she explained, storming at her for having brought this down on him by the folly of putting ‘that thing into the Times.’ Why could she not have stayed away, instead of meddling where she was not wanted?

‘I thought myself wanted when my brother was in trouble,’ said Lucilla, mournfully, raising her face, which she had bent between her hands at the first swoop of the tempest. ‘Heaven knows, I had no thought of spying. I came to stand by your wife, and comfort you. I only learnt all this in trying to shield you from intrusion. Oh, would that I knew it not! Would that I could think of you as I did an hour ago! Oh, Owen, though I have never shared your fondness for Honor Charlecote, I thought it genuine; I did not scorn it as fortune-hunting.’

‘It was not! It never was!’ cried the poor boy. ‘Honor! Poor Honor! Lucy, I doubt if I could have felt for my mother as I do for her. Oh, if you could guess how I long for her dear voice in my ears, her soft hand on my head—’ and he sank into his chair, hiding his face and sobbing aloud.

‘Am I to believe that, when—’ began Lucilla, slowly.

‘The last resource of desperation,’ cried Owen. ‘What could I do with such a drain upon me; the old woman for ever clamouring for money, and threatening exposure? My allowance? Poor Honor meant well, but she gave me just enough to promote expensive habits without supplying them. There was nothing to fall back on—except the ways of the Castle Blanch folk.’

‘Betting?’

He nodded. ‘So when it went against me, and people would have it that I had expectations, it was not for me to contradict them. It was their business, not mine, to look out for themselves, and pretty handsomely they have done so. It would have been a very different percentage if I had been an eldest son. As it is, my bond is—what is it for, Lucy?’

‘Six hundred.’

‘How much do you think I have touched of that? Not two! Of that, three-fourths went to the harpies I fell in with at Paris, under Charles’s auspices—and five-and-twenty there’—pointing in the direction of Whittington-street.

‘Will the man be satisfied with the two hundred?’

‘Don’t he wish he may get it? But, Lucy, you are not to make a mess of it. I give you warning I shall go, and never be heard of more, if Honor is applied to.’

‘I had rather die than do so.’

‘You are not frantic enough to want to do it out of your own money? I say, give me those papers.’

He stooped and stretched out the powerful hand and arm, which when only half-grown had been giant-like in struggles with his tiny sister but she only laid her two hands on the paper, with just sufficient resistance to make it a matter of strength on his side. They were man and woman, and what availed his muscles against her will? It came to parley. ‘Now, Lucy, I have a right to think for you. As your brother, I cannot permit you to throw your substance to the dogs.’

‘As your sister, I cannot allow you to rest dishonoured.’

‘Not a whit more than any of your chosen friends. Every man leaves debts at Oxford. The extortion is framed on a scale to be unpaid.’

‘Let it be! There shall be no stain on the name that once was my father’s, if there be on the whole world beside.’

‘Then,’ with some sulkiness, ‘you won’t be content without beggaring me of my trumpery twenty-five hundred as soon as I am of age?’

‘Not at all. Your child must live on that. Only one person can pay your debts without dishonouring you, and that is your elder sister.’

‘Elder donkey,’ was the ungrateful answer. ‘Why, what would become of you? You’d have to be beholden to Honor for the clothes on your back!’

‘I shall not go back to Honor; I shall earn my own livelihood.’

‘Lucilla, are you distracted, or is it your object to make me so?’

‘Only on one condition could I return to the Holt,’ said Lucilla, resolutely. ‘If Honor would freely offer to receive your son, I would go to take care of him. Except for his sake, I had rather she would not. I will not go to be crushed with pardon and obligation, while you are proscribed. I will be independent, and help to support the boy.’

‘Sure,’ muttered Owen to himself, ‘Lucifer is her patron saint. If I looked forward to anything, it was to her going home tame enough to make some amends to poor, dear Sweet Honey, but I might as well have hoped it of the panther of the wilderness! I declare I’ll write to Honor this minute.’

He drew the paper before him. Lucilla started to her feet, looking more disgusted and discomfited than by any former shock. However, she managed to restrain any dissuasion, knowing that it was the only right and proper step in his power, and that she could never have looked Robert in the face again had she prevented the confession; but it was a bitter pill; above all, that it should be made for her sake. She rushed away, as usual, to fly up and down her room.

She might have spared herself that agony. Owen’s resolution failed him. He could not bring himself to make the beginning, nor to couple the avowal of his offence with such presumption as an entreaty for his child’s adoption, though he knew his sister’s impulsive obstinacy well enough to be convinced that she would adhere pertinaciously to this condition. Faltering after the first line, he recurred to his former plan of postponing his letter till his plans should be so far matured that he could show that he would no longer be a pensioner on the bounty of his benefactress, and that he sought pardon for the sake of no material advantage. He knew that Robert had intimated his intention of writing after the funeral, and by this he would abide.

Late in the evening Robert brought the engineer’s answer, that he had no objection to take out a pupil, and would provide board, lodging, and travelling expenses; but he required a considerable premium, and for three years would offer no salary. His standard of acquirements was high, but such as rather stimulated than discouraged Owen, who was delighted to find that an appointment had been made for a personal interview on the ensuing Monday.

It was evident that if these terms were accepted, the debts, if paid at all, must come out of Lucilla’s fortune. Owen’s own portion would barely clothe him and afford the merest pittance for his child until he should be able to earn something after his three years’ apprenticeship. She trusted that he was convinced, and went up-stairs some degrees less forlorn for having a decided plan; but a farther discovery awaited her, and one that concerned herself.

On her bed lay the mourning for which she had sent, tasteful and expensive, in her usual complete style, and near it an envelope. It flashed on her that her order had been dangerously unlimited, and she opened the cover in trepidation, but what was her dismay at the double, treble, quadruple foolscap? The present articles were but a fraction to the dreadful aggregate—the sum total numbered hundreds! In a dim hope of error she looked back at the items, ‘Black lace dress: Dec. 2nd, 1852.’—She understood all. It dated from the death of her aunt. Previously, her wardrobe had been replenished as though she had been a daughter of the house, and nothing had marked the difference; indeed, the amply provided Horatia had probably intended that things were to go on as usual. Lucilla had been allowed to forget the existence of accounts, in a family which habitually ignored them. Things had gone smoothly; the beautiful little Miss Sandbrook was an advertisement to her milliners, and living among wealthy people, and reported to be on the verge of marriage with a millionaire, there had been no hesitation in allowing her unlimited credit.

Probably the dressmaker had been alarmed by the long absence of the family, and might have learnt from the servants how Lucilla had quitted them, therefore thinking it expedient to remind her of her liabilities. And not only did the present spectacle make her giddy, but she knew there was worse beyond. The Frenchwoman who supplied all extra adornments, among them the ball-dress whose far bitterer price she was paying, could make more appalling demands; and there must be other debts elsewhere, such that she doubted whether her entire fortune would clear both her brother and herself. What was the use of thinking? It must be done, and the sooner she knew the worst the better. She felt very ill-used, certain that her difficulties were caused by Horatia’s inattention, and yet glad to be quit of an obligation that would have galled her as soon as she had become sensible of it. It was more than ever clear that she must work for herself, instead of returning to the Holt, as a dependent instead of a guest. Was she humbled enough?

The funeral day began by her writing notes to claim her bills, and to take steps to get her capital into her own hands. Owen drowned reflection in geometry, till it was time to go by the train to Wrapworth.

There Mr. Prendergast fancied he had secured secrecy by eluding questions and giving orders at the latest possible moment. The concourse in the church and churchyard was no welcome sight to him, since he could not hope that the tall figure of the chief mourner could remain unrecognized. Worthy man, did he think that Wrapworth needed that sight to assure them of what each tongue had wagged about for many a day?

Owen behaved very properly and with much feeling. When not driving it out by other things, the fact was palpable to him that he had brought this fair young creature to her grave; and in the very scenes where her beauty and enthusiastic affection had captivated him, association revived his earlier admiration, and swept away his futile apology that she had brought the whole upon herself. A gust of pity, love, and remorse convulsed his frame, and though too proud to give way, his restrained anguish touched every heart, and almost earned him Mr. Prendergast’s forgiveness.

Before going away, Lucilla privately begged Mr. Prendergast to come to town on Monday, to help her in some business. It happened to suit him particularly well, as he was to be in London for the greater part of the week, to meet some country cousins, and the appointment was made without her committing herself by saying for what she wanted him, lest reflection should convert him into an obstacle instead of an assistant.

The intervening Sunday, with Owen on her hands, was formidable to her imagination, but it turned out better than she expected. He asked her to walk to Westminster Abbey with him, the time and distance being an object to both, and he treated her with such gentle kindness, that she began to feel that something more sweet and precious than she had yet known from him might spring up, if they were not forced to separate. Once, on rising from kneeling, she saw him stealthily brushing off his tears, and his eyes were heavy and swollen, but, softened as she felt, his tone of feelings was a riddle beyond her power, between their keenness and their petulance, their manly depth and boyish levity, their remorse and their recklessness; and when he tried to throw them off, she could not but follow his lead.

‘I suppose,’ he said, late in the day, ‘we shall mortify Fulmort if we don’t go once to his shop. Otherwise, I like the article in style.’

‘I am glad you should like it at all,’ said Lucy, anxiously.

‘I envy those who, like poor dear Honor, or that little Phœbe, can find life in the driest form,’ said Owen.

‘They would say it is our fault that we cannot find it.’

‘Honor would think it her duty to say so. Phœbe has a wider range, and would be more logical. Is it our fault or misfortune that our ailments can’t be cured by a paring of St. Bridget’s thumb-nail, or by any nostrum, sacred or profane, that really cures their votaries? I regard it as a misfortune. Those are happiest who believe the most, and are eternally in a state in which their faith is working out its effects upon them mentally and physically. Happy people!’

‘Really I think, unless you were one of those happy people, it is no more consistent in you to go to church than it would be in me to set up Rashe’s globules.’

‘No, don’t tell me so, Lucy. There lie all my best associations. I venerate what the great, the good, the beloved receive as their blessing and inspiration. Sometimes I can assimilate myself, and catch an echo of what was happiness when I was a child at Honor’s knee.’

The tears had welled into his eyes again, and he hurried away. Lucilla had faith (or rather acquiescence) without feeling. Feeling without faith was a mystery to her. How much Owen believed or disbelieved she knew not, probably he could not himself have told. It was more uncertainty than denial, rather dislike to technical dogma than positive unbelief; and yet, with his predilections all on the side of faith, she could not, womanlike, understand why they did not bring his reason with them. After all, she decided, in her off-hand fashion, that there was quite enough that was distressing and perplexing without concerning herself about them!

Style, as Owen called it, was more attended to than formerly at St. Wulstan’s, but was not in perfection. Robert, whose ear was not his strong point, did not shine in intoning, and the other curate preached. The impression seemed only to have weakened that of the morning, for Owen’s remarks on coming out were on the English habit of having overmuch of everything, and on the superior sense of foreigners in holiday-making, instead of making a conscience of stultifying themselves with double and triple church-going.

Cilla agreed in part, but owned that she was glad to have done with Continental Sundays that had left her feeling good for nothing all the week, just as she had felt when once, as a child, to spite Honor, she had come down without saying her prayers.

‘The burthen bound on her conscience by English prejudice,’ said her brother, adding ‘that this was the one oppressive edict of popular theology. It was mere self-defence to say that the dulness was Puritanical, since the best Anglican had a cut-and-dried pattern for all others.’

‘But surely as a fact, Sunday observance is the great safeguard. All goes to the winds when that is given up.’

‘The greater error to have rendered it grievous.’

Lucilla had no reply. She had not learnt the joy of the week’s Easter-day. It had an habitual awe for her, not sacred delight; and she could not see that because it was one point where religion taught the world that it had laws of its own, besides those of mere experience and morality, therefore the world complained, and would fain shake off the thraldom.

Owen relieved her by a voluntary proposal to turn down Whittington-street, and see the child. Perhaps he had an inkling that the chapel in Cat-alley would be in full play, and that the small maid would be in charge; besides, it was gas-light, and the lodgers would be out. At any rate softening was growing on him. He looked long and sorrowfully at the babe in its cradle, and at last,—

‘He will never be like her.’

‘No; and I do not think him like you.’

‘In fact, it is an ugly little mortal,’ said Owen, after another investigation. ‘Yet, it’s very odd, Lucy, I should like him to live.’

‘Very odd, indeed!’ she said, nearly laughing.

‘Well, I own, before ever I saw him, when they said he would die, I did think it was best for himself, and every one else. So, maybe, it would; but you see I shouldn’t like it. He will be a horrible expense, and it will be a great bore to know what to do with him: so absurd to have a son only twenty years younger than oneself: but I think I like him, after all. It is something to work for, to make up to him for what she suffered. And I say, Lucy,’ his eye brightened, ‘perhaps Honor will take to him! What a thing it would be if he turned out all she hoped of me, poor thing! I would be banished for life, if he could be in my place, and make it up to her. He might yet have the Holt!’

‘You have not proposed sending him to her?’

‘No, I am not so cool,’ he sadly answered; ‘but she is capable of anything in an impulse of forgiveness.’

He spent the evening over his letter; and, in spite of his sitting with his back towards his sister, she saw more than one sheet spoilt by large tears unperceived till they dropped, and felt a jealous pang in recognizing the force of his affection for Honor. That love and compassion seemed contemptible to her, they were so inconsistent with his deception and disobedience; and she was impatient of seeing that, so far as he felt his errors at all, it was in their aspect towards his benefactress. His ingratitude towards her touched him in a more tender part than his far greater errors towards his wife. The last was so shocking and appalling, that he only half realized it, and, boy-like, threw it from him; the other came home to the fondness that had been with him all his life, and which he missed every hour in his grief. Lucy positively dreaded his making such submission or betraying such sorrow as might bring Honora down on them full of pardon and beneficence. At least, she had the satisfaction of hearing ‘I’ve said nothing about you, Cilla.’

‘That’s right!’

‘Nor the child,’ he continued, brushing up his hair from his brow. ‘When I came to go over it, I did hate myself to such a degree that I could not say a word like asking a favour.’

Lucy was greatly relieved.

He looked like himself when he came down to breakfast exhilarated by the restoration to activity, and the opening of a new path, though there was a subdued, grave look on his young brow not unsuited to his deep mourning.

He took up his last evening’s production, looked at it with some satisfaction, and observed, ‘Sweet old honey! I do hope that letter may be a little comfort to her good old heart!’

Then he told that he had been dreaming of her looking into the cradle, and he could not tell whether it were himself or the boy that he had seen sitting on a haycock at Hiltonbury.

‘Who knows but it may be a good omen,’ said he in his sanguine state. ‘You said you would go to her, if she took the child.’

‘I did not say I would not.’

‘Well, don’t make difficulties; pray don’t, Lucilla. I want nothing for myself; but if I could see you and the child at the Holt, and hear her dear voice say one word of kindness, I could go out happy. Imagine if she should come to town!’

Lucilla had no mind to imagine any such thing.