LONDON SOCIETY. MARCH, 1874. OPEN! SESAME! BY FLORENCE MARRYAT (MRS. Ross-CHURCH), AUTHOR OF 'LOVE'S CONFLICT,' NO INTENTIONS,' ETC., ETC. *SHE CHAPTER I. 'WHY DID YOU NOT TELL HER OF THIS BEFORE?' HE has no more heart than a stone !' says General Hawke. 'She has so much heart she doesn't know what to do with it,' replies Mr. Mildmay. What! when she despises our counsels, laughs at our threats, and disobeys our orders?' 'How much of her heart do you suppose is concerned in these things? She is very thoughtless, but she is generous. Take her in ore of her softened moods and appeal to her feelings, and you will find her as tractable as an infant.' 'Pooh! but you were always on her side,' grumbles General Hawke. 'And you were always against her!' retorts Mr. Mildmay, with a dash of clerical warmth. The person of whom they are speaking is an heiress, and their mutual ward, Miss West-Norman, and the place in which they are speaking of her is the library at Norman House in Hertfordshire. It is a soft, mild afternoon in April, and the windows are open to the ground. Beyond them stretches a wide expanse of garden VOL. XXV.-NO. CXLVII. and park and pasture land, which yet forms but a small part of the property that has been intrusted to their charge. General Hawke steps out upon the window-sill, and points angrily to the closeshaven lawn that lies beneath the terrace. 'Look at that, sir-look at that! would such a state of things have been permitted in the days when my old friend West was master here?-never, and you know it!' Mr. Mildmay, who has followed him to the window, sees that the carefully-tended grass is ploughed up in fifty different directions, as though cattle had been trampling it all night. Dear, dear! this is a great pity!' he says, in his quiet way; 'the gardeners must be answerable for this. Is it possible they can have let the cows in through the west gate?' 'Cows!' repeats the General, in a voice of supreme contempt; 'no cows are at fault here, sir. It's your ward, Mr. Mildmay-your ward!' Here let it be observed that whenever Miss West-Norman is convicted of an offence in the eyes of her guardians, she immediately becomes, in those of General Hawke, the ward of Mr. Mildmay. When her beauty is admired, her wit repeated, her courage extolled, the General is ready to stand sponsor for all her good points; but directly she fails (and Miss West-Norman, alas! fails very often), he hands over the responsibility to his companion in distress, who accepts it meekly, and stands up for his troublesome charge staunchly, though in rather a feeble and deprecating way. echoes, as 'My ward!' he General Hawke throws the last imputation at his head. 'Yes, sir, your ward! When I arrived here this morning to consult you on the best steps to take with respect to Miss West-Norman's coming of age next month, the first visit I paid was to the stables. What did I see there?— seven fine horses, and three lamed. Who lamed them? Miss WestNorman. How? By jumping two of them over the sunk fence into the park, and throwing down the third in driving tandem. I come round to the lawn-I find it cut up as though a charge of cavalry had gone over it. Who did this? Miss West-Norman. How? In teaching her horses to jump. It's outrageous, sir—a good piece of grass cut up and three horses lamed for a girl's tantrums. It's not to be stood!' 'But after all it is her own lawn, and they are her own horses,' remonstrates the other. 'Her own lawn! No such thing, sir. Her own horses! Not a bit of it. Nothing here is her own until she comes of age, and not then unless she complies with the conditions of her father's will. You should know that as well as I do.' 'True, General, but until that event occurs, the very handsome maintenance provided for her almost justifies 'Her robbing the property until it will not be worth the acceptance of another-I don't agree with you, sir. I strolled through the conservatories this morning— hardly a flower to be seen-all stripped off for some confounded nonsense up at the church 'I must beg you to remember, General 'Oh! no offence to the cloth, my dear Mildmay-you've known me too long to think that-but this girl is altogether too impetuous, too unreasonable; where another woman would pull one blossom she tears off twenty.' 'It is her nature, which is as open as her mind. Everil is large-hearted, large-handed, largesouled. She has no fear of public opinion, therefore she is too free of speech-of action. She has no idea of doing a thing by halves, therefore she is extravagant, reckless, and defiant. But she has a noble nature, which will show itself some day when people least expect it, and save her under circumstances that would crush ordinary women to the ground.' 'Humph! can't say I follow you. But Barrett tells me that the poultry-yard and the forcinghouses have been nearly emptied this winter for the poor.' 'It has been such a hard season, and we have had so much sickness,' murmurs the rector. 'But I did remonstrate with her about that as far as lay in my power.' As far as lay in your power! Everything should lie in your power, sir, living on the spot as you do, if you only knew how to use it. And yet you talk about finding her as tractable as an infant,' sneers the General. But there is another point I wish to discuss with you. Who is this |