"It's a wonder you thought of it, I'm sure." John Heathcote gave a grunt in acknowledgment. "The last time that boy was here, he was brought in with a broken collar-bone." "Broke it at Codgebroke Brook, on my old black mare. How that boy did ride!” 66 When you mounted him. Riding your horses to death! I always said he'd come back like a bad shilling, if he only had time to do it." "Your mother used to say she knew he was dead-didn't she, Lu ?" "Sometimes she said she thought so, papa," said Lucy, softly. "I never had a lucky legacy in my life," sighed Mrs. Heath cote. Her cousin Dick's return was a very bitter pill for her to swallow, but she had got it down. "What did you want the boy dead for? You've got enough, haven't you, Lydia?" said her husband, rather angrily. "He never was any good to himself or anybody else. I never counted on Uncle Richard's money though, for I felt sure he'd come back. Such scapegraces always do. What did they say about it, John? I suppose all the world and Market Basing know about it by this time!" 66 "Market Basing people know all about it," said Mr. Heathcote. They were all talking about it this morning." "What did they say?" "Wait till the boy comes, and see him for yourself. Where's Grace gone? "She has gone with Frank Melliship down to the church, to practise something or another on the organ for Sunday. They'll catch their deaths of cold in that church a day like this ?" "Who's gone She said this quite gravely. Silly Billy had been blower ever since she had known the church. "Then I'll bet a new hat the greenhouse fire's never been lighted. I told him to light it.” Mr. Heathcote put on his hat, and went out to light it himself. "I'm quite anxious to see Cousin Dick, mamma," said this was that, once a year or so, a Southdown of his lordship's tumbled over into Mrs. Heathcote's flower-beds. About which catastrophes, when they occurred, Mrs. Heathcote made more fuss than the sheep did. She was a born grumbler. She grumbled for self and husband; when it was wet, because it was not fine; when the sun shone, because the turnips wanted rain; when beef was dear, because corn was low; when the markets rose, because John had sold too soon; when they fell, because he had held on to his corn or his bullocks. And she was infallible. John Heathcote-as honest and sensible a man as ever sowed one grain in the hope of reaping twenty-farmed five hundred. and thirty acres of land, good, bad, and indifferent. Three hundred and eighty acres were his own good freehold. The remaining hundred and fifty he rented of his neighbour, Lord Hunslope. Of the lot, but twenty acres came under the category of bad and indifferent. They served their useful purpose, if they did not pay their way; they gave Mrs. Heathcote good cause of complaint. "What in the world your father wants to go and pay fortytwo shillings an acre for Church Marsh for, nobody but John Heathcote knows," she had said to her daughters and at her husband a thousand times. But her husband puffed his pipe in peace. She had pecked at him so long, he could not have digested his dinner without his usual desert. At Parkside, they dined at half-past two in the afternoon. Dinner was over, and they were sitting in their pleasant dining-room. The winter's sun was shining brightly in at the windows. At one, Lucy sat with some Heathcote, in her violet silk, at The farmer was smoking his cl "What did he say, John ?" She referred to Dick Mort "I didn't see him." "Didn't see to-day ?" r comes e added, rley in her her cottage." tead of coming Billy take it when he nonsense!" The matron smoothed red with smiles as the door ote with Lord Launton. one, light-haired, short-sighted, vating in his manner, with a little as a tenant of the earl's; and this been accustomed to run in and out isit from him had not by any means which Mrs. Heathcote would have Heathcote-really nothing at all," he ped his hat in his effort to find a chair. Heathcote ?-I was passing, and I-I to ask Mr. Heathcote's opinion aboutifle-the horse Mr. Heathcote bought for I was afraid he might prove ford, where he had the reputation of being a scholar and a poet; but he had not yet learned to hide those signals of confusion and distress which modesty and shamefacedness hung out continually upon his cheeks. A lad, for the rest, of high-born and generous tendencies, who read the tales of his ancestors' valour to profit, seeing that the virtues of self-sacrifice and duty are the modern substitutes for those old ones of bravery and strength; and knowing that with these the nineteenth century may be made as fair a battle-field as any chronicled by Villehardouin and Froissart. A poetic youth, too, and a dweller in that cloud-land of rosy mist and shapeless castles where the future shines before the eyes of dreaming youth like a landscape by Turner-vague, glorious, and golden. In his own home, with a common-place and rather stupid father, and a mother always occupied with her projects and pet societies, there was no one with whom he could exchange ideas; and so he peopled the solitude with creations of his own brain, and wandered about the glorious old park which surrounds Hunslope Towers until every avenue of it was filled with the fanciful beings of his own imagination, and every glade was a scene of romance, exploit, and endurance. A foolish, fond, and silly way of passing the hours: an unproductive, unpractical, and wasted time, quite useless in these days of competitive examinations-detrimental to honour-lists—and only useful in after-life if, haply, when the fallow years are spent, the soil is found richer and stronger; if, haply, strength of will grows out of vague aspiration, and purpose out of hope. Ronald, Viscount Launton, was twenty-one: the only son of an impoverished peer. He knew well-it was the bitterness of his life-that he was expected to raise the fortunes of the house by a good marriage. He had always understood this, from the day when he began to understand anything. And at first it did not seem to matter. But there came a time-and it comes to all alike-when he found himself a man; when he felt his sex; when his thoughts turned naturally, and by that noble instinct which it is the business of our civilization to divert or repress, to the love of woman. Chateaubriand, during his years of adolescence, constructed for himself an imaginary woman. One lent him her hair, one her eyes, one her figure, one her hands, and one her mind. This was fatal, because the woman of his dreams never came to him, and he spent his life in looking for her. Ronald was wiser. He found one woman lovely enough, graceful enough, refined He seldom enough for a poet's idol, and set her up to be worshipped in that Holy of Holies-the heart of a pure man. spoke to her: he never told her that he loved her. guessed it. Their stations in life were different: for the idol of Lord Launton was Grace Heathcote, Farmer John's eldest daughter. As the mother, so the boys: as the father, so the girls. A fanciful rule, and often enough proving itself by its exceptions. But in the Heathcote family, there was a refinement and delicacy of feeling about the farmer, in spite of his rough downrightness, which you might look for in vain in his wife. Mrs. Heathcote was essentially common-place-vulgar sometimes, ambitious always. Her daughters, who had been educated in London with their cousins-other Heathcotes, of a higher social position than themselves, with whom we have little to do-owed, doubtless, some of their refinement to culture and training. But training is only skin deep, and wears off like veneer. It was the hereditary quality that showed itself in them the gentle blood of the Heathcotes, come down to them through long centuries of varied and chequered fortunes. Lucy, the younger, now about nineteen, who had been the especial favourite of Miss Susan Mortiboy, seemed to have imbibed something of her cousin's deeply religious character. She was weakly, and often suffering her face one of those thin, pale faces whose beauty is chiefly that of expressionbut yet not without a beauty of its own, with its abundant wealth of rich brown hair, and large and deep brown eyes. girl who seemed to have fixed her thoughts on things above this world yet one who found none of its duties beneath her. John Heathcote loved his daughter Grace with a sort of passionate tenderness; but when he thought of Lucy, it seemed to him as if his heart melted within him. Grace was the sun of his life; Lucy, like the moonshine, not so bright or so beautiful, but softer, sweeter, more holy. If Farmer John were to read what I have written, he would declare that it was all nonsense and romance. But it is true, nevertheless. Was Grace, then, beautiful really, or only beautiful in the eyes of her silent lover? Wait a moment. i : : A Lord Launton has been sitting all this time, answering Yes and No to Mrs. Heathcote's questions, and nervously wishing that he had not called. He stays about a quarter of an hour, and then, grasping his hat, he asks with a tremendous blush"How is Miss Grace ?" |