Heriot's Choice: A Tale

Rosa Nouchette Carey

Heriot's Choice: A Tale

Published by Good Press, 2022

goodpress@okpublishing.info

EAN 4064066237578

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

'SAY YES, MILLY'

CHAPTER II

'IF YOU PLEASE, MAY I BRING RAG AND TATTERS?'

CHAPTER III

VIÂ TEBAY

CHAPTER IV

MILDRED'S NEW HOME

CHAPTER V

OLIVE

CHAPTER VI

CAIN AND ABEL

CHAPTER VII

A MOTHER IN ISRAEL

CHAPTER VIII

'ETHEL THE MAGNIFICENT'

CHAPTER IX

KIRKLEATHAM

CHAPTER X

THE RUSH-BEARING

CHAPTER XI

AN AFTERNOON IN CASTLESTEADS

CHAPTER XII

THE WELL-MEANING MISCHIEF-MAKER

CHAPTER XIII

A YOUTHFUL DRACO AND SOLON

CHAPTER XIV

RICHARD CŒUR-DE LION

CHAPTER XV

THE GATE AJAR

CHAPTER XVI

COMING BACK

CHAPTER XVII

THREE YEARS AFTERWARDS—A RETROSPECT

CHAPTER XVIII

OLIVE'S WORK

CHAPTER XIX

THE HEART OF CŒUR-DE-LION

CHAPTER XX

WHARTON HALL FARM

CHAPTER XXI

UNDER STENKRITH BRIDGE

CHAPTER XXII

DR. HERIOT'S WARD

CHAPTER XXIII

'AND MAIDENS CALL IT LOVE-IN-IDLENESS'

CHAPTER XXIV

THE DESERTED COTTON-MILL IN HILBECK GLEN

CHAPTER XXV

ROYAL

CHAPTER XXVI

'IS THAT LETTER FOR ME, AUNT MILLY?'

CHAPTER XXVII

COOP KERNAN HOLE

CHAPTER XXVIII

DR. HERIOT'S MISTAKE

CHAPTER XXIX

THE COTTAGE AT FROGNAL

CHAPTER XXX

'I CANNOT SING THE OLD SONGS'

CHAPTER XXXI

'WHICH SHALL IT BE?'

CHAPTER XXXII

A TALK IN FAIRLIGHT GLEN

CHAPTER XXXIII

'YES'

CHAPTER XXXIV

JOHN HERIOT'S WIFE

CHAPTER XXXV

OLIVE'S DECISION

CHAPTER XXXVI

BERENGARIA

THE END

THE NOVELS OF ROSA NOUCHETTE CAREY.

NELLIE'S MEMORIES.

WEE WIFIE.

BARBARA HEATHCOTE'S TRIAL.

ROBERT ORD'S ATONEMENT.

WOOED AND MARRIED.

HERIOT'S CHOICE.

QUEENIE'S WHIM.

NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS.

MARY ST. JOHN.

FOR LILIAS.

UNCLE MAX.

ONLY THE GOVERNESS.

LOVER OR FRIEND?

BASIL LYNDHURST.

SIR GODFREY'S GRANDDAUGHTERS.

THE OLD, OLD STORY.

THE MISTRESS OF BRAE FARM.

MRS. ROMNEY and BUT MEN MUST WORK.

OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES.

RUE WITH A DIFFERENCE.

HERB OF GRACE.

CHAPTER I

Table of Contents

'SAY YES, MILLY'

Table of Contents

'Man's importunity is God's opportunity.'

'O fair, O fine, O lot to be desired!

Early and late my heart appeals to me,

And says, "O work, O will—Thou man, be fired,

To earn this lot— she says—I would not be

A worker for mine own bread, or one hired

For mine own profit. O, I would be free

To work for others; love so earned of them

Should be my wages and my diadem."'—

Jean Ingelow.

'Say yes, Milly.'

Three short words, and yet they went straight to Milly's heart. It was only the postscript of a long, sorrowful letter—the finale brief but eloquent—of a quiet, dispassionate appeal; but it sounded to Mildred Lambert much as the Macedonian cry must have sounded of old: 'Come over and help us.'

Mildred's soft, womanly nature was capable of only one response to such a demand. Assent was more than probable, and bordered on certainty, even before the letter was laid aside, and while her cheek was yet paling at the thought of new responsibilities and the vast unknown, wherein duty must tread on the heel of inclination, and life must press out thought and the worn-out furrows of intro- and retrospection.

And so it was that the page of a negative existence was turned; and Mildred agreed to become the inmate of her brother's home.

'Aunt Milly!' How pleasant it would be to hear that again, and to be in the centre of warm young life and breathless activity, after the torpor of long waiting and watching, and the hush and the blank and the drawn-out pain, intense yet scarcely felt, of the last seven years.

To begin life in its fulness at eight-and-twenty; to taste of its real sweets and bitters, after it had offered to her nothing but the pale brackish flavour of regret for a passing youth and wasted powers, responsive rather than suggestive (if there be such monstrous anomaly on the whole face of God's creation), nothing being wasted, and all pronounced good, that comes direct from the Divine Hand. To follow fresh tracks when the record of the years had left nothing but the traces of the chariot-wheels of daily monotonous duties that dragged heavily, when summer and winter and seed-time and harvest found Mildred still through those seven revolving courses of seasons within the walls of that quiet sickroom.

It is given to some women to look back on these long level blanks of life; on mysteries of waiting, that intervene between youth and work, when the world's noise comes dimly to them, like the tumult of city's streets through closed shutters; when pain and hardship seem preferable to their death-in-life, and they long to prove the armour that has grown rusted with disuse.

How many a volume could be written, and with profit, on the watchers as well as the workers of life, on the bystanders as well as the sufferers. 'Patient hearts their pain to see.' Well has this thought been embodied in the words of a nineteenth-century Christian poet; while to many a pallid malcontent, wearied with inaction and panting for strife, might the Divine words still be applied: 'Could ye not have watched with Me one hour?'

Mildred Lambert's life for eight-and-twenty years might be summed up in a few sentences. A happy youth, scarcely clouded by the remembrance of a dead father and the graves of the sisters that came between her infancy and the maturer age of her only brother; and then the blurred brightness when Arnold, who had married before he had taken orders, became the hard-working vicar of a remote Westmorland parish—and he and his wife and children passed out of Milly's daily life.

Milly was barely nineteen when this happened; but even then her mother—who had always been ailing—was threatened with a chronic complaint involving no ordinary suffering; and now began the long seven years' watching which faded Milly's youth and roses together.

Milly had never known how galling had been the strain to the nerves—how intense her own tenacity of will and purpose, till she had folded her mother's pale hands together; and with a lassitude too great for tears, felt as she crept away that her work was finished none too soon, and that even her firm young strength was deserting her.

Trouble had not come singly to Mildred. News of her sister-in-law's unexpected death had reached her, just before her mother's last brief attack, and her brother had been too much stunned by his own loss to come to her in her loneliness.

Not that Milly wondered at this. She loved Arnold dearly; but he was so much older, and they had grown necessarily so apart. He and his wife had been all in all to each other; and the family in the vicarage had seemed so perfected and completed that the little petted Milly of old days might well plead that she was all but forgotten.

But Betha's death had altered this; and Arnold's letter, written as good men will write when their heart is well-nigh broken, came to Mildred as she sat alone in her black dress in her desolate home.

New work—unknown work—and that when youth's elasticity seemed gone, and spirits broken or at least dangerously quieted by the morbid atmosphere of sickness and hypochondria. They say the prisoner of twenty years will weep at leaving his cell. The tears that Mildred shed that night were more for the mother she had lost and the old safe life of the past, than pity for the widowed brother and motherless children.

Do we ever outlive our selfishness? Do we ever cease to be fearful for ourselves?

And yet Mildred was weary of solitude. Arnold was her own, her only brother; and Aunt Milly—well, perhaps it might be pleasant.

'Say yes, Milly—for Betha's sake—for my darling's sake (she was so fond of you), if not for mine. Think how her children miss her! Matters are going wrong already. It is not their fault, poor things; but I am so helpless to decide. I used to leave everything to her, and we are all so utterly lost.

'I could not have asked you if our mother had lingered; but your faithful charge, my poor Milly, is over—your martyrdom, as Betha called it. She was so bright, and loved to have things so bright round her, that your imprisonment in the sickroom quite oppressed her. It was poor Milly, our dear good Milly, to the last. I wish her girls were more like her; but she only laughed at their odd ways, and told me I should live to be proud of them.

'Olive is as left-handed as ever, and Chrissy little better. Richard is mannish, but impracticable, and a little difficult to understand. We should none of us get on at all but for Roy: he has his mother's heart-sunshine and loving smile; but even Roy has his failures.

'We want a woman among us, Milly—a woman with head and hands, and a tolerable stock of patience. Even Heriot is in difficulties, but that will keep till you come—for you will come, will you not, my dear?'

'Come! how could you doubt me, Arnold?' replied Mildred, as she laid down the letter; but 'God help me and them' followed close on the sigh.

'After all, it is a clear call to duty,' she soliloquised. 'It is not my business to decide on my fitness or unfitness, or to measure myself to my niche. We are not promised strength before the time, and no one can tell before he tries whether he be likely to fail. Richard's mannishness, and Olive's left-handed ways, and Chrissy's poorer imitation, shall not daunt me. Arnold wants me. I shall be of use to some one again, and I will go.'

But Mildred, for all her bravery, grew a little pale over her brother's second letter:—'You must come at once, and not wait to summer and winter it, or, as some of our old women say, to bide the bitterment on't. Shall I send Richard to help you about your house business, and to settle your goods and chattels? Let the old furniture go, Milly; it has stood a fair amount of wear and tear, and you are young yet, my dear. Shall I send Dick? He was his mother's right hand. The lad's mannish for his nineteen years.' Mannish again! This Richard began to be formidable. He was a bright well-looking lad of thirteen when Mildred had seen him last. But she remembered his mother's fond descriptions of Cardie's cleverness and goodness. One sentence had particularly struck her at the time. Betha had been comparing her boys, and dwelling on their good points with a mother's partiality. 'As to Roy, he needs no praise of mine; he stands so well in every one's estimation—and in his own, too—that a little fault-finding would do him good. Cardie is different: his diffidence takes the form of pride; no one understands him but I—not even his father. The one speaks out too much, and the other too little; but one of these days he will find out his son's good heart.'

'I wonder if Arnold will recognise me,' thought Mildred, sorrowfully, that night, as she sat by her window, looking out on her little strip of garden, shimmering in the moonlight. 'I feel so old and changed, and have grown into such quiet ways. Are there some women who are never young, I wonder? Am I one of them? Is it not strange,' she continued, musingly, 'that such beautiful lives as Betha's are struck so suddenly out of the records of years, while I am left to take up the incompleted work she discharged so lovingly? Dear Betha! what a noble heart it was! Arnold reverenced as much as he loved her. How vain to think of replacing, even in the faintest degree; one of the sweetest women this earth ever saw: sweet, because her whole life was in exact harmony with her surroundings.' And there rose before Mildred's eyes a faint image that often haunted her—of a face with smiling eyes, and brown hair just touched with gold—and the small firm hand that, laid on unruly lips, could hush coming wrath, and smooth the angry knitting of baby brows.

It was strange, she thought, that neither Olive nor Chrissy were like their mother. Roy's fairness and steady blue eyes were her sole relics—Roy, who was such a pretty little fellow when Mildred had seen him last.

Mildred tried to trace out a puzzled thought in her head before she slept that night. A postscript in Arnold's letter, vaguely worded, but most decidedly mysterious, gave rise to a host of conjectures.

'I have just found out that Heriot's business must be settled long before the end of next month—when you come to us. You know him by name and repute, though not personally. I have given him your address. I think it will be better for you both to talk the matter over, and to give it your full consideration, before you start for the north. Make any arrangements you like about the child. Heriot's a good fellow, and deserves to be helped; he has been everything to us through our trouble.'

What could Arnold mean? Betha's chatty letters—thoroughly womanly in their gossip—had often spoken of Arnold's friend, Dr. Heriot, and of his kindness to their boys. She had described him as a man of great talents, and an undoubted acquisition to their small society. 'Arnold (who was her universal referee) wondered that a man like Dr. Heriot should bury himself in a Westmorland valley. Some one had told them that he had given up a large West End practice. There was some mystery about him; his wife made him miserable. No one knew the rights or the wrongs of it; but they would rather believe any thing than that he was to blame.'

And in another letter she wrote: 'A pleasant evening has just been sadly interrupted. The Bishop was here and one or two others, Dr. Heriot among them; but a telegram summoning him to his wife's deathbed had just reached him.

'Arnold, who stood by him, says he turned as pale as death as he read it; but he only put it into his hand without a word, and left the room. I could not help following him with a word of comfort, remembering how good he was to us when we had nearly lost Chrissy last year; but he looked at me so strangely that the words died on my lips. When death only relieves us of a burden, Mrs. Lambert, we touch on a sorrow too great for any ordinary comfort. You are sorry for me, but pray for her. And wringing my hand, he turned away. She must have been a bad wife to him. He is a good man; I am sure of it.'

How strange that Dr. Heriot should be coming to see her, and on private business, too! It seemed so odd of Arnold to send him; and yet it was pleasant to feel that she was to be consulted and her opinion respected. 'Mildred, who loves to help everybody, must find some way of helping poor Heriot,' had been her brother's concluding words.

Mildred Lambert's house was one of those modest suburban residences lying far back on a broad sunny road bordering on Clapham Common; but on a May afternoon even Laurel Cottage, unpretentious as it was, was not devoid of attractions, with its trimly cut lawn and clump of sweet-scented lilac and yellow drooping laburnum, stretching out long fingers of gold in the sunshine.

Mildred was sitting alone in her little drawing-room, ostensibly sorting her papers, but in reality falling into an occasional reverie, lulled by the sunshine and the silence, when a brisk footstep on the gravel outside the window made her start. Visitors were rare in her secluded life, and, with the exception of the doctor and the clergyman, and perhaps a sympathising neighbour, few ever invaded the privacy of Laurel Cottage; the light, well-assured footstep sounded strange in Mildred's ears, and she listened with inward perturbation to Susan's brief colloquy with the stranger.

'Yes, her mistress was disengaged; would he send in his name and business, or would he walk in?' And the door was flung open a little testily by Susan, who objected to this innovation on their usual afternoon quiet.

'Forgive me, if I am intruding, Miss Lambert, but your brother told me I might call.'

'Dr. Heriot?'

'Yes; he has kept his promise then, and has written to inform you of my intended visit? We have heard so much of each other that I am sure we ought to need no special introduction.' But though Dr. Heriot, as he said this, held out his hand with a frank smile, a grave, penetrating look accompanied his words; he was a man rarely at fault, but for the moment he seemed a little perplexed.

'Yes, I expected you; will you sit down?' replied Mildred, simply. She was not a demonstrative woman, and of late had grown into quiet ways with strangers. Dr. Heriot's tone had slightly discomposed her; instinctively she felt that he failed to recognise in her some given description, and that a brief embarrassment was the result.

Mildred was right. Dr. Heriot was trying to puzzle out some connection between the worn, soft-eyed woman before him, and the fresh girlish face that had so often smiled down on him from the vicarage wall, with shy, demure eyes, and the roses in her belt not brighter than the pure colouring of her bloom. The laughing face had grown sad and quiet—painfully so, Dr. Heriot thought—and faint lines round mouth and brow bore witness to the strain of a wearing anxiety and habitual repression of feeling; the skin of the forehead was too tightly stretched, and the eyes shone too dimly for health; while the thin, colourless cheek, seen in juxtaposition to the black dress, told their own story of youthful vitality sacrificed to the inexorable demand of hypochondria.

But it was a refined, womanly face, and one that could not fail to interest; a kind patient soul looked through the quiet eyes; youth and its attractions had faded, but a noble unconsciousness had replaced it; in talking to her you felt instinctively that the last person of whom Mildred thought was herself. But if Dr. Heriot were disappointed in the estimate he had formed of his friend's sister, Mildred on her side was not the less surprised at his appearance.

She had imagined him a man of imposing aspect—a man of height and inches, with iron-gray hair. The real Dr. Heriot was dark and slight, rather undersized than otherwise, with a dark moustache, and black, closely-cropped hair, which made him look younger than he really was. It was not a handsome face; at first sight there was something stern and forbidding about it, but the lines round the mouth relaxed pleasantly when he smiled, and the eyes had a clear, straightforward look; while about the whole man there was a certain indefinable air of good-breeding, as of one long accustomed to hold his own amongst men who were socially his superiors.

Mildred had taken her measurement of Dr. Heriot in her own quiet way long before she had exhausted her feminine budget of conversation: the fineness of the weather, the long dusty journey, his need of refreshment, and inquiries after her brother's health and spirits.

'He is not a man to be embarrassed, but his business baffles him,' she thought to herself; 'he is ill at ease, and unhappy. I must try and meet him half-way.' And accordingly Mildred began in her straightforward manner.

'It is a long way to come up on business, Dr. Heriot. Arnold told me you had difficulties, though he did not explain their nature. Strange to say, he spoke as though I could be of some assistance to you!'

'I have no right to burden you,' he returned, somewhat incoherently; 'you look little fit now to cope with such responsibilities as must fall to your share. Would not rest and change be beneficial before entering on new work?'

'I am not talking of myself,' returned Mildred, with a faint smile, though her colour rose at the unmistakable tone of sympathy in Dr. Heriot's voice. 'My time for rest will come presently. Is it true, Dr. Heriot, that I can be of any service to you?'

'You shall judge,' was the answer. 'I will meet your kindness with perfect frankness. My business in London at the present moment concerns a little girl—a distant relative of my poor wife's—who has lost her only remaining parent. Her father and I were friends in our student days; and in a weak moment I accepted a presumptive guardianship over the child. I thought Philip Ellison was as likely as not to outlive me, and as he had some money left him there seemed very little risk about the whole business.'

Mildred gave him a glance full of intelligence. It was clear to her now wherein Dr. Heriot's difficulty lay. He was still too young a man to have the sole guardianship of a motherless orphan.

'Philip was but a few years older than myself, and, as he explained to me, it was only a purely business arrangement, and that in case of his death he wished to have a disinterested person to look after his daughter's interest. Things were different with me then, and I had no scruples in acceding to his wish. But Philip Ellison was a bad manager, and on an evil day was persuaded to invest his money in some rotten company—heaven knows what!—and as a natural consequence lost every penny. Since then I have heard little about him. He was an artist, but not a rising one; he travelled a great deal in France and Germany, and now and then he would send over pictures to be sold, but I am afraid he made out only a scanty subsistence for himself and his little daughter. A month ago I received news of his death, and as she has not a near relation living, except some cousins in Australia, I find I have the sole charge of a girl of fourteen; and I think you will confess, Miss Lambert, that the position has its difficulties. What in the world'—here Dr. Heriot's face grew a little comical—'am I to do with a raw school-girl of fourteen?'

'What does Arnold suggest?' asked Mildred, quietly. In her own mind she was perfectly aware what would be her brother's first generous thought.

'It was my intention to put the child at some good English school, and have her trained as a governess; but it is a dreary prospect for her, poor little soul, and somehow I feel as though I ought to do better for Philip Ellison's daughter. He was one of the proudest men that ever lived, and was so wrapped up in his child.'

'But my brother has negatived that, and proposed another plan,' interrupted Mildred, softly. She knew her brother well.

'He was generous enough to propose that she should go at once to the vicarage until some better arrangement could be made. He assured me that there was ample room for her, and that she could share Olive's and Chrissy's lessons; but he begged me to refer it to you, as he felt he had no right to make such an addition to the family circle without your full consent.'

'Arnold is very good, but he must have known that I could have no objection to offer to any plan of which he approves. He is so kind-hearted, that one could not bear to damp his enthusiasm.'

'Yes, but think a moment before you decide,' returned Dr Heriot, earnestly. 'It is quite true that I was bound to your brother and his wife by no ordinary ties of friendship, and that they would have done anything for me, but this ought not to be allowed to influence you. If I accept Mr. Lambert's offer, at least for the present, I shall be adding to your work, increasing your responsibilities. Olive and Chrissy will tax your forbearance sufficiently without my bringing this poor little waif of humanity upon your kindness; and you look so far from strong,' he continued, with a quick change of tone.

'I am quite ready for my work,' returned Mildred, firmly; 'looks do not always speak the truth, Dr. Heriot. Please let me have the charge of your little ward; she will not be a greater stranger to me than Olive and Chrissy are. Why, Chrissy was only nine when I saw her last. Ah,' continued Mildred, folding her hands, and speaking almost to herself, 'if you knew what it will be to me to see myself surrounded by young faces, to be allowed to love them, and to try to win their love in return—to feel I am doing real work in God's world, with a real trust and talent given to me—ah! you must let me help you in this, Dr. Heriot; you were so good to Betha, and it will make Arnold happy.' And Mildred stretched out her hand to him with a new impulse, so unlike the composed manner in which she had hitherto spoken, that Dr. Heriot, surprised and touched, could find no response but 'God bless you for this, Miss Lambert!'

Mildred's gentle primness was thawing visibly under Dr. Heriot's pleasant manners. By and by, as she presided at the sunny little tea-table, and pressed welcome refreshment on her weary guest, she heard more about this strange early friendship of his, and shared his surmises as to the probable education and character of his ward.

'She must be a regular Bohemian by this time,' he observed. 'From what I can hear they were never long in one place. It must be a strange training for a girl, living in artists' studios, and being the sole companion of a silent, taciturn man such as Philip was.'

'She will hardly have the characteristics of other girls,' observed Mildred.

'She cannot possibly be more out of the common than Olive. Olive has all sorts of absurd notions in her head. It is odd Mrs. Lambert's training should have failed so signally in her girls. I am afraid your preciseness will be sometimes offended,' he continued, looking round the room, which, with all its homeliness, had the little finishes that a woman's hand always gives. 'Olive might have arranged those flowers, but she would have forgotten to water them, or to exclude their presence when dead.'

'You are a nice observer,' returned Mildred, smiling. 'Do not make me afraid of my duties beforehand, as though I do not exactly know how all the rooms look! Betha's pretty drawing-room trampled by dirty boots, Arnold's study a hopeless litter of books, not a corner of the writing-table clear. Chrissy used them as bricks,' she continued, laughing. 'Roy and she had a mighty Tower of Babel one day. You should have seen Arnold's look when he found out that The Seven Lamps of Architecture laid the foundation; but Betha only laughed, and told him it served him right.'

'But she kept them in order, though. In her quiet way she was an excellent disciplinarian. Well, Miss Lambert, I am trespassing overmuch on your goodness. To-morrow I am to make my ward's acquaintance—one of the clique has brought her over from Dieppe—and I am to receive her from his hands. Would it be troubling you too much if I ask you to accompany me?—the poor child will feel so forlorn with only men round her.'

'I will go with you and bring her home. No, please, do not thank me, Dr. Heriot. If you knew how lonely I am here——' and for the first time Mildred's eyes filled with tears.

CHAPTER II

Table of Contents

'IF YOU PLEASE, MAY I BRING RAG AND TATTERS?'

Table of Contents

'O, my Father's hand,

Stroke heavily, heavily the poor hair down,

Draw, press the child's head closer to thy knee—

I'm still too young, too young, to sit alone.'—

Aurora Leigh.

So this was Polly.

It was only a shabby studio, where poverty and art fought a hand-to-hand struggle for the bare maintenance, but among the after scenes of her busy life Mildred never forgot the place where she first saw Dr. Heriot's ward; it lingered in her memory, a fair, haunting picture as of something indescribably sweet and sad.

Its few accessories were so suggestive of a truer taste made impossible by paucity of success; an unfinished painting all dim grays and pallid, watery blues; a Cain fleeing out of a blurred outline of clouds; fragmentary snatches of colour warming up pitiless details; rickety chairs and a broken-down table; a breadth of faded tapestry; a jar of jonquils, the form pure Tuscan, the material rough earthenware, a plaster Venus, mutilated but grand, shining out from the dull red background of a torn curtain. A great unfurnished room, full of yellow light and warm sunshine, and, standing motionless in a ladder of motes and beams, with brown eyes drinking in the twinkling glory like a young eagle, was a girl in a shabby black dress, with thin girlish arms clasped across her breast. For a moment Dr. Heriot paused, and he and Mildred exchanged glances; the young figure in its forlornness came to them like a mournful revelation; the immobility was superb, the youthful languor pitiful. As Dr. Heriot touched her, she turned on them eyes full of some lost dream, and a large tear that had been gathering unconsciously brimmed over and splashed down on his hand.

'My child, have we startled you? Mr. Fabian told us to come up.' For a moment she looked bewildered. Her thoughts had evidently travelled a long way, but with consciousness came a look of relief and pleasure.

'Oh, I knew you would come—papa told me so. Oh, why have you been so long?—it is three months almost since papa died. Oh, poor papa! poor papa!' and the flush of joy died out of her face as, clasping her small nervous hands round Dr. Heriot's arm, she laid her face down on them and burst into a passion of tears.

'I sent for you directly I heard; they kept me in ignorance—have they not told you so? Poor child, how unkind you must have thought me!' and a grieved look came over Dr. Heriot's face as he gently stroked the closely-cropped head, that felt like the dark, soft plumage of some bird.

'No, I never thought you that,' she sobbed. 'I was only so lonely and tired of waiting; and then I got ill, and Mr. Fabian was good to me, and so were the others. But papa had left me to you, and I wanted you to fetch me. You have come to take me home, have you not?'

She looked up in his face pleadingly as she said this; she spoke in a voice sweet, but slightly foreign, but with a certain high-bred accent, and there was something unique in her whole appearance that struck her guardian with surprise. The figure was slight and undeveloped, with the irregularity of fourteen; but the ordinary awkwardness of girlhood was replaced by dignity, almost grace, of movement. She was dark-complexioned, but her face was a perfect oval, and the slight down on the upper lip gave a characteristic but not unpleasing expression to the mouth, which was firm but flexible; the hair had evidently been cut off in recent illness, for it was tucked smoothly behind the ears, and was perfectly short behind, which would have given her a boyish look but for the extreme delicacy of the whole contour.

'You have come to take me home, have you not?' she repeated anxiously.

'This lady has,' he replied, with a look at Mildred, who had stood modestly in the background. 'I wish I had a home to offer you, my dear; but my wife is dead, and——'

'Then you will want me all the more,' she returned eagerly. 'Papa and I have so often talked about you; he told me how good you were, and how unhappy.'

'Hush, Mary,' laying his hand lightly over her lips; but Mildred could see his colour changed painfully. But she interrupted him a little petulantly—

'Nobody calls me Mary, and it sounds so cold and strange.'

'What then, my dear?'

'Why, Polly, of course!' opening her brown eyes widely; 'I have always been Polly—always.'

'It shall be as you will, my child.'

'How gently you speak! Are you ever irritable, like papa, I wonder?—he used to be so ill and silent, and then, when we tried to rouse him, he could not bear it. Who is this lady, and why do you say you have no home for me?'

'She means to be our good friend, Polly—there, will that do? But you are such a dignified young lady, I should never have ventured to call you that unasked.'

'Why not?' she repeated, darting at him a clear, straightforward glance. Evidently his reticence ruffled her; but Dr. Heriot skilfully evaded the brief awkwardness.

'This lady is Miss Lambert, and she is the sister of one of my best friends; she is going to take charge of his girls and boys, who have lost their mother, and she has kindly offered to take charge of you too.'

'She is very good,' returned Polly, coldly; 'very, very good, I mean,' as though she had repented of a slight hauteur. 'But I have never had anything to do with children. Papa and I were always alone, and I would much rather live with you; you have no idea what a housekeeper I shall make you. I can dress salad and cook omelettes, and Nanette taught me how to make potage. I used to take a large basket myself to the market when we lived at Dresden, when Nanette was so bad with rheumatism.'

'What an astonishing Polly!'

'Ah! you are laughing at me,' drawing herself up proudly, and turning away so that he should not see the tears in her eyes.

'My dear Polly, is that a crime?'

'It is when people are in earnest I have said nothing that deserves laughing at—have I, Miss Lambert?' with a sweet, candid glance that won Mildred's heart.

'No, indeed; I was wishing that my nieces were like you.'

'I did not mean that—I was not asking for praise,' stammered Polly, turning a vivid scarlet. 'I only wanted my guardian to know that I should not be useless to him. I can do much more than that I can mend and darn better than Annette, who was three years older. You are smiling still.'

'If I smile, it is only with pleasure to know my poor friend had such a good daughter. Listen to me, Polly—how old are you?'

'Fourteen last February.'

'What a youthful Polly!—too young, I fear, to comprehend the position. And then with such Bohemian surroundings—that half-crazed painter, Fabian,' he muttered, 'and a purblind fiddler and his wife. My poor child,' he continued, laying his hand on her head lightly, and speaking as though moved in spite of himself, 'as long as you want a friend, you will never find a truer one than John Heriot. I will be your guardian, adopted father, what you will; but,' with a firmness of voice that struck the girl in spite of herself, 'I cannot have you to live with me, Polly.'

'Why not?' she asked, pleadingly.

'Because it would be placing us both in a false position; because I could not incur such a responsibility; because no one is so fit to take charge of a young girl as a good motherly woman, such as you will find, in Miss Lambert.' And as the girl looked at him bewildered and disappointed, he continued kindly, 'You must forget this pleasant dream, Polly; perhaps some day, when your guardian is gray-haired, it may come to pass; but I shall often think how good my adopted daughter meant to be to me.'

'Shall I never see you then?' asked Polly mournfully.

If these were English ways, the girl thought, what a cold, heartless place it must be! Had not Mr. Fabian promised to adopt her if the English guardian should not be forthcoming? Even Herr Schreiber had offered to keep her out of his poor salary, when her father's death had left her dependent on the little community of struggling artists and musicians. Polly was having her first lesson in the troublesome convenances of life, and to the affectionate, ardent girl it was singularly unpalatable.

'I am afraid you will see me every day,' replied her guardian, with much gravity. 'I shall not be many yards off—just round the corner, and across the market-place. No, no, Miss Polly; you will not get rid of me so easily. I mean to direct your studies, haunt your play-time, and be the cross old Mentor, as Olive calls me.'

'Oh, I am so glad!' returned the girl earnestly, and with a sparkle of pleasure in her eyes. 'I like you so much already that I could not bear you to do wrong.'

It was Heriot's turn to look puzzled.

'Would it not be wrong,' she returned, answering the look, 'when papa trusted me to you, and told me on his deathbed that you would be my second father, if you were to send me right away from you, and take no notice of me at all!'

'I should hardly do that in any case,' returned her guardian, seriously. 'What a downright, unconventional little soul you are, Polly! You may set your mind at rest; your father's trust shall be redeemed, his child shall never be neglected by me. But come—you have not made Miss Lambert's acquaintance. I hope you mean to tell her next you like her.'

'She looks good, but sad—are you sad?' touching Mildred's sleeve timidly.

'A little. I have been in trouble, like you, and have lost my mother,' replied Milly, simply; but she was not prepared for the suddenness with which the girl threw her arms round her neck and kissed her.

'I might have thought—your black dress and pale face,' she murmured remorsefully. 'Every one is sad, every one is in trouble—myself, my guardian, and you.'

'But you are the youngest—it falls heaviest on you.'

'What am I to call you? I don't like Miss Lambert, it sounds stiff,' with a little shrug and movement of the hands, rather graceful than otherwise.

'I shall be Aunt Milly to the others, why not to you?' returned Mildred, smiling.

'Ah, that sounds nice. Papa had a sister, only she died; I used to call her Aunt Amy. Aunt Milly! ah, I can say that easily; it makes me feel at home, somehow. Am I to come home with you to-day, Aunt Milly?'

'Yes, my dear.' Milly absolutely blushed with pleasure at hearing herself so addressed. 'I am not going to my new home for three weeks, but I shall be glad of your company, if you will come and help me.'

'Poor Mr. Fabian will be sorry, but he is expecting to lose me. There is one thing more I must ask, Aunt Milly.'

'A dozen if you will, dear.'

'Oh, but this is a great thing. Oh, please, dear Aunt Milly, may I bring Rag and Tatters?' And as Mildred looked too astonished for reply, she continued, hurriedly: 'Tatters never left papa for an instant, he was licking his hand when he died; and Rag is such a dear old thing. I could not be happy anywhere without my pets.' And without waiting for an answer she left the room; and the next instant the light, springy tread was heard in company with a joyous scuffling and barking; then a large shaggy terrier burst into the room, and Polly followed with a great tortoise-shell cat in her arms.

'Isn't Rag handsome, except for this?' touching the animal where a scrap of fur had been rudely mauled off, and presented a bald appearance; 'he has lost the sight of one eye too. Veteran Rag, we used to call him. He is so fond of me, and follows me like a dog; he used to go out with me in Dresden, only the dogs hunted him.'

'You may bring your pets, Polly,' was Mildred's indulgent answer; 'I think I can answer for my brother's goodwill.'

Dr. Heriot shook his head at her laughingly.

'I am afraid you are no rigid disciplinarian, Miss Lambert; but it is Love me, love my dog with Polly, I expect. Now, my child, you must get ready for the flitting, while I go in search of Mr. Fabian. From the cloud of tobacco-smoke that met us on entering, I fancy he is on the next story.'

'He is with the Rogers, I expect. His model disappointed him, and he is not working to-day. If you will wait a moment, I will fetch him.'

'What an original character!' observed Dr. Heriot as the door closed.

'A loveable one,' was Mildred's rejoinder. She was interested and roused by the new phase of life presented to her to-day. She looked on amused, yet touched, when Polly returned, leading by the hand her pseudo-guardian—a tall old man, with fiery eyes and scanty gray hair falling down his neck, in a patched dressing-gown that had once been a gorgeous Turkey-red. It was the first time that the simple woman had gazed on genius down-at-heel, and faring on the dry crust of unrequited self-respect.

'There is my Cain, sir; a new conception—unfinished, if you will—but you may trace the idea I am feebly striving to carry out. Sometimes I fancy it will be my last bit of work. Look at that dimly-traced figure beside the murderer—that is his good angel, who is to accompany the branded one in his life-long exile. I always believed in Cain's repentance—see the remorse in his eyes. I caught that expression on a Spanish sailor's face when he had stabbed his mate in a drunken brawl. I saw my Cain then.'

Needy genius could be garrulous, as Mildred found. The old man warmed at Polly's open-eyed admiration and Mildred's softly-uttered praise; appreciation was to him what meat and drink would be to more material natures. He looked almost majestic as he stood before them, in his ragged dressing-gown, descanting on the merits of his Tobit, that had sold for an old song. 'A Neapolitan fisher-boy had sat for my angel; every one paints angels with yellow hair and womanish faces, but I am not one of those that must follow the beaten track—I formed my angel on the loftiest ideal of Italian beauty, and got sneered at for my pains. One ought to coin a new proverb nowadays, Dr. Heriot—Originality moves contempt. People said the subject was not a taking one; Tobit was too much like an old clothes man, or a veritable descendant of Moses and Sons. There was no end to the quips and jeers; even our set had a notion it would not do, and I sold it to a dealer at a sum that would hardly cover a month's rent,' finished the old man, with a mixture of pathos and dignity.

'After all, public taste is a sort of lottery,' observed Dr. Heriot; 'true genius is not always requited in this world, if it offends the tender prejudices of preconceived ideas.'

'The worship of the golden image fills up too large a space in the market-place,' replied Mr. Fabian, solemnly, 'while the blare of instruments covers the fetish-adoration of its votaries. The world is an eating and drinking and money-getting world, and art, cramped and stifled, goes to the wall.'

'Nay, nay; I have not so bad an opinion of my generation as all that,' interposed Dr. Heriot, smiling. 'I have great faith in the underlying goodness of mankind. One has to break through a very stiff outer-crust, I grant you; but there are soft places to be found in most natures.' And, as the other shook his head—'Want of success has made you a little down-hearted on the subject of our human charities, Mr. Fabian; but there is plenty of reverence and art-worship in the world still. I predict a turn of the wheel in your case yet. Cain may still glower down on us from the walls of the Royal Academy.'

'I hope so, before the hand has lost its cunning. But I am too egotistical. And so you are going to take Polly from me—from Dad Fabian, ay?'—looking at the young girl fondly.

'Indeed, Mr. Fabian, I must thank you for your goodness to my ward. Poor child! she would have fared badly without it. Polly, you must ask Miss Lambert to bring you to see this kind friend again.'

'Nay, nay; this is a poor place for ladies to visit,' replied the other, hastily, as he brushed away the fragment of a piece of snuff with a trembling hand; but he looked gratified, notwithstanding. 'Polly has been a good girl—a very good girl—and weathered gallantly through a very ticklish illness, though some of us thought she would never reach England alive.'

'Were you so ill, Polly?' inquired her guardian anxiously.

'Dad Fabian says so; and he ought to know, for he and Mrs. Rogers nursed me. Oh, he was so good to me,' continued Polly, clinging to him. 'He used to sit up with me part of the night and tell me stories when I got better, and go without his dinner sometimes to buy me fruit. Mrs. Rogers was good-natured, too; but she was noisy. I like Dad Fabian's nursing best.'

'You see she fretted for her father,' interposed the artist. 'Polly's one of the right sort—never gives way while there is work to be done; and so the strain broke her down. She has lost most of her pretty hair. Ellison used to be so proud of her curls; but it suits her, somehow. But you must not keep your new friends waiting, my child. There, God bless you! We shall be seeing you back again here one of these days, I dare say.'

Mildred felt as though her new life had begun from the moment the young stranger crossed her threshold. Polly bade her guardian good-bye the next day with unfeigned regret. 'I shall always feel I belong to him, though he cannot have me to live with him,' she said, as she followed Mildred into the house. 'Papa told me to love him, and I will. He is different, somehow, from what I expected,' she continued. 'I thought he would be gray-haired, like papa. He looks younger, and is not tall. Papa was such a grand-looking man, and so handsome; but he has kind eyes—has he not, Aunt Milly?—and speaks so gently.'

Mildred was quite ready to pronounce an eulogium on Dr. Heriot. She had already formed a high estimate of her brother's friend; his ready courtesy and highly-bred manners had given her a pleasing impression, while his gentleness to his ward, and a certain lofty tone of mind in his conversation, proved him a man of good heart and of undoubted ability. There was a latent humour at times discernible, and a certain caustic wit, which, tinged as it was with melancholy, was highly attractive. She felt that a man who had contrived to satisfy Betha's somewhat fastidious taste could not fail to be above the ordinary standard, and, though she did not quite echo Polly's enthusiasm, she was able to respond sympathetically to the girl's louder praise.

Before many days were over Polly had transferred a large portion of loving allegiance to Mildred herself. Women—that is, ladies—had not been very plentiful in her small circle. One or two of the artists' wives had been kind to her; but Polly, who was an aristocrat by nature, had rather rebelled against their want of refinement, and discovered flaws which showed that, young as she was, she had plenty of discernment.

'Mrs. Rogers was noisy, and showed all her teeth when she laughed, and tramped as she walked—in this way;' and Polly brought a very slender foot to prove the argument. And Mrs. Hornby? Oh, she did not care for Mrs. Hornby much—'she thought of nothing but smart dresses, and dining at the restaurant, and she used such funny words—that men use, you know. Papa never cared for me to be with her much; but he liked Mrs. Rogers, though she fidgeted him dreadfully.'

Mildred listened, amused and interested, to the girl's prattle. The young creature on the stool at her feet was conversant with a life of which she knew nothing, except from books. Polly would chatter for hours together of picture-galleries and museums, and little feasts set out in illuminated gardens, and of great lonely churches with swinging lamps, and little tawdry shrines. Monks and nuns came familiarly into her reminiscences. She had had gateau and cherries in a convent-garden once, and had swung among apple-blossoms in an orchard belonging to one.

'I used to think I should like to be a nun once,' prattled Polly, 'and wear a great white flapping cap, as they did in Belgium. Sœur Marie used to be so kind. I shall never forget that long, straight lime-walk, where the girls used to take their recreation, or sit under the cherry-trees with their lace-work, while Sœur Marie read the lives of the saints. Do you like reading the lives of the saints, Aunt Milly? I don't. They are glorious, of course; but it pains me to know how uncomfortable they made themselves.'

'I do not think I have ever read any, Polly.'

'Have you not?'—with a surprised arching of the brows. 'Sœur Marie thought them the finest books in the world. She used to tell me stories of many of them; and her face would flush and her eyes grow so bright, I used to think she was a saint herself.'

Mildred rarely interrupted the girl's narratives; but little bits haunted her now and then, and lingered in her memory with tender persistence. What sober prose her life seemed in contrast to that of this fourteen-years' old girl! How bare and empty seemed her niche compared to Polly's series of pictures! How clearly Mildred could see it all! The wandering artist-life, in search of the beautiful, poverty oppressing the mind less sadly when refreshed by novel scenes of interest; the grave, taciturn Philip Ellison, banishing himself and his pride in a self-chosen exile, and training his motherless child to the same exclusiveness.

The few humble friends, grouped under the same roof, and sharing the same obscurity; stretching out the right hand of fellowship, which was grasped, not cordially, but with a certain protest, the little room which Polly described so graphically being a less favourite resort than the one where Dad Fabian was painting his Tobit.

'It was only after papa got so ill that Mrs. Rogers would bring up her work and sit with us. Papa did not like it much; but he was so heavy that I could not lift him alone, and, noisy as she was, she knew how to cheer him up. Dad suited papa best: they used to talk so beautifully together. You have no idea how Dad can talk, and how clever he is. Papa used to say he was one of nature's gentlemen. His father was only a working man, you know;' and Polly drew herself up with a gesture Mildred had noticed before, and which was to draw upon her later the soubriquet of 'the princess.'

'I think none the less of him for that,' returned Mildred, with gentle reproof.

'You are not like papa then,' observed Polly, with one of her pretty gestures of dissent. 'It fretted him so being with people not nice in their ways. The others would call him milord, and laugh at his grand manners; but all the same they were afraid of him; every one feared him but I; and I only loved him,' finished Polly, with one of her girlish outbursts of emotion, which could only be soothed by extra petting on Mildred's part.

Mildred's soft heart was full of compassion for the lonely girl. Polly, who cried herself to sleep every night for the longing for her lost father, often woke to find Mildred sitting beside her bed watching her.

'You were sleeping so restlessly, I thought I would look in on you,' was all she said; but her motherly kiss spoke volumes.

'How good you are to me, Aunt Milly,' Polly would say to her sometimes. 'I am getting to love you more every day; and then your voice is so soft, and you have such nice ways. I think I shall be happy living with you, and seeing my guardian every day; but we don't want Olive and Chrissy, do we?'—for Mildred had described the vicarage and its inhabitants—'It will feel as though we were in a beehive after this quiet little nest,' as she observed once. Mildred smiled, as she always did over Polly's quaint speeches, which were ripe at times with an old-fashioned wisdom, gathered from the stored garner of age. She would ponder over them sometimes in her slow way, when the girl was sleeping her wet-eyed