Kitabı oku: «The Shadow of Ashlydyat», sayfa 36

Maria moistened her dry lips, and swallowed down the lump in her throat ere she could speak. “Would it be safe for him to return here?”

“If he does return, it must be at the risk of consequences.”

“Thomas!—Thomas!” she gasped, the thought occurring to her with a sort of shock, “is he in hiding, do you think?”

“I think it likely that he is. He gave you no address, it seems: neither has he sent one to me.”

She drew back to the wall by the mantel-piece, and leaned against it. Every hour seemed to bring forth worse and worse. Thomas gazed with compassion on the haggardness that was seating itself on her sweet face. She was less able to cope with this misery than he. He laid his hand upon her shoulder, speaking in low tones.

“It is a fiery trial for both of us, Maria: one hard to encounter. God alone can help us to bear it. Be very sure that He will help!”

He went out, taking his way on foot to Ashlydyat. There was greater grief there, if possible, than at the Bank. The news touching the bonds, unhappily afloat in Prior’s Ash, had penetrated an hour ago to Ashlydyat.

Scarcely had he entered the presence of his sisters, when he was told that Lady Sarah Grame wanted him.

Thomas Godolphin proceeded to the room where she had been shown. She was not sitting, but pacing it to and fro; and she turned sharply round and met him as he entered, her face flushed with excitement.

“You were once to have been my son-in-law,” she said abruptly.

Thomas, astonished at the address, invited her to a seat, but made no immediate reply. She would not take the chair.

“I cannot sit,” she said. “Mr. Godolphin, you were to have been my son-in-law: you would have been so now had Ethel lived. Do you consider Ethel to be any link between us still?”

He was quite at a loss what to answer. He did not understand what she meant. Lady Sarah continued.

“If you do; if you retain any fond remembrance of Ethel; you will prove it now. I had seven hundred pounds in your Bank. I have been scraping and saving out of my poor yearly income nearly ever since Ethel went; and I had placed it there. Can you deny it?”

“Dear Lady Sarah, what is the matter?” he asked; for her excitement was something frightful. “I know you had it there. Why should I deny it?”

“Oh, that’s right. People have been saying the Bank was going to repudiate all claims. I want you to give it me. Now: privately.”

“It is impossible for me to do so, Lady Sarah–”

“I cannot lose it; I have been saving it up for my poor child,” she interrupted, in a most excited tone. “She will not have much when I am dead. Would you be so cruel as to rob the widow and the orphan?”

“Not willingly. Never willingly,” he answered in his pain. “I had thought, Lady Sarah, that though all the world misjudged me, you would not.”

“Could you not, you who were to have married Ethel, have given me a private hint of it when you found the Bank was going wrong? Others may afford to lose their money, but I cannot.”

“I did not know it was going wrong,” he said. “The blow has fallen upon me as unexpectedly as it has upon others.”

Lady Sarah Grame, giving vent to one of the fits of passionate excitement to which she had all her life been subject, suddenly flung herself upon her knees before Thomas Godolphin. She implored him to return the money, to avert “ruin” from Sarah Anne; she reproached him with selfishness, with dishonesty, all in a breath. Can you imagine what it was for Thomas Godolphin to meet this? Upright, gifted with lively conscientiousness, tenderly considerate in rendering strict justice to others, as he had been all his life, these unmerited reproaches were as iron entering his soul.

Which was the more to be pitied, himself or Maria? Thomas had called the calamity by its right name—a fiery trial. It was indeed such: to him and to her. You, who read, cannot picture it. How he got rid of Lady Sarah, he could scarcely tell: he believed it was by her passion spending itself out. She was completely beside herself that night, almost as one who verges on insanity, and Thomas found a moment to ask himself whether that uncontrolled woman could be the mother of gentle Ethel. Her loud voice and its reproaches penetrated to the household—an additional drop of bitterness in the cup of the master of Ashlydyat.

But we must go back to Maria, for it is with her this evening that we have most to do. Between seven and eight o’clock Miss Meta arrived, attended by Charlotte Pain. Meta was in the height of glee. She was laden with toys and sweetmeats; she carried a doll as big as herself: she had been out in the carriage; she had had a ride on Mrs. Pain’s brown horse, held on by that lady; she had swung “above the tops of the trees;” and, more than all, a message had come from the keeper of the dogs in the pit-hole, to say that they were never, never coming out again.

Charlotte had been generously kind to the child; that was evident; and Maria thanked her with her eyes and heart. As to saying much in words, that was beyond Maria to-night.

“Where’s Margery?” asked Meta, in a hurry to show off her treasures.

Margery had not returned. And there was no other train now from the direction in which she had gone. It was supposed that she had missed it, and would be home in the morning. Meta drew a long face; she wanted Margery to admire the doll.

“You can go and show it to Harriet, dear,” said Maria. “She is in the nursery.” And Meta flew away, with the doll and as many other encumbrances as she could carry.

“Have those bankruptcy men been here?” asked Charlotte, glancing round the room.

“No. I have seen nothing of them.”

“Well now, there’s time yet, and do for goodness’ sake let me save some few trifles for you; and don’t fret yourself into fiddle-strings,” heartily returned Charlotte. “I am quite sure you must have some treasures that it would be grief to part with. I have been thinking all day long how foolishly scrupulous you are.”

Maria was silent for a minute. “They look into everything, you say?” she asked.

“Look into everything!” echoed Charlotte. “I should think they do! That would be little. They take everything.”

Maria left the room and came back with a parcel in her hand. It was a very small trunk—dolls’ trunks they are sometimes called—covered with red morocco leather, with a miniature lock.

“I would save this,” she said in a whisper, “if you would be so kind as to take care of it for me. I should not like them to look into it. It cannot be any fraud,” she added, in a sort of apology for what she was doing. “The things inside would not sell for sixpence, so I do not think even Mr. Godolphin would be angry with me.”

Charlotte nodded, took up her dress, and contrived to thrust the trunk into a huge pocket under her crinoline. There was another on the other side. “I put them on on purpose,” she said, alluding to the pockets. “I thought you might think better of it by this evening. But this is nothing, Mrs. George Godolphin. You may as well give me something else. They’ll be in to-morrow morning for certain.”

Maria replied that she had nothing else to give, and Charlotte rose, saying she should come or send for Meta again on the morrow. As she went out, and proceeded up Crosse Street on her way home, she tossed her head with a laugh.

“I thought she’d come to! As if she wouldn’t like to save her jewels, as other people do! She’s only rather more sly over it—saying what she has given me would not fetch sixpence! You may tell that to the geese, Mrs. George Godolphin! I should like to see what’s inside. I think I will.”

And Charlotte put her wish into action. Upon reaching Lady Godolphin’s Folly, she flung off her bonnet and mantle, gathered together all the small keys in the house, and had little difficulty in opening the simple lock. The contents were exposed to view. A lock of hair of each of her children who had died, wrapped in separate pieces of paper, with the age of the child and the date of its death written respectively outside. A golden lock of Meta’s; a fair curl of George’s; half a dozen of his letters to her, written in the short time that intervened between their engagement and their marriage, and a sort of memorandum of their engagement. “I was this day engaged to George Godolphin. I pray God to render me worthy of him! to be to him a loving and dutiful wife.”

Charlotte’s eyes opened to their utmost width, but there was nothing else to see; nothing except the printed paper with which the trunk was lined. “Is she a fool, that Maria Godolphin?” ejaculated Charlotte. Certainly that was not the class of things Mrs. Pain would have saved from bankruptcy. And she solaced her feelings by reading Mr. George’s love-letters.

No, Maria was not a fool. Better that she had come under that denomination just now, for she would have felt her position less keenly. Charlotte perhaps might have found it difficult to believe that Maria Godolphin was one of those who are sensitively intellectual, to a degree that Mistress Charlotte herself could form little notion of.

It is upon these highly-endowed natures that sorrow tells. And the sorrow must be borne in silence. In the midst of her great misery, so great as to be almost irrepressible, Maria contrived to maintain a calm exterior to the world, even to Charlotte and her outspoken sympathy. The first tears that had been wrung from her she shed that night over Meta. When the child came to her for her good-night kiss, and to say her prayers, Maria was utterly unhinged. She clasped the little thing to her heart and burst into a storm of sobs.

Meta was frightened.

Mamma! mamma! What was the matter with mamma?

Maria was unable to answer. The sobs were choking her. Was the child’s inheritance to be that of shame? Maria had grieved bitterly when her other children died: she was now feeling that it might have been a mercy had this dear one also been taken. She covered the little face with kisses as she held it against her beating heart. Presently she grew calm enough to speak.

“Mamma’s not well this evening, darling.”

Once more, as on the previous nights, Maria had to drag herself up to her weary bed. As she fell upon her knees by the bedside, she seemed to pray almost against faith and hope. “Father! all things are possible to Thee. Be with me in Thy mercy this night, and help me to pass through it!”

She saw not how she could pass through it. “Oh! when will the night be gone?” broke incessantly from her bruised heart. Bitterly cold, as before, was she; a chilly, trembling sensation was in every limb; but her head and brain seemed burning, her lips were dry, and that painful nervous affection, the result of excessive anguish, was attacking her throat. Maria had never yet experienced that, and thought she was about to be visited by some strange malady. It was a dreadful night of pain, of apprehension, of cold; inwardly and outwardly she trembled as she lay through it. One terrible word kept beating its sound on the room’s stillness—transportation. Was her husband in danger of it? Just before daylight she dropped asleep, and for half an hour slept heavily; but with the full dawn of day she was awake again. Not for the first minute was she conscious of reality; but, the next, the full tide of recollection had burst upon her. With a low cry of despair, she leaped from her bed, and began pacing the carpet, all but unable to support the surging waves of mental anguish which rose up one by one and threatened to overmaster her reason. Insanity, had it come on, might have been then more of a relief than a calamity to Maria Godolphin.

“How shall I live through the day? how shall I live through the day?” were the words that broke from her lips. And she fell down by the bedside, and lifted her hands and her heart on high, and wailed out a cry to God to help her to get through it. Of her own strength, she truly believed that she could not.

She would certainly have need of some help, if she were to bear it patiently. At seven o’clock, a peal of muffled bells burst over the town, deafening her ears. Some mauvais sujets, discontented sufferers, had gone to the belfry of St. Mark’s Church, and set them ringing for the calamity which had overtaken Prior’s Ash, in the stoppage of the House of Godolphin.

CHAPTER XXIII.
“AS FINE AS A QUEEN!”

“Is Mrs. George Godolphin within?”

The inquiry came from Grace Akeman. She put it in a sharp, angry tone, something like the sharp, angry peal she had just rung at the hall-bell. Pierce answered in the affirmative, and showed her in.

The house seemed gloomy and still, as one in a state of bankruptcy does seem. Mrs. Akeman thought so as she crossed the hall. The days had gone on to the Thursday, the bankruptcy had been declared, and those pleasant visitors, foretold by Charlotte Pain, had entered on their duties at the Bank and at Ashlydyat. Fearfully ill looked Maria: dark circles had formed under her eyes, her face had lost its bloom, and an expression as of some ever-present dread had seated itself upon her features. When Pierce opened the door to usher in her sister, she started palpably.

Things, with regard to George Godolphin, remained as they were. He had not made his appearance at Prior’s Ash, and Thomas did not know where to write to him. Maria did. She had heard from him on the Tuesday morning. His letter was written apparently in the gayest of spirits. The contrast that was presented between his state of mind (if the tone of the letter might be trusted) and Maria’s was something marvellous. A curiosity in metaphysics, as pertaining to the spiritual organization of humanity. He sent gay messages to Meta, he sent teasing ones to Margery, he never so much as hinted to Maria that he had a knowledge of anything being wrong. He should soon be home, he said; but meanwhile Maria was to write him word all news, and address the letter under cover to Mr. Verrall. But she was not to give that address to any one. George Godolphin knew he could rely upon the good faith of his wife. He wrote also to his brother: a letter which Thomas burnt as soon as read. Probably it was intended for his eye alone. But he expressed no wish to hear from Thomas; neither did he say how a letter might reach him. He may have felt himself in the light of a guilty schoolboy, who knows he merits a lecture, and would escape from it as long as possible. Maria’s suspense was almost unbearable—and Lord Averil had given no sign of what his intentions might be.

Seeing it was her sister who entered, she turned to her with a sort of relief. “Oh, Grace!” she said, “I thought I was never going to see any of you again.”

Grace would not meet the offered hand. Never much given to ceremony, she often came in and went out without giving hers. But this time Grace had come in anger. She blamed Maria for what had occurred, almost as much as she blamed George. Not of the highly refined organization that Maria was, Grace possessed far keener penetration. Had her husband been going wrong, Grace would inevitably have discovered it; and she could not believe but that Maria must have suspected George Godolphin. In her angry feeling against George, whom she had never liked, Grace would have deemed it right that Maria should denounce him. Whether she had been wilfully blind, or really blind, Grace alike despised her for it. “I shall not spare her,” Grace said to her husband: and she did not mean to spare her, now she had come.

“I have intruded here to ask if you will go to the Rectory and see mamma,” Grace began. “She is not well, and cannot come to you.”

Grace’s manner was strangely cold and stern. And Maria did not like the word “intruded.” “I am glad to see you,” she replied in a gentle voice. “It is very dull here, now. No one has been near me, except Bessy Godolphin.”

“You cannot expect many visitors,” said Grace in her hard manner—very hard to-day.

“I do not think I could see them if they came,” was Maria’s answer. “I was not speaking of visitors. Is mamma ill?”

“Yes, she is; and little wonder,” replied Grace. “I almost wish I was not married, now this misfortune has fallen upon us: it would at any rate be another pair of hands at the Rectory, and I am more capable of work than mamma or Rose. But I am married; and of course my place must be my husband’s home.”

“What do you mean by another pair of hands, Grace?”

“There are going to be changes at the Rectory,” returned Grace, staring at the wall behind Maria, apparently to avoid looking at her. “One servant only is to be retained, and the two little Chisholm girls are coming there to be kept and educated. Mamma will have all the care upon her; she and Rose must both work and teach. Papa will keep the little boy at school, and have him home in the holidays, to make more trouble at the Rectory. They, papa and mamma, will have to pinch and screw; they must deprive themselves of every comfort; bare necessaries alone must be theirs; and, all that can be saved from their income will be put by towards paying the trust-money.”

“Is this decided?” asked Maria in a low tone.

“It is decided so far as papa can decide anything,” sharply rejoined Grace. “If the law is put in force against him, by his co-trustee, for the recovery of the money, he does not know what he would do. Possibly the living would have to be sequestered.”

Maria did not speak. What Grace was saying was all too true and terrible. Grace flung up her hand with a passionate movement.

“Had I been the one to bring this upon my father and mother, Maria, I should wish I had been out of the world before it had come to pass.”

“I did not bring it upon them, Grace,” was Maria’s scarcely-breathed answer.

“Yes, you did. Maria, I have come here to speak my mind, and I must speak it. I may seem hard, but I can’t help it. How could you, for shame, let papa pay in that money, the nine thousand pounds? If you and George Godolphin must have flaunted your state and your expense in the eyes of the world, and ruined people to do it, you might have spared your father and mother.”

“Grace, why do you blame me?”

Mrs. Akeman rose from her chair, and began pacing the room. She did not speak in a loud tone; not so much in an angry one, as in a clear, sharp, decisive one. It was just the tone used by the Rector of All Souls’ when in his cynical moods.

“He has been a respected man all his life; he has kept up his position–”

“Of whom do you speak?” interrupted Maria, really not sure whether she was applying the words satirically to George Godolphin.

“Of whom do I speak!” retorted Grace. “Of your father and mine. I say he has been respected all his life; has maintained his position as a clergyman and a gentleman, has reared his children suitably, has exercised moderate hospitality at the Rectory, and yet was putting something by that we might have a few pounds each, at his death, to help us on in the world. Not one of his children but wants helping on: except the grand wife of Mr. George Godolphin.”

“Grace! Grace!”

“And what have you brought him to?” continued Grace, lifting her hand in token that she would have out her say. “To poverty in his old age—he is getting old, Maria—to trouble, to care, to privation: perhaps to disgrace as a false trustee. I would have sacrificed my husband, rather than my father.”

Maria lifted her aching head. The reproaches were cruel, and yet they told home. It was her husband who had ruined her father: and it may be said, ruined him deliberately. Grace resumed, answering the last thought almost as if she had divined it.

“If ever a shameless fraud was committed upon another, George Godolphin wilfully committed it when he took that nine thousand pounds. Prior’s Ash may well be calling him a swindler!”

“Oh, Grace, don’t!” she said imploringly. “He could not have known that it was unsafe to take it.”

“Could not have known!” indignantly returned Grace. “You are either a fool, Maria, or you are deliberately saying what you know to be untrue. You must be aware that he never entered it in the books—that he appropriated it to his own use. He is a heartless, bad man! He might have chosen somebody else to prey upon, rather than his wife’s father. Were I papa, I should prosecute him.”

“Grace, you are killing me,” wailed Maria. “Don’t you think I have enough to bear?”

“I make no doubt you have. I should be sorry to have to bear the half. But you have brought it upon yourself, Maria. What though George Godolphin was your husband, you need not have upheld him in his course. Look at the ruin that has fallen upon Prior’s Ash. I can tell you that your name and George Godolphin’s will be remembered for many a long day. But it won’t be with a blessing!”

“Grace,” she said, lifting her streaming eyes, for tears had at length come to her relief, “have you no pity for me?”

“What pity have you had for others?” was Grace Akeman’s retort. “How many must go down to their graves steeped in poverty, who, but for George Godolphin’s treachery, would have passed the rest of their lives in comfort! You have been a blind simpleton, and nothing else. George Godolphin has lavished his money and his attentions broadcast elsewhere, and you have looked complacently on. Do you think Prior’s Ash has had its eyes closed, if you have?”

“What do you mean, Grace?”

“Never mind what I mean,” was Grace’s answer. “I am not going to tell you what you might have seen for yourself. It is all of a piece. If people will marry gay and attractive men, they must pay for it.”

Maria remained silent. Grace also for a time. Then she ceased her walking, and sat down opposite her sister.

“I came to ask you whether it is not your intention to go down and see mamma. She is in bed. Suffering from a violent cold, she says. I know; suffering from anguish of mind. If you would not add ingratitude to what has passed, you will pay her a visit to-day. She wishes to see you.”

“I will go,” said Maria. But as she spoke the words, the knowledge that it would be a fearful trial—showing herself in the streets of the town—was very present to her. “I will go to-day, Grace.”

“Very well,” said Grace, rising; “that’s all I came for.”

“Not quite all, Grace. You came, I think, to make me more unhappy than I was.”

“I cannot gloss over facts; it is not in my nature to do so,” was the reply of Grace. “If black is black, I must call it black; and white, white. I have not said all I could say, Maria. I have not spoken of our loss; a very paltry one, but a good deal to us. I have not alluded to other and worse rumours, touching your husband. I have spoken of the ruin brought on our father and mother, and I hold you nearly as responsible for it as George Godolphin. Where’s Meta?” she added, after a short pause.

“At Lady Godolphin’s Folly. Mrs. Pain has been very kind–”

Grace turned sharply round. “And you can let her go there!”

“Mrs. Pain has been kind, I say, in coming for her. This is a dull house now for Meta. Margery went out on Monday, and has been detained by her sister’s illness.”

“Let Meta come to me, if you want to get rid of her,” returned Grace in a tone more stern than any that had gone before it. “If you knew the comments indulged in by the public, you would not let a child of yours be at Lady Godolphin’s Folly, while Charlotte Pain inhabits it.”

Somehow, Maria had not the courage to inquire more particularly as to the “comments:” it was a subject that she shrank from, though vague and uncertain at the best. Mrs. Akeman went out; and Maria, the strings of her grief loosened, sat down and cried as if her heart would break.

With quite a sick feeling of dread she dressed herself to go to the Rectory. But not until later in the day. She put it off, and put it off, with some faint wish, foolish and vain, that dusk would forestall its usual hour. The western sun, drawing towards its setting, streamed full on the street of Prior’s Ash as she walked down it. Walked down it, almost as a criminal, a black veil over her face, flushed with its sensitive dread. No one but herself knew how she shrank from the eyes of her fellow-creatures.

She might have ordered the close carriage and gone down in it—for the carriages and horses were yet at her disposal. But that, to Maria, would have been worse. To go out in state in her carriage, attended by her men-servants, would have seemed more defiant of public feelings than to appear on foot. Were these feelings ultra-sensitive? absurd? Not altogether. At any rate, I am relating the simple truth—the facts as they occurred—the feelings that actuated her.

“Look at her, walking there! She’s as fine as a queen!” The words, in an insolent, sneering tone, caught her ear as she passed a group of low people gathered at the corner of a street. They would not be likely to come from any other. That they were directed to her there was no doubt; and Maria’s ears tingled as she hastened on.

Was she so fine? she could not help asking herself. She had put on the plainest things she had. A black silk dress and a black mantle, a white silk bonnet and a black veil. All good things, certainly, but plain, and not new. She began to feel that reproaches were cast upon her which she did not deserve: but they were not the less telling upon her heart.

Did she dread going into the Rectory? Did she dread the reproaches she might be met with there?—the coldness? the slights? If so, she did not find them. She was met by the most considerate kindness, and perhaps it wrung her heart all the more.

They had seen her coming, and Rose ran forward to meet her in the hall, and kissed her; Reginald came boisterously out with a welcome; a chart in one hand, parallel-rulers and a pair of compasses in the other: he was making a pretence of work, was pricking off a ship’s place in the chart. The Rector and Isaac were not at home.

“Is mamma in bed?” she asked of Rose.

“Yes. But her cold is better this evening. She will be so glad to see you.”

Maria went up the stairs and entered the room alone. The anxious look of trouble on Mrs. Hastings’s face, its feverish hue, struck her forcibly, as she advanced with timidity, uncertain of her reception. Uncertain of the reception of a mother?? With an eagerly fond look, a rapid gesture of love, Mrs. Hastings drew Maria’s face down to her for an embrace.

It unhinged Maria. She fell on her knees at the side of the bed, and gave vent to a passionate flood of tears. “Oh mother, mother, I could not help it!” she wailed. “It has been no fault of mine.”

Mrs. Hastings did not speak. She put her arm round Maria’s neck, and let it rest there. But the sobs were redoubled.

“Don’t, child!” she said then. “You will make yourself ill. My poor child!”

“I am ill, mamma; I think I shall never be well again,” sobbed Maria, losing some of her reticence. “I feel sometimes that it would be a relief to die.”

“Hush, my love! Keep despair from you, whatever you do.”

“I could bear it better but for the thought of you and papa. That is killing me. Indeed, indeed I have not deserved the blame thrown upon me. I knew nothing of what was happening.”

“My dear, we have not blamed you.”

“Oh yes, every one blames me!” wailed Maria. “And I know how sad it is for you all—to suffer by us. It breaks my heart to think of it. Mamma, do you know I dreamt last night that a shower of gold was falling down to me, faster than I could gather it in my hands. I thought I was going to pay every one, and I ran away laughing, oh so glad! and held out some to papa. ‘Take them,’ I said to him, ‘they are slipping through my fingers.’ I fell down when I was near him, and awoke. I awoke—and—then”—she could scarcely speak for sobbing—“I remembered. Mamma, but for Meta I should have been glad in that moment to die.”

The emotion of both was very great, nearly overpowering Maria. Mrs. Hastings could not say much to comfort, she was too prostrated herself. Anxious as she had been to see Maria, for she could not bear the thought of her being left alone and unnoticed in her distress—she almost repented having sent for her. Neither was strong enough to bear this excess of agitation.

Not a word was spoken of George Godolphin. Mrs. Hastings did not mention him; Maria could not. The rest of the interview was chiefly spent in silence, Maria holding her mother’s hand and giving way to a rising sob now and then. Into the affairs of the Bank Mrs. Hastings felt that she could not enter. There must be a wall of silence between them on that point, as on the subject of George.

At the foot of the stairs, as she went down, she met her father. “Oh, is it you, Maria?” he said. “How are you?”

His tone was kindly. But Maria’s heart was full, and she could not answer. He turned into the room by which they were standing, and she went in after him.

“When is your husband coming back? I suppose you don’t know?”

“No,” she answered, obliged to confess it.

“My opinion is, it would be better for him to face it, than to remain away,” said the Rector. “A more honourable course, at any rate.”

Still there was no reply. And Mr. Hastings, looking at his daughter’s face in the twilight of the evening, saw that it was working with emotion; that she was striving, almost in vain, to repress her feelings.

“It must be very dull for you at the Bank now, Maria,” he resumed in a gentle tone: “dull and unpleasant. Will you come to the Rectory for a week or two, and bring Meta?”

The tears streamed from her eyes then, unrepressed. “Thank you, papa! thank you for all your kindness,” she answered, striving not to choke. “But I must stay at home as long as I may.”

Reginald put on his cap to see her home, and they departed together, Reginald talking gaily, as if there were not such a thing as care in the world; Maria unable to answer him. The pain in her throat was worse than usual then. In turning out of the Rectory gate, whom should they come upon but old Jekyl, walking slowly along, nearly bent double with rheumatism. Reginald accosted him.

“Why, old Jekyl! it’s never you! Are you in the land of the living still?”

“Ay, it is me, sir. Old bones don’t get laid so easy; in spite, maybe, of their wishing it. Ma’am,” added the old man, turning to Maria, “I’d like to make bold to say a word to you. That sixty pound of mine, what was put in the Bank—you mind it?”