’In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.’ 

&  -W.  Shakespeare.

CHAPTER I. - She returns for the new season

Twenty years had spread their films over the events which wound up with the reunion of the second Avice and her husband; and the hoary peninsula called an island looked just the same as before; though many who had formerly projected their daily shadows upon its unrelieved summer whiteness ceased now to disturb the colourless sunlight there.

The general change, nevertheless, was small.  The silent ships came and went from the wharf, the chisels clinked in the quarries; file after file of whitey-brown horses, in strings of eight or ten, painfully dragged down the hill the square blocks of stone on the antediluvian wooden wheels just as usual.  The lightship winked every night from the quicksands to the Beal Lantern, and the Beal Lantern glared through its eye-glass on the ship.  The canine gnawing audible on the Pebble-bank had been repeated ever since at each tide, but the pebbles remained undevoured./p>

Men drank, smoked, and spat in the inns with only a little more adulteration in their refreshments and a trifle less dialect in their speech than of yore.  But one figure had never been seen on the Channel rock in the interval, the form of Pierston the sculptor, whose first use of the chisel that rock had instigated.

He had lived abroad a great deal, and, in fact, at this very date he was staying at an hotel in Rome.  Though he had not once set eyes on Avice since parting from her in the room with her firstborn, he had managed to obtain tidings of her from time to time during the interval.  In this way Pierston learnt that, shortly after their resumption of a common life in her house, Ike had ill-used her, till fortunately, the business to which Jocelyn had assisted him chancing to prosper, he became immersed in its details, and allowed Avice to pursue her household courses without interference, initiating that kind of domestic reconciliation which is so calm and durable, having as its chief ingredient neither hate nor love, but an all-embracing indifference.

At first Pierston had sent her sums of money privately, fearing lest her husband should deny her material comforts; but he soon found, to his great relief, that such help was unnecessary, social ambition prompting Ike to set up as quite a gentleman-islander, and to allow Avice a scope for show which he would never have allowed in mere kindness.

Being in Rome, as aforesaid, Pierston returned one evening to his hotel to dine, after spending the afternoon among the busts in the long gallery of the Vatican.  The unconscious habit, common to so many people, of tracing likes in unlikes had often led him to discern, or to fancy he discerned, in the Roman atmosphere, in its lights and shades, and particularly in its reflected or secondary lights, something resembling the atmosphere of his native promontory.  Perhaps it was that in each case the eye was mostly resting on stone-that the quarries of ruins in the Eternal City reminded him of the quarries of maiden rock at home.

This being in his mind when he sat down to dinner at the common table, he was surprised to hear an American gentleman, who sat opposite, mention the name of Pierston’s birthplace.  The American was talking to a friend about a lady-an English widow, whose acquaintance they had renewed somewhere in the Channel Islands during a recent tour, after having known her as a young woman who came to San Francisco with her father and mother many years before.  Her father was then a rich man just retired from the business of a stone-merchant in the Isle of Slingers; but he had engaged in large speculations, and had lost nearly all his fortune.  Jocelyn further gathered that the widowed daughter’s name was Mrs. Leverre; that she had a step-son, her husband having been a Jersey gentleman, a widower; and that the step-son seemed to be a promising and interesting young man.

Pierston was instantly struck with the perception that these and other allusions, though general, were in accord with the history of his long-lost Marcia.  He hardly felt any desire to hunt her up after nearly two score years of separation, but he was impressed enough to resolve to exchange a word with the strangers as soon as he could get opportunity.

He could not well attract their attention through the plants upon the wide table, and even if he had been able he was disinclined to ask questions in public.  He waited on till dinner was over, and when the strangers withdrew Pierston withdrew in their rear.

They were not in the drawing-room, and he found that they had gone out.  There was no chance of overtaking them, but Pierston, waked to restlessness by their remarks, wandered up and down the adjoining Piazza di Spagna, thinking they might return.  The streets below were immersed in shade, the front of the church of the Trinità de’ Monti at the top was flooded with orange light, the gloom of evening gradually intensifying upon the broad, long flight of steps, which foot-passengers incessantly ascended and descended with the insignificance of ants; the dusk wrapped up the house to the left, in which Shelley had lived, and that to the right, in which Keats had died.

Getting back to the hotel he learnt that the Americans had only dropped in to dine, and were staying elsewhere.  He saw no more of them; and on reflection he was not deeply concerned, for what earthly woman, going off in a freak as Marcia had done, and keeping silence so long, would care for a belated friendship with him now in the sere, even if he were to take the trouble to discover her.

Thus much Marcia.  The other thread of his connection with the ancient Isle of Slingers was stirred by a letter he received from Avice a little after this date, in which she stated that her husband Ike had been killed in his own quarry by an accident within the past year; that she herself had been ill, and though well again, and left amply provided for, she would like to see him if he ever came that way.

As she had not communicated for several long years, her expressed wish to see him now was likely to be prompted by something more, something newer, than memories of him.  Yet the manner of her writing precluded all suspicion that she was thinking of him as an old lover whose suit events had now made practicable.  He told her he was sorry to hear that she had been ill, and that he would certainly take an early opportunity of going down to her home on his next visit to England.

He did more.  Her request had revived thoughts of his old home and its associations, and instead of awaiting other reasons for a return he made her the operating one.  About a week later he stood once again at the foot of the familiar steep whereon the houses at the entrance to the Isle were perched like grey pigeons on a roof-side.

At Top-o’-Hill-as the summit of the rock was mostly called-he stood looking at the busy doings in the quarries beyond, where the numerous black hoisting-cranes scattered over the central plateau had the appearance of a swarm of crane-flies resting there.  He went a little further, made some general inquiries about the accident which had carried off Avice’s husband in the previous year, and learnt that though now a widow, she had plenty of friends and sympathizers about her, which rendered any immediate attention to her on his part unnecessary.  Considering, therefore, that there was no great reason why he should call on her so soon, and without warning, he turned back.  Perhaps after all her request had been dictated by a momentary feeling only, and a considerable strangeness to each other must naturally be the result of a score of dividing years.  Descending to the bottom he took his seat in the train on the shore, which soon carried him along the Bank, and round to the watering-place five miles off, at which he had taken up his quarters for a few days.

Here, as he stayed on, his local interests revived.  Whenever he went out he could see the island that was once his home lying like a great snail upon the sea across the bay.  It was the spring of the year; local steamers had begun to run, and he was never tired of standing on the thinly occupied deck of one of these as it skirted the island and revealed to him on the cliffs far up its height the ruins of Red-King Castle, behind which the little village of East Quarriers lay.

Thus matters went on, if they did not rather stand still, for several days before Pierston redeemed his vague promise to seek Avice out.  And in the meantime he was surprised by the arrival of another letter from her by a roundabout route.  She had heard, she said, that he had been on the island, and imagined him therefore to be staying somewhere near.  Why did he not call as he had told her he would do?  She was always thinking of him, and wishing to see him.

Her tone was anxious, and there was no doubt that she really had something to say which she did not want to write.  He wondered what it could be, and started the same afternoon.

Avice, who had been little in his mind of late years, began to renew for herself a distinct position therein.  He was fully aware that since his earlier manhood a change had come over his regard of womankind.  Once the individual had been nothing more to him than the temporary abiding-place of the typical or ideal; now his heart showed its bent to be a growing fidelity to the specimen, with all her pathetic flaws of detail; which flaws, so far from sending him further, increased his tenderness.  This maturer feeling, if finer and higher, was less convenient than the old.  Ardours of passion could be felt as in youth without the recuperative intervals which had accompanied evanescence.

The first sensation was to find that she had long ceased to live in the little freehold cottage she had occupied of old.  In answer to his inquiries he was directed along the road to the west of the modern castle, past the entrance on that side, and onward to the very house that had once been his own home.  There it stood as of yore, facing up the Channel, a comfortable roomy structure, the euonymus and other shrubs, which alone would stand in the teeth of the salt wind, living on at about the same stature in front of it; but the paint-work much renewed.  A thriving man had resided there of late, evidently.

The widow in mourning who received him in the front parlour was, alas! but the sorry shadow of Avice the Second.  How could he have fancied otherwise after twenty years?  Yet he had been led to fancy otherwise, almost without knowing it, by feeling himself unaltered.  Indeed, curiously enough, nearly the first words she said to him were:  ’Why-you are just the same!’

‘Just the same.  Yes, I am, Avice,’ he answered sadly; for this inability to ossify with the rest of his generation threw him out of proportion with the time.  Moreover, while wearing the aspect of comedy, it was of the nature of tragedy.

‘It is well to be you, sir,’ she went on.  ’I have had troubles to take the bloom off me!’

‘Yes; I have been sorry for you.’

She continued to regard him curiously, with humorous interest; and he knew what was passing in her mind:  that this man, to whom she had formerly looked up as to a person far in advance of her along the lane of life, seemed now to be a well-adjusted contemporary, the pair of them observing the world with fairly level eyes.

He had come to her with warmth for a vision which, on reaching her, he found to have departed; and, though fairly weaned by the natural reality, he was so far staunch as to linger hankeringly.  They talked of past days, his old attachment, which she had then despised, being now far more absorbing and present to her than to himself.

She unmistakably won upon him as he sat on.  A curious closeness between them had been produced in his imagination by the discovery that she was passing her life within the house of his own childhood.  Her similar surname meant little here; but it was also his, and, added to the identity of domicile, lent a strong suggestiveness to the accident.

‘This is where I used to sit when my parents occupied the house,’ he said, placing himself beside that corner of the fireplace which commanded a view through the window.  ’I could see a bough of tamarisk wave outside at that time, and, beyond the bough, the same abrupt grassy waste towards the sea, and at night the same old lightship blinking far out there.  Place yourself on the spot, to please me.’

She set her chair where he indicated, and Pierston stood close beside her, directing her gaze to the familiar objects he had regarded thence as a boy.  Her head and face-the latter thoughtful and worn enough, poor thing, to suggest a married life none too comfortable-were close to his breast, and, with a few inches further incline, would have touched it.

‘And now you are the inhabitant; I the visitor,’ he said.  ’I am glad to see you here-so glad, Avice!  You are fairly well provided for-I think I may assume that?’ He looked round the room at the solid mahogany furniture, and at the modern piano and show bookcase.

’Yes, Ike left me comfortable.  ’Twas he who thought of moving from my cottage to this larger house.  He bought it, and I can live here as long as I choose to.’

Apart from the decline of his adoration to friendship, there seemed to be a general convergence of positions which suggested that he might make amends for the desertion of Avice the First by proposing to this Avice when a meet time should arrive.  If he did not love her as he had done when she was a slim thing catching mice in his rooms in London, he could surely be content at his age with comradeship.  After all she was only forty to his sixty.  The feeling that he really could be thus content was so convincing that he almost believed the luxury of getting old and reposeful was coming to his restless, wandering heart at last.

‘Well, you have come at last, sir,’ she went on; ’and I am grateful to you.  I did not like writing, and yet I wanted to be straightforward.  Have you guessed at all why I wished to see you so much that I could not help sending twice to you?’

‘I have tried, but cannot.’

‘Try again.  It is a pretty reason, which I hope you’ll forgive.’

’I am sure I sha’n’t unriddle it.  But I’ll say this on my own account before you tell me.  I have always taken a lingering interest in you, which you must value for what it is worth.  It originated, so far as it concerns you personally, with the sight of you in that cottage round the corner, nineteen or twenty years ago, when I became tenant of the castle opposite.  But that was not the very beginning.  The very beginning was a score of years before that, when I, a young fellow of one-and-twenty, coming home here, from London, to see my father, encountered a tender woman as like you as your double; was much attracted by her as I saw her day after day flit past this window; till I made it my business to accompany her in her walks awhile.  I, as you know, was not a staunch fellow, and it all ended badly.  But, at any rate you, her daughter, and I are friends.’

‘Ah! there she is!’ suddenly exclaimed Avice, whose attention had wandered somewhat from his retrospective discourse.  She was looking from the window towards the cliffs, where, upon the open ground quite near at hand, a slender female form was seen rambling along.  ’She is out for a walk,’ Avice continued.  ’I wonder if she is going to call here this afternoon?  She is living at the castle opposite as governess.’

‘O, she’s-’

’Yes.  Her education was very thorough-better even than her grandmother’s.  I was the neglected one, and her father and myself both vowed that there should be no complaint on that score about her.  We christened her Avice, to keep up the name, as you requested.  I wish you could speak to her-I am sure you would like her.’

‘Is that the baby?’ faltered Jocelyn.

‘Yes, the baby.’

The person signified, now much nearer, was a still more modernized, up-to-date edition of the two Avices of that blood with whom he had been involved more or less for the last forty years.  A ladylike creature was she-almost elegant.  She was altogether finer in figure than her mother or grandmother had ever been, which made her more of a woman in appearance than in years.  She wore a large-disked sun-hat, with a brim like a wheel whose spokes were radiating folds of muslin lining the brim, a black margin beyond the muslin being the felloe.  Beneath this brim her hair was massed low upon her brow, the colour of the thick tresses being probably, from her complexion, repeated in the irises of her large, deep eyes.  Her rather nervous lips were thin and closed, so that they only appeared as a delicate red line.  A changeable temperament was shown by that mouth-quick transitions from affection to aversion, from a pout to a smile.

It was Avice the Third.

Jocelyn and the second Avice continued to gaze ardently at her.

‘Ah! she is not coming in now; she hasn’t time,’ murmured the mother, with some disappointment.  ’Perhaps she means to run across in the evening.’

TThe tall girl, in fact, went past and on till she was out of sight.  Pierston stood as in a dream.  It was the very she, in all essential particulars, and with an intensification of general charm, who had kissed him forty years before.  When he turned his head from the window his eyes fell again upon the intermediate Avice at his side.  Before but the relic of the Well-Beloved, she had now become its empty shrine.  Warm friendship, indeed, he felt for her; but whatever that might have done towards the instauration of a former dream was now hopelessly barred by the rivalry of the thing itself in the guise of a lineal successor.

CHAPTER II. - Misgivings on the re-embodiment

Pierston had been about to leave, but he sat down again on being asked if he would stay and have a cup of tea.  He hardly knew for a moment what he did; a dim thought that Avice-the renewed Avice-might come into the house made his reseating himself an act of spontaneity.

He forgot that twenty years earlier he had called the now Mrs. Pierston an elf, a witch; and that lapse of time had probably not diminished the subtleties implied by those epithets.  He did not know that she had noted every impression that her daughter had made upon him./p>

How he contrived to attenuate and disperse the rather tender personalities he had opened up with the new Avice’s mother, Pierston never exactly defined.  Perhaps she saw more than he thought she saw-read something in his face-knew that about his nature which he gave her no credit for knowing.  Anyhow, the conversation took the form of a friendly gossip from that minute, his remarks being often given while his mind was turned elsewhere.

But a chill passed through Jocelyn when there had been time for reflection.  The renewed study of his art in Rome without any counterbalancing practical pursuit had nourished and developed his natural responsiveness to impressions; he now felt that his old trouble, his doom-his curse, indeed, he had sometimes called it-was come back again.  His divinity was not yet propitiated for that original sin against her image in the person of Avice the First, and now, at the age of one-and-sixty, he was urged on and on like the Jew Ahasuerus-or, in the phrase of the islanders themselves, like a blind ram.

The Goddess, an abstraction to the general, was a fairly real personage to Pierston.  He had watched the marble images of her which stood in his working-room, under all changes of light and shade in the brightening of morning, in the blackening of eve, in moonlight, in lamplight.  Every line and curve of her body none, naturally, knew better than he; and, though not a belief, it was, as has been stated, a formula, a superstition, that the three Avices were inter-penetrated with her essence.

‘And the next Avice-your daughter,’ he said stumblingly; ’she is, you say, a governess at the castle opposite?’

Mrs. Pierston reaffirmed the fact, adding that the girl often slept at home because she, her mother, was so lonely.  She often thought she would like to keep her daughter at home altogether.

‘She plays that instrument, I suppose?’ said Pierston, regarding the piano.

’Yes, she plays beautifully; she had the best instruction that masters could give her.  She was educated at Sandbourne.’

‘Which room does she call hers when at home?’ he asked curiously.

‘The little one over this.’

It had been his own.  ‘Strange,’ he murmured.

He finished tea, and sat after tea, but the youthful Avice did not arrive.  With the Avice present he conversed as the old friend-no more.  At last it grew dusk, and Pierston could not find an excuse for staying longer.

‘I hope to make the acquaintance-of your daughter,’ he said in leaving, knowing that he might have added with predestinate truth, ’of my new tenderly-beloved.’

‘I hope you will,’ she answered.  ’This evening she evidently has gone for a walk instead of coming here.’

’And, by-the-bye, you have not told me what you especially wanted to see me for?’

‘Ah, no.  I will put it off.’

‘Very well.  I don’t pretend to guess.’

‘I must tell you another time.’

’If it is any little business in connection with your late husband’s affairs, do command me.  I’ll do anything I can.’

‘Thank you.  And I shall see you again soon?’

‘Certainly.  Quite soon.’

When he was gone she looked reflectively at the spot where he had been standing, and said:  ’Best hold my tongue.  It will work of itself, without my telling.’

Jocelyn went from the house, but as the white road passed under his feet he felt in no mood to get back to his lodgings in the town on the mainland.  He lingered about upon the rugged ground for a long while, thinking of the extraordinary reproduction of the original girl in this new form he had seen, and of himself as of a foolish dreamer in being so suddenly fascinated by the renewed image in a personality not one-third of his age.  As a physical fact, no doubt, the preservation of the likeness was no uncommon thing here, but it helped the dream.

Passing round the walls of the new castle he deviated from his homeward track by turning down the familiar little lane which led to the ruined castle of the Red King.  It took him past the cottage in which the new Avice was born, from whose precincts he had heard her first infantine cry.  Pausing he saw near the west behind him the new moon growing distinct upon the glow.

He was subject to gigantic fantasies still.  In spite of himself, the sight of the new moon, as representing one who, by her so-called inconstancy, acted up to his own idea of a migratory Well-Beloved, made him feel as if his wraith in a changed sex had suddenly looked over the horizon at him.  In a crowd secretly, or in solitude boldly, he had often bowed the knee three times to this sisterly divinity on her first appearance monthly, and directed a kiss towards her shining shape.  The curse of his qualities (if it were not a blessing) was far from having spent itself yet.

In the other direction the castle ruins rose square and dusky against the sea.  He went on towards these, around which he had played as a boy, and stood by the walls at the edge of the cliff pondering.  There was no wind and but little tide, and he thought he could hear from years ago a voice that he knew.  It certainly was a voice, but it came from the rocks beneath the castle ruin.

‘Mrs. Atway!’

A silence followed, and nobody came.  The voice spoke again; ’John Stoney!’

Neither was this summons attended to.  The cry continued, with more entreaty:  ‘William Scribben!’

The voice was that of a Pierston-there could be no doubt of it-young Avice’s, surely?  Something or other seemed to be detaining her down there against her will.  A sloping path beneath the beetling cliff and the castle walls rising sheer from its summit, led down to the lower level whence the voice proceeded.  Pierston followed the pathway, and soon beheld a girl in light clothing-the same he had seen through the window-standing upon one of the rocks, apparently unable to move.  Pierston hastened across to her.

‘O, thank you for coming!’ she murmured with some timidity.  ’I have met with an awkward mishap.  I live near here, and am not frightened really.  My foot has become jammed in a crevice of the rock, and I cannot get it out, try how I will.  What shall I do!’

Jocelyn stooped and examined the cause of discomfiture.  ’I think if you can take your boot off,’ he said, ’your foot might slip out, leaving the boot behind.’

She tried to act upon this advice, but could not do so effectually.  Pierston then experimented by slipping his hand into the crevice till he could just reach the buttons of her boot, which, however, he could not unfasten any more than she.  Taking his penknife from his pocket he tried again, and cut off the buttons one by one.  The boot unfastened, and out slipped the foot.

‘O, how glad I am!’ she cried joyfully.  ’I was fearing I should have to stay here all night.  How can I thank you enough?’

He was tugging to withdraw the boot, but no skill that he could exercise would move it without tearing.  At last she said:  ’Don’t try any longer.  It is not far to the house.  I can walk in my stocking.’

‘I’ll assist you in,’ he said.

She said she did not want help, nevertheless allowed him to help her on the unshod side.  As they moved on she explained that she had come out through the garden door; had been standing on the boulders to look at something out at sea just discernible in the evening light as assisted by the moon, and, in jumping down, had wedged her foot as he had found it.

Whatever Pierston’s years might have made him look by day, in the dusk of evening he was fairly presentable as a pleasing man of no marked antiquity, his outline differing but little from what it had been when he was half his years.  He was well preserved, still upright, trimly shaven, agile in movement; wore a tightly buttoned suit which set of a naturally slight figure; in brief, he might have been of any age as he appeared to her at this moment.  She talked to him with the co-equality of one who assumed him to be not far ahead of her own generation; and, as the growing darkness obscured him more and more, he adopted her assumption of his age with increasing boldness of tone.

The flippant, harmless freedom of the watering-place Miss, which Avice had plainly acquired during her sojourn at the Sandbourne school, helped Pierston greatly in this rôle of jeune premier which he was not unready to play.  Not a word did he say about being a native of the island; still more carefully did he conceal the fact of his having courted her grandmother, and engaged himself to marry that attractive lady.

He found that she had come out upon the rocks through the same little private door from the lawn of the modern castle which had frequently afforded him egress to the same spot in years long past.  Pierston accompanied her across the grounds almost to the entrance of the mansion-the place being now far better kept and planted than when he had rented it as a lonely tenant; almost, indeed, restored to the order and neatness which had characterized it when he was a boy.

Like her granny she was too inexperienced to be reserved, and during this little climb, leaning upon his arm, there was time for a great deal of confidence.  When he had bidden her farewell, and she had entered, leaving him in the dark, a rush of sadness through Pierston’s soul swept down all the temporary pleasure he had found in the charming girl’s company.  Had Méphistophélès sprung from the ground there and then with an offer to Jocelyn of restoration to youth on the usual terms of his firm, the sculptor might have consented to sell a part of himself which he felt less immediate need of than of a ruddy lip and cheek and an unploughed brow.

But what could only have been treated as a folly by outsiders was almost a sorrow for him.  Why was he born with such a temperament?  And this concatenated interest could hardly have arisen, even with Pierston, but for a conflux of circumstances only possible here.  The three Avices, the second something like the first, the third a glorification of the first, at all events externally, were the outcome of the immemorial island customs of intermarriage and of prenuptial union, under which conditions the type of feature was almost uniform from parent to child through generations:  so that, till quite latterly, to have seen one native man and woman was to have seen the whole population of that isolated rock, so nearly cut off from the mainland.  His own predisposition and the sense of his early faithlessness did all the rest.

HHe turned gloomily away, and let himself out of the precincts.  Before walking along the couple of miles of road which would conduct him to the little station on the shore, he redescended to the rocks whereon he had found her, and searched about for the fissure which had made a prisoner of this terribly belated edition of the Beloved.  Kneeling down beside the spot he inserted his hand, and ultimately, by much wriggling, withdrew the pretty boot.  He mused over it for a moment, put it in his pocket, and followed the stony route to the Street of Wells.

CHAPTER III. - The renewed image Burns itself in

There was nothing to hinder Pierston in calling upon the new Avice’s mother as often as he should choose, beyond the five miles of intervening railway and additional mile or two of clambering over the heights of the island.  Two days later, therefore, he repeated his journey and knocked about tea-time at the widow’s door.

As he had feared, the daughter was not at home.  He sat down beside the old sweetheart who, having eclipsed her mother in past days, had now eclipsed herself in her child.  Jocelyn produced the girl’s boot from his pocket./p>

’Then, ‘tis you who helped Avice out of her predicament?’ said Mrs. Pierston, with surprise.

’Yes, my dear friend; and perhaps I shall ask you to help me out of mine before I have done.  But never mind that now.  What did she tell you about the adventure?’

Mrs. Pierston was looking thoughtfully upon him.  ’Well, ’tis rather strange it should have been you, sir,’ she replied.  She seemed to be a good deal interested.  ’I thought it might have been a younger man-a much younger man.’

’It might have been as far as feelings were concerned....  Now, Avice, I’ll to the point at once.  Virtually I have known your daughter any number of years.  When I talk to her I can anticipate every turn of her thought, every sentiment, every act, so long did I study those things in your mother and in you.  Therefore I do not require to learn her; she was learnt by me in her previous existences.  Now, don’t be shocked:  I am willing to marry her-I should be overjoyed to do it, if there would be nothing preposterous about it, or that would seem like a man making himself too much of a fool, and so degrading her in consenting.  I can make her comparatively rich, as you know, and I would indulge her every whim.  There is the idea, bluntly put.  It would set right something in my mind that has been wrong for forty years.  After my death she would have plenty of freedom and plenty of means to enjoy it.’

Mrs. Isaac Pierston seemed only a little surprised; certainly not shocked.

‘Well, if I didn’t think you might be a bit taken with her!’ she said with an arch simplicity which could hardly be called unaffected.  ’Knowing the set of your mind, from my little time with you years ago, nothing you could do in this way would astonish me.’

‘But you don’t think badly of me for it?’

’Not at all....  By-the-bye, did you ever guess why I asked you to come?...  But never mind it now:  the matter is past....  Of course, it would depend upon what Avice felt....  Perhaps she would rather marry a younger man.’

‘And suppose a satisfactory younger man should not appear?’

Mrs. Pierston showed in her face that she fully recognized the difference between a rich bird in hand and a young bird in the bush.  She looked him curiously up and down.

‘I know you would make anybody a very nice husband,’ she said.  ’I know that you would be nicer than many men half your age; and, though there is a great deal of difference between you and her, there have been more unequal marriages, that’s true.  Speaking as her mother, I can say that I shouldn’t object to you, sir, for her, provided she liked you.  That is where the difficulty will lie.’

‘I wish you would help me to get over that difficulty,’ he said gently.  ‘Remember, I brought back a truant husband to you twenty years ago.’

‘Yes, you did,’ she assented; ’and, though I may say no great things as to happiness came of it, I’ve always seen that your intentions towards me were none the less noble on that account.  I would do for you what I would do for no other man, and there is one reason in particular which inclines me to help you with Avice-that I should feel absolutely certain I was helping her to a kind husband.’

’Well, that would remain to be seen.  I would, at any rate, try to be worthy of your opinion.  Come, Avice, for old times’ sake, you must help me.  You never felt anything but friendship in those days, you know, and that makes it easy and proper for you to do me a good turn now.’

After a little more conversation his old friend promised that she really would do everything that lay in her power.  She did not say how simple she thought him not to perceive that she had already, by writing to him, been doing everything that lay in her power; had created the feeling which prompted his entreaty.  And to show her good faith in this promise she asked him to wait till later in the evening, when Avice might possibly run across to see her.

Pierston, who fancied he had won the younger Avice’s interest, at least, by the part he had played upon the rocks the week before, had a dread of encountering her in full light till he should have advanced a little further in her regard.  He accordingly was perplexed at this proposal, and, seeing his hesitation, Mrs. Pierston suggested that they should walk together in the direction whence Avice would come, if she came at all.

He welcomed the idea, and in a few minutes they started, strolling along under the now strong moonlight, and when they reached the gates of Sylvania Castle turning back again towards the house.  After two or three such walks up and down the gate of the castle grounds clicked, and a form came forth which proved to be the expected one.

As soon as they met the girl recognized in her mother’s companion the gentleman who had helped her on the shore; and she seemed really glad to find that her chivalrous assistant was claimed by her parent as an old friend.  She remembered hearing at divers times about this worthy London man of talent and position, whose ancestry were people of her own isle, and possibly, from the name, of a common stock with her own.

‘And you have actually lived in Sylvania Castle yourself, Mr. Pierston?’ asked Avice the daughter, with her innocent young voice.  ’Was it long ago?’

‘Yes, it was some time ago,’ replied the sculptor, with a sinking at his heart lest she should ask how long.

‘It must have been when I was away-or when I was very little?’

‘I don’t think you were away.’

‘But I don’t think I could have been here?’

‘No, perhaps you couldn’t have been here.’

‘I think she was hiding herself in the parsley-bed,’ said Avice’s mother blandly.

They talked in this general way till they reached Mrs. Pierston’s house; but Jocelyn resisted both the widow’s invitation and the desire of his own heart, and went away without entering.  To risk, by visibly confronting her, the advantage that he had already gained, or fancied he had gained, with the re-incarnate Avice required more courage than he could claim in his present mood.

Such evening promenades as these were frequent during the waxing of that summer moon.  On one occasion, as they were all good walkers, it was arranged that they should meet halfway between the island and the town in which Pierston had lodgings.  It was impossible that by this time the pretty young governess should not have guessed the ultimate reason of these rambles to be a matrimonial intention; but she inclined to the belief that the widow rather than herself was the object of Pierston’s regard; though why this educated and apparently wealthy man should be attracted by her mother-whose homeliness was apparent enough to the girl’s more modern training-she could not comprehend.

They met accordingly in the middle of the Pebble-bank, Pierston coming from the mainland, and the women from the peninsular rock.  Crossing the wooden bridge which connected the bank with the shore proper they moved in the direction of Henry the Eighth’s Castle, on the verge of the rag-stone cliff.  Like the Red King’s Castle on the island, the interior was open to the sky, and when they entered and the full moon streamed down upon them over the edge of the enclosing masonry, the whole present reality faded from Jocelyn’s mind under the press of memories.  Neither of his companions guessed what Pierston was thinking of.  It was in this very spot that he was to have met the grandmother of the girl at his side, and in which he would have met her had she chosen to keep the appointment, a meeting which might-nay, must-have changed the whole current of his life.

Instead of that, forty years had passed-forty years of severance from Avice, till a secondly renewed copy of his sweetheart had arisen to fill her place.  But he, alas, was not renewed.  And of all this the pretty young thing at his side knew nothing.

Taking advantage of the younger woman’s retreat to view the sea through an opening of the walls, Pierston appealed to her mother in a whisper:  ’Have you ever given her a hint of what my meaning is?  No?  Then I think you might, if you really have no objection.’

Mrs. Pierston, as the widow, was far from being so coldly disposed in her own person towards her friend as in the days when he wanted to marry her.  Had she now been the object of his wishes he would not have needed to ask her twice.  But like a good mother she stifled all this, and said she would sound Avice there and then.

‘Avice, my dear,’ she said, advancing to where the girl mused in the window-gap, ’what do you think of Mr. Pierston paying his addresses to you-coming courting, as I call it in my old-fashioned way.  Supposing he were to, would you encourage him?’

‘To me, mother?’ said Avice, with an inquiring laugh.  ’I thought-he meant you!’

‘O no, he doesn’t mean me,’ said her mother hastily.  ’He is nothing more than my friend.’

‘I don’t want any addresses,’ said the daughter.

’He is a man in society, and would take you to an elegant house in London suited to your education, instead of leaving you to mope here.’

‘I should like that well enough,’ replied Avice carelessly.

‘Then give him some encouragement.’

’I don’t care enough about him to do any encouraging.  It is his business, I should think, to do all.’

She spoke in her lightest vein; but the result was that when Pierston, who had discreetly withdrawn, returned to them, she walked docilely, though perhaps gloomily, beside him, her mother dropping to the rear.  They came to a rugged descent, and Pierston took her hand to help her.  She allowed him to retain it when they arrived on level ground.

Altogether it was not an unsuccessful evening for the man with the unanchored heart, though possibly initial success meant worse for him in the long run than initial failure.  There was nothing marvellous in the fact of her tractability thus far.  In his modern dress and style, under the rays of the moon, he looked a very presentable gentleman indeed, while his knowledge of art and his travelled manners were not without their attractions for a girl who with one hand touched the educated middle-class and with the other the rude and simple inhabitants of the isle.  Her intensely modern sympathies were quickened by her peculiar outlook.

Pierston would have regarded his interest in her as overmuch selfish if there had not existed a redeeming quality in the substratum of old pathetic memory by which such love had been created-which still permeated it, rendering it the tenderest, most anxious, most protective instinct he had ever known.  It may have had in its composition too much of the boyish fervour that had characterized such affection when he was cherry-cheeked, and light in the foot as a girl; but, if it was all this feeling of youth, it was more.

Mrs. Pierston, in fearing to be frank, lest she might seem to be angling for his fortune, did not fully divine his cheerful readiness to offer it, if by so doing he could make amends for his infidelity to her family forty years back in the past.  Time had not made him mercenary, and it had quenched his ambitions; and though his wish to wed Avice was not entirely a wish to enrich her, the knowledge that she would be enriched beyond anything that she could have anticipated was what allowed him to indulge his love.

He was not exactly old he said to himself the next morning as he beheld his face in the glass.  And he looked considerably younger than he was.  But there was history in his face-distinct chapters of it; his brow was not that blank page it once had been.  He knew the origin of that line in his forehead; it had been traced in the course of a month or two by past troubles.  He remembered the coming of this pale wiry hair; it had been brought by the illness in Rome, when he had wished each night that he might never wake again.  This wrinkled corner, that drawn bit of skin, they had resulted from those months of despondency when all seemed going against his art, his strength, his happiness.  ’You cannot live your life and keep it, Jocelyn,’ he said.  Time was against him and love, and time would probably win.

‘When I went away from the first Avice,’ he continued with whimsical misery, ’I had a presentiment that I should ache for it some day.  And I am aching-have ached ever since this jade of an Ideal learnt the unconscionable trick of inhabiting one image only.’

UUpon the whole he was not without a bodement that it would be folly to press on.

CHAPTER IV.  - A Dash for the last incarnation

This desultory courtship of a young girl which had been brought about by her mother’s contrivance was interrupted by the appearance of Somers and his wife and family on the Budmouth Esplanade.  Alfred Somers, once the youthful, picturesque as his own paintings, was now a middle-aged family man with spectacles-spectacles worn, too, with the single object of seeing through them-and a row of daughters tailing off to infancy, who at present added appreciably to the income of the bathing-machine women established along the sands.

Mrs. Somers-once the intellectual, emancipated Mrs. Pine-Avon-had now retrograded to the petty and timid mental position of her mother and grandmother, giving sharp, strict regard to the current literature and art that reached the innocent presence of her long perspective of girls, with the view of hiding every skull and skeleton of life from their dear eyes.  She was another illustration of the rule that succeeding generations of women are seldom marked by cumulative progress, their advance as girls being lost in their recession as matrons; so that they move up and down the stream of intellectual development like flotsam in a tidal estuary.  And this perhaps not by reason of their faults as individuals, but of their misfortune as child-rearers./p>

The landscape-painter, now an Academician like Pierston himself-rather popular than distinguished-had given up that peculiar and personal taste in subjects which had marked him in times past, executing instead many pleasing aspects of nature addressed to the furnishing householder through the middling critic, and really very good of their kind.  In this way he received many large cheques from persons of wealth in England and America, out of which he built himself a sumptuous studio and an awkward house around it, and paid for the education of the growing maidens.

The vision of Somers’s humble position as jackal to this lion of a family and house and studio and social reputation-Somers, to whom strange conceits and wild imaginings were departed joys never to return-led Pierston, as the painter’s contemporary, to feel that he ought to be one of the bygones likewise, and to put on an air of unromantic bufferism.  He refrained from entering Avice’s peninsula for the whole fortnight of Somers’s stay in the neighbouring town, although its grey poetical outline-’throned along the sea’-greeted his eyes every morn and eve across the roadstead.

When the painter and his family had gone back from their bathing holiday, he thought that he, too, would leave the neighbourhood.  To do so, however, without wishing at least the elder Avice good-bye would be unfriendly, considering the extent of their acquaintance.  One evening, knowing this time of day to suit her best, he took the few-minutes’ journey to the rock along the thin connecting string of junction, and arrived at Mrs. Pierston’s door just after dark.

A light shone from an upper chamber.  On asking for his widowed acquaintance he was informed that she was ill, seriously, though not dangerously.  While learning that her daughter was with her, and further particulars, and doubting if he should go in, a message was sent down to ask him to enter.  His voice had been heard, and Mrs. Pierston would like to see him.

He could not with any humanity refuse, but there flashed across his mind the recollection that Avice the youngest had never yet really seen him, had seen nothing more of him than an outline, which might have appertained as easily to a man thirty years his junior as to himself, and a countenance so renovated by faint moonlight as fairly to correspond.  It was with misgiving, therefore, that the sculptor ascended the staircase and entered the little upper sitting-room, now arranged as a sick-chamber.

Mrs. Pierston reclined on a sofa, her face emaciated to a surprising thinness for the comparatively short interval since her attack.  ’Come in, sir,’ she said, as soon as she saw him, holding out her hand.  ’Don’t let me frighten you.’

Avice was seated beside her, reading.  The girl jumped up, hardly seeming to recognize him.  ‘O! it’s Mr. Pierston,’ she said in a moment, adding quickly, with evident surprise and off her guard:  ’I thought Mr. Pierston was-’

What she had thought he was did not pass her lips, and it remained a riddle for Jocelyn until a new departure in her manner towards him showed that the words ‘much younger’ would have accurately ended the sentence.  Had Pierston not now confronted her anew, he might have endured philosophically her changed opinion of him.  But he was seeing her again, and a rooted feeling was revived.

Pierston now learnt for the first time that the widow had been visited by sudden attacks of this sort not infrequently of late years.  They were said to be due to angina pectoris, the latter paroxysms having been the most severe.  She was at the present moment out of pain, though weak, exhausted, and nervous.  She would not, however, converse about herself, but took advantage of her daughter’s absence from the room to broach the subject most in her thoughts.

No compunctions had stirred her as they had her visitor on the expediency of his suit in view of his years.  Her fever of anxiety lest after all he should not come to see Avice again had been not without an effect upon her health; and it made her more candid than she had intended to be.

‘Troubles and sickness raise all sorts of fears, Mr. Pierston,’ she said.  ’What I felt only a wish for, when you first named it, I have hoped for a good deal since; and I have been so anxious that-that it should come to something!  I am glad indeed that you are come.’

‘My wanting to marry Avice, you mean, dear Mrs. Pierston?’

’Yes-that’s it.  I wonder if you are still in the same mind?  You are?  Then I wish something could be done-to make her agree to it-so as to get it settled.  I dread otherwise what will become of her.  She is not a practical girl as I was-she would hardly like now to settle down as an islander’s wife; and to leave her living here alone would trouble me.’

‘Nothing will happen to you yet, I hope, my dear old friend.’

’Well, it is a risky complaint; and the attacks, when they come, are so agonizing that to endure them I ought to get rid of all outside anxieties, folk say.  Now-do you want her, sir?’

‘With all my soul!  But she doesn’t want me.’

’I don’t think she is so against you as you imagine.  I fancy if it were put to her plainly, now I am in this state, it might be done.’

They lapsed into conversation on the early days of their acquaintance, until Mrs. Pierston’s daughter re-entered the room.

‘Avice,’ said her mother, when the girl had been with them a few minutes.  ’About this matter that I have talked over with you so many times since my attack.  Here is Mr. Pierston, and he wishes to be your husband.  He is much older than you; but, in spite of it, that you will ever get a better husband I don’t believe.  Now, will you take him, seeing the state I am in, and how naturally anxious I am to see you settled before I die?’

‘But you won’t die, mother!  You are getting better!’

’Just for the present only.  Come, he is a good man and a clever man, and a rich man.  I want you, O so much, to be his wife!  I can say no more.’

Avice looked appealingly at the sculptor, and then on the floor.  ’Does he really wish me to?’ she asked almost inaudibly, turning as she spoke to Pierston.  ‘He has never quite said so to me.’

‘My dear one, how can you doubt it?’ said Jocelyn quickly.  ’But I won’t press you to marry me as a favour, against your feelings.’

‘I thought Mr. Pierston was younger!’ she murmured to her mother.

’That counts for little, when you think how much there is on the other side.  Think of our position, and of his-a sculptor, with a mansion, and a studio full of busts and statues that I have dusted in my time, and of the beautiful studies you would be able to take up.  Surely the life would just suit you?  Your expensive education is wasted down here!’

Avice did not care to argue.  She was outwardly gentle as her grandmother had been, and it seemed just a question with her of whether she must or must not.  ’Very well-I feel I ought to agree to marry him, since you tell me to,’ she answered quietly, after some thought.  ’I see that it would be a wise thing to do, and that you wish it, and that Mr. Pierston really does-like me.  So-so that-’

Pierston was not backward at this critical juncture, despite unpleasant sensations.  But it was the historic ingredient in this genealogical passion-if its continuity through three generations may be so described-which appealed to his perseverance at the expense of his wisdom.  The mother was holding the daughter’s hand; she took Pierston’s, and laid Avice’s in it.

No more was said in argument, and the thing was regarded as determined.  Afterwards a noise was heard upon the window-panes, as of fine sand thrown; and, lifting the blind, Pierston saw that the distant lightship winked with a bleared and indistinct eye.  A drizzling rain had come on with the dark, and it was striking the window in handfuls.  He had intended to walk the two miles back to the station, but it meant a drenching to do it now.  He waited and had supper; and, finding the weather no better, accepted Mrs. Pierston’s invitation to stay over the night.

Thus it fell out that again he lodged in the house he had been accustomed to live in as a boy, before his father had made his fortune, and before his own name had been heard of outside the boundaries of the isle.

He slept but little, and in the first movement of the dawn sat up in bed.  Why should he ever live in London or any other fashionable city if this plan of marriage could be carried out?  Surely, with this young wife, the island would be the best place for him.  It might be possible to rent Sylvania Castle as he had formerly done-better still to buy it.  If life could offer him anything worth having it would be a home with Avice there on his native cliffs to the end of his days.

As he sat thus thinking, and the daylight increased, he discerned, a short distance before him, a movement of something ghostly.  His position was facing the window, and he found that by chance the looking-glass had swung itself vertical, so that what he saw was his own shape.  The recognition startled him.  The person he appeared was too grievously far, chronologically, in advance of the person he felt himself to be.  Pierston did not care to regard the figure confronting him so mockingly.  Its voice seemed to say ‘There’s tragedy hanging on to this!’ But the question of age being pertinent he could not give the spectre up, and ultimately got out of bed under the weird fascination of the reflection.  Whether he had overwalked himself lately, or what he had done, he knew not; but never had he seemed so aged by a score of years as he was represented in the glass in that cold grey morning light.  While his soul was what it was, why should he have been encumbered with that withering carcase, without the ability to shift it off for another, as his ideal Beloved had so frequently done?

By reason of her mother’s illness Avice was now living in the house, and, on going downstairs, he found that they were to breakfast en tete-a-tete.  She was not then in the room, but she entered in the course of a few minutes.  Pierston had already heard that the widow felt better this morning, and elated by the prospect of sitting with Avice at this meal he went forward to her joyously.  As soon as she saw him in the full stroke of day from the window she started; and he then remembered that it was their first meeting under the solar rays.

She was so overcome that she turned and left the room as if she had forgotten something; when she re-entered she was visibly pale.  She recovered herself, and apologized.  She had been sitting up the night before the last, she said, and was not quite so well as usual.

There may have been some truth in this; but Pierston could not get over that first scared look of hers.  It was enough to give daytime stability to his night views of a possible tragedy lurking in this wedding project.  He determined that, at any cost to his heart, there should be no misapprehension about him from this moment.

‘Miss Pierston,’ he said as they sat down, ’since it is well you should know all the truth before we go any further, that there may be no awkward discoveries afterwards, I am going to tell you something about myself-if you are not too distressed to hear it?’

‘No-let me hear it.’

’I was once the lover of your mother, and wanted to marry her, only she wouldn’t, or rather couldn’t, marry me.’

‘O how strange!’ said the girl, looking from him to the breakfast things, and from the breakfast things to him.  ’Mother has never told me that.  Yet of course, you might have been.  I mean, you are old enough.’

He took the remark as a satire she had not intended.  ’O yes-quite old enough,’ he said grimly.  ‘Almost too old.’

‘Too old for mother?  How’s that?’

‘Because I belonged to your grandmother.’

‘No?  How can that be?’

’I was her lover likewise.  I should have married her if I had gone straight on instead of round the corner.’

’But you couldn’t have been, Mr. Pierston!  You are not old enough?  Why, how old are you?-you have never told me.’

‘I am very old.’

‘My mother’s, and my grandmother’s,’ said she, looking at him no longer as at a possible husband, but as a strange fossilized relic in human form.  Pierston saw it, but meaning to give up the game he did not care to spare himself.

‘Your mother’s and your grandmother’s young man,’ he repeated.

‘And were you my great-grandmother’s too?’ she asked, with an expectant interest in his case as a drama that overcame her personal considerations for a moment.

’No-not your great-grandmother’s.  Your imagination beats even my confessions!...  But I am very old, as you see.’

‘I did not know it!’ said she in an appalled murmur.  ’You do not look so; and I thought that what you looked you were.’

‘And you-you are very young,’ he continued.

A stillness followed, during which she sat in a troubled constraint, regarding him now and then with something in her open eyes and large pupils that might have been sympathy or nervousness.  Pierston ate scarce any breakfast, and rising abruptly from the table said he would take a walk on the cliffs as the morning was fine.

He did so, proceeding along the north-east heights for nearly a mile.  He had virtually given Avice up, but not formally.  His intention had been to go back to the house in half-an-hour and pay a morning visit to the invalid; but by not returning the plans of the previous evening might be allowed to lapse silently, as mere pourparlers that had come to nothing in the face of Avice’s want of love for him.  Pierston accordingly went straight along, and in the course of an hour was at his Budmouth lodgings.

Nothing occurred till the evening to inform him how his absence had been taken.  Then a note arrived from Mrs. Pierston; it was written in pencil, evidently as she lay.

‘I am alarmed,’ she said, ’at your going so suddenly.  Avice seems to think she has offended you.  She did not mean to do that, I am sure.  It makes me dreadfully anxious!  Will you send a line?  Surely you will not desert us now-my heart is so set on my child’s welfare!’

‘Desert you I won’t,’ said Jocelyn.  ’It is too much like the original case.  But I must let her desert me!’

On his return, with no other object than that of wishing Mrs. Pierston good-bye, he found her painfully agitated.  She clasped his hand and wetted it with her tears.

‘O don’t be offended with her!’ she cried.  ’She’s young.  We are one people-don’t marry a kimberlin!  It will break my heart if you forsake her now!  Avice!’

The girl came.  ‘My manner was hasty and thoughtless this morning,’ she said in a low voice.  ‘Please pardon me.  I wish to abide by my promise.’

Her mother, still tearful, again joined their hands; and the engagement stood as before.

PPierston went back to Budmouth, but dimly seeing how curiously, through his being a rich suitor, ideas of beneficence and reparation were retaining him in the course arranged by her mother, and urged by his own desire in the face of his understanding.

CHAPTER V. - On the verge of possession

In anticipation of his marriage Pierston had taken a new red house of the approved Kensington pattern, with a new studio at the back as large as a mediaeval barn.  Hither, in collusion with the elder Avice-whose health had mended somewhat-he invited mother and daughter to spend a week or two with him, thinking thereby to exercise on the latter’s imagination an influence which was not practicable while he was a guest at their house; and by interesting his betrothed in the fitting and furnishing of this residence to create in her an ambition to be its mistress.

It was a pleasant, reposeful time to be in town.  There was nobody to interrupt them in their proceedings, and, it being out of the season, the largest tradesmen were as attentive to their wants as if those firms had never before been honoured with a single customer whom they really liked.  Pierston and his guests, almost equally inexperienced-for the sculptor had nearly forgotten what knowledge of householding he had acquired earlier in life-could consider and practise thoroughly a species of skeleton-drill in receiving visitors when the pair should announce themselves as married and at home in the coming winter season./p>

Avice was charming, even if a little cold.  He congratulated himself yet again that time should have reserved for him this final chance for one of the line.  She was somewhat like her mother, whom he had loved in the flesh, but she had the soul of her grandmother, whom he had loved in the spirit-and, for that matter, loved now.  Only one criticism had he to pass upon his choice:  though in outward semblance her grandam idealized, she had not the first Avice’s candour, but rather her mother’s closeness.  He never knew exactly what she was thinking and feeling.  Yet he seemed to have such prescriptive rights in women of her blood that her occasional want of confidence did not deeply trouble him.

It was one of those ripe and mellow afternoons that sometimes colour London with their golden light at this time of the year, and produce those marvellous sunset effects which, if they were not known to be made up of kitchen coal-smoke and animal exhalations, would be rapturously applauded.  Behind the perpendicular, oblique, zigzagged, and curved zinc ‘tall-boys,’ that formed a grey pattern not unlike early Gothic numerals against the sky, the men and women on the tops of the omnibuses saw an irradiation of topaz hues, darkened here and there into richest russet.

There had been a sharp shower during the afternoon, and Pierston-who had to take care of himself-had worn a pair of goloshes on his short walk in the street.  He noiselessly entered the studio, inside which some gleams of the same mellow light had managed to creep, and where he guessed he should find his prospective wife and mother-in-law awaiting him with tea.  But only Avice was there, seated beside the teapot of brown delf, which, as artists, they affected, her back being toward him.  She was holding her handkerchief to her eyes, and he saw that she was weeping silently.

In another moment he perceived that she was weeping over a book.  By this time she had heard him, and came forward.  He made it appear that he had not noticed her distress, and they discussed some arrangements of furniture.  When he had taken a cup of tea she went away, leaving the book behind her.

Pierston took it up.  The volume was an old school-book; Stievenard’s ‘Lectures Francaises,’ with her name in it as a pupil at Sandbourne High School, and date-markings denoting lessons taken at a comparatively recent time, for Avice had been but a novice as governess when he discovered her.

For a school-girl-which she virtually was-to weep over a school-book was strange.  Could she have been affected by some subject in the readings?  Impossible.  Pierston fell to thinking, and zest died for the process of furnishing, which he had undertaken so gaily.  Somehow, the bloom was again disappearing from his approaching marriage.  Yet he loved Avice more and more tenderly; he feared sometimes that in the solicitousness of his affection he was spoiling her by indulging her every whim.

He looked round the large and ambitious apartment, now becoming clouded with shades, out of which the white and cadaverous countenances of his studies, casts, and other lumber peered meditatively at him, as if they were saying, ‘What are you going to do now, old boy?’ They had never looked like that while standing in his past homely workshop, where all the real labours of his life had been carried out.  What should a man of his age, who had not for years done anything to speak of-certainly not to add to his reputation as an artist-want with a new place like this?  It was all because of the elect lady, and she apparently did not want him.

Pierston did not observe anything further in Avice to cause him misgiving till one dinner-time, a week later, towards the end of the visit.  Then, as he sat himself between her and her mother at their limited table, he was struck with her nervousness, and was tempted to say, ‘Why are you troubled, my little dearest?’ in tones which disclosed that he was as troubled as she.

‘Am I troubled?’ she said with a start, turning her gentle hazel eyes upon him.  ’Yes, I suppose I am.  It is because I have received a letter-from an old friend.’

‘You didn’t show it to me,’ said her mother.

‘No-I tore it up.’

‘Why?’

‘It was not necessary to keep it, so I destroyed it.’

Mrs. Pierston did not press her further on the subject, and Avice showed no disposition to continue it.  They retired rather early, as they always did, but Pierston remained pacing about his studio a long while, musing on many things, not the least being the perception that to wed a woman may be by no means the same thing as to be united with her.  The ’old friend’ of Avice’s remark had sounded very much like ‘lover.’  Otherwise why should the letter have so greatly disturbed her?

There seemed to be something uncanny, after all, about London, in its relation to his contemplated marriage.  When she had first come up she was easier with him than now.  And yet his bringing her there had helped his cause; the house had decidedly impressed her-almost overawed her, and though he owned that by no law of nature or reason had her mother or himself any right to urge on Avice partnership with him against her inclination, he resolved to make the most of having her under his influence by getting the wedding details settled before she and her mother left.

The next morning he proceeded to do this.  When he encountered Avice there was a trace of apprehension on her face; but he set that down to a fear that she had offended him the night before by her taciturnity.  Directly he requested her mother, in Avice’s presence, to get her to fix the day quite early, Mrs. Pierston became brighter and brisker.  She, too, plainly had doubts about the wisdom of delay, and turning to her daughter said, ‘Now, my dear, do you hear?’

It was ultimately agreed that the widow and her daughter should go back in a day or two, to await Pierston’s arrival on the wedding-eve, immediately after their return.

In pursuance of the arrangement Pierston found himself on the south shore of England in the gloom of the aforesaid evening, the isle, as he looked across at it with his approach, being just discernible as a moping countenance, a creature sullen with a sense that he was about to withdraw from its keeping the rarest object it had ever owned.  He had come alone, not to embarrass them, and had intended to halt a couple of hours in the neighbouring seaport to give some orders relating to the wedding, but the little railway train being in waiting to take him on, he proceeded with a natural impatience, resolving to do his business here by messenger from the isle.

He passed the ruins of the Tudor castle and the long featureless rib of grinding pebbles that screened off the outer sea, which could be heard lifting and dipping rhythmically in the wide vagueness of the Bay.  At the under-hill island townlet of the Wells there were no flys, and leaving his things to be brought on, as he often did, he climbed the eminence on foot.

Half-way up the steepest part of the pass he saw in the dusk a figure pausing-the single person on the incline.  Though it was too dark to identify faces, Pierston gathered from the way in which the halting stranger was supporting himself by the handrail, which here bordered the road to assist climbers, that the person was exhausted.

‘Anything the matter?’ he said.

‘O no-not much,’ was returned by the other.  ’But it is steep just here.’

The accent was not quite that of an Englishman, and struck him as hailing from one of the Channel Islands.  ’Can’t I help you up to the top?’ he said, for the voice, though that of a young man, seemed faint and shaken.

’No, thank you.  I have been ill; but I thought I was all right again; and as the night was fine I walked into the island by the road.  It turned out to be rather too much for me, as there is some weakness left still; and this stiff incline brought it out.’

’Naturally.  You’d better take hold of my arm-at any rate to the brow here.’

Thus pressed the stranger did so, and they went on towards the ridge, till, reaching the lime-kiln standing there the stranger abandoned his hold, saying:  ‘Thank you for your assistance, sir.  Good-night.’

‘I don’t think I recognize your voice as a native’s?’

‘No, it is not.  I am a Jersey man.  Goodnight, sir.’

’Good-night, if you are sure you can get on.  Here, take this stick-it is no use to me.’  Saying which, Pierston put his walking-stick into the young man’s hand.

’Thank you again.  I shall be quite recovered when I have rested a minute or two.  Don’t let me detain you, please.’

The stranger as he spoke turned his face towards the south, where the Beal light had just come into view, and stood regarding it with an obstinate fixity.  As he evidently wished to be left to himself Jocelyn went on, and troubled no more about him, though the desire of the young man to be rid of his company, after accepting his walking-stick and his arm, had come with a suddenness that was almost emotional; and impressionable as Jocelyn was, no less now than in youth, he was saddened for a minute by the sense that there were people in the world who did not like even his sympathy.

However, a pleasure which obliterated all this arose when Pierston drew near to the house that was likely to be his dear home on all future visits to the isle, perhaps even his permanent home as he grew older and the associations of his youth re-asserted themselves.  It had been, too, his father’s house, the house in which he was born, and he amused his fancy with plans for its enlargement under the supervision of Avice and himself.  It was a still greater pleasure to behold a tall and shapely figure standing against the light of the open door and presumably awaiting him.

Avice, who it was, gave a little jump when she recognized him, but dutifully allowed him to kiss her when he reached her side; though her nervousness was only too apparent, and was like a child’s towards a parent who may prove stern.

’How dear of you to guess that I might come on at once instead of later!’ said Jocelyn.  ’Well, if I had stayed in the town to go to the shops and so on, I could not have got here till the last train.  How is mother?-our mother, as I shall call her soon.’

Avice said that her mother had not been so well-she feared not nearly so well since her return from London, so that she was obliged to keep her room.  The visit had perhaps been too much for her.  ’But she will not acknowledge that she is much weaker, because she will not disturb my happiness.’

Jocelyn was in a mood to let trifles of manner pass, and he took no notice of the effort which had accompanied the last word.  They went upstairs to Mrs. Pierston, whose obvious relief and thankfulness at sight of him was grateful to her visitor.

‘I am so, O so glad you are come!’ she said huskily, as she held out her thin hand and stifled a sob.  ‘I have been so-’

She could get no further for a moment, and Avice turned away weeping, and abruptly left the room.

‘I have so set my heart on this,’ Mrs. Pierston went on, ’that I have not been able to sleep of late, for I have feared I might drop off suddenly before she is yours, and lose the comfort of seeing you actually united.  Your being so kind to me in old times has made me so sure that she will find a good husband in you, that I am over anxious, I know.  Indeed, I have not liked to let her know quite how anxious I am.’

Thus they talked till Jocelyn bade her goodnight, it being noticeable that Mrs. Pierston, chastened by her illnesses, maintained no longer any reserve on her gladness to acquire him as her son-in-law; and her feelings destroyed any remaining scruples he might have had from perceiving that Avice’s consent was rather an obedience than a desire.  As he went downstairs, and found Avice awaiting his descent, he wondered if anything had occurred here during his absence to give Mrs. Pierston new uneasiness about the marriage, but it was an inquiry he could not address to a girl whose actions could alone be the cause of such uneasiness.

He looked round for her as he supped, but though she had come into the room with him she was not there now.  He remembered her telling him that she had had supper with her mother, and Jocelyn sat on quietly musing and sipping his wine for something near half-an-hour.  Wondering then for the first time what had become of her, he rose and went to the door.  Avice was quite near him after all-only standing at the front door as she had been doing when he came, looking into the light of the full moon, which had risen since his arrival.  His sudden opening of the dining-room door seemed to agitate her.

‘What is it, dear?’ he asked.

’As mother is much better and doesn’t want me, I ought to go and see somebody I promised to take a parcel to-I feel I ought.  And yet, as you have just come to see me-I suppose you don’t approve of my going out while you are here?’

‘Who is the person?’

‘Somebody down that way,’ she said indefinitely.  ’It is not very far off.  I am not afraid-I go out often by myself at night hereabout.’

He reassured her good-humouredly.  ’If you really wish to go, my dear, of course I don’t object.  I have no authority to do that till tomorrow, and you know that if I had it I shouldn’t use it.’

’O but you have!  Mother being an invalid, you are in her place, apart from-to-morrow.’

’Nonsense, darling.  Run across to your friend’s house by all means if you want to.’

‘And you’ll be here when I come in?’

‘No, I am going down to the inn to see if my things are brought up.’

’But hasn’t mother asked you to stay here?  The spare room was got ready for you....  Dear me, I am afraid I ought to have told you.’

’She did ask me.  But I have some things coming, directed to the inn, and I had better be there.  So I’ll wish you good-night, though it is not late.  I will come in quite early to-morrow, to inquire how your mother is going on, and to wish you good-morning.  You will be back again quickly this evening?’

‘O yes.’

‘And I needn’t go with you for company?’

‘O no, thank you.  It is no distance.’

PPierston then departed, thinking how entirely her manner was that of one to whom a question of doing anything was a question of permission and not of judgment.  He had no sooner gone than Avice took a parcel from a cupboard, put on her hat and cloak, and following by the way he had taken till she reached the entrance to Sylvania Castle, there stood still.  She could hear Pierston’s footsteps passing down East Quarriers to the inn; but she went no further in that direction.  Turning into the lane on the right, of which mention has so often been made, she went quickly past the last cottage, and having entered the gorge beyond she clambered into the ruin of the Red King’s or Bow-and-Arrow Castle, standing as a square black mass against the moonlit, indefinite sea.

CHAPTER VI. -  The well-beloved is-where?

Mrs. Pierston passed a restless night, but this she let nobody know; nor, what was painfully evident to herself, that her prostration was increased by anxiety and suspense about the wedding on which she had too much set her heart.

During the very brief space in which she dozed Avice came into her room.  As it was not infrequent for her daughter to look in upon her thus she took little notice, merely saying to assure the girl:  ’I am better, dear.  Don’t come in again.  Get to sleep yourself.’/p>

The mother, however, went thinking anew.  She had no apprehensions about this marriage.  She felt perfectly sure that it was the best thing she could do for her girl.  Not a young woman on the island but was envying Avice at that moment; for Jocelyn was absurdly young for three score, a good-looking man, one whose history was generally known here; as also were the exact figures of the fortune he had inherited from his father, and the social standing he could claim-a standing, however, which that fortune would not have been large enough to procure unassisted by his reputation in his art.

But Avice had been weak enough, as her mother knew, to indulge in fancies for local youths from time to time, and Mrs. Pierston could not help congratulating herself that her daughter had been so docile in the circumstances.  Yet to every one except, perhaps, Avice herself, Jocelyn was the most romantic of lovers.  Indeed was there ever such a romance as that man embodied in his relations to her house?  Rejecting the first Avice, the second had rejected him, and to rally to the third with final achievement was an artistic and tender finish to which it was ungrateful in anybody to be blind.

The widow thought that the second Avice might probably not have rejected Pierston on that occasion in the London studio so many years ago if destiny had not arranged that she should have been secretly united to another when the proposing moment came.

But what had come was best.  ‘My God,’ she said at times that night, ’to think my aim in writing to him should be fulfilling itself like this!’

When all was right and done, what a success upon the whole her life would have been.  She who had begun her career as a cottage-girl, a small quarry-owner’s daughter, had sunk so low as to the position of laundress, had engaged in various menial occupations, had made an unhappy marriage for love which had, however, in the long run, thanks to Jocelyn’s management, much improved her position, was at last to see her daughter secure what she herself had just missed securing, and established in a home of affluence and refinement.

Thus the sick woman excited herself as the hours went on.  At last, in her tenseness it seemed to her that the time had already come at which the household was stirring, and she fancied she heard conversation in her daughter’s room.  But she found that it was only five o’clock, and not yet daylight.  Her state was such that she could see the hangings of the bed tremble with her tremors.  She had declared overnight that she did not require any one to sit up with her, but she now rang a little handbell, and in a few minutes a nurse appeared; Ruth Stockwool, an island woman and neighbour, whom Mrs. Pierston knew well, and who knew all Mrs. Pierston’s history.

‘I am so nervous that I can’t stay by myself,’ said the widow.  ’And I thought I heard Becky dressing Miss Avice in her wedding things.’

‘O no-not yet, ma’am.  There’s nobody up.  But I’ll get you something.’

When Mrs. Pierston had taken a little nourishment she went on:  ’I can’t help frightening myself with thoughts that she won’t marry him.  You see he is older than Avice.’

‘Yes, he is,’ said her neighbour.  ’But I don’t see how anything can hender the wedden now.’

’Avice, you know, had fancies; at least one fancy for another man; a young fellow of five-and-twenty.  And she’s been very secret and odd about it.  I wish she had raved and cried and had it out; but she’s been quite the other way.  I know she’s fond of him still.’

‘What-that young Frenchman, Mr. Leverre o’ Sandbourne?  I’ve heard a little of it.  But I should say there wadden much between ’em.’

’I don’t think there was.  But I’ve a sort of conviction that she saw him last night.  I believe it was only to bid him good-bye, and return him some books he had given her; but I wish she had never known him; he is rather an excitable, impulsive young man, and he might make mischief.  He isn’t a Frenchman, though he has lived in France.  His father was a Jersey gentleman, and on his becoming a widower he married as his second wife a native of this very island.  That’s mainly why the young man is so at home in these parts.’

’Ah-now I follow ’ee.  She was a Bencomb, his stepmother:  I heard something about her years ago.’

’Yes; her father had the biggest stone-trade on the island at one time; but the name is forgotten here now.  He retired years before I was born.  However, mother used to tell me that she was a handsome young woman, who tried to catch Mr. Pierston when he was a young man, and scandalized herself a bit with him.  She went off abroad with her father, who had made a fortune here; but when he got over there he lost it nearly all in some way.  Years after she married this Jerseyman, Mr. Leverre, who had been fond of her as a girl, and she brought up his child as her own.’

Mrs. Pierston paused, but as Ruth did not ask any question she presently resumed her self-relieving murmur: 

’How Miss Avice got to know the young man was in this way.  When Mrs. Leverre’s husband died she came from Jersey to live at Sandbourne; and made it her business one day to cross over to this place to make inquiries about Mr. Jocelyn Pierston.  As my name was Pierston she called upon me with her son, and so Avice and he got acquainted.  When Avice went back to Sandbourne to the finishing school they kept up the acquaintance in secret.  He taught French somewhere there, and does still, I believe.’

‘Well, I hope she’ll forget en.  He idden good enough.’

‘I hope so-I hope so....  Now I’ll try to get a little nap.’

Ruth Stockwool went back to her room, where, finding it would not be necessary to get up for another hour, she lay down again and soon slept.  Her bed was close to the staircase, from which it was divided by a lath partition only, and her consciousness either was or seemed to be aroused by light brushing touches on the outside of the partition, as of fingers feeling the way downstairs in the dark.  The slight noise passed, and in a few seconds she dreamt or fancied she could hear the unfastening of the back door.

She had nearly sunk into another sound sleep when precisely the same phenomena were repeated; fingers brushing along the wall close to her head, down, downward, the soft opening of the door, its close, and silence again.

She now became clearly awake.  The repetition of the process had made the whole matter a singular one.  Early as it was the first sounds might have been those of the housemaid descending, though why she should have come down so stealthily and in the dark did not make itself clear.  But the second performance was inexplicable.  Ruth got out of bed and lifted her blind.  The dawn was hardly yet pink, and the light from the sandbank was not yet extinguished.  But the bushes of euonymus against the white palings of the front garden could be seen, also the light surface of the road winding away like a riband to the north entrance of Sylvania Castle, thence round to the village, the cliffs, and the Cove behind.  Upon the road two dark figures could just be discerned, one a little way behind the other, but overtaking and joining the foremost as Ruth looked.  After all they might be quarriers or lighthouse-keepers from the south of the island, or fishermen just landed from a night’s work.  There being nothing to connect them with the noises she had heard indoors she dismissed the whole subject, and went to bed again.

Jocelyn had promised to pay an early visit to ascertain the state of Mrs. Pierston’s health after her night’s rest, her precarious condition being more obvious to him than to Avice, and making him a little anxious.  Subsequent events caused him to remember that while he was dressing he casually observed two or three boatmen standing near the cliff beyond the village, and apparently watching with deep interest what seemed to be a boat far away towards the opposite shore of South Wessex.  At half-past eight he came from the door of the inn and went straight to Mrs. Pierston’s.  On approaching he discovered that a strange expression which seemed to hang about the house-front that morning was more than a fancy, the gate, door, and two windows being open, though the blinds of other windows were not drawn up, the whole lending a vacant, dazed look to the domicile, as of a person gaping in sudden stultification.  Nobody answered his knock, and walking into the dining-room he found that no breakfast had been laid.  His flashing thought was, ‘Mrs. Pierston is dead.’

While standing in the room somebody came downstairs, and Jocelyn encountered Ruth Stockwool, an open letter fluttering in her hand.

‘O Mr. Pierston, Mr. Pierston!  The Lord-a-Lord!’

‘What?  Mrs. Pierston-’

’No, no!  Miss Avice!  She is gone!-yes-gone!  Read ye this, sir.  It was left in her bedroom, and we be fairly gallied out of our senses!’

He took the letter and confusedly beheld that it was in two handwritings, the first section being in Avice’s: 

’My dear mother,-How ever will you forgive me for what I have done!  So deceitful as it seems.  And yet till this night I had no idea of deceiving either you or Mr. Pierston.

’Last night at ten o’clock I went out, as you may have guessed, to see Mr. Leverre for the last time, and to give him back his books, letters, and little presents to me.  I went only a few steps-to Bow-and-Arrow Castle, where we met as we had agreed to do, since he could not call.  When I reached the place I found him there waiting, but quite ill.  He had been unwell at his mother’s house for some days, and had been obliged to stay in bed, but he had got up on purpose to come and bid me good-bye.  The over-exertion of the journey upset him, and though we stayed and stayed till twelve o’clock he felt quite unable to go back home-unable, indeed, to move more than a few yards.  I had tried so hard not to love him any longer, but I loved him so now that I could not desert him and leave him out there to catch his death.  So I helped him-nearly carrying him-on and on to our door, and then round to the back.  Here he got a little better, and as he could not stay there, and everybody was now asleep, I helped him upstairs into the room we had prepared for Mr. Pierston if he should have wanted one.  I got him into bed, and then fetched some brandy and a little of your tonic.  Did you see me come into your room for it, or were you asleep?

’I sat by him all night.  He improved slowly, and we talked over what we had better do.  I felt that, though I had intended to give him up, I could not now becomingly marry any other man, and that I ought to marry him.  We decided to do it at once, before anybody could hinder us.  So we came down before it was light, and have gone away to get the ceremony solemnized.

’Tell Mr. Pierston it was not premeditated, but the result of an accident.  I am sincerely sorry to have treated him with what he will think unfairness, but though I did not love him I meant to obey you and marry him.  But God sent this necessity of my having to give shelter to my Love, to prevent, I think, my doing what I am now convinced would have been wrong-Ever your loving daughter, Avice.’

The second was in a man’s hand: 

’Dear mother (as you will soon be to me),-Avice has clearly explained above how it happened that I have not been able to give her up to Mr. Pierston.  I think I should have died if I had not accepted the hospitality of a room in your house this night, and your daughter’s tender nursing through the dark dreary hours.  We love each other beyond expression, and it is obvious that, if we are human, we cannot resist marrying now, in spite of friends’ wishes.  Will you please send the note lying beside this to my mother.  It is merely to explain what I have done-Yours with warmest regard, Henri Leverre.’

Jocelyn turned away and looked out of the window.

’Mrs. Pierston thought she heard some talking in the night, but of course she put it down to fancy.  And she remembers Miss Avice coming into her room at one o’clock in the morning, and going to the table where the medicine was standing.  A sly girl-all the time her young man within a yard or two, in the very room, and a using the very clean sheets that you, sir, were to have used!  They are our best linen ones, got up beautiful, and a kept wi’ rosemary.  Really, sir, one would say you stayed out o’ your chammer o’ purpose to oblige the young man with a bed!’

‘Don’t blame them, don’t blame them!’ said Jocelyn in an even and characterless voice.  ’Don’t blame her, particularly.  She didn’t make the circumstances.  I did....  It was how I served her grandmother. ...  Well, she’s gone!  You needn’t make a mystery of it.  Tell it to all the island:  say that a man came to marry a wife, and didn’t find her at home.  Tell everybody that she’s run away.  It must be known sooner or later.’

One of the servants said, after waiting a few moments:  ’We shan’t do that, sir.’

‘Oh-Why won’t you?’

‘We liked her too well, with all her faults.’

‘Ah-did you,’ said he; and he sighed.  He perceived that the younger maids were secretly on Avice’s side.

‘How does her mother bear it?’ Jocelyn asked.  ‘Is she awake?’

Mrs. Pierston had hardly slept, and, having learnt the tidings inadvertently, became so distracted and incoherent as to be like a person in a delirium; till, a few moments before he arrived, all her excitement ceased, and she lay in a weak, quiet silence.

‘Let me go up,’ Pierston said.  ‘And send for the doctor.’

Passing Avice’s chamber he perceived that the little bed had not been slept on.  At the door of the spare room he looked in.  In one corner stood a walking-stick-his own.

‘Where did that come from?’

‘We found it there, sir.’

’Ah yes-I gave it to him.  ‘Tis like me to play another’s game!’

It was the last spurt of bitterness that Jocelyn let escape him.  He went on towards Mrs. Pierston’s room, preceded by the servant.

‘Mr. Pierston has come, ma’am,’ he heard her say to the invalid.  But as the latter took no notice the woman rushed forward to the bed.  ’What has happened to her, Mr. Pierston?  O what do it mean?’

Avice the Second was lying placidly in the position in which the nurse had left her; but no breath came from her lips, and a rigidity of feature was accompanied by the precise expression which had characterized her face when Pierston had her as a girl in his studio.  He saw that it was death, though she appeared to have breathed her last only a few moments before.

Ruth Stockwool’s composure deserted her. ’’Tis the shock of finding Miss Avice gone that has done it!’ she cried.  ‘She has killed her mother!’

‘Don’t say such a terrible thing!’ exclaimed Jocelyn.

’But she ought to have obeyed her mother-a good mother as she was!  How she had set her heart upon the wedding, poor soul; and we couldn’t help her knowing what had happened!  O how ungrateful young folk be!  That girl will rue this morning’s work!’

‘We must get the doctor,’ said Pierston, mechanically, hastening from the room.

When the local practitioner came he merely confirmed their own verdict, and thought her death had undoubtedly been hastened by the shock of the ill news upon a feeble heart, following a long strain of anxiety about the wedding.  He did not consider that an inquest would be necessary.

The two shadowy figures seen through the grey gauzes of the morning by Ruth, five hours before this time, had gone on to the open place by the north entrance of Sylvania Castle, where the lane to the ruins of the old castle branched off.  A listener would not have gathered that a single word passed between them.  The man walked with difficulty, supported by the woman.  At this spot they stopped and kissed each other a long while.

’We ought to walk all the way to Budmouth, if we wish not to be discovered,’ he said sadly.  ’And I can’t even get across the island, even by your help, darling.  It is two miles to the foot of the hill.’

She, who was trembling, tried to speak consolingly: 

’If you could walk we should have to go down the Street of Wells, where perhaps somebody would know me?  Now if we get below here to the Cove, can’t we push off one of the little boats I saw there last night, and paddle along close to the shore till we get to the north side?  Then we can walk across to the station very well.  It is quite calm, and as the tide sets in that direction, it will take us along of itself, without much rowing.  I’ve often got round in a boat that way.’

This seemed to be the only plan that offered, and abandoning the straight road they wound down the defile spanned further on by the old castle arch, and forming the original fosse of the fortress.

The stroke of their own footsteps, lightly as these fell, was flapped back to them with impertinent gratuitousness by the vertical faces of the rock, so still was everything around.  A little further, and they emerged upon the open ledge of the lower tier of cliffs, to the right being the sloping pathway leading down to the secluded creek at their base-the single practicable spot of exit from or entrance to the isle on this side by a seagoing craft; once an active wharf, whence many a fine public building had sailed-including Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

The timorous shadowy shapes descended the footway, one at least of them knowing the place so well that she found it scarcely necessary to guide herself down by touching the natural wall of stone on her right hand, as her companion did.  Thus, with quick suspensive breathings they arrived at the bottom, and trod the few yards of shingle which, on the forbidding shore hereabout, could be found at this spot alone.  It was so solitary as to be unvisited often for four-and-twenty hours by a living soul.  Upon the confined beach were drawn up two or three fishing-lerrets, and a couple of smaller ones, beside them being a rough slipway for launching, and a boathouse of tarred boards.  The two lovers united their strength to push the smallest of the boats down the slope, and floating it they scrambled in.

The girl broke the silence by asking, ‘Where are the oars?’

He felt about the boat, but could find none.  ’I forgot to look for the oars!’ he said.

’They are locked in the boathouse, I suppose.  Now we can only steer and trust to the current!’

The currents here were of a complicated kind.  It was true, as the girl had said, that the tide ran round to the north, but at a special moment in every flood there set in along the shore a narrow reflux contrary to the general outer flow, called ‘The Southern’ by the local sailors.  It was produced by the peculiar curves of coast lying east and west of the Beal; these bent southward in two back streams the up-Channel flow on each side of the peninsula, which two streams united outside the Beal, and there met the direct tidal flow, the confluence of the three currents making the surface of the sea at this point to boil like a pot, even in calmest weather.  The disturbed area, as is well known, is called the Race.

Thus although the outer sea was now running northward to the roadstead and the mainland of Wessex ‘The Southern’ ran in full force towards the Beal and the Race beyond.  It caught the lovers’ hapless boat in a few moments, and, unable to row across it-mere river’s width that it was-they beheld the grey rocks near them, and the grim wrinkled forehead of the isle above, sliding away northwards.

They gazed helplessly at each other, though, in the long-living faith of youth, without distinct fear.  The undulations increased in magnitude, and swung them higher and lower.  The boat rocked, received a smart slap of the waves now and then, and wheeled round, so that the lightship which stolidly winked at them from the quicksand, the single object which told them of their bearings, was sometimes on their right hand and sometimes on their left.  Nevertheless they could always discern from it that their course, whether stemwards or sternwards, was steadily south.

A bright idea occurred to the young man.  He pulled out his handkerchief and, striking a light, set it on fire.  She gave him hers, and he made that flare up also.  The only available fuel left was the small umbrella the girl had brought; this was also kindled in an opened state, and he held it up by the stem till it was consumed.

The lightship had loomed quite large by this time, and a few minutes after they had burnt the handkerchiefs and umbrella a coloured flame replied to them from the vessel.  They flung their arms round each other.

‘I knew we shouldn’t be drowned!’ said Avice hysterically.

‘I thought we shouldn’t too,’ said he.

WWith the appearance of day a boat put off to their assistance, and they were towed towards the heavy red hulk with the large white letters on its side.

CHAPTER VII. - An old tabernacle in A new aspect

The October day thickened into dusk, and Jocelyn sat musing beside the corpse of Mrs. Pierston.  Avice having gone away nobody knew whither, he had acted as the nearest friend of the family, and attended as well as he could to the sombre duties necessitated by her mother’s decease.  It was doubtful, indeed, if anybody else were in a position to do so.  Of Avice the Second’s two brothers, one had been drowned at sea, and the other had emigrated, while her only child besides the present Avice had died in infancy.  As for her friends, she had become so absorbed in her ambitious and nearly accomplished design of marrying her daughter to Jocelyn, that she had gradually completed that estrangement between herself and the other islanders which had been begun so long ago as when, a young woman, she had herself been asked by Pierston to marry him.  On her tantalizing inability to accept the honour offered, she and her husband had been set up in a matter-of-fact business in the stone trade by her patron, but that unforgettable request in the London studio had made her feel ever since a refined kinship with sculpture, and a proportionate aloofness from mere quarrying, which was, perhaps, no more than a venial weakness in Avice the Second.  Her daughter’s objection to Jocelyn she could never understand.  To her own eye he was no older than when he had proposed to her.

As he sat darkling here the ghostly outlines of former shapes taken by his Love came round their sister the unconscious corpse, confronting him from the wall in sad array, like the pictured Trojan women beheld by AEneas on the walls of Carthage.  Many of them he had idealized in bust and in figure from time to time, but it was not as such that he remembered and reanimated them now; rather was it in all their natural circumstances, weaknesses, and stains.  And then as he came to himself their voices grew fainter; they had all gone off on their different careers, and he was left here alone.p>

The probable ridicule that would result to him from the events of the day he did not mind in itself at all.  But he would fain have removed the misapprehensions on which it would be based.  That, however, was impossible.  Nobody would ever know the truth about him; what it was he had sought that had so eluded, tantalized, and escaped him; what it was that had led him such a dance, and had at last, as he believed just now in the freshness of his loss, been discovered in the girl who had left him.  It was not the flesh; he had never knelt low to that.  Not a woman in the world had been wrecked by him, though he had been impassioned by so many.  Nobody would guess the further sentiment-the cordial loving-kindness-which had lain behind what had seemed to him the enraptured fulfilment of a pleasing destiny postponed for forty years.  His attraction to the third Avice would be regarded by the world as the selfish designs of an elderly man on a maid.

His life seemed no longer a professional man’s experience, but a ghost story; and he would fain have vanished from his haunts on this critical afternoon, as the rest had done.  He desired to sleep away his tendencies, to make something happen which would put an end to his bondage to beauty in the ideal.

So he sat on till it was quite dark, and a light was brought.  There was a chilly wind blowing outside, and the lightship on the quicksand afar looked harassed and forlorn.  The haggard solitude was broken by a ring at the door.

Pierston heard a voice below, the accents of a woman.  They had a ground quality of familiarity, a superficial articulation of strangeness.  Only one person in all his experience had ever possessed precisely those tones; rich, as if they had once been powerful.  Explanations seemed to be asked for and given, and in a minute he was informed that a lady was downstairs whom perhaps he would like to see.

‘Who is the lady?’ Jocelyn asked.

The servant hesitated a little.  ’Mrs. Leverre-the mother of the-young gentleman Miss Avice has run off with.’

‘Yes-I’ll see her,’ said Pierston.

He covered the face of the dead Avice, and descended.  ‘Leverre,’ he said to himself.  His ears had known that name before to-day.  It was the name those travelling Americans he had met in Rome gave the woman he supposed might be Marcia Bencomb.

A sudden adjusting light burst upon many familiar things at that moment.  He found the visitor in the drawing-room, standing up veiled, the carriage which had brought her being in waiting at the door.  By the dim light he could see nothing of her features in such circumstances.

‘Mr. Pierston?’

‘I am Mr. Pierston.’

‘You represent the late Mrs. Pierston?’

‘I do-though I am not one of the family.’

‘I know it....  I am Marcia-after forty years.’

’I was divining as much, Marcia.  May the lines have fallen to you in pleasant places since we last met!  But, of all moments of my life, why do you choose to hunt me up now?’

’Why-I am the step-mother and only relation of the young man your bride eloped with this morning.’

‘I was just guessing that, too, as I came downstairs.  But-’

‘And I am naturally making inquiries.’

‘Yes.  Let us take it quietly, and shut the door.’

Marcia sat down.  And he learnt that the conjunction of old things and new was no accident.  What Mrs. Pierston had discussed with her nurse and neighbour as vague intelligence, was now revealed to Jocelyn at first hand by Marcia herself; how, many years after their separation, and when she was left poor by the death of her impoverished father, she had become the wife of that bygone Jersey lover of hers, who wanted a tender nurse and mother for the infant left him by his first wife recently deceased; how he had died a few years later, leaving her with the boy, whom she had brought up at St. Heliers and in Paris, educating him as well as she could with her limited means, till he became the French master at a school in Sandbourne; and how, a year ago, she and her son had got to know Mrs. Pierston and her daughter on their visit to the island, ‘to ascertain,’ she added, more deliberately, ’not entirely for sentimental reasons, what had become of the man with whom I eloped in the first flush of my young womanhood, and only missed marrying by my own will.’

Pierston bowed.

’Well, that was how the acquaintance between the children began, and their passionate attachment to each other.’  She detailed how Avice had induced her mother to let her take lessons in French of young Leverre, rendering their meetings easy.  Marcia had never thought of hindering their intimacy, for in her recent years of affliction she had acquired a new interest in the name she had refused to take in her purse-proud young womanhood; and it was not until she knew how determined Mrs. Pierston was to make her daughter Jocelyn’s wife that she had objected to her son’s acquaintance with Avice.  But it was too late to hinder what had been begun.  He had lately been ill, and she had been frightened by his not returning home the night before.  The note she had received from him that day had only informed her that Avice and himself had gone to be married immediately-whither she did not know.

‘What do you mean to do?’ she asked.

’I do nothing:  there is nothing to be done....  It is how I served her grandmother-one of Time’s revenges.’

‘Served her so for me.’

‘Yes.  Now she me for your son.’

Marcia paused a long while thinking that over, till arousing herself she resumed:  ’But can’t we inquire which way they went out of the island, or gather some particulars about them?’

‘Aye-yes.  We will.’

And Pierston found himself as in a dream walking beside Marcia along the road in their common quest.  He discovered that almost every one of the neighbouring inhabitants knew more about the lovers than he did himself.

At the corner some men were engaged in conversation on the occurrence.  It was allusive only, but knowing the dialect, Pierston and Marcia gathered its import easily.  As soon as it had got light that morning one of the boats was discovered missing from the creek below, and when the flight of the lovers was made known it was inferred that they were the culprits.

Unconsciously Pierston turned in the direction of the creek, without regarding whether Marcia followed him, and though it was darker than when Avice and Leverre had descended in the morning he pursued his way down the incline till he reached the water-side.

‘Is that you, Jocelyn?’

The inquiry came from Marcia.  She was behind him, about half-way down.

‘Yes,’ he said, noticing that it was the first time she had called him by his Christian name.

‘I can’t see where you are, and I am afraid to follow.’

Afraid to follow.  How strangely that altered his conception of her.  Till this moment she had stood in his mind as the imperious, invincible Marcia of old.  There was a strange pathos in this revelation.  He went back and felt for her hand.  ‘I’ll lead you down,’ he said.  And he did so.

They looked out upon the sea, and the lightship shining as if it had quite forgotten all about the fugitives.  ‘I am so uneasy,’ said Marcia.  ‘Do you think they got safely to land?’

‘Yes,’ replied some one other than Jocelyn.  It was a boatman smoking in the shadow of the boathouse.  He informed her that they were picked up by the lightship men, and afterwards, at their request, taken across to the opposite shore, where they landed, proceeding thence on foot to the nearest railway station and entering the train for London.  This intelligence had reached the island about an hour before.

‘They’ll be married to-morrow morning!’ said Marcia.

&#’So much the better.  Don’t regret it, Marcia.  He shall not lose by it.  I have no relation in the world except some twentieth cousins in the isle, of whom her father was one, and I’ll take steps at once to make her a good match for him.  As for me...  I have lived a day too long.’

CHAPTER VIII. - ‘Alas for this grey shadow, once A man!’

In the month of November which followed Pierston was lying dangerously ill of a fever at his house in London.

The funeral of the second Avice had happened to be on one of those drenching afternoons of the autumn, when the raw rain flies level as the missiles of the ancient inhabitants across the beaked promontory which has formed the scene of this narrative, scarcely alighting except against the upright sides of things sturdy enough to stand erect.  One person only followed the corpse into the church as chief mourner, Jocelyn Pierston-fickle lover in the brief, faithful friend in the long run.  No means had been found of communicating with Avice before the interment, though the death had been advertised in the local and other papers in the hope that it might catch her eye.p>

So, when the pathetic procession came out of the church and moved round into the graveyard, a hired vehicle from Budmouth was seen coming at great speed along the open road from Top-o’-Hill.  It stopped at the churchyard gate, and a young man and woman alighted and entered, the vehicle waiting.  They glided along the path and reached Pierston’s side just as the body was deposited by the grave.

He did not turn his head.  He knew it was Avice, with Henri Leverre-by this time, he supposed, her husband.  Her remorseful grief, though silent, seemed to impregnate the atmosphere with its heaviness.  Perceiving that they had not expected him to be there Pierston edged back; and when the service was over he kept still further aloof, an act of considerateness which she seemed to appreciate.

Thus, by his own contrivance, neither Avice nor the young man held communication with Jocelyn by word or by sign.  After the burial they returned as they had come.

It was supposed that his exposure that day in the bleakest churchyard in Wessex, telling upon a distracted mental and bodily condition, had thrown Pierston into the chill and fever which held him swaying for weeks between life and death shortly after his return to town.  When he had passed the crisis, and began to know again that there was such a state as mental equilibrium and physical calm, he heard a whispered conversation going on around him, and the touch of footsteps on the carpet.  The light in the chamber was so subdued that nothing around him could be seen with any distinctness.  Two living figures were present, a nurse moving about softly, and a visitor.  He discerned that the latter was feminine, and for the time this was all.

He was recalled to his surroundings by a voice murmuring the inquiry:  ‘Does the light try your eyes?’

The tones seemed familiar:  they were spoken by the woman who was visiting him.  He recollected them to be Marcia’s, and everything that had happened before he fell ill came back to his mind.

‘Are you helping to nurse me, Marcia?’ he asked.

’Yes.  I have come up to stay here till you are better, as you seem to have no other woman friend who cares whether you are dead or alive.  I am living quite near.  I am glad you have got round the corner.  We have been very anxious.’

‘How good you are!...  And-have you heard of the others?’

’They are married.  They have been here to see you, and are very sorry.  She sat by you, but you did not know her.  She was broken down when she discovered her mother’s death, which had never once occurred to her as being imminent.  They have gone away again.  I thought it best she should leave, now that you are out of danger.  Now you must be quiet till I come and talk again.’

Pierston was conscious of a singular change in himself, which had been revealed by this slight discourse.  He was no longer the same man that he had hitherto been.  The malignant fever, or his experiences, or both, had taken away something from him, and put something else in its place.

During the next days, with further intellectual expansion, he became clearly aware of what this was.  The artistic sense had left him, and he could no longer attach a definite sentiment to images of beauty recalled from the past.  His appreciativeness was capable of exercising itself only on utilitarian matters, and recollection of Avice’s good qualities alone had any effect on his mind; of her appearance none at all.

At first he was appalled; and then he said, ‘Thank God!’

Marcia, who, with something of her old absolutism, came to his house continually to inquire and give orders, and to his room to see him every afternoon, found out for herself in the course of his convalescence this strange death of the sensuous side of Jocelyn’s nature.  She had said that Avice was getting extraordinarily handsome, and that she did not wonder her stepson lost his heart to her-an inadvertent remark which she immediately regretted, in fear lest it should agitate him.  He merely answered, however, ’Yes; I suppose she is handsome.  She’s more-a wise girl who will make a good housewife in time....  I wish you were not handsome, Marcia.’

‘Why?’

’I don’t quite know why.  Well-it seems a stupid quality to me.  I can’t understand what it is good for any more.’

‘O-I as a woman think there’s good in it.’

’Is there?  Then I have lost all conception of it.  I don’t know what has happened to me.  I only know I don’t regret it.  Robinson Crusoe lost a day in his illness:  I have lost a faculty, for which loss Heaven be praised!’

There was something pathetic in this announcement, and Marcia sighed as she said, ‘Perhaps when you get strong it will come back to you.’

Pierston shook his head.  It then occurred to him that never since the reappearance of Marcia had he seen her in full daylight, or without a bonnet and thick veil, which she always retained on these frequent visits, and that he had been unconsciously regarding her as the Marcia of their early time, a fancy which the small change in her voice well sustained.  The stately figure, the good colour, the classical profile, the rather large handsome nose and somewhat prominent, regular teeth, the full dark eye, formed still the Marcia of his imagination; the queenly creature who had infatuated him when the first Avice was despised and her successors unknown.  It was this old idea which, in his revolt from beauty, had led to his regret at her assumed handsomeness.  He began wondering now how much remained of that presentation after forty years.

‘Why don’t you ever let me see you, Marcia?’ he asked.

’O, I don’t know.  You mean without my bonnet?  You have never asked me to, and I am obliged to wrap up my face with this wool veil because I suffer so from aches in these cold winter winds, though a thick veil is awkward for any one whose sight is not so good as it was.’

The impregnable Marcia’s sight not so good as it was, and her face in the aching stage of life:  these simple things came as sermons to Jocelyn.

‘But certainly I will gratify your curiosity,’ she resumed good-naturedly.  ’It is really a compliment that you should still take that sort of interest in me.’

She had moved round from the dark side of the room to the lamp-for the daylight had gone-and she now suddenly took off the bonnet, veil and all.  She stood revealed to his eyes as remarkably good-looking, considering the lapse of years.

‘I am-vexed!’ he said, turning his head aside impatiently.  ’You are fair and five-and-thirty-not a day more.  You still suggest beauty.  You won’t do as a chastisement, Marcia!’

’Ah, but I may!  To think that you know woman no better after all this time!’

‘How?’

’To be so easily deceived.  Think:  it is lamplight; and your sight is weak at present; and...  Well, I have no reason for being anything but candid now, God knows!  So I will tell you....  My husband was younger than myself; and he had an absurd wish to make people think he had married a young and fresh-looking woman.  To fall in with his vanity I tried to look it.  We were often in Paris, and I became as skilled in beautifying artifices as any passee wife of the Faubourg St. Germain.  Since his death I have kept up the practice, partly because the vice is almost ineradicable, and partly because I found that it helped me with men in bringing up his boy on small means.  At this moment I am frightfully made up.  But I can cure that.  I’ll come in to-morrow morning, if it is bright, just as I really am; you’ll find that Time has not disappointed you.  Remember I am as old as yourself; and I look it.’

The morrow came, and with it Marcia, quite early, as she had promised.  It happened to be sunny, and shutting the bedroom door she went round to the window, where she uncovered immediately, in his full view, and said, ’See if I am satisfactory now-to you who think beauty vain.  The rest of me-and it is a good deal-lies on my dressing-table at home.  I shall never put it on again-never!’

But she was a woman; and her lips quivered, and there was a tear in her eye, as she exposed the ruthless treatment to which she had subjected herself.  The cruel morning rays-as with Jocelyn under Avice’s scrutiny-showed in their full bareness, unenriched by addition, undisguised by the arts of colour and shade, the thin remains of what had once been Marcia’s majestic bloom.  She stood the image and superscription of Age-an old woman, pale and shrivelled, her forehead ploughed, her cheek hollow, her hair white as snow.  To this the face he once kissed had been brought by the raspings, chisellings, scourgings, bakings, freezings of forty invidious years-by the thinkings of more than half a lifetime.

‘I am sorry if I shock you,’ she went on huskily but firmly, as he did not speak.  ’But the moth frets the garment somewhat in such an interval.’

’Yes-yes!...  Marcia, you are a brave woman.  You have the courage of the great women of history.  I can no longer love; but I admire you from my soul!’

’Don’t say I am great.  Say I have begun to be passably honest.  It is more than enough.’

’Well-I’ll say nothing then, more than how wonderful it is that a woman should have been able to put back the clock of Time thirty years!’

‘It shames me now, Jocelyn.  I shall never do it any more!’

As soon as he was strong enough he got her to take him round to his studio in a carriage.  The place had been kept aired, but the shutters were shut, and they opened them themselves.  He looked round upon the familiar objects-some complete and matured, the main of them seedlings, grafts, and scions of beauty, waiting for a mind to grow to perfection in.

‘No-I don’t like them!’ he said, turning away.  ’They are as ugliness to me!  I don’t feel a single touch of kin with or interest in any one of them whatever.’

‘Jocelyn-this is sad.’

‘No-not at all.’  He went again towards the door.  ’Now let me look round.’  He looked back, Marcia remaining silent.  ’The Aphrodites-how I insulted her fair form by those failures!-the Freyjas, the Nymphs and Fauns, Eves, Avices, and other innumerable Well-Beloveds-I want to see them never any more!...  “Instead of sweet smell there shall be stink, and there shall be burning instead of beauty,” said the prophet.’

And they came away.  On another afternoon they went to the National Gallery, to test his taste in paintings, which had formerly been good.  As she had expected, it was just the same with him there.  He saw no more to move him, he declared, in the time-defying presentations of Perugino, Titian, Sebastiano, and other statuesque creators than in the work of the pavement artist they had passed on their way.

‘It is strange!’ said she.

’I don’t regret it.  That fever has killed a faculty which has, after all, brought me my greatest sorrows, if a few little pleasures.  Let us be gone.’

He was now so well advanced in convalescence that it was deemed a most desirable thing to take him down into his native air.  Marcia agreed to accompany him.  ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t,’ said she.  ’An old friendless woman like me, and you an old friendless man.’

‘Yes.  Thank Heaven I am old at last.  The curse is removed.’

It may be shortly stated here that after his departure for the isle Pierston never again saw his studio or its contents.  He had been down there but a brief while when, finding his sense of beauty in art and nature absolutely extinct, he directed his agent in town to disperse the whole collection; which was done.  His lease of the building was sold, and in the course of time another sculptor won admiration there from those who knew not Joseph.  The next year his name figured on the retired list of Academicians.

As time went on he grew as well as one of his age could expect to be after such a blasting illness, but remained on the isle, in the only house he now possessed, a comparatively small one at the top of the Street of Wells.  A growing sense of friendship which it would be foolish to interrupt led him to take a somewhat similar house for Marcia quite near, and remove her furniture thither from Sandbourne.  Whenever the afternoon was fine he would call for her and they would take a stroll together towards the Beal, or the ancient Castle, seldom going the whole way, his sciatica and her rheumatism effectually preventing them, except in the driest atmospheres.  He had now changed his style of dress entirely, appearing always in a homely suit of local make, and of the fashion of thirty years before, the achievement of a tailoress at East Quarriers.  He also let his iron-grey beard grow as it would, and what little hair he had left from the baldness which had followed the fever.  And thus, numbering in years but two-and-sixty, he might have passed for seventy-five.

Though their early adventure as lovers had happened so long ago, its history had become known in the isle with mysterious rapidity and fulness of detail.  The gossip to which its bearing on their present friendship gave rise was the subject of their conversation on one of these walks along the cliffs.

’It is extraordinary what an interest our neighbours take in our affairs,’ he observed.  ’They say “those old folk ought to marry; better late than never.”  That’s how people are-wanting to round off other people’s histories in the best machine-made conventional manner.’

‘Yes.  They keep on about it to me, too, indirectly.’

’Do they!  I believe a deputation will wait upon us some morning, requesting in the interests of matchmaking that we will please to get married as soon as possible....  How near we were to doing it forty years ago, only you were so independent!  I thought you would have come back and was much surprised that you didn’t.’

’My independent ideas were not blameworthy in me, as an islander, though as a kimberlin young lady perhaps they would have been.  There was simply no reason from an islander’s point of view why I should come back, since no result threatened from our union; and I didn’t.  My father kept that view before me, and I bowed to his judgment.’

’And so the island ruled our destinies, though we were not on it.  Yes-we are in hands not our own....  Did you ever tell your husband?’

‘No.’

‘Did he ever hear anything?’

‘Not that I am aware.’

Calling upon her one day, he found her in a state of great discomfort.  In certain gusty winds the chimneys of the little house she had taken here smoked intolerably, and one of these winds was blowing then.  Her drawing-room fire could not be kept burning, and rather than let a woman who suffered from rheumatism shiver fireless he asked her to come round and lunch with him as she had often done before.  As they went he thought, not for the first time, how needless it was that she should be put to this inconvenience by their occupying two houses, when one would better suit their now constant companionship, and disembarrass her of the objectionable chimneys.  Moreover, by marrying Marcia, and establishing a parental relation with the young people, the rather delicate business of his making them a regular allowance would become a natural proceeding.

And so the zealous wishes of the neighbours to give a geometrical shape to their story were fulfilled almost in spite of the chief parties themselves.  When he put the question to her distinctly, Marcia admitted that she had always regretted the imperious decision of her youth; and she made no ado about accepting him.

‘I have no love to give, you know, Marcia,’ he said.  ’But such friendship as I am capable of is yours till the end.’

’It is nearly the same with me-perhaps not quite.  But, like the other people, I have somehow felt, and you will understand why, that I ought to be your wife before I die.’

It chanced that a day or two before the ceremony, which was fixed to take place very shortly after the foregoing conversation, Marcia’s rheumatism suddenly became acute.  The attack promised, however, to be only temporary, owing to some accidental exposure of herself in making preparations for removal, and as they thought it undesirable to postpone their union for such a reason, Marcia, after being well wrapped up, was wheeled into the church in a chair.

A month thereafter, when they were sitting at breakfast one morning, Marcia exclaimed ‘Well-good heavens!’ while reading a letter she had just received from Avice, who was living with her husband in a house Pierston had bought for them at Sandbourne.

Jocelyn looked up.

’Why-Avice says she wants to be separated from Henri!  Did you ever hear of such a thing!  She’s coming here about it to-day.’

‘Separated?  What does the child mean!’ Pierston read the letter.  ‘Ridiculous nonsense!’ he continued.  ’She doesn’t know what she wants.  I say she sha’n’t be separated!  Tell her so, and there’s an end of it.  Why-how long have they been married?  Not twelve months.  What will she say when they have been married twenty years!’

Marcia remained reflecting.  ’I think that remorseful feeling she unluckily has at times, of having disobeyed her mother, and caused her death, makes her irritable,’ she murmured.  ‘Poor child!’

Lunch-time had hardly come when Avice arrived, looking very tearful and excited.  Marcia took her into an inner room, had a conversation with her, and they came out together.

‘O it’s nothing,’ said Marcia.  ’I tell her she must go back directly she has had some luncheon.’

‘Ah, that’s all very well!’ sobbed Avice.  ’B-b-but if you had been m-married so long as I have, y-you wouldn’t say go back like that!’

‘What is it all about?’ inquired Pierston.

’He said that if he were to die I-I-should be looking out for somebody with fair hair and grey eyes, just-just to spite him in his grave, because he’s dark, and he’s quite sure I don’t like dark people!  And then he said-But I won’t be so treacherous as to tell any more about him!  I wish-’

’Avice, your mother did this very thing.  And she went back to her husband.  Now you are to do the same.  Let me see; there is a train-’

‘She must have something to eat first.  Sit down, dear.’

The question was settled by the arrival of Henri himself at the end of luncheon, with a very anxious and pale face.  Pierston went off to a business meeting, and left the young couple to adjust their differences in their own way.

His business was, among kindred undertakings which followed the extinction of the Well-Beloved and other ideals, to advance a scheme for the closing of the old natural fountains in the Street of Wells, because of their possible contamination, and supplying the townlet with water from pipes, a scheme that was carried out at his expense, as is well known.  He was also engaged in acquiring some old moss-grown, mullioned Elizabethan cottages, for the purpose of pulling them down because they were damp; which he afterwards did, and built new ones with hollow walls, and full of ventilators.

At present he is sometimes mentioned as ‘the late Mr. Pierston’ by gourd-like young art-critics and journalists; and his productions are alluded to as those of a man not without genius, whose powers were insufficiently recognized in his lifetime.