DUNMARA

CHAPTER XLI

A NEW BOOK

MR. WALDRON was a chilly old man, and, therefore, when his carriage stopped at the door of his house in Wimpole Street, the shutters within were shut and the lantern burned in the hall, although the sunset still tinted window-sills to the west, and the street-lamps would yet be long unlighted.

We will not attempt to penetrate anything so profound as the astonishment of Miss Armitage when introduced to her master's daughter and future mistress. But fortunately, she was not called upon for any demonstration of loyalty that night.

The excitement of the day had not harmed Mr. Waldron. His strange discovery had only roused and cheered him. On Ellen the night laid a feverish touch. Her hands were burning, her temples throbbing when she crossed her father's threshold for the first time. Out of solicitude for him she stifled complaint, and did not ask for leave to creep away into a corner somewhere and rest. She sat opposite to him at the dinner-table in the dining-room, with colour brilliant and shining eyes, so that the old man gazed on her in delight, and the servants downstairs talked about her beauty. After dinner, she went with him to see his studio, seldom used for work now, but much loved, and often visited. Here Ellen's portfolio was enthroned upon a stand, and a place appointed for her easel. As she saw her father peering about with his lamp dragging out treasures for her to see, fling ng streams of light over dark pictures; saw tapestry floating from the walls, and white busts that gleamed on her here and there from the shadows, it was all like a whirling dream.

She went back with him to the dining-room, and sat at his feet, striving to talk about the subject of mutual interest, the past, hearing many things that floated away from her again, but afterwards came back mingled with delirious

fancies. When it was pretty late, she was taken to a large room, where a fire blazed, and heavy curtains were swept across the windows, and where many hasty attempts had been made to give the place a bright and habitable aspect. Ellen tried hard to say her prayers coherently, but everything seemed n a maze. She was glad to lay her head on the cool pillows under the canopy of the huge bed. From that bed she did not rise next morning. A low fever kept her there for many days and nights.

Mr. Waldron's physician assured the anxious old man that her life was in no danger. She had worked too closely, lived too much alone, had been subject to too much anxiety, but she would be quite well again in a little time. All through the days she lay flushed and quiet, not speaking, but watching the aspects of the room, and those who came and went. But as the evenings wore on, her eyes would grow more brilliant, and she would talk into her pillow, low delirious talk. Mr. Waldron would sit in the sunniest window wrapped in rugs. He suffered without fire, but he would watch by his new daughter in her sickness. Bright May sunshine poured into the room day after day. Armitage had carried away the heavy curtains from bed and window, and flung flowing white ones, crisp and airy, over the naked poles and frameworks. And in the morning Ellen was conscious of it all, but seldom in the evenings. Then her eyes would begin to wander through the shadows in the dusk, and her lips to move.

"Mother," she would say, come nearer, don't keep so far off-your dress gets mixed up with the curtains. Do you know that he did not die-do you know that Harold was not a murderer ? You would not curse me now for loving the Aungiers? Speak louder. I cannot hear what you say. Your hands are very soft, mother-touch me again. But you cannot unfasten now the weight that you tied round my neck. Kiss me, mother! I did not let it strangle me."

Then the sound of her own voice would rouse her perhaps, and she would look round quickly, longing, but fearing to ask what she had been saying. But, in a little while, she would wander again.

"The fire is too hot, it is scorching my face. Take it away -where is the screen? Ah, dear! how the wind roars. There

will be a wreck. I should not like to see a drowned girl lying at my feet. Some one will take her up though. Some one will carry her to Dunmara and lay her in the white room. Foolish people not to know that she is cursed! I am heiress of Dunmara, you know. Elswitha wrote a will and hid it. How long are we to stay in this house, Miss Ellen? As long as God and Miss Elswitha pleases, Mrs. Kirker. What did you do with the will then? What did you do with the will, Miss Ellen ? Miss Ellen, what did you do with the will? Can't you stop till I answer you-my ears are ringing and ringing-what have I done to Dunmara? Can you not find it? I can see it there-the garden is full of roses, and there is one beating against the library window. Who has taken away the master's grey coat from behind the door? Ah, yes, I believe he has gone to London. I saw him the other day in Paternoster Row. Jingle, jingle,-give that organman a penny to stop. Here is an omnibus going to crash over you Hurry out of these hateful streets-din-din-din. Is that you, father? I have been speaking, haven't I? What nonsense have I been talking ?"

May had deepened before she was able to sit of evenings in the sunset that came redly through the smoke above the chimneys, in at the window of her room; or to walk slowly through the gallery downstairs, looking at the paintings, two of which especially fixed her attention,-one a portrait of her mother, the other of her old master in his youth, a brave, fresh face, strangely unlike the picture furnished by her memory. For the first time in her life she found herself without any occupation whose performance was a duty, for the first time she was an idle lady. Once, fancy could have filled such a life to overflowing, but now it was empty. Ease and wealth seemed foes to energy. Reading was a toil, novels were nonsense, grave books dry. A pencil was nothing but a little bit of wood; a wand no longer. All the magic was gone from its shining point. She hardly felt glad that her picture, marked sold, had been accepted at the Royal Academy, and noticed much. Her easel stood waiting for her in the studio, and she let it wait. Materials lay around her for happy work, unhindered by fear, but her listless fingers delayed to touch them.

The arrival of letters had roused her for a day, letters full

of wonderment and congratulation which came flying from Maud, and her friends at Dunsurf. But the weary apathy came back; the present resumed the veil of unreality which it had worn ever since that eventful day; the past came floating up and asserting itself. All things conduced to an absent kind of life, her father's conversation, the shadowy aspect of the large loneely rooms, and the crowds of dusky faces that looked out from the frames on their walls.

The inertion was oppressive. Surely it was only the effects of illness and would move away. Or could it be that her nature was in reality indolent and unstable, that her spirit had grown lax and purposeless now that there was no urgent necessity for action? "Is this my love of Art ?" she pondered: Art which was to be the joy and crown of my life? She has opened her door wide to me, and I make no haste to enter. Presently she will grow indignant and close it, eaving me a wanderer without a dwelling. Oh! for the eager feet that hurried me towards her gate, three years ago!"

Ellen is dressing in her large room, with pretty bits of usefulness scattered all around her. There stands her jewelcase, filled with ornaments, most of them heirlooms in her father's family. Delicate draperies stir all through the room in the faint June breeze, very faint and very heavy, coming over the tops of all those gloomy London houses with their smoke. She has flowers here, and flowers there. Yonder grand wardrobe is filled with pretty dresses. A dainty bonnet lies upon the bed, and some parcels and a purse are on the table. Ellen has been out spending money, a little; perhaps to pass time, or because her father wished it. Truly her father seems bent on proving to her that he is a rich old man, and she is his only child.

She turns gravely to a tall mirror in which she sees herself from the rosette on her shoe to the shadow on her brow. She ties lazily the silken sash of her delicate muslin dress, and sees the little specks of gold shining in the lace about her throat and wrists. She looks down the glass at a straight slight maiden with serious grey eyes and a sorrowful mouth. Is this the person who laughed to herself in the dull west room? Yes; but she is altered. One changes as one gets older. Twenty is a more sober age than seventeen. It is time to settle down."

Miss Waldron's physician does not, however, approve of the settling-down process, and one day Ellen finds herself whirled many miles away from London, and located with her father in bright rooms at a fashionable watering-place. Here, in a sunny verandah, Mr. Waldron sits by the hour, enjoying the heat. The change from London is very grateful. Ellen is glad to behold the sea again, though this is not like her own ro'ling Atlantic, nor are these tall white cliffs like its huge jagged piles of rock with their myriad shapes and shadows.

Ellen conceives a passion for riding, for long walks, and for digging in the sand with little children. Physical strength is on the return, but mental exertion is more distasteful than ever. The more common-place, the more thoroughly unimaginative any occupation, the more pleased is she to enter upon it. An attempt at novel-reading proves unsuccessful, for after an hour's perusal of a second volume, she declares the whole to be rubbish, and sends for no more novels from the library.

One evening Ellen comes in from one of her rides and sits in the dusk verandah, waiting tea upon her father. She is pondering the contents of a letter received in the morning. Randal has been to say good-bye at the Largie and has gone to Mexico for two years. The boys are going to school, Mr. Waldron having negotiated the arrangements. Maud and Mrs. McDawdle are busy with the preparations. Nancy is henceforth to remain as care-taker of the farm alone, for Maud is this winter to accompany Ellen and her father to Italy.

The twilight gathers, the world grows darker and holier. Sea and sky are one shadowy realm. A watchlight on the distant horizon might be Mars dropped low, but the stars have not come out. The opposite cliff lifts up its rugged mass of houses and piles their dark irregular outlines against the dull, red sky. With its lights glancing here and there like fire-flies, and its green warning blaze out upon the point, it looks much like the grand, dim, old town of a fairy-tale.

"We shall see strange cities," Ellen muses, many glories and prides, many hidden nooks and corners of the world. On many a beach of the Mediterranean the sea is breaking now;