The Daughter of the House

The Daughter of the House

I.

Colonel George Fortescue, of the Parliament’s army, reined in his great grey horse, and, rising in his stirrups, looked over the hedge to his right. Green in the bright sunshine the fields fell away sharply to where, half hidden in the elms, he could see the tall chimneys of Onslow House. The Colonel surveyed the prospect thoughtfully. At any rate the house was absolutely untenable; or what could its Tudor builder have been thinking to set it in such a position? Certainly not of the possibilities of a siege. Two miles behind him, in Chapel Onslow village, the Colonel’s regiment awaited his decision, for the question of the moment was whether a portion of their force should not seize and occupy Onslow Manorhouse. Colonel Fortescue had come slightly out of his line of march for the purpose of seeing with his own eyes this Royalist homestead, to find it alike undefended and useless. Sir John Onslow was a notorious malignant, but he was away with the King, and with him too were gone all the available men from the estate, so that there was little prospect of resistance at the Manorhouse, let alone that it was practically incapable of harbouring it.

But this was a fact which cut two ways, for it was on that very account scarcely worth while, and even dangerous to occupy the place. Still...The grey began to fidget while its rider weighed these arguments, and possibly his horse’s impatience hastened the Colonel’s decision. “The wisest plan were to burn it”, he reflected; “in any case I could ill spare men for a garrison.” He touched his charger, and began to move slowly up the slope, meaning to satisfy himself, before he returned to the village, of the direction of the cross-road some quarter-mile in front of him. The grey paced leisurely up the rise, its rider deep in thought. Beneath the broad brim of his hat his iron-grey hair fell on to the linen collar of his buff coat, framing a stern and steady visage already touched to some purpose by the lines of early middle age, the face not of the militant enthusiast but of the practical and somewhat cold-blooded soldier. A few moments more would have brought him, still reflecting, to the turn, when, looking suddenly in front of him, the Colonel’s eyes were caught by a patch of colour on the roadway. On his right, half sitting, half lying on the steep bank, which here rose above the rider’s head, was a girl; her rose-coloured gown it was which had drawn the soldier’s notice. Her head was bowed, and her face hidden by a profusion of brown ringlets, partly confined by a green ribbon, but her dress announced her a gentlewoman. So much Fortescue remarked as he came abreast of her, but he glanced at her with indifferent eye, in act to pass on. Then he suddenly saw that she was crying.

He threw another glance at the figure on the grass, and checked his horse. The grey stopped willingly, and turned an enquiring head towards the bank, and at the sound of the pausing hoofs the girl removed her handkerchief from her eyes and looked up.

The Colonel beheld a face of a very delicate oval, shaded by chestnut curls, and lit by the most beautiful brown eyes he had ever seen. At present they were humid with unshed tears; after all, the lady appeared not as yet to have wept. He thought he perceived a shade of alarm sweep at the sight of him over the upturned features, and the great brown eyes looked at him half timidly, half in challenge. Their owner’s dress, indeed, with its ribbons and point, proclaimed her no Puritan maiden.

[1]“Madam,” said the Colonel a trifle stiffly, slightly raising his hat, “you are in distress?”

The girl hesitated a moment before replying, dropping her eyes from the vigorous, martial figure above her, and fidgetting with her handkerchief. Then, “It is nothing, Sir,” she returned. Her voice, low-pitched, and of singular sweetness, had the tiniest sobbing inflection intertwined. It stirred the usually cold Fortescue to another effort. He put his right hand on his horse’s crupper and bent yet further towards the speaker.

“If I can be of any service to you, Madam, I beg you to command me,” he urged, in a tone distinctly less formal. It had the effect of bringing the beautiful brown eyes back again to his own.

“Truly, Sir,” returned the girl, “I should be loth to trouble you, more especially since——”. She left the sentence unfinished, but her meaning was quite plain. The Colonel stiffened, and, as his hand tightened involuntarily on the rein, his horse began to move forward. He pulled him up rather violently.

“The fact to which you refer, Madam,” he retorted harshly, “can be deplored by no one more than myself. Since, however, you reject an enemy’s offer of service, I can do nothing but bid you good-day!” Suiting the action to the word, he doffed his hat with a great show of courtesy, and touched his horse with his heel, vexed at having been betrayed into so much humour.

“Sir!” cried the lady in a small imploring voice as he was borne past her. Since the Parliamentarian was inwardly determined to hear no more it was perhaps his steed which elected to stop and turn. Its rider looked on the damsel, it must be confessed, with a somewhat lowering countenance.

“O Sir!” cried she, putting out both hands with the prettiest gesture. “—indeed I had no thought of offending you! I but meant that your offer was the more generous since we do not follow the same cause. O, pray do not go in anger!” The rich voice trembled, and it seemed to the soldier that a tear showed itself ready to overleap its fringed barrier.

“I am not angry,” replied the Colonel more gently, “—and I do myself the honour to repeat my offer,” he added, a trifle to his own surprise.

“And I to accept it,” returned the girl sweetly, a shy gratitude looking out of her eyes. “You will think me very foolish and cowardly,” she went on, “when I confess that all my trouble is but a twisted ankle.”

“Not I, I vow,” asseverated the soldier; “I make no doubt that a pike thrust is no more distressing. Doth it pain you much?” He leant over his saddle-bow.

“Scarce at all when I move it not,” rejoined the sufferer with a courageous smile. “Yet I fear that I cannot stand.” Here, before Fortescue realised what she was about, she scrambled to her feet, only to drop back with a moan of pain, and to cover her face with two shapely hands. If the lady had in thus putting herself to unnecessary torture the object of bringing her knight-errant to her own level she certainly succeeded. In a moment the Colonel was out of his saddle and standing in front of her.

“You have hurt yourself,” he exclaimed reproachfully. “Why did you do it?” The hands came down, and though the lip was trembling the Colonel was relieved to see that the cheeks had not lost their roses.

“Alas!” sighed the girl. “How little I can bear! And to think what..my kindred have to endure...hunger and fatigue...wounds...perhaps worse...” Her voice broke, and she turned away her head, covering her eyes with her left hand as though to shut out a prophetic vision. Two or three sobs, suppressed with difficulty, shook her bare white throat.

The Colonel was indescribably moved. He might even now be on his way to inflict ills such as these on this maid’s father or brother, to convert her tears of apprehension into drops of more bitter significance. Too much absorbed in the longing to comfort her, and too little inured to self-pity to reflect that the chances of a reversal of parts were at least equal, he knelt down by her side, and very respectfully possessed himself of her right hand, which lay idle in her lap. He was beginning some commonplace—such he could not but feel it—about the fortune of war, when the imprisoned hand was gently but firmly withdrawn, and, in conjunction with its fellow, applied for a moment a lace handkerchief to its owner’s eyes.

“We must not think of such things,” said the girl with a sad little smile. Her hands fell locked into her lap. “We—we women—have to try to be brave also...but sometimes it is hard.”

“You women have a task a hundred times as hard as ours,” returned the Colonel in a low voice. “Aye, I think God I am not called upon to sit at home in safety and anxiety——”

“Safety!” interrupted the lady; “—anxiety, yes,—but safety?—are we always so safe in our homes?” A fluttering sigh escaped her. “Ah well...Thank you Sir, thank you a thousand times for your courtesy, and farewell!”

“I cannot leave you here,” said the soldier abruptly. He had risen to his feet. “You cannot walk; you may be here for hours. May I not help you—though a foe?”

“I would all foes were as generous,” replied the girl smiling. “Nay, I could not detain you—for you are of Colonel Fortescue’s regiment, are you not? and but passing through, as we heard—— Oh!” she broke off sweetly, “I mean not to ask secrets!”

Fortescue was a trifle piqued that his face could be so easily read. He had not felt himself to move a muscle. A rash pride inspired his answer.

“Madam, these are no secrets. I have indeed the honour to belong to Colonel Fortescue’s regiment, but I do not know that he intends presently to leave the neighbourhood.” He laid hold of his horse’s bridle as he spoke.

“Why, what will he do here?” exclaimed the girl in dismay. “There is no one for him to fight...” This time the Colonel was sure that his face was impassive, but she went on to herself—and after all it was no difficult conjecture—“Nay, I suppose he will occupy the Manor-house...But of course I must not ask you. Farewell Sir.” She shot a long glance at him, half smiling, half sad.

At this second dismissal the Parliamentarian, though he appeared physically more ready to mount was in mind really less disposed to do so than before. He dropped the reins and bent nearer.

“Madam,” he said pleasantly, “leaving aside questions of war and policy, will you not permit me to help you? I venture you live near, and I could ride for help. May I not do so?”

“Sir, you are too kind,” she returned. “’Tis true that I live near, but you could scarce ride there for help—’twere not safe, nor would I suffer it.”

The soldier drew himself up. “Not safe?” he repeated a trifle haughtily. “And where then do you live, Madam?”

The girl drew a long breath, looking steadfastly at him with a return of the old half-frightened defiance. “I live...in one of those homes which you say are so safe...in Onslow Manor!”

“I might have guessed it,” said Fortescue to himself, staring at her. He knew indeed of her existence from village talk. A turmoil of thoughts ran through his head, and events might have been very different from what they were, had he not at that moment felt a spot of rain upon his hand. Glancing up, he saw that the smiling sky was overcast, and that above the tops of the oaks hung poised a cloud of sufficiently alarming dimensions. Some extraneous force therefore made up his mind for him.

“I am going to take you home,” he announced. “You shall put on my cloak, and I will lift you on to my horse. I pray you make no objections, for I shall not listen to them.” Without waiting for an answer he turned and unbuckled the horseman’s cloak from his saddle-bow. Behind his back the lady looked at him with the strangest expression.

“Now, Madam, if you will permit me?” He threw the cloak quickly around the bare throat, the deep lace collar, the green breast-knot, enveloping indeed the rose-clad figure altogether. The damsel submitted mutely and gravely, and the rain began to patter merrily on the oak-leaves. Next the Colonel caught the bridle of his steed and brought him nearer.

“He is very quiet,” he remarked parenthetically.

“I am not afraid,” replied the girl in a low tone, as she was gently lifted in the soldier’s strong arms. Her injured ankle prevented her from mounting in the prescribed fashion, and, unromantically enough, the Colonel found it for this reason not too easy to get her into the saddle. However she was settled there at last, and he tucked the long cloak round her.

“I fear you must miss the pummels,” he said apologetically, turning his horse’s head once more in the direction of the crossroads. “Lay hold on the saddle-bow. I will go slowly, and my horse is very gentle.”

“I am sure he is,” responded the girl, leaning forward and patting the grey’s neck. There was a sparkle in her eyes. And neither of them said a word until they came to the turn.

“’Tis to the right, I suppose?” asked the soldier at that point.

“Yes,” said the girl. “If you are going to take me to my home. But...are you sure that you had best do so?” Her voice had dropped on to a meaning note, and shook a little. Fortescue looked up in surprise. The face above him was very grave, the mouth set, the delicate nostrils dilated, and a sort of accusing fire burnt in the brown eyes.

“Do you ask me if I am afraid?” The grey stopped, uncertain what the hand on his bridle meant him to do.

His rider gave a scornful little laugh.

“Is a soldier ever afraid—with that kind of fear? Nay, but are[2] you not afraid to come in peace—even on an errand of mercy—where you mean afterwards to smite?”

“I do not mean to smite, Madam,” retorted the Colonel very drily. The horse moved on.

“True, for there is none for you to smite but women, and you strike at them but indirectly. But you mean something against the Manor-house! I know it—I saw it in your face when I asked you. Tell me what your Colonel Fortescue means, or I will not ride into my father’s house on the horse of an enemy!” And indeed, transfigured from the melting girl on the roadside, she caught at the reins, and pulled up the grey with no uncertain hands.

“I cannot tell you Colonel Fortescue’s intentions,” returned the Parliamentarian, uncomfortably startled. “I—that is—he does not confide, overmuch in his officers.”

“Nor even in himself?” She gave him a piercing glance. “Are your purposes then too black to be named even to your own heart, Colonel Fortescue? Yes, I have guessed who you are. Tell me what you mean to do...or set me down here! Will you make me your accomplice!” She threw back his cloak and gripped the saddle preparatory to slipping down.

It was not a very pleasant position. The Colonel may have wished that he had never set this insistent damsel on his steed, not indeed that it were an impossibility or an unpardonable act to take her at her word, and put her down again by the roadside, but because he knew now that he ought not to have yielded to the wish to see her there. It had a sorry look of a feigned peaceable intent towards the home to which he was taking her. However he hardened his heart.

“I mean to burn it,” he said shortly.

“—To burn it...to burn it!” repeated the girl as if she scarce understood. All the life and defiance had gone out of her voice, and she seemed to shrink where she sat in the great cavalry saddle. “O, how can men be so wicked...and your fair speeches...” She burst into a passion of weeping, and slipping forward hid her face in the horse’s mane. The cloak was off her shoulders, and the fine rain fell on her bare neck, but the Colonel did not dare to replace it.

“You would have it, Madam,” he said instead with a harshness somewhat at variance with his feelings. “I will not insult you by speaking of my duty...Is it your wish to go on?”

There was a long pause. At last she raised her head. “I have no wishes,” she replied in a low voice. “As I shall so soon be homeless it matters little...Yes, I will go home—for to-day.” She threw a tear-drowned broken look on his, and seemed unable to phrase the question she attempted. “When..when will . .?”

The Colonel muttered something inaudible under his breath.

“O, I blame you not, Sir,” she went on hastily, in a voice completely subdued. “I am a solder’s daughter, and I know ’tis your duty, and we are at your mercy. If you cannot hold it you must burn it. Only...” A kind of thrill ran through her, and, leaving the sentence unfinished, she suddenly sat up as if she had forgotten his presence, and threw out her arms to the house below them with a passionate abandonment of love and farewell. On the pure outline of her cheek, as he glanced up at her, the soldier saw a single tear toll down. He looked away, knitting his brows. When he spoke again, his words had nothing to do with the subject in hand.

“Child,” he said, very gently, “the rain has stopped, and I hear a thrush...Shall we go on?”

II.

“Nay then, what was the girl doing?” demanded the Colonel with a little asperity. He had had a bad night, and here was Quartermaster Patience Wilkins laying before him some tangled tale which his commanding officer found not easy to unravel. It was held by the profaner in his troop that his Quartermaster bore this baptismal appellation because he generally called for that quality in his listeners. “What was she doing?”

“She was walking up and down in front of your Excellency’s quarters.”

“Anyone may do that,” returned his commander. “You cannot prevent people from passing to and fro in front of an inn in the main street, and if the sentries were at their posts it seems of little matter.”

Quartermaster Wilkins cleared his throat portentously. “Aye, their bodies were at their posts, but where were their minds, and their eyes?”

“I am sure I do not know,” said the Colonel wearily.

“Their eyes and their minds followed this daughter of Belial as she pranced to and fro, decked out in all the finery of the ungodly, with broidered scarves and gay kirtle and what not, dangling ribbons and Babylonish laces, and a shameful bare throat——”

“But I thought you said that she was a village wench,” broke in the Colonel, perplexed and a trifle uneasy. “This sounds like a gentlewoman.”

“I said she was a village wench, Colonel, because no gentlewoman, no, were she the highest in the land, could have so strong an arm. I misdoubt but that Corporal Halley’s lip needs a stitch or two, and Live-in-Peace Thompson’s eye is black already.”

“But what has this to do with the girl, man?” cried Fortescue, nearing the end of his self-control.

“Everything,” responded the Quartermaster firmly and solemnly. “She did it when we arrested her. Oh, it was a shameful sight to see Live-in-Peace Thompson in the dust at the feet of the Moabitish woman.”

“You arrested her!” exclaimed the Colonel. “Then why in the——” he checked himself, “why did you not tell me so at first. You come to me with some story that I can make neither head nor tail of about a woman you suspect of spying, and never tell me that she is actually in your hands!”

“I was coming to that,” said Quartermaster Wilkins with dignity. “I began at the beginning. That was the end.”

“Well, I will see her,” said Colonel Fortescue. “I expect that you were mistaken in your suspicions. They seem to me to be ungrounded—from what I can gather of them. Tell me again, as plainly as you can, why you laid hands on the girl.”

“For her ungodly walking to and fro,” responded Quartermaster Patience promptly. “She held up her kirtle in a mincing manner, and walked as I never saw a woman walk before—even as Agag when he came to Saul the son of Kish;—I would show your Excellency the manner thereof, did it not savour of unseemliness. And she had neither bag nor basket on her arm, so that I know she was not here on a matter of the household. To and fro she went, like a peacock, and as I watched her it was laid upon me that she was even as Delilah, and had it in her heart to draw away the sentries from the door of your Excellency’s lodging, being a comely enough wench—for those that[3] have eyes for such vanities. So when she passed the third time I called unto Corporal Halley to take three file of men and bring her in. And they brought her in,” concluded the Quartermaster Biblically.

“And where is she now?”

“Even in the guardroom.”

“In the guardroom! You took a girl into the guardroom!”

“And wherefore not?” asked his subordinate stolidly. “Are we as the malignants, drinking and swearing, and using talk not fit to be heard of a woman. Nay, when I left the godly Corporal was admonishing her for her sins, comparing her with Jezebel who tired her head, and if it were not that she hath so slit his lip that he can scarce speak, I doubt not that Corporal Halley were praying over her at this moment as a brand——”

“Enough,” said the Colonel shortly. “Bring her up at once. And see that you handle her gently.”

“So she will do the like to us,” murmured the Quartermaster as he saluted. The door closed behind him, and George Fortescue began to pace up and down the room with much the same step and the same expression of brow as those with which he had paced his chamber during a good portion of the night. All night long he had felt the touch of her palm in his as he lifted her down before her father’s door; all night had heard the thrill in her voice as she thanked him; all night, whether he slept or woke, had seen that last shy, radiant look of gratitude and farewell. It was of little use to tell himself that he was a fool—doubly a fool, to spare Onslow House because a girl had cried about it, to think of nothing else besides that girl, and she an enemy’s daughter. It was ridiculous in a man of his age, his standing, and his disposition, as he knew it. It was also ridiculous to feel this vague uneasiness about the Quartermaster’s captive, but that, unlike the other disturbance in his breast, could be laid to rest at once, for here were steps upon the stair. The Colonel snatched up his sheathed rapier where it lay upon a chair, slipped it into the sling of his baldric, and sat down behind the little table in the centre of the room. Justice must wear the front of justice equally with male or female delinquent.

And it was—it was she! That same ridiculous foreboding had served him in some measure as a preparation, and the Colonel controlled himself to show no surprise, no sign of recognition. Only his heart beat quicker as she came in between her hard-faced, buff-coated captors, a little pale, a little dishevelled, with downcast eyes and hands locked in front of her. And he could not dismiss the escort at once, as he longed to do, nor rise and take her by the hand and ask her to explain away this extraordinary, this even horrible mystery. For it was horrible, to think of her struggling in their hands, or captive amid the grave triumph of the guardroom. And horrible also, to the Colonel’s sense, was the knowledge that the very visibly blackening eye of Private Thompson was the word of that slim, delicate hand...whose knuckles, also, were raw and bleeding, presumably from their contact with Corporal Halley’s teeth. All these thoughts crowded into the Parliamentarian’s mind as the guard made report to him, or answered the questions which their framer could only hope sounded logical. The girl kept her face down all the time; the brown curls shaded it, as they had done yesterday, but surely the green fillet was in a different place?

“That will do, Private Thompson,” said the Colonel at length, cutting short with distaste the soldier’s fervid and circumstantial account of the capture. “I cannot but regret that you employed so much force on a woman.—No, I do not wish to hear any more reasons for it.” He paused and pulled himself together preparatory to addressing the prisoner.

“Can you give me any satisfactory explanation, Madam, of what you were doing here? I am very willing to hear it.”

The girl raised her head and met his glance full, but to Fortescue the expression in her eyes was quite illegible.

“No,” she answered low but distinctly, “none that you would credit.” And into her eyes shot a gleam of something bright—heavens, could it be mirth! The Colonel recoiled in spirit, and the long lashes veiled it instantly.

“I will question the damsel in private for a moment,” said Fortescue after a scarcely perceptible hesitation. “Corporal, you can withdraw.”

Saluting, the men clanked out. Fortescue drew a long breath and came round the table.

“Surely I need not to tell you, Mistress Onslow, how much I regret this—this terrible mistake? I know not what to say to you.” He stood before her, very stiff and upright, physically but an imperfect representation of the emotions which rent him. Still she said nothing, and her head was turned aside. Fortescue was bitter for her humiliation and resentment.

“You are free at once,” he went on almost pleadingly, “—but give me some pledge that you were not—nay, I do not ask it.”

Then at last she turned her head, and looked at him, and spoke. “It were better not,” she said sombrely and slowly.

Had she struck him Fortescue could not have been more startled.

“Oh, I am tired of this,” she went on rapidly, tossing back her curls. “God knows, I had not meant to play it again—with you. But I am no spy. I am...’struth I know not how to tell you!” She looked down, frowning and biting her lip, and with the oath which seemed to slip out so easily, an odd and[4] indefinable change had come over her manner.

“What are you?” demanded the Colonel in an ominous, strained voice. At last carried beyond himself by the continued silence, he laid a hand on her shoulder. She was almost as tall as he. “Answer me!”

She responded at once to the touch, looking up with set lips, but with that dancing gleam once more in her eyes. “Shall I tell you?...Perhaps you will be sorry.” The curves of her mouth broke upwards. “You call me Onslow, Colonel Fortescue, and Onslow I am, but I have never told you my first name...You will not like it, for a girl’s...”

“What is it?”

She threw back her head, looked him defiantly in the eyes, and then turned her gaze steadily out of the window. “Humphrey.”

The Colonel removed his hand; it fell slowly to his side like so much lead. His brain felt like lead also, and his heart too, for the matter of that. The floor, on the contrary, seemed to be dancing. It was a blow at first so stunning that resentment itself was numbed beneath it. Nevertheless, of the several feelings in the soldier’s breast it was the first to wake—for incredulity never woke at all; gesture, carriage and several half-forgotten trifles of yesterday amply bore out the confession. A red and angry flush swept over Fortescue’s brow. He turned quickly away, struggling hard for composure, and his left hand, encountering the guard of his sword, closed on it, as on some tangible hold amid this wreckage. When he turned round his eyes were merciless.

“If you were man and not boy——”

The youth, whose eyes had been on the floor, looked up quickly. “I am man enough for that,” he said eagerly. “Yes, I owe it to you.” His girl’s dress no longer seemed a part of him, and all his admirably realistic feminine pose had fallen from him. The result was odd, but there was no one to see it.

“Pshaw!” exclaimed the Colonel contemptuously. “I do not fight with mountebanks.” He turned his back and walked deliberately to his former seat behind the table, though he did not sit down. “I shall hang you.”

The young man shut his mouth tightly and said nothing.

“Hang you for a spy,” reiterated Fortescue venomously, watching him.

A flush came to the lad’s cheek, and he drew himself up. “In a week I shall hold His Majesty’s commission,” he said haughtily. The Colonel dismissed His Majesty’s commission with a scornful shrug. Neither, naturally enough, saw the humorous side of the claim, coming as it did from a figure in petticoats.

“And I presume,” went on the speaker with increasing hauteur, “that it is of no use to give you my word of honour that I was not spying.”

“Pray what were you doing then?” demanded the Colonel sarcastically.

Humphrey Onslow hesitated, and then bent his head, perhaps[5] that his inquisitor might not see the mischievous sparkle that leapt to his eyes.

“Is’t not conceivable, Sir,” he replied, still with downcast eyes, “that a love-sick maid might so far forget her modesty as to pay a visit to the man who——”

It was too much. The Colonel sprang up with a most unpuritanical oath. “Damn you, Sir,” he cried, almost choking with fury. He leant forward on the table, and glared upon the audacious youth, who looked up with a smile so winning, so compound of coyness and daring that any damsel might have envied its possession. Apparently the Colonel had met that smile before, for he flung away from the table gnawing his lip, and looked out of the window while he regained control of his sorely tried temper. Meanwhile the prisoner regarded his back with a smile of a different sort.

The quickness with which the soldier swallowed down his just wrath was probably due to the sobering knowledge that his captive was deliberately trying to irritate him. Well, he should not succeed. He was completely master of himself when he turned round again.

“You seem resolved, young man, to provoke me into ordering you to instant execution. I shall, however, give you the justice which you do not extend to yourself. I will hear what you have to say.” He sat down, very grim.

“I can only repeat that I was not spying,” responded the boy doggedly.

“I do not refer to that,” said Fortescue with meaning.

Humphrey eyed his stern face for a moment as though he were about to refuse to plead, and then he suddenly held his head very upright and spoke, quite gravely and shortly.

“I was alone here,” he said; “I suspected your intent; I had no one to hold the house with me. When I was in France I had often played the girl. It seemed the only way. I put on these clothes and came to find you...then I met you.” He stopped, and lowered his eyes.

A fresh wave of disgust and shame swept over his listener. It was as much as he could do to remain sitting in his chair. However there was a curious consolation in probing the sore, and bringing his humiliation to the light of speech.

“You met me,” he said. “You saw me coming, I suppose?”

Humphrey nodded gravely.

“And then,”—after all it was hard to bring it out, and his voice betrayed it; “then you had the satisfaction of duping me, first with your twisted ankle and then with your tears.” He bit his lip and surveyed the semi-girlish figure with dilated nostrils. “May I ask you how your action shows to you—on my soul I am curious to learn?”

“All is fair in...war,” murmured Humphrey, still looking down. For his life he could not help the sudden upwards twitch of his mouth as he hesitated over the ellipsis. The Colonel marked both, and his face took on a dusky red.

“I should be sorry to meet you in the field,” he flung at him with a vindictiveness but half controlled. “Methinks I had best hinder His Majesty’s commission from the disgrace, to which, with that argument, you may put it.”

This time it was the young man who was stung. A bright flush mounted to his cheeks and his eyes flashed. “You can do what you will with me,” he retorted hotly, “but give me leave to ask you whether I had any choice? Do you think I would not an hundred times have chosen to hold the old house against you, had I had but half a score of men to garrison?”

“I do not know,” replied Fortescue coldly. “Meseems you found your part not an unpleasing nor a difficult thing to play,”—he set his teeth for a moment—“to bemoan yourself at men’s cruelty and to weep feigned tears. Perhaps you would have found a siege a business sterner and less to your liking.”

“And how know you that the tears were feigned?” cried Humphrey, disregarding the last taunt. There was a ring of real passion in his soft young voice. “Was it nothing I was begging of you? Must one be indeed a woman to love one’s home?”

“One need not be a trickster.”

“I played for a stake. I played to save my father’s house.”

“And you think you have succeeded?” asked the Colonel.

The boy looked him steadily and squarely in the eyes. “Yes,” he answered, “I do.”

The reply—a trifle unexpected in its assurance—came with a good deal of straightforwardness and nobility. It was also flattering. But recent events had disposed Colonel Fortescue to pin no faith on any evidence of morality given by the gifted wearer of the rose-coloured gown. Henceforth he would for ever distrust histrionic talent, and Humphrey and he were to stand in a more compelling presence before he could rely on his veracity; his faith was too deeply shaken. Moreover he had never had a taste for even implicit flattery—when he could recognise it. So, after a pause, he said coldly, “You are very confident. Let us get on to to-day. Why were you here, walking up and down the street?”

Humphrey’s lips began to twitch again. “Oh, that is hopeless to explain!” he said with a gesture of despair. “Faith, I can scarce explain it to myself. All I know is that I did not mean to meet you. ’Twas a mere piece of foolery; ’twas diverting—and a thought difficult—to walk for any distance in these fal-lals, and in an idle moment I donned them again to try it. Before I knew where I was got to I found myself in the village. Then the devil put it into my head to walk up and down in front of the sentries.” He ended with half humorous sigh, “I would I had not.”

The recital had a confidential air, which in spite of all that had passed Fortescue could not help finding alluring, and really the explanation, such as it was, was convincing enough in its very absence of motive. He did not believe that the youth had been spying—but even as this impression became conviction a new and horrible idea of some complexity presented itself to him. In the latter part of his interview the Colonel had insensibly but completely lost sight of the damsel by the roadside, who had ridden his horse and wept over her home. Humphrey Onslow, though his moods were as many as a woman’s and his garments a woman’s own, stood over against him a very boy, and the Colonel had separated him in his thought from the girl of yesterday. Her he saw still in fancy sitting on the wayside grass—a real woman, curiously distinct from this, her audacious counterfeit, before him. Now he knew that there was a veritable Mistress Onslow, for he had heard the villagers speak of her. Somehow he was sure that she was like the gracious vision of yesterday—which, though it actually stood before him, was not present in that form to his mental eye. Then, if Humphrey and his sister were so alike, the thought ran, without giving him time to reflect that he had no guarantee for the resemblance—if they were so alike—what opinion of her must not the village and the regiment have conceived when her double, in her very dress, it might be, had paraded up and down in front of his quarters “in an unseemly manner” and was subsequently arrested for so doing! It was profanation. A moment later this rather ludicrously insupported logic had become speech.

“You call yourself a gentleman, I suppose,” said the reasoner very sternly; “—at any rate you expect me to take your word as one that you were not spying, but on my soul I think you were doing something worse...How dare you drag your sister’s name into disrepute by coming here in this travesty?”

The suddenness of this unlooked for attack appeared to throw its object altogether off his balance. He opened his eyes very wide, and a dozen shades of bewilderment and astonishment chased over his expressive and beautiful countenance.

“My sister!” he gasped—and there was a sound akin to a sob in his throat—“I—I never——”

“You never thought of that,” Fortescue took him up; “no, I dare to hope that you did not...Are you and your sister much alike?” he demanded abruptly.

“My sister...alike . .?” stammered Humphrey. Then he suddenly became coherent and mischievous. “I believe you could not tell us apart.”

“There is nothing to smile about,” observed the soldier wrathfully. “Have you no thought for her reputation. By your disgraceful prank of this morning you may have dragged it for ever in the mud.”

“Much in the same way, I suppose, as my gown,” murmured the captive in an unfeeling sotto voce, looking down at his skirts.

“What I pray you, will the village think of your sister,” continued her champion, “when they saw her (as they suppose) walking in an unseemly manner in front of my quarters, or fighting with my men?”

“Was I unseemly?” asked Humphrey innocently. “I thought I had a girl’s walk to a nicety, but I may have held my shirts[6] a trifle too high—’tis uncommon hard to gauge it.” He glanced down at them reflectively, and even betrayed a momentary impulse to repeat the offence. “’Tis true I forgot myself when your men laid hands on me.—But in faith, Colonel Fortescue, I assure you the village could not possibly have taken me for...my sister.”

“She is not here perhaps? The better for her.”[7]

“No,” said the youth with a slow and smiling emphasis, “she is not here. The better for her, as you say.” And he immediately went off into a brief and silent fit of laughter.

The Colonel was excessively irritated by his light and easy manner and his unseasonable mirth.

“I see,” he remarked bitingly. “She is doubtless with your father at the war, while you remain at home to travesty her and your sex. A curious family arrangement, but one which must have its conveniencies—for you.”

Humphrey frowned. “I am your prisoner,” he said with a little haughty air of rebuke. Then, with a sudden and rather charming lapse from dignity—“However, I doubt not I deserve that. But I cannot tell you where my sister is.” He began to laugh again maliciously. “For aught I know she is with His Majesty. If so, you may yet meet her, and tell her how you strove to protect her from her brother’s ill-doing.”

“Thank you,” responded Fortescue coldly. “I did not ask for her whereabouts.” His own mind, and the prisoner’s demeanour, told him that he had something strayed from the subject in hand since, instead of investigating the conduct of a supposed spy he had laid himself open to the charge of an enquiry after a lady he had never seen. It was time to end the matter, and he knew that he could better give to his decision the attention which it demanded were that perplexing[8] figure removed. He went to the door and called for the guard.

“I shall spend some further deliberation upon your case,” he said stiffly to the captive, “but to whatever conclusion I shall come upon this day’s doings, my opinion of yesterday’s will rest unchanged.—Guard, remove this,..this person to safe custody to the present, and see that none has access to her.”

“Corporal Halley hath received a call to speak with the damsel concerning the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,” objected Quarter-master Wilkins, who had come up with the guard for the apparent purpose of imparting this information. “Verily his heart burns within him, and despite his present infirmity his tongue is even as the pen of a ready writer.”

“He must put it to other uses then,” returned the Colonel sharply. “No one, I repeat, is to see the prisoner.”

The disappointed envoy of the evangelist gave his eyes a slight roll towards the ceiling, and said nothing. Humphrey Onslow appeared to be a prey to silent laughter, yet he kept an admirably steady countenance as he was marched out. But the last glance which he shot at his judge was wholly impenitent, and it was with something that sounded like a muttered curse that the latter, as the door closed, threw himself down moodily in his chair, and set a pair of fiercely reflective elbows on the table.

Meanwhile, in the little room to which he had been conducted, the cause of his meditation sat upon a table and swung his legs in a manner which no gentlewoman would have countenanced. He was a trifle out of breath, for he had just been executing a saraband round that article of furniture, and his visage was alight with mischief and merriment.

“Beshrew me if I be not a proper taking damsel,” he said aloud, and instantly apostrophised himself in song.

“Celia, Mars’ befitting mate,
Hath besieged my heart of late.
Gods! what arms unfair ye lend her
That the fortress may surrender!
Yet, I vow, the arrow flown
From her eyes, is all her own!”

Embellishing the last line with many turns, he warbled this ditty uncircumspectly[9] at the top of a clear light tenor, sufficiently unfeminine in character to endanger his disguise had there been anyone to notice the discrepancy between his singing and his speaking voice.

“Appropriate, in sooth!” he exclaimed, laughing with great enjoyment. “Conceive our grave Colonel thus serenading me! But alas! ’tis not I—’tis what I was, or rather what she may be—’tis the mythical kinswoman whom he hath called up to be my——”

Here the door was opened, and, (in despite of orders) a voice addressed the singer. Happily it was rather the song itself than the rendering which had brought it.[10]

“Young woman,” it said, “these be no songs for you, neither is it for you a season for melody of any kind, save lamentations. Leave profane janglings which blister the ears of those that listen!”

“Then do not listen,” returned Humphrey promptly, without moving. The speaker was completely hidden by the open door—a concession to evaded orders. “Wert thou not strictly charged to leave me in peace? Remember, my friend, that the sin of disobedience is as the sin of witchcraft; therefore cast it behind thee. And take note also that lamentations are not commonly termed melody.”

Thus attacked with his own weapons, the unseen reprover seemed taken aback. At least, there was a pause, and a shuffling of feet, before he replied in a tone savouring of resentment and menace—

“Damsel, it is not meet for thee to be rebuking of others, when thou thyself hast, it may be, one foot in the grave. Dost thou not know the meaning of a rope and a firing party and the end reserved for spies?”

“Dost thou not know the meaning of the wooden horse and a couple of matchlocks and the end reserved for mutineers?” retorted Humphrey. “Go think on’t, or I will blister thy crop ears again, if thou leave them too near the keyhole!”

Whether afraid of the execution of this threat or astounded at a lady’s ready acquaintance with the details of military discipline, the intruder without replying banged the door, and the prisoner, who had not stirred, resumed his soliloquy.

“One foot in the grave, quotha? Nay, I think he’ll not hang me; sure they are too dainty to dangle at the end of a rope!” He stuck his feet out in front of him, and surveyed them critically, humming to a tune of his own,

“Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice, stole in and out,
As if they fear’d the light.”[11]

“None too little neither;—in size liker rats, to mend the late Sir John’s fancy...Unlucky feet, to carry me into this scrape!...Well, if I do hang, I’ll not hang in this garb at least—that, if you like, were unseemly—and mayhap if I talk to him a little more of my fair sister he would give me a bullet. Though in sooth,” he added, slipping off the table, “I know well that I shall die by neither, for that same lady’s sake..... Good Lord! how can any man be such a fool!” he exclaimed unsympathetically, craning his neck the while to get a view out of the high window—the room had been a kind of pantry. “And yet I know not! I gave ’em orders in the village to talk as if there were in truth a daughter of the house at the Manor, lest he suspect me. It seems it has been but too successful. ’Struth, I think I will tell him—’twere pity he should think worse of me than he doth already—though I ne’er mentioned the name of sister.” Here he broke off, becoming interested in some details in the courtyard of the inn, which by standing on tiptoe he could just see into. After a moment he tired of this occupation, and began to march whistling round the room, his carriage and his dress presenting a ludicrous incongruity. As he went he wondered aloud why he had confessed the truth. “Had I kept it up, I might have been sent back with an escort to keep me from wetting my foot in a puddle, and there would have been no talk of sisters. I fear that pride hath made of thee a fool, Humphrey Onslow!”

In a short time the masquerader was tired too of tramping, and tried to resume his seat,[12] but there must have been a nail in the corner of the table from the ominous rending sound which accompanied the effort. “A plague on these petticoats!” cried their wearer, and was standing trying to look down his own back when the door was opened. Humphrey turned his head.

“Come in,” he said sweetly, though indeed no permission had been asked.

“A missive for you, damsel,” said the soldier, a new-comer. “And pray you follow me.”

“Let me read it first,” exclaimed Humphrey, holding out his hand. “Who sends it?”

“Colonel Fortescue.”

“Do we then correspond?” murmured the youth derisively. “I fear I am a forward wench, and he——” He broke off as he read, with a rising colour, the very short communication by which the Colonel conveyed to him his decision.

“Sir,

You shall goe free, not for your word given, but because I have noe choice but to lett you goe or hang you, and in this content yourselfe that the semblance you bear hath protected you. You are yet young enough to learne what misbefitts a man of honour, and I can but councell you to applie yourselfe unto that knowledge.

Yr obedt Servt

Geo: Fortescue

Coll. of Horse.”

The note was crushed up to a ball in Humphrey’s hand. Possibly its writer would have been much gratified by its reception.

“Curse him!” muttered the young man between his teeth. “Is a roundheaded rebel to be my tutor in matters of honour! Damn his insolence! ‘Apply yourself to that knowledge’ forsooth! By Heaven! there’s a little piece of knowledge that I’ll not put him in possession of now.” He smoothed out the crumpled paper and read it again;—fortunately the messenger was not[13] a witness of this outburst, having discreetly retired into the passage. “‘The semblance you bear,’” quoted the talented actor, breaking into a wrathful laugh. “Are, my good gentleman, I see your two-edged meaning! This time you have made a fool of yourself without my help, and you shall stay in your fool’s paradise if you are so minded....Corporal!” he called, “make my compliments to Colonel Fortescue, and tell him....that I invoke upon him the blessings of...of all my kindred to the remotest degree! Now I am ready to follow you—though,” he added with a twinkle in his angry eyes, “as I would not care to be again unseemly in my demeanour, you might e’en cast a look at my gown and tell me whether ’tis torn in a manner to give offence to your godly comrades.”

He whirled round, and the soldier inspected him with a perfectly stolid face. “’Tis scarce torn at all. I will give your message to our Colonel.”

“Aye, be sure you remember. And now—if you do not think I hold my petticoats too high—lead on!”

III.

Winceby fight was over. All the five miles westwards to Horncastle the victors had pursued the broken Royalists, smiting and sparing not, until those of Henderson’s four thousand horsemen who were not safely back behind the walls of Newark lay hacked and scattered on the Lincolnshire wolds, drowned in the ditches, or prisoners in the hands of their foes. It had been a great little victory.

Colonel George Fortescue came out of Lord Manchester’s quarters in Horncastle and stood silently looking at the chill October evening settling down on the old gnarled apple-trees of the deserted orchard opposite him. He was weary—as they all had been before they went into action—and suffering the after-effects of that first fierce charge on the green Winceby slope, when, rolling out a battle-psalm, they crashed into the Royalist ranks and felt them splinter, when Colonel Cromwell was unhorsed and all but ridden down, and when Fortescue himself took the shrewdest blow his steel headpiece had yet known. His head still ached from it, and for that very reason he now held the heavy object to which he owed his life beneath his arm, and the breath of October ran over his furrowed brow and lifted his hair a little. It was when he was still reeling from the stroke, ere yet the sword and the hand which dealt it had gone down beneath his horse’s hoofs, that the Colonel had seen the figure which haunted him now. Bareheaded, laughing, defiant, with brown curls tossing on steel corselet and lace collar, a face that was at once a girl’s and a boy’s had swung across his dizzy vision. When Fortescue was able to look for it amid the clashing turmoil of steel and the plunging horses it was gone, and he did not know now whether it had been hallucination or reality. Since the ideal lady had held her court these four months in his heart, it was scarcely wonderful if her counterfeit image should rise before his bodily eye. But it might really have been the boy, and if so, where was he now? Trampled on the slope, or cut down in that merciless pursuit along the lane? So, because he was uneasy about the one, and hopelessly in the love with the other, Fortescue stood and blent King and Parliament, Newcastle and Essex, the Oppressor and the Cause, in one common condemnation. It was a mood very unusual with him?

Presently he roused himself with a sigh from his abstraction, and prepared to go back to his own quarters. He had taken but a few steps in this direction when he heard his name called, and turning, found himself face to face with a huge trooper, whom he recognised as of Manchester’s regiment.

“Doth my lord want me?” he asked wearily, thinking he was sent for by his leader for some forgotten point of discussion.

“No, Sir,” said the main, saluting. “I have been helping to convey the wounded, and I was bidden to bring you this.” He held out a slip of paper, and lifted the lantern which he carried that Fortescue might better see it. The Colonel unfolded it with a presentiment, and was scarcely surprised at what he read.

“Worthy Coll. Fortescue,

I have heere in my hands a youth of the Mallignents, strucke downe in the first charge of this dayes encounter. Hee asking insistently for you, to quiett him I have dispatcht this to you, seeing hee cannot (as I thinke) live thro the night: And soe perchance you may find meanes to come att him. The bearer hereof will informe you wheare hee lyes.

I rest yrs to comand

Jo: Hazlett chyrurgeon.

Postscriptum. Hee saith hee is one Cornett Onslow of Sir Will. Withringtons regt.

“Direct me,” said Fortescue quietly. “Or stay—you had best show me the way.” The man swung round, and Fortescue followed him. They left the main body, passed the pickets, giving the word of the day, “Religion”, crossed the Winceby road and entering a field on the opposite side stopped before a long large barn whose size and situation both had indicated it as a hospital. It was half full of wounded, friend and foe alike, pitiful and horrible little groups, all very quiet. The interior was tolerably well lighted in patches by lanterns on the ground, which, with a few hung from the roof, made brilliant rings of light round haggard faces. Two or three surgeons and assistants hastened to and fro, and as Fortescue stood hesitating in the doorway the sender of the message hurried up.

“I am glad you are come, Colonel Fortescue,” he said quickly. “You will find the youth at the end, against the wall. You cannot mistake him—against the wall.”

“Will he live?” asked Fortescue abruptly.

The surgeon shook his head. “I fear he is mortally hurt. I have done all I can for him; ’tis a gallant boy. Perhaps I can find the time to look at him again in a little space, but for now you must pardon me.” And he turned away to a fresh case.

Fortescue gave his helmet to the trooper and taking the lantern in exchange went forward up the dismal aisle in that place of pain and shadows. Here and there a hand was raised to salute him, but it was easy to see that most of the wounded were Royalists. At the end, close to the wall, was the Royalist he sought.

Humphrey lay at his length, his head thrown back on the folded cloak which pillowed but scarcely raised it, and he seemed to be asleep..From throat to foot he was covered by a dark horseman’s cloak, drawn up high but leaving a glimpse at the shoulders, by contrast almost startlingly white, of his fine Holland shirt, and cast against the wall, just as they had been taken off him, lay corslet, buff coat and doublet. In the gleam of the corner were just discernible also his scarf and embroidered sword-belt, flung across a pair of long cavalry boots. Here was no hint of feminine apparel (which indeed the boy might never wear again—nor indeed any other—thought the Colonel), now was there now anything of the woman in the face on which he looked down, save a trace of a beauty transfigured in the marring to something more virile. It was a girl’s face no longer; scarcely even a boy’s, for the youthful contours had sharpened into a significant angularity, and of the delicate colouring nothing remained but a bright little spot on either cheek, which only served, in the uneasy rays of the lantern, to emphasize the grey pallor of the rest and the blue marks, like those of a deadly fatigue, beneath the long lashes. The well-remembered chesnut curls, tangled now, and damp with blood and sweat, fell draggled from beneath the strip of bloodstained linen which replaced the twining green ribbon around the boy’s head. The Colonel remembered that too.[14]

After a moment Fortescue knelt down, setting the lantern on the beaten earth floor. Humphrey made no movement, but when the soldier whispered his name he stirred, and opened languid eyes upon him.

“’Tis too early to rise,” he said dreamily. “I’ll not get up by candle-light....Oh, Colonel Fortescue, I crave your pardon. I think I must have been asleep.”

“I wish I had not wakened you then,” returned his visitor, “yet since I have, can I not make you easier? Are you in pain?”

Humphrey made a little grimace which ended in a smile. “Faith, I suppose I am. ’Tis worse, at any rate, than a certain ankle you wot of..I fear I shall not ride your grey again....But I am rejoiced you are come, for I have something to say to you.” His eyes had regained their brightness, though they were painfully sunken.

“My dear lad, will it not keep a little, until you are fitter to tell me?”

Humphrey slightly shook his bandaged head. “It might not be safe to wait, from what your surgeon tells me,” he said, still smiling. “And I had liefer you learnt it from me. But you must pardon me—my head is ringing—if I try to gather my wits an instant.” He shut his eyes, and the Colonel’s gaze slipped from the drawn young face and was caught by the discarded doublet. The sinister patch, still wet, which disfigured the pearl-grey satin stared at him, and a bitter and helpless anger took him against war and death and fate and Winceby fight.

Humphrey opened his eyes again.

“I do not know how to tell you,” he said, looking up at the soldier with something of the old sparkle in his eyes, while the corners of his mouth went up in their familiar fashion. “Give me your hand.” He slipped out his arm from under the cloak. “I played a trick on you once—nay, in spite of all you said I have never regretted it. But this—this other mistake I have regretted since, though ’twas not I misled you.”

“For God’s sake don’t think of that matter now, dear boy,” interposed the Colonel sadly. “’Tis all over and forgotten long ago, I assure thee.”

Humphrey scanned him doubtfully. “Forgotten?” he said with a faint surprise. “Is it so?...I believe we are not speaking of the same thing, Sir.”

“Let it rest then,” said Fortescue, “and tell me if there is aught I can do for you—any message in case...”

But the young Royalist refused to be diverted from his train of thought. Perhaps he knew that once lost, he might not recapture it, and he went on disjointedly, with his eyes fixed on the face above him.

“I might have undeceived you...but I was angry at your speech...and still more at your letter...”

“Oh, I was angered too when I writ that,” returned Fortescue smiling, and putting his other hand round the one he held..“Well, what is it you wish to tell me?”

Humphrey paused, knitting his brows beneath the bandage. “Have you ever read an excellent comedy called “Twelfth Night”?” he demanded suddenly.

Fortescue was convinced now that he was wandering, but it seemed kinder to let him go on, and he assented.

“Then you remember,” proceeded Humphrey with feverish energy, “what the maid[15] Viola says to the Duke...I played that same Viola once on a time....”

“Yes, dear lad, I am listening,” said the Colonel gently.

“What was I saying?...Aye, she says it in the play, but it is true too—it is quite true, Sir.

“I am all the daughters of my father’s house,
And all the brothers too.””

The words came out perfectly clearly, and the hand between Fortescue’s contracted a little. The Colonel was quite silent, trying to be sure that he had grasped the speaker’s meaning, for he did not think now that he was delirious, and perhaps, at the back of that mysterious and complex region of sensation which we call the heart, he wished that he were.

“Do you understand me?” asked Humphrey a little anxiously.

“I think so,” answered Fortescue quietly and steadily. “You mean that you have no sister. Not, I trust, that she is dead, but——”

“That’s it,” said the boy excitedly, lifting his head from the cloak. “Not, as you say, that she is dead, but that I never had one. And I vow, Colonel Fortescue, that I never said I had—you put the words into my mouth...and I was angry...and it diverted me.” He smiled at the remembrance, but his head fell back again and for the first time a heavy sigh escaped him.

Vain, baseless, ludicrous, Fortescue knew his vision for all these as a breath dispersed it, yet he felt much the same physical sensations as when the trooper’s sword had descended on his head. And he had never shown more courage in the field than when he answered gently, “There is nothing to distress yourself at; ’twas foolish of me to come to so hasty a conclusion. But I thought I heard in the village——”

A lurking smile invaded the young man’s white lips. “I—forgive me—I had given orders...let when I met you..you suspected. You forgive me..do you not? I wanted you to know...that you were mistaken...not, of course, that it was of any importance,” he added more distinctly.

“Dear lad, there’s nothing to forgive,” said Fortescue, and Humphrey’s eyelids fell. His strength seemed to be ebbing fast, and when after a moment or two he reopened his eyes, there swept across them a shadow of the panic which seizes a child in the night when it realises that it is absolutely alone in the great darkness. His fingers tightened convulsively upon the watcher’s, and he drew a long, hard breath. Fortescue responded at once, and bent closer.

“Humphrey, what is it?” he asked tenderly, though he knew very well.

But the boy’s eyes had regained their serenity, and the twining fingers relaxed their hold.

“I was afraid,” he said simply. “I forgot you were here...I should like a drink, please...and then I think I could sleep. No, the surgeon bade me not be raised . .” And as the Colonel bent close over him with the cup he suddenly disengaged his hand, and flung his arm rather painfully a little way round his neck.

“You are kind,” he said softly, smiling. “Kinder than my deserts....Goodnight...I shall sleep now.”

His arm slipped down, his eyelids fell, and he gave a little sigh of content, appearing to fall asleep at once, like a child. Fortescue scanned him very doubtfully, and without hearing steps behind him, until the voice of the surgeon came over his shoulder.

“Truly, Colonel Fortescue, your presence hath soothed the young man. Perhaps after all . .”

Fortescue started, and yielded his place.

“Is it sleep?” he asked incredulously. “I thought . .”

The other had his fingers on the boy’s wrist. “’Tis genuine slumber,” he responded, “albeit the slumber of exhaustion. Life and death will fight for him while he sleeps. You can do nothing, Sir; if you have duties, or—as I think—need of rest yourself, go, and return about dawn. We may know then.” He lifted the cloak to look at his work and replaced it, apparently satisfied.

“You swear I can do nothing?” said Fortescue.

“Nothing, I pledge my word. And being asleep, the youth cannot want you. I would send for you—for I can promise nothing either; but I assure you I think you may go till dawn.”

“Then I will go, and return,” said the Colonel, but he scarcely knew whether he dared to hope anything, and when he bent down and kissed Humphrey on the forehead it seemed to him that he bade farewell at once to a reality and to a dream.

When you see the three Lelys in Onslow House you are sure to prefer to the other two the gentleman in amber satin who, with one slim, womanish hand displayed on his breast (after the fashion of the day in portraiture) and the other on his hip, smiles sideways at you with half-shut eyes from between the abundant curls of his long periwig. Since this is the portrait of Sir Humphrey Onslow, second baronet, aetat. suae 41, it is to be presumed that the original did not perish untimely at 20. You know, when you have looked at him but a very short time, that the story of the manner in which he saved Onslow House is true. One may also draw an inference from the picture of the third baronet, of him who, at the age of eight or thereabouts, sports with an incredible lamb at the feet of a lady somewhat inadequately, yet voluminously attired. The heathen name of this infant may be Cupid or Ascanius, but his Christian name, as you can easily learn, is Fortescue......It seems to conjure up a vision of a certain Parliamentarian godfather, who lived unmarried all his days, and left his worldly goods to Humphrey Onslow’s boy, all for the sake of that phantasmal lady of his heart, that daughter of the house of Onslow who never lived—and never died.