What chance of Beauchamp! The words made Phœbe’s honest brow contract as she stood by the chimney-piece, while her brother went out into the hall. ‘That’s all he cares for,’ she thought. ‘Poor mamma! But, oh! how unkind. I am sending him away without one kind wish, and she must be good—so much better than I could have hoped!’

Out she ran, and as he paused to kiss her bright cheek, she whispered, ‘Good-bye, Mervyn; good speed. I shall watch for your cover.’

She received another kiss for those words, and they had been an effort, for those designs on Beauchamp weighed heavily on her, and the two tasks that were left to her were not congenial. She did not know how to welcome a strange sister, for whose sake the last of the Mervyns was grudged her own inheritance, and still less did she feel disposed to harass her mother with a new idea, which would involve her in bewilderment and discussion. She could only hope that there would be inspiration in Mervyn’s blank cover, and suppress her fever for suspense.

Wednesday came—no cover, blank or unblank. Had he been taken with a fit of diffidence, and been less precipitate than he intended? Womanhood hoped so, and rather enjoyed the possibility of his being kept a little in suspense. Or suppose he had forgotten his cover, and then should think the absence of a letter her fault? Thursday—still no tidings. Should she venture a letter to him? No; lovers were inexplicable people, and after all, what could she say? Perhaps he was only waiting for an opportunity, and if Cecily had been ungracious at the last meeting, she might not afford one. Day after day wore on, and still the post-bag was emptied in vain, and Phœbe’s patience was kept on tenterhooks, till, when a full fortnight had passed, she learnt through the servants that Mr. Mervyn’s wardrobe and valet, grooms and horses, had been sent for to London.

So he had been refused, and could not bear to tell her so! And here she was disappointed and pitying, and as vexed with Miss Raymond as if it had not been no more than he deserved. But poor Mervyn! he had expected it so little, and had been so really attached, that Phœbe was heartily grieved for him, and longed to know how he bore it. Nay, with all the danger of removal, the flatness of the balked excitement was personally felt, and Phœbe would have been glad, in her monotonous life, of something to hope or to fear.

Her greatest pleasure was in Miss Charlecote’s return. The long watch over her old friend was over. Honor had shared his wife’s cares, comforted and supported her in her sorrow, and had not left her till the move from her parsonage was made, and she was settled among her own relations. Much as Honor had longed to be with Phœbe, the Savilles had nearer claims, and she could not part with them while there was any need of her. Indeed, Mr. Saville, as once the husband of Sarah Charlecote, the brother-in-law of Humfrey, and her own friend and adviser, was much esteemed and greatly missed. She felt as if her own generation were passing away, when she returned to see the hatchment upon Beauchamp, and to hear of the widow’s failing health. Knowing how closely Phœbe was attending her mother, Honor drove to Beauchamp the first day after her return, and had not crossed the hall before the slender black figure was in her arms.

Friends seem as though they must meet to know one another again, and begin afresh, after one of the great sorrows of life has fallen on either side, and especially when it is a first grief, a first taste of that cup of which all must drink. As much of the child as could pass from Phœbe’s sweet, simple nature had passed in those hours that had made her the protector and nurse of her mother, and though her open eyes were limpid and happy as before, and the contour of the rounded cheek and lip as youthful and innocent, yet the soft gravity of the countenance was deepened, and there was a pensiveness on the brow, as though life had begun to unfold more difficulties than pleasures.

And Honor Charlecote? That ruddy golden hair, once Owen’s pride, was mingled with many a silvery thread, and folded smoothly on a forehead paler, older, but calmer than once it had been. Sorrow and desertion had cut deeply, and worn down the fair comeliness of heathful middle age; but something of compensation there was in the less anxious eye, from which had passed a certain restless, strained expression; and if the face were more habitually sad, it was more peaceful. She did not love less those whom she ‘had seen,’ but He whom she ‘had not seen’ had become her rest and her reliance, and in her year of loneliness and darkness, a trust, a support, a confiding joy had sprung up, such as she had before believed in, but never experienced. ‘Her Best, her All;’ those had been words of devotional aspiration before, they were realities at last. And it was that peace that breathed into her fresh energy to work and love on, unwearied by disappointment, but with renewed willingness to spend and be spent, to rejoice with those who rejoiced, to weep with them that wept, to pray and hope for those who had wrung her heart.

Her tears were flowing as she tenderly embraced Phœbe, and the girl clung fast to her, not weeping, but full of warm, sweet emotion. ‘Dear Miss Charlecote, now you are come, I have help and comfort!’

‘Dear one, I have grieved to be away, but I could not leave poor Mrs. Saville.’

‘Indeed, I know you could not; and it is better to have you now than even at the time. It is a new, fresh pleasure, when I can enjoy it better. And I feel as if we had a right to you now—since you know what I told you,’ said Phœbe, with her pretty, shy, lover-like colouring.

‘That you are Humfrey’s ward?—my legacy from him? Good!’ said Honora, ratifying the inheritance with a caress, doubly precious to one so seldom fondled. ‘Though I am afraid,’ she added, ‘that Mr. Crabbe would not exactly recognize my claim.’

‘Oh, I don’t want you for what Mr. Crabbe can do for us, but it does make me feel right and at ease in telling you of what might otherwise seem too near home. But he was intended to have taken care of us all, and you always seem to me one with him—’

Phœbe stopped short, startled at the deep, bright, girlish blush on her friend’s cheek, and fearing to have said what she ought not; but Honor, recovering in a moment, gave a strange bright smile and tightly squeezed her hand. ‘One with him! Dear Phœbe, thank you. It was the most undeserved, unrequited honour of my life that he would have had it so. Yes, I see how you look at me in wonder, but it was my misfortune not to know on whom or what to set my affections till too late. No; don’t try to repent of your words. They are a great pleasure to me, and I delight to include you in the charges I had from him—the nice children he liked to meet in the woods.’

‘Ah! I wish I could remember those meetings. Robert does, and I do believe Robert’s first beginning of love and respect for what was good was connected with his fondness for Mr. Charlecote.’

‘I always regard Bertha as a godchild inherited from him, like Charlecote Raymond, whom I saw ordained last week. I could not help going out of my way when I found I might be present, and take his sister Susan with me.’

‘You went.’

‘Yes, Susan had been staying with her uncle at Sutton, and met me at Oxford. I am glad we were able to go. There was nothing that I more wished to have seen.’

Irrepressible curiosity could not but cause Phœbe to ask how lately Miss Raymond had been at Sutton, and as Miss Charlecote answered the question she looked inquisitively at her young friend, and each felt that the other was initiated. Whether the cousin ought to have confided to Miss Charlecote what she had witnessed at Sutton was an open question, but at least Honor knew what Phœbe burnt to learn, and was ready to detail it.

It was the old story of the parish priest taking pupils, and by dire necessity only half fulfilling conflicting duties, to the sacrifice of the good of all. Overworked between pupils and flock, while his wife was fully engrossed by children and household cares, the moment had not been perceived when their daughter became a woman, and the pupil’s sport grew to earnest. Not till Mervyn Fulmort had left Sutton for the University were they aware that he had treated Cecily as the object of his affection, and had promised to seek her as soon as he should be his own master. How much was in his power they knew not, but his way of life soon proved him careless of deserving her, and it was then that she became staid and careworn, and her youth had lost its bloom, while forced in conscience to condemn the companion of her girlhood, yet unable to take back the heart once bestowed, though so long neglected.

But when Mervyn, declaring himself only set at liberty by his father’s death, appeared at Sutton, Cecily did not waver, and her parents upheld her decision, that it would be a sin to unite herself to an irreligious man, and that the absence of principle which he had shown made it impossible for her to accept him.

Susan described her as going about the next morning looking as though some one had been killing her, but going through her duties as calmly and gently as ever, though preyed on by the misery of the parting in anger, and the threat that if he were not good enough for her, he would give her reason to think so! Honor had pity on the sister, and spared her those words, but Phœbe had well-nigh guessed them, and though she might esteem Cecily Raymond, could not but say mournfully that it was a last chance flung away.

‘Not so, my dear. What is right comes right. A regular life without repentance is sometimes a more hopeless state than a wilder course, and this rejection may do him more good than acceptance.’

‘It is right, I know,’ said Phœbe. ‘I could advise no one to take poor Mervyn; but surely it is not wrong to be sorry for him.’

‘No, indeed, dear child. It is only the angels who do not mourn, though they rejoice. I sometimes wonder whether those who are forgiven, yet have left evil behind them on earth, are purified by being shown their own errors reduplicating with time and numbers.’

‘Dear Miss Charlecote, do not say so. Once pardoned, surely fully sheltered, and with no more punishment!’

‘Vain speculation, indeed,’ answered Honor. ‘Yet I cannot help thinking of the welcome there must be when those who have been left in doubt and fear or shipwreck come safely into haven; above all, for those who here may not have been able to “fetch home their banished.”’

Phœbe pressed her hand, and spoke of trying whether mamma would see her.

‘Ah!’ thought Honora, ‘neither of us can give perfect sympathy. And it is well. Had my short-sighted wish taken effect, that sweet face might be clouded by such grief as poor Cecily Raymond’s.’

Mrs. Fulmort did see Miss Charlecote, and though speaking little herself, was gratified by the visit, and the voices talking before her gave her a sense of sociability. This preference enabled Phœbe to enjoy a good deal of quiet conversation with her friend, and Honora made a point of being at Beauchamp twice or three times a week, as giving the only variety that could there be enjoyed. Of Mervyn nothing was heard, and house and property wanted a head. Matters came to poor Mrs. Fulmort for decision which were unheard-of mysteries and distresses to her, even when Phœbe, instructed by the steward, did her utmost to explain, and tell her what to do. It would end by feeble, bewildered looks, and tears starting on the pale cheeks, and ‘I don’t know, my dear. It goes through my head. Your poor papa attended to those things. I wish your brother would come home. Tell them to write to him.’

‘They’ wrote, and Phœbe wrote, but in vain, no answer came; and when she wrote to Robert for tidings of Mervyn’s movements, entreating that he would extract a reply, he answered that he could tell nothing satisfactory of his brother, and did not know whether he were in town or not; while as to advising his mother on business, he should only make mischief by so doing.

Nothing satisfactory! What could that imply? Phœbe expected soon to hear something positive, for Bertha’s teeth required a visit to London, and Miss Fennimore was to take her to Lady Bannerman’s for a week, during which the governess would be with some relations of her own.

Phœbe talked of the snugness of being alone with her mother and Maria, and she succeeded in keeping both pleased with one another. The sisters walked in the park, and brought home primroses and periwinkles, which their mother tenderly handled, naming the copses they came from, well known to her in childhood, though since her marriage she had been too grand to be allowed the sight of a wild periwinkle. In the evening Phœbe gave them music, sang infant-school hymns with Maria, tried to teach her piquet; and perceived the difference that the absence of Bertha’s teasing made in the poor girl’s temper. All was very quiet, but when good night was said, Phœbe felt wearied out, and chid herself for her accesses of yawning, nay, she was shocked at her feeling of disappointment and tedium when the return of the travellers was delayed for a couple of days.

When at length they came, the variety brightened even Mrs. Fulmort, and she was almost loquacious about some mourning pocket-handkerchiefs with chess-board borders, that they were to bring. The girls all drank tea with her, Bertha pouring out a whole flood of chatter in unrestraint, for she regarded her mother as nobody, and loved to astonish her sisters, so on she went, a slight hitch in her speech giving a sort of piquancy to her manner.

She had dined late every day, she had ridden with Sir Bevil in the Park, her curly hair had been thought to be crépé, she had drunk champagne, she would have gone to the Opera, but the Actons were particular, and said it was too soon—so tiresome, one couldn’t do anything for this mourning. Phœbe, in an admonitory tone, suggested that she had seen the British Museum.

‘Oh yes, I have it all in my note-book. Only imagine, Phœbe, Sir Nicholas had been at Athens, and knew nothing about the Parthenon! And, gourmet as he is, and so long in the Mediterranean, he had no idea whether the Spartan black broth was made with sepia.’

‘My dear,’ began her mother, ‘young ladies do not talk learning in society.’

‘Such a simple thing as this, mamma, every one must know. But they are all so unintellectual! Not a book about the Bannermans’ house except Soyer and the London Directory, and even Bevil had never read the Old Red Sandstone nor Sir Charles Lyell. I have no opinion of the science of soldiers or sailors.’

‘You have told us nothing of Juliana’s baby,’ interposed Phœbe.

‘She’s exactly like the Goddess Pasht, in the Sydenham Palace! Juliana does not like her a bit, because she is only a girl, and Bevil quite worships her. Everything one of them likes, the other hates. They are a study of the science of antipathies.’

‘You should not fancy things, Bertha.’

‘It is no fancy; every one is observing it. Augusta says she has only twice found them together in their own house since Christmas, and Mervyn says it is a warning against virulent constancy.’

‘Then you saw Mervyn?’ anxiously asked Phœbe.

‘Only twice. He is at deadly feud with the Actons, because Bevil takes Robert’s part, and has been lecturing him about the withdrawing all the subscriptions!’

‘What?’ asked Phœbe again.

‘Oh! I thought Robert told you all, but there has been such a row! I believe poor papa said something about letting Robert have an evening school for the boys and young men at the distillery, but when he claimed it, Mervyn said he knew nothing about it, and wouldn’t hear of it, and got affronted, so he withdrew all the subscriptions from the charities and everything else, and the boys have been mobbing the clergy, and Juliana says it is all Robert’s fault.’

‘And did you see Robert?’

‘Very little. No one would come to such an old fogy’s as Sir Nicholas, that could help it.’

‘Bertha, my dear, young ladies do not use such words,’ observed her mother.

‘Oh, mamma, you are quite behindhand. Slang is the thing. I see my line when I come out. It would not do for you, Phœbe—not your style—but I shall sport it when I come out and go to the Actons. I shall go out with them. Augusta is too slow, and lives with nothing but old admirals and gourmands; but I’ll always go to Juliana for the season, Phœbe, wear my hair in the Eugenie style, and be piquante.’

‘Perhaps things will be altered by that time.’

‘Oh no. There will be no retrograde movement. Highly educated women have acquired such a footing that they may do what they please.’

‘Are we highly educated women?’ asked Maria.

‘I am sure you ought to be, my dear. Nothing was grudged for your education,’ said her mother.

‘Well, then, I’ll always play at bagatelle, and have a German band at the door,’ quoth Maria, conclusively.

‘Did you go to St. Matthew’s?’ again interrupted Phœbe.

‘Yes, Bevil took me. It is the oddest place. A white brick wall with a red cross built into it over the gate, and the threshold is just a step back four or five hundred years. A court with buildings all round, church, schools, and the curates’ rooms. Such a sitting-room; the floor matted, and a great oak table, with benches, where they all dine, schoolmaster, and orphan boys, and all, and the best boy out of each class.’

‘It is a common room, like one at a college,’ explained Phœbe. ‘Robert has his own rooms besides.’

‘Such a hole!’ continued Bertha. ‘It is the worst of all the curates’ sitting-rooms, looking out into the nastiest little alley. It was a shame he did not have the first choice, when it is all his own.’

‘Perhaps that is the reason he took the worst,’ said Phœbe.

‘A study in extremes,’ said Bertha. ‘Their dinner was our luncheon—the very plainest boiled beef, the liquor given away and at dinner, at the Bannermans’, there were more fine things than Bevil said he could appreciate, and Augusta looking like a full-blown dahlia. I was always wanting to stick pins into her arms, to see how far in the bones are. I am sure I could bury the heads.’

Here, seeing her mother look exhausted, Phœbe thought it wise to clear the room; and after waiting a few minutes to soothe her, left her to her maid. Bertha had waited for her sister, and clinging round her, said, ‘Well, Phœbe, aren’t you glad of us? Have you seen a living creature?’

‘Miss Charlecote twice, Mr. Henderson once, besides all the congregation on Sunday.’

‘Matter-of-fact Phœbe! Perhaps you can bear it, but does not your mind ache, as if it had been held down all this time?’

‘So that it can’t expand to your grand intellect?’ said Phœbe.

‘It is no great self-conceit to hope one is better company than Maria! But come, before we fall under the dominion of the Queen of the West Wing, I have a secret for you.’ Then, after a longer stammer than usual, ‘How should you like a French sister-in-law?’

‘Nonsense, Bertha!’

‘Ah! you’ve not had my opportunities. I’ve seen her—both of them. Juliana says the mother is his object; Augusta, the daughter. The mother is much the most brilliant; but then she has a husband—a mere matter of faith, for no one ever sees him. Mervyn is going to follow them to Paris, that’s certain, as soon as the Epsom day is over.’

‘You saw them!’

‘Only in the Park—oh, no! not in a room! Their ladyships would never call on Madame la Marquise; she is not received, you know. I heard the sisters talk it all over when they fancied me reading, and wonder what they should do if it should turn out to be the daughter. But then Juliana thinks Mervyn might never bring her home, for he is going on at such a tremendous rate, that it is the luckiest thing our fortunes do not depend on the business.’

Phœbe looked quite appalled as she entered the schoolroom, not only at Mervyn’s fulfilment of his threat, but at Bertha’s flippancy and shrewdness. Hitherto she had been kept ignorant of evil, save what history and her own heart could tell her. But these ten days had been spent in so eagerly studying the world, that her girlish chatter was fearfully precocious.

‘A little edged tool,’ said Miss Fennimore, when she talked her over afterwards with Phœbe. ‘I wish I could have been with her at Lady Bannerman’s. It is an unsafe age for a glimpse of the world.’

‘I hope it may soon be forgotten.’

‘It will never be forgotten’ said Miss Fennimore. ‘With so strong a relish for society, such keen satire, and reasoning power so much developed, I believe nothing but the devotional principle could subdue her enough to make her a well-balanced woman. How is that to be infused?—that is the question.’

‘It is, indeed.’

‘I believe,’ pursued the governess, ‘that devotional temper is in most cases dependent upon uncomprising, exclusive faith. I have sometimes wondered whether Bertha, coming into my hands so young as she did, can have imbibed my distaste to dogma; though, as you know, I have made a point of non-interference.’

‘I should shudder to think of any doubts in poor little Bertha’s mind,’ said Phœbe. ‘I believe it is rather that she does not think about the matter.’

‘I will read Butler’s Analogy with her,’ exclaimed Miss Fennimore. ‘I read it long ago, and shall be glad to satisfy my own mind by going over it again. It is full time to endeavour to form and deepen Bertha’s convictions.’

‘I suppose,’ said Phœbe, almost to herself, ‘that all naughtiness is the want of living faith—’

But Miss Fennimore, instead of answering, had gone to another subject.

‘I have seen St. Matthew’s, Phœbe.’

‘And Robert?’ cried Phœbe. ‘Bertha did not say you were with her.’

‘I went alone. No doubt your brother found me a great infliction; but he was most kind, and showed me everything. I consider that establishment a great fact.’

Phœbe showed her gratification.

‘I heard him preach,’ continued Miss Fennimore. ‘His was a careful and able composition, but it was his sermon in brick and stone that most impressed me. Such actions only arise out of strong conviction. Now, the work of a conviction may be only a proof of the force of the will that held it; and thus the effect should not establish the cause. But when I see a young man, brought up as your brother has been, throwing himself with such energy, self-denial, and courage into a task so laborious and obscure, I must own that, such is the construction of the human mind, I am led to reconsider the train of reasoning that has led to such results.’

And Miss Fennimore’s sincere admiration of Robert was Phœbe’s one item of comfort.

Gladly she shared it with Miss Charlecote, who, on her side, knew more than she told Phœbe of the persecution that Robert was undergoing from a vestry notoriously under the influence of the Fulmort firm, whose interest it was to promote the vice that he came to withstand. Even the lads employed in the distillery knew that they gratified their employer by outrages on the clergy and their adherents, and there had been moments when Robert had been exposed to absolute personal danger, by mobs stimulated in the gin-shops; their violence against his attacks on their vicious practices being veiled by a furious party outcry against his religious opinions. He meanwhile set his face like a rock, and strong, resolute, and brave, went his own way, so unmoved as apparently almost to prefer his own antagonistic attitude, and bidding fair to weary out his enemies by his coolness, or to disarm them by the charities of which St. Matthew’s was the centre.

As Phœbe never read the papers, and was secluded from the world’s gossip, it was needless to distress her with the knowledge of the malignity of the one brother, or the trials of the other; so Honor obeyed Robert by absolute silence on this head. She herself gave her influence, her counsel, her encouragement, and, above all, her prayers, to uphold the youth who was realizing the dreams of her girlhood.

It might be that the impress of those very dreams had formed the character she was admiring. Many a weak and fragile substance, moulded in its softness to a noble shape, has given a clear and lasting impress to a firm and durable material, either in the heat of the furnace, or the ductility of growth. So Robert and Phœbe, children of the heart that had lost those of her adoption, cheered these lonely days by their need of her advice and sympathy.

Nor was she without tasks at home. Mr. Henderson, the vicar, was a very old man, and was constantly growing more feeble and unequal to exertion. He had been appointed by the squire before last, and had the indolent conservative orthodoxy of the old school, regarding activity as a perilous innovation, and resisting all Miss Charlecote’s endeavours at progress in the parish. She had had long patience, till, when his strength failed, she ventured to entreat him to allow her to undertake the stipend of a curate, but this was rejected with displeasure, and she was forced to redouble her own exertions; but neither reading to the sick, visiting the cottages, teaching at school, nor even setting up a night-school in her own hall, availed to supply the want of an active pastor and of a resident magistrate.

Hiltonbury was in danger of losing its reputation as a pattern parish, which it had retained long after the death of him who had made it so. The younger race who had since grown up were not such as their fathers had been, and the disorderly household at Beauchamp had done mischief. The primitive manners, the simplicity, and feudal feeling were wearing off, and poor Honor found the whole charge laid to her few modern steps in education! If Hiltonbury were better than many of the neighbouring places, yet it was not what it had been when she first had known it, and she vexed herself in the attempt to understand whether the times or herself were the cause.

Even her old bailiff, Brooks, did not second her. He had more than come to the term of service at which the servant becomes a master, and had no idea of obeying her, when he thought he knew best. Backward as were her notions of modern farming, they were too advanced for him, and either he would not act on them at all, or was resolved against their success when coerced. There was no dismissing him, and without Mr. Saville to come and enforce her authority, Honor found the old man so stubborn that she had nearly given up the contest, except where the welfare of men, not of crops, was concerned.

A maiden’s reign is a dreary thing, when she tends towards age. And Honor often felt what it would have been to have had Owen to back her up, and infuse new spirit and vigour.

The surly ploughboy, who omitted to touch his cap to the lady, little imagined the train of painful reflections roused by this small indication of the altering spirit of the place!