CHAPTER XLII
.
A PERFECT UNION.
Maude left Paddington by an afternoon express, and reached Exeter after a journey that was long and wearisome even to a modern traveller, for whom the way has been smoothed so delightfully. It was late the next evening when she reached Falmouth, after a day in a stage-coach, and put up at the principal hotel with her maid, who was a good deal more tired than her mistress, as it is in the nature of maids to be. The coach that passed through Landresdale on its way to some still more remote and savage district left Falmouth early in the morning; and Maude left with it, this time unattended by her maid, whose curiosity had been considerably stimulated by the erratic nature of her mistress’s movements, and who thought it a hard thing to be left alone to look out of the window of the hotel sitting-room, while Mrs. Tredethlyn pursued her mysterious journey to its mysterious close.
How strange and new all the wild Cornish scenery seemed to Maude, as she sat alone in the interior of the coach, which was not affected by the sturdy agriculturists and miners who were generally the only passengers on this route! How many conflicting hopes and fears found a place in her mind as she looked out at the unknown country amidst which her husband’s boyhood had been spent! Had he sailed for the New World by some later vessel than the _Kingfisher_? Was he far away from the rustic homestead towards which she was travelling with a faint hope of finding him at the end of her journey?--an unreasoning hope, which she tried to shut out of her mind in her dread of the cruel disappointment that might await her.
The coach put her down before the Crown Inn, and she stood alone in Landresdale High Street, with the great gates of the marquis’s enchanted castle frowning down upon her from the top of the hill. She inquired about a conveyance to take her on to Tredethlyn Grange; and the landlord of the Crown ordered the immediate preparation of a lumbering old equipage of a tub-like character, lined with washed-out chintz, which was brought forth on rare occasions, and charged for at a prodigious rate. While the equipage was being prepared, the landlord contemplated his bright young visitor with evident curiosity, and would fain have beguiled her into conversation; but Maude had no inclination to be communicative. If she was to receive a death-blow to all her hopes, she did not want to take it from the hands of this coarse common man. She wanted to go straight to the Grange and learn her fate there, and there only. The road from Landresdale to the moorland farmhouse was longer than the by-path through the churchyard by which Francis had gone; and the clumsy old brown horse, and the lumbering vehicle in which Maude was seated, progressed very slowly. The way seemed intolerably long to her; but at last she saw a grey spot against the blue sky, and made out that the vehicle was bearing towards it by a winding track along which heavy waggons had left the impression of their broad wheels. The grey spot grew bigger and bigger against the horizon, until it grew at last into a dreary-looking habitation, with quaint old gables and moss-grown stone walls. One slender thread of smoke curled upward, white against the clear blue atmosphere; some sheep were grazing upon the patch of ground that had once been a garden; and the perfume of the clover blew towards the traveller as the fly lumbered nearer to the broken gate.
Maude looked hopelessly at the quiet house,--so little sign of occupation, so little token of life.
“He can’t be there,” she thought; a sudden gush of tears shutting out the grey stone walls, the clover-field and browsing sheep. “I am too late!”
She brushed away her tears, drew down her veil, and alighted, telling the driver to wait for her; whereupon the man took the bit out of his horse’s mouth and abandoned himself to slumber, while the animal cropped the stunted grass contentedly. Some sheep that had been lying in the pathway skipped awkwardly away as Maude crossed the bare enclosure; and as she approached the door, it was opened by a tall gaunt woman, who had evidently been disturbed by the unwonted sound of wheels on the rough moorland road.
“Mr. Tredethlyn has been staying here, has he not?” Maude asked, eagerly.
“Yes, ma’am; and he’s here still. Excuse me for being a little put out like, but you have taken me so aback. You don’t happen to be my master’s wife, do you?”
“Yes, yes! Oh, thank Heaven, he is still here! Let me see him at once, please!” exclaimed Maude, trying to pass the grim-looking woman who barred her passage.
“Not yet! Oh, please, ma’am, not yet!” cried the woman, eagerly. “It mightn’t be safe.”
“Not safe! What do you mean?”
“He has been so ill, ma’am; and the doctor’s special orders was that he was to be kept from anything that might upset him. And he talked and raved so about you, poor dear, when his senses were quite gone, as they were for days together; and I’m sure nothing could upset him so much as the sight of your coming upon him sudden. Let me see him first, and tell him you are here. I make no doubt he’ll be overjoyed to see you; but it mustn’t come like a shock upon him.”
“He has been ill!” cried Maude; “dangerously ill!”
“Yes, ma’am; very dangerously. We had two doctors with him at one time. Brain fever it was; over-fatigue and trouble of the mind, and so on, the doctors said. He came up here after being too late for the steamer by which he was to have gone abroad; and he came to settle everything about the farm and the quarries, and so on; and he worked at it night and day, without rest nor sleep, though me and my husband told him how bad it was for him; and everything was almost settled when he woke one morning bad in his head, and after that got from bad to worse, until his life was almost give up.”
“But he is out of danger now?”
“Yes, ma’am, thank God, quite out of danger now; but, oh, so weak; the smallest child that ever I had to do with wasn’t weaker than my poor master now.”
Maude burst out crying. Until this moment she had stood, pale and breathless, waiting to hear that she was indeed too late--that Francis Tredethlyn had escaped the destruction of the _Kingfisher_ only to find death waiting for him in his own home.
“Don’t mind me,” she exclaimed, as the gaunt woman made a clumsy attempt to comfort her; “I am crying for joy. Go and tell my husband that I am here; but not at any hazard to him. I will be very patient. Thank God I have found him! thank God I shall be able to fall on my knees by his bed-side and beg his forgiveness for my neglect and ingratitude!”
Martha Dryscoll looked wonderingly at this butterfly creature, who talked hysterically of falling at her husband’s feet and begging forgiveness. Francis had made no confidants in that Cornish house; and Mrs. Dryscoll began to fear that his marriage had been a very unfortunate affair, and that this sudden arrival of an elegantly dressed penitent was to be the last act of a domestic tragedy.
“If you’ll walk in there, ma’am,” Martha said, pointing to the parlour, with a severe aspect of countenance, “I’ll go and see my master.”
She said no more, but departed; and Maude crept into the old-fashioned room, fearful lest the rustling of her silk dress might disturb an invalid’s slumber. It seemed a long time that she waited, and then Mrs. Dryscoll returned, smiling grimly this time.
“He’ll see you directly minute,” she said; “and, oh, he does seem so pleased, poor dear!”
She led Maude to the top of the staircase, and then pointed to a half-open door at the end of a dusky corridor, after which she went down-stairs again, and Maude heard her sobbing quietly to herself until the sound subsided in the distance.
The young wife went on to the half-open door, and entered the room in which her husband lay on a white-curtained bed, very pale, very wan, and so weak that he could not raise his hand to offer it her in token of loving reconciliation.
She fell on her knees by the bed, and laid her cheek upon the hand that was too feeble to be lifted.
“Oh, forgive me!” she said; “my dear, my love, my true and cherished husband! If you wanted to give me a lesson, you have given me a very cruel one; but you have taught me that I cannot live without you.”
She sat by his pillow, with his weak head encircled by her caressing arms, and told him the story of her penitence and remorse. It was a sweet exchange of forgiveness for the past, and tender promises for the future. No denizens of Stuccoville kept watch from behind pink curtains; the driver of the fly slumbered as profoundly as one of the seven sleepers; the rustic sound of the sheep cropping the clover was the only sound that stirred the drowsy stillness. Martha kept herself discreetly out of the way; and the husband and wife, truly united for the first time in their lives in that Cornish solitude, were loath to break the spell which held them in such loving union.
But such spells have to be broken for the common business of life. Punctual to the appointed moment Mrs. Dryscoll appeared with her master’s medicine; and then the lumbering fly was sent back empty to Landresdale; and after that Mrs. Tredethlyn was banished from the sick room, and made some faint show of taking a little of the refreshment which had been provided for her by Martha.
After dinner she wrote two brief notes--one to her maid at Falmouth, who was to follow her immediately with the portmanteau; the other to Julia, who was to be so good as to send her such luggage as would be necessary to her in a stay of some weeks.
After this Mrs. Tredethlyn had no more to do but to nurse her husband through the slow stages of convalescence. It was very long before he was strong enough to get up to a little Arcadian tea-drinking. It was very long after that before he was able to take a few turns in the clover-field, leaning on Maude’s arm. It was still longer before he was well enough to think of turning his back upon Cornwall, to plunge into busy commonplace life again.
If he could have been an invalid for the rest of his days, he would have resigned himself uncomplainingly to his fate; for what period of his chequered existence had been so sweet as this, in which he and Maude were all in all to each other?--this perpetual _tête-à-tête_, unbroken by the intrusion of morning callers, undisturbed by the conflicting emotions which attend social intercourse in high latitudes. And they were not idle either during these autumn months. Hidden among those wild Cornish moors, the husband and wife were very busy together--_improving their minds_; for Maude had confessed to her husband, with a good deal of girlish giggling and blushing, that her own education had been very nearly as defective as his, and that the wide fields of knowledge, which were such strange and bewildering regions to him, were scarcely more familiar to her.
“And you are so clever, Frank,” she exclaimed, in conclusion--she always called him Frank now. “You remember what those American phrenologists--Messrs. Somebody and Something--said about your perceptive faculties? You could learn anything, they said. And we’ll learn together, dear; for I’m ashamed to say I’ve forgotten everything my governesses and masters taught me, except French and music, and a smattering of German and Italian. And I’m sure if you’d seen how, as soon as one master had beaten anything into my brains, another master came and beat it out again with something else, you’d scarcely wonder that I’m ignorant. So we’ll begin together, Frank dear, and learn everything. Won’t it be fun?”
A young lady who looked upon the acquisition of universal knowledge as an agreeable joke would scarcely be expected to drink very deeply of the Pierian spring. Maude imbibed the classic water in little fitful sips, and wasted a good deal of it in frolicsome splashing; but Francis had read considerably, even in the midst of his London dissipation, and he had a happy knack of remembering what he read. Mrs. Tredethlyn wrote to a popular librarian for his catalogue; and in the pages of this pamphlet she ticked off the solid works which she considered adapted to the improvement of her own and her husband’s mind.
“Merivale’s ‘History of the Romans under the Empire!’” she exclaimed; “_that_ of course we must read. I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea of Julius Cæsar, except that he always seemed to have a laurel-wreath on his head and a kind of rolling-pin--if I remember right--in his hand, and that he once passed something called the Rubicon, though _what_ it was I haven’t the slightest notion. We’ll have the ‘Roman Empire;’ and when we’ve got through that, we’ll have Gibbon in _one_ volume, you know,” said Maude, triumphantly; “he’ll _seem_ shorter in one volume, even if the small print is rather trying to one’s eyes. Newman’s ‘Phases of Faith’--that sounds like theology, doesn’t it? and I don’t think we need begin theology yet, because if we got into the early schisms of the Church, and Gnostics, and Arians, and so on, our brains wouldn’t be clear enough for Julius Cæsar. There’s a life of Madame de Maintenon, by the Duc de Noailles; I think we’ll have that: she’ll be quite a relief after the ‘Roman Empire,’ because one _has_ a kind of idea about her, and that she was a nasty old frump, and said rude things about the king, who was so kind to her, and so on.”
The selection of these and a great many more books was eminently delightful; but when they came, Maude insisted on dipping into “Roman Empires” and ponderous histories of different ages just as if they had been so many novels; and she frisked among the records of the Reign of Terror with a very confused idea as to the difference between the “Mountain” and the “Gironde,” but a vivid notion of Charlotte Corday having her portrait painted just before her death, and Citizen Roland’s beautiful wife declaiming on the scaffold.
They were very happy together. If Francis read in real earnest, and his wife only played at reading, they were not the less united in their studies. The industrious honey-bee and the frivolous butterfly may hover about the same flower, happy according to their different natures in the same summer noon. Francis Tredethlyn and his wife were so happy in the quiet old farmhouse that they let the autumn days drift by them in their moorland retreat, even after the Cornishman had grown strong enough for a new skirmish with Harcourt Lowther, had there been any need of a physical contest between the two men.
“We have been so happy here, Francis,” Maude said one dim November evening, as the husband and wife walked side by side upon the moorland before the Grange; “but I think we have learnt to understand each other so well now, that no one in the world will be able to divide us again. And by-and-by, when you have read a great deal about Julius Cæsar and political economy, and so on, and go into the HOUSE”--Maude opened her eyes to the widest extent as she pronounced the high-sounding substantive--“how proud I shall be of you; and I shall go to the Ladies’ Gallery when you are going to speak! And then, when you have settled all about the Berkshire estate, how delightful it will be to arrange our model farm, and model stables, and pineries, and vineries, and conservatories, and orchid-houses, and a model dairy, and a model poultry-yard, almost as pretty as the one at Frogmore! and then how much we shall have to think of and talk about, shan’t we, Frank?”
“And you’ll never be ashamed of me again, Maude?”
“Ashamed of you!” cried Mrs. Tredethlyn, innocently; “was I ever ashamed of you?” And then she looked at her husband archly, blushing and laughing. “Well, perhaps once, when you knocked those _petits timbales de gibier_ into the duchess’s lap,--half-a-dozen of them at the very least, Frank; and the night you tore Lady Ophelia Fitzormond’s old point: but you are so refined, Frank, so improved, if I may venture to say as much without offending you.”
“I should be a churlish brute indeed, if I had not improved in the society of the sweetest wife in Christendom, to say nothing of Julius Cæsar. My great-grandfather was a gentleman, Maude; and there are few names older than Tredethlyn, even in this land of ancient lineages. We dropped down until we came to be represented by my grandfather, who lived like a peasant for the sake of hoarding his money, and in whose steps my uncle Oliver followed. I shall try to make myself a gentleman for your sake, Maude--it would never do for people to say that the lovely Mrs. Tredethlyn had allied herself to a man who was only a clod.”
After this, need it be said that all went very smoothly with Mr. and Mrs. Tredethlyn?--so smoothly, that poor discontented Julia abandoned the happy couple in disgust, and went abroad as travelling companion to a rheumatic old countess, who leads her a dreadful life, and insists upon being read to sleep out of German metaphysical works at weird hours of the night. She has met with Roderick Lowther in the course of her travels, lonely and cynical, looking at everything in life through the medium of his own disappointments; for he has sought in vain for a reconciliation with his young wife, and has found to his cost how very firmly a gentlewoman can hold to her resolution, when her firmness is justified by the sense of a deep and deadly wrong.
They are very happy, Francis and Maude. The Berkshire estate is just one of those exceptionally delightful places which drop now and then into the hands of rich commoners when the aristocratic proprietors go to the dogs; and the Stuccoville mansion only sees its owners during the few months in which they skim the cream of the London season, before scudding off to the Continent to improve their minds among the monuments of the past, or in the most fashionable watering-places of the present. They are very happy. As time speeds on, there appears on the lawn in Berkshire a little rolling bundle of white muslin and expensive lace, which, inspected closely, turns out to be a baby, and which, if it could speak at all, would answer to the name of Lionel Hillary Tredethlyn; and by-and-by, when the young couple travel in the bright autumn weather, a prim English nurse and a French _bonne_ follow in their rear, and there is a little girl baby in a white hood; and papa and mamma are alike concerned for the safe conveyance of these domestic treasures. The girl baby is called Maude; but she owns a string of other names; and her two godmothers are Susan Lowther, who lives happily with her boy in the Petersham cottage, and Rosa Grunderson, who declares that, in consequence of the distracting influence of public characters, and her fatal experience of the perfidy of private individuals in the person of Roderick Lowther, she will descend a spinster to the grave.
One day, at a German watering-place, Francis and his wife hear of a man living in the same hotel with them, their countryman; a man who is young, has been handsome, and who for the last few months has been conspicuous in the gaming-saloons of the Kursaal as a desperate, and sometimes a very lucky, player--a traveller who can scarcely be an adventurer, for he has been admired and caressed by elegant women and well-born men, but who has been a hard drinker from first to last, and within the last fortnight has fallen a victim to the most hideous disease which vice ever engendered as the scorpion-whip to work its own retribution,--a disease called delirium tremens.
The landlord of the hotel tells Mr. Tredethlyn how this wretched Englishman has his bad fits and his intervals of quiet; how he will lie down calmly enough perhaps at night, to start up mad in the dim grey morning, to walk far out into the country, hurrying wildly before the fiend that pursues him; and to fall exhausted in some desolate spot, and lie there till some passing peasant picks him up and conveys him back to his lodging. The landlord describes, with considerable vivacity and gesticulation, how this poor afflicted creature will sit for hours together catching at imaginary insects that buzz about him and torment him; how he will watch and point to falling snow, that never falls; how with a power that is hideously graphic, he will describe the devils that dance and gibber round his miserable bed. He tells how the shutting of a door, the rustling of a newspaper, the flutter of a falling leaf, will startle this unhappy sufferer more than an unexpected peal of thunder would startle another man. He describes the sleeplessness which no opiate is strong enough to conquer, the restlessness and depression with which medical science struggles in vain. He tells Francis Tredethlyn, in confidence, that the poor ailing wretch is all but penniless, and that very scanty supplies of money come to him in reply to the letters he writes to England now and then in his rational moments.
It scarcely needs Maude’s appealing look to inspire Francis with the wish to help this unhappy countryman. He says nothing to his wife, but he goes by-and-by to smoke his cigar in the lamplit quadrangle, where there is a café, and a smoking-room, and a reading-room, and a post-office, and a perpetual chatter of divers tongues, and clatter of hurrying feet. He is a long time smoking that cigar; and yet Maude feels no displeasure in his absence, as she sits alone in her balcony looking out at the lamplit town and the solemn forest looming darkly in the distance. She knows that whatever impulse stirs her own heart is almost sure to find an answering impulse in her husband’s; and she can guess what keeps him so long to-night.
He has spoken to the landlord, he tells her, when he comes back, and has given him a cheque which is to keep things smooth for the present, and has promised more money, if more should be needed; for in any case the Englishman is not to be worried about money matters while he is ill; and above all he is not to know that a stranger’s help has saved him from annoyance.
“The landlord persuaded me to go into the--poor fellow’s room, afterwards,” said Francis, slowly. “He thought it would cheer him up a little to shake a countryman by the hand; and I did go in, Maude,--and I saw him.”
“Yes, dear; and the interview has made you unhappy, I’m sure. You are looking dreadfully pale!”
“The man is very ill, Maude, very ill. Yes, the sight of him did almost knock me over, I assure you.”
It was a week after this when Mr. and Mrs. Tredethlyn left the German watering-place. They were on the point of starting from the hotel when Maude noticed the closed shutters of some windows on an upper story, and on questioning one of the waiters, was told that the Englishman was dead. She asked her husband to tell her more about the painful end of this lonely Englishman, as they sat alone in the _coupé_ of a railway carriage.
“Yes, he is dead, Maude,” Francis answered, sadly. “It was a very melancholy fate. The doctors could not conquer the sleeplessness, and he sank at last into a state of coma from which he never rallied. It was a very miserable ending. He will he buried in the little Protestant cemetery. I left all necessary directions, and I have written to his friends in England. Perhaps some one who cared for him will come over to stand beside his grave. He was no friend of mine; but there seems something very shocking in this solitary death in a foreign country.”
“He was no friend of yours!” repeated Maude, wonderingly; “how strangely you say that, Frank! You knew him, then?”
“Yes, Maude, and you knew him too. The man who died last night was Harcourt Lowther!”
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
MISS M. C. HAY’S NOVELS
UNIFORM EDITION. Price 2s.; cloth gilt, 2s. 6d.
NORA’S LOVE TEST
‘“Nora” is good.’--_Athenæum._
‘This book has, what is very rare in novels, a distinct interest as a story.’--_Academy._
‘Bright, fresh, and sparkling.... It is full of interest.’--_Examiner._
Also ready, by the same Author, Uniform Edition,
OLD MYDDELTON’S MONEY. HIDDEN PERILS. VICTOR AND VANQUISHED. THE ARUNDEL MOTTO. THE SQUIRE’S LEGACY. BRENDA YORKE. [_In the Press._ UNDER THE WILL.
MR. W. G. WILLS’S NOVELS
Price 2s. each; cloth gilt, 2s. 6d.
1. DAVID CHANTREY. 2. THE WIFE’S EVIDENCE. 3. NOTICE TO QUIT. [_In the Press._ 4. THE THREE WATCHES. 5. LIFE’S FORESHADOWING.
Price 2s. Cloth gilt, 2s. 6d.
PUT TO THE TEST. EDITED BY M. E. BRADDON. ONLY A WOMAN. Do. ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE. MISSES AND MATRIMONY. BY LIEUT.-COL. KNOLLYS.
Price 1s., boards.
BUSH LIFE IN ZULULAND. BY MRS. F. AYLMER.
Illustrated. Price 2s. 6d. Paper boards. Cloth gilt, 3s. 6d.
TWICE ROUND THE CLOCK. BY G. A. SALA.
_N.B.--The Cloth Edition of this book makes_ _a very handsome and useful Present._
MR. W. S. HAYWARD’S NOVELS CHEAP NEW EDITIONS.
_Price 2s. each; cloth gilt, 2s. 6d._
HUNTED TO DEATH. A Novel of the most alluring interest.
PERILS OF A PRETTY GIRL. A Novel founded upon real life.
LOVE AGAINST THE WORLD. A Novel showing that the “course of true love never did run smooth.”
ETHEL GREY. A Novel unsurpassed for dramatic power and depth of plot.
MAUDE LUTON. A Novel descriptive of the most charming traits in woman’s nature.
CAROLINE. A Novel of the most captivating character, full of variety, pathos, and feminine interest.
THE THREE RED MEN. A Novel possessing all the charms of romance and all the graces of a genuine love-story.
JOHN HAZEL’S VENGEANCE.
BARBARA HOME.
⁂ Mr. W. STEPHENS HAYWARD’S Novels have taken their place amongst the most popular works of the present day. They command a ready and large sale in all the colonies, where the scenes of some are laid, and where the author passed through many of the incidents so graphically and faithfully described in some of his most interesting Novels.
MISS DORA RUSSELL’S NOVELS
Price 2s., Ornamental Cover; 2s. 6d. cloth gilt.
1. FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW. 2. THE VICAR’S GOVERNESS. 3. BENEATH THE WAVE.
MRS. EDWARDS’ NOVEL
Price 2s., Ornamental Cover; 2s. 6d. cloth gilt.
THE MORALS OF MAY-FAIR.
LONDON: JOHN AND ROBERT MAXWELL MILTON HOUSE, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET, E.C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Notes
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text. New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain. Itemized changes from the original text:
• Table of Contents: Supplied missing period after chapter number IV. • p. 10: Changed “Deptfort” to “Deptford” in phrase “embarked at Deptford on a misty morning in October.” • p. 16: Changed exclamation mark after “child” to comma in phrase “his only child, too, for the matter of that.” • p. 16: Supplied missing closing quotation mark after phrase “bring out your desk, and write at once.” • p. 22: Replaced double with single closing quotation mark in phrase “the lawyer’s letter!--‘Francis Tredethlyn, Esq.!’ eh?” • p. 35: Supplied missing closing quotation mark after phrase “I’m every bit as far from Susy now as ever I was out yonder.” • p. 51: Changed “Hilary” to “Hillary” in phrase “Lionel Hillary, Australian merchant, of Moorgate Street.” • p. 69: Supplied missing period after “Mr.” in phrase “She sighed as she admitted to Mr. Tredethlyn that her name was Burfield.” • p. 72: Supplied missing closing quotation mark after phrase “with her relations in the country.” • p. 80: Supplied missing period after “Mrs.” in phrase “He had only been able to read Mrs. Burfield’s story in one fashion.” • p. 111: Omitted repeated word “as” in phrase “appeared to resent any inquiries as to his state.” • p. 169: Changed “gaities” to “gaieties” in phrase “amidst all the gaieties and luxuries and successes of the most wonderful city in the world.” • p. 188: Replaced double with single closing quotation mark after phrase “what have you done with Robert?” • p. 202: Changed “Cliquot” to “Clicquot” in phrase “under the influence of unlimited Moet or Clicquot.” • p. 214: Supplied missing period after phrase “some one proposed an adjournment to an adjacent theatre.” • p. 224: Supplied missing letter “s” in “Turner’s” in phrase “I’ll slip over and get Miss Turner’s direction.” • p. 227: Supplied missing single closing quotation mark after phrase “I don’t think I shall ever bring my mind to go there, or to see them.” • p. 241: Several words at the top of this page were missing from the images used to produce this eBook. The words “said,” “set,” and “heiress” were confirmed from the original 1864-65 serial publication. • p. 246: Changed “Burlegh” to “Burleigh” in phrase “And long he mourned, the Lord of Burleigh.” • p. 250: Changed “looing” to “looking” in phrase “looking sharply at the myosotis in her nephew’s button-hole.” • p. 266: Changed dash to period after phrase “exclaimed Mr. Harcourt, who had said all he wanted to say.” • p. 268: Changed “reurned” to “returned” in phrase “when the water-party returned to the Cedars.” • p. 271: Omitted closing double quotation mark after phrase “willing to lay down his very life for her pleasure.” • p. 280: Added semicolon after phrase “I have been face to face with starvation, Frank, very often within the last two years.” • p. 286: Supplied missing period after “Mr.” in phrase “The quiet rubber at Mr. Lowther’s lodgings generally led to other rubbers elsewhere.” • p. 289: Supplied missing period after phrase “while Francis was shaking hands with some of the men.” • p. 292: Supplied missing letter “n” in “man” in phrase “a big man with a black moustache.”