and the dismissal completed the business.'
'I told them about it,' said Fergus.
'Quite right, my boy; the pity was that he did not trust to your honour, but he seems to have worked himself into the state of mind when young men run amuck. I saw his colonel, Lydiard, and the captain and sergeant of his company, who had from the first seen that he was a man of a higher class under a cloud, and had expected further inquiry, though, even from the little that had been seen of him, there was a readiness to take his word. As the sergeant said, he was not the common sort of runaway clerk, and it was a thousand pities that he must go to the civil power-in which I am disposed to agree. What sort of man is the cousin at the marble works?'
'A regular beast,' murmured Fergus.
'I think,' said Jane, 'that he means to be good and upright.'
'More than means,' said Ada, 'but he is cautious, and says he has been so often deceived.'
'As far as I can understand,' said Jane, 'there was originally desperate enmity between him and his cousin.'
'He forgave entirely,' said Ada; 'and he really has done a great deal for the family, who own that they have no claim upon him.'
'Yes,' said Jane, 'but from a distance, with no personal knowledge, and a contempt for the foreign mother, and the pretensions to gentility. He would have been far kinder if his cousin had remained a sergeant.'
'He only wished to try them,' said Adeline, 'and he always meant to come and see about them; besides, that eldest son has been begging of him on false pretences all along.'
'That I can believe,' said Sir Jasper. 'I remember his father's distress at his untruth in the regimental school, and his foolish mother shielding him. No doubt he might do enough to cause distrust of his family; but has Mr. White actually never gone near them, as Gillian told me?'
'Excepting once walking Maura home,' said Jane, 'no; but I ascribe all that to the partner, Mr. Stebbing, who has had it all his own way here, and seems to me to have systematically kept Alexis down to unnecessarily distasteful drudgery. Kalliope's talent gave her a place; but young Stebbing's pursuit of her, though entirely unrequited, has roused his mother's bitter enmity, and there are all manner of stories afloat. I believe I could disprove every one of them; but together they have set Mr. White against her, and he cannot see her in her office, as her mother is too ill to be left. I do believe that if the case against Alexis is discharged, they will think she has the money.'
'Stebbing said Maura changed a five-pound note,' put in Fergus; 'and when I told him to shut up, for it was all bosh, he punched me.'
I hope Richard sent it' said Ada, 'but you see the sort of report that is continually before Mr. White-not that I think he believes half, or is satisfied-with the Stebbings.'
'I am sure he is not with Frank Stebbing,' said Jane. 'I do think and hope that he is only holding off in order to judge; and I think your coming may have a great effect upon him, Jasper.'
The Rotherwoods had requested Sir Jasper to use their apartments at the hotel, and he went thither to dress, being received, as he said, by little Lady Phyllis with much grace and simplicity.
The evening passed brightly, and when the children were gone to bed, their father said rather anxiously that he feared the aunts had had a troublesome charge hastily thrust on them.
'We enjoyed it very much,' said Adeline politely.
'We were thankful to have a chance of knowing the young people,' added Jane. 'I am only glad you did not come home at Christmas, when I was not happy about the two girls.'
'Yes, Valetta got into trouble and wrote a piteous little letter of confession about copying.'
'Yes, but you need not be uneasy about that; it was one of those lapses that teach women without any serious loss. She did not know what she was about, and she told no falsehoods; indeed, each one of your children has been perfectly truthful throughout.'
'That is the great point, after all. Lilias could hardly fail to make her children true.'
'Fergus is really an excellent little boy, and Gillian-poor Gillian- -I think she really did want more experience, and was only too innocent.'
'That is what you really think,' said the father anxiously.
'Yes, I do,' said Jane. 'If she had been a fast girl, she would have been on her guard against the awkward situation, and have kept out of this mess; but very likely would have run into a worse one.'
'I do not think that her elder sisters would have done like her.'
'Perhaps not; but they were living in your regimental world at the age when her schoolroom life was going on. I think you have every reason to be satisfied with her tone of mind. As you said of the boy, a person may commit an imprudence without being imprudent.'
'I quite agree to that,' he said, 'and, indeed, I see that you have managed her most wisely, and obtained her affection and gratitude, as indeed you have mine!' he added, with a tone in his voice that touched Jane to the core of her heart.
'I never heard anything like it before,' she said to her sister over their fire at night, with a dew of pleasure in her eyes.
'I never liked Jasper so well before. He is infinitely pleasanter and more amiable. Do you remember our first visit? No, it was not you who went with me, it was Emily. I am sure he felt bound to be on guard all the time against any young officer's attentions to his poor little sister-in-law,' said Ada, with her Maid-of-Athens look. 'The smallest approach brought those hawk's eyes of his like a dart right through one's backbone. It all came back to me to-night, and the way he used to set poor Lily to scold me.'
'So that you rejoiced to be grown old. I beg your pardon, but I did. My experience was when I went to help Lily pack for foreign service, when I suppose my ferret look irritated him, for he snubbed me extensively, and I am sure he rejoiced to carry his wife out of reach of all the tribe. I dare say I richly deserved it, but I hope we are all 'mellered down,' as Wat Greenwood used to say of his brewery for the pigs.'
'My dear, what a comparison!'
'Redolent of the Old Court, and of Lily, waiting for her swan's nest among the reeds, till her stately warrior came, and made her day dreams earnest in a way that falls to the lot of few. I don't think his severity ever dismayed her for a moment, there was always such sweetness in it.
'True knight and lady! Yes. He is grown handsomer than ever, too!'
'I hope he will get those poor children out of their hobble! It is chivalrous enough of him to come down about it, in the midst of all his business in London.'
Sir Jasper started the next morning with Fergus on his way to school, getting on the road a good deal of information, mingled together about forms and strata, cricket and geology. Leaving his little son at Mrs. Edgar's door, he proceeded to Ivinghoe Terrace, where he waited long at the blistered door of the dilapidated house before the little maid informed him that Mr. Richard was gone out, and missus was so ill that she didn't know as Miss White could see nobody; but she took his card and invited him to walk into the parlour, where the breakfast things were just left.
Down came Kalliope, with a wan face and eyes worn with sleeplessness, but a light of hope and gratitude flashing over her features as she met the kind eyes, and felt the firm hand of her father's colonel, a sort of king in the eyes of all Royal Wardours.
'My poor child,' he said gently, 'I am come to see if I can help you.'
'Oh! so good of you,' and she squeezed his hand tightly, in the effort perhaps not to give way.
'I fear your mother is very ill.'
'Very ill,' said Kalliope. 'Richard came last night, and he let her know what we had kept from her; but she is calmer now.'
'Then your brother Richard is here.'
'Yes; he is gone up to Mr. White's.'
'He is in a solicitor's office, I think. Will he be able to undertake the case?'
'Oh no, no'-the white cheek flushed, and the hand trembled. 'There is a Leeds family here, and he is afraid of their finding out that he has any connection with this matter. He says it would be ruin to his prospects.'
'Then we must do our best without him,' Sir Jasper said in a fatherly voice, inexpressively comforting to the desolate wounded spirit. 'I will not keep you long from your mother, but will you answer me a few questions? Your brother tells me-'
