fingers, no more short-sleeved lilac, no more vulgarities from the cook! Ladylike dress, high wages, work among flowers and gauzes, reading to Miss Louisa, housekeeper's-room society, rank as 'Arnold' or 'Miss Arnold!' How much more suitable to the betrothed of the Superintendent at San Benito! To be sure, she was aware that a serpent lurked among the flowers; but she had shown him a bit of her mind once, and she found she could take care of herself, and keep him at a distance.
With her eyes shut, she already beheld Jane Beckett meeting her, when seated at the back of a carriage, with a veil and a parasol, addressing her as a grand lady, and kissing and praising her when she found her little Charlotte after all.
CHAPTER XIV. THE TRUSTEES' MEETING.
Know you not, master, to some kind of men Their graces serve them but as enemies? As You Like It.
'My Lord,' said Frampton, entering the library late one evening, in visible perturbation, and addressing himself to Fitzjocelyn, 'there is a person wishing to see you.'
'What person at this time of night?' said Louis.
'In fact, my Lord,' said the butler, hesitating, 'it is the young person at Mr. Frost's.'
'Something must be the matter!' cried Louis, starting up.
'She would explain nothing to me, she insisted on seeing your lordship; and-in fact-she was in such a state of agitation that I left her with Mrs. Bowles.'
Louis lost no time in hurrying into the hall. Charlotte must have followed Frampton without his knowledge, for she was already there; and, springing with clasped hands towards Fitzjocelyn, she cried, sobbing, 'My Lord, my Lord, come to master!'
'Is he ill? or the children?'
'No, no! but he'll be off, he'll be off like poor Tom!' exclaimed Charlotte, between her gasps; 'but I've locked it!' and she waved a door-key, and seemed about to laugh hysterically.
'Sit down, Charlotte,' said Louis, authoritatively, bringing a chair. 'If you do not explain yourself reasonably at once, I shall call Mrs. Bowles, and desire her to put you to bed.'
She made an imploring gesture, sank trembling into the chair, and, after a few incoherent efforts, managed to speak-'If you would but come to master, my Lord-I know it is something bad.'
Louis thought it wisest to despatch Frampton at once to order the carriage to be brought out immediately; and this so far pacified Charlotte, that she could speak comprehensibly on the cause of her alarm. 'He is in such a way!' she began. 'He went out to the school-examination, I believe, in his cap and gown, this morning; he was gone all day, but just at dusk I heard him slam-to the front door, fit to shake the house down, like he does when he is put out. I'd a thought nothing of that; but by-and-by I heard him stamping up nnd down the study, like one in a frenzy, and I found his cap and gown lying all of a heap in a corner of the hall. Then, Mr. Calcott came to call; and when I went into the study, master had his head down on the table, and wouldn't see no one; he fairly stamped to me to be gone, and bring him no more messages. Mr. Calcott, he looked so sorry and concerned, and sent in again. I was to say that he hoped some arrangement might be made, if Mr. Frost would only see him; but master had locked the door, and hallooed out that I was to say he was obliged, but couldn't see nobody. So Mr. Calcott was forced to go; and there was poor master. Not one morsel of dinner has he had. I knocked, but he would not open, only said he did not want for nothing. No, not even when 'twas time for Miss Catharine to come down. She thumped at the door, and called 'Papa' so pretty; but he never heeded, except to call out, 'Take her away!' Charlotte was crying so much that she could hardly proceed. 'Then I knew it must be something very melancholy indeed. But by-and-by he opens the door with a great jerk, and runs right up to the lumber-room. I saw his face, and 'twas like a corpse, my Lord; and he brings down his portmanteau into his dressing-room, and I hears him pulling out all his drawers. 'He'll be gone!' I thinks, 'he'll be off to America, too! And my poor mistress!' So I went up quietly, and in secret, unbeknown to them all, and got my bonnet; and I've run every step of the way-for you are the only one, my Lord, as can soothe his wounded spirit; and I've locked both the doors, and here's the key, so he can't be gone till you come.'
'Locked the doors!' cried Louis. 'What have you done? Suppose your mistress or Miss Clara were ill?'
'Oh, no-no, it is not that,' said Charlotte; 'or why should he flee from the face of his children? Why, I took Miss Salome up to the top of the stairs, when she was screaming and crying with all her might, and you would not have thought he was within a mile of her. No, my Lord, no one can't do nothing but you.'
'I'll come at once,' said Louis. 'You did quite right to fetch me; but it was a frightful thing to lock the door.'
Sending Charlotte to the housekeeper, he went to communicate her strange intelligence to his father, who shared his dismay so much as almost to wish to come with him to Northwold; but Louis felt he could deal better alone with James. His fears took the direction of the Italian travellers, knowing that any misfortune to them must recoil on James with double agony after such a parting.
In very brief space the carriage was at Northwold, and desiring that it should wait at the corner of the Terrace, Louis followed Charlotte, who had jumped down from the box, and hastened forward to unlock the door; and he was in time to hear the angry, though suppressed, greeting that received her. 'Pretty doings, ma'am! So I have caught you out at last, though you did think to lock me in! He shan't come in! I wonder at your impudence! The very front door!'
'Oh, cook, don't!' The poor breathless voice managed at last to be heard. 'This is Lord Fitzjocelyn.'
Cook had vanished out of sight or hearing before Louis's foot was within the threshold. The study-door was open, the fire expiring, the books and papers pushed back; and James's fierce, restless tread was heard pacing vehemently about his own room. Louis ran hastily up, and entered at once. His cousin stood staring with wild eyes, his hair was tossed and tangled, his face lividly pale, and the table was strewn with fragments of letters, begun and torn up again; his clothes lay tumbled in disorder on the floor, where his portmanteau lay open and partly packed. All Louis's worst alarm seemed fulfilled at once. 'What has happened?' he cried, catching hold of both James's hands, as if to help him to speak. 'Who is ill?-not Clara?'
'No-no one is ill,' said James, withdrawing his hands, and kneeling down by his box, with an air of feigned indifference; 'I am only going to London.'
'To London?'
'Aye, to see what is to be done,-ship-chaplaincy, curacy, literature, selling sermons at five shillings each,-what not. I am no longer master of Northwold school!' He strove to speak carelessly, but bending over his packing, thrust down the clothes with desperate blows.
Louis sat down, too much dismayed to utter a word.
'One morning's work in the conclave,' said James, with the same assumed ease. 'Here's their polite reprimand, which they expected me to put up with,-censuring all my labour, forbidding Sunday-classes, accusing me of partiality and cruelty, with a lot of nonsense about corporal punishment and dignity. I made answer, that if I were master at all, I must be at liberty to follow my own views, otherwise I would resign; and, would you believe it, they snapped at the offer- -they thought it highly desirable! There's an end of it.'
'Impossible!' cried Louis, casting his eye over the reprimand, and finding that the expressions scarcely warranted James's abstract of them. 'You must have mistaken!'
'Do you doubt _that_?' and James threw to him a sheet where, in Richardson's clerkly handwriting, the trustees of King Edward's Northwold Grammar School formally accepted the resignation of the Reverend James Roland Frost Dynevor.
'They cannot be so hasty! Did not Mr. Calcott call to gee you?'
'An old humbug!'
'I'll go and see him this instant. Something may be done.'
'No,' said James, holding him down by the shoulder, 'I will not be degraded by vain solicitations.'
'This must be that wretched Ramsbotham!' exclaimed Louis. 'Oh, Jem! I little thought he had so much power to injure you.'
'It is as well you did not,' said James. 'It would have made no difference, except in the pain it would have cost you; and the only gratification in this business is, that I suffer because neither you nor I would deny our principles. I thank you, Fitzjocelyn!' and he straightened himself in the satisfaction of persecuted rectitude.
'You have very little to thank me for,' said Louis, wringing his hand, and turning aside, as if unable yet to face the full extent of the evil.
'Never fear for us,' continued James, boldly; 'we shall struggle on. Mens conscia,-you see I can't forget to be a
