Mrs. Wilkinson did not leave her home for her long and tedious journey without considerable parade. Her best new black silk dress was packed up in order that due honour might be done to Lord Stapledean\'s hospitality, and so large a box was needed that Dumpling and the four-wheeled carriage were hardly able to take her to the railway-station. Then there arose the question who should drive her. Arthur offered to do so; but she was going on a journey of decided hostility as regarded him, and under such circumstances she could not bring herself to use his services even over a portion of the road. So the stable-boy was her charioteer.

She talked about Lord Stapledean the whole evening before she went. Arthur would have explained to her something of that nobleman\'s character if she would have permitted it. But she would not. When he hinted that she would find Lord Stapledean austere in his manner, she answered that his lordship no doubt had had his reasons for being austere with so very young a man as Arthur had been. When he told her about the Bowes hotel, she merely shook her head significantly. A nobleman who had been so generous to her and hers as Lord Stapledean would hardly allow her to remain at the inn.

"I am very sorry that the journey is forced upon me," she said to Arthur, as she sat with her bonnet on, waiting for the vehicle.

"I am sorry that you are going, mother, certainly," he had answered; "because I know that it will lead to disappointment."

"But I have no other course left open to me," she continued. "I cannot see my poor girls turned out houseless on the world." And then, refusing even to lean on her son\'s arm, she stepped up heavily into the carriage, and seated herself beside the boy.

"When shall we expect you, mamma?" said Sophia.

"It will be impossible for me to say; but I shall be sure to write as soon as I have seen his lordship. Good-bye to you, girls." And then she was driven away.

"It is a very foolish journey," said Arthur.

"Mamma feels that she is driven to it," said Sophia.

Mrs. Wilkinson had written to Lord Stapledean two days before she started, informing his lordship that it had become very necessary that she should wait upon him on business connected with the living, and therefore she was aware that her coming would not be wholly unexpected. In due process of time she arrived at Bowes, very tired and not a little disgusted at the great expense of her journey. She had travelled but little alone, and knew nothing as to the cost of hotels, and not a great deal as to that of railways, coaches, and post-chaises. But at last she found herself in the same little inn which had previously received Arthur when he made the same journey.

"The lady can have a post-chaise, of course," said the landlady, speaking from the bar. "Oh, yes, Lord Stapledean is at home, safe enough. He\'s never very far away from it to the best of my belief."

"It\'s only a mile or so, is it?" said Mrs. Wilkinson.

"Seven long miles, ma\'am," said the landlady.

"Seven miles! dear, dear. I declare I never was so tired in my life. You can put the box somewhere behind in the post-chaise, can\'t you?"

"Yes, ma\'am; we can do that. Be you a-going to stay at his lordship\'s, then?"

To this question Mrs. Wilkinson made an ambiguous answer. Her confidence was waning, now that she drew near to the centre of her aspirations. But at last she did exactly as her son had done before her. She said she would take her box; but that it was possible she might want a bed that evening. "Very possible," the landlady said to herself.

"And you\'ll take a bite of something before you start, ma\'am," she said, out loud. But, no; it was only now twelve o\'clock, and she would be at Bowes Lodge a very little after one. She had still sufficient confidence in Lord Stapledean to feel sure of her lunch. When people reached Hurst Staple Vicarage about that hour, there was always something for them to eat. And so she started.

It was April now; but even in April that bleak northern fell was very cold. Nothing more inhospitable than that road could be seen. It was unsheltered, swept by every blast, very steep, and mercilessly oppressed by turnpikes. Twice in those seven miles one-and-sixpence was inexorably demanded from her.

"But I know one gate always clears the other, when they are so near," she argued.

"Noa, they doant," was all the answer she received from the turnpike woman, who held a baby under each arm.

"I am sure the woman is robbing me," said poor Mrs. Wilkinson.

"No, she beant," said the post-boy. They are good hearty people in that part of the world; but they do not brook suspicion, and the courtesies of life are somewhat neglected. And then she arrived at Lord Stapledean\'s gate.

"Be you she what sent the letter?" said the woman at the lodge, holding it only half open.

"Yes, my good woman; yes," said Mrs. Wilkinson, thinking that her troubles were now nearly over. "I am the lady; I am Mrs. Wilkinson."

"Then my lord says as how you\'re to send up word what you\'ve got to say." And the woman still stood in the gateway.

"Send up word!" said Mrs. Wilkinson.

"Yees. Just send up word. Here\'s Jock can rin up."

"But Jock can\'t tell his lordship what I have to say to him. I have to see his lordship on most important business," said she, in her dismay.

"I\'m telling you no more that what my lord said his ain sell. He just crawled down here his ain sell. \'If a woman comes,\' said he, \'don\'t let her through the gate till she sends up word what she\'s got to say to me.\'" And the portress looked as though she were resolved to obey her master\'s orders.

"Good heavens! There must be some mistake in this, I\'m sure. I am the clergyman of Staplehurst—I mean his widow. Staplehurst, you know; his lordship\'s property."

"I didna know nothing aboot it."

"Oh, drive on, post-boy. There must be some mistake. The woman must be making some dreadful mistake."

At last the courage of the lodge-keeper gave way before the importance of the post-chaise, and she did permit Mrs. Wilkinson to proceed.

"Mither," said the woman\'s eldest hope, "you\'ll cotch it noo."

"Eh, lad; weel. He\'ll no hang me." And so the woman consoled herself.

The house called Bowes Lodge looked damper and greener, more dull, silent, and melancholy, even than it had done when Arthur made his visit. The gravel sweep before the door was covered by weeds, and the shrubs looked as though they had known no gardener\'s care for years. The door itself did not even appear to be for purposes of ingress and egress, and the post-boy had to search among the boughs and foliage with which the place was overgrown before he could find the bell. When found, it sounded with a hoarse, rusty, jangling noise, as though angry at being disturbed in so unusual a manner.

But, rusty and angry as it was, it did evoke a servant—though not without considerable delay. A cross old man did come at last, and the door was slowly opened. "Yes," said the man. "The marquis was at home, no doubt. He was in the study. But that was no rule why he should see folk." And then he looked very suspiciously at the big trunk, and muttered something to the post-boy, which Mrs. Wilkinson could not hear.

"Will you oblige me by giving my card to his lordship—Mrs. Wilkinson? I want to see him on very particular business. I wrote to his lordship to say that I should be here."

"Wrote to his lordship, did you? Then it\'s my opinion he won\'t see you at all."

"Yes, he will. If you\'ll take him my card, I know he\'ll see me. Will you oblige me, sir, by taking it into his lordship?" And she put on her most imperious look.

The man went, and Mrs. Wilkinson sat silent in the post-chaise for a quarter of an hour. Then the servant returned, informing her that she was to send in her message. His lordship had given directions at the lodge that she was not to come up, and could not understand how it had come to pass that the lady had forced her way to the hall-door. At any rate, he would not see her till he knew what it was about.

Now it was impossible for Mrs. Wilkinson to explain the exact nature of her very intricate case to Lord Stapledean\'s butler, and yet she could not bring herself to give up the battle without making some further effort. "It is about the vicarage at Hurst Staple," said she; "the vicarage at Hurst Staple," she repeated, impressing the words on the man\'s memory. "Don\'t forget, now." The man gave a look of ineffable scorn, and then walked away, leaving Mrs. Wilkinson still in the post-chaise.

And now came on an April shower, such as April showers are on the borders of Westmoreland. It rained and blew; and after a while the rain turned to sleet. The post-boy buttoned up his coat, and got under the shelter of the portico; the horses drooped their heads, and shivered. Mrs. Wilkinson wished herself back at Hurst Staple—or even comfortably settled at Littlebath, as her son had once suggested.

"His lordship don\'t know nothing about the vicarage," bellowed out the butler, opening the hall-door only half way, so that his face just appeared above the lock.

"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" said Mrs. Wilkinson. "Just let me down into the hall, and then I will explain it to you."

"Them \'orses \'ll be foundered as sure as heggs," said the post-boy.

Mrs. Wilkinson at last succeeded in making her way into the hall, and the horses were allowed to go round to the yard. And then at last, after half a dozen more messages to and fro, she was informed that Lord Stapledean would see her. So dreadful had been the contest hitherto, that this amount of success was very grateful. Her feeling latterly had been one of intense hostility to the butler rather than to her son. Now that she had conquered that most savage Cerberus, all would be pleasant with her. But, alas! she soon found that in passing Cerberus she had made good her footing in a region as little desirable as might be.

She was ushered into the same book-room in which Arthur had been received, and soon found herself seated in the same chair, and on the same spot. Lord Stapledean was thinner now, even than he had been then; he had a stoop in his shoulders, and his face and hair were more gray. His eyes seemed to his visitor to be as sharp and almost as red as those of ferrets. As she entered, he just rose from his seat and pointed to the chair on which she was to sit.

"Well, ma\'am," said he; "what\'s all this about the clergyman\'s house at Hurst Staple? I don\'t understand it at all."

"No, my lord; I\'m sure your lordship can\'t understand. That\'s why I have thought it my duty to come all this way to explain it."

"All what way?"

"All the way from Hurst Staple, in Hampshire, my lord. When your lordship was so considerate as to settle what my position in the parish was to be—"

"Settle your position in the parish!"

"Yes, my lord—as to my having the income and the house."

"What does the woman mean?" said he, looking down towards the rug beneath his feet, but speaking quite out loud. "Settle her position in the parish! Why, ma\'am, I don\'t know who you are, and what your position is, or anything about you."

"I am the widow of the late vicar, Lord Stapledean; and when he died—"

"I was fool enough to give the living to his son. I remember all about it. He was an imprudent man, and lived beyond his means, and there was nothing left for any of you—wasn\'t that it?"

"Yes, my lord," said Mrs. Wilkinson, who was so troubled in spirit that she hardly knew what to say. "That is, we never lived beyond our means at all, my lord. There were seven children; and they were all educated most respectably. The only boy was sent to college; and I don\'t think there was any imprudence—indeed I don\'t, my lord. And there was something saved; and the insurance was always regularly paid; and—"

The marquis absolutely glared at her, as she went on with her domestic defence. The household at Hurst Staple had been creditably managed, considering the income; and it was natural that she should wi............