For a wonder, the dinner-table at Dallory Hall included only the family-party. Madam headed it; Mr. North was at the foot; Richard on one side; Matilda on the other. Scarcely a word was being spoken. Madam was in one of her imperious humours--when, indeed, was she out of them?--the servants waited in silence.

Suddenly there rang out a loud peal from the hall-bell. Richard, who was already beginning to be disturbed by vague fears as to what his ex-workmen\'s hostilities might make them do, sat back in his chair absently, and turned his head.

"Are you expecting any one, Dick?" asked his father.

"No, sir. Unless it be a message to call me out."

It was, however, a message for Mr. North; not for Richard. Mrs. Cumberland wanted to see him. "On the instant," the servant added: for so Jelly had imperatively put it.

Mr. North laid down his knife and fork and looked at the man. He did not understand.

"Mrs. Cumberland is at Eastsea," he cried.

"No, sir, she has just got home, and she wants to see you very particular. It\'s the lady\'s maid who has brought the message."

"Mr. North cannot go," broke forth madam to the servant. "Go and say so."

But Jelly, to whom the words penetrated as she stood in the hall, had no notion of her mistress\'s wishes being set at nought by madam. Jelly had a great deal of calm moral and physical courage--in spite of the supernatural terrors that had recently influenced her--some persons might have said her share of calm impudence also: and she made no ceremony of putting her black bonnet inside the room.

"My mistress is dying, sir; I don\'t think there can be a doubt of it," she said, advancing to Mr. North. "She wishes to say a few last words to you, if you\'ll please to come. There\'s no time to be lost, sir."

"Bless me!--poor Fanny!" cried Mr. North, rising: his hands beginning to tremble a little. "I\'ll come at once, Jelly."

"You will not go," spoke madam, as if she were issuing an imperial edict.

"I must go," said Mr. North. "Don\'t you hear, madam, that she is dying?"

"I say you shall not go."

"The wishes of the dying must be respected by the living," interposed Jelly, still addressing Mr. North. "Otherwise there\'s no telling what ghosts might haunt \'em after."

The words were somewhat obscure, but their meaning was sufficiently plain. Mr. North took a step or two towards the door: madam came quickly round and placed herself before him.

"My will is law in this house, and out of it you do not go."

For a minute or two Mr. North looked utterly helpless; then cast an appealing look at his son. Richard rose, laying down his table-napkin.

"Leave the room for an instant," he quietly said to the servants, including Jelly. And they filed out.

"My dear father, is it your wish to see Mrs. Cumberland?"

"Oh, Dick, you know it is," spoke the poor brow-beaten man. "There\'s little left to me in life to care for now; but if I let her die without going to her there\'ll be less."

"Then you shall go," said Richard. Madam turned to him in furious anger.

"How dare you attempt to oppose me, Richard North? I say your father shall not go forth at the beck and call of this crazy woman."

"Madam, I say he shall," calmly spoke Richard.

"Do you defy me? Has it come to that?"

"Why yes, if you force it upon me: it is not my fault. Pardon me if I speak plainly--if I set you right upon one point, madam," he added. "You have just said your will is law in the house and out of it: in future it must, on some occasions, yield to mine. This is one of them. My father will go to Mrs. Cumberland\'s. Say no more, madam: it will be useless; and I am about to admit the servants."

From sheer amazement madam was silent. The resolution born of conscious power to will and to execute lay in every tone and glance of Richard North. Before she could rally her energies, the door was opened to the servants, and she heard Richard\'s order to make ready and bring round the close carriage. Instantly.

"Mr. North will be with your mistress as soon as you are, Jelly," said he. And Jelly curtsied as she took her departure.

But a scene ensued. Madam had called Mrs. Cumberland a crazy woman: she seemed nothing less herself. Whatever her private objection might have been to her husband\'s holding an interview with Mrs. Cumberland--and there could be no doubt that she had one--Richard fairly thought she was going mad in her frenzied attempts to prevent it. She stamped, she raved, she threatened Mr. North, she violently pushed him into his chair, she ordered the servants to bar the house doors against him; she was in fact as nearly mad, as a woman out of an asylum could be. Matilda cried: indifferent as that young lady remained in general to her mother\'s ordinary fits of temper, she was frightened now. The servants collected in dark nooks of the hall, and stood peeping; Mr. North stole into his parlour, and thence, by the window, to a bench in the garden, where he sat in the dark and the rain, trembling from head to foot. Of his own accord he had surely never dared to go, after this: but Richard was his sheet anchor. Richard alone maintained his calm equanimity, and carried matters through. The servants obeyed his slightest word; with sure instinct they saw who could be, and was, the Hall\'s real master: and the carriage came to the door.

But all this had caused delay. And yet more might have been caused--for what will an unrestrained and determined woman not do--but that just as the wheels, grating on the wet gravel struck on madam\'s ear, her violence culminated in a species of fainting-fit. For the time at least she could not move, and Richard took the opportunity to conduct his father to the carriage. It was astonishing how confidingly the old man trusted to Richard\'s protection.

"Won\'t you come also, Dick? I hardly dare go alone. She\'d be capable of coming after me, you know."

Richard\'s answer was to step in beside his father. It was eight o\'clock when they reached Mrs. Cumberland\'s. Jelly, with a reproachful face, showed them into a sitting-room.

"You can\'t go up now, sir; you will have to wait!" said she.

"Is she any better?" asked Richard.

"She\'s worse," replied Jelly; "getting weaker and weaker with every quarter-of-an-hour. Dr. Rane thinks she\'ll last till morning. I don\'t. The clergyman\'s up there now."

And when the time came for Mr. North to be introduced into the room, Mrs. Cumberland was almost beyond speaking to him. They were alone--for she motioned others away. Mr. North never afterwards settled with himself what the especial point could have been that she had wished to see him upon; unless it was the request that he should take charge of Ellen Adair.

Her words were faint and few, and apparently disjointed, at times seeming to have no connection one with another. Mr. North--sitting on a chair in front of her, holding one of her hands, bending down his ear to catch what fell from her white lips--thought her mind wandered a little. She asked him to protect Ellen Adair--to take her home to the Hall until she should be claimed by her husband or her father. It might be only a few days, she added, before the former came, and he would probably wish the marriage to take place at once; if so, it had better be done. Then she went on to say something about Arthur Bohun, which Mr. North could not catch at all. And then she passed abruptly to the matter of the anonymous letter.

"John, you will forgive it! You will forgive it!" she implored, feebly clasping the hand in which hers lay.

"Forgive it?" returned Mr. North, not in dissent but in surprise that she should allude to the subject.

"For my sake, John. We were friends and playfellows in the old days--though you were older than I. You will forgive it, John, for my sake; because I am dying, and because I ask it of you?"

"Yes, I will," said John North. "I don\'t think as much about it as I did," he added. "I should like to forgive every one and everything before I go, Fanny; and my turn mayn\'t be long now. I forgive it heartily; heartily," he repeated, thinking to content her. "Fanny, I never thought you\'d go before me."

"God bless you! God reward you," she murmured. "There was no ill intention, you know, John."

John North did not see why he merited reward, neither could he follow what she was talking about. It might be, he supposed, one of the hallucinations that sometimes attend the dying.

"I\'ll take every care of Ellen Adair: she shall come to the Hall and stay there," he said, for that he could understand, "I promise it faithfully, Fanny."

"Then that is one of the weights off my mind," murmured the dying woman. "There were so many on it. I have left a document, John, naming you and Richard her guardians for the time being. She\'s of good family, and very precious to her father. There has been so short a time to act in: it was only three or four days ago that I knew the end was coming. I did not expect it would be quite so soon."

"It mostly come when it\'s not expected," murmured poor John North: "many of us seem to be going very near together. Edmund first; then Bessy; now you, Fanny: and the next will be me. God in His mercy grant that we may all meet in a happier world, and be together for ever!"

Richard North had remained below in the dining-room with Ellen Adair. The heavy crimson curtains were drawn before the large garden window, a bright fire blazed in the grate. Ellen in her black dress, worn for Bessy, sat in the warmth: she felt very chilly after her journey, was nervous at the turn the illness seemed to be taking; and every now and then a tear stole silently down her sweet face. Richard walked about a little as he glanced at her. He thought her looking, apart from the present sorrow, pale and ill. Richard North was deliberating whether to say a word or two upon a matter that puzzled him. He thought he would do so.

"I have been across the Channel, you know, Ellen, since you left for Eastsea," he began. He had grown sufficiently intimate at Mrs. Cumberland\'s since his enforced term of idleness, to drop the formal "Miss Adair" for her Christian name.

"Yes, we heard of it. You went to engage workmen, did you not?"

"For one thing. When I returned home, I found a letter or two awaiting me from Arthur Bohun, who was then at Eastsea. Madam had opened one of them."

Ellen looked up, and then looked down again immediately. Richard North saw a change pass over her face, as though she were startled.

"I could not quite understand the letters; I think Arthur intended me not to fully understand them. They spoke of some--some event that was coming off, at which he wished me to be present."

Ellen saw that he did understand: at least, that he believed he did. She rose from her seat and went close to him, speaking in agitation.

"Will you grant me a request, Richard? I know you can be a firm friend; you are very true. Do not ever think of it again--do not speak of it to living man or woman."

"I presume it did not take place, Ellen."

"No. And the sooner it is altogether forgotten, the better."

He took her hand between his, and drew her to the fire. They stood before it side by side.

"I am glad you know that I am your firm and true friend, Ellen; you may trust me always. ............