In the midst of the pretty and exclusive village of Katterley, an inland spot, from twenty to thirty miles away from the sea, there stands a charming residence, half-cottage, half-villa, called Katterley Lodge. Its rooms are warm in winter, cool in summer; it rises in the midst of a lovely garden, in view of magnificent scenery; and the sweetest roses and honeysuckles entwine themselves on its walls.

The evening August sun--July had just past--shone full on its entrance gate; on a lady, young and fair, who was leaning over it. She may have been about three-and-twenty, and she was dressed in white, with ribbons in her hair. There was a remarkable refinement and delicacy in her face, her manners, in her appearance altogether; and her soft dark eyes had a sad expression. Did you, who may be reading this, ever observe that peculiar, sad look--not a passing sadness, or one caused by present care--but a fixed mournful look, implanted in the eyes by nature? It is not a common expression, or one often seen; rely upon it, when you do see it, it is but an index that the spirit is, or will be, sad within.

Sauntering up the road towards the gate, encumbered with a basket, a rod, and other apparatus pertaining to the fishing art, strode a gentleman, carelessly switching the hedge as he passed it. No sad expression was there about him; rather the contrary. He was of middle height, very slender, with a frank pleasant face given to laughing, and dark auburn hair; his manner was light, his speech free and careless. Her face sparkled, at his approach, and she opened the gate long before he had gained it.

"What sport, Robert? What have you brought?"

"Brought you myself," was the gentleman\'s reply, as he passed in at the gate she held wide. "Thank you. How much is the toll?"

As he bent to take the "toll," a kiss, she glanced shyly in his face and blushed--blushed brightly; although she was his wife of nearly three years\' standing. In a retiring, impassioned earnest nature such as hers, it takes a great deal ere love can die out--a convulsion sometimes. With her it had not begun to die.

His name was Robert Frederick Hunter. His wife liked the second name best, and generally called him by it, but as other people adhered to the first it may be best to do so here. His career already, young though he was, had seen changes. Reared in middle-class life in the North of England, practically educated, rather than fashionably, he had served his articles to a civil engineer. Ere they were quite out, and he free, a small fortune came to him through a relative. Mr. Robert Hunter thought he could not do better than take to a red-coat, and he purchased a lieutenancy in a home corps. Nearly simultaneously with this, he met with Clara Lake, of Katterley. He fell in love with her; at least he fancied so; she most unmistakably did with him, and the preliminaries for a marriage were arranged. Her father made it a proviso that he should quit the army; and that they should live with him after the marriage at Katterley Lodge. Robert Hunter assented, sold out, and the marriage took place. When his wife\'s father died shortly after, it was found that Katterley Lodge and money amounting to four or five hundred a year were left to her, with a condition that Mr. Hunter should take the name of Lake. So he was mostly called in Katterley, Lake, or Hunter-Lake; elsewhere he was as before Hunter. Just for the present we will call him Lake, but it must not be forgotten that Hunter was his real name.

Mr. Lake opened his basket as he got in and displayed the contents--some fine trout. Two were ordered to be dressed, and served with the tea. On the days of these fishing expeditions, Mrs. Lake dined early. Occasionally she went with him. Not very often. The sport wearied her, and but for him at whose side she sat, it would never have been endurable. "Sport, indeed!" she used laughingly to say, "I\'d as soon be at a funeral."

"What have you been doing all the afternoon, Clara?"

"Oh, reading and working; and wishing it was time for you to come home."

"Silly girl!" laughed he, as he played with her curls. "Suppose I should be brought home to you some day fished out of the stream myself; drowned and dead."

"Don\'t joke, please," was her reply, given in a low voice.

"It had like to have been no joke this afternoon. I all but overbalanced myself. But for a friendly tree I should have been in; perhaps done for."

"Oh, Robert!" she exclaimed, the bright rose fading out of her cheeks.

"And there\'s a fierce bit of current there, and the river is at its deepest, and the mill-wheel a stone\'s throw lower down," he continued, as if he enjoyed the sport of teasing her; which perhaps he did. "I was an idiot never to learn to swim."

"Did you slip?" she asked in a half-whisper.

"No; I was leaning too forward and lost my balance. Oh, Clary! you are a little coward at best. Why your heart is beating fast; a vast deal faster than mine did, I can tell you. And where have your roses gone?"

She looked up with a faint smile.

To be affected in this manner, to agitation, merely at the recital of the possible danger, now past, was what Mr. Lake did not understand Neither did he understand the depth of her love, for no sentiment in his own heart echoed to it; the time for love, with him, had not come.

"It is simply foolish, child, to feel alarm now," he said, looking at her gravely.

"You must not go again, Robert."

The remark called forth a hearty laugh. "Not go again! What am I to do, then, until shooting comes in?"

What, indeed? Robert Lake was an idle man. One of those whose unhappy lot it is (the most unhappy lot on earth) to be obliged to "kill" time, or else find it hang on their hands with a heavy weight. To a man born to idleness, cradled in the lap of luxury, it is bad enough; but to Robert Lake, brought up to industry, it was simply unbearable. He was skilled and clever in his profession, and he loved it; the misfortune of his life was having the money left to him; the great mistake his quitting his profession. He saw it now; he had seen it nearly ever since. Another mistake, but a smaller one, was his retiring from the army; as he had entered it, he ought to have kept in it. That fault was not his, but old Mr. Lake\'s. Lieutenant Hunter was on a visit at his sister\'s when he met Clara Lake, also staying there, the heiress in a small way. They fell in love with each other; he, after his temperament, carelessly and lightly, a species of love that he had felt for others, and would feel for more; she with all the fervour, the lasting depth of an impassioned and poetic nature. When he came to speak of marriage, and the father--an old-fashioned man who had once worn a pig-tail--said "Yes, upon condition that you quit soldiering and settle down with me--I cannot part with my daughter," Robert Hunter acquiesced without a word of murmur. Nay, he rather liked the prospect; change of all sorts bears its charm of magic for the young. And he was very young; but a year or so older than his wife. They settled down in Katterley Lodge; he to idleness, and it brings danger sometimes; she to happiness, which she believed in as real, as a bliss that would last for ever. If there were a man more perfect than other men on earth, she believed her husband to be that man. A charming confidence, a safeguard for a wife\'s heart; but sometimes the trust gets rudely awakened. One great grief had come to Clara Lake--she lost her baby; but she was getting over that now.

How intolerable idleness had been to Robert Hunter at first, none save himself ever knew. Over and over again visions of resuming his work as a civil engineer, came pressing on him. But it was never done. In the first year of their marriage came old Mr. Lake\'s long illness and death; in the second year came the baby and a prolonged illness for Clara; in the third year, this, the idleness had grown upon him, and he cared less to exchange it for hard work. It is of all evils nearly the most insidious.

All the year long, from January to December, living at Katterley Lodge with nothing to do! And he was really beginning not to feel the sameness. Their income, about six hundred a year in all, was not sufficient to allow of their mixing in the great world\'s fair, the London season; and one visit only had they paid the seaside. The pretty cottage, with its roses and its honeysuckles for a bower, and fishing for recreation in the summer season! It had a monotonous charm, no doubt; but the young man\'s conscience sometimes warned him that he was wasting his life.

The tea and the fish came in, and they sat down to it, Mrs. Lake remarking that she had forgotten to mention his sister had been there.

"What has she come over for?"

"To see the Jupps. Some little matter of business, she said."

"Business with the Jupps! Gossiping, rather, Clary."

"She said she should remain to tea with them. I wanted her to come back and take it with us; I told her there would be some fish. The fish was a great temptation, she said, but she must stay at the Jupps\'! Who\'s this?" continued Mrs. Lake as the gate was pushed open with a hasty hand "Why, here she is!"

"And now for a clatter." He alluded to his sister\'s voluble tongue, but he got up and went out to greet her, table-napkin in hand It was Mrs. Chester, his half-sister. She was ten years older than he, twenty times older in experience, and rather inclined to be dictatorial to him and his gentle wife. Her husband, a clergyman, had died a few months back, and she was not left well-off in the world. She had just taken a house at Guild, a place about seven miles from Katterley; though how she meant to pay expenses in it, she scarcely knew.

"Well, Clara! here I am back again!" she exclaimed as she came in; "like a piece of bad money returned."

"I am so glad to see you!" returned Mrs. Lake, in her warmth of courtesy, as she rose and brought forward a chair and rang the bell, and busied herself with other little signs of welcome.

Mrs. Chester threw off her widow\'s bonnet and black silk mantle. Her well-formed face was pale in general, but the hot August sun made it red now.

She was a little, restless woman, inclined to be stout, with shrewd grey eyes and brown hair, and a nose sharp at the end. The deep crape on her merino gown looked worn and shabby; her muslin collar and cuffs were tumbled. She told everybody she was twenty-eight; Mr. Lake knew her to be four-and-thirty.

"Such a mess it makes of one, travelling in this heat and dust!" she exclaimed rather fretfully, as she shook out her skirts and pulled her collar here and there before the chimney-glass. "I\'ve nothing but my bonnet-cap here; you won\'t mind it."

It was a bit of plain muslin with a widow\'s gauffered border. Mrs. Chester untied the black strings of it as she turned round and fanned herself with her handkerchief.

"Did the fish bring you back, Penelope?" asked Mr. Lake.

"Not it. When I got to the Jupps\' I found they were going to have a late dinner-party. They wanted me to stay for it. Fancy! in this dusty guise of a costume. How delicious those fish look!"

"Try them," said Mr. Lake, passing some to her. "I have not caught finer trout this season. Clara has some cold fowl in the house, I think, if you have not dined."

"I dined before I came over--that is, had a scrambling sort of cold-meat meal, half dinner, half lunch. Robert, I should like you to catch fish for me always."

"How are you getting on with the house, Penelope?" he asked. "Are you straight yet?"

"Oh, we are getting on. Anna\'s worth her weight in gold at that sort of thing. She has been used to contrive and work all her life, you know."

"She might be used to worse things," said Mr. Lake.

"I have got a--visitor coming to stay with me," resumed Mrs. Chester, making a pause before the word visitor, and then going on with a cough, as if a fish-bone had stuck in her throat.

"Who is it?"

"Lady Ellis."

"Lady Ellis!" echoed Mr. Lake, unaware that his sister had any one of the name on her visiting list. "Who on earth is Lady Ellis?"

"Well, she is a friend of the Jupps\'."

"Oh. And why is she going to visit you?"

"Because I choose to ask her," returned Mrs. Chester, in a reproving tone meant for the public benefit, while she gave her brother a private kick under the table. "She is a widow lady, just come home from India in the depth of her sorrow; and she wants to find some quiet country seclusion to put her poor bereaved head into."

Mr. Lake concluded that the kick was intended as a warning against asking questions. He put a safe one.

"Is she staying with the Jupps?"

"Oh dear, no. She went to India a mere child, I fancy. She was very pretty, and was snapped up by some colonel, a K.C.B., and dreadfully old."

"Ellis by name, I presume?" carelessly remarked Mr. Lake, as he looked for another nice piece of fish for his sister\'s plate.

"Colonel Sir George Ellis," spoke Mrs. Chester, in a grandly reproving tone, as if the title were good for her mouth. "He is dead, and Lady Ellis has come home."

"With a lac of rupees?"

"With a lack of rupees," retorted Mrs. Chester, rubbing her sharp nose. "Sir George\'s property, every shilling of it, was settled on his first wife\'s children. Lady Ellis has money of her own--not very much."

"And why is she coming to you?"

"I have told you. She wants quiet and country air."

"Will she pay you?"

"Pay me! Good gracious, Robert, what mercenary ideas you have! Do you hear him, Clara? Oh, thank you; don\'t heap my plate like that, though I think I never did taste such fish. The Jupps have been praising her to the skies, one trying to out-talk the rest. Never were such talkers as the Jupp girls."

"Except yourself," put in Mr. Lake.

Mrs. Chester lifted her eyes in surprise.

"Myself! Why, I am remarkably silent. Nobody can say I talk."

He glanced at his wife as he suppressed a smile. The matter in regard to Lady Ellis puzzled him--at least, the proposed residence with Mrs. Chester; but he supposed he might not inquire further.

"Should you like to take home some trout, Penelope?"

"That I should. Have you any to give?"

"I\'ll have them put up for you, the fellow brace to these. Mind the youngsters don\'t get the bones in their throats."

"They must take their chance," was the philosophical reply. "Children were never sent for anything but our torment. I am going to pack the two young ones off to school."

"Have you further news from the Clergy Orphan School about James?"

"News! Yes. It is all cross together. There\'s not the least chance for him, they write me word, at the election in November; I must try again later. And now, Clara, I want you and your husband to come to me for Sunday and Monday. Will you promise? I came over purposely to ask you."

Mrs. Lake did not immediately answer.

"You can come on Sunday morning in time for church, and remain until Tuesday. I don\'t ask you to come on Saturday evening; we shall be busy until late. The Jupps are coming."

"All of them?" asked Mr. Lake.

"Not all. I don\'t know where I should put them. Some of the girls: Mary and Margaret for two; and Oliver. I have three spare bedrooms nearly ready."

"Three spare bedrooms? And you grumbling about the purse\'s shallowness!"

"Allow me to manage my own affairs," said Mrs. Chester, equably. "You will say \'Yes,\' will you not, Clara? I want to show you my house; you have never seen it."

Clara Lake did say "Yes;" but at the same time there was a feeling in her heart prompting her to say "No." She neither listened to it nor gave way to it; and yet she was conscious that it was there, as she well remembered afterwards.

"And now I must be going," said Mrs. Chester, putting on her bonnet and mantle. "You will come with me to the station, Robert?"

They started together: he carrying the basket of fish: and walked slowly. As he remarked, they had plenty of time.

"I know it," she said. "I came on early to talk to you."

"About Lady Ellis and her projected visit?" he quickly rejoined. "I thought there was some scheme agate by the kick you gave me."

"Robert, I must scheme to live."

"I think you must if you are to keep three spare bedrooms for visitors."

"I am left a widow, Robert, with a fair amount of furniture, and a wretched pittance of two hundred a year. How am I to live like a lady and educate the children?"

"But why need you have taken so large a house?"

"What am I to do? How am I to eke out my means? I cannot lose caste. I can\'t go and open a shop; I can\'t turn Court milliner; I can\'t begin and speculate in the funds; I can\'t present myself to the Government or the Bank of England directors, and make a curtsey, and say, \'Please, gentlemen, double my income for me, and then perhaps I can manage to get along.\' Can I?" added Mrs. Chester, fiercely.

"I never said you could."

"No; I have only got my own resources to look to, and my own headpiece to work upon. It has been ransacked pretty well of late, I can tell you. The first idea that suggested itself to me was to educate Fanny at home with Anna Chester\'s help, and to get half-a-dozen pupils as well, on the plan of a private family. But I hated the thought of it. I have no nerves and no patience; and I knew I should be worried out of my very existence. Besides, education gets more fantastical every day, and I am not up to the modern rubbish they call requirements: so I said, \'That won\'t do.\' Next I thought of getting three or four gentlewomen to live with me, on the plan of a private family. Quite as visitors, you know; and the longer I dwelt on the scheme the better I liked it. I thought it would be a pleasant, social way of getting on; and I determined to carry it out. Now you know why I have taken a large house, and am putting it into good order."

"That is, you are going to take boarders?"

"If you choose to put it in that plain way. You are so very downright, Robert. Lady Ellis is the first coming."

"How did you hear of her?"

"Never you mind," returned Mrs. Chester, who did not choose to say she had advertised. "Friends are looking out for me in London and elsewhere. I have had some correspondence with Lady Ellis, and she comes to me the middle of next week. She wants quiet, she says--quiet and country air. A most exquisite little hand she writes, only you can\'t read it at sight."

"Have you references?"

"Of course. She referred me to some people in London, and also in Cheltenham, where she is now staying. In her last letter she mentioned that the Jupps of Katterley knew her, and that\'s the chief thing that brought me over today. Mind, Robert, I did not tell the Jupps she was coming to me as a boarder: only as a visitor. \'She writes me that you know her,\' I carelessly said to the girls, and they immediately began to tell all they did know, as I knew they would."

"What did they say?"

"Well, the whole of it did not amount to much. At first they persisted they had never heard of her, till I said she was formerly a Miss Finch, having lost sight of her when she went to India. They are charmed to hear she has come back Lady Ellis, and think it will be delightful for me to have her with me."

"Unless you can get more boarders, Lady Ellis will prove a source of expense to you, Penelope, instead of a profit."

"You can\'t teach me," retorted Mrs. Chester. "I mean to get more."

"What is she to pay you?"

"Well, you know, Robert, I can\'t venture upon much style at first, wanting the means. I am unable to set up men-servants, and a service of plate, and a pony carriage, and that sort of thing: so at present my terms must be in accordance with my accommodation. Now what should you think fair?"

"I? Oh, nonsense! Don\'t ask me."

"Lady Ellis is to pay me a hundred pounds if she stays the year; if not, ten pounds per month. Now you see if I get four at that rate, permanent inmates," went on Mrs. Chester, rapidly, "it will bring my income up to six hundred pounds, which will be comfortable, and enable one to live."

"I suppose it will."

"You suppose it will!" snapped Mrs. Chester, who was resenting his indifferent demeanour. "It is as much as you and Clara possess. You live well."

"We have none too much. We spend it--all."

"And more imprudent of you to spend it all! as I have often thought of telling you, Robert Hunter. I wonder you can reconcile yourself to live up to the last penny of your income, and do nothing to increase it. How will it be when children come?"

"Ah, that\'s a question," said he, giving the fish-basket a twirl.

"You may have a large family yet; you are both young. What sort of a figure would your six hundred a year cut when everything had to come out of it? A dozen children to keep at home, and find in clothes, and doctors, and sundries, and a dozen children to provide for at school, would make your money look foolish."

"Let\'s see," cried he, gravely; "twelve at home and twelve at school would make twenty-four. Could you not have added twelve more while you were about it, and said thirty-six?"

"Don\'t be stupid! You know I meant twelve in all. They may come, for all you can tell; and they\'ll require both home expenses and school expenses, as you will find. It is a sin and a shame, Robert, for a young capable man like you, to live an idle life."

"I tell myself so every other morning, Penelope."

She glanced at him, uncertain whether he spoke in jest or earnest. His dark-blue eyes had a serious look in them, but there was a smile on his pleasant lips.

"If you don\'t think well to take up civil engineering again, try something else. There\'s nothing like providing for a rainy day; and a man who lives up to his income cannot be said to do it. You cannot be altogether without interest; perhaps you might get a post under Government."

"I\'ll apply for the lord-lieutenancy," said he. "The place is vacant."

"I know you always turn into ridicule any suggestion of mine," again retorted Mrs. Chester. "You might get into the board of works, and leave the lord-lieutenancy for your betters. There\'s the train, shrieking in the distance. Don\'t forget Sunday. I wish you and Clara to see how nice the house looks."

"All right, Penelope; we will not forget. But now I want to know why you could not have given your explanation before my wife."

"Her pride would have taken alarm."

"Indeed you cannot know Clara if you think that."

"I know her as well as you," returned Mrs. Chester. "I shall acquaint neither her nor the Jupps of the terms on which Lady Ellis is coming."

He said no more. To keep the fact from the clear-sighted, sensible Jupps would be just an impossibility; and he meant to tell his wife as soon as he got home. They passed through the waiting-room to the platform. Mrs. Chester took her seat in one of the carriages; he handed in the basket of trout, and stood back. Just before the train started, she suddenly beckoned to him.

"Robert," she began in a low voice, putting her head out at the window to speak, "I\'m going to give you a caution. Don\'t you carry on any of that nonsensical flirting with Rose Jupp, should you ever happen to be together in the presence of Lady Ellis. You make yourself utterly ridiculous with that girl."

He looked very much amused. "A couple of sinful scapegoats! I am astonished you ever have us at your house!"

"There you are, mocking me again. You may think as you please, Robert, but it is excessively absurd in a married man. I saw you kiss Rose Jupp the other day."

He broke into a laugh.

"Anything of that before Lady Ellis would be an awful mistake. It might frighten her away again."

"Oh, we will both put on our best behaviour for the old Begum. Do not let doubts of us disturb your sleep, Penelope."

"She is not old, but I daresay she knows what propriety is," sharply concluded Mrs. Chester as the train puffed off. And Mr. Lake, quitting the station, went home laughing.

He found his wife in a reverie. The feeling, that she had done wrong to promise to go to Mrs. Chester\'s, was making itself unmistakably heard, and Clara tried to analyse it. Why should it be wrong? It was difficult to say. Sunday travelling? But she had gone several times before to spend Sunday with Mrs. Chester, gone and returned the same day; for Guild Rectory, where Mrs. Chester had lived, was short of bedrooms. No, it was not the idea of Sunday travelling that disturbed her, and she could find no other reason. Finally she gave up the trouble of guessing, and her husband came in.

"Were you not too early for the train, Robert?"

"I should think so. Penelope confessed that she wiled me out to talk of her plans. I\'ll tell you about them directly. What do you think she wound up with, Clara, just as the train was starting?"

He had sat down in a large armchair, and was holding his wife before him by the waist.

"With an injunction not to flirt so much with Rose Jupp! Which is absurd in itself, she says, and might frighten away the grand Indian Begum."

Clara Lake laughed. She was accustomed to witness her husband\'s free rattling manners with others, but not a shadow of jealousy had yet arisen. She believed his love to be hers, just as truly and exclusively as hers was his; and nothing as yet had shaken the belief.