The early buds had gone, the flowers of May were springing. Richard and Isaac Thornycroft were at home again, and the old profuse, irregular mode of life reigned at the Red Court Farm.

The skies are grey this afternoon; there is a chillness in the early summer air. Mr. Thornycroft, leaning lightly on the slender railings, that separate his grounds from the plateau, looks up to see whether rain will be falling.

There was trouble at home with Mary Anne. Uncontrolled as she was just now, no female friend to watch over her, she went her own way. Not any very bad way; only a little inexpedient. Masters came from the nearest town for her studies, taking up an hour or two each day; the rest of it she exercised her own will. The fear of school had subsided by this time, and she was growing wilful again--careering about on the heath; calling in at Captain Copp\'s and other houses; seated on some old timber on the beach, talking to the fishermen; riding off alone on her pony; jolting away (she had done it twice) in the omnibus to Jutpoint, without saying a word to anybody. Only on the previous day she had gone out in old Betts\'s tub of a boat, with the old man and his little son, got benighted, and frightened them at home. Clearly this was a state of things that could not be allowed to continue; and Mr. Thornycroft, leaning there on the railings, was revolving a question: should he ask Lady Ellis to come to the Red Court as dame de compagnie?--or as his wife?

"Of the two, a wife would be less dangerous than a companion," thought Justice Thornycroft, giving the light railings a shake with his strong hand "I\'m not dying for either; but then--there\'s Mary Anne."

Almost as if she had heard the word, his daughter came out of the house and ran up to him. The justice put his hand on hers.

"What are you doing here, papa?"

"Thinking about you."

"About me?"

"Yes, about you. You are getting on for seventeen, Mary Anne; you have as much common sense as most people; therefore--listen, I want to speak to yon seriously."

She had turned her head at the ringing of the bell of the outer gate. But the injunction brought it round again.

"Therefore you must be quite well aware, without my having to reiterate it to you, that this kind of thing cannot be allowed to go on."

"I do no harm," said Mary Anne, knowing well to what the words tended.

"Harm or no harm, it cannot go on; it shall not. Now, which will you do--go to school again, or have a governess?"

"I don\'t want either," she answered, with a pout of her decisive lips.

"Or would you like--it is the one other alternative--a lady to come here as your friend and companion?"

"Frankly speaking, papa, I don\'t see what the difference would be between a companion and a governess. Of course, of the two I\'d rather have a companion. To school I will not go. Lady Ellis was talking to me of this. I think she was fishing to be the companion herself."

"Fishing!" echoed the justice.

"Well, I do."

"Would you like her?"

"Not at all, papa."

"Who is it that you would like?" asked the justice, tartly.

"I should like nobody in that capacity. I might put up with it; but that is very different from liking."

"For my own part, if we decide upon a companion, there\'s no one I would so soon have as Lady Ellis," remarked Mr. Thornycroft. "Would you?"

"La la, la la!" sang Mary Anne, her eyes following a passing bird.

"Answer me without further trifling," sternly resumed Mr. Thornycroft, putting his hand on her shoulder.

The tone sobered her. "Of course, papa; if some one must come, why, let it be Lady Ellis."

Heaving a sort of relieved sigh, he released her, and she went away singing to herself a scrap of a pretty little French song, the refrain of which was, rendered in English--"If you come today, madam, you go tomorrow."

The misapprehension that arises in this world! None of us are perfectly open one with the other. Between the husband and the wife, the parents and the children, the brothers and the sisters, involuntary deceit reigns. Mr. Thornycroft assumed that Lady Ellis would be more acceptable to his daughter as a resident at the Red Court than any one else that could be found: had Miss Thornycroft spoken the truth boldly, she would have said that my Lady Ellis was her bête noire; the person she most disliked of all others on earth.

But the chief question was not solved yet in the mind of Justice Thornycroft. Should it be wife, or should it be only companion? He was quite sufficiently taken with my lady\'s fascinations to render the first alternative sufficiently agreeable in prospective; he deemed her a soft-hearted, yielding gentlewoman; he repeated over again to himself the mysterious words, "As a wife she would be less dangerous than a companion." But still, there were considerations against it that made him hesitate. And with good cause.

He went strolling towards the village, turning down the waste land, a right of way that was his own, past the plateau. The first house, at the corner of the street, was the Mermaid. He passed the end of it, and struck across to a low commodious cottage on the cliffs, whose rooms were all on the ground-floor. Tomlett lived in it; he was called the fishing-boat master, and was also employed occasionally on the farm of Mr. Thornycroft, as he had leisure. Mrs. Tomlett, a little woman with a red face and shrill voice, was hanging out linen on the lines to dry.

"Where\'s Tomlett today?" asked the justice. "He has not been to the farm."

Mrs. Tomlett turned sharply round, for she had not heard the approach, and dropped a curtsey to the justice. "He have gone to Dartfield, sir," she answered, lowering her voice to the key people use when talking secrets. "Mr. Richard he come in the first thing this morning and sent him."

Mr. Thornycroft nodded, and went away, muttering to himself exclusively something to the effect that Richard might have mentioned it. Passing round by the Mermaid again, he went towards home.

And he was charmingly rewarded. Standing on the waste land near the plateau, in her pretty and becoming bonnet of delicate primrose and white, her Indian shawl folded gracefully round her, her dress looped, was Lady Ellis.

"Do you know, Mr. Thornycroft," she said, as he took her hand, "I have never been on the plateau. Will you take me?"

Mr. Thornycroft hesitated visibly. "It is not a place for a lady to go to," he said, after a pause.

"But why not? Mary Anne told me one day you objected to her going on it."

"I do. The real objection is the danger. The cliff has a treacherous edge just there, and you might be over before you were aware. A sharp gust of wind, a footing too near or not quite secure, and the evil is done. Some accidents have occurred there; one, the last of them, was attended by very sad circumstances, and I then had these railings put round."

"You said the real objection was the danger; is there any other objection?" resumed Lady Ellis, who never lost a word or its emphasis.

"There are certain superstitious fancies connected with the plateau," answered Mr. Thornycroft, and very much to her surprise his face took a solemn look, his voice a subdued tone, just as if he himself believed in them: "a less tangible fear than the danger, but one that effectually scares visitors away, at night especially."

They were walking round towards the Red Court now, to which he had turned, and Mr. Thornycroft changed the subject. She could not fail to see that he wished it dropped. At the gates of the farm she wished him good afternoon, and took the road to the heath.

Justice Thornycroft did not enter the gates, but went round to the back entrance. Passing by the various outbuildings, he gained the yard, just as a man was driving out with a waggon and team.

"Where are you going?" asked the justice.

"After the oats, sir. Mr. Richard telled me."

"Is Mr. Richard about?"

"He be close to his own stables, sir."

Mr. Thornycroft went on across the yard, not to the house but to the stables at its end. This portion of the stables (as may be remembered) was detached from the rest, and had formed part of the old ruins. It was shut in by a wall. The horses of the two elder sons were kept there, and their dog-cart. It was their whim and pleasure that Hyde, the man-servant (who could turn his hand to anything indoors or out), should attend to this dog-cart and the horses used in it, and not the groom. Richard was sitting on the frame of the well just on this side the wall, doing something to the collar of his dog.

"Dicky," said the justice, without any sort of circumlocution, "I think I shall give the Red Court a mistress."

Richard lifted his dark stern face to see whether--as he verily thought--his father was joking. "Give it a what?" he asked.

"A mistress. I shall take a wife, I think."

"Are you mad, sir?" asked Richard, after a pause.

"Softly, softly, Dick."

Richard lifted his towering form to its full height. Every feeling within him, every sense of reason rebelled against the notion of the measure. A few sharp words ensued, and Richard went into a swearing fit.

"I knew it would be so; he was always hot and hasty," thought the justice to himself. "What behaviour do you call this?" he asked aloud. "Perhaps if you\'ll hear what I have to say you may cool down. Do you suppose I should be intending to marry for my own gratification?"

"I don\'t suppose you\'d be marrying for that of anybody else," said the undaunted Richard.

"It is for the sake of Mary Anne. Some one must be here with her, and a wife will be less--less risk than a crafty, inquisitive governess."

"For the sake of Mary Anne!" ironically retorted Richard. "Send Mary Anne to school."

"I did send her; and she cane back again."

"I\'d keep her there with cords. I said so at the time."

"Unfortunately she won\'t be kept. She has a touch of the Thornycroft will, Dick."

"Hang the Thornycroft will!" was Dick\'s angry answer. Not but what it was a stronger word he said.

"When you have cooled down from your passion I\'ll talk further with you," said the justice, some irritation arising in his own tone. "You have no right to display this temper to me. I am master here, remember, Dick; though sometimes, if appearances may be trusted, you like to act as if you forgot that."

Richard bit his dark lip. "You must know how inexpedient the measure would be, sir. Give yourself a wife!--the house a mistress! Why, the place might no longer be our own."

"Do you suppose I have not weighed the subject on all sides? I have been weeks considering it, and I have come to the conclusion that of the two--a wife or a governess--the former will be the less risk."

"No," said Richard; "a governess may be got rid of in an hour; a wife, never."

"But a governess might go out in the world and talk; a wife would not."

Richard dashed the dog\'s collar on the ground which he had held all the while. "Mark me, father"--he said, his stern eyes and resolute lips presenting a picture of angry warning rarely equalled--"this step, if you enter on it, will lead to what you have so long lived in dread of,--to what we are ever scheming to guard against. Mary Anne! Before that girl\'s puny interests should lead me to--to a measure that may bring ruin in its wake, I\'d send her off to the wilds of Africa."

He strode away, haughty, imperious, rigid in his sharp condemnation. Mr. Thornycroft, one of those men whom opposition only hardens, turned to the fields, thinking of his brother Richard; Dick was so like him. There he found Isaac, stretched idly on the ground with a book. The young man rose at once in his respect to his father. His handsome velveteen coat, light summer trousers and white linen, his tail form with its nameless grace, his fair features, clear blue eyes and waving light hair, presenting as fine a picture as man ever made.

"That\'s one way of being useful," remarked Mr. Thornycroft.

Isaac laughed. "I confess I am idle this afternoon: and there\'s nothing particular to do."

"Isaac--" Mr. Thornycroft came to a long pause, and then went on rapidly, imparting the news that he had to tell. And it was a somewhat curious fact, that an embarrassment pervaded his manner in making this communication to his second son, quite contrasting with the easy coolness shown to his eldest. A bright flush rose to Isaac\'s fair Saxon face as he listened.

"A wife, sir! Will it be well that you should introduce one to the Red Court?"

"Don\'t make me go over the ground again, Isaac. I repeat that I think it will be well. Some lady must be had here--a wife or a governess, and the former in my judgment will be the lesser evil."

"As you please, of course, sir," returned Isaac, who could not forget the perfect respect and courtesy due to his father, however he might deplore the news. "I have heard you say--"

"Well? Speak out, Ikey."

"That had the time to come over again you would not have married my mother. I think it killed her, sir."

"My marrying her?" asked the justice in a joke. Isaac smiled.

"No, sir. You know what I mean; the constant state of fear she lived in."

"She was one of those sensitive, timid women that fear works upon; Cyril is the only one of you like her," said the justice, his thoughts reverting with some sadness to his departed wife. "But the error committed there, Isaac, lay in my disclosing it to her."

"In disclosing what, sir?" asked Isaac, rather at sea.

"The secret connected with the Red Court Farm," laconically answered Mr. Thornycroft.

There ensued a pause. Isaac put a straw in his lips and bit it like a man in pain. He had loved his mother with no common love; to hear that her place was to be occupied fell on him like a blow, putting aside other considerations against it.

"It is a great risk, sir."

"I don\'t see it, Isaac. But for an accident your mother would never have suspected. I then disclosed the truth to her, and I cursed myself for my folly afterwards. But for that she might have been with us now. As to risk, we run the same every day with Mary Anne. Ah me! your poor mother was too sensitive, and the fear killed her."

Isaac winced. He remembered how his mother had faded visibly, day by day; he could see, even now, the alarm in her soft eyes that the twilight often brought.

Mr. Thornycroft went away with the last words. Richard, who appeared to have been reconnoitring, came striding up to his brother, and let off a little of his superfluous anger, talking loud and fast.

"He is going out of his senses; you know it must be so, Isaac. Who is the woman? Did he tell you?"

"No," replied Isaac; "but I can give a pretty shrewd guess at her."

"Well?"

"Lady Ellis."

"Who?" roared Richard, as if too much surprised to hear the name distinctly.

"Lady Ellis. I have seen him walking with her two or three times lately."

"The devil take Lady Ellis!"

"So say I; rather than she should come into the Red Court."

"Lady Ellis!" repeated Richard, panic-stricken. "That beetle-browed, bold-eyed woman--with her soft, false words, and her stealthy step! \'Ware her, Isaac. Mark me, \'ware her, all of us, should she come home to the Red Court!"


The June roses were in bloom, and the nightingales sang in the green branches. Perfume was exhaled from the linden trees; butterflies floated in the air; insects hummed through the summer day. Out at sea the fishing-boats lay idly on the sparkling waves that gently rippled in the sun. And in this joyous time the new mistress came home to the Red Court Farm.

Lady Ellis had departed for London. Some three weeks afterwards Mr. Thornycroft went up one day, and was married the next, having said nothing at all at home. It came upon Mary Anne like a thunderbolt. She cried, she sobbed, she felt every feeling within her outraged.

"Isaac, I hate Lady Ellis!"

In that first moment, with the shock upon her, it was worse than useless to argue or persuade, and Isaac wisely left it. The mischief was done; and all that remained for them was to make the best of it. Mary Anne, with the independence of will that characterized her, wrote off a pressing mandate to France, which brought Mademoiselle Derode back again. In the girl\'s grief she instinctively turned to the little governess, her kind friend in the past years.

And now, after a fortnight\'s lapse, the mature bridegroom and bride were coming home. The Red Court had made its preparations to receive them. Mary Anne Thornycroft stood in the large drawing-room, in use this evening, wearing a pale blue silk of delicate brightness. Her hard opposition had yielded. Isaac persuaded, mademoiselle reasoned, Richard came down upon her with a short, stern command--and she stood ready, if not exactly to welcome, at least to receive civilly her father\'s wife. Richard appeared to have fallen in with Isaac\'s recommendation--that they should "make the best of it." At any rate he no longer showed anger; and he ordered his sister not to do it. So, apparently, all was smooth.

............