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THE WOMAN OF BUSINESS.

CHAPTER XLI.

WHAT PASSED AT THE COTTAGE ON THE NIGHT OF MRS. ROWLEY'S ARRIVAL, AND HOW A BRANCH OF THE PRY FAMILY VISITED

MR. ARNAUD WHEN HE WAS NOT AT HOME.

"HEIGH-HO!" said Rowley.

She was exhausted too, and no great wonder, by the excitement of the day of her arrival, and all the bustle of the hearty and touching reception she met with. Soon after dinner she began actually to nod in her chair, like Mrs. Cosie; and Fanny, following her example, went off nodding too.

"It's too soon to go to bed, or I would really go,” said Fanny, in the waking intervals between two nutations.

"Bed is the proper place to sleep in, my dear," said the widow; "so to bed let us go. Arnaud will excuse us. Come over to us early to-morrow, Arnaud; come to breakfast. I am quite done up to-night."

Arnaud rose to take leave of them all, but Susan detained him. She was not in the least sleepy, and it was so early, and such a glorious night. He hesitated, but Fanny said, as she left the room. in her mother's wake, "Do sit a little longer, and keep my sister company," and he sat down again.

Susan had a thousand things to say, a thousand questions to ask about his strange Crusoe life on those desert rocks, so hard to imagine, though she sometimes thought she could understand how fascinating such a life must be with all its privations.

"The privations are nothing," said Arnaud. "I laugh at the Cosies when they pity me."

"I never do that," said Susan.

"No, for you feel you would cheerfully bear them yourself to be of use to your fellow-creatures."

"At least, Mr. Arnaud, I hope I should. I think I should find the loneliness the hardest to endure."

"But is it loneliness, Susan? A wild society is society still; and besides, I have a strong belief that we make God our companion when we give ourselves up to the service of man; so strongly do I feel it that there are times when I even think I hear his small still voice upon the heath cheering and supporting me. The life of a recluse has a tendency to breed such fantastical notions; it is one of its evils."

"No, no, Mr. Arnaud, don't call it fantastic; why should it not be true?"

Women, at least such women as Susan Rowley, of temperament at once imaginative and devout, are tenacious of those visionary conceptions that flit through a man's mind, but make no lodgment there. The devotion of an enthusiastic girl is a kind of delicious twilight, in which the bounds between truths and illusions melt away in a confusion of unspeakable charm.

"Tell me more, more, more," she murmured, "of your experiences in solitude your divine solitude."

With modest frankness and graphic simplicity he gratified her curiosity, touching lightly on his toils, saying nothing of his sacrifices, and taking no glory to himself for his successes. How different was his artless tale from the fanatical and high-flown narratives that bring down the thunders of Exeter Hall, when some godly grandee fills the chair, and all the lights of the evangelical world are assembled, and the orator's report of thousands of converted heathens is only to be paralleled by the imaginary feats of Captain Bobadil!

Still Arnaud felt that in spite of himself he was trumpeting his own achievements, and breaking off abruptly, he turned the conversation to Mrs. Rowley.

“Oh, she is herself again," cried Susan. "I knew she would be as soon as she set her foot on this soil, which is so dear to her. Thank God, she has still something here she can call her own; something that her enemies, with all their malice, can never take from her."

"Thank God, she has," repeated Arnaud, in a low deep voice, with a solemn emphasis that almost startled Susan, though in so earnest a mood herself; and as he spoke he rose, much sooner than she thought he need have done, to return to his home over the moonlit sea.

"Remember we see you to-morrow," said Miss Rowley, as she bade him good-night.

"To-morrow, yes, to-morrow," said Arnaud, almost absently. There was a tremor, too, in his hand as it took hers which made hers quiver responsively, but the cause of his emotion she could. never have divined.

Long after he was gone she continued sitting in the porch where they parted, still feeling the strange trembling of his muscular hand until she descried his homeward boat riding the waters; nor did she rise to follow her sister to her bower until after dwindling to a black speck the boat was lost to her view in the shadowy distance. From the day the young Waldensian left Paris on his errand of humanity, with all her soul had Susan Rowley followed each step of

his career. Had the film been removed from his eyes that hides the immaterial world from us all, he might have seen her fair spirit and fond heart always at his side. And every letter, of course, that came to her mother from him, describing his mode of life or detailing his adventures, deepened the soft impression, and led her nearer and nearer, like the circling of a moth round the fatal flame of a candle, to the inevitable end of girlish admiration.

As to Arnaud, it is unnecessary to say that there was nothing in the nature of the employment to which he had dedicated his life to protect him from the sentiment which a girl so fair, so high-minded and sympathising, was formed to inspire. If neither the warrior in the field, nor the statesman at the helm, nor the lawyer in the forum, is impregnable to the soft passion, it may well invade the breast of a gentle missionary; but never for an instant had Arnaud's feelings towards Miss Rowley warped him from the line of duty which he had chalked out for himself towards her mother. More and more inclined to believe it possible that he might indeed be Mrs. Rowley's brother, he was at the same time more and more determined, not only never to claim a kindred which must reduce her to poverty, but to take every precaution in his power against having it thrust upon him. That vow and resolution, refreshed and strengthened by his conversation with Susan, he renewed again that night in the solitude of the silvery waves; never, as he energetically expressed it, would he make himself an accomplice with the painted Jezebel of Foxden. But then this same resolve, which required no effort and cost him no pang, involved another, which it needed all his fortitude to take. That one evening with Susan, that first meeting after months of absence, forced the conviction on his mind that such intercourse could not take place often without dangers to which it would be the height of dishonour to expose her. He had already divined, as has before been hinted, that Mrs. Rowley, when he was in Paris, had cut out his present occupation for him, in part at least, to nip in the bud the growth of tender feelings between her daughter and him. It was evident that, as the guardian of her daughter's welfare and happiness, she considered their union undesirable; and Arnaud knew enough of the world to know that it was the natural view for a sensible woman to take, nor did it for a moment occur to him to tax her with worldliness for taking it. It was enough for him that Mrs. Rowley, of whose sincere affection for himself he was assured, had come to that conclusion, and could there be a clearer indication of the path in which his duty lay? In what material circumstance had his position been altered since he returned to England? He now knew what he was not, but as to what he really was, the only conjecture at all plausible pointed to revelations the very contemplation of which was intolerable. Thus, whether the clouds remained,

or the sun dispersed them, it made no difference in relation to Miss Rowley. He recollected the inscription on the fountain in the Arabian desert:-"Drink and away." He had drunk already— perhaps too deep; but there was still time to fly. The next morning he wrote to the managers of a foreign missionary society in London, and earnestly solicited immediate employment in some remote region of the globe.

But his promise to return to the Meadows was not to be broken, though in consistency with his plan he wished it had not been made. Now he had also to post his letter. It was with a heart that had nothing to lighten it but the sense of treading the path of duty, he crossed the water while the sun was yet within some degrees of

noon.

Had he not been so early abroad, Leonard on his way to the island would have probably met him, which would not only have saved that worthy gentleman some trouble (as his only object was to see Arnaud), but would have been a fortunate occurrence for Arnaud himself.

When Leonard, following Mrs. Upjohn's directions, came to the little quay where the boats were moored, he found only a boy there, but as the water was pretty smooth, the boy, with his own assistance, was perfectly equal to so short a navigation. As soon as he was landed on the other side, he told the boy that he was curious to see the remarkable gentleman who lived on the island, and inquired where he was most likely to find him. The boy, who had not been with his boat when Arnaud crossed, thought he would probably be at home at that hour, and pointed out the track that led to the hut. Leonard had no time to lose, Miss Lovibond's jewels urging him to make his stay in Cornwall as brief as possible, so he set off with the speed of a postman on Valentine's Day. His path was the same that we have seen Lord Stromness and his friends taking on a former occasion, and like those gentlemen, when Leonard dropped down on the cot, he found it deserted and the door left ajar. He was too wary, however, to gratify his curiosity to inspect the interior, until he had first taken the two gentlemanly precautions of listening at the door and peeping in at the window. Having satisfied himself that there was nobody within, and also that nobody was visible outside, as far as his eye could reach, he had the courage to push the door open and extend his investigations. It was really the pure love of knowledge, for there never was a buman abode with less to tempt anything above the lowest form of thievery. The thief who would have robbed Arnaud would have been capable of robbing

"A hermit of his weeds,

His few books, or his beads, or maple dish,"

and when property wore shapes like these no man respected its rights more than Mr. Archibald Leonard.

However, he entered the hut, and made his observations, his eye glancing first at the table, which was strewed, as before, with books, and a few letters and newspapers. It would scarce have taken five minutes to make an inventory of all Arnaud's effects, much less to take a general survey of them, which was enough for Leonard. It seemed to disgust him, for he shrugged his shoulders and was about to withdraw, when again his eye lighted on the table. It was not the books that attracted it, but the letters, and one with a foreign stamp on the cover was the first to arrest it. He looked stealthily round him, and even out at the door in all directions over the heath, before he ventured to open it. It was the letter from the Valleys, and in a few seconds Leonard knew as much as Arnaud knew himself of his position in the world.

But what was still doubtful to the young man himself was a positive certainty to Leonard. It was indifferent to him now whether he saw Arnaud or not; he was content to take the likeness to Mr. Evelyn on Mrs. Upjohn's word, but as he retraced his steps to the boat, just as he emerged on the open heath at the top of the rocks that rose behind the hut, he met Arnaud face to face, and even had he doubted before, to see was to be convinced. He probably trembled also as certain spiritual personages are said to do when they believe, for he pushed on at such a rate as not to give the young man time to address him, as he was in the habit of doing when he met a stranger on the island. But Arnaud had time enough to seize Leonard's features perfectly, though he could not at first recall where he had seen them. As he stood gazing after him, however, a little mental effort brought distinctly to his memory the physiognomy of the great Mr. Sandford, whom he had met on a memorable evening at Woodville's. But what could have brought Sandford to this part of the world? Was he going to plant his interesting colony on the coasts of Cornwall? Or what new villainy had he in hand? Arnaud was under his peat roof before he could answer any of these questions to his satisfaction.

Leonard, though he had stolen nothing this time but a peep at a letter when he might have filched the letter itself, hardly thought himself safe until he was afloat, and even then he often looked back apprehensively, as if he expected Arnaud to give him chase even through the waves. But this was a passing weakness, and when it was over he began thoroughly to enjoy the sense of power which his unexpected discoveries had armed him with. The secret was still half hidden in the box which was rusting in the bowels of the earth; he felt as if he already clutched it, and did not at first reflect that it might prove a difficult and expensive business to come at it.

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