The thought of this damped his spirits considerably, and he was almost inclined to abandon a scheme which must cost him so dear, when an incident occurred which gave his vindictiveness a fresh impulse. As he passed the Meadows again he reconnoitred the cottage more attentively than he had done in the morning, and to get a better view of it peeped through a crevice in the paling that separated the grounds from the lane. It was hardly the prettiest thatched cottage in England, though surveyed by one to whom incendiarism was a joke, that made the eyes of master Leonard glare with such a sudden access of ferocity. Only the fair cottager herself could have made them glitter as they did. It was so. They fell upon Mrs. Rowley herself, who was sitting reading her newspaper in the same spot, under the same thorn (only that it was now rich with crimson berries instead of pink blossoms) where she had in the early spring initiated Miss Cosie into the mysteries of accounts. Neither the lapse of a dozen years nor the widow's weeds prevented him from recognising her in an instant, though he had never seen her since the day when she repulsed him with such address and energy at Orta. Whatever change in the interval her face and person had undergone, whatever she had left behind her as she advanced in life, it was not the lofty carriage or the piercing eye before which he had quailed when she was only a girl. As he looked she dropped the paper, folded her arms, and sat thinking. Perhaps she had been reading the City article in the Times, and was thinking of improving her small patrimony. At all events she looked sagacious, independent, and notwithstanding her losses, every inch a proprietor. It was that stately unconquered look that made Leonard regard her with such a mixture of fear and animosity. The fascination of hate glued him to the spot until at last his old wound gave him a wicked twinge, and he slunk away, with a more tremendous oath than he had ever before muttered, to prosecute his revenge, even if it cost him every shilling he had extorted from Mrs. Upjohn.

CHAPTER XLII.

IN WHICH MRS. ROWLEY MINDS HER BUSINESS, AND WISHES OTHER FOLK WOULD MIND THEIRS.

MANY days now elapsed, during which we must leave Mr. Arnaud in suspense, with no part of his "self-denying ordinance" carried out, save that which depended altogether on himself, namely, to stick to his island as stubbornly as Simeon to his pillar, or a periwinkle to its native rock. The weather favoured him by being

unusually blustery, even for the Cornish coast. It was about the time of the equinox, and those strong winds were blowing, popularly believed to be connected with the equality of day and night. Be that as it may, they kept the sea in a ferment, and its turbulence was a perfect security from visits from the Rowleys, against which nothing else could have protected him, as Mrs. Rowley was anxious to have his abode made tighter and more commodious against the coming winter. He knew very well what her kind intentions were, and would have been more grateful to her for taking no trouble about him. He felt as uneasy every time the storm held its breath, as his friends at the Meadows were on his account when the gale howled in the chimneys and was bending the trees double.

The weather, however, was no hindrance to Mrs. Rowley's operations on terra-firma. She came down to work, and she began by dismissing all other thoughts from her mind. First, and rather contemptuously, she dismissed her sister-in-law. Many people thought, as well as Mr. Marjoram, that Mrs. Rowley made a mistake in planting herself where she did, as it exposed her to the suspicion of being influenced by the unworthy motive of ruffling Mrs. Upjohn in the high-tide of her prosperity, an idea which had nothing to countenance it but the proximity of the Meadows to Foxden, with only the gorge through which the brook brawled to divide them; but Mrs. Rowley had no notion of shaping her conduct to escape frivolous imputations. There being no place for her but the cottage, with her wonted pluck she settled there.

"I shall not interfere with her pleasures," said the widow, in her pointed style, "and I shall not allow her to interfere with my business."

With this epigram she discharged, as we have said, Mrs. Rowley Upjohn as completely from her mind as if half England had stretched

between them.

Another subject which had not long since caused her some solicitude she flung overboard likewise. When she first meditated her return, the only hesitation she felt about it was on her daughter Susan's account, who would again be placed in dangerous vicinity to her hero, but on this point Mrs. Rowley's mind had changed on maturer reflection. In fact, she soon perceived that separation had not the refrigerating effect she had expected upon her daughter; but on the contrary, seemed rather to heighten the sentimental temperature which she had reckoned upon lowering. As the experiment had not succeeded after a good long trial, she asked herself whether it was her duty to persist, and even if it was, whether it was likely to be of any avail. Her knowledge of her daughter's character satisfied her that it was not, and then came the consideration that Susan was of an age to settle a question of the heart for herself,

especially as she had an independent fortune, which if affection impelled her to share with a man like Arnaud, she had a perfect right to do it. Such was the conclusion to which Mrs. Rowley had come, though she saw no necessity to announce it formally. Let the young people decide for themselves, she had her own concerns to look after. As to the mines and the brewery she left everything to Mr. Cosie, except the accounts and auditing, which she understood better than he did. Arnaud, who knew by experience how the enormous funds raised by missionary societies and tract societies are squandered, wished a thousand times that they were under her control. But her own books gave her enough to do, and more every day as her operations extended. The mining had rapidly reached the dignity of a company, and Mrs. Rowley's copper, or as her enemies said, her brass, was beginning to be quoted like her beer. Don't expect me to give you the quotations; I doubt if they would interest you; but perhaps her appointment of a clerk may, particularly as her clerk was of her own sex.

It will easily be believed what contempt Mrs. Rowley had for all the nonsense that even in her day was talked and written about the rights of women. But a doctor in petticoats is one thing, and a clerk or secretary to a lady is another, so after looking about her for a day or two she remembered the little girl who had attracted her notice when she was last in England by her skill in figures, as well as by her good character and the neatness of her person, and she determined to try her. Mr. Choker, who was still the acting minister of the parish, wanted her to hold what would now be called a competitive examination for the appointment, and give it to the best answerer.

"But," said Mrs. Rowley, "if I do that, I should probably get a person who would have her head well crammed, no doubt, with Scripture genealogies and the details of the Levitical law, but very little in it of the sort of knowledge that I want, or to be plain with your reverence, of the kind most useful to herself. I don't want a theologian, Mr. Choker, but at the same time I dare say the kind of girl to suit me will not be very deficient in her catechism or Bible either."

So Patty Penrose was nominated, and a most efficient functionary she turned out to be. The parlour that contained the wonderful portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Cosie in their civic splendours was turned into an office, for Mrs. Rowley and her daughters agreed that the daily contemplation of those works of art was a trial not to be faced, unless it was a positive duty. So they established Patty there, and you had only to look in at the door or the window to see how tidy and regular everything was. There you would have seen the secretary herself, in a fresh cotton dress, with a black silk apron,

and her pen in her hand, or knowingly cocked behind her ear, seated at a desk on a table covered with green baize, with a nest of drawers in it. Over the chimney-piece was one of the pictures, surmounted by a cuckoo-clock; and on the opposite wall was the other portrait, with a row of shelves on each side, on which were ranged the various account-books, and they were not a few, with an almanack, a dictionary, the county Directory, and a Bradshaw, then quite a new publication. If Patty had a speciality it was Bradshaw. There are men who know a great deal more about the stars than Mr. Greenwich, but are entirely at sea in Bradshaw; Mrs. Rowley herself was often lost in its labyrinths, but Patty threaded them like an Ariadne.

The table was well furnished with the usual official necessaries and conveniences; with red ink and black ink, pens and wafers, and all the contrivances for keeping papers in order and subjection, weights for pressing them down, elastic bands for tying them up, and tweezers for pinching them, when nothing else would keep them together.

On a pin behind the door hung the tidy secretary's straw hat with pink ribbons; there were always flowers in the window-seat, the grate was filled with heath and ferns, and there was generally a tortoise-shell cat asleep on the most comfortable chair in the

room.

If you had passed from Patty's room into Mrs. Rowley's, which communicated with it, you would have found few or no signs of business at all. It was only a snug little drawing-room hung with a pretty chintz, and the chairs covered with green velvet; for Mr. Cosie had new-furnished the room expressly for Mrs. Rowley's special use, and much more expensively than she would have done it herself. Beyond a map of the county on one wall, and a map of the estate on another, there was nothing suggestive of the management of property; and as to double entry, you could only have been reminded of it by a second door which led into the garden behind the house.

Indeed, you might have been for weeks under Mrs. Rowley's roof without very well understanding how she ever got the name of the Woman of Business. When her affairs gave her most anxiety, she never made them the subject of conversation; and if there was one thing more than another which she scrupulously abstained from talking of in her social hours, even in her family, or whether she lived in a cottage or a big house, it was money. This is not quite the same thing as not talking of business. Many people who never think of business, and have none to think of, will never tire talking of money-matters; how much such a one has a year, what fortune another intends to give his daughters, what he paid for his house or

his horses, or what balance he is likely to have at his bankers. To Mrs. Rowley such discussions were most disagreeable. Even when her difficulties were fresh, and her narrowed circumstances might well have excused her from at least alluding to them, she never allowed herself to touch the subject, to the no small surprise and often vexation of inquisitive people, who before she left Paris especially, visited her expressly in the hopes of hearing her grievances from her own lips.

She drew her conversational resources from other fountains. Mrs. Rowley read twice as much as hundreds of ladies who have nothing in the world else to do. With respect to novels, Mrs. Rowley was something like the old judge who said that one wine. might be better than another, but that no wine could be said to be bad. In the same way Mrs. Rowley devoured every novel and romance, French and English, that came in her way, though nobody could better appreciate the master-pieces of fiction.

Much of her life too, especially just now, was spent out of doors, except when the weather was too wet, which it is sometimes in that part of England, as perhaps you may know, without being a meteorologist. She visited all her people in her walks, generally accompanied by Susan, and sometimes by Fanny on a Shetland pony, for she was still not strong enough for much walking exercise. Mrs. Rowley was acquainted with everybody on her property, and never passed anyone without a word or two, generally pleasant and encouraging, but sharp enough when there was occasion for it. Nobody could make a rebuke sting like her. Susan once told her that her intolerance of sauntering would be sure one day or another to nip some poet in the bud, by whose song Oakham might have

been immortalised.

"I'm not uneasy about that," said Mrs. Rowley; "a lazy, lubberly fellow, my dear, were he to turn poet, would be infinitely more likely to prove a Tupper than a Thomson or a Burns."

Week after week passed away in these active employments, as good for the health of the mind as the body. The weather relented a little at intervals, but on the whole Arnaud could not have wished for a more tempestuous season. If one of the three cottagers was ever out of tune, or out of spirits, it was Susan. Her sparkling gaiety seemed often transferred to Fanny, who was now sometimes Mrs. Rowley's sole companion in her rambles. Susan was not only provoked by the roughness of the climate, which formerly she used even to enjoy, but she was provoked with Mr. Arnaud too, for had she not heard of his braving rougher winds and ruder seas, while she was far away in another land? However, she fought a tolerably good fight to keep her griefs to herself; took a fair part in all that her mother was doing; and found additional occupation, in con