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blame, mortification, and ridicule of the miserable failure. No, however Lord Robert might have been brought to welcome the release had he been fully enlightened and convinced at an earlier stage of the proceedings, he would never consent to accept the alternative at this date. Like most hot-headed, simple-hearted, blustering men, he was vain and arrogant, and, though not rendered thin-skinned by excessive, essential refinement, he was very much alive to the scorn and laughter of his fellows. He had written chivalrously in his first dim glimpse of Lady Catherine's misfortune, that he would not hesitate to call out every man who should suggest his giving her up. If she gave him up at the eleventh hour he would grind his teeth and prepare to fight all round the whole world whom he suspected of grinning and sneering at his discomfiture.

No final breaking-off of the marriage could be in those days, to those people-not with Lady Catherine cut to the quick with her pride-and the young, gracious, kindly girl had, without knowing it, been proud in her own way-laid in the very dust, her moral nature frozen in its vitals. The rupture was impossible, though the Duke of Salop was moved to elevate his chin, let fall his eyeglass, and murmur to his congenial first-born, "Heavens! what a pill it is for a boy like poor Bob to swallow, though he has Oxham to gild the pill." Though Lady Stukely, in the retirement of her darkened room and great bed, beat her hands together and cried weakly by way of comforting herself, too, out of the treasure-house of her experience"the lad was a fine lad, and he is staunch, at least he will not rob or beat my Kitty."

CHAPTER III.

THE LAST MEETING.

COMPLETE change of scene and the climate of Portugal and Spain did not suit Lady Catherine. The crushed and wounded woman was far from popular among the half Bohemian military set to which, while morbidly shrinking from strangers, she was introduced. Even the pity excited by the sad story written on her young face, together with the honour due to her rank, rapidly passed into the careless contempt which coarse minds are apt to feel when they are constrained to pity, and when, at the same time, the privileges which they would respect, remain unclaimed. Lord Robert, on the contrary, was exceedingly popular as a frank, high-spirited young man, who had kept his word at all hazards, and the skeleton at whose feast was keenly appreciated. His gentlemanlike forbearance with his wife's peculiarities was loudly commended, while the avoidance of and repugnance to Lady Catherine, which underlay the indulgence, was overlooked and escaped remark.

Within a year, by mutual consent, and quite as much by her will as by Lord Robert's, Lady Catherine returned with Sally Judd to England.

Lady Catherine was not without a call of duty summoning her home, for Lady Stukely was on her death-bed, the lingering, painless, pathetically peaceful death-bed, in all the centuries, of honest Christian old age long reconciled to its adversaries. Lady Catherine waited dutifully and lovingly by the bed to which, day and night, summer and winter, came without the prospect of change to the aged woman, save the great change through death and the grave. Like all such watchers by such beds, Lady Catherine found the noise, the strife, the very bitterness of life, stilled and sweetened in the half-solemn, half-sweet, wholly human and familiar calmness. Then came another of the turning-points in Lady Catherine's life— one of those turning-points silent in proportion to their importance, and which are, for the most part, better left in silence.

After Lady Stukely's death Lady Catherine began to cultivate her privileges, duties and tastes, languidly and fitfully at first, always more steadily and successfully. These duties included returning to society, to which her rank and fortune gave her an unforfeited passport, and exchanging civilities with the Salop family, for nothing had happened which could legally dissolve Lady Catherine's marriage, and she was still to be considered and coveted by Lord Robert's family as a rich, childless wife, who, if Oxham must eventually go back to a Fortescue, had yet enough in her power to render desirable the bridging over the gulf of incompatibility between her and Lord Robert.

Lady Catherine improved greatly in health and brightened altogether -she was still under five-and-twenty-until she attained the neutral tint of being regarded as a high-bred example in the right ordering of a great establishment, a judge and ally in the church services established to convert the heathenness of the land, and in the elementary schools which Hannah More was employed in setting a-going to inform the people's dense ignorance, in cottage aids, in simple literature and art, flowers and needle-work. Lady Catherine took younger unmarried women under her chaperonage to county and town balls, to the play, to an auction, or an archery meeting at the last she would distribute the prizes and be spoken of as pleasant-looking in her ladyhood and good-nature, in spite of her plainness. She resided chiefly at her own country-house of Oxham, which had not received its master. There Lady Catherine's rooms were not only stately but cheerful and animated with their pleasant home and country view, with her birds, her pug, her Angola cat, her plants, her books, her worsted work. These rooms were as different as possible from Lady Catherine's cheerless, foreign apartments-empty of occupation, devoid of ornament-where she had lodged with her husband, and he had paid her freezing, goading visits of ceremony.

For outward interest, at Oxham Lady Catherine had her friendly neighbours in general, and her rector in particular; her poultry, pet little cows and ponies, as well as pet village maids and lads, old men and women, all the innocent kindly ties of an innocent, kindly woman.

Time wore on. Lady Catherine heard the public news from rumour

and the newspapers. Lord Robert was marching and picquetting under broiling suns and rainy moons, reconnoitring by hedges and in ditches, faring on chance fare, playing his part in bloody battles and desperate assaults, having the shine taken out of the man as well as out of his uniform. The peace of 1814 came and the allies were in Paris where Lord Robert tarried with other disengaged gentlemen. Another whirlwind broke over the world when the lion was loose again, and the destiny of a quarter of the world to be settled once more. The battle of Waterloo followed, with the hurrying of frantic couriers east and west, north and south, to Russia, Italy, England and America, and with one little quaintly, coldly formal, yet familiar, school-boy note to Lady Catherine beginning "Dear Lady Catherine," and ending "Your obedient servant, Robert Luttrel "-certifying that a great battle had been fought and won, peace was about to be established at last, and Lord Robert Luttrel, whose name Lady Catherine bore, was among the triumphant survivors. A throb of duty and. dignity, perhaps born of discipline, despatched that letter; a throb of duty and dignity acknowledged it fitly. Nay, more, when Lord Robert was safe back in England only to find that his agent, from having indulged freely in the land mania and other manias which collapsed with the peace, had spent the money which Lord Robert, not being a gambler who could gamble anywhere and at any odd moment, had been too continuously and busily engaged on active service to fail to spare, he was persuaded to apply through his agent and his wife's agent for help from Lady Catherine! Why not? He had not robbednot to say beaten her-even to the extent marriage might have permitted him to do. He had not wronged her wilfully. Destiny had been against them- a great mutual misfortune had separated them-he thought. It was true that he only proposed to borrow from Lady Catherine a loan to which she would have been heartily welcome from him, had she required or sought it, at any time all those years.

Lady Catherine did not hesitate for a moment over this request. She wrote a generous letter; she sent immediate and imperative orders to her agent to do what he could for Lord Robert in his embarrassments incurred while he was serving his country.

Lord Robert's circumstances were righted, and more years—a decade, two decades-slipped by rapidly, as the years gather momentum and speed, in multiplying, till they reach the appointed span of each man and woman. During the interval Lord Robert and Lady Catherine had not met again even in public, for they were not like a state couple compelled of necessity to parade their misery and make a mock show of polite greetings in high places and thoroughfares.

Both lived mostly in the country at their different seats, where there were several shires linked together to form a barrier between them. When the lady and the gentleman were in town, naturally they were in different sets. They heard of each other-shyly-and a little curiously; Lord Robert of Lady Catherine, as a good plain woman, who might have grown

twaddling and bigoted in his eyes, but who could be trusted not to disgrace the shred of connection between them; Lady Catherine of Lord Robert, as roughened and louder (since even a Lord Robert may roughen and wax louder by campaigning), offering a rude version of a lordly bearing-a man somewhat given to violent exercise even of his lawful power, to excesses of temper in public and private, and addicted to those who might be stigmatized as boon companions in his man's fastness of Chevington Friars, but still not by any means regarded as a man beyond the pale of society and social esteem. Sometimes comically petty details floated to the husband and wife of their respective ways and doings: how Lady Catherine would not consent to adopt a wig, but wore her own silvering hair under her turban or cap; how Lord Robert had shown the fiercest grizzled mutton-chop whiskers at the nearest assizes and assize ball; how Lady Catherine had founded a home for incurables, including the blind victims of smallpox; how Lord Robert had knocked down a refractory postboy-to be sure the postboy had been brutal to his horses as well as insolent to his employer-and after teaching the man a lesson in humanity and civility, Lord Robert had promptly administered a solatium in current coin of the realm.

Then there came a time when Lord Robert, visiting within the county in which Oxham was situated, and hardened by long immunity to a painful, accidental encounter, ventured to follow the hunt so near to his wife's gates, that when he was badly thrown, hers happened to be the nearest house within several miles.

The members of the hunt who were on the spot, and who knew the gentleman and his story, consulted together and fidgeted a good deal before they arranged that he should be carried to Oxham. They did not apprehend the fall to be fatal, though ribs were broken and unknown internal injuries loomed in the background, but delay and such insufficient accommodation as any of the neighbouring farm-houses could afford, might well have the worst consequences in the case of a heavy elderly man, whose constitution had been tried by active foreign service. It was quite within men's memories how the late Duke of Dorset had met with his accident when hunting with Lord Powerscourt's harriers over in Ireland, and had risen without assistance, and run half-a-dozen yards across the furrows before he staggered and fell to rise no more.

In the meantime Lord Robert had recovered his senses, and was fit to be told what was the most likely place for a gentleman hurt on the hunting-field to be taken to, and could enter his objections if his alienation from his wife were of such a nature that he could not seek shelter under her roof in circumstances when a man would not turn his enemy's dog from the door.

Lord Robert made no objection. Perhaps his head was not clear yet, perhaps he was conscious of greater injuries than men guessed at, and judged that he might as well die at Oxham as elsewhere, if there were not a certain propriety in its master drawing his last breath there, though he

had never crossed the threshold before. Whatever the reason, after a moment's thought, Lord Robert gave a gruff consent to the movement.

Lady Catherine was from home for the day, gone to superintend her home for incurables, when the anxious group with Lord Robert on men's shoulders in their centre, arrived, but the servants were ready to do the honours of the house in Lady Catherine's absence, and to render every assistance.

Sally Judd, a sagacious, responsible old woman, in her black silk gown and white silk shawl, was forward to help and relieve an old master and acquaintance.

Lord Robert recognised Sally as she plied him with restoratives.

"Well, how are you Sally? How has the world gone with you ?" he inquired faintly, not proving himself abashed or overcome by more than pain and giddiness.

"Middling well, my lord; but I'm main sorry that you've met with this toss," answered Sally, discrectly.

"The old man," was her verdict when she turned away, warrant his conscience feels none the guiltier nor the tenderer."

"I'll

Sally, like many people, confounded conscience with capacity of feeling, and then, as if aware of her injustice, she added emphatically, "Which I never said Lord Robert was either a very bad man, or a very bad master, but he was found wanting when he had to deal with himself and my lady, as they were pulled up and brought to book for what had brought and what kep' 'em together; and when they were like to go clean distraught with the beggary which the small-pox had left behind it for their portion. Lady Catherine has lived it down, and grown a well-to-do woman again-why should she not? But the two are crossing each other's paths afresh when—as sure as I ever seed it in a man's eyes— there's death in his path, let them doctors say what they will. Eh, it mun be no less than death that sends Lord Robert here at this hour of

the day. What will my lady think? daisy me knows the upshot!" finished Sally, appealing to a mysterious and yet familiar oracle.

The doctors, soon summoned, saw cause to dread such irreparable evil that they did not dare to precipitate matters by removing Lord Robert from the couch in the morning-room, Lady Catherine's own room, to which he had been first taken in the confusion and consternation. There he dozed for the rest of the short autumn day, occasionally roused to take what medicines were tried by the assiduous watchers, occasionally rousing himself with a start of fitful recollection to the scene and circumstances. How different this room was from other rooms he recollected! He was so fond of animals that the ruling passion strong in death made him have a perception of the presence of Lady Catherine's pets, and transported his half wandering imagination to her out-of-door favourites, which would have been his favourites too, or brothers and sisters to his favourites. He had entertained a boyish admiration for bright colours and pleasant outlines, though he had not known how, in amending the stiff, bare details of his

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