“Non illum nostri passunt labores,
  Non si frigoribus mediis Hebrumque libamus
  Sithoniasque nives hiemis subeamus aquos?—
  Omnia vincit amor.”
 
VIRGIL.
 
 
 
“AND what then do you and Harry think I should do? Where, I should rather say, do you think I should go, for I am sure you have thought of some plan?” asked Marion, later is the evening, as they still at together talking.
 
Mr. Baldwin looked at Harry, and Harry at Mr. Baldwin. This was the part of the whole they most dreaded telling her, being, as are all their sex, sad cowards when there was question breaking bad or disagreeable news.
 
“No permanent arrangement can be made till we hear from Mr. Framley, Vere,” began Mr. Baldwin, but Marion interrupted him.
 
“You need not, I assure you, take him into consideration with regard to my movements,” said she: “he is one of those old bachelors that think girls torments, and provided he is not asked to look out for a home for me himself, he will trouble himself very little as to what becomes of me. I daresay Harry may find him a sensible adviser and he may be a good man of business, but beyond that I am sure he won’t interfere.”
 
“The only plan that appears at all feasible to Harry and me,” resumed Mr. Baldwin, “is one which I fear will be very distasteful to you.” Again he stopped.
 
“Please tell me what it is,” urged Marion.
 
Mr. Baldwin looked at Harry beseechingly.
 
“It’s nothing so very dreadful,” said the boy, “all really for the present it’s the only thing to be done. It’s only Aunt Tremlett and Mallingford, May.” He spoke lightly, but in his heart he dreaded the effect of his announcement.
 
But to his amazement Marion took it philosophically in the extreme.
 
“I thought it was that,” she replied, “well, I daresay it will do very fairly, all things considered. Mallingford certainly is dull, and Aunt Tremlett duller; but I don’t mind. I shall get on comfortably enough, and I shall have you Harry, in the holidays. May I not?” she asked, appealing, to Mr. Baldwin.
 
“Most assuredly,” he answered warmly, “I was thinking of that. And if Miss Tremlett objects to the racket of a young gentleman in her house, Harry can come to me. It’s not two miles from my house to Mallingford, and I can lend you a horse, or two if you like,” he said, turning to Harry.
 
“That would be capital,” said the boy, “much more to my taste than Aunt Tremlett’s. Though I’ll stay there part of the time if shell have me,” he added quickly, seeing that his sister looked rather disappointed.
 
And so Marion’s future, for a time at least, was decided.
 
It all came to pass very soon. So soon, that ten days later she found herself, under the escort of Mrs. Evans and Brown (about to set up a joint establishment, after “keeping company” of many years’ standing), in the railway on her way to Mallingford, hardly able to realize that not yet a month had passed since the day when she saw those sad four lines in the ‘Times’—when for the first time the destroying angel had passed close by her, breaking the small circle of her immediate friends. And now already another place was vacant!
 
It was rather a long journey to Mallingford. A few years ago, when as children Marion and Harry used to spend the summer in the Brackley cottage, the railway only went about two-thirds of the way, and the last thirty miles were traversed in the coach. Now it was different. Mallingford had a station of its own, at which some half dozen trains stopped in the day, so the whole of the journey was performed on the railway; at which, had she been in the mood to observe or feel interested in outside things, Marion would have murmured; for long ago the stage coach part of the programme had been the children’s great delight: in fine weather at least, when they coaxed their attendants to allow them to mount up to the top of the vehicle, from whence they had a charming view of the country in general, and of the four dashing, smoking horses in particular.
 
But Marion was sad and listless, and so long as she was left at peace to pursue the wearying circle of her own thoughts, cared little for what might be her surroundings.
 
She had heard nothing from Ralph, received no sort of explanation of his strange conduct. And her hopes were sinking low. By Cissy’s last message she was now perfectly convinced that no sort of mistake was at the bottom of his incomprehensible silence. He must, by the last mail at latest, if not sooner, have received Mrs. Archer’s explanation of the whole from Marion’s side. That he still refrained from communicating with her must be owing to one of two causes: either his feelings to her were changed by the knowledge of the deception she had practised; or he himself had failed in the object of his visit to England, and was still fettered by the mysterious complications to which he had alluded. Complications in no way removed, as she had now and then begun to fancy might prove to be the case, by the fact of her being the daughter of the distinguished politician Hartford Vere, instead of Marion Freer, the little governess.
 
“Not that my position would have made any difference to him personally,” she always added; “he, I know, cared for Marion Freer as I shall never, never be cared for again. But it might have influenced his mother if the obstacle was in any way connected with her.”
 
Latterly she had said to herself somewhat bitterly, that so far as his advantage was concerned, there was nothing to regret.
 
My father dead, and a mere pittance all my portion! And the very little beauty I ever had fading already,” she thought, as she looked at herself in her old toilet glass for the last time, the morning she left London.
 
She was mistaken, however. But her beauty was not of a kind to be materially affected by such causes, and in this respect rose far superior to the more striking, but merely physical, loveliness of such women as Florence Vyse. The “sweet soul” that looked out of Marion Vere’s grey eyes would render them beautiful till old age; the delicate features and sensitive mouth drew their chief attraction from the truth of heart and refinement of mind of their owner. To my mind she was at all times a beautiful woman. Her nature, in spite of adverse circumstances, was sound and healthy, and in a sense, even strong; for after all it is the strongest who suffer the most, that bend only, where weaker ones would break.
 
As Geoffrey Baldwin handed her on to the little platform at Mallingford station, whither he had driven to meet her, he, at least, would have agreed with me. Likely enough, he would have been at a loss to define his sensations with regard to her. He was not a man who troubled himself much with definitions of any kind certainly, but it is curious to reflect on the peculiar attraction this girl had for him from the first. He had seen plenty of far handsomer women, he had known some few as sweet and good. Intellect he did not care for, did not understand. Yet as he looked at the slight figure in its heavy mourning dress, at the fair face and sad, gentle eyes that glanced up at him with their indescribable expression or mingled womanliness and childlike appeal, there came over his honest manhood the same yearning instinct of love and protection, the same wild longing to fold her then and there in his arms, which, before now, had stirred the innermost depths of Ralph Severn’s heart, had indeed cost him no slight struggle to resist. I make, no secret of it at all. Both these men fell love with her, as it is called, almost from the first. It was very strange. They were so utterly different, alike only in that they were brave and good and true. But as to tastes, shades of character, habits, ideas—all in short that goes to the formation of individuality, you might search high and low, far and wide, before you could find two men so radically dissimilar as the quiet, studious Sir Ralph Severn, and the high-spirited, open-hearted, life enjoying farmer, Geoffrey Baldwin.
 
Marion felt glad that her young guardian had come to meet her, and she told him so.
 
“It seems less desolate,” she said, “for I do not expect much of a welcome from Aunt Tremlett.” Which expectation, for all his wish to cheer her, Mr. Baldwin could not find it in his conscience to disagree with.
 
So in silence he put her and Evans into the fly he had stopped to order at the King’s Arms, on his way through Mallingford, he himself following in his dog-cart, “just to shake hands with Miss Tremlett,” he said to himself, though in reality to make sure that his charge should have what little additional comfort and support his presence might give her, on her first arrival at the not very cheerful dwelling, which, for some time to come, at least, was to be her home.
 
There was no mystery about Miss Tremlett. She was simply a narrow-minded hypochondriac, who, never having been accustomed in youth to live for any other object than her precious self, had in old age, naturally enough increased in devotion to this all-engrossing idol. She was what is called a woman of high principles and excellent judgement, meaning, I suppose that when she was young, pretty, and poor, she had refused to marry the only man she cared for because he was a struggling curate, and had done her best to secure a rich husband; failing which she had for years “devoted herself” to an odious old woman, her god-mother, in hopes of succeeding to her fortune, in which, strange to say, she had not been disappointed. And now that she was old (for the fortune did not come to her till she was fifty) she had not been guilty of any enormity, robbing a church, for instance, in consequence of which and her large fortune, she was “greatly respected” in Mallingford, and at the various tea-tables always alluded to by the rector in the terms above mentioned.
 
It was a great feather in her cap, this taking her orphan grand-niece to live with her. Many of her acquaintances, in their secret hearts, wondered at it, especially when it oozed out, as such things always do, that the great Mr. Vere had not left his children “overly well provided for,” as Mrs. Jones, of the King’s Arms, expressed it to her crony, Miss Green, the milliner. Miss Green was better informed than Mrs. Jones, however, a few days later, for she had been working at “The Cross House,” Miss Tremlett’s residence, and had it from Mrs. Thomas, the ............