CHAPTER I.

At School in London.

Two years have gone by, and it is June again.

A good, substantial house in one of the western suburbs of the metropolis—Kensington. By the well-rubbed brass plate on the iron gate of the garden, and the lady's name on it—"Miss Jupp"—it may be taken for a boarding-school. In fact, it is one: a small select school (as so many schools proclaim themselves now; but this really is such); and, kept by Miss Jupp, once of Katterley. That is, by Miss Jupp and two of her sisters, but she wisely calls it by her own name singly, avoiding the ugly style of the plural "Miss Jupp's establishment."

Fortune changes with a great many of us; every day, every hour of our lives, some are going up, others down. When death removed old Mr. Jupp (an event that occurred almost close upon poor Mrs. Lake's), then his daughters found that they had not enough to get along in the world. Wisely taking time and circumstances by the forelock, the three elder ones, Mary, Margaret, and Emma, removed to London, took a good house at Kensington, and by the help of influential friends very soon had pupils in it. Dorothy and Rose were married; Louisa remained at Katterley with her widowed mother. They professed to take ten pupils only: once or twice the number had been increased to twelve; the terms were high, but the teaching was good, and the arrangements were really first-class. It was with the Miss Jupps that Mary Anne Thornycroft had been placed. And she did not run away from them.

Quite the contrary. The summer holidays have just set in, and she is to go home for them; as she did the previous midsummer; but she is expressing a half wish, now as she stands before Miss Margaret Jupp, that she could spend them where she is, in London. Long and long ago has she grown reconciled to the regularity of a school life, and to regard Miss Jupp's as a second and happy home. She spent the first Christmas holidays with them; the second Christmas (last) at Cheltenham with her stepmother; she and her brother Cyril.

Lady Ellis (retaining still the name) is in very ill health now. Almost simultaneously with quitting the Red Court after her marriage, a grave inward disorder manifested itself. Symptoms of it indeed had been upon her for some time, even before leaving India; but—as is the case with many other symptoms—they had been entirely disregarded, their grave nature unsuspected. Instead of leading a gay life at the gay inland watering-place, flaunting her charms and her fashion in the eyes of other sojourners, Lady Ellis found herself compelled to live a very quiet one. She has a small villa, an establishment of two servants only; and she does not wish for more. In heart, in nature, she is growing altered, and the refining, holy influence that very often—God be praised!—changes the whole heart and spirit with a change which is not of this world, is coming over her. Two visits only has she paid to the Red Court Farm, staying about six weeks each time, and Mr. Thornycroft goes to Cheltenham two or three times a year. Miss Thornycroft and her stepmother are civil to each other now, not to say

friendly; and when she invited the young lady and her brother Cyril for the holidays last Christmas, they went. The previous midsummer they had spent together at Coastdown, it having been one of the periods of my lady's two visits. Fortune had contrived well for Lady Ellis, and her marriage with the wealthy master of the Red Court Farm enabled her to enjoy every substantial comfort in her hour of need.

Two other young ladies connected in a degree with this history are at Miss Jupp's this evening; the rest of the pupils have left. One of the two we have met before, one not. They are in the room now, and you may look at them. All three, including Miss Thornycroft, are about the same age—between eighteen and nineteen. She, Mary Anne, is the same tall, stately, fair, handsome, and (it must be owned) haughty girl that you knew before; the fine face is resolute as ever, the cold blue eyes as honest and uncompromising. She had been allowed to dress as expensively at Miss Jupp's as her inclination leads: to-day she wears a rich pale-blue silk; blue ribbons are falling from her fair hair. She is standing doing nothing: but sitting in a chair by her side, toying with a bit of fancy-work, is a plain, dark, merry-looking girl in a good useful nut-brown silk, Susan Hunter. She is the sister of Robert Hunter, several years his junior, and has been sent up from Yorkshire by her aunt, with whom she lives, to have two years of "finish" at a London school. Accident—not their having once known

something of her brother—led to the school fixed on being Miss Jupp's. And now for the last.

In a grey alpaca dress, trimmed with a little ribbon velvet of the same hue, her head bent patiently over a pile of drawings that she is touching up, sits the third. A very different footing in the school, hers, from that of the other two; they pay the high, full terms; she pays nothing, but works out her board with industry. Have you forgotten that pale, gentle face, one of the sweetest both in feature and expression ever looked upon, with the fine silky chestnut hair modestly braided round it, and the soft brown eyes that take all the best feelings of a genuine heart by storm? The weary look telling of incessant industry, the pile of work that she does not look up from, the cheap holiday-dress (her best) costing little, all proclaim sufficiently her dependent position in the house—a slight, graceful girl of middle height, with a sort of drooping look in her figure, as if she were, and had been all her life, in the habit of being pushed into the background?

It is Anna Chester. Her life since we saw her has been like that of a dray horse. Mrs. Chester placed her at an inferior school as pupil-teacher, where she had many kinds of things to do, and the mistress's own children to take care of in the holidays. For a year and a half she stayed at it, doing her best patiently, and then the Miss Jupps took her. She has to work very much still, and her health is failing. Captain and Mrs. Copp have invited her to Coastdown for a change, and she goes down to-morrow with Miss Thornycroft. Miss Hunter spends the holidays at school.

Mrs. Chester? Mrs. Chester quitted Guild, to set up a fashionable boarding-house in London. It did not answer; the mass of people remained cruelly indifferent to its advertisements; and the few who tried it ran away and never paid her. She then removed to Paris, where (as some friends assured her) a good English boarding-house was much wanted; and, if her own reports are to be trusted, she is likely to do pretty well at it.

There remains only one more person to mention of those we formerly knew; and that is Robert Hunter. Putting his shoulder to the wheel in earnest, as only a resolute and capable man can put it; I had almost said as one only who has some expiation to work out; his days are spent in hard industry. He is the practical energetic man of business; never spending a moment in waste, never willingly allowing himself recreation. The past folly, the past idleness of that time, not so very long gone by, recurs to his memory less frequently than it used, but ever with the feeling of a nightmare. He is still with the same firm, earning a liberal salary. Since a day or two only has he been in London, but there's some talk of his remaining in it now. Nothing seems to be further from his thoughts than any sort of pleasure: it would seem that he has one vocation alone in life—work.

These three young ladies were going out this afternoon. To a grand house, too: Mrs. Macpherson's. The professor, good simple man, had been content, socially speaking, with a shed on the top of Aldgate pump: not so madam. As the professor rose more and more into distinction, she rose; and the residence in Bloomsbury was exchanged for a place at Kensington. Possibly the calling occasionally on the Miss Jupps, had put it into her head. A house as grand as its name in the matter of decoration; but not of undue size: Mrs. Macpherson had good common sense, and generally exercised it. A dazzling white front with a pillared portico and much ornamentation outside and in—"Majestic Villa." The professor had wanted to change the name, but madam preferred to retain it. It was not very far from Miss Jupp's, and these young ladies were going there to spend the evening.

In all the glory of her large room, with its decorations of white and gold, its mirrors, its glittering cabinets, its soft luxurious carpet, its chairs of delicate green velvet, sat Mrs. Macpherson, waiting for these young guests. In all her own glory of dress, it may be said, for that was not less conspicuous than of yore, and that of to-day looked just as if it were chosen to accord with the hangings—a green satin robe with gold leaves for trimmings, and a cap that could not be seen for sprays and spangles. In her sense of politeness—and she possessed an old-fashioned stock of it—Mrs. Macpherson had dressed herself betimes, not to leave the young ladies alone after they came. Thus, when they arrived, under the convoy of Miss Emma Jupp, who left them at the door, Mrs. Macpherson was ready to receive them.

It was the first time they had been there for many weeks; for the professor had been abroad on a tour in connexion with some of the ologies, as his wife expressed it, in which she had accompanied him. The result of this was, that Mrs. Macpherson had no end of Parisian novelties, in the shape of dress, to display to them in her chamber.

"I know what girls like," she said, in her hearty manner, "and that is, to look at new bonnets and mantles, and try 'em on."

But Mary Anne Thornycroft—perhaps because she could indulge in such articles at will—cared not a jot for these attractions, and said she should go down to see the professor.

He had some rooms at the back of the house, where his collection of scientific curiosities—to call things by a polite name—had been stowed. And here the professor, when not out, spent his time. Mary Anne quite loved the man, so simple-minded and yet great-minded at one and the same time, and never failed to penetrate to his rooms when occasion offered. Quickly wending her way through the passages, she opened the door softly.

It was not very easy to distinguish clearly at first, what with the crowd of things darkening the windows, and the mass of objects generally. At a few yards' distance, slightly bending over a sort of upright desk, as if writing something, stood a gentleman; but certainly not the professor. His back was towards her; he had evidently not heard her enter, and a faint flush of surprise dawned on Mary Anne's face, for in that first moment she thought it was her brother Cyril. It was the same youthful, supple, slender figure; the same waving hair, of a dark auburn, clustering round the head above the collar of the coat. Altogether, seen in this way, there was a certain resemblance; and that was the first primary link in the chain that attracted Mary Anne to him. The door, which she had left open, closed with a slight bang, and the gentleman spoke, without lifting his head.

"I have worked it out at last. You were right about its being less than the other."

"Is Dr. Macpherson not here?"

He turned sharply at the words, a pencil in his hand, surprise on his face. A good face; for its old gay careless look had departed for ever, and the dark blue eyes—darker even than of yore—wore a serious gravity that never left them, a gravity born of remorse. The face was older than the figure, and not in the least like Cyril Thornycroft's; it looked fully its seven-and-twenty years—nay, looked nearer thirty; but all its expression was merged in surprise. No wonder; to see a beautiful girl in blue silk, with blue ribbons in her fair hair, standing there; when he had only expected the professor, in his old threadbare coat and spectacles. It was Robert Hunter.

"I beg your pardon," he said, coming forward. "Can I do anything for you?"

"I thought Dr. Macpherson was here. I came to see him."

Never losing her calm self-possession on any occasion, as so many young ladies do on no occasion at all, Miss Thornycroft stepped up to the side glass cases to examine the curiosities, talking as easily to him as though she had known him all her life. Without being in the least free, there was an openness of manner about her, an utter absence of tricks and affectation, a straightforward independence, rather remarkable in a young lady. For Robert Hunter it possessed a singular charm.

Before the professor came in, who had forgotten himself down in his cellar, where he had gone after a cherished specimen in the frog line; before Mr. Hunter had pointed out to her a quarter of the new acquisitions in the glass cases—animal, vegetable, and mineral—they knew all about each other: that he was Susan Hunter's brother, and that she was Miss Thornycroft of Coastdown. At mention of her name, a brief vision connected with the past floated across Robert Hunter's brain—of a certain summer evening when he was returning to Guild with his poor young wife, and saw the back of a high open carriage bowling away from his sister's gate, which he was told contained Mr. and Miss Thornycroft. Never since that had he heard the name or thought of the people.

"Do you know, when I came into the room just now, and you were standing with your back to me, I nearly took you for one of my brothers. At the back you are just like him."

Robert Hunter smiled slightly. "And not in the face?"

"Not at all—except, perhaps, a little in the forehead. Cyril has hazel eyes and small features. The hair is exactly like his, the same colour, and grows just as his does in front, leaving the forehead square. If you were to hide your face, showing only the top of the forehead and the hair, I should say you were Cyril."

The professor appeared, and they went into the more habitable part of the house. Robert had not seen his sister since she was a little girl; he had not seen Anna since they parted at Guild. It was altogether an acceptable meeting; but he looked at Anna's face somewhat anxiously.

"Have you been working very much, Anna?" he took occasion to ask, drawing her for a moment aside.

"I am always working very hard," she answered, with her sweet smile of patient endurance. "There is a great deal to be done in schools, you know; but I am well off at Miss Jupp's compared to what I was at the other place. They are very kind to me."

"You have a look upon you as if you felt tired always. It is a curious impression to draw though, perhaps, considering I have seen you but for ten minutes."

"I do feel tired nearly always," acknowledged Anna. "The Miss Jupps think London does not agree with me. I am going to Coastdown for a change for the holidays; I shall get better there."

He thought she would require a longer change than a few holiday weeks. Never in the old days had it struck him that Anna looked fragile; but she certainly did now.

"And now, Robert Hunter, you'll stay with us, as these young ladies are here?" said hospitable Mrs. Macpherson.

He hesitated before replying. Very much indeed would he have liked to remain, but he had made an appointment with a gentleman.

"Put it off," said Mrs. Macpherson.

"There's no time for that. Certainly—if I am not at the office when he comes, one of the partners would see him. But—"

"But what?" asked the professor. "Would not that be a solution of the difficulty?"

"A way out of the mess," put in the professor's wife.

Mr. Hunter laughed. "I was going to say that I have never put away any business for my own convenience since—since I took to it again."

The attraction, or whatever it might be, however, proved too strong for business this afternoon, and Robert Hunter remained at the professor's. When he and Miss Thornycroft parted at night, it seemed that they had known each other for years.

It was very singular; a thing of rare occurrence. We have heard of this sudden mutual liking, the nameless affinity that draws one soul to another; but believe me it is not of very frequent experience. The thought that crossed Robert Hunter's mind that evening more than once was—"I wish that girl was my sister." Any idea of another sort of attachment would be a very long while yet before it penetrated to him as even a possibility.

In the evening, when they got home, at an early hour—Miss Jupp had only given them until eight o'clock, for there was packing to do—Mary Anne Thornycroft went into a fever of indignation to think that no message had been left by or from any of her brothers.

"It is so fearfully careless of them! That is just like my brothers. Do they expect we are to travel alone?"

"My dear, do not put yourself out," said Miss Jupp. "Two young ladies can travel alone very well. You will get there quite safely."

"So far as that goes, ma'am, I could travel alone fearlessly to the end of the world," spoke Mary Anne. "But that is not the question; neither does it excuse their negligence. For all they know, I might have spent all my money, and have none to take me down."

Miss Emma Jupp laughed. "They would suppose that we should supply you."

"Yes, Miss Emma, no doubt. But they had no business to send me word that one of them would be in London to-day to take charge of me home, unless—"

The words were brought to a sudden standstill by the opening of the door. One of the maids appeared at it to announce a guest.

"Mr. Isaac Thornycroft."

There entered the same noble-looking young man, noble in his towering height and strength, that we knew two years ago at Coastdown; he came in with a smile on his bright face—on its fair features, in its blue eyes. Miss Emma Jupp's first thought was, what a likeness he bore to his sister; her second that she had never in her whole life seen any one half so good-looking. It happened that she had never seen him before. Mary Anne began to reproach him for carelessness. He received it all with the most ineffable good humour, the smile brightening on his sunny face.

"I know it is too late, quite wrong of me, but I missed the train at Jutpoint, and had to come by a later one. Which of these two young ladies is Miss Chester?" he added, turning to the two girls who stood together. "I have a—a trifle for her from Captain Copp."

"You shall guess," interposed Mary Anne. "One of them is Anna Chester. Now guess."

It was not difficult. Miss Hunter met his glance fearlessly in a merry spirit; Anna blushed and let fall her eyes. Isaac Thornycroft smiled.

"This is Miss Chester."

"It is all through your stupid shyness, Anna," said Mary Anne in a cross tone. Which of course only increased her confusion. Isaac crossed the room, his eyes bent on the sweet blushing face, as he held out the "trifle" forwarded by Captain Copp.

"Will you accept it, Miss Chester? Captain Copp charged me to take particular care of it, and not to touch it myself."

It was a travelling wickered bottle, holding about a pint. Anna looked at it with curiosity, and Emma Jupp took it out of her hand.

"What can it be?"

"Take out the cork and smell it," suggested Mr. Isaac Thornycroft.

Miss Emma did so; giving a strong sniff. "Dear me! I think it is rum."

"Rum-and-water," corrected Isaac. "Captain Copp begged me to assure Miss Chester that it was only half-and-half, she being a young lady. It is for her refreshment as she goes down to-morrow."

"If that's not exactly like Sam Copp!" exclaimed Miss Jupp with some asperity, while the laugh against Anna went round. "He will never acquire an idea beyond his old sea notions; never. I remember what he was before his leg came off."

"He came all the way to Jutpoint in the omnibus after me when I had driven over, to make sure, I believe, that Mrs. Copp should not be privy to the transaction. It was through his injunctions as to the wicker bottle that I missed my train," concluded Isaac—his eyes, that were bent on Anna Chester, dancing with mirth. At which hers fell again.