do with it. She might possibly be worthy of better things, but then women are always fond of throwing themselves away. Nine out of ten clever women are fools in that one matter alone-the matter of the men they marry. If Juliet had set her heart on this lanky youth, and her father had wished it, and her step-mother and Mr. Bruce were also in favour of it-why, there seemed nothing more left for him to do but to set the bells a-ringing and give her away with a smiling face. And then one comfort of it would be that his guardianship would be over, and he would go back again to India, and wash his hands of the whole business for ever. Yes, it was much the best thing for everybody concerned, and would simplify matters very much for himself. And then he roused himself with a half impatient sigh to listen to Mrs. Blair, who was still going over the many advantages of the match. "He has known her all her life, you know, and so thoroughly understands and appreciates the dear girl; and, being the only son, of course he comes into whatever money there will be as well as the property. The daughters have their mother's fortune. Nice clever girls the Miss Travers are, and so fond of darling Juliet-they make quite a sister of her already; indeed, the whole family are ready to welcome her with open I am so glad to have had this talk with you, Colonel Fleming, and to have secured your sympathy in the matter. I felt so sure that your admirable good sense would make you take the same view of the subject as I do; though I fear you don't care so much for the sentiment of love as I do; you naughty, heartless, matter-of-fact man!" and here Mrs. Blair again brought her fan playfully into action. arms. "I certainly am not given much to thinking about love affairs, if that is what you mean, Mrs. Blair," said Colonel Fleming, good-temperedly. "The position of a father to a full-grown young woman is a new one to me." "Ah, yes; and you so thoroughly put yourself into the place of her dear father, don't you, Colonel Fleming? So nice of you!" and again went that covert glance up at him from those sharp-looking eyes. This time Colonel Fleming caught the look, and it set him thinking. Had this pretty passée beauty, with her silly gushing affection and her civil speeches to himself, any double meaning in all that she was saying? Was she cloaking a secret enmity under the guise of friendship and frankness? or, gracious heavens! had she read him better even than he could read himself? And through all the tanned bronze of his weather-beaten face Colonel Hugh Fleming turned red at the bare idea of what she might have seen, or might have fancied that she had seen, of his innermost thoughts. RA CHAPTER III. THE TRAVERS FAMILY. ATHER more than three miles distant from Sotherne Court stands Bradley House, the residence of Mr., Mrs., Master, and the Misses Travers. It is a long, low, irregular white building, with no architectural beauty, and in a very dilapidated condition indeed. The mouldy plaster is peeling off the walls in many places, the window-sashes and door-frames have been guiltless of paint for years, the garden is weed-grown and uncared for, and chickens and dogs wander alike unreproved over the once trim Italian parterre in front of the drawing-room windows. In a word, the general appearance of the house is povertystricken and neglected. And yet Squire Travers is not at all a poor man; he has a good moderate fortune derived from a small but compact property, which if it does not show quite the same high standard of model farming as do the adjoining acres of his wealthier neighbour, Miss Blair, is still fairly cared for and productive. Moreover, his wife has a few thousands of her own, quite enough to portion off his unmarried daughters comfortably. There is no reasonable cause why the plaster and paint should be dropping off the outside of the house unheeded and unrepaired, nor why the Turkey carpet in the dining-room should be threadbare and the stairs carpetless, nor why the whole of the antiquated mahogany furniture should be dropping to pieces unmended all over the house. No reasonable cause I have said—no ; but there was a cause, and many people, including Mrs. Travers herself, and also her son Cecil, and her daughter Mary, considered the cause a very unreasonable one indeed. For Squire Travers kept the hounds, and for a man of small property and moderate means to divert those moneys which should by rights have been spent on the paperer, the painter, the upholsterer, and the cabinetmaker, upon hounds and horses, huntsmen and whip's wages, and compensation to farmers, was felt by sundry members of his family to be a grievance indeed. But old Thomas Travers had kept the hounds for years, as his father had done before him, and he often said he would starve himself and his family on bread and water sooner than give them up. If you will go round to the stables at the back of the house you will see a very different state of things. There in the red-tiled courtyard, kept as clean and neat as the deck of a yacht, numerous grooms and stableboys are bustling backwards and forwards in and out of the long rows of stalls and loose boxes which take up two sides of the square; no lack of paint and plaster here! The stalls are light and airy, the woodwork is polished till it glitters, the horses are sleek and shiny, and in good condition; all is life, and brisk business, and order; and Mr. Davis, the stud groom, swaggers about superintending everything and everybody, with his hands in his trousers' pockets, a straw in his mouth, and a villanous-looking but perfectly bred bulldog at his heels-" for all the world like a dook!" as says an admir ing under-housemaid, who worships him adoringly at a distance. If I were to take you on to the kennels, a mile and a half off, you would see the same story; buildings in first-rate repair, with all the most modern improvements carried out to perfection. The stables, the huntsman's house, the kennels themselves, everything in apple pie order; and meanwhile the Squire's wife catches her foot in that hole in the carpet every time she goes into her bedroom. The decorations of the entrance hall indicate sufficiently well the predominating influence in the household. Hunting crops, spurs, bits, fox brushes, heads, and pads, arranged in artistic patterns, literally line the walls, while a glimpse through the open door of the Squire's study reveals the same style of ornament relieved by hunting and sporting pictures all over the walls of that most cosy-looking apartment-for there is no such room for comfort and ease and luxury in any house, large or small, as the master's "den." Here resort all the members of the family when they desire a little peace and enjoyment; when they want to fly from the practising of Maria's scales and Czerny's exercises on the drawing-room piano, or from the squalls and shouts of the children's games along the passages on a wet day, or from the stiff decorum of the lady visitors in the morning room. Here are comfortable chairs on which, unreproved, you may repose your feet if you feel so disposed, even if your boots are heavy or bespattered with mud; here you may smoke your pipe or drink your brandy and soda, resting your pipe as you do so on the carpet at your feet with no dread of rebuke before your eyes; here you may snooze away a Sunday afternoon over the last new novel or the "Sporting Gazette," perfectly safe from the inroads of the Reverend Snuffles, who, even if he chance to visit the house during the afternoon, is not likely to venture into the inner sanctum and to catch you at it. Squire Travers's "study" was a haven of rest after this sort. Many a long hour had he and his eldest daughter, Georgie, spent together in this cosy retreat, whilst the other members of the family were employed in other and more homely avocations; the Squire dozing over his pipe, and Georgie writing letters in her father's name to the farmers, or settling in her own mind all about next month's meets, or often merely conning over the ordnance map, and going over again in imagination some famous run of last season. For Georgie Travers was her father's own daughter. A slight, wiry-looking little creature, with a blonde head and small baby features; she had, nevertheless, a perfect seat on a horse, a wrist as strong as a man's, and the most indomitable pluck and nerve of any lover of hunting who followed her father's hounds. And keen! Why, there are no words to describe Georgie's keenness in the noble sport. Wind or rain, early or late, nothing stopped her; she was often out and away on winter mornings long before her mother opened her eyes to her wearisome life, or her sister Mary had turned round shivering in her bed to ring for her cup of tea. Near or far, wet or fine, no meet was ever without Georgie Travers's slight figure, well balanced on her lean thorough-bred chestnut, or on one of her father's big bloodlooking bays, being seen close to the Squire's side when the hounds threw off. Georgie is her father's secretary and right hand, much to her mother's disapprobation, who thinks her whole conduct unfeminine and indecorous, and often suggests that she should superintend her young sister's practising. "Let her alone," growls the Squire; "let her alone, ma'am. I want the girl myself;" and so Mrs. Travers is silent, and Georgie takes up her abode in her father's study as a matter of course. The father and daughter are there now very busy together. The Squire is in topboots and breeches; winter and summer alike, he is always attired in these symbols of his profession, from morning until dinner time, Sundays excepted, when he dons a frock-coat and sombre-looking trousers, in which his burly form looks sadly out of place. He sits leaning upon the table with both arms, and dictating to his daughter, who is scribbling away for bare life. Cub-hunting begins next week, ushering in the more solemn rites of November, and pretty well every farmer in the county has to be written to. Georgie has a beagle pup secreted on her lap under the table, which she keeps furtively stroking with her left hand, whilst a superannuated hound, blind with one eye and otherwise considered past his work, and so delivered over unto her as a pet, lies close to her feet on the folds of her dress. "And I propose drawing the Colebrook woods at six o'clock on Monday morning". reads Georgie aloud after her father's dictation-" and should be glad to know if you have many foxes in your covers," continues the Squire. "Why, not one, papa; you know there's not one! I believe that old Briggs has trapped them all the summer," cries Georgie excitedly. "Shouldn't wonder-surly old brute but we must write civilly all the same; he knows very well what to expect if he has trapped them, that's all. Make haste and sign it; that's the last. Why do you keep that pup on your lap, child? It is covered with fleas puppies always are. What a girl you are!" adds the father admiringly, as Georgie stands up and hugs the puppy, perfectly regardless of its reputed inhabitants. "You ought to have been a boy; can't make out why you weren't. Ah, well!" with half a sigh, "go and find that big milksop brother of yours, my girl; I must give him a dressing now, I suppose!" Georgie lingers a minute putting away her writing-case. "Don't be hard on poor Cis, papa; you know he isn't strong." "Not strong? Pooh, fiddlesticks! What business has a great big fellow six foot high to be ailing like a girl? I've no patience with such nonsense. D'ye ever hear me say I'm not strong? d'ye ever find me not able to be up and after the hounds at six o'clock in the morning? d'ye ever hear me say I've got a headache or a pain in my chest or my back? and I'm sixty and your brother's twenty-three! All d-nonsense I say," said the Squire, working himself into a rage; "it's all your mother's molly-coddling has done it, I say; and a precious muff she's made of him. A son of mine who can't ride to hounds-ugh!" and the supreme contempt and disgust expressed in the final ejaculation made Georgie laugh in spite of her sympathy with her brother. Mr. Travers, like many people blessed themselves with robust health and a strong constitution, regarded delicate people with the utmost contempt. It was almost a sin in his eyes not to be able to walk and ride like an athlete. It was a perpetual sore to him that his only son should be weak and unequal to physical exertion; he could not understand it, nor, indeed, believe in it at all, and nothing would persuade him that Cecil was not in a great measure shamming. He was never tired, he said; he was never ill. If he did feel a little squeamish in the morning, why, a pint of home-brewed ale and a good gallop across the fields put him all straight in half an hour! And then, when Cecil shook his head and doubted whether such remedies would have the smallest effect in his case, his father lost his temper and turned round and swore at him for a coward and a fool. Good-hearted little Georgie took her brother's part and tried to shield him from the Squire's wrath; but she was not free herself from a certain amount of pitying contempt, born of a perfectly strong body and a healthy appetite, for the delicate indolence of her brother. Like the Squire, she thought Providence had made a mistake, and that she ought to have been the son and Cis the daughter. some smell; and I've only come to give papa's message to Cis," says Georgie, answering her mother's complaints categorically, as she does the farmers, in the letters she is accustomed to docket and answer. "Come along, Cis; make haste!" "My poor boy!" sighs his mother, lookfondly after him. She went away to find her brother, with the puppy still in her arms, and Chanticleer, the one-eyed, toothless old hound, following ing close at her heels. Cis, papa wants you in the study." Master Cis was lying down on the sofa in his mother's morning room, with an open book of Browning's poems on his chest, his eyes closed, and his arms thrown up behind his head. Mrs. Travers, a pale washed-outlooking woman in drab, sat hard by, dictating a French story to Flora, aged twelve, whilst through the open door in the adjoining room could be seen the second daughter Mary, who, reclining on an arm-chair, with a novel, was supposed to be looking after the four-finger exercises of little Amy, the youngest child. "One, two, three, four-time, child!" in Mary's cross sharp voice. "Ils n'avaient plus-l'espérance-de sauver-les naufragés "-slowly drawls out Mrs. Travers from the table. "Do you think they will be saved?" asks Flora, breathlessly, as she writes down an agonising description of the shipwreck of an unhappy pair of lovers. "Not a doubt of it; and they'll marry and live happy ever after!" breaks in Cis, reassuringly, from the sofa, thereby showing that he has been listening too. And then comes Georgie with those awful words, "Papa wants you in the study, Cis." "Your brother has a headache, Georgie," says Mrs. Travers, deprecatingly. 66 'Well, it will be much quieter for him there than here with all the lessons going on." "I wish you wouldn't bring those nasty, dirty dogs here," says her mother; but little Flora has slipped down from her chair and thrown both her arms round Chanticleer's neck, and is kissing him rapturously on his blind eye. "Flora, you naughty child! come back to your chair this minute. I declare, Georgie, you quite smell of the stables, and I wish you wouldn't come in here disturbing your sisters at their lessons." "The dogs aren't a bit dirty, mamma; they are as clean as Christians, and, if I do smell of stables, it's not at all an unwhole "What is it about, Georgie; is he angry with me?" "Not more than usual," she answers, laughing, as they go out together; "but, if you would just try and please him sometimes, he would be so much gentler to you. Now, why didn't you go out and see them exercising that new mare this morning, as he asked you to do at breakfast, instead of lounging on the sofa with that trash ?" she added, pointing contemptuously to the poetry book. "Browning is not trash," said Cis indignantly; "and what do I care about new mares?" "Ah, what, indeed!" said Georgie, turning off from him with a sigh; and, passing out through the open hall door, she took the slanting path across the paddock that led towards the kennels, with Chanticleer and the "pup" following boisterously and noisily behind her. As to Cis, he waited for a moment irresolute outside the study door before he could summon up courage to turn the handle. He stood very much in awe of his father, and these private conferences in that cosy little room were apt to be of an unpleasant and stormy nature. The Squire's first words to-day, however, were in an amicable tone of voice. "Well Cis, my boy, have you been to have a look at that young mare?" And Cis had the presence of mind to answer, "Not yet, sir." "Ah! well, didn't suppose you would; but it isn't of that I wanted to speak; light your pipe, boy; ah! no, by the way, you don't smoke; makes you feel sick, don't it, eh?" This was another sore point with the Squire, that his only son should not be able to smoke a quiet pipe with him; and he was for ever pretending to forget it, in order to remind him of this delinquency and to sneer at him about it. Cis certainly had something to bear from his father, too; he got very red and did not answer. "Well, Cis, I want to talk to you about Miss Blair." "About Miss Blair, sir?" stammered Cis, getting redder still. "Yes; you now very well my wishes on that subject; it's high time you made the running there, you know. She's a fine girl, and a good girl, and goes deuced well across country, too-not to be compared to your sister, of course; but still she goes very straight, very straight indeed, and the property fits in very well; a fine property and a nice girl,-I don't know what more you want, Cis." "I assure you, sir, my dearest wish, my greatest joy would be to induce Juliet to be my wife. I love her dearer than I love my life." "Ha, ha, ha!" interrupted the Squire, with the most irreverent guffaw; "ha, ha!" | don't go rehearsing the proposal to me, my dear boy. What's the good talking of love and sentiment and bosh to me? That's all humbug. What does all that signify? The girl has got a pot of money and a fine property-you needn't say any more about it. Go in and win if you can, and make haste about it. I want you to do something to the old place when I'm gone, Cis. I don't suppose you'll keep the hounds. Ah, it's a pity Georgie wasn't a boy! But if you marry Juliet Blair you'll live at Sotherne and have a little money to do up the old house for your mother and the girls. It's a fine match for you, my boy." "I don't think of that for one moment, sir, I assure you," said the boy rather hotly. "Well, then, you should think of it, Cis. Why, what do you suppose I married your mother for?” "Love, sir, I trust," answered Cis, gravely and reproachfully. "Not a bit of it. It was for that slip of land that dove-tailed into Cosby farm, down on the flat. I'd always coveted that land, and then she had her bit of money besides, and I don't say, Cis, that I didn't like and esteem her, and she's a very good woman in her way; but I might have liked and esteemed her ever so much, I shouldn't have married her if it hadn't been for the land and the money. Lord bless you! an eldest son must think of these things; there's no particular virtue in marrying for love; it's all the same in a dozen years' time whatever you've married for; only, when you've got something substantial besides, it makes everything pleasanter for life." Cis looked very grave during this philosophical enunciation of his father's views upon marriage in general and his own in particular, and again signified his perfect willingness, nay, eagerness, to marry Miss Blair for herself and her money combined. "Only," he added sadly, "there's one thing against it. I'm afraid she won't have me. "And shouldn't be a bit surprised if she wouldn't," said the old man, veering round unreasonably. "Why don't you ride, and hunt, and go about like other men, and do something to make a sensible girl proud of you, instead of wasting your life doing nothing?" "I haven't done badly at college, sir," remonstrated Cis; "and it is not my fault I am not strong enough for violent out-door exercise. You forget I took a first in mods." "What's mods?—a parcel of Latin and Greek, and rubbish! I'd rather you'd have broken your collar bone over a stiff bit of timber! Not strong, indeed! No wonder you're not strong-always molly-coddling over the fire with a book, and never clearing your brains out with a good gallop across country. I sent you to college to make a man of you, sir, not to learn a pack of Latin and stuff! Why, Wattie Ellison is Georgie's lo--" began Cis. Nothing of the sort," thundered the Squire. "Don't go coupling your sister's name with an idle young pauper like that, though sure he can ride a bit. Georgie knows better. But you'll let Juliet Blair slip through your fingers if you're not sharp. Go and propose, boy; don't be a fool. Girls always come round at last if a man keeps on worry, worry, worry at 'em. Turn 'em round; keep their heads straight at the fence; if they refuse the first time, turn 'em round and send 'em at it again," he added not unkindly. "I am most anxious to marry her, sir but she has refused me dozens of times ;" and |
