"Asked _you_ to marry him, child?"

"Yes."

"And what did you say?"

"What could I say, aunt? He is coming to see you about it to-morrow."

Miss Celia arose from her easy-chair. Perhaps out of the midst of the cloud of years that had gathered behind her there arose the ghost of an old love-dream, never laid--never likely to be laid. At all events her usually shrill voice was modulated to an almost tender key, as, drawing Dolly towards her, she asked,

"Do you love him, Dolly?"

"What should I know about love, aunty?" inquired Dolly; and at that answer the elder woman's embrace relaxed. Here was no sentimental Miss such as she herself had been in her teens, but a girl lacking something as every one felt--who in some way or other was not as other human beings--who even in those remote wilds was able to behold a personable man and not go crazy about him on the instant.

Clearly there was a want in Dolly. Miss Gerace could not imagine what that want might be, but that it existed she entertained not the smallest manner of doubt.

After that answer about love, Dolly slipped out of her aunt's arms, out of the room, out of the house. It was a quiet country place, and so she merely wrapped a shawl about her head and shoulders, and walked a few paces up the road to a field path across which she struck--a field path leading to the church-yard.

There were no gates and bolts and locks there--cutting off the dead from the living. Dolly swung back the turnstile gate--it had often yielded to her touch before--and entered the enclosure.

Leaning over the spot where her father lay, she--this girl who had never known a mother--whispered her story.

Dolly's best friend was right, I fear, and the girl was a heathen; but this visit to the dead had been a fancy of hers for years. Whenever she was troubled, whenever she was glad, whenever she was in perplexity, whenever a difficult problem had been solved--she carried the trouble, the gladness, the perplexity, the solution to a mound where the grass grew, which the daisies covered, and went away relieved.

A strange creature--destitute of beauty, not in the least like other young ladies, with occasionally a biting tongue--for Mortomley to choose.

Yet he chose her; that was the last act wanting to complete his ruin.

Had he married Leonora Trebasson, she would have made him successful.

Her grand nature, her imperial beauty, her strength of character, would have impelled him to deeds of daring; she would have armed him for the battle and insisted on his coming back victorious.

As matters stood, he wooed and won Dolly; he married her in the spring succeeding his first visit to Dassell. When the woods were putting on their earliest robings of delicate green he made her his wife, and Miss Trebasson was principal bridesmaid, and Mr. Henry Werner best man.

So the play I have to recount commenced; how it ended, if you have patience, you shall know.

CHAPTER V.

ABOUT MRS. MORTOMLEY AND OTHERS.

As has been already stated, Mr. Henry Werner assisted at the wedding in the character of best man, and it was to this circumstance that he owed the good fortune of subsequently marrying Miss Trebasson himself.

Had he met that young lady--as he did afterwards meet her, as a mere guest at Homewood--in the unexalted position of Mrs. Mortomley's friend, he would never have thought of asking her to be his wife; but seeing her for the first time with the glamour of Dassell Court upon her, and the glory of her relatives surrounding her, he thought it would be a fine thing for him to win and wed such a woman even if she had not, as he soon found out was the case, a penny of fortune.

More of these matches are made than people generally imagine. It is astonishing to look around and behold the number of well-born women who have married men, that at first sight one might imagine to have been as far distant from the upper ten thousand as earth is from heaven; and it is more astonishing still to find that these women have, one and all--despite their prejudices, their pedigree, their pride, and their delicate sensitiveness--married for money.

It would be useless to deny that Leonora Trebasson did this. She was not a girl of whom such a step could have been predicated, and yet, looking at the affair from a common-sense point of view, it was quite certain--after the event--that if no one for whom she could feel affection possessed of money came to woo, she would marry some person for whom she did not care in the least.

It was necessary for her to marry; she knew it, she had always known it.

Her mother's small jointure died with her. Whenever her cousin, the heir of Dassell Court, took a wife--and there was just as great a necessity for him to find an heiress as for her to meet a man possessed of a competence, at all events--she understood she and her mother would have to leave the Court, and settle down in perhaps such another cottage as that tenanted by Miss Gerace.

There had been a tenderness once between herself and Charley--the Honourable Charles Trebasson--but the elders on both sides comprehending how disastrous such a pauper union must prove, speedily nipped that attachment in the bud, and the future Lord went out into the world to look for his heiress, whilst Miss Trebasson stayed at Dassell to await the husband fate might send her.

Of these and such like matters the mother and daughter never spoke openly; but it was clearly understood between them, that curates without private fortune, officers with no income beyond their pay, the younger sons of neighbouring squires, were to be considered as utterly ineligible for husbands.

Mrs. Trebasson herself having made a love-match and suffered for the imprudence every day of her married life, she had educated Leonora to keep her feelings well in hand and on no account to let affection run away with her judgment.

When Archibald Mortomley went down that summer to fish, and recruit his health, Mrs. Trebasson's hopes grew high that love and prudence might, for once, be able to walk hand in hand together.

She liked Mortomley--he was the kind of man to whom women, especially elderly women, take naturally with as true and keen an instinct as children--and the thought passed through her mind that here, at last, was a possible son-in-law, who would not merely make a good husband to her daughter, but prove a friend to herself.

She pictured Homewood, and fancied she could end her days there happily.

In those days of uncertainty the future wore a fairer face for mother and child than had ever been the case previously.

And then the vision departed--Dolly, whom Mrs. Trebasson had always regarded as less than nobody, was preferred to Leonora. Without lifting a finger to secure the prize--without the slightest effort or trouble on her part--the stranger yielded himself captive. It was not Dolly's fault, nevertheless Mrs. Trebasson regarded her with unchristian feelings for the remainder of her life.

When, after a time, Henry Werner preferred his suit and was accepted, Mrs. Trebasson never spoke of ending her days in his house; rather she trusted she "should not have to leave Dassell Court until she was laid in the family vault."

She had no fault to find with Mr. Werner. He was a much richer man than Mortomley; he was possessed of more worldly sense than any Mortomley ever boasted; he was ambitious and might rise to be a man of mark as well as one of wealth; he spent money lavishly; he evidently intended to maintain a handsome establishment; he was proud of the beauty and stately grace of his _fiancee_; he bowed down before the Darshams and worshipped them; he was of a suitable age and sufficiently presentable--and yet--and yet--Mrs. Trebasson felt her daughter ought to have married Archibald Mortomley, and then Dolly Gerace might have been chosen by Henry Werner or some one like him.

Dolly had no love, however, for Henry Werner. So far as she was in the habit of developing antipathies she felt one for him, and when she learned he had proposed for Leonora and been accepted, she expressed her opinions on the subject with a freedom which Mrs. Trebasson, at all events, keenly resented.

"You must not be angry with poor Dolly, mamma," said her friend, tearing Mrs. Mortomley's letter into very small fragments and then strewing them on the fire. Mrs. Trebasson had desired the letter should be preserved and deposited with other family treasures, to the end that Dolly might, at some future day, be confronted with it and covered with confusion; but her daughter would permit nothing of the kind.

"I do not know why you call her 'poor' Dolly," retorted Mrs. Trebasson, "she has an excellent husband who gives her everything she wants and never crosses her whims. She has plenty of money and a pretty house--she who never had a sovereign in her pocket she could call her own; and now, forsooth, she must give herself airs and presume to dictate to you."

"She does not dictate, mamma, she only expresses her opinions--she means no harm."

"It would be harm in any one else. Why should you defend her when she is so grossly impertinent?"

"I love Dolly," was the quiet answer. "She is often very foolish, sometimes very trying, always disappointing and unsatisfying; but I shall love her to the end."

When Miss Trebasson set her foot down upon such a sentence as the foregoing, Mrs. Trebasson understood further expostulation was useless, and so the offensive letter smouldered into ashes, and the bride elect tried to forget its contents as she had too readily, perhaps, forgiven them.

Fortunately for all concerned Dolly was unable to be present at her friend's wedding, and Mortomley gladly enough made the state of his wife's health a plea for excusing his own attendance.

Owing either to her own folly, or to some remoter cause with which this story has no concern, Mrs. Mortomley was, at that period, having an extremely hard fight for life. She had been happy with her child--that Lenore of whom Mr. Kleinwort made mention--for a couple of days. Every one was satisfied, husband, doctor, nurse; and then suddenly there came a reaction, and Dolly hung between life and death, insensible to the reality of either.

When Mrs. Werner, after her wedding tour, drove over and visited her friend, she found outwardly a very different Dolly to that photographed in her memory.

A pale weak woman, with hair cut short and softly curling round her temples; a creature with transparent hands; dark eyes looking eagerly and anxiously out of a white sunken face; the Dolly of old; but Dolly as she might have looked had she gone to heaven and come back again to earth; Dolly etherealised, and with a beauty of delicacy strange as it was new--but Dolly unchanged mentally.

With a feeling of surprise and regret Mrs. Werner confessed to herself that not even the fact of having set her feet in the valley of the shadow, and being brought back into the sunshine, almost by a miracle, had altered her friend.

The want there had been in Dolly before her marriage still remained unsupplied.