"I wonder what would really change her," thought Mrs. Werner looking at the poor wan cheeks, at the wasted figure, at the feeble woman too weak to hold her child in her arms and coo soft tender nothings in its ear.

One day Mrs. Werner was to understand; but before that day arrived she was destined to see many changes in Dolly.

When Mrs. Mortomley was sufficiently recovered to endure the fatigue of travelling, the doctors recommended her to leave London and remain for some time at a quiet watering-place on the East coast. Near that particular town resided some relatives of the Trebassons, and to them Mrs. Werner wrote, asking them to call on her friend.

That proved the turning point in Dolly's life, and she took, as generally proves the case, the wrong road. With what anguish of spirit, over what weary and stony paths, through what hedges set thick with thorns, she retraced her steps, it is part of the purpose of this story to show. As matters then stood, she simply went along winding lanes bordered with flowers, festooned by roses, the sun shining over-head, the birds singing all around; went on, unthinking of evil, happier than she had ever been before; satisfied, because at last she had found her vocation.

To enjoy herself--that was the object for which she was created. If she did not say this in so many words, she felt it, felt it like a blessing each night as she laid her head on her pillow--her poor foolish little head which was not strong enough to bear the excitement of the new and strange life suddenly opened before her.

She was young--she was recovering from dangerous illness; she was, notwithstanding her feeble health, bright and gay and sun-shiny. She had plenty of money, for her husband grudged her nothing his love could supply; she was interesting and fresh, and new, and nave, and she was the dearest friend Leonora Trebasson ever had; what wonder therefore that the people amongst whom she was thrown fussed over, and petted and flattered, and humoured her, till they taught Dolly wherein her power and her genius lay; so that when Mrs. Mortomley returned home she took with her graces previously undeveloped, and left behind the virtue of unconsciousness and the mantle of personal humility which had hitherto clothed her.

Up to that time Dolly had not thought much of herself. Now she was as one possessed of a beautiful face, who having seen her own reflection for the first time can never forget the impression it produced upon her.

In her own country and amongst her own people, Dolly had been no prophet. Rather she had been regarded as a nonentity, and the little world of Dassell wondered at Mr. Mortomley's choice. Amongst strangers Dolly had spread her wings and tried her strength. She felt in the position of a usually silent man, considered by his friends rather stupid than otherwise, who in a fresh place and under unwonted circumstances opens his mouth and gives utterance to words he knew not previously were his to command.

Yes, Dolly would never be humble again. She had lost that attraction, and through all the years to follow, the years filled with happiness and sorrow, exaltation and abasement, she never recovered it.

There are plants of a rare sweetness which die more surely from excess of sunshine than from the severity of frost; common plants, yet that we miss from the borders set round and about our homes with a heart-ache we never feel when a more flaunting flower fails to make its appearance; and just such a tender blossom, just such a healing herb, died that summer in the garden of Dolly's nature.

And she only nineteen! Well-a-day, the plant had not perhaps had time to strike its roots very deep, and the soil was certainly uncongenial. At all events its place knew it no more, and something of sweetness and softness departed with it.

But it was only a very keen and close observer who could have detected all this; for other flowers sprang up and made a great show where that had been--graces of manner, inflections of voice, thoughtfulness for others, which if acquired seemed none the less charming on that account, a desire to please and be pleased, which exercised itself on rich and poor alike--these things and the sunshine of old which she still carried with her, made Dolly seem a very exceptional woman in the bright years which were still to come.

They made her so exceptional in fact, that her god-mother left her eight thousand pounds. She would not have left her eight pence in the Dassell days, but after spending a fortnight at Homewood she returned home, altered her will which had provided for the establishment and preservation of certain useless charities, and bequeathed eight thousand pounds, her plate, and her jewellery, and her lace, to her beloved god-daughter Dollabella, wife of Archibald Mortomley, Esquire, of Homewood.

If people be travelling downhill the devil is always conveniently at hand to give the vehicle they occupy a shove. That eight thousand pounds proved a nice impetus to the Mortomleys, and a further legacy from a distant relative which dropped in shortly after the previous bequest, accelerated the descent.

When Dolly was married, no girl could have come to a husband with more economical ideas than she possessed. Poverty and she had been friends all her life; she had been accustomed to shortness of money, to frugal fare, to the closest and strictest expenditure from her childhood upwards, and had Mortomley been wise as he was amiable, she might have regarded changing a five-pound note with a certain awe and hesitation to the end of her days.

In money as in other matters, however, she speedily, in that different atmosphere, lost her head. There can be no greater mistake than to suppose, because a person has made both ends meet on, say a hundred and fifty pounds a year, he will be able to manage comfortably on fifteen hundred; on the contrary, he is nearly certain either to turn miser or spendthrift. Dolly had not the faintest idea how to deal with a comfortable income, and as her husband was as incompetent as herself, he let her have pretty well her own way, which was a very bad way indeed.

Like his wife, perhaps, he thought those legacies represented a great deal more money than was the case, since money only represents money according to the way in which it chances to be expended.

It is not in the unclouded noontide, however, when fortune wears its brightest smiles, that any one dreams of the wild night--the darkness of despair to follow. It seems to me that the stories we hear of second sight, of presentiments, of warnings, had a deeper origin than the usual superstitious fantasies we associate with them. I think they were originally intended as parables--as prophecies.

I believe the words of dark import were designed to convey to the man--prosperous, victorious--safe in the security of his undiscovered sins, the same lesson that Nathan's final sentence, "Thou art the Man,"

conveyed in _his_ hour of fancied safety to the heart of David. I believe under the disguise of a thrice-told tale, those inscrutable warnings of which we hear, arresting a man in the middle of a questionable story or a peal of drunken laughter, were meant to be as truly writings on the wall as ever silenced the merriment in Belshazzar's halls--as certainly prophecies as that dream which prefigured Nebuchadnezzar's madness.

And there was a time when portents, prophecies, and parables did influence men for good, did turn them from the evil, did turn their thoughts from earth to heaven, but that was in the days when people having time to think--thought; when sometimes alone, separate from their fellow-creatures, able to forget for a period the world and its requirements, they were free to think of that which, spite of a learned divine's dictum, is more wonderful and more bewildering than eternity--the soul of man--the object of his creation, the use and reason and purpose of his ever having been made in God's image to walk erect upon the earth.

There were not wanting, in the very middle of their abundant prosperity, signs and tokens sufficient to have assured the Mortomleys that to the life, one at least of them was leading, there must come an end; but neither husband nor wife had eyes to see presages which were patent to the very ordinary minds of some of the business men with whom the owner of Homewood had dealings. Notwithstanding his large connexion, his monopoly of several lucrative branches of his trade, his own patrimony, his wife's thousands, Mortomley was always short of money.

When once shortness of money becomes chronic, it is quite certain the patient is suffering under a mortal disease. People who are clever in commercial matters understand this fact thoroughly. Chronic shortness of money has no more to do with unexpected reverses, with solvent poverty, with any ailment curable by any means short of sharp and agonizing treatment, than the heart throbs of a man destined some day to fall down stone dead in the middle of a sentence, has a likeness to the pulsations of fever, or the languid flow of life which betokens that the body is temporarily exhausted.

Like all persons, however, who are sickening unto death, Mortomley was the last to realize the fact.

He knew he was embarrassed, he knew why he was embarrassed, and he thought he should have no difficulty in clearing himself of those embarrassments.

And, in truth, had he been a wise man he might have done so. If, after the death of his brother, which occurred about seven years subsequent to his own marriage with Dolly, he had faced his position, there would have been no story to tell about him or his estate either; but instead of doing that, he drifted--there are hundreds and thousands in business, in love, on sea or land, who when an emergency comes, always drift--and always make ship-wreck of their fortunes and their lives in consequence.

For years he had helped his step-brother by going security for him, by lending his name, by giving him money, by paying his debts. Somehow the security had never involved pecuniary outlay. The loan of the name had been renewed, passed into different channels, held over, manipulated in fact by Mr. Richard Halling, until, in very truth, Mortomley, at best as wretched a financier as he was an admirable inventor, knew no more than his own daughter how accounts stood between him and the man who had been his mother's favourite son.

One day, however, Mr. Richard Halling caught cold--a fortnight after, he was dead. The debts he left behind him were considerable; his effects small. To Mortomley he bequeathed the former, together with his son and daughter. Of his effects the creditors took possession.

The event cut up Mr. Mortomley considerably. He was a man who, making no fresh friends, felt the loss of relatives morbidly.

He returned from the funeral looking like one broken-hearted, and brought back with him to Homewood his nephew and niece, who were to remain there "until something definite could be settled about their future."

To this arrangement Dolly made no objection. Dolly would not have objected had her husband suggested inviting the noblemen composing the House of Lords, or a regiment of soldiers, or a squad of workhouse boys.

People came and people went. It was all the same to Dolly.

CHAPTER VI.

MRS. MORTOMLEY IS ADVISED FOR HER GOOD.

"My dear, you never mean to tell me Richard Halling's son and daughter are _here_ for an indefinite period." It was Mrs. Werner who, dressed in a light summer muslin, which trailed behind her over the grass, addressed this remark to Mrs. Mortomley attired in deep mourning--barathea and crape trailing behind her likewise.

"Yes, they are," said Dolly indifferently. "For how long a time they are to be here I have not the faintest idea. It makes no difference to me.

They go their way and I go mine. Antonia dresses herself to receive her _fiance_ and goes to stay with his sister. Rupert lounges about, plays the piano, bribes Lenore to sit still like an angel. They do not interfere with me and I do not interfere with them. There is nothing to make a song about in the matter."

"Dolly," said her friend, "You will go your own way once too often."

Dolly opened her eyes as wide as she could, and asked, "Whose way would you have me go."

"I would have you take a woman's place and assume a wife's responsibilities."

"Good gracious!" and Dolly plumped down on the grass.

"Leonora, you utter dark sayings, be kind enough to explain your words of wisdom in plain English."

There was a garden chair close at hand, and Mrs. Werner took advantage of it to lessen the distance between herself and her friend. Being a small, short, slight, lithe woman, Dolly could pose her person anywhere.

Being tall, stately, a lady "with a presence," Mrs. Werner would as soon have thought of dropping on the grass as of climbing a tree.

"Do you remember Dassell?" she asked softly.

"Do I remember Dassell," repeated Dolly, and her brown eyes had a far-away look in them as she answered, "You might have shaped your singular question better, Nora; ask me if I shall ever forget it, and then I shall answer you in the words of Moultrie's, 'Forget Thee,' which really does go admirably to the air of Lucy Neal; I wish you would try how well."

"Dolly do be serious for five minutes, if you can. Do you never long for the old quiet life again."

"No I do not," answered Mrs. Mortomley promptly. "It was very well while it lasted; good, nice, peaceful, what you will, but I could no more go back to that than I could to a rattle and coral and bells. I have gone forward--I have passed that stage. We must go forward, we must travel from stage to stage till the end, whether we like the journey or not. My journey has been very pleasant, so far."

"Has it been satisfactory?" asked Mrs. Werner.

"Has yours?" retorted Dolly; then, without waiting for a reply, went on:

"We have all our ideal life, and the real must differ from it. We have our ideal husbands, as our husbands have had their ideal wives, and the real are never like the ideal. Well, what does it matter? We would not marry our ideals now if we could, so what is the use of thinking about them. Has my life been satisfactory? you ask. Yes, I think so. I am not very old now. I am five-and-twenty, Leonora, four years younger than you, and yet I think if the whole thing were stopped this minute, if God himself said to me now, you have had your share of happiness, you have eaten all the feasts set out for you too fast, you must walk out of the sunshine and make way for some one else, I could not grumble even mentally; I have had my innings, Nora, let the future bring what it will."