LENORE.

When Mrs. Mortomley stated that the rich men's wives--the carriage-and-pair and moderate-single-brougham ladies, who had duly called at Homewood and made acquaintance with the colour-maker's bride--hated her, her statement was probably too sweeping.

Hatred is a big word, and conveys the idea of an overwhelming amount of detestation, and I do not think really there was a woman amongst the whole number included in Dolly's mental and verbal condemnation who was not far too much occupied with the grandeur of her own surroundings--the wish to eclipse her neighbours--the perfections of her children and the shortcomings of her servants, to have time to cultivate any feeling stronger than very sufficient dislike for the new mistress of Homewood.

So far as dislike went, Mrs. Mortomley was right. The ladies who called upon her, and who, in their own way--which was not her way--were wiser, better, happier women than Dolly, disliked her as nation dislikes nation, as class dislikes class, as sect dislikes sect, as diverging politicians dislike each other.

There was no blame attaching to any one in the matter. It could not be said that anything Dolly did repulsed these worthy matrons. What God and circumstances had made her was the cause of their antipathy.

A cat is a nice domestic animal in the eyes of many people, and a dog has many qualities which endear him to an appreciative master; but we do not blame either because they cannot agree--we say they are better separate than together. Mrs. Mortomley and the worthy, kindly, prim, straight-laced female pharisees who had been disposed to look amiably upon her, were better apart.

Mrs. Werner, with her stately manner, with her--by them--unapproachable heart, with her high-bred courtesy and innate knowledge of the world, delighted them. Though in her presence they felt much the same sort of restraint as a subject, no matter how well-born and delicately nurtured, if unaccustomed to courts, might feel during an audience with her Majesty, still they went away praising her gifts of person, her graces of bearing, her suitable conversation.

She was all the mind of woman could desire, while Dolly was all that the imagination of woman held undesirable.

But the precious gift of charity was amongst these ladies. They were glad to smooth their ruffled feathers with a flattering platitude, "Poor dear Mrs. Mortomley! Yes; so untiring a hostess! so hospitable! so unselfish! but," this in a stage whisper, "odd, no doubt a little flighty and uncertain, like all clever people!"

For these people, with a quicker intuition than obtained among the residents of Great Dassell, had discovered Dolly was clever. Though her light, hidden under a bushel, could have never been discovered save by the eye of faith,--by them.

With men the case was different. With all the veins of their hearts, the men whose good-will it seemed most desirable she should conciliate, hated Dolly.

They began with liking her--there was the misfortune--that which their wives, daughters, and sisters were sharp enough to detect at a glance, they only found out by a slow and painful and degrading process of disillusion.

Intuitively women understood that the moment after Mrs. Mortomley had in her best manner bid the last of them "good night," coming herself to the outer door to speak the words, she flung her arms over her head, thanked Heaven they were gone, and delightedly mocked them for the benefit of any appreciative guest belonging to the clique she affected; but men could not be lectured, scolded, or inducted into a comprehension of Mrs.

Mortomley's hypocrisy till their vanity had been raised to a point from whence the fall proved hurtful.

Men accustomed to society would have taken Dolly's little careful attentions, her conventional flatteries, her recollection of special likings, her remembrance of physical delicacy, and mental peculiarities for just the trifle they were worth, the laudable desire of a woman to make all her guests feel Homewood for the nonce their home, and the natural and essentially feminine wish to induce each male of the company--even if he were deaf, bald, prosy--to carry away a special and particular remembrance of their hostess Mrs. Mortomley.

But this is a game which if all very well for a short period, palls after frequent playing. Dolly grew sick of the liking she herself had striven to excite.

She might have managed to continue to associate with the wives and produce no stronger feeling of antipathy than she managed to excite during the course of a first interview, but with husbands the case was different. Let her try as she would, and at the suggestion of various well meaning if short-sighted friends she did occasionally try, with all her heart, to retain the good opinion that many worthy and wealthy gentlemen had been kind enough in the early days of acquaintanceship to express concerning her--her efforts proved utterly futile.

Mortomley had made a mistake, and he was the only person who failed to understand the fact. His wife was quick enough to know she ought never to have responded to the offers of intimacy and hospitality "people most desirable for a man to stand well with" had been so unhappily prompt to offer.

That which Lamb wrote of himself might, merely altering the pronoun, have been said about Dolly:

"Those who did not like him hated him, and some who once liked him afterwards became his bitterest haters."

I have said before that this was scarcely Mr. Mortomley's fault; but most assuredly it was Mr. Mortomley's misfortune. The very dislike his wife inspired gave a factitious importance to him and his affairs which they certainly never possessed before.

The modest home his progenitors had, in the good old days when that which belonged to everybody could be appropriated by any-body, made for themselves on the outskirts of Epping Forest, became a centre of interest to an extent the owner never could have conceived possible. He did not trouble himself about the affairs of his neighbours. That they should concern themselves about his, never entered his mind.

It may be safe enough, if not altogether pleasant, for a great millionaire or a great lady to be subject to the curious gaze of the multitude; but for a business man doing a moderate trade, or for a wife in the middle rank of society, it proves a trying and often dangerous ordeal.

All unconsciously Mortomley pursued his way, with many a scrutinizing eye marking his progress. Not quite so unconsciously Mrs. Mortomley pursued her way, making fresh enemies as she moved along.

Even her child grew to be a source of offence. "It's not her fault poor little thing!" the mothers of pert, snub-nosed, inquisitive, precocious snoblings would complacently remark, "properly brought up she might be something very different."

Which, indeed, to say truth, was not desirable. Let the mother's deficiencies be what they might, it would have been difficult, I think, to suggest improvement in the child.

She had all the Mortomley regularity of features, light brown hair, flecked with gold, that came likewise from her father's family; but her eyes were the eyes of Dolly--only darker, larger, more liquid; and her vivacity, her peals of delighted laughter, her happy ability to amuse herself for hours together, came from some forgotten Gerace. There are families in which few traditions are preserved, who have left no memory behind them, but still lived long enough to bequeath the great gift of contentment to some who were to come after.

Why then was Lenore accounted an offence? A sentence from "Imperfect Sympathies," may, perhaps, explain this better than I can.

Elia says, "I have been trying all my life to like--" For the present purpose it is not needful to extract more closely,--"And am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They cannot like me, and in truth I never knew one of that nation who attempted to do it."

In a foot note to the same essay, he puts his idea even more clearly:

"There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite to another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons meeting (who never saw one another before), and instantly fighting."

Custom, association, family prejudices, the objects upon which the eye has been in the habit of perpetually dwelling, these things go to make the something, which in at once a wider and a narrower sense than that artists and literati understand the word, is called taste.

I mean this: matters such as those indicated, educate for good or for evil, the outward senses, and at the same time form an actual, if unconscious, mental standard to which, as it may be high or low, the estimate of those with whom we are thrown in contact is dwarfed or raised.

If it were true, as is generally supposed, that maternity makes women appreciative of, and tender-hearted to, the children of other women, Lenore might have spanned the gulf which stretched between her mother and the admirable matrons who contemned without understanding her; but it is not true.

So long as infants are in arms, so long as their talk is unintelligible, their limbs unavailable for active service, their idiosyncracies undeveloped and their features unformed, they occupy a platform on which mothers can meet on neutral ground and survey and discuss the beauties of alien babies without a feeling of envy, or rivalry.

In that stage, even Lenore was viewed with kindly and appreciative eyes, but not long subsequently to the period when she found the use of her tongue which, of course, after the manner of her sex, she began to ply in vague utterances before a boy would have thought of exercising it, the little creature began to fall out of favour with those ladies who looked upon Mrs. Mortomley as an error in creation.

And as Lenore passed as such as she do pass, rapidly from infancy to childhood, she became more obnoxious to those who had a theory as to what little girls and boys should be, founded it may be remarked on the reality of what their own boys and girls had been, or were.

Dolly's child, though an only one, was no spoiled brat, always rubbing up against its mother and asking for this, that and the other. Let Dolly be as foolish in all else as she liked, she was wise as regarded Lenore.

When with lavish hand the father would have poured toys into her lap, filled her little hands to overflowing, given her every pretty present his eye lit upon, Dolly interfered. Her own childhood, bare of toys and gifts, yet full of an exceeding happiness all self-made, was not, God help her, hid so far away back in the mists of time, but she could understand even in that land of plenty how to bring up the one child given to her.

Lenore was a healthy little girl, healthily brought up. As a baby she rolled on the grass or over the carpets, as a tiny little girl she could make herself as happy stringing daisy chains and dandelion flowers, as though each flower had been a pearl of price, and the threads with which she linked them together spun out of gold; no lack of living companions had she either; cats and dogs, kittens and puppies, composed part of the retinue of that tiny queen.

But the queen and the retinue gave offence; as, being all natural, how could they avoid doing?

Her name in the first instance stank in the nostrils of many worthy women. "Named after some dreadful creature in Lord Byron's poems," they remarked.

And if a person favourably inclined to Mrs. Mortomley explained he believed the child was called after Mrs. Werner, and that secondly the name was that of a heroine in one of Edgar Poe's poems, they answered,

"The name is suitable enough when given to a Lord's daughter, but Mr.

Mortomley is not a Lord, and I hope, Mr.----" this severely, "you do not advocate having the heroines of French and German poets introduced into English homes."

At which crass ignorance Mr.----bowed his head and confessed himself conquered.

Whilst Lenore, unconscious of disapprobation and offence, grew and was happy, a very impersonation of childish beauty and grace, and all the time trouble was coming. A cloud no bigger than a man's hand hovered in the horizon during the first happy years of her life, betokening a hurricane which ultimately broke over Homewood, and swept it away from her father's possession.

CHAPTER VIII.

A DEAD FAINT.