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like alertness which Iris felt far trans- | midable old woman and took the control cended her own mortified well-nigh timid inspection of her cousin.

of herself, Marianne Dugdale, into her own hands, where she had been early ac customed to keep it. She proposed to do in London and at Lambford exactly what she had done in her father's country house, in the depths of Devonshire - and that was, very much what she liked.

In another sense the strong, ardent, rejoicing youth of the girl had an underlying fund of generosity and pity for the old woman's position, fighting against infirmity on the brink of the grave. After a conspicuously self-willed action or flippant speech, Marianne Dugdale would suddenly turn, as if moved by a different spring, and speak the gentlest words she had uttered that day, refrain from resenting a jeering rejoinder, refuse to be held back by any chilling repulse from offering soft, cherishing aid to the stout-hearted, thankless rebel against her own needs and other people's devices.

The first thing that shook Iris's belief in her kinswoman's rôle, was her observation of the inherent youthfulness which clung to Marianne Dugdale. Iris knew they were much of the same age, but she had been feeling a woman for years now, she was certain she presented no such juvenile traits as were constantly peeping out in Marianne Dugdale, and largely qualifying a nature that even in early womanhood was sharp, shrewd, and full of self-reliance. There was the oddest mixture, the result, of early forcing and contemporaneous neglect, of strength and weakness, boldness and shyness, confidence and distrust, tenacity and collapse, in the little, square-shouldered person who was to divide with Iris the claims of the young ladies of the family and the filial duties of grandchildren to Lady Fermor, both in the house at Kensington Gore and elsewhere. The double temperament and training betrayed itself even in Marianne Dugdale's physique. Her little chubby hands were dimpled like a child's, and while they were tolerably useless in some things notably in woman's work, in others they displayed the dexterity of an intelligent mechanic. The owner of the hands had been very irregularly educated, Lady Fermor's looks and words offered but she had a scientific, particularly a a new field of conjecture to Iris. There mechanical bias. She preferred mathe- was a strange, suspicious forbearance and matics and chemistry to history and liter- obliviousness about Lady Fermor's dealature, while she had a side for fiction and ing with Marianne Dugdale's behavior, poetry; with a greater resemblance to which Iris suspected was made up of new men than to women in this respect, she sensations-considerable amusement, and relished an opportunity of working with wire and wood; she bored and whittled like a boy; put all the bells right in the house at Kensington Gore without the assistance of a workman, to the amazement, amounting to consternation, of the strictly conventional London menservants and maidservants; rectified the unevenness of various articles of furniture, and set straight every picture that was hung wrong by a hair's breadth.

Her voice, in the style of her hands, was furnished with a singular variety of tones, some of them strident and selfassertive enough, others mostly addressed to children and animals wonderfully winning and sweet, full of childlike vibrations, and an irresistibly coaxing ring.

But Marianne Dugdale's attitude to her grandmother, Lady Fermor, was the most puzzling and characteristic of any. In one sense the girl openly defied the for

Iris looked from one to another in marvel to see how Lady Fermor would stand it-the open, scarcely seemly contradiction the sudden sweet, tender amends, and if anybody had presumed to observe and applaud the relenting, the likelihood was that Marianne Dugdale would have gone off at a tangent, harder, sharper, more dogged than ever.

an abiding conviction that in spite of all the restiveness and waywardness, she, Lady Fermor, was mistress of Marianne Dugdale, and could easily crush her op position whether in great matters or small. There was no coherence as yet in the warring qualities in the girl's disposition, no principle of steadfastness to enable her to pull herself together and resist any impulse, whether for good or evil, advis edly and to the end. She was physically fearless to daring, but she might prove morally weak as water.

Iris was not thinking of herself, but she was as a still, deep stream, obeying a great law, which, however ruffled, could not be diverted from its course and was full of reserved power.

Marianne Dugdale was like a brawling brook, spending itself in foam and noise, rushing hither and thither, in wandering channels, either to lose name and identity, or to discover itself suddenly turned

aside, and notwithstanding its raving, carried where it would not, to serve some foreign purpose for which it had not the slightest inclination. Iris arrived at the sound conclusion that, however indifferent or even averse to her a girl like this might be, it was hardly probable that she would figure in the light of an avenger of hereditary injuries. Marianne was not made of the stuff that constitutes an old supporter of the vendetta, or a modern Nihilist.

and both of her granddaughters were starting up to her assistance. "I hear Soames coming to tell me I ought to be lying down; but if she proposes to hug me, or even to kiss my hand, I'll dismiss her on the spot. I make it a principle not to encourage humbug."

"Don't be too affectionate, Charlotte, or I'll kick yer,' ‚”” Marianne quoted audibly from "Oliver Twist." Then, as the door closed, she appealed to her cousin. "Now, Iris, you've known granny a great deal longer than I have, but I have seen enough of her to dare you to contradict me, if you are in the habit of speaking the truth, when I say she is an abominable old

It was on the occasion of Lady Fermor's persistently twitting Iris, according to an old bad habit, which their recent compact had not interfered with, that Marianne Dugdale abruptly declared her-woman." self on the side of her cousin, called her Iris looked down into the clear, search"Iris" in those accents which when they ing, imperious eyes fixed on hers, then were friendly at all, sounded as if they before she answered looked away into the came fresh from a warm, true heart, and green gardens. Happy little children might wile a bird from a tree. She walked played there from morning till night. Inover to Iris's side, where she sat in one valids in Bath chairs were pulled along, of the windows looking out across the that the sick folk might look with their crowded traffic of the road to the grand dim, faded eyes at the sunny sky and the alleys of the gardens. Marianne knelt, flowery earth, and know summer had come or as she would have called it, in her scorn again, and dream for a brief moment that of sentimentality, "plumped" down before health and strength were not fled forever. her cousin, leant her crossed arms against Men of business, pursued by cares and the frame in which Iris was working at worries undertaken for women and chil the Arachne, amidst altered surroundings, dren, trudged home from their offices. and began to chat over the events of the Lovers sat on the benches, and looked day in which the girls were mutually in- into each others' eyes, and exchanged a terested. word now and then, as if they had sat there since Adam and Eve walked in the garden of Eden, and could be content to sit there forever. Iris left her needle sticking in her work, clasping her hands, and spoke piteously, "She belongs to other times and other manners, so that we cannot judge her and her temptations. She has lost all she loved and honored, and she does not care any more for love and honor." Her voice fell as if this were, what indeed it was, the crown of human wretchedness.

The action was the nearest approach to a caress in which the least caressing of girls was likely to indulge. It was also a pretty, unaffected movement, at once confidential and implying more or less voluntary allegiance.

Iris welcomed it gladly, and with as much cordiality as it was wise to display to a wild bird that might take alarm and start off on the smallest provocation.

Lady Fermor had never known the love of woman to woman, and had been as incredulous of it as many men are, or pretend to be. She had never looked upon her own sex otherwise than with a mixture of dislike, suspicion, and contempt, as natural enemies and rivals, or as poor inferiors. She now regarded the little group before her with a snort of exasperated scepticism. "Well done, young ladies!" she said sardonically, as she rose from her chair with an effort; "the pose is very pretty, but it is wasted upon me. You ought to keep it for les jeunes ingénues like yourselves. Oh dear, no! don't, I beg of you, disturb yourselves on my account," as she stumbled and recovered herself on the way to the door,

A passing shade of awe crossed Marianne Dugdale's dauntless face, but she did not refrain from proclaiming triumphantly, "Then, Iris Compton, we can be friends. I agree with what you say. She is a miserable, old, old granny, and some-. times I would give anything to help her. But I was trying you to see if you were goody-goody, as she said. She told me it was because of your goody-goodiness you ran away; and if you had begun to preach to me about reverence, and the duty and privilege of respecting and loving that dreadful old woman though she is a poor old soul all the same, to whom we have the misfortune to be related — I

should have given you up at once, since I won't be preached to. Luckily granny, however horrible otherwise, never tries on that; and, Hike her, I make a principle of never encouraging humbugs."

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Everybody is not a humbug who does not go about proclaiming all the truth, who even keeps back as much of it as is possible sometimes. You would not expose a wound to shock your fellow-creatures," remonstrated Iris.

"No-yes. You are talking of a different thing. I shall always speak the truth I have never told lies. I should not know how to hold my tongue. And you -you were not altogether silent in your conduct; I mean when you ran away. Ah! I have you there, Iris."

and I understand each other, and I am not often vexed by what she says. People at her age are privileged. It is only her way of joking. You must mind your self. You may not find it so easy for you as you suppose, though I need not say I will do all I can to help you."

"I do not see how there can be any difficulty," said Marianne, a little offended in her extravagant independence and selfcomidence, as she rose to her feet and prepared to stroll away. "I have always got my own way; at least, almost always. Papa is constantly up to his ears in business, and a very bad business it is, with the agricultural interest gone to the dogs. Mamma is too lazy, and reads too many novels to take the trouble to call me to Iris winced before this very plain speak- order. She never had a mother of her ing. "I thought I was forced to leave own at least the one she had was as grandmamma," she said, "but I did not good as none; and her father was soured go clandestinely. I dare say she told you with his misfortunes, so that her spirit that also; for whatever she has done, she was broken when she was still a girl; but is a truthful woman, Marianne. It was I am not going to lose my spirit. The not a pleasant experience. I do not like other girls, Cathie and Chattie, are youngto speak or think of it, and I do not career than I am, and I rule them instead of to speak ill of Lady Fermor when I am them ruling me. There are the boys, to eating her bread. Remember, she has be sure," said Marianne, with a momenbrought me up. I have lived with her all tary pause. my life, as you have not done."

"The more shame to her, then, to speak to you as she did a little while ago -as she is constantly doing," asserted Marianne Dugdale roundly, "and the more fool you to let her. I shan't run away, see if I shall. I shall stay as long as she will keep me, or till I make the place too hot to hold me, since I have come - for the good of the other girls, and because papa scolded and mamma cried about our poverty. But she shan't take me off or put me down, or domineer over me, you notice, Iris. I will manage better; and neither shall she ride rough-shod over you any more if I am here," declared Marianne, in the tone of a gallant little cavalier who means to fight in defence of his lady. "You are really a great deal too good for her, instead of thinking only of yourself and preaching to every other person in the goody-goody fashion I feared, and have been looking out for every day since you came. But it is not true; you are quite an honest, reasonable, jolly girl. I shall do what seems best to me, and you will do what you think proper, and if granny will only consent to behave herself tolerably for an old woman, we'll do all we can for her."

"I am much obliged to you, my dear cousin," Iris was forced to laugh, "but you must not mind me. Lady Fermor

"I thought you had no brothers."

"Oh no! not brothers, but as goodrather better five cousins; Tom and Ned, and Dick and Harry, and Charlie. Tom and Ned are going to India, and Dick and Harry are at Cambridge. Dick is to be a barrister, and Harry an engineer. Charlie has had thoughts of the Church. The rest of the boys say he has plenty of 'jaw' if his mind were made up, but I don't believe he ever will make it up. My mind is made up that he will choke on the Thirty-nine Articles. He is the only sop among our boys, and he is dreadfully spoony on Cathie, which is a great bore both to her and the whole of us; to me more than anybody else, for I was understood to look after them and keep them from running into mischief- at least till Sir George came home."

"What a responsibility!" exclaimed Iris, with proper sympathy; "and who are all these boys you have on your mind?"

"Of course sons of papa's brother, Sir George, out in India. He has been a widower ever so long, and sent all the boys home when they were young to papa and mamma's care. She and papa were glad to have them, both for their own sakes since boys are so much nicer than girls, and because their father, Uncle George, is a great swell in the civil service, who can not only make good allow

ances to his sons, but is coming back to provide for us all when his time is out; only he may die, no doubt, or marry again, or do something out there before he is able to think what he is about. I have been a great deal more with the boys than the girls. Even Cathie, the sister next me, is three years younger than I-a soft little mortal, who can't say bo! to a goose, or to Charlie. I flatter myself I can play cricket, and take a fence, and drive, and row, and chaff. Boys will chaff and criticise, but I didn't often give in to them, I assure you."

These were advantages of education of which Iris could not boast; before which, with their results, she must often sit dumb, though she had not been used to regard. ing herself, or to being regarded by others, as a particularly weak and helpless young

woman.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

LADY FERMOR'S YOUNG PEOPLE. THERE was a budding phase of life of which Iris in her isolation had known little or nothing. Except at the rectory she had scarcely come into familiar contact with a gay, accessible, yet engrossed and restless, group of young people like herself. And life at the rectory had consisted simply of a family party, into which Iris was admitted by special favor. It was her fortune in the weeks spent at Kensington Gore to form one in a cluster of young people of more varied elements, not related, not like, for the most part only recently known to each other, yet who seemed suddenly, in spite of what might have been regarded as insurmount able barriers, to wax well acquainted, and to a certain extent intimate. The result was produced largely by the freemasonry of youth, and by a certain simplicity of character which distinguished more than one of the number. Perhaps something was due also to that curious fusing influence of London, or any other great city, on individuals who, however dissimilar otherwise, resemble each other in having been brought together unexpectedly, and making a common experiment in a new, complex, manifold life. The group was so far well matched that it consisted of two girls and two young men - Iris Compton and Marianne Dugdale, Sir William Thwaite and Ludovic Acton.

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into a college for aspiring able-bodied lieutenants, as well as for more juvenile naval recruits. Iris and Sir William Thwaite met as friends of old standing, and they also met more as contemporaries and equals than they had ever done be fore. Iris had fallen into the habit, in the past, of classing him among middle-aged and elderly people. Doubtless this was the consequence of the gravity and formality of manner conspicuous in a man bent on fulfilling his obligations to society while doubtful of his power to fulfil them.

It surprised Iris to hear Marianne Dugdale, who, after she had found her tongue, was frank and free in expressing her opinions on every subject, mention Sir William casually as "a nice young fellow."

"Oh! I know what you are thinking of," Marianne cried, in answer to Iris's bewildered look. "He was not always a gentleman, and he made a foolish marriage, and went to the bad for a time. I know all about him," continued Marianne. "But what of that when he has redeemed his character? Down where I come from we would say he could not help the first, and he was very much to be pitied for the second. Men are not perfect. If they are manly, honest fellows, and do their best, we need not wonder though some of them have a fall or two. We may be glad when they can pick themselves up again, as they do after a spill in the hunting-field, and we should be ready to lend them a hand, and expect them to give us another, if we come to grief. Oh! we are not so starched and severe, and, upon my word, I do not think we are the worse Christians for it down in my part of Devonshire. Neither are we such prigs of scholars or such very fine ladies and gentlemen as to refuse to forgive a man for a false particle, or even for a verb or an adjective out of joint, or because he keeps on his hat, or does not take off his muddy boots, or bolts his knife, or puts his feet on the chimney-piece not that Sir William Thwaite commits these enormities to my knowledge; I merely used the similes to give point to my assertions. What would a host of them signify if he were a man and a gentleman at heart, as I am sure he is? Yes; I know all about him, and I say he is a nice young fellow, fairly handsome, with a fine carriage. He is not stupid a bit, for he has told me ever so many things I wished to hear about India, where Tom and Ned are going."

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Ludovic was doing nothing more heroic at this time than studying the science of the sea and its ships, with their work and Whatever Marianne Dugdale had learnt warfare, at Greenwich Hospital, converted | she had certainly not been informed that

the squire of Whitehills had been a rejected suitor of her cousin's, an amount of ignorance for which Iris was thankful, and that she earnestly trusted would receive no enlightenment.

Lady Fermor had made a supererogatory statement that Sir William entertained a fancy for her other granddaughter. Marianne on her part openly professed an interest in him. Iris, too, had an interest, different in origin and kind, which included thoughts of poor Honor Smith, and a wonder whether she were altogether forgotten. Iris tried to look at Sir William in a new light and with impartial eyes. He was certainly a young man, not over thirty, although he looked old for his age; strong and comely too, in spite of a certain wayworn look, a trace of trouble, and a shade of sternness, which lent him a kind of dignity. Yes, there was a homely dignity about him; and his manners, though blunt and unsophisticated, were no longer labored and artificial. Other and infinitely heavier considerations had totally outweighed social dog. mas, and from the moment that he had regained his liberty in this respect, the man and the gentleman at heart shone out in his words and actions. Iris was able to comprehend how a young gentlewoman, a little rustic herself, rather masculine, after the fashion of the generation, in temper and training, with a natural impatience and scorn of forms and ceremonies, should fraternize with Sir William, and hold him in sincere esteem, in defiance of what carping people persistently remembered and chronicled against him.

It was impossible for Sir William not to respond within limits to the generosity and kindness of this girl, as he had done long ago without bounds in more difficult circumstances, to the generosity and kindness of another girl. It was therefore quite true that he was on very good terms with Marianne Dugdale, to the extent of submitting to be chaffed by her, as if it were a pleasure to him, and of bluffly chaffing her in return, as he had never dreamed of chaffing Iris Compton. It was perfectly possible that something serious might come out of these terms.

But Iris soon discovered that another puppet was to play his part in the little drama, a puppet with such strength to feelings, hopes, and wishes, that he threatened to produce a serious complica tion of the plot. Ludovic Acton had been at Greenwich before the date of Lady Fermor's arrival in London. He had

been commanded both by his mother and Lucy to call immediately on his father's most difficult parishioner. Being greatly under female commanders from the moment he put his foot on shore, he had reported himself at Kensington Gore be fore Iris was transplanted there. He had done it in the way of duty, and with the usual failure of poetic justice in the affairs of men, in the very act of filial, fraternal, and neighborly good-will he found himself, as he had soon to own with a groan, "completely done for."

King Lud had happened to pay his first visit while Lady Fermor was not out of her room, when he was handed over to a wonderful dark-eyed girl, with a little mouth, a square chin, a square yet sym metrical figure and habited in a sort of work woman's blouse, in which she did not seem to feel the least put out. She stepped briskly from the conservatory, where she had been knitting her brows and pouting her lips over the dilapidated rock-work, the rolled-up tarpaulin which ought to have shaded the roof, the syringes which would not spout water, the sickly plants ravaged by the green fly. She scarcely waited to hear his name, and to listen to his modest explanations and apologies for intruding on an unknown young lady, before she told him, "(it is a

"Oh! I know who you are wonder she did not say, "I know all about you "). "You are the son of the rector down at Lambford. Your people said you would call, and I am glad, because sailors are handy, and you may be able to help me. Come and see the disgraceful wreck of a London conservatory." ,,

King Lud went and saw and worked with Marianne Dugdale for half an hour, and did not conquer, unless in the trifles of nailing up some of the higher dropping. down cork rock-work, erecting the tarpaulin in its proper place, clearing out the pipes of the syringes and playing them on the astonished green fly. As if that were not enough for the entomological specimens, Marianne gave her order, "Smoke, Mr. Acton, smoke."

King Lud, too, complied forthwith, consoling himself for having to light and puff a cigar in such a presence by the true conviction that those pretty fresh lips, frank and fearless as they were, had never been soiled by so much as a cigarette, for the country Amazon of high degree is more innocent and unsophisticated than the same Amazon belonging to the town. He was conquered himself, hard hit, beaten to the wall at the first bout. He

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