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MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE.

VOLUMES I. TO XXXVIII., COMPRISING NUMBERS 1-228, HANDSOMELY BOUND IN CLOTH, PRICE 7s. 6d. EACH.

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MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE.

MAY, 1878.

CHAPTER XIII.

BEHIND THE HOLLIES.

SEBASTIAN.

SEBASTIAN and Mr. Rudall were walking up and down a shady little side walk, which seemed to them quite hidden from the house. But there was a gap between two variegated hollies that gave Dowdeswell a very clear view of them as they passed it on the way up or down the little walk.

As he stood looking out on the fine old lawn, with prettily grouped trees, the grey church-tower appearing almost in their midst, and the quaint thatched roofs beyond, he felt sure he should have reason to remember the picture, and those two figures in it, passing and repassing the gap in the screen of gold-leafed holly. Rudall, with his erect soldierly little form, was the intent listener; Sebastian, with his tall figure, one shoulder very slightly before the other, and his hand thrown back at his waist, the earnest speaker.

Once, as they were passing the gap, Dowdeswell noticed that Rudall's head was bending very low, as though he wished to keep his face concealed from his tall companion. The next time Sebastian came past alone, looking deeply thoughtful and troubled.

Traitor, every inch of him!" said Dowdeswell, inwardly.

There was, at the end of the walk
No. 223.-VOL. XXXVIII.

where they were, a little rustic seat, and Dowdeswell thought he could see Rudall's straw hat in that direction, when he missed him from Sebastian's side. After a few moments he had rejoined Sebastian, and they were continuing their walk. Rudall had a peculiarly absorbed look. Dowdeswell was at a loss to understand it. If he suffered from Sebastian's communication, his suffering did not prevent his step being firmer, and his form looking as though he had just been freed from some great burthen.

Dowdeswell watched him with a sinking heart. This was no remarkably eligible match for Dora; he was aware of that, but her happiness in her engagement had been one of the most real pleasures of Dowdeswell's life. The more he felt he had submitted to those things he considered unpleasant in it, the more keenly he dreaded, and was prepared to resent, any cloud over the brightness he thought he had made much worldly sacrifice to obtain for her. As she sat writing to her girl friends, and he saw the tender smile on her mouth and the kindling of her rich dark eyes, he felt very proud of being wealthy enough to let his child have her own way in the matter of her marriage. But that anything could occur to hinder it after he had brought his mind to it seemed positively unendurable to him.

B

Once Dora looked up and saw the prebendary smiling very pleasantly at her bright face and flying little pen. She blushed and cried out merrily

"Ah, there's the prebendary laughing at me, papa; but he little knows the relief it is to be able at last to answer all the questions I have here," pointing to her little heap of letters in different feminine handwritings. "Through this quarrel of yours, I have actually had to keep one of my dearest friends in suspense as to whether Clarence's eyes are blue or dark; another, whether he's high church or low; another, whether all my bridesmaids are to be dressed alike, or half one way and half different; another, if I'm sure I love him according to her idea of true love, given in six sheets of foreign paper here. You may have it, prebendary, it may assist your mind when

comes."

your turn

The prebendary declared that would not be till he should chance to meet a young lady with all the charms and without the sauciness of Miss Dora Dowdeswell.

Dowdeswell looked away from her happy face to the garden again. By this time Sebastian was coming towards the house alone. He looked thoughtful, indeed sad. Dowdeswell hardly knew what to surmise from this. If, as he thought, Sebastian was in love with Dora, and would do anything in his power to prevent her marriage with Rudall, he would surely not look so dejected if he had succeeded in showing Rudall an obstacle to that marriage.

Sebastian came up close outside the open window by which Dowdeswell was standing. In a low voice, which he thought would not be heard in the room beyond him, he said

"Mr. Rudall wished me to beg you to excuse him, as he is obliged to return home suddenly on very urgent business. He will come and offer his apologies the first moment he can do so.'

All Dowdeswell's secret alarm

showed itself in the searching and intensely distrustful look he fixed on his informant. He made no reply, however, and Sebastian went into the house and retired to his own room.

The prebendary tried his utmost to persuade his friends to stay one more night; but Dowdeswell, having made his relative's illness the excuse for leaving the St. Georges so suddenly, he felt he was hardly justified in even having delayed till now his journey home.

Rudall's expected letter came when the Dowdeswells and Sebastian were alone in the drawing-room, Miss Jellicoe having gone to assist in bandaging the prebendary's foot.

Sebastian was answering, somewhat abstractedly, Dora's questions about some colonial sketches of his that were in a portfolio on the table, being a present of Sebastian to Miss Jellicoe.

They neither noticed the letter brought in till Dowdeswell had read it, and came and stood before Sebastian, his face white with rage.

66

So, sir," said he, "there has been foul play this morning. foul play this morning. I thought as much."

Dora started, and looked from one to the other in great surprise.

Sebastian rose, and said, gently"Come, Mr. Dowdeswell, if you have trying news for your daughter, do not make it harder for her to bear by giving way to unjust and unreasonable anger."

Dora became pale and alarmed at the foreboding their words naturally gave her.

"What is it, papa?" she asked, rising, and clinging to his arm with one hand, while she tried to take the letter from him with the other.

"No, my child," cried Dowdeswell, 'you shall not see this. I'll make him retract it!"

"Papa, I ought to see it," pleaded Dora, more urgently.

"No, you need not, Dora," declared her father, his anger gaining on him; "for he shall retract it! I say he

shall, though a hundred worthless. jades be white-washed to suit the purposes of hypocritical meddlers!"

"Come, sir," said Sebastian, ignoring the allusion to his share of the matter; "will it not be better to let Miss Dowdeswell see the truth for herself? I am sure she would find it less painful than your view of it."

"I tell you, Sebastian Gould," said Dowdeswell, in a sort of subdued shout, "this man you have been making a tool for your own purposes shall not serve my child in this way. He shall retract this letter and rue the day he sent it. No, no, Dora; why read it? But if you will, why, don't take it to heart. I'll not see you played with in this manner. Believe my word against his, my girl; he shall retract, and beg your pardon for that letter, let hypocrites and selfseekers do what they can!"

Dora had gone from the room, taking Rudall's letter with her, not daring to trust herself to read it in the presence of others.

Meanwhile the prebendary came hurrying in, assisted by Miss Jellicoe, to learn the cause of Dowdeswell's angry tones.

Dowdeswell, unrestrained by the lady's presence, broke out hotly against Sebastian, who stood at the window, thinking of and caring for nothing in the world but how Dora would receive the letter. He knew she had there the simple, and not-however painful it might be to her unlovely truth, told by a man strong in loyalty and courage; and though Sebastian felt truly sick at heart at the thought of her pain, he hardly believed it likely to cause her any fatal shock.

It did not tend to soothe Dowdeswell's ruffled spirit to be reminded by the prebendary's sympathetic remarks that it had been entirely due to his own obstinate selfish greed with regard to Plas Llewellyn that brought Rudall into correspondence with its injured tenant- a correspondence that led to his asking Dora to release him from his engagement. His letter to her

was inclosed in the one that had so incensed Dowdeswell, and Sebastian knew she had them both with her

now.

It was with more than relief that his listening ear caught the sound of her light step descending the stairs firmly and courageously.

As she entered Sebastian thought he had never known before what beauty was. She had hastened down while her first noble impulse, on reading such a story as Rudall's and Cicely's was, in her heart. Her cheeks glowed, her eyes looked out beyond the boundary of her own loss and humiliation, radiantly and purely as

stars.

"Papa," she said, going to Dowdeswell and letting him support her form, that trembled in spite of her brave carriage, "there's no unfaithfulness in Clarence Rudall's conduct, but the most true faithfulness I ever heard of. He has found his wife is just what he believed and loved, and that is enough for him. I honour him for it. I thank him from my very heart that he does not wrong me by asking me what is right or wrong in such a case. It is the best compliment he ever paid me to take it for granted that I could wish him to take no other course than he has chosen. You, papa, think I have been wronged, but what is my wrong to what hers has been ?"

Dowdeswell looked down at her, at once proudly yet perplexedly. Sebastian, standing gazing at her with eyes that moistened and sparkled, was surprised by her face-from which the flush died rapidly out-turning towards him with a look of deep reproach.

"But, Mr. Gould," she said, "as for your part in this, all that I will say is, the next time you receive a dying man's or woman's trust and request, it will perhaps be better you should honour it, and not humour one woman's freak that another's life may be exposed to such mockery as this that has ruined mine."

In another hour they were gone, and the prebendary and his sister sat

discussing the whole affair with much wise though aimless philosophy.

Sebastian, in his own little room, with a burning and throbbing head, sat writing page after page of explanation, which he destroyed almost as soon as written. Yet at post-time he did go out with a thick letter, which found its way into the letter-box of the Petherton post-office and general shop. Nor was it the only one that was found there during the next week, bearing the same address, in Sebastian's hand

"Miss Dowdeswell,

Combe Park,

Monksdean."

The old proverb, that misfortunes do not come singly, was brought painfully to Dowdeswell's mind when he and Dora reached home after their eventful visit to the prebendary's. For some weeks past he had lent his yacht to a party of young gentlemen, including his nephew (the literary genius whom he had sent in search of facts in connection with Llewellyn's birthplace). This person had to break to Dowdeswell the unpleasant news that his yacht had been run into and seriously damaged by a ship off Holyhead. The captain, whose name was Fisk, had shown great concern and courtesy in the matter, and sent a note on to the yacht's owner, promising to come to Monksdean and see him about it the first day he could call his own. This, however, he feared would not be for a few weeks.

When Dowdeswell's rage at this new disaster had a little subsided, the young author thought to quite disperse it by introducing a subject which he believed could not fail to be interesting.

"However, sir," he said, dismissing with a sigh the story of the yacht, "with all this ill-luck, I have some good news that you will be glad to hear. I have here"-taking papers from his pocket-"most indisputable proofs that Llewellyn was born at Plas- "9

"Idiot!" shouted Dowdeswell, in ungovernable fury. "And I hope he was strangled there too, and that every other fool will be that ever mentions that name in my hearing again!"

CHAPTER XIV.

PLAS LLEWELLYN.

DOWDESWELL's young historian would no doubt have given greater zest to his patron's desire to obtain Plas Llewellyn, had the last little romance that happened there belonged to the palmy times of the ancient Welsh chivalry, instead of to so late a day.

Disappointed, grieved, and alarmed at not hearing from Sebastian, though in receipt of Rudall's letter agreeing to the proposed interview, Cicely sat, as the hour drew nigh, in a state of indescribable agitation.

There were moments when she trusted some accident might prevent the visit; and thought that in allowing it under existing circumstances she must be half as guilty as the world believed her. Then, at other moments she felt her disappointment would be almost more than she could bear if the expected visitor did not come.

Not a thought of the truth occurred to her; yet afterwards, when she heard all that had passed between Sebastian and Rudall, she wondered how it could have been so far from her mind.

She sat waiting in the only inhabitable room of any size that her house contained. Two tiny bedrooms, and one huge kitchen were all besides that had been made fit to live in. But these were enough for herself, her old nurse, and the rough maid-of-all-work, which three composed the little household of Plas Llewellyn.

In spite of all she had done to make home-like and pretty the room where she spent so much time, and where she now sat expecting Rudall, it still had a dull and sombre air, partly, perhaps, caused by the small, deep windows.

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