Experiment Validation

Instinctively he shrank from confessing it to his wife; and of course he could not tell Margaret. It was a high delight to him to speak with Margaret of those spiritual experiences, which she seemed to comprehend almost without words, but which Laura altogether failed to understand. Of this painful and perplexing anxiety he could not speak. Once or twice he tried to approach the subject, hoping that Margaret might utter some word indicating that she, too, was aware of the attachment between Philip and Phyllis. But Margaret gave no sign that she had ever dreamed of such a thing. Though the idea of it seemed natural and familiar at the Rectory, it was quite unthought of at the Hall.

But one plain duty lay before him—to separate his little Phyllis from Philip as much as possible.

He faintly hoped that he was mistaken, and that she had not already given her heart to him.

CHAPTER XXV.

"No, your uncle and aunt do not know," he replied in a tone of deep depression and sadness. It seemed an unpardonable treachery that these two should have entered into an engagement without asking the consent of their parents. This base blow had been struck at Sidney in his home, and by those that were dear to him. "A man's foes shall be they of his own household," he said bitterly to himself, as he sat alone in his study, after leaving all the members of his family in a state of dismay and amazement. Philip came to him by and by, having been summoned by Phyllis, and declared that he had never thought of keeping his love a secret; that he was only waiting till he was of age to speak openly of it to his father and mother; and that he did not for a moment anticipate anything like disapproval from either of them. The rector was too unhappy to take courage or comfort. But he could not be shaken in his resolution that Phyllis should not join the party going north.

Philip's coming of age was to be celebrated merely by a gathering of the tenants at Brackenburn Manor, a festivity which could not have taken place at all but for the death of Mr. Churchill, an event which had left the old house at Sidney's disposal. They were strangers on their own estate, and had, therefore, no friendly neighbors to gather about them. Now that the rector so firmly refused all invitations, except for his sons, there was a small party only going northward. Oddly enough, Sidney invited Andrew Goldsmith to accompany them. It was a sudden impulse and freak for which he could not account to himself. Rachel Goldsmith was accompanying Margaret, as she still held the nominal post of her maid, and it did not seem altogether out of place to ask her brother Andrew.

"It'll be a rare treat to me," said the old saddler, "for I've loved Mr. Philip, as if he'd been my own flesh and blood, ever since my lady brought him to my house as a little babe. Ah! if he'd been Sophy's boy I couldn't have loved him more."

It was years since Sidney had heard Sophy's name; for, naturally, as time went on, the memory of her, and of her strange disappearance and silence, had withdrawn into the background of life, and only two or three hearts, that had been stricken sorely by her loss, kept her in remembrance. They had no hope now of finding her; but no day passed in which her father and Rachel did not think of her, and still wonder, with sad bewilderment, what could have become of her.

It was early in December: the few leaves left in the topmost branches of the trees were brown and sere. The wide moors rising behind Brackenburn were brown too, but there were purple and gray tints on them—dun, soft tints that looked very beautiful under the low sky and slowly drifting clouds.

To Dorothy it was an unmingled pleasure to revisit, in this manner, her birthplace, and to see its empty rooms peopled by all those she had learned to love. The old familiar house, with its latticed windows shining through the luxuriant tendrils of ivy, which Sidney had left untrained, was quite unchanged; but when she entered through the broad porch into the large old hall, she uttered a cry of delight. It was a transformed and brilliant place; not the bare, barnlike entrance she remembered. Soft skins and rugs lay on the oak floor, and a large fire burned in the wide old chimney, which had always looked to her, when a child, like the mouth of a black cavern. On each side of the broad and shallow staircase there stood flowering plants on every step. The place was the same; yet, oh, how different! A rich color came into her face, and her dark eyes glowed with happy excitement. Margaret was tired, and Dorothy, feeling almost like mistress and hostess in her old home, conducted her to her room, where Rachel was awaiting her lady's arrival.

Margaret was not in her usual health and spirits. There was always mingled with her joy in

Philip's birth, the memory of her father's death the day afterward, and the solemn recollection of her own strange experience of dying, as if she had actually passed out of this world, and been sent back to it. Life had never been to her, since that memorable time, the commonplace existence of her mere physical or intellectual being. She had lived more by the soul than by the mind or the body. These lower forms of life had possessed their fullness for her. She had enjoyed the perfect health of her physical nature, with all the rich pleasures coming through the senses, and she had in a greater measure taken delight in intellectual pursuits. But, pre-eminently, she had lived in the spirit, and just now her spirit was overshadowed. There was a conflict coming near from which it shrank.

She was troubled about Phyllis. The girl was dear to her from old associations and the intimacy of a lifetime; but she could not think of her as Philip's wife. No word had been spoken to her yet about this subject; but it had been in the air for the last fortnight, and she could not be unconscious of it. She had guessed the reason of the rector's firm resolution of not coming to Brackenburn, and not letting Laura and Phyllis come. Sidney had not spoken of it; but she thought he was troubled. But the most disquieting symptom of a coming storm was that Philip kept silence, even to her. He never mentioned Phyllis; but he was absent and low-spirited. This was the first sorrow, the first shadow of a cloud, coming over Margaret from her relationship with her husband and her son. Until now she had been able to speak as she thought before them, with quiet, unrestrained freedom. But there had sprung up, during the last few days, a novel feeling of restraint and embarrassment. Neither Sidney nor Philip uttered the name of Phyllis.

After Dorothy had seen Margaret comfortably established in her room, she stole quietly and quickly out of the house, and hastened on to the moors. There was yet half an hour of the short December day, and she could not wait for the morrow. At the first low knoll she turned round to look back upon the old Manor House, with its picturesque gables and large stacks of chimneys. She knew now better than she used to do how very beautiful it was. The sun was setting, and the low light shone full upon the small diamond panes of the many windows, and cast deep shadows from the eaves, and brought into stronger relief the antique carvings on the heavy beams of oak. She felt proud of the place

—as proud as if it had been her own.

"Why did you never tell us how pretty it was?" asked Philip's voice; and turning round, she saw him coming up to her over the soundless turf.

"I never knew," she answered, almost stammeringly; "I never thought it was as lovely as this. Yet I've seen it from this very spot thousands of times. Why did it look so sad to me then, and so beautiful now?"

She looked up into his face as if it was a very knotty question for him to consider, and his grave expression relaxed a little as he answered her.

"You were not very happy here then," he suggested.

"I never knew a happy day till I knew your father," she replied; "and I've never known an unhappy one since. Is it happiness that makes a place look lovely?"

If it was so, thought Philip, this place could have no beauty for him. Phyllis was not there, and his

heart was very heavy for her absence. And not only for her absence, but from a growing dread of meeting with an opposition he had not anticipated. It was significant to him of trouble that his father and mother never spoke of Phyllis in his presence; he did not know that they were equally silent with one another. Though it was the rector who had prevented her from coming north, he could not help guessing that it was his father who had, in some way, been the real hinderer. The rector could have no objection to himself as Phyllis's suitor, and he felt sure that he at least had looked upon him as her future husband. Phyllis, too, was certain of it, and so were the boys. He was only waiting till he came of age, and stepped into his right of free and independent manhood, to tell his father that he had chosen Phyllis as his wife.

"It is not only happiness that makes a place lovely," pursued Dorothy, after a pause, "it is being with people one loves. Do you see that window just touched by the end of a branch of those Scotch firs? Your mother is in that room. I cannot see her, of course; but that window is more beautiful to me because I know she is there. And I know all the rooms, and how they will be occupied; and the whole house is full of interest to my mind. So that even if it was an ugly place, it could not be altogether ugly to me."

There was a pleasant ring in her voice which was new to Philip's ear, He looked long and earnestly at the old house, which some day would belong to him, unless it was pulled down to make room for a finer mansion. It already belonged to him because it belonged to his father. It was a beautiful old place, with the gray stones of the strong wall surrounding it made warm with golden mosses; and the front of the house covered with undipped ivy-branches, hanging in glistening festoons from every point of vantage. Such a place could not be built or made. Why should he be such a Goth as to erect a brand-new mansion, which could possess no such charm and beauty until he, and generations of his sons, were moldering in their graves?

"Wouldn't it be a pity to pull it down?" asked Dorothy, as if she read his thoughts; "but Phyllis would find the rooms too small, and too low for her. I described it to her one day, and drew a sort of plan of it; and she said it was only a big rambling farmhouse, and you must build a much grander place, because Sir John Martin left a large sum of money to build it with. So I thought, was it quite impossible for me to buy it, and you build a house somewhere near it? Then we should always be neighbors; and it is very lonely here in the winter. Do you think Phyllis would like to live here in the winter?"

It was sweet to him to hear Phyllis's name spoken in this way; no one had uttered it in his presence for a fortnight except the boys, and they spoke it with a sort of jeer, as brothers sometimes do. Dorothy's gentle voice lingered shyly over it. He looked down into her shining eyes with a smile in his own.

"We must not talk of Phyllis living here yet," he said, "not till the day after to-morrow."

"Let us go a little higher up the moors," she said, "I know every little track, and beck, and dingle for miles round. When I lived here with my father, I used to sit an hour or two with him every day, on the other side of the table, reading aloud, and answering the questions he asked me. But he never talked to me, or took me on his knee, or kissed me; and I thought all fathers were the same. The rest of the day I had to myself, and I spent my time here, out of doors."

"And in the winter when there was snow or rain?" asked Philip.

"I read all day long," she went on. "See on the roof there, between two gables, is a little dormer window. There my secret room is. I really believe nobody knew of it but me; and I used to stay there till I was nearly starved and famished. But there was no one to ask me where I had been, or what I'd been doing."

"Poor child!" said Philip unconsciously. The color mounted to Dorothy's face, and she turned away from him a little.

"It is all different now," she continued, after a momentary silence, "you are all so kind and good to me. And I think sometimes that when my father died he too went to a place where everyone is good and kind to him and tries to make up to him for his life here; for he was more lonely and unhappy than I was. I was only a child, and he was a man. I should not like to feel that his death had made me so happy, if it has not made him happy too."

"My mother has always told us that death itself comes to us out of the love of God," said Philip.

He had followed Dorothy along a narrow track, and now they were out of sight of the house. A wide, undulating upland, whose limits were almost lost in the darkening sky, stretched as far as the eye could see. The sun was gone down, but a frosty light lingered in the west. The keen, sweet air played around them; and Dorothy drew in a deep breath, and stretched out her arms, with a caressing gesture, to the wide landscape. She looked more at home here than Phyllis would have done. Phyllis would have seen but little beauty in so wild and solitary a spot. Perhaps it was better that she had not seen her future home for the first time in the winter.

Philip retraced his steps, with Dorothy beside him, in a more tranquil frame of mind. She did not shun conversation about Phyllis; and though nothing was acknowledged between them, he was sure she knew of their love for one another. What was more likely than that Phyllis had told her?

They went back to the house slowly through the deepening twilight, Dorothy pointing out distant objects which neither of them could distinguish in the darkness, though she fancied she saw them, so familiar and so dear they were to her. He looked at the wide, open, dusky landscape, and the broad sky above them, and the picturesque old house, with light shining through the many windows, from Dorothy's point of view. But what would Phyllis think of it, with her dainty, fastidious ways, and her love of society?

As they passed through the great gates into the forecourt Andrew Goldsmith met them.

"Well, Mr. Philip!" he said, "I don't think much of your place. The saddle and harness room is almost in ruins; and the stables aren't fit for anything better than cart horses. It's not to be compared with Apley Hall; and the sooner you begin to build yourself a suitable mansion the better."

CHAPTER XXVI.

AT CROSS PURPOSES.

For the next two days Philip was fully occupied in riding with his father to call upon the principal tenants, who had been already invited to commemorate his coming of age. He was quite a stranger to them, and Sidney knew but little of them. They were mostly farmers; a fine, outspoken, independent race of north-country men, very different in their ways and manners from the same class on Margaret's estate in the south. Sidney made himself exceedingly popular with them; and Philip was almost surprised at his father's tone of easy friendliness with his tenants. But Sidney was, as he told himself, enjoying the happiest season of his very prosperous life. Putting aside that little trouble about Phyllis, which would prove no more than a boy's fancy, he gave the reins to his feelings of exultation and rejoicing. He was very proud of this handsome, athletic, well-bred young Englishman, who was his eldest son and heir, the apple of his eye through all these twenty-one years, since he welcomed his first-born into the world. He was secretly afraid of yielding to the tender recollections that crowded into his brain as his son rode beside him, and, therefore, he flung himself more fully into an open demonstration of his pleasure in introducing him to his future tenants. He told them that the Manor House would not be let again, but that Philip would soon be coming to dwell among them for a great part of the year, and take his position as a country squire. He could never quit the south and the near neighborhood of London himself, but, with his son living up here, he would naturally be often among them, and would get better acquainted with them.

The great dinner given to the tenants and the afternoon merry-making passed off well, as such festivities usually do. But Dorothy, not Philip, was the real center of interest. She had grown up under their observation, a neglected, forlorn, uncared-for child, thought little of by all of them; and suddenly, on her father's death, she had been made known to them as a great heiress. She was an astonishment to them all, especially to the women; the elegance of her dress, the frank and simple grace of her manner, her daughter-like familiarity with Mr. and Mrs. Martin amazed them. When she joined in an easy country dance, with Philip as her partner, there was only one thought in the mind of each of them: This poor little Cinderella was destined to marry the young son and heir.

If Andrew and Rachel Goldsmith had not known better they would have thought the same. Even Dick and the other boys, who had come north to be present at these festivities, said to one another that Phyllis was not missed. Dorothy was very much more the daughter of the house than Phyllis could ever have been. She was at home, and she felt as if the success of these rejoicings depended partly upon her. For the first time, too, she was free from the depressing influence of Phyllis's superiority;

and Laura was not there, with her chilling, criticising gaze. No one could be insensible to the charm of Dorothy's gay spirits and sweet kindliness.

But as soon as the last guest was gone Philip went off alone up the moors. The moon was at the full, and poured a flood of light on the twinkling surface of the silent little tarns sleeping in the hollows. The frosty sky was shot with pale red lines in the north, and a thick bank of clouds, the edge of which was tinged with moonlight, stretched across the south. He did not wander out of sight of the black massive block of the old Manor, but all day he had longed to be alone, and here he was safely alone. The day he had been looking forward to, which had been talked of, in his hearing, for as long