mained on the other side of the water. But during the whole time he was exercising his mind in that painful process of thinking of two things at once. He was determined that Cæsar should be uppermost; but it may be doubted whether he succeeded. At that very moment Colonel Lefroy might be telling the Doctor that his Ella was in truth the wife of another man. At that moment the Doctor might be deciding in his anger that the sinful and deceitful man should no longer be "officer of his." The hour was too important to him to leave his mind at his own disposal. Nevertheless he did his best. 66 Clifford, junior," he said, “I shall never make you understand what Cæsar says here or elsewhere if you do not give your entire mind to Cæsar."

"I do give my entire mind to Cæsar," said Clifford, junior.

66

Very well; now go on and try again. But remember that Cæsar wants all your mind." As he said this he was revolving in his own mind how he would face the Doctor when the Doctor should look at him in his wrath. If the Doctor were in any degree harsh with him, he would hold his own against the Doctor as far as the personal contest might go. At twelve the boys went out for an hour before their dinner, and Lord Carstairs asked him to play a game of rackets.

"Not to-day, my Lord," he said. "Is anything wrong with you?" "Yes, something is very wrong." They had strolled out of the building, and were walking up and down the gravel terrace in front when this was said.

"I knew something was wrong, because you called me my Lord."

66

Yes, something is so wrong as to alter for me all the ordinary ways of my life. But I wasn't thinking of it. It came by accident,-just because I am so troubled."

"What is it?"

"There has been a man here,-a man, whom I knew in America." "An enemy?"

"Yes,--an enemy. One who is anxious to do me all the injury he can."

"Are you in his power, Mr. Peacocke?"

"No, thank God, not that. I am in no man's power. He cannot do me any material harm. Anything which may happen would have happened whether he had come or not. But I am unhappy." "I wish I knew."

"So do I, with all my heart. I wish you knew; I wish you knew. I would that all the world knew. But we shall live through it, no doubt. And if we do not, what matter. 'Nil conscire sibi,nulla pallescere culpa.' That is all that is necessary to a man. I have done nothing of which I repent ;nothing that I would not do again; nothing of which I am ashamed to speak as far as the judgment of other men is concerned. Go, now. They are making up sides for cricket. Perhaps I can tell you more before the evening is over.

"I

Both Mr. and Mrs. Peacocke were accustomed to dine with the boys at one, when Carstairs, being a private pupil, only had his lunch. But on this occasion she did not come into the dining-room. don't think I can to-day," she said, when he bade her to take courage, and not be altered more than she could help, in her outward carriage, by the misery of her present circumstances. "I could not eat if I were there, and then they would look at me."

"If it be so, do not attempt it. There is no necessity. What I mean is, that the less one shrinks the less will be the suffering. It is the man who shivers on the brink that is cold, and not he who

plunges into the water. If it were over, if the first brunt of it were over, I could find means to comfort you."

He went through the dinner, as he had done the Cæsar, eating the roast mutton and the baked potatoes, and the great plateful of currant-pie that was brought to him. He was fed and nourished, no doubt, but it may be doubtful whether he knew much of the flavour of what he ate. But before the dinner was quite ended, before he had said the grace which it was always his duty to pronounce, there came a message to him from the rectory. "The Doctor would be glad to see him as soon as dinner was done." He waited very calmly till the proper moment should come for the grace, and then, very calmly, he took his way over to the house. He was certain now that Lefroy had been with the Doctor, because he was sent for considerably before the time fixed for the interview.

It was his chief resolve to hold his own before the Doctor. The Doctor who could read a character well, had so read that of Mr. Peacocke as to have been aware from the first that no censure, no faultfinding, would be possible if the connection was to be maintained. Other ushers, other curates, he had occasionally scolded. He had been very careful never even to seem to scold Mr. Peacocke. Mr. Peacocke had been aware of it too,-aware that he could not endure it, and aware also that the Doctor avoided any attempt at it. He had known that, as a consequence of this, he was bound to be more than ordinarily prompt in the performance of all his duties. The man who will not endure censure has to take care that he does not deserve it. Such had been this man's struggle, and it had been altogether successful. Each of the two understood the

other, and each respected the other. Now their position must be changed. It was hardly possible, Mr. Peacocke thought, as he entered the house, that he should not be rebuked with grave severity, and quite out of the question that he should bear any rebuke at all.

The library at the rectory was a spacious and handsome room, in the centre of which stood a large writing-table, at which the Doctor was accustomed to sit, when he was at work,-facing the door, with a bow-window at his right hand. But he rarely remained there when any one was summoned into the room, unless some one were summoned with whom he meant to deal in a spirit of severity. Mr. Peacocke would be there perhaps there or four times a-week, and the Doctor would always get up from his chair and stand, or seat himself elsewhere in the room, and would probably move about with vivacity, being a fidgety man of quick motions, who sometimes seemed as though he could not hold his own body still for a moment. But now when Mr. Peacocke entered the room he did not leave his place at the table. "Would you take a chair?" he said; "there is something that we must talk about." "Colonel Lefroy has been with you, I take it." "A man calling himself by that name has been here. Will you not take a chair?"

"I do not know that it will be necessary. What he has told you, -what I suppose he has told you, -is true."

"You had better at any rate take a chair. I do not believe that what he has told me is true." "But it is."

"I do not believe that what he has told me is true. Some of it cannot, I think, be true. Much of it is not so,-unless I am more de

ceived in you than I ever was in any man. At any rate sit down." Then the schoolmaster did sit down. "He has made you out to be a perjured, wilful, cruel biga

mist."

"I have not been such," said Peacocke, rising from his chair. "One who has been willing to sacrifice a woman to his passion." "No;-no."

"Who deceived her by false witness."

"Never."

"And who has now refused to allow her to see her own husband's brother, lest she should learn the truth."

"She is there, at any rate for you to see."

"Therefore the man is a liar. A long story has to be told, as to which at present I can only guess what may be the nature. I presume the story will be the same as that you would have told had the man never come here."

"Exactly the same, Dr. Wortle." "Therefore you will own that I am right in asking you to sit down. The story may be very long, that is, if you mean to tell it."

"I do,-and did. I was wrong from the first in supposing that the nature of my marriage need be of no concern to others, but to herself and to me."

"Yes, Mr. Peacocke; yes. We are, all of us, joined together too closely to admit of isolation such as that." There was something in this which grated against the schoolmaster's pride, though nothing had been said as to which he did not know that much harder things must meet his ears before the matter could be brought to an end between him and the Doctor. The "Mister" had been prefixed to his name, which had been omitted for the last three or four months in the friendly intercourse

which had taken place between them; and then, though it had been done in the form of agreeing with what he himself had said, the Doctor had made his first complaint by declaring that no man had a right to regard his own moral life as isolated from the lives of others around him. It was as much as to declare at once that he had been wrong in bringing this woman to Bowick, and calling her Mrs. Peacocke. He had said as much himself, but that did not make the censure lighter when it came to him from the mouth of the Doctor. "But come," said the Doctor, getting up from his seat at the table, and throwing himself into an easy chair, so as to mitigate the austerity of the position; "let us hear the true story. So big a liar as that American gentleman probably never put his foot in this room before."

Then Mr. Peacocke told the story, beginning with all those incidents. of the woman's life which had seemed to be so cruel both to him and to others at St. Louis before he had been in any degree intimate with her. Then came the departure of the two men, and the necessity for pecuniary assistance, which Mr. Peacocke now passed over lightly, saying nothing specially of the assistance which he himself had rendered. "And she was left quite alone?" asked the Doctor. "Quite alone."

"And for how long?"

"Eighteen months had passed before we heard any tidings. Then there came news that Colonel Lefroy was dead."

"The husband?" "We did not know which. They were both Colonels." "And then ?"

"Did he tell you that I went down into Mexico?"

"Never mind what he told me.

All that he told me were lies. What you tell me I shall believe. But tell me everything."

There was a tone of complete authority in the Doctor's voice, but mixed with this there was a kindliness which made the schoolmaster determine that he would tell everything as far as he knew how. "When I heard that one of them was dead, I went away down to the borders of Texas, in order that I might learn the truth."

"Did she know that you were going?"

"Yes;-I told her the day I started."

"And you told her why?"

"That I might find out whether her husband were still alive."

"ButThe Doctor hesitated as he asked the next question. He knew, however, that it had to be asked, and went on with it. "Did she know that you loved her?" To this the other made no immediate answer. The Doctor was a man who, in such a matter, was intelligent enough, and he therefore put his question in another shape. "Had you told her that you loved her?"

"Never, while I thought that other man was living."

"She must have guessed it," said the Doctor.

"She might guess what she pleased. I told her that I was going, and I went."

"And how was it, then?"

"I went, and after a time I came across the very man who is here now, this Robert Lefroy. I met him and questioned him, and he told me that his brother had been killed while fighting. It was lie."

a

Altogether a lie?" asked the

Doctor.

"How altogether?"

"He might have been wounded and given over for dead. The

brother might have thought him to be dead."

"I do not think so. I believe it to have been a plot in order that the man might get rid of his wife. But I believed it. Then I went back to St. Louis, -and we were married."

"You thought there was no obstacle but what you might become man and wife legally?"

I thought she was a widow." "There was no further delay?" "Very little. Why should there have been delay?"

66

Why had he come?"

"In want of money, I suppose, -as this other one has come here." "Did he ask for money?"

"I do not think he did then, though he spoke of his poor condition. But on the next day he went away. We heard that he had taken the steamer down the river for New Orleans. We have never heard more of him from that day to this."

"Can you imagine what caused conduct such as that?"

For an hour or two before his dinner, the Doctor went out on horseback, and roamed about among the lanes, endeavouring to make up his mind. He was hitherto altogether at a loss as to what he should do in this present uncomfortable emergency. He could not bring his conscience and his inclination to come square together. And even when he counselled himself to yield to his conscience, his very conscience, -a second conscience, as it were, revolted against the first. His first conscience told him that he owed a primary duty to his parish, a second duty to his school, and a third to his wife and daughter. In In the performance of all these duties he would be bound to rid himself of Mr. Peacocke. But then there came that other conscience, telling him that the man had been more "sinned against than sinning," that common humanity required bim to stand by a man who had suffered so much, and had suffered so unworthily. Then this second conscience went on to remind him that

the man was pre-eminently fit for the duties which he had undertaken, that the man was a Godfearing, moral, and especially in tellectual assistant in his school, that were he to lose him he could not hope to find any one that would be his equal, or at all approaching to him in capacity. This second conscience went further, and assured him that the man's excellence as a schoolmaster was even increased by the peculiarity of his position. Do we not all know that if a man be under a cloud the very cloud will make him more attentive to his duties than another? If a man, for the wages which he receives, can give to his employer high character as well as work, he

work because of his character. And as to this man, who was the very phoenix of school assistants, there would really be nothing amiss with his character if only this piteous incident as to his wife were unknown. In this way his second conscience almost got the better of the first.

But then it would be known. It would be impossible that it should not be known. He had already made up his mind to tell Mr. Puddicombe, absolutely not daring to decide in such an emergency without consulting some friend. Mr. Puddicombe would hold his peace if he were to proImise to do so. Certainly he might be trusted to do that. But others would know it; the Bishop would know it; Mrs. Stantiloup would know it. That man, of course, would take care that all Broughton, with its close full of cathedral clergymen, would know it. When Mrs. Stantiloup should know it there would not be a boy's parent through all the school who would not know it. If he kept the man he must keep him resolving that all the world should know that he kept him, that all the world should know of what nature was the married life of the assistant in whom he trusted. And he must be prepared to face all the world, confiding in the uprightness and the humanity of his purpose.

In such case he must say something of this kind to all the world: "I know that they are not married. I know that their condition of life is opposed to the law of God and man. I know that she bears a name that is not, in truth, her own; but I think that the circumstances in this case are so strange, so peculiar, that they excuse a disregard even of the law of God and man." Had he courage enough