The Grey Monk. T. W. Speight

       CHAPTER VII.

      TOO LATE.

      Years nearly a score have come and gone since Mr. Winch brought home the news of the untimely demise of the whilom heir of Withington Chase.

      Many have been the changes under the old roof-tree during that time. Sir Gilbert Clare, who is now entering on his seventy-fourth year, is both a widower and childless. Not only is the second Lady Clare dead, but her three sons have followed her to the tomb. Two of them have died of consumption when on the verge of manhood, while the youngest has been accidentally drowned.

      Yes, a lonely, childless old man is Sir Gilbert, but still carrying himself bravely before the world, as if in defiance of all the blows a cruel fate has aimed at him, and still retaining a large measure of his old irritability of temper and imperiousness of manner. Would it be too much to wonder whether his heart is ever touched with compunction, or regret, when his eyes chance to rest on a certain tablet above the family pew--that pew now empty of all but himself--which professes to record the death of his firstborn? That, however, is one of those things known to himself alone.

      The venue of our story now changes to St. Oswyth's, a town in the Midlands of some twelve to fifteen thousand inhabitants.

      It was the fourteenth of May, and Ethel Thursby's nineteenth birthday. Nowhere was there a happier girl than she. Breakfast was just over, and she had come out into the garden to gather a posy of such flowers as were already in bloom for the drawing-room table. Earlier there had been congratulations and presents from her aunts. Miss Matilda had given her "such a love" of a gold watch and chain, while Miss Jane's gift had taken the shape of an inlaid writing-desk filled with stationery stamped with Ethel's monogram, so that really, as she told herself, it was quite a pity her correspondents were so few in number, and that she could not well write to any of them oftener than once a week. Nor had Tamsin forgotten her--dear, rugged, true-hearted Tamsin, who had been her aunt's maid, and hers too for that matter, for more years than she could remember. Ethel's present from her had been a silver thimble, having engraven on its rim the appropriate legend, "A stitch in time saves nine."

      While busying herself with the gathering and arrangement of her flowers, Ethel's thoughts were engaged on two very diverse subjects. As she rose from the breakfast-table this morning, her Aunt Matilda had said to her:

      "My dear, I and my sister would like to see you in the drawing-room at twelve precisely, when we shall have something of importance to communicate to you."

      That the girl should wonder to herself what the "something of importance" could be was but natural.

      But just then she had neither time nor inclination to wonder overmuch, her thoughts being almost exclusively taken up by an altogether different matter. The communication which she hoped to be able to make to her aunts a few hours hence, far outweighed, in her estimation, anything they could possibly have to say to her. For had not Launce promised that to-day, on her birthday, to wit, he would take off the embargo of silence he had imposed upon her, and give her leave to inform her aunts of their engagement? It was a secret which had weighed upon her ever since, in response to his persistent entreaties, she had yielded a reluctant consent to an arrangement so totally opposed to her feelings and modes of thought. No one but herself could tell how happy she should feel when it was a secret no longer.

      The Miss Thursbys had come to reside at St. Oswyth's when Ethel was about two years old. She was an orphan, and who, if not they, should take charge of the parentless girl and bring her up as their own? Even then they were spinsters of mature age, but beyond silvering their hair in some measure, the intervening years had changed them scarcely at all. They belonged to that happy class of persons, with equable tempers, untroubled by dyspepsia and uncorroded by pessimism, whom Time loves to touch with the gentlest of fingers. He does not overlook them entirely, but the furrows he traces on their placid brows are few and far between. And so they go on for years, growing older by gradations so gentle as to be scarcely perceptible; for, say as we will, the old scythe-man has his favourites.

      The sisters, on coming to St. Oswyth's, had bought Vale View House--a substantial modern-built mansion, standing in its own pleasant grounds, but a world too big for the requirements of their unpretentious establishment. That, however, was nobody's business but their own.

      There they had settled down, and there, in "quiet innocency," it was their hope to spend the remaining term of their lives.

      They had a joint income, derivable in part from property left them by their father, and in part by their brother, of about eight hundred pounds a year. In addition to their faithful Tamsin, they kept a couple of maid-servants, a cook, a youth in buttons, and a man who combined the duties of gardener with those of groom to Flossie, the pony driven by them in their pretty little basket-carriage. They came of a Quaker stock, but their father had seceded when they were quite young. They still, however, retained much of the traditional simplicity of dress and demeanour of their progenitors and "thee'd" and "thou'd" each other when they were alone, but rarely, or never, when in the company of others.

      Be it known, further, that Miss Matilda and Miss Jane were twins, they having been born within half-an-hour of each other.

      Owing, however, to some stupid mismanagement on the part of the nurse, they had got "mixed," so to speak, when only a few hours old, and it was not positively known which of them was the elder.

      In this embarrassing state of affairs they had long ago--that is to say, from the date of their commencing to keep house together--come to a mutual arrangement by which they agreed to take it in turns, month and month about, to enact the part of elder sister, during which time the other deferred to her in every way, only, in her turn, to occupy the superior position and be deferred to throughout the following month.

      It was an arrangement well understood among the circle of their friends and acquaintance, but, in order that there should be no mistake in the matter, each in turn, during the month she filled the rôle of elder sister, wore round her neck, by way of distinguishing token, an old-fashioned gold chain from which was suspended an equally old-fashioned locket, which, when open, displayed on one side a miniature of their mother, and on the other a lock of their father's hair.

      Thus it came to pass that whenever people visited at Vale View House, or whenever they were called upon by the sisters, they would nudge each other and whisper, "This is Miss Matilda's month," or Miss Jane's, according to which of them was wearing the chain and locket; and to that one they would have been considered by the sisters as lacking in good manners, had they failed to address her as "Miss Thursby," or to treat her with an added shade of deference as representing for the time being the head of the family.

      By every one who knew them, both rich and poor (and to numbers