The Grey Monk. T. W. Speight
of poor people they were very well known indeed) the ladies of Vale View were beloved and respected; although it might be that there were not wanting some would-be "superior" persons who smiled to themselves at certain old-fashioned ways and quaint simplicities of speech and manner which they were quite incapable of appreciating. But such people are to be met with everywhere. It was Mrs. Trippington-Fynes, a new-comer at St. Oswyth's, and regarded as quite an acquisition to the somewhat restricted circle of society in the little town, who, after having been introduced to the Misses Thursby and chatted with them awhile, remarked to Mrs. Sandilands, wife of the popular squire of that name:
"Do you know, my dear, I find them quite too deliciously archaic."
It was a phrase that was repeated and taken up, and for many a day afterwards the sisters were spoken of by one person or another as being "quite too deliciously archaic, don't you know."
But we have left Ethel all this time alone in the garden.
Following her with our eyes, while she pursues her dainty occupation, what do we see? A slender supple figure of medium height, every movement of which betrays an easy unstudied grace with which training has evidently had nothing to do. A small head crowned with plaits and coils of glossy dark brown hair; eyes, too, of a brown so dark that unless you are privileged to gaze into them by sunlight, you would be almost ready to wager that they are absolutely black; large and luminous, with here and there a tiny fleck of ruddy light, they respond instantaneously to every fluctuating emotion of the loving, brave, reverent soul which looks out at you through them. The face, with its candid brow, its rather short straight nose and the soft curves of its chin, has the ineffable charm of purity, of equable pulses, of slow-breathing health both of mind and body; the whole expression is one of sweet, grave steadfastness.
To connect Ethel Thursby in one's thoughts with such feminine weaknesses as a fit of hysterics, or an attack of "nerves," would seem as preposterous as to assume that the man in the moon is afflicted after a similar fashion. This morning she is wearing a lavender-coloured frock of some soft clinging stuff which displays to perfection the charming contours of her figure. Her collarette and cuffs are of lace, woven by a crippled girl in a neighbouring village, whom Ethel counts as one among the number of her humble friends.
The sound of footsteps on the gravel of the carriage drive breaks up her reverie. She turns to behold Everard Lisle, and, as she does so, a smile of welcome illumines her face.
The young man in question was the son of the vicar of the parish church of St. Oswyth's, and had been intended for the medical profession, for which he had displayed much natural aptitude; but an illness, the result of overwork while a student in Paris, had left him with weakened eyesight.
Having been ordered to give up his studies for a long time to come, and to confine himself to some outdoor occupation, he had chosen to become the pupil and, later on, the assistant to an architect and land surveyor in St. Oswyth's; and so much did his new profession prove to his liking, and so well did it agree with his health, that at length he definitively decided to discard the one for which he had originally been intended.
Everard's father, the Rev. Harold Lisle, and Sir Gilbert Clare--at that time simply Mr. Clare--had been contemporaries at college, but strangers to each other previously to a certain afternoon, when it had been the good fortune of the former to save the life of the latter, who had been seized with cramp while bathing.
From that time they had never quite lost touch of each other, so that when Sir Gilbert, who always felt that he owed a debt of gratitude to his preserver, became in want of some one to fill the double post of amanuensis to himself--his eyesight having failed him considerably of late--and assistant to his land-steward, Mr. Kinaby, whose health was breaking up, he wrote to the Rev. Harold, offering the position in question to his son, of whose affairs he had some knowledge, by whom it was gladly accepted. Everard Lisle, who had now been a couple of months at Withington Chase, had come over to St. Oswyth's to-day for a special purpose, the nature of which will presently appear.
He had known Ethel Thursby for years, and had loved her as long as he had known her.
They had met frequently, sometimes at his own home, for now and then the ladies from Vale View took tea with his mother, and sometimes in general society. When he had first known her she had been still a schoolgirl, and he had told himself that he could afford to wait till she should be of an age to listen to what he had to say to her.
Then had come the break in his prospects consequent on his illness, after which he had had to begin the world afresh. Knowing that he would have to rely solely upon his own exertions--for his father's living was far from being a lucrative one and there were several fledgelings still under the parental roof--and that some years must necessarily elapse before he would be able to marry, with rare self-abnegation he determined neither by word nor sign to betray his love to the object of it till he should have some assured prospect of being able to ask her to share with him such a home as she was entitled to expect. To that prospect he had at length attained, and he was here to-day with the determination to tell her all that he had carefully hidden in his heart for so long a time. But delays are dangerous in love, as in so many other of the affairs of life, as Everard was presently destined to find to his cost. He was a well set-up resolute-looking young fellow, clear-eyed and clear-skinned, and groomed to perfection; in brief, as far as appearance was concerned, a typical young Briton of the latter half of the nineteenth century.
He was making directly for the house, but the moment he caught sight of Ethel his face flushed, a sudden sparkle leapt to his eyes, and he at once turned and made across the lawn towards her. In one hand he was carrying a bouquet of choice orchids covered up in tissue paper.
Ethel, seeing him thus unexpectedly, supposed, naturally enough, that he had come to spend a brief holiday at home, not troubling herself to remember that only a couple of months had gone by since he had taken up the duties of his new position.
"This is a surprise," she said smilingly as she gave him her hand. "I quite thought you were a hundred miles away at the least. That's about the distance, is it not, to--to--I forget its name--the place where you are now living?"
They turned together and strolled slowly along.
"That is about the distance," he smilingly replied. "Duty ought, perhaps, to have kept me at Withington Chase, but inclination has brought me to St. Oswyth's. I did not forget that this is your birthday, Miss Ethel; as a proof of which I venture to offer you these few flowers. Will you deign to accept them with the giver's best wishes for your health and happiness." As he spoke he stripped the paper off the bouquet and offered it for Ethel's acceptance.
She took it without a shadow of hesitation, first coming to a stand and placing on the lawn the basket in which she had been gathering her own flowers. "Oh, how lovely--how exquisitely lovely!" she exclaimed with unfeigned admiration. Flowers such as those were a revelation to her. "It was very very kind of you, Mr. Lisle, to remember my birthday in such a charming fashion. My aunts will be as delighted as I am. Of course you will come in and see them now that you are here."
Even now there was no dawn of suspicion in her heart as to the real purport of his visit. Everard's courage sank a little, but he had come all the way from the Chase to seek his opportunity, and now that he had found it he was not the man to let it slip through his fingers.
"One moment, if you please," he pleaded. "There is something that I wish particularly to say to you."
"Yes?" she said interrogatively, turning her gaze full upon him, with the slightest inflection of surprise in her voice.
Then, all at once, she saw that in his eyes which revealed to her what it was he was about to say to her, and before the clear intense flame of love which glowed in their depths, her own eyes sank abashed and dismayed. To her it came, indeed, as a revelation. For a moment or two all the pulses of her being seemed to stand still. She said to herself, "I am dreaming--presently I shall awake." Everard took her hand and she did not know it. From her unresisting fingers he withdrew the bouquet and placed it on the basket at her feet. It was only when he began to speak that she came to herself. Between the spot where they were standing and the house a large clump of evergreens intervened. From none