CHAPTER X.

MRS RIVERS TELLS HER STORY.

"You say, my son, that I am a lady, and so my parents always wished me to be; but my father was a shopkeeper, as I am now, though he was a man of good education. He was a chemist, but he was ambitious, and he gave me a good education, and intended me to marry none but a gentleman. I made a friend at school named Emily Rivers. I used to visit at her house. She had two brothers, Archibald and Frank. I suppose I was rather pleasing and good-looking in those days, at any rate both the brothers took a fancy to me.

"Frank was very handsome, and what is called good company. He was fond of pleasure, and liked to take his sister and her friend to all the entertainments going. I was always ready enough to go anywhere, for we led but a dull life at home. Archibald was much quieter and not so good-looking as Frank, but he was Fanny's favourite. She was always praising him to me, and telling me what a good husband he would make, but he was homely and plain, and I felt much more flattered by Frank's attentions, and when he proposed to me I was so delighted that I accepted him at once. For some reason, which I could not quite understand, he wished to have our engagement kept secret at first.

Archibald kept on paying me his quiet attentions, which I received much more graciously than I had done before, for, now that he was to be my brother-in-law, I wished to be as friendly with him as possible; but I had no idea how the case really stood, or I should have acted very differently.

"When one day I received a letter from Archibald telling me of his love, and how he had latterly begun to hope that I was not indifferent to him, I was utterly astonished, and really grieved that he should have so misinterpreted my change of manners. I felt bound to tell him the truth. He was very angry with both Frank and me, and declared we had wilfully deceived him. He called me a heartless flirt, and many other hard names. Fanny, too, was indignant, and the end of it all was a general quarrel, and break-up of the family. Archibald bought a coffee plantation in India, and took Fanny to live with him there, and shortly after, Frank and I were married. I have never heard from his brother or sister since.

"At first things went on well enough. Frank had inherited a small property from his father, enough for us to live on quietly, and he used to spend most of his time in painting. He called himself an artist; but, though he began a great many pictures, as far as I know, he never sold any. He used to go about a great deal to other artists' studios, to learn, he said, and also to save expense, as they made the same models do between them. Gradually he spent more and more time away from home, and then he discovered that he had mistaken his talents; he was born to be a landscape painter, and he must study nature in the pure country. My

heart leapt with joy at the idea; I thought if we could get away together into the country, far removed from London and its temptations, we might be as happy as we were at first, and I would go about with him and sit by his side with my needle-work, while he painted his pictures, and we would lead a peaceful quiet life together. But my joy was soon damped when he told me that he had made arrangements to go for a walking tour in Wales with an artist friend; the expense would be a mere nothing, and he was safe to sell his sketches. He said it would be madness to go to the expense of moving till he knew how he would succeed, and besides, he did not mean to tie himself to one place. He was going to paint all the beauty spots in Great Britain, and then he would try the Continent. He was sure to make a fortune at last.

"I was a good deal upset, but I tried to think he knew best. He went out and bought me a present, and he spent the whole evening at home, and was very kind and loving, and in capital spirits. The next morning I woke very early and found him packing his clothes, he said he had arranged to start at eight o'clock. He said he had not told me the night before for fear of upsetting me. I felt hurt and angry. Well, he was away more than a month, only writing now and then to give me an address, but he so often changed his plans that he hardly got any of my letters. I was very unhappy all the time he was away, and not much better when he came back, for he was dull and irritable; he seemed to have spent a great deal of money and done very little painting, but he said he had enjoyed his trip very much, and had been to the top of almost every mountain in

Wales. Very soon he began to get discontented and fidgetty at home again; he said he was wasting his time in London. But what is the use of dwelling upon it all? "From that time he was more and more away, and when he was at home I was inclined to wish him away, he was so discontented and irritable. He was always out half the night, and at last I found that he and his artist friends used to meet at a public house, instead of a studio as he told me, and he used often to come home quite excited by drink, and then he would say very cruel things to me, that I only wish could be blotted out of my memory.

"Well, Stephen, things went on from bad to worse, and I do not know how I should have borne my life at all if you had not come to me, my son. But can you wonder, Stephen, that, long before you were born, I made up my mind that, with my consent, you should never be a painter, and that it turned my heart sick when you began to scribble on every bit of blank paper you could find? But I must not ramble. Well, you were born, and then indeed my sorrow was turned into joy. Frank was away on one of his sketching expeditions when you came to me; he had parted from me with rough words on his lips, and he returned in a few days in a fit of repentance, as he sometimes did. When he found me almost too weak to speak to him, and your little cherub face by my side, he was filled with remorse for his cruelty, and he wept, not like a child, but as only a strong man can weep, tears of agony and shame. He knelt beside my bed and vowed that from that day he would be a different man, and I believed him, and my heart was very full of joy and thankfulness. I had

always hoped and prayed that his child might prove an angel of mercy to him.

"Things did improve a little after that; he stayed at home more, and was very proud of you. He used to sit and watch you, and talk about what a great painter he would make of you some day: he said he was sure you had large organs of drawing and colour, and perhaps he was right, Stephen; I am afraid he was. But before long he became very morose and gloomy again, and at times I could not help fancying he had something on his mind, he had such strange fits of excitement. Then I found that he kept brandy in his painting room; he seemed to have a constant craving for it. I do not know whether I ought to tell you all this, Stephen, about your own father, but it may be a warning to you; not that you seem to need it, my boy. And it may help you to understand why I have always been so anxious about you; but remember, I have never told all my reasons to any one but you.

"I lived in constant terror; I was always dreading some catastrophe, and at last it came. He had been out with his friends, as he called them, for several days. He had started one morning, saying he should be back at night, but a few hours afterwards a boy came with a note telling me to put up a few clothes and send them by bearer, as he was going away for a few days, he did not mention where. I put up the things with a strange foreboding, and I wrote him a short letter, which I enclosed in the parcel.

"I heard nothing of him for about a week, and though I ought to have been used to such suspense by that time, I could not help feeling unusually anxious. I