I, Thou, and the Other One: A Love Story. Barr Amelia E.

you tell Edgar, sir, that his mother is prouder of the gold thread than of diamonds. Tell him, she holds her Reform ring next to her wedding ring,”–and with the words Mrs. Atheling drew off her “guard” of rubies, and put the slender thread of gold her son had sent her next her wedding ring. At the same moment Kate slipped upon her “heart finger” the golden token. Her face shone, her voice was like music: “Tell Edgar, Mr. North,” she said, “that my love for him is like this ring: I do not know its beginning; but I do know it can have no end.”

      Then North rose to go, and would not be detained; and the women walked with him to the very gates, and there they said “good-bye.” And all the way through the garden Mrs. Atheling was sending tender messages to her boy, though at the last she urged North to warn him against saying anything “beyond bearing” to his father, if they should meet on the battle-ground of the House of Commons. “It is so easy to quarrel on politics,” she said with all the pathos of reminiscent disputes.

      “It has always been an easy quarrel, I think,” answered North. “Don’t you remember when Joseph wanted to pick a quarrel with his brethren, he pretended to think they were a special commission sent to Egypt to spy out the nakedness of the land?”

      “To be sure! And that is a long time ago. Good-bye! and God bless thee! I shall never forget thy visit!”

      “And we wish ‘The Cause’ success!” added Kate.

      “Thank you. Success will come. They who care and dare can do anything.” With these words he passed through the gates, and Mrs. Atheling and Kate went slowly back to the house, both of them turning the new ring on their fingers. It was dinner-time, but little dinner was eaten. Edgar’s letter was to read; Mr. North to speculate about; and if either of the women remembered Lord Exham’s expected call, no remark was made about it.

      Yet Kate was neither forgetful of the visit, nor indifferent to it. A sweet trouble of heart, half-fear and half-hope, flushed her cheeks and sent a tender light into her star-like eyes. In the very depths of her being there existed a feeling she did not understand, and did not investigate. Was it Memory? Was it Hope? Was it Love? She asked none of these questions. But she dressed like a girl in a dream; and just as she was sliding the silver buckle on her belt, a sudden trick of memory brought back to her the rhyme of her childhood. And though she blushed to the remembrance, and would not for anything repeat the words, her heart sang softly to itself,–

      “It may so happen, it may so fall,

      That I shall be Lady of Exham Hall.”

      CHAPTER THIRD

      THE LORD OF EXHAM

      On the very edge of the deep, tumbling becks which feed the Esk stands Exham Hall. It is a stately, irregular building of gray stone; and when the sunshine is on its many windows, and the flag of Richmoor flying from its central tower, it looks gaily down into the hearts of many valleys, where

      “The oak, and the ash, and the bonny ivy-tree,

      Flourish at home in the North Countree.”

      Otherwise, it has, at a distance, a stern and forbidding aspect. For it is in a great solitude, and the babble of the beck, and the cawing of the rooks, are the only sounds that usually break the silence. The north part was built in A. D. 1320; and the most modern part in the reign of James the First; and yet so well has it stood the wear and tear of elemental and human life in this secluded Yorkshire vale that it does not appear to be above a century old.

      It was usually tenanted either by the dowager of the family, or the heir of the dukedom; and it had been opened at this time to receive its young lord on his return from Italy. So it happened that at the very hour when Mrs. and Miss Atheling were talking with Cecil North, Piers Exham was sitting in a parlour of Exham Hall, thinking of Kate, and recalling the events of their acquaintanceship. It had begun when he was seventeen years old, and Kate Atheling exactly twelve. Indeed, because it was her birthday, she was permitted to accompany an old servant going to Exham Hall to visit the housekeeper, who was her cousin.

      This event made a powerful impression on Kate’s imagination. It was like a visit to some enchanted castle. She felt all its glamour and mystery as soon as her small feet trod the vast entrance hall with its hangings of Arras tapestry, and its flags and weapons from every English battlefield. Her fingers touched lightly standards from Crecy, and Agincourt, and the walls of Jerusalem; and her heart throbbed to the touch. And as she climbed the prodigiously wide staircase of carved and polished oak, she thought of the generations of knights, and lords and ladies, who had gone up and down it, and wondered where they were. And oh, the marvellous old rooms with their shadowy portraits, and their treasures from countries far away!–shells, and carved ivories, and sandalwood boxes; strange perfumes, and old idols, melancholy, fantastic, odd; musky-smelling things from Asia; and ornaments and pottery from Africa, their gloomy, primitive simplicity, mingling with pretty French trifles, and Italian bronzes, and costly bits of china.

      It was all like an Arabian Night’s adventure, and hardly needed the touches of romance and superstition the housekeeper quite incidentally threw in: thus, as they passed a very, very tall old clock with a silver dial on a golden face, she said: “Happen, you would not believe it, but on every tenth of June, a cold queer light travels all round that dial. It begins an hour past midnight, and stops at an hour past noon. I’ve seen it myself a score of times.” And again, in going through a state bed-room, she pointed out a cross and a candlestick, and said, “They are made from bits of a famous ship that was blown up with an Exham, fighting on the Spanish Main. I’ve heard tell that candles were once lighted in that stick on his birthday; but there’s been no candle-lighting for a century, anyway.” And Kate thought it was a shame, and wished she knew his birthday, and might light candles again in honour of the hero.

      With such sights and tales, her childish head and heart were filled; and the mazy gardens, with their monkish fish-ponds and hedges, their old sun-dials and terraces, their ripening berries and gorgeous flower-beds, completed her fascination. She went back to Atheling ravished and spellbound; too wrapt and charmed to talk much of what she had seen, and glad when she could escape into the Atheling garden to think it all over again. She went straight to her swing. It was hung between two large ash-trees, and there were high laurel hedges on each side. In this solitude she sat down to remember, and, as she did so, began to swing gently to-and-fro, and to sing to her movement,–

      “It may so happen, it may so fall,

      That I shall be Lady of Exham Hall.”

      And as she sung these lines over and over–being much pleased with their unexpected rhyming–the young Lord of Exham Hall came through Atheling garden. He heard his own name, and stood still to listen; then he softly parted the laurel bushes, and watched the little maid, and heard her sing her couplet, and merrily laugh to herself as she did so. And he saw how beautiful she was, and there came into his heart a singular warmth and pleasure; but, without discovering himself to the girl, he delivered his message to Squire Atheling, and rode away.

      The next morning, however, he managed to carry his fishing-rod to the same beck where Edgar Atheling was casting his line, and to so charm the warm-hearted youth that meeting after meeting grew out of it. Nor was it long until the friendship of the youths included that of the girl; so that it was a very ordinary thing for Kate to go with her brother and Piers Exham to the hill-streams for trout. As the summer grew they tossed the hay together, and rode after the harvest wagons, and danced at the Ingathering Feast, and dressed the ancient church at Christmastide, and so, with ever-increasing kindness and interest, shared each other’s joy and sorrows for nearly two years.

      Then there was a break in the happy routine. Kate put on long dresses; she was going to a fine ladies’ school in York to be “finished,” and Edgar also was entered at Cambridge. Piers was to go to Oxford. He begged to go to Cambridge with his friend; but the Duke approved the Tory principles of his own University, and equally disapproved of those of Cambridge, which he declared were deeply tainted with Whig and even Radical ideas. Perhaps also he was inclined to break up the close friendship between the Athelings and his heir. “No one can be insensible to the beauty