The Hillman. E. Phillips Oppenheim

am so sorry," she murmured, looking down at her slipper. "I could not help breaking down here, could I?"

      "Nor could my brother fail to offer you the hospitality of this roof," Stephen admitted. "The incident was unfortunate but inevitable. It is a matter for regret that we have so little to offer you in the way of entertainment." He rose to his feet. The door had been opened. Jennings was standing there with a candlestick upon a massive silver salver. Behind him was Aline. "You are doubtless fatigued by your journey, madam," Stephen concluded.

      Louise made a little grimace, but she rose at once to her feet. She understood quite well that she was being sent to bed, and she shivered a little when she looked at the hour—barely ten o'clock. Yet it was all in keeping. From the doorway she looked back into the room, in which nothing seemed to have been touched for centuries. She stood upon the threshold to bid her final good-night, fully conscious of the complete anachronism of her presence there.

      Her smile for Stephen was respectful and full of dignity. As she glanced toward John, however, something flashed in her eyes and quivered at the corners of her lips, something which escaped her control, something which made him grip for a moment the back of the chair against which he stood. Then, between the old man servant, who insisted upon carrying her candle to her room, and her maid, who walked behind, she crossed the white stone hall and stepped slowly up the broad flight of stairs.

III

       Table of Contents

      Louise awoke the next morning filled with a curious sense of buoyant expectancy. The sunshine was pouring into the room, brightening up its most somber corners. It lay across the quilt of her bed, and seemed to bring out the perfume of lavender from the pillow on which her head reposed.

      Aline, hearing her mistress stir, hastened at once to the bedside.

      "Good morning, madame!"

      Louise sat up and looked around her, with her hands clasped about her knees.

      "Tell me everything, Aline," she said. "Have you my breakfast there? And what time is it?"

      "It is half-past nine, madame," Aline replied, "and your breakfast is here. The old imbecile from the kitchen has just brought it up."

      Louise looked approvingly at the breakfast tray, with the home-made bread and deep-yellow butter, the brown eggs and clear honey. The smell of the coffee was aromatic. She breathed a little sigh of content.

      "How delicious everything looks!" she exclaimed.

      "The home-made things are well enough in their way, madame," Aline agreed, "but I have never known a household so strange and disagreeable. That M. Jennings, who calls himself the butler—he is a person unspeakable, a savage!"

      Louise's eyes twinkled.

      "I don't think they are fond of women in this household, Aline," she remarked. "Tell me, have you seen Charles?"

      "Charles has gone to the nearest blacksmith's forge to get something made for the car, madame," Aline replied. "He asked me to say that he was afraid he would not be ready to start before midday."

      "That does not matter," Louise declared, as she settled down to her breakfast. "I do not care how long it is before he is ready. I should love to spend a month here!"

      Aline held up her hands. She was speechless. Her mistress laughed at her consternation.

      "Well," she continued, "there is no fear of their asking us for a month, or for an hour longer than they can help. The elder Mr. Strangewey, it seems, has the strongest objection to our sex. There is not a woman servant in the house, is there?"

      "Not one, madame," Aline replied. "I have never been in a household conducted in such a manner. It is like the kitchen of a monastery. The terrible Jennings is speechless. If one addresses him, he only mumbles. The sound of my skirts, or my footstep on the stone floor, makes him shiver. He is worse, one would imagine, than his master."

      Louise ate and drank reflectively.

      "It is the queerest household one could possibly stumble upon," she remarked. "The young Mr. Strangewey—he seems different, but he falls in with his brother's ways."

      Aline glanced at herself in the mirror. She was just out of her mistress's range of vision, and she made a little grimace at her reflection.

      "I met him twice this morning in the hall," she remarked. "He wished me good morning the first time. The second time he did not speak. He did not seem to see me."

      Louise finished her breakfast and strolled presently to the window. She gave a little sigh of pleasure as she looked out.

      "But, Aline," she exclaimed, "how exquisite!"

      The maid glanced over her shoulder and went on preparing her mistress's clothes.

      "It is as madame finds it," she replied. "For myself, I like the country for fête days and holidays only, and even then I like to find plenty of people there."

      Louise heard nothing. She was gazing eagerly out of the casement-window. Immediately below was a grass-grown orchard which stretched upward, at a precipitous angle, toward a belt of freshly plowed field; beyond, a little chain of rocky hills, sheer overhead. The trees were pink and white with blossom; the petals lay about upon the ground like drifted snowflakes. Here and there yellow jonquils were growing among the long grass. A waft of perfume stole into the room through the window which she had opened.

      "Fill my bath quickly, Aline," Louise ordered. "I must go out. I want to see whether it is really as beautiful as it looks."

      Aline dressed her mistress in silence. It was not until she had finished lacing her shoes that she spoke another word. Then, suddenly, she stopped short in the act of crossing the room. Her eyes had happened to fall upon the emblazoned genealogical record. A little exclamation escaped her. She swung round toward her mistress, and for once there was animation in her face.

      "But, madame," she exclaimed, "I have remembered! The name Strangewey—you see it there—it was in our minds all the time that we had seen or heard of it quite lately. Don't you remember—"

      "Yes, yes!" Louise interrupted. "I know it reminds me of something, but of what?"

      "Yesterday morning," Aline continued, "it was you madame, who read it out while you took your coffee. You spoke of the good fortune of some farmer in the north of England to whom a relative in Australia had left a great fortune—hundreds and thousands of pounds. The name was Strangewey, the same as that. I remember it now."

      She pointed once more to the family tree. Louise sat for a moment with parted lips.

      "You are quite right, Aline. I remember it all perfectly now. I wonder whether it could possibly be either of these two men!"

      Aline shook her head doubtfully.

      "It would be unbelievable, madame," she decided. "Could any sane human creatures live here, with no company but the sheep and the cows, if they had money—money to live in the cities, to buy pleasures, to be happy? Unbelievable, madame!"

      Louise remained standing before the window. She was watching the blossom-laden boughs of one of the apple trees bending and swaying in the fresh morning breeze—watching the restless shadows which came and went upon the grass beneath.

      "That is just your point of view, Aline," she murmured; "but happiness—well, you would not understand. They are strange men, these two. The young one is different now, but as he grows older he will be like his brother. He will live a very simple and honorable life. He will be—what is it they call it?—a county magistrate, chairman of many things, a judge at agricultural shows. When he dies, he will be buried up in that windy little churchyard, and people will come from a long way off to say how good he was. My hat, quickly, Aline! If I am not in that orchard in five minutes