LITMIR.BIZ

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rosery, for it had been cleverly utilised to serve as a background and shelter to the earliest spring roses, and was now bare of blossom, almost of leaves. In the centre of this wall, built into the old brick surface, was an elaborate black and white marble tablet or monument, on which was engraved the following inscription:—

      "Hic, ubi ludebas vagula olim et blandula virgo, Julia, defendunt membra foventque rosæ. Laetius ah quid te tenuit, quid purius, orbis?— Nunc solum mater quod fueris meminit"

      "What is it? What is written there?" Barbara asked with some eagerness. "How strange a thing to find in a rose garden!"

      She had turned to her companion, but for a while he made no answer. Then at last, speaking with an even stronger burr than usual, Doctor McKirdy translated, in a quiet emotionless voice, the inscription which had been composed by Lord Bosworth, at the bidding of Madame Sampiero, to the memory of their beloved child.

      "Here, where thou wert wont once to play, a little sweet wandering maid, Julia, the roses protect and cherish thy limbs. Ah, what happier or purer thing than thee did the world contain?"

       "Do ye wish to hear the rest?" he said, rather sharply, "'Twas put in against my will and conscience, for 'tis false—false!"

      She bent her head, and he read on,

      "Now, only thy mother remembers that thou wast."

      Barbara looked up, questions trembling on her lips, but her eyes dropped as they met his. "Madam would have her put here," he said; "Julia's garden—that's what we used to call it, and that is what it still is, for here she lies—coffinless."

      Again he pointed to the last line, "Madam ought not to have had that added when there's not a man or woman about the place who's forgotten the child! But beyond the walls—ah! well, who knows what is remembered beyond the walls?"

      "What do you mean?" asked Barbara in a low tone; out of the past she was remembering a June day at St. Germains. What had she been promised?—ah, yes! "the sweetest of playfellows."

      "Well, I was just meaning that Madam, when she made us put in those words, was thinking may-be of some who do not belong to the Priory, who live beyond the walls. I make no doubt that those folk have no time to cast their minds back so far as to remember little Julia."

      He turned sharply round and walked as if in haste through the garden, his head thrust forward, his hands clasped behind his back, in what Barbara already knew to be his favourite attitude.

      Once outside the gate, Doctor McKirdy looked long, first towards the Priory, then down the broad grass drive. "And now," he said briskly, "let's get away to the downs—there's more air out there than here!"

      The road leading from the Priory gates to the open downs lay along a western curve of country-side, and was over-arched by great elms. To the west Mrs. Rebell caught glimpses of a wide plain verging towards the sea, and in the clear autumn air every tree and bush flamed with glory of gold and russet.

      As they walked along the white chalky ridged cart track, the doctor looked kindly enough at the woman by his side. She was not beautiful as had been her mother, and yet he saw that her features were very perfect, and that health—perfect recovery from what had evidently been a bad illness—might give her the bloom, the radiance, which were now lacking. The old Scotchman also told himself with satisfaction that she was intelligent—probably cultivated. With the one supreme exception of Madame Sampiero, Doctor McKirdy had had very little to do with intelligent women; but Barbara, from her way of listening to his stories of Chancton Priory, from her questions and her answers, had proved—or so thought the doctor—that she was one of the very few members of her sex who take the trouble to think for themselves.

      "I suppose Mr. Sampiero is dead?"

      Never was man more unpleasantly roused from an agreeable train of thought.

      "He was dead last time we heard of him, but that happened once before, and then he came to life again—and most inopportunely."

      There was a pause, and Doctor McKirdy added, in a tone which from him was new to Barbara, "I wonder if you are one to take offence, even if the offensive thing be said for your own exclusive benefit?" He did not wait for her reply, "I think you should just be informed that the man—that individual to whom you referred—is never to be mentioned. Here at Chancton he is forgotten, completely obliterated—wiped out." He made a fierce gesture as though his strong hands were destroying, crushing the life out of, some vile thing.

      "Since I came here, thirty years ago, no one has dared to speak of him to me, and the only time that Madam had to communicate with me about him she wrote what she had to say—I, making answer to her, followed the same course. I thought, may-be, I'd better let you know how he is felt about in this place."

      "I am sorry," faltered Barbara. "I did not know—My father and mother told me so little——"

      "They're a fearsome gossiping lot in Chancton," Doctor McKirdy was still speaking in an angry ruffled voice; "I don't suppose you'll have much call to see any of them, but Madam may just mean you to do so, and you may as well be put on your guard. And then you'll be having your own friends here, I'm thinking"—he shot a quick look at her—"Madam bid me tell you that she has no idea of your shutting yourself up, and having no company but Mrs. Turke and,"—he turned and made her an odd, ungainly little bow—"your most humble servant here!"

      "I have no friends," said Barbara, in a very low tone. "Nay, I should not say that, for I have two very good friends, a Mr. Johnstone, the Governor of Santa Maria, and his wife—also, since yesterday, a third—if he will take me on trust for my mother's sake." She smiled on her companion with a touch of very innocent coquetry. Doctor McKirdy's good humour came back.

      "Ay," he said, "there's no doubt about that third friend," but his brow clouded as Barbara added, "There is one person in Chancton I'm very anxious to see—a Mrs. Boringdon. She is the mother of my friend Mrs. Johnstone."

      The mention of this lady's name found Doctor McKirdy quite prepared, and ready with an answer. "Well, I'm not saying you'll like her, and I'm not saying you'll dislike her."

      "If she's at all like her daughter I know I shall like her."

      "May-be you will prefer the son, Mr. Oliver Boringdon—I do so myself, though I've no love to waste on him."

      How the doctor longed to tell Mrs. Rebell what he really thought of this Mrs. Boringdon, the mother of Madame Sampiero's estate agent, and of how badly from his point of view this same young gentleman, Oliver Boringdon, sometimes behaved to him! But native caution, a shrewd knowledge that such warnings often bring about the exact opposite to what is intended by those who utter them, kept him silent.

      Barbara's next words annoyed him keenly.

      "Oliver!" she cried, "of course I shall like him!"

      "Oliver? Then you're already acquainted with him?" The doctor felt beside himself with vexation. He was a man of feuds, and to him the land agent, all the more so that he was a highly educated man, who had been a civil servant, and later, for a brief period of glory, a member of Parliament, was a very real thorn in the flesh.

      But Barbara was laughing, really laughing, and for the first time since her arrival at Chancton. "If I were acquainted with him," she cried, "surely I should not be calling him by his Christian name! But of course his sister, Mrs. Johnstone, has talked to me of him: he is her only brother, and she thinks him quite perfect."

      "It's well there are two to think him so! I refer, o' course, Ma'am, to the youth himself, and to this lady who is a friend of yours."

       "Is he conceited? Oh! what a pity!"

      "Conceited?" Doctor McKirdy prided himself on his sense of strict justice and probity: "Nay, nay, that's no' the word for it. Mr. Oliver Boringdon just considers that he is always right, and that such a good thinker as himself can never be wrong. He's encouraged in his ideas by the silly women about here."

      "Does my godmother like him?—he's her land-agent, isn't he?"

      "Madam!"

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