“I can’t make it out,” she said to herself. “It seems so odd and inconsistent. And – I have not done so very much for her after all. They write as if I were her dearest friend, and in a sense responsible for her! I like her. There is a great deal of good in her, but the only real service I have done her since she came to London was getting Mr Montague to beg her in again, that time she was given notice of dismissal for defiance of the society’s rules.”

A smile came over Miss Norreys’s face at the recollection of the circumstances, and with the letters still in her hand, she sat down at her neat breakfast-table. And when she had poured out her coffee and begun to eat, she glanced through them again. They had both come together, one from Winifred enclosing the other, which was from Mrs Maryon, simply inscribed to Miss Norreys, but without any address.

This was Winifred’s:

“Dearest friend,” and the words again drew forth a smile from the reader —

“I have just received the enclosed from my mother. It was left open for me to read the contents. I hope you will not mind their asking you in this unceremonious way, though I confess I think they should have left the invitation to me. I am afraid you would find it dreadfully dull down there. I am not at all sure if I shall get down myself for Easter, as I scarcely see how I am to be spared here. If I go, it will be principally for poor little Celia’s sake; though now it would, of course, be for yours too, should you possibly care to go. It certainly is very pretty in our part of the country in the spring. You will let me know what you decide! – Ever yours devotedly, —

“Winifred R.V. Maryon.”

The enclosure was a slightly stiff and yet cordial invitation – an invitation which gave one the feeling that the writer had not the slightest doubt of its being at once and eagerly accepted – to Miss Norreys, to spend Easter week at White Turrets.

“You would give us pleasure by doing so,” wrote Mrs Maryon, “and we should be glad to have an opportunity of thanking you for your kindness to my daughter, and of making the acquaintance of one to whom in her present life she looks for advice and direction. And there are several things I should be glad to talk over with you. We expect Winifred at the time I name, and you and she could travel together. I think there are special return tickets issued about Easter, and I hope a little country air would do you good.”

Hertha read and re-read. Was there, or was there not, a slight touch of “patronisingness” in the letter? The idea rather amused her.

“It is almost impossible,” she said to herself. ”‘Poor and proud’ explains it, I suppose. Winifred was delighted to get the fifty pounds salary. I wish they had not asked me, for any visitor causes expense when people are so poor, and unaccustomed to that sort of thing. No doubt they think me very poor too – poorer than I am now, I am glad to say; the railway fare information is evidently given with that idea.”

Then she poured out a second cup of coffee, and proceeded with her cogitations.

“I have several invitations for Easter, but with out being cynical or suspicious I know that some, at least, of them are more for my voice than me. And my voice had much better stay at home or go to sleep. And it would be a rest of its kind to be with a simple country family like that – no dressing to speak of – I need not take a maid. It must be a pretty quaint place, too, I fancy. I wonder if ‘White Turrets’ is the name of a village, or what? It doesn’t seem likely that their house would have so important a name, though there are old farmhouses in some countries, scarcely more than cottages, with very grand names. I remember,” – she glanced at the letter again. “It must be their house or the village, for I see the railway station and post-town are both different. Dear me – the Maryons are rather extravagant as to note-paper! If one didn’t know it was impossible, this might have come from some big place!”

Then her thoughts reverted to her own plans.

“I should like to see that pretty younger sister again,” she thought. “And, after all, it will not increase any real or imaginary responsibility about Winifred if I come to a clear understanding with her mother. Not that I would shirk responsibility if it were a duty, but in this case it would be a mockery. She is not a girl to be either led or advised, and the reason that I am still her dearest friend is that I have – except on that one occasion – left her to buy her own experience. She needs to do so.”

The “one occasion” to which Hertha’s thoughts referred had been that of a crisis in Winifred’s relations with the society for which she worked – a crisis which, at the cost of considerable mortification, had left her a wiser woman. For it was only the finish up of a series of annoyances which had begun almost from the first day of her engagement, the cause of which may be summed up very shortly – Miss Maryon’s absolute ignorance of the meaning of the word obedience.

She was quite sure she knew the best way to manage the work better than those who had been at it for years; she was brimful of eagerness to distinguish herself, and of a kind of enthusiasm; she was energetic and hard-working, but she was entirely without deference. And underlying all her talk about the dignity of labour, the contemptibleness of an ordinary woman’s home-life, was a strong, though, unexpressed belief that she was doing the society no small honour in working for it, and that, by some instinct which she did not seek to define, the society should be aware of the fact.

The result of all this can be easily imagined. Though valuable as a steady and zealous worker, she was entirely inexperienced, and want of compliance with the rules was not to be endured.

“We can get scores of girls better fitted for the post at any moment,” said the much-worried secretary in reply to Mr Montague’s entreaties that they would give his protégée another trial. And in reality it was far more owing to the skilful pleadings, made in all good faith, of Hertha’s friend, as to the importance of the salary to a girl so placed, the disappointment her dismissal would cause to her friends as well as to herself, than from any conviction of Miss Maryon’s special abilities, that the secretary at last gave in.

He knew Mr Montague well, and his post had given him exceptional opportunities for the cultivation of discernment.

“Are you sure,” he said towards the close of the interview, looking up with a keen glance from under his bushy eyebrows, “are you sure this girl is really so dependent on her work? There is no story about her that we have not been told, is there? It’s no case of a self-willed young woman running away from home – an uncongenial stepmother, or any nonsense exaggerated into importance? She is not a girl to give in, even if in the wrong.”

Mr Montague started.

“What makes you fancy such a thing?” he asked.

The secretary considered.

“I can scarcely say – an impression, perhaps. Still there are trifling circumstances – she is very careless about money, thinks nothing of hansoms, for instance. And you know one of her great offences has been giving charity without permission, and, naturally, most injudiciously – ” He gave an impatient exclamation. “Enough to bring our whole society into disrepute,” he said, “contravening its very raison-d’être.”

Mr Montague felt uncomfortable, and yet he had no real grounds for misgiving.

“I can only repeat the reason of any interest I feel in her,” he said, “and that is that she is a friend of Miss Norreys – the last woman in the world to aid or abet any silly girl in the sort of conduct you suggest.”

The secretary’s brow cleared.

“True,” he said, “I had forgotten.”

Mr Montague called that very day to relate his success to Miss Norreys, but she was not at home. Then he contented himself with a note, merely stating that Winifred was to have another chance, feeling that any further discussion about her would be more satisfactory in speaking than in writing. He tried to see Hertha again, but again failed, and then a summons to an invalid sister at Cairo took him out of England for several weeks, without his meeting Miss Norreys at all.

Mrs Maryon’s invitation was accepted, simply, and with no effusive expressions of gratitude, though with all the kindly acknowledgment that it seemed to Hertha to call for.

“I have been undecided where to go at Easter,” wrote Miss Norreys, “but, among several invitations, none seems to promise me the quiet I really feel I need so surely as your very thoughtful one. It will be pleasant, too, to travel down with your daughter, for I have not seen her for some time, she, as well as I, being so busy. Indeed, I feel that you greatly overrate any little service I may have had it in my power to render her. My sympathy, as I think she knows, she can always count upon.”

Mrs Maryon read this with a feeling of some perplexity. She could not make up her mind what she should feel about and towards this Miss Hertha Norreys. She handed the letter to Louise.

“I cannot quite decide if we shall like her or not,” she said. “What is there in her way of writing that is not quite – I don’t know what to call it – not ‘deferential,’ that is too strong, for I suppose she is really a perfect gentlewoman; but almost as if she thought we were ‘out of everything,’ as if rest and quiet were all she could possibly expect here?”

“Well, to a certain extent they are,” said Louise with a smile. “Very likely Winifred has impressed upon her the extreme monotony and dullness of our life. But I suppose what you feel is the tone of the emancipated young woman of the day, mother – though from Celia’s description of her I fancied Miss Norreys above that. However, we shall soon see her for ourselves, and I do agree with you that it is a very good thing she is coming. You will be able to judge for yourself about her – especially on Celia’s account.”

“Of course, I hope she will enjoy it,” said Mrs Maryon. “I don’t like the idea of bringing her down here merely as a satisfaction to myself. Lennox has promised to spend Easter with us, hasn’t he; and that friend of his, Captain Hillyer?”

“Yes,” said Louise, “I’m sure we can count upon them. I wish Eric Balderson could have come, but he is going abroad for three weeks with his mother. It would have been a little return for their great kindness to Winifred and Celia.”

“He knows he can come whenever he likes,” replied her mother. “Yes, they were very kind; but sometimes, Louise, I wonder if that visit to London was not a mistake. It only seemed to clench matters.”

“No,” said Louise, “nothing would have kept back Winifred, mother. Do try to believe that.”

Easter, though it fell early that year, was wonderfully bright and mild. The morning which saw Miss Norreys and Winifred off to the country was, as to weather, a real red-letter day, and Hertha’s spirits, as she drove to the station where she and her “devoted friend” were to meet, rose higher and higher.

Not that she was anticipating any special enjoyments in her visit. More than once she had asked herself if she were not acting foolishly in bestowing a whole week of her rare holidays upon perfect strangers – and strangers whom she had no particularly strong reasons for expecting to find sympathetic and congenial.

“I really don’t know why I accepted,” she thought.

But this morning she felt a sort of reward – if reward she deserved, as she said to herself – in the beautiful promises of spring delights that met her even in the dingy streets through which a hansom rapidly carried her.

“What will it not be in the country?” was almost her first greeting to Winifred, when that young lady appeared, more punctually than was her habit, in honour of her expected guest. “If this weather lasts it will be perfectly —heavenly. Primroses and gorse always picture to me the streets of gold far more exquisitely than the thought of the hard, cold metal.”

And her eyes sparkled, and her beautiful expressive face flushed with the quick instinctive response to nature which was one of her characteristics.

Winifred looked at her in some surprise. This phase of Miss Norreys’s character was new to her, but as it was Miss Norreys and no one else, the girl’s instinct was to admire and not criticise.

“You make me afraid to say what I have been wishing all the morning,” she said with a little smile.

“Indeed, and what is that?” inquired Hertha.

“Oh,” said Winifred, “it just struck me, seeing this nice weather, how delightful, how much more delightful, it would have been to have a week’s holiday in London with you. How many places we could have gone to see; what long charming mornings we could have spent, reading and talking, at the British Museum, for instance! Whereas – oh dear, I can scarcely hope to have you much to myself down at White Turrets.”

“But it is the country that makes all the difference in the world,” said Hertha. “Even if I had not fixed to go, I don’t think anything would have kept me in London to-day. Everything, every leaf, every bird’s twitter, every breath of air, seems to be calling us out of the dust and glare of the weary streets.”

“I suppose it’s all a question of novelty,” said Winifred. “You see spring in the country is such an old experience to me. There’s nothing new in it.”

“Nothing new!” repeated Hertha, with a touch of scorn. “You don’t suppose I have always lived in a town, do you? But as for ‘nothing new’ in the spring – why it is always new. Ever-returning youth is its very essence. You cannot know anything of the true feeling of spring to speak so.”

“Perhaps not,” said Winifred, and for her the tone was very humble. “I am not at all poetical: I have told you so.”

This softened Hertha, to whose nature the position of antagonism was never congenial.

“And I, perhaps, am foolishly enthusiastic in some ways,” she said. “I feel so exuberant this morning.”

“I am so glad,” said Winifred fervently.

Then it proved to be time to take their tickets.

“You travel th – ,” Miss Norreys was beginning, when Winifred interrupted her.

“I am quite pleased to go second,” she said eagerly. “I – I thought you would like it better, and I arranged for it.”

“Poor girl!” thought Hertha. “No doubt she has been saving in something else, to make up for the extra expense, which, doubtless, is for my sake. She has some very nice instincts about her, but I wish she could believe I don’t mind going third. Still it might hurt her to urge the point.”

They found a comfortable compartment, not unpleasantly crowded, which at that season was rather exceptional good luck, and, thanks partly to the presence of strangers, partly to Winifred’s respect for her friend’s remark, that she found few things more tiring than much talking in the railway, the journey was for the most part performed in silence.

As they approached its end, they found themselves at last alone, and Hertha, who had been enjoying with quiet though intense appreciation the varying view from her window of fields and trees in their first exquisite tenderness of green, of primroses on the banks, and homesteads in whose nestling orchards the fruit-trees were already in blossom, turned to Winifred with a smile of glad pleasure.

“Is the country remarkably pretty and picturesque about here?” she asked, “or is it all the charm of the contrast to my London eyes? It seems to me I have never loved a spring day really before.”

“I am so glad,” said Winifred, her own face reflecting the ready sympathy which, poetical or not, her devotion to Hertha never failed in. “I am so very glad. It makes me hope that, after all, you will not find a week at home too dull and dreary. You see, we can be perfectly independent: you and I can stroll about the woods talking all day long if we like.”

“But you will want to see as much as you can of your mother and sisters, considering you are only with them for a week,” said Hertha. “And I shall like to get to know your pretty Celia a little better. Don’t trouble about me, Miss Maryon, I beg you. I shall be perfectly content. I only hope I shall give no trouble, and that none of you will – will make the very least difference with my being there.”

Winifred looked slightly perplexed.

“Any difference!” she repeated, “I don’t see what difference your being with us could make, except the pleasure of having you. You see, in a country-house there is always a good deal of coming and going – there are not the ‘told-off’ hours and days as in London. But, by-the-by,” she added suddenly, “I did not see your maid at the station. Have you not brought her?”

“N-no,” said Miss Norreys, “I said to Mrs Maryon, when I wrote, that I could do without her, I thought.”

“Oh, of course it will be all right,” said Winifred, quickly, at once thinking of the expense for her friend. “Nothing will be easier than for – But here we are,” she broke off, as at that moment the train slackened, and she turned to gather together the odds and ends lying about the carriage. “Just put them near the door. Dawson will see to them,” she went on. Then she added, with a little rising colour, “Don’t you think —would you mind calling me ‘Winifred’? before my own people, you know. I would so like it.”

“I will try,” said Hertha, smiling. “I may forget sometimes, but as you wish it, I will try.”

“Thank you,” replied Winifred. “Oh, there is Louise. Poor dear old Louise! She loves coming to meet arrivals. She is not very ‘interesting,’ you know – just a girl of the old type, but as good as gold. You need not be more with her than you like, if she bores you.”

“I am not afraid of that,” said Hertha; “very few people bore me. But you have scarcely ever mentioned her to me. Which is she?” as she ran her eye along the platform, where they were just drawing up, and seeing no one quite answering to her mental picture of the probably dowdy, certainly commonplace, ungifted “home” sister.

“Not that – ”

How glad she was afterwards that she had never completed the sentence! The person she was on the point of pointing out was a remarkably plain, indeed, shabby, little young woman, barely answering to the word “lady,” even in its most conventional sense. No, no, that could not be a sister of Winifred’s, still less of beautiful Celia’s.

“Oh, what pretty ponies!” she went on, hastily, as she caught sight of a charming low carriage, just visible through the station gates, “and what a sweet-looking girl driving them. How her hair glistens in the sunshine!”

“Yes,” said Winifred, calmly, “that’s Louise. Oh, Dawson – yes, take all these little things and bring them up with the luggage. Don’t trouble about anything, dear Miss Norreys – they will be all right,” as an unexceptionably correct young groom proceeded to load himself with their smaller goods and chattels.

Chapter Nine.
The White Weeper

Hertha felt stupefied: but she had the presence of mind to say nothing more, and to wait for the further development of this extraordinary mystification. Winifred, evidently in happy security that their luggage was in good hands, led the way to the pony carriage, where a joyful —

“Dear Winifred – Miss Norreys – I am so glad to see you,” followed by excuses at not daring to leave her place, “as the ponies are sometimes just a little fidgety with the trains, you know,” left no shadow of doubt as to the identity of the girl with the bright brown hair. “There is comfortable room for three, as Winifred never minds sitting at the back,” Louise went on; and Winifred, after kissing her sister, endorsed this statement by declaring she would rather sit anywhere than have to drive.

“Do you not like driving?” said Miss Norreys, feeling that she must say something, though a curious sensation of indignation against Winifred for the sort of trick she seemed to have played her was fast taking form and growing in her heart.

Winifred shook her head. “I am too short-sighted, for one thing,” she said, “and then the only thing that I enjoy in driving is reading, and of course you can’t read if you’ve got the reins.”

“Read!” repeated Miss Norreys, with a slight and not altogether approving smile. “Certainly not. But reading,” and she turned to Louise.

“Your sister soars above me,” she said. “I can imagine no volume ever printed that one could glance at for an instant with such an open book of beauty before us as this;” and her eyes sparkled with that look of exquisite and intense enjoyment which, with some, we feel is almost “akin to tears.” “I don’t think I ever felt the marvel and the magic of spring more than to-day.”

Louise glanced at her, and by the sweetness of the glance, and the kindness of the whole – not remarkably pretty, but thoroughly lovable and womanly face, Hertha felt that she ran no risk of being misunderstood.

“Yes,” the girl replied, “a morning like this makes one echo the ‘very good,’ with all one’s heart, as far as Nature is concerned.”

Then a little sigh made itself heard.

“Winifred,” she said, “you will be very sorry – papa is not well. He had one of his bad attacks yesterday. He is better, but of course very weak, as usual.”

“He must have been doing something imprudent,” said Winifred, with a touch of asperity which, with many people, is the expression of real anxiety. “He has been so well lately.”

“It has been leading up to it, I fear,” said Louise. “There has been a great deal of extra work, and I am afraid more of it has fallen on him than should have been the case, though I have done my best – I am not so clever or clear-headed as Winifred,” she added, with a smile, to Miss Norreys, “and in a large prop – ”

An exclamation from her companion interrupted her.

“What a beautiful old house! A perfect Sleeping Beauty’s palace,” cried Miss Norreys. “Do tell me whose it is. It must be a show place.”

It never occurred to her that the great white house, seen to peculiar advantage from their present point of view, as it rose among the trees, its many latticed windows glistening in the sunshine – a sort of fairy dignity brooding over all – could be the Maryons’ home. For though she felt that she had been, it seemed to her, inexcusably misled by Winifred as to her family’s social position and means, she could not all at once have realised how “very pleasant” were the material places in which their lines were laid.

Again Louise smiled, but this time with a surprised and almost reproachful glance of interrogation at her sister.

“Has not Winifred told you about our dear old home?” she said. “We think there is nothing like it in the world. Winifred, have you never described it to Miss Norreys?”

“We have always had so many other things to talk of,” said Winifred, indifferently. “Besides, I am not good at description.”

Hertha felt too provoked to look at her.

“You are right,” she said warmly to Louise, “I am sure there cannot be another place like it. There is something dreamy about it, too, even in this brilliant sunshine.”

“You feel that?” said the girl eagerly. “I am so glad. Yes, there is a very peculiar charm about it. I think it must be that it is so little changed from what it must have been hundreds of years ago. It is so easy in one’s fancy to re-people it with those who used to live in it and love it as we do now. Celia makes up all sorts of stories, based on the real history and legends of the place. Sometimes,” with a little laugh, “she really frightens herself, for we have a ghost. We call her the – ”

“Louise,” said Winifred, “I just won’t have you tell Miss Norreys that idiotic old story. I wish all ghost stories and nonsense of the kind were forbidden by Act of Parliament.”

“We should be in many ways the losers if it were so,” said Hertha, quietly. She could not understand Winifred, for there was evident earnestness under her half-laughing tone.

“What a strange, inconsistent girl she is!” thought the elder woman. “She looks and seems honesty itself, it is the thing that attracted me to her; and yet how she has deceived, or at least misled me, and through me, Mr Montague and others. I feel hot when I think of it! Still she does not feel ashamed, and she must have known I should be undeceived as soon as I came here. And now this about ghosts? Is it possible she is really afraid of that sort of thing, and that it makes her dislike her home? She certainly does not look as if she had ever had a fright.”

Her silence during these cogitations had reacted on her companions, and for a few minutes neither spoke. Then Winifred turned abruptly to Louise.

“Who is with you?” she said, “or who is coming? Lennox, of course, and any friends of his?”

“Yes,” Louise replied with the slightest possible increase of colour in her face. “Lennox and Captain Hillyer. We shall be quite a cheerful Easter party, if only papa gets better quickly.”

“Dear me,” thought Miss Norreys, who was not above all feminine weaknesses, “I do feel very angry with you, Winifred Maryon. I shall be all wrong about my clothes even: I shall have to telegraph for evening dresses.”

They were entering the drive by now. It was in keeping with all the rest. Long and straight, with thickly growing trees at each side, which gave an additional touch of mystery to the approach to the house. And though straight – so that the building standing somewhat high on its terraced summit, was conspicuous, the white flights of steps, gleaming like the walls themselves in the sunshine – the road dipped considerably, though gradually, here and there, causing all but the turrets, from which the house evidently took its name, momentarily to disappear.

Hertha, for the time, forgot all else in her true sense of pleasure and interest. And no words she could have chosen, had she been the most calculating of mortals, would have made such a pleasing impression in the still dubious Mrs Maryon as those with which her new guest replied to her words of cordial but slightly constrained greeting.

“I have never been so enchanted by anything as by the first sight of your exquisite old house. I feel for once in real fairy-land.”

And graceful Celia, in her pale-grey dress, with a flush on her cheeks and shy welcome in her lovely eyes, might, indeed, have been the Sleeping Beauty just awakened.

That “first impression” grew instead of fading, for it was well rooted. Both Mrs Maryon and her guest, so different in all else, so entirely unlike each other in the circumstances of their lives – the one so sheltered and protected, so curiously ignorant of life save in her own experience of it; the other, so early thrown upon herself, clung to by others at an age when most are still clinging and dependent; yet neither of the two either narrowed or hardened – these two, thanks to their genuine womanliness and unselfish single-mindedness, made friends, and such a friendship lasts.

By some tacit agreement the “talk,” which on Mrs Maryon’s part had been one underlying motive of the invitation, was during the first few days evaded. They did talk, but not so much about Winifred as of themselves, their personal feelings, and almost at once Mrs Maryon knew that she had utterly misjudged this girl, or woman, as Hertha preferred to call herself. Though it had arisen through no fault of her own, Winifred’s mother was acutely conscious of the prejudice she had harboured against Miss Norreys, and it now seemed to her as if she could not do enough to make amends for the mistaken opinion she was yet far too delicate-minded to avow to its object; and Hertha, on her side, bided her time for the explanation which she knew was unavoidable. She was feeling her way, anxious not to blame Winifred unduly, difficult as she found it to understand the girl, or to sympathise with the line she had taken up.

But the long tête-à-têtes with her friend which Miss Maryon had looked forward to did not come to pass. Instead, Hertha seemed never tired of talking to her hostess, relating to her as they grew to know each other better, tender recollections of her own mother and bygone days, which she seldom now allowed herself to dwell upon.

And Winifred, one of whose good qualities was a remarkable absence of jealousy, consoled herself by reflecting that Hertha was probably actuated by real regard for herself.

“She sees that it will make everything easier for mamma to like and trust her, and thus to get rid of all these old prejudices against women with a career,” she thought.

Altogether the days passed pleasantly. Hertha allowed herself, for the time, to live in the present. Her interest in both Celia and Louise deepened; of Celia’s unusual talent she became convinced, and she determined to do anything in her power to help the young girl to cultivate it. Mr Maryon recovered sufficiently to join the family party in the later hours of the day, when his cheerfulness made one almost forget his chronic invalidism.

“I like your cousin Lennox so much,” said Hertha one day to Celia; “I had no idea from the little I had heard of him that he was so – well, interesting, as well as sterling.”

“I am so glad you like him,” said Celia, her face lighting up. “Yes, he is very nice, though not, perhaps, exactly clever.”

“He is not stupid,” said Hertha.

“Oh, no; not stupid. He’s just the sort of man that would have got on splendidly if he had had a clever wife. It is such a pity,” and she sighed a little. “I daresay you have noticed – he is so devoted to Winifred, and she doesn’t care for him in the least.”

“To Winifred!” said Miss Norreys. “No, I certainly should not have thought so. Are you sure – it is not one of Winifred’s freaks to think so?” she was going to add, but stopped in time.

“Oh, quite sure,” said Celia, with the slightest possible inflection of annoyance. “Winifred is not at all the sort of girl to flirt, or anything like that. And I think it is only natural that he should be devoted to her. She is so clever, and so – unlike the common run, and Lennox has looked up to her all his life. We should all have been so glad, for then she could have settled down at home, or close to home, for good. Len’s little place is only two miles away. And it would have kept White Turrets in the family. He is our second-cousin, you know.”