THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

SEPTEMBER 1879.

UNDER WHICH LORD?

BY E. LYNN LINTON.

Α'

LL this disgraceful turmoil about Theresa Molyneux and the Honourable and Reverend Launcelot Lascelles was perhaps more painful to Ringrove Hardisty than to any other. He had the honest Englishman's sensitive pride in the purity of the women who were his friends; and the fair fame of girls whom he had known from their infancy, and who were in a manner like his sisters-the only version of sisters that he had-was specially dear to him.

To make it the harder for him now, a few years ago there had been certain tentative little passages between him and Theresa. She had fancied herself in love with him when she came home from school; and she had shown what she felt too clearly to be mistaken. He had been struck by her prettiness, flattered by her preference; and in consequence had wandered round her for a short time, asking himself if it would do, and was she really his assigned half? Finally he decided that she was not; and that a temperament which gave before being asked to give, was not that which he most desired in his wife. Still, he always had for her that certain tenderness and secret sense of possession which a man feels for a woman of whom he has dreamt; and his indignation was the more bitter now because of that short time of hesitation and virtual ownership, when he had laid a few flowers of thought and fancy on the altar where the vicar had lighted such a consuming fire.

Like everyone else, he understood the true state of things, and how the religion which expressed itself in hysterics and nervous VOL. CCXLV. NO, 1785.

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exaltation was simply the passion of love under another name. And also like everyone else not committed to Ritualism blindfold, he knew that Theresa had been led into this state of semi-madness by the spiritual philandering with which a celibate priesthood enforces dogmatic teaching, and that Mr. Lascelles had made love to her after his own manner. Whether that manner had been crafty and undeclared, or open and confessed, it had been love-making all the same; and to Ringrove and some others the vicar stood as the responsible author of all the mischief.

But this was too delicate a thing for him to touch. Women, maternal and other, may take girls to task for their folly; and fatherly men may say a word in season, of not too direct a kind, against that sleeve-wearing of the heart which attracts the daws; but what can a young fellow do? especially if the lines are not laid in his own country-if the one implicated is out of his beat both for age and knowledge, so that he cannot drop hints about undesirable habits, and knows nothing of any damnatory antecedents, both of which well handled may be made useful as checks and refrigerators? A young man cannot go to a girl of his own age and say: "My dear, you are making a fool of yourself with the vicar or the curate-the captain or the lieutenant, and all the world is laughing at you." And even straightforward Ringrove felt this, and knew that it was not possible for him to lecture Theresa or advise her, to reprove or to enlighten her.

But if he could not do this, he could speak to Hermione and Virginia; and under cover of deprecating their friend's folly, and deploring the scandal that had occasioned, perhaps he might do them some little good, and open to the hateful truth, as he saw it, the dear eyes which were so fast shut now.

He saw very little of either mother or daughter in these sad later times; only at the Sunday morning service. When he called at the Abbey as he still did-often-they were sure to be out or engaged, and he had to content himself with Richard's company only. The two men indeed were discarded with impartial severity by the women to whom fanaticism was dearer than love; and if Richard was held to be the Man of Sin, Ringrove took rank as his younger brother.

But a man's love bears a tremendous strain when put to it; and to Ringrove as to Richard, these beloved ones were not so much to be blamed as pitied. It was to both as it would have been had they believed in possession. A grievous thing truly, that those fair bodies should be made the strongholds of fiends; but it was by no fault that they had been so disastrously invested. It was only

"They

were seated side by side on the couch at the foot of the bed."

a question of relative strength and weakness; and the Evil One is so strong!

It was just about noon when Ringrove entered the drawing-room of the Abbey, and sent in his name to Mrs. Fullerton and Virginia who were in Virginia's room upstairs.

"Shall we see him?" asked Hermione, looking perplexed and a little frightened.

At this moment they were seated side by side on the couch at the foot of the bed; watching the maid who was packing a small portmanteau of Virginia's with linen; only with linen. No girlish possessions dating from childish times and sacred as the first beginnings of private property were added; no pretty trinkets nor personal adornments; no favourite books of poetry, nor photographs of home or friends, nor any vestige of finery:-only linen. The crucifix before which those fervent daily prayers were said with so much holy zeal, so much mistaken application—some books of devotion and that queer collection of sacred rubbish which even her mother must not see nor handle, given her with such pomp of reverence by Father Truscottthis was all that was being packed up in the little portmanteau which her father had given her two years ago; everything else was renounced and left like the old loves and the old life.

"Yes, mamma," said Virginia after a short pause: "let us see him. It can do no harm, and I should like to say good-bye to him and to part good friends."

"Oh! we must be always good friends with him, in a way-unless we are forbidden; I hope though that we shall not be. It makes so much talk in the place when things come to a public breakdown," said Hermione with an unwonted burst of good sense.

"We ought not to mind that," returned Virginia, always on the side of uncompromising sincerity.

"After all, Ringrove is a good fellow!" said Hermione, with a strangely kind accent. "Had he been a good Churchman he would have been a splendid creature!"

"Yes; but it is just that if !" said Virginia with a sigh.

Mother and daughter were in an abnormal state to-day; and both were of softer mood towards outside sinners than their Directors allowed, or they themselves thought right. Though no tears had come to their eyes they were very close with each; and had they not been restrained by the sense of sinfulness and the carnal creature, should they mourn for the joyful event that was now at hand, they would have clung to each other weeping with the illogical sorrow of women who have wilfully undertaken to carry an un