"

WELL,"

CHAPTER V

KIN AND KIND

WELL," said Mrs. Scarth, placidly, "if your father is too busy to call upon him-and I must say that I never knew anybody who had such a gift as Robert has for being busy at a time of year when there isn't anything to do-I shall drive over and call this afternoon myself. Will you come?"

Her daughter, whom she addressed and who was sitting near her at the breakfast table, which the male members of the family had deserted, looked doubtful.

"Do you think he would like that?" she asked.

"I don't see why he should mind, and even if he did, he couldn't eat us," answered Mrs. Scarth. "After all, we are his nearest relations. Besides which, one doesn't want him to think that we are sore about his having come into the estate."

"Aren't we a little bit sore?" Bessie Scarth suggested.

"I am not. I am very comfortable where I am, and I should have hated moving to Rixmouth, which will want a great deal doing to it before it can be made anything like a comfortable house. Besides, we always know perfectly well that, whoever might succeed your uncle, we shouldn't. We have an apparent grievance, of course, but really I sometimes think poor Tom must have bequeathed that to your father because he was

aware that no legacy could give Robert half as much satisfaction. What particularly delights Robert is Tom's inconsistency in making a Roman Catholic his heir, when we were never forgiven for submitting to lighted candles on the altar of the parish church. As for me, I see no harm in lights, nor very much in Roman Catholics either. I'm all for living and let live."

Mrs. Scarth, a stoutish, elderly lady, who had contrived to live harmoniously for thirty years with the most difficult of husbands, and who had brought up a rather large family, was entitled to lay claim to that liberal attitude of mind. As the mother of half a dozen sons, she had naturally had her share of troubles and worries; but these had left no mark upon her broad, good-humoured countenance, nor had anybody ever found it possible to quarrel with her. Even the late owner of Rixmouth Castle, who had done his best, had been forced to give her up as a bad job, and had remained upon good terms with her throughout those oftrecurring periods when his brothers and he had mutually ignored one another. By her sons she was greatly beloved and unreservedly trusted, for they knew that she might always be counted upon to make allowances for their peccadilloes and also to do what in her lay towards obtaining occasional additions to the pecuniary allowances assigned to them by their stern father. As for her only daughter and youngest child, it must be confessed that the girl was a little spoilt, in the sense of having been much indulged. If Miss Bessie was not spoilt in any other sense, that was perhaps because she had an independent character, was given to field sports and was not particularly pretty. She had a neat little figure, bright blue eyes and a quantity of fair hair, which had a natural wave in it; but in the opinion of most people, including her own, these trifling advantages left

her so far from being a beauty that she was quite as likely as not to die an old maid. Old Humphry Trenchard, who, for some reason or other, was not as fond of her as her father's most intimate friend might have been expected to be, thought otherwise.

"Your daughter," he once told Robert Scarth, "has what the French call the beauty of the devil. It sounds an unflattering description, but it is really the reverse, for it means that she has what nine men out of ten can't resist. She may give you trouble in some ways, but you need have no fear of her lacking suitors. I venture to predict that she will get just as many offers of marriage as it may please her to invite or permit."

It is true that Humphry Trenchard was a blind man, which may seem to detract somewhat from the value of his statement; still, it was admitted on all hands that he seldom made a mistake, and Robert Scarth, whose rule it was to differ from everybody, never contradicted this staunch ally of his.

It was, in any case, with no view to making a conquest of her cousin Nigel that the young lady decided to accompany Mrs. Scarth to Rixmouth Castle that fine afternoon. She was a little curious to see the ex-monk who had been so oddly and abruptly converted into a country gentleman; but she did not expect to like him -the chances being so very much against his proving a sportsman—and it seemed to her highly probable that he would regard the visit of two ladies, nearly related to him though they were, in the light of an intrusion.

"I hope," said she, while she was being driven by her mother's side across the undulating, sparsely timbered expanse of park by which Rixmouth Castle is surrounded, "that you are prepared to be snubbed."

"Oh yes," answered Mrs. Scarth composedly, "I dare say he will snub us; he would hardly be a Scarth

if he didn't, would he? All the same, somebody must break the ice somehow, at some time, and as I never was afraid of poor Tom, I don't see why I should be afraid of Nigel."

The huge grey edifice of which he had become the conditional master wore an aspect forbidding enough to daunt a less obstinately good-humoured caller. Rixmouth Castle was not an old building, having been reconstructed, after a disastrous fire, in the early years of the nineteenth century; but, standing as it did on an eminence exposed to all the winds of heaven, it had already assumed a weatherworn appearance, and it had the grim, inhospitable look which belongs to all dwellings of which only a corner can be inhabited. The corner wherein its new tenant had recently established himself happened to include his late uncle's library, and this-although his late uncle had been no lover of books

-was a large and valuable one. He was investigating it, and was perched upon the top step of a ladder, with a duster in one hand and a heavy tome in the other, when the two ladies were announced; so that, even if he had wished to be formidable, the circumstances would have rendered such an attitude a little difficult for him. But it was evident that he had no wish of the kind. He descended rapidly, apologising, with a smile, for his dusty condition, begging his visitors to be seated and looking rather shy, rather ill at ease, as well as a good deal surprised.

"We have come," Mrs. Scarth explained, making herself comfortable in an armchair, "because my husband couldn't. He has a lot of jobs on hand just now-so he says. The proper thing, perhaps, would have been to leave his card at the door and drive away; but the truth is that I wanted to shake hands with you and welcome you to Yorkshire. When all's said and done,

blood is thicker than water. Now, don't tell me that it has taken us rather a long time to make that discovery, because I shan't have a word to say in reply if you do!"

He was not so uncivil. He murmured something about family dissensions, of which he had never known the rights or the wrongs, and glanced deprecatingly from his aunt to his cousin and back again, as though mutely imploring them not to visit the sins of his father upon him. Presently he came out with an articulate appeal.

"I am afraid it can't be very pleasant to you to see me here, and I don't myself feel that I have any right to be here; but, as you know, I am not here by my own choice."

"I thought," said Bessie, breaking silence for the first time, "that you were left free to choose."

His great brown eyes were turned upon her instantly. "Yes, but I should never have chosen to be given the choice. That was forced upon me, and I had to do what, upon the whole, seemed to be my duty."

"Of course it was your duty, my dear boy," Mrs. Scarth briskly declared. "How can it be any young fellow's duty to bury himself alive in a monastery when there is plenty of work in the world ready to his hand? And pray don't imagine that we are such dogs in the manger as to grudge you an inheritance which wouldn't have been ours if you had refused it. We are delighted, on the contrary, that there should still be a Scarth at Rixmouth, and if only you can make up your mind to return to the Church of EnglandBut I suppose

you won't do that?"

Nigel started. "Make up my mind to apostatise!" he ejaculated, in unfeigned horror; "you cannot be speaking seriously."

"All I meant to say was that it would make things