CHAPTER XII.

MORE SURPRISES THAN ONE.

Miss Winter remained in London with her aunt three or four days. She had some purchases to make preparatory to her nuptials, and consultations to hold with her dressmaker. Neither did Mrs. Carlyon care to quit her house again without giving a few days to it.

On the morning preceding that on which they were to travel down to Heron Dyke, they were surprised, not knowing he was in London, to see Conroy. He had been somewhere in the country.

"And my visit was a failure," he said to Ella: "the friend whom I went to see was absent from home. I waited a day or two; but as he did not return, I came up here.--Have you been house-hunting?" he carelessly asked.

"House-hunting!" she repeated. "No."

"Seeing that Heron Dyke is to be given up, it will be necessary to fix upon some nest or other, will it not?" he continued.

Ella's eyelashes grew wet in a moment, and she turned away her head. A little while, and the old home that she had known and loved all her life would be hers no longer: how bitter the parting would be, no one but herself could tell.

"And there will be the furniture to select," continued Conroy, in the same light tone; "chairs, and tables, and carpets, and fire-irons, and a thousand other things that we can't do without: but all that I shall leave to you."

"I hope you won't do anything of the kind," said Ella, in some alarm. "I should be the greatest ignoramus in the world at selecting furniture."

"And I should not be one whit better," lamented Conroy. "Mrs. Carlyon, we shall have to fall back upon you. You must purchase for us."

"Time enough for that," returned Mrs. Carlyon, rather crossly. Any reminder of the giving up of Heron Dyke put her out at once. "You intend to travel, you both tell me, for two or three months after your marriage: you can come to me when you return and look out for a house then."

"So be it," said Conroy.

Mrs. Carlyon and Ella returned to Heron Dyke together, Conroy travelling to Nullington with them. Just to make sure that they got down in safety, he observed, laughingly: on the next day, or the next day but one, he should have to go back again.

It was with a heavy heart that Ella entered her many-years home. Not much longer would she be able to call it her own: indeed the feeling of its being hers had already left her. In her heart she began to say farewell to all the sweet familiar places that seemed now almost as if they were a part of herself. No whisper had yet gone abroad of any impending changes at the Hall. Neither had the servants been spoken to. It was best to keep the matter quiet until the last moment drew nearer. So long as she remained at the Hall, Miss Winter did not care to become an object of commiseration, or listen to the condolences of the neighbourhood; after she was gone people might talk as they pleased.

Her thoughts had other things to dwell upon beside the sweet sorrows of farewell. Before her stretched a strange, new, unknown life--a sea whose depths and whose shallows she had not yet fathomed--and sometimes the prospect half affrighted her. But when she thought of Conroy, and how her heart was safely anchored in his love, a trusting courage came back to her. He was the pilot of her life-bark: whatever storms might come, whatever winds might blow, so long as he was at the helm she would not be afraid.

On the morning but one after Miss Winter's return to Heron Dyke, Aaron Stone was crossing the lawn in front of the Hall, when he saw an elderly gentleman within its gates. Pacing to and fro and turning himself about, he seemed to be examining the house from different points of view in a manner that Aaron deemed to be the height of impudence. Aaron had hated strangers all his life, and he made no ado about walking up to this one and demanding by whose authority he was in the private grounds of Heron Dyke.

The old gentleman turned to face him.

"Ah, you are Aaron Stone, I expect: I have heard of you before to-day," said the stranger, as he peered at Aaron through his eyeglass.

"Well, I am Mr. Denison of Nunham Priors. Here is my card. Take it to Miss Winter, and ask her whether she can oblige me with an interview."

Aaron gave a great start at mention of the name, and shrank back a step or two. This little pleasant-faced, inoffensive elderly gentleman the man he had all his life been taught to hate, and whom he had always pictured to himself as more of a demon than a man! He could hardly believe the evidence of his eyes, and stood staring at a respectful distance.

"Take the card, man alive! What are you afraid of?" cried out Mr. Denison.

And there was so much in the impatient, commanding tone, ay, and in the words themselves, that put Aaron in mind of the other Mr. Denison, his late master, now dead and gone, that he took the card at once and hobbled off with it. Mr. Denison watched him with an amused smile. Ella was in her morning-room alone when the old servitor came in with a face white as milk.

"Oh, ma'am! Miss Ella! he has come at last! But don't you see him, ma'am--don't you speak to him. The old Squire will turn in his coffin if you do."

"Who is here?" exclaimed Ella. "Who is it that I am not to see?"

"He is outside on the lawn there, taking his views of the house; but if he once gets inside, there's no knowing what may happen. Keep him out, Miss Ella--keep him out!"

But by this time Ella had the card between her fingers. Flinging down her sewing, she ran out to the lawn with a glowing face of welcome. Aaron's mouth fell. To him the end of the world seemed at hand.

"I am so glad you are come! I am so glad to see you!" cried Ella, with outstretched hands.

Mr. Denison drew the blushing girl toward him and kissed her tenderly.

"You don't know how pleased I am to see you again," he said. "What would I not give if I had a daughter like you!"

"How did you get here? Where did you come from?"

"I came down from London last night, my dear, and was driven to a country inn a mile or two away--I like your old-fashioned country inns, they are pretty sure to be comfortable--and I walked here this morning. I am good for a few miles' walk yet."

"You will come in," said Ella, as she linked her arm in his. "It is your own house now, you know."

"That is a fact with which I shall not be able to familiarise myself for some time to come," replied Mr. Denison. "I have not set foot inside Heron Dyke since I was a lad of nineteen. Dear! dear! what changes in the world, and in me too, since that time!"

They sat down in Ella's pleasant little room overlooking the flower-garden and the park.

"And is this strange news, that Charles Plackett has told me, really true?" asked Mr. Denison.

"Quite true, dear Mr. Denison," said Ella, hiding her quivering lip.

"I was told not to ask any questions, and I won't, although I may have some opinions of my own in the matter, which may or may not be near the truth. However, we will let that pass. I have been anxious to see you ever since I heard the news from Plackett; wishful, too, to see the old roof-tree once again--for I am as much a Denison as my cousin was. But there were two or three interesting sales coming off in London, and I waited for them.----And you are glad to see me, are you!"

"I am indeed. Can you doubt it?"

"Well no, I can't, for your tone and your face tell it me as well as your words. And now, my dear, what I am come to say to-day is this: Heron Dyke must continue to be your home in time to come as it has been in time gone by. However much I may esteem the old place, I should not care to live here: I am too old to change my roof-tree. As regards the revenues, we can come to some arrangement about them after a time. You have behaved so nobly in this matter that I will see you do not suffer, and you may safely leave your interests in my hands. All I wish is that things should go on here as they have gone on hitherto. You shall continue to be mistress of Heron Dyke."

Ella shook her head.

"It cannot be, dear Mr. Denison," she answered through her tears.

"And why can it not be, I should like to know, if I say that it shall be?"

The peremptory tone was her uncle's over again, but with a quaint geniality in it which his had lacked. Ella did not answer at first. Her face was rosy red.

"I am going to be married," she said in a low tone. "So it is not fit that I should continue to be the mistress here: my husband would be the master. And I fear he would not care that his wife should be dependent on anyone's bounty--not even on yours, dear Mr. Denison."

A pained look came into Mr. Denison's face.

"Well, well; I might have had the sense to know that some young fellow would not fail to secure such a treasure. I was foolish enough to dream that you and my boy might perhaps in time meet and learn to like each other, and then--but all that is at an end now. Well, well."

Ella was gazing sadly out of the window. There was silence for a little while.

"I hope the husband you have chosen will take you to as good a home as this, my dear. Is he rich?"

"No. He has four hundred a-year certain, and----"

"Four hundred a-year!" interrupted Mr. Denison, in a tone of contempt. "Why I allow my scapegrace son as much as that. Tut, tut! you can't marry a man who has but four hundred a-year."

"And I have as much, or nearly as much," continued Ella. "Dear Mr. Denison, we shall do very well."

"Very well! After Heron Dyke!" Mr. Denison gave an emphatic sniff. "My dear, I have taken a great liking to you, as much as if you were my daughter, and I don't care to hear of this. I don't approve of it. Four hundred a-year!"

"Is your son come home from abroad?" inquired Ella, to change the conversation, after a pause of silence.

"Oh yes, he has come home, the graceless dog! Came down to eat his Christmas dinner with me at Nunham Priors. Stayed but a day or two, though."

"Is he so very graceless?"

"That's as may be. He thinks himself a model of a son for duty. Reminded me once, when I was blowing him up, that he had never given me a moment's care in his life. Oh, Master Frank's one that won't be sat upon--even by me."

"And has he never given you any care?"

"Care, yes; plenty of it: does he not go roving off by the year together pretty near, leaving me to my china and my things? Is that dutiful? I don't say Frank has vexed me in other ways. He has good parts and principles; he does not play up old Gooseberry, as some young men do. Ah, my dear, if he and you could but have made it out together! You would not have scrupled to stay at Heron Dyke then."

"No, not with him," smiled Ella. "It would have been his own--so to say. We must not think of that."

"No use to think of it, My young gentleman gave me to understand, in an obscure hint or two, that he had been setting up a sweetheart on his own account; hoped to marry her sometime. When I asked who it was, he drew in, and said no more: save that I should know all in good time."

"Then he would not have had me," laughed Ella. "Was it at Christmas he told you this?"

"No, the next time. It was another flying visit that he chose to pay me since then. 'Why don't you see if you can't make up to that young kinswoman of ours at Heron Dyke?' I said to him, and he had the impertinence to laugh in my face. 'Very well, young sir,' said I, 'understand this much: that if you take up with any black foreign woman, let her be a princess if you like, I'll not countenance your marriage.' It was not a black princess, he assured me; so I make no doubt it is some silly native doll."

Ella laughed heartily at the old gentleman's genuine tone of grievance. The next moment she blushed crimson at the sound of a well-known step, and Conroy entered the room.

He stood transfixed with surprise, the door-handle in his hand, as he gazed at the stranger. Mr. Denison rose and gazed back again.

"Sir!" exclaimed Conroy. "What brings you here?"

"I think I may ask what brings _you_ here?" retorted the old gentleman, while Ella looked on in wonder. "Have you no welcome for me?"

Conroy advanced and put his hands into Mr. Denison's, his face lighting up with smiles. Ella turned to her lover.

"Do you know this gentleman, Edward?"

"Well, he ought to: he is my own son," interposed Mr. Denison before the other could speak. "A graceless, ne'er-do-well young fellow! always giving me surprises."

Ella Winter stood bewildered. She thought a farce was being played for her benefit.

"This is the--the gentleman I told you of, sir," she said to Mr. Denison. "His name is Conroy."

"Indeed, my dear, it is not. His name is Denison."

"Dear father, it is Conroy; you forget," said the young man with a laugh. "Ella," turning to her, "my name is Francis Edward Conroy Denison, as the church register of my baptism will testify."

"Just you tell me the meaning of this, Master Frank. It seems that you do know your young kinswoman, here."

"Yes, father, and it is to her that I am engaged; she has promised to be my wife."

"Bless my heart!" was all that Mr. Denison could ejaculate. "Conroy? Well, yes, I ought to have remembered that was the name you went by when you chose to go gallivanting about the world as a newspaper correspondent.--My dear, you are looking bewildered--and no wonder."

"I am bewildered," returned Ella.

Conroy turned to address her.

"My father brought me up to no profession," he began. "He thought that as he was a rich man there was no necessity for me to learn to work. With all deference to him I chose to think otherwise. Idleness was distasteful to me. Like Ulysses, I could not bear 'to rest unburnished, not to shine in use.' I wanted to taste the sweet pride of earning my bread by the labour of my own hands. I dropped my family name, and went out into the world; with what result you know."

"You made no such mighty splash after all," grunted Mr. Denison.

"I contrived to be of some use, sir, which was the end I had in view. And I have seen the world, and gained experience. I shall be none the worse for it in the long-run, father."

"And not much the better, I dare say," retorted Mr. Denison. "My dear, can it be true that you have promised to marry this scapegrace?"

"Yes," smiled Ella, with a blush.

"Very good. We'll hold a jubilee. But how was it, pray Mr. Frank, that you kept the secret from me? Is that your idea of duty?"

"Father, I will explain to you; and to you also, at the same time," he added to Ella. "The first time I ever saw this young lady--it was at Mrs. Carlyon's--I fell in love with her. I resolved that she should be my wife, good Providence permitting. Had I been what I then appeared only to be, a correspondent for the newspapers, I might have hesitated to cherish any such hope: knowing myself to be the probable heir of Heron Dyke, certainly of Nunham Priors, I felt the hope was justifiable. In a short while I followed her down here, and got admittance to the Hall, and to Mr. Denison, under the plea of wishing to take sketches of points on the estate: my incipient love for Miss Winter grew into an ardent passion, and I felt assured as to the future. Moreover I saw, or thought I saw, that Heron Dyke would never come to her, but to you; there was that in the Squire's aspect which convinced me he would not live to see his birthday. But now, I must ask you, father, to acknowledge what your course would have been, had I told you this. Should you not have hastened to open negotiations for the alliance with your cousin the Squire?"

"Dare say I might."

"I am sure of it; and that would have ruined all. The Squire would have laid his positive embargo on the marriage, for I was one of the hated Denisons; and he would have extorted a promise from Miss Winter never to see more of me during his life or after it. So I maintained my incognito to her, and said nothing to you. I might have spoken after the Squire's death, that's true enough; but I wanted her to care for myself alone, not for my prospective fortune. I very nearly told you at Christmas, father; but I thought I would wait just a little longer. Last week I went down to Nunham Priors for the purpose, but found you absent. To-morrow I intended to start for Nunham Priors again, expecting you would by that time be at home."

"He should take out a licence for special pleading, he should!" interjected Mr. Denison to Ella. "To hear the neat way he twists and turns things! Where you got your gift o' the gab from, Frank, _I_ don't know. Not from me."

Frank smiled.

"It is true pleading, father. And you need no longer be under the fear that I shall bring home a black wife."

"There's some sense in the 'Dougal creature' yet," muttered the old gentleman, with a flourish of his pocket-handkerchief. "Ah, my dear, what, can I say to him, in what terms can I scold him, when he proffers you to me as his excuse? I can only forgive him, yes, were it a thousand times over!" He drew her to him, and kissed her very tenderly. "You shall be as my daughter--as my own child to me in every way. Heaven has been kinder to me than my deserts--and I am quite sure it has to Frank! And now there will no longer be any question of your quitting the old homestead here."

"But it is yours, sir," answered Ella, through her tears.

"My dear, it is Frank's from this day. I shall never quit my own home of many years. Good gracious! how would all the bric-a-brac be packed and moved? I'll come and see you both here as often as it suits me, and you must come in turn to me."

"And you will stay with me a few days now, to begin with, won't you?" pleaded the grateful girl. "Aunt Gertrude is here, you know."

"Won't say but I will, my dear. I should like to see a bit more of the old family place."

Mrs. Carlyon's surprise when she came into the room and saw the group, and her amazement when she learnt that Edward Conroy the despised was Frank Denison the heir, may well be left to the reader's imagination. Aaron Stone at first refused to believe it: "it was but a trick o' them other Denisons," he muttered, and it did not soften his ill-feeling towards Conroy.

Other troubles were not done with yet. That evening--after dinner--and never had a happier party met under the old roof than was then assembled--when the ladies went into the drawing-room, Ella was called out of it, by her maid Adele, to be told that the household was in a commotion. Two of the maids, who had been despatched on some errand to Miss Winter's sitting-room in the north wing, had come rushing down again in a terrible fright, asserting that the ghost of Katherine Keen had appeared to them. As a consequence, the whole of the servants were thoroughly scared. Ella whispered the news into Frank Denison's ear that night before he left for his quarters at the Rose and Crown: but it would take her some time yet ere she could remember to address him by that name. Frank made light of it to Ella, but he resolved to resume his patient watchings; which had been interrupted of late. And his patience was not put to much further trial.

The following evening, Frank--as we must now call him--instead of following his father to the drawing-room, quietly made his way to the north wing. He saw nothing. The next night he saw nothing, heard nothing. On the third night, as he was on the same seat in the darkest corner of the gallery that he was sitting on once before, when he heard those mysterious words spoken, the origin of which he had not yet been able to fathom, he was startled by hearing a low sigh, or by fancying he heard it, no great distance away.

He scarcely dared to breathe. The night was bright with stars and a young moon, and Frank's eyes, accustomed to the semi-twilight, fixed themselves in the direction from which the sound seemed to have come. Next moment he saw a dim figure emerge from the blackness of the corridor beyond and advance slowly into the starlit gallery. As it came nearer, stepping without a sound, he could see that it was robed in black from head to foot, he could see its white face and one white hand that clasped the robe closely round its throat. Frank Denison was no coward; but the figure, gliding noiselessly towards him, looked so eerie and unsubstantial by that dim light, that if his heart sank a little it was hardly to be wondered at. If he, strong and fearless man that he was, felt thus, what must be the effect of such an apparition on the nerves of timid and ignorant girls?

Nearer came the figure, and nearer. It would have passed him without noticing that he was there; but Frank nerved himself, sprang suddenly forward, and flinging out his arms seized the figure firmly round the waist. It felt tangible enough, a form of flesh and blood without doubt: he had half expected that his arms would grasp nothing but thin air. Simultaneously with this, the silence of the north wing was shattered by a piercing scream; and the figure fell into Frank's arms.

That scream did not fail to make itself heard below; two minutes later, half-a-dozen scared faces with as many lights were crowding into the gallery. One of the first on the spot was Miss Winter. She stooped and gently turned the face that was resting on Frank's arm to the light. "Why this is poor Susan!" she exclaimed. "Susan Keen!"

"Susan Keen!" repeated the wondering maids, pressing round.

Mrs. Carlyon was up now. "It can't be Susan Keen: what should Susan Keen do here?" she cried, full of incredulity.

"It is Susan: no mistake about that," said Frank. "The first thing to be done is to try and restore her to consciousness."

The girl was carried to Miss Winter's dressing-room, and placed on the sofa near the fire: the same sofa that Maria Kettle had lain on when she got her fright. Susan soon revived, and they gave her some warm wine. Shutting everybody out except Mrs. Carlyon, Ella soothed and comforted the girl with pleasant words. Gradually the eyes lost their frightened look, and the poor fluttering heart began to beat more equably. Then she was gently questioned; and, little by little, without much pressing, Susan's story was told by her own lips.

Possessed by the belief that her sister, either alive or dead, was hidden somewhere inside the Hall, poor Susan, as we already know, whenever she could escape her mother's vigilance, took to wandering about the grounds in the dusk of evening, gazing up at the windows of the old house, more especially at her sister's bedroom window, often fancying that she heard Katherine's voice calling her, and trying everywhere to find some traces of the missing girl. After a time the thought seemed to have entered her head that if she could only get inside the Hall and search there, it would be better still. It would appear that on two occasions during Katherine's service there, when Susan had gone up to the Hall hoping to see her sister, Aaron Stone had locked up for the night. Susan had then thrown some pieces of gravel at her sister's window, in order to attract attention; upon which Katherine had come out to her, kissed her, and bidden her to return home. Susan, curious to know by what means her sister had been able to leave the house after it was made safe for the night, had persuaded Katherine to tell her.

Among other rooms on the ground-floor at the back of the Hall, or rather at its side, and the side not frequented, was one that was called the wood-room, in which logs were kept to dry for winter burning. The unglazed window of this room was protected by horizontal iron bars; and one day, by a mere accident, Katherine saw that the lowest bar was loose in its socket; it could be displaced and replaced at will, and there was not the smallest difficulty in stepping through the low aperture to the ground outside. Katherine had thought it no harm to make use of this discovered means of egress on the one or two occasions she had seen her poor simple sister waiting, rather than let the girl remain there, as she might have done, for half the nights When the loss came, poor Susan never spoke of this, lest it might bring blame on Katherine's memory.

But she did not forget it. And when, impelled by uncontrollable longing to discover a clue to her sister's fate and to venture inside the house, she sought for the window, she readily found it. She had but to displace the bar, step in, and be within the Hall. Near the door of the wood-room was a narrow, back staircase, hardly ever used, which led up to the north wing, and so to the bedroom which Katherine had occupied.

Susan Keen might be half-witted, but she was cunning in this search. As she had found a way of getting into the Hall, so she found a way of getting out of her mother's house. After she was supposed to be safe in bed, she would creep downstairs, open one of the lower windows, go out of it, and return in the same way, Mrs. Keen being none the wiser. She made for herself a pair of list shoes which she slipped on over her ordinary walking shoes whenever she ventured, which was but rarely, inside the Hall. Between the two sisters there was a strong family likeness; both had the same long, pale, serious face, the same large, grey eyes, and hair of the same tint--a dark brown with a gleam of gold in it. In the dusk of evening or by the dim light of a candle in a big room, it was quite possible that one sister should be mistaken for the other, even by those to whom both of them were well known. Susan it was whom the two maids, Ann and Martha, had seen looking down upon them from the gallery; she it was who had frightened Mrs. Carlyon and deceived Maria Kettle; it was her voice that Conroy had heard calling for her sister as she wandered through the dark passages of the north wing; it was she who had tried Betsy Tucker's door the night of the storm: and it was no other than she who had rearranged the furniture in Katherine's abandoned chamber, about which there had been so much speculation. The supposed ghost, haunting the north wing, had not been a ghost after all; instead of being Katherine dead, it was Susan living.

"But she will not come to me, though I seek for her everywhere," wailed poor Susan, as she came to the end of her narrative and looked piteously into the compassionate face of Miss Winter. "Oh, ma'am, where can she be? Living or dead, she _must_ be inside these walls. I hear her voice calling to me, but I can never find her. Where can she be? where can she be?"

It was a question that Miss Winter could not answer.