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| In sheep's clothing |
And Irion sat at her bedroom window staring, as she had often stared, at the old grey cas-
tellated building away on the hill-top.
In her happy moods its dreamy poetic loneliness fascinated her; in her troubled moments its desolation frightened her —
because of the ghosts which were said to wander there by night.
To-day she was simply speculative. Where was the owner of those miles of tree-covered hill, the should-be master of that almost ruined house ? Was he alive or dead, that man-rejected alien, who had been driven with whips and scorns away from his people
and from his country ? Even thinking of him made Irion feel cold and frightened. A man, the son of a good old English gentle- man, the last of a proud old English family, a man whom the world had called great because of the talents which he possessed, and because of the rich promise of his youth. Such a man, and — a murderer 1
He had not been hanged — not sentenced even; *a quibble of the law and family
interest had saved him,' the people said. But not one man, not one woman in all the
county held him guiltless. Therefore they had driven him out from amongst them, curse
pursued.*
Irion had seen him once— she was quite a chUd then— seen him as he passed her in the street of Rockford, coming out of the justice- court, committed for trial — condemned already by his once friends ! The first stones cast at him, as usual, by those who had fawned upon him prosperous. He had passed by her in the street, and had laid his hand upon her
head, saying to the man with him : ' What a very pretty child,' and looking straight into
Irion's baby eyes. She was only five years old then, but she could remember having started away from his touch, and raced like a hunted animal across the road to the other side of the way, where some village boys and girls shouted to her that he had left blood- stains on her hair. She had never forgotten it. To-day, twenty years afterwards, she
could recall — a boy's face, hairless still, but stern, and hard, and evil, so she had thought
it, trembling under the fear which his touch had brought upon her.
And this was all she had known of Ulric Aylmer, except — that he was a mur- derer 1
A boy of twenty years, and a slayer of human life 1 The horror of it had fallen upon her then with unnatural intensity, and it had never left her. When as a child she dreamed bad dreams, they were always of this blood- stained man (for to a child of five, twenty is manhood) clutching at her throat, and holding a knife over her. Even now in her woman- hood, she dreamed the same dream sometimes, after she had sat staring at the old grey
towers, speculating as to the present of Ulric Aylmer — ^if he were yet alive.
It was the most striking object before Irion's bedroom window, this house, and the park, and the woods. A grand old family estate, let to the ghosts inside, and to the rooks and the owls outside. Irion intended to write a romance about it some day, when she should have learnt the fate of the owner. Some day she would tell the world that story which Rockford alone knew in detail. The story of the last of the Aylmers, who loved a village girl and in cold blood slew the man who stood in his way ; the village swain who would have been so true to his lass, only he was laid low by * the squire's son.'
Every one in Rockford knew the truth, — but the law, they said, blinded its own eyes, and stopped its own ears, and refused to hear the voice of the people crying out for justice. They were poor, all of them, and ignorant ; but the Aylmers were rich, and wise in their generation. . In London, who knew Jim Hobb, the gamekeeper's son, or his village lass ? who cared that he was mur-
dered ? He would leave no blank amongst them. In London, who did not know the Aylmers of Aylmer ? Who would not have felt ashamed that a murderer should have lived and moved amongst them ? The voice of respectability is loud to convince, the arm of prosperity is strong to compel — and so Ulric Alymer was set free.
But the people of Rockford knew more, a great deal more, and they said amongst them that * If ever a blackguard and a devil in man's clothing were walking the earth, un- punished, it was Ulric Aylmer.' And this, Irion also had told herself, shuddering always at the remembrance of him.
Nevertheless, the deserted house, and the gloomy woods, with the cloud-shadows float- ing over them ; smiling sometimes, frowning sometimes, but ever changing, ever suggesting, had a charm for Irion which was all their own.
Her life was somewhat lonely, somewhat eventless, passing away with a monotonous,
meaningless cadence, echoed only by the hills of sleepy Devon. Now and again, indeed, stray sun-rays had
come and warmed it into a new life. These had taught the girl that there is something beyond charity schools and crops, somewhere out in the world, and that it was possible she might have a share in this something. Once before she had tasted of life, and again to-morrow she should revive the sweetness. Once she had been to London 1 to-morrow she was going again. Going on a visit for ' all the spring months. Going to friends whose world was so different from her world, whose life so apart from her life, that they might have been another form of creation alto- gether, instead of men and women such as she had been taught to understand manhood and womanhood in her country ignorance of worth.
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