CHAPTER II.

Mrs Norton had known William Hare all her life.  She was the youngest daughter, he the youngest son of equal Yorkshire families.  Separated by about a mile of pasture and woodland, these families had for generations lived unanimous lives.  In England the hunting field, the grouse moor, the croquet and tennis lawn, with its charming adjunct the five-o’clock tea-table, have made life in certain classes almost communal; and Mrs Norton and William Hare had stood in white frocks under Christmas trees and shared sweetmeats.  He often thought of the first time he saw her, wearing a skirt that fell below her ankles, with her hair done up.  And she remembered his first appearance in evening clothes, and how surprised and delighted she was to hear him ask her if he might have the pleasure of a waltz.

He went to Oxford to take his degree; she was taken to London for the season, and towards the end of the third year she married Mr Norton, and went to live at Thornby Place.  Through the excitement of the marriage arrangements, and the rapid impressions of her honeymoon, the thought of having for neighbour the playmate of her youth had flitted across, but had not rested in, her mind, and she did not realize the charm that it was for her until one afternoon, now more than twenty years ago, a young curate, bespattered with the grey mud of the downs, had startled her and her husband by addressing her as Lizzie.  Lizzie she had remained to him, he was William to her, and henceforth their lives had been indissolubly linked.  Not a week had passed without their seeing each other.  There were visits to pay, there was hunting, and then habit intervened; and for many years, in suffering, in joy, in hope, their thoughts had instinctively looked to each other for reflective sympathy, and every remembrable event was full of mutual associations.  He had sat by her when, after the birth of her first and only child, she lay pale, beautiful, and weak on a sofa by a window blown by the tide of summer scent; and the autumn of that same year he had walked with her in the garden, where the leaves fell like the last illusion of youth under the tears of an incurable grief; and staying in their walk they looked on the house which was to be for evermore one of widowhood.

Had she ever loved him?  Had he ever loved her?  In moments of passionate loneliness she had yearned for his protection; in moments of deep dejection he had dreamed of the happiness he might have found with her; but in the broad day of their lives they had ever thought of each other as friends.  He had advised her on the management of her estate, on the education of her son; and in his afflictions—­in his widowerhood—­when his children quickly followed their mother to the grave, Mrs Norton’s form, face, and words had steadied him, and had helped him to bear with a life of crumbling ruin.  Kitty was now the only one that remained to him.