Her Kingdom by Amy Le Feuvre

ANSTICE found her cousin, as she expected, much in her usual health. She had had a bad cold, but was getting over it, and had come up to London for the purpose of shopping combined with amusement. Anstice was taken everywhere; she found opportunity of seeing her cousins in town, who had been much astonished by the secrecy and suddenness of her marriage, and very much hurt that they had not been asked to it. She shopped a little for herself, and a great deal for Lady Lucy, and it was not till a week had passed that she got any time for a quiet talk with her old cousin.

Then one wet afternoon they sat over a blazing fire together in Lady Lucy's comfortable Early Victorian drawing-room.

"I am afraid," Lady Lucy began, "that you have been having a lonely time of it shut away with those naughty children all the lovely summer months, but now in the winter it must be worse. I do not like the country in winter. I always leave Norfolk, as you know, every October, and don't go back to it till May or June. Of course now Justin is home, it will be better. My dear, you and he must entertain a little. Have you not done so? He has some rough shooting and there's good hunting, and you could have quite a nice little house-party."

"I don't think he cares for society any more than I do."

"You are greatly mistaken. Justin has a good many friends, especially men friends, and now he is married, they will expect to be offered hospitality."

"I don't know him," admitted Anstice. Then she added impulsively: "I wish you would tell me a little more about him. We are almost strangers, remember! He has only been home for a few weeks, and we each live our own lives independently of each other."

"But that will not last. It must not, my dear."

Anstice smiled, but there was a wistful look in her blue eyes.

"There is a very hard and bitter strain in him, Cousin Lucy, which cannot be touched or broken. I feel every now and then, as if I am up against a stone wall. I agree with you that he has a heart, and has nice feelings, but they are encrusted over with this bitterness."

"He is North-country. You must remember that. They're hard and dour, something like their Scotch neighbours, very slow at showing affection or liking, but staunch and true and deep when they once let themselves go. And when they meet with disillusion or injury, unforgiving and unforgetting. That is the character of the Fell people. His father-my husband's brother-was a North-country man to the core; he was a hard, stern father, with little show of affection, and yet he idolized his son. Justin fell head over ears in love with a pretty, heartless minx, and disillusionment after marriage was his portion. He always had high ideals of womanhood and of marriage. His wife smashed these ideals to bits, and he has not yet recovered from his crash."

"Tell me more about him," said Anstice as she came to a pause.

"He has had a lonely life. Since he quarrelled with his only sister, he has had no woman to give him any help or sympathy."

"His sister? You don't mean to say he had a sister living? This is the first word I have heard of it."

"I wonder you have not come across her. Mrs. Wykeham knows her. She lives up there not so very far away. In the neighbourhood of Windermere. It's another instance of the North-country pride and rankling resentment. She was mistress of the Manor till he married. Brother and sister lived together, and she stupidly tried to stay on after the wife came. You can imagine the result. And before long, she was so rude and insulting to the bride that Justin literally turned her out of the house. She has never spoken to him since. I believe in justice. I must say that he has tried to make it up, but she is adamant. I fancy the bride was more to blame than Justin thought at the time. These family quarrels are very sad. It all accounts for the bitterness you complain of in Justin."

"I don't believe the children know that they have an aunt," said Anstice slowly. "This is all astonishing news to me."

"I rather think they have heard her name, but imagine she is dead. Of course their father would never mention her to them."

"No, I suppose not. It seems dreadful to me. I almost wish you had not told me."

"You are bound to know sooner or later. You might even come across her at some friend's house. I am not a Holme, I am glad to say. I can't understand bearing anyone a lifelong grudge. I only saw her once, a very handsome woman, pride and power in every line of her face."

"I have seen a portrait of her with him as a little girl. I always thought she must have died in infancy."

"Well, that's that, and now to talk of yourselves. You must soften him, Anstice, win him! He must be made of stone to withstand you!"