CHAPTER I.

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Mary Meehan and Distributed Proofreaders

CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE

By

M. E. Braddon

CONTENTS.

Book the First.

DE PROFUNDIS.

I. LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE

II. IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE

III. PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR

IV. A DECREE OF BANISHMENT

Book the Second.

DOWNHILL.

I. THE FATE OF SUSAN LENOBLE

II. FORGIVEN TOO LATE

III. GUSTAVE THE SECOND

Book the Third.

THE HORATIAD.

I. CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE

II. EPISTOLARY

III. TOO CLEVER FOR A CATSPAW

IV. CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL

V. THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR

Book the Fourth.

GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND.

I. HALCYON DAYS

II. CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY

III. WHAT DO WE HERE, MY HEART AND I?

IV. SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH

Book the Fifth.

THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA.

I. TAKEN BY STORM

II. FIRM AS A ROCK

III. AGAINST WIND AND TIDE

IV. DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY

V. ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE

Book the Sixth.

DIANA IN NORMANDY.

I. AT COTENOIR

Book the Seventh.

A CLOUD OF FEAR.

I. THE BEGINNING OF SORROW

II. FADING

III. MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS

IV. VALENTINE'S SKELETON

V. AT HAROLD'S HILL

VI. DESPERATE MEASURES

Book the Eighth.

A FIGHT AGAINST TIME.

I. A DREAD REVELATION

II. PHOENICIANS ARE RISING

III. THE SORTES VIRGILIANAE

Book the Ninth.

THROUGH THE FURNACE.

I. SOMETHING TOO MUCH

II. DR. JEDD'S OPINION

III. NON DORMIT JUDAS

IV. COUNTING THE COST

V. THE BEGINNING OF THE END

VI. CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED

VII. THERE IS A WORD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE

Book the Tenth.

HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS.

I. OUT OF THE DARK VALLEY

II. AFTER THE WEDDING

III. GREEK AGAINST GREEK

IV. ONLY A DREAM

V. BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE

VI. BEYOND THE VEIL

VII. BETTER THAN GOLD

VIII. LOST SIGHT OF

IX. ETEOCLES AND POLYNICES

X. "ACCORDING TO THEIR DEEDS."

CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE

Book the first.

DE PROFUNDIS.

CHAPTER I.

LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE.

In the days when the Bourbon reigned over Gaul, before the "simple,

sensuous, passionate" verse of Alfred de Musset had succeeded the

_debonnaire_ Muse of Beranger in the affections of young France,--in days

when the site of the Trocadero was a remote and undiscovered country, and

the word "exposition" unknown in the Academic dictionary, and the Gallic

Augustus destined to rebuild the city yet an exile,--a young law-student

boarded, in common with other students, in a big dreary-looking house at

the corner of the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, abutting on the Place Lauzun,

and within some ten minutes walk of the Luxembourg. It was a very dingy

quarter, though noble gentlemen and lovely ladies had once occupied the

great ghastly mansions, and disported themselves in the gruesome gardens.

But the young students were in nowise oppressed by the ghastliness of

their abode. They sang their Beranger, and they pledged each other in

cheap Bordeaux, and clinked their glasses noisily in their boisterous

good-fellowship, and ate the messes compounded for them in a darksome

cupboard, known as the kitchen, by old Nanon the cook, purblind,

stone-deaf, and all but imbecile, and popularly supposed to be the

venerable mother of Madame Magnotte. The youngsters grumbled to each

other about the messes when they were unusually mysterious; and it must

be owned that there were _vol-au-vents_ and _fricandeaux_ consumed in

that establishment which were awful and wonderful in their nature; but

they ventured on no complaint to the mistress of the mansion. She was a

grim and terrible personage. Her terms were low, and she treated her

boarders _de haute en bas_. If they were not content with her viands,

they might go and find more agreeable viands elsewhere.

Madame Magnotte was altogether mysterious and inscrutable. Some people

said that she was a countess, and that the wealth and lands of her family

had been confiscated by the committee of public unsafety in '93. Others

declared that she had been a popular actress in a small theatre in the

days of Napoleon. She was tall and thin--nay, of an exceptional

leanness--and her complexion was of a more agreeable yellow than the

butter that appeared on her hospitable board; but she had flashing black

eyes, and a certain stateliness of gait and grandeur of manner that

impressed those young Bohemians, her boarders, with a kind of awe. They

talked of her as the "countess," and by that name she was known to all

inmates of the mansion; but in all their dealings with her they treated

her with unfailing respect.

One of the quietest among the young men who enjoyed the privileges of

Madame Magnotte's abode was a certain Gustave Lenoble, a law-student, the

only son of a very excellent couple who lived on their own estate, near

an obscure village in Normandy. The estate was of the smallest; a

dilapidated old house, known in the immediate neighbourhood as "the

Chateau," and very dear to those who resided therein; a garden, in which

everything seemed to have run to seed; and about forty acres of the

poorest land in Normandy. These possessions constituted the patrimonial

estate of Francois Lenoble, _proprietaire_, of Beaubocage, near

Vevinordin, the department of Eure.

The people amongst whom the good man lived his simple life called him M.

Lenoble de Beaubocage, but he did not insist upon this distinction; and

on sending out his only son to begin the battle of life in the great

world of Paris, he recommended the young man to call himself Lenoble,

_tout court_.

The young man had never cherished any other design. He was of all

creatures the least presuming or pretentious. The father was Legitimist

to the very marrow; the son half Buonapartist, half republican. The

father and son had quarrelled about these differences of opinion

sometimes in a pleasantly disputatious manner; but no political

disagreement could lesser the love between these two. Gustave loved

his parents as only a Frenchman can venture to love his father and

mother--with a devotion for the gentleman that bordered on enthusiasm,

with a fond reverence for the lady that was the very essence of chivalry.

There was a sister, who regarded her brother Gustave as the embodiment of

all that is perfect in youthful mankind; and there were a couple of old

house-servants, a very stupid clumsy lad in the stables, and half a dozen

old mongrel dogs, born and bred on the premises, who seemed to share the

young lady's opinions. There was not a little discussion upon the subject

of Gustave Lenoble's future career; and it was not without difficulty

that the father could be persuaded to approve the choice of a profession

which the young man had made. The seigneur of Beaubocage cherished an

exaggerated pride of race little suspected by those who saw his simple

life, and were pleased by his kindly unaffected manners. The house of

Lenoble, at some remote and almost mythical period of history, had

distinguished itself in divers ways; and those bygone grandeurs, vague

and shadowy in the minds of all others, seemed very real to Monsieur

Lenoble. He assured his son that no Lenoble had ever been a lawyer. They

had been always lords of the soil, living on their own lands, which had

once stretched wide and far in that Norman province; a fact proved by

certain maps in M. Lenoble's possession, the paper whereof was worn and

yellow with age. They had stooped to no profession save that of arms. One

seigneur of Beaubocage had fought under Bayard himself; another had

fallen at Pavia, on that great day when all was lost _hormis l'honneur_;

another had followed the white plume of the Bernais; another--but was

there any need to tell of the glories of that house upon which Gustave

was so eager to inflict the disgrace of a learned profession?

Thus argued the father; but the mother had spent her girlhood amidst the

clamour of the Buonapartist campaigns, and the thought of war was very

terrible to her. The memory of the retreat from Russia was not yet twenty

years old. There were men alive to tell the story, to depict those days

and nights of horror, that mighty march of death. It was she and her

daughter Cydalise who had helped to persuade Gustave that he was born to

distinguish himself in the law. They wanted him to study in Paris--the

young man himself had a wild desire to enjoy the delights of that

wondrous capital--and to return in a few years to set up for himself as

_avocat_ at the town of Vevinord, some half-dozen leagues from the

patrimonial estate. He was created to plead for the innocent, to denounce

the guilty, to be grand and brave and fiery-hot with enthusiasm in

defence of virtuous peasants charged unjustly with the stealing of sheep,

or firing of corn-ricks. It never struck these simple souls that he might

sometimes be called upon to defend the guilty, or to denounce the

innocent.

It was all settled at last. Gustave was to go to Paris, and enter himself

as a student of law. There were plenty of boarding-houses in the

neighbourhood of the Ecole de Droit where a young man might find a home;

and to one of these Gustave was recommended by a friend of his family. It

was the Pension Magnotte to which they had sent him, the big dreary

house, _entre cour et jardin_, which had once been so grand and noble. A

printer now occupied the lower chambers, and a hand painted on the wall

pointed to the _Pension Magnotte, au premier. Tirez le cordon, s.v.p._

Gustave was twenty-one years of age when he came to Paris; tall,

stalwart, broad of shoulders and deep of chest, with a fair frank face,

an auburn moustache, candid, kind blue eyes--a physiognomy rather Saxon

than Celtic. He was a man who made friends quickly, and was soon at home

among the students, roaring their favourite songs, and dancing their

favourite dances at the dancing-places of that day, joining with a

pleasant heartiness in all their innocent dissipations. For guilty

dissipation the young provincial had no taste. Did he not carry the

images of two kind and pure women about with him wherever he went, like

two attendant angels ever protecting his steps; and could he leave them

sorrowing on thresholds _they_ could not pass? Ah, no! He was loud and

boisterous and wild of spirits in those early days, but incapable of

meanness or vice.

"It is a brave heart," Madame Magnotte said of him, "though for the

breaking of glasses a scourge--_un fleau_."

The ladies of the Pension Magnotte were for the most part of mature age

and unattractive appearance--two or three lonely spinsters, eking out

their pitiful little incomes as best they might, by the surreptitious

sale of delicate embroideries, confectioned in their dismal leisure; and

a fat elderly widow, popularly supposed to be enormously rich, but of

miserly propensities. "It is the widow of Harpagon himself," Madame

Magnotte told her gossips--an old woman with two furiously ugly

daughters, who for the last fifteen years had lived a nomadic life in

divers boarding-houses, fondly clinging to the hope that, amongst so many

strange bachelors, husbands for these two solitary ones must at last be

found.

These, with a pale young lady who gave music lessons in the quarter, were

all the feminine inmates of the mansion; and amongst these Gustave

Lenoble was chief favourite. His tender courtesy for these lonely women

seemed in some manner an evidence of that good old blood whereof the

young man's father boasted. Francis the First, who listened with bent

knee and bare head to his mother's discourse, was not more reverential to

that noble Savoyarde than was Gustave to the shabby-genteel maiden ladies

of the Pension Magnotte. In truth, this young man had a heart pitiful and

tender as the heart of woman. To be unfortunate was to possess a sure

claim upon his pity and regard; to be poor and friendless was the best

appeal to his kindness. He spent his evenings sometimes in the great

dreary desert of a salon, and listened respectfully while Mademoiselle

Servin, the young music-teacher, played dismal sonatas of Gluck or Gretry

on a cracked old piano that had been one of the earliest made of those

instruments, and was now attenuated and feeble as the very ghost of

music. He listened to Madame Magnotte's stories of departed splendour. To

him she opened her heart as she never had opened it to those other young

men.

"They mock themselves of everything--even the religion!" she exclaimed,

with horror. "They are Diderots and Holbachs in the bud, less the talent.

But you do not come of that gutter in which they were born. You are of

the old blood of France, M. Lenoble, and I can trust myself to you as I

cannot to them. I, who speak to you--I, too, come of a good old race, and

there is sympathy between we others."

And then, after babbling to him of her lost station, the lady would

entertain him with some dainty little supper with which she was wont to

indulge herself and her lady boarders, when the students--who were

treated something after the manner of school-boys--were out of doors.

For four years the law-student had enjoyed his Parisian life--not

altogether idle, but not altogether industrious--amusing himself a great

deal, and learning very little; moderate in his expenditure, when

compared with his fellow-students, but no small drain upon the funds of

the little family at home. In sooth, this good old Norman family had in a

pecuniary sense sunk very low. There was real poverty in the tumble-down

house at Beaubocage, though it was poverty that wore a cheerful face, and

took things pleasantly. A very humble English farmer would have despised

the income which supported M. Lenoble's household; and it was only the

economy and skill of the matron and her daughter which sustained the

dignity of the small establishment.

There was one great hope cherished alike by the proud simple-minded old

father, the fond mother, the devoted sister, and that was the hope in the

grand things to be done, in the dim future, by Gustave, the son, the

heir, the pole-star of the household.

Out of poverty, out of obscurity, into the broad light of honour and

riches, was the house of Lenoble to be lifted by this young law-student.

On the broad shoulders of this modern Atlas the Lenoble world was to be

sustained. To him they looked, of him they thought, in the long dreary

winter evenings during which the mother nodded over her knitting, the

father slept in his capacious easy-chair, the sister toiled at her

needle-work by her little table of _palissandre_.

He had paid them more than one visit during his two years of study,

bringing with him life and light and gladness, as it seemed to the two

women who adored him; and now, in the winter of 1828, they expected

another visit. He was to be with them on the first day of the new year.

He was to stay with them till his Mother's fete--the 17th of January.

The father looked to this special visit with an unusual anxiety. The

mother too was more than ever anxious. The sister, if she who loved her

brother with a somewhat morbid intensity could be more anxious than

usual, was more so now. A dreadful plot, a dire conspiracy, of which

Gustave was to be the subject and victim, had been concocted beneath that

innocent-seeming roof. Father, mother, and sister, seated round the

family hearth, fatal as some domestic Parcae, had hatched their horrid

scheme, while the helpless lad amused himself yonder in the great city,

happily unconscious of the web that was being woven to enmesh him.

The cord which monsieur unwound, the mesh which madame held, the

needle which dexterous mademoiselle wielded, were employed in the

fabrication of a matrimonial net. These unsophisticated conspirators

were bent upon bringing about the marriage of their victim, a marriage

which should at once elevate and enrich the Lenobles of Beaubocage, in

the person of Gustave.

Francois Lenoble's best friend and nearest neighbour was a certain Baron

Frehlter, of Germanic origin, but for some generations past naturalised

to the Gallic soil. The Baron was proprietor of an estate which could

show ten acres for one of the lands of Beaubocage. The Baron boasted a

family tree which derived its root from a ramification of the

Hohenzollern pedigree; but, less proud and more prudent than the

Lenobles, the Frehlters had not scorned to intermingle their Prussian

blue blood with less pure streams of commercial France. The _epicier_

element had prevailed in the fair brides of the house of Frehlter for the

last three or four generations, and the house of Frehlter had

considerably enriched itself by this sacrifice of its family pride.

The present Baron had married a lady ten years his senior, the widow of a

Rouen merchant, alike wealthy and pious, but famous rather for these

attributes than for any personal charm. One only child, a girl, had

blessed this union. She was now a young person of something under twenty

years of age, newly emerged from her convent, and pining for some share

in the gaieties and delights of a worldly paradise, which had already

been open to many of her schoolfellows.

Mademoiselle Frehlter's companions had, for the most part, left school to

be married. She had heard of the _corbeille_, the wedding dress, the

wedding festivities, and occasionally a word or two about that secondary

consideration the bridegroom. The young lady was therefore somewhat

inclined to take it ill of her father that he had not secured for her the

_eclat_ of an early marriage. Her departure from the convent of the Sacre

Coeur, at Vevinord, was flat and tame to an extreme degree. The future

lay before her, a dreary desert of home life, to be spent with a father

who gorged himself daily at a greasy and savoury banquet, and who slept

away the greater part of his existence; and with a mother who divided her

affections between a disagreeable poodle and a still more disagreeable

priest--a priest who took upon himself to lecture the demoiselle Frehlter

on the smallest provocation.

The chateau of the Frehlters was a very grand abode as compared to the

tumble-down house of Beaubocage; but it was cold and stony to a

depressing degree, and the furniture must have been shabby in the days of

the Fronde. Faithful old servants kept the mansion in a state of spotless

purity, and ruled the Baron and his wife with a rod of iron. Mademoiselle

execrated these devoted retainers, and would have welcomed the sauciest

of modern domestics who would have released her from the bondage of these

servants of the old school.

Mademoiselle had been at home a year--a year of discontent and

ill-humour. She had quarrelled with her father, because he would not take

her to Paris; with her mother, because she would not give her more new

gowns and bonnets and feathers and fur-belows; with the priest, the

poodle, with the autocracy below-stairs, with everybody and everything.

So at last the Baron decided that mademoiselle should marry, whereby he

might be rid of her, and of her complaints, vagaries, ill-tempers, and

general dissatisfaction.

Having once made up his mind as to the wisdom of a matrimonial

arrangement, Baron Frehlter was not slow to fix upon a bridegroom. He was

a very rich man, and Madelon was his only child, and he was furthermore a

very lazy man; so, instead of looking far afield for a wealthy or

distinguished suitor for his daughter, he was inclined to take the first

that came to hand. It is possible that the Baron, who was of a somewhat

cynical turn of mind, may have cherished no very exalted idea of his

daughter's attractions, either personal or mental. However this might be,

it is certain that when the demoiselle had ill-treated the poodle, and

insulted the priest, and quarrelled with the cook--that high-priestess of

the kitchen who alone, in all Normandy, could concoct those messes which

the Baron loved--the master of Cotenoir decided on marrying his heiress

out of hand.

He communicated this design to his old crony, Francois Lenoble, one day

when the Beaubocage family dined at Chateau Cotenoir.

"I think of marrying my daughter," he said to his friend, when the ladies

were safely out of hearing at the other end of the long dreary saloon.

"Now thy son Gustave is a fine fellow--brave, handsome, and of a good

race. It is true he is not as rich as Madelon will be by-and-by; but I am

no huckster, to sell my daughter to the best bidder" ("and I doubt if

there would be many bidders for her, if I were so inclined," thought the

Baron, in parenthesis); "and if thy son should take a fancy to her, and

she to him, it would please me well enough, friend Francois."

Friend Francois pricked up his ears, and in his old eyes flickered a

feeble light. Cotenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his son

Gustave! Lenoble of Beaubocage and Cotenoir--Lenoble of Cotenoir and

Beaubocage! So splendid a vision had never shone before his eyes in all

the dreams that he had dreamed about the only son of whom he was so

proud. He could not have shaped to himself so bold a project as the union

of those two estates. And here was the Baron offering it to him, with his

snuff-box, _en passant_.

"It would be a great marriage," he said, "a very great marriage. For

Gustave I can answer without hesitation. He could not but be charmed by

such a union--so amiable a bride would enchant him."

He looked down the room to the spot where Madelon and Cydalise were

standing, side by side, admiring Madame Frehlter's poodle. Madelon could

afford to be civil to the poodle before company. The contrast between the

two girls was sufficiently striking. Cydalise was fair and

bright-looking--Mademoiselle Frehlter was square and ungainly of figure,

swarthy of complexion, dark of brow.

"He could not but be charmed," repeated the old man, with feeble

gallantry.

He was thinking of the joining together of Beaubocage and Cotenoir; and

it seemed a very small thing to him that such a union of estates would

involve the joining of a man and woman, who were to hold to each other

and love each other until death should part them.

"It shall be no marriage of convenience," said the Baron, in a generous

spirit; "my daughter is somewhat ill-tem--that is to say, my daughter

finds her life somewhat dull with her old father and mother, and I think

she might be happier in the society of a husband. I like your son; and

my wife, too, likes him better than any other young man of our

acquaintance. Madelon has seen a good deal of him when she has been home

from the convent in her holidays, and I have reason to think she does

not dislike him. If he likes her and she likes him, and the idea is

pleasing to you and madame, we will make a match of it. If not, let it

pass; we will say no more."

Again the seigneur of Beaubocage assured his friend that Gustave would be

enchanted with the proposal; and again it was of Cotenoir that he

thought, and not of the heart or the inclinations of his son.

This conversation took place late in autumn, and at the new year Gustave

was to come. Nothing was to be said to him about his intended wife until

he arrived; that was a point upon which the Baron insisted.

"The young man may have fallen in love with some fine young person in

Paris," he said; "and in that case we will say nothing to him of Madelon.

But if we find him with the heart free, and inclined to take to my

daughter, we may give him encouragement."

This was solemnly agreed between the two fathers. Nor was Mademoiselle

Frehlter to be told of the matrimonial scheme until it ripened. But after

this dinner at Cotenoir the household at Beaubocage talked of little else

than of the union of the two families. What grandeur, what wealth, what

happiness! Gustave the lord of Cotenoir! Poor Cydalise had never seen a

finer mansion than the old chateau, with its sugar-loaf towers and stone

terraces, and winding stairs, and tiny inconvenient turret chambers, and

long dreary salon and _salle-a-manger_. She could picture to herself

nothing more splendid. For Gustave to be offered the future possession of

Cotenoir was as if he were suddenly to be offered the succession to a

kingdom. She could not bring herself to consider that Madelon was neither

agreeable nor attractive, and that, after all, the wife must count for

something in every marriage contract. She could see nothing, she could

think of nothing, but Cotenoir. The glory and grandeur of that estate

absorbed every other consideration.

No one of those three conspirators feared any opposition on the part of

their victim. It was just possible that Gustave might have fallen in love

with some Parisian damsel, though his letters gave no hint of any such

calamity. But if such a misfortune had happened, he would, of course,

fall out of love again, return the damsel her troth and obtain the return

of his own, and straightway offer the second-hand commodity to

Mademoiselle Frehlter.

The object of all these cares and hopes and dreams arrived at last, full

of life and spirits, with plenty to tell about Paris in general, and very

little to tell about himself in particular. The women questioned him

unmercifully. They insisted on a graphic description of every female

inmate of the boarding-house, and would scarcely believe that all except

the little music-mistress were elderly and unattractive. Of the

music-mistress herself they were inclined to be very suspicious, and were

not altogether reassured by Gustave's assertion that she was neither

pretty nor fascinating.

"She is a dear, good, industrious little thing," he said, "and works

harder than I do. But she is no miracle of beauty; and her life is so

dreary that I often wonder she does not go into a convent. It would be

gayer and pleasanter for her than to live with those old women at the

Pension Magnotte."

"I suppose there are many beautiful women in Paris?" said Cydalise, bent

upon knowing the worst.

"Well, I dare say there are," Gustave answered frankly; "but we students

don't see much of them in our quarter. One sees a pretty little

milliner's girl now and then, or a washerwoman. In short, there are a

good many grisettes in our part of the world," added the young man,

blushing, but for no sin of his own. "We get a glimpse of a handsome

woman sometimes, rattling past in her carriage; but in Paris handsome

women do not go on foot. I have seen prettier girls at Vevinord than in

Paris."

Cydalise was enchanted with this confession.

"Yes," she exclaimed, "our Normandy is the place for pretty girls.

Madelon Frehlter, for example, is not she a very--amiable girl?"

"I dare say she's amiable enough," answered Gustave; "but if there were

no prettier girls than Mademoiselle Frehlter in this part of the world,

we should have no cause to boast. But there are prettier girls, Cydalise,

and thou art thyself one of them."

After this speech the young man bestowed upon his sister a resounding

kiss. Yes; it was clear that he was heart-whole. These noisy, boisterous

good spirits were not characteristic of a lover. Even innocent Cydalise

knew that to be in love was to be miserable.

From this time mother and sister tormented their victim with the merits

and charms of his predestined bride. Madelon on the piano was miraculous;

Madelon's little songs were enchanting; Madelon's worsted-work was a

thing to worship; Madelon's devotion to her mother and her mother's

poodle was unequalled; Madelon's respectful bearing to the good Abbe St.

Velours--her mother's director--was positively beyond all praise. It was

virtue seraphic, supernal. Such a girl was too good for earth--too good

for anything except Gustave.

The young man heard and wondered.

"How you rave about Madelon Frehlter!" he exclaimed. "She seems to me the

most commonplace young person I ever encountered. She has nothing to say

for herself; she never appears to know where to put her elbows. I never

saw such elbows; they are everywhere at once. And her shoulders!--O

heaven, then, her shoulders!--it ought to be forbidden to wear low

dresses when one has such shoulders."

This was discouraging, but the schemers bore up even against this. The

mother dwelt on the intellectual virtues of Madelon; and what were

shoulders compared to mind, piety, amiability--all the Christian graces?

Cydalise owned that dear Madelon was somewhat _gauche_; Gustave called

her _bete_. The father remonstrated with his son. Was it not frightful to

use a word of the barracks in connection with this charming young lady?

At last the plot revealed itself. After a dinner at Cotenoir and a dinner

at Beaubocage, on both which occasions Gustave had made himself very

agreeable to the ladies of the Baron's household--since, indeed, it was

not in his nature to be otherwise than kind and courteous to the weaker

sex--the mother told her son of the splendid destiny that had been shaped

for him. It was a matter of surprise and grief to her to find that the

revelation gave Gustave no pleasure.

"Marriage was the last thing in my thoughts, dear mother," he said,

gravely; "and Madelon Frehlter is the very last woman I should think of

for a wife. Nevertheless, I am gratified by the honour Monsieur le Baron

has done me. That goes without saying."

"But the two estates!--together they would make you a great proprietor.

You would not surely refuse such fortune?"

Cydalise gave a little scream of horror.

"Cotenoir! to refuse Cotenoir! Ah, surely that would be impossible! But

figure to yourself, then, Gustave--"

"Nay, Cydalise, you forget the young lady goes with the chateau; a

fixture that we cannot dispense with."

"But she, so amiable, so pious--"

"So plain, so stupid--"

"So modest, so charitable--"

"In short, so admirably adapted for a Sister of Charity," replied

Gustave. "But no, dear Cydalise. Cotenoir is a grand old place; but I

would as soon spend my life at Toulon, dragging a cannon-ball at my

heels, as in that dreary salon where Madame Frehlter nurses her maladies

and her poodle, and where the good-humoured, easy-going old Baron snores

away existence. 'Tis very well for those elderly folks, you see, my

sister, and for Madelon--for hers is an elderly mind in a youthful body;

but for a young man full of hope and gaiety and activity--bah! It would

be of all living deaths the worst. From the galleys there is always the

hope of escaping--an underground passage, burrowed out with one's

finger-nails in the dead of the night--a work lasting twenty years or so,

but with a feeble star of hope always glimmering at the end of the

passage. But from the salon, and mamma, and the poodle, and the good,

unctuous, lazy old director, and papa's apoplectic snoring, and the

plaintive little songs and monotonous embroideries of one's wife, there

would be no escape. Ah, bah!"

Gustave shuddered, and the two women shuddered as they heard him. The

prospect was by no means promising; but Madame Lenoble and her daughter

did not utterly despair. Gustave's heart was disengaged. That was a great

point; and for the rest, surely persuasion might do much.

Then came that phenomenon seen very often in this life--a

generous-minded, right-thinking young man talked into a position which of

all others is averse from his own inclinations. The mother persuaded, the

sister pleaded, the father dwelt dismally upon the poverty of Beaubocage,

the wealth of Cotenoir. It was the story of auld Robin Gray reversed.

Gustave perceived that his refusal to avail himself of this splendid

destiny would be a bitter and lasting grief to these people who loved him

so fondly--whom he loved as fondly in return. Must he not be a churl to

disappoint hopes so unselfish, to balk an ambition so innocent? And only

because Madelon was not the most attractive or the prettiest of women!

The young man stood firm against all their arguments, he was unmoved by

all their pleading. It was only when his anxious kindred had given up the

battle for lost that Gustave wavered. Their mute despair moved him more

than the most persuasive eloquence; and the end was submission. He left

Beaubocage the plighted lover of that woman who, of all others, he would

have been the last to choose for his wife. It had all been settled very

pleasantly--the dowry, the union of the two estates, the two names. For

six months Gustave was to enjoy his freedom to finish his studies; and

then he was to return to Normandy for his marriage.

"I have heard very good accounts of you from Paris," said the Baron. "You

are not like some young men, wild, mad-brained. One can confide in your

honour, your steadiness."

The good folks of Beaubocage were in ecstacies. They congratulated

Gustave--they congratulated each other. A match so brilliant would be the

redemption of the family. The young man at last began to fancy himself

the favoured of the gods. What if Madelon seemed a little dull--a little

wanting in that vivacity which is so pleasing to frivolous minds? she was

doubtless so much the more profound, so much the more virtuous. If she

was not bright and varied and beautiful as some limpid fountain dancing

in summer sunlight, she was perhaps changeless and steady as a rock; and

who would not rather have the security of a rock than the summer-day

beauty of a fountain?

Before Gustave departed from his paternal home he had persuaded himself

that he was a very lucky fellow; and he had paid Mademoiselle Frehlter

some pretty little stereotyped compliments, and had listened with sublime

patience to her pretty little stereotyped songs. He left the young lady

profoundly impressed by his merits; he left his own household supremely

happy; and he carried away with him a heart in which Madelon Frehlter's

image had no place.

CHAPTER II.

IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE.

Gustave went back to his old life, and was not much disturbed by the

grandeur of his destiny as future seigneur of Cotenoir and Beaubocage. It

sometimes occurred to him that he had a weight upon his mind; and, on

consideration, he found that the weight was Madelon Frehlter. But he

continued to carry that burden very lightly, and his easy-going student

life went on, unbroken by thoughts of the future. He sent polite messages

to the demoiselle Frehlter in his letters to Cydalise; and he received

from Cydalise much information, more graphic than interesting, upon the

subject of the family at Cotenoir; and so his days went on with pleasant

monotony. This was the brief summer of his youth; but, alas, how near at

hand was the dark and dismal winter that was to freeze this honest joyous

heart! That heart, so compassionate for all suffering, so especially

tender for all womankind, was to be attacked upon its weaker side.

It was Gustave Lenoble's habit to cross the gardens of the Luxembourg

every morning, on his way from the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle to the Ecole

de Droit. Sometimes, when he was earlier than usual, he carried a book

with him, and paced one of the more obscure alleys, reading for an odd

half-hour before he went to the daily mill-grinding in the big building

beyond those quiet gardens.

Walking with his book one morning--it was a volume of Boileau, which

the student knew by heart, and the pages whereof did not altogether

absorb his attention--he passed and repassed a bench on which a lady

sat, pensive and solitary, tracing shapeless figures on the ground with

the point of her parasol. He glanced at her somewhat carelessly the

first time of passing, more curiously on the second occasion, and

the third time with considerable attention. Something in her

attitude--helplessness, hopelessness, nay indeed, despair itself, all

expressed in the drooping head, the listless hand tracing those idle

characters on the gravel--enlisted the sympathies of Gustave Lenoble. He

had pitied her even before his gaze had penetrated the cavernous depths

of the capacious bonnet of those days; but one glimpse of the pale

plaintive face inspired him with compassion unspeakable. Never had he

seen despair more painfully depicted on the human countenance--a despair

that sought no sympathy, a sorrow that separated the sufferer from the

outer world. Never had he seen a face so beautiful, even in despair. He

could have fancied it the face of Andromache, when all that made her

world had been reft from her; or of Antigone, when the dread fiat had

gone forth--that funeral rites or sepulture for the last accursed scion

of an accursed race there were to be none.

He put Boileau into his pocket. That glimpse of a suffering human mind,

which had been unconsciously revealed to him, possessed an interest more

absorbing than the grandest flight of poet and satirist. As he passed for

the fifth time, he looked at the mournful lady still more searchingly,

and this time the sad eyes were lifted, and met his pitying looks. The

beautiful lips moved, and murmured something in tones so tremulous as to

be quite unintelligible.

The student took off his hat, and approached the lady, deferential as

knight-errant of old awaiting the behest of his liege mistress.

"In what can I have the happiness to be agreeable to you, madame?"

"You are very good, monsieur," murmured the lady in very decent French,

but with an accent unmistakably foreign--English, as Gustave opined.

"I--I--am quite a stranger in Paris, and--and--I have heard there are

numerous lodging-houses in this quarter--where one may obtain a

lodging--cheaply. I have asked several nursemaids, and other women, in

the gardens this morning; but they seem very stupid, and can tell me

nothing; and I do not care to ask at the hotel where I am staying."

Gustave pondered. Yes, there were many lodgings, he informed the lady.

And then he thought of Madame Magnotte. Was it not his duty to secure

this stray lodger for that worthy woman, if possible?

"If madame has no objection to a boarding-house--" he began.

Madame shook her head. "A boarding-house would suit me just as well," she

said; "but it must not be expensive. I cannot afford to pay much."

"I know of a boarding-house very near this place, where madame might find

a comfortable home on very reasonable terms. It is, in point of fact, the

house in which I myself reside," added Gustave, with some timidity.

"If you will kindly direct me to the house--" said the lady, looking

straight before her with sad unseeing eyes, and evidently supremely

indifferent as to the residence or non-residence of M. Lenoble in the

habitation referred to.

"Nay, madame, if you will permit me to conduct you there. It is but a

walk of five minutes."

The stranger accepted the courtesy with a gentle indifference that was

not ingratitude, but rather incapacity for any feeling except that one

great sorrow which seemed to absorb her mind.

Gustave wondered what calamity could thus overwhelm one so young and

beautiful.

The lady was quite silent during the little walk from the gardens to the

Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and Gustave observed her attentively as he

walked by her side. She was evidently not more than four-and-twenty years

of age, and she was certainly the prettiest woman he had ever seen. It

was a fair delicate English beauty, a little worn and faded, as if by

care, but idealized and sublimated in the process. At her brightest this

stranger must have been strikingly beautiful; in her sorrow she was

touchingly lovely. It was what Gustave's countrymen call a _beaute

navrante_.

Gustave watched her, and wondered about her. The dress she wore was

sufficiently elegant, but had lost the gloss of newness. Her shawl, which

she carried as gracefully as a Frenchwoman, was darned. Gustave perceived

the neat careful stitches, and divined the poverty of the wearer. That

she should be poor was no subject for surprise; but that she, so

sorrowful, so lonely, should seek a home in a strange city, was an enigma

not easy to solve.

To Madame Magnotte Gustave introduced the stranger. She gave just one

look round the dreary saloon; but to Gustave's fancy that one look seemed

eloquent. "Ah me!" it said; "is this the fairest home I am to find upon

this inhospitable earth?"

"She does not seem to belong to this world," the young man thought, as

he went back to the garden where he had found his fair stranger, having

been very coolly dismissed by Madame Magnotte after his introduction had

been made.

And then M. Lenoble, being of a romantic turn of mind, remembered how a

lady had been found by a student sitting on the lowest steps of the

guillotine, desolate and helpless, at night; and how the student had

taken her home and sheltered her, and had straightway fallen desperately

in love with her, to discover, with unutterable horror, that her head had

been severed from her fair shoulders by the cruel knife twelve hours

before, and that her melancholy loveliness was altogether phantasmal and

delusive.

Was this English stranger whom Gustave had found in the gardens of the

Luxembourg twin sister to that ghostly lady of the familiar legend? Her

despair and her beauty seemed to him greater than earthly sorrow or

earthly beauty; and he was half inclined to wonder whether she could be

of the same race as Madelon Frehlter. And from this hour the sense of a

weight upon his mind, before so vague and intermittent, became an

enduring oppression, not to be shaken off by any effort of his will.

All through that day he found himself thinking more of the unknown

Englishwoman than was consistent with a strict performance of his duties.

He was vexed with himself on account of this foolish distraction of mind.

"What a frivolous fellow I must be," he said to himself, "to dwell upon

such a trifle! This comes of leading such a monotonous life."

At dinner he looked for the lady; but she did not appear at the long

table, where the shrill old ladies, the epicurean old bachelors, the

noisy students, daily devoured and grumbled at the four or five courses

which old Nanon developed out of her inner consciousness and a rather

scantily furnished larder. He questioned Madame Magnotte after dinner,

and was told that the lady was in the house, but was too tired to dine

with the other inmates.

"I have to thank thee for a new boarder, my friend," she said. "Madame

Meynell will not pay largely; but she seems a quiet and respectable

person, and we shall doubtless be well pleased with each other."

"Madame Meynell!" repeated Gustave, congratulating himself on finding

that the Englishwoman was an inhabitant of the house he lived in. "She is

a widow, I suppose?"

"Yes, she is a widow. I asked that question, and she answered, yes.

But she told me nothing of her late husband. She is not at all

communicative."

This was all Gustave could obtain from Madame Magnotte. She was not

communicative. No; she was, indeed, scarcely less silent than that

ghostly lady who had been found sitting at the foot of the guillotine.

There was some kind of mystery involved in her sorrowful face, her silent

apathy. It was possibly the fact of this mystery which interested M.

Lenoble. Certain it is that the young man's interest had been aroused by

this unknown Englishwoman, and that his mind was more occupied by the

image of her whom he had seen but once than by that of his plighted wife.

He waited anxiously for the next day; but on the next day Madame Meynell

still pleaded fatigue and illness. It was only on the third day that she

appeared at the noisy banquet, pale, silent, absent-minded, sheltering

herself under the wing of Madame Magnotte, who was disposed to be kind to

this helpless stranger. To Gustave the young English widow seemed like a

ghost at that crowded board. He looked at her every now and then from his

distant seat, and saw her always with the same hopeless far-away look in

her sad eyes. He himself was silent and _distrait_.

"Of what dost thou dream, my droll one?" said his nearest neighbour.

"Thou art positively insupportable."

M. Lenoble could not become vivacious or entertaining at the behest of

his fellow-student. The consciousness of that strange pale face haunted

and oppressed him. He hoped to have a few minutes' talk with the English

lady after dinner, but she disappeared before the removal of those

recondite preparations which in the Pension Magnotte went by the generic

name of "dessert."

For more than a week she appeared thus at the dinner-table, eating very

little, speaking not at all, except such monosyllabic replies as the

hostess now and then extorted from her pale lips. A creature at once so

beautiful and so profoundly sad became an object of interest to others

besides Gustave; but in no breast was the sympathy which her sadness and

beauty excited so poignant as in his. Her face haunted him. The familiar

pleasures and amusements became distasteful to him. He spent his evenings

at home in the dismal salon, and was content to listen to the chatter of

the old women, the little music-mistress's dreary sonatas, the monotonous

roll of wheels on the distant quay--anything rather than the hackneyed

round of student-life that had once been agreeable to him. He did not

fail to write his weekly letter to Cydalise; but, for some reason or

other, he refrained from any allusion to the English stranger, although

it was his custom to relate all his adventures for the amusement of the

family at Beaubocage.

An evening came at last on which Madame Meynell was persuaded to remain

with the other ladies after dinner.

"It must be very cold and cheerless for you in your bedroom," said

Madame Magnotte; "why not spend your evening with us, in a pleasant and

social manner?"

"You are very good, madame," murmured the Englishwoman, in the slow timid

accents that had so plaintive a sound to Gustave's ear; "if you wish it,

I will stay."

She seemed to submit rather from utter weakness and inability to refuse

anything asked of her than from any hope of finding pleasure in the

society of the Magnotte salon.

It was an evening in March--cold, blustrous, dreary. The east wind blew

clouds of dust athwart the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and the few

foot-passengers in that dull thoroughfare looked pinched and wretched.

The old ladies gathered round the great black stove, and gossipped in the

twilight; the music-mistress went to her feeble piano, and played,

unasked, unheeded; for Gustave, who was wont to turn the leaves, or sit

attentive by the piano, seemed this evening unconscious of the music.

Madame Meynell sat in one of the windows, alone, half-hidden by the faded

yellow damask curtains, looking out into the street.

Something--some impulse which he tried to resist, but could not--drew

Gustave towards that lonely figure by the window. He went close up to the

strange lady. This evening, as in the gardens of the Luxembourg, she

seemed to him a living statue of despair. Now, as then, he felt an

interest in her sorrow which he was powerless to combat. He had a vague

idea that even this compassionate sympathy was in some manner an offence

against Madelon Frehlter, the woman to whom he belonged, and yet he

yielded to the fatal weakness.

"Yes, I belong to her," he said to himself; "I belong to Madelon

Frehlter. She is neither pretty nor fascinating; but I have every reason

to believe her very good, very amiable; and she is the only woman, except

those of my own kindred, in whom I have any right to be interested."

He did not say this in so many words; but this was the shape which his

thoughts assumed as he yielded to the tempter, and walked straight to the

distant window by which Madame Meynell had seated herself.

She started slightly as he approached her, and then looked up and

recognized him as her acquaintance of the Luxembourg.

"Good evening, monsieur," she said; "I have to thank you for having

helped me to find a comfortable home."

Having said this in a low gentle voice, she looked out into the street

once more with her mournful unseeing eyes. It was evident that she had no

more to say to M. Lenoble.

The student, however, had no idea of leaving the window just yet,

although he knew--yes, knew--that his presence there was a wrong done to

Madelon Frehlter; but a wrong so small, so infinitesimal, that it was

really not worth consideration.

"I am enchanted to think that I was of some slight service to you,

madame," he said; "but I fear you will find this quarter of Paris

very dull."

She did not take any notice of this remark until Gustave had repeated it,

and then she spoke as if suddenly awakened from a trance.

"Dull?" she said. "No, I have not found it dull. I do not care for

gaiety."

After this M. Lenoble felt that he could say no more. The lady relapsed

into her waking trance. The dust-clouds in the silent street seemed more

interesting to her than M. Lenoble of Beaubocage. He lingered a few

minutes in the neighbourhood of her chair, thoughtfully observant of the

delicate profile, the pale clear tints of a complexion that had lost its

bloom but not its purity, the settled sadness of the perfect mouth, the

dreamy pensiveness of the dark-grey eye, and then was fain to retire.

After this, the English widow lady spent many evenings in Madame

Magnotte's salon. The old Frenchwoman gossipped and wondered about

her; but the most speculative could fashion no story from a page so

blank as this joyless existence. Even slander could scarcely assail

a creature so unobtrusive as the English boarder. The elderly ladies

shrugged their shoulders and pursed up their lips with solemn

significance. There must needs be something--a secret, a mystery, sorrow,

or wrong-doing--somewhere; but of Madame Meynell herself no one could

suspect any harm.

Gustave Lenoble heard little of this gossip about the stranger, but she

filled his thoughts nevertheless. The vision of her face came between him

and his work; and when he thought of the future, and of the damsel who

had been allotted to him for a wife, his thoughts were very bitter.

"Fate is like Laban," he said to himself; "a man works and does his duty

for seven years, and then Fate gives him Leah instead of Rachel. No doubt

Leah is a very good young woman; one has no complaint to make against

her, except that she is not Rachel."

This was not a hopeful manner of looking at things for the destined

master of Cotenoir. M. Lenoble's letters to the anxious folks at

Beaubocage became, about this time, somewhat brief and unsatisfactory. He

no longer gave ample details of his student-life--he no longer wrote in

his accustomed good spirits. His letters seemed stiff and constrained.

"I am afraid he is studying too much," said the mother.

"I daresay the rascal is wasting his time in dissipation," suggested

the father.

CHAPTER III.

"PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR."

Two months had elapsed since the bleak spring morning on which Gustave

Lenoble found the solitary lady under the leafless trees of the

Luxembourg gardens. The inmates of the Pension Magnotte had grown

accustomed to her presence, to her silence, her settled sadness, and

troubled themselves no further respecting herself or her antecedents. The

lapse of time had brought no improvement to her spirits; indeed, Gustave,

who watched her closely, perceived that she had grown paler and thinner

since that March morning when he met her in the public garden. Her life

must have been painfully monotonous. She very rarely went out of doors,

and on no occasion ventured beyond the gardens of the Luxembourg. No one

visited her. She neither wrote nor received any letters. She was wont to

make a pretence of reading as she sat in her retired corner of the salon;

but Gustave had discovered that she gave little attention to her book.

The open volume in her hand seemed no more than an excuse for brooding

upon her sorrows.

If people, prompted by curiosity or by compassion, endeavoured to get

into conversation with this lonely lady, the result was always the same.

She would answer their questions in a low gentle voice, with a quiet

politeness; but she never assisted them in the smallest degree to

interchange thoughts with her. It seemed as if she sought neither friend

nor sympathizer, or as if her case was so entirely hopeless as to admit

of neither. She paid for her board and lodging weekly with a punctilious

exactness, though weekly payments were not the rule of the house.

"My movements are uncertain," she said to Madame Magnotte. "I cannot

tell how long I may be with you. It will therefore be better for me to

pay you weekly."

She had been in the house two months, dining every day at the public

table, spending all her evenings in the public saloon; and during that

time her settled gloom had never been broken by any outburst of grief or

passion. She might have been a creature of ice, a statue of despair

modelled in snow by a Michael Angelo. But one night the ice melted, the

statue of snow became in a moment a passionate, grief-stricken woman.

It was one bright evening late in May. Ah, how near at hand was the

appointed date of those nuptials to which the household of Beaubocage

looked forward with supreme happiness! The old ladies of the Pension

Magnotte were for the most part out of doors. The long saloon was almost

empty. There were only Gustave, Madame Magnotte, and the little

music-mistress, who sat at her piano, with the western sunlight shining

full upon her, rosy-hued and glorious, surrounding her with its soft

radiance until she looked like a humble St. Cecilia.

Madame Meynell had seated herself close to the piano, and was listening

to the music. Gustave hovered near, pretending to be occupied with a limp

little sheet of news published that evening.

Mademoiselle Servin, the teacher of music, upon this occasion deserted

her favourite masters. She seemed in a somewhat dreamy and sentimental

humour, and played tender little melodies and simple plaintive airs, that

were more agreeable to Gustave than those grand examples of the

mathematics of counter-point which she so loved to interpret.

"You like this melody of Gretry's," said the music-mistress, as M.

Lenoble seated himself close to the piano. "I do not think you care for

classic sonatas--the great works of Gluck, or Bach, or Beethoven?"

"No," replied the young man frankly; "I do not care about anything I

can't understand. I like music that goes to one's heart."

"And you, too, Madame Meynell, like simple melodies?" mademoiselle asked

of that lady, who was not wont to come so near the little piano, or to

pay so much attention to Mademoiselle Servin's performance.

"O yes," murmured the Englishwoman, "I like such music as that."

"And you, too, think that Beethoven never composed simple plaintive

airs--for example," exclaimed the pianist, playing softly while she

spoke. "You think he wrote only sonatas, quartettes, fugues, grand

operas, like _Fidelio_. Have you never heard this by your scientific

Beethoven?"

Hereupon she played "Hope told a flattering tale," with much tenderness

and delicacy. Her two hearers listened, mute and deeply moved. And then

from that familiar melody she glided softly into another, most musical,

most melancholy, which has been set to some of the sweetest verses that

Thomas Moore ever composed:

"Those evening bells, those evening bells!

How many a tale their music tells

Of youth and home, and that sweet time

When last I heard their soothing chime!"

All the world sang the verses of Ireland's divine bard in those days. The

song was one which the Englishwoman had sung years ago in a happy home.

What recollections, what associations, were evoked by that plaintive

melody, who shall say? The words came back with the music to which they

have been eternally wedded. The words, their mournful meaning, the faces

of the friends amongst whom she had last sung them, the picture of the

peaceful home whose walls had echoed the music,--all these things arose

before her in a vision too painfully vivid; and the lonely boarder at the

Pension Magnotte covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud.

The passion of tears lasted but a minute. Madame Meynell dried her eyes,

and rose to leave the room.

"Do not question me," she said, perceiving that her two companions were

about to offer her their sympathy. "I cannot tell you the memories that

were conjured up by that music. It brought back a home I shall never see

again, and the faces of the dead--worse than dead to me--and the

happiness I have lost, and the hopes and dreams that once were mine. Oh,

I pray God I may never hear that melody again."

There was a passion, a depth of feeling, in her tone quite new to Gustave

Lenoble. He opened the door for her without a word, and she passed out of

the salon quietly, like a ghost--the ghost of that bright young creature

who had once borne her shape, and been called by her name, in a pleasant

farmhouse among the Yorkshire wolds.

"Ah, but how that poor soul must have suffered!" cried the sympathetic

Mademoiselle Servin, as the door closed on the Englishwoman. "I did

not think it was in her to feel so deeply. I thought she was stone, and

now I begin to think it must be of such stone as Niobe--the

petrification of despair."

Upon Gustave Lenoble this scene made a profound impression. He lay awake

during the greater part of that night, thinking of the lonely lady's

tears and anguish. The music of "Those evening bells" pervaded his

dreams. He rose unrefreshed, feverish, forgetful of Cotenoir and Madelon

Frehlter, as if that place and that person had never emerged from the

shapeless substances of chaos. He wanted to see _her_ again, to console

her, if that were possible. Oh, that it might be his privilege to console

her! He pitied her with a compassion so intense, that thus to

compassionate her woes, was himself to suffer a poignant anguish. He

pitied her. Yes, he told himself again and again that this sentiment

which so absorbed his heart and mind was no more than pity. But oh, if

this were pity, what were love? That was a question which also presented

itself to the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, of Beaubocage _in esse_, and

Cotenoir _in posse_.

Madame Meynell rarely appeared at the common breakfast in the grim

dining-room of the Pension Magnotte. Gustave was therefore in nowise

surprised to miss her on this particular morning. He took a cup of

coffee, and hurried off to his daily duties. There was a fever on him

which he could neither understand nor shake off, and he hastened to the

gardens of the Luxembourg, as if there were some special necessity for

speed. So do men often hasten unconsciously to their predestined doom,

defiant of augury. Soothsayers may menace, and wives may dream dreams;

but when his hour comes, Caesar will go to the appointed spot where the

daggers of his assassins await him.

In the alley where he had first looked upon her sad face, beneath

the umbrage of young limes and chestnuts just bursting into bloom,

he saw the Englishwoman to-day, seated on the same bench, almost in

the same attitude.

He went up to her, and bade her good morning; and then, intensely

conscious of his own temerity, seated himself by her side.

"I did not expect to find you here so early."

"No, I seldom come out so soon; but this morning I have to make some

inquiries upon a matter of business, and I am only resting here before

going to make them."

She gave a little weary sigh at the end of this speech. It seemed a

strange manner of transacting business to rest in the Luxembourg gardens,

which were distant but a few hundred yards from her home. Gustave divined

that it was for very forlornness she lingered there, shrinking from some

difficult encounter that lay before her.

"Can I not make the inquiries for you?" he asked. "Pray command me. It

will be my happiness to be useful to you."

"You are very good. I cannot trouble you so much."

"Pray do not talk of trouble. It can be no trouble to me to aid you in

any manner. Ah, madame, you do not know how much I would sacrifice to be

useful to you!"

She must have been dull indeed had she failed to perceive the earnestness

of his tone. She did perceive it, and was vaguely conscious that in this

student of law she had a friend.

"I want to know when the diligence for Calais leaves Paris, and from what

office," she said. "I am going back to England."

She was surprised to see the young man's face blanch as she announced

this simple fact. The young man himself was surprised by the sudden

anguish inflicted by her announcement. It was in this moment that he

first discovered how completely he had given his heart into this strange

woman's keeping.

"You are really going to leave Paris?--for ever?" he exclaimed.

"Yes. I have been here too long already. I have no business here. I ought

to have gone back to England that day when I first met you here, but I

put off the day of my return. I can put it off no longer."

"And you are going back to your friends?" Gustave asked, in a very

mournful tone.

"I am going back to my friends? Yes!" Her lips quivered a little, and the

unbidden tears came to her eyes.

Ah, what was the sorrow that oppressed this beauteous lonely creature?

What agony of grief or self-reproach was this pain which consumed her?

Gustave remembered her passion of tears on the previous night; her talk

of friends that were dead, and happiness lost; and now to-day she talked

of going home to her friends: but O the bitterness of expression with

which she had spoken that word "friends!"

"Are you going alone, Madame Meynell?" he inquired, after a pause. He

could not tear himself from that seat by her side. He could not be manly

or rational where she was concerned. The image of Madelon Frehlter rose

before his mental vision, reproachful, menacing; but a thick fog

intervened to obscure that unwelcome image. His whole life resolved

itself into those thrilling moments in which he sat here, on this common

garden bench, by this stranger's side; the entire universe was contracted

into this leafy walk where they two sat.

"Yes, I am going alone," madame replied, with a little laugh. "Who should

I have to go with me? I am quite alone in the world. I think I had better

make these inquiries myself, M. Lenoble. There is no reason why I should

give you so much trouble."

"There is no such thing as trouble. I will bring you all necessary

information to-day at dinner, if that will be soon enough."

"Quite soon enough, I thank you, monsieur," she answered, with a sigh. "I

must ask you kindly to ascertain for me also the expense of the journey."

"Most certainly, madame."

This request set him wondering whether she were poor, and how poor. But

she had evidently no more to say to him; she had again become

impenetrable. He would fain have stayed, though honour and conscience

were clamorous in their demands for his departure. Happily for honour and

conscience, the lady was silent as death, impervious as marble; so M.

Lenoble presently bowed and departed.

He thought of her all day long. The farce of pity was ended. He knew now

that he loved this Englishwoman with an affection at once foolish and

sinful,--foolish, since he knew not who or what this woman was; sinful,

since the indulgence of this passion involved the forfeiture of his

plighted word, the disappointment of those who loved him.

"No, no, no," he said to himself; "I cannot do this base and wicked

thing. I must marry Madelon. All the hopes of my mother and father rest

on that marriage; and to disappoint them because this stranger's face has

bewitched me? Ah, no, it cannot be. And even if I were willing to trample

my honour in the dust, how do I know that she would value or accept the

sacrifice?"

M. Lenoble made all necessary inquiries at the office of the Messageries,

and carried the intelligence to Madame Meynell. He could see that she

winced a little when he told her the cost of the journey, which in those

days was heavy.

"She must certainly be poor," he said to himself; and it rent his heart

to think that even in this paltry matter he could be of no use to her.

The destined master of Beaubocage and Cotenoir was entirely without ready

money. He had his watch. He put his hand upon that clumsy timekeeper as

he talked to madame.

"_Je te porterai chez ma tante, mon gars_," he said to himself. But he

doubted whether the high priests of the pious mountain--the Dordona of

Pauperism--would advance much upon this antique specimen of the

watchmaker's art.

After this evening he looked forward daily, hourly, to the anguish of her

departure. She would vanish out of his life, intangible as a melted

snow-flake, and only memory would stay behind to tell him he had known

and loved her. Why should this be so hard to bear? If she stayed, he

dared not tell her she was dear to him; he dared not stretch forth his

hand to help her. In all the world there was no creature more utterly

apart from him than she, whether she lived in the same house with him or

was distant as the Antipodes. What did it matter, then, since she was

destined to disappear from his life, whether she vanished to-day or a

year hence? He argued with himself that it could be a question of no

moment to him. There was a death-blow that must descend upon him, cruel,

inevitable. Let it come when it would.

Every day when he came home to dinner, M. Lenoble expected to behold a

vacant place by the side of his hostess; every day he was pleasantly

disappointed. The pale hopeless face was still to be seen, ghost-like, at

that noisy board. The face was more pale, more hopeless, as it seemed to

Gustave, every day he looked upon it.

He asked Madame Magnotte when the English lady was going to leave, but

she could not tell.

"She talks of leaving from day to day," said madame; "it will no doubt be

soon. I am sorry to lose her. She is very gentle, and gives no trouble to

any one. But she is sad--ah, how sad she is! She has suffered, monsieur."

Gustave agreed to this. Yes, she had suffered; but what, and how?

He watched her closely, but she was always the same. She no longer spent

her evenings in the salon, but in her own apartment. He saw her only at

dinner-time, and had no opportunity of speaking to her.

At last the day came upon which he missed her at the usual hour. He sat

through the tedious meal without speaking; eating a little, drinking a

little, mechanically, but with no consciousness of what he ate or drank.

There was a mist before his eyes, a confusion of voices in his ears; but

the faculties of sight and hearing seemed suspended. The agony he

suffered during that miserable hour was bitter as death.

"O, my God, how I love her!" he said to himself, while Raoul's bass roar

brayed in his ear on one side, and Leon's shrill squeal tortured him on

the other.

He made his way to Madame Magnotte directly after dinner.

"She is gone?" he exclaimed.

"But who, my friend? Ah, yes; it is of that poor Madame Meynell you

speak. How you are interested in her! No, she is not gone, poor woman.

She remains always. She has the air of a person who knows not her own

mind. Yet I am sure she thinks of going. To-day, for the first time, she

has been writing letters. Reine came to tell me she had seen her occupied

in her own room for the first time. It is not her habit to occupy

herself."

Gustave's heart gave a great jump. She was not gone; he might see her

again--if it were but a glimpse of her pale face looking out of the

diligence as it drove out of the Cour de Messageries. One look, one

glance; it would be something to carry in his heart all his life. All his

life! He looked forward and shuddered. What a dreary life it must needs

be! Cotenoir, Beaubocage, Madelon, the law; to plead, to read papers, to

study dry as dust books. He shrank appalled from the contemplation of

that dreary desert of existence--a life without her.

She had been writing letters--doubtless letters to her friends to

announce her return. Her departure must be very near at hand.

Gustave refused to go out that evening. His fellow-students were bent on

a night's pleasure at a dancing-garden then in vogue, where there would

be twinkling lamps and merry music under the May moon. The lamp-lit

parterres, the joyous waltzes, had no attractions for Gustave Lenoble. He

haunted the dull salon, dim and dreary in the twilight; for Madame

Magnotte was chary of lamps and candles, and prolonged to its utmost

limits the pensive interval between day and night. He walked softly up

and down the room, unheeded by the ladies clustered in a group by one of

the windows. Restless and unhappy, he could neither go nor stay. She was

not coming down to the salon this evening. He had clung to the faint hope

that she might appear; but the faint hope died away in his breast as the

night deepened. What purpose could be served by his remaining in that

dismal room? He was no nearer her than he would have been in the

remotest wilds of Central America. He would go out--not to the odious

dancing-garden, but to the cool dark streets, where the night wind might

blow this fever from his brain.

He left the room suddenly, and hurried downstairs. At the bottom of the

staircase he almost stumbled against a woman, who turned and looked at

him in the light of a little oil-lamp that hung over the door of the

portress's lodge.

It was the Englishwoman, deadly pale, and with a wild look in her face

that Gustave had never seen there before. She gave him no sign of

recognition, but passed out of the courtyard, and walked rapidly away.

That unusual look in her face, the strangeness of the fact that she

should be leaving the house at this hour, inspired him with a vague

terror, and he followed her, not stealthily, without a thought that he

was doing any wrong by such an act--rather, indeed, with the conviction

that he had a right so to follow her.

She walked very quickly--at a more rapid pace than Gustave would have

supposed possible for so fragile a creature. She chose the lonelier

streets, and Gustave had no difficulty in following her; she never looked

back, but went straight on her course, without pause or slackening of her

pace, as if with a settled purpose.

"Where can she be going?" Gustave asked himself; and an answer, vague,

hideous, terrible, suggested itself to his mind. The idea that occurred

to him was one that would scarcely have occurred to an Englishman under

the same circumstances, but to a Frenchman it was a very familiar idea.

It was dark now--the darkness that reigns between early sunset and late

moonrise. As the lonely woman went farther along the dreary streets

parallel with the quay, the dreadful suspicion grew stronger in Gustave's

mind. From that instant he had but one thought; in that moment he put

away from him for ever all sense of obligation to Madelon Frehlter; he

shook off father, mother, sister, old associations, home ties, ambition,

fortune--he lived alone for this woman, and the purpose of his life was

to save her from despair and death.

They emerged upon the quay at last. The long stretch of pavement was

deserted. Ah, now she looked back--she looked on every side with wild

unseeing eyes--and now there could be little doubt as to the purpose that

brought her here. She crossed the road, and went upon the bridge, Gustave

following close; in the next minute she was standing on the stone bench,

a tremulous, fluttering figure, with arms stretched towards the water; in

a breath she was clasped to Gustave's breast, clasped by arms that meant

to hold her for ever.

The shock of that surprise utterly unnerved the wretched creature. She

shivered violently, and struggled to free herself from those strong arms.

"Let me go!" she cried in English. "Let me go!" And then, finding herself

powerless, she turned and looked at her captor. "M. Lenoble! O, why do

you persecute me? Why do you follow me?"

"Because I want to save you."

"To save me! To snatch me back when I was going to find rest--an end for

my weary life! O yes, I know that it is a sinful end; but my life has

been all sin."

"Your life all sin! Foolish one, I will never believe that."

"It is true," she cried, with passionate self-reproach. "The sin of

selfishness, and pride, and disobedience. There is no fate too hard for

me--but, O, my fate is very hard! Why did you keep me from that river?

You do not know how miserable my life is--you do not know. I paid my

last penny to Madame Magnotte this morning. I have no money to take me

back to England, even if I dared go there--and I dare not. I have prayed

for courage, for strength to go back, but my prayers have not been

heard; and there is nothing for me but to die. What would be the sin of

my throwing myself into that river! I must die; I shall die of

starvation in the streets."

"No, no," cried Gustave passionately; "do you think I have dragged you

back from death to give you to loneliness and despair? My dear one, you

are mine--mine by right of this night. These arms that have kept you

from death shall shelter you,--ah, let them shelter you! These hands

shall work for you. My love, my love! you cannot tell how dear you are

to me. If there must be want or trouble for either of us, it shall come

to me first."

He had placed her on the stone bench, bewildered and unresisting, and had

seated himself by her side. The fragile figure, shivering still, even in

the mild atmosphere of the spring night, was sustained by his encircling

arm. He felt that she was his, irrevocably and entirely--given to him by

the Providence which would have seemed to have abandoned her, but for the

love it had implanted for her in this one faithful heart. His tone had

all the pleading tenderness of a lover's, but it had something more--an

authority, a sense of possession.

"Providence sent me here to save you," he said, with that gentle yet

authoritative tone; "I am your providence, am I not, dearest? Fate made

me love you--fondly, hopelessly, as I thought. Yesterday you seemed as

far away from me as those pale stars, shining up yonder--as

incomprehensible as that faint silvery mist above the rising moon--and

to-night you are my own."

He knew not what ties might be broken by this act. He had indeed a vague

consciousness that the step which he was now taking would cause a

lifelong breach between himself and his father. But the time had gone by

in which he could count the cost.

"Let me go back, M. Lenoble," the Englishwoman said presently. The

faintness of terror was passing away, and she spoke almost calmly. "Let

me go back to the house. It is you that have saved me from a dreadful

sin. I promise you that I will not again think of committing that deadly

sin. I will wait for the end to come. Let me go, my kind friend. Ah, no,

no; do not detain me! Forget that you have ever known me."

"That is not in my power. I will take you back to the Pension Magnotte

directly; but you must first promise to be my wife."

"Your wife! O, no, no, no! That is impossible."

"Because you do not love me," said Gustave, with mournful gravity.

"Because I am not worthy of you."

Humiliation and self-reproach unspeakable were conveyed in those few

words.

"You are worth all the stars to me. If I had them in my hands, those

lamps shining up there, I would throw them away, to hold you," said the

student passionately. "You cannot understand my love, perhaps. I seem a

stranger to you, and all I say sounds wild and foolish. My love, it is

true as the heaven above us--true as life or death--death that was so

near you just now. I have loved you ever since that bleak March morning

on which I saw you sitting under the leafless trees yonder. You held me

from that moment. I was subjugated--possessed--yours at once and for

ever. I would not confess even to myself that my heart had resigned

itself to you; but I know now that it was so from the first. Is there any

hope that you will ever pay me back one tithe of my love?"

"You love me," the Englishwoman repeated slowly, as if the words were

almost beyond her comprehension,--"you love _me_, a creature so lost, so

friendless! Ah, but you do not know my wretched story!"

"I do not ask to know it. I only ask one question--will you be my wife?"

"You must be mad to offer your name, your honour to me."

"Yes, I am mad--madly in love. And I am waiting for your answer. You

will be my wife? My angel, you will say yes! It is not much that I offer

you--a life of uncertainty, perhaps even of poverty; but a fond and

constant heart, and a head and hands that will work for you while God

gives them strength. It is better than the river."

All that was thoughtless and hopeful in his disposition was expressed in

these words. The woman to whom he pleaded was weakened by sorrow, and

the devotion of this brave true heart brought her strength, comfort,

almost hope.

"Will you be my friend?" she said gently. "Your words seem to bring me

back to life. I wanted to die because I was so wretched, so lonely. I

have friends in England--friends who were once all that is dear and kind;

but I dare not go to them. I think a cruel look from one of those friends

would kill me with a pain more bitter than any other death could give.

And I have no right to hope for kind looks from them. Yours are the only

words of friendship I have heard for a long time."

"And you will give me the right to work for you--to protect you? You will

be my wife?"

"I would rather be your servant," she answered, with sad humility. "What

right have I to accept so great a sacrifice? What folly can be so foolish

as your love for me--if it is indeed love, and not a wild fancy of

to-night!"

"It is a fancy that will last my life."

"Ah, you do not know how such fancies change."

"I know nothing except that mine is changeless. Come, my love, it is

growing late and cold. Let me take you home. The portress will wonder.

You must slip past her quietly with your veil down. Did you give old

Margot your key when you came down stairs to-night?"

"No, it is in my pocket. I was not thinking--I--"

She stopped with a sudden shudder. Gustave understood that shudder; he

also shuddered. She had left her room that night possessed by the

suicide's madness; she had left it to come straight to death. Happily his

strong arm had come between her and that cruel grave by which they were

still lingering.

They walked slowly back to the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle under the light of

the newly-risen moon. The Englishwoman's wasted hand rested for the first

time on M. Lenoble's arm. She was his--his by the intervention and by the

decree of Providence! That became a conviction in the young man's mind.

He covered her late return to the house with diplomatic art, engaging the

portress in conversation while the dark figure glided past in the dim

lamplight. On the staircase he paused to bid her good night.

"You will walk with me in the Luxembourg garden to-morrow morning,

dearest," he said. "I have so much to say--so much. Until then, adieu!"

He kissed her hand, and left her on the threshold of her apartment, and

then went to his own humble bachelor's chamber, singing a little drinking

song in his deep manly voice, happy beyond all measure.

They walked together next day in the gardens of the Luxembourg. The poor

lonely creature whom Gustave had rescued seemed already to look up to him

as a friend and protector, if not in the character of a future husband.

It was no longer this fair stranger who held possession of Gustave; it

was Gustave who had taken possession of her. The stronger nature had

subjugated the weaker. So friendless, so utterly destitute--penniless,

helpless, in a strange land, it is little matter for wonder that Susan

Meynell accepted the love that was at once a refuge and a shelter.

"Let me tell you my wretched story," she pleaded, as she walked under the

chestnut-trees by her lover's side. "Let me tell you everything. And if,

when you have heard what an unhappy creature I am, you still wish to give

me your heart, your name, I will be obedient to your wish. I will not

speak to you of gratitude. If you could understand how debased an outcast

I seemed to myself last night when I went to the river, you would know

how I must feel your goodness. But you can never understand--you can

never know what you seem to me."

And then in a low voice, and with infinite shame and hesitation, she told

him her story.

"My father was a tradesman in the city of London," she said. "We were

very well off, and my home ought to have been a happy one. Ah, how happy

such a home would seem to me now! But I was idle and frivolous and

discontented in those days, and was dissatisfied with our life in the

city because it seemed dull and monotonous to me. When I look back now

and remember how poor a return I gave for the love that was given to

me--my mother's anxiety, my father's steady, unpretending kindness--I

feel how well I have deserved the sorrows that have come to me since

then."

She paused here, but Gustave did not interrupt her. His interest was too

profound for any conventional expression. He was listening to the story

of his future wife's youth. That there could be any passage in that

history which would hinder him from claiming this woman as his wife was a

possibility he did not for a moment contemplate. If there were shame

involved in the story, as Madame Meynell's manner led him to suppose

there must be, so much the worse was it for him, since the shame must be

his, as she was his.

"When my father and mother died, I went into Yorkshire to live with my

married sister. I cannot find words to tell you how kind they were to

me--my sister and her husband. I had a little money left me by my father,

and I spent the greater part of it on fine dress, and on foolish presents

to my sister and her children. I was happier in Yorkshire than I had been

in London; for I saw more people, and my life seemed gayer and brighter

than in the city. One day I saw a gentleman, the brother of a nobleman

who lived in the neighbourhood of my sister's house. We met by accident

in a field on my brother-in-law's farm, where the gentleman was shooting;

and after that he came to the house. He had seen my sister before, and

made some excuse for renewing his acquaintance. He came very often, and

before long he asked me to marry him; and I promised to be his wife, with

my sister's knowledge and consent. She loved me so dearly, and was so

proud of me out of her dear love, that she saw nothing wonderful in this

engagement, especially as Mr. Kingdon, the gentleman I am speaking of,

was a younger son, and by no means a rich man."

Again she stopped, and waited a little before continuing her story. Only

by a gentle pressure of the tremulous hand resting on his arm did Gustave

express his sympathy.

"I cannot tell you, how happy I was in those days--so bright, so brief. I

cannot tell you how I loved Montague Kingdon. When I look back to that

time of my life, it seems like a picture standing out against a

background of darkness, with some strange vivid light shining upon it. It

was arranged between Montague and my sister that we should be married as

soon as his brother, Lord Durnsville, had paid his debts. The payment of

the debts was an old promise of Lord Durnsville's, and an imprudent

marriage on his brother's part might have prevented the performance of

it. This is what Montague told my sister Charlotte. She begged him to

confide in her husband, my kind brother-in-law, but this he refused to

do. There came a day very soon after this when James Halliday, my

brother-in-law, was told about Montague Kingdon's visits to the farm. He

came home and found Mr. Kingdon with us; and then there was a dreadful

scene between them. James forbade Mr. Kingdon ever again to set foot in

his house. He scolded my sister, he warned me. It was all no use. I loved

Montague Kingdon as you say you love me--foolishly, recklessly. I could

not disbelieve or doubt him. When he told me of his plans for our

marriage, which was to be kept secret until Lord Durnsville had paid his

debts, I consented to leave Newhall with him to be married in London. If

he had asked me for my life, I must have given it to him. And how should

I disbelieve his promises when I had lived only amongst people who were

truth itself? He knew that I had friends in London, and it was arranged

between us that I was to be married from the house of one of them, who

had been my girlish companion, and who was now well married. I was to

write, telling her of my intended journey to town; and on the following

night I was to leave Newhall secretly with Montague Kingdon. I was to

make my peace with my sister and her husband after my marriage. How shall

I tell you the rest? From the first to last he deceived me. The carriage

that was, as I believed, to have taken us to London, carried us to Hull.

From Hull we crossed to Hamburg. From that time my story is all shame and

misery. I think my heart broke in the hour in which I discovered that I

had been cheated. I loved him, and clung to him long after I knew him to

be selfish and false and cruel. It seemed to be a part of my nature to

love him. My life was not the kind of life one reads of in novels. It was

no existence of splendour and luxury and riot, but one long struggle with

debt and difficulty. We lived abroad--not for our pleasure, but because

Mr. Kingdon could not venture to appear in England. His brother, Lord

Durnsville, had never promised to pay his debts. That was a falsehood

invented to deceive my sister. For seven long weary years I was his

slave, a true and faithful slave; his nurse in illness, his patient

drudge at all times. We had been wandering about France for two years,

when he brought me to Paris; and it was here he first began to neglect

me. O, if you could know the dreary days and nights I have spent at the

hotel on the other side of the river, where we lived, you would pity me."

"My dear love, my heart is all pity for you," said Gustave. "Do not tell

me any more. I can guess the end of the story. There came a day in which

neglect gave place to desertion."

"Yes; Mr. Kingdon left me one day without a warning word to break the

blow. I had been waiting and watching for him through two weary days and

nights, when there came a letter to tell me he was on his way to Vienna

with a West Indian gentleman and his daughter. He was to be married to

the daughter. It was his poverty, he told me, which compelled this step.

He advised me to go back to my friends in Yorkshire. To go back!--as if

he did not know that death would be easier to me. There was a small sum

of money in the letter, on which I have lived since that time. When you

first met me here, I had not long received that letter."

This was the end of her story. In the depth of her humiliation she dared

not lift her eyes to the face of her companion; but she felt his hand

clasp hers, and knew that he was still her friend. This was all she asked

of Providence.

To Gustave Lenoble the story had been unutterably painful. He had hoped

to hear a tragedy untarnished by shame, and the shame was very bitter to

him. This woman whom he loved so fondly was no spotless martyr, the

victim of inevitable fate, beautiful and sublime in her affliction. She

was only a weak vain, village beauty who had suffered herself to be lured

away from her peaceful home by the falsehoods of a commonplace scoundrel.

The story was common, the shame was common, but it seemed to M. Lenoble

that the woman by his side was his destiny; and then, prompt to the

rescue of offended pride, of outraged love--tortured to think that she,

so distant and pure a creature to him, should have been trampled in the

dust by another--came the white-winged angel Pity. By her weakness, by

her humiliation, by the memory of her suffering, Pity conjured him to

love her so much the more dearly.

"My darling," he said softly, "it is a very sad story, and you and I will

never speak of it again. We will bury the memory of Montague Kingdon in

the deepest grave that was ever dug for bitter remembrances; and we will

begin a new life together."

This was the end of M. Lenoble's wooing. He could not speak of his love

any more while the sound of Montague Kingdon's name had but lately died

away on Susan Meynell's lips. He had taken her to himself, with all her

sorrows and sins, in the hour in which he snatched her from death; and

between these two there was no need of passionate protestations or

sentimental rapture.

M. Lenoble speedily discovered that the law had made no provision for the

necessities of a chivalrous young student eager to unite himself with a

friendless foreign woman, who could not produce so much as one of the

thirty witnesses required to establish her identity. A very little

consideration showed Gustave that a marriage between him and Susan

Meynell in France was an impossibility. He explained this, and asked her

if she would trust him as she had trusted Montague Kingdon. In Jersey the

marriage might easily be solemnised. Would she go with him to Jersey, to

stay there so long as the English law required for the solemnization of

their union?

"Why should you take so much trouble about me?" said Susan, in her low

sad voice. "You are too good, too generous. I am not worth so much care

and thought from you."

"Does that mean that you will not trust me, Susan?"

"I would trust you with my life in a desert, thousands of miles from the

rest of mankind--with a happier life than mine. I have no feeling in my

heart but love for you, and faith in you."

After this the rest was easy. The lovers left the Pension Magnotte one

bright summer morning, and journeyed to Jersey, where, after a

fortnight's sojourn, the English Protestant church united them in the

bonds of matrimony.

Susan was a Protestant, Gustave a Catholic, but the difference of

religion divided them no more than the difference of country. They came

back to Paris directly after the marriage, and M. Lenoble took a very

modest lodging for himself and his wife in a narrow street near the

Pantheon--a fourth story, very humbly furnished. M. Lenoble had provided

for himself an opportunity of testing the truth of that adage which

declares that a purse large enough for one is also large enough for two.

CHAPTER IV.

A DECREE OF BANISHMENT.

After those stormy emotions which accompany the doing of a desperate

deed, there comes in the minds of men a dead calm. The still small voice

of Wisdom, unheard while Passion's tempest was raging, whispers grave

counsel or mild reproof; and Folly, who, seen athwart the storm-cloud,

sublime in the glare of the lightning, seemed inspiration, veils her face

in the clear, common light of day.

Let it not for a moment be supposed that with M. Lenoble time and

reflection brought repentance in their train. It was not so. The love

which he felt for his English wife was no capricious emotion; it was a

passion deep and strong as destiny. The worst that afterthought could

reveal to him was the fact that the step he had taken was a very

desperate one. Before him lay an awful necessity--the necessity of going

to Beaubocage to tell those who loved him how their air-built castles had

been shattered by this deed of his.

The letters from Cydalise--nay, indeed, more than one letter from his

mother, with whom letter-writing was an exceptional business--had of late

expressed much anxiety. In less than a month the marriage-contract would

be made ready for his signature. Every hour's delay was a new dishonour.

He told his wife that he must go home for a few days; and she prepared

his travelling gear, with a sweet dutiful care that seemed to him like

the ministration of an angel.

"My darling girl, can I ever repay you for the happiness you have brought

me!" he exclaimed, as he watched the slight girlish figure flitting about

the room, busy with the preparations for his journey.

And then he thought of Madelon Frehlter--commonplace, stiff, and

unimpressionable--the most conventional of school-girls, heavy in face,

in figure, in step, in mind even, as it had seemed to him, despite his

sister's praises.

He had been too generous to tell Susan of his engagement, of the

brilliant prospects he forfeited by his marriage, or the risk which he

ran of offending his father by that rash step. But to-night, when he

thought of Madelon's dulness and commonness, it seemed to him as if Susan

had in manner rescued him from a dreadful fate--as maidens were rescued

from sea-monsters in the days of Perseus and Heracles.

"Madelon is not unlike a whale," he thought. "They tell us that whales

are of a sagacious and amiable temper,--and Cydalise was always talking

of Madelon's good sense and amiablity. I am sure it is quite as easy to

believe in the unparalleled virtues of the whale as in the unparalleled

virtues of Madelon Frehlter."

His valise was packed, and he departed for Beaubocage, after a sad and

tender parting from his wife. The journey was a long one in those days,

when no express train had yet thundered across the winding Seine,

cleaving its iron way through the bosom of fertile Norman valleys. M.

Lenoble had ample time for reflection as he jogged along in the ponderous

diligence; and his heart grew more and more heavy as the lumbering

vehicle approached nearer to the town of Vevinord, whence he was to make

his way to the paternal mansion as best he might.

He walked to Beaubocage, attended by a peasant lad, who carried his

portmanteau. The country was very pleasant in the quiet summer

evening, but conscious guilt oppressed the heart and perplexity

disturbed the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, and his spirits were in

nowise elevated by the walk.

Lights in the lower chambers gleamed dimly athwart the trim garden at

Beaubocage. One faint twinkling candle shone in a little pepper-castor

turret, his sister's room. The thought of their glad welcome smote his

heart. How could he shape the words that must inform them of their

disappointment? And then he thought of the gentle pensive wife in the

Parisian lodging, so grateful for his devotion, so tender and

submissive,--the wife he had rescued from death and eternal condemnation,

as it seemed to his pious Catholic mind. The thought of this dear one

gave him courage.

"I owe much to my parents," he thought to himself, "but not the privilege

to sell me for money. The marriage they want to bring about would be a

sordid barter of my heart and my honour."

In a few minutes after this he was standing in the little salon at

Beaubocage, with his mother and sister hanging about him and caressing

him, his father standing near, less demonstrative, but evidently well

pleased by this unexpected arrival of the son and heir.

"I heard thy voice in the hall," cried Cydalise, "and flew down from my

room to welcome thee. It seems to me that one can fly on these occasions.

And how thou art looking well, and how thou art handsome, and how I adore

thee!" cries the damsel, more ecstatic than an English sister on a like

occasion. "Dost thou know that we began to alarm ourselves about thee?

Thy letters became so infrequent, so cold. And all the while thou didst

plot this surprise for us. Ah, how it is sweet to see thee again!"

And then the mother took up the strain, and anon was spoken the dreaded

name of Madelon. She too would be glad--she too had been anxious. The

prodigal made no answer. He could not speak, his heart sank within him,

he grew cold and pale; to inflict pain on those who loved him was a

sharper pain than death.

"Gustave!" cried the mother, in sudden alarm, "thou growest pale--thou

art ill! Look then, Francois, thy son is ill!"

"No, mother, I am not ill," the young man replied gravely. He kissed his

mother, and put her gently away from him. In all the years of her

after-life she remembered that kiss, cold as death, for it was the

farewell kiss of her son.

"I wish to speak a few words with you alone, father," said Gustave.

The father was surprised, but in no manner alarmed by this request. He

led the way to his den, a small and dingy chamber, where there were some

dusty editions of the French classics, and where the master of Beaubocage

kept accounts and garden-seeds and horse-medicines.

When they were gone, the mother and sister sat by one of the open

windows, waiting for them. Without all was still. Distant lights

glimmered through the summer twilight, the lighted windows of Cotenoir.

"How pleased Madelon will be," said Cydalise, looking towards those

glimmering windows. She had really taught herself to believe that the

demoiselle Frehlter was a most estimable young person; but she would have

been glad to find more enthusiasm, more brightness and vivacity, in her

future sister-in-law.

The interview between the father and son seemed long to Madame Lenoble

and Cydalise. The two women were curious--nay, indeed, somewhat anxious.

"I fear he has made debts," said the mother, "and is telling thy father

of his follies. I know not how they are to be paid, unless with the dowry

of Madelon, and that would seem a dishonourable use of her money."

It was half an hour before any sound broke the stillness of that quiet

house. Twilight had thickened into night, when there came a banging of

doors and heavy footsteps in the hall. The door of the salon was

opened, and M. Lenoble came in alone. At the same moment the outer door

closed heavily.

M. Lenoble went straight to the open window and closed the Venetian

shutters. He went from thence to the second window, the shutters whereof

he fastened carefully, while the women stared at him wonderingly, for it

was not his habit to perform this office.

"I am shutting out a vagabond," he said, in a cold, cruel voice.

"Where is Gustave?" cried the mother, alarmed.

"He is gone."

"But he is coming back, is he not, directly?"

"Never while I live!" answered M. Lenoble. "He has married an English

adventuress, and is no longer any son of mine."

Book the Second.

DOWNHILL.

CHAPTER I.

THE FATE OF SUSAN LENOBLE.

Seven years after that miserable summer night at Beaubocage on which

Gustave Lenoble was disowned by his father, a man and woman, with a boy

five years of age, were starving in a garret amongst the housetops and

chimneys of Rouen. In the busy city these people lived lonely as in a

forest, and were securely hidden from the eyes of all who had ever

known them. The man--haggard, dying--cherished a pride that had grown

fiercer as the grip of poverty tightened upon him. The woman lived only

for her husband and her child.

The man was Gustave Lenoble. The world had gone ill with him since he

cast his destiny into the lap of the woman he loved. In all these years

no olive-bearing dove had spanned the gulf that yawned between the

prodigal and his father. The seigneur of Beaubocage had been marble. A

narrow-minded old man, living his narrow life, and nursing one idea with

fanatical devotion, was of all men the least likely to forgive. Vain had

been the tears and entreaties of mother and sister. The doors of that

joyless dwelling on the fertile flats beyond Vevinord were sealed against

the offender with a seal not to be broken, even had he come thither to

plead for pardon, which he did not.

"My father would have sold me as negro slaves are sold _la-bas_," he said,

on those rare occasions when he opened his old wounds, which were to the

last unhealed: "I am glad that I escaped the contemptible barter."

He was in very truth glad. Poverty and hardship seemed to him easier to

bear than the dreary prosperity of Cotenoir and a wife he could not have

loved. The distinguishing qualities of this man's mind were courage and

constancy. There are such noble souls born into the world, some to shine

with lustre supernal, many to burn and die in social depths, obscure as

ocean's deepest cavern.

In his love for the woman he had chosen Gustave Lenoble never wavered. He

worked for her, he endured for her, he hoped against hope for her sake;

and it was only when bodily strength failed that this nameless

foot-soldier began to droop and falter in life's bitter battle. Things

had gone ill with him. He had tried his fate as an advocate in Paris, in

Caen, in Rouen--but clients would not come. He had been a clerk, now in

one counting-house, now in another, and Susan and he had existed somehow

during the seven years of their married life.

They clung to each other with affection that seemed to grow with every

new sorrow; nor did love exhibit any inclination to spread his wings and

take flight from the window, though poverty came in every day at the

door, and sat by the hearth, a familiar companion and inevitable guest.

The mother and sister contrived to help this poor castaway with the

veriest scrapings of a miserly household. The old man, soured by his

great disappointment, grew sordid and covetous with increasing years, and

the lives of the women were hard and hopeless. By little cheats, and

petty contrivances, and pitiful falsifications of financial statements,

they managed to scrape together a few louis now and then for the

struggling exile; and to do this was the sole delight of their patient

lives. They contrived also to correspond secretly with Gustave, and were

informed of the birth of his son.

"Ah, if thou couldst see how beautiful he is," wrote the father, "this

child of pure and true love, thou wouldst no longer regret my breach of

faith with Madelon Frehlter. I knew not until now how like infant

children are to angels. I knew not how true to nature are the angels in

the pictures of Raffaelle and Murillo. Thou knowest the print of

Murillo's Assumption; the picture is in the Louvre. If thou canst

remember that picture, dear mother, thou hast but to recall the face of

one of the cherubim about the feet of our Lady, and thou hast the

portrait of my boy. He opens his eyes, and looks at me as I write. Ah!

that he and I and my Susan were with thee in the little salon at

Beaubocage--my sister, Susan, you, and I united round this darling's

cradle. He has been born in poverty, but his birth has made us very

happy."

The sentiment of this letter was no spurious or transient feeling. For

this child Gustave Lenoble evinced an unchanging fondness. It was indeed

no part of his nature to change. The little one was his comfort in

affliction, his joy during every brief interval of prosperity. When the

battle was well nigh fought, and he began to feel himself beaten. His

chief anxieties, his ever-returning fears, were for his wife and child.

To Susan the thought of parting from him was a despair too deep for

tears. She would have been something less than woman if she had not loved

her husband with more than common affection. She watched the change that

illness brought in the frank face, the stalwart figure; and little by

little the awful truth came home to her. The hour was at hand in which

she must lose him.

"If you could have rest, Gustave, better medical advice, more comforts,

you would soon be strong again. I am sure your father would not refuse to

forgive you now. Write to him, dearest. Go back to Beaubocage, and let

your mother and sister nurse you. I will stay here with the little one.

It shall be forgotten that you have a wife and child."

"No, dear one; I will not desert you, even for a day, to buy back my

father's love. I would rather be here with you than in the pleasantest

home without you. But we must face the future, Susan; we must be brave

and wise, for the little one's sake. You are not so strong that you can

afford to trust blindly in your power to protect him by-and-by. I have

written a letter to my father. He has proved himself a hard man to me,

cruel and obdurate beyond all my fears; but I know he is not altogether

heartless. When I am dead, you will take the letter in one hand, the

child in the other, and go to Beaubocage. I believe he will adopt the

boy, and that the little one will give him the comfort and happiness he

hoped from me. He must be very lonely; and I cannot doubt that his heart

will melt when he sees the child's face, and hears that he has no longer

a son. As for yourself, my poor girl, I see for you no hope except in the

old Yorkshire home, and the friends you fear to see again."

"I no longer fear them," said his wife, with unwonted energy, "I could

not go to them seven years ago; but I can go to them as your wife."

"Ah, thank God, the poor name is worth something for you."

"Yes, dear; and I will go back to them--to-morrow."

"To-morrow!"

"To-morrow, Gustave. I have been selfish and cruel to delay so long. The

old dread of seeing my sister's reproachful face has been strong enough

to hold me back, when a little courage might have enabled me to help you.

The burden has been all on you, and I have done nothing. O, what a wretch

I must have been to sit idly by and see you suffer, and make no effort to

help you!"

"But, my darling, you have not been idle. You have been the dearest and

most industrious of wives, and have helped me to bear my burden. You have

done more, dear--you have made my burden pleasant to me."

"I will try to lighten it, Gustave," cried Susan, with excitement. "O,

why, why did I never try before! My sister and her husband are well

off--rich perhaps. If they are still living, if no cruel changes have

come to pass at Newhall, they could help us with a little money. They

might even give us a home. I will start for England to-morrow."

"Nay, my dear, you are not strong enough to travel so far alone. It

seems, indeed, a happy thought this of your rich relations; but you must

not undertake such a journey. You might write."

"No, Gustave, I will trust to no letter; I will go. It will be no pain

for me to humble myself for your sake. I will go straight to my sister. I

know what a tender compassionate heart it is that I shall appeal to."

There was much discussion; but Susan was resolute. To scrape together the

money for the journey she made efforts that were heroic in a nature so

weak as hers. She went to the Monte de Piete with the last of her little

treasures, that one dear trinket to which she had clung even when hunger

was at the door--the gimmal or alliance ring that Gustave had placed upon

her finger before God's altar--the double symbolic circlet which bore on

one side her name, on the other her husband's. This dearest of all her

possessions she surrendered for a few francs, to make up the sum needful

for her journey.

What it cost her to do this, what it cost her to tear herself away

from her sick husband and her only child, who shall say? There are

pangs that cannot be counted, agonies that will come within no

calculation--the infinite of pain. She went. Two kind souls, a labourer

and his wife, lodgers in the same garret-story, promised to care for

and help the invalid and child. There is no desolation in which a child

will not find a friend.

The journey was long and fatiguing; the anguish of her poor aching heart

almost too much for endurance--a heart so heavy that even hope could

scarce flutter it. It was dull damp weather, though in the middle of

summer. The solitary traveller caught cold on the journey, and arrived in

London in a high fever. Ill, faint, and helpless, the great city seemed

to her unspeakably dismal--most stony of all stony-hearted mothers to

this wretched orphan. She could go no farther than the darksome city inn

where the coach from Southampton brought her. She had come _via_ Havre.

Here she sank prostrate, and had barely sufficient strength to write an

incoherent letter to her sister, Mrs. Halliday, of Newhall Farm, near

Huxter's Cross, Yorkshire.

The sister came as fast as the fastest coach on the great northern road

could carry her. There was infinite joy in that honest sisterly heart

over this one sinner's repentance. Fourteen years had gone by since the

young city-bred beauty had fled with that falsest of men, and most

hardened of profligates, Montague Kingdon; and tidings from Susan were

unlooked for and thrilling as a message from the grave.

Alas for the adverse fate of Susan Meynell! The false step of her youth

had set her for ever wrong upon life's highway. When kind Mrs. Halliday

came, Gustave Lenoble's wife was past her help; wandering in her mind; a

girl again, but newly run away from her peaceful home; and with no

thought save of remorse for her misdeeds.

The seven years of her married life seemed to have faded out of her mind.

She raved of Montague Kingdon's baseness, of her own folly, her vain

regret, her yearning for pardon; but of the dying husband in the garret

at Rouen she uttered no word. And so, with her weary head upon her

sister's breast, she passed away, her story untold, no wedding-ring on

her wasted finger to bear witness that she died an honest man's wife; no

letters or papers in her poor little trunk to throw light on the fourteen

years in which she had been a castaway.

Mrs. Halliday stayed in London to see the wanderer laid in the quiet city

churchyard where her family rested, and where for her was chosen an

obscure corner in which she might repose forgotten and unknown.

But not quite nameless. Mrs. Halliday could not leave the grave unmarked

by any record of the sister she had loved. The stone above the grave of

Gustave's wife bore her maiden name, and the comforting familiar text

about the one sinner who repenteth.

CHAPTER II.

FORGIVEN TOO LATE.

For a week of long days and longer nights there was no step sounded on

the stair, no opening or shutting of a door in the old dilapidated house

where he lay languishing on the brink of an open grave, that did not move

Gustave Lenoble with a sudden emotion of hope. But the footsteps came and

went, the doors were opened and shut again and again, and the traveller

so waited, so hoped for did not return.

The boy--the brave bright son, who seemed to inherit all that was noblest

and best in his father's nature--pined for his mother. The man endured a

martyrdom worse than the agony of Damiens, the slow tortures of La Barre.

What had befallen her? That she could desert him or his child was a

possibility that never shaped itself in his mind. _That_ drop of poison

was happily wanting in his cup; and the bitterness of death was sweet

compared to the scorpion-sting of such a supposition.

She did not return. Calamity in some shape had overtaken her--calamity

dire as death; for, with life and reason, she could not have failed to

send some token, some tidings, to those she loved. The sick man waited a

week after the day on which he had begun to expect her return. At the end

of that time he rose, with death in his face, and went out to look for

her--to look for her in Rouen; for her whom the instinct of his heart

told him was far away from that city--as far as death from life. He went

to the Cour de Messageries, and loitered and waited amidst the bustle of

arriving and departing diligences, with a half-imbecile hope that she

would alight from one of them. The travellers came and went, pushing and

hustling him in their selfish haste. When night came he went back to his

garret. All was quiet. The boy slept with the children of his good

neighbour, and was comforted by the warmth of that strange hearth.

Gustave lit his candle, a last remaining morsel.

"You will last my time, friend," he said, with a wan smile.

He seated himself at the little table, pushed aside the medicine-bottles,

searched for a stray sheet of letter-paper, and then began to write.

He wrote to his mother, telling her that death was at hand, and that the

time had come in which she must succour her son's orphan child. With this

he enclosed a letter to his father--that letter of which he had spoken to

his wife, and which had been written in the early days of his illness.

This packet he directed to Madame Lenoble, at Beaubocage. There was no

longer need for secrecy.

"When those letters are delivered I shall be past blame, and past

forgiveness," he thought.

In the morning he was dead.

The neighbours posted the letter. The neighbours comforted and protected

the child for two days; and then there came a lady, very sad, very quiet,

who wept bitterly in the stillness of that attic chamber where Gustave

Lenoble lay; and who afterwards, with a gentle calmness of manner that

was very sweet to see, made all necessary arrangements for a humble, but

not a mean or ignominious, funeral.

"He was my brother," she said to the good friends of the neighbouring

garret. "We did our best to help him, my mother and I; but we little

thought how bitterly he wanted help. The brave heart would not suffer us

to know that."

And then she thanked them with much tenderness for their charity to the

dead man; and with these good people she went on foot through the narrow

streets of the city to see her brother laid in his grave.

Until this was done the mournful lady, who was not yet thirty years of

age, and of a placid nun-like beauty, abandoned herself to no transport

of love for her orphan nephew; but when that last office of affection had

been performed, she took the little one on her knees, and folded him to

her breast, and gave him her heart, as she had given it long ago to his

father; for this gentle unselfish creature was one who must needs have

some shrine at which to offer her daily sacrifice of self. Already she

was beginning to think how the orphan was to be cared for and the widow

also, for whose return she looked daily.

For the return of Susan Lenoble Cydalise waited at Rouen several days

after the funeral. She had, happily, an old school-fellow comfortably

established in the city; and in the house of this old friend she found a

home. No one but her mother and this friend, whom she could trust, knew

of the business that had brought her from Beaubocage. In seven years the

father had never uttered his only son's name; in all the seven years that

name had never been spoken in his hearing.

When three weeks had gone by since the departure of Susan for England,

all hope of her return was abandoned by Mademoiselle Lenoble and the

neighbours who had known the absent woman.

"She had the stamp of death on her face when she went away," said the

labourer's wife, "as surely as it was on him that she left. I told her

she had no strength for the journey; but she would go: there was no

moving her from that. She had rich friends _la-bas_, who might help her

husband. It was for that she went. That thought seemed to give her a kind

of fever, and the strength of fever."

"And there has come no letter--nothing?"

"Nothing, mademoiselle."

On this Cydalise determined to return to Beaubocage. She could not well

leave the child longer on the hands of these friendly people, even by

paying for his maintenance, which she insisted on doing, though they

would fain have shared their humble _pot-a-feu_ and coarse loaf with

him unrecompensed. She determined on a desperate step. She would take

her brother's orphan child back with her, and leave the rest to

Providence--to the chance of some sudden awakening of natural affection

in a heart that had long languished in a kind of torpor that was almost

death.

The little fellow pined sadly for those dear familiar faces, those tender

soothing voices, that had vanished so suddenly from his life. But the

voice of his aunt was very sweet and tender, and had a tone that recalled

the father who was gone. With this kind aunt he left Rouen in the

lumbering old vehicle that plied daily betwixt that city and Vevinord.

"Thou canst call me Cydalise for a while, my little one," she said to

him; for she did not wish the child to proclaim the relationship between

them yet awhile.

Ah, what bitter tears the two women shed over the soft fair curls of that

little head, when they had the boy all to themselves in the turret

chamber at Beaubocage, on whose white walls the eyes of Cydalise had

opened almost every morning of her pure eventless life!

"Why dost thou cry so, madame?" the child asked of his grandmother, as

she held him in her arms, kissing and weeping over him; "and what have

they done with my father--and mamma too? She went away one day, but she

told me that she would come back, so quickly, ah, so quickly! and the

days passed, and they shut papa in his room, and would not let me go to

him; and mamma did not come, though I asked the Blessed Virgin to send

her back to me."

"Dear child, thy father and mother are in a brighter place than this hard

world, where they had so much sorrow," Madame Lenoble answered, gently.

"Yes, they were often sorry," murmured the boy thoughtfully. "It was

because of money; but then, when there was no money, mamma cried and

kissed me, and kissed papa, and the good papa kissed us both, and somehow

it always ended in happiness."

Francois Lenoble was, happily, absent on this day of tribulation. The

women took their fill of sorrow, but it was sorrow mingled with a strange

bitter sweetness that was almost joy. The seigneur of Beaubocage had gone

to dine, as he still often did, with his old friend Baron Frehlter; for

the breach of faith which had caused a lifelong disunion of father and

son had not divided the two proprietors. Nay, indeed the Baron had been

generous enough to plead the cause of the castaway.

"A man cannot dispose at will of his affections, my friend," he urged;

"and it was more generous in your son to break faith with my daughter

before marriage than after."

Mademoiselle Frehlter had not broken her heart on account of her lover's

falsehood. She had been sufficiently indignant on the occasion, and had

been more impatient of her mother's pet priest and pet poodle during the

brief period in which she wore the willow. She had recovered her good

humour, however, on being wooed by a young subaltern in a cavalry

regiment stationed at Vevinord, the offshoot of a grander house than that

of Lenoble, and whose good looks and good lineage had ultimately

prevailed with the Baron. That gentleman had by no means too good an

opinion of the son-in-law thus forced upon him; but peace was the highest

good (with unlimited tobacco) to which his Germanic soul aspired; and for

the sake of peace in the present he was content to hazard his daughter's

happiness in the future.

"_That_ is very brilliant," he said of M. Paul de Nerague, the young

lieutenant of light cavalry; "but it is not solid, like Gustave. Your son

is honest, candid--a brave heart. It is for that I would have given him

Madelon. But it is Providence which disposes of us, as our good father

St. Velours tells us often; and one must be content. Young Nerague

pleases my daughter, and I must swallow him, though for me he smells too

strong of the barracks: _ca flaire la caserne, mon ami_."

That odour of the barracks which distinguished the sub-lieutenant Paul de

Nerague became more odious after his marriage with the virtuous Madelon,

when he was established--_niche_, as he himself called it--in very

comfortable, though somewhat gruesome, apartments at Cotenoir. His

riotous deportment, his hospitable disposition (as displayed in the

frequent entertainment of his brothers-in-arms at the expense of his

father-in-law), his Don Juan-like demeanour in relation to the housemaids

and kitchen-wenches of the chateau--innocent enough in the main, but on

that account so much the more audacious--struck terror to the hearts of

Madame Frehlter and her daughter; and the elder lady was much gratified

by that thirst for foreign territory which carried the greater part of

the French army and the regiment of the vivacious Paul to the distant

wilds of Algeria.

The virtuous Madelon was too stolid to weep for her husband. But even her

stolidity was not proof against the fiery influence of jealousy, and,

waking and sleeping, her visions were of veiled damsels of Orient

assailing the too inflammable heart of Lieutenant de Nerague.

The young officer was yet absent at that period in which Cydalise

returned from Rouen with her brother's child.

The little boy was sleeping peacefully in a cot beside his aunt's bed (it

had been his father's cot thirty years ago) when Francois Lenoble

returned from Cotenoir that night.

It was not till the next day that he saw the child. He had been making

his usual morning's round in the gardens and orchards, when he came into

the salon, and saw the little boy seated near his grandmother's chair,

playing with some dominoes. Something--perhaps the likeness to his dead

son--the boy's black clothes, for Cydalise had contrived to dress him in

decent mourning--struck suddenly on the old man's heart. "Who is that

boy?" he asked, with a strange earnestness.

"Your son Gustave's only child," answered his wife gently,--"his

orphan child."

Francois Lenoble looked at her, and from her to the boy; tried to speak,

but could not; beckoned the child, and then dropped heavily into a chair

and sobbed aloud. Until this moment no one had ever seen him shed a tear

for the son he had put away from his home--and, as it had seemed, from

his heart. Not by one sigh, not by one mournful utterance of the familiar

name, had he betrayed the depth of that wound which he had endured,

silently, obstinately, in all these years.

They suffered him to bemoan his dead son unhindered by stereotyped

consolations. The two women stood by, and pitied him in silence. The

little boy stared wonderingly, and at last crept up to the

sorrow-stricken father. "Why do you cry, poor old man?" he asked. "You

have not lost your papa and mamma, as I have lost mine, have you? I want

to stay with you and be your little boy, please. She told me to say

that," he added, pointing to Cydalise.--"And I have said it right,

haven't I?" he asked of the same lady.--"I think I shall love you,

because you are like my papa, only older and uglier," the little one

concluded, with angelic candour.

The seigneur of Beaubocage dried his tears with an effort.

Beaubocage--Cotenoir. Ah, me! what empty sounds those two once magic

names seemed to him now that his son's life had been sacrificed to so

paltry an ambition, so sordid a passion, so vile and grovelling a desire!

He took the boy on his knee, and kissed him tenderly. His thoughts

bridged over a chasm of five-and-twenty years as his lips pressed

that fair young brow; and it was his own son--the son whom he had

disowned--whose soft hair was mingling itself now with the grey bristles

on his rugged chin.

"My child," he murmured softly, "the fear is that I shall love thee too

well, and be to thee as much too weakly indulgent as I was wickedly stern

to thy father. Anything is easier to humanity than justice."

This was said to himself rather than to the boy.

"Tell me thy name, little one," he asked presently, after a few moments'

pensive meditation.

"I have two names, monsieur."

"Thou must call me grandfather. And the two names?"

"Francois Gustave."

"I shall call thee Gustave."

"But papa always called me Francois, and mamma said it was the name of a

cruel man; but papa said he loved the name--"

"Ah, no more, little one!" cried the lord of Beaubocage suddenly;

"thou knowest not with what dagger-thrusts thou dost pierce this poor

old heart."

CHAPTER III.

GUSTAVE THE SECOND.

The little Gustave grew and flourished. Such love was lavished on him as

rarely falls to the lot of children, though the spring of many lives may

be rich in love's pure white blossom. The existence of this child seemed

all happiness. He brought hope, and a sense of atonement, and all sweet

things, to the quiet family at Beaubocage; and as he grew from childhood

to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood, it seemed to that household as if

the first Gustave of their love had never been taken from them. That

Orphic fable of Zagreus repeats itself in many households. For the one

bright creature lost another is given; and then comes a time when it is

almost difficult to separate the image of the missing one from the dear

substitute who so nearly fills his place.

Francois Lenoble and his wife enjoyed a green old age, and the affection

of their grandson made the cup of life sweet for them to the very dregs.

There are, happily, some natures which indulgence cannot injure; some

luxuriant flowers which attain strength as well as beauty under the

influence of these tropical heats of affection. Gustave the second

possessed all the noble qualities of Gustave the first. Frank, generous,

brave, constant, affectionate, light-hearted, he shone on the failing

eyes of his kindred radiant as a young Apollo, brave as a mortal

Hercules.

Those things which the ignorant heart has at some time so passionately

desired are apt to be granted when the desire has grown somewhat cold and

dead. Thus it was with the ambition of Francois Lenoble. He lived to see

the lands of Cotenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his

grandson, who married Clarice, the only surviving child of M. and Madame

de Nerague. Two sons and a daughter had been born at Cotenoir; but the

sons withered and faded in early boyhood, and even the daughter, though

considered a flourishing plant in that poor garden of weakling blossoms,

was but a fragile creature.

The old people at Beaubocage survived the seigneur and chatelaine of

Cotenoir by some years, and survived also the fiery lieutenant, who fell

in Algeria without having attained his captaincy, or added any military

renown to the good old name of de Nerague in his own magnificent person.

Francois saw his grandson established at Cotenoir before he died. He

expired with his hand in that of Gustave, whom, in the half-consciousness

of that last hour, he mistook for the son he had disowned.

"What door was that that shut?" he asked, in an eager whisper. "Who said

I turned my son out of doors--my only son? It's false! I couldn't have

done it! Hark! there's the door shutting again! It sounds like the door

of a tomb."

After this he dozed a little, and woke with a smile on his face.

"I have been dreaming of thy father, Gustave," he said calmly. "I thought

that I saw him with a light shining in his face, and that he kissed and

forgave me."

This was the end. The faithful wife was not slow to follow her husband to

the grave, and there was now only a placid maiden lady at Beaubocage,

Mademoiselle Cydalise Lenoble, whom everyone within ten leagues of

Vevinord knew and loved,--a lay abbess, a Sister of Mercy in all save the

robes; a tender creature, who lived only to do good.

Ten years passed, and M. Lenoble of Cotenoir was a widower with two

fair young daughters at a convent school on the outskirts of Vevinord,

and a boisterous son at an academy in Rouen. Gustave had never followed

any profession; the lands of Beaubocage secured him a competence,

so prudently had the small estate been managed by the kindred who

adored him. His marriage had given him fortune. He had no need of

trade or profession. His life was laid out for him like a prim Dutch

flower-garden. He was to live at Cotenoir, and look after his estate, and

smoke his pipe, as Baron Frehlter had done, and be a good husband to his

wife, a kind father to his children. This latter part of his duty came

natural to M. Lenoble. It was not in him to be otherwise than kind to

women and children. His invalid wife praised him as a model of marital

perfection. It was Gustave who wheeled her sofa from one room to another,

Gustave who prepared her medicines, Gustave whose careful hands adjusted

curtains and _portieres_. The poor woman lived and died believing herself

the happiest of wives. She mistook kindness for love.

M. Lenoble bore his wife's demise with Christian calmness. He was sorry

that the fragile creature should have been taken so early from the

pleasant home that was hers by right, but of passionate grief, or dreary

sense of irreparable loss, there was none in that manly heart. There were

times when the widower reproached himself for this want of feeling; but

in very truth Madame Lenoble, _jeune_, had lived and died a nonentity.

Her departure left no empty place; even her children scarcely missed her.

The father was all-in-all.

Gustave had married at twenty years of age. He was twenty-nine when his

wife died. His eldest daughter, Clarice, eight; his second, Madelon,

seven; the boy, a spoilt young dog of five, not yet despatched to the

great school at Rouen.

But in '65 Mademoiselle Clarice was fifteen years of age, and a very

charming performer on the pianoforte, as the good nuns at the Convent of

the Sacred Heart, at Vevinord, told the father. Mademoiselle Madelon was

looking forward to her fourteenth anniversary, and she, too, was a very

pretty pianist, and altogether a young prodigy of learning and goodness,

as the nuns told the master of Cotenoir. The demoiselles of Cotenoir

stood high in the estimation of pupils and mistress; they were a kind of

noblesse; and the simple-minded superioress spoke of these young persons

with some pride when she described her establishment to a stranger. It

was a very comfortable little colony, a small world enclosed by high

walls. The good mothers who taught and cherished the children were for

the greater part ladies of superior and even exalted station; and there

was a gentleness, a tenderness, in their care for these young lambs not

always to be insured by the payment of an annual stipend. It must be

confessed that the young lambs were apt to be troublesome, and required a

good deal of watching. To the eye of the philosopher that convent school

would have afforded scope for curious study; for it is singular to

discover what exceptional vices the youthful mind can develop from its

inner consciousness, in homes as pure as this. There were black sheep

even in the convent of the Sacre Coeur, damsels marked with a sign that

meant "dangerous."

Happily for Gustave Lenoble, his daughters were amongst the brightest and

the purest of those girl-graduates. They gave him no trouble, except when

they asked him for a home.

"It seems so dull and dreary at Cotenoir, papa," they said, "though you

are always so kind. It doesn't seem like home. Beaubocage is more

home-like. At Cotenoir, when you are out, there is no one to talk to; and

we have no little parties, no excursions into the country, none of those

pleasures which the other girls tell us they have during the holidays."

This was the gist of the lamentations of Mademoiselles Clarice and

Madelon; and the father knew not how to supply the mysterious something

which was wanting to make Cotenoir a pleasant home. The girls could

complain of no restraint, or pine for no indulgence, since their father

was always prompt to gratify every whim. But there was some element of

happiness wanting, nevertheless; and M. Lenoble perceived that it was so.

The life at Cotenoir was desultory, straggling; an existence of perpetual

dawdling; a life of shreds and patches, half-formed resolutions, projects

begun and broken off in the middle. The good genius, the household angel,

order, was wanting in that mansion. There was waste, dirt, destruction of

all kinds, in the rambling old chateau; old servants, too weak or too

lazy to work; old tradesmen, presuming on old-established habits of

imposition, unquestioned so long as to have become a right--for the

feudal system of fine and forfeiture has only changed hands. The power

still flourishes, only it is the villein who takes tithe of his lord.

The servants at Cotenoir had gone their own ways with but little

interference since the death of Madame de Nerague, which occurred two

years before that of her daughter, Clarice Lenoble. Poor invalid Clarice

had been quite unable to superintend her household; and since her death

Mademoiselle Cydalise had been too feeble of health to assume any

authority in her nephew's establishment, even if the household of

Cotenoir would have submitted to interference from Beaubocage, which in

all likelihood they would not.

Thus it happened that things had taken their own course at the chateau,

and the course had been somewhat erratic. There is nothing so costly as

muddle, and Gustave Lenoble had of late begun to perceive that he had the

maximum of expense with the minimum of comfort. Meanwhile the kind old

aunt at Beaubocage gave her nieces much valuable advice against the time

when they should be old enough to assume the management of their father's

house. The sweet unselfish lady of Beaubocage had indeed undergone hard

experience in the acquirement of the domestic art. Heaven and her own

memory alone recorded those scrapings and pinchings and nice calculations

of morsels by which she had contrived to save a few pounds for her

outcast brother. Such sordid economics show but poorly on earth; but it

is probable that in the mass of documentary evidence which goes before

the Great Judge, Mademoiselle Lenoble's account-book will be placed on

the right side.

Book the Third.

THE HORATIAD.

CHAPTER I.

CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE.

Captain Paget went his way to Rouen in a placid but not an exulting mood,

after parting with his young friend Valentine Hawkehurst at the London

Bridge terminus of the Brighton line. He was setting out upon an

adventure wild and impracticable as the quest of Jason and his Argonauts;

and this gallant captain was a carpet-knight, sufficiently adventurous

and audacious in the diplomatic crusades of society, but in nowise eager

to hazard his life on tented field and in thick press of war. If the

Fates had allowed the accomplished Horatio to choose his own destiny, he

would have elected to live in the immediate neighbourhood of St. James's

Street, from the first day to the last of the London season, and to dine

artistically and discreetly at one of those older and more exclusive

clubs dear and familiar to him from the bright years of his youth. He was

by nature a _flaneur_, a gossip, a lover of expensive luxuries and

frivolous pleasures. He was not only incapable of a high thought himself,

but was an unbeliever in the possibility of high thoughts or noble

principles in the world he lived in. He measured the universe by that

narrow scrap of tape which was the span of his own littleness. To him

Caesar was an imperial brigand, Cicero a hypocritical agitator. To him

all great warriors were greedy time-servers like John Churchill; all

statesmen plausible placemen; all reformers self-seeking pretenders. Nor

did Captain Paget wish that it should be otherwise. In his ideal

republic, unselfishness and earnestness would have rendered a man rather

a nuisance than otherwise. With the vices of his fellow-men the

diplomatic Horatio was fully competent to deal; but some of his most

subtle combinations on the chess-board of life would have been checkmated

by an unexpected encounter with intractable virtue.

The necessity of living was the paramount consideration to which this

gentleman had given his mind from the time when he found himself a

popular subaltern in a crack regiment, admired for his easy manners and

good looks, respected by meaner men for his good blood, and rich in

everything except that vulgar dross without which the life of West-end

London is so hollow a delusion, so bitter a comedy of mean shifts and

lying devices.

That freebooter of civilization, the man who lives by his wits, is

subject to strange fluctuations from prosperity to adversity. He is the

miner or gold-digger of civilized life; and as there are times when his

pickaxe strikes suddenly on a rich lode, so there are dreary intervals in

which his spade turns up nothing but valueless clay, and the end of each

day's work leaves him with no better evidence of his wasted labour than

the aching limbs which he drags at nightfall to his dismal shanty.

For some months Captain Paget had found Philip Sheldon a very useful

acquaintance. The stockbroker had been the secret inaugurator of two or

three joint-stock companies, though figuring to the outer world only as

director; and in the getting-up of these companies Horatio had been a

useful instrument, and had received liberal payment for his labours.

Unhappily, so serene an occupation as promoting cannot go on for ever; or

rather, cannot remain for ever in the same hands. The human mind is

naturally imitative, and the plagiarisms of commerce are infinitely more

audacious than the small larcenies of literature. The joint-stock company

market became day by day more crowded. No sooner did Philip Sheldon float

the Non-destructive Laundry Company, the admirable organization of which

would offer a guarantee against the use of chloride of lime and other

destructive agencies in the wash-tub, than a rival power launched a

colourable imitation thereof, in the Union-is-Strength Domestic Lavatory

Company, with a professor of chemistry specially retained as inspector of

wash-tubs. Thus it was that, after the profitable ripening of three such

schemes, Mr. Sheldon deemed it advisable to retire from the field, and

await a fitter time for the further exercise of his commercial genius.

Captain Paget's relations with the stockbroker did not, however,

terminate with the cessation of his labours as secretary,

jack-of-all-trades, and promoter. Having found him, so far, clever, and

to all appearance trustworthy--and this was an important point, for no

man so much needs honourable service as a rogue--Philip Sheldon

determined upon confiding to Horatio the conduct of a more delicate

business than anything purely commercial. After that discovery of the

telegraphic message sent by his brother George to Valentine Hawkehurst,

and the further discovery of the advertisement relating to the unclaimed

wealth of the lately deceased John Haygarth, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in

organizing his plans for his own aggrandizement at the expense of his

brother.

"George refused to let me in for a share of chances when I showed myself

willing to help him," thought Philip. "He may discover by-and-by that I

have contrived to let myself into his secrets; and that he might have

played a better game by consenting to a partnership."

A life devoted to his own interests, and a consistent habit of

selfishness, had rendered Mr. Sheldon, of the Lawn, Bayswater, and Stags

Court, City, very quick of apprehension in all matters connected,

immediately or remotely, with the making of money. The broken sentences

of the telegram betrayed by the blotting-pad told him a great deal. They

told him that there was a certain Goodge, in the town of Ullerton, who

possessed letters so valuable to George Sheldon, as to be bought by his

agent Valentine Hawkehurst. Letters for which Sheldon was willing to give

money must needs be of considerable importance, since money was a very

scarce commodity with that hunter of unconscious heirs-at-law. Again, a

transaction which required the use of so expensive a medium as the

electric telegraph rather than the penny post, might be fairly supposed a

transaction of some moment. The letters in question might relate to some

other estate than that of John Haygarth, for it was quite possible that

the schemer of Gray's Inn had other irons in the fire. But this was a

question of no moment to Philip Sheldon.

If the letters--or the information contained therein--were likely to be

useful to George, they might be useful to him. If George found it worth

his while to employ an agent at Ullerton, why should not he (Philip) have

his agent in the same town? The pecuniary risk, which might be a serious

affair to George, was child's play for Philip, who had always plenty of

money, or, at any rate, the command of money. The whole business of

heir-at-law hunting seemed to the stockbroker a very vague and shadowy

piece of work, as compared to the kind of speculation that was familiar

to him; but he knew that men had made money in such a manner, and any

business by which money could be made, was interesting to him. Beyond

this, the notion of cutting the ground from under his brother's feet had

a certain attraction for him. George's manner to him had been somewhat

offensive to him on more than one occasion since--well, since Tom

Halliday's death. Mr. Sheldon had borne that offensiveness in mind, with

the determination to "take it out of" his brother on the earliest

opportunity.

It seemed as if the opportunity had arrived, and Philip was not one of

those men who wait shivering on the shore when Fortune's tide is at the

flood. Mr. Sheldon launched his bark upon the rising waters, and within

two hours of his discovery in the telegraph-office was closeted with

Horatio Paget in the little parlour in Omega Street, making arrangements

for the Captain's journey to Ullerton.

That Horatio was the right man for the work he wanted done, Mr. Sheldon

had been quick to perceive.

"He knows Hawkehurst, and will be able to reckon up any manoeuvres of his

better than a stranger; and is, I think, altogether as deep an old

gentleman as one could hope to meet with, barring _the_ traditional

gentleman who did odd jobs for Dr. Faustus," the stockbroker said to

himself, as his hansom sped along Park Lane on its way to Chelsea. The

eagerness with which Captain Paget took up the idea of this business was

very agreeable to his patron.

"This is an affair in which success hinges on time," said Mr. Sheldon;

"so, if you mean to go in for the business, you must start for Ullerton

by the two o'clock express. You'll have just time to throw your razors

and a clean shirt into a carpet-bag while I talk to you. I've got a cab

outside, and a good one, that will take you to Euston Square in half an

hour."

The Captain showed himself prompt in action. His bedchamber was a small

apartment at the back of the parlour, and here he packed his bag while

conversing with his employer.

"If you get upon the ground in time, you may obtain a look at the letters

before they are handed over to Hawkehurst, or you may outbid him for

them," said Mr. Sheldon; "but remember, whatever you do must be so done

as to keep Hawkehurst and George completely in the dark as to our

proceedings. If once they find out we are on their track, our chances

will be gone, for they have got the information and we haven't; and it's

only by following close in their footsteps we can hope to do anything."

"That is understood," replied the Captain, stooping over his bag; "I

shall keep myself as close as possible, you may depend upon it. And it

shan't be my fault if Valentine sees me or hears of me. I shall want

money, by the bye; for one can't stir a step in this sort of affair

without ready cash."

"I am quite aware of that. I stopped at the West-end branch of the Unitas

and cashed a cheque for forty pounds. You can do a good deal in the way

of bribery for forty pounds, in such a place as Ullerton. What you have

to do is to keep your eye on Hawkehurst, and follow up every channel of

information that he opens for you. He has the clue to the labyrinth,

remember, the reel of cotton, or whatever it was, that the young woman

gave that Roman fellow. All you have to do is to get hold of it, and

follow your leader." continued Philip, with his watch in his hand. "This

business of the letters will be sharp work, for the chances are against

us here, as it's more than likely the papers will have changed hands

before you can get to Ullerton. But if you can't buy the letters, you may

buy the information contained in them, and that is the next best thing.

Your first move will be to ferret out this man Goodge. Everybody knows

everybody else in such a place as Ullerton, large and busy as the town

is, and you won't find that difficult. When you see Goodge, you'll know

how to deal with him. The mode and manner of your dealing I leave to

yourself. You are a man of the world, and will know how to manipulate the

gentleman, whoever he may be. And now lock your bag and cut downstairs as

fast as you can. Time's up. Here's your money--three tens, two fives.

Good day."

CHAPTER II.

EPISTOLARY.

_From Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_.

Royal Hotel, Ullerton, Oct. 7, 186--.

My dear sir,--I arrived here last evening just in time to run against

Hawkehurst on the platform, which was rather a provoking encounter at the

outset. He went further north by the same train that brought me from

London. This train only stops at three places after Ullerton--Slowport,

Black Harbour, and Manchester; and I shall take pains to discover which

of these towns was Hawkehurst's destination. There was one satisfaction

in seeing his departure by this train, inasmuch as it assured me that I

had the ground clear for my own operations.

I had no difficulty in discovering the whereabouts of Goodge--_the_

Goodge we want--and at eight o'clock was comfortably seated in that

gentleman's parlour, talking over the affair of the letters. Tolerably

quick work, I think you will allow, my dear sir, for a man whose years

have fallen into the sere and yellow leaf.

Mr. Goodge is a Methodist parson--a class of person I have always

detested. I found him peculiarly amenable to monetary influence. I need

scarcely tell you that I was careful to conceal my identity from this

person. I made so bold as to borrow the cognomen of an old-established

firm of solicitors in the Fields, and took a somewhat high tone

throughout the interview. I informed Mr. Goodge that the young man who

had called on him with reference to certain letters connected with the

affairs of the Haygarth family--and I perceived from Mr. Goodge's face

that we were on the right track--was a person of disreputable character,

engaged in an underhand transaction calculated to injure a respected

client of our house. I saw that the words "house" and "our" were

talismanic in their effect upon the Methodist parson. You see, my dear

sir, there is no one can manage this sort of thing so well as a

gentleman. It comes natural to him. Your vulgar diplomatist seldom knows

how to begin, and never knows when to stop. Here I had this low-bred

Methodist fellow impressed by the idea of my individual and collective

importance after five minutes' conversation. "But this comes too near the

praising of myself; therefore hear other things," as the bard observes.

A very little further conversation rendered Mr. Goodge malleable. I found

that Hawkehurst had approached him in the character of your brother's

articled clerk, but under his own proper name. This is one point gained,

since it assures me that Valentine is not skulking here under a feigned

name; and will enable me to shape my future inquiries about him

accordingly. I also ascertained Hawkehurst's whereabouts when in

Ullerton. He stays at a low commercial house called the Black Swan. It

appears that the man Goodge possesses a packet of letters written by a

certain Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth, wife of one Matthew Haygarth. In what

relationship this Matthew may stand to the intestate is to be discovered.

It is evident he is an important link in the chain, or your brother would

not want the letters. I need not trouble you with our conversation in

detail. In gross it amounted to this: Mr. Goodge had pledged himself to

hand over Mrs. Haygarth's letters, forty or so in number, to Hawkehurst

in consideration of twenty pounds. They would have been already in

Hawkehurst's possession, if Mr. Goodge had not objected to part with them

except for ready money. In consideration of a payment of twenty pounds

from me, he was willing to let me read all the letters, and select any

ten I pleased to take. This bargain was not arrived at without

considerable discussion, but it certainly struck me as a good one.

I opened the packet of papers then and there, and sat up until six

o'clock the next morning, reading Mrs. Haygarth's letters in Mr. Goodge's

parlour. Very fatiguing occupation for a man of my years. Mr. Goodge's

hospitality began and ended in a cup of coffee. Such coffee! and I

remember the mocha I used to get at Arthur's thirty years ago,--a

Promethean beverage, that illumined the dullest smoking-room bore with a

flash of wit or a glimmer of wisdom.

I enclose the ten letters which I have selected. They appear to me to

tell the history of Mrs. Haygarth and her husband pretty plainly; but

there is evidently something mysterious lurking behind the commonplace

existence of the husband. That is a matter for future consideration. All

I have to do in the present is to keep you as well informed as your

brother. It may strike you that the letters I forward herewith, which are

certainly the cream of the correspondence, and the notes I have made from

the remaining letters, are scarcely worth the money paid for them. In

reply to such an objection, I can only say that you get more for _your_

money than your brother George will get for his.

The hotel at which I have taken up my quarters is but a few paces from

the commoner establishment where Hawkehurst is stopping. He is to call on

Goodge for the letters to-day; so his excursion will be of brief

duration. I find that the name of Haygarth is not unknown in this town,

as there are a family of Judsons, some of whom call themselves Haygarth

Judson. I intend inviting my landlord--a very superior person for his

station--to discuss a bottle of wine with me after my chop this evening,

and hope to obtain some information from him. In the meantime I shall

keep myself close. It is of vital consequence that I should remain unseen

by Hawkehurst. I do not believe he saw me on the platform last night,

though we were as close to each other as we well could be.

Let me know what you think of the letters, and believe me to be, my

dear sir, very faithfully yours,

H. N. C. PAGET.

PHILIP SHELDON, Esq., &c. &c. &c.

* * * * *

_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_.

Bayswater, Oct. 8,186-.

DEAR PAGET,--The letters are mysterious, and I don't see my way to

getting much good out of them, but heartily approve your management of

matters, and give you _carte blanche_ to proceed, according to your own

lights.

Yours truly, P.S.

* * * * *

_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_.

Royal Hotel, Oct. 9, 186-.

MY DEAR SIR,--The cultivation of my landlord has been very profitable.

The house is the oldest in the town, and the business has descended in a

direct line from father to son since the time of George the Second. This

man's grandfather entertained the officers of William Duke of Cumberland,

honoured by his contemporaries with the soubriquet of Billy the Butcher,

during the "forty-five." I had to listen to and applaud a good many

stories about Billy the Butcher before I could lead my landlord round to

the subject of the Haygarths. But he was not more prosy than many men I

have met at dinner-parties in the days when the highest circles in the

land were open to your humble servant.

The Haygarth family, of which the intestate John Haygarth was the last

male descendant, were for a long period inhabitants of this town, and

obtained their wealth by trading as grocers and general dealers in a shop

not three hundred yards from the room in which I write. The building is

still standing, and a curious, old-fashioned-looking place it is. The

last of the Haygarths who carried on business therein was one Jonathan,

whose son Matthew was the father of that Reverend John Haygarth, lately

deceased, intestate. You will thus perceive that the letters I sent you

are of much importance, as they relate solely to this Matthew, father of

our intestate.

My next inquiries related to the Judson family, who are, it appears,

descended from the issue of a certain Ruth Haygarth's marriage with one

Peter Judson. This Ruth Haygarth was the only sister of the Matthew

alluded to in the letters, and therefore was aunt of the intestate. It

would herefrom appear that in this Judson family we must naturally look

for the rightful claimant to the fortune of the deceased John Haygarth.

Possessed of this conviction, I proceeded to interrogate my landlord very

cautiously as to the status, &c. of the Judson family, and amongst other

questions, asked him with a complete assumption of indifference, whether

he had ever heard that the Judsons expected to inherit property from any

branch of the Haygarth family.

This careless interrogatory produced information of, as I imagine, a very

valuable character. A certain Theodore Judson, attorney of this town,

calls himself heir-at-law to the Haygarth estates; but before he can

establish his claim, this Theodore must produce evidence of the demise,

without heirs, of one Peter Judson, eldest surviving grandson of Ruth

Haygarth's eldest son, a scamp and ne'er-do-well--if living, supposed to

be somewhere in India, where he went, as supercargo to a merchant vessel

about, the year '41--who stands prior to Theodore Judson in the

succession. I conclude that the said Theodore, who, as a lawyer, is

likely to do things _secundum artem_, is doing his _possible_ to obtain

the necessary evidence; but in the meantime he is at a dead lock, and the

whole affair appears to be in a charming condition for speculative

interference. I opine, therefore, that your brother really has hit upon a

good thing this time; and my only wonder is, that instead of allowing his

agent, Hawkehurst, to waste his time hunting up old letters of Matthew

Haygarth's (to all appearance valueless as documentary evidence), he does

not send Valentine to India to hunt for Peter Judson, who, if living, is

the rightful heir to the intestate's fortune, and who, as a reckless

extravagant fellow, would be likely to make very liberal terms with any

one who offered to procure him a large lump of money.

I confess that I am quite at a loss to understand why your brother George

does not take this very obvious course, and why Valentine potters about

in this neighbourhood, when a gold mine is waiting to be _exploite_ on

the other side.

I shall be very glad to have your views upon this subject, for at the

present moment I am fain to acknowledge that I do not see my way to

taking any further steps in this business, unless by commencing a search

for the missing Peter.

I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours,

H. N. C. PAGET.

* * * * *

_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_.

Bayswater, Oct. 10, 186--.

DEAR PAGET,--When so old a stager as G. S. does not take the obvious

course, the inference is that there is a better course to be taken--_not_

obvious to the uninitiated.

You have done very well so far, but the information you have obtained

from your landlord is only such information as any one else may obtain

from the current gossip of Ullerton. You haven't yet got to the _dessous

des cartes_. Remember what I told you in London. G. S. _has_ the clue to

this labyrinth; and what you have to do is to hold on to the coat-tails

(in a figurative sense) of his agent, V. H.

Don't put your trust in prosy old landlords, but continue to set a watch

upon that young man, and follow up his trail as you did in the matter of

the letters.

If the Peter Judson who went to India three-and-twenty years ago were the

right man to follow, G.S. would scarcely give twenty pounds for the

letters of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth. It appears to me that G. must be

looking for an heir on the Haygarth side of the house; and if so, rely

upon it he has his reasons. Don't bewilder yourself by trying to

theorize, but get to the bottom of G.'s theory.

Yours truly, P. S.

_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_.

* * * * *

Royal Hotel, Oct. 12, 186.--

MY DEAR SIR,--Considering the advice contained in your last very good, I

lost no time in acting upon it. I need hardly tell you, that to employ

the services of a hired spy, and to degrade myself in some sort to the

level of a private inquirer, was somewhat revolting to a man, who, in the

decadence of his fortunes, has ever striven to place some limit on the

outrages which that hard taskmaster, poverty, may have from time to time

compelled him to inflict upon his self-respect. But in the furtherance of

a cause which I conclude is in no manner dishonourable, since an

unclaimed heritage must needs be a prize open to all, I submitted to this

temporary degradation of my higher feelings, and I trust that when the

time arrives for the settlement of any pecuniary consideration which

I am to derive from these irksome and uncongenial labours, my wounded

self-respect may not be omitted from the reckoning. The above exordium

may appear to you tedious, but it is only just to myself to remind you

that you are not dealing with a vulgar hireling. My first step, after

duly meditating your suggestions, was to find a fitting watch for the

movements of Hawkehurst. I opined that the best person to play the spy

would be that class of man whose existence seems for the most part

devoted to the lounging at street corners, the chewing of straw, and that

desultory kind of industry known in the _patois_ of this race as

"fetching errands." This is the man, or boy, who starts up from the

pavement (as through a trap-door in the flags) whenever one alights from

or would enter any kind of vehicle. Unbidden, unrequired, and obnoxious,

the creature arises, and opens a door, or lays some rag of his wretched

attire on a muddy wheel, and then whines, piteous, for a copper. Such a

man, or such a boy, I felt convinced must exist among the hangers-on of

the Royal Hotel; nor was I mistaken. On inquiring for a handy lad,

capable of attending upon my needs at all hours in the day, and not a

servant in the hotel, but a person who would be wholly at my own

disposal, I was informed that the Boots had a younger brother who was

skilled in the fetching of errands, and who would be happy to wait upon

me for a very reasonable remuneration, or in the words of the waiter

himself, would be ready to leave it--i.e. the remuneration--to my own

generosity. I know that there are no people who expect so much as those

who leave the assessment of their claims to your own generosity; but

as I wanted good service, I was prepared to pay well. The younger Boots

made his appearance in due course--a sharp young fellow enough--and I

forthwith made him my slave by the promise of five shillings a day for

every day in which I should require his services. I then told him that it

was my misfortune to own--with a strong inclination to disown--a

reprobate nephew, now an inhabitant of that very town. This nephew, I had

reason to believe, was going at a very rapid rate to the dogs; but my

affectionate feelings would not allow him to consummate his own

destruction without one last effort to reclaim him. I had therefore

followed him to Ullerton, whither I believed him to be led by the worst

possible motives; and having done so, my next business was to keep myself

informed of his whereabouts.

Seeing that the younger Boots accepted these statements with

unquestioning faith, I went on to inquire whether he felt himself equal

to the delicate duty of hanging about the yard of the Black Swan, and

watching the doors of exit from that hotel, with a view to following my

recreant nephew wherever he might go, even if considerably beyond the

limits of Ullerton. I saw that the lad's intelligence was likely to be

equal to this transaction, unless there should arise any difficult or

complicated position by reason of the suspicion of Hawkehurst, or other

mischance. "Do you think you can watch the gentleman without being

observed?" I asked. "I'm pretty well sure I can, sir," answered the boy,

who is of an enterprising, and indeed audacious, temper. "Very well,"

said I, "you will go to the Black Swan Inn. Hawkehurst is the name by

which my nephew is known there, and it will be your duty to find him

out." I gave the boy a minute account of Valentine's appearance, and

other instructions with which I need not trouble you. I further furnished

him with money, so that he might be able to follow Hawkehurst by rail, or

any other mode of conveyance, if necessary; and then despatched him, with

an order to come back to me when he had seen our man safely lodged in the

Black Swan after his day's perambulations. "And if he shouldn't go out at

all?" suggested the lad. "In that case you must stick to your post till

nightfall, and pick up all the information you can about my unfortunate

nephew from the hangers-on of the hotel," said I. "I suppose you know

some one at the Black Swan?" The boy informed me, in his untutored

language, that he knew "a'most all of 'em," and thereupon departed.

At nine o'clock at night he again appeared before me, big with the

importance of his day's work. He had seen my nephew issue forth from the

Black Swan within an hour of leaving my presence, and had followed him,

first to Mr. William Judson's in Ferrygate, where he waited and hung

about nearly an hour, keeping himself well out of view round the corner

of Chalkin Street, a turning close to Mr. Judson's house. After leaving

this gentleman's house, my renegade nephew had proceeded--carrying a

letter in his hand, and walking as if in very good spirits (but that

fellow Hawkehurst would walk to the gallows in good spirits)--to the

Lancaster Road, where he was admitted into Lochiel Villa, a house

belonging, as my Mercury ascertained from a passing baker's boy, to Miss

Judson, sister of the William Judson of Ferrygate. You will perceive that

this town appears to teem with the Judson family. My messenger, with

praiseworthy art, contrived to engage in a game of tip-cat (what, I

wonder, _is_ a tip-cat?) with some vagrant boys disporting themselves in

the roadway, within view of Miss Judson's house. Hence, after the lapse

of more than an hour, Boots-Mercury beheld my recreant relative emerge,

and from this point followed him--always with extreme caution--back to

the Black Swan. Here he hung about the yard, favoured by his close

acquaintance with the ostler, until eight o'clock in the evening, no

event of the smallest importance occurring during all those hours. But at

eight there arrived a young woman, with a packet from Miss Judson to Mr.

Hawkehurst. The packet was small, and was sealed with red wax. This was

all my Mercury could ascertain respecting it; but this was something.

I at once divined that this packet must needs contain letters. I asked

myself whether those letters or papers had been sold to Hawkehurst, or

only lent to him, and I immediately concluded that they could only have

been lent. It was all very well for Goodge, the Methodist parson, to

traffic in the epistles of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth, but it was to the last

degree unlikely that a well-to-do maiden lady would part with family

letters or papers for any pecuniary consideration whatever. "No," I said

to myself, "the documents have been lent, and will have to be returned;"

and thereupon I laid my plans for the next day's campaign, with a view to

obtaining a peep at those letters, by fair means or foul. I told the boy

to be at his post in the inn yard early the next morning, and if my

nephew did not leave the inn, my agent was to ascertain what he was

doing, and to bring me word thereof. "I'll tell you what it is, Boots," I

said; "I have reason to believe that sadly disposed nephew of mine has

some wicked intention with regard to Miss Judson, who is nearly related

to a young lady with whom that unprincipled young man is, or pretends to

be, in love; and I very much fear that he means to send her some letters,

written by this foolish niece of hers to my more foolish nephew, and

eminently calculated to wound the good lady's feelings. Now, in order to

prevent this very shameful conduct on his part, I want to intercept any

packet or letter which that mistaken youth may send to Miss Judson. Do

you feel yourself capable of getting hold of such a packet, on

consideration of a bonus of half-a-sovereign in addition to the five

shillings per diem already agreed upon?"

This, in more direct and vulgar phraseology, was what I said to the boy;

and the boy departed, after pledging himself to bring me any packet which

Hawkehurst might despatch from the Swan Inn. The only fear was that

Hawkehurst might carry the packet himself, and this contingency appeared

unpleasantly probable.

Fortune favoured us. My reprobate nephew was too ill to go out. He

intrusted Miss Hudson's packet to his waiter, the waiter confided it to

the Boots, the Boots resigned the responsibility in favour of my boy

Mercury, who kindly offered to save that functionary the trouble of a

walk to the Lancaster Road.

At eleven A.M. the packet was in my hands. I have devoted the best part

of to-day to the contents of this packet. They consist of letters written

by Matthew Haygarth, and distinguished by a most abominable orthography;

but I remember my own father's epistolary composition to have been

somewhat deficient in this respect; nor is it singular that the humble

citizen should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal

personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which would

provoke the laughter of a modern charity-boy. That the pretender to the

crown of England should murder the two languages in which he wrote seems

a small thing; but that Frederick the Great, the most accomplished of

princes, bosom-friend of Voltaire, and sworn patron of the literati,

should not have been able to spell, is a matter for some astonishment. I

could but remember this fact, as I perused the epistles of Matthew

Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully

numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to

any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to

retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's

caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It

appears to me that these letters relate to some _liaison_ of the

gentleman's youth; though I am fain to confess myself surprised to

discover that, even in a period notorious for looseness of morals, a man

should enter into such details in a correspondence with his sister.

_Autres temps, autres moeurs_. I have selected my extracts with great

care, and hope that you may be able to make more use of them than I can

at present imagine possible. I shall post this letter and enclosure with

my own hands, though in order to do so I must pass the Black Swan. I

shall despatch my messenger to Lochiel Villa, with Miss Judson's packet,

under cover of the darkness.

In much haste, to catch the London mail,

Truly yours, H.N.C.P.

* * * * *

_From Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. City, Oct. 12, 186--

Dear Paget,--Come back to town. You are only wasting money, time, and

trouble. Yours, P.S.

CHAPTER III.

TOO CLEVER, FOR A CATSPAW.

Captain Paget returned to town, mystified by that sudden summons from his

patron, and eager to know what new aspect of affairs rendered his further

presence in Ullerton useless or undesirable.

Horatio arrived in the great city half-a-dozen hours before his sometime

protege, and was comfortably installed when Valentine returned to those

lodgings in Omega Street, Chelsea, which the two men occupied in common.

Captain Paget went into the City to see Philip Sheldon on the day of his

return, but did not succeed in finding the stockbroker. The evening's

post brought him a letter from Philip, appointing an interview at

Bayswater, at three o'clock on the following day--the day after

Valentine's return from Ullerton.

Punctual to the moment appointed by this letter, Captain Paget appeared

at the Lawn on the following day. He was ushered into Mr. Sheldon's

study, where he found that gentleman awaiting him, grave and meditative

of mood, but friendly, and indeed cordial, in his manner to the returning

traveller.

"My dear Paget, sit down; I am delighted to see you. Your trip has made

you look five years younger, by Jove! I was sorry to find you had called

while I was out, and had waited for me upwards of an hour yesterday. I

have a good deal of worry on my shoulders just now; commerce is all

worry, you know. The Marquis of Lambeth has come into the market and

bought up two-thirds of the Astrakhan Grand Trunk debenture bonds, just

as our house had speculated for the fall. And since it has got wind that

the Marquis is sweet upon the concern, the bonds are going up like a

skyrocket. Such is life. I thought we had better have our little talk

here; it's quieter than in the City. Have some sherry and soda; you like

that Manzanilla of mine, I know."

And the hospitable Philip rang the bell, without thinking it necessary to

wait for his guest's answer.

There was a cordiality, a conciliating friendliness about the

stockbroker's manner which Horatio Paget did not like.

"He's too civil by half," the Captain said to himself; "he means to do

me."

"And now about this Ullerton business," Mr. Sheldon began, when the wine

and soda-water had been brought, and a tall tumbler of that refreshing

compound filled for the Captain; "you have really managed matters

admirably. I cannot too much applaud your diplomatic tact. You would have

put a what's-his-name--that fellow of Napoleon's--to the blush by your

management of the whole business. But, unfortunately, when it's all done

it comes to nothing; the whole affair is evidently, from beginning to

end, a mare's-nest. It is one of those wild geese which my brother George

has been chasing for the last ten years, and which never have resulted in

profit to him or anybody else; and I should be something worse than a

fool if I were to lend myself any longer to such a folly."

"Humph," muttered the Captain, "here is a change indeed!"

"Well, yes," Mr. Sheldon answered coolly. "I dare say my conduct does

seem rather capricious; but you see George put me out of temper the other

day, and I was determined, if he had got a good thing, to cut the ground

from under his feet. All your communications from Ullerton tend to show

me that he has not got hold of a good thing, and that in any attempt to

circumvent him I should only be circumventing myself, wasting your time,

and my own money. This Judson family seems numberless; and it is evident

to me that the Reverend John Haygarth's fortune will be a bone of

contention amongst the Judsons in the High Court of Chancery for any

indefinite number of years between this and the milennium. So I really

think, my dear Paget, we'd better consider this transaction finished. I

will give you whatever honorarium you think fit to name for your trouble,

and we'll close the affair. I shall find plenty more business as good, or

better, for you to do."

"You are very good," replied the Captain, in nowise satisfied by this

promise. It was all too smooth, too conciliatory. And there was a

suddenness in this change of plan that was altogether mysterious. So

indeed might a capricious man be expected to drop a speculation he had

been eager to inaugurate, but Philip Sheldon was the last of men to be

suspected of caprice.

"You must have taken an immense deal of trouble with those extracts,

now," said the stockbroker carelessly, as Horatio rose to depart,

offended and angry, but anxious to conceal his anger. "What, are you off

so soon? I thought you would stop and take a chop with us."

"No, thanks; I have an engagement elsewhere. Yes, I took an

inordinate trouble with those extracts, and I am sorry to think they

should be useless."

"Well, yes, it is rather provoking to you, I dare say. The extracts would

be very interesting from a social point of view, no doubt, to people who

care about such things; but in a legal sense they are waste-paper. I

can't understand why Hawkehurst was in Ullerton; for, as you yourself

suggested, that Peter Judson who went to India must be the Judson wanted

for this case."

"Your brother may be in league with some other branch of the Judson

family. Or what if he is hunting for an heir on the Haygarth side?" asked

the Captain, with a very close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's face. Let the

stockbroker be never so skilful a navigator of the high seas of life,

there was no undercurrent, no cross trade-wind, no unexplained veering of

the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was

not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that

wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the

diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day's

sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew;

but no doctoring of the social log-book could mislead the acute Horatio.

"How about the Haygarth side of the house?" he asked again; for it had

seemed to him that at his first mention of the name of Haygarth Mr.

Sheldon had winced, ever so little. This time, however, he betrayed not

the faintest concern; but he was doubtless now on his guard.

"Well, I don't see how there can be any claimant on that side of the

house," he said carelessly. "You see, according to your old landlord's

statement--which I take to be correct--Jonathan Haygarth had but one son,

a certain Matthew, who married one Rebecca So-and-so, and had, in his

turn one only son, the intestate John. Now, in that case, where is your

heir to come from, except through Matthew's sister Ruth, who married

Peter Judson?"

"Isn't it just possible that Matthew Haygarth may have married twice, and

had other children? Those letters certainly suggest the idea of a secret

alliance of some kind on Haygarth's part, and the existence of a family,

to whom he appears to have been warmly attached. My first idea of this

affair was that it must have been a low _liaison_; but I could hardly

realize the fact of Matthew's confiding in his sister under any such

circumstances, however lax in his morals that gentleman may have been.

Mrs. Matthew Haygarth's letters hint at some mystery in her husband's

life. Is it not likely that this hidden family was a legitimate one?"

"I can't quite see my way to that idea," Mr. Sheldon answered, in a

meditative tone. "It seems very unlikely that any marriage of Haygarth's

could have remained unknown to his townsmen; and even if it were so, I

doubt the possibility of our tracing the heirs from such a marriage. No,

my dear Paget, I have resolved to wash my hands of the business, and

leave my brother George in undisturbed possession of his ground."

"In that case, perhaps, you will return my notes; they are

interesting to me."

Here again the faintest indication of annoyance in the stockbroker's face

told its tale to Captain Paget. For your accomplished navigator of the

unknown seas there is no ocean bird, no floating weed, that has not a

language and a significance.

"You can have your notes, if you want them," answered Mr. Sheldon; "they

are at my office. I'll hunt them up and send them to you; or you had

better look in upon me in the City early next week, and I can give you a

cheque at the same time."

"Thanks. I will be sure and do so."

"You say the orthography of the original letters was queer. I suppose

your copies were faithful in all matters except the orthography. And in

the names, you of course adhered to the original spelling?"

"Most decidedly," replied Captain Paget, opening the door to depart,

and with a somewhat cynical smile upon his face, which was hidden from

Mr. Sheldon.

"I suppose there is no doubt of your accuracy with regard to the name of

Meynell, now?"

"Not the least. Good afternoon. Ah, there's our young friend Hawkehurst!"

exclaimed the Captain, in his "society" voice, as he looked out into the

hall, where Valentine was parting with Diana.

He came and greeted his young friend, and they left the house together.

This was the occasion upon which Valentine was startled by hearing the

name "Meynell" pronounced by the lips of Philip Sheldon.

CHAPTER IV.

CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL.

Horatio Paget left the Lawn after the foregoing interview, fully

convinced that Mr. Sheldon was only desirous to throw him off the scent,

in order to follow up the chase alone, for his sole profit and advantage.

"My last letter conveyed some intelligence that altered his whole plan of

action," thought the Captain; "that is perfectly clear. He was somewhat

wanting in tact when he recalled me so suddenly. But I suppose he thought

it would be easy to throw dust in my poor old eyes. What was the

intelligence that made him change his mind? That is the grand question."

Captain Paget dined alone at a West-End restaurant that evening. He dined

well, for he had in hand certain moneys advanced by his patron, and he

was not disposed to be parsimonious. He sat for some time in meditative

mood over his pint bottle of Chambertin, and the subject of his

meditation was Philip Sheldon.

"Yes," he murmured at last, "that is it. The charm is in the name of

Meynell. Why else should he question me about the orthography of that

name? I sent him information about Matthew Haygarth in the wife's

letters, and he took no special notice of that information. It was only

when the name of Meynell cropped up that he changed his tactics and tried

to throw me over. It seems to me that he must have some knowledge of this

Meynell branch, and therefore thinks himself strong enough to act alone,

and to throw me over the bridge. To throw me over," the Captain repeated

to himself slowly. "Well, we'll see about that. We'll see; yes, we'll

see."

At noon on the following day Captain Paget presented himself again at the

Bayswater villa, where his daughter ate the bread of dependence. He

appeared this time in a purely paternal character. He came to call upon

his only child. Before paying this visit the Captain had improved the

shining hour by a careful study of the current and two or three back

volumes of the Post-Office and Trade Directories; but all his researches

in those interesting volumes had failed to reveal to him the existence of

any metropolitan Meynells.

"The Meynells whom Sheldon knows may be in the heart of the country," he

said to himself, after these futile labours.

It was a fine autumnal morning, and as Miss Paget was at home and

disengaged, her affectionate father suggested that she should take a walk

with him in Kensington Gardens. Such a promenade had very little

attraction for the young lady; but she had a vague idea that she owed a

kind of duty to her father not remitted by his neglect of all duties to

her; so she assented with a smile, and went out with him, looking very

handsome and stylish in her simple but fashionable attire, no part of

which had been provided by the parent she accompanied.

The Captain surveyed her with some sense of family pride. "Upon my word,

my dear, you do me credit!" he exclaimed, with a somewhat patronising

kindness of tone and manner; "indeed any man might be proud of such a

daughter. You are every inch a Paget."

"I hope not, papa," said the girl involuntarily; but the Captain's more

delicate instincts had been considerably blunted in the press and jostle

of life, and he did not feel the sting of this remark.

"Well, perhaps you are right, my love," he replied blandly; "the Pagets

_are_ an unlucky family. Like those Grecian people, the Atri--,

what's-his-name--the man who was killed in his bath, you know. His wife,

or the other young person who had come to visit his daughters, made the

water too hot, you know--and that kind of thing. I am not quite clear

about the story, but it's one of those farragos of rubbish they make

young men learn at public schools. Yes, my dear, I really am amazingly

pleased by your improved appearance. Those Sheldon people dress you very

nicely; and I consider your residence in that family a very agreeable

arrangement for all parties. You confer a favour on the girl by your

society, and so on, and the mother provides you with a comfortable home;

All I wonder is that your good looks haven't made their mark before this

with some of Sheldon's rich stockbroking fellows."

"We see very little of the stockbroking fellows, as you call them, at the

Lawn, papa."

"Indeed! I thought Sheldon kept a great deal of company."

"O no. He gives a dinner now and then, a gentleman's dinner usually; and

poor Mrs. Sheldon is very anxious that it should all go off well, as she

says; but I don't think he is a person who cares much for society."

"Really, now?"

"His mind seems completely occupied by his business, you see, papa. That

horrible pursuit of gain seems to require all his thoughts, and all his

time. He is always reading commercial papers, the _Money Market_ and _On

Change_, and the _Stockbrokers' Vade Mecum_, and publications of that

kind. When he is not reading he is thinking; and by his manner one would

fancy his thoughts were always gloomy and unpleasant. What a miserable,

hateful, unholy life to lead! I would not be that man for all the money

in the Bank of England. But it is a kind of treachery to tell these

things. Mr. Sheldon is very good to me. He lets me sit at his table and

share the comforts of his home, and I must be very ungrateful to speak

against him. I do _not_ mean to speak against him, you see, papa--I only

mean that a life devoted to money-making is in itself hateful."

"My dear child, you may be assured that anything you say to _me_ will go

no further," said the Captain, with dignity; "and in whom should you

confide, if not in your father? I have a profound respect for Sheldon and

his family--yes, my love, a profound respect; and I think that girl

Sarah--no, I mean Charlotte--a very charming young person. I need

scarcely tell you that the smallest details of your life in that family

possess a keen interest for me. I am not without a father's feelings,

Diana, though circumstances have never permitted me to perform a father's

duties."

And here the solitary tear which the accomplished Horatio could produce

at will trembled in his eye. This one tear was always at his command. For

the life of him he could not have produced a second; but the single drop

never failed him, and he found one tear as effective as a dozen, in

giving point and finish to a pathetic speech.

Diana looked at him, and wondered, and doubted. Alas, she knew him only

too well! Any other creature in this wide world he might deceive, but not

her. She had lived with him; she had tasted the bitterness of dependence

upon him--ten times more bitter than dependence on strangers. She had

shown him her threadbare garments day after day, and had pleaded for a

little money, to be put off with a lying excuse. She could not forget

this. She had forgiven him long ago, being of too generous a nature to

brood upon past injuries. But she could not forget what manner of man he

was, and thank him for pretty speeches which she knew to be meaningless.

They talked a little more of Mr. Sheldon and his family, but Diana did

not again permit herself to be betrayed into any vehement expressions of

her opinions. She answered all her father's questions without restraint,

for they were very commonplace questions, of a kind that might be

answered without any breach of faith.

"Amongst the Sheldons' acquaintances did you ever hear of any people

called Meynell?" Captain Paget asked at length.

"Yes," Diana replied, after a moment's thought; "the name is certainly

very familiar to me;" and then, after a pause, she exclaimed, "Why, the

Meynells were relations of Charlotte's! Yes, her grandmother was a Miss

Meynell; I perfectly remember hearing Mrs. Sheldon talk about the

Meynells. But I do not think there are any descendants of that family now

living. Why do you ask the question, papa? What interest have you in the

Meynells?"

"Well, my dear, I have my reasons, but they in no manner concern Mr.

Sheldon or his family; and I must beg you to be careful not to mention

the subject in your conversation with those worthy people. I want to know

all about this Meynell family. I have come across some people of that

name, and I want to ascertain the precise relationship existing between

these people and the Sheldons. But the Sheldons must know nothing of this

inquiry for the present. The people I speak of are poor and proud, and

they would perish rather than press a relationship upon a rich man,

unless fully justified by the closeness of family ties. I am sure you

understand all this, Diana?"

"Not very clearly, papa."

"Well, my dear, it is a delicate position, and perhaps somewhat difficult

for the comprehension of a third party. All you need understand is the

one fact, that any information respecting the Meynell family will be

vitally interesting to my friends, and, through them, serviceable to me.

There is, in fact, a legacy which these friends of mine could claim,

under a certain will, if once assured as to the degree of their

relationship to your friend Charlotte's kindred on the Meynell side of

the house. To give them the means of securing this legacy would be to

help the ends of justice; and I am sure, Diana, you would wish to do

that."

"Of course, papa, if I can do so without any breach of faith with my

employers. Can you promise me that no harm will result to the Sheldons,

above all to Charlotte Halliday, from any information I may procure for

you respecting the Meynell family?"

"Certainly, Diana, I can promise you that. I repeat most solemnly,

that by obtaining such information for me you will be aiding the cause

of justice."

If Horatio Paget might ever be betrayed into the inconsistency of a

truthful assertion, it seemed to his daughter that it was likely to be in

this moment. His words sounded like truth; and, on reflection, Diana

failed to perceive that she could by any possibility inflict wrong on her

friends by obliging her father in this small affair.

"Let me think the matter over, papa," she said.

"Nonsense, Diana; what thinking over can be wanted about such a trifle? I

never before asked you a favour. Surely you cannot refuse to grant so

simple a request, after the trouble I have taken to explain my reasons

for making it."

There was some further discussion, which ended in Miss Paget consenting

to oblige her father.

"And you will manage matters with tact?" urged the Captain, at parting.

"There is no especial tact required, papa," replied Diana; "the matter is

easy enough. Mrs. Sheldon is very fond of talking about her own affairs.

I have only to ask her some leading question about the Meynells, and she

will run on for an hour, telling me the minutest details of family

history connected with them. I dare say I have heard the whole story

before, and have not heeded it: I often find my thoughts wandering when

Mrs. Sheldon is talking."

Three days after this Captain Paget called on Mr. Sheldon in the City,

when he received a very handsome recompense for his labours at Ullerton,

and became repossessed of the extracts he had made from Matthew

Haygarth's letters, but not of the same Mr. Haygarth's autograph letter:

that document Mr. Sheldon confessed to having mislaid.

"He has mislaid the original letter, and he has had ample leisure for

copying my extracts; and he thinks I am such a consummate fool as not to

see all that," thought Horatio, as he left the stockbroker's office,

enriched but not satisfied.

In the course of the same day he received a long letter from Diana

containing the whole history of the Meynells, as known to Mrs. Sheldon.

Once set talking, Georgy had told all she could tell, delighted to find

herself listened to with obvious interest by her companion.

"I trust that you have not deceived me, my dear father," Diana concluded,

after setting forth the Meynell history. "The dear good soul was so

candid and confiding, and seemed so pleased by the interest I showed in

her family affairs, that I should feel myself the vilest of wretches if

any harm could result to her, or those she loves, from the information

thus obtained."

The information was very complete. Mrs. Sheldon had a kindly and amiable

nature, but she was not one of those sensitive souls who instinctively

shrink from a story of bitter shame or profound sorrow as from a cureless

wound. She told Diana, with many lamentations, and much second-hand

morality, the sad history of Susan Meynell's elopement, and of the

return, fourteen years afterwards, of the weary wanderer. Even the poor

little trunk, with the name of the Rouen trunk-maker, Mrs. Sheldon dwelt

upon with graphic insistence. A certain womanly delicacy had prevented

her ever telling this story in the presence of her brother-in-law, George

Sheldon, whose hard worldly manner in no way invited any sentimental

revelation. Thus it happened that George had never heard the name of

Meynell in connection with his friend Tom Halliday's family, or had heard

it so seldom as to have entirely forgotten it. To Horatio his daughter's

letter was priceless. It placed him at once in as good a position as

Philip Sheldon, or as George Sheldon and his coadjutor, Valentine

Hawkehurst. There were thus three different interests involved in the

inheritance of the Reverend John Haygarth.

Captain Paget sat late by a comfortable fire, in his own bedchamber, that

night, enjoying an excellent cigar, and meditating the following jottings

from a pedigree:--

CHARLOTTE MEYNELL, married JAMES HALLIDAY.

|

THOMAS HALLIDAY, only son of above, married GEORGINA, now Mrs. SHELDON;

| had issue,

CHARLOTTE HALLIDAY.

SUSAN MEYNELL, only and elder sister of the above-named Charlotte, ran

away from her home, in Yorkshire, with a Mr. Kingdon, brother to Lord

Darnsville. Fate unknown during fourteen years of her life. Died in

London, 1835. Buried under her maiden name; but no positive evidence to

show that she was unmarried.

CHAPTER V.

THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR.

Once in possession of the connection between the intestate John Haygarth

and the Halliday family, Captain Paget's course was an easy one. He

understood now why his investigations had been so suddenly brought to a

standstill. Philip Sheldon had discovered the unexpected connection, and

was eager to put a stop to researches that might lead to a like discovery

on the part of his coadjutor.

"And Sheldon expects to prove his stepdaughter's claim to this fortune?"

thought the Captain. "He will affect ignorance of the whole transaction

until his plans are ripe, and then spring them suddenly upon his brother

George. I wonder if there is anything to be made out of George by letting

him into the secret of his brother's interference? No; I think not.

George is as poor as a church mouse, and Philip must always be the more

profitable acquaintance."

On the broad basis afforded by Diana's letter Captain Paget was able to

build up the whole scheme of the Haygarthian succession. The pedigree of

the Meynells was sufficiently simple, if their legitimate descent from

Matthew Haygarth could be fairly proved. Charlotte Halliday was

heiress-at-law to the fortune of John Haygarth, always provided that her

great-aunt Susan died without legitimate issue.

Here was the one chance which appeared to the adventurous mind of Horatio

Paget worth some trouble in the way of research. Fourteen years of Susan

Meynell's life had been spent away from all who knew her. It was

certainly possible that in that time she might have formed some

legitimate alliance.

This was the problem which Horatio set himself to solve. Your adventurer

is, of all manner of men, the most sanguine. Sir Walter Raleigh sees

visions of gold and glory where grave statesmen see only a fool's

paradise of dreams and fancies. To the hopeful mind of the Captain these

fourteen unrecorded years of Susan Meynell's life seemed a very Golconda.

He did not, however, rest satisfied with the information afforded by

Diana's letter.

"I will have the story of these Meynells at first-hand as well as at

second-hand," he said to himself; and he lost no time in presenting

himself again at the Villa--this time as a visitor to Mrs. Sheldon.

With Georgy he had been always a favourite. His little stories of the

great world--the Prince and Perdita, Brummel and Sheridan--though by no

means novel to those acquainted with that glorious period of British

history, were very agreeable to Georgy. The Captain's florid flatteries

pleased her; and she contrasted the ceremonious manners of that gentleman

with the curt business-like style of her husband, very much to the

Captain's advantage. He came to thank her for her goodness to his child,

and this occasion gave him ample opportunity for sentiment. He had asked

to see Mrs. Sheldon alone, as his daughter's presence would have been

some hindrance to the carrying out of his design.

"There are things I have to say which I should scarcely care to utter

before my daughter, you see, my dear Mrs. Sheldon," he said, with

pathetic earnestness. "I should not wish to remind the dear child of her

desolate position; and I need scarcely tell you that position is _very_

desolate. A father who, at his best, cannot provide a fitting home for a

delicately nurtured girl, and who at any moment may be snatched away, is

but a poor protector. And were it not for your friendship, I know not

what my child's fate might be. The dangers and temptations that beset a

handsome young woman are very terrible, my dear Mrs. Sheldon."

This was intended to lead up to the subject of Susan Meynell, but Georgy

did not rise to the bait. She only shook her head plaintively in assent

to the Captain's proposition.

"Yes, madam; beauty, unallied with strength of mind and high principles,

is apt to be a fatal dower. In every family there are sad histories,"

murmured the sentimental Horatio.

Even this remark did not produce the required result; so the Captain drew

upon his invention for a specimen history from the annals of his own

house, which was a colourable imitation of Susan Meynell's story.

"And what was the end of this lovely Belinda Paget's career, my dear Mrs.

Sheldon?" he concluded. "The gentleman was a man of high rank, but a

scoundrel and a dastard. Sophia's brother, a cornet in the First Life

Guards, called him out, and there was a meeting on Wimbledon Common, in

which Lavinia's seducer was mortally wounded. There was a trial, and the

young captain of Hussars, Amelia's brother, was sentenced to

transportation for life. I need scarcely tell you that the sentence was

never carried out. The young man fell gloriously at Waterloo, at the head

of his own regiment, the Scotch Fusiliers, and Lavinia--I beg pardon,

Amelia; nay, what am I saying? the girl's name was Belinda--embraced the

Roman Catholic faith, and expired from the effects of stigmata inflicted

by her own hands in a paroxysm of remorse for her brother's untimely

death at the hands of her seducer."

This lively little impromptu sketch had the desired effect. Melted by the

woes of Belinda, or Sophia, or Amelia, or Lavinia Paget, Mrs. Sheldon was

moved to relate a sad event in her husband's family; and encouraged by

the almost tearful sympathy of the Captain, she again repeated every

detail of Susan Meynell's life, as known to her kindred. And as this

recital had flowed spontaneously from the good soul's lips, she would be

scarcely likely to allude to it afterwards in conversation with Mr.

Sheldon; more especially as that gentleman was not in the habit of

wasting much of his valuable time in small-talk with the members of his

own household.

Captain Paget had duly calculated this, and every other hazard that

menaced the intricate path he had mapped out for himself.

Satisfied by Mrs. Sheldon's repetition of Susan Meynell's story, and

possessed of all the information he could hope to obtain from that

quarter, Horatio set himself to consider what steps must next be taken.

Much serious reflection convinced even his sanguine mind that the

enterprise was a difficult one, and could scarcely be carried through

successfully without help from some skilled genealogist.

"George Sheldon has given his lifetime to this sort of thing, and is a

skilled lawyer to boot," Captain Paget said to himself. "If I hope to go

in against him, I must have someone at my elbow as well versed in this

sort of business as he is."

Having once admitted this necessity, the Captain set himself to consider

where he was to find the right person. A very brief meditation settled

this question. One among the numerous business transactions of Captain

Paget's life had brought him in contact with a very respectable little

French gentleman called Fleurus, who had begun his career as a notary,

but, finding that profession unprofitable, had become a hunter of

pedigrees and heirs-at-law--for the most part to insignificant legacies,

unclaimed stock, and all other jetsam and flotsam thrown up on the

shadowy shores of the Court of Chancery. M. Fleurus had not often been so

fortunate as to put his industrious fingers into any large pie, but he

had contrived to make a good deal of money out of small affairs, and had

found his clients grateful.

"The man of men," thought Horatio Paget; and he betook himself to the

office of M. Fleurus early next day, provided with all documents relating

to the Haygarthian succession.

His interview with the little Frenchman was long and satisfactory. On

certain conditions as to future reward, said reward to be contingent on

success, M. Fleurus was ready to devote himself heart and soul to the

interests of Captain Paget.

"To begin: we must find legal evidence of this Matthew Haygarth's

marriage to the mother of this child C., who came afterwards to marry the

man Meynell; and after we will go to Susan Meynell. Her box came from

Rouen--that we know. Where her box came from she is likely to have come

from. So it is at Rouen, or near Rouen, we must look for her. Let me see:

she die in 1835! that is long time. To look for the particulars of her

life is like to dive into the ocean for to find the lost cargo of a ship

that is gone down to the bottom, no one knows where. But to a man really

expert in these things there is nothing of impossible. I will find you

your Susan Meynell in less than six months; the evidence of her marriage;

if she was married; her children, if she had children."

In less than six months--the margin seemed a wide one to the impatient

Horatio. But he knew that such an investigation must needs be slow, and

he left the matters in the hands of his new ally with a sense that he had

done the best thing that could be done. Then followed for Horatio Paget

two months of patient attendance upon fortune. He was not idle during

this time; for Mr. Sheldon, who seemed particularly anxious to conciliate

him, threw waifs and strays of business into his way. Before the middle

of November M. Fleurus had found the register of Matthew Haygarth's

marriage, as George Sheldon had found it before him, working in the same

groove, and with the same order of intelligence. After this important

step M. Fleurus departed for his native shores, where he had other

business besides the Meynell affair to claim his attention. Meanwhile the

astute Horatio kept a close eye upon his young friend Valentine. He knew

from Diana that the young man had been in Yorkshire; and he guessed the

motive of his visit to Newhall, not for a moment supposing that his

presence in that farmhouse could have been accidental. The one turn of

affairs that utterly and completely mystified him was Mr. Sheldon's

sanction of the engagement between Valentine and Charlotte. This was a

mystery for which he could for some time find no solution.

"Sheldon will try to establish his stepdaughter's claim to the fortune;

that is clear. But why does he allow her to throw herself away on a

penniless adventurer like Hawkehurst? If she were to marry him before

recovering the Haygarth estate, she would recover it as his wife, and the

fortune would be thrown unprotected into his hands."

More deliberate reflection cast a faint light upon Philip Sheldon's

motives for so quixotic a course.

"The girl had fallen in love with Val. It was too late to prevent that.

She is of age, and can marry whom she pleases. By showing himself opposed

to her engagement with Val, he might have hurried her into rebellion, and

an immediate marriage. By affecting to consent to the engagement, he

would, on the contrary, gain time, and the advantage of all those chances

that are involved in the lapse of time."

Within a few days of Christmas came the following letter from M.

Fleurus:--

_From Jacques Rousseau Fleurus to Horatio Paget_.

Hotel de la Pucelle, place Jeanne d'Arc, Rouen, 21st December, 186--.

MONSIEUR,--After exertions incalculable, after labours herculean, I come

to learn something of your Susan Meynell,--more, I come to learn of her

marriage. But I will begin at the beginning of things. The labours, the

time, the efforts, the courage, the patience, the--I will say it without

to blush--the genius which this enterprise has cost me, I will not

enlarge upon. There are things which cannot tell themselves. To commence,

I will tell you how I went to Rouen, how I advertised in the journals of

Rouen, and asked among the people of Rouen--at shops, at hotels, by the

help of my allies, the police, by means which you, in your inexperience

of this science of research, could not even figure to yourself--always

seeking the trace of this woman Meynell. It was all pain lost. Of this

woman Meynell in Rouen there was no trace.

In the end I enraged myself. "Imbecile!" I said to myself, "why seek in

this dull commercial city, among this heavy people, for that which thou

shouldst seek only in the centre of all things? As the rivers go to the

ocean, so flow all the streams of human life to the one great central

ocean of humanity--PARIS! It is there the Alpha and the Omega--there the

mighty heart through which the blood of all the body must be pumped, and

is pumping always," I say to myself, unconsciously rising to the

sublimity of my great countryman, Hugo, in whose verse I find an echo of

my own soul, and whose compositions I flatter myself I could have

surpassed, if I had devoted to the Muses the time and the powers which I

have squandered on a _vilain_ metier, that demands the genius of a

Talleyrand, and rewards with the crust of an artisan.

In Paris, then, I will seek the woman Meynell, and to Paris I go. In my

place an inexperienced person would advertise in the most considerable

papers; would invite Susan Meynell to hear of something to her

advantage; and would bring together a crowd of false Susan Meynells,

greedy to obtain the benefice. Me, I do nothing in this style there. On

the contrary, in the most obscure little journals of Paris I publish a

modest little advertisement as from the brother of Susan Meynell, who

implores his sister to visit him on his deathbed.

Here are follies, you will say. Since Susan Meynell is dead it is thirty

years, and her brother is dead also. Ah, how you are dull, you insulars,

and how impossible for your foggy island to produce a Fouche, a Canler, a

genius of police, a Columbus of the subterranean darknesses of your city.

The brother, dying, advertises for the sister, dead; and who will answer

that letter, think you? Some good Christian soul who has pity for the

sick man, and who will not permit him to languish in waiting the sister

who will come to him never. For us of the Roman Catholic religion the

duty of charity is paramount. You of the Anglican faith--bah, how you are

cold, how you are hard, how you are unpitiable!

My notice appears once, my notice appears twice, three times, four times,

many times. I occupy myself about my other business, and I wait. I do not

wait unusefully. In effect, a letter arrives at last at the address of

the dying, from a lady who knew Susan Meynell _before her marriage with

M. Lenoble._

Think you not that to me this was a moment of triumph? _Before her

marriage with M. Lenoble!_ Those words appear under my eyes in the

writing of the unknown lady. "It is found!" I cry to myself; and then I

hasten myself to reply to the unknown lady. Will she permit me to see

her?

With all politeness I make the request; with all politeness it is

answered. The lady calls herself Mademoiselle Servin. She resides in the

street Grande-Mademoiselle, at the corner of the Place Lauzun. It is of

all the streets of Paris the most miserable. One side is already removed.

In face of the windows of those houses that still stand they are making a

new Boulevard. Behind they are pulling down edifices of all kinds in the

formation of a new square. At the side there is a yawning chasm between

two tall houses, through which they pierce a new street. One sees the

interior of many rooms rising one above another for seven stories. Here

the gay hangings of an apartment of little master; there the still

gaudier decoration of a boudoir of these ladies. High above these

luxurious salons--ah, but how much more near to the skies!--one sees the

poor grey paper, blackened and smoky, of a garret of sempstress, or

workman, and the hearths black, deserted. These interiors thus exposed

tighten me the heart. It is the autopsy of the domestic hearth.

I find the Mademoiselle Servin an old lady, grey and wan. The house where

she now resides is the house which she has inhabited five-and-thirty

years. They talk of pulling it down, and to her the idea of leaving it is

exquisite pain. She is alone, a teacher of music. She has seen

proprietors come and go. The _pension_ has changed mistresses many times.

Students of law and of medicine have come and passed like the shadows of

a magic lantern; but this poor soul has remained still in her little room

on the fourth, and has kept always her little old piano.

It was here she knew Susan Meynell, and a young Frenchman who became in

love with her, for she was beautiful like the angels, this lady said to

me.

Until we meet for all details. Enough that I come to discover where the

marriage took place, that I come to obtain a copy of the register, and

that I do all things in rule. Enough that the marriage is a good

marriage--a regular marriage, and that I have placed myself already in

communication with the heir of that marriage, who resides within some few

leagues of this city.

My labours, my successes I will not describe. It must that they will be

recompensed in the future. I have dispensed much money during these

transactions.

Agree, monsieur, that I am your devoted servitor,

JACQUES ROUSSEAU FLEURUS.

* * * * *

It was in consequence of the receipt of this missive that the Captain

trusted himself to the winds and waves in the cheerless December weather.

He was well pleased to find that M. Fleurus had made discoveries so

important; but he had no idea of letting that astute practitioner absorb

all the power into his own hands.

"I must see Susan Meynell's heir," he said to himself; "I must give him

clearly to understand that to me he owes the discovery of his claims, and

that in this affair the Frenchman Fleurus is no more than a paid agent."

Book the Fourth.

GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND.

CHAPTER I.

HALCYON DAYS.

Once having offered up the fondest desires of her own heart on the

shrine of duty, Diana Paget was not a person to repent herself of the

pious sacrifice. After that Christmas night on which she had knelt at

Charlotte's feet to confess her sad secret, and to resign all claim to

the man she had loved so foolishly, so tenderly, with such a romantic

and unselfish devotion, Miss Paget put away all thought of the past from

her heart and mind. Heart and mind seemed empty and joyless without

those loved tenants, though the tenants had been only fair wraiths of

dreams that were dead. There was a sense of something missing in her

life--a blank, dull calm, which was at first very painful. But for

Charlotte's sake she was careful to hide all outward token of

despondency, and the foolish grief, put down by so strong a hand, was

ere long well-nigh stifled.

Those dark days which succeeded Christmas were a period of halcyon peace

for Valentine and Charlotte. The accepted lover came to the villa when he

pleased, but was still careful not to encroach on the license allowed

him. Once a week he permitted himself the delight of five-o'clock tea in

Mrs. Sheldon's drawing-room, on which occasions he brought Charlotte all

the news of his small literary world, and a good deal of useful

information out of the books he had been reading. When Mr. Sheldon

pleased to invite him to dinner on Sunday he gladly accepted the

invitation, and this Sunday dinner became in due course an established

institution.

"You may as well make this your home on a Sunday," said Mr. Sheldon one

day, with careless cordiality; "I dare say you find Sunday dull in your

lodgings."

"Yes, papa," cried Charlotte, "he does find it very dull--dreadfully

dull--don't you, Valentine?"

And she regarded him with that pretty, tender, almost motherly look,

which young ladies who are engaged are apt to bestow on their affianced

lovers.

Miss Halliday was very grateful to her stepfather for his kindness to her

landless adorer, and showed her appreciation of his conduct in many

pretty little caressing ways, which would have been infinitely bewitching

to a person of sentiment.

Unfortunately Mr. Sheldon was not sentimental, and any exhibition of

feeling appeared to have an irritating effect upon his nerves. There were

times when he shrank from some little sudden caress of Charlotte's as

from the sting of an adder. Aversion, surprise, fear--what was it that

showed in the expression of his face at these moments? Whatever that

strange look was, it departed too quickly for analysis; and the

stockbroker thanked his stepdaughter for her little affectionate

demonstration with his wonted smile--the smile he smiled on Change, the

smile which was sometimes on his lips when his mind was a nest of

scorpions.

To Valentine, in these rosy hours, life seemed full of hope and

brightness. He transferred his goods and chattels from Omega Street,

Chelsea, to the pleasant lodging in the Edgware Road, where he was nearer

Charlotte, and out of the way of his late patron Captain Paget, in the

event of that gentleman's return from the Continent.

Fortune favoured him. The gaiety of heart which came with his happiness

lent a grace to his pen. Pleasant thoughts and fancies bedecked his

pages. He saw everything in the rosy light of love and beauty, and there

was a buoyant freshness in all he wrote. The Pegasus might be but a

common hackney, but the hack was young and fresh, and galloped gaily as

he scented the dewy morning air. It is not every poet whose Pegasus

clears at a bound a space as wide as all that waste of land and sea the

watchman views from his tall tower on the rock.

Mr. Hawkehurst's papers on Lauzun, Brummel, Sardanapalus, Rabelais, Lord

Chesterfield, Erasmus, Beau Nash, Apelles, Galileo, and Philip of

Orleans, were in demand, and the reading public wondered at this prodigy

of book-making. He had begun to save money, and had opened a deposit

account at the Unitas Bank. How he gloated over the deposit receipts in

the stillness of the night, when he added a fresh one to his store! When

he had three, for sums amounting in all to forty pounds, he took them to

Charlotte, and she looked at them, and he looked at them, as if the poor

little bits of printed paper had been specimens of virgin ore from some

gold mine newly discovered by Mr. Hawkehurst. And then these foolish

lovers kissed each other, as William Lee and his wife may have embraced

after the penniless young student had perfected his invention of the

stocking-frame.

"Forty pounds!" exclaimed Miss Halliday, "all won by your pen, and your

poor fingers, and your poor, poor head! How it must ache after a long

day's work! How clever you must be, Valentine!"

"Yes, dear; amazingly clever. Clever enough to know that you are the

dearest girl in Christendom."

"Don't talk nonsense, sir! You are not clever enough to have the

privilege of doing that yet awhile. I mean, how learned you must be to

know such lots of things, all about Erasmus, and Galileo, and--"

"No, my darling, not Erasmus and Galileo. I knew all about Erasmus last

week; but I am working at my paper on Galileo now, an exhaustive review

of all the books that were ever written on the subject, in ten pages. I

don't ask other people to remember what I write, you know, my dear, and I

don't pledge myself to remember it. That sort of thing won't keep. There

is a kind of sediment, no doubt, in one's note-book; but the

effervescence of that vintage goes off rather quickly."

"I only know that you are a very clever person, and that one obtains an

immensity of information from your writings," said Charlotte.

"Yes, dearest, there is a kind of wine that must be made into negus for

such pretty little topers as you--the 'Wine of Cyprus,' as Mrs. Browning

called it. It is better for pretty girls to have the negus than to have

nothing, or only weak home-brewed stuff that results in head-ache. My

dearest, Fate has been very good to me, and I love my profession of

letters. I am sure that of all educational processes there is none better

than book-making; and the man who begins by making books must be a dolt,

dunce, and dunderhead, if he do not end by writing them. So you may yet

hope to see the morning that shall make your Valentine famous--for a

fortnight. What man can hope to be famous for _more_ than a fortnight in

such a railroad age as this?"

During this halcyon period, in which Mr. Hawkehurst cultivated

alternately the society of the Muses and his mistress, he saw little or

nothing of George Sheldon. He had washed his hands of all share in the

work of establishing Charlotte Halliday's claim to the Reverend John

Haygarth's thousands. Indeed, since that interview in which Philip

Sheldon had made so light of his stepdaughter's chances, and ratified his

consent to her marriage with so humble a literary adventurer as himself,

Mr. Hawkehurst had come to consider the Haygarthian inheritance as

altogether a visionary business. If it were certain, or even probable,

that Charlotte was to inherit a hundred thousand pounds, was it likely

that Mr. Sheldon would encourage such an alliance? This question Mr.

Hawkehurst always answered in the negative; and as days and weeks went

by, and he heard no more of the Haygarth fortune, the idea of Charlotte's

wealth became more and more shadowy.

If there were anything doing in this matter, the two brothers were now

working together, and George had no further need of Valentine's help.

The two brothers were not working entirely together. Philip Sheldon had

taken the matter into his own strong hand, and George found it very

difficult to hold an inch of ground against that formidable antagonist.

The papers and information which George had boasted of to Valentine, and

the possession whereof was, as he asserted, the very keystone of the

arch, proved to be of such small account that he ultimately consented to

hand them over to his brother on the payment of expenses out of pocket,

and a bonus of one hundred and fifty pounds, together with a written

undertaking from Miss Halliday to pay him the fifth share of any fortune

recovered by means of those papers.

This undertaking had been executed in the easiest manner.

"My brother has taken it into his wise head that there is some unclaimed

stock standing in your grandfather's name which you are entitled to,

Lotta," Mr. Sheldon said one morning; "and he wants to recover the amount

for you, on condition of receiving a clear fifth when the sum is

recovered. Have you any objection to sign such an undertaking?"

"Dear papa, how can I object?" cried Charlotte gaily. "Why, stocks are

money, are they not? How fortunate we are, and how rich we are getting!"

"We!"

"Valentine and I," murmured the girl, blushing. "I cannot help thinking

of him when any windfall of good fortune comes to me. What do you think,

papa? He has saved forty pounds in little more than three months--all

earned by his pen!

"Behold

The arch-enchanter's wand! Itself a nothing;

But taking sorcery from the master-hand

To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike

The loud earth breathless!"

And Miss Halliday spouted the glowing lines of the noble dramatist with

charming enthusiasm. She signed the required undertaking without looking

at it, and it was duly witnessed by her stepfather.

"In your talk with your mother and Valentine, I should advise you to be

as silent about this small business as about your own little fortune,"

Mr. Sheldon remarked presently.

"Mustn't I tell Valentine?" cried Charlotte, making a wry face; "I should

so like to tell him--just about these stocks. I daresay _he_ knows what

stocks are; and it would be such cheering news for him, after he has

worked his poor brain so for that forty pounds. I don't so much care

about telling poor mamma; for she does exclaim and wonder so about

things, that it is quite fatiguing to hear her. But please let me tell

Valentine?"

Miss Halliday pursed-up her lips and offered her stepfather one of those

kisses which she had of late been prompted to bestow on him out of the

gratitude of a heart overflowing with girlish joy. He took the kiss as he

might have taken a dose of medicine, but did not grant the request

preferred by it.

"If you want to be a fool, you can tell your lover of this windfall; but

if you wish to prove yourself a sensible girl, you will hold your tongue.

He has saved forty pounds by hard work in the last three months, you say:

do you think he would have saved forty pence if he had known that you had

five thousand pounds at his disposal? I know that class of men; look at

Goldsmith, the man who wrote the "Vicar of Wakefield," and "Rasselas,"

and "Clarissa Harlowe," and so on. I have read somewhere that he never

wrote except under coercion--that is to say, want of money."

Charlotte acknowledged the wisdom of this argument, and submitted. She

was not what was called a strong-minded woman; and, indeed, strength of

mind is not a plant indigenous to the female nature, but an exceptional

growth developed by exceptional circumstances. In Charlotte's life there

had been nothing exceptional, and she was in all things soft and womanly,

ready to acknowledge, and to be guided by, the wisdom of her seniors. So

Valentine heard nothing of the undertaking executed by his lady-love.

After this, Mr. Sheldon took counsel's opinion, and set to work in real

earnest to recover the estate of the deceased John Haygarth from the

yawning jaws of that tame but all-devouring monster, the Crown. The work

was slow, and the dry as dust details thereof need not be recorded here.

It had but just begun when Horatio Paget suddenly returned from his

Continental expedition, and established himself once more in the Omega

Street lodgings.

CHAPTER II.

CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY.

Captain Paget's return was made known to the Sheldon circle by a letter

from the returning wanderer to his daughter. The Captain was laid up with

rheumatic gout, and wrote quite piteously to implore a visit from Diana.

Miss Paget, always constant to the idea of a duty to be performed on her

side, even to this _pere prodigue_, obeyed the summons promptly, with the

full approval of Georgy, always good-natured after her own fussy manner.

"And if you'd like to take your papa a bottle of Mr. Sheldon's old port,

Diana, remember it's at your disposal. I'm sure I've heard people say

that old port is good for the gout--or perhaps, by the bye, what I heard

was that it _wasn't_ good. I know old port and gout seem to run together

in my head somehow. But if there's anything in the house your papa would

like, Diana--wine, or gunpowder tea, or the eider-down coverlet off the

spare bed, or the parlour croquet, to amuse him of an evening, or a new

novel--surely one couldn't forfeit one's subscription by lending a book

to a non-subscribing invalid?"

While Georgy was suggesting the loan of almost every portable object in

the house as a specific for Captain Paget's gout, Charlotte sent for a

cab and made things smooth for her friend's departure. She wrapped her

warmly against the February blast, and insisted upon going out to see her

seated in the cab, whereby she offered to the pedestrians of that

neighbourhood a seraphic vision of loveliness with tumbled hair.

Charlotte had been always delightful, but Charlotte engaged to Valentine

Hawkehurst was a creature of supernal sweetness and brightness--a radiant

ministering angel, hovering lightly above a world too common for her foot

to rest upon.

Miss Paget found her father suffering from a by no means severe attack of

a respectable family gout, a little peevish from the effects of this

affliction, but not at all depressed in mind. He had, indeed, the manner

of a man with whom things are going pleasantly. There was a satisfaction

in his tone, a placidity in his face, except when distorted for the

moment by a twinge of pain, that were new to Diana, who had not been

accustomed to behold the brighter side of her father's disposition. He

seemed grateful for his daughter's visit, and received her with unwonted

kindness of manner.

"You have come very promptly, my dear, and I am gratified by your early

compliance with my request," he said with dignified affection, after he

had given his daughter the kiss of greeting. "I was a great sufferer last

night, Diana, a great sufferer, a prisoner to this chair, and the woman

below attempted to send me up a dinner--_such_ a dinner! One would think

a very small degree of education necessary for the stewing of a kidney,

but the things that woman gave me last night were like morsels of stewed

leather. I am not an epicure, Diana; but with such a constitution as

mine, good cooking is a vital necessity. Life in lodgings for a man of my

age is a sore trial, my dear. I wish you were well married, Diana, and

could give your father a humble corner at your fireside."

Diana smiled. It was a somewhat bitter smile; and there was scorn of

herself, as well as scorn of her father in that bitterness.

"I am not the sort of person to marry well, papa," she said.

"Who knows? You are handsomer than nine-tenths of the women who marry

well."

"No, papa; that is your sanguine manner of looking at your own property.

And even if I were married to some one to whom I might give obedience and

duty, and all that kind of thing, in exchange for a comfortable home, as

they say in the advertisements, would you be content with a peaceful

corner by my fireside? Do you think you would never pine for clubs and

gaming-tables--nay, even for creditors to--to diplomatize with, and

difficulties to surmount?"

"No, my dear. I am an old man; the clubs and gaming-houses have done with

me, and I with them. I went to see a man at Arthur's a few months ago. I

had written to him on a little matter of business--in fact, to be candid

with you, my love, for the loan of a five-pound note--and I called at the

club for his reply. I caught sight of my face in a distant glass as I was

waiting in the strangers' room, and I thought I was looking at a ghost.

There comes a time towards the close of a long troublesome life in which

a man begins to feel like a ghost. His friends are gone, and his money is

gone, his health is gone, his good looks are gone; and the only mistake

seems to be that the man himself should be left behind. I remember an

observation of Lord Chesterfield's: 'Lord ---- and I have been dead for

the last two years, but we don't tell anyone so,' he said; and there are

few old men who couldn't say the same. But I am not down-hearted to-day,

my dear. No, the habit of hoping has never quite deserted me; and it is

only now and then that I take a dismal view of life. Come, my love, lay

aside your bonnet and things. Dear me! what a handsome black silk dress,

and how well you look in it!"

"It is a present from Charlotte, papa. She has a very liberal allowance

of pocket-money, and is generosity itself. I don't like to take so much

from her, but I only wound her by a refusal."

"Of course, my dear. There is nothing so ungracious as a refusal, and no

mark of high breeding so rare as the art of gracious acceptance. Any

booby can give a present; but to receive a gift without churlish

reticence or florid rapture is no easy accomplishment. I am always

pleased to see you well-dressed, my love"--Diana winced as she remembered

her shabby hat and threadbare gown at Foretdechene--"and I am especially

pleased to see you elegantly attired this evening, as I expect a

gentleman by-and-by."

"A gentleman, papa!" exclaimed Miss Paget, with considerable surprise; "I

thought that you had sent for me because you were ill and depressed and

lonely."

"Well, yes, Diana, I certainly am ill; and I suppose it is scarcely

unnatural that a father should wish to see his only daughter."

Diana was silent. A father's wish to see his daughter was indeed natural

and common; but that Captain Paget, who in no period of his daughter's

life had evinced for her the common affection of paternity, should be

seized all of a sudden with a yearning for her society, was somewhat

singular. But Diana's nature had been ennobled and fortified by the

mental struggle and the impalpable sacrifice of the last few months, and

she was in nowise disposed to repel any affectionate feeling of her

father's even at this eleventh hour.

"_He_ tells us the eleventh hour is not too late," she thought. "If it is

not too late in the sight of that Divine Judge, shall it be thought too

late by an erring creature like me?"

After a few minutes of thoughtful silence, she knelt down by her father's

chair and kissed him.

"My dear father," she murmured softly, "believe me, I am very pleased to

think you should wish to see me. I will come to you whenever you like to

send for me. I am glad not to be a burden to you; but I should wish to be

a comfort when I can."

The Captain shed his stock tear. It signified something nearer akin to

real emotion than usual.

"My dear girl," he said, "this is very pleasing, very pleasing

indeed. The day may come--I cannot just now say when--and events may

arise--which--the nature of which I am not yet in a position to indicate

to you--but the barren fig-tree may not be always fruitless. In its old

age the withered trunk may put forth fresh branches. We will say no more

of this, my love; and I will only remark that you may not go unrequited

for any affection bestowed on your poor old father."

Diana smiled, and this time it was a pensive rather than a bitter smile.

She had often heard her father talk like this before. She had often heard

these oracular hints of some grand event looming mighty in the immediate

future; but she had never seen the vague prophecy accomplished. Always a

schemer, and always alternating between the boastful confidence of hope

and the peevish bewailings of despair, the Captain had built his castle

to-day to sit among its ruins to-morrow, ever since she had known him.

So she set little value on his hopeful talk of this evening, but was

content to see him in good spirits. He contemplated her admiringly as she

knelt by his easy-chair, and smoothed the shining coils of her dark hair

with a gentle hand, as he looked downward at the thoughtful face--proud

and grave, but not ungentle.

"You are a very handsome girl, Diana," he murmured, as much to himself as

to his daughter; "yes, very handsome. Egad, I had no idea how handsome!"

"What has put such a fancy into your head to-night, papa?" asked Diana,

laughing. "I do not believe in the good looks you are so kind as to

attribute to me. When I see my face in the glass I perceive a pale gloomy

countenance that is by no means pleasing."

"You may be out of spirits when you look in the glass. I hope you are not

unhappy at Bayswater."

"Why should I be unhappy, papa? No sister was ever kinder or more loving

than Charlotte Halliday is to me. I should be very ungrateful to

Providence as well as to her if I did not appreciate such affection. How

many lonely girls, like me, go through life without picking up a sister?"

"Yes, you are right, my dear. Those Sheldon people have been very useful

to you. They are not the kind of people I should have wished a daughter

of mine to be _liee_ with, if I were in the position my birth entitles me

to occupy; but as I am not in that position, I submit. That black silk

becomes you admirably. And now, my love, be so kind as to ring the bell

for lights and tea."

They had been sitting in the firelight--the mystic magical capricious

firelight--which made even that tawdry lodging-house parlour seem a

pleasant chamber. The tea-tray was brought, and candles. Diana seated

herself at the table, and made tea with the contents of a little

mahogany caddy.

"Don't pour out the tea just yet," said the Captain; "I expect a

gentleman. I don't suppose he'll take tea, but it will look more civil to

wait for him."

"And who is this mysterious gentleman, papa?"

"A Frenchman; a man I met while I was abroad."

"_Really_ a gentleman?"

"Certainly, Diana," replied her father, with offended dignity. "Do you

think I should admit any person to my friendship who is not a gentleman?

My business relations I am powerless to govern; but friendship is a

different matter. There is no man more exclusive than Horatio Paget.

M. Lenoble is a gentleman of ancient lineage and amiable character."

"And rich, I suppose, papa?" asked Diana. She thought that her father

would scarcely speak of the gentleman in a tone so profoundly respectful

if he were not rich.

"Yes, Diana. M. Lenoble is master of a very fair estate, and is likely to

be much richer before he dies."

"And he has been kind to you, papa?"

"Yes, he has shown me hospitality during my residence in Normandy. You

need not speak of him to your friends the Sheldons."

"Not even to Charlotte?"

"Not even to Charlotte. I do not care to have my affairs discussed by

that class of people."

"But, dear papa, why make a mystery about so unimportant a matter.

"I do not make a mystery; but I hate gossip. Mrs. Sheldon is an

incorrigible gossip, and I daresay her daughter is no better."

"Charlotte is an angel, papa."

"That is very possible. But I beg that you will refrain from discussing

my friend M. Lenoble in her angelic presence."

"As you please, papa," said Diana gravely. She felt herself bound to obey

her father in this small matter; but the idea of this mystery and secrecy

was very unwelcome to her. It implied that her father's acquaintance with

this Frenchman was only a part of some new scheme. It was no honest

friendship, which the Captain might be proud to own, glad to show the

world that in these days of decadence he could still point to a friend.

It was only some business alliance, underhand and stealthy; a social

conspiracy, that must needs be conducted in darkness.

"Why did papa summon me here if he wants his acquaintance with this man

kept secret?" she asked herself; and the question seemed unanswerable.

She pictured this M. Lenoble to herself--a wizened, sallow-faced

Macchiavellian individual, whose business in England must needs be

connected with conspiracy, treason, commercial fraud, anything or

everything stealthy and criminal.

"I wish you would let me go back to Bayswater before this gentleman

comes, papa," she said presently. "I heard it strike seven just now, and

I know I shall be expected early. I can come again whenever you like."

"No, no, my love; you must stop to see my friend. And now tell me a

little about the Sheldons. Has anything been stirring since I saw them

last?"

"Nothing whatever, papa. Charlotte is very happy; she always had a

happy disposition, but she is gayer than ever since her engagement

with--Valentine."

"What an absurd infatuation!" muttered the Captain.

"And he--Valentine--is very good, and works very hard at his literary

profession--and loves her very dearly."

It cost her an effort to say this even now, even now when she fancied

herself cured of that folly which had once been so sweet to her. To speak

of him like this--to put him away out of her own life, and contemplate

him as an element in the life of another--could not be done without some

touch of the old anguish.

There was a loud double-knock at the street-door as she said this, and a

step sounded presently in the passage; a quick, firm tread. There was

nothing stealthy about that, at any rate.

"My friend Lenoble," said the Captain; and in the next instant a

gentleman entered the room, a gentleman who was in every quality the

opposite of the person whom Diana had expected to see.

These speculative pictures are seldom good portraits. Miss Paget had

expected to find her father's ally small and shrivelled, old and ugly,

dried-up and withered in the fiery atmosphere of fraud and conspiracy; in

outward semblance a monkey, in soul a tiger. And instead of this

obnoxious creature there burst into the room a man of four-and-thirty

years of age, tall, stalwart, with a fair frank face, somewhat browned by

summer suns; thick auburn hair and beard, close trimmed and cropped in

the approved Gallic fashion--clear earnest blue eyes, and a mouth whose

candour and sweetness a moustache could not hide. Henry of Navarre,

before the white lilies of France had dazzled his eyes with their fatal

splendour, before the court of the Medici had taught the Bearnois to

dissemble, before the sometime Protestant champion had put on that

apparel of stainless white in which he went forth to stain his soul with

the sin of a diplomatic apostasy.

Such a surprise as this makes a kind of crisis in the eventless record of

a woman's life. Diana found herself blushing as the stranger stood near

the door awaiting her father's introduction. She was ashamed to think of

the wrong her imagination had done him.

"My daughter, Diana Paget--M. Lenoble. I have been telling Diana how much

I owed to your hospitality during my stay in Normandy," continued the

Captain, with his grandest air, "I regret that I can only receive you in

an apartment quite unworthy the seigneur of Cotenoir.--A charming place,

my dear Diana, which I should much like you to see on some future

occasion.--Will you take some tea, Lenoble?--Diana, a cup of tea.--The

Pagets are a fallen race, you see, my dear sir, and a cup of tea in a

lodging-house parlour is the best entertainment I can give to a friend.

The Cromie Pagets of Hertfordshire will give you dinner in gold plate,

with a footman standing behind the chair of every guest; but our branch

is a younger and a poorer one, and I, among others, am paying the price

of youthful follies."

Gustave Lenoble looked sympathetic, but the glance of sympathy was

directed to Diana, and not to the male representative of the younger

Pagets. To pity the distressed damsel was an attribute of the Lenoble

mind; and Gustave had already begun to pity Miss Paget, and to wonder

what her fate in life would be, with no better protector than a father

who was confessedly a pauper. He saw that the young lady was very

handsome, and he divined, from some indefinable expression of her face,

that she was proud; and as he thought of his own daughters, and their

easy life and assured future, the contrast seemed to him very cruel.

Chivalrous as the house of Lenoble might be by nature, he could scarcely

have felt so keen an interest in Captain Paget's daughter at the first

glance, if his sympathies had not been already enlisted for her. The

noble Horatio, though slow to act a father's part, had shown himself

quick to make capital out of his daughter's beauty and virtues when the

occasion offered.

In his intercourse with the seigneur of Cotenoir, which had developed

from a mere business acquaintance into friendship, Captain Paget had

discoursed with much eloquence upon the subject of his motherless

daughter; and M. Lenoble, having daughters of his own, also motherless,

lent him the ear of sympathy.

"I have heard much of you, Miss Paget," said Gustave presently, "and of

your devotion to your father. He has no more favourite theme than your

goodness."

Diana blushed, and Diana's father blushed also. That skilled diplomatist

felt the awkwardness of the situation, and was prompt to the rescue.

"Yes," he said, "my daughter has been a heroine. There are Antigones,

sir, who show their heroic nature by other service than the leading to

and fro of a blind father. From the earliest age my poor child has

striven to stand alone; too proud, too noble to be a burden on a parent

whose love would have given all, but whose means could give but little.

And now she comes to me from her home among strangers, to soothe my hour

of pain and infirmity. I trust your daughters may prove as worthy of your

love, M. Lenoble."

"They are very dear girls," answered the Frenchman; "but for them life

has been all sunshine. They have never known a sorrow except the death of

their mother. It is the storm that tests the temper of the tree. I wish

they might prove as noble in adversity as Miss Paget has shown herself."

This was more than Diana could bear without some kind of protest.

"You must not take papa's praises _au pied de la lettre_, M. Lenoble,"

she said; "I have been by no means brave or patient under adversity.

There are troubles which one must bear. I have borne mine somehow; but I

claim no praise for having submitted to the inevitable."

This was spoken with a certain noble pride which impressed Gustave more

than all the father's florid eloquence had done. After this the

conversation became less personal. M. Lenoble talked of England. It was

not his first visit; but he had only the excursionist's knowledge of the

British Isles.

"I have been to Scotland," he said. "Your Scotland is grand,

mountainous--all that there is of the most savage and poetic. It is a

Switzerland lined with Brittany. But that which most speaks to the heart

of a stranger is the peaceful beauty of your English landscape."

"You like England, M. Lenoble?" said Diana.

"Have I not reason? My mother was English. I was only five years old when

I lost her. She went out of my life like a dream; but I can still recall

a faint shadow of her face--an English face--a countenance of placid

sadness, very sweet and tender. But why do I talk of these things?"

On this the Frenchman's talk took a gayer turn. This M. Lenoble showed

himself a lively and agreeable companion. He talked of Normandy, his

daughters and their convent, his little son at Rouen, his aunt Cydalise,

the quiet old lady at Beaubocage; his grandfather, his grandmother, the

old servants, and everything familiar and dear to him. He told of his

family history with boyish candour, untainted by egotism, and seemed much

pleased by Diana's apparent interest in his unstudied talk. He was quite

unconscious that the diplomatic Horatio was leading him on to talk of

these things, with a view to making the conversation supremely

interesting to him. That arch diplomatist knew that there is nothing a

man likes better than talking of his own affairs, if he can have a decent

excuse for such discourse.

The clock struck nine while Diana was listening, really interested. This

glimpse of a life so far apart from her own was a relief, after the

brooding introspective reveries which of late had constituted so large a

portion of her existence. She started up at the sound of the clock.

"What now, Cinderella?" cried her father. "Have you stopped beyond your

time, and will your fairy godmother be angry?"

"No one will be angry, papa; but I did not mean to stay so late. I am

sorry your description of Normandy has been so interesting, M. Lenoble."

"Come and see Vevinord and Cotenoir, and you will judge for yourself. The

town-hall of Vevinord is almost as fine as that of Louvain; and we have a

church that belongs to the time of Dagobert."

"She shall see them before long," said the Captain; "I shall have

business in Rouen again before the next month is out; and if my daughter

is a good girl, I will take her over there with me."

Diana stared at her father in utter bewilderment. What could be the

meaning of this sudden display of affection?

"I should not be free to go with you, papa, even if you were able to take

me," she replied, somewhat coldly; "I have other duties."

She felt assured that there was some lurking motive, some diplomatic art

at the bottom of the Captain's altered conduct, and she could not

altogether repress her scorn. The astute Horatio saw that he had gone a

little too far, and that his only child was not of the stuff to be

moulded at will by his dexterous hands.

"You will come and see me again, Diana?" he said in a pleading tone: "I

am likely to be a prisoner in this room for a week or more."

"Certainly, papa; I will come if you wish it. When shall I come?"

"Well, let me see--to-day is Thursday; can you come on Monday?"

"Yes, I will come on Monday."

A cab was procured, and Miss Paget was conducted to that vehicle by her

new acquaintance, who showed a gallant anxiety for her comfort on the

journey, and was extremely careful about the closing of the windows. She

arrived at Bayswater before ten, but being forbidden to talk of M.

Lenoble, could give but a scanty account of her evening.

"And was your papa kind, dear?" asked Charlotte, "and did he seem pleased

to see you?"

"He was much kinder and more affectionate than usual, Lotta dear; so much

so, that he set me wondering. Now, if I were as confiding and eager to

think well of people as you are, I should be quite delighted by this

change. As it is, I am only mystified. I should be very glad if my father

and I could be drawn closer together; very glad if my influence could

bring about an amendment in his life."

While Miss Paget was discussing her father's affectionate and novel

behaviour, the noble Horatio was meditating, by his solitary hearth, upon

the events of the evening.

"I'm half-inclined to think he's hit already," mused the Captain. "I must

not allow myself to be deluded by manner. A Frenchman's gallantry rarely

means much; but Lenoble is one of those straightforward fellows whose

thoughts may be read by a child. He certainly seemed pleased with her;

interested and sympathetic, and all that kind of thing. And she is an

uncommonly handsome girl, and might marry any one if she had the

opportunity. I had no idea she was so handsome until to-night. I suppose

I never noticed her by candlelight before. By Jove! I ought to have made

her an actress, or singer, or something of that kind. And so I might, if

I'd known her face would light up as it does. I wish she wasn't so

impracticable--always cutting in with some awkward speech, that makes me

look like a fool, when, if she had an ounce of common sense, she might

see that I'm trying to make her fortune. Yes, egad, and such a fortune as

few girls drop into now-a-days! Some of your straitlaced church-going

people would call me a neglectful father to that girl, I daresay; but I

think if I succeed in making her the wife of Gustave Lenoble, I shall

have done my duty in a way that very few fathers can hope to surpass.

Such a high-principled fellow as Lenoble is too!--and _that_ is a

consideration."

CHAPTER III.

"WHAT DO WE HERE, MY HEART AND I?"

After that first summons to Chelsea, Diana went many times--twice and

three times a week--to comfort and tend her invalid father. Captain

Paget's novel regard for his only child seemed to increase with the

familiarity of frequent intercourse. "I have had very great pleasure in

making your acquaintance, my dear Diana," he said one day, in the course

of a _tete-a-tete_ with his daughter; "and I am charmed to find you

everything that a well-born and well-bred young woman ought to be. I am

sure you have excellent reason to be grateful to your cousin, Priscilla

Paget, for the excellent education you received in her abode; and you

have some cause to thank me for the dash and style imparted to your

carriage and manner by our foreign wanderings."

The Captain said this with the air of a man who had accompanied his

daughter on the grand tour solely with a view to her intellectual

improvement. He really thought she had reason to be grateful to him for

those accidents of his nomadic life which had secured her a good accent

for French and German, and the art of putting on her shawl.

"Yes, my dear child," he continued with dignity, "it affords me real

gratification to know you better. I need scarcely say that when you were

the associate of my pilgrimage, you were not of an age to be available as

a companion. To a man of the world like myself, a young person who has

not done growing must always savour somewhat of the schoolroom and the

nursery. I am not going to repeat the Byronic impertinence about

bread-and-butter; but the society of a girl of the hobbledehoy age is apt

to be insipid. You are now a young woman, and a young woman of whom any

father might with justice be proud."

After a few such speeches as these, Diana began to think that it was just

possible her father might really experience some novel feeling of regard

for her. It might be true that his former coldness had been no more than

a prejudice against the awkwardness of girlhood.

"I was shabby and awkward, I daresay, in those days," she thought; "and

then I was always asking papa for money to buy new clothes; and that may

have set him against me. And now that I am no burden upon him, and can

talk to him and amuse him, he may feel more kindly disposed towards me."

There was some foundation for this idea. Captain Paget had felt himself

more kindly disposed towards his only child from the moment in which she

ceased to be an encumbrance upon him. Her sudden departure from

Foretdechene had been taken in very good part by him.

"A very spirited thing for her to do, Val," he had said, when informed of

the fact by Mr. Hawkehurst; "and by far the best thing she could do,

under the circumstances."

From that time his daughter had never asked him for a sixpence, and from

that time she had risen steadily in his estimation. But the feeling which

he now exhibited was more than placid approval; it was an affection at

once warm and exacting. The fact was, that Horatio Paget saw in his

daughter the high-road to the acquirement of a handsome competence for

his declining years. His affection was sincere so far as it went; a

sentiment inspired by feelings purely mercenary, but not a hypocritical

assumption. Diana was, therefore, so much the more likely to be softened

and touched by it.

She was softened, deeply touched by this late awakening of feeling. The

engagement of Valentine and Charlotte had left her own life very blank,

very desolate. It was not alone the man she loved who was lost to her;

Charlotte, the friend, the sister, seemed also slipping away from her. As

kind, as loving, as tender as of old, this dear friend and adopted sister

still might be, but no longer wholly her own. Over the hearts of the

purest Eros reigns with a too despotic power, and mild affection is apt

to sneak away into some corner of the temple on whose shrine Love has

descended. This mild affection is but a little twinkling taper, that will

burn steadily on, perhaps unseen amidst the dazzling glory of Love's

supernal lamp, to be found shining benignantly when the lamp is

shattered.

For Charlotte, Valentine--and for Valentine, Charlotte--made the

sum-total of the universe at this time; or, at best, there was but a

small balance which included all the other cares and duties, affections

and pleasures, of life. Of this balance Diana had the lion's share; but

she felt that things had changed since those days of romantic school-girl

friendship in which Charlotte had talked of never marrying, and

travelling with her dearest friend Diana amongst all the beautiful scenes

they had read of, until they found the loveliest spot in the world, where

they would establish themselves in an ideal cottage, and live together

for the rest of their lives, cultivating their minds and their

flower-garden, working berlin-wool chairs for their ideal drawing-room,

and doing good to an ideal peasantry, who would be just poor enough to be

interesting, and sickly enough to require frequent gifts of calf's-foot

jelly and green tea.

Those foolish dreams were done with now; and that other dream, of a life

to be spent with the reckless companion of her girlhood, was lost to

Diana Paget. There was no point to which she could look forward in the

future, no star to lure her onward upon life's journey. Her present

position was sufficiently comfortable; and she told herself that she must

needs be weak and wicked if she were not content with her lot. But beyond

the present she dared not look, so blank was the prospect--a desert,

without even the mirage; for her dreams and delusions were gone with her

hope.

Possessed by such a sense of loneliness, it is scarcely strange if

there seemed to her a gleam of joy, a faint glimmer of hope, in the

newly awakened affection of her father. She began to believe him, and

to take comfort from the thought that he was drifting to a haven where

he might lie moored, with other battered old hulks of pirate and

privateer, inglorious and at rest. To work for him and succour him in his

declining years seemed a brighter prospect to this hopeless woman of

four-and-twenty than a future of lonely independence. "It is the nature

of woman to lean," says the masculine philosopher; but is it not rather

her nature to support and sustain, or else why to her is entrusted the

sublime responsibility of maternity? Diana was pleased to think that a

remorseful reprobate might be dependent on her toil, and owe his

reformation to her influence. She was indeed a new Antigone, ready to

lead him in his moral blindness to an altar of atonement more pure than

the ensanguined shrine of the Athenian Eumenides.

Her visits to Omega Street were not entirely devoted to _tete-a-tetes_

with her father. By reason of those coincidences which are so common to

the lives of some people, it generally happened that M. Lenoble dropped

in upon his invalid friend on the very day of Miss Paget's visit. M.

Lenoble was in London on business, and this business apparently

necessitated frequent interviews with Captain Paget. Of course such

interviews could not take place in the presence of Diana. Gustave was

wont, therefore, to wait with praiseworthy patience until the conclusion

of the young lady's visit; and would even, with an inconsistent

gallantry, urge her to prolong her stay to its utmost limit.

"It will always be time for my affairs, Miss Paget," he urged, "and I

know how your father values your society; and he well may value it. I

only hope my daughters will be as good to me, if I have the gout,

by-and-by."

Diana had spent nearly a dozen evenings in Omega Street, and on each of

those evenings had happened to meet M. Lenoble. She liked him better on

every occasion of these accidental meetings. He was indeed a person whom

it was difficult for any one to dislike, and in the thirty-four years of

his life had never made an enemy. She had been pleased with him on the

first evening; his bright handsome face, his courteous reverence for her

sex--expressed in every word, every tone, every look--his sympathy with

all good thoughts, his freshness and candour, were calculated to charm

the coldest and most difficult of judges. Diana liked, and even admired

him, but it was from an abstract point of view. He seemed a creature as

remote from her own life as a portrait of Henry of Navarre, seen and

admired in some royal picture-gallery to-day, to fade out of her memory

to-morrow.

There was only one point in connection with Gustave Lenoble which

occupied her serious thoughts; and this was the nature of his relations

with her father.

This was a subject that sorely troubled her. Hope as she might for the

future, she could not shut her eyes to the past. She knew that her

father had lived for years as a cheat and a trickster--now by one

species of falsehood and trickery, now by another--rarely incautious,

but always unscrupulous. How had this village seigneur of Normandy

fallen into the Captain's toils; and what was the nature of the net that

was spread for him?

The talk of business, the frequent interviews, the evident elation of her

father's spirits, combined to assure her that some great scheme was in

progress, some commercial enterprise, perhaps not entirely dishonest--nay

even honest, when regarded from the sanguine speculator's point of view,

but involving the hazard of Gustave Lenoble's fortune.

"It is quite as easy for my father to delude himself as it is for him to

delude others. This M. Lenoble is ignorant of English commerce, no doubt,

and will be ready to believe anything papa tells him. And he is so

candid, so trusting, it would be very hard if he were to be a loser

through his confidence in papa. His daughters, too; the hazard of his

fortune is peril to their future." Such doubts and fears, gradually

developed by reflection took stronger hold on Miss Paget's mind after

every fresh visit to Omega Street. She saw the Frenchman's light-hearted

confidence in all humanity, her father's specious manner and air of

quixotic honour. His sanguine tone, his excellent spirits, filled her

with intolerable alarm. Alas! when had she ever seen her father in good

spirits, except when some gentlemanly villany was in progress?

Miss Paget endured this uneasiness of mind as long as she could, and then

determined to warn the supposed victim. She planned the mode of her

warning, and arranged for herself a diplomatic form which would reflect

the least possible discredit upon her father; and having once come to

this resolution, she was not slow to put it into effect.

When her father was about to send for a cab to convey her back to

Bayswater, after her next visit to Omega Street, she surprised him by

intercepting his order.

"There is a cab-stand in Sloane Square, papa," she said; "and if M.

Lenoble will be so kind as to take me there, I--I would rather get the

cab from the stand. The man charges more when he is fetched off the rank,

I believe."

She could think of no better excuse for seeing Gustave alone than this

most sordid pretence. She blushed as she thought how mean a sound it must

have in the ears of the man for whose advantage she was plotting. Happily

M. Lenoble was not among the people who see nothing but meanness in the

desire to save sixpence. His aunt Cydalise had shown him the loveliness

of poverty; for there are vows of holy poverty that need no spoken

formula, and that are performed without the cloister.

"Poor girl!" thought M. Lenoble; "I dare say even the cost of her coach

is a consideration with her; and one dare not pay the coachman."

This was how Gustave read that blush of shame which for a moment dyed

Diana's cheek. Her father's was a very different reading.

"The minx sees my game, and is playing into my hands," thought he. "So

demure as she is, too! I should never have supposed her capable of such

a clever manoeuvre to secure ten minutes' _tete-a-tete_ with an

eligible admirer."

He bade his daughter good night with more than usual effusion. He began

to think that she might prove herself worthy of him after all.

The district between Omega Street and Sloane Square is after dusk of all

places the most solitary. It is the border-land of Pimlico, or, to borrow

from Sidney Smith, the knuckle end of Belgravia. In these regions of

desolation and smoke-blackened stucco Diana and her companion were as

secure from the interruption of the jostling crowd as they might have

been in the primeval forests of Central America.

Miss Paget's task was not a pleasant one. Shape her warning as she might,

it must reflect some discredit upon her father. He had of late been kind

to her; she felt this keenly to-night, and it seemed that the thing she

was about to do was a sort of parricide. Not against her father's life

was her cruel hand to be lifted; but her still more cruel tongue was to

slay her father's good name.

"This M. Lenoble likes him and trusts him," she thought to herself. "What

a happiness for that poor broken-down old man to have so kind a friend!

And I am going to interfere in a manner that may put an end to this

friendship?"

This is the shape which her thoughts assumed as she walked silently by

Gustave's side, with her hand lying lightly on his arm. He spoke to her

two or three times about the dulness of the neighbourhood, the coldness

of the night, or some other equally thrilling subject; but, finding by

her replies that she was thinking deeply, he made no further attempt at

conversation.

"Poor child! she has some trouble on her mind, perhaps," he thought to

himself sadly, for his sympathy with this young lady was a very profound

feeling. This was the first occasion on which he had ever been alone

with her, and he wondered to find what a strange emotion was developed

by the novelty of the situation. He had married at twenty years of age,

and had never known those brief fancies or foolish passions which waste

the freshness of mind and heart. He had married a wife whom he never

learned to love; but his nature was so essentially a happy one, that he

had failed to discover the something wanting in his life. In all

relations--as grandson, husband, father, master--he had been "all simply

perfect," as Mademoiselle Cydalise pronounced him; and in a mind occupied

by cares for the welfare and happiness of others, he had never found that

blank which needed to be filled in order to make his own life completely

happy. Only of late, in his thirty-fourth year, had he come to the

knowledge of a feeling deeper than dutiful regard for an invalid wife, or

affectionate solicitude for motherless children; only of late had he felt

his heart stirred by a more thrilling emotion than that placid

resignation to the will of Providence which had distinguished his

courtship of Mademoiselle de Nerague.

They had nearly reached Sloane Square before Diana took courage to broach

the subject so naturally repugnant to her. She had need to remember that

the welfare of M. Lenoble and all belonging to him might be dependent on

her fortitude.

"M. Lenoble," she began at last, "I am going to say something I shall

find it most painful to utter, but which I feel it my duty to say to you.

I can only ask you to receive it in a generous spirit."

"But, my dear Miss Paget, I pray you not to say anything that is

disagreeable to you. Why should you give yourself pain?--why--"

"Because it is my duty to warn you of a danger which I know only too

well, and of which you may be quite ignorant. You are my father's friend,

M. Lenoble; and he has very few friends. I should be sorry if anything I

were to say should rob him of your regard."

"Nothing that you say shall rob him of my friendship. But why should

you persist thus to say anything that is painful? What can you tell me

that I do not know, or that I cannot guess? Will you tell me that he is

poor? But I know it. That he is a broken-down gentleman? And that also

I know. What, then, would you tell me? That he has a daughter who is to

him a treasure without price? Ah, mademoiselle, what must I be if I did

not know that also?--I, who have contemplated that daughter so many

times--ah, so many!--when she could not know with what sympathy my eyes

watched her dutiful looks, with what profound emotion my heart

interpreted her life of affectionate sacrifice."

There was a warmth, a tenderness in his tones which touched Diana's heart

as it had not been touched of late. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the full

meaning of those tender accents came home to her. The love that she had

once dreamed of from the lips of another spoke to her to-night in the

words of this stranger. The sympathy for which she had yearned long ago,

in the days of her wanderings with Valentine, was given to her to-night

without stint or measure. Unhappily it came too late; and it did not come

from the only lips which, as it seemed to her to-night, could make

sympathy precious or love divine. But to this lonely girl a good man's

affection seemed a treasure for which she must needs be deeply grateful.

It was something to discover that she could be loved.

"I too," she said to herself,--"I, of whose presence Valentine is

scarcely conscious when he enters a room where Charlotte and I are

together; I, whom he greets day after day with the same careless words,

the same indifferent look; I, who might fade and waste day by day with

some slow disease, until I sank into the grave, before he would be

conscious of any change in my face,--is it possible that amongst the same

race of beings there can be any creature so widely different from

Valentine Hawkehurst as to love _me_?"

This was the bitter complaint of her heart as she compared the tenderness

of this stranger with the indifference of the man to whom, for three long

years of her girlhood, she had given every dream, every thought, every

hope of her existence. She could not put him away from her heart all at

once. The weak heart still fondly clung to the dear familiar image. But

the more intensely she had felt the cold neglect of Valentine, the more

grateful to her seemed the unsought affection of Gustave Lenoble.

"You know me as little as you know my father, M. Lenoble," she said,

after a long pause, during which they had walked to the end of the long

dull street, and were close to the square. "Let us go back a little way,

please; I have much more to say. I wish you to be my father's friend

always, but, if possible, without danger to yourself. My father is one of

those sanguine people who are always ready to embark in some new

enterprise, and who go on hoping and dreaming, after the failure of a

dozen schemes. He has no money, that I know of, to lose himself, and that

fact may make him, unconsciously, reckless of other people's money. I

have heard him speak of business relations with you, M. Lenoble, and it

is on that account I venture to speak so plainly. I do not want my poor

father to delude you, as he has often deluded himself. If you have

already permitted him to involve you in any speculation, I entreat you

to try to withdraw from it--to lose a little money, if necessary, rather

than to lose all. If you are not yet involved, let my warning save you

from any hazard."

"My dear Miss Paget, I thank you a thousand times for your advice, your

noble thoughtfulness for others. But no, there is no hazard. The

business in which your father is occupied for me is not a speculation. It

involves no risk beyond the expenditure of a few thousand francs, which,

happily, I can afford to lose. I am not at liberty to tell you the nature

of the business in question, because I have promised your father to keep

that a secret. Dear young lady, you need have no fear for me. I am not a

rash speculator. The first years of my life were passed in extreme

poverty--the poverty that is near neighbour to starvation. That is a

lesson one cannot forget. How shall I thank you for your concern for

me?--so generous, so noble!"

"It was only my duty to warn you of my poor father's weakness," replied

Diana. "If I needed thanks, your kindness to him is the only boon I could

ask. He has bitter need of a friend."

"And he shall never lack one while I live, if only for your sake." The

last half of the sentence was spoken in lower tones than the first. Diana

was conscious of the lurking tenderness of those few words, and the

consciousness embarrassed her. Happily they had reached the end of the

quiet street by this time, and had emerged into the busier square. No

more was said till they reached the cab-stand, when Diana wished her

companion good night.

"I am going back to Normandy in a week, Miss Paget; shall I see you again

before I leave England?"

"I really don't know; our meetings are generally accidental, you see."

"O yes, of course, always accidental," replied Gustave, smiling.

"I am sorry you are going to leave London--for papa's sake."

"And I, too, am sorry--for my own sake. But, you see, when one has

daughters, and a farm, and a chateau, one must be on the spot. I came to

England for one week only, and I have stayed six."

"You have found so much to amuse you in London?"

"Nay, mademoiselle, so much to interest me."

"It is almost the same thing, is it not?"

"A thousand times no! To be amused and to be interested--ah, what can be

so widely different as those two conditions of mind!"

"Indeed! Good night, Mr. Lenoble. Please ask the cabman to drive as fast

as he can venture to do with consideration for his horse. I am afraid I

shall be late, and my friends will be anxious about me."

"You will be late. You consider your friends at Bayswater, and you

consider even the cabman's horse. You are charity itself. Will you not

consider me a little also, Miss Paget?"

"But how?"

"Let me see you before I go back to Normandy. Your papa likes to see you

twice a week, I know. This is Monday night; will you come to see him on

Thursday?"

"If he wishes it."

"He does wish it. Ah, how he wishes it! You will come?"

"If Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte can spare me."

"They cannot spare you. No one can spare you. That cannot be. It

is amongst the things that are impossible. But they will have pity

upon--your father, and they will let you come."

"Please ask the cabman to start. Indeed, I shall be late. Good night,

M. Lenoble."

"Good night."

He took her hand in his, and kissed it, with the grace of a Bayard. He

loved her, and took no trouble to conceal his passion. No shadow of doubt

darkened that bright horizon to which M. Lenoble looked with hopeful

eyes. He loved this penniless, motherless girl, as it was in the blood of

the Lenobles to love the poor and the helpless; especially when poverty

and helplessness presented themselves in the guise of youth and beauty.

He loved her, and she would love him. But why not? He was ten years her

senior, but that makes nothing. His auburn hair and beard, in the style

of Henry the Great, could show no streak of grey. His eyes had the

brightness of one-and-twenty; for the eyes of a man whose soul preserves

its youthfulness will keep their clear lustre for half a century. The

tall figure, straight as a dart; the frank handsome face which M. Lenoble

saw in the glass when he made his toilet, were not calculated to

dishearten a hopeful lover; and Gustave, by nature sanguine, enjoyed his

dream of happiness, untroubled by one morbid apprehension.

He loved her, and he would ask her for his wife. She would accept his

offer; her father would rejoice in so fortunate an alliance; her friends

of Bayswater would felicitate a change so desirable. And when he returned

to Normandy he would take her with him, and say to his children, "Behold

your mother!" And then the great rambling mansion of Cotenoir would

assume a home-like aspect. The ponderous old furniture would be replaced

by lightsome appointments of modern fashion; except, of course, in the

grand drawing-room, where there were tapestries said to be from the

designs of Boucher, and chairs and sofas in the true Louis Quinze style,

of immovable bulkiness.

There was but one trifling hitch in the whole scheme of happiness--Diana

was a Protestant. Ah, but what then! A creature so sweet, so noble, could

not long remain the slave of Anglican heresy. A little talk with

Cydalise, a week's "retreat" at the Sacre Coeur, and the thing would be

done. The dear girl would renounce her errors, and enter the bosom of the

Mother Church. Pouff! M. Lenoble blew the little difficulty away from his

finger-tips, and then wafted a kiss from the same finger-tips to his

absent beloved.

"And this noble heart warned me against her own father!" M. Lenoble said

to himself, as he walked towards the hotel at Blackfriars where he had

taken up his abode, quite unconscious that the foot of Blackfriars Bridge

was not the centre of West End London. "How noble, how disinterested!

Poor old man! He is, no doubt, a speculator--something even of an

Adventurer. What then? He shall have an apartment at Cotenoir, his place

at the family table, his _fauteuil_ by the hearth; and there he can do no

harm."

* * * * *

There was a strange sentiment in Diana's mind after this evening's

conversation with Gustave Lenoble. To feel herself beloved, to know that

there was some one creature in the wide crowded world interested in, nay,

even attached to her, was a mystery, a surprise, and in some sort a

source of pleasure to her. That Gustave Lenoble could ever be any nearer

to her than he was at the present time did not occur to her as being

within the limits of possibility. She had thrust Valentine from her

heart, but the empty chamber could receive no new tenant. It was not

swept and garnished; nay, indeed, it was sadly littered with the shreds

and patches left by the late occupant. But, while this was so, to know

that she could be loved was in some manner sweet to her.

"Ah, now I know that the poet is right," she said to herself. "There is

no creature so desolate but some heart responds unto its own. And I have

found the generous responsive heart that can pity and love me because

I seem so sorely to need love and pity. All my life--my blank, empty

life--I will remember and be grateful to him, the first good man who ever

called my father friend; the first of all mankind who thought this poor

hand worthy to be lifted to his lips."

CHAPTER IV.

SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH.

Having pledged herself to visit Omega Street on Thursday, Diana

considered herself bound to perform that promise. She felt, however, that

there was some touch of absurdity in the position, for to keep a promise

so made was in a manner to keep an appointment with M. Lenoble.

"I dare say he has a habit of falling in love with every young woman he

meets," she thought, when she considered his conduct from a more prosaic

standpoint than the grateful enthusiasm his generous sympathy had at

first awakened in her mind. "I have heard that it is a Frenchman's

faculty to consider himself irresistible, and to avow his adoration for a

new divinity every week. And I was so foolish as to fancy there was a

depth of feeling in his tone and manner! I am sure he is all that is good

and generous; but the falling in love is no doubt a national failing."

She remembered the impertinent advances of divers unknown foreigners whom

she had encountered on pier or _digue_, kursaal or beach, in the

frequently unprotected hours of her continental wanderings.

She had not seen the best side of the foreign mind in her character of

unattended and doubtfully attired English demoiselle. She knew that

Gustave Lenoble was of a very different stamp from those specimens of the

genus tiger whose impertinent admiration had often wounded and distressed

her; but she was inclined to attribute the fault of shallowness to a

nature so frank and buoyant as that of her father's friend.

She walked from Bayswater to Chelsea on the appointed Thursday, for the

cost of frequent journeys in cabs was more than her purse could supply.

The walk across the Park was pleasant even in the bleak March weather,

and she entered the little parlour in Omega Street with the bloom of

damask roses upon her cheeks.

"How do you do, papa dear?" she began, as she came into the dusky room;

but the figure sitting in her father's accustomed place was not that of

her father. It was M. Lenoble, who rose to welcome her.

"Is papa worse?" she asked, surprised by the Captain's absence.

"On the contrary, he is better, and has gone out in a hired carriage for

a breath of fresh air. I persuaded him to go. He will be back very

shortly."

"I wrote to tell him I should be here to-day, but I am very glad he has

gone out, for I am sure the air will do him good. Was he well wrapped up,

do you know, M. Lenoble?"

"Enveloped in railway-rugs and shawls to his very nose. I arranged all

that with my own hands. He looked like an ambassador from all the

Russias."

"How kind of you to think of such things!" said Diana gratefully.

"And tell me why should I not think of such things? Do you imagine that

it is not a pleasure to me to wait upon your father--for your sake?"

There was some amount of awkwardness in this kind of thing. Diana busied

herself with the removal of her hat and jacket, which she laid neatly

upon a stony-hearted horsehair sofa. After doing this she placed herself

near the window, whence she contemplated the dusky street, appearing much

interested in the movements of the lamp lighter.

"What an admirable way they have of lighting the lamps now," she

remarked, with the conversational brilliance which usually marks this

kind of situation; "how much more convenient it must be than the old

method with the ladder, you know!"

"Yes, I have no doubt," said Gustave, bringing himself to her side with a

couple of steps, and planting himself deliberately in a chair next to

hers; "but don't you think, as I start for Normandy to-morrow, we might

talk of something more interesting than the lamplighter, Miss Paget?"

"I am ready to talk of anything you like," replied Miss Paget, with that

charming assumption of unconsciousness which every woman can command on

these occasions.

"You are very good. Do you know that when I persuaded your father to go

out for an airing, I was prompted by a motive so selfish as to render the

proceeding quite diabolical? Don't be alarmed! The doctor gave his

permission for the airing, or I should not have attempted such a thing.

Hypocrisy I am capable of, but not assassination. You cannot imagine the

diplomacy which I exhibited; and all to what end? Can you imagine that?"

"No, indeed."

"That I might secure one half-hour's uninterrupted talk with you; and,

unhappily, you are so late that I expect your father's return every

minute. He was to be back again before dusk, and the appearance of the

lamplighter demonstrates that the dusk has come. I have so much to say,

and so little time to say it; so much, Diane--"

She started as he called her thus, as if in that moment of surprise she

would have risen from her chair by his side. She knew what was coming,

and having expected nothing so desperate, knew not how to arrest the

confession that she would fain have avoided hearing. M. Lenoble laid his

hand firmly on hers.

"So much, Diane; and yet so little, that all can be told in three words.

I love you."

"M. Lenoble!"

"Ah, you are surprised, you wonder, you look at me with eyes of sweet

amazement! Dear angel, do you think it is possible to see you and not to

love you? To see you once is to respect, to admire, to bow the knee

before beauty and goodness; but to see you many times, as I have done,

the patient consoler of an invalid and somewhat difficult father--ah, my

sweet love, who is there so hard amongst mankind that he should escape

from loving you, seeing all that?"

The question had a significance that the speaker knew not. Who amongst

mankind? Why, was there not one man for whom she would have been content

to be the veriest slave that ever abnegated every personal delight for

the love of a hard master? And he had passed her by, indifferent,

unseeing. She had worshipped him on her knees, as it seemed to her; and

he had left her kneeling in the dust, while he went on to offer himself,

heart and soul, at another shrine.

She could not forget these things. The memory and the bitterness of them

came back with renewed poignancy at this moment, when the voice of a

stranger told her she was beloved.

"My dear one, will you not answer me?" pleaded Gustave, in nowise alarmed

by Diana's silence, which seemed to him only the natural expression of a

maidenly emotion. "Tell me that you will give me measure for measure;

that you will love me as my mother loved my father--with a love that

trouble and poverty could never lessen; with a love that was strongest

when fate was darkest--a star which the dreary night of sorrow could not

obscure. I am ten years older than you by my baptismal register, Diane;

but my heart is young. I never knew what love was until I knew you. And

yet those who know me best will tell you that I was no unkind husband,

and that my poor wife and I lived happily. I shall never know love again,

except for you. The hour comes, I suppose, in every man's life; and the

angel of his life comes in that appointed hour. Mine came when I saw you.

I have spoken to your father, and have his warm approval. He was all

encouragement, and hinted that I might be assured of your love. Had he

sufficient justification for that half-promise, Diane?"

"He had none," Miss Paget answered gravely, "none except his own wishes.

You have made me hear more than I wished to hear, M. Lenoble, for the

treasure you offer me is one that I cannot accept. With all my heart I

thank you for the love you tell me of. Even if it is, as I can but think

it, a passing fancy, I thank you, nevertheless. It is sweet to win the

love of a good man. I pray you to believe that with all my heart and mind

I honour your generous nature, your noble sympathy with the weak and

friendless. If you can give me your friendship, you shall find how I can

value a good man's regard, but I cannot accept your love."

"Why not?" asked Gustave, aghast.

"Because I cannot give you measure for measure, and I will not give you

less."

"But in time, Diane, in time?"

"Time cannot show me your character in a nobler light than that in which

I see it now. You do not lack the power to win a woman's heart, but I

have no heart to give. If you will be my friend, time will increase my

affection for you--but time cannot restore the dead."

"Which means that your heart is dead, Diane?"

"Yes," she answered, with unutterable sadness.

"You love some one younger, happier than I?"

"No, M. Lenoble, no one."

"But you have loved? Yes!--a scoundrel, perhaps; a villain, who--"

A spasm of pain contracted his face as he looked at the girl's drooping

head; her face, in that dim light, he could not see.

"Tell me this, Diane," he said presently, in an altered voice; "there is

no barrier between us--no irrevocable obstacle that must part us for

ever? There is no one who can claim you by any right--" He paused; and

then added, in a lower voice, "by any wrong?"

"No one," answered Miss Paget, lifting her head, and looking her lover

full in the face. Even in that uncertain light he could see the proud

steady gaze that seemed the fittest answer of all doubts.

"Thank God!" he whispered. "Ah, how could I fear, even for one moment,

that you could be anything but what you seem--the purest among the pure?

Why, then, do you reject me? You do not love me, but you ask my

friendship; you offer me your friendship, even your affection. Ah,

believe me, if those are but real, time will ripen them into love. Your

heart is dead. Ah, why should that young heart be dead? It is not dead,

Diane; it needs but the fire of true love to warm it into life again. Why

should you reject me, since you tell me that you love me; unless you love

another? What should divide us?"

"Shadows and memories," Diana replied mournfully,--"vague and foolish;

wicked, perhaps; but they come between you and me, M. Lenoble. And since

I cannot give you a whole heart, I will give you nothing."

"You have loved some one, some one who did not value your love? Tell me

the truth, Diane; you owe me at least as much as that."

"I do owe you the truth. Yes; I have been very foolish. For two or three

years of my life there was a person who was our daily companion. He

travelled with us--with my father and me; and we saw many changes and

troubles together. For a long time he was like my brother; and I doubt if

many brothers are as kind to their sisters as he was to me. In his heart

that feeling never changed. He was always equally kind, equally careless.

Once I deluded myself with the fancy that in his looks and tones, and

even in his words, there was some deeper feeling than this careless

brotherly kindness; but it was no more than a delusion. My eyes were

opened rudely enough. I saw his heart bestowed elsewhere. Do not think

that I am so weak, or so wicked, as to abandon myself to despair because

I have been awakened from my foolish dream. I can look the realities of

life in the face, M. Lenoble; and I have taught myself to wish all good

things for the dear girl who has won the heart that I once thought was

mine. The person I am speaking of can boast no superior graces of mind or

person. He is only a very commonplace young man, with a certain amount of

talent, a disposition inclined to good rather than to evil. But he was

the companion of my girlhood; and in losing him it seems to me as if I

had lost a part of my youth itself."

To Diana's mind this seemed the end of the discussion. She expected M.

Lenoble to bow his head to the inevitable, to utter a friendly farewell,

and depart for his Norman home, convinced, if not satisfied. But the

light-hearted, easy-tempered Gustave was not a lover of the despairing

order, nor an easily answered suppliant.

"And that is all!" he exclaimed, in the cheeriest tone. "A companion of

your girlhood, for whom you had a girl's romantic fancy! And the memory

of this unspeakable idiot--great Heaven! but how idiotic must this wretch

have been, to be loved by you, and not even to know it!--the memory of

this last of the last is to come between you and me, and divide us for

ever? The phantom of this miserable, who could be loved by an angel

without knowing it, is to lift its phantasmal hand and thrust me

aside--me, Gustave Lenoble, a man, and not an idiot? Ah, thus we blow him

to the uttermost end of the world!" cried M. Lenoble, blowing an

imaginary rival from the tips of his fingers. "Thus we dismiss him to the

Arctic regions, the torrid zone--to the Caucasus, where await vultures to

gnaw his liver--wherever earth is most remote and uncomfortable--he and

the bread-and-butter miss whom he prefers to my Diane!"

This manner of taking things was quite unexpected by Diana. It was much

more pleasant than gloomy despair or sullen resentment; but it was, at

the same time, much more difficult to deal with.

"He is gone!" cried Gustave presently; "he is on the topmost heights of

Caucasus, and the vultures are sharpening their beaks! And now, tell me,

Diane--you will be my wife, will you not? You will be a mother to my

children? You will transform the old chateau of Cotenoir into a pleasant

home? You will cease to live amongst strangers? You will come to those

who will love and cherish you as their own, their dearest and best and

brightest? You will give your poor old father a corner by your fireside?

He is old and needs a home for his last years. For his sake, Diane, for

mine, for my children, let your answer be yes! Ah, not so fast!" he

cried, as she was about to speak. "Why are you so quick to pronounce your

fatal judgment? Think how much depends on your reply--your father's

happiness, my children's, mine!"

"It is of yours only I must think," Miss Paget answered earnestly. "You

fancy it is so easy for me to say no. Believe me, it would be much easier

to say yes. When you speak of my father's declining years, I, who know

his weary life so well, would be hard of heart indeed if I were not

tempted by the haven you offer. Every word that you say gives me some new

proof of your goodness, your generosity. But I will not wrong you because

you are generous. I shall always be your grateful friend, but you must

seek elsewhere for a wife, M. Lenoble. You will have little difficulty in

finding one worthier than I."

"I will seek nowhere else for a wife; I will have no wife but you. I have

had a wife of other people's choosing; I will choose one for myself this

time. Let us be friends, Diane, since your decision is as irrevocable as

the laws of Draco. You are stone, you are adamant; but no matter, we can

be friends. Your father will be disappointed. But what then? He is no

doubt accustomed to disappointments. My daughters--for them it is a

profound affliction to be motherless, but they must support it. Cotenoir

must go to wreck and ruin a little longer--a few more rats behind the

panelling, a few more moths in the tapestry, that is all. My children

say, 'Papa, our home is not comfortable; all is upside-down;' and I

reply. 'But what will you, my children? A home without a wife is always

upside down.' And then I take them between my arms, in weeping. It is a

poignant picture to rend the heart. But what does it matter, Miss Paget?

What is that verse of your grand Will?--

Blow, blow, thou wintry wind;

And let go weep the stricken land,

While harts ungalled go play.

Perhaps I have mixed him up somehow; but the meaning is clear."

A hollow-sounding and somewhat awful cough heralded the approach of

Captain Paget, who entered the room at this juncture. If the Captain had

prolonged his first airing, after six weeks' confinement to the house,

until this late period of the afternoon, he would have committed an

imprudence which might have cost him dearly. Happily, he had done nothing

of the kind, but had re-entered the house unobserved, while Diana and

Gustave were conversing close to the window, having preferred to leave

his fly at the end of the street, rather than to incur the hazard of

interrupting a critical tete-a-tete. The interval that had elapsed since

his return had been spent by the Captain in his own bedchamber, and in

the immediate neighbourhood of the folding-doors between that apartment

and the parlour. What he had heard had been by no means satisfactory to

him; and if a look could annihilate, Miss Paget might have perished

beneath the Parthian glance which her father shot at her as he came

towards the window, with a stereotyped smile upon his lips and

unspeakable anger in his heart.

He had heard just enough of the conversation to know that Gustave had

been rejected--Gustave, with Cotenoir and a handsome independence in the

present, and the late John Haygarth's fortune in the future. Rejected by

a penniless young woman, who at any moment might find herself without a

roof to shelter her from the winds of heaven! Was ever folly, madness,

wickedness supreme as this?

Horatio trembled with rage as he took his daughter's hand. She had the

insolence to extend her hand for the customary salutation. The Captain's

greeting was a grip that made her wince.

"Good-night, Miss Paget," said Gustave gravely, but with by no means the

despondent tone of a hopeless lover; "I--well, I shall see you again,

perhaps, before I go to Normandy. I doubt if I shall go to-morrow. I

have my own reasons for staying--unreasonable reasons, perhaps, but I

shall stay."

All this was said in a tone too low to reach Captain Paget's ear.

"Are you going to leave us, Lenoble?" he asked in a quavering voice. "You

will not stop and let Di give you a cup of tea as usual?"

"Not to-night, Captain. Good-bye."

He wrung the old man's hand and departed. Captain Paget dropped heavily

into a chair, and for some minutes there was silence. Diana was the

first to speak.

"I am glad your doctor considered you well enough to go out for a drive,

papa," she said.

"Indeed, my dear," answered her father with a groan; "I hope my next

drive may be in a different kind of vehicle--the last journey I shall

ever take, until they cart away my bones for manure. I believe they do

make manure from the bones of paupers in our utilitarian age."

"Papa, how can you talk so horribly! You are better, are you not? M.

Lenoble said you were better."

"Yes, I am better, God help me!" answered the old man, too weak alike in

mind and body to hide the passion that possessed, him. "That is one of

the contradictions of the long farce we call life. If I had been a rich

man, with a circle of anxious relations and all the noted men of Savile

Row dancing attendance round my bed, I dare say I should have died; but

as I happen to be a penniless castaway, with only a lodging-house drudge

and a half-starved apothecary to take care of me, and with nothing before

me but a workhouse, I live. It is all very well for a man to take things

easily when he is ill and helpless, too weak even to think. _That_ is not

the trying time. The real trial arrives when a little strength comes back

to him, and his landlady begins to worry him for her rent, and the

lodging-house drudge gets tired of pitying him, and the apothecary sends

in his bill, and the wretched high-road lies bare and broad before him,

and he hears the old order to move on. The moving-on time has come for

me, Di; and the Lord alone knows how little I know where I am to go."

"Papa, you are not friendless; even I can give you a little help."

"Yes," answered the Captain with a bitter laugh; "a sovereign once a

quarter--the scrapings of your pittance! That help won't save me from

the workhouse."

"There is M. Lenoble."

"Yes, there is M. Lenoble; the man who would have given me a home for my

old age: he told me so to-day--a home fit for a gentleman--for the

position he now occupies is nothing compared to that which he may occupy

a year hence. He would have received me as his father-in-law, without

thought or question of my antecedents; and if I have not lived like a

gentleman, I might have died like one. This is what he would have done

for me. But do you think I can ask anything of him now, after you have

refused him? I know of your refusal to be that man's wife. I heard--I saw

it in his face. You--a beggar, a friendless wretch, dependent on the

patronage of a stockbroker's silly wife--_you_ must needs give yourself

grand airs, and refuse such a man as that! Do you think such men go

begging among young ladies like you, or that they run about the streets,

like the roast pigs in the story, begad, with knives and forks in their

backs, asking to be eaten?"

The Captain was walking up and down the room in a fever of rage. Diana

looked at him with sad wondering eyes. Yes, it was the old selfish

nature. The leopard cannot change his spots; and the Horatio Paget of the

present was the Horatio Paget of the past.

"Pray don't be angry with me, papa," said Diana sorrowfully; "I believe

that I have done my duty."

"Done your fiddlesticks!" cried the Captain, too angry to be careful of

his diction. "Your duty to whom? Did you happen to remember, miss, that

you owe some duty to me, your father, but for whom you wouldn't be

standing there talking of duty like a tragedy queen? By Jove! I suppose

you are too grand a person to consider my trouble in this matter; the

pains I took to get Lenoble over to England; the way I made the most of

my gout even, in order to have you about me; the way I finessed and

diplomatized to bring this affair to a successful issue. And now, when I

have succeeded beyond my hopes, you spoil everything, and then dare to

stand before me and preach about duty. What do you want in a husband, I

should like to know? A rich man? Lenoble is that. A handsome man? Lenoble

is that. A gentleman, with good blood in his veins? Lenoble comes of as

pure a race as any man in that part of France. A good man? Lenoble is one

of the best fellows upon this earth. What is it, then, that you want?"

"I want to give my heart to the man who gives me his."

"And what, in the name of all that's preposterous, is to prevent you

giving Gustave Lenoble your heart?"

"I cannot tell you."

"No, nor any one else. But let us have no more of this nonsense. If you

call yourself a daughter of mine, you will marry Gustave Lenoble. If

not--"

The Captain found himself brought to a sudden stop in his unconscious

paraphrase of Signor Capulet's menace to his recalcitrant daughter,

Juliet. With what threat could the noble Horatio terrify his daughter to

obedience? Before you talk of turning your rebellious child out of doors,

you must provide a home from which to cast her. Captain Paget remembered

this, and was for the moment reduced to sudden and ignominious silence.

And yet there must surely be some way of bringing this besotted young

woman to reason.

He sat for some minutes in silence, with his head leaning on his hand,

his face hidden from Diana. This silence, this attitude, so expressive of

utter despondency, touched her more keenly than his anger. She knew that

he was mean and selfish, that it was of his own loss he thought; and yet

she pitied him. He was old and helpless and miserable; so much the more

pitiable because of his selfishness and meanness. For the heroic soul

there is always some comfort; but for the grovelling nature suffering

knows no counterbalance. The ills that flesh is heir to seem utterly

bitter when there is no grand spirit to dominate the flesh, and soar

triumphant above the regions of earthly pain. Captain Paget's mind, to

him, was not a kingdom. He could not look declining years of poverty in

the face; he was tired of work. The schemes and trickeries of his life

were becoming very odious to him; they were for the most part worn out,

and had ceased to pay. Of course he had great hopes, in any event, from

Gustave Lenoble; but those hopes were dependent on Gustave's inheritance

of John Haygarth's estate. He wanted something more tangible than

this--he wanted immediate security; and his daughter's marriage with

Gustave would have given him that security, and still grander hopes for

the future. He had fancied himself reigning over the vassals of Cotenoir,

a far more important personage than the real master of that chateau. He

had pictured to himself a _pied-a-terre_ in Paris which it might be

agreeable for him to secure, for existence in Normandy might occasionally

prove _ennuyeux_. These things were what he meant when he talked of a

haven for his declining years; and against the daughter who, for some

caprice of her own, could hinder his possession of these things, he had

no feeling but anger.

Diana compassionated this weak old man, to whose lips the cup of

prosperity had seemed so near, from whose lips her hand had thrust it.

He had been promised a home, comfort, respectability, friendship--"all

that should accompany old age"--and she had prevented the fulfilment of

the promise. Heaven knows how pure her motives had been; but as she

watched that drooping head, with its silvered hair, she felt that she

had been cruel.

"Papa," she began presently, laying her hand caressingly upon her

father's neck; but he pushed aside the timid, caressing hand--"papa, you

think me very unkind, only because I have done what I believe to be

right; indeed it is so, papa dear. In what I said to Gustave Lenoble this

evening, I was governed only by my sense of right."

"Indeed!" cried the Captain, with a strident laugh; "and where did you

pick up your sense of right, madam, I should like to know? From what

Methodist parson's hypocritical twaddle have you learnt to lay down the

law to your poor old father about the sense of right? 'Honour your father

and your mother, that your days may be long in the land,' miss, _that's_

what your Bible teaches you; but the Bible has gone out of fashion, I

dare say, since I was a young man; and your model young woman of the

present generation taunts her father with her sense of right. Will your

sense of right be satisfied when you hear of your father rotting in the

old-men's ward of a workhouse, or dying on the London stones?"

"I am not unfeeling, papa. With all my heart I pity you; but it is cruel

on your part to exaggerate the misery of your position, as I am sure you

must be doing. Why should your means of living fail because I refuse to

marry M. Lenoble? You have lived hitherto without my help, as I have

lived of late without yours. Nothing could give me greater happiness than

to know that you were exempt from care; and if my toil can procure you a

peaceful home in the future--as I believe it can, or education and will

to work must go for nothing--there shall be no lack of industry on my

part. I will work for you, I will indeed, papa--willingly, happily."

"When your work can give me such a home as Cotenoir--a home that one word

of yours would secure for me--I will thank you."

"If you will only wait, papa, if you will only have patience--"

"Patience! Wait! Do you know what you are talking about? Do you prate of

patience, and waiting, and hope in the future to a man who has no

future--to a man whose days are numbered, and who feels the creeping

chills of death stealing over him every day as he sits beside his

wretched hearth, or labours through his daily drudgery? I can live as I

have always lived! Yes; but do you know, or care to know, that with every

day life becomes more difficult for me? Your fine friends at Bayswater

have done with me. I have spent the last sixpence I shall ever see from

Philip Sheldon. Hawkehurst has cut me, like the ungrateful hound he is.

When they have squeezed the orange, they throw away the rind. Didn't

Voltaire say that, when Frederick of Prussia gave him the go-by? Heaven

knows it's true enough; and now you, who by a word might secure yourself

a splendid position--yes, I say splendid for a poor drudge and dependent

like you, and insure a home for me--you, forsooth, must needs favour me

with your high-flown sentiments about your sense of right, and promise me

a home in the future, if I will wait and hope! No, Diana, waiting and

hoping are done with for me, and I can find a home in the bed of the

river without your help."

"You would not be so wicked as to do that!" cried Diana, aghast.

"I don't know about the wickedness of the act. But, rely upon it, when my

choice lies between the workhouse and the river, I shall prefer the

river. The modern workhouse is no inviting sanctuary, and I dare say many

a homeless wretch makes the same choice."

For some minutes there was silence. Diana stood with her elbows resting

on the chimneypiece, her face covered with her hands.

"O Lord, teach me to do the thing which is right!" she prayed, and in the

next breath acted on the impulse of the moment.

"What would you have me do?" she asked.

"What any one but an idiot would do of her own accord--accept the good

fortune that has dropped into your lap. Do you think such luck as yours

goes begging every day?"

"You would have me accept Gustave Lenoble's offer, no matter what

falsehoods may be involved in my acceptance of it?"

"I can see no reason for falsehood. Any one but an idiot would honour

such a man; any one but an idiot would thank Providence for such good

fortune."

"Very well, papa," exclaimed Diana, with a laugh that had no mirthful

music, "I will not be the exceptional idiot. If M. Lenoble does me the

honour to repeat his offer--and I think from his manner he means to do

so--I will accept it."

"He shall repeat it!" cried the Captain, throwing off his assumption of

the tragic father. The Oedipus Coloneus, the Lear--the venerable victim

of winter winds and men's ingratitude--was transformed in a moment into

an elderly Jeremy Diddler, lined with Lord Foppington. "He shall repeat

it; I will have him at your feet to-morrow. Yes, Di, my love, I pledge

myself to bring that about, without compromise to your maidenly pride or

the dignity of a Paget. My dear child, I ought to have known that

reflection would show you where your duty lies. I fear I have been

somewhat harsh, but you must forgive me, Di; I have set my heart on this

match, for your happiness as well as my own. I could not stand the

disappointment; though I admired, and still admire, the high feeling,

and all that kind of thing, which prompted your refusal. A school-girlish

sentimentality, child, but with something noble in it; not the

sentimentality of a vulgar schoolgirl. The blue blood will show itself,

my love; and now--no, no, don't cry. You will live to thank me for

to-night's work; yes, my child, to thank me, when you look round your

comfortable home by-and-by--when my poor old bones are mouldering in

their unpretending sepulchre--and say to yourself, 'I have my father to

thank for this. Adverse circumstances forbade his doing his duty as

happier fathers are allowed the privilege of doing theirs, but it was his

forethought, his ever-watchful care, which secured me an admirable

husband and a happy home.' Mark my words, the time will come when you

will say this, my dear."

"I will try to think of you always kindly, papa," Miss Paget answered in

a low sad voice; "and if my marriage can secure your happiness and

Gustave Lenoble's, I am content. I only fear to take too much, and give

too little."

"My love, you must certainly be the lineal descendant of Don Quixote. Too

much, and too little, forsooth! Let Lenoble find a handsomer woman, or a

more elegant woman, by gad, elsewhere! Such a woman as a duke might be

proud to make his duchess, by Jove! There shall be no sense of obligation

on our side, my love. Gustave Lenoble shall be made to feel that he gets

change for his shilling. Kiss me, child, and tell me you forgive me for

being a little rough with you, just now."

"Forgive you?--yes, papa. I dare say you are wiser than I. Why should I

refuse M. Lenoble? He is good and kind, and will give us a happy home?

What more can I want? Do I want to be like Charlotte, to whom life seems

all poetry and brightness?"

"And who is going to throw herself away upon a penny-a-liner, by Jove!"

interjected the Captain.

"Can I hope to be like that girl, with her happy ignorance of life, her

boundless love and trust! O, no, no, papa; those things are not for me."

She laid her head upon her father's breast, and sobbed like a child. This

was her second farewell to the man she had loved, the dreams she had

dreamed. The Captain comforted her with a paternal embrace, but was as

powerless to comprehend her emotion as if he had found himself suddenly

called upon to console the sorrows of a Japanese widow.

"Hysterical," he murmured. "These noble natures are subject to that kind

of thing. And now, my love," he continued, in a more business-like tone,

"let us talk seriously. I think it would be very advisable for you to

leave Bayswater, and take up your abode in these humble lodgings with me

immediately."

"Why, papa?"

"The reason is sufficiently obvious, my love. It is not right that you

should continue to eat the bread of dependence. As the future wife of

Gustave Lenoble--and in this case, the word future means immediately--"

"Papa," cried Diana suddenly, "you will not hurry me into this marriage?

I have consented for your sake. You will not be so ungenerous as to--"

"As to hurry you? No, my dear, of course not. There shall be no indecent

haste. Your wishes, your delicate and disinterested motives, shall be

consulted before all things; yes, my love," cried the Captain, sorely

afraid of some wavering on the part of his daughter, and painfully

anxious to conciliate her, "all shall be in accordance with your wishes.

But I must urge your immediate removal from Bayswater; first, because M.

Lenoble will naturally wish to see you oftener than he can while you are

residing with people whose acquaintance I do not want him to make; and

secondly, because you have no further need of Mrs. Sheldon's patronage."

"It has been kindness, affection, papa--never patronage. I could not

leave Mrs. Sheldon or Charlotte abruptly or ungraciously, upon any

consideration. They gave me a home when I most bitterly needed one.

They took me away from the dull round of schoolroom drudgery, that was

fast changing me into a hard hopeless joyless automaton. My first duty

is to them."

The Captain's angry sniff alone expressed the indignation which this

impious remark inspired.

"My next shall be to you and M. Lenoble. Let me give Mrs. Sheldon due

notice of the change in our plans."

"What do you call due notice?" asked Horatio, peevishly.

"A quarter's notice."

"O, indeed! Then for three months you are to dance attendance upon Mrs.

Sheldon, while M. Lenoble is waiting to make you his wife."

"I must consult the wishes of my friends, papa."

"Very well, my dear," replied the Captain, with a sigh that was next of

kin to a groan; "you must please yourself and your friends, I suppose;

your poor old father is a secondary consideration." And then, timeously

mindful of the skirmish he had just had with his daughter, Captain Paget

made haste to assure her of his regard and submission.

"All shall be as you please, my love," he murmured. "There, go into my

room, and smooth your hair, and bathe your eyes, while I ring for the

tea."

Diana obeyed. She found eau-de-cologne and the most delicate of Turkey

sponges on her father's wash-handstand; jockey-club, and ivory-backed

brushes, somewhat yellow with age, but bearing crest and monogram, on his

dressing-table. The workhouse did not seem quite so near at hand as the

Captain had implied; but with these sanguine people it is but a step from

disappointment to despair.

"What am I to tell Mrs. Sheldon, papa?" she asked, when she was pouring

out her father's tea.

"Well, I think you had better say nothing, except that my circumstances

have somewhat improved, and that my failing health requires your care."

"I hate secrets, papa."

"So do I, my dear; but half-confidences are more disagreeable than

secrets."

Diana submitted. She secretly reserved to herself the right to tell

Charlotte anything she pleased. From that dear adopted sister she would

hide nothing.

"If M. Lenoble should repeat his offer, and I should accept it, I will

tell her all," she thought. "It will make that dear girl happy to know

that there is some one who loves me, besides herself."

And then she thought of the strange difference of fate that gave to

this Charlotte Halliday, with her rich stepfather and comfortable

surroundings, a penniless soldier of fortune for a lover, while to her,

the spendthrift adventurer's daughter, came a wealthy suitor.

"Will hers be the dinner of herbs, and mine the stalled ox?" she thought.

"Ah, Heaven forbid! Why is it so difficult to love wisely, so easy to

love too well?"

She remembered the cynical French proverb, "When we can not have what

we love, we must love what we have." But the cynical proverb brought her

no comfort.

She went back to Bayswater with a strange bewildered feeling; after

having promised her father to go to Omega Street whenever he sent for

her. There was no actual pain in her mind, no passionate desire to recall

her promise, no dread horror of the step to which she had pledged

herself. The feeling that oppressed her was the sense that such a step

should have been the spontaneous election of her grateful heart, proud of

a good man's preference, instead of a weak submission to a father's

helplessness.

Book the Fifth.

THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA.

CHAPTER I.

TAKEN BY STORM.

Two days after her interview with Gustave Lenoble, Miss Paget received a

brief note from her father, summoning her again to Omega Street.

"He has not gone back to Normandy," wrote the Captain.

"My child, he positively worships the ground you walk upon. Ah, my love,

_it is something to have a father_! I need scarcely tell you that his

first idea of your excellence was inspired by those glowing descriptions

of your goodness, your beauty, your heroism, which I favoured him with,

_en passant_, during our conversations at Cotenoir, where the happy

accident of a business transaction first introduced me to him. The

interests of my only child have ever been near and dear to me; and where

a duller man would have perceived only a wealthy stranger, my paternal

instincts recognized at a glance the predestined husband of my daughter.

It needed my wide experience of life--and, as I venture to believe, my

subtle knowledge of the human heart--to understand that a man who had

lived for five-and-thirty years buried alive in a French province--a

charming place, my love, and for your refined taste replete with

interest--never seeing a mortal except his immediate neighbours, would be

the man of men to fall in love with the first attractive young woman he

met among strangers. Come to me this afternoon without fail, and come

early.--Yours,

"H.N.C.P."

Diana obeyed this summons submissively, but still troubled by that

strange sense of bewilderment which had affected her since her stormy

interview with Captain Paget. She was not quite certain of herself. The

old dreams--the sweet foolish girlish fancies--were not yet put away

altogether from her mind; but she knew that they were foolish, and she

was half-inclined to believe that there had been some wisdom in her

father's scorn.

"What do I want more?" she asked herself. "He is good and brave and true,

and he loves me. If I were a princess, my marriage would be negotiated

for me by other people, and I should have reason to consider myself very

happy if the man whom the state selected for my husband should prove as

good a man as Gustave Lenoble. And he loves me; me, who have never before

had power over a man's heart!"

She walked across Hyde Park on this occasion, as on the last; and her

thoughts, though always confused--mere rags and scraps of thought--were

not all unpleasant. There was a smile, half shy, half tender, on her face

as she went into the little sitting-room where Gustave was waiting for

her. She had seen his hat and overcoat in the passage, and knew that he

was there waiting for her. To this poor desolate soul there was something

sweet in the idea of being waited for.

As she stood but a little within the doorway, blushing, almost trembling

with the sense of her changed position, her lover came across the room

and took her in his arms. The strong brave arms held her to his breast;

and in that one embrace he took her to his heart, and made her his own

for ever.

In every story of life-long affection, there is one moment in which the

bond is sealed. Diana looked up at the frank tender face, and felt that

she had found her conqueror. Master, friend, protector, husband, adoring

and devoted lover, gallant and fearless champion--he was all; and she

divined his power and his worth as she glanced shyly upward, ashamed to

be so lightly won.

"M. Lenoble," she faltered, trying to withdraw herself from the strong

encircling arm that held her, as if by right.

"Gustave, now and for ever, my Diane! There shall be no more Monsieur

Lenoble. And in a few weeks it shall be 'my husband.' Your father has

given me to you. He tells me to laugh at your refusals your scruples; to

assail you like your Shakespeare's Petruchio assails his Katherine--with

audacious insolence that will not be denied. And I shall take his advice.

Look up into my face, dear angel, and defy me to take his advice."

Happily the dear angel looked only downwards. But M Lenoble was resolved

to have an agreeable response.

"See, then, thou canst not defy me!" he cried, in the only language he

spoke; and the "_tu_" for the first time sounded very tender, very sweet.

"Thou canst not tell me thou art angry with me. And the other--the

imbecile;--he is gone for ever, is he not? Ah, say yes!"

"Yes, he is gone," said Diana, almost in a whisper.

"Is he quite gone? The door of thine heart locked against him, his

luggage thrown out of the window?"

"He is gone!" she murmured softly. "He could not hold his place against

you--you are so strong--so brave; and he was only a shadow. Yes, he is

gone."

She said this with a little sigh of relief. It was in all sincerity that

she answered her suitor's question. She felt that a crisis had come in

her life--the first page of a new volume; and the old sad tear-blotted

book might be cast away.

"Dear angel, wilt thou ever learn to love me?" asked Gustave, in a

half-whisper, bending down his bearded face till his lips almost touched

her cheek.

"It is impossible not to love you," she answered softly. And indeed it

seemed to her as if this chivalrous Gaul was a creature to command the

love of women, the fear of men; an Achilles _en frac_; a Bayard without

his coat of mail; Don Quixote in his youth, generous, brave,

compassionate, tender, and with a brain not as yet distempered by the

reading of silly romances.

Captain Paget emerged from his den as the little love scene ended. He

affected a gentlemanly unconsciousness of the poetry involved in the

situation, was pleasantly anxious about the tea-tray, the candles, and

minor details of life; and thus afforded the lovers ample time in which

to recover their composure. The Frenchman was in no wise discomposed; he

was only abnormally gay, with a little air of triumph that was not

unpleasing. Diana was pale; but there was an unwonted light in her eyes,

and she had by no means the appearance of a victim newly offered on the

sacrificial altar of filial duty. In sober truth, Miss Paget was happier

to-night than she had been for a long time. At three-and-twenty she was

girl enough to rejoice in the knowledge that she was truly loved, and

woman enough to value the sense of peace involved in the security of a

prosperous future.

If she was grateful to her lover--and the affection he had inspired in

her heart had grown out of gratitude--it was no mercenary consideration

as to his income or position that made her grateful. She thanked him for

his love--that treasure which she had never expected to possess; she

thanked him because he had taken her by the hand, and led her out of the

ranks of lonely dependent womanhood, and seated her upon a throne, on the

steps whereof he was content to kneel. Whether the throne were a rushen

chair in some rustic cottage, or a gilded _fauteuil_ in a palace, she

cared very little. It was the subject's devotion that was new and sweet

to her.

She went to Charlotte's room that night, when Mr. Sheldon's small

household was at rest; as she had gone on Christmas Eve to renounce her

lover and to bless her rival. This time it was a new confession she went

to make, and a confession that involved some shame. There is nothing so

hard to confess as inconstancy; and every woman is not so philosophic as

Rahel Varnhagen, who declared that to be constant was not always to love

the same person, but always to love some one.

Miss Paget seated herself at Charlotte's feet, as she had done on that

previous occasion. The weather was still cold enough to make a fire very

pleasant, though it was more than two months since the Christmas bells

had rung out upon the frosty air. Diana sat on a low hassock, playing

with the tassels of her friend's dressing-gown, anxious to make her

confession, and solely at a loss for words in which to shape so

humiliating an avowal.

"Charlotte," she began abruptly at last, "have you any idea when you and

Valentine are to be married?"

Miss Halliday gave a little cry of surprise.

"Why, of course not, Di! How can you ask such a question? Our marriage

is what uncle George calls a remote contingency. We are not to be married

for ages--not until Valentine has obtained a secure position in

literature, and an income that seems almost impossible. That was the

special condition upon which Mr. Sheldon--papa--gave his consent to our

engagement. Of course it was very proper and prudent of him to think of

these things; and as he has been very kind and liberal-minded in his

conduct to me throughout, I should be a most ungrateful person if I

refused to be guided by his advice."

"And I suppose that means that your engagement is to be a long one?"

"The longest of long engagements. And what can be happier than a long

engagement? One gets to know and understand the man one is to marry so

thoroughly. I think I know every turn of thought in Valentine's mind;

every taste, every fancy; and I feel myself every day growing to think

more and more like him. I read the books he reads, so as to be able to

talk to him, you know; but I am not so clever as you, Di, and Valentine's

favourite authors do sometimes seem rather dry to me. But I struggle on,

you know; and the harder I find the struggle, the more I admire my dear

love's cleverness. Think of him, Di--three different articles in three

different magazines last month! The paper on Apollodorus, in the

_Cheapside_, you know; and that story in the Charing Cross--'How I lost

my Gingham Umbrella, and gained the Acquaintance of Mr. Gozzleton.' _So_

funny! And the exhaustive treatise on the Sources of Light, in the

_Scientific Saturday_. And think of the fuss they make about Homer, a

blind old person who wrote a long rigmarole of a poem about battles, and

wrote it so badly that to this day no one knows whether it's one complete

poem, or a lot of odds-and-ends in the way of poetry, put together by a

man with an unpronounceable Greek name. When I think of what Valentine

accomplishes in comparison to Homer, and the little notice the reviewers

take of him, except to make him low-spirited by telling him that he is

shallow and frivolous, I begin to think that literature must be going to

the dogs."

And here Charlotte became meditative, absorbed in the contemplation of

Mr. Hawkehurst's genius. Diana had begun the conversation very artfully,

intending to proceed by a gentle transition from Charlotte's love affairs

to her own; but the conversation was drifting away from the subject into

a discussion upon literature, and the brilliant young essayist whose

first adventurous flights seemed grand as the soaring of Theban eagle to

this tender and admiring watcher of his skyward progress.

"Lotta," said Miss Paget, after a pause, "should you be very sorry if I

were to leave you before your marriage?"

"Leave me before my marriage, Diana! Is it not arranged that you are to

live with mamma, and be a daughter to her, when I am gone? And you will

come and stay with Valentine and me at our cottage; and you will advise

me about my house-keeping, and teach me how to be a sensible, useful,

economical wife, as well as a devoted one. Leave us, Di! What have I

done, or mamma, or Mr. Sheldon, or anybody, that you should talk of

anything so dreadful?"

"What have you done, dear girl, dear friend, dear sister? Everything to

win my undying love and gratitude. You have changed me from a hard

disappointed bitter-minded woman--envious, at times, even of you--into

your loving and devoted friend. You have changed me from a miserable

creature into a contented and hopeful one. You have taught me to forget

that my childhood and youth were one long night of wretchedness and

degradation. You have taught me to forgive the father who suffered my

life to be what it was, and made no one poor effort to lift me out of the

slough of despond to which he had sunk. I can say no more, Charlotte.

There are things that cannot be told by words."

"And you want to leave me!" said Charlotte, in accents half-wondering,

half-reproachful.

"My father wants me to leave you, Lotta; and some one else--some one whom

you must know and like before I can be sure I like him myself."

"Him!" cried Charlotte, with a faint shriek of surprise. "Diana, WHAT are

you going to tell me?"

"A secret, Lotta; something which my father has forbidden me to tell any

one, but which I will not hide from you. My poor father has found a kind

friend--a friend who is almost as good to him as you are to me. How

merciful Heaven is in raising up friends for outcasts! And I have seen a

good deal of this gentleman who is so kind to papa, and the result is

that--chiefly for papa's sake, and because I know that he is generous and

brave and true, I mean papa's friend, M. Lenoble--I have consented to be

his wife."

"Diana!" cried Charlotte, with a sternness of manner that was alarming in

so gentle a creature, "it shall never be!"

"What dear?"

"The sacrifice! No, dear, no! I understand it all. For your cruel

mercenary heartless designing father's sake, you are going to marry a man

whom you can't love. You are going to offer up your poor bruised desolate

heart on the altar of duty. Ah, dear, you can't think I forget what you

told me only two short months ago--though I seem selfish and frivolous,

and am always talking about _him_, and parading my happiness, as it must

seem to you, reckless of the wounds so newly healed in your noble

unselfish heart. But I do not altogether forget, Diana, and such a

sacrifice as this I will not allow. I know you have resigned him to me--I

know you have thrust him from your heart, as you told me that night. But

the hollow aching void that is left in your lonely heart shall be sacred,

Di. No stranger's image shall pollute it. You shall not sacrifice your

own peace to your father's selfishness. No, dear, no! With mamma and me

you will always have a home. You need stoop to no cruel barter such as

this marriage."

And hereupon Miss Halliday wept over and caressed her friend, as the

confidante of Agamemnon's daughter may have wept over and caressed that

devoted young princess after the divination of Calchas had become common

talk in the royal household.

"But if I think it my duty to accept M. Lenoble's offer, Lotta?" urged

Miss Paget with some embarrassment of manner. "M. Lenoble is as rich as

he is generous, and my marriage with him will secure a happy home for my

father. The foolish dreams I told you about on Christmas Eve had faded

from my mind before I dared to speak of them. I could only confess my

folly when I knew that I was learning to be wise. Pray do not think that

I am sordid or mercenary. It is not because M. Lenoble is rich that I am

inclined to marry him, it is because--"

"Because you want to throw yourself away for the advantage of your

selfish heartless father," interjected Charlotte. "He has neglected you

all your life, and now wants to profit by the sacrifice of your

happiness. Be firm, Di, darling; your Charlotte will stand by you, and

find a home for you always, come what may. Who is this M. Lenoble? Some

horrible ugly old creature, I dare say."

Miss Paget smiled and blushed. The vision of Gustave's frank handsome

face arose before her very vividly as Charlotte said this.

"No, dear," she replied. "M. Lenoble is not an old

man--five-and-thirty at most."

"Five-and-thirty!" repeated Charlotte, with a wry face; "you don't call

that young? And what is he like?"

"Well, dear, I think he is the sort of man whom most people would call

handsome. I'm sure you would like him, Lotta. He is so candid, so

animated, so full of strength and courage. The sort of man to whom one

would naturally look in any emergency or danger; the sort of man in whose

company fear would be impossible."

"Diana," cried Charlotte, suddenly, "you are in love with him!"

"Lotta!"

"Yes, dear, you are in love with him," repeated Miss Halliday, embracing

her friend with effusion; "yes, over head and ears in love with him. And

you are ashamed to confess the truth to me; and you are half ashamed to

confess it even to yourself--as if you could deceive an old stager like

me!" cried Charlotte, laughing. "Why, you dear inconstant thing, while I

have felt myself the guiltiest and most selfish creature in the world for

robbing you of Valentine, you have been quietly transferring your

affections to this M. Gustave Lenoble--who is very rich, and brave, and

true, and generous, and what most people would call handsome! Bless you,

a thousand times, my darling! You have made me so happy!"

"Indeed, Lotta!"

"Yes, dear. The thought that there was a blank in your life made a dark

cloud in mine. I know I have been very selfish, very thoughtless, but I

could never have been quite free from a sense of self-reproach. But now

there is nothing for me but happiness. O darling, I so long to see your

M. Lenoble!"

"You shall see him, dear."

"And in the meantime tell me what he is like."

Miss Halliday insisted upon a full, true, and particular account of M.

Lenoble's personal appearance. Diana gave it, but not without some sense

of embarrassment. She could not bring herself to be enthusiastic about

Gustave Lenoble, though in her heart there was a warmth of feeling that

surprised her. "What a hypocrite you are, Di!" exclaimed Charlotte

presently. "I know you love this good Frenchman almost as dearly as I

love Valentine, and that the thought of his affection makes you happy;

and yet you speak of him in little measured sentences, and you won't be

enthusiastic even about his good looks."

"It is difficult to pass from dreams to realities, Lotta. I have lived so

long among dreams, that the waking world seems strange to me."

"That is only a poetical way of saying that you are ashamed of having

changed your mind. I will tell M. Lenoble what a lukewarm creature you

are, and how unworthy of his love!"

"You shall tell him what you please. But remember, dear, my engagement

must not be spoken about yet awhile, not even to your mamma. Papa makes a

strong point of this, and I have promised to obey, though I am quite in

the dark as to his reasons."

Miss Halliday submitted to anything her friend wished; only entreating

that she might be introduced to M. Lenoble. Diana promised her this

privilege; but it speedily transpired that Diana's promise was not all

that was wanted on this occasion.

For some time past, in fact from the very commencement of Charlotte's

engagement, Mr. Sheldon had shown himself punctilious to an exceeding

degree with regard to his stepdaughter. The places to which she went, and

the people with whom she consorted, appeared to be matters of supreme

importance in his mind. When speaking of these things he gave those about

him to understand that his ideas had been the same from the time of

Charlotte's leaving school; but Diana knew that this was not true. Mr.

Sheldon's theories had been much less strict, and Mr. Sheldon's practice

had been much more careless, prior to Miss Halliday's engagement.

No stately principal of a school for young ladies could have been more

particular as to the movements of her charges--more apprehensive of

wolf-in-sheep's-clothing in the shape of singing or drawing-master--than

Mr. Sheldon seemed to be in these latter days. Even those pleasant walks

in Kensington Gardens, which had been one of the regular occupations of

the day, were now forbidden. Mr. Sheldon did not like that his daughter

should walk in public with no better protector than Diana Paget.

"There is something disreputable in two girls marching about those

gardens together according to my ideas," said this ultra-refined

stockbroker, one morning at the family breakfast-table. "I don't like to

see my stepdaughter do anything I should forbid my own daughter to do.

And if I had a daughter, I should most decidedly forbid all lonely

rambles in Kensington Gardens. You see, Lotta, two girls as attractive

as you and Miss Paget can't be too particular where you go, and what you

do. When you want air and exercise, you can get both in the garden; and

when you want change of scene, and a peep at the fashions, you can drive

out with Mrs. Sheldon."

To this deprivation Charlotte submitted, somewhat unwillingly, but with

no sign of open rebellion. She thought her stepfather foolish and

unreasonable; but she always bore in mind the fact that he had been kind

and disinterested in the matter of her engagement, and she was content to

prove her gratitude by any little sacrifice of this kind. Was not her

lover permitted to spend his Sundays in her society, and to call on her,

at his discretion, during the week? And what were walks in Kensington

Gardens compared with the delight of his dear presence! It is true that

she had sometimes been favoured with Mr. Hawkehurst's society in the

course of her airing; but she knew that he sacrificed his hours of work

or study for the chance of half an hour in her society; and she felt that

there might be gain to him in her loss of liberty.

She told him, when next they met, that the morning walks were forbidden;

and, so jealous a passion is love, that Mr. Hawkehurst was nowise sorry

to find that his pearl was strictly watched and carefully guarded.

"Well, it seems very particular of Mr. Sheldon, of course," he said;

"but, upon my word, I think he's right. Such a girl as you oughtn't to go

about with no better protection than Diana can give you. Fellows will

stare so at a pretty girl, you know; and I can't bear to think my pearl

should be stared at by impertinent strangers."

Mr. Hawkehurst did not, however, find the strict notions of his

lady-love's stepfather quite so agreeable when he wanted to take his

"pearl" to the winter exhibitions of pictures. He was told that Miss

Halliday could go nowhere, except accompanied by her mamma; and as Georgy

did not care about pictures, and found herself unequal to the fatigue of

attending the winter exhibitions, he was obliged to forego the delight of

seeing them with Lotta on his arm. He pronounced Mr. Sheldon on this

occasion to be a narrow-minded idiot; but withdrew the remark in a

contrite spirit when Charlotte reminded him of that gentleman's

generosity.

"Yes, dear, he has certainly been very kind and very disinterested--more

disinterested than even you think; but, somehow, I can't make him out."

It was very well for Miss Halliday that she had submitted to this novel

restriction with as good a grace, inasmuch as Mr. Sheldon had prepared

himself for active opposition. He had given orders to his wife, and

further orders to Mrs. Woolper to the effect that his step-daughter

should not be permitted to go out of doors, except in his own or her

mother's company.

"She is a very good girl, you see, Nancy," he said to the old

housekeeper, "but she's young, and she's giddy; and of course I can't

take upon myself to answer for Miss Paget, who may or may not be a good

girl. She comes of a very bad stock, however; and I am bound to remember

that. Some people think that you can't give a girl too much liberty. My

ideas lean the other way. I think you can't take too much care of a very

pretty girl whom you are bound by duty to protect."

All this sounded very noble and very conscientious. It sounded thus even

to Mrs. Woolper, who in her intercourse with Philip Sheldon could never

quite divest herself of one appalling memory. That memory was the death

of Tom Halliday, and the horrible thoughts and fears that had for a time

possessed her mind in relation to that death. The shadow of that old

ghastly terror sometimes came between her and Mr. Sheldon, even now,

though she had long ago assured herself that the terror had been alike

groundless and unreasonable.

"Didn't I see my own nephew carried off by a fever twice as sudden as the

fever that carried off poor Mr. Halliday?" she said to herself; "and am I

to think horrid things of him as I nursed a baby, because a cup of greasy

beef-tea turned my stomach?"

Convinced by such reasoning as this that she had done her master a

grievous wrong, and grateful for the timely shelter afforded in her old

age, Mrs. Woolper felt that she could not do too much in her benefactor's

service. She had already shown herself a clever managing housekeeper; had

reformed abuses, and introduced a new system of care and economy

below-stairs, to the utter bewilderment of poor Georgy, for whom the

responsibilities of the gothic villa had been an overwhelming burden.

Georgy was not particularly grateful to the energetic old Yorkshirewoman

who had taken this burden off her hands, but she was submissive.

"I never felt myself much in the house, my dear," she said to Lotta; "but

I am sure since Ann Woolper has been here I have felt myself a cipher."

Mrs. Woolper, naturally sharp and observant, was not slow to perceive

that Mr. Sheldon was abnormally anxious about his stepdaughter. She

ascribed this anxiety to a suspicious nature, an inherent distrust of

other people on the part of her master, and in some measure to his

ignorance of womankind.

"He seems to think that she'd run away and get married on the sly, at a

word from that young man; but he doesn't know what a dear innocent soul

she is, and how sorry she'd be to displease any one that's kind to her. I

don't know anything about Miss Paget. She's more stand-offish than our

own Miss, though she is little better than a genteel kind of servant;

but she seems fair-spoken enough. As to our Miss, bless her dear heart!

she wants no watching, I'll lay. But I daresay those City folks, with

their stocks going up and going down, and always bringing about the ruin

of somebody or other, go which way they will, get their poor heads so

muddled with figures that they can't believe there's such a thing as

honesty in the world."

This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's evening musing in the snug little

housekeeper's room at the Lawn. It was a very comfortable little room,

and held sacred to Mrs. Woolper; the three young females, and the boy in

buttons, who formed Mr. Sheldon's in-door establishment, preferring the

license of the kitchen to the strict etiquette of the housekeeper's room.

This apartment, as well as every other room in the stockbroker's house,

bore the stamp of prosperity. A comfortable easy-chair reposed the limbs

of Mrs. Woolper; a bright little fire burned in a bright little grate,

and its ruddy light was reflected in a bright little fender. Prints of

the goody class adorned the walls; and a small round table, with a

somewhat gaudy cover, supported Mrs. Woolper's work-box and family Bible,

both of which she made it a point of honour to carry about with her, and

to keep religiously, through good fortune and through evil fortune;

neither of which, however, afforded her much employment. She felt herself

to be much nearer grace with the family Bible by her side than she would

have been without it; she felt, indeed, that the maintenance and due

exhibition of the family Bible was in itself a kind of religion. But that

she should peruse its pages was not in the bond. Her eyes were old and

weak--sharp enough to discover the short-comings of Mr. Sheldon's young

maid-servants, but too feeble even for long-primer.

As she looked round that snug little chamber of an evening, when her

day's labours were ended, and her own particular Britannia-metal tea-pot

was basking in the fender, her own special round of toast frizzling on

the trivet, she was very grateful to the man to whom she owed these

comforts.

"What should I be but for him?" she asked herself with a shudder; for

the vision of that darksome abode shut in by high black walls--the

metropolitan workhouse--arose before her. She did not know what

difficulties would have barred her entrance even to that dreary

asylum; she only thought of the horrors of that sanctuary, and she

blessed her master for the benevolence that had accepted the service

of her failing hands.

This was the servant on whom Philip Sheldon relied. He saw that she was

grateful, and that she was ready to serve him with an almost slavish

devotion. He knew that she had suspected him in the past, and he saw that

she had outlived her suspicion.

"There is a statute of limitations to these things as well as for debt,"

he said to himself. "A man can live down anything, if he knows what he

is about."

CHAPTER II.

FIRM AS A BOOK.

After that midnight interview between the two girls in Miss Halliday's

bedroom, life went very smoothly at the gothic villa for two or three

days, during which the impulsive Charlotte, being forbidden to talk

openly of the change in her friend's position, was fain to give vent to

her feelings by furtive embraces and hand-squeezings, sly nods and

meaning becks, and mischievous twinkling of her arch grey eyes.

She talked of Valentine more than ever now, feeling herself at liberty to

sing what paeans she pleased in praise of her hero, now that her friend

had also a fitting subject for paeans.

"And now it's your turn to talk of M. Lenoble, dear," she would say

naively, when she had entertained Diana with the minute details of her

last conversation with her lover, or a lively sketch of the delights of

that ideal cottage which she loved to furnish and unfurnish in accordance

with the new fancy of the hour.

Diana was pleased to listen to her girlish talk: to hang and rehang the

ideal draperies, to fill and refill the ideal bookcase, to plan and

replan the arrangements of that ideal existence which was to be all joy

and love and harmony; but when her turn came, and she was asked to be

rapturous about her own lover, she could say nothing: that which she felt

was too deep for words. The thought of her lover was strange to her; the

fact of his love was mysterious and wonderful. She could not talk of him

with the customary frivolous school-girl talk; and love for him had so

newly taken root in her heart that there were as yet no blossoms to be

gathered from that magical plant.

"Don't ask me to talk of him, Lotta, dear;" she said. "I am not yet sure

that I love him; I only feel that it is sweet to be loved by him. I think

Providence must have sent him to me in pity for my desolation."

This was almost the same fancy that had occurred to Susan Meynell

five-and-thirty years before this time, when Gustave the first had

rescued her from the suicide's unrepentable sin.

That chivalrous turn of mind which was hereditary in the race of Lenoble

predisposed these men to pity loneliness and beauty, weakness and sorrow.

This pity for helplessness may have been indeed only an element of their

exceeding strength. Was not the rescue of weaklings and women an

unfailing attribute in the mighty men of old? Who so prompt as Hercules

to fly to the rescue of Hesione? Who so swift as Perseus to save

Andromeda? And what sea-monster more terrible than loneliness and

poverty?

In a few days there came another letter from Captain Paget, containing a

fresh summons to Omega Street.

"Lenoble positively returns to Normandy to-morrow," he wrote, "to see his

girls, and, no doubt, break the news of his approaching marriage. He much

wants to see you, and, as I have forbidden his calling on you at the

Lawn, can only meet you here. He is to drink tea with me at the usual

time to-morrow evening, and I shall expect to see you early in the

afternoon."

This afforded an opportunity for that introduction to which Miss Halliday

looked forward with so much interest.

"If Mr. Sheldon and your mamma will let you come with me this afternoon,

dear, I shall be very pleased to take you," said Diana; and she felt that

she would appear less in the character of a lamb led to the slaughter if

she could go to meet her betrothed accompanied by Charlotte.

But in this matter both the young ladies were doomed to disappointment.

Mr. Sheldon showed himself a social Draco in all things relating to his

stepdaughter. Being forbidden to reveal the existence of Gustave Lenoble,

Charlotte could only urge a frivolous desire to accompany her friend in a

pilgrimage dictated by filial duty. To the practical mind of Philip

Sheldon this desire appeared altogether absurd and unreasonable, and he

did not hesitate to express himself to that effect in a _tete-a-tete_

with his stepdaughter.

"What good on earth can you do by going to see a gouty old man, who has

his own daughter to dance attendance upon him?" asked Mr. Sheldon.

"Really, Charlotte, I am surprised to hear such a proposition from a

girl of your good sense. Miss Paget is your companion, not your visitor.

It is her duty to indulge your whims, but it is not your place to give

way to hers."

"But this is a whim of mine, papa; I should really like to spend the

afternoon at Chelsea. It would be a change, you know."

Mr. Sheldon looked at his stepdaughter with a sharp and searching gaze, a

gaze in which there was suspicion as well as curiosity.

"It is a very discreditable whim for a young lady in your position,"

he said sternly; "and I beg that such a proposition may not be made to

me again."

This was decisive. Charlotte submitted, and Diana went alone to Omega

Street. She found Gustave waiting for her. He proposed a walk, and

Captain Paget was enthusiastic upon the subject of fresh air, and the

benefits arising therefrom. So the lovers went out in the bleak winter

afternoon, and wandered in the dreary Pimlico region as far as St.

James's Park--Gustave delighted to have Diana's hand upon his arm, and

Diana almost bewildered by a sense of happiness, which seemed unreal by

reason of its very novelty.

Gustave was all enthusiasm, full of plans for the future. He would have

had the marriage take place immediately, if such a thing had been

possible; but Diana showed him that it would not be possible. Her first

duty was to the only friends she had ever known. Gustave argued the point

resolutely for nearly an hour, during which time they made their way to

the very gates of St. James's Park, but Diana was more resolute still.

"What a tyrannical wife I shall have by-and-by!" said Gustave. "I think

you care for these Sheldons more than for me, Diane."

"These Sheldons have been so good to me in the past."

"And I mean to be so good to you in the future," answered Gustave. "You

shall be the happiest wife in Normandy, if a foolish doting husband's

devotion can make you happy."

"What have I done to deserve so much devotion?" Diana murmured

wonderingly.

"What have you done? Nothing, less than nothing. You will not even run

the hazard of offending your family of Sheldon in order to make me happy.

But Fate has said, 'At the feet of that girl with the dark eyes and pale

proud face shall poor Lenoble of Cotenoir put down his heart.' Do you

know what I said to myself when I saw you first in the little parlour

yonder? Ah, no! How should you guess? 'She is there,' said I; 'behold

her! It is thy destiny, Lenoble, on which thou gazest!' And thou, love,

wert calm and voiceless as Fate. Quiet as the goddess of marble before

which the pagans offered their sacrifices, across whose cold knees they

laid their rich garments. I put my treasures in your lap, my love; my

heart, my hopes,--all the treasures I had to offer."

This was all very sweet, but there was a sting even mingled with that

sweetness. Diana told herself that love like this should only be offered

on the purest shrine; and when she remembered the many stains upon her

father's honour, it seemed to her that a part of the shame must needs

cleave to her.

"Gustave," she said presently, after an absent meditative mood, from

which her lover had vainly tried to beguile her, "does it not seem to you

that there is something foolish in this talk of love and confidence

between you and me; and that all your promises have been a little too

lightly made? What do you know of me? You see me sitting in my father's

room, and because my eyes happen to please you, or for some reason as

foolish as that, you ask me to be your wife. I might have been one of the

worst of women."

"You might have been?--yes, dear, but you are not. And if you had been,

Gustave Lenoble would not have flung his heart into your lap, even if

your eyes had been sweeter than they are. We impulsive people are people

of quick perceptions, and know what we are doing better than our

reflective friends imagine. I did not need to be an hour in your company,

dear love, in order to know that you are noble and true. There are tones

in the voice, there are expressions of the face, that tell these things

better than words can tell them; for, you see, words can lie, while tones

and looks are apt to be true. Yes, my angel, I knew you from that first

night. My heart leapt across all conventional barriers, and found its way

straight to yours."

"I can see that you think much better of me than I deserve; but even

supposing you not to be deceived as to myself, I fear you are much

deceived as to my surroundings."

"I know that your father is poor, and that the burden of his poverty

weighs heavily on you. That is enough for me to know."

"No, M. Lenoble; it is not enough for you to know. If I am to be your

wife, I will not enter your family as an impostor. I told you the truth

about myself the other day when you questioned me, and I am bound to tell

you the truth about my father."

And then she told him, in the plainest frankest language, the story of

her father's life. She inflicted no unnecessary shame on Captain Paget;

she made no complaint of her neglected childhood and joyless youth; but

she told Gustave that her father had been an adventurer, keeping doubtful

company, and earning his bread by doubtful means.

"I hope and believe that if a peaceful home could be secured for his

declining years, he would live the rest of his life like a gentleman and

a Christian; and that, the bitter struggle for existence being ended, he

would be sorry for the past. I doubt if the sense of shame ever deserted

him when he was living that wretched wandering life, leaving debts and

difficulties behind him everywhere--always harassed and hunted by

creditors, who had good cause to be angry. Yes, Gustave, I do believe

that if it should please Providence to give my father a peaceful home at

last, he will be thankful for God's mercy, and will repent the sins of

life. And now I have told you the kind of heritage I can bring my

husband."

"My dear love, I will accept the heritage, for the sake of her who brings

it. I never meant to be less than a son to your father; and if he is not

the best of fathers, as regards the past, we will try to make him a

decent kind of father as regards the future. I have long understood that

Captain Paget is something--ever so little--of an adventurer. It was the

pursuit of fortune that brought him to me; and without knowing it, he

brought me my fortune in the shape of his daughter."

Diana blushed as she remembered that Captain Paget had not been so

innocent of any design in this matter as the Frenchman imagined.

"And you will receive even papa for my sake?" asked Diana.

"With all my heart."

"Ah, you are indeed a generous lover!"

"A lover who is not generous is--bah! there is nothing in creation so

mean as the wretch whom love does not render generous. When one sees the

woman whom Fate intends for one's wife, is one to stop to inquire the

character of her father, her mother, her sister, her cousin?--for there

is no stopping when you begin that. A man who loves makes no inquiries.

If he finds his jewel in the gutter, he picks it out of the mud and

carries it away in his bosom, too proud of his treasure to remember where

he found it; always provided that the jewel is no counterfeit, but the

real gem, fit for a king's crown. And my diamond is of the purest water.

By-and-by we will try to drain the gutter--that is to say, we will try to

pay those small debts of which you speak, to lodging-house keepers, and

tradesmen who have trusted your father."

"You would pay papa's debts!" cried Diana in amazement.

"But why not? All these little debts, the thought of which is so bitter

to you, might be discharged for two or three thousand pounds. Your father

tells me I am to be very rich by-and-by."

"My father tells you! Ah, then, you have allowed him to involve you in

some kind of speculation!"

"He has involved me in no speculation, and in no risk that two or three

hundred pounds will not cover."

"The whole business seems very mysterious, Gustave."

"Perhaps; it has to do with a secret which I am pledged to keep. I will

not allow your father to lead me into any quagmire of speculation,

believe me, dear one."

After this they went back to Omega Street in the winter gloaming, and

Diana loved and admired this man with all her heart and mind. A new life

lay before her, very bright and fair. There, where had been only the

barren desert, was now a fair landscape, shining in the sunlight of hope.

"Do you think your children will ever love me, Gustave?" she asked, not

without some sense of wonder that this impulsive light-hearted lover

should be the owner of children. She fancied that a responsibility so

grave as paternity must needs have impressed some stamp of solemnity upon

the man who bore it.

"Ever love thee!" cried Gustave. "Child, they will adore thee. They ask

only some one to love. Their hearts are gardens of flowers; and thou

shalt gather the flowers. But wilt thou be happy at Cotenoir, thou? It is

somewhat sad, perhaps--the grave old chateau with the long sombre

corridors. But thou shalt choose new furniture, new garnitures at Rouen,

and we will make all bright and gay, like the heart of thy affianced. Thou

wilt not be dull?"

"Dull, with you and yours! I shall thank God for my happy home day and

night, as I never thought to thank Him a few months ago, when I was

dissatisfied, wicked, tired of my life."

"And when you thought of that other one? Ah, how he was an imbecile, that

other one! But thou wilt never think of him again; it is a dream that is

past," said M. Lenoble.

That self-confidence which was an attribute of his sanguine nature

rendered the idea of a rival not altogether unpleasant to him. He was

gratified by the idea of his own victory, and the base rival's

annihilation.

"Diane, I want to show thee the home that is to be thine," he said

presently. "Your Sheldon family must give thee at least a holiday, if

they refuse to let thee go altogether. Thou wilt come to Normandy with

thy father. He is coming for a week or two, now that his gout is better.

I want to show thee Cotenoir--and Beaubocage, the place where my father

was born. It will seem dreary, perhaps, to thine English eyes; but to me

it is very dear."

"Nothing that is dear to you shall appear dreary to me," said Diana.

By this time they had arrived at Omega Street. Again Miss Paget made tea

for her lover. Strange to say, the operation seemed to grow more

agreeable with every repetition. While taking his tea from the hands of

his beloved, Gustave pressed the question of Diana's visit to Normandy.

"About her Sheldon family she is adamant," he said to Captain Paget, who

sipped his tea and smiled at the lovers with the air of an aristocratic

patriarch. "There is to be no marriage till it pleases Mrs. Sheldon to

set her free. I consent to this only as man must consent to the

inevitable; but I say to her, can she not come to Normandy for a

fortnight--say but one short fortnight--to see her home? She will come

with you. She has but to ask a holiday of her friends, and it is done."

"Of course," exclaimed the Captain, "she shall come with me. If

necessary, I myself will ask it of Sheldon.--But it will be best not to

mention where you are going, Diana. There are reasons, best known to our

friend Gustave and myself, which render secrecy advisable just at

present. You can say Rouen. That is quite near enough to the mark to come

within the limits of truth," added Horatio, with the tone of a man who

had never quite outstepped those limits. "Yes, Rouen. And you will come

with me."

"With us," said Gustave. "I will put off my journey for a day or two for

the sake of going with you. You have to meet Fleurus in Rouen haven't

you?"

"Yes; he is to be there on the fifth of March, and this is the last day

of February. I had a letter from him this morning. All goes swimmingly."

Diana wondered what it could be which went swimmingly; but she was

obliged to content herself with her lover's assurance that he had not

allowed her father to involve him in any kind of speculation.

CHAPTER III.

AGAINST WIND AND TIDE.

Between Philip Sheldon and his brother there was at this time a state of

feeling somewhat akin to the relations between a subjugated country and

its conqueror. The vanquished is fain to accept whatever the victor is

pleased to give, though discontent and impotent rage may be gnawing his

entrails. George Sheldon had been a loser in that game in which the

Haygarthian inheritance was the stake. He had held good cards, and had

played them with considerable cleverness; but no play could prevail

against his antagonist's ace of trumps. The ace of trumps was Charlotte

Halliday; and as to his mode and matter of playing this card, Mr. Sheldon

was for the present profoundly mysterious.

"I have known a good many inscrutable cards in my time," the solicitor of

Gray's Inn observed to his elder brother, in the course of fraternal

converse; "but I think for inscrutability you put the topper on the lot.

What do you expect to get out of this Haygarth estate? Come, Phil, let us

have your figures in plain English. I am to have a fifth--that's all

signed and sealed. But how about your share? What agreement have you got

from Miss Halliday?"

"None."

"None!"

"What would the world think of me if I extorted money, or the promise of

money, from my wife's daughter? Do you think I could enforce any deed

between her and me?"

"Ah, I see; you go in for respectability. And you are going to leave the

settlement of your claims to your stepdaughter's generosity. You will let

her marry Hawkehurst, with her hundred thousand pounds; and then you will

say to those two, 'Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst, be so kind as to hand over my

share of the plunder.' That is not _like_ you, Phil."

"Perhaps you will be good enough to spare yourself the trouble of

speculating about my motives. Go your way, and leave me to go mine."

"But this is a case in which I have an interest. If Charlotte marries

Hawkehurst, I don't see how you are to profit, to any extent that you

would care about, by the Haygarth fortune. But, on the other hand, if she

should die unmarried, without a will, the money would go to your wife. O

my God! Philip Sheldon, is _THAT_ what you mean?"

The question was so sudden, the tone of horror in which it was spoken so

undisguised, that Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker was for one moment thrown

off his guard. His breath thickened; he tried to speak, but his dry lips

could shape no word. It was only one moment that he faltered. In the next

he turned upon his brother angrily, and asked what he meant.

"You've been promised _your_ reward," he said; "leave me to look after

mine. You'll take those papers round to Greenwood and Greenwood; they

want to talk to you about them."

"Yes, I'll take the papers."

Greenwood and Greenwood were Mr. Sheldon's own solicitors--a firm of some

distinction, on whose acumen and experience the stockbroker placed

implicit reliance. They were men of unblemished respectability, and to

them Mr. Sheldon had confided the care of his stepdaughter's interests,

always reserving the chief power in his own hands. These gentlemen

thought well of the young lady's prospects, and were handling the case in

that slow and stately manner which marks the handling of such cases by

eminent firms of the slow-and-stately class.

Mr. Sheldon wished his brother good-day, and was about to depart, when

George planted himself suddenly before the door.

"Look you here, Phil," he said, with an intensity of manner that was by

no means common to him; "I want to say a few words to you, and I will say

them. There was an occasion, ten years ago, on which I ought to have

spoken out, and didn't. I have never ceased to regret my cowardice. Yes,

by Jove! I hate myself for it; and there are times when I feel as if my

share in that wretched business was almost as bad as yours."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Of course not. That's your text, and you'll stick to it. But you _do_

know what I mean, and you shall know what I mean, if plain words can tell

you. You and I had a friend, Phil. He was a good friend to me, and I

liked him as much as a man of the world can afford to like anybody. If I

had been down in the world, and had asked him for a hundred pounds to

give me a new start in life, I think he'd have said, 'George, here's a

cheque for you.' _That's_ my notion of a friend. And yet I stood by that

man's deathbed, and saw him sinking, and knew what ailed him, and didn't

stretch out my hand to save him."

"Be so good as to move away from that door," said Mr. Sheldon, livid to

the lips with smothered fury, but able to put on a bold front

nevertheless. "I didn't come here to listen to rhodomontade of this kind,

or to bandy words with you. Get out of my way."

"Not till I've said my say. There shall be no rhodomontade this time. I

stood by and saw my best friend murdered--by you. I kept my counsel for

your sake, and when you had made your fortune--by his death--I asked you

for a little money. You know how much you gave me, and how graciously you

gave it. If you had given me twenty times the sum you gained by Tom

Halliday's death, I would give it back, and twenty times as much again,

to bring him back to life, and to feel that I had never aided and abetted

a murderer. Yes, by God, I would! though I'm not straitlaced or

over-scrupulous at the best of times. But that's past, and all the money

in the Bank of England wouldn't undo what you did in Fitzgeorge Street.

But if you try on any such tricks with Tom Halliday's daughter, if

_that's_ the scheme you've hatched for getting hold of this money, as

surely as we two live, I'll let in the light upon your doings, and save

the girl whose father you murdered. I will, Philip, let come what may.

You can't get _me_ out of the way when it suits you, you see. _I know

you._ That's the best antidote against your medicines."

"If you'll be so good as to say these things on 'Change, I can bring an

action for libel, or get you put into a madhouse. There's no good in

saying them here."

Philip Sheldon, even in this crisis, was less agitated than his brother,

being of a harder nature, and less subject to random impulses of good or

evil. He caught his accuser by the collar of his coat, and flung him

violently from the doorway. Thus ended his visit to Gray's Inn.

Boldly as he had borne himself during the interview, he went to his

office profoundly depressed and dispirited.

"So I am to have him against me?" he said to himself. "He can do me no

real harm; but he can harass and annoy me. If he should drop any hint to

Hawkehurst?--but he'll scarcely do that. Perhaps I've ridden him a little

too roughly in the past. And yet if I'd been smoother, where would his

demands have ended? No; concession in these cases means ruin."

He shut himself in his office, and sat down to his desk to confront

his difficulties. For a long time the bark which was freighted with

Philip Sheldon's fortunes had been sailing in troubled waters. He had

been an unconscious disciple of Lord Bacon, inasmuch as the boldness

inculcated by that philosopher had been the distinguishing characteristic

of his conduct in all the operations of life. As a speculator, his

boldness had served him well. Adventures from which timid spirits shrunk

appalled had brought golden harvests to this daring gamester. When some

rich argosy upon the commercial ocean fired her minute-guns, and sent up

signals of distress, menaced by the furious tempest, lifted high on the

crest of mountainous waves, below which, black and fathomless, yawn the

valleys of death,--a frail ark hovering above the ravening jaws of

all-devouring Poseidon,--Philip Sheldon was among that chosen band of

desperate wreckers who dared to face the storm, and profit by the

tempest and terror. From such argosies, while other men watched and

waited for a gleam of sunlight on the dark horizon, Mr. Sheldon had

obtained for himself goodly merchandise. The debenture of railways that

were in bad odour; Unitas Bank shares, immediately after the discovery of

gigantic embezzlements by Swillenger, the Unitas-Bank secretary; the

Mole-and-Burrow railway stock, when the Mole-and-Burrow scheme was as yet

in the clouds, and the wiseacres prognosticated its failure; the shares

in foreign loans, which the Rothschilds were buying _sub rosa_;--these,

and such as these, had employed Mr. Sheldon's capital; and from the

skilful manipulation of capital thus employed, Mr. Sheldon had trebled

the fortune secured by his alliance with Tom Halliday's widow.

It had been the stockbroker's fate to enter the money market at a time

when fortunes were acquired with an abnormal facility. He had made the

most of his advantages, and neglected none of his opportunities. He had

seized Good Fortune by the forelock, and not waited to find the

harridan's bald and slippery crown turned to him in pitiless derision. He

had made only one mistake--and that he made in common with many of his

fellow-players in the great game of speculation always going on eastward

of Temple Bar--he had mistaken the abnormal for the normal: he had

imagined that these splendid opportunities were the natural evolvements

of an endless sequence of everyday events; and when the sequence was

abruptly broken, and when last of the seven fat kine vanished off the

transitory scene of life, to make way for a dismal succession of lean

kine, there was no sanguine youngster newly admitted to the sacred

privileges of "The House" more astounded by the change than Mr. Sheldon.

The panic came like a thief in the night, and it found Mr. Sheldon a

speculator for the rise. The Melampuses and Amphiaraeuses of the Stock

Exchange had agreed in declaring that a man who bought into consols at 90

_must_ see his capital increased; and what was true of this chief among

securities was of course true of other securities. The panic came, and

from 90, consols declined dismally, slowly, hopelessly, to 85-1/2;

securities less secure sank with a rapidity corresponding with their

constitutional weakness. As during the ravages of an epidemic the weaker

are first to fall victims to the destroyer, so while this fever raged on

'Change, the feeble enterprises, the "risky" transactions, sank at an

appalling rate, some to total expiry. The man who holds a roaring lion by

the tail could scarcely be worse off than the speculator in these

troublous times. To let go is immediate loss, to hold on for a certain

time might be redemption, could one but know the exact moment in which it

would be wise to let go. But to hold on until the beast grows more and

more furious, and then to let go and be eaten up alive, is what many men

did in that awful crisis.

If Philip Sheldon had accepted his first loss, and been warned by the

first indication that marked the turning of the tide, he would have been

a considerable loser; but he would not accept his loss, and he would not

be warned by that early indication. He had implicit belief in his own

cleverness; and he fancied if every other bark in that tempest-tossed

ocean foundered and sank, his boat might ride triumphantly across the

harbour-bar, secure by virtue of his science and daring as a navigator.

It was not till he had seen a small fortune melt away in the payment of

contango, that he consented to the inevitable. The mistakes of one year

devoured the fruits of nine years' successful enterprise, and the Philip

Sheldon of this present year was no richer than the man who had stood by

Tom Halliday's bedside and waited the advent of the equal foot that knows

no difference between the threshold of kingly palace or pauper refuge.

Not only did he find himself as poor a man as in that hateful stage of

his existence--to remember which was a dull dead pain even to _him_--but

a man infinitely more heavily burdened. He had made for himself a certain

position, and the fall from that must needs be a cruel and damaging fall,

the utter annihilation of all his chances in life.

The stockbroker's fitful slumbers at this time began to be haunted by the

vision of a black board fixed against the wall of a public resort, a

black board on which appeared his own name. In what strange places

feverish dreams showed him this hideous square of painted deal!--Now it

was on the walls of the rooms he lived in; now on the door of a church,

like Luther's propositions; now at a street-corner, where should have

been the name of the street; now inky-black against the fair white

headstone of his own grave. Miserable dream, miserable man, for whom the

scraping together of sordid dross was life's only object, and who, in

losing money, lost all!

This agonizing consciousness of loss and of close-impending disgrace was

the wolf which this Spartan stockbroker concealed beneath his waistcoat

day after day, while the dull common, joyless course of his existence

went on; and his shallow wife smiled at him from the opposite side of his

hearth, more interested in a new stitch for her crotchet or berlin-wool

work than by the inner life of her husband; and Charlotte and her lover

contemplated existence from their own point of view, and cherished their

own dreams and their own hopes, and were, in all things, as far away from

the moody meditator as if they had been natives of Upper India.

The ruin which impended over the unlucky speculator was not immediate,

but it was not far off; the shadow of it already wrapped him in a

twilight obscurity. His repute as a clever and a safe man had left him.

He was described now as a daring man; and the wiseacres shook their heads

as they talked of him.

"One of the next to go will be Sheldon," said the wiseacres; but in these

days of commercial epidemic there was no saying who would be the first to

go. It was the end of the world in little. One was taken, and another

left. The Gazette overran its customary column like a swollen river, and

flooded a whole page of the Times newspaper; and men looked to the lists

of names in the Wednesday and Saturday papers as to the trump of

archangels sounding the destruction of the universe.

For some time the bark in which Mr. Sheldon had breasted those turbulent

waters had been made of paper. This was nothing. Paper boats were the

prevailing shipping in those waters; but Captain Sheldon's bark needed

refitting, and the captain feared a scarcity of paper, or, worse still,

the awful edict issued from some commercial Areopagus that for him there

should be no more paper.

Once before, Mr. Sheldon had found himself face to face with ruin

complete and irredeemable. When all common expedients had been exhausted,

and his embarrassments had become desperate, he had found a desperate

expedient, and had extricated himself from those embarrassments. The time

had come in which a new means of extrication must be found as desperate

as the last, if need were. As Philip Sheldon had faced the situation

before, he faced it now--unshrinkingly, though with a gloomy anger

against destiny. It was hard for him that such a thing should have to be

repeated. If he pitied anybody, he pitied himself; and this kind of

compassion is very common with this kind of character. Do not the Casket

letters show us--if we may trust them to show us anything--that Mary

Stuart was very sorry for herself when she found herself called upon to

make an end of Darnley? In Mr. Swinburne's wonderful study in morbid

anatomy, there are perhaps no finer touches than those which reveal the

Queen's selfish compassion for her own heartlessness.

CHAPTER IV.

DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY.

Diana informed Mrs. Sheldon of her father's wish that she should leave

Bayswater. Before doing this, she had obtained the Captain's consent to

the revelation of her engagement to be married.

"I don't like to leave them in a mysterious manner, papa," she said. "I

have told Charlotte a good deal already, under a promise of secrecy; but

I should like to tell Mrs. Sheldon that there is a real reason for my

leaving her."

"Very well, my love, since you are so amazingly squeam--honourable,"

interposed the Captain, remembering how much depended on his daughter's

marriage, and what a very difficult person he had found her. "Yes, my

dear, of course; I respect your honourable feeling; and--er--yes--you may

tell Mrs. Sheldon--and that of course includes Mr. Sheldon, since the

lady is but an inoffensive cipher--that you are about to be married--to a

French gentleman of position. You will, of course, be obliged to mention

his name, and then will arise the question as to where and how you met

him; and, upon my word, it's confoundedly awkward that you should insist

on enlightening these people. You see, my dear girl, what I want to

avoid, for the present, is any chance of collision between the Sheldons

and Lenoble."

"Papa!" exclaimed Diana, impatiently, "why must there be all this

scheming?"

"O, very well, Miss Paget; tell them what you like!" cried the Captain,

aggravated beyond endurance by such inherent perversity. "All I can say

is, that a young woman who quarrels with her bread-and-butter is likely

to come to dry bread; and very little of that, perhaps. I wash my hands

of the business. Tell them what you like."

"I will not tell them more than I feel to be actually necessary, papa,"

the young lady replied calmly. "I do not think Mr. Sheldon will trouble

himself about M. Lenoble. He seems very much occupied by his own

affairs."

"Humph! Sheldon seems harassed, anxious, does he?"

"Well, yes, papa; I have thought so for the last few months. If I may

venture to judge by the expression of his face, as he sits at home in the

evening, reading the paper, or staring at the fire, I am sure he has many

anxieties--troubles even. Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte do not appear to

notice these things. They are accustomed to see him quiet and reserved,

and they don't perceive the change in him as I do."

"O, there is a change, is there?"

"Yes, a decided change."

"Why the deuce couldn't you tell me this before!"

"Why should I tell you that Mr. Sheldon seems anxious? I should not have

told you now, if you had not appeared to dread his interference in our

affairs. I can't help observing these things; but I don't want to play

the part of a spy."

"No, you're so infernally punct--so delicate-minded, my love," said the

Captain, pulling himself up suddenly, for the second time. "Forgive me if

I was impatient just now. You look at these things from a higher point of

view than that of a battered old man of the world like me. But if you

should see anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct on another

occasion, my love, I should be obliged to you if you would be more

communicative. He and I have been allied in business, you see, and it is

important for me to know these things."

"I have not seen anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct, papa; I

have only seen him thoughtful and dispirited. And I suppose anxieties are

common to every man of business."

Georgy received Miss Paget's announcement with mingled lamentations and

congratulations.

"I am sure I am heartily glad for your sake, Diana," she said; "but what

we shall do without you, I don't know. Who is to see to the drawing-room

being dusted every morning, when you are gone? I'm sure I tremble for the

glass shades. Don't imagine I'm not pleased to think you should settle in

life advantageously, my love. I'm not so selfish as that; though I will

say that there never was a girl with more natural talent for making-up

pretty little caps than you. The one I have on has been admired by

everybody. Even Ann Woolper this morning, when I was going into the

butcher's book with her--for I insist upon going into the butcher's book

with her weekly, whether she likes it or not; though the way that man

puts down the items is so bewildering that I feel myself a perfect baby

in her hands,--even Ann admired it, and said how young-looking it is. And

then she brought up the time in Fitzgeorge Street, and poor Tom's

illness, and almost upset me for the rest of the day. And now, dear, let

me offer you my sincere congratulations. Of course, you know that you

would always have had a home with me; but service, or at least

companionship, is no inheritance, as the proverb says; and for your own

sake I'm very glad to think that you are going to have a house of your

own. And now tell me what he is like, Monsieur what's-his-name?"

Mrs. Sheldon had been told, but had not remembered the name. Her great

anxiety, as well as Charlotte's, was to know what manner of man the

affianced lover was. If Diana's future happiness had been contingent on

the shape of her husband's nose, or the colour of his eyes, these two

ladies could not have been more anxious upon the subject.

"Has he long eyelashes, and a dreamy look in his eyes, like Valentine?"

asked Charlotte, secretly convinced that her lover had a copyright in

these personal graces.

"Does he wear whiskers?" asked Georgy. "I remember, when I was quite a

girl, and went to parties at Barlingford, being struck by Mr. Sheldon's

whiskers. And I was quite offended with papa, who was always making

sarcastic remarks, for calling them mutton-chop whiskers; but they

really were the shape of mutton-cutlets at that time. He wears them

differently now."

Mrs. Sheldon branched off into a disquisition on whiskers, and Diana

escaped from the task of describing her lover. She could not have

described him to Georgy.

By-and-by she asked permission to leave Bayswater for a fortnight, in

order to see her lover's home and friends.

"I will come back to you, and stay as long as you like, dear Mrs.

Sheldon," she said, "and make you as many caps as you please. And I will

make them for you by and by, when I am living abroad, and send them over

to you in a bandbox. It will be a great delight to me to be of some

little service to a friend who has been so kind. And perhaps you will

fancy the caps are prettier when they can boast of being French."

"You darling generous-minded girl! And you won't go away for a fortnight

and never come back again, will you, dear? I had a cook who did that, and

left me with a large dinner-party hanging over my head; and how I got

through it--with a strange man-cook, who charged a guinea, and used fresh

butter, at twentypence, a pound, as if it had been dirt, and two strange

men to wait--I don't know. It all seemed like a dream. And since then we

have generally had everything from the confectioner's; and I assure you,

to feel that you can wash your hands of the whole thing, and sit down at

the head of your table with your mind as free from care as if you were a

visitor, is worth all the expense."

Diana promised she would not behave like the cook; and two days after

this conversation left the London Bridge terminus with her father and

Gustave Lenoble.

Mr. Sheldon troubled himself very little about this departure. He was

informed of Miss Paget's intended marriage; and the information awakened

neither surprise nor interest in his heavily-burdened mind.

"A Frenchman, a friend of her father's!" he said; "some swindling

adventurer, no doubt," he thought. And this was as much consideration

as he could afford to bestow upon Miss Paget's love affairs at this

present time.

CHAPTER V.

ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE.

On the day after Miss Paget's departure Mr. Sheldon came home from the

City rather earlier than usual, and found Charlotte alone in the

drawing-room, reading a ponderous volume from Mudie of an instructive and

edifying character, with a view to making herself clever, in order that

she might better understand that prodigy of learning, Mr. Hawkehurst.

She was somewhat inclined to yawn over the big book, which contained a

graphic account of recent discoveries of an antiquarian nature. Her mind

was not yet attuned to the comprehension of the sublimer elements in such

discoveries. She saw only a dry as dust record of futile gropings in

desert sand for the traces of perished empires. Her imagination was not

cultivated to that point whereat the gift which Mr. Lewes calls "insight"

becomes the daily companion, nay, indeed, the ever-haunting and

nightmare-bringing influence of the dreamer. For her sands were only

sands, the stones were only stones. No splendour of fallen palaces, no

glory and pride of perished kings, no clash and clamour of vanished

courts, arose from those barren sands, with all their pomp and

circumstance, conjured into being by half a word on a broken pillar, or a

date upon a Punic monument. Miss Halliday looked up with a sigh of

fatigue as her stepfather came into the room. It was not a room that he

particularly affected, and she was surprised when he seated himself in

the easy-chair opposite her, and poked the fire, as if with the intention

of remaining.

"You shouldn't read by firelight, my dear," he said; "it is most

destructive to the eyesight."

"I dare say my sight will last my time, papa," the young lady replied

carelessly; "but it's very kind of you to think of it, and I won't read

any more."

Mr. Sheldon made no reply to this observation. He sat looking at the

fire, with that steady gaze which was habitual to him--the gaze of the

man who plans and calculates.

"My dear," he said by-and-by, "it seems that this money to which you may

or may not be entitled is more than we thought at first; in fact, it

appears that the sum is a considerable one. I have been, and still am,

particularly anxious to guard against disappointment on your part, as I

know the effect that such a disappointment is apt to produce upon a

person's life. The harassing slowness of Chancery proceedings is

proverbial; I am therefore especially desirous that you should not count

upon this money."

"I shall never do that, papa. I should certainly like a fine edition of

the Encyclopaedia Britannica for Valentine, by-and-by, as he says that is

essential for a literary man; and a horse, for people say literary men

ought to take horse exercise. But beyond that--"

"We need scarcely go into these details, my dear. I want you to

understand the broad facts of the case. While, on the one hand, our

success in obtaining the inheritance which we are about to claim for you

is uncertain, on the other hand the inheritance is large. Of course, when

I presented you with the sum of five thousand pounds, I had no idea of

this possible inheritance."

"O, of course not, papa."

"But I now find that there is such a possibility as your becoming

a--well--a rich woman."

"O papa!"

"In which case I may conclude that your mother would benefit in some

measure from your good fortune."

"Can you doubt that, papa? There should be no measure to her benefit from

any money obtained by me."

"I do not doubt that, my dear. And it is with that idea that I wish to

make a proposition to you--for your mother's possible advantage."

"I shall be happy to do anything you wish, papa."

"It must be done as a spontaneous act of your own, Charlotte, not in

accordance with any wish of mine."

"What is it that I am to do?" asked Charlotte.

"Well, my dear, you see it is agreed between us that if you do get this

money, your mother is certain to benefit considerably. But unhappily the

proceedings are likely to drag on for an indefinite time; and in the

course of that time it comes within the limits of possibility that your

decease may precede that of your mother."

"Yes, papa."

"In which case your mother would lose all hope of any such advantage."

"Of course, papa."

Charlotte could not help thinking that there was something sordid in this

discussion--this calculation of possible gain or loss contingent on her

fresh young life. But she concluded that it was the nature of business

men to see everything from a debased standpoint, and that Mr. Sheldon was

no more sordid than other men of his class.

"Well, papa?" she asked presently, after some moments of silence, during

which she and her stepfather had both been absorbed in the contemplation

of the fire.

"Well, my dear," replied Mr. Sheldon slowly, "I have been thinking that

the natural and easy way of guarding against all contingencies would be

by your effecting an insurance on your life in your mother's favour."

"No, no, papa!" cried Charlotte, with unwonted vehemence; "I would rather

do anything than that!"

"What can be your objection to such a very simple arrangement?"

"I dare say my objection seems foolish, childish even, papa; but I really

have a horror of life assurances. I always think of papa--my own poor

father, whom I loved so dearly. It seemed as if he put a price upon his

life for us. He was so anxious to insure his life--I remember hearing him

talk of it at Hyley, when I was a child--to make things straight, as he

said, for us; and, you see, very soon afterwards he died."

"But you can't suppose the insurance of his life had anything to do with

his death?"

"Of course not, I am not so childish as that; only--"

"Only you have a foolish lackadaisical prejudice against the only means

by which you can protect your mother against a contingency that is so

remote as to be scarcely worth consideration. Let it pass."

There was more anger in the tone than in the words. It was not that angry

tone, but the mention of her mother, that impressed Miss Halliday. She

began to consider that her objections were both foolish and selfish.

"If you really think I ought to insure my life, I will do so," she said

presently. "Papa did as much for those he loved; why should I be less

thoughtful of others?"

Having once brought Miss Halliday to this frame of mind, the rest was

easy. It was agreed between them that as Valentine Hawkehurst was to be

kept in ignorance of his betrothed's claim to certain moneys now in the

shadowy under-world of Chancery, so he must be kept in ignorance of the

insurance.

It was only one more secret, and Charlotte had learned that it was

possible to keep a secret from her lover.

"I suppose before we are married I shall able to tell him everything?"

she said.

"Certainly, my dear. All I want is to test his endurance and his

prudence. If the course of events proves him worthy of being trusted, I

will trust him."

"I am not afraid of that, papa."

"Of course not, my dear. But, you see, I have to protect your interests;

and I cannot afford to see this gentleman with your eyes. I am compelled

to be prudent."

The stockbroker sighed as he said this--a sigh of utter weariness.

Remorse was unknown to him; the finer fibres upon which that chord is

struck had not been employed in the fabrication of his heart. But there

is a mental fatigue which is a spurious kind of remorse, and has all the

anguish of the nobler feeling. It is an utter weariness and prostration

of spirit--a sickness of heart and mind--a bitter longing to lie down and

die--the weariness of a beaten hound rather than of a baffled man.

This was what Mr. Sheldon felt, as the threads of the web which he was

weaving multiplied, and grew daily and hourly more difficult of

manipulation. Success in the work which he had to do depended on so many

contingencies. Afar off glittered the splendid goal--the undisputed

possession of the late John Haygarth's hundred thousand pounds; but

between the schemer and that chief end and aim of all his plottings what

a sea of troubles! He folded his arms behind his head, and looked across

the girlish face of his companion into the shadow and the darkness. In

those calculations which were for ever working themselves out in this

man's brain, Charlotte Halliday was only one among many figures. She had

her fixed value in every sum; but her beauty, her youth, her innocence,

her love, her trust, made no unit of that fixed figure, nor weighed in

the slightest degree with him who added up the sum. Had she been old,

ugly, obnoxious, a creature scarcely fit to live, she would have

represented exactly the same amount in the calculations of Philip

Sheldon. The graces that made her beautiful were graces that he had no

power to estimate. He knew she was a pretty woman; but he knew also that

there were pretty women to be seen in any London street; and the

difference between his stepdaughter and the lowest of womankind who

passed him in his daily walks was to him little more than a social

prejudice.

The insurance business being once decided on, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in

putting it into execution. Although he made a point of secrecy as

regarded Mr. Hawkehurst, he went to work in no underhand manner, but

managed matters after a highly artistic and superior fashion. He took his

stepdaughter to the offices of Greenwood and Greenwood, and explained her

wishes to one of those gentlemen in her presence. If he dwelt a little

more on Miss Halliday's anxiety for her mother's pecuniary advantage than

his previous conversation with Miss Halliday warranted, the young lady

was too confiding and too diffident to contradict him. She allowed him to

state, or rather to imply, that the proposed insurance was her

spontaneous wish, an emanation of her anxious and affectionate heart, the

natural result of an almost morbid care for her mother's welfare.

Mr. Hargrave Greenwood, of Greenwood and Greenwood, seemed at first

inclined to throw cold water on the proposition, but after some little

debate, agreed that extreme caution would certainly counsel such a step.

"I should imagine there was no better life amongst the inhabitants of

London," he said, "than Miss Shel--pardon me--Miss Halliday's. But, as

the young lady herself suggests, 'in the midst of life we are--'; and, as

the young lady herself has observed, these things are--ahem--beyond

human foresight. If there were any truth in the aphorisms of poets, I

should say Miss Halliday cannot insure too quickly; for the remark of

Cowper--or, stay, I believe Pope--'whom the gods love die young,' might

very well be supposed to apply to so charming a young lady. Happily, the

secretaries of insurance offices know very little about the poets,

unless, indeed, Miss Halliday were to go to the Royal Widow's and

Orphan's Hope, the secretary of which is the author of dramas that may

fairly rank with the works of Knowles and Lytton."

Mr. Greenwood, an elderly gentleman of the ponderous and port-wine

school, laughed at his own small jokes, and took things altogether

pleasantly. He gave Mr. Sheldon a letter of introduction to the secretary

of his pet insurance company, the value of which to that gentleman was

considerable. Nor was this the only advantage derived from the interview.

The lawyer's approval of the transaction reassured Charlotte; and though

she had heard her own views somewhat misrepresented, she felt that an

operation which appeared wise in the sight of such a lawyer, standing on

such a Turkey hearthrug, commanding such gentlemanly-looking clerks as

those who came and went at Mr. Greenwood's bidding, must inevitably be a

proceeding at once prudent and proper.

The business of the insurance was not quite so easy as the interview with

the lawyer. The doctor to whom Miss Halliday was introduced seemed very

well satisfied with that young lady's appearance of health and spirits,

but in a subsequent interview with Mr. Sheldon asked several questions,

and shook his head gravely when told that her father had died at

thirty-seven years of age. But he looked less grave when informed that

Mr. Halliday had died of a bilious fever.

"Did Mr. Halliday die in London?" he asked.

"He did."

"I should like--ahem--if it were possible, to see the medical man who

attended him. These fevers rarely prove fatal unless there is some

predisposing cause."

"In this case there was none."

"You speak rather confidently, Mr. Sheldon, as a non-professional man."

"I speak with a certain amount of professional knowledge. I knew Tom

Halliday for many years."

Mr. Sheldon forebore to state that Tom Halliday had died in his house,

and had been attended by him. It is, perhaps, only natural that Philip

Sheldon, the stockbroker of repute, should wish to escape identification

with Philip Sheldon, the unsuccessful dentist of Bloomsbury.

After a little more conversational skirmishing, the confidential

physician of the Prudential Step Assurance Company agreed to consider

that Mr. Halliday's constitution had been in no manner compromised by his

early death, and to pass Charlotte's life. The motives for effecting the

insurance were briefly touched upon in Mr. Greenwood's letter of

introduction, and appeared very proper and feasible in the eyes of the

directors; so, after a delay of a few days, the young lady found herself

accepted, and Mr. Sheldon put away among his more important papers a

large oblong envelope, containing a policy of assurance on his

stepdaughter's life for five thousand pounds. He did not, however, stop

here, but made assurance doubly sure by effecting a second insurance upon

the same young life with the Widow's and Orphan's Hope Society, within a

few days of the first transaction.

Book the Sixth.

DIANA IN NORMANDY.

CHAPTER I.

AT COTENOIR.

Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 15, 186--.

My darling Lotta,--As you extorted from me a solemn pledge that I would

write you a full and detailed account of my adventures, I seat myself in

Mademoiselle Lenoble's pretty little turret-chamber, in the hope of

completing the first instalment of my work before papa or Gustave summons

me to prepare for a drive and visit to the Convent of the Sacred Heart,

which, I believe, has been planned for to-day.

What am I to tell you, dear, and how shall I begin my story? Let me

fancy myself sitting at your feet before your bedroom fire, and you

looking down at me with that pretty inquisitive look in your dear grey

eyes. Do you know that M. Lenoble's eyes are almost the colour of yours,

Lotta? You asked me a dozen questions about his eyes the other day, and I

could give you no clear description of them; but yesterday, as he stood

at the window looking out across the garden, I saw their real colour. It

is grey, a deep clear grey, and his lashes are dark, like yours. How

shall I begin? That is the grand difficulty! I suppose you will want to

know something even about the journey. Everything was very pleasant, in

spite of the cold blusterous March weather. Do you know what my last

journey was like, Lotta? It was the long dreary journey from Foretdechene

to St. Katharine's Wharf, when Mr. Hawkehurst advised and arranged my

return to England. I had been sitting quite alone in a balcony

overlooking the little town. It was after midnight, but the lights were

still burning: I can see the lamplit windows shining through the night

mist as I write this, and the sense of the hopeless misery of that time

comes back to me like the breath of some freezing wind. I can find no

words to tell you how desolate I was that night, or how hopeless.

I dared not think of my future life; or of the next day, that was to be

the beginning of that hopeless future. I was obliged to bind my thoughts

to the present and all its dreariness; and a kind of dull apathetic

feeling, which was too dull for despair, took possession of me that

night. While I was sitting there Mr. Hawkehurst came to me, and told me

that my father had become involved in a quarrel, under circumstances of a

very shameful nature, which I need not tell you, darling. He recommended

me to leave Foretdechene--indeed, almost insisted that I should do so. He

wanted to rescue me from that miserable life. Your lover had noble and

generous impulses even then, you see, dear; at his worst he was not all

bad, and needed only your gentle influence to purify and elevate his

character. He gave me all the money he possessed to pay the expenses of

my journey. Ah, what a dreary journey! I left Foretdechene in the chill

daybreak, and travelled third class, with dreadful Belgians who smelt of

garlic, to Antwerp. I slept at a very humble inn near the quay, and

started for England by the Baron Osy at noon next day. I cannot tell you

how lonely I felt on board the steamer. I had travelled uncomfortably

before, but never without my father and Valentine--and he had been always

kind to me. If we were shabbily dressed, and people thought ill of us, I

did not care. The spirit of Bohemianism must have been very strong with

me in those days. I remembered how we had sat together on the same boat

watching the sleepy shores of Holland, or making fun of our respectable

fellow-passengers. Now I was quite alone. People stared at me rudely and

unkindly, as I thought. I could not afford to dine or breakfast with the

rest; and I was weak enough to feel wounded by the idea that people would

guess my motive for shunning the savoury banquets that sent up such

horrid odours to the deck where I sat, trying to read a tattered

Tauchnitz novel. And the end of my journey? Ah, Charlotte, you can never

imagine what it is to travel like that, without knowing whether there is

any haven, any shelter for you at the end of your wanderings! I knew that

at a certain hour we were to arrive at St. Katharine's Dock, but beyond

that I knew nothing. I counted my money. There was just enough to pay for

a cab that would carry me to Hyde Lodge. I should land there penniless.

And what if my cousin Priscilla should refuse to receive me? For a moment

I fancied even that possible; and I pictured myself walking about London,

hungry and homeless.

This was my last journey. I have dwelt upon it longer than I need have

done; but I want you to understand what it is that makes Gustave Lenoble

dear to me. If you could feel the contrast between the past and the

present as I felt it when I stood on the deck of the Dover packet with

him by my side, you would know why I love him, and am grateful to him. We

stood side by side, watching the waves and talking of our future, while

my father enjoyed a nap in one of the little deck cabins. To Gustave that

future seems very bright and clear; to me it seems unutterably strange

that the future _can_ be anything but a dismal _terra incognita_, from

the contemplation of which it is wise to refrain.

Papa stays with Gustave at Cotenoir; but it had been arranged for me to

visit Mademoiselle Lenoble, Gustave's aunt, at Beaubocage, and to remain

with her during my stay in Normandy. I at once understood the delicate

feeling which prompted this arrangement. We dined at Rouen, and came to

Vevinord in a coach. At Vevinord a queer little countrified vehicle met

us, with a very old man, of the farm-servant class, as coachman. Gustave

took the reins from the old man's hand and drove to Beaubocage, where

Mademoiselle Lenoble received me with much cordiality. She is a dear old

lady, with silvery bands of hair neatly arranged under the prettiest of

caps. Her gown is black silk, and her collar and cuffs of snowy

whiteness; everything about her exquisitely neat, and of the fashion of

twenty, or perhaps thirty, years ago.

And now, I suppose, you will want to know what Beaubocage is like. Well,

dear, much as I admire Mademoiselle Lenoble, I must confess that her

ancestral mansion is neither grand nor pretty. It might have made a very

tolerable farmhouse, but has been spoiled by the architect's

determination to make it a chateau. It is a square white building, with

two pepper-castor-like turrets, in one of which I write this letter.

Between the garden and the high road there is a wall, surmounted with

plaster vases. The garden is for the greater part utilitarian; but in

front of the salon windows there is a grassplot, bordered by stiff

gravel-walks, and relieved by a couple of flower-beds. A row of tall

poplars alone screens the house from the dusty high road. At the back of

it there is an orchard; on one side a farmyard; behind the orchard lie

the fields that compose the farm of Beaubocage and the paternal estate of

the Lenoble family. All around the country is very flat. The people seem

to be kind and simple, and devotedly attached to "Mademoiselle." There is

a rustic peacefulness pervading everything which, for me, stands instead

of beauty.

I am hypocrite enough to pretend to be pleased with everything, for I can

perceive how anxiously M. Lenoble watches me in order to discover whether

I like his native country. He was not born at Beaubocage, but in Paris.

Mademoiselle Lenoble told me the story of his childhood, and how she

brought him to Beaubocage, when quite a little fellow, from Rouen, where

his father died. About his mother there seems to have been some mystery.

Mademoiselle told me nothing of this, except that her brother, Gustave

the elder, made a love-match, and thereby offended his father. She has

the little crib in which her nephew, Gustave the younger, slept on the

night of his coming. It had been his father's little bed thirty years

before. She shed tears as she told me the story, and how she sat and

watched by the little fellow as he cried himself to sleep with his head

lying on her arm, and the summer moonlight shining full upon his face.

I was deeply touched by her manner as she told me these things; and I

think, if I had not already learned to love M. Lenoble, I should love him

for the sake of his aunt. She is charming; a creature so innocent and

pure, that one considers one's words in speaking to her, almost as if she

were a child. She is about forty years older than I; yet for worlds I

would not tell her of the people and the scenes I have beheld at foreign

watering-places and gambling-rooms. She has spent the sixty years of her

life so completely out of the world, that she has retained the freshness

and sweetness of her youth untainted in the least degree. Can there be

magical philtre equal to this--a pure unselfish life, far away from the

clamour of cities?

The old servant who waits upon me is seventy-five years of age, and

remembers Ma'amselle Cydalise from her childhood. She is always singing

the praises of her mistress, and she sees that I like to hear them. "Ah,

ma'amselle," she said to me, "to marry a Lenoble is to marry one of the

angels. I will not say that the old seigneur was not hard towards his

son. Ah, yes, but it was a noble heart. And the young monsieur--that one

who died in Rouen, the Poor!--ah, that he was kind, that he was gracious!

What of tears, what of regrets, when the Old chased him!"

My position is quite recognised. I think the very cowboy in the

farmyard--a broad-shouldered lad, with a good-natured mindless face, and

prodigious wooden shoes like clumsy canoes--even the cowboy knows that I

am to be Madame Lenoble of Cotenoir. Cotenoir is the Windsor Castle of

this district; Beaubocage is only Frogmore. Yes, dear, the bond is signed

and sealed. Even if I did not love M. Lenoble, I have bound myself to

marry him; but I do love him, and thank him with all my heart for having

given a definite end and aim to my life. Don't think I underrate your

kindness, darling; I know that I should never want a home while you could

give me one. But 'tis hard to be a hanger-on in any household; and

Valentine will exact all his sweet young wife's love and care.

I have written you a letter which I am sure will require double postage;

so I will say no more except goodbye. Take care of yourself, dear one.

Practise your part in our favourite duets; remember your morning walk in

the garden; and don't wear out your eyes over the big books that Mr.

Hawkehurst is obliged to read.

Ever your affectionate

DIANA.

* * * * *

_From Charlotte Halliday to Diana Paget_.

The dullest house in Christendom, Monday.

EVER DEAREST Di,--Your letter was a welcome relief to the weariness

of my existence. How I wish I were with you! But that is too bright a

dream. I am sure I should idolise Beaubocage. I should not mind the

dismal row of poplars, or the flat landscape, or the dusty road, or

anything, so long as it was not like Bayswater. I languish for a change,

dear. I have seen so little of the world, except the dear moorland

farmhouse at Newhall. I don't think I was ever created to be "cabined,

cribbed, confined," in such a narrow life as this, amid such a dull,

unchanging round of daily commonplace. Sometimes, when the cold spring

moon is shining over the tree-tops in Kensington-Gardens, I think of

Switzerland, and the snow-clad mountains and fair Alpine valleys we have

read of and talked of, until my heart aches at the thought that I may

never see them; and to think that there are people in whom the word

'Savoy' awakes no fairer image than a cabbage! Ah, my poor dear! isn't it

almost wicked of me to complain, when _you_ have had such bitter

experience of the hard cruel world?

I am quite in love with your dear Mademoiselle Lenoble; almost as deeply

as I am in love with your magnanimous, chivalrous, generous,

audacious--everything ending in _ous_--Monsieur Lenoble.

How dare you call him M. Lenoble, by the bye? I have counted the

occasions on which you write of him in your nice long letter, and for one

Gustave there are half a dozen M. Lenobles. It must be Gustave in future

to me, remember.

What shall I tell you, dear? I have nothing to tell, really nothing. To

say that I wish you were with me is only to confess that I am very

selfish; but I _do_ wish for you, dear--my friend and adopted sister,

my old school companion, from whom, willingly, I have never concealed

one thought.

Valentine called on Tuesday afternoon; but I have nothing to tell you

even about him. Mamma dozed in her corner after her cup of tea, and Val

and I sat by the fire talking over our future, just like you and M.

Lenoble on board the Calais boat. How much engaged people find to say

about the future! Is it our love that makes it seem so bright, so

different from all that has gone before? I cannot fancy life with

Valentine otherwise than happy. I strive to picture trials, and fancy

myself in prison with him, the wind blowing in at broken windows, the

rain coming through the dilapidated roof and pattering on the carpetless

floor; but the most dismal picture I can paint won't seem dismal if his

figure is a part of it. We would stop the broken windows with rags and

paper, we would wipe up the rain with our pocket-handkerchiefs, and sit

side by side and talk of the future, as we do now. Hope could never

abandon us while we were together. And then, sometimes, while I am

looking at Valentine, the thought that he might die comes to me suddenly,

like the touch of an icy hand upon my heart.

I lie awake at night sometimes thinking of this, and of papa's early

death. He came home one night with a cold, and from that hour grew worse

until he died. Ah, think what misery for a wife to suffer! Happily for

mamma, she is not capable of suffering intensely. She was very sorry, and

even now when she speaks of papa she cries a little; but the tears don't

hurt her. I think, indeed, they give her a kind of pleasure.

See, dear, what a long egotistical letter I have written, after all. I

will say no more, except that while I am delighted to think of your

pleasure among new friends and new scenes, my selfish heart still longs

for the hour that is to bring you back to me.

Pray tell me all you can about your daughters that are to be.

Ever and ever your loving CHARLOTTE.

* * * * *

_From Diana Paget to Charlotte Halliday_.

Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 30, 186--.

MY DEAR LOTTA,--In three days more I hope to be with you; but I suppose,

in the meantime, I must keep my promise, and send you a faithful account

of my life here. Everyone here is more kind to me than words can tell;

and I have nothing left to wish for, except that you were here to be

delighted, as I am sure you would be, with the freshness and the

strangeness of everything. If I ever do become Madame Lenoble--and even

yet I _cannot_ picture to myself that such a thing will be--you must come

to Cotenoir, you and Valentine. I was taken through every room in the old

chateau the day before yesterday, and I fixed in my own mind upon the

rooms I will give you, if these things come to pass. They are very old

rooms, and I can fancy what strange people must have lived in them, and

died in them perhaps, in the days that are gone. But if you come to them,

they shall be made bright and pretty, and we will chase the shadows of

the mediaeval age away. There are old pictures, old musical instruments,

quaint spindle-legged chairs and tables, tapestries that crumble as you

touch them--the ashes and relics of many generations. Gustave says we

will sweep these poor vestiges away, and begin a new life, when I come to

Cotenoir; but I cannot find it in my heart to obliterate every trace of

those dead feet that have come and gone in all the dusky passages of my

future home.

And now I must tell you about my daughters that are to be--my daughter

that is, I may say of the elder--for I love her so well already that no

breach between Gustave and me could rob her of my affection. She is the

dearest, most loving of creatures; and she reminds me of you! I dare say

you will laugh at this, dear; and, mind, I do not say that Clarice

Lenoble is actually like you in complexion or feature--those common

attributes which every eye can see; the resemblance is far more subtle.

There is a look in this dear girl's face, a smile, an I-know-not-what,

which every now and then recalls your own bright countenance. You will

say this is mere fancy--and that is what I told myself at the first; but

I found afterwards that it is no fancy, but really one of those vague,

indefinable, accidental likenesses which one perceives so often. To me it

seems a very happy accident; for my first glance at my daughter's face

told me that I should love her for your sake.

We went to the convent the day before yesterday. It is a curious old

place, and was once a stately chateau, the habitation of a noble family.

A little portress, in the black robes of a lay sister, admitted us, and

conducted us to the parlour, a fine old room, decorated with pictures of

a religious character, painted by members of the sisterhood. Here Gustave

and I were received by the superioress, an elderly woman, with a mild

holy face, and a quiet grace of manner which might become a duchess. She

sent for the demoiselles Lenoble, and after a delay of a quarter of an

hour--you remember the toilet the girls at Hyde Lodge were obliged to

make before they went to the drawing-room, Lotta--Mademoiselle Lenoble

came, a tall, slim, lovely and lovable girl, who reminded me of the

dearest friend I have in this world. She ran to her papa first, and

saluted him with an enthusiastic hug; and then she stood for a moment

looking shyly at me, confused and doubtful. It was only for a moment

she was left in doubt. Gustave bent down to whisper something in her

ear--something for which his letters had in some manner prepared her. The

fair young face brightened, the clear grey eyes looked up at me with a

sweet affectionate gaze, and she came to me and kissed me. "I shall love

you very much," she whispered. "And I love you very much already," I

answered, in the same confidential manner. And I think these few words,

that one pretty confiding look in her innocent eyes, made a tie between

us that it would take much to loosen. Ah, Lotta, what a wide gulf between

the Diana Paget who landed alone at St. Katharine's Wharf, in the dim

cheerless dawn, and uncertain where to find a shelter in all that busy

city, and the same creature redeemed by your affection, and exalted by

the love and trust of Gustave Lenoble!

After this my second daughter appeared--a pretty young hoyden, with

lovable clinging ways; and then the superioress asked if I would like to

see the garden. Of course I said yes; and we were taken through the long

corridors, out into a fine old garden, where the pupils, who looked like

the Hyde Lodge girls translated into French, were prancing and scampering

about in the usual style. After the garden we went to the chapel, where

there were more pictures, and flower-bedecked altars, and pale twinkling

tapers burning here and there in the chill sunlight. Here there were

damsels engaged in pious meditation, from five years old upwards. They

send even the little ones to meditate, Clarice tells me; and there are

these infants kneeling before the flower-bedecked altars, rapt in

religious contemplation, like so many Thomas a Kempises. The young

meditators glanced shyly at us as we passed. When they had shown me

everything of special interest in the pleasant old place, Clarice and

Madelon ran off to dress for walking, in order to accompany us to

Cotenoir, where we were to dine.

It was quite a family party. Mademoiselle Lenoble was there, and papa. He

arrived at the chateau while Gustave and I were paying our visit to the

convent. He is in the highest spirits, and treats me with an amount of

affection and courtesy I have not been accustomed to receive at his

hands. Of course I know the cause of this change; the future mistress of

Cotenoir is a very different person from that wretched girl who was

nothing to him but a burden and an encumbrance. But even while I despise

him I cannot refuse to pity him. One forgives anything in old age. In

this, at least, it is a second childhood; and my father is very old,

Lotta. I saw the look of age in his face more plainly at Cotenoir, where

he assumed his usual _debonnaire_ man-of-the-world tone and manner, than

I had seen it in London, when he was a professed invalid. He is much

changed since I was with him at Foretdechene. It seems as if he had kept

Time at bay very long, and now at last, the common enemy will be held at

arm's-length no longer. He still braces himself up in the old military

manner, still holds himself more erect than many men of half his age;

but, in spite of all this, I can see that he is very feeble; shaken and

worn by a long life of difficulty. I am glad to think that there will be

a haven for him at last; and if I did not thank Gustave with my whole

heart for giving me a home and a place in the world, I should thank him

for giving a shelter to my father.

And now, dear, as I hope to be with you so very soon, I shall say no

more. I am to spend a day in Rouen before we come back--papa and I, that

is to say; Gustave stays in Normandy to make some arrangements before he

comes back to England. I cannot comprehend the business relations between

him and papa; but there is some business going on--law business, as it

seems to me--about which papa is very important and elated.

I am to see the cathedral and churches at Rouen, and I shall contrive to

see the shops, and to bring you something pretty. Papa has given me

money--the first he ever gave me unasked. I have very little doubt it

comes from Gustave; but I have no sense of shame in accepting it. M.

Lenoble's seems to me a royal nature, formed to bestow benefits and

bounties on every side.

Tell Mrs. Sheldon that I shall bring her the prettiest cap I can find in

Rouen; and,

with all love, believe me ever your affectionate

DIANA.

BOOK THE SEVENTH.

A CLOUD OF FEAR.

CHAPTER I.

THE BEGINNING OF SORROW.

Who heeds the cloud no bigger than a man's hand amidst a broad expanse of

blue ether? The faint, scarce perceptible menace of that one little cloud

is lost in the wide brightness of a summer sky. The traveller jogs on

contented and unthinking, till the hoarse roar of stormy winds, or the

first big drops of the thunder-shower, startle him with a sudden

consciousness of the coming storm.

It was early May, and the young leaves were green in the avenues of

Kensington Gardens; Bayswater was bright and gay with fashionable people;

and Mrs. Sheldon found herself strong enough to enjoy her afternoon drive

in Hyde Park, where the contemplation of the bonnets afforded her

perennial delight.

"I think they are actually smaller than ever this year," she remarked

every season; and every season the headgear of fashionable London did

indeed seem to shrink and dwindle, "fine by degrees, and beautifully

less." The coalscuttle-shaped headdress of our grandmothers had not yet

resolved itself into a string of beads and a rosebud in these days, but

was obviously tending thitherward.

Charlotte and Diana accompanied Mrs. Sheldon in her drives. The rapture

of contemplating the bonnets was not complete unless the lady had some

sympathising spirit to share her delight. The two girls were very well

pleased to mingle in that brilliant crowd, and to go back to their own

quiet life when the mystic hour came, and that bright vision of colour

and beauty melted into the twilight loneliness. It had seemed just

lately, however, as if Charlotte was growing a little weary of the

gorgeous spectacle--the ever-changing, ever-splendid diorama of West End

life. She no longer exclaimed at the sight of each exceptional toilette;

she no longer smiled admiringly on the thoroughbred horses champing their

bits in the immediate neighbourhood of her bonnet; she no longer gave a

little cry of delight when the big drags came slowly along the crowded

ranks, the steel bars shining as they swung loosely in the low afternoon

sunlight, the driver, conscious of his glory, grave and tranquil, with

the pride that apes humility.

"See, Lotta," said Miss Paget, upon an especially bright May evening, as

one of these gorgeous equipages went past Mr. Sheldon's landau, "there's

another drag. Did you see it?"

"Yes, dear, I saw it."

"And are you tired of four-in-hands? You used to admire them so much."

"I admire them as much as ever, dear."

"And yet you scarcely gave those four splendid roans a glance."

"No," Charlotte answered, with a faint sigh.

"Are you tired, Lotta?" Miss Paget asked, rather anxiously. There was

something in Charlotte's manner of late that had inspired her with a

vague sense of anxiety; some change which she could scarcely define--a

change so gradual that it was only by comparing the Charlotte of some

months ago with the Charlotte of the present that she perceived how real

a change it was. The buoyancy and freshness, the girlish vivacity of Miss

Halliday's manner, were rapidly giving place to habitual listlessness.

"Are you tired, dear?" she repeated, anxiously; and Mrs. Sheldon looked

round from her contemplation of the bonnets.

"No, Di, dearest, not tired; but--I don't feel very well this afternoon."

This was the first confession which Charlotte Halliday made of a sense of

weakness and languor that had been creeping upon her during the last two

months, so slowly, so gradually, that the change seemed too insignificant

for notice.

"You feel ill, Lotta dear?" Diana asked.

"Well, no, not exactly ill. I can scarcely call it illness; I feel rather

weak--that is really all."

At this point Mrs. Sheldon chimed in, with her eyes on a passing bonnet

as she spoke.

"You see, you are so dreadfully neglectful of your papa's advice, Lotta,"

she said, in a complaining tone. "Do _you_ like pink roses with mauve

areophane, Diana? I do not. Look at that primrose tulle, with dead

ivy-leaves and scarlet berries, in the barouche. I dare say you have not

taken your glass of old port this morning, Charlotte, and have only

yourself to thank if you feel weak."

"I did take a glass of port this morning, mamma. I don't like it; but I

take it every morning."

"Don't like old tawny port, that your papa bought at the sale of a bishop

of somewhere? It's perfectly absurd of you, Lotta, to talk of not liking

wine that cost fifteen shillings a bottle, and which your papa's friends

declare to be worth five-and-thirty."

"I am sorry it is so expensive, mamma; but I can't teach myself to think

it nice," answered Charlotte, with a smile that sadly lacked the

brightness of a few weeks ago. "I think one requires to go into the City,

and become a merchant or a stockbroker, before one can like that sort of

wine. What was it Valentine quoted in the _Cheapside_, about some lady

whom somebody loved?--'To love her was a liberal education.' I think to

like old port is a commercial education."

"I am sure such wine _ought_ to do you good," said Georgy, almost

querulously. She thought this bright blooming creature had no right to be

ill. The headaches, and little weaknesses and languors and ladylike

ailments, were things for which she (Georgy) had taken out a patent; and

this indisposition of her daughter's was an infringement of copyright.

"I dare say the port will do me good, mamma, in time. No doubt I shall be

as strong as that person who strangled lions and snakes and dogs with

incalculable heads, and all that kind of thing."

"I really wish you would not talk in that absurd manner, my dear," said

Mrs. Sheldon with offended dignity. "I think you really cannot be too

grateful for your papa's kind thoughtfulness and anxiety about you. I am

sure I myself am not so anxious as he is; but of course his medical

knowledge makes him doubly careful. Six weeks ago he noticed that you

wanted strength--tone is what he calls it. 'Georgina,' he said to me,

'Charlotte wants tone. She is beginning to stoop in a really lamentable

manner: we must make her take port or bark, or something of a

strengthening kind.' And then a day or two afterwards he decided on port,

and gave me the key of the cellar--which is a thing he rarely gives out

of his own hands--and told me the number of the bin from which I was to

take the wine--some old wine that he had laid by on purpose for some

special occasion; and no one is to have it but you, and you are to take a

glass daily at eleven o'clock. Mr. Sheldon is most particular about the

hour. The regularity of the thing is half the battle in these cases, he

says; and I am sure if you do not observe his wishes and mine, Charlotte,

it will be really ungrateful of you."

"But, dear mamma, I do observe Mr.--papa's wishes. I take my glass of

port every morning at eleven. I go to your cupboard in the breakfast-room

and take out my special decanter, and my special glass, in the most

punctiliously precise manner. I don't like the wine, and I don't like the

trouble involved in the ceremony of drinking it; but I go through it most

religiously, to please you and papa."

"And do you mean to say that you do not feel stronger after taking that

expensive old port regularly for nearly six weeks.

"I am sorry to say that I do not, mamma. I think if there is any change,

it is that I am weaker."

"Dear, dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheldon captiously, "you are really a

most extraordinary girl."

Mrs. Sheldon could almost have found it in her heart to say, a most

ungrateful girl. There did seem a kind of ingratitude in this futile

consumption of old port at fifteen shillings a bottle.

"I'll tell you what it is, Lotta," she said presently, "I am convinced

that your illness--or your weakness--is all fancy."

"Why so, mamma?"

"Because, if it were real weakness, that old port must have made you

stronger. And the fact that the port does you no good, is a proof that

your weakness is only fancy. Girls of your age are so full of fancies.

Look at me, and the martyrdom I go through with my nervous headaches,

which perfectly prostrate me, after the least worry or excitement. The

nerves of my head, after going into the butcher's book, are perfect

agony. When you come to have a house to look after, and find what it is

to have the same saddle of mutton charged for twice over, with the most

daring impudence--or to have capers and currie-powder, that you _know_

you've never had, staring at you from every page of your grocer's book,

and nothing but your memory between you and utter ruin--you'll discover

what it is to be really ill."

In this easy manner did Mrs. Sheldon dismiss the subject of her daughter's

illness. But it was not so easily dismissed by Diana Paget, who loved her

friend with a profound and pure affection, than which no sister's love

was ever warmer or stronger. Even Valentine's preference for this happy

rival had not lessened Diana's love for her friend and benefactress. She

had been jealous of Charlotte's happier fate: but in the hour when this

jealousy was most bitter there had been no wavering in her attachment to

this one true and generous friend.

Miss Paget was very silent during the homeward drive. She understood now

what that change had been in her friend which until now had so perplexed

her. It was a decay of physical strength which had robbed Lotta's smile

of its brightness, her laugh of its merry music. It was physical languor

that made her so indifferent to the things which had once awakened her

girlish enthusiasm. The discovery was a very painful one. Diana

remembered her experience of Hyde Lodge: the girls who had grown day by

day more listless, now in the doctor's hands for a day or two, now well

again and toiling at the old treadmill round of study, now sinking into

confirmed invalids; until the bitter hour in which parents are summoned,

and the doctor urges rest, and the fond mother carries her darling home,

assured that home comfort and tenderness will, speedily restore her. Her

schoolfellows cluster round the carriage to bid her "good-bye until next

half," full of hopeful talk about her swift recovery. But when the

vacation is over, and Black Monday comes, she is not amongst the

returning scholars. Has she not gone up to the higher school, and

answered _Adsum_ to the call of the Great Master?

Diana remembered these old experiences with cruel pain.

"Girls, as bright and lovable as she is, have drooped and faded away,

just when they seem brightest and happiest," she thought as she watched

Charlotte, and perceived to-day for the first time that the outline of

her fair young cheek had lost its perfect roundness.

But in such a case love can do nothing except watch and wait. That night,

in the course of that girlish talk in Charlotte's bedroom, which had

become a habit with the two girls, Diana extorted from her friend a full

account of the symptoms which had affected her within the last few weeks.

"Pray don't look so anxious, dear Di," she said gaily; "it is really

nothing worth talking of; and I knew that if I confessed to feeling ill

you and mamma would straightway begin to worry yourselves about me. I

have felt a little sick and faint sometimes; and now and then a sudden

dizziness has come over me. It is nothing of any consequence, and it

passes away very quickly. Sometimes I have a kind of torpid languid

feeling, which is scarcely unpleasant, only strange, you know. But what

does it all amount to, except that I am nervous?"

"You must have change of air, Lotta," said Diana resolutely, "and change

of scene. Yes, no doubt you are nervous. You have been kept almost a

prisoner in the house through Mr. Sheldon's punctilious nonsense. You

miss our brisk morning walks in the Gardens, I dare say. If you were to

go to Yorkshire, now, to your friends at Newhall, you would like that

change, dear, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, I should dearly like to see Aunt Dorothy and uncle Joe; but--"

"But what, darling?"

"I should scarcely like being at Newhall, unless--you'll think me very

foolish, Di--unless Valentine was with me. We were so happy there, you

see, dear; and it was there he first told me he loved me. No, Di, I

couldn't bear Newhall without him."

"Poor Aunt Dorothy, poor uncle Joe! feathers when weighed in the scale

against a young man whom their niece has known less than a twelvemonth!"

No more was said about Charlotte's illness; Diana was too prudent to

alarm her friend by any expression of uneasiness. She adopted a cheering

tone, and the conversation drifted into other channels.

While Diana's concern for her friend's altered health was yet a new

feeling, she found herself called upon to attend her father once more

in the character of a ministering angel. And this time Captain Paget's

illness was something more than gout. It was, according to his

doctors--he had on this occasion two medical attendants--a general

breaking up of the system. The poor old wanderer,--the weary Odysseus,

hero of so many trickeries, such varied adventures,--laid himself down to

rest, within view of the Promised Land for which his soul yearned.

He was very ill. Gustave Lenoble, who came back to London, did not

conceal from Diana that the illness threatened to end fatally. At his

instigation the Captain had been removed from Omega Street to pleasant

lodgings at the back of Knightsbridge Road, overlooking Hyde Park. This

was nearer Bayswater, and it was very pleasant for the fading old

worldling. He could see the stream of fashion flowing past as he sat in

his easy-chair, propped up with pillows, with the western sunlight on his

face. He pointed out the liveries and armorial bearings; and told many

scandalous and entertaining anecdotes of their past and present owners to

Gustave Lenoble, who devoted much of his time to the solacement of the

invalid. Everything that affection could do to smooth this dreary time

was done for the tired Ulysses. Pleasant books were read to him; earnest

thoughts were suggested by earnest words; hothouse flowers adorned his

cheerful sitting-room; hothouse fruits gladdened his eye by their rich

warmth of colour, and invited his parched lips to taste their cool

ripeness. Gustave had a piano brought in, so that Diana might sing to her

father in the dusky May evenings, when it should please him to hear her.

Upon the last feeble footsteps of this old man, whose life had been very

selfish and wicked, pity waited with a carefulness so fond and tender

that he might well mistake it for love. Was it fair that his last days

should be so peaceful and luxurious, when many a good man falls down to

die in the streets, worn out with the life-long effort to bear the burden

laid upon his weary shoulders? In the traditions of the Rabbins it is

written that those are the elect of God who suffer His chastisement in

the flesh. For the others, for those who on earth drain the goblet of

pleasure, and riot in the raptures of sin, for them comes the dread

retribution after death. They are plunged in the fire, and driven before

the wind; they take the shape of loathsome reptiles, and ascend by

infinitesimal degrees through all the grades of creation, until their

storm-tost wearied degraded souls re-enter human semblance once more. But

even then their old stand-point is not yet regained; their dread penance

not yet performed. As men they are the lowest and worst of men; slaves

toiling in the desert; dirt to be trampled under the feet of their

prosperous brethren. Inch by inch the wretched soul regains its lost

inheritance; cycles must elapse before the awful sentence is fulfilled.

Our Christian faith knows no such horrors. Even for the penitent of the

eleventh hour there is promise of pardon. The most earnest desire of

Diana's heart was that her father should enroll himself amongst those

late penitents--those last among the last who crowd in to the marriage

feast, half afraid to show their shame-darkened faces in that glorious

company.

If we forgive all things to old age, so much the more surely do we

forgive all injuries to the fading enemy. That she had suffered much

cruelty and neglect at the hands of her father, was a fact that Diana

could not forget, any more than she could forget the name which he had

given her. It was a part of her life not to be put off or done away with.

But in these last days, with all her heart she forgave and pitied him.

She pitied him for the crooked paths into which his feet had wandered at

the very outset of life, and from which so weak a soul could find no

issue. She pitied him for that moral blindness which had kept him

pleasantly unconscious of the supreme depth of his degradation--a social

Laplander, who never having seen a western summer, had no knowledge that

his own land was dark and benighted.

Happily for Diana and her generous lover, the Captain was not a

difficult penitent. He was indeed a man who, having lost the capacity

and the need for sin, took very kindly to penitence, as a species of

sentimental luxury.

"Yes, my dear," he said complacently--for even in the hour of his

penitence he insisted on regarding himself as a social martyr--"my life

has been a very hard one. Fortune has not been kind to me. In the words

of the immortal bard, my lines have _not_ been set in pleasant places. I

should have been glad if Providence had allowed me to be a better father

to you, a better husband to your poor mother--a better Christian, in

fact--and had spared me the repeated humiliation of going through the

Insolvent Debtors' Court. It is not always easy to understand the justice

of these things: and it has often appeared to me that something of the

favouritism which is the bane of our governments on earth must needs

obtain at a higher tribunal. One man enters life with an entailed estate

worth seventy thousand a-year, while another finds himself in the hands

of the Jews before he is twenty years of age. 'There's something in this

world amiss shall be unriddled by-and-by,' as the poet observes. The

circumstances of my own existence I have ever regarded as dark and

enigmatic. And, indeed, the events of this life are altogether

inexplicable, my love. There is that fellow Sheldon, now, who began

life as a country dentist, a man without family or connections,

who--well, I will not repine. If I am spared to behold my daughter

mistress of a fine estate, although in a foreign country, I can depart in

peace. But you must have a house in town, my dear. Yes, London must be

your head-quarters. You must not be buried alive in Normandy. There is no

place like London. Take the word of a man who has seen the finest

Continental cities, and lived in them--that is the point, my love--lived

in them. For a fine afternoon in the beginning of May, an apartment in

the Champs Elysees, or the Boulevard, is an earthly paradise; but the

Champs Elysees in a wet December--the Boulevard in a sweltering August!

London is the only spot upon earth that is never intolerable. And your

husband will be a rich man, my dear girl, a really wealthy man; and you

must see that he makes a fitting use of his wealth, and does his duty to

society. The parable of the Talents, which you were reading to me this

afternoon, is a moral lesson your husband must not forget."

After this fashion did the invalid discourse. Gustave and Diana perceived

that he still hoped to have his share in their future life, still looked

to pleasant days to come in a world which he had loved, not wisely, but

too well. Nor could they find it in their hearts to tell him that his

journey was drawing to a close, and that on the very threshold of the

peaceful home which his diplomatic arts had helped to secure, he was to

abandon life's weary race.

They indulged his hopes a little, in order to win him the more easily to

serious thoughts; but though at times quite ready to abandon himself to a

penitential mood that was almost maudlin, there were other times when the

old Adam asserted himself, and the Captain resented this intrusion of

serious subjects as a kind of impertinence.

"I am not aware that I am at my last gasp, Diana," he said with dignity,

on one of these occasions; "or that I need to be talked to by my own

daughter as if I were on my deathbed. I can show you men some years my

senior driving their phaetons-and-pairs in that Park. The Gospel is all

very well in its place--during Sunday-morning service, and after morning

prayers, in your good old county families, where the household is large

enough to make a fair show at the end of the dining-room, without

bringing in hulking lads who smell of the stables: but I consider that

when a man is ill, there is a considerable want of tact in bringing the

subject of religion before him in any obtrusive manner."

Thus the Captain alternated from sentimental penitence to captious

worldliness, during many days and weeks. The business of the Haygarthian

inheritance was progressing slowly, but surely. Documents were being

prepared, attested copies of certificates of marriages, births, baptisms,

and burials were being procured, and all was tending towards the grand

result. Once, and sometimes twice a week, M. Fleurus came to see Captain

Paget, and discussed the great affair with that invalid diplomatist. The

Captain had long ago been aware that in entering upon an alliance with

that gentleman, he had invoked the aid of a coadjutor likely to prove too

strong for him. The event had justified his fears. M. Fleurus had

something of Victor Hugo's famous _Poulpe_ in his nature. Powerful as

flexible were the arms he stretched forth to grasp all prizes in the way

of heirs-at-law and disputed heritages, unclaimed railway-stock, and

forgotten consols. If the Captain had not played his cards very cleverly,

and contrived to obtain a personal influence over Gustave Lenoble, he

might have found himself thrust entirely out of the business by one of

the Frenchman's gelatinous arms. Happily for his own success, however,

the Captain did obtain a strong hold upon Gustave. This enabled him to

protect his own interests throughout the negotiation, and to keep the

insidious Fleurus at bay.

"My good friend," he said, in his grand Carlton-House manner, "I am bound

to protect the interests of my friend M. Lenoble, in any agreement to be

entered upon in this matter. I cannot permit M. Lenoble's generosity or

M. Lenoble's inexperience to be imposed upon. My own interests are of

secondary importance. That I expect to profit by the extraordinary

discovery made by me--by ME--alone and unaided, I do not affect to deny.

But I will not profit at the expense of a too generous friend."

"And what recompense am I to have for my work--a work at once painful and

impoverishing?" asked the little Frenchman, with an angry and suspicious

look. "Do you believe that I do that to amuse me? To run the streets, to

go by here, by there, in hunting the papers of that marriage, or this

baptism? Believe you that is so agreeable, Monsieur the Captain? No; I

desire to be paid for my work. I must have my part in the heritage which

I have help to win."

"It is not won yet. We will talk of your recompense by-and-by."

"We will talk of it this instant--upon the field. It must that I

comprehend where I am in this affair. I will not of mystifications, of

prevarications, of lies--"

"M. Fleurus!" cried the Captain, with a hand stretched towards the bell.

"You will sound--you will chase me! Ah, but no!--you cannot afford to

chase me yet. I have to find more papers of baptisms and burials. Go,

then, we will talk of this affair as friends."

This friendly talk ended in Captain Paget's complete victory. M. Fleurus

consented to accept his costs out of pocket in the present, and three per

cent, of the heritage in the future. It was further agreed that the

Captain should select the English attorney who should conduct M.

Lenoble's case in the Court of Chancery.

This conversation occurred at Rouen, and a day or two afterwards the

necessary document was drawn up. Gustave pledged himself to pay over a

fourth share of the Haygarthian fortune to Horatio Paget, and three

per cent, upon the whole amount to Jean Francois Fleurus. The document

was very formal, very complete; but whether such an agreement would

hold water, if Gustave Lenoble should choose to contest it, was open

to question.

The solicitor to whom Horatio Paget introduced M. Lenoble was a Mr.

Dashwood, of the firm of Dashwood and Vernon; a man whom the Captain had

known in the past, and from whom he had received good service in some of

the most difficult crises of his difficult career. To this gentleman he

confided the conduct of the case; and explained his apprehensions with

regard to the two Sheldons.

"You see, as the case now stands, they think they have the claimant to

this money in Miss Halliday--Sheldon's stepdaughter. But if they got an

inkling of Susan Meynell's marriage--and, in point of fact--the actual

state of the case--they might try to get hold of my friend, Gustave

Lenoble. They could _not_ get hold of him, mind you, Dashwood, but they

would try it on, and I don't want trying on of that kind."

"Of course not. I know Sheldon, of Gray's Inn. He is rather--well, say

_shady_. That's hardly an actionable epithet, and it expresses what I

mean. Your friend's case seems to me tolerably clear. That little

Frenchman is useful, but officious. It is not a speculative affair, I

suppose? There is money to meet the current expenses of the business?"

"Yes, there is money. Within reasonable limits my friend is prepared to

pay for the advancement of his claims."

After this the Haygarthian business progressed, slowly, quietly. The work

was up to this point underground work. There were still papers

wanting--final links of the chain to be fitted together; and to the

fitting of these links Messrs. Dashwood and Vernon devoted themselves, in

conjunction with M. Fleurus.

This was how matters stood when Captain Paget drooped and languished, and

was fain to abandon all active share in the struggle.

CHAPTER II.

FADING.

While the invalid in the pleasant lodgings overlooking Hyde Park

grew day by day weaker, there was a change as marked in the bright

young creature whose loving spirit had first brought the influence of

affection to bear upon Diana Paget's character. Charlotte Halliday was

ill--very ill. It was with everyday increasing anxiety that Diana watched

the slow change--slow in its progress, but awfully rapid to look back

upon. The pain, the regret, with which she noted her father's decay were

little indeed compared with the sharp agony which rent her heart as she

perceived the alteration in this dear friend, the blighting of this fair

young flower.

That the withered leaves of autumn should fall is sad, but natural, and

we submit to the gloomy inevitable fact of decay and death. But to see

our rose of roses, the pride and glory of the garden, fade and perish in

its midsummer prime, is a calamity inexplicable and mysterious. Diana

watched her father's decline with a sense of natural sorrow and pity; but

there was neither surprise nor horror in the thought that for him the end

of all things was drawing nigh. How different was it with Charlotte--with

that happy soul for whom life and love wore their brightest smile, before

whose light joyous footsteps stretched so fair a pathway!

The illness, whatever it was--and neither Mr. Sheldon nor the portly and

venerable physician whom he called in could find a name for it--crept

upon the patient with stealthy and insidious steps. Dizziness, trembling,

faintness; trembling, faintness, dizziness; the symptoms alternated day

by day. Sometimes there was a respite of a few days; and Charlotte--the

youthful, the sanguine, the happy--declared that her enemy had left her.

"I am sure mamma is right, Di," she said on these occasions. "My nerves

are the beginning and end of the mischief; and if I could get the better

of my nerves, I should be as well as ever. I don't wonder that the idea

of my symptoms makes mamma almost cross. You see, she has been accustomed

to have the symptoms all to herself; and for me to plagiarise them, as it

were, must seem quite an impertinence. For a strong young thing like me,

you know, Di dear--who have only just broken myself of plunging

downstairs two and three steps at a time, and plunging upstairs in the

same vulgar manner--to intrude on mamma's shattered nerves, and pirate

mamma's low spirits, is utterly absurd and abominable; so I have resolved

to look my nerves straight in the face, and get the better of them."

"My darling, you will get the better of them if you try," said Diana, who

did at times beguile herself with the hope that her friend's ailments

were mental rather than bodily. "I dare say your monotonous life has

something to do with your altered health; you want change of scene,

dear."

"Change of scene, when I have you and Valentine! No, Di. It would

certainly be very nice to have the background shifted now and then; to

see Capability Brown's prim gardens melt into Alpine heights or

southern vineyards, or even into Russian steppes or Hungarian forests.

One does get a little tired of _toujours_ Bayswater; and Mr. Sheldon;

and crimped skate; and sirloin of beef, and the inevitable discussion as

to whether it is in a cannibal state of rawness or burnt to a cinder;

and the glasses of pale sherry; and the red worsted doyleys and blue

finger-glasses; and the almonds and raisins, and crisp biscuits, that

nobody ever eats; and the dreary, dreary funereal business of dinner,

when we all talk vapid nonsense, with an ever-present consciousness of

the parlourmaid. I am tired of the dull dinners, and of mamma's peevish

complaints about Ann Woolper's ascendancy downstairs; and of Mr.

Sheldon's perpetual newspapers, that crackle, crackle, crackle all the

evening through; and _such_ papers!--_Money Market Monitor, Stockholder's

Vade-Mecum_, and all sorts of dreadful things of that kind, with not so

much as an interesting advertisement in one of them. I used never to feel

these things an annoyance, you know, dear, till I made the acquaintance

of my nerves; but from the moment I allowed my nerves to get the better

of me, all these trifles have worried and excruciated me. But I am happy

with you, darling; and I am happy with Valentine. Poor Valentine!"

She pronounced his name with a sigh; and then, after a pause, repeated

mournfully, "Poor Valentine!"

"Why do you speak of him so sadly, dear?" asked Diana, very pale.

"Because--because we have planned such a happy life together, dear,

and--"

"Is that a thing to be sad about, darling?"

"And--if it should happen, after all, that we have to part, and he go on

alone, the world may seem so sad and lonely to him."

"Charlotte!" cried Diana, with a laugh that was almost choked by a sob,

"is this looking your nerves in the face? Why, my dear one, this is

indeed plagiarism of your mamma's low spirits. Lotta, you shall have

change of air; yes, I am determined on that. The stately physician who

came in his carriage the other day, and who looked at your tongue, and

said 'Ah!' and then felt your pulse and said 'Ah!' again, and then called

for pen-and-ink and wrote a little prescription, is not the doctor we

want for you. We want Dr. Yorkshire; we want the breezes from the

Yorkshire moors, and the smell of the farmyard, and our dear Aunt

Dorothy's sillabubs, and our uncle Joe to take us for long walks across

his clover-fields."

"I don't want to go to Newhall, Di. I couldn't bear to leave--him."

"But what is to prevent your meeting _him_ at the white gate this time,

as you met him last October? Might not accident take _him_ to Huxter's

Cross again? The archaeological work--of which we have heard no more, by

the bye--might necessitate further investigations in that district. If

you will go to Newhall, Lotta, I will pledge myself for Mr. Hawkehurst's

speedy appearance at the white gate you have so often described to me."

"My dearest Di, you are all kindness; but even if I were inclined to go

to Newhall, I doubt if mamma or Mr. Sheldon would like me to go."

"I am sure they would be pleased with any arrangement that was likely to

benefit your health. But I will talk to your mamma about it. I have set

my heart on your going to Newhall."

Miss Paget lost no time in carrying out her idea. She took possession of

Georgy that afternoon, while teaching her a new stitch in _tricot_, and

succeeded in impressing her with the conviction that change of air was

necessary for Charlotte.

"But you don't think Lotta really ill?" asked Mrs. Sheldon, nervously.

"I trust she is not really ill, dear Mrs. Sheldon; but I am sure she is

much changed. In talking to her, I affect to think that her illness is

only an affair of the nerves; but I sadly fear that it is something more

than that."

"But what is the matter with her?" exclaimed Georgy, with a piteous air

of perplexity; "that is the question which I am always asking. People

can't be ill, you know, Diana, without having something the matter with

them; and that is what I can't make out in Charlotte's case. Mr. Sheldon

says she wants tone; the physician who came in a carriage and pair, and

ought to know what he is talking about, says there is a lack of vigour.

But what does that all amount to? I'm sure I've wanted tone all my life.

Perhaps there never was a creature so devoid of tone as I am; and the

internal sinking I feel just before luncheon is something that no one but

myself can realize. I dare say Lotta is not so strong as she might be;

but I do not see that she can be ill, unless her illness is something

definite. My poor first husband's illness, now, was the kind of thing

that any one could understand--bilious fever. The merest child knows what

it is to be bilious, and the merest child knows what it is to be

feverish. There can be nothing mysterious in bilious fever."

"But, dear Mrs. Sheldon," said Diana, gravely, "don't you think that the

weakness of constitution which rendered Charlotte's father liable to be

taken off in the prime of life by a fever is a weakness that Charlotte

may possibly have inherited?"

"Good heavens, Diana!" cried Georgy, with sudden terror; "you don't mean

to say that you think my Charlotte is going to die?"

It was but one step with Mrs. Sheldon from peevish incredulity to frantic

alarm; and Diana found it as difficult to tranquillise her newly-awakened

fears as it had been to rouse her from absolute apathy.

Change of air--yes, of course--Charlotte must have change of air that

instant. Let a cab be sent for immediately to take them to the terminus.

Change of air, of course. To Newhall--to Nice--to the Isle of Wight--to

Malta; Mrs. Sheldon had heard of people going to Malta. Where should they

go? Would Diana advise, and send for a cab, and pack a travelling bag

without an instant's delay? The rest of the things could be sent

afterwards. What did luggage matter, when Charlotte's life was at stake?

At this point a flood of tears happily relieved poor Georgy's excited

feelings, and then common sense and Diana Paget came to the rescue.

"My dear Mrs. Sheldon," she said, with a quiet cheerful tone that went

far to reassure the excited lady, "in the first place we must, above all

things, refrain from any appearance of alarm. Her illness may, after all,

be only an affair of the nerves; and there is certainly no cause for

immediate fear."

Georgy was tranquillised, and agreed to take matters quietly. She

promised to arrange Charlotte's departure for Newhall, with Mr. Sheldon,

that evening.

"Of course, you know, my dear, I like to consult him about everything,"

she said, apologetically. "It is a duty which one owes one's husband, you

know, and a duty which, as a young woman about to marry, I cannot too

much impress upon you; but in this case it is quite a matter of form: Mr.

Sheldon never has objected to Charlotte's going to Newhall, and he is not

likely to object now."

The event proved Mrs. Sheldon mistaken as to this matter. Georgy proposed

the visit to Newhall that evening, while the two girls were strolling

listlessly in the dusky garden, and Mr. Sheldon most decidedly rejected

the proposition.

"If she wants change of air--and Dr. Doddleson recommended nothing of the

kind--Newhall is not the place for her."

"Why not, dear?"

"It is too cold. Northerly aspect--no shelter--three hundred feet above

York minster."

"But Dorothy Mercer is such a kind motherly creature; she'd delight in

nursing Lotta."

"Yes," answered Mr. Sheldon, with a laugh, "and in quacking her. I know

what those good motherly creatures are when they get an excuse for dosing

some unhappy victim with their quack nostrums. If Charlotte went to

Newhall, Mrs. Mercer would poi--would make her ten times worse than

she is with old woman's remedies. Besides, as I said before, the place is

too cold. That is a conclusive argument, I suppose?"

He said this with some impatience of tone and manner. There was a haggard

look in his face, a hurried harassed manner pervading him this evening,

which had been growing upon him of late. Georgy was too slow of

perception to remark this; but Diana Paget had remarked it, and had

attributed the change in the stockbroker's manner to a blending of two

anxieties.

"He is anxious about money matters," she had said to herself, "and he is

anxious about Charlotte's health. His lips, moving in whispered

calculations, as he sits brooding by the fire, tell me of the first

anxiety; his eyes, wandering furtively to his step-daughter's face every

now and then, tell me of the second."

This furtive anxiety of Mr. Sheldon's increased Diana Paget's anxiety.

This man, who had a certain amount of medical knowledge, could no doubt

read the diagnostics of that strange insidious illness, which had, as

yet, no name. Diana, furtively watching his furtive looks, told herself

that he read of danger.

"If Charlotte wants change of air, let her go to Hastings," he said;

"that is the kind of place for an invalid. I want rest myself; and

there's such utter stagnation in the City nowadays that I can very well

afford to give myself a holiday. We'll run down to Hastings, or the

immediate neighbourhood of Hastings, for a week or two."

"O Philip, how kind and considerate you are! I am sure, as I was

observing to Miss Paget only today, you--"

"Ah, by the bye, there's Miss Paget. Is it absolutely necessary that Miss

Paget should go to Hastings with us?"

"Well, dear, you see she has so kindly desired to remain with me for the

quarter, so as to give me time to turn round, you know, with regard to

caps and summer things, and so on--for, really, she has such taste, and

does strike out such excellent ideas about turning, and dipping, and

dyeing, that I don't know what will become of me when she leaves us; and

it would look so pointed to--"

"Yes; she had better go with us. But why all this fuss about Charlotte?

Who put it into your head that she wants change of air?"

Mr. Sheldon evidently considered it an established fact that any idea in

his wife's head must needs have been put there by someone or other.

"Well, you see, Diana and I were talking of Lotta this afternoon, and

Diana quite alarmed me."

"How so?" asked Mr. Sheldon, with a quick frown.

"Why, she said it was evident, by the fact of poor dear Tom's dying of a

fever, that his constitution must have been originally weak. And she said

that perhaps Charlotte had inherited Tom's weak constitution--and

frightened me dreadfully."

"There is no occasion for you to be frightened; Charlotte will get on

very well, I dare say, with care. But Miss Paget is a very sensible

young woman, and is right in what she says. Charlotte's constitution is

not strong."

"O Philip!" said Georgy, in a faint wailing voice.

"I dare say she will live to follow you and me to our graves," said Mr.

Sheldon, with a hard laugh. "Ah, here she is!"

Here she was, coming towards the open window near which her stepfather

sat. Here she was, pale and tired, with her sauntering walk, dressed in

white, and spectral in the gloaming. To the sad eyes of her mother she

looked like a ghost. To the eyes of Philip Sheldon, a man not prone to

poetic fancies, she looked even more ghostlike.

CHAPTER III.

MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS.

Since the beginning of her illness, Charlotte Halliday had been the

object and subject of many anxious thoughts in the minds of several

people. That her stepfather had his anxieties about her--anxieties which

he tried to hide--was obvious to the one person in the Bayswater villa

who noted his looks, and tried to read the thoughts they indicated.

Mrs. Sheldon's alarm, once fairly awakened, was not to be lulled to rest.

And in Valentine Hawkehurst's heart there was an aching pain--a dull dead

load of care, which had never been lightened from the hour when he first

perceived the change in his dear one's face.

There was one other person, an inhabitant of the Bayswater villa, who

watched Charlotte Halliday at this time with a care as unresting as the

care of mother or stepfather, bosom friend or plighted lover. This person

was Ann Woolper. Mrs. Woolper had come to the villa prepared to find in

Miss Halliday a frivolous self-satisfied young person, between whom and

an old broken-down woman like herself there could be no sympathy. She had

expected to be contemptuously--or, at the best, indifferently--entreated

by the prosperous well-placed young lady, whom Mr. Sheldon had spoken of

as a good girl, as girls go; a vague species of commendation, which, to

the mind of Mrs. Woolper, promised very little.

As clearly as Philip Sheldon dared express his wishes with regard to

Charlotte Halliday, he had expressed them to Ann Woolper. What he would

fain have said, was, "Watch my stepdaughter, and keep me well acquainted

with every step she takes." Thus much he dared not say; but by

insinuating that Tom Halliday's daughter was frivolous and reckless, and

that her lover was not to be trusted, he had contrived to put Mrs.

Woolper on the _qui vive_.

"Mr. Philip's afraid she may go and marry this young man on the sly,

before he's got the means to support a wife," she said to herself, as she

meditated upon the meaning of her master's injunctions; "and well he may

be. There's no knowing what young women are up to nowadays; and the more

innocent and inexperienced a young woman is, the more she wants looking

after. And Miss Georgy Craddock always was a poor fondy, up to naught but

dressing herself fine, and streaming up and down Barlingford High Street

with her old schoolfellows. Such as she ain't fit to be trusted with a

daughter; and Mr. Philip knows that. He always was a deep one. But I'm

glad he looks after Missy: there's many men, having got fast hold of th'

father's brass, would let th' daughter marry Old Scratch, for the sake of

gettin' rid of her."

This is how Mrs. Woolper argued the matter. She came of a prudent race;

and anything like prudence seemed to her a commendable virtue. She wished

to think well of her master; for her he had been a Providence in the hour

of calamity and old age. Where else could she look, if not to him? And to

suspect him, or think ill of him, was to reject the one refuge offered to

her distress. A magnanimous independence of spirit is not an easy virtue

for the old and friendless and poor. The drowning wretch will scarcely

question the soundness of the plank that sustains him upon the

storm-tossed billows; nor was Mrs. Woolper inclined to question the

motives of the man to whom she now owed her daily bread.

It is possible that before invoking Mrs. Woolper from the ashes of the

past to take her seat by the hearthstone of the present, Mr. Sheldon may

have contemplated the question of her return in all its bearings, and

may have assured himself that she was his own, by a tie not easily

broken--his bond-slave, fettered hand and foot by the bondage of

necessity.

"What choice can she have, except the choice between my house and the

workhouse?" he may naturally have asked himself; "and is it likely she

will quarrel with her bread-and-butter in order to fall back upon dry

bread?" Mr. Sheldon, contemplating this and all other questions from his

one unchanging standpoint, may reasonably have concluded that Mrs.

Woolper would do nothing opposed to her own interests; and that so long

as it suited her interest to remain at the Lawn, and to serve him, she

would there remain, his docile and unquestioning slave.

The influence of affection, the force of generous impulse, were qualities

that did not come into Mr. Sheldon's calculations upon this subject. His

addition and subtraction, division and multiplication, were all based on

one system.

That happy and unconscious art by which Charlotte Halliday made herself

dear to all who knew her had a speedy effect upon the old housekeeper.

The girl's amiable consideration for her age and infirmities; the pretty

affectionate familiarity with which she treated this countrywoman, who

had known her father, and who could talk to her of Yorkshire and

Yorkshire people, soon made their way to Nancy Woolper's heart of hearts.

For Miss Halliday to come to the housekeeper's room with some message

from her mother, and to linger for a few minutes' chat, was a delight to

Mrs. Woolper. She would have detained the bright young visitant for hours

instead of minutes, if she could have found any excuse for so doing. Nor

was there any treason against Mr. Sheldon in her growing attachment to

his stepdaughter. Whenever Nancy spoke of that master and benefactor, she

spoke with unfeigned gratitude and affection.

"I nursed your step-papa as a baby, Miss Halliday," she said very often

on these occasions. "You wouldn't think, to look at him now, that he ever

was _that_, would you? But he was one of the finest babies you could wish

to see--tall, and strong, and with eyes that pierced one through, they

were so bright and big and black. He was rather stubborn-spirited with

his teething; but what baby isn't trying at such times? I had rare work

with him, I can tell you, Miss, walking him about of nights, and jogging

him till there wasn't a jog left in me, as you may say, from sleepiness.

I often wonder if he thinks of this now, when I see him looking so grave

and stern. But, you see, being jogged doesn't impress the mind like

having to jog; and though I can bring that time back as plain as if it

was yesterday, with the very nursery I slept in at Barlingford, and the

rushlight in a tall iron cage on the floor, and the shadow of the cage on

the bare whitewashed walls--it's clean gone out of his mind, I dare say."

"I'm afraid it has, Nancy."

"But, O, I was fond of him, Miss Halliday; and what I went through with

him about his teeth made me only the fonder of him. He was the first baby

I ever nursed, you see, and the last; for before Master George came to

town I'd taken to the cooking, and Mrs. Sheldon hired another girl as

nurse; a regular softy _she_ was, and it isn't her fault that Master

George has got anything christian-like in the way of a back, for the way

she carried that blessed child used to make my blood run cold."

Thus would Mrs. Woolper discourse whenever she had a fair excuse for

detaining Miss Halliday in her comfortable apartment. Charlotte did not

perceive much interest in these reminiscences of Mr. Sheldon's infancy,

but she was much too kind to bring them abruptly to a close by any show

of impatience. When she could get Nancy to talk of Barlingford and Hyley,

and the people whom Charlotte herself had known as a child, the

conversation was really interesting; and these recollections formed a

link between the old woman and the fair young damsel.

When the change arose in Charlotte's health and spirits, Mrs. Woolper was

one of the first to perceive it. She was skilled in those old woman's

remedies which Mr. Sheldon held in such supreme contempt, and she would

fain have dosed the invalid with nauseous decoctions of hops, or

home-brewed quinine. Charlotte appreciated the kindness of the intent,

but she rebelled against the home-brewed medicines, and pinned her faith

to the more scientific and less obnoxious preparations procured from the

chemist's.

For some time Nancy made light of the girl's ailments, though she watched

her with unfailing attention.

"You ain't a-done growing yet, miss, I'll lay," she said.

"But I'm more than twenty-one, Nancy. People don't grow after they're of

age, do they?"

"I've known them as have, miss; I don't say it's common, but it has been

done. And then there's the weakness that comes after you've done growing.

Girls of your age are apt to be faint and lollopy-like, as you may say;

especially when they're stived up in a smoky place like London. You ought

to go to Hyley, miss, where you was born; that's the place to set you

up."

The time had come when the change was no longer matter for doubt. Day by

day Charlotte grew weaker and paler; day by day that bright and joyous

creature, whose presence had made an atmosphere of youth and gladness

even in that prim dwelling-place, receded farther into the dimness of

the past; until to think of what she had been seemed like recalling the

image of the dead. Nancy marked the alteration with a strange pain, so

sharp, so bitter, that its sharpness and bitterness were a perpetual

perplexity to her.

"If the poor dear young thing is meant to go, there's no need for me to

fret about it all day long, and wake up sudden in the night with cold

water standing out upon my forehead at the thought of it. I haven't known

her six months; and if she is pretty and sweet-spoken, it's not my place

to give way at the thoughts of losing her. She's not my own flesh and

blood; and I've sat by to watch them go, times and often, without feeling

as I do when I see the change in her day after day. Why should it seem so

dreadful to me?"

Why indeed? This was a question for which Mrs. Woolper could find no

answer. She knew that the pain and horror which she felt were something

more than natural, but beyond this point her thoughts refused to travel.

A superstitious feeling arose at this point, to usurp the office of

reason, and she accounted for the strangeness of Miss Halliday's illness

as she might have done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been

liable to the suspicion of nocturnal careerings on broomsticks.

"I'm sorry Mr. Philip's house should be unlucky to that sweet young

creature," she said to herself. "It was unlucky to the father; and now it

seems as if it was going to be unlucky to the daughter. And Mr. Philip

won't be any richer for her death. Mrs. Sheldon has told me times and

often that all Tom Halliday's money went to my master when she married

him, and he has doubled and trebled it by his cleverness. Miss

Charlotte's death wouldn't bring him a sixpence."

This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's meditations very often nowadays. But

the strange sense of perplexity, the nameless fear, the vague horror,

were not to be banished from her mind. A sense of some shapeless presence

for ever at her side haunted her by day and night. What was it? What did

its presence portend? It was as if a figure, shrouded from head to foot,

was there, dark and terrible, at her elbow, and she would not turn to

meet the horror face to face. Sometimes the phantom hand lifted a corner

of the veil, and the shade said, "Look at me! See who and what I am! You

have seen me before. I am here again! and this time you shall not refuse

to meet me face to face! I am the shadow of the horror you suspected in

the past!"

The shadowy fears which oppressed Mrs. Woolper during this period did not

in any way lessen her practical usefulness. From the commencement of

Charlotte's slow decline she had shown herself attentive, and even

officious, in all matters relating to the invalid. With her own hands she

decanted the famous port which Georgy fetched from the particular bin in

Mr. Sheldon's carefully arranged cellar. When the physician was called

in, and wrote his harmless little prescription, it was Mrs. Woolper who

carried the document to the dispensing chemist, and brought back the

innocent potion, which might, peradventure, effect some slight good, and

was too feeble a decoction to do any harm. Charlotte duly appreciated all

this kindness; but she repeatedly assured the housekeeper that her

ailments were not worthy of so much care.

It was Mrs. Woolper whom Mr. Sheldon employed to get lodgings for the

family, when it had been ultimately decided that a change to the seaside

was the best cure for Miss Halliday.

"I am too busy to go to Hastings myself this week," he said; "but I

shall be prepared to spend a fortnight there after next Monday. What I

want you to do, Nancy, is to slip down tomorrow, with a second-class

return-ticket, and look about for a nice place for us. I don't care about

being in Hastings; there's too much cockneyism in the place at this time

of year. There's a little village called Harold's Hill, within a mile or

so of St. Leonard's--a dull, out-of-the-way place, but rustic and

picturesque, and all that kind of thing--the sort of place that women

like. Now, I'd rather stay at that place than at Hastings. So you can

take a fly at the station, drive straight to Harold's Hill, and secure

the best lodgings you can get."

"You think as the change of air will do Miss Halliday good?" asked Mrs.

Woolper anxiously, after she had promised to do all her kind master

required of her.

"Do I think it will do her good? Of course I do. Sea-air and

sea-bathing will set her up in no time; there's nothing particular the

matter with her."

"No, Mr. Philip; that's what bothers me about the whole thing. There's

nothing particular the matter with her; and yet she pines and dwindles,

and dwindles and pines, till it makes one's heart ache to see her."

Philip Sheldon's face darkened, and he threw himself back in his chair

with an impatient movement. If he had chosen to do so, he could have

prevented that darkening of his face; but he did not consider Mrs.

Woolper a person of sufficient importance to necessitate the regulation

of his countenance. What was she but an ignorant, obstinate old woman,

who would most probably perish in the streets if he chose to turn her out

of doors? There are men who consider their clerks and retainers such very

dirt, that they would continue the forging of a bill of exchange, or

complete the final touches of a murder, with a junior clerk putting coals

on the fire, or an errand-boy standing cap in hand on the threshold of

the door. They cannot realize the fact that dirt such as this is flesh

and blood, and may denounce them by-and-by in a witness-box.

Of all contingencies Mr. Sheldon least expected that this old woman could

prove troublesome to him--this abject wretch, whose daily bread depended

on his will. He could not imagine that there are circumstances under

which such abject creatures will renounce their daily bread, and die of

hunger, rather than accept the means of life from one hateful hand.

"If you want to know anything about Miss Halliday's illness," he said in

his hardest voice, and with his hardest look, "you had better apply to

Dr. Doddleson, the physician who has prescribed for her. I do not attend

her, you see, and I am in no way responsible for her health. When I was

attending her father you favoured me by doubting my skill, if I judged

rightly as to your tone and manner on one occasion. I don't want to be

brought to book by you, Mrs. Woolper, about Miss Halliday's altered looks

or Miss Halliday's illness; I have nothing to do with either."

"How should I think you had, sir? Don't be angry with me, or hard upon

me, Mr. Phil. I nursed you when you was but a baby, and you're nearer and

dearer to me than any other master could be. Why, I have but to shut my

eyes now, and I can feel your little hand upon my neck, as it used to lie

there, so soft and dear. And then I look down at the hand on the table,

strong and dark, and clenched so firm, and I ask myself, Can it be the

same? For the sake of that time, Mr. Phil, don't be hard upon me. There's

nothing I wouldn't do to serve you; there's nothing you could do that

would turn me from you. There's no man living in this world, sir, that

oughtn't to be glad to know of one person that nothing can turn from

him."

"That's a very fine sentiment, my good soul," replied Mr. Sheldon coolly;

"but, you see, it's only an _ex parte_ statement; and as the case stands

there is no opportunity for the display of those fine feelings you talk

about. You happen to want a home in your old age, and I happen to be able

to give you a home. Under such circumstances, your own good sense will

show you that all sentimental talk about standing by me, and not turning

away from me, is absolute bosh."

The old woman sighed heavily. She had offered her master a fidelity which

involved the abnegation of all impulses of her own heart and mind, and he

rejected her love and her service. And then, after the first dreary sense

of his coldness, she felt better pleased that it should be so. The man

who spoke to her in this harsh uncompromising way could have no cause to

fear her. In the mind of such a man there could surely be no secret

chamber within which she had, with his knowledge, almost penetrated.

"I won't trouble you any more, sir," she said mournfully. "I dare say I'm

a foolish old woman."

"You are, Nancy. We don't get wiser as we grow older, you see; and when

we let our tongues wag, we're apt to talk nonsense. The quieter you keep

your tongue, the better for yourself, in more ways than one. To a useful

old woman about the place I've no objection; but a chattering old woman I

will not have at any price."

After this everything was settled in the most agreeable manner. Nancy

Woolper's journey to Hastings was fully arranged; and early the next

morning she started, brisk and active, in spite of her sixty-eight years

of age. She returned at night, having secured very pleasant lodgings at

the village of Harold's Hill.

"And a very sweet place it is, my dear Miss Lotta," she said to Charlotte

the next day, when she described her adventures. "The apartments are at a

farmhouse overlooking the sea; and the smell of the cows under your

windows, and the sea-breezes blowing across the farmyard, can't fail to

bring the colour back to your pretty cheeks, and the brightness back to

your pretty eyes."

CHAPTER IV.

VALENTINE'S SKELETON.

The idea of this visit to the Sussex village by the sea seemed delightful

to every one except Gustave Lenoble, who was still in town, and who

thought it a hard thing that he should be deprived of Diana's society

during an entire fortnight, for the sake of this sickly Miss Halliday.

For the rest, there was hope and gladness in the thought of this change

of dwelling. Charlotte languished for fresher breezes and more rustic

prospects than the breezes and prospects of Bayswater; Diana looked to

the sea-air as the doctor of doctors for her fading friend; and Valentine

cherished the same hope.

On Valentine Hawkehurst the burden of an unlooked-for sorrow had weighed

very heavily. To see this dear girl, who was the beginning, middle, and

end of all his hopes, slowly fading before his eyes, was, of all agonies

that could have fallen to his lot, the sharpest and most bitter. Not

Ugolino sitting silent amidst his famishing children--not Helen, when she

would fain that the tempest had swept her from earth's surface on that

evil day when she was born--not Penelope, when she cried on Diana, the

high-priestess of death, to release her from the weariness of her

days--not Agamemnon, when the fatal edict had gone forth, and his fair

young daughter looked into his face, and asked him if it was true that

she was to die--not one of these typical mourners could have suffered a

keener torture than that which rent this young man's heart, as he marked

the stealthy steps of the Destroyer drawing nearer and nearer the woman

he loved. Of all possible calamities, this was the last he had ever

contemplated. Sometimes, in moments of doubt or despondency, he had

thought it possible that poverty, the advice of friends, caprice or

inconstancy on the part of Charlotte herself, should sever them. But

among the possible enemies to his happiness he had never counted Death.

What had Death to do with so fair and happy a creature as Charlotte

Halliday? she who, until some two months before this time, might have

been the divine Hygieia in person--so fresh was her youthful bloom, so

buoyant her step, so bright her glances. Valentine's hardest penance was

the necessity for the concealment of his anxiety. The idea that

Charlotte's illness might be--nay, must be--for the greater part an

affair of the nerves was always paramount in his mind. He and Diana had

talked of the subject together whenever they found an opportunity for so

doing, and had comforted themselves with the assurance that the nerves

alone were to blame; and they were the more inclined to think this from

the conduct of Dr. Doddleson, on that physician's visits to Miss

Halliday. Mrs. Sheldon had been present on each occasion, and to Mrs.

Sheldon alone had the physician given utterance to his opinion of the

case. That opinion, though expressed with a certain amount of

professional dignity, amounted to very little. "Our dear young friend

wanted strength; and what we had to do was to give our dear young friend

strength--vital power. Yes--er--um, that was the chief point. And what

kind of diet might our dear young friend take now? Was it a light diet, a

little roast mutton--not too much done, but not underdone? O dear, no.

And a light pudding? what he would call--if he might be permitted to have

his little joke--a nursery pudding." And then the old gentleman had

indulged in a senile chuckle, and patted Charlotte's head with his fat

old fingers. "And our dear young friend's room, now, was it a large

room?--good! and what was the aspect now, south?--good again! nothing

better, unless, perhaps, south-west; but, of course, everyone's

rooms can't look south-west. A little tonic draught, and gentle daily

exercise in that nice garden, will set our dear young friend right again.

Our temperament is nervous we are a sensitive plant, and want care." And

then the respectable septuagenarian took his fee, and shuffled off to his

carriage. And this was all that Mrs. Sheldon could tell Diana, or Nancy

Woolper, both of whom questioned her closely about her interview with the

doctor. To Diana and to Valentine there was hope to be gathered from the

very vagueness of the physician's opinion. If there had been anything

serious the matter, the medical adviser must needs have spoken more

seriously. He came again and again. He found the pulse a little weaker,

the patient a little more nervous, with a slight tendency to hysteria,

and so on; but he still declared that there were no traces of organic

disease, and he still talked of Miss Halliday's ailments with a cheery

easy-going manner that was very reassuring.

In his moments of depression Valentine pinned his faith upon Dr.

Doddleson. Without organic disease, he told himself, his darling could

not perish. He looked for Dr. Doddleson's name in the Directory, and took

comfort from the fact of that physician's residence in a fashionable West

End square. He took further comfort from the splendour of the doctor's

equipage, as depicted to him by Mrs. Sheldon; and from the doctor's age

and experience, as copiously described by the same lady.

"There is only one fact that I have ever reproached myself with in

relation to my poor Tom," said Georgy, who, in talking to strangers of

her first husband, was apt to impress them with the idea that she was

talking of a favourite cat; "and that is, the youthfulness of the

doctor Mr. Sheldon employed. Of course I am well aware that Mr. Sheldon

would not have consulted the young man if he had not thought him

clever; but I could lay my head upon my pillow at night with a clearer

conscience if poor Tom's doctor had been an older and more experienced

person. Now, that's what I like about Dr. Doddleson. There's a gravity--a

weight--about a man of that age which inspires one with immediate

confidence. I'm sure the serious manner with which he questioned me about

Lotta's diet, and the aspect of her room, was quite delightful."

In Dr. Doddleson, under Providence, Valentine was fain to put his trust.

He did not know that the worthy doctor was one of those harmless

inanities who, by the aid of money and powerful connections, are

sometimes forced into a position which nature never intended them to

occupy. Among the real working men of that great and admirable

brotherhood, the medical profession, Dr. Doddleson had no rank; but he

was the pet physician of fashionable dowagers suffering from chronic

laziness or periodical attacks of ill-humour. For the spleen or the

vapours no one was a better adviser than Dr. Doddleson. He could afford

to waste half an hour upon the asking of questions which the fair

patient's maid might as well have asked, and the suggestions of remedies

which any intelligent abigail could as easily have suggested. Elderly

ladies believed in him because he was pompous and ponderous, lived in an

expensive neighbourhood, and drove a handsome equipage. He wore

mourning-rings left him by patients who never had anything particular the

matter with them, and who, dying of sheer old age, or sheer over-eating,

declared with their final gasp that Dr. Doddleson had been the guardian

angel of their frail lives during the last twenty years.

This was the man who, of all the medical profession resident in London,

Mr. Sheldon had selected as his stepdaughter's medical adviser in a case

so beyond common experience, that a man of wide practice and keen

perception was especially needed for its treatment.

Dr. Doddleson, accustomed to attribute the fancied ailments of

fashionable dowagers to want of tone, and accustomed to prescribe the

mildest preparations with satisfaction to his patients and profit to

himself dwelt upon the same want of tone, and prescribed the same

harmless remedies, in his treatment of Charlotte Halliday. When he found

her no better--nay, even worse--after some weeks of this treatment, he

was puzzled; and for one harmless remedy he substituted another harmless

remedy, and waited another week to see what effect the second harmless

remedy might have on this somewhat obstinate young person.

And this was the broken reed to which Valentine clung in the day of

his trouble.

Bitter were his days and sleepless were his nights in this dark period of

his existence. He went to the Bayswater villa nearly every day now. It

was no longer time for etiquette or ceremony. His darling was fading day

by day; and it was his right to watch the slow sad change, and, if it

were possible, to keep the enemy at arm's-length. Every day he came to

spend one too brief hour with his dear love; every day he greeted her

with the same fond smile, and beguiled her with the same hopeful talk. He

brought her new books and flowers, and any foolish trifle which he

fancied might beguile her thoughts from the contemplation of that

mysterious malady which seemed beyond the reach of science and Dr.

Doddleson. He sat and talked with her of the future--that future which in

their secret thoughts both held to be a sweet sad fable--the hyperborean

garden of their dreams. And after spending this too sweet, too bitter

hour with his beloved, Mr. Hawkehurst would diplomatise in order to have

a little talk with Diana as he left the house. Did Diana think his dear

girl better to-day, or worse--surely not worse? He had fancied she had

more colour, more of her old gaiety of manner. She had seemed a little

feverish; but that might be the excitement of his visit. And so on, and

so on, with sad and dreary repetition.

And then, having gone away from that house with an aching heart, the

young magazine-writer went back to his lodgings, and plunged into the

dashing essay or the smart pleasant story which was to constitute his

monthly contribution to the _Cheapside_ or the _Charing Cross_. Gaiety,

movement, rollicking, Harry Lorrequer-like spirits were demanded for the

_Cheapside_; a graceful union of brilliancy and depth was required for

the _Charing Cross_. And, O, be sure the critics lay in wait to catch the

young scribbler tripping! An anachronism here, a secondhand idea there,

and the _West End Wasp_ shrieked its war-whoop in an occasional note; or

the _Minerva_ published a letter from a correspondent in the Scilly

Islands, headed "Another Literary Jack Sheppard," to say that in his

"Imperial Dictionary" he had discovered with profound indignation a whole

column of words feloniously and mendaciously appropriated by the writer

of such and such an article in the _Cheapside_. While the sunlight of

hope had shone upon him, Mr. Hawkehurst had found the hardest work

pleasant. Was he not working for _her_ sake? Did not his future union

with that dear girl depend upon his present industry? It had seemed to

him as if she stood at his elbow while he wrote, as Pallas stood beside

Achilles at the council, invisible to all but her favourite. It was that

mystic presence which lent swiftness to his pen. When he was tired and

depressed, the thought of Charlotte had revived his courage and

vanquished his fatigue. Pleasant images crowded upon him when he thought

of her. What could be easier than for him to write a love-story? He had

but to create a shadowy Charlotte for his heroine, and the stream of

foolish lover's babble flowed from his pen perennial and inexhaustible.

To his reading she lent a charm and a grace that made the most perfect

poetry still more poetical. It was not Achilles and Helen who met on

Mount Ida, but Valentine and Charlotte; it was not Paolo and Francesca

who read the fatal book together, but Valentine and Charlotte, in an

unregenerate and state of mind. The mere coincidence of a name

made the "Sorrows of Werter" delightful. The all-pervading presence was

everywhere and in everything. His religion was not Pantheism, but

Charlottism.

Now all was changed. A brooding care was with him in every moment. The

mystic presence was still close to him in every hour of his lonely days

and nights; but that image, which had been fair and blooming as the

incarnation of youth and spring-time, was now a pale shrouded phantom

which he dared not contemplate. He still wrote on--for it is marvellous

how the pen will travel and the mind will project itself into the

shadow-world of fancy while cankerous care gnaws the weary heart. Nay, it

is perhaps at these times that the imagination is most active; for the

world of shadows is a kind of refuge for the mind that dare not dwell

upon realities. Who can say what dull, leaden, care may have weighed down

the heart of William Shakespeare when his mind conceived that monster of

a poet's grand imaginings, Othello! There is the flavour of racking care

in that mighty creation. The strong soul wantonly tortured by a sordid

wretch; the noble spirit distraught, the honourable life wrecked for so

poor a motive; that sense of the "something in this world amiss," which

the poet, of all other creatures, feels most keenly.

With grief and fear as his constant companions, Valentine Hawkehurst

toiled on bravely, patiently. Hope had not deserted him; but between hope

and fear the contest was unceasing. Sometimes hope had the best of it for

a while, and the toiler comforted himself with the thought that this dark

cloud would pass anon from the horizon of his life; and then he counted

his gains, and found that the fruit of his labours was increasing

monthly, as his name gained rank among the band of young _litterateurs_.

The day when he might count upon that income which Mr. Sheldon demanded

as his qualification for matrimony did not appear far distant. Given a

certain amount of natural ability, and the industrious and indefatigable

young writer may speedily emerge from obscurity, and take his place in

the great army of those gallant soldiers whose only weapon is the pen.

Whatever good fortune had come to Valentine Hawkehurst he had worked for

with all honesty of purpose. The critics were not slow to remark that he

worked at a white-hot haste, and must needs be a shallow pretender

because he was laborious and indefatigable.

Before the beginning of Charlotte's slow decline he had fancied himself

the happiest of men. There were more deposit-receipts in his desk. The

nest-egg, about the hatching whereof there had been such cackling and

crowing some months ago, was now one of many eggs; for the hard-working

scribbler had no leisure in which to be extravagant, had he been so

minded. The purchase of a half-circlet of diamonds for his betrothed's

slim finger had been his only folly.

Charlotte had remonstrated with him on the impropriety of such an

extravagance, and had exacted from him a promise that this wild and

Monte-Christo-like course should be pursued no further; but she was very

proud of her half-hoop of diamonds nevertheless, and was wont to press it

tenderly to her lips before she laid it aside for the night.

"There must be no more such extravagance, sir," she said to her lover,

when he sat by her side twisting the ring round and round on her pretty

finger. Alas, how loose the ring had become since it had first been

placed there!

"Consider the future, Valentine," continued the girl, hopeful of mood

while her hand rested in his. "Do you suppose we can furnish our cottage

at Wimbledon if we rush into such wild expenses as diamond rings? Do you

know that _I_ am saving money, Valentine? Yes, positively. Papa gives me

a very good allowance for my dresses, and bonnets, and things, you know,

and I used to be extravagant and spend it all. But now I have become the

most miserly creature; and I have a little packet of money upstairs which

you shall put in the Unitas Bank with the rest of your wealth. Diana and

I have been darning, and patching, and cutting, and contriving, in the

most praiseworthy manner. Even this silk has been turned. You did not

think that, did you, when you admired it so?"

Mr. Hawkehurst looked at his beloved with a tender smile. The exact

significance of the operation of turning, as applied to silk dresses, was

somewhat beyond his comprehension; but he felt sure that to turn must be

a laudable action, else why that air of pride with which Charlotte

informed him of the fact?

CHAPTER V.

AT HAROLD'S HILL.

The summer sun shone upon the village of Harold's Hill when Charlotte

arrived there with Mrs. Sheldon and Diana Paget. Mr. Sheldon was to

follow them on the same day by a later train; and Valentine was to come

two days afterwards to spend the peaceful interval between Saturday and

Monday with his betrothed. He had seen the travellers depart from the

London Bridge terminus, but Mr. Sheldon had been there also, and there

had been no opportunity for confidential communication between the

lovers.

Of all Sussex villages Harold's Hill is perhaps the prettiest. The grey

old Saxon church, the scattered farmhouses and pleasant rustic cottages,

are built on the slope of a hill, and all the width of ocean lies below

the rustic windows. The roses and fuchsias of the cottage gardens seem

all the brighter by contrast with that broad expanse of blue. The fresh

breath of the salt sea blends with the perfume of new-mown hay and all

the homely odours of the farmyard. The lark sings high in the blue vault

of heaven above the church, and over the blue of the sea the gull skims

white in the sunshine. The fisherman and the farm labourer have their

cottages side by side, nestling cosily to leeward of the hilly winding

road.

This hilly winding road in the July afternoon seemed to Charlotte almost

like the way to Paradise.

"It is like going to heaven, Di!" she cried, with her eyes fixed on the

square tower of the old grey church. She wondered why sudden tears sprang

to Diana's eyes as she said this. Miss Paget brushed the unbidden tears

away with a quick gesture of her hand, and smiled at her friend.

"Yes, dear, the village is very pretty, isn't it?"

"It looks awfully dull!" said Mrs. Sheldon, with a shudder; "and, Diana,

I declare there isn't a single shop. Where are we to get our provisions?

I told Mr. Sheldon St. Leonards would have been a better place for us."

"O mamma, St. Leonards is the very essence of all that is tame and

commonplace, compared to this darling rural village! Look, do look, at

that fisherman's cottage, with the nets hanging out to dry in the

sunshine; just like a picture of Hook's!"

"What's the use of going on about fishermen's cottages, Lotta?" Mrs.

Sheldon demanded, peevishly. "Fishermen's cottages won't provide us with

butcher's meat. Where are we to get your little bit of roast mutton? Dr.

Doddleson laid such a stress upon the roast mutton."

"The sea-air will do me more good than all the mutton that ever was

roasted at Eton, mamma. O, dear, is this our farmhouse?" cried Charlotte,

as the vehicle drew up at a picturesque gate. "O, what a love of a house!

what diamond-paned windows! what sweet white curtains! and a cow staring

at me quite in the friendliest way across the gate! O, can we be so happy

as to live here?"

"Diana," cried Mrs. Sheldon, in a solemn voice, "not a single shop have

we passed--not so much as a post-office! And as to haberdashery, I'm sure

you might be reduced to rags in this place before you could get so much

as a yard of glazed lining!"

The farmhouse was one of those ideal homesteads which, to the dweller in

cities, seems fair as the sapphire-ceiled chambers of the house of

Solomon. Charlotte was enraptured by the idea that this was to be her

home for the next fortnight.

"I wish it could be for ever, Di," she said, as the two girls were

inspecting the rustic, dimity-draperied, lavender-and-rose-leaf-perfumed

bedchambers. "Who would wish to go back to prim suburban Bayswater after

this? Valentine and I could lodge here after our marriage. It is better

than Wimbledon. Grand thoughts would come to him with the thunder of the

stormy waves; and on calm bright days like this the rippling water would

whisper pretty fancies into his ear. Why, to live here would make any one

a poet. I think I could write a novel myself, if I lived here long

enough."

After this they arranged the pretty sitting-room, and placed an

easy-chair by the window for Charlotte, an arm-chair opposite this for

Mrs. Sheldon, and between the two a little table for the fancy work and

books and flowers, and all the small necessities of feminine existence.

And then--while Mrs. Sheldon prowled about the rooms, and discovered so

many faults and made so many objections as to give evidence of a fine

faculty for invention unsuspected in her hitherto--Charlotte and Diana

explored the garden and peeped at the farmyard, where the friendly cow

still stared over the white gate, just as she had stared when the fly

came to a stop, as if she had not yet recovered from the astonishment

created in her pastoral mind by that phenomenal circumstance. And then

Charlotte was suddenly tired, and there came upon her that strange

dizziness which was one of her most frequent symptoms. Diana led her

immediately back to the house, and established her comfortably in her

easy-chair.

"I must be very ill," she said, plaintively; "for even the novelty of

this pretty place cannot make me happy long."

* * * * *

Mr. Sheldon arrived in the evening, bringing with him a supply of that

simple medicine which Charlotte took three times a day. He had remembered

that there was no dispensing chemist at Harold's Hill, and that it would

be necessary to send to St. Leonards for the medicine, and had therefore

brought with him a double quantity of the mild tonic.

"It was very kind of you to think of it, though I really don't believe

the stuff does me any good," said Charlotte. "Nancy Woolper used to get

it for me at Bayswater. She made quite a point of fetching it from the

chemist's herself."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mr. Sheldon. "Nancy troubled herself about your

medicine, did she?"

"Yes, papa; and about me altogether. If I were her own daughter she could

scarcely have seemed more anxious."

The stockbroker made a mental note of this in the memorandum-book of his

brain. Mrs. Woolper was officious, was she, and suspicious?--altogether a

troublesome sort of person.

"I think a few weeks of workhouse fare would be wholesome for that old

lady," he said to himself. "There are some people who never know when

they are well off."

Saturday afternoon came in due course, after a long and dreary interval,

as it seemed to Charlotte, for whom time travelled very slowly, so

painful was the weariness of illness. Now and then a sudden flash of

excitement brought the old brightness to her face, the old gaiety to her

accents; but the brightness faded very soon, and the languor of illness

was very perceptible.

Punctual to the hour at which he was expected, Mr. Hawkehurst appeared,

in radiant spirits, laden with new magazines, delighted with the village,

enraptured with the garden, enchanted with the sea; full of talk and

animation, with all sorts of news to tell his beloved. Such and such a

book was a failure, such and such a comedy was a fiasco; Jones's novel

had made a hit; Brown's picture was the talk of the year; and Charlotte

must see the picture that had been talked about, and the play that had

been condemned, when she returned to town.

For an hour the lovers sat in the pretty farmhouse parlour talking

together thus, the summer sea and the garden flowers before them, and a

bird singing high in the calm blue heaven. Charlotte's talk was somewhat

languid, though it was perfect happiness for her to be seated thus, with

her betrothed by her side; but Valentine's gaiety of spirits never

flagged; and when Mrs. Sheldon hinted to him that too long a conversation

might fatigue the dear invalid, he left the parlour with a smile upon his

face, and a cheery promise to return after an hour's ramble.

He did not ramble far. He went straight to a little wooden summer-house

in the remotest corner of the humble garden; and thither Diana Paget

followed him. She had learned the language of his face in the time of

their daily companionship, and she had seen a look as he left the house

which told her of the struggle his cheerfulness had cost him.

"You must not be downhearted, Valentine," she said, as she went into the

summer-house, where he sat in a listless attitude, with his arms lying

loosely folded on the rustic table.

He did not answer her.

"You don't think her worse--much worse--do you, Valentine?"

"Worse? I have seen death in her face to-day!" he cried; and then he let

his forehead fall upon his folded arms, and sobbed aloud.

Diana stood by his side watching that outburst of grief. When the

passionate storm of tears was past, she comforted him as best she might.

The change so visible to him was not so plain to her. He had hoped that

the breath of the ocean would have magical power to restore the invalid.

He had come to Harold's Hill full of hope, and instead of the beginning

of an improvement he saw the progress of decay.

"Why did not Sheldon send for the doctor," he asked, indignantly,--"the

physician who has attended her? He might have telegraphed to that man."

"Charlotte is taking Dr. Doddleson's medicine," said Diana, "and all his

directions are most carefully obeyed."

"What of that, if she grows worse? The doctor should see her daily,

hourly, if necessary. And if he cannot cure her, another doctor should be

sent for. Good heavens, Diana! are we to let her fade and sink from us

before our eyes? I will go back to London at once, and bring that man

Doddleson down by the night mail."

"Your going back to London would grieve and alarm Charlotte. You can

telegraph for the doctor; or, at least, Mr. Sheldon can do so. It would

not do for you to interfere without his permission."

"It would not do!" echoed Valentine, angrily. "Do you think that I

am going to stand upon punctilio, or to consider what will do or

will not do?"

"Above all things, you must avoid alarming Charlotte," pleaded Diana.

"Do you think I do not know that? Do you think I did not feel that just

now, when I sat by her side, talking inane rubbish about books and plays

and pictures, while every stolen glance at my darling's face was like a

dagger thrust into my heart? I will not alarm her. I will consult Mr.

Sheldon--will do anything, everything, to save her! To save her! O my

God, has it come to that?"

He grew a little calmer presently under Diana's influence, and went

slowly back to the house. He avoided the open window by which Charlotte

was sitting. He had not yet schooled himself to meet her questioning

looks. He went to the room where they were to dine, a duller and darker

apartment than the parlour, and here he found Mr. Sheldon reading a

paper, one of the eternal records of the eternal money-market.

The stockbroker had been in and out of the house all day, now sauntering

by the sea-shore, now leaning moodily, with folded arms, on the garden

gate, meditative and silent as the cow that stared at Charlotte; now

pacing the garden walks, with his hands in his pockets and his head bent.

Diana, who in her anxiety kept a close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's

movements, had noted his restlessness, and perceived in it the sign of

growing anxiety on his part. She knew that he had once called himself

surgeon-dentist, and had some medical knowledge, if not so much as he

took credit for possessing. He must, therefore, be better able to judge

the state of Charlotte's health than utterly ignorant observers. If he

were uneasy, there must be real cause for uneasiness. It was on this

account, and on this account only, that Diana watched him.

"He must love her better than I gave him credit for being able to love

any one," Miss Paget said to herself. "Dear girl! The coldest heart is

touched by her sweetness."

Mr. Sheldon looked up from his newspaper as Valentine came into the room,

and saluted the visitor with a friendly nod.

"Glad to see you, Hawkehurst," he said. "_Semper fidelis_, and that

kind of thing; the very model of devoted lovers. Why, man alive, how

glum you look!"

"I think I have reason to look glum," answered Valentine, gravely; "I

have seen Charlotte."

"Yes? And don't you find her improving?--gradually, of course. That

constitutional languor is not shaken off in a hurry. But surely you think

her improving--brightening--"

"Brightening with the light that never shone on earth or sea. God help

me! I--I--am the merest child, the veriest coward, the--" He made a great

effort, and stifled the sob that had well-nigh broken his voice. "Mr.

Sheldon," he continued quietly, "I believe your stepdaughter is dying."

"Dying! Good heavens!--my dear Hawkehurst, this alarm is most--most

premature. There is no cause for fear--at present, no cause--I give you

my word as a medical man."

"No cause for alarm at present? That means my darling will not be taken

from me to-night, or to-morrow. I shall have a few days breathing-time.

Yes, I understand. The doom is upon us. I saw the shadow of death upon

her face to-day."

"My dear Hawkehurst--"

"My dear Sheldon, for pity's sake don't treat me as if I were a woman or

a child. Let me know my fate. If--if--this, the worst, most bitter of all

calamities God's hand--raised against me in punishment of past sins,

sinned lightly and recklessly, in the days when my heart had no stake in

the game of destiny--can inflict upon me; if this deadly sorrow is

bearing down upon me, let me meet it like a man. Let me die with my eyes

uncovered. O, my dearest, my fondest, redeeming angel of my ill-spent

life! have you been only a supernal visitant, after all, shining on me

for a little while, to depart when your mission of redemption is

accomplished?"

"Powers above!" thought Mr. Sheldon, "what nonsense these sentimental

magazine-writers can talk!"

He was in nowise melted by the lover's anguish, though it was very real.

Such a grief as this was outside the circle in which his thoughts

revolved. This display of grief was unpleasant to him. It grated

painfully upon his nerves, as some of poor Tom Halliday's little speeches

had done of old, when the honest-hearted Yorkshireman lay on his

deathbed; and the young man's presence and the young man's anxiety were

alike inconvenient.

"Tell me the truth, Mr. Sheldon," Valentine said presently, with

suppressed intensity. "Is there any hope for my darling, any hope?"

Mr. Sheldon considered for some moments before he replied to this

question. He pursed-up his lips and bent his brows with the same air of

business-like deliberation that he might have assumed while weighing the

relative merits of the first and second debenture bonds of some doubtful

railway company.

"You ask me a trying question, Hawkehurst," he said at last. "If you ask

me plainly whether I like the turn which Charlotte's illness has taken

within the last few weeks, I must tell you frankly, I do not. There is a

persistent want of tone--a visible decay of vital power--which, I must

confess, has caused me some uneasiness. You see, the fact is, there is a

radical weakness of constitution--as Miss Paget, a very sensible girl and

acute observer--herself has remarked, indeed a hereditary weakness; and

against this medicine is sometimes unavailing. You need apprehend no

neglect on my part, Hawkehurst; all that can possibly be done is being

done. Dr. Doddleson's instructions are carefully obeyed, and--"

"Is this Dr. Doddleson competent to grapple with the case?" asked

Valentine; "I never heard of him as a great man."

"That fact proves how little you know of the medical profession."

"I know nothing of it; I have had no need for doctors in my life. And you

think this Dr. Doddleson really clever?"

"His position is a sufficient answer to that question."

"Will you let me telegraph for him--this afternoon--immediately?"

"You cannot telegraph from this place."

"No, but from St. Leonards I can. Do you think I am afraid of a

five-mile walk?"

"But why send for Dr. Doddleson? The treatment he prescribed is the

treatment we are now following to the letter. To summon him down here

would be the merest folly. Our poor Charlotte's illness is, so far, free

from all alarming symptoms."

"You do not see the change in her that I can see," cried Valentine

piteously. "For mercy's sake, Mr. Sheldon, let me have my way in this. I

cannot stand by and see my dear one fading and do nothing--nothing to

save her. Let me send for this man. Let me see him myself, and hear what

he says. You can have no objection to his coming, since he is the man you

have chosen for Charlotte's adviser? It can only be a question of

expense. Let this particular visit be my affair."

"I can afford to pay for my stepdaughter's medical attendance without any

help from your purse, Mr. Hawkehurst," said the stockbroker with offended

pride. "There is one element in the case which you appear to ignore."

"What is that?"

"The alarm which this summoning of a doctor from London must cause in

Charlotte's mind."

"It need cause no alarm. She can be told that Dr. Doddleson has come to

this part of the world for a Sunday's change of air. The visit can appear

to be made _en passant._ It will be easy to arrange that with the doctor

before he sees her."

"As you please, Mr. Hawkehurst," the stockbroker replied coldly. "I

consider such a visit to the last degree unnecessary; but if Dr.

Doddleson's coming can give you any satisfaction, by all means let him

come. The expense involved in summoning him is of the smallest

consideration to me. My position with regard to my wife's daughter is one

of extreme responsibility, and I am ready to perform all the obligations

of that position."

"You are very good: your conduct in relation to Charlotte and myself has

been beyond all praise. It is quite possible that I am over-anxious; but

there was a look in that dear face--no--I cannot forget that look; it

struck terror to my heart. I will go at once to St. Leonards. I can tell

Charlotte that I am obliged to telegraph to the printer about my copy.

You will not object to that white lie?"

"Not at all. I think it essential that Charlotte should not be alarmed.

You had better stop to dine; there will be time for the telegram after

dinner."

"I will not risk that," answered Valentine. "I cannot eat or drink till I

have done something to lessen this wretched anxiety."

He went back to the room where Charlotte was sitting by the open window,

through which there came the murmur of waves, the humming of drowsy bees,

the singing of birds, all the happy voices of happy nature in a

harmonious chorus.

"O God, wilt thou take her away from such a beautiful world," he asked,

"and change all the glory of earth to darkness and desolation for me?"

His heart rebelled against the idea of her death. To save her, to win her

back to himself from the jaws of death, he was ready to promise anything,

to do anything.

"All my days will I give to Thy service, if Thou wilt spare her to me,"

in his heart he said to his God. "If Thou dost not, I will be an infidel

and a pagan--the vilest and most audacious of sinners. Better to serve

Lucifer than the God who could so afflict me."

And this is where the semi-enlightened Christian betrays the weakness of

his faith. While the sun shines, and the sweet gospel story reads to him

like some tender Arcadian idyl, all love and promise, he is firm in his

allegiance; but when the dark hour comes, he turns his face to the wall,

with anger and disappointment in his heart, and will have no further

commune with the God who has chastised him. His faith is the faith of the

grateful leper, who, being healed, was eager to return and bless his

divine benefactor. It is not the faith of Abraham or of Job, of Paul or

of Stephen.

Valentine told his story about the printers and the copy for the

_Cheapside_ magazine, about which there had arisen some absurd mistake,

only to be set right by a telegram.

It was not a very clear account; but Charlotte did not perceive the

vagueness of the story; she thought only of the one fact, that Valentine

must leave her for some hours.

"The evening will seem so long without you," she said. "That is the worst

part of my illness; the time is so long--so weary. Diana is the dearest

and kindest of friends. She is always trying to amuse me, and reads to me

for hours, though I know she must often be tired of reading aloud so

long. But even the books I was once so fond of do not amuse me. The words

seem to float indistinctly in my brain, and all sorts of strange images

mix themselves up with the images of the people in the book. Di has been

reading "The Bride of Lammermoor" all this morning; but the pain and

weariness I feel seemed to be entangled with Lucy and Edgar somehow, and

the dear book gave me no pleasure."

"My darling, you--you are too weak to listen to Diana's reading. It is

very kind of her to try to amuse you; but--but it would be better for you

to rest altogether. Any kind of mental exertion may help to retard your

recovery."

He had placed himself behind her chair, and was bending over the pillows

to speak to her. Just now he felt himself unequal to the command of his

countenance. He bent his head until his lips touched the soft brown hair,

and kissed those loose soft tresses passionately. The thought occurred to

him that a day might come when he should again kiss that soft brown hair,

with a deeper passion, with a sharper pain, and when Charlotte would not

know of his kisses, or pity his pain.

"O Valentine!" cried Charlotte, "you are crying; I can see your face in

the glass."

He had forgotten the glass; the little rococo mirror, with an eagle

hovering over the top of the frame, which hung above the old-fashioned

chiffonier.

"I am not so very ill, dear; I am not indeed," the girl continued,

turning in her chair with an effort, and clasping her lover's hands; "you

must not distress yourself like this, Valentine--dear Valentine! I shall

be better by-and-by. I cannot think that I shall be taken from you."

He had broken down altogether by this time. He buried his face in the

pillows, and contrived to stifle the sobs that would come; and then,

after a sharp struggle, he lifted his face, and bent over the chair once

more to kiss the invalid's pale upturned forehead.

"My dear one, you shall not, if love can guard and keep you. No, dear,

I _cannot_ believe that God will take you from me. Heaven may be your

fittest habitation; but such sweet spirits as yours are sorely needed

upon earth. I will be brave, dearest one; brave and hopeful in the

mercy of Heaven. And now I must go and telegraph to my tiresome

printer. _Au revoir_!"

He hurried away from the farmhouse, and started at a rattling pace along

the pleasant road, with green waving corn on his left, and broad blue

ocean on his right.

"I can get a fly to bring me back from St. Leonard's" he thought; "I

should only lose time by hunting for a vehicle here."

He was at St. Leonards station within an hour after leaving the farm.

He despatched the message in Mr. Sheldon's name, and took care to make

it urgent.

CHAPTER VI.

DESPERATE MEASURES.

Fitful and feverish were the slumbers which visited Mr. Hawkehurst on

that balmy summer's night. His waking hours were anxious and unhappy; but

his sleeping hours were still more painful. To sleep was to be the

feverish fool of vague wild visions, in which Charlotte and Dr.

Doddleson, the editor of the _Cheapside_, the officials of the British

Museum reading-room, Diana Paget, and the Sheldons, figured amidst

inextricable confusion of circumstances and places. Throughout these

wretched dreams he had some consciousness of himself and the room in

which he was lying, the July moon shining upon him, broad and bright,

through the diamond-paned lattice. And O, what torturing visions were

those in which Charlotte smiled upon him, radiant with health and

happiness; and there had been no such thing as her illness, no such thing

as his grief. And then came hurried dreams, in which Dr. Doddleson was

knocking at the farmhouse door, with the printer of the _Cheapside_. And

then he was a spectator in a mighty theatre, large as those Roman

amphitheatres, wherein the audience seemed a mass of flies, looking down

on the encounter of two other flies, and all the glory of an imperial

court only a little spot of purple and gold, gleaming afar in the

sunshine. To the dreamer it was no surprise that this unknown theatre of

his dreams should be vast as the gladiatorial arena. And then came the

deep thunderous music of innumerable bass-viols and bassoons: and some

one told him it was the first night of a great tragedy. He felt the

breathless hush of expectation; the solemn bass music sank deeper; dark

curtains were drawn aside, with a motion slow and solemn, like the waving

of mountain pines, and there appeared a measureless stage, revealing a

moonlit expanse, thickly studded with the white headstones of unnumbered

graves, and on the foremost of these--revealed to him by what power he

knew not, since mortal sight could never have reached a point so

distant--he read the name of Charlotte Halliday. He awoke with a sharp

cry of pain. It was broad day, and the waves were dancing gaily in the

morning sunlight. He rose and dressed himself. Sleep, such as he had

known that night, was worse than the weariest waking. He went out into

the garden by-and-by, and paced slowly up and down the narrow pathways,

beside which box of a century's growth rose dark and high. Pale yellow

lights were in the upper windows. He wondered which of those sickly

tapers flickered on the face he loved so fondly.

"It is only a year since I first saw her," he thought: "one year! And to

love her has been my 'liberal education;' to lose her would be my

desolation and despair."

To lose her! His thoughts approached that dread possibility, but could

not realize it; not even yet.

At eight o'clock Diana came to summon him to breakfast.

"Shall I see Charlotte?" he asked.

"No; for some time past she has not come down to breakfast."

"What kind of night has she had?"

"A very quiet night, she tells me; but I am not quite sure that she tells

me the truth, she is so afraid of giving us uneasiness."

"She tells you. But do you not sleep in her room, now that she is so

ill?"

"No. I was anxious to sleep on a sofa at the foot of her bed, and

proposed doing so, but Mr. Sheldon objects to my being in the room. He

thinks that Charlotte is more quiet entirely alone, and that there is

more air in the room with only one sleeper. Her illness is not of a kind

to require attention of any sort in the night."

"Still I should have thought it better for her to have you with her, to

cheer and comfort her.

"Believe me, Valentine, I wished to be with her."

"I am sure of that, dear," he answered kindly.

"It was only Mr. Sheldon's authority, as a man of some medical

experience, that conquered my wish."

"Well, I suppose he is right. And now we must go in to breakfast. Ah, the

dreary regularity of these breakfasts and dinners, which go on just the

same when our hearts are breaking!"

The breakfast was indeed a dreary soul-dispiriting meal. Farmhouse

luxuries, in the way of new-laid eggs and home-cured bacon, abounded; but

no one had any inclination for these things. Valentine remembered the

homestead among the Yorkshire hills, with all the delight that he had

known there; and the "sorrow's crown of sorrow" was very bitter. Mr.

Sheldon gave his Sabbath-morning meditations to the study of a

Saturday-evening share-list; and Georgy plunged ever and anon into the

closely printed pages of a Dissenting preacher's biography, which she

declared to be "comforting."

Diana and Valentine sat silent and anxious; and after the faintest

pretence of eating and drinking, they both left the table, to stroll

drearily in the garden. The bells were ringing cheerily from the grey

stone tower near at hand; but Valentine had no inclination for church on

this particular morning. Were not all his thoughts prayers--humble

piteous entreaties--for one priceless boon?

"Will you see the doctor when he comes, and manage matters so as not to

alarm Charlotte?" he asked of Mr. Sheldon. That gentleman agreed to do

so, and went out into the little front-garden to lie in wait for the

great Doddleson--"Dowager Doddleson" as he was surnamed by some

irreverent unbelievers.

A St. Leonards fly brought the doctor while the bells were still ringing

for morning service. Mr. Sheldon received him at the gate; and explained

the motive of his summons.

The doctor was full of pompous solicitude about "our sweet young

patient."

"Really one of the most interesting cases I ever had upon my hands,"

the West-end physician said blandly; "as I was remarking to a very

charming patient of mine--in point of fact, the amiable and

accomplished Countess of Kassel-Kumberterre, only last Tuesday

morning. A case so nearly resembling the Countess's own condition as to

be highly interesting to her."

"I really ought to apologize for bringing you down," said Mr. Sheldon, as

he led the doctor into the house. "I only consented to your being sent

for in order to tranquillize this young fellow Hawkehurst, who is engaged

to my daughter; a rising man, I believe, in his own particular line, but

rather wild and impracticable. There is really no change for the worse,

absolutely none; and as we have not been here more than three days, there

has been positively no opportunity for testing the effect of change and

sea air, and so on."

This seemed rather like giving the learned physician his cue. And there

were those among Dr. Doddleson's professional rivals who said that the

worthy doctor was never slow to take a cue so given, not being prejudiced

by any opinions of his own.

Charlotte had by this time been established in her easy-chair by the open

window of the sitting-room, and here Dr. Doddleson saw her, in the

presence of Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon; and here Dr. Doddleson went through the

usual Abracadabra of his art, and assented to the opinions advanced, with

all deference, by Mr. Sheldon.

To Georgy this interview, in which Mr. Sheldon's opinions were pompously

echoed by the West-end physician, proved even more comforting than the

benignant career of the Dissenting minister, who was wont to allude to

that solemn passing hence of which the ancients spoke in dim suggestive

phrase, as "going upstairs."

Diana and Valentine strolled in the garden while the physician saw his

patient. Dr. Doddleson's ponderous polysyllables floated out upon the

summer air like the droning of a humble-bee. It was a relief to Valentine

to know that the doctor was with his patient: but he had no intention to

let that gentleman depart unquestioned.

"I will take no secondhand information," he thought; "I will hear this

man's opinion from his own lips."

He went round to the front of the house directly the droning had ceased,

and was in the way when Dr. Doddleson and Mr. Sheldon came out of the

rose-hung porch.

"If you have no objection," he said to Mr. Sheldon, "I should like to ask

Dr. Doddleson a few questions."

"_I_ have no objection," replied the stockbroker; "but it is really

altogether such an unusual thing, and I doubt if Dr. Doddleson will

consent to--"

And here he cast a deprecating glance at the doctor, as who should say,

"Can you permit yourself to comply with a demand so entirely unwarranted

by precedent?"

Dowager Doddleson was eminently good-natured.

"And this is our sweet young friend's _fiance_," he said; "dear

me--dee-ar me!"

And then he looked at Valentine with bland pale-blue eyes that twinkled

behind his gold-framed spectacles; while Valentine was taking his

measure, so far as the measure of any man's moral and intellectual force

can be taken by the eyes of another man. "And this is the man who is

chosen to snatch my darling from the jaws of death!" he said to himself,

with burning rage in his heart, while the amiable physician repeated

blandly:

"And this is our sweet young patient's _fiance_. Dee-ar me, how very

interesting!"

The three men strolled round to the garden behind the house, Mr. Sheldon

close at the physician's elbow.

"For God's sake tell me the truth, Dr. Doddleson!" said Valentine in a

low hoarse voice, directly they were beyond ear-shot of the house. "I am