CHAPTER XIX.

_GOOD-NIGHT AND GOOD-BYE._

Behold in yon skies

This wild night is passing away while I speak.

Lo! above us the day-spring beginning to break!

Something wakens within me, and warms to the beam.

Is it hope that awakens?

"My bairn was unco' fashed aboot naething," said Nurse Martha to

herself as she trotted about the cottage that day, trying to be very

busy, but finding the process hard.

The fact was this: Martha was considerably perplexed. She had been sent

to Middlethorpe because her young master was anxious about this lady,

in whom he had taken so deep an interest; he had given the old woman

as a reason for his anxiety that he had a strong suspicion about her

landlady--the only other person in the house--believing her to be not

only an untrustworthy person, but specially antagonistic to Mrs. Grey.

Martha Foster had been requested to watch this person. She _had_

watched, and what had she found out? Only an almost superfluous

devotion on Jane Rodgers's part.

Through the whole of that day Mrs. Grey had been suffering from a kind

of nervous depression. The thoughtful kindness of her attendant, which

seemed to be offered as a tribute of affection, could not possibly be

exceeded. Nothing was left for Martha to do. The landlady was even

inclined to resent her interference in any personal attendance on Mrs

Grey.

Her cold, quiet way of saying that, having known Mrs. Grey some time,

it was only natural she should understand her ways better than a

stranger, quite surprised the old woman.

"Gang yer ain gait, my gude woman," she had answered. "I'm blithe to

hear ye ken your wark and love yer bonny leddy sae weel."

And then the landlady had looked at her with a kind of suspicion.

Turning away, she had said in a low, constrained voice, "I should love

her if any one should."

What, perhaps, appeared still more mysterious to Nurse Martha was that

Mrs. Grey seemed thoroughly to understand, and even to return, the

feelings her landlady cherished for her.

When she was at her worst--and in the early part of the day the pain

in her head had been maddening--she could look up with a smile that

was almost one of pleasure at the anxious, hard-featured face leaning

over her, and receive with a sweet gratitude services which to the old

woman, experienced in nursing, seemed unnecessary and obtrusive.

The landlady and her lodger appeared, in fact, to understand each

other so perfectly that in the evening Mrs. Foster began to think

herself _de trop_. Not that Mrs. Grey was anything but most kind and

hospitable; she was even too grateful for her obedience to her young

gentleman's wishes; but there was nothing for her to do. Jane kept her

house in excellent order, and certainly, as far as Mrs. Grey's personal

requirements went, it did not seem as if she could have a more devoted

attendant.

Mrs. Foster made up her mind to write to her young master and point out

to him that her further presence would be unnecessary. But the next

morning brought a change. There were two letters--one for Margaret and

one for the old woman. Adèle and Arthur had both written to announce

the pleasing fact of their arrival.

Margaret was in bed when her letters came, but the sight of them

revived her. Her new champion was more active than the lawyer; he had

news, Adèle said, and he would bring it. For although the strange

events of the last few days had had the effect of dividing Margaret's

thoughts in a measure, yet this was still her one haunting desire--to

see Maurice once more, to let him at least hear of her, to have him

know that she was faithful to him in heart and conscience. Even the

recovery of her child was second to that.

"They will be here this evening," she said to old Martha, her face

radiant with hope. "I wish the evening were here."

And the old woman wondered, thinking within herself that this eagerness

was rather suspicious.

But further remarks were stopped by a knock at the door. The landlady

was there holding a fair-haired child by the hand. "Excuse me, ma'am,"

she said in that constrained tone which was always a puzzle to Martha;

"but I thought you might perhaps like to see my nephew."

A light which was very like most unfeigned joy spread itself over

Margaret's face. "Bring him to me, Jane," she said softly. "There, put

him up on the bed; he won't be frightened." For the child was looking

round bewildered at the strangeness of the scene.

"He's not properly dressed," said the woman falteringly.

Willie still wore the coarse workhouse suit, but his fair skin was as

white as snow, and his yellow curls might have been the pride of any

mother's heart.

"Never mind his clothes. Give him to me for one moment," said Margaret

pleadingly.

"If you really wish it, ma'am," said Jane, and her harsh voice was

husky, but she stooped over the child, and no one knew that the cold,

gray eyes were dim with tears.

"So this is little Willie?" said Margaret, passing her hand caressingly

over his curls, while the child looked up with blue eyes of wonder.

"Should you like to live with us, dear?" she said, in her soft motherly

voice.

The little boy had never taken his eyes from her face. "Stay wid you,"

he replied decisively.

"So you shall," said Margaret smiling; and then to his aunt, "I have

some little things that will almost fit him, Jane. My child's frocks

and petticoats two or three years ago would suit Willie very well. We

could alter them a little, and you might easily get a belt of some kind

in the village to keep him from looking too much like a girl."

"Thank you, ma'am," said Jane. She could not have spoken another word.

"How pleasant!" said Margaret almost gleefully. "I wanted something to

help me to pass the tiresome hours of this long day, and now my pretty

little Willie has come, and we must help him into prettier clothes.

Come, Mrs. Foster you know all about little ones. We must press you

into the service."

"Willingly," said the old woman, producing a monstrous thimble from her

pocket and popping it on her finger. And soon, united by the pleasant

mutual interest, even awkwardness was forgotten among the three women

as they worked together with a will to clothe the little one suitably.

They were all benefited: Martha had found an occupation, and she began

dimly to understand Mrs. Grey's tactics; Margaret was happy in seeing

the fruits of her efforts come even more fully than she could have

hoped; and Jane felt all the hardness melting away from her heart. Mrs.

Grey insisted she should join them in the afternoon to give her advice

and assistance in the serious task of changing a girl's clothes into

a boy's, but once or twice she was forced to make her escape. These

outbursts of feeling, however, made her better. They taught her that

she was not all bad. They showed her that in the heart she had thought

past redemption were yet the seeds of good; and unconsciously she

rejoiced, blessing the kindly hand which out of misery and blackness

had brought light, and even a measure of peace.

The day passed rapidly in this pleasant work, but Willie had long been

asleep before the welcome sound of wheels notified the approach of the

travellers.

The cottage and its surroundings certainly presented a more smiling

appearance than on the preceding evening. Indeed, the contrast could

not have been greater, for this was a kind of gala, and Jane Rodgers,

in deference to the wishes of her mistress, determined nothing should

be wanting that could produce a pleasing impression on the mind of the

visitor.

Jane was not, and never could be, a person of many words. She was

naturally self-contained. The business of preparation, from which she

spared neither labor nor thought, was a kind of outlet for the feelings

which could not find expression in words. If she could say nothing

about her gratitude, she would prove it.

She knew Margaret's love of flowers, so she had gathered them together

from every available corner. Roses, geraniums, fragrant heliotrope and

mignonette were literally scattered in the rooms, which were full of an

abundance of light. Some of Jane's cherished savings had been expended

in plants that lined the hall and peeped from the windows. The cottage,

indeed, looked very pleasant. The front door, thrown wide open, showed

the lighted hall, and even allowed a glimpse of the small sitting-room,

in which a substantial tea-table, spread with all kinds of dainties

and decorated with Jane's wealth of plate and china, seemed to invite

the entrance of the weary travellers. Outside was the moon, throwing

its white beams on the little plot of grass as it shone persistently

through the branches of the stately cedar which flanked the little

house on one side, while through the fragrant limes on the other side

came the glimmer of the starlit sea.

"How pretty and quiet it all looks!" said Adèle to her cousin as they

approached the cottage. "And that's the place, I feel sure; it is just

what I expected to see. Now I know I shall get well soon."

She leant back in the carriage with a little sigh, for Arthur was

paying scarcely any attention to her words. She could see his face in

the moonlight rapt and eager, and Adèle felt almost sick for a moment

with the longing that _she_ might ever be able to call that look into

his face. He turned to her at last. "It is all right," he said in a

tone of intense relief; "I see her."

Adèle looked at him in simple wonder: "And whom did you expect to see,

Arthur?"

Arthur turned away in slight confusion. He did not wish Adèle to know

that the kind of uneasiness aroused by the storm had never left his

mind--that he had been haunted by a certain inexplicable fear which

nothing but the sight of Margaret herself could take away. He did not

answer Adèle's question, but proceeded to gather together the bags and

parcels.

The landlady was at the gate, with curtseyed welcome, ready for any

consignment; Margaret was on the steps of the front door; the old woman

was behind her. Arthur for the first few moments had to be contented

with her and with a nod and a smile from Margaret, whose warmest

welcome was for Adèle. "Come in, come in," she said, holding out both

her hands; "I thought it almost too good to be true when I read your

letter this morning. But you have come, my poor, pale child, and we

must take care of you and make you strong." She drew her into her own

room: "Will you share this with me for the present, dear? I can look

after you better so."

Adèle was weak and tired. She could scarcely keep from tears as she

threw her arms round Margaret's neck in her impulsive girlishness. "I

am so glad to come," she said. "And oh! I wanted to thank you!" Adèle

was thinking of the little scene in the library.

"Thank me, dear!" replied Margaret, gently removing the young girl's

hat as she spoke, and smoothing back her hair with a loving hand. "What

shall I say to you, then, my faithful friend, who has believed in me

through everything?" She spoke lightly, but there was an undertone of

deep emotion in her voice. "We shall have plenty to talk about, Adèle,

but this evening is to be given to rejoicing. I feel as if it were the

opening of a new era in our lives--as if happiness, that capricious

little deity, were hiding somewhere very near us. Come into the

dining-room; your cousin will become impatient if we shut ourselves up

_too_ long."

They went together into the little parlor; and when Arthur saw Adèle's

glistening eyes and noted Margaret's loving little attentions to her

guest, he felt sorely inclined once more to be jealous of his cousin;

but he did not allow this to be seen, and the evening passed away

very happily. Harmony, that sweet, rare guest, seemed to reign in the

little household. Every one was comfortable and happy. The undisguised

satisfaction of the old woman, who began dimly to see through some

of the mysteries that had been perplexing her; the happiness of

Adèle, wavering between smiles and tears, and taking a final refuge

in the former; the confidence and peace which seemed for the moment

to have taken possession of Margaret; Arthur's apparent contentment

and overflowing merriment; the quiet, respectful attentions of the

landlady,--made a pleasing whole.

When the tea-things were cleared away, and Jane and Martha had finally

retired for a gossip in the kitchen, Arthur got up and closed the door

with great care. "Now, Mrs. Grey," he said, crossing over to where she

sat looking out upon the moonlight, "I must really have it out with

you. Are you a magician? _Please_ give us the secret of your power?"

Margaret smiled: "A serious accusation, Sir Knight. Before committing

myself in any way, I must hear upon what it is founded."

"You have bewitched that wretched old landlady of yours. Why, I declare

I never in my life saw the like of it. When I was last here I felt

once or twice an insane desire to say something that would astonish

her, I was so angry at the cool impertinence of her manner. Now, good

gracious! no humble slavey could be more obsequious. She seems actually

affectionate--has the appearance of a devoted family servant. What have

you done to arouse enthusiasm? Come, Mrs. Grey, confess!"

"You must confess, first," answered Mrs. Grey, more gravely, it seemed,

than the occasion warranted, "that such a thing is possible as to be

mistaken, even when we think our observation has been of the keenest.

You thought and I thought that Jane Rodgers was wholly without a

heart. I have discovered my mistake, and found a way to her heart;

that is all the mystery. Thank you, a thousand times, for your kind

thoughtfulness in sending Mrs. Foster. She is a charming old woman, and

I was delighted to receive her, but my landlady and I are perfectly

_d'accord_."

Arthur shrugged his shoulders: "The mystery remains a mystery still,

however; even in her changed attitude your landlady is not a lively

subject, to me especially, for she was the cause of a severe nightmare

which kept me awake for hours only a very short time ago. We'll change

it. What I want to tell you is, that all being well I start for Moscow

to-morrow night."

Margaret clasped her hands and looked straight before her into the

night. "Then you have heard of him?" she said in a low voice.

"I have heard something, dear Mrs. Grey." Arthur spoke slowly, a

certain sadness in his voice. It was as it should be. She loved her

husband. He was nothing to her but an intermediary, an instrument.

"But do not raise your hopes too high," he continued. "It may be a

long and tedious business. The last address given by Mr. Grey to his

solicitor--who, I suppose you know, is not the same as yours--for

letters and remittances, was that of an agent in Moscow. It is more

than probable he has left that place himself. He seemed to wish to keep

his ultimate destination a secret. I shall go to Moscow myself, and see

this agent. He will probably be able to give me some information."

"And what if he refuse?"

"I have a key. Russians are proverbially open to bribery and

corruption."

Margaret shivered a little: "It seems almost wrong, but I can't help

it. Oh, if I only knew!"

"We are working for him as well as for you," said Arthur quietly. He

felt for the moment an insane inclination to do something desperate to

this "_him_" for whom he was working so disinterestedly. For Margaret

looked more beautiful than ever--at least he thought so as she sat

there in the moonlight. The young man in his boyish enthusiasm could

have fallen before her, and, holding her feet, have worshipped her.

But she was so utterly unconscious. Adèle meanwhile was lying on the

sofa, listening and watching. She was trying to acquiesce in it all,

trying to feel it right that her Arthur should take so deep an interest

in another woman--for she knew his face well, she had read that sudden

longing--she was trying to rejoice in Margaret's unconsciousness and

her cousin's truth; but the little aching was at her heart. Margaret

had been, for the moment, absorbed in her own hopes and fears; as

Arthur spoke the last words, however, she thought suddenly of Adèle,

and crossing to the sofa she sat down by her side.

"Forgive me," she said softly.

"What for, Mrs. Grey?"

Adèle lifted her eyes to her friend's face, and Margaret saw that tears

were not far off.

"For sending _your_ Arthur away on this wild search," she whispered.

And Arthur, who had been standing at the window gazing regretfully at

the stars, and thinking with some discontent of life's contradictions,

heard what she said. The words were like a reproach. They made him

think of Adèle's self-forgetfulness; they brought back to him the

gentle scene of that stormy night.

He turned resolutely from the window, and placing himself at the head

of the sofa looked down upon his cousin's young fair face. She put out

her hand with a smile; he took it and held it in both his own. "She is

not to be pitied, Mrs. Grey," he said lightly, "for this is all her

own doing. I am only obeying, like a faithful knight, the orders of my

liege lady. She filled my mind with her grand poetic ideas about doing

good, and the rest of it; she was always making me ashamed of my idle,

aimless life; then after we first met you, and she and I had made up

our minds you had some great sorrow, she tried to bring me near to you;

and finally, the other day, when, as I told you, part of your history

came to us, she sent me off to see you and find out the truth; her

orders were--Shall I repeat them, Adèle?"

He had succeeded in making her pale cheeks a "celestial rosy red."

"You have said quite enough, dear, and too much. Have you discovered,

Mrs. Grey, that my cousin is rather given to exaggeration?"

"Am I to believe all this is exaggeration?" replied Margaret. And

then she stooped and kissed the young girl's glowing face. "It is so

very like the truth, Adèle, that you must allow me the happiness of

believing it. I shall take the services of your knight as your gift,

and we shall watch together for his safe return."

"And remember, Adèle," said Arthur impressively, "no flirting in my

absence. Mrs. Grey, I shall make you responsible."

Margaret laughed, and Adèle answered gayly, for her bright spirits were

rapidly returning, "Pray, sir, with what am I to flirt? As far as I can

see already, there are no objects but stones and waves, and I fear that

on them my fascinations would be thrown away. Mrs. Grey, have you many

visitors in this place in the summer?"

"Principally nurses and babies; I fear it will be dull for you."

"Dull!" said Adèle rapturously, "with you and the sea! Why, this is

the kind of dulness I have been craving for. If you only knew how

delightful it is to escape from soirées and dinner-parties, and, more

hateful still, afternoon callers! But have you nothing else to tell

Mrs. Grey, Arthur?"

"Very little more, Adèle. I think I told you, Mrs. Grey, that we had

traced your little girl to Southampton. We sent an agent there, and

to-day my solicitor, Golding, had a telegram from him. Travellers

answering exactly to our description seem to have taken tickets to

Paris. A sailor in one of the steam-packets remembers the child

perfectly. He seems to have been struck with her beauty and the

peculiar appearance of her companion. Paris is a large city, but I do

not despair. Our man has his wits about him. We have communicated with

the French police too, and they are on the alert."

Margaret sighed: "It is _so_ difficult to be patient. I long to be off

myself--my poor little darling!--but I suppose it would be useless."

"Worse than useless. You see we must proceed with great caution, and

the man we suspect knows you. If he found out that you were personally

on the track, he might take alarm and hide the child; but our agent is

unknown to him. By the bye, have you a picture or anything of the kind

of either or of both of them, your little Laura and this foreigner? If

you have it may be useful."

Margaret turned pale: "Wait a moment," she said. She went with her

candle into the next room, and opening a drawer took from it a little

old leather box. The key was on her watch-chain, but her hand trembled

as she fitted it into the lock. The lid flew open, revealing a little

velvet-lined case, which seemed to contain only two or three yellow

envelopes, a withered flower and two likenesses.

Sitting down, Margaret leant her head upon her hand, and two or three

tears fell into the box. It was like the opening of a grave. The

likenesses were miniatures, delicately painted and set in gold. She

took up the one that lay uppermost, and looked at it through a mist of

blinding tears. It was the portrait of a young girl; the face was not

so beautiful as that which looked down upon it, for the features were

irregular, but the artist had hit happily upon its principal charm: it

was in the eyes, which were dark and lustrous, and in the low, broad

brow, from which the hair swept back in soft waving lines.

"My Laura," said Margaret half aloud, "forgive me--he is unworthy."

She laid down the miniature softly, and taking up the other looked at

it silently, then turning it she touched a clasp at the back. Between

the gold and the ivory lay a scrap of yellow paper. With a sudden

impulse she crushed it in her hand, then smoothing it out carefully she

read it by the candlelight. The words written were few and simple: "A

Mddles. Marguerite et Laure, des amitiés bien sincères--L'ESTRANGE;"

but the strong man's hand that had traced them had trembled visibly,

and as the woman whose dignity he had outraged, whose treasure, as she

believed, he had stolen, looked on them that night, she remembered how

her heart had warmed at the thought of those trembling fingers, and of

what that trembling told.

It was not this, however, that brought the softness to her face at

that moment. Slowly she put down the paper and the opened miniature;

taking up the other, she held it against her heart. "Laura, my darling,

forgive me!" she murmured; "I would have kept your treasure; I cannot."

With the other hand she took the piece of yellow paper and held it in

the flames till it was consumed. Then replacing the first miniature,

she shut and locked the box, put it back in its place with scrupulous

care, and returned to Adèle and Arthur.

There was no trace of agitation in Margaret's manner as she held out

the miniature.

"This was a common treasure of my cousin's and mine," she said with a

sad smile. "I kept it only in obedience to her dying wishes, but I must

find my child, and my poor Laura would forgive me."

Arthur took it. "I think you are right," he said; "but about your

child?"

"I have plenty of likenesses of her. You had better take the last; it

is wonderfully good: I have never seen a better photograph of a child.

But, Arthur, before you send this miniature away, look at it carefully;

_you_ may possibly come across them."

"If I do--!" said Arthur from between his clenched teeth.

Margaret laid her hand on his arm and looked at him anxiously: "You

would do nothing rash, I hope, Arthur; you know my history; you will be

able to understand me when I say that for the sake of those old days,

for my darling's memory, I would not have a hair of his head touched. I

only want my child."

"Be of good courage," said Arthur cheerily; "if she is in the land of

the living, we shall find her, Mrs. Grey, and bring her back to you in

triumph. Thank you for these; they will be of great use to us. But now,

ladies, it is getting late, and I shall have to be up early to-morrow,

so I think I shall say good-night and good-bye. I have taken a room at

the hotel, and as I find the first train to York leaves this--or rather

the station--at half-past seven in the morning, it will be best to make

my adieus to-night."

"How soon shall we hear from you?" said Adèle, her lip trembling.

"As soon as ever I can send a letter. I mean to travel night and day,

therefore you must not be surprised if some days pass."

Arthur was himself again; the thoughts of action had been invigorating.

He shook hands with Margaret, kissed his cousin and then took his

departure. _They_ stood together under the moonbeams silent, for their

hearts were full. _He_, with never a backward look, walked steadily

away along the sounding sea.

PART IV.

AT WORK WITH A WILL.

* * * * *

CHAPTER I.

_LAURA'S TASK._

O source of the holiest joys we inherit!

O Sorrow, thou solemn, invisible spirit!

Ill fares it with man when through life's desert sand,

Grown impatient too soon for the long-promised land,

He turns from the worship of thee.

It will long ago have been suspected that Margaret was wrong in her

suspicion about her husband. Maurice Grey was not the person who had

taken forcible possession of her child. Jane, in her new capacity of

friend and protector (for the landlady had never done anything by

halves; hers was one of the world's strong natures--great in good as in

evil), had opened out, with much shame and contrition, everything that

concerned the transactions of that fatal day.

Her story was this: In the course of the afternoon a gentleman had

come up the garden-path, and proceeding to the back instead of to the

front door, had requested to have a few words with her. He had begun by

asking some trivial questions about her mistress, and Jane said that as

he asked them he looked at her in a searching kind of way. Apparently

it did not take him many minutes to discover a certain amount of

animus in her state of mind, and with the more readiness he revealed

to her the object of his visit, persuading her that the service she

was desired to render was very small. He was careful enough of her

conscience not to tell her in so many words what he intended to do. All

he asked her was to keep the fact of his having been there at all a

secret as long as possible, and if she should be questioned to give a

certain description of his personal appearance.

L'Estrange's revenge was perfect in its kind. In his angry bitterness

he had determined to punish, and not only to punish but to humiliate,

the woman who had kept him at arm's length, who offended him by her

dignity, who openly showed her contempt and loathing for his character;

and he had succeeded.

It was a bold scheme. Had it been deliberately planned, it might have

been said to be diabolical in its clever wickedness; but the fact,

though strange, was true: it was _not_ deliberately planned.

When L'Estrange found Margaret's address and followed her to

Middlethorpe, he had not the vaguest idea of being in any way inimical

to her. He had a passionate admiration for her beauty, and he believed

her to be weak. Even the persistent way in which she had hidden herself

from him had nurtured this idea in his mind. He thought she was afraid

of him, and his aim was to conquer this fear, to persuade her by his

specious reasoning that it was foolish and vain.

He was a man who believed he understood women perfectly, and as,

unhappily for himself, his experience had been rather with the weak and

erring than with the strong and pure, he had a rooted contempt for the

female character. The height and purity of such a soul as Margaret's it

was impossible for him to understand.

It must not be supposed that L'Estrange was any monster of

wickedness--he possessed, on the contrary, many good and noble

traits--but his foreign training, the wandering life he had led and

the strange notions he had picked up from modern sectaries had sorely

impaired his moral sense. Truth was a mere name to him. To cling to

it at an inconvenient season he would have considered the supreme of

folly. And yet he had a kind of honor of his own. To help the weak and

defend the oppressed were articles in his strange creed. If Margaret

had given herself up to him and followed him in his wanderings, he

would have been faithful to her even unto death.

In fact it was only tenderness for _her_, an instinctive feeling of

unfitness, that had prevented him from marrying the warm-hearted,

impulsive English girl who had given him her love so unreservedly.

Fortune had come to L'Estrange late in life, and unexpectedly; with

it came the desire for the renewal of old ties. He did not look upon

marriage as the insuperable barrier which it is happily considered

here. He believed Margaret's marriage to have been one of convenience,

not inclination, and that she would be rather thankful to him than

the reverse for interfering with its smooth tranquillity. Hence the

scene at Ramsgate, which, in reliance on Maurice's impulsive character

and his English repugnance to anything approaching a scandal, he had

deliberately planned.

It had succeeded beyond his hopes. Margaret was separated from her

obnoxious husband, and L'Estrange believed that all he had to do was

to go in and win. But for a long time she baffled him, and, as it has

been seen, he misinterpreted her motives, attributing to superstitious

fear of an unknown evil what really arose from disgust and horror. The

success of L'Estrange with women had been so unfailing that he could

not but have unbounded confidence in his own power of fascination.

That the heart which had once been unreservedly his could have been

transferred--and, above all, transferred to a husband--was a thing the

Frenchman failed to realize.

When he fell upon the traces he had been so long seeking, his

determination was this--to enlighten the fair Englishwoman, to lead

her out into what he looked upon as the true land of freedom, to

destroy her foolish prejudices, and then when the education was fairly

begun--what? The usual fools' paradise.

It was in his surprise and indignation at finding himself utterly

baffled, in the light, hateful to him, of her last strong words of

contempt and loathing, that he hastily formed the scheme of cruel

revenge which he carried out so cleverly. The idea was flashed in upon

his brain by the very inspiration of madness.

It will be well, perhaps, to return to that afternoon when, penetrating

into Margaret's sanctuary, he carried away her treasure.

The little Laura was unsuspecting. When L'Estrange entered the parlor

he found her curled up, with her favorite story-book in her hand, in a

corner of the sofa. She recognized him instantly as the stranger whose

kindness to her on the sands had made her think he might be her lost

father. His appearance confirmed her in the idea. Throwing down her

book she ran to him and took his hand with confiding frankness "Then

you _are_ my papa after all?" she said.

"Who told you I was your papa, Laura?" he asked gravely.

"I told myself," replied the little one; "but come, poor mamma will be

_so_ pleased. I left her sitting on the sands, for she wanted to find

you too, and now you've come here instead. Shall we go out and tell

her?"

She did not wait for denial or assent, but dashed out of the room for

her hat, while L'Estrange, rather astonished at his reception, sat and

pondered for a few moments.

"She has taught her child to love him, the man who wronged and doubted

her," he thought with a growing wonder. "I must have been mistaken.

Does she care for him, after all?"

But the bare idea made him clench his teeth and knit his brows, till

the reappearance of the child forced him to dissimulate. L'Estrange was

a consummate actor. He could be all things to all men, but I think that

never in his life had he set himself a harder task than this. The child

was so confiding, so simple in her trust. Not much dissimulation was

necessary, however. The strong emotion he felt as he took up the little

one and felt her small arms round his neck was very real of its kind.

For, she was Margaret's; here lay the spell.

"Laura, my child!" he murmured, and his heart turned with sudden

loathing from the deed he was doing. He felt inclined to put her down

and to run from the house and from the place.

But as he spoke she smiled. It was her mother's beautiful smile, such

as had lit up her face in those bygone days when Margaret and he

had been one in heart and mind. He hesitated no longer. "Laura," he

said, putting her down and looking at her with a tenderness that was

certainly not altogether put on, "I know where your mother is. She is

not on the sands; she has walked so far that it would tire her to

walk back. We shall have to take a carriage to find her. You are not

frightened, little one? See, she has sent her scarf, that you may know

I have come from her."

"Is mamma ill?" said Laura with a quivering lip.

"No, only a little tired."

"Well, then, let's go at once! But how funny of mamma to walk so far! I

suppose she was talking and forgot."

A carriage which L'Estrange had already hired was waiting for them at

some little distance from the house. They got into it and drove away.

For the first half hour Laura was very happy. She did not speak much,

for she was a little shy of this new relation of whom she had heard so

often, and for whose return she was accustomed to pray at her mother's

knees.

She sat by his side, his arm round her, looking up into his face now

and then to point out something they were passing or to make a simple

remark, mostly about "mamma." _He_ was very silent. But still they went

on, up hills and down them, through villages, past trees and fields,

till at last all the well-known landmarks had disappeared and Laura

grew uneasy.

"Where _is_ mamma?" she asked with a half inclination to tears; "she

_can't_ have walked so far."

He drew her on to his knees, so tenderly that she smiled again, and

resting her head on his shoulder repeated the question in a quieter

tone. Still no answer, and still they drove on, till not even the

shelter of those loving arms could do away with the child's uneasiness;

she lifted up her dark eyes pleadingly: "_Please_ tell me, shall we

soon get to mamma?" Then he took both her small hands and looked at her

for a moment. "My poor Laura!" he said, "what will you say to me when I

tell you that you are going away from mamma?"

"Away from mamma!" replied the child, and there came a sudden terror

into her eyes. But Laura was a peculiar child. The life she had lived

with those much older than herself, the shadow of her mother's sorrow

and the influence of her mother's life and character, had made her

unlike others of her own age.

L'Estrange had been prepared for a passion of tears and cries. It did

not come. Only the child drew herself out of his arms, and crouching

down in a corner of the carriage looked round as though searching for

a means of escape. Her case seemed hopeless, so she clasped her small

hands together. "Take me back," she said, earnestly; "oh what will

mamma say?--poor mamma!"

And then she cried, but it was like a woman's weeping--a still

noiseless grief.

L'Estrange was a disciple of Rousseau's. He could understand the

beautiful pathos of a situation, and the child's quiet tears affected

him so painfully that he could scarcely refrain from giving vent to his

own sentiments in some such way, but they did not persuade him to alter

his purpose. He let the child weep for some time, then stooping down

he drew the cold little hands from her face, and holding them in his,

looked at her earnestly for a few moments.

"Come to me, Laura," he said. She half rose, but, as if bethinking

herself, drew back: "It's wrong to take me away from mamma. And _why,

why_ did you say we were going to her?"

Yes, there lay the sting. He had deceived her, and the child distrusted

him. He drew her to him. "This is a strange child," he thought, "and

must be strangely treated."

"Listen to me, Laura," he said gently, "and try to trust me. I know it

was wrong, very wrong, but I had a reason. I want to do good to your

mamma and to you. Your mother is unhappy."

"Yes," sobbed the child; "but it's only because papa is away; if you--"

She looked at him suddenly, then turned away, literally trembling with

a new fear. "Are you _really_ my own papa that mamma tells me stories

about?" she asked with unchildlike earnestness, fixing her dark,

mournful eyes on his face.

There followed a few moments of silence. L'Estrange was thinking.

For the first time in all his life he was staggered. Falsehood had

hitherto always befriended him, but he had never before been in such a

situation as this. Mentally he cursed his own folly, and cast about in

his usually ready mind for something to say, for in this pure child's

presence he felt as if he dared not lie. An inspiration came. "Laura,"

he said earnestly, "you are much better and wiser than other children

of your age or I should not say this to you. I am _not_ your father.

Remember, I never told you I was, but I love you as much as if I were,

and I love your mother. I want to make her happy, and you, her little

daughter, must help me."

L'Estrange did not mean precisely what he said, but for the moment he

persuaded himself that he did. The child held her breath and listened.

"Laura," he continued after a pause, "what would make your mother

happy?"

"For papa to come back," she said with a sigh, which he echoed. Only

a few hours before he had thought to make her happiness in a very

different way. But this should not interfere with his scheme.

"What if _you_ found your father, Laura, and told him this--that your

mother was unhappy, I mean, and wanted him back? Do you think he would

come?"

The child looked up eagerly: "Oh, I'm certain he would."

"Well, petite, if you consent to come away with me, I will try and take

you to your father. Do you understand me?"

Laura understood, certainly. She clasped her hands, but suddenly her

face fell. "You said you would take me to mamma, and you didn't," she

said; "perhaps this is just the same."

L'Estrange was right. She was a strange child and not easy to manage.

As he hesitated for an answer she spoke again: "Take me back to mamma,

and we can ask her about it."

"No, Laura," he said as firmly as he could, for he was easily moved and

the child had touched him to the heart. And then he took her in his

arms again, and smoothing back her hair kissed the tears from her eyes.

For the first time he was really in earnest. Instinctively the child

felt it and was soothed.

"Trust me, petite, and try to be calm. I do not mean you anything but

good, my fair child, for you are dear to me as my own soul."

There was a wonderful power of fascination about this man which had

seldom failed him. It had its effects on this girl-child. She looked

up into his strong face convulsed with emotion, and she was comforted.

Her tears ceased. She lay back silently, and he rocked her to and fro

in his arms while they drove on through the gathering darkness. Was

the child wrong? Had her heaven-sent gift of instinct failed her in

her hour of need? I think not. Rather, in that moment this strange,

complex-natured man was what he appeared--good and true. The pure

child-presence, the simple words, the dark, searching eyes seemed

to have drawn away his evil for the time. It was as though an angel

had looked into his soul's darkness and with a ray of living light

dispelled it utterly.

It must be remembered that L'Estrange was not an Englishman. There

is, I think, a certain oneness of nature about the Anglo-Saxon race

that renders it very difficult for its members to understand the

emotional, impulsive, two-sided character of the Celt, the Latin or

the Greek. An Englishman is eminently straightforward. He does not

stop to analyze. Be his object good or bad, he is given to carrying

it out perseveringly, leaving to the future thoughts of compunction

or self-gratulation. This is doubtless sweeping, as indeed all

generalities must be, but possibly a truth underlies it--a truth

which may explain the extreme lack of sympathy between ourselves and

our southern neighbors. With Englishwomen the case is different.

There is always something in the female character that answers to

this two-sidedness. Its very weakness challenges a woman's sympathy.

Muscular Christianity, strong, manly straightforwardness, is very

attractive in its way, but not so dangerous, I am inclined to imagine,

to the female heart as this emotional impulsiveness, ready at one

moment with tears of sentiment and tender analysis of feeling, and at

the next with passionate indignation and deep-breathed curses.

L'Estrange was a son of the South, a pupil of the great philosopher

of Nature. From his childhood upward he had indulged in every emotion

that ruffled the calm of his strong spirit. From Jean Jacques he had

learnt to invert the eternal unity of beauty and goodness, calling that

fair which is wanting in truth. Therefore, when involuntarily, as he

gazed on the child, who had sobbed herself to sleep on his shoulder,

the moisture dimmed his eyes and his heart softened before her fair

innocence, he felt a certain glow of self-approbation. "I am certainly

becoming a better man," he thought, but he did not make up his mind to

restore the child to her mother--the woman he had once loved, the woman

he had robbed of every joy.

His heart ached for her sadness as in the soft emotion of that evening

her pale face came before his mind; but if he would do her good at all,

it should be in his own way.

And so they drove on--Laura, wearied out with her tears and the

excitement, fast asleep in the arms of the man who had taken her from

her mother; L'Estrange scarcely daring to stir. In his strange way he

thanked God for this sleep.

The stopping of the carriage aroused the child. They were at a station

some miles distant from the one by which they usually went from

Middlethorpe to York.

The night was dark; only a few stars shone through the cloud-rents.

Laura started up. "Mamma!" she cried; then looking round her, she

remembered and said no more. L'Estrange was watching her narrowly. He

had dreaded this awakening, for he feared a passionate outburst of

grief, but it did not come.

The child looked out and around her with that far-seeing look that some

children have, as if they can see into the invisible, and then, as they

entered the dimly-lighted station--for the little lady had insisted

upon being put down to the ground--she looked up again into his face.

It was the same, mournful, searching gaze that had already touched him

so deeply.

Apparently the scrutiny satisfied her, or it may be her woman's

instinct showed her the uselessness of resistance, for she gazed away

again into the night and said no more till she found herself wrapped

up tenderly and laid amongst the cushions of a first-class railway

carriage. L'Estrange took his seat beside her and the train began to

move.

Then first the child's lip trembled, and there came a look of distress

into her small face. L'Estrange stooped over her: "Are you frightened,

darling?"

"Not frightened," said the little girl; "but--"

"But what? Tell me."

Then came the trouble with a burst of tears: "I want mamma to tuck me

up and hear my prayers. We say them--mamma and I--when the stars come

in the sky; and the stars are up there now, and--and I want mamma."

For Laura was only a very little girl, and this want made her first

realize what it was to be without her mother.

Her companion did not answer, and the child went on in her simplicity:

"God is up there above the stars a very long way away, but I know He

hears, for when mamma was in London and Jane was cross, I told Him and

He brought her back after a long time. Oh, please, will it be a _great_

many nights before we go back to mamma?"

As she spoke those silent tears so pitiful from a little child began to

flow, and her companion once more felt inclined to curse himself for

his short-sighted folly. He knelt down beside her in the carriage, and

she saw that his face was very pale and that real tears were in his

eyes.

"Ma fillette, ma chèrie," he whispered, for in his emotion the English

endearments sounded hard and cold, "be patient--trust me."

For a few moments Laura was soothed, but still, as there came the gleam

of the stars through the darkness, the childish wail was repeated: "I

want mamma! I want mamma!"

L'Estrange was perplexed. Passionate sorrow he had expected, and he had

not despaired of curing it by distractions, but this quiet pathos of

grief cut him to the very soul. In its presence he was helpless. How

could he comfort her?

He pondered, but for a long time in vain. At last his own childish days

returned to his mind, and the stories he had learnt at his nurse's

knee. "It was in parables," thought this master of human nature,

"that the Great Teacher taught the world; and what were the myths of

antiquity but parables to prepare the nations in their childhood for

the reception of truth? By a parable I may perhaps make this little one

believe that her present suffering is for a future good."

By which it will be seen that he still thought, in some vague way, of

redressing the great wrong he had committed, and by means of the child,

whom he had stolen in an access of bitter revenge, restoring Margaret

to happiness by giving her back her husband.

"Laura," he said, lifting her from the cushions and holding her in his

arms, "can you listen to a story?"

"Yes," said the child wearily.

"Listen, then, ma fillette, and try to understand me. It is long ago

that I heard this story, when I was a little child like you, and

perhaps you have heard it many times, for it comes from a book that

English people read. There was a man who had a great many sons--twelve,

I think--and he loved one of them more than all the others; we do not

know why--perhaps he was beautiful and good. This boy was of course

very happy at home, because he was always with his father, who gave him

everything he wanted. But at last his brothers grew angry---jealous, I

think you call it in English."

Laura drew in her breath with a sigh of contentment. "Why," she

interrupted, "you are telling me about Joseph!"

"Yes," he replied gravely, "and ma fillette knows that Joseph was sent

to a country a long way off, far from his father who loved him."

"Like me," said Laura sighing.

"And ma fillette knows, too, that Joseph saw his father again."

"After a long, long time," said the child.

"After a long time, it is true; but what did he do then?"

Laura looked away at the stars: "Gave his father bread and a house and

sheep, and everything he wanted."

For she knew all about this, her favorite Bible story.

There was a pause then. The child and her companion were thinking.

At last L'Estrange spoke: "And was he sorry afterward, this good

Joseph, that he had been taken away from his father?"

"I think he was glad," said Laura in a low tone; "only it was such a

very, very long time. But if I thought what you say I wouldn't mind the

long time."

"Think it, then, ma fillette," he said, stooping over her with his own

peculiar smile, which seemed to shine like light on his dark face. And

the child believed him.

It was a strange doctrine to take root in so young a mind, for the

subtle parable wrought powerfully. The great fact of self-sacrifice,

the suffering of some for the good of others, began to dawn upon the

child's mind. It was real suffering to be separated from her mother,

to be wandering with this stranger through the night instead of lying

in her warm white bed in her mother's room; but Laura neither wept

nor complained. Her tears ceased, and her dark eyes grew large with

thought. For she had overcome her distrust of her companion; she

believed with the simple faith of childhood that what he told her was

true. Her strong imagination idealized him into a guide (like Great

Heart in the bit of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ she loved the best) come

to put an end to her mother's troubles by bringing her father back to

them; and for her part in the great work the child, with unchildlike

calm and thoughtfulness, was ready.

It was late before they reached York, but rooms were ready at an hotel

to which L'Estrange had telegraphed, and the good-natured chambermaid

took every care of the little lady. Going to bed so far from mamma

was hard work for the poor child, and her sobs and tears and sudden

startings from sleep were subject of much speculation to the attendant;

but at this time she said nothing, as her services were very liberally

remunerated.

L'Estrange passed a very different night. He had been longing for

its deep solitude, that he might think out undisturbed the unwonted

thoughts to which the experiences of that day had given rise. And the

night came--heavy, dark, brooding, suitable to his spirit's mood.

He went to his room, but there he could not rest; under its narrow roof

even thought would not come to him; he rose and went out. The town was

silent in the darkness, and utterly undisturbed he walked through the

quaint, narrow streets, under low-browed gates and arches, till in

a few minutes he gained the open country. A wide, grassy expanse it

seemed to be, as far as he could see by the faint light that struggled

now and then through the clouds--undulating here and there, and

bordered in the distance by a fringe of wood, behind which a line of

light that told of either twilight or dawn was lying low down on the

horizon.

A gate opened on to the smooth turf. He unlatched it, and, after a few

more rapid steps, threw himself down on the grass with his face to

heaven. A sudden craving for rest of some kind--rest of conscience,

rest of heart, rest of soul--had come to him, and in the night's

stillness he had set himself the task of thinking out the problem.

In the morning of the long day he had thought to rest in love. That

hope had gone by. It did not require so consummate a master of human

nature as himself to recognize clearly that this was vain; and strive

as he would he could not forget Margaret; her beauty haunted him as

the vision of impossible good must follow the lost--a torment, because

unattainable for ever. Later, he had imagined that revenge in its

bitter satisfaction might rest his spirit. His scheme had succeeded,

but this too was vanity, or worse, for the child whom he had looked

upon merely as the instrument of his vengeance had opened his eyes,

and instead of rest came the stinging pang of remorse to harass his

tormented soul.

And thus it had ever been with him. The beautiful "spirit of delight"

he had been seeking from his youth up; always with the same result--to

find under the beauty, ashes; under the glory, dull despair.

At first, as he lay there under the canopy of cloud, the thoughts

of this strange man were nothing higher than self-pity and bitter

complaining of wayward fate. His being seemed for the moment a thing

apart from himself. He took it in his hand and reasoned on it. Why

was it formed to enjoy when enjoyment was a thing unattainable? Why

was it tortured with longings which for ever were destined to remain

unsatisfied? Why was beauty so fair and good so lovely when always they

looked on it from afar? What was this superior fate that fed its slave

with mocking visions--removing evermore and ever farther the cup of

bliss for which his thirsty soul was panting?

The soft sensualist felt the tears brimming to his eyes as he pondered

on his calamities. It was the remembrance of his own parable that

first aroused him, for the man was not naturally weak. Brought up in a

different school, he might have been different. Education had made him

a formalist and from forms he had turned away in his manhood, thinking

in the direct opposite to find freedom and truth.

The formalist had cast off every tie of faith, only to fall into the

closer bondage of fatalism. And the worst of it all was that there

seemed no opening for him into the light. But, though he little

suspected it, he had found a teacher, and in the stillness of that

night the lessons fallen from the lips of one of God's little ones

began to take effect upon his mind.

It was not so much his own parable as its effect upon Laura that struck

suddenly to the root of his selfish murmuring. His sensuous soul had

been hitherto seeking with all its power for beauty as a resting-place.

He had thought to find it in the gratification of his senses, but it

had always eluded him. The child's earnest look that night as she took

up at his command the burden of suffering for the good that was to

come--not so much to herself as to another--made a new idea dawn upon

his mind. Was there, then, an unsuspected beauty even in suffering when

sanctified by high ends? If so, he had been all his life seeking in

vain.

Suddenly as the idea flashed in upon his brain--with the vision of that

patient little face, from which something more than a child's spirit

seemed to look--he sprang to his feet and walked rapidly forward into

the night. Like a dream his former life seemed to map itself out before

him in those few moments of intense feeling. The days, the years that

had, in spite of his efforts, furrowed his face and sprinkled their

gray ashes on his head, how had he spent them? In seeking the good

which ever eluded him, in fleeing from the shadow that ever pursued

him. The good had been happiness, beauty--the evil had been pain,

suffering. Physical suffering, mental suffering, sympathetic suffering,

vicarious suffering,--this he had striven to blot out from the story

of his life; he would believe that it did not exist, and when in

unmistakable evidence it had presented itself to his senses, he would

forget its presence or drown its influence in distractions.

And now came this child-messenger to tell him that all this time he had

been banishing a holy thing, a soul-purifier. It had ennobled the young

face that night till an angel's pure beauty seemed to rest upon it.

Even his peerless Margaret had gained in calmness and strength by those

years of desolation; and he who had cast it aside as abhorrent, what

was he becoming?

He asked himself this with an involuntary shudder. He had always

rejoiced in the tenderness of his heart. His very objection to the

sight of suffering had been laid to this account in the self-analyses

which with him had been so frequent: and now what did he find himself

doing? Coolly inflicting torture on a woman and child--two of the

weakest of God's creatures--and all for the gratification, not of the

best but of the worst feelings of his nature. Once more L'Estrange

threw himself to the ground, but this time his face was turned

earthward and buried in his hands, while wave after wave of bitterness

passed over his troubled soul.

When he looked up the white dawn was beginning to struggle with the

darkness. Gray clouds and intermediate patches of pale blue had become

visible, and heavy, bead-like drops of dew stood on the blades of

grass. His face was wan, like that of one who had passed through a

death-agony, but it looked better. He rose to his feet and paced slowly

back to the town. At the railway-station he stopped, knocked up a

telegraph-clerk, and sent a message apparently to London, then returned

to his room at the hotel, arousing the astonishment of two or three

sleepy waiters who were up in expectation of an early train.

There he sat down before the table, opened his desk and taking from it

a sheet of paper began a letter. It seemed a difficult one to write,

for sheet after sheet was destroyed before he could satisfy himself. It

was accomplished at last, however, and the words written seemed to be

very few, but a smile flitted over his face as he read them. Then he

pressed the paper to his lips, enclosed it in an envelope, and wrote

the address with a trembling hand.

L'Estrange's method of spelling English words was very eccentric. He

could speak the language well enough, as he had lived long in England,

but he could never bring himself to write it. Why words should be spelt

in such an arbitrary way he could not or would not understand. All he

could suppose was that the English would keep in this, as in everything

else, to their national characteristic of eccentricity.

English eccentricity had always been a fruitful theme with L'Estrange.

On the point of spelling he was obstinate. He persisted in spelling

phonetically, and as a natural consequence his letters very often went

astray.

It will be as well to say at once that this was the unhappy fate of

the letter in which his mental struggles culminated. It was written in

French and addressed to Margaret. She never got it. Three weeks later,

after vain endeavors had been made to procure it some destination, it

was returned to the hotel from which it had been written. There it

awaited the return of its writer.

CHAPTER II.

_A WASTED LIFE._

A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain,

That did love Beauty only (Beauty seen

In all varieties of mould and mind),

And Knowledge for its beauty; or if Good,

Good only for its beauty, seeing not

That Beauty, Good and Knowledge are three sisters

That doat upon each other--friends to man,

Living together under the same roof,

And never can be sundered without tears.

The heavy rings round Laura's eyes and her general languor when she

appeared in the private sitting-room her protector had taken deeply

grieved him.

For a few moments he felt inclined to act upon his natural impulse

of kindliness--to take the child back to her mother, and pursue his

strange scheme of setting Margaret right with her husband by himself.

But a remnant of selfishness withheld him. Laura, in her sweet,

childish innocence and in the unchildlike development of her inner

life, was a beautiful problem, the like of which had never before, in

all his wanderings through the fields of humanity, been presented to

him. He longed to study her more closely, and this could only be done

by following out his original scheme. He determined, therefore, to

leave the decision to her.

He said very little during breakfast-time, only watched her with a

certain curiosity. He was grateful to this child who had opened a door

of light in his soul, though he was not near enough to her in purity

and beauty to know how great was the service she had rendered him.

Breakfast was something of a pretence to both of them. The longing for

her mother, and the brave determination to choke it down in her heart

till she had done what was required of her--found this unknown father

and brought him back--made the child too excited for eating to be any

pleasure to her; and L'Estrange at the best of times could not eat so

early.

When it was over the child got up. "Please," she said hesitatingly. She

was in a great perplexity about what she should call her new protector.

He read her thought: "Come here, Laura."

She went quietly to his side, and he drew her on to his knees. "I knew

another Laura once," he said quietly, stroking back her hair; "she

was the sister of your mother; but she is dead now, pauvre enfant!"

And then he continued, as if talking to himself: "Comme elle était

gentille, la chère petite!"

"That must be my aunt Laura," said the child; "mamma has a picture of

her, and I kiss it sometimes."

"Yes, she would be your aunt, ma fillette; you are like her. Ah! I

remember now--it is of her that your eyes make me think. Turn round to

the light."

"But why do you talk about Aunt Laura?" said the child impatiently.

"Please, I want a sheet of paper. I can only write big letters, but I

think mamma would understand."

"Patience, ma mie. _I_ have written a letter to your mother. See, it is

here, all ready to be sent, and if you like some of your big letters

can go inside. You shall put it in the postbox yourself, that you may

trust your old friend as the other Laura did. I told you about her

because of what she used to call me. I should like you to do the same.

It was _mon père_. Can you say that?"

"Mon père," said Laura, in her small childish voice. Then she thought

a few moments: "That means my father, doesn't it? But you are not my

papa."

"I must be your father till you find your own, Laura," he said gravely.

"Shall it be so?"

"Yes, mon père," said the child, smiling up into his face.

And from that moment she never doubted her protector. He on his part

became more determined than ever in the pursuit of his new object.

Little by little the child was doing childhood's Heaven-given work,

drawing away selfishness and bringing pure love in its place. It was

this that brought him to try his experiment. He watched the child as

she sat down before a large sheet of paper with a pencil, writing

painfully her letter to her mother. L'Estrange had all the innate

delicacy of a refined mind; he would not attempt to see what the words

were that the child was tracing.

She brought the paper to him when the letter was done, and stood

beside him as he folded it up; but before it was finally put away he

hesitated: "Which would you rather, Laura--for this letter to go to

your mother, or to go back yourself?"

For a moment the child's face looked bright and joyous, but only for a

moment. The flush faded, she clasped her small hands together: "We must

find papa first; but, oh, I hope it will be soon!"

The strong man turned away; he had difficulty in keeping himself from

weeping like a child. When he spoke again his voice was calm: "We must

lose no time then, Laura." He rang the bell, and the waiter appeared.

"Send the chambermaid here."

When after a few moments the soft-hearted Jane came in, he gave her

money, ordering, in those imperative tones which always gained a

hearing with his inferiors, that the little lady should be supplied

without delay with every necessary for a long journey. He did not

deign to explain, nor did Jane venture to remonstrate. She went to an

outfitter's, procured all that was necessary, and in half an hour from

that time they were ready for another start.

There followed a long and wearisome day, for the heat and dust were

excessive, and before it was over, L'Estrange for the hundredth time

repented as he looked on the patient little flushed face that would yet

show no sign of weariness.

Arthur had been right in his conjecture. They were remarkable

travellers, and many were the comments of those who journeyed with

them--the man, with his dark face and foreign appearance and imperious

conduct, and the fair English child, at the very sight of whom his face

seemed to melt into tenderness and his manners to take the softness

of those of a woman. And no woman could have watched over her child

more lovingly or tended it with greater care than he watched over

and tended his little charge. Food and drink he brought her with his

own hands when it was possible to obtain them; whenever her position

grew wearisome she rested in his arms, the imperious voice sinking to

lulling murmurs as he told her long nursery-tales which he made out

of everything they passed. A house, a stream, the cows in a meadow

would be sufficient material for his fertile brain. Once even, when

the black grimy dust had literally overpowered the fastidious little

lady, and her timidity prevented her from appealing to the attendant

in a waiting-room, he took her himself to a kind of pump, and dipping

his cambric handkerchief into the cool water washed her hands and face

so effectually that she laughed for pleasure. It was her first laugh

since the moment when she had discovered that she was going away from

her mother, and it caused L'Estrange as sincere a throb of gladness

as he had ever known in all his life, for this child was gradually

becoming to him something more than a child--something more even than

the offspring of the woman who through all his lovings and longings had

most entirely held his heart. He began to look upon her, in his strange

fatalistic way, as a mysterious thing, sent to him at the very darkest

hour of all his dark career to touch his blackness with fingers of

light and bring good near to his soul.

And perhaps it was partly the truth. There is, for those who can

understand the mystery, something divine in childhood; certainly, if

not nearer to God than we, children have the power of drawing out the

divine that is in us. L'Estrange felt this in a very peculiar way; he

treated the child with a loving reverence, watching jealously her every

word and movement as one who looks for an inspiration.

And so the long hours of the day wore away. When they reached London it

was already late in the afternoon. Laura was tired, but she would not

hear of remaining there for the night, she was too anxious to press on.

They were met at the Great Northern Station by a gentleman who appeared

to have been expecting them. This man gave them a boisterous welcome,

shook hands warmly with L'Estrange, who did not seem to reciprocate

his cordiality, and, chucking Laura under the chin in a familiar way,

asked her where she was going. The child's lady-like instincts were

offended. She answered quietly that she did not know, and clung to her

protector's hand.

The stranger laughed in a peculiar way, and turned to L'Estrange: "I

didn't know you had a daughter, mossou."

"_Monsieur_," replied he, emphasizing the French word, "was mistaken,

as he very often is."

"Well! well!" answered the other rapidly--he was our friend Mr.

Robinson--"I can't stand here wasting my time. I gather from the

telegram, which duly arrived this morning, that you sent for me about a

certain subject. I _may_ have information for you--I _may_ not."

"It shall be worth Monsieur Rob_ee_nson's while to give me his

information," replied L'Estrange quietly, but with a kind of sarcastic

courtesy.

The courtesy struck Mr. Robinson's mind, the sarcasm glanced over

him harmlessly. "Of course, of course!" he protested volubly. "You

foreigners put things strangely, mossou; ignorance of English ways, no

doubt. Allow me to explain myself. In expectation of this (you gave me

reason a little while ago to believe it might possibly be wanted) I

have kept myself acquainted with the movements of the party discussed

between us. You will doubtless remember the occasion. Naturally

the firm is slightly out of pocket. These investigations, you must

understand, are costly, but everything shall be done in due form

between us. In the mean time, if I can be of any service--"

"Oblige me," said L'Estrange with the same manner, that might be either

courtesy or its semblance, "by taking this as an instalment." He handed

him a paper packet. "The firm I can settle with when your lawyer's bill

comes in. _Your_ services, monsieur, are for the moment personal."

Mr. Robinson bowed. His fingers itched to get to the inside of the

packet, but it would have been unprofessional to show anxiety, so it

rested quietly in his palm. L'Estrange looked at Laura to see how much

of all this she had understood. The little girl was still holding

his hand, but her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere, and he addressed

himself again to the lawyer: "Tell me, in as few words as can be,

where was he heard of last?"

"The last remittances were sent to Moscow. A few weeks ago he was

certainly there--probably is so still."

"Moscow!" L'Estrange repeated the word in a dismayed tone, looking down

as he did so at the child whose hand he held.

Mr. Robinson guessed his thought, and broke in volubly: "You surely

don't think of going there yourself, and with that child too! Why, it

would be preposterous, and not the smallest necessity. Give us time and

we can gain further information. If necessary, I could go there myself,

though of course it would be an expensive business. In any case,

leave your little girl. My wife would be delighted to look for a nice

school--conducted, you know, on Christian principles--where every care

would be taken, both in the way of physical and mental training."

Mr. Robinson would have his say out. He affected to consider that duty

required him to give salutary advice in season and out of season;

and as duty, in his sense of the term, was always closely connected

with business, he had already in his own mind fixed upon a temporary

residence for the child. A lady who owed him a long outstanding bill

was anxious to take in pupils. This new client was evidently a liberal

payer; through the profits made out of the child a part, at least, of

that just debt might be paid off.

But his client did not look at matters in the same light. He tried to

stop his voluble utterances, for the little hand he held was trembling.

Laura, hearing herself discussed, had taken a sudden interest in the

proceedings. She looked up at her protector and saw that his brows were

knit angrily. This alarmed her. She burst into tears. "Oh! please don't

leave me with him," she sobbed; "take me with you or let me go back to

mamma."

How his face changed as he heard the child's cry! It became suddenly

soft as that of a woman. He stooped down to her and wiped away her

tears, whispering all kinds of gentle assurances. Then he turned again

to the lawyer with that ominous frown: "You see what you have done. Be

so good, monsieur, as in the future to preserve business relations in

our necessary intercourse, nor presume to advise me at all on matters

that do not concern you."

Another man would have been struck dumb or else have retired offended,

but the lawyer was of the tough sort. This was too valuable a client

to be sacrificed to feelings. "No offence meant, I assure you, sir,"

he hastened to say--"only interest; but" (seeing the frown gather) "to

return to business. I have a few more details that may be useful--the

address of an agent in Moscow, the--"

"Write them out for me, and send them to the usual address in Paris by

to-morrow morning's mail. At the present, monsieur, we have no more

time for delay. It is necessary to dine before taking the train again

to Southampton."

"You leave, then, this evening? Can I be of any further--"

"No, thank you, Mr. Robeenson." He bowed in his stately manner and

turned away to the refreshment-rooms with Laura, leaving the lawyer on

the platform, still grinning his contentment.

As they distanced him the child gave a sigh: "I'm so glad he's gone!"

"Why, then, did you not like him, ma mie?"

"No, mon père, not at all; he doesn't look good."

"I think the bébé is right," he said in a low tone; "mais que faut il

faire?--Little wise one," he continued aloud, "we must take the people

as we find them, some good and some bad, making our own use of them

all. Is that too hard a philosophy for the little brain?"

Apparently it was, for the child made no answer.

In the mean time L'Estrange had seated her at one of the marble-topped

tables, and before thinking about his own dinner was trying to find

out what would best suit her appetite. The well-feed waiter was flying

about to supply all her wants; dainty after dainty, which she scarcely

touched, was put upon her plate. It was such a new scene to Laura that

her appetite fled with the excitement.

Many looked at her curiously in the crowded room, for Laura was a

peculiarly beautiful child. Her golden curls and her dark, lustrous

eyes, with the transparent delicacy of complexion she had inherited

from her mother, and the childish grace which is the gift of God to

her age of helplessness, made her very attractive. She was rather

embarrassed at the attention she excited, noticing which her protector

stood up and folding his arms looked right and left so haughtily that

the most compassionate and least curious of the many beholders felt as

if their admiration of the fair child had been an indiscretion.

After dinner the wearied little one fell asleep in his arms, and

only awoke to find herself in the train, which was far on its way to

Southampton. She was getting accustomed to her new friend and to these

sudden wakings; so this time, to his great relief, she did not cry out

for her mamma, but clung to him still more closely. They stopped at

Southampton. It was a lovely night, the sea still as glass and the dark

blue sky alight with moonshine and studded with stars.

Laura and her protector stood together on the steamer's deck. "Will ma

fillette go to bed?" he asked.

The child shook her head. "Oh! _please_ let me stay out here," she

pleaded. "I promise not to be a trouble, and the stars are so nice."

Without another word he wrapped her up in his own fur-lined overcoat

and made a bed for her on one of the seats, himself watching beside her.

But this time Laura could not sleep, the position was too strange.

"What is that noise?" she asked nervously as the plash of the water

against the great paddle-wheels came to her ears.

"The water and the wheels," he answered. "The wheels are rolling along

through the waves, taking us over the sea."

The child raised herself on her elbow and looked round: "Where are we

going? There's only sky and clouds out there. But, oh!" clasping her

hands in delight, "look at the moon on the water. I see it like that

at home sometimes. Once, when I could not go to sleep, mamma took me

to the window, and a little bit of the sea was all white as it is

to-night. She said it was the moon, and now we're going to catch the

moon in the water. Oh! _why_ didn't mamma come?"

For this was the ever-recurring trouble of the child. Her love for

her mother was stronger and more enduring than it generally is among

those of her age. A mother gives; but very often years pass before she

receives any return to her devotion. Laura's love was strong, because,

in the first place, there was nothing to divide it: her young life had

never held another affection. Then her love and childish sympathy had

for some time been partially checked, and, it may be, had therefore

grown stronger in their secret place. Only during the last weeks had

her young affection had its free course in the light of her mother's

comprehending love.

Her plaint made her companion wince, but he would not answer it. After

a few moments he looked at her again and saw that tears were in her

eyes. They were reflecting, in their moistness, the white shimmering

moonlight; in its pure unearthly shining the little face seemed almost

transfigured.

L'Estrange had been superstitious from his youth up. He was the very

creature of those dreams and inspirations to which the glowing South

gives birth. Perhaps they had weakened his strong intellect. At any

rate they had kept it in the shadowy twilight, giving little chance for

living truth to make its entrance into his soul.

The look on the child's face startled him. "_Does_ she belong to this

earth?" he asked himself.

"Laura," he whispered, "look away from the stars. Doubtless they are

thy sisters and brothers, little one, but look for one moment from

them to me, and say what thoughts are in the busy little brain at this

moment?"

The child smiled: "I was thinking about the moon and about mamma, mon

père. I was wondering if she is looking at the moon now, and if she got

my letter, and if she misses me very much."

Her simple reflections did not satisfy her friend. I think at the

moment he would scarcely have been surprised if the child had developed

budding wings and floated away into the sympathetic moonshine; his

superstition, it may be, specially as displayed by one whose sex might

have been supposed to lift him above such weakness, will seem strange

and improbable to the majority of readers. A _man allow_ himself to

think seriously of such follies? Yes--a _man_, and not the first nor

the last, by a great many. The inhabitants of our island are not

alone on the face of the earth. In the glow of the sunny South, where

generations have lapped their souls in sunshine and indolently lived

on the abundant gifts of lavish Nature, where life can be sustained by

a little, and the struggle for existence is less painful and bitter,

there has been time for dreaming; and perhaps this has enervated the

moral sense and loosened the sinews of mind, till pleasure has become a

god and the mind receptive of strange things.

In the early days of civilization, before these things had wrought

fully on the character, pure reason, law and its cold abstractions,

divine art and severe philosophy made the South their centre, for when

we think of these first Athens and then Rome come before the mind. And

at that age in the gray formless North the legend flourished, with many

a wild superstition. But all that has changed. A light dawned upon the

mighty tribes; their superstitions fell, and they girded themselves

with strength, while evermore in the sunny lands dreams gained ground,

and weakness followed in their train, till at last what is it that we

see? In the city where Pericles ruled, where Socrates taught, where

Plato reasoned, they dream and do not; in imperial Rome a shadow, an

old mediæval fiction, has kept the people from freedom as they gloried

in the past and dreamed about the future, and in the mean time we of

the gray North are rapidly casting from us almost everything but what

we can see, taste, hold and understand.

Be practical! is the watchword of the age, and sentiment is repudiated,

and imagination cried down or relegated to extreme youth and the

weakest of weak womanhood. Are there many, I wonder, who find the

medium--whose strong souls are strong enough to allow that there is

something which passes their ken--who think it no shame to be at

certain moments swayed by sentiment, governed by a dream of ideal

loveliness, and yet who work on in their daily calling unsickened and

undismayed?

There are some such souls, and to no climate are they peculiar.

L'Estrange might have been one of them. There was in his imaginative

faculty, in his receptivity to beauty and sentiment, in his sympathetic

tenderness, a something that marked him out as one born to a higher

life than that of self-gratification. His success among women was

chiefly owing to this. For it is the good, not the bad in a character,

that draws and enchains the loving worship of womanhood.

Where a man reads weakness a woman's keen eye beholds what underlies

that weakness, and if _it_ be lovable she is ready to adore.

What L'Estrange wanted was this: A soul to understand the beauty and

glory of truth--truth on the lips and truth in the life. To indulge

his love of beauty he had wrapped himself in the rose-colored mists of

dreams; to preserve himself and others from pain he had never hesitated

to resort to falsehood. He might have been very different. Some of the

misery of that "might have been" was in his soul that evening as he

turned from the child and paced up and down the steamer's deck, for a

dark hour had come and he could not bear to face his good genius. With

arms folded and brows knit, his dark face looking forward into the

moonlight, he thought until thinking was pain. But the influence of the

child had begun to work. He would not, as he usually did, cast aside

the painful thinking because of the pain that was in it; rather he

looked it in the face, trying to touch its centre, and so, it might be,

find a cure.

Oh, it was a hard task! For his was the misery of a wasted life, and

a life that had brought desolation. True his innate refinement, the

self-respect of a high intellect, had kept him tolerably free from

what is gross and degrading, but that midnight retrospect was bitter

notwithstanding. Pleasure sought and taken at the expense of truth;

blighted lives, to which he had brought the warm beauty of love,

leaving them when the mood had changed to find it where they could;

good that he might have done and did not; wasted talents, used-up

powers,--these came before his conscience in an accusing throng. And

there was no help for it. He had one life only, and the best of that

life had gone. L'Estrange, though he professed to believe in a futurity

to the soul, was that saddest of all beings, a practical infidel. In

the misery of self-communion his thoughts turned suddenly to the memory

of his boyhood's faith, to the days when heaven had been a reality and

the saints robed in white, the pure queen of the skies, the fair infant

in her breast, had formed part of his hopes and dreams for the future.

They had vanished like myths born of the early vapor. They had been

too shadowy to bear the inroad of hot, lurid noon. Tried, they had

been found wanting, and what had he left in the hour when his heart

and spirit craved for something unearthly as their rest? Nothing. All

he found within, as he ventured shudderingly to lift the curtain that

hides the unseen from the seen, was a "certain fearful looking-for of

judgment and fiery indignation," which no man, if ten times over an

infidel, can escape when the hour comes.

His dark face darkened. If all were hopeless, then why should he pause?

Why had the good that was in him made him hesitate at last? He would

crush it down and gain his own ends, even through suffering itself. He

stopped in his rapid walk and looked over the vessel's side. It was a

real blackness, for clouds had covered the face of the moon, and had

gathered here and there in heavy masses on the horizon.

A moaning wind swept across the sea, ruffling the waters till the

vessel rocked to and fro. Then the dark face relaxed. The desolation of

the watery waste had been responsive to his mood. "So be it, then," he

muttered, looking out into the darkness. He was for the moment like the

grand creation of Milton, that ideal Lucifer, when his last struggles

after goodness have culminated in the fatal cry, "Evil, be thou my

good!"

But L'Estrange was not yet absolutely God-forsaken. As he spoke

something touched his knees. He looked down impatiently. But suddenly

his impatience changed. He drew himself away with a murmured

exclamation and a strange contraction of heart. Was it a miracle? For

this was what he saw. The kneeling figure of a child, the hands clasped

and the eyes lifted up to his. On the face was a bright shining that

made the golden hair like a saint's halo, and brought out the picture

in every small detail--the tremulous lips, the fair soft brow, the

lustrous eyes under their silken fringe. The face was Laura's. In

her companion's mood it seemed transfigured, like that of an angel

lamenting over his sins and follies. Involuntarily he bowed his head.

The strong man trembled like a child at the evidence of all he had

imagined, and yet the phenomenon was very commonplace. This was what

had caused it. The faithful child had read his trouble, and as she

had already allowed him to find his way to her heart, it made that

little heart sad. In her mother's sadness Laura had sometimes proved a

comforter, and the thought came into her head that she might comfort

her friend. So when he had stopped by the vessel's side the little

child had risen noiselessly, and kneeling by his side had clasped her

small hands about his knees. Then came the partial darkness, which

with her friend's seeming indifference frightened her so much that she

loosened her hold and looked up pleadingly. A sailor who was walking

about with a lantern looking after the rigging had been watching this

little episode. In his curiosity he caused its light to shine full

upon the child's face, so that when L'Estrange turned round he saw it

irradiated, while, as the sailor stood behind him, the source of the

sudden radiance was hidden.

The illumination did not last longer than a few minutes. The man

turned away to his business, his heart softer for this glimpse of

innocent beauty; Laura and her protector were left in the darkness. But

until the day of his death L'Estrange believed that the light which

irradiated the child came down from heaven.

He was recalled to his belief in Laura's mortality by a little wailing

cry. She put out her hands to feel for her friend, as the darkness and

silence alarmed her. Then he stooped down reverently and lifted her up

in his arms. The sorrowing angel was his own little Laura, fair and

pure in her habitation of flesh and blood, for, clasping her small arms

about his neck, she burst into a passion of tears. The darkness, the

sense of loneliness, the over-excitement had wrought upon the child's

nerves, and L'Estrange forgot all his wild thoughts in the effort to

comfort her. Instead of seeking evil as a good, he became tender as the

tenderest of fathers while he strove to make her forget her fears.

He succeeded at last. She lay on his knees, quiet, only for a sob

or two at intervals, her golden head against his breast, one hand

round his neck, the other lost in his large grasp--she was afraid of

losing her friend again--and he soothed her by murmuring low, crooning

melodies that he thought he had forgotten long ago. Then when the

morning came and they were near their destination, he took her to the

stewardess for all needful combing and dressing. But from that time

L'Estrange treated the mortal child with a strange reverence.

Later in that day, when they were wandering through the quaint streets

and corners of old Rouen, and the child had almost forgotten her

sorrows in wonder and delight, he brought his trouble to his young

oracle. "Have you ever been naughty, Laura?" he asked, looking down

upon her with a smile that was almost one of incredulity.

The child smiled: "Oh yes, mon père--a number of times."

"And what did you do, ma fillette?--when you were naughty, I mean."

"I told mamma about it," said the child simply, "and she always said

something to make me good again."

"But, Laura, when people are grown up and have no mamma to tell, what

must they do then?"

For a moment the child looked troubled and thoughtful; then, as a light

seemed to dawn upon her, she smiled. "I should think they might tell

God," she said.

The wayworn man bowed his head, and that evening in the solitude he

told God. For the child was making him believe in the actual goodness

(for only the Good could have made anything so good and pure) and in

the possibility of goodness for himself, as he was still able to love

and reverence it.

Slowly the light dawned upon his benighted soul, and only after many

struggles with the darkness that was in him: this telling God was the

beginning.

CHAPTER III.

_A TALE ABOUT THE STARS._

Could we but deem the stars had hearts, and loved,

They would seem happier, holier, to us even than now;

And ah! why not?--they are so beautiful.

The strange travellers continued their wanderings. News reached them at

Paris about the object of their journey, but news so indefinite that

L'Estrange thought it well to proceed with caution. In any of the

places through which they passed it was possible Maurice Grey might

be found. He did not seem to be in Moscow, although for the time all

communications were to be addressed to an agent there.

He told as much as was possible of his plans and ideas to the child,

and her impatience was stayed while they wandered through the English

quarter of Paris and appeared in the galleries and public places--her

friend, who knew the city well, making every inquiry about the

stranger's residence there.

And in the mean time L'Estrange enjoyed his peculiar position and the

kind of mystery that the beautiful, fair-haired child excited among the

few of his friends whom he could not avoid meeting. Mystery had always

been one of his chief tools. He delighted in wrapping himself up in

this misty obscurity. It challenged curiosity and excited interest.

He was given to appearing and disappearing without rendering to any

one an account of his motives, and the rumors current about him were

many. Even his nationality was a matter of doubt to some of his nearest

associates. The general idea was that he travelled here and there as a

secret emissary from one of the societies which work under ground in

Europe, or else that he was an agent from some one of its governments.

L'Estrange enjoyed this curiosity. It suited his purposes, and he

never, or very seldom, lifted the veil. To say the truth, the aims of

his journey were as varied and complex as himself. This was not the

first that had been undertaken with a good object, though never before,

perhaps, had self been so entirely set aside.

Maurice Grey was his enemy. He had taken his treasure. He had possessed

himself--for the fact was slowly dawning on his mind through the

child's innocent prattle--not only of the person, but of the heart

and affections, of the one woman in all the world for whom he had

ever cherished a perfect sympathy. For although L'Estrange had felt

many times a certain power in womanhood, although his senses had been

enchained and his self-love flattered, yet it was true that this time

only had his whole being been surrendered, this once only had love

become one with his life--entered into him as a thing from which

nothing but death could free him.

Sometimes, as with _his_ child beside him he wandered through the gay

city, it came over him like a flood what it would be to come upon this

man, to look into his face, to behold in it the workings of that soul

which for an apparent weakness could have cast off Margaret; and then

to do what? To take his revenge by proclaiming in words that could

not be denied the purity of his forsaken wife--by giving up into his

keeping the child whose young love he had despised. And if, after all,

he should be unworthy of this happiness? L'Estrange was walking through

the Champs Elysées with Laura late in the afternoon of a sultry day

when this thought dawned upon him.

He stopped, and sitting down on one of the chairs drew the child to

his knees. There was a fierce determination in his face that half

frightened her.

"Mon père!" she said gently.

He turned his face from her and hid it with his hand. L'Estrange was

vowing a great vow with himself.

"By Heaven!" he muttered, but so low that she could not hear, "I will

watch him, and if I read this weakness in his face he shall never know."

Then he looked forward down the avenue.

A tall, well-shaped and well-dressed man, English evidently, from

his carriage and general appearance, was sauntering leisurely in the

direction of the Place de la Concorde with a young French girl, who

seemed to be chattering volubly and making good use of her eyes,

hanging on his arm. There was a carelessness in his manner to her

that seemed to mark her out as not precisely of his own position in

the social scale, and this, as well as a certain resemblance, tempted

L'Estrange to follow the pair.

"Stay where you are till I come back," he whispered to the child. In

the gathering twilight he followed till he was close on the heels of

the young Englishman.

His companion was at that moment looking up coaxingly into his face.

"But how close you Englishmen are!" she was saying in a wheedling

tone. "I am dying of curiosity, mon ami. Tell me, then, about this

immaculate, this runaway husband, this milord Anglais, who finds

nothing better to do than pine away, perhaps die, for the wife he

has left behind. Mon Dieu! what a nation! You are great, vous autres,

in love as in war; but why does he hide? One might find a method of

consoling him; pas vrai?"

L'Estrange, who had crept under the shadow of the trees, and was now

walking parallel with the pair, could see by the light of one of the

scattered lamps that the young man's brow darkened.

"He doesn't want such consolation as yours, Laurette. But why do you

persist in questioning me? I have told you a dozen times that Maurice

Grey will never be game for us--for _us_," he continued with a strange

emphasis. "If I had taken _his_ advice--"

She smiled--a smile that looked rather dangerous: "Your associates

would not have been the same. Continue then, mon ami. Are we not

friends?"

"Of course, of course," he said hastily. "Ma chère, what a little goose

you are, taking up a fellow in this serious kind of style! You see,

it's all your own fault--you put me out of temper by talking about that

prig. I believe he has buried himself in the wilds. I saw him last in

St. Petersburg; then he said he was going to the mountains. But, good

gracious! how should this interest you? I shall be jealous presently,

Laurette, and think you in love with my saintly cousin."

Laurette laughed--a clear, ringing laugh, but to the watchful listener

it sounded hollow.

"There is sadness under that mirth," he said to himself; "she has tried

her wiles on the Englishman, and tried them in vain; so much the better

for him."

After a few more light words, Laurette and her companion turned into

a brilliantly-lit and decorated _café_. L'Estrange walked slowly back

to the seat where he had left Laura. His face was very pale and his

fine mouth was quivering. A fear had been partially laid to rest, but

it might be that even in the fear a hope, the shadow of self-love, had

rested.

As he drew near to the seat where Laura had been left his steps

quickened, for the murmur of her sweet voice reached his ears. Some one

was speaking to her, and his unquiet conscience filled him with fear.

Perhaps they were trying to steal away his treasure.

His fears were realized. A man was leaning over the child's chair and

speaking to her earnestly. Laura looked troubled and irresolute, but

all her hesitation fled when she saw her friend. She rose suddenly,

eluding with the agility of a child the grasping hand that sought to

detain her, and took refuge in his arms.

The darkness and his knowledge of Paris favored L'Estrange. He

caught her up and disappeared among the shadows with the rapidity

of lightning, leaving the man, who was Golding's agent and had been

triumphing in his discovery, altogether baffled. He had certainly

shown very little judgment, for he had not even mentioned that he had

come from her mother. The first thing he had done was to bewilder the

child by cross-examination, to test the truth of his discovery. Then

he had told her, in the directest way possible, that the man with whom

she was travelling was a bad man, and that it was her duty to leave

him at once. This, Laura, who had given her faith to her companion,

entirely disbelieved. She rather feared the stranger who had come in

the darkness to steal her away from her friend.

But all these contradictions puzzled her brain; she felt alarmed, and

in her bewilderment the sight of her friend was reassuring. It was rest

for the weary child to be gathered up into his strong arms, and his

sudden flight through the cool night-air was rather satisfactory than

the contrary. The dry manner of this man of business was so different

from the tender reverence, the deep emotion, of the man she called

her father!--what wonder then that the little girl, woman-like in her

instincts, trusted the one and was glad to flee from the other?

With long strides L'Estrange passed on through the darkness, for,

though the child was in his arms, he did not grow weary. His love

prevented him from feeling her a burden.

"I shall only give thee up to one, my treasure," he whispered; and

Laura was quite content.

If she was becoming unspeakably dear to her friend, he was also

becoming dear to her. In his tenderness and devotion he seemed to clasp

her round like a providence. The little one began to think that he must

be her father, whatever he might say to the contrary.

And while she was thinking they went on together more slowly, as the

darkness deepened and the danger of pursuit became less, into the very

heart of Paris, among its network of streets and lanes. L'Estrange knew

every inch of the way as well by night as by day. This was not his

first midnight flight.

They stopped at last before a small house in a little side street.

L'Estrange rang the bell, and there came a respectable middle-aged

woman to the door. She smiled her recognition, then put out her hand

and drew them in.

"C'est toi, donc, mon ami? et, mon Dieu! un bébé! Comment! Mais entre

toujours."

She took the candle from the concierge, and preceded them up stairs

to a little room furnished partly as a bedroom and partly as a

sitting-room. Then, when they had seated themselves and she had

removed Laura's hat and jacket, she began bustling about, helpful as a

Frenchwoman generally is, to prepare everything for their further stay.

L'Estrange stopped her:

"A thousand thanks, ma bonne Marie: we go on to-night."

She shrugged her shoulders, a significant gesture. Marie was a very old

friend, and L'Estrange had been her benefactor. She knew his weakness.

"As you will, mon ami," she answered, "but this bébé wants rest," she

continued in English, approaching the child and stroking her fair hair

caressingly.

The bébé had been sitting in a large arm-chair, looking curiously

about her. She was perfectly happy and comfortable, for her friend was

with her, and Marie's benevolent face and pleasant cheerful voice had

inspired her with confidence.

"I'm not at all tired, thank you," she said; "mon père carried me a

long way."

The woman turned round abruptly: "This is not yours, Adolphe?"

"Pour le moment," he answered; and she did not dare to question him

further, for this man, when he liked, could be repellant even to his

friends. But the shadow passed. He chatted gayly with Marie upon a

variety of subjects, sent a messenger to their hotel to settle their

account and bring their portmanteau, and partook with Laura of coffee

of Marie's making, and of such few substantials as she could get

together in a hurry.