Meanwhile, the miserable Nora--deceived by the arts and representations

of Levy, acting on the natural impulse of a heart so susceptible to

shame, flying from a home which she deemed dishonoured, flying from a

lover whose power over her she knew to be so great that she dreaded lest

he might reconcile her to dishonour itself--had no thought save to hide

herself forever from Audley’s eye. She would not go to her relations,

to Lady Jane; that were to give the clew, and invite the pursuit. An

Italian lady of high rank had visited at Lady Jane’s,--taken a great

fancy to Nora; and the lady’s husband, having been obliged to precede

her return to Italy, had suggested the notion of engaging some

companion; the lady had spoken of this to Nora and to Lady Jane Horton,

who had urged Nora to accept the offer, elude Harley’s pursuit, and go

abroad for a time. Nora then had refused; for she then had seen Audley

Egerton.

To this Italian lady she now went, and the offer was renewed with the

most winning kindness, and grasped at in the passion of despair. But the

Italian had accepted invitations to English country-houses before she

finally departed for the Continent. Meanwhile Nora took refuge in a

quiet lodging in a sequestered suburb, which an English servant in the

employment of the fair foreigner recommended. Thus had she first come

to the cottage in which Burley died. Shortly afterwards she left England

with her new companion, unknown to all,--to Lady Jane as to her parents.

All this time the poor girl was under a moral delirium, a confused

fever, haunted by dreams from which she sought to fly. Sound

physiologists agree that madness is rarest amongst persons of the finest

imagination. But those persons are, of all others, liable to a temporary

state of mind in which judgment sleeps,--imagination alone prevails with

a dire and awful tyranny. A single idea gains ascendancy, expels all

others, presents itself everywhere with an intolerable blinding glare.

Nora was at that time under the dread one idea, to fly from shame!

But when the seas rolled, and the dreary leagues interposed between

her and her lover; when new images presented themselves; when the fever

slaked, and reason returned,--doubt broke upon the previous despair. Had

she not been too credulous, too hasty? Fool, fool! Audley have been so

poor a traitor! How guilty was she, if she had wronged him! And in the

midst of this revulsion of feeling, there stirred within her another

life. She was destined to become a mother. At that thought her high

nature bowed; the last struggle of pride gave way; she would return

to England, see Audley, learn from his lips the truth, and even if the

truth were what she had been taught to believe, plead not for herself,

but for the false one’s child.

Some delay occurred in the then warlike state of affairs on the

Continent before she could put this purpose into execution; and on her

journey back, various obstructions lengthened the way. But she returned

at last, and resought the suburban cottage in which she had last lodged

before quitting England. At night, she went to Audley’s London house;

there was only a woman in charge of it. Mr. Egerton was absent,

electioneering somewhere; Mr. Levy, his lawyer, called every day for

any letters to be forwarded to him. Nora shrank from seeing Levy, shrank

from writing even a letter that would pass through his bands. If she

had been deceived, it had been by him, and wilfully. But parliament

was already dissolved; the election would soon be over. Mr. Egerton

was expected to return to town within a week. Nora went back to Mrs.

Goodyer’s and resolved to wait, devouring her own heart in silence. But

the newspapers might inform her where Audley really was; the newspapers

were sent for and conned daily.

And one morning this paragraph met her eye:--

The Earl and Countess of Lansmere are receiving a distinguished

party at their country seat. Among the guests is Miss Leslie, whose

wealth and beauty have excited such sensation in the fashionable

world. To the disappointment of numerous aspirants amongst our

aristocracy, we hear that this lady has, however, made her

distinguished choice in Mr. Audley Egerton. That gentleman is now a

candidate for the borough of Lansmere, as a supporter of the

Government; his success is considered certain, and, according to the

report of a large circle of friends, few new members will prove so

valuable an addition to the ministerial ranks. A great career may

indeed be predicted for a young man so esteemed for talent and

character, aided by a fortune so immense as that which he will

shortly receive with the hand of the accomplished heiress.

Again the anchor snapped, again the storm descended, again the stars

vanished. Nora was now once more under the dominion of a single thought,

as she had been when she fled from her bridal home. Then, it was to

escape from her lover,--now, it was to see him. As the victim stretched

on the rack implores to be led at once to death, so there are moments

when the annihilation of hope seems more merciful than the torment of

suspense.

CHAPTER XVII.

When the scenes in some long diorama pass solemnly before us, there is

sometimes one solitary object, contrasting, perhaps, the view of stately

cities or the march of a mighty river, that halts on the eye for

a moment, and then glides away, leaving on the mind a strange,

comfortless, undefined impression.

Why was the object presented to us? In itself it seemed comparatively

insignificant. It may have been but a broken column, a lonely pool with

a star-beam on its quiet surface,--yet it awes us. We remember it when

phantasmal pictures of bright Damascus, or of colossal pyramids, of

bazaars in Stamboul, or lengthened caravans that defile slow amidst the

sands of Araby, have sated the wondering gaze. Why were we detained in

the shadowy procession by a thing that would have been so commonplace

had it not been so lone? Some latent interest must attach to it. Was it

there that a vision of woe had lifted the wild hair of a Prophet; there

where some Hagar had stilled the wail of her child on her indignant

breast? We would fain call back the pageantry procession, fain see again

the solitary thing that seemed so little worth the hand of the artist,

and ask, “Why art thou here, and wherefore dost thou haunt us?”

Rise up,--rise up once more, by the broad great thoroughfare that

stretches onward and onward to the remorseless London! Rise up, rise up,

O solitary tree with the green leaves on thy bough, and the deep rents

in thy heart; and the ravens, dark birds of omen and sorrow, that build

their nest amidst the leaves of the bough, and drop with noiseless

plumes down through the hollow rents of the heart, or are heard, it may

be in the growing shadows of twilight, calling out to their young.

Under the old pollard-tree, by the side of John Avenel’s house, there

cowered, breathless and listening, John Avenel’s daughter Nora. Now,

when that fatal newspaper paragraph, which lied so like truth, met her

eyes, she obeyed the first impulse of her passionate heart,--she tore

the wedding ring from her finger, she enclosed it, with the paragraph

itself, in a letter to Audley,--a letter that she designed to convey

scorn and pride--alas! it expressed only jealousy and love. She could

not rest till she had put this letter into the post with her own hand,

addressed to, Audley at Lord Lansmere’s. Scarce had it left her ere she

repented. What had she done,--resigned the birth-right of the child

she was so soon to bring into the world, resigned her last hope in her

lover’s honour, given up her life of life--and from belief in what?--a

report in a newspaper! No, no; she would go herself to Lansmere; to

her father’s home,--she could contrive to see Audley before that letter

reached his hand. The thought was scarcely conceived before obeyed.

She found a vacant place in a coach that started from London some hours

before the mail, and went within a few miles of Lansmere; those last

miles she travelled on foot. Exhausted, fainting, she gained at last the

sight of home, and there halted, for in the little garden in front

she saw her parents seated. She heard the murmur of their voices, and

suddenly she remembered her altered shape, her terrible secret. How

answer the question,

“Daughter, where and who is thy husband?” Her heart failed her; she

crept under the old pollard-tree, to gather up resolve, to watch, and to

listen. She saw the rigid face of the thrifty, prudent mother, with the

deep lines that told of the cares of an anxious life, and the chafe of

excitable temper and warm affections against the restraint of decorous

sanctimony and resolute pride. The dear stern face never seemed to

her more dear and more stern. She saw the comely, easy, indolent,

good-humoured father; not then the poor, paralytic sufferer, who could

yet recognize Nora’s eyes under the lids of Leonard, but stalwart and

jovial,--first bat in the Cricket Club, first voice in the Glee Society,

the most popular canvasser of the Lansmere Constitutional True Blue

Party, and the pride and idol of the Calvinistical prim wife; never from

those pinched lips of hers had come forth even one pious rebuke to

the careless, social man. As he sat, one hand in his vest, his profile

turned to the road, the light smoke curling playfully up from the pipe,

over which lips, accustomed to bland smile and hearty laughter, closed

as if reluctant to be closed at all, he was the very model of the

respectable retired trader in easy circumstances, and released from the

toil of making money while life could yet enjoy the delight of spending

it.

“Well, old woman,” said John Avenel, “I must be off presently to see to

those three shaky voters in Fish Lane; they will have done their work

soon, and I shall catch ‘em at home. They do say as how we may have an

opposition; and I know that old Smikes has gone to Lonnon in search of

a candidate. We can’t have the Lansmere Constitutional Blues beat by a

Lonnoner! Ha, ha, ha!”

“But you will be home before Jane and her husband Mark come? How ever

she could marry a common carpenter!”

“Yes,” said John, “he is a carpenter; but he has a vote, and that

strengthens the family interest. If Dick was not gone to Amerikay, there

would be three on us. But Mark is a real good Blue! A Lonnoner, indeed!

a Yellow from Lonnon beat my Lord and the Blues! Ha, ha!”

“But, John, this Mr. Egerton is a Lonnoner!”

“You don’t understand things, talking such nonsense. Mr. Egerton is the

Blue candidate, and the Blues are the Country Party; therefore how can

he be a Lonnoner? An uncommon clever, well-grown, handsome young man,

eh! and my young Lord’s particular friend.”

Mrs. Avenel sighed.

“What are you sighing and shaking your head for?”

“I was thinking of our poor, dear, dear Nora!”

“God bless her!” cried John, heartily.

There was a rustle under the boughs of the old hollow-hearted

pollard-tree.

“Ha, ha! Hark! I said that so loud that I have startled the ravens!”

“How he did love her!” said Mrs. Avenel, thoughtfully. “I am sure he

did; and no wonder, for she looks every inch a lady; and why should not

she be my lady, after all?”

“He? Who? Oh, that foolish fancy of yours about my young Lord? A prudent

woman like you!--stuff! I am glad my little beauty is gone to Lonnon,

out of harm’s way.”

“John, John, John! No harm could ever come to my Nora. She ‘s too pure

and too good, and has too proper a pride in her, to--”

“To listen to any young lords, I hope,” said John; “though,” he added,

after a pause, “she might well be a lady too. My Lord, the young one,

took me by the hand so kindly the other day, and said, ‘Have not you

heard from her--I mean Miss Avenel--lately?’ and those bright eyes of

his were as full of tears as--as--as yours are now.”

“Well, John, well; go on.”

“That is all. My Lady came up, and took me away to talk about the

election; and just as I was going, she whispered, ‘Don’t let my wild boy

talk to you about that sweet girl of yours. We must both see that she

does not come to disgrace.’ ‘Disgrace!’ that word made me very angry

for the moment. But my Lady has such a way with her that she soon put

me right again. Yet, I do think Nora must have loved my young Lord, only

she was too good to show it. What do you say?” And the father’s voice

was thoughtful.

“I hope she’ll never love any man till she’s married to him; it is not

proper, John,” said Mrs. Avenel, somewhat starchly, though very mildly.

“Ha, ha!” laughed John, chucking his prim wife under the chin, “you

did not say that to me when I stole your first kiss under that very

pollard-tree--no house near it then!”

“Hush, John, hush!” and the prim wife blushed like a girl.

“Pooh,” continued John, merrily, “I don’t see why we plain folk should

pretend to be more saintly and prudish-like than our betters. There’s

that handsome Miss Leslie, who is to marry Mr. Egerton--easy enough to

see how much she is in love with him,--could not keep her eyes off from

him even in church, old girl! Ha, ha! What the deuce is the matter with

the ravens?”

“They’ll be a comely couple, John. And I hear tell she has a power of

money. When is the marriage to be?”

“Oh, they say as soon as the election is over. A fine wedding we shall

have of it! I dare say my young Lord will be bridesman. We’ll send for

our little Nora to see the gay doings!”

Out from the boughs of the old tree came the shriek of a lost

spirit,--one of those strange, appalling sounds of human agony which,

once heard, are never forgotten. It is as the wail of Hope, when SHE,

too, rushes forth from the Coffer of Woes, and vanishes into viewless

space; it is the dread cry of Reason parting from clay, and of Soul,

that would wrench itself from life! For a moment all was still--and then

a dull, dumb, heavy fall!

The parents gazed on each other, speechless: they stole close to the

pales, and looked over. Under the boughs, at the gnarled roots of the

oak, they saw--gray and indistinct--a prostrate form. John opened the

gate, and went round; the mother crept to the road-side, and there stood

still.

“Oh, wife, wife!” cried John Avenel, from under the green boughs, “it is

our child Nora! Our child! our child!”

And, as he spoke, out from the green boughs started the dark ravens,

wheeling round and round, and calling to their young!

And when they had laid her on the bed, Mrs. Avenel whispered John to

withdraw for a moment; and with set lips but trembling hands began

to unlace the dress, under the pressure of which Nora’s heart heaved

convulsively. And John went out of the room bewildered, and sat

himself down on the landing-place, and wondered whether he was awake or

sleeping; and a cold numbness crept over one side of him, and his head

felt very heavy, with a loud, booming noise in his ears. Suddenly his

wife stood by his side, and said, in a very low voice,

“John, run for Mr. Morgan,--make haste. But mind--don’t speak to any one

on the way. Quick, quick!”

“Is she dying?”

“I don’t know. Why not die before?” said Mrs. Avenel, between her teeth;

“but Mr. Morgan is a discreet, friendly man.”

“A true Blue!” muttered poor John, as if his mind wandered; and rising

with difficulty, he stared at his wife a moment, shook his head, and was

gone.

An hour or two later, a little, covered, taxed cart stopped at Mr.

Avenel’s cottage, out of which stepped a young man with pale face and

spare form, dressed in the Sunday suit of a rustic craftsman; then a

homely, but pleasant, honest face bent down to him, smilingly; and two

arms emerging from under covert of a red cloak extended an infant, which

the young man took tenderly. The baby was cross and very sickly; it

began to cry. The father hushed, and rocked, and tossed it, with the air

of one to whom such a charge was familiar.

“He’ll be good when we get in, Mark,” said the young woman, as she

extracted from the depths of the cart a large basket containing poultry

and home-made bread.

“Don’t forget the flowers that the squire’s gardener gave us,” said Mark

the Poet.

Without aid from her husband, the wife took down basket and nosegay,

settled her cloak, smoothed her gown, and said, “Very odd! they don’t

seem to expect us, Mark. How still the house is! Go and knock; they

can’t ha’ gone to bed yet.”

Mark knocked at the door--no answer. A light passed rapidly across the

windows on the upper floor, but still no one came to his summons. Mark

knocked again. A gentleman dressed in clerical costume, now coming from

Lansinere Park, on the opposite side of the road, paused at the sound of

Mark’s second and more impatient knock, and said civilly,

“Are you not the young folks my friend John Avenel told me this morning

he expected to visit him?”

“Yes, please, Mr. Dale,” said Mrs. Fairfield, dropping her courtesy.

“You remember me! and this is my dear good man!”

“What! Mark the Poet?” said the curate of Lansmere, with a smile. “Come

to write squibs for the election?”

“Squibs, sir!” cried Mark, indignantly.

“Burns wrote squibs,” said the curate, mildly.

Mark made no answer, but again knocked at the door.

This time, a man, whose face, even seen by the starlight, was much

flushed, presented himself at the threshold.

“Mr. Morgan!” exclaimed the curate, in benevolent alarm; “no illness

here, I hope?”

“Cott! it is you, Mr. Dale!--Come in, come in; I want a word with you.

But who the teuce are these people?”

“Sir,” said Mark, pushing through the doorway, “my name is Fairfield,

and my wife is Mr. Avenel’s daughter!”

“Oh, Jane--and her baby too!--Cood! cood! Come in; but be quiet, can’t

you? Still, still--still as death!”

The party entered, the door closed; the moon rose, and shone calmly on

the pale silent house, on the sleeping flowers of the little garden, on

the old pollard with its hollow core. The horse in the taxed cart dozed

unheeded; the light still at times flitted across the upper windows.

These were the only signs of life, except when a bat, now and then

attracted by the light that passed across the windows, brushed against

the panes, and then, dipping downwards, struck up against the nose of

the slumbering horse, and darted merrily after the moth that fluttered

round the raven’s nest in the old pollard.

CHAPTER XVIII.

All that day Harley L’Estrange had been more than usually mournful and

dejected. Indeed, the return to scenes associated with Nora’s presence

increased the gloom that had settled on his mind since he had lost sight

and trace of her. Audley, in the remorseful tenderness he felt for his

injured friend, had induced L’Estrange towards evening to leave the

Park, and go into a district some miles off, on pretence that he

required Harley’s aid there to canvass certain important outvoters: the

change of scene might rouse him from his reveries. Harley himself was

glad to escape from the guests at Lansmere. He readily consented to go.

He would not return that night. The outvoters lay remote and scattered,

he might be absent for a day or two. When Harley was gone, Egerton

himself sank into deep thought. There was rumour of some unexpected

opposition. His partisans were alarmed and anxious. It was clear that

the Lansmere interest, if attacked, was weaker than the earl would

believe; Egerton might lose his election. If so, what would become of

him? How support his wife, whose return to him he always counted on, and

whom it would then become him at all hazards to acknowledge? It was

that day that he had spoken to William Hazeldean as to the family

living.--“Peace, at least,” thought the ambitious man,--“I shall have

peace!” And the squire had promised him the rectory if needed; not

without a secret pang, for his Harry was already using her conjugal

influence in favour of her old school-friend’s husband, Mr. Dale;

and the squire thought Audley would be but a poor country parson, and

Dale--if he would only grow a little plumper than his curacy would

permit him to be--would be a parson in ten thousand. But while Audley

thus prepared for the worst, he still brought his energies to bear on

the more brilliant option; and sat with his Committee, looking into

canvass-books, and discussing the characters, politics, and local

interests of every elector, until the night was well-nigh gone. When he

gained his room; the shutters were unclosed, and he stood a few moments

at the window, gazing on the moon. At that sight, the thought of Nora,

lost and afar, stole over him. The man, as we know, had in his nature

little of romance and sentiment. Seldom was it his wont to gaze upon

moon or stars. But whenever some whisper of romance did soften his hard,

strong mind, or whenever moon or stars did charm his gaze from earth,

Nora’s bright Muse-like face, Nora’s sweet loving eyes, were seen in

moon and star-beam, Nora’s low tender voice heard in the whisper of

that which we call romance, and which is but the sound of the mysterious

poetry that is ever in the air, would we but deign to hear it! He turned

with a sigh, undressed, threw himself on his bed, and extinguished his

light. But the light of the moon would fill the room. It kept him awake

for a little time; he turned his face from the calm, heavenly beam

resolutely towards the dull blind wall, and fell asleep. And, in the

sleep, he was with Nora,--again in the humble bridal-home. Never in

his dreams had she seemed to him so distinct and life-like,--her

eyes upturned to his, her hands clasped together, and resting on his

shoulder, as had been her graceful wont, her voice murmuring meekly,

“Has it, then, been my fault that we parted? Forgive, forgive me!”

And the sleeper imagined that he answered, “Never part from me

again,--never, never!” and that he bent down to kiss the chaste lips

that so tenderly sought his own. And suddenly he heard a knocking

sound, as of a hammer,--regular, but soft, low, subdued. Did you ever,

O reader, hear the sound of the hammer on the lid of a coffin in a house

of woe,--when the undertaker’s decorous hireling fears that the living

may hear how he parts them from the dead? Such seemed the sound to

Audley. The dream vanished abruptly.

He woke, and again heard the knock; it was at his door. He sat up

wistfully; the moon was gone, it was morning. “Who is there?” he cried

peevishly.

A low voice from without answered, “Hush, it is I; dress quick; let me

see you.”

Egerton recognized Lady Lansmere’s voice. Alarmed and surprised, he

rose, dressed in haste, and went to the door. Lady Lansmere was standing

without, extremely pale. She put her finger to her lip, and beckoned him

to follow her. He obeyed mechanically. They entered her dressing-room, a

few doors from his own chamber, and the countess closed the door.

Then laying her slight firm hand on his shoulder, she said, in

suppressed and passionate excitement,

“Oh, Mr. Egerton, you must serve me, and at once. Harley! Harley! save

my Harley! Go to him, prevent his coming back here, stay with him; give

up the election,--it is but a year or two lost in your life, you will

have other opportunities; make that sacrifice to your friend.”

“Speak--what is the matter? I can make no sacrifice too great for

Harley!”

“Thanks, I was sure of it. Go then, I say, at once to Harley; keep him

away from Lansmere on any excuse you can invent, until you can break the

sad news to him,--gently, gently. Oh, how will he bear it; how recover

the shock? My boy, my boy!”

“Calm yourself! Explain! Break what news; recover what shock?”

“True; you do not know, you have not heard. Nora Avenel lies yonder, in

her father’s house,--dead, dead!”

Audley staggered back, clapping his hand to his heart, and then dropping

on his knee as if bowed down by the stroke of heaven.

“My bride, my wife!” he muttered. “Dead--it cannot be!”

Lady Lansmere was so startled at this exclamation, so stunned by a

confession wholly unexpected, that she remained unable to soothe, to

explain, and utterly unprepared for the fierce agony that burst from the

man she had ever seen so dignified and cold, when he sprang to his feet,

and all the sense of his eternal loss rushed upon his heart.

At length he crushed back his emotions, and listened in apparent

calm, and in a silence broken but by quick gasps for breath, to Lady

Lansmere’s account.

One of the guests in the house, a female relation of Lady Lansmere’s,

had been taken suddenly ill about an hour or two before; the house had

been disturbed, the countess herself aroused, and Mr. Morgan summoned

as the family medical practitioner. From him she had learned that Nora

Avenel had returned to her father’s house late on the previous evening,

had been seized with brain fever, and died in a few hours.

Audley listened, and turned to the door, still in silence. Lady Lansmere

caught him by the arm. “Where are you going? Ah, can I now ask you

to save my son from the awful news, you yourself the sufferer? And

yet--yet--you know his haste, his vehemence, if he learned that you were

his rival, her husband; you whom he so trusted! What, what would be the

result?--I tremble!”

“Tremble not,--I do not tremble! Let me go! I will be back soon, and

then,”--(his lips writhed)--“then we will talk of Harley.”

Egerton went forth, stunned and dizzy. Mechanically he took his way

across the park to John Avenel’s house. He had been forced to enter that

house, formally, a day or two before, in the course of his canvass; and

his worldly pride had received a shock when the home, the birth, and the

manners of his bride’s parents had been brought before him. He had even

said to himself, “And is it the child of these persons that I, Audley

Egerton, must announce to the world as wife?” Now, if she had been the

child of a beggar-nay, of a felon--now if he could but recall her to

life, how small and mean would all that dreaded world appear to him!

Too late, too late! The dews were glistening in the sun, the birds were

singing overhead, life wakening all around him--and his own heart felt

like a charnel-house. Nothing but death and the dead there,--nothing! He

arrived at the door: it was open: he called; no one answered: he walked

up the narrow stairs, undisturbed, unseen; he came into the chamber of

death. At the opposite side of the bed was seated John Avenel; but he

seemed in a heavy sleep. In fact, paralysis had smitten him; but he knew

it not; neither did any one. Who could heed the strong hearty man in

such a moment? Not even the poor anxious wife! He had been left there

to guard the house, and watch the dead,--an unconscious man; numbed,

himself, by the invisible icy hand! Audley stole to the bedside; he

lifted the coverlid thrown over the pale still face. What passed within

him during the minute he stayed there who shall say? But when he left

the room, and slowly descended the stairs, he left behind him love and

youth, all the sweet hopes and joys of the household human life, for

ever and ever!

He returned to Lady Lansmere, who awaited his coming with the most

nervous anxiety.

“Now,” said he, dryly, “I will go to Harley, and I will prevent his

returning hither.”

“You have seen the parents. Good heavens! do they know of your

marriage?”

“No; to Harley I must own it first. Meanwhile, silence!”

“Silence!” echoed Lady Lansmere; and her burning hand rested in

Audley’s, and Audley’s hand was as ice.

In another hour Egerton had left the house, and before noon he was with

Harley.

It is necessary now to explain the absence of all the Avenel family,

except the poor stricken father.

Nora had died in giving birth to a child,--died delirious. In her

delirium she had spoken of shame, of disgrace; there was no holy nuptial

ring on her finger. Through all her grief, the first thought of Mrs.

Avenel was to save the good name of her lost daughter, the unblemished

honour of all the living Avenels. No matron long descended from

knights or kings had keener pride in name and character than the poor,

punctilious Calvinistic trader’s wife. “Sorrow later, honour now!” With

hard dry eyes she mused and mused, and made out her plan. Jane Fairfield

should take away the infant at once, before the day dawned, and nurse

it with her own. Mark should go with her, for Mrs. Avenel dreaded the

indiscretion of his wild grief. She would go with them herself part of

the way, in order to command or reason them into guarded silence. But

they could not go back to Hazeldean with another infant; Jane must

go where none knew her; the two infants might pass as twins. And Mrs.

Avenel, though naturally a humane, kindly woman, and with a mother’s

heart to infants, looked with almost a glad sternness at Jane’s puny

babe, and thought to herself, “All difficulty would be over should there

be only one! Nora’s child could thus pass throughout life for Jane’s!”

Fortunately for the preservation of the secret, the Avenels kept no

servant,--only an occasional drudge, who came a few hours in the day,

and went home to sleep. Mrs. Avenel could count on Mr. Morgan’s silence

as to the true cause of Nora’s death. And Mr. Dale, why should be reveal

the dishonour of a family? That very day, or the next at furthest, she

could induce her husband to absent himself, lest he should blab out the

tale while his sorrow was greater than his pride. She alone would then

stay in the house of death until she could feel assured that all else

were hushed into prudence. Ay, she felt, that with due precautions, the

name was still safe. And so she awed and hurried Mark and his wife away,

and went with them in the covered cart, that hid the faces of all three,

leaving for an hour or two the house and the dead to her husband’s

charge, with many an admonition, to which he nodded his head, and which

he did not hear. Do you think this woman was unfeeling and inhuman?

Had Nora looked from heaven into her mother’s heart Nora would not have

thought so. A good name when the burial stone closes over dust is still

a possession upon the earth; on earth it is indeed our only one! Better

for our friends to guard for us that treasure than to sit down and weep

over perishable clay. And weep!--Oh, stern mother, long years were left

to thee for weeping! No tears shed for Nora made such deep furrows on

the cheeks as thine did! Yet who ever saw them flow?

Harley was in great surprise to see Egerton; more surprised when Egerton

told him that he found he was to be opposed,--that he had no chance of

success at Lansmere, and had, therefore, resolved to retire from the

contest. He wrote to the earl to that effect; but the countess knew

the true cause, and hinted it to the earl; so that, as we saw at the

commencement of this history, Egerton’s cause did not suffer when

Captain Dashmore appeared in the borough; and, thanks to Mr. Hazeldean’s

exertions and oratory, Audley came in by two votes,--the votes of John

Avenel and Mark Fairfield. For though the former had been removed a

little way from the town, and by medical advice, and though, on other

matters, the disease that had smitten him left him docile as a child

(and he had but vague indistinct ideas of all the circumstances

connected with Nora’s return, save the sense of her loss), yet he still

would hear how the Blues went on, and would get out of bed to keep his

word: and even his wife said,

“He is right; better die of it than break his promise!” The crowd gave

way as the broken man they had seen a few days before so jovial and

healthful was brought up in a chair to the poll, and said, with his

tremulous quavering voice, “I ‘m a true Blue,--Blue forever!”

Elections are wondrous things! No man who has not seen can guess how the

zeal in them triumphs over sickness, sorrow, the ordinary private life

of us!

There was forwarded to Audley, from Lansmere Park, Nora’s last letter.

The postman had left it there an hour or two after he himself had gone.

The wedding-ring fell on the ground, and rolled under his feet. And

those burning, passionate reproaches, all that anger of the wounded

dove, explained to him the mystery of her return, her unjust suspicions,

the cause of her sudden death, which he still ascribed to brain fever,

brought on by excitement and fatigue. For Nora did not speak of the

child about to be born; she had not remembered it when she wrote, or she

would not have written. On the receipt of this letter, Egerton could not

remain in the dull village district,--alone, too, with Harley. He

said, abruptly, that he must go to London; prevailed on L’Estrange to

accompany him; and there, when he heard from Lady Lansmere that the

funeral was over, he broke to Harley, with lips as white as the dead,

and his hand pressed to his heart, on which his hereditary disease was

fastening quick and fierce, the dread truth that Nora was no more. The

effect upon the boy’s health and spirits was even more crushing than

Audley could anticipate. He only woke from grief to feel remorse. “For,”

said the noble Harley, “had it not been for my passion, my rash pursuit,

would she ever have left her safe asylum,--ever even have left her

native town? And then--and then--the struggle between her sense of

duty and her love to me! I see it all--all! But for me she were living

still!”

“Oh, no!” cried Egerton, his confession now rushing to his lips.

“Believe me, she never loved you as you think. Nay, nay, hear me! Rather

suppose that she loved another, fled with him, was perhaps married to

him, and--”

“Hold!” exclaimed Harley, with a terrible burst of passion,--“you kill

her twice to me if you say that! I can still feel that she lives--lives

here, in my heart--while I dream that she loved me--or, at least, that

no other lip ever knew the kiss that was denied to mine! But if you tell

me to doubt that--you--you--” The boy’s anguish was too great for

his frame; he fell suddenly back into Audley’s arms; he had broken a

blood-vessel. For several days he was in great danger; but his eyes were

constantly fixed on Audley’s, with wistful intense gaze. “Tell me,”

he muttered, at the risk of re-opening the ruptured veins, and of the

instant loss of life,--“tell me, you did not mean that! Tell me you have

no cause to think she loved another--was another’s!”

“Hush, hush! no cause--none--none! I meant but to comfort you, as I

thought,--fool that I was!--that is all!” cried the miserable friend.

And from that hour Audley gave up the idea of righting himself in his

own eyes, and submitted still to be the living lie,--he, the haughty

gentleman!

Now, while Harley was still very weak and suffering, Mr. Dale came to

London, and called on Egerton. The curate, in promising secrecy to Mrs.

Avenel, had made one condition, that it should not be to the positive

injury of Nora’s living son. What if Nora were married after all?

And would it not be right, at least, to learn the name of the child’s

father?

Some day he might need a father. Mrs. Avenel was obliged to content

herself with these reservations. However, she implored Mr. Dale not to

make inquiries. What could they do? If Nora were married, her husband

would naturally, of his own accord, declare himself; if seduced and

forsaken, it would but disgrace her memory (now saved from stain) to

discover the father to a child of whose very existence the world as

yet knew nothing. These arguments perplexed the good curate. But Jane

Fairfield had a sanguine belief in her sister’s innocence; and all her

suspicions naturally pointed to Lord L’Estrange. So, indeed, perhaps;

did Mrs. Avenel’s, though she never owned them. Of the correctness

of these suspicions Mr. Dale was fully convinced; the young lord’s

admiration, Lady Lansmere’s fears, had been too evident to one who had

often visited at the Park; Harley’s abrupt departure just before Nora’s

return home; Egerton’s sudden resignation of the borough before even

opposition was declared, in order to rejoin his friend, the very day of

Nora’s death,--all confirmed his ideas that Harley was the betrayer or

the husband. Perhaps there might have been a secret marriage--possibly

abroad--since Harley wanted some years of his majority. He would, at

least, try to see and to sound Lord L’Estrange. Prevented this interview

by Harley’s illness, the curate resolved to ascertain how far he could

penetrate into the mystery by a conversation with Egerton. There was

much in the grave repute which the latter had acquired, and the singular

and pre-eminent character for truth and honour with which it was

accompanied, that made the curate resolve upon this step. Accordingly;

he saw Egerton, meaning only diplomatically to extract from the new

member for Lansmere what might benefit the family of the voters who had

given him his majority of two.

He began by mentioning, as a touching fact, how poor John Avenel, bowed

down by the loss of his child and the malady which had crippled his

limbs and enfeebled his mind, had still risen from his bed to keep his

word. And Audley’s emotions seemed to him so earnest and genuine, to

show so good a heart, that out by little and little came more: first,

his suspicions that poor Nora had been betrayed; then his hopes that

there might have been private marriage; and as Audley, with his iron

self-command, showed just the proper degree of interest, and no more, he

went on, till Audley knew that he had a child.

“Inquire no further!” said the man of the world. “Respect Mrs. Avenel’s

feelings and wishes, I entreat you; they are the right ones. Leave

the rest to me. In my position--I mean as a resident of London--I

can quietly and easily ascertain more than you could, and provoke no

scandal! If I can right this--this--poor--[his voice trembled]--right

the lost mother, or the living child, sooner or later you will hear

from me; if not, bury this secret where it now rests, in a grave which

slander has not reached. But the child--give me the address where it is

to be found--in case I succeed in finding the father, and touching his

heart.”

“Oh, Mr. Egerton, may I not say where you may find that father--who he

is?”

“Sir!”

“Do not be angry; and, after all, I cannot ask you to betray any

confidence which a friend may have placed in you. I know what you men

of high honour are to each other, even in sin. No, no, I beg pardon; I

leave all in your hands. I shall hear from you then?”

“Or if not, why, then, believe that all search is hopeless. My friend!

if you mean Lord L’Estrange, he is innocent. I--I--I--[the voice

faltered]--am convinced of it.”

The curate sighed, but made no answer. “Oh, ye men of the world!”

thought he. He gave the address which the member for Lansmere had asked

for, and went his way, and never heard again from Audley Egerton. He was

convinced that the man who had showed such deep feeling had failed in

his appeal to Harley’s conscience, or had judged it best to leave

Nora’s name in peace, and her child to her own relations and the care of

Heaven.

Harley L’Estrange, scarcely yet recovered, hastened to join our armies

on the Continent, and seek the Death which, like its half-brother,

rarely comes when we call it.

As soon as Harley was gone, Egerton went to the village to which Mr.

Dale had directed him, to seek for Nora’s child. But here he was led

into a mistake which materially affected the tenor of his own life, and

Leonard’s future destinies. Mrs. Fairfield had been naturally ordered

by her mother to take another name in the village to which she had gone

with the two infants, so that her connection with the Avenel family

might not be traced, to the provocation of inquiry and gossip. The grief

and excitement through which she had gone dried the source of nutriment

in her breast. She put Nora’s child out to nurse at the house of a small

farmer, at a little distance from the village, and moved from her first

lodging to be nearer to the infant. Her own child was so sickly and

ailing, that she could not bear to intrust it to the care of an other.

She tried to bring it up by hand; and the poor child soon pined away

and died. She and Mark could not endure the sight of their baby’s grave;

they hastened to return to Hazeldean, and took Leonard with them. From

that time Leonard passed for the son they had lost.

When Egerton arrived at the village, and inquired for the person whose

address had been given to him, he was referred to the cottage in which

she had last lodged, and was told that she had been gone some days,--the

day after her child was buried. Her child buried! Egerton stayed to

inquire no more; thus he heard nothing of the infant that had been put

out to nurse. He walked slowly into the churchyard, and stood for some

minutes gazing on the small new mound; then, pressing his hand on the

heart to which all emotion had been forbidden, he re-entered his chaise

and returned to London. The sole reason for acknowledging his marriage

seemed to him now removed. Nora’s name had escaped reproach. Even

had his painful position with regard to Harley not constrained him to

preserve his secret, there was every motive to the world’s wise and

haughty son not to acknowledge a derogatory and foolish marriage, now

that none lived whom concealment could wrong.

Audley mechanically resumed his former life,--sought to resettle his

thoughts on the grand objects of ambitious men. His poverty still

pressed on him; his pecuniary debt to Harley stung and galled his

peculiar sense of honour. He saw no way to clear his estates, to repay

his friend, but by some rich alliance. Dead to love, he faced this

prospect first with repugnance, then with apathetic indifference. Levy,

of whose treachery towards himself and Nora he was unaware, still held

over him the power that the money-lender never loses over the man that

has owed, owes, or may owe again. Levy was ever urging him to propose,

to the rich Miss Leslie; Lady Lansmere, willing to atone, as she

thought, for his domestic loss, urged the same; Harley, influenced by

his mother, wrote from the Continent to the same effect.

“Manage it as you will,” at last said Egerton to Levy, “so that I am not

a wife’s pensioner.”

“Propose for me, if you will,” he said to Lady Lansmere,--“I cannot

woo,--I cannot talk of love.”

Somehow or other the marriage, with all its rich advantages to the

ruined gentleman, was thus made up. And Egerton, as we have seen, was

the polite and dignified husband before the world,--married to a woman

who adored him. It is the common fate of men like him to be loved too

well!

On her death-bed his heart was touched by his wife’s melancholy

reproach,--“Nothing I could do has ever made you love me!”

“It is true,” answered Audley, with tears in his voice and eyes; “Nature

gave me but a small fund of what women like you call ‘love,’ and I

lavished it all away.” And he then told her, though with reserve, some

portion of his former history; and that soothed her; for when she saw

that he had loved, and could grieve, she caught a glimpse of the human

heart she had not seen before. She died, forgiving him, and blessing.

Audley’s spirits were much affected by this new loss. He inly resolved

never to marry again. He had a vague thought at first of retrenching his

expenditure, and making young Randal Leslie his heir. But when he first

saw the clever Eton boy, his feelings did not warm to him, though his

intellect appreciated Randal’s quick, keen talents. He contented himself

with resolving to push the boy,--to do what was merely just to the

distant kinsman of his late wife. Always careless and lavish in money

matters, generous and princely, not from the delight of serving others,

but from a grand seigneur’s sentiment of what was due to himself and his

station, Audley had a mournful excuse for the lordly waste of the large

fortune at his control. The morbid functions of the heart had become

organic disease. True, he might live many years, and die at last of some

other complaint in the course of nature; but the progress of the disease

would quicken with all emotional excitement; he might die suddenly--any

day--in the very prime, and, seemingly, in the full vigour, of his

life. And the only physician in whom he confided what he wished to

keep concealed from the world (for ambitious men would fain be thought

immortal) told him frankly that it was improbable that, with the wear

and tear of political strife and action, he could advance far into

middle age. Therefore, no son of his succeeding--his nearest relations

all wealthy--Egerton resigned himself to his constitutional disdain

of money; he could look into no affairs, provided the balance in his

banker’s hands were such as became the munificent commoner. All else

he left to his steward and to Levy. Levy grew rapidly rich,--very, very

rich,--and the steward thrived.

The usurer continued to possess a determined hold over the imperious

great man. He knew Audley’s secret; he could reveal that secret to

Harley. And the one soft and tender side of the statesman’s nature--the

sole part of him not dipped in the ninefold Styx of practical prosaic

life, which renders man so invulnerable to affection--was his remorseful

love for the school friend whom he still deceived.

Here then you have the key to the locked chambers of Audley Egerton’s

character, the fortified castle of his mind. The envied minister, the

joyless man; the oracle on the economies of an empire, the prodigal in

a usurer’s hands; the august, high-crested gentleman, to whom princes

would refer for the casuistry of honour, the culprit trembling lest the

friend he best loved on earth should detect his lie! Wrap thyself in the

decent veil that the Arts or the Graces weave for thee, O Human Nature!

It is only the statue of marble whose nakedness the eye can behold

without shame and offence!

CHAPTER XIX.

Of the narrative just placed before the reader, it is clear that

Leonard could gather only desultory fragments. He could but see that his

ill-fated mother had been united to a man she had loved with surpassing

tenderness; had been led to suspect that the marriage was fraudulent;

had gone abroad in despair; returned repentant and hopeful; had gleaned

some intelligence that her lover was about to be married to another,

and there the manuscript closed with the blisters left on the page by

agonizing tears. The mournful end of Nora, her lonely return to die

under the roof of her parents,--this he had learned before from the

narrative of Dr. Morgan.

But even the name of her supposed husband was not revealed. Of him

Leonard could form no conjecture, except that he was evidently of higher

rank than Nora. Harley L’Estrange seemed clearly indicated in the early

boy-lover. If so, Harley must know all that was left dark to Leonard,

and to him Leonard resolved to confide the manuscripts. With this

resolution he left the cottage, resolving to return and attend the

funeral obsequies of his departed friend. Mrs. Goodyer willingly

permitted him to take away the papers she had lent to him, and added

to them the packet which had been addressed to Mrs. Bertram from the

Continent.

Musing in anxious gloom over the record he had read, Leonard entered

London on foot, and bent his way towards Harley’s hotel; when, just as

he had crossed into Bond Street, a gentleman in company with Baron Levy,

and who seemed, by the flush on his brow and the sullen tone of his

voice, to have had rather an irritating colloquy with the fashionable

usurer, suddenly caught sight of Leonard, and, abruptly quitting Levy,

seized the young man by the arm.

“Excuse me, sir,” said the gentleman, looking hard into Leonard’s face,

“but unless these sharp eyes of mine are mistaken, which they seldom

are, I see a nephew whom, perhaps, I behaved to rather too harshly, but

who still has no right to forget Richard Avenel.”

“My dear uncle,” exclaimed Leonard, “this is indeed a joyful surprise;

at a time, too, when I needed joy! No; I have never forgotten your

kindness, and always regretted our estrangement.”

“That is well said; give us your fist again. Let me look at you--quite

the gentleman, I declare--still so good-looking too. We Avenels always

were a handsome family.

“Good-by, Baron Levy. Need not wait for me; I am not going to run away.

I shall see you again.”

“But,” whispered Levy, who had followed Avenel across the street, and

eyed Leonard with a quick, curious, searching glance--“but it must be

as I say with regard to the borough; or (to be plain) you must cash the

bills on the day they are due.”

“Very well, sir, very well. So you think to put the screw upon me, as

if I were a poor little householder. I understand,--my money or my

borough?”

“Exactly so,” said the baron, with a soft smile.

“You shall hear from me.” (Aside, as Levy strolled away)--“D---d

tarnation rascal!”

Dick Avenel then linked his arm in his nephew’s, and strove for some

minutes to forget his own troubles, in the indulgence of that curiosity

in the affairs of another, which was natural to him, and in this

instance increased by the real affection which he had felt for Leonard.

But still his curiosity remained unsatisfied; for long before Leonard

could overcome his habitual reluctance to speak of his success in

literature, Dick’s mind wandered back to his rival at Screwstown,

and the curse of “over-competition,”--to the bills which Levy had

discounted, in order to enable Dick to meet the crushing force of a

capitalist larger than himself, and the “tarnation rascal” who now

wished to obtain two seats at Lansmere, one for Randal Leslie, one for

a rich Nabob whom Levy had just caught as a client, and Dick, though

willing to aid Leslie, had a mind to the other seat for himself.

Therefore Dick soon broke in upon the hesitating confessions of Leonard,

with exclamations far from pertinent to the subject, and rather for the

sake of venting his own griefs and resentment than with any idea that

the sympathy or advice of his nephew could serve him.

“Well, well,” said Dick, “another time for your history. I see you have

thrived, and that is enough for the present. Very odd; but just now I

can only think of myself. I’m in a regular fix, sir. Screwstown is not

the respectable Screwstown that you remember it--all demoralized

and turned topsy-turvy by a demoniacal monster capitalist, with

steam-engines that might bring the falls of Niagara into your back

parlour, sir! And as if that was not enough to destroy and drive into

almighty shivers a decent fair-play Britisher like myself, I hear he

is just in treaty for some patent infernal invention that will make his

engines do twice as much work with half as many hands! That’s the way

those unfeeling ruffians increase our poor-rates! But I ‘ll get up a

riot against him, I will! Don’t talk to me of the law! What the devil

is the good of the law if it don’t protect a man’s industry,--a liberal

man, too, like me!” Here Dick burst into a storm of vituperation against

the rotten old country in general, and Mr. Dyce, the monster capitalist

of Screwstown, in particular.

Leonard started; for Dick now named, in that monster capitalist, the

very person who was in treaty for Leonard’s own mechanical improvement

on the steam-engine.

“Stop, uncle, stop! Why, then, if this man were to buy the contrivance

you speak of, it would injure you?”

“Injure me, sir! I should be a bankrupt,--that is, if it succeeded; but

I dare say it is all a humbug.”

“No, it will succeed,--I ‘ll answer for that!”

“You! You have seen it?”

“Why, I invented it!”

Dick hastily withdrew his arm from Leonard’s.

“Serpent’s tooth!” he said falteringly, “so it is you, whom I warmed at

my hearth, who are to ruin Richard Avenel?”

“No; but to save him! Come into the City and look at my model. If you

like it, the patent shall be yours!”

“Cab, cab, cab,” cried Dick Avenel, stopping a ‘Ransom;’ “jump in,

Leonard,--jump in. I’ll buy your patent,--that is, if it be worth a

straw; and as for payment--”

“Payment! Don’t talk of that!”

“Well, I won’t,” said Dick, mildly; “for ‘t is not the topic of

conversation I should choose myself, just at present. And as for that

black-whiskered alligator, the baron, let me first get out of those

rambustious, unchristian, filbert-shaped claws of his, and then--but

jump in! jump in! and tell the man where to drive!”

A very brief inspection of Leonard’s invention sufficed to show Richard

Avenel how invaluable it would be to him. Armed with a patent, of which

the certain effects in the increase of power and diminution of labour

were obvious to any practical man, Avenel felt that he should have no

difficulty in obtaining such advances of money as he required, whether

to alter his engines, meet the bills discounted by Levy, or carry on

the war with the monster capitalist. It might be necessary to admit into

partnership some other monster capitalist--What then? Any partner better

than Levy. A bright idea struck him.

“If I can just terrify and whop that infernal intruder on my own

ground for a few months, he may offer, himself, to enter into

partnership,--make the two concerns a joint-stock friendly combination,

and then we shall flog the world.”

His gratitude to Leonard became so lively that Dick offered to bring his

nephew in for Lansmere instead of himself; and when Leonard declined the

offer, exclaimed, “Well, then, any friend of yours; I’m all for reform

against those high and mighty right honourable borough-mongers; and what

with loans and mortgages on the small householders, and a long course

of ‘Free and Easies’ with the independent freemen, I carry one--seat

certain, perhaps both seats of the town of Lansmere, in my breeches

pocket.” Dick then, appointing an interview with Leonard at his

lawyer’s, to settle the transfer of the invention, upon terms which he

declared “should be honourable to both parties,” hurried off, to search

amongst his friends in the City for some monster capitalist, who alight

be induced to extricate him from the jaws of Levy and the engines of his

rival at Screwstown. “Mullins is the man, if I can but catch him,” said

Dick. “You have heard of Mullins?--a wonderful great man; you should see

his nails; he never cuts them! Three millions, at least, he has scraped

together with those nails of his, sir. And in this rotten old country,

a man must have nails a yard long to fight with a devil like Levy!

Good-by, good-by,--Goon-by, MY DEAR, nephew!”

CHAPTER XX.

Harley L’Estrange was seated alone in his apartments. He had just put

down a volume of some favourite classic author, and he was resting

his hand firmly clenched upon the book. Ever since Harley’s return to

England, there had been a perceptible change in the expression of his

countenance, even in the very bearing and attitudes of his elastic

youthful figure. But this change had been more marked since that last

interview with Helen which has been recorded. There was a compressed,

resolute firmness in the lips, a decided character in the brow. To

the indolent, careless grace of his movements had succeeded a certain

indescribable energy, as quiet and self-collected as that which

distinguished the determined air of Audley Egerton himself. In fact, if

you could have looked into his heart, you would have seen that Harley

was, for the first time, making a strong effort over his passions and

his humours; that the whole man was nerving himself to a sense of duty.

“No,” he muttered,--“no! I will think only of Helen; I will think

only of real life! And what (were I not engaged to another) would that

dark-eyed Italian girl be to me?--What a mere fool’s fancy is this! I

love again,--I, who through all the fair spring of my life have clung

with such faith to a memory and a grave! Come, come, come, Harley

L’Estrange, act thy part as man amongst men, at last! Accept regard;

dream no more of passion. Abandon false ideals. Thou art no poet--why

deem that life itself can be a poem?”

The door opened, and the Austrian prince, whom Harley had interested

in the cause of Violante’s father, entered, with the familiar step of a

friend.

“Have you discovered those documents yet?” said the prince. “I must now

return to Vienna within a few days; and unless you can arm me with

some tangible proof of Peschiera’s ancient treachery, or some more

unanswerable excuse for his noble kinsman, I fear that there is no other

hope for the exile’s recall to his country than what lies in the hateful

option of giving his daughter to his perfidious foe.”

“Alas!” said Harley, “as yet all researches have been in vain; and

I know not what other steps to take, without arousing Peschiera’s

vigilance, and setting his crafty brains at work to counteract us. My

poor friend, then, must rest contented with exile. To give Violante to

the count were dishonour. But I shall soon be married; soon have a home,

not quite unworthy of their due rank, to offer both to father and to

child.”

“Would the future Lady L’Estrange feel no jealousy of a guest so fair

as you tell me this young signorina is? And would you be in no danger

yourself, my poor friend?”

“Pooh!” said Harley, colouring. “My fair guest would have two fathers;

that is all. Pray do not jest on a thing so grave as honour.”

Again the door opened, and Leonard appeared.

“Welcome,” cried Harley, pleased to be no longer alone under the

prince’s penetrating eye,--“welcome. This is the noble friend who shares

our interest for Riccabocca, and who could serve him so well, if we

could but discover the document of which I have spoken to you.”

“It is here,” said Leonard, simply; “may it be all that you require!”

Harley eagerly grasped at the packet, which had been sent from Italy to

the supposed Mrs. Bertram, and, leaning his face on his hand, rapidly

hurried through the contents.

“Hurrah!” he cried at last, with his face lighted up, and a boyish toss

of his right hand. “Look, look, Prince, here are Peschiera’s own letters

to his kinsman’s wife; his avowal of what he calls his ‘patriotic

designs;’ his entreaties to her to induce her husband to share them.

Look, look, how he wields his influence over the woman he had once

wooed; look how artfully he combats her objections; see how reluctant

our friend was to stir, till wife and kinsman both united to urge him!”

“It is enough,-quite enough,” exclaimed the prince, looking at the

passages in Peschiera’s letters which Harley pointed out to him.

“No, it is not enough,” shouted Harley, as he continued to read the

letters with his rapid sparkling eyes. “More still! O villain, doubly

damned! Here, after our friend’s flight, here is Peschiera’s avowal

of guilty passion; here, he swears that he had intrigued to ruin his

benefactor, in order to pollute the home that had sheltered him. Ah, see

how she answers! thank Heaven her own eyes were opened at last, and she

scorned him before she died! She was innocent! I said so. Violante’s

mother was pure. Poor lady, this moves me! Has your emperor the heart of

a man?”

“I know enough of our emperor,” answered the prince, warmly, “to know

that, the moment these papers reach him, Peschiera is ruined, and your

friend is restored to his honours. You will live to see the daughter, to

whom you would have given a child’s place at your hearth, the wealthiest

heiress of Italy,--the bride of some noble lover, with rank only below

the supremacy of kings!”

“Ah,” said Harley, in a sharp accent, and turning very pale,--“ah, I

shall not see her that! I shall never visit Italy again!--never see her

more,--never, after she has once quitted this climate of cold iron cares

and formal duties! never, never!” He turned his head for a moment, and

then came with quick step to Leonard. “But you, O happy poet! No Ideal

can ever be lost to you. You are independent of real life. Would that I

were a poet!” He smiled sadly.

“You would not say so, perhaps, my dear Lord,” answered Leonard,

with equal sadness, “if you knew how little what you call ‘the Ideal’

replaces to a poet the loss of one affection in the genial human world.

Independent of real life! Alas! no. And I have here the confessions of

a true poet-soul, which I will entreat you to read at leisure; and when

you have read, say if you would still be a poet!”

He took forth Nora’s manuscripts as he spoke.

“Place them yonder, in my escritoire, Leonard; I will read them later.”

“Do so, and with heed; for to me there is much here that involves my own

life,--much that is still a mystery, and which I think you can unravel!”

“I!” exclaimed Harley; and he was moving towards the escritoire, in a

drawer of which Leonard had carefully deposited the papers, when once

more, but this time violently, the door was thrown open, and Giacomo

rushed into the room, accompanied by Lady Lansmere.

“Oh, my Lord, my Lord!” cried Giacomo, in Italian, “the signorina! the

signorina! Violante!”

“What of her? Mother, Mother! what of her? Speak, speak!”

“She has gone,--left our house!”

“Left! No, no!” cried Giacomo. “She must have been deceived or forced

away. The count! the count! Oh, my good Lord, save her, as you once

saved her father!”

“Hold!” cried Harley. “Give me your arm, Mother. A second such blow in

life is beyond the strength of man,--at least it is beyond mine. So, so!

I am better now! Thank you, Mother. Stand back, all of you! give me

air. So the count has triumphed, and Violante has fled with him! Explain

all,--I can bear it!”

BOOK TWELFTH.

INITIAL CHAPTER.

WHEREIN THE CAXTON FAMILY REAPPEAR.

“Again,” quoth my father,--“again behold us! We who greeted the

commencement of your narrative, who absented ourselves in the midcourse

when we could but obstruct the current of events, and jostle personages

more important,--we now gather round the close. Still, as the chorus to

the drama, we circle round the altar with the solemn but dubious

chant which prepares the audience for the completion of the appointed

destinies; though still, ourselves, unaware how the skein is to be

unravelled, and where the shears are to descend.”

So there they stood, the Family of Caxton,--all grouping round me,

all eager officiously to question, some over-anxious prematurely to

criticise.

“Violante can’t have voluntarily gone off with that horrid count,” said

my mother; “but perhaps she was deceived, like Eugenia by Mr. Bellamy,

in the novel of ‘CAMILLA’.”

“Ha!” said my father, “and in that case it is time yet to steal a hint

from Clarissa Harlowe, and make Violante die less of a broken heart than

a sullied honour. She is one of those girls who ought to be killed! All

things about her forebode an early tomb!”

“Dear, dear!” cried Mrs. Caxton, “I hope not!”

“Pooh, brother,” said the captain, “we have had enough of the tomb in

the history of poor Nora. The whole story grows out of a grave, and if

to a grave it must return--if, Pisistratus, you must kill somebody--kill

Levy.”

“Or the count,” said my mother, with unusual truculence. “Or Randal

Leslie,” said Squills. “I should like to have a post-mortem cast of his

head,--it would be an instructive study.”

Here there was a general confusion of tongues, all present conspiring

to bewilder the unfortunate author with their various and discordant

counsels how to wind up his story and dispose of his characters.

“Silence!” cried Pisistratus, clapping his hands to both ears. “I can no

more alter the fate allotted to each of the personages whom you honour

with your interest than I can change your own; like you, they must

go where events lead there, urged on by their own characters and the

agencies of others. Providence so pervadingly governs the universe,

that you cannot strike it even out of a book. The author may beget a

character, but the moment the character comes into action, it escapes

from his hands,--plays its own part, and fulfils its own inevitable

doom.”

“Besides,” said Squills, “it is easy to see, from the phrenological

development of the organs in those several heads which Pisistratus has

allowed us to examine, that we have seen no creations of mere fiction,

but living persons, whose true history has set in movement their various

bumps of Amativeness, Constructiveness, Acquisitiveness, Idealty,

Wonder, Comparison, etc. They must act, and they must end, according

to the influences of their crania. Thus we find in Randal Leslie the

predominant organs of Constructiveness, Secretiveness, Comparison, and

Eventuality, while Benevolence, Conscientiousness, Adhesiveness, are

utterly nil. Now, to divine how such a man must end, we must first see

what is the general composition of the society in which he moves, in

short, what other gases are brought into contact with his phlogiston.

As to Leonard, and Harley, and Audley Egerton, surveying them

phrenologically, I should say that--”

“Hush!” said my father, “Pisistratus has dipped his pen in the ink, and

it seems to me easier for the wisest man that ever lived to account for

what others have done than to predict what they should do. Phrenologists

discovered that Mr. Thurtell had a very fine organ of Conscientiousness;

yet, somehow or other, that erring personage contrived to knock the

brains out of his friend’s organ of Individuality. Therefore I rise to

propose a Resolution,--that this meeting be adjourned till Pisistratus

has completed his narrative; and we shall then have the satisfaction of

knowing that it ought, according to every principle of nature, science,

and art, to have been completed differently. Why should we deprive

ourselves of that pleasure?”

“I second the motion,” said the captain; “but if Levy be not hanged, I

shall say that there is an end of all poetical justice.”

“Take care of poor Helen,” said Blanche, tenderly: “nor, that I would

have you forget Violante.”

“Pish! and sit down, or they shall both die old maids.” Frightened at

that threat, Blanche, with a deprecating look, drew her stool quietly

near me, as if to place her two proteges in an atmosphere mesmerized to

matrimonial attractions; and my mother set hard to work--at a new frock

for the baby. Unsoftened by these undue female influences, Pisistratus

wrote on at the dictation of the relentless Fates. His pen was of iron,

and his heart was of granite. He was as insensible to the existence of

wife and baby as if he had never paid a house bill, nor rushed from

a nursery at the sound of an infant squall. O blessed privilege of

Authorship!

“O testudinis aureae

Dulcem quae strepitum, Pieri, temperas!

O mutis quoque piscibus

Donatura cyeni, si libeat, sonum!”

[“O Muse, who dost temper the sweet sound of the golden shell of the

tortoise, and couldst also give, were it needed, to silent fishes

the song of the swan.”]

CHAPTER II.

It is necessary to go somewhat back in the course of this narrative, and

account to the reader for the disappearance of Violante.

It may be remembered that Peschiera, scared by the sudden approach of

Lord L’Estrange, had little time for further words to the young Italian,

than those which expressed his intention to renew the conference, and

press for her decision. But the next day, when he re-entered the garden,

secretly and stealthily, as before, Violante did not appear. And after

watching round the precincts till dusk, the count retreated, with an

indignant conviction that his arts had failed to enlist on his side

either the heart or the imagination of his intended victim. He began now

to revolve and to discuss with Levy the possibilities of one of those

bold and violent measures, which were favoured by his reckless daring

and desperate condition. But Levy treated with such just ridicule any

suggestion to abstract Violante by force from Lord Lansmere’s house, so

scouted the notions of nocturnal assault, with the devices of scaling

windows and rope-ladders, that the count reluctantly abandoned that

romance of villany so unsuited to our sober capital, and which would no

doubt have terminated in his capture by the police, with the prospect of

committal to the House of Correction.

Levy himself found his invention at fault, and Randal Leslie was called

into consultation. The usurer had contrived that Randal’s schemes of

fortune and advancement were so based upon Levy’s aid and connivance,

that the young man, with all his desire rather to make instruments

of other men, than to be himself their instrument, found his superior

intellect as completely a slave to Levy’s more experienced craft, as

ever subtle Genius of air was subject to the vulgar Sorcerer of earth.

His acquisition of the ancestral acres, his anticipated seat in

parliament, his chance of ousting Frank from the heritage of Hazeldean,

were all as strings that pulled him to and fro, like a puppet in the

sleek, filbert-nailed fingers of the smiling showman, who could exhibit

him to the admiration of a crowd, or cast him away into dust and lumber.

Randal gnawed his lip in the sullen wrath of a man who bides his hour

of future emancipation, and lent his brain to the hire of the present

servitude, in mechanical acquiescence. The inherent superiority of the

profound young schemer became instantly apparent over the courage of

Peschiera and the practised wit of the baron.

“Your sister,” said Randal, to the former, “must be the active agent in

the first and most difficult part of your enterprise. Violante cannot

be taken by force from Lord Lansmere’s,--she must be induced to leave

it with her own consent. A female is needed here. Woman can best decoy

woman.”

“Admirably said,” quoth the count; “but Beatrice has grown restive, and

though her dowry, and therefore her very marriage with that excellent

young Hazeldean, depend on my own alliance with my fair kinswoman, she

has grown so indifferent to my success that I dare not reckon on her

aid. Between you and me, though she was once very eager to be married,

she now seems to shrink from the notion; and I have no other hold over

her.”

“Has she not seen some one, and lately, whom she prefers to poor Frank?”

“I suspect that she has; but I know not whom, unless it be that detested

L’Estrange.”

“Ah, well, well. Interfere with her no further yourself, but have all

in readiness to quit England, as you had before proposed, as soon as

Violante be in your power.”

“All is in readiness,” said the count. “Levy has agreed to purchase a

famous sailing-vessel of one of his clients. I have engaged a score or

so of determined outcasts, accustomed to the sea,--Genoese, Corsicans,

Sardinians, ex-Carbonari of the best sort,--no silly patriots, but

liberal cosmopolitans, who have iron at the disposal of any man’s gold.

I have a priest to perform the nuptial service, and deaf to any fair

lady’s ‘No.’ Once at sea, and wherever I land, Violante will lean on my

arm as Countess of Peschiera.”

“But Violante,” said Randal, doggedly, determined not to yield to the

disgust with which the count’s audacious cynicism filled even him--“but

Violante cannot be removed in broad daylight at once to such a vessel,

nor from a quarter so populous as that in which your sister resides.”

“I have thought of that too,” said the count; “my emissaries have found

me a house close by the river, and safe for our purpose as the dungeons

of Venice.”

“I wish not to know all this,” answered Randal, quickly; “you will

instruct Madame di Negra where to take Violante.--my task limits itself

to the fair inventions that belong to intellect; what belongs to force

is not in my province. I will go at once to your sister, whom I think I

can influence more effectually than you can; though later I may give

you a hint to guard against the chance of her remorse. Meanwhile as, the

moment Violante disappears, suspicion would fall upon you, show yourself

constantly in public surrounded by your friends. Be able to account for

every hour of your time--”

“An alibi?” interrupted the ci-devant solicitor.

“Exactly so, Baron. Complete the purchase of the vessel, and let the

count man it as he proposes. I will communicate with you both as soon

as I can put you into action. To-day I shall have much to do; it will be

done.”

As Randal left the room, Levy followed him.

“What you propose to do will be well done, no doubt,” quoth the usurer,

linking his arm in Randal’s; “but take care that you don’t get yourself

into a scrape, so as to damage your character. I have great hopes of you

in public life; and in public life character is necessary,--that is, so

far as honour is concerned.”

“I damage my character!--and for a Count Peschiera!” said Randal,

opening his eyes. “I! What do you take me for?”

The baron let go his hold.

“This boy ought to rise very high,” said he to himself, as he turned

back to the count.

CHAPTER III.

Randal’s acute faculty of comprehension had long since surmised the

truth that Beatrice’s views and temper of mind had been strangely and

suddenly altered by some such revolution as passion only can effect;

that pique or disappointment had mingled with the motive which had

induced her to accept the hand of his rash young kinsman; and that,

instead of the resigned indifference with which she might at one time

have contemplated any marriage that could free her from a position that

perpetually galled her pride, it was now with a repugnance, visible to

Randal’s keen eye, that she shrank from the performance of that pledge

which Frank had so dearly bought. The temptations which the count could

hold out to her to become his accomplice in designs of which the fraud

and perfidy would revolt her better nature had ceased to be of avail. A

dowry had grown valueless, since it would but hasten the nuptials from

which she recoiled. Randal felt that he could not secure her aid, except

by working on a passion so turbulent as to confound her judgment. Such

a passion he recognized in jealousy. He had once doubted if Harley were

the object of her love; yet, after all, was it not probable? He knew,

at least, of no one else to suspect. If so, he had but to whisper,

“Violante is your rival. Violante removed, your beauty may find its

natural effect; if not, you are an Italian, and you will be at least

avenged.” He saw still more reason to suppose that Lord L’Estrange was

indeed the one by whom he could rule Beatrice, since, the last time

he had seen her, she had questioned him with much eagerness as to the

family of Lord Lansmere, especially as to the female part of it. Randal

had then judged it prudent to avoid speaking of Violante, and feigned

ignorance; but promised to ascertain all particulars by the time he next

saw the marchesa. It was the warmth with which she had thanked him that

had set his busy mind at work to conjecture the cause of her curiosity

so earnestly aroused, and to ascribe that cause to jealousy. If Harley

loved Violante (as Randal himself had before supposed), the little of

passion that the young man admitted to himself was enlisted in aid

of Peschiera’s schemes. For though Randal did not love Violante, he

cordially disliked L’Estrange, and would have gone as far to render that

dislike vindictive, as a cold reasoner, intent upon worldly fortunes,

will ever suffer mere hate to influence him.

“At the worst,” thought Randal, “if it be not Harley, touch the chord of

jealousy, and its vibration will direct me right.”

Thus soliloquizing, he arrived at Madame di Negra’s.

Now, in reality the marchesa’s inquiries as to Lord Lansmere’s family

had their source in the misguided, restless, despairing interest with

which she still clung to the image of the young poet, whom Randal had

no reason to suspect. That interest had become yet more keen from the

impatient misery she had felt ever since she had plighted herself

to another. A wild hope that she might yet escape, a vague regretful

thought that she had been too hasty in dismissing Leonard from her

presence,--that she ought rather to have courted his friendship, and

contended against her unknown rival,--at times drew her wayward mind

wholly from the future to which she had consigned herself. And, to

do her justice, though her sense of duty was so defective, and the

principles which should have guided her conduct were so lost to her

sight, still her feelings towards the generous Hazeldean were not so

hard and blunted but what her own ingratitude added to her torment; and

it seemed as if the sole atonement she could make to him was to find

an excuse to withdraw her promise, and save him from herself. She had

caused Leonard’s steps to be watched; she had found that he visited at

Lord Lansmere’s; that he had gone there often, and stayed there long.

She had learned in the neighbourhood that Lady Lansmere had one or

two young female guests staying with her. Surely this was the

attraction--here was the rival!

Randal found Beatrice in a state of mind that answered his purpose;

and first turning his conversation on Harley, and noting that her

countenance did not change, by little and little he drew forth her

secret.

Then said Randal, gravely, “If one whom you honour with a tender thought

visits at Lord Lansmere’s house, you have, indeed, cause to fear for

yourself, to hope for your brother’s success in the object which has

brought him to England; for a girl of surpassing beauty is a guest in

Lord Lansmere’s house, and I will now tell you that that girl is she

whom Count Peschiera would make his bride.”

As Randal thus spoke, and saw how his listener’s brow darkened and her

eye flashed, he felt that his accomplice was secured. Violante! Had not

Leonard spoken of Violante, and with such praise? Had not his boyhood

been passed under her eyes? Who but Violante could be the rival?

Beatrice’s abrupt exclamations, after a moment’s pause, revealed to

Randal the advantage he had gained. And partly by rousing her jealousy

into revenge, partly by flattering her love with assurances that,

if Violante were fairly removed from England, were the wife of Count

Peschiera, it would be impossible that Leonard could remain insensible

to her own attractions; that he, Randal, would undertake to free her

honourably from her engagement to Frank Hazeldean, and obtain from her

brother the acquittal of the debt which had first fettered her hand to

that confiding suitor,--he did not quit the marchesa until she had not

only promised to do all that Randal might suggest, but impetuously urged

him to mature his plans, and hasten the hour to accomplish them. Randal

then walked some minutes musing and slow along the streets, revolving

the next meshes in his elaborate and most subtle web. And here his craft

luminously devised its masterpiece.

It was necessary, during any interval that might elapse between

Violante’s disappearance and her departure from England, in order to

divert suspicion from Peschiera (who might otherwise be detained), that

some cause for her voluntary absence from Lord Lansmere’s should be at

least assignable; it was still more necessary that Randal himself should

stand wholly clear from any surmise that he could have connived at the

count’s designs, even should their actual perpetrator be discovered or

conjectured. To effect these objects, Randal hastened to Norwood, and

obtained an interview with Riccabocca. In seeming agitation and alarm,

he informed the exile that he had reason to know that Peschiera had

succeeded in obtaining a secret interview with Violante, and he feared

had made a certain favourable impression on her mind; and speaking as

if with the jealousy of a lover, he entreated Riccabocca to authorize

Randal’s direct proposals to Violante, and to require her consent to

their immediate nuptials.

The poor Italian was confounded with the intelligence conveyed to him;

and his almost superstitious fears of his brilliant enemy, conjoined

with his opinion of the susceptibility to outward attractions common

to all the female sex, made him not only implicitly credit, but

even exaggerate, the dangers that Randal intimated. The idea of his

daughter’s marriage with Randal, towards which he had lately cooled, he

now gratefully welcomed.

But his first natural suggestion was to go, or send, for Violante, and

bring her to his own house. This, however, Randal artfully opposed.

“Alas! I know,” said he, “that Peschiera has discovered your retreat,

and surely she would be far less safe here than where she is now!”

“But, diavolo! you say the man has seen her where she is now, in spite

of all Lady Lansmere’s promises and Harley’s precautions.”

“True. Of this Peschiera boasted to me. He effected it not, of course,

openly, but in some disguise. I am sufficiently, however, in his

confidence--any man may be that with so audacious a braggart--to deter

him from renewing his attempt for some days. Meanwhile, I or yourself

will leave discovered some surer home than this, to which you can

remove, and then will be the proper time to take back your daughter.

And for the present, if you will send by me a letter to enjoin her to

receive me as her future bridegroom, it will necessarily divert all

thought at once from the count; I shall be able to detect by the manner

in which she receives me, how far the count has overstated the effect

he pretends to have produced. You can give me also a letter to Lady

Lansmere, to prevent your daughter coming hither. Oh, sir, do not reason

with me. Have indulgence for my lover’s fears. Believe that I advise for

the best. Have I not the keenest interest to do so?”

Like many a man who is wise enough with pen and paper before him, and

plenty of time wherewith to get up his wisdom, Riccabocca was flurried,

nervous, and confused when that wisdom was called upon for any ready

exertion. From the tree of knowledge he had taken grafts enough to

serve for a forest; but the whole forest could not spare him a handy

walking-stick. The great folio of the dead Machiavelli lay useless

before him,--the living Machiavelli of daily life stood all puissant by

his side. The Sage was as supple to the Schemer as the Clairvoyant is to

the Mesmerist; and the lean slight fingers of Randal actually dictated

almost the very words that Riccabocca wrote to his child and her

hostess.

The philosopher would have liked to consult his wife; but he was ashamed

to confess that weakness. Suddenly he remembered Harley, and said, as

Randal took up the letters which Riccabocca had indited,

“There, that will give us time; and I will send to Lord L’Estrange and

talk to him.”

“My noble friend,” replied Randal, mournfully, “may I entreat you not

to see Lord L’Estrange until at least I have pleaded my cause to your

daughter,--until, indeed, she is no longer under his father’s roof?”

“And why?”

“Because I presume that you are sincere when you deign to receive me as

a son-in-law, and because I am sure that Lord L’Estrange would hear with

distaste of your disposition in my favour. Am I not right?”

Riccabocca was silent.

“And though his arguments would fail with a man of your honour and

discernment, they might have more effect on the young mind of your

child. Think, I beseech you, the more she is set against me, the more

accessible she may be to the arts of Peschiera. Speak not, therefore, I

implore you, to Lord L’Estrange till Violante has accepted my hand, or

at least until she is again under your charge; otherwise take back your

letter,--it would be of no avail.”

“Perhaps you are right. Certainly Lord L’Estrange is prejudiced against

you; or rather, he thinks too much of what I have been, too little of

what I am.”

“Who can see you, and not do so? I pardon him.” After kissing the hand

which the exile modestly sought to withdraw from that act of homage,

Randal pocketed the letters; and, as if struggling with emotion, rushed

from the house.

Now, O curious reader, if thou wilt heedfully observe to what uses

Randal Leslie put those letters,--what speedy and direct results he drew

forth from devices which would seem to an honest simple understanding

the most roundabout, wire-drawn wastes of invention,--I almost fear

that in thine admiration for his cleverness, thou mayest half forget thy

contempt for his knavery.

But when the head is very full, it does not do to have the heart very

empty; there is such a thing as being top-heavy!

CHAPTER IV.

Helen and Violante had been conversing together, and Helen had obeyed

her guardian’s injunction, and spoken, though briefly, of her positive

engagement to Harley. However much Violante had been prepared for the

confidence, however clearly she had divined that engagement, however

before persuaded that the dream of her childhood was fled forever, still

the positive truth, coming from Helen’s own lips, was attended with that

anguish which proves how impossible it is to prepare the human heart for

the final verdict which slays its future. She did not, however, betray

her emotion to Helen’s artless eyes; sorrow, deep-seated, is seldom

self-betrayed. But, after a little while, she crept away; and, forgetful

of Peschiera, of all things that could threaten danger (what danger

could harm her more!) she glided from the house, and went her desolate

way under the leafless wintry trees. Ever and anon she paused, ever

and anon she murmured the same words: “If she loved him, I could be

consoled; but she does not! or how could she have spoken to me

so calmly! how could her very looks have been so sad! Heartless!

heartless!”

Then there came on her a vehement resentment against poor Helen,

that almost took the character of scorn or hate,--its excess startled

herself. “Am I grown so mean?” she said; and tears that humbled her

rushed to her eyes. “Can so short a time alter one thus? Impossible!”

Randal Leslie rang at the front gate, inquired for Violante, and,

catching sight of her form as he walked towards the house, advanced

boldly and openly. His voice startled her as she leaned against one of

the dreary trees, still muttering to herself,--forlorn. “I have a letter

to you from your father, Signorina,” said Randal; “but before I give it

to your hands, some explanation is necessary. Condescend, then, to hear

me.” Violante shook her head impatiently, and stretched forth her hand

for the letter. Randal observed her countenance with his keen, cold,

searching eye; but he still withheld the letter, and continued, after a

pause,

“I know that you were born to princely fortunes; and the excuse for my

addressing you now is, that your birthright is lost to you, at least

unless you can consent to a union with the man who has despoiled you

of your heritage,--a union which your father would deem dishonour to

yourself and him. Signorina, I might have presumed to love you, but I

should not have named that love, had your father not encouraged me by

his assent to my suit.”

Violante turned to the speaker, her face eloquent with haughty surprise.

Randal met the gaze unmoved. He continued, without warmth, and in the

tone of one who reasons calmly, rather than of one who feels acutely,

“The man of whom I spoke is in pursuit of you. I have cause to believe

that this person has already intruded himself upon you. Ah, your

countenance owns it; you have seen Peschiera? This house is, then,

less safe than your father deemed it. No house is safe for you but a

husband’s. I offer to you my name,--it is a gentleman’s; my fortune,

which is small; the participation in my hopes of the future, which are

large. I place now your father’s letter in your hand, and await your

answer.” Randal bowed slightly, gave the letter to Violante, and retired

a few paces.

It was not his object to conciliate Violante’s affection, but rather to

excite her repugnance, or at least her terror,--we must wait to

discover why; so he stood apart, seemingly in a kind of self-confident

indifference, while the girl read the following letter:

“My child, receive with favour Mr. Leslie. He has my consent to

address you as a suitor. Circumstances of which it is needless now

to inform you render it essential to my very peace and happiness

that your marriage should be immediate. In a word, I have given my

promise to Mr. Leslie, and I confidently leave it to the daughter of

my House to redeem the pledge of her anxious and tender father.”

The letter dropped from Violante’s hand. Randal approached, and restored

it to her. Their eyes met. Violante recoiled.

“I cannot marry you,” said she, passionately.

“Indeed?” answered Randal, dryly. “Is it because you cannot love me?”

“Yes.”

“I did not expect that you would as yet, and I still persist in my suit.

I have promised to your father that I would not recede before your first

unconsidered refusal.”

“I will go to my father at once.”

“Does he request you to do so in his letter? Look again. Pardon me, but

he foresaw your impetuosity; and I have another note for Lady Lansmere,

in which he begs her ladyship not to sanction your return to him (should

you so wish) until he come or send for you himself. He will do so

whenever your word has redeemed his own.”

“And do you dare to talk to me thus, and yet pretend to love me?”

Randal smiled ironically.

“I pretend but to wed you. Love is a subject on which I might have

spoken formerly, or may speak hereafter. I give you some little time to

consider. When I next call, let me hope that we may fix the day for our

wedding.”

“Never!”

“You will be, then, the first daughter of your House who disobeyed a

father; and you will have this additional crime; that you disobeyed him

in his sorrow, his exile, and his fall.”

Violante wrung her hands.

“Is there no choice, no escape?”

“I see none for either. Listen to me. I love you, it is true; but it is

not for my happiness to marry one who dislikes me, nor for my ambition

to connect myself with one whose poverty is greater than my own. I marry

but to keep my plighted faith with your father, and to save you from a

villain you would hate more than myself, and from whom no walls are

a barrier, no laws a defence. One person, indeed, might perhaps have

preserved you from the misery you seem to anticipate with me; that

person might defeat the plans of your father’s foe,--effect, it might

be, terms which could revoke his banishment and restore his honours;

that person is--”

“Lord L’Estrange?”

“Lord L’Estrange!” repeated Randal, sharply, and watching her pale

parted lips and her changing colour; “Lord L’Estrange! What could he do?

Why did you name him?”

Violante turned aside. “He saved my father once,” said she, feelingly.

“And has interfered, and trifled, and promised, Heaven knows what, ever

since: yet to what end? Pooh! The person I speak of your father

would not consent to see, would not believe if he saw her; yet she is

generous, noble, could sympathize with you both. She is the sister of

your father’s enemy, the Marchesa di Negra. I am convinced that she

has great influence with her brother,--that she has known enough of his

secrets to awe him into renouncing all designs on yourself; but it is

idle now to speak of her.”

“No, no,” exclaimed Violante. “Tell me where she lives--I will see her.”

“Pardon me, I cannot obey you; and, indeed, her own pride is now aroused

by your father’s unfortunate prejudices against her. It is too late to

count upon her aid. You turn from me,--my presence is unwelcome. I rid

you of it now. But welcome or unwelcome, later you must endure it--and

for life.”

Randal again bowed with formal ceremony, walked towards the house, and

asked for Lady Lansmere. The countess was at home. Randal delivered

Riccabocca’s note, which was very short, implying that he feared

Peschiera had discovered his retreat, and requesting Lady Lansmere to

retain Violante, whatever her own desire, till her ladyship heard from

him again.

The countess read, and her lip curled in disdain. “Strange!” said she,

half to herself.

“Strange!” said Randal, “that a man like your correspondent should fear

one like the Count di Peschiera. Is that it?”

“Sir,” said the countess, a little surprised, “strange that any man

should fear another in a country like ours!”

“I don’t know,” said Randal, with his low soft laugh; “I fear many men,

and I know many who ought to fear me; yet at every turn of the street

one meets a policeman!”

“Yes,” said Lady Lansmere. “But to suppose that this profligate

foreigner could carry away a girl like Violante against her will,--a man

she has never seen, and whom she must have been taught to hate!”

“Be on your guard, nevertheless, I pray you, madam; ‘Where there’s a

will there’s a way’!”

Randal took his leave, and returned to Madame di Negra’s. He stayed with

her an hour, revisited the count, and then strolled to Limmer’s.

“Randal,” said the squire, who looked pale and worn, but who scorned

to confess the weakness with which he still grieved and yearned for his

rebellious son, “Randal, you have nothing now to do in London; can you

come and stay with me, and take to farming? I remember that you showed a

good deal of sound knowledge about thin sowing.”

“My dear sir, I will come to you as soon as the general election is

over.”

“What the deuce have you got to do with the general election?”

“Mr. Egerton has some wish that I should enter parliament; indeed,

negotiations for that purpose are now on foot.”

The squire shook his head. “I don’t like my half-brother’s politics.”

“I shall be quite independent of them,” cried Randal, loftily; “that

independence is the condition for which I stipulate.”

“Glad to hear it; and if you do come into parliament, I hope you’ll not

turn your back on the land?”

“Turn my back on the land!” cried Randal, with devout horror. “Oh, sir,

I am not so unnatural!”

“That’s the right way to put it,” quoth the credulous squire; “it is

unnatural! It is turning one’s back on one’s own mother. The land is a

mother--”

“To those who live by her, certainly,--a mother,” said Randal, gravely.

“And though, indeed, my father starves by her rather than lives, and

Rood Hall is not like Hazeldean, still--I--”

“Hold your tongue,” interrupted the squire; “I want to talk to you. Your

grandmother was a Hazeldean.”

“Her picture is in the drawing-room at Rood. People think me very like

her.”

“Indeed!” said the squire. “The Hazeldeans are generally inclined to be

stout and rosy, which you are certainly not. But no fault of yours. We

are all as Heaven made us. However, to the point. I am going to alter

my will,”--(said with a choking gulp). “This is the rough draft for the

lawyers to work upon.”

“Pray, pray, sir, do not speak to me on such a subject. I cannot bear to

contemplate even the possibility of--of--”

“My death? Ha, ha! Nonsense. My own son calculated on the date of it by

the insurance-tables. Ha, ha, ha! A very fashionable son, eh! Ha, ha!”

“Poor Frank! do not let him suffer for a momentary forgetfulness of

right feeling. When he comes to be married to that foreign lady, and be

a father himself, he--”

“Father himself!” burst forth the squire. “Father to a swarm of

sallow-faced Popish tadpoles! No foreign frogs shall hop about my

grave in Hazeldean churchyard. No, no. But you need not look so

reproachful,--I ‘m not going to disinherit Frank.”

“Of course not,” said Randal, with a bitter curve in the lip that

rebelled against the joyous smile which he sought to impose on it.

“No; I shall leave him the life-interest in the greater part of

the property; but if he marry a foreigner, her children will not

succeed,--you will stand after him in that case. But--now don’t

interrupt me--but Frank looks as if he would live longer than you, so

small thanks to me for my good intentions, you may say. I mean to do

more for you than a mere barren place in the entail. What do you say to

marrying?”

“Just as you please,” said Randal, meekly.

“Good. There’s Miss Sticktorights disengaged,--great heiress. Her lands

run onto Rood. At one time I thought of her for that graceless puppy of

mine. But I can manage more easily to make up the match for you. There’s

a mortgage on the property; old Sticktorights would be very glad to pay

it off. I ‘ll pay it out of the Hazeldean estate, and give up the Right

of Way into the bargain. You understand?

“So come down as soon as you can, and court the young lady yourself.”

Randal expressed his thanks with much grateful eloquence; and he then

delicately insinuated, that if the squire ever did mean to bestow upon

him any pecuniary favours (always without injury to Frank), it would

gratify him more to win back some portions of the old estate of Rood,

than to have all the acres of the Sticktorights, however free from any

other incumbrance than the amiable heiress.

The squire listened to Randal with benignant attention. This wish the

country gentleman could well understand and sympathize with. He promised

to inquire into the matter, and to see what could be done with old

Thornhill.

Randal here let out that Mr. Thornhill was about to dispose of a large

slice of the ancient Leslie estate through Levy, and that he, Randal,

could thus get it at a more moderate price than would be natural, if Mr.

Thornhill knew that his neighbour the squire would bid for the purchase.

“Better say nothing about it either to Levy or Thornhill.”

“Right,” said the squire. “No proprietor likes to sell to another

proprietor, in the same shire, as largely acred as himself: it spoils

the balance of power. See to the business yourself; and if I can help

you with the purchase (after that boy is married,--I can attend to

nothing before), why, I will.”

Randal now went to Egerton’s. The statesman was in his library, settling

the accounts of his house-steward, and giving brief orders for the

reduction of his establishment to that of an ordinary private gentleman.

“I may go abroad if I lose my election,” said Egerton, condescending to

assign to his servant a reason for his economy; “and if I do not lose

it, still, now I am out of office, I shall live much in private.”

“Do I disturb you, sir?” said Randal, entering.

“No; I have just done.”

The house-steward withdrew, much surprised and disgusted, and meditating

the resignation of his own office,--in order, not like Egerton, to save,

but to spend. The house steward had private dealings with Baron Levy,

and was in fact the veritable X. Y. of the “Times,” for whom Dick Avenel

had been mistaken. He invested his wages and perquisites in the discount

of bills; and it was part of his own money that had (though unknown to

himself) swelled the last L5,000 which Egerton had borrowed from Levy.

“I have settled with our committee; and, with Lord Lansmere’s consent,”

said Egerton, briefly, “you will stand for the borough, as we proposed,

in conjunction with myself. And should any accident happen to me,--that

is, should I vacate this seat from any cause,--you may succeed to it,

very shortly perhaps. Ingratiate yourself with the electors, and speak

at the public-houses for both of us. I shall stand on my dignity, and

leave the work of the election to you. No thanks,--you know how I hate

thanks. Good-night.”

“I never stood so near to fortune and to power,” said Randal, as he

slowly undressed. “And I owe it but to knowledge,--knowledge of men,

life, of all that books can teach us.”

So his slight thin fingers dropped the extinguisher on the candle, and

the prosperous Schemer laid himself down to rest in the dark. Shutters

closed, curtains drawn--never was rest more quiet, never was room more

dark!

That evening, Harley had dined at his father’s. He spoke much to Helen,

scarcely at all to Violante. But it so happened that when later, and

a little while before he took his leave, Helen, at his request, was

playing a favourite air of his, Lady Lausmere, who had been seated

between him and Violante, left the room, and Violante turned quickly

towards Harley.

“Do you know the Marchesa di Negra?” she asked, in a hurried voice.

“A little. Why do you ask?”

“That is my secret,” answered Violante, trying to smile with her old

frank, childlike archness. “But, tell me, do you think better of her

than of her brother?”

“Certainly. I believe her heart to be good, and that she is not without

generous qualities.”

“Can you not induce my father to see her? Would you not counsel him to

do so?”

“Any wish of yours is a law to me,” answered Harley, gallantly. “You

wish your father to see her? I will try and persuade him to do so. Now,

in return, confide to me your secret. What is your object?”

“Leave to return to my Italy. I care not for honours, for rank; and

even my father has ceased to regret their loss. But the land, the native

land--Oh, to see it once more! Oh, to die there!”

“Die! You children have so lately left heaven, that ye talk as if

ye could return there, without passing through the gates of sorrow,

infirmity, and age! But I thought you were content with England. Why

so eager to leave it? Violante, you are unkind to us,--to Helen, who

already loves you so well.” As Harley spoke, Helen rose from the piano,

and approaching Violante, placed her hand caressingly on the Italian’s

shoulder. Violante shivered, and shrunk away. The eyes both of Harley

and Helen followed her. Harley’s eyes were very grave and thoughtful.

“Is she not changed--your friend?” said he, looking down.

“Yes, lately; much changed. I fear there is something on her mind,--I

know not what.”

“Ah,” muttered Harley, “it may be so; but at your age and hers, nothing

rests on the mind long. Observe, I say the mind,--the heart is more

tenacious.”

Helen sighed softly, but deeply.

“And therefore,” continued Harley, half to himself, “we can detect when

something is on the mind,--some care, some fear, some trouble. But when

the heart closes over its own more passionate sorrow, who can discover,

who conjecture? Yet you at least, my pure, candid Helen,--you might

subject mind and heart alike to the fabled window of glass.”

“Oh, no!” cried Helen, involuntarily.

“Oh, yes! Do not let me think that you have one secret I may not know,

or one sorrow I may not share. For, in our relationship, that would be

deceit.”

He pressed her hand with more than usual tenderness as he spoke, and

shortly afterwards left the house.

And all that night Helen felt like a guilty thing,--more wretched even

than Violante.

CHAPTER V.

Early the next morning, while Violante was still in her room, a letter

addressed to her came by the post. The direction was in a strange hand.

She opened it, and read, in Italian, what is thus translated:--

I would gladly see you, but I cannot call openly at the house in

which you live. Perhaps I may have it in my power to arrange family

dissensions,--to repair any wrongs your father may have sustained.

Perhaps I may be enabled to render yourself an essential service.

But for all this it is necessary that we should meet and confer

frankly. Meanwhile time presses, delay is forbidden. Will you meet

me, an hour after noon, in the lane, just outside the private gate

of your gardens? I shall be alone, and you cannot fear to meet one

of your own sex, and a kinswoman. Ah, I so desire to see you!

Come, I beseech you.

BEATRICE.

Violante read, and her decision was taken. She was naturally fearless,

and there was little that she would not have braved for the chance of

serving her father. And now all peril seemed slight in comparison

with that which awaited her in Randal’s suit, backed by her father’s

approval. Randal had said that Madame di Negra alone could aid her in

escape from himself. Harley had said that Madame di Negra had generous

qualities; and who but Madame di Negra would write herself a kinswoman,

and sign herself “Beatrice”?