She pointed to a room on the ground-floor in the opposite house, where

might be dimly seen a dull red fire in a sordid grate, and a man’s form,

the head pillowed upon arms that rested on a small table. On the table a

glass, a bottle.

“It is thus that his mornings pass,” said Arabella Crane, with a wild

bitter pity in the tone of her voice. “Look, I say, is he formidable

now? can you fear him?”

“Very much indeed,” muttered Cutts. “He is only stupefied, and he can

shake off a doze as quickly as a bulldog does when a rat is let into his

kennel.”

“Mr. Cutts, you tell me that he constantly carries about him the same

old pocket-book which he says contains his fortune; in other words, the

papers that frighten his victim into giving him the money which is now

the cause of his danger. There is surely no pocket you cannot pick or

get picked, Mr. Cutts? Fifty pounds for that book in three hours.”

“Fifty pounds are not enough; the man he sponges on would give more to

have those papers in his power.”

“Possibly; but Losely has not been dolt enough to trust you sufficiently

to enable you to know how to commence negotiations. Even if the man’s

name and address be amongst those papers, you could not make use of the

knowledge without bringing Jasper himself upon you; and even if Jasper

were out of the way, you would not have the same hold over his victim;

you know not the circumstances; you could make no story out of some

incoherent rambling letters; and the man, who, I can tell you, is by

nature a bully, and strong, compared with any other man but Jasper,

would seize you by the collar; and you would be lucky if you got out of

his house with no other loss than the letters, and no other gain but a

broken bone. Pooh! YOU know all that, or you would have stolen the book,

and made use of it before. Fifty pounds for that book in three hours;

and if Jasper Losely be safe and alive six months hence, fifty pounds

more, Mr. Cutts. See! he stirs not must be fast asleep. Now is the

moment.”

“What, in his own room!” said Cutts with contempt. “Why, he would know

who did it; and where should I be to-morrow? No--in the streets; any one

has a right to pick a pocket in the Queen’s highways. In three hours you

shall have the book.”

CHAPTER VIII.

MERCURY IS THE PATRON DEITY OF MERCANTILE SPECULATORS, AS WELL AS OF

CRACK-BRAINED POETS; INDEED, HE IS MUCH MORE FAVOURABLE, MORE A

FRIEND AT A PINCH, TO THE FORMER CLASS OF HIS PROTEGES THAN HE IS TO

THE LATTER.

“Poolum per hostes mercurius celer,

Denso paventem sustulit aere.”

Poole was sitting with his wife after dinner. He had made a good

speculation that day; little Johnny would be all the better for it a few

years hence, and some other man’s little Johnnys all the worse--but each

for himself in this world! Poole was therefore basking in the light of

his gentle helpmate’s approving smile. He had taken all extra glass of

a venerable port-wine, which had passed to his cellar from the bins of

Uncle Sam. Commercial prosperity without, conjugal felicity within, the

walls of Alhambra Villa; surely Adolphus Poole is an enviable man! Does

he look so? The ghost of what he was but a few months ago! His cheeks

have fallen in; his clothes hang on him like bags; there is a worried,

haggard look in his eyes, a nervous twitch in his lips, and every now

and then he looks at the handsome Parisian clock on the chimneypiece,

and then shifts his posture, snubs his connubial angel, who asks “what

ails him?” refills his glass, and stares on the fire, seeing strange

shapes in the mobile aspects of the coals.

To-morrow brings back this weekly spectre! To-morrow Jasper Losely,

punctual to the stroke of eleven, returns to remind him of that past

which, if revealed, will blast the future. And revealed it might be any

hour despite the bribe for silence which he must pay with his own hands,

under his own roof. Would he trust another with the secret of that

payment?--horror! Would he visit Losely at his own lodging, and pay him

there?--murder! Would he appoint him somewhere in the streets--run the

chance of being seen with such a friend? Respectability confabulating

with offal?--disgrace! And Jasper had on the last two or three visits

been peculiarly disagreeable. He had talked loud. Poole feared that his

wife might have her ear at the keyhole. Jasper had seen the parlour-maid

in the passage as he went out, and caught her round the waist. The

parlour-maid had complained to Mrs. Poole, and said she would leave if

so insulted by such an ugly blackguard. Alas! what the poor lady-killer

has come to! Mrs. Poole had grown more and more inquisitive and

troublesome on the subject of such extraordinary visits; and now, as her

husband stirred the fire-having roused her secret ire by his previous

unmanly snubbings, and Mrs. Poole being one of those incomparable wives

who have a perfect command of temper, who never reply to angry words at

the moment, and who always, with exquisite calm and self-possession, pay

off every angry word by an amiable sting at a right moment--Mrs. Poole,

I say, thus softly said:

“Sammy, duck, we know what makes oo so cross; but it shan’t vex oo long,

Sammy. That dreadful man comes to-morrow. He always comes the same day

of the week.”

“Hold your tongue, Mrs. Poole.”

“Yes, Sammy, dear, I’ll hold my tongue. But Sammy shan’t be imposed upon

by mendicants; for I know he is a mendicant--one of those sharpers or

blacklegs who took oo in, poor innocent Sam, in oo wild bachelor days,

and oo good heart can’t bear to see him in distress; but there must be

an end to all things.”

“Mrs. Poole--Mrs. Poole-will you stop your fool’s jaw or not?”

“My poor dear hubby,” said the angel, squeezing out a mild tear, “oo

will be in good hands to advise oo; for I’ve been and told Pa!”

“You have,” faltered Poole, “told your father--you have!” and the

expression of his face became so ghastly that Mrs. Poole grew seriously

terrified. She had long felt that there was something very suspicious in

her husband’s submission to the insolence of so rude a visitor. But she

knew that he was not brave; the man might intimidate him by threats of

personal violence. The man might probably be some poor relation, or

some one whom Poole had ruined, either in bygone discreditable sporting

‘days, or in recent respectable mercantile speculations. But at that

ghastly look a glimpse of the real truth broke upon her; and she stood

speechless and appalled. At this moment there was a loud ring at the

street-door bell. Poole gathered himself up, and staggered out of the

room into the passage.

His wife remained without motion; for the first time she conceived a

fear of her husband. Presently she heard a harsh female voice in the

hall, and then a joyous exclamation from Poole himself. Recovered by

these unexpected sounds, she went mechanically forth into the passage,

just in time to see the hems of a dark-grey dress disappearing within

Poole’s study, while Poole, who had opened the study-door, and was

bowing-in the iron-grey dress obsequiously, turned his eye towards his

wife, and striding towards her for a moment, whispered, “Go up-stairs

and stir not,” in a tone so unlike his usual gruff accents of command,

that it cowed her out of the profound contempt with which she habitually

received, while smilingly obeying, his marital authority.

Poole, vanishing into his study, carefully closed his door, and would

have caught his lady visitor by both her hands; but she waived him back,

and, declining a seat, remained sternly erect.

“Mr. Poole, I have but a few words to say. The letters which gave

Jasper Losely the power to extort money from you are no longer in his

possession; they are in mine. You need fear him no more--you will fee

him no more.”

“Oh!” cried Poole, falling on his knees, “the blessing of a father of a

family--a babe not six weeks born--be on your blessed, blessed head!”

“Get up, and don’t talk nonsense. I do not give you these papers at

present, nor burn them. Instead of being in the power of a muddled,

irresolute drunkard, you are in the power of a vigilant, clear-brained

woman. You are in my power, and you will act as I tell you.”

“You can ask nothing wrong, I am sure,” said Poole, his grateful

enthusiasm much abated. “Command me; but the papers can be of no use to

you; I will pay for them handsomely.”

“Be silent and listen. I retain these papers-first, because Jasper

Losely must not know that they ever passed to my hands; secondly,

because you must inflict no injury on Losely himself. Betray me to him,

or try to render himself up to the law, and the documents will be used

against you ruthlessly. Obey, and you have nothing to fear, and nothing

to pay. When Jasper Losely calls on you tomorrow, ask him to show you

the letters. He cannot; he will make excuses. Decline peremptorily,

but not insultingly (his temper is fierce), to pay him farther. He

will perhaps charge you with having hired some one to purloin his

pocket-book; let him think it. Stop--your window here opens on the

ground--a garden without:--Ah! have three of the police in that garden,

in sight of the window. Point to them if he threaten you; summon them to

your aid, or pass out to them, if he actually attempt violence. But when

he has left the house, you must urge no charge against him; he must be

let off unscathed. You can be at no loss for excuse in this mercy;

a friend of former times--needy, unfortunate, whom habits of

drink maddened for the moment--necessary to eject him--inhuman to

prosecute--any story you please. The next day you can, if you choose,

leave London for a short time; I advise it. But his teeth will be drawn;

he will most probably never trouble you again. I know his character.

There, I have done; open the door, sir.”

CHAPTER IX.

THE WRECK AND THE LIFE-BOAT IN A FOG.

The next day, a little after noon, Jasper Losely, coming back from

Alhambra Villa--furious, desperate, knowing not where to turn for bread,

or on whom to pour his rage--beheld suddenly, in a quiet, half-built

street, which led from the suburb to the New Road, Arabella Crane

standing right in his path. She had emerged from one of the many

straight intersecting roads which characterise that crude nebula of

a future city; and the woman and the man met thus face to face; not

another passer-by visible in the thoroughfare;--at a distance the dozing

hack cab-stand; round and about them carcases of brick and mortar--some

with gaunt scaffolding fixed into their ribs, and all looking yet more

weird in their raw struggle into shape through the living haze of a

yellow fog.

Losely, seeing Arabella thus planted in his way, recoiled; and the

superstition in which he had long associated her image with baffled

schemes and perilous hours sent the wrathful blood back through his

veins so quickly that he heard his heart beat!

MRS. CRANE.--“SO! You see we cannot help meeting, Jasper dear, do what

you will to shun me.”

LOSELY.--“I--I--you always startle me so!--you are in town, then?--to

stay?--your old quarters?”

MRS. CRANE.--“Why ask? You cannot wish to know where I am--you would

not call. But how fares it?--what do you do?--how do you live? You look

ill--Poor Jasper.”

LOSELY (fiercely).--“Hang your pity, and give me some money.”

MRS. CRANE (calmly laying her lean hand on the arm which was darted

forward more in menace than entreaty, and actually terrifying the

Gladiator as she linked that deadly arm into her own).--“I said you

would always find me when at the worst of your troubles. And so, Jasper,

it shall be till this right hand of yours is powerless as the clay at

our feet. Walk--walk; you are not afraid of me?--walk on, tell me all.

Where have you just been?”

Jasper, therewith reminded of his wrongs, poured out a volley of abuse

on Poole, communicating to Mrs. Crane the whole story of his claims

on that gentleman--the loss of the pocket-book filched from him, and

Poole’s knowledge that he was thus disarmed.

“And the coward,” said he, grinding his teeth, “got out of his

window--and three policemen in his garden. He must have bribed a

pickpocket--low knave that he is. But I shall find out--and then--”

“And then, Jasper, how will you be better off?--the letters are gone;

and Poole has you in his power if you threaten him again. Now, hark

you; you did not murder the Italian who was found stabbed in the fields

yonder a week ago; L100 reward for the murderer?”

“I--no. How coldly you ask! I have hit hard in fair fight;

murdered--never. If ever I take to that, I shall begin with Poole.”

“But I tell you, Jasper, that you are suspected of that murder; that you

will be accused of that murder; and if I had not thus fortunately met

you, for that murder you would be tried and hanged.”

“Are you serious? Who could accuse me?”

“Those who know that you are not guilty--those who could make you appear

so--the villains with whom you horde, and drink and brawl! Have I ever

been wrong in my warnings yet?”

“This is too horrible,” faltered Losely, thinking not of the conspiracy

against his life, but of her prescience in detecting it. “It must be

witchcraft, and nothing else. How could you learn what you tell me?”

“That is my affair; enough for you that I am right. Go no more to those

black haunts; they are even now full of snares and pitfalls for you.

Leave London, and you are safe. Trust to me.”

“And where shall I go?”

“Look you, Jasper; you have worn out this old world no refuge for you

but the new. Whither went your father, thither go you. Consent, and

you shall not want. You cannot discover Sophy. You have failed in all

attempts on Darrell’s purse. But agree to sail to Australasia, and

I will engage to you an income larger than you say you extorted from

Poole, to be spent in those safer shores.”

“And you will go with me, I suppose,” said Losely, with ungracious

sullenness.

“Go with you, as you please. Be where you are--yes.” The ruffian bounded

with rage and loathing.

“Woman, cross me no more, or I shall be goaded into--”

“Into killing me--you dare not! Meet my eye if you can--you dare not!

Harm me, yea a hair of my head, and your moments are numbered!--your

doom sealed. Be we two together in a desert--not a human eye to see the

deed--not a human ear to receive my groan, and still I should stand by

your side unharmed. I, who have returned the wrongs received from you,

by vigilant, untiring benefits--I, who have saved you from so many

enemies, and so many dangers--I, who, now when all the rest of earth

shun you--when all other resource fails-I, who now say to you, ‘Share my

income, but be honest!’ I receive injury from that hand. No; the guilt

would be too unnatural--Heaven would not permit it. Try, and your arm

will fall palsied by your side!”

Jasper’s bloodshot eyes dropped beneath the woman’s fixed and scorching

gaze, and his lips, white and tremulous, refused to breathe the fierce

curse into which his brutal nature concentrated its fears and its

hate. He walked on in gloomy silence; but some words she had let fall

suggested a last resort to his own daring.

She had urged him to quit the old world for the new, but that had been

the very proposition conveyed to him from Darrell. If that proposition,

so repugnant to the indolence that had grown over him, must be embraced,

better at least sail forth alone, his own master, than be the dependent

slave of this abhorred and persecuting benefactress. His despair gave

him the determination he had hitherto lacked. He would seek Darrell

himself, and make the best compromise he could. This resolve passed

into his mind as he stalked on through the yellow fog, and his nerves

recovered from their irritation, and his thoughts regained something of

their ancient craft as the idea of escaping from Mrs. Crane’s vigilance

and charity assumed a definite shape.

“Well,” said he at length, dissimulating his repugnance, and with an

effort at his old half-coaxing, half-rollicking tones, “you certainly

are the best of creatures; and, as you say,

‘Had I a heart for falsehood framed, I ne’er could injure you,’

ungrateful dog though I may seem, and very likely am. I own I have a

horror of Australasia--such a long sea-voyage! New scenes no longer

attract me; I am no longer young, though I ought to be; but if you

insist on it, and will really condescend to accompany me in spite of all

my sins to you, why, I can make up my mind. And as to honesty, ask those

infernal rascals, who, you say, would swear away my life, and they

will tell you that I have been as innocent as a lamb since my return to

England; and that is my guilt in their villanous eyes. As long as that

infamous Poole gave me enough for my humble wants, I was a reformed man.

I wish to keep reformed. Very little suffices for me now. As you say,

Australasia may be the best place for me. When shall we go?”

“Are you serious?”

“To be sure.”

“Then I will inquire the days on which the vessels sail. You can call on

me at my own old home, and all shall be arranged. Oh, Jasper Losely, do

not avoid this last chance of escape from the perils that gather round

you.”

“No; I am sick of life--of all things except repose. Arabella, I suffer

horrible pain.”

He groaned, for he spoke truly. At that moment the gnaw of the monster

anguish, which fastens on the nerves like a wolf’s tooth, was so keen

that he longed to swell his groan into a roar. The old fable of Hercules

in the poisoned tunic was surely invented by some skilled physiologist,

to denote the truth that it is only in the strongest frames that pain

can be pushed into its extremest torture. The heart of the grim woman

was instantly and thoroughly softened. She paused; she made him lean

on her arm; she wiped the drops from his brow; she addressed him in the

most soothing tones of pity. The spasm passed away suddenly as it does

in neuralgic agonies, and with it any gratitude or any remorse in the

breast of the sufferer.

“Yes,” he said, “I will call on you; but meanwhile I am without a

farthing. Oh, do not fear that if you helped me now, I should again shun

you. I have no other resource left; nor have I now the spirit I once

had. I no longer now laugh at fatigue and danger.”

“But will you swear by all that you yet hold sacred--if, alas! there be

aught which is sacred to you--that you will not again seek the company

of those men who are conspiring to entrap you into the hangman’s hands?”

“Seek them again, the ungrateful cowardly blackguards! No, no; I promise

you that--solemnly; it is medical aid that I want; it is rest, I tell

you--rest, rest, rest.” Arabella Crane drew forth her purse. “Take what

you will,” said she gently. Jasper, whether from the desire to deceive

her, or because her alms were so really distasteful to his strange kind

of pride that he stinted to bare necessity the appeal to them, contented

himself with the third or fourth of the sovereigns that the purse

contained, and after a few words of thanks and promises, he left her

side, and soon vanished in the fog that grew darker and darker as the

night-like wintry day deepened over the silenced thoroughfares.

The woman went her way through the mists, hopeful--through the mists

went the man, hopeful also. Recruiting himself by slight food and strong

drink at a tavern on his road, he stalked on to Darrell’s house in

Carlton Gardens; and, learning there that Darrell was at Fawley,

hastened to the station from which started the train to the town nearest

to the old Manor-house; reached that town safely, and there rested for

the night.

BOOK IX.

CHAPTER I.

THE SECRET WHICH GUY DARRELL DID NOT CONFIDE TO ALBAN MORLEY.

It was a serene noonday in that melancholy interlude of the seasons when

autumn has really ceased--winter not yet visibly begun. The same hired

vehicle which had borne Lionel to Fawley more than five years ago,

stopped at the gate of the wild umbrageous grass-land that surrounded

the antique Manor-house. It had been engaged, from the nearest

railway-station on the London road, by a lady, with a female companion

who seemed her servant. The driver dismounted, opened the door of the

vehicle, and the lady bidding him wait there till her return, and saying

a few words to her companion, descended, and, drawing her cloak round

her, walked on alone towards the Manor-house. At first her step was

firm, and her pace quick. She was still under the excitement of the

resolve in which the journey from her home had been suddenly conceived

and promptly accomplished. But as the path wound on through the

stillness of venerable groves, her courage began to fail her. Her feet

loitered, her eyes wandered round vaguely, timidly. The scene was

not new to her. As she gazed, rushingly gathered over her sorrowful

shrinking mind memories of sportive happy summer days, spent in

childhood amidst those turfs and shades-memories, more agitating, of the

last visit (childhood then ripened into blooming youth) to the ancient

dwelling which, yet concealed from view by the swells of the undulating

ground and the yellow boughs of the giant trees, betrayed its site by

the smoke rising thin and dim against the limpid atmosphere. She bent

down her head, closing her eyes as if to shut out less the face of the

landscape than the images that rose ghost-like up to people it, and

sighed heavily, heavily. Now, hard by, roused from its bed amongst the

fern, the doe that Darrell had tained into companionship had watched

with curiosity this strange intruder on its solitary range. But at

the sound of that heavy sigh, the creature, emboldened, left its

halting-place, and stole close to the saddened woman, touching her very

dress. Doubtless, as Darrell’s companion in his most musing hours, the

doe was familiarised to the sound of sighs, and associated the sound

with its gentlest notions of humanity.

The lady, starting, raised her drooping lids, and met those soft dark

eyes, dark and soft as her own. Round the animal’s neck there was a

simple collar, with a silver plate, fresh and new, evidently placed

there recently; and as the creature thrust forward its head, as if for

the caress of a wonted hand, the lady read the inscription. The words

were in Italian, and may be construed thus: “Female, yet not faithless;

fostered, yet not ungrateful.” As she read, her heart so swelled, and

her resolve so deserted her, that she turned as if she had received a

sentence of dismissal, and went back some hasty paces. The doe followed

her till she paused again, and then it went slowly down a narrow path to

the left, which led to the banks of the little lake.

The lady had now recovered herself. “It is a duty, and it must be done,”

she muttered, and letting clown the veil she had raised on entering the

demesne, she hurried on, not retracing her steps in the same path, but

taking that into which the doe had stricken, perhaps in the confused

mistake of a mind absorbed and absent-perhaps in revived recollection

of the localities, for the way thus to the house was shorter than by

the weed-grown carriage-road. The lake came in view, serene and glassy;

half-leafless woodlands reflected far upon its quiet waters; the doe

halted, lifted its head, and sniffed the air, and, somewhat quickening

its pace, vanished behind one of the hillocks clothed with brushwood,

that gave so primitive and forest-like a character to the old ground.

Advancing still, there now,--at her right hand, grew out of the

landscape the noble turrets of the unfinished pile; and, close at her

left, under a gnarled fantastic thorn-tree, the still lake at his feet

reflecting his stiller shadow, reclined Guy Darrell, the doe nestled at

his side.

So unexpected this sight--he, whom she came to seek yet feared to see,

so close upon her way--the lady uttered a faint but sharp cry, and

Darrell sprang to his feet. She stood before him, veiled, mantled,

bending as a suppliant.

“Avaunt!” he faltered wildly. “Is this a spirit my own black solitude

conjures up--or is it a delusion, a dream? It is I--I!--the Caroline

dear to you once, if detested now! Forgive me! Not for myself I come.”

She flung back her veil-her eyes pleadingly sought his.

“So,” said Darrell, gathering his arms round his breast in the gesture

peculiar to him when seeking either to calm a more turbulent movement,

or to confirm a sterner resolution of his heart--“so! Caroline,

Marchioness of Montfort, we are then fated to meet face to face at last!

I understand--Lionel Haughton sent, or showed to you, my letter?”

“Oh! Mr. Darrell, how could you have the heart to write in such terms of

one who--”

“One who had taken the heart from my bosom and trampled it into the

mire. True, fribbles will say, ‘Fie! the vocabulary of fine gentlemen

has no harsh terms for women.’ Gallants, to whom love is pastime, leave

or are left with elegant sorrow and courtly bows. Madam, I was never

such airy gallant. I am but a man unhappily in earnest--a man who placed

in those hands his life of life--who said to you, while yet in his

prime, ‘There is my future, take it, till it vanish out of earth! You

have made that life substanceless as a ghost--that future barren as the

grave. And when you dare force yourself again upon my way, and would

dictate laws to my very hearth--if I speak as a man what plain men must

feel--‘Oh! Mr. Darrell,’ says your injured ladyship, ‘how can you have

the heart?’ Woman! were you not false as the falsest? Falsehood has no

dignity to awe rebuke--falsehood no privilege of sex.”

“Darrell--Darrell--Darrell--spare me, spare me! I have been so

punished--I am so miserable!”

“You!--punished!--What! you sold yourself to youth, and sleek looks,

and grand titles, and the flattery of a world; and your rose-leaves were

crumpled in the gorgeous marriage-bed. Adequate punishment!--a crumpled

rose-leaf! True, the man was a--but why should I speak ill of him?

It was he who was punished, if, accepting his rank, you recognised in

himself a nothingness that you could neither love nor honour. False and

ungrateful alike to the man you chose--to the man you forsook! And now

you have buried one, and you have schemed to degrade the other.”

“Degrade!--Oh! it is that charge which has stung me to the quick. All

the others I deserve. But that charge! Listen--you shall listen.”

“I stand here resigned to do so. Say all you will now, for it is the

last time on earth I lend my ears to your voice.”

“Be it so--the last time.” She paused to recover speech, collect

thoughts, gain strength; and strange though it may seem to those who

have never loved, amidst all her grief and humiliation there was a

fearful delight in that presence from which she had been exiled since

her youth--nay, delight unaccountable to herself, even in that rough,

vehement, bitter tempest of reproach, for an instinct told her that

there would have been no hatred in the language had no love been

lingering in the soul.

“Speak,” said Darrell gently, softened, despite himself, by her evident

struggle to control emotion.

Twice she began-twice voice failed her. At last her words came forth

audibly. She began with her plea for Lionel and Sophy, and gathered

boldness by her zeal on their behalf. She proceeded to vindicate her

own motives-to acquit herself of his harsh charge. She scheme for his

degradation! She had been too carried away by her desire to promote

his happiness--to guard him from the possibility of a self-reproach.

At first he listened to her with haughty calmness; merely saying, in

reference to Sophy and Lionel, “I have nothing to add or to alter in the

resolution I have communicated to Lionel.” But when she thus insensibly

mingled their cause with her own, his impatience broke out. “My

happiness? Oh! well have you proved the sincerity with which you schemed

for that! Save me from self-reproach--me! Has Lady Montfort so wholly

forgotten that she was once Caroline Lyndsay that she can assume the

part of a warning angel against the terrors of self-reproach?”

“Ah!” she murmured faintly, “can you suppose, however fickle and

thankless I may seem to you--”

“Seem!” he repeated.

“Seem!” she said again, but meekly--“seem, and seem justly;--yet can

you suppose that when I became free to utter my remorse--to speak of

gratitude, of reverence--I was insincere? Darrell, Darrell, you cannot

think so! That letter which reached you abroad nearly a year ago, in

which I laid my pride of woman at your feet, as I lay it now in coming

here--that letter, in which I asked if it were impossible for you to

pardon, too late for me to atone--was written on my knees. It was the

outburst of my very heart. Nay, nay, hear me out. Do not imagine that

I would again obtrude a hope so contemptuously crushed!” (a deep blush

came over her cheek.) “I blame you not, nor, let me say it, did your

severity bring that shame which I might have justly felt had I so

written to any man on earth but you--you, so reverenced from my infancy,

that--”

“Ay,” interrupted Darrell fiercely, “ay, do not fear that I should

misconceive you; you would not so have addressed the young, the fair,

the happy. No! you, proud beauty, with hosts, no doubt, of supplicating

wooers, would have thrust that hand into the flames before it wrote to a

young man, loved as the young are loved, what without shame it wrote to

the old man, reverenced as the old are reverenced! But my heart is not

old, and your boasted reverence was a mocking insult. Your letter, torn

to pieces, was returned to you without a word--insult for insult! You

felt no shame that I should so rudely reject your pity. Why should you?

Rejected pity is not rejected love. The man was not less old because he

was not reconciled to age.”

This construction of her tender penitence--this explanation of his

bitter scorn--took Caroline Montfort wholly by surprise. From what

writhing agonies of lacerated self-love came that pride which was but

self-depreciation? It was a glimpse into the deeper rents of his charred

and desolate being which increased at once her yearning affection and

her passionate despair. Vainly she tried to utter the feelings that

crowded upon her!--vainly, vainly! Woman can murmur, “I have injured

you--forgive!” when she cannot exclaim, “You disdain me, but love!”

Vainly, vainly her bosom heaved and her lips moved under the awe of his

flashing eyes and the grandeur of his indignant frown.

“Ah!” he resumed, pursuing his own thoughts with a sombre intensity of

passion that rendered him almost unconscious of her presence--“Ah!

I said to myself, ‘Oh, she believes that she has been so mourned and

missed that my soul would spring back to her false smile; that I could

be so base a slave to my senses as to pardon the traitress because her

face was fair enough to haunt my dreams. She dupes herself; she is no

necessity to my existence--I have wrenched it from her power years, long

years ago! I will show her, since again she deigns to remember me, that

I am not so old as to be grateful for the leavings of a heart.

“I will love another--I will be beloved. She shall not say with secret

triumph, ‘The old man dotes in rejecting me’”

“Darrell, Darrel--unjus--cruel kill me rather than talk thus!”

He heeded not her cry. His words rolled on in that wonderful, varying

music which, whether in tenderness or in wrath, gave to his voice a

magical power--fascinating, hushing, overmastering human souls.

“But--you have the triumph; see, I am still alone! I sought the world of

the young--the marriage mart of the Beautiful once more. Alas! if my eye

was captured for a moment, it was by something that reminded me of you.

I saw a faultless face, radiant with its virgin blush; moved to it,

I drew near-sighing, turned away; it was not you! I heard the silvery

laugh of a life fresh as an April morn. ‘Hark!’ I said, ‘is not that

the sweet mirth-note at which all my cares were dispelled? Listening,

I forgot my weight of years. Why? because listening, I remembered you.

‘Heed not the treacherous blush and the beguiling laugh,’ whispered

Prudence. ‘Seek in congenial mind a calm companion to thine own.’ Mind!

O frigid pedantry! Mind!--had not yours been a volume open to my eyes;

in every page, methought, some lovely poet-truth never revealed to human

sense before! No; you had killed to me all womanhood! Woo another!--wed

another! ‘Hush,’ I said, ‘it shall be. Eighteen years since we

parted--seeing her not, she remains eternally the same! Seeing her

again, the very change that time must have brought will cure. I saw

you--all the past rushed back in that stolen moment. I fled--never more

to dream that I can shake off the curse of memory--blent with each drop

of my blood--woven with each tissue-throbbing in each nerve-bone of my

bone, and flesh of my flesh--poison-root from which every thought buds

to wither--the curse to have loved and to have trusted you!”

“Merciful Heaven! can I bear this?” cried Caroline, clasping her hands

to her bosom. “And is my sin so great--is it so unpardonable? Oh, if in

a heart so noble, in a nature so great, mine was the unspeakable honour

to inspire an affection thus enduring, must it be only--only--as a

curse! Why can I not repair the past? You have not ceased to love me.

Call it hate--it is love still! And now, no barrier between our lives,

can I never, never again--never, now that I know I am less unworthy of

you by the very anguish I feel to have so stung you--can I never again

be the Caroline of old?”

“Ha, ha!” burst forth the unrelenting man, with a bitter laugh--“see the

real coarseness of a woman’s nature under all its fine-spun frippery!

Behold these delicate creatures, that we scarcely dare to woo! how

little they even comprehend the idolatry they inspire! The Caroline of

old! Lo, the virgin whose hand we touched with knightly homage, whose

first bashful kiss was hallowed as the gate of paradise, deserts

us--sells herself at the altar--sanctifies there her very infidelity to

us; and when years have passed, and a death has restored her freedom,

she comes to us as if she had never pillowed her head on another’s

bosom, and says ‘Can I not again be the Caroline of old?’ We men are

too rude to forgive the faithless. Where is the Caroline I loved?

YOU--are--my Lady Montfort! Look round. On these turfs, you, then a

child, played beside my children. They are dead, but less dead to me

than you. Never dreamed I then that a creature so fair would be other

than a child to my grave and matured existence. Then, if I glanced

towards your future, I felt no pang to picture you grown to

womanhood--another’s bride. My hearth had for years been widowed, I had

no thought of second nuptials. My son would live to enjoy my wealth, and

realise my cherished dreams--my son was snatched from me! Who alone

had the power to comfort?--who alone had the courage to steal into the

darkened room where I sate mourning? sure that in her voice there would

be consolation, and the sight of her sympathising tears would chide

away the bitterness of mine?--who but the Caroline of old! Ah, you are

weeping now. But Lady Montfort’s tears have no talisman to me! You were

then still a child--as a child, my soothing angel. A year or so more my

daughter, to whom all my pride of House--all my hope of race, had been

consigned--she whose happiness I valued so much more than my ambition,

that I had refused her hand to your young Lord of Montfort--puppet

that, stripped of the millinery of titles, was not worthy to replace a

doll!--my daughter, I folded her one night in my arms,--I implored her

to confide in me if ever she nursed a hope that I could further--knew a

grief that I could banish; and she promised--and she bent her forehead

to my blessing--and before daybreak she had fled with a man whose very

touch was dishonour and pollution, and was lost to me for ever.... Then,

when I came hither to vent at my father’s grave the indignant grief I

suffered not the world to see, you and your mother (she who professed

for me such loyal friendship, such ineffaceable gratitude), you two

came kindly to share my solitude--and then, then you were a child no

more!--and a sun that had never gilt my life brightened out of the face

of the Caroline of old!” He paused a moment, heeding not her bitter

weeping; he was rapt from the present hour itself by the excess of that

anguish which is to woe what ecstasy is to joy--swept along by the flood

of thoughts that had been pent within his breast through the solitary

days and haunted nights, which had made the long transition state from

his manhood’s noon to its gathering eve. And in that pause there came

from afar off a melodious, melancholy strain--softly, softly borne

over the cold blue waters--softly, softly through the sere autumnal

leaves--the music of the magic flute!

“Hark!” he said, “do you not remember? Look to that beech-tree yonder!

Summer clothed it then! Do you not remember! as under that tree we

stood--that same, same note came, musical as now, undulating with rise

and fall--came, as if to interpret, by a voice from fairyland, the

beating of my own mysterious heart. You had been pleading for pardon to

one less ungrateful--less perfidious--than my comforter proved herself.

I had listened to you, wondering why anger and wrong seemed banished

from the world; and I murmured, in answer, without conscious thought

of myself: ‘Happy the man whose faults your bright charity will

admonish--whose griefs your tenderness will chase away! But when, years

hence, children are born to yourself, spare me the one who shall most

resemble you, to replace the daughter whom I can only sincerely pardon

when something else can spring up to my desolate being--something that

I can cherish without the memory of falsehood and the dread of shame.’

Yes, as I ceased, came that music; and as it thrilled through the summer

air, I turned and met your eyes--turned and saw you blush--turned

and heard some faint faltering words drowning the music with diviner

sweetness; and suddenly I knew, as by a revelation, that the Child I had

fostered had grown the Woman I loved. My own soul was laid bare to me

by the flash of hope. Over the universe rushed light and colour! Oh, the

Caroline of old! What wonder that she became so fatally, so unspeakably

beloved! As some man in ancient story, banished from his native land, is

told by an oracle to seek a happier isle in undiscovered seas--freights

with his all a single bark--collects on his wandering altar the last

embers of his abandoned hearth-places beside it his exiled household

gods; so all that my life had left to me, hallowing and hallowed, I

stored in you.... I tore myself from the old native soil, the old hardy

skies. Through time’s wide ocean I saw but the promised golden isle.

Fables, fables!--lying oracle!--sunken vessel!--visionary isle! And life

to me had till then been so utterly without love!--had passed in such

hard labours, without a holyday of romance--all the fountains of the

unknown passion sealed till the spell struck the rock, and every wave,

every drop sparkled fresh to a single star. Yet my boyhood, like other

men’s, had dreamed of its Ideal. There at last that Ideal, come to life,

bloomed before me; there, under those beech-trees--the Caroline of old.

O wretched woman, now weeping at my side, well may you weep! Never can

earth give you back such love as you lost in mine.”

“I know it, I know it--fool that I was--miserable fool!”

“Ay, but comfort yourself--wilder and sadder folly in myself! Your

mother was right. ‘The vain child,’ she said, ‘knows not her own heart.

She is new to the world--has seen none of her own years. For your

sake, as for hers, I must insist on the experiment of absence. A

year’s ordeal--see if she is then of the same mind.’ I marvelled at her

coldness; proudly I submitted to her seasonings; fearlessly I confided

the result to you. Ah! how radiant was your smile, when, in the parting

hour, I said, ‘Summer and you will return again!’ In vain, on pretence

that the experiment should be complete, did your mother carry you

abroad, and exact from us both the solemn promise that not even a letter

should pass between us--that our troth, made thus conditional, should

be a secret to all--in vain, if meant to torture me with doubt. In my

creed, a doubt is itself a treason. How lovely grew the stern face of

Ambition!--how Fame seemed as a messenger from me to you! In the sound

of applause I said ‘They cannot shut out the air that will carry that

sound to her ears! All that I can win from honour shall be my marriage

gifts to my queenly bride.’ See that arrested pile--begun at my son’s

birth, stopped awhile at his death, recommenced on a statelier plan

when I thought of your footstep on its floors--your shadow on its walls.

Stopped now forever! Architects can build a palace; can they build

a home? But you--you--you, all the while--your smile on another’s

suit--your thoughts on another’s hearth!”

“Not so!--not so! Your image never forsook me. I was giddy, thoughtless,

dazzled, entangled; and I told you in the letter you returned to

me--told you that I had been deceived!”

“Patience--patience! Deceived! Do you imagine that I do not see all that

passed as in a magician’s glass? Caroline Montfort, you never loved

me; you never knew what love was. Thrown suddenly into the gay world,

intoxicated by the effect of your own beauty, my sombre figure gradually

faded dim--pale ghost indeed in the atmosphere of flowers and lustres,

rank with the breath of flatterers. Then came my lord the Marquess--a

cousin privileged to familiar intimacy to visit at will, to ride with

you, dance with you, sit side by side with you in quiet corners of

thronging ball-rooms, to call you ‘Caroline.’ Tut, tut--they are only

cousins, and cousins are as brothers and sisters in the affectionate

House of Vipont; and gossips talk, and young ladies envy--finest match

in all England is the pretty-faced Lord of Montfort! And your mother,

who had said, ‘Wait a year’ to Guy Darrell, must have dreamed of the

cousin, and schemed for his coronet, when she said it. And I was unseen,

and I must not write; and the absent are always in the wrong--when

cousins are present! And I hear your mother speak of me--hear the soft

sound of her damaging praises. ‘Another long speech from your clever

admirer! Don’t fancy he frets; that kind of man thinks of nothing but

blue-books and politics.’ And your cousin proposes, and you say with a

sigh, ‘No; I am bound to Guy Darrell’; and your mother says to my Lord,

‘Wait, and still come--as a cousin!’ And then, day by day, the sweet

Mrs. Lyndsay drops into your ear the hints that shall poison your heart.

Some fable is dressed to malign me; and you cry, ‘‘Tis not true; prove

it true, or I still keep my faith to Guy Darrell.’ Then comes the kind

compact--‘If the story be false, my cousin must go.’ ‘And if it be true,

you will be my own duteous child. Alas! your poor cousin is breaking his

heart. A lawyer of forty has a heart made of parchment!’ Aha! you were

entangled, and of course deceived! Your letter did not explain what was

the tale told to you. I care not a rush what it was. It is enough for me

to know that, if you had loved me, you would have loved me the more for

every tale that belied me. So the tale was credited, because a relief to

credit it. So the compact was kept--so the whole bargain hurried over

in elegant privacy-place of barter, an ambassador’s chapel. Bauble for

bauble--a jilt’s faith for a mannikin’s coronet. Four days before the

year of trial expired, ‘Only four days more!’ I exclaimed, drunk with

rapture. The journals lie before me. Three columns to Guy Darrell’s

speech last night; a column more to its effect on a senate, on an

empire; and two lines--two little lines--to the sentence that struck Guy

Darrell out of the world of men! ‘Marriage in high life.--Marquess

of Montfort-Caroline Lyndsay.’ And the sun did not fall from heaven!

Vulgarest of ends to the tritest of romances! In the gay world these

things happen every day. Young ladies are privileged to give hopes to

one man--their hands to another. ‘Is the sin so unpardonable?’ you ask,

with ingenuous simplicity. Lady Montfort, that depends! Reflect! What

was my life before I put it into your keeping? Barren of happiness, I

grant--saddened, solitary--to myself a thing of small value. But what

was that life to others?--a thing full of warm beneficence, of active

uses, of hardy powers fitted to noble ends! In paralysing that life

as it was to others, there may be sin wider and darker than the mere

infidelity to love. And now do you dare to ask, ‘Can I again be the

Caroline of old’?”

“I ask nothing--not even pardon,” said the miserable woman. “I might say

something to show where you misjudge me--something that might palliate;

but no, let it be.” Her accents were so drearily hopeless that Darrell

abruptly withdrew his eyes from her face, as if fearful that the sight

of her woe might weaken his resolve. She had turned mechanically

back. They walked on in gloomy silence side by side, away now from the

lake--back under the barbed thorn-tree-back by the moss-grown crag-back

by the hollow trunks, and over the fallen leaves of trees, that had

defied the storms of centuries, to drop, perhaps, brittle and sapless,

some quiet day when every wind is lulled.

The flute had ceased its music; the air had grown cold and piercing; the

little park was soon traversed; the gate came in sight, and the humble

vehicle without it. Then, involuntarily, both stopped; and on each there

came at once the consciousness that they were about to part--part, never

perhaps in this world to meet again; and, with all that had been said,

so much unspoken--their hearts so full of what, alas! their lips could

not speak.

“Lady Montfort,” at length said Darrell. At the sound of her name she

shivered.

“I have addressed you rudely--harshly--”

“No--no--”

“But that was the last exercise of a right which I now resign for ever.

I spoke to her who had once been Caroline Lyndsay; some gentler words

are due to the widow of Lord Montfort. Whatever the wrongs you have

inflicted on me--wrongs inexpiable--I recognise no less in your general

nature qualities that would render you, to one whom you really loved,

and had never deceived, the blessing I had once hoped you would prove to

me.”

She shook her head impatiently, piteously.

“I know that in an ill-assorted union, and amidst all the temptations

to which flattered beauty is exposed, your conduct has been without

reproach. Forget the old man whose thoughts should now be on his grave.”

“Hush, hush--have human mercy!”

“I withdraw and repent my injustice to your motives in the protection

you have given to the poor girl whom Lionel would wed; I thank you

for that protection,--though I refuse consent to my kinsman’s prayer.

Whatever her birth, I must be glad to know that she whom Lionel so loves

is safe from a wretch like Losely. More--one word more--wait--it is

hard for me to say it--be happy! I cannot pardon, but I can bless you.

Farewell for ever!” More overpoweringly crushed by his tenderness than

his wrath, before Caroline could recover the vehemence of her sobs,

he had ceased--he was gone--lost in the close gloom of a neighbouring

thicket, his hurried headlong path betrayed by the rustle of mournful

boughs swinging back with their withered leaves.

CHAPTER II.

RETROSPECT.

THERE IS A PLACE AT WHICH THREE ROADS MEET, SACRED TO THAT

MYSTERIOUS GODDESS CALLED DIANA ON EARTH, LUNA, OR THE MOON, IN

HEAVEN, OR HECATE IN THE INFERNAL REGIONS. AT THIS PLACE PAUSE THE

VIRGINS PERMITTED TO TAKE THEIR CHOICE OF THE THREE ROADS. FEW GIVE

THEIR PREFERENCE TO THAT WHICH IS VOWED TO THE GODDESS IN HER NAME

OF DIANA: THAT ROAD, COLD AND BARREN, IS CLOTHED BY NO ROSES AND

MYRTLES. ROSES AND MYRTLES VEIL THE ENTRANCE TO BOTH THE OTHERS,

AND IN BOTH THE OTHERS HYMEN HAS MUCH THE SAME GAY-LOOKING TEMPLES.

BUT WHICH OF THOSE TWO LEADS TO THE CELESTIAL LUNA, OR WHICH OF THEM

CONDUCTS TO THE INFERNAL HECATE, NOT ONE NYMPH IN FIFTY DIVINES. IF

THY HEART SHOULD MISGIVE THEE, O NYMPH!--IF, THOUGH CLOUD VEIL THE

PATH TO THE MOON, AND SUNSHINE GILD THAT TO PALE HECATETHINE

INSTINCT RECOILS FROM THE SUNSHINE, WHILE THOU DAREST NOT ADVENTURE

THE CLOUD--THOU HAST STILL A CHOICE LEFT--THOU HAST STILL THE SAFE

ROAD OF DIANA. HECATE, O NYMPH, IS THE GODDESS OF GHOSTS. IF THOU

TAKEST HER PATH, LOOK NOT BACK, FOR THE GHOSTS ARE BEHIND THEE...

When we slowly recover from the tumult and passion of some violent

distress, a peculiar stillness falls upon the Mind, and the atmosphere

around it becomes in that stillness appallingly clear. We knew not,

while wrestling with our woe, the extent of its ravages. As a land the

day after a flood, as a field the day after a battle, is the sight

of our own sorrow, when we no longer have to steer its raging, but to

endure the destruction it has made. Distinct before Caroline Montfort’s

vision stretched the waste of her misery--the Past, the Present, the

Future, all seemed to blend in one single Desolation. A strange thing it

is how all time will converge itself, as it were, into the burning-glass

of a moment! There runs a popular superstition that it is thus, in the

instant of death; that our whole existence crowds itself on the glazing

eye--a panorama of all we have done on earth just as the soul restores

to the earth its garment. Certes, there are hours in our being, long

before the last and dreaded one, when this phenomenon comes to warn

us that, if memory were always active, time would be never gone.

Rose before this woman--who, whatever the justice of Darrell’s bitter

reproaches, had a nature lovely enough to justify his anguish at her

loss--the image of herself at that turning point of life, when the

morning mists are dimmed on our way, yet when a path chosen is a fate

decided. Yes; she had excuses, not urged to the judge who sentenced, nor

estimated to their full extent by the stern equity with which, amidst

suffering and wrath, he had desired to weigh her cause.

Caroline’s mother, Mrs. Lindsay, was one of those parents who acquire

an extraordinary influence over their children by the union of caressing

manners with obstinate resolves. She never lost control of her temper

nor hold on her object. A slight, delicate, languid creature too, who

would be sure to go into a consumption if unkindly crossed. With much

strong common sense, much knowledge of human nature, egotistical,

worldly, scheming, heartless, but withal so pleasing, so gentle, so

bewitchingly despotic, that it was like living with an electrobiologist,

who unnerves you by a look to knock you down with a feather. In only one

great purpose of her life had Mrs. Lyndsay failed. When Darrell, rich

by the rewards of his profession and the bequest of his namesake, had

entered Parliament, and risen into that repute which confers solid and

brilliant station, Mrs. Lyndsay conceived the idea of appropriating to

herself his honours and his wealth by a second Hymen. Having so long

been domesticated in his house during the life of Mrs. Darrell, an

intimacy as of near relations had been established between them. Her

soft manners attached to her his children; and after Mrs. Darrell’s

death rendered it necessary that she should find a home of her own, she

had an excuse, in Matilda’s affection for her and for Caroline, to be

more frequently before Darrell’s eyes, and consulted by him yet more

frequently, than when actually a resident in his house. To her Darrell

confided the proposal which had been made to him by the old Marchioness

of Montfort, for an alliance between her young grandson and his sole

surviving child. Wealthy as was the House of Vipont, it was amongst

its traditional maxims that wealth wastes if not perpetually recruited.

Every third generation, at farthest, it was the duty of that house to

marry an heiress. Darrell’s daughter, just seventeen, not yet brought

out, would be an heiress, if he pleased to make her so, second to

none whom the research of the Marchioness had detected within the

drawing-rooms and nurseries of the three kingdoms. The proposal of the

venerable peeress was at first very naturally gratifying to Darrell. It

was an euthanasia for the old knightly race to die into a House that

was an institution in the empire, and revive phoenix-like in a line of

peers, who might perpetuate the name of the heiress whose quarterings

they would annex to their own, and sign themselves “Darrell Montfort.”

Said Darrell inly, “On the whole, such a marriage would have pleased

my poor father.” It did not please Mrs. Lyndsay. The bulk of Darrell’s

fortune thus settled away, he himself would be a very different match

for Mrs. Lyndsay; nor was it to her convenience that Matilda should be

thus hastily disposed of, and the strongest link of connection between

Fulham and Carlton Gardens severed. Mrs. Lyndsay had one golden rule,

which I respectfully point out to ladies who covet popularity and power:

she never spoke ill of any one whom she wished to injure. She did not,

therefore, speak ill of the Marquess to Darrell, but she so praised him

that her praise alarmed. She ought to know the young peer well; she was

a good deal with the Marchioness, who liked her pretty manners. Till

then, Darrell had only noticed this green Head of the Viponts as a

neat-looking Head, too modest to open its lips. But he now examined the

Head with anxious deliberation, and finding it of the poorest possible

kind of wood, with a heart to match, Guy Darrell had the audacity to

reject, though with great courtesy, the idea of grafting the last plant

of his line on a stem so pithless. Though, like men who are at once very

affectionate and very busy, he saw few faults in his children, or indeed

in any one he really loved, till the fault was forced on him, he could

not but be aware that Matilda’s sole chance of becoming a happy and safe

wife was in uniting herself with such a husband as would at once win her

confidence and command her respect. He trembled when he thought of her

as the wife of a man whose rank would expose her to all fashionable

temptations, and whose character would leave her without a guide or

protector.

The Marquess, who obeyed his grandmother from habit, and who had

lethargically sanctioned her proposals to Darrell, evinced the liveliest

emotion he had ever yet betrayed when he learned that his hand was

rejected. And if it were possible for him to carry so small a sentiment

aspique into so large a passion as hate, from that moment he aggrandised

his nature into hatred. He would have given half his lands to have

spited Guy Darrell. Mrs. Lyndsay took care to be at hand to console him,

and the Marchioness was grateful to her for taking that trouble some

task upon herself. And in the course of their conversation Mrs. Lyndsay

contrived to drop into his mind the egg of a project which she took a

later occasion to hatch under her plumes of down. “There is but one

kind of wife, my dear Montfort, who could increase your importance: you

should marry a beauty; next to royalty ranks beauty.” The Head nodded,

and seemed to ruminate for some moments, and then _apropos des bottes_,

it let fall this mysterious monosyllable, “Shoes.” By what process of

ratiocination the Head had thus arrived at the feet, it is not for me to

conjecture. All I know is that, from that moment, Mrs. Lyndsay bestowed

as much thought upon Caroline’s chaussure as if, like Cinderella,

Caroline’s whole destiny in this world hung upon her slipper. With the

feelings and the schemes that have been thus intimated, this sensible

lady’s mortification may well be conceived when she was startled by

Darrell’s proposal, not to herself, but to her daughter. Her egotism was

profoundly shocked, her worldliness cruelly thwarted. With Guy Darrell

for her own spouse, the Marquess of Montfort for her daughter’s, Mrs.

Lyndsay would have been indeed a considerable personage in the world.

But to lose Darrell for herself, and the Marquess altogether--the idea

was intolerable! Yet, since to have refused at once for her portionless

daughter a man in so high a position, and to whom her own obligations

were so great, was impossible, she adopted a policy, admirable for the

craft of its conception and the dexterity of its execution. In exacting

the condition of a year’s delay, she made her motives appear so loftily

disinterested, so magnanimously friendly! She could never forgive

herself if he--he--the greatest, the best of men, was again rendered

unhappy in marriage by her imprudence (hers, who owed to him her

all!)--yes, imprudent indeed, to have thrown right in his way a pretty

coquettish girl (“for Caroline is coquettish, Mr. Darrell; most girls so

pretty are at that silly age”). In short, she carried her point against

all the eloquence Darrell could employ, and covered her designs by the

semblance of the most delicate scruples, and the sacrifice of worldly

advantages to the prudence which belongs to high principle and

affectionate caution.

And what were Caroline’s real sentiments for Guy Darrell? She understood

them-now on looking back. She saw herself as she was then--as she had

stood under the beech-tree, when the heavenly pity that was at the core

of her nature--when the venerating, grateful affection that had grown

with her growth made her yearn to be a solace and a joy to that grand

and solitary life. Love him! Oh certainly she loved him, devotedly,

fondly; but it was with the love of a child. She had not awakened then

to the love of woman. Removed from his presence, suddenly thrown into

the great world--yes, Darrell had sketched the picture with a stern, but

not altogether an untruthful hand. He had not, however, fairly estimated

the inevitable influence which a mother such as Mrs. Lyndsay would

exercise over a girl so wholly inexperienced--so guileless, so

unsuspecting, and so filially devoted. He could not appreciate--no man

can--the mightiness of female cunning. He could not see how mesh upon

mesh the soft Mrs. Lyndsay (pretty woman with pretty manners) wove her

web round the “cousins,” until Caroline, who at first had thought of the

silent fair-haired young man only as the Head of her House, pleased

with attentions that kept aloof admirers of whom she thought Guy Darrell

might be more reasonably jealous, was appalled to hear her mother

tell her that she was either the most heartless of coquettes, or poor

Montfort was the most ill-used of men. But at this time Jasper Losely,

under his name of Hammond, brought his wife from the French town at

which they had been residing, since their marriage, to see Mrs.

Lyndsay and Caroline at Paris, and implore their influence to obtain a

reconciliation with her father. Matilda soon learned from Mrs. Lyndsay,

who affected the most enchanting candour, the nature of the engagement

between Caroline and Darrell. She communicated the information to

Jasper, who viewed it with very natural alarm. By reconciliation with

Guy Darrell, Jasper understood something solid and practical--not a mere

sentimental pardon, added to that paltry stipend of L700 a-year which

he had just obtained--but the restoration to all her rights and

expectancies of the heiress he had supposed himself to marry. He had

by no means relinquished the belief that sooner or later Darrell would

listen to the Voice of Nature, and settle all his fortune on his only

child. But then for the Voice of Nature to have fair play, it was clear

that there should be no other child to plead for. And if Darrell were

to marry again and to have sons, what a dreadful dilemma it would be for

the Voice of Nature! Jasper was not long in discovering that Caroline’s

engagement was not less unwelcome to Mrs. Lyndsay than to himself,

and that she was disposed to connive at any means by which it might

be annulled. Matilda was first employed to weaken the bond it was so

desirable to sever. Matilda did not reproach, but she wept. She was sure

now that she should he an outcast--her children beggars. Mrs. Lyndsay

worked up this complaint with adroitest skill. Was Caroline sure that

it was not most dishonourable--most treacherous--to rob her own earliest

friend of the patrimony that would otherwise return to Matilda

with Darrell’s pardon? This idea became exquisitely painful to the

high-spirited Caroline, but it could not counterpoise the conviction of

the greater pain she should occasion to the breast that so confided in

her faith, if that faith were broken. Step by step the intrigue against

the absent one proceeded. Mrs. Lyndsay thoroughly understood the art

of insinuating doubts. Guy Darrell, a man of the world, a cold-blooded

lawyer, a busy politician, he break his heart for a girl! No, it was

only the young, and especially the young when not remarkably clever, who

broke their hearts for such trifles. Montfort, indeed--there was a man

whose heart could be broken!--whose happiness could be blasted! Dear

Guy Darrell had been only moved, in his proposals, by generosity.

“Something, my dear child, in your own artless words and manner, that

made him fancy he had won your affections unknown to yourself!--an idea

that he was bound as a gentleman to speak out! Just like him. He has

that spirit of chivalry. But my belief is, that he is quite aware by

this time how foolish such a marriage would be, and would thank you

heartily if, at the year’s end, he found himself free, and you happily

disposed of elsewhere,” &c., &c. The drama advanced. Mrs. Lyndsay

evinced decided pulmonary symptoms. Her hectic cough returned; she could

not sleep; her days were numbered--a secret grief. Caroline implored

frankness, and, clasped to her mother’s bosom, and compassionately

bedewed with tears, those hints were dropped into her ear which, though

so worded as to show the most indulgent forbearance to Darrell, and

rather as if in compassion for his weakness than in abhorrence of his

perfidy, made Caroline start with the indignation of revolted purity and

outraged pride. “Were this true, all would be indeed at an end between

us! But it is not true. Let it be proved.”

“But, my dear, dear child, I could not stir in a matter so delicate.

I could not aid in breaking off a marriage so much to your worldly

advantage, unless you could promise that, in rejecting Mr. Darrell, you

would accept your cousin. In my wretched state of health, the anxious

thought of leaving you in the world literally penniless would kill me at

once.”

“Oh, if Guy Darrell be false (but that is impossible)! do with me all

you will; to obey and please you would be the only comfort left to me.”

Thus was all prepared for the final denouement. Mrs. Lyndsay had not

gone so far without a reliance on the means to accomplish her object,

and for these means she had stooped to be indebted to the more practical

villany of Matilda’s husband.

Jasper, in this visit to Paris, had first formed the connection which

completed the wickedness of his perverted nature, with that dark

adventuress who has flitted shadow-like through part of this varying

narrative. Gabrielle Desmarets was then in her youth, notorious only for

the ruin she had inflicted on admiring victims, and the superb luxury

with which she rioted on their plunder. Captivated by the personal

advantages for which Jasper then was preeminently conspicuous, she

willingly associated her fortunes with his own. Gabrielle was one of

those incarnations of evil which no city but Paris can accomplish

with the same epicurean refinement, and vitiate into the same cynical

corruption. She was exceedingly witty, sharply astute, capable of acting

any part, carrying out any plot; and when it pleased her to simulate the

decorous and immaculate gentlewoman, she might have deceived the most

experienced roue. Jasper presented this Artiste to his unsuspecting

wife as a widow of rank, who was about to visit London, and who might be

enabled to see Mr. Darrell, and intercede on their behalf. Matilda fell

readily into the snare; the Frenchwoman went to London, with assumed

name and title, and with servants completely in her confidence. And such

(as the reader knows already) was that eloquent baroness who had

pleaded to Darrell the cause of his penitent daughter! No doubt the wily

Parisienne had calculated on the effect of her arts and her charms, to

decoy him into at least a passing forgetfulness of his faith to another.

But if she could not succeed there, it might equally achieve the object

in view to obtain the credit of that success. Accordingly, she wrote to

one of her friends at Paris letters stating that she had found a very

rich admirer in a celebrated English statesman, to whom she was indebted

for her establishment, &c.; and alluding, in very witty and satirical

terms, to his matrimonial engagement with the young English beauty at

Paris, who was then creating such a sensation--an engagement of

which she represented her admirer to be heartily sick, and extremely

repentant. Without mentioning names, her descriptions were unmistakable.

Jasper, of course, presented to Mrs. Lyndsay those letters (which, he

said, the person to whom they were addressed had communicated to one of

her own gay friends), and suggested that their evidence against Darrell

would be complete in Miss Lyndsay’s eyes if some one, whose veracity

Caroline could not dispute, could corroborate the assertions of the

letters; it would be quite enough to do so if Mr. Darrell were even

seen entering or leaving the house of a person whose mode of life was

so notorious. Mrs. Lyndsay, who, with her consummate craft, saved her

dignity by affected blindness to the artifices at which she connived,

declared that, in a matter of inquiry which involved the private

character of a man so eminent, and to whom she owed so much, she would

not trust his name to the gossip of others. She herself would go to

London. She knew that odious, but too fascinating, Gabrielle by

sight (as every one did who went to the opera or drove in the Bois de

Boulogne). Jasper undertook that the Parisienne should show herself at

her balcony at a certain day at a certain hour, and that at that hour

Darrell should call and be admitted; and Mrs. Lyndsay allowed that that

evidence would suffice. Sensible of the power over Caroline that she

would derive if, with her habits of languor and her delicate health, she

could say that she had undertaken such a journey to be convinced with

her own eyes of a charge which, if true, would influence her daughter’s

conduct and destiny--Mrs. Lyndsay did go to London--did see Gabrielle

Desmarets at her balcony--did see Darrell enter the house; and on her

return to Paris did, armed with this testimony, and with the letters

that led to it, so work upon her daughter’s mind, that the next day the

Marquess of Montfort was accepted. But the year of Darrell’s probation

was nearly expired; all delay would be dangerous--all explanations would

be fatal, and must be forestalled. Nor could a long courtship be

kept secret; Darrell might hear of it, and come over at once; and the

Marquess’s ambitious kinsfolk would not fail to interfere if the news of

his intended marriage with a portionless cousin reached their ears. Lord

Montfort, who was awed by Carr, and extremely afraid of his grandmother,

was not less anxious for secrecy and expedition than Mrs. Lyndsay

herself.

Thus, then, Mrs. Lyndsay triumphed, and while her daughter was still

under the influence of an excitement which clouded her judgment, and

stung her into rashness of action as an escape from the torment of

reflection--thus were solemnised Caroline’s unhappy and splendid

nuptials. The Marquess hired a villa in the delightful precincts of

Fontainebleau for his honeymoon; that moon was still young when the

Marquess said to himself, “I don’t find that it produces honey.” When he

had first been attracted towards Caroline, she was all life and joy--too

much of a child to pine for Darrell’s absence, while credulously

confident of their future union--her spirits naturally wild and lively,

and the world, opening at her feet, so novel and so brilliant. This

fresh gaiety had amused the Marquess--he felt cheated when he found it

gone. Caroline might be gentle, docile, submissive; but those

virtues, though of higher quality than glad animal spirits, are not so

entertaining. His own exceeding sterility of mind and feeling was not

apparent till in the _tetes-a-tetes_ of conjugal life. A good-looking

young man, with a thoroughbred air, who rides well, dances well, and

holds his tongue, may, in all mixed societies, pass for a shy youth of

sensitive genius! But when he is your companion for life, and all to

yourself, and you find that, when he does talk, he has neither an idea

nor a sentiment--alas! alas for you, young bride, if you have ever known

the charm of intellect, or the sweetness of sympathy. But it was not for

Caroline to complain; struggling against her own weight of sorrow, she

had no immediate perception of her companion’s vapidity. It was he,

poor man, who complained. He just detected enough of her superiority of

intelligence to suspect that he was humiliated, while sure that he was

bored. An incident converted his growing indifference into permanent

dislike not many days after their marriage.

Lord Montfort, sauntering into Caroline’s room, found her insensible

on the floor--an open letter by her side. Summoning her maid to her

assistance, he took the marital privilege of reading the letter which

had apparently caused her swoon. It was from Matilda, and written in

a state of maddened excitement. Matilda had little enough of what is

called heart; but she had an intense selfishness, which, in point of

suffering, supplies the place of a heart. It was not because she could

not feel for the wrongs of another that she could not feel anguish for

her own. Arabella was avenged. The cold-blooded snake that had stung

her met the fang of the cobra-capella. Matilda had learned from some

anonymous correspondent (probably a rival of Gabrielle’s) of Jasper’s

liaison with that adventuress. But half recovered from her confinement,

she had risen from her bed--hurried to Paris (for the pleasures of which

her husband had left her)--seen this wretched Gabrielle--recognised in

her the false baroness to whom Jasper had presented her--to whom, by

Jasper’s dictation, she had written such affectionate letters--whom she

had employed to plead her cause to her father;--seen Gabrielle--seen

her at her own luxurious apartment, Jasper at home there--burst into

vehement wrath-roused up the cobra-capella; and on declaring she would

separate from her husband, go back to her father, tell her wrongs,

appeal to his mercy, Gabrielle calmly replied: “Do so, and I will take

care that your father shall know that your plea for his pardon through

Madame la Baronne was a scheme to blacken his name, and to frustrate

his marriage. Do not think that he will suppose you did not connive at

a project so sly; he must know you too well, pretty innocent.” No match

for Gabrielle Desmarets, Matilda flung from the house, leaving Jasper

whistling an air from Figaro; returned alone to the French town from

which she now wrote to Caroline, pouring out her wrongs, and, without

seeming sensible that Caroline had been wronged too, expressing her fear

that her father might believe her an accomplice in Jasper’s plot, and

refuse her the means to live apart from the wretch; upon whom she heaped

every epithet that just indignation could suggest to a feeble mind. The

latter part of the letter, blurred and blotted, was incoherent, almost

raving. In fact Matilda was then seized by the mortal illness which

hurried her to her grave. To the Marquess much of this letter was

extremely uninteresting--much of it quite incomprehensible. He could not

see why it should so overpoweringly affect his wife. Only those passages

which denounced a scheme to frustrate some marriage meditated by Mr.

Darrell made him somewhat uneasy, and appeared to him to demand an

explanation. But Caroline, in the anguish to which she awakened,

forestalled his inquiries. To her but two thoughts were present--how she

had wronged Darrell--how ungrateful and faithless she must seem to him;

and in the impulse of her remorse, and in the childlike candour of her

soul, artlessly, ingenuously, she poured out her feelings to the husband

she had taken as counsellor and guide, as if seeking to guard all her

sorrow for the past from a sentiment that might render her less loyal

to the responsibilities which linked her future to another’s. A man of

sense would have hailed in so noble a confidence (however it might have

pained him for the time) a guarantee for the happiness and security of

his whole existence. He would have seen how distinct from that ardent

love which in Caroline’s new relation of life would have bordered upon

guilt and been cautious as guilt against disclosing its secrets, was the

infantine, venerating affection she had felt for a man so far removed

from her by years and the development of intellect--an affection which

a young husband, trusted with every thought, every feeling, might

reasonably hope to eclipse. A little forbearance, a little of delicate

and generous tenderness, at that moment, would have secured to Lord

Montfort the warm devotion of a grateful heart, in which the grief that

overflowed was not for the irreplaceable loss of an earlier lover, but

the repentant shame for wrong and treachery to a confiding friend.

But it is in vain to ask from any man that which is not in him! Lord

Montfort listened with sullen, stolid displeasure. That Caroline should

feel the slightest pain at any cause which had cancelled her engagement

to that odious Darrell, and had raised her to the rank of his

Marchioness, was a crime in his eyes never to be expiated. He

considered, not without reason, that Mrs. Lyndsay had shamefully

deceived him; and fully believed that she had been an accomplice with

Jasper in that artifice which he was quite gentleman enough to consider

placed those who had planned it out of the pale of his acquaintance. And

when Caroline, who had been weeping too vehemently to read her lord’s

countenance, came to a close, Lord Montfort took up his hat and said: “I

beg never to hear again of this lawyer and his very disreputable family

connections. As you say, you and your mother have behaved very ill to

him; but you don’t seem to understand that you have behaved much worse

to me. As to condescending to write to him, and enter into explanations

how you came to be Lady Montfort, it would be so lowering to me that I

would never forgive it--never. I would just as soon that you run away

at once;--sooner. As for Mrs. Lyndsay, I shall forbid her entering my

house. When you have done crying, order your things to be packed up. I

shall return to England to-morrow.”

That was perhaps the longest speech Lord Montfort ever addressed to his

wife; perhaps it was also the rudest. From that time he regarded her

as some Spaniard of ancient days might regard a guest on whom he was

compelled to bestow the rights of hospitality--to whom he gave a seat at

his board, a chair at his hearth, but for whom he entertained a profound

aversion, and kept at invincible distance, with all the ceremony of

dignified dislike. Once only during her wedded life Caroline again saw

Darrell. It was immediately on her return to England, and little more

than a month after her marriage. It was the day on which Parliament had

been prorogued preparatory to its dissolution--the last Parliament of

which Guy Darrell was a member. Lady Montfort’s carriage was detained in

the throng with which the ceremonial had filled the streets, and Darrell

passed it on horseback. It was but one look in that one moment; and the

look never ceased to haunt her--a look of such stern disdain, but also

of such deep despair. No language can exaggerate the eloquence which

there is in a human countenance, when a great and tortured spirit speaks

out from it accusingly to a soul that comprehends. The crushed heart,

the ravaged existence, were bared before her in that glance, as clearly

as to a wanderer through the night are the rents of the precipice in the

flash of the lightning. So they encountered--so, without a word, they

parted. To him that moment decided the flight from active life to which

his hopeless thoughts had of late been wooing the jaded, weary man. In

safety to his very conscience, he would not risk the certainty thus

to encounter one whom it convulsed his whole being to remember was

another’s wife. In that highest and narrowest sphere of the great London

world to which Guy Darrell’s political distinction condemned his social

life, it was impossible but that he should be brought frequently into

collision with Lord Montfort, the Head of a House with which Darrell

himself was connected--the most powerful patrician of the party of which

Darrell was so conspicuous a chief. Could he escape Lady Montfort’s

presence, her name at least would be continually in his ears. From that

fatal beauty he could no more hide than from the sun.

This thought, and the terror it occasioned him, completed his resolve on

the instant. The next day he was in the groves of Fawley, and amazed

the world by dating from that retreat a farewell address to his

constituents. A few days after, the news of his daughter’s death

reached him; and as that event became known it accounted to many for his

retirement for a while from public life.

But to Caroline Montfort, and to her alone, the secret of a career

blasted, a fame renounced, was unmistakably revealed. For a time she was

tortured, in every society she entered, by speculation and gossip which

brought before her the memory of his genius, the accusing sound of his

name. But him who withdraws from the world, the world soon forgets; and

by degrees Darrell became as little spoken of as the dead.

Mrs. Lyndsay had never, during her schemes on Lord Montfort, abandoned

her own original design on Darrell. And when, to her infinite amaze and

mortification, Lord Montfort, before the first month of his marriage

expired, took care, in the fewest possible words, to dispel her dream of

governing the House, and residing in the houses of Vipont, as the lawful

agent during the life-long minority to which she had condemned both the

submissive Caroline and the lethargic Marquess, she hastened by letter

to exculpate herself to Darrell--laid, of course, all the blame on

Caroline. Alas! had not she always warned him that Caroline was not

worthy of him?--him, the greatest, the best of men, &c., &c. Darrell

replied by a single cut of his trenchant sarcasm--sarcasm which shore

through her cushion of down and her veil of gauze like the sword of

Saladin. The old Marchioness turned her back upon Mrs. Lyndsay. Lady

Selina was crushingly civil. The pretty woman with pretty manners, no

better off for all the misery she had occasioned, went to Rome, caught

cold, and having no one to nurse her as Caroline had done, fell at

last into a real consumption, and faded out of the world elegantly and

spitefully, as fades a rose that still leaves its thorns behind it.

Caroline’s nature grew developed and exalted by the responsibilities she

had accepted, and by the purity of her grief. She submitted, as a just

retribution, to the solitude and humiliation of her wedded lot; she

earnestly, virtuously strove to banish from her heart every sentiment

that could recall to her more of Darrell than the remorse of having

darkened a life that had been to her childhood so benignant, and to her

youth so confiding. As we have seen her, at the mention of Darrell’s

name--at the allusion to his griefs--fly to the side of her ungenial

lord, though he was to her but as the owner of the name she bore,--so it

was the saving impulse of a delicate, watchful conscience that kept her

as honest in thought as she was irreproachable in conduct. But vainly,

in summoning her intellect to the relief of her heart--vainly had she

sought to find in the world friendships, companionships, that might

eclipse the memory of the mind so lofty in its antique mould--so tender

in its depths of unsuspected sweetness--which had been withdrawn

from her existence before she could fully comprehend its rarity, or

appreciate its worth.

At last she became free once more; and then she had dared thoroughly to

examine into her own heart, and into the nature of that hold which

the image of Darrell still retained on its remembrances. And precisely

because she was convinced that she had succeeded in preserving her old

childish affection for him free from the growth into that warm love

which would have been guilt if so encouraged, she felt the more free to

volunteer the atonement which might permit her to dedicate herself to

his remaining years. Thus, one day, after a conversation with Alban

Morley, in which Alban had spoken of Darrell as the friend, almost the

virtual guardian, of her infancy; and, alluding to a few lines just

received from him, brought vividly before Caroline the picture of

Darrell’s melancholy wanderings and blighted life,--thus had she, on the

impulse of the moment, written the letter which had reached Darrell at

Malta. In it she referred but indirectly to the deceit that had been

practised on herself--far too delicate to retail a scandal which she

felt to be an insult to his dignity, in which, too, the deceiving

parties were his daughter’s husband and her own mother. No doubt every

true woman can understand why she thus wrote to Darrell, and every true

man can equally comprehend why that letter failed in its object, and

was returned to her in scorn. Hers was the yearning of meek, passionless

affection, and his the rebuke of sensitive, embittered indignant love.

But now, as all her past, with its interior life, glided before her, by

a grief the most intolerable she had yet known, the woman became aware

that it was no longer penitence for the injured friend--it was despair

for the lover she had lost. In that stormy interview, out of all the

confused and struggling elements of her life--long self-reproach,

LOVE--the love of woman--had flashed suddenly, luminously, as the love

of youth at first sight. Strange--but the very disparity of years seemed

gone! She, the matured, sorrowful woman, was so much nearer to the man,

still young in heart and little changed in person, than the gay girl

of seventeen had been to the grave friend of forty! Strange, but those

vehement reproaches had wakened emotions deeper in the core of the wild

mortal breast than all that early chivalrous homage which had exalted

her into the ideal of dreaming poets. Strange, strange, strange! But

where there is nothing strange, THERE--is there ever love?

And with this revelation of her own altered heart, came the clearer

and fresher insight into the nature and character of the man she

loved. Hitherto she had recognised but his virtues--now she beheld his

failings! beholding them as if virtues, loved him more; and, loving him,

more despaired. She recognised that all-pervading indomitable pride,

which, interwoven with his sense of honour, became relentless as it was

unrevengeful. She comprehended now that, the more he loved her, the

less he would forgive; and, recalling the unexpected gentleness of his

farewell words, she felt that in his promised blessing lay the sentence

that annihilated every hope.

CHAPTER III.

WHATEVER THE NUMBER OF A MAN’S FRIENDS, THERE WILL BE TIMES IN HIS

LIFE WHEN HE HAS ONE TOO FEW; BUT IF HE HAS ONLY ONE ENEMY, HE IS

LUCKY INDEED IF HE HAS NOT ONE TOO MANY.

A cold night; sharp frost; winter set in. The shutters are closed, the

curtains drawn, the fire burns clear, and the lights are softly shaded

in Alban Morley’s drawing-room.

The old bachelor is at home again. He had returned that day; sent

to Lionel to come to him; and Lionel had already told him what had

transpired in his absence--from the identification of Waife with William

Losely, to Lady Montfort’s visit to Fawley, which had taken place two

days before, and of which she had informed Lionel by a few hasty lines,

stating her inability to soften Mr. Darrell’s objections to the alliance

between Lionel and Sophy; severely blaming herself that those objections

had not more forcibly presented themselves to her own mind, and

concluding with expressions of sympathy, and appeals to fortitude, in

which, however brief, the exquisite kindness of her nature so diffused

its charm, that the soft words soothed insensibly, like those sounds

which in Nature itself do soothe us we know not why.

The poor Colonel found himself in the midst of painful subjects. Though

he had no very keen sympathy for the sorrows of lovers, and no credulous

faith in everlasting attachments, Lionel’s portraiture of the young

girl, who formed so mysterious a link between the two men who, in

varying ways, had touched the finest springs in his own heart, compelled

a compassionate and chivalrous interest, and he was deeply impressed by

the quiet of Lionel’s dejection. The young man uttered no complaints of

the inflexibility with which Darrell had destroyed his elysium. He bowed

to the will with which it was in vain to argue, and which it would have

been a criminal ingratitude to defy. But his youth seemed withered up;

down-eyed and listless, he sank into that stupor of despondency which so

drearily simulates the calm of resignation.

“I have but one wish now,” said he, “and that is to change at once into

some regiment on active service. I do not talk of courting danger

and seeking death. That would be either a senseless commonplace, or a

threat, as it were, to Heaven! But I need some vehemence of action--some

positive and irresistible call upon honour or duty that may force me

to contend against this strange heaviness that settles down on my whole

life. Therefore, I entreat you so to arrange for me, and break it to Mr.

Darrell in such terms as may not needlessly pain him by the obtrusion

of my sufferings. For, while I know him well enough to be convinced that

nothing could move him from resolves in which he had entrenched, as in a

citadel, his pride or his creed of honour, I am sure that he would take

into his own heart all the grief which those resolves occasioned to

another’s.”

“You do him justice there,” cried Alban; “you are a noble fellow to

understand him so well! Sir, you have in you the stuff that makes

English gentlemen such generous soldiers.”

“Action, action, action,” exclaimed Lionel. “Strife, strife! No other

chance of cure. Rest is so crushing, solitude so dismal.”

Lo! how contrasted the effect of a similar cause of grief at different

stages of life! Chase the first day-dreams of our youth, and we cry,

“Action--Strife!” In that cry, unconsciously to ourselves, HOPE speaks

and proffers worlds of emotion not yet exhausted. Disperse the last

golden illusion in which the image of happiness cheats our experienced

manhood, and HOPE is silent; she has no more worlds to offer--unless,

indeed, she drop her earthly attributes, change her less solemn name,

and float far out of sight as “FAITH!”

Alban made no immediate reply to Lionel; but, seating himself more

comfortably in his chair--planting his feet still more at ease upon his

fender--the kindly Man of the World silently revolved all the possible

means by which Darrell might yet be softened and Lionel rendered happy.

His reflections dismayed him. “Was there ever such untoward luck,” he

said at last, and peevishly, “that out of the whole world you should

fall in love with the very girl against whom Darrell’s feelings

(prejudices if you please) must be mailed in adamant! Convinced, and

apparently with every reason, that she is not his daughter’s child, but,

however innocently, an impostor, how can he receive her as his young

kinsman’s bride? How can we expect it?”

“But,” said Lionel, “if, on farther investigation, she prove to be his

daughter’s child--the sole surviving representative of his line and

name?”

“His name! No! Of the name of Losely--the name of that turbulent

sharper, who may yet die on the gibbet--of that poor, dear, lovable

rascal Willy, who was goose enough to get himself transported for

robbery!--a felon’s grandchild the representative of Darrell’s line!

But how on earth came Lady Montfort to favour so wild a project, and

encourage you to share in it?--she who ought to have known Darrell

better?”

“Alas! she saw but Sophy’s exquisite, simple virtues, and inborn grace;

and, believing her claim to Darrell’s lineage, Lady Montfort thought

but of the joy and blessing one so good and so loving might bring to

his joyless hearth. She was not thinking of morbid pride and mouldering

ancestors, but of soothing charities and loving ties. And Lady Montfort,

I now suspect, in her scheme for our happiness--for Darrell’s--had an

interest which involved her own!”

“Her own!”

“Yes; I see it all now.”

“See what? you puzzle me.”

“I told you that Darrell, in his letter to me, wrote with great

bitterness of Lady Montfort.”

“Very natural that he should. Who would not resent such interference?”

“Listen. I told you that, at his own command, I sent to her that letter;

that she, on receiving it, went herself to Fawley, to plead our cause. I

was sanguine of the result.”

“Why?”

“Because he who is in love has a wondrous intuition into all the

mysteries of love in others; and when I read Darrell’s letter I felt

sure that he had once loved--loved still, perhaps--the woman he so

vehemently reproached.”

“Ha!” said the Man of the World, intimate with Guy Darrell from his

school-days--“Ha! is it possible! And they say that I know everything!

You were sanguine,--I understand. Yes, if your belief were true--if

there were some old attachment that could be revived--some old

misunderstanding explained away--stop; let me think. True, true--it was

just after her marriage that he fled from the world. Ah, my dear Lionel;

light, light! light dawns on me! Not without reason were you sanguine.

Your hand, my dear boy; I see hope for you at last. For if the sole

reason that prevented Darrell contracting a second marriage was the

unconquered memory of a woman like Lady Montfort (where, indeed, her

equal in beauty, in disposition so akin to his own ideal of womanly

excellence?)--and if she too has some correspondent sentiment for him,

why then, indeed, you might lose all chance of being Darrell’s sole

heir; your Sophy might forfeit the hateful claim to be the sole scion

on his ancient tree; but it is precisely by those losses that Lionel

Haughton might gain the bride he covets; and if this girl prove to be

what these Loselys affirm, that very marriage, which is now so repugnant

to Darrell, ought to insure his blessing. Were he himself to marry

again--had he rightful representatives and heirs in his own sons--he

should rejoice in the nuptials that secured to his daughter’s child so

honourable a name and so tender a protector. And as for inheritance,

you have not been reared to expect it; you have never counted on it.

You would receive a fortune sufficiently ample to restore your ancestral

station; your career will add honours to fortune. Yes, yes; that is the

sole way out of all these difficulties. Darrell must marry again; Lady

Montfort must be his wife. Lionel shall be free to choose her whom Lady

Montfort approves--be friends--no matter what her birth; and I--I--Alban

Morley-shall have an arm-chair by two smiling hearths.”

At this moment there was heard a violent ring at the bell, a loud knock

at the street door; and presently, following close on the servant, and

pushing him aside as he asked what name to announce, a woman, severely

dressed in irongrey, with a strongly-marked and haggard countenance,

hurried into the room, and, striding right up to Alban Morley, as he

rose from his seat, grasped his arm, and whispered into his ear, “Lose

not a minute--come with me instantly--as you value the safety, perhaps

the life of Guy Darrell!”

“Guy Darrell!” exclaimed Lionel, overhearing her, despite the undertones

of her voice.

“Who are you?” she said, turning fiercely; “are you one of his family?”

“His kinsman--almost his adopted son--Mr. Lionel Haughton,” said the

Colonel. “But pardon me, madam--who are you?”

“Do you not remember me? Yet you were so often in Darrell’s house that

you must have seen my face, as you have learned from your friend how

little cause I have to care for him or his. Look again; I am that

Arabella Fossett who--”

“Ah, I remember now; but--”

“But I tell you that Darrell is in danger, and this night. Take money;

to be in time you must hire a special train. Take arms, though to be

used only in self-defence. Take your servant if he is brave. This young

kinsman--let him come too. There is only one man to resist; but that

man,” she said, with a wild kind of pride, “would have the strength and

courage of ten were his cause not that which may make the strong man

weak, and the bold man craven. It is not a matter for the officers of

justice, for law, for scandal; the service is to be done in

secret, by friends, by kinsmen; for the danger that threatens

Darrell--stoop--stoop, Colonel Morley--close in your ear”; and into his

ear she hissed, “for the danger that threatens Darrell in his house this

night is from the man whose name his daughter bore. That is why I come

to you. To you I need not say, ‘Spare his life--Jasper Losely’s

life.’ Jasper Losely’s death as a midnight robber would be Darrell’s

intolerable shame. Quick, quick, quick!--come, come!”

BOOK X.

CHAPTER I.

BRUTE-FORCE.

We left Jasper Losely resting for the night at the small town near

Fawley. The next morning he walked on to the old Manor-house. It was the

same morning in which Lady Montfort had held her painful interview with

Darrell; and just when Losely neared the gate that led into the small

park, he saw her re-enter the hired vehicle in waiting for her. As the

carriage rapidly drove past the miscreant, Lady Montfort looked forth

from the window to snatch a last look at the scenes still so clear to

her, through eyes blinded by despairing tears. Jasper thus caught sight

of her countenance, and recognised her, though she did not even notice

him. Surprised at the sight, he halted by the palings. What could have

brought Lady Montfort there? Could the intimacy his fraud had broken off

so many years ago be renewed? If so, why the extreme sadness on the face

of which he had caught but a hurried, rapid glance? Be that as it might,

it was no longer of the interest to him it had once been; and after

pondering on the circumstance a minute or two, he advanced to the gate.

But while his hand was on the latch, he again paused; how should he

obtain admission to Darrell?--how announce himself? If in his own name,

would not exclusion be certain?--if as a stranger on business, would

Darrell be sure to receive him? As he was thus cogitating, his ear,

which, with all his other organs of sense, was constitutionally fine as

a savage’s, caught sound of a faint rustle among the boughs of a thick

copse which covered a part of the little park, terminating at its pales.

The rustle came nearer and nearer; the branches were rudely displaced;

and in a few moments more Guy Darrell himself came out from the copse,

close by the gate, and opening it quickly, stood face to face with his

abhorrent son-in-law. Jasper was startled, but the opportunity was

not to be lost. “Mr. Darrell,” he said, “I come here again to see you;

vouchsafe me, this time, a calmer hearing.” So changed was Losely, so

absorbed in his own emotions Darrell, that the words did not at once

waken up remembrance. “Another time,” said Darrell, hastily moving on

into the road; “I am not at leisure now.” “Pardon me, NOW,” said Losely,

unconsciously bringing himself back to the tones and bearing of his

earlier and more civilised years. “You do not remember me, sir; no

wonder. But my name is Jasper Losely.”

Darrell halted; then, as if spellbound, looked fixedly at the

broad-shouldered burly frame before him, cased in its coarse pea-jacket,

and in that rude form, and that defeatured, bloated face, detected,

though with strong effort, the wrecks of the masculine beauty which had

ensnared his deceitful daughter. Jasper could not have selected a more

unpropitious moment for his cause. Darrell was still too much under the

influence of recent excitement and immense sorrow for that supremacy of

prudence over passion which could alone have made him a willing listener

to overtures from Jasper Losely. And about the man whose connection

with himself was a thought of such bitter shame, there was now so

unmistakably the air of settled degradation, that all Darrell’s

instincts of gentleman were revolted--just at the very time, too, when

his pride had been most chafed and assailed by the obtrusion of all that

rendered most galling to him the very name of Jasper Losely. What!

Was it that man’s asserted child whom Lionel Haughton desired as

a wife?--was the alliance with that man to be thus renewed and

strengthened?--that man have another claim to him and his in right of

parentage to the bride of his nearest kinsman? What! was it that man’s

child whom he was asked to recognise as of his own flesh and blood?--the

last representative of his line? That man!--that! A flash shot from

his bright eye, deepening its grey into dark; and, turning on his heel,

Darrell said, through his compressed lips--

“You have heard, sir, I believe, through Colonel Morley, that only on

condition of your permanent settlement in one of our distant colonies,

or America if you prefer it, would I consent to assist you. I am of the

same mind still. I can not parley with you myself. Colonel Morley is

abroad, I believe. I refer you to my solicitor; you have seen him years

ago; you know his address. No more, sir.”

“This will not do, Mr. Darrell,” said Losely, doggedly; and, planting

himself right before Darrell’s way, “I have come here on purpose to have

all differences out with you, face to face--and I will--”

“You will!” said Darrell, pale with haughty anger, and with the impulse

of his passion, his hand clenched. In the bravery of his nature, and

the warmth of a temper constitutionally quick, he thought nothing of the

strength and bulk of the insolent obtruder--nothing of the peril of odds

so unequal in a personal encounter. But the dignity which pervaded all

his habits, and often supplied to him the place of discretion, came,

happily for himself, to his aid now. He strike a man whom he so

despised!--he raise that man to his own level by the honour of a blow

from his hand! Impossible! “You will!” he said. “Well, be it so. Are you

come again to tell me that a child of my daughter lives, and that you

won my daughter’s fortune by a deliberate lie?”

“I am not come to speak of that girl, but of myself. I say that I have

a claim on you, Mr. Darrell; I say that turn and twist the truth as you

will, you are still my father-in-law, and that it is intolerable that I

should be wanting bread, or driven into actual robbery, while my wife’s

father is a man of countless wealth, and has no heir except--but I

will not now urge that child’s cause; I am content to abandon it if so

obnoxious to you. Do you wish me to cut a throat, and to be hanged,

and all the world to hear the last dying speech and confession of Guy

Darrell’s son-in-law? Answer me, sir?”

“I answer you briefly and plainly. It is simply because I would not have

that last disgrace on Guy Darrell’s name that I offer you a subsistence

in lands where you will be less exposed to those temptations which

induced you to invest the sums that, by your own tale, had been obtained

from me on false pretences, in the sink of a Paris gambling house. A

subsistence that, if it does not pamper vice, at least places you beyond

the necessity of crime, is at your option. Choose it or reject it as you

will.”

“Look you, Mr. Darrell,” said Jasper, whose temper was fast giving way

beneath the cold and galling scorn with which he was thus cast aside,

“I am in a state so desperate, that, rather than starve, I may take what

you so contemptuously fling to--your daughter’s husband; but--”

“Knave!” cried Darrell, interrupting him, “do you again and again urge

it as a claim upon me, that you decoyed from her home, under a false

name, my only child; that she died in a foreign land-broken-hearted, if

I have rightly heard is that a claim upon your duped victim’s father?”

“It seems so, since your pride is compelled to own that the world would

deem it one, if the jail chaplain took down the last words of your

son-in-law! But, _basta, basta!_ hear me out, and spare hard names; for

the blood is mounting into my brain, and I may become dangerous. Had any

other man eyed, and scoffed, and railed at me as you have done, he

would be lying dead and dumb as this stone at my foot; but you-are my

father-in-law! Now, I care not to bargain with you what be the precise

amount of my stipend if I obey your wish, and settle miserably in one

of those raw, comfortless corners into which they who burthen this Old

World are thrust out of sight. I would rather live my time out in this

country--live it out in peace and for half what you may agree to give in

transporting me. If you are to do anything for me, you had better do

it so as to make me contented on easy terms to your own pockets, rather

than to leave me dissatisfied, and willing to annoy you, which I could

do somehow or other, even on the far side of the Herring Pond. I might

keep to the letter of a bargain, live in Melbourne or Sydney, and take

your money, and yet molest and trouble you by deputy. That girl, for

instance--your grandchild; well, well, disown her if you please; but

if I find out where she is, which I own I have not done yet, I might

contrive to render her the plague of your life, even though I were in

Australia.”

“Ay,” said Darrell, murmuring--“ay, ay; but”--(suddenly gathering

himself up)--“No! Man, if she were my grandchild, your own child, could

you talk of her thus? make her the object of so base a traffic, and such

miserable threats? Wicked though you be, this were against nature! even

in nature’s wickedness--even in the son of a felon, and in the sharper

of a hell. Pooh! I despise your malice. I will listen to you no longer.

Out of my path.”

“No!”

“No?”

“No, Guy Darrell, I have not yet done; you shall hear my terms, and

accept them--a moderate sum down; say a few hundreds, and two hundred

a-year to spend in London as I will--but out of your beat, out of your

sight and hearing. Grant this, and I will never cross you again--never

attempt to find, and, if I find by chance, never claim as my child by

your daughter that wandering girl. I will never shame you by naming our

connection. I will not offend the law, nor die by the hangman; yet I

shall not live long, for I suffer much, and I drink hard.”

The last words were spoken gloomily, not altogether without a strange

dreary pathos. And amidst all his just scorn and anger, the large human

heart of Guy Darrell was for the moment touched. He was silent--his mind

hesitated; would it not be well--would it not be just as safe to his

own peace, and to that of the poor child, whom, no matter what her

parentage, Darrell could not but desire to free from the claim set up

by so bold a ruffian, to gratify Losely’s wish, and let him remain

in England, upon an allowance that would suffice for his subsistence?

Unluckily for Jasper, it was while this doubt passed through Darrell’s

relenting mind, that the miscreant, who was shrewd enough to see that

he had gained ground, but too coarse of apprehension to ascribe

his advantage to its right cause, thought to strengthen his case by

additional arguments. “You see, sir,” resumed Jasper, in almost familiar

accents, “that there is no dog so toothless but what he can bite, and

no dog so savage but what, if you give him plenty to eat, he will serve

you.”

Darrell looked up, and his brow darkened.

Jasper continued: “I have hinted how I might plague you; perhaps, on the

other hand, I might do you a good turn with that handsome lady who drove

from your park-gate as I came up. Ah! you were once to have been married

to her. I read in the newspapers that she has become a widow; you may

marry her yet. There was a story against you once; her mother made use

of it, and broke off an old engagement. I can set that story right.”

“You can,” said Darrell, with that exceeding calmness which comes from

exceeding wrath; “and perhaps, sir, that story, whatever it might be,

you invented. No dog so toothless as not to bite--eh, sir?”

“Well,” returned Jasper, mistaking Darrell’s composure, “at that time

certainly it seemed my interest that you should not marry again; but

_basta! basta!_ enough of bygones. If I bit once, I will serve now.

Come, sir, you are a man of the world, let us close the bargain.”