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Title: Charlotte's Inheritance

Author: M. E. Braddon

Release Date: November, 2005 [EBook #9259]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on September 15, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE ***




Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Mary Meehan and Distributed Proofreaders




                        CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE

                                   By

                             M. E. Braddon




CONTENTS.


Book the First.

DE PROFUNDIS.

   I.  LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE

  II.  IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE

 III.  PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR

  IV.  A DECREE OF BANISHMENT


Book the Second.

DOWNHILL.

   I.  THE FATE OF SUSAN LENOBLE

  II.  FORGIVEN TOO LATE

 III.  GUSTAVE THE SECOND


Book the Third.

THE HORATIAD.

   I.  CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE

  II.  EPISTOLARY

 III.  TOO CLEVER FOR A CATSPAW

  IV.  CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL

   V.  THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR


Book the Fourth.

GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND.

   I.  HALCYON DAYS

  II.  CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY

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

  IV.  SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH


Book the Fifth.

THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA.

   I.  TAKEN BY STORM

  II.  FIRM AS A ROCK

 III.  AGAINST WIND AND TIDE

  IV.  DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY

   V.  ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE


Book the Sixth.

DIANA IN NORMANDY.

   I.  AT CÔTENOIR


Book the Seventh.

A CLOUD OF FEAR.

   I.  THE BEGINNING OF SORROW

  II.  FADING

 III.  MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS

  IV.  VALENTINE'S SKELETON

   V.  AT HAROLD'S HILL

  VI.  DESPERATE MEASURES


Book the Eighth.

A FIGHT AGAINST TIME.

   I.  A DREAD REVELATION

  II.  PHOENICIANS ARE RISING

 III.  THE SORTES VIRGILIANAE


Book the Ninth.

THROUGH THE FURNACE.

   I.  SOMETHING TOO MUCH

  II.  DR. JEDD'S OPINION

 III.  NON DORMIT JUDAS

  IV.  COUNTING THE COST

   V.  THE BEGINNING OF THE END

  VI.  CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED

 VII.  THERE IS A WORD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE


Book the Tenth.

HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS.

   I.  OUT OF THE DARK VALLEY

  II.  AFTER THE WEDDING

 III.  GREEK AGAINST GREEK

  IV.  ONLY A DREAM

   V.  BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE

  VI.  BEYOND THE VEIL

 VII.  BETTER THAN GOLD

VIII. LOST SIGHT OF

  IX.  ETEOCLES AND POLYNICES

   X.  "ACCORDING TO THEIR DEEDS."




CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE



Book the first.



DE PROFUNDIS.



CHAPTER I.


LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE.

In the days when the Bourbon reigned over Gaul, before the "simple,
sensuous, passionate" verse of Alfred de Musset had succeeded the
_débonnaire_ Muse of Béranger in the affections of young France,--in days
when the site of the Trocadero was a remote and undiscovered country, and
the word "exposition" unknown in the Academic dictionary, and the Gallic
Augustus destined to rebuild the city yet an exile,--a young law-student
boarded, in common with other students, in a big dreary-looking house at
the corner of the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, abutting on the Place Lauzun,
and within some ten minutes walk of the Luxembourg. It was a very dingy
quarter, though noble gentlemen and lovely ladies had once occupied the
great ghastly mansions, and disported themselves in the gruesome gardens.
But the young students were in nowise oppressed by the ghastliness of
their abode. They sang their Béranger, and they pledged each other in
cheap Bordeaux, and clinked their glasses noisily in their boisterous
good-fellowship, and ate the messes compounded for them in a darksome
cupboard, known as the kitchen, by old Nanon the cook, purblind,
stone-deaf, and all but imbecile, and popularly supposed to be the
venerable mother of Madame Magnotte. The youngsters grumbled to each
other about the messes when they were unusually mysterious; and it must
be owned that there were _vol-au-vents_ and _fricandeaux_ consumed in
that establishment which were awful and wonderful in their nature; but
they ventured on no complaint to the mistress of the mansion. She was a
grim and terrible personage. Her terms were low, and she treated her
boarders _de haute en bas_. If they were not content with her viands,
they might go and find more agreeable viands elsewhere.

Madame Magnotte was altogether mysterious and inscrutable. Some people
said that she was a countess, and that the wealth and lands of her family
had been confiscated by the committee of public unsafety in '93. Others
declared that she had been a popular actress in a small theatre in the
days of Napoleon. She was tall and thin--nay, of an exceptional
leanness--and her complexion was of a more agreeable yellow than the
butter that appeared on her hospitable board; but she had flashing black
eyes, and a certain stateliness of gait and grandeur of manner that
impressed those young Bohemians, her boarders, with a kind of awe. They
talked of her as the "countess," and by that name she was known to all
inmates of the mansion; but in all their dealings with her they treated
her with unfailing respect.

One of the quietest among the young men who enjoyed the privileges of
Madame Magnotte's abode was a certain Gustave Lenoble, a law-student, the
only son of a very excellent couple who lived on their own estate, near
an obscure village in Normandy. The estate was of the smallest; a
dilapidated old house, known in the immediate neighbourhood as "the
Château," and very dear to those who resided therein; a garden, in which
everything seemed to have run to seed; and about forty acres of the
poorest land in Normandy. These possessions constituted the patrimonial
estate of Francois Lenoble, _propriétaire_, of Beaubocage, near
Vevinordin, the department of Eure.

The people amongst whom the good man lived his simple life called him M.
Lenoble de Beaubocage, but he did not insist upon this distinction; and
on sending out his only son to begin the battle of life in the great
world of Paris, he recommended the young man to call himself Lenoble,
_tout court_.

The young man had never cherished any other design. He was of all
creatures the least presuming or pretentious. The father was Legitimist
to the very marrow; the son half Buonapartist, half republican. The
father and son had quarrelled about these differences of opinion
sometimes in a pleasantly disputatious manner; but no political
disagreement could lesser the love between these two. Gustave loved
his parents as only a Frenchman can venture to love his father and
mother--with a devotion for the gentleman that bordered on enthusiasm,
with a fond reverence for the lady that was the very essence of chivalry.
There was a sister, who regarded her brother Gustave as the embodiment of
all that is perfect in youthful mankind; and there were a couple of old
house-servants, a very stupid clumsy lad in the stables, and half a dozen
old mongrel dogs, born and bred on the premises, who seemed to share the
young lady's opinions. There was not a little discussion upon the subject
of Gustave Lenoble's future career; and it was not without difficulty
that the father could be persuaded to approve the choice of a profession
which the young man had made. The seigneur of Beaubocage cherished an
exaggerated pride of race little suspected by those who saw his simple
life, and were pleased by his kindly unaffected manners. The house of
Lenoble, at some remote and almost mythical period of history, had
distinguished itself in divers ways; and those bygone grandeurs, vague
and shadowy in the minds of all others, seemed very real to Monsieur
Lenoble. He assured his son that no Lenoble had ever been a lawyer. They
had been always lords of the soil, living on their own lands, which had
once stretched wide and far in that Norman province; a fact proved by
certain maps in M. Lenoble's possession, the paper whereof was worn and
yellow with age. They had stooped to no profession save that of arms. One
seigneur of Beaubocage had fought under Bayard himself; another had
fallen at Pavia, on that great day when all was lost _hormis l'honneur_;
another had followed the white plume of the Bernais; another--but was
there any need to tell of the glories of that house upon which Gustave
was so eager to inflict the disgrace of a learned profession?

Thus argued the father; but the mother had spent her girlhood amidst the
clamour of the Buonapartist campaigns, and the thought of war was very
terrible to her. The memory of the retreat from Russia was not yet twenty
years old. There were men alive to tell the story, to depict those days
and nights of horror, that mighty march of death. It was she and her
daughter Cydalise who had helped to persuade Gustave that he was born to
distinguish himself in the law. They wanted him to study in Paris--the
young man himself had a wild desire to enjoy the delights of that
wondrous capital--and to return in a few years to set up for himself as
_avocat_ at the town of Vevinord, some half-dozen leagues from the
patrimonial estate. He was created to plead for the innocent, to denounce
the guilty, to be grand and brave and fiery-hot with enthusiasm in
defence of virtuous peasants charged unjustly with the stealing of sheep,
or firing of corn-ricks. It never struck these simple souls that he might
sometimes be called upon to defend the guilty, or to denounce the
innocent.

It was all settled at last. Gustave was to go to Paris, and enter himself
as a student of law. There were plenty of boarding-houses in the
neighbourhood of the Ecole de Droit where a young man might find a home;
and to one of these Gustave was recommended by a friend of his family. It
was the Pension Magnotte to which they had sent him, the big dreary
house, _entre cour et jardin_, which had once been so grand and noble. A
printer now occupied the lower chambers, and a hand painted on the wall
pointed to the _Pension Magnotte, au premier. Tirez le cordon, s.v.p._

Gustave was twenty-one years of age when he came to Paris; tall,
stalwart, broad of shoulders and deep of chest, with a fair frank face,
an auburn moustache, candid, kind blue eyes--a physiognomy rather Saxon
than Celtic. He was a man who made friends quickly, and was soon at home
among the students, roaring their favourite songs, and dancing their
favourite dances at the dancing-places of that day, joining with a
pleasant heartiness in all their innocent dissipations. For guilty
dissipation the young provincial had no taste. Did he not carry the
images of two kind and pure women about with him wherever he went, like
two attendant angels ever protecting his steps; and could he leave them
sorrowing on thresholds _they_ could not pass? Ah, no! He was loud and
boisterous and wild of spirits in those early days, but incapable of
meanness or vice.

"It is a brave heart," Madame Magnotte said of him, "though for the
breaking of glasses a scourge--_un fléau_."

The ladies of the Pension Magnotte were for the most part of mature age
and unattractive appearance--two or three lonely spinsters, eking out
their pitiful little incomes as best they might, by the surreptitious
sale of delicate embroideries, confectioned in their dismal leisure; and
a fat elderly widow, popularly supposed to be enormously rich, but of
miserly propensities. "It is the widow of Harpagon himself," Madame
Magnotte told her gossips--an old woman with two furiously ugly
daughters, who for the last fifteen years had lived a nomadic life in
divers boarding-houses, fondly clinging to the hope that, amongst so many
strange bachelors, husbands for these two solitary ones must at last be
found.

These, with a pale young lady who gave music lessons in the quarter, were
all the feminine inmates of the mansion; and amongst these Gustave
Lenoble was chief favourite. His tender courtesy for these lonely women
seemed in some manner an evidence of that good old blood whereof the
young man's father boasted. Francis the First, who listened with bent
knee and bare head to his mother's discourse, was not more reverential to
that noble Savoyarde than was Gustave to the shabby-genteel maiden ladies
of the Pension Magnotte. In truth, this young man had a heart pitiful and
tender as the heart of woman. To be unfortunate was to possess a sure
claim upon his pity and regard; to be poor and friendless was the best
appeal to his kindness. He spent his evenings sometimes in the great
dreary desert of a salon, and listened respectfully while Mademoiselle
Servin, the young music-teacher, played dismal sonatas of Gluck or Grétry
on a cracked old piano that had been one of the earliest made of those
instruments, and was now attenuated and feeble as the very ghost of
music. He listened to Madame Magnotte's stories of departed splendour. To
him she opened her heart as she never had opened it to those other young
men.

"They mock themselves of everything--even the religion!" she exclaimed,
with horror. "They are Diderots and Holbachs in the bud, less the talent.
But you do not come of that gutter in which they were born. You are of
the old blood of France, M. Lenoble, and I can trust myself to you as I
cannot to them. I, who speak to you--I, too, come of a good old race, and
there is sympathy between we others."

And then, after babbling to him of her lost station, the lady would
entertain him with some dainty little supper with which she was wont to
indulge herself and her lady boarders, when the students--who were
treated something after the manner of school-boys--were out of doors.

For four years the law-student had enjoyed his Parisian life--not
altogether idle, but not altogether industrious--amusing himself a great
deal, and learning very little; moderate in his expenditure, when
compared with his fellow-students, but no small drain upon the funds of
the little family at home. In sooth, this good old Norman family had in a
pecuniary sense sunk very low. There was real poverty in the tumble-down
house at Beaubocage, though it was poverty that wore a cheerful face, and
took things pleasantly. A very humble English farmer would have despised
the income which supported M. Lenoble's household; and it was only the
economy and skill of the matron and her daughter which sustained the
dignity of the small establishment.

There was one great hope cherished alike by the proud simple-minded old
father, the fond mother, the devoted sister, and that was the hope in the
grand things to be done, in the dim future, by Gustave, the son, the
heir, the pole-star of the household.

Out of poverty, out of obscurity, into the broad light of honour and
riches, was the house of Lenoble to be lifted by this young law-student.
On the broad shoulders of this modern Atlas the Lenoble world was to be
sustained. To him they looked, of him they thought, in the long dreary
winter evenings during which the mother nodded over her knitting, the
father slept in his capacious easy-chair, the sister toiled at her
needle-work by her little table of _palissandre_.

He had paid them more than one visit during his two years of study,
bringing with him life and light and gladness, as it seemed to the two
women who adored him; and now, in the winter of 1828, they expected
another visit. He was to be with them on the first day of the new year.
He was to stay with them till his Mother's fete--the 17th of January.

The father looked to this special visit with an unusual anxiety. The
mother too was more than ever anxious. The sister, if she who loved her
brother with a somewhat morbid intensity could be more anxious than
usual, was more so now. A dreadful plot, a dire conspiracy, of which
Gustave was to be the subject and victim, had been concocted beneath that
innocent-seeming roof. Father, mother, and sister, seated round the
family hearth, fatal as some domestic Parcae, had hatched their horrid
scheme, while the helpless lad amused himself yonder in the great city,
happily unconscious of the web that was being woven to enmesh him.

The cord which monsieur unwound, the mesh which madame held, the
needle which dexterous mademoiselle wielded, were employed in the
fabrication of a matrimonial net. These unsophisticated conspirators
were bent upon bringing about the marriage of their victim, a marriage
which should at once elevate and enrich the Lenobles of Beaubocage, in
the person of Gustave.

Francois Lenoble's best friend and nearest neighbour was a certain Baron
Frehlter, of Germanic origin, but for some generations past naturalised
to the Gallic soil. The Baron was proprietor of an estate which could
show ten acres for one of the lands of Beaubocage. The Baron boasted a
family tree which derived its root from a ramification of the
Hohenzollern pedigree; but, less proud and more prudent than the
Lenobles, the Frehlters had not scorned to intermingle their Prussian
blue blood with less pure streams of commercial France. The _épicier_
element had prevailed in the fair brides of the house of Frehlter for the
last three or four generations, and the house of Frehlter had
considerably enriched itself by this sacrifice of its family pride.

The present Baron had married a lady ten years his senior, the widow of a
Rouen merchant, alike wealthy and pious, but famous rather for these
attributes than for any personal charm. One only child, a girl, had
blessed this union. She was now a young person of something under twenty
years of age, newly emerged from her convent, and pining for some share
in the gaieties and delights of a worldly paradise, which had already
been open to many of her schoolfellows.

Mademoiselle Frehlter's companions had, for the most part, left school to
be married. She had heard of the _corbeille_, the wedding dress, the
wedding festivities, and occasionally a word or two about that secondary
consideration the bridegroom. The young lady was therefore somewhat
inclined to take it ill of her father that he had not secured for her the
_éclat_ of an early marriage. Her departure from the convent of the Sacré
Coeur, at Vevinord, was flat and tame to an extreme degree. The future
lay before her, a dreary desert of home life, to be spent with a father
who gorged himself daily at a greasy and savoury banquet, and who slept
away the greater part of his existence; and with a mother who divided her
affections between a disagreeable poodle and a still more disagreeable
priest--a priest who took upon himself to lecture the demoiselle Frehlter
on the smallest provocation.

The château of the Frehlters was a very grand abode as compared to the
tumble-down house of Beaubocage; but it was cold and stony to a
depressing degree, and the furniture must have been shabby in the days of
the Fronde. Faithful old servants kept the mansion in a state of spotless
purity, and ruled the Baron and his wife with a rod of iron. Mademoiselle
execrated these devoted retainers, and would have welcomed the sauciest
of modern domestics who would have released her from the bondage of these
servants of the old school.

Mademoiselle had been at home a year--a year of discontent and
ill-humour. She had quarrelled with her father, because he would not take
her to Paris; with her mother, because she would not give her more new
gowns and bonnets and feathers and fur-belows; with the priest, the
poodle, with the autocracy below-stairs, with everybody and everything.
So at last the Baron decided that mademoiselle should marry, whereby he
might be rid of her, and of her complaints, vagaries, ill-tempers, and
general dissatisfaction.

Having once made up his mind as to the wisdom of a matrimonial
arrangement, Baron Frehlter was not slow to fix upon a bridegroom. He was
a very rich man, and Madelon was his only child, and he was furthermore a
very lazy man; so, instead of looking far afield for a wealthy or
distinguished suitor for his daughter, he was inclined to take the first
that came to hand. It is possible that the Baron, who was of a somewhat
cynical turn of mind, may have cherished no very exalted idea of his
daughter's attractions, either personal or mental. However this might be,
it is certain that when the demoiselle had ill-treated the poodle, and
insulted the priest, and quarrelled with the cook--that high-priestess of
the kitchen who alone, in all Normandy, could concoct those messes which
the Baron loved--the master of Côtenoir decided on marrying his heiress
out of hand.

He communicated this design to his old crony, François Lenoble, one day
when the Beaubocage family dined at Château Côtenoir.

"I think of marrying my daughter," he said to his friend, when the ladies
were safely out of hearing at the other end of the long dreary saloon.
"Now thy son Gustave is a fine fellow--brave, handsome, and of a good
race. It is true he is not as rich as Madelon will be by-and-by; but I am
no huckster, to sell my daughter to the best bidder" ("and I doubt if
there would be many bidders for her, if I were so inclined," thought the
Baron, in parenthesis); "and if thy son should take a fancy to her, and
she to him, it would please me well enough, friend François."

Friend François pricked up his ears, and in his old eyes flickered a
feeble light. Côtenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his son
Gustave! Lenoble of Beaubocage and Côtenoir--Lenoble of Côtenoir and
Beaubocage! So splendid a vision had never shone before his eyes in all
the dreams that he had dreamed about the only son of whom he was so
proud. He could not have shaped to himself so bold a project as the union
of those two estates. And here was the Baron offering it to him, with his
snuff-box, _en passant_.

"It would be a great marriage," he said, "a very great marriage. For
Gustave I can answer without hesitation. He could not but be charmed by
such a union--so amiable a bride would enchant him."

He looked down the room to the spot where Madelon and Cydalise were
standing, side by side, admiring Madame Frehlter's poodle. Madelon could
afford to be civil to the poodle before company. The contrast between the
two girls was sufficiently striking. Cydalise was fair and
bright-looking--Mademoiselle Frehlter was square and ungainly of figure,
swarthy of complexion, dark of brow.

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

He was thinking of the joining together of Beaubocage and Côtenoir; and
it seemed a very small thing to him that such a union of estates would
involve the joining of a man and woman, who were to hold to each other
and love each other until death should part them.

"It shall be no marriage of convenience," said the Baron, in a generous
spirit; "my daughter is somewhat ill-tem--that is to say, my daughter
finds her life somewhat dull with her old father and mother, and I think
she might be happier in the society of a husband. I like your son; and
my wife, too, likes him better than any other young man of our
acquaintance. Madelon has seen a good deal of him when she has been home
from the convent in her holidays, and I have reason to think she does
not dislike him. If he likes her and she likes him, and the idea is
pleasing to you and madame, we will make a match of it. If not, let it
pass; we will say no more."

Again the seigneur of Beaubocage assured his friend that Gustave would be
enchanted with the proposal; and again it was of Côtenoir that he
thought, and not of the heart or the inclinations of his son.

This conversation took place late in autumn, and at the new year Gustave
was to come. Nothing was to be said to him about his intended wife until
he arrived; that was a point upon which the Baron insisted.

"The young man may have fallen in love with some fine young person in
Paris," he said; "and in that case we will say nothing to him of Madelon.
But if we find him with the heart free, and inclined to take to my
daughter, we may give him encouragement."

This was solemnly agreed between the two fathers. Nor was Mademoiselle
Frehlter to be told of the matrimonial scheme until it ripened. But after
this dinner at Côtenoir the household at Beaubocage talked of little else
than of the union of the two families. What grandeur, what wealth, what
happiness! Gustave the lord of Côtenoir! Poor Cydalise had never seen a
finer mansion than the old château, with its sugar-loaf towers and stone
terraces, and winding stairs, and tiny inconvenient turret chambers, and
long dreary salon and _salle-à-manger_. She could picture to herself
nothing more splendid. For Gustave to be offered the future possession of
Côtenoir was as if he were suddenly to be offered the succession to a
kingdom. She could not bring herself to consider that Madelon was neither
agreeable nor attractive, and that, after all, the wife must count for
something in every marriage contract. She could see nothing, she could
think of nothing, but Côtenoir. The glory and grandeur of that estate
absorbed every other consideration.

No one of those three conspirators feared any opposition on the part of
their victim. It was just possible that Gustave might have fallen in love
with some Parisian damsel, though his letters gave no hint of any such
calamity. But if such a misfortune had happened, he would, of course,
fall out of love again, return the damsel her troth and obtain the return
of his own, and straightway offer the second-hand commodity to
Mademoiselle Frehlter.

The object of all these cares and hopes and dreams arrived at last, full
of life and spirits, with plenty to tell about Paris in general, and very
little to tell about himself in particular. The women questioned him
unmercifully. They insisted on a graphic description of every female
inmate of the boarding-house, and would scarcely believe that all except
the little music-mistress were elderly and unattractive. Of the
music-mistress herself they were inclined to be very suspicious, and were
not altogether reassured by Gustave's assertion that she was neither
pretty nor fascinating.

"She is a dear, good, industrious little thing," he said, "and works
harder than I do. But she is no miracle of beauty; and her life is so
dreary that I often wonder she does not go into a convent. It would be
gayer and pleasanter for her than to live with those old women at the
Pension Magnotte."

"I suppose there are many beautiful women in Paris?" said Cydalise, bent
upon knowing the worst.

"Well, I dare say there are," Gustave answered frankly; "but we students
don't see much of them in our quarter. One sees a pretty little
milliner's girl now and then, or a washerwoman. In short, there are a
good many grisettes in our part of the world," added the young man,
blushing, but for no sin of his own. "We get a glimpse of a handsome
woman sometimes, rattling past in her carriage; but in Paris handsome
women do not go on foot. I have seen prettier girls at Vevinord than in
Paris."

Cydalise was enchanted with this confession.

"Yes," she exclaimed, "our Normandy is the place for pretty girls.
Madelon Frehlter. for example, is not she a very--amiable girl?"

"I dare say she's amiable enough," answered Gustave; "but if there were
no prettier girls than Mademoiselle Frehlter in this part of the world,
we should have no cause to boast. But there are prettier girls, Cydalise,
and thou art thyself one of them."

After this speech the young man bestowed upon his sister a resounding
kiss. Yes; it was clear that he was heart-whole. These noisy, boisterous
good spirits were not characteristic of a lover. Even innocent Cydalise
knew that to be in love was to be miserable.

From this time mother and sister tormented their victim with the merits
and charms of his predestined bride. Madelon on the piano was miraculous;
Madelon's little songs were enchanting; Madelon's worsted-work was a
thing to worship; Madelon's devotion to her mother and her mother's
poodle was unequalled; Madelon's respectful bearing to the good Abbé St.
Velours--her mother's director--was positively beyond all praise. It was
virtue seraphic, supernal. Such a girl was too good for earth--too good
for anything except Gustave.

The young man heard and wondered.

"How you rave about Madelon Frehlter!" he exclaimed. "She seems to me the
most commonplace young person I ever encountered. She has nothing to say
for herself; she never appears to know where to put her elbows. I never
saw such elbows; they are everywhere at once. And her shoulders!--O
heaven, then, her shoulders!--it ought to be forbidden to wear low
dresses when one has such shoulders."

This was discouraging, but the schemers bore up even against this. The
mother dwelt on the intellectual virtues of Madelon; and what were
shoulders compared to mind, piety, amiability--all the Christian graces?
Cydalise owned that dear Madelon was somewhat _gauche_; Gustave called
her _bête_. The father remonstrated with his son. Was it not frightful to
use a word of the barracks in connection with this charming young lady?

At last the plot revealed itself. After a dinner at Côtenoir and a dinner
at Beaubocage, on both which occasions Gustave had made himself very
agreeable to the ladies of the Baron's household--since, indeed, it was
not in his nature to be otherwise than kind and courteous to the weaker
sex--the mother told her son of the splendid destiny that had been shaped
for him. It was a matter of surprise and grief to her to find that the
revelation gave Gustave no pleasure.

"Marriage was the last thing in my thoughts, dear mother," he said,
gravely; "and Madelon Frehlter is the very last woman I should think of
for a wife. Nevertheless, I am gratified by the honour Monsieur le Baron
has done me. That goes without saying."

"But the two estates!--together they would make you a great proprietor.
You would not surely refuse such fortune?"

Cydalise gave a little scream of horror.

"Côtenoir! to refuse Côtenoir! Ah, surely that would be impossible! But
figure to yourself, then, Gustave--"

"Nay, Cydalise, you forget the young lady goes with the château; a
fixture that we cannot dispense with."

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

"So plain, so stupid--"

"So modest, so charitable--"

"In short, so admirably adapted for a Sister of Charity," replied
Gustave. "But no, dear Cydalise. Côtenoir is a grand old place; but I
would as soon spend my life at Toulon, dragging a cannon-ball at my
heels, as in that dreary salon where Madame Frehlter nurses her maladies
and her poodle, and where the good-humoured, easy-going old Baron snores
away existence. 'Tis very well for those elderly folks, you see, my
sister, and for Madelon--for hers is an elderly mind in a youthful body;
but for a young man full of hope and gaiety and activity--bah! It would
be of all living deaths the worst. From the galleys there is always the
hope of escaping--an underground passage, burrowed out with one's
finger-nails in the dead of the night--a work lasting twenty years or so,
but with a feeble star of hope always glimmering at the end of the
passage. But from the salon, and mamma, and the poodle, and the good,
unctuous, lazy old director, and papa's apoplectic snoring, and the
plaintive little songs and monotonous embroideries of one's wife, there
would be no escape. Ah, bah!"

Gustave shuddered, and the two women shuddered as they heard him. The
prospect was by no means promising; but Madame Lenoble and her daughter
did not utterly despair. Gustave's heart was disengaged. That was a great
point; and for the rest, surely persuasion might do much.

Then came that phenomenon seen very often in this life--a
generous-minded, right-thinking young man talked into a position which of
all others is averse from his own inclinations. The mother persuaded, the
sister pleaded, the father dwelt dismally upon the poverty of Beaubocage,
the wealth of Côtenoir. It was the story of auld Robin Gray reversed.
Gustave perceived that his refusal to avail himself of this splendid
destiny would be a bitter and lasting grief to these people who loved him
so fondly--whom he loved as fondly in return. Must he not be a churl to
disappoint hopes so unselfish, to balk an ambition so innocent? And only
because Madelon was not the most attractive or the prettiest of women!

The young man stood firm against all their arguments, he was unmoved by
all their pleading. It was only when his anxious kindred had given up the
battle for lost that Gustave wavered. Their mute despair moved him more
than the most persuasive eloquence; and the end was submission. He left
Beaubocage the plighted lover of that woman who, of all others, he would
have been the last to choose for his wife. It had all been settled very
pleasantly--the dowry, the union of the two estates, the two names. For
six months Gustave was to enjoy his freedom to finish his studies; and
then he was to return to Normandy for his marriage.

"I have heard very good accounts of you from Paris," said the Baron. "You
are not like some young men, wild, mad-brained. One can confide in your
honour, your steadiness."

The good folks of Beaubocage were in ecstacies. They congratulated
Gustave--they congratulated each other. A match so brilliant would be the
redemption of the family. The young man at last began to fancy himself
the favoured of the gods. What if Madelon seemed a little dull--a little
wanting in that vivacity which is so pleasing to frivolous minds? she was
doubtless so much the more profound, so much the more virtuous. If she
was not bright and varied and beautiful as some limpid fountain dancing
in summer sunlight, she was perhaps changeless and steady as a rock; and
who would not rather have the security of a rock than the summer-day
beauty of a fountain?

Before Gustave departed from his paternal home he had persuaded himself
that he was a very lucky fellow; and he had paid Mademoiselle Frehlter
some pretty little stereotyped compliments, and had listened with sublime
patience to her pretty little stereotyped songs. He left the young lady
profoundly impressed by his merits; he left his own household supremely
happy; and he carried away with him a heart in which Madelon Frehlter's
image had no place.



CHAPTER II.


IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE.

Gustave went back to his old life, and was not much disturbed by the
grandeur of his destiny as future seigneur of Côtenoir and Beaubocage. It
sometimes occurred to him that he had a weight upon his mind; and, on
consideration, he found that the weight was Madelon Frehlter. But he
continued to carry that burden very lightly, and his easy-going student
life went on, unbroken by thoughts of the future. He sent polite messages
to the demoiselle Frehlter in his letters to Cydalise; and he received
from Cydalise much information, more graphic than interesting, upon the
subject of the family at Côtenoir; and so his days went on with pleasant
monotony. This was the brief summer of his youth; but, alas, how near at
hand was the dark and dismal winter that was to freeze this honest joyous
heart! That heart, so compassionate for all suffering, so especially
tender for all womankind, was to be attacked upon its weaker side.

It was Gustave Lenoble's habit to cross the gardens of the Luxembourg
every morning, on his way from the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle to the Ecole
de Droit. Sometimes, when he was earlier than usual, he carried a book
with him, and paced one of the more obscure alleys, reading for an odd
half-hour before he went to the daily mill-grinding in the big building
beyond those quiet gardens.

Walking with his book one morning--it was a volume of Boileau, which
the student knew by heart, and the pages whereof did not altogether
absorb his attention--he passed and repassed a bench on which a lady
sat, pensive and solitary, tracing shapeless figures on the ground with
the point of her parasol. He glanced at her somewhat carelessly the
first time of passing, more curiously on the second occasion, and
the third time with considerable attention. Something in her
attitude--helplessness, hopelessness, nay indeed, despair itself, all
expressed in the drooping head, the listless hand tracing those idle
characters on the gravel--enlisted the sympathies of Gustave Lenoble. He
had pitied her even before his gaze had penetrated the cavernous depths
of the capacious bonnet of those days; but one glimpse of the pale
plaintive face inspired him with compassion unspeakable. Never had he
seen despair more painfully depicted on the human countenance--a despair
that sought no sympathy, a sorrow that separated the sufferer from the
outer world. Never had he seen a face so beautiful, even in despair. He
could have fancied it the face of Andromache, when all that made her
world had been reft from her; or of Antigone, when the dread fiat had
gone forth--that funeral rites or sepulture for the last accursed scion
of an accursed race there were to be none.

He put Boileau into his pocket. That glimpse of a suffering human mind,
which had been unconsciously revealed to him, possessed an interest more
absorbing than the grandest flight of poet and satirist. As he passed for
the fifth time, he looked at the mournful lady still more searchingly,
and this time the sad eyes were lifted, and met his pitying looks. The
beautiful lips moved, and murmured something in tones so tremulous as to
be quite unintelligible.

The student took off his hat, and approached the lady, deferential as
knight-errant of old awaiting the behest of his liege mistress.

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

"You are very good, monsieur," murmured the lady in very decent French,
but with an accent unmistakably foreign--English, as Gustave opined.
"I--I--am quite a stranger in Paris, and--and--I have heard there are
numerous lodging-houses in this quarter--where one may obtain a
lodging--cheaply. I have asked several nursemaids, and other women, in
the gardens this morning; but they seem very stupid, and can tell me
nothing; and I do not care to ask at the hotel where I am staying."

Gustave pondered. Yes, there were many lodgings, he informed the lady.
And then he thought of Madame Magnotte. Was it not his duty to secure
this stray lodger for that worthy woman, if possible?

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

Madame shook her head. "A boarding-house would suit me just as well," she
said; "but it must not be expensive. I cannot afford to pay much."

"I know of a boarding-house very near this place, where madame might find
a comfortable home on very reasonable terms. It is, in point of fact, the
house in which I myself reside," added Gustave, with some timidity.

"If you will kindly direct me to the house--" said the lady, looking
straight before her with sad unseeing eyes, and evidently supremely
indifferent as to the residence or non-residence of M. Lenoble in the
habitation referred to.

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

The stranger accepted the courtesy with a gentle indifference that was
not ingratitude, but rather incapacity for any feeling except that one
great sorrow which seemed to absorb her mind.

Gustave wondered what calamity could thus overwhelm one so young and
beautiful.

The lady was quite silent during the little walk from the gardens to the
Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and Gustave observed her attentively as he
walked by her side. She was evidently not more than four-and-twenty years
of age, and she was certainly the prettiest woman he had ever seen. It
was a fair delicate English beauty, a little worn and faded, as if by
care, but idealized and sublimated in the process. At her brightest this
stranger must have been strikingly beautiful; in her sorrow she was
touchingly lovely. It was what Gustave's countrymen call a _beauté
navrante_.

Gustave watched her, and wondered about her. The dress she wore was
sufficiently elegant, but had lost the gloss of newness. Her shawl, which
she carried as gracefully as a Frenchwoman, was darned. Gustave perceived
the neat careful stitches, and divined the poverty of the wearer. That
she should be poor was no subject for surprise; but that she, so
sorrowful, so lonely, should seek a home in a strange city, was an enigma
not easy to solve.

To Madame Magnotte Gustave introduced the stranger. She gave just one
look round the dreary saloon; but to Gustave's fancy that one look seemed
eloquent. "Ah me!" it said; "is this the fairest home I am to find upon
this inhospitable earth?"

"She does not seem to belong to this world," the young man thought, as
he went back to the garden where he had found his fair stranger, having
been very coolly dismissed by Madame Magnotte after his introduction had
been made.

And then M. Lenoble, being of a romantic turn of mind, remembered how a
lady had been found by a student sitting on the lowest steps of the
guillotine, desolate and helpless, at night; and how the student had
taken her home and sheltered her, and had straightway fallen desperately
in love with her, to discover, with unutterable horror, that her head had
been severed from her fair shoulders by the cruel knife twelve hours
before, and that her melancholy loveliness was altogether phantasmal and
delusive.

Was this English stranger whom Gustave had found in the gardens of the
Luxembourg twin sister to that ghostly lady of the familiar legend? Her
despair and her beauty seemed to him greater than earthly sorrow or
earthly beauty; and he was half inclined to wonder whether she could be
of the same race as Madelon Frehlter. And from this hour the sense of a
weight upon his mind, before so vague and intermittent, became an
enduring oppression, not to be shaken off by any effort of his will.

All through that day he found himself thinking more of the unknown
Englishwoman than was consistent with a strict performance of his duties.
He was vexed with himself on account of this foolish distraction of mind.

"What a frivolous fellow I must be," he said to himself, "to dwell upon
such a trifle! This comes of leading such a monotonous life."

At dinner he looked for the lady; but she did not appear at the long
table, where the shrill old ladies, the epicurean old bachelors, the
noisy students, daily devoured and grumbled at the four or five courses
which old Nanon developed out of her inner consciousness and a rather
scantily furnished larder. He questioned Madame Magnotte after dinner,
and was told that the lady was in the house, but was too tired to dine
with the other inmates.

"I have to thank thee for a new boarder, my friend," she said. "Madame
Meynell will not pay largely; but she seems a quiet and respectable
person, and we shall doubtless be well pleased with each other."

"Madame Meynell!" repeated Gustave, congratulating himself on finding
that the Englishwoman was an inhabitant of the house he lived in. "She is
a widow, I suppose?"

"Yes, she is a widow. I asked that question, and she answered, yes.
But she told me nothing of her late husband. She is not at all
communicative."

This was all Gustave could obtain from Madame Magnotte. She was not
communicative. No; she was, indeed, scarcely less silent than that
ghostly lady who had been found sitting at the foot of the guillotine.
There was some kind of mystery involved in her sorrowful face, her silent
apathy. It was possibly the fact of this mystery which interested M.
Lenoble. Certain it is that the young man's interest had been aroused by
this unknown Englishwoman, and that his mind was more occupied by the
image of her whom he had seen but once than by that of his plighted wife.

He waited anxiously for the next day; but on the next day Madame Meynell
still pleaded fatigue and illness. It was only on the third day that she
appeared at the noisy banquet, pale, silent, absent-minded, sheltering
herself under the wing of Madame Magnotte, who was disposed to be kind to
this helpless stranger. To Gustave the young English widow seemed like a
ghost at that crowded board. He looked at her every now and then from his
distant seat, and saw her always with the same hopeless far-away look in
her sad eyes. He himself was silent and _distrait_.

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

M. Lenoble could not become vivacious or entertaining at the behest of
his fellow-student. The consciousness of that strange pale face haunted
and oppressed him. He hoped to have a few minutes' talk with the English
lady after dinner, but she disappeared before the removal of those
recondite preparations which in the Pension Magnotte went by the generic
name of "dessert."

For more than a week she appeared thus at the dinner-table, eating very
little, speaking not at all, except such monosyllabic replies as the
hostess now and then extorted from her pale lips. A creature at once so
beautiful and so profoundly sad became an object of interest to others
besides Gustave; but in no breast was the sympathy which her sadness and
beauty excited so poignant as in his. Her face haunted him. The familiar
pleasures and amusements became distasteful to him. He spent his evenings
at home in the dismal salon, and was content to listen to the chatter of
the old women, the little music-mistress's dreary sonatas, the monotonous
roll of wheels on the distant quay--anything rather than the hackneyed
round of student-life that had once been agreeable to him. He did not
fail to write his weekly letter to Cydalise; but, for some reason or
other, he refrained from any allusion to the English stranger, although
it was his custom to relate all his adventures for the amusement of the
family at Beaubocage.

An evening came at last on which Madame Meynell was persuaded to remain
with the other ladies after dinner.

"It must be very cold and cheerless for you in your bedroom," said
Madame Magnotte; "why not spend your evening with us, in a pleasant and
social manner?"

"You are very good, madame," murmured the Englishwoman, in the slow timid
accents that had so plaintive a sound to Gustave's ear; "if you wish it,
I will stay."

She seemed to submit rather from utter weakness and inability to refuse
anything asked of her than from any hope of finding pleasure in the
society of the Magnotte salon.

It was an evening in March--cold, blustrous, dreary. The east wind blew
clouds of dust athwart the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and the few
foot-passengers in that dull thoroughfare looked pinched and wretched.
The old ladies gathered round the great black stove, and gossipped in the
twilight; the music-mistress went to her feeble piano, and played,
unasked, unheeded; for Gustave, who was wont to turn the leaves, or sit
attentive by the piano, seemed this evening unconscious of the music.
Madame Meynell sat in one of the windows, alone, half-hidden by the faded
yellow damask curtains, looking out into the street.

Something--some impulse which he tried to resist, but could not--drew
Gustave towards that lonely figure by the window. He went close up to the
strange lady. This evening, as in the gardens of the Luxembourg, she
seemed to him a living statue of despair. Now, as then, he felt an
interest in her sorrow which he was powerless to combat. He had a vague
idea that even this compassionate sympathy was in some manner an offence
against Madelon Frehlter, the woman to whom he belonged, and yet he
yielded to the fatal weakness.

"Yes, I belong to her," he said to himself; "I belong to Madelon
Frehlter. She is neither pretty nor fascinating; but I have every reason
to believe her very good, very amiable; and she is the only woman, except
those of my own kindred, in whom I have any right to be interested."

He did not say this in so many words; but this was the shape which his
thoughts assumed as he yielded to the tempter, and walked straight to the
distant window by which Madame Meynell had seated herself.

She started slightly as he approached her, and then looked up and
recognized him as her acquaintance of the Luxembourg.

"Good evening, monsieur," she said; "I have to thank you for having
helped me to find a comfortable home."

Having said this in a low gentle voice, she looked out into the street
once more with her mournful unseeing eyes. It was evident that she had no
more to say to M. Lenoble.

The student, however, had no idea of leaving the window just yet,
although he knew--yes, knew--that his presence there was a wrong done to
Madelon Frehlter; but a wrong so small, so infinitesimal, that it was
really not worth consideration.

"I am enchanted to think that I was of some slight service to you,
madame," he said; "but I fear you will find this quarter of Paris
very dull."

She did not take any notice of this remark until Gustave had repeated it,
and then she spoke as if suddenly awakened from a trance.

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

After this M. Lenoble felt that he could say no more. The lady relapsed
into her waking trance. The dust-clouds in the silent street seemed more
interesting to her than M. Lenoble of Beaubocage. He lingered a few
minutes in the neighbourhood of her chair, thoughtfully observant of the
delicate profile, the pale clear tints of a complexion that had lost its
bloom but not its purity, the settled sadness of the perfect mouth, the
dreamy pensiveness of the dark-grey eye, and then was fain to retire.

After this, the English widow lady spent many evenings in Madame
Magnotte's salon. The old Frenchwoman gossipped and wondered about
her; but the most speculative could fashion no story from a page so
blank as this joyless existence. Even slander could scarcely assail
a creature so unobtrusive as the English boarder. The elderly ladies
shrugged their shoulders and pursed up their lips with solemn
significance. There must needs be something--a secret, a mystery, sorrow,
or wrong-doing--somewhere; but of Madame Meynell herself no one could
suspect any harm.

Gustave Lenoble heard little of this gossip about the stranger, but she
filled his thoughts nevertheless. The vision of her face came between him
and his work; and when he thought of the future, and of the damsel who
had been allotted to him for a wife, his thoughts were very bitter.

"Fate is like Laban," he said to himself; "a man works and does his duty
for seven years, and then Fate gives him Leah instead of Rachel. No doubt
Leah is a very good young woman; one has no complaint to make against
her, except that she is not Rachel."

This was not a hopeful manner of looking at things for the destined
master of Côtenoir. M. Lenoble's letters to the anxious folks at
Beaubocage became, about this time, somewhat brief and unsatisfactory. He
no longer gave ample details of his student-life--he no longer wrote in
his accustomed good spirits. His letters seemed stiff and constrained.

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

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



CHAPTER III.


"PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR."

Two months had elapsed since the bleak spring morning on which Gustave
Lenoble found the solitary lady under the leafless trees of the
Luxembourg gardens. The inmates of the Pension Magnotte had grown
accustomed to her presence, to her silence, her settled sadness, and
troubled themselves no further respecting herself or her antecedents. The
lapse of time had brought no improvement to her spirits; indeed, Gustave,
who watched her closely, perceived that she had grown paler and thinner
since that March morning when he met her in the public garden. Her life
must have been painfully monotonous. She very rarely went out of doors,
and on no occasion ventured beyond the gardens of the Luxembourg. No one
visited her. She neither wrote nor received any letters. She was wont to
make a pretence of reading as she sat in her retired corner of the salon;
but Gustave had discovered that she gave little attention to her book.
The open volume in her hand seemed no more than an excuse for brooding
upon her sorrows.

If people, prompted by curiosity or by compassion, endeavoured to get
into conversation with this lonely lady, the result was always the same.
She would answer their questions in a low gentle voice, with a quiet
politeness; but she never assisted them in the smallest degree to
interchange thoughts with her. It seemed as if she sought neither friend
nor sympathizer, or as if her case was so entirely hopeless as to admit
of neither. She paid for her board and lodging weekly with a punctilious
exactness, though weekly payments were not the rule of the house.

"My movements are uncertain," she said to Madame Magnotte. "I cannot
tell how long I may be with you. It will therefore be better for me to
pay you weekly."

She had been in the house two months, dining every day at the public
table, spending all her evenings in the public saloon; and during that
time her settled gloom had never been broken by any outburst of grief or
passion. She might have been a creature of ice, a statue of despair
modelled in snow by a Michael Angelo. But one night the ice melted, the
statue of snow became in a moment a passionate, grief-stricken woman.

It was one bright evening late in May. Ah, how near at hand was the
appointed date of those nuptials to which the household of Beaubocage
looked forward with supreme happiness! The old ladies of the Pension
Magnotte were for the most part out of doors. The long saloon was almost
empty. There were only Gustave, Madame Magnotte, and the little
music-mistress, who sat at her piano, with the western sunlight shining
full upon her, rosy-hued and glorious, surrounding her with its soft
radiance until she looked like a humble St. Cecilia.

Madame Meynell had seated herself close to the piano, and was listening
to the music. Gustave hovered near, pretending to be occupied with a limp
little sheet of news published that evening.

Mademoiselle Servin, the teacher of music, upon this occasion deserted
her favourite masters. She seemed in a somewhat dreamy and sentimental
humour, and played tender little melodies and simple plaintive airs, that
were more agreeable to Gustave than those grand examples of the
mathematics of counter-point which she so loved to interpret.

"You like this melody of Grétry's," said the music-mistress, as M.
Lenoble seated himself close to the piano. "I do not think you care for
classic sonatas--the great works of Gluck, or Bach, or Beethoven?"

"No," replied the young man frankly; "I do not care about anything I
can't understand. I like music that goes to one's heart."

"And you, too, Madame Meynell, like simple melodies?" mademoiselle asked
of that lady, who was not wont to come so near the little piano, or to
pay so much attention to Mademoiselle Servin's performance.

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

"And you, too, think that Beethoven never composed simple plaintive
airs--for example," exclaimed the pianist, playing softly while she
spoke. "You think he wrote only sonatas, quartettes, fugues, grand,
operas, like _Fidelio_. Have you never heard this by your scientific
Beethoven?"

Hereupon she played "Hope told a flattering tale," with much tenderness
and delicacy. Her two hearers listened, mute and deeply moved. And then
from that familiar melody she glided softly into another, most musical,
most melancholy, which has been set to some of the sweetest verses that
Thomas Moore ever composed:

"Those evening bells, those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells
Of youth and home, and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime!"

All the world sang the verses of Ireland's divine bard in those days. The
song was one which the Englishwoman had sung years ago in a happy home.
What recollections, what associations, were evoked by that plaintive
melody, who shall say? The words came back with the music to which they
have been eternally wedded. The words, their mournful meaning, the faces
of the friends amongst whom she had last sung them, the picture of the
peaceful home whose walls had echoed the music,--all these things arose
before her in a vision too painfully vivid; and the lonely boarder at the
Pension Magnotte covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud.

The passion of tears lasted but a minute. Madame Meynell dried her eyes,
and rose to leave the room.

"Do not question me," she said, perceiving that her two companions were
about to offer her their sympathy. "I cannot tell you the memories that
were conjured up by that music. It brought back a home I shall never see
again, and the faces of the dead--worse than dead to me--and the
happiness I have lost, and the hopes and dreams that once were mine. Oh,
I pray God I may never hear that melody again."

There was a passion, a depth of feeling, in her tone quite new to Gustave
Lenoble. He opened the door for her without a word, and she passed out of
the salon quietly, like a ghost--the ghost of that bright young creature
who had once borne her shape, and been called by her name, in a pleasant
farmhouse among the Yorkshire wolds.

"Ah, but how that poor soul must have suffered!" cried the sympathetic
Mademoiselle Servin, as the door closed on the Englishwoman. "I did
not think it was in her to feel so deeply. I thought she was stone, and
now I begin to think it must be of such stone as Niobe--the
petrification of despair."

Upon Gustave Lenoble this scene made a profound impression. He lay awake
during the greater part of that night, thinking of the lonely lady's
tears and anguish. The music of "Those evening bells" pervaded his
dreams. He rose unrefreshed, feverish, forgetful of Côtenoir and Madelon
Frehlter, as if that place and that person had never emerged from the
shapeless substances of chaos. He wanted to see _her_ again, to console
her, if that were possible. Oh, that it might be his privilege to console
her! He pitied her with a compassion so intense, that thus to
compassionate her woes, was himself to suffer a poignant anguish. He
pitied her. Yes, he told himself again and again that this sentiment
which so absorbed his heart and mind was no more than pity. But oh, if
this were pity, what were love? That was a question which also presented
itself to the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, of Beaubocage _in esse_, and
Côtenoir _in posse_.

Madame Meynell rarely appeared at the common breakfast in the grim
dining-room of the Pension Magnotte. Gustave was therefore in nowise
surprised to miss her on this particular morning. He took a cup of
coffee, and hurried off to his daily duties. There was a fever on him
which he could neither understand nor shake off, and he hastened to the
gardens of the Luxembourg, as if there were some special necessity for
speed. So do men often hasten unconsciously to their predestined doom,
defiant of augury. Soothsayers may menace, and wives may dream dreams;
but when his hour comes, Caesar will go to the appointed spot where the
daggers of his assassins await him.

In the alley where he had first looked upon her sad face, beneath
the umbrage of young limes and chestnuts just bursting into bloom,
he saw the Englishwoman to-day, seated on the same bench, almost in
the same attitude.

He went up to her, and bade her good morning; and then, intensely
conscious of his own temerity, seated himself by her side.

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

"No, I seldom come out so soon; but this morning I have to make some
inquiries upon a matter of business, and I am only resting here before
going to make them."

She gave a little weary sigh at the end of this speech. It seemed a
strange manner of transacting business to rest in the Luxembourg gardens,
which were distant but a few hundred yards from her home. Gustave divined
that it was for very forlornness she lingered there, shrinking from some
difficult encounter that lay before her.

"Can I not make the inquiries for you?" he asked. "Pray command me. It
will be my happiness to be useful to you."

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

"Pray do not talk of trouble. It can be no trouble to me to aid you in
any manner. Ah, madame, you do not know how much I would sacrifice to be
useful to you!"

She must have been dull indeed had she failed to perceive the earnestness
of his tone. She did perceive it, and was vaguely conscious that in this
student of law she had a friend.

"I want to know when the diligence for Calais leaves Paris, and from what
office," she said. "I am going back to England."

She was surprised to see the young man's face blanch as she announced
this simple fact. The young man himself was surprised by the sudden
anguish inflicted by her announcement. It was in this moment that he
first discovered how completely he had given his heart into this strange
woman's keeping.

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

"Yes. I have been here too long already. I have no business here. I ought
to have gone back to England that day when I first met you here, but I
put off the day of my return. I can put it off no longer."

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

"I am going back to my friends? Yes!" Her lips quivered a little, and the
unbidden tears came to her eyes.

Ah, what was the sorrow that oppressed this beauteous lonely creature?
What agony of grief or self-reproach was this pain which consumed her?
Gustave remembered her passion of tears on the previous night; her talk
of friends that were dead, and happiness lost; and now to-day she talked
of going home to her friends: but O the bitterness of expression with
which she had spoken that word "friends!"

"Are you going alone, Madame Meynell?" he inquired, after a pause. He
could not tear himself from that seat by her side. He could not be manly
or rational where she was concerned. The image of Madelon Frehlter rose
before his mental vision, reproachful, menacing; but a thick fog
intervened to obscure that unwelcome image. His whole life resolved
itself into those thrilling moments in which he sat here, on this common
garden bench, by this stranger's side; the entire universe was contracted
into this leafy walk where they two sat.

"Yes, I am going alone," madame replied, with a little laugh. "Who should
I have to go with me? I am quite alone in the world. I think I had better
make these inquiries myself, M. Lenoble. There is no reason why I should
give you so much trouble."

"There is no such thing as trouble. I will bring you all necessary
information to-day at dinner, if that will be soon enough."

"Quite soon enough, I thank you, monsieur," she answered, with a sigh. "I
must ask you kindly to ascertain for me also the expense of the journey."

"Most certainly, madame."

This request set him wondering whether she were poor, and how poor. But
she had evidently no more to say to him; she had again become
impenetrable. He would fain have stayed, though honour and conscience
were clamorous in their demands for his departure. Happily for honour and
conscience, the lady was silent as death, impervious as marble; so M.
Lenoble presently bowed and departed.

He thought of her all day long. The farce of pity was ended. He knew now
that he loved this Englishwoman with an affection at once foolish and
sinful,--foolish, since he knew not who or what this woman was; sinful,
since the indulgence of this passion involved the forfeiture of his
plighted word, the disappointment of those who loved him.

"No, no, no," he said to himself; "I cannot do this base and wicked
thing. I must marry Madelon. All the hopes of my mother and father rest
on that marriage; and to disappoint them because this stranger's face has
bewitched me? Ah, no, it cannot be. And even if I were willing to trample
my honour in the dust, how do I know that she would value or accept the
sacrifice?"

M. Lenoble made all necessary inquiries at the office of the Messageries,
and carried the intelligence to Madame Meynell. He could see that she
winced a little when he told her the cost of the journey, which in those
days was heavy.

"She must certainly be poor," he said to himself; and it rent his heart
to think that even in this paltry matter he could be of no use to her.
The destined master of Beaubocage and Côtenoir was entirely without ready
money. He had his watch. He put his hand upon that clumsy timekeeper as
he talked to madame.

"_Je te porterai chez ma tante, mon gars_," he said to himself. But he
doubted whether the high priests of the pious mountain--the Dordona of
Pauperism--would advance much upon this antique specimen of the
watchmaker's art.

After this evening he looked forward daily, hourly, to the anguish of her
departure. She would vanish out of his life, intangible as a melted
snow-flake, and only memory would stay behind to tell him he had known
and loved her. Why should this be so hard to bear? If she stayed, he
dared not tell her she was dear to him; he dared not stretch forth his
hand to help her. In all the world there was no creature more utterly
apart from him than she, whether she lived in the same house with him or
was distant as the Antipodes. What did it matter, then, since she was
destined to disappear from his life, whether she vanished to-day or a
year hence? He argued with himself that it could be a question of no
moment to him. There was a death-blow that must descend upon him, cruel,
inevitable. Let it come when it would.

Every day when he came home to dinner, M. Lenoble expected to behold a
vacant place by the side of his hostess; every day he was pleasantly
disappointed. The pale hopeless face was still to be seen, ghost-like, at
that noisy board. The face was more pale, more hopeless, as it seemed to
Gustave, every day he looked upon it.

He asked Madame Magnotte when the English lady was going to leave, but
she could not tell.

"She talks of leaving from day to day," said madame; "it will no doubt be
soon. I am sorry to lose her. She is very gentle, and gives no trouble to
any one. But she is sad--ah, how sad she is! She has suffered, monsieur."

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

He watched her closely, but she was always the same. She no longer spent
her evenings in the salon, but in her own apartment. He saw her only at
dinner-time, and had no opportunity of speaking to her.

At last the day came upon which he missed her at the usual hour. He sat
through the tedious meal without speaking; eating a little, drinking a
little, mechanically, but with no consciousness of what he ate or drank.
There was a mist before his eyes, a confusion of voices in his ears; but
the faculties of sight and hearing seemed suspended. The agony he
suffered during that miserable hour was bitter as death.

"O, my God, how I love her!" he said to himself, while Raoul's bass roar
brayed in his ear on one side, and Leon's shrill squeal tortured him on
the other.

He made his way to Madame Magnotte directly after dinner.

"She is gone?" he exclaimed.

"But who, my friend? Ah, yes; it is of that poor Madame Meynell you
speak. How you are interested in her! No, she is not gone, poor woman.
She remains always. She has the air of a person who knows not her own
mind. Yet I am sure she thinks of going. To-day, for the first time, she
has been writing letters. Reine came to tell me she had seen her occupied
in her own room for the first time. It is not her habit to occupy
herself."

Gustave's heart gave a great jump. She was not gone; he might see her
again--if it were but a glimpse of her pale face looking out of the
diligence as it drove out of the Cour de Messageries. One look, one
glance; it would be something to carry in his heart all his life. All his
life! He looked forward and shuddered. What a dreary life it must needs
be! Côtenoir, Beaubocage, Madelon, the law; to plead, to read papers, to
study dry as dust books. He shrank appalled from the contemplation of
that dreary desert of existence--a life without her.

She had been writing letters--doubtless letters to her friends to
announce her return. Her departure must be very near at hand.

Gustave refused to go out that evening. His fellow-students were bent on
a night's pleasure at a dancing-garden then in vogue, where there would
be twinkling lamps and merry music under the May moon. The lamp-lit
parterres, the joyous waltzes, had no attractions for Gustave Lenoble. He
haunted the dull salon, dim and dreary in the twilight; for Madame
Magnotte was chary of lamps and candles, and prolonged to its utmost
limits the pensive interval between day and night. He walked softly up
and down the room, unheeded by the ladies clustered in a group by one of
the windows. Restless and unhappy, he could neither go nor stay. She was
not coming down to the salon this evening. He had clung to the faint hope
that she might appear; but the faint hope died away in his breast as the
night deepened. What purpose could be served by his remaining in that
dismal room? He was no nearer her than he would have been in the
remotest wilds of Central America. He would go out--not to the odious
dancing-garden, but to the cool dark streets, where the night wind might
blow this fever from his brain.

He left the room suddenly, and hurried downstairs. At the bottom of the
staircase he almost stumbled against a woman, who turned and looked at
him in the light of a little oil-lamp that hung over the door of the
portress's lodge.

It was the Englishwoman, deadly pale, and with a wild look in her face
that Gustave had never seen there before. She gave him no sign of
recognition, but passed out of the courtyard, and walked rapidly away.
That unusual look in her face, the strangeness of the fact that she
should be leaving the house at this hour, inspired him with a vague
terror, and he followed her, not stealthily, without a thought that he
was doing any wrong by such an act--rather, indeed, with the conviction
that he had a right so to follow her.

She walked very quickly--at a more rapid pace than Gustave would have
supposed possible for so fragile a creature. She chose the lonelier
streets, and Gustave had no difficulty in following her; she never looked
back, but went straight on her course, without pause or slackening of her
pace, as if with a settled purpose.

"Where can she be going?" Gustave asked himself; and an answer, vague,
hideous, terrible, suggested itself to his mind. The idea that occurred
to him was one that would scarcely have occurred to an Englishman under
the same circumstances, but to a Frenchman it was a very familiar idea.

It was dark now--the darkness that reigns between early sunset and late
moonrise. As the lonely woman went farther along the dreary streets
parallel with the quay, the dreadful suspicion grew stronger in Gustave's
mind. From that instant he had but one thought; in that moment he put
away from him for ever all sense of obligation to Madelon Frehlter; he
shook off father, mother, sister, old associations, home ties, ambition,
fortune--he lived alone for this woman, and the purpose of his life was
to save her from despair and death.

They emerged upon the quay at last. The long stretch of pavement was
deserted. Ah, now she looked back--she looked on every side with wild
unseeing eyes--and now there could be little doubt as to the purpose that
brought her here. She crossed the road, and went upon the bridge, Gustave
following close; in the next minute she was standing on the stone bench,
a tremulous, fluttering figure, with arms stretched towards the water; in
a breath she was clasped to Gustave's breast, clasped by arms that meant
to hold her for ever.

The shock of that surprise utterly unnerved the wretched creature. She
shivered violently, and struggled to free herself from those strong arms.

"Let me go!" she cried in English. "Let me go!" And then, finding herself
powerless, she turned and looked at her captor. "M. Lenoble! O, why do
you persecute me? Why do you follow me?"

"Because I want to save you."

"To save me! To snatch me back when I was going to find rest--an end for
my weary life! O yes, I know that it is a sinful end; but my life has
been all sin."

"Your life all sin! Foolish one, I will never believe that."

"It is true," she cried, with passionate self-reproach. "The sin of
selfishness, and pride, and disobedience. There is no fate too hard for
me--but, O, my fate is very hard! Why did you keep me from that river?
You do not know how miserable my life is--you do not know. I paid my
last penny to Madame Magnotte this morning. I have no money to take me
back to England, even if I dared go there--and I dare not. I have prayed
for courage, for strength to go back, but my prayers have not been
heard; and there is nothing for me but to die. What would be the sin of
my throwing myself into that river! I must die; I shall die of
starvation in the streets."

"No, no," cried Gustave passionately; "do you think I have dragged you
back from death to give you to loneliness and despair? My dear one, you
are mine--mine by right of this night. These arms that have kept you
from death shall shelter you,--ah, let them shelter you! These hands
shall work for you. My love, my love! you cannot tell how dear you are
to me. If there must be want or trouble for either of us, it shall come
to me first."

He had placed her on the stone bench, bewildered and unresisting, and had
seated himself by her side. The fragile figure, shivering still, even in
the mild atmosphere of the spring night, was sustained by his encircling
arm. He felt that she was his, irrevocably and entirely--given to him by
the Providence which would have seemed to have abandoned her, but for the
love it had implanted for her in this one faithful heart. His tone had
all the pleading tenderness of a lover's, but it had something more--an
authority, a sense of possession.

"Providence sent me here to save you," he said, with that gentle yet
authoritative tone; "I am your providence, am I not, dearest? Fate made
me love you--fondly, hopelessly, as I thought. Yesterday you seemed as
far away from me as those pale stars, shining up yonder--as
incomprehensible as that faint silvery mist above the rising moon--and
to-night you are my own."

He knew not what ties might be broken by this act. He had indeed a vague
consciousness that the step which he was now taking would cause a
lifelong breach between himself and his father. But the time had gone by
in which he could count the cost.

"Let me go back, M. Lenoble," the Englishwoman said presently. The
faintness of terror was passing away, and she spoke almost calmly. "Let
me go back to the house. It is you that have saved me from a dreadful
sin. I promise you that I will not again think of committing that deadly
sin. I will wait for the end to come. Let me go, my kind friend. Ah, no,
no; do not detain me! Forget that you have ever known me."

"That is not in my power. I will take you back to the Pension Magnotte
directly; but you must first promise to be my wife."

"Your wife! O, no, no, no! That is impossible."

"Because you do not love me," said Gustave, with mournful gravity.

"Because I am not worthy of you."

Humiliation and self-reproach unspeakable were conveyed in those few
words.

"You are worth all the stars to me. If I had them in my hands, those
lamps shining up there, I would throw them away, to hold you," said the
student passionately. "You cannot understand my love, perhaps. I seem a
stranger to you, and all I say sounds wild and foolish. My love, it is
true as the heaven above us--true as life or death--death that was so
near you just now. I have loved you ever since that bleak March morning
on which I saw you sitting under the leafless trees yonder. You held me
from that moment. I was subjugated--possessed--yours at once and for
ever. I would not confess even to myself that my heart had resigned
itself to you; but I know now that it was so from the first. Is there any
hope that you will ever pay me back one tithe of my love?"

"You love me," the Englishwoman repeated slowly, as if the words were
almost beyond her comprehension,--"you love _me_, a creature so lost, so
friendless! Ah, but you do not know my wretched story!"

"I do not ask to know it. I only ask one question--will you be my wife?"

"You must be mad to offer your name, your honour to me."

"Yes, I am mad--madly in love. And I am waiting for your answer. You
will be my wife? My angel, you will say yes! It is not much that I offer
you--a life of uncertainty, perhaps even of poverty; but a fond and
constant heart, and a head and hands that will work for you while God
gives them strength. It is better than the river."

All that was thoughtless and hopeful in his disposition was expressed in
these words. The woman to whom he pleaded was weakened by sorrow, and
the devotion of this brave true heart brought her strength, comfort,
almost hope.

"Will you be my friend?" she said gently. "Your words seem to bring me
back to life. I wanted to die because I was so wretched, so lonely. I
have friends in England--friends who were once all that is dear and kind;
but I dare not go to them. I think a cruel look from one of those friends
would kill me with a pain more bitter than any other death could give.
And I have no right to hope for kind looks from them. Yours are the only
words of friendship I have heard for a long time."

"And you will give me the right to work for you--to protect you? You will
be my wife?"

"I would rather be your servant," she answered, with sad humility. "What
right have I to accept so great a sacrifice? What folly can be so foolish
as your love for me--if it is indeed love, and not a wild fancy of
to-night!"

"It is a fancy that will last my life."

"Ah, you do not know how such fancies change."

"I know nothing except that mine is changeless. Come, my love, it is
growing late and cold. Let me take you home. The portress will wonder.
You must slip past her quietly with your veil down. Did you give old
Margot your key when you came down stairs to-night?"

"No, it is in my pocket. I was not thinking--I--"

She stopped with a sudden shudder. Gustave understood that shudder; he
also shuddered. She had left her room that night possessed by the
suicide's madness; she had left it to come straight to death. Happily his
strong arm had come between her and that cruel grave by which they were
still lingering.

They walked slowly back to the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle under the light of
the newly-risen moon. The Englishwoman's wasted hand rested for the first
time on M. Lenoble's arm. She was his--his by the intervention and by the
decree of Providence! That became a conviction in the young man's mind.
He covered her late return to the house with diplomatic art, engaging the
portress in conversation while the dark figure glided past in the dim
lamplight. On the staircase he paused to bid her good night.

"You will walk with me in the Luxembourg garden to-morrow morning,
dearest," he said. "I have so much to say--so much. Until then, adieu!"

He kissed her hand, and left her on the threshold of her apartment, and
then went to his own humble bachelor's chamber, singing a little drinking
song in his deep manly voice, happy beyond all measure.

They walked together next day in the gardens of the Luxembourg. The poor
lonely creature whom Gustave had rescued seemed already to look up to him
as a friend and protector, if not in the character of a future husband.
It was no longer this fair stranger who held possession of Gustave; it
was Gustave who had taken possession of her. The stronger nature had
subjugated the weaker. So friendless, so utterly destitute--penniless,
helpless, in a strange land, it is little matter for wonder that Susan
Meynell accepted the love that was at once a refuge and a shelter.

"Let me tell you my wretched story," she pleaded, as she walked under the
chestnut-trees by her lover's side. "Let me tell you everything. And if,
when you have heard what an unhappy creature I am, you still wish to give
me your heart, your name, I will be obedient to your wish. I will not
speak to you of gratitude. If you could understand how debased an outcast
I seemed to myself last night when I went to the river, you would know
how I must feel your goodness. But you can never understand--you can
never know what you seem to me."

And then in a low voice, and with infinite shame and hesitation, she told
him her story.

"My father was a tradesman in the city of London," she said. "We were
very well off, and my home ought to have been a happy one. Ah, how happy
such a home would seem to me now! But I was idle and frivolous and
discontented in those days, and was dissatisfied with our life in the
city because it seemed dull and monotonous to me. When I look back now
and remember how poor a return I gave for the love that was given to
me--my mother's anxiety, my father's steady, unpretending kindness--I
feel how well I have deserved the sorrows that have come to me since
then."

She paused here, but Gustave did not interrupt her. His interest was too
profound for any conventional expression. He was listening to the story
of his future wife's youth. That there could be any passage in that
history which would hinder him from claiming this woman as his wife was a
possibility he did not for a moment contemplate. If there were shame
involved in the story, as Madame Meynell's manner led him to suppose
there must be, so much the worse was it for him, since the shame must be
his, as she was his.

"When my father and mother died, I went into Yorkshire to live with my
married sister. I cannot find words to tell you how kind they were to
me--my sister and her husband. I had a little money left me by my father,
and I spent the greater part of it on fine dress, and on foolish presents
to my sister and her children. I was happier in Yorkshire than I had been
in London; for I saw more people, and my life seemed gayer and brighter
than in the city. One day I saw a gentleman, the brother of a nobleman
who lived in the neighbourhood of my sister's house. We met by accident
in a field on my brother-in-law's farm, where the gentleman was shooting;
and after that he came to the house. He had seen my sister before, and
made some excuse for renewing his acquaintance. He came very often, and
before long he asked me to marry him; and I promised to be his wife, with
my sister's knowledge and consent. She loved me so dearly, and was so
proud of me out of her dear love, that she saw nothing wonderful in this
engagement, especially as Mr. Kingdon, the gentleman I am speaking of,
was a younger son, and by no means a rich man."

Again she stopped, and waited a little before continuing her story. Only
by a gentle pressure of the tremulous hand resting on his arm did Gustave
express his sympathy.

"I cannot tell you, how happy I was in those days--so bright, so brief. I
cannot tell you how I loved Montague Kingdon. When I look back to that
time of my life, it seems like a picture standing out against a
background of darkness, with some strange vivid light shining upon it. It
was arranged between Montague and my sister that we should be married as
soon as his brother, Lord Durnsville, had paid his debts. The payment of
the debts was an old promise of Lord Durnsville's, and an imprudent
marriage on his brother's part might have prevented the performance of
it. This is what Montague told my sister Charlotte. She begged him to
confide in her husband, my kind brother-in-law, but this he refused to
do. There came a day very soon after this when James Halliday, my
brother-in-law, was told about Montague Kingdon's visits to the farm. He
came home and found Mr. Kingdon with us; and then there was a dreadful
scene between them. James forbade Mr. Kingdon ever again to set foot in
his house. He scolded my sister, he warned me. It was all no use. I loved
Montague Kingdon as you say you love me--foolishly, recklessly. I could
not disbelieve or doubt him. When he told me of his plans for our
marriage, which was to be kept secret until Lord Durnsville had paid his
debts, I consented to leave Newhall with him to be married in London. If
he had asked me for my life, I must have given it to him. And how should
I disbelieve his promises when I had lived only amongst people who were
truth itself? He knew that I had friends in London, and it was arranged
between us that I was to be married from the house of one of them, who
had been my girlish companion, and who was now well married. I was to
write, telling her of my intended journey to town; and on the following
night I was to leave Newhall secretly with Montague Kingdon. I was to
make my peace with my sister and her husband after my marriage. How shall
I tell you the rest? From the first to last he deceived me. The carriage
that was, as I believed, to have taken us to London, carried us to Hull.
From Hull we crossed to Hamburg. From that time my story is all shame and
misery. I think my heart broke in the hour in which I discovered that I
had been cheated. I loved him, and clung to him long after I knew him to
be selfish and false and cruel. It seemed to be a part of my nature to
love him. My life was not the kind of life one reads of in novels. It was
no existence of splendour and luxury and riot, but one long struggle with
debt and difficulty. We lived abroad--not for our pleasure, but because
Mr. Kingdon could not venture to appear in England. His brother, Lord
Durnsville, had never promised to pay his debts. That was a falsehood
invented to deceive my sister. For seven long weary years I was his
slave, a true and faithful slave; his nurse in illness, his patient
drudge at all times. We had been wandering about France for two years,
when he brought me to Paris; and it was here he first began to neglect
me. O, if you could know the dreary days and nights I have spent at the
hotel on the other side of the river, where we lived, you would pity me."

"My dear love, my heart is all pity for you," said Gustave. "Do not tell
me any more. I can guess the end of the story. There came a day in which
neglect gave place to desertion."

"Yes; Mr. Kingdon left me one day without a warning word to break the
blow. I had been waiting and watching for him through two weary days and
nights, when there came a letter to tell me he was on his way to Vienna
with a West Indian gentleman and his daughter. He was to be married to
the daughter. It was his poverty, he told me, which compelled this step.
He advised me to go back to my friends in Yorkshire. To go back!--as if
he did not know that death would be easier to me. There was a small sum
of money in the letter, on which I have lived since that time. When you
first met me here, I had not long received that letter."

This was the end of her story. In the depth of her humiliation she dared
not lift her eyes to the face of her companion; but she felt his hand
clasp hers, and knew that he was still her friend. This was all she asked
of Providence.

To Gustave Lenoble the story had been unutterably painful. He had hoped
to hear a tragedy untarnished by shame, and the shame was very bitter to
him. This woman whom he loved so fondly was no spotless martyr, the
victim of inevitable fate, beautiful and sublime in her affliction. She
was only a weak vain, village beauty who had suffered herself to be lured
away from her peaceful home by the falsehoods of a commonplace scoundrel.

The story was common, the shame was common, but it seemed to M. Lenoble
that the woman by his side was his destiny; and then, prompt to the
rescue of offended pride, of outraged love--tortured to think that she,
so distant and pure a creature to him, should have been trampled in the
dust by another--came the white-winged angel Pity. By her weakness, by
her humiliation, by the memory of her suffering, Pity conjured him to
love her so much the more dearly.

"My darling," he said softly, "it is a very sad story, and you and I will
never speak of it again. We will bury the memory of Montague Kingdon in
the deepest grave that was ever dug for bitter remembrances; and we will
begin a new life together."

This was the end of M. Lenoble's wooing. He could not speak of his love
any more while the sound of Montague Kingdon's name had but lately died
away on Susan Meynell's lips. He had taken her to himself, with all her
sorrows and sins, in the hour in which he snatched her from death; and
between these two there was no need of passionate protestations or
sentimental rapture.

M. Lenoble speedily discovered that the law had made no provision for the
necessities of a chivalrous young student eager to unite himself with a
friendless foreign woman, who could not produce so much as one of the
thirty witnesses required to establish her identity. A very little
consideration showed Gustave that a marriage between him and Susan
Meynell in France was an impossibility. He explained this, and asked her
if she would trust him as she had trusted Montague Kingdon. In Jersey the
marriage might easily be solemnised. Would she go with him to Jersey, to
stay there so long as the English law required for the solemnization of
their union?

"Why should you take so much trouble about me?" said Susan, in her low
sad voice. "You are too good, too generous. I am not worth so much care
and thought from you."

"Does that mean that you will not trust me, Susan?"

"I would trust you with my life in a desert, thousands of miles from the
rest of mankind--with a happier life than mine. I have no feeling in my
heart but love for you, and faith in you."

After this the rest was easy. The lovers left the Pension Magnotte one
bright summer morning, and journeyed to Jersey, where, after a
fortnight's sojourn, the English Protestant church united them in the
bonds of matrimony.

Susan was a Protestant, Gustave a Catholic, but the difference of
religion divided them no more than the difference of country. They came
back to Paris directly after the marriage, and M. Lenoble took a very
modest lodging for himself and his wife in a narrow street near the
Pantheon--a fourth story, very humbly furnished. M. Lenoble had provided
for himself an opportunity of testing the truth of that adage which
declares that a purse large enough for one is also large enough for two.



CHAPTER IV.


A DECREE OF BANISHMENT.

After those stormy emotions which accompany the doing of a desperate
deed, there comes in the minds of men a dead calm. The still small voice
of Wisdom, unheard while Passion's tempest was raging, whispers grave
counsel or mild reproof; and Folly, who, seen athwart the storm-cloud,
sublime in the glare of the lightning, seemed inspiration, veils her face
in the clear, common light of day.

Let it not for a moment be supposed that with M. Lenoble time and
reflection brought repentance in their train. It was not so. The love
which he felt for his English wife was no capricious emotion; it was a
passion deep and strong as destiny. The worst that afterthought could
reveal to him was the fact that the step he had taken was a very
desperate one. Before him lay an awful necessity--the necessity of going
to Beaubocage to tell those who loved him how their air-built castles had
been shattered by this deed of his.

The letters from Cydalise--nay, indeed, more than one letter from his
mother, with whom letter-writing was an exceptional business--had of late
expressed much anxiety. In less than a month the marriage-contract would
be made ready for his signature. Every hour's delay was a new dishonour.
He told his wife that he must go home for a few days; and she prepared
his travelling gear, with a sweet dutiful care that seemed to him like
the ministration of an angel.

"My darling girl, can I ever repay you for the happiness you have brought
me!" he exclaimed, as he watched the slight girlish figure flitting about
the room, busy with the preparations for his journey.

And then he thought of Madelon Frehlter--commonplace, stiff, and
unimpressionable--the most conventional of school-girls, heavy in face,
in figure, in step, in mind even, as it had seemed to him, despite his
sister's praises.

He had been too generous to tell Susan of his engagement, of the
brilliant prospects he forfeited by his marriage, or the risk which he
ran of offending his father by that rash step. But to-night, when he
thought of Madelon's dulness and commonness, it seemed to him as if Susan
had in manner rescued him from a dreadful fate--as maidens were rescued
from sea-monsters in the days of Perseus and Heracles.

"Madelon is not unlike a whale," he thought. "They tell us that whales
are of a sagacious and amiable temper,--and Cydalise was always talking
of Madelon's good sense and amiablity. I am sure it is quite as easy to
believe in the unparalleled virtues of the whale as in the unparalleled
virtues of Madelon Frehlter."

His valise was packed, and he departed for Beaubocage, after a sad and
tender parting from his wife. The journey was a long one in those days,
when no express train had yet thundered across the winding Seine,
cleaving its iron way through the bosom of fertile Norman valleys. M.
Lenoble had ample time for reflection as he jogged along in the ponderous
diligence; and his heart grew more and more heavy as the lumbering
vehicle approached nearer to the town of Vevinord, whence he was to make
his way to the paternal mansion as best he might.

He walked to Beaubocage, attended by a peasant lad, who carried his
portmanteau. The country was very pleasant in the quiet summer
evening, but conscious guilt oppressed the heart and perplexity
disturbed the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, and his spirits were in
nowise elevated by the walk.

Lights in the lower chambers gleamed dimly athwart the trim garden at
Beaubocage. One faint twinkling candle shone in a little pepper-castor
turret, his sister's room. The thought of their glad welcome smote his
heart. How could he shape the words that must inform them of their
disappointment? And then he thought of the gentle pensive wife in the
Parisian lodging, so grateful for his devotion, so tender and
submissive,--the wife he had rescued from death and eternal condemnation,
as it seemed to his pious Catholic mind. The thought of this dear one
gave him courage.

"I owe much to my parents," he thought to himself, "but not the privilege
to sell me for money. The marriage they want to bring about would be a
sordid barter of my heart and my honour."

In a few minutes after this he was standing in the little salon at
Beaubocage, with his mother and sister hanging about him and caressing
him, his father standing near, less demonstrative, but evidently well
pleased by this unexpected arrival of the son and heir.

"I heard thy voice in the hall," cried Cydalise, "and flew down from my
room to welcome thee. It seems to me that one can fly on these occasions.
And how thou art looking well, and how thou art handsome, and how I adore
thee!" cries the damsel, more ecstatic than an English sister on a like
occasion. "Dost thou know that we began to alarm ourselves about thee?
Thy letters became so infrequent, so cold. And all the while thou didst
plot this surprise for us. Ah, how it is sweet to see thee again!"

And then the mother took up the strain, and anon was spoken the dreaded
name of Madelon. She too would be glad--she too had been anxious. The
prodigal made no answer. He could not speak, his heart sank within him,
he grew cold and pale; to inflict pain on those who loved him was a
sharper pain than death.

"Gustave!" cried the mother, in sudden alarm, "thou growest pale--thou
art ill! Look then, François, thy son is ill!"

"No, mother, I am not ill," the young man replied gravely. He kissed his
mother, and put her gently away from him. In all the years of her
after-life she remembered that kiss, cold as death, for it was the
farewell kiss of her son.

"I wish to speak a few words with you alone, father," said Gustave.

The father was surprised, but in no manner alarmed by this request. He
led the way to his den, a small and dingy chamber, where there were some
dusty editions of the French classics, and where the master of Beaubocage
kept accounts and garden-seeds and horse-medicines.

When they were gone, the mother and sister sat by one of the open
windows, waiting for them. Without all was still. Distant lights
glimmered through the summer twilight, the lighted windows of Côtenoir.

"How pleased Madelon will be," said Cydalise, looking towards those
glimmering windows. She had really taught herself to believe that the
demoiselle Frehlter was a most estimable young person; but she would have
been glad to find more enthusiasm, more brightness and vivacity, in her
future sister-in-law.

The interview between the father and son seemed long to Madame Lenoble
and Cydalise. The two women were curious--nay, indeed, somewhat anxious.

"I fear he has made debts," said the mother, "and is telling thy father
of his follies. I know not how they are to be paid, unless with the dowry
of Madelon, and that would seem a dishonourable use of her money."

It was half an hour before any sound broke the stillness of that quiet
house. Twilight had thickened into night, when there came a banging of
doors and heavy footsteps in the hall. The door of the salon was
opened, and M. Lenoble came in alone. At the same moment the outer door
closed heavily.

M. Lenoble went straight to the open window and closed the Venetian
shutters. He went from thence to the second window, the shutters whereof
he fastened carefully, while the women stared at him wonderingly, for it
was not his habit to perform this office.

"I am shutting out a vagabond," he said, in a cold, cruel voice.

"Where is Gustave?" cried the mother, alarmed.

"He is gone."

"But he is coming back, is he not, directly?"

"Never while I live!" answered M. Lenoble. "He has married an English
adventuress, and is no longer any son of mine."




Book the Second.



DOWNHILL.



CHAPTER I.


THE FATE OP SUSAN LENOBLE.

Seven years after that miserable summer night at Beaubocage on which
Gustave Lenoble was disowned by his father, a man and woman, with a boy
five years of age, were starving in a garret amongst the housetops and
chimneys of Rouen. In the busy city these people lived lonely as in a
forest, and were securely hidden from the eyes of all who had ever
known them. The man--haggard, dying--cherished a pride that had grown
fiercer as the grip of poverty tightened upon him. The woman lived only
for her husband and her child.

The man was Gustave Lenoble. The world had gone ill with him since he
cast his destiny into the lap of the woman he loved. In all these years
no olive-bearing dove had spanned the gulf that yawned between the
prodigal and his father. The seigneur of Beaubocage had been marble. A
narrow-minded old man, living his narrow life, and nursing one idea with
fanatical devotion, was of all men the least likely to forgive. Vain had
been the tears and entreaties of mother and sister. The doors of that
joyless dwelling on the fertile flats beyond Vevinord were sealed against
the offender with a seal not to be broken, even had he come thither to
plead for pardon, which he did not.

"My father would have sold me as negro slaves are sold _làbas_," he said,
on those rare occasions when he opened his old wounds, which were to the
last unhealed: "I am glad that I escaped the contemptible barter."

He was in very truth glad. Poverty and hardship seemed to him easier to
bear than the dreary prosperity of Côtenoir and a wife he could not have
loved. The distinguishing qualities of this man's mind were courage and
constancy. There are such noble souls born into the world, some to shine
with lustre supernal, many to burn and die in social depths, obscure as
ocean's deepest cavern.

In his love for the woman he had chosen Gustave Lenoble never wavered. He
worked for her, he endured for her, he hoped against hope for her sake;
and it was only when bodily strength failed that this nameless
foot-soldier began to droop and falter in life's bitter battle. Things
had gone ill with him. He had tried his fate as an advocate in Paris, in
Caen, in Rouen--but clients would not come. He had been a clerk, now in
one counting-house, now in another, and Susan and he had existed somehow
during the seven years of their married life.

They clung to each other with affection that seemed to grow with every
new sorrow; nor did love exhibit any inclination to spread his wings and
take flight from the window, though poverty came in every day at the
door, and sat by the hearth, a familiar companion and inevitable guest.

The mother and sister contrived to help this poor castaway with the
veriest scrapings of a miserly household. The old man, soured by his
great disappointment, grew sordid and covetous with increasing years, and
the lives of the women were hard and hopeless. By little cheats, and
petty contrivances, and pitiful falsifications of financial statements,
they managed to scrape together a few louis now and then for the
struggling exile; and to do this was the sole delight of their patient
lives. They contrived also to correspond secretly with Gustave, and were
informed of the birth of his son.

"Ah, if thou couldst see how beautiful he is," wrote the father, "this
child of pure and true love, thou wouldst no longer regret my breach of
faith with Madelon Frehlter. I knew not until now how like infant
children are to angels. I knew not how true to nature are the angels in
the pictures of Raffaelle and Murillo. Thou knowest the print of
Murillo's Assumption; the picture is in the Louvre. If thou canst
remember that picture, dear mother, thou hast but to recall the face of
one of the cherubim about the feet of our Lady, and thou hast the
portrait of my boy. He opens his eyes, and looks at me as I write. Ah!
that he and I and my Susan were with thee in the little salon at
Beaubocage--my sister, Susan, you, and I united round this darling's
cradle. He has been born in poverty, but his birth has made us very
happy."

The sentiment of this letter was no spurious or transient feeling. For
this child Gustave Lenoble evinced an unchanging fondness. It was indeed
no part of his nature to change. The little one was his comfort in
affliction, his joy during every brief interval of prosperity. When the
battle was well nigh fought, and he began to feel himself beaten. His
chief anxieties, his ever-returning fears, were for his wife and child.

To Susan the thought of parting from him was a despair too deep for
tears. She would have been something less than woman if she had not loved
her husband with more than common affection. She watched the change that
illness brought in the frank face, the stalwart figure; and little by
little the awful truth came home to her. The hour was at hand in which
she must lose him.

"If you could have rest, Gustave, better medical advice, more comforts,
you would soon be strong again, I am sure your father would not refuse to
forgive you now. Write to him, dearest. Go back to Beaubocage, and let
your mother and sister nurse you. I will stay here with the little one.
It shall be forgotten that you have a wife and child."

"No, dear one; I will not desert you, even for a day, to buy back my
father's love. I would rather be here with you than in the pleasantest
home without you. But we must face the future, Susan; we must be brave
and wise, for the little one's sake. You are not so strong that you can
afford to trust blindly in your power to protect him by-and-by. I have
written a letter to my father. He has proved himself a hard man to me,
cruel and obdurate beyond all my fears; but I know he is not altogether
heartless. When I am dead, you will take the letter in one hand, the
child in the other, and go to Beaubocage. I believe he will adopt the
boy, and that the little one will give him the comfort and happiness he
hoped from me. He must be very lonely; and I cannot doubt that his heart
will melt when he sees the child's face, and hears that he has no longer
a son. As for yourself, my poor girl, I see for you no hope except in the
old Yorkshire home, and the friends you fear to see again."

"I no longer fear them," said his wife, with unwonted energy, "I could
not go to them seven years ago; but I can go to them as your wife."

"Ah, thank God, the poor name is worth something for you."

"Yes, dear; and I will go back to them--to-morrow."

"To-morrow!"

"To-morrow, Gustave. I have been selfish and cruel to delay so long. The
old dread of seeing my sister's reproachful face has been strong enough
to hold me back, when a little courage might have enabled me to help you.
The burden has been all on you, and I have done nothing. O, what a wretch
I must have been to sit idly by and see you suffer, and make no effort to
help you!"

"But, my darling, you have not been idle. You have been the dearest and
most industrious of wives, and have helped me to bear my burden. You have
done more, dear--you have made my burden pleasant to me."

"I will try to lighten it, Gustave," cried Susan, with excitement. "O,
why, why did I never try before! My sister and her husband are well
off--rich perhaps. If they are still living, if no cruel changes have
come to pass at Newhall, they could help us with a little money. They
might even give us a home. I will start for England to-morrow."

"Nay, my dear, you are not strong enough to travel so far alone. It
seems, indeed, a happy thought this of your rich relations; but you must
not undertake such a journey. You might write."

"No, Gustave, I will trust to no letter; I will go. It will be no pain
for me to humble myself for your sake. I will go straight to my sister. I
know what a tender compassionate heart it is that I shall appeal to."

There was much discussion; but Susan was resolute. To scrape together the
money for the journey she made efforts that were heroic in a nature so
weak as hers. She went to the Monte de Piété with the last of her little
treasures, that one dear trinket to which she had clung even when hunger
was at the door--the gimmal or alliance ring that Gustave had placed upon
her finger before God's altar--the double symbolic circlet which bore on
one side her name, on the other her husband's. This dearest of all her
possessions she surrendered for a few francs, to make up the sum needful
for her journey.

What it cost her to do this, what it cost her to tear herself away
from her sick husband and her only child, who shall say? There are
pangs that cannot be counted, agonies that will come within no
calculation--the infinite of pain. She went. Two kind souls, a labourer
and his wife, lodgers in the same garret-story, promised to care for
and help the invalid and child. There is no desolation in which a child
will not find a friend.

The journey was long and fatiguing; the anguish of her poor aching heart
almost too much for endurance--a heart so heavy that even hope could
scarce flutter it. It was dull damp weather, though in the middle of
summer. The solitary traveller caught cold on the journey, and arrived in
London in a high fever. Ill, faint, and helpless, the great city seemed
to her unspeakably dismal--most stony of all stony-hearted mothers to
this wretched orphan. She could go no farther than the darksome city inn
where the coach from Southampton brought her. She had come _viâ_ Havre.
Here she sank prostrate, and had barely sufficient strength to write an
incoherent letter to her sister, Mrs. Halliday, of Newhall Farm, near
Huxter's Cross, Yorkshire.

The sister came as fast as the fastest coach on the great northern road
could carry her. There was infinite joy in that honest sisterly heart
over this one sinner's repentance. Fourteen years had gone by since the
young city-bred beauty had fled with that falsest of men, and most
hardened of profligates, Montague Kingdon; and tidings from Susan were
unlooked for and thrilling as a message from the grave.

Alas for the adverse fate of Susan Meynell! The false step of her youth
had set her for ever wrong upon life's highway. When kind Mrs. Halliday
came, Gustave Lenoble's wife was past her help; wandering in her mind; a
girl again, but newly run away from her peaceful home; and with no
thought save of remorse for her misdeeds.

The seven years of her married life seemed to have faded out of her mind.
She raved of Montague Kingdon's baseness, of her own folly, her vain
regret, her yearning for pardon; but of the dying husband in the garret
at Rouen she uttered no word. And so, with her weary head upon her
sister's breast, she passed away, her story untold, no wedding-ring on
her wasted finger to bear witness that she died an honest man's wife; no
letters or papers in her poor little trunk to throw light on the fourteen
years in which she had been a castaway.

Mrs. Halliday stayed in London to see the wanderer laid in the quiet city
churchyard where her family rested, and where for her was chosen an
obscure corner in which she might repose forgotten and unknown.

But not quite nameless. Mrs. Halliday could not leave the grave unmarked
by any record of the sister she had loved. The stone above the grave of
Gustave's wife bore her maiden name, and the comforting familiar text
about the one sinner who repenteth.



CHAPTER II.


FORGIVEN TOO LATE.

For a week of long days and longer nights there was no step sounded on
the stair, no opening or shutting of a door in the old dilapidated house
where he lay languishing on the brink of an open grave, that did not move
Gustave Lenoble with a sudden emotion of hope. But the footsteps came and
went, the doors were opened and shut again and again, and the traveller
so waited, so hoped for did not return.

The boy--the brave bright son, who seemed to inherit all that was noblest
and best in his father's nature--pined for his mother. The man endured a
martyrdom worse than the agony of Damiens, the slow tortures of La Barre.
What had befallen her? That she could desert him or his child was a
possibility that never shaped itself in his mind. _That_ drop of poison
was happily wanting in his cup; and the bitterness of death was sweet
compared to the scorpion-sting of such a supposition.

She did not return. Calamity in some shape had overtaken her--calamity
dire as death; for, with life and reason, she could not have failed to
send some token, some tidings, to those she loved. The sick man waited a
week after the day on which he had begun to expect her return. At the end
of that time he rose, with death in his face, and went out to look for
her--to look for her in Rouen; for her whom the instinct of his heart
told him was far away from that city--as far as death from life. He went
to the Cour de Messageries, and loitered and waited amidst the bustle of
arriving and departing diligences, with a half-imbecile hope that she
would alight from one of them. The travellers came and went, pushing and
hustling him in their selfish haste. When night came he went back to his
garret. All was quiet. The boy slept with the children of his good
neighbour, and was comforted by the warmth of that strange hearth.

Gustave lit his candle, a last remaining morsel.

"You will last my time, friend," he said, with a wan smile.

He seated himself at the little table, pushed aside the medicine-bottles,
searched for a stray sheet of letter-paper, and then began to write.

He wrote to his mother, telling her that death was at hand, and that the
time had come in which she must succour her son's orphan child. With this
he enclosed a letter to his father--that letter of which he had spoken to
his wife, and which had been written in the early days of his illness.
This packet he directed to Madame Lenoble, at Beaubocage. There was no
longer need for secrecy.

"When those letters are delivered I shall be past blame, and past
forgiveness," he thought.

In the morning he was dead.

The neighbours posted the letter. The neighbours comforted and protected
the child for two days; and then there came a lady, very sad, very quiet,
who wept bitterly in the stillness of that attic chamber where Gustave
Lenoble lay; and who afterwards, with a gentle calmness of manner that
was very sweet to see, made all necessary arrangements for a humble, but
not a mean or ignominious, funeral.

"He was my brother," she said to the good friends of the neighbouring
garret. "We did our best to help him, my mother and I; but we little
thought how bitterly he wanted help. The brave heart would not suffer us
to know that."

And then she thanked them with much tenderness for their charity to the
dead man; and with these good people she went on foot through the narrow
streets of the city to see her brother laid in his grave.

Until this was done the mournful lady, who was not yet thirty years of
age, and of a placid nun-like beauty, abandoned herself to no transport
of love for her orphan nephew; but when that last office of affection had
been performed, she took the little one on her knees, and folded him to
her breast, and gave him her heart, as she had given it long ago to his
father; for this gentle unselfish creature was one who must needs have
some shrine at which to offer her daily sacrifice of self. Already she
was beginning to think how the orphan was to be cared for and the widow
also, for whose return she looked daily.

For the return of Susan Lenoble Cydalise waited at Rouen several days
after the funeral. She had, happily, an old school-fellow comfortably
established in the city; and in the house of this old friend she found a
home. No one but her mother and this friend, whom she could trust, knew
of the business that had brought her from Beaubocage. In seven years the
father had never uttered his only son's name; in all the seven years that
name had never been spoken in his hearing.

When three weeks had gone by since the departure of Susan for England,
all hope of her return was abandoned by Mademoiselle Lenoble and the
neighbours who had known the absent woman.

"She had the stamp of death on her face when she went away," said the
labourer's wife, "as surely as it was on him that she left. I told her
she had no strength for the journey; but she would go: there was no
moving her from that. She had rich friends _là-bas_, who might help her
husband. It was for that she went. That thought seemed to give her a kind
of fever, and the strength of fever."

"And there has come no letter--nothing?"

"Nothing, mademoiselle."

On this Cydalise determined to return to Beaubocage. She could not well
leave the child longer on the hands of these friendly people, even by
paying for his maintenance, which she insisted on doing, though they
would fain have shared their humble _pot-à-feu_ and coarse loaf with
him unrecompensed. She determined on a desperate step. She would take
her brother's orphan child back with her, and leave the rest to
Providence--to the chance of some sudden awakening of natural affection
in a heart that had long languished in a kind of torpor that was almost
death.

The little fellow pined sadly for those dear familiar faces, those tender
soothing voices, that had vanished so suddenly from his life. But the
voice of his aunt was very sweet and tender, and had a tone that recalled
the father who was gone. With this kind aunt he left Rouen in the
lumbering old vehicle that plied daily betwixt that city and Vevinord.

"Thou canst call me Cydalise for a while, my little one," she said to
him; for she did not wish the child to proclaim the relationship between
them yet awhile.

Ah, what bitter tears the two women shed over the soft fair curls of that
little head, when they had the boy all to themselves in the turret
chamber at Beaubocage, on whose white walls the eyes of Cydalise had
opened almost every morning of her pure eventless life!

"Why dost thou cry so, madame?" the child asked of his grandmother, as
she held him in her arms, kissing and weeping over him; "and what have
they done with my father--and mamma too? She went away one day, but she
told me that she would come back, so quickly, ah, so quickly! and the
days passed, and they shut papa in his room, and would not let me go to
him; and mamma did not come, though I asked the Blessed Virgin to send
her back to me."

"Dear child, thy father and mother are in a brighter place than this hard
world, where they had so much sorrow," Madame Lenoble answered, gently.

"Yes, they were often sorry," murmured the boy thoughtfully. "It was
because of money; but then, when there was no money, mamma cried and
kissed me, and kissed papa, and the good papa kissed us both, and somehow
it always ended in happiness."

François Lenoble was, happily, absent on this day of tribulation. The
women took their fill of sorrow, but it was sorrow mingled with a strange
bitter sweetness that was almost joy. The seigneur of Beaubocage had gone
to dine, as he still often did, with his old friend Baron Frehlter; for
the breach of faith which had caused a lifelong disunion of father and
son had not divided the two proprietors. Nay, indeed the Baron had been
generous enough to plead the cause of the castaway.

"A man cannot dispose at will of his affections, my friend," he urged;
"and it was more generous in your son to break faith with my daughter
before marriage than after."

Mademoiselle Frehlter had not broken her heart on account of her lover's
falsehood. She had been sufficiently indignant on the occasion, and had
been more impatient of her mother's pet priest and pet poodle during the
brief period in which she wore the willow. She had recovered her good
humour, however, on being wooed by a young subaltern in a cavalry
regiment stationed at Vevinord, the offshoot of a grander house than that
of Lenoble, and whose good looks and good lineage had ultimately
prevailed with the Baron. That gentleman had by no means too good an
opinion of the son-in-law thus forced upon him; but peace was the highest
good (with unlimited tobacco) to which his Germanic soul aspired; and for
the sake of peace in the present he was content to hazard his daughter's
happiness in the future.

"_That_ is very brilliant," he said of M. Paul de Nérague, the young
lieutenant of light cavalry; "but it is not solid, like Gustave. Your son
is honest, candid--a brave heart. It is for that I would have given him
Madelon. But it is Providence which disposes of us, as our good father
St. Velours tells us often; and one must be content. Young Nérague
pleases my daughter, and I must swallow him, though for me he smells too
strong of the barracks: _ça flaire la caserne, mon ami_."

That odour of the barracks which distinguished the sub-lieutenant Paul de
Nérague became more odious after his marriage with the virtuous Madelon,
when he was established--_niché_, as he himself called it--in very
comfortable, though somewhat gruesome, apartments at Côtenoir. His
riotous deportment, his hospitable disposition (as displayed in the
frequent entertainment of his brothers-in-arms at the expense of his
father-in-law), his Don Juan-like demeanour in relation to the housemaids
and kitchen-wenches of the château--innocent enough in the main, but on
that account so much the more audacious--struck terror to the hearts of
Madame Frehlter and her daughter; and the elder lady was much gratified
by that thirst for foreign territory which carried the greater part of
the French army and the regiment of the vivacious Paul to the distant
wilds of Algeria.

The virtuous Madelon was too stolid to weep for her husband. But even her
stolidity was not proof against the fiery influence of jealousy, and,
waking and sleeping, her visions were of veiled damsels of Orient
assailing the too inflammable heart of Lieutenant de Nérague.

The young officer was yet absent at that period in which Cydalise
returned from Rouen with her brother's child.

The little boy was sleeping peacefully in a cot beside his aunt's bed (it
had been his father's cot thirty years ago) when François Lenoble
returned from Côtenoir that night.

It was not till the next day that he saw the child. He had been making
his usual morning's round in the gardens and orchards, when he came into
the salon, and saw the little boy seated near his grandmother's chair,
playing with some dominoes. Something--perhaps the likeness to his dead
son--the boy's black clothes, for Cydalise had contrived to dress him in
decent mourning--struck suddenly on the old man's heart. "Who is that
boy?" he asked, with a strange earnestness.

"Your son Gustave's only child," answered his wife gently,--"his
orphan child."

François Lenoble looked at her, and from her to the boy; tried to speak,
but could not; beckoned the child, and then dropped heavily into a chair
and sobbed aloud. Until this moment no one had ever seen him shed a tear
for the son he had put away from his home--and, as it had seemed, from
his heart. Not by one sigh, not by one mournful utterance of the familiar
name, had he betrayed the depth of that wound which he had endured,
silently, obstinately, in all these years.

They suffered him to bemoan his dead son unhindered by stereotyped
consolations. The two women stood by, and pitied him in silence. The
little boy stared wonderingly, and at last crept up to the
sorrow-stricken father. "Why do you cry, poor old man?" he asked. "You
have not lost your papa and mamma, as I have lost mine, have you? I want
to stay with you and be your little boy, please. She told me to say
that," he added, pointing to Cydalise.--"And I have said it right,
haven't I?" he asked of the same lady.--"I think I shall love you,
because you are like my papa, only older and uglier," the little one
concluded, with angelic candour.

The seigneur of Beaubocage dried his tears with an effort.
Beaubocage--Côtenoir. Ah, me! what empty sounds those two once magic
names seemed to him now that his son's life had been sacrificed to so
paltry an ambition, so sordid a passion, so vile and grovelling a desire!
He took the boy on his knee, and kissed him tenderly. His thoughts
bridged over a chasm of five-and-twenty years as his lips pressed
that fair young brow; and it was his own son--the son whom he had
disowned--whose soft hair was mingling itself now with the grey bristles
on his rugged chin.

"My child," he murmured softly, "the fear is that I shall love thee too
well, and be to thee as much too weakly indulgent as I was wickedly stern
to thy father. Anything is easier to humanity than justice."

This was said to himself rather than to the boy.

"Tell me thy name, little one," he asked presently, after a few moments'
pensive meditation.

"I have two names, monsieur."

"Thou must call me grandfather. And the two names?"

"François Gustave."

"I shall call thee Gustave."

"But papa always called me François, and mamma said it was the name of a
cruel man; but papa said he loved the name--"

"Ah, no more, little one!" cried the lord of Beaubocage suddenly;
"thou knowest not with what dagger-thrusts thou dost pierce this poor
old heart."



CHAPTER III.


GUSTAVE THE SECOND.

The little Gustave grew and flourished. Such love was lavished on him as
rarely falls to the lot of children, though the spring of many lives may
be rich in love's pure white blossom. The existence of this child seemed
all happiness. He brought hope, and a sense of atonement, and all sweet
things, to the quiet family at Beaubocage; and as he grew from childhood
to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood, it seemed to that household as if
the first Gustave of their love had never been taken from them. That
Orphic fable of Zagreus repeats itself in many households. For the one
bright creature lost another is given; and then comes a time when it is
almost difficult to separate the image of the missing one from the dear
substitute who so nearly fills his place.

François Lenoble and his wife enjoyed a green old age, and the affection
of their grandson made the cup of life sweet for them to the very dregs.
There are, happily, some natures which indulgence cannot injure; some
luxuriant flowers which attain strength as well as beauty under the
influence of these tropical heats of affection. Gustave the second
possessed all the noble qualities of Gustave the first. Frank, generous,
brave, constant, affectionate, light-hearted, he shone on the failing
eyes of his kindred radiant as a young Apollo, brave as a mortal
Hercules.

Those things which the ignorant heart has at some time so passionately
desired are apt to be granted when the desire has grown somewhat cold and
dead. Thus it was with the ambition of François Lenoble. He lived to see
the lands of Côtenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his
grandson, who married Clarice, the only surviving child of M. and Madame
de Nérague. Two sons and a daughter had been born at Côtenoir; but the
sons withered and faded in early boyhood, and even the daughter, though
considered a flourishing plant in that poor garden of weakling blossoms,
was but a fragile creature.

The old people at Beaubocage survived the seigneur and châtelaine of
Côtenoir by some years, and survived also the fiery lieutenant, who fell
in Algeria without having attained his captaincy, or added any military
renown to the good old name of de Nérague in his own magnificent person.

François saw his grandson established at Côtenoir before he died. He
expired with his hand in that of Gustave, whom, in the half-consciousness
of that last hour, he mistook for the son he had disowned.

"What door was that that shut?" he asked, in an eager whisper. "Who said
I turned my son out of doors--my only son? It's false! I couldn't have
done it! Hark! there's the door shutting again! It sounds like the door
of a tomb."

After this he dozed a little, and woke with a smile on his face.

"I have been dreaming of thy father, Gustave," he said calmly. "I thought
that I saw him with a light shining in his face, and that he kissed and
forgave me."

This was the end. The faithful wife was not slow to follow her husband to
the grave, and there was now only a placid maiden lady at Beaubocage,
Mademoiselle Cydalise Lenoble, whom everyone within ten leagues of
Vevinord knew and loved,--a lay abbess, a Sister of Mercy in all save the
robes; a tender creature, who lived only to do good.

Ten years passed, and M. Lenoble of Côtenoir was a widower with two
fair young daughters at a convent school on the outskirts of Vevinord,
and a boisterous son at an academy in Rouen. Gustave had never followed
any profession; the lands of Beaubocage secured him a competence,
so prudently had the small estate been managed by the kindred who
adored him. His marriage had given him fortune. He had no need of
trade or profession. His life was laid out for him like a prim Dutch
flower-garden. He was to live at Côtenoir, and look after his estate, and
smoke his pipe, as Baron Frehlter had done, and be a good husband to his
wife, a kind father to his children. This latter part of his duty came
natural to M. Lenoble. It was not in him to be otherwise than kind to
women and children. His invalid wife praised him as a model of marital
perfection. It was Gustave who wheeled her sofa from one room to another,
Gustave who prepared her medicines, Gustave whose careful hands adjusted
curtains and _portières_. The poor woman lived and died believing herself
the happiest of wives. She mistook kindness for love.

M. Lenoble bore his wife's demise with Christian calmness. He was sorry
that the fragile creature should have been taken so early from the
pleasant home that was hers by right, but of passionate grief, or dreary
sense of irreparable loss, there was none in that manly heart. There were
times when the widower reproached himself for this want of feeling; but
in very truth Madame Lenoble, _jeune_, had lived and died a nonentity.
Her departure left no empty place; even her children scarcely missed her.
The father was all-in-all.

Gustave had married at twenty years of age. He was twenty-nine when his
wife died. His eldest daughter, Clarice, eight; his second, Madelon,
seven; the boy, a spoilt young dog of five, not yet despatched to the
great school at Rouen.

But in '65 Mademoiselle Clarice was fifteen years of age, and a very
charming performer on the pianoforte, as the good nuns at the Convent of
the Sacred Heart, at Vevinord, told the father. Mademoiselle Madelon was
looking forward to her fourteenth anniversary, and she, too, was a very
pretty pianist, and altogether a young prodigy of learning and goodness,
as the nuns told the master of Côtenoir. The demoiselles of Côtenoir
stood high in the estimation of pupils and mistress; they were a kind of
noblesse; and the simple-minded superioress spoke of these young persons
with some pride when she described her establishment to a stranger. It
was a very comfortable little colony, a small world enclosed by high
walls. The good mothers who taught and cherished the children were for
the greater part ladies of superior and even exalted station; and there
was a gentleness, a tenderness, in their care for these young lambs not
always to be insured by the payment of an annual stipend. It must be
confessed that the young lambs were apt to be troublesome, and required a
good deal of watching. To the eye of the philosopher that convent school
would have afforded scope for curious study; for it is singular to
discover what exceptional vices the youthful mind can develop from its
inner consciousness, in homes as pure as this. There were black sheep
even in the convent of the Sacré Coeur, damsels marked with a sign that
meant "dangerous."

Happily for Gustave Lenoble, his daughters were amongst the brightest and
the purest of those girl-graduates. They gave him no trouble, except when
they asked him for a home.

"It seems so dull and dreary at Côtenoir, papa," they said, "though you
are always so kind. It doesn't seem like home. Beaubocage is more
home-like. At Côtenoir, when you are out, there is no one to talk to; and
we have no little parties, no excursions into the country, none of those
pleasures which the other girls tell us they have during the holidays."

This was the gist of the lamentations of Mademoiselles Clarice and
Madelon; and the father knew not how to supply the mysterious something
which was wanting to make Côtenoir a pleasant home. The girls could
complain of no restraint, or pine for no indulgence, since their father
was always prompt to gratify every whim. But there was some element of
happiness wanting, nevertheless; and M. Lenoble perceived that it was so.
The life at Côtenoir was desultory, straggling; an existence of perpetual
dawdling; a life of shreds and patches, half-formed resolutions, projects
begun and broken off in the middle. The good genius, the household angel,
order, was wanting in that mansion. There was waste, dirt, destruction of
all kinds, in the rambling old château; old servants, too weak or too
lazy to work; old tradesmen, presuming on old-established habits of
imposition, unquestioned so long as to have become a right--for the
feudal system of fine and forfeiture has only changed hands. The power
still flourishes, only it is the villein who takes tithe of his lord.

The servants at Côtenoir had gone their own ways with but little
interference since the death of Madame de Nérague, which occurred two
years before that of her daughter, Clarice Lenoble. Poor invalid Clarice
had been quite unable to superintend her household; and since her death
Mademoiselle Cydalise had been too feeble of health to assume any
authority in her nephew's establishment, even if the household of
Côtenoir would have submitted to interference from Beaubocage, which in
all likelihood they would not.

Thus it happened that things had taken their own course at the château,
and the course had been somewhat erratic. There is nothing so costly as
muddle, and Gustave Lenoble had of late begun to perceive that he had the
maximum of expense with the minimum of comfort. Meanwhile the kind old
aunt at Beaubocage gave her nieces much valuable advice against the time
when they should be old enough to assume the management of their father's
house. The sweet unselfish lady of Beaubocage had indeed undergone hard
experience in the acquirement of the domestic art. Heaven and her own
memory alone recorded those scrapings and pinchings and nice calculations
of morsels by which she had contrived to save a few pounds for her
outcast brother. Such sordid economics show but poorly on earth; but it
is probable that in the mass of documentary evidence which goes before
the Great Judge, Mademoiselle Lenoble's account-book will be placed on
the right side.




Book the Third.



THE HORATIAD.



CHAPTER I.


CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE.

Captain Paget went his way to Rouen in a placid but not an exulting mood,
after parting with his young friend Valentine Hawkehurst at the London
Bridge terminus of the Brighton line. He was setting out upon an
adventure wild and impracticable as the quest of Jason and his Argonauts;
and this gallant captain was a carpet-knight, sufficiently adventurous
and audacious in the diplomatic crusades of society, but in nowise eager
to hazard his life on tented field and in thick press of war. If the
Fates had allowed the accomplished Horatio to choose his own destiny, he
would have elected to live in the immediate neighbourhood of St. James's
Street, from the first day to the last of the London season, and to dine
artistically and discreetly at one of those older and more exclusive
clubs dear and familiar to him from the bright years of his youth. He was
by nature a _flâneur_, a gossip, a lover of expensive luxuries and
frivolous pleasures. He was not only incapable of a high thought himself,
but was an unbeliever in the possibility of high thoughts or noble
principles in the world he lived in. He measured the universe by that
narrow scrap of tape which was the span of his own littleness. To him
Caesar was an imperial brigand, Cicero a hypocritical agitator. To him
all great warriors were greedy time-servers like John Churchill; all
statesmen plausible placemen; all reformers self-seeking pretenders. Nor
did Captain Paget wish that it should be otherwise. In his ideal
republic, unselfishness and earnestness would have rendered a man rather
a nuisance than otherwise. With the vices of his fellow-men the
diplomatic Horatio was fully competent to deal; but some of his most
subtle combinations on the chess-board of life would have been checkmated
by an unexpected encounter with intractable virtue.

The necessity of living was the paramount consideration to which this
gentleman had given his mind from the time when he found himself a
popular subaltern in a crack regiment, admired for his easy manners and
good looks, respected by meaner men for his good blood, and rich in
everything except that vulgar dross without which the life of West-end
London is so hollow a delusion, so bitter a comedy of mean shifts and
lying devices.

That freebooter of civilization, the man who lives by his wits, is
subject to strange fluctuations from prosperity to adversity. He is the
miner or gold-digger of civilized life; and as there are times when his
pickaxe strikes suddenly on a rich lode, so there are dreary intervals in
which his spade turns up nothing but valueless clay, and the end of each
day's work leaves him with no better evidence of his wasted labour than
the aching limbs which he drags at nightfall to his dismal shanty.

For some months Captain Paget had found Philip Sheldon a very useful
acquaintance. The stockbroker had been the secret inaugurator of two or
three joint-stock companies, though figuring to the outer world only as
director; and in the getting-up of these companies Horatio had been a
useful instrument, and had received liberal payment for his labours.
Unhappily, so serene an occupation as promoting cannot go on for ever; or
rather, cannot remain for ever in the same hands. The human mind is
naturally imitative, and the plagiarisms of commerce are infinitely more
audacious than the small larcenies of literature. The joint-stock company
market became day by day more crowded. No sooner did Philip Sheldon float
the Non-destructive Laundry Company, the admirable organization of which
would offer a guarantee against the use of chloride of lime and other
destructive agencies in the wash-tub, than a rival power launched a
colourable imitation thereof, in the Union-is-Strength Domestic Lavatory
Company, with a professor of chemistry specially retained as inspector of
wash-tubs. Thus it was that, after the profitable ripening of three such
schemes, Mr. Sheldon deemed it advisable to retire from the field, and
await a fitter time for the further exercise of his commercial genius.

Captain Paget's relations with the stockbroker did not, however,
terminate with the cessation of his labours as secretary,
jack-of-all-trades, and promoter. Having found him, so far, clever, and
to all appearance trustworthy--and this was an important point, for no
man so much needs honourable service as a rogue--Philip Sheldon
determined upon confiding to Horatio the conduct of a more delicate
business than anything purely commercial. After that discovery of the
telegraphic message sent by his brother George to Valentine Hawkehurst,
and the further discovery of the advertisement relating to the unclaimed
wealth of the lately deceased John Haygarth, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in
organizing his plans for his own aggrandizement at the expense of his
brother.

"George refused to let me in for a share of chances when I showed myself
willing to help him," thought Philip. "He may discover by-and-by that I
have contrived to let myself into his secrets; and that he might have
played a better game by consenting to a partnership."

A life devoted to his own interests, and a consistent habit of
selfishness, had rendered Mr. Sheldon, of the Lawn, Bayswater, and Stags
Court, City, very quick of apprehension in all matters connected,
immediately or remotely, with the making of money. The broken sentences
of the telegram betrayed by the blotting-pad told him a great deal. They
told him that there was a certain Goodge, in the town of Ullerton, who
possessed letters so valuable to George Sheldon, as to be bought by his
agent Valentine Hawkehurst. Letters for which Sheldon was willing to give
money must needs be of considerable importance, since money was a very
scarce commodity with that hunter of unconscious heirs-at-law. Again, a
transaction which required the use of so expensive a medium as the
electric telegraph rather than the penny post, might be fairly supposed a
transaction of some moment. The letters in question might relate to some
other estate than that of John Haygarth, for it was quite possible that
the schemer of Gray's Inn had other irons in the fire. But this was a
question of no moment to Philip Sheldon.

If the letters--or the information contained therein--were likely to be
useful to George, they might be useful to him. If George found it worth
his while to employ an agent at Ullerton, why should not he (Philip) have
his agent in the same town? The pecuniary risk, which might be a serious
affair to George, was child's play for Philip, who had always plenty of
money, or, at any rate, the command of money. The whole business of
heir-at-law hunting seemed to the stockbroker a very vague and shadowy
piece of work, as compared to the kind of speculation that was familiar
to him; but he knew that men had made money in such a manner, and any
business by which money could be made, was interesting to him. Beyond
this, the notion of cutting the ground from under his brother's feet had
a certain attraction for him. George's manner to him had been somewhat
offensive to him on more than one occasion since--well, since Tom
Halliday's death. Mr. Sheldon had borne that offensiveness in mind, with
the determination to "take it out of" his brother on the earliest
opportunity.

It seemed as if the opportunity had arrived, and Philip was not one of
those men who wait shivering on the shore when Fortune's tide is at the
flood. Mr. Sheldon launched his bark upon the rising waters, and within
two hours of his discovery in the telegraph-office was closeted with
Horatio Paget in the little parlour in Omega Street, making arrangements
for the Captain's journey to Ullerton.

That Horatio was the right man for the work he wanted done, Mr. Sheldon
had been quick to perceive.

"He knows Hawkehurst, and will be able to reckon up any manoeuvres of his
better than a stranger; and is, I think, altogether as deep an old
gentleman as one could hope to meet with, barring _the_ traditional
gentleman who did odd jobs for Dr. Faustus," the stockbroker said to
himself, as his hansom sped along Park Lane on its way to Chelsea. The
eagerness with which Captain Paget took up the idea of this business was
very agreeable to his patron.

"This is an affair in which success hinges on time," said Mr. Sheldon;
"so, if you mean to go in for the business, you must start for Ullerton
by the two o'clock express. You'll have just time to throw your razors
and a clean shirt into a carpet-bag while I talk to you. I've got a cab
outside, and a good one, that will take you to Euston Square in half an
hour."

The Captain showed himself prompt in action. His bedchamber was a small
apartment at the back of the parlour, and here he packed his bag while
conversing with his employer.

"If you get upon the ground in time, you may obtain a look at the letters
before they are handed over to Hawkehurst, or you may outbid him for
them," said Mr. Sheldon; "but remember, whatever you do must be so done
as to keep Hawkehurst and George completely in the dark as to our
proceedings. If once they find out we are on their track, our chances
will be gone, for they have got the information and we haven't; and it's
only by following close in their footsteps we can hope to do anything."

"That is understood," replied the Captain, stooping over his bag; "I
shall keep myself as close as possible, you may depend upon it. And it
shan't be my fault if Valentine sees me or hears of me. I shall want
money, by the bye; for one can't stir a step in this sort of affair
without ready cash."

"I am quite aware of that. I stopped at the West-end branch of the Unitas
and cashed a cheque for forty pounds. You can do a good deal in the way
of bribery for forty pounds, in such a place as Ullerton. What you have
to do is to keep your eye on Hawkehurst, and follow up every channel of
information that he opens for you. He has the clue to the labyrinth,
remember, the reel of cotton, or whatever it was, that the young woman
gave that Roman fellow. All you have to do is to get hold of it, and
follow your leader." continued Philip, with his watch in his hand. "This
business of the letters will be sharp work, for the chances are against
us here, as it's more than likely the papers will have changed hands
before you can get to Ullerton. But if you can't buy the letters, you may
buy the information contained in them, and that is the next best thing.
Your first move will be to ferret out this man Goodge. Everybody knows
everybody else in such a place as Ullerton, large and busy as the town
is, and you won't find that difficult. When you see Goodge, you'll know
how to deal with him. The mode and manner of your dealing I leave to
yourself. You are a man of the world, and will know how to manipulate the
gentleman, whoever he may be. And now lock your bag and cut downstairs as
fast as you can. Time's up. Here's your money--three tens, two fives.
Good day."



CHAPTER II.


EPISTOLARY.

_From Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_.

Royal Hotel, Ullerton, Oct. 7, 186--.

My dear sir,--I arrived here last evening just in time to run against
Hawkehurst on the platform, which was rather a provoking encounter at the
outset. He went further north by the same train that brought me from
London. This train only stops at three places after Ullerton--Slowport,
Black Harbour, and Manchester; and I shall take pains to discover which
of these towns was Hawkehurst's destination. There was one satisfaction
in seeing his departure by this train, inasmuch as it assured me that I
had the ground clear for my own operations.

I had no difficulty in discovering the whereabouts of Goodge--_the_
Goodge we want--and at eight o'clock was comfortably seated in that
gentleman's parlour, talking over the affair of the letters. Tolerably
quick work, I think you will allow, my dear sir, for a man whose years
have fallen into the sere and yellow leaf.

Mr. Goodge is a Methodist parson--a class of person I have always
detested. I found him peculiarly amenable to monetary influence. I need
scarcely tell you that I was careful to conceal my identity from this
person. I made so bold as to borrow the cognomen of an old-established
firm of solicitors in the Fields, and took a somewhat high tone
throughout the interview. I informed Mr. Goodge that the young man who
had called on him with reference to certain letters connected with the
affairs of the Haygarth family--and I perceived from Mr. Goodge's face
that we were on the right track--was a person of disreputable character,
engaged in an underhand transaction calculated to injure a respected
client of our house. I saw that the words "house" and "our" were
talismanic in their effect upon the Methodist parson. You see, my dear
sir, there is no one can manage this sort of thing so well as a
gentleman. It comes natural to him. Your vulgar diplomatist seldom knows
how to begin, and never knows when to stop. Here I had this low-bred
Methodist fellow impressed by the idea of my individual and collective
importance after five minutes' conversation. "But this comes too near the
praising of myself; therefore hear other things," as the bard observes.

A very little further conversation rendered Mr. Goodge malleable. I found
that Hawkehurst had approached him in the character of your brother's
articled clerk, but under his own proper name. This is one point gained,
since it assures me that Valentine is not skulking here under a feigned
name; and will enable me to shape my future inquiries about him
accordingly. I also ascertained Hawkehurst's whereabouts when in
Ullerton. He stays at a low commercial house called the Black Swan. It
appears that the man Goodge possesses a packet of letters written by a
certain Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth, wife of one Matthew Haygarth. In what
relationship this Matthew may stand to the intestate is to be discovered.
It is evident he is an important link in the chain, or your brother would
not want the letters. I need not trouble you with our conversation in
detail. In gross it amounted to this: Mr. Goodge had pledged himself to
hand over Mrs. Haygarth's letters, forty or so in number, to Hawkehurst
in consideration of twenty pounds. They would have been already in
Hawkehurst's possession, if Mr. Goodge had not objected to part with them
except for ready money. In consideration of a payment of twenty pounds
from me, he was willing to let me read all the letters, and select any
ten I pleased to take. This bargain was not arrived at without
considerable discussion, but it certainly struck me as a good one.

I opened the packet of papers then and there, and sat up until six
o'clock the next morning, reading Mrs. Haygarth's letters in Mr. Goodge's
parlour. Very fatiguing occupation for a man of my years. Mr. Goodge's
hospitality began and ended in a cup of coffee. Such coffee! and I
remember the mocha I used to get at Arthur's thirty years ago,--a
Promethean beverage, that illumined the dullest smoking-room bore with a
flash of wit or a glimmer of wisdom.

I enclose the ten letters which I have selected. They appear to me to
tell the history of Mrs. Haygarth and her husband pretty plainly; but
there is evidently something mysterious lurking behind the commonplace
existence of the husband. That is a matter for future consideration. All
I have to do in the present is to keep you as well informed as your
brother. It may strike you that the letters I forward herewith, which are
certainly the cream of the correspondence, and the notes I have made from
the remaining letters, are scarcely worth the money paid for them. In
reply to such an objection, I can only say that you get more for _your_
money than your brother George will get for his.

The hotel at which I have taken up my quarters is but a few paces from
the commoner establishment where Hawkehurst is stopping. He is to call on
Goodge for the letters to-day; so his excursion will be of brief
duration. I find that the name of Haygarth is not unknown in this town,
as there are a family of Judsons, some of whom call themselves Haygarth
Judson. I intend inviting my landlord--a very superior person for his
station--to discuss a bottle of wine with me after my chop this evening,
and hope to obtain some information from him. In the meantime I shall
keep myself close. It is of vital consequence that I should remain unseen
by Hawkehurst. I do not believe he saw me on the platform last night,
though we were as close to each other as we well could be.

Let me know what you think of the letters, and believe me to be, my
dear sir, very faithfully yours,

H. N. C. PAGET. PHILIP SHELDON, Esq.,
&c. &c. &c.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_.

Bayswater, Oct. 8,186-.

DEAR PAGET,--The letters are mysterious, and I don't see my way to
getting much good out of them, but heartily approve your management of
matters, and give you _carte blanche_ to proceed, according to your own
lights.

Yours truly, P.S.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_.

Royal Hotel, Oct. 9, 186-.

MY DEAR SIR,--The cultivation of my landlord has been very profitable.
The house is the oldest in the town, and the business has descended in a
direct line from father to son since the time of George the Second. This
man's grandfather entertained the officers of William Duke of Cumberland,
honoured by his contemporaries with the soubriquet of Billy the Butcher,
during the "forty-five." I had to listen to and applaud a good many
stories about Billy the Butcher before I could lead my landlord round to
the subject of the Haygarths. But he was not more prosy than many men I
have met at dinner-parties in the days when the highest circles in the
land were open to your humble servant.

The Haygarth family, of which the intestate John Haygarth was the last
male descendant, were for a long period inhabitants of this town, and
obtained their wealth by trading as grocers and general dealers in a shop
not three hundred yards from the room in which I write. The building is
still standing, and a curious, old-fashioned-looking place it is. The
last of the Haygarths who carried on business therein was one Jonathan,
whose son Matthew was the father of that Reverend John Haygarth, lately
deceased, intestate. You will thus perceive that the letters I sent you
are of much importance, as they relate solely to this Matthew, father of
our intestate.

My next inquiries related to the Judson family, who are, it appears,
descended from the issue of a certain Ruth Haygarth's marriage with one
Peter Judson. This Ruth Haygarth was the only sister of the Matthew
alluded to in the letters, and therefore was aunt of the intestate. It
would herefrom appear that in this Judson family we must naturally look
for the rightful claimant to the fortune of the deceased John Haygarth.
Possessed of this conviction, I proceeded to interrogate my landlord very
cautiously as to the status, &c. of the Judson family, and amongst other
questions, asked him with a complete assumption of indifference, whether
he had ever heard that the Judsons expected to inherit property from any
branch of the Haygarth family.

This careless interrogatory produced information of, as I imagine, a very
valuable character. A certain Theodore Judson, attorney of this town,
calls himself heir-at-law to the Haygarth estates; but before he can
establish his claim, this Theodore must produce evidence of the demise,
without heirs, of one Peter Judson, eldest surviving grandson of Ruth
Haygarth's eldest son, a scamp and ne'er-do-well--if living, supposed to
be somewhere in India, where he went, as supercargo to a merchant vessel
about, the year '41--who stands prior to Theodore Judson in the
succession. I conclude that the said Theodore, who, as a lawyer, is
likely to do things _secundum artem_, is doing his _possible_ to obtain
the necessary evidence; but in the meantime he is at a dead lock, and the
whole affair appears to be in a charming condition for speculative
interference. I opine, therefore, that your brother really has hit upon a
good thing this time; and my only wonder is, that instead of allowing his
agent, Hawkehurst, to waste his time hunting up old letters of Matthew
Haygarth's (to all appearance valueless as documentary evidence), he does
not send Valentine to India to hunt for Peter Judson, who, if living, is
the rightful heir to the intestate's fortune, and who, as a reckless
extravagant fellow, would be likely to make very liberal terms with any
one who offered to procure him a large lump of money.

I confess that I am quite at a loss to understand why your brother George
does not take this very obvious course, and why Valentine potters about
in this neighbourhood, when a gold mine is waiting to be _exploité_ on
the other side.

I shall be very glad to have your views upon this subject, for at the
present moment I am fain to acknowledge that I do not see my way to
taking any further steps in this business, unless by commencing a search
for the missing Peter.

I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours,

H. N. C. PAGET.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_.

Bayswater, Oct. 10, 186--.

DEAR PAGET,--When so old a stager as G. S. does not take the obvious
course, the inference is that there is a better course to be taken--_not_
obvious to the uninitiated.

You have done very well so far, but the information you have obtained
from your landlord is only such information as any one else may obtain
from the current gossip of Ullerton. You haven't yet got to the _dessous
des cartes_. Remember what I told you in London. G. S. _has_ the clue to
this labyrinth; and what you have to do is to hold on to the coat-tails
(in a figurative sense) of his agent, V. H.

Don't put your trust in prosy old landlords, but continue to set a watch
upon that young man, and follow up his trail as you did in the matter of
the letters.

If the Peter Judson who went to India three-and-twenty years ago were the
right man to follow, G.S. would scarcely give twenty pounds for the
letters of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth. It appears to me that G. must be
looking for an heir on the Haygarth side of the house; and if so, rely
upon it he has his reasons. Don't bewilder yourself by trying to
theorize, but get to the bottom of G.'s theory.

Yours truly, P. S.

_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Royal Hotel, Oct. 12, 186.--

MY DEAR SIR,--Considering the advice contained in your last very good, I
lost no time in acting upon it. I need hardly tell you, that to employ
the services of a hired spy, and to degrade myself in some sort to the
level of a private inquirer, was somewhat revolting to a man, who, in the
decadence of his fortunes, has ever striven to place some limit on the
outrages which that hard taskmaster, poverty, may have from time to time
compelled him to inflict upon his self-respect. But in the furtherance of
a cause which I conclude is in no manner dishonourable, since an
unclaimed heritage must needs be a prize open to all, I submitted to this
temporary degradation of my higher feelings, and I trust that when the
time arrives for the settlement of any pecuniary consideration which
I am to derive from these irksome and uncongenial labours, my wounded
self-respect may not be omitted from the reckoning. The above exordium
may appear to you tedious, but it is only just to myself to remind you
that you are not dealing with a vulgar hireling. My first step, after
duly meditating your suggestions, was to find a fitting watch for the
movements of Hawkehurst. I opined that the best person to play the spy
would be that class of man whose existence seems for the most part
devoted to the lounging at street corners, the chewing of straw, and that
desultory kind of industry known in the _patois_ of this race as
"fetching errands." This is the man, or boy, who starts up from the
pavement (as through a trap-door in the flags) whenever one alights from
or would enter any kind of vehicle. Unbidden, unrequired, and obnoxious,
the creature arises, and opens a door, or lays some rag of his wretched
attire on a muddy wheel, and then whines, piteous, for a copper. Such a
man, or such a boy, I felt convinced must exist among the hangers-on of
the Royal Hotel; nor was I mistaken. On inquiring for a handy lad,
capable of attending upon my needs at all hours in the day, and not a
servant in the hotel, but a person who would be wholly at my own
disposal, I was informed that the Boots had a younger brother who was
skilled in the fetching of errands, and who would be happy to wait upon
me for a very reasonable remuneration, or in the words of the waiter
himself, would be ready to leave it--i.e. the remuneration--to my own
generosity. I know that there are no people who expect so much as those
who leave the assessment of their claims to your own generosity; but
as I wanted good service, I was prepared to pay well. The younger Boots
made his appearance in due course--a sharp young fellow enough--and I
forthwith made him my slave by the promise of five shillings a day for
every day in which I should require his services. I then told him that it
was my misfortune to own--with a strong inclination to disown--a
reprobate nephew, now an inhabitant of that very town. This nephew, I had
reason to believe, was going at a very rapid rate to the dogs; but my
affectionate feelings would not allow him to consummate his own
destruction without one last effort to reclaim him. I had therefore
followed him to Ullerton, whither I believed him to be led by the worst
possible motives; and having done so, my next business was to keep myself
informed of his whereabouts.

Seeing that the younger Boots accepted these statements with
unquestioning faith, I went on to inquire whether he felt himself equal
to the delicate duty of hanging about the yard of the Black Swan, and
watching the doors of exit from that hotel, with a view to following my
recreant nephew wherever he might go, even if considerably beyond the
limits of Ullerton. I saw that the lad's intelligence was likely to be
equal to this transaction, unless there should arise any difficult or
complicated position by reason of the suspicion of Hawkehurst, or other
mischance. "Do you think you can watch the gentleman without being
observed?" I asked. "I'm pretty well sure I can, sir," answered the boy,
who is of an enterprising, and indeed audacious, temper. "Very well,"
said I, "you will go to the Black Swan Inn. Hawkehurst is the name by
which my nephew is known there, and it will be your duty to find him
out." I gave the boy a minute account of Valentine's appearance, and
other instructions with which I need not trouble you. I further furnished
him with money, so that he might be able to follow Hawkehurst by rail, or
any other mode of conveyance, if necessary; and then despatched him, with
an order to come back to me when he had seen our man safely lodged in the
Black Swan after his day's perambulations. "And if he shouldn't go out at
all?" suggested the lad. "In that case you must stick to your post till
nightfall, and pick up all the information you can about my unfortunate
nephew from the hangers-on of the hotel," said I. "I suppose you know
some one at the Black Swan?" The boy informed me, in his untutored
language, that he knew "a'most all of 'em," and thereupon departed.

At nine o'clock at night he again appeared before me, big with the
importance of his day's work. He had seen my nephew issue forth from the
Black Swan within an hour of leaving my presence, and had followed him,
first to Mr. William Judson's in Ferrygate, where he waited and hung
about nearly an hour, keeping himself well out of view round the corner
of Chalkin Street, a turning close to Mr. Judson's house. After leaving
this gentleman's house, my renegade nephew had proceeded--carrying a
letter in his hand, and walking as if in very good spirits (but that
fellow Hawkehurst would walk to the gallows in good spirits)--to the
Lancaster Road, where he was admitted into Lochiel Villa, a house
belonging, as my Mercury ascertained from a passing baker's boy, to Miss
Judson, sister of the William Judson of Ferrygate. You will perceive that
this town appears to teem with the Judson family. My messenger, with
praiseworthy art, contrived to engage in a game of tip-cat (what, I
wonder, _is_ a tip-cat?) with some vagrant boys disporting themselves in
the roadway, within view of Miss Judson's house. Hence, after the lapse
of more than an hour, Boots-Mercury beheld my recreant relative emerge,
and from this point followed him--always with extreme caution--back to
the Black Swan. Here he hung about the yard, favoured by his close
acquaintance with the ostler, until eight o'clock in the evening, no
event of the smallest importance occurring during all those hours. But at
eight there arrived a young woman, with a packet from Miss Judson to Mr.
Hawkehurst. The packet was small, and was sealed with red wax. This was
all my Mercury could ascertain respecting it; but this was something.

I at once divined that this packet must needs contain letters. I asked
myself whether those letters or papers had been sold to Hawkehurst, or
only lent to him, and I immediately concluded that they could only have
been lent. It was all very well for Goodge, the Methodist parson, to
traffic in the epistles of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth, but it was to the last
degree unlikely that a well-to-do maiden lady would part with family
letters or papers for any pecuniary consideration whatever. "No," I said
to myself, "the documents have been lent, and will have to be returned;"
and thereupon I laid my plans for the next day's campaign, with a view to
obtaining a peep at those letters, by fair means or foul. I told the boy
to be at his post in the inn yard early the next morning, and if my
nephew did not leave the inn, my agent was to ascertain what he was
doing, and to bring me word thereof. "I'll tell you what it is, Boots," I
said; "I have reason to believe that sadly disposed nephew of mine has
some wicked intention with regard to Miss Judson, who is nearly related
to a young lady with whom that unprincipled young man is, or pretends to
be, in love; and I very much fear that he means to send her some letters,
written by this foolish niece of hers to my more foolish nephew, and
eminently calculated to wound the good lady's feelings. Now, in order to
prevent this very shameful conduct on his part, I want to intercept any
packet or letter which that mistaken youth may send to Miss Judson. Do
you feel yourself capable of getting hold of such a packet, on
consideration of a bonus of half-a-sovereign in addition to the five
shillings per diem already agreed upon?"

This, in more direct and vulgar phraseology, was what I said to the boy;
and the boy departed, after pledging himself to bring me any packet which
Hawkehurst might despatch from the Swan Inn. The only fear was that
Hawkehurst might carry the packet himself, and this contingency appeared
unpleasantly probable.

Fortune favoured us. My reprobate nephew was too ill to go out. He
intrusted Miss Hudson's packet to his waiter, the waiter confided it to
the Boots, the Boots resigned the responsibility in favour of my boy
Mercury, who kindly offered to save that functionary the trouble of a
walk to the Lancaster Road.

At eleven A.M. the packet was in my hands. I have devoted the best part
of to-day to the contents of this packet. They consist of letters written
by Matthew Haygarth, and distinguished by a most abominable orthography;
but I remember my own father's epistolary composition to have been
somewhat deficient in this respect; nor is it singular that the humble
citizen should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal
personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which would
provoke the laughter of a modern charity-boy. That the pretender to the
crown of England should murder the two languages in which he wrote seems
a small thing; but that Frederick the Great, the most accomplished of
princes, bosom-friend of Voltaire, and sworn patron of the literati,
should not have been able to spell, is a matter for some astonishment. I
could but remember this fact, as I perused the epistles of Matthew
Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully
numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to
any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to
retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's
caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It
appears to me that these letters relate to some _liaison_ of the
gentleman's youth; though I am fain to confess myself surprised to
discover that, even in a period notorious for looseness of morals, a man
should enter into such details in a correspondence with his sister.
_Autres temps, autres moeurs_. I have selected my extracts with great
care, and hope that you may be able to make more use of them than I can
at present imagine possible. I shall post this letter and enclosure with
my own hands, though in order to do so I must pass the Black Swan. I
shall despatch my messenger to Lochiel Villa, with Miss Judson's packet,
under cover of the darkness.

In much haste, to catch the London mail,

Truly yours, H.N.C.P.

       *       *       *       *       *

_From Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. City, Oct. 12, 186--

Dear Paget,--Come back to town. You are only wasting money, time, and
trouble. Yours, P.S.



CHAPTER III.


TOO CLEVER, FOR A CATSPAW.

Captain Paget returned to town, mystified by that sudden summons from his
patron, and eager to know what new aspect of affairs rendered his further
presence in Ullerton useless or undesirable.

Horatio arrived in the great city half-a-dozen hours before his sometime
protégé, and was comfortably installed when Valentine returned to those
lodgings in Omega Street, Chelsea, which the two men occupied in common.

Captain Paget went into the City to see Philip Sheldon on the day of his
return, but did not succeed in finding the stockbroker. The evening's
post brought him a letter from Philip, appointing an interview at
Bayswater, at three o'clock on the following day--the day after
Valentine's return from Ullerton.

Punctual to the moment appointed by this letter, Captain Paget appeared
at the Lawn on the following day. He was ushered into Mr. Sheldon's
study, where he found that gentleman awaiting him, grave and meditative
of mood, but friendly, and indeed cordial, in his manner to the returning
traveller.

"My dear Paget, sit down; I am delighted to see you. Your trip has made
you look five years younger, by Jove! I was sorry to find you had called
while I was out, and had waited for me upwards of an hour yesterday. I
have a good deal of worry on my shoulders just now; commerce is all
worry, you know. The Marquis of Lambeth has come into the market and
bought up two-thirds of the Astrakhan Grand Trunk debenture bonds, just
as our house had speculated for the fall. And since it has got wind that
the Marquis is sweet upon the concern, the bonds are going up like a
skyrocket. Such is life. I thought we had better have our little talk
here; it's quieter than in the City. Have some sherry and soda; you like
that Manzanilla of mine, I know."

And the hospitable Philip rang the bell, without thinking it necessary to
wait for his guest's answer.

There was a cordiality, a conciliating friendliness about the
stockbroker's manner which Horatio Paget did not like.

"He's too civil by half," the Captain said to himself; "he means to do
me."

"And now about this Ullerton business," Mr. Sheldon began, when the wine
and soda-water had been brought, and a tall tumbler of that refreshing
compound filled for the Captain; "you have really managed matters
admirably. I cannot too much applaud your diplomatic tact. You would have
put a what's-his-name--that fellow of Napoleon's--to the blush by your
management of the whole business. But, unfortunately, when it's all done
it comes to nothing; the whole affair is evidently, from beginning to
end, a mare's-nest. It is one of those wild geese which my brother George
has been chasing for the last ten years, and which never have resulted in
profit to him or anybody else; and I should be something worse than a
fool if I were to lend myself any longer to such a folly."

"Humph," muttered the Captain, "here is a change indeed!"

"Well, yes," Mr. Sheldon answered coolly. "I dare say my conduct does
seem rather capricious; but you see George put me out of temper the other
day, and I was determined, if he had got a good thing, to cut the ground
from under his feet. All your communications from Ullerton tend to show
me that he has not got hold of a good thing, and that in any attempt to
circumvent him I should only be circumventing myself, wasting your time,
and my own money. This Judson family seems numberless; and it is evident
to me that the Reverend John Haygarth's fortune will be a bone of
contention amongst the Judsons in the High Court of Chancery for any
indefinite number of years between this and the milennium. So I really
think, my dear Paget, we'd better consider this transaction finished. I
will give you whatever honorarium you think fit to name for your trouble,
and we'll close the affair. I shall find plenty more business as good, or
better, for you to do."

"You are very good," replied the Captain, in nowise satisfied by this
promise. It was all too smooth, too conciliatory. And there was a
suddenness in this change of plan that was altogether mysterious. So
indeed might a capricious man be expected to drop a speculation he had
been eager to inaugurate, but Philip Sheldon was the last of men to be
suspected of caprice.

"You must have taken an immense deal of trouble with those extracts,
now," said the stockbroker carelessly, as Horatio rose to depart,
offended and angry, but anxious to conceal his anger. "What, are you off
so soon? I thought you would stop and take a chop with us."

"No, thanks; I have an engagement elsewhere. Yes, I took an
inordinate trouble with those extracts, and I am sorry to think they
should be useless."

"Well, yes, it is rather provoking to you, I dare say. The extracts would
be very interesting from a social point of view, no doubt, to people who
care about such things; but in a legal sense they are waste-paper. I
can't understand why Hawkehurst was in Ullerton; for, as you yourself
suggested, that Peter Judson who went to India must be the Judson wanted
for this case."

"Your brother may be in league with some other branch of the Judson
family. Or what if he is hunting for an heir on the Haygarth side?" asked
the Captain, with a very close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's face. Let the
stockbroker be never so skilful a navigator of the high seas of life,
there was no undercurrent, no cross trade-wind, no unexplained veering of
the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was
not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that
wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the
diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day's
sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew;
but no doctoring of the social log-book could mislead the acute Horatio.

"How about the Haygarth side of the house?" he asked again; for it had
seemed to him that at his first mention of the name of Haygarth Mr.
Sheldon had winced, ever so little. This time, however, he betrayed not
the faintest concern; but he was doubtless now on his guard.

"Well, I don't see how there can be any claimant on that side of the
house," he said carelessly. "You see, according to your old landlord's
statement--which I take to be correct--Jonathan Haygarth had but one son,
a certain Matthew, who married one Rebecca So-and-so, and had, in his
turn one only son, the intestate John. Now, in that case, where is your
heir to come from, except through Matthew's sister Ruth, who married
Peter Judson?"

"Isn't it just possible that Matthew Haygarth may have married twice, and
had other children? Those letters certainly suggest the idea of a secret
alliance of some kind on Haygarth's part, and the existence of a family,
to whom he appears to have been warmly attached. My first idea of this
affair was that it must have been a low _liaison_; but I could hardly
realize the fact of Matthew's confiding in his sister under any such
circumstances, however lax in his morals that gentleman may have been.
Mrs. Matthew Haygarth's letters hint at some mystery in her husband's
life. Is it not likely that this hidden family was a legitimate one?"

"I can't quite see my way to that idea," Mr. Sheldon answered, in a
meditative tone. "It seems very unlikely that any marriage of Haygarth's
could have remained unknown to his townsmen; and even if it were so, I
doubt the possibility of our tracing the heirs from such a marriage. No,
my dear Paget, I have resolved to wash my hands of the business, and
leave my brother George in undisturbed possession of his ground."

"In that case, perhaps, you will return my notes; they are
interesting to me."

Here again the faintest indication of annoyance in the stockbroker's face
told its tale to Captain Paget. For your accomplished navigator of the
unknown seas there is no ocean bird, no floating weed, that has not a
language and a significance.

"You can have your notes, if you want them," answered Mr. Sheldon; "they
are at my office. I'll hunt them up and send them to you; or you had
better look in upon me in the City early next week, and I can give you a
cheque at the same time."

"Thanks. I will be sure and do so."

"You say the orthography of the original letters was queer. I suppose
your copies were faithful in all matters except the orthography. And in
the names, you of course adhered to the original spelling?"

"Most decidedly," replied Captain Paget, opening the door to depart,
and with a somewhat cynical smile upon his face, which was hidden from
Mr. Sheldon.

"I suppose there is no doubt of your accuracy with regard to the name of
Meynell, now?"

"Not the least. Good afternoon. Ah, there's our young friend Hawkehurst!"
exclaimed the Captain, in his "society" voice, as he looked out into the
hall, where Valentine was parting with Diana.

He came and greeted his young friend, and they left the house together.

This was the occasion upon which Valentine was startled by hearing the
name "Meynell" pronounced by the lips of Philip Sheldon.



CHAPTER IV.


CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL.

Horatio Paget left the Lawn after the foregoing interview, fully
convinced that Mr. Sheldon was only desirous to throw him off the scent,
in order to follow up the chase alone, for his sole profit and advantage.

"My last letter conveyed some intelligence that altered his whole plan of
action," thought the Captain; "that is perfectly clear. He was somewhat
wanting in tact when he recalled me so suddenly. But I suppose he thought
it would be easy to throw dust in my poor old eyes. What was the
intelligence that made him change his mind? That is the grand question."
Captain Paget dined alone at a West-End restaurant that evening. He dined
well, for he had in hand certain moneys advanced by his patron, and he
was not disposed to be parsimonious. He sat for some time in meditative
mood over his pint bottle of Chambertin, and the subject of his
meditation was Philip Sheldon.

"Yes," he murmured at last, "that is it. The charm is in the name of
Meynell. Why else should he question me about the orthography of that
name? I sent him information about Matthew Haygarth in the wife's
letters, and he took no special notice of that information. It was only
when the name of Meynell cropped up that he changed his tactics and tried
to throw me over. It seems to me that he must have some knowledge of this
Meynell branch, and therefore thinks himself strong enough to act alone,
and to throw me over the bridge. To throw me over," the Captain repeated
to himself slowly. "Well, we'll see about that. We'll see; yes, we'll
see."

At noon on the following day Captain Paget presented himself again at the
Bayswater villa, where his daughter ate the bread of dependence. He
appeared this time in a purely paternal character. He came to call upon
his only child. Before paying this visit the Captain had improved the
shining hour by a careful study of the current and two or three back
volumes of the Post-Office and Trade Directories; but all his researches
in those interesting volumes had failed to reveal to him the existence of
any metropolitan Meynells.

"The Meynells whom Sheldon knows may be in the heart of the country," he
said to himself, after these futile labours.

It was a fine autumnal morning, and as Miss Paget was at home and
disengaged, her affectionate father suggested that she should take a walk
with him in Kensington Gardens. Such a promenade had very little
attraction for the young lady; but she had a vague idea that she owed a
kind of duty to her father not remitted by his neglect of all duties to
her; so she assented with a smile, and went out with him, looking very
handsome and stylish in her simple but fashionable attire, no part of
which had been provided by the parent she accompanied.

The Captain surveyed her with some sense of family pride. "Upon my word,
my dear, you do me credit!" he exclaimed, with a somewhat patronising
kindness of tone and manner; "indeed any man might be proud of such a
daughter. You are every inch a Paget."

"I hope not, papa," said the girl involuntarily; but the Captain's more
delicate instincts had been considerably blunted in the press and jostle
of life, and he did not feel the sting of this remark.

"Well, perhaps you are right, my love," he replied blandly; "the Pagets
_are_ an unlucky family. Like those Grecian people, the Atri--,
what's-his-name--the man who was killed in his bath, you know. His wife,
or the other young person who had come to visit his daughters, made the
water too hot, you know--and that kind of thing. I am not quite clear
about the story, but it's one of those farragos of rubbish they make
young men learn at public schools. Yes, my dear, I really am amazingly
pleased by your improved appearance. Those Sheldon people dress you very
nicely; and I consider your residence in that family a very agreeable
arrangement for all parties. You confer a favour on the girl by your
society, and so on, and the mother provides you with a comfortable home;
All I wonder is that your good looks haven't made their mark before this
with some of Sheldon's rich stockbroking fellows."

"We see very little of the stockbroking fellows, as you call them, at the
Lawn, papa."

"Indeed! I thought Sheldon kept a great deal of company."

"O no. He gives a dinner now and then, a gentleman's dinner usually; and
poor Mrs. Sheldon is very anxious that it should all go off well, as she
says; but I don't think he is a person who cares much for society."

"Really, now?"

"His mind seems completely occupied by his business, you see, papa. That
horrible pursuit of gain seems to require all his thoughts, and all his
time. He is always reading commercial papers, the _Money Market_ and _On
Change_, and the _Stockbrokers' Vade Mecum_, and publications of that
kind. When he is not reading he is thinking; and by his manner one would
fancy his thoughts were always gloomy and unpleasant. What a miserable,
hateful, unholy life to lead! I would not be that man for all the money
in the Bank of England. But it is a kind of treachery to tell these
things. Mr. Sheldon is very good to me. He lets me sit at his table and
share the comforts of his home, and I must be very ungrateful to speak
against him. I do _not_ mean to speak against him, you see, papa--I only
mean that a life devoted to money-making is in itself hateful."

"My dear child, you may be assured that anything you say to _me_ will go
no further," said the Captain, with dignity; "and in whom should you
confide, if not in your father? I have a profound respect for Sheldon and
his family--yes, my love, a profound respect; and I think that girl
Sarah--no, I mean Charlotte--a very charming young person. I need
scarcely tell you that the smallest details of your life in that family
possess a keen interest for me. I am not without a father's feelings,
Diana, though circumstances have never permitted me to perform a father's
duties."

And here the solitary tear which the accomplished Horatio could produce
at will trembled in his eye. This one tear was always at his command. For
the life of him he could not have produced a second; but the single drop
never failed him, and he found one tear as effective as a dozen, in
giving point and finish to a pathetic speech.

Diana looked at him, and wondered, and doubted. Alas, she knew him only
too well! Any other creature in this wide world he might deceive, but not
her. She had lived with him; she had tasted the bitterness of dependence
upon him--ten times more bitter than dependence on strangers. She had
shown him her threadbare garments day after day, and had pleaded for a
little money, to be put off with a lying excuse. She could not forget
this. She had forgiven him long ago, being of too generous a nature to
brood upon past injuries. But she could not forget what manner of man he
was, and thank him for pretty speeches which she knew to be meaningless.

They talked a little more of Mr. Sheldon and his family, but Diana did
not again permit herself to be betrayed into any vehement expressions of
her opinions. She answered all her father's questions without restraint,
for they were very commonplace questions, of a kind that might be
answered without any breach of faith.

"Amongst the Sheldons' acquaintances did you ever hear of any people
called Meynell?" Captain Paget asked at length.

"Yes," Diana replied, after a moment's thought; "the name is certainly
very familiar to me;" and then, after a pause, she exclaimed, "Why, the
Meynells were relations of Charlotte's! Yes, her grandmother was a Miss
Meynell; I perfectly remember hearing Mrs. Sheldon talk about the
Meynells. But I do not think there are any descendants of that family now
living. Why do you ask the question, papa? What interest have you in the
Meynells?"

"Well, my dear, I have my reasons, but they in no manner concern Mr.
Sheldon or his family; and I must beg you to be careful not to mention
the subject in your conversation with those worthy people. I want to know
all about this Meynell family. I have come across some people of that
name, and I want to ascertain the precise relationship existing between
these people and the Sheldons. But the Sheldons must know nothing of this
inquiry for the present. The people I speak of are poor and proud, and
they would perish rather than press a relationship upon a rich man,
unless fully justified by the closeness of family ties. I am sure you
understand all this, Diana?"

"Not very clearly, papa."

"Well, my dear, it is a delicate position, and perhaps somewhat difficult
for the comprehension of a third party. All you need understand is the
one fact, that any information respecting the Meynell family will be
vitally interesting to my friends, and, through them, serviceable to me.
There is, in fact, a legacy which these friends of mine could claim,
under a certain will, if once assured as to the degree of their
relationship to your friend Charlotte's kindred on the Meynell side of
the house. To give them the means of securing this legacy would be to
help the ends of justice; and I am sure, Diana, you would wish to do
that."

"Of course, papa, if I can do so without any breach of faith with my
employers. Can you promise me that no harm will result to the Sheldons,
above all to Charlotte Halliday, from any information I may procure for
you respecting the Meynell family?"

"Certainly, Diana, I can promise you that. I repeat most solemnly,
that by obtaining such information for me you will be aiding the cause
of justice."

If Horatio Paget might ever be betrayed into the inconsistency of a
truthful assertion, it seemed to his daughter that it was likely to be in
this moment. His words sounded like truth; and, on reflection, Diana
failed to perceive that she could by any possibility inflict wrong on her
friends by obliging her father in this small affair.

"Let me think the matter over, papa," she said.

"Nonsense, Diana; what thinking over can be wanted about such a trifle? I
never before asked you a favour. Surely you cannot refuse to grant so
simple a request, after the trouble I have taken to explain my reasons
for making it."

There was some further discussion, which ended in Miss Paget consenting
to oblige her father.

"And you will manage matters with tact?" urged the Captain, at parting.

"There is no especial tact required, papa," replied Diana; "the matter is
easy enough. Mrs. Sheldon is very fond of talking about her own affairs.
I have only to ask her some leading question about the Meynells, and she
will run on for an hour, telling me the minutest details of family
history connected with them. I dare say I have heard the whole story
before, and have not heeded it: I often find my thoughts wandering when
Mrs. Sheldon is talking."

Three days after this Captain Paget called on Mr. Sheldon in the City,
when he received a very handsome recompense for his labours at Ullerton,
and became repossessed of the extracts he had made from Matthew
Haygarth's letters, but not of the same Mr. Haygarth's autograph letter:
that document Mr. Sheldon confessed to having mislaid.

"He has mislaid the original letter, and he has had ample leisure for
copying my extracts; and he thinks I am such a consummate fool as not to
see all that," thought Horatio, as he left the stockbroker's office,
enriched but not satisfied.

In the course of the same day he received a long letter from Diana
containing the whole history of the Meynells, as known to Mrs. Sheldon.
Once set talking, Georgy had told all she could tell, delighted to find
herself listened to with obvious interest by her companion.

"I trust that you have not deceived me, my dear father," Diana concluded,
after setting forth the Meynell history. "The dear good soul was so
candid and confiding, and seemed so pleased by the interest I showed in
her family affairs, that I should feel myself the vilest of wretches if
any harm could result to her, or those she loves, from the information
thus obtained."

The information was very complete. Mrs. Sheldon had a kindly and amiable
nature, but she was not one of those sensitive souls who instinctively
shrink from a story of bitter shame or profound sorrow as from a cureless
wound. She told Diana, with many lamentations, and much second-hand
morality, the sad history of Susan Meynell's elopement, and of the
return, fourteen years afterwards, of the weary wanderer. Even the poor
little trunk, with the name of the Rouen trunk-maker, Mrs. Sheldon dwelt
upon with graphic insistence. A certain womanly delicacy had prevented
her ever telling this story in the presence of her brother-in-law, George
Sheldon, whose hard worldly manner in no way invited any sentimental
revelation. Thus it happened that George had never heard the name of
Meynell in connection with his friend Tom Halliday's family, or had heard
it so seldom as to have entirely forgotten it. To Horatio his daughter's
letter was priceless. It placed him at once in as good a position as
Philip Sheldon, or as George Sheldon and his coadjutor, Valentine
Hawkehurst. There were thus three different interests involved in the
inheritance of the Reverend John Haygarth.

Captain Paget sat late by a comfortable fire, in his own bedchamber, that
night, enjoying an excellent cigar, and meditating the following jottings
from a pedigree:--

CHARLOTTE MEYNELL, married JAMES HALLIDAY.
       |
THOMAS HALLIDAY, only son of above, married GEORGINA, now Mrs. SHELDON;
       |         had issue,
CHARLOTTE HALLIDAY.

SUSAN MEYNELL, only and elder sister of the above-named Charlotte, ran
away from her home, in Yorkshire, with a Mr. Kingdon, brother to Lord
Darnsville. Fate unknown during fourteen years of her life. Died in
London, 1835. Buried under her maiden name; but no positive evidence to
show that she was unmarried.



CHAPTER V.


THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR.

Once in possession of the connection between the intestate John Haygarth
and the Halliday family, Captain Paget's course was an easy one. He
understood now why his investigations had been so suddenly brought to a
standstill. Philip Sheldon had discovered the unexpected connection, and
was eager to put a stop to researches that might lead to a like discovery
on the part of his coadjutor.

"And Sheldon expects to prove his stepdaughter's claim to this fortune?"
thought the Captain. "He will affect ignorance of the whole transaction
until his plans are ripe, and then spring them suddenly upon his brother
George. I wonder if there is anything to be made out of George by letting
him into the secret of his brother's interference? No; I think not.
George is as poor as a church mouse, and Philip must always be the more
profitable acquaintance."

On the broad basis afforded by Diana's letter Captain Paget was able to
build up the whole scheme of the Haygarthian succession. The pedigree of
the Meynells was sufficiently simple, if their legitimate descent from
Matthew Haygarth could be fairly proved. Charlotte Halliday was
heiress-at-law to the fortune of John Haygarth, always provided that her
great-aunt Susan died without legitimate issue.

Here was the one chance which appeared to the adventurous mind of Horatio
Paget worth some trouble in the way of research. Fourteen years of Susan
Meynell's life had been spent away from all who knew her. It was
certainly possible that in that time she might have formed some
legitimate alliance.

This was the problem which Horatio set himself to solve. Your adventurer
is, of all manner of men, the most sanguine. Sir Walter Raleigh sees
visions of gold and glory where grave statesman see only a fool's
paradise of dreams and fancies. To the hopeful mind of the Captain these
fourteen unrecorded years of Susan Meynell's life seemed a very Golconda.

He did not, however, rest satisfied with the information afforded by
Diana's letter.

"I will have the story of these Meynells at first-hand as well as at
second-hand," he said to himself; and he lost no time in presenting
himself again at the Villa--this time as a visitor to Mrs. Sheldon.

With Georgy he had been always a favourite. His little stories of the
great world--the Prince and Perdita, Brummel and Sheridan--though by no
means novel to those acquainted with that glorious period of British
history, were very agreeable to Georgy. The Captain's florid flatteries
pleased her; and she contrasted the ceremonious manners of that gentleman
with the curt business-like style of her husband, very much to the
Captain's advantage. He came to thank her for her goodness to his child,
and this occasion gave him ample opportunity for sentiment. He had asked
to see Mrs. Sheldon alone, as his daughter's presence would have been
some hindrance to the carrying out of his design.

"There are things I have to say which I should scarcely care to utter
before my daughter, you see, my dear Mrs. Sheldon," he said, with
pathetic earnestness. "I should not wish to remind the dear child of her
desolate position; and I need scarcely tell you that position is _very_
desolate. A father who, at his best, cannot provide a fitting home for a
delicately nurtured girl, and who at any moment may be snatched away, is
but a poor protector. And were it not for your friendship, I know not
what my child's fate might be. The dangers and temptations that beset a
handsome young woman are very terrible, my dear Mrs. Sheldon."

This was intended to lead up to the subject of Susan Meynell, but Georgy
did not rise to the bait. She only shook her head plaintively in assent
to the Captain's proposition.

"Yes, madam; beauty, unallied with strength of mind and high principles,
is apt to be a fatal dower. In every family there are sad histories,"
murmured the sentimental Horatio.

Even this remark did not produce the required result; so the Captain drew
upon his invention for a specimen history from the annals of his own
house, which was a colourable imitation of Susan Meynell's story.

"And what was the end of this lovely Belinda Paget's career, my dear Mrs.
Sheldon?" he concluded. "The gentleman was a man of high rank, but a
scoundrel and a dastard. Sophia's brother, a cornet in the First Life
Guards, called him out, and there was a meeting on Wimbledon Common, in
which Lavinia's seducer was mortally wounded. There was a trial, and the
young captain of Hussars, Amelia's brother, was sentenced to
transportation for life. I need scarcely tell you that the sentence was
never carried out. The young man fell gloriously at Waterloo, at the head
of his own regiment, the Scotch Fusiliers, and Lavinia--I beg pardon,
Amelia; nay, what am I saying? the girl's name was Belinda--embraced the
Roman Catholic faith, and expired from the effects of stigmata inflicted
by her own hands in a paroxysm of remorse for her brother's untimely
death at the hands of her seducer."

This lively little impromptu sketch had the desired effect. Melted by the
woes of Belinda, or Sophia, or Amelia, or Lavinia Paget, Mrs. Sheldon was
moved to relate a sad event in her husband's family; and encouraged by
the almost tearful sympathy of the Captain, she again repeated every
detail of Susan Meynell's life, as known to her kindred. And as this
recital had flowed spontaneously from the good soul's lips, she would he
scarcely likely to allude to it afterwards in conversation with Mr.
Sheldon; more especially as that gentleman was not in the habit of
wasting much of his valuable time in small-talk with the members of his
own household.

Captain Paget had duly calculated this, and every other hazard that
menaced the intricate path he had mapped out for himself.

Satisfied by Mrs. Sheldon's repetition of Susan Meynell's story, and
possessed of all the information he could hope to obtain from that
quarter, Horatio set himself to consider what steps must next be taken.
Much serious reflection convinced even his sanguine mind that the
enterprise was a difficult one, and could scarcely be carried through
successfully without help from some skilled genealogist.

"George Sheldon has given his lifetime to this sort of thing, and is a
skilled lawyer to boot," Captain Paget said to himself. "If I hope to go
in against him, I must have someone at my elbow as well versed in this
sort of business as he is."

Having once admitted this necessity, the Captain set himself to consider
where he was to find the right person. A very brief meditation settled
this question. One among the numerous business transactions of Captain
Paget's life had brought him in contact with a very respectable little
French gentleman called Fleurus, who had begun his career as a notary,
but, finding that profession unprofitable, had become a hunter of
pedigrees and heirs-at-law--for the most part to insignificant legacies,
unclaimed stock, and all other jetsam and flotsam thrown up on the
shadowy shores of the Court of Chancery. M. Fleurus had not often been so
fortunate as to put his industrious fingers into any large pie, but he
had contrived to make a good deal of money out of small affairs, and had
found his clients grateful.

"The man of men," thought Horatio Paget; and he betook himself to the
office of M. Fleurus early next day, provided with all documents relating
to the Haygarthian succession.

His interview with the little Frenchman was long and satisfactory. On
certain conditions as to future reward, said reward to be contingent on
success, M. Fleurus was ready to devote himself heart and soul to the
interests of Captain Paget.

"To begin: we must find legal evidence of this Matthew Haygarth's
marriage to the mother of this child C., who came afterwards to marry the
man Meynell; and after we will go to Susan Meynell. Her box came from
Rouen--that we know. Where her box came from she is likely to have come
from. So it is at Rouen, or near Rouen, we must look for her. Let me see:
she die in 1835! that is long time. To look for the particulars of her
life is like to dive into the ocean for to find the lost cargo of a ship
that is gone down to the bottom, no one knows where. But to a man really
expert in these things there is nothing of impossible. I will find you
your Susan Meynell in less than six months; the evidence of her marriage;
if she was married; her children, if she had children."

In less than six months--the margin seemed a wide one to the impatient
Horatio. But he knew that such an investigation must needs be slow, and
he left the matters in the hands of his new ally with a sense that he had
done the best thing that could be done. Then followed for Horatio Paget
two months of patient attendance upon fortune. He was not idle during
this time; for Mr. Sheldon, who seemed particularly anxious to conciliate
him, threw waifs and strays of business into his way. Before the middle
of November M. Fleurus had found the register of Matthew Haygarth's
marriage, as George Sheldon had found it before him, working in the same
groove, and with the same order of intelligence. After this important
step M. Fleurus departed for his native shores, where he had other
business besides the Meynell affair to claim his attention. Meanwhile the
astute Horatio kept a close eye upon his young friend Valentine. He knew
from Diana that the young man had been in Yorkshire; and he guessed the
motive of his visit to Newhall, not for a moment supposing that his
presence in that farmhouse could have been accidental. The one turn of
affairs that utterly and completely mystified him was Mr. Sheldon's
sanction of the engagement between Valentine and Charlotte. This was a
mystery for which he could for some time find no solution.

"Sheldon will try to establish his stepdaughter's claim to the fortune;
that is clear. But why does he allow her to throw herself away on a
penniless adventurer like Hawkehurst? If she were to marry him before
recovering the Haygarth estate, she would recover it as his wife, and the
fortune would be thrown unprotected into his hands."

More deliberate reflection cast a faint light upon Philip Sheldon's
motives for so quixotic a course.

"The girl had fallen in love with Val. It was too late to prevent that.
She is of age, and can marry whom she pleases. By showing himself opposed
to her engagement with Val, he might have hurried her into rebellion, and
an immediate marriage. By affecting to consent to the engagement, he
would, on the contrary, gain time, and the advantage of all those chances
that are involved in the lapse of time."

Within a few days of Christmas came the following letter from M.
Fleurus:--


_From Jacques Rousseau Fleurus to Horatio Paget_.

Hotel de la Pucelle, place Jeanne d'Arc, Rouen, 21st December, 186--.

MONSIEUR,--After exertions incalculable, after labours herculean, I come
to learn something of your Susan Meynell,--more, I come to learn of her
marriage. But I will begin at the beginning of things. The labours, the
time, the efforts, the courage, the patience, the--I will say it without
to blush--the genius which this enterprise has cost me, I will not
enlarge upon. There are things which cannot tell themselves. To commence,
I will tell you how I went to Rouen, how I advertised in the journals of
Rouen, and asked among the people of Rouen--at shops, at hotels, by the
help of my allies, the police, by means which you, in your inexperience
of this science of research, could not even figure to yourself--always
seeking the trace of this woman Meynell. It was all pain lost. Of this
woman Meynell in Rouen there was no trace.

In the end I enraged myself. "Imbecile!" I said to myself, "why seek in
this dull commercial city, among this heavy people, for that which thou
shouldst seek only in the centre of all things? As the rivers go to the
ocean, so flow all the streams of human life to the one great central
ocean of humanity--PARIS! It is there the Alpha and the Omega--there the
mighty heart through which the blood of all the body must be pumped, and
is pumping always," I say to myself, unconsciously rising to the
sublimity of my great countryman, Hugo, in whose verse I find an echo of
my own soul, and whose compositions I flatter myself I could have
surpassed, if I had devoted to the Muses the time and the powers which I
have squandered on a _vilain_ metier, that demands the genius of a
Talleyrand, and rewards with the crust of an artisan.

In Paris, then, I will seek the woman Meynell, and to Paris I go. In my
place an inexperienced person would advertise in the most considerable
papers; would invite Susan Meynell to hear of something to her
advantage; and would bring together a crowd of false Susan Meynells,
greedy to obtain the benefice. Me, I do nothing in this style there. On
the contrary, in the most obscure little journals of Paris I publish a
modest little advertisement as from the brother of Susan Meynell, who
implores his sister to visit him on his deathbed.

Here are follies, you will say. Since Susan Meynell is dead it is thirty
years, and her brother is dead also. Ah, how you are dull, you insulars,
and how impossible for your foggy island to produce a Fouché, a Canler, a
genius of police, a Columbus of the subterranean darknesses of your city.

The brother, dying, advertises for the sister, dead; and who will answer
that letter, think you? Some good Christian soul who has pity for the
sick man, and who will not permit him to languish in waiting the sister
who will come to him never. For us of the Roman Catholic religion the
duty of charity is paramount. You of the Anglican faith--bah, how you are
cold, how you are hard, how you are unpitiable!

My notice appears once, my notice appears twice, three times, four times,
many times. I occupy myself about my other business, and I wait. I do not
wait unusefully. In effect, a letter arrives at last at the address of
the dying, from a lady who knew Susan Meynell _before her marriage with
M. Lenoble._

Think you not that to me this was a moment of triumph? _Before her
marriage with M. Lenoble!_ Those words appear under my eyes in the
writing of the unknown lady. "It is found!" I cry to myself; and then I
hasten myself to reply to the unknown lady. Will she permit me to see
her?

With all politeness I make the request; with all politeness it is
answered. The lady calls herself Mademoiselle Servin. She resides in the
street Grande-Mademoiselle, at the corner of the Place Lauzun. It is of
all the streets of Paris the most miserable. One side is already removed.
In face of the windows of those houses that still stand they are making a
new Boulevard. Behind they are pulling down edifices of all kinds in the
formation of a new square. At the side there is a yawning chasm between
two tall houses, through which they pierce a new street. One sees the
interior of many rooms rising one above another for seven stories. Here
the gay hangings of an apartment of little master; there the still
gaudier decoration of a boudoir of these ladies. High above these
luxurious salons--ah, but how much more near to the skies!--one sees the
poor grey paper, blackened and smoky, of a garret of sempstress, or
workman, and the hearths black, deserted. These interiors thus exposed
tighten me the heart. It is the autopsy of the domestic hearth.

I find the Mademoiselle Servin an old lady, grey and wan. The house where
she now resides is the house which she has inhabited five-and-thirty
years. They talk of pulling it down, and to her the idea of leaving it is
exquisite pain. She is alone, a teacher of music. She has seen
proprietors come and go. The _pension_ has changed mistresses many times.
Students of law and of medicine have come and passed like the shadows of
a magic lantern; but this poor soul has remained still in her little room
on the fourth, and has kept always her little old piano.

It was here she knew Susan Meynell, and a young Frenchman who became in
love with her, for she was beautiful like the angels, this lady said to
me.

Until we meet for all details. Enough that I come to discover where the
marriage took place, that I come to obtain a copy of the register, and
that I do all things in rule. Enough that the marriage is a good
marriage--a regular marriage, and that I have placed myself already in
communication with the heir of that marriage, who resides within some few
leagues of this city.

My labours, my successes I will not describe. It must that they will be
recompensed in the future. I have dispensed much money during these
transactions.

Agree, monsieur, that I am your devoted servitor,

JACQUES ROUSSEAU FLEURUS.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was in consequence of the receipt of this missive that the Captain
trusted himself to the winds and waves in the cheerless December weather.
He was well pleased to find that M. Fleurus had made discoveries so
important; but he had no idea of letting that astute practitioner absorb
all the power into his own hands.

"I must see Susan Meynell's heir," he said to himself; "I must give him
clearly to understand that to me he owes the discovery of his claims, and
that in this affair the Frenchman Fleurus is no more than a paid agent."




Book the Fourth.



GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND.



CHAPTER I.


HALCYON DAYS.

Once having offered up the fondest desires of her own heart on the
shrine of duty, Diana Paget was not a person to repent herself of the
pious sacrifice. After that Christmas night on which she had knelt at
Charlotte's feet to confess her sad secret, and to resign all claim to
the man she had loved so foolishly, so tenderly, with such a romantic
and unselfish devotion, Miss Paget put away all thought of the past from
her heart and mind. Heart and mind seemed empty and joyless without
those loved tenants, though the tenants had been only fair wraiths of
dreams that were dead. There was a sense of something missing in her
life--a blank, dull calm, which was at first very painful. But for
Charlotte's sake she was careful to hide all outward token of
despondency, and the foolish grief, put down by so strong a hand, was
ere long well-nigh stifled.

Those dark days which succeeded Christmas were a period of halcyon peace
for Valentine and Charlotte. The accepted lover came to the villa when he
pleased, but was still careful not to encroach on the license allowed
him. Once a week he permitted himself the delight of five-o'clock tea in
Mrs. Sheldon's drawing-room, on which occasions he brought Charlotte all
the news of his small literary world, and a good deal of useful
information out of the books he had been reading. When Mr. Sheldon
pleased to invite him to dinner on Sunday he gladly accepted the
invitation, and this Sunday dinner became in due course an established
institution.

"You may as well make this your home on a Sunday," said Mr. Sheldon one
day, with careless cordiality; "I dare say you find Sunday dull in your
lodgings."

"Yes, papa," cried Charlotte, "he does find it very dull--dreadfully
dull--don't you, Valentine?"

And she regarded him with that pretty, tender, almost motherly look,
which young ladies who are engaged are apt to bestow on their affianced
lovers.

Miss Halliday was very grateful to her stepfather for his kindness to her
landless adorer, and showed her appreciation of his conduct in many
pretty little caressing ways, which would have been infinitely bewitching
to a person of sentiment.

Unfortunately Mr. Sheldon was not sentimental, and any exhibition of
feeling appeared to have an irritating effect upon his nerves. There were
times when he shrank from some little sudden caress of Charlotte's as
from the sting of an adder. Aversion, surprise, fear--what was it that
showed in the expression of his face at these moments? Whatever that
strange look was, it departed too quickly for analysis; and the
stockbroker thanked his stepdaughter for her little affectionate
demonstration with his wonted smile--the smile he smiled on Change, the
smile which was sometimes on his lips when his mind was a nest of
scorpions.

To Valentine, in these rosy hours, life seemed full of hope and
brightness. He transferred his goods and chattels from Omega Street,
Chelsea, to the pleasant lodging in the Edgware Road, where he was nearer
Charlotte, and out of the way of his late patron Captain Paget, in the
event of that gentleman's return from the Continent.

Fortune favoured him. The gaiety of heart which came with his happiness
lent a grace to his pen. Pleasant thoughts and fancies bedecked his
pages. He saw everything in the rosy light of love and beauty, and there
was a buoyant freshness in all he wrote. The Pegasus might be but a
common hackney, but the hack was young and fresh, and galloped gaily as
he scented the dewy morning air. It is not every poet whose Pegasus
clears at a bound a space as wide as all that waste of land and sea the
watchman views from his tall tower on the rock.

Mr. Hawkehurst's papers on Lauzun, Brummel, Sardanapalus, Rabelais, Lord
Chesterfield, Erasmus, Beau Nash, Apelles, Galileo, and Philip of
Orleans, were in demand, and the reading public wondered at this prodigy
of book-making. He had begun to save money, and had opened a deposit
account at the Unitas Bank. How he gloated over the deposit receipts in
the stillness of the night, when he added a fresh one to his store! When
he had three, for sums amounting in all to forty pounds, he took them to
Charlotte, and she looked at them, and he looked at them, as if the poor
little bits of printed paper had been specimens of virgin ore from some
gold mine newly discovered by Mr. Hawkehurst. And then these foolish
lovers kissed each other, as William Lee and his wife may have embraced
after the penniless young student had perfected his invention of the
stocking-frame.

"Forty pounds!" exclaimed Miss Halliday, "all won by your pen, and your
poor fingers, and your poor, poor head! How it must ache after a long
day's work! How clever you must be, Valentine!"

"Yes, dear; amazingly clever. Clever enough to know that you are the
dearest girl in Christendom."

"Don't talk nonsense, sir! You are not clever enough to have the
privilege of doing that yet awhile. I mean, how learned you must be to
know such lots of things, all about Erasmus, and Galileo, and--"

"No, my darling, not Erasmus and Galileo. I knew all about Erasmus last
week; but I am working at my paper on Galileo now, an exhaustive review
of all the books that were ever written on the subject, in ten pages. I
don't ask other people to remember what I write, you know, my dear, and I
don't pledge myself to remember it. That sort of thing won't keep. There
is a kind of sediment, no doubt, in one's note-book; but the
effervescence of that vintage goes off rather quickly."

"I only know that you are a very clever person, and that one obtains an
immensity of information from your writings," said Charlotte.

"Yes, dearest, there is a kind of wine that must be made into negus for
such pretty little topers as you--the 'Wine of Cyprus,' as Mrs. Browning
called it. It is better for pretty girls to have the negus than to have
nothing, or only weak home-brewed stuff that results in head-ache. My
dearest, Fate has been very good to me, and I love my profession of
letters. I am sure that of all educational processes there is none better
than book-making; and the man who begins by making books must be a dolt,
dunce, and dunderhead, if he do not end by writing them. So you may yet
hope to see the morning that shall make your Valentine famous--for a
fortnight. What man can hope to be famous for _more_ than a fortnight in
such a railroad age as this?"

During this halcyon period, in which Mr. Hawkehurst cultivated
alternately the society of the Muses and his mistress, he saw little or
nothing of George Sheldon. He had washed his hands of all share in the
work of establishing Charlotte Halliday's claim to the Reverend John
Haygarth's thousands. Indeed, since that interview in which Philip
Sheldon had made so light of his stepdaughter's chances, and ratified his
consent to her marriage with so humble a literary adventurer as himself,
Mr. Hawkehurst had come to consider the Haygarthian inheritance as
altogether a visionary business. If it were certain, or even probable,
that Charlotte was to inherit a hundred thousand pounds, was it likely
that Mr. Sheldon would encourage such an alliance? This question Mr.
Hawkehurst always answered in the negative; and as days and weeks went
by, and he heard no more of the Haygarth fortune, the idea of Charlotte's
wealth became more and more shadowy.

If there were anything doing in this matter, the two brothers were now
working together, and George had no further need of Valentine's help.

The two brothers were not working entirely together. Philip Sheldon had
taken the matter into his own strong hand, and George found it very
difficult to hold an inch of ground against that formidable antagonist.
The papers and information which George had boasted of to Valentine, and
the possession whereof was, as he asserted, the very keystone of the
arch, proved to be of such small account that he ultimately consented to
hand them over to his brother on the payment of expenses out of pocket,
and a bonus of one hundred and fifty pounds, together with a written
undertaking from Miss Halliday to pay him the fifth share of any fortune
recovered by means of those papers.

This undertaking had been executed in the easiest manner.

"My brother has taken it into his wise head that there is some unclaimed
stock standing in your grandfather's name which you are entitled to,
Lotta," Mr. Sheldon said one morning; "and he wants to recover the amount
for you, on condition of receiving a clear fifth when the sum is
recovered. Have you any objection to sign such an undertaking?"

"Dear papa, how can I object?" cried Charlotte gaily. "Why, stocks are
money, are they not? How fortunate we are, and how rich we are getting!"

"We!"

"Valentine and I," murmured the girl, blushing. "I cannot help thinking
of him when any windfall of good fortune comes to me. What do you think,
papa? He has saved forty pounds in little more than three months--all
earned by his pen!

"Behold
The arch-enchanter's wand! Itself a nothing;
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless!"

And Miss Halliday spouted the glowing lines of the noble dramatist with
charming enthusiasm. She signed the required undertaking without looking
at it, and it was duly witnessed by her stepfather.

"In your talk with your mother and Valentine, I should advise you to be
as silent about this small business as about your own little fortune,"
Mr. Sheldon remarked presently.

"Mustn't I tell Valentine?" cried Charlotte, making a wry face; "I should
so like to tell him--just about these stocks. I daresay _he_ knows what
stocks are; and it would be such cheering news for him, after he has
worked his poor brain so for that forty pounds. I don't so much care
about telling poor mamma; for she does exclaim and wonder so about
things, that it is quite fatiguing to hear her. But please let me tell
Valentine?"

Miss Halliday pursed-up her lips and offered her stepfather one of those
kisses which she had of late been prompted to bestow on him out of the
gratitude of a heart overflowing with girlish joy. He took the kiss as he
might have taken a dose of medicine, but did not grant the request
preferred by it.

"If you want to be a fool, you can tell your lover of this windfall; but
if you wish to prove yourself a sensible girl, you will hold your tongue.
He has saved forty pounds by hard work in the last three months, you say:
do you think he would have saved forty pence if he had known that you had
five thousand pounds at his disposal? I know that class of men; look at
Goldsmith, the man who wrote the "Vicar of Wakefield," and "Rasselas,"
and "Clarissa Harlowe," and so on. I have read somewhere that he never
wrote except under coercion--that is to say, want of money."

Charlotte acknowledged the wisdom of this argument, and submitted. She
was not what was called a strong-minded woman; and, indeed, strength of
mind is not a plant indigenous to the female nature, but an exceptional
growth developed by exceptional circumstances. In Charlotte's life there
had been nothing exceptional, and she was in all things soft and womanly,
ready to acknowledge, and to be guided by, the wisdom of her seniors. So
Valentine heard nothing of the undertaking executed by his lady-love.

After this, Mr. Sheldon took counsel's opinion, and set to work in real
earnest to recover the estate of the deceased John Haygarth from the
yawning jaws of that tame but all-devouring monster, the Crown. The work
was slow, and the dry as dust details thereof need not be recorded here.
It had but just begun when Horatio Paget suddenly returned from his
Continental expedition, and established himself once more in the Omega
Street lodgings.



CHAPTER II.


CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY.

Captain Paget's return was made known to the Sheldon circle by a letter
from the returning wanderer to his daughter. The Captain was laid up with
rheumatic gout, and wrote quite piteously to implore a visit from Diana.
Miss Paget, always constant to the idea of a duty to be performed on her
side, even to this _père prodigue_, obeyed the summons promptly, with the
full approval of Georgy, always good-natured after her own fussy manner.

"And if you'd like to take your papa a bottle of Mr. Sheldon's old port,
Diana, remember it's at your disposal. I'm sure I've heard people say
that old port is good for the gout--or perhaps, by the bye, what I heard
was that it _wasn't_ good. I know old port and gout seem to run together
in my head somehow. But if there's anything in the house your papa would
like, Diana--wine, or gunpowder tea, or the eider-down coverlet off the
spare bed, or the parlour croquet, to amuse him of an evening, or a new
novel--surely one couldn't forfeit one's subscription by lending a book
to a non-subscribing invalid?"

While Georgy was suggesting the loan of almost every portable object in
the house as a specific for Captain Paget's gout, Charlotte sent for a
cab and made things smooth for her friend's departure. She wrapped her
warmly against the February blast, and insisted upon going out to see her
seated in the cab, whereby she offered to the pedestrians of that
neighbourhood a seraphic vision of loveliness with tumbled hair.
Charlotte had been always delightful, but Charlotte engaged to Valentine
Hawkehurst was a creature of supernal sweetness and brightness--a radiant
ministering angel, hovering lightly above a world too common for her foot
to rest upon.

Miss Paget found her father suffering from a by no means severe attack of
a respectable family gout, a little peevish from the effects of this
affliction, but not at all depressed in mind. He had, indeed, the manner
of a man with whom things are going pleasantly. There was a satisfaction
in his tone, a placidity in his face, except when distorted for the
moment by a twinge of pain, that were new to Diana, who had not been
accustomed to behold the brighter side of her father's disposition. He
seemed grateful for his daughter's visit, and received her with unwonted
kindness of manner.

"You have come very promptly, my dear, and I am gratified by your early
compliance with my request," he said with dignified affection, after he
had given his daughter the kiss of greeting. "I was a great sufferer last
night, Diana, a great sufferer, a prisoner to this chair, and the woman
below attempted to send me up a dinner--_such_ a dinner! One would think
a very small degree of education necessary for the stewing of a kidney,
but the things that woman gave me last night were like morsels of stewed
leather. I am not an epicure, Diana; but with such a constitution as
mine, good cooking is a vital necessity. Life in lodgings for a man of my
age is a sore trial, my dear. I wish you were well married, Diana, and
could give your father a humble corner at your fireside."

Diana smiled. It was a somewhat bitter smile; and there was scorn of
herself, as well as scorn of her father in that bitterness.

"I am not the sort of person to marry well, papa," she said.

"Who knows? You are handsomer than nine-tenths of the women who marry
well."

"No, papa; that is your sanguine manner of looking at your own property.
And even if I were married to some one to whom I might give obedience and
duty, and all that kind of thing, in exchange for a comfortable home, as
they say in the advertisements, would you be content with a peaceful
corner by my fireside? Do you think you would never pine for clubs and
gaming-tables--nay, even for creditors to--to diplomatize with, and
difficulties to surmount?"

"No, my dear. I am an old man; the clubs and gaming-houses have done with
me, and I with them. I went to see a man at Arthur's a few months ago. I
had written to him on a little matter of business--in fact, to be candid
with you, my love, for the loan of a five-pound note--and I called at the
club for his reply. I caught sight of my face in a distant glass as I was
waiting in the strangers' room, and I thought I was looking at a ghost.
There comes a time towards the close of a long troublesome life in which
a man begins to feel like a ghost. His friends are gone, and his money is
gone, his health is gone, his good looks are gone; and the only mistake
seems to be that the man himself should be left behind. I remember an
observation of Lord Chesterfield's: 'Lord ---- and I have been dead for
the last two years, but we don't tell anyone so,' he said; and there are
few old men who couldn't say the same. But I am not down-hearted to-day,
my dear. No, the habit of hoping has never quite deserted me; and it is
only now and then that I take a dismal view of life. Come, my love, lay
aside your bonnet and things. Dear me! what a handsome black silk dress,
and how well you look in it!"

"It is a present from Charlotte, papa. She has a very liberal allowance
of pocket-money, and is generosity itself. I don't like to take so much
from her, but I only wound her by a refusal."

"Of course, my dear. There is nothing so ungracious as a refusal, and no
mark of high breeding so rare as the art of gracious acceptance. Any
booby can give a present; but to receive a gift without churlish
reticence or florid rapture is no easy accomplishment. I am always
pleased to see you well-dressed, my love"--Diana winced as she remembered
her shabby hat and threadbare gown at Fôretdechêne--"and I am especially
pleased to see you elegantly attired this evening, as I expect a
gentleman by-and-by."

"A gentleman, papa!" exclaimed Miss Paget, with considerable surprise; "I
thought that you had sent for me because you were ill and depressed and
lonely."

"Well, yes, Diana, I certainly am ill; and I suppose it is scarcely
unnatural that a father should wish to see his only daughter."

Diana was silent. A father's wish to see his daughter was indeed natural
and common; but that Captain Paget, who in no period of his daughter's
life had evinced for her the common affection of paternity, should be
seized all of a sudden with a yearning for her society, was somewhat
singular. But Diana's nature had been ennobled and fortified by the
mental struggle and the impalpable sacrifice of the last few months, and
she was in nowise disposed to repel any affectionate feeling of her
father's even at this eleventh hour.

"_He_ tells us the eleventh hour is not too late," she thought. "If it is
not too late in the sight of that Divine Judge, shall it be thought too
late by an erring creature like me?"

After a few minutes of thoughtful silence, she knelt down by her father's
chair and kissed him.

"My dear father," she murmured softly, "believe me, I am very pleased to
think you should wish to see me. I will come to you whenever you like to
send for me. I am glad not to be a burden to you; but I should wish to be
a comfort when I can."

The Captain shed his stock tear. It signified something nearer akin to
real emotion than usual.

"My dear girl," he said, "this is very pleasing, very pleasing
indeed. The day may come--I cannot just now say when--and events may
arise--which--the nature of which I am not yet in a position to indicate
to you--but the barren fig-tree may not be always fruitless. In its old
age the withered trunk may put forth fresh branches. We will say no more
of this, my love; and I will only remark that you may not go unrequited
for any affection bestowed on your poor old father."

Diana smiled, and this time it was a pensive rather than a bitter smile.
She had often heard her father talk like this before. She had often heard
these oracular hints of some grand event looming mighty in the immediate
future; but she had never seen the vague prophecy accomplished. Always a
schemer, and always alternating between the boastful confidence of hope
and the peevish bewailings of despair, the Captain had built his castle
to-day to sit among its ruins to-morrow, ever since she had known him.

So she set little value on his hopeful talk of this evening, but was
content to see him in good spirits. He contemplated her admiringly as she
knelt by his easy-chair, and smoothed the shining coils of her dark hair
with a gentle hand, as he looked downward at the thoughtful face--proud
and grave, but not ungentle.

"You are a very handsome girl, Diana," he murmured, as much to himself as
to his daughter; "yes, very handsome. Egad, I had no idea how handsome!"

"What has put such a fancy into your head to-night, papa?" asked Diana,
laughing. "I do not believe in the good looks you are so kind as to
attribute to me. When I see my face in the glass I perceive a pale gloomy
countenance that is by no means pleasing."

"You may be out of spirits when you look in the glass. I hope you are not
unhappy at Bayswater."

"Why should I be unhappy, papa? No sister was ever kinder or more loving
than Charlotte Halliday is to me. I should he very ungrateful to
Providence as well as to her if I did not appreciate such affection. How
many lonely girls, like me, go through life without picking up a sister?"

"Yes, you are right, my dear. Those Sheldon people have been very useful
to you. They are not the kind of people I should have wished a daughter
of mine to be _live_ with, if I were in the position my birth entitles me
to occupy; but as I am not in that position, I submit. That black silk
becomes you admirably. And now, my love, be so kind as to ring the bell
for lights and tea."

They had been sitting in the firelight--the mystic magical capricious
firelight--which made even that tawdry lodging-house parlour seem a
pleasant chamber. The tea-tray was brought, and candles. Diana seated
herself at the table, and made tea with the contents of a little
mahogany caddy.

"Don't pour out the tea just yet," said the Captain; "I expect a
gentleman. I don't suppose he'll take tea, but it will look more civil to
wait for him."

"And who is this mysterious gentleman, papa?"

"A Frenchman; a man I met while I was abroad."

"_Really_ a gentleman?"

"Certainly, Diana," replied her father, with offended dignity.

"Do you think I should admit any person to my friendship who is not a
gentleman? My business relations I am powerless to govern; but friendship
is a different matter. There is no man more exclusive than Horatio Paget.
M. Lenoble is a gentleman of ancient lineage and amiable character."

"And rich, I suppose, papa?" asked Diana. She thought that her father
would scarcely speak of the gentleman in a tone so profoundly respectful
if he were not rich.

"Yes, Diana. M. Lenoble is master of a very fair estate, and is likely to
be much richer before he dies."

"And he has been kind to you, papa?"

"Yes, he has shown me hospitality during my residence in Normandy. You
need not speak of him to your friends the Sheldons."

"Not even to Charlotte?"

"Not even to Charlotte. I do not care to have my affairs discussed by
that class of people."

"But, dear papa, why make a mystery about so unimportant a matter.

"I do not make a mystery; but I hate gossip. Mrs. Sheldon is an
incorrigible gossip, and I daresay her daughter is no better."

"Charlotte is an angel, papa."

"That is very possible. But I beg that you will refrain from discussing
my friend M. Lenoble in her angelic presence."

"As you please, papa," said Diana gravely. She felt herself bound to obey
her father in this small matter; but the idea of this mystery and secrecy
was very unwelcome to her. It implied that her father's acquaintance with
this Frenchman was only a part of some new scheme. It was no honest
friendship, which the Captain might be proud to own, glad to show the
world that in these days of decadence he could still point to a friend.
It was only some business alliance, underhand and stealthy; a social
conspiracy, that must needs be conducted in darkness.

"Why did papa summon me here if he wants his acquaintance with this man
kept secret?" she asked herself; and the question seemed unanswerable.

She pictured this M. Lenoble to herself--a wizened, sallow-faced
Macchiavellian individual, whose business in England must needs be
connected with conspiracy, treason, commercial fraud, anything or
everything stealthy and criminal.

"I wish you would let me go back to Bayswater before this gentleman
comes, papa," she said presently. "I heard it strike seven just now, and
I know I shall be expected early. I can come again whenever you like."

"No, no, my love; you must stop to see my friend. And now tell me a
little about the Sheldons. Has anything been stirring since I saw them
last?"

"Nothing whatever, papa. Charlotte is very happy; she always had a
happy disposition, but she is gayer than ever since her engagement
with--Valentine."

"What an absurd infatuation!" muttered the Captain.

"And he--Valentine--is very good, and works very hard at his literary
profession--and loves her very dearly."

It cost her an effort to say this even now, even now when she fancied
herself cured of that folly which had once been so sweet to her. To speak
of him like this--to put him away out of her own life, and contemplate
him as an element in the life of another--could not be done without some
touch of the old anguish.

There was a loud double-knock at the street-door as she said this, and a
step sounded presently in the passage; a quick, firm tread. There was
nothing stealthy about that, at any rate.

"My friend Lenoble," said the Captain; and in the next instant a
gentleman entered the room, a gentleman who was in every quality the
opposite of the person whom Diana had expected to see.

These speculative pictures are seldom good portraits. Miss Paget had
expected to find her father's ally small and shrivelled, old and ugly,
dried-up and withered in the fiery atmosphere of fraud and conspiracy; in
outward semblance a monkey, in soul a tiger. And instead of this
obnoxious creature there burst into the room a man of four-and-thirty
years of age, tall, stalwart, with a fair frank face, somewhat browned by
summer suns; thick auburn hair and beard, close trimmed and cropped in
the approved Gallic fashion--clear earnest blue eyes, and a mouth whose
candour and sweetness a moustache could not hide. Henry of Navarre,
before the white lilies of France had dazzled his eyes with their fatal
splendour, before the court of the Medici had taught the Bearnois to
dissemble, before the sometime Protestant champion had put on that
apparel of stainless white in which he went forth to stain his soul with
the sin of a diplomatic apostasy.

Such a surprise as this makes a kind of crisis in the eventless record of
a woman's life. Diana found herself blushing as the stranger stood near
the door awaiting her father's introduction. She was ashamed to think of
the wrong her imagination had done him.

"My daughter, Diana Paget--M. Lenoble. I have been telling Diana how much
I owed to your hospitality during my stay in Normandy," continued the
Captain, with his grandest air, "I regret that I can only receive you in
an apartment quite unworthy the seigneur of Côtenoir.--A charming place,
my dear Diana, which I should much like you to see on some future
occasion.--Will you take some tea, Lenoble?--Diana, a cup of tea.--The
Pagets are a fallen race, you see, my dear sir, and a cup of tea in a
lodging-house parlour is the best entertainment I can give to a friend.
The Cromie Pagets of Hertfordshire will give you dinner in gold plate,
with a footman standing behind the chair of every guest; but our branch
is a younger and a poorer one, and I, among others, am paying the price
of youthful follies."

Gustave Lenoble looked sympathetic, but the glance of sympathy was
directed to Diana, and not to the male representative of the younger
Pagets. To pity the distressed damsel was an attribute of the Lenoble
mind; and Gustave had already begun to pity Miss Paget, and to wonder
what her fate in life would be, with no better protector than a father
who was confessedly a pauper. He saw that the young lady was very
handsome, and he divined, from some indefinable expression of her face,
that she was proud; and as he thought of his own daughters, and their
easy life and assured future, the contrast seemed to him very cruel.

Chivalrous as the house of Lenoble might be by nature, he could scarcely
have felt so keen an interest in Captain Paget's daughter at the first
glance, if his sympathies had not been already enlisted for her. The
noble Horatio, though slow to act a father's part, had shown himself
quick to make capital out of his daughter's beauty and virtues when the
occasion offered.

In his intercourse with the seigneur of Côtenoir, which had developed
from a mere business acquaintance into friendship, Captain Paget had
discoursed with much eloquence upon the subject of his motherless
daughter; and M. Lenoble, having daughters of his own, also motherless,
lent him the ear of sympathy.

"I have heard much of you, Miss Paget," said Gustave presently, "and of
your devotion to your father. He has no more favourite theme than your
goodness."

Diana blushed, and Diana's father blushed also. That skilled diplomatist
felt the awkwardness of the situation, and was prompt to the rescue.

"Yes," he said, "my daughter has been a heroine. There are Antigones,
sir, who show their heroic nature by other service than the leading to
and fro of a blind father. From the earliest age my poor child has
striven to stand alone; too proud, too noble to be a burden on a parent
whose love would have given all, but whose means could give but little.
And now she comes to me from her home among strangers, to soothe my hour
of pain and infirmity. I trust your daughters may prove as worthy of your
love, M. Lenoble."

"They are very dear girls," answered the Frenchman; "but for them life
has been all sunshine. They have never known a sorrow except the death of
their mother. It is the storm that tests the temper of the tree. I wish
they might prove as noble in adversity as Miss Paget has shown herself."

This was more than Diana could bear without some kind of protest.

"You must not take papa's praises _au pied de la lettre_, M. Lenoble,"
she said; "I have been by no means brave or patient under adversity.
There are troubles which one must bear. I have borne mine somehow; but I
claim no praise for having submitted to the inevitable."

This was spoken with a certain noble pride which impressed Gustave more
than all the father's florid eloquence had done. After this the
conversation became less personal. M. Lenoble talked of England. It was
not his first visit; but he had only the excursionist's knowledge of the
British Isles.

"I have been to Scotland," he said. "Your Scotland is grand,
mountainous--all that there is of the most savage and poetic. It is a
Switzerland lined with Brittany. But that which most speaks to the heart
of a stranger is the peaceful beauty of your English landscape."

"You like England, M. Lenoble?" said Diana.

"Have I not reason? My mother was English. I was only five years old when
I lost her. She went out of my life like a dream; but I can still recall
a faint shadow of her face--an English face--a countenance of placid
sadness, very sweet and tender. But why do I talk of these things?"

On this the Frenchman's talk took a gayer turn. This M. Lenoble showed
himself a lively and agreeable companion. He talked of Normandy, his
daughters and their convent, his little son at Rouen, his aunt Cydalise,
the quiet old lady at Beaubocage; his grandfather, his grandmother, the
old servants, and everything familiar and dear to him. He told of his
family history with boyish candour, untainted by egotism, and seemed much
pleased by Diana's apparent interest in his unstudied talk. He was quite
unconscious that the diplomatic Horatio was leading him on to talk of
these things, with a view to making the conversation supremely
interesting to him. That arch diplomatist knew that there is nothing a
man likes better than talking of his own affairs, if he can have a decent
excuse for such discourse.

The clock struck nine while Diana was listening, really interested. This
glimpse of a life so far apart from her own was a relief, after the
brooding introspective reveries which of late had constituted so large a
portion of her existence. She started up at the sound of the clock.

"What now, Cinderella?" cried her father. "Have you stopped beyond your
time, and will your fairy godmother be angry?"

"No one will be angry, papa; but I did not mean to stay so late. I am
sorry your description of Normandy has been so interesting, M. Lenoble."

"Come and see Vevinord and Côtenoir, and you will judge for yourself. The
town-hall of Vevinord is almost as fine as that of Louvain; and we have a
church that belongs to the time of Dagobert."

"She shall see them before long," said the Captain; "I shall have
business in Rouen again before the next month is out; and if my daughter
is a good girl, I will take her over there with me."

Diana stared at her father in utter bewilderment. What could be the
meaning of this sudden display of affection?

"I should not be free to go with you, papa, even if you were able to take
me," she replied, somewhat coldly; "I have other duties."

She felt assured that there was some lurking motive, some diplomatic art
at the bottom of the Captain's altered conduct, and she could not
altogether repress her scorn. The astute Horatio saw that he had gone a
little too far, and that his only child was not of the stuff to be
moulded at will by his dexterous hands.

"You will come and see me again, Diana?" he said in a pleading tone: "I
am likely to be a prisoner in this room for a week or more."

"Certainly, papa; I will come if you wish it. When shall I come?"

"Well, let me see--to-day is Thursday; can you come on Monday?"

"Yes, I will come on Monday."

A cab was procured, and Miss Paget was conducted to that vehicle by her
new acquaintance, who showed a gallant anxiety for her comfort on the
journey, and was extremely careful about the closing of the windows. She
arrived at Bayswater before ten, but being forbidden to talk of M.
Lenoble, could give but a scanty account of her evening.

"And was your papa kind, dear?" asked Charlotte, "and did he seem pleased
to see you?"

"He was much kinder and more affectionate than usual, Lotta dear; so much
so, that he set me wondering. Now, if I were as confiding and eager to
think well of people as you are, I should be quite delighted by this
change. As it is, I am only mystified. I should be very glad if my father
and I could be drawn closer together; very glad if my influence could
bring about an amendment in his life."

While Miss Paget was discussing her father's affectionate and novel
behaviour, the noble Horatio was meditating, by his solitary hearth, upon
the events of the evening.

"I'm half-inclined to think he's hit already," mused the Captain. "I must
not allow myself to be deluded by manner. A Frenchman's gallantry rarely
means much; but Lenoble is one of those straightforward fellows whose
thoughts may be read by a child. He certainly seemed pleased with her;
interested and sympathetic, and all that kind of thing. And she is an
uncommonly handsome girl, and might marry any one if she had the
opportunity. I had no idea she was so handsome until to-night. I suppose
I never noticed her by candlelight before. By Jove! I ought to have made
her an actress, or singer, or something of that kind. And so I might, if
I'd known her face would light up as it does. I wish she wasn't so
impracticable--always cutting in with some awkward speech, that makes me
look like a fool, when, if she had an ounce of common sense, she might
see that I'm trying to make her fortune. Yes, egad, and such a fortune as
few girls drop into now-a-days! Some of your straitlaced church-going
people would call me a neglectful father to that girl, I daresay; but I
think if I succeed in making her the wife of Gustave Lenoble, I shall
have done my duty in a way that very few fathers can hope to surpass.
Such a high-principled fellow as Lenoble is too!--and _that_ is a
consideration."



CHAPTER III.


"WHAT DO WE HERE, MY HEART AND I?"

After that first summons to Chelsea, Diana went many times--twice and
three times a week--to comfort and tend her invalid father. Captain
Paget's novel regard for his only child seemed to increase with the
familiarity of frequent intercourse. "I have had very great pleasure in
making your acquaintance, my dear Diana," he said one day, in the course
of a _tête-à-tête_ with his daughter; "and I am charmed to find you
everything that a well-born and well-bred young woman ought to be. I am
sure you have excellent reason to be grateful to your cousin, Priscilla
Paget, for the excellent education you received in her abode; and you
have some cause to thank me for the dash and style imparted to your
carriage and manner by our foreign wanderings."

The Captain said this with the air of a man who had accompanied his
daughter on the grand tour solely with a view to her intellectual
improvement. He really thought she had reason to be grateful to him for
those accidents of his nomadic life which had secured her a good accent
for French and German, and the art of putting on her shawl.

"Yes, my dear child," he continued with dignity, "it affords me real
gratification to know you better. I need scarcely say that when you were
the associate of my pilgrimage, you were not of an age to be available as
a companion. To a man of the world like myself, a young person who has
not done growing must always savour somewhat of the schoolroom and the
nursery. I am not going to repeat the Byronic impertinence about
bread-and-butter; but the society of a girl of the hobbledehoy age is apt
to be insipid. You are now a young woman, and a young woman of whom any
father might with justice be proud."

After a few such speeches as these, Diana began to think that it was just
possible her father might really experience some novel feeling of regard
for her. It might be true that his former coldness had been no more than
a prejudice against the awkwardness of girlhood.

"I was shabby and awkward, I daresay, in those days," she thought; "and
then I was always asking papa for money to buy new clothes; and that may
have set him against me. And now that I am no burden upon him, and can
talk to him and amuse him, he may feel more kindly disposed towards me."

There was some foundation for this idea. Captain Paget had felt himself
more kindly disposed towards his only child from the moment in which she
ceased to be an encumbrance upon him. Her sudden departure from
Forêtdechêne had been taken in very good part by him.

"A very spirited thing for her to do, Val," he had said, when informed of
the fact by Mr. Hawkehurst; "and by far the best thing she could do,
under the circumstances."

From that time his daughter had never asked him for a sixpence, and from
that time she had risen steadily in his estimation. But the feeling which
he now exhibited was more than placid approval; it was an affection at
once warm and exacting. The fact was, that Horatio Paget saw in his
daughter the high-road to the acquirement of a handsome competence for
his declining years. His affection was sincere so far as it went; a
sentiment inspired by feelings purely mercenary, but not a hypocritical
assumption. Diana was, therefore, so much the more likely to be softened
and touched by it.

She was softened, deeply touched by this late awakening of feeling. The
engagement of Valentine and Charlotte had left her own life very blank,
very desolate. It was not alone the man she loved who was lost to her;
Charlotte, the friend, the sister, seemed also slipping away from her. As
kind, as loving, as tender as of old, this dear friend and adopted sister
still might be, but no longer wholly her own. Over the hearts of the
purest Eros reigns with a too despotic power, and mild affection is apt
to sneak away into some corner of the temple on whose shrine Love has
descended. This mild affection is but a little twinkling taper, that will
burn steadily on, perhaps unseen amidst the dazzling glory of Love's
supernal lamp, to be found shining benignantly when the lamp is
shattered.

For Charlotte, Valentine--and for Valentine, Charlotte--made the
sum-total of the universe at this time; or, at best, there was but a
small balance which included all the other cares and duties, affections
and pleasures, of life. Of this balance Diana had the lion's share; but
she felt that things had changed since those days of romantic school-girl
friendship in which Charlotte had talked of never marrying, and
travelling with her dearest friend Diana amongst all the beautiful scenes
they had read of, until they found the loveliest spot in the world, where
they would establish themselves in an ideal cottage, and live together
for the rest of their lives, cultivating their minds and their
flower-garden, working berlin-wool chairs for their ideal drawing-room,
and doing good to an ideal peasantry, who would be just poor enough to be
interesting, and sickly enough to require frequent gifts of calf's-foot
jelly and green tea.

Those foolish dreams were done with now; and that other dream, of a life
to be spent with the reckless companion of her girlhood, was lost to
Diana Paget. There was no point to which she could look forward in the
future, no star to lure her onward upon life's journey. Her present
position was sufficiently comfortable; and she told herself that she must
needs be weak and wicked if she were not content with her lot. But beyond
the present she dared not look, so blank was the prospect--a desert,
without even the mirage; for her dreams and delusions were gone with her
hope.

Possessed by such a sense of loneliness, it is scarcely strange if
there seemed to her a gleam of joy, a faint glimmer of hope, in the
newly awakened affection of her father. She began to believe him, and
to take comfort from the thought that he was drifting to a haven where
he might lie moored, with other battered old hulks of pirate and
privateer, inglorious and at rest. To work for him and succour him in his
declining years seemed a brighter prospect to this hopeless woman of
four-and-twenty than a future of lonely independence. "It is the nature
of woman to lean," says the masculine philosopher; but is it not rather
her nature to support and sustain, or else why to her is entrusted the
sublime responsibility of maternity? Diana was pleased to think that a
remorseful reprobate might be dependent on her toil, and owe his
reformation to her influence. She was indeed a new Antigone, ready to
lead him in his moral blindness to an altar of atonement more pure than
the ensanguined shrine of the Athenian Eumenides.

Her visits to Omega Street were not entirely devoted to _tête-a-têtes_
with her father. By reason of those coincidences which are so common to
the lives of some people, it generally happened that M. Lenoble dropped
in upon his invalid friend on the very day of Miss Paget's visit. M.
Lenoble was in London on business, and this business apparently
necessitated frequent interviews with Captain Paget. Of course such
interviews could not take place in the presence of Diana. Gustave was
wont, therefore, to wait with praiseworthy patience until the conclusion
of the young lady's visit; and would even, with an inconsistent
gallantry, urge her to prolong her stay to its utmost limit.

"It will always be time for my affairs, Miss Paget," he urged, "and I
know how your father values your society; and he well may value it. I
only hope my daughters will be as good to me, if I have the gout,
by-and-by."

Diana had spent nearly a dozen evenings in Omega Street, and on each of
those evenings had happened to meet M. Lenoble. She liked him better on
every occasion of these accidental meetings. He was indeed a person whom
it was difficult for any one to dislike, and in the thirty-four years of
his life had never made an enemy. She had been pleased with him on the
first evening; his bright handsome face, his courteous reverence for her
sex--expressed in every word, every tone, every look--his sympathy with
all good thoughts, his freshness and candour, were calculated to charm
the coldest and most difficult of judges. Diana liked, and even admired
him, but it was from an abstract point of view. He seemed a creature as
remote from her own life as a portrait of Henry of Navarre, seen and
admired in some royal picture-gallery to-day, to fade out of her memory
to-morrow.

There was only one point in connection with Gustave Lenoble which
occupied her serious thoughts; and this was the nature of his relations
with her father.

This was a subject that sorely troubled her. Hope as she might for the
future, she could not shut her eyes to the past. She knew that her
father had lived for years as a cheat and a trickster--now by one
species of falsehood and trickery, now by another--rarely incautious,
but always unscrupulous. How had this village seigneur of Normandy
fallen into the Captain's toils; and what was the nature of the net that
was spread for him?

The talk of business, the frequent interviews, the evident elation of her
father's spirits, combined to assure her that some great scheme was in
progress, some commercial enterprise, perhaps not entirely dishonest--nay
even honest, when regarded from the sanguine speculator's point of view,
but involving the hazard of Gustave Lenoble's fortune.

"It is quite as easy for my father to delude himself as it is for him to
delude others. This M. Lenoble is ignorant of English commerce, no doubt,
and will be ready to believe anything papa tells him. And he is so
candid, so trusting, it would be very hard if he were to be a loser
through his confidence in papa. His daughters, too; the hazard of his
fortune is peril to their future." Such doubts and fears, gradually
developed by reflection took stronger hold on Miss Paget's mind after
every fresh visit to Omega Street. She saw the Frenchman's light-hearted
confidence in all humanity, her father's specious manner and air of
quixotic honour. His sanguine tone, his excellent spirits, filled her
with intolerable alarm. Alas! when had she ever seen her father in good
spirits, except when some gentlemanly villany was in progress?

Miss Paget endured this uneasiness of mind as long as she could, and then
determined to warn the supposed victim. She planned the mode of her
warning, and arranged for herself a diplomatic form which would reflect
the least possible discredit upon her father; and having once come to
this resolution, she was not slow to put it into effect.

When her father was about to send for a cab to convey her back to
Bayswater, after her next visit to Omega Street, she surprised him by
intercepting his order.

"There is a cab-stand in Sloane Square, papa," she said; "and if M.
Lenoble will be so kind as to take me there, I--I would rather get the
cab from the stand. The man charges more when he is fetched off the rank,
I believe."

She could think of no better excuse for seeing Gustave alone than this
most sordid pretence. She blushed as she thought how mean a sound it must
have in the ears of the man for whose advantage she was plotting. Happily
M. Lenoble was not among the people who see nothing but meanness in the
desire to save sixpence. His aunt Cydalise had shown him the loveliness
of poverty; for there are vows of holy poverty that need no spoken
formula, and that are performed without the cloister.

"Poor girl!" thought M. Lenoble; "I dare say even the cost of her coach
is a consideration with her; and one dare not pay the coachman."

This was how Gustave read that blush of shame which for a moment dyed
Diana's cheek. Her father's was a very different reading.

"The minx sees my game, and is playing into my hands," thought he. "So
demure as she is, too! I should never have supposed her capable of such
a clever manoeuvre to secure ten minutes' _tête-a-tête_ with an
eligible admirer."

He bade his daughter good night with more than usual effusion. He began
to think that she might prove herself worthy of him after all.

The district between Omega Street and Sloane Square is after dusk of all
places the most solitary. It is the border-land of Pimlico, or, to borrow
from Sidney Smith, the knuckle end of Belgravia. In these regions of
desolation and smoke-blackened stucco Diana and her companion were as
secure from the interruption of the jostling crowd as they might have
been in the primeval forests of Central America.

Miss Paget's task was not a pleasant one. Shape her warning as she might,
it must reflect some discredit upon her father. He had of late been kind
to her; she felt this keenly to-night, and it seemed that the thing she
was about to do was a sort of parricide. Not against her father's life
was her cruel hand to be lifted; but her still more cruel tongue was to
slay her father's good name.

"This M. Lenoble likes him and trusts him," she thought to herself. "What
a happiness for that poor broken-down old man to have so kind a friend!
And I am going to interfere in a manner that may put an end to this
friendship?"

This is the shape which her thoughts assumed as she walked silently by
Gustave's side, with her hand lying lightly on his arm. He spoke to her
two or three times about the dulness of the neighbourhood, the coldness
of the night, or some other equally thrilling subject; but, finding by
her replies that she was thinking deeply, he made no further attempt at
conversation.

"Poor child! she has some trouble on her mind, perhaps," he thought to
himself sadly, for his sympathy with this young lady was a very profound
feeling. This was the first occasion on which he had ever been alone
with her, and he wondered to find what a strange emotion was developed
by the novelty of the situation. He had married at twenty years of age,
and had never known those brief fancies or foolish passions which waste
the freshness of mind and heart. He had married a wife whom he never
learned to love; but his nature was so essentially a happy one, that he
had failed to discover the something wanting in his life. In all
relations--as grandson, husband, father, master--he had been "all simply
perfect," as Mademoiselle Cydalise pronounced him; and in a mind occupied
by cares for the welfare and happiness of others, he had never found that
blank which needed to be filled in order to make his own life completely
happy. Only of late, in his thirty-fourth year, had he come to the
knowledge of a feeling deeper than dutiful regard for an invalid wife, or
affectionate solicitude for motherless children; only of late had he felt
his heart stirred by a more thrilling emotion than that placid
resignation to the will of Providence which had distinguished his
courtship of Mademoiselle de Nérague.

They had nearly reached Sloane Square before Diana took courage to broach
the subject so naturally repugnant to her. She had need to remember that
the welfare of M. Lenoble and all belonging to him might be dependent on
her fortitude.

"M. Lenoble," she began at last, "I am going to say something I shall
find it most painful to utter, but which I feel it my duty to say to you.
I can only ask you to receive it in a generous spirit."

"But, my dear Miss Paget, I pray you not to say anything that is
disagreeable to you. Why should you give yourself pain?--why--"

"Because it is my duty to warn you of a danger which I know only too
well, and of which you may be quite ignorant. You are my father's friend,
M. Lenoble; and he has very few friends. I should be sorry if anything I
were to say should rob him of your regard."

"Nothing that you say shall rob him of my friendship. But why should
you persist thus to say anything that is painful? What can you tell me
that I do not know, or that I cannot guess? Will you tell me that he is
poor? But I know it. That he is a broken-down gentleman? And that also
I know. What, then, would you tell me? That he has a daughter who is to
him a treasure without price? Ah, mademoiselle, what must I be if I did
not know that also?--I, who have contemplated that daughter so many
times--ah, so many!--when she could not know with what sympathy my eyes
watched her dutiful looks, with what profound emotion my heart
interpreted her life of affectionate sacrifice."

There was a warmth, a tenderness in his tones which touched Diana's heart
as it had not been touched of late. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the full
meaning of those tender accents came home to her. The love that she had
once dreamed of from the lips of another spoke to her to-night in the
words of this stranger. The sympathy for which she had yearned long ago,
in the days of her wanderings with Valentine, was given to her to-night
without stint or measure. Unhappily it came too late; and it did not come
from the only lips which, as it seemed to her to-night, could make
sympathy precious or love divine. But to this lonely girl a good man's
affection seemed a treasure for which she must needs be deeply grateful.
It was something to discover that she could be loved.

"I too," she said to herself,--"I, of whose presence Valentine is
scarcely conscious when he enters a room where Charlotte and I are
together; I, whom he greets day after day with the same careless words,
the same indifferent look; I, who might fade and waste day by day with
some slow disease, until I sank into the grave, before he would be
conscious of any change in my face,--is it possible that amongst the same
race of beings there can be any creature so widely different from
Valentine Hawkehurst as to love _me_?"

This was the bitter complaint of her heart as she compared the tenderness
of this stranger with the indifference of the man to whom, for three long
years of her girlhood, she had given every dream, every thought, every
hope of her existence. She could not put him away from her heart all at
once. The weak heart still fondly clung to the dear familiar image. But
the more intensely she had felt the cold neglect of Valentine, the more
grateful to her seemed the unsought affection of Gustave Lenoble.

"You know me as little as you know my father, M. Lenoble," she said,
after a long pause, during which they had walked to the end of the long
dull street, and were close to the square. "Let us go back a little way,
please; I have much more to say. I wish you to be my father's friend
always, but, if possible, without danger to yourself. My father is one of
those sanguine people who are always ready to embark in some new
enterprise, and who go on hoping and dreaming, after the failure of a
dozen schemes. He has no money, that I know of, to lose himself, and that
fact may make him, unconsciously, reckless of other people's money. I
have heard him speak of business relations with you, M. Lenoble, and it
is on that account I venture to speak so plainly. I do not want my poor
father to delude you, as he has often deluded himself. If you have
already permitted him to involve you in any speculation, I entreat you
to try to withdraw from it--to lose a little money, if necessary, rather
than to lose all. If you are not yet involved, let my warning save you
from any hazard."

"My dear Miss Paget, I thank you a thousand times for your advice, your
noble thoughtfulness for others. But no, there is no hazard. The
business in which your father is occupied for me is not a speculation. It
involves no risk beyond the expenditure of a few thousand francs, which,
happily, I can afford to lose. I am not at liberty to tell you the nature
of the business in question, because I have promised your father to keep
that a secret. Dear young lady, you need have no fear for me. I am not a
rash speculator. The first years of my life were passed in extreme
poverty--the poverty that is near neighbour to starvation. That is a
lesson one cannot forget. How shall I thank you for your concern for
me?--so generous, so noble!"

"It was only my duty to warn you of my poor father's weakness," replied
Diana. "If I needed thanks, your kindness to him is the only boon I could
ask. He has bitter need of a friend."

"And he shall never lack one while I live, if only for your sake." The
last half of the sentence was spoken in lower tones than the first. Diana
was conscious of the lurking tenderness of those few words, and the
consciousness embarrassed her. Happily they had reached the end of the
quiet street by this time, and had emerged into the busier square. No
more was said till they reached the cab-stand, when Diana wished her
companion good night.

"I am going back to Normandy in a week, Miss Paget; shall I see you again
before I leave England?"

"I really don't know; our meetings are generally accidental, you see."

"O yes, of course, always accidental," replied Gustave, smiling.

"I am sorry you are going to leave London--for papa's sake."

"And I, too, am sorry--for my own sake. But, you see, when one has
daughters, and a farm, and a chateau, one must be on the spot. I came to
England for one week only, and I have stayed six."

"You have found so much to amuse you in London?"

"Nay, mademoiselle, so much to interest me."

"It is almost the same thing, is it not?"

"A thousand times no! To be amused and to be interested--ah, what can be
so widely different as those two conditions of mind!"

"Indeed! Good night, Mr. Lenoble. Please ask the cabman to drive as fast
as he can venture to do with consideration for his horse. I am afraid I
shall be late, and my friends will be anxious about me."

"You will be late. You consider your friends at Bayswater, and you
consider even the cabman's horse. You are charity itself. Will you not
consider me a little also, Miss Paget?"

"But how?"

"Let me see you before I go back to Normandy. Your papa likes to see you
twice a week, I know. This is Monday night; will you come to see him on
Thursday?"

"If he wishes it."

"He does wish it. Ah, how he wishes it! You will come?"

"If Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte can spare me."

"They cannot spare you. No one can spare you. That cannot be. It
is amongst the things that are impossible. But they will have pity
upon--your father, and they will let you come."

"Please ask the cabman to start. Indeed, I shall be late. Good night,
M. Lenoble."

"Good night."

He took her hand in his, and kissed it, with the grace of a Bayard. He
loved her, and took no trouble to conceal his passion. No shadow of doubt
darkened that bright horizon to which M. Lenoble looked with hopeful
eyes. He loved this penniless, motherless girl, as it was in the blood of
the Lenobles to love the poor and the helpless; especially when poverty
and helplessness presented themselves in the guise of youth and beauty.
He loved her, and she would love him. But why not? He was ten years her
senior, but that makes nothing. His auburn hair and beard, in the style
of Henry the Great, could show no streak of grey. His eyes had the
brightness of one-and-twenty; for the eyes of a man whose soul preserves
its youthfulness will keep their clear lustre for half a century. The
tall figure, straight as a dart; the frank handsome face which M. Lenoble
saw in the glass when he made his toilet, were not calculated to
dishearten a hopeful lover; and Gustave, by nature sanguine, enjoyed his
dream of happiness, untroubled by one morbid apprehension.

He loved her, and he would ask her for his wife. She would accept his
offer; her father would rejoice in so fortunate an alliance; her friends
of Bayswater would felicitate a change so desirable. And when he returned
to Normandy he would take her with him, and say to his children, "Behold
your mother!" And then the great rambling mansion of Côtenoir would
assume a home-like aspect. The ponderous old furniture would be replaced
by lightsome appointments of modern fashion; except, of course, in the
grand drawing-room, where there were tapestries said to be from the
designs of Boucher, and chairs and sofas in the true Louis Quinze style,
of immovable bulkiness.

There was but one trifling hitch in the whole scheme of happiness--Diana
was a Protestant. Ah, but what then! A creature so sweet, so noble, could
not long remain the slave of Anglican heresy. A little talk with
Cydalise, a week's "retreat" at the Sacré Coeur, and the thing would be
done. The dear girl would renounce her errors, and enter the bosom of the
Mother Church. Pouff! M. Lenoble blew the little difficulty away from his
finger-tips, and then wafted a kiss from the same finger-tips to his
absent beloved.

"And this noble heart warned me against her own father!" M. Lenoble said
to himself, as he walked towards the hotel at Blackfriars where he had
taken up his abode, quite unconscious that the foot of Blackfriars Bridge
was not the centre of West End London. "How noble, how disinterested!
Poor old man! He is, no doubt, a speculator--something even of an
Adventurer. What then? He shall have an apartment at Côtenoir, his place
at the family table, his _fauteuil_ by the hearth; and there he can do no
harm."

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a strange sentiment in Diana's mind after this evening's
conversation with Gustave Lenoble. To feel herself beloved, to know that
there was some one creature in the wide crowded world interested in, nay,
even attached to her, was a mystery, a surprise, and in some sort a
source of pleasure to her. That Gustave Lenoble could ever be any nearer
to her than he was at the present time did not occur to her as being
within the limits of possibility. She had thrust Valentine from her
heart, but the empty chamber could receive no new tenant. It was not
swept and garnished; nay, indeed, it was sadly littered with the shreds
and patches left by the late occupant. But, while this was so, to know
that she could be loved was in some manner sweet to her.

"Ah, now I know that the poet is right," she said to herself. "There is
no creature so desolate but some heart responds unto its own. And I have
found the generous responsive heart that can pity and love me because
I seem so sorely to need love and pity. All my life--my blank, empty
life--I will remember and be grateful to him, the first good man who ever
called my father friend; the first of all mankind who thought this poor
hand worthy to be lifted to his lips."



CHAPTER IV.


SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH.

Having pledged herself to visit Omega Street on Thursday, Diana
considered herself bound to perform that promise. She felt, however, that
there was some touch of absurdity in the position, for to keep a promise
so made was in a manner to keep an appointment with M. Lenoble.

"I dare say he has a habit of falling in love with every young woman he
meets," she thought, when she considered his conduct from a more prosaic
standpoint than the grateful enthusiasm his generous sympathy had at
first awakened in her mind. "I have heard that it is a Frenchman's
faculty to consider himself irresistible, and to avow his adoration for a
new divinity every week. And I was so foolish as to fancy there was a
depth of feeling in his tone and manner! I am sure he is all that is good
and generous; but the falling in love is no doubt a national failing."

She remembered the impertinent advances of divers unknown foreigners whom
she had encountered on pier or _digue_, kursaal or beach, in the
frequently unprotected hours of her continental wanderings.

She had not seen the best side of the foreign mind in her character of
unattended and doubtfully attired English demoiselle. She knew that
Gustave Lenoble was of a very different stamp from those specimens of the
genus tiger whose impertinent admiration had often wounded and distressed
her; but she was inclined to attribute the fault of shallowness to a
nature so frank and buoyant as that of her father's friend.

She walked from Bayswater to Chelsea on the appointed Thursday, for the
cost of frequent journeys in cabs was more than her purse could supply.
The walk across the Park was pleasant even in the bleak March weather,
and she entered the little parlour in Omega Street with the bloom of
damask roses upon her cheeks.

"How do you do, papa dear?" she began, as she came into the dusky room;
but the figure sitting in her father's accustomed place was not that of
her father. It was M. Lenoble, who rose to welcome her.

"Is papa worse?" she asked, surprised by the Captain's absence.

"On the contrary, he is better, and has gone out in a hired carriage for
a breath of fresh air. I persuaded him to go. He will be back very
shortly."

"I wrote to tell him I should be here to-day, but I am very glad he has
gone out, for I am sure the air will do him good. Was he well wrapped up,
do you know, M. Lenoble?"

"Enveloped in railway-rugs and shawls to his very nose. I arranged all
that with my own hands. He looked like an ambassador from all the
Russias."

"How kind of you to think of such things!" said Diana gratefully.

"And tell me why should I not think of such things? Do you imagine that
it is not a pleasure to me to wait upon your father--for your sake?"

There was some amount of awkwardness in this kind of thing. Diana busied
herself with the removal of her hat and jacket, which she laid neatly
upon a stony-hearted horsehair sofa. After doing this she placed herself
near the window, whence she contemplated the dusky street, appearing much
interested in the movements of the lamp lighter.

"What an admirable way they have of lighting the lamps now," she
remarked, with the conversational brilliance which usually marks this
kind of situation; "how much more convenient it must be than the old
method with the ladder, you know!"

"Yes, I have no doubt," said Gustave, bringing himself to her side with a
couple of steps, and planting himself deliberately in a chair next to
hers; "but don't you think, as I start for Normandy to-morrow, we might
talk of something more interesting than the lamplighter, Miss Paget?"

"I am ready to talk of anything you like," replied Miss Paget, with that
charming assumption of unconsciousness which every woman can command on
these occasions.

"You are very good. Do you know that when I persuaded your father to go
out for an airing, I was prompted by a motive so selfish as to render the
proceeding quite diabolical? Don't be alarmed! The doctor gave his
permission for the airing, or I should not have attempted such a thing.
Hypocrisy I am capable of, but not assassination. You cannot imagine the
diplomacy which I exhibited; and all to what end? Can you imagine that?"

"No, indeed."

"That I might secure one half-hour's uninterrupted talk with you; and,
unhappily, you are so late that I expect your father's return every
minute. He was to be back again before dusk, and the appearance of the
lamplighter demonstrates that the dusk has come. I have so much to say,
and so little time to say it; so much, Diane--"

She started as he called her thus, as if in that moment of surprise she
would have risen from her chair by his side. She knew what was coming,
and having expected nothing so desperate, knew not how to arrest the
confession that she would fain have avoided hearing. M. Lenoble laid his
hand firmly on hers.

"So much, Diane; and yet so little, that all can be told in three words.
I love you."

"M. Lenoble!"

"Ah, you are surprised, you wonder, you look at me with eyes of sweet
amazement! Dear angel, do you think it is possible to see you and not to
love you? To see you once is to respect, to admire, to bow the knee
before beauty and goodness; but to see you many times, as I have done,
the patient consoler of an invalid and somewhat difficult father--ah, my
sweet love, who is there so hard amongst mankind that he should escape
from loving you, seeing all that?"

The question had a significance that the speaker knew not. Who amongst
mankind? Why, was there not one man for whom she would have been content
to be the veriest slave that ever abnegated every personal delight for
the love of a hard master? And he had passed her by, indifferent,
unseeing. She had worshipped him on her knees, as it seemed to her; and
he had left her kneeling in the dust, while he went on to offer himself,
heart and soul, at another shrine.

She could not forget these things. The memory and the bitterness of them
came back with renewed poignancy at this moment, when the voice of a
stranger told her she was beloved.

"My dear one, will you not answer me?" pleaded Gustave, in nowise alarmed
by Diana's silence, which seemed to him only the natural expression of a
maidenly emotion. "Tell me that you will give me measure for measure;
that you will love me as my mother loved my father--with a love that
trouble and poverty could never lessen; with a love that was strongest
when fate was darkest--a star which the dreary night of sorrow could not
obscure. I am ten years older than you by my baptismal register, Diane;
but my heart is young. I never knew what love was until I knew you. And
yet those who know me best will tell you that I was no unkind husband,
and that my poor wife and I lived happily. I shall never know love again,
except for you. The hour comes, I suppose, in every man's life; and the
angel of his life comes in that appointed hour. Mine came when I saw you.
I have spoken to your father, and have his warm approval. He was all
encouragement, and hinted that I might be assured of your love. Had he
sufficient justification for that half-promise, Diane?"

"He had none," Miss Paget answered gravely, "none except his own wishes.
You have made me hear more than I wished to hear, M. Lenoble, for the
treasure you offer me is one that I cannot accept. With all my heart I
thank you for the love you tell me of. Even if it is, as I can but think
it, a passing fancy, I thank you, nevertheless. It is sweet to win the
love of a good man. I pray you to believe that with all my heart and mind
I honour your generous nature, your noble sympathy with the weak and
friendless. If you can give me your friendship, you shall find how I can
value a good man's regard, but I cannot accept your love."

"Why not?" asked Gustave, aghast.

"Because I cannot give you measure for measure, and I will not give you
less."

"But in time, Diane, in time?"

"Time cannot show me your character in a nobler light than that in which
I see it now. You do not lack the power to win a woman's heart, but I
have no heart to give. If you will be my friend, time will increase my
affection for you--but time cannot restore the dead."

"Which means that your heart is dead, Diane?"

"Yes," she answered, with unutterable sadness.

"You love some one younger, happier than I?"

"No, M. Lenoble, no one."

"But you have loved? Yes!--a scoundrel, perhaps; a villain, who--"

A spasm of pain contracted his face as he looked at the girl's drooping
head; her face, in that dim light, he could not see.

"Tell me this, Diane," he said presently, in an altered voice; "there is
no barrier between us--no irrevocable obstacle that must part us for
ever? There is no one who can claim you by any right--" He paused; and
then added, in a lower voice, "by any wrong?"

"No one," answered Miss Paget, lifting her head, and looking her lover
full in the face. Even in that uncertain light he could see the proud
steady gaze that seemed the fittest answer of all doubts.

"Thank God!" he whispered. "Ah, how could I fear, even for one moment,
that you could be anything but what you seem--the purest among the pure?
Why, then, do you reject me? You do not love me, but you ask my
friendship; you offer me your friendship, even your affection. Ah,
believe me, if those are but real, time will ripen them into love. Your
heart is dead. Ah, why should that young heart be dead? It is not dead,
Diane; it needs but the fire of true love to warm it into life again. Why
should you reject me, since you tell me that you love me; unless you love
another? What should divide us?"

"Shadows and memories," Diana replied mournfully,--"vague and foolish;
wicked, perhaps; but they come between you and me, M. Lenoble. And since
I cannot give you a whole heart, I will give you nothing."

"You have loved some one, some one who did not value your love? Tell me
the truth, Diane; you owe me at least as much as that."

"I do owe you the truth. Yes; I have been very foolish. For two or three
years of my life there was a person who was our daily companion. He
travelled with us--with my father and me; and we saw many changes and
troubles together. For a long time he was like my brother; and I doubt if
many brothers are as kind to their sisters as he was to me. In his heart
that feeling never changed. He was always equally kind, equally careless.
Once I deluded myself with the fancy that in his looks and tones, and
even in his words, there was some deeper feeling than this careless
brotherly kindness; but it was no more than a delusion. My eyes were
opened rudely enough. I saw his heart bestowed elsewhere. Do not think
that I am so weak, or so wicked, as to abandon myself to despair because
I have been awakened from my foolish dream. I can look the realities of
life in the face, M. Lenoble; and I have taught myself to wish all good
things for the dear girl who has won the heart that I once thought was
mine. The person I am speaking of can boast no superior graces of mind or
person. He is only a very commonplace young man, with a certain amount of
talent, a disposition inclined to good rather than to evil. But he was
the companion of my girlhood; and in losing him it seems to me as if I
had lost a part of my youth itself."

To Diana's mind this seemed the end of the discussion. She expected M.
Lenoble to bow his head to the inevitable, to utter a friendly farewell,
and depart for his Norman home, convinced, if not satisfied. But the
light-hearted, easy-tempered Gustave was not a lover of the despairing
order, nor an easily answered suppliant.

"And that is all!" he exclaimed, in the cheeriest tone. "A companion of
your girlhood, for whom you had a girl's romantic fancy! And the memory
of this unspeakable idiot--great Heaven! but how idiotic must this wretch
have been, to be loved by you, and not even to know it!--the memory of
this last of the last is to come between you and me, and divide us for
ever? The phantom of this miserable, who could be loved by an angel
without knowing it, is to lift its phantasmal hand and thrust me
aside--me, Gustave Lenoble, a man, and not an idiot? Ah, thus we blow him
to the uttermost end of the world!" cried M. Lenoble, blowing an
imaginary rival from the tips of his fingers. "Thus we dismiss him to the
Arctic regions, the torrid zone--to the Caucasus, where await vultures to
gnaw his liver--wherever earth is most remote and uncomfortable--he and
the bread-and-butter miss whom he prefers to my Diane!"

This manner of taking things was quite unexpected by Diana. It was much
more pleasant than gloomy despair or sullen resentment; but it was, at
the same time, much more difficult to deal with.

"He is gone!" cried Gustave presently; "he is on the topmost heights of
Caucasus, and the vultures are sharpening their beaks! And now, tell me,
Diane--you will be my wife, will you not? You will be a mother to my
children? You will transform the old chateau of Côtenoir into a pleasant
home? You will cease to live amongst strangers? You will come to those
who will love and cherish you as their own, their dearest and best and
brightest? You will give your poor old father a corner by your fireside?
He is old and needs a home for his last years. For his sake, Diane, for
mine, for my children, let your answer be yes! Ah, not so fast!" he
cried, as she was about to speak. "Why are you so quick to pronounce your
fatal judgment? Think how much depends on your reply--your father's
happiness, my children's, mine!"

"It is of yours only I must think," Miss Paget answered earnestly. "You
fancy it is so easy for me to say no. Believe me, it would be much easier
to say yes. When you speak of my father's declining years, I, who know
his weary life so well, would be hard of heart indeed if I were not
tempted by the haven you offer. Every word that you say gives me some new
proof of your goodness, your generosity. But I will not wrong you because
you are generous. I shall always be your grateful friend, but you must
seek elsewhere for a wife, M. Lenoble. You will have little difficulty in
finding one worthier than I."

"I will seek nowhere else for a wife; I will have no wife but you. I have
had a wife of other people's choosing; I will choose one for myself this
time. Let us be friends, Diane, since your decision is as irrevocable as
the laws of Draco. You are stone, you are adamant; but no matter, we can
be friends. Your father will be disappointed. But what then? He is no
doubt accustomed to disappointments. My daughters--for them it is a
profound affliction to be motherless, but they must support it. Côtenoir
must go to wreck and ruin a little longer--a few more rats behind the
panelling, a few more moths in the tapestry, that is all. My children
say, 'Papa, our home is not comfortable; all is upside-down;' and I
reply. 'But what will you, my children? A home without a wife is always
upside down.' And then I take them between my arms, in weeping. It is a
poignant picture to rend the heart. But what does it matter, Miss Paget?
What is that verse of your grand Will?--

Blow, blow, thou wintry wind;
And let go weep the stricken land,
While harts ungalled go play.

Perhaps I have mixed him up somehow; but the meaning is clear."

A hollow-sounding and somewhat awful cough heralded the approach of
Captain Paget, who entered the room at this juncture. If the Captain had
prolonged his first airing, after six weeks' confinement to the house,
until this late period of the afternoon, he would have committed an
imprudence which might have cost him dearly. Happily, he had done nothing
of the kind, but had re-entered the house unobserved, while Diana and
Gustave were conversing close to the window, having preferred to leave
his fly at the end of the street, rather than to incur the hazard of
interrupting a critical tête-à-tête. The interval that had elapsed since
his return had been spent by the Captain in his own bedchamber, and in
the immediate neighbourhood of the folding-doors between that apartment
and the parlour. What he had heard had been by no means satisfactory to
him; and if a look could annihilate, Miss Paget might have perished
beneath the Parthian glance which her father shot at her as he came
towards the window, with a stereotyped smile upon his lips and
unspeakable anger in his heart.

He had heard just enough of the conversation to know that Gustave had
been rejected--Gustave, with Côtenoir and a handsome independence in the
present, and the late John Haygarth's fortune in the future. Rejected by
a penniless young woman, who at any moment might find herself without a
roof to shelter her from the winds of heaven! Was ever folly, madness,
wickedness supreme as this?

Horatio trembled with rage as he took his daughter's hand. She had the
insolence to extend her hand for the customary salutation. The Captain's
greeting was a grip that made her wince.

"Good-night, Miss Paget," said Gustave gravely, but with by no means the
despondent tone of a hopeless lover; "I--well, I shall see you again,
perhaps, before I go to Normandy. I doubt if I shall go to-morrow. I
have my own reasons for staying--unreasonable reasons, perhaps, but I
shall stay."

All this was said in a tone too low to reach Captain Paget's ear.

"Are you going to leave us, Lenoble?" he asked in a quavering voice. "You
will not stop and let Di give you a cup of tea as usual?"

"Not to-night, Captain. Good-bye."

He wrung the old man's hand and departed. Captain Paget dropped heavily
into a chair, and for some minutes there was silence. Diana was the
first to speak.

"I am glad your doctor considered you well enough to go out for a drive,
papa," she said.

"Indeed, my dear," answered her father with a groan; "I hope my next
drive may be in a different kind of vehicle--the last journey I shall
ever take, until they cart away my bones for manure. I believe they do
make manure from the bones of paupers in our utilitarian age."

"Papa, how can you talk so horribly! You are better, are you not? M.
Lenoble said you were better."

"Yes, I am better, God help me!" answered the old man, too weak alike in
mind and body to hide the passion that possessed, him. "That is one of
the contradictions of the long farce we call life. If I had been a rich
man, with a circle of anxious relations and all the noted men of Savile
Row dancing attendance round my bed, I dare say I should have died; but
as I happen to be a penniless castaway, with only a lodging-house drudge
and a half-starved apothecary to take care of me, and with nothing before
me but a workhouse, I live. It is all very well for a man to take things
easily when he is ill and helpless, too weak even to think. _That_ is not
the trying time. The real trial arrives when a little strength comes back
to him, and his landlady begins to worry him for her rent, and the
lodging-house drudge gets tired of pitying him, and the apothecary sends
in his bill, and the wretched high-road lies bare and broad before him,
and he hears the old order to move on. The moving-on time has come for
me, Di; and the Lord alone knows how little I know where I am to go."

"Papa, you are not friendless; even I can give you a little help."

"Yes," answered the Captain with a bitter laugh; "a sovereign once a
quarter--the scrapings of your pittance! That help won't save me from
the workhouse."

"There is M. Lenoble."

"Yes, there is M. Lenoble; the man who would have given me a home for my
old age: he told me so to-day--a home fit for a gentleman--for the
position he now occupies is nothing compared to that which he may occupy
a year hence. He would have received me as his father-in-law, without
thought or question of my antecedents; and if I have not lived like a
gentleman, I might have died like one. This is what he would have done
for me. But do you think I can ask anything of him now, after you have
refused him? I know of your refusal to be that man's wife. I heard--I saw
it in his face. You--a beggar, a friendless wretch, dependent on the
patronage of a stockbroker's silly wife--_you_ must needs give yourself
grand airs, and refuse such a man as that! Do you think such men go
begging among young ladies like you, or that they run about the streets,
like the roast pigs in the story, begad, with knives and forks in their
backs, asking to be eaten?"

The Captain was walking up and down the room in a fever of rage. Diana
looked at him with sad wondering eyes. Yes, it was the old selfish
nature. The leopard cannot change his spots; and the Horatio Paget of the
present was the Horatio Paget of the past.

"Pray don't be angry with me, papa," said Diana sorrowfully; "I believe
that I have done my duty."

"Done your fiddlesticks!" cried the Captain, too angry to be careful of
his diction. "Your duty to whom? Did you happen to remember, miss, that
you owe some duty to me, your father, but for whom you wouldn't be
standing there talking of duty like a tragedy queen? By Jove! I suppose
you are too grand a person to consider my trouble in this matter; the
pains I took to get Lenoble over to England; the way I made the most of
my gout even, in order to have you about me; the way I finessed and
diplomatized to bring this affair to a successful issue. And now, when I
have succeeded beyond my hopes, you spoil everything, and then dare to
stand before me and preach about duty. What do you want in a husband, I
should like to know? A rich man? Lenoble is that. A handsome man? Lenoble
is that. A gentleman, with good blood in his veins? Lenoble comes of as
pure a race as any man in that part of France. A good man? Lenoble is one
of the best fellows upon this earth. What is it, then, that you want?"

"I want to give my heart to the man who gives me his."

"And what, in the name of all that's preposterous, is to prevent you
giving Gustave Lenoble your heart?"

"I cannot tell you."

"No, nor any one else. But let us have no more of this nonsense. If you
call yourself a daughter of mine, you will marry Gustave Lenoble. If
not--"

The Captain found himself brought to a sudden stop in his unconscious
paraphrase of Signor Capulet's menace to his recalcitrant daughter,
Juliet. With what threat could the noble Horatio terrify his daughter to
obedience? Before you talk of turning your rebellious child out of doors,
you must provide a home from which to cast her. Captain Paget remembered
this, and was for the moment reduced to sudden and ignominious silence.
And yet there must surely be some way of bringing this besotted young
woman to reason.

He sat for some minutes in silence, with his head leaning on his hand,
his face hidden from Diana. This silence, this attitude, so expressive of
utter despondency, touched her more keenly than his anger. She knew that
he was mean and selfish, that it was of his own loss he thought; and yet
she pitied him. He was old and helpless and miserable; so much the more
pitiable because of his selfishness and meanness. For the heroic soul
there is always some comfort; but for the grovelling nature suffering
knows no counterbalance. The ills that flesh is heir to seem utterly
bitter when there is no grand spirit to dominate the flesh, and soar
triumphant above the regions of earthly pain. Captain Paget's mind, to
him, was not a kingdom. He could not look declining years of poverty in
the face; he was tired of work. The schemes and trickeries of his life
were becoming very odious to him; they were for the most part worn out,
and had ceased to pay. Of course he had great hopes, in any event, from
Gustave Lenoble; but those hopes were dependent on Gustave's inheritance
of John Haygarth's estate. He wanted something more tangible than
this--he wanted immediate security; and his daughter's marriage with
Gustave would have given him that security, and still grander hopes for
the future. He had fancied himself reigning over the vassals of Côtenoir,
a far more important personage than the real master of that château. He
had pictured to himself a _pied-à-terre_ in Paris which it might be
agreeable for him to secure, for existence in Normandy might occasionally
prove _canuyeux_. These things were what he meant when he talked of a
haven for his declining years; and against the daughter who, for some
caprice of her own, could hinder his possession of these things, he had
no feeling but anger.

Diana compassionated this weak old man, to whose lips the cup of
prosperity had seemed so near, from whose lips her hand had thrust it.
He had been promised a home, comfort, respectability, friendship--"all
that should accompany old age"--and she had prevented the fulfilment of
the promise. Heaven knows how pure her motives had been; but as she
watched that drooping head, with its silvered hair, she felt that she
had been cruel.

"Papa," she began presently, laying her hand caressingly upon her
father's neck; but he pushed aside the timid, caressing hand--"papa, you
think me very unkind, only because I have done what I believe to be
right; indeed it is so, papa dear. In what I said to Gustave Lenoble this
evening, I was governed only by my sense of right."

"Indeed!" cried the Captain, with a strident laugh; "and where did you
pick up your sense of right, madam, I should like to know? From what
Methodist parson's hypocritical twaddle have you learnt to lay down the
law to your poor old father about the sense of right? 'Honour your father
and your mother, that your days may be long in the land,' miss, _that's_
what your Bible teaches you; but the Bible has gone out of fashion, I
dare say, since I was a young man; and your model young woman of the
present generation taunts her father with her sense of right. Will your
sense of right be satisfied when you hear of your father rotting in the
old-men's ward of a workhouse, or dying on the London stones?"

"I am not unfeeling, papa. With all my heart I pity you; but it is cruel
on your part to exaggerate the misery of your position, as I am sure you
must be doing. Why should your means of living fail because I refuse to
marry M. Lenoble? You have lived hitherto without my help, as I have
lived of late without yours. Nothing could give me greater happiness than
to know that you were exempt from care; and if my toil can procure you a
peaceful home in the future--as I believe it can, or education and will
to work must go for nothing--there shall be no lack of industry on my
part. I will work for you, I will indeed, papa--willingly, happily."

"When your work can give me such a home as Côtenoir--a home that one word
of yours would secure for me--I will thank you."

"If you will only wait, papa, if you will only have patience--"

"Patience! Wait! Do you know what you are talking about? Do you prate of
patience, and waiting, and hope in the future to a man who has no
future--to a man whose days are numbered, and who feels the creeping
chills of death stealing over him every day as he sits beside his
wretched hearth, or labours through his daily drudgery? I can live as I
have always lived! Yes; but do you know, or care to know, that with every
day life becomes more difficult for me? Your fine friends at Bayswater
have done with me. I have spent the last sixpence I shall ever see from
Philip Sheldon. Hawkehurst has cut me, like the ungrateful hound he is.
When they have squeezed the orange, they throw away the rind. Didn't
Voltaire say that, when Frederick of Prussia gave him the go-by? Heaven
knows it's true enough; and now you, who by a word might secure yourself
a splendid position--yes, I say splendid for a poor drudge and dependent
like you, and insure a home for me--you, forsooth, must needs favour me
with your high-flown sentiments about your sense of right, and promise me
a home in the future, if I will wait and hope! No, Diana, waiting and
hoping are done with for me, and I can find a home in the bed of the
river without your help."

"You would not be so wicked as to do that!" cried Diana, aghast.

"I don't know about the wickedness of the act. But, rely upon it, when my
choice lies between the workhouse and the river, I shall prefer the
river. The modern workhouse is no inviting sanctuary, and I dare say many
a homeless wretch makes the same choice."

For some minutes there was silence. Diana stood with her elbows resting
on the chimneypiece, her face covered with her hands.

"O Lord, teach me to do the thing which is right!" she prayed, and in the
next breath acted on the impulse of the moment.

"What would you have me do?" she asked.

"What any one but an idiot would do of her own accord--accept the good
fortune that has dropped into your lap. Do you think such luck as yours
goes begging every day?"

"You would have me accept Gustave Lenoble's offer, no matter what
falsehoods may be involved in my acceptance of it?"

"I can see no reason for falsehood. Any one but an idiot would honour
such a man; any one but an idiot would thank Providence for such good
fortune."

"Very well, papa," exclaimed Diana, with a laugh that had no mirthful
music, "I will not be the exceptional idiot. If M. Lenoble does me the
honour to repeat his offer--and I think from his manner he means to do
so--I will accept it."

"He shall repeat it!" cried the Captain, throwing off his assumption of
the tragic father. The Oedipus Coloneus, the Lear--the venerable victim
of winter winds and men's ingratitude--was transformed in a moment into
an elderly Jeremy Diddler, lined with Lord Foppington. "He shall repeat
it; I will have him at your feet to-morrow. Yes, Di, my love, I pledge
myself to bring that about, without compromise to your maidenly pride or
the dignity of a Paget. My dear child, I ought to have known that
reflection would show you where your duty lies. I fear I have been
somewhat harsh, but you must forgive me, Di; I have set my heart on this
match, for your happiness as well as my own. I could not stand the
disappointment; though I admired, and still admire, the high feeling,
and all that kind of thing, which prompted your refusal. A school-girlish
sentimentality, child, but with something noble in it; not the
sentimentality of a vulgar schoolgirl. The blue blood will show itself,
my love; and now--no, no, don't cry. You will live to thank me for
to-night's work; yes, my child, to thank me, when you look round your
comfortable home by-and-by--when my poor old bones are mouldering in
their unpretending sepulchre--and say to yourself, 'I have my father to
thank for this. Adverse circumstances forbade his doing his duty as
happier fathers are allowed the privilege of doing theirs, but it was his
forethought, his ever-watchful care, which secured me an admirable
husband and a happy home.' Mark my words, the time will come when you
will say this, my dear."

"I will try to think of you always kindly, papa," Miss Paget answered in
a low sad voice; "and if my marriage can secure your happiness and
Gustave Lenoble's, I am content. I only fear to take too much, and give
too little."

"My love, you must certainly be the lineal descendant of Don Quixote. Too
much, and too little, forsooth! Let Lenoble find a handsomer woman, or a
more elegant woman, by gad, elsewhere! Such a woman as a duke might be
proud to make his duchess, by Jove! There shall be no sense of obligation
on our side, my love. Gustave Lenoble shall be made to feel that he gets
change for his shilling. Kiss me, child, and tell me you forgive me for
being a little rough with you, just now."

"Forgive you?--yes, papa. I dare say you are wiser than I. Why should I
refuse M. Lenoble? He is good and kind, and will give us a happy home?
What more can I want? Do I want to be like Charlotte, to whom life seems
all poetry and brightness?"

"And who is going to throw herself away upon a penny-a-liner, by Jove!"
interjected the Captain.

"Can I hope to be like that girl, with her happy ignorance of life, her
boundless love and trust! O, no, no, papa; those things are not for me."

She laid her head upon her father's breast, and sobbed like a child. This
was her second farewell to the man she had loved, the dreams she had
dreamed. The Captain comforted her with a paternal embrace, but was as
powerless to comprehend her emotion as if he had found himself suddenly
called upon to console the sorrows of a Japanese widow.

"Hysterical," he murmured. "These noble natures are subject to that kind
of thing. And now, my love," he continued, in a more business-like tone,
"let us talk seriously. I think it would be very advisable for you to
leave Bayswater, and take up your abode in these humble lodgings with me
immediately."

"Why, papa?"

"The reason is sufficiently obvious, my love. It is not right that you
should continue to eat the bread of dependence. As the future wife of
Gustave Lenoble--and in this case, the word future means immediately--"

"Papa," cried Diana suddenly, "you will not hurry me into this marriage?
I have consented for your sake. You will not be so ungenerous as to--"

"As to hurry you? No, my dear, of course not. There shall be no indecent
haste. Your wishes, your delicate and disinterested motives, shall be
consulted before all things; yes, my love," cried the Captain, sorely
afraid of some wavering on the part of his daughter, and painfully
anxious to conciliate her, "all shall be in accordance with your wishes.
But I must urge your immediate removal from Bayswater; first, because M.
Lenoble will naturally wish to see you oftener than he can while you are
residing with people whose acquaintance I do not want him to make; and
secondly, because you have no further need of Mrs. Sheldon's patronage."

"It has been kindness, affection, papa--never patronage. I could not
leave Mrs. Sheldon or Charlotte abruptly or ungraciously, upon any
consideration. They gave me a home when I most bitterly needed one.
They took me away from the dull round of schoolroom drudgery, that was
fast changing me into a hard hopeless joyless automaton. My first duty
is to them."

The Captain's angry sniff alone expressed the indignation which this
impious remark inspired.

"My next shall be to you and M. Lenoble. Let me give Mrs. Sheldon due
notice of the change in our plans."

"What do you call due notice?" asked Horatio, peevishly.

"A quarter's notice."

"O, indeed! Then for three months you are to dance attendance upon Mrs.
Sheldon, while M. Lenoble is waiting to make you his wife."

"I must consult the wishes of my friends, papa."

"Very well, my dear," replied the Captain, with a sigh that was next of
kin to a groan; "you must please yourself and your friends, I suppose;
your poor old father is a secondary consideration." And then, timeously
mindful of the skirmish he had just had with his daughter, Captain Paget
made haste to assure her of his regard and submission.

"All shall be as you please, my love," he murmured. "There, go into my
room, and smooth your hair, and bathe your eyes, while I ring for the
tea."

Diana obeyed. She found eau-de-cologne and the most delicate of Turkey
sponges on her father's wash-handstand; jockey-club, and ivory-backed
brushes, somewhat yellow with age, but bearing crest and monogram, on his
dressing-table. The workhouse did not seem quite so near at hand as the
Captain had implied; but with these sanguine people it is but a step from
disappointment to despair.

"What am I to tell Mrs. Sheldon, papa?" she asked, when she was pouring
out her father's tea.

"Well, I think you had better say nothing, except that my circumstances
have somewhat improved, and that my failing health requires your care."

"I hate secrets, papa."

"So do I, my dear; but half-confidences are more disagreeable than
secrets."

Diana submitted. She secretly reserved to herself the right to tell
Charlotte anything she pleased. From that dear adopted sister she would
hide nothing.

"If M. Lenoble should repeat his offer, and I should accept it, I will
tell her all," she thought. "It will make that dear girl happy to know
that there is some one who loves me, besides herself."

And then she thought of the strange difference of fate that gave to
this Charlotte Halliday, with her rich stepfather and comfortable
surroundings, a penniless soldier of fortune for a lover, while to her,
the spendthrift adventurer's daughter, came a wealthy suitor.

"Will hers be the dinner of herbs, and mine the stalled ox?" she thought.
"Ah, Heaven forbid! Why is it so difficult to love wisely, so easy to
love too well?"

She remembered the cynical French proverb, "When we can not have what
we love, we must love what we have." But the cynical proverb brought her
no comfort.

She went back to Bayswater with a strange bewildered feeling; after
having promised her father to go to Omega Street whenever he sent for
her. There was no actual pain in her mind, no passionate desire to recall
her promise, no dread horror of the step to which she had pledged
herself. The feeling that oppressed her was the sense that such a step
should have been the spontaneous election of her grateful heart, proud of
a good man's preference, instead of a weak submission to a father's
helplessness.




Book the Fifth.



THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA.



CHAPTER I.


TAKEN BY STORM.

Two days after her interview with Gustave Lenoble, Miss Paget received a
brief note from her father, summoning her again to Omega Street.

"He has not gone back to Normandy," wrote the Captain.

"My child, he positively worships the ground you walk upon. Ah, my love,
_it is something to have a father_! I need scarcely tell you that his
first idea of your excellence was inspired by those glowing descriptions
of your goodness, your beauty, your heroism, which I favoured him with,
_en passant_, during our conversations at Côtenoir, where the happy
accident of a business transaction first introduced me to him. The
interests of my only child have ever been near and dear to me; and where
a duller man would have perceived only a wealthy stranger, my paternal
instincts recognized at a glance the predestined husband of my daughter.
It needed my wide experience of life--and, as I venture to believe, my
subtle knowledge of the human heart--to understand that a man who had
lived for five-and-thirty years buried alive in a French province--a
charming place, my love, and for your refined taste replete with
interest--never seeing a mortal except his immediate neighbours, would be
the man of men to fall in love with the first attractive young woman he
met among strangers. Come to me this afternoon without fail, and come
early.--Yours,

"H.N.C.P."

Diana obeyed this summons submissively, but still troubled by that
strange sense of bewilderment which had affected her since her stormy
interview with Captain Paget. She was not quite certain of herself. The
old dreams--the sweet foolish girlish fancies--were not yet put away
altogether from her mind; but she knew that they were foolish, and she
was half-inclined to believe that there had been some wisdom in her
father's scorn.

"What do I want more?" she asked herself. "He is good and brave and true,
and he loves me. If I were a princess, my marriage would be negotiated
for me by other people, and I should have reason to consider myself very
happy if the man whom the state selected for my husband should prove as
good a man as Gustave Lenoble. And he loves me; me, who have never before
had power over a man's heart!"

She walked across Hyde Park on this occasion, as on the last; and her
thoughts, though always confused--mere rags and scraps of thought--were
not all unpleasant. There was a smile, half shy, half tender, on her face
as she went into the little sitting-room where Gustave was waiting for
her. She had seen his hat and overcoat in the passage, and knew that he
was there waiting for her. To this poor desolate soul there was something
sweet in the idea of being waited for.

As she stood but a little within the doorway, blushing, almost trembling
with the sense of her changed position, her lover came across the room
and took her in his arms. The strong brave arms held her to his breast;
and in that one embrace he took her to his heart, and made her his own
for ever.

In every story of life-long affection, there is one moment in which the
bond is sealed. Diana looked up at the frank tender face, and felt that
she had found her conqueror. Master, friend, protector, husband, adoring
and devoted lover, gallant and fearless champion--he was all; and she
divined his power and his worth as she glanced shyly upward, ashamed to
be so lightly won.

"M. Lenoble," she faltered, trying to withdraw herself from the strong
encircling arm that held her, as if by right.

"Gustave, now and for ever, my Diane! There shall be no more Monsieur
Lenoble. And in a few weeks it shall be 'my husband.' Your father has
given me to you. He tells me to laugh at your refusals your scruples; to
assail you like your Shakespeare's Petruchio assails his Katherine--with
audacious insolence that will not be denied. And I shall take his advice.
Look up into my face, dear angel, and defy me to take his advice."

Happily the dear angel looked only downwards. But M Lenoble was resolved
to have an agreeable response.

"See, then, thou canst not defy me!" he cried, in the only language he
spoke; and the "_tu_" for the first time sounded very tender, very sweet.
"Thou canst not tell me thou art angry with me. And the other--the
imbecile;--he is gone for ever, is he not? Ah, say yes!"

"Yes, he is gone," said Diana, almost in a whisper.

"Is he quite gone? The door of thine heart locked against him, his
luggage thrown out of the window?"

"He is gone!" she murmured softly. "He could not hold his place against
you--you are so strong--so brave; and he was only a shadow. Yes, he is
gone."

She said this with a little sigh of relief. It was in all sincerity that
she answered her suitor's question. She felt that a crisis had come in
her life--the first page of a new volume; and the old sad tear-blotted
book might be cast away.

"Dear angel, wilt thou ever learn to love me?" asked Gustave, in a
half-whisper, bending down his bearded face till his lips almost touched
her cheek.

"It is impossible not to love you," she answered softly. And indeed it
seemed to her as if this chivalrous Gaul was a creature to command the
love of women, the fear of men; an Achilles _en frac_; a Bayard without
his coat of mail; Don Quixote in his youth, generous, brave,
compassionate, tender, and with a brain not as yet distempered by the
reading of silly romances.

Captain Paget emerged from his den as the little love scene ended. He
affected a gentlemanly unconsciousness of the poetry involved in the
situation, was pleasantly anxious about the tea-tray, the candles, and
minor details of life; and thus afforded the lovers ample time in which
to recover their composure. The Frenchman was in no wise discomposed; he
was only abnormally gay, with a little air of triumph that was not
unpleasing. Diana was pale; but there was an unwonted light in her eyes,
and she had by no means the appearance of a victim newly offered on the
sacrificial altar of filial duty. In sober truth, Miss Paget was happier
to-night than she had been for a long time. At three-and-twenty she was
girl enough to rejoice in the knowledge that she was truly loved, and
woman enough to value the sense of peace involved in the security of a
prosperous future.

If she was grateful to her lover--and the affection he had inspired in
her heart had grown out of gratitude--it was no mercenary consideration
as to his income or position that made her grateful. She thanked him for
his love--that treasure which she had never expected to possess; she
thanked him because he had taken her by the hand, and led her out of the
ranks of lonely dependent womanhood, and seated her upon a throne, on the
steps whereof he was content to kneel. Whether the throne were a rushen
chair in some rustic cottage, or a gilded _fauteuil_ in a palace, she
cared very little. It was the subject's devotion that was new and sweet
to her.

She went to Charlotte's room that night, when Mr. Sheldon's small
household was at rest; as she had gone on Christmas Eve to renounce her
lover and to bless her rival. This time it was a new confession she went
to make, and a confession that involved some shame. There is nothing so
hard to confess as inconstancy; and every woman is not so philosophic as
Rahel Varnhagen, who declared that to be constant was not always to love
the same person, but always to love some one.

Miss Paget seated herself at Charlotte's feet, as she had done on that
previous occasion. The weather was still cold enough to make a fire very
pleasant, though it was more than two months since the Christmas bells
had rung out upon the frosty air. Diana sat on a low hassock, playing
with the tassels of her friend's dressing-gown, anxious to make her
confession, and solely at a loss for words in which to shape so
humiliating an avowal.

"Charlotte," she began abruptly at last, "have you any idea when you and
Valentine are to be married?"

Miss Halliday gave a little cry of surprise.

"Why, of course not, Di! How can you ask such a question? Our marriage
is what uncle George calls a remote contingency. We are not to be married
for ages--not until Valentine has obtained a secure position in
literature, and an income that seems almost impossible. That was the
special condition upon which Mr. Sheldon--papa--gave his consent to our
engagement. Of course it was very proper and prudent of him to think of
these things; and as he has been very kind and liberal-minded in his
conduct to me throughout, I should be a most ungrateful person if I
refused to be guided by his advice."

"And I suppose that means that your engagement is to be a long one?"

"The longest of long engagements. And what can be happier than a long
engagement? One gets to know and understand the man one is to marry so
thoroughly. I think I know every turn of thought in Valentine's mind;
every taste, every fancy; and I feel myself every day growing to think
more and more like him. I read the books he reads, so as to be able to
talk to him, you know; but I am not so clever as you, Di, and Valentine's
favourite authors do sometimes seem rather dry to me. But I struggle on,
you know; and the harder I find the struggle, the more I admire my dear
love's cleverness. Think of him, Di--three different articles in three
different magazines last month! The paper on Apollodorus, in the
_Cheapside_, you know; and that story in the Charing Cross--'How I lost
my Gingham Umbrella, and gained the Acquaintance of Mr. Gozzleton.' _So_
funny! And the exhaustive treatise on the Sources of Light, in the
_Scientific Saturday_. And think of the fuss they make about Homer, a
blind old person who wrote a long rigmarole of a poem about battles, and
wrote it so badly that to this day no one knows whether it's one complete
poem, or a lot of odds-and-ends in the way of poetry, put together by a
man with an unpronounceable Greek name. When I think of what Valentine
accomplishes in comparison to Homer, and the little notice the reviewers
take of him, except to make him low-spirited by telling him that he is
shallow and frivolous, I begin to think that literature must be going to
the dogs."

And here Charlotte became meditative, absorbed in the contemplation of
Mr. Hawkehurst's genius. Diana had begun the conversation very artfully,
intending to proceed by a gentle transition from Charlotte's love affairs
to her own; but the conversation was drifting away from the subject into
a discussion upon literature, and the brilliant young essayist whose
first adventurous flights seemed grand as the soaring of Theban eagle to
this tender and admiring watcher of his skyward progress.

"Lotta," said Miss Paget, after a pause, "should you be very sorry if I
were to leave you before your marriage?"

"Leave me before my marriage, Diana! Is it not arranged that you are to
live with mamma, and be a daughter to her, when I am gone? And you will
come and stay with Valentine and me at our cottage; and you will advise
me about my house-keeping, and teach me how to be a sensible, useful,
economical wife, as well as a devoted one. Leave us, Di! What have I
done, or mamma, or Mr. Sheldon, or anybody, that you should talk of
anything so dreadful?"

"What have you done, dear girl, dear friend, dear sister? Everything to
win my undying love and gratitude. You have changed me from a hard
disappointed bitter-minded woman--envious, at times, even of you--into
your loving and devoted friend. You have changed me from a miserable
creature into a contented and hopeful one. You have taught me to forget
that my childhood and youth were one long night of wretchedness and
degradation. You have taught me to forgive the father who suffered my
life to be what it was, and made no one poor effort to lift me out of the
slough of despond to which he had sunk. I can say no more, Charlotte.
There are things that cannot be told by words."

"And you want to leave me!" said Charlotte, in accents half-wondering,
half-reproachful.

"My father wants me to leave you, Lotta; and some one else--some one whom
you must know and like before I can be sure I like him myself."

"Him!" cried Charlotte, with a faint shriek of surprise. "Diana, WHAT are
you going to tell me?"

"A secret, Lotta; something which my father has forbidden me to tell any
one, but which I will not hide from you. My poor father has found a kind
friend--a friend who is almost as good to him as you are to me. How
merciful Heaven is in raising up friends for outcasts! And I have seen a
good deal of this gentleman who is so kind to papa, and the result is
that--chiefly for papa's sake, and because I know that he is generous and
brave and true, I mean papa's friend, M. Lenoble--I have consented to be
his wife."

"Diana!" cried Charlotte, with a sternness of manner that was alarming in
so gentle a creature, "it shall never be!"

"What dear?"

"The sacrifice! No, dear, no! I understand it all. For your cruel
mercenary heartless designing father's sake, you are going to marry a man
whom you can't love. You are going to offer up your poor bruised desolate
heart on the altar of duty. Ah, dear, you can't think I forget what you
told me only two short months ago--though I seem selfish and frivolous,
and am always talking about _him_, and parading my happiness, as it must
seem to you, reckless of the wounds so newly healed in your noble
unselfish heart. But I do not altogether forget, Diana, and such a
sacrifice as this I will not allow. I know you have resigned him to me--I
know you have thrust him from your heart, as you told me that night. But
the hollow aching void that is left in your lonely heart shall be sacred,
Di. No stranger's image shall pollute it. You shall not sacrifice your
own peace to your father's selfishness. No, dear, no! With mamma and me
you will always have a home. You need stoop to no cruel barter such as
this marriage."

And hereupon Miss Halliday wept over and caressed her friend, as the
confidante of Agamemnon's daughter may have wept over and caressed that
devoted young princess after the divination of Calchas had become common
talk in the royal household.

"But if I think it my duty to accept M. Lenoble's offer, Lotta?" urged
Miss Paget with some embarrassment of manner. "M. Lenoble is as rich as
he is generous, and my marriage with him will secure a happy home for my
father. The foolish dreams I told you about on Christmas Eve had faded
from my mind before I dared to speak of them. I could only confess my
folly when I knew that I was learning to be wise. Pray do not think that
I am sordid or mercenary. It is not because M. Lenoble is rich that I am
inclined to marry him, it is because--"

"Because you want to throw yourself away for the advantage of your
selfish heartless father," interjected Charlotte. "He has neglected you
all your life, and now wants to profit by the sacrifice of your
happiness. Be firm, Di, darling; your Charlotte will stand by you, and
find a home for you always, come what may. Who is this M. Lenoble? Some
horrible ugly old creature, I dare say."

Miss Paget smiled and blushed. The vision of Gustave's frank handsome
face arose before her very vividly as Charlotte said this.

"No, dear," she replied. "M. Lenoble is not an old
man--five-and-thirty at most."

"Five-and-thirty!" repeated Charlotte, with a wry face; you don't call
that young? And what is he like?"

"Well, dear, I think he is the sort of man whom most people would call
handsome. I'm sure you would like him, Lotta. He is so candid, so
animated, so full of strength and courage. The sort of man to whom one
would naturally look in any emergency or danger; the sort of man in whose
company fear would be impossible."

"Diana," cried Charlotte, suddenly, "you are in love with him!"

"Lotta!"

"Yes, dear, you are in love with him," repeated Miss Halliday, embracing
her friend with effusion; "yes, over head and ears in love with him. And
you are ashamed to confess the truth to me; and you are half ashamed to
confess it even to yourself--as if you could deceive an old stager like
me!" cried Charlotte, laughing. "Why, you dear inconstant thing, while I
have felt myself the guiltiest and most selfish creature in the world for
robbing you of Valentine, you have been quietly transferring your
affections to this M. Gustave Lenoble--who is very rich, and brave, and
true, and generous, and what most people would call handsome! Bless you,
a thousand times, my darling! You have made me so happy!"

"Indeed, Lotta!"

"Yes, dear. The thought that there was a blank in your life made a dark
cloud in mine. I know I have been very selfish, very thoughtless, but I
could never have been quite free from a sense of self-reproach. But now
there is nothing for me but happiness. O darling, I so long to see your
M. Lenoble!"

"You shall see him, dear."

"And in the meantime tell me what he is like."

Miss Halliday insisted upon a full, true, and particular account of M.
Lenoble's personal appearance. Diana gave it, but not without some sense
of embarrassment. She could not bring herself to be enthusiastic about
Gustave Lenoble, though in her heart there was a warmth of feeling that
surprised her. "What a hypocrite you are, Di!" exclaimed Charlotte
presently. "I know you love this good Frenchman almost as dearly as I
love Valentine, and that the thought of his affection makes you happy;
and yet you speak of him in little measured sentences, and you won't be
enthusiastic even about his good looks."

"It is difficult to pass from dreams to realities, Lotta. I have lived so
long among dreams, that the waking world seems strange to me."

"That is only a poetical way of saying that you are ashamed of having
changed your mind. I will tell M. Lenoble what a lukewarm creature you
are, and how unworthy of his love!"

"You shall tell him what you please. But remember, dear, my engagement
must not be spoken about yet awhile, not even to your mamma. Papa makes a
strong point of this, and I have promised to obey, though I am quite in
the dark as to his reasons."

Miss Halliday submitted to anything her friend wished; only entreating
that she might be introduced to M. Lenoble. Diana promised her this
privilege; but it speedily transpired that Diana's promise was not all
that was wanted on this occasion.

For some time past, in fact from the very commencement of Charlotte's
engagement, Mr. Sheldon had shown himself punctilious to an exceeding
degree with regard to his stepdaughter. The places to which she went, and
the people with whom she consorted, appeared to be matters of supreme
importance in his mind. When speaking of these things he gave those about
him to understand that his ideas had been the same from the time of
Charlotte's leaving school; but Diana knew that this was not true. Mr.
Sheldon's theories had been much less strict, and Mr. Sheldon's practice
had been much more careless, prior to Miss Halliday's engagement.

No stately principal of a school for young ladies could have been more
particular as to the movements of her charges--more apprehensive of
wolf-in-sheep's-clothing in the shape of singing or drawing-master--than
Mr. Sheldon seemed to be in these latter days. Even those pleasant walks
in Kensington Gardens, which had been one of the regular occupations of
the day, were now forbidden. Mr. Sheldon did not like that his daughter
should walk in public with no better protector than Diana Paget.

"There is something disreputable in two girls marching about those
gardens together according to my ideas," said this ultra-refined
stockbroker, one morning at the family breakfast-table. "I don't like to
see my stepdaughter do anything I should forbid my own daughter to do.
And if I had a daughter, I should most decidedly forbid all lonely
rambles in Kensington Gardens. You see, Lotta, two girls as attractive
as you and Miss Paget can't be too particular where you go, and what you
do. When you want air and exercise, you can get both in the garden; and
when you want change of scene, and a peep at the fashions, you can drive
out with Mrs. Sheldon."

To this deprivation Charlotte submitted, somewhat unwillingly, but with
no sign of open rebellion. She thought her stepfather foolish and
unreasonable; but she always bore in mind the fact that he had been kind
and disinterested in the matter of her engagement, and she was content to
prove her gratitude by any little sacrifice of this kind. Was not her
lover permitted to spend his Sundays in her society, and to call on her,
at his discretion, during the week? And what were walks in Kensington
Gardens compared with the delight of his dear presence! It is true that
she had sometimes been favoured with Mr. Hawkehurst's society in the
course of her airing; but she knew that he sacrificed his hours of work
or study for the chance of half an hour in her society; and she felt that
there might be gain to him in her loss of liberty.

She told him, when next they met, that the morning walks were forbidden;
and, so jealous a passion is love, that Mr. Hawkehurst was nowise sorry
to find that his pearl was strictly watched and carefully guarded.

"Well, it seems very particular of Mr. Sheldon, of course," he said;
"but, upon my word, I think he's right. Such a girl as you oughtn't to go
about with no better protection than Diana can give you. Fellows will
stare so at a pretty girl, you know; and I can't bear to think my pearl
should be stared at by impertinent strangers."

Mr. Hawkehurst did not, however, find the strict notions of his
lady-love's stepfather quite so agreeable when he wanted to take his
"pearl" to the winter exhibitions of pictures. He was told that Miss
Halliday could go nowhere, except accompanied by her mamma; and as Georgy
did not care about pictures, and found herself unequal to the fatigue of
attending the winter exhibitions, he was obliged to forego the delight of
seeing them with Lotta on his arm. He pronounced Mr. Sheldon on this
occasion to be a narrow-minded idiot; but withdrew the remark in a
contrite spirit when Charlotte reminded him of that gentleman's
generosity.

"Yes, dear, he has certainly been very kind and very disinterested--more
disinterested than even you think; but, somehow, I can't make him out."

It was very well for Miss Halliday that she had submitted to this novel
restriction with as good a grace, inasmuch as Mr. Sheldon had prepared
himself for active opposition. He had given orders to his wife, and
further orders to Mrs. Woolper to the effect that his step-daughter
should not be permitted to go out of doors, except in his own or her
mother's company.

"She is a very good girl, you see, Nancy," he said to the old
housekeeper, "but she's young, and she's giddy; and of course I can't
take upon myself to answer for Miss Paget, who may or may not be a good
girl. She comes of a very bad stock, however; and I am bound to remember
that. Some people think that you can't give a girl too much liberty. My
ideas lean the other way. I think you can't take too much care of a very
pretty girl whom you are bound by duty to protect."

All this sounded very noble and very conscientious. It sounded thus even
to Mrs. Woolper, who in her intercourse with Philip Sheldon could never
quite divest herself of one appalling memory. That memory was the death
of Tom Halliday, and the horrible thoughts and fears that had for a time
possessed her mind in relation to that death. The shadow of that old
ghastly terror sometimes came between her and Mr. Sheldon, even now,
though she had long ago assured herself that the terror had been alike
groundless and unreasonable.

"Didn't I see my own nephew carried off by a fever twice as sudden as the
fever that carried off poor Mr. Halliday?" she said to herself; "and am I
to think horrid things of him as I nursed a baby, because a cup of greasy
beef-tea turned my stomach?"

Convinced by such reasoning as this that she had done her master a
grievous wrong, and grateful for the timely shelter afforded in her old
age, Mrs. Woolper felt that she could not do too much in her benefactor's
service. She had already shown herself a clever managing housekeeper; had
reformed abuses, and introduced a new system of care and economy
below-stairs, to the utter bewilderment of poor Georgy, for whom the
responsibilities of the gothic villa had been an overwhelming burden.
Georgy was not particularly grateful to the energetic old Yorkshirewoman
who had taken this burden off her hands, but she was submissive.

"I never felt myself much in the house, my dear," she said to Lotta; "but
I am sure since Ann Woolper has been here I have felt myself a cipher."

Mrs. Woolper, naturally sharp and observant, was not slow to perceive
that Mr. Sheldon was abnormally anxious about his stepdaughter. She
ascribed this anxiety to a suspicious nature, an inherent distrust of
other people on the part of her master, and in some measure to his
ignorance of womankind.

"He seems to think that she'd run away and get married on the sly, at a
word from that young man; but he doesn't know what a dear innocent soul
she is, and how sorry she'd be to displease any one that's kind to her. I
don't know anything about Miss Paget. She's more stand-offish than our
own Miss, though she is little better than a genteel kind of servant;
but she seems fair-spoken enough. As to our Miss, bless her dear heart!
she want's no watching, I'll lay. But I daresay those City folks, with
their stocks going up and going down, and always bringing about the ruin
of somebody or other, go which way they will, get their poor heads so
muddled with figures that they can't believe there's such a thing as
honesty in the world."

This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's evening musing in the snug little
housekeeper's room at the Lawn. It was a very comfortable little room,
and held sacred to Mrs. Woolper; the three young females, and the boy in
buttons, who formed Mr. Sheldon's in-door establishment, preferring the
license of the kitchen to the strict etiquette of the housekeeper's room.

This apartment, as well as every other room in the stockbroker's house,
bore the stamp of prosperity. A comfortable easy-chair reposed the limbs
of Mrs. Woolper; a bright little fire burned in a bright little grate,
and its ruddy light was reflected in a bright little fender. Prints of
the goody class adorned the walls; and a small round table, with a
somewhat gaudy cover, supported Mrs. Woolper's work-box and family Bible,
both of which she made it a point of honour to carry about with her, and
to keep religiously, through good fortune and through evil fortune;
neither of which, however, afforded her much employment. She felt herself
to be much nearer grace with the family Bible by her side than she would
have been without it; she felt, indeed, that the maintenance and due
exhibition of the family Bible was in itself a kind of religion. But that
she should peruse its pages was not in the bond. Her eyes were old and
weak--sharp enough to discover the short-comings of Mr. Sheldon's young
maid-servants, but too feeble even for long-primer.

As she looked round that snug little chamber of an evening, when her
day's labours were ended, and her own particular Britannia-metal tea-pot
was basking in the fender, her own special round of toast frizzling on
the trivet, she was very grateful to the man to whom she owed these
comforts.

"What should I be but for him?" she asked herself with a shudder; for
the vision of that darksome abode shut in by high black walls--the
metropolitan workhouse--arose before her. She did not know what
difficulties would have barred her entrance even to that dreary
asylum; she only thought of the horrors of that sanctuary, and she
blessed her master for the benevolence that had accepted the service
of her failing hands.

This was the servant on whom Philip Sheldon relied. He saw that she was
grateful, and that she was ready to serve him with an almost slavish
devotion. He knew that she had suspected him in the past, and he saw that
she had outlived her suspicion.

"There is a statute of limitations to these things as well as for debt,"
he said to himself. "A man can live down anything, if he knows what he
is about."



CHAPTER II.


FIRM AS A BOOK.

After that midnight interview between the two girls in Miss Halliday's
bedroom, life went very smoothly at the gothic villa for two or three
days, during which the impulsive Charlotte, being forbidden to talk
openly of the change in her friend's position, was fain to give vent to
her feelings by furtive embraces and hand-squeezings, sly nods and
meaning becks, and mischievous twinkling of her arch grey eyes.

She talked of Valentine more than ever now, feeling herself at liberty to
sing what paeans she pleased in praise of her hero, now that her friend
had also a fitting subject for paeans.

"And now it's your turn to talk of M. Lenoble, dear," she would say
naively, when she had entertained Diana with the minute details of her
last conversation with her lover, or a lively sketch of the delights of
that ideal cottage which she loved to furnish and unfurnish in accordance
with the new fancy of the hour.

Diana was pleased to listen to her girlish talk: to hang and rehang the
ideal draperies, to fill and refill the ideal bookcase, to plan and
replan the arrangements of that ideal existence which was to be all joy
and love and harmony; but when her turn came, and she was asked to be
rapturous about her own lover, she could say nothing: that which she felt
was too deep for words. The thought of her lover was strange to her; the
fact of his love was mysterious and wonderful. She could not talk of him
with the customary frivolous school-girl talk; and love for him had so
newly taken root in her heart that there were as yet no blossoms to be
gathered from that magical plant.

"Don't ask me to talk of him, Lotta, dear;" she said. "I am not yet sure
that I love him; I only feel that it is sweet to be loved by him. I think
Providence must have sent him to me in pity for my desolation."

This was almost the same fancy that had occurred to Susan Meynell
five-and-thirty years before this time, when Gustave the first had
rescued her from the suicide's unrepentable sin.

That chivalrous turn of mind which was hereditary in the race of Lenoble
predisposed these men to pity loneliness and beauty, weakness and sorrow.
This pity for helplessness may have been indeed only an element of their
exceeding strength. Was not the rescue of weaklings and women an
unfailing attribute in the mighty men of old? Who so prompt as Hercules
to fly to the rescue of Hesione? Who so swift as Perseus to save
Andromeda? And what sea-monster more terrible than loneliness and
poverty?

In a few days there came another letter from Captain Paget, containing a
fresh summons to Omega Street.

"Lenoble positively returns to Normandy to-morrow," he wrote, "to see his
girls, and, no doubt, break the news of his approaching marriage. He much
wants to see you, and, as I have forbidden his calling on you at the
Lawn, can only meet you here. He is to drink tea with me at the usual
time to-morrow evening, and I shall expect to see you early in the
afternoon."

This afforded an opportunity for that introduction to which Miss Halliday
looked forward with so much interest.

"If Mr. Sheldon and your mamma will let you come with me this afternoon,
dear, I shall be very pleased to take you," said Diana; and she felt that
she would appear less in the character of a lamb led to the slaughter if
she could go to meet her betrothed accompanied by Charlotte.

But in this matter both the young ladies were doomed to disappointment.
Mr. Sheldon showed himself a social Draco in all things relating to his
stepdaughter. Being forbidden to reveal the existence of Gustave Lenoble,
Charlotte could only urge a frivolous desire to accompany her friend in a
pilgrimage dictated by filial duty. To the practical mind of Philip
Sheldon this desire appeared altogether absurd and unreasonable, and he
did not hesitate to express himself to that effect in a _tête-a-tête_
with his stepdaughter.

"What good on earth can you do by going to see a gouty old man, who has
his own daughter to dance attendance upon him?" asked Mr. Sheldon.
"Really, Charlotte, I am surprised to hear such a proposition from a
girl of your good sense. Miss Paget is your companion, not your visitor.
It is her duty to indulge your whims, but it is not your place to give
way to hers."

"But this is a whim of mine, papa; I should really like to spend the
afternoon at Chelsea. It would be a change, you know."

Mr. Sheldon looked at his stepdaughter with a sharp and searching gaze, a
gaze in which there was suspicion as well as curiosity.

"It is a very discreditable whim for a young lady in your position,"
he said sternly; "and I beg that such a proposition may not be made to
me again."

This was decisive. Charlotte submitted, and Diana went alone to Omega
Street. She found Gustave waiting for her. He proposed a walk, and
Captain Paget was enthusiastic upon the subject of fresh air, and the
benefits arising therefrom. So the lovers went out in the bleak winter
afternoon, and wandered in the dreary Pimlico region as far as St.
James's Park--Gustave delighted to have Diana's hand upon his arm, and
Diana almost bewildered by a sense of happiness, which seemed unreal by
reason of its very novelty.

Gustave was all enthusiasm, full of plans for the future. He would have
had the marriage take place immediately, if such a thing had been
possible; but Diana showed him that it would not be possible. Her first
duty was to the only friends she had ever known. Gustave argued the point
resolutely for nearly an hour, during which time they made their way to
the very gates of St. James's Park, but Diana was more resolute still.

"What a tyrannical wife I shall have by-and-by!" said Gustave. "I think
you care for these Sheldons more than for me, Diane."

"These Sheldons have been so good to me in the past."

"And I mean to be so good to you in the future," answered Gustave. "You
shall be the happiest wife in Normandy, if a foolish doting husband's
devotion can make you happy."

"What have I done to deserve so much devotion?" Diana murmured
wonderingly.

"What have you done? Nothing, less than nothing. You will not even run
the hazard of offending your family of Sheldon in order to make me happy.
But Fate has said, 'At the feet of that girl with the dark eyes and pale
proud face shall poor Lenoble of Côtenoir put down his heart.' Do you
know what I said to myself when I saw you first in the little parlour
yonder? Ah, no! How should you guess? 'She is there,' said I; 'behold
her! It is thy destiny, Lenoble, on which thou gazest!' And thou, love,
wert calm and voiceless as Fate. Quiet as the goddess of marble before
which the pagans offered their sacrifices, across whose cold knees they
laid their rich garments. I put my treasures in your hip, my love; my
heart, my hopes,--all the treasures I had to offer."

This was all very sweet, but there was a sting even mingled with that
sweetness. Diana told herself that love like this should only be offered
on the purest shrine; and when she remembered the many stains upon her
father's honour, it seemed to her that a part of the shame must needs
cleave to her.

"Gustave," she said presently, after an absent meditative mood, from
which her lover had vainly tried to beguile her, "does it not seem to you
that there is something foolish in this talk of love and confidence
between you and me; and that all your promises have been a little too
lightly made? What do you know of me? You see me sitting in my father's
room, and because my eyes happen to please you, or for some reason as
foolish as that, you ask me to be your wife. I might have been one of the
worst of women."

"You might have been?--yes, dear, but you are not. And if you had been,
Gustave Lenoble would not have flung his heart into your lap, even if
your eyes had been sweeter than they are. We impulsive people are people
of quick perceptions, and know what we are doing better than our
reflective friends imagine. I did not need to be an hour in your company,
dear love, in order to know that you are noble and true. There are tones
in the voice, there are expressions of the face, that tell these things
better than words can tell them; for, you see, words can lie, while tones
and looks are apt to be true. Yes, my angel, I knew you from that first
night. My heart leapt across all conventional barriers, and found its way
straight to yours."

"I can see that you think much better of me than I deserve; but even
supposing you not to be deceived as to myself, I fear you are much
deceived as to my surroundings."

"I know that your father is poor, and that the burden of his poverty
weighs heavily on you. That is enough for me to know."

"No, M. Lenoble; it is act enough for you to know. If I am to be your
wife, I will not enter your family as an impostor. I told you the truth
about myself the other day when you questioned me, and I am bound to tell
you the truth about my father."

And then she told him, in the plainest frankest language, the story of
her father's life. She inflicted no unnecessary shame on Captain Paget;
she made no complaint of her neglected childhood and joyless youth; but
she told Gustave that her father had been an adventurer, keeping doubtful
company, and earning his bread by doubtful means.

"I hope and believe that if a peaceful home could be secured for his
declining years, he would live the rest of his life like a gentleman and
a Christian; and that, the bitter struggle for existence being ended, he
would be sorry for the past. I doubt if the sense of shame ever deserted
him when he was living that wretched wandering life, leaving debts and
difficulties behind him everywhere--always harassed and hunted by
creditors, who had good cause to be angry. Yes, Gustave, I do believe
that if it should please Providence to give my father a peaceful home at
last, he will be thankful for God's mercy, and will repent the sins of
life. And now I have told you the kind of heritage I can bring my
husband."

"My dear love, I will accept the heritage, for the sake of her who brings
it. I never meant to be less than a son to your father; and if he is not
the best of fathers, as regards the past, we will try to make him a
decent kind of father as regards the future. I have long understood that
Captain Paget is something--ever so little--of an adventurer. It was the
pursuit of fortune that brought him to me; and without knowing it, he
brought me my fortune in the shape of his daughter."

Diana blushed as she remembered that Captain Paget had not been so
innocent of any design in this matter as the Frenchman imagined.

"And you will receive even papa for my sake?" asked Diana.

"With all my heart."

"Ah, you are indeed a generous lover!"

"A lover who is not generous is--bah! there is nothing in creation so
mean as the wretch whom love does not render generous. When one sees the
woman whom Fate intends for one's wife, is one to stop to inquire the
character of her father, her mother, her sister, her cousin?--for there
is no stopping when you begin that. A man who loves makes no inquiries.
If he finds his jewel in the gutter, he picks it out of the mud and
carries it away in his bosom, too proud of his treasure to remember where
he found it; always provided that the jewel is no counterfeit, but the
real gem, fit for a king's crown. And my diamond is of the purest water.
By-and-by we will try to drain the gutter--that is to say, we will try to
pay those small debts of which you speak, to lodging-house keepers, and
tradesmen who have trusted your father."

"You would pay papa's debts!" cried Diana in amazement.

"But why not? All these little debts, the thought of which is so bitter
to you, might be discharged for two or three thousand pounds. Your father
tells me I am to be very rich by-and-by."

"My father tells you! Ah, then, you have allowed him to involve you in
some kind of speculation!"

"He has involved me in no speculation, and in no risk that two or three
hundred pounds will not cover."

"The whole business seems very mysterious, Gustave."

"Perhaps; it has to do with a secret which I am pledged to keep. I will
not allow your father to lead me into any quagmire of speculation,
believe me, dear one."

After this they went back to Omega Street in the winter gloaming, and
Diana loved and admired this man with all her heart and mind. A new life
lay before her, very bright and fair. There, where had been only the
barren desert, was now a fair landscape, shining in the sunlight of hope.

"Do you think your children will ever love me, Gustave?" she asked, not
without some sense of wonder that this impulsive light-hearted lover
should be the owner of children. She fancied that a responsibility so
grave as paternity must needs have impressed some stamp of solemnity upon
the man who bore it.

"Ever love thee!" cried Gustave. "Child, they will adore thee. They ask
only some one to love. Their hearts are gardens of flowers; and thou
shalt gather the flowers. But wilt thou be happy at Côtenoir, thou? It is
somewhat sad, perhaps--the grave old château with the long sombre
corridors. But thou shalt choose new furniture, new garnitures at Rouen,
and we will make all bright and gay, like the heart of thy affianced Thou
wilt not be dull?"

"Dull, with you and yours! I shall thank God for my happy home day and
night, as I never thought to thank Him a few months ago, when I was
dissatisfied, wicked, tired of my life."

"And when you thought of that other one? Ah, how he was an imbecile, that
other one! But thou wilt never think of him again; it is a dream that is
past," said M. Lenoble.

That self-confidence which was an attribute of his sanguine nature
rendered the idea of a rival not altogether unpleasant to him. He was
gratified by the idea of his own victory, and the base rival's
annihilation.

"Diane, I want to show thee the home that is to be thine," he said
presently. "Your Sheldon family must give thee at least a holiday, if
they refuse to let thee go altogether. Thou wilt come to Normandy with
thy father. He is coming for a week or two, now that his gout is better.
I want to show thee Côtenoir--and Beaubocage, the place where my father
was born. It will seem dreary, perhaps, to thine English eyes; but to me
it is very dear."

"Nothing that is dear to you shall appear dreary to me," said Diana.

By this time they had arrived at Omega Street. Again Miss Paget made tea
for her lover. Strange to say, the operation seemed to grow more
agreeable with every repetition. While taking his tea from the hands of
his beloved, Gustave pressed the question of Diana's visit to Normandy.

"About her Sheldon family she is adamant," he said to Captain Paget, who
sipped his tea and smiled at the lovers with the air of an aristocratic
patriarch. "There is to be no marriage till it pleases Mrs. Sheldon to
set her free. I consent to this only as man must consent to the
inevitable; but I say to her, can she not come to Normandy for a
fortnight--say but one short fortnight--to see her home? She will come
with you. She has but to ask a holiday of her friends, and it is done."

"Of course," exclaimed the Captain, "she shall come with me. If
necessary, I myself will ask it of Sheldon.--But it will be best not to
mention where you are going, Diana. There are reasons, best known to our
friend Gustave and myself, which render secrecy advisable just at
present. You can say Rouen. That is quite near enough to the mark to come
within the limits of truth," added Horatio, with the tone of a man who
had never; quite outstepped those limits. "Yes, Rouen. And you will come
with me."

"With us," said Gustave. "I will put off my journey for a day or two for
the sake of going with you. You have to meet Fleurus in Rouen haven't
you?"

"Yes; he is to be there on the fifth of March, and this is the last day
of February. I had a letter from him this morning. All goes swimmingly."

Diana wondered what it could be which went swimmingly; but she was
obliged to content herself with her lover's assurance that he had not
allowed her father to involve him in any kind of speculation.



CHAPTER III.


AGAINST WIND AND TIDE.

Between Philip Sheldon and his brother there was at this time a state of
feeling somewhat akin to the relations between a subjugated country and
its conqueror. The vanquished is fain to accept whatever the victor is
pleased to give, though discontent and impotent rage may be gnawing his
entrails. George Sheldon had been a loser in that game in which the
Haygarthian inheritance was the stake. He had held good cards, and had
played them with considerable cleverness; but no play could prevail
against his antagonist's ace of trumps. The ace of trumps was Charlotte
Halliday; and as to his mode and matter of playing this card, Mr. Sheldon
was for the present profoundly mysterious.

"I have known a good many inscrutable cards in my time," the solicitor of
Gray's Inn observed to his elder brother, in the course of fraternal
converse; "but I think for inscrutability you put the topper on the lot.
What do you expect to get out of this Haygarth estate? Come, Phil, let us
have your figures in plain English. I am to have a fifth--that's all
signed and sealed. But how about your share? What agreement have you got
from Miss Halliday?"

"None."

"None!"

"What would the world think of me if I extorted money, or the promise of
money, from my wife's daughter? Do you think I could enforce any deed
between her and me?"

"Ah, I see; you go in for respectability. And you are going to leave the
settlement of your claims to your stepdaughter's generosity. You will let
her marry Hawkehurst, with her hundred thousand pounds; and then you will
say to those two, 'Mr. and Mrs. Hawkehurst, be so kind as to hand over my
share of the plunder.' That is not _like_ you, Phil."

"Perhaps you will be good enough to spare yourself the trouble of
speculating about my motives. Go your way, and leave me to go mine."

"But this is a case in which I have an interest. If Charlotte marries
Hawkehurst, I don't see how you are to profit, to any extent that you
would care about, by the Haygarth fortune. But, on the other hand, if she
should die unmarried, without a will, the money would go to your wife. O
my God! Philip Sheldon, is _THAT_ what you mean?"

The question was so sudden, the tone of horror in which it was spoken so
undisguised, that Mr. Sheldon the stockbroker was for one moment thrown
off his guard. His breath thickened; he tried to speak, but his dry lips
could shape no word. It was only one moment that he faltered. In the next
he turned upon his brother angrily, and asked what he meant.

"You've been promised _your_ reward," he said; "leave me to look after
mine. You'll take those papers round to Greenwood and Greenwood; they
want to talk to you about them."

"Yes, I'll take the papers."

Greenwood and Greenwood were Mr. Sheldon's own solicitors--a firm of some
distinction, on whose acumen and experience the stockbroker placed
implicit reliance. They were men of unblemished respectability, and to
them Mr. Sheldon had confided the care of his stepdaughter's interests,
always reserving the chief power in his own hands. These gentlemen
thought well of the young lady's prospects, and were handling the case in
that slow and stately manner which marks the handling of such cases by
eminent firms of the slow-and-stately class.

Mr. Sheldon wished his brother good-day, and was about to depart, when
George planted himself suddenly before the door.

"Look you here, Phil," he said, with an intensity of manner that was by
no means common to him; "I want to say a few words to you, and I will say
them. There was an occasion, ten years ago, on which I ought to have
spoken out, and didn't. I have never ceased to regret my cowardice. Yes,
by Jove! I hate myself for it; and there are times when I feel as if my
share in that wretched business was almost as bad as yours."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Of course not. That's your text, and you'll stick to it. But you _do_
know what I mean, and you shall know what I mean, if plain words can tell
you. You and I had a friend, Phil. He was a good friend to me, and I
liked him as much as a man of the world can afford to like anybody. If I
had been down in the world, and had asked him for a hundred pounds to
give me a new start in life, I think he'd have said, 'George, here's a
cheque for you.' _That's_ my notion of a friend. And yet I stood by that
man's deathbed, and saw him sinking, and knew what ailed him, and didn't
stretch out my hand to save him."

"Be so good as to move away from that door," said Mr. Sheldon, livid to
the lips with smothered fury, but able to put on a bold front
nevertheless. "I didn't come here to listen to rhodomontade of this kind,
or to bandy words with you. Get out of my way."

"Not till I've said my say. There shall be no rhodomontade this time. I
stood by and saw my best friend murdered--by you. I kept my counsel for
your sake, and when you had made your fortune--by his death--I asked you
for a little money. You know how much you gave me, and how graciously you
gave it. If you had given me twenty times the sum you gained by Tom
Halliday's death, I would give it back, and twenty times as much again,
to bring him back to life, and to feel that I had never aided and abetted
a murderer. Yes, by God, I would! though I'm not straitlaced or
over-scrupulous at the best of times. But that's past, and all the money
in the Bank of England wouldn't undo what you did in Fitzgeorge Street.
But if you try on any such tricks with Tom Halliday's daughter, if
_that's_ the scheme you've hatched for getting hold of this money, as
surely as we two live, I'll let in the light upon your doings, and save
the girl whose father you murdered. I will, Philip, let come what may.
You can't get _me_ out of the way when it suits you, you see. _I know
you._ That's the best antidote against your medicines."

"If you'll be so good as to say these things on 'Change, I can bring an
action for libel, or get you put into a madhouse. There's no good in
saying them here."

Philip Sheldon, even in this crisis, was less agitated than his brother,
being of a harder nature, and less subject to random impulses of good or
evil. He caught his accuser by the collar of his coat, and flung him
violently from the doorway. Thus ended his visit to Gray's Inn.

Boldly as he had borne himself during the interview, he went to his
office profoundly depressed and dispirited.

"So I am to have him against me?" he said to himself. "He can do me no
real harm; but he can harass and annoy me. If he should drop any hint to
Hawkehurst?--but he'll scarcely do that. Perhaps I've ridden him a little
too roughly in the past. And yet if I'd been smoother, where would his
demands have ended? No; concession in these cases means ruin."

He shut himself in his office, and sat down to his desk to confront
his difficulties. For a long time the bark which was freighted with
Philip Sheldon's fortunes had been sailing in troubled waters. He had
been an unconscious disciple of Lord Bacon, inasmuch as the boldness
inculcated by that philosopher had been the distinguishing characteristic
of his conduct in all the operations of life. As a speculator, his
boldness had served him well. Adventures from which timid spirits shrunk
appalled had brought golden harvests to this daring gamester. When some
rich argosy upon the commercial ocean fired her minute-guns, and sent up
signals of distress, menaced by the furious tempest, lifted high on the
crest of mountainous waves, below which, black and fathomless, yawn the
valleys of death,--a frail ark hovering above the ravening jaws of
all-devouring Poseidon,--Philip Sheldon was among that chosen band of
desperate wreckers who dared to face the storm, and profit by the
tempest and terror. From such argosies, while other men watched and
waited for a gleam of sunlight on the dark horizon, Mr. Sheldon had
obtained for himself goodly merchandise. The debenture of railways that
were in bad odour; Unitas Bank shares, immediately after the discovery of
gigantic embezzlements by Swillenger, the Unitas-Bank secretary; the
Mole-and-Burrow railway stock, when the Mole-and-Burrow scheme was as yet
in the clouds, and the wiseacres prognosticated its failure; the shares
in foreign loans, which the Rothschilds were buying _sub rosa_;--these,
and such as these, had employed Mr. Sheldon's capital; and from the
skilful manipulation of capital thus employed, Mr. Sheldon had trebled
the fortune secured by his alliance with Tom Halliday's widow.

It had been the stockbroker's fate to enter the money market at a time
when fortunes were acquired with an abnormal facility. He had made the
most of his advantages, and neglected none of his opportunities. He had
seized Good Fortune by the forelock, and not waited to find the
harridan's bald and slippery crown turned to him in pitiless derision. He
had made only one mistake--and that he made in common with many of his
fellow-players in the great game of speculation always going on eastward
of Temple Bar--he had mistaken the abnormal for the normal: he had
imagined that these splendid opportunities were the natural evolvements
of an endless sequence of everyday events; and when the sequence was
abruptly broken, and when last of the seven fat kine vanished off the
transitory scene of life, to make way for a dismal succession of lean
kine, there was no sanguine youngster newly admitted to the sacred
privileges of "The House" more astounded by the change than Mr. Sheldon.

The panic came like a thief in the night, and it found Mr. Sheldon a
speculator for the rise. The Melampuses and Amphiaräuses of the Stock
Exchange had agreed in declaring that a man who bought into consols at 90
_must_ see his capital increased; and what was true of this chief among
securities was of course true of other securities. The panic came, and
from 90, consols declined dismally, slowly, hopelessly, to 85-1/2;
securities less secure sank with a rapidity corresponding with their
constitutional weakness. As during the ravages of an epidemic the weaker
are first to fall victims to the destroyer, so while this fever raged on
'Change, the feeble enterprises, the "risky" transactions, sank at an
appalling rate, some to total expiry. The man who holds a roaring lion by
the tail could scarcely be worse off than the speculator in these
troublous times. To let go is immediate loss, to hold on for a certain
time might be redemption, could one but know the exact moment in which it
would be wise to let go. But to hold on until the beast grows more and
more furious, and then to let go and be eaten up alive, is what many men
did in that awful crisis.

If Philip Sheldon had accepted his first loss, and been warned by the
first indication that marked the turning of the tide, he would have been
a considerable loser; but he would not accept his loss, and he would not
be warned by that early indication. He had implicit belief in his own
cleverness; and he fancied if every other bark in that tempest-tossed
ocean foundered and sank, his boat might ride triumphantly across the
harbour-bar, secure by virtue of his science and daring as a navigator.
It was not till he had seen a small fortune melt away in the payment of
contango, that he consented to the inevitable. The mistakes of one year
devoured the fruits of nine years' successful enterprise, and the Philip
Sheldon of this present year was no richer than the man who had stood by
Tom Halliday's bedside and waited the advent of the equal foot that knows
no difference between the threshold of kingly palace or pauper refuge.
Not only did he find himself as poor a man as in that hateful stage of
his existence--to remember which was a dull dead pain even to _him_--but
a man infinitely more heavily burdened. He had made for himself a certain
position, and the fall from that must needs be a cruel and damaging fall,
the utter annihilation of all his chances in life.

The stockbroker's fitful slumbers at this time began to be haunted by the
vision of a black board fixed against the wall of a public resort, a
black board on which appeared his own name. In what strange places
feverish dreams showed him this hideous square of painted deal!--Now it
was on the walls of the rooms he lived in; now on the door of a church,
like Luther's propositions; now at a street-corner, where should have
been the name of the street; now inky-black against the fair white
headstone of his own grave. Miserable dream, miserable man, for whom the
scraping together of sordid dross was life's only object, and who, in
losing money, lost all!

This agonizing consciousness of loss and of close-impending disgrace was
the wolf which this Spartan stockbroker concealed beneath his waistcoat
day after day, while the dull common, joyless course of his existence
went on; and his shallow wife smiled at him from the opposite side of his
hearth, more interested in a new stitch for her crotchet or berlin-wool
work than by the inner life of her husband; and Charlotte and her lover
contemplated existence from their own point of view, and cherished their
own dreams and their own hopes, and were, in all things, as far away from
the moody meditator as if they had been natives of Upper India.

The ruin which impended over the unlucky speculator was not immediate,
but it was not far off; the shadow of it already wrapped him in a
twilight obscurity. His repute as a clever and a safe man had left him.
He was described now as a daring man; and the wiseacres shook their heads
as they talked of him.

"One of the next to go will be Sheldon," said the wiseacres; but in these
days of commercial epidemic there was no saying who would be the first to
go. It was the end of the world in little. One was taken, and another
left. The Gazette overran its customary column like a swollen river, and
flooded a whole page of the Times newspaper; and men looked to the lists
of names in the Wednesday and Saturday papers as to the trump of
archangels sounding the destruction of the universe.

For some time the bark in which Mr. Sheldon had breasted those turbulent
waters had been made of paper. This was nothing. Paper boats were the
prevailing shipping in those waters; but Captain Sheldon's bark needed
refitting, and the captain feared a scarcity of paper, or, worse still,
the awful edict issued from some commercial Areopagus that for him there
should be no more paper.

Once before, Mr. Sheldon had found himself face to face with ruin
complete and irredeemable. When all common expedients had been exhausted,
and his embarrassments had become desperate, he had found a desperate
expedient, and had extricated himself from those embarrassments. The time
had come in which a new means of extrication must be found as desperate
as the last, if need were. As Philip Sheldon had faced the situation
before, he faced it now--unshrinkingly, though with a gloomy anger
against destiny. It was hard for him that such a thing should have to be
repeated. If he pitied anybody, he pitied himself; and this kind of
compassion is very common with this kind of character. Do not the Casket
letters show us--if we may trust them to show us anything--that Mary
Stuart was very sorry for herself when she found herself called upon to
make an end of Darnley? In Mr. Swinburne's wonderful study in morbid
anatomy, there are perhaps no finer touches than those which reveal the
Queen's selfish compassion for her own heartlessness.



CHAPTER IV.


DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY.

Diana informed Mrs. Sheldon of her father's wish that she should leave
Bayswater. Before doing this, she had obtained the Captain's consent to
the revelation of her engagement to be married.

"I don't like to leave them in a mysterious manner, papa," she said. "I
have told Charlotte a good deal already, under a promise of secrecy; but
I should like to tell Mrs. Sheldon that there is a real reason for my
leaving her."

"Very well, my love, since you are so amazingly squeam--honourable,"
interposed the Captain, remembering how much depended on his daughter's
marriage, and what a very difficult person he had found her. "Yes, my
dear, of course; I respect your honourable feeling; and--er--yes--you may
tell Mrs. Sheldon--and that of course includes Mr. Sheldon, since the
lady is but an inoffensive cipher--that you are about to be married--to a
French gentleman of position. You will, of course, be obliged to mention
his name, and then will arise the question as to where and how you met
him; and, upon my word, it's confoundedly awkward that you should insist
on enlightening these people. You see, my dear girl, what I want to
avoid, for the present, is any chance of collision between the Sheldons
and Lenoble."

"Papa!" exclaimed Diana, impatiently, "why must there be all this
scheming?"

"O, very well, Miss Paget; tell them what you like!" cried the Captain,
aggravated beyond endurance by such inherent perversity. "All I can say
is, that a young woman who quarrels with her bread-and-butter is likely
to come to dry bread; and very little of that, perhaps. I wash my hands
of the business. Tell them what you like."

"I will not tell them more than I feel to be actually necessary, papa,"
the young lady replied calmly. "I do not think Mr. Sheldon will trouble
himself about M. Lenoble. He seems very much occupied by his own
affairs."

"Humph! Sheldon seems harassed, anxious, does he?"

"Well, yes, papa; I have thought so for the last few months. If I may
venture to judge by the expression of his face, as he sits at home in the
evening, reading the paper, or staring at the fire, I am sure he has many
anxieties--troubles even. Mrs. Sheldon and Charlotte do not appear to
notice these things. They are accustomed to see him quiet and reserved,
and they don't perceive the change in him as I do."

"O, there is a change, is there?"

"Yes, a decided change."

"Why the deuce couldn't you tell me this before!"

"Why should I tell you that Mr. Sheldon seems anxious? I should not have
told you now, if you had not appeared to dread his interference in our
affairs. I can't help observing these things; but I don't want to play
the part of a spy."

"No, you're so infernally punct--so delicate-minded, my love," said the
Captain, pulling himself up suddenly, for the second time. "Forgive me if
I was impatient just now. You look at these things from a higher point of
view than that of a battered old man of the world like me. But if you
should see anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct on another
occasion, my love, I should be obliged to you if you would be more
communicative. He and I have been allied in business, you see, and it is
important for me to know these things."

"I have not seen anything remarkable in Mr. Sheldon's conduct, papa; I
have only seen him thoughtful and dispirited. And I suppose anxieties are
common to every man of business."

Georgy received Miss Paget's announcement with mingled lamentations and
congratulations.

"I am sure I am heartily glad for your sake, Diana," she said; "but what
we shall do without you, I don't know. Who is to see to the drawing-room
being dusted every morning, when you are gone? I'm sure I tremble for the
glass shades. Don't imagine I'm not pleased to think you should settle in
life advantageously, my love. I'm not so selfish as that; though I will
say that there never was a girl with more natural talent for making-up
pretty little caps than you. The one I have on has been admired by
everybody. Even Ann Woolper this morning, when I was going into the
butcher's book with her--for I insist upon going into the butcher's book
with her weekly, whether she likes it or not; though the way that man
puts down the items is so bewildering that I feel myself a perfect baby
in her hands,--even Ann admired it, and said how young-looking it is. And
then she brought up the time in Fitzgeorge Street, and poor Tom's
illness, and almost upset me for the rest of the day. And now, dear, let
me offer you my sincere congratulations. Of course, you know that you
would always have had a home with me; but service, or at least
companionship, is no inheritance, as the proverb says; and for your own
sake I'm very glad to think that you are going to have a house of your
own. And now tell me what he is like, Monsieur what's-his-name?"

Mrs. Sheldon had been told, but had not remembered the name. Her great
anxiety, as well as Charlotte's, was to know what manner of man the
affianced lover was. If Diana's future happiness had been contingent on
the shape of her husband's nose, or the colour of his eyes, these two
ladies could not have been more anxious upon the subject.

"Has he long eyelashes, and a dreamy look in his eyes, like Valentine?"
asked Charlotte, secretly convinced that her lover had a copyright in
these personal graces.

"Does he wear whiskers?" asked Georgy. "I remember, when I was quite a
girl, and went to parties at Barlingford, being struck by Mr. Sheldon's
whiskers. And I was quite offended with papa, who was always making
sarcastic remarks, for calling them mutton-chop whiskers; but they
really were the shape of mutton-cutlets at that time. He wears them
differently now."

Mrs. Sheldon branched off into a disquisition on whiskers, and Diana
escaped from the task of describing her lover. She could not have
described him to Georgy.

By-and-by she asked permission to leave Bayswater for a fortnight, in
order to see her lover's home and friends.

"I will come back to you, and stay as long as you like, dear Mrs.
Sheldon," she said, "and make you as many caps as you please. And I will
make them for you by and by, when I am living abroad, and send them over
to you in a bandbox. It will be a great delight to me to be of some
little service to a friend who has been so kind. And perhaps you will
fancy the caps are prettier when they can boast of being French."

"You darling generous-minded girl! And you won't go away for a fortnight
and never come back again, will you, dear? I had a cook who did that, and
left me with a large dinner-party hanging over my head; and how I got
through it--with a strange man-cook, who charged a guinea, and used fresh
butter, at twentypence, a pound, as if it had been dirt, and two strange
men to wait--I don't know. It all seemed like a dream. And since then we
have generally had everything from the confectioner's; and I assure you,
to feel that you can wash your hands of the whole thing, and sit down at
the head of your table with your mind as free from care as if you were a
visitor, is worth all the expense."

Diana promised she would not behave like the cook; and two days after
this conversation left the London Bridge terminus with her father and
Gustave Lenoble.

Mr. Sheldon troubled himself very little about this departure. He was
informed of Miss Paget's intended marriage; and the information awakened
neither surprise nor interest in his heavily-burdened mind.

"A Frenchman, a friend of her father's!" he said; "some swindling
adventurer, no doubt," he thought. And this was as much consideration
as he could afford to bestow upon Miss Paget's love affairs at this
present time.



CHAPTER V.


ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE.

On the day after Miss Paget's departure Mr. Sheldon came home from the
City rather earlier than usual, and found Charlotte alone in the
drawing-room, reading a ponderous volume from Mudie of an instructive and
edifying character, with a view to making herself clever, in order that
she might better understand that prodigy of learning, Mr. Hawkehurst.

She was somewhat inclined to yawn over the big book, which contained a
graphic account of recent discoveries of an antiquarian nature. Her mind
was not yet attuned to the comprehension of the sublimer elements in such
discoveries. She saw only a dry as dust record of futile gropings in
desert sand for the traces of perished empires. Her imagination was not
cultivated to that point whereat the gift which Mr. Lewes calls "insight"
becomes the daily companion, nay, indeed, the ever-haunting and
nightmare-bringing influence of the dreamer. For her sands were only
sands, the stones were only stones. No splendour of fallen palaces, no
glory and pride of perished kings, no clash and clamour of vanished
courts, arose from those barren sands, with all their pomp and
circumstance, conjured into being by half a word on a broken pillar, or a
date upon a Punic monument. Miss Halliday looked up with a sigh of
fatigue as her stepfather came into the room. It was not a room that he
particularly affected, and she was surprised when he seated himself in
the easy-chair opposite her, and poked the fire, as if with the intention
of remaining.

"You shouldn't read by firelight, my dear," he said; "it is most
destructive to the eyesight."

"I dare say my sight will last my time, papa," the young lady replied
carelessly; "but it's very kind of you to think of it, and I won't read
any more."

Mr. Sheldon made no reply to this observation. He sat looking at the
fire, with that steady gaze which was habitual to him--the gaze of the
man who plans and calculates.

"My dear," he said by-and-by, "it seems that this money to which you may
or may not be entitled is more than we thought at first; in fact, it
appears that the sum is a considerable one. I have been, and still am,
particularly anxious to guard against disappointment on your part, as I
know the effect that such a disappointment is apt to produce upon a
person's life. The harassing slowness of Chancery proceedings is
proverbial; I am therefore especially desirous that you should not count
upon this money."

"I shall never do that, papa. I should certainly like a fine edition of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica for Valentine, by-and-by, as he says that is
essential for a literary man; and a horse, for people say literary men
ought to take horse exercise. But beyond that--"

"We need scarcely go into these details, my dear. I want you to
understand the broad facts of the case. While, on the one hand, our
success in obtaining the inheritance which we are about to claim for you
is uncertain, on the other hand the inheritance is large. Of course, when
I presented you with the sum of five thousand pounds, I had no idea of
this possible inheritance."

"O, of course not, papa."

"But I now find that there is such a possibility as your becoming
a--well--a rich woman."

"O papa!"

"In which case I may conclude that your mother would benefit in some
measure from your good fortune."

"Can you doubt that, papa? There should be no measure to her benefit from
any money obtained by me."

"I do not doubt that, my dear. And it is with that idea that I wish to
make a proposition to you--for your mother's possible advantage."

"I shall be happy to do anything you wish, papa."

"It must be done as a spontaneous act of your own, Charlotte, not in
accordance with any wish of mine."

"What is it that I am to do?" asked Charlotte.

"Well, my dear, you see it is agreed between us that if you do get this
money, your mother is certain to benefit considerably. But unhappily the
proceedings are likely to drag on for an indefinite time; and in the
course of that time it comes within the limits of possibility that your
decease may precede that of your mother."

"Yes, papa."

"In which case your mother would lose all hope of any such advantage."

"Of course, papa."

Charlotte could not help thinking that there was something sordid in this
discussion--this calculation of possible gain or loss contingent on her
fresh young life. But she concluded that it was the nature of business
men to see everything from a debased standpoint, and that Mr. Sheldon was
no more sordid than other men of his class.

"Well, papa?" she asked presently, after some moments of silence, during
which she and her stepfather had both been absorbed in the contemplation
of the fire.

"Well, my dear," replied Mr. Sheldon slowly, "I have been thinking that
the natural and easy way of guarding against all contingencies would be
by your effecting an insurance on your life in your mother's favour."

"No, no, papa!" cried Charlotte, with unwonted vehemence; "I would rather
do anything than that!"

"What can be your objection to such a very simple arrangement?"

"I dare say my objection seems foolish, childish even, papa; but I really
have a horror of life assurances. I always think of papa--my own poor
father, whom I loved so dearly. It seemed as if he put a price upon his
life for us. He was so anxious to insure his life--I remember hearing him
talk of it at Hyley, when I was a child--to make things straight, as he
said, for us; and, you see, very soon afterwards he died."

"But you can't suppose the insurance of his life had anything to do with
his death?"

"Of course not, I am not so childish as that; only--"

"Only you have a foolish lackadaisical prejudice against the only means
by which you can protect your mother against a contingency that is so
remote as to be scarcely worth consideration. Let it pass."

There was more anger in the tone than in the words. It was not that angry
tone, but the mention of her mother, that impressed Miss Halliday. She
began to consider that her objections were both foolish and selfish.

"If you really think I ought to insure my life, I will do so," she said
presently. "Papa did as much for those he loved; why should I be less
thoughtful of others?"

Having once brought Miss Halliday to this frame of mind, the rest was
easy. It was agreed between them that as Valentine Hawkehurst was to be
kept in ignorance of his betrothed's claim to certain moneys now in the
shadowy under-world of Chancery, so he must be kept in ignorance of the
insurance.

It was only one more secret, and Charlotte had learned that it was
possible to keep a secret from her lover.

"I suppose before we are married I shall able to tell him everything?"
she said.

"Certainly, my dear. All I want is to test his endurance and his
prudence. If the course of events proves him worthy of being trusted, I
will trust him."

"I am not afraid of that, papa."

"Of course not, my dear. But, you see, I have to protect your interests;
and I cannot afford to see this gentleman with your eyes. I am compelled
to be prudent."

The stockbroker sighed as he said this--a sigh of utter weariness.
Remorse was unknown to him; the finer fibres upon which that chord is
struck had not been employed in the fabrication of his heart. But there
is a mental fatigue which is a spurious kind of remorse, and has all the
anguish of the nobler feeling. It is an utter weariness and prostration
of spirit--a sickness of heart and mind--a bitter longing to lie down and
die--the weariness of a beaten hound rather than of a baffled man.

This was what Mr. Sheldon felt, as the threads of the web which he was
weaving multiplied, and grew daily and hourly more difficult of
manipulation. Success in the work which he had to do depended on so many
contingencies. Afar off glittered the splendid goal--the undisputed
possession of the late John Haygarth's hundred thousand pounds; but
between the schemer and that chief end and aim of all his plottings what
a sea of troubles! He folded his arms behind his head, and looked across
the girlish face of his companion into the shadow and the darkness. In
those calculations which were for ever working themselves out in this
man's brain, Charlotte Halliday was only one among many figures. She had
her fixed value in every sum; but her beauty, her youth, her innocence,
her love, her trust, made no unit of that fixed figure, nor weighed in
the slightest degree with him who added up the sum. Had she been old,
ugly, obnoxious, a creature scarcely fit to live, she would have
represented exactly the same amount in the calculations of Philip
Sheldon. The graces that made her beautiful were graces that he had no
power to estimate. He knew she was a pretty woman; but he knew also that
there were pretty women to be seen in any London street; and the
difference between his stepdaughter and the lowest of womankind who
passed him in his daily walks was to him little more than a social
prejudice.

The insurance business being once decided on, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in
putting it into execution. Although he made a point of secrecy as
regarded Mr. Hawkehurst, he went to work in no underhand manner, but
managed matters after a Highly artistic and superior fashion. He took his
stepdaughter to the offices of Greenwood and Greenwood, and explained her
wishes to one of those gentlemen in her presence. If he dwelt a little
more on Miss Halliday's anxiety for her mother's pecuniary advantage than
his previous conversation with Miss Halliday warranted, the young lady
was too confiding and too diffident to contradict him. She allowed him to
state, or rather to imply, that the proposed insurance was her
spontaneous wish, an emanation of her anxious and affectionate heart, the
natural result of an almost morbid care for her mother's welfare.

Mr. Hargrave Greenwood, of Greenwood and Greenwood, seemed at first
inclined to throw cold water on the proposition, but after some little
debate, agreed that extreme caution would certainly counsel such a step.

"I should imagine there was no better life amongst the inhabitants of
London," he said, "than Miss Shel--pardon me--Miss Halliday's. But, as
the young lady herself suggests, 'in the midst of life we are--'; and, as
the young lady herself has observed, these things are--ahem--beyond
human foresight. If there were any truth in the aphorisms of poets, I
should say Miss Halliday cannot insure too quickly; for the remark of
Cowper--or, stay, I believe Pope--'whom the gods love die young,' might
very well be supposed to apply to so charming a young lady. Happily, the
secretaries of insurance offices know very little about the poets,
unless, indeed, Miss Halliday were to go to the Royal Widow's and
Orphan's Hope, the secretary of which is the author of dramas that may
fairly rank with the works of Knowles and Lytton."

Mr. Greenwood, an elderly gentleman of the ponderous and port-wine
school, laughed at his own small jokes, and took things altogether
pleasantly. He gave Mr. Sheldon a letter of introduction to the secretary
of his pet insurance company, the value of which to that gentleman was
considerable. Nor was this the only advantage derived from the interview.
The lawyer's approval of the transaction reassured Charlotte; and though
she had heard her own views somewhat misrepresented, she felt that an
operation which appeared wise in the sight of such a lawyer, standing on
such a Turkey hearthrug, commanding such gentlemanly-looking clerks as
those who came and went at Mr. Greenwood's bidding, must inevitably be a
proceeding at once prudent and proper.

The business of the insurance was not quite so easy as the interview with
the lawyer. The doctor to whom Miss Halliday was introduced seemed very
well satisfied with that young lady's appearance of health and spirits,
but in a subsequent interview with Mr. Sheldon asked several questions,
and shook his head gravely when told that her father had died at
thirty-seven years of age. But he looked less grave when informed that
Mr. Halliday had died of a bilious fever.

"Did Mr. Halliday die in London?" he asked.

"He did."

"I should like--ahem--if it were possible, to see the medical man who
attended him. These fevers rarely prove fatal unless there is some
predisposing cause."

"In this case there was none."

"You speak rather confidently, Mr. Sheldon, as a non-professional man."

"I speak with a certain amount of professional knowledge. I knew Tom
Halliday for many years."

Mr. Sheldon forebore to state that Tom Halliday had died in his house,
and had been attended by him. It is, perhaps, only natural that Philip
Sheldon, the stockbroker of repute, should wish to escape identification
with Philip Sheldon, the unsuccessful dentist of Bloomsbury.

After a little more conversational skirmishing, the confidential
physician of the Prudential Step Assurance Company agreed to consider
that Mr. Halliday's constitution had been in no manner compromised by his
early death, and to pass Charlotte's life. The motives for effecting the
insurance were briefly touched upon in Mr. Greenwood's letter of
introduction, and appeared very proper and feasible in the eyes of the
directors; so, after a delay of a few days, the young lady found herself
accepted, and Mr. Sheldon put away among his more important papers a
large oblong envelope, containing a policy of assurance on his
stepdaughter's life for five thousand pounds. He did not, however, stop
here, but made assurance doubly sure by effecting a second insurance upon
the same young life with the Widow's and Orphan's Hope Society, within a
few days of the first transaction.




Book the Sixth.



DIANA IN NORMANDY.



CHAPTER I.


AT CÔTENOIR.

Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 15, 186--.

My darling Lotta,--As you extorted from me a solemn pledge that I would
write you a full and detailed account of my adventures, I seat myself in
Mademoiselle Lenoble's pretty little turret-chamber, in the hope of
completing the first instalment of my work before papa or Gustave summons
me to prepare for a drive and visit to the Convent of the Sacred Heart,
which, I believe, has been planned for to-day.

What am I to tell you, dear, and how shall I begin my story? Let me
fancy myself sitting at your feet before your bedroom fire, and you
looking down at me with that pretty inquisitive look in your dear grey
eyes. Do you know that M. Lenoble's eyes are almost the colour of yours,
Lotta? You asked me a dozen questions about his eyes the other day, and I
could give you no clear description of them; but yesterday, as he stood
at the window looking out across the garden, I saw their real colour. It
is grey, a deep clear grey, and his lashes are dark, like yours. How
shall I begin? That is the grand difficulty! I suppose you will want to
know something even about the journey. Everything was very pleasant, in
spite of the cold blusterous March weather. Do you know what my last
journey was like, Lotta? It was the long dreary journey from Forêtdechêne
to St. Katharine's Wharf, when Mr. Hawkehurst advised and arranged my
return to England. I had been sitting quite alone in a balcony
overlooking the little town. It was after midnight, but the lights were
still burning: I can see the lamplit windows shining through the night
mist as I write this, end the sense of the hopeless misery of that time
comes back to me like the breath of some freezing wind. I can find no
words to tell you how desolate I was that night, or how hopeless.

I dared not think of my future life; or of the next day, that was to be
the beginning of that hopeless future. I was obliged to bind my thoughts
to the present and all its dreariness; and a kind of dull apathetic
feeling, which was too dull for despair, took possession of me that
night. While I was sitting there Mr. Hawkehurst came to me, and told me
that my father had become involved in a quarrel, under circumstances of a
very shameful nature, which I need not tell you, darling. He recommended
me to leave Forêtdechêne--indeed, almost insisted that I should do so. He
wanted to rescue me from that miserable life. Your lover had noble and
generous impulses even then, you see, dear; at his worst he was not all
bad, and needed only your gentle influence to purify and elevate his
character. He gave me all the money he possessed to pay the expenses of
my journey. Ah, what a dreary journey! I left Forêtdechêne in the chill
daybreak, and travelled third class, with dreadful Belgians who smelt of
garlic, to Antwerp. I slept at a very humble inn near the quay, and
started for England by the Baron Osy at noon next day. I cannot tell you
how lonely I felt on board the steamer. I had travelled uncomfortably
before, but never without my father and Valentine--and he had been always
kind to me. If we were shabbily dressed, and people thought ill of us, I
did not care. The spirit of Bohemianism must have been very strong with
me in those days. I remembered how we had sat together on the same boat
watching the sleepy shores of Holland, or making fun of our respectable
fellow-passengers. Now I was quite alone. People stared at me rudely and
unkindly, as I thought. I could not afford to dine or breakfast with the
rest; and I was weak enough to feel wounded by the idea that people would
guess my motive for shunning the savoury banquets that sent up such
horrid odours to the deck where I sat, trying to read a tattered
Tauchnitz novel. And the end of my journey? Ah, Charlotte, you can never
imagine what it is to travel like that, without knowing whether there is
any haven, any shelter for you at the end of your wanderings! I knew that
at a certain hour we were to arrive at St. Katharine's Dock, but beyond
that I knew nothing. I counted my money. There was just enough to pay for
a cab that would carry me to Hyde Lodge. I should land there penniless.
And what if my cousin Priscilla should refuse to receive me? For a moment
I fancied even that possible; and I pictured myself walking about London,
hungry and homeless.

This was my last journey. I have dwelt upon it longer than I need have
done; but I want you to understand what it is that makes Gustave Lenoble
dear to me. If you could feel the contrast between the past and the
present as I felt it when I stood on the deck of the Dover packet with
him by my side, you would know why I love him, and am grateful to him. We
stood side by side, watching the waves and talking of our future, while
my father enjoyed a nap in one of the little deck cabins. To Gustave that
future seems very bright and clear; to me it seems unutterably strange
that the future _can_ be anything but a dismal _terra incognita_, from
the contemplation of which it is wise to refrain.

Papa stays with Gustave at Côtenoir; but it had been arranged for me to
visit Mademoiselle Lenoble, Gustave's aunt, at Beaubocage, and to remain
with her during my stay in Normandy. I at once understood the delicate
feeling which prompted this arrangement. We dined at Rouen, and came to
Vevinord in a coach. At Vevinord a queer little countrified vehicle met
us, with a very old man, of the farm-servant class, as coachman. Gustave
took the reins from the old man's hand and drove to Beaubocage, where
Mademoiselle Lenoble received me with much cordiality. She is a dear old
lady, with silvery bands of hair neatly arranged under the prettiest of
caps. Her gown is black silk, and her collar and cuffs of snowy
whiteness; everything about her exquisitely neat, and of the fashion of
twenty, or perhaps thirty, years ago.

And now, I suppose, you will want to know what Beaubocage is like. Well,
dear, much as I admire Mademoiselle Lenoble, I must confess that her
ancestral mansion is neither grand nor pretty. It might have made a very
tolerable farmhouse, but has been spoiled by the architect's
determination to make it a château. It is a square white building, with
two pepper-castor-like turrets, in one of which I write this letter.
Between the garden and the high road there is a wall, surmounted with
plaster vases. The garden is for the greater part utilitarian; but in
front of the salon windows there is a grassplot, bordered by stiff
gravel-walks, and relieved by a couple of flower-beds. A row of tall
poplars alone screens the house from the dusty high road. At the back of
it there is an orchard; on one side a farmyard; behind the orchard lie
the fields that compose the farm of Beaubocage and the paternal estate of
the Lenoble family. All around the country is very flat. The people seem
to be kind and simple, and devotedly attached to "Mademoiselle." There is
a rustic peacefulness pervading everything which, for me, stands instead
of beauty.

I am hypocrite enough to pretend to be pleased with everything, for I can
perceive how anxiously M. Lenoble watches me in order to discover whether
I like his native country. He was not born at Beaubocage, but in Paris.
Mademoiselle Lenoble told me the story of his childhood, and how she
brought him to Beaubocage, when quite a little fellow, from Rouen, where
his father died. About his mother there seems to have been some mystery.
Mademoiselle told me nothing of this, except that her brother, Gustave
the elder, made a love-match, and thereby offended his father. She has
the little crib in which her nephew, Gustave the younger, slept on the
night of his coming. It had been his father's little bed thirty years
before. She shed tears as she told me the story, and how she sat and
watched by the little fellow as he cried himself to sleep with his head
lying on her arm, and the summer moonlight shining full upon his face.

I was deeply touched by her manner as she told me these things; and I
think, if I had not already learned to love M. Lenoble, I should love him
for the sake of his aunt. She is charming; a creature so innocent and
pure, that one considers one's words in speaking to her, almost as if she
were a child. She is about forty years older than I; yet for worlds I
would not tell her of the people and the scenes I have beheld at foreign
watering-places and gambling-rooms. She has spent the sixty years of her
life so completely out of the world, that she has retained the freshness
and sweetness of her youth untainted in the least degree. Can there be
magical philtre equal to this--a pure unselfish life, far away from the
clamour of cities?

The old servant who waits upon me is seventy-five years of age, and
remembers Ma'amselle Cydalise from her childhood. She is always singing
the praises of her mistress, and she sees that I like to hear them. "Ah,
ma'amselle," she said to me, "to marry a Lenoble is to marry one of the
angels. I will not say that the old seigneur was not hard towards his
son. Ah, yes, but it was a noble heart. And the young monsieur--that one
who died in Rouen, the Poor!--ah, that he was kind, that he was gracious!
What of tears, what of regrets, when the Old chased him!"

My position is quite recognised. I think the very cowboy in the
farmyard--a broad-shouldered lad, with a good-natured mindless face, and
prodigious wooden shoes like clumsy canoes--even the cowboy knows that I
am to be Madame Lenoble of Côtenoir. Côtenoir is the Windsor Castle of
this district; Beaubocage is only Frogmore. Yes, dear, the bond is signed
and sealed. Even if I did not love M. Lenoble, I have bound myself to
marry him; but I do love him, and thank him with all my heart for having
given a definite end and aim to my life. Don't think I underrate your
kindness, darling; I know that I should never want a home while you could
give me one. But 'tis hard to be a hanger-on in any household; and
Valentine will exact all his sweet young wife's love and care.

I have written you a letter which I am sure will require double postage;
so I will say no more except goodbye. Take care of yourself, dear one.
Practise your part in our favourite duets; remember your morning walk in
the garden; and don't wear out your eyes over the big books that Mr.
Hawkehurst is obliged to read.

Ever your affectionate

DIANA.

       *       *       *       *       *

_From Charlotte Halliday to Diana Paget_.

The dullest house in Christendom, Monday.

EVER DEAREST Di,--Your letter was a welcome relief to the weariness
of my existence. How I wish I were with you! But that is too bright a
dream. I am sure I should idolise Beaubocage. I should not mind the
dismal row of poplars, or the flat landscape, or the dusty road, or
anything, so long as it was not like Bayswater. I languish for a change,
dear. I have seen so little of the world, except the dear moorland
farmhouse at Newhall. I don't think I was ever created to be "cabined,
cribbed, confined," in such a narrow life as this, amid such a dull,
unchanging round of daily commonplace. Sometimes, when the cold spring
moon is shining over the tree-tops in Kensington-Gardens, I think of
Switzerland, and the snow-clad mountains and fair Alpine valleys we have
read of and talked of, until my heart aches at the thought that I may
never see them; and to think that there are people in whom the word
'Savoy' awakes no fairer image than a cabbage! Ah, my poor dear! isn't it
almost wicked of me to complain, when _you_ have had such bitter
experience of the hard cruel world?

I am quite in love with your dear Mademoiselle Lenoble; almost as deeply
as I am in love with your magnanimous, chivalrous, generous,
audacious--everything ending in _ous_--Monsieur Lenoble.

How dare you call him M. Lenoble, by the bye? I have counted the
occasions on which you write of him in your nice long letter, and for one
Gustave there are half a dozen M. Lenobles. It must be Gustave in future
to me, remember.

What shall I tell you, dear? I have nothing to tell, really nothing. To
say that I wish you were with me is only to confess that I am very
selfish; but I _do_ wish for you, dear--my friend and adopted sister,
my old school companion, from whom, willingly, I have never concealed
one thought.

Valentine called on Tuesday afternoon; but I have nothing to tell you
even about him. Mamma dozed in her corner after her cup of tea, and Val
and I sat by the fire talking over our future, just like you and M.
Lenoble on board the Calais boat. How much engaged people find to say
about the future! Is it our love that makes it seem so bright, so
different from all that has gone before? I cannot fancy life with
Valentine otherwise than happy. I strive to picture trials, and fancy
myself in prison with him, the wind blowing in at broken windows, the
rain coming through the dilapidated roof and pattering on the carpetless
floor; but the most dismal picture I can paint won't seem dismal if his
figure is a part of it. We would stop the broken windows with rags and
paper, we would wipe up the rain with our pocket-handkerchiefs, and sit
side by side and talk of the future, as we do now. Hope could never
abandon us while we were together. And then, sometimes, while I am
looking at Valentine, the thought that he might die comes to me suddenly,
like the touch of an icy hand upon my heart.

I lie awake at night sometimes thinking of this, and of papa's early
death. He came home one night with a cold, and from that hour grew worse
until he died. Ah, think what misery for a wife to suffer! Happily for
mamma, she is not capable of suffering intensely. She was very sorry, and
even now when she speaks of papa she cries a little; but the tears don't
hurt her. I think, indeed, they give her a kind of pleasure.

See, dear, what a long egotistical letter I have written, after all. I
will say no more, except that while I am delighted to think of your
pleasure among new friends and new scenes, my selfish heart still longs
for the hour that is to bring you back to me.

Pray tell me all you can about your daughters that are to be.

Ever and ever your loving CHARLOTTE.

       *       *       *       *       *

_From Diana Paget to Charlotte Halliday_.

Beaubocage, near Vevinord, March 30, 186--.

MY DEAR LOTTA,--In three days more I hope to be with you; but I suppose,
in the meantime, I must keep my promise, and send you a faithful account
of my life here. Everyone here is more kind to me than words can tell;
and I have nothing left to wish for, except that you were here to be
delighted, as I am sure you would be, with the freshness and the
strangeness of everything. If I ever do become Madame Lenoble--and even
yet I _cannot_ picture to myself that such a thing will be--you must come
to Côtenoir, you and Valentine. I was taken through every room in the old
château the day before yesterday, and I fixed in my own mind upon the
rooms I will give you, if these things come to pass. They are very old
rooms, and I can fancy what strange people must have lived in them, and
died in them perhaps, in the days that are gone. But if you come to them,
they shall be made bright and pretty, and we will chase the shadows of
the mediaeval age away. There are old pictures, old musical instruments,
quaint spindle-legged chairs and tables, tapestries that crumble as you
touch them--the ashes and relics of many generations. Gustave says we
will sweep these poor vestiges away, and begin a new life, when I come to
Côtenoir; but I cannot find it in my heart to obliterate every trace of
those dead feet that have come and gone in all the dusky passages of my
future home.

And now I must tell you about my daughters that are to be--my daughter
that is, I may say of the elder--for I love her so well already that no
breach between Gustave and me could rob her of my affection. She is the
dearest, most loving of creatures; and she reminds me of you! I dare say
you will laugh at this, dear; and, mind, I do not say that Clarice
Lenoble is actually like you in complexion or feature--those common
attributes which every eye can see; the resemblance is far more subtle.
There is a look in this dear girl's face, a smile, an I-know-not-what,
which every now and then recalls your own bright countenance. You will
say this is mere fancy--and that is what I told myself at the first; but
I found afterwards that it is no fancy, but really one of those vague,
indefinable, accidental likenesses which one perceives so often. To me it
seems a very happy accident; for my first glance at my daughter's face
told me that I should love her for your sake.

We went to the convent the day before yesterday. It is a curious old
place, and was once a stately château, the habitation of a noble family.
A little portress, in the black robes of a lay sister, admitted us, and
conducted us to the parlour, a fine old room, decorated with pictures of
a religious character, painted by members of the sisterhood. Here Gustave
and I were received by the superioress, an elderly woman, with a mild
holy face, and a quiet grace of manner which might become a duchess. She
sent for the demoiselles Lenoble, and after a delay of a quarter of an
hour--you remember the toilet the girls at Hyde Lodge were obliged to
make before they went to the drawing-room, Lotta--Mademoiselle Lenoble
came, a tall, slim, lovely and lovable girl, who reminded me of the
dearest friend I have in this world. She ran to her papa first, and
saluted him with an enthusiastic hug; and then she stood for a moment
looking shyly at me, confused and doubtful. It was only for a moment
she was left in doubt. Gustave bent down to whisper something in her
ear--something for which his letters had in some manner prepared her. The
fair young face brightened, the clear grey eyes looked up at me with a
sweet affectionate gaze, and she came to me and kissed me. "I shall love
you very much," she whispered. "And I love you very much already," I
answered, in the same confidential manner. And I think these few words,
that one pretty confiding look in her innocent eyes, made a tie between
us that it would take much to loosen. Ah, Lotta, what a wide gulf between
the Diana Paget who landed alone at St. Katharine's Wharf, in the dim
cheerless dawn, and uncertain where to find a shelter in all that busy
city, and the same creature redeemed by your affection, and exalted by
the love and trust of Gustave Lenoble!

After this my second daughter appeared--a pretty young hoyden, with
lovable clinging ways; and then the superioress asked if I would like to
see the garden. Of course I said yes; and we were taken through the long
corridors, out into a fine old garden, where the pupils, who looked like
the Hyde Lodge girls translated into French, were prancing and scampering
about in the usual style. After the garden we went to the chapel, where
there were more pictures, and flower-bedecked altars, and pale twinkling
tapers burning here and there in the chill sunlight. Here there were
damsels engaged in pious meditation, from five years old upwards. They
send even the little ones to meditate, Clarice tells me; and there are
these infants kneeling before the flower-bedecked altars, rapt in
religious contemplation, like so many Thomas à Kempises. The young
meditators glanced shyly at us as we passed. When they had shown me
everything of special interest in the pleasant old place, Clarice and
Madelon ran off to dress for walking, in order to accompany us to
Côtenoir, where we were to dine.

It was quite a family party. Mademoiselle Lenoble was there, and papa. He
arrived at the château while Gustave and I were paying our visit to the
convent. He is in the highest spirits, and treats me with an amount of
affection and courtesy I have not been accustomed to receive at his
hands. Of course I know the cause of this change; the future mistress of
Côtenoir is a very different person from that wretched girl who was
nothing to him but a burden and an encumbrance. But even while I despise
him I cannot refuse to pity him. One forgives anything in old age. In
this, at least, it is a second childhood; and my father is very old,
Lotta. I saw the look of age in his face more plainly at Côtenoir, where
he assumed his usual _debonnaire_ man-of-the-world tone and manner, than
I had seen it in London, when he was a professed invalid. He is much
changed since I was with him at Forêtdechêne. It seems as if he had kept
Time at bay very long, and now at last, the common enemy will be held at
arm's-length no longer. He still braces himself up in the old military
manner, still holds himself more erect than many men of half his age;
but, in spite of all this, I can see that he is very feeble; shaken and
worn by a long life of difficulty. I am glad to think that there will he
a haven for him at last; and if I did not thank Gustave with my whole
heart for giving me a home and a place in the world, I should thank him
for giving a shelter to my father.

And now, dear, as I hope to be with you so very soon, I shall say no
more. I am to spend a day in Rouen before we come back--papa and I, that
is to say; Gustave stays in Normandy to make some arrangements before he
comes back to England. I cannot comprehend the business relations between
him and papa; but there is some business going on--law business, as it
seems to me--about which papa is very important and elated.

I am to see the cathedral and churches at Rouen, and I shall contrive to
see the shops, and to bring you something pretty. Papa has given me
money--the first he ever gave me unasked. I have very little doubt it
comes from Gustave; but I have no sense of shame in accepting it. M.
Lenoble's seems to me a royal nature, formed to bestow benefits and
bounties on every side.

Tell Mrs. Sheldon that I shall bring her the prettiest cap I can find in
Rouen; and,

with all love, believe me ever your affectionate
DIANA.




BOOK THE SEVENTH.



A CLOUD OF FEAR.


CHAPTER I.

THE BEGINNING OF SORROW.

Who heeds the cloud no bigger than a man's hand amidst a broad expanse of
blue ether? The faint, scarce perceptible menace of that one little cloud
is lost in the wide brightness of a summer sky. The traveller jogs on
contented and unthinking, till the hoarse roar of stormy winds, or the
first big drops of the thunder-shower, startle him with a sudden
consciousness of the coming storm.

It was early May, and the young leaves were green in the avenues of
Kensington Gardens; Bayswater was bright and gay with fashionable people;
and Mrs. Sheldon found herself strong enough to enjoy her afternoon drive
in Hyde Park, where the contemplation of the bonnets afforded her
perennial delight.

"I think they are actually smaller than ever this year," she remarked
every season; and every season the headgear of fashionable London did
indeed seem to shrink and dwindle, "fine by degrees, and beautifully
less." The coalscuttle-shaped headdress of our grandmothers had not yet
resolved itself into a string of beads and a rosebud in these days, but
was obviously tending thitherward.

Charlotte and Diana accompanied Mrs. Sheldon in her drives. The rapture
of contemplating the bonnets was not complete unless the lady had some
sympathising spirit to share her delight. The two girls were very well
pleased to mingle in that brilliant crowd, and to go back to their own
quiet life when the mystic hour came, and that bright vision of colour
and beauty melted into the twilight loneliness. It had seemed just
lately, however, as if Charlotte was growing a little weary of the
gorgeous spectacle--the ever-changing, ever-splendid diorama of West End
life. She no longer exclaimed at the sight of each exceptional toilette;
she no longer smiled admiringly on the thoroughbred horses champing their
bits in the immediate neighbourhood of her bonnet; she no longer gave a
little cry of delight when the big drags came slowly along the crowded
ranks, the steel bars shining as they swung loosely in the low afternoon
sunlight, the driver, conscious of his glory, grave and tranquil, with
the pride that apes humility.

"See, Lotta," said Miss Paget, upon an especially bright May evening, as
one of these gorgeous equipages went past Mr. Sheldon's landau, "there's
another drag. Did you see it?"

"Yes, dear, I saw it."

"And are you tired of four-in-hands? You used to admire them so much."

"I admire them as much as ever, dear."

"And yet you scarcely gave those four splendid roans a glance."

"No," Charlotte answered, with a faint sigh.

"Are you tired, Lotta?" Miss Paget asked, rather anxiously. There was
something in Charlotte's manner of late that had inspired her with a
vague sense of anxiety; some change which she could scarcely define--a
change so gradual that it was only by comparing the Charlotte of some
months ago with the Charlotte of the present that she perceived how real
a change it was. The buoyancy and freshness, the girlish vivacity of Miss
Halliday's manner, were rapidly giving place to habitual listlessness.
"Are you tired, dear?" she repeated, anxiously; and Mrs. Sheldon looked
round from her contemplation of the bonnets.

"No, Di, dearest, not tired; but--I don't feel very well this afternoon."

This was the first confession which Charlotte Halliday made of a sense of
weakness and languor that had been creeping upon her during the last two
months, so slowly, so gradually, that the change seemed too insignificant
for notice.

"You feel ill, Lotta dear?" Diana asked.

"Well, no, not exactly ill. I can scarcely call it illness; I feel rather
weak--that is really all."

At this point Mrs. Sheldon chimed in, with her eyes on a passing bonnet
as she spoke.

"You see, you are so dreadfully neglectful of your papa's advice, Lotta,"
she said, in a complaining tone. "Do _you_ like pink roses with mauve
areophane, Diana? I do not. Look at that primrose tulle, with dead
ivy-leaves and scarlet berries, in the barouche. I dare say you have not
taken your glass of old port this morning, Charlotte, and have only
yourself to thank if you feel weak."

"I did take a glass of port this morning, mamma. I don't like it; but I
take it every morning."

"Don't like old tawny port, that your papa bought at the sale of a bishop
of somewhere? It's perfectly absurd of you, Lotta, to talk of not liking
wine that cost fifteen shillings a bottle, and which your papa's friends
declare to be worth five-and-thirty."

"I am sorry it is so expensive, mamma; but I can't teach myself to think
it nice," answered Charlotte, with a smile that sadly lacked the
brightness of a few weeks ago. "I think one requires to go into the City,
and become a merchant or a stockbroker, before one can like that sort of
wine. What was it Valentine quoted in the _Cheapside_, about some lady
whom somebody loved?--'To love her was a liberal education.' I think to
like old port is a commercial education."

"I am sure such wine _ought_ to do you good," said Georgy, almost
querulously. She thought this bright blooming creature had no right to be
ill. The headaches, and little weaknesses and languors and ladylike
ailments, were things for which she (Georgy) had taken out a patent; and
this indisposition of her daughter's was an infringement of copyright.

"I dare say the port will do me good, mamma, in time. No doubt I shall be
as strong as that person who strangled lions and snakes and dogs with
incalculable heads, and all that kind of thing."

"I really wish you would not talk in that absurd manner, my dear," said
Mrs. Sheldon with offended dignity. "I think you really cannot be too
grateful for your papa's kind thoughtfulness and anxiety about you. I am
sure I myself am not so anxious as he is; but of course his medical
knowledge makes him doubly careful. Six weeks ago he noticed that you
wanted strength--tone is what he calls it. 'Georgina,' he said to me,
'Charlotte wants tone. She is beginning to stoop in a really lamentable
manner: we must make her take port or bark, or something of a
strengthening kind.' And then a day or two afterwards he decided on port,
and gave me the key of the cellar--which is a thing he rarely gives out
of his own hands--and told me the number of the bin from which I was to
take the wine--some old wine that he had laid by on purpose for some
special occasion; and no one is to have it but you, and you are to take a
glass daily at eleven o'clock. Mr. Sheldon is most particular about the
hour. The regularity of the thing is half the battle in these cases, he
says; and I am sure if you do not observe his wishes and mine, Charlotte,
it will be really ungrateful of you."

"But, dear mamma, I do observe Mr.--papa's wishes. I take my glass of
port every morning at eleven. I go to your cupboard in the breakfast-room
and take out my special decanter, and my special glass, in the most
punctiliously precise manner. I don't like the wine, and I don't like the
trouble involved in the ceremony of drinking it; but I go through it most
religiously, to please you and papa."

"And do you mean to say that you do not feel stronger after taking that
expensive old port regularly for nearly six weeks.

"I am sorry to say that I do not, mamma. I think if there is any change,
it is that I am weaker."

"Dear, dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheldon captiously, "you are really a
most extraordinary girl."

Mrs. Sheldon could almost have found it in her heart to say, a most
ungrateful girl. There did seem a kind of ingratitude in this futile
consumption of old port at fifteen shillings a bottle.

"I'll tell you what it is, Lotta," she said presently, "I am convinced
that your illness--or your weakness--is all fancy."

"Why so, mamma?"

"Because, if it were real weakness, that old port must have made you
stronger. And the fact that the port does you no good, is a proof that
your weakness is only fancy. Girls of your age are so full of fancies.
Look at me, and the martyrdom I go through with my nervous headaches,
which perfectly prostrate me, after the least worry or excitement. The
nerves of my head, after going into the butcher's book, are perfect
agony. When you come to have a house to look after, and find what it is
to have the same saddle of mutton charged for twice over, with the most
daring impudence--or to have capers and currie-powder, that you _know_
you've never had, staring at you from every page of your grocer's book,
and nothing but your memory between you and utter ruin--you'll discover
what it is to be really ill."

In this easy manner did Mrs. Sheldon dismiss the subject of her daughters
illness. But it was not so easily dismissed by Diana Paget, who loved her
friend with a profound and pure affection, than which no sister's love
was ever warmer or stronger. Even Valentine's preference for this happy
rival had not lessened Diana's love for her friend and benefactress. She
had been jealous of Charlotte's happier fate: but in the hour when this
jealousy was most bitter there had been no wavering in her attachment to
this one true and generous friend.

Miss Paget was very silent during the homeward drive. She understood now
what that change had been in her friend which until now had so perplexed
her. It was a decay of physical strength which had robbed Lotta's smile
of its brightness, her laugh of its merry music. It was physical languor
that made her so indifferent to the things which had once awakened her
girlish enthusiasm. The discovery was a very painful one. Diana
remembered her experience of Hyde Lodge: the girls who had grown day by
day more listless, now in the doctor's hands for a day or two, now well
again and toiling at the old treadmill round of study, now sinking into
confirmed invalids; until the bitter hour in which parents are summoned,
and the doctor urges rest, and the fond mother carries her darling home,
assured that home comfort and tenderness will, speedily restore her. Her
schoolfellows cluster round the carriage to bid her "good-bye until next
half," full of hopeful talk about her swift recovery. But when the
vacation is over, and Black Monday comes, she is not amongst the
returning scholars. Has she not gone up to the higher school, and
answered _Adsum_ to the call of the Great Master?

Diana remembered these old experiences with cruel pain.

"Girls, as bright and lovable as she is, have drooped and faded away,
just when they seem brightest and happiest," she thought as she watched
Charlotte, and perceived to-day for the first time that the outline of
her fair young cheek had lost its perfect roundness.

But in such a case love can do nothing except watch and wait. That night,
in the course of that girlish talk in Charlotte's bedroom, which had
become a habit with the two girls, Diana extorted from her friend a full
account of the symptoms which had affected her within the last few weeks.

"Pray don't look so anxious, dear Di," she said gaily; "it is really
nothing worth talking of; and I knew that if I confessed to feeling ill
you and mamma would straightway begin to worry yourselves about me. I
have felt a little sick and faint sometimes; and now and then a sudden
dizziness has come over me. It is nothing of any consequence, and it
passes away very quickly. Sometimes I have a kind of torpid languid
feeling, which is scarcely unpleasant, only strange, you know. But what
does it all amount to, except that I am nervous?"

"You must have change of air, Lotta," said Diana resolutely, "and change
of scene. Yes, no doubt you are nervous. You have been kept almost a
prisoner in the house through Mr. Sheldon's punctilious nonsense. You
miss our brisk morning walks in the Gardens, I dare say. If you were to
go to Yorkshire, now, to your friends at Newhall, you would like that
change, dear, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, I should dearly like to see Aunt Dorothy and uncle Joe; but--"

"But what, darling?"

"I should scarcely like being at Newhall, unless--you'll think me very
foolish, Di--unless Valentine was with me. We were so happy there, you
see, dear; and it was there he first told me he loved me. No, Di, I
couldn't bear Newhall without him."

"Poor Aunt Dorothy, poor uncle Joe! feathers when weighed in the scale
against a young man whom their niece has known less than a twelvemonth!"

No more was said about Charlotte's illness; Diana was too prudent to
alarm her friend by any expression of uneasiness. She adopted a cheering
tone, and the conversation drifted into other channels.

While Diana's concern for her friend's altered health was yet a new
feeling, she found herself called upon to attend her father once more
in the character of a ministering angel. And this time Captain Paget's
illness was something more than gout. It was, according to his
doctors--he had on this occasion two medical attendants--a general
breaking up of the system. The poor old wanderer,--the weary Odysseus,
hero of so many trickeries, such varied adventures,--laid himself down to
rest, within view of the Promised Land for which his soul yearned.

He was very ill. Gustave Lenoble, who came back to London, did not
conceal from Diana that the illness threatened to end fatally. At his
instigation the Captain had been removed from Omega Street to pleasant
lodgings at the back of Knightsbridge Road, overlooking Hyde Park. This
was nearer Bayswater, and it was very pleasant for the fading old
worldling. He could see the stream of fashion flowing past as he sat in
his easy-chair, propped up with pillows, with the western sunlight on his
face. He pointed out the liveries and armorial bearings; and told many
scandalous and entertaining anecdotes of their past and present owners to
Gustave Lenoble, who devoted much of his time to the solacement of the
invalid. Everything that affection could do to smooth this dreary time
was done for the tired Ulysses. Pleasant books were read to him; earnest
thoughts were suggested by earnest words; hothouse flowers adorned his
cheerful sitting-room; hothouse fruits gladdened his eye by their rich
warmth of colour, and invited his parched lips to taste their cool
ripeness. Gustave had a piano brought in, so that Diana might sing to her
father in the dusky May evenings, when it should please him to hear her.
Upon the last feeble footsteps of this old man, whose life had been very
selfish and wicked, pity waited with a carefulness so fond and tender
that he might well mistake it for love. Was it fair that his last days
should be so peaceful and luxurious, when many a good man falls down to
die in the streets, worn out with the life-long effort to bear the burden
laid upon his weary shoulders? In the traditions of the Rabbins it is
written that those are the elect of God who suffer His chastisement in
the flesh. For the others, for those who on earth drain the goblet of
pleasure, and riot in the raptures of sin, for them comes the dread
retribution after death. They are plunged in the fire, and driven before
the wind; they take the shape of loathsome reptiles, and ascend by
infinitesimal degrees through all the grades of creation, until their
storm-tost wearied degraded souls re-enter human semblance once more. But
even then their old stand-point is not yet regained; their dread penance
not yet performed. As men they are the lowest and worst of men; slaves
toiling in the desert; dirt to be trampled under the feet of their
prosperous brethren. Inch by inch the wretched soul regains its lost
inheritance; cycles must elapse before the awful sentence is fulfilled.

Our Christian faith knows no such horrors. Even for the penitent of the
eleventh hour there is promise of pardon. The most earnest desire of
Diana's heart was that her father should enroll himself amongst those
late penitents--those last among the last who crowd in to the marriage
feast, half afraid to show their shame-darkened faces in that glorious
company.

If we forgive all things to old age, so much the more surely do we
forgive all injuries to the fading enemy. That she had suffered much
cruelty and neglect at the hands of her father, was a fact that Diana
could not forget, any more than she could forget the name which he had
given her. It was a part of her life not to be put off or done away with.
But in these last days, with all her heart she forgave and pitied him.
She pitied him for the crooked paths into which his feet had wandered at
the very outset of life, and from which so weak a soul could find no
issue. She pitied him for that moral blindness which had kept him
pleasantly unconscious of the supreme depth of his degradation--a social
Laplander, who never having seen a western summer, had no knowledge that
his own land was dark and benighted.

Happily for Diana and her generous lover, the Captain was not a
difficult penitent. He was indeed a man who, having lost the capacity
and the need for sin, took very kindly to penitence, as a species of
sentimental luxury.

"Yes, my dear," he said complacently--for even in the hour of his
penitence he insisted on regarding himself as a social martyr--"my life
has been a very hard one. Fortune has not been kind to me. In the words
of the immortal bard, my lines have _not_ been set in pleasant places. I
should have been glad if Providence had allowed me to be a better father
to you, a better husband to your poor mother--a better Christian, in
fact--and had spared me the repeated humiliation of going through the
Insolvent Debtors' Court. It is not always easy to understand the justice
of these things: and it has often appeared to me that something of the
favouritism which is the bane of our governments on earth must needs
obtain at a higher tribunal. One man enters life with an entailed estate
worth seventy thousand a-year, while another finds himself in the hands
of the Jews before he is twenty years of age. 'There's something in this
world amiss shall be unriddled by-and-by,' as the poet observes. The
circumstances of my own existence I have ever regarded as dark and
enigmatic. And, indeed, the events of this life are altogether
inexplicable, my love. There is that fellow Sheldon, now, who began
life as a country dentist, a man without family or connections,
who--well, I will not repine. If I am spared to behold my daughter
mistress of a fine estate, although in a foreign country, I can depart in
peace. But you must have a house in town, my dear. Yes, London must be
your head-quarters. You must not be buried alive in Normandy. There is no
place like London. Take the word of a man who has seen the finest
Continental cities, and lived in them--that is the point, my love--lived
in them. For a fine afternoon in the beginning of May, an apartment in
the Champs Elysées, or the Boulevard, is an earthly paradise; but the
Champs Elysées in a wet December--the Boulevard in a sweltering August!
London is the only spot upon earth that is never intolerable. And your
husband will be a rich man, my dear girl, a really wealthy man; and you
must see that he makes a fitting use of his wealth, and does his duty to
society. The parable of the Talents, which you were reading to me this
afternoon, is a moral lesson your husband must not forget."

After this fashion did the invalid discourse. Gustave and Diana perceived
that he still hoped to have his share in their future life, still looked
to pleasant days to come in a world which he had loved, not wisely, but
too well. Nor could they find it in their hearts to tell him that his
journey was drawing to a close, and that on the very threshold of the
peaceful home which his diplomatic arts had helped to secure, he was to
abandon life's weary race.

They indulged his hopes a little, in order to win him the more easily to
serious thoughts; but though at times quite ready to abandon himself to a
penitential mood that was almost maudlin, there were other times when the
old Adam asserted himself, and the Captain resented this intrusion of
serious subjects as a kind of impertinence.

"I am not aware that I am at my last gasp, Diana," he said with dignity,
on one of these occasions; "or that I need to be talked to by my own
daughter as if I were on my deathbed. I can show you men some years my
senior driving their phaetons-and-pairs in that Park. The Gospel is all
very well in its place--during Sunday-morning service, and after morning
prayers, in your good old county families, where the household is large
enough to make a fair show at the end of the dining-room, without
bringing in hulking lads who smell of the stables: but I consider that
when a man is ill, there is a considerable want of tact in bringing the
subject of religion before him in any obtrusive manner."

Thus the Captain alternated from sentimental penitence to captious
worldliness, during may days and weeks. The business of the Haygarthian
inheritance was progressing slowly, but surely. Documents were being
prepared, attested copies of certificates of marriages, births, baptisms,
and burials were being procured, and all was tending towards the grand
result. Once, and sometimes twice a week, M. Fleurus came to see Captain
Paget, and discussed the great affair with that invalid diplomatist. The
Captain had long ago been aware that in entering upon an alliance with
that gentleman, he had invoked the aid of a coadjutor likely to prove too
strong for him. The event had justified his fears. M. Fleurus had
something of Victor Hugo's famous _Poulpe_ in his nature. Powerful as
flexible were the arms he stretched forth to grasp all prizes in the way
of heirs-at-law and disputed heritages, unclaimed railway-stock, and
forgotten consols. If the Captain had not played his cards very cleverly,
and contrived to obtain a personal influence over Gustave Lenoble, he
might have found himself thrust entirely out of the business by one of
the Frenchman's gelatinous arms. Happily for his own success, however,
the Captain did obtain a strong hold upon Gustave. This enabled him to
protect his own interests throughout the negotiation, and to keep the
insidious Fleurus at bay.

"My good friend," he said, in his grand Carlton-House manner, "I am bound
to protect the interests of my friend M. Lenoble, in any agreement to be
entered upon in this matter. I cannot permit M. Lenoble's generosity or
M. Lenoble's inexperience to be imposed upon. My own interests are of
secondary importance. That I expect to profit by the extraordinary
discovery made by me--by ME--alone and unaided, I do not affect to deny.
But I will not profit at the expense of a too generous friend."

"And what recompense am I to have for my work--a work at once painful and
impoverishing?" asked the little Frenchman, with an angry and suspicious
look. "Do you believe that I do that to amuse me? To run the streets, to
go by here, by there, in hunting the papers of that marriage, or this
baptism? Believe you that is so agreeable, Monsieur the Captain? No; I
desire to be paid for my work. I must have my part in the heritage which
I have help to win."

"It is not won yet. We will talk of your recompense by-and-by."

"We will talk of it this instant--upon the field. It must that I
comprehend where I am in this affair. I will not of mystifications, of
prevarications, of lies--"

"M. Fleurus!" cried the Captain, with a hand stretched towards the bell.

"You will sound--you will chase me! Ah, but no!--you cannot afford to
chase me yet. I have to find more papers of baptisms and burials. Go,
then, we will talk of this affair as friends."

This friendly talk ended in Captain Paget's complete victory. M. Fleurus
consented to accept his costs out of pocket in the present, and three per
cent, of the heritage in the future. It was further agreed that the
Captain should select the English attorney who should conduct M.
Lenoble's case in the Court of Chancery.

This conversation occurred at Rouen, and a day or two afterwards the
necessary document was drawn up. Gustave pledged himself to pay over a
fourth share of the Haygarthian fortune to Horatio Paget, and three
per cent, upon the whole amount to Jean François Fleurus. The document
was very formal, very complete; but whether such an agreement would
hold water, if Gustave Lenoble should choose to contest it, was open
to question.

The solicitor to whom Horatio Paget introduced M. Lenoble was a Mr.
Dashwood, of the firm of Dashwood and Vernon; a man whom the Captain had
known in the past, and from whom he had received good service in some of
the most difficult crises of his difficult career. To this gentleman he
confided the conduct of the case; and explained his apprehensions with
regard to the two Sheldons.

"You see, as the case now stands, they think they have the claimant to
this money in Miss Halliday--Sheldon's stepdaughter. But if they got an
inkling of Susan Meynell's marriage--and, in point of fact--the actual
state of the case--they might try to get hold of my friend, Gustave
Lenoble. They could _not_ get hold of him, mind you, Dashwood, but they
would try it on, and I don't want trying on of that kind."

"Of course not. I know Sheldon, of Gray's Inn. He is rather--well, say
_shady_. That's hardly an actionable epithet, and it expresses what I
mean. Your friend's case seems to me tolerably clear. That little
Frenchman is useful, but officious. It is not a speculative affair, I
suppose? There is money to meet the current expenses of the business?"

"Yes, there is money. Within reasonable limits my friend is prepared to
pay for the advancement of his claims."

After this the Haygarthian business progressed, slowly, quietly. The work
was up to this point underground work. There were still papers
wanting--final links of the chain to be fitted together; and to the
fitting of these links Messrs. Dash and Vernon devoted themselves, in
conjunction with M. Fleurus.

This was how matters stood when Captain Paget drooped and languished, and
was fain to abandon all active share in the struggle.



CHAPTER II.


FADING.

While the invalid in the pleasant lodgings overlooking Hyde Park
grew day by day weaker, there was a change as marked in the bright
young creature whose loving spirit had first brought the influence of
affection to bear upon Diana Paget's character. Charlotte Halliday was
ill--very ill. It was with everyday increasing anxiety that Diana watched
the slow change--slow in its progress, but awfully rapid to look back
upon. The pain, the regret, with which she noted her father's decay were
little indeed compared with the sharp agony which rent her heart as she
perceived the alteration in this dear friend, the blighting of this fair
young flower.

That the withered leaves of autumn should fall is sad, but natural, and
we submit to the gloomy inevitable fact of decay and death. But to see
our rose of roses, the pride and glory of the garden, fade and perish in
its midsummer prime, is a calamity inexplicable and mysterious. Diana
watched her father's decline with a sense of natural sorrow and pity; but
there was neither surprise nor horror in the thought that for him the end
of all things was drawing nigh. How different was it with Charlotte--with
that happy soul for whom life and love wore their brightest smile, before
whose light joyous footsteps stretched so fair a pathway!

The illness, whatever it was--and neither Mr. Sheldon nor the portly and
venerable physician whom he called in could find a name for it--crept
upon the patient with stealthy and insidious steps. Dizziness, trembling,
faintness; trembling, faintness, dizziness; the symptoms alternated day
by day. Sometimes there was a respite of a few days; and Charlotte--the
youthful, the sanguine, the happy--declared that her enemy had left her.

"I am sure mamma is right, Di," she said on these occasions. "My nerves
are the beginning and end of the mischief; and if I could get the better
of my nerves, I should be as well as ever. I don't wonder that the idea
of my symptoms makes mamma almost cross. You see, she has been accustomed
to have the symptoms all to herself; and for me to plagiarise them, as it
were, must seem quite an impertinence. For a strong young thing like me,
you know, Di dear--who have only just broken myself of plunging
downstairs two and three steps at a time, and plunging upstairs in the
same vulgar manner--to intrude on mamma's shattered nerves, and pirate
mamma's low spirits, is utterly absurd and abominable; so I have resolved
to look my nerves straight in the face, and get the better of them."

"My darling, you will get the better of them if you try," said Diana, who
did at times beguile herself with the hope that her friend's ailments
were mental rather than bodily. "I dare say your monotonous life has
something to do with your altered health; you want change of scene,
dear."

"Change of scene, when I have you and Valentine! No, Di. It would
certainly be very nice to have the background shifted now and then; to
see Capability Brown's prim gardens melt into Alpine heights or
southern vineyards, or even into Russian steppes or Hungarian forests.
One does get a little tired of _toujours_ Bayswater; and Mr. Sheldon;
and crimped skate; and sirloin of beef, and the inevitable discussion as
to whether it is in a cannibal state of rawness or burnt to a cinder;
and the glasses of pale sherry; and the red worsted doyleys and blue
finger-glasses; and the almonds and raisins, and crisp biscuits, that
nobody ever eats; and the dreary, dreary funereal business of dinner,
when we all talk vapid nonsense, with an ever-present consciousness of
the parlourmaid. I am tired of the dull dinners, and of mamma's peevish
complaints about Ann Woolper's ascendancy downstairs; and of Mr.
Sheldon's perpetual newspapers, that crackle, crackle, crackle all the
evening through; and _such_ papers!--_Money Market Monitor, Stockholder's
Vade-Mecum_, and all sorts of dreadful things of that kind, with not so
much as an interesting advertisement in one of them. I used never to feel
these things an annoyance, you know, dear, till I made the acquaintance
of my nerves; but from the moment I allowed my nerves to get the better
of me, all these trifles have worried and excruciated me. But I am happy
with you, darling; and I am happy with Valentine. Poor Valentine!"

She pronounced his name with a sigh; and then, after a pause, repeated
mournfully, "Poor Valentine!"

"Why do you speak of him so sadly, dear?" asked Diana, very pale.

"Because--because we have planned such a happy life together, dear,
and--"

"Is that a thing to be sad about, darling?"

"And--if it should happen, after all, that we have to part, and he go on
alone, the world may seem so sad and lonely to him."

"Charlotte!" cried Diana, with a laugh that was almost choked by a sob,
"is this looking your nerves in the face? Why, my dear one, this is
indeed plagiarism of your mamma's low spirits. Lotta, you shall have
change of air; yes, I am determined on that. The stately physician who
came in his carriage the other day, and who looked at your tongue, and
said 'Ah!' and then felt your pulse and said 'Ah!' again, and then called
for pen-and-ink and wrote a little prescription, is not the doctor we
want for you. We want Dr. Yorkshire; we want the breezes from the
Yorkshire moors, and the smell of the farmyard, and our dear Aunt
Dorothy's sillabubs, and our uncle Joe to take us for long walks across
his clover-fields."

"I don't want to go to Newhall, Di. I couldn't bear to leave--him."

"But what is to prevent your meeting _him_ at the white gate this time,
as you met him last October? Might not accident take _him_ to Huxter's
Cross again? The archaeological work--of which we have heard no more, by
the bye--might necessitate further investigations in that district. If
you will go to Newhall, Lotta, I will pledge myself for Mr. Hawkehurst's
speedy appearance at the white gate you have so often described to me."

"My dearest Di, you are all kindness; but even if I were inclined to go
to Newhall, I doubt if mamma or Mr. Sheldon would like me to go."

"I am sure they would be pleased with any arrangement that was likely to
benefit your health. But I will talk to your mamma about it. I have set
my heart on your going to Newhall."

Miss Paget lost no time in carrying out her idea. She took possession of
Georgy that afternoon, while teaching her a new stitch in _tricot_, and
succeeded in impressing her with the conviction that change of air was
necessary for Charlotte.

"But you don't think Lotta really ill?" asked Mrs. Sheldon, nervously.

"I trust she is not really ill, dear Mrs. Sheldon; but I am sure she is
much changed. In talking to her, I affect to think that her illness is
only an affair of the nerves; but I sadly fear that it is something more
than that."

"But what is the matter with her?" exclaimed Georgy, with a, piteous air
of perplexity; "that is the question which I am always asking. People
can't be ill, you know, Diana, without having something the matter with
them; and that is what I can't make out in Charlotte's case. Mr. Sheldon
says she wants tone; the physician who came in a carriage and pair, and
ought to know what he is talking about, says there is a lack of vigour.
But what does that all amount to? I'm sure I've wanted tone all my life.
Perhaps there never was a creature so devoid of tone as I am; and the
internal sinking I feel just before luncheon is something that no one but
myself can realize. I dare say Lotta is not so strong as she might be;
but I do not see that she can be ill, unless her illness is something
definite. My poor first husband's illness, now, was the kind of thing
that any one could understand--bilious fever. The merest child knows what
it is to be bilious, and the merest child knows what it is to be
feverish. There can be nothing mysterious in bilious fever."

"But, dear Mrs. Sheldon," said Diana, gravely, "don't you think that the
weakness of constitution which rendered Charlotte's father liable to be
taken off in the prime of life by a fever is a weakness that Charlotte
may possibly have inherited?"

"Good heavens, Diana!" cried Georgy, with sudden terror; "you don't mean
to say that you think my Charlotte is going to die?"

It was but one step with Mrs. Sheldon from peevish incredulity to frantic
alarm; and Diana found it as difficult to tranquillise her newly-awakened
fears as it had been to rouse her from absolute apathy.

Change of air--yes, of course--Charlotte must have change of air that
instant. Let a cab be sent for immediately to take them to the terminus.
Change of air, of course. To Newhall--to Nice--to the Isle of Wight--to
Malta; Mrs. Sheldon had heard of people going to Malta. Where should they
go? Would Diana advise, and send for a cab, and pack a travelling bag
without an instant's delay? The rest of the things could be sent
afterwards. What did luggage matter, when Charlotte's life was at stake?

At this point a flood of tears happily relieved poor Georgy's excited
feelings, and then common sense and Diana Paget came to the rescue.

"My dear Mrs. Sheldon," she said, with a quiet cheerful tone that went
far to reassure the excited lady, "in the first place we must, above all
things, refrain from any appearance of alarm. Her illness may, after all,
be only an affair of the nerves; and there is certainly no cause for
immediate fear."

Georgy was tranquillised, and agreed to take matters quietly. She
promised to arrange Charlotte's departure for Newhall, with Mr. Sheldon,
that evening.

"Of course, you know, my dear, I like to consult him about everything,"
she said, apologetically. "It is a duty which one owes one's husband, you
know, and a duty which, as a young woman about to marry, I cannot too
much impress upon you; but in this case it is quite a matter of form: Mr.
Sheldon never has objected to Charlotte's going to Newhall, and he is not
likely to object now."

The event proved Mrs. Sheldon mistaken as to this matter. Georgy proposed
the visit to Newhall that evening, while the two girls were strolling
listlessly in the dusky garden, and Mr. Sheldon most decidedly rejected
the proposition.

"If she wants change of air--and Dr. Doddleson recommended nothing of the
kind--Newhall is not the place for her."

"Why not, dear?"

"It is too cold. Northerly aspect--no shelter--three hundred feet above
York minster."

"But Dorothy Mercer is such a kind motherly creature; she'd delight in
nursing Lotta."

"Yes," answered Mr. Sheldon, with a laugh, "and in quacking her. I know
what those good motherly creatures are when they get an excuse for dosing
some unhappy victim with their quack nostrums. If Charlotte went to
Newhall, Mrs. Mercer would poi--would make her ten times worse than
she is with old woman's remedies. Besides, as I said before, the place is
too cold. That is a conclusive argument, I suppose?"

He said this with some impatience of tone and manner. There was a haggard
look in his face, a hurried harassed manner pervading him this evening,
which had been growing upon him of late. Georgy was too slow of
perception to remark this; but Diana Paget had remarked it, and had
attributed the change in the stockbroker's manner to a blending of two
anxieties.

"He is anxious about money matters," she had said to herself, "and he is
anxious about Charlotte's health. His lips, moving in whispered
calculations, as he sits brooding by the fire, tell me of the first
anxiety; his eyes, wandering furtively to his step-daughter's face every
now and then, tell me of the second."

This furtive anxiety of Mr. Sheldon's increased Diana Paget's anxiety.
This man, who had a certain amount of medical knowledge, could no doubt
read the diagnostics of that strange insidious illness, which had, as
yet, no name, Diana, furtively watching his furtive looks, told herself
that he read of danger.

"If Charlotte wants change of air, let her go to Hastings," he said;
"that is the kind of place for an invalid. I want rest myself; and
there's such utter stagnation in the City nowadays that I can very well
afford to give myself a holiday. We'll run down to Hastings, or the
immediate neighbourhood of Hastings, for a week or two."

"O Philip, how kind and considerate you are! I am sure, as I was
observing to Miss Paget only today, you--"

"Ah, by the bye, there's Miss Paget. Is it absolutely necessary that Miss
Paget should go to Hastings with us?"

"Well, dear, you see she has so kindly desired to remain with me for the
quarter, so as to give me time to turn round, you know, with regard to
caps and summer things, and so on--for, really, she has such taste, and
does strike out such excellent ideas about turning, and dipping, and
dyeing, that I don't know what will become of me when she leaves us; and
it would look so pointed to--"

"Yes; she had better go with us. But why all this fuss about Charlotte?
Who put it into your head that she wants change of air?"

Mr. Sheldon evidently considered it an established fact that any idea in
his wife's head must needs have been put there by someone or other.

"Well, you see, Diana and I were talking of Lotta this afternoon, and
Diana quite alarmed me."

"How so?" asked Mr. Sheldon, with a quick frown.

"Why, she said it was evident, by the fact of poor dear Tom's dying of a
fever, that his constitution must have been originally weak. And she said
that perhaps Charlotte had inherited Tom's weak constitution--and
frightened me dreadfully."

"There is no occasion for you to be frightened; Charlotte will get on
very well, I dare say, with care. But Miss Paget is a very sensible
young woman, and is right in what she says. Charlotte's constitution is
not strong."

"O Philip!" said Georgy, in a faint wailing voice.

"I dare say she will live to follow you and me to our graves," said Mr.
Sheldon, with a hard laugh. "Ah, here she is!"

Here she was, coming towards the open window near which her stepfather
sat. Here she was, pale and tired, with her sauntering walk, dressed in
white, and spectral in the gloaming. To the sad eyes of her mother she
looked like a ghost. To the eyes of Philip Sheldon, a man not prone to
poetic fancies, she looked even more ghostlike.



CHAPTER III.


MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS.

Since the beginning of her illness, Charlotte Halliday had been the
object and subject of many anxious thoughts in the minds of several
people. That her stepfather had his anxieties about her--anxieties which
he tried to hide--was obvious to the one person in the Bayswater villa
who noted his looks, and tried to read the thoughts they indicated.

Mrs. Sheldon's alarm, once fairly awakened, was not to be lulled to rest.
And in Valentine Hawkehurst's heart there was an aching pain--a dull dead
load of care, which had never been lightened from the hour when he first
perceived the change in his dear one's face.

There was one other person, an inhabitant of the Bayswater villa, who
watched Charlotte Halliday at this time with a care as unresting as the
care of mother or stepfather, bosom friend or plighted lover. This person
was Ann Woolper. Mrs. Woolper had come to the villa prepared to find in
Miss Halliday a frivolous self-satisfied young person, between whom and
an old broken-down woman like herself there could be no sympathy. She had
expected to be contemptuously--or, at the best, indifferently--entreated
by the prosperous well-placed young lady, whom Mr. Sheldon had spoken of
as a good girl, as girls go; a vague species of commendation, which, to
the mind of Mrs. Woolper, promised very little.

As clearly as Philip Sheldon dared express his wishes with regard to
Charlotte Halliday, he had expressed them to Ann Woolper. What he would
fain have said, was, "Watch my stepdaughter, and keep me well acquainted
with every step she takes." Thus much he dared not say; but by
insinuating that Tom Halliday's daughter was frivolous and reckless, and
that her lover was not to be trusted, he had contrived to put Mrs.
Woolper on the _qui vive_.

"Mr. Philip's afraid she may go and marry this young man on the sly,
before he's got the means to support a wife," she said to herself, as she
meditated upon the meaning of her master's injunctions; "and well he may
be. There's no knowing what young women are up to nowadays; and the more
innocent and inexperienced a young woman is, the more she wants looking
after. And Miss Georgy Craddock always was a poor fondy, up to naught but
dressing herself fine, and streaming up and down Barlingford High Street
with her old schoolfellows. Such as she ain't fit to be trusted with a
daughter; and Mr. Philip knows that. He always was a deep one. But I'm
glad he looks after Missy: there's many men, having got fast hold of th'
father's brass, would let th' daughter marry Old Scratch, for the sake of
gettin' rid of her."

This is how Mrs. Woolper argued the matter. She came of a prudent race;
and anything like prudence seemed to her a commendable virtue. She wished
to think well of her master; for her he had been a Providence in the hour
of calamity and old age. Where else could she look, if not to him? And to
suspect him, or think ill of him, was to reject the one refuge offered to
her distress. A magnanimous independence of spirit is not an easy virtue
for the old and friendless and poor. The drowning wretch will scarcely
question the soundness of the plank that sustains him upon the
storm-tossed billows; nor was Mrs. Woolper inclined to question the
motives of the man to whom she now owed her daily bread.

It is possible that before invoking Mrs. Woolper from the ashes of the
past to take her seat by the hearthstone of the present, Mr. Sheldon may
have contemplated the question of her return in all its bearings, and
may have assured himself that she was his own, by a tie not easily
broken--his bond-slave, fettered hand and foot by the bondage of
necessity.

"What choice can she have, except the choice between my house and the
workhouse?" he may naturally have asked himself; "and is it likely she
will quarrel with her bread-and-butter in order to fall back upon dry
bread?" Mr. Sheldon, contemplating this and all other questions from his
one unchanging standpoint, may reasonably have concluded that Mrs.
Woolper would do nothing opposed to her own interests; and that so long
as it suited her interest to remain at the Lawn, and to serve him, she
would there remain, his docile and unquestioning slave.

The influence of affection, the force of generous impulse, were qualities
that did not come into Mr. Sheldon's calculations upon this subject. His
addition and subtraction, division and multiplication, were all based on
one system.

That happy and unconscious art by which Charlotte Halliday made herself
dear to all who knew her had a speedy effect upon the old housekeeper.
The girl's amiable consideration for her age and infirmities; the pretty
affectionate familiarity with which she treated this countrywoman, who
had known her father, and who could talk to her of Yorkshire and
Yorkshire people, soon made their way to Nancy Woolper's heart of hearts.
For Miss Halliday to come to the housekeeper's room with some message
from her mother, and to linger for a few minutes' chat, was a delight to
Mrs. Woolper. She would have detained the bright young visitant for hours
instead of minutes, if she could have found any excuse for so doing. Nor
was there any treason against Mr. Sheldon in her growing attachment to
his stepdaughter. Whenever Nancy spoke of that master and benefactor, she
spoke with unfeigned gratitude and affection.

"I nursed your step-papa as a baby, Miss Halliday," she said very often
on these occasions. "You wouldn't think, to look at him now, that he ever
was _that_, would you? But he was one of the finest babies you could wish
to see--tall, and strong, and with eyes that pierced one through, they
were so bright and big and black. He was rather stubborn-spirited with
his teething; but what baby isn't trying at such times? I had rare work
with him, I can tell you, Miss, walking him about of nights, and jogging
him till there wasn't a jog left in me, as you may say, from sleepiness.
I often wonder if he thinks of this now, when I see him looking so grave
and stern. But, you see, being jogged doesn't impress the mind like
having to jog; and though I can bring that time back as plain as if it
was yesterday, with the very nursery I slept in at Barlingford, and the
rushlight in a tall iron cage on the floor, and the shadow of the cage on
the bare whitewashed walls--it's clean gone out of his mind, I dare say."

"I'm afraid it has, Nancy."

"But, O, I was fond of him, Miss Halliday; and what I went through with
him about his teeth made me only the fonder of him. He was the first baby
I ever nursed, you see, and the last; for before Master George came to
town I'd taken to the cooking, and Mrs. Sheldon hired another girl as
nurse; a regular softy _she_ was, and it isn't her fault that Master
George has got anything christian-like in the way of a back, for the way
she carried that blessed child used to make my blood run cold."

Thus would Mrs. Woolper discourse whenever she had a fair excuse for
detaining Miss Halliday in her comfortable apartment. Charlotte did not
perceive much interest in these reminiscences of Mr. Sheldon's infancy,
but she was much too kind to bring them abruptly to a close by any show
of impatience. When she could get Nancy to talk of Barlingford and Hyley,
and the people whom Charlotte herself had known as a child, the
conversation was really interesting; and these recollections formed a
link between the old woman and the fair young damsel.

When the change arose in Charlotte's health and spirits, Mrs. Woolper was
one of the first to perceive it. She was skilled in those old woman's
remedies which Mr. Sheldon held in such supreme contempt, and she would
fain have dosed the invalid with nauseous decoctions of hops, or
home-brewed quinine. Charlotte appreciated the kindness of the intent,
but she rebelled against the home-brewed medicines, and pinned her faith
to the more scientific and less obnoxious preparations procured from the
chemist's.

For some time Nancy made light of the girl's ailments, though she watched
her with unfailing attention.

"You ain't a-done growing yet, miss, I'll lay," she said.

"But I'm more than twenty-one, Nancy. People don't grow after they're of
age, do they?"

"I've known them as have, miss; I don't say it's common, but it has been
done. And then there's the weakness that comes after you've done growing.
Girls of your age are apt to be faint and lollopy-like, as you may say;
especially when they're stived up in a smoky place like London. You ought
to go to Hyley, miss, where you was born; that's the place to set you
up."

The time had come when the change was no longer matter for doubt. Day by
day Charlotte grew weaker and paler; day by day that bright and joyous
creature, whose presence had made an atmosphere of youth and gladness
even in that prim dwelling-place, receded farther into the dimness of
the past; until to think of what she had been seemed like recalling the
image of the dead. Nancy marked the alteration with a strange pain, so
sharp, so bitter, that its sharpness and bitterness were a perpetual
perplexity to her.

"If the poor dear young thing is meant to go, there's no need for me to
fret about it all day long, and wake up sudden in the night with cold
water standing out upon my forehead at the thought of it. I haven't known
her six months; and if she is pretty and sweet-spoken, it's not my place
to give way at the thoughts of losing her. She's not my own flesh and
blood; and I've sat by to watch them go, times and often, without feeling
as I do when I see the change in her day after day. Why should it seem so
dreadful to me?"

Why indeed? This was a question for which Mrs. Woolper could find no
answer. She knew that the pain and horror which she felt were something
more than natural, but beyond this point her thoughts refused to travel.
A superstitious feeling arose at this point, to usurp the office of
reason, and she accounted for the strangeness of Miss Halliday's illness
as she might have done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been
liable to the suspicion of nocturnal careerings on broomsticks.

"I'm sorry Mr. Philip's house should be unlucky to that sweet young
creature," she said to herself. "It was unlucky to the father; and now it
seems as if it was going to be unlucky to the daughter. And Mr. Philip
won't be any richer for her death. Mrs. Sheldon has told me times and
often that all Tom Halliday's money went to my master when she married
him, and he has doubled and trebled it by his cleverness. Miss
Charlotte's death wouldn't bring him a sixpence."

This was the gist of Mrs. Woolper's meditations very often nowadays. But
the strange sense of perplexity, the nameless fear, the vague horror,
were not to be banished from her mind. A sense of some shapeless presence
for ever at her side haunted her by day and night. What was it? What did
its presence portend? It was as if a figure, shrouded from head to foot,
was there, dark and terrible, at her elbow, and she would not turn to
meet the horror face to face. Sometimes the phantom hand lifted a corner
of the veil, and the shade said, "Look at me! See who and what I am! You
have seen me before. I am here again! and this time you shall not refuse
to meet me face to face! I am the shadow of the horror you suspected in
the past!"

The shadowy fears which oppressed Mrs. Woolper during this period did not
in any way lessen her practical usefulness. From the commencement of
Charlotte's slow decline she had shown herself attentive, and even
officious, in all matters relating to the invalid. With her own hands she
decanted the famous port which Georgy fetched from the particular bin in
Mr. Sheldon's carefully arranged cellar. When the physician was called
in, and wrote his harmless little prescription, it was Mrs. Woolper who
carried the document to the dispensing chemist, and brought back the
innocent potion, which might, peradventure, effect some slight good, and
was too feeble a decoction to do any harm. Charlotte duly appreciated all
this kindness; but she repeatedly assured the housekeeper that her
ailments were not worthy of so much care.

It was Mrs. Woolper whom Mr. Sheldon employed to get lodgings for the
family, when it had been ultimately decided that a change to the seaside
was the best cure for Miss Halliday.

"I am too busy to go to Hastings myself this week," he said; "but I
shall be prepared to spend a fortnight there after next Monday. What I
want you to do, Nancy, is to slip down tomorrow, with a second-class
return-ticket, and look about for a nice place for us. I don't care about
being in Hastings; there's too much cockneyism in the place at this time
of year. There's a little village called Harold's Hill, within a mile or
so of St. Leonard's--a dull, out-of-the-way place, but rustic and
picturesque, and all that kind of thing--the sort of place that women
like. Now, I'd rather stay at that place than at Hastings. So you can
take a fly at the station, drive straight to Harold's Hill, and secure
the best lodgings you can get."

"You think as the change of air will do Miss Halliday good?" asked Mrs.
Woolper anxiously, after she had promised to do all her kind master
required of her.

"Do I think it will do her good? Of course I do. Sea-air and
sea-bathing will set her up in no time; there's nothing particular the
matter with her."

"No, Mr. Philip; that's what bothers me about the whole thing. There's
nothing particular the matter with her; and yet she pines and dwindles,
and dwindles and pines, till it makes one's heart ache to see her."

Philip Sheldon's face darkened, and he threw himself back in his chair
with an impatient movement. If he had chosen to do so, he could have
prevented that darkening of his face; but he did not consider Mrs.
Woolper a person of sufficient importance to necessitate the regulation
of his countenance. What was she but an ignorant, obstinate old woman,
who would most probably perish in the streets if he chose to turn her out
of doors? There are men who consider their clerks and retainers such very
dirt, that they would continue the forging of a bill of exchange, or
complete the final touches of a murder, with a junior clerk putting coals
on the fire, or an errand-boy standing cap in hand on the threshold of
the door. They cannot realize the fact that dirt such as this is flesh
and blood, and may denounce them by-and-by in a witness-box.

Of all contingencies Mr. Sheldon least expected that this old woman could
prove troublesome to him--this abject wretch, whose daily bread depended
on his will. He could not imagine that there are circumstances under
which such abject creatures will renounce their daily bread, and die of
hunger, rather than accept the means of life from one hateful hand.

"If you want to know anything about Miss Halliday's illness," he said in
his hardest voice, and with his hardest look, "you had better apply to
Dr. Doddleson, the physician who has prescribed for her. I do not attend
her, you see, and I am in no way responsible for her health. When I was
attending her father you favoured me by doubting my skill, if I judged
rightly as to your tone and manner on one occasion. I don't want to be
brought to book by you, Mrs. Woolper, about Miss Halliday's altered looks
or Miss Halliday's illness; I have nothing to do with either."

"How should I think you had, sir? Don't be angry with me, or hard upon
me, Mr. Phil. I nursed you when you was but a baby, and you're nearer and
dearer to me than any other master could be. Why, I have but to shut my
eyes now, and I can feel your little hand upon my neck, as it used to lie
there, so soft and dear. And then I look down at the hand on the table,
strong and dark, and clenched so firm, and I ask myself, Can it be the
same? For the sake of that time, Mr. Phil, don't be hard upon me. There's
nothing I wouldn't do to serve you; there's nothing you could do that
would turn me from you. There's no man living in this world, sir, that
oughtn't to be glad to know of one person that nothing can turn from
him."

"That's a very fine sentiment, my good soul," replied Mr. Sheldon coolly;
"but, you see, it's only an _ex parte_ statement; and as the case stands
there is no opportunity for the display of those fine feelings you talk
about. You happen to want a home in your old age, and I happen to be able
to give you a home. Under such circumstances, your own good sense will
show you that all sentimental talk about standing by me, and not turning
away from me, is absolute bosh."

The old woman sighed heavily. She had offered her master a fidelity which
involved the abnegation of all impulses of her own heart and mind, and he
rejected her love and her service. And then, after the first dreary sense
of his coldness, she felt better pleased that it should be so. The man
who spoke to her in this harsh uncompromising way could have no cause to
fear her. In the mind of such a man there could surely be no secret
chamber within which she had, with his knowledge, almost penetrated.

"I won't trouble you any more, sir," she said mournfully. "I dare say I'm
a foolish old woman."

"You are, Nancy. We don't get wiser as we grow older, you see; and when
we let our tongues wag, we're apt to talk nonsense. The quieter you keep
your tongue, the better for yourself, in more ways than one. To a useful
old woman about the place I've no objection; but a chattering old woman I
will not have at any price."

After this everything was settled in the most agreeable manner. Nancy
Woolper's journey to Hastings was fully arranged; and early the next
morning she started, brisk and active, in spite of her sixty-eight years
of age. She returned at night, having secured very pleasant lodgings at
the village of Harold's Hill.

"And a very sweet place it is, my dear Miss Lotta," she said to Charlotte
the next day, when she described her adventures. "The apartments are at a
farmhouse overlooking the sea; and the smell of the cows under your
windows, and the sea-breezes blowing across the farmyard, can't fail to
bring the colour back to your pretty cheeks, and the brightness back to
your pretty eyes."



CHAPTER IV.


VALENTINE'S SKELETON.

The idea of this visit to the Sussex village by the sea seemed delightful
to every one except Gustave Lenoble, who was still in town, and who
thought it a hard thing that he should be deprived of Diana's society
during an entire fortnight, for the sake of this sickly Miss Halliday.

For the rest, there was hope and gladness in the thought of this change
of dwelling. Charlotte languished for fresher breezes and more rustic
prospects than the breezes and prospects of Bayswater; Diana looked to
the sea-air as the doctor of doctors for her fading friend; and Valentine
cherished the same hope.

On Valentine Hawkehurst the burden of an unlooked-for sorrow had weighed
very heavily. To see this dear girl, who was the beginning, middle, and
end of all his hopes, slowly fading before his eyes, was, of all agonies
that could have fallen to his lot, the sharpest and most bitter. Not
Ugolino sitting silent amidst his famishing children--not Helen, when she
would fain that the tempest had swept her from earth's surface on that
evil day when she was born--not Penelope, when she cried on Diana, the
high-priestess of death, to release her from the weariness of her
days--not Agamemnon, when the fatal edict had gone forth, and his fair
young daughter looked into his face, and asked him if it was true that
she was to die--not one of these typical mourners could have suffered a
keener torture than that which rent this young man's heart, as he marked
the stealthy steps of the Destroyer drawing nearer and nearer the woman
he loved. Of all possible calamities, this was the last he had ever
contemplated. Sometimes, in moments of doubt or despondency, he had
thought it possible that poverty, the advice of friends, caprice or
inconstancy on the part of Charlotte herself, should sever them. But
among the possible enemies to his happiness he had never counted Death.
What had Death to do with so fair and happy a creature as Charlotte
Halliday? she who, until some two months before this time, might have
been the divine Hygieia in person--so fresh was her youthful bloom, so
buoyant her step, so bright her glances. Valentine's hardest penance was
the necessity for the concealment of his anxiety. The idea that
Charlotte's illness might be--nay, must be--for the greater part an
affair of the nerves was always paramount in his mind. He and Diana had
talked of the subject together whenever they found an opportunity for so
doing, and had comforted themselves with the assurance that the nerves
alone were to blame; and they were the more inclined to think this from
the conduct of Dr. Doddleson, on that physician's visits to Miss
Halliday. Mrs. Sheldon had been present on each occasion, and to Mrs.
Sheldon alone had the physician given utterance to his opinion of the
case. That opinion, though expressed with a certain amount of
professional dignity, amounted to very little. "Our dear young friend
wanted strength; and what we had to do was to give our dear young friend
strength--vital power. Yes--er--um, that was the chief point. And what
kind of diet might our dear young friend take now? Was it a light diet, a
little roast mutton--not too much done, but not underdone? O dear, no.
And a light pudding? what he would call--if he might be permitted to have
his little joke--a nursery pudding." And then the old gentleman had
indulged in a senile chuckle, and patted Charlotte's head with his fat
old fingers. "And our dear young friend's room, now, was it a large
room?--good! and what was the aspect now, south?--good again! nothing
better, unless, perhaps, south-west; but, of course, everyone's
rooms can't look south-west. A little tonic draught, and gentle daily
exercise in that nice garden, will set our dear young friend right again.
Our temperament is nervous we are a sensitive plant, and want care." And
then the respectable septuagenarian took his fee, and shuffled off to his
carriage. And this was all that Mrs. Sheldon could tell Diana, or Nancy
Woolper, both of whom questioned her closely about her interview with the
doctor. To Diana and to Valentine there was hope to be gathered from the
very vagueness of the physician's opinion. If there had been anything
serious the matter, the medical adviser must needs have spoken more
seriously. He came again and again. He found the pulse a little weaker,
the patient a little more nervous, with a slight tendency to hysteria,
and so on; but he still declared that there were no traces of organic
disease, and he still talked of Miss Halliday's ailments with a cheery
easy-going manner that was very reassuring.

In his moments of depression Valentine pinned his faith upon Dr.
Doddleson. Without organic disease, he told himself, his darling could
not perish. He looked for Dr. Doddleson's name in the Directory, and took
comfort from the fact of that physician's residence in a fashionable West
End square. He took further comfort from the splendour of the doctor's
equipage, as depicted to him by Mrs. Sheldon; and from the doctor's age
and experience, as copiously described by the same lady.

"There is only one fact that I have ever reproached myself with in
relation to my poor Tom," said Georgy, who, in talking to strangers of
her first husband, was apt to impress them with the idea that she was
talking of a favourite cat; "and that is, the youthfulness of the
doctor Mr. Sheldon employed. Of course I am well aware that Mr. Sheldon
would not have consulted the young man if he had not thought him
clever; but I could lay my head upon my pillow at night with a clearer
conscience if poor Tom's doctor had been an older and more experienced
person. Now, that's what I like about Dr. Doddleson. There's a gravity--a
weight--about a man of that age which inspires one with immediate
confidence. I'm sure the serious manner with which he questioned me about
Lotta's diet, and the aspect of her room, was quite delightful."

In Dr. Doddleson, under Providence, Valentine was fain to put his trust.
He did not know that the worthy doctor was one of those harmless
inanities who, by the aid of money and powerful connections, are
sometimes forced into a position which nature never intended them to
occupy. Among the real working men of that great and admirable
brotherhood, the medical profession, Dr. Doddleson had no rank; but he
was the pet physician of fashionable dowagers suffering from chronic
laziness or periodical attacks of ill-humour. For the spleen or the
vapours no one was a better adviser than Dr. Doddleson. He could afford
to waste half an hour upon the asking of questions which the fair
patient's maid might as well have asked, and the suggestions of remedies
which any intelligent abigail could as easily have suggested. Elderly
ladies believed in him because he was pompous and ponderous, lived in an
expensive neighbourhood, and drove a handsome equipage. He wore
mourning-rings left him by patients who never had anything particular the
matter with them, and who, dying of sheer old age, or sheer over-eating,
declared with their final gasp that Dr. Doddleson had been the guardian
angel of their frail lives during the last twenty years.

This was the man who, of all the medical profession resident in London,
Mr. Sheldon had selected as his stepdaughter's medical adviser in a case
so beyond common experience, that a man of wide practice and keen
perception was especially needed for its treatment.

Dr. Doddleson, accustomed to attribute the fancied ailments of
fashionable dowagers to want of tone, and accustomed to prescribe the
mildest preparations with satisfaction to his patients and profit to
himself dwelt upon the same want of tone, and prescribed the same
harmless remedies, in his treatment of Charlotte Halliday. When he found
her no better--nay, even worse--after some weeks of this treatment, he
was puzzled; and for one harmless remedy he substituted another harmless
remedy, and waited another week to see what effect the second harmless
remedy might have on this somewhat obstinate young person.

And this was the broken reed to which Valentine clung in the day of
his trouble.

Bitter were his days and sleepless were his nights in this dark period of
his existence. He went to the Bayswater villa nearly every day now. It
was no longer time for etiquette or ceremony. His darling was fading day
by day; and it was his right to watch the slow sad change, and, if it
were possible, to keep the enemy at arm's-length. Every day he came to
spend one too brief hour with his dear love; every day he greeted her
with the same fond smile, and beguiled her with the same hopeful talk. He
brought her new books and flowers, and any foolish trifle which he
fancied might beguile her thoughts from the contemplation of that
mysterious malady which seemed beyond the reach of science and Dr.
Doddleson. He sat and talked with her of the future--that future which in
their secret thoughts both held to be a sweet sad fable--the hyperborean
garden of their dreams. And after spending this too sweet, too bitter
hour with his beloved, Mr. Hawkehurst would diplomatise in order to have
a little talk with Diana as he left the house. Did Diana think his dear
girl better to-day, or worse--surely not worse? He had fancied she had
more colour, more of her old gaiety of manner. She had seemed a little
feverish; but that might be the excitement of his visit. And so on, and
so on, with sad and dreary repetition.

And then, having gone away from that house with an aching heart, the
young magazine-writer went back to his lodgings, and plunged into the
dashing essay or the smart pleasant story which was to constitute his
monthly contribution to the _Cheapside_ or the _Charing Cross_. Gaiety,
movement, rollicking, Harry Lorrequer-like spirits were demanded for the
_Cheapside_; a graceful union of brilliancy and depth was required for
the _Charing Cross_. And, O, be sure the critics lay in wait to catch the
young scribbler tripping! An anachronism here, a secondhand idea there,
and the _West End Wasp_ shrieked its war-whoop in an occasional note; or
the _Minerva_ published a letter from a correspondent in the Scilly
Islands, headed "Another Literary Jack Sheppard," to say that in his
"Imperial Dictionary" he had discovered with profound indignation a whole
column of words feloniously and mendaciously appropriated by the writer
of such and such an article in the _Cheapside_. While the sunlight of
hope had shone upon him, Mr. Hawkehurst had found the hardest work
pleasant. Was he not working for _her_ sake? Did not his future union
with that dear girl depend upon his present industry? It had seemed to
him as if she stood at his elbow while he wrote, as Pallas stood beside
Achilles at the council, invisible to all but her favourite. It was that
mystic presence which lent swiftness to his pen. When he was tired and
depressed, the thought of Charlotte had revived his courage and
vanquished his fatigue. Pleasant images crowded upon him when he thought
of her. What could be easier than for him to write a love-story? He had
but to create a shadowy Charlotte for his heroine, and the stream of
foolish lover's babble flowed from his pen perennial and inexhaustible.
To his reading she lent a charm and a grace that made the most perfect
poetry still more poetical. It was not Achilles and Helen who met on
Mount Ida, but Valentine and Charlotte; it was not Paolo and Francesca
who read the fatal book together, but Valentine and Charlotte, in an
unregenerate and mediaeval state of mind. The mere coincidence of a name
made the "Sorrows of Werter" delightful. The all-pervading presence was
everywhere and in everything. His religion was not Pantheism, but
Charlottism.

Now all was changed. A brooding care was with him in every moment. The
mystic presence was still close to him in every hour of his lonely days
and nights; but that image, which had been fair and blooming as the
incarnation of youth and spring-time, was now a pale shrouded phantom
which he dared not contemplate. He still wrote on--for it is marvellous
how the pen will travel and the mind will project itself into the
shadow-world of fancy while cankerous care gnaws the weary heart. Nay, it
is perhaps at these times that the imagination is most active; for the
world of shadows is a kind of refuge for the mind that dare not dwell
upon realities. Who can say what dull, leaden, care may have weighed down
the heart of William Shakespeare when his mind conceived that monster of
a poet's grand imaginings, Othello! There is the flavour of racking care
in that mighty creation. The strong soul wantonly tortured by a sordid
wretch; the noble spirit distraught, the honourable life wrecked for so
poor a motive; that sense of the "something in this world amiss," which
the poet, of all other creatures, feels most keenly.

With grief and fear as his constant companions, Valentine Hawkehurst
toiled on bravely, patiently. Hope had not deserted him; but between hope
and fear the contest was unceasing. Sometimes hope had the best of it for
a while, and the toiler comforted himself with the thought that this dark
cloud would pass anon from the horizon of his life; and then he counted
his gains, and found that the fruit of his labours was increasing
monthly, as his name gained rank among the band of young _littérateurs_.
The day when he might count upon that income which Mr. Sheldon demanded
as his qualification for matrimony did not appear far distant. Given a
certain amount of natural ability, and the industrious and indefatigable
young writer may speedily emerge from obscurity, and take his place in
the great army of those gallant soldiers whose only weapon is the pen.
Whatever good fortune had come to Valentine Hawkehurst he had worked for
with all honesty of purpose. The critics were not slow to remark that he
worked at a white-hot haste, and must needs be a shallow pretender
because he was laborious and indefatigable.

Before the beginning of Charlotte's slow decline he had fancied himself
the happiest of men. There were more deposit-receipts in his desk. The
nest-egg, about the hatching whereof there had been such cackling and
crowing some months ago, was now one of many eggs; for the hard-working
scribbler had no leisure in which to be extravagant, had he been so
minded. The purchase of a half-circlet of diamonds for his betrothed's
slim finger had been his only folly.

Charlotte had remonstrated with him on the impropriety of such an
extravagance, and had exacted from him a promise that this wild and
Monte-Christo-like course should be pursued no further; but she was very
proud of her half-hoop of diamonds nevertheless, and was wont to press it
tenderly to her lips before she laid it aside for the night.

"There must be no more such extravagance, sir," she said to her lover,
when he sat by her side twisting the ring round and round on her pretty
finger. Alas, how loose the ring had become since it had first been
placed there!

"Consider the future, Valentine," continued the girl, hopeful of mood
while her hand rested in his. "Do you suppose we can furnish our cottage
at Wimbledon if we rush into such wild expenses as diamond rings? Do you
know that _I_ am saving money, Valentine? Yes, positively. Papa gives me
a very good allowance for my dresses, and bonnets, and things, you know,
and I used to be extravagant and spend it all. But now I have become the
most miserly creature; and I have a little packet of money upstairs which
you shall put in the Unitas Bank with the rest of your wealth. Diana and
I have been darning, and patching, and cutting, and contriving, in the
most praiseworthy manner. Even this silk has been turned. You did not
think that, did you, when you admired it so?"

Mr. Hawkehurst looked at his beloved with a tender smile. The exact
significance of the operation of turning, as applied to silk dresses, was
somewhat beyond his comprehension; but he felt sure that to turn must be
a laudable action, else why that air of pride with which Charlotte
informed him of the fact?



CHAPTER V.


AT HAROLD'S HILL.

The summer sun shone upon the village of Harold's Hill when Charlotte
arrived there with Mrs. Sheldon and Diana Paget. Mr. Sheldon was to
follow them on the same day by a later train; and Valentine was to come
two days afterwards to spend the peaceful interval between Saturday and
Monday with his betrothed. He had seen the travellers depart from the
London Bridge terminus, but Mr. Sheldon had been there also, and there
had been no opportunity for confidential communication between the
lovers.

Of all Sussex villages Harold's Hill is perhaps the prettiest. The grey
old Saxon church, the scattered farmhouses and pleasant rustic cottages,
are built on the slope of a hill, and all the width of ocean lies below
the rustic windows. The roses and fuchsias of the cottage gardens seem
all the brighter by contrast with that broad expanse of blue. The fresh
breath of the salt sea blends with the perfume of new-mown hay and all
the homely odours of the farmyard. The lark sings high in the blue vault
of heaven above the church, and over the blue of the sea the gull skims
white in the sunshine. The fisherman and the farm labourer have their
cottages side by side, nestling cosily to leeward of the hilly winding
road.

This hilly winding road in the July afternoon seemed to Charlotte almost
like the way to Paradise.

"It is like going to heaven, Di!" she cried, with her eyes fixed on the
square tower of the old grey church. She wondered why sudden tears sprang
to Diana's eyes as she said this. Miss Paget brushed the unbidden tears
away with a quick gesture of her hand, and smiled at her friend.

"Yes, dear, the village is very pretty, isn't it?"

"It looks awfully dull!" said Mrs. Sheldon, with a shudder; "and, Diana,
I declare there isn't a single shop. Where are we to get our provisions?
I told Mr. Sheldon St. Leonards would have been a better place for us."

"O mamma, St. Leonards is the very essence of all that is tame and
commonplace, compared to this darling rural village! Look, do look, at
that fisherman's cottage, with the nets hanging out to dry in the
sunshine; just like a picture of Hook's!"

"What's the use of going on about fishermen's cottages, Lotta?" Mrs.
Sheldon demanded, peevishly. "Fishermen's cottages won't provide us with
butcher's meat. Where are we to get your little bit of roast mutton? Dr.
Doddleson laid such a stress upon the roast mutton."

"The sea-air will do me more good than all the mutton that ever was
roasted at Eton, mamma. O, dear, is this our farmhouse?" cried Charlotte,
as the vehicle drew up at a picturesque gate. "O, what a love of a house!
what diamond-paned windows! what sweet white curtains! and a cow staring
at me quite in the friendliest way across the gate! O, can we be so happy
as to live here?"

"Diana," cried Mrs. Sheldon, in a solemn voice, "not a single shop have
we passed--not so much as a post-office! And as to haberdashery, I'm sure
you might be reduced to rags in this place before you could get so much
as a yard of glazed lining!"

The farmhouse was one of those ideal homesteads which, to the dweller in
cities, seems fair as the sapphire-ceiled chambers of the house of
Solomon. Charlotte was enraptured by the idea that this was to be her
home for the next fortnight.

"I wish it could be for ever, Di," she said, as the two girls were
inspecting the rustic, dimity-draperied, lavender-and-rose-leaf-perfumed
bedchambers. "Who would wish to go back to prim suburban Bayswater after
this? Valentine and I could lodge here after our marriage. It is better
than Wimbledon. Grand thoughts would come to him with the thunder of the
stormy waves; and on calm bright days like this the rippling water would
whisper pretty fancies into his ear. Why, to live here would make any one
a poet. I think I could write a novel myself, if I lived here long
enough."

After this they arranged the pretty sitting-room, and placed an
easy-chair by the window for Charlotte, an arm-chair opposite this for
Mrs. Sheldon, and between the two a little table for the fancy work and
books and flowers, and all the small necessities of feminine existence.
And then--while Mrs. Sheldon prowled about the rooms, and discovered so
many faults and made so many objections as to give evidence of a fine
faculty for invention unsuspected in her hitherto--Charlotte and Diana
explored the garden and peeped at the farmyard, where the friendly cow
still stared over the white gate, just as she had stared when the fly
came to a stop, as if she had not yet recovered from the astonishment
created in her pastoral mind by that phenomenal circumstance. And then
Charlotte was suddenly tired, and there came upon her that strange
dizziness which was one of her most frequent symptoms. Diana led her
immediately back to the house, and established her comfortably in her
easy-chair.

"I must be very ill," she said, plaintively; "for even the novelty of
this pretty place cannot make me happy long."

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Sheldon arrived in the evening, bringing with him a supply of that
simple medicine which Charlotte took three times a day. He had remembered
that there was no dispensing chemist at Harold's Hill, and that it would
be necessary to send to St. Leonards for the medicine, and had therefore
brought with him a double quantity of the mild tonic.

"It was very kind of you to think of it, though I really don't believe
the stuff does me any good," said Charlotte. "Nancy Woolper used to get
it for me at Bayswater. She made quite a point of fetching it from the
chemist's herself."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mr. Sheldon. "Nancy troubled herself about your
medicine, did she?"

"Yes, papa; and about me altogether. If I were her own daughter she could
scarcely have seemed more anxious."

The stockbroker made a mental note of this in the memorandum-book of his
brain. Mrs. Woolper was officious, was she, and suspicious?--altogether a
troublesome sort of person.

"I think a few weeks of workhouse fare would be wholesome for that old
lady," he said to himself. "There are some people who never know when
they are well off."

Saturday afternoon came in due course, after a long and dreary interval,
as it seemed to Charlotte, for whom time travelled very slowly, so
painful was the weariness of illness. Now and then a sudden flash of
excitement brought the old brightness to her face, the old gaiety to her
accents; but the brightness faded very soon, and the languor of illness
was very perceptible.

Punctual to the hour at which he was expected, Mr. Hawkehurst appeared,
in radiant spirits, laden with new magazines, delighted with the village,
enraptured with the garden, enchanted with the sea; full of talk and
animation, with all sorts of news to tell his beloved. Such and such a
book was a failure, such and such a comedy was a fiasco; Jones's novel
had made a hit; Brown's picture was the talk of the year; and Charlotte
must see the picture that had been talked about, and the play that had
been condemned, when she returned to town.

For an hour the lovers sat in the pretty farmhouse parlour talking
together thus, the summer sea and the garden flowers before them, and a
bird singing high in the calm blue heaven. Charlotte's talk was somewhat
languid, though it was perfect happiness for her to be seated thus, with
her betrothed by her side; but Valentine's gaiety of spirits never
flagged; and when Mrs. Sheldon hinted to him that too long a conversation
might fatigue the dear invalid, he left the parlour with a smile upon his
face, and a cheery promise to return after an hour's ramble.

He did not ramble far. He went straight to a little wooden summer-house
in the remotest corner of the humble garden; and thither Diana Paget
followed him. She had learned the language of his face in the time of
their daily companionship, and she had seen a look as he left the house
which told her of the struggle his cheerfulness had cost him.

"You must not be downhearted, Valentine," she said, as she went into the
summer-house, where he sat in a listless attitude, with his arms lying
loosely folded on the rustic table.

He did not answer her.

"You don't think her worse--much worse--do you, Valentine?"

"Worse? I have seen death in her face to-day!" he cried; and then he let
his forehead fall upon his folded arms, and sobbed aloud.

Diana stood by his side watching that outburst of grief. When the
passionate storm of tears was past, she comforted him as best she might.
The change so visible to him was not so plain to her. He had hoped that
the breath of the ocean would have magical power to restore the invalid.
He had come to Harold's Hill full of hope, and instead of the beginning
of an improvement he saw the progress of decay.

"Why did not Sheldon send for the doctor," he asked, indignantly,--"the
physician who has attended her? He might have telegraphed to that man."

"Charlotte is taking Dr. Doddleson's medicine," said Diana, "and all his
directions are most carefully obeyed."

"What of that, if she grows worse? The doctor should see her daily,
hourly, if necessary. And if he cannot cure her, another doctor should be
sent for. Good heavens, Diana! are we to let her fade and sink from us
before our eyes? I will go back to London at once, and bring that man
Doddleson down by the night mail."

"Your going back to London would grieve and alarm Charlotte. You can
telegraph for the doctor; or, at least, Mr. Sheldon can do so. It would
not do for you to interfere without his permission."

"It would not do!" echoed Valentine, angrily. "Do you think that I
am going to stand upon punctilio, or to consider what will do or
will not do?"

"Above all things, you must avoid alarming Charlotte," pleaded Diana.

"Do you think I do not know that? Do you think I did not feel that just
now, when I sat by her side, talking inane rubbish about books and plays
and pictures, while every stolen glance at my darling's face was like a
dagger thrust into my heart? I will not alarm her. I will consult Mr.
Sheldon--will do anything, everything, to save her! To save her! O my
God, has it come to that?"

He grew a little calmer presently under Diana's influence, and went
slowly back to the house. He avoided the open window by which Charlotte
was sitting. He had not yet schooled himself to meet her questioning
looks. He went to the room where they were to dine, a duller and darker
apartment than the parlour, and here he found Mr. Sheldon reading a
paper, one of the eternal records of the eternal money-market.

The stockbroker had been in and out of the house all day, now sauntering
by the sea-shore, now leaning moodily, with folded arms, on the garden
gate, meditative and silent as the cow that stared at Charlotte; now
pacing the garden walks, with his hands in his pockets and his head bent.
Diana, who in her anxiety kept a close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's
movements, had noted his restlessness, and perceived in it the sign of
growing anxiety on his part. She knew that he had once called himself
surgeon-dentist, and had some medical knowledge, if not so much as he
took credit for possessing. He must, therefore, be better able to judge
the state of Charlotte's health than utterly ignorant observers. If he
were uneasy, there must be real cause for uneasiness. It was on this
account, and on this account only, that Diana watched him.

"He must love her better than I gave him credit for being able to love
any one," Miss Paget said to herself. "Dear girl! The coldest heart is
touched by her sweetness."

Mr. Sheldon looked up from his newspaper as Valentine came into the room,
and saluted the visitor with a friendly nod.

"Glad to see you, Hawkehurst," he said. "_Semper fidelis_, and that
kind of thing; the very model of devoted lovers. Why, man alive, how
glum you look!"

"I think I have reason to look glum," answered Valentine, gravely; "I
have seen Charlotte."

"Yes? And don't you find her improving?--gradually, of course. That
constitutional languor is not shaken off in a hurry. But surely you think
her improving--brightening--"

"Brightening with the light that never shone on earth or sea. God help
me! I--I--am the merest child, the veriest coward, the--" He made a great
effort, and stifled the sob that had well-nigh broken his voice. "Mr.
Sheldon," he continued quietly, "I believe your stepdaughter is dying."

"Dying! Good heavens!--my dear Hawkehurst, this alarm is most--most
premature. There is no cause for fear--at present, no cause--I give you
my word as a medical man."

"No cause for alarm at present? That means my darling will not be taken
from me to-night, or to-morrow. I shall have a few days breathing-time.
Yes, I understand. The doom is upon us. I saw the shadow of death upon
her face to-day."

"My dear Hawkehurst--"

"My dear Sheldon, for pity's sake don't treat me as if I were a woman or
a child. Let me know my fate. If--if--this, the worst, most bitter of all
calamities God's hand--raised against me in punishment of past sins,
sinned lightly and recklessly, in the days when my heart had no stake in
the game of destiny--can inflict upon me; if this deadly sorrow is
bearing down upon me, let me meet it like a man. Let me die with my eyes
uncovered. O, my dearest, my fondest, redeeming angel of my ill-spent
life! have you been only a supernal visitant, after all, shining on me
for a little while, to depart when your mission of redemption is
accomplished?"

"Powers above!" thought Mr. Sheldon, "what nonsense these sentimental
magazine-writers can talk!"

He was in nowise melted by the lover's anguish, though it was very real.
Such a grief as this was outside the circle in which his thoughts
revolved. This display of grief was unpleasant to him. It grated
painfully upon his nerves, as some of poor Tom Halliday's little speeches
had done of old, when the honest-hearted Yorkshireman lay on his
deathbed; and the young man's presence and the young man's anxiety were
alike inconvenient.

"Tell me the truth, Mr. Sheldon," Valentine said presently, with
suppressed intensity. "Is there any hope for my darling, any hope?"

Mr. Sheldon considered for some moments before he replied to this
question. He pursed-up his lips and bent his brows with the same air of
business-like deliberation that he might have assumed while weighing the
relative merits of the first and second debenture bonds of some doubtful
railway company.

"You ask me a trying question, Hawkehurst," he said at last. "If you ask
me plainly whether I like the turn which Charlotte's illness has taken
within the last few weeks, I must tell you frankly, I do not. There is a
persistent want of tone--a visible decay of vital power--which, I must
confess, has caused me some uneasiness. You see, the fact is, there is a
radical weakness of constitution--as Miss Paget, a very sensible girl and
acute observer--herself has remarked, indeed a hereditary weakness; and
against this medicine is sometimes unavailing. You need apprehend no
neglect on my part, Hawkehurst; all that can possibly be done is being
done. Dr. Doddleson's instructions are carefully obeyed, and--"

"Is this Dr. Doddleson competent to grapple with the case?" asked
Valentine; "I never heard of him as a great man."

"That fact proves how little you know of the medical profession."

"I know nothing of it; I have had no need for doctors in my life. And you
think this Dr. Doddleson really clever?"

"His position is a sufficient answer to that question."

"Will you let me telegraph for him--this afternoon--immediately?"

"You cannot telegraph from this place."

"No, but from St. Leonards I can. Do you think I am afraid of a
five-mile walk?"

"But why send for Dr. Doddleson? The treatment he prescribed is the
treatment we are now following to the letter. To summon him down here
would be the merest folly. Our poor Charlotte's illness is, so far, free
from all alarming symptoms."

"You do not see the change in her that I can see," cried Valentine
piteously. "For mercy's sake, Mr. Sheldon, let me have my way in this. I
cannot stand by and see my dear one fading and do nothing--nothing to
save her. Let me send for this man. Let me see him myself, and hear what
he says. You can have no objection to his coming, since he is the man you
have chosen for Charlotte's adviser? It can only be a question of
expense. Let this particular visit be my affair."

"I can afford to pay for my stepdaughter's medical attendance without any
help from your purse, Mr. Hawkehurst," said the stockbroker with offended
pride. "There is one element in the case which you appear to ignore."

"What is that?"

"The alarm which this summoning of a doctor from London must cause in
Charlotte's mind."

"It need cause no alarm. She can be told that Dr. Doddleson has come to
this part of the world for a Sunday's change of air. The visit can appear
to be made _en passant._ It will be easy to arrange that with the doctor
before he sees her."

"As you please, Mr. Hawkehurst," the stockbroker replied coldly. "I
consider such a visit to the last degree unnecessary; but if Dr.
Doddleson's coming can give you any satisfaction, by all means let him
come. The expense involved in summoning him is of the smallest
consideration to me. My position with regard to my wife's daughter is one
of extreme responsibility, and I am ready to perform all the obligations
of that position."

"You are very good: your conduct in relation to Charlotte and myself has
been beyond all praise. It is quite possible that I am over-anxious; but
there was a look in that dear face--no--I cannot forget that look; it
struck terror to my heart. I will go at once to St. Leonards. I can tell
Charlotte that I am obliged to telegraph to the printer about my copy.
You will not object to that white lie?"

"Not at all. I think it essential that Charlotte should not be alarmed.
You had better stop to dine; there will be time for the telegram after
dinner."

"I will not risk that," answered Valentine. "I cannot eat or drink till I
have done something to lessen this wretched anxiety."

He went back to the room where Charlotte was sitting by the open window,
through which there came the murmur of waves, the humming of drowsy bees,
the singing of birds, all the happy voices of happy nature in a
harmonious chorus.

"O God, wilt thou take her away from such a beautiful world," he asked,
"and change all the glory of earth to darkness and desolation for me?"

His heart rebelled against the idea of her death. To save her, to win her
back to himself from the jaws of death, he was ready to promise anything,
to do anything.

"All my days will I give to Thy service, if Thou wilt spare her to me,"
in his heart he said to his God. "If Thou dost not, I will be an infidel
and a pagan--the vilest and most audacious of sinners. Better to serve
Lucifer than the God who could so afflict me."

And this is where the semi-enlightened Christian betrays the weakness of
his faith. While the sun shines, and the sweet gospel story reads to him
like some tender Arcadian idyl, all love and promise, he is firm in his
allegiance; but when the dark hour comes, he turns his face to the wall,
with anger and disappointment in his heart, and will have no further
commune with the God who has chastised him. His faith is the faith of the
grateful leper, who, being healed, was eager to return and bless his
divine benefactor. It is not the faith of Abraham or of Job, of Paul or
of Stephen.

Valentine told his story about the printers and the copy for the
_Cheapside_ magazine, about which there had arisen some absurd mistake,
only to be set right by a telegram.

It was not a very clear account; but Charlotte did not perceive the
vagueness of the story; she thought only of the one fact, that Valentine
must leave her for some hours.

"The evening will seem so long without you," she said. "That is the worst
part of my illness; the time is so long--so weary. Diana is the dearest
and kindest of friends. She is always trying to amuse me, and reads to me
for hours, though I know she must often be tired of reading aloud so
long. But even the books I was once so fond of do not amuse me. The words
seem to float indistinctly in my brain, and all sorts of strange images
mix themselves up with the images of the people in the book. Di has been
reading "The Bride of Lammermoor" all this morning; but the pain and
weariness I feel seemed to be entangled with Lucy and Edgar somehow, and
the dear book gave me no pleasure."

"My darling, you--you are too weak to listen to Diana's reading. It is
very kind of her to try to amuse you; but--but it would be better for you
to rest altogether. Any kind of mental exertion may help to retard your
recovery."

He had placed himself behind her chair, and was bending over the pillows
to speak to her. Just now he felt himself unequal to the command of his
countenance. He bent his head until his lips touched the soft brown hair,
and kissed those loose soft tresses passionately. The thought occurred to
him that a day might come when he should again kiss that soft brown hair,
with a deeper passion, with a sharper pain, and when Charlotte would not
know of his kisses, or pity his pain.

"O Valentine!" cried Charlotte, "you are crying; I can see your face in
the glass."

He had forgotten the glass; the little rococo mirror, with an eagle
hovering over the top of the frame, which hung above the old-fashioned
chiffonier.

"I am not so very ill, dear; I am not indeed," the girl continued,
turning in her chair with an effort, and clasping her lover's hands; "you
must not distress yourself like this, Valentine--dear Valentine! I shall
be better by-and-by. I cannot think that I shall be taken from you."

He had broken down altogether by this time. He buried his face in the
pillows, and contrived to stifle the sobs that would come; and then,
after a sharp struggle, he lifted his face, and bent over the chair once
more to kiss the invalid's pale upturned forehead.

"My dear one, you shall not, if love can guard and keep you. No, dear,
I _cannot_ believe that God will take you from me. Heaven may be your
fittest habitation; but such sweet spirits as yours are sorely needed
upon earth. I will be brave, dearest one; brave and hopeful in the
mercy of Heaven. And now I must go and telegraph to my tiresome
printer. _Au revoir_!"

He hurried away from the farmhouse, and started at a rattling pace along
the pleasant road, with green waving corn on his left, and broad blue
ocean on his right.

"I can get a fly to bring me back from St. Leonard's" he thought; "I
should only lose time by hunting for a vehicle here."

He was at St. Leonards station within an hour after leaving the farm.
He despatched the message in Mr. Sheldon's name, and took care to make
it urgent.



CHAPTER VI.


DESPERATE MEASURES.

Fitful and feverish were the slumbers which visited Mr. Hawkehurst on
that balmy summer's night. His waking hours were anxious and unhappy; but
his sleeping hours were still more painful. To sleep was to be the
feverish fool of vague wild visions, in which Charlotte and Dr.
Doddleson, the editor of the _Cheapside_, the officials of the British
Museum reading-room, Diana Paget, and the Sheldons, figured amidst
inextricable confusion of circumstances and places. Throughout these
wretched dreams he had some consciousness of himself and the room in
which he was lying, the July moon shining upon him, broad and bright,
through the diamond-paned lattice. And O, what torturing visions were
those in which Charlotte smiled upon him, radiant with health and
happiness; and there had been no such thing as her illness, no such thing
as his grief. And then came hurried dreams, in which Dr. Doddleson was
knocking at the farmhouse door, with the printer of the _Cheapside_. And
then he was a spectator in a mighty theatre, large as those Roman
amphitheatres, wherein the audience seemed a mass of flies, looking down
on the encounter of two other flies, and all the glory of an imperial
court only a little spot of purple and gold, gleaming afar in the
sunshine. To the dreamer it was no surprise that this unknown theatre of
his dreams should be vast as the gladiatorial arena. And then came the
deep thunderous music of innumerable bass-viols and bassoons: and some
one told him it was the first night of a great tragedy. He felt the
breathless hush of expectation; the solemn bass music sank deeper; dark
curtains were drawn aside, with a motion slow and solemn, like the waving
of mountain pines, and there appeared a measureless stage, revealing a
moonlit expanse, thickly studded with the white headstones of unnumbered
graves, and on the foremost of these--revealed to him by what power he
knew not, since mortal sight could never have reached a point so
distant--he read the name of Charlotte Halliday. He awoke with a sharp
cry of pain. It was broad day, and the waves were dancing gaily in the
morning sunlight. He rose and dressed himself. Sleep, such as he had
known that night, was worse than the weariest waking. He went out into
the garden by-and-by, and paced slowly up and down the narrow pathways,
beside which box of a century's growth rose dark and high. Pale yellow
lights were in the upper windows. He wondered which of those sickly
tapers flickered on the face he loved so fondly.

"It is only a year since I first saw her," he thought: "one year! And to
love her has been my 'liberal education;' to lose her would be my
desolation and despair."

To lose her! His thoughts approached that dread possibility, but could
not realize it; not even yet.

At eight o'clock Diana came to summon him to breakfast.

"Shall I see Charlotte?" he asked.

"No; for some time past she has not come down to breakfast."

"What kind of night has she had?"

"A very quiet night, she tells me; but I am not quite sure that she tells
me the truth, she is so afraid of giving us uneasiness."

"She tells you. But do you not sleep in her room, now that she is so
ill?"

"No. I was anxious to sleep on a sofa at the foot of her bed, and
proposed doing so, but Mr. Sheldon objects to my being in the room. He
thinks that Charlotte is more quiet entirely alone, and that there is
more air in the room with only one sleeper. Her illness is not of a kind
to require attention of any sort in the night."

"Still I should have thought it better for her to have you with her, to
cheer and comfort her.

"Believe me, Valentine, I wished to be with her."

"I am sure of that, dear," he answered kindly.

"It was only Mr. Sheldon's authority, as a man of some medical
experience, that conquered my wish."

"Well, I suppose he is right. And now we must go in to breakfast. Ah, the
dreary regularity of these breakfasts and dinners, which go on just the
same when our hearts are breaking!"

The breakfast was indeed a dreary soul-dispiriting meal. Farmhouse
luxuries, in the way of new-laid eggs and home-cured bacon, abounded; but
no one had any inclination for these things. Valentine remembered the
homestead among the Yorkshire hills, with all the delight that he had
known there; and the "sorrow's crown of sorrow" was very bitter. Mr.
Sheldon gave his Sabbath-morning meditations to the study of a
Saturday-evening share-list; and Georgy plunged ever and anon into the
closely printed pages of a Dissenting preacher's biography, which she
declared to be "comforting."

Diana and Valentine sat silent and anxious; and after the faintest
pretence of eating and drinking, they both left the table, to stroll
drearily in the garden. The bells were ringing cheerily from the grey
stone tower near at hand; but Valentine had no inclination for church on
this particular morning. Were not all his thoughts prayers--humble
piteous entreaties--for one priceless boon?

"Will you see the doctor when he comes, and manage matters so as not to
alarm Charlotte?" he asked of Mr. Sheldon. That gentleman agreed to do
so, and went out into the little front-garden to lie in wait for the
great Doddleson--"Dowager Doddleson" as he was surnamed by some
irreverent unbelievers.

A St. Leonards fly brought the doctor while the bells were still ringing
for morning service. Mr. Sheldon received him at the gate; and explained
the motive of his summons.

The doctor was full of pompous solicitude about "our sweet young
patient."

"Really one of the most interesting cases I ever had upon my hands,"
the West-end physician said blandly; "as I was remarking to a very
charming patient of mine--in point of fact, the amiable and
accomplished Countess of Kassel-Kumberterre, only last Tuesday
morning. A case so nearly resembling the Countess's own condition as to
be highly interesting to her."

"I really ought to apologize for bringing you down," said Mr. Sheldon, as
he led the doctor into the house. "I only consented to your being sent
for in order to tranquillize this young fellow Hawkehurst, who is engaged
to my daughter; a rising man, I believe, in his own particular line, but
rather wild and impracticable. There is really no change for the worse,
absolutely none; and as we have not been here more than three days, there
has been positively no opportunity for testing the effect of change and
sea air, and so on."

This seemed rather like giving the learned physician his cue. And there
were those among Dr. Doddleson's professional rivals