A Secret of the Sea. Volume 2 of 3

Transcriber's Notes (Volume 2):
1. Page scan source: Internet web archive
https://archive.org/details/secretofseanovel02spei
(University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

A SECRET OF THE SEA.

A Novel.

By T. W. SPEIGHT,

AUTHOR OF
"IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT," "UNDER LOCK AND KEY," ETC., ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON. 1876.

A SECRET OF THE SEA.

CHAPTER I.

MIRIAM BYRNE.

It was nearly dusk on the eighth day after Peter Byrne and his daughter had got settled in their new rooms, when Gerald Warburton knocked at the door of Max Van Duren's house.

"Is my father at home?" asked Gerald of the middle-aged woman who answered his summons.

"If you are Mr. Byrne's son, I was told to send you upstairs when you called," answered the woman. "The first floor, please--door with the brass handle."

It was at Byrne's request that Gerald agreed to pass as his son on the occasion of any visits which he might have to make to Van Duren's house. Gerald could see no reason for the assumption of such a relationship, but in the belief that Byrne might have some special motive in the matter, he acceded without difficulty.

Up the stairs he now went, and knocked at the door indicated by the woman. "Come in," cried a voice, and in he went.

He paused for a moment or two just inside the room, and shut the door slowly after him while his eyes took in the various features of the scene.

The room in which Gerald found himself was of considerable size, and was lighted by three tall, narrow windows, curtained with heavy hangings of faded crimson velvet. The walls were painted a delicate green, and the floor was of polished wood. There was a large old-fashioned fire-place, and a heavy, overhanging marble chimney-piece, across the front of which was carved a wild procession of Baechic figures. A Turkey carpet covered the middle of the floor, but the sides of the room were left bare. Chairs, tables, and bureau were of dark oak, heavy, uncouth, uncompromising--and if not really antique, were very good Wardour Street imitations of the genuine article. On one side of the hearth, however, stood a capacious, modern easy-chair, for the special delectation of Mr. Peter Byrne, while in neighbourly proximity to it was the long-stemmed pipe with the china bowl. On the opposite side of the hearth stood another article, that seemed more out of keeping with the rest of the room, even, than the easy-chair. It was a couch or lounge of the most modern fashion, and upholstered with a gay flowery chintz. There could be no doubt as to the person for whose behoof this gay piece of furniture was intended. Stretched on the floor in front of it, and doing duty as a rug, was a magnificent tiger-skin. On this stood an embroidered footstool. At the back of the couch was a screen painted with Chinese figures and landscapes. Near it hung a guitar.

Gerald advanced slowly into the room, and for a moment or two he altogether failed to recognize the man who rose out of the easy-chair to greet him. It was Byrne and yet it was not Byrne. "It must be his father, or an older brother," said Gerald to himself. Even when the man held out his hand and whispered: "Is there anybody outside the door?" he was still in doubt.

"That's all right, then, and I'm very glad to see you, Mr. Warburton," said Byrne's familiar voice, after which there could no longer be any doubt. "Not a bad make up, eh?" he added, with a chuckle, as he noted Gerald's puzzled look.

"I certainly did not know you at first," replied the latter. "In fact, I took you for your own father."

"You could not pay me a higher compliment, sir," said Byrne, with a gleeful rubbing of the hands. "It is part of the scheme I have in view, that Van Duren should take me to be an old man, very feeble, very infirm, and nearly, if not quite, on my last legs."

"You look at the very least twenty years older than when I last saw you," remarked Gerald.

"And yet the transformation is a very simple matter," said Byrne. "It would not do to tell everybody how it's done, but from you I can have no secrets of that kind. In the first place, I had my own hair cropped as closely as it was possible for scissors to do it. Then I had this venerable wig made with its straggling silvery locks, and this black velvet skull cap. Two-thirds of my teeth being artificial ones, I have dispensed with that portion of them for the time being, and that of itself is sufficient to entirely alter the character of the lower part of my face. Then this dress--this gaberdine-like coat down to my knees, my collar of an antique fashion, my white, unstarched neckcloth, fastened with a little pearl brooch, this stoop of the shoulders, my enfeebled walk, and the stick that I am obliged to use to help me across the room: all simple matters, my dear sir, but, in the aggregate, decidedly effective."

Mr. Byrne omitted to mention that, as a conscientious artist bent on looking the character he meant to play, he had for the time being abandoned the hare's foot and rouge-pot. Although his use of those, articles had always been marked by the most extreme discretion, his discarding of them entirely did not add to the youthfulness of his appearance.

"And then you must please bear in mind that I am afflicted with deafness," added Byrne, with a smile, when Gerald had drawn a chair up to the fire. "It is not a very extreme form of deafness, but still it is necessary that I should be spoken to in a louder voice than ordinary; and it is sufficiently bad," he added, with a chuckle, "to prevent me, as I sit in my easy-chair by the fire, from overhearing any little private conversation that you and another person--my daughter, for instance--might choose to hold together as you sit by the sofa there, only a few yards away."

"I certainly can't understand," said Gerald to himself, "how all this scheming, and all these disguises, can in any way further the object which Ambrose Murray has so profoundly at heart."

Gerald felt mystified, and he probably looked it. As if in response to his unspoken thought, Byrne presently said: "All these things seem very strange to you, I do not doubt, Mr. Warburton; but you will believe me when I assure you that I have not for one moment lost sight of the particular end for which my services are retained. As soon as I begin to see my way a little more clearly--if I ever do--my plans and purposes shall all be told to you and Mr. Murray. I have built up a certain theory in my mind, and there seems only one way of ascertaining whether that theory has any foundation in fact. If it has, it may possibly lead us on to the clue we are in search of. If it has not--but I will not anticipate failure, however probable it may be. If I still possess the confidence of Mr. Murray and yourself, if you are still willing to let me have my own way in this thing for a little while longer, then I am perfectly satisfied."

"We have every confidence in you, Mr. Byrne," said Gerald, earnestly, "and we are both satisfied that the case could not have been entrusted into more capable hands than yours."

While Gerald was speaking, a door that led to an inner room was opened, and Miriam Byrne came in.

Byrne rose, laid one hand on the region of his heart, and waved the other gracefully.

"I am glad that you have called to see us, Mr. Warburton," said Miriam, frankly, in her rich, full voice. "My father has talked so much about you that my curiosity was quite piqued to see for myself what his rara avis was like."

"You will find that I am a bird of very homely plumage," replied Gerald, with a smile. "Your father has been drawing on a too lively imagination. I am afraid that his rara avis will prove to be nothing more wonderful than our familiar friend--the goose."

"What a superb creature!" was Gerald's thought, as he sat down opposite Miriam; and that was the right phrase to apply to her.

Miss Byrne was at this time close upon her twenty-second birthday. Her beauty was of an altogether eastern type. Hardly anyone who met Miriam in the street took her to be an English girl; while to those who knew both her and her father, it was a constant source of wonder how "old Peter" could come to have for his daughter a girl so totally unlike him in every possible way. But Byrne's wife, who died when her daughter was quite an infant, had been a beautiful woman, and Miriam more than inherited her mother's good looks. People knowing the family averred that she was an exact counterpart of her grandmother: a lovely Roumanian Jewess, who had been brought over to England in the train of an Austrian lady of rank, and having found a husband here, had never gone back.

Eyes and hair of the black-set had Miriam Byrne. Large, liquid eyes, shaded with long, black lashes, and arched with delicate, well-defined brows; hair that fell in a thick, heavy mass to her very waist. Tints of the damask rose glowed through the dusky clearness of her cheeks. Her forehead was low and broad as that of some antique Venus. Her mouth was ripe and full, and might have looked somewhat coarse, had it not been relieved by her finely-cut nose with its delicate nostrils. She had on, this evening, a long, trailing dress of violet velvet, which harmonized admirably with her dusky loveliness--a rich, heavy-looking dress by gaslight, but one which daylight would have shown to be faded and frayed in many places. It had, in fact, at one time been a stage-dress, and as such, had been worn by Miss Kesteven of the Royal Westminster Theatre, when playing the heroine of one of Sardou's clever dramas.

The necklace of pearls, with earrings to match, which Miriam wore this evening, were also of stage parentage, but they looked so much like the real thing, that no one, save an expert, could have told without handling them that they were nothing better than clever shams. The one ring, too, which she wore--a hoop of diamonds--on her somewhat large, but well-shaped hand, was not more genuine than her pearl necklace. It had been bought for a few shillings in the Burlington Arcade; but it flashed famously in the gaslight; and as one cannot well take off a lady's ring in order to examine it, answered its purpose just as well as if it had cost a hundred guineas.

But we must not be too hard on Miriam. No doubt she was as fond of a little finery as most of her sisters are at two-and-twenty, but, in the present case, all these sham trinkets had been assumed by her at her father's wish, and "for a certain purpose," as the old man said. At the same time one need not imagine that the wearing of them, although they were counterfeit, was in any way distasteful to Miriam. As she herself would have been one of the first to say, go long as other people accepted her jewellery as real, the end for which it was worn was thoroughly gained.

"I would much rather it had been at the West End than in the City," answered Miriam. "The rooms I like very much. They are large and old-fashioned, and have seen better days. To live in such rooms makes one feel as if one were somebody of importance--as if one had money in the Bank of England. But the look-out is dreadful. At the back, into that horrid churchyard; while in the front, there is nothing to be seen but a high, blank wall. I am always glad when it is time to draw the curtains and light the gas."

"You must get out for a little change and amusement now and then," said Gerald. "It will never do for you to get moped and melancholy through shutting yourself up in this gloomy old house. A visit once a week to a theatre, for instance, or----"

"Don't speak of it," interrupted Miriam. "I hope I shall not see the inside of a theatre for a couple of years, at the very least."

"Perhaps the opera would suit you better," suggested Gerald, altogether at a loss to know why the theatre should be so emphatically tabooed. "If you are fond of the opera, I think I can manage to get a couple of tickets for you now and then."

"Oh, that will be delightful!" exclaimed Miriam, clasping her hands with Oriental fervour. "I have never been to the opera but twice in my life, and I should dearly love to go again."

"Passionately. I love it anywhere and everywhere; but I love it best on the stage. That is the glorification of music. It is to honour music as it ought to be honoured. When I listen to an opera, I seem to be lifted quite out of my ordinary self. I feel as if I were so much better and cleverer than I really am. And then I always have a longing to rush on to the stage and join in the choruses, and make one more figure in the splendid processions."

"I will send you tickets for Friday, if you will honour me by accepting them," said Gerald.

"You are very kind, Mr. Warburton; and to such an offer I cannot find in my heart to say No," answered Miriam, with a "Oh, how I wish I were clever!" she cried next moment; "clever enough to be a great singer on the stage, or to paint a great picture, or to write a book that everybody talked about. Don't you think, Mr. Warburton, that it must be a glorious thing to be clever?"

"Not being clever myself, I am hardly in a position to judge," answered Gerald, amused at the girl's earnestness. "But if we commonplace people only knew it, I have no doubt that cleverness has its disadvantages, like every other exceptional quality. Besides, it would not do for us all to be clever; in that case, the world would soon become intolerable. I think a moderate quantity of brains, and a large amount of contentment, are the best stock-in-trade to get through life with."

"I don't know why the girl should always be raving about wanting to be clever," said Byrne, addressing himself, to Gerald. "She has plenty of good looks, and ought to be content. Five women out of six have neither brains nor good looks--though they will never believe that they haven't got the latter," added the old cynic, under his breath.

"Oh, yes, I know that I'm good-looking," said Miriam, naively, but not without a touch of bitterness. "People have told me that ever since I can remember anything. Besides, I can see it for myself in the glass," with an involuntary glance at the Venetian mirror hanging opposite.

"Then why are you always dissatisfied--always flying in the face of Providence?" growled Byrne. "What are your good looks given you for, but that some man with plenty of money may fall in love with you, and make you his wife?"

"Why not send me to the slave-market at Constantinople?" said Miriam, bitterly. "I dare say that I should fetch a tolerable price there."

"We have seen more of him to-day than we saw yesterday, and more of him yesterday than previously. He is gradually learning to overcome the native bashfulness of his disposition," added Byrne, with a sneer.

"Not a bit of it. What he would have done had I been living here with a wife instead of a daughter, I can't say. But the fact is, he seems inclined to admire Miriam."

The old man sat staring at Gerald with a twinkle in his eye, as he finished speaking.

Gerald was at a loss to know in what way it was expected that he should greet such an item of news. So he merely fell back on a safe, though unmeaning, "Oh, indeed!"

Miriam, gazing into the fire, either had not heard, or did not heed, her father's words.

"For the sort of ursa major that he is," resumed Byrne, "he doesn't conduct himself so much amiss. Has not been much used to ladies' society, I should say. Does not talk much, but likes to look and listen."

"Yes, twice. There's the magnet"--pointing to Miriam. "It isn't me, bless you, not me," added the old man, with a chuckle, as he proceeded to poke the fire vigorously.

To say that Gerald was mystified is to say no more than the truth. But it was evident that whatever Byrne might have to tell him with regard to his plans and purposes, he was not inclined to tell yet, and Gerald would not question him.

"No: a small one. Everything on a miserly scale. Every item of expenditure cut down to the lowest possible point."

"Certainly, to some extent. But you never know how the webs of such spiders as he interlace and cross each other. Perhaps he is only used as a decoy to catch foolish flies for bigger and older spiders than himself. But, in any case, you may be sure that he comes in for a good share of the plunder."

"There are no signs of a wife under this roof," said Byrne. "Besides himself, there is, in the office, first, his clerk, Pringle--a drunken, disreputable old vagabond enough, from what I have seen of him; and secondly, a youth of fifteen, to copy letters and run errands, and so on. Then, downstairs, in a dungeon below the level of the street, we have Bakewell and his wife, as custodians of the premises and personal attendants on Van Duren--a harmless, ignorant couple enough. These, with Miriam and myself, make up the sum total of the establishment. Pringle and the boy, I may add, do not sleep on the premises."

"Are you acquainted with Mr. Van Duren?" asked Miriam, suddenly lifting her eyes from the fire.

"There is a great deal of power about him," said Miriam, "and I like power in a man. He seems to me to be a man who would stand at nothing in working out his own ends either for good or evil. For women--weak women--such characters generally have a peculiar fascination."

"That's because you never have a will of your own for an hour together," said Byrne. "Women always admire what they possess least of themselves."

"Papa always runs the ladies down," said Miriam, smilingly, to Gerald. "But if only one-half that I have heard whispered be true, no one could be fonder of their society than he was, so long as he was young and good-looking."

"No one delights to run them down more than he. The old story, Mr. Warburton. Olives have no longer any flavour for him, therefore only fools eat olives."

Gerald rose and made his adieux. It was arranged that he should call again on the following Tuesday or Wednesday.

"You won't forget the tickets for the opera, will you, Mr. Warburton?" were Miriam's whispered words as they stood for a moment at the street door, she having gone down stairs to let him out.

"Well, kitten, and what do you think of your new-found brother?" asked Byrne, as soon as Miriam got back into the room.

"Ladies are not supposed to give reasons. I like him because I like him. For one thing, he is not commonplace. There is an air of cleverness about him. You would not feel a bit surprised if at any moment he were to tell you that he was the author of the last celebrated poem, or the painter of the last great picture, or that he had been down the crater of Vesuvius, or had invented a new balloon that would take you half-way to the moon. By the time you have been in Mr. Warburton's society ten minutes, you say to yourself: 'Here's a man who has brains.'"

"Now, papa!" said Miriam, in a hurt tone. Then she turned from him and went to the window, and drew aside the curtain, and peered out into the darkness. "I thought it was understood between us that on this point there was no longer to be any contention. I thought you thoroughly understood, papa, that nothing could alter my determination."

"Oh, you have made me understand all that, plainly enough," said Byrne. "But when I think how mad and foolish you are--how determined you are to throw away your one great chance in life, I can't help----"

"Pray spare me, papa! Why cover ground that you and I have trodden so often already?"

"To think," said Byrne, indignantly, "of my daughter demeaning herself to marry a common, underpaid clerk!"

"Let them do so. He will make his way in spite of them. He is a gentleman bred and born."

"Yes--a gentleman who has bound himself to marry a ballet girl--for that's what I am. Neither more nor less than a ballet girl!"

"We need not speak of them, papa. But was it a wise thing on your part to expose me to all the temptations of a theatre?"

"Had you known one tithe of the temptations to which I was exposed, you might well have trembled for me. Why, the very last night I was at the Royal Westminster there was a note left for me at the stage door and a splendid bouquet, and inside the bouquet was this."

As Miriam spoke, she extracted from her watch-pocket a ring set with five or six costly brilliants, and handed it to her father.

"You are not going to wear this!" he said, looking up at her with sudden suspicion.

"Because I mean the sender of it to pay for his folly. You remember my telling you how little Rose Montgomery broke her leg at the theatre the other week, through falling down a trap. She is little more than a child, and has not another friend than myself in all London. I am going to ask James to sell the ring for me. I shall give Rose the money. It will keep her when she comes out of the hospital till she is strong enough to begin dancing again."

"James! James! How I hate to hear the name!" said Byrne, as he got up and left the room.

"It is the name of the man I love--of the man whose wife I am going to be," replied Miriam.

CHAPTER II.

FLOATING WITH THE STREAM.

Lady Dudgeon's morning-room in Harley Street. At her davenport near the window, pen in hand, sat her ladyship, where, indeed, she was to be found at eleven a.m. six mornings out of seven. On the ridge of her high nose was perched the double gold-rimmed eye-glass which she had taken to wearing of late in the privacy of the family circle, but the existence of which, outside that circle, was kept a profound secret.

On a low chair close by, in a pretty morning-dress, sat Eleanor Lloyd. London life and London hours were beginning to tell upon her already. There was a look of weariness in her eyes, and her cheeks had lost a little of that fresh, delicate bloom which she had brought with her from the country, but which cannot exist long in the atmosphere of Belgravian ballrooms.

At Lady Dudgeon's elbow stood Olive Deane, with her black dress, her snowy collar and cuffs, her colourless face, her black, lustreless hair, and her fathomless eyes--in every point precisely the same as at the time when first we met her. Her ladyship had just been issuing invitations for a grand ball to be given at Stammars, during the ensuing Easter recess, to Sir Thomas's chief supporters at the recent election.

"There, thank goodness, that finishes the last batch of twenty!" said her ladyship, as she put down her pen with an air of relief. "I don't think that I have forgotten any one, or, for the matter of that, invited any one that we could have afforded to ignore. There are eighty of them altogether, leaving out of question the tribe of wives and daughters--quite as many as we can reasonably accommodate." Then, turning to Olive, she added, "Will you kindly see that the whole of the invitations are sent off by this afternoon's post?"

"On such an occasion as the present one Miss Deane is really invaluable," said Lady Dudgeon to Eleanor.

"If you would only let me help you in these little matters, instead of Miss Deane, you would please me more than I can tell YOU."

"My dear child, I could not think of such a thing," said her ladyship, with dignity. "I did not bring you to London to make a drudge of you; I brought you here that you might enjoy yourself."

"I should enjoy myself far better if I had a little more to do sometimes. I might as well be a china figure under a glass shade in the drawing-room, for any use I seem to be in the world."

"My dear, all pretty objects have their uses in the world, if it be only to please the eye and educate the taste of others. Be satisfied at present with trying to look as pretty as you can."

"Ah, you young people never know what you would be at. You, for instance, my dear, have youth, good looks, and money, and yet you grumble! But about this ball. I mean it to be a great success. It will make Sir Thomas even more popular in the borough than he is now, and no one can stigmatize it as being either bribery or corruption. There is some talk of a general election next autumn, so that we must keep our supporters well in hand."

"In these days, my dear, it doesn't do to let one's wits grow rusty. You will derive great amusement at the ball from a study of the toilettes of some of the worthy tradespeople's wives and daughters who will honour us with their company. The originality of idea displayed by some of them is truly astounding. And the waistcoats of the gentlemen are hardly less wonderful."

"What a charming surprise, my dear!" she said, as she glanced over it. "Invitations for a private concert at Lady Camperdown's. Most exclusive. That sweet Lady Camperdown! There will be a carpet-dance afterwards. I must write off at once and order our dresses."

"But surely, Lady Dudgeon, one of the ten or fifteen dresses that I have already would do for such an occasion."

"My dear Eleanor! Go to Lady Camperdown's concert in a dress that you have ever worn before! Such a thing is not to be thought of. It would not be doing your duty in that state of life to which it has pleased Providence to call you." Here her ladyship looked at her watch. "My dear, I expect Captain Dayrell here about twelve, and I should like you to change your dress before he arrives. He told me last evening that he wanted to see me to-day, so I asked him to call early, as I am going shopping immediately after luncheon."

"But Captain Dayrell is coming to see you, Lady Dudgeon. There is no occasion for him to see me."

"He is coming to see me, it is true: but I rather suspect it is about a matter that intimately concerns you."

"Indeed! But I really cannot see in what way Captain Dayrell's visit can concern me."

"It may concern you very nearly. I have every reason to believe that Captain Dayrell is coming here this morning to ask my sanction to his making you a formal offer of marriage."

"I was never more serious in my life. You could not fail to see with what attention Captain Dayrell treated you at the ball the other evening. And on the two or three previous occasions when he has met you in society, there has been an empressement in his manner which has led me to suspect that he was only waiting to see a little more of you before making up his mind to ask you to become his wife."

"Only waiting to see a little more of me! I am overwhelmed by Captain Dayrell's preference."

"Don't try to be sarcastic, Eleanor. Sarcasm in young people is little less than odious."

Eleanor rose. There was a heightened colour in her cheeks, an added brightness in her eyes. "Lady Dudgeon, should Captain Dayrell come here this morning on such an errand as the one you have mentioned, you can give him his congé as soon as you please. And I beg that you will not send for me, as I shall certainly decline to see him."

"Tut tut, child! you don't know what you are talking about. A little maidenly shyness is all very nice and proper, especially when the offer is a first one. But prudery may be carried too far; and, in the case of Captain Dayrell, a pretended rejection might perhaps frighten him away altogether."

"It was very foolish on my part," said her ladyship, complacently, without noticing the interruption, "to mention the subject to you at all. I have only succeeded in startling you. I ought to have left Captain Dayrell to plead his own cause with you. Gentlemen, on such occasions, are generally very eloquent after they have made the first plunge."

"I am sorry that you should so persistently misunderstand me," said Eleanor, not without a touch of impatience. "You compel me to speak plainly, and in a way that is most repugnant to my feelings. Under no circumstances could I agree to become the wife of Captain Dayrell. And I trust there will be no necessity for his name ever to be mentioned between us again."

Lady Dudgeon turned slowly on her chair, and surveyed Eleanor through her eye-glass as though she could hardly believe the evidence of her ears.

"You cannot marry Captain Dayrell, Eleanor Lloyd?" she said, with some severity of tone. "May I ask what there is to prevent your marrying him? I hope there is no prior engagement in the case, of which I have been kept in ignorance."

"Were I engaged to anyone, your ladyship would certainly not be kept in ignorance of the fact."

"Then may I ask what particular objection you can have to receive the addresses of Captain Dayrell?"

"My particular objection is that I could never care sufficiently for Captain Dayrell to become his wife."

"I certainly gave you credit for more common sense, Eleanor, than to think that you would allow any foolish sentiment to stand in the way of your proper settlement in life. My theory is this--and I daresay, when you shall have lived as long in the world as I have, you will agree that it is by no means a bad theory--that any girl who has been correctly brought up, and whose affections have not been tampered with, can school herself; without much difficulty, to look with affectionate eyes on whatever suitor her relations or friends may offer to her notice as eligible, in their estimation, to make her happy: and a really good girl will always find half her own happiness in the knowledge that she is making others happy at the same time."

"In a matter involving consequences so serious, I should prefer to make my own choice."

"No doubt you would," said her ladyship drily. "But if young ladies would only be guided by the choice of their best friends, rather than by their own headstrong wills, we should hear far less about unhappy marriages, and the evils they bring." To this Eleanor made no answer. "Most people would agree with me, my dear, that you ought to consider yourself a very lucky girl to have drawn such a prize as Captain Dayrell. A man still young--he can't be more than three or four and thirty--handsome, accomplished, of an excellent family--he is first cousin to Lord Coniston--tolerably rich, and of such an easy, good-natured disposition, that any woman of tact would soon learn to twine him round her finger: what more could any reasonable being wish for?"

"Oh, my dear, you may depend upon it that if there is no prior attachment you would soon learn to like him. Captain Dayrell is generally looked upon as a most fascinating man in society."

"Captain Dayrell may be all that you say he is," replied Eleanor, "but for all that, he can never be anything more to me than he is at the present moment."

"So be it. The likes and dislikes of young ladies are among the unaccountable things of this world. But I cannot help saying that your point-blank refusal even to see Captain Dayrell is a great disappointment to me."

"Do not say that, dear Lady Dudgeon!" cried Eleanor, and with that she took the elder lady's hand in hers, pressed it to her lips, and then nestled down on the little footstool by her knees. "Believe me, I am not ungrateful, not insensible to the kindness which prompted you to take an obscure country girl by the hand, and treat her more as a daughter of your own than anything else. But I cannot tell you how sorry I am to find that you should so far have misunderstood me as to think that you were doing me a kindness in endeavouring to secure for me the attention of Captain Dayrell."

"It is certainly a great disappointment to me," said Lady Dudgeon, with a sigh. "I had really set my heart on you and Captain Dayrell making a match of it."

"But cannot you understand that I have no wish to get married, nor any intention of changing my name for a long time to come--if ever?"

"Well, well, child; I only hope that what you say is right, and that there is indeed no prior attachment. But be careful that you do not fall into the hands of some swindling adventurer--of some romantic rogue, with a handsome face and a wheedling tongue, who, while persuading you that he loves you for yourself alone, cares, in reality, for nothing but the money you will bring him. The world abounds with such men. Be warned, or you may have to repent when repentance will be of no avail."

"It may be so, but this money weighs me down as though it were a millstone about my neck. And how sadly wise in the ways of the world I seem to have become in a few short months! Friendship--service--affection--I feel, nowadays, as if these treasures were offered me, not for myself, but simply because I am a little rich. In the old, happy days at home, before ever I dreamed of being an heiress, no such doubt ever crossed my mind. Friendship and love--my father's love--were mine: as freely and fully mine as the lilies that grew by the mill-pond brim, or the canary that woke me every morning with its song. But indeed, dear Lady Dudgeon, I am in no wise fitted for a life of fashionable pleasure. My tastes are too homely. Life seems to me far too real, far too earnest, to be frittered away in a perpetual round of balls and parties, of morning calls and drives in the Park. When I think of the poverty and wretchedness that I see on every side of me, every time I stir out of doors, and then of all those useless thousands that are said to be mine, I feel ashamed of myself, and think, with sorrow, how utterly I am living for myself alone. Oh, Lady Dudgeon! if you wish to make me happy, be my almoner; teach me how to employ, for the benefit of my poorer sisters and their little ones, that wealth which came to me so unexpectedly, and which I so little deserve. Teach me to do this, and you will make me happy indeed!"

Lady Dudgeon took a sniff at her salts before she spoke. "My dear Eleanor," she said at last, "if all people of wealth and social standing held the same terrible notions that you do, we should have chaos back again in a very little while. Your mind has been badly trained, child, and we must endeavour to eradicate the noxious weeds one by one. Meanwhile, you will be all the better for this little outburst, and I am not in the least offended by what you have said. And now as regards your costume for Lady Camperdown's concert. I think the new shade of green would harmonise admirably with your style and complexion. As for myself, I shall wear--" But at this juncture the door opened, and in came Sir Thomas with a budget of news, so the all-important subject of dress was put aside for the time being, to be discussed with due solemnity at a more fitting opportunity.

On the Friday following this scene Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon, accompanied by Miss Lloyd, went, by invitation, to spend a week at the house of an old family friend at Richmond. On Saturday morning certain important papers reached Gerald, who had been left in charge of matters in Harley Street, which necessitated an immediate consultation with Sir Thomas. Off by the next train hurried Gerald to Richmond, where he found Sir Thomas, in company with his friend Mr. Cromer, smoking a mild cheroot, in a garden-house that looked on to the river. Liking Gerald's manner and appearance, Mr. Cromer would insist upon his staying to dinner. Presently the ladies came sailing across the lawn--Mrs. Cromer and Lady Dudgeon; Miss Cromer, and Miss Lloyd; and then they all walked down to the edge of the river, where lay moored a pretty little boat, named Cora, in honour of Miss Cromer. The weather was warm and sunny for the time of year, and the river looked quite gay, so numerous were the tiny craft which the bright day had coaxed out after their long winter sleep.

"How delightful it would be to go on the river this afternoon!" said Miss Cromer.

"I wish Charley were here to take us for a row," alluding to her brother. "How coquettish my boat looks this afternoon! How she seems to woo us to take her out for a spin!"

Gerald lifted his hat. "I believe that I can handle a pair of oars as awkwardly as most people," he said, with a smile. "If you will trust yourselves to my care, I will promise to bring you back--either alive or dead."

The young ladies vowed that it would be delicious. The elder ladies disapproved faintly, on the ground that there would be a cold breeze on the river, but were overruled. Mr. Cromer waddled back to the house to get some shawls and wraps, and Gerald handed the young ladies into the boat.

In the result, however, Miss Cromer had to be left behind. At the last moment she was seized with her old complaint, palpitation of the heart, and her mother would not let her go. Eleanor would have stayed with her, but both Mr. and Mrs. Cromer insisted upon her going. It did not require much persuasion to make Gerald take them at their word. Eleanor had hardly ceased protesting that she would much rather stay with Cora, when she found herself in the middle of the stream, and all conversation with those on shore at an end.

"Now, Miss Lloyd, will you kindly take charge of the tiller ropes?" said Gerald, decisively. "I presume you know how to use them?"

"I ought to know," said Eleanor. "I had a great deal of practice with them when poor papa and I used to go out boating together."

It would not be high water for half an hour, and the tide was still running up strongly. Gerald put the boat's head up stream, and pulled gently along towards Twickenham. He blessed the happy fortune that, for one delicious hour, had given him Eleanor all to himself. But now that the opportunity was his, what should he talk to her about? He felt that he ought to be at once witty and tender; that now, if ever, he ought to rise above the commonplace level of everyday conversation. He felt all this, and yet he felt, at the same time, that he had nothing to say. If he might only have opened the floodgates of his heart, then, indeed, there would have been no lack of words--no necessity to hunt here and there in his brain for something to talk about. It is true that he might have begun about the weather, or some other equally simple topic; but, then, any nincompoop could have done that, and to-day he wanted so particularly to shine in the eyes of his goddess! But before long it became quite evident that he was not to shine to-day. He must rest contentedly on the level of the nincompoops, and trust to his good fortune that Miss Lloyd would not find out that he was a bigger donkey than the rest of the gentlemen who were in the habit of laying themselves out to fascinate her.

But Miss Lloyd herself seemed to have very little to say this afternoon. It seemed pleasure enough just then to sit quietly in the sweet sunshine and dip her ungloved hand now and again in the cool ripples of the tide.

"Have you ever been as far up the Thames as this before?" asked Gerald at last, in sheer desperation.

"There are some lovely nooks on it--so thoroughly English, you know: altogether unlike anything of the kind that you can see anywhere else."

"I have been so little abroad lately that I am hardly competent to judge what kind of scenery is thoroughly English, or what is not."

Another awkward silence. "What a goose he must think me! It seems so stupid not to be able to talk except in answer to a question," said Eleanor, to herself. "Why do I feel so different when I am with him< br> from what I do when I'm with anyone else? I never felt like this when I was alone with Captain Dayrell. If Cora had come with us we should have been lively enough." And yet, in her heart, how glad she was that Cora had not come! "Whether this scenery is English or not, it is very beautiful," said Eleanor, at last, with a desperate resolve to break the spell that was weaving itself more strongly around them with every moment. "One can see where spring's delicate brush has been at work here and there among the trees, rubbing-in the first faint tints of green. How lovely it is!"

"If this sunshine would only last, and the tide not tire of running up," said Gerald, "I feel that I could go on like this for a week and not feel weary."

"You are an Englishman, Mr. Pomeroy, and I am afraid that you would soon begin to cry out for your dinner."

"Would not the gods feed us and have a care of us? To-day we are their children. I feel that I have but to summon Hebe, and she would come and wait upon us."

"For my part, Minerva is the only one of the divinities whom I should care to summon."

"Possibly so; but Minerva would certainly swamp us. I should greatly prefer the company of a certain juvenile, called by Schiller der lächelnde Knabe: he would make the proper ballast for such a voyage as ours."

"Where I was at school in Germany they never would let us read Schiller," said Eleanor, demurely. "How happy those swans look!" she added, a moment afterwards, as if to change the subject.

"Yes," said Gerald, "they find their happiness as certain people one sometimes meets with find theirs--in groping about amongst the mud--seeking what they can devour."

"They are graceful enough as long as they are in their proper element. Out of it, they are as ungraceful as a scullion-maid in a drawing-room. And yet, I daresay that if they can think at all, they think that they look far more graceful during their perambulations ashore than ever they do in the water. But, then, how many of us think in the same way!"

"Why, you are quite a cynic, Mr. Pomeroy. But it is considered fashionable nowadays for young men to be cynical, and one must be in the fashion, you know."

Gerald laughed a little dismally. "I tasted the bitters of life at so early an age that I suppose the flavour of them still clings to my palate."

"Pardon me if I have hurt your feelings!" said Eleanor, earnestly. "I certainly did not intend to do so. But see, the tide is on the turn, and we must turn with it."

"Yes, you shall row me round yonder tiny island, that looks so pretty from here, and then we must really go back."

When they had rounded the islet, said Eleanor: "I am sure you must be tired, Mr. Pomeroy. Suppose you ship your oars and let the tide float us gently down."

"I am not in the least tired; but, being a good boy, I like to do as I am bidden."

Cunning Gerald knew that by floating down with the stream he should have half an hour more of Eleanor's society than if he had used his oars ever so gently.

"But, when you have landed me, there will be no objection to your having the boat out for as many hours as you like."

"And make a water hermit of myself. I scarcely think that I am sufficiently fond of my own company to care for that. I like solitude, but I must have some one to share it with me. The sweetest solitude is that where two people, whose tastes and sympathies are in accord, shut themselves out from the rest of the world (as you and I are shut out on this silent highway) to find in the society of each other a truer and more complete satisfaction than in aught else this earth can afford."

"Is not that a rather selfish view to take of life and its duties?" asked Eleanor.

"Is it not possible to live in the world and yet be not of it?" he returned--"to do our daily tasks there, and yet have an inner sanctuary to flee to, of which no one but ourselves shall possess the key, and against whose walls the noise and turmoil of the world shall dash themselves in vain?"

"You would have to be very particular in your choice of a companion to share such a solitude with you, otherwise the demon of Ennui would soon make a third in your company."

"Ennui can never intrude itself between two people whose tastes and sympathies thoroughly agree. Four times out of six ennui means neither more nor less than vacuity of brain."

Eleanor laughed. "Next time I am troubled with it I shall know how to call it by its proper name.--I declare if there isn't dear Lady Dudgeon looking out for us with a shawl over her head!"

Her ladyship received them very graciously; but then Mr. Pomeroy was a special favourite with her. "I am glad you have had the good sense to get back early," she said. "The river-damps are said to be very dangerous after sunset."

Not the slightest suspicion of any possible danger to her protégée ever entered her mind. Had anyone even hinted at such a thing, she would have replied indignantly that Miss Lloyd, who had refused the addresses of Captain Dayrell, was not at all likely to fall in love with Sir Thomas Dudgeon's secretary. She judged Eleanor, in fact, by what she herself had been at the same age. She had been brought up to believe that for any young lady to throw herself away simply for love was next door to a crime. As it was totally out of the question that she herself could have ever fallen in love with any man who was without wealth or position, or both, so would it have been utterly inconceivable to her that her darling Miss Lloyd could ever sink to a level which would render possible any such act of social degradation.

CHAPTER III.

A QUIET CUP OF TEA.

Tickets for the opera reached Miriam Byrne, in due course, on the morning of the Friday following Gerald Warburton's first visit to the house of Max Van Duren in Spur Alley. Saturday was Miriam's birthday. Beyond an extra kiss from Mr. Byrne, and the expression of good wishes usual on such an occasion, the day brought little or no difference to either father or daughter. The weather was unpleasant, and neither of them stirred out of doors. But when tea time came, the best china was brought out of its retirement, and from some mysterious cupboard was produced a Madeira cake, with a little jar of honey, and some potted shrimps.

"Now, papa, dear, draw up to the table," cried Miriam, gaily, as soon as everything had been arranged in order due.

"I've put an extra spoonful of green into the pot in order to please you, and if you behave yourself nicely, you shall have an extra lump of sugar in your cup, for you are as fond of sweet things as any schoolgirl."

"That's why I'm so fond of you, dear," said Mr. Byrne, drily, as he drew his chair up to the table.

Just then came a knock at the door. Miriam opened it, and there stood Mr. Van Duren, with a pretty little rustic basket in his hands, full of freshly-cut flowers.

"Good evening, Miss Byrne," he said, in a hesitating sort of way. "I happened to hear Mrs. Bakewell remark this morning, that to-day was your birthday. Such being the case, I have taken the liberty of bringing you these few flowers, of which I beg your acceptance, together with my very best wishes for your health and happiness."

"It is very kind of you, Mr. Van Duren--very kind indeed," replied Miriam. "Many thanks for your flowers and good wishes. But pray come inside."

He came a few steps into the room, and then Miriam took the basket and smelled at the flowers.

"They are indeed lovely," she said. "Yours is the only present that I have had to-day, and nothing else that you could have offered me would have been half so acceptable."

The moment he heard the knock, Peter Byrne collapsed, as it were, and became older by a score years in as many seconds. Deaf and senile, he now tottered across the room, his walking-stick in one hand, the other hand held to his ear.

"What is it? what is it?" he quavered. "Flowers, eh? Vastly pretty--vastly pretty!"

"Mr. Van Duren has brought me these lovely flowers as a birthday present, papa," said Miriam, speaking loudly in his ear.

"Very kind of him--very kind indeed," nodding his head at Miriam. "But come in, Mr. Van Duren, come in, sir. Pussy and I were just about to have a quiet cup of tea. Come and join us, sir--come and join us. I like a quiet cup of tea; so does Pussy."

"If you thought you were not intruding," said Miriam. "You are not doing that, I assure you. See, I will give your flowers the place of honour on my tea-table. But perhaps you are not a tea-drinker--perhaps----"

"Oh, yes, I am. Only I never can bear to drink tea alone. I think it a great promoter of sociability, and I only indulge in it when I have some one to keep me company."

"Then come and keep me company for once," said Miriam, with a smile, her magnificent eyes looking full into his face.

He shrank a little before that full-orbed gaze. For a moment or two the colour left his lips. He smiled faintly, and rubbed his hands together, as though he were cold.

"If I had the inclination to refuse--which, indeed, I have not," he said, "it would be impossible for me to do so after such an invitation. I can quite imagine that your life here is a little dull at times," he added, as he drew a chair up to the table.

"It certainly cannot be called a very lively one," returned Miriam, as she began to pour out the tea. "Poor dear papa is both very old and very feeble, and then his deafness is a great drawback, and makes home duller than it would otherwise be."

Peter Byrne, after sniffing once or twice at the flowers, toddled back to his easy-chair by the fire, and spreading his handkerchief over his knees, waited patiently for his tea. This Miriam now took to him; placing it on a little low table in front of him.

"Good girl, good girl," he said. Then, turning suddenly on Van Duren, he added, "When I was a young spark, I always liked to have a flower in my button-hole. The girls used to beg them of me--bless their pretty eyes! I daresay the young hussies nowadays do the very same thing."

Max Van Duren, at this time, was fifty years old. He was not very tall, but broad-set and strongly built. His coarse, short-cut, sandy hair showed as yet few traces of age. His face was closely shaven, so that whatever character there was in it could be clearly seen without the disguise of beard or moustache. A massive jaw; a close-shut mouth, with its straight line of thin lips; heavy, overhanging eyebrows, and small, deep-set eyes of a cold, steel gray: such were the prominent features of a face that was full of power, self-will, and obstinacy. His ears were pierced, but the small gold rings he had worn in them when a young man had been discarded years ago. Professional beggars are generally pretty good students of facial character, and no member of that fraternity had ever been known to solicit alms from Max Van Duren.

He had not been used to female society, and he felt himself altogether out of his element as he sat at the tea-table and was waited upon by Miriam.

Miss Byrne had not had her magnificent eyes given her for nothing. Very early in life she had learned how to make use of them. After that one full, unveiled look into Van Duren's eyes when she invited him to take tea with her, she kept her own eyes carefully under subjection. He could not keep his away from her, a fact of which Miriam was perfectly conscious; but now that she had got him there, seated opposite to her, she seemed to have become all at once shy, timid, and all but speechless. Now and then he caught a momentary, half-startled glance aimed at him from under the shadow of her long lashes, but that was all. She seemed to turn her eyes anywhere, rather than look him full in the face. He was quite at a loss what to say. What bond of sympathies, tastes, or ideas, as he asked himself, could there be in common between a man like him and that charming creature opposite? There were a great many subjects that he knew a great deal about, but he could not call to mind one that would be likely to have the faintest possible interest for Miss Byrne. Still, it was requisite that he should say something, or she would think him no better than a mummy.

He looked round the room: there were a number of books scattered about. "Are you fond of reading, Miss Byrne?" he asked, suddenly: as good an opening, under the circumstances, as he could possibly have found.

"Oh, novels of course: a sort of literature for which, I daresay, you care nothing."

"Well, I am certainly not a novel reader. But, were I a young lady, I daresay I should be. You like love-stories, of course?"

"Yes; love-stories. Having had no experience in that line myself, it is only natural that I should like to read about it in others."

"I thought that all young ladies nowadays could graduate and take honours in the Art of Love long before they were twenty."

"How nice it must be to be able to write love-stories that you know will be read by some thousands of young ladies!"

"But if an author in every case writes only from his own experience, what a fearful experience must his be!"

"I apprehend that in such a case a writer is like a clever violinist. He may play to the public on one string as long as he likes, if only his variations are sufficiently amusing not to weary them."

"Yes, I daresay there is really a very great sameness in such matters," said Miriam, with well-feigned simplicity.

"And yet I suppose it hardly matters how poor a love-story may be; the vivid imagination of your sex supplies all deficiencies, and clothes it with whatever warmth and colour it may otherwise lack."

"I am not so sure on that point. But I am afraid you are getting beyond my depth, Mr. Van Duren. For my own part, I have not much imagination. I am very, very matter-of-fact."

"That ought to form a bond of sympathy between us, seeing that I am one of the most matter-of-fact people in the City of London."

"I have been told that bonds of sympathy are very dangerous things. Papa's Three-per-cent. bonds would be a much safer investment."

"How would it be, Miss Byrne, if I were to go through a course of reading under your tuition?"

"How would it be possible for me to act as your tutor in such a course of reading when I don't know the alphabet of the language myself?"

"I am afraid that I am too old to learn a fresh language. Besides, if you are as ignorant as you say you are, we should not know the proper sounds to give to the different letters."

"Nature would be our schoolmistress. With her to teach us, we should soon become apt scholars."

"Very well. We will have our first lesson on Monday. But before we begin, you shall go and bowl your hoop a dozen times round the square at the bottom of the street, and I will sit on a doorstep, with a doll in my arms, and watch you."

All at once Peter Byrne, who for the last ten minutes had been gazing intently into the fire, and neither stirring nor speaking, turned in his chair, and said to Miriam--

"Go up to your room, Pussy, for a little while; I want to have a little private talk with Mr. Van Duren."

Then she crossed to the basket of flowers, plucked a spray, placed it in the bosom of her dress, smiled at Van Duren, and went.

Van Duren's face lost its brightness as soon as Miriam left the room. He crossed to Byrne's chair, laid his coarse hand on the old man's shoulder, and said, not without a touch of sternness--

He was obliged to speak in a louder tone of voice than usual, and that of itself annoyed him.

"Sit down, Mr. Van Duren--sit down close beside me. I have something to say to you. But are you sure that we are quite alone?"

He said no more for a minute or two, but fumbled nervously with his handkerchief, still keeping his eyes fixed intently on the fire. Then he had a little fit of coughing. When that was over, and he had recovered his breath, he laid his hand on Mr. Van Duren's wrist, and spoke.

"I suppose not," said Mr. Van Duren, with a sneer; "and I for one would certainly not care to do so."

"Are you one of those people who think that a man is likely to die any the sooner for having made his will?"

"When a man has anything to leave--when he has any dispositions to make with regard to his property, it is best not to put off making them till the last moment--eh?"

"It is very foolish to do so, Mr. Byrne. But it is what many people do, for all that."

"Then you think that I should be doing a wise thing if I were to make my will--eh?"

"If I have any property to dispose of! Ech! ech! ech! If I have any property to dispose of--he says!"

He laughed till another fit of coughing nearly choked him, and after that was over he had to gather breath before he could speak again.

"Yes, Mr. Van Duren," he gasped out, "I have a little property to leave behind me--just a little. And I want you, as a business man, to recommend to me some good sound lawyer, to whom I could give the requisite instructions for drawing up my last will and testament."

"Oh, if that's all, I can recommend to you my own lawyer, Mr. Billing, who is a thorough business man, and would do you justice in every way."

"That's kind of you--very kind. There will be nothing complicated about the affair, There's only two of 'em to leave it to--my boy and my girl. I shall divide it equally between them."

Mr. Van Duren was beginning to feel interested. After all, it was quite possible that this pottering, deaf old fellow might be far better off than he--Van Duren--had any idea of.

"House property, or land, chiefly, I suppose?" he said, in a casual, off-hand kind of way.

"Not a bit of it," said the old man. "I don't own a single house, nor an acre of land. No, sir, my property is all in scrip and shares--in good sound investments, every penny of it. And the beauty of it is--ech! ech!--that not even my own boy has any idea what I'm worth--what he and his sister will drop in for when the old man's under the turf. I've always kept 'em both in the dark about my money matters--and the best way too. They might want me out of the way, they might wish me dead, if they knew everything. No, no! I've kept my own counsel. I've speculated and speculated, and nobody but my broker and myself has been a bit the wiser."

Mr. Van Duren began to feel quite an affectionate regard for his lodger--leaving out of the question his lodger's daughter.

"Mum's the word," chuckled the old man, as he clutched Van Duren by the sleeve. "I'm telling you what I've always kept a secret from them; but there'll be thirty thousand between 'em when I go. Thirty thousand--not a single penny less!"

Van Duren's colour came and went. Miriam, then, would have a fortune of fifteen thousand pounds, respecting which, at present, she knew nothing! Would not the wisest thing he could do be to propose to her and win her consent to become his wife before she became aware of the golden future in store for her? Afterwards it might be too late--she might regard him with altogether different eyes when she knew that her dowry would be fifteen thousand pounds.

"A noble legacy, my dear sir--a truly noble legacy!" said Van Duren, warmly. "And were I in your place, I should not lose an unnecessary hour in making my testamentary arrangements. You may depend on it that your mind will feel more settled and easy when you have made everything secure, and put your wishes beyond the possibility of dispute."

"Egad! I'll take your advice; and if you'll send that lawyer of yours on Tuesday, I'll have the job got out of hand at once. I don't suppose I shall live a day less for having made my will--eh?"

"Not you, my dear sir--not you. There are many pleasant days in store for you yet. You are as tough as a bit of seasoned oak."

"Aye, aye. It's not always the youngest ones that are the strongest. Why shouldn't I live to be a hundred?"

"I have never met any one in my life whom I have learnt to admire so much in so short a time."

"Ah! poor Pussy will feel it when her old father goes. It preys on my mind sometimes when I think of it. What is to become of her, with her money and her inexperience; and no one to look after her but a brother almost as young and inexperienced as herself?"

"Miss Byrne's fate will probably be that of most other young ladies--she will marry."

"I wish with all my heart that she would: that is, if she would marry the sort of man I should like her to have. But to see her married to some empty-headed, extravagant fop of a fellow, who would squander her money and not make her happy--I could never rest quiet in my grave if that were to happen."

What Van Duren's answer would have been is not upon record, for just at this moment there came a knock at the door, and presently Bakewell's head was intruded into the room.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said, carrying a finger to his forehead, "but there's a gentleman downstairs as wants to see you immediately on important business."

"Confound the gentleman, whoever he may be!" said Van Duren, with hearty goodwill. "Tell him I'll be down presently." Then, turning to Byrne, he added: "We business men can never really call an hour our own. I must ask you to make my excuses to Miss Byrne: I am sorry that I cannot say good-night to her in person."

"It will be your own fault if you don't see her again before long. Come and take a quiet cup of tea with us as often as you like. We are very quiet and very homely, but we shall always be glad to see you. You won't forget the lawyer, will you?"

When Miriam came downstairs a quarter of an hour later, she found her father sitting with his legs perched against the chimney-piece, and smoking his china pipe. He had flung his wig and skull-cap aside, he had relieved himself of his false hump, and he had taken his artificial teeth out of the bureau in which he kept them, and had fitted them carefully into his month.

"Miriam," he said, "before you are a week older Max Van Duren will propose marriage to you. I will tell you to-morrow what you are to say when he makes the offer. To-night I am tired. And now mix me a tumbler of grog: the sort of tumbler that you know so well how to mix, dear."

CHAPTER IV.

FASCINATION.

A few days after the private interview between Mr. Van Duren and his lodger, Mr. Billing, the lawyer, called on Mr. Byrne by appointment, and took down that gentleman's instructions with respect to the disposition of his property. Three days later, Mr. Billing called with the all-important document, and found waiting to receive him in Mr. Byrne's parlour, the testator himself, Mr. Van Duren, who had most kindly consented to act as one of the executors, and a certain Mr. Dexter, an old personal friend of Mr. Byrne, who was to act as executor number two.

Then, at the testator's request, the will was read aloud by Mr. Billing. By its provisions Mr. Byrne bequeathed, equally between his son Gerald and his daughter Miriam, the whole of his property, amounting in the aggregate to thirty thousand pounds, the same being partly invested in government three per cents., and partly in the shares of certain railways and other public companies. When the reading was over, Mr. Byrne put his signature to the will in a hand that was remarkably firm and clear for his age. The two executors then appended their signatures. Mr. Billing took charge of the document, and the ceremony was at an end. After that, a couple of bottles of old port were produced, the testator's health was drunk, and there was a little hand-shaking and the expression of many good wishes, and after that the three gentlemen went away, and Mr. Byrne was left to solitude and the company of his own thoughts.

His own thoughts, such as they might be, seemed of an eminently satisfactory nature. Miriam was out--had been sent out purposely during the process of will-signing. Thus it fell out that Mr. Byrne now found himself temporarily deprived of the services of his daughter. But that did not trouble him in the least. He liked to be waited upon--as most men do--but he was not above looking after his own comforts when there was no one else to do it for him. All through life he had been in the habit of celebrating any pleasant little event, or successful stroke of business, by taking something "on the strength of it," as he termed it; and it was hardly likely that he should pretermit such an excellent observance on the present occasion. Accordingly, he no sooner found himself alone than he proceeded to charge and light the inevitable pipe, and to mix for himself the inevitable tumbler of grog. With his chair tilted back on its hind legs, his feet on the table, his wig awry, his pipe in his mouth, and his steaming glass before him, Mr. Byrne was quietly meditating over the day's proceedings, when, without any preliminary knock, the door that gave egress on to the landing was softly opened, and the head of Pringle, Mr. Van Duren's clerk, was thrust into the room. His glassy eyes fixed themselves on Byrne, but without any apparent sign of intelligence lighting up their dull depths. For a few seconds the two men stared at each other without speaking. Byrne was, in fact, too much taken aback to utter a word. "Beg pardon. I thought the governor was here," said Pringle at last. "See he isn't. Sorry to intrude." With that he withdrew his head and shut the door as softly as he had opened it.

"That drunken fool has seen enough to spoil everything!" cried Byrne, as he started to his feet. "What an ass I must have been not to lock the door! My only chance is that he may have had so much to drink as to have forgotten all about what he saw by to-morrow morning."

Pringle, having shut the door of Mr. Byrne's room, stood still on the mat, while he indulged in one of his noiseless, malicious laughs. "I thought the old boy was after some private little game of his own," he said; "and I thought I shouldn't be long before I spotted him. A disguise--eh? And no more deaf, I'll swear, than I am! Haven't I listened at the keyhole, and heard him and the girl talking quite natural and easy like? And then Van Duren's sweet on the girl, but the girl looks too wide awake to be sweet on him, without she thinks him rich, and wants a husband. I can't make out just yet what it all means, but, anyhow, I don't think it means much good to Van Duren, and so long as it don't mean any good to him I sha'n't interfere. I'll watch and say nothing, and if I only find that the pair of them are weaving a net round Van Duren, won't I give them a helping hand! That is," he added, as if suddenly correcting himself, "that is, provided it don't interfere with my own little game."

He went slowly downstairs to the office on the ground-floor. The gas was lighted, but there was no one in the room. "Van Duren and Billing have gone out together. If Van thinks I'm going to wait for him, he's mistaken. I'll just shut up shop, and go to tea. Now, what could Van and the other one want in the old boy's room upstairs? That's a puzzler. Is there some little game on that they are all mixed up in? Or are Van and the other trying to best the old 'un? Or is the old 'un trying to best Van and the other one?" Shaking his head, as though the questions he had put to himself were beyond his powers of solution, he took a ledger under each arm, and carried them slowly downstairs--all Pringle's movements were slow--into the fireproof room in the basement of the house, where Van Duren's books and papers were habitually kept.

This fireproof room was on the same floor as the rooms inhabited by Bakewell and his wife, who had charge of the whole premises, but was separated from them by a brick passage of some length. Opposite the foot of the stairs was a door that opened into this passage, in which a tiny jet of gas was kept burning through the day. At the end of the passage was a strong iron door, which opened into the fireproof room. There was only one key to this door, and that was kept by Van Duren himself. But it was part of Bakewell's duties to go up to his master's bedroom every morning, obtain the key in question, open the door--which was allowed to stand open all day--lock it again at ten o'clock at night, and take back the key to his master's bedroom. When Van Duren went out of town, which he did frequently, the key was given in charge of Pringle. The key of the safe itself never left Van Duren's possession for more than a few minutes at a time. A small, square apartment with a brick roof, and fitted up with shelves and book-racks, with sundry boxes in one corner, and in the other a large patent safe: such was Mr. Van Duren's fireproof room. Like the passage that led to it, it was entirely shut out from daylight, and the gas was kept burning in it all day long.

When Pringle had deposited the ledgers in their proper places, he turned the gas a little higher, and then stood for a few moments listening intently. Not a sound broke the silence. "If one was buried six feet deep in the earth, one couldn't be quieter than one is here," said Pringle, with a shudder. "It's just like a vault, particularly when one knows that there's nothing but dead men's bones all round. No fear of an interruption," he added. "Bakewell's out, and his wife ain't over-fond of this part of the house."

His next proceeding was a very singular one. From an inner pocket of his waistcoat he extracted a key, which key be proceeded to insert into the lock of the patent safe in the corner. "Not quite the thing yet," he muttered, as he tried the key. "Wants another touch of the file here and there. Grainger's three thousand will fall due in about a month's time. I must have everything ready by then. It's sure not to be all in bills. There will be a few hundreds in gold. Then there will be Van's private stock, and other things. Altogether, a pretty little haul."

He withdrew the key from the lock and put it back into his secret pocket. "If he had not treated me like a dog, if he had treated me as one man ought to treat another, I should never have thought of this thing. He thinks that he has me in his power, and that I dare not turn; but he will find himself mistaken. I'm not quite a worm, though he tramples on me as if I were. He will find that I can turn, and sting too, when the proper time comes."

He went back upstairs, turned down the gas in the office, and taking his hat and his faded gingham umbrella, he left the house.

Jonas Pringle was from fifty to fifty-five years old. He was bald, except for a straggling fringe of hair round the back of his head, and had weak, watery eyes, that gave him the appearance, to strangers, of being habitually in tears. He always dressed in black, and always wore an old-fashioned dress coat. But his black clothes were never otherwise than very shabby and threadbare, and shiny with old age at the elbows and knees. He wore a thick black silk neckcloth, above which peered the frayed edge of a dirty collar. Among Pringle's intimates at the Pig and Whistle (his favourite evening haunt) there was a story current that he had not had a new hat for twenty years.

This evening he went mooning slowly along the streets, muttering under his breath, as was his habit, and glancing up with a queer, sudden stare into the face of every woman that passed him. Years before, he had lost his daughter, an only child: lost her, that is, in the sense of her being stolen from him by a villain. It was a fixed article of Pringle's belief that he should one day find his daughter again, and he had got into the habit, when walking along the streets, of looking into the face of each woman that he met, ever hoping that among them he might some time see again the face of his lost Jessie.

It was quite impossible for Pringle to get as far as his lodgings without making one or two calls for refreshment by the way. There were certain houses where his face was well known as that of a regular frequenter, and where they knew, without his having to be at the trouble of asking for it, the particular article (twopennyworth of gin, neat) with which to supply him.

"He's been at it again," remarked Pringle, parenthetically, to the landlord of one of the dirty little taverns which he favoured with his patronage. "He was raving about all morning like a bear with a sore head. Nothing pleased him, nothing one could do was right."

"I sha'n't stand it much longer; you may take your oath of that," said Pringle. "There'll be a day of reckoning before long: mark my words, if there ain't."

About the very time that Jonas Pringle was giving utterance to this mysterious threat, the man to whom he referred was sitting alone, thinking deeply--thinking of Miriam Byrne, of her manifold charms of fortune and person, and trying to screw up his courage to the point of asking her to become his wife. He had fully made up his mind that he would so ask her, but he wished with all his heart that the task were well over. In all business transactions he was one of the most prompt and decisive of men, and, it may be added, one of the hardest; but the thought of having to tell this dark-eyed beauty of twenty that he loved her and would fain marry her, fluttered his nerves strangely. That it must be done, and done soon, he had quite made up his mind; but none the less did the thought of having it to do trouble him. To old Byrne he had thrown out one or two hints already, and had not been repulsed. In fact, the old man seemed desirous of seeing his daughter comfortably settled in life, and would perhaps be more likely to encourage the addresses of a man like Van Duren, who knew the world and the value of money, rather than those of some empty-headed popinjay of Miriam's own age, who would, in all probability, first spend her fortune and then neglect her. Ah! if he could only win her for himself--win her and her fortune too--what a happy stroke of luck that would be! He admired the girl for her beauty, admired her more than any woman he had ever met before, and even if she had not been worth a penny, he might in some moment of rashness have flung all other considerations to the winds, and have asked her to marry him. But knowing what he knew about her, would he not be an idiot to let such a golden opportunity slip through his fingers without trying to grasp it and claim it for his own? "If I can find a chance of doing so, I'll propose to her to-morrow," he said to himself, emphatically, as he rose from the table. "I cannot afford to lose another day."

At seven o'clock next evening Mr. Van Duren knocked at the door of his lodgers' sitting-room. His summons was answered by Miriam in person. He started with surprise as his eyes fell on her. He had never seen her dressed as she was to-night. Anyone might have thought that she knew he was going to call upon her, that she suspected what he had made up his mind to say. Had she deliberately laid herself out to fascinate him, to enthral his senses, to make him forget reason and prudence, and all the cautious rules with which his life had heretofore been hedged round, she could not, with all her thought, have done more towards effecting that end than the caprice of a moment was likely to do for her without thought at all. And it was but the whim of a moment that had induced her to attire herself after the fashion in which she presented herself to the eyes of Van Duren to-night.

She wore a long, trailing robe of amber silk, which fitted her very loosely, and was fastened round her waist with a gay Persian scarf of many colours. The sleeves of this dress were cut very short, and Miriam's bare arms were decorated with bracelets of tiny, tinted shells and small coins intermixed. A fringe of coins was bound round her forehead, and fastened at the back with a gilt arrow. Her hair fell to her waist in two long plaits, with which more coins and shells were intermixed. As she walked across the room, and as she reclined on the sofa, the tips of two Turkish slippers, embroidered with gold thread and silks of various colours, could be seen peeping from under the edge of her robe. In her ears hung two tiny bells, that looked like gold, but were only gilt, which tinkled faintly when she moved her head; round her throat was clasped a double string of large amber beads.

"Good evening, Miss Byrne," said Van Duren, as soon as he had recovered his presence of mind. "I have had a small consignment of fruit from France, and I have ventured to hope that you would do me the favour of accepting a box of it."

"You are kindness itself," said Miriam. "But don't stand there, please." Then, when she had shut the door behind him, she added: "How you have so quickly found out two of my pet weaknesses--flowers and candied fruits--is more than I can understand." Then she took the box from his hand. "Many, many thanks. Why, the casket itself is quite a work of art!"

Van Duren crossed to where Mr. Byrne was sitting in his easy-chair by the fire. He had neither spoken nor stirred from the moment of hearing the knock at the door. Van Duren laid his hand on the old man's shoulder. "How are you this evening, Mr. Byrne?" he said, speaking close to the other one's ear.

"Oh, hearty, hearty: never better," answered Byrne, in a querulous voice. "If it wasn't for this nasty cough, and this pain in my side, and one or two other trifles, I should be as right as a trivet."

"Of course it will. In another month's time I shall be out and about again, as strong and active as the best of you."

"Poor papa never will allow that he is worse," said Miriam, in a low voice. "He has certainly been weaker and feebler for the last day or two, but he will persist in saying that he is quite the opposite."

"The old boy can't last long," thought Van Duren to himself: "another reason why I ought not to delay."

Next minute, without exactly knowing how it happened, he found himself sitting opposite Miriam, who had resumed he favourite position--a half-sitting, half-reclining one--on the sofa, and was eating daintily a sugared apricot. How round and white her arms looked, contrasted against the deep amber of her robe, from under which the tiny Turkish slippers peeped tantalizingly! She was certainly very lovely, but about her loveliness to-night there was something wild and weird that at once attracted to itself a certain element of savagery that lay latent in the character of her admirer, but which the quiet, humdrum life he had led of late years had all but buried out of sight. An Englishman of the timid conventional type would either have been repelled or frightened had he seen the lady of his love decked out after Miriam's strange fashion, but it only served to draw Van Duren more closely to her. It seemed to him that, could he but have had his own way in the matter, he would never have let her dress otherwise than as he saw her to-night. As he gazed at her, all the pulses of his being seemed to throb with newer life. His eyes brightened, the lines of his hard mouth softened, and for once, as Miriam avowed afterwards to her father, the man looked almost handsome.

Miriam's guitar was resting against the sofa, within reach of her hand. Said Van Duren--

"You were singing and playing the other evening, Miss Byrne, as I went upstairs to my own room, but I have never had the pleasure of hearing you when in your company."

"Then you ought to consider yourself very fortunate," replied Miriam, "for I am really not worth listening to."

"If you put it as a definite request, of course I cannot refuse you. I have accepted your bribe beforehand," she added, with a smile, pointing to the box of fruit.

"Then you shall hear me. After that you will be satisfied. You will never want to hear me again."

"That's as it may be," said Van Duren, as he drew his chair several inches nearer the sofa.

The phrase was an ugly one, and was spoken without thought. Van Duren started as if some one had smitten him suddenly from behind. He shot a look full of suspicion and terror at Miriam; but her eyes were bent on the guitar, one or two strings of which seemed to want screwing up.

"The guitar has always been associated in my mind," he said, "with love-songs and serenades, with moonlight and romance."

"Then here's a little serenade for you. I, who sing, am supposed to be a cavalier. If your imagination will carry you so far, you can fancy yourself to be the lady thus lovingly addressed."

"What throbs through the song of the nightingale?
What makes the red heart of the rose turn pale?

What makes me grow drowsy 'neath midsummer skies?
What makes me a slave to my lady's dark eyes?

One verse will be quite enough for the reader. Miriam's voice was a rich, clear contralto, which she managed with considerable skill. Now and again as she sang, she shot a glance out of her dangerous black eyes at the rapt listener sitting opposite to her. Her father, in his easy-chair by the fire, gave no further sign of existence than by the troublesome cough which seized him every few minutes, and shook him like a leaf.

As the last line thrilled from Miriam's lips, Van Duren sank down on one knee before her, and tried to seize her hand. With a little involuntary shudder, she drew it away from him. Then he grasped a fold of her dress, and pressed it passionately to his lips.

"Miriam Miriam! do not repulse me, but listen to me!" he cried. "You, who can give such passionate expression to the words of a mere love-song, must have felt and known that I loved you from the first moment that I saw you. I cannot ask or expect that you should give me back such a love as I now offer you. But try to like me a little--consent to be my wife--and I will do all that lies in the power of mortal man to make you happy!"

"Oh, Mr. Van Duren, you do indeed surprise me!" was all Miriam said. But she was not surprised in the least.

"I am richer than the world gives me credit for being," pursued Van Duren. "I have led a quiet, saving life for years; but all that shall be changed if you will only become mine. I can afford to let my wife live as a lady ought to live; I can afford to----"

"I am quite aware," he pleaded, "that there is a very wide difference between your age and mine, but----"

"That would make no difference in my feelings towards any one for whom I really cared."

"Why, that a man like you, who have seen so much of the world, who must have seen and known so many ladies, both in England and abroad, should really profess to care about a foolish, frivolous girl like me."

"You are neither foolish nor frivolous. Besides which, you are different from any one whom I ever met before. More than all, you are my fate."

"Yes, the one woman out of all the wide world whom, uncounted ages ago, it was fated, or fore-ordained, that I should love."

"Now you are going further than I can follow you," said Miriam, with a smile. "Perhaps, at the same time, it was fore-ordained that I should reject your suit."

"Not till you have told me the best or the worst. Not till you have given me some word of hope, or told me that I must never hope again."

"Mr. Van Duren," said Miriam, with more earnestness than she had yet used, "your offer has come upon me so suddenly that I know not what to say. I think you can hardly expect me to give you an answer to so serious a question without giving me time to consider what that answer must be. Not now, not to-night--can I answer you either one way or the other. Two or three days at the least I must claim, to think over all that you have said to me, and to discover, if it be possible for me to do so, what my feelings are in a matter that concerns my future welfare so closely."

"I can but bow to your decision," said Van Duren. "I hope I may accept it as a good augury that you have not rejected my suit at once and entirely; that you have deemed it worthy of being taken into consideration."

"Ah, Mr. Van Duren, I am afraid that you are not such a novice as you would wish to make out: I am afraid that you understand more of our sex and their ways than you would care to have known."

Then, as if to change the subject, she took up her guitar and began to play. A little while later Van Duren took his leave.

"Very well managed, my dear," said Mr. Byrne, approvingly, wheeling round his chair as soon as the door was closed upon their visitor; "only neither of you seemed to think much about me in the matter."

"I suppose Mr. Van Duren thinks that if he can obtain my consent, yours will follow as a matter of course."

"He is welcome to think what he likes, so long as you succeed in getting out of him the particular information that I want. So far, all has gone off well. In three days' time you will accept him provisionally--accept him on trial, that is, for a month or six weeks, before finally binding yourself to anything. In the course of that month you ought to be able to worm out of him the all-important secret, without which all that we have done up to the present time will be of no avail whatever."

"I understand perfectly what you want, papa, but I cannot tell you how utterly distasteful to me is the whole wretched business."

"Tut, tut, girl, you mustn't talk in that way! Think of the two hundred pounds that will be yours--absolutely your own--if we succeed."

"I do think of it, papa. But even that can hardly reconcile me at times to go through with what I have promised. You don't know the feeling of repulsion, of absolute loathing, that came over me to-night when that man tried to take my hand. Think what it is to be made love to by a murderer; think of this, and pity me!"

"Of course I pity you, and feel for you," said the old man, soothingly. "But our needs are great, and the money will be very useful--you can't but admit that."

"I am not afraid of it--but I certainly don't like it. But what do you intend doing with your two hundred pounds, Miriam? Better let me invest it for you."

"If I succeed in getting the two hundred pounds---which at present is by no means certain--I shall----"

"I shall furnish a couple of rooms--furnish them very nicely, mind you--and marry James."

"I shall, most certainly. It is the thought of that and nothing else that strengthens me to go through with this dreadful business. No meaner prize would tempt me."

She stooped and kissed her father lightly on the forehead, and then went quickly out of the room, as if afraid that what she had said might provoke a discussion that would have been unpleasant to both of them.

CHAPTER V.

EASTER HOLIDAYS.

The Easter holidays were here, and Sir Thomas Dudgeon and family had gone down to Stammars for a fortnight. The baronet was like a boy released for awhile from the tyranny of school. He had always loved the country; but never had it seemed so sweet and pleasant to him as it did now, after he had been penned up for a couple of months in the great wilderness of London. He spent hours with Cozzard every day, and together the two men visited every nook and corner of the property, and renewed acquaintance with every horse, dog, and cow on the estate. Sir Thomas's speech on the Sugar Duties, being a maiden effort, had been listened to with kindly attention by the House, and had been commented on in favourable terms by one or two of the morning papers. Amplified and embellished with tropes and similes not found; in the original, it had been printed, in extenso, in the Pembridge Gazette, and had formed the basis of a ponderous leader in the editor's best style. Sir Thomas began to feel as if he were a power in the realm. Really, as he sometimes whispered to himself, his wife's estimate of his abilities might not be such an exaggerated one, after all. He had been complimented so often about his speech, that, insensibly to himself, he began to regard it as being altogether his own composition, and to forget or ignore Pomeroy's share in the transaction.

The ball at Stammars came off in due course, and was very successful. It added greatly to the popularity of Sir Thomas among his constituents. Husbands and fathers in Pembridge were as amenable to feminine influences as they are supposed to be elsewhere, and Lady Dudgeon judged rightly that all the ladies would work for her after she had hinted that a similar gathering would probably be held at Stammars every year during Sir Thomas's parliamentary career.

Lady Dudgeon's correspondence had got greatly into arrear during her two months in London. As soon as the ball was over she devoted a week to letter-writing. She had many things to write about, and she did not spare any of her numerous correspondents. She had much to say respecting the fashions and foibles of society in town, the drier details being plentifully garnished with gossip and anecdotes respecting mutual friends, or such notabilities of the day as her ladyship might have been brought into casual contact with in the course of a ten minutes' crush on an aristocratic staircase. But the ball and its eccentricities were not forgotten; and could certain of the Pembridge ladies have seen how mercilessly their "dear Lady Dudgeon" ridiculed them in her letters to her fine friends--their manners, their conversation, and their toilettes--they would never have forgiven her to the last day of their lives.

Captain Dayrell came down for the ball, and stayed the remainder of the week at Stammars. Neither he nor Lady Dudgeon had given up the campaign as hopeless. It was part of the Captain's creed that young ladies, especially in matters matrimonial, did not know their own minds for a week at a time. Because he had been refused in March, that was no reason why he should not be accepted in April or May. He had felt considerably annoyed when Lady Dudgeon had told him the result of her conversation with Miss Lloyd. He hinted to her pretty plainly that she had committed an egregious blunder in broaching the subject to Eleanor at all, instead of leaving him to fight his own battle with that somewhat obstinate young person. "A meddlesome old cat" was the term he applied to her in his own thoughts. To do her justice, however, her ladyship was laudably anxious to atone for her error; therefore was Captain Dayrell invited down to Stammars, where he would have the field entirely to himself: even Mr. Pomeroy would be out of the way, Sir Thomas having given that gentleman a week's release from his not very onerous duties.

"You will have to do your spiriting very gently, Captain Dayrell," said her ladyship. "Miss Lloyd's refusal was a very decisive one."

"So long as there is no prior attachment--and you assure me that there is not--I will not permit myself to despair," said Dayrell. "I tell your ladyship this in confidence. But if it could in any way be hinted to Miss Lloyd that I have accepted her decision as final, and, while deeply hurt by her rejection of me, have no intention of troubling her further, I think my cause might be somewhat benefited thereby."

"My dear Lady Dudgeon, it is one of the characteristics of your sex to regard a rejected suitor with a certain amount of tendresse. They say to themselves, 'Here is something that might be mine if I would only hold out my hand to take it.' So long as it is there for the having, they don't care to accept it; but when they have reason to think that they are about to lose it, they will sometimes make a snatch at it rather than let it go altogether--or, perhaps I ought to say, rather than let it fall into the hands of another."

In this matter Captain Dayrell judged Eleanor by himself. He was twice as anxious to win her, now that she had declined his attentions, as he had been before. Not that he would ever have dreamed of asking Miss Lloyd to become his wife had she been other than the heiress she was. He knew too well what was due both to himself and to society.

The suggested hint was duly given to Eleanor. It made her intercourse with Captain Dayrell, during his stay at Stammars, more easy and pleasant than it might otherwise have been, but beyond that it had no effect whatever. When the captain went back to town he was not quite so sanguine of success as he had been a week previously; but being of a persevering disposition, and having no belief in the immutability of a woman's No, he was still very far from considering his case as hopeless.

Olive Deane had three days' leave of absence from her duties at Easter. She went by invitation to spend the time with her aunt and cousin at Pembridge. She had seen neither of them during the two months she had been at Lady Dudgeon's. Matthew Kelvin had once or twice sent his chief clerk to transact business with the baronet, but had never put in an appearance himself. Could it be that he dreaded the possibility of meeting Miss Lloyd? was the question Olive sometimes asked herself; but it was a question to which there was no likelihood of her ever obtaining an answer.

Olive's heart fluttered strangely as she knocked at the familiar door. Absence had in no wise weakened her love for her cousin. Watered with her secret tears, its roots seemed only to grow stronger and to cling more tightly round her heart. "Why should my life be made miserable for the love of this man?" she sometimes asked herself. "He cares nothing for me--he never will care anything for me." But in other moods she would say: "He will learn to love me yet. Such a love as mine must have a magnetism in it strong enough to draw to itself the object of its desires."

But how was it possible that her cousin could grow to love her when she was separated from him by weeks and months of absence? She must devise some scheme that would bring her under the same roof with him again; that was her only chance. Once let Miss Lloyd become engaged either to Mr. Pomeroy or Captain Dayrell--once let Matthew Kelvin realize the fact that, safe in the love of another man, Eleanor was for ever beyond his reach, and she--Olive--would not stop another day at Stammars. Some excuse she would find, some reason she would invent, which would make her once more an inmate of her cousin's house. Now, to-day, when she took her aunt's hand and kissed her, she peered anxiously into her face to read whatever signs might be written there. Was her health much worse than usual? Was there any prospect that before long this poor ailing creature might need her services as nurse? Surely--surely, she could not linger on in this way for ever! She wished no harm to her aunt; but one cannot always help one's thoughts. To-day, however, Mrs. Kelvin looked pretty much as she had looked for the last three or four years--neither better nor worse.

She received her niece very kindly. Matthew was out on business, so there was time for an hour's confidential talk before he came back. One of Mrs. Kelvin's first questions had reference to Mr. Pomeroy; was he comfortable, and did he suit Sir Thomas? Then she was interested in hearing Olive's account of the gay doings in London, and genuinely pleased to find that Lady Dudgeon and her niece agreed so well together.

After that the old lady began to talk about her son. There had been a change in him of late, and it troubled her. He was not bodily ill, she thought; but he seemed to have something on his mind. He was restless and irritable, and seemed to crave for company and excitement more than he had ever done before. When he was talking about one thing he always seemed to be thinking about another.

"He has not read a line to me for I don't know how long," sighed the old lady. "I can see that his heart is not in it, and so I don't care to ask him."

Mr. Kelvin came in while they were still talking about him. His face brightened the moment he saw Olive, and her heart whispered to her, "He is glad to see me!" He shook hands with her, and patted her cheek as he might have done that of a child.

"Your roses were always white ones, Nolly," he said, "and London smoke has certainly done nothing to turn them into red ones."

Olive's anxious eyes were not long in verifying what Mrs. Kelvin had said about her son. He certainly looked more worn and anxious than she had ever seen him look before. He seemed to have grown five years older in a few weeks.

"Will he tell me, I wonder, what has gone amiss with him?" whispered Olive to herself. "Can his anxiety have anything to do with Eleanor Lloyd? or is it common business cares that are troubling his mind?"

From whatever cause Mr. Kelvin's anxiety might spring, he made an effort this evening to put it behind him, and partly succeeded in so doing. He assumed a cheerfulness, if he felt it not, and his mother was only too ready to believe that it was genuine. It struck Olive, however, that she had never seen her cousin drink so much brandy-and-water as he did this evening, and then he would finish up with champagne, toasting Olive in one bumper and his mother in another. After that he went out for a stroll and a whiff in the quiet streets, and had not come back when the ladies retired for the night.

"Your coming, dear, seems to have done Matthew good," said Mrs. Kelvin to Olive, as she kissed her at her bedroom door. "I have not seen him so bright and cheerful for weeks as he has been to-night. But I dare say my company is a little dull for him at times, and the house would be all the brighter for him if you could be here always."

If she could be there always! How the words rang in Olive's ears when shut up in the solitude of her own room! She could not go to bed till she heard Matthew come in, so she put out the candle and drew up the blind, and sat gazing out at the chilly stars till she heard her cousin's footsteps on the stairs.

Mrs. Kelvin never came down to breakfast, a fact of which Olive was aware. She judged that if her cousin had anything particular to say to her, he would say it when his mother was out of the way; so she took care to be down to breakfast betimes next morning.

Kelvin was moody and distrait. After a little commonplace conversation, he lapsed into a silence that seemed deeper than common, and one which Olive did not care to break.

"Do you see much of Miss Lloyd?" he said at last, with a suddenness that was almost startling.

"I see her nearly every day--generally at luncheon," said Olive, quite calmly. She had expected some such question.

Silence again for a minute or two. When Kelvin next spoke, it was with his eyes turned away from Olive.

"She is young, handsome, and presumably rich, consequently not short of suitors--eh?"

"I see so little of Miss Lloyd, except at breakfast or luncheon, that I am hardly in a position to answer your question. There is, however, one gentleman who visits at the house, and who seems to be looked upon with favourable eyes both by Lady Dudgeon and Miss Lloyd."

Olive Deane knew quite well that in speaking thus of Captain Dayrell to her cousin she was not confining herself to the narrow limits of the truth. She knew quite well--for she was not blind, like Lady Dudgeon--that if the attentions of one man were more pleasant to Miss Lloyd than those of another, that man was John Pomeroy. But instinct warned her that it would not be wise on her part to mention Pomeroy's name in any such relation. That Miss Lloyd should receive the attentions of a man like Captain Dayrell would seem to her cousin no more than natural under the circumstances; but that Miss Lloyd should encourage the suit of a penniless adventurer like Jack Pomeroy would have seemed an altogether different affair. Matthew Kelvin's pride would have revolted at the thought of Pomeroy winning that which he himself had failed to gain. He was just the man to have warned Sir Thomas, and have got Pomeroy discharged, so that the affair might be broken off; but in the case of Captain Dayrell no such mode of procedure was possible. However distasteful such a state of affairs might be to him, he could only submit to it with such grace as there might be in him.

It was characteristic of Olive Deane's crooked method of reasoning, that she fully believed that should her plot result in a marriage between Eleanor and Pomeroy, her cousin would, in time to come, be far better pleased than if no such scheme had been hatched by her busy brain. Would not Matthew Kelvin's revenge be far sweeter to him if the woman who had rejected him so contemptuously should marry an adventurer like Pomeroy, who could have no other object than her supposed wealth in trying to win her for his wife, than if she should become the promised bride of Captain Dayrell, who, though he should be told Miss Lloyd's real history at the last moment, might still be chivalrous enough to make her his wife? In any case, thus it was that Olive reasoned with herself, and for this reason it was that John Pomeroy's name was never mentioned by her in connection with Miss Lloyd.

"That was a devilish scheme of revenge that you suggested to me one morning in my office! I have had no peace of mind since I agreed to it."

"You talk as a woman might talk. I certainly gave you credit for more strength of purpose," said Olive, with the slightest possible touch of contempt in her voice.

"Strength of purpose has nothing to do with the point in question," he said, harshly. "For the first time in my life, I have wilfully tarnished my professional honour, and that is what annoys me so greatly."

"A few weeks more, and the necessity for concealment will be at an end. Captain Dayrell will propose to Miss Lloyd--will win her consent to become his wife. After that you can strike your blow as soon as you like."

Kelvin did not answer, but sat staring moodily into the fire. Olive regarded him furtively for a little while, without speaking.

"I certainly thought that I should have seen you at Stammars on the evening of the ball," she said, after a time.

"I had an invitation, but I did not choose to go. Too much of a tag-rag-and-bob-tail affair for me."

"Your absence was commented upon both by Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon at breakfast next morning."

"After Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon had left the room, I rose from the table and went and sat down for a few minutes in one of the deep window recesses. Miss Lloyd and Captain Dayrell rose too, and went towards the fire-place. I suppose from what followed that Miss Lloyd had forgotten that I was in the room. Said the Captain to her: 'Who is this Mr. Kelvin, whose absence from the ball Sir Thomas seemed to regret so much?'--'Oh, a mere nobody--a provincial attorney,' answered Miss Lloyd."

"'Oh, by-the-by,' continued the Captain, 'I want to consult a lawyer on a point of business while I'm down here, and I daresay this fellow of Sir Thomas's would do as well as anybody else.'--'Yes, I should rather like you to see him, Frank,' said Miss Lloyd.--'Why him in particular?' asked the Captain.--'Because this very man--this country attorney--actually had the audacity, no very long time ago, to ask me to become his wife!'--'Confound his impudence!' said the Captain, and then they both laughed, and left the room."

A deep flush mounted to the face of Matthew Kelvin. He got up from the table, and went and rested his two elbows on the chimney-piece, and stood gazing into the fire without speaking. The lie just told by Olive, but which he had accepted as truth, had evidently touched him to the quick. Olive, playing with her tea-spoon, watched him narrowly.

"Do you think of telling Miss Lloyd before long that she is not Miss Lloyd?" Olive ventured at last to remark.

"No, not yet--not yet!" answered Kelvin. "Now that I have kept the secret so long, it shall not be told till the eve of her marriage with this man. I leave it for you to let me know when the proper time has come. Let her suffer--as she has made me suffer."

With that he left the room. Nor, during Olive's visit, was the subject again alluded to between them.

"You must steal another holiday before long," said her aunt to her as she was putting on her bonnet on the morning of her return to Stammars. "Matthew has brightened up wonderfully while you have been here, and I can't tell you how thankful I am for it." Matthew himself kissed her as he handed her into the fly that was to take her back. He had not kissed her since that never-to-be-forgotten day at Redcar, now long years ago. How strangely her heart thrilled to the touch of his lips! "Oh! that I could be with him altogether, never to leave him more!" she murmured. She lay back in the fly and cried all the way to Stammars; but already in that crooked brain of hers the embryo of a strange, dark scheme was beginning to take shape and consistency, although as yet she herself was hardly aware of its existence.

Gerald, too, had his holiday at Easter. Not that he wanted it, or even asked for it. To know that he was under the same roof with Eleanor, even though his chances of seeing her might have been few and far between, would have been holiday enough for him. But Sir Thomas's offer was made in such a way that he could not refuse to accept it. He had no suspicion that the prime mover in the affair was Lady Dudgeon, who thought that, by isolating Eleanor as much as possible, she was materially increasing Captain Dayrell's chances of success.

The demon of Jealousy was tugging at Gerald's heart-strings as he left Stammars for London, and all by reason of this same Captain Dayrell. He knew perfectly well that that gentleman, and he alone, had been specially invited to Stammars. He had met the captain once or twice at luncheon, and had seen enough of him to know that he might prove a most formidable rival. Before leaving Stammars he would fain have seen Eleanor, would fain have given her some hint more pointed than any he had yet given as to the state of his feelings, and have tried to win from her some sort of promise in return. But, either through accident or design, he found himself unable to see her even for five minutes; and he was compelled to go away without one word of farewell, but with the bitter knowledge--and bitter indeed it was to him--that his rival was expected to reach Stammars that very day in time for dinner.

"What may not such a man accomplish in ten days!" muttered poor Gerald to himself, as he was being borne Londonwards in the train. "On the one hand, a good-looking, polished man of the world--a roué, doubtless, but how is Eleanor to know that?--full of bright talk and ready wit, and with an adaptability about him that makes him seem at home anywhere; on the other hand, an ardent, impressionable girl, bred in the country, lacking in knowledge of the world and its ways, with a sort of high-flown sentiment about her which Dayrell would know at once how to twist to his own advantage. In an encounter such as this, which of the two is likely to come off victor?"

Of a truth, poor Gerald was very miserable. He did not know, as we know, that he had himself supplied Eleanor with a suit of invisible armour, welded by Love's deft fingers, which would have rendered her proof against the assaults of a hundred Captain Dayrells. He blamed himself in that he had not yet told her of his love--told her by word of mouth--not dreaming that he had already told it in divers other ways, with a silent eloquence which is often more persuasive and powerful than any words.

Gerald spent three days in London with Miss Bellamy and Ambrose Murray. Then he ran over to Paris with a view of seeking a little distraction among his old acquaintances in that gay city. But nothing could distract him for long at a time from his own jaundiced thoughts. The image of Captain Dayrell was a nightmare to him during the hours of darkness, and as a black shadow that never ceased to haunt his footsteps by day. His light-hearted Parisian friends told him that he was one of them no longer, that English fog had so permeated his system, that there was no longer any esprit left in him: he was triste and distrait; and, in a much shorter time than he had intended, he returned to England.

"No, sir, he went back to town two days ago: and master and missis and the young ladies are gone to a juvenile party, and won't be back till late."

"Yes, sir. Miss Deane came back four days since. Miss Lloyd was to have gone with her ladyship to the party, but had a headache."

After eating a little dinner hurriedly, Gerald went in search of Eleanor. Unless her headache had compelled her to remain upstairs, he thought that he should probably find her in the back drawing-room. And there, in fact, he did find her. Her headache was better, and she had been playing a capriccio by Schubert. When Gerald opened the door she was still at the piano, sitting with downcast eyes and a finger pressed to her lips--thinking. The noise of the opening door broke her reverie. There was a start of surprise and a sudden blush when she saw who it was that came into the room. She rose from her chair, advanced a step or two, held out both her hands, and said--

As Gerald took her hands for a moment in his, he saw that there was a tear trembling in each corner of her eyes, blue as the skies on an April morn. He saw, too, or thought he saw, behind those tears, Love, that, suddenly surprised, had not had time to hide himself. All her being seemed suffused with an indescribable tenderness. The black thoughts that had coiled themselves round Gerald's heart from the hour of his leaving Stammars till the time of his return, his jealousy of Dayrell, his doubts as to whether Eleanor really cared for him--all vanished in this moment of supreme joy, like mists before the rising sun. It was impossible that he should doubt any longer. An impulse that was uncontrollable, that swept away the floodgates of thought and reason, came over him. He was still holding her hands and gazing into her eyes. He drew her to him--close to him. He wrapped his arms round her, and pressed her to his bosom, her face upturned to his. He bent his head, and touched with his lips the blossom of hers.

"Oh, my darling! if I could but tell you how much I love you!" he murmured in her ear. "If I could but tell you how happy it makes me to see you again!"

Her face was rosy red, but the moment he had kissed her, the violet of her eyes seemed to darken, and a strange, fathomless look came into them, such as he had never seen before. Then the tears fell, and for one brief, happy moment--while the secondhand of a clock might have marked six--she let her head rest where he had put it. Suddenly the great hall bell clanged loudly. The family had come back. Eleanor started, as the fawn starts from the covert when it hears the hunter's horn. For a single instant her eyes met Gerald's. An instant later he was in the room alone.

He stood for a little while like a man suddenly roused from sleep, who hardly knows where he is, or what has befallen him. "Was it my darling herself that rested in my arms, and whose lips I kissed just now?" he said. "Or have I suddenly lost my wits and only imagined it all? No! It must be true--it shall be true At last she is mine--mine for ever!" Then, like one who feels himself to be still half asleep, he walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.

Hardly had the door closed, when Olive Deane stepped from her hiding-place behind the curtains of one of the windows, from which spot she had been an unseen witness of the foregoing scene. Her pupils were away, and she had nothing to do. She had gone into the back drawing-room at dusk, before the lamps were lighted, and had sat down on the cushioned seat, that ran round the inner side of the large bow window. Presently a servant came in to light the lamps, but went away again without perceiving Olive. Sitting there, behind the partially-drawn curtains, she was, as it were, in a tiny room of her own; and there she might probably have remained the whole evening without being discovered, had she chosen to do so. In fact, when Eleanor came in a little later, and sat down at the piano and began to play, Olive neither spoke nor stirred, but sat watching her rival with jealous, hungry eyes, and made no sign. Thus it fell out that she became an uninvited witness of the scene between Eleanor and Gerald.

There was a look of triumph on Olive's pale face as she stepped out of her hiding-place. In her black eyes there was an unwonted sparkle. "Checkmate at last!" she said. "Before long, I shall be able to tell Matthew that the hour of his vengeance has come. What will he say when he knows that the accepted lover of dainty Miss Lloyd is no gentleman, such as Captain Dayrell, but a beggarly adventurer, without money enough to pay for the clothes he wears? Surely his revenge will be twice as sweet as it would otherwise have been. As for her--one short hour will strip her of name, wealth, position, and of the man to whom she has given her hand--for Pomeroy is not the man I take him to be if he does not cast her off the moment her real story is told him. Fine feathers make fine birds, Miss Eleanor Lloyd. We shall see how you will look when you are stripped of yours. Before three months are over, you will be grateful to anyone who will obtain for you a situation at forty pounds a year."

CHAPTER VI.

A SECRET OF THE SEA.

Mr. Byrne had been in the habit of writing a line to Ambrose Murray every few days, in order to satisfy the latter as to how matters were progressing at the house in Spur Alley. In one of his brief notes he mentioned that Van Duren had left home on business for a couple of days. Gerald Warburton happened to be at Miss Bellamy's when this note came to hand, and Murray at once proposed that he and Gerald should visit Byrne and his daughter in Spur Alley, while Van Duren was out of town. Gerald assented, and at six o'clock that evening they found themselves at Van Duren's door. Mrs. Bakewell, as she ushered them upstairs, informed them that Miss Byrne had gone out about an hour previously, but that the old gentleman would no doubt be very glad to see them.

There was no answer to the woman's knock at Mr. Byrne's door. "Poor old gentleman, he gets weaker and deafer every day," she said. "He's not long for this world, I'm afraid." Then she opened the door, and went into the room. Mr. Byrne was sitting, as he seemed ever to sit, in his great easy-chair in front of the fire. Mrs. Bakewell touched him on the shoulder, and shouted in his ear: "Two gentlemen to see you, sir."

"Ech, ech! two gentlemen to see me? Tell 'em to come in: tell 'em to come in. And shut that door as soon as you can. That draught's enough to cut one in two." And with that he turned feebly round and confronted his visitors. And then his cough began to trouble him, and he could not find a word to say till Mrs. Bakewell had gone out and shut the door behind her.

A moment later he was on his feet and grasping his visitors warmly by the hand. "Welcome to Spur Alley, gentlemen!" he said. "You could not have come at a more opportune time, except in one respect--that my daughter is not here to receive you as well as I. But the kettle is on the hob, and I've a bottle of prime Kinahan in the cupboard, together with a few choice Henry Clays, that were sent me by a friend the other day. An it please you, we will make ourselves as comfortable as present circumstances will admit of."

After a little conversation of no particular moment, said Byrne: "I am glad that you have come to see me, Mr. Murray. Had you not come here, I should have made a point of calling upon you in the course of a few days."

"No, it is not exactly that; but I think the time has come for me to tell you what I have done already, and what I hope to accomplish before I am many days older; together with my reasons for going about this matter in the way I have gone about it."

"I shall be very glad to hear anything you may have to say, Mr. Byrne; but if you would rather defer your revelation for a little while longer, pray do so. As I have told you already, I have every confidence in your management of the affair, and shall continue to have, whether you choose to-day to tell me anything or nothing."

"You are very kind, Mr. Murray, but I think that I shall feel more comfortable if I tell you everything. I want either your approval or your disapproval of what I am doing: I want to feel the ground firm under my feet."

"In that case I have nothing more to say. You know what an intense interest this matter has for me in all its bearings, great or small."

"Before beginning what I have to tell you," said Byrne, "it may be just as well to lock the door. It was only the other day that Pringle, Van Duren's clerk, opened the door suddenly and put his head into the room. I felt sure at the time that he had either seen or suspected something, and would tell his master. I suppose I was mistaken, but for all that I don't care to run the same risk again."

Having locked the door, Mr. Byrne proceeded to light a cigar, and then to brew himself a tumbler of grog with all the care and deliberation to which so important a proceeding was entitled at his hands. Gerald joined him over a cigar. Murray never smoked.

"When you first came to me, Mr. Warburton, and spoke to me about this business," began Byrne after a few preliminary puffs, "I was more surprised than I cared to let you see. And when you told me what it was that you wanted me to do, I was still more surprised. And well I might be, as you will hear presently. You came to me, Mr. Warburton, in the first place, because you thought that there might be a faint possibility of my being able to assist you to discover the whereabouts of Max Jacoby. I was able to assist you in a way that you little dreamt of. My brother, who is two years older than I am, was originally a sergeant in the detective police. He retired some years ago, and he now keeps a little country tavern in the neighbourhood of Dorking. I told my brother what I wanted; he gave me a note to a particular friend of his who is still in the force, and it was through the kindness of this latter gentleman that I was enabled to inform you that our friend Mr. Max lived here, under this very roof, in Spur Alley. Having obtained that information for you, I naturally concluded that my task was at an end; but when you told me what further you wanted from me, that opened up an entirely fresh phase of the question."

"The point urged by both of you," resumed Byrne, "was your belief that Max Jacoby was the murderer of Paul Stilling; and the question you put before me was: By what means is it possible to bring his guilt home to him? Gentlemen, what method of procedure I might have adopted under different circumstances in order to find an answer to your question I cannot, of course, say, but the one which I did adopt had its origin in a very peculiar occurrence, which I will presently explain to you. My plan was this: to take lodgings in this house--my daughter and I. To make the acquaintance of Van Duren. To invite him to tea or supper, in order that he might have an opportunity of associating with Miriam, who, on her part, was to do her best to fascinate him--to make him fall in love with her, and, if possible, to propose to her. Of this scheme Miriam was the hinge. Everything depended upon her--upon her good looks and powers of fascination. But knowing the sort of man I had to deal with, I determined to smooth for him still further the road I wanted him to travel. With this end in view, I led Van Duren on to believe that I was rich, and I caused to be drawn up in due form a fictitious will, in which I bequeathed fifteen thousand pounds to my daughter, and of which I made Van Duren himself one of the executors. The bait took, as I expected it would take. Van Duren, smitten already by my daughter's good looks, was conquered entirely when he found that she was also an heiress. A few evenings ago he fell on his knees before her and implored her to marry him. Miriam, by my instructions, accepted him conditionally: he is to be a month on probation, and if at the end of that time she finds that she can like him sufficiently well, she is to accept him as her future husband. But before the month of probation shall have come to an end, the particular object which has necessitated all this scheming and preparation will, I trust, have been fully accomplished."

Mr. Byrne had allowed his cigar to go out while talking. He now proceeded to relight it. This done, he again paid his respects to the grog.

Both Ambrose Murray and Gerald were utterly puzzled. That Byrne should have allowed, and, by his own confession, encouraged, Van Duren to make love and propose to his daughter, was to them an altogether incomprehensible proceeding. They awaited his further revelations with impatience.

"You have certainly succeeded in exciting our curiosity, Mr. Byrne," said Gerald, "and I hope you won't send us away till you have thoroughly satisfied it."

"Never fear, sir. You shall have the whole history before you leave the room. With your permission, we will retrace our steps a little. I have already told you that I have a brother who was formerly a sergeant in the detective force. He held this position at the same time that I was confidential clerk to Mr. Frodsham. As both of you are aware, I happened to be in court on the very day that you, Mr. Murray, were tried for the murder of Paul Stilling. One of the chief witnesses at the trial was our friend, Mr. Max Jacoby. After my return to London, I called one evening to smoke a pipe with my brother, and in the course of conversation the Tewkesbury murder case cropped up. I told Dick, who likes to hear of such matters, all about the trial. Jacoby's name was mentioned, and I remember remarking to my brother that he had far more the look of a murderer than the man in the dock--meaning you, sir. Well, gentlemen, some three or four months, passed away, when, one day, I met my brother casually in the street. Says he to me, 'Peter, when next you come up to my crib, I can show you a bit of paper that may perhaps interest you a little--a bit of paper with some writing on it, I mean.'--'Is the writing by anybody that I know?' said I. 'It's a letter,' said he, 'and the signature to it is "Max Jacoby"--the name of the fellow, isn't it, who was a witness in the Tewkesbury murder case?' 'That's the name, sure enough,' replied I. 'But how did a letter signed by him come into your possession?' 'Oh, the fellow to whom it was addressed got into a little difficulty. I had to search his rooms, and I found this letter among a lot of other papers. I took a copy of it before handing over the original, as I thought it might interest you.' Well, gentlemen, I thought very little more of the matter, as, indeed, why should I? Dick, however, did not forget, and the next time I called on him he produced the letter. I read the letter, and looked upon the affair as one of those curious coincidences which so frequently happen in real life; but I speedily forgot all about it, and the chances are that I should never have thought about it again had not your visit to me brought all the old circumstances back to my mind. After that visit I made it my first business to go down to Dorking and see my brother. The question was, had he, after all these years, got the copy of Max Jacoby's letter still by him? Fortunately for us, Dick is one of those cautious souls who hardly ever destroy anything, and who have an almost superstitious reverence for any scrap of paper with writing on it. In short, gentlemen, the letter was still in existence. Dick gave it up to me without difficulty, and it is in my writing-desk at the present moment. Before reading the letter to you, I may just add that, having regard to my brother's great experience, I have taken the liberty of consulting him at each step of this affair. It is some pleasure to me to be able to say that he takes the same view of the contents of the letter that I take, and that he agrees with all that I have done up to the present time."

"You were quite right in consulting your brother, Mr. Byrne," said Murray. "It only proves still more clearly how thoroughly you have identified yourself with the case."

Byrne crossed the room, unlocked his writing-desk, and came back with the letter in his hand.

"The letter bears no date," said he, "but as it was found by my brother in the lodgings of the man to whom it was addressed only some three or four months after the murder--subsequent to which occurrence it was, in my opinion, written--the exact date is a matter of very minor consequence. The address given is simply, 'My old lodgings,' and as it was found without an envelope, there is no clue to the post-mark. But that, too, is a matter of little consequence. And now you shall hear what the letter says."

Mr. Byrne threw the end of his cigar into the fire, cleared his throat, and opening the yellow, time-worn paper, read as under:--

"You will be surprised to hear from me so quickly after our last farewell, and to see the place from which this letter is written. Yes, I am back once more in the old spot--penniless--a beggar! I have met with a most terrible misfortune. I have been shipwrecked, and everything I had in the world has gone to the bottom. When I say everything, you know what I mean. I mean that which cost me so dear--that which I ran so terrible a risk for--that for which one man's life, and another man's happiness, were sacrificed. But the curse of blood rested on it, and it has gone. You remember that when you parted from me on board ship, I had every prospect of a fair voyage, but during the night the wind began to rise, and by daylight next morning a terrific gale was blowing. We were still in sight of land, and having sprung a leak, we put back towards a little harbour with which our captain was acquainted. But before we could reach it, the ship began to founder, and then it was every man for himself. We saved our bare lives, and that was all. I tried all I could to bribe the men to take my box with them in the boat, but it was of no avail. 'Life's sweeter than all the gold in the world,' they said. 'Your box may go to the devil, and we'll send you after it if we have any of your nonsense.' There was no use in my going abroad when I had lost the only inducement which would have taken me there. So here I am once more, the world all before me. I have just enough money left to buy me to-morrow's dinner. After that----? But I need not say more. I trust to you, my dear Legros, to send me a five-pound note by return. In fact, I must have it. I know too much of you, and you know too much of me, for either of us to decline these sweet little offices of friendship for the other.

The three men looked at each other in silence as Byrne slowly refolded the letter.

"Your familiarity with the contents of this letter," said Gerald at last, "has enabled you to arrive at certain conclusions in your own mind such as we, to whom the letter comes as an utter surprise, can no more than barely guess at. Do you mind telling us what those conclusions are?"

"The conclusions I have come to are very few and very simple," said Byrne; "simple, inasmuch as, to my mind, knowing what I know, they are plainly discoverable through the thin veil of obscurity in which the contents of the letter are purposely involved. My conclusions are these: That this letter was written within a very short time after the murder and subsequent trial. That the property whose loss Jacoby bewails in such bitter terms was neither more nor less than the proceeds of the murder, with which he was going abroad. That when the ship went to the bottom, Jacoby's ill-gotten gains went with her, and that Jacoby himself, having no longer the means of going abroad, came back to London in a state of utter destitution, as is evidenced by his begging the loan of a five-pound note from his quondam friend."

"Yes," said Gerald, after a few minutes of silent thought, "I quite agree with you that the construction which you have put upon the contents of this letter is a most feasible one, and I am inclined to think that it is also the true one. But even granting that such be the case, I confess I am still at a loss to understand in what way a proposal of marriage from Jacoby to your daughter can forward by one single step the special end we have in view--to bring home the crime to the real murderer."

"That, too, is where I am puzzled," said Murray; "for, singular as this letter is, and confirmatory as it is of the belief I have all along maintained, that Jacoby is the guilty man, I altogether fail to see in what way Mr. Byrne's late proceedings tend to fix the guilt upon him."

Byrne, looking from one to the other, rubbed his hands and chuckled. "I thought that part of the business would prove a stumbling-block," he said. "But if you will allow me, I can lift you over it very easily. You will have observed that Jacoby's letter enters into no particulars. It gives neither the name of the ship, the date of sailing, nor the port he sailed from. We cannot advance a step beyond the letter till we make ourselves masters of that information. It is quite evident that there is only one source from which we can obtain it, and that is from Jacoby himself. How are we to get out of him any information respecting this, the great secret of his life? Were you or I to question him, we should merely arouse his suspicions and shut his lips for ever. Gentlemen, no one can worm the secret out of this man but a woman--and only a woman that he loves. Gentlemen, Max Jacoby loves my daughter, and has asked her to become his wife. On my daughter, therefore, devolves the duty of making this man reveal what he has probably never told yet to any living soul. And now you understand the point at which we have arrived."

"Clearly," said Gerald; "and upon my word, I am doubtful whether the same result could have been arrived at by means other than those which you have seen fit to make use of."

Ambrose Murray did not speak, but he put out his arm, and grasped Byrne by the hand in a fashion far more eloquent than words.

"If Mr. Byrne will allow me, I will proceed just one step further in the matter," said Gerald. "Assuming for a moment that we have succeeded in getting out of Jacoby all the information we want from him; that we know when and from where he sailed, and the name of the ship--what then? The only evidence on which it would be possible to convict him will still be at the bottom of the sea."

Before Byrne could say a word in reply, there came a sudden knocking at the door, and the voice of Bakewell was heard outside: "A letter for Mr. Byrne."

Murray, his mind impressed with what had gone before, said solemnly: "Yes, it will still be, what it must remain for ever--a Secret of the Sea!"

Byrne held up a warning finger. In one minute he seemed to become twenty years older. He hobbled feebly towards the door, coughing meanwhile in a way that was pitiful to hear. "All right, Bakewell, I'm coming--I'm coming," he cried, querulously. Then, as he opened the door, Miriam's voice was heard carolling gaily as she ran quickly upstairs.

CHAPTER VII.

POD'S REVELATION.

Miss Lloyd pleaded a violent headache as an excuse for her non-attendance at the breakfast-table the morning after the scene between herself and Gerald in the back drawing-room. She felt as if she could not face any one for a little while; but, more than all, the possibility of meeting Gerald frightened her. To have gone in to breakfast, and have found him there, would have set her heart fluttering and have brought the tell-tale colour to her cheeks, and would almost infallibly have betrayed her secret to every one. No; she felt as if she could not meet any one just yet--that she did not want to meet anyone. She asked for no greater happiness at present than to sit alone by her dressing-room fire, and live over again in memory last night's wondrous scene. She had only to shut her eyes, and every word, and look, and tone, came back to her with the most realistic force. What a change three short minutes had wrought in her life! She seemed to have lived a hundred years since yesterday morning; or, rather, the Eleanor Lloyd of yesterday was dead and buried--dead and buried because the poor creature had not known what it was to love!

It was, indeed, like the beginning of a new life to her. "To think that I have been loving him all along, and did not know it!" she said to herself, with a little laugh. "I wonder how long it is since he first found out that he loved me. I will make him tell me all about it after awhile."

Then her cheeks flushed, and her heart beat faster at the thought of all that such a sweet possibility implied.

"How glad I am that he is poor and I am rich," she said. "All that I have shall be his. My money will lend wings to his ambition." Then came the thought, "When shall I see him again, and what will he say when I do see him?"

She felt that she dreaded and yet longed for the time to come when they should meet again. It would be trying enough to have to meet him in the company of others, but the thought of encountering him alone, while sending a delicious thrill through her, made her quake with fear.

On one point she was quite determined--she would shun a private interview with him as long as possible. She was quite aware that such an interview must take place sooner or later, but it should be altogether of his seeking, not of hers. She knew her own weakness. She knew that whenever Mr. Pomeroy should say to her, "Eleanor, I love you, and I want you to become my wife," all power of resistance would be taken from her, and that she should have no alternative but to yield. At present she had not yielded, and she would try to keep out of his way for a little while longer. When next he should encounter her, the spear of his love would smite her, and she must needs become his bondswoman for ever.

Lady Dudgeon sent some breakfast upstairs, and, by-and-by, she made her appearance in person. She wanted to satisfy herself that there was nothing seriously the matter with Miss Lloyd. It was but a simple headache, Eleanor informed her.

"But you are slightly feverish, child," persisted her ladyship; "and you look as if you had not had enough sleep."

Which statement was true enough. Some sensible young ladies there are whose healthy slumbers not even the imprint of Love's first kiss upon their lips has the slightest power to disturb; but not one of such strong-minded maidens was our foolish Eleanor.

"I will look up again about eleven," said her ladyship, "and if you are not better by that time I shall make you up a little mixture of my own."

Eleanor promised herself that she would be better by that time, as her ladyship's mixtures--she prided herself on being able to physic all her household without calling in the doctor--had the invariable property of being excessively nauseous.

She hugged herself with a little shiver of delight when she was left alone again to think her own thoughts. What a surprise it would be to Lady Dudgeon--and, indeed, to everybody! Of course, she would be told that Mr. Pomeroy had only made love to her because she was rich; but in her own heart she knew so much better than that!

All at once it struck her that there were one or two notes she ought to write this morning; so she went to her davenport, and took pen and paper. But, somehow, her thoughts would go wool-gathering, and the notes refused to get themselves written. Then she began to scribble on the sheet before her. She wrote her own name several times over, and then, without knowing it, she found that she had written "John Pomeroy." Really, it looked very nice. Then the question put itself to her--"How should I have to address him in case he were to ask me to write to him?" Then she wrote, "Dear Mr. Pomeroy;" but that would be too formal as between engaged people. Then she tried, "My dear John," and "My darling John"--decided improvements both. Then, with the tip of the pen between her lips, and her head a little on one side, she studied the general effect of what she had written. Not satisfied with that, and being quite sure that she was all alone, she tried the effect of speaking the magic words aloud--though, indeed, it was little more than a timid whisper. Every syllable spoken thus was full of hidden music. Then she took up the pen again, and, hardly conscious of what she was doing, she wrote, "My own dear husband." But this was too much. With a little cry, and a sudden blush, she crumpled up the paper, ran across the room, and dropped it into the fire. Next moment she thought she heard the sound of voices. She went to the door, opened it softly, and listened.

It was as she had thought, Sir Thomas and Mr. Pomeroy were talking together on the floor below. She could not make out what they were talking about--she did not want to do that--all that she wanted was just to hear the sound of Pomeroy's voice. How strangely it thrilled her this morning to hear that voice again, which she could already have singled out from ten thousand others, and to hear which was, for her, to hear a sweeter music than could have been distilled from all the other sounds in the universe!

The last time she had heard that voice was when it spoke to her. What were the words? "If I could only tell you how much I love you!" It was to her those words were spoken--to her, Eleanor Lloyd! But surely it was not yesterday, but long, long years ago that she had heard them! She felt already as if she had loved him all her life.

And then his lips had pressed hers, once--twice--thrice! That, indeed, was something fresh--the revelation of a new life! And then his arms had twined round her--strong, comforting--and had pressed her to his bosom as if she were a little child. And in that one timid glance which she had shot up into his eyes, had she not seen there depths of tenderness and devotion that were to be hers--hers alone--through all the days of her life yet to come? What a happy, happy girl she was this morning!

She was quite startled to hear the clock strike eleven. How quickly the morning had flown! Lady Dudgeon came up to see how she was, but with her came Eleanor's particular friend, Miss Lorrimore, who announced, in the impetuous way usual with her, that she had come to fetch Eleanor away for a couple of days. Eleanor was by no means loth to go. It was as if a door of escape had suddenly opened for her. In half an hour she was ready, Lady Dudgeon's mild opposition being overruled by the two girls without compunction.

Miss Lorrimore's ponies had been waiting all this time. As Eleanor was being driven through the avenue, her quick eyes saw Sir Thomas and Mr. Pomeroy walking together in one of the side paths a little distance away.

The gentlemen raised their hats, Eleanor fluttered her handkerchief for a moment, and that was the last that she and Gerald saw of each other for some time to come.

In the first place, Eleanor's visit to Miss Lorrimore, instead of being for two days only, extended over five. In the second place, when she did get back to Stammars, she found that Gerald was away in London on business for Sir Thomas. This was a little disappointment to her, for by this time she was growing impatient to see him again. She did not like to ask how soon he was expected back, and no one volunteered to tell her.

How bitterly she blamed herself now for running away from him! What a strange, flighty girl he must take her to be! Perhaps, as she had so deliberately run away from him, he would not think her worthy of further notice, and would regard all that had happened between them as nothing more than a foolish dream. This thought was almost unbearable, and now was Eleanor as wretched as she had been happy before. But to be frequently wretched and miserable is part of the penalty incurred by all who are so weak-minded as to fall in love. Such people are not to be pitied.

Gerald, on his side, being smitten with the same disorder, was subject to the same exaltations and depressions, had his hours of fever and his hours of chill. At one time he felt sure that Eleanor loved him a little in return. Had he not seen, or fancied that he saw, a world of love and trust in her eyes during those few brief seconds when she had let him press her to his heart? At another time he felt sure that his roughness and impetuosity had frightened her: that she was staying away from Stammars on purpose to avoid him; that he had offended her past recovery. It was almost a relief to be sent up to London on business by Sir Thomas, who, being about this time confined to his room with a severe cold, was obliged to make use of Gerald in various ways. Gerald hoped that by the time he got back from town Eleanor would have returned to Stammars, in which case he had quite made up his mind that he would lose no time in deciding his fate once for all.

In his more hopeful moments, it was very pleasant to him to think that Eleanor had learned, or was learning, to love him for himself alone. As a poor man he had wooed her, and as a poor man he should win her. He often speculated as to what would be the effect upon her of the news which he must of necessity tell her before he could make her his wife. In the first place, he could not marry her under a false name. He must necessarily tell her that her name was not Eleanor Lloyd, but Eleanor Murray. Then would follow, as a matter of course, her father's story, which would, in its turn, elicit the fact that, as Jacob Lloyd had died without a will, Eleanor had no right to a single sixpence of the property he had left behind him. Next would have to come the telling of everything to Ambrose Murray. Last but not least, would come the revelation to Eleanor that the man she was going to marry was not John Pomeroy, but Gerald Warburton. One fact he would, if it were possible to do so, keep from her till after their marriage--he would not let her know that he was the heir to Jacob Lloyd's property--to the wealth which she had all along believed to be hers. It was his fancy that she should marry him in the belief that he was a poor man. All the greater would be her after-surprise.

It so fell out that a couple of days after Eleanor's return from her visit to Miss Lorrimore, and while Gerald was still absent from Stammars, Mr. Pod Piper, whom it is hoped the reader has not quite forgotten, was sent there with certain papers that required Sir Thomas's signature. Having taken the papers into the library, Pod was told to go and amuse himself for half an hour, by which time the documents would be ready for him to take back to Mr. Kelvin.

Pod was one of those people who never find much difficulty in amusing themselves. His first proceeding was to make his way to the kitchen and ask whether they had got any cold sirloin and strong ale with which to refresh a weary wayfarer. Pod was not unknown at Stammars, and his needs were duly attended to. After that he strolled into the garden, and ensconcing himself behind a large laurel, where he could not be seen from any of the windows, he proceeded to light and smoke the remaining half of a cigar which he happened to have by him. Cigars being a luxury that he could not often indulge in, Pod generally contrived to make one last him for two occasions.

When the cigar was smoked down to the last half-inch, Pod thought that he would take a turn round the conservatory, and as he felt sure that the crusty-looking old gardener had never seen him before, it struck him that there would be no harm in trying to impress the old fellow with the belief that he was being honoured by the presence of some guest of distinction--"some young swell of the upper ten," as Pod put it to himself. Accordingly, before opening the glass door of the conservatory, Mr. Piper produced from his pocket a pair of rather dingy lavender kid gloves, one of which he put on, leaving the other to be carried in an easy, dégagé style, such as would seem natural to a young fellow whose uncle was a marquis at the very least. The fact, however, was, that the gloves were odd ones, and as they were both intended for the right hand, Pod could not conveniently wear more than one of them at a time.

Pod's next proceeding was to give his hat a careful polish with the sleeve of his coat, and then to cock it a little more on one side of his head than he usually wore it. Then one end of his white handkerchief was allowed to hang negligently out of his pocket. Then, from some mysterious receptacle Pod produced an eye-glass. Many weary hours had he spent in his attempts to master the nice art of wearing an eye-glass easily and without conscious effort. But as yet his labours could hardly be said to be crowned with success, seeing that the glass would persist in dropping from his eye at awkward moments, when, by all the laws that regulate such matters, it ought to have been most firmly fixed in its orbit.

As soon as Pod's little arrangements were completed, he opened the door, and marched boldly into the conservatory. The old gardener glared sulkily at him, as gardeners have a habit of doing when any one invades what they look upon as their private domains. But Pod, caring nothing for sulky looks, swaggered up and down the flowery aisles, making believe, glass in eye, to read the different Latin labels, as though he thoroughly understood them. Presently, he caught sight of a little group of people crossing one of the garden-paths outside. Looking more closely, he saw that one of them was Olive Deane; the others, judging from their appearance, were her two pupils and some friends of theirs.

The sight of Miss Deane seemed to surprise Mr. Piper into temporary forgetfulness both of his eye-glass and the Latin labels. He sat down in a brown study, and was still sitting, deep in thought, when, hearing one of the doors clash, he looked up and saw Miss Lloyd coming slowly towards him. "Why, here she is--her very self! And isn't she a beauty!" he muttered. "No time like the present. I'll tell her now." And with that his eye-glass and his lavender gloves were next moment smuggled safely out of sight.

Although Pod had at once recognized Eleanor, it is doubtful whether she would have recollected him had he not spoken to her.

"Beg pardon, but are you not Miss Lloyd?" he said, as she reached the spot where he was standing.

"Yes, I am Miss Lloyd," she said, with a smile, for Pod, much to his own shame and disgust, was blushing violently. "Have you anything to say to me?"

"Yes, miss, something that I should have told you long ago if you had not been away in London. You don't recollect me, but I shall never forget you. My name is Podley Piper, and I'm in Mr. Kelvin's office at Pembridge."

Had Pod been an articled clerk, instead of being the office youth he was, he could not have mentioned this fact with an air of greater dignity.

"It was you, miss, who were so kind to my mother last spring, when she was ill. You sent her wine, and jelly, and coals, and you weren't above going and seeing her yourself. She would never have come round as soon as she did if it had not been for your kindness--and I thank you for it with all my heart!"

"It is very little that you have to thank me for," replied Eleanor. "I hope your mother has had no return of her old complaint?"

"She is well and hearty, thank you, miss, and she often says that if all rich people were like you, the world would be a pleasanter place to live in than it is."

"I am glad to have seen you, and to have news of your mother," said Eleanor. "But I think you said you had something to tell me."

"I certainly am acquainted with a gentleman of that name. But I did not know that Mr. Pomeroy was a friend of Mr. Kelvin."

"Oh, yes, but he is. It was through Mr. Kelvin that he was made secretary to Sir Thomas."

"Indeed!" said Eleanor, coldly. "But that is hardly the news you have to tell me?" Despite herself, she began to tremble a little. What was this strange-looking boy about to tell her?

"I'm coming to the news presently," said Pod. "May I ask whether Miss Olive Deane is still at Stammars?"

"Well, Miss Lloyd, one day I happened to overhear a conversation in Mr. Kelvin's office between Miss Deane and Mr. Pomeroy, in which your name was rather frequently mentioned."

"My name mentioned in a conversation between Miss Deane and Mr. Pomeroy! What could they have to say about me?"

She was trembling more than ever now, and to hide it was obliged to sit down on the chair recently vacated by Pod.

"You know, miss," said Pod, with an air of self-justification, "I am not in the habit of listening to conversations that it is not intended I should hear, and it was only the mention of your name, and a certain remark that was made about you, that made me do so in this case."

"But they could have nothing to say about me--nothing, that is, of any consequence either to you or me."

"Well, I can only say this, that neither Miss Deane nor Mr. Pomeroy mean any good to you, and I want to put you on your guard against them."

Eleanor could not speak for a moment or two. What terrible abyss was this which seemed opening at her feet?

"But what do you mean by putting me on my guard against Miss Deane and Mr. Pomeroy?"

"What I say is this: beware of both of them. Both of them are snakes in the grass."

"You are a very strange young man, and cannot surely know what you are saying," urged poor Eleanor. "I am quite sure that there must be a great mistake somewhere."

"No mistake whatever, miss. If I leave my situation to-morrow, I'll tell you. Mr. Pomeroy had been away from England for some time, and when he first came to my master, about four months ago, he hadn't a penny in the world."

"He came to Mr. Kelvin, who had known him years before, and Kelvin lent him fifty pounds."

"Really," said Eleanor, as she rose, "I fail to see in what way these details concern me. I must wish you good morning, Mr. Piper, and----"

"One moment, if you please," said Pod, earnestly. "You don't know why Mr. Pomeroy was male secretary to Sir Thomas, do you?"

"That is a point about which I have never troubled myself to think: it does not concern me."

"Miss Deane said you were worth twenty thousand pounds, and as Mr. Pomeroy was so poor, why shouldn't he pretend to fall in love with you and marry you?"

There was a dead pause. The plashing of a tiny fountain hidden somewhere among the foliage was the only sound that broke the silence: it was a sound that will dwell in Eleanor's memory as long as she lives.

"Are you quite sure that you did not dream all this?" she said, speaking very faintly.

"Every word I tell you is as true as gospel. I took down the conversation in shorthand, and I've got my notes at home now. The grand point was this: Mr. Pomeroy was to have the place of secretary to Sir Thomas, so that he might be near you and have an opportunity of making love to you. You are not offended with me, miss?"

"I thought it only right to put you on your guard against those two--Miss Deane and Mr. Pomeroy. And there's my governor, too, he's as thick in the plot as the others. It was he who found the other one the money to buy clothes with to come here, so that he might look like a gentleman. It's your money, miss, that's the temptation," concluded Pod, philosophically. "Rich people never know who are their real friends."

Eleanor did not answer. She no longer seemed to see him, or even to be aware of his presence. There was a dumb, despairing, far-away look on her white face that filled him with awe. He felt that he dare not say another word. Leaving her there, sitting on the chair, one hand tightly interlocked in the other, staring into vacancy with wide-open eyes that seemed to see nothing, he stole away on tip-toe, and presently, with a great sense of relief, found himself in the fresh air outside.

CHAPTER VIII.

A GLASS OF BURGUNDY.

The cold caught by Sir Thomas Dudgeon a few days after the ball at Stammars culminated in an attack of low fever, which confined him to the house for some weeks, and delayed the return of the family to Harley Street at the date first fixed upon.

While the baronet was thus shut up within doors, a certain estate was advertised for sale, of which he thought he should like to become the purchaser. Being unable to attend to the matter in person, he put it into the hands of Mr. Kelvin, who, in the course of the business, found himself, much against his will, under the necessity of going to Stammars, from which place he had kept himself carefully aloof for several months.

The day before going there, Kelvin mentioned his intended visit to his mother, mentioned it casually in conversation, and as a matter of no consequence, for the old lady knew of no disinclination on his part to go to Stammars, and had not the remotest suspicion that he had ever been in love with Miss Lloyd.

As soon as Matthew had left the room, Mrs. Kelvin sat down and penned a short note to Miss Deane, informing her that her cousin would be at Stammars on the morrow, and asking her to see him and write back her opinion as to how he seemed in health, whether better or worse than when Olive saw him at Easter.

The note reached Olive by the evening post while she was correcting her pupils' exercises. She read it through once and then put it quietly into her pocket: but she went up to her room earlier than usual, and it was long past midnight before she went to bed. She put out her candle--she always used to say that she could think better in the dark--and drew up her blinds, and paced her room for hours in the dim starlight. This visit of her cousin to Stammars might mean so much to her!

The main reason which, in the first instance, had induced her to come to Stammars no longer existed. Her scheme for bringing Pomeroy and Miss Lloyd together, that they might have an opportunity of falling in love with each other, had succeeded almost beyond her expectations. She had partly seen, and partly overheard, what had passed between them that evening in the back drawing-room. Her belief, as regarded Pomeroy, was that he was merely playing a part in order to win an heiress for his wife; but that Eleanor was really in love with Pomeroy, she felt equally sure. So sure, indeed, was she on this point, that all fear of Matthew Kelvin ever inducing Miss Lloyd to change her mind and look upon him with kindly eyes had vanished from Olive's mind for ever. Let her cousin marry whomsoever he might, there was one person in the world who would never become his wife, and that person was Eleanor Lloyd--on that point there could be no possible mistake. So far, she had cut her way clearly and boldly towards the end she had had in view from the first. But much remained for her still to do. In the first place, she must satisfy her cousin that all chance of his ever winning Miss Lloyd was utterly at an end. This there would not be much difficulty in effecting; but something much harder would remain to be achieved before she could hope to benefit in the least by all that had gone before. There was no hope of her ever being able to win her cousin's affections, no hope that he would ever ask her to become his wife, unless the opportunity were given her of seeing him and being with him daily--unless, in fact, he and she were living under the same roof. But how was such an end to be accomplished? True it was that she might, on some easily-invented pretext, throw up her position at Stammars, and go and live with her aunt for a week or two while looking out for another situation. But that was not what she wanted. Her next situation might take her a couple of hundred miles away, and so separate her from her cousin for years--for ever. It were better to remain at Stammars than run such a risk as that. True it was that she had lived under her cousin's roof for several weeks before coming to Stammars, without, to all appearance, advancing one single step towards the end she had in view. But she flattered herself that her failure at that time was altogether due to the fact that her cousin had not as yet, whatever he might say to the contrary, given up all expectation of one day inducing Miss Lloyd to change her mind in his favour. In any case, his recent disappointment sat too freshly upon him: his hurt was not yet healed, the image of Miss Lloyd was still too constantly in his mind's eye, for any real hope to exist that he might have his eyes and his thoughts diverted elsewhere. But that time was now gone by. Mr. Kelvin was no love-sick schoolboy, to go whimpering through the world because he could not have the particular toy on which he had set his mind. When once the first sharp pang was over, when once he knew for a fact that the heart he had one day hoped to call his was irrevocably given to another, pride would come to the aid of his natural strength of character, and he would school himself to forget, would school himself to obliterate from his memory all traces of so painful an episode.

Then, if ever, would come Olive's chance; then, if ever, would come the opportunity so intensely longed for. But, in order to avail herself of that opportunity, in order to put it to all the uses of which it was capable, it was imperatively necessary that she should be there--on the spot. Thus, to-night, the problem which Olive Deane had set herself to solve--the problem which kept her out of bed half the night and awake the remaining half, was, "How, and by what means, is it possible for me to make myself an inmate of my cousin's house, so that he may have an opportunity of learning to love me?"

Just as the first ghostly glimmer of daylight was beginning to creep across the sky, she sat up in bed, moved by a thought against which she had been fighting faintly all night long, but which had conquered her at last. "If only he were ill!" was the thought that at last clothed itself with definite words in her mind. "If only he were ill!" she said aloud, staring out with blank, sleepless eyes at the dawn. "Aye--if! Then I could claim to nurse him; then I could obtain a place by his side. He has no sister, his mother is old and infirm, and no one else is so near to him as I am. And why should he not be ill?"

She went down to breakfast with dark-rimmed eyes and sallow cheeks, and looking as if she had aged five years in a few short hours. Still the same question kept repeating itself like a refrain in her mind, "Why should he not be ill?" Over and over again, as though it were a question asked by some other than herself, it seemed to be whispered in her ear; and even when she was hearing her pupils their lessons, it seemed to write itself in blood-red letters across the book in her hand.

Matthew Kelvin reached Stammars about noon. Olive had asked one of the servants to let her know when he arrived. Then she wrote a little note and sent it to him in the library, where he was closeted with Sir Thomas. "Come and have luncheon with me in my room as soon as your business is over." Then she put on another dress, and laid out her bonnet, mantle, and gloves, so that they would be ready at a moment's notice. She had quite made up her mind that she should go back to Pembridge with her cousin.

Half an hour later, Mr. Kelvin was ushered into her sitting-room, where a comfortable little luncheon was already laid.

"I suppose you would have gone away without coming near me," said Olive, as she held out her hand, "if I had not sent you that note?"

"No, indeed," said Kelvin, pleasantly. "Why should you think such hard things of me? Rather a comfortable little place, this of yours," he added, as he looked round; "but I daresay you feel rather lonely and mopy here at times."

"Very seldom. You know that I am not one who cares for much society, and so long as I have plenty of books, I content myself tolerably well."

"That all depends on the state of Sir Thomas's health. And that reminds me that I have not yet asked after my aunt."

"Oh, my mother is pretty much as usual, I think. Of course, like all of us, she does not grow younger. I believe she would be better if she didn't fidget herself so unnecessarily about me."

"My aunt does not fidget herself without cause, Matthew. You don't look at all well--hardly as well as when I saw you at Easter."

"There, there! you women are all alike," he said, a little impatiently. "Never mind my looks, but give me something to eat. I believe my drive through the crisp spring air has given me an appetite, and that's more than I've had for ever so long a time. You don't look over bright yourself, Olive," he added, as he sat down at table. "A little bit worried, perhaps--eh?"

"Oh, pretty well. She does not interfere a great deal with me, and I keep out of her way as much as possible."

He certainly looked older and more careworn, as he sat there, than she had ever seen him look before. It made her heart ache to look at him. If she could but have comforted him! if she could but have laid his head against her bosom, and have kissed back the pleasant light into his eyes, and the sunny smile to his lips, as she remembered them in the days before the shadow of Eleanor Lloyd had ever crossed his path! But that might not be.

"Do you see much of Miss Lloyd nowadays?" asked Kelvin, presently, in as indifferent a tone as he could assume.

"I generally see her at breakfast and luncheon when she is at home. Not often besides."

"Anything come of that affair between her and Captain--Captain, what do you call him?"

"Captain Dayrell, you mean. No; I believe the affair is broken off entirely. I have reason to believe that when it came to the point, Miss Lloyd would have nothing more to do with him."

"Ah! what a little coquette she is! If a man like this Captain Dayrell is not good enough for her, what on earth does she expect? I'll take a glass of wine, if you please, Olive."

He had brightened up all in a moment. He looked quite a different individual from the gloomy, careworn man who had entered the room only ten minutes before. "In his heart he loves her still," said Olive to herself, and her own heart overflowed with bitterness at the thought. From that moment any scrap of compunction that might hitherto have clung to her was flung to the winds.

She poured him out a glass of Burgundy with a hand that betrayed not the slightest tremor before she spoke.

"Is it not possible, Matthew," she said, in that icy tone which she knew so well how to assume when it suited her to do so, "is it not possible that Miss Lloyd's refusal to entertain the proposition of Captain Dayrell might arise from some other motive than mere coquetry?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, quickly and suspiciously. "When you ask an ambiguous question like that, Miss Deane, you have generally got the answer to it ready at your tongue's end."

"Thank you, Matthew," said Olive, quietly. "When Miss Lloyd turned her back on Captain Dayrell, is it not possible that she might be influenced in doing so by her liking for some one else?"

"If you know so much, you can doubtless tell me the rest," he said, at last. "Let us have no more beating about the bush. You can, if you choose to do so, tell me the name of the person for whom you believe Miss Lloyd to have a preference. Who is the man?" His last question might have been a cry wrung from him by his own agony, so sharp and bitter was its tone.

"Pomeroy! Eleanor Lloyd in love with Pomeroy!" he cried, as he started to his feet. "No; I will never believe it. It is a lie!"

"A lie, Matthew? Thank you again. It is but a few evenings ago since I saw--myself unseen--the head of Eleanor Lloyd laid on the shoulder of John Pomeroy: since I saw the lips of John Pomeroy pressed without reproof to those of Eleanor Lloyd. Such is my evidence. Set on it what value you please."

He seized a knife suddenly, as though he would have liked to stab her to the heart. But her eyes met his unflinchingly, as she stood opposite to him, and presently he sank back into his chair, and let his arm fall on to the table, and so sat with bowed head for a time, without speaking.

"This is your doing and my mother's!" he said at last, speaking slowly and bitterly. "It was through you that this vagabond had the opportunity given him of doing what he has done!"

"How was either I or your mother to know that what has happened would happen?" asked Olive. She felt that the time had not yet come when it would be safe for her to tell her cousin that Pomeroy had been brought to Stammars for the express purpose of falling in love with Miss Lloyd.

"To think of Eleanor Lloyd so far forgetting herself as to fall in love with an adventurer like Pomeroy! It seems impossible."

"You seem to forget that Pomeroy passes here as a gentleman. A poor one, it may be, but still a gentleman. And if you know anything at all of Miss Lloyd, you must know this, that the fact of Mr. Pomeroy being without a shilling in the world would not influence her estimate of him in the slightest possible degree."

"We will soon strip his fine feathers off him," exclaimed Kelvin, "and expose him for what he really is--an adventurer and a vagabond. I'll go to Sir Thomas this very day, and tell him everything."

Olive had quite expected that her cousin would be angry when he heard her news, and would threaten to expose everything to Sir Thomas; but she had kept an arrow in store for such an occasion, which she now proceeded to let fly.

"How inconsistent you are, cousin Matthew!" she exclaimed. "Why has certain news been kept back from Eleanor Lloyd for so long a time? That question you can answer as well as I can. Cannot you, therefore, comprehend how much more complete will be your revenge on this woman who rejected you with contempt and scorn, if, through your agency, she is hoodwinked into marrying a penniless adventurer like Pomeroy, rather than a gentleman and a man of honour like Captain Dayrell? Cannot you, I say, comprehend all this?"

"The question did not strike me in that light," said Kelvin, in the quick way habitual with him when any fresh idea was put before him. "If I have wished once, I have wished a thousand times," he said, "that I had never hidden from Eleanor that which it was my duty to have told her the moment the knowledge came into my possession. But such regrets are useless."

"They are worse than useless," said Olive, in her cold, measured tones, as she looked fixedly at him. There was something either in her words or her look that stung him.

"You think me weak," he said; "but how is it possible for you to understand the thoughts and feelings of a man placed as I am."

"You will not go to Sir Thomas to-day, as you said you would," was all she answered.

"No, I will not go to Sir Thomas. She rejected me and she has accepted Pomeroy. Let her abide by her choice. Having kept the secret so long, I will keep it a little while longer. Let her find out, when no remedy can avail, that this man sought her for her money alone--that money which belongs to another. Had she been the beggar's daughter of Bethnal Green, I would have made her my wife."

He had spoken passionately, and he now got up and walked to the window, and stood I gazing out of it, as if to hide his emotion.

He had half emptied his glass of Burgundy when he first sat down. Olive now filled it up, while he stood thus with his back towards her, and then, quickly and deftly, from a little phial which she extracted from the bosom of her dress, she let fall into the wine three drops of some thick, dark tincture. Very white, but very determined, was the face that was turned next moment on Mr. Kelvin.

"No," he said, as he turned from the window. "My appetite has gone. I can't eat."

"You will, at least, drink this glass of wine. If you cannot eat, you must drink."

She took up the glass of Burgundy as she spoke, and handed it to him with a hand that was as steady as his own. He took it without a word, and drank it slowly to the last drop. Then he gave her back the glass, making a slight grimace as he did so.

"Either my palate is out of order," he said, "or else Sir Thomas's wine merchant is a vendor of rubbish." Then he added, "I promised that I would give Sir Thomas another look in before I went back, but I'll go first and have a weed in the shrubbery. A quarter of an hour in the fresh air will bring me down to my ordinary business level."

"I shall want to see you again before you go," said Olive. "I have a tiny parcel for you to take to my aunt."

Her heart was fluttering so fast, that she was obliged to press one hand over it in an effort to still its wild beating.

"All right. I'll look in again for a minute before starting," said Mr. Kelvin, as he took up his hat.

He was just about to open the door, when Olive, whose eyes had been anxiously following him, saw him stagger slightly, and lift his hand to his head. She was by his side in a moment.

"It was nothing. Only a sudden giddiness. I shall be better when I get into the fresh air."

Olive went to the window, from which place the side-door could be seen by which her cousin would gain access to the grounds Even her lips seemed to have lost their colour this afternoon. She stood there, rubbing one thin white hand against the other, with a slow, restless motion, as though that were the only outlet she could find for the intense life burning within her.

"It begins to take effect already!" she whispered, as though she were breathing her secret in some one's ear. "He shall take me back with him to Pembridge this very day. When he gets over this foolish passion, as he must do when Eleanor Lloyd is another man's wife, then his heart will turn to me--the heart that once was mine, and that shall be mine again! With me for his wife, all his old, ambitious dreams would spring up again with renewed vigour. He should not live and die a mere country lawyer, as, with Eleanor Lloyd for his wife, he surely would do. Raby House is his already--so his mother told me. He is far richer than the world believes him to be. In a little while he will be in Parliament--and then! What wild, ambitious dreams are these! But they are dreams that shall one day become realities, if a woman's will can make them so. There he is in the Laurel Walk! He sits down and presses his hand to his forehead. It wrings my heart to see him suffer; but what can I do? How gladly would I suffer instead of him, if thereby I could charm him to my side and make him my own for ever! It is time to go and get ready for my journey."

Lady Dudgeon had just hunted up Sir Thomas in the library (he had ventured downstairs for an hour this afternoon), in order to point out to him a flagrant error of two shillings in the casting of the butcher's monthly account, when there came a tap at the door, and next moment Miss Deane entered.

"I hope, Lady Dudgeon, you will pardon my intrusion," she said, "but my cousin, Mr. Kelvin, has been suddenly taken ill, and----"

"He is in the conservatory, Sir Thomas. A sudden attack--giddiness--nausea. I have ordered the fly to be brought round in which he drove over from Pembridge."

"It's nothing contagious, I hope," said her ladyship. "My two darling pets--where are they?"

"Safe in the schoolroom. But your ladyship need fear nothing on the score of contagion."

"I am sorry I can't go and look after him myself," said the baronet. "Is he well enough to be sent home alone?"

"I was about to ask her ladyship to allow me to go home with him," said Olive, "although, in such a case, I could not promise to get back before to-morrow morning."

"It is very thoughtful on your part, Miss Deane," said her ladyship. "You must go with Mr. Kelvin, by all means."

"Yes, go, by all means," said Sir Thomas. "A most invaluable, man, Kelvin--so clear-headed, and all that--never seems in a muddle, you know--never messes his fingers with the ink when he's writing."

Matthew Kelvin was indeed very ill--worse, perhaps, than Olive Deane had thought he would be. But, on the other hand, had he not been very ill, no valid necessity would have existed for Olive to accompany him home. He was grateful to her for offering to go with him. It was much nicer to have Olive by his side than one of the Stammars footmen. He had no strength to talk; but they had hardly got out of the park, and well on to the high road that led to Pembridge, when he took one of Olive's cool hands in both his, and let his head droop on to her shoulder.

But she could not help it. It made her cry to see him suffer so much; but none the more on that account did she waver for a single moment in her determination to carry out the scheme on which her mind was so firmly bent.

CHAPTER IX.

THE STORY OF THE WRECK.

Everything now depended on Miriam's ability to carry out the programme laid down for her by her father. The task thus set before her was repugnant to her feelings in many ways, and yet there was a strange sort of fascination in the thought that she alone had power enough over this man to draw from him a secret that he would reveal to no living soul else. But it was requisite that even she should go to work very carefully in the matter. It was requisite that not the slightest suspicion as to her motives should be aroused in Van Duren's naturally suspicious mind. Time and patience were essentially necessary. To have seemed anxious, or in a hurry, would have defeated everything.

Thus it fell out that, nearly every evening when he was in town, Max Van Duren was admitted for an hour to the society of the woman to whose love-spells he had fallen so easy a victim. It could have been no greater surprise to any one than it was to himself to find such toils woven so strongly about him--to find himself, at fifty years of age, and with all his hard worldly experience, as weak as any school boy before the foolish witchery of a pretty face.

Every day his infatuation, for it was nothing less, seemed to grow stronger. While coquetting with him, and leading him on to believe that she really did care a little for him in her heart, she was careful to restrain all lover-like familiarities within the smallest possible limits. She could not prevent his pressing her hand now and then, and she even schooled herself into letting him once and again, and as an immense favour, touch the tips of her fingers with his lips. But that was all. Never once was his arm allowed to insinuate itself round her waist. Never once would she sit alone in the room with him for even five minutes. Her father, infirm and deaf as he was, or appeared to be, was always there--a power to be appealed to should the necessity for such an appeal ever arise.

Van Duren growled a little occasionally at being so persistently forced to keep his distance; but Miriam was as obdurate as a flint.

"I don't believe you have a heart!" he said to her, rather savagely, one night, after she had refused to let him kiss even the tips of her fingers.

"I thought you told me only ten minutes ago that I was the happy possessor of yours," she said, demurely.

"Pshaw! You know well enough what I mean. In any case, you can't be possessed of much feeling."

"I pricked my finger this morning, and it seemed to me that my feelings were very acute indeed. But doubtless you know best."

"I wonder whether you have anything beyond the very vaguest idea of what it is to love."

"My natural stupidity, doubtless. But then, you know, some people set up for being teachers who have no right to the name."

"The teacher expects his pupil to read before she has properly learned to spell; expects, too, to be paid for his services before he has earned his first quarter's salary."

Miriam's tongue had a readiness about it that Van Duren could not match, and in such encounters he was invariably worsted. He liked Miriam all the better in that she was ready of speech and quick of tongue. This bright, clever girl would be his own property before long, and it could not but redound to his credit that his wife should not only have the good looks which go so often without brains, but that she should be keen-witted into the bargain--a woman whom he could introduce to his friends with pride, and with the knowledge that they would envy him his new-found treasure.

Presently Mr. Van Duren's birthday came round, and nothing would satisfy him on this occasion but that he should drive Miriam and her father down to Greenwich, and that they should all dine together at the "Ship." As he wished, so it was agreed.

"It will be a good chance, Miriam dear, for getting out of him what we want to know," said the old man to his daughter when they were alone. "A good dinner, and a glass or two of champagne, will help to loosen his tongue and to keep his suspicions fast asleep. There could not be a better opportunity."

They drove to Greenwich in a close carriage, out of consideration for the delicate state of Mr. Byrne's health. But the old man freshened up wonderfully at the dinner-table, and proposed Mr. Van Duren's health in an eulogistic but somewhat rambling speech, he being evidently of opinion, once or twice, that quite a roomful of guests were listening to him. Miriam at last was obliged to force him gently down into his chair, and tempt him into silence with some grapes. When coffee was brought in he looked vacantly around.

"I feel just a little bit sleepy," he said "and if none of the company objects, I'll have forty winks in that pleasant-looking chair in the corner. But mind, if there's going to be any harmony, I'm your man, and 'Tom Bowling' 's the song that I'll sing."

Three minutes later he was snoring gently, with his bandana thrown over his head, although as yet there were no flies to trouble him.

"I am afraid it is," answered Miriam; "but not perhaps too cold to sit by the open window." She did not want to get out of earshot of her father.

This evening she felt more nervous than she had ever felt before. It was the consciousness of what she was expected to do that affected her thus. She looked a little paler than ordinary, and, by consequence, a little more refined; and as she sat there in her black silk dress, with a little ruffle made of tulle and pink ribbon round her throat, Van Duren vowed to himself that he had never seen her look more thoroughly charming.

"I shall not feel satisfied unless you smoke," she said, as they sat down near the open window. "I have heard you say that you always like to smoke a couple of cigars after dinner."

"But that is a bachelor's vile habit, and one which I am going to learn to give up."

"It will be time enough to give it up when you are no longer a bachelor. Confess, now: did you not smuggle two or three cigars into your pocket before you left home?"

Van Duren laughed. "You must be a witch," he said, as he pulled a cigar-case out of his pocket.

"I am no witch," said Miriam. "I have only found out one of your little weaknesses."

"A man's virtues--when he has any--don't require much discovery; he is generally quite ready to proclaim their existence himself. We women know what your sex like. We maintain our empire over you not by flattering you about your virtues, but by studying your weaknesses. But now, smoke."

Miriam struck a fusee, and Van Duren bit the end off a cigar and lighted it. A little table was between them, on which stood a bottle of sparkling hock and two glasses. The evening was closing in, but the sun had not yet set, and the broad bosom of the river lay fair and clear before them, with its steamers, and lighters, and pleasure-boats, and incoming or outgoing ships, passing to and fro unceasingly--a never-ending panorama, abounding with life, colour, and variety.

"I wonder whether you will always be as indulgent to me as you are to-day," said Van Duren, as he exhaled a long curl of fragrant smoke.

"That would depend upon whether you were always as good as you have been to-day."

"I want you, this afternoon," he said, "to tell me where you would like us to spend our honeymoon."

"As we have not yet agreed that there is to be a honeymoon, the question where we shall spend it seems to me slightly premature."

"Let us be like children for once, and make believe. Let us make believe that you and I are going to be married in a month from now, and that I have asked you where you would like to spend the honeymoon."

Miriam did not answer for a few moments, but sat with one finger pressed to her lips, a pretty embodiment of perplexity. "Really, I don't know," she said--"I don't know where I should like to go. So long as I got away to some strange place, I don't think I should care much where it was."

"Yes--yes!" cried Miriam, clapping her hands. "I should like to go to Paris above all places in the world. To see the shops, and the toilettes, and the gay crowds, and--and the hundreds of other attractions: that would suit me exactly."

"Many ladies, at such times, prefer some quiet nook either in the country or at the seaside."

"Yes, prefer to bury themselves alive, in fact. But that would not suit me, however much I might like my husband. In such a case, I am quite certain that by the end of the first week I should begin to think him a great stupid, and I am equally sure that he would already have discovered with what a shallow-pated individual he had mated himself for life. The experiment would be far too dangerous a one for me."

"A very neatly-framed excuse for preferring Paris to Bognor or Bowness," said Van Duren, with a smile.

"How cleverly you unravel my motives! But I think I told you before that I was shallow. Be warned in time!"

"I have never heeded warnings all my life. I have always preferred keeping my own headstrong course."

"How beautiful the river looks this afternoon!" said Miriam, a moment or two later. "I never look on an outward-bound ship without feeling a sort of vague longing to be on board her, sailing away into that strange world of which I know so little."

"The chances are that before you had been on board a dozen hours you would wish with all your heart that you were on shore again--especially if there happened to be a capful of wind."

"Oh, I quite believe that. Being a woman, it only stands to reason that I should be both ill and frightened. Men are never either one or the other." Then, in a little while, she added: "Still, nonsense apart, I believe that I should very much like to go a long voyage."

"Unless you chanced to have very pleasant companions, you would soon grow weary of the everlasting monotony of sea and sky: sky and sea."

"I'm not quite so sure on that point. I cannot conceive that either the sky or the sea is ever really monotonous. And yet you, who have travelled so much, ought to know far better than I," she added, a minute later, as if correcting herself. "You have travelled much in the course of your life, Mr. Van Duren, have you not?"

"Not so much, perhaps, as you imagine. Still, I have seen something of the world."

"And yet you never talk to me about your travels! You have never told me a single one of your adventures."

"I am not aware that I have any adventures to tell you about," said Van Duren, with an amused expression. "How can a man meet with adventures in these days of railroads and steamboats?"

"Still, you must have encountered something, or seen something, that would be worth telling about."

"Have you ever been pursued by Red Indians, or by wolves, or had a fight with a bear?"

"Have you ever been shipwrecked?" Van Duren gave a little start, but did not immediately answer.

He slowly exhaled the smoke, in a long, thin curl, from between his lips before he spoke. "Yes--I have been shipwrecked," he said, at last.

Miriam's merry laugh rang out, and she clapped her hands for glee. "Every man knows some adventure worth telling," she said. "Yours is a shipwreck. I knew that I should find out what it was at last.--And now you will tell me all about it, won't you?" She looked at him with a pretty air of entreaty, and moved her chair a little closer to his.

"There was really nothing about the affair that is worth telling," he said. He was intent, just now, on choosing another cigar out of his case, smelling at and nipping first one and then another. "It was a very trifling piece of business, I assure you."

"Still, it was a shipwreck, and you were in it," urged Miriam. "Of course, if you do not choose to tell me anything about it, I have nothing further to say in the matter."

"You are a little too hasty," said Van Duren, deprecatingly. "If I really thought it would interest you----" and then he stopped.

"I suppose I ought not to feel interested in such trifles--but I do," said Miriam, with a pout. "After all, it is not so many years since I was a child, and I daresay I have not yet got rid of all my childish tastes. I always did love to read and hear about shipwrecks."

"Then you shall hear about mine," said Van Duren, with more heartiness of tone than he had yet used. He was flattered by her evident interest in himself and his fortunes. There could be no possible harm in telling her the story of the shipwreck: it was only that the telling of it would rouse into morbid activity a snake's nest of terrible recollections, that he would fain have let sleep for ever.

The cloud that had begun to lower over Miriam's face vanished in a moment. "That is really very nice of you," she said. And then she struck another fusee and held it while he lighted his cigar. Van Duren did not speak till he had swallowed a couple of glasses of hock, one immediately after the other.

"As I said before, this shipwreck-story of mine is hardly worth telling. It is true that it seemed serious enough to me at the time, but it is associated with no thrilling adventures or hair-breadth escapes. Altogether, it was a very commonplace affair."

"Still, it was a shipwreck, and there never was a shipwreck yet that wasn't worth hearing about. So now begin, please, and remember that you must tell me all the details, and make a nice, long story of it."

Poor old Byrne, with his handkerchief thrown over his head, and his hands crossed comfortably over his stomach, was still in the middle of his forty winks, and happily oblivious of all terrestrial troubles.

"Yes, that is near enough." There was a perceptible shade of annoyance in his tone as he spoke.

"Now, if you are going to be petulant, I won't speak to you again all the evening. If you knew more about young ladies, and their whims and ways, you would feel flattered by the interest I am taking in your narrative."

"I do feel flattered by your interest," said Van Duren. "But I did not know that you would care for such minute details."

"Little things always interest our sex--our lives are made up of petty details. And now, if you will make a fresh start, I will try not to interrupt you again."

"Well, then, about twenty years ago, more or less, I made up my mind that I would leave England for ever and try my fortune in the New World. A legacy had come to me from an unexpected quarter, and it seemed to me that I could invest my money better in America than in England, and that my chances of making a fortune were greater there than here. I went down to Liverpool with the view of selecting a ship in which to sail. Whilst staying at the hotel there, I fell in with a countryman of my own, whom I had known some years previously, and to whom I had once done some small service. He was now in the shipping-trade, and when he found that I was going to America he offered me a free passage in a vessel, of which he was part owner, that was to sail in a few days for Halifax, Nova Scotia. The offer was too good a one to be refused, and on a certain Saturday morning I found myself, and all my belongings, on board the Albatross, dropping gently down with the tide. We had hardly got beyond the mouth of the Mersey, when it began to blow heavily, and by midnight we were in the midst of a terrific gale. The Albatross was laden with a general cargo, and I was the only passenger on board. I shall never forget the magnificent sight that met my gaze when I went on deck next morning. Such a scene I never saw before, and I never want to behold again. The wind was still very high, but the sun shone brightly, and the atmosphere was so clear that the Welsh hills, although, in reality, several miles away, appeared quite close at hand. Presently the captain came up, looking very serious. 'I am sorry to tell you that we sprang a leak in the night,' he said, 'and I am afraid we shall have to put back to Liverpool, in order to have it stopped. An hour later he came to me again. The water is gaining on us so fast,' he said, 'that I shall have to make for Marhyddoc Bay, which is the nearest place I know of. I am afraid she would founder before I could get her back to Liverpool.' He then gave orders for the ship's head to be put about, and we made at once for the Welsh coast."

"What a dreadful disappointment for you!" said Miriam. "How annoyed I should have been, had I been in your place."

"My feelings were very bitter ones, I assure you," said Van Duren. "But there was no room for anger: in fact, it was becoming a question whether we should even succeed in saving our lives. Near to the coast as we were, it was doubtful whether the ship would not go down before we could reach it, and the sea was such that it would have been next to impossible for any boat to have lived in it."

"Those were moments of intense anxiety for all of us. One of the boats had been stove in during the night; the two remaining ones were got ready for lowering at a moment's notice. The water in the hold kept rising steadily, and at last the men refused to work at the pumps any longer. We laboured slowly on towards the land, but with every minute the ship seemed to become more unmanageable, and to be sinking deeper in the trough of the sea. We had weathered the corner of a promontory, and were within a quarter of a mile of shore, and in somewhat smoother water, when the captain gave the order to lower the boats. The ship's last moment was evidently at hand, and if we did not want to go down with her, we must hurry into the boats as quickly as possible. 'With close packing they will hold us,' said the captain; 'but it's a precious good job that, we haven't far to go.'"

"I was not overburdened with personal luggage, but one article I had that I was particularly desirous of saving. It was a small silver-clamped box, and was full of the most valuable property. In fact, I may tell you that inside that box were my whole worldly possessions. I had brought it up from my cabin and placed it on deck ready to be lowered into the boat. 'You can't take that thing with you,' said the mate, sternly, 'and if you don't look sharp, you'll be left behind yourself.' 'But I must take it,' I said; 'it holds everything I have in the world.' 'Can't help that. I tell you, it can't go. Boys, over with him.' And before I knew what had happened, I found myself dropped over the ship's side into the boat, and the remainder of the crew scrambling after me one by one. The captain and the rest of the crew were in the other boat, and had already cast themselves loose from the ship. 'Two hundred--five hundred pounds,' I cried, 'to any one who will bring that box safely ashore!' 'Hold your tongue, you fool!' cried the mate, 'or else we'll send you to fish for your confounded box at the bottom of the sea;' and with that he pushed away from the sinking ship. I said no more, but sat in dumb despair, hardly caring whether I reached the shore or not. The boat was laden to the water's edge, and I could hardly wonder at the mate's refusal to take my box. 'There she goes!' cried one of the men a few moments later. 'Farewell to the dear old Albatross!' cried a second. I lifted up my eyes. Ship and box had disappeared for ever. A quarter of an hour later I landed at Marhyddoc--a ruined man."

"Gracious me! what a dreadful misfortune!" cried Miriam. "So you did not go to America, after all?"

"I did not. It seemed to me that as I had to begin the world afresh, it would be better to do so among friends and acquaintances than among strangers. I did begin it afresh, and the result has proved far more satisfactory than I should have dared to hope."

"Your narrative has interested me very much, Mr. Van Duren," said Miriam. "It will be something for me to think about when I am sitting alone at my work. I shall think of you far oftener than I should have done had you never told me the story of the Albatross."

"Then I am indeed repaid," said Van Duren, with fervour. "To live in your thoughts is my highest ambition."

"How papa is sleeping," cried Miriam, suddenly. "He will be awake half the night if I don't rouse him."

He awoke querulous and shivering with cold: so, after a hurried cup of tea, they started at once for home, Van Duren sat for a great part of the way with one of Miriam's hands pressed tightly in his. Miriam's soul shrank within her at his touch, but she was obliged to submit. She consoled herself with the thought that only for a very short time longer would the necessity for submitting to his hateful attentions exist. She had wormed out of him the great secret that he had hidden so carefully for twenty long years. The next question was whether any practical use could be made of the knowledge.

"Did you hear what passed this afternoon?" asked Miriam of her father as soon as they were alone together in their own room.

"And now that you have got all this information, what step do you intend to take next?"

"The next step I intend to take is to advertise in the second column of the Times."

CHAPTER X.

GERALD'S CONFESSION.

Gerald was away from Stammars for several days, and it was during his absence that Mr. Pod Piper's interview with Eleanor took place. Gerald, metaphorically speaking, flew back on the wings of love. It seemed months ago since he spoke those few memorable words to Eleanor, and he was burning to see her again: burning to speak of the love that filled his heart, firm in his determination, when once he should see her again, not to leave her till he had won from her a promise to become his wife.

He got back to Stammers on a certain day in time for luncheon, and found Sir Thomas somewhat better in health. Lady Dudgeon and Miss Lloyd were out visiting, and were not expected home much before dinner-time. Gerald was in a restless and anxious mood, and could not settle down to anything. To wait quietly indoors was intolerable. For more than an hour he wandered aimlessly up and down the grounds, but was at last driven by a shower to take shelter in the conservatory. There he found Sanderson, the old gardener, plodding away as usual. He was rather a favourite with the old fellow, simply because he never took the liberty of plucking a flower without first asking Sanderson's permission to do so.

"Eh, sir! but I heard some queer news about you t'other day," he said, as he hobbled up to Gerald.

"I'm no so certain that I ought to tell ye. And yet, seeing that there's a leddy in the case, it's perhaps only right that you should know."

"I suppose I must tell ye, or else you'll no be satisfied," he said. "But let us sit down while we talk. Sitting's as cheap as standing, and I'm no so young as I have been, Mr. Pummery. It was that bit imp of a lawyer laddie," resumed Sanderson, as soon as he and Gerald were comfortably seated, "young Brazen-face, I call him, from Mr. Kelvin's. He was here t'other day, here in this very spot, and Miss Lloyd happened to come in quite accidental at the time. I'd been hard at work all the morning, and was just resting a bit behind the bushes, when all at once I heard young Brazen-face mention your name, and that made me listen to hear more."

"Why, he said that you were as poor as a church mouse, and that his master lent you fifty pounds to buy your clothes with."

"But he said the reason why you came to Stammers was that you might fall in love with Miss Lloyd and marry her, because she was worth twenty thousand pounds."

"That's just what he did! And he said that Miss Deane knew all about it, and that it was all a planned thing between you and her."

Gerald was dumbfounded. He could not find a word to say for a little while. What must Eleanor think of him! It would not be a very difficult matter to set himself right with her if he chose to do so, but a climax was being forced upon him which he would gladly have delayed for a little while longer.

"She didn't seem to say much; but she may have thought all the more," answered Sanderson.

"It was enough to make her think. I am really very much obliged to you for telling me."

"Well, no, Sanderson, I think not. Even if this foolish accusation were true, it would be as well, for Miss Lloyd's sake, not to let it go any further. There's a sovereign for you to buy snuff with. A still tongue, you know, is a sign of a wise head."

"How did that young scamp get to know all that he told Eleanor?" was Gerald's first thought as he walked slowly back into the house. But that was a question which it was impossible for him to answer. How different was the spirit with which he entered the house from that which had possessed him when he left it but one short hour before! The summer sunshine of his love had suddenly been clouded over: the landscape had darkened: a storm was at hand.

How fortunate it was, he said to himself, that he had not met Eleanor before encountering Sanderson! He did not want to see her now; it was requisite that he should decide upon some particular line of action before meeting her again. He sat down in his easy-chair and shut his eyes, and bent himself to the task of thinking--no very easy task just now, so strangely was he fluttered by the news which had been told him. Two or three different courses were open to him: which one of them should he choose?

He sat without moving till the dinner-bell rang; then, all at once, he made up his mind as to the line of action he would adopt. Having excused himself on the plea of fatigue from going downstairs, he lighted his lamp and seated himself at his writing-table. Then he took pen and paper, and wrote as under:--

"From certain private information which has reached me, I have reason to believe that a great proportion, if not the whole, of the property which my uncle, the late Mr. Jacob Lloyd, of Bridgeley Wells, died possessed of, should devolve on me as being his legal representative. As I am given to understand that you had the management of my late uncle's affairs, will you kindly inform me, at your earliest convenience, whether it is within your knowledge that the facts of the case are as stated by me, and if so, what steps it will be requisite for me to take in order to prove the validity of my claim?

This letter, addressed to Matthew Kelvin, was sent under cover by Gerald to a friend in London, from whose house it was professedly written, with a request that it might be posted.

Four days later, through the hands of his London friend, Gerald received the following answer:--

"In reply to your favour of the 25th inst., I regret to inform you that the state of Mr. Kelvin's health at the present time is such as to entirely preclude him from giving any attention to matters of business. He hopes, however, to be sufficiently recovered in the course of a few days to be able to reply fully to the questions contained in your letter.

Gerald's letter to Kelvin had been marked "Private." All letters not so marked were opened by Mr. Bray, the chief clerk. The private letters were picked out and sent upstairs. Kelvin, at this time, was so ill that Olive was deputed to open these letters, and read them aloud to him, and pencil down his remarks respecting such of them as required answering. Thus it fell out that Gerald's letter reached her among a number of others one morning. She always opened the letters and read them over herself before submitting them to her cousin, by which means she could often give him the pith of a letter without troubling him with unnecessary details.

Gerald's letter startled her not a little. It was requisite that she should have time to think it over, and to consider in what way it might or might not interfere with her own special plans; so she slipped it quietly into her pocket, and said nothing to Kelvin that morning about it.

Locked up in her own room she read the letter over and over again. After all, it was, perhaps, quite as well that this Mr. Warburton had discovered something as to the real facts of the case. Her cousin Matthew was so thin-skinned that, although he had agreed to the temporary concealment of certain facts, he evidently shrank from inflicting on Eleanor Lloyd the blow which ought to follow such concealment as a logical sequence. But should this Mr. Warburton come forward, the blow struck would be just the same, but her cousin would be spared its infliction. Eleanor Lloyd would still be deprived of name, wealth, and position, while a final sting should reach her from the hands of Olive herself, in the care she would take that, if not in one way then in another, Miss Lloyd should be duly enlightened as to the character and antecedents of the man to whom she had given her heart and promised her hand. Still it might be as well to temporise a little, to delay the climax for a week or two, if it were only that the bond of love which bound Miss Lloyd to Pomeroy might grow stronger with the lapse of time; for the more she learnt to love Pomeroy, the deeper would be the wound that a knowledge of his treachery could not fail to inflict.

When Olive had once adopted this line of argument, it was easy for her to persuade herself that the wisest thing she could do would be to keep her own counsel for a little while as to Mr. Warburton's letter. In her cousin's present state of health such a communication would only serve to worry him, and could answer no practical end. Meanwhile, she would take upon herself to have the letter replied to, but in such a way that it would be impossible for her cousin to be offended with her when the time should come for him to be told all that she had done. Not being a person who was in the habit of acting on rash impulses, she kept the letter over-night, with the view of ascertaining whether the resolve which she had come to to-day would bear next morning's cold confirmation. Next morning changed nothing; and as soon as breakfast was over she went downstairs to her cousin's private office, and sent for Mr. Bowood, one of the clerks, and dictated to him that letter which we have already seen in the hands of Gerald. All that Olive wanted just now was a little delay, and this she succeeded in securing.

But what was Gerald to do next? After what that meddlesome imp of a Pod Piper had told Eleanor, it was quite evident to him that all prospect of her listening favourably to his suit was at an end, unless he could offer a frank and full explanation of the facts. He had relied upon his letter to Kelvin bringing matters to a crisis without any further impulse on his part, but that hope was now at an end, unless he could afford to wait for Kelvin's recovery at some indefinite future time. But he could not afford to wait. He had shut himself up in his own rooms, on the plea of indisposition, while awaiting the lawyer's answer, in order that he might run no risk of meeting Miss Lloyd till he knew what that answer was. But this could not go on any longer. A meeting with Eleanor was inevitable, but on what terms could they meet, unless he were prepared with some sort of an explanation beforehand?

His most straightforward course would certainly have been to explain frankly to Eleanor who and what he was, and to tell her all his reasons for seeking to win her affections under a fictitious name. But he still shrank, with a repugnance which he seemed quite unable to overcome, from being the first to tell her that strange story which she must one day be told, but which, it seemed to him, his lips ought to be the last in the world to reveal. That story would deprive her of name, wealth, position--of everything, in fact, that her life had taught her to hold most dear. Not even to set himself right in her eyes, not even to free himself in her thoughts from a vile imputation, could he consent that from his hands the blow should come. That the blow must fall some day he knew quite well, but Kelvin was the man from whom it ought to emanate; and now, after what had happened, no matter how soon it came.

To this conclusion had he come before writing to Kelvin, but the lawyer's answer left him exactly where he was before. Something he must do himself, or else shun Eleanor altogether: but what must that something be?

Was there no middle course open to him? he asked himself; was no scheme of compromise possible by means of which, while setting himself right with Eleanor, he might be spared the necessity of becoming the mouthpiece of a revelation which, if told by him, might perchance shatter his dearest hopes for ever?

After a restless and miserable night, which seemed as if it would never come to an end, he fell into an hour's sound sleep, and when he woke he seemed to see a glimpse of daylight through the midst of his perplexities. Again he took pen in hand, and here is what he wrote on that occasion:--

"Mr. Pomeroy presents his compliments to Miss Lloyd, and having something of a special nature which he is desirous of communicating to her, he would esteem it a great favour if Miss Lloyd would allow him the privilege of a few minutes' private conversation at any time and at any place that may be most convenient to her."

Poor Eleanor! What a miserable time was that which she had passed since that afternoon when Pod Piper spoke to her in the conservatory! An hour before, she would have staked her existence on Pomeroy's truth and sincerity; and now, proof had been given her that he was nothing better than a common adventurer, who had sought to win her because she was rich! Truth and sincerity seemed to have vanished from the world. Nowhere could she feel sure that she had a friend who cared for her for herself alone, who would be the same to her to-morrow as to-day, if, by the touch of some wizard's wand, her money were suddenly turned to dross. How she wished that her father had left his riches elsewhere! How she wished that necessity had driven her to earn her living by her fingers or her brain! Then, if friendship or love had chanced to come to her, she would have known that they were genuine, because she would have had nothing but their like to give in return. The poorest shop-girl, who walked the streets on her sweetheart's arm, was richer than she in all that makes life sweet and beautiful.

Sometimes Eleanor recalled certain words of warning which Lady Dudgeon had on one occasion addressed to her. "Beware lest you fall into the hands of some swindling adventurer," her ladyship had said, "of some romantic rogue, with a handsome face and a wheedling tongue, who, while persuading you that he loves you for yourself alone, cares, in reality, for nothing but the money you will bring him."

But ten minutes later she would reproach herself for thinking so hardly of Pomeroy. No; notwithstanding all that she had heard, she would not believe that he was an adventurer. There was a mistake somewhere, she felt sure.

How much of the unhappiness of life is due to misunderstandings and mistakes which a few frank words of explanation would often serve to put right!

But supposing Mr. Pomeroy offered her no explanation? Supposing he persisted in his suit, and went on making love to her on the assumption that after what had passed between them he would not be repulsed? Then, indeed, painful as such a course might be, she would feel compelled to tell him all that young Piper had told her, leaving him to deny it or explain it away as he might best be able.

There were some other words of Lady Dudgeon's which she could not quite forget, and which seemed to have a more apposite force at the present moment than when they were uttered. "If you become the wife of Captain Dayrell, you will have the consolation of knowing that you have not been sought for your money alone. Dayrell is rich enough to marry a woman without a penny, if he chose to do so." She did not like Captain Dayrell, and she would never become his wife, but for all that Lady Dudgeon's words would keep ringing in her ears.

When she heard Sir Thomas mention one day at dinner that Mr. Pomeroy was back again at Stammars, she felt strangely moved. However great his offences might be, his image still dwelt in her heart, and there was something delicious in the thought that he was once again under the same roof with her. She longed and yet dreaded to see him; but as day passed after day without giving him to her aching eyes, her longing deepened into an intense anxiety. She heard from those around her that he was not very well, and that beyond seeing Sir Thomas, on business matters, for an hour every morning, he kept to his own rooms. But if he were well enough to see Sir Thomas, he was surely well enough to see her--to see the woman whose lips he had kissed, and into whose ears he had whispered words that could never be forgotten! But perhaps he held himself aloof on purpose that they might not meet. Perhaps he was desirous of shunning her--wishful that she should understand that what had passed between them had better be forgotten, and that in time to come they must be as strangers, or, at the most, as mere acquaintances, to each other. If he could forget, she could do the same: her pride was quite a match for his. It was a time of bitter perplexity and trouble.

When Eleanor walked into the library to meet Pomeroy, she had his note hidden in the bosom of her dress. She looked very cold and very proud. Her coldness and her pride notwithstanding, she had kissed his letter and cried over it; but of that Gerald was to know nothing. He bowed gravely to her as she entered the room, but he did not speak, and that of itself was enough to send a chill to her heart. Then he placed a chair for her, and she sat down, but during the interview that followed, Gerald stood with his elbow resting on the chimney-piece.

"Miss Lloyd," he began, when Eleanor was seated, "I have taken the liberty of asking you to meet me privately, being desirous of saying something to you which I could not well communicate by letter, and which, perhaps, I ought to have told you long before now." His tone was very measured and grave. Was it possible, Eleanor asked herself, that she could be listening to the same man who had pressed her to his heart in a rapture of love only two short weeks ago?

"You asked me to meet you, Mr. Pomeroy," she said, "and I am here to listen to whatever you may have to say to me."

"I am here to-day, Miss Lloyd," he said at last, "to make a very painful confession, and I must ask your forgiveness if, in the course of it, I am compelled to speak more plainly than under other circumstances I should venture to do. Some three months ago I entered the service of Sir Thomas Dudgeon as his secretary. At that time I was doing nothing, or next to nothing: I was a poor man; the situation was thrown in my way, and I accepted it. But I accepted it, Miss Lloyd, not for the sake of the salary or emoluments attached to the position, but simply in order that by its means I might be brought near to you, and have an opportunity of making your acquaintance. It had been hinted to me that the only mode by which I could recoup my fortunes was by marrying an heiress. I was told that you were an heiress, and that there was just a faint possibility that I might succeed in winning your hand."

"Your confession, sir, has at least the merit of frankness," said Eleanor, with a quivering lip.

"Its frankness is the only merit it can lay claim to. I came to Stammars, Miss Lloyd, and I made your acquaintance. From that moment I was a changed man. Whatever mercenary motives, whatever ignoble ends, may have held possession of me before, they all vanished, utterly and for ever, in that first hour of our meeting. I felt and knew only that I loved you. In that love--so different from anything I had ever felt before--lay a subtle alchemy, that had the power of transfusing into something finer and purer everything base that it touched. It has refined and purified me: it has given to my hopes and inspirations a different aim: it has taught me to look at life and its duties with altogether different eyes."

He paused for a moment. Eleanor sat without speaking. What, indeed, could she say? But she had never loved him better than at that moment.

"A fortnight ago," resumed Gerald, "carried away by the impulse of the moment, and my own long-suppressed feelings, I said certain words to you which I ought not to have said--at least, not till after I had told you what I am telling you to-day, and not till I knew that I was forgiven. I am here to-day, Miss Lloyd, to crave your pardon for having given utterance to those words, and to ask you to look upon them as if they had never been said."

"After the confession which I have just made as to the motives which first led me to become an inmate of this house, I dare hardly hope ever to attain again to that position in your regards which I flattered myself--wrongly enough, perhaps--was mine but a little while ago. How greatly I regret having forfeited that position I should fail to tell you in any words. But I may, perhaps, hope that my candour will meet with sufficient recognition at your hands to induce you to overlook all that has gone before, and to treat me in time to come, not as an utter stranger, but as one who----"

"No, not as an utter stranger, Mr. Pomeroy," said Eleanor, gently. "Your confession, as you term it, has been nearly as painful to me as it must have been to you. I almost forget what the words were to which you have made allusion: something foolish, I do not doubt. In any case, we will both try to forget that they were ever uttered. Good-bye."

She held out her hand as she spoke. Gerald took it, and pressed it respectfully to his lips. Then her eyes met his, while a faint smile, that was more akin to tears than laughter, played round her mouth for a moment: for a moment only--the next, he was gone.

CHAPTER XI.

KELVIN'S ILLNESS.

Matthew Kelvin found himself considerably better the morning of the day following that on which he had been taken ill at Stammars, but in the course of the afternoon he had a sharp return of the previous symptoms. Then it was that his mother insisted upon sending for Dr. Druce, the family practitioner, and Olive seconded the plea. Up to this time Kelvin had strenuously refused to let any one be called in, but he now yielded reluctantly to his mother's wishes. He had never been ill enough to need the services of a doctor since those far-off juvenile days of measles and scarlatina, and he was loth to believe that there was any necessity for such services now.

However, in the course of the day, Dr. Druce looked in. He felt his patient's pulse, looked at his tongue, and asked the usual questions. Then he took off his spectacles, pursed up his mouth, shook his head at Kelvin as though he were an offending schoolboy, and delivered himself oracularly. "Disordered state of stomach. Nothing serious. Put you right in a day or two. Must diet yourself more carefully in future. What really charming weather we are having."

Everybody agreed that Dr. Druce was seventy years old; many averred that he was nearly eighty. The latter people it probably was who asserted that the doctor was purblind, that his memory was half gone, that it was hardly safe for him to practise, and that he ought to retire and make room for a younger man. The doctor, however, still considered himself to be in the prime of his powers, and as he had attended Mrs. Kelvin herself for a long series of years, and was, besides, an old personal friend of that lady, it was not likely that she would think of calling in any other assistance to her son.

As soon as Dr. Druce's visit had relieved in some measure his mother's anxiety, Kelvin began to express his desire that Olive should get back to Stammers without delay. "I shall be all right in a day or two," he said, "and my mother, or one or other of the servants, will see meanwhile that I want for nothing."

"I shall wait till to-morrow, and see how you are then, before I think of going back," said Olive. "You know that my aunt can do nothing in the way of waiting upon you, and as for the servants, they are all very well in their places, but they would be quite out of their element in a sick-room."

"A sick-room, indeed! You talk as if I were going to be laid up for a month," said Kelvin, impatiently.

"I talk simple common sense, Matthew," said Olive. "Besides, Lady Dudgeon promised me a holiday a month ago, and I don't see why I should not take it now. In fact, I may tell you that I have already written to her ladyship telling her not to expect me back for three or four days."

"Cool, I must say. Not but what you are welcome to stay here as long as you like: cela va sans dire; and I am greatly obliged to you for what you have done for me already. But as for spending your holiday in waiting on me--that's pure nonsense. A week at the seaside, now, is what you ought to have."

"Which to me would mean a week in a strange place among people whom I never saw before and should never see again. I would sooner hear Sophy and Carry their lessons from year's end to year's end than indulge in such a holiday as that."

"I shall be better to-morrow, you mark my words if I'm not, and then we'll have a little further talk about your holiday."

But he was by no means better next morning; rather worse, indeed, if anything. It was nothing, Dr. Druce said. The medicine sent by him had, perhaps, had the effect of increasing the sickness, but the patient himself was no worse than on the preceding day. A little time and a little patience were needed. It was not to be expected that an evil which had been growing for months, perhaps even for year, could be put right in a day or two.

Kelvin said nothing to Olive that day about going back to Stammars. He was very ill indeed, and he could not help admitting to himself that it was a great comfort to have Olive to wait upon him. His mother, at the best of times, would not have been of much use in a sick-room, seeing that it was a matter of difficulty for her to walk across the floor, and the very fact of Matthew being so ill only tended to make her worse than usual. As for a hired nurse, Kelvin shuddered at the thought. But such a nurse as Olive made all the difference. "You might have been born to this sort of thing, from the way you go, about it," he said to her.

"You forget that for many years my father kept a chemist's shop in a poor neighbourhood," she replied, "and that I seem to have been familiar with sickness and disease since I can remember anything."

"You are a clever girl, Olive, and I believe you could doctor me a deuced sight better than old Druce. I remember when I was a lad hearing your father say that you knew almost as much about his drugs and messes as he did himself."

Olive's back was towards him as he spoke, and she did not answer for a moment or two. "That is a long time ago," she said, in a low voice; "and such knowledge as that is easily forgotten. Then, again, you remember how poor papa always would exaggerate a little."

How deft and noiseless were all her movements in the sick man's room! How soft, and white, and cool were her hands! Her dress never rustled, her shoes never creaked, her voice itself was attuned to the place and the occasion. She was never hurried; nothing seemed to put her out. She would either read to her cousin, or talk to him, or sit for hours by his side doing some noiseless stitching that would not have disturbed the slumbers of a mouse. When he was more than ordinarily restless she would bathe his head with eau-de-Cologne or aromatic vinegar, or sometimes, leaving his door ajar, she would go into the other room and play some of his favourite airs softly on the piano, and so, little by little, charm him out of his restless mood and soothe him off into a refreshing sleep.

It was on the evening of the second day that Mrs. Kelvin called Olive on one side. "You will not leave me to-morrow, unless my dear boy is better?" said the old lady, with tears in her eyes.

"I will not leave you to-morrow, or next week, or next month, unless my cousin is better," said Olive. "You may take my word for that."

"Heaven bless you, dear!" said Mrs. Kelvin, fervently; and she made as though she would kiss Olive, but the latter started back.

"These cases are sometimes very obstinate, indeed," said the old gentleman, pleasantly, as he peered into his snuff-box in search of a last pinch. "And then they not unfrequently affect the liver. Now, I don't know a more obstinate noun substantive in the whole of the English language than your disordered liver. As for the increasing weakness that you complain about--why, I don't care much about that, because it tends to keep down any febrile symptoms. Of course, if you can't eat you can't keep up your strength; but when you once take a turn, you know, you'll have the appetite of a wolf--I may say, the appetite of a wolf in winter."

"What a comfort it is, dear," said Mrs. Kelvin to Olive, "to think that we are in the hands of such a nice clever man as Dr. Druce. He has had so much experience that I believe he can tell at a glance what is the matter with a patient. Experience, in the medical profession, is everything."

Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon drove over to see Mr. Kelvin a couple of days before their return to London. They were greatly concerned at his illness. As regarded Miss Deane, permission was given her to stay with her cousin as long as it might be necessary for her to do so. The young ladies, her pupils, were gone to pay a long-deferred visit to an aunt of theirs, and it was quite uncertain when they would return.

One of Olive's difficulties was thus smoothed away for her without any trouble on her part.

A few hours after Sir Thomas's visit, Mr. Kelvin suddenly opened his hollow eyes. "Olive, where is my mother?" he asked, abruptly.

Olive guessed instinctively what was coming. "If what you were about to say to me is not very important, I would leave it unsaid to-day, if I were you," she answered. "You have done more talking already than is good for you."

As if to verify her words, he was suddenly taken with a severe fit of sickness which lasted several minutes and left him thoroughly exhausted.

Laying his wasted fingers on Olive's arm, and drawing her towards him, "What I was about to say was this," he whispered. "Since I have been lying here, I have had time to think of many things. But the thing that has weighed heaviest on my mind, the thing that I have regretted most, is my treatment of Eleanor Lloyd. It was you, Olive, who persuaded me to hide the truth from her, to let her live on in ignorance of her real history; to--to--you understand what I mean."

"You know what my motives in the matter were, Matthew," said Olive, in a low voice.

"Yes, I know quite well what they were, and very mean and despicable they seem to me now. Mind, I am not going to reproach you. The fault was mine in allowing myself to be persuaded by you. In any case, the past is the past, and nothing can alter it; but, so sure as I now lie here, the very first day that I can crawl downstairs, I will send for Miss Lloyd, tell her everything, and ask her forgiveness for the wrong I have done her!"

Olive at this time had got Gerald Warburton's letter upstairs, and had, in fact, already answered it in the way that we have seen. For a moment she was tempted to show the letter to her cousin, but before she could make up her mind to do so, Kelvin was asleep or seemed to be. So telling herself that she did not care to disturb him, she let the opportunity go by, and as Kelvin, when he awoke, did not again recur to the subject, there seemed to be no reason why she should do so. Not much longer could the climax be delayed, not much longer could Eleanor Lloyd be kept in ignorance; of that Olive was quite aware; but she would, if possible, delay the revelation for a little while; delay it till Mr. Kelvin should have thoroughly recovered from his illness, and having got rid of all his foolish sick-bed fancies, should be prepared to carry out the scheme in all its features as originally proposed by her and agreed to by him.

But when would Mr. Kelvin have recovered from his illness? That was a question which, as yet, Olive was not prepared to answer. Sometimes it seemed to her that her plot was slowly working itself round to the fulfilment for which she so ardently longed; sometimes it seemed as if no such fulfilment were possible to her. That her cousin liked to have her by his side, liked to have her wait upon him, she saw clearly enough, and she fancied that with each day she became more indispensable to him. But was his heart touched by her devotion; was he slowly but surely learning to love her? That was a problem which at present she could in nowise solve. Time and patience might work wonders for her, and with them as her allies she saw no reason, when in her more sanguine moods, to despair of ultimate success. Having gone so far, having ventured so much, it was not likely, as she said to herself, that she should go back, that she should let herself be overcome by any childish timidity or nonsensical scruples, when, for aught she knew to the contrary, she might at that very moment be on the brink of success. She never knew what a day, what an hour, might bring forth. At some moment when least expected her cousin might put forth his hand and say to her, "Olive, my heart has come round to you again. I love you. Be my wife." If such a prize were not to be won without risk, she was prepared to run that risk, whatever it might involve.

There were times when Kelvin's mysterious malady caused him to suffer acutely. At such moments Olive was always by his side, "a ministering angel," as her cousin himself called her one day; soothing him with the gentlest attentions, anticipating each want intuitively, making herself, in fact, so indispensable to him that after a while he could hardly bear to let her go out of his sight, and if, when he woke up, she were not by his side, he would cry, fretfully, "Where's Olive? Why isn't she here?" and toss and turn restlessly till he felt her soft cold hand laid on his brow.

But even Olive's nerves of steel gave way sometimes. When, at midnight, or later than that, she would steal out of her cousin's room in the hope of getting an hour or two's sleep, sleep would not come to her. All tired as she was, she would fling herself on her bed, and, burying her face in her pillow, cry for an hour at a time as if her heart would break. To see the man she loved so passionately suffer as he suffered; to know that she had but to hold up her little finger, as it were, for his sufferings to cease, but that if she were to let her compassion so master her he would be lost to her for ever; to know that her only chance of winning him was to win him through those sufferings which she alone could soothe: to feel and know all this was at times, especially in the midnight darkness of her own room, torture unspeakable. But when, at cockcrow, the ebony gates of the realm of shadows and midnight fancies were silently shut, and when another day looked in at the windows with its clear cold eyes, the purpose of Olive Deane faltered no longer: her strong will re-asserted itself, and tears and compunction alike were for the time being thrust mercilessly out of sight.

"Oh, doctor, doctor, when are you going to get me downstairs again?" the sick man would sometimes wearily ask. "I am so terribly tired of lying here."

To which the old gentleman, tapping his snuff-box, would blandly reply: "That Mr. Liver is a deuce of a fellow to get right again when once he's really put out. So obstinate, you know, and all that. Wants a deal of coaxing. But we shall bring him to his senses by-and-by--yes, yes, by-and-by, never fear."

CHAPTER XII.

RECOGNITION.

Three days after Mr. Van Duren's little birthday dinner at Greenwich, the following advertisement appeared in the second column of the Times:--

"Albatross.--Should this meet the eye of any person or persons who happened to be on board the schooner Albatross when she foundered off Marhyddoc Bay on the 18th Oct., 18--, they may hear of something to their advantage, by applying to Messrs. Reed and Reed, Solicitors, Bedford Row, London."

This advertisement was repeated every other day for three weeks. At the end of that time there came a response.

As it happened, Van Duren never saw the advertisement, and there was no one to show it to him; no one who knew what a terrible fascination such an announcement would have had for him. His newspaper reading was generally confined to the money article, the City intelligence, and the latest telegrams. For miscellaneous news and leading articles he cared little Or nothing.

Now that everything had been got out of Max Van Duren that could be got out of him, the motive that had induced Miriam Byrne to play the part she had played existed no longer; and although it was needful that appearances should still be kept up, there was no longer the same strain upon her. While keeping Van Duren at arm's length, and permitting no lover-like familiarities, on the ground that as yet he was only accepted on probation, it would not have been wise, having an eye to future eventualities, to repel him too rigidly, or to have run the risk of frightening him away. He must be so kept in hand that a little coaxing--a smile, a look, a whispered word--could always lure him to her side. He would fain have been twice as loving, twice as assiduous in his attentions, as Miriam would allow him to be. "Wait," she would say, "wait till I have made up my mind, and then----!" a look would finish the sentence, a look which seemed to say, "You know very well that I shall end by accepting you, and then I won't object to your kissing me, or perhaps to kissing you in return." That, at least, was Van Duren's interpretation of it.

During the time that the advertisement was appearing every other day, Byrne seized the opportunity for obtaining a little rest and change. He and Miriam went back for a week to their old lodgings in Battersea, which they had not yet given up. Van Duren believed that they were going to the seaside, but could not discover the particular place for which they were bound. Miriam put the case to him playfully.

"No, I shall not tell you where we are going," she said, with a smile, "because that would be merely offering you a premium to run down and spend the end of week with us. I am going to leave you for seven long days. You will not know where I am, and I shall not write to you. I am going to test you--I am going to see whether you will like me as well when I come back as you do now."

"You should try me for seven years instead of seven days," said Van Duren, fervently.

"Suppose I take you at your word, and stay away for seven years," said Miriam, with a mischievous sparkle in her eye.

"Like a knight of old, I should start in quest of you long before that time was at an end; I should search for you till I found you in your hidden bower, and then I should seize you, and carry you away with me, whether you liked it or no."

"Yes, and while you were riding off with me as fast as you could go, I should be slily searching for a joint in your armour, and when I had found it, I should stab you to the heart with my silver bodkin. What a romance it would be!"

"He would live in song and story ever after, and that would be far more fame than he would deserve."

At the end of a week Miriam and her father found themselves back in Spur Alley, and three days later there came a response to the advertisement. Messrs. Reed and Reed were called upon by two men who professed to have been on board the Albatross at the time she foundered. One of these men was Paul Morrell, the mate of the ill-fated schooner; the other one was Carl Momsen, an ordinary seaman. An appointment was made for the following day, when Mr. Byrne came in person to examine them. A private room was set apart for the interview, and one of Messrs. Reed's shorthand clerks was there to take notes. The men were examined separately, and out of each other's hearing, but the evidence elicited from one was almost an exact counterpart of the evidence elicited from the other. The evidence of both of them may be summarized as follows:--

The Albatross sailed from Liverpool for Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the 17th October, 18--. She was not in the habit of carrying passengers, but on this particular occasion there was one passenger on board her who was said to be a friend of the owner. He was a foreigner, but spoke very good English. He had sandy-coloured hair, and wore small gold rings in his ears. Neither of the men knew his name. The Albatross was caught in a gale off the mouth of the Mersey. Next morning she sprung a leak, and a little while after the schooner's head was put about for Marhyddoc Bay. Outside the bay the vessel foundered, and the crew had barely time to take to the boats before she went down. At the last moment the man with the earrings brought up out of his cabin what looked like a small portmanteau, it being covered with leather, but which he called a box. This box he wanted to take with him in the boat, but as the men had orders to take off and leave behind them all superfluous clothing, and as it was the merest chance whether even then the boat would not be swamped, it was quite evident that the box must be left behind. The man entreated and stormed, and offered a reward of five hundred pounds to any one who would take his box ashore. But life is sweeter than five hundred pounds, and the box had to be left behind. The man raved like a maniac about the loss, but an hour or two after reaching shore he disappeared, and neither Morrell nor Momsen either saw or heard anything of him from that day forward.

After the examination was over, Morrell, as being the more intelligent of the two men, was asked whether he thought it possible that if he were to see the passenger of the Albatross he could recognise him again.

After so long a time it seemed very doubtful to him whether he could do so, he said, but he would be happy to try.

Accordingly, next day, while Van Duren was dining at his usual tavern, Morrell was instructed to walk into the room and call for some dinner, and see whether he could pick his man out of the assembled company.

About an hour later he rejoined Byrne in a private room of another tavern close at hand.

"I picked him out in a moment, sir," said the ex-mate. "Yes, the very moment I set eyes on him I knew him again. He's stouter and older looking, of course, and he's close-shaved now, and wears no earrings; but, for all that, he's the same man."

"I think you told me the other day," said Byrne, "that you had nothing very particular to do just now?"

"Yes, sir, I did. I only got back from China a few weeks since, and, as I am getting on in life, it's just a toss up with me whether I shall go to sea again or settle down ashore for the rest of my days."

"On Wednesday morning next I shall want you to go down from Euston Station to Marhyddoc, and there make certain inquiries for me."

"Nothing could please me better, sir. I've had plenty of travelling by water: a little travelling by land will make a pleasant change."

"Then meet me here on Tuesday evening at seven, and I will give you your instructions."

Before proceeding further, Byrne thought that he had better put Ambrose Murray in possession of what he had done since their last meeting, and seek his sanction to the steps he proposed taking next. Byrne accordingly sought Murray out at his lodgings, and the two men had a long consultation. Gerald, unfortunately, was at Stammars just then, and could not be present.

"Everything now hinges upon the result of Morrell's inquiries at Marhyddoc," said Byrne. "Should the report he will bring back with him prove a favourable one, then we may consider ourselves fortunate indeed--then we may take it that the best or worst will soon be known to us. But should the result of his inquiries prove unfavourable to our hopes, then all that we have done--all my toiling and scheming, all the expense you have been put to--will have been next to useless. Van Duren's guilt as the murderer of Paul Stilling may have been morally proved to the satisfaction of you and me and one or two others, but that would be of no avail whatever in proving your innocence and in bringing home the crime to him. Unless we can wrest from the sea the terrible secret which it has hidden so carefully all these years, the guilt of Van Duren will remain unproved for ever. Beyond the point now reached by us it is impossible to advance a single step till we shall have made that secret our own."

"The sea has only been keeping its secret all these years that it might yield it up when the time should be ripe for me to ask for it. That time has now come. I ask for it, and I shall have it. Have no fear, my good friend, no fear whatever. Guided by an unseen hand, we have threaded a labyrinth from which at first there seemed no possible outlet; and now that we have reached the gate, and are bidden to look for the key, can you doubt that it is there for the searching--can you doubt that we shall find it?"

"Cracked, to a certainty," muttered Byrne to himself, as he left the house. "And no wonder either, poor fellow, when one remembers all that he has had to go through."

Morrell went down to Wales in due course, and in due course he returned. His report to Byrne was of such a nature that the latter could not conceal his exultation. "We shall have him yet!" he exclaimed, much to the ex-mate's astonishment. "He has escaped for twenty long years, but the hangman's fingers shall unbutton his collar before he is six months older."

Then he went and saw Murray again, and it was arranged that they two, together with Gerald, if possible, should go down to Marhyddoc as soon as certain necessary preparations which would have to be made in London should be completed. Morrell, too, was to form one of the party.

When Byrne and Miriam got back to their rooms in Spur Alley, Van Duren could not conceal his exultation at seeing them under his roof again. His time of probation would soon be at an end now: Miriam would soon have to make up her mind to the utterance of a definite "Yes," or "No." Now that she had come back, she seemed more kind and gracious to him than before, from which fact he did not fail to draw an augury that was favourable to his own wishes.

Ambrose Murray had his little portmanteau packed ready for the journey to Wales several days before the other preparations could possibly be completed. Miss Bellamy had never seen him so elated before. He went about the house singing to himself in an under-tone, or whistling snatches of old tunes that had been popular when he was a boy. That cloud of quiet melancholy, which would sometimes oppress him for days together, without a break in its dulness, had all but vanished, leaving but a shadow of its former self behind. Miss Bellamy had asked him several times to go and have his portrait taken, but up to the present he had always declined to do so. One fine day, however, after the journey to Wales had been decided on, he astonished her by telling her that if she would go and be photographed he would follow her example.

"First of all, Maria, you shall be photographed by yourself," he said, "and then I'll be photographed by myself; and after that, what do you say to our being photographed together, eh? Such old friends as you and I are ought to be photographed together. But, above all things, Maria, don't forget to be taken with your locket."

This latter remark was a sly hit at the large, old-fashioned locket which Miss Bellamy wore round her neck on high days and holidays--at such times, in fact, as she wore her silver grey dress and her company cap, but at no other. Ambrose Murray could remember Miss Bellamy wearing this locket when she was a girl of nineteen, and she wore it still. He often joked her about it, and would offer to wager anything that if she would only let him have a peep inside it he should find there the portrait of a certain handsome cornet of dragoons, with whom, according to his account, she had at one time a desperate flirtation. But he never had seen inside the locket, and Miss Bellamy was quite sure that he never would do so with her consent; for within that old-fashioned piece of jewellery was shut up the cherished secret of Miss Bellamy's life. Ambrose Murray's laughing assertion that in it was hidden the portrait of a man was so far true, but the likeness was not that of any young cornet of dragoons, but that of Ambrose Murray himself--of Ambrose Murray at two-and-twenty, with brown hair, and laughing eyes, and no care in the world beyond that of making up his mind which one out of a bevy of pretty girls he was most in love with. He fell in love, not with Miss Bellamy, but with her friend, and Miss Bellamy's secret remained buried for ever in her own heart. With the portrait were shut up two locks of hair: one lock was of a light golden brown colour, the other was white.

"There is room for another portrait," said Miss Bellamy to herself, with a sigh, when Ambrose Murray proposed going to the photographer's, "and then it will be full." She had left orders in her will that the locket should be buried with her. How her heart fluttered, how the unwonted colour rushed to her face, when Ambrose proposed that they should be photographed together! Years had no power to weaken or alter her love, but she would have died rather than let Murray suspect for a moment the existence of any such feeling on her part. He knew it not, but it was a fact that, with the exception of a few trifling legacies, all her little property was bequeathed to him, or, in event of his prior demise, to Eleanor. In her secret heart she could not help dreading a little the coming of that time when father and daughter should learn to know and love each other. She must then, of necessity, fall into the background; she must then, of necessity, sink into little more than a mere cypher in the sum of Ambrose Murray's existence. Had Eleanor been a daughter of her own she could hardly have loved her better, and she told herself, times without number, that to see the girl and her father happy in each other's love ought to be sufficient reward for any one who thought of others more than herself. And ought she not to study the happiness of these two, both of whom were so dear to her, rather than her own selfish feelings?

However sharp the pang might be, whatever the cost to herself might be, she would so study it--she would do her best to bring them together.

That time when Ambrose Murray was, as it were, living under the same roof with her, was a very happy time for Miss Bellamy. Murray himself did not seem to know, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that he never thought how greatly he was indebted to her. Beyond a flying visit now and then from Gerald, he had no society save that of Miss Bellamy, and of the children of the two houses in which he and she had apartments. He almost invariably took tea and supper with Miss Bellamy, and spent his evenings with her, and made, besides, almost as free a use of her sitting-room as of his own. He looked upon her, in fact, as he would have looked upon a sister to whom he was much attached, and that she regarded him in the light of a brother he was fully convinced.

An agreement had long ago been come to between Gerald and Miss Bellamy by which it was arranged that Ambrose Murray should be relieved from all pecuniary cares and liabilities. No one ever presented him with a bill for the rent of his apartments. The servant would ask him what he would have for breakfast or dinner, and whatever he might order was there for him ready to the minute, but no butcher or baker ever vexed his soul with unpaid accounts. Now and then he would find a sovereign in some odd place or other--in his razor-case, inside one of his gloves, or in the folds of his Sunday cravat. He would pick up the coin, look at it curiously for a moment or two, wondering how he could possibly have been so absent-minded as to leave money there, and then put it quietly into his pocket and think no more about it.

"Preparations completed. Shall be ready to start from Euston Square at nine o'clock on Saturday morning. Shall expect to find you on platform, unless I hear from you in course of to-day."

He was so fluttered by the receipt of this telegram that he could not eat any dinner. He at once sat down and wrote a note to Gerald, enclosing the telegram, and begging of him, if he could possibly do so, to join him in Wales early in the ensuing week. Then he said to himself, "I must write to Mary before I go. I feel sure that she is expecting a letter from me. But first the boat must be finished."

In a back room he had fixed up a lathe, and a small joiner's bench, at which he occasionally amused himself. There were various kinds of useless knick-knacks that he could manufacture with some degree of skill, and the toys of half the children in the neighbourhood were mended at his bench. As soon as he had sent off his letter to Gerald, he shut himself up in his little workshop, and set to work busily to finish a little toy boat, which was half done already. It was a very small affair--a child's boat, in fact, cut out of a block of wood, and not more than a couple of feet in length. He worked at it till late that evening, and by noon next day it was finished to his satisfaction. Then he slept for an hour, and then he sat down to write his letter. This is what he wrote:--

"I had a very strange dream the other night. I dreamt that I had written you a letter, and that when I had sealed it up I put it in a little boat, and let the boat and the letter float down the river with the tide. And in my dream I seemed to watch the boat till it got far out to sea, beyond the sight of any land. Then all at once the clouds gathered, till the black edges of one of them seemed to touch the sea, and then from cloud and sea together there was formed a huge waterspout, that presently drew to itself and sucked up my boat and letter. And when they vanished, the waterspout vanished also, and presently the clouds broke away, and in the heavens one splendid star was shining, which seemed to me as a token that you had received my letter.

"My darling, I have translated this dream as a message from you, telling me what I ought to do. Very often of late your face has appeared to me in my dreams; but when I have tried to speak to you, an invisible finger seemed to be laid on my lips, and my heart could only yearn dumbly towards you. But now you have shown me a way by means of which a message may reach you--for from you alone that dream could come. The boat is ready, and the midnight tide will take it down to the sea, and then at dawn of day the waterspout will come and lift my letter up into the clouds; but of what will follow after I know nothing.

"My darling, day by day the time of our separation grows shorter; soon shall we see each other again, and all these long years of waiting and trouble will seem but as a dim vision of the night, fading and vanishing utterly in the bright dawn of an everlasting day. The purpose that has held me and chained me to this life for so, long a time is now near its fulfilment, and after that I feel and know that I shall not be long before I join you. Soon the time will be here when I can tell everything to our child--our child, Mary! whom I have never seen since she lay an infant in your arms. Very precious will her love be to me, but not so precious as yours. I shall stay with her a little while, I shall tell her all about the mother whom she cannot remember, and then I shall go to you.

"To-morrow night, darling, you will come to me in my sleep, will you not? Then, when I see you, I shall take it as a token that you have had my letter.

"Soon I will write to you again--when the sea shall have given up the secret which it has hidden so carefully for twenty years. Till then, adieu.

This singular document Mr. Murray sealed up carefully, and then addressed it, "To my Wife in Heaven." Then leaving a message for Miss Bellamy, who happened to be out shopping, that he was going out for the evening, he took a hansom to London Bridge and started by the next train for Gravesend, taking the boat and letter with him. He had still some hours to wait; but at midnight, having made a previous arrangement with a boatman, he put off from the pier stairs, and was pulled slowly out to the middle of the black and silent river. A few stars could be seen overhead; now and then the moon shone down through a rift in the clouds. The whole scene was weird and ghostly. The tide was running down rapidly. A cold wind blew faintly across the river, as though it were the last chill breath of the dying day. They halted in mid-stream just as the clocks on shore began to strike twelve. Then Murray took his toy-boat out of its brown paper covering, and having firmly fixed his letter in it by means of a strip of wood intended for that purpose, he leaned over the side and placed it gently on the surface of the stream. On this point, at any rate, poor Murray was still insane.

"What are you after, master?" cried the boatman, whose suspicions were beginning to be aroused.

"I am sending a letter to my wife," answered Murray, as he lifted his hat for a moment. "See how swiftly it starts on its journey. And now I can see it no longer. But no harm will happen to it. How pleased my darling will be when she reads it!"

The boatman said no more, but thinking that he had got a crazy person to deal with, whose next act might be to jump into the river himself, he made all possible haste back to shore.

It happened, singularly enough, that on the Wednesday previous to the Saturday fixed on by Peter Byrne for the journey to Wales, Mr. Van Duren entered his room and announced to him and Miriam that he had been called suddenly from home on business of great importance. Byrne, as yet, had given no hint of any intention on his part to go out of town, and he now determined to say nothing about it till after Van Duren's departure.

"How long do you expect to be away, Mr. Van Duren?" asked Miriam, as she glanced at him out of her big black eyes.

"Four or five days, at the least, I am afraid," he said. "It is a source of great annoyance to me to be called away at this time, but unfortunately there is no way of avoiding it. You may depend upon my getting back as quickly as possible," he added, significantly.

"I am afraid you flatter me," he replied, slowly. Then he suddenly drew his chair up to her side and took her hand in his. "Miriam," he said, "do you know that the time you asked for in order that you might be able to make up your mind is nearly at an end?"

"As soon as I return from the continent, I shall expect you to give me an answer."

"You won't keep me in suspense much longer?" he said. "You will let me know my fate, won't you, as soon as I come back?"

For the first time she bent her eyes on him fully and steadily. "Yes, Mr. Van Duren," she said, "you shall know your fate when you get back from the Continent."

Before she knew what he was about to do, he had seized her hand and pressed it passionately to his lips. She shuddered from head to foot as she withdrew it from his grasp. Bakewell knocked and entered. "Your hansom is at the door, sir, and you have only just time to catch the train."

Van Duren arose and made his adieux. "Your father still seems very weak and feeble," he said, in a low voice, to Miriam, as he stood for a moment at the door. "I am afraid that the warm weather has not done much to benefit him."

"Will anything in this world ever do much to benefit him," she answered. Then there was a last shake of the hand, and then she watched him go downstairs. As soon as she heard the front door clash she ran to the window, and waved him a last adieu as he was driven away. "Shall I ever see him again, I wonder?" she whispered to herself "I hope not."

"Farewell, Max Jacoby, otherwise Van Duren!" cried Byrne, as he took off his wig and flung it across the room. "When next we meet it will be under very different circumstances."

Pringle, as was usual whenever his master was from home, was left in special charge of the premises. At such times he slept in the house, and was waited upon by Bakewell and his wife. As it was necessary to give some sort of an intimation that they were going out of town, Byrne, on the Friday morning, sent Miriam downstairs to see Pringle, and tell him that they had suddenly made up their minds to take a holiday at the seaside for a week or two. Pringle was most affable and polite, and desired Miss Byrne to give his respects to her papa, and say how sincerely he hoped that the sea air might prove of benefit to him. At the same time, might he be permitted to ask for an address to which he could send any post letters that might happen to come for Mr. Byrne after his departure?

As Miriam had not mentioned the place to which they were going, this seemed only a fair question. However, she had an answer ready. She wrote down Miss Bellamy's address, to which place Pringle was requested to send all letters.

That same evening, between eight and nine, Miriam and her father went out for a little while to make a few final arrangements for their journey in the morning. They had hardly been gone five minutes when Pringle happened to find himself on the landing opposite the door of their sitting-room. On turning the handle the door was found to be unlocked and the gas only half turned down--signs that the inmates might be expected back before very long.

Leaving the door wide open, Pringle glided into the room. He was dying to know to what place Byrne and his daughter were going--in fact, he did not believe they were going to the seaside at all--and he thought that he might perhaps find a luggage label, or something else, in the room, that would reveal to him what he wanted to know.

One or two boxes, ready packed, were there, and on the table lay several loose labels, but, unfortunately for Pringle's purpose, they were still blank. Gliding quietly about the room, he next tried the different drawers and cupboards, hoping that in one or other of them he might find a clue of some kind to what he was so anxious to know, but all his searching proved of no avail. Suddenly he heard the street door open, and he had hardly time to get out of the room and round the corner of the next landing, before Miriam ran lightly up the stairs to fetch something that she had forgotten.

Later on in the evening, when Byrne and Miriam had got back home, Pringle sent Bakewell upstairs to ask at what time next morning they would like to have a cab in readiness.

"At that rate an hour would be ample time. Will you kindly arrange to have a cab in readiness by nine o'clock?"

At five minutes past nine next morning, Mr. Byrne and his daughter, together with sundry boxes of luggage, drove away from Spur Alley in a four-wheeler for Euston Square. Three minutes later Pringle was following on their heels in a hansom. He had timed himself to arrive at the station within two minutes of those whom he was following. He alighted, and began to reconnoitre cautiously. It would not do to be seen by either father or daughter. Peeping round a corner of the entrance doors into the large hall, he there saw Miriam standing by the luggage, Byrne having in all probability gone to secure tickets. Pringle beckoned to a porter. "I'm from Scotland Yard," he whispered. "I want you to find out, without its being noticed, for what place those boxes are directed by which yonder young lady is standing."

Three minutes later he came back to Pringle. "The boxes are labelled for Marhyddoc, in North Wales," he said. Pringle put down the name of the place in his note-book, gave the man a shilling, and took the next omnibus back to the City.

But he did not leave the station till he caught a glimpse of Byrne as he stood at the refreshment counter waiting for his travelling flask to be filled. But the Peter Byrne whom he now saw was a very different person from the decrepit, deaf old invalid of Spur Alley, The long white locks, the black velvet skull-cap, the hump on the left shoulder, and the feeble walk, had all disappeared in the cab, as if by magic, leaving behind them a brisk, pleasant-looking gentleman of middle age, who was speaking with the young person that was waiting upon him, and who seemed to have no difficulty whatever in hearing her replies.

"I thought as much," said Pringle, with a knowing shake of the head. "It's no more than I expected. I've known all along that the old boy and his daughter were up to some private little game of their own. Well, so long as it means no good to Van Duren and no harm to me, I'm not the man to spoil their sport. But what will Van Duren say when he gets back home and finds his birds flown? It don't matter: I hope to have flown too by that time."

END OF VOL. II.

BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY.

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