TABLE of CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER I

Linda (she did not possess a surname) was born in a workhouse. When she had attained fourteen years she was sent as “general,” which means maid-of-all-work, to Mrs. Swainson, who kept a second-rate lodging-house in a back street in Bristol. Linda was undersized for her age, and rather childish, and Mrs. Swainson pronounced her a simpleton.

Her small thin face acquired a very hunted look after a month’s service; and she was overworked and underfed to a degree that no other “general” had ever stood. Mrs. Swainson averred that she kept the child out of charity; but, possibly, economy had also something to say in the matter.

It never occurred to Linda to complain, or to try to get a better place. On the contrary, she was terribly afraid of being given notice to quit, and was sure that no one else would ever take her. She had no spirit of adventure or independence; her undeveloped virtues were all of the submissive kind. She was meant to be gentle and affectionate; she was low-spirited and timid.

From morning till night Linda lived in an atmosphere of hurry and dirt and scolding; and, she supposed, if she ever consciously reflected on the subject, that life must be “like that” for girls who had no father to speak of, and “who hadn’t ought to have been born at all.”

Nevertheless she had her own consolations. Dame Nature, at least, is no step-mother; she manages to provide all her children with toys somehow: clean ones if she can; if she can’t, why then, whatever she can find. She has been vilified by some for this very practice; she has been called very odd names; but she is too strong for us; we get little by abusing her. By the time we have learnt all her lessons perhaps the millennium will have come.

Whenever Linda could scrape together a few coppers she bought a cheap novelette and a candle. She lighted her candle when the other lights were out, and so long as it, and the story lasted, she was happy. The novels were trashy and melodramatic, mainly about transcendently lovely countesses, and exceedingly villainous villains! The little maid, sitting up in her bare garret, gloated over them. I can see her while I write, with her eyes growing brighter, and her thin shoulders shaking with cold and excitement, while her flame burns lower. Her knob of hair is screwed up with a hairpin, which she presently pulls out, in order to poke the candle up to a last effort. She will suffer for her dissipations. She will come down to her work, at five o’clock to-morrow, with blue patches under her eyes, and a bad headache. She is a very silly little girl, but then—what can you expect? She was born with a taste for sugar, like the rest of us, and the only form she can get it in is cheap and nasty.

Of course there were weeks when she could by no possibility afford either light or literature; and then she missed the excitement, much as her more fortunate sisters miss balls when the London season is over. It was during one of these times of dearth that Monsieur Moréze visited Bristol.

Monsieur Moréze was a public character. His placards, in huge red type, wound in serpentine coils up the lamp posts, and blazed in the shop windows at least three days before he arrived.

“The Great Wizard is coming!”

“The Mighty Magician of the West is expected! Secure your seats at once, lest you be too late!” There was actually an evangelical flavour about the wording of the last advertisement. It reminded Linda of a religious tract that had once been given to her in the street.

Mrs. Swainson’s lodgers were uninteresting as a rule; but life became decidedly more exciting when the conjuror took the first-floor rooms. Linda could not hope to admire him in his glory at the Town Hall. I doubt whether, during her sixteen years, it had ever struck any one that she could want a treat; but, at least, she might see him off the boards. A conjuror at home would hardly cause a thrill to the majority of us, but to Linda the best parlour became an abode of mystery at this time.

Monsieur Moréze reached Bristol in the afternoon; he had an hour or two to spare before he was due at the hall. In spite of his magic, he did not guess that he was being observed with awe and reverence through the keyhole. Linda knelt on the landing with her forehead pressed hard against the door of his room. I fear she was not in the least ashamed of her position! Mrs. Swainson frequently made use of that convenient aperture, and Linda did not consider that there was any harm in spying.

The conjuror sat in front of the coke fire in the one comfortable chair that the house possessed. He was a spare, olive-complexioned Frenchman, no longer in his first youth. His hair and moustache were black; his eyelids were very full and drooped slightly, giving the impression that his watchful eyes were halfshut. He was lithe and deft in all his movements and very restless. His stillness, like that of a cat before it springs, seemed to denote concentration of energy rather than repose.

He took up some letters that had awaited his arrival, and glanced through them carelessly till he came to the last, which he read with evident anger and surprise. The man was dramatic even when he supposed himself to be alone.

“Sacré! Cannot do without you! I cannot do without you? But it makes me laugh, this impertinence,” he muttered. “Absolutely refuse to appear, unless adequately remunerated! Ah! but you never spelt those long words yourself, my angel. Good, good! You shall be paid what you deserve for this, but yes, to the last farthing!”

He crumpled the letter viciously in his slender brown fingers, and tossed it into the fire. The diamond ring on his hand glittered.

Not all the jewellers’ shops in the High Street had impressed Linda so much. She could not understand what he said, for he spoke in his own language. ^ She did not even wish to understand; she had no vulgar curiosity as to why he was so angry. She was attracted by mystery pure and simple. The glamour of the supernatural fascinated her, as it does most women; as, no doubt, it fascinated Mother Eve in the garden long ago.

Monsieur Moréze sprang to his feet, and walked up and down, still giving vent to angry ejaculations. “The mean trick! To disappoint the public! And she is advertised for the day after to-morrow. There is not time to get another. She thinks she can force me to give way to her. But no! Not for a night! not even for a minute. We will see who can stand alone best, my dear. You shall have leisure to repent in.”

“Linda! Linda! Wherever has that girl got to? What are you about up there? Oh you bad, idle, little good-for-nothing! Peeping through the gentleman’s keyhole, and me working my legs off. You sly workhouse brat! You-”

The angry voice, which had burst out suddenly on the landing, died away in the distance, to the sound of hurrying footsteps. The conjuror opened the door, and looked down the passage; then picked up the key and put it in the lock, with a short laugh. “Evidently one must beware of this Mademoiselle Linda,” he said.

His anger cooled after this interruption, and, presently, he put on his dress clothes, and sent for his supper. He had seldom seen a more draggled and untidy lodging-house slave than the girl who brought it to him.

At eight o’olock he left the house for the Town Hall, and Linda was sent up again to clear away. Mrs. Swainson had gone to the conjuring—Monsieur Moréze having presented her with tickets—and the “general” was left single-handed. She was anxious to get through arrears of work, and to wipe out the remembrance of her late delinquencies. She piled up the plates and dishes and beer-jug on the tray, topped them with the candle, and made a valiant, if somewhat rash, effort to lift everything at once. The tray was too heavy for her. She might, however, have carried it as far as the landing had she not unluckily trodden on a bit of orange-peel. Her foot slipped and, in the instinctive effort to save herself, her grasp relaxed, the tray went down with a crash, knocking over the insecure little lodging-house table in its fall.

Linda stood aghast in the middle of broken crockery, and a mingled stream of beer, coffee, and gravy. She was absolutely overcome with horror at the amount of mischief she had done. She pinched herself, in the futile hope that this might turn out to be a bad dream; then shivered and sobbed helplessly; suffering far more from dread of the disclosure that must be made on the morrow at latest, than she had ever suffered from any scolding in course of administration. She had never before broken so much as a cup or a plate; but that only made matters worse, for it left the consequences entirely dependent on her over vivid imagination.

What would her mistress do? If she were sent away where could she possibly go? How terrible it would be to wander about starving and lost all day and all night! She would never dare to go back to the “House.” The Committee had found a place for her, had given her good advice, and had done with her. She could not face it again. The very porter would “look so” at her; besides, she never could ring the high bell. She sat down on the floor and cried. Her head had been aching all day and she had a sharp pain between her shoulders and through her chest. Perhaps it was partly ill-health that made her so helpless and forlorn. It is so very much easier to be brave when one has habitually enough to eat.

Linda sobbed till the clock, striking nine, roused her. Then she got up slowly, and gathering the broken china together, carried it upstairs, and hid it under her bed. The evidences of her mishap thus disposed of, she went about the rest of her work with as deep a feeling of guilt and depression as if she had committed a murder, and had concealed the victim’s body.

It was ten o’clock before she had finished all the “washing up” that had to be got through; but she could not sleep even when she, at last, lay down. She was hot and restless, and she became possessed with a feverish desire to go and look at the scene of her misfortune. Had she picked up that overturned table? She could not remember doing so. What would happen if the conjuror came back to find all his possessions on the floor? He would ring for Mrs. Swainson, and Mrs. Swainson would call “Linda.” It would all come out! Oh, she could not bear to be sent away to-night! She must put that table straight at once. She got up, dressed quickly, and went down again. It was later than she thought, and the conjuror was at that moment ascending the stairs.

Monsieur Moréze had had a success that evening. He was elated and triumphant. The audience had been spell-bound, and the hall had been crammed. “Hélène” would see that he could do very well without her! He smiled when he thought of her. His passion had evaporated, though not his malice. He paused when he reached the door of his room; his quick ear caught the sound of some one moving stealthily. He entered without noise, and stood unseen in the room, which was in darkness, save for the glimpses of light from Linda’s candle—watching.

Linda had picked up the overturned table, and, with shaking hands, was replacing the things that had fallen.

Monsieur Moréze’s narrow black eyes—eyes that noticed a good deal from between their half-closed lids—saw that the girl had been crying, and that she was trembling and white.

A loosely tied parcel lay on the floor; the string that held it gave way when Linda took hold of it. The glittering contents of the paper fell out in a golden shower! The little drudge stood transfixed with surprise. Sovereigns! Sovereigns by the hundred! The conjuror, standing in his corner, laughed under his breath (a better man might have sighed) when he saw her slip a coin into her pocket after a moment’s evident hesitation.

Of course, they were sham sovereigns— palpably sham!—with a portrait of the magician stamped on one side! Monsieur Moréze had intended to distribute them among the children at the Town Hall, but had left them behind by accident.

They were not worth so much as a penny, much less a stain on the girl’s conscience.

Linda silenced that inconvenient monitor with the plea, which was true enough, that she would not have stolen from a poor man. Monsieur Moréze had so many pounds to spare; Monsieur Moréze could coin gold out of blank space. Was there not a picture of him doing so? So surely he would not grudge her this one little bit out of all his wealth, even were he to know that she had taken it.

It meant so much to her, so easy a way out of the terrors that beset her. To him it could not matter at all.

She could buy a new pie-dish and beer-jug before the breakage should be discovered, and-

She felt a hand on her shoulder, turned suddenly with a gasp of fright, and saw Monsieur Moréze close at her elbow!

There was a mocking smile on his lips, and his curious eyes were looking through and through her. All the little fallacies about the innocence of stealing from a rich man melted. Linda tried to speak, and could not. The room seemed to be spinning round and round, the floor gave way under her, and she fell at the conjuror’s feet in a dead faint.

It is not too much to say that for once Monsieur Moréze was considerably dismayed at his success. He had meant to startle the child; he had felt amused at the situation, while he stood an unsuspected spectator of her temptation and defeat, but he had not meant the shock to be so serious as all this!

He had had no idea that she would actually swoon with fear; he had even some feeling of compunction.

He carried the girl to the window, and flung up the sash.

When Linda came to herself the cool night wind was blowing through the room, making her candle gutter wildly; and her face and hands were wet with the water the conjuror had dashed over her.

“Mon Dieu! but you were a little imbecile,” said he. “See now, I do not eat girls. Not even when dey steal my properties and peep trou my keyhole. Get up! You are quite well now, without doubt, and you had better go quickly to your bed, where you ought to have been dese many hours ago. Come, we will not remember what has happened. Ah, c’est ca, c’est tré bién,” giving her his hand.

Linda stood up, looking rather dazed still. Never before in her life had she fainted, so that she was not quite sure what had occurred to her.

“You are not in de least e’ll now, hein?” said the Frenchman, with cheerful decision. “Run up quick before any one else catches you!”

And she obeyed him.

• Monsieur Moréze watched her mount the stairs safely; then turned back to his room with an expressive shrug of his shoulders.

“That child will end in the river,” he said to himself. “She is just the kind that despairs. She would make a good medium. It is a pity I startled her so.”

And then his mind reverted to more interesting affairs, and he thought no more of that episode.

But Linda shivered and burnt by turns in her attic, and whenever she shut her eyes, she felt as if some one were standing close by her; and when she crept down to her work in the morning, she looked so ill that even Mrs. Swainson was anxious, and began to wonder whether she had not better get rid of the girl before she was “laid up on her hands.”

Of course the broken china was discovered during the day, and I think—though Linda was far too simple to guess it—that a hacking cough and white cheeks had quite as much to do with Mrs. Swainson’s moral indignation as anything else. Linda made no attempt to defend herself, and when her mistress further accused her of having “been up to no good last evening,” she looked so terribly guilty that the woman’s suspicions were really aroused. It had been quite a chance shot, but it had evidently hit the mark! Mrs. Swainson never rested till she had first got a confession out of Linda and then put her own construction on it.

Her own construction was startling. Linda had had no idea how wicked she had been!

The girl was absolutely crushed, and what self-respect she possessed was torn to shreds. She did not venture to remonstrate when she was told to pack out of the house at once. She just rolled her few clothes into a bundle and made ready to go—anywhere.

Monsieur Moréze, who was putting his things into his portmanteau, heard the landlady storming, and, albeit he was not particularly soft-hearted, was rather sorry for the victim. He was just about to ring for his bill and depart when he heard some one touch the handle of his door.

“Enter, enter,” he cried impatiently. An uncertain or “fidgety” movement always irritated him. He flung the door wide open with a jerk. The maid-of-all-work was standing outside. She did not start this time. Her big soft eyes met his with a tragic look in them. The reflection that the fast fading sunset threw on her face was the only colour she had. She stretched out her palm with the sovereign on it without a word.

“Ah! you have found it will not pass,” he said, with a laugh, but she did not understand him, and the moment he had spoken he saw she did not. “I do not want it! It ees worth not half a farthing, and I have bags full. Why did you bring it back?”

“Sir,” she stammered, “you knew I took it last night, but you did not tell, and the money doesn’t matter no more; it wouldn’t keep me long anyhow, and I shan’t get another place with no character, and I shan’t try. I don’t care what becomes of me.”

The despair in the high young voice was .the despair of a child rather than of a woman.

The man wondered for a moment whether she had the faintest idea of what in all probability she would become. It was not his affair but yet-“Have you any money in your pocket?” he asked, sharply.

Linda shook her head.

“Why for does Madame turn you out? Hein?” But she made no answer.

“Where will you go now—for dis night?”

“I don’t know,” said Linda, “and it doesn’t matter to no one.” She turned away, and left him without another word. It did not occur to her to ask his help; there was even a touch of childish dignity in her last words. His sharp curiosity had made her draw back.

Monsieur Moréze considered for a second, then he followed the girl to the end of the passage and checked her.

“Stop,” he said. “Leesen a minute to me. Look now, you are not clever enough to make it pay to be bad. You would always sell your soul for sham coin, I tink. But” (interrupting himself) “she does not know in the least what I mean. Mon Dieu! how greatly ees Monsieur le Diable in debt to de respectable Christian who sends such children into de streets! See! you do not know where to go. I will tell you. Come with me to London; we will try eef you do not make a vary good medium. Ah, you comprehend not what dat will mean? N’importe. It ees I who haf to understand. For you, I will pay you—Mais non! I will see what you are worth first, and afterwards I will tink what I will pay. In any case I will not starve you; and you will sleep to-night under a roof. Ees it yes or no? Vite! Dere ees no more time to lose. My train does not wait. Come I am not so bad a master. It ees yes?”

His rapid speech and quick gestures bewildered Linda. She was silent for a minute. Then she looked straight at him with candid eyes that had still the innocence of childhood in them.

“Had I better say ‘ Yes?” she said. “If you think I had better, then I will, sir. There ain’t nobody else to advise me. I’ll go by what you say. Had I better?”

The conjuror pulled his moustache thoughtfully; his eager flow of words ceased. “Eh bien,” he said at last, “But yes. Upon my soul, mon enfant, I do tink you had better.”

He went downstairs, and Linda followed him. Mrs. Swainson stood in the hall flushed and belligerent, for Monsieur Moréze had not yet paid his bill, and she foresaw a fight over it. It was a preposterous bill, but, as she volubly explained, she respected the “Lord’s day,” and a lodger who smoked and slept all the Sabbath morning; and who insisted on a hot supper (which kept her from chapel) must expect to pay for such “goings-on.” It was a matter of conscience. “She couldn’t feel it right not to charge extra for Sunday service.” Monsieur Moréze smiled politely and shrugged his shoulders up to his ears, “Ah, pour cela—when we do get to conscience, den you are beyond me.”

He turned and looked at the little general, who was close at his heels, and again at the landlady, “You see, Madame, I do mean to take dis girl with me; go on, get into de cab, Linda.”

The girl did as she was bid at once. Obedience came naturally to her. Mrs. Swain-son drew herself up, and sniffed contemptuously.

“How old is she?” he asked.

“I’m a respectable woman, sir,” cried the landlady, “and always ’are been. I don’t wish to demean myself by conversation about such as her. Nor to ’ave it said as I countenanced your doings.”

“A—ah. You do know very leetle about me, except dat I am a foreigner and do not keep de Sabbath, and de child ees vary simple and you haf a conscience, hein? You feel responsible for her? Dere ees yet time. You may haf her back eef you will? You will take care of her and let her rest for a few days.

She wants feeding and-”

“Responsible! I ain’t responsible. She’s nothing to me. I took her out of charity,” cried the woman. “I don’t want to hear nothing about it—but as to that extra ’alf crown sir—seeing I was kept from chapel and-”

“I will gif you a shilling,” said the conjuror. “I do tink dat your conscience charges too high! For de chapel—I haf a leetle superstition left. It seems perhaps safer outside. Le bon Dieu may be alive—after all. You do call Him de father for de fatherless, n’est-ce-pas? Ah, and suppose he leestens and de roof falls? So you’ll let de girl go, hein?”

The woman stared blankly at him. She saw no connection whatever between “chapel services” and the child she had cast off, but she had a vague idea that the Frenchman was blaspheming.

“As bad a man as ever I saw,” she said afterwards. “He made my flesh creep with his wickedness. Like to like! It shows what that sly baggage really was, that she should ’ave took up with ’im. Fancy now, his being afeard to go inside a chapel. Depend on it, he’s done something awful!”

And she talked over her lodger’s possible iniquities till bedtime—when she slept the sleep of the just.

CHAPTER II

It was seven o’clock when Monsieur Moréze reached London. There was little time to spare. He had made up his mind while the train dashed along; he would play to win, and he would play boldly. He got into a hansom at Charing Cross. Linda sat by his side, speechless and very pale.

It is difficult to say of what she had been thinking during that unpremeditated journey; for, like a child, she felt rather than consciously reflected, and could not have translated her sensations into words.

They stopped at the entrance to a narrow street, connecting two thoroughfares. There was barely room to drive along this alley—for it was little more—so the conjuror took the girl’s hand in his, and walked.

The tall houses, with their uncurtained windows, towered on each side of the way, grimed with the smoke of years, full, from garret to cellar. The gas jets flared cheerfully over piles of second-hand furniture, and dogeared prints, and beflowered crockery, all massed together, in a manner tempting to the seeker of second-hand bargains, who hopes always to find a pearl of price in the oyster heap. Those queer old shops drove a fast trade, and Aaron Schonenwetter, at whose door Monsieur Moréze paused, had handed ready money over the counter for many a fine lady’s diamonds.

To Aaron’s house one had to descend two steps from a footway, and a tall man would have had to stoop in order to pass through the doorway; once inside, however, a stranger would be surprised at the size of the shop, which took in the whole depth of the house.

A huge old fashioned chandelier, dusty and unused, hung from the ceiling, but the room was lighted by a flaring gas jet.

Suits of large armour stood in the corners.

Wigs, flaxen and black, were suspended in a row. A screen, with a woodland glade painted on one side, and a prison with barred window on the other, stood at one end of the room. Brocades and tinsels, sceptres and flasks, second-hand satin slippers (pathetic enough these), and a whole set of sober fathers of the church, who certainly found themselves in strange company, lay together on an old-fashioned mahogany sideboard.

Heaven knows what stories all these properties had played their part in!

The conjuror half pushed his companion before him through the door. “Quick, mon ami, we are late, and in a grand haste,” he said.

Aaron Schonenwetter hurried forward from behind the screen, smiling and rubbing his hands. He nodded familiarly to the Frenchman, but his eyes rested on the girl, who was clasping her fingers together nervously under a threadbare shawl, and who looked as if she hardly knew whether she was awake or dreaming.

Aaron was a German Jew, stout and florid; a big man with a suave manner. His fingers had been in many pies, and had seldom been withdrawn empty. His small blue eyes, penetrating as gimlets, were surrounded by a network of fine lines; his nose betrayed his race; his rather coarse mouth was partly hidden by his fair moustache. He had lived for many years in Armour Street, plundering the Gentiles and taking care of the old mother, to whom (though his victims never found much mercy in him) he was a most patient and devoted son.

“I have discovered a new medium. Behold her!” said Monsieur Moréze, rapidly in French. “Tell me now, how shall we dress her? The child has it in her to look charming! Bring out her beauty! and if she be a success you shall profit over and above the price of the clothes.”

“And Mademoiselle Hélène?” asked the Jew.

Monsieur Moréze shrugged his shoulders and smiled, not altogether pleasantly. “I have yet to reckon with her,” he said.

Aaron turned up the gas, and put one finger under Linda’s chin to lift her downcast face to the light. She shrank back, blushing crimson, and he laughed.

“Come, you look the better for a little colour, my dear,” he said. “What will you have to wear? You are a lucky young woman. My whole assortment is at your disposal. Shall we try virgin white, and diamond stars? No; that is too common, and the idea don’t even make you smile. Yet a star in your hair would look pretty, too. Aren’t you longing to try the effect?”

He stooped down and untied the strings of her bonnet with quick, deft fingers while he spoke. Linda stood passive and amazed.

The girl’s hair was fair, in strong contrast to her black eyebrows and dark eyes; it was screwed into an untidy knot at the back of her head, but it was fine and soft, as Aaron’s practised eyes told him at once.

“How about a black velvet? You are young enough for an old style to make you more effective. What do you say, eh? I always find the ladies know best themselves what suits them!”

“I don’t know nothing about it,” said Linda, in a low voice.

The Jew looked at her and then at the conjuror with increased curiosity; then retreated to the back of the shop and presently returned with a little old woman trotting after him.

Mrs. Schonenwetter was old and brown and wrinkled, but she had been a beauty in her day, and in her old age she still was a distinct personality, a woman to he deferred to and listened to. She was sharp as a needle, and every line that experience had traced added to the shrewdness of her countenance. She professed to read-fortunes “by the cards,” but, possibly, in her seventy years she had learnt to read them “by the faces” as well. She looked like a gipsy, but talked with a villainous accent, that was half German and half cockney. She wore a crimson and yellow handkerchief on her head, and wore it with the dignity of an Eastern queen.

Monsieur Moréze lifted his eyebrows inquiringly, as if to ask what the new-comer thought of his prot6g6. The look was a compliment, for “Monsieur” seldom depended on any one’s opinion.

“A—ah—I’ll see to her,” said the old woman. “I’ve dressed beauties before now! You come along with me, my pretty, and you shall startle ’em all.”

As some man-fearing creature will turn to man for protection in the presence of an unfamiliar danger, so Linda turned to the Frenchman by her side, who, in this extraordinary place, alone had some connection with the life she had left behind.

“You ain’t going to go away, and leave me?” she said, with the sharp accent of terror in her high, childish voice.

“Mon Dieu, no! Ees it likely dat I should bring you up to London and den leave you?” cried Monsieur Moréze impatiently. “Was dere evair before a girl who was not in a hurry to put on fine clothes? Go and dress, I wait for you here;” and Linda followed her conductress behind the pasteboard walls.

The two men left alone together talked and laughed with greater freedom. Aaron threw out hints that he should like to know how and where this new medium had been picked up; Monsieur Moréze parried his inquiries skilfully, whistling softly to himself, while he ran his fingers through the holes in the little black shawl that Linda had dropped. It was an untidy, threadbare shawl; he would give the child a warmer one if she should be a success!

On the other side of the screen Mrs. Schonenwetter pinned, and adjusted, and brushed, and powdered, making her own comments the while. Linda’s hands were roughened with work, and her arms much too thin for beauty, but her neck was white as milk (at least after a little soap and water had been applied), and there was a pathetic charm about the girlish figure in the heavy velvet dress that made the old woman nod approvingly.

She crimped the fair hair till it stood like an aureole round Linda’s brow; she touched the pale lips with red (the long black lashes needed no artistic improving); she put the faintest possible soupcjon of pink on the cheeks. The shape of the downcast head and oval face was distinctly good. The hanging sleeves could be arranged to cover the tell-tale hand.

“Monsieur is no fool!” said Mrs. Schonenwetter. “I should think you’d have dimples if you were to smile, my dear. Can’t you manage to be a bit more cheerful?”

But the girl’s frightened face looked at that moment as though she would never smile again.

Monsieur Moréze threw up his hands and bowed low, half mockingly, when they returned to the shop.

The transformation surpassed his hopes! It was like the realisation of the old fairy story —with a difference.

Alas, there had never been a fairy godmother to protect this maid! and it was no vision of girlish pleasure that was making her heart beat fast.

“She will do!” said the conjuror. “Lend me a cloak, please, to cover the finery. We have just time to reach the hall!”

“Good luck to you, Miss,” said Aaron, affably. He waved his hand to them and watched them drive off; then returned to the shop door, where Mrs. Schonenwetter was still standing.

“Why, she’s not more than a child,” he said, “and she is as green as green peas!”

“She won’t be that long if Monsieur has the charge of her,” said the old woman.

Aaron glanced up at the clock. He was very curious, and it was hardly likely that he would have many more customers that night. “I must see that black velvet on the boards,” he said.

The placards that usually bore the names of Monsieur Moréze and Mademoiselle Hélène had sheets of white paper pasted over their yellow and blue surfaces. On the paper was the following inscription, written in a flourishing and bold handwriting in red ink:

Monsieur Morize has been unexpectedly obliged to dispense with Mademoiselle Helene’s assistance. He has at once and at immense cost secured the services of a distinguished lady whose name it is not permitted him to reveal. A faultlessly attired gentleman, in full evening dress, was pointing out this advertisement (the ink was barely dry) to the crowd at the entrance of the hall.

“Pit full already!” he whispered exultantly when Aaron passed him with a nod and went in at the stage door; “Pit full and Mademoiselle Helene kicking up a row!”

The first part of the programme (which consisted of sleight-of-hand only) was nearly over. Aaron, filled with the liveliest curiosity, made his way behind the scenes. Cowering in a comer, her face buried m her hands, was the “distinguished lady!”

Pacing up and down, flushed with rage, pouring forth a torrent of indignant invective, was Mademoiselle Hélène. . . . The Jew looked at Helene with unfeigned pleasure. Her gestures were superb, her fine figure showed to advantage, when, turning to the new-comer, she pointed dramatically and in very truth “the finger of scorn” at her unwilling rival. It was a pity that her accent was vulgar and her voice harsh. She looked like a tragedy queen, but, alas! she scolded like a costermonger.

Aaron had the poorest possible opinion of the ex-medium’s intellect, and he had no sympathy with her anger; but, then, in his estimation, moral or mental qualities in a woman counted for little. Hélène seemed to him worth a dozen such half-starved waifs as Linda.

Hélène was barely twenty, but had attained already the full ripeness of her beauty.

Her heavy mass of black hair, her flashing dark eyes and full lips had a suggestion of the Oriental about them. When she laughed or when she was angry she looked her best. At such times other women seemed pale and colourless beside her.’ When her face was in repose the mouth took somewhat sullen lines and her expression was stolid, not to say stupid. She had plenty of passion, and very little mind. A combination that is apt to be dangerous.

Aaron Schonenwetter stood looking on at the game with some amusement. He knew better than to attempt to interfere. An affair became his business only when he could make something for himself out of it. Helene raged, and Linda sobbed on, till a burst of clapping surprised both, and Monsieur Moréze stepped behind the scenes.

The conjuror was apparently in excellent spirits; the sound of applause refreshed him like new wine. A gleam of vindictive triumph shot across his face when he saw Hélêne. “Ah, congratulate me, Hélêne! he cried; “It ees a vary good audience to-night. De best I haf yet.”

The woman looked at him with an expression in which anger and fear, and perhaps something else, were contending.

“I don’t know what you mean by bringing that little idiot here!” she cried. “You can’t ever be thinking as she’ll go down when the people’s expecting me! You can’t-” then her voice faltered. “There’s been a mistake.”

“Haf you made one? I condole with you, Mademoiselle,” said the conjuror. “Dey are awkward dese mistakes! One takes no time to make dem! One can scratch dem off in a moment, and, pouf!—away fly the fine dress, the employ, the pleasure! and to get them back, it ees impossible ! Ah! do you hear de stamp and de clap? But it ees an audience to be proud of! See here”—turning to Linda— “I haf just to say one leetle speech about you. After dat I ring a bell—so—and say ‘ She comes! ’ and you do walk through that door on de left, and stand for one moment comme $a. You see? One arm up, holding back de curtain. Den I lead you forward, voila tout! I will do all de rest.” He nodded reassuringly and passed on to the stage.

Hélène stamped her foot with an inarticulate little cry. Linda grew perceptibly whiter.

Aaron congratulated himself that his business in no way depended on the whims of women.

The three listened attentively. They heard the sound of the Frenchman’s voice; then the sharp note of a hand-bell. Linda stood upright. There was another burst of clapping. The bell was struck once more. The girl sat down again; she was shaking from head to foot.

“I can’t go! I can’t, I can’t!” she cried.

Hélène’s face brightened.

“Now I hope Monsieur will see!” she exclaimed. “A pretty trick to play him! I wouldn’t be in your shoes to-morrow, my lady!”

“They’ll hiss in another minute,” said Aaron. But almost as the words passed his lips, Monsieur Moréze stood again by their side. He glanced round him, taking in the situation in a second. A crisis always sharpened this man’s perceptions, and increased his self-reliance.

“Go! both of you, please. Leave de child to me,” he said. “But go, go!” stamping his foot impatiently when Hélène would have lingered. When they were both gone he turned to Linda.

“Dere ees not in de least of a hurry,” he remarked quietly. “You can finish your cry ef you want to. We will let dem make a noise till we are quite ready.”

He poured some water into a tumbler and made her drink it. “At present, shall we wait for any more tears?” he asked, smiling. “Ho? Come den, and look not at any one but me.” And, taking her hand in his, he led her on to the stage.

There was a murmur of half-pitying admiration. The little maid-of-all-work was curiously delicate and fair in her velvet robes, with tears still wet on her eyelashes. A man in the pit hissed, because he felt convinced that that foreign brute ill-treated her, but the majority clapped.

Monsieur Morfize had never had a more sensitive subject. He made the stance longer than usual, and tried experiments on the spur of the moment. The girl was pliable as clay in the hands of the potter.

The Jew and Hélène went round to the front and found seats amongst the audience.

Hélène sat rocking herself to and fro, her face growing darker as the performance went on, her eyes fixed steadily on the stage.

“She is not in the least beautiful,” she cried. “Folks won’t pay to see her twice. He’ll soon find out his mistake;” but, nevertheless, despair was settling heavily on her.

“You have quarrelled with our friend there,” said Aaron, presently. “Now, might I ask how was it, my dear?”

“Oh, you may ask,” said Hélène, suddenly, when he had repeated his question twice, and touched her round, white arm to attract attention.

“Five pounds,” said Aaron, softly, “for costumes worn on different occasions; shoes and diamonds included; ten pounds last June to meet some passing necessity; six more put down on account. Oh, you need not colour. I don’t say I want my money this moment; I shall get it in time. I’m very patient.”

“You’ve had enough from me. I should think you might afford to wait,” said his companion; but even while she spoke a sick sensation came over her, like that which possesses a sailor when he sees the rats departing from the ship. Aaron had always flattered her before. “Look here!” she cried suddenly; “I’ve never been one to save and scrape; and I can’t work, I hate it! I wasn’t made to. Some folks are born ugly and respectable, and some ain’t That’s all about it. I’ve never had any call to slave, for I know one thing, I’m ten times handsomer than-”

“Yes, yes,” interrupted the Jew. “But how was it?”

This time he got an answer; he had shown his claws to some purpose.

“I wrote and gave him a bit of my mind,” Hélène explained. “I just said what every one knows. I just told him that his performances wouldn’t be worth ’alf, no! nor a quarter as much without me. It wasn’t no good talking; he comes round me, if I talk to him; so I waited till he was touring, and then I sent my letter at the last and said I wasn’t coming to-night unless he made the terms what they should be. He didn’t answer, so—so-”

“So you exercised your charming sex’s privilege and came?”

Hélène smiled and, bending forward, laid both her hands on the Jew’s arm. “Come, dear Mr. Schonenwetter, you’ll help me,” she sand, “I’ve got into a tight place, but you’ll help me.” She leant towards him, her face almost touching his. There was admiration in Aaron’s glance. The crimson flowers that rested against her white skin (and whose heavy scent he breathed) were not more luxuriant in their beauty than was she. He hesitated for a moment. He hesitated, and then drew back with a laugh, and shook his head. “No, no, it won’t do!” he said; “and, besides, a beauty like you can surely make her own terms with any of our sex!”

And Hélène, knowing that she found her chances not worth assisting, rose suddenly and swept out of the theatre.

“It has been a success!” cried the conjuror. He was driving home through the wet, gas-lit streets, and he was filled with triumph. Monsieur Morfize was a true artist in his way. His intellectual grasp of art was certainly not high, but he loved his craft for its own sake. He liked money, without doubt, but he liked a “good effect” better. He was born to a vocation, and he followed it with all his heart. Already he was pondering how he could improve on the programme of to-night.

Aaron sat opposite to him, with a fat, good-tempered Italian by his side. The latter filled the cab with an atmosphere of bad tobacco and garlic. Linda, squeezed into a comer, was nearly choked by the smoke from their pipes, and was quite overwhelmed by the force of new impressions.

All the men talked in a tongue that was unknown to her. They all gesticulated. The very inflexions of their voices were un-English and strange. Monsieur Moréze hardly noticed the girl, he was so busy planning what lie would do with the medium. Genius has its drawbacks, which chiefly affect its neighbour and its kindred. The drive was over at last, and Monsieur Moréze led the way to his sitting-room. The men drank to his good luck, with side glances at Linda, who stood by their host’s chair; an incongruous little figure, with star-spangled hair, and bare neck, and terrified eyes.

Monsieur Moréze drank nothing. Too much depended on the steadiness of his hand for him to venture to indulge himself. He insisted, however, that “de leetle girl” should swallow some brandy and water, which he had warmed over a spirit-lamp. It brought a shade more colour to her cheek, and he smiled, noting, with a sense of proprietorship, how much prettier she looked in consequence.

Aaron noticed it too, and ventured on a coarse joke about her. “Monsieur” was no Puritan, a fact which was very well known, but the remark angered him. He sprang to his feet suddenly and drummed on the tables for silence; then took Linda’s cold hand in his. “Listen!” he said, “dis lady is my— my—(ah, but how do you say it when one is in the stead of a father? N’importe! what I mean ees dat no one shall fling dirt while she ees under my roof. I do mean to be careful of de child, as eef mats out Monsieur, as eef she were my daughter.”

The fat Italian clapped his hands and shouted, “Bravo! bravo!” He was sentimental, and easily affected. Aaron smiled in his sleeve. Linda, though she had not in the least understood what had passed, was overcome by an instinctive sense of shame. She longed to hide from all these eyes, but she was also afraid of offending the conjuror.

Monsieur Moréze considered for a moment, and then walked to the door and shouted “Nanette, Nanette.”

A Frenchwoman answered the call—a sallow-faced, broad-shouldered dame, who looked as if she might have stepped out of some Brittany cottage, but who was curiously “unexpected” in this London street. Her cap, such a cap as Linda had never seen before, was of starched linen, like a nun’s; it almost covered her grey hair, and Nanette would have felt immodest without it! Her apron was ampler than aprons of English make, and white as new fallen snow. She had sharp little black eyes, but there were both kindliness and capability in the expression of her mouth. Her knitting was in her hands. She knitted even while she talked, and she talked with the musical, rather drawling sing-song of the “Auray” peasant.

Linda could not have translated a word that Nanette said, but she understood quickly enough that the Frenchwoman was angry and disapproving.

It seemed to the poor child that disapproval was the usual attitude of the world in regard to herself. She had been disapproved from her very earliest recollections. If they sent her away what should she do? She felt terribly ill, so ill that she wondered vaguely whether she were going to die. She might have managed to creep into the country, and have starved peacefully under a hedge, if she had not been brought to London. But in this huge town there was no end to the streets and the people. They would always be pushing and jostling and hustling her on. She fancied that she said something to that effect when Nanette made a step toward her, but in reality the words died on her lips.

Nanette paused in the middle of a sentence. “But this is a child,” she cried. “What was her mother doing?”

Monsieur Moréze shrugged his shoulders. “It is a little late in the day to inquire into that,” he said in French. “If you won’t find room for her, my friend, I will take her to some lodging-house, or-”

“La—la,” said Nanette, “some lodging-house? and she no more fit to be alone in London than a white rabbit! Come, then, for to-night. Will you be so good as to come, mademoiselle?”

The last words were spoken in English, but it did not occur to Linda that the “mademoiselle” applied to herself, and she made no movement.

“She thinks every one will eat her,” cried the conjuror. “Go with Nanette, mon enfant.” And Linda followed her conductress obediently.

They went upstairs to a room—half bedroom, half sitting-room—where the boards were washed and polished and the windowsill was full of scarlet geraniums. A gaily coloured picture of the Madonna hung on the wall, and beneath it was a crucifix, and a shelf holding a blue glass full of flowers. A bed, covered with a bright patchwork quilt, stood in one corner.

The place was exquisitely clean and smelt of soap and water, but there was a curiously foreign air about it.

“This is mine room,” said Nanette, “and for now, because I think you are not very old or wise, I will keep you to sleep in it. But to have his mediums to live here with me is what I will not. It is but for to-night. Where is your luggage?”

“I haven’t got none,” said Linda.

“None?” said the Frenchwoman, horrified. “Mon Dieu! Do you drop from the clouds? Where from do you come? Where is your home?”

“I didn’t never have one,” said Linda. She sank on to a chair, and leant her head wearily against the wooden bedpost. The black velvet robe was very heavy, and she could stand no more.

“Are you ill?” asked Nanette, uneasily.

Linda lifted her head with an effort. “Oh, no, ma’am,” she said, “I ain’t ill. To-morrow I’ll be quite well. I ain’t generally like this. I can do a deal of work. I’m stronger than you’d think for.” But her forehead dropped on to the post again, and the heavy lids fell half over her eyes.

“Monsieur has no business to play his tricks with such a child,” cried Nanette angrily, and she put her hand on Linda’s shoulder.

“Chut—chut. Lapauvrette, how tired she is! Come, mon chou, it’s time you were to bed.”

A quiver crossed Linda’s face at the kindly tone.

“Oh,” she said, under her breath, “I won’t be ill if I can help it; but if I am, shall you turn me out?”

And then, as Nanette, throwing prudence to the winds, held out her arms with an irrepressible motherly gesture, the little maid-of-all-work suddenly clung to her, hiding her face on the Frenchwoman’s shoulder. “Oh, I was so frightened; but you’ll keep me, won’t you?” she cried.

CHAPTER III

By the next day the conjuror’s new speculation was in a high fever. It was unfortunate, but, perhaps, not surprising.

Monsieur Moréze shrugged his shoulders philosophically when Nanette told him that the child was ill. She would have been ill in any case, he suspected, but, at least, she had been of some use first. He had triumphed very satisfactorily over Helene. Nanette begged earnestly to be allowed to nurse the girl.

“If you send her to a workhouse infirmary, she will die. She will slip out of the world, because no one will hold her fast; but she will not slide through my fingers,” said the good woman; and, indeed, her fingers had a remarkably capable look about them.

“Last night you were angry that I brought her here! You told me that, for the future, you would have nothing to do with her,” said Monsieur Moréze.

“And that was twelve hours ago,” replied Nanette. “Mon Dieu! I can alter my mind in less than twelve hours. I am not a stolid Englishwoman, that I must continue to swear by my own stupidity for ever.”

“It would mean paying a doctor,” said Monsieur.

He went upstairs with Nanette to look at the girl. The little maid was sitting holt upright in bed, and she stared at him with brilliant, wide-open eyes.

“I can’t ’elp it, ma’am. Indeed I can’t. I keep on trying to carry the tray steady! It ain’t my fault. It’s the foreign gentleman as plays the organ outside and makes the plates stand up on end and dance. I can’t keep ’em from it while he goes on, and they will get broke. Oh don’t, ma’am— I didn’t mean —I-”

“She takes me for the excellent widow!

Mon Dieu! she must be very mad!” said the conjuror, and he went for the doctor.

The doctor was an old man, and in the course of forty years’ experience he had learnt to keep his observations to himself. He eyed Monsieur Moréze with some dislike, for he had an instinctive aversion to foreigners in general, and a healthy antipathy to the way in which this especial foreigner made money. It was a pity that this girl should have fallen into such hands; but then a good many things were pitiful, and he was by no means called upon to interfere with Monsieur’s private affairs. Nanette was evidently a capable and apparently a respectable woman. He gave his directions to her, remarking, by the way, that Linda had been underfed, and that her chance of recovery was slight.

Monsieur Moréze met him on the stairs, and he repeated his verdict.

“I understand,” said the conjuror, “you say de fever ees very high, and de child ees weak and has been starved, hein? Eef I keep her here she will most like die on my hands, and eef I send her to de hospital she will most like die on de road?”

“Quite so,” said the doctor, drily. “Ah, but it ees vairy inconvenient of her,” sighed the conjuror.

The doctor nodded, and muttered a curt “Good day to you,” ignoring the Frenchman’s outstretched hand.

Monsieur laughed to himself at the snub. He possessed a rather sardonic vein of humour, and respectability was apt to irritate him. “I should prefer on de road,” he said, and smiled again when the doctor shut the hall door with a bang. Then he called Nanette once more.

“La petite is very ill,” he remarked. Nanette looked at him anxiously.

“Ah—for that—yes she is ill, no doubt; but Monsieur need not be afraid, if he will leave her to me. These doctors are not, after all, so intimate with ‘ le grand Dieu ’ that they can say whether it is to be life or death,” said she. “Leave her to me, and you’ll make something out of her yet, monsieur.”

She tried to smile, and then suddenly her voice broke. “Monsieur will not have the heart to turn her out,” she cried.

“Am I a woman?” said the conjuror. “No; it is a little beyond me to do that, my friend! We will leave it to the vary religious widows to fill the streets, hein? We’ll keep her; and La Mort shall not have the child, if we can prevent him.” And La Mort did not have her.

Linda’s fate hung in the balance for days, but with the first breath of coming spring the young life seemed to strengthen and quicken again; she began to recover. The danger of death was over; she lay facing the dangers of life instead. She spoke very seldom at first, but smiled contentedly whenever Nanette came near, and watched her when she moved to and fro. She was filled with wonder, and with a gentle, half-timid pleasure at her surroundings. The pretty, clean room, the image of the Madonna, blue-robed and placid, in a wooden shrine, the plant of ivy that was trained against the wall were amusement and delight enough to her at first. She was pleased when Nanette dressed her in a little white jacket with blue bows, and let her sit up for the first time. She blushed with pleasure when the kind Frenchwoman called her by pet names. The world had hitherto been rather hard on her, but that made the present sunshine all the more wonderful and charming.

Faith came naturally to Linda; distrust and timidity had been forced on her by circumstances. She learnt to lore any one who was kind to her as quickly and simply as a child loves: it was the childlike quality in her affection that touched Nanette. She had never in all her short life been so happy as she was during her convalescence. She felt as if she were bathed in sunshine, and her soft eyes shone with gratitude.

Presently she began to pick up French phrases. They pleased Nanette mightily, and seeing that they did so, Linda redoubled her efforts, and would listen carefully, and whisper to herself any sentence she could catch. She was learning French in the same way that a baby learns its mother-tongue, only with a more conscious effort. A little praise more than repaid her. Her mother had liked soft words too, and had had unlimited faith in the person who had whispered them.

When she grew stronger still, a shadow began to creep over her happiness. The remembrance of the strange day before she was ill harassed her. Her recollection of what had happened was blurred, but she had an uncomfortable impression of shouting people, of a violent headache, of the hurried journey. Then, one day, to ease her mind, she told Nanette her story, such as it was. Nanette said very little about it, but thought much.

“I must be costin’ an awful deal,” Linda said, anxiously. “When I get strong I’ll work just as hard as ever I can for you, and the conjuring gentleman, and I wouldn’t think of wantin’ wages, not after all the things I’ve had, and the doctorin’ and all!”

“Mais enfin—Monsieur will probably make it pay,” said Nanette. “For you are decidedly not ugly, mon chou.”

Linda looked up with the bright, surprised joy that so wonderfully enhanced what prettiness she possessed. It was new and sweet to her that any woman should take a motherly pride in her appearance!

Nanette turned away with an odd lump in her throat.

“It is not what one would choose for a girl, but at least I can take care of her,” she muttered to herself. “The Holy Lady can put it down to my credit that I have nursed this child for a charity. It was entirely out of charity at first,” she added half aloud, for it was as well that that should be clearly understood up above.

She had often declared that she thanked Heaven that she had never had a child to bother her, and probably to break her heart by taking after the husband of whom she had had more than enough.

Possibly-the saints (at least those among them who were women) knew what such thanks meant. She put her brown hand on the little maid’s head for a moment, and that caress was not “for charity;” nor did she consider that yearning impulse of protection a prayer. There were a good many things that Nanette never dreamt of saying even to the “Mother of God.”

“He will not in the least desire that you should work hard for him. There is no need to promise that,” she declared, and she fancied the matter settled. Linda was so very gentle, and so ready to listen to advice; and yet—and yet—she had a way of clinging to her own opinion at times. It is the very gentle people who occasionally do that most tenaciously.

As for Monsieur, he was in no hurry. To do him justice he was not a niggard, and did not grudge Linda food and board, nor did he want to throw his too susceptible medium into another fever by making her face an audience again too soon. It was the girl herself who first broached the subject of how she was to pay him.

She knocked at the door of his sitting-room one day, and, on being bidden to enter, came in with a pink flush on her cheeks, and with a delicate charm of returning health in her whole appearance.

She had been draggled and untidy when he had first seen her. She was spotlessly and daintily clean and neat now. Her black dress was simply made (Nanette had stitched it herself with goodwill in every needleful), her little white apron became her. Monsieur Moréze smiled involuntarily, and with a sense of possession when he saw the change. She was much more fascinating than Hélène, and she was his own discovery!

“I am quite well now, please sir,” said Linda. “And, please, I want to do some work, for it ain’t right nor likely you should go on keepin’ me for nothing.”

She stood before him twisting her fingers in her apron rather nervously; her colour came and went quickly while she spoke.

Monsieur Moréze had a white pigeon in his hands. He was sitting at a table, and was engaged in tying up the bird’s broken feathers, and was smoking the while. He glanced at Linda, and then went on with his work.

“Dis fool of a bird!” he said, between the puffs at his pipe. “For eyairy night for a month has he been discovered in my pie dish, and has enjoyed de joke! But yes! I tell you, he has enjoyed it as well as ainy one! Last night, because only it was a new dish of a different colour, he did take it in his silly head to excite himself, and to flutter up in de wrong place and get hurt. But what were you, saying? You are quite well? I make you my congratulations, mademoiselle. It ees time you recovered, hein?”

“Yes, sir,” said Linda, blushing more deeply; for she was much ashamed of having indulged in so expensive a luxury as a fever. “And, please, I’d like to begin to do something useful now. I can be quite handy in the kitchen, and-”

“No, no!” said the conjuror, “Your hands are getting white and soft! I do not -wish dem spoilt. Besides, I did nevair engage you for dat. Eef Nanette wants to be waited on she may come herself and tell me so.”

“It wasn’t her as told me to speak to you, sir,” said Linda, with quickened breath. “It —it was that I’ve been thinking. The lady as was so angry said as how I took the bread out of her mouth! I didn’t go for to do that, nor I don’t wish to. I’d a deal rather scrub, and wash, and carry, please.”

“Varry well,” said the conjuror. He became apparently absorbed in his operations again, but Linda still lingered with a growing disquiet, of which he was very much aware, in her expression.

“Haf you more to say?” he asked at last. “No? Den I do not know why you wait. It ees settled, n’est ce pas? Nanette ees enough servant for me. I do not need more, but eef I did, I should not choose you. You can go tomorrow or de next day as you like.”

He paused a moment. Linda’s dismayed face was eloquent enough.

“Or, we will have de next performance at de beginning of May,” he added quietly. “It matters leetle to me which you do. I do not . force you. I can find another medium vary easily. Only I promise you it will nevair j again be Helene in any case. Do you still go?”

“No,” said Linda in a low voice, “I will stay and do anything you like.” Her voice trembled almost to tears; it “mattered” very much to her, poor child! though she quite believed the choice to be of no moment to him.

“Ainything I like! In a so frightened voice, as if I wanted her to cut off her head!” he cried, relaxing into a laugh (for, indeed, he had had not the faintest intention of parting with her). “Bien! but dere ees nothing at! all to be alarmed of, and as for Hélène, she shall nevair disturb you again. Ah, you deserve I should wring your neck, Houdin!”

The last remark was addressed to the pigeon, which he had just released with a cleverly splinted wing.

“He is so tame and pretty,” said Linda, with some anxiety.

But the pigeon showed no fear. He had known his master long and intimately, and was perfectly aware that though he pecked Monsieur’s brown fingers ungratefully, his neck was in no sort of danger.

“Do you like him? You shall take de bother of him and of all de others too den,” said the conjuror. “Come, you wanted work. How I will show you. You will not wring de necks, hein?”

“Oh no, sir,” said Linda, solemnly. She took all his remarks literally, for life had been a terribly serious affair hitherto, with no place for jokes in it. Her simplicity amused “ monsieur.” He introduced her then and there to a soft, stupid rabbit that cuddled in her arms; to a guinea pig that followed him like a dog; to an extraordinary little mere-cat that ran up his arm and sat on his shoulder. She loved all small animals, and these dumb claimants on the affection that had had little vent before, bound her closer still to her new home.

“Houdin will mope eef I do not feed him myself, but de rest I leave to you. It ees a bargain,” said the conjuror.

The girl smiled, well pleased. There was nothing she would like better. This natural healthy interest put the terrors of the stage out of her mind for the time.

“You will find dem plenty of trouble, and you are vary welcome to it! For me, I do nevair pine for work,” he declared; and Linda accepted the charge with enthusiasm.

It was perhaps not altogether the desire to save himself trouble that made him throw the care of his “assistants” on her hands, but she did not guess that Monsieur Moréze was clever at other things than conjuring.

CHAPTER IV

Linda had been Monsieur Moréze’s medium for a year and a half. She had proved a lucky venture for the conjuror. The success she had attained had surpassed her master’s expectations. To have surpassed his ambition would have been impossible.

Monsieur Moréze could do wonders with her; but it was his genius for “effect,” rather than his mesmeric powers, that made his mysterious “lady” the sensation of a London season. There was real art in his way of arranging backgrounds to the girl’s delicate beauty. His advertisements were many and marvellous. The hall was full every night; fuller than it had ever been before.

He brought Linda on the stage only in the season. He sent her to the seaside with Nanette during the dull months. That, too, was a stroke of wisdom. He had no idea of letting her become “ cheap”; besides, the sea air was good for her.

She had altered and improved in looks to an extraordinary degree. “Monsieur” was proud of the improvement; and, indeed, it may be said for him that, whereas he had found her a miserable and half-starved little drudge, she had developed into a beautiful and, on the whole, happy girl.

She had learned to laugh, and if she still hated the “performances,” she had also learned to suppress any manifestations of dislike. Her early experience had impressed on her the fact that one cannot earn even daily bread without some pain; and “Monsieur” gave her more than daily bread—he gave her sugar into the bargain. He was kind to her, and kind in the little things that form so large a part of a woman’s life, and are so infinitely dear to her heart. He liked to give her ornaments and knick-knacks, if only to see her smile and blush over them. When he had discovered by chance that she loved to read, he gave her books without end. He understood (perhaps by reason of his own artistic nature) that she was sensitive to an angry word, or even look; and, in spite of an occasional irritability of manner, he was generally careful not to frighten her. It was, perhaps, less to his credit that, although he made hundreds of pounds through her instrumentality, yet he paid her no wages; thus, she never possessed a farthing of her own. Linda was not likely to leave him, if her doing so would necessitate her facing the world without a penny in her pocket; and he knew that well enough. When it was a case of business, Monsieur had a very keen eye to his own advantages; but, on the other hand, he treated her with a respect that rather puzzled his acquaintances.

Aaron, for example, who had assisted at the advent of the new star, watched her course with a wondering interest. He was compelled to own that, though he had seen in the new medium little to rave about, yet her big, innocent eyes were acting like witchcraft on men’s hearts—and purses. Her photographs took rank with the portraits of professional beauties in the shop windows; and there were times when Mr. Schonenwetter found it profitable to drop hints suggesting that he knew all about the pretty maid, and could even, if it were made worth his while, introduce admirers to her at home.

Monsieur Moréze ostensibly discouraged visitors; but he occasionally allowed himself to be interviewed; at such times he would stand between Linda and Linda’s would-be admirers, intercepting any covert glances at the girl, and deriving considerable amusement from the situation. The comedy was entirely on his side, but that made it the more entertaining. Linda never raised her eyes, and seldom spoke on such occasions. Monsieur Moréze treated her with a punctilious ceremony, and addressed her only as “Mademoiselle.”

That, Aaron supposed, was all part of the absurd mystery in which the Frenchman chose to envelop her: he could understand it very well. But what fairly puzzled him was the fact that, even among his intimates, Monsieur Moréze never allowed the girl’s name to be so much as lightly mentioned. The Augur, on meeting his brother Augur, refused to wink. Indeed, Aaron had even heard his host check himself in the middle of a sentence with a muttered “Je m’oublie, ce n’est pas pour les enfants,” when Linda had entered the room. The incident had surprised and mystified the Jew.

Was there, after all, some secret about the girl?

Monsieur, it was well known, was a man to whom no respectable father would trust his daughter for an hour; yet this fatherless waif had never heard a hurtful word from his lips.

Hélène had stories enough and to spare about him. It was ridiculous to suppose that his virtue was more than a mask. To what end was the mask worn?

Aaron sought the explanation in vain; it lay beyond him. Nine times out of ten Mr. Schonenwetter perceived symptoms, and foresaw results with a sharpness born of long practice. In the tenth he was sometimes wrong. He was accustomed to reckoning on men’s vices, but their virtues occasionally took erratic courses that he could not follow.

“Good, good!” Monsieur would cry triumphantly, when, to Linda’s evident relief, the door had closed on some discomfited swain. “She does not care in de least for ces messieurs. She is like a real demoiselle!”

And while he laughed in his sleeve, remembering where he had picked her up, yet, under the laughter, and the patronage, and the vanity, there was another sentiment that prevented him from himself making love to his pretty medium—a sentiment for which few people would have given Monsieur Moréze credit.

It was curious that, in spite of all his cleverness, one most obvious possibility never occurred to Monsieur’s mind. He guarded the beauty that he looked upon as his own property, most carefully; he took every precaution that no rival showman should have the chance of tempting Linda with a golden bait; he protected her from the least breath of insult; but it never struck him that the girl, fast growing into womanhood, might give her heart, which was not his, to another. His medium was like a delicate instrument, on which he fancied he could play as he chose. Monsieur knew a good deal; perhaps not one man in ten would have understood so much; but he did not know quite every note.

One night there was an extraordinary scene at the Emperor’s Hall: a scene that was graphically described in all the papers on the following day, and that added to Monsieur’s growing reputation. What occurred was this. A huge, red-haired Scotchman stood up and denounced the “works of the devil,” to the immense amazement of the onlookers. Unkind reporters hinted that he had been bribed to do so by Monsieur Moréze himself; but they were wrong. It was, strange to say, a bonâ fide attack, and the conjuror was as much surprised as any one.

The Scotchman had been delighted with the sleight of hand; but grew angrier and angrier during the “mesmeric experiments.”

The medium’s face was connected with some vague memory that haunted, but yet eluded him. He was fascinated, he could not tear himself away, but he muttered in the broadest of Scotch, below his breath, and his light blue eyes glared fiercely.

Linda in a trance, dancing, singing, weeping, simulating every phase of emotion at this “ black little foreigner’s” bidding, seemed to him like a pure spirit bound by some evil spell.

He shouted “Shame,” once when Monsieur Moréze apparently stuck a knife through the girl’s soft palm. His freckled face became quite red, and he sprang to his feet. The man next him pulled him down with a good-natured injunction, “not to make a spectacle of himself;” but “Monsieur” had heard the shout, and it acted on him like a challenge.

Hitherto he had never let any one but “himself either address or touch Linda while she was in a trance. It had been a sort of unwritten agreement between them. When the Scotchman attacked him, he broke his own rule. His vanity overcame him, or perhaps the spirit of opposition that was always roused by the strictures of the “vary respectable.”

“Monsieur believes dat I sham? dat Mademoiselle ees not really asleep? dat she feels all I do, but does conceal her feelings, hein?” he said. “Eef Monsieur will do me de honour to come here, he may judge for himself.” Thereupon the Scotchman, without a moment’s hesitation, got up hurriedly, and came.

The people tittered as he walked between the benches, but under their breath, for there was something rather awe-inspiring in the intensity of his folly. He looked neither to the right nor to the left, but mounted the steps that led up to the stage, not with the sheepish air of an amateur investigator, but in a very fury of hardly suppressed indignation.

Monsieur Moréze showed his white teeth in a polite smile, and glanced at his brawny opponent through his half-closed eyelids.

“Perhaps Monsieur would himself like to be experimented on?” he suggested suavely.

“If you try,” the Scotchman said, with a directness that carried conviction, “I’ll tak’ the leeberty of knocking ye down—but ye may try if ye like.”

Whereupon the audience, that always sees a joke in knocking down, roared with laughter.

“Ma foi! I should not, perhaps, get up again in a hurry! I am no professor of de British box,” cried Monsieur. He, too, laughed, knowing that he had the best of the contest. Besides it was an excellent advertisement.

“I take good care of my bones. I haf too great a respect for dem to fight with you,” he said. “But Mademoiselle, she will not knock me down. Now leesen, Mademoiselle!” (turning to Linda) “Here voyez-vous, ees an old woman who has stolen my watch. She ees vary aged, and full of de rheumatism. I do tink I will send her to gaol, where she will sleep on a plank bed, and eat of bread and water. You are fond of dis poor old woman. You haf known her for years. You call her ‘Granny.’ Go now! advise her to gif me back my watch, so dat I may let her off.”

He pointed to the Scotchman while he spoke. The girl followed his lead at once, and regarded her indignant would-be champion, with wide open, seriously pitying eyes.

“You should not have stolen Monsieur’s watch. You had better give it up,” she said earnestly. “Oh, indeed, that would be much the best thing for you to do. I am sure that Monsieur will let you go, if you return it to him quickly. Do please listen to me, granny.” She put her hand on the Scotchman’s arm, and he started as if her light touch had shocked and thrilled him.

“You know that, at your age, you could never bear the gaol. The plank bed would be very bad for your rheumatism,” the gentle voice persisted.

The Scotchman clenched his fist and breathed hard. “I’m no auld wife! God save ns, lass, has he blinded ye—or are ye shamming?” he cried vehemently.

“Her granny had better take a kiss,” a wag shouted from the gallery. But not a trace of embarrassment appeared on the medium’s calm, sweet face.

Monsieur, however, frowned. The jest was excellent, but it had gone far enough.

“C’est bien assez,” he exclaimed. “Monsieur ees, without doubt, satisfied dat she feels nothing. I will wake her now.”

But, alas! it is never so easy to lay a spirit as to raise it; and Monsieur had roused a potent one that day. The Scotchman threw his arm round the medium’s waist; he glared defiantly at the conjuror over her head. When the Frenchman bade him “Let her go!” he laughed grimly, and tightened his hold. Monsieur, however, had kept command of his temper, and saved the situation.

“I tink de old granny has been drinking a leetle too much whisky. Leeve her den, Mademoiselle,” he said.

And, to his relief, Linda gently extricated herself from the man’s grasp.

Monsieur made a few passes with his hands, and awakened her. There had been, he felt, more than enough of this scene; he would have taken her off the stage at once, had it been possible, but the Scotchman intercepted him.

“Do ye know what ye ha’ been saying to me?” he asked Linda.

The girl looked up startled. The sternness of his tone frightened her. She put her hands to her head, trying to recall her broken dream.

“You haf no more to do with my Mademoiselle, when you are no more an old woman to her,” Monsieur cried, with unwonted anger in his voice.

But the Scotchman persisted.

“I’ve this to say, and I’ll say it,” he declared, with an obstinacy bordering on passion.

“Listen, lass! Perhaps, no one has told you this before. You aren’t much more than a bairn, I suppose. Listen! You had letter clem than put your soul into any man’s hands, let alone a Frenchman’s.”

Then he turned and faced the astonished audience. “It’s a verra shamefu’ and ineequitous thing that we ha’ been watching this day,” he shouted. Then he stumbled over the plank and went out of the hall like a drunken man. But if drunk it was not with whisky, but with righteous indignation and impotent rage, and love—love at first sight, if ever there was such a thing.

The audience sided with Monsieur Moréze; it very naturally objected to being preached at; and the conjuror went home apparently triumphant, but at the bottom of his heart (for he, too, possessed one) a trifle uneasy.

Linda never dreamed of remonstrating with him, but he knew that she had been shocked. He bought a cornelian necklace for her the following month, and he proffered a sort of half apology for his behaviour. It is unfortunate that the Fates will not be bribed.

“Hélène would never haf minded, and I tink I forgot it was you, petite,” he explained.

“I will never again let any one come near you. Pouf! How red and hot ce monsieur was! He nearly set de curtain in a blaze; I was afraid dat his head would touch it. Look, however, what he has done for me!” He held out a copy of Truth to her. Linda took it rather unwillingly. All the bangles on her pretty white wrist jangled like silver fetters when she raised her hand. One of the articles in the paper was headed “A White Slave.” The girl glanced through it; then with an impulsive movement, the very opposite of her usually languid manner, tore it in two.

Monsieur laughed and raised his eyebrows. “Do you not like it, but dey speak vary well of you! Leesten now to this,” he said, and began to read aloud.

It was odd how the injunction had brought the colour to Linda’s face. Some one else had bidden her, “listen;” his voice was ringing in her ears still.

“Whether de girl whom dis devour prestidigitateur introduces nightly to crowded audiences is of gentle birth or not, dere ees at least no doubt of her singular grace and vary sympathetic (ma foi! what a word) beauty. Dis kind of entertainment has no attraction for me (he ees so vary good, you observe, de writer of dis paper!) And the rumours that are afloat as to Monsieur Moréze’s treatment of his medium, though possibly exaggerated, give an unpleasing flavour to the whole performance.”

“It is a shame!” cried the girl; “you don’t ill-treat me! I’d like to tell the gentleman as writes in that paper that he makes a great mistake.”

“Mon Dieu! you would lose me pounds. Do noting of de kind. Will you ruin me?” said Monsieur in affected alarm. “De English public enjoy to be horrified! “De poor creature,’ dey say, sans doute, he beats her evairy night.’ It ees most shocking! and dey buy more tickets. But de joke is on your side. I do not see why you look so grave. I do not beat you, hein?”

“No, no, I’ve been very happy here,” she said. She turned to him impulsively; a revelation was on the tip of her tongue. She was more moved than the occasion warranted.

“You are a vary foolish girl,” said Monsieur; “I do believe dat you care what ees said of me.”

And the confession died on her lips.

He never guessed, magician though he was, that it was not indignation on his behalf that had excited her, but the efforts to tell him something that remained, after all, untold. It was odd, but he thought of that little episode a good deal. The remembrance of her emotion came across him at all sorts of times (as the smell of violets assails us suddenly in the spring), bringing a distinct sensation of its own. The child’s eyes had actually filled with tears. What an absurd child to care so much! Ah, it was lucky he had the charge of her; he understood so well how sensitive she was; a clumsier hand would have jarred, would have drawn no music from that fine instrument. Monsieur congratulated himself handsomely. Indeed, there was no doubt that he had been very discriminating. Unluckily there were several things he did not quite take into account.

In order to understand a girl, even in a small measure, a man must bring into play something besides his intellect. Monsieur gave his brains the entire credit for what was, at least, partly due to his heart. Now that is an unsafe thing to do. A slighted faculty, like a slighted woman, revenges itself in curious ways at times.

Also he made too light of a false step that would cost him dear.

Linda did not speak of that episode with the Scotchman. Nanette heard of it by chance. Nanette was by no means so clever as “Monsieur;” but, being a woman, she knew that the girl’s silence was a good deal more pregnant of meaning than would have been speech.

Nevertheless, she taxed Linda with reticence one day.

“Dear Nanny I didn’t tell you about that because—I suppose it was because I minded it so,” said Linda. The two women were sitting by the window. Billows of soft, creamy muslin lay between them, and both were hemming busily. The muslin would make a stage costume, and Nanette took pleasure in the task. She loved to array Linda in dainty attire. The old woman felt a keen delight in the beauty that she had rescued from the grave. Linda would have died but for her; though Heaven had denied her the crowning joy and pain of womanhood, yet had she fought for and gained this life. She looked sharply over her spectacles and shook her head.

“It is not fair,” she said, “your Scotchman had some reason, mon chou. You give way to Monsieur too much. I do not say, indeed, that what you let him do is wrong. One must live. And le bon Dieu has clearly put this way of living in your path; but at least, you should insist on being paid. What if Monsieur were to be run over in the streets; what if he were to die to-morrow? You have been a success, without doubt; the first success in London, but where would you be then?”

“I should be very, very sorry,” said Linda, simply.

“Ah! and I also; but I have saved enough to dry my eyes on,” said Nanette.

Her shrewd old eyes twinkled while she spoke. The thought of her nest-egg was joy and pride to her. It meant independence and a decent burial, for which she would be beholden to no one. She came of a sturdy race, but in Linda’s veins there was no such good peasant blood.

“See, now he is good to you as a father, and I make him my compliments; ‘de bon cceur,’ on that. It is more than I expected, and ce Monsieur is not bad-hearted; but, en-fin, he is not your father.”

“Oh, I know that,” said Linda, under her breath.

She sewed on silently, seeing her needle “double,” and pricking her fingers while she worked. Nanette, having delivered herself of her advice, held her peace for a time. But the tears in Linda’s eyes disturbed her.

“I did not mean to scold you, mon chon,” she said at last.

Linda looked up.

“Oh, Nanny, I daresay I had ought to, but I can’t ask Monsieur for money,” she cried.

Her needle broke against a spangle; she tossed the bits into the street and put her pricked finger into her mouth.

“I don’t want to he thrown away like that!” she said with a shiver.

Nanette laughed—a hearty, guttural laugh. “Ah, bah! he knows better!”

“He would look at me,” said the girl, “and he would not be angry at all, or raise his voice; but he would say,‘Eef you are not content, you can always go; ’ and I can not bear it! It makes me feel cold all over!”

She threw down her work, and knelt by the old woman’s side.

“I wish I belonged to some one really!” she said, “girls with belongings are very lucky! I’d love to ’ave been brought up in a cottage in the country, where there was never any staring people, nor nothing that one couldn’t think of.”

“Ah—but what is it that you are afraid to think about?” said Nanette, quickly. “Are you not happy, my angel?”

“Yes, oh yes,” cried Linda, “I never was so happy before. I s’pose that’s just why I’m a bit nervous. I wake up in the night sometimes and think how dark and cold it is outside, and then I creep near to listen to your breathing, and am glad I am here.” Her face quivered, “and then I think of that other woman who said I took the bread out of her mouth.”

“When did she say that?” asked Nanette sharply. Here was another story that had not been told to her.

“She followed Monsieur when we came out of the Hall one night. It was the same night as there was the row with the Scotchman. She looked so hungry. No, I don’t mean that she was wanting food. It was her eyes was hungry, and Monsieur laughed. He was angry, cos she spoke to me; and his voice was so hard, it scared me. He said, ‘ I will call de police, eef you follow me one more step! de poor foreigner must be protected.’ I want to forget it, Nanny.”

Nanette shrugged her broad shoulders with a sigh. Linda, she felt, should have been born in the sheltered home that her soul craved.

“Eh, well, Hélène had her turn,” she said. “A man has always one side for that kind of woman, and quite another side for the other sort; and one may choose which part one will have. Hélène is not your kind. Mais, enfin, she enjoyed herself while it lasted, and got plenty out of him, too. You trouble yourself too much, petite.”

Linda rose from her knees and picked up her work again, with a smile.

“I know I’m uncommon lucky, Nanny,” she said; “and I don’t mean to talk no more about such things; only, sometimes it comes over one to just fancy what it would be like to be in a family of one’s own, where one just couldn’t be turned out, and where there was no call for any one to say: ‘It’s a shameful thing that you’re doing,’ and to feel quite, quite safe! It would be like heaven,” concluded Linda in a whisper; and Nanette nodded thoughtfully.

Safety and peace and respectability—these were what the child longed for—the child who had been born nameless, and who was “Monsieur’s Medium.”

Well, one would like to be able to give one’s dearest their heaven, even though it may not be at all the sort of place one would choose for one’s own delectation.

CHAPTER V

The Scotchman stumbled out of the theatre, scarcely knowing what strange thing had befallen him. All through the next day, and the day after, and the day after that, the thoughts of Monsieur Moréze’s medium haunted him.

The girl with the startled, innocent expression, and the little black foreigner; these two kept him awake when he should have slept, ‘ and set him a-dreaming when he should have waked.

It was a curious state of things, and John Maclean was surprised at himself; for it is, perhaps, not too much to say that, up to the moment of his seeing Linda in a trance, he had never felt an overpowering interest in any one.

John was a person of slow development, both mentally and physically. He, as his mother put it, “started growing” at nineteen instead of at fifteen, and steadily increased in stature till he was tweniy-two.

He was twenty-four when he fell in love for the first time, and I think that not in the whole of London could have been found a man with a cleaner record.

In his youth he was almost unnaturally abstemious; his energy wholly absorbed in the hard struggle for money. Being the breadwinner of the family, he was, naturally, of the utmost importance at home, hut “home ” had never drawn much affection out of him.

John was reasonably, but not warmly, attached to his mother, and rather kind than otherwise to his sister.

His mother was masterful, and a little too like himself, and his sister was fretful and delicate .

His steadiness and his aptitude for work were remarkable; they were even a trifle too remarkable. John was honest as daylight, but of the milk of human kindness he had by no means too large a supply. There was always a possibility that, while preserving his boyish integrity, he might harden into a pharisee of the strictest sect. Also the possibility that, if the spur of necessity were removed—as it was removed later—there might be a reaction from the constant labour of his youth, a sudden loosening of an over-taut bow. He was saved from both dangers, I think, at the moment when his ready championship of Linda caused him to “make a fool of himself,” for, perhaps, the first time in his well ordered life.

It was high time that he did!

John Maclean’s mother never forgave Linda; but she ought to have thanked her on her knees.

It was on a Saturday afternoon that John met his fate. A friend had given him the ticket for Emperor’s Hall; he would never have bought it for himself. He was very silent on Sunday, which was not unusual, and very absent-minded, which was unlike him.

Linda’s face was before him, when he covered his face during the long prayers in the chapel. Throughout the sermon, instead of the preacher’s, her voice, dreamy and soft, pleading in gentle tones, rang in his ears.

It was teaching him a lesson beyond the power of the minister.

He did not discover that the pulpit discourse had reached its conclusion till his sister nudged him violently.

He had been sitting on with his face fixed in a look of wrapped attention.

“Eh, but Duncan Macdonald’s a fine speaker,” Mrs. Maclean said, when they came out of chapel. “And what did ye think o’ the sermon, John?”

John looked slightly dumbfounded. “My word, yes! A fine speaker,” he rejoined.

“Do ye take that view o’ the text, lad?”

“Oh, ay,” said John.

“Then Pm no so sure about it,” said Mrs. Maclean, triumphantly. “I’m doubting if King David had a’ that meaning in his head; he’d have been a bit surprised, I’m thinking, if he could ha’ heard that interpretation.”

“That’s likely, too,” assented John, and his mother glanced at him astonished. She had never before in her life known her son baulk a discussion by agreeing with his adversary.

“What’s wrong with ye?” she asked; but got no answer.

“John’s working a bit too hard. He’s not so cool-headed as his father was, and he’ll be rich none the sooner for making overmuch haste,” she remarked to her daughter, Janet, that evening.

“John is not overworked. John is in love,” said Janet, with precocious sharpness, the tears gathering in her black eyes.

The girl was small and weakly, and Mrs. Maclean had no great affection for her. She could not be proud of such a “poor thing” of a daughter. Yet Janet’s wits were quicker than her own. Janet repented of her last speech almost before it had passed her lips.

“Don’t tell John I said that. It was just nonsense,” she cried.

Mrs. Maclean laughed loudly, but with an under-current of anger.

“Hey, John!” she shouted to John, who was coming down the stairs. “Here’s your sister saying you’re love-struck.”

John’s face flushed. “Then my sister had better mind her own business,” he said, roughly. But he didn’t deny the “impeachment;” and Janet retreated to her room and cried.

She was loyal to John as a rule, and in the present instance was sorry that she had divulged his secret; and still more so that there was a secret to be divulged.

Her affection for her brother was much stronger than was his for her, perhaps partly because she had no “business of her own” to mind; but that, naturally, did not occur to him.

It took all the young man’s self-command, in presence of the new and unaccountable emotion that had taken possession of him, to restrain himself from going to the next Saturday night’s performance at the Emperor’s Hall.

A mightier power than that of any mesmerist had laid hold of him, but his principles were strong and sturdy. John would not countenance the Frenchman’s evil practices; no, not even to the extent of half-a-crown, for the sake of satisfying his desire to see that girl’s face again.

There was something fine in his uncompromising attitude, but someone must always pay for heroism, and his abstention made John unbearably surly at home.

At last, one afternoon, his resolution was rewarded. It was a Bank Holiday, and he was walking along the Strand with Janet when he saw Monsieur Mor6ze and “the lady of distinction” in front of him.

John’s heart leaped with a thrill of excitement, and he quickened his footsteps. He forgot Janet for the moment; he forgot everything but those two figures.

Janet glanced up at him, saw his eager look, followed the direction of his eyes, and then stood still, an odd, wistful expression in her little white face.

She was lame, having been born with one leg shorter than the other; her head barely reached her big brother’s shoulder. No one, as their mother often remarked, would have guessed the two to be near akin.

“You are not wanting me now. Go on. I’ll find my own way home,” said she.

John turned to her in surprise. “I can’t send you back alone; but how in the world did you guess?” he began. But Janet gave him a push with both hands.

“Eh, don’t stand gaping. Hurry up! or it will be too late,” she cried. “And—and good luck to you, Jack.”

She turned round sharply, with her face set in the other direction. A forlorn, limping figure, somewhat of an anomaly in that crowd.

When she had proceeded a few yards, she looked back, and saw that Jack was running; a smile broke over her face.

No man ever had made or would make love to poor little Janet; but she knew quite well what that light in John’s eyes meant.

Her sympathy was so strong that it overcame her jealousy.

“He’s running fine; and she’s a lucky girl that Jack runs for,” said Janet.

Monsieur Mor6ze and Linda walked from the Strand to Emperor’s Hall, and John followed them. The girl was nearly as tall as the conjuror, and she had learned to carry herself gracefully.

John could catch sight of a little bit of her face when she turned it towards her companion. He watched eagerly; but, at the same time, it made him angry to see her answer Monsieur’s remarks.

They went into the hall, although there was to be no conjuring that afternoon. John still followed them.

“The mission meeting does not commence till four o’clock, sir,” said a man at the door.

“I know. It’s all right,” said John; and putting a shilling into the man’s hand, he passed in.

He went upstairs to the gallery, whence, unobserved, he could look down on the stalls and pit, and on the two figures on the stage.

It was rather dark after the bright sunshine outside; the building had not yet been lighted; and there is always something ghostly and depressing about an empty theatre. John felt a sensation of positive horror when he saw Monsieur Moréze and Linda begin what was evidently a kind of rehearsal of some part of the evening’s performance.

John clenched his hands and longed to interfere again; he “glowered” at the Frenchman from his far-off corner; but prudence withheld him from further demonstrations this time.

It was monstrous that, not content with his evening triumphs, this cowardly rascal should play his pranks, out of pure deviltry and love of mischief, in the daytime.

As a matter of fact, however, Monsieur Mor6ze was not attempting to mesmerise his medium, but was only going through a small piece of business she had somewhat bungled at the last stance.

Monsieur Mor6ze had amplified his programme, and Linda was no longer an absolutely passive instrument. He had taught her to curtsey to the audience and to come on to the stage gracefully; she had to take part in a few sentences before the mesmerising began. It was this little colloquy that they were practising.

Monsieur Moréze was possessed of unfailing zeal. The public—that stupid English public—might be satisfied, but, so long as he was not, he would never rest. The girl’s gestures were not exactly what he wanted; her intonation was not quite correct; he would have perfection, though he wore his patience to tatters, and her endurance to tears.

Linda, who had no natural capacity for acting, indeed cordially hated it, grew weary and nervous in her endeavours to please him.

John could not understand their speech, but he burned with indignation while he watched the man’s, impatient and peremptory gestures. What right had he to command and gesticulate? and what was he saying to her?

It would have been difficult to make John believe that the little Frenchman had never said anything very terrible to Linda; and that she had a genuine affection for him; though teaching was, perhaps, not his strong point.

“A la bonne heure!” cried Monsieur Mo-r6ze at last. “But that is just what I haf wanted all de time! Why did you not do it so before, hein?”

“I didn’t understand,” said Linda, sitting down on the stage chair with a sigh of relief. “ You’ll never be able to make me clever, Monsieur.”

“Nevair mind,” said the conjuror, relaxing into good humour. “You keep de beauty and I keep de brains. That goes vary well. Will you wait here for Nanette? I haf to go now.”

Linda nodded an assent; then helped him to put on his coat and strolled with him to the door; proof enough, had John’s mind been open to conviction, that she was not unhappy with the Frenchman.

When Monsieur Moréze had gone, she wandered into the stalls, and, resting her arms on the seat in front of her, leaned her head on them and, apparently, fell into a reverie.

She was tired, and a little sad. The circumstances of her life were not such as to conduce to healthiness of either mind or body; but, with the remembrance of her childhood in the background, she certainly did not consider herself ill-used.

This Easter Monday—the touch of spring in the air—seemed to fill her with vague longings. The families of children out for a treat with father and mother had interested her curiously.

She shut her eyes and imagined a home. She pictured all the details; how the furniture was arranged; the names and characters of the children; the exact sum the mother had to spend, amusing herself with planning how stockings and frocks were to “come out” of the weekly allowance.

John supposed the conjuror’s beautiful and mysterious slave to be dreaming of something far more tragic and mysterious than were children and housekeeping. He would have been astonished, could he have looked into her heart, but I think he would have been awestruck, too. The imaginary home was so full of purity and goodness; the dream children were so wrapped in tenderness and peace.

He wondered whether she was really asleep, and became ashamed of spying on her; yet could not make up his mind to leave the place. He went down into the theatre at last. His approaching steps echoing through the vacant hall made her look round, then a flash of frightened recognition crossed her face. This was the man who had given voice to certain formless misgivings of her own, who had awakened her to some purpose.

His denunciation had impressed her; he had been to her like some indignant prophet; but he was not at all like a prophet now.

He was blushing up to the roots of his hair, he was stammering an apology in disjointed sentences.

“I’m unco sorry, I startled you. I chanced to be in the gallery a while ago, and thought maybe you would let me come and tell you so. I’ve thought o’ nothing else ever since,” John murmured.

Then their eyes met, and it seemed as though a veil fell from between them. Linda was no longer a tragic and mysterious “lady of distinction,” but just a girl, good and sweet as spring blossoms, with “only” the mystery of early womanhood about her; and John was no longer a denunciator of evil, but a man in the strength of his youth, brimming over with the desire to be of service to her.

They both smiled involuntarily and naturally.

“But all the same, what I said was true,” cried John, “you should na’ let that man play tricks wi’ ye, lassie. You should na’ bide with him.”

“He is very good to me,” said the girl; “and it is you who do not at all understand.”

She spoke rather slowly, and her voice had in it an unusually fresh and sweet quality.

John’s mind wandered momentarily from the point in question, to admire her curling eyelashes, and to wonder why they were so black when her hair was so fair.

“You do not know anything whatever about my master,” Linda continued, “nor yet about me. You don’t know where he found me, nor what he has done for me. You see him on the stage one night, and make up your mind that he’s a bad man, as a girl shouldn’t be with. He isn’t bad! he does no harm to me, nor to anybody else. He isn’t like them that pretend to ’ave dealings with spirits and such-like; though, if he chose, I’m sure he could beat ’em all, for he’s often told me so. Monsieur Moréze doesn’t need to go in for any cheating, for he can do without; there is nothing to be ashamed of in his performance. It’s first-class throughout.”

“We’ll not talk of him,” said John. He held out his hand to Linda, and the honest kindliness in his face disarmed her.

“Maybe I took too much on myself, seeing I had no claim on you,” he said. “But if you will give me the leave, I’d like very well to see you again. I can’t think that you’ve got too many good friends. You wouldn’t be doing this kind of thing if you had. I’ll be silent about that now; but, if I were your friend, I would have the right to speak my mind. I am bad at saying all I mean, but I would give something—I think I would give a great deal—for the chance of standing by you if ever you wanted it.”

“Oh, here is Nanny!” said Lydia.

John sat stolidly still. “Then I would verra much like to meet ‘ Nanny,’” he said.

He stared hard at the Frenchwoman, in doubt whether she was a safeguard or an additional danger in that perilous path into which this pretty maid had strayed.

Nanette came hurrying into the theatre, and her eyes twinkled with curiosity when she saw John. Nanette was much quicker of comprehension than he. She hardly needed Linda’s explanation. She guessed at once that this was the “Scotchman” who had declared Monsieur Moréze’s seance to be “a shameful and iniquitous sight.”

She dropped an old-fashioned curtsey, and John muttered something unintelligible in his throat; but in spite of his shyness, stuck close to Linda like a burr, so that they all three left the hall together.

He did not speak until they reached the conjuror’s house. Then, “And may I meet you again?” he asked persistently.

He looked down at the two women almost defiantly, as if half-expecting to be sent about his business; and yet with an underlying determination that was more earnest and deeper than anything that the medium’s beauty hitherto had elicited from any of her admirers.

“You can’t meet me again; why should you? I don’t see where you can,” Linda said hesitatingly.

“I’ll find the why, and the when, and the where—if you’d like it,” said John Maclean. “And if ye say naught, I take it that that means ay!”

Perhaps his unexpected readiness took her by surprise. Had he been preparing this speech all the time they were walking home? Her tongue was not equal to the occasion, she looked at Nanny, then opened her lips— too late!

“Oh, he is gone,” she cried.

“And we have not seen the last of him,” said Nanette.

The season was drawing to a close. Monsieur Moréze, who made a point of being fashionable, and would not condescend to audiences of country cousins, was already meditating a move. Only one engagement still kept him. Lady Pattesworth’s grand “At Home” was announced for the last day of July, and Monsieur Moréze and his “medium” were to appear at it. It would be the crowning achievement, the hall-mark on all his other successes. He had asked a fabulous sum, and had refused the honour of his pres- ence to all lesser lights in the social world. He most thoroughly understood the art of setting a high value on himself in order that men should value him.

“Eef I lowered my price, down we should slide,” he once remarked. “We should rank with school-boy holiday amusements, with performing dogs, and magic lanterns. Mrs. Grimwood Atkinson would haf us. Non! Je ne veux pas, Mrs. Grimwood Atkinson, not eef she pays me ten pounds de minute! Who is she, dat Mademoiselle should go to her? To Marlborough House I will, perhaps, let her go, or to Lady Pattesworth; for dey say de Prince will most like be dere; but for dese second-rate parties, we are not de sort for dem! Mrs. Atkinson can, sans doute, find plenty of de ordinary kind who will vary well do for her, but Mademoiselle goes only to de vary highest.”

He tore Mrs. Grimwood Atkinson’s note in half, and wrote that “Mademoiselle” accepted few private engagements, and declined Mrs. Grimwood Atkinson’s proposal with thanks.

He handed Linda his reply to read. The airs he gave himself on her behalf fairly took away her breath.

“But, Monsieur, she offers you a great deal of money! And doesn’t this answer sound rather rude?” Linda ventured to suggest.

“Does it? Ah! c’est ca,” he said with a chuckle. “That’s right. To be patronised by de rich people, dat is for de common conjuror. But you and I, we will patronise dem, and dey will think de more of us.”

“Well,” said the girl, with a sigh of relief, “I would rather not go to any grand house. I am glad you don’t want me to.” /

He frowned a little impatiently. He had not told her about the “At Home” at Lady Pattesworth’s yet. He did not mean to tell her till they were actually on their way to it. It never occurred to him that she might seriously oppose him; but there was no use in making her nervous and miserable beforehand.

“As soon as de season has finished, I shall send you to de sea again; or, would you like to go to America, Mademoiselle?” he asked suddenly.

“To America!” she exclaimed, horrified; “no, no. It is much too far; but Nanette would not go! She does not like the sea. You did not mean it, did you, Monsieur?”

“Not at dis vary minute,” he said, laughing. “It was an idea only. You haf not one leetle bit of ambition in you. Mon Dieu! eef I had been born with a face like yours, mon enfant, what would I not haf made out of it? How it ees wasted on you! C’est, â dire, how it would haf been wasted, eef I had not had de cleverness to discover you!”

He smiled while he spoke. Monsieur Moréze always apparently took the most practical view of Linda’s beauty.

If he had been a whit less business-like, she might have found the situation impossible. As it was—and he scoffed at himself for it—it was only Monsieur who occasionally felt that his relations with his beautiful medium were becoming a trifle strained.

“Monsieur,” said Linda, suddenly, “You have been very clever, and it has been all your doing that people have thought me pretty? But—you will not like what I am going to say-”

“You are going to say again dat you hate de people who stare, and dat you would with much more pleasure cook my dinner in de kitchen than stand on de stage,” said Monsieur Mor6ze, “and dis time I answer you differently.”

He took up the fragments of Mrs. Grim-wood Atkinson’s note, and began to fold the tom bits into cocked hats while he spoke.

“You hate it still. Vary well, I also; ees it not strange? I also could sometimes strangle de people who stare at you. It ees foolish of you, mon enfant; and, for me, it does show dat I am in my second childhood.”

He bent his head over his deft fingers.

“But we will haf one great success!” he resumed. “On dat I haf set my heart and aprds-”

“And afterward,” said Linda.

“I am, perhaps, a leetle tired of playing master. How eef we changed de rdles, hein?” he said; but he spoke in so low a tone that she could scarcely catch the words. Then he sprang to his feet and swept the cocked-hat. notes into the fire. “Go out with Nanette and get some colour in your face before the evening,” he cried. “We will not consider de afterwards yet.”

Linda went out, though not with Nanette, and walked toward the river. Once she had disliked walking alone; now—and this was part of a change that had come over her of late—she found her own thoughts excellent and charming companions.

Nanette watched her from the window, with a smile that was for Linda, and a sigh that was for herself.

“Monsieur would be very angry if he were to know; but a girl should have her chance,” Nanette thought. Her best chance of happiness lay in the possibility of a safe and respectable marriage. Nanette had no great liking for John Maclean, and she knew that he distrusted her; but she trusted him absolutely.

The old Frenchwoman had no book learning, but she was not unlearned. Possibly she read men all the better because she had never read books.

The acuteness of some natural instincts becomes dulled by civilisation; but Nanette’s shrewd, kindly brown eyes recognised minute signs of character, as unerringly as a savage will discover the traces of a footprint. She had kept a small cafe in the Strand, till she grew too old for the work, and she had never made mistakes about her customers. She knew that she was making no mistake now.

Linda had had many admirers; one man among them meant to be her husband.

It is almost needless to say that John had “found the when and where” pretty often since that first meeting in the theatre. As for the “why,” that was in the eternal order of life, and was not of his inventing at all!

That Monsieur Mor6ze had not yet discovered what was going on, was probably owing to the direct interposition of Our Lady.

Nanette filled the little blue vase with the best flowers she could buy, while John’s courtship was in progress. She spent a great deal more than she could afford on roses and lilies, though all the time she was sorely jealous of John.

The Scotchman would have been horrified if he had known of her transactions on his behalf! I am not sure that he would not have considered the flowers an offering to idols.

As for the sacrifice and love and renunciation that they represented—most inadequately—perhaps those did not appear absurd in Heaven, after all.

Only two months had passed since Linda had first seen John Maclean; but at eighteen one lives fast, and the world can change its colour completely in two months. John was her declared lover now, and Linda was very happy, and very simply and naturally in love. She smiled to herself while she walked along, and her feet seemed to be keeping pace to a wonderfully beautiful tune. Her face was so bright that more than one person turned to look again at her, and smiled in sympathy.

Fortunately the world has not yet outgrown that story which is as old as the sunrise, and as new as the new day.

Whatever harm Monsieur Moréze had, or had not done to her, he had, at any rate, helped rather to preserve than to destroy the simplicity of her character.

As for John, who had told her that she had better have starved than put her soul into any man’s hands, his verdict, like most moral judgments, was capable of modifications.

It was shocking enough that her will should be mastered by a French trickster, but, when she married an honest Scotchman; why, of course, that would be quite another matter, and the wife would naturally set her conscience by her husband’s.

That Linda would always be ruled by some one was taken for granted by each of the men who held rival influence over her life. To a certain extent, no doubt, they were right; yet she was destined to surprise them both.

John Maclean waited for Linda by the river. He walked up and down by Cleopatra’s needle with rather an anxious face.

It was a new thing to John to be anxious about any one, but he was actually almost foolishly nervous about Linda. He had splendid health, and had always prided himself on his common-sense. He had, in fact, been aggressively unsentimental. He felt himself, that it was an extraordinary thing that this slip of a lass should have changed the whole current of his life! He had not reckoned on marrying; at any rate, not for years to come: yet he knew now that he should never have a mind at peace till the girl he loved should be his wife.

There was no iniquity of which he did not believe the Frenchman capable. He lay awake at nights meditating on all the evil things that might possibly befall his little love. Yet, when he would fain have warned her explicitly, an indefinable instinct made him hesitate.

He was not aware that he had any great reverence for women; but, for very shame, he could not tell Linda of his fears, and her purity and innocence were sacred to him as the innocence of a child.

On this especial evening she was three minutes late, and John had suffered such an infinity of torture on her behalf, that he was almost aggrieved at the sight of happiness in her face.

“It’s all verra well for you,” he said; “but it’s no play to me, when you keep me waiting. How will I be sure that that scoundrel has not spirited you off to Jericho? or sent you into a seven years’ trance, or—or done worse still?” said John, gloomily.

He held her hand so tightly that Linda gave a little cry of pain.

“Don’t! You hurt me, John! Monsieur Moréze isn’t a scoundrel. Why, I wouldn’t be here now if it hadn’t been for him! but I’m behaving very badly to him, and I ought to tell him all about you.”

The last words came out breathlessly. Linda could not hear to displease any one. Her gratitude and her love were at variance just now.

The two turned and walked along the Embankment.

“You don’t really know how good he is,” said Linda, softly.

“I know enough,” John replied grimly.

More than one bit of evil knowledge was in his mind. He had heard stories of Monsieur Moréze; stories that drove him mad with disgust and anger. He could notretail them to Linda, but he solaced himself by picturing with relish the reception he would give the conjuror, if ever he should dare to come near Mrs. John Maclean.

In the meantime, Linda was not yet Mrs. Maclean, and John was shrewd enough to see that prudence was their only safe policy at present, and that there was small chance of her ever obtaining that safe and enviable position if she were to confess her intentions to her self-appointed guardian. His horror of Monsieur Moréze was almost superstitiously strong. He first commanded, and finally besought Linda not to betray herself.

“Let me make you my wife,” he said, “and then we’ll not be afraid. It’s not all the foreigners in creation, with the devil to back ’em, shall take you away from me! But if you tell him now, it’s well I know I’ll never set eyes on you again. Not even if I were to break into his house to find you. It’s just vanished into thin air you’d be, wi’ not a scrap of ye left behind!”

“But he’s been so kind to me,” said Linda for the hundredth time.

She felt momentarily rather helpless. It is proverbially difficult to convince any man against his will; when the man hails from north of the Tweed it is impossible.

“I very nearly told him to-day—only, I was afraid,” she added.

“It was your good angel stopped you, my dear,” cried John.

He took off his hat and mopped his face with his handkerchief. He was no coward, but that last bit of information took his breath away.

“Oh, no, John! I think it was my bad angel,” Linda cried, with a soft laugh.

She put her hand on his arm as they stood together looking up the river towards Westminster.

A grey haze hung over the water softening the outline of the Abbey’s grey tower, but it was only a fine weather haze, grateful after the heat of the day, and the sun glinted through it now and then, sending shimmering flecks of light on our slow-flowing river.

Linda looked with happy eyes at the crowded boats going citywards.

“It feels as if one were in a beautiful fairy story—most too good to be true, don’t it?” she said, under her breath.

“No!” said John, sharply.

He put his arm round her and drew her close to him. He could not have explained the sensation, but he had always a dim idea that he was fighting with impalpable powers for the possession of this girl. The very qualities that fascinated him, yet, at times, doubled his abiding and haunting sense of insecurity. Deep down, under all his sturdy, practical common-sense, lay a vein of belief in the supernatural, as well as a vein of tenderness. Linda had touched his innermost heart.

“No! it’s a deal better than such moonshine. Fairy stories and dreams have nothing to do with you and me, and it’s not a bit over good for truth. Why, it happens every day that a man looks at a maid and . wants her for his wife,” ^said John, sturdily, and then his face flushed hotly. “Though not such a maid as you, my darling,” he whispered. And the whisper was for her alone. It was to be hoped the Fates heard only the first part of the sentence. It is un lucky to call oneself too blessed.

“I get a sort of a scare that you’ll slip away from me; but I know that’s all just nonsense,” he said, laughing shamefacedly.

“It’s altogether mighty queer, I think; but I couldn’t do without you now, not if I tried ever so; and just so soon as ever we can manage it we’ll go before the minister, eh?”

“When you like,” said Linda. “And,” she added gently, “I shall tell Monsieur Moréze this very evening.”

John stared, and then laughed ruefully. He was not quite certain whether to be angry or not. The moment before, her ready acquiescence, her almost childish yielding to his wishes, had seemed to him the sweetest thing in the world. She was so candid and simple, so sure both of him and of herself.

“But, after all, you like your own way,” he cried. “Why I believe you are even a bit obstinate, Linda!”

“No, I’m not; but I mind so many things that you don’t know about,” she said.

She hesitated a second, and then began to tell him of her first meeting with the conjuror. She was painfully and morbidly ashamed of the story, and John could feel that she was trembling when she narrated it.

John’s judgment seldom at that period of his life erred on the side of leniency; but, at least, he was man enough to let his tenderness gain the day where this girl was concerned.

“It is all over long ago, my dear,” he said, with unwonted gentleness. “And God knows it would be better for most of us, if the worst sin we had on our conscience was no more than just the sin of a bit frightened bairn.”

“That was it,” said Linda. “I was frightened, and there wasn’t no one to stand by me; and now I have you.”

She looked up at him with a smile that made John forget all about the obstinacy.

“I haven’t no excuse for being a coward now!” she murmured. “Oh, John, when one is so very, very happy-” She broke off; it is so impossible to explain the sense of indebtedness that a great joy brings with it.

“And do you know that Monsieur Moréze has never reminded me of that; not even by a word or look!” she said.

“Reminded you! Why it was every bit his own fault. What business had he to leave parcels full of temptations about?” cried John wrathfully. “Or to come spying and creeping after you in the dark! Hallo! What’s the matter? What made you start like that?”

The girl glanced round nervously.

“The clock striking made me jump,” she said, “and it blows cold from the water. It is time we went back, John. It wants but two hours to the time the performance begins, and I’ve got my dress to change.”

John gave an exclamation of disgust. He hated the recollection of the performance. He turned away from the river with a sigh.

“On the day that you are safely my wife,” he said, “I’ll put gold in the chapel plate if I stint for a month for it.”

Old Nanny had promised the Virgin wax candles on Linda’s behalf, hut possibly they meant much the same thing.

John and Linda walked homewards, talking as they went. Linda’s spirits had been momentarily overclouded, but she was happy again now. As for John, he was learning all sorts of lessons in the best school in the world. They passed a timber-yard on their way; the great beams of Jwood were piled up higher than a man’s head. Lovers on the Embankment are a common enough sight, but a man standing in the shadow of the wood-stack had been for some time watching them rather intently.

He drew back, so that he was just out of sight when Linda crossed the road. Then he stepped forward again, and looked after them, shrugged his shoulders, and glanced at the time.

“She will be late if she does not hurry,” he said. “Par Dieu, and I thought that she was as easy to see through as the glass of my watch! But it appears that a woman, even the simplest, is more than a match for any one of us.”

CHAPTER VI

Linda parted with John Maclean at the corner of the street in which the conjuror, lived, and ran home, and upstairs to Nanette.

Nanette grunted discontentedly.

“How late you are!” she said. “You come in breathless, and with kisses and love-making written all over you! You will have your eggs in the fire one fine morning, mon chou; and it is you who will have fear at the blaze. I am in terror each day lest monsieur should guess.”

Linda laughed, and put both hands to her hot cheeks.

“I do not care who knows,” she said.

She took off her dress, and began brushing her hair before the looking-glass.

Her pretty white shoulders were no longer thin, and had lost their trick of stooping. Her voice had a merrier and more girlish ring in it than heretofore.

“Don’t be cross, Nanny,” she said coaxingly; “I don’t like it when you are cross. I am so sorry I wasn’t in before. I ran all the way down the street to make up the lost time. That is what makes my cheeks burn.”

“Ah! that and other things,” Nanette muttered.

Linda went behind the Frenchwoman’s chair, and put her bare arms round Nanette’s neck, the brush and comb still in her hands.

“Nanny! However am I to get dressed if you don’t help me? You know that I must not be late, I wouldn’t keep Monsieur Moréze waiting—no, not for the world; and him so good to me, though John is always trying to persuade me that he isn’t.”

Nanette pulled Linda’s arms apart, and twisted round in her chair.

“Which is it?” she asked solemnly. “Voyez-vous, it is one man or the other; but both! no! that you can not Your Mr. Mac-lean has reason.” —-

“No, he hasn’t,” said Linda. “John doesn’t understand about Monsieur Moréze. He thinks—oh, I don’t know what dreadful things he doesn’t think. He-”

“Depéche toi, Mademoiselle!”

The man’s voice broke in on their colloquy. The women looked at each other in dismay; then Linda scrambled into her white dress with a celerity worthy of Monsieur Moréze himself, Nanette helping her. She looked even prettier than usual, Nanette thought, in spite of the hurried toilette. Only, when she was quite ready, and was standing with her hand on the door handle, there crossed her face for one instant the old strained anxious look, the shadow of her miserable childhood.

“Nanny, dear,” she whispered under her breath, “I had a sort of a terror when I was by the river. A feeling as if some one were watching us. You—you don’t think it meant anything, do you? ”

“No, no! You will have enough to do if you stop to count all your silly fancies,” said Nanette.

The girl laughed again, and ran downstairs. The old woman took up her work with a sigh. y “The wax candles shall measure three inches round!” said she.

Monsieur Moréze was decidedly in a bad temper that evening. Linda found it utterly impossible to “tell him about John” while they were driving to the hall, and he was constantly putting his head out of the cab window, urging the cabman to drive faster.

His nervous irritability expended itself chiefly in abuse of the driver and the horse, for he knew better than to frighten his medium just before a seance; nevertheless, she felt that he was angry.

For once Monsieur Moréze would have found some satisfaction in venting his wrath on his “lady of distinction.”

The strong instincts of protection and kindliness that had been growing in him, since the moment when he had first fought the little maid’s battles with Mrs. Swainson, were overpowered for the time. Monsieur would have liked to mock freely at himself, at Linda, and at the Scotchman.

The girl, who was morbidly sensitive to his moods, was more thankful than usual when the stance was over.

“To-morrow I will tell him,” she promised herself; but, somehow her courage was sinking fast, and it was with an unheroic feeling of relief that she heard him announce to Nanette that he should be absent for a night or two.

He had a little business to attend to , he should probably come back only in time for the Saturday performance. Well, then, “tomorrow” would be a free day, a respite!

Clearly it would be impossible to make confessions to-morrow. On his return he should hear everything.

Linda awoke the next day with a comfortable sense of rest and peace. Her nerves had been rather shaken last night, though she would have found it difficult to explain why, for Monsieur had certainly not scolded her; now he was probably miles away. She would not need to make an effort for at least twenty-four hours.

Her relief was, perhaps, a little inconsistent with her assurance to John and Nanette that she had no fears, that she did not “care” whether Monsieur guessed or not. It is almost impossible to be consistent when one’s reason pulls one way, backed too by gratitude, and one’s natural instinct the other.

Moreover, if one is naturally a coward, the only thing left is to act with as much courage as one can summon. It is only people with iron nerves who can afford to allow to themselves that they are afraid.

It was characteristic of a certain fine quality in the girl that she would not take advantage of the master’s absence to have John inside the house.

“It’s his house, and it wouldn’t be fair,” she said.

She did not even let John know that Monsieur Moréze was away; whereby, oddly enough, she disappointed the conjuror’s expectations.

Monsieur Moréze came back unexpectedly long before the twenty-four hours were over, but he caught no mice at play. Nanette saw his quick glance at the cups and plates on the table, and guessed that he had had his suspicions.

“Mademoiselle is not far off. She has gone to buy a cake for tea,” she said cheerfully. Linda’s scruples, that had seemed to her unnatural and absurd, had evidently been heavensent. “Monsieur will have his tea with us to-day. It is all ready, and la petite will be pleased to see him back so early.”

“She shall have the pleasure at once. I will go to fetch her,” said Monsieur. “How often have I said that she is too much of a celebrity, and much too pretty to be allowed to wander about London alone. Where is she, then?”

“Just across the road at the pastry-cook’s, where I can watch the whole journey there and back,” said Nanette triumphantly.

It was a mercy that the child was alone, especially since Monsieur still looked like a thunder-cloud.

Nanette saw him cross the road, and go into the shop, and she uttered an ejaculation of thankfulness. “The blessed lady certainly guards her,” she thought; “for it might so easily have been otherwise.”

Linda was chatting with the woman who served her. Monsieur Moréze heard her laugh when he entered the shop. Linda was in much better spirits, and laughed more merrily than of yore. The pastry-cook’s boy was staring at her with admiration. Monsieur tweaked the lad’s ear viciously, which caused a slight commotion.

Linda turned round and saw him. “Ah! you have come back, Monsieur,” she said.

“Evidently,” said Monsieur Moréze.

He threw down a shilling on the counter.

“Keep the change; Mademoiselle does not want it,” he said grandly. “Besides,” he added in French to Linda, “You have had a sixpennyworth of conversation.”

Linda blushed, and gathered up her cakes. “I quite forgot that you don’t like me to talk to people.”

They had left the shop now, and he was walking by her side. She turned to him with a little air of apology, her fair face still slightly flushed, her eyes a little anxious, but a smile on her lips. She did not like even the faintest shadow of displeasure, but “Monsieur” was easily mollified as a rule. Then her smile died away all at once; when her eyes met his, she knew that he knew.

“What ees it? Haf you a guilty conscience? But take care where you go,” he said.

He put his hand on hers as they crossed the road. “Without me you would haf been run over; but now you are safe, you will pull your hand away—hein?”

The girl walked on in front of him for a few paces without answering. They turned into a square of old-fashioned, dingy houses that stood back from the thoroughfare.

Here she paused, leaning against the garden paling, her face curiously white.

“You know!” she said. “I can hear in your voice that you know; but I was meaning to tell you myself. Indeed, indeed this is quite true, Monsieur! Every day I’ve meant to tell you, but somehow it—it was difficult. I haven’t wanted to behave badly to you. I wouldn’t have John come to your house while you were away. This very day I have been saying that so soon as ever Monsieur comes home he shall hear everything.”

She clasped and unclasped her fingers while she spoke. Every gesture and every intonation was unconsciously appealing. Yet Monsieur Moréze had expressed no anger. He stood, with bent head, tracing patterns with his stick on the dusty road. At her last words he shrugged his shoulders.

“Your thought was prophetic, for I do now mean to hear evairyting. All de same, I might have waited till de great day dat de priests talk about, when all de secrets are called on de house-tops, eef I had not found out. Where did you meet first your Mr.— Mr. — ah, how does he say it?”

“His name is John Maclean,” said Linda. Somehow the very sound of the words stilled her violent and unaccountable panic.

“I do not know why I was so silly just now. I am not ashamed. I am very proud of John,” she cried.

She made a rather pathetic effort to regain her self-control.

They walked slowly down the length of the square, and Monsieur Moréze proceeded to draw the whole of the story, such as it was, from her, with very little trouble.

“Monsieur” had been angry, and something more than angry, when he had seen her with her lover; now his anger died away. John had, after all, so very small a chance against him. John had hot played on her emotions twice a week, for years, nor held her will captive.

The foolish little tale, too, was so natural. His medium was hound, after all, to fall in love with some one. She was hardly more to blame for that, than for the fever she had had when he had first taken her into his house. Calf love, like measles, is a thing that must be got through. It was highly “inconvenient,” Monsieur thought (as he had thought once before, when the child had so nearly died on his hands), but he ought to have expected it.

So he was partially mollified, though more than once the confessions he extorted made him swear under his breath at the Scotchman, and make comments that jarred on the girl.

Monsieur had never before treated her with anything approaching disrespect. She was, perforce, seeing a side of him that she would very much have preferred to remain blind to. It was her own fault, she said to herself, ruefully enough. She ought not to have had any concealments from him.

“So you met him again in de hall, and did remember at once dat he was de red-headed Monsieur who had made so fine a noise? Mon Dieu! and I was vary„sorry about dat! How she has been shocked and startled, I said to myself. But, after all, you forgave him vary quickly. Mais enfin, to forgive is what a woman most enjoys, hein? And you, perhaps, did not after all so much mind? ”

The sneer in his voice brought the colour to Linda’s cheeks. For a moment she wished for John to defend her. Then she was ashamed of her desire. No, no, she was thankful he was not here. Thankful for the sake of both men.

“I hadn’t anything to forgive. It was only that John didn’t understand,” she said. “He didn’t know that you have been so good to me. He meant to take my part. There aren’t so many people wanting to take trouble for anybody who they think put upon,” cried the girl. “You and him, Monsieur, you are the only two as Fve ever seen go out of their ways to help girls who’ve no claim on them.”

“I and him,” said Monsieur, laughing, in spite of himself. “But he would not feel complimented, your so vary pious and respectable, Monsieur Maclean. You do not say dat to him, hein?”

“Yes, but I do,” said Linda quickly.

She knew, even while she spoke, that Monsieur was less bitter now; she too had a power at her command. She was not proud and conscious of it, as Monsieur was proud of his, but she used it all the same.

There had been a faint suggestion of sadness in his voice; she answered that. She was no mesmerist, able to impose her will; she was only a woman able to touch that “other part” of him.

“Of course I do,” she cried. “Do you fancy I forget? I don’t think I’ve ever forgotten.”

She looked straight before her, with eyes that saw, not this quiet square where the almonds were flowering, but a Bristol lodging-house, and a desperate, frightened child going “out into the streets.”

“I shouldn’t be here now, if you hadn’t been at Mrs. Swainson’s then. I shouldn’t never have had months and years of happiness. I shouldn’t have had John,” said Linda, softly. “However long I live I won’t forget.”

Her face, while she spoke, was transfigured with the joy that comes once in a lifetime.

Monsieur Moréze turned his head away, and spoke without looking at her.

“It is all vary pretty. I wish you would keep dat expression when we are on de stage; it ees like church music and de smell of incense. But it was not yesterday dat I was born. Gratitude ees a beautiful sentiment. I am old enough to haf learnt what does happen to de beautiful sentiments when dey come in de way of de lover. What does your so excellent Scotchman say to it, hein?”

“John does not understand,” said Linda, evasively.

“Which is where I haf de advantage,” said Monsieur Moréze. “See now, it ees my turn to talk, and I haf someting to say to you. It ees not quite what I did mean to say at first, and you need not be afraid; it ees only common sense I will talk to you. Leesten, Linda! When I did take you away with me, it was because I did see you would pay me. Bien! I had reason. I generally haf. But I had even more right than I knew at first. You are without any doubt a vary wonderful success. With Hélène—who was also a good medium in her way—I did not make one quarter de stir. You are made for it. You haf a constitution quite peculiar, and you are also vary pretty. It ees, den, matter of course dat I do not wish you to marry. Q’a va sans dire—is it not so?”

He paused for an answer, but got none, and went on again rapidly. “Dat ees my view. You see I do tell you plain, you would be a loss to me. I haf nevair before found ainy one so sensitive. With you I can do ainything. I do not need to touch or even be in de same room with you. I could without doubt make you feel what I do choose, eef I had de whole of England between, or eef, for example, you were in Scotland, and I standing in dis square in London.”

Again he paused for a moment, and his companion shivered.

She understood suddenly and fully what John had meant, when he had told her that she had “ better have starved.”

The conjuror’s words struck her very hard. They were significant, and they were terribly true.

“Dat also is so, n’est ce pas?” he said again insistently. “But yes, you know it! I ‘ haf so many times experimented on you, dat you do answer to a thought. You are a very good medium, and you haf been at ease and in comfort with me.”

Linda made a gesture of assent. The ease and the comfort had been dearly bought!

“But a good wife to ce Monsieur, dat you would not be, nor at ease, nor in comfort with him,” he went on. “Ah, you look as eef I were putting a knife into you. After all, I am not a beast, dat I should tell you dis to gif you pain. It ees because it ees de truth I say it. One day I see you walk by de river, Linda. I say to myself, ‘Voilã la petite, who will go de way of all women.’ All of dem either do make fools of men, or else dey are made fools of. If it ees to de last kind that dey belong, then they repent themselves; generally too late.”

Linda interrupted with a smile that had a touch of pride in it.

“Other girls may repent,” she said; “but John is not like other men.”

And Monsieur Moréze stretched out his hands, and shrugged his shoulders, with an indescribable grimace.

“Without doubt!” he cried.

“I do not suppose he ees of de same stuff, mon enfant. De person who makes of us fools ees nevair in de least like all de rest! But you haf reason so far; he does mean to marry you.

“Yes, I haf found out all about him. Your Monsieur ees serious. He ees serious to distraction. He ees vary respectable. He does support a mother and a sister already. For money? he has not too much, but he ees careful. When he does spread his porridge Vary thin, it does just go round de family at present. With four, one will haf always hunger. You will perhaps take dat in turn.

I gif you de warning, however, dat to haf hunger does not at all become you, nor ees it good for de temper. Monsieur Maclean ees not like other men, hein? Good! dat ees lucky; for he will need to be vary different, eef he does still smile on you, when he see you with red eyes, and does feel himself pinched. Shall I tell you what it will be when you haf been a year tiiarried to him? (We will gif him one whole year because he ees a young man so extraordinary.)

“To begin de story. De old mother already does not lof you—ees it not so? Ah, but dat too goes without saying; it ees not to wonder at. Till de day when her son saw you, he consulted her de first of all. He was a vary good son (you see I am quite fair to him). When you appeared, it was de young against de old, de hot, new lof pushing against de affection dat ees of years. De hot new lof wins; de old woman must gif way. Now, voyez vous, petite, you believe it ees you haf conquered. I, I tell you no! It is not you at all. It is only de nature. De old woman ees stronger than you, but she ees only not so strong as de man’s own passions. He has nevair made lof till he meets you; it ees not to marvel at dat he catches de fever badly. De mothers do not always comprehend dat; de girls do nevair understand it, unless it ees de bad ones; mais, enfin, c’est vrai. Bien! de excellent Monsieur has been married a year. It ees no longer new to him to haf a wife; his lof ees no longer on de bubble; but dere ees still an extra mouth to feed; in fact (pardon me, if you please), dere are probably now two. You are now always tired, your back does always ache; but you do de vary best you can to please him, and de mother and de sister.”

Monsieur made a dramatic pause; he was really struck by the verisimilitude of his own picture.

“It is now dat de mother will remember dat she did not wish him to marry you, dat . you haf brought him not one penny, dat you had not a name! You are not strong even to sweep and dust and cook; in such a house you are no good at all. She will tell you dat —often and often; and she will be right. For Monsieur Maclean, I do not say dat he will in de least ill-use you. No, I gif him evairy credit. He will do his duty (unless you make him jealous, which would be another story), but he will see you no more pretty when de colour and de figure are gone, and at bottom he ees hard, he ees vary like his mother. Haf I not said she, after all, is stronger than you? Well, he will see at last dat she had reason. It will be a comfort to her; she will forgif him then. To be right is always a satisfaction, even when de porridge will not go round. For you, perhaps, it will hardly be so consoling. Mais, enfin, some one must always go to de wall, and it will be your turn.”

“I don’t believe it! Oh, I don’t believe it!” cried Linda; but the very vehemence of her denial belied her words.

Even while he spoke, her unwilling eyes pictured the future he prophesied.

“Don’t tell me about it,” she cried. “Oh,

Monsieur, let me be happy!” She spoke piteously, with an almost childish pathos.

Monsieur Moréze could easily impress her; it is even possible that he had half impressed himself!

For his own sake he had not the slightest intention of letting her John carry her off; but he told himself that it was really rather fortunate for Linda that the marriage was not in his programme.

“Ah, but it ees I who do guard your happiness,” he said. “To marry Monsieur Maclean would not at all suit you. It is I who am an angel vary much in disguise! Ah! you do not think so now, but I assure you, petite, dat I do feel de wings sprouting! Eegardez done; eef you were as strong as dat cart-horse, who pulls de coals along in front of us, and eef your skin were also so tough as his, in dat case it would perhaps be not so bad for you to marry de poor man wid de red hair. As it ees, de load would break your back, and de temper your heart. One has but to look at him to see de last.

Why do I tell you? But to show you what you haf escaped.”

“But I have not,” cried Linda with sudden energy.

She threw out both hands as if she were trying to break some invisible fetter. “Monsieur, my life is mine,” she exclaimed; “not any one else’s. It ain’t yours, it ain’t even John’s. It’s mine; and if everything you say is going to happen, and ten times worse, yet I’ll do as I like with it. It will be worth while.”

They were still walking up and down the quiet square, where she had chosen to fight the unequal contest out. Monseiur Moréze turned round and lifted his hat with a mock homage, that had yet a touch of reality about it. “Brava,” he said, “but you are not, after all, a coward, Linde! See now, dat was meant for a—what ees de word?—a fling down of de glove—a defiance? Ah, dat ees it. A defiance, hein? And, eef I were quite de devil your monsieur does tink me, I might pick it up and say, “Try den, if you will, which ees stronger—you, who I can command any minute of de day, or I. Mon Dieu! Your monsieur would be bold eef he did take for a wife a woman who must come eef I were to call her, and must speak with my words eef I choose. But, after all, I do not want to quarrel. I am not so cruel. We will make a fair bargain, and dere shall be no anger in it. Come; you will promise me to take de time to consider all de wise words I haf said. For one month you will not see Monsieur Maclean, and I—I will not say one more word against him till de month is over. Shall it be so?”

He smiled, not unkindly, and held out his hand.

That reckless speech of hers, that rather despairing defiance, had actually touched him. Moreover, Linda’s implicit belief in the magnitude of his power always gratified his self-esteem.

“We have not been bad friends, and for me, I do much prefer dat you should like me,” he said. “Will you promise? I advise it.”

Linda hesitated for a moment, then nodded in assent. She did not take his hand; his hardly veiled threats had touched her too nearly.

As for Monsieur Moréze, he had recovered both temper and spirits.

“Good! dat ees right; and I trust you, petite,” he said cheerfully. “At present we are good friends once more. We will drive home now, for you look white as the pavement. Ah, but eef you were to marry de Scotchman, you would haf always to walk.”

He signalled to a hansom, and jumped in beside her. Monsieur Moréze was lavish over small sums. On the whole, he was pleased with himself. Indeed, there was small doubt on which side of the scale the so-called “bargain” dipped.

“But if, with a whole month to work in, I cannot outwit the Scotchman, I shall deserve to lose,” he reflected.

CHAPTER VII

Linda went home with indignation in her heart.

She had never before felt angry with Monsieur Moréze; it was a new sensation.

“Your John would be bold eef he did take for a wife a woman who must come eef I call her, and must speak with my words, eef I choose.”

It was that hardly veiled threat that had roused her.

Monsieur Moréze should have known better than to threaten a woman. There is scarcely any surer means of awakening her defiance. He had boasted a little too much. The worst of playing to a mob is that the player loses in delicacy; his effects become too strong.

Linda was haunted by horrible visions that were but the shadows and reflections of her waking thoughts.

In her dreams she dismissed John in despite of herself; she tried to entreat him to stay, and found, to her horror, that her tongue, compelled to do the conjuror’s will, was bidding him to go. One night she woke to find herself in the hall.

The sensation of cold stones against her bare feet had awakened her.

She went back to her room shivering.

She could rest no more. The vague terrors that oppressed her drove her to her knees.

She knelt under the picture of the Madonna before which a night-light was burning.

The eternal goodness that we cling to, that shows itself to us men and women in guises so diverse, was most manifest to Linda as a protecting and parental power.

John would have been horrified at her “leaning to Papistry,” but the picture of mother and child helped to quiet her fears.

Life was not all made up of mysterious, unnatural influences. It meant the honest lore of an upright man, and the blessed burden of children, and the effort to be good!

When she rose from her knees Nanette called softly to her from her comer of the room.

“Come here, mon ange, I’ve something to say to you.”

Linda ran across to her, and sat on the bed, and the old woman talked in an eager whisper.

The dawn, peering into that funny little French room in the heart of London, found the two still in earnest confabulation.

Nanette sitting bolt upright, her brown face framed in a starched and pleated nightcap; Linda with her hair loose on her shoulders, looking in her straight white night-gown, like the angel Nanette had called her, but with a most human and unangelic anxiety at her heart.

“She said so. I am telling you her very words: ‘ I’ve come to give your little saint a warning,’ she said. ‘ Tell her that if she wants to marry her lover, she’d best be quick about it, or she’ll find the sea between.’ Now, the woman’s got no love for you, ma cherie, but I think that what she told me is the truth, for she does not wish Monsieur to carry you off, for her own sake. She is mad—absolutely mad about him. Mon Dieu, she cannot understand when she has no more chance; when a man is dead sick of her! As for Monsieur, he is not without sense, though he may amuse himself. He would never take Hélène abroad, though that was what she always wanted. With you he is different. See now, I have told you everything, petite. May Mary Mother protect me on the day when Monsieur finds me out!”

The light had broadened now; the carts were beginning to rattle by.

Linda got off the bed, and pulled up the window-blinds, and threw open the window.

“Oh dear! I am glad the morning has come!” she cried. “Things seem more natural-like in daylight. Nanny, if Monsieur Moréze ever shows one sign of meaning to take me away, I know what I’ll do; but till he does, I’ll keep my promise to him.”

She put her head out of the window. The sky showed clear and primrose-coloured above the smoke of chimneys.

“I mayn’t write to you, but good-morning, good-morning to you, John,” she whispered.

“What are you saying?” asked Nanette.

“It’s going to be very fine,” said Linda. “The days are much more sunshiny than they used to be, I think.”

Nanette gave an odd little grunt, and turned over on her side.

“Then, you’d better make your hay,” she said. “But for me—I am going to sleep.”

Mr. Schonenwetter was just about to put up his shutters one August night, when a woman stumbled over the doorstep, and then came hurriedly in.

Even before he saw her face, Aaron noticed that she was possessed by some strong emotion. She walked across the shop, and leaned her arms on the counter.

There was a freedom in her movements, there was a restless excitement in the tones of her voice, that Aaron, at the first glance, attributed to the influence of drink; at the second, to anger or grief.

“I’ve something to sell,” said she.

“Couldn’t come to a better shop, my dear,” answered the Jew cheerfully. Then, with quickened interest, he recognised the conjuror’s ex-medium. “There’s that little account between us,” he said; “but let’s see what you’ve brought.”

“You’ll have to be content with hearing it,” said the woman. She leaned forward and whispered in his ear: “I’ve got a secret that Monsieur Moréze would give his eyes to know. He has shut his door against me. Me that was worth-”

“Yes, yes,” said the Jew impatiently. “We’ve heard all that. He treated you shameful, and showed his bad taste—eh? Well, what’s the secret? Ah, you know you’re longing to tell.”

Hélène looked at him defiantly; her mood changed and shifted like a weathercock.

“I don’t know that I will after all,” she cried. “I ain’t a Jew to wring my living out of other people’s heart-breaks. I don’t want your dirty money.”

“It’s not been offered you yet, my dear,” said Aaron drily. “She must have been drinking, after all,” he reflected. “She’ll lose her beauty if she goes on on that tack.”

He observed her torn dress, and split boots, and draggled bonnet. She was certainly hard-up. Should he turn her out of the shop? No, he might as well hear the secret. It was probably worthless, but one never knew in what unlikely places one might not happen on a treasure-trove. Mr. Schonenwetter had dealt in “secrets,” and found them profitable before now.

“I suppose you came for something,” he said. “You’re a bit excited to-night. Hadn’t you better think what it was you wanted?”

Hélène put her hands to her head. Then she looked up with suddenly kindling eyes.

“I want to see him; I want another chance,” she cried. She was handsome still. At that moment she was even beautiful, with the beauty of a tragedy queen.

“Now, upon my soul,” said Aaron, with half-mocking admiration, “if I were in the Frenchman’s shoes you shouldn’t ask twice. But I am not, and he ain’t so accommodating as I am. You see you wounded his vanity, which is easier reached than his heart, but which don’t heal as quick.”

“Get me into the house where I can speak to him,” said Hélène, “and I’ll make him listen yet.”

Aaron smiled at the vanity of her hope. It was absurd that she should not recognise that any attempt to re-instate herself by an appeal to the conjuror’s feelings was ludicrous in its futility. Nevertheless, it was easy to promise the thing she asked, and his ears itched to hear her secret.

“It is a dangerous game for me to play,” he said. “Monsieur Moréze ain’t altogether a safe gentleman to meddle with. But—ah you know how to get round us men, Miss Hélène. I’ll do what I can for you—that’s to say, when I’ve heard the whole story. Let’s consult about it comfortably, my dear, for I shan’t have any more customers to-night, and, I take it, you’ve your time at your disposal now—only too much so, eh?”

He led her into the back room, and placed her in a high, carved chair, while he lighted the gas-jet above her. As she leaned back he noticed that she was thinner, that she stopped to cough in the midst of every sentence, and that her hands were hot and dry.

She did not tell a story connectedly, but the Jew, from long practice, was clever at sifting details, and apt to discriminate between the gist of a statement and its embellishments. He let her talk on, and drew his own conclusions.

First came the oft-repeated account of her old triumphs, and of her quarrel with the conjuror. Of how she had been justified (a point proved by many complimentary anecdotes) in telling him he would be nothing without her; of how she had threatened to leave him, but had not expected him to be mad enough to take her at her word; of how a cruel chance had so infatuated the public that his rashness remained, alas! unpunished; while her mistake was bitterly brought home to her.

She described how she had followed him one evening, and how he had laughed and threatened to appeal to the police to protect “de helpless foreigner.” The girl by his side had been shocked, and had remonstrated. Her pity had stung Hélène more sharply than had his scorn.

“I went after them to Emperor’s Hall and hissed him,” she said. “He didn’t like that. Oh, I know how it excites him to be hissed. I made all the noise I could, and I wished I could make more. I think I was a bit lightheaded with rage. When I saw that little white idiot in the ‘Marvellous experiment with a dagger,’ I was that angry with her— there—set up in my place, that I called out ‘ Shame ’ at the top of my voice.”

“A man standing behind me (I’d heard him breathing hard and shuffling his feet before) joined in all of a sudden and shouted too. He jumped up all in a fuss, his face nearly as red as his hair, and went blundering on to the stage. I didn’t wait to see the end; I went out. It don’t seem as if I could sit still long anywhere. I get a kind of a ‘driven ’ feeling that—”

“Yes, yes,” said Aaron, interrupting hastily, foreseeing another divergence, “we know all about your feelings. What happened next?”

Hélène stretched her arms out wide, with a weary hysterical laugh.

“He knows all about that!” she cried. He knows all that! Listen to him; he hasn’t got a heart that’s as big as a dried filbert; but he quite understands all that!”

Aaron looked at her suspiciously, Héléne was decidedly volcanic to-night. He edged a little further away.

It was odd to reflect on how she’must have followed the Frenchman! Watching his outgoings and incomings, growing ever thinner and poorer, and more feverishly eager!

Women were curiously made. Worth the study—even the worst of them.

If Monsieur Moréze did not mind what he was about, he would be stabbed in the street one of these days. She was just the sort to do that kind of thing, Aaron reflected. A dangerous animal to have driven in a corner.

“Well, my dear, so you went into the street, and then?” he said softly.

“I walked about, up and down,” said Hélène, “and then I changed my mind and tried to get in again, but I hadn’t another shilling in my pocket, and that’s his fault, d-n him, and hers!—and presently the Scotchman, him who made all the row, comes quick into the street, and when he sees me, he holds out his hand and he says to me, all out of breath like, and with his eyes shining, “I’m glad there was one woman in that sink of iniquity who had not the heart to sit still and look on. I honour you for it, miss.’ I don’t know what he meant,” added Hélène, “ unless he was fool enough to think the girl was really being hurt; I daresay he was. But it don’t matter. Not that he’s altogether a silly, either.”

“Far from it, I should think,” said Aaron; “he is evidently a man of taste.”

“Oh, it ain’t me, he’s after,” said Hélène; “and about that girl, he’s as stupid as the rest of them. I don’t know what nonsense he did not talk. Something about rescuing her from such a life, and it’s being the ruin of her soul and body, and about her being no more than a child; though she’s eighteen, if she’s a day, and I’ll be bound she’s not lived a year with Monsieur Moréze for nothing, though she does look as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But this Scotchman ain’t the only one she’s taken in with her soft ways. Why, there’s a dozen at least I’ve seen at the stage-door waiting for her coming out. Not but what that’s Monsieur Moréze’s doing as much as hers. It’s the mystery and the fuss he makes over her, hurrying her into the cab without allowing a word with any one; that’s what it is, for she ain’t even pretty.”

“He’s sharp enough,” said Aaron; “I don’t know any one that understands changing the metals better—copper into silver, and silver into gold. It ain’t only on the boards that he does that.”

“Ah!” said Helene, with growing excitement, “but he’s found his match for all his sharpness. She’s sold him! Little hypocrite.”

“Eh, what?” cried Aaron, “I always thought that girl was a deep one. It stands to reason, as you say; no one could be such an innocent as she’s by way of being; but if she’s outwitted him—upon my word, I ain’t sure she’s as wise as she is clever; for there’ll be the devil to pay, she’ll find. He don’t forget in a hurry.”

“He certainly don’t,” said Hélène bitterly; “and she knows it too. She’s in mortal terror of him. She’s as great a coward as ever I saw. If I played her game, at least I’d play it well; but she shilly-shallies till her lover would have given her up before now, if he wasn’t as obstinate as a mule. It’s all obstinacy. He’s determined Monsieur Moréze shan’t have her, and he’s got it in his head that she’s ill-used, for all she tells him to the contrary. Ill-used! Why, Monsieur Moréze gives her every dress she puts on, and he treats her as if she was a princess. He would not let me look at her if he could help it.”

“You said, ‘for all she tells him,’” said Aaron. “Her friend has done more than look, then.”

“He’s done more than look for this month past,” said Helene, with a short laugh. “He’s met her most days; and, if he’d had his way, he’d have married her first, and told the conjuror afterwards. But no; she wouldn’t have that. She cried, and talked about deceiving the man who had been kind to her, and she wouldn’t run away from him, and yet she did not dare tell him. At the last out the whole story comes somehow—I don’t know how—and says she: ‘ If you please, I’m going to be married.’”

Aaron whistled. “I thought you said she was a coward,” he remarked.

“So she is; but she’s a little stupid too,” cried Hélène; “and whatever he sees in her, I-”

“Yes, yes; but the point, my dear, the point!” said Aaron. “So she told him the story, and then? Eh?”

Hélène stared stupidly for a minute, and put her hand to her head again. She found it difficult to relate anything connectedly. The curious, horrible fact that the conjuror would have no more to do with her was so much more important than anything else, that it kept looming up, dwarfing all other facts.

Hélène could not accept the inevitable. She could only fight against it spasmodically and unreasonably. She had fought against it for two years, growing older and weaker in the struggle.

“Go on, go on. What did he say?” said Aaron, whose eyes were twinkling with curiosity.

“I don’t know, and it don’t matter,” said Hélène. “P’raps he told her lies; perhaps he didn’t. It wouldn’t hardly be worth his while to say much to that little milk-faced slip of a thing, I should think; but, whatever he said, he meant to take her to New York. I found out that much. And whether she liked it or no. Now, I put it to you, Mr. Schonenwetter, which of us two ought to go to America—her or me? and which-”

“Oh! of course there ain’t no comparison between you,” interposed Aaron judiciously. “But did she get wind of his little game? or did the lover come to the rescue— eh? or is he still meaning to take his pretty dear?”

“She ain’t his,” said Hélène quickly, “nor never was. She’s got no more blood than a fish. She plays her see-saw between the two just as long as she can. She won’t see her lover because of some ridiculous promise that, she says, she’s given her master; and yet she’s scared at the thought of giving him up; till, all of a sudden, the conjuror mentions, by the way, that he means to take her to Liverpool for a change of air (she’s been looking a bit pastier than usual), and that startled her. I’d given her a hint as to what his intentions was, and it seems to have come over her all at once that there wasn’t no time to lose. She first gives him the slip, and is off—this very afternoon!”

Aaron chuckled. “So that baby-faced girl has been one too many for our friend,” he cried. “ Now I should have thought him quite clever enough to keep a cage-door shut if he chose. It’s odd, ain’t it? I never fancied him much of a fool.”

“No more he is,” said Hélène, with a quick sobbing breath; “but she’s the only one he ever believed in—and that’s done it.”

Aaron’s hard, clear eyes twinkled in the gaslight. Her despair did not touch, but it interested him, as a curious fact in natural history. He was a keen observer of other people’s passions, and had plenty of acuteness, though little sympathy.

“This is a very interesting story, Miss Hélène, but I don’t see much secret about it. I suppose Monsieur Moréze knows by now that, for the second time in his career, he’s been thrown over at the last moment? Oh! why there’s an at-home at Lady Pattesworth’s to-night.”

Hélène nodded. “That’s all he was waiting for,” she said; “he would not miss that; he was determined to go. It’s what he has always wanted. As soon as ever it was oyer he meant to be off—medium and all. But he don’t know where she is now and he’d give”—an odd smile came over her face— “he’d give his eyes to catch her. But he won’t! I could tell him, but it has never come across him to ask me. I’m of no account now! I’m not!”

“Where is she?” asked Aaron eagerly. And Hélène laughed.

“That’s what I’ve got to sell,” she said. “Oh! it’s worth something. He’ll give a pretty penny to whoever can tell him. But I don’t want no money. I shan’t require it no more. Some one else will keep me after to-night. You may have the secret and sell it as dear as you can, if you’ll just let me into that there grand house this evening. I’d like to see him there! Fancy now! the big drawing-room, and the lights, and the flowers, and all the ladies waiting. He wasn’t satisfied with the Hall; not with all the money he made! Fancy it! he’ll have got his wish, and no medium there. For you shan’t have charge of her yet, Mr. Schonenwetter; not till the party has begun. What do you suppose the little fool did? She slipped away from him without a word to any one—(wouldn’t get the old French body she’s so thick with into trouble, she said)—and she went straight to Mr. Maclean’s (that’s her lover, you know). But he was out, and his mother would not let her inside the door; so there she was without a place to lay her head on! She comes to me then, because I’d given her the warning, and says she, quite straight out: “know you wanted me to leave Monsieur Moréze. Well, I’ve done it! Hide me from him to-night and I’ll write to John, and to-morrow morning John will come and fetch me, and I shall need no one to hide me from any man ever any more. And you needn’t ever be jealous of me again.’”

Aaron drew a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have given her credit for it, but it wasn’t a bad idea,” he said. “Do you think her “John’ will come now, or will the old mother tug the hardest?”

“Oh, he’ll come,” said Hélène, “but, whether he’ll find her there, I can’t say. What do you think about that? How much do you think Monsieur Moréze would give to be there first? A pretty penny, I fancy! He ain’t like some of us; though he likes money, he likes a few other things more. He’ll not forgive that girl the trick she has played him; not if she were worth ten millions to him. But he’ll be even with her, and he’ll make her sorry for herself. I’m not afraid as he’ll be too forgiving. But you’ll get your price.

Come now, Mr. Schonenwetter, I’ve heard as r you’ve the key to Lady Pattesworth’s house; get me inside it, introduce me to that nice gentleman of a butler as brought you that bit of silver you showed me once, and you| shall have the girl’s address to do as you [ like with. It wants an hour to the time ^ he’s due at Russell Square, but he’ll be late to-night.”

Aaron looked at her meditatively. “I don’t quite understand your game, my dear,” said he, “ but I’d do a deal to oblige a lady. Come now, show me where the bird’s hidden first, and then we’ll stroll round to the aristocratic parts the Frenchman’s so fond of, and j I’ll see if I can’t get you in. If I may make so bold, though, you’d better dress up a bit better; especially,” he added, “as the conjuror always had an eye to beauty; and, excuse me, but you can’t afford to go untidy now. Who knows? If you’re looking your best, you might touch any man’s heart.”

But he sneered as he spoke. Only a woman could have had any hope in such a plan.

“I’ve no doubt,” said Hélène, calmly. “Thank you, Mr. Schonenwetter. I have tried before, and it’s been no go, but this time I shall touch him.’

CHAPTER VIII

Linda sat alone in a long white-washed dormitory. She sat on the twelfth mattress, at the far end of the apartment, counting from the door. All the mattresses would be occupied at night, but it was not late enough yet for the room to have filled. Every mattress was enclosed in a sort of box, which gave one the idea of a coffin; there was a rug for each, but no blankets, no sheets, and no pillow.

It was by especial favour that Linda had been allowed to come in so early, for the place was supposed to be open only from ten at night till ten in the morning. It was a woman’s lodging-house, and was perfectly respectable, though frequented only by the very poor, but it was dreary to the last degree.

The room was underground, and rather dark, even at mid-day. Linda’s box was directly under the gas jet; she had paid twopence extra for the privilege of having the gas lighted at this unusual hour, and she was now writing busily, her feet curled up under her, her paper on her knee. She frowned slightly while she wrote, and seldom raised her eyes from her task; partly because the occupation was a new one to her (she had never before had occasion to write a letter), partly because her surroundings depressed her. Her writing was clear, however, and her spelling correct.

She had read a good deal, her natural tastes lay in a scholarly direction, and she had had times during the last few years in which to indulge them.

“DEAREST JOHN,—

“Do come to me quick. I am here at No. 10 Flower Lane by myself and waiting for you. Monsieur Moréze came home two weeks ago, and he knew all about you, and he told me not to see you nor write to you for a month, but to take that time to think over what he had been saying.”

Linda’s pen paused for a moment, and she drew a deep breath, as if the remembrance of those hard sayings weighed upon her even now, though she had most practically evinced her disbelief in them.

“That is why I have not met you, nor written lately, about which I am afraid you will be angry; but it wasn’t that I ever had any doubts but that you would always be good to me, dear John; for I never do doubt that, in spite of all Monsieur Moréze says; no more than I do the rise of the sun (which, of course, it always will), but it was because it comes natural to me to do what he tells me; besides I owe him a great deal. I think I am a bad, ungrateful girl when I think of him. Do come quickly and tell me I did right.”

Another pause. How terribly difficult it was to explain everything in writing.

“It takes so long to make it clear in a letter, but something happened that frightened me, and I’ve run away. I went to your home. I made sure that I should find you, but you were not there. Then I went to the girl who was Monsieur Moréze’s medium before ever he met me. I went to her, because it was her that sent me a warning (I’ll tell you about that when you come to me), and she brought me here. I am quite safe here, she says, but I am very lonesome and strange. I will begin to watch for you at the door so soon as ever it is light to-morrow. I know that you will come, but please come just as soon as ever you possibly can, for I feel frightened. Nanny knew what I was about, though I did not tell her in so many words, lest Monsieur Moréze should be angry with her. I have sold a rosary Nanny gave me to pay for the night’s lodging, but I’ve left behind all the ornaments Monsieur Moréze gave me, because you don’t like to see me with them. All except one little locket. It didn’t cost much, and I’ve kept it for a remembrance. He bought it when I was getting well from an illness once. Dear John, please don’t be angry at this, for he has often been very kind to me.

Your always,

“LINDA.

“P. S.—When we are married I shall have two names to sign like other people.”

The letter was finished at Iast. Linda felt that the very act of writing to John had inspired her with fresh courage.

Mrs. Maclean had eyed her very suspiciously when she had fled for refuge to John’s home. She had not dared to tell her story. She had come away with a sinking heart. The woman’s roughness had hurt her doubly because of the strong likeness between mother and son. She did not mention that episode. She was too sore to write about it. She was one who expanded in the sunshine of affection, and shut herself up at a breath of dislike or Contempt.

Fortunately her trust in John was unbounded. She was quite certain that no woman in -the world could ever influence him against his own judgment. She dwelt slowly on the letters that formed his name when she addressed the envelope.

Then she went out to post her letter at the pillar box at the end of the street.

There was thunder in the air, and the sky was overcast. Linda had effected her escape at about four o’clock; it was nearly ten now and she reflected, with a nervous shudder, that the conjuror must have discovered her defection by this time.

Would he go at once to John’s house and there demand his medium, or would he keep his engagement at Lady Pattesworth’s first?

How astonished John would be, if he encountered Monsieur Moréze before receiving her letter.

Linda had never before been out alone so late. Monsieur Moréze had been particular on that score; she had a sense of guilt, as if the breaking through his rule, in this very minor degree, were an additional wrong she was doing him; but the letter must certainly be sent, and the serving of two masters had at last become impossible.

As she hurried along, a man and a woman, who had been walking on the opposite side of the street, stood still and looked after her.

“That’s her!” said the woman. “Whatever is she doing now? and that tall, narrow house there, is where she’ll sleep to-night. She’s in the basement. They let out the beds there at fourpence each—Oh, she’s posting her letter.”

“There ain’t any more deliveries tonight,” said Aaron. “Her friend won’t get that till nine o’clock to-morrow morning. I shall see Monsieur Moréze before then. He ought to be very much obliged to us, I’m sure!”

“Here she comes back again,” said Helene. “Stand back a bit, or she’ll see you and take fright. How fast she runs up the street; she pops in like a rabbit into a hole.”

Aaron laughed. “Do you think the weazel will be watching outside, when she pokes her nose out next?” he said. “Come along, my dear; we’ll go to Grosvenor Place now, for I’m a man of my word.”

They went on their way and Linda returned to her corner in the long dormitory. Presently other women dropped in, one by one. Weary, draggled-looking wanderers, who disposed themselves for the night with few words and little ceremony, laying down in their dresses, for the most part, some even in their bonnets.

The atmosphere was oppressive; the sight of these careworn women, reposing in a row down the side of the room, struck her as grotesquely melancholy. They, most of them, looked so apathetic, so stolidly accustomed to discomfort, and she wished that it had not occurred to her that the place was like the mortuary at the union, into which she had been taken as a child to see her mother’s body laid out. Had any of these women ever enjoyed life? Had any of them ever had a “ John” to make love to them, a dear kind Nanny to pet them? Would she have looked like one of them if Monsieur Moréze had not lifted her above the struggle for existence; she had felt estranged from him since she had received Hélène’s warning. In very self-defence she had been driven to claim her soul and body as her own. But now that she was free, her heart softened again to her master. No one, not even John, could quite eradicate her gratitude. “I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t help it,” she said to herself; but she was oppressed with a sense of unpaid debts.

Monsieur Moréze had surrounded her with many small kindnesses. . The remembrance of them beset her like accusing ghosts. Had he forborne to threaten her, it is possible that she might never have had the heart to liberate herself.

She did not sleep at all that night, but lay counting the beads which Nanette had given her over and over again, and waited for the dawn and John.

She was afraid to close her eyes. A remark that the Frenchman had made haunted her. She would not let her will sleep now.

“But eef there were de whole of England between—you could not choose but come!”

That speech had made her indignant; she was angry still when she thought of it, and then again between the waves of indignation, the spirit of his deeds spoke for the man.

“Oh, he can’t be bad!” Linda whispered.

The woman next her raised a sleepy head and peered over the edge of her box.

“What ’yer mutterin’ about?” she asked.

I say that it’s not true that he is bad,” said Linda firmly. It somehow was a relief to her to say this aloud, though she was perfectly aware that the woman would not understand. “The bad part ain’t really him at all. He is good, good?

The “At Home” was in full swing at Grosvenor Place.

Monsieur Moréze was expected, but was, as usual, very late in making his appearance.

Monsieur Moréze presumed on being the fashion, and seldom appeared till long after the appointed time. He gave himself airs that should have been held insufferable, but no one remonstrated with him.

Society, like a spoilt beauty, occasionally rather enjoys being bullied for a change, a fact which the little Frenchman had very quickly discovered.

The hostess cast anxious glances at the door; she wished that Monsieur Moréze would come to take the burden of the evening off her hands.

Lady Pattesworth cordially disliked receptions, though it had been her duty to entertain ever since she was married at eighteen!

She was a small, slim woman, and was most unbecomingly, though richly dressed. Her maid and her dressmaker dressed her; she took no interest whatever in her own appearance. Yet, in spite of her plain features, and her slight stature, she possessed a quiet dignity of her own that was free from self-consciousness, and entirely uninfluenced by her surroundings. Had she been dressed in linsey-woolsey or sackcloth, she would still have looked the greatest lady in the room.

Lady Pattesworth was an unpopular woman; she was gently unresponsive to advances, and she was usually accounted “hard.” She did her duty by her guests without geniality, though with an impartial and painstaking thoroughness that should have won their respect.

Monsieur Moréze was announced at last, an hour and a half after the appointed time; he made his way through the crowd to the hostess.

“I haf to beg a tousand pardons, madame,” said he. “My medium suffers. I dare not to bring her to-night. A headache, a migraine, a—what you will—possesses her. For me! I am desolated. I rave, I expostulate. I say to her, ‘When so great an honour is offered you as dat Lady Pattesworth does wish to see you, it ees without all reason dat you so gif way.’ But it was a foolish speech, for your beautiful sex, dey are quite above reason, and to talk of it even, did make her vary much de worse.”

“It is unfortunate,” said Lady Pattesworth coldly.

“For me! exceedingly, madame,” said the conjuror; “for de others! no! I nevair let my audiences lose. I will offer you to-day a new and unparalleled experience. I will begin wid de sleight of hand, and will afterwards mesmerise evairy person in de room, eef you like. See now, I will transport you all to heaven or—de other place. Which you wills. You, mes-dames, will all, without doubt, be at home in heaven. De difficulty will be to bring you back. Perhaps, den, it will be safer to begin wid de gentlemen.”

He made his way to the stage while he spoke, and presently stood silently looking down on the assembly, surveying for a brief minute this drawing-room audience, before whom it had always been the height of his ambition to appear.

There was no space for chairs. The guests stood below him, watching him with languid curiosity; he was accustomed to greater enthusiasm.

The ladies yawned surreptitiously behind their fans, and thought of the balls that they had to go on to. Some of them looked weary, for the season was in full swing. The men put up their eyeglasses, and leaned against the wall.

Monsieur Moréze’s sombre black eyes had a rather odd expression while he watched this tlase audience. All his nervous energy was roused; he was in a very fury of determination to excite and possess it.

Lady Pattesworth’s “at homes” were apt to be slightly dull, but this evening the dullness was to be dispersed.

The room got hotter and hotter as the night wore on, but the ladies ceased to sigh for “ somewhere to sit down,” and there was a curious breathless hush.

Monsieur Moréze was no more remarkable as a conjuror than many a professor of the art before and since. It was in his own personality that his power lay. No one who saw and heard him that night was likely to forget the experience.

His voice, with the far-carrying ring in it, reached to the farthest end of the double drawing-room; his eyes, looking nowhere in particular, saw everything.

He addressed himself to individuals in distant corners at first. He begged “de young gentleman who has broke de button off his glove” to do him “de honour to attend.” He asked “de mademoiselle wid de grey feather-fan” to “shut de feathers up, so dat madame behind may see.” Then he felt himself gain command of his listeners.

He “held the room,” and the flow of talk, seasoned by its bitter undertone, became more animated.

His compliments were barely civil in their mockery; his remarks were audaciously personal.

Some of the men would have shown their disgust, but that they feared being laughed at for taking a joke too seriously. The women were all leaning forward to listen to him.

The man was a born orator, and he was intensely excited. It was strange to see how his mood was reflected below the footlights.

He was willing to hypnotise any one who would give him the chance; and he made his subjects perform grotesquely incongruous antics, with a relish that had something uncanny about it.

In the fifteenth century, with its crude faith, Monsieur Moréze would have been burned for witchcraft; we of the nineteenth are glad to have our faculty of wonder tickled, even by way of a drawing-room amusement. We cannot afford to burn our wizards now.

It was a curious scene. Lady Pattesworth stood aloof, and looked on at it with growing distaste. She wished she had not allowed her secretary to engage this extraordinary little conjuror. She was ashamed of these hysterically “thrilled” ladies.

She wondered how they could condescend to such a display of emotion.

She interfered at last, in order to prevent a pretty delicate girl of eighteen from mounting on to the stage, and defying his power.

“It would be very silly of you!” said Lady Pattesworth, in clear, sensible tones, that were like drops of cold water. “Tomorrow, when you are quite cool, you will be glad that you have had the sense to refrain.” She added in a lower tone: “The man would make you look ridiculous, and we have had more than enough of this sort of thing already.”

Monsieur’s quick ear caught the aside.

“I should not haf made mademoiselle ridiculous; I nevair attempt de impossible,” he declared.

The interruption had, however, broken the thread of the performance.

Monsieur Moréze looked at his watch, and brought the seance to an abrupt conclusion.

“I haf gone on too long for milady,” he said, and he descended from the stage.

Lady Pattesworth was chillingly surprised when the conjuror took his leave of her.

That was a very unnecessary proceeding on his part.

“I am sure you have amused us all very nicely,” she said, “and have done your best to make up for your assistant’s having failed us.”

“You are vary kind to say so,” answered the Frenchman.

He glanced round the room with a smile.

“Dey all looked-amused” he said.

.“All de same it was inexcusable of mademoiselle. She shall come herself and apologise to you. But, yes, on my honour she shall do dat!”

“Ah! Poor girl!” said Lady Pattesworth.

Something in the man’s face or tone moved her. Monsieur Moréze saw well enough that she disliked him, and, though he could be suave enough on occasion, yet tonight this controller of spirits was himself He found a sort of fierce satisfaction in shocking this fine lady in her own drawingroom.

What business had she to say, “Poor girl,” when she spoke of his medium?

And what was the sentimental pity of a drawing-room society worth? Well, it was worth so much in his pocket, Monsieur Moréze reflected with a laugh.

He was a good deal surprised, when, while he was packing up his properties in the library, the door opened, and Lady Pattesworth came in.

The little lady shut the door behind her, and addressed him with a directness that was not without dignity.

“I have to apologise for my interference, monsieur,” said she (never was the word apologise said with a prouder humility), “but I wish to say that your medium’s nonappearance will make no difference to the sum we owe you. I hope therefore that you will not be angry with her. I see that you are annoyed.”

Monsieur Moréze shrugged his shoulders, and politely disclaimed the imputation.

“But I have heard that the girl is quite young. I—I am often very sorry for girls.”

Her voice softened at the last words.

Monsieur Moréze looked at her with a sudden flash of attention.

She was genuinely anxious, and a genuine emotion makes itself felt with extraordinary force.

“Milady speaks de truth,” he said. “I will also—eef she likes! Shall I tell you de story, hein?”

“No, no,” she said, “I do not wish to know about your affairs. I only-”

“You only gif me advice about dem,” said Monsieur Moréze. “You are vary wise! It ees always much more easy to advise eef you do not hear too much. To see on de two sides, dat confuses. See now, milady, you haf made of yourself a judge. I did not ask you so far to condescend. Now you haf come, you must leesen, hein? Otherwise it ees not even; ees not fair I would say. Besides de story will vary nicely amuse you.’”

He paused for a second, then went on rapidly.

“It ees, as all de stories are, of a man and of a girl,” he said. “De man did one day stay in de lodgings of a vary respectable woman. She was of de kind who will say prayers all de Sabbath, and all de week-days will spoil de ungodly. Milady knows dat de saints are often tried by affliction (perhaps also de sinners, mais cela n’ importe!), therefore de vary good woman had, for her torment, a good-for-nothing leetle slave who, I was told, had no rights in de world to begin with, and who, one could see, was not de sort to make for herself a place. De Nature, or de Providence (which milady likes), who makes de babies, did perhaps forget where dis one came from, for she did grow up vary pretty. She was easy to make cry or laugh. Afraid eef only one spoke in a sharp voice; vary fond of any one who was not unkind. One day she did commit one foolish fault. She was, besides, ill and had a cough dat disturbed de lodgers. De vary good woman could not any longer put up with her. De house was so vary respectable! She did turn de leetle girl out—out into de night.”

Lady Pattesworth held out her hands with a quick appealing gesture. “A wicked, wicked woman!” she cried. “But the child?”

“De man also put out de hand,” said Monsieur Moréze, “and saved her.”

“Thank God!” said Lady Pattesworth. The tears stood in her eyes.

“Ah—Pour cela,” said Monsieur Moréze, with a relapse into his usual manner, which left his listener ashamed of her earnestness. “De man was not one of de religious, milady. He wanted a medium; he did see dat de child was made for him! En effet—de venture did pay him well. De girl became more pretty wid evairy month. She became also young. (Ah, you smile, but I do tell you she had not known before what de youth tastes like.) He took de work out of her hands. She did learn to laugh and to be happy. De change pleased him! He was not at all stupid, dis man! He had seen de beauty under de shabby frock. When he lit up de candles, and put it on a throne, den de others saw it too. Dey were all quite ready now to make de pretty lady dere compliments! Ah, eet was a vary fine sight!”

He was silent again for a moment, then his voice took a graver tone.

“It did not seem to de man dat it would be difficult to keep what he had found. His hands were not so white as milady’s.” He stretched out his long-fingered, dexterous hand while he spoke. “Perhaps even dey had not always been so clean; but he did know when he held a stone like de pearl in your ring, a stone white and without stain. He did keep it so.”

“You have treated the girl well?” said Lady Pattesworth dubiously.

She was ashamed because the touch of pathos in his voice had brought a lump to her throat. She said in her own mind that she knew that the man was talking for effect. She would not condescend to this theatrical use of the third person! He was, of course, speaking of himself, though he might, or might not, be speaking the truth. It was absurd that she should be interested; yet she could not turn away now and leave the tale unfinished.

“Keep it a secret I implore you!” he whispered, dropping his voice to a stage aside. “La petite has been so much to be pitied! It would be a pity eef it were known, but, in fact, she has been vary happy. I haf, so far as I know, been vary kind to her.

“Milady, de girl grows tall and upright. I hear her voice singing about de house. De sound of it ees pleasant. On de stage she looks sad, but at home she is gay like a bird. For me, I haf patience. I will not dat my mademoiselle shall become too common. I let her not be too much seen. I wait for de glory and de triumph she does owe me. Dat she does owe me! See, madame when one ees my age, de blood runs not so hot and quick as before. One has, perhaps, not so many desires. But what one has still ambition for, dat ees no longer fancy; it ees like part of oneself, and not to be given up. I wait. De day I wait for comes. It comes at last. But—it ees unfortunate, n’est ce pas? La petite ees tired of de easy life; she ees grown a woman; she will haf a lover. I go to find her dis evening. I will make her my compliments dat she has so well repaid me. Dere ees de silence for an answer! She ees gone!”

“Do you mean that—that this girl, whom we have heard so much about, has actually run away from you?”

Lady Pattesworth was startled at this de-noument.

It gave the lie to all the excuses Monsieur Moréze had made before. Why did he confide in her, she wondered?

“You did offer me counsel. You did say, ‘We pay you what was in de bargain. Do not, therefore, be angry.’ Whether I am angry ees perhaps quite my own affair; but milady does not mean an impertinence, hein? She ees only sorry for de poor girl.’ Bien! / also was sorry. I would ask now, ‘Do you tink my mademoiselle does owe me anything?’”

Lady Pattesworth’s honest grey eyes met his bravely.

Her sympathy was all with the girl, and if it had been possible for her to lie, she would have lied then.

She could, however, never be less than truthful in any circumstances, which, perhaps, partially accounted for her unpopularity.

“How can I tell?” she said slowly. “It may be that, if you were really kind to her, she had possibly some cause to—to feel grateful to you.”

“Mais, non; dat ees not an answer. It ees not a case of sentiment,” he cried impatiently. “ Gratitude! it does not weigh much, it ees not in my line! Without doubt she did give me plenty of dat! it ees a matter of business. I did take de child and lay out much money on her; now dat she ees a success, do you tink she does owe me ainything?”

And, very reluctantly, Lady Pattesworth answered, “Ye—es.”

Monsieur Moréze smiled. “And I do alwayes make my debtors pay,” he said. “In self-defence, madame, for else de duns would be at my door. I do thank you vary much for your advice. Good-night.”

He picked up his properties, and held the door open for her. She went out of the room with a heavy heart. She had apparently done more harm than good.

The staircase was thronged with departing guests.

Monsieur Moréze enjoyed the way they turned to look at him while he crossed the hall. He had, at least, made a sensation this evening!

The heavy scent of hot-house plants, the scarlet and blue liveries, the diamonds, and the soft music; all these were signs of the accomplishment of an ambition.

He was triumphant and elated; yet, under all the triumph, angry and sore and hurt.

He was in the act of descending the steps that led into the outer hall, when a woman started forward and confronted him—a woman with despair in her face.

Those nearest to him shrank back. This figure was like an embodiment of the very spirit of tragedy. It was as though the sadness that underlies the swing of a valse had taken form. (The band was still playing in the verandah.)

The conjuror prided himself on the strength of his nerves, and he would not show that he was startled.

“Ah, Mademoiselle Hélène, you did dat vary well,” he said. “You are my own pupil! Your stage effects are without doubt so— ah-”

He flung up his arms quickly to save his eyes; then staggered backwards and fell. Hélène had flung the vitriol she carried full at his face.

“For once I have made him attend to me,” she said. “It is worth going to prison for!”

She stood quite still and upright among the startled crowd. Lady Pattesworth caught a momentary glimpse of her. Then some one opened the hall door and called for the police. Two men lifted the conjuror between them.

Some one came up and offered Lady Pat-tesworth his arm. “Come upstairs. You can do nothing. It is a shocking sight for you,” he said. “Dear me! What an end to the comedy.”

“Comedy!” said Lady Pattesworth. “But it was tragedy all through.”

CHAPTER IX

It is hard when one intends serving a friend, and making a little money out of him, to be baulked of both pleasures.

Aaron Schonenwetter felt himself decidedly ill-used. Hélène had put him in an awkward position; he had narrowly escaped being locked up himself as accessory to her mad designs, and he had had no chance of selling the secret. Monsieur Moréze was in the hands of the doctors—he had been taken to the nearest hospital—and Mademoiselle Hélène was in the hands of the police. Why, then, in all probability, that little fool of a medium would have the best of it; she would be Mrs. Maclean after all.

Aaron, who had reached home and was relating the news of the conjuror’s mishap to his mother, stopped to laugh in the midst of his chagrin when this last thought struck him.

“Upon my soul!” he cried,“she’s had a wonderful near shave I and the beauty of it is, that she’ll never know it. Monsieur Moréze will be months laid up, if he’s a day. His arm is burnt right to the bone; I saw it when they cut the sleeve of his coat off, where the stuff had run down. He’ll do no more on the boards anyhow, and by the time he is out again, the trick will be finished. That is, if this Scotchman means fair by the girl. It is queer to think of, ain’t it? when one considers what a good chance there was that the Frenchman would have got wind of her first. I was there, meaning to give him the tip, when that mad woman put the stopper on. It’s been a precious rum set out from first to last! For the life of me I can never see why that slip of a girl took so well as she did!”

“1 told you she would,” said the old woman. “1 saw it from the first, and it’s a pity to my mind that that Scotch booby will get her, and a shameful waste! A commoner sort would have done his turn just as well and better. If it wasn’t for the way Providence comes, breaking in and upsetting us, things would go a deal smoother and sensi-bler.”

Aaron yawned and sighed. “One can’t reckon on these sudden upsets, no more than can a spider on the broom that knocks his work to pieces,” he said, in a rather dispirited voice.

He went to bed in a depressed frame of mind that was unusual for him—for Aaron was seldom saddened even by the unaccountable bungles of Providence—but sound sleep restored him to his ordinary cheerful alertness. He woke in the morning as ready to make fresh plans as is the spider he had likened himself to, to throw out new lines if the old have been demolished by the unreasoning brutal broom.

After all, perhaps everything was just as well as it was. If John Maclean had found his sweetheart spirited away, and had ever got words. “My opinion is that one who makes a show of a helpless lass, and uses his devil’s power (which is just witchcraft) to earn money by the spectacle of her slavery, deserves to be horse-whipped at the least. In old times they burnt ’em,” he added regretfully.

Then his face softened, as another idea occurred to him.

“The girl wasn’t hurt, eh?” he said. “His medium, I mean, but it must have frightened her, poor lass.”

“Haven’t you heard?” said Aaron, after a moment’s consideration, in which he rapidly reviewed the situation, and came to the conclusion that, since the Scotchman must now get the best of it, he might just as well help him; it was always good business to give a shove to the winning side. “Haven’t you heard? The Lady of Distinction has run away from Monsieur Moréze. She made off yesterday evening. I heard (but I wouldn’t swear it’s true) that she went off straight to the house of a Mr. Maclean; perhaps you know him, sir?”

John’s face flushed redder than ever; he leaned across the counter and grasped Aaron’s sleeve, as if he feared the Jew might vanish into thin air, before he could get any more out of him.

“I am John Maclean,” he said. “Tell me all ye know, man. It’s no for idle curiosity I’m asking. I went with some samples to Dover, and am on my way back to the shop now. I’ve not been home the night. Do you know whether—do you know where she is now?”

“I couldn’t say for certain,” said Aaron slowly. “I did see some one uncommonly like Monsieur Moréze medium, yesterday evening; she went into a lodging-house, as I shouldn’t have thought up to the mark of such a very superior young lady. What are you thinking of doing, if you find her?”

“There’s no ‘if,’” said John; “I’ll find her, sure enough. I’ll no break bread till I have. Do! Go before the minister with her so soon as ever I can. Where is she?”

“You’re in a great hurry,” said Aaron.

“Softly now. Look here, my friend, I am soft-hearted where young people is concerned, and my mother has a spare bedroom for lodgers. You bring your young woman here till you’re married. Board and lodging a guinea a day, and we’ll provide her wedding breakfast, eh!”

John gasped. Even in the midst of genuine anxiety for his poor little love (who he guessed but too truly had been turned away from his door), this exorbitant demand fairly shocked him. “A guinea the day! Good lord, man! Do ye think she lives on melted pearls, or that I am made of gold?” he cried.

“Couldn’t do it for less,” said Aaron, “I’ve too great a respect for the young lady. Mrs. Schonenwetter will be like a mother to her. Come, it’s a bargain, then?”

“No, it’s not,” said John roughly. “Where is she, man? Out with it, if ye really know.” The Jew shook his head and drew back a step. “You won’t gain anything by bullying,” he said, not without some dignity.

“And there ain’t reason in it. It’s my business to buy and sell. If you don’t think your young woman is worth a few sovereigns, you’re at liberty to go out of the shop, no need for any swearing. If you do want to find out where she is (and I will say she’s a deal too pretty an article to be left knocking about on the loose), why then I’ll tell you, but it ain’t like I am going to give you information for nothing.”

John glared at him doubtfully. He hated this “dirty Jew” and felt it an unkind fate that mixed him up with all these dishonest and much to be despised foreigners. He didn’t want to be conciliatory.

“How do I know you won’t be telling me lies?” he asked. It was a remark he would hardly have made to a compatriot, but it didn’t occur to him that Aaron could be insulted.

“Oh, you won’t know!” said the latter, with a contempt that was more decently veiled than was his visitor’s. “You won’t know! Some folks can’t see when a man’s telling truth and when he’s not—that’s their misfortune. But, I suppose, you’ll recognise her when she’s before you, eh? I’ll take you to her, if you like, and the old lady can mind the shop; but we’ll have the agreement clear first. She lodges here till you’re man and wife— board and lodging a guinea the day (extras not included), and I will inform you of one thing gratis,” added Aaron. “Monsieur Mo-r&ze ain’t dead, though he’s scotched, and he ain’t one to lose a bargain through overmuch haggling. Upon my soul, I believe he’ll recover yet; and, if you haven’t made sure of the girl, he will?

“God forbid!” said John. If he had been a Romanist he would have crossed himself. “Needs must where the devil drives,” he added. “Ye shall have the guineas, man! but I’ll fetch her by myself. Where is she?”

“Don’t you ever let on to Monsieur Moréze that I told you,” said Aaron. “1 am too good-natured by half, and that’s a fact.”

But he directed John to the lodging-house, after having obtained his written promise, which, it may be mentioned by the way, cost John uncommonly dear in the end.

Linda was waiting, with an expectation that had been growing more painfully keen with every minute since day-break. She had been walking up and down the unsavoury street for hours, all the terrible possibilities that must have prevented John’s coming in answer to her appeal, chasing each other through her brain. She durst not go far from No. 10, lest, after all, she might miss him. She tortured herself by fancying that, perhaps, she had missed him, that, while her back had been turned he had come, and looked vainly for her, and gone away never to return. Or that he had come while she was still asleep, or that he had been run over on the way. She had eaten no breakfast, lest while she was eating he should arrive. By the time one o’clock came, she was faint with weariness and anxiety—and apprehension of the evil things that might have befallen him. But one disquieting thought she was spared; it never once occurred to her that John could possibly play her false, or be in any way to blame.

John met her walking for the hundredth time up that pavement, whose every speck and stain she felt she knew by heart. She neither spoke nor cried, but caught the sleeve of his coat between her hands and held him fast.

“My dear, my dear!” he cried, moved as he had never been before, “you’ll be mine at last! Why, how white ye are, my precious darling. Did ye write to me? Did ye send for me? I’ve not been home the night and never knew. How was it all? Did you go to my house, and what did my mother say to ye, eh?” he cried. “But I’ll no forgie her so long as I breathe if she was na good to ye.”

He threw his arm round her, and the girl leaned against him for a moment with a look of utter content.

“It is all over and done with, any way,” she said,“and nothing matters any more now that you’ve come.”

“Dear heart!” said John,“when you are my wife there’s nothing that will matter!”

He was very gentle and very grave. His mother would hardly have recognised the “John” who was Linda’s lover.

He accepted the responsibility of her action with a tender chivalry that filled her with a sensation of peace and rest.

He took her to the Jew’s house according to the compact, and left her there, though with some misgivings. Had it been possible he would have married her that afternoon. As it was, he had to content himself with giving notice at the Registrar’s office and with announcing his intentions at home. He knew that his news would be somewhat of a shock to his mother; and since he had loved Linda, John had softened to all women—for her sake. On the other hand, he was bitterly indignant that his poor little girl should have been turned away from his door. He was so angry that he could not trust himself to speak on that subject. The remembrance of it made his manner stern and defiant when he delivered himself of his tidings.

Mrs. Maclean listened to him with set lips. She was not altogether unprepared for this, but it was none the less bitter to her. She stood at the table in the parlour, washing the tea things. Her big, capable hands continued the work without pause. She did not interrupt John’s story or make any comment till he had quite finished it. Then, “It just comes to this, John,” said she. “I’ll no’ give my consent to what will be just the ruin of you! But you are your own master, and you can marry without your mother’s blessing, if you like.”

“That’s true,” said John, “and I’d be a verra fine creature if I didn’t choose my own wife! But I don’t want to quarrel with you, mother. I’ll listen to what you’ve got to say.”

Mrs. Maclean laughed harshly. “Hear to him! He’s that dutiful!” she cried. “No, no, I won’t trouble you, my son. You know what there is to say as well as I do. You’ve heard before now that you can’t gather figs from thistles! A lassie without a name will make a proper mother to your bairns, no doubt. Though she can’t turn her hand to honest work, at least she has no false pride about selling her-”

“You’d best stop there,” said John.

He got up, and stood leaning with his hands on the table. The mother and son faced each other so for a second. The likeness between them was very strong.

“I should not have said that I would listen without warning you,” said John. “I’ll hear naught against my lass. If you finish that sentence, mother, it will be just the last word you’ll ever say to me.”

“Mother, mother, the pot has boiled over, and it’s too heavy for me to lift!” cried a voice from the door. Janet stood there, looking white and scared.

Mrs. Maclean turned hastily, and, pushing by her, rushed into the kitchen.

Janet went up to her brother. “Eh, Jack, I’m no’ so verra fond of my mother, but she’s just wrapped up in you,” said she. “It’s hard enough on her anyhow, I’m thinking! You needn’t make it worse! Can’t you bring your wife home without so much swearing about it?”

“Why weren’t you here when she came? What’s the use of a sister, if she’s gadding about when she’s wanted?” cried John wrath-fully; and then his heart smote him. “I think I’m a brute,” he said. “I’m not good enough to be her husband, Janet; but day and night I’m sorely anxious till she’s safe.”

Janet nodded sympathetically. She was shy of asking too many questions, for John was seldom confidential.

“I’m going to take to the dressmaking,” she said presently. “You’ll have mouths enough to feed without me. It’s a brave thing you’re doing!” she added, softly.

Little Janet had never adored her brother more.

“If it was another man who was meaning to marry on the little I’ve got, I should say he was a fool!” said John. “But Linda’s no the kind to be taking care of herself.”

“Is she very bonnie?” said Janet, wistfully.

“She is that,” said John. “I thought her bonnier than all the world at first; and now I never compare her with the rest, for she’s just herself to me, and I think her soul is even bonnier than her face. God bless her!”

“Ah, well,” said Jannet. “To have a bonnie face and a bonnie soul too is great luck. But I’ll try to like her.” Janet was ruefully conscious of her own defects while she spoke.

“There’ll be no trying needed,” said John. “It will be grand for you to have her here.” Which was all he knew about it.

Mrs. Maclean made no more open objections to the marriage, but accepted the inevitable sullenly. John spent every moment that he could with Linda, and, in one respect, followed his sister’s advice.

Linda had not heard of her master’s misfortunes, and John kept that bit of information from her.

She was very happy—happier than she had ever been before.

John came to see her every day, and was demonstratively kind. Her entire dependence on him had stirred the very depths of his nature.

Each day seemed to knit them closer, and each day brought the wedding day nearer.

Linda always walked with John after his business for the day was over, and would come in tired but contented, to fall asleep in a huge four-posted bed, with elaborately decorated canopy, under which, Mrs. Schonenwetter informed her, dukes and duchesses had reposed.

Her only longing was for Nanette. She would have liked at least to write to her; but there had been a tacit understanding between them that that had better not be, until she should be married. Monsieur Moréze’s eyes were sharp, and the less communication between them the safer, till the deed were done.

“When you are turned into a full-blown madame, I will, perhaps, one day come to visit you, when Monsieur, your husband, is out,” old Nanette had said. “But you will not see me often, for he does not at all like me.”

The words had distressed Linda, but she promised herself that when she should be John’s wife, she would coax him into a better appreciation of Nanny.

In the meantime she abandoned herself to her dream of bliss. Certainly Aaron’s roof had never sheltered a more unworldly guest! The Jew actually learned to believe in this girl’s innocence, though he felt more contempt than admiration for her.

He bestowed a piece of advice on her one morning, that brought a momentary cloud to her face.

“You are the first young woman that’s ever got the better of Monsieur Moréze. If you are wise, you’ll put as many counties as you can between him and you,” said he.

And, strange as it may seem, he spoke in good faith. Mr. Schonenwetter would have betrayed the girl’s hiding-place for a few pounds, and would have slept no whit the worse for the transaction; but his former intentions did not in the least prevent him from giving her a friendly warning.

There was no malice in Aaron’s machinations, and no ruth. Linda thrust aside the thought of the conjuror’s anger; hut she was even more glad than usual when it was time to get ready for John.

When he was with her she felt “safe.” She ran up to the room (crammed with ticketed furniture) in which she slept, and stood gravely looking at her reflection in a long mirror that had reflected many a ball-room beauty in its day.

She wished that she could have arrayed herself beautifully for John, but she had only .her ordinary dress with her. Monsieur Moréze had chosen that; he had indeed chosen all her dresses; consequently there was a flavour of picturesque originality about them that always disturbed John. Linda pinned a cambric handkerchief over her grey gown (the conjuror had discovered that grey suited the sweet-pea tints of her complexion) and tied back her curls in the way which John (not Monsieur Moréze) approved. Prom the bottom of her heart she was glad now that she was fair to see. She would go to her husband with empty hands; she had nothing but herself to give him.

While she gazed, a laugh behind her made her start.

“You needn’t jump out of your skin. An old woman like me ain’t worth turning colour for,” said Mrs. Schonenwetter, who had crept into the room unobserved. She stood looking at her “ lodger” with an odd combination of mockery and interest. “So you’re going to marry that pig-headed Scotchman!” said she. “Well, well! If that angel’s face of yours had had any brains to back it, you might have done better, my pretty!”

“Better?” said the girl; “why John is the best man in the world!”

Aaron’s mother gave an unbelieving grunt. “You’re a queer little fish,” she cried; “a very queer little fish to have come out of Monsieur Moréze’s net.” But there was an underlying kindliness in her voice, and Linda, with a sudden craving for a woman’s sympathy in her supreme happiness, stooped and kissed her.

“John will be here in a few minutes,” she said. “I want somebody to be glad with me.” The touch of the fresh, young face seemed almost to startle the old woman.

It was many years since any one had kissed Rebecca Schonenwetter.

She trotted out of the room, but presently returned with a necklace of silver coins in her hand. “Let me dress you up,” she said. “Let me dress the bride. I’ve helped actresses by dozens, but never a real bride before, since the day I wore my own veil. I was a beauty, if you like! Not but what your face is the sweeter. Not a lucky face though,” she muttered. “No, no, it ain’t a good sign to look ’ like that. It means that there’s storms a-coming.”

“I only hope that John won’t mind,” said Linda doubtfully. “You see he don’t like finery. He says it ain’t respectable, and he wouldn’t have me look different to other girls.”

“Lor’!” said the old woman. “He should have spoken to the Almighty about that afore you was born. It’s a terrible waste! a terrible waste.”

“What? the necklace? Would you like to have it back?” said the girl quickly.

“Keep it, keep it, it wasn’t that I meant. Monsieur Moréze he knew what your looks are worth, my dear!”

“But John loves me” said Linda softly.

CHAPTER X

John was waiting in the shop. His rather hard-featured face softened in expression when Linda entered it. The very tone of his voice was gentler when he spoke to her.

“I’ve brought a cloak for you, for it’s mizzling a wee bit,” he said.

He wrapped the cloak carefully round her, and noticed the silver coins while he did so.

“Mrs. Schonenwetter gave them to me. Wasn’t it wonderful kind of her?” said Linda in a whisper. “It’s the only coin I shall bring you, John!”

John nodded gravely and drew her hand through his arm when they went out together.

The sight of her in that Jew’s shop touched him. The lass was so appealingly alone in the world. She came to him fatherless and motherless. It was to the Father of the fatherless that he must answer for her. He was a good man, and he entertained the thought reverently. If any one had told him that the conjuror had felt the same reverence for defencelessness, he would have refused to believe it.

They walked silently down the quaint narrow street. Everything looked beautiful to Linda in spite of the drizzling rain. Then John spoke:

“There’s only another week to run, and then you’ll be my wife and I’ll be taking you safely home.”

“Yes. We shall be going home, and I shall be your wife for ever and ever,” said Linda.

His voice was anxious, but hers was full of content.

When they reached the corner of the footway, Linda stood still and looked behind her. Her lips moved, but John could not catch what she said. Her face was radiant as the reflection of blue sky in a pool of water, just before the clouds come up.

“What are you stopping for?” he asked.

“I was thinking,” said Linda. “I was thinking of myself when I first walked down this street. How frightened and tired I was —and how happy I am now!” Even while she spoke, the moments of her joy were running out. “It was raining hard,” she went on, “and it was night, and the gas jets shone yellow in the wet puddles under our feet. Monsieur Moréze held his umbrella over me, and talked all the time, though I didn’t rightly take in anything he said, what with the noise, and the confusion, and his strange accent, and the way my head ached.”

“The rascal!” said John. The exclamation came from his heart to his lips unawares. “There,” he added, “I won’t say it again, my darling; the feeling was too strong for me; come along, we’ll not think of him any more.” He hurried her along with slightly jealous eagerness, and they left W-Street, with its pawnbrokers, and old-picture dealers, and reminiscences behind them. But presently she said a little timidly:

“John, I’ll never talk of him again after this if you don’t like it, but I know that he was good to me; and I wish—oh, I wish you would believe it.”

“Good?” said John, hotly, “I’ve seen too much to believe that! He didn’t starve or beat you, I daresay! You were a deal too valuable to him for that. He knew better, d-n him, but-” He stopped and swal lowed his indignation. “Oh, well,” he resumed, “I’ve got you! and he is pretty well done for. I don’t suppose he’ll ever be fit for his tricks again, so let him be. Why, what’s the matter?” For Linda dropped his arm and stood aghast, the sunshine in her face dying away. “Don’t stop!” he cried uneasily. “Why, I didn’t mean to have told you that. I forgot for the minute.” He could have bitten his tongue out for its stupidity, but the cat had escaped from the bag now, and, alas! there is never any getting her in again.

“What do you mean?” said Linda. “Why do you say, ‘ He’ll never be fit for his tricks again?’ Has there been an accident, or what has happened to him? What have you heard, John?” Then with increasing earnestness, seeing that he remained ruefully silent: “Tell me quickly, please.”

“Don’t get fashed about it,” said John. “He ain’t worth your pity.” But he glanced at her anxiously. “That unfortunate girl who was once his medium, and whom he ought to have mad£ his wife, but drove to the devil instead, threw vitriol at him, when he came out of a grand lady’s house. She missed his eyes, but the stuff ran down his arm. He was badly burned. Blood-poisoning set in while he was in the hospital, and they had to take the arm off. That’s the whole story. The account of it was in all the newspapers, but I didn’t want you to read it till we were safely married. Don’t look like that, Linda! Aye, ye are sorry! unco sorry!” he cried, with a fierce spasm of jealousy. “It was time that I took you away from him.” The extreme terror in her face increased his foreboding of trouble. “Oh! I’ll be thankful when the dust of his house is fairly shaken from your feet, and when you’ve forgotten all that’s had to do with him,” said John.

He put his right hand over the hand that rested on his arm. He could never adequately express the tenderness he felt for Linda. When she should be his wife, his love should keep all evil from her, as the circle of fire, that travellers light in a desert, keeps wild beasts away. In the meantime, his irritation found easier vent than did his deeper feelings.

“I shan’t ever forget,” said Linda. “I ain’t quite bad enough for that!”

She walked with downcast head after that, answering absently when he spoke to her.

John tried to lead her thoughts away from the subject that had so disturbed her. He was taking her to see the chapel where they were to he married.

They passed along Piccadilly, and then turned into quieter streets; streets of semi-genteel houses, and second-rate shops.

They stood at the door of the Presbyterian chapel. It was an ugly little grey building, wedged between two dull lodging-houses; but to John and Linda it was not dull at all.

The door was ajar, Linda pushed it open, and looked in. While she stood there, just outside, a legend that he had heard in his childhood, rose in John’s mind.

It was the story of a man who wooed a fairy; at the very threshold of the church, the powers of the air took hold of her, and she was drawn away from her lover’s arms.

“Come in! Come right in 1” John cried sharply.

The girl obeyed him, but sat down wearily on a bench close to the door.

“I’ll show you where we’ll stand,” said John, “and where the minister will be, and-”

“Ah, wait a minute,” said Linda, and her face was full of trouble. “I am so stupid. I don’t seem able to understand all at once. Did you say that Monsieur Moréze has been so much hurt, that he can’t ever go on the boards any more? Have they really had to take off his arm? Oh, John! and you never told me! Why it means ruin to him.”

“He has his deserts,” said John, between his teeth.

He sat down by her side, and tried to pull her towards him, but she shook her head.

“Oh, I never knew! I never knew!” she cried.

“It must have hurt him so!”

John bit his lip; he could not bear to hear the tears in her voice.

“And it will break his heart! for he loves his profession.”

“His profession!” said John. “A fine profession it was! To make a show of an innocent little maid! To live by lies and deception. It’s by a miracle that he has not done you more harm. That other poor thing told me—but I can’t say all she told me.”

“I think you’d better not,” said Linda in a low voice; “I’d not believe her! John, I’ve been cowardly, and bad, and ungrateful—but I didn’t know he was ill! I’ve run away from him when he is in trouble, but I’ll—I’ll go back!”

“My God!” cried John. “Are ye daft?”

They were silent for minutes, staring at each other with tragic faces. In spite of her clinging gentleness, Linda would choose for herself in the great crisis of her life. She hated having to act; decision was pain and grief to her; yet John felt curiously powerless before this unreasoning resolve.

He had been sorely jealous; he knew that he had been undiplomatic.

Now his instinct told him that but one chance remained. He flung aside his anger, and held out his arms.

“My darling! Would you desert me? Do I not need you?” he cried. “Is my trouble nothing to you?”

And she clung to him sobbing, and hid her face on his shoulder.

“You are everything to me! Your trouble must always be my trouble, John.”

He drew a breath of relief, and devoted himself to soothing her, with a sense of victory won. After all, John said to himself, he needed not have experienced that uncomfortable “scare.” It was impossible that this gentle little thing, who was so fond of him, should really have meant what she had said.

“You’ve just been talking great nonsense, my girl,” he said, laughing tenderly. “And of course,” with a somewhat belated effort to be magnanimous, “of course, it’s natural you should feel a bit sorry for that—foreign gentleman. I shouldn’t wonder if he were to come to life again, and to try to give us some trouble yet! Not that he shall ever have another chance of frightening you. Eh, my bairn, how you are trembling!”

He tried to suppress the indignation that always nearly mastered him when he noticed how nervous Linda was.

“That’s his doing,” he said, “but we’ll make another woman of you when you’re my wife, my bonnie dear.”

Then she lifted her head; she was not crying any longer, and her eyes were very bright.

“I’m not afraid now,” she said; “not one bit afraid. I was a coward, John, but I am sure I’ll be safe enough now. Why, I couldn’t leave off from loving you, if I tried. Monsieur Moréze ain’t God to give life, and to take it away? and loving is like living. I didn’t know how strong it was before! I’ll go back to him now without a scrap of fear, and I’ll stay with him till he’s well. He ain’t one to give up. You’ll see that he’ll learn to manage with one hand. He’ll pick himself up again, and, when he is recovered, then I’ll come to you. You’ll wait for me, won’t you, John?”

John fairly gasped with astonishment. It was as if this baptism of pain and love had turned the girl into a woman.

“I love you too much to be afraid,” she said; but John thrust her from him with a groan.

“You don’t know what you are doing! Wait for /you? Ay—it’s till the Last Day I may wait, if you go back now! Linda, it’s not only for myself I’m speaking,” he cried, incoherently; “though God knows I love you, but for the sake of your own soul, that has been kept so white and pure in the middle of evil.”

His face flushed while he spoke. Never before in his life had John spoken like this.

“It was like a miracle,” he said. “And I saw it! I saw you up on that stage with that black rascal by your side, and, among all the crowd, it was I who saw your goodness, and knew that you were—were compassed round about. You were kept safe before ever I was there to lead you away from his sorceries. But now you’ll be tempting the Lord, if you go back. Will you do that, and take no hurt? Listen, Linda; is this man, who was your master, a good man? Is he a Christian? No! I’ll not ask so much as that from him; but is he even one that honest women should speak with? Oh, you will not hear! You will shut your eyes, and stop your ears, and it is ill work to tell foul tales to a maid, but for-”

“Hush,” said Linda, “I’ll hear no tales, John. I know what he is to me. He is the one who held out his hand when no one else would.”

“Then hear only this,” said John. “No one can serve both God and Mammon; and, if ever there was a Mammon serving in this world, it’s what you’d go back to now. Oh, my dear, my dear, dinna go.”

“Do you think I want to,” cried the girl. “Oh, John, it’s hard enough! You may be right, for you know more. I only see one thing. And that gets clearer and clearer every minute. I see that Monsieur Moréze was the saving of me, and that now he’s down, I’ve deserted him. I can’t do it any more! I feel wicked and shameful when I think of it. If I let you marry me now, I should know I wasn’t fit to be yours. It would just show that I wasn’t worth the picking out of the mud,” she said, with sudden passion. “You are too good a man to have a selfish coward for a wife! Let me go, let me go while he needs me. John, I’ve been bad enough already; but I don’t think as my soul would be worth the saving, if I saved it so.”

“Then go!” said John. “A wilful woman maun have her way, but the consequences are on your own head, Linda. Can you touch pitch and not be defiled? Go, if you will; but if you do, I’ve washed my hands of you. I’ll never see you more.”

Yet even while he spoke, feeling his heart on fire with anger and jealousy and indignation, he scarcely thought that she would take him at his word. John had yet to learn that when a coward screws courage to the striking point, she may take a leap in the dark that bolder spirits might shrink from. Linda turned away without another word—and went.

Nanette sat alone by the kitchen fire, knitting and pondering. She had no need to look at her busy fingers, they did- their work mechanically. She peered into the caverns of red-hot coal, and thought about Linda.

When we are young, we dream of our own future; when we are old, of other people’s.

Was the child happy? Was she safely married, and turned into Madam Maclean, with a gold ring on her finger?

Nanette twisted the wedding ring on her own wrinkled hand, with a grim smile.

She hoped that “la petite” would have better luck than she herself had had; but, even if John were to show himself bad-tempered, or close-fisted, or jealous, still Linda would have gained a name and an assured position. That was always something.

“But my child, she will never be again,” Nanette said to herself; and her spectacles grew dim, and the coals took strange shapes.

It was “triste” in the empty house. Monsieur Moréze was still in the hospital, and Nanette doubted whether he would keep her on his return. He had probably guessed that she had connived at Linda’s flight. She was very sorry for him; she hoped that Hélène would be well punished. She would certainly stay to look after his house till he should come back, even though doing so would entail facing his probable anger.

She would not have cheated him for any one but the girl she loved; but she did not in the least repent. No, no, she was bound to put Linda’s welfare first, because Linda would have died, if it had not been for her.

The “sequitur” was quite clear to Nanny. She saw a wedding cake in the burning or smouldering coals, and that was consoling, but she was certainly getting anxious. This silence and uncertainty depressed her. She wished for Monsieur Moréze’s return, even though she feared it. Anything would be more cheerful than this lonely waiting.

Presently there was a ring at the front door bell. Nanette jumped up with alacrity. Possibly it was the postman with a letter from Linda Maclean; it would do her heart good to see that signature!

She had on a fresh apron (for Nanette would have felt that she had fallen to the level of an Englishwoman, if any man had seen her in one that was less than immaculately clean), then went to answer the summons.

But it was not the postman who stood outside, and who cried, “Nanny, Nanny, IVe come back!” and who threw two arms round her neck and kissed her.

“My treasure! my precious child! my darling!” cried Nanette, in one breath. Then she pulled Linda inside, and shut the door; and holding her at arms’ length, looked at her left hand. “ Linda,” she said solemnly. “But if you are not married, what was it for that you ran away? and—where is he?”

“Oh, Nanny, he is very angry,” said Linda. “He says that he will never forgive me. But I couldn’t do anything else—not after I’d heard the news. It was only yesterday I was told. John let it out by mistake. He says that the master has been dreadfully hurt, and he’s ill in hospital, and they are going to take off his arm. When I heard all that, I knew that I just couldn’t desert him, and that I must come back—so I’ve come.”

“Dame!” said Nanette, “but are you quite mad?”

Linda sighed. “1 suppose I am,” she said; “for John said that too.”

They went into the familiar kitchen, and stood in front of the fire, where Nanette had descried the wedding-cake. She couldn’t see it now.

“But, Nanny,” Linda said softly, “if Monsieur Moréze had deserted me when I was ill, I shouldn’t be here now, mad or not!”

“It is true, and the saints have well rewarded him!” said Nanette,“for his charity has already been returned to him at least twenty times. Mon chou, it is not a time to pick words. Go while you still can, if you mean to be your John’s wife! When Monsieur comes back, you will find it too late.” Linda took off her cloak and hat, and laid them aside. She was rather pale but quite decided.

“1 am not afraid of him now,” she said simply. “One is not afraid when one is doing the only thing that there is to do— without being ashamed. It is only fair. The other way would have been horrible. Monsieur took very good care of me once, before I could take care of myself. Oh, it isn’t the money I owe him, Nanny! There’s a deal more than that!”

Nanette shook her head.

“But your own life’s happiness shonld come first,” she cried.

“But yes, mon chou; and the happiness of your ‘John,’ though he has evidently been stupid as a pig! See now, Linda, what is Monsieur Moréze to you? He is not either father or lover, though indeed—ah, is it possible, after all, that you are in love with Monsieur?”

“I?” cried Linda indignantly. “Can one have two loves? It is you who are mad now, Nanny.”

“Then do not stay here,” said Nanette earnestly. “It was natural you should feel sorry; but one must always let something go when one would climb up higher. It is sad! but it must be! Le bon Dieu has arranged it so!”

“Ah,” said the girl with a sharp accent of pain in her tone, “I know it’s sad!”

She turned away from the fire, and walked restlessly to the window.

The rain was beating in gusts against the panes of glass. It was beginning to get dark. Linda hated darkness; the streets at night had no fascination, but only terror for her; nevertheless she would have braved their terrors willingly for the sake of seeing John again.

Had she, after all, been wrong? She habitually acted from instinct rather than reason; she was apt to become confused when she tried to think.

“I will go with you, petite,” said Nanny. “For it is too late for you to be walking about alone. ‘ Monsieur ’ would certainly not have allowed that.”

“No! he didn’t let me go,” said Linda; “though Mrs. Swainson was all against me.

I’ll put away my things now, Nanny!” And she stayed.

As for Nanny, she argued no more. Argument was clearly of no avail. The child’s conscience was on the other side, and it would listen to no worldly wisdom. “The saints defend her!” said Nanette; but she could not but feel ruefully that she would have preferred a more visible and tangible aid than theirs.

Linda went upstairs to their old room; then returned to busy herself with making tea as of old. She was neither tearful nor apparently excited; but when the old woman questioned her further about what had passed between her and John, she put the subject aside.

“I can’t talk about it yet,” she said.

A few days later, however, she referred to it, though with evident effort.

“John can’t forgive me,” she said. “He says that all is over between us, but I had to do it, Nanny. If one is fond of a good person one has to try to be a bi£ good.”

And, as the days went by, Nanny knew more and more how “all that” had changed the girl.

Her love seemed to have increased and strengthened her individuality. Oddly enough Linda always felt as if John had awakened in her “a soul of her own.”

She had, however, lost something of her fresh charm. She neither laughed nor cried so readily as heretofore, and her pretty mouth had at times an almost stem expression.

Old Time is a wonderful joiner, and mends cleverly, but though he may make things “as good” as new, or perhaps better, he cannot make them the same again!

Linda grew thin and white, but was busier and less clingingly dependent than of old. It is only happy people who can afford to dream, and she took to working very hard at this time.

Nanette had taught her to embroider exquisitely, and Linda discovered that the “Brittany stitch” was fairly remunerative.

Her fingers were never still now, she sewed with an energy that made her back ache, but perhaps eased the pain at her heart—stitching renunciation and resolution into the dainty initials that marked the “trousseau” linen of a bride. „

John did not come to see her, he was too angry; but he wrote aggrieved and indignant letters, which she read and re-read.

They showed at least that he still cared about her, and she could no more help being glad of that, than she could help feeling warmer when the sun shone.

It was, perhaps, illogical to rejoice, seeing that they had “done with all that,” but Linda always took her sensations for granted without analysis. It was a tribute to the sterling uprightness of John’s character that the thought of him actually inspired her with courage to follow the leading of her conscience, even though it led her to do that which he disapproved.

But the disapproval hurt her sorely!

Once Nanette waking in the night, fancied she heard the girl crying, and got up to see whether she was ill.

Linda was asleep, but as Nanette bent over her, she moaned with a little low sound like a sick child, and stretched out eager hands as if she were seeking something.

Nanette went back to bed with a sigh.

• “It is what one lives past!” she muttered. “The poor child! she will get over it without doubt; but it is bad while it lasts! Mon Dieu! yes it is the very devil while it lasts!”

CHAPTER XI

Monsieur Moréze’s mishap was in all the papers—long and sensational paragraphs that it would have rejoiced his heart to read. While he was fighting for life in the hospital the “Society” numbers came out every week, with new stories about his relations with Mademoiselle Hélène, and the causes of her mad crime. Gossip could hardly have been busier with his name had he been born with a handle to it.

The mysterious “lady of distinction” who had made such an “unparalleled sensation,” faded into insignificance beside this new mystery. Only the Frenchman remembered, and in his delirium sought for her. “Quick, quick!” he had exclaimed, when they brought him into the hospital ward. “Bandage my head up any way. I haf to go out again directly. Does la petite think she will get off, she and HelSne together? But, if I were in hell—and it feels much like it, I would outwit Monsieur le Diable, and find her.”

They had hard work to keep him in bed for all that night; and the next, the idea of there being no time to be lost possessed him. But, when he regained his senses, he spoke of Linda no more; he bent his whole power to the task of getting well, and never was a more excellent patient.

He made a joke of pain, he won the hearts of all the nurses, he learnt to use his left hand as soon as he had strength to sit upright, and, to all appearance, his spirit never failed him, even for a second.

Yet it was a hard struggle; he had no longer youth in his favour, and for a time, in the doctor’s opinion at least, the issue was doubtful.

On the fifth day after he had been brought to th^e hospital, he woke from a long sleep, and his black eyes rested with a gleam of absolute triumph in them on the “sister” by his side.

“A la bonne heure,” he said. “I feel Monsieur le Mort has given in; I shall get well with ease now; de tug is over.”

“It is a most merciful recovery. You have great cause to be thankful,” said the sister. Whereat he smiled and held out his left hand to her.

“I gif you all my thanks for your kind care,” he said. “I? no! place aux dames. I will put you first; you and I haf gained de victory! But de fate or de Providence—eef you like de last name better—has robbed me of an arm, and I do not gif thanks for dat. It will be two, free week before I can prosecute Helene, and before I am again on de boards.”

The sister sighed and shook her head reproachfully; though she could not help feeling some sympathy for the pluck that already purposed “standing again on the boards.”

“After such an escape-” she began, then hesitated, and stammered.

“Ah, you wish to relieve your conscience,” said Monsieur Moréze. “But go on, by all means, eef you wish. You may not again haf de chance, for I haf passed de age when sermons amuse.”

“I would only say that the near sight of death should surely have taken away thoughts of revenge,” said the sister, with an effort.

She was a good deal embarrassed, though she had witnessed many a terror-stricken death-bed “repentance” without any qualms of doubt or uncertainty.

“Ma soeur,” said Monsieur Moréze gravely. “For me, I am not a religious person. Dere are, however, some things dat it would shame me to do. Par exemple, I would think shame of myself, if de shadow of death did so frighten me, that I should turn at de sight like a beaten dog, with tail between his legs, and should run fast de other way from fear! Par bleu! de Providence dat ees pleased wid such a turning, must be easy to—how do you say it?—to fling dust in de eyes of! to make a fool of! Easier than an audience of nursery babies, hein?”

“Hush!” said the sister aghast, “do not blaspheme God.”

“Mais non,” he answered quickly. “I nevair do—I leave dat to de priests.” And the good woman turned away disheartened.

From that hour Monsieur Moréze got steadily better, though he remained longer in the hospital than he had reckoned.

It was at the end of two months, a weary and painful two months, that he found himself outside its walls. The air smelt sweet and fresh; he had become sick of the hospital odour of carbolic, of the uniform of the nurses and sisters, of a world where every one was ill!

He had made no complaints, but he had hated the whole place. He had taken a very kindly leave of the hospital staff, but he sincerely hoped never to see any member of it again!

His face was terribly scarred, though he held his head erect as ever. He stood still a long time at the crossings, to gather breath and rest.

The other patients who had been discharged that day, had been met by friends, but Monsieur Moréze had asked no one to meet him.

He was weary of being taken care of; he preferred being alone! He fancied that he could walk home easily, he had walked up and down the ward several times, but he had rather over-rated his strength, and the way seemed very long.

All the cabs and omnibuses were full, and his legs grew tired! The more exhausted he was bodily, the more busily his brain worked. He was possessed with the idea of regaining possession of Linda. He glanced inquiringly at every woman who passed him, though he knew that the chances were against Linda’s being anywhere in London.

He had been—at any rate since middle-age had cooled his blood—a man in whom the brain governed the heart; who could be daring when daring seemed most likely to win success; but who would have turned away with a laugh and a shrug, from any enterprise in which the odds were clearly against him.

Now, the passionate southern nature that lay asleep underneath both his wisdom and his vanity reasserted itself.

He knew that it would be rash to try to force Linda’s return; he knew that the plans that kept suggesting themselves to his mind were mad and indefensible.

He did not care! Whatever happened afterward, he would make her come back.

He repeated the last words to himself over and over again. “She shall come back, she shall come back.”

The heat made him giddy. By the time he at last reached his own door he felt that he had got to the end of his powers.

He was glad that the walk was over.

He had his latch key in his pocket; his left hand was not yet accustomed to doing all the work : he fumbled over the lock.

While so engaged it seemed to him that his house must be full of people.

He heard many voices, the sound of a crowd shouting and laughing and clapping.

“It’s a good audience,” he thought vaguely.

He opened the door, and everything was silent, chillingly silent; and he shivered with a momentary horror at his own weakness.

“I am getting old and foolish,” he muttered.

He rested in the passage for a few minutes; then pulled himself together and went into the parlour.

Nanette would not be prepared for him, for he had given no notice of his return.

Some one was standing with her back to him, dusting the ornaments on the mantelpiece. She turned at the sound of the closing door, and Monsieur Moréze started violently, and put his hand before his eyes.

“But I am still quite mad, evidently,” he said.

“Oh, Monsieur!” cried Linda. “How dreadfully ill you have been! Oh, I am glad I have come back!”

She had lain awake wondering how he would receive her; she had secretly dreaded the first meeting, picturing it again and again, and deciding beforehand exactly what she should say and do.

Now, while he leaned against the door, staring at her as if she were a ghost, she for- -got herself altogether and said nothing that she had intended to say.

It was so extraordinary that his self-possession should be upset.

“Dear Monsieur, you are not in the least mad. It is only that I’ve changed my mind and come back.”

He walked slowly across the room and sat down, resting his head on his hands.

She noticed the white hairs that sprinkled the black, and the new lines that pain had traced round his lips.

He was quite silent for a few minutes; then he spoke without looking at her.

“De women are made so,” he said.

“Either dey do make of men fools or else— dey are made fools of; it ees de last, I suppose, has happened to you. N’est-ce-pas? Ah, well, it ees good for you dat I am no saint to turn my back on you. Your room ees there, still, eef you like. And for him,” his thin fingers clenched involuntarily, “for him, I will make him vary sorry for himself yet.”

“What do you mean?” said Linda. “Monsieur, look at me, and tell me what you mean!”

She was older, the outline of her face was sharper, and her eyes had a new depth of purpose in them; but when he lifted his head and looked at her, they met his still with the old child-like directness and innocence in them, and he was silent.

“We were to have been married,” she said; “and then I heard as you had been hurt, and that made the difference; but it wasn’t John’s fault.”

“A—ah! It ees, then, Monsieur who is de fool,” he said. “Bien, bien! dat ees by far de better arrangement, mon enfant.”

He spoke briskly; he was more like himself now; he was glad from his heart that the girl had come to no harm.

Linda smiled rather sadly.

“John is lucky to have got rid of me— leastways his mother will think so—but he cared for me! he really did,” she added, with a pathetic little touch of pride. “He hates the stage, he don’t approve anything I’ve done, but he wanted to marry me. Even up to yesterday he wrote and said he would stiU, if-”

“Well?” said the conjuror.

If I’d promise not to see you again,” she said.

The very frankness with which she spoke seemed to raise a barrier round her.

“I won’t have no one fancy it was John’s fault—nor that I’ve left off loving him; it’s only that we see one thing differently,” said Linda.

“I will swear dat ‘John’ keeps all de virtues,” said Monsieur Moréze; “since, what-effer I may haf lost, it ees I who keep you!”

She came across the room to him, and knelt by his chair, for the reference to his loss touched her.

“I am sorry!” she said. “May I be your medium again? You won’t need your right hand for that? I ought not to have run away; it was very wrong, and a shame! Do you remember how ill I was when I first came to you? I’ve thought of that a great deal lately. Monsieur, please forgive me, for I want to be of any use to you that I can now.”

Monsieur Moréze twisted round sharply, and put his left hand on her shoulder.

“Ah, you do not know what it ees you do, when you come back to me so; and do say soft things in a voice dat—dat ees after all, ice cold,” the man cried. “And I haf not made you come!”

He sat on, long after she had left him, as if he were still dazed.

“It is as if one had planned to risk one’s neck to get into a house and steal a diamond ‘ —but the mistress comes out and says,‘ it is yours, my friend,’ and puts it into one’s hand,” he thought whimsically.

It was probably because his nerve had been shaken by his illness that this affected him so strangely. It was the oddest thing that had ever happened to him. Linda’s return surprised him more than had her flight; but it did more than surprise him, it filled him with a kind of awe.

He sent for Nanette presently and cross-questioned her about all that had occurred.

Nanette told him the whole story; there was no further use in concealment; besides, she knew that he would get nothing but truth from Linda, for the girl clung, as if for safety, to a scrupulous exactness of conduct.

“I wished that la petite should make a good marriage,” she said. “And if I did not help her, who would? She is like my own child. Why not? if another woman bore her, 1 saved her life. Yes, you were kind to her, I am not saying no to that, Monsieur; but she was not laying by so much as a penny piece, and how was I to know what would become of her if I died? I, who am no longer a chicken. To be married to a young respectable man who she loved, that would be the making of her. Oh, I know well it was not fair to you. If you send me away this minute, I do not complain, though you will never get another to cook for you as I have.”

“That is true,” said the conjuror, “and to-morrow is time enough; for, if you go tonight, I shall get no supper, hein? You will go to-morrow.”

Nanette made him a little curtsey, and went to the door. She had expected that dismissal, and she was proud in her way and did not mean to entreat. Then all of a sudden something conquered her pride, and she came back and stood before him again, with tears in her old eyes.

“Monsieur can do as he chooses,” she said; “but, if I have cheated him in one big thing, it was for love of the girl whom he himself brought here. And another woman may cheat him in a hundred little matters (which I have never done) and for love of herself. These dr Englishwomen have no consciences or hearts, except Linda. Monsieur, I am old, and it will break mine to leave.”

He looked at her with a half sad, half mocking light in the black eyes that Helene had tried to put out.

“For that, it is a pity,” he said; “but, at your age, you should know better than to keep such a thing. What! it is still unbroken. Get rid of it, my friend, before it leads you into more mischief. I do give you to the end of the week. Dame! do not go on standing there, but go, go,” he cried with a sudden little burst of irritability; and Nanette fled. It was something to have gained even so much.

“He has told me to go, mon chou,” she said to Linda, who was sitting stitching as usual; “but not directly; and he was not so angry as I expected.”

Linda raised her head from her work; she looked tired, and white and rather anxious.

“Monsieur was not angry with me,” she said; “and it was all my fault; not yours at all, Nanny. He was more glad to see me back than I had thought for; but you mustn’t go away and leave me. If you go, I could get a room somewhere, I suppose, and yet keep my promise, and be his medium of an evening— but it would be very dreary!”

Nanette nodded thoughtfully. It no longer struck her as ridiculous for Linda to live alone, for the girl had proved to have rather more will of her own than any one had fancied.

“Of course, if you did that, and he no longer gave you board and lodging, Monsieur would be forced to pay you something; but he will not be pleased when you suggest it,” she remarked.

“Then, perhaps, he will let us both stay,” said Linda.

“Perhaps,” answered Nanette. “He does not generally change his mind, but-

Well, so he was glad to see you? Very glad? Eh, why do you put your eyes out over that work? Put it away and rest; I am going to get his supper ready. Poor fellow! how will he eat it with one hand? Tell me that?” Linda put down her work. “I’ll help you,” she said. “Oh, Nanny, I wish he hadn’t got hurt and that I wasn’t so sorry for him! it’s a difficult world!”

“We will make him an omelette,” said Nanette cheerfully. “Be careful how you break that egg; he will never let himself be helped, but he can eat an omelette with a fork.” She spoke in the tone of one who has solved a problem, and Linda smiled. The frying of the omelette was a relief. It was simple, and one could see the end of it.

The small services for kinsfolk and neighbours that tax a woman’s powers pretty constantly, perhaps comfort, as well as weary her, at times more than she knows. She grows sick over the puzzles of heart and brain that she must either shirk, or find a clue to; but these insistent clamorous claims of love, of other people’s minor needs, pull the balance straight.

Perhaps, after all, the world is the saner, because dinners must be cooked, and clothes stitched.

Monsieur Moréze certainly did not allow Liinda too much time for reflection. He devoted himself, with characteristic courage, to the practices of leger-de-main with the left hand only.

Nanette was audience, and Linda accomplice. The latter was by no means clever in the last capacity. She was over anxious, and the conjuror over impatient.

The slowness and clumsiness of other people’s fingers were simply incomprehensible to Monsieur Moréze; but, all the same, he would not hear of having any other pupil.

Nanette suspected that the conjuring lessons were simply the excuse for keeping his recovered treasure constantly in his sight; and Linda herself, at least learned one lesson —a lesson that women are’ curiously slow to take in—she learned the utter impossibility of going backwards!

She had returned to Monsieur Moréze, but she had not returned to the old condition of things. That was all gone, swept away in the sudden gust of emotion that had escaped him at first sight of her.

He watched her constantly, and a little feverishly. If Linda had had any secrets to conceal, she could not have borne the scrutiny.

The strength of her position, however, lay in the fact that she had told him the whole truth.

She was in love with John, but-had “come back” to her master. He might watch for ever, and he would discover no more than that.

One day she asked him whether Nanette might stay.

“Nanette only did what I wanted, Monsieur,” she said. “It is not fair to forgive me and yet send her away.”

“Noting ees what you call ‘fair,’ when it ees a woman who ees concerned,” he said. “Eef I do let de old woman stay, will you be quite happy again, hein?”

Linda hesitated; she was young enough to believe that she should never again taste real happiness without John; but, barring that great want, she wanted nothing but Nanette.

“Yes, Monsieur,” she said bravely.

“Den she shall stay,” he said. “Now are you satisfied?”

“Yes—and thank you,” she answered. He looked hard at her, then turned away.

“It ees de first time you haf lied to me, mon enfant,” he said. “You do it badly; do not try it again; it ees not at all your rdle”

When she was gone he repeated the words to himself.

“The first time! for she is such an extraordinarily simple child; but when she is my wife, she will do it all day long, unless she forgets him; and, for me, though I am worth a hundred of him, yet I am not worth that.”

He walked restlessly up and down the room.

It had become clear to him, that, if he meant to keep Linda, he must marry her.

He had let her see his feeling for her, the pretty little fiction of guardianship had become impossible; he could trust his self-command no more.

“And she shall not be unhappy,” he assured himself. “Mon Dieu, no! she shall not! What? I am not so very old, and I am clever, and I am rich.”

He paused in front of the glass, and looked at his own brown face, scarred now across the forehead and right cheek, then shrugged his shoulders sardonically.

“~No! you are not pretty, my friend,” he said. “Mademoiselle Hélène has taken care of that; la petite will keep her eyes shut when she marries you!—close shut—as if she were taking poison. Poor child; and she came back of her own accord, and left her lover.”

A little smile curved his lips. It was decidedly a satisfaction to reflect that, though John had had youth on his side, as well as his love’s heart, yet he was discomfited.

“But he must be a great fool,” thought the conjuror, “or it could not have happened.”

He guessed pretty correctly what line John had taken; he could imagine the Scotchman’s triumph over his adversary’s misfortune, and Linda’s revolt.

“She never liked to hear me abused,” he remembered. “That made her angry once before; she is very strange, this girl!”

An odd look crossed his face, as if some painful thought were trying to force admittance, and he let it in, with a sneer at his own weakness.

“It would be absurd, for the man is not worth it; and in twelve months she would not thank me,” he muttered.

“He is not worth the clothes he stands up in, this good gentleman, or he would not so easily have let her go. Besides, I spoke the truth to her—to be poor and overworked, that is not what suits her. It is I who am the saying of her.”

He sat down and his head dropped on his hands.

“Mon Dieu! if one could only believe one’s own lies!” he cried; “but it is the patience in her face that is too strong for me.”

CHAPTER XII

He was still sitting so when Linda brought a letter to him. He knew, before he opened it, whom it came from.

He had seen in Linda’s face that which told him. If he had needed further warning he would have had it in the sound of her voice, which she tried vainly to make unconcerned.

He read the letter through, but Linda could gather nothing from his expression. She stood by, waiting. She longed to say, “What has John written?” but forbore.

“But it comes to just de same,” said the conjuror, “for your eyes ask questions when you shut your lips. I will tell you what he writes. He writes dat an uncle has died, and left him much money. He wishes to know what I will take? He will gif me my price eef I gif up all claim on your services. He will pay de money on de same day dat you are his wife. He does think after his own kind. I haf no answer for de monsieur.”

“I, too, have heard from John,” said Linda. “I want to see him once more.”

“You do repent you left him?”

“No. I said once more,” said the girl. “It is only”—and there were tears in her voice—“it is only that I want to make John understand. It shall be the last time, Monsieur. I promise you that I will not ask this again.”

“And after?” said the conjuror. “But de understanding is what you can nevair gif to de man who has it not, mon enfant; and it ees I—not he, who understand!” Wherein he spoke the truth.

They were silent for a minute. He knew that her thoughts had flown away from him to John. He brought them back, with a jerk.

“Linda, listen to me,” he said. “I would tell you something. I did know once, when I was young, a woman who was married to de man she did first lof. De man was stupid when he was sober, and, when he was drunk, lie was—but I make him a compliment when I say he was a brute. He did twice nearly kill her: once with a knife, and once because lie kicked her too hard She would not be separated from him. It ees so sometimes with women; but I do not understand it. She was, without doubt, very mad, hein?”

“No,” said Linda simply. “I don’t see what else she could have done, when she was his wife.”

“You are vary like her,” said Monsieur Moréze. “I haf noticed de likeness before. Another man did lof de woman; she might haf married him. I knew both de men, and dere was no compare between de two. It was a pity she did not take de better man!”

“Yes. It was a great pity she didn’t like the good one,” said the girl. “And it was queer she didn’t, too,”’ she added thoughtfully.

She thought of her lover while she spoke. It was, she believed, entirely John’s moral worth that had made her love him. Linda firmly believed that she would never have cared for any man had she not met John.

She was probably quite wrong there; but the very fact of her holding such a faith made it likely that she would guard her love for him with a constancy that had in it the strength of a religion.

“De liking would haf come! She was vary foolish not to haf married him, hein?” said the Frenchman.

Linda coloured—a sudden, hot blush that tinged even her forehead with pink.

“Oh, no! she couldn’t have done that, and still have felt honest,” she said.

Monsieur Moréze laughed, but rather sadly.

“You do know so much about it. You say quite certainly what he could nevair do, as eef all de women were made like you; and I, who haf lived so many more years, I tell you -oh, but what ees de matter?”

Linda’s expression had changed. A surprised gladness was quivering in her face.

“Do you hear?” she said breathlessly. “It is only that I hear—Monsieur! it’s some one coming up the stairs.”

“Ma foi! He has followed his letter fast,” said the conjuror. He stood up, his sallow face twitching slightly.

“So you will not see him any more after to-day? Open de door, mon enfant. No; I will let him in myself.”

John had left Nanette behind and had dashed up the stairs, three steps at a time.

He was hot with excitement, and with exercise. He recoiled a step when the Frenchman threw open the door, as a man recoils at sight of a snake.

“Enter if you please, monsieur,” said the conjuror. “I am delighted dat, for once, you honour me; for, as a rule, you do prefer to talk to de women of my house when de master ees not by.”

And he motioned John in with a bow.

“Linda!” said John.

He had been prepared to find that she had been spirited away. He was almost as much surprised as Monsieur Moréze had been, when he saw her before him. “Linda—” he began eagerly. Then he paused, hesitated, and addressed himself to the Frenchman instead. After all, it was with him that the struggle must be.

“You have had my letter?” he asked.

“Yes, certainly; and I haf tore him up,” said Monsieur Moréze. “It ees no use you offer me money, Monsieur. You will, perhaps, not comprehend when I say it ees an insult; so I do say, only it ees no use!”

“I will pay-” began John, with a stolid disregard of this declaration, which he preferred to consider advanced in order to draw a larger sum.

“You will pay nothing,” said the Frenchman. “How den shall I say it plain enough? I would not, eef I were starving, which I am far from; I would not dirty my fingers with ainything dat came from Monsieur’s.” And, this time, John believed him perforce.

He stood glaring at the little Frenchman, as a bull terrier might glare at a rat whose life he would willingly shake out, but who is “beyond his reach. If the rascal wasn’t to be bought off, what was to be done?

“Sir, I have not come here to quarrel with you,” he said at last with a gulp. “If it is by your cursed mesmerism you have drawn this girl here, or if it is by working on the gratitude which she fancies she owes you, I can only appeal to—to any manliness you may have left —to let her go.”

He felt his very fingers itch with desire to “appeal” to the fellow’s feelings in a very different fashion, and yet, even while he spoke, despair was creeping over him; for his adversary had only one hand, and was fresh from the hospital. He grew hotter still, and ashamed in the midst of his anger as the conjuror’s eyes rested on him, with a scorn in their black depths that said quite plainly, “ Monsieur is somewhat of a coward, he thinks he can bully a sick man with safety.”

It was a relief to him when Monsieur Moréze spoke.

“Monsieur does not wish to quarrel with me, when he does talk of my cursed mesmerism, and of ainy manliness I may haf left? I do not then wish to quarrel with Monsieur, when I do refer to his uncalled for impertinence and do beg he will leave me for de future to compose my own affairs.”

“I came here of myself, John,” said Linda in a low voice. It was the first time she had spoken since John’s entry. “And I am staying of my own free will; Monsieur Moréze didn’t even know as I was here when he came back.”

“Your affairs, do you say?” answered John indignantly. He paid no attention to Linda’s remark; indeed in good truth he believed her bewitched, and persuaded himself that she was barely responsible in this matter. “Your affairs! but it is of mine I am talking; the lass was to have been my wife.”

And the lass who was to have been his wife stifled a sob that made her throat ache, as she stood behind the conjuror.

John did not notice that, but Monsieur Moréze did; and turned his head quickly. During the months that his medium had lived under his roof he had got into a habit of observing her.

One cannot make a girl happy without taking some pains—unless, indeed, she happens to be in love with one.

“I want to talk to John,” she said. “Monsieur, I told you that I must talk to John once more.”

“And gif him de understanding. But certainly, mon enfant, why not?” said Monsieur Moréze. He walked to the window and stood there, with his back to her, looking intently at a cat creeping after sparrows on the roof.

He could guess what Linda would say, he had no need to listen.

For one second, a wild hope lightened John’s heart. Was it yet possible that she would hear reason, even at the eleventh hour?

Linda caught her breath with a little gesture of despair, and Monsieur Mor6ze left the window and stood by her side.

“I do tink we haf had enough of this. It ees she who suffers!” he said. “You haf no more to say, Linda? And you stay with me, hein?”

“There is no more to say,” said Linda; “I will stay with you.”

Monsieur Moréze kept his eyes fixed on the ground while she spoke. He was ostentatiously careful lest he should appear to influence her.

In truth he was quite as deeply moved as was either Linda or John, but he could no more refrain from being slightly theatrical, than he could help the shape of his head, or the colour of his skin. His every movement angered the Scotchman.

John looked on grimly. He had fought hard for Linda, and he had failed.

Good and evil had struggled for her, and evil had conquered—at any rate he thought so.

“Monsieur, I hope, feels satisfied dat I haf not in any way compelled Mademoiselle’s choice,” said, Monsieur Moréze suavely. “Monsieur will show dat I did not even look at her.”

There was a tone of triumph in his voice, but he had won, and he could afford to be polite.

“I allow nothing,” said John between his teeth. “If you weren’t the lowest of scoundrels, you couldn’t have taken advantage of her.”

Monsieur Moréze drew himself up with some dignity.

“You haf lost de game,” he said. “Therefore, eef it does console you to call me names, I do remember dat. One makes de large excuse for de loser.”

And again John felt that he would have given ten years of his life to be on equal terms with his adversary.

“If you only had both hands-” he be gan; then stopped short and fairly groaned with a sense of impotence.

Monsieur Moréze’s best friend could not have wished him whole more heartily than did his enemy; and a something absurd in the situation made the conjuror smile, though at heart, he was serious enough.

It was then that Linda interposed. For her, at least, there had been nothing but tragedy in this conflict.

“No one has taken advantage of me,” she said; “neither you nor Monsieur. One must always settle for oneself in the end, though it’s very hard—just now.”

The last two words she addressed to the Frenchman—almost in a whisper. She was very weary, poor girl. It was, as he had truly said, she who suffered most.

Monsieur Moréze had not felt inclined to forego the pleasure of irritating John; but at her appeal, the spirit of mockery that possessed him, fled.

“You did trust me before? Ees it not so?” he said. “Go now. I, too, haf one word I would speak alone to Monsieur. We will do each other no harm!”

She hesitated a second, because though he had bidden her leave them, he had taken, and was still holding, her hand in his.

He apparently became conscious of the fact, and released it.

“C’est 9a. Adieu, mon enfant,” he said.

He waited till the door closed behind her; then, when John would have finished the sentence that Linda had interrupted, he held up his hand with a gesture that the Scotchman, to his own surprise, obeyed.

“It ees quite my turn. I haf leestened to you, now hear me. Monsieur, I do always admire greatly de charity of you so respectable people, who do say one should think no ill of one’s neighbour; also your honesty, which does, however, find it no harm to steal from an unbeliever; and your pity, which ees so wide awake when it ees a pretty girl in de case. But it ees not for your so many virtues, but for dat she has trusted me, and dat I am not perhaps altogether de Devil—dat I do let you haf her.”

He paused a second, but the unexpected end to his speech had left John dumb. Then he went on less bitterly:

“It ees notting to me what Monsieur may like to believe of me, but for her sake who will soon be his wife (for she nevair was very wise) I do say this. She has not at any time felt more than grateful to me—sacr6! eef I did not too well know it, it ees not you who would marry her. I did see Monsieur did hardly believe her just now, and I agree it ees strange. It ees vary strange, also, dat ainy woman’s gratitude should live after she ees in lof. Le pauvre enfant! Perhaps, den, her lof may last even after de marriage!”

He laid his hand on John’s arm with a nervous grip of which his thin fingers looked incapable.

“We do not like each other, hein,” he said. “But I believe you lof her—after your way. And de child ees of de kind who will rather be beaten by the man she lofs than by de other. It ees so sometimes! For de rest, she did de ‘ impossible ’ when she did come back to me, but she ees vary good. Dere are de people who make de miracles still. Dey are not of my sort—or of yours, Monsieur.”

He had still something to say, and the grip on John’s arm tightened.

“Be vary kind to her. She does need dat one should be gentle. Mon Dieu! you will nevair understand. But be so kind as you can. Eef you are not,” he added with a flash of fierce passion, “eef you are not, I swear to you dat even my one hand shall find you out!”

And he went out of the room and out of the house, the hall door shuttings sharply after him.

Linda never saw Monsieur Moréze again. She seldom ever speaks of him, for her husband hates the very sound of his name, and she is, as a rule, a most amenable wife.

She received a note from him late in the evening, after that scene of which John had told her the conclusion.

John could not get rid of the idea that the conjuror’s renunciation was a pretence, and part of a deep laid plot. He had gone in search of her at once, and had related all that had happened with some exclamations of amazement and incredulity.

“It was like Monsieur to do that. But I always knew he was good, though I didn’t trust him enough!” the girl had said.

The note, written with the left hand, was perhaps difficult to decipher, for she was a long time reading it.

“You have, without doubt, again made friends with Mr. Maclean,” he wrote. “For me, I shall not be back for a week. By the time I return you will be married; is it not so? I do send my felicitations. If you should want me ever, it is not I who will have forgot you; but I do wish you a good fortune and happiness which, if you do enjoy, we shall not again meet. I do send my respects to Monsieur votre fiance.

“Paul Moréze.

“That you did come back to me was a thing extraordinary. Do not forget me quite, mon enfant.”

“Then I shall never see him again?” said Linda; and happy as she was, there were tears in her eyes.

She was married within the week, and it is only fair to state that John Maclean made her an excellent husband. Prosperity had a softening effect on him, and his wife’s admiration drew out the finer side of his character. In one respect only did the prophecies of Monsieur Moréze come to pass. John’s mother never forgave Linda. Janet, however, welcomed her kindly.

Monsieur Moréze sailed for America so soon as he was fit to travel, and Nanette accompanied him.

Linda would willingly have kept the old woman with her. John’s increased fortunes made it possible to offer her a home; and, albeit he distrusted all foreigners, he was not the man to forget a debt, and he knew that he owed the “old witch” a good turn.

Nanette refused the offer.

“I know better, mon chon,” said she. “Oh, yes, I have been a mother to you, it is true! Bien. One cannot have maternity without pain! One soon learns that. You belong to Monsieur le mari at present, and lie will not be pleased to see my old fingers meddle with his pies. Moreover, he is not at all of my kind; and to live on him is what I could never do! nor to hold my tongue, like an English bonne, and not to say my say. With Monsieur it is quite different; and I have also an affection for him!”

So she vanished out of Linda’s life with all the rest of that strange past, which became more and more dreamlike as the years went by.

Healthy, busy years, that brought plenty of homely cares, of household joys, of love and of some grief, too—for love can never be in large measure without it.

John’s riches increased, and so did his family.

No one would recognise either the workhouse-bred, forlorn child, or the delicately beautiful “ medium” who was once the rage of a London season, in the happy mother of many children, who sits at the head of John Maclean’s table.

Only one person remembers both, and that person is John Maclean’s wife.

If, as one would fain believe, the gratitude of the helped pursues the helper, then, indeed, Monsieur Moréze ought one day to reap a blessing. Perhaps he has, seeing that heaven’s benefits seldom take the form of “beer and skittles;” and a love that is strong enough to renounce its object for “love’s sake,” is beyond our little system of rewards or pity.

John Maclean, however, considers that his wife pays an exaggerated gratitude and a curiously inappropriate reverence to a bad man; and, doubtless, there is a good deal to be said on his side, too. He knows more evil of the conjuror than she does, and less good.

She had loved “Monsieur,” though only with the love of a child for its protector; therefore, said John, she was blinded.

And was she? Ah, well; love has been called blind these many years.

He can well afford to be so maligned for the sake of the fruit that ripens under the glance of his “blind” eyes. He has been dubbed mad too—in the goodly company of the prophets.

When he shall see like the rest of us (but I think that he never will), one fears that miracles will cease, and that Heaven will have left off helping the poor old world.

THE END.