Date: 1878-12-31T22:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Crime Stories; Mystery; Adventure; Romance; Victorian Fiction
Description: Sixteen stories of crime and mystery and romance in the best Victorian tradition, featuring sinister villains, stalwart heroes, and comely heroines; with a goodly portion of loving endings for happy couples. These stories from “The Argosy” magazine have never before been collected.
Publisher: MobileRead
Rights: Public domain in the USA. Text is believed to be in the public domain in countries where copyright is “Life+70” or less.

Something Wicked

THE MYSTERY STORIES
OF
Mary Elizabeth Penn

CONTENTS:

One Autumn Night
Forrester’s Lodger
In the Mist
On the Night of the Storm
In a Dangerous Strait
The Innkeeper’s Daughter
An Innocent Thief
Under a Spell
A Violinist’s Adventure
The Mystery of Miss Carew
The Secret of Lyston Hall
A Singular Accusation
A Night in a Balloon
A Dramatic Critique
A Painter’s Vengeance
Monsieur Silvain’s Secret

…About This eBook

One Autumn Night

(Mar. 1879)

There is no pleasanter spot in leafy Warwickshire than Clieveden Vale. The little “Clieve”—scarcely more than a stream, though it calls itself a river—meanders through the valley in a loitering, leisurely fashion, now winding through pastoral meadows, now making a detour to cross the main street of a straggling village, where it is spanned by an ivy-covered bridge; then flowing onwards into the green shady solitude of Clieveden woods.

On the slope of the valley, its Tudor chimneys just visible above the trees, stands the Hall, the residence of Sir Richard Clieveden; and on the opposite hill side, with woods and stream between, is the Vicarage—a handsome modern house, surrounded by smooth lawns and bright parterres. The baronet has two sons. Gilbert, the heir, lives quietly at home, dividing his time pretty equally between sport and study; his younger brother, Reginald, who is in the army, seldom makes his appearance at the Hall. “The Captain only comes when he wants money,” say the household; and it must be acknowledged that after one of his duty-visits Sir Richard generally finds his purse lightened. Again and again the old gentleman has vowed that he would “draw a line,” and pay no more of Reginald’s debts; but the line is not yet drawn, for in spite of his faults the scapegrace younger son is the father’s favourite.

There is constant and friendly intercourse between the inmates of the Hall and the Vicarage. The Reverend Edgar Severne, though only “a country parson,” is a man of good birth and ample means. He has been twice married. His second wife, the present Mrs. Severne, was an heiress, and her fortune will descend to their daughter, Maud.

It is Maud Severne who, on this September evening, stands at the open French window of the drawing-room, looking out over the lawn, the river, and the woods, towards the chimneys of Clieveden Hall.

The fading glow of the sunset lights her face; a face which, like her character, is faulty enough, if critically examined, but thoroughly lovable and attractive nevertheless, with its bright “April-blue” eyes, equally ready for smiles or tears, its pretty wilful lips, and exquisite complexion.

Maud had been standing for some moments, deep in thought—rather graver thought than usual, to judge from her face—when her mother’s voice roused her.

“Maud,” said Mrs. Severne, looking up from her writing-table at the other end of the room, “did Reginald Clieveden call this morning while I was out?”

“Yes, mother; at least, he did not come in. I was in the garden, and he practised lawn-tennis with me.”

Her mother’s brow contracted as she closed and addressed the letter she had just finished.

“If Reginald must devote all his energies to lawn-tennis, I wish that he would practise at home instead of spending all his mornings here. I do not care for him to be constantly in your society, particularly during Gilbert’s absence. However, his leave will soon expire, I suppose, and then—”

“I don’t see what Gilbert has to do with it,” Maud interrupted, a shade of defiance in her tone.

“Don’t you think Gilbert has a right to object to your flirting with his brother when you are engaged to himself?” was the quiet enquiry.

“But, excuse me, mother, I am not engaged to Gilbert,” she returned, coming away from the window. “A month ago, just before he started on his Highland tour, he proposed to me, but I would not give him an answer then; I told him I did not know my own mind—and it was true.”

“But previously to that you had given him sufficient encouragement to justify his thinking that you meant to accept him eventually. He takes it for granted that you will.”

“He takes it for granted—yes, that is just what I complain of,” Maud declared. “He knows that you and papa are on his side, and he thinks my consent ‘goes without saying.’ But I don’t care to be disposed of in that summary manner.”

“That is a very unjust and unkind remark,” was Mrs. Severne’s comment. “You know perfectly well that your father and I would never attempt to force your inclinations; if we wish to see you Gilbert’s wife, it is because we are sure that he would make you happy. He is a loyal, true-hearted gentleman; a man whose love any woman, might be proud to win.”

Maud was silent a moment.

“Yes, that is quite true,” she said at last. “Gilbert is all that is noble and good—almost too good. If he were a little faulty I think I should like him better. He lives in an atmosphere too rarefied for common mortals to breathe.”

Mrs. Severne glanced at her with displeasure.

“I am sorry to hear you sneer at Gilbert.”

“Indeed, mother, I am not sneering. I have the greatest respect and affection for him, only—only—”

“Only he has not Reginald’s handsome face and flattering tongue,” her mother concluded. “Ah, Maud, take care that you do not throw away the substance for the shadow, and find out your mistake when it is too late.”

The girl made no reply, but her face clouded with a doubtful, anxious look, as if her mother’s warning had given expression to some unacknowledged misgiving in the recesses of her own mind. She returned to her old place at the window, and after standing there irresolutely a few moments, passed out on to the lawn.

Twilight’s “gradual dusky veil” was deepening over woods and fields, and a pale half-moon gleamed faintly in the darkening sky. In the dim light the flowers in the garden-beds looked pale and unreal, like the ghosts of departed blossoms.

Maud crossed the sloping lawn at the side of the house, descended a steep path which led down through the plantation to the river, and paused by a rustic bridge, connecting the Vicarage grounds with those of the Hall. Just above the bridge a little waterfall came dancing down out of the wood to join the river; a few yards lower the stream widened into a miniature lake, whose unruffled surface reflected like a mirror the woods and sky. Close to the margin of the pool stood a picturesque rustic pavilion, called the Châlet, built from a design by Gilbert Clieveden, who spent much of his time there in the summer. The upper room, which overhung the water, and was supported on piles, was his study; the space beneath was used as a boat-house. The baronet’s eldest son was not only a clever amateur artist, he had made his mark in literature, and was a contributor to several high-class Reviews and scientific journals. A thoughtful, studious, scholarly man; as great a contrast as could be imagined to his brother Reginald, with his frank contempt for intellectual pursuits, his shallow mind, and fickle heart.

Maud leaned against the rail of the bridge, looking towards the opposite bank. The shadows had gathered thickly under the trees, but the rising moon cast a long, tremulous line of light across the lake. At this shadowy silent hour the place was mournful in its utter solitude.

Presently from Clieveden woods came the sound of a musical tenor voice, singing, “Come into the garden, Maud,” and in a few moments the singer, Reginald Clieveden, emerged from the shadow of the trees, and crossed the bridge to her side.

“‘She is come—my dove, my dear!’” he quoted, as he kissed her hand.

“I should not have come,” Maud hastened to assure him, “only I had something particular to say to you.”

“Something pleasant, I hope? If not, let it wait. I have just passed a mauvais quart d’heure with my father, and I want you to smooth my ruffled feelings, and pour balm on my wounded spirit.”

“Oh, Reginald, are you in disgrace again?”

“Even so. And pretty deep in it too. The pater swears he will have nothing more to do with me. He has ‘drawn a line,’ at last.”

“But you know he always says that,” Maud reminded him, consolingly.

“He always says it, but this time he appears to mean it,” her companion returned, with a significant nod, pulling his moustache.

“You don’t mean that he refuses to help you!” she exclaimed.

“Positively—except on one condition, and that”—he paused, still thoughtfully caressing his moustache. “Such an easy way out of the difficulty, if I dared,” he muttered.

“What is it?” she enquired, but he made no reply.

“If Sir Richard does not relent, what in the world shall you do?” asked Maud, after a pause.

He shrugged his shoulders. “How do I know? I can’t look so far into the infinities. The true philosophy is to take short views of life. Let us change the subject. What was it you had to say to me?”

She hesitated.

“I was going to ask you,” she began, “not to come quite so often to the Vicarage—at any rate, for the present; my mother does not approve of it; at least, she thinks Gilbert would not. She says that 1 am treating him unfairly, and—and I am afraid she is right.”

“That depends. If you are engaged to him—”

“But I am not; at least—”

“Then I fail to see what right he has to control you, or why you need banish me, to gratify him. It is me you are treating unfairly—cruelly, Maud, knowing what I feel for you.”

“If—if I were sure you cared for me—”

“You must be blind if you doubt it. ‘Care for you’—what a feeble little phrase! I love you as I never loved in my life; and you know it.”

“You never told me so till this moment,” she murmured, plucking a handful of leaves from a bush near, and dropping them one by one into the stream.

His face darkened suddenly.

“The words have been on my lips a hundred times within the last three weeks, but a scruple kept me silent. Don’t ask me what it was; it is connected with an episode in my life that I hate to think of.”

He bent his handsome head to hers, looking into her face with that dangerous tender gaze which few women could resist.

“Speak to me,” he pleaded; “say one word, or if the word won’t come, put your hand in mine. I shall understand.”

Flattered, touched, thrilled by his ardent look, carried away by his earnest pleading, the girl silently placed her hand in his.

There was an expression of triumph and relief, touched by a certain vague remorse, on the young man’s face, as he lifted the little hand to his lips.

“Now that you are quite sure that I ‘care for you’ just a little, you won’t talk of banishing me, will you?” he said presently. “Tell Mrs. Severne that if anyone is sent to Coventry it must be Gilbert.”

“Poor Gilbert!” Maud sighed, penitently. “I wonder what he will think of me when he learns—”

“Ah yes, I shall be curious to see how he takes it,” Reginald answered, equably, examining a ring on her finger. “He never dreamt of me as a possible rival; I must look out for squalls.”

She looked uneasy.

“I hope there will be no quarrel between you,” she said, anxiously; “I should never forgive myself, if—”

“If there is it will be of his making,” Reginald interrupted; “but I should think he has enough wisdom to take his defeat quietly. By-the-by, have you heard from him since he left home?”

“Yes; he wrote last week from a place called Glenfalloch, where—”

“Glenfalloch!” he repeated in a startled tone; “are you sure that was the name?”

“Quite sure. It is in the Western Highlands. Do you know it?”

There was a pause before the answer came. His face had a blank, dismayed look, and the colour had left his lips.

“I—I have heard of it,” he said, at length, looking away from her. “Well,” he continued, after a moment, making an effort to resume his usual manner, “to return to ourselves. When may I speak to the Vicar?”

“Papa is going to Leamington to-morrow, to take Mr. R——’s duties for a fortnight.”

“Then, Maud, I will see him this evening; at once. I want it to be all safely settled before Gilbert appears on the scene. Are you coming in now?”

“Not with you. In a few moments.”

“Gilbert at Glenfalloch!” muttered Reginald, as he ascended the path; “it looks like fatality, and if I were superstitious—bah! after all, nothing may come of it; at any rate, I shall not throw up the cards till the game is lost. Après cela, le déluge!”

Very grave grew Maud’s face when she was alone. Doubts and misgivings crowded into her mind, and would not be dismissed. Her mother’s warning haunted her: “Take care that you do not throw away the substance for the shadow.”

Had she really done so, and would she live to repent her rashness? It seemed to her that she was beginning to repent it already. She thought of Gilbert as she never had before, tenderly, regretfully, with a remorseful consciousness of his worth; with a tardy appreciation of the value of that faithful heart which she had flung aside so lightly.

She tried to assure herself that he would soon recover from the disappointment, and return to the old brotherly intercourse, but she knew his nature too well to believe that he could so easily forget. She remembered his words, spoken on that very spot, a month ago: “I have loved you all your life, and whether you accept me or not, I shall love you still.”

Absorbed in her reflections she did not hear an approaching footstep, or notice the figure of a man advancing along the path which skirted the stream, on the opposite bank. On seeing her he paused, looked at her doubtfully a moment, then came quickly across the bridge to her side; and Maud, raising her head, saw before her the very person who had been in her thoughts—Gilbert Clieveden.

She drew back with a stifled cry.

“Don’t be alarmed. It is I—Gilbert,” he said, in his pleasant cordial tones, taking her hand in both his own. “Did I startle you, dear? I am sorry; it was thoughtless of me.”

“I thought it was your ghost,” she said, with a nervous laugh. “We did not expect you home for another week at least. When did you arrive?”

“I have only just come from the station. I left my traps to be sent on, and walked home by the river-side, that I might see the place where I bid you good-bye a month ago. I little expected to have the happiness of meeting you here. Is it really you?” he added, bending to look at her; “you look as unsubstantial as a water-wraith. Maud, are you not well, or is it the moonlight makes you look so pale?”

“I am quite well,” she answered, averting her head. “You will come in, Gilbert, and see papa?”

“Not to-night; I must go home. But first I want to say a few words to you.” There was a pause. Maud’s heart beat fast with the knowledge of what was coming. He seemed in no hurry to speak. Leaning back against the rail of the bridge, he took off his hat and pushed the hair from his forehead, looking thoughtfully away across the lake. The moonlight rested full upon his face, and Maud, glancing at him furtively, could not help thinking what a noble face it was, with its broad forehead, calm serious eyes, and mouth at once firm and tender. The features were not classical, perhaps, but they were full of character, and his bronzed complexion, dark moustache, and short pointed beard, gave him the look of a portrait by Vandyke.

“What happiness it is to be near you once more,” he said at length. “It seems natural to meet you here in the spot where we parted. So many times, Maud, during the last month, I have seen you in dreams, standing there in your white dress, with the woods above you and the river at your feet! So many times I have fancied I heard your voice mingling with the murmur of other streams far away. Waking and sleeping you were always in my thoughts.”

“You think of me too much,” she faltered.

“Cure me of that bad habit if you can,” was his reply, as he took her hand. “Maud, when I parted from you a month ago I carried a sweet hope away with me; will you—”

She looked up suddenly, showing a pale, agitated face.

“Gilbert—forgive me!” she began.

He looked at her in surprise.

“What have I to forgive you, Maud?”

“For allowing you to hope, only to disappoint you after all.”

The colour faded out of his bronzed face; he caught his breath as if he had received a blow.

“You never intended, then, to accept me—”

“Yes, yes, I did,” she interrupted, “though I wanted to have my liberty a little longer, but since then—”

“Since then?” he repeated, still holding her hand, but looking away from her; “don’t fear to tell me. Do you mean that—that you have learnt to care for some one else?”

Her silence answered for her.

He looked at the dark woods and the moonlit lake; looked at them, but did not see them; there was a mist before his eyes.

“Who is it?” he asked slowly.

Almost inaudibly she whispered the name.

“Reginald.”

“Reginald!”

His tone was one of such emphatic astonishment that it startled her.

“Reginald!” he repeated. “Do you mean to say that he has made love to you? that he—”

“He has proposed to me, and I have accepted him,” she answered, as he paused. He let fall her hand, looking at her in incredulous amazement.

“Maud, what are you saying? my brother has proposed to you? Well, but—good heavens! he—No,” he broke off, “I can’t believe it. I cannot believe that he is such a scoundrel.”

“Gilbert, what a word! You have no right to apply such a term to Reginald. If he has wronged you, it is—”

“It is not of my own wrongs I am thinking,” her companion interrupted, “though I might complain of his treachery in robbing me of—but let that pass. Do you love him, Maud?” he asked, looking at her with anxious eyes. The colour rushed to her face; she could not answer “Yes.” In a flash, as it were, her own heart was revealed to her: but the revelation came too late.

He put his own construction on her silence. “I see. It was an unnecessary question. Of course you do. He is the sort of man women do love—to their sorrow.” Then, with a look in his eyes such as she had never seen there before, he muttered: “He shall answer to me for this.”

Almost at the same moment, Reginald’s gay voice floated down from the plantation above.

“Come into the garden, Maud,

For the black bat, night, has flown—”

Gilbert started and turned, looking up towards the path. The girl, watching his face, shivered with a sudden dread.

“Don’t meet him now,” she said, anxiously, “you—”

“You need not fear that there will be any dispute in your presence,” he answered, divining her thought.

“Nor afterwards, when you are alone together?” she urged. He did not reply; he was looking towards the plantation, listening to the musical voice ringing out in the evening stillness.

Come into the garden, Maud,

I am here at the gate alone.”

“Maud, Maud!” Reginald called, breaking off in his song. “I have good news for you. Are you still there?”

“Yes, I am here, I am coming,” she responded, and would have hurried towards him, hoping to prevent the meeting, but her companion’s firm fingers closed on her wrist and detained her.

The next moment Reginald’s figure emerged from the trees into the strip of moonlight on the bank.

“Good child, to wait for me,” he began. “Hallo, who is that? Why, Gilbert! Where have you dropped from? I thought you were in the wilds of the Highlands.”

“I have returned, as you see,” the other answered in his usually quiet tone, greatly to Maud’s relief; though he made no movement to take the hand extended to him.

“You are just in time to offer us—Maud and me—your congratulations,” Reginald proceeded, with a smile which had something mocking in its triumph. “We are—”

“I know. Maud has told me. But I think, with your permission, that I will defer my congratulations for the present, lest they should prove premature.”

His brother gave him a quick glance, as if struck by something in his tone; then, with a slight shrug, took out his cigar-case.

“As you like,” he said carelessly. “Hope you have enjoyed your tour, and distinguished yourself by some wonderful discovery as to the ‘strata’ of the Highlands?”

“I have made one very unexpected discovery, but it had nothing to do with geology.”

Reginald started, and paused in the act of opening his cigar-case. Gilbert met his look with one full of significance.

“When and where did you make it?” Reginald asked, after a moment, dropping his voice so as to be inaudible to Maud.

“Only two days ago, at a place called Glenfalloch, You know it?”

He shook his head. He was lighting his cigar, and the flickering gleam of the match showed that his face was colourless.

“There is some one there who knows you, at any rate, and who has entrusted me with a letter for you. Shall I give it you now?”

“No, no, not now,” he muttered hastily, with a glance at Maud.

“Come to me at the Châlet in three hours’ time; we shall be secure from listeners there,” Gilbert responded.

Then turning to Maud, who had caught only a word or two here and there of the latter part of the dialogue, he continued: “It is getting late. I will take you home.”

Reginald uttered no protest against this invasion of his privileges, but stood moodily staring at the river.

“Good night,” she said, putting out her hand to him.

He looked at her absently.

“You are going? oh—good night. God bless you, Maud,” he added, with sudden and strange earnestness: and he would have kissed her, but Gilbert hastily, almost roughly interposed.

“Stand back—do not touch her! How dare you!” he said, hoarsely. His hands were clenched, his face white with suppressed passion; a lurid light burnt in his dark eyes.

Maud clung tremblingly to his arm.

“Come away—please!” she entreated; “remember what you promised.”

But already he had commanded himself, and drawing her hand through his arm, turned away without another word.

In silence they traversed the plantation. He seemed absorbed in thought, and there was a stern set look on his face which made her timid of addressing him. Just as they emerged into the lawn, Mrs. Severne met them.

“You have stayed too long, Maud. I— Why, is that Gilbert?” she exclaimed, breaking off.

“Yes, Mrs. Severne; you must scold me for detaining Maud.”

“I shall scold her for not bringing you to the house at once,” she answered. “Pray come in.”

“Excuse me to-night. I have not yet been home. Kind regards to the Vicar; please tell him I will call to-morrow. Good night.”

And he was gone.

“I am glad he has returned, but I wish with all my heart that he had never gone away,” the Vicar’s wife said with a sigh, as they crossed the lawn.

Maud understood the sigh. “I am very sorry you are disappointed, mother,” she said tremulously.

“It is on your account we are grieved, Maud, your father and I. We fear you have made an unfortunate choice. However, if your happiness depends upon this marriage—and Reginald has just assured us that it does—there is nothing more to be said.”

The girl’s heart sank; she made no reply.

II

An exquisite autumn night, full of misty sweetness; the sky luminous with stars, the world sleeping in a calm so profound as to be almost melancholy. Not a breath of wind swayed the trees in the plantation, or stirred their shadows on the Vicarage lawn, where the moonlight lay white and cold; only now and then, at long intervals, a thrill, a tremor ran through the leaves, as if a spirit had whispered to them as it passed.

It was nearly midnight. Early hours were the rule at the Vicarage, and all the household had long been sleeping, except Maud, who turned and tossed in her pretty white-curtained bed, too restless even to close her eyes. Never yet in her tranquil life of eighteen years had the girl felt so troubled. It was not only that her heart was full of vain regret and self-reproach, but there was an oppression on her spirits, a dark shadowy foreboding of evil, which she tried in vain to dismiss. She dared hardly acknowledge in what direction her fears pointed, but Gilbert’s face, with that white threatening look of wrath upon it, rose before her as if painted on the darkness.

The window was wide open, and just opposite there was a break in the plantation, which gave a pretty glimpse, set like a picture in a frame of dark foliage, of the Châlet and the moonlit lake. She could not see the little waterfall, but she could hear its murmur; a distant dreamy sound which hardly seemed to break the silence. At length, insensibly, it lulled her to sleep.

How long she slept she did not know. She woke with a violent start, and sat up in bed, her heart beating tumultuously. A shot, followed by a cry, ringing out in the night stillness—those were the sounds which had roused her.

Her first thought was that there were poachers in Clieveden woods, but that supposition was quickly followed by another so terrible that it turned her cold.

A glance at the Châlet had shown her that a light was burning in Gilbert’s study, and at the same moment there rushed back to her recollection a few words she had overheard in his whispered colloquy with his brother.

“At the Châlet, three hours hence.” Were the brothers there now? Had Gilbert— She sprang out of bed, and without asking herself what she intended to do, began to dress herself as quickly as her shaking fingers would let her.

Gliding noiselessly down stairs, she crossed the hall to the garden-door. “Timon,” the house dog, was there before her, scratching and whining uneasily. He, too, had heard the shot, though no other inmate of the house seemed to have been roused by it.

She unfastened the bolt and chain and passed out, the dog bounding on before her across the lawn, and into the deep shadow of the plantation. When she reached the bridge she was obliged to pause to recover her breath. The window of the Châlet was open, but the lamp was so placed that she could see nothing of the occupants of the room. All looked peaceful enough, but she did not feel reassured. There was something ominous in the silence.

The entrance of the building was at the side, up a flight of wooden steps. The dog was barking angrily and scratching at the door, which was locked.

“Who is there?” demanded Gilbert’s voice.

“It is I—Maud. Let me in.”

She heard a smothered exclamation, then there was a pause.

“Wait a moment; I will admit you presently,” he said.

A sound of hurried footsteps followed; a noise as of some piece of furniture being moved; then a long silence.

At length the door opened, and Gilbert stood before her, deadly pale; his dress disordered, his breath coming quickly. He looked at her as if she were a ghost, and for a moment neither spoke.

“Why are you here, Maud, at this hour?” he asked, at length. Without replying, she passed by him into the room, followed by the dog, who began sniffing suspiciously about the floor. It was the model of a bachelor’s sanctum: panelled walls and a polished floor; plain furniture of unstained oak, a capacious writing-table in the middle; an easel in one corner; over the chimney-piece an array of pipes of all shapes, sizes, and colours; on the opposite wall, near the door, a trophy of arms, fencing-foils, fishing-rods, and hunting-whips, surmounted by a fox’s head. To-night all was in disorder, and on the floor at Gilbert’s feet lay a gun. Maud took in all these details before she turned to him again.

“Where is Reginald?” she asked, in a voice hardly above a whisper.

“He is not here, Maud, as you see.”

“He has been here; there is his glove.”

“Yes, he has been with me, but—— Why do you look at me so strangely?” he broke off, taking a step towards her.

She recoiled from him, putting out both hands to keep him away.

“I heard a shot,” she panted; “there is a gun at your feet—did you—have you—— Gilbert! what has happened? Where is Reginald?”

For a moment he stood looking at her like one in a dream; then, instead of replying, he walked to the window, and after glancing out at the lake, silently beckoned her to approach.

“Look! who is that?” he said, pointing down.

At the same moment a boat—his own little canoe, the Maud—shot out suddenly from the boat-house below into the moonlit pool.

The occupant was Reginald. He did not even glance up at the window, though he must have heard Maud’s involuntary exclamation, but with a few strokes of the paddles sent the canoe, swift as a swallow, across the lake, and on up the river towards the Hall.

“Thank heaven!” the girl exclaimed, as she drew back from the window. “Oh, Gilbert,” she added, turning to her companion, “can you forgive me for having—”

He put up his hand to interrupt her. There was a look of pain on his face which deepened every line. “I have no right to resent your suspicion, Maud,” he said in a low tone; “it is only by heaven’s mercy that I was not the cause of my brother’s death to-night. Sit down a moment,” he continued; “I promised Reginald that I would tell you all. He was with me when you came, just now, but not wishing to meet you, left the Châlet by this door. Down, Timon—down, good dog!”

He stooped and showed her a trap-door in the floor, which communicated, by a flight of wooden steps, with the boat-house below.

“But why should he avoid me?” she questioned, when he returned to her side.

“I am going to tell you, Maud. It is a miserable story. I wish to heaven I could spare you the pain of hearing, and myself the shame of telling it; but you must know it.”

“Stay,” she interposed; “is it something you have found out about Reginald? something you learnt when you were in Scotland?”

He silently assented.

“Perhaps—perhaps you discovered that he was already engaged?” she hazarded.

“Worse than that. I discovered that he was already married.”

She sank into a chair, looking up at him incredulously.

“Reginald married!” she gasped; “impossible! Oh, Gilbert, there must be some mistake.”

He shook his head. “I saw his wife only two days ago. She is the daughter of the inn-keeper at Glenfalloch, and one of the loveliest women I ever met. Two years ago, when Reginald was salmon fishing in the Highlands, he passed through the place. He had intended to stay three days; he remained three weeks; and when he left, Jeanie Henderson went with him—”

“As his wife?”

“There was no marriage ceremony, and he declares he never regarded her as his wife, but he owns that he acknowledged her as such in the presence of witnesses; and that, by the law of Scotland, as he must have known, constitutes a legal marriage. He took her abroad, wandered about the continent for a few months, soon wearied of his beautiful but uneducated companion, and finally—deserted her. Not knowing his address (he had been careful to keep from her all knowledge of his real station), she could not trace him, and so returned half heart-broken to her father’s roof.

“I had been staying some days at Glenfalloch Inn before Jeanie knew my name. When she learnt it she asked me, in an agitated tone, if I had a brother or relative named Reginald, and then—well, then I learnt what I have just told you. The next day I left the place, bearing a letter for Reginald from his wife. For that she is really his wife, I ascertained beyond doubt.”

“And yet he would have married me!” Maud exclaimed. “What an escape I have had. I understand now,” she added thoughtfully; “Sir Richard wished him to propose to me; that was the ‘condition’ Reginald spoke of.”

“No doubt. Well,” he pursued, “when we met here half an hour ago, we were both in the worst possible mood for such an interview. I was suffering under a strong sense of personal wrong, and his careless, defiant manner seemed to add insult to injury. I told him briefly what I had learnt, and required his promise that he would immediately acknowledge his wife. He flatly refused to give any such engagement. I set my back against the door, and vowed he should not leave me till he did. In a spirit of angry jesting he took down a gun from the wall, and pointed it at me, with some taunting words which I need not repeat. Forgetting, in my excitement, that it was loaded, I seized it and tried to wrest it from him; in the struggle it went off—to my horror he uttered a cry and staggered backwards, his forehead covered with blood.”

Maud shuddered and put both hands to her eyes.

“Mercifully, the bullet had only grazed his temple, but the thought of what might have been turned me cold and sick. In the sudden revulsion of feeling all anger was swept away, not from my heart only, but from his too. I bathed his forehead and gave him some water, and then he silently offered me his hand.

“‘I have acted like a brute and a villain, Gilbert, I know that well enough,’ he said in a changed voice; after a pause, ‘you said you had a letter for me; give it me now,’ he added. He read it through in silence till he came to a sentence near the end. ‘The child—our child?’ he repeated, with a start; ‘good heavens, I did not know—’ his face suddenly flushed and softened, and there were tears in his eyes. ‘Poor little Jeanie,’ he muttered, as he folded it again: ‘I must have a heart of stone if I could resist this appeal. I shall go to her at once. I must leave you to break it to the pater, and—and to Maud. Tell her—no,’ he broke off; ‘I dare not say all I feel, and I won’t say less. I will send no message.’ I promised to make the best of the case to everyone, and if my father still refused to help him, I undertook to pay. Well, it does not matter what more passed between us, we were still talking when we heard the dog barking at the door, and directly afterwards your voice. To avoid meeting you, he went out by way of the boat-house, and the moment I had closed the trap I admitted you.”

Maud drew a long deep breath, and raised her head. Her mind was occupied by a mixture of feelings, too confused to be intelligible, but chief amongst them was relief. She was free once more. There might yet be a chance of winning back the treasure she had cast aside so carelessly.

Her companion heard the sigh and misinterpreted it. He sat down beside her and took her hand, looking tenderly into her face.

“Maud, my friend and sister, what can I say to you? I dare not even offer you sympathy, it is too like pity, and that, I know, you would resent. But child, you are young; your wounded heart will heal more quickly than you think, and the day will come when another more worthy of your love—”

She withdrew her hand quickly, and turned away her head. A look of pain crossed his face. Again he misunderstood the action.

“It was not of myself I was thinking,” he said gently. “I shall not trouble you again with my own feelings. All that is past. Lest my presence should keep alive painful memories, I shall go away for a time, till—”

“Why should you go away?” she murmured, without raising her eyes; “let us—let us go back to the old times, when I was what you called me just now, your friend and sister.”

He shook his head with a grave smile. “The old times are past and gone, and the old feelings with them. Having once been your lover, I can never again feel for you as a brother.”

“But you—” she began, then stopped abruptly, with a vivid blush. “I must go home,” she added, rising.

He extinguished the lamp, and they went out into the cool, fragrant night.

The waterfall was still singing its monotonous song to the sleeping woods. To her ears it seemed to echo like a mournful refrain: “The old times are past and gone—past and gone!”

As she walked silently at her companion’s side, her heart was swelling with vain regret. Bitter tears, such as she had never shed before, blinded her eyes. She longed to cry aloud all that filled her heart; but when she tried to speak no words would come.

Midway in the steep plantation path she stumbled over a projecting root, and would have fallen if Gilbert had not supported her. As he raised her he heard a suppressed sob.

He pressed her hand passionately to his breast.

“Maud, Maud, it breaks my heart to see you suffer! What can I do, what can I say to comfort you?”

“Don’t leave me,” she sobbed, clinging to his arm; “if you want to comfort me, don’t go away! Gilbert—”

Something in the pleading voice, something in the clinging pressure of the little hands on his arm, made his heart leap with a sudden sweet hope, wild though it seemed.

“Maud,” he whispered, pausing; “don’t tell me to stay unless you can tell me to hope too.”

“Stay,” she repeated, laying her tearful cheek against his sleeve.

“Child, do not trifle with me,” he said, his voice stern with emotion. “I cannot be content with half your heart; I must have all, or none; and if you loved Reginald, how can you—”

“I did not love him,” she interrupted, looking up; “I mistook my own feelings. I was weak and foolish and perverse, and—oh! Gilbert, if you will but forgive me; if you will only take me to your heart again, I—”

The sentence was never finished. Before she could utter another word she was clasped to that faithful heart, and Gilbert, in lover’s fashion, closed her lips.

Forrester’s Lodger

(Mar. 1881)

It was a bright genial afternoon in early spring. The adventurous sunbeams had succeeded in piercing the canopy of smoke which hung over busy Hammerton, and were exploring every nook and corner of its crowded thoroughfares. Some of them found their way into a certain “long, unlovely street” in the outskirts of the town, and lighted up the windows of a row of humble little red brick houses, which were frowned upon by the high wall of a great iron-foundry opposite.

On the step of Number Three stood Mary Forrester. She was a slender girl of nineteen, with chestnut hair, falling in loose waves over her forehead; a clear colourless complexion, a small grave mouth, and a pair of soft brown eyes, that looked at the world with a pathetic sort of perplexity, as if its ways bewildered her.

She had her work in her hand, but she was not sewing. Her eyes were fixed on the strip of blue sky above the foundry wall. She could not have told why the sight of that turquoise gleam, and the breath of the soft spring breeze on her face, should make her feel vaguely sorrowful; but so it was, and unconsciously she sighed as she resumed her work.

Presently the sound of approaching footsteps made her look up again. Two figures were advancing in the middle of the dusty road —a young man, and a little boy whom he led by the hand.

She looked at them curiously. They were strangers, she saw at a glance, and of a type not common in Foundry Street. The man, who was dressed in a suit of rough grey tweed and a felt hat, was a tall, well-built young fellow of five or six-and-twenty, with a sunburnt complexion, pleasant, frank blue eyes, and short brown beard and moustache.

It was not he, however, but the child who absorbed her attention, and brought the look of wondering admiration to her face. Never out of a picture had she seen anything so lovely as this little fellow, with his velvety dark eyes, half hidden by their long lashes, his clear, olive skin with its rich dusky bloom, his full smiling lips, red as coral, and the short silky curls that clustered over his forehead.

They came slowly on up the street, the stranger looking straight before him, as if his thoughts were elsewhere, the boy noticing everything, and commenting on the unfamiliar objects in a continuous ripple of exclamation and inquiry. His bright little person seemed to light up the street like a sunbeam. As they were passing the house, his eyes suddenly encountered those of Mary Forrester, fixed upon him in a gaze of rapt admiration,

He loosened his hand from his father’s and stopped short, returning her look with one of interest and curiosity. Then his lips broke into a smile, and he babbled something which she did not understand; it was in a strange language, soft and musical. However, she smiled and nodded at a venture, whereupon he laughed all over his little gipsy face, and putting the tips of five dimpled fingers to his lips, kissed his hand to her. Mary’s heart went out to him.

“Oh, the sweet little lad!” she exclaimed aloud, and extended her hand with a gesture of invitation, to which he at once responded. The father, who had been watching this little scene with a smile of amusement, now approached her.

“I think you have bewitched my boy,” he said, pleasantly; “he is not usually so ready to make friends.”

“I am sure he has bewitched me,” she answered, as she bent to kiss him; “but I don’t understand what he says. Is it French?”

“No, Italian. He was born in Italy, and has not yet learnt to speak English properly, though he is beginning to understand it. Come, Tonio!”

She reluctantly released the little hand which clung to hers.

“I dare say you will see him again,” the father said. “We shall often pass this way if I succeed in finding rooms in this neighbourhood.”

“We have a room to let in our house,” she told him, timidly.

He glanced at the house and the street, and made a sort of grimace, but her wistful look at the child touched him.

“May I see it?” he asked, after a moment’s hesitation. “It would be convenient for me to be so near my work.”

Mary, who had turned to enter the house, stopped short and looked at him. “You are not a working-man!” she remarked.

He laughed. “I don’t know what else to call myself. I am a machinist, and have an engagement at the Works yonder.”

She still looked at him half incredulously. “You are not like our Hammerton working-folks. You haven’t their looks or their speech.”

“I suppose I haven’t been here long enough to catch them. I only arrived this morning, coming from Glasgow.”

Mary said no more, but led the way into the house. Her visitor looked round as if agreeably surprised. The little kitchen into which she ushered him was humble enough, certainly, with its brick floor and gaily-papered walls, but it had a pleasant, homelike look, and there were some attempts at adornment, in the shape of plants in the window-sill, prints and photographs over the mantel-piece, and a hanging shelf containing books, which seemed to have been well read.

“Are these yours?” he asked, looking at the titles. “Are you fond of reading?”

“Yes, very. Those were my mother’s books. There were a good many others, but my father— but they are gone. Will you come upstairs?”

Carrying little Tonio, who refused to be separated from his new friend, she preceded him up the steep, narrow staircase to a bedroom on the first floor.

“It looks dull now,” she said, apologetically, drawing up the blind, “but it has the morning light upon it. The sun rises just over there.”

“Are you ever awake at sunrise?”

“Often, in summer. I like to sit at the window, and watch the stars fading and the light getting brighter. The air is so clear before the chimneys begin to smoke, and everything is so still—so still, and the sky is all gold and rose colour. It is beautiful and yet sad, somehow.”

He looked at her curiously. “Nature is never sad, whatever poets say,” he remarked. “The sadness is in the eyes that look at her.”

“Ay, maybe it is,” she acquiesced. “Do you think this room will suit you?”

“I should be hard to please if it didn’t. The question is—shall I suit you for a lodger? You see there is no one to look after my boy while I am at work, and—”

“Has he no mother?” she interrupted, in a compassionate undertone.

“No,” he answered shortly, with a sudden darkening of his face, which altered its whole expression. “Perhaps you will find it troublesome to have him on your hands all day?”

“Troublesome? I should love to take care of him, and I believe he would be happy with me.”

After a little further conversation, during which the question of terms was settled to their mutual satisfaction, Mary’s new lodger betook himself to the station to fetch his “traps,” leaving Tonio perfectly contented in her charge.

The young man was absent about an hour, returning in a cab with his belongings. As it approached the house his ear was struck by a confusion of sounds within—a scuffling of feet on the floor, a man’s rough voice raised in anger, a woman’s subdued and imploring. A little group of neighbours had gathered outside the door.

“Forrester’s at his old ways again,” he heard one woman say; “he’ll be the death of the girl some day.”

“What is it? what has happened?” he asked anxiously, as he alighted. They stared at him without replying, and drew back to allow him to pass in. This was the scene which met his eyes as he entered the kitchen. Mary, flushed and dishevelled, was struggling in the grasp of a man whose heavy hand had just descended on her shoulders, and was raised to repeat the blow.

On this group the new lodger burst like a whirlwind, and seizing her assailant by the collar, flung him across the room with so little ceremony that he stumbled and measured his length on the floor.

“Brute!” the young man panted, out of breath with exertion, and in a white heat of indignation and disgust, “Who is this man?” he demanded, turning to the girl, who leaned against the wall, white to the lips and trembling from head to foot.

“My father,” was the almost inaudible reply.

Forrester—who was only half sober—was on his feet in a moment, but seemed too astonished by the sudden attack to retaliate.

“Who is this man?” he echoed, parodying the other’s tone, and measuring him with what was intended for a haughty stare.

“My name is Stephen Lydiard, and I was to have had the honour of being your lodger; but after this—”

An imploring gesture from Mary arrested the words on his lips.

“You must be friends with Mr. Lydiard, father,” she pleaded timidly, “he didn’t know who you were, or he wouldn’t—”

“Have knocked me down in my own house,” her father put in, with a short, gruff laugh. “Very considerate of Mr. Lydiard.”

“But you won’t bear malice?” she persisted. “You’ll shake hands with him?”

“I bear no malice—oh, no, that is not my character,” was the reply, though the glance he threw at her protector rather belied his words. “I am ready to shake hands, if Mr. Lydiard wishes it.”

After a moment’s hesitation the latter complied, with a slight shrug. “Don’t strike your daughter again while I am in the house,” he said, quietly, as their hands met, “or you’ll receive a lesson you will not soon forget.”

“I shall not soon forget this one,” was the muttered reply, as he took up his hat and slouched out at the door.

“Try to keep friends with my father,” Mary said anxiously, when they were alone; “don’t interfere between us again.”

“Not when I see you ill-treated?”

“It doesn’t matter; I’m used to it.”

“Used to it!” he echoed compassionately. “My poor child, what a life yours must have been!”

She smiled tremulously, and glanced at him with a sort of wistful wonder. Sympathy was so strange and so sweet.

“What was it all about just now?” he asked, after a moment’s silence. “Why was he so angry?”

She coloured and turned her head aside. “Don’t ask me; I’m ashamed to tell you.”

“Pray do—I want to know.”

“Well—it was because—because I hadn’t asked you twice as much for the room as it was worth.”

“Was that all? I will pay you double with pleasure, if—”

“No,” she interrupted; “you must not. And if he asks you for money you must refuse—he would only spend it at the ‘Silver Cup.’ You will stay with us?” she continued. “While you are here I shall feel that I have one friend in the world.”

“Only one? Surely you have others?”

“The neighbours are kind in their way, and I know they are sorry for me, but—”

She shook her head, and left the sentence unfinished.

“I will stay if it will make you happier,” he said, in his kind cordial tones, “and I will be your firm and faithful friend. But I have something to ask you in return.”

He lifted his boy on to the table between them, and taking the little olive face in his hands, gazed at it a moment with a troubled, anxious fondness that was strangely touched with dread.

“Is it something about the child?” she asked.

“Yes. If I give him into your keeping, you must promise never to let him out of your sight while I am away—never under any pretext to trust him with a stranger. There is a reason for this which I will tell you some day, but not now.”

“You may rely on me,” she said, earnestly. “I will guard him well.”

Mary went to sleep that night with a heart lighter than it had been for many a day. On the dark horizon of her life a ray of dawn had appeared at last.

•    •    •    •

Stephen Lydiard’s life in his new quarters proved pleasanter than might have been expected from its unpromising commencement. His landlord kept out of the way as much as possible, though when they did meet he behaved with studied civility. Stephen was well aware, however, that he had neither forgotten nor forgiven their encounter, and would probably make reprisals if an opportunity occurred.

As for Mary, never had she been so happy. Friendship and sympathy brightened her life and warmed her lonely heart.

Tonio was the wonder and admiration of the neighbourhood, and his daily promenades were quite a triumphal progress. He accepted the public homage graciously enough, but in a cool, imperial manner, as merely a tribute that was his due, showing no marked preference for anyone but Mary, who repaid his affection with boundless devotion.

The days crept by, getting warmer and longer. Blustering March and fickle April were past, and May came smiling in. One evening, on returning from the foundry, Stephen threw into Mary’s lap a bunch of flowers he had just bought in the street.

“A message from the country, to tell you that summer is coming,” he said. She was seated at work, with Tonio at her feet, and raised the flowers to her face with a deep breath of delight.

“How sweet! and how beautiful the country must be looking now! I haven’t seen it for—not since the day I ran away from home.”

“You ran away?” he repeated, as he took a seat opposite to her and lifted the child on to his knee. “When was that?”

She looked down, tracing figures on the table with the point of her scissors. “It was nearly four years ago: not long after my mother died. I was so miserable at home. Father— Well, never mind,” she broke off. “One morning—it was in the early autumn—I left the house, meaning never to return. When I got away from the town I walked on and on, along the country roads, not caring where they led me, till, late in the afternoon, I found myself on the borders of a great common. It was Fernleigh Heath. Have you ever been there?”

He shook his head.

“It is a beautiful place—so wild and free. It stretches away as far as you can see, with the blue sky coming right down on every side, and the furze-bloom shining yellow as gold. I wandered about till dark, then lay down in a hollow, and went to sleep. It was so strange to wake in the night, and find nothing between me and the stars, which seemed like millions of bright eyes looking down at me.”

“Were you not afraid?”

“No, but I had the strangest feeling—as if—as if I had died and come to life again in another world, where there was no such thing as sorrow, or anger, or pain. My heart had been full of bitterness when I went to sleep, but it had all died away in the beautiful solemn stillness. I fancied mother was looking down at me, telling me to go home and do my duty, as she had done hers till she died.”

Her voice faltered, and she put her hand to her eyes.

“And you went home?” he said gently, after a pause.

“Yes, I started directly it was light, and reached home in time to get father’s dinner,” she answered, smiling. “I have often thought I should like to see the heath again,” she concluded, as she resumed her work.

“You shall,” he responded. “We will spend a day there—you and I and the little one.”

She clasped her hands rapturously.

“Oh, do you mean it? When shall we go?”

“To-day is Saturday; why not to-morrow? We can go by an early train, and take our dinner with us.”

And so it was settled, and she at once began her preparations for the excursion, glancing anxiously at the sky now and then, to see if it promised fine weather for the morrow.

The next day proved all that could be desired—sunny, clear, and cloudless—with only just enough breeze to give freshness to the air.

“Why, Mary, you are dazzling!” was Stephen’s exclamation, as she made her appearance after breakfast in all the glory of a freshly-trimmed hat, with a bunch of primroses in her dress. “And how—”

He paused, looking at her as she bent to put on Tonio’s hat.

“And how very pretty you look,” he concluded.

She glanced up at him as if doubting whether she had heard correctly, but something in his eyes—an expression she had never seen there before—made her own drop, and suffused her cheeks with a warm colour.

Half an hour later they were being borne away from smoky Hammerton into the green and gracious country.

The breeze blew freshly through the open carriage windows, fluttering the ribbons in Mary’s hat and the ends of Tonio’s scarlet necktie. The child was in wild spirits, and chattered as merrily as a brook, with rippling bursts of laughter and little startled cries, as some unfamiliar object came in sight, and now and then a pause of silence and a deep sigh of measureless content. It was still early when they reached the quiet little town of Fernleigh-Coldfleld, and the church bells were ringing for morning service.

Directly they emerged from the sunny, silent streets they found themselves on the borders of the heath. The soft wind swept over its wide expanse, dappling it with fleeting cloud-shadows, and bringing aromatic odours of broom and wild thyme. The larks were soaring and singing jubilantly, high up against the blue; the cuckoo’s note came at intervals from a distant wood, and as they walked on, the sound of church bells followed them, solemn and musical, like a benediction on the day.

Stephen was quieter than usual, and she fancied there was a change in his manner; a certain reserve which was not coldness, yet which seemed to put an unwonted distance between them. She would have feared she had offended him, but it was not displeasure she read in his eyes when they met her own.

When the bright day was waning towards afternoon, they sat to rest in the woods which bordered the heath. The slant sunbeams, low but clear, touched the mossy boughs with gold, and steeping through the young leaves, filled the space beneath with a soft green twilight. Now and then the fitful breeze shook the tree-tops and passed on; somewhere in the heart of the wood, a thrush was singing his sweet, full-throated song.

They were sitting on a fallen tree; Tonio half asleep on his father’s knee, his red lips pouted in a drowsy smile; the flowers he had gathered falling one by one from his relaxing grasp.

“What are you thinking of, Mary?” Stephen asked after a silence, turning towards her as she sat, with folded hands, looking down the vistas of the wood.

“I was thinking of the day, four years ago, when I came here alone. How different I feel now; how changed everything is!”

“Changed for the better, I hope. You are happier now, are you not?”

“Happier? I never knew what happiness was till—till you and the little one came.”

“Why—what have we done for you, except give you trouble?” he asked, smiling, as he laid his hand on hers.

“More than you know; more than I can tell you,” she replied, softly. “My heart was withering for want of kindness; all that was good in me was being crushed. I felt that I was getting hard and bitter—”

“And no wonder,” he put in.

“But your friendship saved me. From the very first day, when you spoke to me so gently, and the little lad put his arms round my neck, I felt—I—”

Her voice broke, she bent and hid her face on Tonio’s curly head. Roused by the touch he stroked her cheek, then, suddenly raising himself, he drew his father’s head down to the same level.

“Kiss Mary—poverina Mary!” he pleaded.

The young man laughingly resisted, but the little brown hands held him tight, and at length he complied, and laid his lips to hers. She trembled under the caress, and flushed to her forehead. For a moment his bronzed cheek caught the reflection of hers, then paled, and a look of pain, almost remorse, crossed his face.

Raising her eyes timidly, Mary caught that look and wondered at it. She felt a passing chill; a vague uneasiness. It was the first shadow which had crossed the brightness of the day.

He was silent, looking down. Suddenly he raised his head.

“Mary,” he began, abruptly, “I promised that I would tell you some day why I asked you to guard my boy so jealously. Have you never wondered?”

“I thought you feared to have him stolen. You may have an enemy who—”

“I have,” he interrupted, “a bitter and dangerous one. And that enemy is—my wife.”

“Your wife!” She started, looking up at him incredulously. “You said—you told me—she was dead.”

“I said that my child had no mother,” he corrected; “and, indeed, he is worse than motherless. But my wife is not dead. May Heaven forgive me if I say that I would she were, or that I had been before I met her.”

The girl could not speak; she looked straight before her with eyes that saw nothing. She did not know what had come to her; she felt suddenly cold and tired, and all the glory had departed from the day. At length she spoke, with an effort.

“Is she Italian?”

“Yes. I first met her at Genoa, five years ago. I had been sent out to superintend the working of some new machinery in one of the velvet-weaving factories there. She was the foreman’s daughter, and the loveliest woman I ever saw. I fell in love at first sight, and married her after three weeks courtship, knowing absolutely nothing of her character and disposition. I paid a heavy price for my rashness. My beautiful wife had the temper of a fiend—violent, cruel, revengeful. For four miserable years she made my life a daily martyrdom. I should have been driven to despair—to crime, perhaps, but for my child. His little white soul stood between me and ill. For his sake I bore with her, till I discovered—it makes me angry still to think of it—that he, too, was the victim of her evil temper. Returning unexpectedly one day, I found her beating him unmercifully for some childish fault. The sight of his pain maddened me to that degree that I lost all control over myself. For the first time—I struck her. I expected she would rave and storm at me. She said not a word, but she gave me a look I shall never forget, and I knew that from that moment my wife was my deadliest enemy. But I was not prepared for the revenge she took.”

“What was it?” his companion whispered.

“The very next day she quitted the house secretly, taking the child with her, and leaving a note to tell me that I should never see either her or him again. For two whole months I searched for her in vain; at length accident put me on her track. I traced her from place to place till I found her in Paris. She had gone on the stage, and already the city was ringing with her beauty.”

“And Tonio?”

“Tonio was with her, but so changed—such a poor little ghost of himself that I should hardly have known him if, when I entered the room where he was, he had not sprung towards me with a cry that went to my heart. His mother did not attempt to prevent me from taking him, but she warned me, mockingly, that though I had got him I should not keep him; sooner or later she would find him, and I should lose him when I least expected it. That was the last I saw of her. It is more than a year ago, but her threat has haunted me ever since.”

“Does she know where you are?” the girl asked, apprehensively.

“I think not—I hope not. She must have lost all trace of me when I went to Glasgow.”

Mary drew a deep breath, and looked down at the sleeping child. “Now you have told me this, I shall not know how to guard him carefully enough,” she said, tightening her hold upon the child.

“You cannot be more careful than you are,” was his reply; “while he is with you I feel secure. You have been a good angel, Mary, to me and to Tonio.” She sighed, and they were both silent. The thrush had finished his song, the daylight was fading fast.

“It is getting late,” Stephen said at last, looking round; “we must go. I will carry Tonio. Don’t forget the flowers.”

She looked down at them drearily. “They are dead,” she said.

“They will revive again in water.”

“No, they are quite dead,” she repeated, and left them lying on the ground.

Twilight was falling over the heath like a dusky curtain; earth and sky seemed darkening round them as they walked on, and the wind had an eerie sigh that threatened rain. They were both very silent on the homeward journey. When they reached Hammerton Station a train from the North was just in, and the platform was thronged and bustling. They made their way through the crowd, and mounted the iron steps leading up to the bridge.

Stephen went first with the little boy. When he reached the bridge he looked round for his companion. She was leaning over the balustrade, looking down at the platform as if watching someone.

Presently she looked up, with a pale, startled face, and beckoned to him. “I thought I saw—her,” she whispered.

“Saw who?”

“Your wife.”

He stared at her. “My—— You are dreaming, Mary! How would you know her?”

“It was a dark, beautiful woman, with eyes like Tonio’s, only fiercer. She was watching us—watching you. She stood just there, by the lamp. She is gone now.”

Without waiting to hear more he hurried down the steps. In about five minutes he returned, out of breath.

“No signs of her, or of anyone like her,” he said, in a tone of relief. “It was your fancy, Mary; you had been thinking of what I told you.”

She said no more, but she seemed only half convinced, and glanced nervously over her shoulder more than once as they made their way home.

•    •    •    •

Rain fell steadily all the next day. Mary rose that morning feeling languid and depressed, vaguely dissatisfied with herself and her surroundings. She had never noticed before how dingy and dull the street was; it looked changed and unfamiliar somehow: or perhaps the change was in herself—she could not tell.

The hours wore away till it came to be dusk. Tonio, over-tired the previous day, fell asleep long before his usual bed-time. She carried him upstairs, and laid him, dressed as he was, in his little cot, close to her own bed. She stood a moment, shading the candle with her hand, and looking down at him as he lay—his little tired limbs curled up, his red lips parted, the ruffled curls falling over his brow. Then, pressing a soft kiss on his cheek, she went downstairs.

Having laid the table for supper, she took up her sewing, but found she could not work. She did not know what ailed her, or what was the meaning of the dull ache at her heart—a pain that was not all pain, but had a strange sort of bitter sweetness. Soon her work fell into her lap, her eyes grew fixed and dreamy.

She was sitting thus when the door opened. She glanced round, expecting to see Stephen Lydiard, but it was her father who entered. She looked at him curiously. There was an air of suppressed excitement about him which attracted her attention at once, and made her exclaim, before he could speak:

“Father, is anything the matter?”

He took off his hat and pushed back his hair; he was flushed and out of breath.

“Matter enough. Lydiard’s had an accident—been and hurt himself with the machinery. They told me to fetch you.”

Mary started to her feet, every trace of colour fading from her face. “Oh—is he badly hurt? When did it happen?”

“Not ten minutes ago. Yes, it’s a bad job, I’m afraid. He’s been asking for you, they say.”

She caught up her hat, and was over the threshold in a moment.

“Wait here till I come back,” she said, over her shoulder.

“All right,” he answered shortly, turning his back on her, as he took a seat near the hearth.

The entrance to the works was at the end of the street. When she reached it the day workers were just pouring out of the great archway. Mary caught hold of the first person she met.

“Where is Stephen Lydiard? Is he much hurt? How—”

The words died on her lips. It was Lydiard himself who stood before her. “Why, Mary, don’t you know me?’” he asked, with a puzzled smile.

“Then you are not hurt? it was a mistake?” she said, bewilderedly.

“Who told you I was hurt?”

“Father. He must have been hoaxing me; or else—”

She started. A vague suspicion flashed across her mind. Without another word she darted from her companion’s side, and ran home. Her father was sitting where she had left him. She did not stay to speak to him, but hurried upstairs to her own room. There was just light enough to show her that the cot was empty, and with a cry that rang through the house, she rushed downstairs again.

“The child—father, where is the child?” she cried, seizing his arm.

He looked her straight in the face with a defiant smile. “The child is where he ought to be—with his mother.”

“His mother—”

“Ay, and an uncommonly fine woman she is—worthy of a better husband. You may stare, I know all about it. She told me the whole story this afternoon. She saw you at the station last night, you know,” he continued, nodding at her as he pressed some tobacco down in his pipe. “She was on her way from Glasgow, where she had been in search of him. She followed you home, and has been watching the house all day, on the sly. When I went out after dinner she spoke to me. We soon came to an understanding, both of us having an account to settle with your model lodger—”

“And you found a pretext to get me out of the way while— Ah, I understand. Father, what have you done?”

“Done a good action: paid off an old grudge, and earned a five-pound note, all at one stroke—not a bad day’s work I call it”

He turned upon her with a look of triumph, which changed somewhat abruptly to one of apprehension when, glancing over his shoulder, he found that Stephen Lydiard had entered unperceived, and was standing behind them. His face showed that he had heard every word. Mary threw herself between the two men.

“It was my fault!” she cried, “I ought not to have left him. But I shall find him, never fear—she has not had time to go far, and I will make her give him up—”

The next moment she was gone.

When he found himself alone with his lodger, the master of the house instinctively backed away, and put himself on the defensive. But for the moment Stephen was too much stunned by the blow to recollect what share the other had had in it.

“Which way did the woman turn when she left the house?” he asked hoarsely.

“Don’t know—didn’t look,” was the dogged reply.

The young man saw it was useless wasting words upon him. He paused at the door a moment, looking right and left, then turned in the opposite direction to that which Mary had taken, and hurried away through the rainy dusk.

Evening had deepened into night before he returned, haggard with fatigue and anxiety, having found no trace of those he sought.

He had hoped that Mary would be more successful, and his heart beat fast as he opened the door. But he found the house empty, the kitchen only lighted by the glow of an expiring fire. Mr. Forrester had deemed it expedient to absent himself for a few hours.

He glanced round and shivered, not so much with cold as with a presentiment of some darker trouble in store. Where could Mary be? He feared—he hardly dared think what. He could not endure to be shut up in the dark and silent house. He lit a candle, made up the fire, and then went and stood at the door, looking anxiously up and down the street. The rain had ceased now, and a “wan and weary moon” peered out at intervals through the rents of the clouds, throwing a pale bluish gleam across the wet road.

At length one of these brief glimpses of light showed him an approaching figure, at sight of which his heart leaped with renewed hope. He watched it with straining eyes till hope became certainty, and Mary stood before him with Tonio at her side. Uttering an inarticulate exclamation of joy and relief, he drew her into the house and shut the door. The boy ran to his father’s arms with a shrill glad cry—but Mary stood motionless and silent.

Wild and white, with the rain on her hair and the mud of the streets on her dress, her eyes dilated with a blank, stricken look, like one half stunned by a blow, she stood and looked at him. In the first moment he did not notice her expression, he only saw that she was there.

“Thank Heaven you are safe!” he exclaimed “I feared—I hardly know what. And you have found my darling and brought him back to me! Oh, Mary, I have no words to thank you!”

She did not speak. She looked at him fixedly, forlornly, with her sorrowful dark eyes, but she said not a word.

The light died out of his face.

“What has happened?” he asked, with a sudden change of tone, taking a step towards her. She drew back, putting the whole width of the room between them.

“Don’t ask me,” she said, in a voice unlike her own. “The child is safe—that is enough. I must go; I dare not stay here.”

“Go!” he echoed; “why—Ah, what has happened?”

She shuddered from head to foot, but made no answer, and turned abruptly away. Her hand was on the door, but he caught and detained her.

“Tell me—you must,” he said, in a quick, imperious whisper. “Was there a struggle between you? did she—”

She uttered a stifled cry, and snatching her hand from his grasp, crouched against the wall, hiding her face. Tonio crept up and clung to her, but she put him almost roughly aside.

“Take him away—don’t let him touch me,” she said hoarsely; “let me go! You don’t know—I am in danger.”

“Then I must share it. It is for life and death between us, Mary. Tell me, is my wife—”

He paused; the look she raised to his face arrested the words on his lips. “She is dead,” the girl whispered.

He started and caught his breath; for a moment he could not speak. “Dead! But you—but she did not die by your hand?”

She shivered, looking vaguely round her.

“Yes—no. It is all confused, like a horrible dream.”

“Try to tell me all,” he said, after a pause. “How and where did you find her?”

“I saw her before me with Tonio in her arms when I had got a street’s length from the house, but I dared not stop her then, fearing that if there was a dispute between us, the passers-by would take her part. I followed her through the town to an hotel near the Central Railway Station. I waited outside a few moments, then went in and asked for the foreign lady who had just come. The waiter took me upstairs to the door of the room where she was, and left me. She was bending over Tonio, trying to silence his sobs by shaking him. She did not see me till I was close to her, and before she could recover from her surprise I had him in my arms. But in a moment she rushed to the door and set her back against it. ‘I know you,’ she cried; ‘you were with him last night. He has sent you? Well, go back and tell him from me that he shall never see his child again—do you hear? never.’ I made no answer, but tried to get to the door. ‘Stand back,’ she said; ‘I warn you.’ And then I saw that she had a revolver in her hand. I put the child behind me, and caught her wrist, trying to force it from her grasp. We struggled together desperately, without a sound. Suddenly—I don’t know how it happened—there was a shot. She tossed her arms above her head with a terrible cry—and fell.”

The girl paused, wiping her damp forehead.

“For a moment I could not move. I stood like one frozen. But there were voices and footsteps on the stairs. I took up the child again, and hurried from the room, and down a long corridor with a half glass door at the end. A flight of stairs led to the back entrance: I crossed a yard and found myself in another street. I ran on blindly through the dusk, not knowing where I went, and it was not till I was exhausted that I stopped. I had not been followed, but I dared not return home till it was dark, and I have been wandering about ever since.”

She paused and pushed back her hair nervously, listening to some fancied sound outside. Stephen took her hand and compelled her to sit down. He was deadly pale, but calm and firm.

“You should not have fled,” he said; “only the guilty need do that, and you are innocent. What happened was purely an accident—”

“Yes,” she returned, interrupting him, “but how would people know that—people who are always so ready to believe the worst?” she cried with a shudder. Folding her arms on the table, she let her forehead sink upon them wearily. Her excitement had given place to a dull feeling of indifference—a despairing resignation to whatever might befall her.

Her companion stood for a moment with his hand over his lips, looking down at her, his face stern with anxious thought. At length he touched her shoulder.

“Mary, I am going to that place to make inquiries.”

“Yes,” she answered, without raising her head.

“And you must stay here till I return. Do you hear?”

“Yes,” she repeated in the same tone. “I will do anything you wish. After all, what does it matter what becomes of me?”

His face contracted with a look of pain. He bent till his lips brushed her drooping head.

“It matters so much to me,” he whispered, “that I would gladly lay down my life to save you from harm. You know it, Mary—you know that I—”

He checked himself. A host of eager words besieged his lips for utterance, but this was not the time to speak them.

The girl lifted her pale face with a sudden light upon it, and their hearts met in a look. Then he turned away and she hid her face on her arms again.

“I don’t mind now,” she thought, “whatever happens. I don’t mind—” But it was no longer the indifference of despair that possessed her. For one brief instant she had tasted life’s supremest joy; let fate do what it might, it could not rob her of that moment.

Tonio was curled up on the hearth-rug, half asleep. His father carried him upstairs to his own room, and laid him on the bed, then left the house.

Moments lengthened into hours, the night wore itself out, and the intense coldness of coming dawn crept into the silent house. Still he did not return.

Mary never changed her position. Her limbs ached, her heart and brain felt numb. At length from sheer exhaustion she fell asleep. A hand on her shoulder, a voice in her ear, roused her suddenly from a troubled dream. Raising her head she found Stephen at her side.

She looked up at him in the bewilderment of a sudden awakening, oblivious for the moment of all that had happened.

As recollection returned, her eyes dilated with anxiety. His expression reassured her before he spoke.

“You have nothing to fear, nothing to reproach yourself with,” he said, as he took a seat at her side.

“Then she is not—” the girl began.

“Yes, she is dead,” he answered gravely, “but she lived long enough to clear you from any shadow of blame. There was a priest with her when I arrived—she had asked for one—and to him she acknowledged that the shot was fired by accident when you were struggling together for the possession of the revolver.”

His companion drew a deep breath of relief. She could not speak, but she put her hand on his, as it rested upon the table. His strong fingers closed over it with a warm, firm pressure; he looked at her with all his heart in his eyes.

“Mary,” he said, suddenly, “you have risked your life for me and mine. Now—will you do something else for us?”

“What is there I would not do for you and yours?” she returned, looking up at him.

He put his arm round her and drew her to him, laying his bearded cheek against hers.

“Darling,” he whispered, “I am free now to say to you what was on my lips a few hours ago. I may ask you to give into my keeping a treasure I cannot live without, now I know its worth.”

“What is it?” she asked, with drooping eyes.

“Yourself,” was the reply.

As he spoke he put her a little away from him, so that he could look into her face. Joy beamed in it, transfiguring every feature. She raised her eyes with a tremulous, happy smile.

“Do you really need me?” she questioned shyly; “you are quite sure? Then— take me!”

And she laid her head upon his breast.

In the Mist

(Oct. 1881)

I

“Yes, Winnie, I say it, and I mean it—you are a cruel coquette. You know that I love you more than life itself, and yet you take a pleasure in tormenting me.”

“It is you who torment me with your jealous suspicions, Noel, and your temper is simply unbearable. I warn you that you may try me too far.”

This fragment of dialogue reached my ears one autumn afternoon as I—the Vicar of Penravon—was returning home across the heights after a long round of parochial visits.

The speakers stood facing each other, on the dusty, sunburnt turf at the edge of the cliff, too much absorbed in their quarrel to notice my approach. Not that my presence would have greatly disconcerted them had they been aware of it. I had known both Winnifred Carlyon and Noel Tremaine from childhood; had christened them, and should probably have the pleasant task of marrying them, if all went well—though the course of their true love did not seem to be running very smoothly at this moment.

It must be admitted that there was some ground for their mutual reproaches. Tremaine, who was a clever young mining engineer, had the quick temper which often goes with a warm heart, and the very strength of his affection made him jealous and exacting. As for Winnifred, her best friends could not deny that she was somewhat wayward and capricious, though so thoroughly lovable withal that those little failings, which time would certainly correct, might well be forgiven. She was the orphan grand-daughter and spoilt darling of the wealthiest man for miles round Penravon—old Michael Carlyon, the shipowner—and was, besides, as pretty a girl as you would meet in a summer day; with a complexion like a May rose, and eyes of the wonderful blue that seems peculiar to Cornwall—the deep, limpid, changeful hue of the western sea; whilst she never smiled but to reveal a set of teeth dazzlingly white and even.

Noel’s stalwart form, and handsome, vivacious, olive-tinted face, made a picturesque contrast to her delicate beauty: a better matched young couple could not have been found in the Duchy.

Just now, however, neither of my favourites appeared to advantage. The girl was flushed and defiant, her companion white with anger. Hitherto their disagreements had merely been the “renewing of love,” but in this there appeared to be something more serious.

“What, quarrelling again!” I exclaimed, looking at them severely over my spectacles. “When will you two learn to agree?”

They started and turned, both looking rather guilty.

“Noel has insulted me, Mr. Glynn!” Winnie declared, hotly.

“I have not—unless truth is an insult,” asserted Noel. “I said that you—”

“There’s no need to repeat it,” interposed Winnie.

“Excuse me,” he returned. “As you have appealed to Mr. Glynn, it is only fair he should know what has passed. I said it was scandalous that you should encourage other men’s attentions when you are my betrothed wife.”

Winnie laughed provokingly, though her fingers trembled as she trifled with a spray of heather at her breast. “Is no one else even to look at me without your permission?” she asked.

“No one shall make love to you if I know it,” he answered between his teeth.

“And pray who has done so?”

Tremaine hesitated a moment. “Walter Borlace, for one,” he said at length.

Winnifred raised her pretty brows in affected astonishment. “Walter Borlace! why—I have known him all my life. We are almost like brother and sister.”

“‘A little less than kin and more than kind,’” quoted Noel, with an angry laugh. “You know well enough that he is in love with you.”

“I—” Winnie began, then stopped short, colouring to her temples. “At any rate he has never told me so,” she finished proudly.

“But you know it well enough, I repeat, and you encourage him.”

“It is false!” she interrupted. “I have never encouraged him.”

“It is true,” returned Noel. “I have watched you, and I know it. I am not blind.”

An angry retort rose to her lips, but she controlled herself.

“Yes, Noel, you are blind,” she said, more gently. “You are blinded by jealousy, or you would know that, whatever my faults may be, I am not untrue or false-hearted. But you can think so if you choose,” she concluded, raising her head proudly. “I will be indifferent to your opinion.”

“You would not say that if you really cared for me,” returned Noel, “but you don’t. I have long thought your love is given elsewhere, and now I am sure of it.”

Her lip quivered, but she said nothing, looking away from him across the calm, sun-lit sea. Noel gazed into her face as if he were trying to read her heart in it.

“Is it so?” he questioned, with fierce anxiety. “Have I lost your heart, Winnie?”

Her breath came quickly; she raised her eyes to his with a look which ought to have convinced him to the contrary; but meeting his angry, suspicious gaze, her face froze again.

“Vou have not taken much trouble to keep it,” was her reply.

He drew a quick breath and stepped back from her. “I see—it is as I thought,” he muttered, with an expression in his eyes that almost marred the beauty of his face. “As such is the case,” he resumed, speaking slowly and with difficulty, “I release you from your promise. I will not wed a woman whose heart is elsewhere. But listen”—he caught her wrist, bending his angry face close to hers—“if you will not be my wife you shall be no other man’s. I will kill you first.”

She drew back with a faint cry, turning suddenly pale.

“Tremaine, you forget yourself!” I interposed. “Your temper betrays you into conduct that you will blush for later. Threats and violence—for shame!” And, to do him justice, he looked ashamed already of his outburst.

“Come, come,” I continued paternally, “you are both wrong. Temper on one side, pride on the other. Forgive and forget, both of you, and resolve that this shall be your last quarrel.”

“That it certainly shall be,” Winnie said quickly, but in a tone of resolution that was new to her. Her young face had a hard, resentful look that altered it strangely.

“You have given me my freedom,” she continued, turning to Noel; “I accept it. Here is your ring. Henceforth you and I are strangers.”

She held it out to him, and as he made no movement to take it, threw it at his feet, and went her way, with a firm step and erect figure, taking the road over the moor towards Borlace Court, as the old-fashioned manor-house was called.

Tremaine mechanically picked up the ring, and stood, looking after her, with a blank, incredulous expression, as if he hardly realised what had happened. The tempest of passion had passed as quickly as it rose, leaving pain and remorse behind.

“Do you think she is in earnest, Mr. Glynn?” he asked at last, in a tone of dismay.

“It looks very like it,” I answered dryly.

“You think she really intends to take me at my word, and— But, good heavens, I did not mean it! I was so maddened with jealousy I hardly knew what I said.”

“You must have been mad indeed to believe for a moment that Walter Borlace had taken your place in her heart,” I said.

“She did not contradict me,” he muttered.

“Pride sealed her lips, but her face spoke for her, if you had had eyes to see.”

He was silent a moment, looking down. His colour came and went; his face was troubled and remorseful.

“I have acted like a fool!” he burst out at last. “I know that she is true at heart, in spite of her little coquetries, and I have driven her from me—perhaps for ever! What shall I do? Do you think she will forgive me? I will ask her pardon on my knees—”

“I hope you will do nothing so ridiculous,” I interrupted. “It will be better policy to keep away for a few days, until she has had time to think it over, and then—”

“And then, perhaps, I shall find that she has engaged herself to that fellow”—he nodded towards Borlace woods—“in a fit of pique. No; I will not eat or sleep till my ring is on her finger again. She is gone to the Court to tea; I shall wait here till she returns, and it will be strange if I can’t win her pardon for a few hasty words. She knows that my temper, and not my heart, was to blame.”

“You must learn to control that temper of yours,” I said gravely, as we shook hands, “or I fear it will lead you into terrible trouble some day.”

I little thought when I uttered that prediction how soon it was destined to be fulfilled.

He turned from me without replying, and I left him standing with folded arms on Penravon Cliff, while I went on my way home, pondering, with a bachelor’s amused perplexity, on the strange inconsistencies of “the passion called love.”

Five minutes’ walk brought me to the Vicarage—a low, square house of grey stone, facing the sea, while its back windows looked out over the broad purple moor. Between the house and the cliffs stood the church, a quaint, weather-stained granite building, said to be of sixteenth century architecture. In stormy weather its walls were often wet with spray, and in its crowded graveyard many a humble stone bore witness to the perils of those that “go down to the sea in ships.” The most striking object in the view from my windows was the ancient Martello Tower on Penravon Cliff, locally known as the “Smugglers’ Keep.” The vaults beneath had once been used as a storing-place for contraband goods, and it was said that a subterranean passage connected them with the beach, but the entrance in the face of the cliff had probably long ago been blocked up by falls of rock. These slips were of constant occurrence, sometimes only consisting of loose stones and sand; but often great masses of rock, detached from the overhanging edge, went crashing and thundering to the beach.

The narrow footpath, passing the churchyard gate, wound along Penravon Cliff, and dipped abruptly into the wooded hollow which sheltered the village—one of the most picturesque on the Cornish coast. Its steep, zigzag main street went straggling down to the water’s edge, where it terminated in a little jetty of rough boulders and dark beams dripping with seaweed. The houses were, for the most part, low stone cottages, with deep doorways and slated roofs, and gardens where myrtle and fuchsia flourished luxuriantly, but on the wooded slope above were dotted not a few white-walled villas, among which the shipowner’s house, substantial and sturdy-looking like himself, showed conspicuously.

A couple of hours later, having dined and rested, I strolled out through my garden into the humble “God’s acre” which adjoined it, and sat down on the low stone wall, under a twisted old thorn-tree. The glory of the evening had departed, and twilight was gathering over land and sea—a chill grey twilight, with something melancholy in its utter stillness. The sun had set in a hazy horizon, and now the cold sea mist was drifting inland like a ghostly veil, gradually blotting out the familiar outlines of the scene.

As I sat, smoking meditatively, and watching old Dan Tregallas, the sexton, who was digging a grave not far off, two figures approached along the path, looming suddenly out of the mist—Winnifred Carlyon and Walter Borlace.

The latter was a slight, rather effeminate-looking young fellow of two or three-and-twenty, with pale grey eyes and thin lips—as great a contrast to Tremaine in person as in character. There had always been a latent antagonism between the two men, which only needed a pretext to break into open enmity.

His expression, as he looked down into his companion’s face, left little doubt as to his feelings for her. But Winnie did not seem to observe it; her eyes were bent on the ground with a downcast, troubled look. Neither of them noticed me, though they passed so closely to where I sat that I could not help overhearing a part of their conversation.

“Why do you look so sorrowful?” were the first words I heard, in Walter Borlace’s soft, drawling voice. “It seems to me that you ought to congratulate yourself on your escape. What chance of happiness would you have had with Tremaine—a violent, dangerous fellow, who—”

“He is nothing of the sort,” she interrupted quickly. “You were always prejudiced against him, and for no earthly reason.”

“And yet you told me just now that he had threatened your life!” exclaimed Borlace.

“He said some wild words in the heat of passion,” replied Winnie; “but of course they meant nothing. I am very sorry I repeated them. I was the most to blame; I ought not to have provoked him to anger.”

He glanced at her with an unpleasant smile. “I see—it is the old story. You have quarrelled just for the pleasure of making it up again.”

She shook her head. “Not this time; it has gone too far,” she said gravely.

“Are you sure of that?” he asked, taking her hand, and speaking for once without affectation. “Are you really free? Then, Winnie, I may say to you at last what has been on my lips many a time before, though you would never let me speak. I think you know what it is. You must know that I—”

Winnie coloured, and drew her hand away.

“Walter, please say no more,” she interrupted. “I am not in the mood to listen just now.”

His thin lips tightened. “Will you ever be in the mood?” he questioned.

“Some other time I may be—I don’t know; but certainly not now.” She put out her hand as she spoke. “Don’t trouble to come any further,” she added abruptly. “Good-bye.”

“Are you offended with me?” he asked, bending to look into her face.

“No, but—but I would rather be alone.”

“How white you are,” he exclaimed, as they shook hands; “and you are shivering. Are you cold?”

She laughed uneasily. “No, it was only a nervous tremor. Someone is walking on my grave, as the country people say.”

He lingered a moment, twisting his neat little blonde moustache as he looked after her; then, with a slight shrug, turned and walked slowly away in the opposite direction.

I watched the girl’s retreating figure till the mist hid it from view, wondering if Noel was still waiting on Penravon Cliff, and whether there would be another angry scene when they met.

As the thought crossed my mind I was conscious of a strange, uncomfortable feeling, such as I have experienced sometimes in a troubled dream; a vague dread; a presentiment of some impending calamity which I was powerless to avert. I tried to shake it off, but it clung to me, assuming every moment a more definite shape.

At length, yielding to an impulse I could not understand, I swung myself over the low wall, and followed her.

The mist was now so dense that I was obliged to proceed cautiously lest I should stray from the path, which at some points is dangerously near to the edge of the precipitous cliff.

I had passed the spot where I parted from Tremaine, and was approaching the old tower, when a confused sound of voices reached me; voices I recognised, though the speakers were as yet invisible.

“Winnie, don’t madden me! You know that I didn’t mean what I said. Take back the ring.”

“After you have insulted and threatened me? Never! No, you shall not force it on me; let go my hand—how dare you!”

“I dare anything rather than lose you.”

“This is not the way to win me back. Let go my hand—you hurt me! Ah, take care, Noel! you will—”

The words broke off in a scream—a cry so wild and terrible that it went through my nerves like an electric shock. In another moment I was on the spot.

Tremaine was standing, rigid and motionless as a figure carved in stone, on the extreme verge of the cliff, gazing blankly into the depth below, where there was nothing to be seen but the drifting mist; nothing to be heard but the wash of the incoming waves upon the rocks.

Where was Winnifred?

When I put the question in a faltering voice, and laid my hand upon his arm, he slowly turned his head and looked at me.

I trust I may never again see on a human face the expression his wore at that moment—the speechless horror and despair which seemed to petrify every feature. He tried to answer, but no sound came from his white lips. He mutely pointed down to the beach.

“Great heaven!” I gasped, “you do not mean that you—that she has fallen over?” He inclined his head.

“We were standing on the path close to the edge,” he began, in a low hoarse whisper. “I tried to force the ring upon her; she resisted and struggled to get her hand away. I loosed it suddenly—so suddenly that she staggered backwards, and—and before I could prevent it, she—”

His voice broke; a shudder ran through him from head to foot He threw up his hands with a wild despairing gesture.

“I have killed her—I that would have died for her! I have killed her—my love, my darling! Well, it is but a step to join her.”

In another moment he would, in the frenzy of despair and remorse, have thrown himself over the cliff, but I seized his arm and dragged him back by main force.

As I did so, young Borlace came hurrying up, out of breath.

“What has happened?” he panted. “I heard a cry—”

“There has been a terrible accident,” I began, and in a few hurried words told him all.

He stared at me with an expression of incredulous horror, then turned his eyes on Noel Tremaine. “An accident?” he repeated slowly. “Was it an accident?”

Tremaine started, and raised his head. Their eyes met, and for a moment they looked at each other as if under a spell.

“Good heavens—you cannot believe that I intended—” Noel began, but reading the other’s dark suspicion only too plainly in his face, he left the sentence unfinished, and turned abruptly away.

“That is a shameful insinuation,” I cried warmly. “You know that Tremaine loved her too well to—”

“I know that he threatened her life this afternoon,” interrupted Borlace; “let him deny it if he can.”

Noel looked round. His face had frozen into a strange quietude.

“I do not deny it. It is true.”

“And a moment ago I heard you say that you had killed her.”

“But not intentionally!” I exclaimed; “it was an accident. Tremaine—speak! defend yourself from this shocking accusation. Do not let it be supposed that you are—a murderer!”

He shuddered, and covered his eyes with his hand. “I feel like one,” he groaned. “But for me this would never have happened. Her death lies at my door—”

“We do not yet know that she is dead,” I returned, hastily. “While we are loitering here she may be lying insensible on the beach.”

The suggestion—improbable as I felt it to be—had the effect of rousing him from his despairing apathy. The words had hardly left my lips when he turned from us, and hurried away, soon disappearing in the mist.

“If she has survived such a fall, it is little short of a miracle,” Walter Borlace remarked, as we followed. “And you forget, Mr. Glynn, that the tide is at the flood. It will take us more than an hour to reach Penravon Rocks; by that time the waves will have carried her away.”

I made no answer; I knew only too well that he was right, and my heart sank as I thought of all the misery that was to come.

The nearest way to the beach was through the village, where Noel had arrived before us. The news spread like wild-fire through the place (though none dared to carry it to Michael Carlyon), and half the population turned out to accompany us. There was some delay while the boats were put out, and lanterns and torches provided, and it seemed hours to our impatience before we reached the spot.

A light breeze had sprung up, dispersing the mist, and the moon and stars looked forth as serenely as if there were no death in the world, no sin or sorrow. The pale, pure light gleamed on Penravon Rocks, from which the tide had retreated, leaving them wet and bare; sparkled on the shallow pools between the boulders, showed every crevice and projection of the rugged cliff—but it did not show us the figure we hoped, yet dreaded, to see.

Noticing that there had been a recent fall of turf and soil from the edge of the cliff, some of the men set to work to remove the debris, while the others gathered round, hardly daring to think what piteous sight might be revealed. But they found nothing.

Hoping against hope we continued the search for hours, sometimes mistaking a patch of moonlight for a fair dead face, or a floating tangle of sea-weed for “a drowned maiden’s hair”—all in vain. Of Winnifred Carlyon, dead or living, there was no trace.

At length we prepared to return, but without Noel, who refused to leave the spot.

“I shall find her yet—something tells me that I shall,” he muttered, casting a haggard glance round him. “Go—all the rest of you; I would rather be alone.”

Walter Borlace gave him a curious look from his pale grey eyes, and seemed about to speak, but checked himself, and followed the others in silence.

“Who’ll break the news to old Carlyon?” the men whispered among themselves, glancing furtively at me.

I knew that the sorrowful task would be mine, though I would have given much to avoid it. I dared not think of the grief and desolation the tidings would bring into the home which the sweet girl’s presence had brightened.

II

Nothing travels so swiftly as ill-tidings, and nothing is more infectious than suspicion. Before another day had dawned the tragedy was known far and wide, and as the news spread, a vague shadow of doubt and distrust gathered round Noel’s name. No accusation had yet been uttered, but on every side I heard the echo of Walter Borlace’s doubting question—

“Was it an accident?”

Tremaine himself seemed unconscious of the whispered suspicion; unconscious of everything except his despair. All day long he was wandering on the heights, or by the margin of the “cruel, crawling foam,” as if in the wild hope that the waves would give back what they had taken.

There had been a sudden change in the weather. A strong north-westerly gale was rising, and as I sat in my study at the vicarage that evening I felt the sturdy old house vibrate beneath the gust, while the rain beat against the panes as if it would drive them in. I was endeavouring, not very successfully, to concentrate my mind on the sermon I had begun when there was a tap at the door, and old Dan Tregellas, the sexton, entered, looking scared and startled.

“What is it?” I enquired. “You look as if you had seen a ghost.”

“Something like one, Sir. Coming up from the village just now I met young Tremaine, and it gave me quite a turn.”

“Where was he?”

“On Penravon Cliff, just about where the accident happened. He was walking fast, talking to himself. I spoke to him, but he didn’t hear me; didn’t even see me, though he passed close to me. He was staring straight before him like a sleep-walker, and his face was as white as this—” laying his finger on my writing-paper. “I don’t doubt his mind’s giving way, sir, and he’ll do himself a mischief if he’s not prevented.”

I threw down my pen and rose.

“In which direction was he going?”

“Straight towards the Keep.”

I drew aside the curtain and looked out. Dusk was deepening into night; a wild stormy night of hurrying clouds and driving rain. Enough light remained to show me the massive form of the tower, standing sentinel above the angry sea.

“Surely he doesn’t mean to spend the night in that dismal place?” old Dan muttered at my elbow.

“He must not be allowed to do so. Fetch me a lantern and help me on with my overcoat; I shall go after him at once.”

Five minutes later I sallied forth into the rain and darkness.

The moment I emerged from the house the wind swooped down upon me with a rush that nearly took me off my feet, half blinding me as it drove the sharp sleet into my eyes. I struggled on, however, fighting my way along, with bent head, and at length, out of breath and dripping with rain, I reached the tower.

In the days when it was used for contraband purposes, the lower part of the building had been roughly restored; the breaches in the wall stopped up, the windows barred across, and a massive door added, which now hung awry on its rusty hinges. The place had an uncanny sort of reputation in the neighbourhood, and nothing would have induced the superstitious fishermen to enter it after dark.

I pushed open the door and looked in, holding the lantern above my head. Its light showed me the figure of Noel Tremaine, standing motionless in the middle of the floor, as if he had stopped short in the act of crossing it. His face was turned towards the door, but he did not appear to see me. He stood in a listening attitude, his lips apart, his eyes fixed and dilated, every line of his face expressing strained and anxious attention.

What was it he heard? No sound reached my own ears but the roar of the wind and the murmur of the sea. A vague, half-superstitious fear crept over me as I watched him, but I shook it off and entered, closing the door loudly to attract his attention. But though the sound echoed through the place, it did not break the strange spell that held him. It was not until I touched his arm that he seemed conscious of my presence. Then he started violently, and looked at me with a wild, haggard stare, but expressed no surprise at my sudden appearance, and for a moment seemed hardly to recognise me. At length he drew a deep breath, as if waking from a dream, and laid his hand on my wrist.

“Do you hear it?” he asked, in a breathless whisper.

“I hear nothing but the wind and the sea.”

“Not that—the sound is within the tower. Hark!”

I listened intently a moment, then shook my head. “It was the cry of a sea-gull.”

“I tell you it is here, close to us, seeming to come from the ground beneath our feet,” he persisted excitedly.

“What is the sound?”

His answer fairly took my breath away.

“Winnie’s voice.”

I looked at him compassionately. “You are dreaming, Noel! grief and excitement have unnerved you. Come out of this gloomy place; come home with me, and—”

He shook his head impatiently.

“No, I dare not leave this spot. Something—an attraction I can’t explain—drew me to it in spite of myself, and just now, before you came, I thought I heard—There again!” he broke off, seizing my shoulder. “Good heavens! is it possible you don’t hear it too?”

Was I infected by his delusion, or did I indeed hear a faint muffled cry, seeming, as he had said, to come from the ground beneath our feet?

He had watched my face, and his own lighted up with a wild triumph.

“Do you believe me now, or are we both dreaming?” he cried; then, relinquishing my arm, he threw himself on the floor, beating the stones as if he would have torn them up with his bare hands.

“Winnie—Winnie! Speak to me—where are you?”

It was no delusion this time: no trick of excited fancy. A voice—not the “wail of a soul in pain,” but the voice of a living woman, answered: “I am here, in the vault! Help—come to me!”

Noel sprang to his feet, with a cry that rang through the place. “Ah, I understand! Dolt that I was not to think of it before! Mr. Glynn—the subterranean passage—”

I started, and looked back at him with a face as excited as his own. “But—but how could she—” I began.

“I don’t know. It is all mystery at present,” he interrupted; “but one thing is certain. By some strange chance she must have discovered the opening in the cliff, and made her way to the vault. The entrance is somewhere in the floor. Give me the lantern—quick!”

I handed it to him, and we anxiously examined the pavement, which was of square stone slabs, worn and uneven with age. In one of them, which appeared newer than the rest, was embedded a rusty iron ring. My companion pointed to it without a word, and set down the light.

The stone had become firmly fixed in its position, and it required the utmost exertion of our united strength to raise it. When, at length, we succeeded in removing it, a breath of damp cold air, charged with an earthy odour, came rushing up from the vault beneath.

Noel bent over the opening, gazing down anxiously as he swung the lantern to and fro. Its rays fell on what looked like a heap of light drapery, huddled together at the further end of the vault.

“She is there!” he breathed; “but—but she does not speak or stir. Suppose—suppose we are too late?”

I took the lantern while he let himself drop into the vault, then handed it down to him, and watched him as he approached the motionless figure.

He bent over it, raised the drooping head, and turned the white face to the light. Then, with an inarticulate sound of mingled pain and rapture, he lifted the slight form and bore it towards the opening where I was waiting to receive it.

We took off our coats and laid her down upon them. I supported her head on my knee while he tenderly chafed her hands.

“Are we too late?” he faltered, looking up at me with a face hardly less white than hers.

“No, she has only fainted. Look, she is reviving already.”

Even as I spoke she stirred uneasily, drew a deep breath, and unclosed her eyes. They wandered round the unfamiliar place, then rested on her lover, who knelt at her side, watching her with breathless anxiety.

The change in her face was something to remember. Light, life and colour rushed back to it in a sudden tide of joy that transfigured every feature.

“Noel, Noel!”

The next moment his strong arms were round her, and his lips pressed to hers.

“My love—my darling!” he whispered between his passionate kisses. “How can I thank heaven enough for its mercy in giving you back to me almost from the grave!”

“It would indeed have been my grave, but for you,” Winnie faltered.

His face darkened with a look of pain and remorse. “If you knew what I have suffered since yesterday! the agony of self-reproach.”

“My poor Noel, your face speaks for you,” she interrupted, with a faint smile. “But you need not have reproached yourself; it was a pure accident.”

“Are you badly hurt, my darling?” he asked anxiously.

“I am a little bruised and stiff—nothing more.”

“You escaped without injury from that terrible fall,” I exclaimed. “It seems a miracle.”

“It was indeed little short of one,” she answered gravely. “Let me try to tell you how it happened. After I fell from the cliff—was it only yesterday? it seems so long ago—I must have been unconscious for some time. When I recovered I found myself lying on a projecting ledge of rock, my dress entangled in a straggling brier. Though not injured I was terribly bruised and shaken, and the ledge was so narrow that I dared not stir for fear of falling again. I cried for help, but my voice was drowned in the noise of the breakers, and the mist hid me from your sight. As I looked up despairingly, thinking every moment would be my last, I noticed a hollow in the cliff just above me, like the mouth of a natural cavern, half-hidden by brambles and furze-bushes. The thought flashed across me that it must be the entrance to the old ‘Smugglers’ Passage,’ and that if I could creep into it I should be safe till you found me. With some difficulty, for the opening was only just large enough to admit me, I succeeded, disturbing a whole colony of sea-gulls who had built their nests inside. But another danger threatened me, which I could not foresee. I was beginning to get accustomed to my position, and to feel thankful for my merciful escape, when I heard a curious sound in the cliff above me—a cracking, rending noise. A quantity of loose stones and gravel came rushing down before the opening, half blinding me, and almost at the same moment I found myself in total darkness. A mass of rock and earth falling from the upper part of the cliff had blocked up the entrance, making me a prisoner.

“At first I hardly realised what had happened, but when I found that I was actually walled up in the cliff a dreadful fear seized me. Still I did not yet despair. I resolved to make my way along the passage, hoping to find another outlet in the tower. It was a steep incline, with rough steps at intervals, and it brought me, as I expected, to a vault. But, to my horror, I could find no outlet of any sort. I groped round the damp stone walls again and again before I could believe it, then sank down, as if stunned. I pictured you all seeking for me in vain; poor grandpapa’s grief—Noel’s despair. I thought what my fate would be, dying of slow starvation in the dreadful darkness of that living tomb.”

She broke off, shuddering; then, after a moment’s pause, went on again.

“The time dragged by till, from sheer exhaustion, I fell into a deep dreamless sleep, which must have lasted many hours. At length I woke with a start, thrilling in every nerve with a strange conviction that Noel was somewhere near me. I sat up, stretching out my arms in the darkness, calling to him, imploring him to come to me. When at last he replied, the sudden joy and relief overcame me, and I fainted.”

“Never while I live shall I forget what I felt when I heard your voice,” said Noel, in a low tone of deep emotion. “And yet it was scarcely surprise. I, too, had the same instinctive conviction that you were near me. My spirit was conscious of yours—”

They clasped hands and were silent a moment; a silence I would not interrupt, for I saw they were blissfully oblivious of my presence.

“Noel,” Winnifred whispered after a pause, in a tone half playful, half serious, and wholly tender; “when you offer me the ring again I shall not refuse it. I think you believe now that I love you—a little?”

“I was mad ever to doubt it, as Mr. Glynn told me. But you need not fear, Winnie,” he added with a smile, “the ‘green-eyed monster’ will never come between us again. I have learnt a lesson in self-control that I shall remember all my life.”

“Thus, out of evil comes good,” I put in sententiously. “But listen; I hear footsteps outside.”

There was a moment’s pause—a sound of whispering voices, then the heavy door suddenly swung open, and Walter Borlace appeared on the threshold, followed by the old shipowner and two men, whom I recognised as police-constables.

Hastily signing to Tremaine to place himself so that Winnie’s figure was hidden, I advanced towards the intruders, who seemed not a little astonished at my presence.

“What does this mean?” I enquired, looking from one to the other.

“It means, Mr. Glynn, that these men have a warrant for the arrest of Noel Tremaine,” young Borlace answered. “We tracked him here, and—”

“May I ask of what I am accused?” Noel interrupted, with a coolness which seemed to take them all by surprise.

Before the other could reply, Michael Carlyon stepped forward. He was a tall, stately old man, with silver hair, and a handsome weather-beaten face, pale and haggard just now.

“Noel,” he began, in an agitated voice, “they tell me that—that you killed my darling in a fit of jealousy—” (there was a smothered exclamation from the background, which passed unnoticed)—“but now I look you in the face I can’t believe it. It was an accident; you did not—you could not have intended to—”

“Heaven knows I did not, Mr. Carlyon,” the young man answered earnestly; “but I don’t ask you to take my word for it. Here is a witness who will speak for me.”

He stepped back, and showed—Winnifred, who rose hastily to her feet, and quickly sought the shelter of her grandfather’s arms.

I shall not attempt to describe the scene which followed; old Carlyon’s joy, Walter Borlace’s amazement, and the bewilderment of the two police-constables, who suddenly found themselves de trop.

When the first excitement had subsided, Winnie, after describing how the accident occurred, repeated what has already been told—often interrupted by the questions and exclamations of her hearers. When she had concluded, she turned to Walter Borlace.

“Was it you, Walter, who first suggested that monstrous accusation?” she asked, in a tone which brought the blood to his cheek. He hung his head, muttering something inaudible. After a moment’s struggle with himself, however, he turned to his rival.

“Tremaine, I don’t know whether you can ever forgive me,” he began, awkwardly enough, but with evident sincerity. “I feel heartily ashamed of my unjust suspicion, and—”

“Let us shake hands and say no more about it,” Noel interrupted, suiting the action to the word. “Even if I were disposed to resent it, my heart is too full of thankfulness just now to have room for any other feeling.”

“Well spoken,” said the old shipowner heartily; “you can afford to be generous, my boy. And now,” he added, “the sooner we get home the better for this young lady, who is looking like a little ghost.”

“You must please to consider the Vicarage your home, for to-night at least,” I put in.

“Thank you, Mr, Glynn, that’s kind. Can you manage to walk so far, my dear, or shall Noel carry you?”

Winnie essayed a few steps, then paused, looking white and faint.

“I think I shall have to trust myself to Noel,” she said shyly, blushing as she looked up at him.

He stepped forward, nothing loth, lifting her as easily as if she had been a child.

“Yes, you may trust yourself to me, my darling,” I heard him whisper as he passed out. “These arms shall guard and serve you faithfully all your life to come.”

Winnie made no verbal reply, but the sigh of rest and contentment with which she let her head sink on his shoulder was an answer more eloquent than words.

On the Night of the Storm

(Jun. 1882)

I

“Once for all, Brigitta, I will not marry Count Baldassare! Rather would I take the veil, or die an old maid. If he has asked you to be his advocate, you may give him that answer, with my compliments.”

Having so expressed herself, the speaker turned from her companion, and crossed to the arched opening of the vaulted loggia in front of the house, where she stood, like a bright picture in a sombre frame, looking out over the rich Tuscan landscape.

The waning sunshine of a sultry September afternoon lay in long shafts of light across a broad fertile slope, covered with golden fields of maize and corn, grey olive woods, and vineyards where the grapes were ripening under the yellow leaves. All that sunny hillside, with its vines and fields, up to the ridge of stone-pines, dark against the sky, was her own; as well as the rich meadows by the stream, and the old grey farmhouse with its flat roof and open galleries, which had sheltered her people from time immemorial.

She, Teresa Guercino, was the last of the old stock—for the cousin who managed her house was no blood relation—and absolute mistress of herself and her possessions. A tall stately girl of one-and-twenty, with a skin which the sun had kissed; eyes dark as night and soft as velvet, under level brows; and full red lips, which told of a generous, but passionate and undisciplined nature. Her companion, a little shrivelled elderly woman, with a hooked nose and bead-like black eyes, in the dress of a well-to-do contadina, sat knitting within the loggia.

“Do you mean that?” she asked shrilly, looking up for a moment from her twinkling needles.

“I think you know that I generally mean what I say, cousin.”

“I know that you are perverse enough to anger a saint,” answered the cousin pettishly, as she changed the pins. “What have you against the man—tell me that?”

“Nothing—except that I detest him.”

“Detest? pooh! a woman’s hate is only love turned inside out, as the proverb says. It would all come straight after marriage. He is passionately fond of you; he is rich; he can give you a title—”

“A brand new one too, with the gloss upon it!” Teresa put in, with a slighting laugh. “It has only been in the family one lifetime. These Baldassari, whose alliance you think such an honour, are parvenus of yesterday, nothing more. We were masters here on our own land when they were little better than serfs.”

“They have the best of it now, anyhow. Much of your land has passed to them, thanks to your father’s mismanagement. If you married the count you would get it back,” was the prompt suggestion. Teresa laughed.

“No; he would get what remains—and that he never shall! Say no more, Brigitta, unless you wish to quarrel with me. I will take your advice on any other subject, but I mean to choose my husband for myself.”

“And a fine choice you will make,” the housekeeper returned drily, as she rolled up her knitting and put it in her pocket. “Ah, you may look; I know what I know. Ahimé! ’tis a crooked world!” She rose as she spoke, and pushed back her chair with a grating sound that made her companion start.

“Santa Maria, what a noise!” the girl exclaimed impatiently; “you will wake little Angelo; he is asleep in the sala.”

Brigitta, who was turning to enter the house, paused and looked at her. “So! you have got the steward’s brat here again? Humph! Meraldi should be grateful to you. It is not every mistress who would put herself out of the way for her servant’s child.”

“Meraldi is no more my servant than you are,” the girl retorted, with a heightened colour, “and you seem to forget that, like yourself, he is my relation—”

“Your connection by marriage, no more,” the housekeeper corrected quickly. “His late wife was your cousin—”

“And my dearest friend. It would be strange indeed if I took no interest in poor Angela’s only child.”

“So that your tender interest in the child doesn’t extend to the father, I have nothing more to say.”

“And if it does?” Teresa rejoined, turning upon her suddenly, flushed and defiant. “Listen—you shall know my mind once for all. I will be Meraldi’s wife if he asks me—if he does not, I will be no other man’s.”

“Then, mia bella, I fear you will ‘coiffe Sainte Catherine,’” retorted Brigitta, with a series of little short dry nods. “Meraldi has no eyes or heart for anyone but his child.”

Having launched this shaft, she trotted off into the house. Teresa stood for a moment, leaning against the stone pillar, then, taking up her broad Leghorn hat, she descended the steps that led from the southern loggia into the garden.

In times gone by, the building which was now a farmhouse had been a Carthusian monastery. Traces of faded frescoes still lingered on the walls of its great bare echoing rooms; the chapel was in ruins, and the cloisters had been converted into stables, but the garden remained very much as the old monks had left it—such a garden as Fra Angelico might have painted for a background to one of his sweet saintly pictures. It was in true Italian taste, at once formal and picturesque; green even in winter, with its ilex and arbutus, laurel and cypress, and, from early spring to late autumn, a perfect paradise of flowers—roses, magnolias, oleanders, myrtles, camellias, and a hundred nameless blooms, all flourishing at their own sweet will.

A vine-grown wall enclosed it, low on the inner side, but high towards the road, which was on a different level. The house stood on the southern slope of a valley, through which a wilful little stream hurried over its rocky bed to join the river Serchio.

The summit of the opposite hillside was crowned by a grey mediaeval tower, which was all that remained of a strong fortress that in feudal times had frowned upon the valley at its feet. The tower stood on Count Baldassare’s land, which was divided from Teresa’s by a rough low stone wall.

Lower down on the slope, gleaming white out of a sea of vines, was the cottage occupied by her farm-bailiff, Antonio Meraldi.

She leaned on the garden wall, under the shadow of a bignonia tree, looking, with a moody dissatisfied face, across the sunny hillside towards the steward’s house.

She was standing thus, “half light, half shade,” when the sound of a horse approaching made her look down towards the road. It was Count Baldassare. He was a slight, somewhat foppishly dressed young fellow of five-and-twenty, looking older than his years; with a thin, dark, mobile face, and restless glittering black eyes, that had a smouldering fire in them. His features were regular, but there was something vaguely repellent in their expression, even when he smiled, as he did now, looking up at her with uncovered head.

“I owe the saints a candle for this chance,” he said. “It is almost a miracle to find you alone. May I come in?”

Without waiting for her permission, he dismounted, tied his horse to a ring in the wall, and ascended the steps to the garden gate, which she reluctantly opened to admit him.

“Excuse me for intruding,” he began, looking at her with a curious mixture of admiration and defiance: “your face tells me that I am an unwelcome visitor. What would you, Teresa? The attraction that draws me here is stronger than my will.”

“Your will must be a weak one, signor Conte,” was her comment.

He glanced at her with a curious smile. “You think so? You do not know me. You will learn some day that no obstacles deter me from my purpose, and that what I covet I always win in the long run.”

“Unless you happen to encounter a will as strong as your own,” she answered, looking him full in the face for a moment, and then turning from his side.

“What—you are going?” he exclaimed. “Am I so hateful to you that you cannot endure my presence for five minutes? Have all my patience and devotion been thrown away!—Have you no heart, Teresa?”

“Yes,” she answered quietly, “I have a heart—but it is beyond your reach.”

He drew in his breath quickly. “Does that mean that it is given to another?” he demanded, with jealous suspicion.

She coloured, and turned from him without replying. He caught, her wrist and detained her. His face was white, and there was a fierce gleam in his eyes that startled her.

“Who is it? tell me his name—”

“Have you lost your senses?” she cried. “Let go my hand—”

He paid no more heed than if she had not spoken.

“Perhaps I can guess,” he continued, bending to look into her face. “I have heard it whispered that the handsome steward of San Giovanni could be master of the farm and its mistress if he chose, but—”

She tore her hand from his grasp, crimsoning to the temples. “How dare you!” she panted, breathless with indignation.

“Ah, I see—it is true,” he commented, with a bitter smile. “Your face speaks for you. So the proud heart that is ‘beyond my reach’ lies at your servant’s feet? and he—”

He broke off abruptly, glancing over his shoulder towards the road, whence there came the sound of a mellow baritone voice, singing a Tuscan “rispetto.” The next moment the garden-gate opened and swung to, admitting the very person whose name had just been mentioned—Antonio Meraldi.

The steward was a strikingly handsome man, still in the prime of life, though not in his first youth; with an olive-tinted oval face, somewhat melancholy in repose, broad, calm, honest dark eyes, a tall lithe figure, and a small head well set on a pair of muscular shoulders. By the side of the young Count, with his foppish dress and neat little waxed moustache, he looked like a prince in disguise.

He glanced with a shade of surprise at Baldassare, but lifted his hat to him—a courtesy which was only acknowledged by an insolent stare—then turned to his young mistress.

“I am going up to the house, signorina, to fetch Angelo,” he said, and was passing on, but she called him back.

“Stay for me; Signor Baldassare is going now.”

“Pardon me,” the latter interposed, “I have something more to say to you before I take my leave.”

“I will not listen to another word,” she flashed out angrily; “you shall not insult me twice.”

Meraldi started. “What—you have been insulted?” he exclaimed, taking a step towards the visitor, with a dangerous glitter in his dark eyes.

Teresa hastily put herself between the two men. “Antonio, I forbid you to interfere.”

“Then let this gentleman take himself out of my reach,” he said significantly, pointing to the gate.

The young man looked him over with a sneering laugh, twisting his moustache with unsteady fingers. “At your bidding? Basta! not I. You are not master here yet, my good fellow, though it seems that your mistress would—”

The sentence was never finished. Before he knew what the steward intended, he found himself seized in a grasp of iron, lifted over the low wall with as much ease as if he had been a child, and dropped neatly into the dusty road outside. Having executed this summary ejection, without the least appearance of heat or hurry, Meraldi leaned on the wall, looking down on him composedly.

“You might as well have gone through the gate, signor Conte,” was his remark. The other turned and gave him a look of concentrated hatred that made Teresa shudder.

“You shall pay me for this,” he panted, under his breath; “there will be a reckoning between us some day, and then you shall pay me with interest.”

“You should not have interfered,” were Teresa’s first words when they were alone; “you have made him your enemy for life. He is dangerous. Did you notice the look he gave you just now?”

Antonio shrugged his shoulders. “He is more than half mad, I believe, at times. They say he has been drinking hard lately—keeps a secret store at the old tower. By the way, did you know he had taken to sleeping there lately?”

She stopped short in her walk and looked at him. “At the tower? Why, it is a ruin!”

“The upper part is, but the basement is solid enough. Anyhow, it is a favourite haunt of his. I see him going past, up the hill-road, nearly every evening, between sundown and moon-rise.”

Teresa shivered uncomfortably. “I wish you had not told me. I hate for him to be so near. I believe he has the evil eye.”

“I dare say he would do me an ill turn if he could,” pursued the steward, “though I hardly know how he would set about it. I have nothing to lose—except your friendship: and I hope he will never rob me of that,” he added, laying his hand on hers for a moment.

Her face flushed and softened, she glanced up at him half wistfully, but meeting his frank, unembarrassed smile, looked away again.

“Of course his enmity will not make me less your friend,” she answered carelessly, as she led the way into the house.

They passed through an open glass door into a cool spacious shadowy room, with antique furniture, and walls flecked with dim rich colours. Meraldi took off his hat and looked round, shaking back his thick dark hair with a gesture that was habitual to him.

“How pleasant it is here, after the heat and glare outside!”

“Sit down, and I will get you a cup of wine,” she said, pushing a chair towards him.

“Excuse me—I must not stay. I only looked in to fetch Angelo. Is he better? he has been in my thoughts all day.”

“He is asleep; come and look at him.”

She preceded him to the upper end of the room, where there was an alcove, in which the abbot’s chair of state once stood. It contained now a heavy carved couch, covered with faded amber damask, on which little Angelo—a pretty, fragile-looking boy of four or five years old—lay, fast asleep. Meraldi bent over the child, watching him with anxious tenderness, oblivious for the moment of his companion, who stood in the shadow behind.

“Angiol mio! He grows more like her every day,” she heard him murmur, and she knew that he was thinking of his dead wife. The girl’s heart contracted with a thrill of jealous pain; her face flushed and paled; her fingers nervously twisted the silver beads at her throat. Had he looked up then, he might have learnt a secret he was far from suspecting at present, but when he turned towards her the expression had passed away.

“It seems almost a pity to wake him,” he whispered.

“You need not. Leave him here for to-night, and I will bring, him back myself to-morrow evening.”

“Will you? benissimo! It is a long time since you honoured me with a visit.”

“I suppose you have almost finished reaping, on the slope?” she said, as she followed him to the door.

“We shall finish to-morrow I hope, if the weather holds up. It has been a glorious harvest, and the vintage promises finely. Everything prospers with you as usual.”

“You have brought me luck,” she said, with a faint smile.

He lifted his shoulders and laughed, somewhat ruefully, as he took up his sunburnt straw hat.

“Have I? then I have brought you what I never found myself, cara Padrona, or I should be my own master now, instead of your prime minister.”

Teresa stood and watched him as he passed through the fragrant garden alleys.

“This must end, I cannot bear it,” she muttered. “I shall get to despise myself, or to hate him. I must send him away, though it break my heart. Oh, I am a fool!”

She angrily dashed from her eyes the tears that had gathered in spite of her, and turned indoors.

II

The shadows were lengthening on the following afternoon when Teresa, leading little Angelo by the hand, crossed the flat timber bridge over the stream, and passing through a little wood of ilex trees whose twisted stems were bearded with long silvery moss, ascended the rough road which wound up the hillside. The reapers were leaving work, and she met throngs of merry contadini coming down from the harvest fields; and clumsy carts laden with yellow sheaves, and drawn by great dove-coloured oxen, with mighty horns, and grand dark eyes.

As they turned a curve in the steep road, Meraldi’s voice hailed them from above. He had seen them approaching, and came to meet them, waving his hat. Angelo bounded forwards, and was promptly swung up on to his father’s shoulder.

“How good of you to come,” was the latter’s greeting, as he walked on at her side, holding the boy on his perch with one hand. “I feared you might change your mind, and send one of the maids. But the walk has tired you—you look pale.”

“My head aches. There is thunder in the air,” replied Teresa.

“That sky threatens a storm before night,” he rejoined, nodding towards the west, where the sun was sinking in a blaze of lurid splendour. “Luckily, most of the wheat is carried,” he added, setting the child on his feet as they reached the little house among the vines.

It was a low, white-walled building of one storey, with little deep-set casements, and a pink-tiled roof shaded by an old walnut tree. She looked about her disparagingly. “You are lodged like a peasant. You should have had the other house by the river.”

“This is well enough—and look at the view! I can almost see the domes of Florence, far away, and at sunrise the mountains yonder look as Dante described the hills of Paradise—‘like sun-illumined gold.’”

She took her seat on the bench under the walnut tree, and glanced over the wide rich landscape, set, as in a frame, by the purple peaks of the majestic, melancholy Apennines. In the valley below, where the old house nestled among its sheltering woods, twilight was already gathering, and a white mist clung, ghost-like, to the stream, but the slopes above were bathed in sunset light, and the tawny white sheaves cast long shadows upwards over the stubble. The cicali chirped among the vines; the swallows chased each other with shrill cries, skimming round and over the cottage roof; the bell of a little church hidden among chestnut woods in the valley was ringing for Benediction.

It was all sweet, pensive, and peaceful, save for the threat of coming storm.

“From this point you can take in all your possessions at a glance,” said the steward, who had installed himself on an overturned lemon pot opposite to her, with the boy between his knees. “It is a fair inheritance.”

“Too much for a single woman, as my cousin often tells me.”

“Some day you will give it a master,” he said with a grave smile, stroking Angelo’s curls, “though I am selfish enough to hope that day may be distant.”

“What difference will it make to you?” she asked, turning her eyes upon him for a moment and looking away again.

“Well—when that event happens, I suppose I must strike my tent. You will scarcely need a steward when you have a husband to look after your interests.”

“True,” she acquiesced briefly, and was silent a moment. “Should you be sorry to leave the farm?” she asked, after a pause, examining the veins of a fallen leaf.

He looked at her half reproachfully. “What a question! Where else shall I meet with such a home as I have had here, and such a friend as I have found in you? I owe you more than I can ever repay, Teresa.”

She shook her head with a dubious smile. He did not see how her lips quivered, nor how her bodice heaved with the painful beating of her heart.

“Shall I prophesy your future as you do mine?” she asked lightly. “You will have a home of your own again some day, and—a wife.”

He shook his head, looking away towards the mountains.

“I shall never marry again. I might if I were alone in the world; I should feel the need of some one to love. But as it is—I have my child; he is enough for me.” And drawing the little fellow closer to him, he laid his bearded cheek on the fair curly head.

Her face changed, every trace of softness leaving it.

“The child—always the child!” she exclaimed, with a forced laugh; “as if there was nothing else in the world worth living for; as if—”

She checked herself abruptly, colouring to the temples. She dared not look at him; she knew that he was watching her perplexedly, and she feared he might read the secret in her eyes. At that moment she almost felt as if her love had turned to hatred. A great wave of anger rushed into her heart, filling it with pain and bitterness, then retreated, leaving her icily calm.

“You are a model father,” she said, with the same discordant laugh; “it is to be hoped that Angelo will repay you for your devotion. But, to return to what we were discussing just now. I have no present intention of marrying, but it may be necessary for us to part, notwithstanding.”

He started and looked at her as if he doubted whether he had heard correctly.

“Do you mean that you wish me to leave the farm?”

“I do not wish it, but it must be. I came here this afternoon with the intention of telling you so.”

He looked at her in silence. His eyes were troubled and perplexed. “Have I offended you, Teresa?” he asked gently at last She averted her head.

“No.”

“Then why do you send me away?”

“Because—because I find that gossip has been busy with our names.”

He frowned. “Baldassare told you so, I suppose? I do not believe it, but even if it were true, need you care for the cackle of idle tongues? No one who knows you would misinterpret your generous friendship for me.”

She gave him a curious glance. “No,” she acquiesced slowly. “I suppose few people who know me would believe that I could wish to make my servant my master.”

The words brought the blood to his olive cheek. He bit his lip, and looked away, more hurt than he would have cared to acknowledge. Never before had she made him feel his position; till that moment he had been her friend and equal. Now, all at once, a gulf opened between them. His heart sank with a sense of isolation and’ loss—and some other feeling which he could hardly define.

But pride came to his aid, and it was in a tone almost as cold as her own that he replied: “Perhaps you are right: it will be better for us to part. You will wish me to stay till you meet with a successor?”

“No—I shall dispense with a steward for the present,” she said, rising.

“I will bring the books to-morrow evening and go over them with you.”

“It is not necessary. You can send them. Good-bye.”

“Teresa!” he exclaimed, in a tone of pain that went to her heart, “this is not to be our parting? You dismiss me without a word of regret—I, who have been your faithful friend and servant so long” and his voice faltered. “What has come between us?” he added, taking her hand; “there is something more than you have told me.”

“Let me go,” she said, in a choked voice, turning her head aside.

“Tell me,” he persisted; “do not let a misunderstanding part us. Is it anything I have done—”

“No, no, you are not to blame. Think what you like of me, but don’t question me. Good-bye!” She snatched her hand from his and turned away. She felt that if she spoke another word, she should break down altogether. Her throat ached with the effort to keep back her tears.

Little Angelo, struggling from his father’s arms, ran and clung to her dress. “Tessa, take me with thee!”

“No, you must not come,” she said, disengaging her skirt almost roughly. Then, as the child looked at her in wistful surprise, with a sudden revulsion of feeling she bent and kissed him again and again.

“Go back, carino, I cannot take thee now,” she said gently.

But Angelo declined to be separated from her by anything short of force, and finally was carried off into the house by his old nurse wailing for “Tessa!”

Meraldi stood with folded arms, watching the girl’s retreating figure as it passed from the sunlight of the slope into the mist and gloom of the valley. A dim perception of the truth was dawning upon his mind, though at first he refused to believe it. But conviction was forced upon him. Words, looks, and tones which he had hardly noticed at the time, returned to him all at once with the force of accumulated testimony. Teresa loved him.

The discovery almost took his breath away, and yet he wondered now that he had not made it before. “How blind I have been! If only I had known! And if I had, what then? I have no love to offer her in return. It is buried in Angela’s grave.”

He sat down on the bench under the walnut tree, covering his eyes with his hand. But when he would have conjured up the fair face of his dead wife, another face rose unbidden before him, and a pair of dark pleading eyes looked into his. He thrilled in all his veins, and his heart swelled with a feeling to which he could hardly give a title, but which was dangerously sweet.

Meanwhile, little Angelo had escaped from purblind old Lotta’s surveillance and stolen out into the garden. Finding his father too absorbed in thought to notice him, he crept towards the gate, and after one or two backward glances, to make sure that his proceedings were unobserved, trotted off in pursuit of Teresa—a little flying figure, with the sunset glory on his curls, hurrying down through the vines and the wheat as fast as his feet would carry him. When Meraldi raised his head the child was out of sight. Old Lotta missed him presently, but was not concerned, taking it for granted he was with his father.

At length the steward roused himself with a sigh, and changed his position. Lighting a cigarette he sat smoking and looking down into the valley; while twilight deepened into night, and beyond Carrara the coming storm brooded and muttered.

•    •    •    •

An hour passed away. Darkness had gathered round the old farmhouse in the valley. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees, or shook the leaves from the pale autumn roses, and the only sound that broke the sultry silence was the restless murmur of the stream as it chafed over its rocky bed. Nature seemed to hold her breath in fear.

The farm-servants were at supper in the great bare kitchen—once the convent refectory—which was dimly lighted by bronze oil-lamps, suspended by chains from the vaulted ceiling. There was a mixed smell of wine and garlic and polenta, a cheerful buzz of voices and clink of glasses. Brigitta moved about, superintending the repast, her fingers mechanically busy with her knitting, while her keen eyes were everywhere, and her shrill tongue was seldom silent.

“Cielo! how black it is,” she muttered, standing at the wide-arched entrance which opened on a courtyard, stored with piles of faggots, wine-vats, and oil-presses. “The storm that is coming will be the worst we have had this year. It—who is that?” she broke off, as a man’s figure loomed out of the darkness.

“It is I—Meraldi,” the steward’s voice replied, and he entered, looking hot and breathless, as if he had been running. “Is Angelo here?”

“Angelo? My cousin took him back to the cottage this afternoon.”

“She brought him, yes; but we thought he must have followed her home again. He is nowhere to be found.”

“He is not here, that’s certain. Teresa returned without him more than an hour ago. She has gone to bed with a headache.”

He stared at her in dismay. “What has become of him then? Where is he?” he exclaimed.

There was a pause. The men looked up from their supper, interested and sympathetic.

“Perhaps the bambino has fallen into the stream—it runs deep by the bridge,” one of them suggested in an undertone.

The steward put both hands to his broad chest, drawing a deep breath, as if in pain.

“It is more likely that he has wandered among the vines and got lost,” put in Brigitta, hastily.

“In that case, mistress, the sooner he is found the better,” said a stalwart young contadino in a striped shirt, as he threw down his knife and swung himself off the bench. “This is not a night for a man to be abroad, much less a child.”

His example was at once followed by the others, and after a short delay, while lanterns were found and lighted, they set forth, headed by Meraldi, just as the storm broke. Not long afterwards Teresa made her appearance in the kitchen, startling her cousin, who supposed her to have retired for the night.

“Where are the men?” she asked. “I heard them go out just now.”

“They are gone in search of the fattore’s boy. He is lost.”

“Lost! little Angelo? I left him safe at home.”

“Yes, but he was missed afterwards, and they think he may have lost his way in attempting to follow you. By-the-by,” she added, “Count Baldassare may have seen him. He went up the hill just after you returned. Monica saw him.”

“Yes,” one of the maids assented; “he passed me on the bridge a few minutes after you came home, signorina. If the little lad was coming down the hill-road, he must have met him; though it is strange he did not—”

Teresa interrupted her. She had turned very white, and there was a look of dread anxiety on her face. “Get me a lantern, Monica,” she said, abruptly.

“Madonna mia! you are not going out?” her cousin exclaimed, while the girl stared at her without moving.

“A lantern—quick! do you hear?” she repeated, in a tone which admitted of no delay. When it was brought she lighted it at one of the lamps, then, disregarding Brigitta’s inquiries and expostulations, she hurried from the house.

As she crossed the bridge she heard the voices of the men, who were searching the banks of the stream, and midway in the dark ilex-wood beyond she encountered Luigi, the young contadino who had first volunteered for the search.

“Padrona—it is you!” he exclaimed, raising his lantern to her face; “you should not be out in this storm.”

“I am going to the tower, to inquire if Count Baldassare has seen the child.”

“Let me call the fattore; he will go with you—”

“No,” she said, detaining him, “I would rather go alone, and you need not tell him you met me.”

The storm increased every moment. So brief were the intervals of darkness that her lantern was hardly needed, the lightning showing her the white winding road before her, and the old tower, standing on the summit of the hill, like a sentinel forgotten at his post. She passed the cottage, where old Lotta was keeping anxious vigil, and making her way through a breach in the boundary wall which divided Baldassare’s land from her own, mounted the steep slope to the ruin. The ground was strewn with old debris, overgrown with weeds and briars, and she stumbled more than once as she approached the tower, the entrance to which was by an iron-clamped, nail-studded door, deeply set in the massive wall. A faint light which gleamed from the narrow-barred casement showed that Baldassare was within, but the door was fast, and all was silent.

She raised her hand to knock, but let it fall again and hesitated. A sudden dread overcame her; she shrank from the thought of entering, and had half-turned, as if to retrace her steps, but at that moment a sound reached her from within, which banished her momentary hesitation and nerved her to meet any danger. It was the terrified cry of a child. Unconsciously she uttered an answering cry, and knocked with all her force, but the sound was lost in the uproar of the storm. She set down the lantern and groped about for a stone, with which she battered the door, calling upon Baldassare to admit her.

This time her summons was heard. There was a sound as of some heavy piece of furniture being dragged out of place, hurried footsteps, and the clang of a bolt withdrawn. Then the worm-eaten door creaked on its rusty hinges, and he stood before her, with a small oil-lamp in his hand—his face wild and white, his hair disordered, his breath coming quickly. She saw that he had been drinking heavily. Strangely enough, he expressed no surprise at seeing her.

“Ah—it is you,” he said, with a curious smile. “I had a presentiment that you would come,” and he drew back to allow her to pass in.

She found herself in a vaulted stone chamber, rounded to the shape of the tower, and containing no furniture but a small camp-bed, a couple of chairs, an antique oak chest against the wall, and a table on which lay a gun.

One glance showed her these details, and it showed her also that Angelo was not there. She turned to Baldassare, who had followed her in and closed the door.

“Where is the child?”

He folded his arms, and leaned against the table, looking at her with a mocking composure which, somehow, seemed more ominous than violence. “He is here. I do not deny it. What then?”

“What then? You will give him up to me instantly. Where is he?” she asked, looking round. “Where have you hidden him? He—ah, cielo!” she broke off, setting down the lamp, “you have not—”

The words died on her lips.

“I have not murdered him, if that is what you mean,” he finished, composedly. “He is safe enough—as yet. See for yourself.”

He crossed the room, and dragging the chest away from the wall, disclosed a low, arched recess behind it, in which, dumb and paralysed with fear, little Angelo was crouching. At sight of Teresa the child uttered a breathless cry of joy, and sprang into her arms, clinging to her neck with the nervous force of terror, and hiding his face on her shoulder.

Without another word, without even a glance at Baldassare, she turned towards the door. He reached it before her, and set his back against it.

“Not yet,” he said; “I have something to say to you.”

“I will not listen to a word. Stand back—let me pass.”

“Presently—on one condition.”

“Condition? Do you suppose I will stay to make terms with you? Open that door, or I will cry for help, and bring those who will—”

Her words were drowned in a peal of thunder which shook the tower to its foundations.

“Cry for help, by all means,” he resumed mockingly, when the sound died sullenly away. “Cry long and loud, and they may hear you—perhaps. But in the meantime you must listen to me, whether it pleases you or not”

She looked at him with a heaving bosom—too angry for the moment to feel afraid. “Speak, then—what is your ‘condition?’”

After a moment’s pause he came to her side. There was an expression on his face that made her shrink from him with mingled dread and loathing.

“Can you not guess, Teresa?” he questioned. He would have taken her hand, but she drew back, putting half the width of the tower between them, and, with a swift instinctive movement, snatched the long silver dagger from her dark hair.

“Come not a step nearer—I warn you!”

He laughed harshly.

“Excuse me. I forgot that my touch was contamination. You need not be alarmed, I will keep my distance. You may walk out of this place as freely as you came in, only—” he paused “—it must be as my promised wife.”

“As your— you are mad!” she exclaimed. “You must know that not to save my life would I give you such a promise.”

“But to save another’s, perhaps?” he suggested, with a significant glance at the child.

She gazed at him blankly, her eyes dilating with horror, unconsciously folding her arms more closely round the boy, whose quick heart-beats throbbed against her bosom.

“You could not—you dare not!” was all she could say.

“Dare not? I dare anything now,” he cried, with a wild laugh. “Do you not see that I am despairing and dangerous? Swear that you will be my wife—I will trust your oath—and you and the child shall pass out unmolested. Refuse—and as surely as you and I are standing face to face, Meraldi’s boy shall never leave this place alive.”

Looking into his eyes she realized that his words were no idle threat. For a moment she did not speak; only looked at him fixedly, feeling like one in an evil dream.

Outside there was a strange hush and lull, as if the storm, exhausted by its fury, were pausing to collect force for a fresh outburst. The sudden stillness had something ominous and threatening.

At length Teresa spoke again, facing him like an animal at bay.

“It would profit you little if I gave you that promise, for though I might stand at the altar with you, I would put the width of the world between us rather than spend a day beneath your roof.”

His forced composure fell from him like a mask. His face turned livid, haggard, menacing. With a furious oath he caught up his gun from the table.

She drew back still further, putting the child behind her. She saw madness blazing in his eyes, and for a moment her heart failed her. But she faced him without flinching, never removing her eyes from his face, and, after a struggle, he seemed to command himself, and flung the gun upon the floor behind him.

“Promise me this, then,” he said, in a hard, panting whisper, with his hand on her arm, and his face close to hers: “that if you will not be my wife, you will never be his—Meraldi’s—while I live.”

A faint dreary smile crossed her face. “I can safely promise that; I shall have no temptation to break my word.”

“Swear it——”

“I swear it.”

He kept his hand on her arm, looking up and down her lace as i he were learning every feature by heart. His lips worked convulsively.

“Great heaven—how I love you!” he muttered brokenly, and before she could prevent him, he threw his arms round her, and strained her to him in an embrace so fierce and passionate that it left her breathless. Then, suddenly relinquishing her, “Go, go,” he said hoarsely, motioning her away, with averted head, “or I cannot answer for myself.”

She waited for no second telling, but taking up Angelo again, opened the heavy door, and passed out into the gloom. She had moved only a few paces away when the darkness was rent by a flash which seemed to set earth and heaven on fire. Mingling with the uproar of the terrible peal that followed was another sound—a cracking, rending noise, which made her turn to look back at the building she had just quitted.

For a moment she saw its dark form looming above her, erect against the sky, then there was a crash of breaking timbers and falling stones, an avalanche of dust, and the old tower lay prostrate, burying three living creatures beneath its ruins.

III

For nearly an hour the men had been searching the hillside—among the wet and down-beaten vines, in the bare stubble fields, and up and down the banks of the stream, which, swollen by rain, rushed over the rocks with the sound of a mountain torrent.

“What was that noise?” the steward asked suddenly, in the pause after a deafening peal. “It sounded like the fall of a house.”

“Per Bacco—it was the tower!” one of the men exclaimed. “I thought the old owl’s nest would be down some stormy night. Luckily the Count is not there—”

“But yes—he is there!” cried Luigi, excitedly, “and—Dio buono!” he broke off, “the signorina—”

Meraldi turned towards him. “What do you mean? The mistress is not near the tower?”

“Yes—she went up to inquire if he had seen the boy. I met her in the wood half an hour ago. She told me to say nothing to you.”

The steward stared at the speaker as if the sense of the words had not reached him. Then his face changed, as a sudden light burst on his mind. With a hoarse inarticulate cry he broke from his companions, and rushed up the steep road and across the slope to the spot where the tower had stood. A great formless heap of ruin, from which the dust was rising in clouds, was all that remained of the sturdy old building, which had resisted the shocks of centuries. He ran hither and thither distractedly calling “Angelo—Teresa!”

But there was “no voice, nor any that replied.”

The storm, as if satisfied with the havoc it had worked, was now subsiding, the thunder dying away in deep sullen reverberations behind the mountains, though the rain still fell in torrents.

When the other men arrived they found the steward like one stunned, gazing blankly at the ruins. He quickly roused himself, however, and despatched two of the men to the farm for spades and pickaxes. When these were brought they set to work with a will, lighted by pine torches, which cast a red flickering glare over the scene, giving it a strange air of unreality.

The women-servants, who had hurried up after the men, stood in a frightened group round Brigitta, who was mechanically muttering Aves and Paternosters, while the tears streamed down her brown wrinkled cheeks. Three hours passed thus; hours that were short to the workers, but long to the anxious watchers.

•    •    •    •

The rain had ceased, the air was cool and sweet, “like a breath from the innocent plains of Paradise,” and the moon looked forth serenely from broken and dispersing clouds. It was close upon midnight, when there was a stir and murmur in the group which Meraldi was directing, then a sudden shout which brought the women hurrying to the spot They had cleared away the debris above a great beam, which lay obliquely, one end wedged between fragments of masonry, while the other rested on the ground. In the hollow space thus formed, under the heap of ruin, lay Teresa and little Angelo—whether dead or living could not be told till, with infinite precaution, the heavy beam had been raised. It was soon ascertained that the child, though bruised and stunned, was not seriously hurt. He recovered consciousness almost immediately on being lifted out into the air, and clung to his father’s neck with a cry that went to the hearts of all present.

But Teresa lay motionless, the blood trickling from a wound in her temple, and not the faintest sign of life in her white face and nerveless limbs.

Meraldi hastily set the boy on his feet, and knelt at her side, watching her face with agonized anxiety. White and inanimate in the moonlight, it looked like a beautiful mask. He lifted her head on to his knee, chafing her cold hand. “She is dead,” he breathed, with a shudder that shook him from head to foot.

“No, she is only stunned,” Brigitta assured him. “Look—she is coming to herself.”

After a few moments, the girl’s breast heaved in a long-drawn inspiration, her eyes unclosed and wandered round from face to face, vaguely at first, then with dawning recollection and intelligence.

She tried to raise herself. “Angelo?”

“He is safe—see,” Brigitta replied, drawing the child forward. “What brought him up here is more than I can guess.”

“I know,” Meraldi muttered, with a sudden darkening of his face; “if my enemy lives, he shall answer for it. Teresa,” he added, bending his lips to her ear, “you risked your life to save my child, my own life shall show how I thank you;” and he passionately kissed the hand he held.

A faint colour flushed over her face, then faded again. “Thank heaven I was in time,” she whispered. “Baldassare is there—under the ruins. Try to save him—though he is—your enemy—”

Her voice failed, and her head sank heavily back upon his knee.

“We must take her home at once,” Brigitta said anxiously, “or to your cottage, fattore; it is the nearest.” He assented.

“Go on working, men; I will be back presently,” he said, and, raising her figure in his strong arms, he bore her away, followed by Brigitta and the other women.

•    •    •    •

It was many hours before Teresa recovered consciousness, and then only to pass from insensibility to delirium. For weeks she lay, tossing on a troubled tide of fever which threatened to bear her away from love and life to the shores of the silent land. At length the cloud passed from her senses, and she woke, as from a long oppressive dream, to find herself in a place which was strange, yet vaguely familiar to her. A quaint little chamber, with a tiled floor and a ceiling crossed by old blackened beams; with one low square casement looking out over a green hillside and a sea of vines towards the distant mountains, which were bathed in the ineffable brightness of early morning. The window was open, admitting the cool-scented air, and a sound of chimes from some distant convent mingled with sweet rustic noises of tinkling oxen-bells, creaking waggons, and the voices of contadini passing by to their work among the dewy vines.

Curled up on the floor was little Angelo, playing a solitary game of “morra,” and near the window sat Brigitta, severely upright, and knitting energetically.

Teresa raised herself among the pillows, and uttered her cousin’s name. The latter dropped her pins with a hasty “Santa Maria!” and was at her side in a moment, while Angelo scrambled up on the bed.

“Do you know me, carina?” the housekeeper inquired.

The girl extended her hand with a smile.

“Of course I do, my good cousin,” she said, faintly; “but I hardly know myself—I feel so weak and strange. This is not my room,” she added, looking round.

“No, you are at the fattore’s cottage: they brought you here that dreadful night—”

“Ah—I remember,” the girl interrupted, with a shudder, covering her eyes with her hand. “Was Count Baldassare found—alive?” she asked after a moment, without looking up.

“Yes, he was alive. He—but you must not question me now. I will tell you more when you are better.”

“He is alive—that is all I wish to know; please never mention his name to me again,” she said quickly, a faint colour rising to her cheeks.

Her companion gave her a dubious glance, but said nothing.

“Where is Meraldi?” Teresa asked presently.

“Not far off, for certain. He has hardly left the house since you were ill, and he looks like a ghost himself. Certainly he has more feeling than I gave him credit for—”

A gentle tap at the door interrupted her.

“Is she conscious?” the steward’s voice inquired. “I thought I heard her speaking.”

“Let him come in,” Teresa interposed, and he was admitted.

His cheeks were scarcely less white than her own, and his strong hand trembled like a leaf as he laid it on hers. He looked down at her, and tried to speak, but his voice failed him, his chest heaved convulsively. Suddenly he turned aside, and rested his arm against the wall, laying his forehead upon it.

“Do not,” she said brokenly; “do not, Antonio.” But the tears were running down her cheeks as she spoke.

After a moment he turned and looked at her again; at the lovely pallid face, with the subdued expression which gave it a new charm; at the great dark eyes .which seemed almost too large for the wasted features. His hand closed on hers with a passionate pressure that almost hurt her.

“Heaven is merciful,” he breathed; “it has given you back to us from the very gates of death. What should I have done if the fever had taken you!”

She shook her head with a wistful smile. “It would not have mattered—you would still have had Angelo,” she said, laying her disengaged hand on the boy’s fair curls.

Meraldi regarded her a moment without speaking. There was a look in his eyes she had never seen before; a look which sent a thrill of mingled joy and sadness to her heart.

“Ay—I should still have had my boy,” he said at last, in his deep grave voice, “and once I told you that I needed no other love but his. But in the very hour I spoke those words I began to find out my mistake. Teresa, if you had been taken, the void in my life could never, never have been filled! Dear—I have been blind and insensible, but I know my own heart now, and if it is not too late—Why do you look at me so piteously?”

“It is too late,” she breathed, in a voice scarcely audible.

“Carissima—you will not let pride stand between us?”

“Pride? ah no; pride cannot stand before the might of love—”

“You love me? then what need keep us apart?”

“My vow,” she faltered; “the vow that was wrung from me that terrible night—”

“That night?” he interrupted; “ah, I begin to understand. Baldassare made you promise that you would never be my wife—”

“While he lived,” she concluded.

He straightened his tall figure and looked at her with a sudden change of expression. “While he lived? then you do not know—”

She raised herself among the pillows, looking from him to her cousin.

“Brigitta told me he was living.”

“He was alive when we found him, but injured beyond hope of recovery. He lived long enough to receive absolution, after making a confession, the substance of which you and I can guess. But for you, Teresa, I believe I should never have seen my child again.”

“Do not let us think of it,” she said, with a shudder.

“No,” he agreed, “let it be forgotten like a bad dream. We can afford to forget the past—the present is so sweet, and the future—”

“The future?” she repeated, as he paused.

He bent and looked into her eyes with a tender, pleading smile.

“My future is in your hands,” he whispered. “It rests with you to make it dark or sunny. My love—my dear heart, you will not send me away? You will let me stay—as your ‘prime minister’?”

She put up her arms and drew his head still lower.

“No; stay—as my king,” she whispered, and laid her lips to his.

In a Dangerous Strait

(Nov. 1887)

The close of a bright spring evening some eighteen years ago. A lingering ray of sunlight flickers across a quiet, suburban street, in the great manufacturing town of Hammerton, and slanting through the uncurtained window of an engraver’s workroom, rests on the head of its occupant, bent low over his task.

He is a tall, slightly-built man of seven or eight and twenty, with a face full of intelligence and refinement; a firm but sweet-tempered mouth, and calm, luminous brown eyes, which have faced the world’s frown without losing a whit of their brightness and courage.

The son of a struggling artist, who had left him no inheritance but debts and unsold pictures, Gilbert Haviland had early made acquaintance with those stern realities of life: poverty, toil, and care. They were his daily companions still, though latterly, his heart had opened to admit a guest whose presence robbed them of half their bitterness.

A fresh girlish voice in the next room was singing Dekker’s brave old song, “The Happy Heart,” and presently, a light footstep sounded outside the door, causing him to look round with an expectant smile.

“Oh sweet content!” sang the girl. “Honest labour wears a lovely face—”

Then, putting in her pretty head of curly bronze-brown hair, she added:

“Doesn’t the ‘honest labourer’ want his tea? It is quite ready.”

“Presently, dear,” he answered; “I have something to finish first.”

“No; ‘presently’ will not do; there are crumpets, which don’t improve with waiting,” she said, as she entered, seeming to bring with her into the dingy work-room all the bloom and freshness of spring.

Gilbert’s smile of tender admiration betrayed his heart’s secret, as he glanced at the bright gipsy face, with its piquant combination of warm, sun-kissed complexion and blue eyes. No word of love had yet been spoken between himself and his cousin, Janet Ray, who at his mother’s invitation had come to share their home when her father’s death left her an orphan, a year ago. But he knew that the girl understood his heart as well as he did himself, and would be content to wait till he was in a position to claim her.

“Even the prospect of crumpets won’t tempt me to leave this plate unfinished, but I have only a few touches to put in,” he replied, as he shook back his hair, and rounded his shoulders to his task again.

“Very well; I shall wait for you,” she said; and dragging a high leather-seated stool to his side, she perched herself upon it, leaning her elbows on the “bench.”

“What is it you are doing? who is it for?” she asked, watching the tiny chips of metal as they curled up beneath his tool.

“An illustrated circular for Mapleton and Co. I am now, as you perceive, putting the finishing-touches to an extremely realistic tea-kettle.”

Janet drew down her lips. “An ironmonger’s circular! I did not know you accepted common work like that.”

“Accept it? aye, and am glad to get it. The engraving trade is not what it was, Jeanie, before printing and lithography ruined it. Small craftsmen like myself can’t afford to be proud.”

She ruffled her pretty hair discontentedly. “Whatever made you choose to be an engraver?”

“Well, there wasn’t much choice in the matter. I drifted into it. You see, I had never been trained for any trade or profession, for though, I got some notions of art from my father, he gave me no regular teaching. But I had picked up a knowledge of engraving from an old workman who lodged in our house; and when my poor father died, leaving the dear mother dependent on me, it seemed the only thing I could turn to with a prospect of success. That is how I came to be in a ‘square hole’ instead of a round one,” he concluded, with a smiling glance at her.

“It is a shame!” Janet exclaimed, her sympathy all the keener for his patience. “You were not meant for this drudgery; you are a born artist, Gilbert. Look at your clever etchings; and your illustrations for the ‘Warwickshire Messenger.’”

“With their queer perspective, and still queerer anatomy,” he put in laughing. “No, no, Jeanie; you cannot blind me to the fact that years of study and practice are required before I can call myself an artist; so I must stick to the graver at present, and make the best of it. And now for tea and crumpets,” he added, as he laid down his tool. “I shall work no more this evening, for Monsieur de Fontenay is coming.”

“Again! This is the fourth time you have invited him within the last ten days, Gilbert.”

“He invited himself this time, Jeanie. He said he had a proposal to make to me with reference to some drawings. I couldn’t very well put him off, even had I wished to—”

“Which of course you did not,” she interrupted resentfully. “I think that Frenchman has bewitched you, Gilbert. It is barely three months since you made his acquaintance through engraving a ring for him, and now you and he are hand-in-glove together. You are not usually so ready to make friends of strangers.”

“Strangers are not usually so ready to prove themselves friends to me,” Gilbert answered, turning away to gather his tools together.

Something peculiar in his tone struck Miss Ray’s ear. “You speak as though you were under an obligation to him, Gilbert!”

“So I am—for his society. It is seldom I have an opportunity of talking to a man of his stamp—a cultured and accomplished gentleman. Why you dislike him I cannot imagine.”

“I hardly know myself,” she acknowledged; “but I do dislike and distrust him heartily, in spite of his culture and accomplishments; and I can’t get it out of my mind that he has some hidden motive in coming here.”

Gilbert glanced at her pretty face with a smile. She coloured and looked annoyed.

“Oh, it is not on my account that he began his visits here, if that is what you mean,” she said resentfully. “He took to haunting your workroom, and inviting you to his house long before he saw me or your mother. I cannot divest myself of the feeling that there’s a mystery about him which we can’t fathom. Who and what is he, to begin with?”

“That is easily answered, Jeanie. He is a political refugee; the last surviving member of an old and noble family, noted for devotion to the House of Orleans, and therefore in bad odour with the present Imperial Government. I believe, in fact, that he has been concerned in a conspiracy against it, and still belongs to a secret Royalist Society.”

“Ah; I saw him in the town the other day with an elderly Frenchman who looked very like a ‘conspirator.’”

“Had he a cloak and lantern à la Guy Fawkes?”

“No; but he had an ugly sinister face, and a furtive sort of expression, as if he were accustomed to being watched,” answered Jeanie. “M. de Fontenay and he were in such close confabulation that they did not see me pass. They were talking secrets, evidently—plotting, perhaps.”

He laughed. “Very likely. But their plots are no business of ours, Jeanie.”

“No—so long as you are not drawn into them. I have fancied lately—don’t be angry, Gilbert—that there is a sort of secret understanding between you and M. de Fontenay; and I have feared—”

“That I too was turning conspirator?” he suggested, with a look of amusement. “Make your mind quite easy on that score, my child. I never kept a secret in my life; at least—”

He checked himself with some embarrassment, and left the sentence unfinished. Drawing her hand through his arm he led her away.

The curtains were closed, but the lamp was not yet lighted, when they entered the parlour; a homely little room enough, with its worn carpet and plain furniture, yet snug and cheerful, and bearing evidences of taste and refinement in the few well-chosen ornaments; the open piano, the books and pictures, and the vase of spring flowers which adorned the daintily spread tea-table.

Near the window was a smaller table, strewed with the materials for embroidery; and in a low chair beside the hearth, sat Mrs. Haviland, a fair, refined, fragile-looking woman, with Gilbert’s soft brown eyes and wavy hair.

“All in the dark, mother?” he said.

“Yes, dear; it is ‘blindman’s holiday,’” she answered, looking up with a smile. “Janet and I have been hard at work this afternoon, and Mr. Chasuble’s altar-cloth is nearly finished. Light the lamp, Jeanie, and let Gilbert see it.”

“In a moment; I have not put myself to rights yet,” said Gilbert, as he left the room.

Janet lit the lamp and stood for a moment looking absently at the fire: then spoke suddenly.

“Auntie, did you know that Gilbert had a secret?”

“A secret, dear? What sort of secret?”

“I don’t know, but I believe, from something in his manner, that M. de Fontenay is connected with it. I shall dislike that man more than ever if he is going to make Gilbert as reserved and mysterious as he is himself.”

Mrs. Haviland smiled. “Poor M. de Fontenay! he is your bête noire, Jeanie. I must say you are rather unfair to him. So far from being mysterious, he seems to me particularly open and communicative. That is his ring,” she added, as there was a summons at the front door, “now do, dear, try to be civil to him for once.”

There was a sound of voices in the hall, and Gilbert entered, dressed for the evening, ushering in de Fontenay. He was a tall and strikingly distinguished looking man of three or four and thirty, with a clear olive complexion, a black moustache, and handsome bold dark eyes. He spoke English with the fluency of a native, and bore himself with the well-bred ease of a thorough man of the world.

As Janet noticed his cordial manner to Gilbert, and the gentle deference with which he greeted Mrs. Haviland, she felt half ashamed of her unreasonable antipathy; but it returned, strongly as ever, directly the bold dark eyes were turned upon her with that look of suppressed but passionate admiration which she resented as a tacit insult.

At the tea-table Janet scarcely spoke to him, keeping her eyes obstinately bent another way. He addressed his conversation chiefly to her companions, but she could see him watching her covertly, under his long dark lashes.

When the tray had been removed, he produced a folio he had brought with him, and unclosing it, showed that it contained a number of large mounted photographs,

“I want you, Haviland, when you have leisure,” he said, “to do me a series of etchings from these photos, which were taken from pictures in the gallery of the Château de Fontenay. You will be at a disadvantage in not having seen the originals, but those, alas! were sold and dispersed with the rest of my household gods when I became an exile and a wanderer.”

“You have given me a very pleasant task,” Gilbert replied; “and I will do my best to achieve it to your satisfaction. I see that there are some portraits among them.”

“Yes—dead and gone de Fontenays. You need not copy those; I don’t care enough for my ancestors to make them interesting.”

“You have preserved the family type,” Gilbert said, smiling. “This—” indicating a half-length figure in the costume of the Grand Monarque’s days—“might be yourself in fancy dress.”

He glanced at it and laughed. “I am flattered by the resemblance. That is Baron Enguerraud de Fontenay, one of the blackest sheep in the family flock—and there have been not a few among us,” he added, coolly. “We are a reckless, spendthrift, ne’er-do-well stock, we de Fontenays, though we have somehow managed in all our follies to keep honour intact. ‘Tout est perdu, fors l’honneur,’ might be our motto.”

“An unsullied name is an inheritance to be proud of,” observed Mrs. Haviland.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Unfortunately one cannot live on it, madame,” he answered cynically. “’ When lands are gone, and money spent,’ as the old song says, honour is but a barren heritage. That is enough of pictures for the present. Will Mademoiselle Jeanne oblige us with a little music?”

Jeanie shook her head. “I could not venture to play before so accomplished a musician as yourself, monsieur.”

He did not press her, but, taking his seat at the piano, struck a few masterly chords, then glided into the “Moonlight Sonata.”

Attracted, in spite of herself, by the exquisite music, Janet approached, and stood watching the slender but powerful fingers, on one of which a great ruby gleamed, blood red.

Presently, without removing his hands from the keys, he glanced round at Gilbert and his mother. They were still absorbed in the pictures and talking with animation.

“What a pleasant, peaceful home interior!” he murmured, keeping up a subdued ripple of accompaniment. “A haven of rest, it seems, to a storm-tossed wanderer like myself. Every form of what the world calls pleasure I have known, but the joys of home—never, or I might have been a better man.”

“Perhaps you would have found them insipid,” she said.

He smiled rather bitterly. “I understand you: you think me incapable of appreciating innocent pleasures—you may even doubt my capacity for affection. But there you are wrong. World-hardened as I am, I can still love, deeply, passionately; and for the loved one I would do and dare all. I would sacrifice fortune, honour, life itself, in her service.”

His voice barely rose above a whisper, but there was a thrill of passionate earnestness in it which startled Jeanie. She drew back and answered coldly:

“That sounds well, monsieur; but it seldom happens in real life that a man is called upon to make any such sacrifices. The affection best worth having is that which will stand the test of daily companionship; which shows itself in little unobtrusive acts of kindness, in patience and tenderness and self-abnegation.”

Involuntarily she glanced towards Gilbert. Her listener frowned, and played a jarring discord.

“Such ideal perfection is beyond me,” he returned. “And yet, if a woman cared for me enough to bear with my faults, she might find some good in me still. Her influence might raise me to a higher level, and I might learn to live worthily for her sweet sake.”

There was a moment’s silence. Janet dared not look at him, but she felt that his dark eyes were riveted on her face with a gaze which seemed to magnetise her.

Suddenly he changed his position, and played the introductory symphony of a song, the “Chanson de Tortunio:”

Si je vous le disais, pourtant, que je vous aime,

Qui sait, brune aux yeux bleus, ce que vous en diriez.

As his mellow baritone voice lingered on the last words, she involuntarily glanced at him; but the look she encountered made her eyes quickly drop again, and brought a hot flush of colour to her cheeks.

“Jeanne, I love you!” he breathed, in a quick, passionate undertone; and, affecting to pick up a loose sheet of music, he stooped and laid his lips to her hand.

The girl started and snatched it away.

“Do not shrink from me, my sweetest,” he pleaded, in the same suppressed but vehement tone. “Tell me that I may hope; tell me that you will—”

“Oh, no—it is impossible!” she interrupted hurriedly. “Please say no more; you only distress me.”

His face changed, an expression crossing it which made it almost menacing.

“So be it; I am silenced,” he said in an altered voice. “Yet it might have been better had you listened to me; better for you—and for someone else also. It is safer to have me for a friend than a rival.”

The girl threw up her head and looked at him defiantly.

“Is that a threat, monsieur?”

“No, merely a warning,” he replied, as he rose and left the piano.

“You have given us a treat, M. de Fontenay,” Mrs. Haviland said, looking up; “but I fear Gilbert has been sadly inattentive to your music. He is fascinated by these pictures.”

“By the way, Haviland, I find there is one I have omitted to bring,” their visitor remarked, “not a photograph, but an engraving, which I wish to have copied in facsimile. However, you will see it when next you call. Suppose you come and dine with me to-morrow evening, if you have no other engagement. And now,” he continued, “I will take my leave. Au revoir, madame, and thanks for a delightful evening.”

He shook hands with her cordially, but to Janet he merely bowed, with an exaggerated deference in which there seemed a touch of irony.

When Gilbert returned to the sitting-room after showing out their guest, he found his cousin alone. She was standing at the table, looking absently at the scattered photographs.

“Congratulate me on my good fortune, Jeanie,” he began. “This commission gives me just the sort of work I was longing for.”

“I am pleased you have the commission, but sorry it came from M. de Fontenay,” she replied.

“Oh, you are incorrigible!” he exclaimed, in a tone of vexation. “Will it remove your prejudice against him, Jeanie, if I tell you that he saved me from ruin?”

She started, looking at him in wondering inquiry. He nodded gravely.

“It is a fact. To explain it I must tell you what I have hitherto kept a secret, even from my mother. Ever since my father died, Janet, I have been struggling under a debt, which, quixotically perhaps, I took upon myself to save his memory from dishonour. The money had been borrowed from Screwton, the attorney, who promised to give me time to repay it in instalments. About a month ago, however, he came down upon me by demanding payment in full, under a threat of legal proceedings. I was at my wits’ end, not knowing where to turn for help, when de Fontenay came to my rescue—”

“How did he know of it?” interrupted Janet.

“He heard of it from Screwton—he knows him. De Fontenay, in the most delicate and friendly manner, came to me with an offer of assistance. He would not hear of my refusing it; he insisted upon advancing me sufficient money to discharge the debt in full.”

Janet drew in her lips, looking perplexed and uneasy.

“Did it strike you that such generosity was extraordinary on the part of a comparative stranger?”

“It would have been from anyone else; but de Fontenay is liberal and open-handed to a fault.”

“So now he is your creditor instead of Mr. Screwton? I would rather you were in the attorney’s power than his, Gilbert. How much was the debt?”

“Three hundred pounds.”

She uttered an exclamation of dismay. “When shall you be able to repay it?”

“In time—and de Fontenay is not likely to hurry me,” he said cheerfully. “I feel that I have it in me to succeed, Janet, if I can only get a start in the right groove. This commission of his may be the first step towards that brilliant future you are so fond of predicting for me.”

He stole an arm round her waist and drew her to his side. “You know for whose sake I am anxious to succeed,” he whispered, looking down at her with tender seriousness. “I have never before put my hopes into words, but I think you have guessed them, Jeanie?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

But even as her sweet lips met his, and they took their first long, lingering kiss of love, Janet shivered with a vague foreboding of coming trouble.

II

Though M. de Fontenay was fond of alluding to himself as a poor man, there were no signs of poverty in his manner of living. The house which he had taken, when he settled in Hammerton, some six months before making Gilbert’s acquaintance, was a large and handsome one, standing in an aristocratic suburb of the town.

The “Priory,” as it was called, a comparatively old house, was a square, substantial building, of mellow-tinted red brick, so thickly sheltered by trees and shrubs as to be invisible from the road; and though its exterior was typically English, in its look of solid respectability, it was as thoroughly French inside as if it had been transported bodily from the environs of Paris. M. de Fontenay’s fastidious taste was shown in the rich but subdued elegance of the furniture and decorations.

Gilbert Haviland proceeded to keep his dinner engagement at the appointed hour, and was admitted by an English footman; but M. de Fontenay’s valet, and confidential servant, Luigi—a soft-voiced, obsequious Italian—came forward to relieve him of his hat and overcoat, and usher him into the salon. It was a long, lofty room on the ground floor, with furniture of inlaid ebony; panelled walls, a polished floor, and two tall windows draped with olive-green plush.

To his surprise, for he had expected to dine tête-à-tête with his host, he found two other visitors present, who were introduced to him respectively as the Vicomte de Sanzac and Monsieur Docquois. The former, a young man, was a type of a Parisian dandy of the “Third Empire;” with a handsome but dissipated face, a waxed moustache, a glass screwed into his eye, and an expression of amiable self-sufficiency.

Docquois, whom Gilbert fancied he recognised as Janet’s “conspirator,” was a haggard, sallow-complexioned man of forty; his eyes were dark and restless, with a sullen, lowering look, which certainly merited the description, “sinister.” The two guests were as great a contrast in manner as in appearance, the Vicomte being just as talkative and expansive as M. Docquois was taciturn and reserved.

They were alike, however, in the marked deference with which they treated their host, and also in the close and curious scrutiny which they bestowed on Gilbert himself.

Glancing towards them as he exchanged a few words with de Fontenay, he found Docquois watching him furtively under his heavy brows, while the Vicomte, twirling his waxed moustache surveyed him from head to foot with undisguised curiosity. Feeling somewhat uncomfortable under this fire of eyes, he was not sorry when dinner was announced, and they crossed the hall to the dining-room.

“Monsieur Docquois understands but does not speak English, so I shall put you near de Sanzac, who will be charmed to show off his knowledge of your language,” the host said, as they took their places at the perfectly appointed dinner-table, with its glittering array of glass and silver. “Convince him if you can that the sun does sometimes shine in this foggy island.”

“There is a week I have been in England, and every day it has rained more or less, generally more,” remarked the Vicomte.

“April is usually a rainy month, even in France, is it not?” Gilbert asked, good-temperedly.

The other shrugged his shoulders. “Cher Monsieur, I adore England; but your climate gives me the horrors.”

“I may plead that we have learned how to indemnify ourselves for its defects by home comforts,” said Gilbert smiling.

“Oh, you have a genius for ‘le confort,’ I admit; but for me, look you, I am a child of the south. Sunlight is as necessary to my happiness as—”

“As pretty women and good wine, for example,” put in M. de Fontenay. “Apropos—try my Xères, Vicomte.”

M. Docquois, who was supping his soup noisily from the end of his spoon, glanced at the sprightly Vicomte with an unpleasant smile. “You have just narrowly escaped being deprived of the materials for happiness for some time to come,” he said sneeringly.

“True; but under those painful circumstances I should at least have enjoyed the consolation of your society, mon cher,” the other replied quickly and coolly; “and such genial companionship might make even a prison endurable.”

Gilbert raised his head with an involuntary look of surprised inquiry, which M. de Fontenay answered.

“Ah, my dear Haviland, in spite of its climate, England is a happy country,” he said. “You may not have sunshine, but you have freedom; freedom, social, religious and political. Every man can speak the thing he thinks, without danger of finding himself within prison walls—as our friend here would have done, but for his timely trip across the Channel.”

De Sanzac laughed and filled his glass.

“You see what a dangerous character you have for a neighbour, M. Haviland,” he remarked lightly. “We make no stranger of you,” he added, in a curious tone; “we know that you will not betray us.”

“Oh, there is no fear of that,” de Fontenay said quietly, and changed the subject.

In spite of the host’s geniality and the conversational powers of one of the guests, the dinner was not a success. Gilbert felt unaccountably constrained and ill-at-ease, and it was a relief to him when they adjourned for cigars to the study.

The latter apartment had been built by the present tenant, and was connected with the other part of the house by a long corridor with a padded door at each end. It was a spacious but somewhat gloomy room, lined on three sides with bookshelves; it had heavy oak furniture, a wide open fire-place, and an elaborately carved chimney-piece. In a recess at one end stood an exquisite statue of Psyche, a copy from the antique; its marble whiteness gleaming coldly against the dark background.

After the warm and brilliant dining-room the place looked chill and sombre, lighted only by a shaded lamp on the reading-table, which cast a bright circle of radiance on the scattered books and papers, leaving the corners of the room in shadowy obscurity.

The discreet Luigi brought in a tray containing coffee, cognac and liqueurs, placed another log of wood on the hearth (M. de Fontenay abjured both coal and gas) and retired noiselessly as he had come.

“That fellow comes and goes like a ghost,” observed de Sanzac, as he rolled a fresh cigarette.

“Or like a spy,” growled Docquois, giving his coffee a liberal bracing of cognac. “I don’t like your model valet, de Fontenay. He is too sly and cat-footed for me.”

“Luigi? Oh, he is an excellent fellow, and the best servant in the world. But he has a trick of leaving the door open. Vicomte, will you oblige me by seeing if it is shut?”

De Sanzac glanced at him, then smiled and crossed the room to the door, which was screened by a tapestry portière.

Gilbert fancied—it could only have been fancy—that he heard the click of a key in the lock as the young Frenchman put his hand under the curtain.

“All right,” he said jauntily, coming back with his hands in his pockets. “We can talk secrets without danger of eaves-droppers.”

“Oh, we are not going to talk secrets,” the master of the house replied, as he pushed the cigar-stand towards Gilbert. “Though there is a little matter of business between Mr. Haviland and myself which may as well be settled now as later. I have been thinking,” he continued, addressing the engraver, “that it might be more satisfactory to have our agreement about the etchings in writing. You are contented with the terms I proposed when we parted last night?”

“More than contented; they are far too liberal,” said Gilbert.

“On the contrary, in accepting them you leave me your debtor,” was the courteous reply, as de Fontenay opened a writing case on the table. “Then will you kindly put your signature to this memorandum? You see,” he added laughing, “I am nothing if not business-like—the result of my residence in England, I suppose.”

The young man took the paper from his hand, and was about to affix his signature without looking at the contents when his friend interrupted him. “My good fellow, have I to teach you, a practical, cautious Englishman, never to sign a document without reading it? Why, even our feather-brained de Sanzac would know better than that.”

Gilbert laughed, and putting up his eyeglass glanced through the memorandum. “It is perfectly correct,” he said, as he dipped his pen in the ink. At the same moment, the vivacious Vicomte, stretching across to reach the cognac bottle, contrived to upset his coffee, which poured in a stream across the table.

“Maladroit!” exclaimed the host, springing to his feet to avoid being inundated.

“I beg ten thousand pardons,” drawled the other, who, however did not seem much disconcerted by his mishap.

“There is no great harm done,” rejoined de Fontenay; “I will ring for Luigi presently. What has become of the memorandum?—Oh, here it is, on the floor,” he added, stooping to pick it up.

Without looking at it again, Gilbert signed his name and handed him the paper.

“So—that is settled,” de Fontenay said with a satisfied smile, and a glance at the other two, who were smiling also. “And now,” he continued, “I will show you the engraving I mentioned, which you have kindly promised to copy for me. It has no particular merit as a work of art, but there are circumstances which render it particularly interesting and valuable—as my friends can tell you.”

“Parbleu!” muttered Docquois, with his ill-favoured smile; while the Vicomte, who seemed to have had quite as much wine as was good for him, burst into an immoderate fit of laughter.

“Interesting and valuable!” he echoed, when he could speak: “I believe you! Show me the work of art which comes up to it. But let us see this treasure, de Fontenay. Where do you keep it?—In an iron safe? In a jewelled shrine?”

“No,” said the other calmly; “I keep it—in my purse,” and opening his porte-monnaie he drew out a folded paper which he tossed across the table to Gilbert.

The other two approached and watched the young man curiously as he bent towards the light of the lamp and examined it, holding it close to his short-sighted eyes.

He uttered an involuntary exclamation of surprise, and looked up at his friend. “You are joking, of course,” he said with a smile.

“I never was more serious,” replied the latter, whose face was indeed grave and stern enough now.

Gilbert glanced bewilderingly at the paper again. “But—I don’t understand,” he stammered. “This is a Bank of England note for a thousand pounds.”

“Exactly,” the Frenchman rejoined; “and that is the ‘engraving’ which you have promised to copy in facsimile.”

The young man started, and rose to his feet, his eyes dilating with a sudden horrible suspicion. “Good heavens! you do not mean—”

“I mean precisely what I say,” de Fontenay interrupted with imperturbable calmness. “You will not deny your promise, I suppose? Here it is, in black and white. You agree to join our fraternity, and to place your professional skill at our service for a consideration, which is specified.”

“That is not the paper I read.”

“That is the paper you signed. See, here is your name, with the ink scarcely dry upon it.”

“Then you substituted that for the other,” Gilbert said quickly. “Ah!” he added with sudden enlightenment. “I understand it all now! This is the climax of a deep-laid scheme. It was for this you played the comedy of friendship, and got me into your power—to make me your tool and accomplice. I was to turn forger to oblige you! You must have been mad to think I should consent.”

“It is you who are the madman if you refuse,” muttered Docquois in a tone of menace there was no mistaking.

De Fontenay silenced him by a gesture.

“My dear Haviland,” he said, in a voice of friendly remonstrance, “I think you scarcely understand your position. If you reflect, you will see that you have no alternative but to yield. You are at my mercy. I can ruin you, for this agreement is so worded that I can make use of it against you without compromising myself—”

“Before you had time to do so, I should denounce you as an impostor and a felon,” struck in Gilbert, courageously.

“Excuse me; a felon I may be, but an impostor I am not. That I am a spendthrift and a gambler is pretty well known to my friends; but that I have descended to crime in order to avoid the misery and humiliation of poverty is, as yet, my own secret. Denounce me if you like, and see who will believe, on your word, that Raoul de Fontenay is a ‘felon.’”

“Oh, M. Haviland will do nothing so imprudent; he will make a virtue of necessity, and become one of us,” spoke de Sanzac, rolling a fresh cigarette. “You must not confound us with vulgar faussaires, M. Haviland; our workmen are artists in their way, and our agents belong to a rank of life which places them above suspicion. It happens that we are at present in want of an engraver, the post having become vacant through the—ah—temporary retirement of one of our confrères—a retirement which Docquois and I were very near sharing, by the way,” he added with a laugh. “It is a brilliant opportunity for you, as we are just now breaking fresh ground, having at length succeeded in imitating the peculiar texture of the Bank of England paper; and that’s the whole story. The work is simple, the remuneration munificent. You accept—yes?”

Gilbert drew a deep breath, and glanced at the master of the house, who, during his friend’s fluent harangue had been standing with his arms folded.

He met the young man’s eyes with a sombre smile. “Well,” he said, “you do not speak. Are we to understand that you consent?”

“You are to understand,” the young Englishman replied, all his nerves thrilling with excitement, “that I would rather cut off my right hand than use it in your service. And now you will allow me to go.”

As he turned to leave the room, words from de Fontenay arrested him. “The door is locked and the key in my pocket,” he said, deliberately.

“Open it, sir, or I will rouse the house!” said Gilbert.

“You may shout till you are hoarse; no sound will pass the walls of this room,” returned de Fontenay coolly. “It was built to hold a secret, and nothing that could compromise us has ever escaped it. The grave itself is not more discreet.”

Gilbert understood the veiled menace; he felt that he turned pale, but he answered in a tone of contemptuous indifference: “Your threat does not alarm me, Monsieur de Fontenay; you would scarcely be so mad as to attempt my life, knowing that if I disappeared this house would be the first place searched for me.”

“It might be searched from garret to basement and no trace of you would be found, were it necessary for our safety that you should ‘disappear.’ See here.”

He walked to the statue of Psyche, and drawing out the movable pedestal on which it stood, pressed a concealed spring in the panelled niche. Instantly a door flew open, revealing a cupboard or closet, about the height of a man, but not more than two feet deep, contrived in the thickness of the wall. Taking up the lamp, he threw its light into the recess, which contained a few papers and a small iron safe; then he glanced over his shoulder at Gilbert.

“Do you understand?” he asked, with the same dark smile. “While the police were searching for you, while pretty Jeanne was lamenting you, while your friends and enemies were putting their own construction on your disappearance, you would be here—safely gagged and bound, and left to suffocate at your leisure.”

The young man gasped as if he were already suffocating. The horror of the idea overpowered him.

De Fontenay advanced a step nearer to him, lowering his voice. “And while you were lying perdu here, mon ami, it should be my pleasant task to console that sweet young demoiselle—not a very difficult one, I fancy. She might mourn for you at first, but she would soon learn to forget you—in my arms.”

Before he could utter another word, Gilbert lifted his hand, and struck him in the face. Then, with the energy of desperation he dashed across the room, and seized the bell-rope.

Quick as he was, Docquois, who had been watching him closely, anticipated the movement, and snatched it from him. The two men struggled for a moment, when Gilbert, catching his foot in the hearthrug, fell heavily, dragging his assailant with him. At the same instant de Sanzac uttered a hasty exclamation.

“Hush—what was that?” he breathed. “Someone is at the door!”

Docquois started to his feet; but Gilbert, whose head had struck the fender in his fall, rose with difficulty.

“Keep him quiet—do you hear?” de Fontenay said in a hurried whisper to Docquois.

His confederate nodded. Gilbert, who, dazed and giddy, had sunk into a chair, felt a cold touch on his temple—the steel barrel of a revolver, which the Frenchman was holding to his head.

“Who is there?” de Fontenay demanded, through the door, which was being knocked at.

“It is I, Monsieur,” his valet’s voice replied. “A gentleman desires to see you.”

His master unlocked the door, and opened it a few inches.

“A gentleman?” he repeated; “a visitor at this hour! Who is it? what name does he give?”

“None, Monsieur. He says that he is a stranger to you, but that he comes on urgent business—”

“On business so urgent that it cannot be delayed for a moment, M. de Fontenay,” put in another voice; and the door was thrust open, and two strangers made a sudden irruption into the room.

“Mille tonnerres!” shouted Docquois; “the police!”

“Just so,” replied the first speaker, a tall burly man of middle age, whom Gilbert recognised as the local superintendent; “and to save you the fatigue of useless resistance I may mention that my men are here, within call, and that the house is also guarded outside, back and front. This is the man, is it not?” he continued, indicating de Fontenay, as he turned to his companion, who wore a moustache and imperial, and a tight-waisted frock-coat.

“Yes, that is our bird,” the French detective replied airily, “and a knowing one he is. It has been a ticklish business to catch him; but he is in the net at last. The other two are ours also, but the third I don’t know. Is he one of the gang?”

The question was addressed to Luigi, who stood in the background, an interested and attentive spectator of the scene.

“Questo è certo!—he is one of them, or he would not be here,” replied the valet, coming forward. “He is an engraver, and has been at the house frequently of late.”

De Fontenay turned a strange look on his favourite servant. “So, Luigi, it is you who have betrayed me?” he said quietly.

“With profound regret, and as part of my professional duty, signor, si,” the Italian answered, with his usual obsequiousness. “I did not think it necessary to say, when I entered your excellency’s service, that I was employed by the police to watch you.”

“The game is up then,” his master said, with a shrug.

“Yes, the game is up,” Gilbert echoed, shaking off his torpor and rising; “for what your servant does not know, I can tell.”

“That, by heaven, you shall not!” Docquois interposed, with a furious oath. “One spy and informer is enough for us.”

He raised his revolver to Gilbert as he spoke, but de Fontenay caught his arm. “No bloodshed,” he said peremptorily; “it will only make matters worse.”

As the other jerked his wrist away, there was a sharp report, and de Fontenay staggered back from him, putting his hand to his side.

“You have killed him!” exclaimed de Sanzac with emotion, speaking for the first time since the detectives had entered the room; and he hurried to his friend’s assistance.

“I—it is nothing,” de Fontenay gasped, though he had turned lividly pale. “If you had wished to serve me, Docquois, you would have taken better aim,” he added, with a bitter smile.

“I would rather shoot myself than you, you know that,” the latter answered hoarsely. “It was a miserable accident.”

“To avoid further accidents, M. Docquois,” said the French “agent,” blandly, producing a pair of handcuffs from his pocket, “perhaps you will allow me to put on these little ornaments? Ca y est! You also, M. le Vicomte, if you please—thousand thanks! As to this gentleman, who is English, I think we have a warrant for his arrest on Mr. Luigi’s information. He—”

“Pray allow me to explain!” hastily interrupted Gilbert. “I have no connection whatever with these men; I was entrapped into their company by false—”

“You will have an opportunity of explaining all that before the magistrate to-morrow,” struck in the superintendent brusquely; “in the meantime, sir, if you take my advice, you will hold your tongue, and come quietly with us. Now M. de Fontenay, if you are ready—why, what’s this?” M. de Fontenay had almost fallen from his chair; his hands were hanging, his head drooped on his breast.

“He is fainting!” exclaimed de Sanzac.

“He is dying,” whispered the French detective with sudden gravity, as he raised the drooping face.

Luigi approached, and helped to lift his betrayed and wounded master on to the couch, loosened his cravat and unfastened his waistcoat. De Fontenay had not lost consciousness; his eyes were wide open, and unnaturally bright, but his features looked pinched and drawn, and his rich olive complexion had faded to an ashen pallor. Docquois stood, the image of distress.

“No cause for a long face,” spoke de Fontenay to him, with a haggard smile, as he feebly strove to repulse Luigi. “You never did me a better turn than by that chance shot, Docquois, my good friend. No, don’t touch me; let me die in peace. But first—” His eyes wandered round till they rested on Gilbert; then he turned, and addressed the superintendent, who was standing near the couch.

“Sir, I have a statement to make which will clear an innocent man from unjust suspicion. Mr. Haviland spoke the truth just now; he—but let it be taken down in writing,” he broke off, “and quickly, for my moments are counted.”

Clearly and collectedly, though in a voice which grew fainter with every word, he made his confession, and affixed a trembling signature.

Then he looked wistfully at Gilbert again, and the latter crossed the room to his side.

“Haviland, will you forgive me?” he faltered. “I did not mean my threats just now. Villain though I may have been, I am not a murderer; believe that.”

Without a word the young man gave him his hand.

“Thanks,” he said, his lips parting in a faint smile. “You are a good fellow. You deserve to be happy, and you will be—happy and prosperous with—with the woman you love. Tell her from me that—”

His voice sank so low that the rest of the sentence was inaudible. “Jeanne—‘brune aux yeux bleus,’” he muttered; and with a long shivering sigh, fell back on the pillows, dead.

•    •    •    •

De Fontenay’s prophecy was realised. Gilbert Haviland was happy in due course of time, and very prosperous. He is now one of the most popular illustrators of our periodical literature.

Janet and he have partly forgotten the shadows and trials of the past. “But I can never forget the horror of that night, as you related it to me, Gilbert,” she says to him sometimes, with a shudder.

“I cannot regret it, when it served to draw us more closely together, my darling,” her husband answers tenderly. “All the same, I hope it may never again be my lot to find myself in so dangerous a strait.”

The Innkeeper’s Daughter

(Jun. 1888)

I

Six o’clock on a sultry August evening. The bell of the Hôtel du Lion d’Or, at the Picardy town of Mont-St.-Evrard, has just announced to all whom it may concern that dinner is ready, and the habitués of the table-d’hôte are dropping in leisurely, one by one, to take their accustomed places.

The dining-room windows look out on the broad sunny Market Place, with its ancient Hôtel-de-Ville and gabled houses. At the opposite end of the room a half-glass door opens into the courtyard, on the left-hand side of which is the spacious, raftered kitchen.

The Lion d’Or, though the principal inn of the town, made no pretensions to style. The innkeeper, Jacques Destrée, was wealthy enough to have owned a much more imposing dwelling. But he loved the old house where his people had lived and prospered for generations, and refused to modernise it, even to oblige his pretty daughter, who had returned from her Parisian boarding-school with ambitious views, and a strong distaste for her homely surroundings.

Valérie Destrée was the acknowledged beauty of St. Evrard; but she was far too conscious of her own attractions, the townspeople said, and “gave herself airs” unbecoming to her position; the innkeeper had done a foolish thing, they thought, in making a fine lady of the girl. In this opinion Valérie’s mother thoroughly coincided. In the matter of their daughter’s education, her easy-going husband had for once ventured to act in opposition to her wishes, and she prophesied that he would live to repent it.

Except on Sundays, when they appeared at the table-d’hôte. Monsieur Destrée and his family dined apart, in Madame’s private sanctum—a queer little triangular room, conveniently situated between the dining-room and the kitchen, so that the mistress could keep a vigilant eye on both departments.

“Has your master come in, Rose?” she asked, when, after seeing her guests fairly launched on the first course, she entered this apartment, where a smart servant-girl was laying the cloth.

“Not yet, madame,”

Her mistress shrugged her shoulders impatiently. “He has gone to Bainville market, and has no doubt lost his train, as usual! Well, I shall not wait for him. Tell Mademoiselle Valérie—Oh, here she is,” broke off Madame, as her daughter entered: a tall, graceful girl of eighteen, with brilliant dark eyes, a clear, pale complexion, and a pretty, “mutinous” mouth.

“May one ask what you have been doing all the afternoon?” demanded her mother, with a glance of strong disapproval at the coquettish costume and elaborate coiffure. “Curling your hair?”

“No, I have been reading,” the girl answered, taking a leisurely survey of herself in the glass over the chimney-piece before she subsided into her place at table.

“A novel, of course?”

“Yes, and a very good one. Madame Lebrun lent it to me.”

“That’s a recommendation, truly!” remarked her mother, in a tone which expressed disparagement of both the book and its lender.

“I can’t think, mother, why you have taken such a dislike to Madame Lebrun,” Valérie said, resentfully. “I am sure no one could be a kinder friend to me than she is.”

“Kind! Yes, if it is kindness to flatter you, make you vainer than you are by nature, and give you ideas above your station! Jean Lemartel is quite right: she is about the most dangerous friend you could have.”

Valérie coloured and bit her lip. “I wish Jean would be good enough to mind his own business. What right has he to interfere with me?”

“A very good right, Valérie, as your future husband.”

“He is not my husband yet, and perhaps never will be; at any rate, I am not bound to obey him before marriage. If he does not approve of me, he can seek a wife elsewhere—and so I shall tell him.”

“But you would not be best pleased if he took you at your word,” Madame remarked, shrewdly. “Ah, you may toss your head, Valérie, but I know what I’m saying. Jean has been devoted to you for so long that you take his affection as a thing of course; but if he transferred it to someone else—”

“He is quite welcome to do so,” struck in the girl, which called forth a retort from her mother, as she began to ladle out the soup with energy.

“A nice wife you’ll make for a farmer! You are of no more use in a house than—”

“Come, come, wife, that’s enough,” interrupted a voice at the door. “If the child is not useful, no one can deny that she’s ornamental, and there’s room in the world for roses as well as cabbages—hein?”

It was the innkeeper who spoke—a big, burly man of middle age, with a large, clean-shaven, good-tempered face, and kindly blue eyes which had a humorous twinkle. Valérie rose, and taking him by the lapels of his holland coat, rewarded him for his championship by a kiss on each cheek.

“Now, Jean, my lad, it’s your turn,” said M. Destrée, as he drew back and showed the figure of his companion: a handsome, sunburnt man of thirty, with honest brown eyes, and a mouth indicating both sweet temper and a firm will.

Valérie turned away, affecting not to hear. Jean Lemartel, nothing daunted, detained her, and kissed her cheek.

“When I am not served, I help myself,” he explained.

“Quite right,” approved his host, laughing, as he sat down to table, and rubbed his bald forehead with a large blue cotton handkerchief.

“And now, mother, give us our dinner. The walk from Bainville has sharpened my appetite.”

“Dinner has been waiting this half-hour,” returned his wife, tartly, “If everything is spoilt, it is your own fault.”

“It is partly mine, madame,” Jean Lemartel interposed pleasantly, as he drew a chair to Valérie’s side. “I detained M. Destrée as he was passing my place, to ask his opinion upon the alterations I am making in the house. You must come too, Valérie, and tell me it you approve of them. You know for whose sake I am trying to beautify my home,” he added, in a tender undertone, glancing at the pretty, clouded face at his side.

“Did you leave the books with Madame Lebrun, father?” Valérie inquired, as if her lover had not spoken.

“Ay, and found the ‘Châlet’ turned upside down in preparation for some grand visitors she is expecting—an English lord and his wife.”

“‘Visitors’? Allez!” Madame Destrée exclaimed, with a short laugh; “lodgers you mean. Veuve Lebrun lets her first floor during the bathing-season, though she chooses to make a mystery over it. You know that, husband.”

“Well, visitors or lodgers, they are coming to-morrow; and the widow is in high feather, I can tell you. I couldn’t get a word in edgeways while she was rattling on about milord and milady Del—what’s-their-name?”

“Delamere,” put in Valérie. “They are old friends of hers. At least, not friends exactly; but Madame Lebrun, before she married, was French governess to Lady Delamere’s daughters. Madame is going to present me to her.”

The hostess tossed her head. “Much good that will do you, child! Those fine folks are best at a distance.”

“She wants Valérie to go to her to-morrow afternoon, and see these folks; they will have come then,” remarked M. Destrée, with little tact.

“Then she may want,” said his wife. “I can’t spare Valérie. She is quite set up enough already without the help of Widow Lebrun’s fine friends.”

The girl’s eyes flashed rebelliously. She turned upon Jean with an abruptness that startled him.

“I have to thank you for this, I believe. It is you who have set the mother against my friend; you would deprive me of the only amusement I have.” And, throwing down her serviette, she rose from the table and left the room.

When the young farmer had recovered from his astonishment at this unexpected attack, he was about to follow her, but the host pushed him back into his chair.

“Stay where you are, lad, and eat your dinner. She will come round all the sooner, left to herself. Valérie’s breezes soon blow over. As to her going sometimes to the Widow Lebrun’s, I see no particular objection to it, though the fine English people may be there. One can’t oppose the child’s every little wish. Let’s hear no more on the subject.”

“Very good,” said Madame, with ominous calmness. “I wash my hands of it.”

While this discussion was in progress, Valérie had retreated to the garden, feeling in her angry mood as if the air indoors stifled her.

It was a large, but by no means an orderly garden that was attached to the hotel, flowers, fruit, and vegetables flourishing together in republican equality; but it had a certain picturesqueness of its own, with its tangled rose bushes, and drooping fruit trees; its quaint hooded well, overshadowed by a weird old elder tree, and its sunny south wall, covered by a wonderful vine which was noted for producing the best grapes in the department. At the end, near the tall privet hedge which divided it from the road, was a jasmine arbour, which Valérie called her “refuge.” In it she spent many a summer hour, in idleness as delightful to herself as it was exasperating to her mother.

Here Jean found her, half-an-hour later, sitting on the low rustic bench, idly picking a rose to pieces, petal by petal. She took no notice of him.

“Are you angry with me, Valérie?” he asked, as he sat down beside her, and took one of the restless little hands in his own muscular brown ones.

“I think you are very unkind, and—and interfering,” she murmured, vexed to find her resentment melting away under his tender, earnest gaze. “You know how few friends I have—there is no one in this stupid place I care to associate with; and you are doing your best to divide me from the only one I value. I believe jealousy is at the bottom of it!”

“Jealousy?” he repeated, in amused inquiry. “That I am jealous of Widow Lebrun?”

“You are jealous of her influence over me, because you think it is used against yourself. That is the reason you have called her dangerous.”

He pulled his beard meditatively. “That is not the only reason, Valérie, but I own that it influences me. You can’t expect me to feel very kindly disposed towards a woman who is doing her best to deprive me of the dearest treasure I possess in life.”

“What is that, pray?”

“Your love, sweetheart,” he replied, with a warm pressure of her hand.

In spite of herself her face softened, but she only answered drily:

“You are quite sure you do possess it, then?”

“Sure? No. But until lately I hoped I did. Ay, and I hope so still, in spite of Madame Lebrun and her manoeuvres. Who is she, an acquaintance of yesterday, to come between you and me? We, who have known each other all our lives? I can hardly look back to the time when I did not love you, Valérie. My affection has become a part of my life—a part of myself, and the worthiest part of me. And you? Oh, my dearest, let me hear you say that I have not deceived myself; that you do love me!”

He put his arm about her as he spoke, and drew her closer to his side, laying his bronzed cheek against hers.

“I thought you had taken that for granted, as we are supposed to be engaged,” she returned, trying to speak lightly, though her voice trembled and her breath came quickly, with an emotion which was new to her. She could hardly realise that this was Jean, this ardent, pleading lover, whose tender earnestness thrilled her, in spite of herself. “My parents have given me to you—”

“I will not take you from them; I will not take you until I know that you are content to be mine,” he vehemently interrupted. “Speak to me, sweetheart; let me have the assurance from your own dear lips!”

Valérie made a feeble attempt to disengage herself, and not succeeding, turned her head so that her face was hidden on his shoulder.

“I—yes, I am content,” she whispered.

“And as soon as the nest is ready, you will come to me, my dove?” he softly said.

“Oh, I am in no hurry to be caged; you must leave me my liberty a little longer, Jean,” she answered, drawing herself away with a little laugh.

The match for Valérie was good and suitable. Jean Lemartel was a man of substance, apart from the land he farmed, a portion of which he owned. The house belonging to it, called Les Ormes, was large and handsome, while Jean himself was of unblemished character and most genial disposition. St. Evrard thought Valérie was lucky to have been chosen by him.

II

Madame Veuve Lebrun, the widow of a well-to-do tradesman of Lille, had been left with a comfortable independency. A plump, over-dressed, prettyish woman of seven and thirty; vain, self-indulgent, and not too scrupulous, but good-natured in her way, when it involved no trouble, and honestly fond of the innkeeper’s daughter.

On the following afternoon, when Valérie arrived at the “Châlet Beauregard”—a pert little red-brick villa on the sandy new Boulevard near the sea—she found the fair chatelaine—who affected English habits, and was ridiculously pretentious—arranging a tea equipage on a gipsy table in her “boudoir.”

“A la bonne heure!” exclaimed Madame, embracing her guest with effusion; “charmed to see you, my dear. I was afraid the ‘powers that be’ might not allow you to come.”

“Has the Countess arrived?” Valérie asked, saying nothing of the little discordance there had been at home.

“The Countess cannot come,” lamented Madame Lebrun, sinking into a chair with a tragic gesture of her plump white hands. “Picture to yourself my dismay, after all the preparations I had made!”

“But why can she not come?”

“The Earl is laid up with a sudden attack of gout, and may not be able to travel for some weeks. I received a telegram yesterday evening.”

“How provoking!” the girl exclaimed, in a disappointed tone. “I did so wish to meet Lady Delamere.”

The widow smiled and nodded mysteriously.

“Never mind, ma belle, you will meet someone as interesting. Who do you think arrived this morning and took me by surprise, for I had not expected him at all—Viscount Harcourt.”

“Lord Delamere’s son?”

“His eldest son. He is heir to the earldom and thirty thousand a year. Pounds! not francs, my dear.”

Valérie laughed. “How will he be able to spend it all?”

“And the most charming young man,” ran on Madame, flirting her fan. “But so altered, so improved that I did not recognise him. It is true I saw but little of him when I was living with the family, but I remember him a plain, quiet, studious youth, amiable, but shy and gauche. He has developed into a handsome, accomplished man of the world, and Here he comes, I do believe!” she broke off, as a footstep sounded outside. “I asked him to take tea with me, on purpose to introduce him to you, Valérie.”

Madame Lebrun rose from the sofa to receive Lord Harcourt. He was a tall, slightly-built man of six or seven and twenty, with a handsome, blasé face, bold blue eyes, and lips which were habitually curved in a half-cynical smile under his blonde moustache.

He sauntered into the room with his hands in his pockets, and an air of almost insolent nonchalance, which was exchanged for one of sudden interest when he saw Valérie.

“Permit me,” said the widow, with her grandest air, “to present Lord Harcourt to my particular friend. Mademoiselle Destrée.”

The Viscount bowed, murmuring that he was “charmed,” and putting up his eye-glass, favoured the girl with a glance of undisguised admiration, which brought the colour to her cheeks.

“I was just saying,” observed Madame, with an affected laugh, as she placed a chair for him, “that I find you altered past recognition, milord.”

“Indeed, I hope I am!” he answered in fluent French. “Boys are generally ugly young animals, and I’m sure I was no exception to the rule. Why, how long is it, madame, since you left us?”

“Nearly ten years; though I can hardly believe it.”

“Nor I, madame, when I look at you,” was his polite reply, with a low bow, for he seemed to have quite the French manner. “I remember you perfectly, though I was only a troublesome school-boy.”

“Pardon—you were nearly seventeen, soon about to leave Eton; and you were remarkable for your steadiness and amiability.”

“Is it possible?” he exclaimed laughing. “I fear I have long out-grown both those characteristics. At least, so my sisters tell me.”

“Apropos—how are my dear old pupils, the Ladies Maud and Hilda? You have told me nothing about them yet.”

“There is not much to tell,” he answered, indifferently. “You know, of course, that Maud is married?”

“Maud?” she repeated with a doubtful look. “I understood that it was Lady Hilda who married.”

“Hilda, of course,” he corrected hastily. “I meant Hilda. But our family histories cannot be very interesting to Mademoiselle Destrée. Suppose we change the subject?” he continued, as he rose to hand the latter her tea-cup. After which he planted himself upon an ottoman in front of her.

“Do you reside in Bainville, mademoiselle, or are you a visitor like myself?”

She glanced at him shyly under her long eyelashes. “I live at Mont-St.-Evrard, a small town not far from here,” she replied.

“Indeed? I should have taken you for a Parisienne,” he remarked, looking her over with a cool and critical scrutiny which in a man of less exalted standing, Valérie would have deemed the height of impertinence. “There is nothing of the country about you—except its freshness. ‘Mont-St.-Evrard’ sounds picturesque. Is it a pretty place?”

“It is quaint and old-fashioned, but not otherwise interesting. There is nothing in it to attract a stranger.”

“No! Yet I have a presentiment, do you know, that I shall find much to attract me,” he rejoined, with an ambiguous smile, as he pulled his moustache, displaying the magnificent brilliant which sparkled on his little finger.

“If you are fond of sketching, you may,” she answered, sipping her tea demurely. “The ruined Abbey of St. Evrard has often been painted.”

“I shall certainly make a pilgrimage to that shrine. May I ask—ah—if your house is anywhere near the Abbey?”

“No, it is in the town. We—” she coloured and hesitated. “My father keeps the Hôtel du Lion d’Or.”

“But Monsieur Destrée is a landed proprietor also, and one of the wealthiest men in the district,” her friend hastened to put in, detecting Lord Harcourt’s involuntary look of surprise. “It is from choice, not necessity, that he continues the business.”

“Just so; I understand,” assented his lordship, and was silent a moment, looking at the girl curiously—wondering, perhaps, she thought, with a twinge of mortified pride, how an innkeeper’s daughter came to look like a lady.

But there was no diminution of empressement in his manner; and he exerted himself to be agreeable with such success that Valérie was fairly fascinated. Never before had she tasted flattery so sweet as this young English nobleman subtly contrived to convey in every look and tone, making her vain heart beat high with triumph, and a vague, undefined sort of hope.

The afternoon fled quickly by; and when he rose, it was with the understanding that he was to return to dine with Madame that day and spend the evening in their company.

“And now I must go and make myself presentable,” he remarked. “I did not bring my man, for he is so very fine a gentleman that I feared he might put your modest household out, madame. But I am a helpless creature without him, and have managed to lose the key of my dressing-case. Does there happen to be a locksmith in the neighbourhood?”

“Certainly,” Madame replied, touching the bell. “I will send for one.”

When the door closed on her guest the widow dropped her company manners, and darting across the room, seized Valérie’s hands and clapped them together with a triumphant laugh.

“I knew it—I foresaw it!” she cried. “You have made a conquest. Now you need not put on that incredulous look; you know it as well as I do, petite chatte! Lord Harcourt is quite prepared to fall in love with you.”

“Pray, dear madame, do not joke,” the girl returned, yet laughing and blushing. “If you think he is likely to be in any such danger, you had better tell him that—that I am engaged.”

“Indeed, I shall tell him nothing of the sort,” said Madame Lebrun. “I should like you to be the wife of a fine young English noble, my dear, and to be mistress of a grand château in England, where I could come and visit you. It would be utterly preposterous for a girl with your advantages to throw yourself away upon Jean Lemartel.”

Valérie sighed. If Jean were but a nobleman, with a grand château and more wealth than could be counted! “I suppose,” she said, quitting the subject, “that Lord Harcourt is inhabiting the apartments you prepared for his father and mother?”

“To be sure he is. They sent him to take possession that I should not be quite disappointed. It was so good of them! But, my dear,” added Madame, shrewdly, “I foresee he will spend more of his time in my rooms than in his. And there is one caution I should like to give you, Valérie—do not mention at home that it is young Harcourt who has come; let them think—as of course they will think—that it is the old lord, his father. If your mother thought any young fellow was here, lord or not lord, she would stop your visits forthwith.”

•    •    •    •

Three or four weeks have passed away. Summer is waning into autumn, and the rich, undulating country round St. Jean is all a sea of golden wheat. At Les Ormes, Jean Lemartel’s farm, the reaping machine is already at work, and his leisure moments are few, though he rarely fails in his evening visit to the Lion d’Or.

But of late, the course of Jean’s true love had run anything but smoothly. A shadow and constraint had risen up, he scarcely knew how, between himself and Valérie. Her manner was strangely capricious; sometimes cold and distant, at others unusually gentle, with a touch of deprecation, as if conscious of deserving his displeasure. He felt puzzled, doubtful, and vaguely uneasy.

One sultry afternoon Jean made his appearance at the Lion d’Or some few hours before his usual time. Red-headed Berthe, the stout, hard-working house-girl, who was seated on a bench outside the kitchen door, preparing vegetables for the soup, glanced up in surprise as he entered the courtyard.

“Is Mademoiselle at home?” he inquired.

“No, monsieur. She is spending the afternoon with Madame Lebrun.”

“Again?” he exclaimed involuntarily. “Why, she was there yesterday!”

The girl glanced at him oddly under her light eyelashes.

“Shall I tell him what I know?” she debated within herself. “It would serve Mam’zelle Valérie right. Little cat! For all her superior airs, she is not above having a sweetheart on the sly; and telling things to Rose that she doesn’t tell me! Yes, monsieur,” she said aloud, “Mademoiselle has been invited very often since Madame’s visitor arrived.”

“What visitor? Oh, you mean the lodger—the old English lord.”

Berthe looked up innocently. “Comment, comment. Monsieur Lemartel, you did not know? It was not the old lord who came and is staying at the Châlet; it is his son, a young and handsome gentleman, and a great admirer. Rose says, of Mademoiselle.”

Jean started as though he had been struck. Rose was the personal maid of Madame and Mademoiselle Destrée, having nothing to do with the service of the hotel; and it was Rose who attended her young mistress to Madame Lebrun’s and back whenever she went there; for a well brought up young French girl does not go out alone.

“A young man staying there—the son!” exclaimed Jean, his bronzed face flushing to the temples. “I think you must be in error, Berthe. Mademoiselle has not said so.”

Berthe laughed quietly. “You can inquire of anybody over there, M. Jean,” she said, as she rose and shook the parings from her apron. “It is the young one, sure enough, monsieur, and he is over head and ears in love with our demoiselle. He will inherit a sumptuous palace in England, and millions and millions of francs a year!”

Jean believed her. He felt instinctively that it was true, and that this was the explanation of the change in Valérie which had so perplexed him.

Losing not a minute, he turned away, and sought the train for Bainville, his heart burning with anger, and sick with jealous pain.

The Bainville season was now at its height, and the bright, breezy little watering-place was overflowing with visitors. On this particular afternoon, the gardens of the casino were thronged with a gaily-dressed crowd, promenading to the sound of a band, which was vigorously attacking the Overture to Zampa. Among the groups seated under the glass-roofed verandah in front of the building were Madame Lebrun and Valérie.

The girl looked languid and listless, and her eyes wandered absently over the crowd, as if her thoughts were elsewhere. Her companion was fluttering her fan, and glancing restlessly towards the entrance gate.

“How provoking it is!” she muttered at last. “The concert will be over before the Vicomte joins us—thanks to that tiresome friend of his, that vulgar Mr. Lester. I wonder how he can tolerate the familiarity of the man. Here he comes at last, and Lester, of course, with him still!”

Mr. Lester, a friend of Lord Harcourt’s, had arrived at Bainville the previous evening; he was a stout, common-looking man of forty, whose fashionably cut clothes seemed to sit uneasily on his clumsy figure.

The two men formed a curious contrast as they advanced slowly up the broad carriage drive leading to the casino, Mr. Lester talking earnestly, while his companion listened with unconcealed impatience. At the foot of the verandah steps the Viscount paused.

“I have given you my answer,” he said brusquely. “You are wasting breath in saying more.”

“And, after what I have told you, you persist in staying?”

“Over to-day, yes. What difference can twenty-four hours make?”

“All the difference between safety and—”

“Hold your tongue!” the young man broke in, hurriedly glancing over his shoulder. “Do you want all the world to hear?”

The other made an impatient movement. “Well, I say no more. Have your own way—and take the consequences,” he retorted, and with a surly nod, he turned on his heel.

The Viscount shrugged his shoulders, and ran lightly up the steps to where Valérie and her chaperon were sitting.

“I beg pardon for being so late, but I’ve been occupied. Lester has brought me bad news,” he continued, as he drew a chair to Valérie’s side. “At least, it is bad to me, for it compels me to return to England to-morrow.”

“What do you say, milord?” the widow exclaimed, bending forward to look at him. “You are going to-morrow? But what has happened? Is Lord Delamere worse?”

“Oh, no, it has nothing to do with with my father; it is a matter of business which would not interest you.”

“But when it is settled you will return, I hope?”

“Oh, of course; though I don’t know when—it depends,” he answered. “Will you take a turn with me in the grounds?” he presently said in a lower tone to Valérie.

She hesitated; struck with a sudden shyness and reluctance to be alone with him. “I fear there is not time,” she objected; “the concert is almost over, and I must be going home.”

“There is plenty of time. It may be our last walk together,” he whispered. “Come.”

“Go, Valérie—don’t be childish,” said Madame Lebrun, graciously, believing in her own mind that the young lord was going to propose. Thus adjured, the girl rose, and they descended the steps into the garden.

Had she been less preoccupied, she would have noticed a familiar figure which emerged from one of the side paths as they passed—Jean Lemartel. He stood for a moment as if stunned, gazing after them with a dark look of suppressed passion on his face, which altered it strangely. Then, taking a sudden resolution, he turned, and slowly followed them.

Meantime, Valérie’s companion had led her to the terrace by the sea, which was comparatively deserted, and as they paced slowly along, he was speaking in an earnest undertone, without his usual drawl.

“You must know that I love you, Valérie—that I have loved you from the first moment I saw you!” began Lord Harcourt. “I have struggled with the feeling, knowing what opposition I should meet with from my family; but—but I find I can’t live without you. Even the idea of a short separation makes me wretched. But, my sweet Valérie—if you love me we need not be separated even for a day. I will take you with me when I go to-morrow.”

She drew her hand, which he had taken, from him, stepping back in surprise.

“Take me with you. Lord Harcourt! What do you mean?”

“I mean that we can do what many a couple, situated as we are, have done before us—get married quietly at a registrar’s, and save a world of fuss and trouble. Of course my people will be vexed at first; but when once the knot is tied they can only receive you, and you will take your proper position in society as my wife, and—as—as—the future Countess of Delamere, for I fear my poor father cannot be here long. Say that you consent, my darling—that you will come with me!”

They reached the end of the terrace as he spoke. He put her hand within his arm as they stood, pressing it to his side.

Valérie’s heart beat fast, and her colour came and went. Her ambitious dreams were realised; the prize she had longed for, wealth, station, lay in her grasp. How was it that it seemed all at once to have lost its value, like the fairy gold which turns to dead leaves in the hand?

He watched her face keenly in the silence; but she did not speak.

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” he pleaded, bending towards her, as she stood, with one hand on the low railing, gazing absently at the sunlit sea. “Say that you will come!”

She drew a deep breath and looked at him. For the first time it struck her that there was something hard and cruel in the handsome face; a treacherous light in the cold blue eyes.

“It is so sudden,” she faltered. “Why could we not wait until you return?”

“How do I know that I should find you in the same mind? ‘Souvent femme varie!’ No, it must be now or never.”

“Then it will be never,” Valérie replied with decision, “for I certainly shall not consent to anything so disreputable as a runaway marriage. What would my father and mother feel? What would the world say of me—”

“Bah! who cares what the world says?” he broke in, sharply. “Pardon my impatience, Valérie; if you loved me, you would not give that a moment’s consideration.”

“Perhaps I should not,” she answered quietly; “but as it is, I do.”

He was evidently surprised. Biting his lip, he gave her a look which startled her.

“Thank you; that is explicit,” he said, with a short angry laugh. “Then I am to conclude that you have drawn me on to a declaration merely for the pleasure of refusing me?”

“I have not drawn you on,” she said indignantly.

“Of course not!” he cried, with a disagreeable sneer.

“But I have not,” she said.

“Of course not!” repeated he, in the same tone. “You and your friend did not speculate upon me from the first, did you? Though, as I have since learnt, you were not quite at liberty to do so, being engaged to another man. I wonder, by the way, if Corydon is aware how you have been amusing yourself lately? It might almost be a charity to tell him.”

“It is unnecessary; he has heard already,” said a voice behind them, and turning, with a start, Valérie found herself face to face with Jean Lemartel.

The colour rushed to her cheeks, then receded, leaving them white and ghastly. After one swift, terrified glance at him, she dropped her head with a burning sense of humiliation.

My lord put up his eye-glass, and surveyed the intruder with a supercilious stare.

“Is this—ah—gentleman—a friend of yours, mademoiselle?” he drawled.

“My name is Lemartel, and I am—or was—Mademoiselle Destrée’s fiancé,” Jean replied, some menace in the studied calmness of his tone.

“Corydon himself, by Jove!” muttered the Englishman, with a suppressed laugh. “Charmed to make your acquaintance, monsieur,” he said aloud. “We ought to be friends, as we are companions in misfortune. This cruel little beauty has been playing fast and loose with us both, it seems.”

“I decline to discuss Mademoiselle Destrée’s conduct with you,” Lemartel rejoined; “but I will tell you my opinion of your own, if you choose. Whatever your rank may be by the accident of birth, your actions are those of a scoundrel.”

An ugly oath escaped the other, and he lifted his cane threateningly. Before it could descend, Jean wrested it from his hand, broke it in two, and tossed it over the fence. Then, seizing Lord Harcourt’s wrist in a grasp of iron, he lowered his voice, so as to be inaudible to Valérie.

“Who but an unmitigated scoundrel would seek to entrap an innocent girl to ruin by such a proposal as I overheard just now? You know well enough that a marriage so contracted by a French girl would not be legal either in France or England! You could shake off the tie when you pleased—and you know this, I say. What is your defence?”

“I shall not condescend to defend myself to you. Take your hand from my wrist, sir, and let me go.”

For a moment Jean kept his hold, looking down at him with so dangerous a glitter in his eyes that the man cowered, and Valérie uttered a faint cry of alarm. Jean looked at her; and with a gesture of angry contempt, flung his rival aside.

“Go, then; and if you are wise, keep out of my path in future—and out of Mademoiselle Destrée’s. I have no right now to control your actions,” he added gravely, turning to Valérie, “but I must ask what you are going to do. You cannot remain in the company of this man.”

“I was going home,” the girl faltered. “Rose is on the bench at the gate, waiting for me. Please make my excuses to Madame Lebrun,” she added, addressing her late companion. “Adieu, monsieur!”

As if not caring to trust her, Jean walked by her side towards the gate. Milord looked after them with a smile which made his face sinister.

“Not ‘adieu,’ little jilt, but ‘au revoir,’” he muttered. “I swear I will win you yet, if it be only to punish you for this. Nous verrons!”

Valérie’s heart beat fast when she was alone with her lover, and for a moment she had not courage to speak.

“Jean,” she began at last, glancing timidly at his pale, stern face, “I know that you are very angry with me, and that I have deserved your anger; but—”

“I am not angry,” he interrupted, with a cold composure which took her by surprise. “A false and fickle woman is not worth an honest man’s anger or regret.”

The colour rushed to her face. “Indeed, I have not been false to you,” she protested. “I have done wrong in suppressing the truth at home about M. Harcourt, and in letting him pay attention to me, but I never really cared for him—and I refused him just now as you must have heard.”

“Yes, I heard; I heard all,” said Jean, with a bitter smile. “I know that while I was living in a fool’s paradise of love and hope, you were amusing yourself with this fine gentleman; laughing, no doubt, together, you and he, at the simple lover who believed in you so blindly.”

“No, no, Jean,” the girl exclaimed; “I never mentioned you to him in my life. Deceitful I have been; fickle, if you will; but in my heart I have not ceased to—to love and respect you, and I have learned of late to value your affection as I never did before.”

“We often learn the worth of a thing for the first time when we lose it,” he commented, coldly.

“Do you mean that—that I have lost your love for ever?” Valérie faltered, pausing, and looking at him in forlorn appeal.

“You have lost my trust,” was his grave reply; “and without perfect confidence love cannot exist.”

“And you can renounce me calmly—coldly, without a pang?” the girl exclaimed.

“Without a pang?” he echoed, and his broad chest heaved with a tearless sob; “may you never feel such pain as it costs me. But we must part. I dare not trust the honour and happiness of my life in your keeping. Friends we may still be, if you will, but lovers nevermore.”

The girl’s heart contracted with a spasm which was like physical pain to her. A wave of bitterest regret and self-reproach swept over her, then subsided, leaving her with a reckless feeling of indifference to everything.

“If I am not worthy of your love, I am equally unworthy of your friendship,” she responded, in an altered voice. “Henceforth we will be strangers. Here is your ring.”

She drew it from her finger as she spoke, but instead of handing it to him, she, with a sudden passionate movement, flung it into the advancing waves. Then, joining Rose, she walked quickly with her to the railway station.

•    •    •    •

“The weather is changing, there will be rain before night,” remarked Madame Destrée about five o’clock on the following evening, as she glanced from the stocking she was mending to the darkening sky.

“Ay, it looks like it,” rejoined her husband, laying down the France du Nord; “and Jean will be caught in it. I met him this afternoon starting off to Samer on foot, by the ‘old road.’ He seemed out of spirits; he and Valérie have been having a tiff, I expect. Where is Valérie?”

“Lying down. She complained of a headache—overtired herself yesterday at Bainville, of course!”

Madame’s tone was tart, and the innkeeper rubbed his bald forehead with a thoughtful frown. “Don’t you think, wife,” he said, “that she has gone a little bit too much to Bainville lately?”

“I think!” retorted Madame. “If she goes and takes up her bed and board there, it’s no business of mine. You took that out of my hands, you know.”

“The girl has not seemed like herself,” he said mildly. “Go up to her, mère; see if she won’t come down.”

Madame deliberately finished the thin place she was darning before moving to comply. She was away a few minutes; when she returned there was a white look on her face which startled M. Destrée.

“What is the matter?” he exclaimed. “Is the child ill?”

Madame shook her head, and carefully closed the door before replying.

“It is very strange,” she said, lowering her voice. “Valérie is not in the house; and—and—Berthe has been telling me a tale.”

Berthe had a crooked kind of temper. It chanced that Rose had had a holiday given her that day, which Berthe resented. It was not long since Rose had a holiday before, while she—Berthe—had not been given one for ages and ages. Besides this, Berthe thought it might be unwise to keep silence any longer upon what she knew, and she opened her mind to her mistress.

About half-an-hour before Madame Destrée went upstairs to her daughter’s room, Berthe had seen Mademoiselle Valérie go quietly out at the side door, a small black travelling bag in her hand. Berthe, going up presently, found Mademoiselle’s bedroom in disorder, and part of a torn letter and envelope lying on the floor.

“Berthe tells me it was brought here this morning by a boy,” related Madame Destrée to her husband, as she put the letter into his hand. “The boy said he was to wait for an answer, but Valérie sent word down that her answer was merely ‘Yes.’ Read it, Jacques.”

He took it from his wife, mechanically, looking at her in a bewildered manner, carried it to the window, and read it aloud. The fragment began abruptly in the middle of a sentence.

but in spite of your cruelty, I love you more madly than ever, and am determined not to give you up. My proposal yesterday scandalised you, but perhaps you will view it in another light if I tell you that Madame Lebrun approves the plan, and offers to accompany us, to play propriety. We shall wait for you in a closed carriage at the Abbey ruins this evening, at six o’clock. In a very few hours we shall be in London, and by midday to-morrow you will be my wife. Send a word by the bearer—yes or no, and let it be ‘Yes,’ my queen.

Your devoted

Harcourt.

The innkeeper turned towards his wife, his face blank with consternation.

“What in heaven’s name does this mean?” he cried.

“It means,” she answered, with angry emphasis, “that Valérie has disgraced us by an elopement—English fashion. You have only yourself to thank for it, Jacques.”

“But who is the man?” asked the unhappy father.

“Ah! Berthe has told me. It is all of a piece, husband, and Valérie has been as deceitful as the rest. It was not the old lord who came to stay at the Châlet Beauregard, but his son, the young lord, and he has been making love to Valérie all these weeks. Her precious friend, Madame Lebrun, has led her into this entanglement!”

Jacques Destrée crushed the letter in his hand, with the first oath his wife had ever heard from his lips.

“She shall answer for it,” he said, hoarsely, “and so shall this man, were he fifty times a lord, if my child comes to harm. But it is not too late to stop them. I can reach the Abbey before—”

He was interrupted by the sound of wheels in the courtyard, and an open carriage drew up at the door. The first person who alighted was Madame Lebrun. She was followed by an agent de police in uniform, and a stranger of semi-clerical appearance, evidently English; a tall, wiry man, whose clean-shaven face would have been singularly expressionless but for a pair of keen, observant grey eyes, which seemed to make a note of everything they rested on.

Brushing past Berthe, who had came forward, the widow burst into the sitting-room, dishevelled with haste and agitation.

“Monsieur Destrée—such a terrible thing has happened,” she began. “Ah, madame! I am almost out of my senses. To think that I should have been so deceived. Even now I can hardly believe it.”

The French policeman stepped forward.

“Allow me to explain to monsieur,” he interposed. “My English colleague here—”

“Inspector Bennett, of Scotland Yard, at your service,” put in the latter, blandly.

“—is charged with a warrant for the arrest of le nomme Francis Walton, alias Marquis de la Roche, alias Viscount Harcourt, an accomplished swindler and chevalier d’industrie, who has been ‘wanted’ by the police for some time back for various clever frauds. His latest exploit was to rob a young English nobleman, son of Lord Delamere, to whom he had contrived to get introduced in Paris as a Frenchman of distinction. He wormed himself into Lord Harcourt’s confidence, acquiring an intimate knowledge of all his family affairs; and when the scent after him got too hot in Paris, he decamped with his lordship’s desk, containing some money and a little jewellery, and—”

“And came straight off to me, passing himself off as Lord Harcourt,” impatiently interrupted the widow, who was boiling over with her wrongs. “He thought rightly that my house was the last place where the police would look for him, and he has been living at my expense all the while, the coquin—Va!”

“We should have nailed him to-day though,” said the English officer, “but that a confederate of his got scent of his danger and came on to warn him. Walton has given us the slip for the moment, but we imagine that your daughter, monsieur, may hold a clue to his whereabouts.”

“He wrote to Valérie this morning,” the widow explained, “and I thought perhaps—where is she?” she broke off, looking round.

“Where is she?” the innkeeper echoed in a tone which startled her, “that is the question I must ask you, madame. What have you done with my daughter?”

She looked at him in astonishment.

“I—Monsieur Destrée? I don’t understand you,” she exclaimed. Then as a sudden light flashed upon her: “Don’t tell me,” she gasped, “that she is gone away with that villain!”

“Why should we tell you what you know already?” sharply spoke Madame Destrée. “You were in his confidence—the elopement was of your planning. Read his letter, and deny it if you can.”

The widow glanced over it, and contemptuously tossed the paper aside.

“It is false,” she said, indignantly. “I did not even know that he had proposed a clandestine marriage. I should never, never have countenanced it. It is true that I encouraged his attentions; I own to that; I thought it would be such a grand match for Valérie; and yesterday evening, when he told me she had refused him, I felt greatly vexed. My poor, pretty Valérie.”

But police officers, whether French or English, know better than to waste time in sentiment. Accompanied by the innkeeper, they got into the waiting carriage, and were driven away at a gallop. The torn note had given them a clue as to the possible hiding-place of Walton.

The ruined Abbey of St. Evrard, with its crumbling ivy-mantled walls, crowned the summit of the hill on which the town was built. It was approached by what was known—in contra-distinction to a more convenient route lately constructed—as the “old road,” which wound up the steep hillside, and skirting the ruin, dipped abruptly into the wooded valley beyond.

Except by visitors to the Abbey, this road was seldom used, and was already becoming grass-grown and neglected. It looked particularly gloomy in the thickening dusk of this rainy evening. No living creatures were in sight, except the sheep which cropped the short herbage at the foot of the ruin, and a solitary woman’s figure, leaning on the low stone wall which enclosed it. It was Valérie—first at the trysting-place.

The girl’s face was white and troubled, and her eyes looked out wistfully at the wide darkening landscape beneath her, as if they were gazing into the mist and shadow of her own future.

What would that future be? Until now she had not allowed herself to reflect on what she was doing; yielding to a blind impulse of resentment and wounded pride; but now that question rose up before her, and struck chill to her heart. She knew that she neither loved nor respected the man in whose power she was about to place herself. He could give her, she supposed, all that she had been lately thinking most desirable—rank, riches, and power; but would these compensate for what she was relinquishing—the home she had left, and the love she had lost?

Suddenly a light dog-cart came in sight, rapidly mounting the hill towards the Abbey. Valérie moved towards the flight of worn stone steps giving entrance to the enclosure (which was above the level of the road), and looked doubtfully at the advancing vehicle.

At first she did not recognise the driver, who was muffled in an ulster, with his hat pulled low over his eyes; but when he drew rein At the foot of the steps, she saw that it was Lord Harcourt—alone. He looked up and called to her, but seeing that she did not stir, shrugged his shoulders impatiently, and, after glancing up and down the lonely road, ascended the steps to her side.

“I beg a hundred pardons for keeping you waiting, my dearest, but I was detained at the last moment,” he began, hurriedly. He was flushed, and looked anxious and excited. “Come, we have not a moment to lose.”

Valérie drew back. “Where is Madame Lebrun?” she asked.

“Madame did not care to come, as it threatened rain; she will meet us at the Embarcadère,” he answered, without looking at her. There was something in his tone and manner which inspired her with sudden distrust.

“I believe you are deceiving me,” she said, gazing at him searchingly.

“Believe what you like, only come,” he returned, lightly. “We have a good hour’s drive before us, and the boat starts at seven.”

“If you can deceive me in one thing you may in another; I shall not trust myself to you,” was her reply. “I feel sure Madame Lebrun never agreed to come.”

His face darkened. “And you think I shall let you slip through my fingers like that? No, my beauty; I have won you and I mean to keep you.”

“Not by force,” she retorted, as he laid his hand on her wrist.

“Come, Valérie, don’t be foolish,” he expostulated. “I deceived you about Madame, I confess, but all’s fair in love and war. It was a harmless fiction to quiet your scruples; we shall get on much better without her. Come, it is only the first step which costs. When once we are fairly started you will thank me for insisting.”

He threw his arm round her to draw her down the steps; but Valérie, thoroughly roused now, resisted with all her might. “I will not—I will not!” she cried passionately. “Let me go home—let me go back to—”

“To your rustic swain,” he put in, with an angry laugh. “That you shall not, my girl, or I shall still be in his debt for yesterday’s business. Little fool! do you know what you are refusing? Think what I can give you.”

“You can give me nothing that will compensate for what I have lost through you,” she returned. “I deserve to be called a fool for ever having listened to you, but I have come to my senses now.”

“A little too late,” he sneered, and fairly lifting her from her feet in spite of her struggles, he carried her down the steps.

“Coward—coward!” she panted. “Ah, you would not dare if—if Jean were here! Jean—help, help!”

She uttered the name almost unconsciously, with no hope that her appeal would be heard. But it had hardly left her lips when there was an answering shout from the turn of the road; a sound of hurried footsteps, and before she could realise what had happened, she was in Jean Lemartel’s arms, while his rival measured his length on the ground.

The latter staggered to his feet, bewildered by the sudden attack. Then, recognising his assailant, he uttered a savage oath, and slipped his hand into the breast of his coat.

Confused and excited as she was, Valérie noticed the movement, and saw that Jean was in danger. With a cry that rang shrilly through the evening stillness, she flung herself between the two men, and received in her own shoulder the shot which was intended for her lover. Jean caught her as she was falling.

“Stand back—don’t touch her!” he said hoarsely, as the Englishman, who looked genuinely dismayed at the mishap, approached to assist him. At that moment, the carriage containing Monsieur Destrée and the two policemen came galloping into sight. Walton at once comprehended the peril he was in, and hurriedly made for the dog-cart.

The men shouted, and called “Stop him! Stop him!” and Jean, laying the fainting girl gently on the grass by the roadside, sprang forward and caught the reins as the other mounted. Walton lashed at him furiously with the whip, while the frightened horse reared and plunged, but Lemartel kept his hold until the carriage dashed up, and its occupants came to his assistance. A short, sharp scuffle; then Walton was overpowered, and had handcuffs put on his wrists.

“Sorry to interfere with your little plans, my Lord Viscount,” said the detective drily, “but I fear your pleasure trip must be deferred—at any rate for the present. By-and-by, you may perhaps get change of air and scene at Government expense.”

“But what is all this?” gasped the innkeeper, as he now saw Valérie.

Jean Lemartel explained: Valérie had received the shot which was meant for him.

Showing signs of returning consciousness, she was carefully lifted into the carriage by her father and Jean. The officers drove off in the dog-cart with their prisoner, to convey him into the safe keeping of that justice at whose hands he would assuredly get his deserts.

•    •    •    •

Valérie’s wound proved more serious than was at first supposed, and it was many weeks before she was able to leave her bed, and be about again. Nothing could conquer her languor and depression, and she shrank nervously from visitors. Not a day passed without Jean’s calling at the inn to inquire after her. His manner to her was invariably gentle, but its reserve and constraint seemed to augment the gulf between them.

She knew that it could not be otherwise; but, all the same, her heart rebelled passionately against the change, and she felt as if she would give half her life to regain the faithful heart she had so lightly thrown away.

One day she sat in her favourite jasmine bower, now withered and forlorn. The autumn morning was mild as spring, but grey and melancholy, with that hushed and pensive stillness in the air, which seems like Nature’s mood of calm regret for the year’s decay.

Valérie was sitting with her hands listlessly clasped on the rustic table before her, when the garden gate swung to, and Jean came slowly down the path. She did not see him till he was close to her; then she started and half rose, as if her first impulse were to fly.

He paused in the arched entrance of the arbour, his dark eyes dwelling earnestly on her face. “Why do you avoid me, Valérie?” he asked gravely. “Are you afraid of me?”

She made no answer, but with a constrained smile, sank on to the bench again.

Jean took his seat at her side. “You need not fear that I shall touch upon unwelcome topics,” he said. “The past is dead and buried so far as I am concerned—except one fact which I do not wish to forget; that you saved my life at the risk of your own.”

She shook her head. “But for me you would never have been in danger. Oh, Jean,” she faltered, laying her hand on his arm, “you do not know what I have suffered during my illness—the pain and remorse I have felt! I cannot expect to regain your—your—what I lost—but let me know that I have your forgiveness; that you can think of me without bitterness.”

Jean took the little pleading hand in both his own, looking at her with a serious smile.

“There is no room in my heart for resentment, Valérie. It is full to the brim of—love.”

She started, raising her eyes with an incredulous look.

“In spite of everything, I love you. Love is a plant of obstinate growth, my dear, not easily destroyed when once it has taken firm root.”

“But—I—can’t believe it, Jean.”

“Then the sooner I prove it to you, the better,” he whispered tenderly. “My darling, how soon will you be my wife?”

With a sigh of sweet contentment, Valérie allowed herself to be drawn into those protecting arms; and all the troubles of the past were effaced as he kissed away her shower of happy tears.

An Innocent Thief

(Mar. 1894)

“Yes, Miss Falconer is a remarkably pretty girl, but—”

“Pretty! She is the loveliest girl I ever saw, and the sweetest!”

This emphatic declaration was uttered by my ex-ward, Reginald Dane, as we stood together, one brilliant January afternoon, on the terrace of the Casino at Monte Carlo.

He turned his back on the sea as he spoke, and faced me with a rather militant air, and his hands in his pockets.

“My dear boy, I don’t deny it,” I answered, pacifically, taking out my cigar-case; “she is all that is lovely and of good repute; but—she has a father.” I paused impressively. “I ask you frankly—is Captain Falconer precisely the sort of man you would select for a papa-in-law?”

Reginald stared moodily at his boots, and made no reply.

“A man,” I continued, deliberately, “of whom it is flattery to say that his character is doubtful, for there has long ceased to be any doubt about it. A roué and gambler, and worse, if report speaks truly.”

“I know all that,” he rejoined; “but if I married her, I should sever all connection with the Captain, you may be sure. He should never cross my threshold.”

“Would Miss Falconer consent to a total separation from her only parent? She is evidently devoted to him.”

“I don’t know about devotion; she is very sweet and dutiful, but I fancy she has more fear than affection for him. He has an iron will.”

“And an extraordinary influence over the will of others,” I added. “I have felt it myself. By the way, it remains to be seen whether he will consent to the marriage.”

Reginald looked at me rather blankly.

“Why, do you think there is any doubt of that? I fancied that—living the life he does—he would be rather glad to get his daughter off his hands.”

“Perhaps—living the life he does—he may find her useful.”

“Useful? Good heavens. Sir John, you don’t mean that he uses Elsie as—as a decoy? What a horrible idea!”

“Not as a decoy, but as what the French call a porte-respect. The presence of a beautiful, lady-like, and irreproachable daughter gives him a sort of cachet of respectability which inspires confidence.”

My companion was silent a moment, pulling his moustache.

“Oh, well,” he said at last, looking up, “it’s no use anticipating evils. I fancy I shall be able to square the Captain if he makes any difficulties. I happen to know that he is at rather a low ebb just now.”

I also happened to be aware of the same fact, it having been brought to my notice, as no doubt it had to Reginald’s, by a request for a loan. I might have complied with it, having the misfortune to belong to what Charles Lamb calls “the inferior race” of lenders, but for the interposition of a certain lady who is not only the partner of my joys and sorrows, but the keeper of my purse.

“No, Sir John, you will not lend Captain Falconer fifty pounds,” that lady had said with decision, in the privacy of a conjugal tête-à-tête. “He is a dangerous and disreputable person, and if it were not for his daughter—whom I pity sincerely, poor child!—I would have nothing whatever to do with him. As it is, I wish with all my heart he was staying at another hotel.”

But though she expressed her opinion of him with great vigour in private, it was noticeable that my wife was rather markedly civil to Captain Falconer in public. The fact is, there was something about the man—a suggestion of latent power—which, though it might not inspire respect, exacted politeness, even from those who disliked and distrusted him.

He was a tall, soldierly-looking man of four or five and forty, with a beak-like aquiline nose, a drooping moustache, and remarkably bright, penetrating dark eyes: “mesmeric eyes,” my wife called them, and declared they had an uncanny power of reading one’s thoughts.

Coming into lunch at the ——— Hotel somewhat late, after my conversation with Reginald Dane above recorded, I found the usual group assembled at the end of the long table-d’hôte; Captain Falconer next to my wife, and beyond him, his daughter, Elsie, a pretty, fair-haired, fragile-looking girl of nineteen, at whose side sat Reginald.

Captain Falconer, I found, had hit upon a topic which was sure to interest my wife. He was talking of diamonds.

“I was telling Lady Rushton,” he explained affably, turning to me, “that I, like herself, am something of a connoisseur in diamonds.”

“And Captain Falconer says, John,” she added, “that he has never seen finer stones than those in the bracelet I wore last night—the one you gave me on my last birthday.”

“H’m, they ought to be good, they cost enough,” I grumbled, being hungry and somewhat cross.

“They are magnificent; old Brazilian of the purest water. But, my dear Lady Rushton,” he continued, “is it wise to travel with such valuable jewellery, in these days of railway robberies and hotel thieves? Nothing is more easily snapped up than a jewel-case.”

“I don’t carry my jewels in a case,” she returned confidentially; “when we are on a journey I wear them in a belt, and at night I put the belt—”

I touched her foot under the table, and she paused.

“Yes?” the Captain said interrogatively, looking her straight in the face with his piercing dark eyes.

“I put it—” she repeated, and paused again, then, as he still looked at her steadily, she finished her sentence with a jerk, as if the words had been forced from her—“under my pillow.”

“Hush—sh, my dear madam—not so loud!” he whispered warningly, glancing over his shoulder; “I fear the waiter heard you. Let us talk of something else.”

When my wife and I were alone, half an hour later, she startled me by exclaiming: “John, I believe Captain Falconer is Mephistopheles in person! You heard the stupid thing I said at lunch?”

“I heard you announcing to all whom it might concern, where you put your jewels at night,” I answered drily.

“Yes—was it not idiotic? I was perfectly aware of it at the time, but, do you know, Captain Falconer forced me to tell him. I tried to keep the words back, but his eyes seemed to wring them from me in spite of myself. Do you think—” she hesitated—“do you think he had any particular motive in asking?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I can’t say, I’m sure, what his motive was,” I rejoined, “but I think, on the whole, my dear, you had better find another hiding-place for your diamonds.”

•    •    •    •

Now it befell that two nights after this episode I was visited by a strange dream—if dream it were; but it was uncommonly like reality. I was unusually restless that night, and for some hours after Lady Rushton had been peacefully slumbering, I tossed and turned, trying in vain to sleep.

At last I fell into a doze, in which there came to me a hazy idea that the window, which I had left half closed, was now wide open, and that something, or someone, was moving near it.

For the better understanding of what follows, I must explain that our room was on the second floor front, and adjoined Miss Falconer’s chamber, on the other side of which was that occupied by Reginald Dane. Captain Falconer slept on the floor above. The window opened after the usual foreign fashion, like a folding door, and had a hand-rail, but no balcony. Beneath was the stone terrace in front of the hotel.

It was clearly impossible for any living creature without wings to enter the room from that window; yet in my half-waking, half-dozing condition, it seemed to me that someone had entered by it.

A woman’s figure, which might have dropped from the clouds, so suddenly had it appeared, stood in the opening, and after a pause stepped lightly in between the muslin curtains, and noiselessly approached the bed. As it came forward, the light of the night-lamp fell full upon its face. With a sudden shock and thrill of startled recognition, I saw that it was Miss Falconer.

She still wore her dinner-dress, with a light shawl over her shoulders. Her face was pale, and had a strained and anxious look which was not the vacant expression of a sleep-walker.

Without the least hesitation, she made her way to Lady Rushton’s side of the bed, and cautiously slipped her hand beneath the pillow.

Whatever she expected to find was evidently not there. Again and again the stealthy hand renewed its search—in vain.

At length she withdrew it, stood for a few seconds irresolute, then turned away, and crossing the room with a noiseless but leisurely step, passed out through the window—passed out, as it seemed, into mid-air—and vanished!

For a few moments I was literally too astonished to move, and lay staring stupidly at the window by which she had so unaccountably disappeared.

Then, waking up all at once, I sprang from the bed, and looked out wildly at earth, and air, and sky, in search of my mysterious visitor. There was not a trace of her to be seen, nor was there any rope or ladder by which she could have entered. A broad ledge, or pediment of sculptured stone, forming part of the architectural decoration of the house, projected beneath the windows, but it was divided by a good four feet from the corresponding ledge of the next one.

That she could have crossed the intervening space, unaided, at such a giddy height, was clearly an impossible supposition. Then how had she come, and gone?

Craning my neck, I could see that her window was closed and shuttered, no gleam of light appearing between the shutters, and no sound coming from the room. The more I puzzled over the matter, the more mysterious did it appear, and I began to think that I must in fact have dreamt the whole incident.

“What in the world are you doing at the window?” my wife’s voice demanded, sleepily.

“I—was looking at the moon, my dear,” I answered in some confusion, and was preparing to return to bed and resume my interrupted slumbers, when I caught sight of a small white object lying on the floor at my feet.

It was a lady’s handkerchief—a dainty little lace-bordered square of cambric, embroidered in one corner with a Christian name in full. The name was Elsie.

The following morning, contrary to my usual habit, I rose early and went at once in search of Miss Falconer, whom I knew I should be pretty sure to find in the garden. I came upon her presently seated under a drooping pepper-tree, with a book on her knee.

The day was Sunday, and there was, I thought, a sort of Sabbath atmosphere about the girl as she sat there in her fresh white gown, the image of maiden purity and peace. With her delicate pensive face framed in cloudy golden hair, her soft appealing blue eyes and sensitive lips, she might have been the original of one of Raphael’s Madonnas. So lovely and so lovable she looked, it seemed sacrilege to suppose her capable of any evil thought or deed.

She glanced up with a smile as I approached—we were very good friends, she and I, “You are up early this morning, Sir John,” she said, closing her book; “that is unusual, is it not?”

“Yes; early rising is not one of the virtues I practise habitually,” I rejoined; “I keep it for special occasions.”

“And is this a special occasion?”

“Certainly! I got up early to meet you.”

She laughed.

“I should be immensely flattered if I could quite believe it.”

“Well, it is partly true, but it is also true that I had a restless night, and was glad to be out of bed. You look as if you had not slept yourself,” I added, glancing at her. “Your eyes are heavy.”

“Oh yes, I slept very well last night,” she answered, “though, strange to say, I never went to bed.”

“How was that?” I inquired, pricking up my ears.

“Well, I had a bad headache yesterday evening, and papa persuaded me to lie down on the couch in my room and let him ‘charm it away.’ You have no idea how soothing his touch is. He just strokes my forehead and all the pain vanishes directly. In five minutes I was asleep; a deep dreamless sleep from which I did not wake till morning, when I was very much astonished to find myself still on the couch fully dressed.”

“Ah!” I murmured thoughtfully, and was silent so long that she looked at me in surprise.

“I think I have something that belongs to you,” I resumed at last, taking the handkerchief from my pocket.

“Oh yes, that is mine,” she exclaimed; “where did you find it?”

“I found it,” I answered deliberately, watching her face as I spoke, “in our bedroom, last night. How do you suppose it came there?”

She met my eyes without the faintest shadow of consciousness or confusion.

“Probably Lady Rushton took it in mistake for her own.”

“H’m—perhaps so. You never walk in your sleep, I suppose?”

She laughed outright.

“Not that I am aware of. I hope you and Lady Rushton don’t suspect me of prowling about your room at night?”

To that I made no reply, but fell into a brown study again, tracing figures in the gravel with my cane.

She watched me with a flicker of amusement in her eyes.

“I don’t think early rising agrees with you, Sir John,” she observed demurely, after a pause.

“You are right, it does not,” I answered, rousing myself. “I suppose I ought to be as lively as a lark at this virtuous hour, but I find myself as stupid as an owl. I shall make no apology for leaving you—particularly,” I added, glancing down the walk, where Reginald Dane had just appeared, “as a more entertaining companion will take my place. Au revoir!”

Nodding to Reginald as I passed, I returned to the house, in a denser fog of perplexity than ever.

One thing was evident; Elsie was utterly unconscious of her action of the previous night. She had been a victim, not an accomplice; the helpless instrument of another’s will.

What unholy spells had Captain Falconer exercised upon his daughter? Had she acted in obedience to “hypnotic suggestion”? That supposition seemed the most probable, in the light of what she had told me, but it still left unaccounted for the most perplexing point of the problem—how she could possibly have entered the room by the window. I puzzled over it till I was thoroughly bewildered, and at last dismissed the subject from my mind with the reflection that time would probably clear up the mystery, which, meanwhile, I resolved to keep strictly to myself.

Some days passed, however, and brought no solution, though they brought forth another event of some interest.

Reginald formally proposed to Captain Falconer for his daughter’s hand—and, as I had anticipated, was rejected.

The Captain would condescend to give no explanation of his refusal except the statement that he had “other views” for her. The fact was, I suspect, that he did not see any prospective advantage to himself in the marriage, knowing that, when once it was a fait accompli, he would have nothing further to expect from Reginald, who frankly disliked him.

Anyhow, he refused point-blank, totally declining to be “squared.” In vain the young man stormed and expostulated: in vain Elsie pleaded and wept. He met tears and anger with the same bland, but immovable determination. He laid no embargo on their intercourse, being fully aware that the girl was too dutiful, and too much afraid of him, to set him at defiance.

So the lovers continued to see each other as usual, but all their happiness was blighted. Elsie fretted openly, and Reginald took to evil courses; that is to say, he drank more than was good for him, and haunted the tables at the Casino when he ought to have been in bed. To compensate for having thwarted him in love, fortune favoured him in play. He won steadily, and on one particular evening, after a longer séance than usual, rose from the trente-et-quarante table, the richer by some twenty thousand francs.

I was with him at the time, having thought it well, in his present reckless mood, to keep an eye on his proceedings.

He was not in the least elated by his good luck, seeming to care little whether he won or lost. He thrust his pocket-book, which was crammed with notes, into the breast-pocket of his coat, and turned from the table with a yawn.

“My head aches,” he said; “let’s go and have a soda at the buffet.”

But I linked my arm in his, and drew him towards the door. Captain Falconer was hovering near us, and there was a peculiar gleam in that “mesmeric” eye of his which I did not like.

“No more ‘sodas’ to-night,” I said firmly; “you are going straight home to bed, and the first thing to-morrow morning you will deposit that money in the bank.”

When we reached the hotel, I followed him upstairs to his room, and saw him throw the pocket-book carelessly into a drawer.

“I’m dead tired,” he said, stretching himself; “I shall tumble in at once. Good-night, Sir John.”

“Good-night and pleasant dreams,” I rejoined; but instead of leaving the room, I locked the door, then proceeded with much deliberation to divest myself of my boots, and stretch myself on a couch which stood in the corner of the room.

Reginald stopped short in the act of removing his coat, and stared at me. “Hallo! what does that mean?” he demanded.

“It means, my dear boy, that I am going to pass the night here, if you have no objection.”

“As guardian of the treasure?” he suggested, laughing. “I’m awfully obliged, I’m sure, but it really isn’t necessary. The door is locked, and no one can possibly come in through the window.”

“No matter, J’y suis, j’y reste.”

“All right! But don’t lie there, anyhow. Take the bed, and I’ll have the couch.”

“I’m perfectly comfortable here, thank you,” I answered, and tried to think I was; but what human being was ever comfortable on a French hotel sofa? However, the inhospitable piece of furniture had one advantage; it offered no temptation to sleep, and, for certain reasons, I was particularly anxious to keep awake to-night.

Reginald insisted on giving me a pillow, then he “tumbled in,” and in ten minutes was fast asleep.

According to his usual habit, he had left the window wide open, and the soft, flower-scented air—mild as if the month were June, instead of January—blew in, gently fluttering the curtains. There was no toilette table to obstruct the view, and I caught a glimpse of the sea, above which a pale half-moon was rising.

It was long after midnight. The moon rose, brightening as it rose, and a dread pale ray of light streamed across the floor from the open window. Suddenly, a shadow obscured it, and, looking up, I saw a woman’s figure framed in the opening, its outlines darkly relieved against the background of moonlit sky. It was Elsie Falconer!

She stood for a moment in a listening attitude, then stepped into the room. I could see her face distinctly, and saw that it had the same strained and troubled look I had noticed before.

She crossed into the middle of the room, and paused, looking about her, as if hesitating where to begin her search.

Then I stepped noiselessly forward out of the shadow, and confronted her. She showed not the least alarm or surprise at my appearance, regarding me with mild, unspeculative eyes.

“You are looking for Reginald’s pocket-book?” I said, in an undertone.

“Yes,” she acquiesced quietly, as if it were the most simple and natural errand in the world.

“I will give it you,” I answered, turning my back on her as I opened the drawer where Reginald had placed it.

After a moment I handed it to her. It contained, now, nothing, but a slip of paper on which I had hastily pencilled a short but pithy note addressed to Captain Falconer.

She took it from me without a word, and turned to go. I followed her to the window, and a glance outside showed me how she had reached it. The solution of the mystery was so simple that I only wondered I had not guessed it before.

I have already said that beneath each of the windows on the second floor was a projecting ledge of sculptured stone. A narrow board about four feet long—evidently the shelf of a cupboard—had been placed between Miss Falconer’s window and Reginald’s, resting on the ledges, and forming a bridge which connected them.

What if the board slipped? What if she turned giddy at that perilous height? A false step would probably cost her her life, for nothing interposed to break her fall on to the stone-paved terrace beneath.

Involuntarily I made a movement to hold her back, but it was already too late.

Lightly, steadily, without a trace of fear, she stepped across. I saw a hand put forth from the adjoining window to draw her in; the board was instantly removed, the window closed, and all was still.

I listened intently for any sound of voices from the next room, but none reached me. After an interval, however, I heard the door softly open and close, and footsteps passed down the corridor. The Captain had probably read my note, and had retired to his own room to digest it. I smiled sweetly, and the thought of his discomfiture had so soothing an effect on me that, returning to my inhospitable couch, I slept the sleep of the just till morning.

•    •    •    •

When we assembled at lunch next day, I was scarcely surprised to find that one member of our little party was missing.

Captain Falconer, taking to heart my warning, had incontinently vanished from the scene, leaving behind him some valueless luggage, several unpaid bills—and his daughter.

Elsie never saw her father again. He was heard of from time to time at various haunts of high play, and later, the news came that he had lost his life in a gambling affray at San Francisco.

Long before that event, however, Elsie was Reginald Dane’s wife.

Under a Spell

(Feb. 1895)

I

“Hallo, Phil, old fellow, what’s this I hear? Is it true that you are going to commit matrimony?”

The person I addressed, and whose attention I had attracted by a smart tap on the shoulder, turned with a start, then laughed and shook hands.

He was as handsome a young fellow as you would meet in a summer’s day; “fair-haired, blue-eyed, of aspect blithe,” with a sunny smile, and a manner which even men pronounced charmirg, and women, irresistible.

“Perfectly true,” he acknowledged. “You can congratulate or condole with me, as you feel inclined.”

“I shall wait first to hear who is the lady,” I answered cautiously, as I linked my arm in his. We were walking down the “sweet shady side of Pall-Mall” one bright spring afternoon four years ago.

“Is it that fascinating Russian Countess whom you used to rave about last season till I was sick of her name?”

“No, it is not Madame Marenski,” Philip Durham answered, colouring slightly.

“So much the better. Who is it then? Do I know her?”

“No, I don’t think you have ever met. It is Miss Rayne.”

“What! the American heiress? The match of the season? Phew! upon my word, for an impecunious younger son you have not done badly. But I thought you told me she was the sort of girl you particularly detested—self-assertive, and under-bred?”

“When I said that I did not know her, and had an entirely wrong impression about her; I found out my mistake later. She is not an American, by-the-by; her father was English; a man of good family, but considered rather a ne’er-do-well, till he redeemed his character by making a big fortune, silver-mining in Nevada. When his death two years ago left her an orphan, Dolores (she was named after her mother, who was a Spaniard) came to England to live with an aunt—”

“Dolores?” I interrupted, with sudden interest; “Dolores Rayne? Why, I knew her when she was a child. I made her father’s acquaintance years ago, when I was travelling in the States—a capital fellow, and his wife the handsomest woman I ever saw; though, unless I am mistaken, she had a temper. Miss Dolly and I were great chums. She was then a little black-eyed witch of ten, with a warm heart, a saucy tongue, and a finely developed will of her own.”

He laughed. “She still possesses all those characteristics, particularly the latter. But she is a glorious creature, Hetley!” he added, enthusiastically. “Such a face and figure! and such a warm, generous, affectionate nature! It is impossible not to love her, in spite of her faults! But it must be acknowledged,” he added pensively, “that Dolores, like her mother, ‘has a temper.’”

“And how did Madame Marenski take the news of your engagement?”

He stroked his moustache thoughtfully.

“Well, she took it quietly,” he said, after a pause; “very quietly; though of course it was a surprise to her, as she knew of my prejudice against Dolores, and in fact had rather fostered it. To say the truth I quite expected there would be a scene, because—well I’m afraid I had given her reason to believe that if I married anyone it would be herself.”

“H’m! It sounds, do you know, as if you had treated her rather shabbily.”

“I know I did, and I feel awfully ashamed of myself,” he confessed penitently; “but what could I do? I honestly believed that I was deeply in love with her till I met Dolores, and found out for the first time what real love is. To have married her after that would have been to make us both miserable. And besides, brilliant and fascinating as she is—”

He checked himself and left the sentence unfinished.

“However, I must say that she behaved beautifully,” he continued: “uttered not a word of reproach, hoped our ‘pleasant friendship,’ would still continue, and went out of her way to cultivate my fiancée. Dolores, who is rather given to striking up sudden friendships, was quite captivated by her, and is staying at her house at the present time. I was just on my way to call. I haven’t seen her for a week, having been down in Norfolk, in the bosom of my family. Come with me, won’t you? It’s Madame’s day, and you will meet some amusing people.”

“But I don’t know her. I have heard her discussed often enough, but never saw her, to my knowledge.”

“That doesn’t matter; you will be welcome as my friend. Besides, you have travelled, and are literary and all that—just the sort of fellow she likes. Come along; we must take a cab,” he added, “she lives in the wilds of Kensington.”

•    •    •    •

The house which the Countess Marenski occupied was a large old-fashioned one of red brick, standing back from the road in a walled garden. We were ushered into a spacious drawing-room, somewhat over-crowded with pictures and ornaments, and with decidedly more colour in its scheme of decoration than is permitted by the modern code of aesthetics.

It was thronged with visitors of both sexes, and an animated buzz of conversation prevailed, above which rose the wild, sweet notes of a violin, played by someone in an inner room, which was divided from the first by a curtained archway.

“The usual menagerie,” Philip remarked disrespectfully, glancing round at the visitors who, to say truth, were a sufficiently heterogeneous assemblage. “Can’t imagine where she picks up such impossible people. There’s Goring, the actor; the pretty untidy woman he is talking to is Miss ———, who writes doubtful novels. The tall man with the wild head of hair is Professor Platz of the Psychological Society—avoid him; he is a deadly bore; and the weird old woman in black, who looks like the Witch of Endor, is Mrs. Amelia G. Scraggs, the American clairvoyante. The Countess goes in for that sort of thing, you know, and is by way of being a ‘medium’ herself.”

“Who is it that is playing the violin so beautifully?”

“Madame herself. She is an accomplished musician, and an artist as well—paints and models to perfection. In fact there are very few things she can’t do.”

“Has she ever been on the stage?”

“Not that I know of; I should think it unlikely. Her husband, Count Marenski, was a great swell, I believe, but her married life was anything but happy—at least, so I gather from hints she has dropped, for she hates to speak of the past. He had left her, and they were living apart when he died— Hush, here she comes,” he broke off as the music suddenly ceased, and our hostess’s figure appeared in the doorway.

She was a tall, slight, blonde woman, whose age it was difficult to determine, with a graceful, undulating figure, and a face which at first sight charmed and dazzled, but on closer study revealed something vaguely repellent. There was a slumbering fire in those soft, sleepy grey eyes of hers, half-veiled by their long lashes, and a hardness in the lines of mouth and chin, which, unless I was much mistaken, betrayed not only strong passions but a cruel and relentless nature. A woman whose love might be dangerous, and whose hatred would be deadly, I thought, as I watched her. Assuredly not a safe woman to offend. But what puzzled me was that her face seemed strangely familiar, though I could not for the life of me recall where and when I had seen it before. I was presented by Philip in due form, and received with a gracious smile.

“Any friend of Mr. Durham’s is welcome,” she said, in a soft liquid voice to which her slight foreign accent gave an added charm; “but particularly such a distinguished litterateur as the author of ‘Modern Russia.’ Your description of Russian society is wonderfully accurate, Mr. Hetley. You must have lived for some time in my country?”

“Yes, I know it very well—particularly St. Petersburg.”

“How long is it since you were there?” she asked; and I fancied she waited rather anxiously for my answer.

“About six years.”

“Ah, that was before—before the great sorrow of my life came upon me,” she said with a sigh, and a sudden droop of her white eyelids. “What changes since then, alas! But it will not do to think of it.” Then, turning to Philip, she continued: “You are looking for Dolores? She is not very well to-day—oh, nothing serious; only a headache—and has been lying down, but she promised to come down presently and sing to us. Ah, here she is,” she added, as the door opened and Miss Rayne appeared.

I saw at once that Philip’s description of her was no mere lover’s hyperbole. She was indeed a “glorious creature.” Tall and straight as a dart, with a rich southern complexion, velvet dark eyes, which could flash with anger or sparkle in mirth, and a sweet “mutinous” mouth which told of a generous, though wilful and impulsive nature.

But just now the girl was very pale, and there was a curious look of repressed excitement about her. Philip went forward to meet her eagerly, his handsome face beaming with pleasure. To my surprise, she either did not, or would not see his outstretched hand, and turned to her hostess, pointedly ignoring him.

“Thanks, my head is much better,” she said, in answer to the former’s inquiries. “Oh, yes, I feel quite able to sing,” and she was passing by when I ventured to detain her.

“Miss Rayne, will you allow me to recall myself to your recollection?” I said, perceiving that Philip was too dumfounded by his reception to think of introducing me.

She looked at me with a puzzled expression, which gave place the next moment to a bright smile of recognition.

“Of course—it is Mr. Hetley!” she exclaimed, impulsively putting out both hands. “How delightful to meet you again! It reminds me of the dear old times. But fancy your remembering me after all these years!”

“That is not so remarkable as that you should remember me,” I observed.

“You impressed yourself on my memory by your kindness,” she said pleasantly. “We will have a long talk directly—but now my audience is waiting;” and with another of her winning smiles, she turned away.

“Dolores!” Philip exclaimed, laying his hand on her arm.

The girl drew back haughtily, looked him full in the face, and passed on without a word or sign of recognition. He started as if she had struck him, and the colour rushed to his face as he stood looking after her in blank amazement.

“What does that mean?” I asked in an undertone.

“I know no more than you do,” he declared. “We parted on perfectly good terms a week ago, and now she cuts me dead. She must explain herself. I am not going to be treated in this way.”

He was starting off to follow her, but I checked him.

“Don’t make a scene. She is going to sing; wait till she has finished, and then speak to her quietly. No doubt it is only some trifling misunderstanding.”

He acquiesced half reluctantly, and retreated to the further end of the room, where he was promptly seized upon and button-holed by Professor Platz, who had been prowling about in search of a fresh listener.

Meantime Miss Rayne had taken her seat at the piano, and the first notes of her voice—a rich full contralto—caused a sudden hush in the murmur of conversation. She had chosen the “Song of Hypolito,” from the “Spanish Student,” and seemed to throw her whole soul into the words—

“Ah, Love!

Perjured, false, treacherous Love!”

There was a ring of passionate scorn in her voice that thrilled the listeners.

“Thorns below and flowers above—

Perjured, false, treacherous Love!”

But at the end of the first verse she broke off abruptly, saying that she was not in voice to-day, and in spite of a chorus of remonstrance and entreaty, rose abruptly from the piano. As she did so, she glanced towards me, and, with a pretty imperious gesture, which reminded me forcibly of the saucy “Dolly” of old, beckoned me to her side.

“Let us go into the other room,” she said, “it is quieter there.” And she led the way through the curtained arch, leaving Philip still writhing impatiently in the Professor’s grasp.

The room was furnished as a studio, and gave evidence of its owner’s versatile tastes. On an easel stood an unfinished picture; in a glass case was a group of fruit and flowers exquisitely modelled in wax; and a pedestal at the further end supported a marble bust, covered by a cloth.

“There is no one here, thank goodness!” Dolores said, in a tone of relief. “How those people chatter!”

“Have you acquired a distaste for society?” I asked, smiling; “or are you only a little ‘out of tune’ to-day?”

“I am out of tune,” she returned. “I feel as if I had been stroked the wrong way, and should like to scratch someone.”

I laughed.

“What shall I do to soothe your ruffled feelings? I fear you have outgrown bonbons, which in the old days used to be infallible.”

“I have outgrown many things since then,” she answered, moodily—“a few beliefs and illusions among the rest.”

I looked at her a moment in silence, wondering what made the beautiful face so dark and overcast.

“May I venture to congratulate you on your engagement?” I said, at length. “Philip Durham is an old friend of mine, and an excellent fellow. You—”

She stopped me by a look.

“My engagement to Mr. Durham is at an end,” she said coldly.

“What!” I exclaimed. “Why, it is barely half-an-hour since I heard of it from his own lips.”

“He did not know, then, what I am waiting now to tell him—that I would not marry him if he were the last man left in the world,” she replied deliberately.

“But what has Philip done to deserve this?” I questioned. “It is a delicate matter to interfere in lovers’ quarrels; but if this is only some misunderstanding which a few words from a mutual friend would clear away—”

“There has been no quarrel, there is no misunderstanding,” she interrupted. “It is simply this. Within the last few days a fact has come to my knowledge—I can’t tell you what it is without compromising another person—which has enlightened me as to his true character, and killed my love and confidence at one blow.”

“Ah, I think I understand! You have discovered, perhaps, that he had once a flirtation with Madame Marenski? But my dear child—”

“Oh, I knew that long ago!” she returned. “I am not so foolish as to indulge in retrospective jealousy. But what I did not know and cannot forgive, is that he—”

She was interrupted by the entrance of Philip himself.

“Dolores, what on earth is the matter?” he began. “What have I done to offend you?”

The girl’s face grew set and hard. She rose, drawing a ring from her finger. “I wish to be released from my engagement,” she said, with cold distinctness. “Here is your ring.”

He stared at her in consternation. “For what reason?” he demanded. “What has happened?”

“Nothing has happened. I have merely come to the conclusion that we are not suited to each other. You see”—with a hard little laugh which was half a sob—“I am romantic enough to wish to be loved a little for myself as well as for my money, and I fear there is not room in your heart for both.”

The young man coloured and bit his lip to keep down his anger.

“That is a cruel insinuation,” he cried indignantly, “and one which you must know to be untrue. I should never have asked you to be my wife if I had not loved you with an affection as deep and sincere as ever man felt.”

“Pray spare me any further protestations,” she returned. “I have learned to know exactly what they are worth.”

“You trusted me once. Who has taught you to doubt me?” was his question.

She made no reply.

“Dolores,” her lover said earnestly, “I implore you not to let some foolish and cruel slander ruin the happiness of both our lives. If ever you loved me—”

The girl turned upon him suddenly with flashing eyes. “If ever I loved you!” she echoed. “Yes, I loved you passionately, and trusted you utterly; but now I know you, it humiliates me to think I could ever have cared for one so mean and false.”

As she spoke the last words unconsciously raising her voice, Madame Marenski entered the room. She seemed to take in the situation at a glance, and for a second, a look of something very like malicious triumph crossed her face. But it passed as quickly as a breath from a mirror, giving place to one of surprise and concern.

“Dolores,” she said, in a tone of tender remonstrance, laying her hand on the girl’s shoulder, and looking earnestly into the flushed excited face.

Her touch seemed to possess some quality of magnetic control. Dolores’ agitation subsided as if by magic. She shivered slightly and turned pale, but said nothing.

“What has happened to excite her so painfully?” the Russian asked, addressing Philip, without removing her hand from her friend’s shoulder. “Surely you have not quarrelled?”

“The quarrel was not of my making,” he answered coldly. “Miss Rayne insists on breaking off our engagement, but refuses to tell me her motives. It is evident that someone has poisoned her mind against me during my absence.”

He glanced keenly at his hostess as he spoke, as if with a half-formed suspicion; but she met his eyes without flinching.

“Surely no one would be so base!” she exclaimed. “And what accusation could possibly be brought against you, who are the soul of honour, truth, and—constancy?” Again Philip looked at her, doubting whether her words were spoken in earnest or in bitterest irony. But her face told nothing.

“Leave her to me,” she continued, in an undertone; “she is nervous and unstrung to-day. Dear,” she continued, in her soft, caressing voice, addressing Dolores, who stood passive and motionless with downcast eyes; “your head is worse, I am sure; you look so white and tired. You must lie down again and try to sleep. Come!”

She took her hand as she spoke. Dolores hesitated a moment, and then, in the same curiously passive way, and without another glance at Philip or myself, allowed herself to be led from the room.

“Let us go,” Durham said hurriedly, when they had disappeared; “the air of this house suffocates me. Come and dine with me, will you, Hetley? It will be a charity.”

I assented, and we left the house together.

II

“Depend upon it, Phil, your fair friend the Countess is at the bottom of this,” I said, when, dinner being over, and the servant dismissed, we were sitting over our coffee and cigars in Durham’s snug rooms in Jermyn Street. “There is no one who has an interest in robbing you of Dolores’ love except the woman whom you deserted for her sake.”

He changed his position uneasily. “I can’t believe Olga Marenski capable of so mean a revenge.”

“‘Hell holds no fury like a woman scorned,’” I quoted. “If you think she has forgiven you, you are no judge of physiognomy.”

He stared moodily at the fire a moment, then started up and began to pace the room.

“But, good heavens, if this is true, what an actress—what a hypocrite she must be!” he exclaimed at length. “To play the comedy of friendship to us both, while all the time she was plotting to divide us—it is sickening! And she has evidently obtained such an influence over Dolores that the girl will believe any lies she chooses to tell her.”

“And yet Dolores is not one to be easily duped,” I remarked thoughtfully. “Doesn’t it strike you that there is something rather strange, not to say mysterious, in the power this woman has obtained over her in so short a time?”

“It does not surprise me. The control she exercises over others by mere force of will is almost uncanny. I have felt it myself. There was a time when she could make me do and think what she chose and though—”

A subdued tap at the door interrupted him, and his discreet manservant, Watson, appeared with the information that “a person” wished to see him.

“A person?” Philip repeated. “Is it a tradesman?”

“No, sir; it is a—a lady.”

“A lady! at this hour! Impossible! Did she give her name?”

“No, sir; but she—it is—it is Miss Rayne, sir.”

“What!” Durham almost shouted, staring at him incredulously.

“Miss Rayne, sir,” repeated the man, lowering his voice; “she came in a hansom, which is waiting, and has followed me upstairs—”

Even as he spoke, the door was pushed open, and the visitor appeared on the threshold. She wore a long black mantle, and a small half-mourning bonnet, with a gauze veil, not so thick as to conceal her features; the fine arched brows, the delicately modelled nose, and the low broad forehead, with its fringe of loosely curling soft dark hair. Her eyes were lowered, and she kept in the shadow near the door. Philip turned towards her eagerly, with the same idea which had occurred to myself, namely, that she had repented her rash decision of yesterday, and had impulsively come, in defiance of conventionalities, to “make it up.” But another glance at her face dispelled this pleasing illusion. Stonily calm it was, but with a look of stern vindictive purpose which hardened every feature.

“Dolores”—her lover faltered, taking a step towards her. She drew back still further into the shadow, and without uttering a word, without even raising her eyes to his face, pointed to a small sandalwood box—her own gift to him—which stood on a side-table.

“You wish to have your letters?” he questioned, divining her meaning. She silently inclined her head in assent. There was something so strange, so unnatural in her manner, and in the almost death-like immobility of her face, that I watched her in alarm and perplexity, doubting if she were in her right mind; and I could see that Philip shared my fear. Mechanically he crossed the room, took up the box, and approached her again.

As he presented it to her, she suddenly drew out the hand which had hitherto been concealed within her cloak, and I saw something gleam in the lamplight. At the same moment Durham uttered a quick cry, and staggered back, his hand pressed to his side. Without another glance at him she hurried from the room, and brushing past Watson, who was lingering in the doorway, descended the stairs, and was out of the house before we had recovered from our stupefaction. I started up to follow her, but Philip detained me.

“No, you must not,” he gasped. “Let her go—”

“But, good heavens, she has stabbed you,” I cried, as I supported him to a chair.

“It is nothing,” he faltered, though he had turned deadly pale. “Tell no one; say—it was an accident. If I die, let her know that I forgave her. Oh, Dolores—”

He gave a shuddering sigh, and fell back insensible.

“Shall I fetch Dr. Mackay, sir?” inquired Watson, hurriedly. “He is the nearest surgeon.”

I acquiesced with a nod, and he left the room.

Philip was still insensible when the doctor arrived—a grave, hard-featured, dry-mannered Scotsman, who listened without comment, but with evident incredulity, to my confused account of the accident. He declined at present to commit himself to an opinion as to the gravity of his patient’s injury, but recommended that his parents should be sent for without delay; and I accordingly at once despatched a cautiously-worded telegram to his father. He passed a restless and feverish night, and when morning came, was in a condition which made Dr. Mackay look graver than ever.

Sir Henry, accompanied by Lady Durham, arrived about noon. Fearing to be questioned, I left the house without seeing them, and, having paid a hasty visit to my chambers in order to change my dress, took a cab and drove to Kensington.

I felt that I must see Dolores—force the unhappy girl to confide in me, and save her, if possible, from the consequences of her crime. That she was not in her right senses when she committed it, I felt convinced. Hasty, head-strong, passionate, I knew her to be, but I could not believe her capable of such a deed, except on the supposition that her mind was for the time unhinged. I was still pondering over the mystery, when the cab drew up at Madame Marenski’s door.

“Miss Rayne had not yet left her room,” the servant told me, “but would be down in a few moments.”

Ha ushered me into the drawing-room, which had no occupant but a great white macaw in a gilded cage, that screamed angrily at my intrusion, executing a sort of war-dance on its perch. To escape the bird’s irritating noise, I passed into the studio, absently examining the casts and pictures and group of wax flowers. Then my attention was attracted by the bust. I removed the cloth which concealed it, and found that it was a portrait of Dolores, needing only a few finishing touches in the hair and drapery to complete it. But this was not the bright debonnaire face I knew so well. The features were hers indeed, but they were disfigured by exactly the same dark vindictive expression she had worn last night—as if, like Coleridge’s “Christabel,” the girl were under some malignant spell, and forced to imitate “a look of dull and treacherous hate.”

I was still contemplating it when Dolores entered. To my astonishment, though looking pale and depressed, she was perfectly composed, and greeted me as if nothing had happened.

“I hope you are not admiring that horrid thing,” she said, glancing distastefully at the bust. “Madame Marenski has made me look as if I were plotting a murder. I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” she continued. “I was very lazy this morning, though I went to bed at an unnaturally early hour last night.”

I gazed at her in bewilderment. Was this dissimulation? If so, she was the most accomplished actress I had ever met.

“But you went out between nine and ten?” I said.

She looked surprised, and shook her head.

“Oh, no; I was sound asleep then—thanks to Madame. She gave me a composing draught, which sent me into a deep sleep, almost like a trance. I did not wake till nearly eleven o’clock this morning.” Her manner was natural and unembarrassed; her eyes met mine frankly. I felt convinced that the girl was speaking the truth, or what she believed to be the truth. And yet I had seen her with my own eyes in Philip’s rooms at the moment when she declared herself to have been in bed. What was I to believe? Was it possible that the deed had been committed in her sleep? Had she, while in that trance-like slumber, been made the unconscious instrument of another’s revengeful will?

I recalled her strange fixed look and automatic manner, and the idea, extravagant as it seemed, gathered probability.

But would anyone else believe it? Suppose—the thought sent a chill through me—suppose she were tried for her life, would any jury accept such a theory in the face of the overwhelming evidence against her? No; I felt, with a shudder, that if Philip died, Dolores was lost. While these thoughts passed rapidly through my mind, she had composedly seated herself, motioning me to do the same. It gave me a curious sensation to see her so calm and unmoved on the verge of such deadly peril.

“I am glad you have called, Mr. Hetley,” she began. “I have something to say to you. I do not regret having broken off my engagement”—her lip quivered a little as she spoke—“but I feel that I ought to have explained my motives. I can do so now, for I am released from the promise of secrecy which kept me silent yesterday.”

She took a packet of letters from her pocket as she spoke.

“These were written by—by Philip to Madame Marenski,” she said, “and she showed them to me the other day, that I might know what manner of man it was that I was wasting my love upon.”

“Very kind and disinterested of her. But did you not tell me that you were perfectly aware of his having flirted with her before he met you?”

“Yes; but I did not know that the flirtation was so serious, and that it continued long after his engagement to me—that while he was deluding me with the semblance of love, the reality was given to her—that he spoke of me with dislike and disparagement, and cynically acknowledged that, for him, my fortune was my only attraction.”

“I will never believe Philip capable of such baseness!” I exclaimed.

She opened the packet, and hurriedly selected one letter, which she handed to me.

“You see that it is no forgery?”

“It is undoubtedly Philip’s writing,” I admitted.

“Read it. See how he writes to the woman he loves of the woman he is going to marry.”

I glanced through the letter and uttered an exclamation. “But this cannot have been written lately! It is utterly impossible he could speak of you in these terms when he had learned to know you!”

“Look at the date,” she rejoined—“March of this year. We have been engaged since Christmas.”

I rose and walked to the window, examining the letter more closely; and presently I made a curious discovery.

“Are you convinced?” Dolores asked at last.

“I am convinced,” I said dryly, as I returned to her side, “that your friend the Countess is a very clever and ingenious lady. Now, supposing for a moment that these letters had been written before Philip knew you personally, should you resent them?”

“Of course not. I knew that he was prejudiced against me at first; he has told me so; and in these letters he says no more than that. But look at the date.”

“Look again yourself,” I retorted, “and you will see that the last figure in the date of the year has been altered. Not one of these letters was written since your engagement.”

She started, and hurriedly examined them. I saw the colour rush to her face, then retreat, leaving it white.

“You are right,” she said in an altered tone. “They have been tampered with. Ah, I see it all now! This was a plot to separate us, and thanks to my wicked temper, it has succeeded. How could I have believed it? Fool—fool that I have been! I have insulted him past forgiveness—I have lost him! Oh, Philip—”

Burying her head in a cushion of the couch, she burst into a passionate flood of tears, her sobs shaking her from head to foot. After a moment she looked up at me imploringly.

“Mr. Hetley,” she said, in a choked, trembling voice; “will you go to Philip—now, at once? Beg him to come to me, and I will ask his forgiveness on my knees!”

“He cannot come to you,” was my grave reply; “he lies now dangerously ill; wounded—perhaps mortally—by your hand.”

“By—my—hand!” she echoed, gazing at me wonderingly.

I inclined my head in assent.

“Last night, between nine and ten o’clock, a woman came to his rooms, and in the presence of witnesses, of whom I was one, deliberately stabbed him. That woman was yourself.”

She sprang to her feet.

“What are you saying? What monstrous accusation is this?” she cried. “You must know that it is false”

“It is true,” said a quiet voice behind us. Madame Marenski was standing in the curtained archway, regarding us with a curious smile. “I heard Miss Rayne tell you a few moments ago that she did not leave the house last night,” she continued, in a tone of icy distinctness, addressing me. “Her memory plays her false. She went out after I myself had retired, and was absent more than an hour. The servants saw her, and this morning the housemaid brought me something she had dropped in the hall.”

She showed me a quaint silver-handled dagger of Moorish workmanship.

“I little thought when I gave it her a few days ago that it would be used as an instrument of—revenge.”

As she spoke the last word, for the first time she looked full at Dolores, with an expression of malignant triumph, which seemed to transform her into a fiend.

How strangely familiar her face seemed to me with that look upon it! What was the association connected with it which I tried vainly to recall? Suddenly—in a flash, as it were—I recollected; and, at the same moment a flood of light poured in upon my mind.

The event of last night was no longer a mystery, and I knew that Dolores was innocent of any, even unconscious, participation in the deed. As the girl was about to speak, I silenced her by a gesture, and advanced a step nearer to the mistress of the house.

“I think I have seen that dangerous plaything before,” I remarked, taking it from her hand. “Was it not formerly in the possession of an actress of St. Petersburg, named Olive Merovna?”

Had I had any doubt as to the correctness of my suspicion, the change in her face would have dispelled it.

“I do not know,” she faltered; “I never heard of such a person.”

“No! yet her name was sufficiently notorious some ten years ago. She was arrested, you may remember, on suspicion of having murdered her husband, but though there was strong presumptive evidence against her, she was acquitted, as she could not be identified with the woman who fired the fatal shot. Afterwards, when she had escaped the country, it was discovered that she was indeed the criminal, but had disguised herself in a way to defy detection—altering, not only her dress and figure, but, by an ingenious artifice, her very features—”

I paused a moment, looking at her steadily. “Was it not the same device which you employed last night, Madame?”

The Russian started, and I saw her cast a quick involuntary glance towards a Japanese cabinet near the fire-place. That glance was an unconscious revelation of something I had wished to know. In a moment I had crossed the room to where the cabinet stood, and had my hand on the door, when, with a cry of mingled rage and terror, she darted after me and seized my arm.

“What are you doing? are you mad?” she cried, unconsciously speaking in her own language.

“No, madame,” I answered in the same tongue. “I am in full possession of my senses, and am merely curious to examine the contents of this cabinet. It is locked, I perceive. Oblige me with the key.”

“If you dare to touch it, I will call the servants and have you turned out of the house!” she gasped.

“Call them in, by all means; they will be valuable witnesses,” I returned, coolly. “You refuse to unlock it? Very well,” and with one vigorous blow I drove in the fragile doors.

She set her teeth, and tried with all her strength, which was not slight, to push me back; but it was too late. I had already caught sight of what I was in search of, lying, half hidden, on an upper shelf, and held it up triumphantly above her reach.; It was a delicate wax mask of Dolores’ face, evidently modelled from the bust, and coloured to the life.

The girl, who had been a silent and bewildered spectator of the scene, uttered a startled cry, and involuntarily recoiled. “Ah—I understand!” she exclaimed, in a tone of sudden enlightenment; “it was she who attempted Philip’s life. While I was sleeping last night she dressed in my clothes, and with that mask on her face, went to his rooms! You dreadful woman,” she added, turning to the Russian, who stood, white and panting, the image of baffled malice: “how had either of us injured you that you should plot our destruction?”

“How had you injured me? you dare to ask me that?” the other retorted, in a breathless tone of suppressed passion. “Was it nothing that Philip Durham made me love him as I had never loved before—madly, miserably, and after using me as the pastime of his leisure hours, flung me aside carelessly as an old glove when he met a fairer face? And you—was it nothing that you robbed me of him? that you maddened me by parading your affection for him under my own eyes, in my own house? He had loved me once, or pretended to do so, and if you had never come between us I should now have been his wife.”

Passion choked her voice. She made a sudden snatch at the mask, and would have trampled it under foot, had I not been too quick for her.

“No, no, madame,” I said quietly; “I cannot allow you to destroy this valuable piece de conviction. It will be wanted—later.”

Her arm fell to her side. She looked at me steadily, her excitement giving place all at once to a cold composure.

“You intend to give me up to justice?” she questioned, in Russian, speaking with great distinctness and deliberation.

“Most assuredly I do,” I answered, “and I shall take care that you do not escape this time. You will please to consider yourself a prisoner from this moment.”

She drew a deep breath, still looking at me fixedly. The pupils of her strange grey-green eyes dilated, and her red lips slowly widened in a sinister smile.

“I am to consider myself a prisoner?” she repeated; “so be it. I am at your mercy. I yield to the inevitable. Have I your Excellency’s permission to sit down for a moment?” she continued, with mock humility. “I feel somewhat faint—”

I turned aside to place a chair for her, and in that moment she seized her opportunity, and with a movement swift and noiseless as a cat’s, darted across the room. She had gained the door, closed and locked it after her, and was gone, with a rush of flying feet down the corridor outside, before I had time even to realise her intention.

The hansom which had brought me was still waiting.

While I was hammering at the locked door, enraged at being foiled so easily, I heard wheels pass the window, and glanced out just in time to catch a brief glimpse of a white face with an evil smile of triumph on it, and a hand waved in mocking farewell. The next moment she had vanished.

•    •    •    •

Philip Durham did not die, though it was many weary weeks before he was pronounced out of danger. Dolores had insisted on helping his mother to nurse him, and there were no limits to the girl’s devotion. It seemed as if she could not do enough to prove her love and penitence, and her manner was so softened and subdued that she was hardly to be recognised as the proud and wilful Dolores of old. Indeed, Philip was ungrateful enough to complain that she was getting almost too meek and submissive; but, as I told him consolingly, that was a fault which matrimony would probably correct.

Madame Marenski they never saw or heard of again. She had crossed their path like some brilliant baleful meteor, and vanished into outer darkness, leaving no trace behind.

A Violinist’s Adventure

(Apr. 1895)

“Yes, it is a genuine Stradivarius, of the best period—1710,” said my friend and host, Lord Danescourt, as he lifted the violin from its case tenderly, as if it had been a sentient thing, and drew his bow across the strings with the touch of a master.

Nature had intended Danescourt for a great artist, but, as he said himself, “fortune had thwarted her plan by making him a mere Earl.”

“Many a happy moment I owe to this old fiddle,” he went on, patting it affectionately, “and one very mauvais quart d’heure—whereby hangs a tale. You want to hear it? all right, it is short enough to be told before the dressing-bell rings.” He pushed the cigar-stand towards me, and began:

•    •    •    •

Fifteen years ago I spent two pleasant autumn months rambling on foot through the highways and byways of the Apennines, with no luggage but a knapsack, and no companion but my violin.

What strange places I visited, what strange people I met, what scenes of unexplored loveliness were revealed to me in those mountain solitudes, I have not time to tell. I must come at once to a certain October evening, when, just after sunset, I was toiling up the steep ascent to the little hillside town of San’ Benedetto, where I was to pass the night. A town it called itself, but it was in fact little more than a village; its one long street of grey, sundried stone houses straggling up the hill, which was crowned by a ruined citadel. Its only inn—“The Albergo d’Italia, kept by Leone Rosso”—stood at the entrance to the town, apart from the other dwellings. In front was a strip of parched and dusty turf, while at the back the ground sloped steeply down to the bed of a mountain stream.

The house, with its deep-set windows barred like a prison, its low-browed arched doorway, and its general air of neglect and decay, was as ill-favoured a habitation as I had ever beheld. Nor did its owner’s physiognomy please me much better, if it were indeed the landlord who lounged in the doorway with his hands in his pockets. A short, thickset, powerfully built man of middle age, with a heavy jaw, and eyes at once fierce and sullen. However, as it was a case of Hobson’s choice, there being no other hostelries in the place but small wine-shops, I approached and addressed him:

“Can I have a bed for the night here?”

He looked me over at his leisure before replying, taking a disparaging survey of my person and accoutrements, from my dusty boots and battered felt hat, to my well-worn knapsack and violin case.

“I suppose so,” he answered, grudgingly, and drew back to allow me to enter.

The large dimly-lit apartment in which I found myself, seemed to do duty for kitchen, café and restaurant combined. Its only occupants were a wizened, witch-like old woman, evidently my host’s mother, and an untidy servant-girl, who were engaged together in some mysterious cooking operations, which gave forth an ambrosial odour of garlic and fried fat.

The master said a few words in an undertone to his mother, who, having favoured me with a stare and a nod over her shoulder, resumed her occupation, while her son flung himself on to a low seat near the hearth, and produced his pipe.

“Will you kindly show me my room, and let me have supper?” I said, finding that no one took any further notice of me.

“The supper is ready, but the room is not,” the old woman rejoined tartly. “Ludovica will arrange it presently.”

“Meantime, where can I wash my hands?” I inquired, unfastening my knapsack. She looked at me with a sour smile.

“The signore is English, evidently,” she remarked, as if that accounted for the eccentricity of such a request, and raising her voice, called shrilly—“Tonio!”

Ever since I entered the house, I had heard from an inner room the faint notes of a violin; a primitive instrument, evidently, and touched by an untutored hand, which yet was skilful enough to extract from it some tones of plaintive and penetrating sweetness.

As the music still continued, she repeated the call, and her son echoed it roughly, with the accompaniment of an oath. The melody broke off abruptly, and a boy emerged from the inner door, a slender fragile-looking lad of fifteen, with a delicate sensitive face, and great dark eyes, which had the pathetic appealing look of an ill-used animal.

“Stop that cursed caterwauling, and come when you are called,” the man said, harshly. “I shall break that fiddle over your head some day. The signore wants water to wash his hands. Fetch it.”

The lad promptly obeyed, and I performed my summary ablutions at a corner of the long kitchen dresser.

“So it was you who were playing so sweetly just now?” I said, smiling at him as I dried my hands. “I need not ask if you are fond of music?”

“I love it,” he murmured, “but I can’t play; I never learnt. The signore is a musician?” he added wistfully, noticing my violin-case. I nodded.

“Would you like to try my violin?” I asked. “Play to me while I am at supper—I like to hear you.”

He glanced timidly at the master, who grunted, but made no objection, and retreating to the furthest corner of the room, took out the instrument with infinite care, and lightly drew the bow across the strings. I was watching his face, and as the first clear mellow note rang out, I saw a sudden light flash over it.

“Oh—!” he gasped, and stopped short, looking at me in a sort of rapturous surprise.

“Rather a different tone to yours, isn’t it?” I said smiling. “Don’t be afraid of it. Play!”

The lad needed no second telling. He was soon lost to himself and his surroundings, pouring out his whole heart in a strange wild improvisation. Never, before or since, have I heard a performance like that. It was as if a soul had suddenly become articulate; a martyred soul, repressed and blighted by its uncongenial environment.

Absorbed in listening, I forgot to eat, and when at last the music ceased, my eyes were wet with tears. I turned to the master of the house, who sat, stolid and unmoved, puffing at his pipe.

“That boy is a born musician,” I said, emphatically; “if he has proper instruction he may—”

“Get his living by fiddling at fairs,” he put in, with a rude laugh. “Mille grazie! We have had one ne’er-do-well in the family—his father; and that is quite enough.”

Tonio looked up quickly. “My father was not—” he began.

“Your father was a spendthrift and a ne’er-do-well,” his uncle repeated; “who died a pauper, and left his only son to live on charity.”

The lad flushed to the roots of his dark hair. “If my father was a ‘spendthrift,’” he retorted fearlessly, “it is not for you to reproach him. You had your share of his money while it lasted, and when it was gone, you turned him out to die like a dog. As to my living on charity,” he pursued bitterly, “Heaven knows I work hard enough for the bread I eat, and the roof that covers me. No hired servant would submit to the insult and ill-usage which you—”

“Will you be silent—maladetto!” Rosso interrupted savagely, and starting from his seat, he lifted his hand to strike him. It was fortunate that I interposed in time, for the blow which fell on my arm was heavy enough to have broken that for which it was intended.

The look of passionate gratitude the boy gave me I shall not soon forget.

“Oh, signore!” he faltered, “you are hurt—and for me!”

I silenced him by a gesture.

“Come, we must have no quarrelling,” I said. “Give us some more music, my boy, to restore harmony.”

He shook his head.

“I can play no more to-night, the music is gone out of me,” he answered sadly, as he restored the violin to its case. “I thank you a hundred times, signore, for the pleasure you have given me. I understand now,” he added quaintly, “why the old painters make their angels play the violin. Such a one as this is indeed worthy to make music in heaven. I suppose—” he hesitated “I suppose it cost a great deal of money?”

“That is a Stradivarius; it cost eight hundred pounds—twenty thousand lire.”

Rosso paused in the act of filling his pipe, and looked round at me incredulously.

“Twenty thousand lire for a fiddle!”

“Si, si!” the boy asserted eagerly. “I have heard that violins by that maker cost a fortune now. He died nearly two hundred years ago, and no one can make them as he did. He gave a soul to the wood and strings.”

The man looked at me oddly, as he stuffed tobacco into his pipe.

“Twenty thousand lire!” he muttered, “your excellency must be a millionaire; to spend so much money on a superfluity.”

“But the signore is a musician,” Tonio answered for me; “his violin is not a superfluity, but a necessary—non e vero, signore?”

I left the question unanswered, and hastened to change the subject. I did not quite relish the turn the conversation had taken, and I liked still less the curious furtive looks my host now cast at me from time to time, as if he were revolving in his mind some new and pregnant idea.

I noticed also that he and the old woman exchanged glances, and once she crossed the hearth to hold a whispered conference with him, which, I could not help seeing, referred to myself.

I felt vaguely uncomfortable, and wished, more than once, that I could have found quarters for the night elsewhere.

It was too late to seek them now, however, and as the evening was advanced, and I was tired and drowsy, I presently asked to be taken to my room.

Tonio sprang up to light me, but his uncle thrust him aside.

“Carry the knapsack—thou,” he said, taking the lamp from his hand, and preceded me up the staircase, and along an icy-cold, draughty stone corridor to the chamber allotted to me.

It was a large, bleak, inhospitable room, with a tiled floor and frescoed ceiling, containing no furniture but a bed, a washing-stand, two chairs, and a table, and no ornaments save a ghastly old picture of the Crucifixion, and a vessel for holy water—dry. Its barred window looked down on the ravine at the back of the house. My landlord closed the casement, trimmed the flickering oil-lamp, and dismissing Tonio with a nod, turned to me.

“Your Excellency leaves to-morrow?” he said, with a sudden change of manner from rudeness to servility, which struck me as sinister. I assented.

“Your Excellency is travelling quite alone?”

“I am alone now, as you perceive,” I answered, shortly, “but I expect to meet friends at Arezzo.”

“Arezzo? Ah, Arezzo is a long way off,” he remarked, with a peculiar intonation. “The roads are rough, and not always safe for lonely travellers.”

“I do not travel unarmed,” I returned, and taking my revolver from my pocket, I placed it, with ostentatious carelessness, on the table near the window.

“A wise precaution,” he rejoined, with an equivocal smile. “Well, I wish you a good-night, Excellenza, and pleasant dreams.”

He had got as far as the door, when he turned as if recollecting something. “I forgot to see if the window was properly fastened,” he explained, and after fumbling with it for a moment, pronounced all safe, and retired.

I drew a breath of relief when he was gone, then locked the door, and having by a careful survey of the room ascertained that there was no other means of entrance, I felt somewhat reassured.

Resolving, however, to be on the alert, I threw myself, dressed as I was, on the bed, leaving the lamp burning. I had not realised before I lay down how tired I was, so tired that even the sense of possible danger could not long keep me awake. Sleep fell upon me unawares—a deep dreamless sleep which must have lasted several hours.

What woke me? I did not know. I seemed to glide back imperceptibly to consciousness, lingering for a few blissful moments on the dim borderland between sleep and waking.

Drowsily listening, I heard the monotonous murmur of the stream in the ravine below, but it seemed to mingle with another sound within the room—as if someone were lightly touching the strings of a violin close to my ear.

The lamp had burnt out, and the chamber was only dimly lighted by the rising moon. As I stirred and half raised myself, a hand was placed softly on my lips, and a voice murmured:

“Hush, it is I—‘Tonio! I wanted to wake you gently, that you might not cry out.”

“What is it? What has happened?” I whispered.

He put his lips to my ear.

“You are in danger. The padrone is plotting to rob, perhaps to murder you. I heard him talking just now to the grandmother. He thinks you are a rich man; he suspects that you have money about you. Besides, there is the violin. In another moment he will be here.”

“But the door is locked.”

“The door is not locked, or how could I have got in? The lock has been tampered with. And your revolver is gone,” he added. “My uncle took it when he returned to fasten the window. Up, quick, signore! Here is your knapsack and violin! There is not a moment to be lost.”

“But what can I do?” I questioned. “Unarmed, I am helpless; caught like a rat in a trap!”

“No, there is a way of escape, if you are quick and bold enough. We shall hear him coming along the corridor. You must stand here, close against the wall, and directly he opens the door, make a rush for it. Throw yourself on him and trip him up, if possible, then follow me, and I will see you safe out of the house. If—” he broke off with a start. “He is coming,” he breathed; “are you ready?”

“Quite ready,” I answered grimly, a pleasant sense of excitement tingling in all my veins.

The boy had taken his stand at my side, and his slender hand—cold, but firm and steady, gripped mine in the darkness.

We stood, with suspended breath, watching the door. Slowly, cautiously, silently, it opened inwards, and Rosso’s villainous figure appeared on the threshold.

I was prepared to spring on him the moment he set foot in the room, but quick as I was, Tonio was quicker.

With reckless daring he literally flung himself on the murderous villain who, startled by this unexpected attack, staggered back, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the stone floor, where he lay like a log, stunned and motionless.

“Follow me—quick!” my companion cried, scrambling to his feet, for he had fallen with the other.

Brushing past the old woman who was lurking at the end of the corridor, he led the way downstairs, across the kitchen, and out at a back door.

I have a vague recollection that we hurried through a neglected garden, and down a steep rocky slope to the stony bed of the stream, over which a few planks were thrown. Up the opposite bank we climbed, among rocks and bushes, and finally, to my surprise and relief, found ourselves in the broad high-road, which crossed the ravine by a stone bridge, half-a-mile lower down. Then, and not till then, we paused to take breath.

Looking back, we could see the inn on the opposite bank, dark and silent.

“You are safe now; he will not dare to follow you,” my companion panted; “besides, I believe he is badly hurt.”

“He has his deserts,” I returned. “But what is to become of you, my boy? You cannot go back to that cut-throat’s den.”

“I have nowhere else to go,” he answered forlornly.

I laid my hand on his shoulder.

“Come with me!” I exclaimed. “You have saved my life, and I will do my best to make yours happy. You shall learn music, and who knows? you may be a great artist, some day.”

He clasped his hands, looking up at me as if hardly daring to believe his ears.

“Signore—you do not mean it! You will take me away with you—now, at once?”

“This very moment, if you will come. We will go together to Arezzo, and thence to Rome. You shall turn your back for ever on the old life, and begin a new and happier one. Look, the day is breaking, it is a good omen.”

He glanced towards the east, where the “awful rose of dawn” was slowly unfolding. His face, transfigured by that supernatural light, reminded me of one of Fra Angelico’s boy angels. Then he turned to me, and—But why should I try to repeat the words in which he poured out his joy and gratitude? I could not do justice to his simple eloquence. It is enough to say that we went on our way together, mutually satisfied with the arrangement, and three days later we were at Florence.

•    •    •    •

At this point, the dressing-bell sounded, and my friend paused.

“But that is not the end of the story?” I exclaimed. “You have not told me what became of your young protégé. Did he fulfil your expectations, is he a great artist?”

Panescourt shook his head sadly.

“He would have been had he lived, but—Antonio Cherici was one of those whom the gods love. He has long since been ‘making music in heaven.’”

The Mystery of Miss Carew

(Sep. 1895)

“Jack, is it your intention to many Mrs. Winthrop?”

“If she will do me the honour to accept me—it is.” This point-blank inquiry and decisive reply were exchanged between myself, Wilfrid Madeley, and my friend, Jack Davenant, one autumn evening five years ago, as we stood on the terrace of the hotel at Bürgenstock, near Lucerne.

“Bürgenstock,” as perhaps some of my readers are aware, is a lofty wooded promontory, which juts out abruptly on the east side of the lake of Lucerne. A funicular railway shoots up almost perpendicularly from the shore to the summit of the cliff, which is crowned by a big white hotel, where my friend and I had been spending our autumn holiday. We were both barristers, but I was perforce a hard worker, while Davenant merely “coquetted with the law,” having independent means.

“Is there any just cause or impediment why I should not marry Mrs. Winthrop?” he demanded, turning his handsome bronzed face towards me.

“No ‘cause’ whatever; she is an excellent match in every sense of the word, and you are a lucky man if you win her. But there may be an ‘impediment.’ Her sister, Miss Carew, has evidently made up her mind, for reasons best known to herself, that Mrs. Winthrop shall not marry again if she can prevent it.”

“But fortunately she can’t prevent it,” he interrupted. “If Stella—Mrs. Winthrop—loves me, as I hope and believe she does, it is not likely she will give me up at the bidding of that interfering old maid.”

“She would be very foolish to do so. But she seems to be in the habit of yielding to her sister, and even to be a little afraid of her, which surprises me, for Miss Carew does not give one the impression of being a particularly strong-willed or strong-minded person.”

“Not strong-minded certainly,” he acquiesced. “In fact it has occurred to me more than once that she is a little bit,” he touched his forehead significantly, “and perhaps that is the reason Mrs. Winthrop gives way to her, not to irritate her by opposition. Haven’t you noticed her nervous restless manner, and the scared sort of look she has, as if she had once seen a ghost and had never got over it?”

I laughed.

“She is sane enough to make herself uncommonly disagreeable sometimes,” I remarked; “but to do her justice, she seems devoted to her sister, though in a jealous sort of way that must be rather trying.”

“Trying? Stella must be an angel to endure it!” he exclaimed. “Poor darling, her life has not been a very bright one hitherto. Married at eighteen to a man old enough to be her father, who kept her shut up like a nun, and now, tormented by the tyranny and surveillance of a jealous old-maid sister! But if she will trust herself to me, the future shall atone for the past,” he added, more to himself than to me, and returned to his contemplation of the view.

At a giddy depth below us lay the “Lake of the Four Cantons,” calm as a mirror in the evening stillness, while to right and left, like twin sentinels, rose the majestic forms of the Righi and Mount Pilatus. The sun had set long ago, but the golden glow still lingered, and all the air seemed luminous.

Dinner was over, and the Bürgenstock guests, among whom Germans predominated, were trooping out on to the terrace to drink coffee and enjoy the cool evening air. Trim waitresses bustled about, the hotel band began to play, and presently an electric lamp was strung up to a pole above our heads, illuminating the terrace a giorno.

“Here they are at last!” Jack exclaimed, after many expectant glances over his shoulder, and he went forward to meet two ladies who had just emerged from the house.

Except in figure and complexion, both being fair, and both tall and slender, the sisters were as great a contrast as could well be imagined. Mrs. Winthrop was a fragile, girlish-looking woman of three or four-and-twenty, with soft appealing blue eyes, and arched brows, which gave her face a look of innocent surprise. It was a face which, if not actually beautiful, was singularly attractive; none the less so, perhaps, for the suggestion of weakness in the pretty curved lips and dimpled chin. Miss Carew was at least ten years her sister’s senior, and looked even older than her age, thanks to her worn features and pallid complexion. Her manner was nervous and abrupt, and her eyes—fine brown eyes, which redeemed her face from plainness—had at times, as Jack had remarked, a curiously startled look, as if the shadow of some great fear had passed over her.

“How late you are!” was my friend’s greeting. “Dinner was over half-an-hour ago.” He placed a chair for the young widow as he spoke, leaving me to perform the same office for her sister.

“It took me exactly half-an-hour to convince Edith that it was not too cold to sit out of doors,” she answered, laughing; “and having been ‘convinced against her will,’ she is naturally ‘of the same opinion still.’”

“The air is chilly,” Miss Carew asserted, as she drew round her shoulders a voluminous grey woollen shawl.

“You would be more sheltered at the other end of the terrace,” Jack suggested with empressement. “Madeley, why don’t you move Miss Carew’s chair over there?”

“Thank you, I will stay where I am,” she rejoined drily, as she subsided into her seat, and produced the complicated piece of knitting without which she was seldom seen.

Mrs. Winthrop laughed again, that pretty ringing little laugh of hers which was almost too frequent.

“Edith will freeze rather than desert the post of duty,” she said. “‘J’y suis, j’y reste’ is her motto.”

“But may I ask why she considers it her duty to mount guard over you so persistently?” Davenant inquired, lowering his voice. “I thought a widow could dispense with a chaperon.”

“So one would think,” she answered with a little shrug, “but to Edith I am still a girl, to be watched and guarded. It is rather irritating sometimes, but she is so good, so devoted, that I cannot complain. I know that she loves me dearly.”

He looked at her adoringly.

“If it is a merit to love you,” he began, “then I—”

She interrupted him with a tap of her fan.

“Hush! this is too public a place for sentiment. How full the terrace is to-night, and how loud those Germans talk!” she added, glancing over her shoulder at a particularly noisy group near us, the central figure of which was a stout black-eyed lady with strongly-marked Jewish features, who was attired with more splendour than the occasion seemed to warrant.

“Those dulcet tones are not German,” I remarked; “it is Mrs. Solomans, the stock-broker’s wife.”

The young widow changed her position to have a better view of the Jewess.

“Her diamonds are splendid,” she said softly after a pause.

Miss Carew, who had apparently been absorbed in counting stitches, looked up quickly.

“Shocking bad form to wear them at a table-d’hôte,” she remarked, in her abrupt way.

“And not very safe,” Davenant added, lowering his voice; “there is a thief in the house. The manager tells me that within the last fortnight several guests have missed small articles of jewellery. But the curious part of the matter is,” he continued, “that the things have since been returned to their owners as mysteriously as they were taken. There is something rather uncanny about it—things vanishing and reappearing as if by some invisible agency.”

“You make me quite nervous,” Mrs. Winthrop declared, half laughing, half serious. “I hope—Are you going, Edith?” she broke off, as Miss Carew began to roll up her knitting.

“Yes, I am cold,” the latter replied, with a shiver. “You had better come indoors too; it is getting late.”

The young widow hesitated, but meeting her lover’s pleading gaze, she answered with unusual decision:

“Not yet; I will join you presently.”

Her sister seemed about to speak again, but changed her mind, and walked away in silence.

Soon afterwards I also discreetly vanished, leaving Davenant to make the most of his opportunity. An hour later, looking from my window, I saw the lovers still tête-à-tête, apparently unconscious of the fact that Miss Carew, grim and inscrutable as one of the Fates, was watching them from the steps of the verandah.

II

“Well, Jack, am I to congratulate you?” I asked my friend the following day, as we were smoking after lunch in a shady nook of the shrubbery.

“Congratulate me on what?” he demanded moodily.

“On having won the fair widow, for I suppose you came to an understanding last night? Surely she has not refused you!” I added, noticing his gloomy expression.

“She neither refused nor accepted me,” he answered, discontentedly. “I could not get her to give me a definite answer. She acknowledged that she cared for me, but talked mysteriously of an obstacle between us, and when I asked her what it was, began to cry. Of course the ‘obstacle’ is Miss Carew—confound her!” he concluded, flicking the ash from his cigar.

“Cheer up; it’ll all come right!” I told him consolingly. “Rather than you should be disappointed, I’ll marry the ‘obstacle’ myself.”

“Thanks, old boy, that would indeed be a proof of friendship,” he rejoined laughing, as he rose and stretched himself. “How intolerably hot it is! I’m going to get an iced ‘soda.’ Au revoir!” and he strolled away.

The heat was indeed overpowering, and seemed to increase rather than diminish as the sultry afternoon wore on. Lightly clad as I was, my clothes oppressed me. My very ring—a sapphire, in a massive old-fashioned setting—was an inconvenience. I took it off, and placing it on the rustic table before me, resumed the novel which I had been reading before Davenant joined me.

But the book was dull, and I was drowsy. The distant voices of the indefatigable lawn-tennis players, and the muffled plaint of the much-enduring piano, which reached me through an open window, mingled together in a confused and soothing murmur. I fell into a doze, and from that into a sound sleep. I must have slept some time, for when I woke it was getting dusk.

Before my waking senses fully returned, I had a hazy idea that someone or something had been near me in the arbour; I even fancied that I had caught sight of a woman’s figure in the act of leaving it, but when I roused myself and looked round, no one was visible. A glance at my watch showed me that it was time to dress for dinner, and I was moving away, when I remembered my ring, and turned to take it from the table.

To my surprise and dismay it was no longer there.

I looked under the bench, among the bushes, and in every nook and corner of the place—in vain. The mysterious thief had paid me a visit while I slept, and the ring was gone!

I felt that I had only my own carelessness to thank for the loss, but it was none the less vexatious, for the ring was a valuable one. I could only hope that it would eventually be returned, as other missing articles had been.

At dinner I related my adventure, drawing forth a chorus of excited questions and exclamations from everyone within hearing.

“You think it was a woman?” Davenant asked, when he could make himself heard.

“I am convinced of it. I caught sight of her figure as she left the arbour, and if I had awakened a few seconds earlier, I should have surprised her in flagrante delicto.”

I happened to glance, as I spoke, at Miss Carew, who was sitting opposite, and met a look which startled me. If ever a face told a guilty fear, hers did at that moment. The look passed as quickly as a breath from a mirror, but it had been there, and it suggested to my mind a suspicion which I dismissed the next moment as extravagant and absurd. How was it possible to suppose that a wealthy and well-bred woman would condescend to petty pilfering!

Still, that look haunted me.

A sort of chill seemed to have fallen upon us; Mrs. Winthrop looked pale and disturbed, and I hastened to change the subject. The sisters left the table before dessert, and to Jack’s disappointment, did not appear after dinner.

Later in the evening I had occasion to go upstairs to fetch my cigar-case. I was approaching my bedroom door when it suddenly opened, and to my astonishment, Miss Carew emerged from the apartment.

She stopped short on seeing me, and for a moment we stood face to face, looking at each other in silence.

Then, as if taking a sudden resolution, she said, with a sort of desperate composure: “I have returned your ring, Mr. Madeley.”

“My ring!” I echoed. “Then,” the words escaped me involuntarily, “then it was you who took it!”

She inclined her head without speaking, standing before me like a criminal awaiting sentence. I gazed at her in perplexity. She could not be in her right mind, I told myself, yet there were no signs of insanity about her at this moment. Her face was simply a blank page which told nothing.

“My dear Miss Carew,” I said, forcing a smile, “what induced you to do such a thing? Was it meant as a joke?”

“You can think so if you like,” she muttered, without raising her eyes.

Her manner provoked me.

“I should advise you to give up such ‘jokes’ in future,” I said drily; “they are rather a dangerous form of pleasantry, and might get you into difficulties.”

“Shall you—do you intend to denounce me?” she asked, huskily.

“If anything of the sort occurs again, I shall be compelled to do so,” I returned; “but in the meantime I shall keep silence for your sister’s sake.”

She raised her eyes to my face with a strange look; a look that seemed full of meaning, though I had not the clue to it.

“Thank you,” she said, quietly, and before I could speak again, she walked past me down the corridor.

III

Three days passed uneventfully, and brought us to Thursday evening, when the weekly soiree dansante took place. It was held in the large dining-hall of the hotel, which made a capital ball-room.

Not being a dancing man, I seldom attended these affairs, and was inclined to grumble when deprived of my natural rest by the noise of revelry in which I did not share.

At about ten o’clock I looked in, on my way upstairs, and found the ball in full swing. Davenant and Mrs. Winthrop whirled passed me to the strains of the “Endymion Valse.” They both looked radiantly happy, but it struck me that there was something feverish in the young widow’s gaiety. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes unnaturally bright, and her laugh had a half-hysterical ring. She seemed as the Scotch say, “fey.” Near the curtained doorway where I stood, a row of “wall-flowers” and chaperons were seated, among whom were Miss Carew and Mrs. Solomans. The latter, as usual was absurdly over-dressed, with half the contents of a jeweller’s show-case displayed on her neck and arms.

As Davenant and his partner walked past at the conclusion of the valse, I saw him laughingly direct her attention to the Jewess. The young widow looked at her carelessly, glancing over her shoulder as they passed on. Miss Carew also was watching her stout neighbour with a curious intent look, as if she were appraising the value of every jewel she wore.

Presently I retired to my room, but not to sleep; I felt wakeful and restless.

Before midnight the music ceased, there was a sound of footsteps and voices in the corridor as the guests dispersed to their different rooms, and I heard Davenant enter his, which adjoined my own. Then by degrees, silence settled down upon the sleeping house—silence utter and complete.

Feeling that if I went to bed, I should not sleep this sultry night, I took a chair out on to the broad stone balcony, on which all the rooms of the first-floor front opened. The suite occupied by Mrs. Winthrop and her sister were to the left, over the entrance, while my right-hand neighbour was Mrs. Solomans, whose sonorous snoring reached me distinctly through her open window.

It was a magical night. All the circle of the heavens glittered with stars, the lake and mountains lying in a tranced stillness beneath. To look up at that shining host in the thrilling silence of a night like this made one feel lonely and insignificant, giving one a sense of the immeasurable space which lies above and around this puny world of ours, the vast spheres of existence apart from our little life, and never to be explored by us.

I rose at last, and retreated to my room, to shut myself in from the wide vague night and the haunting presence of the stars. I had hardly quitted the balcony, when my ear caught the sound of a light footfall approaching along it from the left. As I drew back into the shadow of the room, a woman’s figure glided past—a tall slender figure—-with a grey woollen shawl thrown over the head and shoulders. She walked swiftly but stealthily past my window, her long light wrapper trailing after her, and disappeared in the direction of Mrs. Solomans’ apartment.

“So,” I thought, “in spite of my warning, Miss Carew is at her old tricks again!”

What was to be done? Should I follow and prevent her from carrying out her purpose, or would it be better to wait till she emerged, and—— While I still hesitated, there came from the next room a sound of something dropped on the parquet floor.

The Jewess’s rhythmical breathing ceased all at once. There was a smothered exclamation, then a loud startled cry, which rang through the silence.

I lingered no longer, but obeying an impulse of irresistible curiosity, hurried down the balcony and looked in through the open French window.

The electric light had been turned on, and showed me Mrs. Solomans in a graceful deshabille, just as she had sprung out of bed, clutching the wrist of the intruder, who stood as if petrified, her head bent low, and her shawl half covering her face. At the same moment Davenant’s voice sounded behind me.

“What’s the matter? what has happened?” he exclaimed, looking over my shoulder. “Hallo, Mrs. Solomans, have you caught the thief?”

“Yes, I have caught the thief,” she answered, in a curious tone, glancing towards him. The muffled figure made a sudden movement as if to escape, but Davenant placed himself in the way.

“No, no, madame or mademoiselle,” he said, with ironical politeness, “you must not leave us till we have seen your face,” and before she could prevent him, he drew the shawl away.

After one glance at the features which were revealed, he fell back with a gasp of astonishment.

“Good heavens—Stella!”

It was indeed Mrs. Winthrop who stood there, white and trembling, her face vacant with fear.

“Stella?” he repeated after a moment; “why are you here?”

“Is it necessary to ask that question?” Mrs. Solomans exclaimed, with an angry laugh. “Look! she has my necklet-case in her hand at this moment!” She pointed to it with a fat forefinger. “Luckily she dropped something and woke me, or—”

She was interrupted by the appearance of Miss Carew, who put us aside without ceremony and entered the room. She was very pale, but looked neither surprised nor alarmed. There was a composed dignity about her which I had never noticed before.

“Is my sister here?” she asked quietly, addressing Mrs. Solomans. “She has been walking in her sleep.”

“Edith, I am here. Take me away, oh, take me away, and hide me,” the young widow cried, in a tone of anguish, rushing to her, and hiding her face on her shoulder.

The elder woman folded her arms round the trembling figure with a look of protecting tenderness which transfigured her face.

“Yes, darling, come,” she said soothingly.

“I am sorry you have been disturbed,” she added with a smile, addressing Mrs. Solomans, who stood transfixed. “Good-night.”

Drawing her sister’s arm through her own, she led the way along the balcony to the sitting-room they occupied, and turning at the door, beckoned to Davenant and myself to enter.

Mrs. Winthrop threw herself on a couch and buried her face in her hands, sobbing hysterically.

In a moment her lover was on his knees at her side.

“Stella, my darling,” he began, taking her hand; “do not distress yourself. You have had a bad dream; try to forget it—”

She started at his touch, and raised herself, confronting him with a face so changed, so wild and haggard, that the words died upon his lips.

“Do not speak to me—do not touch me,” she breathed, shrinking from him. “I am not worthy of your love. I am—what that woman called me just now”—her voice sank to a horrified whisper—“a thief!”

He drew back involuntarily, gazing at her in speechless astonishment. “What are you saying?” he exclaimed; “you were not conscious of what you were doing. You were asleep—”

She shook her head.

“I was not asleep—though it seems now like a dream. Edith will tell you that.” She broke off with a cry of pain, putting both hands to her temples. “My head—my head,” she moaned, and with a long shuddering sigh, fell back insensible.

Davenant rose slowly, his face white to the lips.

“Is she raving, or is this horrible thing true?” he asked hoarsely turning to Miss Carew.

She did not answer him until she had laid her sister’s nerveless figure upon the couch, and arranged the cushions under her head. Then she turned to him with a face almost as white as his own.

“It is true,” she said quietly; “but—”

She held up her hand as he was about to speak. “You must pity, not condemn, her. She is no more to be blamed for this unhappy mania than if it were a physical ailment.”

“Mania?” he repeated quickly; “ah, I understand.”

“Yes; a mania she has had since childhood. The temptation comes upon her as a sudden overmastering impulse. She acts automatically, as if under the pressure of a will stronger than her own, and retains no recollection of her action. There are intervals during which the malady seems dormant, and then again it attacks her—as it has since we came here.”

He drew a deep breath and was silent a moment.

“Miss Carew, you should have told me this before,” were his next words.

“You have a right to reproach me,” she acknowledged; “but I hoped to find a means of separating you from her without revealing this miserable secret, which it has been the purpose of my life to conceal. But now that you know it,” she continued, “you understand how impossible it is that she can be your wife, and in mercy to her you will go away, and never seek to see her again.”

“But she is young: she may be cured,” I suggested.

“Never! Mr. Winthrop had that hope when he married her—for of course we had warned him; but all his love and care were in vain. No—death only can remove the blight which rests upon her mind.”

Davenant turned and looked at the inanimate figure on the couch, so pathetic in its helplessness. “How can I leave her? I love her—I love her!” he cried passionately.

“If you love her, do not torture her. Go before she wakes, and spare her the pain of saying Good-bye.”

He stood for a moment irresolute, then stooped and kissed again and again the closed eyes and sweet cold lips, and muttering some inarticulate words of farewell, turned and hurried from the room.

•    •    •    •

The next day we left Bürgenstock, and my friend never saw Mrs. Winthrop again. Little more than a year afterwards the tidings reached him of her death, and even he, who had loved her, could not but feel that she was mercifully taken.

The Secret of Lyston Hall

(Aug. 1897)

I

“It certainly is most mysterious,” said Mrs. Morland emphatically laying down her knitting.

The Honourable and Reverend Francis Morland, Vicar of Lyston Magna, to whom the words were addressed, looked up from the pages of the Guardian.

“What is mysterious, my dear?” he inquired. His companion was silent a moment, tapping her lip thoughtfully with her knitting-needle as she looked out through the open window at the garden, now in all its midsummer beauty.

The Vicarage was a handsome, dignified old house, which stood with an air of aristocratic seclusion, in the midst of its smooth lawns and brilliant flower-beds. Its grounds were divided by a belt of shrubbery from those of Lyston Hall, whose Tudor chimneys were just visible, peeping above the trees.

“I was thinking of the Lystons,” she explained at last; “of the strange manner in which they have secluded themselves since their return from abroad. One would suppose that after a four years’ absence they would be glad to welcome their neighbours, particularly such old and intimate friends as ourselves. But they go nowhere, and receive no one. Except for one formal call from Lady Lyston in return for mine, we have seen nothing of them since their arrival six weeks ago.”

“It seems to me that we have seen a good deal of one member of the family,” Mr. Morland remarked drily, glancing towards the lawn, where two figures, a young man and a girl, were seated on a bench under a spreading cedar-tree.

The young man was Julian Lyston, son and heir of the master of the Hall, and the girl, Evlyn Morland, the vicar’s only child.

“Julian? yes, poor fellow, he is glad to come. It is the only change he has from the dismal monotony of life at the Hall. But if Sir Richard knew of his visits here, even that innocent pleasure would be tabooed.”

Mr. Morland’s brows contracted.

“Do you mean that his father objects to his coming to my house?”

“It appears so. But in fact he objects to his going anywhere, and if he had his way, would make his son as great a recluse as himself. Julian says that they live as if the Hall were in a state of siege. No one is allowed to enter or leave it except on special business, and all the park gates are kept locked, except the wicket leading into our shrubbery, which, fortunately has been overlooked. Sir Richard was always eccentric,” she concluded, “but it seems as if his eccentricity were developing into something like—” she touched her forehead significantly.

The vicar nodded gravely.

“There is insanity in the family,” he said. “The old baronet, Julian’s grandfather, was ‘under restraint’ for years before he died.”

He rose and stood for a moment looking at the group under the cedar, and his frown deepened.

“Julian and Evlyn seem to be on very familiar terms,” he remarked, in a tone of disapproval.

“That is not surprising, considering that they have known each other all their lives, and were almost like brother and sister in the old days.”

“H’m!” Mr. Morland stroked his chin reflectively. “And has he only a ‘brotherly’ affection for her still?”

His wife laughed.

“Of course it is something more than that now. Anyone can see that he is passionately in love with her.”

“And she?”

“I don’t know what Evlyn’s feelings are, and I question whether she knows herself. She is very fond of Julian, but I sometimes fear that she cares more for Gilbert Conyers—who, of course is quite impossible.”

“Why ‘impossible’?” the vicar demanded, turning suddenly with his hands in his pockets.

She raised her eyebrows. “Surely you would never consent to her marrying a mere country surgeon, without fortune or position?”

“But with ability to make both,” he put in. “Conyers is the cleverest man I know, and the best. A man to whose keeping I could entrust the child’s happiness without a doubt.”

“And could you not trust Julian?” she returned half reproachfully. “I am sure that no one could be more amiable than he is, and as to cleverness, I have heard you say yourself that those poems of his show real genius.”

“I don’t deny it. I like and admire the lad as much as you do; but he is not suited to Evlyn. She needs the guidance of a stronger will. Besides, there is another objection—the family infirmity. Julian has escaped it; but how can we tell that it might not reappear in his children? No,” he concluded with decision; “it will not do. If that is the object of his visits here, they must cease.”

Mrs. Morland looked a protest, but did not utter it, knowing that when the Vicar spoke in that tone, argument was useless.

Meantime, the young couple under the cedar-tree were improving the shining hours in their own fashion, all unconscious of the shadow of coming separation.

Julian had changed his position, and was now lying on the grass at his companion’s feet, his head supported on his hand, his fine dark eyes—the eyes of a poet and a dreamer—fixed adoringly on her face.

Evlyn took the adoration composedly, being well-accustomed to such tribute, and, if the truth must be told, somewhat spoilt by it.

She was a tall, slender girl of eighteen, with that radiant yet delicate complexion which only English air and English habits can produce; a pretty, wilful mouth, and clear blue eyes, which as yet had looked only on the sunny surface of life, seeing nothing of the depths beneath. At this moment they were unusually soft and dreamy; but she was gazing away from her companion, as if her thoughts were elsewhere.

“I wish I were an artist, that I might paint you just as you look now!” Julian exclaimed, after a moment’s silence.

She roused herself from her abstraction with a laugh.

“Immortalise me in a sonnet,” she suggested demurely.

“I am going to immortalise you in a whole volume of sonnets, under the name of ‘April’s Lady,’” he replied.

“And pray, why ‘April’s Lady’?”

“Because no April day was ever more capricious,” he declared. “This afternoon, for example, you are all that is sweet and gracious. To-morrow, perhaps, you will not have a word or a smile for me; they will all be given to my pet aversion, Gilbert Conyers.”

She coloured consciously and looked away.

“I don’t know why you dislike Mr. Conyers,” she said, after a pause. “He is a favourite with everyone but yourself.”

“He is a favourite with you, I am aware,” her lover answered resentfully. “You can scarcely expect me to feel much affection for a man who I know is my rival—and a dangerous rival too.”

“You foolish, jealous boy!” the girl exclaimed, letting her hand rest caressingly a moment on his dark hair. “As if there could be any comparison between my feelings of you and for him! He is only a recent acquaintance, whereas I have known you all my life.”

“And I am still first in your heart?” he asked eagerly, raising himself, and detaining her hand. “You do not—”

“Hush!” she interrupted, glancing across the lawn. “Here is papa piloting a visitor—your ‘pet aversion’ himself! Now do be civil to him for once.”

He dropped her hand and rose hastily, his handsome face darkening with a look of jealous hostility as he turned towards the newcomer.

The surgeon was a long-limbed, spare, athletic man of thirty, with a fine, strong, intellectual face, which might, perhaps, have seemed somewhat hard but for the kindly gleam in the honest brown eyes which lighted it. They had a questioning, wistful look as he greeted Evlyn, then turned to shake hands with young Lyston.

“I have just come from the Hall,” he remarked, addressing the latter.

“How did you find my father?” Julian inquired.

“Much as usual. He was asking for you, and seemed uneasy at your absence.”

“Well, really, I cannot be perpetually chained to his side,” was the reply, in a tone of suppressed irritation. “My liberty is sufficiently curtailed as it is. If he were really ill, I should think it no hardship; but there is nothing serious the matter with him, as you must be aware, though you think proper—very injudiciously in my opinion—to humour his morbid fancies.”

“May I not possibly be the best judge of what is good for my patient?” the surgeon rejoined quietly.

“Of course,” Mr. Morland put in. “And, Julian,” he added, “you must forgive me for saying that I would rather you did not visit us so frequently if your father objects, as I am told he does.”

The young man flushed, then paled.

“Does this mean that you forbid me the house, sir?” he faltered.

“It means,” the Vicar answered in his firmest tone, “that I will not have you coming here clandestinely. It puts us in a false position.”

Young Lyston bit his lip and was silent a moment.

“Very well, sir,” he said sullenly, “I will come no more.”

“Oh, papa—” Evlyn began, but the Vicar, having launched his shaft, had thought it prudent to beat a retreat, and was already on his way to the house.

Julian drew her aside.

“No matter, dearest,” he whispered; “though I am turned out of paradise, we will find a way of meeting. If you love me, I will never give you up. Life without you would not be worth living. Only be true to me, Evlyn—be true or you will break my heart!”

He wrung her hand, looking with passionate entreaty into her face, then, without a glance at Gilbert Conyers, crossed the lawn to the shrubbery and disappeared.

“It is most unkind and unjust of papa,” she declared indignantly, looking after her lover’s retreating figure. “What has poor Julian done, that he should be banished in this way?”

“Does his ‘banishment’ grieve you so deeply?” her companion asked with a searching glance at her. “You make me think—you make me fear that he is more to you than I supposed.”

“He is a dear friend, almost like a brother.”

“And nothing more?”

“You have no right to ask the question,” was her rejoinder.

“I might reply that my own feelings for you give me the right,” he said quietly; “but it is not of myself that I am thinking now, it is of you, and your happiness. You have not—” his voice had a thrill of anxiety—“you have not engaged yourself to Lyston?”

“I have engaged myself to no one,” she answered lightly, “and have no intention of doing so at present. And now, if you have quite finished cross-examining me, perhaps you will come in to tea?”

“Presently. Let us take a turn in the linden-walk first.”

She hesitated and seemed about to refuse, but he coolly drew her hand through his arm, and she yielded, as she generally found herself doing, to the quiet mastery of his will, which fascinated her, though she chafed against it.

They walked on a few paces in silence beneath the over-arching boughs, which tempered the strong June sunshine to a soft green twilight, cool and shadowy.

“You say that it is no concern of mine to whom your affections are given,” he began at last. “Have you quite forgotten then what I said to you under these very trees a month ago? and the question I asked you—a question which has not yet been answered?”

She made no reply, but her face showed that she remembered.

“I told you that I loved you, dear,” he continued, “and I asked if you would be my wife. You said that you must have time for consideration—you did not know your own mind.”

“And now I seem to know it less than ever,” she declared.

His face clouded.

“You are not treating me fairly,” he said, in a tone she had never heard from him before. “I cannot consent to wait indefinitely, while you balance my claims against those of Julian Lyston. You must choose between us once and for all. Come, Evlyn,” he added more gently, “you have kept me in suspense long enough, do not try me further. I want only three words, but all your heart must come with them.”

He laid his other hand on hers, holding it with a close warm pressure which thrilled her as no touch of Julian’s had ever done.

“Is it so difficult to say, ‘I love you’?” he whispered.

The girl trembled, and her colour faded. A chord in her nature, which had never yet been touched, vibrated to his tone. She felt that it would be only too easy to speak the words he longed to hear. They seemed to surge straight from her heart to her lips. But with Julian’s pale pleading face still haunting her, and his passionate entreaty ringing in her ears, she could not bring herself to utter them.

“I cannot answer you now—it is impossible,” she said hurriedly. “Another time—not now!”

He looked at her a moment in silence. His face was grave and anxious.

“So be it,” he answered, coldly. “I will wait your pleasure, though this procrastination is neither kind nor wise. You are trifling with the hearts of two men who love you—a cruel pastime—and possibly a dangerous one.”

“That sounds like a threat,” she exclaimed, with a forced smile.

“No, it is merely a warning,” he answered, and said no more.

Those warning words were destined to recur to her not long afterwards with all the force of a prophecy fulfilled.

II

On a bright afternoon about a week later, Evlyn was on her way to the Hall, having been summoned thither very unexpectedly by a note from Lady Lyston herself—a note couched in as affectionate and familiar terms as if there had never been a break in the friendly intercourse between the two families.

The girl found her friend in the pleasant south room which she most affected, the windows of which opened on a broad stone terrace above the garden.

Julian’s mother was a delicate fragile-looking woman, who had been beautiful, and was still fair and slender as a girl, though her face was thin and careworn.

She rose as her visitor entered, coming forward with both hands outstretched.

“I am delighted to see you, dear child,” she said, with unmistakable sincerity. “I was afraid you would not be allowed to come. I fear I have seemed sadly neglectful since our return, but—but, as you know, it is not my fault. Sir Richard’s ill-health disinclines him for society. He—”

She hesitated, glancing quickly towards the open window. A footstep sounded on the terrace outside, and Sir Richard himself paced slowly by; a tall, gaunt figure, with handsome, but lined and haggard features, and deepest melancholy dark eyes.

As he passed, Lady Lyston drew her visitor back into the shadow.

“My husband does not know that you are here; I dared not tell him,” she whispered, and was silent till he disappeared. Then she motioned her to a seat at her side, and taking her hand affectionately, continued:

“I had a special reason for wishing to see you, dear. Julian has made me the confidant of his hopes; he told me what happened the other day, and I was anxious to let you know that whatever Sir Richard and the Vicar’s views may be, I am heart and soul your ally. It has always been my dearest wish to have you for a daughter.”

“You are very kind, dear Lady Lyston,” Evlyn answered, with embarrassment, “but—but if Sir Richard objects, I could not—”

“He will yield in time, if you are firm and patient,” she said, eagerly; “I shall make him understand how desirable it is—how essential for Julian’s happiness—and yours. For you love my son, do you not, Evlyn?” she continued, looking wistfully into her companion’s face.

The girl coloured, and lowered her eyes.

“I am afraid not—in the way he wishes,” she acknowledged.

Lady Lyston’s face changed.

“You do not love him!” she exclaimed, in an altered tone. “Then you have accepted his attentions—you have won his heart, merely to amuse an idle hour, and to gratify your own vanity?”

“I did not mean—” Evlyn began.

“You did not mean,” her hostess echoed bitterly; “no, perhaps you did not mean to break his heart and wreck his life; but that is what your cruel coquetry will do. Oh, my poor boy,” she murmured, “how will he bear this blow? How shall I tell him—”

“He knows already,” said a voice behind them. It was Julian, who had entered unperceived, and was standing just within the threshold. “Will you leave us, mother?” he asked quietly. “I wish to speak to Evlyn alone.”

She gave him an anxious deprecating glance, but left the room without speaking.

“So I have been living in a fool’s paradise all these weeks?” the young man said, when they were alone, in the same quiet voice which sounded unlike his own. “You gave me the shadow—sweet looks and words that meant nothing, while Conyers had the substance—your love.”

“Julian,” she began, laying her hand on his arm. He shook it off almost roughly.

“A fool indeed I must have been to be so easily deceived,” he went on, with rising passion. “How you will laugh at me, you and he, when—”

He broke off with a passionate ejaculation, and throwing himself on the couch, buried his face in his hands.

“I did not intend to mislead you, indeed I did not,” she protested. “Forgive me, Julian! Let us be friends still, if we can be nothing more.”

“Friends? What a mockery!” he muttered. “I ask for bread, and you give me a stone.”

After a moment he raised himself, pushing back his hair, and sat, looking down, with a face so dark and moody, so changed in every line, that her heart contracted with remorse.

“Well,” he said at last, rising; “my dream is over now. I accept the inevitable. You are free, Evlyn. Good-bye, and this is indeed good-bye,” he added, “for it may be long before we meet again. I shall go away for a time and try to—forget.”

“Go away?” she echoed. “Where?”

“What does it matter? Who cares?” was the reckless reply.

“I care very much. Oh, Julian, we can’t part in this way,” she continued, almost in tears. “At least tell me where you are going. What are your plans for the future?”

“I have none; the future is a blank,” he answered gloomily. There was silence again. He paced across the room, pausing at the far end, as if deep in thought, his hand over his lips.

Presently he returned to her side.

“If you really care to see me again, before I vanish ‘into the Ewigkeit,’” he resumed, more in his usual tones than he had yet spoken, “will you meet me somewhere? Say at the Belvedere, on Monday evening, after sunset?”

“The Belvedere? That is an eerie place at dusk,” she objected “but— well, I will come.”

“Do not fail,” he rejoined.

He took her hand, looking at her fixedly, and seemed about to speak again but checked himself, and they parted without another word.

•    •    •    •

The “Belvedere” was a marble pavilion, a summer-house in the Italian style, which stood on rising ground in a secluded part of Lyston Park. It consisted merely of one octagonal room, with windows on all sides, commanding pretty sylvan views of the Park, and the wooded country beyond. This apartment had been Julian’s playroom in his boyhood, and now often served him as a study. On the day appointed for their farewell meeting, just as dusk was falling, Evlyn ascended the winding path which led up to the pavilion.

The day had been sultry, and the evening was warm and very still. Not a breath of air stirred the leaves, or broke the charmed quiet of the place, which had indeed an “eerie” look at this silent and shadowy hour. In spite of the warmth, she shivered nervously as she glanced round, and found herself first at the trysting place.

Not caring to enter, she stood between the pillars of the porch, looking down a long twilight vista towards the Hall.

A vague apprehension oppressed her, which she could not have put into words, and which was perhaps only born of the lonely spot, and melancholy hour.

As the moments wore on, bringing no sign of Julian, and dusk deepened into dark, her nervousness increased, and at last she was turning to leave the place, when she saw his figure advancing rapidly under the trees.

“Have I kept you waiting?” he asked, as he hurried up the path to her side. “I am so sorry, but I could not get away before.”

Glancing at his face, she was struck by its pallor.

“How ill you look!” she exclaimed, involuntarily.

“I have one of my nervous headaches,” he replied, taking off his hat and pushing back the hair from his forehead. “I have been in bed all day, and am supposed to be there still, awaiting a visit from Conyers. When he comes, by-and-by,” he added, with a laugh, “he will find his patient flown.”

“Suppose he should come here in search of you?” she suggested uneasily.

He laughed again, a laugh which jarred upon her.

“What a dramatic surprise if he did, and found you with me! A scene of comedy, or perhaps it might turn to tragedy—who knows? Come in, Evlyn, and sit down.”

“I cannot stay long, I shall be missed,” she said, as she followed him into the shadowy room, which felt damp and cold in contrast to the warmth outside.

Julian placed a chair for her, and sat down at her side.

“It is like old times to have you here,” he resumed, laying his hand, which was burning with fever, on hers. “Like the dear old days, long ago, when you were my child-sweetheart. Once, I remember, when we had been maying in the woods, you were tired and fell asleep here, and I carried you home with your little golden head on my shoulder. Dear golden head! Let it rest there again for a moment.”

He drew it gently down to his shoulder, and laid his cheek caressingly against it.

“Oh, ‘would that we two were maying’ once more!” he breathed, in a voice scarcely audible, “or ‘would that we two were lying under the churchyard sod’—yes, that would be best. You would be mine, then, for all Eternity.”

“But I do not care to be yours on such terms,” she answered, forcing a laugh, though his tone thrilled her, “I prefer to live and be happy.”

“As Gilbert Conyers’ wife?” he suggested, with a quick change of manner. “Is that the happy prospect you look forward to, when I am put aside and forgotten?”

Suddenly he threw his arms round her, and strained her to his heart.

“Never, never, by Heaven!” he burst out, passionately. “I will not—I cannot give you up! If you are not mine you shall never be his—I swear it!”

Startled and alarmed by his vehemence, she tried to disengage herself.

“Don’t talk so wildly! You frighten me! Let me go!”

But he only drew her more closely to him, so close that she could feel the rapid beating of his heart.

“I cannot give you up!” he repeated, hoarsely. “You are my only hope and safeguard. I am afraid of myself if I lose you—afraid lest I should yield to the devilish voices that whisper such terrible temptations.”

“Voices!” she repeated, more and more alarmed by his manner. “What do you mean?”

“Hush!” he whispered, glancing apprehensively over his shoulder. “I hear them now; they are in the air all round us—mocking tempting, urging me on to crime. I have heard them often before, but never so distinctly as to-night. Listen!”

A sudden fear, a terrible suspicion, shot through the girl’s heart like a bolt of ice.

She drew back from him, so that she could see his face in the moonlight. What she read there turned her suspicion to certainty.

There rushed back into her memory a crowd of half-forgotten words and incidents, each one of which confirmed it. She understood now the reason of Sir Richard’s constant watchfulness, and strange seclusion; she had the clue to Gilbert’s hinted warning.

It was not on the father that the family curse had fallen, but on the son. Julian was mad!

For a moment the revelation seemed to paralyse her in mind and body. She could not stir; she could not think, except to realise that she was alone with him in this desolate spot, far from help; alone, at the mercy of a madman.

Recovering from the first shock, she reflected that her best chance of safety lay in showing no fear.

“Listen!” he repeated in a thrilling whisper. “Do you not hear them?”

“I hear nothing; it is your fancy,” she faltered.

“No fancy could be so like reality; it was those voices which suggested the other day that I should meet you here; it was they who reminded me to bring this—”

She recoiled with a stifled cry, guessing rather than seeing what he drew from his breast-pocket.

“My father had hidden it away,” he said, with a laugh. “But I found it; my familiar spirits told me where it was.”

“Julian! Julian! do not kill me!” she cried wildly, losing all self-control.

“Why are you afraid?” he questioned, calmly; “what is there so terrible in death—a swift and painless death? And you shall not die alone, darling; we will go together to the silent land, ‘where beyond these voices there is peace.’ Come!”

“No, no; no!” she screamed, struggling to free herself. “You shall not! I will not die! Help, help, Gilbert!”

She uttered the name almost unconsciously, with no hope or expectation that her despairing appeal would be heard.

Her heart gave a wild leap of joy and relief when, from the park below, there came an answering cry in a voice she recognised.

Julian heard it too, and started, relaxing his hold on her wrist.

In a moment she had wrenched herself free, and darted towards door, but before she could reach it, his hand was on her wrist again, detaining her in a grasp of iron.

Still holding her, he listened, laughing softly to himself.

“This is a happy chance,” he muttered. “Conyers’ arrival makes the drama complete!”

He forced her back into the shadow of the door, and stood waiting, revolver in hand, his lips parted in a sinister smile. There was a moment of breathless silence; a moment of agony which the girl never forgot. She tried in vain to move; to utter a cry of warning. Her voice died in her throat. She could only listen with straining ears to the sound of her lover’s footsteps, hurrying up the slope, she could only think with mute anguish, that it was her voice which had summoned him, perhaps to death.

“Evlyn, are you there?” he called, with a note of astonishment in his tone.

“Yes, I am here, with Julian, but do not come!” she cried hoarsely. “Keep back, for heaven’s sake! He will kill you!”

The warning came too late, for even as it was uttered, the surgeon appeared on the threshold.

Julian raised his disengaged hand, a sharp report rang out, and Gilbert staggered, uttering an involuntary cry of pain. Recovering himself in an instant, however, he rushed on his aggressor, and a desperate struggle ensued for the possession of the revolver.

Under ordinary circumstances Julian would have stood no chance against the other, who was by far the most powerfully-built man of the two. But madness had doubled his strength, and it was only by a violent effort that Gilbert at last succeeded in wrenching the weapon from his grasp.

As he flung it from him through one of the open windows, voices and footsteps sounded outside, and Sir Richard appeared accompanied by two sturdy attendants.

The scene which followed—Julian’s frantic resistance, and wild appeals to her to “save him,” mingled with threats which made her shudder, and bursts of hysterical laughter—seemed to the girl like some frightful nightmare. It was not till he was exhausted by his own violence that he gave up the struggle, and sullenly, without another word or glance at her, submitted to be led away.

Gilbert Conyers was about to follow, but before he could reach the door, a momentary faintness overpowered him. His tall figure swayed and he would have fallen if Sir Richard had not supported him to the nearest seat, a cushioned divan under one of the windows.

“Good heavens, Conyers, what is this?” Sir Richard exclaimed, touching his sleeve, which was soaked with blood. “You are wounded!”

The surgeon made no reply. His eyes were closed, and his bronzed face was lividly pale.

“Oh, he is hurt—he is dying,” Evlyn exclaimed, kneeling at his side in an agony of fear. “Dying,” she sobbed, “and he will never, never know that I loved him!”

But even as she spoke, the colour ebbed back to his face, and the next moment he raised himself, drawing a deep breath.

“I am ashamed of myself,” he muttered, with a forced smile; “to faint like a girl for such a trifle as this.” He pushed up his sleeve above the elbow. “It is only a flesh-wound, you see; the bullet passed through; but it has bled pretty freely, and—”

“Let me bind it up,” Evlyn interposed, hurriedly, and proceeded to do so, as well as her trembling fingers would allow.

“Thank heaven it is no worse!” Sir Richard exclaimed. “I shudder to think what might have happened. This decides me, Conyers,” he continued. “I shall take your advice, and place my unhappy boy under safe control without further delay. I should have done so long ago, as you know, but for my wife’s opposition. She will not believe the dreadful truth, and clings to the idea that these attacks are only ‘hysterical,’ and will pass in time.”

“And is there no chance of his recovery?” Evlyn exclaimed, looking up.

He shook his head sorrowfully.

“My knowledge of our family history forbids me to hope,” was his grave reply. “The first symptoms of his malady appeared about four years ago. It was for that reason we went abroad, hoping that change of scene might be beneficial; but we were compelled to bring him home. The attacks become more violent every time, though, in his sane intervals, he retains no recollection of them. He imagines—as no doubt others do—that it is my own ‘eccentricity’ which causes me to live in such seclusion. You understand now, my child,” he continued, “why I was obliged to discourage his intimacy with you, which my wife so imprudently fostered. I hope,” he hesitated; “I hope your presence here to-night does not mean that he has been meeting you secretly, and has won your affections?”

The colour rushed to her face, she glanced involuntarily at Gilbert, but his eyes were averted.

“No, Sir Richard,” she murmured; “I only met him here to say good-bye, as he told me that he was going away from home.”

“I am thankful to know that you are not involved in our sorrow,” Sir Richard said kindly. “And now I must go, if you are sure you do not need my help, Conyers?”

“Quite sure,” the surgeon answered, rising. “I will follow you as soon as I have taken Miss Morland home.”

When they were alone, however, he deliberately resumed his seat, and drew Evlyn to his side.

“Are you in pain?” she asked, looking at him anxiously. “I shall never forgive myself for having been the cause of this accident.”

“A fortunate accident for me,” he put in.

“Fortunate?” she repeated.

“Yes”—his arm stole round her waist—“but for it, I might have remained in ignorance of an interesting fact—a fact which changes the whole aspect of my life,” he answered, bending to look at her with eyes full of affection and tender raillery. “I might ‘never, never have known that you loved me’!”

She put up her hands to hide her blushing cheeks.

“You heard that—”

“I believe those were the words,” he replied gravely; “but I was rather dazed at the time, and may not have heard correctly. Will you repeat them, please, more distinctly?”

“There is no need; you know already,” she whispered, hiding her eyes on his shoulder.

“I want to hear it again,” he persisted. “Such good news will bear repetition.”

He took her face in his hands, and compelled her to look at him.

“I love you with all my heart,” the girl said earnestly. “I have loved you from the first, I think, though I was hardly conscious of it myself. But I feel unworthy of your affection, Gilbert. I don’t deserve such happiness—I, who am responsible for all this trouble!”

“You are not responsible for poor Julian’s malady,” he said consolingly, “and though excitement may have hastened the crisis, it must have come, sooner or later.”

“And you really care for me still, in spite of my folly and perversity,” she began; “you do not—”

The sentence was never finished, for though Gilbert made no reply in words, he found an effectual means to close her lips and dispel her last remaining doubt for ever.

A Singular Accusation

(Jul. 1879)

On a certain February afternoon nearly thirty years ago, I, Fred Weston, then studying surgery in the Paris hospitals, was seated at the window of my bachelor chamber on the fourth story of a dull old house in the Isle St. Louis, looking absently at the placid Seine, which flowed just beneath. I was meditating on a subject which had been disagreeably obtruded on my notice that day, namely, my own pecuniary difficulties.

Absorbed in my reflections on this momentous topic, I did not notice a curious scuffling noise on the stairs. My astonishment may be imagined when the door was suddenly thrown open, and there bounded into the room—a huge ape, of the orang-outang species, which, after performing some fantastic capers, clapped a paw on my shoulder, and accosted me in the familiar voice of my friend Louis Delattre.

To account for this startling phenomenon I must explain that it was Carnival time, and that Louis had assumed the disguise preparatory to joining the throng of masquers on the boulevards.

He was my fellow-student at the Hôtel Dieu; like myself, a thorough Bohemian, though, luckily for him, his pockets were better furnished than mine, his father being a wealthy notaire of the Quartier d’Antin.

“Neat thing in costumes, isn’t it?” he said, complacently, removing his mask, and festooning his tail gracefully over one arm, in the fashion of a lady’s train. “Your old concierge nearly had a fit when I put my head into his loge just now. But what’s the matter?” he added. “You look as dull as a wet Sunday.”

“Read that, and you will understand why,” I returned, handing him a letter which had reached me that morning.

“From Isaac Ulbach? I thought you had given him the slip when you changed your lodgings.”

“No such luck; read what he says.”

Louis perched himself on the table, and unfolding the document gingerly, as if it were something in the nature of a grenade, and might go off unexpectedly, he read it aloud:

“Monsieur,—When you quitted your old lodgings so abruptly a fortnight ago, you omitted to leave your address for inquiring friends, which was unkind to one who takes so much interest in you as I do—”

“Gets so much interest out of you, he means, the old Shylock,” interpolated the reader.

“I have not lost sight of you, however, and I shall do myself the honour of calling upon you this day week, when I trust you will be prepared to meet your engagements; otherwise I shall be under the necessity of providing you with apartments free of expense—at Ste. Pelagie.

“Accept, meanwhile, the assurance of my distinguished consideration.

“Isaac Ulbach.”

Louis emitted a long, soft whistle as he refolded the money-lender’s letter.

“The old humbug doesn’t mean it,” he assured me, consolingly. “It’s just a flash in the pan to frighten you. He knows that you have a rich uncle in England—”

“Who will see me at the North Pole before he pays my debts,” I interrupted, gloomily. “My uncle Probyn is a good-hearted old man, but he has the bad taste to be fonder of his money than of his promising nephew. Moreover, he has a horror of gambling; and if he knew that the greater part of what I owe had been lost at cards, it would be all up with my ‘expectations.’”

“Why won’t you let me help you?” said Louis, reproachfully. “You know I have more money than I want. Will a thousand francs cover it?”

“No, nor three thousand.”

He opened his eyes.

“You are more deeply dipped than I thought,” he remarked.

After staring at me a moment in sympathetic silence, he gave the matter up with a hopeless shrug, and rose, putting on his mask again.

“Well, anyhow, don’t stop moping in this suicidal hole,” he said. “Put your cares in your pocket, and come out and see the fun.”

“Not yet; I must write to my uncle. I don’t expect he’ll help me, but I’ll give him the chance. I must do the penitent and pathetic.”

“Write in a shaky hand, with plenty of blots, you know,” he suggested. “Of course you will go with the rest of us to the Bal Masque to-night. Have you got a costume?”

“No; I meant to have hired one, but this affair put it out of my head.”

“Well, you can get one in the Temple market for a bagatelle. Come down to my rooms this evening; we’ll dine at the Café Anglais for once in our lives. Au revoir!”

And he took himself off, humming a student’s song.

Left to myself, I took up the money-lender’s letter and read it through once more, trying in vain to find a gleam of hope “between the lines.” I felt dismally certain that my creditor would be, as good—or as bad—as his word, and that in the course of a few days I should find myself in a debtor’s prison.

Isaac Ulbach was a Jew, whose mean little shop in the Place du Pantheon was almost as well known in that quarter as the Pantheon itself. Ostensibly a dealer in second-hand jewellery and silver, in reality he was a usurer, and one of the most grasping and rapacious of his tribe, as I had discovered to my cost.

I had flattered myself that, for a time at least, I was safe from his importunities, in the world-forgotten corner of the city in which I had taken sanctuary. For the last fortnight I had been lodging in one of a group of ancient and dilapidated tenements (long since swept away) which formed a sort of cul-de-sac, called the “Impasse du Cloître,” at the extremity of the Isle St. Louis, beyond the Rue du Pont Louis Philippe. The one in which I dwelt was at the end of this “no thoroughfare,” and was built with the back wall sheer to the river, so that, leaning out of my bedroom window, I could drop a stone into the water. It was a gruesome old house, damp and dark and close, with steep stairs and long tiled passages, and a pervading fragrance of mould and mildew.

A capital hiding-place, however. There were no lodgers besides myself, no visitors, no passers-by; in the very heart of Paris I lived as solitary as a lighthouse-keeper. But if I had buried myself in the Catacombs Isaac would have managed to find me out.

Failing to extract any comfort from his letter, I threw it aside, and sat down to indite such an appeal to my uncle as should not only touch his heart but loosen his purse-strings. But the inspiration would not come at my call. I spoilt half a dozen sheets of paper, scribbled my blotting-book all over with horses’ heads, and then gave it up as a bad job. Being by this time heartily tired of my own company, I resolved to take a stroll on the Boulevards, and write my letter when I returned.

The clock of Nôtre Dame was striking four as I crossed the Pont Louis Philippe. The river flashed and sparkled in the afternoon sunlight, reflecting a cloudless sky; the air was as mild as if the month had been May instead of February. Even Nature seemed to sympathise with the universal holiday.

The Carnival was the Carnival in those days, not the dismal mockery it has become of late years, and when I reached the Boulevards the revelry was at its height. The pavements were lined with spectators, and the horse-road thronged with masquers on foot or in vehicles, their costumes forming a mass of variegated brightness which united in fresh combinations every moment, like the changing colours of a kaleidoscope.

Pierrots and Polichinelles, harlequins and diablotins, Turks and débardeurs; English milords, with shark-like teeth, sandy whiskers and Scotch caps; a shipful of sailors, a waggon-load of burlesque Pompiers, then a car of clowns and acrobats, followed by a great cageful of monkeys, among whom I recognised my friend. Such a bright, gay, crowded scene, such frolicsome uproar and contagious gaiety that surely none but a misanthrope could have looked on in disapproval.

For the time, I forgot all my troubles and perplexities, and entered into the spirit of the scene as thoroughly as if I had not a care in the world. But when the crowd began to thin, as the afternoon waned, I suddenly recollected that I had not yet written my letter, and it was now nearly six o’clock. I was just about to turn into the Rue Richelieu, when I was startled to hear myself called by name in a voice unmistakably English. At the same time I received a violent poke in the back with the handle of a stick or umbrella. Turning round sharply to expostulate, to my astonishment I found myself face to face with the very person who had been in my thoughts at the moment—my uncle Probyn.

He was struggling to get through the crowd to my side, looking very much flushed and “flustered,” and tightly grasped the umbrella with which he had assaulted me, and which, like himself, was of rather a plethoric habit.

“Why, uncle!” I exclaimed, as we shook hands, “I can hardly believe my eyes! Who would have expected to see you here?”

“No one who knew me, I should think,” he returned, drily. “You won’t catch me in a Carnival crowd again—Bedlam let loose! I am glad to see,” he added, glancing at me approvingly, “that you have not made a tomfool of yourself like the rest of them.”

“I feel very little in the mood for folly of any sort just now,” I answered, with an ostentatious sigh, considering how I could best open up the subject of my difficulties, and wondering whether it was any rumour of them which had brought him across the Channel.

“Give me your arm, my boy, and let us get out of this racket,” he said, pushing his way through the crowd with the help of the stout umbrella,

“Are you alone?” I inquired, when we reached the comparative quiet of the Rue Richelieu.

“My friend, Drummond, was with me a few moments ago, but I lost him in the crowd. He came over to see his son—you know Sam Drummond, don’t you?—and I thought I might as well run across and have a look at you. But when I called at your lodgings yesterday they told me you had gone away and left no address.”

Here was the opening ready-made, and I plunged into it headlong.

“Why, yes; I was compelled to change my quarters for reasons which the fact is, uncle, I am in a trifling difficulty.”

He stopped short, tucked his umbrella under his arm, and glared at me through his spectacles.

“Docs that mean that you are in debt, sir?”

Calling up as contrite a look as I could assume at so short a notice, I owned the soft impeachment, murmuring something incoherent about “the expenses of my medical studies—the cost of books, and—ah—lecture-fees—”

“Books and lecture-fees!” echoed my uncle, with scornful incredulity. “Folly and dissipation more likely. How much do you owe, sir? Come, you had better make a clean breast of it.”

Taking my courage in both hands I named the sum-total. The torrent of indignation that descended on my devoted head would quite have overwhelmed me, if I had not been aware that my uncle’s wrath, like a tropical thunderstorm, was brief in proportion to its violence.

His lecture lasted all the way from the Rue Richelieu to his hotel in the Rue St. Honoré; by that time he had talked himself out of breath, and was considerably calmer. A glass or two of Médoc and a rest in an easy-chair had such a happy effect on his temper that, after a little more grumbling, sotto voce, he called for pen and ink, and produced—his cheque-book. He had taken up the pen, and I was already beginning to pour out my thanks, when he paused—ah, that pause!

“On second thoughts, I won’t give it you now,” he said. Then seeing how my face lengthened, he added: “Oh, you shall have it, but I’d rather send it to you. Shall you be at home at seven o’clock? Very good; give me your address.”

I complied, and as he did not ask me to stay, and indeed, for some reason, seemed anxious to get rid of me, I soon afterwards wished him good-bye. He was returning to England the same night.

For the life of me I could not understand why he preferred to send the cheque instead of giving it me at once; however, as I trusted his promise, I did not trouble myself to conjecture his reasons for delay. It was enough for me that in another hour the precious document would be in my hands, and to-morrow I could free myself from the hateful bondage of debt.

Relieved of the weight which had oppressed them, my spirits went up with a bound; I found myself humming Louis’ song, “La vie a des attraits,” and executing an impromptu pas seul on the pavement. Would not I distinguish myself at the Opera Ball to-night! I felt as if there were quicksilver in my heels.

Before going in search of a costume, I resolved that I would drop in “permiscuously” on Isaac Ulbach.

I hailed the first empty fiacre that passed me, and drove to the Place du Panthéon.

His shop was open as usual—little cared he for fêtes and holidays—and he was in the little dark den at the back, occupied with a couple of rather shady-looking clients.

I burst in upon him sans cérémonie.

“A hundred thanks for your billet-doux received this morning,” I began. “I had no idea you knew my present address, so you may imagine what a delightful surprise it was to hear from you.”

“Yes, I thought it would be,”’ he answered, quietly, glancing at me under his bent brows. He had a hook nose, an obstinate chin, and a mouth that shut like a trap. In other respects he matched his shop, being small and dark, and not too clean.

“But this is a day of surprises,” I went on; “I have just seen a relative of mine, who was the last person I expected to meet.”

He was suddenly interested.

“A relative? Was it your uncle?” he asked quickly, coming forward.

“You have guessed. It was that worthy man, and he— But you are occupied,” I broke off, pretending to be going. “It’s of no consequence—another time.”

“Of no consequence, dear sir?” the money-lender exclaimed in a tone of plaintive reproach, becoming all at once effusively civil. “But everything that concerns my clients is of consequence to me.”

“You take such a deep interest in their welfare—fifty per cent., eh? Well, then, to relieve your friendly anxiety, I’ll tell you that my uncle has promised to send me a cheque this evening. So rejoice and sing paeans!”

“Chut, chut! not so loud!” he interposed in an undertone, with a glance at his visitors which was anything but flattering to them. “There’s no need to announce it pro bono.”

“Or for the benefit of your friends there, who are listening with all their ears; very true. I shall call upon you to-morrow. Au revoir!”

“If it is all the same to you, cher monsieur,” he answered, with his sly smile, “I think I will call upon you to-night instead. The money may as well be in my pocket as yours, hein?”

“Better; mine has a hole in it. Don’t be later than seven, or I shall be gone—and the cheque too.”

“I shall be punctual,” was his reply, and I had little doubt that he would.

Half an hour later I was in the Marché du Temple, wandering in a wilderness of old clothes, and exposed to a running fire of shrill importunities from the marchandes, every one of whom declared (before I had stated what I wanted) that she had exactly the thing to suit me.

Resisting these temptations, and escaping with some difficulty from one old lady who wanted to invest me, nolens-volens, with a bottle-green overcoat, I continued my search between the rows of little cabins, but for some time unsuccessfully. There were masquerade dresses in bewildering abundance, but they were all more or less tawdry, tarnished, and commonplace. I wanted something bizarre, original. At last, after some rummaging in recondite corners, I lighted upon what struck me as the very thing for my purpose, though it was not intended for a “travestissement,” being, in fact, the genuine discarded costume of a Californian gold-digger (the gold-fever was just then at its height). How it had come there was a mystery, but there it was; the serge shirt, the great thigh boots, leather belt, and broad-brimmed hat: I should only need a wig and false beard to make the disguise complete. As I had just, so to speak, “discovered gold,” there was a beautiful fitness in this costume which pleased my fancy. I struck a bargain on the spot; the wig and false beard I purchased elsewhere, and drove home in triumph with my spoils.

It was now nearly seven o’clock, and before going upstairs I asked the concierge—a surly, silent old man, whose nature seemed to have got soured with waiting for lodgers who never came—whether he had a letter for me. Yes, he said, grudgingly, there was one; it had been left by an hotel commissionnaire a few moments previously: and he handed it to me with a distrustful glance, as if he suspected it of containing treason against the state.

I mounted the stairs three at a time, locked myself into my den, and opened the welcome missive.

There was a letter—but where was the cheque?

A dire foreboding seized me. My heart, figuratively speaking, sank into my boots, as I unfolded the note.

Dear Fred,—I thought proper, before sending you the money, to ascertain how that debt of yours had been contracted. Since parting from you this afternoon I have made some inquiries from an acquaintance of yours” (Sam Drummond, I suppose. Humph!) “which have enlightened me considerably on that, and other matters.” (Oh, Samuel, my friend, I owe you one for this! ) “As your own recklessness has brought you into this difficulty, your own ingenuity must get you out of it. You have nothing further to expect from

Your indignant uncle,

W. Probyn.

This was a “crusher.”

I sat staring at the letter, quite unable at first to realize my position. Then, in a flash, as it were, I saw the precipice before me.

In a few moments Isaac would be down upon me, hungry for the spoil. I knew him too well to expect to move him by my piteous story, even if he believed it, which was doubtful.

Most probably he would jump to the conclusion that I had appropriated the money to some other purpose, and dire would be his wrath.

Already I seemed to see the walls of Ste. Pélagie looming before me, and once on the wrong side of them, when should I get out again?

My only safety lay in flight.

I resolved to start at once, and so avoid an unpleasant scene.

I began my preparations in desperate haste, fancying every moment that I heard his footstep on the stairs.

I hastily packed a few necessaries in a carpet-bag; the rest of my clothes, and a select library of medical works, I left him as a parting gift. There was a heap of odd things, however, which I could not take with me, and did not care to leave behind for him to overhaul.

It would take too long to burn them piecemeal, so I resolved to throw them into the river. I crammed them all pell-mell into an old leather portmanteau, putting in all the heaviest things I could find, including a pair of dumb-bells, to weight it.

I had just completed my task when I heard—it was not fancy this time—a footstep on the stairs, and after a pause there was a gentle tap at the door.

I would have given a good deal to avoid the interview, but there was no getting out of it now: I must bear as best I could his reproaches, taunts, and insinuations; I only hoped I might not inadvertently knock him down.

I was just about to admit him when, glancing forlornly round the room, my eye fell on the “digger’s” costume. A brilliant idea occurred to me. Disregarding a second more imperative summons at the door, I hurried on the clothes over my own, and assumed the wig and bushy beard, which were as complete a disguise as could be desired. Having done so, I opened the window and flung the portmanteau into the river, where it fell with a loud splash; then unlocked the door, and confronted my visitor.

It was not the Jew.

So much I saw at a glance, but I had not time to see more; for no sooner had I appeared on the threshold than the stranger, whoever he was, literally flung himself upon me and brought me to the floor, falling with me. Before I could utter a cry his hand was on my throat, the cold barrel of a revolver was pressed against my temple, and, with his face close to mine, he whispered—

“Where is the cheque?”

But the words had hardly left his lips when he started, looked at me more closely, then drew back with a sudden change of expression to astonishment and consternation.

“Diable!” he muttered, “it’s the wrong man!”

He stared at me stupidly a moment, then took his hand from my throat, sprang to his feet, and in an instant was gone.

I was too bouleversé by the unexpectedness of the attack to make any effort to detain him; and when I had picked myself up (none the worse for the tumble) and collected my scattered wits, the ludicrous side of the adventure struck me so forcibly that I sat down and laughed till I was exhausted.

Thinking it over, I concluded that my late visitor was one of Isaac Ulbach’s “ugly customers,” who had overheard my incautious mention of the cheque, and had followed me home from the shop. It was easy for him to enter the house without being noticed by the concierge, who seldom put his head out of his loge.

I was still chuckling over the thought of how the thief had been “sold,” when once more there was a footstep on the stairs. No doubt about its being Isaac this time, for I could hear him grumbling, under his breath, at having to mount so high.

I hastily adjusted my wig, which had got disarranged in the scuffle, took up the valise I had packed, and presented myself at the door before he had time to knock.

He started and retreated a step, not recognizing me in the least.

“Did you want me, monsieur?” I demanded, politely, in an assumed voice.

“Pardon,” he answered, recovering himself, “it is M. Weston I want. I see that I have mistaken the room.”

“This is his room, but you won’t find him in it,” I returned; and, brushing past him, I quietly descended the stairs, leaving him to reconnoitre at his leisure. Apparently he soon discovered the trick, for I had not reached the ground-floor when I heard him hurrying down after me, shouting “Arrêtez! arrêtez!” The concierge emerged from his loge as I passed, but, though Isaac called out to him to stop me, he was far too much startled by my appearance to attempt it.

I got safely out into the street, hurried along the Quai d’Orléans and over the Pont de la Tournelle, and then proceeded more leisurely to Delattre’s rooms in the Rue des Ecoles.

He was as far from recognizing me as the others had been.

My story sent him into such fits of laughter that it was some time before he recovered his gravity sufficiently to ask, “What do you intend to do now?”

Having divested myself of my theatrical properties, I had taken a seat and a cigar.

“Smoke, if you will give me a light. Thanks!”

“What are your plans, I mean? You can’t go on dodging Isaac for ever. Sooner or later he’ll run you to earth, and after that—”

“The deluge. My good fellow, it’s no use asking what are my plans; you might as well put the question to a man shipwrecked on a rock. Suggest something, and I’ll do it.”

He looked at me thoughtfully, twisting the ends of his neat little black moustache.

“Why not turn ‘digger’ in earnest,” he said, at length, in the coolest way possible.

I started. The idea gave me a galvanic shock.

“Are you serious?”

“Perfectly. You are not wedded to your profession; or, if you are, it is a ‘mariage de convenance’ without much affection. Take my advice; ‘throw physic to the dogs,’ as your Shakespeare beautifully says, go out to the new Land of Promise where fortunes are dug up like potatoes, find a monster nugget, and return triumphant. What do you say?”

“Hurrah for California,” I exclaimed, starting to my feet. “I’ll go—it’s settled. I’m off to the diggings to-morrow. But stay,” I said with a sudden change of tone; “how am I to get here? I have barely enough cash to take me to Liverpool, and as for my passage and outfit—”

He interrupted me by going to his desk and taking out a plump little roll of notes, which he thrust into my hands.

“You shall repay me when you have found the famous nugget I’ll go with you as far as Liverpool; my father has some friends here, and it will be a capital excuse for taking a few weeks’ holiday.”

And so in this offhand fashion, my plans for the future were settled.

We agreed that, under the circumstances, the sooner I was out of Paris the better, and by noon the next day we were on our way to Calais by the mail train.

Ten days afterwards! found myself on board the good ship Gold-finder, bound for San Francisco.

The curtain falls on the first part of my story, to rise again after an interval of two years.

•    •    •    •

I shall not dwell on my sojourn in California. Suffice it to say that, happier than many of my fellow-adventurers, I found the Land of Promise a land of fulfilment.

Fickle Dame Fortune, after buffeting me so long, took to pelting me with nuggets by way of compensation. I was successful beyond my utmost hopes.

For eighteen months I stuck to the spade and “cradle”; then being heartily tired of hard work and rough living, I resolved to return to civilisation.

I had more than once written to Delattre, but no letters had reached me in return.

I took ship for Havre, intending to spend a month or two in Paris before returning to settle in England.

I was anxious to acquit myself of debt, and to see whether my old friends would recognize me. I rather doubted it when I looked at the ferocious individual my glass reflected, bearded with bronzed skin and unkempt hair. I should scarcely need a false beard and wig now for purposes of disguise.

It was a bright spring evening when I found myself once more in Paris, loitering along the familiar Boulevards, and attracting more attention than was quite agreeable, for I had purposely delayed “civilising” myself till I had called upon Isaac Ulbach.

I crossed the Seine and made my way to a certain café in the Rue Soufflot, where I knew that the moneylender was in the habit of taking his petit verre in an evening.

It was a dull and dingy little place, chiefly frequented by lawyers’ clerks, small tradesmen, and the like.

The mistress of the establishment was a plump Jewess, who looked up from her crochet with a startled air when I sauntered in. Indeed, the entrance of such a formidable stranger made quite a sensation in the place; the habitués glanced at me distrustfully and the garçon—an overgrown youth, with a shock of frizzy hair like a black mop—backed away from me apprehensively when he took my order, as if he feared I might assault him.

A glance round the room showed me that the Jew was not there, but before I had finished my coffee he came in, nodded to the dame du comptoir, and taking a seat with his back to me, was soon deep in the Moniteur de la Bourse.

There was a large mirror opposite to him which reflected my figure at full-length, and presently, as he raised his glass to his lips, he looked up, and our eyes met.

The change in his face was something to remember.

He started, put down his glass untasted, stared at my reflection a moment, as if fascinated, then wheeled round in his chair and looked me in the face. There was something in his expression that puzzled me. It showed not only recognition, but a sort of horrified astonishment.

Before I had time to address him, he rose, and approaching the proprietress, whispered an enquiry which evidently referred to me, to which she replied by shaking her head and shrugging her plump shoulders. After another keen glance at me, he leaned over the counter and whispered to her again. The words he uttered were few, but their effect was electrical. .

She dropped her crochet, and uttered an exclamation which caused the habitués to look up from their cards and dominoes, and the garçon to stand transfixed with a coffee-pot in one hand and a cognac-bottle in the other.

“Monsieur Ulbach, what do you tell me?” she cried.

“The truth, and I am ready to prove it,” he answered aloud, and turning round he pointed full at me. “That man is an assassin!”

I started to my feet. Was he out of his senses?

“Why, Isaac,” I exclaimed, “whom do you take me for? Don’t you know me?”

“I know you very well,” was his emphatic reply, as he shook his forefinger at me, “though I have only seen you once before, and that was on the evening of Mardi-Gras, two years ago, at a house in the Rue St. Louis, where you had just robbed and murdered a client of mine.”

There was a general exclamation of horror. I looked at him in stupefaction. He was perfectly serious, and evidently believed what he said.

“I remember seeing it in the papers,” cried the Jewess, before I could speak; “the ‘Mysterious Disappearance of a Medical Student.’ A man was arrested on suspicion of having tracked the young fellow home from your shop, M. Ulbach, but as there was no evidence against him he was set at liberty, and the real murderer was never found—”

“Till this moment,” put in the Jew.

I burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter; it was too ridiculous. Never, surely, had a man been placed in a situation so grotesque and improbable; accused of having murdered—myself!

“It is no joke, as you will soon find,” said Isaac, grimly. “Garçon, fetch a sergent de ville.”

“Wait a moment,” I interposed. “I want to ask you something. Was the ‘body’ ever found?”

“No; it was thrown through the window into the Seine; a boatman heard the splash, but as the river was swollen by rain, the current was unusually strong, and must have carried it away.”

“I see; that accounts for it. The victim was a friend of yours?”

“He was a client of mine,” he answered sharply, “and owed me money, a great deal of money, which I should have had that night if you had not robbed him of the cheque—brigand!”

“Gently, Isaac,” I said, as gravely as I could; “just put on your spectacles and take a good look at me. Supposing your late lamented client had chosen, for reasons of his own, to disguise himself in a ‘digger’s’ dress, and a false beard, might he not have looked something like me?”

He started, and looked at me closely, but the next moment he shrugged his shoulders with contemptuous incredulity.

“The force of audacity can go no farther! To assume the name and identity of the very man whom you—That is enough,” he broke off; “out of this place you shall not go except in custody.”

The others murmured their approval, and gathered round with the evident intention of detaining me, by force if necessary, till the waiter returned with a policeman.

Decidedly the joke was getting serious.

“Come, come,” I said, “you can’t be in earnest. Let me have a few words with you in private and I’ll soon convince you of my identity.”

I was moving towards the door when he seized me by the arm. I shook him off with so little ceremony that he staggered backwards into the arms of the plump proprietress, who had left her throne behind the counter and joined the group. At the same moment the garçon returned with two policemen, one of whom was in plain clothes.

“That is the man,” the waiter said, indicating me.

“Yes, that is the man—the robber and assassin!” cried Isaac, excitedly. “He has just assaulted me, as messieurs here can testify.”’

Upon that, all the tongues were let loose at once. In vain I endeavoured to explain. I could not even make myself heard, much less understood.

At length the “agent” in plain clothes, who had listened to it all without comment, turned to me and said civilly: “Monsieur will have an opportunity of explaining himself before the Commissaire de Police,” which I took as a polite intimation that I might consider myself in custody until further notice.

“If monsieur prefers it, we can have a carriage,” he added, considerately. I certainly did prefer it, under the circumstances. So the shock-headed garçon was despatched for a fiacre, which I entered, followed by Isaac and the policeman in plain clothes; he of the cocked hat and sword returned to his beat.

The Commissary of the quarter was a little, yellow, high-dried man, like a resuscitated mummy, who took snuff incessantly during the interview.

Having listened in silence to the agent’s statement and Isaac’s charge, he turned to me for my explanation.

In response, I related the story of my escapade pretty much as I have written it here, glancing from time to time at Isaac, as I proceeded, to see what effect it had upon him.

His face was a study. Incredulity, doubt, astonishment, succeeded each other rapidly, giving place by degrees to a half-reluctant conviction.

But when I told of my brilliant success in California, and added that I had returned to Paris for the express purpose of paying my old debt, his expression changed with ludicrous abruptness.

As if a flood of light had suddenly burst upon his mind, he started to his feet.

“It is himself!” he exclaimed, rapturously, seizing my hand. “Ah, cher monsieur, can you ever forgive me for having been so blind?—so Monsieur le Commissaire,” he broke off, “I ask a hundred pardons; I was mistaken. This is indeed my long-lost and respected client.”

“That remains to be proved,” was the quiet reply.

“How! proved? but I have proved it by recognising him. I am ready to swear to his identity—”

“And a few moments ago you were ready to swear exactly the reverse—a somewhat sudden conversion, M. Ulbach,” drily remarked the magistrate, to whom Isaac was evidently no stranger.

“But I had not heard his story then,” he explained eagerly; “I did not know—”

“That it would be to your own interest to acknowledge him—just so,” put in the other, with a smile. Turning to me, he added: “I forbear to comment on your statement, till I have made further enquiries. The friend you mention will be communicated with at once; meantime it is, of course, my duty to detain you.”

This was pleasant; however, I submitted with a good grace to the inevitable, and, having obtained permission to send a note to Delattre, I bowed to the Commissary, and, with a friendly nod to Isaac, who was loudly protesting against my incarceration, I followed my conductor from the apartment.

He led me down a short passage into a bare-boarded room, where half a dozen men off duty were lounging about the stove; and here an official at a desk entered my name in the charge-book. Thence I was conducted to one of the cellules de détention—a cheerful retreat, with a stone floor and a barred window commanding an uninterrupted view of a blank wall opposite. He kindly allowed me a lamp and a copy of the Gazette des Tribunaux to beguile my solitude, and, having politely hinted that smoking was forbidden, left me to my reflections.

Forbidden or not, directly I was alone I lighted my pipe, and, thanks to the soothing influence, managed to get through the first hour of captivity with tolerable philosophy. But when my tobacco-pouch was exhausted, my patience began to give way. I anathematized Delattre for his tardiness in coming; I paced about the cell like a caged hyena, consulting my watch half a dozen times in as many minutes.

When another hour had passed I began to speculate as to what would happen if my friend could not be found. Suppose Isaac’s testimony was not believed? suppose I could not prove my identity? it was on the cards that I might be tried for my own murder, and really I was bound to acknowledge that there was a strong case against me, notwithstanding the absence of the “body.”

It was now long past dinner-time, as internal sensations warned me. Recollecting the proverb, “Qui dort, dine,” I stretched myself on the pallet-bed in one corner, and endeavoured to forget hunger in sleep.

I succeeded at length in dropping off, and, though my doze could not have lasted many minutes, I had time for a long and complicated dream, in which I was tried, found guilty, sentenced, and led to the scaffold. I felt the grasp of “Monsieur de Paris,” I heard the click of the fatal knife, when—

There was a cheerful sound of voices in the passage outside, the door was thrown open, and there stood Delattre, with the Commissary and his satellites in the background.

I may explain here that my friend’s delay in coming was caused by his having been out when the messenger arrived.

He started when he saw me, as Isaac had done, but came forward at once with both hands outstretched.

“Weston, old fellow, is it really you?” he exclaimed in English.

“I think so,” I answered, cautiously; “I wouldn’t swear it. But ‘if this be I as I think it be,’ I owe something to you, for I found more than one big nugget.”

“Didn’t I predict it?” he cried, triumphantly, shaking both my hands at once. “Upon my word,” he added, looking me over, “now that I have seen you I can make excuse for Isaac. Your own mother wouldn’t know you, my boy.”

“I trust M. le Commissaire is satisfied,” I said, turning to that functionary.

“Perfectly, monsieur. M. Delattre has made a statement which confirms yours in every particular. I have the pleasure to set you at liberty, regretting that you should ever have been detained.”

“And now,” said I to Louis, as we left the building arm-in-arm, “perhaps you will tell me why you never answered my letters?”

“Parbleu! but I did. You never got mine? Then they miscarried. In the first I wrote I gave you a full, true, and particular account of your own ‘murder,’ which was the first piece of news I received on my return to Paris after a month’s stay in England. As the nine days’ wonder of your disappearance was over by that time, and the subject nearly forgotten, I thought I might as well leave you to enlighten the public when you returned. The mystery has had a dramatic dénoûment; thanks to Isaac, who——Parlez des anges!” he added, in an undertone, “here he is.” He had been waiting for us outside. “Monsieur Ulbach,” said Louis, gravely, “allow me to present to you your ‘late lamented client,’ who seems very little the worse for his sojourn among the fishes.”

“Ah, monsieur!” cried Isaac, piteously, “if you could only imagine how I reproach myself—”

“Enough!” I interrupted. “Come to my hotel, and we will settle accounts at once, unless you have still some lingering doubts of my identity.”

“If he has, the touch of the money will dispel them,” was Louis’ remark.

“And you will try to forget that preposterous mistake of mine, cher monsieur?”

“No, no! it’s too good a joke to be forgotten,” I answered, laughing. “Whenever I speak of my return from California, you may be sure that I shall tell the story of that singular accusation.”

A Night in a Balloon

(Jan. 1880)

It was Whit Monday; a bright June day, some fifteen years ago. Evening was closing in, and the crowds of Whitsun holiday folks from the great midland manufacturing town of Hammerton—hard-worked mechanics and factory “hands” for the most part—were returning by road or rail from their excursions in the environs.

The people’s park at Laston Hall was still thronged, however, for the annual fête was to conclude as usual, with a grand display of fireworks. All day the chief attraction had been the captive balloon in the lower grounds, but now that dusk was falling, the crowd had deserted the remoter parts of the gardens, and gathered about the terrace where the fireworks were to be displayed.

There were still a few loiterers left in the pleasant, dusky paths, and among them was a couple whom more than one person turned to look after, struck by something of country freshness in their dress and appearance which was an agreeable contrast to the pallid faces, and tawdry finery of the Hammerton folks. They were George and Ellen Fielding. He, was a tall, well-made, bronzed-complexioned man of thirty, with the air of a prosperous farmer or small land-owner; she, a fair-haired, sweet-looking, refined girl of eighteen, whose likeness to her companion showed her to be his sister. They, too, seemed to be making their way towards the terrace, but they walked slowly, and were talking gravely and earnestly.

“It is no use, Nellie,” he was saying, in answer to some remonstrance from his companion; “I must speak as I feel; and how can I help feeling bitterly towards the man who is doing his best to defraud me of my rights? And I had a right to the property John Lester left me. It was not a gift, but a compensation for my—”

“I know,” the girl interrupted gently, “but that ought to have been stated in the will.”

“And because it was not, I must be robbed. Because of John Lester’s neglect, I must be accused of fraud by his son! I, who would scorn—”

“But he does not know you,” she interposed again; “these suspicions have been suggested to him. If he knew you he could not believe it for a moment.”

He went on as if she had not spoken. “The ground I have cultivated—the house I have looked upon as my home, will be wrested from me, and I shall have to begin the world afresh. It is hard—hard!”

“The trial is not over yet,” she reminded him. He shook his head despondingly.

“I know how it will end. Young Lester has money, friends, influence, while I—”

His sister sighed; he heard it, and rousing himself from his depression by an effort, exclaimed remorsefully: “There I go again! harping on my grievance when I came here expressly to forget it, and making you as wretched as myself. Come, Ellen, let us see what is going on.”

They quickened their pace along the winding path, and presently emerged upon a small lawn, surrounded with palisadings. It was the place reserved for the ascensions of the captive balloon, which was now hovering above their heads, the light, elegant car depending from it, being only a few feet from the ground.

Ellen Fielding uttered a cry of delighted surprise; it was the first time she had seen a balloon so near.

“Two places left,” said the custodian as they approached.

George Fielding glanced at the car; one seat was already occupied by a young man of four or five and twenty, with a handsome, sunburnt face, and frank blue eyes.

“Two places,” George repeated; “would you like to go up, Nellie?”

She hesitated. “There is no danger, I suppose?”

“Not the least,” the custodian assured her. “More than a thousand persons have gone up this summer, and they all came down again safe and sound.”

She still hesitated, but though she felt some timidity, the originality of such an adventure was tempting, and after a moment she turned to her brother, and declared herself ready to make the ascent.

“Off we go, then, for a voyage in the air!” he said, as he placed her in the car.

Directly they were seated the custodian let out the rope, and the balloon began gently to ascend.

When she felt it rising Ellen turned slightly pale, and could not suppress an exclamation.

The stranger who sat opposite to her asked, smiling: “Are you afraid?”

His admiring glance brought the colour back to her face at once, as she replied: “A little, but I shall soon get used to it.”

“See,” said her brother, “we are already above the trees.”

She looked down, and soon forgot her timidity in admiration of the scene. Beneath them, like a map in relief, lay the park and gardens, their whole extent visible at a glance. Immediately under the balloon was the terrace, covered by a dense crowd, whose murmur scarcely reached our aerial travellers. The air was pure and light, and of an exhilarating freshness.

The girl turned to her brother with sparkling eyes.

“Oh George, how beautiful!” And in a lower tone she added: “Don’t you feel somehow calmer and happier than you did just now?”

“Yes,” he said smiling, “I do. I seem to have risen for the time above the troubles and turmoil of earth. But what is going on down there? what a crowd there is on the terrace!”

“They are waiting for the fireworks,” the young stranger observed.

“Ah, there is the first rocket,” exclaimed Ellen. “How pretty! like golden rain.”

There was a pause; the balloon still ascended. No more fireworks appeared.

“There seems to be something wrong,” the stranger remarked, leaning over the car. “Look! the framework which supports the ‘set pieces’ has fallen down.”

“Just hark!” exclaimed George Fielding, “do you hear the people shouting? and—why, they are tearing up the palisadings! What does that mean?”

“It means that there is a riot, I’m afraid,” the other returned. “They are a rough lot, those Hammerton folks, and I expect they are revenging their disappointment on the gardens.”

“How glad I am that we are not in that crowd,” was Ellen’s remark.

“You have quite lost your fear, now?” the young man asked.

“Oh yes, I should like to go much higher.”

“We are almost at the end of our tether, I think,” he replied. And even as he spoke, the balloon stopped.

“What a view we have now!” George exclaimed. It was indeed a beautiful panorama that stretched beneath them, of hill and valley, field and stream, in the “leafy heart” of Warwickshire. Twilight was stealing over the scene, idealizing its colours, and giving a dreamy softness to its outlines. The great prosaic town of Hammerton was only dimly discerned through its shroud of smoke.

“Old Fuller was right,” the stranger said, enthusiastically. “There is no county to beat Warwickshire. ‘It is the Heart but not the Core of England, having nothing coarse or choky therein.’ Are you like myself, a Warwickshire man?” he added, turning to George Fielding.

“Oh, yes, born and bred. I have spent here all the best years of my life—before it was spoilt by lawsuits and the like,” he muttered, half aloud.

“Ay, they do spoil one’s life. No one knows that better than I,” the other returned quickly.

“Are you, too, compelled to defend your rights in a court of law?” Fielding demanded, looking at him with sudden interest.

“Yes, and against an adversary who will do his best to rob me of them.”

“Like mine,” responded the young farmer emphatically; “and if he succeeds, I shall lose all.”

“Let us hope that he will not,” was the stranger’s reply; “though I fear it is sometimes the case that law is stronger than justice; particularly when one has an adversary as unscrupulous as I believe mine to be.”

“Ah! I can sympathise with you,” exclaimed the other. “I see you too are at law with some Frank Lester—some heartless, unprincipled—”

“Frank Lester!” echoed the stranger; “that is my own name.”

“Yours?”

“Yes, and my opponent is George Fielding.”

For a moment the two men gazed at each other in silence, with mingled astonishment and hostility. Ellen was terrified.

“George,” she whispered, “pray do not—” But he did not heed her.

“Frank Lester,” he cried suddenly, “what you said of me just now was a base slander, and I call upon you to retract it.”

“Not till you retract your expressions with regard to myself,” the young man retorted, in the same tone. “It is false that I wish to rob you—false that I am—”

George Fielding half rose from his seat, but Ellen clung to his arm, trembling.

“George—pray, pray control yourself!” she implored; “at least, do not quarrel here.”

“You are right, this is not the place for it,” he responded, commanding himself by an effort. “Time enough when we get to earth again.”

The balloon had now been some time stationary, and they were expecting every instant that it would begin its descent. But as the moments passed, and it still hung motionless, young Lester leaned over the edge of the car, and peered through the gathering shadows beneath.

“Surely the man has not forgotten us,” he muttered.

“He is not there!” Miss Fielding exclaimed. “The enclosure is empty.”

“The rioters have frightened him from his post,” said her brother, “and look! they are making a bonfire of the benches, and a band of them are running through the gardens, putting out the lamps.”

“They are under the balloon!” cried Ellen, clasping her hands. “And now—ah, good heavens!”

“What is the matter?”

“They—they are cutting the rope!”

“No—no—impossible!”

“Look!” she gasped.

The young men leaned out of the car, and saw it was but too true They shouted with all their might, waving hats and handkerchiefs, but it was too late. Believing the car to be empty the rioters had severed the ropes which held the balloon captive, and the latter, rising with prodigious rapidity, soon disappeared in the evening mists.

At first they exhausted themselves in vain lamentations, but after a time a calm produced by prostration succeeded. They all three remained silent, motionless, apathetic.

The terrible peculiarity of the situation was their utter helplessness. They could do nothing, they could hope for no assistance; they drifted at the mercy of blind chance.

Ellen, half fainting, had hidden her face on the shoulder of her brother, who mechanically supported her with his arm, but was too stupefied to offer her any encouragement.

Young Lester, who was seated opposite to them, glanced at the girl compassionately from time to time, but did not speak. There was a barrier of angry pride between the two men which kept them apart, even in their common danger.

Meantime, the balloon, abandoned to the night breeze, drifted on at random, now cleaving the air with the swiftness of a swallow, then hovering majestically, like an eagle above its eyrie. Occasionally, Lester and Fielding looked over the edge of the car into the gulf of shadows beneath them, where they could just discern the vague confused lights which indicated towns and villages. But little by little, as the balloon ascended into the higher regions, these last traces of earth disappeared. The atmosphere became every moment more rarefied; their breathing was oppressed; there was a singing in the ears, and a painful tingling in every limb. Now, too, the air became so intensely cold that it seemed to freeze the blood in their veins, and a chill mist enveloped them on every side, like a ghostly curtain.

Ellen, who had hitherto uttered no complaint, suddenly sank from the seat, on to the floor of the car.

“Nellie, Nellie—what is the matter?” exclaimed her brother, in alarm.

“I am tired—and cold. I want to sleep,” she murmured, her eyes closing.

“Good heavens! what shall I do? If she sleeps, she will never wake again. Ellen, look up—rouse yourself!”

But she remained motionless. He could not see her face, but her hands were damp and deadly cold.

“Wrap her in this,” said Frank Lester’s voice, and looking round, Fielding saw that the young man had taken off his coat.

“No, no, you want it yourself,” he stammered, surprised and touched; “she can have mine—”

“This is the warmest. Take it—I shall do well enough. I forgot till this moment that I had my pocket-flask with me,” he added; “if she can swallow a little brandy—”

He gently raised the girl’s head, and supporting it on his knee poured a few drops between her lips, then chafed her hands, bending his head to listen anxiously to the faint beating of her heart.

“She is reviving,” he whispered; “if we can keep her warm she will take no hurt.”

As he assisted Fielding to draw the coat more closely round her, the latter’s hand touched his. Yielding to a sudden impulse, the young farmer seized and pressed it.

“Lester, you are a good fellow,” he said, huskily; “if I had known you before I should not have said—what I did just now. Forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive; I was the most in fault,” Lester answered quickly, cordially returning the pressure; “we have both been mistaken. Enmity is often the result more of ignorance and misunderstanding than of malice. Hush—your sister is recovering.”

“Yes, I am better now,” the girl said faintly. “I heard what you have been saying, and I am glad—so glad you are friends. Perhaps,” she continued solemnly, “perhaps we may never see earth again, and would it not have been terrible to have gone into the presence of God with hearts full of hatred and enmity?”

The men were silent, the minds of both were occupied with thoughts too deep for words.

They felt calmer now. The reconciliation seemed to have given them fresh courage. Hitherto they had been isolated by hatred, now they were united by the common peril, and the better fit to endure it.

So passed the long hours of the night. As dawn approached, the wind, which had hitherto borne them steadily upwards, gradually subsided, leaving the air calm, and the balloon began gently to descend. Hope returned to their hearts; they waited anxiously for daylight.

At length the “awful rose of dawn” unfolded in the East; long rays of light shot upwards over the sky; the grey clouds broke into bright bars and islets, floating in a golden sea; and then, in all his majesty, up rose the sun.

For them, it was like a resurrection. They were no longer alone in an abyss of darkness; a blank, death-like void. The sun shone; the earth still existed! There, beneath them, were woods and hills, dewy meadows, and pastoral streams.

A fresh, moist odour reached them from the fields; the lark poured out his matin song, high up in the luminous air.

Still the balloon descended; and now they could distinguish houses and figures. Suddenly the farmer uttered an exclamation of joyful surprise.

“Nellie! look! there is Ashwood church, and there—there—”

His voice faltered, he turned and looked at his sister, silently pointing down. He had recognised his native village, and the fields of his own farm.

Trembling with excitement she leaned over the edge of the car.

“Take care,” said young Lester quickly, drawing her back, and—perhaps from absence of mind—he kept his arm round her waist—“In five minutes we shall be on terra firma.”

The words had hardly left his lips when the balloon, which had hitherto steadily descended, began slowly to rise again, borne upwards by the gentle breeze.

Ellen Fielding uttered a cry of despair, extending her arms as if she would have flown towards her home.

“Is there no way of descending?” the farmer exclaimed.

“There is one,” Lester replied, “but it is frightfully dangerous.”

“Anything is better than this torture.”

“Well, this is our last resource. Give me your stick.”

He rose cautiously to his feet, and raising the iron-shod walking-stick, tore the cover of the balloon.

It seemed to utter a sigh, as the gas rushed out impetuously at the opening. There was a moment of terrible suspense, then the torn and shrunk balloon sank with frightful rapidity, as if it were falling through space. They closed their eyes, and gave themselves up for lost.

All at once, there was a rushing, rending noise, followed by a violent shock. They looked up in terror, and found that the balloon had been caught by the upper branches of an oak tree, and the car hung only a few feet from the ground.

•    •    •    •

Towards the close of a bright day, about a week after these events, young Lester, and George Fielding were seated at an open window in the house of the latter, whose guest the young man had been ever since their aerial adventure.

Now that the first relief of their escape from peril was over, the farmer’s mind had returned to its old preoccupation, as his sister noticed with distress.

His face was shadowed at this moment, as, leaning one elbow on the broad old fashioned window-sill, he looked out vaguely, between the geraniums and fuchsias across the broad sunny meadows in front of the house.

At length young Lester, whose eyes had followed his, asked abruptly: “How far does your property extend?”

Fielding turned to him with a faint smile. “You wish to know how much the richer you will be if you gain the suit.”

“On my honour I was not thinking of it,” the young man returned, colouring.

“You need not blush for it, if you were,” his companion said quietly; “everyone believes in the justice of his own cause. I will show you which is my property.”

And he pointed out, one by one, the woods, fields, and meadows which composed it.

“It is in beautiful order,” was Frank Lester’s remark.

“I have given it all my time and care. There are still many improvements which I hoped to make: but who knows,” he added with a sigh, “how long I may be able to call it mine?”

As he uttered these words, Ellen entered. She looked agitated, and had a letter in her hand.

“Is it from Mr. Harding?” he asked eagerly.

“Yes it is from the lawyer,” she replied.

“Then the trial is over, and we shall know—give it me, Ellen.”

He extended his hand for the letter, but she seized the hand in both her own and said, with a glance at Lester: “Whatever the news may be, do not forget that you two now are friends.”

“Give me the letter,” he repeated impatiently, disregarding her words.

She drew back a step, looking at him earnestly.

“George, have you so soon forgotten?”

There was a moment’s pause, then his face changed and softened.

“No, I have not forgotten,” he answered and extending his hand to his guest he continued: “We left our enmity in the clouds, Lester, and we will not take it up again directly we find ourselves on earth. Whatever the verdict may be, it will make no difference in my feelings for you.”

“And for my own part I shall be almost content to lose the property if it gains me your friendship—and your sister’s,” replied the young man, with an eloquent glance at Ellen. She handed the letter to her brother, who opened it with a steady hand, glanced over it, and looked up.

“Lester, you are in your own house,” he said quietly.

“Then I have gained the suit!” the other exclaimed.

Fielding handed him the letter, but he threw it aside, unread.

“A friend’s happiness is worth more than a few acres of land,” he said impetuously. “I entered your house as a guest; I will not be the one to turn you out of it. This wretched lawsuit shall be as if it had never been. We will do as we had better have done at the commencement; submit the case to arbitration, and you shall select the umpire.”

“But I should not know whom to choose.”

Lester turned to Ellen, with a look full of tenderness.

“Let the one to whom we owe our friendship rivet its links for ever, and make it easy for us to share this inheritance to which we have both a claim.”

“How can she do that?” George Fielding demanded.

“By making the friends—brothers.”

Fielding drew his sister to his side, looking down with a questioning smile into her face.

“What say you to that, Ellen?”

Ellen Fielding said not a word, but hiding her blushing face on her brother’s shoulder extended her hand to Frank Lester.

A Dramatic Critique,
and What Came of It

(Nov. 1882)

“Bravo, bravo! well done, Miss Sylvester!” cried the manager of the Royal Kensington Theatre. “That speech will bring the house down.”

The beautiful and popular young actress, dropping her tragedy airs all at once, acknowledged the compliment with a sweet smile and a sweeping curtsey, then came towards the speaker. He was sitting at a little “property” table on the stage, with his back to the footlights, superintending the last rehearsal of the new play, the author of which was Miss Sylvester’s brother.

“You are satisfied, Mr. Hope?” she asked brightly.

“More than satisfied! Your acting will save the play if anything can do it.”

Her face clouded. “You speak as if you doubted its success?”

He screwed up his mouth dubiously. “Well, you see, it is rather formidable—a blank-verse tragedy in five acts, with Boadicea for a heroine! I doubt whether it will ‘draw.’”

“Then why did you accept it?” she asked quickly.

“I’ll be hanged if I know,” Mr. Hope replied, rubbing up his hair the wrong way. “During a temporary aberration of intellect I suppose. I didn’t mean to vex you,” he added kindly, noticing her expression; “it is not that I don’t appreciate its beauties, only I am afraid they will be ‘caviare’ to the audience.”

“Don’t listen to him, Miss Sylvester,” interposed the manager’s wife, giving her an encouraging touch on the shoulder. “You know that Hope never ‘tells a flattering tale’ about a new piece till it has filled the treasury.”

“Which this one won’t—” put in Mr. Deloraine, the tragedian in a stage “aside.”

“If it fails as a tragedy Mr. Sylvester might turn it into a burlesque,” airily suggested young Carleton, admiring the effect of his own feet in sandals.

“Your acting will save him the trouble,” retorted Miss Sylvester, as she turned from the group, and retired up the stage.

There was a general laugh, and the j’eune premier looked slightly discomfited.

“You deserved a snub for your ill-nature,” was Mrs. Hope’s comment. “It’s a shame to discourage her when you know how she has set her heart on her brother’s play succeeding. Whatever we may think of it, she considers it a work of genius.”

“And so does the author, by the airs he gives himself,” young Carleton returned, with a shrug; “if it fails, perhaps he will learn modesty.”

“At my expense,” added Mr. Hope, drily. “It has cost a small fortune to mount this piece. Come, you had better go on with the scene; we are wasting time.”

At length, after many interruptions, the rehearsal came to an end.

As Edith Sylvester left the theatre, she paused to make an inquiry of the stage-door keeper; a snuffy, surly old man, in a velvet skullcap, who was ensconced in a dark little den close to the entrance.

“Watson, have you seen my brother?”

“He left the theatre half an hour ago. Miss Sylvester,” said a voice behind her, before the other could reply.

It was a gentleman who spoke; a young fellow of five or six and twenty, with a keen, vivacious, clever face, and grey eyes, somewhat too near together.

She turned, and seeing who it was, presented him with two little gloved fingers. She had never been able to make up her mind whether she liked Frederick Procter or detested him, though she had no doubt at all about his feelings for herself. His devotion was proof against all rebuffs. He was a barrister, but condescended to “coquet with literature” while waiting for briefs, and was the author of the light piece which would precede the tragedy.

“Your brother asked me to tell you that he had a headache and could not stay longer,” he continued.

“I am glad he was not there while they were pulling the play to pieces,” she returned, as she passed out into the street.

A spring shower was falling, and her admirer officiously put up her umbrella, and walked on by her side, uninvited.

“They were very disagreeable,” he returned, “but, fortunately, the opinion of the little world behind the scenes is not of much consequence. It is for the public to judge.”

“There will be a capital house to-night,” she said after a pause; “all the stalls and boxes are taken, and no orders have been given except to the Press.”

“The critics will muster in force, I suppose—the great Oliver among the rest,” he remarked, glancing at her face as he pronounced the name.

“Who is the ‘great Oliver?’ Oh—you mean Oliver Dane, What paper does he write for, do you know?”

“I know—but perhaps I had better not tell you. If his criticism should be in the ‘slashing’ style—”

“Oh, there is not much danger of that,” she replied, laughing: “don’t you know that he is my brother’s particular friend?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“It is not my experience that one’s particular friends make the most indulgent critics,” he remarked; “especially if one has had the impertinence to succeed where they have failed—and I believe Mr. Dane failed conspicuously as a dramatist some years ago.”

Edith frowned.

“I wonder what he has done to offend you?” she said, coldly. “I notice you seldom mention his name without a sneer. I thought he was your friend.”

“So he was—till he became my rival,” was the quick reply.

She crimsoned under her veil to the roots of her fair hair, and gave him a look which might have annihilated him.

“You know it is so,” he persisted. “You know that I would die for you, and that he—”

“That is enough,” she interrupted, hurrying on. “I will say good-bye now, Mr. Procter.”

“Nay, do not leave me in that way,” he pleaded. “Do you dislike me so much that you cannot endure my presence?”

“I dislike your conversation this morning,” she answered quietly.

He drew in his lips, and gave her a curious look.

“I did not mean to offend you. Pray forgive me. Let me be your friend, at least, if nothing more.”

After a moment’s hesitation she put out her hand.

“My friend, if you will, but nothing more,” she echoed.

“I understand. I will try not to offend again. Good-bye. I hope both the audience and the critics will be in a genial mood to-night. By the way—” he turned back as if struck by a sudden thought—“If you particularly wish to know the name of Mr. Dane’s paper—it is The Planet, But pray don’t let him know that I told you.”

“I will not say a word,” she promised.

“Thank you.” And she gave him a friendly nod and smile as she went her way.

The home which she shared with her brother and widowed mother was a small but daintily appointed house in the artistic region of South Kensington. There was nothing in the least Bohemian about Miss Sylvester or her surroundings, for the young actress was a lady by birth and education, and on her father’s death, followed by the wreck of their fortune, she had adopted her present profession. How brilliantly she had succeeded all the world knew, though few were aware by what courageous effort and dauntless perseverance her success had been won.

“Where is Claud, mother?” she asked, entering the pleasant little morning-room where Mrs. Sylvester was sitting.

The latter, a delicate, refined, and still beautiful woman, with a gentle manner and a gracious smile, looked up from the book she was reading.

“He is lying down, dear. He brought a headache from the theatre as usual. Poor boy—it is a trying time for him!”

Edith stood at the window, turning her gloves in her hand, and looking out vaguely at the quiet suburban street, where the soft spring rain was falling, and an organ was grinding “Il Balen” out of tune.

“Yes,” she acquiesced, “but I wish he had a little more tact and patience. He has offended everyone behind the curtain.”

“He belongs to the ‘irritable race of poets,’” Mrs. Sylvester replied, with a smile. “We must not expect him to be a philosopher as well. I think I will go and see how he is,” she added, laying her book aside.

“Don’t go,” Edith interposed quickly, drawing back from the window with a sudden accession of colour to her cheeks, as a hansom stopped at the door. “Here is Mr. Dane.”

But her mother had already left the room.

A few seconds afterwards the visitor was ushered in. A tall, well-built man, of five-and-thirty, with handsome but somewhat stern features; a short brown beard and moustache, and dark, penetrating eyes, which could soften into tenderness on occasion, though, as a rule, they looked at the world proudly and rather defiantly, as if they “cared not for its smile nor frown.”

He greeted her with the ease of an old acquaintance, and took up his position with one elbow on the chimney-piece, while Edith, throwing off her hat, subsided into a low chair by the hearth.

“Well,” he began, “how did the rehearsal go this morning?”

“Fairly well,” she answered, “but Mr. Hope does not seem very sanguine of success.”

“Does he not? But he is not of a sanguine disposition in spite of his name. I see no reason why it should not succeed, though—” he paused, absently examining a Dresden china pug on the mantel-shelf, “I think it would have been better if Claud had chosen a less ambitious subject.”

Edith looked anxious. “He has set all his hopes on it, poor lad. If it fails, the disappointment will crush him.”

“Crush him? Nonsense!” returned her companion, cheerfully. “He must not expect to reach a pinnacle of fame per saltum. Success is seldom won without rebuffs and disappointments, as you yourself have experienced. To say the truth, Claud needs a little discipline of that sort. You have spoilt him.”

She made no answer, but her face expressed dissent.

“Is it true that you have written for the stage yourself?” she inquired presently.

He tossed back his head with a hearty, genial laugh. “I wonder what good-natured friend of mine told you that? Yes, it is true. Long ago in my boyish days—I too wrote a tragedy, which I believe I considered one of the finest productions of the age, but the public was of a distinctly different opinion. However, the failure did not crush me. It merely decided me to turn my energies in a different direction.”

“I wish Claud had your strength of character,” she said, with a half-sigh, “but we cannot change his nature. He has genius, and the defects that accompany it.”

“The defects I perceive, the genius I must take on trust,” was Mr. Dane’s reply.

She rose with an impatient movement, and began turning over the books and papers on the table.

“I know you do not believe in him—you never did,” she said, resentfully. “I think you will be almost disappointed if his play succeeds and proves you were wrong.”

He looked at her with pained surprise, and when she met his eyes, her anger died a sudden death.

“I did not mean that,” she exclaimed, in her quick, impulsive way, putting out her hand. “You wish him well, I know, and I can’t expect you to see him with my eyes.”

He took her hand in both his own, looking at her with an expression that softened every line of his face.

“You do not suppose I could be indifferent to anyone so dear to you?” he said gently; “to you, Edith, who are so dear to me?”

The pressure of his fingers sent a thrill to her heart. She gave him a quick, shy glance, then dropped her head, and “suddenly, sweetly, strangely blushed.”

Before he could speak again, there was a footstep in the corridor outside, and she hastily disengaged her hand. He detained her as she was turning away.

“Do you ever take an early walk in Kensington Gardens, as you used last summer?”

“Sometimes,” she answered, smiling. “Why?”

“Will you be there to-morrow morning at about ten o’clock?—by the Round Pond? I have something to say to you which can best be said under the trees where I have so often lingered to think of you.”

“I will come,” she whispered, and her heart leapt with a sudden joy that almost startled her. At the same moment her brother entered the room.

He was little more than a youth, with a fair, beardless face, dreamy blue eyes, and a quantity of untidy fair hair which he had a restless trick of pushing back from his forehead.

“How is your head, dear?” his sister asked affectionately.

“Splitting,” was the brief reply, as he crossed the room to shake hands with the visitor. “Don’t mention the play, if you please,” he added hastily, before the latter could speak. “I am sick of the subject. Would that mine enemy had written—a tragedy!”

Mr. Dane laughed.

“May I be allowed to say that, from what I have heard. Miss Sylvester will make a sensation in the part of Boadicea?”

“Oh, Edith will do well enough,” her brother admitted, carelessly; “but the rest are sticks—though, of course, if it succeeds they will take all the credit, while if it fails the fault will be mine.”

“You seem in a cynical mood this morning,” his friend observed pleasantly. “You had better come and lunch with me at the club. You will take a brighter view of life after a few glasses of claret. Good-bye—” he added, turning to Edith. “When next we meet I hope I shall have to congratulate you on another triumph.”

With a significant glance of reminder he pressed her hand, and followed her brother from the room.

•    •    •    •

That night the “Royal Kensington” was crowded as it had seldom been before. Blank-verse tragedy was a startling novelty on its boards, which had hitherto been devoted to “society” comedies and adaptations from the French. The new play was sure of a success of curiosity, if nothing more.

The manager’s spirits rose as he surveyed the crowded and brilliant house from his box, pointing out various notabilities to Claud, who was too nervous to listen.

“Your play will be tried by a select jury—the cream of London society is here to-night,” Mr. Hope added, as the curtain drew up on the opening scene.

As the work of a lad of twenty, “Boadicea” was certainly a remarkable production. Though crude and immature it was strikingly original, with many passages of great poetic beauty. It remained to be seen whether these would compensate for its prolixity and lack of dramatic interest.

The first act passed off successfully, and was concluded to applause—a sound which thrilled the young author and brought a flush of triumph to Edith’s face.

“You said it would be ‘caviare’ to the audience—but they seem to like ‘caviare,’” she remarked to Mr. Hope, as she passed him at the wings—looking every inch a queen, in her picturesque barbaric costume, with flowing hair and white arms bare to the shoulder.

“H’m—I would rather the applause came later; it is safer to ‘begin with a little aversion,’” the manager answered, with a look of doubt.

His doubts were changed to gloomiest certainty as the evening proceeded. The audience were politely attentive, but—except when Edith was before them—evidently bored. Of her success, however, there could be no doubt. Whenever she appeared the flagging interest revived, and all the faults of the play were forgotten. Never before had she displayed such passion, power, and tenderness. A wave of inspiration seemed to have raised her all at once to the level of a great artist.

“She has saved the play,” Mr. Dane remarked to a fellow-journalist, when at last the curtain fell on Boadicea’s death-scene.

“It is only a respite,” the other returned, with a shrug. “I doubt if it will live another night. It is too long by half, and—how dull!”

But Edith had no such fears, and was angry with Mr. Hope for expressing them. “With the applause ringing in your ears you can tell me it was not a success!” she exclaimed.

“It was you they applauded, not the play,” put in Claud, half-jealously.

“We shall see what The Planet says about it to-morrow,” she returned, with a glance at Mr. Dane, who had come round from the front to offer congratulations.

He looked at her curiously. “Why do you mention that paper in particular?”

“Well, because it is one of the most important and influential, and because—I have a presentiment that the notice will be favourable.”

“Do not be vexed if it is otherwise,” he replied gently. She glanced at him inquiringly, but he only smiled as he shook hands, and added in an undertone—“Adieu—till to-morrow!”

•    •    •    •

Kensington Gardens on a bright May morning.

The sunbeams lay warm and golden on the daisied turf, the birds were twittering volubly among the young green leaves, and a thrush was singing his sweet full-throated song as unrestrainedly as if London were a hundred miles away.

Oliver Dane was first at the trysting place.

He stood at the margin of the Round Pond, watching the water-fowl, and listening to the thrush; glancing now and then down the path where he expected Edith to appear. It lay in shadow, except at the far end, where a gleam of sunlight struck across it. That shadowed vista seemed to him an image of his own life—which, for all its success, had been sunless and solitary; and the far-off gleam was the hope that had brightened it of late with “the light that never was on sea or shore.”

As the fancy crossed his mind he saw her approaching under the noble old trees. “‘She is coming, my life, my fate,’” he murmured to himself, with a smile, as he went forward to meet her.

The smile faded as he approached her; there was something in her face which puzzled him. A cold, impassive expression, that seemed to disguise it like a mask.

“You are not well?” he said, looking at her earnestly as they shook hands.

“I am a little tired.”

“I am not surprised to hear it, after your exertions last night. But the triumph you won was well worth the effort. It—”

“You shall congratulate me another time,” she interrupted, with a faint smile. “I have just been reading the newspaper critiques and I feel that my head will not stand more flattery at present.”

“Well—it was not to speak of the play that I asked you to meet me this morning,” he responded, drawing her hand through his arm; “but of a subject which concerns me more nearly. Edith, what I have to say can be told in three words, but they carry a heartful of meaning—I love you.”

He paused, looking down at her, but she did not speak, and her face was averted.

“That confession has been near my lips many times before to-day, but I hesitated to speak, fearing to lose your friendship and gain nothing in exchange. But lately—may I confess that I have had hopes? Edith, I have loved you from the first moment I saw you, and, ever since, you have been the centre of all my thoughts and desires. You do not speak. Perhaps I have taken you by surprise? You did not recognise love in the guise of friendship—nor did I myself at first,” he added with a serious smile; “my heart entertained an angel unawares.”

When he ceased speaking, Edith drew a deep breath and looked up. She was pale, and her eyes were troubled, but there was the same unfamiliar expression on her face which he had noticed at first; something cold and almost hostile.

“Answer me, dear,” he said, pressing her hand to his side. “Will you be my wife?”

She stopped short and drew her hand away, looking him full in the face for the first time. “No,” was her reply.

He started as if she had struck him, looking at her blankly. “Edith,” he faltered, “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I cannot accept your offer,” she answered deliberately.

For a moment he could not speak; he felt stunned.

“You refuse me—coldly, carelessly, without a word of explanation?” he exclaimed.

“Is any explanation needed? I am not conscious of having encouraged the hopes you speak of”

“Not purposely, perhaps, but I certainly thought I had grounds for hope, and only yesterday, you—Edith,” he broke off, “what has come between us?” .

He took her hand. Gazing into her face as if he would read her heart in it. “You are changed since we parted last night. Have you heard anything which—”

“You had better not question me,”. she interrupted. “I have answered you—that is enough. Please let go my hand.”

He only held it more closely, in a grasp that almost hurt her.

“Look in my eyes and tell me that you do not love me, or I will not believe you are in earnest,” he said imperiously.

She flushed to her forehead, and turned her face away. “You are sceptical,” she replied, with a forced laugh. “I presume you think no woman in her senses would refuse you? I am the one exception, which proves the rule, you see.”

His face changed suddenly, all the tenderness dying out of it. He dropped her hand and stepped back from her.

“I am convinced now,” he said, quietly. “I will importune you no further. Shall we walk on?”

They walked in silence to the entrance, then he paused. “I shall go abroad shortly, for an indefinite time, so this is good-bye,” he said, putting out his hand.

“Good-bye,” she echoed, and they parted. Edith went her way with her head erect, and step not less elastic than usual, but her face was white, and her eyes dim with suppressed pain.

“I said I would punish him, and I have,” she muttered; “but— I have punished myself more.”

When she reached home, Claud was dawdling over his late breakfast with a newspaper propped up before him.

“Is that The Planet? I told them not to give it to you,” she said, anxiously.

“Were you afraid that I should be intoxicated by the flattery of this critique?” he asked, with a short laugh.

“It is the cruellest thing that ever was written!” she exclaimed.

“You have no reason to say so,” he remarked, with emphasis. “Do you think I care to be praised at your expense? To have my acting held up to admiration while your beautiful play is turned into ridicule? I will never forgive Oliver Dane for this.”

“Dane!” he echoed, looking at her in astonishment; “do you mean to say Dane wrote this thing?”

“So I was told by Mr. Procter.”

He took up the paper, frowning doubtfully as he ran his eye down the column.

“It is certainly like his style, and I know that he writes for this paper,” he muttered. “Bah—so much for ‘friendship’!” he added, as he flung it across the table and left the room.

The manager’s forebodings were realized that night. Edith’s best efforts could not galvanize the play into life a second time. It did not die a violent death, however, but merely languished forlornly through its five long acts to a lame and impotent conclusion.

Claud disappeared from the theatre before the curtain fell. He hurried home, hastily packed a few necessaries in a portmanteau and left the house, informing his mother that he intended to keep away till his “fiasco” was forgotten.

“He would not even say where he was going,” Mrs. Sylvester’ told Edith when she returned.

“Perhaps he hardly knew himself,” the latter replied. “We shall hear from him soon, no doubt.”

But days passed into weeks, and the expected letter did not come.

Meantime “Boadicea” vanished abruptly from the bills, and was shortly afterwards succeeded by a new “society” play, polished and cynical, which was understood to have been written expressly for Miss Sylvester by Mr. Frederick Procter.

•    •    •    •

A sultry sunny midsummer afternoon was drawing to a close.

There was a flower show at the Horticultural Gardens, and a long line of carriages was waiting in Exhibition Road. The grounds were still crowded, and the bright array of summer toilettes rivalled the flowers in colour and variety.

“The best dressed woman here is Miss Sylvester,” remarked one of a group of young men who had turned to look after her.

“And the handsomest,” put in another voice. “Not one of the professional beauties can hold a candle to her. Who’s with her?”

“Fred Procter—author of ‘Hearts and Coronets’—don’t you know? They say she is going to marry him.”

Edith’s quick ears caught the words, and a sudden colour flushed her face.

“The sun makes my head ache,” she said abruptly to her companion; “let us find a seat in the shade.”

They found it presently under some trees, in a remote part of the grounds, away from the crowd, but not out of hearing of the Hungarian band, which was playing a weird mournful air in the minor key.

Taking the fan from her hand the young man leaned forward with his elbow on his knee, and fanned her gently, earnestly watching the beautiful face, which just now had a clouded look.

“Are you displeased because gossip couples our names?” he asked at length. She shrugged her shoulders with the air of lassitude and indifference which had been growing upon her of late.

“If gossip of that sort troubled me I should never be at peace. Rumour has married me to half a dozen different people this season.”

“But suppose—suppose I asked you to make this rumour true?” he said, after a pause.

She shook her head.

“No,” she said gently; “it is impossible. I will not do you the injustice of marrying you without love.”

“But I am content to wait for that,” he returned, quickly; “it would come in time, I feel certain. You could not resist such devotion as I should offer you. I don’t pretend to be worthy of you, Edith; I am but an indifferent sort of a fellow, I know, but if you would only give me your hand, you could raise me to a higher level.”

There was genuine emotion in his face, unmistakeable sincerity in his voice. She looked at him—and hesitated. She was in a mood when any change seems a relief. She felt an impatient longing to get rid of old memories and associations, and begin life afresh under new conditions.

He construed her silence as consent, and a light of triumph sprang into his eyes. But the next moment his expression changed abruptly, and he muttered under his breath something that was certainly not a benediction, as he glanced at an approaching figure.

Edith raised her head and saw that it was Oliver Dane.

Her heart gave a great leap, then sank. It would only be pain to meet him, cold and estranged as he would be.

But there was no trace of coldness in Mr. Dane’s greeting.

He came forward with hand outstretched, a cordial smile on his lips, his dark eyes beaming with pleasure.

“I have been looking for you all over the grounds,” he said.

She glanced at him in perplexity. He looked as radiant as if some great good fortune had befallen him. Had he forgotten—so soon?

“I thought you were on the other side of the Channel,” she answered, with a constrained smile, as she gave him her hand. The young barrister rose, with a stiff bow, and drew back, behind her chair, where he stood, looking oddly nervous and ill at ease, as he trifled with her fan.

“So I was, a few hours ago,” was the reply; “but I heard something yesterday which—which decided me to return at once. I have just called at your house and Mrs. Sylvester told me you were here, with the Hardings. Claud is at home. I brought him back with me.”

“Claud!” she exclaimed in surprise. “Where did you meet him?”

“We came across each other in Paris only yesterday. He had been living on a fourth storey in the Quartier Latin, like a hero of the ‘Vie de Bohême,’ but I fancy he was getting tired of exile, and was not sorry to see the face of a friend.”

“Did he meet you as a friend?” she asked involuntarily. He smiled.

“Well—not at first, certainly. His manner was even more hostile than your own at our last meeting. I found that you had both been under a strange misconception with regard to a critique on the play, which—”

“Did you not write it?” she interrupted, rising as she spoke.

“Certainly not. Mr. Procter will tell you that he succeeded me as dramatic critic to The Planet some months ago.”

She uttered an exclamation. “But it was he who said—”

“It was a misunderstanding,” Mr. Procter interposed, hurriedly. “I will explain it another time. Come, dearest,” he added, drawing her hand through his arm with a quick glance of triumph at his rival; “shall we return to your friends?”

At the familiar words and action Mr. Dane started, glancing from one to the other inquiringly. Then his face changed suddenly, all the brightness fading out of it.

“I perceive that I am de trop,” he said drily. “I will take my leave.”

She snatched her hand away, colouring hotly.

“No, no—you don’t understand,” she began; “I—”

“I understand that I have come too late,” was his reply. He bowed to her gravely and turned away, without another word.

When they were alone Edith turned to her companion; her face white and her eyes glittering.

“You have deceived me,” she said, in a low tone of suppressed passion; “deliberately and intentionally deceived me, to gain your own ends. But I shall not reproach you—I fear if I said anything, I should say too much. Please leave me, and let us never meet again.”

He turned pale. “You are not going to dismiss me in this way!—you cannot have the heart, when you know that I love you so madly—”

She interrupted him by a look which seemed to place a gulf between them.

There was a moment’s silence, then he said in an altered voice: “Edith, I will undo the mischief I have done. He shall know that you are still free. He will return to you—”

She shook her head.

“He will—he shall! Only say that you forgive me before I go,” he pleaded.

She looked at him irresolutely a moment, then gave him her hand in silence. Glancing right and left to make sure that no one was in sight he pressed it passionately to his lips. The next moment he was gone.

When Edith reached home, she found her mother rejoicing over the return of the truant, who seemed rather improved than otherwise by his voluntary exile. He saluted his sister with unusual effusion.

“Have you seen Dane?” he inquired, after their first greetings had been exchanged; “he rushed off, declaring he could not rest till he had set himself right with you. He is the best fellow in the world! Mother, did I tell you that he was going to start a new paper and I am to be on the staff?”

Mrs. Sylvester looked doubtful. “I should hardly have thought journalism was suited to you, dear. With your—”

“Don’t say ‘genius’!” the lad interrupted, with a laugh and a blush. “You make me feel such a sorry impostor. Dane has more talent in his little finger than I have in my whole body.”

At this, his mother raised her eyebrows and his sister smiled. Such modesty in Claud was as rare as it was refreshing.

After dinner Edith left them, on the plea of a headache, and retreated to the morning-room, where she threw herself on the couch, burying her face in her hands. It was true that her head ached, but her heart ached too, as it never had in her life before, with a pain of vain regret and desolate longing.

The shadows gathered round her as she lay, feeling numbed and stupefied. She did not hear the door open, and started when a voice at her side uttered her name.

“Who is it?” she asked, as she rose, peering doubtfully at the intruder.

“It is I,” the voice replied, and two warm, firm hands clasped her own. She caught her breath with a sob of joy and relief.

“Oliver!”

He drew her to him, putting back the disordered hair from her forehead.

“We seem fated to misunderstand each other, Edith, you and I,” he said gently. “Is it true what Procter has just told me—that you refused him this afternoon on the ground that your love was given elsewhere?”

She bent her head in assent.

“Now, dear,” he continued, putting her away from him so that he could look into her face, “let there be no more shadows between us; tell me—is it I who have your heart?”

She looked at him with eyes that shone like stars through the dusk. “You had it long ago,” she whispered. And lest he should retain any lingering doubt on the subject, she put her arms round his neck and drew his dark face down and kissed him.

A Painter’s Vengeance

(May 1883)

Thirty years ago the Belgian painter, Antoine Wiertz, was astonishing the artistic world by the powerful but extravagant productions which are now exhibited at Brussels in the Museum which bears his name.

Though his brush was generally occupied with classical subjects, or weird allegorical designs such as the “Contest between Good and Evil,” he occasionally consented to paint portraits. This was a favour, however, which he only accorded to those whose physiognomy happened to interest him. It may be added that his taste inclined rather to the grotesque and eccentric than the beautiful.

One day he received a visit from a certain M. van Spach, a notary, who had been seized with the desire to have his features perpetuated by the celebrated artist. Maître van Spach—a dry, wrinkled, keen-eyed old gentleman, with an expression of mingled shrewdness and self importance—was one of the wealthiest men in Brussels, and as avaricious as he was rich; a characteristic which had procured him the nickname of “Maître Harpagon.”

Wiertz was aware of his visitor’s failing; nevertheless he acceded to his request without demur. The fact was, he had been conquered at first sight by the old scrivener’s picturesque head. That head was a perfect treasure to an artist, with its bald cranium, wrinkled forehead, shaggy brows overhanging the small piercing eyes, hooked nose, and thin-lipped mouth, which shut like a trap. Wiertz was fascinated, and while his visitor was pompously explaining his wishes, the artist was taking mental note of every line and feature.

“How much will the portrait cost?” was the notary’s cautious inquiry.

“My terms are ten thousand francs, Monsieur,” was the reply.

The lawyer started, stared incredulously, shrugged his shoulders, and took up his hat. “In that case,” he answered drily, “I have only to wish you good morning.”

Alarmed at the prospect of losing this promising “subject,” whom he had already in imagination transferred to canvas, Wiertz hastened to add: “Those are my usual terms; but as your face interests me, I am willing to make a reduction in your favour. Suppose we say five thousand?”

But M. van Spach still objected, urging that such a sum was exorbitant for “a strip of painted canvas.”

At length, after much bargaining and hesitation, he agreed to pay three thousand francs for the portrait—“frame included;” and this being settled, he rose to take leave.

“When am I to give you the first sitting?” he inquired.

“There is no hurry,” replied the artist, who had his own intentions regarding this portrait. “I am somewhat occupied just now, but will let you know when I have a morning at liberty. Au revoir!”

The moment his visitor had left the studio, Wiertz seized palette and brushes, placed a fresh canvas on his easel, and dashed in the outlines of the portrait from memory. He painted as if for a wager, while the summer daylight lasted; and, thanks to his marvellous rapidity of execution, when evening came the picture was all but finished.

He had represented the old Notary seated at a table, strewn with papers and parchments, his full face turned towards the spectator. The head was brought out in masterly relief against a shadowed background, and painted in the artist’s best style; bold, free and unconventional, showing no signs of its hurried execution. The likeness was striking in its fidelity, giving not only the features, but the character and expression of the original, so that the canvas seemed instinct with life.

The following morning Wiertz gave the finishing touches to his work, put it in a frame, and despatched it to Van Spach; instructing the messenger to wait for an answer.

He rubbed his hands with pleasure as he pictured the old gentleman’s delight and astonishment, and anticipated the sensation which this tour de force would create in artistic circles.

In due time the messenger returned—with the picture in one hand, and a note in the other. Wiertz hastily dismissed him, opened the letter, and read as follows:

Sir—I beg to return your extraordinary production, which I cannot suppose is intended for my portrait, as it bears no sort of resemblance to me.

In art, as in everything else, I like to have my money’s worth for my money, and I do not choose to pay you the sum of three thousand francs for one afternoon’s work. As you do not consider me worth the trouble of painting seriously, I must decline any further transactions with you, and remain, Sir,

Yours obediently,

Peter van Spach.

When the artist recovered from his astonishment at this remarkable epistle, he burst into a fit of laughter which made the studio ring.

“His money’s worth—ha, ha! Maître Harpagon has over-reached himself for once. He could have sold it for five times what it cost him—the benighted old Philistine!”

He placed the rejected picture once more on the easel, and regarded it long and critically, only to become more convinced of its merit. He knew that art-judges would pronounce it a chef-d’oeuvre. His amusement began to give place to irritation at the indignity to which his work had been subjected, and vague projects of vengeance rose before him as he paced the floor, with bent head and knitted brows.

Suddenly he stopped short, his eyes sparkling with mischievous satisfaction at an idea which had suddenly occurred to him. He took up his palette, and set to work upon the picture again, adroitly altering and retouching.

In an incredibly short space of time, it underwent a startling metamorphosis. While carefully preserving the likeness, he had altered the face by exaggerating its characteristics; giving a cunning leer to the deeply-set eyes, a grimmer curve to the thin lips, and a scowl to the heavy brows. A stubbly beard appeared on the chin, and the attitude became drooping and decrepit.

Then the notary’s accessories vanished, the background becoming the wall of a cell, with a barred window; while the table, with its litter of papers and parchments, was transformed into a rough bench, beneath which might be discerned a pitcher and a loaf.

When this was achieved to his satisfaction, the artist signed his work, and gummed on the frame a conspicuous label, with the inscription: “Imprisoned for Debt.”

Then he sent for a fiacre, and drove to Melchior’s, the well-known picture-dealer in the Rue de la Madeleine, whose window offers such constant attraction to lovers of art.

“I have something to show you,” began Wiertz. “I have just finished this study, which I think is fairly successful. Can you find room for it in your window?”

“Find room for it? I should think so!” exclaimed the dealer, enthusiastically. “My dear fellow, it is first-rate! I have seen nothing of yours more striking and original—and that is saying much. What price do you put upon it?”

“I have not yet decided,” replied the painter. “Give it a good place in the window, and if a purchaser presents himself, let me know.”

The picture was immediately installed in the place of honour, and soon attracted a curious group. All day Melchior’s window was surrounded; and next morning the papers noticed the wonderful picture, and sent fresh crowds to gaze at it.

Among the rest was a friend of Maître van Spach, who could hardly believe his eyes on recognising the worthy notary in this “questionable shape.” He hastened at once to inform him of the liberty which had been taken with his person; and not long afterwards the old lawyer burst into the shop, startling its proprietor, who at once recognized the original of the famous picture.

“M. Melchior,” began the intruder, “I have been made the victim of a shameful practical joke by one of your clients. It is my portrait, sir, that hangs in your window; it is I, sir—I, Maître van Spach—who am held up to ridicule in that infamous daub—pilloried for all the world to see as an imprisoned bankrupt! If the thing is not at once removed, I shall apply to the police.”

At this threat the picture-dealer merely smiled. “I must refer you to the artist, Monsieur,” he returned, coolly. “The picture belongs to him, and I cannot remove it without his permission.”

To Wiertz’s house went Maître van Spach, in a white heat of rage and indignation. On entering the studio, he found the painter lounging in an arm-chair, smoking his afternoon cigar.

“Ah, it is you, Maître?” was his bland greeting. “To what fortunate circumstance am I indebted for this visit? Pray take a seat. Do you smoke? You will find those cigars excellent.”

“Monsieur,” interrupted the notary, cutting short these courtesies with scant ceremony: “let us come to the point. There is at this moment in Melchior’s window a picture—a caricature—which makes me the laughing stock of the town. I insist on its being taken out at once—at once, do you understand?”

“Not quite,” replied the other imperturbably. “It is true there is a picture of mine at Melchior’s, but I really don’t see how it makes you ridiculous.”

“You don’t see?—But that picture is my portrait, sir—my portrait!” cried his visitor, rapping his cane upon the floor.

“Your portrait?” echoed the other, with a look of surprise.

“Of course it is, as anyone can see at a glance. You—”

“But—excuse me,” the painter interrupted, “you said yesterday that it did not resemble you in the least. See—here is your letter to that effect.”

Van Spach coloured and bit his lip. He felt that he was caught.

“Such being the case,” continued Wiertz, “and the work being returned on my hands, I have a perfect right to dispose of it to the best advantage.”

The notary took a turn across the room, to recover his composure.

“Come,” he said, at length, forcing a smile, “let us try to arrange this ridiculous affair amicably. I will give you the three thousand francs at once, and take the horrible thing out of the window—”

“Stay a moment,” interrupted his companion, as he flicked the ashes from his cigar, and carelessly changed his position. “You must be aware that the picture in its present shape is ten times more valuable than a mere portrait. It is now a work of imagination and invention, and I may own that I consider it one of my most successful canvases. I could not think of parting with it for less than fifteen thousand francs.”

The notary gasped. “Fifteen thousand francs! You are joking!”

“Not at all. That is my price; you may take it or leave it.”

There was a moment’s pause; then the visitor turned on his heel.

“I leave it, then! Go to the deuce with your picture!” he retorted, as he left the room, banging the door behind him.

He had not gone many yards from the house, however, when he stopped short and reflected. So long as that ill-omened canvas remained on view in Melchior’s window he would not know a moment’s peace. The story would be sure to get wind, and even his friends would join in the laugh against him. He would hardly dare to show his face abroad. At any sacrifice, this scandal must be stopped. But—fifteen thousand francs! He fairly groaned as he reluctantly retraced his steps towards the house.

“Monsieur Wiertz,” he began, in a conciliatory tone, “I have reconsidered the matter, and—and I agree to your terms. I will take your picture for the sum you named.”

Wiertz threw away his cigar, and rose.

“Monsieur, you are very kind. But it happens that I, too, have been considering, and a brilliant idea has occurred to me.”

The notary shuddered. He dreaded Wiertz’s “ideas,” and he had a presentiment that some fresh disaster was in store for him.

“What is it?” he asked, nervously.

“As my picture seems to have made a sensation, I think I shall advertise it to be raffled for at five francs a ticket, and, that all the town may have a chance of seeing it, I shall hire a commissionaire to carry it through the streets for a day or two. Not a bad notion, —eh?”

Maître van Spach was speechless with consternation. “You—you would not do that?” he stammered.

“Why not? I am confident the plan would succeed—so confident that I wouldn’t give it up for less than thirty thousand francs—money down.”

The unfortunate notary burst into a cold perspiration, and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. To see himself trotted round Brussels on a porter’s back, labelled “Imprisoned for Debt!” It was like a horrible nightmare.

“Here,” he exclaimed, desperately, taking out his pocket-book—“here is a cheque for the amount. For heaven’s sake, let me have the picture, and I will say no more about it.”

Half an hour afterwards the detestable canvas was in his possession; but it was not until he had cut it out of the frame and burnt it to ashes that he felt himself safe from some fresh manifestation of the painter’s vengeance.

Meantime, Wiertz cashed the cheque, and after deducting the sum of ten thousand francs—the price he had first demanded—forwarded the rest to the charitable fund of the town in the name of Maître van Spach.

Monsieur Silvain’s Secret

(Jun. 1887)

Monsieur Silvain had not at all the look of a man with a secret; being a brisk, dapper, cheerful little gentleman of middle age, with a round, clean-shaven face, short-sighted blue eyes, and a mouth which wore a perpetual smile.

He was a bachelor, and affected a juvenile style of dress; in manners, he was the pink of politeness and urbanity, and in conversation, was perfectly frank and unreserved on every subject save one.

For about three years he had occupied rooms in the Rue Vavin, on the second floor of a house near the Luxembourg Gardens. Every day, Sundays and fêtes not excepted, he left home at nine and returned at six, but how he was occupied during his absence was a mystery. When questioned as to the nature of his business or profession. Monsieur Silvain either politely evaded the enquiry, or else petrified the interrogator with a stony stare which effectually checked further indiscretion.

If, as had more than once happened, he was followed on his way to “business,” he adroitly contrived to give his pursuers the slip after exhausting them with a long and exciting chase.

In spite of the mystery attaching to him, the little gentleman was far from unpopular. He was reputed to be rich, and was known to be generous, while his politeness and geniality commended him to everyone.

Even Old Musard, his concierge, though aggrieved by the “second-floor’s” unaccountable reserve, had been heard to admit that “there couldn’t be much harm in a man who had a good word for everyone, carried bonbons in his pocket for the children, and was a providence to all the poor in the neighbourhood.”

Such was Monsieur Silvain, and such had been the tenor of his life for three years or thereabouts, when, one bleak November evening, having returned to his apartments at the usual hour, and made some changes in his dress, he prepared to sally forth again to the restaurant where he was in the habit of dining.

Jauntily descending the stairs he was crossing the landing below his own, when he was arrested by an unusual sound proceeding from the rooms which opened on to it.

He was on terms of neighbourly intimacy with their occupant, the elderly widow of a retired colonel, but it was certainly neither Madame Evrard, nor Marthe, her stout bonne, who was singing with such thrilling sweetness and pathos the old melody of “Ma Normandie.”

“Charming, charming!” commented Monsieur Silvain, half-aloud, refreshing himself from his snuff-box as he listened. “A pure soprano, admirably trained. I wonder who Madame’s visitor can be, and whether her face matches her voice? By-the-by, I owe my neighbour a visit. Why not pay it now?”

Without further hesitation he rang the bell.

Instead of the buxom Marthe in her white cap and apron, it was a young lady who answered his summons. A sweet-faced, fair-haired girl of nineteen, in a well-worn black dress with a knot of winter violets at her breast.

The effect of this pleasant apparition on Monsieur Silvain was remarkable, not to say mysterious. He peered at her doubtfully for a moment through his eye-glass, then started, and drew back, giving her a glance of wondering and delighted recognition. Perceiving, however, that there was no answering consciousness on her face, but surprise and some amusement at his bewildered expression, he quickly recovered himself, and saluted her with ceremonious politeness.

“Pardon, Mademoiselle, can I have the pleasure of seeing Madame Evrard?”

She inclined her head in assent, and preceded him across the antechamber into a cosy little panelled sitting-room, lighted only by the flickering gleam of a wood fire, which revealed the figure of its occupant sitting severely upright in a high-backed chair by the hearth, knitting energetically.

The officer’s widow was a bright-eyed, well-preserved woman of fifty, with a quick manner and a shrewd, but not unkindly face.

“Ah, Monsieur Silvain, is it you? I thought you had forgotten me,” she said, arresting her knitting-pins for a moment to shake hands with him. “Take a seat, and let me introduce you to this young friend of mine; the orphan daughter of an old comrade of my husband. Renée, my neighbour. Monsieur Silvain.”

Bringing his heels together, the visitor bowed with the grace of a marquis of the old régime, murmuring with a smile that he was “enchanted.”

“I hope you happen to be fond of music,” the widow proceeded briskly, “for Renée is come to live with me, and it will be unfortunate if you are annoyed by her practising.”

“Annoyed, Madame? I shall be charmed—enraptured!” he protested. “Music is my passion, and to hear such an artiste as Mademoiselle is a treat indeed. Allow me to congratulate you, and your charming friend on this most happy arrangement.”

“Yes, I think it will be an advantage to both of us,” she acquiesced.

“But much greater on my side than on yours. Madam Evrard,” the girl rejoined, bending to kiss the elder lady’s cheek. “If you knew how delightful it is after living in solitary lodgings so long to have a home to return to and a friend to welcome me when my day’s work is done!”

“You might have had them months ago if you had let me know you were in Paris, instead of leaving me to find it out by chance.”

“I feared—”

“Yes, I know; you are a proud girl,” her friend interrupted, tapping her cheek with a knitting-needle. Then turning to the visitor, who, with his eye-glass fixed on his nose, was looking profoundly interested and sympathetic, she continued: “Quiet as she looks, this is a very adventurous and independent young lady, Monsieur Silvain. When her father died three years ago, leaving her to face the world alone, she adopted music as her profession, and not being appreciated in her native place, Rouen, came up to Paris last year with the hope—”

“Of covering myself with laurels,” Renée put in. “But alas! here I am, still unknown to fame, giving lessons at four francs an hour. A melancholy example of frustrated ambition.”

“No matter! a woman was never the happier for being famous,” Madame Evrard returned, consolingly; “we must find you a husband, my child; you will cease to care for laurels when you have worn orange-blossoms. What say you, Monsieur Silvain?”

“Undoubtedly, Madame, it is better to be happy than famous,” he answered, absently, without removing his eyes from the girl’s face.

She looked at him demurely as she leaned with folded arms on the back of Madame Evrard’s chair.

“If you consider marriage equivalent to happiness. Monsieur Silvain, pardon me for asking how it is you are still a bachelor?”

He shrugged his shoulders with a deprecating smile. “Mademoiselle, I must plead that it is not my fault, but my misfortune. Constantly occupied in my—ahem!—official duties, I have positively had no leisure hitherto to think of matrimony, but I hope—”

“Your official duties?” the widow interrupted quickly. “Then you have a post under government. Monsieur Silvain?” He dropped his glove, and stooped to pick it up. “I—hm—have occupied my present position for a number of years, Madame.”

“Ah—a snug berth, I daresay?”

“Very snug,” he replied, smoothing his hat and examining with a sudden appearance of interest the maker’s name inside. Then, as if anxious to change the conversation, he turned to Renée.

“Do not let my presence prevent you from finishing that charming song, Mademoiselle.”

“Not that old-fashioned thing, child,” Madame Evrard interposed. “Fetch the lamp, and let us have something worth hearing.”

The visitor’s eyes followed her from the room with a look which his companion was not slow to notice.

“I see that you admire my young friend,” she remarked.

“She is adorable! such a union of grace, beauty and sweetness, I have never seen.”

“Yes, she is pretty,” the widow admitted, impartially.

“Pretty? pardon—the term is too commonplace. Mademoiselle Rene has the face of an angel—and the heart of one.”

The last words were added in an undertone, as if spoken to himself. Her busy needles stopped abruptly, as she looked at him with upraised eyebrows.

“You must be a very acute observer to discover her angelic qualities after being only five minutes in her company. But perhaps you have heard something of her history—though I don’t know who can have told you.” He shook his head with a smile.

“I do not even know her name, Madame, for you forgot to mention it just now. I judged from the sweetness of her expression.”

“Oh, I see. Like most men, you give a pretty woman credit for all the virtues,” she remarked drily. “However, in this case you happen to be right, for Renée Duvilliers is—”

He pushed back his chair with a stifled exclamation of surprise.

“Duvilliers,” he repeated. “Is she the daughter of Raymond Duvilliers of Rouen?”

“Yes. You knew him then?”

“I have heard of him, Madame,”

“You have heard nothing to his credit I fear,” she remarked, shaking her head significantly, “for between ourselves, the Captain was a bad man. He began life with every advantage, but after squandering his fortune in all sorts of follies, he was reduced to living by his wits. He retrieved his fortune by a rich marriage, and though, of course, he soon ran through half his wife’s money—she was an Englishwoman, older than himself—Renée would have been left fairly well off, if it had not been for her own quixotic self-sacrifice. After her father’s death, she found among his papers a memorandum concerning a certain Monsieur Mathieu, an ex-dancing master, of Paris, whom the Captain had, well, I’m afraid I must say swindled, out of all his savings, under pretext of some brilliant investment which only existed in his own fertile imagination.”

“Monsieur Mathieu must have been a weak and credulous person,”” her listener remarked coolly, taking snuff.

“Possibly. But what was Raymond Duvilliers? Even when he had it in his power to refund the money, he cruelly neglected to do so, and left the poor man’s piteous appeals unanswered; for Renée found his letters, dated nearly twenty years ago, with the seals unbroken.”

“He had his remedy at law.”

“No, for Duvilliers had managed to keep on the safe side of the code. Well,” she continued, “you may think how shocked his daughter was by the discovery. She never rested till, by means of advertisements in Parisian papers, she had discovered her father’s victim and made restitution. Her property being, unfortunately, under her own control, she at once refunded the greater part of the money, and undertook to pay the rest in annual instalments out of the pittance she had left herself, which she proposed to increase by teaching.”

Monsieur Silvain coughed, and changed his position abruptly. “And this person—Mathieu—how could he accept the reparation, knowing that she had reduced herself to poverty in order to—”

“He did not know it. The money was refunded, through her lawyer, in her father’s name. She has never seen him, and knows nothing concerning him, except what his letters told her. He furnished proofs of his identity, but gave no information as to his present position. Maître Delaunay, of Rouen, was her agent in the matter—sorely against his will, as it deprived his son of a fortune.”

“How so?”

“Renée was engaged to be married to Maurice Delaunay, whom she had known from childhood, but when she insisted on beggaring herself, the notary and his wife peremptorily broke off the match, and as the young man is dependent on his parents, he was forced to give way. I’m afraid,” she added, with a sigh, “that it will not be an easy matter to find the poor child another parti.”

Her companion shut his snuff-box with an indignant snap. “You must have a poor opinion of my sex, Madame, if you think that beauty and goodness such as hers—”

“Eh, my good sir, you are sadly behind the times!” his hostess interrupted with a shrug. “What do beauty and goodness avail unless they are set off by a golden frame? It is not for her ‘beaux yeux’ that a girl is wooed now-a-days, but for ‘les beaux yeux de sa cassette.’ But hush,” she broke in, “Renée is coming back.”

The next moment the girl appeared with the lamp in her hand.

Feeling instinctively that they had been speaking of her, she glanced from one to the other as she placed it on the table, then looked more closely at the visitor, bending her brows in a puzzled frown.

“It is strange,” she said slowly, “your face seems familiar to me. I can’t think of whom it is you remind me.”

“Some friend at Rouen, perhaps?” Madame Evrard suggested.

“No; of someone here in Paris, whom I have seen recently—”

Monsieur Silvain rose and came forward, standing so that the light fell full on his face and figure.

“Every man is said to have his double. I should be curious to know of whom I can remind you,” he said, composedly.

She shook her head. “I can’t recollect, and now that I look at you again, the resemblance vanishes. I daresay it was only fancy,” she said, as she opened her music-book. Once installed at the piano, she was not allowed to leave it till her répertoire was exhausted, Monsieur Silvain petitioning again and again “for just one more” song, till the evening had insensibly passed away.

At last, suddenly becoming conscious of the fact that he had not yet dined, their visitor, with a profusion of thanks and apologies, took his leave. When the little gentleman had bowed himself out, Madame Evrard turned to her companion and demanded abruptly: “Well, what do you think of my neighbour?”

Renée, who was still seated at the piano, running her fingers absently over the keys, wheeled round on the music-stool.

“I think he is ‘charming, charming!’” she replied, with a droll imitation of his manner; “but he is a living anachronism. He ought to have been a functionary of the vieille cour, instead of a clerk under the Republic. But there is something quaint and pleasant in his old-fashioned gallantry, and he has a face one can trust.”

“I am glad you like him,” her friend replied, complacently. “I assure you that he returns the compliment with interest. In fact, Renée, you have made a conquest.”

The girl lifted her pretty brows with a look of laughing incredulity. “Really? I had no idea I was so fascinating. But what a very susceptible old gentleman he must be!”

“Old?” her friend repeated with some resentment. “I don’t know what you call old. He can’t be much over fifty.”

“Well, that isn’t exactly the first bloom of youth, is it?”

“It is the prime of life for a man. And he doesn’t look his age. With such good hair and teeth—”

Renée broke into an irrepressible laugh. “Why, Monsieur Silvain has bewitched your sight! His luxuriant hair is the most innocent wig I ever saw; and as for his teeth—”

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Madame Evrard answered hastily; “a man’s appearance is of very little consequence if he is eligible in every other respect—which our neighbour undoubtedly is. Rich, good-natured and good-mannered; occupying, it appears, a responsible post under Government—let me tell you, Renée, that such a match is not to be despised by a girl in your position.”

“Perhaps not,” she acquiesced, mildly; “but as I happen to be already engaged—”

The widow let her knitting fall into her lap.

“Engaged?” she repeated; “to whom?”

“To Maurice Delaunay.”

“Did you not tell me that the engagement had been broken off by his people three years ago?”

“Yes—but not by himself. He would have married me in defiance of them, but I told him that I would not be his wife till—till I had fulfilled my task and cleared my father’s name of the stain of dishonour.”

“And you think he will wait for you?” her friend questioned, with a cynically compassionate smile; “that shows how little you know of men! You are living in a world of dreams, my poor child.”

“If love and faith and honour are dreams, what is real in life?” she answered softly, as she closed the piano. “I am as sure of his fidelity as I am of my own, and I have confidence in the future. ‘Work, wait and trust,’ that is my motto.”

Madame Evrard shook her head in emphatic disapproval, but was wise enough to say no more.

•    •    •    •

In spite of her cheerful confidence, however, there were moments when the girl’s courage and spirits failed her; and her heart grew sick with hope deferred.

It was in one of these moods of dejection that she set forth next morning on her daily round, but she attributed her depression to the influence of the weather. It was a grey, melancholy day; a chill mist clung to the surface of the river and drifted along the busy quays.

As she crossed the Pont Neuf, Renée paused for a moment to drop a contribution into the leathern wallet of the old wooden-legged fiddler, familiarly known to Parisians by the soubriquet of “Père Joyeux.” For more years than anyone cared to count, he had haunted the same sheltered corner near the end of the bridge, scraping away energetically on a battered fiddle, whose shrill merry notes made themselves heard above all the noise of traffic. Men might come and men might go, but Père Joyeux’s fiddle “went on for ever,” in cheerful defiance of time and change. He had grown to be regarded as a public pensioner, and though he never asked for alms, the “gros sous” came dropping fast into the open wallet which was slung from his shoulder. Coins of any sort were not very plentiful with Renée, but she seldom omitted to contribute her mite in her daily pilgrimage across the bridge, accompanying the donation with a friendly little nod and smile and sometimes a few words of greeting.

Having deposited her offering in silence to-day, she was passing on, when the old violinist called her back, breaking off in the middle of a bar.

“My little lady, you have given me a silver piece; did you know?”

“Yes, I have no coppers. Is it not a good one?” she added, for he had picked it out of the bag and was eyeing it curiously. He nodded, and stowed it carefully away in his waistcoat pocket.

“Quite good, and a new one, too! I shall keep it for luck,” he replied, and, tucking his fiddle under his grizzled beard once more, he broke into the tune of “Monsieur et Madame Denis.”

“Do you remember,

Do you remember,

The happy days when love was young?”

Renée found herself humming the refrain of the foolish old song as she went her way. Ah, yes, too well she remembered those happy bygone days when all the world was glorified by the light of newborn love. How bright they seemed, but how distant, looking back at them from the shadowed present! It was little more than a year since she had parted from her lover, but that long dreary year seemed to have put a gulf between them, in spite of the tender letters which bridged it across. Her heart thrilled with the longing to see him again; to hear once more the dear familiar voice which to her was the sweetest music the world could give.

“Renée!”

She paused with a start, looking wonderingly, half-incredulously at the speaker, into whose arms she had almost run in her pre-occupation. It was Maurice himself who stood before her, looking down at her with “liquid eyes of love.”

“Renée, don’t you know me?” he questioned smiling, as he put out his hand.

She drew a deep breath, and her face brightened all over with joyful surprise.

“Oh, Maurice, is it really you?” was all she could find to say.

“I believe so,” he answered soberly, “though your incredulous look just now almost made me doubt my own identity. Was I so far from your thoughts at that moment, dear?”

“So near to them, on the contrary, that your sudden appearance seemed almost magical,” she returned, with a happy laugh. “I had no idea you were in Paris.”

“Nor has anyone else,” he replied, as he drew her hand through his arm, and walked on with her. “At the present moment I am supposed to be at Pontoise, where my father sent me on a business mission, but, finding myself so near to you, how could I resist the temptation of coming? I was positively hungering for a sight of you. Oh, my darling,” he added, pressing her hand to his side, “what happiness it is to be together again, if only for a few stolen moments. If you knew how my heart has ached all these weary months!”

“I know—by my own,” she whispered.

“And how has the world been using you, sweetheart, since we parted a year ago?” he went on, looking down at her tenderly.

“Fairly well, on the whole,” she responded with a smile, “though to tell the truth, I find the road to success steeper than I expected.”

“Too steep for your little feet to tread alone. The task you have undertaken is too heavy for you, Renée. Why will you not give me the right to help you?”

She shook her head.

“I have put my hand to the plough and I must not look back,” she rejoined with a serious smile. “After all, work is no hardship when one is young—and when one has a motive as strong as mine.”

“Is it no hardship that you should be wearing out your youth in toil and poverty to atone for your father’s fault, while I, who would so gladly take the task upon myself, am kept apart from you by my parents’ mercenary—”

“Hush,” she interrupted; “let us not blame either the living or the dead. We shall not be kept apart for ever. If we are true to ourselves and each other, all will come right in time.”

After that there was silence for a few moments, then they fell into conversation again; talking of the past and the future, calling up tender memories, and forming happy projects, oblivious of time and the world round them.

At length the sound of a church clock striking the hour made Renée start guiltily.

“Twelve o’clock! You have beguiled me into forgetting all my pupils,” she exclaimed. “Dear, we must say good-bye now. No, do not come to Madame Evrard’s; let our parting words be spoken alone. And you must return home this evening; promise me that you will.”

“Very well,” he acquiesced reluctantly: “but we shall soon meet again, for with my father’s consent or without it, I intend to spend New Year’s Day with you. Till then, good-bye, sweet love. I leave my heart in your keeping.”

“As mine is in yours,” she whispered.

A long, lingering look; a warm close pressure of the hands, and they parted, drifting away from each other into diverging currents of the city’s living tide.

II

Six weeks had passed away. It was the last day of the old year. For the first time on record Monsieur Silvain so far departed from his usual habits as not to leave home till afternoon. Marthe, Madame Evrard’s comely hand-maiden, rushed into the salon, where her mistress was sitting alone, to announce this portentous event.

“And he was dressed like a prince, Madame! a brand new overcoat with a fur collar and a hat you could see yourself in. I was to give his compliments and say that he would have the honour of waiting upon you at four o’clock, when he hoped to find Mademoiselle Renée also at home.”

“Humph! I think I know what that means,” was the widow’s mental comment, as she took off her glasses and laid down the paper she was reading; “he is coming to propose in due form. It has been evident for some time to everyone but Renée herself that he meant to do so, though she persists in treating him as if he were her grandfather, not perceiving that her friendly familiarity seems like encouragement to his hopes. I haven’t patience with the girl! And now, to complicate matters, that tiresome young man, who I hoped was forgetting her, is coming this very evening! What am I to say to Monsieur Silvain? Well,” she concluded with a shrug, “I have done my best for him, and now I wash my hands of the matter.”

Meantime, her fellow-lodger, walking with his most juvenile step and throwing out his chest to show the new overcoat to advantage, went blithely on his way humming his favourite air of “Malbrouck.” Across the river, along the Boulevard to the Palais Royal, where he entered a florist’s shop and purchased, at a fancy price, a superb bouquet of hot-house roses.

“Roses in December—they are typical,” he thought, smiling to himself, as he watched the shopwoman enveloping this treasure in paper. “Typical of the love which blooms in life’s winter as well as its spring. Very good. I must remember to say that to my sweet Renée.”

After a stroll through the brilliantly-lighted arcades of the Palais, he turned towards home, which he reached shortly before four o’clock.

“The ladies are in the salon,” Marthe told him, giving him an odd look which he did not notice; “there is a visitor with them, a friend of Mademoiselle, who has just arrived.”

“Very good,” he answered absently, scarcely hearing her in his preoccupation.

The old bachelor’s cheeks were flushed, and his heart beat fast, as he approached the door of the sitting-room. It was partly open, and as he paused, furtively adjusting his collar and cravat, he heard a sound of laughter within; Renée’s musical voice mingling with the deeper tones of a man. Surprised, he cautiously opened the door a little wider and looked in.

On the hearth, opposite to him, stood Renée, flushed and radiant, looking up into the handsome bronzed face of a tall, dark-eyed young fellow of three or four and twenty, who had imprisoned both her hands in his own, while his other arm, from which she was laughingly endeavouring to disengage herself, encircled her waist.

“Let me go, sir; don’t you see that Madame Evrard looks quite scandalised?” she exclaimed, glancing at Madame Evrard, whose face expressed the most unqualified disapproval.

“It is at you then, not at me!” he declared. “Madame is naturally astonished that you should object to be respectfully saluted by your fiancé—so!” and suiting the action to the word, he bent and kissed her.

The watcher started as if he had been struck, and hastily drawing back, before anyone had perceived his presence, turned from the door. Marthe, hearing his returning footsteps, came out from her little kitchen and looked at him in surprise.

“Make my compliments to the ladies, and say that as they have a visitor, I will not intrude this evening,” he said, and walked away.

Safely locked into his own rooms, he stood for a moment looking vaguely round, like one waking from a dream, then, becoming conscious of the roses in his hand, he flung them from him with a passionate ejaculation, and sitting down at the table, let his head fall on his folded arms, and cried like a child.

His emotion had subsided, but he was still sitting in the same dejected attitude, when there was a gentle summons at the outer door. He allowed it to be twice repeated before he roused himself to answer it. At length, with an impatient shrug, he unlocked the door, and started when he found that the visitor was Renée.

“I am come to scold you, Monsieur Silvain,” she began, with her sweet smile. “Marthe tells us that you refused to come in because we had a visitor. Surely you did not think you would be intruding? Monsieur Delaunay wishes to be introduced to you. I ought to tell you,” she added shyly, “that we—that we are engaged, though our engagement has not the sanction of his family, and—”

She checked herself, noticing for the first time his unusual pallor and gravity. “You are not ill, Monsieur Silvain?”

He shook his head, smiling constrainedly. “No, not ill, only a little low-spirited, and therefore not likely to be good company this evening, so I will beg you to excuse me.”

“I am very sorry,” she said gently, putting out her hand.

He took it in both his own, looking at her with an expression of tender earnestness, which she had never seen on his face before.

“We have all our troubles—you have yours also my child, have you not? but you are young, and in youth, ‘though sorrow may endure for a night, joy cometh with the morning.’”

“My ‘morning’ seems still far off,” she answered, with a smile and a sigh.

“Have patience, it will come—sooner perhaps than you expect,” was his reply. “Thanks for your sympathy, my sweet friend. Good-night.”

“Until to-morrow,” she cried.

He watched her out of sight, then stood for a moment on the landing, looking down, deep in thought. When he raised his face, it had recovered its usual serenity, and wore a look of resolution which gave it a new dignity.

“Yes,” he muttered, “I will do it; she shall be happy. And as for me—well, I shall be no worse off than I was formerly. Allons!”

And rousing himself from his abstraction, he turned into his solitary rooms once more and closed the door.

•    •    •    •

The New Year began auspiciously with brilliant sunshine and a cloudless sky. The domes and spires of Paris, lightly powdered with new fallen snow, looked fairy-like and aerial, and when a light breeze stirred the river, every ripple flashed back the sunbeams.

On this great festival of the year, all Paris seemed to be out of doors. The boulevards, with their long lines of stalls, were thronged with promenaders, the shops and cafés crowded with customers, while merry family parties hurried along on foot or in carriages, to pay the round of calls which French etiquette prescribes on the “Jour de l’An.”

Renée and her fiancé had spent the whole sunny afternoon drifting with the stream along the Boulevards. Infected by the universal gaiety, they had put aside for a time all doubts of the future, giving themselves up to the happiness of the present. To-morrow they would be parted again—who could say for how long? but to-day was theirs, and they would enjoy its sweetness to the utmost.

Daylight was waning when at last they turned their faces homewards. Half way across the Pont-Neuf, Renée paused, with a regretful exclamation:

“I quite forgot Père Joyeux!”

“Who is he?” her companion demanded.

“An old pensioner of mine; a crippled fiddler who always plays on the bridge. There he is, on the other side. Let us cross over.”

“Never mind now, Renée; it is getting dark, and beginning to snow again. Give him something to-morrow.”

“But this is New Year’s Day, and it seems unkind to neglect him when I am so happy. Look, he has seen me—he is looking so wistfully! Stay here, I shall not be a moment.”

“Wait—wait till this railway-van has gone past!” he exclaimed; but she had already darted from his side.

The road was slippery with fresh-fallen snow, and when halfway across, the girl’s foot slipped. She made a vain effort to recover herself, and fell just in the track of the heavy vehicle, which came thundering along, drawn by two powerful horses. The driver, on his high perch, did not perceive what had happened till the bystanders uttered a warning shout, which was echoed by a cry of alarm from Maurice, as he hurried to her assistance.

Quick as he was, however, someone else had anticipated him.

Père Joyeux, who had been watching her movements, flung his violin aside, and before Maurice could reach the spot, he had snatched her literally from under the horses’ hoofs. The startled animals shied and reared, backing the van against the parapet, and there was a moment of wild confusion and alarm before the driver succeeded in quieting them.

Renée, bruised and giddy, leaned half-fainting on the arm of her lover, whose face was scarcely less white than hers.

“What an escape!” he gasped. “Are you hurt, Renée?”

“No, no; but where is Père Joyeux who has saved my life?” she asked, anxiously looking round. “I heard a cry—oh, what has happened?” she broke off, noticing that an excited crowd had gathered on the pavement. The compassionate faces of the group answered her before she made her way through them and saw the figure of her old friend stretched insensible upon the asphalt.

There was no sign of external injury, but his face looked white and pinched, and there was a bluish shadow under his closed eyes.

With an inarticulate exclamation of pity, Renée knelt at his side and raised his head on to her knee.

“He couldn’t get out of the way quickly enough, and the horses knocked him down,” someone explained, and other voices in the crowd echoed the words with a murmur of regret and compassion.

The next moment a policeman approached, and after a few brief enquiries, which Maurice answered, peremptorily dispersed the lookers-on, and hailed a passing carriage, giving the order, “To the Hôtel-Dieu.”

The injured man having been carefully lifted in, Renée and Maurice followed, and the carriage drove rapidly along the Quai de l’Horloge to the ancient hospital which looks down upon the Seine.

Père Joyeux, still unconscious, was at once carried to the accident ward, while Maurice and Renée waited to learn the surgeon’s opinion of his injuries. After what seemed an interminable interval, one of the hospital Sisters appeared and beckoned to Renée.

“He has regained consciousness and asks for you,” she said. “Pardon, monsieur,” she added, as Maurice was about to follow, “he wishes to speak to Mademoiselle alone.”

The girl’s heart beat fast with some vague expectation which she could not define, as she followed her guide along an echoing stone corridor to the accident ward, a long narrow apartment lighted by half-blocked windows high in the wall, which admitted the last pale gleam of daylight. A tall stove stood in the middle of the ward, and on each side was a row of pallet-beds, most of which were occupied. The latest arrival had been placed in one near the door, sheltered by a screen. The surgeon, who was bending over him, straightened himself as they approached, and looked at Renée.

“Is he seriously hurt?” she asked, in an anxious whisper.

“He is dying,” was the grave reply. “He has sustained internal injuries which leave no hope of recovery.”

He drew back as he spoke, to allow her to approach the bed, but after one glance at its occupant she recoiled with a stifled cry of astonishment. The face on the pillow, though familiar to her, was not that of “Père Joyeux.”

“You are surprised at the change in his appearance?” the surgeon remarked in an undertone; “he had been wearing a false beard, and without it he looks quite a different man. It is possible that he—”

He left the sentence unfinished, as his patient moved uneasily, attempting to raise himself from the pillows.

“Is she there?” the latter asked faintly.

When Renée advanced, a sudden light irradiated his face; he put out his hand to her with a smile. “A happy New Year, my little lady!”

The girl mechanically gave him her hand, looking at him as one in a dream. “Monsieur Silvain,” she breathed, in a low tone of questioning wonder.

He glanced significantly at the doctor, who, understanding the look, gave him a kindly nod and vanished behind the screen.

“Yes; ‘Monsieur Silvain’ to you,” her old friend said when they were alone; “but your father knew me as Silvain Mathieu.”

She started and coloured, then turned pale.

“What! it was you whom my father wronged?” she faltered.

“Dear child, you have repaired the wrong, and left me your debtor,” he gently replied. “If I had known at the time what it cost you, I would never have accepted your generous reparation. Sit down; I have a story to tell you, Renée—not a long one, fortunately,” he added, with a serious smile, “or I might not have time to finish it. You know what was formerly my profession? I was a dancing-master; the most fashionable in Paris during the Second Empire, but having met with an accident, which crippled me for life, I was compelled to retire in the height of my success. However, I had saved enough to live upon, and should have passed the rest of my days in comfort, if—if I had not been so foolish as to risk my small capital in the hope of increasing it. I lost it, as you know, and, after some years of struggle and privation, which I do not care to recall, all other resources having failed me, I began life afresh, on a lower level, as a street musician, who has since been known to fame by the name of Père Joyeux. Don’t look distressed; I assure you that the life suited me; I earned amply sufficient for my wants, and had grown perfectly reconciled to my lot, when one day, three years ago, I chanced to see your advertisement, and found myself once more independent.”

“And then?” she asked, as he paused.

He glanced at her with humorous gravity. “Then, you naturally suppose, that I retired into private life. So I did; but, after six months of ease, I found that I was dying of ennui. I felt as if I had lost my identity. Who was Silvain Mathieu? A lonely old man whom nobody knew and nobody needed, whereas Père Joyeux had hundreds of friends whom he could serve in his humble way. Yes, have I not seen hard faces soften and sad ones brighten as I played? Have not my old tunes touched a chord of hope or memory in many a heart?”

“They have in mine, more than once,” she put in softly.

“And then the Bohemian freedom of the life, its constant interest and variety, gave it a fascination which, in spite of myself, drew me back to it. So I returned to my old post. But for the last three years I have given in charity what I received from charity, and out of ‘business hours’ I became—Monsieur Silvain; the transformation being effected at quiet lodgings near the river, the landlord of which was in my confidence. Without my beard and wooden leg (which was replaced by an artificial one), I was unrecognisable; even you, who knew me in both characters, never guessed that Madame Evrard’s friend was the old cripple to whom for a year past you have been a ministering angel. How eagerly I used to watch for your coming! You were the sunshine of my life, long before I knew who you were and what I owed to you.”

Too much moved to speak, Renée laid her hand on his.

“The dear little charitable hand—how often I have longed to kiss it!” he murmured. “I may do so now, may I not?” and with the ghost of his old gallant manner he raised it to his lips. “I told you I should keep your silver piece for good luck,” he continued, more faintly; “see—here it is.”

He showed it to her strung round his neck.

“My poor friend—it has brought you misfortune instead!” she murmured tremulously. “But for me, you would not be—”

“Hush,” he interrupted gently; “what better fortune can I have than to save your life and secure your happiness? Renée, you will find a parcel in my desk, directed to yourself. I restore your gift, dear—as I meant to have done—if I had lived. There is no obstacle now between you—and—your lover. God bless you both. How dark it grows—and cold! Do not be sorry for me, dear—I am quite content,” he concluded, with a tranquil smile.

A sudden shiver ran through him, and there was a change in his face. Then he drew a deep quiet breath.

“Quite content,” he repeated; and with the smile on his lips he died.

•    •    •    •

A month later, when the first faint flowers of early spring were blooming on the old musician’s grave, Renée and Maurice were married.

On the afternoon of their wedding day, before starting on their journey into Normandy, they crossed the Pont Neuf once more, to pay a last visit to “Père Joyeux’s” old haunt, and paused for a moment in the recess where he had been used to stand. The stream of life flowed past them, “ever changing never ceasing,” like the river beneath, which the mellow sunset light had transformed into a flood of molten gold.

“I am glad no one has taken his place,” Renée said softly, after a moment; “it would seem almost like desecration. I fancy I can still hear the sound of his violin! It was like a friendly voice to me in those dark days which are past.”

Maurice looked down at her tenderly.

“They were dark days indeed, my sweet wife, but now that the sunshine is come, it seems all the brighter for the shadows we have passed through.”

Renée glanced upwards at the luminous primrose sky, unflecked by a cloud from zenith to horizon.

“Yes,” she answered, with a happy smile; “‘Sorrow endured for a night, but joy has come with the morning!’”

About this eBook

SOMETHING WICKED

THE MYSTERY STORIES
OF
MARY ELIZABETH PENN
(no biographical data found)

Sixteen stories of crime and mystery and romance in the best Victorian tradition, featuring sinister villains, stalwart heroes, and comely heroines; with a goodly portion of loving endings for happy couples. These stories from The Argosy magazine have never before been collected.

* * * *

This writer of supernatural and crime stories was a regular contributor to the British periodical The Argosy beginning in the mid-1870s. After Penn’s last attributed story appeared in 1897, the author vanished from the literary world.

Nothing is known about Mary Elizabeth Penn. Scholars have been unable to find any details, including birth and death dates, or even gender. Alastair Gunn, in the introduction to The Ghost Stories of Mary E. Penn (2017), advances a theory that this may have been one of the many pen-names of noted Victorian author Ellen (Mrs. Henry) Wood (1814-1887). [See: http://synfinity.blogspot.com/2017/11/who-was-ghost-story-writer-mary-e-penn.html ]

This compilation was created by ECM for MobileRead.com, October 2018, and may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

The contents of this book were first published 1879 ~ 1897 in The Argosy.

Click here for editing notes.

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EDITING NOTES

>>TOC     >>ABOUT

This is my own compilation. Texts were obtained from magazine archives at the Internet Archive and HathiTrust. OCR errors were corrected; punctuation, diacritics, and italics formatted.

Story titles are cross-linked to table of contents.

Embedded font “Fontin” by Jos Buivenga used for titling.

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