The Flower of the Flock, Volume 2 (of 3)
Date: 2018-01-14T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction

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Title: The Flower of the Flock, Volume 2 (of 3)

Author: Pierce Egan

Release date: January 14, 2018 [eBook #56372]
Most recently updated: February 25, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK, VOLUME 2 (OF 3) ***

THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK

By Pierce Egan

In Three Volumes

Vol. II.

London: W. S. Johnson & Co.

1865

CONTENTS

FLOWER OF THE FLOCK

CHAPTER I.—SUITORS

CHAPTER II.—THE DREADFUL SECRET.

CHAPTER III.—THE STRICKEN DEER.

CHAPTER IV.—THE ASSAULT AND THE RESCUE.

CHAPTER V.—THE GOLD AND THE ALLOY.

CHAPTER VI.—THE COVETED HEART BESTOWED.

CHAPTER VII.—MARK WILTON.

CHAPTER VIII.—THE COMPACT.

CHAPTER IX.—LESTER VANE AND VIVIAN.

CHAPTER X.—THE OLD MAN AND HIS DAUGHTER.

CHAPTER XI.—THE UNPLEASANT CONFERENCE.

CHAPTER XII.—LESTER VANE AND HELEN.

CHAPTER XIII.—A SISTER’S LOVE

CHAPTER XIV.—REVENGE.

CHAPTER XV.—THE RETURN HOME.

FLOWER OF THE FLOCK

CHAPTER I.—SUITORS

And art thou then, fond youth, secure of joy?

Can no reverse thy flattering bliss destroy?

Has treacherous Love no torment yet in store?

Or hast thou never proved his fatal power P

Whence flow’d those tears that late bedew’d thy cheek?

Why sigh’d thy heart as if it strove to break?

Why were the desert rocks invok’d to hear

The plaintive accent of thy sad despair?

Lyttleton.

It was, as we have seen, through, the remarkable and unexpected return of Colonel Mires to England, and the no less singular circumstance of the rencontre in the Queen’s Bench, that old Wilton was reinstated in the position from which years back he had been, by the harsh rigour of the law, ruthlessly expelled.

As Nathan Gomer had stated to Mr. Grahame, the Colonel not only came forward to prove the genuineness of his own signature and the integrity of the document to which it was attached, but he was able to show that a duplicate existed, to point out the solicitor in whose hands it had been placed, and to help to refresh this old man’s recollection as to what had become of that most important paper. The individual thus suddenly-dragged from his seclusion, had long retired from practice, but he yet retained many important deeds and documents, to which he had been attesting witness or a party in some way.

It was, therefore, mainly by Colonel Mires’s instrumentality that Wilton was once more a man of wealth and position; and, knowing this, the former felt no scruple in becoming a frequent visitor at Mr. Wilton’s house.

He had, indeed, a secret motive which impelled him to present himself pretty constantly at Mr. Wilton’s table.

He had, not unmoved, looked upon the face of Flora Wilton; first in the courtyard of the Queen’s Prison, and many times since when surrounded by all those accessories to personal charms which elegant dress and freedom from anxiety afford.

At first a high degree of admiration was raised in his breast by a personal beauty of rare excellence, which, at the same time, struck him as being familiar to him. A glorious star, worshipped in boyhood, since lost, and now suddenly reappearing in his sphere, which was only too sparsely studded with orbs of light.

The admiration deepened, as it was fed by frequent observation, into a more ardent emotion. Love and passion were called into being, and the Colonel had not been long the frequent guest at Wilton’s abode, ere he found himself ardently in love with Flora. He was at an age when love is a dangerous tenant in a man’s breast. In youth he had been tinged with romance, but he had had more than enough selfishness to counteract its promptings. His passions were no doubt strong while they lasted, but they were sufficiently evanescent to commit no havoc on his heart. There was one solitary case in which the love which is deaf to the urgings of self-worship, and susceptible to all that is noble, generous, and exalted, sought a home in his bosom; but the heart he coveted had been bestowed, the hand be yearned to obtain was given to another. He was compelled to subdue the fonder workings of his soul; and in a distant clime, amid the whirl of gay, heartless, frivolous society, to deaden the restless action of a sentiment he could not wholly forget. He was so far successful, that he reduced it to subordination. The stirring activity of camp life and warfare, the indolent, intriguing nature of domestic society in India, where ladies are scarce and gentlemen officers are in excess, these and many other causes peculiar to his isolation from all his English ties, kept this emotion deep beneath the surface. It was, however, like a trout in a deep and shady recess in a pool, and would spring to the surface whenever the attracting influence of a tempting object reached it.

He had, as we have said, been but a short time a partaker of the pleasant society of Flora, when he found raging in his breast a flame which burned the fiercer at every attempt he himself made to subdue it.

When it became evident to him that her beauty was the predominating object in his vision, whether absent from her or present, he determined to settle the question by widening the intervals of his visits. He shortened them, under the impression that they were lengthened.

His conduct towards her soon began to wear the colour and the impress of his feelings. His dark brown eyes settled upon her with a dreamy, fond expression. His dark visage, scarcely susceptible of change, yet showed the glow of pleasure he felt when she appeared in the room; and his voice softened to a mellow tone as he addressed her in language which often partook of the rich imagery of the East.

At first he had the field all to himself. His society, his ardent gaze, and his honeyed words did not appear distasteful to her. She did not refrain from appearing, when she knew that he was in the sitting-room, nor did she show any disposition to retire when in his society. This was gratifying to him as soon as he discovered that she had become necessary to his happiness, and yet it afforded ground for a very small congratulation.

Flora had not noticed his conduct as distinct from the manner in which she was usually accosted and regarded. From her earliest recollection, every one had looked upon her smilingly and tenderly, and spoken to her gently and fondly. Colonel Mires had done no more, and she saw nothing different in his behaviour to her to that of others at all times.

She had been grateful for this good feeling so generally evinced towards her, and had tried to repay it by being herself sweet tempered, kind mannered, and soft spoken.

Hitherto she had made no distinction between persons; now she began to perceive that there was one she should like to make; a homage it would be little short of felicity to herself to render. She began to feel that there was a voice whose music touched her brain, and thrilled the pulses of her heart; whose language, simple as it might be, bore a richer poetry than all that tongue of poet ever uttered. There was a hand whose pressure filled her with emotions no other touch could raise—there was a presence whose absence was not compensated for by the coming of all the world beside.

She began to be sensible of the new feeling growing upon her, and taking possession of her soul, after Hal Vivian paid his first visit, as distinct from, and subsequent to, that when accompanied by Lotte.

He being rather retiring by nature and abashed by the style in which the Wiltons now lived, made his appearance but seldom, though he would gladly have spent every hour of the day beneath the roof that sheltered Flora.

But if he came seldom, Colonel Mires came often, and thus Flora began to shape her first distinction between persons. She had no objection to the frequent appearance of Mires, but she would infinitely rather that Hal came oftener, even if his coming were to cause the absence of the Colonel—even if it occasioned him to stay away for ever.

She did not permit this impression in Hal’s favour to show itself; as soon as she began to recognise it, and assure herself that it was a reality, she fashioned it into her first secret, which was to be looked at with no eyes but her own.

So she came to compare the interval that passed between the visits of Hal and the space of time that elapsed during the absence of Colonel Mires, and she began to think that if Hal had ever conceived the notion of vexing her, this was just the plan that would be most successful.

At each of his last visits, Hal had met Colonel Mires; the ordinary civilities passed between them, but they looked at each other with fierce eyes.

Colonel Mires could not but regard young Vivian as a formidable rival, who must be got rid of at any cost. He had not forgotten how, when first he gazed upon the fair face of Flora, she hung upon his arm, and seemed to cling to him as if with him only was safety. He could not but see now how pleased, and even tender, was the expression of her eyes when they were turned upon him, and how sweet the smile with which she welcomed him. He could not avoid noticing that Hal was a handsome-faced, finely-formed young fellow, dressed in the latest style of fashion, in clothes of the best material, chosen with excellent taste; and that the small quantity of jewellery he displayed was of costly material and the very first workmanship.

Altogether the Colonel felt himself matched against heavy odds, and he foresaw that he would have to adopt in the coming struggle unusual weapons. It was true he had the chances that the young tradesman might not aspire to Flora’s hand; or if he had the temerity to do so, it was scarcely probable that old Wilton would give his assent to such an alliance. He had, however, but little faith in chance, and he resolved not to trust to it.

To set Wilton and young Vivian at variance, and to ruin him in Flora’s estimation were tasks to which he designed to devote himself, and to which he would have exclusively applied himself, but that Hal turned out to be not the only competitor he had to deal with.

Hal’s notion of Colonel Mires is quickly summed up—it was that the “fellow” conveyed insult in every glance he directed at Flora, and that he waited but for the opportunity in private to act as he would not dare openly.

“Some day,” thought Hal, with set teeth and a frowning brow, “I shall have to beat him to a jelly.”

He looked forward to that day not without a feeling of eager anticipation.

When old Wilton made one of the party, he engrossed the conversation of the Colonel; there was much to refer to in the events of the past, and the old man was minute in his inquiries, and pertinacious in insisting upon copious and clearly expressed details.

While thus occupied, the Colonel, with fiery eyes, would watch the movements of Hal and Flora. With sickening forebodings, he would note how completely satisfied they were with each other’s society—how unflagging their conversation—how little the outer world attracted their attention—how completely they were absorbed in gazing into each other’s eyes, and treasuring up words or observations, light and simple in themselves, which fell from the other’s lips.

“He loves her,” he grated through his compressed teeth, “but the whelp shall no more wed her than if she were a Princess Royal of England.”

It is possible that Mr. Wilton obtained some incoherent answers during the periods when the Colonel was mentally making these observations, and it is certain that the manner of the latter to Hal grew more distant, haughty, and contemptuous than ever, even as Hal’s to him grew more defiant, keeping pace with it.

It was upon a day when Flora and Vivian—while Mr. Wilton was pursuing some inquiries addressed to Colonel Mires—-were standing in the recess of a deep bay window, conversing in a low tone about Lotte, that the Colonel found his position insupportable. Old Wilton was more than usually pointed in his questions, and displayed great anxiety about the exactness of the replies he requested. The Colonel was frequently called upon to repeat his answers, and, in many instances, to explain them with deliberation and clearness. All the time he was called upon to do this, he observed Hal and Flora in close, animated converse, conducted in so low a tone that not a word could reach his ears. It was so intended. Flora did this for Lotte’s sake—the circumstances which had happened in connection with her were not of a nature to be spoken loudly, in indifferent ears; she therefore depressed her voice to so soft a tone that Hal had to bend his face near to hers, to catch the sound and comprehend its meaning.

Her warm breath must frequently have played upon his cheek.

If so, it was as balmy as the softest zephyr ever breathed upon a summer evening—as fragrant as the odour of a thousand sweet-scented flowers.

Mires rapidly lost the sound of Wilton’s voice, and heard nothing but the low, murmuring tones of the youthful pair; saw nought but that Flora’s delicately-shaped hand rested upon Vivian’s arm, and that their faces were in a proximity which maddened him to behold.

Bear it longer he could not; he was just about to betray himself by some violent, insane remark, when a servant entered, and announced to Mr. Wilton that Mr. Malcome Grahame, accompanied by the Honorable Lester Vane, would be glad of a few minutes’ conversation with him.

“Show the gentlemen in here,” Wilton returned, laconically.

At least, this interruption was, in the eyes of Colonel Mires, agreeable, for it broke up that torturing tête-à tète, and saved him from committing himself in a very ridiculous manner. He could not, however, let pass the opportunity of scowling at young Vivian, in a way highly expressive of hatred and malignity, which was responded to by the young gentleman, who saw, and rightly interpreted it, with a steadfast look of ineffable scorn.

The servant returned, and almost immediately ushered in Malcolm and Lester Vane. Young Mr. Grahame sent his eyes swiftly round the room, in search of Lotte, but was grievously disappointed not to see her. Vane looked directly in Flora’s face, and continued to do so during the interview, with but a trifling exception, causing her embarrassment, which he observed with pleasure, because, whenever he perceived that he raised an emotion in the female breast, he supposed that he had eliminated a symptom favourable to himself.

Malcolm, finding the only person he had really come to visit not present, opened his business to Mr. Wilton, who received him with sufficient coldness to have made uncomfortable a more sensitive person.

“My dear Mr. Wilton,” he said, with much awkward hesitation, “it was the intention of my good mamma, and two of my sisters, to have paid you and Miss Wilton an introductory visit, to open up a friendship between you, and to induce, if possible, Miss Wilton to form an agreeable intimacy with my sisters. But, unfortunately, my elder sister Helen, was most unaccountably and suddenly attacked with a fainting fit yesterday morning, and she is still very ill. Mamma has, therefore, been unable to carry out her wish, but fearing that you might, after your interview with my father, imagine there was some inexplicable delay in the tender of kind and social relations to you and your remarkably charming daughter, Miss Wilton, I have been—greatly to my own satisfaction—deputed to act as their avant courier, and to offer the kindest congratulations of our family.”

At the conclusion of this speech, Mr. Wilton coldly inclined his head.

“I thank Mrs. Grahame and her daughters for the honour they intend me and Miss Wilton,” he said, frigidly. “We do not at present mix much in society. We leave to a future time the desire to form new friends. Permit me, however, to thank you for the manner in which you have performed the task allotted to you.”

“Oh! there’s no credit due to me for that,” replied Malcolm—truly. “I believe,” he added, “the folks at home are animated by a wish to be on friendly terms with you and your family, and, upon my honour, I echo it. Besides, we are relatives, you know, Mr. Wilton.”

“Distant relatives, Mr. Grahame,” observed old Wilton, as though he wished that they should continue such.

He turned abruptly to Lester Vane, and continuing, said—

“Pray, Mr. Vane, are you of the Vanes of Durham?”

“A branch of my family,” replied Vane; “an uncle of mine lived on an estate in the county—Robert Tempest Vane, of Weardale——”

“An old and dear friend of mine. We were hoys and men together—friends from our first meeting until death separated us,” cried Wilton, with ardour.

“Delighted to hear this, Mr. Wilton,” exclaimed Vane, eagerly, “may I be permitted to hope that you will allow me, although I can do so but imperfectly I fear, to renew that friendship in my unworthy person?”

Wilton took his proffered hand and grasped it warmly.

“I shall have the sincerest pleasure in such an arrangement,” he responded. “It will afford me much gratification: I loved your uncle for his frank heart, his noble spirit, and his honourable manliness. I have no doubt that in you I shall find a worthy representative of him.”

“I hope I shall not wrong so generous a supposition,” said Vane, with affected modesty.

“I feel assured you will not,” rejoined Wilton, and, turning to Flora, he said—“Let me specially present the Honorable Lester Vane to you, Flo’, my darling. As the nephew of the dearest friend I ever had, I request you, out of your love for me, to render to him the warmest hospitality of our house, and such direct attention as my most valued guest is at all times entitled to.”

Flora bowed at her father’s fervidly uttered instructions, and submitted her hand to the pressure of Lester Vane’s. But she liked not his eyes, they made her—as they had done Helen Grahame—shudder. She liked not his voice; least of all, she liked the cold touch of his soft, smooth fingers.

“Miss Wilton,” he said, in a subdued, deep tone, “if I could have formed a wish, constructed so as to gain for me, in its realisation, the greatest possible amount of felicity, it should have been that which would have compassed what has come to pass. To be thrown into the society of your honoured parent, the loved friend of a relative, whose memory I reverence, is, indeed, a deep gratification, but to have to that happiness added the high privilege, commended to your best attention, of enjoying your sweet society, is to place me in a state of beatitude of which I am undeserving, but of which, in true sincerity of heart, I will strive to make myself worthy.”

Lester Vane was rather fond of this flowery style of expression. It was a mistake when adopted to create an effect on such minds as those possessed by Flora Wilton or Helen Grahame. It was as hollow to them, and as transparent, as a glass globe. Malcolm thought it a masterly power of language, “framed to make woman false.” Colonel Mires had some such thought, and gnawed his lips as he listened. Hal only smiled, and turned away. If such expressions were flowers at all, he believed them to be artificial flowers, and, at best, a bad imitation of nature.

To this rhapsody as to her father’s request. Flora only bowed; she turned her face away from Vane’s steadfast gaze, feeling that it would be a relief to her when the interview terminated, and she should be once more alone with Hal, for she imagined she had still much to say to him.

Malcolm Grahame had received special commands from his father to make himself as agreeable to Flora as circumstances would permit, and he actually made some way in her good opinion, because he spoke a little earnestly of Lotte, expressed a fear that he had startled her at the sudden meeting in the garden, and uttered a wish to see her to offer an apology for unintentional rudeness, if such were needed. He dropped no hint that he knew her to be humble in her position, spoke praisefully of her pleasant face, her smiling eyes, and her graceful figure, and he did so with such seeming frankness of tone and manner, that Flora felt absolutely gratified.

She smiled on him as she had not done on Lester Vane. She talked to him with less reserve than she would have displayed if that particular subject had not been broached; and Vane grew absolutely envious to find that Malcolm, who had not had the benefit of a friendly word from Mr. Wilton, made evidently more rapid progress in his daughter’s good graces than he who stood before her with the advantages of person, rank, and a powerful recommendation from her father. He looked on Malcolm’s claim to her favour as simply contemptible. He had a mean opinion of his intellect and of his capabilities. As a rival, he would have laughed him to scorn. He could hardly understand, therefore, the progress he had made in Flora’s good opinion. It was something of a lesson. He, however, dismissed the impression it had for a moment made upon his mind; he accounted for it, in accordance with his own low estimate of feminine truth and purity, by the conceit that Flora was playing off Malcolm against him, with the view of securing, by that small piece of coquetry, his direct attention.

Malcolm failed, notwithstanding his diligent inquiries, to learn more about Lotte than that she was no longer in the house, and that she lived in London, in the western quarter; there the conversation respecting her ceased. He had sense enough to understand that to pursue it further would be to make his notice of her too marked.

Having renewed a pressing invitation to Wilton and his daughter, if they would graciously waive the introductory visit of his mamma, on account of his sister Helen’s sudden attack, and having, as he believed—and with some show of reason—rendered himself quite as agreeable to Miss Wilton as could, under the circumstances, be expected, he took his leave, accompanied by Lester Vane.

The latter individual, wholly indifferent as to the effect he might produce upon the minds of the gentlemen there assembled, was very desirous of creating an impression upon Flora.

But he failed to attract even a glance from her, and her hand motionless under his pressure, was hastily withdrawn, even as he touched it. When he retired through the doorway, he saw that her gaze was fastened upon the face of the young and handsome person introduced to him as Mr. Vivian.

His quick eye and his experience noted all these symptoms of the small way he had made in her favour.

“Yet,” said he to himself, “she will fall far more easily into my mesh than Helen Grahame. She is so pure, so guileless, so innocent of the world’s ways, that she is without suspicion—that best defence for woman against man’s art. My heart now aches to gain her. She must be mine, my wife be it—but she shall be mine!”

He had at his departure, informed Wilton that he should take advantage of his friendly invitation, and he hoped that his occasional visits would not be deemed intrusive. The warmth with which old Wilton responded to this suggestion by repeating his desire that he would frequently test his hospitality, removed any hesitation he might have in again presenting himself there without a special invitation, and he determined quickly to avail himself of an opening so eminently favourable to his design to lay siege to Flora’s heart.

Somehow, the interruption caused by these visitors seemed to render the remaining part of the day less cheerful and happy than it had commenced.

Old Wilton sat in his easy chair, plunged in deep thought. Colonel Mires, though full of rumination, took care to prevent a repetition of Hal and Flora’s tête-à-tête, by joining them. Flora occasionally appeared abstracted, and Hal wore an expression upon his face very much as if his visions of the future were clouded and sad.

As the Colonel did not, and would not, shift his quarters, the conversation grew common-place until at length it became absolutely irksome to Hal, and he rose to depart.

Flora fancied that, as he bade her farewell, his tone was cold, and she missed the pressure of his hand. She knew, too, his eye was averted, and he lingered not as usual upon the threshold of the door, but he went away and never looked back to meet the gaze she directed to him—and which meant to say “adieu,” with an expression she could not trust to her words nor to her soft fingers—but he looked not back once—no, not once!

Yet, when without the house, he directed his steps to the nearest entry to the park, and paused not until he gained a spot, where he could look upon the lighted window of the room in which he knew she sat, thinking, perhaps, of the gentleman who had that day been first presented to her, and was shortly to be little else than a constant companion.

“Oh, Flora, dearest!” he murmured, compressing his hands tightly, “it was a dream—a happy, happy dream! I wake to misery. You can never, never be mine; it would be only mad presumption to entertain longer a hope so blissful—oh, so very blissful! You will wed some one higher, nobler than myself, for you are of proud and high descent, and I but humbly born. If in this your happiness be secured, I love you far, far too well to seek or wish a change. I can only hope and pray that he who wins you may love you as truly, as fondly, as devotedly as I do.”

He paused, for his throat swelled, and there was a gush of water in his eyes that made the lighted window upon which they rested dim and indistinct.

“What now shall be my future course?” he continued with deep emotion; “my ambition is strangled in its birth. Fame! what have I to do with fame? sought only that my hour of triumph should be rewarded by her sweet smile of joy. What to me the rank in which high success would place me, if her eyes, glowing with gratified pride at sight of the honours I had won, were lost to me? No; life hath no more a motive to render it worth its endurance. A rifle and the prairies of the Far West shall be my world; there at least in the vast solitudes I can, uninterrupted, dwell upon her memory, revel in glorious visions of her angel face”——

A hand placed lightly upon his shoulder interrupted his soliloquy.

He turned sharply to find at his side Colonel Mires.

“A word with you,” he said to Hal, abruptly. “Follow me.”

“No!” returned Hal, coldly. “What you can have to say to me can as well be said here as elsewhere. We are unobserved.”

“In sight of that window it is, perhaps, as well,” returned the Colonel.

There was a pause for a moment; Hal made no remark upon the insinuation thus conveyed, and the Colonel proceeded——

“With you I ought to have no difficulty in coming to the point,” he said. With one in a different position my task would not be so easy, therefore I at once say I perceive that you with ignorant audacity”——

“Sir,” cried Hal, fiercely.

“Hear me out”——

“Not another word, if such expressions are to be addressed to me. I will submit to insult from no man breathing; he who attempts it had need beware of a strong arm, and a spirit which never yet bent or quailed before a danger.”

“It is not my design to insult you. I gain no end by it; if I use plain terms, attribute it to my desire to describe exactly the act of one of mean birth aspiring to ally himself to a house with a pedigree extending to the Norman Conquest”——

“Colonel Mires, as few words, if you please, between us as possible; briefly state the object of your seeking this interview with me. My answer shall be clear, decided, and prompt as short.”

“Be it so. An accident has enabled you to render a service to Miss Wilton. The firemen of London nightly do the same thing to hundreds, and are content with the fee they receive as their reward. You, on the contrary, with, as I have said, ig”——

“I warn you to be choice in your terms!”

“You actually, on account of the common deed you performed, have inflated yourself with a monstrous notion that you might aspire to the hand of a young lady of birth and wealth. You have, perhaps, been led to nurse this ridiculous conception, because Miss Wilton, with the true and refined courtesy of a well-bred lady, has extended towards you a kindness of manner she would have displayed to the very fireman you forestalled, if he had been the person who rescued her from the peril she was in.”

“Have you finished?” cried Hal, impatiently.

“When I have told you to abandon for ever the wild and preposterous idea which seems to have taken possession of you, and to abstain from further visits to the house of Mr. Wilton, under the risk of my resentment, and perhaps an ignominious punishment, I have ended.”

“My reply is, sir,” returned Hal, with a swelling breast, and a sensation upon his forehead, like a burning band, “that I wholly deny your right to interfere either in Mr. Wilton’s or my affairs. I have further to inform you, that I am master of my actions, and that I intend to remain so; I conclude, sir, by telling you, in full explanation of the estimation in which I hold your resentment, that should you dare, in my hearing, speak of Miss Wilton as but now you have done, or should attempt to renew this conversation with me, I will treat you as I would a snarling, troublesome, officious hound! Stand out of my path!”

Hal placed his open hand on the breast of Colonel Mires, and thrust him back. He strode with a firm but dignified step from the spot.

“Scoundrel!” yelled Mires; “I will horsewhip you for this indignity.”

“We shall meet when you have a horsewhip,” answered Hal, scornfully. “Spare your promises until then.”

With rage and fury swelling his frame, and forming a hundred schemes of a deadly revenge, the foiled Colonel hastened in the opposite direction to that Hal had taken.

“And this dark-skinned villain hopes to take to his arms the fairest, brightest piece of Nature’s handicraft,” Hal muttered, as he pursued his way homeward. “He will vex and trouble her by his detestable addresses. Oh, Flora, dearest! if I may not aspire to your hand, or hope for your love, I may, at least, pass my life in protecting you from the machinations of such villains as this. At least I shall be near you; I will watch over you, and preserve you from ill, if I may never, never shelter you from harm within these arms as my own—my own.”

CHAPTER II.—THE DREADFUL SECRET.

Oh, shame! oh, guilt! oh, horror! oh, remorse

Oh, punishment! Had Satan never fallen,

Hell had been made for me. Oh, Leonora!

Leonora! Leonora!

Young.

Helen Grahame, borne helpless to her bed-chamber, remained for many hours without exhibiting any sign of returning consciousness.

An experienced physician had been summoned, and at length the fit was so far mastered by the application of remedies and restoratives, that the semblance of death no longer remained, and she was roused into motion, though not to consciousness.

She was delirious, at first: and sitting upright in the bed, caught the terrified, weeping Evangeline by the wrist, and pointed into vacancy.

“See, see,” she shrieked; “he stands tottering on the vessel’s side. Hold him back for mercy sake, hold him back, or he will be lost! Oh, Hugh, but one moment—pause—for very charity pause! I come to you—one moment, Hugh—I will hang on your breast, I will cling to you, I will go through the world with you—stay—one instant! Save him! Save him! Hugh!—Hugh!—see, he curses me—his eyes glare angrily on me, he tosses his hands wildly in the air—he leaps—ha!”

A piercing shriek burst from her lips, and rang through the house.

Evangeline threw her arms round her sister, and by force prevented her from springing from the bed on to the floor.

“Helen, darling,” she exclaimed, sobbing, as she felt the quivering, trembling frame of her sister shake in every limb, as though she was struck with an ague—“Helen, look upon me—I am Eva, sister Eva; you see only a horrible vision—a dreadful dream; you are at home in your own room—oh, Helen, Helen darling, speak to me one word, say that you know me, one word, Helen dearest.”

“One word, Helen dearest! the words mock me,” exclaimed Helen, in a low subdued tone, her large dark eyes wandering slowly round the room. “One word, Helen, dearest!—and I would not utter it. My cold selfishness has killed him. The remorseless sea has closed over him, the moaning wind chants his dirge, the slimy seaweed entangles his locks, he lays upon the cold, cold sand in the green depths, his white wan face turned, despairing, to the harsh world which had no compassion for him. He is gone, he is for ever gone!—I—I have slain him!”

A fearful passion of hysteric weeping followed these words. Her whole frame was convulsed. It took the united aid of the physician, Chayter, and Evangeline to hold her down, in order to prevent her committing some wild act of delirious extravagance.

The paroxysm passed away but it left her utterly prostrate. The physician declaring her out of immediate danger, retired, leaving Evangeline and Chayter to watch by her as she lay, wan and motionless—the faint heaving of her bosom only telling that she was not dead.

Helen’s intercourse with Hugh was known only to herself and to him—she had no confidante—and it was well that Mrs. Grahame was not present during the ravings uttered by her daughter. A secret is never so well kept as when it is never entrusted. Helen believed this, and confided to no one the love passage in her young life, Evangeline, in her innocence, believed that the mere relation of the incident with which Hugh Riversdale was connected, coming upon Helen at a moment when she was not quite in health, had so shocked her as to produce this grave result; but such would not have been the interpretation by Mrs. Grahame.

At present that lady decided in her own mind that Helen had been attacked by this fit, wholly irrespective of the paragraph in the paper; but she would at once have surmised the truth, if she had seen how her daughter wept the loss of the person they “could not notice now.”

The report of the physician was that she had suffered a severe attack of hysteria—that she was much prostrated, with a tendency to be delirious; but that though she might be compelled to keep her chamber for some time, there was no real danger. “It was necessary that she should be well nursed,” he said, and as he perceived that in that mansion, where pride reigned supreme, she was not likely to obtain the careful and constant attention which she so much needed, he recommended a person to be sent for from the institution for trained nurses.

Mrs. Grahame approved of the suggestion, and, within a couple of hours, one, a tall matronly female, was duly installed empress of Helen’s sick chamber.

She had a struggle, at first, to wrest the empire from Evangeline, but she was so forcible in her reasoning, and so kind and gentle in her manner, that Eva yielded up the sway, on the understanding that she should spend the greater portion of her time at her sister’s bedside.

And now the house assumed an aspect of quiet. The Duke of St. Allborne had just begun to find favourable qualities in Margaret, not visible to the eyes of others, but bright in his, for her homage to him had been so direct that he could but notice and approve it. Direct flattery rarely disgusts the weak-minded; it charmed the Duke, and he purred as he received it. He would have become more marked in his attentions to the artful girl, but Helen’s sudden illness brought his and Lester Vane’s visit to an abrupt close.

They quitted, with expressions of complimentary condolence, and promised, at a future time, to repeat their visit. Both intended to keep their word.

Lester Vane had no thought of yielding up his designs on Helen. He neither forgot nor forgave. He had correctly read her intention to make a prize of his heart, and then to toss it away as a worthless gain. He overlooked the provocation he gave her for entertaining such a scheme, unjustifiable as it was, and he resolved to punish her. There was a blow to wipe out, and he thought he knew how to exact ample vengeance in atonement of it.

So he determined to return again to the house when Helen had recovered.

The anticipated visit of old Wilton and his daughter Flora to the house of Mr. Grahame was not paid, the reason assigned was, that Wilton, with his daughter, had gone into the country—rather unexpectedly—to take possession of the estate of which he had been so long deprived.

The pressing claims upon Mr. Grahame were all satisfied, a large sum had been placed to his credit at his bankers, and proceedings were going on to carry into effect Nathan Gomer’s scheme.

Mr. Grahame was, upon the whole, though rather mystified and vexed by a lurking uneasiness, glad that the deed, bearing the signature of Eustace Wilton, which the latter had never written, had so strangely disappeared; and he was also rather pleased, though perplexed, to find Mr. Chewkle had never returned to him, after his departure with the professed object of enlisting the services of two arrant scoundrels in the atrocious business of false swearing. He, therefore, set out on a business visit to an estate he possessed in Scotland, with a much easier frame of mind, and a more decided disposition to enact the part of a haughty feudal lord, than he had done on the visits immediately preceding the present.

Mrs. Grahame and Margaret were incessantly engaged in fulfilling with propriety what they deemed the duties of the station they held. They were in their carriage one-half the day, and one-half the night at the opera, at soirées, and routs.

Evangeline spent all the time allotted her by her mamma, and by the nurse, Mrs. Truebody, in Helen’s room; but in the sick chamber, or away from it, her soft footsteps and her sweet low voice were rarely heard.

So the mansion was for the most part silent as an untenanted house of prayer. Helen was slowly recovering. She was still very ill. Since her raving in her delirium, she had never spoken a word.

To the fond and affectionate questions of Evangeline, she replied by a faint, loving smile, or a gentle pressure of the hand, but not a word.

To the physician or to the nurse, she either nodded slightly or shook her head, but not a sound escaped her lips.

At length the physician terminated his visits, recommending that Helen should rise for an hour or two, extending the time each day, until she had strength enough to resume her ordinary routine of life.

Mrs. Truebody had been most attentive to her patient; her medical knowledge was excellent, and frequently most usefully applied; her kindness, her patient, unweary watching, most exemplary; it had won, as it could not fail to do, the gratitude of Helen, occasionally displayed by a beaming look, not at all difficult of interpretation.

One night, towards midnight, when Eva had, after embracing and kissing her sister tenderly, retired to her own room to pray, as usual, for the speedy restoration of Helen to health, Mrs. Truebody seated herself by the bedside, and took Helen’s wasted hand in her own, and held it there.

“Miss Grahame,” she said, in a low tone, “you are progressing, though slowly, to recovery; but there is one impediment to your more rapid return to health, which, I confess, I am sadly afraid cannot be easily removed.”

She paused.

Helen turned her dark eyes upon her, with an inquiring look, but did not speak.

“You have a weight preying on your mind, which alone causes the physical prostration under which you suffer,” continued Mrs. Truebody. “It will continue to keep you here unless prompt arrangements are made to alleviate it by some decided step on your part.”

Helen remained silent. Still, Mrs. Truebody went on—

“Have you a friend, Miss Grahame?” she asked; adding—“I do not mean a mere acquaintance, nor yet a relative, but a friend, in whom you can place the fullest confidence, and who would spare no exertion and faint not at trial and trouble to serve you. Speak, my child, for in truth it is a momentous question I ask of you.”

Helen faintly shook her head, and, in a feeble voice, replied—

“No, I have not—not one—now.”

The tears clustered in her eyes.

Mrs. Truebody gazed upon her sadly.

“You have need of one—sore need of one,” she said, gravely; “for you have some painful secret in your heart.”

There was a silence as of the grave.

Helen’s eyes looked into the dark shadow in her room, as though there she saw a phantom. She spoke not.

“Have you never confided, by word or hint, to anyone that grief which now oppresses you?” asked Mrs. Truebody, in a curiously solemn tone.

A flush spread itself over the hitherto pale features of Helen, and then it passed away, leaving her whiter than ever.

“Never,” she murmured, in a low voice.

“And where is he who has brought you to this condition?” asked Mrs. Truebody, in a tone betraying indignation.

“Oh, do not speak, do not think harshly of him!” exclaimed Helen, with a quivering lip. “His anguish, his misery, and his despair, were greater than my own!”

Then, in hoarse accents, she briefly spoke of the circumstances which called Hugh away, of his letter to her, of her mental struggles, her hesitation, and vacillation, until too late even to write to him, and then of the incident published in the newspaper.

Mrs. Truebody listened in silence, with her eyes intently fixed upon Helen’s features, perusing them earnestly as though to ascertain whether there was not something more which Helen studiously concealed, but she did not seem to find what she sought.

Presently, she said abruptly—

“Were you married?”

A change instantly passed over the features of Helen—an expression impossible to describe: it told that a throng of unutterable thoughts were passing through her brain.

“Why do you ask me such a question?” she said, in an almost inarticulate voice.

Mrs. Truebody took a firmer hold of her hand.

“Look in my eyes, my child,” she said solemnly; “answer me truly—are you ignorant of your actual condition?”

“My—my condition!” feebly echoed Helen.

“Know you not, my poor girl,” exclaimed Mrs. Truebody, in a deep and earnest tone, “that ere a few short months have passed over your head, you will become a mother?”

Helen’s face became instantly of a ghastly whiteness. She turned an affrighted glare upon Mrs. Truebody. Her lips moved as though she would speak but could not. A film spread itself over her eyes, a moment before unnaturally bright, and she swooned away.

Mrs. Truebody let fall her hand, and hastened to apply restoratives.

Her tears fell fast upon the pallid countenance over which she bent like a tender mother.

“Poor child” she murmured. “Poor deluded child! Riches have not saved her from sin, nor spared her sorrow. Oh, woman! woman! you, who claim this frail creature as your child, what have you not to answer for!”

Once again Helen became conscious, and now she was face to face with her true position—now she felt more terribly the upbraidings of self-reproach, for not having complied with Hugh’s passionate appeal to her. But the opportunity was passed. He was gone—perhaps to heaven. She was here alone—alone with her sin.

Something to Mrs. Truebody’s surprise, she did not exhibit the violent emotions she had expected her to give way to, on being restored to a full sense of her position. She wept, it is true—her eyes rained tears, and her sobs—low, wailing sobs—were very painful to hear—but she was almost motionless; it was as though she cowered beneath the bed-clothes to hide herself for very shame.

After a time she whispered—

“This is a dreadful secret—a most dreadful secret. I have had, since I have laid here, a terrifying sense of the truth, but I drove it away—I would not think of it, I would not believe it—but oh! is it true—is it true?”

“It is true,” repeated Mrs. Truebody, emphatically.

Helen clasped her hands, and said to her, imploringly—

“Leave me to deal with this fearful discovery alone, but oh! Mrs. Truebody, if you have a spark of human charity, breathe not to mortal the calamity with which Heaven has afflicted me in meting out to me my deserts. Oh! think of my father’s and of my mother’s pride in the honour of our house. To know of my fall would crush them—that foul blot on their escutcheon would slay them. Oh! Mrs. Truebody, let me not add murder to my dread fault, I implore you, I pray of you—upon my knees with bitter, bitter tears I will pray of you, as you alone discovered my secret, so retain it in your own bosom.”

“Be comforted in this, my poor child,” she replied: “I will not add a pang to the anguish which I am sure you must now so keenly suffer, but what I must know, and what I will know, is, the course you are going to adopt.”

“You shall know as soon as I have the power to decide. At present my brain is racked with agony, my temples burn and throb: I cannot collect my thoughts into anything like coherency. Let me but have quiet—quiet, Mrs. Truebody, and I shall be able then to shape out the path my guilt and shame may compel me to take, without injuring or degrading those who are so jealous of their virtue and their fame.”

“Ah!” thought Mrs. Truebody, “if they had mixed up with this stern purity of character a little common humanity. If the haughty mother of this frail sinful girl had been but as proud of being a good, watchful, loving parent as she has been of her long line of ancestry, this dreadful thing surely had not happened.” She turned to Helen, and said—

“You shall have quiet and rest—so that you may gather strength to reflect upon the consequences of your terrible error, and pray to God for pardon.”

“I will try to do all you counsel,” responded Helen, excitedly, though speaking in the same hissing undertone; “but I must be left for a time to myself—be alone, quite alone! Above all, let not Eva come to me!”

“Miss Grahame?”

“No!—no!—no! Not Eva!—not Eva! I cannot now dare to look in her sinless face. I cannot bear the soft gaze of her innocent eyes, nor hear those affectionate words emanating from her pure heart, without acutely feeling each look, each tone of her dear voice, as a terrible reproach. I have so looked down upon her simplicity, taunted her guilelessness, scoffed at her singleness of heart, that the very sight of her seems to humble me to the dust.”

“She will be so very grieved, to be forbidden the usual seat by your bedside,” said Mrs. Truebody, deprecatingly.

“I know it—I feel it. I can see her turning sorrowfully away when you deny her access to me, but she is now to me an angel of such spotless purity, and I so foul, so black, so begrimed with wickedness, that were she to lay her tender hand upon me, and with those immaculate lips press my hot forehead, I should shrink from her, fearing to pollute her by the contact.”

“Whatever you may inwardly feel—and I would not have you repulse any such sense of your grievous fault—it will be necessary to obtain a control over your feelings, and to appear much as usual,” said Mrs. Truebody; “and I would suggest to you that by refusing to see your sister Eva—dear, sweet creature that she is—you will give rise to questions which it will be difficult to answer.”

“I will be guided by you, but pray let me be alone for the next day or two,” urged Helen. “You will tell her that, unless I am for a short time left entirely to myself, my recovery will be greatly retarded. She will not, after that, press her own kind desires in opposition to my recovery. And, now, if my beating brain will let me, I will try to sleep, and strive to gather strength; for, oh! I have a dreadful task to encounter—a desperate part to play. Good night, Mrs. Truebody; remember your promise!—not a word to mortal—not a word—not a word! as you hope hereafter for mercy from the Almighty!”

Mrs. Truebody slept in a small antechamber. Her room door was in Helen’s apartment, and this she always left open all night. Having performed a few necessary duties, and bade Helen farewell for the night, she retired to her bed.

At length Helen was quite alone. The slight hum of the gently-moving trees in the garden was broken only by the monotonous ticking of the time-piece over the fireplace. An hour passed, and not a sound broke the intense stillness which reigned throughout the house.

Suddenly Helen sat straight up in the bed. She stretched her arms out, and murmured, in accents of the keenest misery—

“Oh! Hugh, Hugh—pardon and pity me! If you are dead, come to me in the spirit; let your sad eyes once more turn on mine. I will not tremble, nor faint, nor be appalled. Come to me—bear me with you; for oh! it is dreadful to be here alone—alone, Hugh! Oh! you know not how lone I am—so utterly lonely. No, no; oh, mercy Heaven! not alone—not alone—no more alone!”

With a low wail, more like a cry of horror than, the sob of anguish, she sank shivering down, and buried her head beneath the bed-clothes. Once more she raised herself, and parted her long black hair from her tearful eyes, dim with long weeping.

“Are you dead, Hugh?” she moaned; “it is happiness for you, if you are. I may not die—I dare not die; I must live—live for, for—oh—I shall go frantic! Live? Live where?—where?—where?”

She clasped her hands in despair.

“Here I cannot stay. Here? No; I must out into the world. Oh! where, to hide my misery and my shame from all—the pitying and the pitiless? Oh, Hugh! that I had fled to you. If I had but listened to the pleadings of my heart, I had not fallen before the whisperings of my pride!”

And thus the night through did she start up and murmur in moaning accents, or hide herself beneath the bed-covering, sobbing and wailing in the very wildest grief.

The pale gray dawn began to show through the transparent blind, when sleep stole over the exhausted girl, and it was mid-day ere she awoke, strengthened, though not refreshed, by her long slumber—awoke, as Mrs. Truebody had told her, to be face to face with her miserable situation.

She did not shrink from it. The nurse kept her promise, and suffered no one to enter the chamber but herself, and Helen had all the quiet she could hope for.

She lay motionless the remainder of the day. The nurse could, however, see that her mind was working with ceaseless activity. Occasionally she would perceive her dark eyes, shining with an unnatural brilliancy, turned upon herself, and she knew that Helen was taking into her calculations her aid or her silence.

She did not try to induce her to speak, especially as she saw that she had a disinclination to do so. She believed it to be better for her to think. A steady reflection upon the failings of our nature tends to promote an endeavour to remedy them. Under such an impression, she did not care to make Helen talk.

Helen slept all that night, but the following day was a counterpart of the last. Neither Mrs. Grahame nor Margaret made any attempt to see her, when they were requested not to visit her for a day or so, but Evangeline could scarcely be moved from the chamber door.

She stole there upon tiptoe, and stood without for hours, listening intently. If she could have only heard Helen speak, it would have made her heart light and glad.

That night, at the hour when the household were retiring to repose, Evangeline escaped the vigilance of Mrs. Truebody, and crept to the bedside.

Helen lay there in deep thought, as for hours she had been—living over her past life, and vainly trying to shape out of the obscure future the lot she would have to endure.

Her restless eyes suddenly fell upon the upturned, loving face of her sister—that face so full of tenderness, and yet charged with an expression deprecating her anger for having broken through the arrangement which compelled her absence.

At first Helen shrank, as if horrified, from her, but Evangeline leaned over, and caught her in her arms.

“Do not be angry with me, Helen, dearest,” she said, entreatingly; “but indeed, indeed, I could not sleep without speaking just one little word to you, and kissing you. I sobbed all last night; it was foolish, I know; but I could not bear to go to bed without having even seen you during the day.”

“Do—do not touch me, Eva,” said Helen, gasping and struggling to free herself from her sister’s affectionate embrace.

Eva burst into tears.

“Do not be cross with me, Helen, darling, for I love you fondly and dearly!” she exclaimed. “If I too much intrude my love upon you, forgive me, for I cannot help it. Say to me only, ‘Good night, Eva,’ and kiss me, and I will leave you—oh, so happy, Helen.”

Helen could not bear this tenderness of her sister’s, and not respond to it; she strained her passionately to her bosom, and sobbed violently upon her neck. She then wiped her scalding tears from her burning eyes, and kissed Eva fervidly upon the forehead.

“Eva,” she whispered in her ear, “I love you with my whole soul. I have wronged you. I have treated you with unkindness——”

“No, darling—no, never.”

“With unfeeling scorn, Eva—cruel, selfish pride. I am punished, Eva—you cannot dream how fearfully; but let that pass—mine the crime, mine the atonement. Know this, however—that my eyes are opened, and my error stands before me, a monument of glowing brass. You do not understand this, sweet Eva; but you will comprehend that, from the inmost depths of my heart, I love and honour you.”

“Helen!”

“That in—in the—the time to come, I shall never forget your more than sisterly affection, your dear love for me, and I shall pray for blessings to be showered upon you, Eva—pray for you—as I hope you will—will pray for me.”

The last words were almost inaudible. She kissed the astonished Eva again and again with passionate fervour, and then she bade her not to say a word, but to leave her and come again at the same hour on the following night.

“But you will say, ‘Good night and good bye, dearest,’ to me, will you not, Helen?” asked Eva, softly and fondly.

Helen felt as if she should be suffocated by a rising hysterical sob, but she contrived to force out the words—

“Good night and good bye, dearest Eva,” and then she fell back, almost lifeless, on the bed.

Eva bent over her, imprinted one last kiss upon her burning lips, and then ran out of the room with a heart throbbing with joy, and kneeling down at her own bedside, she prayed with sincerity and fervour for the recovery and for the happiness of her sister Helen.

In the early morning, while Helen seemed yet sleeping, Mrs. Truebody went upon an errand, which her patient had begged her to execute herself; it took her to no great distance from the house, and when she returned she went into the kitchen and made breakfast for Helen herself, according to her usual custom, and then she carried it up to her bedside.

But Helen was not there!

Nor in the room, nor in the house, ransacked, in wild terror, by Mrs. Truebody.

Upon the toilet table, was subsequently found a note, addressed to Mrs. Grahame. Within, ran the following words—

“Search not for me. I have departed of my own free will. Rest satisfied in this—that the life bestowed by my Creator will not beshortened by a despairing hand. One word of solemn warning. Inquire not. Be content that there is a mystery. Do not seek to draw a veil from that which, hidden, cannot wound you, but if revealed would destroy you. Forget me!”

“Helen.”

So she was gone.

Mrs. Grahame, after perusing this strange and, to her mind, incomprehensible epistle, concluded to take no step in the matter until she had consulted with Mr. Gra-hame upon the subject. Such undignified behaviour on the part of her eldest daughter was unpardonable.

Margaret thought that her mother had adopted quite the proper course to pursue; Malcolm was out of town for a few days; and Evangeline, upon her knees, implored Mrs. Truebody to accompany her over London in search of her absent sister.

Mrs. Truebody, in deep tribulation, promised everything, and did nothing.

Yes, she did one thing.

She kept Helen’s dreadful secret!

CHAPTER III.—THE STRICKEN DEER.

Bel. Whither shall I fly?

Where hide me and my miseries together?

Where’s now the Roman constancy I boasted?

Sunk into trembling fears and desperation.

Jaf. Mercy! Kind Heaven has surely endless stores

Hoarded for thee, of blessings yet untasted.

—Otway.

So Lotte Clinton began the world afresh. Her prospects were newer and brighter. Since she had been flung abruptly and rudely upon the hard world, she had not known such true comfort and happiness as she now enjoyed. The death of her parents, within a few days of each other, had left her and her brother—her senior only some fifteen months—utterly destitute. The disinterested charity of a neighbouring humble tradesman, who had known something of the family in better times, not only provided the expenses of the double funeral, but paused not until it had placed the boy in a lawyer’s office, and the girl at a milliner’s, as an apprentice for three years in the house.

In those three years, Lotte had been trained to exist with as few hours nightly sleep as it was possible for her young nature to sustain without actually sinking under it. But she had acquired the whole mystery of cap-makings and some little knowledge of dressmaking.

When the term of her apprenticeship expired, she went through the routine of day work until her skill, and the known power she had of working long after midnight, and rising with the sun, enabled her to ask for, and to obtain, her work at home.

The advantages afforded her by this arrangement were, that she saved the time occupied in passing to and from her place of business, and she was spared exposure to insult on her nightly return to her humble lodging.

When our tale opened, she was occupied in making those pretty blonde, flowered fronts, worn by ladies as the inner adornment of their bonnets. For making up these, she was paid at the rate of sixpence-halfpenny, sevenpence-halfpenny, and for some eight-pence-halfpenny per dozen. At this miserable pay she had to rise with the dawn, and work until past the hour of midnight, to earn even a scanty pittance-Many a fair creature, consulting her mirror, has, with gratified pride, observed the becoming properties of the small and pretty addition to her head-dress; but how very few have reflected that their own efforts to procure it as cheaply as possible have helped to hurry many a poor exhausted careworn sister into the crowded paths of sin, or into a pauper grave!

Lotte was rapid with her needle, and was full of self-sacrifice, that she might be self-dependent. She possessed great powers of endurance, and, to preserve her independence, she taxed those powers to the utmost. No one but herself knew what privations she had undergone. No one but herself could tell of the hardships she had faced, struggled with, without a despairing sigh, and had surmounted—until the cruel circumstances succeeding the fire had ruthlessly dragged from her all hope.

Now her trials and her miseries seemed to have vanished. She had not to work so hard, for she was far better paid, and if her old habit of early rising still adhered to her, she laid her pretty, happy face upon her soft pillow at least an hour before midnight.

Her furniture was all her own, too, now; to the kind liberality of Flora Wilton she was indebted for that, and she had, at least, a sovereign by her for an emergency. She had begun to deposit in a Savings Bank already. She had a plan daintily conceived, which involved a fair amount of poetical justice. She had indomitable perseverance, and, if events unforeseen and uncontrollable did not occur, she fully resolved to carry it out. Her room—her one room, for she had only one—was a little picture, so clean, so tidy, so prettily arranged it was. There was her table with its two flaps, so that if she felt lonely and somewhat disposed to turn with liberal hand her economy aside it would accommodate a visitor—ay, actually company.

Then, in addition to her neat set of chairs, there was a sofa, which, by a marvel of mechanical ingenuity was converted at night into a pretty little bedstead. There was upon the floor a neat-patterned carpet. Upon the flowered walls a picture or two, not of much value, but they added to the liveliness of the room.

She had, too, a charming little canary, such a dear tiltle “dick,” which chirruped and sang to her all the long day, looking at her every now and then, and calling “sweet” to her with as knowing an expression in his little bright eye, as if he were that young smart though anky grocer himself round the corner, who never served her with sugar but he gazed upon her as if, like the genuine “barley,” he was a “sweetness long drawn out.”

There were flowers in the window. She was very fond of flowers. She could not afford the more expensive kinds, but as it was, she delighted in tending her geraniums, her mignionette, her fuchsias, and her trained convolvuli.

Altogether, in her eyes, her room was an earthly Paradise. She almost sighed with too much happiness as at times she lifted up her eyes from her work to gaze around.

“Oh, if Charley could only see me here, how happy he would be!” she would often say to herself; and then she would pray with earnest fervour that he might soon be restored to her.

As yet she had not had a visitor. Flora was away in the country. Hal Vivian she had expected to call, if only to say, “How do you do?” but he had never been, and Mrs. Bantom—who had promised to return the visit, which Lotte, full of gratitude and thankfulness to her for her motherly kindness in her distress, had paid—had not yet put in an appearance. Several times when a loud ring came to “her” bell, she ran with a light step and a beating heart down the stairs to answer the door, expecting to see some loved face reward her hopeful anticipations, but it was only “the milk,” or a boy to bring her a fresh supply of work, and take away that which she had done. She would return up to her room with just a little bit of a sigh, and take refuge once more in the sanguine belief that some one would come to see her, and that before long.

She little dreamed all this while that there was “some one” on the look-out to find her—one who was fully as anxious to become a visitor to her as she could be to receive one.

She was all unconscious that her round, attractive face had won the heart of “the heir of the haughty Grahame”—that is, so much of the article as he possessed. Alas! too, like many others of his sex, as far as woman was concerned, his heart greatly resembled a garden-grown cabbage, luxuriant in leaf, but without the solid centre, which was necessary to make it of value to the possessor.

She had no inkling that while she longed for some face, bearing a kind expression, to come shining through her doorway, that a suitor for her—love—was roaming through the more retired of the west-end streets, examining apartments to let, making kind inquiries after imaginary persons of impatient landladies, in the strong hope, that he should at last “come shining through the doorway” to her, as though by the most charming accident in the world.

But this swain was not successful. Something more than the reverse, for he pursued his investigation in a manner so peculiar that in several cases he was suspected of being after the time-piece, or any stray purse or plate, instead of the lodgings; and was, consequently, answered with abruptness, not permitted to be left by himself for an instant, and was shown to the door with all possible speed. In other instances, he was imagined to be an individual shrinking from an interview with sharp and urgent creditors, whose claims he could not liquidate. In nearly every case, he was considered impertinently inquisitive, and received monosyllables in reply, but not in satisfaction of the object of his questions, as that formed precisely the point upon which the interrogated joined issue with him, especially if the lady with diminished resources who let apartments to help out her income, or who had “more room than she wanted,” happened to have a daughter old enough to be thought of by young men—and to think of them. Then Malcolm Grahame observed, as he questioned, the elderly landlady’s face redden, her brow contract, her lips purse up, her eyes brighten, and her conversational powers stricken with a sudden frost; and he found himself gradually backed, inch by inch, down the stairs, along the passage too narrow mostly to be dignified with the name of a hall, until he was fairly in the street, and then the door was slammed in his face.

“Cursedly rude,” thought he: “devilish odd, too, they should treat a person of my standing and appearance in such a beastly fashion.”

The more his imagination dwelt upon Lotte, the more infatuated he grew; the difficulties thrown in his path, in his endeavour to discover her, served but to add to the flame already kindled; and thus much time that ought to have been passed at Oxford was spent in wandering through whole streets of unlet apartments to find one who had no idea of his existence, and who, as soon as his identity was established, would think about him pretty much as she had done before, that is to say—not at all.

A recent effort of Lotte’s handicraft had been purchased by a lady of title in Belgravia; and, requiring other articles of attire for her “budding sprigs,” she desired that the person, young or old, who had made the articles she had purchased, and was much pleased with, should, upon a certain evening, after dinner, wait upon her to take her instructions. Delighted with the taste exhibited in the things she had bought, the lady concluded that the same excellent fancy would be displayed by the young person in whatever was made under her own directions; in fact, that by such a mode of procedure the very best results would be produced. She was, therefore, very particular in requesting the presence of the actual workwoman.

Her wishes were conveyed to Lotte, and she, glad of a little change, readily assented to attend upon the lady, resolving to make, by allowing herself plenty of time, something more than a mere walk of her journey.

So she tied on the prettiest of little bonnets—we must tell the truth—so as to cover only half her head and to hide that graceful turn in her neck, which, without shawl or bonnet, commanded the admiration of any person with half an eye for beauty of form, and she donned her dove-coloured mantle, which fell so gracefully from her shoulders, giving a tantalising suggestion of the small, well-shaped waist it concealed from view, but not from the imagination; and she drew on gradually, with a woman’s patience and perseverance in those matters, the small deep-green kid gloves, and then she seized her little morocco handkerchief-box hung it on her arm, and sallied forth.

“Well,” she thought, with a smile and a suppressed sigh, “if no one has been to pay me a visit, it consoles me to think I have a visit to pay.”

Now she had not left her residence more than a few minutes, when Hal Vivian, with grave and thoughtful face, called at her residence to see her, and to have a quiet talk with her upon a subject of interest to her and of moment to himself. He was vexed to find that she was out; but, on learning that she had gone to Eaton Square, he said it was probable he might walk in that direction, and, in all likelihood, he should see her; he therefore declined to leave a message.

Perhaps an hour had elapsed, when Miss Clinton’s bell again gave forth a loud peal. This time there appeared at the door two young men, one of whom inquired for Lotte with great earnestness; he displayed much disappointment when told that, though the young lady for whom he inquired certainly lived there, that she was not within. When, however, it was made known to him whither she had gone, he, with his friend, at once departed in quest of her.

Now, as though visits were to fall on Lotte as thick as hail during her absence, Mr. Bantom, spruced up and decorated with a tall shirt collar, so that his wife laughed until she absolutely wept, as she walked round and surveyed him, when dressed, presented himself at her abode for admission.

But he had been observed by a policeman to hang round the door for at least five minutes before he selected the bell-handle he intended to manipulate upon, and when apparently he had made up his mind, he pulled it out with such tenderness, that it was only at the fourth effort a slight “ting” ensued. He had allowed about three minutes to elapse between each pull, a quarter of-an-hour was therefore very nearly consumed before the door was opened to him. The policeman having little on his mind and nothing to do but to crack nuts, lessened gradually the distance between himself and Bantom, until he stood at his shoulder. When Lotte’s landlady threw wide the entrance to her mansion, she almost fainted at beholding the strange man she had seen a short time previously walking slowly up and down opposite her house, seeming to examine it with the eye of a practised burglar, picking out its most vulnerable part, and with him a policeman. A variety of horrible suggestions presented themselves to her, and she gasped for breath without being able to utter a word.

Bantom looked slightly bewildered by the unexpected appearance of the policeman at his elbow; he was at a loss to conceive his object in pausing there, and waited for him to state his business to the housekeeper. The policeman, who was no artist in his profession, urged by a sense of duty and a presentiment that Bantom was animated by a hope of plunder, also remained silent to hear what Bantom had to say for himself; for a minute, therefore, the three gazed upon each other without speaking.

The landlady broke ground by faintly demanding to what remarkable event she might attribute the honour of this most unlooked-for visit; whereupon Mr. Bantom gracefully resigned to X 94 the privilege of speaking first, a privilege which was immediately accepted, and used in directing a series of sharp interrogatories addressed to Mr. Bantom, every one of which he replied to with skilful evasion. The officer, at length declared himself extremely dissatisfied with the result of his examination, and requested Mr. Bantom to accompany him to the station-house, in order that he might give more satisfactory explanations concerning himself to the inspector on duty. To this proposition, Mr. Bantom emphatically declined to accede; he declared it a violation of the liberty of the subject, to which he would not submit; and as X 94 endeavoured to enforce his suggestion, a collision ensued.

Lotte’s landlady, when she saw the policeman’s hand upon Bantom’s collar, and Bantom’s hand upon the policeman’s belt, and the two commence to revolve with frightful rapidity, thought it prudent to take no further part in the interview. She therefore retired, closed her door, bolted it, and put the chain up. She ascended to the room above, and peeped over a blind to ascertain what followed her departure. She heard a great shuffling of feet upon the pavement, and the roar of many voices. There were frequent heavy bumps at the street door, as of human bodies swung violently against it, the knocker rapped at these times, untouched by mortal hand; then the uproar increased, grew, swelled into a mighty sound, and at last she saw the heels of Mr. Bantom quivering in the air, waving above the shoulders of five policemen, who were bearing him off in triumph to that audience with the inspector at the station-house, suggested in the first instance by X 94, but which Bantom had so obstinately refused to attend.

All this while Lotte was on her way to Eaton Square, She paused occasionally to look in at the shops—the drapers’ and the milliners’ commanding the largest portion of her attention; though at the time Mr. Bantom was doing desperate battle against such unequal odds, she was steadfastly regarding a large variety of pipes in a tobacconist’s window, with the intention of one day selecting one, and making him a present of it.

She went on and reached Hyde Park. She struck across towards the Serpentine.

The sky was blue, clear, and serene; the air was balmy, and the soft turf green and smooth. The throngs moving to and fro, in carriages and on foot, dressed in all the colours of the rainbow, made the scene busy and lively, and she tripped on, full of joyful tenderness and freshened spirits, light and free as a bird.

The route she had determined to pursue lay along the path on the banks of the Serpentine river, over the bridge, and so towards Knightsbridge. As she went on, she admired the gay equipages, and the superb dresses of the fair high-bred creatures borne in them, and no touch of envy mingled with her admiration. Glad of heart herself, she was delighted to see how smiling and happy every one appeared—with what a light, elastic step each one seemed to move, and how deliciously the breeze wafted to her ear the unsaddened ring of childish laughter, when suddenly she came upon the boat-house of the Humane Society.

It stood in the gloomy shadow of a cluster of trees upon the bank; near to it was moored a boat, in which lay at rest the formidable looking-instrument employed to rescue the drowning, or to bring up from the cold depths of the river, the dead.

A cold thrill ran through her frame as she gazed upon it, and she hastened on. The hue of the still river, before so blue and sparkling in its ripples, now seemed to change—to become leaden and motionless. She remembered the dark night when, with cold, sinking heart, she hurried to leap from an arched height into a river’s chill and fatal embrace, that she might there end in a wakeless sleep, her sorrow and her despair.

She remembered the sudden grip of her wrist, the gentle voice in her ear, and the infinite mercy of the great and good God who had saved her in the very moment of committing a mortal sin.

A throng of tears gushed into her eyes. She murmured a prayer of thankfulness to Him for His beneficence to her, and a blessing on Hal for his interposition.

While the soft words of gratefulness yet stirred her quivering lips, her tearful eyes fell upon the pale features of a young, beautiful, and elegantly dressed lady, who was passing beneath a group of trees, seemingly desirous of screening herself from public gaze, and evidently affected with the deepest sadness. Oh! that terrible expression of despair upon her pallid face—that aspect of blank, hopeless woe-begone desolation, which the most accomplished mime or the vilest cheat could never simulate—how sure and perfect an index is it of the utter misery crushing the prostrated heart of those whose countenances bear its fearful impress!

Lotte recognised it. Instantly she felt that so she must have looked when her wretchedness had reached its culminating point. Her easily-awakened sympathy, prompted her to speak to the young lady; but as she advanced with this purpose, she perceived that the object of her interest, observing her, hastily retreated, and hurried away in the direction of Kensington Gardens.

She gazed wistfully after her, and felt impelled to follow, for she knew there was an aching heart beating against a prison grate from which it longed to escape. She would, with earnest fervour, have done her best to pour consolation into the dull ear of the strange lady, and, as far as she could, have softened the anguish of her racked soul, but the young and evidently high-born girl moved so quickly away, that she was beyond the reach of her voice in less than a minute after she detected that she had attracted attention.

Lotte, therefore, proceeded upon her mission, was received with magnificent condescension by the stately mistress of the splendid mansion to whom she had been accredited, endured much patronage as she took her instructions, was honoured with a glass of wine and a piece of cake after her walk, permitted to retire at the proper moment, was winked at by the footman who conducted her out, and who thought her “a jewced nice gal,” and found herself in the square, uncertain which route to take on her return to her own dear little paradise of a room.

Her decision was formed for her. She had been unable to chase from her brain a vision of the pale woe-smitten face she had seen in the park. It haunted her from the moment the reality faded from her sight; it settled before her, the large eyes gazing upon her own sadly and steadfastly, while she listened to details of juvenile dress; it grew brighter and more vivid when alone in the deepening twilight, and it seemed to glow with brighter aspect as she turned herself to retrace her steps through the park again, and pass the spot where she had seen the wan features, which she had an indistinct, undefined impression she had known under happier circumstances.

“I should, perhaps, be less anxious about her,” she thought, “but for that ugly, death-scented water.” She shuddered. “God preserve her from seeking rashly such a grave as that!”

She pressed on towards the spot where she had encountered the young lady, who had so strongly and so strangely excited her interest. On reaching it, she was scarcely surprised to discern, in the murky obscurity occasioned by the umbrageous foliage of many trees, whose branches intertwined, a shadowy phantom like a female, pacing agitatedly on the narrow pathway beneath.

Lotte glided noiselessly up to her, for she knew that she now beheld the same young creature she had before seen, though her mental agony, expressed by her excited movements, appeared to have increased in intensity since she had quitted her. As Lotte gained her side, she heard with a sharp pang her choking sob of acute misery. She saw her wring her hands in despairing agony, and then Lotte placed her lingers lightly upon her shoulder.

The lady turned, with a low, smothered shriek, to see who had touched her, but on finding that it was a young female, a stranger, she drew herself up haughtily, and said, in a low, grating voice—“What do you want with me?”

Lotte quietly took a firm hold of her elegant mantle, and then replied, in an earnest tone—

“Pardon me! you are smitten by some terrible grief.”

“Well!” replied the young lady, coldly, as Lotte paused.

“Oh, do not repel me!” she cried, fervidly; “pray do not. I am aware it may appear intrusive and rude in me to trespass upon your sorrow”——

“You are right; it is both rude and intrusive. Leave me!” interrupted the young lady, a little vehemently, endeavouring at the same time, to remove her mantle from Lotte’s grasp, but she retained her hold, and continued in urgent tones—

“As Heaven is my witness, I am animated by no common motives! You are a lady: I am humble. Grief knows no distinction: the human heart is susceptible of misery, though a diadem may glitter upon the brow of its possessor. The rich are not exempt from its blight, even though it be the common inheritance of the poor. I have been destitute, am poor”——

The young lady turned her unbending head away, still cold and stern. By a rapid movement, she drew a purse from the pocket of her dress; and, offering it to Lotte, said, almost harshly—

“Take it and leave me!”

“Oh, madam! madam!” cried Lotte, passionately, “do not misconstrue me. You are a woman, as I am; we are both equal in the eyes of the Creator. He gave us our lives to hold in trust—not to fling wildly away, and rush unbidden into His dread presence.”

The startling energy of Lotte’s tones caused the young lady to recede a pace, and mutter something which was inaudible.

Lotte, in her excitement, changed her grip from the mantle to the wrist of the young creature she was addressing.

“Look there!” she cried, in a low tone, but with a terrible emphasis. She pointed to the dark, sluggish, leaden-hued mass of water, stretching east and west.

“Look upon that dark vaporous river, the graveyard of the madly despairing. I stood upon the brink of a river mightier and blacker than that before you; upon its very edge I stood, prepared to spring into its deadly depths, because I was friendless, homeless, hopeless—do you mark me?”

The haughty girl cowered.

“I do,” she murmured.

“As with a bitter wail of sorrowing distraction, even such as now burst from your lips, I was about to leap out of life, I was seized by the wrist, as I now seize you, and by a friend. To shame me from my dreadful purpose, God had sent to me a friend, as—as he now sends me to you.”

She fell upon her knees, and clasped the hands of the young lady.

“Oh! believe that, though humble, I can and will do all within my power to serve you, to console you, to soothe the dreadful anguish which urges you to crime beyond redemption.”

“Nothing can console or soothe me,” hoarsely replied the young lady. “Let me free; I have nothing more to do with life.”

“But it has with you. Oh! it has with you,” urged Lotte, vehemently; “a glimmering light there is to penetrate the foulest vault of sin and despair. Have but faith in me, and I will show you, though it be as a star shining afar, the beacon of hope burning steadily. Perhaps you have not yet tested the value of sincere friendship; perhaps you know not what peace may be won by pouring your sorrows in a tenderly attentive ear, or confiding your fears, your worst forebodings—even your sins—for alas! we are all more or less tainted—to a sympathising breast.”

The young lady squeezed Lotte’s hands spasmodically.

“I never had such a friend—I know not what it means,” she said, her lips quivering with emotion.

“Let me he such a one to you,” exclaimed Lotte, with intense eagerness—“humble, but truthful. Come, let us away from this dark, lonely place. Come with me for so long as you will. I live by myself—quite, quite alone. No one visits me, for I am humble—very humble, but oh! I am happy now, and I will strive to bring back peacefulness and calm to your poor disturbed heart. I will not ask you one word about the past. I will not seek for your confidence, but will act always as though I possessed it. Your station, it is evident, is far higher than mine, but you can think me a foster sister—though still, in all tenderness of affection and loving service, a sister.”

She felt the limbs of the young stranger tremble She saw that she shook like an aspen from head to foot, and she rose up to catch her in her arms, for she knew that she yearned to fall within them and weep—weep long and bitterly.

At length Lotte, whose eye from time to time rested painfully upon the still, almost mist-hidden river, passed her arm gently round the waist of the young lady, and drew her softly away.

She was yet sobbing, but she made no resistance.

Lotte’s earnest sincerity had subdued her haughty pride; it had found its way to her heart and to her reason. It suddenly and unexpectedly offered a future where before all had been blank obscurity; it opened up to her a store of womanly sympathy and service, which until now she had credited, but not found; and what weighed much with her, it offered her with life a secret seclusion, for that was now as needful to her as life itself; and so she accepted the new position, as though she had suffered herself to be persuaded and had yielded.

Yet she thought, as she went on, clinging to Lotte’s supporting arm—

“If this is to be humble, how large the price paid by rank to become ignorant of human worth!”

The group of trees and the leaden river were left behind, and the two young creatures, upon whom the shadows of Fate had successively so darkly fallen, moved into the open space, slowly pursuing the pathway leading towards the glaring lights of Oxford Street.

CHAPTER IV.—THE ASSAULT AND THE RESCUE.

Soph. Permit me, sir, to pass.

Con. Not till you hear of your good fortune, my dear. You have attracted, in one moment, what hundreds of your sex have twinkled their eyes for whole years in vain—my notice. I will bring you into the world myself; your fortune’s made.

Soph. Sir, this kind of conversation is new to me. I insist upon passing.

Con. When we fellows of superior class show ourselves, the women throw themselves at us; pick and choose is the way; and happy is she we deign to catch in our arms.

[Attempts to lay hold of her.

Soph. (Bursts into tears.) Unheard of assurance! What do you seer in me to encourage such insolence? or is it the very baseness of you nature that insults a woman because she has no protection?

Tru. (Advances between them.) Protection is not so distant as you imagined.

—C. Dibdin, Jun.

Lotte’s heart, out of its own sore struggles, had been schooled to compassionate deeply and tenderly the afflictions and trials of others, especially of her own sex. She had no thought, in taking to her bosom this poor heart-crushed wanderer, of the responsibility she was entailing upon herself. The cold suggestions of worldly prudence, and the heartless promptings of mincing propriety had no trumpet-tongued voice loud enough to reach her ear. She saw only that one, lonely, helpless, pressed, as she had been, ruthlessly by a mad despair upon the brink of an awful abyss, would spring into its unfathomable depths, if she stretched not forth her hand to hold her back. She paused not in her impulse to save this young, forlorn, desolate woman—to ask in what, why, or how she had erred, or to reflect whether she was destitute, even though elegantly dressed, and, if so, that her noble purpose of restoring her, if possible, back to the sunny paths of ife, could only be accomplished by many a personal sacrifice.

No; not one selfish thought mingled itself with her sympathy; her own initiation into suffering had stimulated her, unbiassed by any personal consideration, to rescue one placed in a like peril to that in which she had stood, and she was prepared to conduct the young stranger to her own abode without further inquiry—without stipulation or condition.

“Imprudent! rash! inconsiderate!” cries rigid Decorum—“Yet a blessed sample of pure human compassion!” exclaims old single-hearted, but, alas! too often abused Philanthropy.

The young stranger read human nature by instinct, rather than by experience. She felt assured that the girl who had pleaded with her so passionately against the commission of her meditated sin, was sincere, truthful, and trustworthy, and she resolved to place confidence in her. She had been struck by the words, “I live by myself quite, quite alone—no one visits me, for I am humble.” Upon them had followed the promise of the tender, affectionate, loving services of a sister, and those words had conjured up before her eyes a young, loving, anxious face—that of one whose gentle heart would break if she came to know that the tenant of the sick couch she had so patiently watched had perished by the terrible crime of self-murder. Then she found it impossible to resist the earnest pleadings of her new found friend, and she yielded her will up to her with some vague notion that she should be conducted to a quiet retired place, where her friends—search for her as they might—would never discover her.

They proceeded slowly along the path stretching across the park, Lotte alone sustaining the conversation which she knew how to shape, so as not to jar upon the feelings of her companion. She tried, also, so to arrange her discourse as to give some knowledge of her occupation and style of life, that the young lady might have a just notion of the new home she was going to, and how it was supported.

Lotte spoke hopefully and cheerfully of the future, even though she extracted not a sound, not even a monosyllable, in reply; but she was not disconcerted at this, for she knew, by sad experience, the heart of the young mourner upon her arm was too full for speech. The increasing darkness spreading over the wide, treeless expanse, contrasted by the distant lights, made the surrounding place seem drear, and caused Lotte—who was not much more courageous, when in the midst of a wide moor-like space, in the dark, than most of her sex—to increase her speed. Her companion, who had drawn a thick veil down over her face, completely shrouding her features, offered no objection to this change in their pace, but, if anything, appeared desirous of accelerating it, seemingly wishful, now she had decided on accepting a new condition of life, to hurry to it, so as to escape the observation of the outer world.

Their walk thus became rapid, and the lights drew nearer, and grew brighter.

Suddenly, a footstep, quick and light, sounded immediately behind them, and a hand touched Lotte lightly on the shoulder. She turned, and perceived at her elbow a tall, moustached gentleman, a little in advance of two others, arm in arm, who were following him up.

He addressed Lotte.

“What a hurry you are in, my dear,” he said; “I have had to increase my pace to a gallop to catch you. Don’t walk so fast, I beg of you; you fatigue me, and do you know that disturbs my serenity.”

Lotte gazed upon him with inexpressible astonishment.

“I don’t know you,” she said, with unequivocal surprise, “I am sure you don’t know me. You have mistaken me, sir, for some other person.”

The man bent his head down, and looked closely and impertinently at her face; he appeared rather agreeably surprised by its prettiness.

“How absurd,” he exclaimed, catching hold of her wrist, “mere affectation, you little coy queen, you. We are good friends, you know, of course.”

He tried to put her hand within his arm. Lotte wrenched her hand from him, and stamped her foot indignantly.

“How dare you touch me?” she said, her face and neck becoming a brilliant crimson. “You are aware that I am an entire stranger to you, and that your speaking thus to me is an insult.”

“The little pearl!” exclaimed the man, with a slight laugh, as he placed himself before her to impede her advance.

At this moment his companions arrived, and one of them said, with a stupid grin—

“A brace only, Spoonly; Vane and I will have to go Newmarket for the other.”

Lotte felt her companion shiver, shrink, cower, as though she would sink into the earth. She clung tightly, desperately to Lotte, and in a low, hissing whisper, she murmured—

“For mercy’s sake, let us fly!”

“Stand aside, sir!” cried Lotte, firmly, and with clear tones, to the man who detained her; “let us pass on without further interruption.”

“I will do anything in the world, my little pet, to gratify you,” responded the man whom she addressed, “but that—a—I cannot do that.”

Again Lotte stamped her little foot angrily.

“But you shall!” she exclaimed. “A ruffled dove, by Jupiter!” exclaimed her tormentor laughing. “Now, if there is one thing I love to see beyond aught else, it is a ruffled dove. It is such a pretty bird, and it swells and extends its feathers, and struts so gloriously, I feel that I could catch it in my arms and press it”——

“I say—though—by Jove—here, Spoonly, stop,” suddenly observed the person who had before spoken, “I know this young lady; you must give way to me here.”

“You know her, Grahame!” cried the man he addressed as Spoonly; “well, that gives an interesting turn to the incident.”

“You know her, Grahame?” cried the third individual, advancing, “pray introduce us; we shall make a blissful termination to a dull barrack dinner.”

At the sound of his voice, Lotte’s companion seemed as though she would crawl upon the earth from the spot. It was the Honorable Lester Vane who spoke. Lotte was at a loss to divine why she betrayed so much abject fear, but she felt that it called upon her for renewed spirit and exertions.

She caught a firmer hold of her companion’s arm, and pushing her first assailant out of her path, hurried on, but he instantly pursued and caught her.

“You are a little vixenish fairy,” he said. “I like vixens. I have a thorough-bred filly, which is the sweetest creature to look at in the world of racers, but she has a temper, and I have named her Vixen. I like vixens. My little yacht, a perfect duck upon the water, will run in the teeth of a breeze like an arrow, as if out of spite; I have named her Vixen. I have”——

Finding that remonstrance, as well as resistance, were utterly unavailing, Lotte screamed for assistance loudly and vehemently.

Her cry was so sudden, so unexpected, so shrill and piercing, that it startled even those men against whose insults it was directed.

Almost instantly, from a hollow, the shadowy forms of two men appeared dark against the sky. Both gave a shout; and, in another moment, racing like deer, they reached the side of Lotte and her companion.

“What is all this?” cried one of the new arrivals.

“Have these men insulted you?”

Lotte uttered an almost hysterical shriek.

“Charley, Charley!” she cried, and disengaging herself from her companion, she threw herself upon the neck of her brother, for it was he.

But her embrace, passionate and loving as it was, lasted but an instant; in another moment she had again possessed herself of the arm of the young lady.

“We are safe now! oh, we are safe now!” she cried, in joyous tones.

“I should think so,” muttered Charley, with a slight swelling of the throat. Then he said—“These fellows have insulted you; have they not, Lotte?”

“Fellows!” echoed Vane fiercely.

“Puppies is the truer and the better word!” exclaimed Charley’s companion. “We will say puppies!”

“You walk on, Lotte, dear, with your friend,” said Charley to his sister; “we will join you presently; you need no more be afraid. We will deal with these vagabonds.”

Lord Spoonly—for he was a lord—placed himself directly in front of Charley.

“You dirty clerk,” he cried, “how dare you apply such epithets to gentlemen. You see that we are three to two, and therefore could take advantage of your want of strength, by half-murdering the pair of you. But I will prevent that, by taking upon myself to chastise you, Charley, and by ducking your friend. Vane and Grahame hold that fellow, while I give this one a lacing.”

As he spoke, he suddenly seized Charley by the collar, and raised his light Malacca cane to inflict severe punishment upon him. But, as it descended, it was caught by Charley’s companion, and twisted out of Lord Spoonly’s hand; at the same time he caught his lordship by the neck, jerked him from his grip of Charley, and lashed him with his own cane until he absolutely roared from pain.

Charley, in the meanwhile, attacked Vane, but that honourable gentleman parleyed; he objected to a fistic encounter, and submitted to say “he was sorry for what had happened”—rather than do battle with his hands. He would not have hesitated an instant—let him have justice—with the small sword or the pistol—to have confronted his antagonist, but then Charley was not a person, so he believed, whom he could meet on such terms, and, therefore, to avoid the vulgar appearance of maltreatment upon his handsome face, he said—

“Look here, my man—to stand up and fight like a couple of boxers, is not to my taste, and is merely ridiculous, where our physical powers appear so unequal, therefore I say that I am sorry the young ladies were offended; they were only accosted in joke, and nothing occurred to make that foolish young creature scream as she did—nothing.”

“Charley” surveyed him with a look of disdain; he waved his hand contemptously. “Come, Mark,” he said, “we will overtake the girls. I do not think these fellows will trouble us any more.”

Mark, as Charley styled his friend, put the cane to his knee, broke it into two pieces, and, uttering a few indignant comments, flung it towards his prostrate antagonist. He then took Charley’s arm, and accompanied him in the same direction as Lotte and her companion had pursued.

They were hardly gone, when a man came up to where Lester Vane was bending over his friend, who had been most severely thrashed. He touched his hat to Vane, saying—

“Goodness me, sir, what has happened?”

“You scoundrel!” cried Vane, passionately; “you ought to have been here before this to have given a thrashing to a couple of ruffians who have assaulted us. However, you may do some good yet. Hurry along yon path, you will overtake two men; they will join two girls; see where they go to, and bring back word to me; be particular in the address, and ascertain that you are correct. Be off with you!”

The man touched his hat, and hurried after Charley and his companion.

In the meantime, Charley had overtaken Lotte. In a few brief words he explained to her that he had been to New York; and, having succeeded in aiding an officer to capture the person of whom he had been sent in quest, he had immediately returned with the prisoner to England.

On board the vessel he had made the acquaintance of a young fellow, who, he said, strangely enough, turned out to be the son of the person in whose house Lotte had lodged when he left England, and he had broken to him, as well as he could, the pecuniary distress into which the family had been plunged; but he was not prepared to find that the house had been destroyed by fire, and his relatives dispersed he knew not where.

“Then this gentleman,” said Lotte, “is Mr. Mark Wilton, I presume?

“Exactly,” said Charley, “and he is anxious to have his mind set at rest about his father and sister.”

Lotte turned her eyes upon him. There was light enough to see that his countenance much resembled Flora’s—save that it was, of course, manly in all its points—and his skin was browned by exposure to the sun.

To say this, is to suggest that he was a very handsome, manly-looking young fellow, and so Lotte thought the more she looked at him.

It was satisfactory to think that one so good-looking as he, had lifted his strong right arm in her defence, and she resolved, when an opportunity offered, to work some little article of use, and present him with it, in testimony of her appreciation of his valour.

She felt a pleasure, too, in telling him that his father had become the possessor of a large fortune; that he lived in a fine house; that Flora was now a lady; and that he would become a grand gentleman.

Mark listened with evident surprise, but with no display of emotion, and he took down the address of the house in the Regent’s Park tenanted by his father, that he might proceed there that night, or rather immediately on reaching Oxford Street.

Beyond this point, Lotte would not permit her brother to accompany her.

“Ask me not wherefore, Charley,” she said; “you know my address, and when you come to see me tomorrow or next day, at furthest, then I will explain much that may seem strange and inexplicable to you now.”

Charley Clinton had too much confidence in his sister to ask a question, or to press his desire to accompany her to her lodging. He, therefore, bade her good night, without putting a question respecting, or making any allusion to, the young lady who was with her, and he promised to call upon her, not on the following day, but the day succeeding.

Mark Wilton also took his farewell of her, but now that the light fell full upon her face and he saw her bright eye, her cheek flushed with excitement, and the pure ingenuous expression upon her pretty face, he mentally promised himself that the parting now taking place should not be for long.

“Love at first sight” is an open question. It certainly is subjected in this country to a wholesale doubt, while in the warmer climes of the sunny south it is an every hour occurrence. Here, where we take impressions with a qualification, it is considered almost apocryphal that a man or woman should fall in love with one of the opposite sex the moment they cast eyes upon each other. Yet it is not deemed wonderful that persons seeing an article which, at the first glance, strikes them as being beautiful, should conceive instantly a desire to possess it, and call it their own. Why should there be a difference between the emotions raised by the inanimate and the animate? In nine cases out of ten, love which is clothed with passion springs into existence at the first sight of the object, although other causes may be afterwards attributed, and proofs may be adduced that it was of slow growth, fostered and increased by charms freshly and continuously developed, but the fact of the first impression calling love into existence, we venture to think, remains indisputable.

Mark was, perhaps, unconscious of the effect which Lotte’s expressive and attractive face had really upon him. He saw that she was pretty and that her manner was agreeable; he thought he should like to see her again; he felt almost instantly after he had entertained that thought that he must see her again; and, as he pressed her soft hand and gazed into her clear mild eyes, he resolved that he would see her again; and so they parted, Lotte silently sharing his impressions.

The groom despatched by Lester Vane to follow Charley and Mark, was embarrassed by perceiving the two young men suddenly proceed in opposite directions, while the young ladies took a wholly different course. It was impossible that he should follow them all, so he decided upon following the females. He shrewdly surmised that the females, being alone, would proceed home, and that where the females lived, the young men were likely to visit, and thus, at some future time, if needful, might be tracked to their own abodes.

He followed, unobserved, Lotte and her young companion to the house in which the former resided and watched them in. Then he carefully noted down the name of the street, and the number of the house. But, although he went to butcher, and baker, and publican, he failed to ascertain Lotte’s name. He returned, therefore, to the hotel, where he knew he should find his master, with all the information he could obtain.

And now Lotte was at home in her own little room, her candle lighted, and the door locked.

She was alone with her new acquaintance. She gently forced her to a seat upon the sofa.

“This,” she said, in soft tones, purposely made so that she might give strength and encouragement to the young lady to speak—“this is my home, all my home; for the limits of my property are bounded by these walls. But here I sit the day long, employed at my needle, the song of my little bird ringing joyously in my ears, the bright sky shining beyond my windows, the fresh air coming in among my flowers; and, being so fortunate as to have no lack of employment, I am as happy as the day is long.”

She paused and looked at her companion. Her hand was to her face, her bowed head yet partly concealed by her veil.

Lotte knelt suddenly, but softly, at her feet, and took both her hands in hers.

“It is not so long,” she said, in yet lower tones, “since I was waked in my sleep by the wild cry of fire. The house in which I dwelt was a mass of living flame. The noble intrepidity of young Mr. Vivian—you do not know him—ah! he is such a fine, hand-some-looking youth—saved my life. Circumstances placed me where this dire calamity most deeply affected me. What shall I say? I became a hopeless, homeless outcast. I sought refuge from my despair in an attempt to die by my own hand—yet I am here; I can wear a smile on my face, a song is ever on my lips, and I have a contented heart. Nay, let your eyes rest on mine—there is hope for all—hope for the most despairing, hope even for those whose crimes seem most to repel it—will you believe that for you only there is no hope?”

“Not on this earth—not on this earth,” murmured the young stranger, plaintively.

“Upon this earth, and There, even Where you least expect it,” cried Lotte, with energy, pointing heavenward. Then she raised her hands and gently unfastened the superb brooch which confined the mantle worn by her companion, letting her garment fall from her shoulders behind her where she sat.

“Pardon me,” she said, “I would not offend you, nor would I seem troublesomely attentive, but I have elevated myself to the post of foster-sister, and I wish to perform the duties I have undertaken.”

As she said this, she, with the same gentle violence which forbade the impulsive resistance offered slightly by the young lady, removed her bonnet, and the two girls now looked into each other’s eyes with unimpeded gaze.

Lotte saw the sharp traces of recent illness upon the pale features of the young lady as strongly as the lines which developed hopeless woe, and her heart was drawn yet closer to her new companion.

She saw that her features were beautiful; she detected in the thin, finely-shaped aquiline nose, the small ear, the delicate lips, and the exquisitely transparent skin, the well-defined evidences of aristocratic birth. She detected also that the impression she had previously entertained of having before somewhere seen the face on which now she gazed, was confirmed, and she said quietly—

“I have seen you before.”

“You have,” said the young lady, laconically.

“I knew it—but where? I cannot remember where.”

“Yet I recollect your face well, and where I saw it.”

“You?”

“Yes. It was in the garden in the rear of Mr. Wilton’s mansion.”

Lotte clasped her hands together.

She remembered the rencontre in the garden, the group, and, most of all, that proud young beauty, who stood among all, as it then seemed, the “Flower of the Flock.”

And was the prostrate, agonized being before her that same haughty girl!

She gazed on her intently.

Alas! yes it was she! But what a wreck in a period so brief. She could scarcely credit the evidence of her senses, scarce believe that splendid loveliness such as she had seen admired could become so bruised and shattered as this which she now saw before her.

She remained silent for a minute, steadfastly gazing upon her, and then she said—

“You then are—”

She hesitated.

The young lady compressed her hands together, as if with sudden agony, and in broken accents murmured—

“Helen Grahame!”

There was again a silence, and then Lotte looked up wistfully in her face, and said—

“You must have suffered deeply, dreadfully; but pray believe the worst to be past. Look upon me as a trustful, loving, faithful attendant, in whom you may confide safely so much as you may see fit to reveal. I ask no more. I will preserve your secret faithfully, and do all, all that I can to bring to you peace and comfort.”

Then Helen fell upon her neck, and wept a long, long passion of tears; and, when the fount was exhausted, she, in broken tones and disjointed words, and with sobs and groans, revealed all to Lotte—more, far more, than ever she had breathed to mortal before.

Lotte listened with breathless attention, sometimes in astonishment, at others in fright, but when, half fainting, the worst part of the history was confessed by Helen, she pressed her to her bosom, and wept with her.

A woman’s error out of a woman’s love, oh! it was not unpardonable, least of all in the eyes of a woman with a young and loving heart.

It was far into the night before Helen laid her wearied frame down upon Lotte’s humble couch. The tender and compassionate girl made a pretence of arranging her little domestic matters, so that she did not retire with her, but busied herself about the room, until she perceived that, utterly worn out and exhausted, Helen had fallen into a slumber.

Then she knelt down by the modest bedside, and, in humble intercession, prayed long and earnestly for her.

Then, with calmer heart and quieter mind, she sate herself at the foot of the bed, and watched in silence the sad face of the pale and haggard sleeper.

CHAPTER V.—THE GOLD AND THE ALLOY.

Keep your eye on him,

The man avoids me—knows that I now know him

Watch him!—as you would watch the wild boar when

He make against you in the hunter’s gap—

Like him he must be speared.

He stands

Between me and a brave inheritance.

I may depend on you?

’Twere too late

To doubt it.

Let no foolish pity shake

Your bosom!

Byron.

The flight of Helen Grahame from her home was not followed by a convulsion of the household. Its internal economy proceeded with the same regularity as before. Mrs. Grahame, minus her grand and beautiful eldest daughter—the pride of her family—would, it was only natural to expect, have been overwhelmed by agony, distress, apprehension and unutterable woe at her mysterious bereavement. Love of offspring is the prominent element of maternity. A she-bear is a most loving mother, though its nature is none of the tenderest. Mrs. Grahame might reasonably be credited with much mental suffering, in consequence of the flight of her child, considering too how elegant, how accomplished, how handsome that child was.

To say that she remained unaffected by any of the emotions commonly produced by such an event, would be, perhaps, advancing too much; to say that she displayed none of them—no, not one, is only truth.

Whatever might have been stirred up in the inner recesses of a nature whose depths no mortal, save herself, had plumbed, remained concealed. She permitted no line of anxious care to invade the regularity of her smooth brow, nor did she allow her coldly placid bearing, or the existing arrangements governing her daily movements, to undergo any change.

Miss Grahame had left her home. Whither she had gone, wherefore, or in what manner, she considered, from her point of view, to be that young lady’s business alone. She was herself the last person in the world to offer explanations to any one upon domestic occurrences. As well might such a surrender of dignity be expected from imperial majesty. To the inquiries of friends, it would be enough to say that Miss Grahame was absent, and that was the only decided step she determined upon taking in the really terrible event. She would, it is true, have gladly plied her servants with the waters of Lethe, so that the past, which in any way took in Miss Grahame, might be forgotten by them; but she made no allusion to her; and, discharging, at a moment’s notice, Chayter, Helen’s maid, sternly forbade her own attendant, or any other member of the household, to repeat her daughter’s name in her presence.

Margaret Grahame wasted not her powers of imagination in endeavouring to divine why her sister Helen had fled. She rather looked upon the circumstance as one that had rid her of a formidable rival, and she fixed her sluggish, single thought yet more steadfastly upon the young Duke of St. Allborne.

Malcolm, exclusively under the control of his mother, when he heard from her his sister’s flight, at her desire, moved not with a view of tracing the fugitive. He thought her departure “deuced odd,” and wondered what it could all mean; but, beyond an undefined feeling of surprise, mingled with a vague anxiety, he was not more affected than if some attendant pertaining to the household from childhood had mysteriously disappeared.

He had been, from early boyhood, at public schools, and had met his sister only in the vacations, at which periods their intercourse, under the forms of domestic etiquette laid down by Mrs. Grahame for the observance of her children, was not more affectionate in its nature than if they had been ceremonious acquaintances.

It is the common and natural tendency of public education—that is the system which removes a child from home influences—to detach or diminish filial and fraternal love. The young heart, always seeking for something to love, fastens upon objects with which it comes in daily contact. Love of kindred is weakened in the personal attachments formed at school; and as, during the progress to man or womanhood, the opportunities for correcting this evil are rather lessened by the extra studies imposed, the youth of both sexes usually terminate the educational career with a strong impression that parents are exacting; on the boy’s side, the pater having a predominant passion for stinginess; and, on the girl’s, that “ma” has a great many ridiculous notions, and is only another form of the odious grim feminine tyrant, from whose rigorous despotism she has been just emancipated.

Perhaps, therefore, it is not so surprising that Malcolm Grahame went out to dine with some friends in the Guards on the day of his sister’s flight, his equanimity being not much more disturbed than usual.

Evangeline was the only one who appeared to feel acutely, and to see the affair in its true light, but then she was considered to be of weak intellect. It was a common thing for her to violate all “the proprieties.” Her gentle, loving nature, her soft, womanly sympathies, impelled her to do this, and her “puling absurdities,” as her mamma styled the sweet evidences of her affectionate disposition, were allowed to exhibit themselves only on sufferance. On this occasion, however, she displayed such frantic, inconsolable grief, that she was dismissed harshly to her own room, and was ordered to remain there until she could quit it with a face serene and passionless, upon which remained no traces of the suffering her sister’s flight had occasioned her.

Mr. Grahame had not been communicated with. His lady’s first impulse was to telegraph to him to return instantly to London; upon second thoughts, she decided to await his return.

With him she acted as with others—she simply expressed her will when she adopted a course of action. It did not cross her that Mr. Grahame might object to her mode of proceeding in respect to Helen’s disappearance, but if it had, it would not have influenced her. It was enough that she considered the course she had pursued the proper one.

Mr. Grahame stayed away from London longer than was expected. Freed from embarrassments, he played the lord in his haughtiest and worst aspect. His harshness and his despotic tyranny had obtained for him an outward show of slavish deference, with a fierce under-current of mortal hatred. This bowing down and worshipping had re-inflated him, and he returned to his London mansion, swelled in feeling to the dimensions of a mighty noble.

It was not until he presided at the dinner table that he noticed the absence of his daughter Helen. It immediately occurred to him that she was still too ill to leave her chamber. Nature asserting her right to be heard, even in the icy dominion of pride’s stronghold, touched his heart. He felt the twinge, and immediately-asked Mrs. Grahame respecting her.

The servants waiting at table glanced at each other’s eyes; Margaret and Malcolm sat coldly immovable; Evangeline’s gentle bosom heaved and fell; she clasped her hands tightly together and looked down, striving to restrain the hot tears which sprang up to her trembling lids. Mrs. Grahame displayed not the slightest perceptible emotion, but replied to her husband’s question by saying in a tone which he knew was intended to preclude further inquiry at that time—

“Miss Grahame is from home.”

Mr. Grahame bent his head in acknowledgment, and removed the conversation to the scene of his recent visit. He enlarged upon the improved aspect of his estates, and upon the additions he intended to make—what accession of territory, and what increase of tenantry he had acquired, and was about to acquire. He described the torchlight procession to welcome his arrival, and the vast assemblage gathered to bid him farewell—nine-tenths of whom would have rejoiced at his downfall with savage joy.

All the while he spoke, there was ringing in his brain the words—“Miss Grahame is from home.” As he described the stately reception he gave his tenants in the hall of his Scotch castle, feeling second to no monarch in Europe, the words, “Miss Grahame is from home,” danced before his eyes. Not one passage in his description, illustrative of his own elevated position came gradually from his lips, but he heard those words as if every one was a note in a death-peal.

“Miss Grahame is from home.” he thought, as he took wine with his wife.

Where? under what circumstances? Why should no place, no name be mentioned? He dared not ask; he felt he durst not. He glanced furtively at all the faces at table; from Evangeline’s only could he gather aught to satisfy him that there was something unusual and unsatisfactory in the disappearance of Helen. He said to her abruptly, but not austerely—

“A little wine, Evangeline. You do not look well, child.”

She turned her large, clear eyes, glittering with tears upon him; he saw her small upper lip quiver, and he perceived that her heart was too full for her to articulate a word, as she returned his salutation.

“There is something wrong!—something horrible has happened!” he muttered to himself, and he became almost silent during the remainder of the dinner.

When the cloth was cleared, the dessert spread upon the table, and the servants had retired, he asked in a seemingly careless tone—

“How long has Helen been away? With whom is she staying?”

Mrs. Grahame’s brow slightly contracted. She produced a small, beautifully finished pocket-book, and opening it, took from it her daughter’s letter, which she handed to her husband.

“Miss Grahame’s room was one morning found by her nurse untenanted,” she said; coldly; “that letter was discovered upon her toilette; such explanation as it affords you have equally with myself; I know no more.”

Mr. Grahame’s eyes raced down the trembling characters penned by his wretched child; and when he came to the conclusion; he looked up to his wife in bewildered astonishment.

“What does all this mean?” he cried; almost fiercely Mrs. Grahame shrugged her shoulders; a low sob burst from Evangeline’s lips.

“Mistress Grahame,” he exclaimed; with a strong Scottish accent; an evidence of unusual feeling; “am I to understand that you are unable to offer any further explanation than this miserable epistle affords?”

“You are, Mr. Grahame,” replied his wife; with cold sullenness.

“Did you make no effort to trace her?” he asked.

“None.”

“Have you no clue to the place of her flight?”

“None.”

“You have taken no steps in the matter whatever?”

“None.”

“Very extraordinary conduct; Mistress Grahame;” he cried; with a brow of crimson—“a very unsatisfactory delay; madam.”

She glanced at him with her dull gray eyes.

“You are the head of the house; Grahame,” she replied. “You, as such, will take the steps you deem expedient. For myself, I, as a representative of a line whose annals are unstained, will never permit a degenerate child to continue to move in the same circle, or breathe the same air as myself. She has forgotten her position, her dignity, her blood. She has forfeited her claim to her name; and, therefore, with her own hand, has sundered the ties of affinity. In my eyes she is dead.”

Again a low cry of acute grief burst from Evangeline.

“Dead?”—repeated Mrs. Grahame, only a little more emphatically for the interruption—“sunk into the depths of a grave from which there is no earthly redemption. Mr. Grahame, your and my daughter, Margaret Claverhouse, is now the eldest female representative of our name in your family, and from this moment it will be so understood. Margaret we will retire.”

She rose as she spoke, motioning to Margaret to follow her example.

As she did so, Evangeline flung herself wildly at her feet.

“Have mercy, madam!” she cried. “Helen is still your child. She is my sister—my dear sister. Oh, in mercy, do not discard her! She is our own flesh and blood. You are her mother. Oh, in the face of God, do not forget that though she may have erred—she is but human. Christ forgave, and came to save the erring. Mother, have mercy, as you hope for it at the day of eternal judgment!”

Mrs. Grahame drew her dress angrily from the clutch of Evangeline. She stepped back as the face of her half-swooning girl bowed itself upon her feet, and she said sternly—

“Malcolm, raise this raving girl from her self-degradation. Unworthy of her name, she pleads for one who has disgraced herself—and in vain; Evangeline, retire to your room, and there remain until you can meet me in a manner becoming your position as a Grahame.”

She turned to Mr. Grahame, and added haughtily, but emphatically—

“My path, you perceive, Mr. Grahame, has been selected. I shall pursue it without swerving from it. I suggest this to you, that you may be able to understand what I deem the proper course for you to adopt.”

She swept haughtily out of the room, closely followed by her daughter Margaret.

Malcolm lifted his sister Evangeline up; he whispered to her not to make herself a little fool about a thing that could not be helped; and was so far animated by the common promptings of humanity, as to accompany’ her to her chamber, seeing that she had hardly strength to get there alone. Mr. Grahame, in the meanwhile, with contracted brow and in thoughtful abstraction, made his way to his library.

He entered it slowly and moodily. The lamp which his servant had lighted had been turned down; the whole of the further parts of the room were in deep shadow.

“She has disgraced the name of Grahame,” he muttered between his set teeth; “but how?—how? It is a black mystery; still she has gone—fled! She must be discarded—disowned! How could we receive her again? has she not disgraced the name of Grahame?”

And he looked around him loftily and proudly.

He uttered a cry of horror.

Up on the shadowed cornice he saw written, in letters of lambent flame, the frightful word—forgery!

He covered his eyes with his hands; and still, in fiery characters—leaping, coruscating, glittering—he saw the word—forgery!

He dared not look into either of the murky corners of the apartment, for in one he expected to see sitting, grinning and gibbering at him like a fiend, his arch accomplice, Chewkle.

Disgraced the name of Grahame! What, then, had he done? In what immaculate position did he stand, that he should close his door upon his child—discard, disown her, upon a mere suspicion of error? He slunk into a chair. He felt how hollow was his pride, how contemptible himself. With an impatient and trembling hand he turned up the lamp, until the room was one glare of light.

He rang his bell violently.

The summons was answered by Whelks.

“Tell me,” said Mr. Grahame, resuming his cold, austere manner, “has any person been here desiring to see me privately during my absence?”

He alluded to Chewkle. He fully expected to be told that he had called three or four times; he was, therefore, surprised to hear ‘Whelks answer him negatively.

“Are you sure?” he said, pointedly.

“I am sure no person ’ave been of that deskripshun, sir,” the man replied. “Oh! stay; there was one—yes, there was one, sir.”

“Who was that?” inquired Mr. Grahame, sharply.

“It was the small, little dwarf, who ’ave ’ad the janders offul, sir—Mr. Gummy, sir,” responded Whelks.

“Mr. Gomer,” corrected Mr. Grahame, thoughtfully. Presently he said—

“Did that individual—that person named Chewkle not call in my absence?”

“No, sir,” returned Whelks, who had traced, to the best of his belief, his missing sovring to him. “But Mr. Gummy asked me if he had called lately, which I told him no; and he asked me if I know where I could find him, which I tell him I ’ave not a idee.”

Mr. Whelks would have availed himself of it rather promptly if he had.

This absence of Chewkle in connection with the loss of the document with Wilton’s forged signature, was both mysterious and disturbingly perplexing. The painful doubts it gave birth to in his mind were not relieved by the information that Nathan Gomer had been making inquiries respecting him. He saw, however, that it would not do for him to appear to seek Chewkle; he was likely to prove sufficiently a locust without his taking such a step. He, therefore, determined to await his appearance. Seeming to dismiss the subject from his mind, he turned over a few letters which lay upon his table, and said in a deliberate, but apparently apathetic tone——

“Send Miss Grahame’s maid to me.”

“A—a—Miss Grahame’s, sir,” said Whelks, with an air of embarrassment, “A—a—Stalker, sir?”

“No,” returned Mr. Grahame, with a frown “Miss Grahame’s maid, Chayter—that is her name, I think.”

“Oh—oh, yaas—yaas, sir. She ’ave gone sir.”

“Discharged?”

“A—yaas, sir, yaas.”

“Do you know where she is to be found?”

“I think I ’ave a impression it is—at least her hadver-tisement come out at——”

“Find her and bring her to me instantly—quietly, you understand.”

Whelks bowed and retired; he guessed his master’s object, and very quickly unkennelled Chayter, who likewise suspected the reason why Mr. Grahame sent for her, and prepared herself accordingly.

Within a short time from receiving his instructions,

Whelks introduced Chayter into the library, and stationed himself outside the door, with his ear to the keyhole, to put himself in possession of what transpired at the interview, but a current of air so sharp and so steady poured through the small opening into his ear, that he was compelled to retire, to avoid another onslaught of his ear-ache.

Chayter’s quick eye detected, as soon as she was alone with Mr. Grahame, a little pile of sovereigns, some eight or ten, upon the table. Mr. Grahame pointed to them.

“They shall be yours,” he said, “if you afford me any satisfactory information respecting the disappearance of Miss Grahame.”

“I can only tell you what I know sir,” replied the girl, regarding the sovereigns with a wishful eye.

“And what you may have reason to assume,” he added.

He then put a variety of questions to her, some of which she answered truthfully, and others by mere invention. It was not much that he ascertained, yet enough to know that Helen was in the habit of meeting some person at night in the garden; that whoever he was, he frequently addressed letters to her, and was no doubt the person who, being discovered suddenly by the Honorable Lester Vane, had felled that gentleman to the earth.

Mr. Grahame racked his brain to no purpose to fix upon some one likely to be the man who had so singularly beguiled his daughter from her high place, and at length he handed the money to Chayter, and bade her, if she could obtain any further information upon the strange subject, to communicate it to him, and she should be liberally rewarded.

“I’ll find her out,” said Chayter, when she left. “It will be worth my while. She’ll be clever if she keeps herself hidden from me!”

Chayter was premature in her conclusions.

Mr. Grahame sat alone to reflect upon his situation. A cloud had once more risen upon his fair sky, and threatened a storm. The flight, and possible mésalliance of his daughter Helen would certainly become known, and prove humbling to the pride of his house. The arrangements between himself and Wilton had yet to be completed. He had received large sums of money, for which he had given acknowledgments, and should anything arise to destroy the present understanding, his position would be frightful. Utter ruin and beggary must at one blow ensue.

But there was no reason to presume that the proposition made by Nathan Gomer, and acceded to by Wilton, would not be completed: there was a possibility of his son Malcolm marrying Flora Wilton. Still there was the possible contingency of something arising to prevent either being accomplished. Ah! if old Wilton had but perished in the fire which had consumed his house, or had died in prison, the whole of the wealth in dispute would have come to him, Grahame.

If the old man were to die now—before the arrangement was completed the same result would take place, for the existence of Mark Wilton was a problem, so far as Grahame’s knowledge of him went.

If he were to die now!

Safety, wealth, and a future secure from the fears that now tortured him, would be the consequence to him.

If he were to die now!

Grahame’s heart throbbed, and he felt cold as ice. He threw his eyes stealthily round the library. He was alone!

The man was old. How small a thing might rob him of life; a common accident—a potion administered in mistake—a subtle poison in fruit.

Mr. Grahame rose from his chair. Could he have seen the aspect of his own features at this moment in the glass, he would have almost screamed with horror. He tottered rather than walked to a book-case, and ran his eye down the back of his books; presently he clutched at one, drew it out, and moved back with it to the immediate vicinity of the lamp.

The book was labelled On Poisons.

With a hand which shook as if it was smitten with the palsy, he turned over a few of the leaves, and began reading with some avidity, an article on “Strychnos Tieuté, &c.”

Deeply interested in the revelations, he became unconscious of all else, until the pressure of a heavy hand upon his shoulder caused him to start with fright, and to spring back several feet.

Just where he had been standing, he beheld a grim, dirty-looking man, whose clothes where shabby, greasy, and dusty; whose face was pale, and whose eyes were red; whose matted hair was straggling over his forehead, and whose thick, stubbly beard, rendered his grimy visage yet more foul in its aspect.

Mr. Grahame stretched his hand towards the bell.

A sudden motion on the part of the stranger arrested his attention, and then he saw, for the first time, that his visitor was no other than Mr. Chewkle.

He gazed upon him with an emotion which partook of offended pride, uneasy wonder, and a lurking, darkly foreboding fear.

Mr. Chewkle now present was not, at least in appearance, the Mr. Chewkle first introduced to our readers. Then he was the decently-clad commission agent; now he was the dirty ruffian. The change was so remarkable as to extort an immediate remark from Mr. Grahame, who, with knitted brows, demanded of him how he came to visit him in such filthy guise.

“Never mind about that,” returned Mr. Chewkle, evincing by the tone of his voice, his intention to dispense with ceremony and with deferential respect. “I ain’t come here on a holiday visit, I can tell you. I came about that forger——”

“Hush—hush, man! are you mad that you speak so loud?” interrupted Mr. Grahame excitedly.

“Almost mad, and no mistake,” cried Mr. Chewkle, drawing the dirty cuff of his coat across his parched and blackened lips. “I’ve been hunted like a dog by the hofiicers, but I ain’t been run down yet, and I shan’t be, if you does the thing that’s rights and you must, or by——”

“No threats, man,” again interposed Mr. Grahame, attempting to assume a firm and haughty manner. “Tell me how it is you appear before me in this disreputable condition, and for what you wish, in thus forcing upon me an interview at so unseasonable an hour?”

Chewkle glared at him with red tiger-like eyes. He perused the features of Mr. Grahame, as though to read in their expression the line of conduct he intended to adopt with him.

“Lookee here,” he said, his beetling brows descending low enough to hide the upper lids of his glittering eyes; “there can’t be no mistake between us. That dockyment——”

“What document?”

“Oh! forgotten it so soon? That dockyment, bearing old Wilton’s name, which you forged in my presence; that dockyment which you think to be lost, but which isn’t, because I knows where it is, and can have it brought forard at a minute’s notice; that dockyment which you would swear, I dessay, that you’d never seen before, only you forget that you made a davy, when it went to be registered, that the signature was genuine, and was done in your presence—and in mine; that dockyment which, a few years ago, would a’ hanged you at Newgate, and which now, if I likes—mind, if I likes—will drag you before a judge and jury, and turn you, mighty proud as you are, into a con-vick——”

“Silence, wretch! silence, or I’ll strangle you!” cried Mr. Grahame, springing upon him in a paroxysm of rage and fright—Chewkle’s volubility, urged by his irritation, having resisted all extravagant signs and motions to check it.

He struck down Mr. Grahame’s vulture-like hands, and said—

“No, you don’t; and, mark me; take my advice, and be quiet, or I’ll make your own ’ouse too ’ot to ’old you!”

“What do you want with me?” growled Mr. Grahame, in anxious fear.

Seeing that it would be useless to expostulate with, or threaten, such a determined ruffian, he formed a hasty resolve to give him the money, or some portion off it, that he expected he would require, and get rid of him.

“I wants this of you—money?”

“I expected as much.”

“Ah! but not without earning it. I’ve got something to tell as will startle you. Listen, and see whether it won’t be worth while to open your purse to me, Old Wilton wants one link of evidence to make him master of all that property you have been trying to get—don’t he?”

“He does.” replied Mr. Grahame, with a half-presentiment of what was to follow.

“Well, that link I’ve found.”

“You?”

“I! I know where to clap my hand on it, and bring it to light; or—if liberally renoomerated—to keep it dark.”

“Is this truth?” cried Mr. Grahame, petrified.

Mr. Chewkle immediately took a terrific oath to confirm its assertion.

“The link’s a man,” he added; “and his name is Josh Maybee, eh?”

“The same—the same—where is he?”

“Ah; that’s jest what I shall keep for the present to myself. I don’t mind telling you that he does not know his own vally; and that I does; and I means to make a trifle by him; either out of you or Mr. Wilton; for if you don’t think it worth while to pay to keep the man dark; Mr. Wilton will; I daresay; think very little of a hundred or two to have him turn up.”

“Your intelligence is, indeed; important,” murmured Grahame with colourless features; “you swear that he is living; and can easily be produced?”

“I do.”

“I confess, if you are able to keep him out of the way, you are entitled to a handsome sum from me.”

“I thought you’d hear reason.”

“A-hem—when—when you say that you—that you will keep the man dark—those were yonr words, I think?”

Chewkle nodded.

“I feel I don’t precisely understand yonr meaning. Am I to be assured that you will—will so arrange matters that—this man—this Maybee—can never appear again, either to disturb my peace, or—or to substantiate Wilton’s claim to the estate?”

Mr. Grahame looked into Chewkle’s eyes with a strange meaning; Chewkle read the expression correctly instantly, and he instinctively shuddered and looked over his shoulder.

Then he whispered—

“Murder is it?”

Mr. Grahame threw his eyes slowly round the library, and then fastened them again on Chewkle’s inflamed orbs—

“It would be the source of unceasing torture to me to know the evidence of which you speak to be living, and that at any moment it might be forthcoming.”

“That’s true,” muttered Chewkle.

“It would be to my interest to pay handsomely—very handsomely, if I knew the evidence was”——

“Destroyed!”

“Exactly, Chewkle, my good fellow.”

“I wants money.”

“Pressingly?”

“Werry, werry pressingly.”

“How much at this moment?”

“Well, my position is jes’ this; I was a’pointed secretary and treasurer to a benefit society, and a little while ago they wanted money in a hurry, and I couldn’t let ’em ’ave it.”

“Embezzled their funds, I presume.”

“No, you speaks plain but not correctly. I had borrowed ’em, and it was inconvenient to return ’em jest when they wanted ’em. They was rash, and wouldn’t listen to explanations, and set the police on me. I have been hiding and seeking, and starving ever since. But I can square it by paying the sum they lent me.”

“Or you lent yourself. What is its amount?”

“Just forty pun’—that’s all.”

“You want that sum now?”

“Or Josh Maybee must turn up to-morrow, in Wilton’s favour; the bobbies are too close upon my heels to waste any time in parleying about it.”

Mr. Grahame drew forth his pocket-book, and from it selected a fifty pound note. He opened it to the greedy eyes of Chewkle, but he retained it while he spoke.

“I will give you this note now,” he said, slowly, and in a marked manner, “to relieve you from your present difficulties. But I will give you twice ten times that amount when I know that the evidence we have spoken of cannot at any time—mind! at any time—be produced.”

“Give me the note,” said Chewkle. “You shall be made easy in a few days, and I shall be as—as jolly as a sandboy again.”

Mr. Grahame gave him the note. He took it, and, after carefully reading it, put it away into his pocket.

“Twenty o’ them will be worth fingering,” he said, with a grin, and added abruptly, “and, perhaps, if old Wilton was to die very suddenly, it might be something in my pocket.”

A sickly smile passed over Mr. Grahame’s face.

“There is no telling what happens to old men,” he replied. “I have no desire to harm the old fellow, but I would give a magnificent douceur to the man who brought me tidings that he had been gathered to his ancestors.” Then he added quickly—“Haste away, I expect some of my family here—cannot you contrive to slip out unobserved?”

“Rather,” responded Chewkle, with a knowing look, “I came in by the garding, and up the hanging staircase. Luckily, the winder was half open, though the blind was down; I shall go back the same way.”

Mr. Grahame now understood the secret of his sudden and noiseless appearance. He was not sorry to know that the man could retire from the house without being seen, but he resolved that a like opportunity to enter at unbidden moments should not be afforded him.

He watched him descend into the garden, listened to his stealthy tread upon the smooth gravel path, and remained motionless until his intent ear could detect no other sound than the rustle of leaves, stirred by the soft breath of a gentle night breeze.

Then he returned to his table.

He took up the work “On Poisons.” He had hastily thrown it from him when startled by the unexpected appearance of Chewkle.

He gazed with a self-possessed aspect at the book, opened it, closed it with a smart clap, and then, walking with a firm step to his bookcase, he replaced it.

“I shall not now need its aid,” he muttered.

Then he sat himself by his library table. After musing a moment or two, he jerked his head once or twice, and ejaculated—

“What a scoundrel that fellow Chewkle is!”

Then he calmly applied himself to the perusal of some letters.

CHAPTER VI.—THE COVETED HEART BESTOWED.

She saw it waxing very pale and dead,

And straight all flush’d; so lisped tenderly,

“Lorenzo!”—here she ceased her timid quest,

But in her tone and look he read the rest.

Oh, Isabella! I can half perceive

That I might speak my grief into thine ear;

If thou did’st ever anything believe.

Believe how I love thee—believe how near

My soul is to its doom: I would not grieve

Thy hand by unwelcome pressing, would not fear

Thine eyes by gazing; but I cannot live

Another night, and not my passion shrive.

Keats.

As soon as Wilton’s lawyers had executed and completed all the preliminaries necessary to reinstate him in the possession of that property from which some years back he had been so unceremoniously expelled, and had transferred the accumulated arrears from the Court of Chancery to his bankers the old man set out with Flora suddenly and alone once more to tread those halls—where before he had reigned supreme—as lord and master.

Wilton had a motive in proceeding to his long lost home thus privately. His heart was susceptible of emotion. A long course of comparative poverty had tended greatly to weaken his nervous system, and when last he left the spot he was now about to visit, a young trembling wife—whom he had loved passionately and tenderly, and with a devotion which had never changed under the afflicting trials to which he had been subjected—clung weeping to his arm. Long waving grass swayed softly to and fro now above where she lay in her last sleep. He knew that those tearful eyes, which had looked up at the picturesque old building—had dwelt upon the valley and the hill-side—the clustering woods and the distant villages, with lingering, agonized gaze, could never more regard them—never more bend their earnest, beaming, glad looks of recognition upon the places where in early and in happy times they had so loved to rest. He knew he should have a sharp wrestle with his spirit when he placed again his footstep upon the threshold of his recovered mansion, and he wished no eye, save that of Heaven or of his child, to irreverently obtrude upon his sacred emotions.

This will explain why he so suddenly departed from London without communicating to anyone his intention, and why Flora submitted to his request not to mention his purpose, even to one person.

It was night when they reached their destination in a carriage which bore them from the railway station to their new home, and, by the strict injunctions of Mr. Wilton, the housekeeper and one servant only were at the entrance of Harleydale Hall to receive them.

Wilton, with an agitated manner, drew Flora’s arm within his own, and entered the spacious hall. He threw his eyes hurriedly round, and saw at a glance that everything appeared to be much in the same state as when he had quitted it.

The housekeeper an elderly matron, advanced, and, in trembling voice, said—

“Welcome—welcome, sir, home! Welcome to your own! God be praised, you have won your rights!”

“Thank you, thank you, Mrs. Steadfast,” he replied, huskily. “I am glad to see you are still here!”

“Yes, sir, thank Heaven! and, madam, your dear lady, I am so proud——”

“My daughter, my daughter, Mrs. Steadfast—a mere child when last you saw her.”

Flora put aside her veil, that the old servant, who had many a time held her in her arms, should see her face, and the changes that time had made in it.

The housekeeper uttered an exclamation, and muttered—“The very counterpart!” Then she turned to old Wilton, and said—

“But your dear lady, my loved and honoured young mistress, sir; for young she was when last I saw her.”

Wilton removed his hat, and, gazing upwards, said in a low, impressive tone, yet tremulous with intense feeling—

“She is in heaven!”

There was a solemn stillness for an instant.

The housekeeper raised her handkerchief to her eyes, and Flora gently stole her hand into her father’s, and pressed it.

Then the old man, with a burst of anguish, hurried up the staircase, and, parting in broken sentences with his daughter for the night, sought the retirement of the room prepared for him, and there battled with his sorrow alone.

Flora, too, passed a part of the night in tears and prayer—tears for the loss of the gentle being she had loved so affectionately, and prayer for an angel-life with her hereafter in the ever-sunny regions of Paradise. Somehow, the form of Hal Vivian was interwoven with her thoughts and her prayers. She wept as her vision brought him to her eyes—she knew not wherefore; and her cheek hushed and burned as in fancy she saw his quiet, earnest gaze bent upon her face.

The sun was penetrating brightly through the window of her sleeping chamber as she awoke. She pressed her beautiful eyes with the delicate tips of her soft fingers, and then, opening them, gazed around her, surprised and somewhat disappointed to find that she was no longer dreaming. As, with the assistance, of her maid, she attired herself, she gazed out of the window upon the lovely landscape spread before her Upland and woodland, valley and ridge, all clothed in luxuriant verdure, fair as eye ever rested upon, and her dreams were called up by the beautiful scene before her.

A rosy blush mantled on her cheek as she remembered that Hal took part in her dreams, and probably she thought that, as with joy she had wandered with him in flowery meads and shadowy groves in her dream, the reality, if it were to occur here, would not be altogether distasteful to her.

Again her cheek burned, and her gentle bosom heaved, as, in her mental dreams, she saw his full clear eye turned upon her with thoughtful fervour. Strange that she should not ask herself what this emotion meant.

For the first few days she wandered with her father or alone over the more attractive portions of the property. Memory was busy all the while, and she sought to retrace spots and places she had in laughing childhood gambolled over. At the expiration of a week, Colonel Mires made his appearance.

There was a change in the aspect of his features, his skin was of a white sallowness; his eye was brighter, and the edges of the eyelids were red, as if inflamed. His black hair seemed longer and to be straggling, as if the care originally displayed in its arrangement had been abandoned. His voice, too, was hoarser in its tone, and his manner appeared agitated and abrupt.

Wilton did not notice the alteration in him, but Flora observed it, and attributed it to some event that had happened, and had brought him sorrow; so she was more kind in her manner to him, and seemed to evince more interest in his conversation than she had ever before exhibited.

There was no disguise in the joy which he displayed at this, but she saw in it nothing more than gratefulness for her endeavour to wile away moments he would otherwise have spent in sad thoughts. His flushed cheek and his increased excitement were not interpreted as he could have wished—for that he entertained for her the passion of love, was exactly the last thing she would have conceived respecting him.

He sought, by all the experience he was master of, to increase and improve the opportunity afforded him in having the field to himself, of ingratiating himself in her good graces, and of winning her favour. But anxious as he was upon the point, he was afraid to declare himself, for fear of startling her timid nature—all unpractised in the world’s ways—and thus damage the cause he had at heart. A cause which he trusted to conduct to success by obtaining an influence over her, the insidious approaches of which should be so cautiously concealed, that she would be unable to detect them until she discovered herself in trammels from which she would be unable to get free.

It is easy to lay plans for the capture of a woman’s heart. Artless, innocent, gentle, yielding, she may be; but even when those plans, matured by all that practised skill and experience can suggest, are put in operation, it is often found, at the moment of anticipated triumph, that the surrender of the heart depends solely on some condition which was omitted in the calculations upon which the plans were constructed.

Women have strong instincts as well as large intuitive perceptions, not reducible to any known laws of reasoning. They dislike a certain man because they do, and suspect him from no more explainable cause. Now, this man may be well versed in the weaknesses of the fairer sex, and well acquainted with all the points upon which they are most susceptible and accessible, but if he has excited dislike and suspicion, however fair and clear his conduct may have been, he may just as well lay plans to capture the moon, in the expectation of being successful, as to lay siege to the heart of a woman who dislikes or suspects him, in anticipation of winning it.

The advantage Colonel Mires possessed, in being the sole guest of Mr. Wilton, he continued for some little time to enjoy, and he observed with no small gratification, that Flora sat and listened with quiet attention and evident interest to his strange and wild stories of Indian life. Romantic adventures in campaigns, in which he had been engaged, he narrated with graphic power, artfully making himself the hero of the events, without seeming intentionally to do it. Occasionally, and with consummate skill, he would interweave with his relations love stories, mostly to show how a man, like himself, had, daring the stormy period of his life, raised up an ideal beauty to love and worship. How, on the long, weary march, in the quiet night in his tent, pitched upon the cold damp earth, or in the fierce din of warlike strife, he had looked upon that face as a lodestar cheering him on his march, shining upon him in the silent night, and leading him on to glory in the roar of battle. How, in after times, the reality had presented itself to his longing eyes, and how he had wooed the gentle creature and brought her to love him for—

“The dangers he had passed.”

How she, believing his ardent vow, that his whole future life should be devoted to the consummation of her future happiness, had given to him her hand with her heart in it.

Flora listened to such stories with downcast eyes and thoughtful air. It was evident they made an impression upon her. It seemed, even, that she loved to listen to them; it was plain that she did not grow weary of them, for she never displayed inattention or a desire to be away while he was deep in such a narration. But whether she interpreted them as he wished her to do, he was unable to detect.

Yet she was given much to wander alone. She contrived to elude the endeavours made by the Colonel to accompany her. Soon after dawn she would be away in the woods, or in the glen, upon the hill-side, or by the fair brook, that meandered, like a silver thread, through the valley. Or she would slip away when she perceived that her father had engaged his guest in conversation of a character not likely to terminate for some little time.

Many a sequestered spot, shaded by the soft green leaves of graceful trees, she found in her rambles, and, secure from interruption, enjoyed its solitary retirement, and its quiet beauties, but always alone. She shared the pleasure she obtained in visiting these leafy recesses with no one. It may have been that here she was free to think, without the possibility of the emotions playing over her expressive features being seen, and interpreted—without, too, the full play of her thoughts being impeded.

She would sit for hours in dreamy abstraction—sometimes she would weep unbidden tears—weep she could not tell why—would feel depressed, lonely, sad, without, attempting to assign a cause. Often would her cheek flush, and her bosom heave, while deep sighs burst from her breast; and she would look distastefully round her, rise, and with impatient manner, wander to some other spot, only to repeat her emotions and then return home, perhaps to seek her chamber and there relieve her surcharged heart by weeping.

Suffering this strange soul-disturbance, she knew not wherefore.

One day it was announced, to the discomfiture of Colonel Mires, that the Honorable Mr. Lester Vane had arrived, and craved the honour of paying his respects to Mr. Wilton and his daughter. The old man exhibited considerable pleasure at this arrival, and warmly welcomed his new guest. Flora’s reception of him, under the strong injunctions of her father, had rather too much display to please the Colonel, who could not help looking upon Vane with jealous misgivings. He met him with a cold and haughty reserve, which Vane perceived and returned with interest.

At first, Lester Vane declared that he had arrived with the purpose only of paying a flying visit, but he suffered himself to be persuaded by Wilton into making a longer stay, and he very quickly gave Colonel Mires an opportunity of discovering that he was passionately smitten by Flora’s charms, and that he intended to win her, if he could.

Colonel Mires grew deadly sick at heart, as the conviction—without the consolation of one poor doubt—forced itself upon him. The Honorable Lester Vane was a formidable rival. He was many years his junior; he was tall, well-formed, and possessed a handsome face; he was the son of a nobleman, and, some day, would be himself a lord. He could thus not only present a hand some person to the consideration of a young girl who had been for many years placed in a humble sphere, but could offer to her the prospect of becoming a titled lady—an inducement almost always of weight in feminine consideration. The Colonel, therefore, found that he had much, very much, to do to even maintain the ground he fancied he had gained, and very much more to oust a rival who had, as he believed, every advantage in his favour, and superior claims to his own in the struggle for Flora’s hand.

Lester Vane had conceived a passionate attachment for the person of Flora—a burning, feverish attachment, with which pure love had little to do. Her beauty had taken his soul by storm, and absence from her had inflamed his imagination to an intensity he found it impossible to endure. Hence, in spite of certain other designs he had formed, and was determined upon accomplishing, he had felt himself compelled, on finding Wilton had left London, to follow him down to the country.

He detected the position of Colonel Mires in an instant.

“He is a friend of the family,” he said to himself, with a sneer. “He is smitten with Miss Wilton’s beauty, and he expects to cunningly worm himself into her good graces, and so make her his wife. Bah! she would never willingly sacrifice herself to him—no, no! I don’t like the fellow; I don’t like the expression of his eyes. They have a dangerous, snake-like character. N’importe!—I can cope with him, I think; but if I fail by art, it will not be difficult to goad him by insult into a challenge. Fourteen paces and a firm hand will settle the matter between us for ever.”

So Flora, immediately after the advent of Lester Vane, found her society courted, both by him and Colonel Mires, with a solicitude and an earnestness which quickly became embarrassing to her.

Her father passed a great deal of his time alone in his library; his restoration to the society of his books was one of the happiest conditions in his change from poverty to wealth; he hardly knew how enough to indulge in those treasures of art and science thus repossessed, and which had been his passion in former times.

Flora was thus left to the—it might almost be said—importunities of her father’s guests: for though both, as well-bred men, did not exceed the strict rules of good society, yet they took every occasion to make her see and to understand, that their attentions were dictated by something warmer than the impulses of common friendship.

She had one protection in the fact, that the rivalry existing between these lovers made each take every precaution that the other should not have the satisfaction and the advantage of a tête-à-tête with the object of their mutual passion, and this was even extended to her out-door excursions. Lester Vane, at times, watched and followed her, but he had scarcely reached her side, when they were joined by Mires, who would, on no suggestion or hint from Vane, quit the pair until the house was reached, and Flora had retired to her own apartment.

This occurred several times. Flora began to feel distressed and alarmed. Not any direct profession of love had fallen from the lips of either, but it was impossible for her not to comprehend, by the devoted attentions, the fervent language, and the ardent looks addressed to her by each, that these professions would be made, and at no distant period. Thus she began to contract the duration of her stay in the presence of her father’s guests, and to so contrive her rambles that they should take place at periods when she was likely to be secure from interruption.

She grew pale and melancholy, was often abstracted while in the company of those who sought exclusively to occupy her attention; and, without being marked in her increasing desire for seclusion, she presented herself in the drawing-room or dining-room only when she could not well escape the duties of her position.

It was not difficult for either Colonel Mires or Lester Vane to see that Flora looked upon the seemingly accidental rencontres with themselves in their strolls as unfortunate, and that she viewed them with distaste. Colonel Mires even took the trouble to sound her on the subject, and succeeded in eliciting from her that she preferred in her morning walks to be quite alone.

Lester Vane caught at her acknowledgment, and proposed a shooting excursion for the following morning to Colonel Mires, who promptly acceded to the proposition. Flora perceived that this was a delicate attention to her wish, and responded by a grateful look to Vane, who treasured it up to be that night gloated over as a step gained towards the goal he looked forward to reach.

“I see my way better from that glance,” he thought, “than I have yet by any occurrence that has happened. I will rack my brain to lay her under small obligations; those little thankfulnesses gathered together will reach to the magnitude of fondness; and if I but make her fond—if I can only make her fond—the victory is mine.”

That morning early, Lester Vane and Colonel Mires, equipped for the sport, attended by the gamekeeper and their grooms, set out upon their expedition. Flora, seeing her father safe in his library, surrounded by his favourite authors, and bent upon scientific experiments, which were likely to absorb his devoted attention until dinner-time, took a book with her, and sauntered away from the house in an opposite direction to that which she had seen the gentlemen take. She directed her steps towards a sequestered glen, through which the valley stream flowed, chanting its bubbling lay, and where wild flowers were profuse. Young trees, thickly intertwined, shaded the sun from the soft, even, emerald sward, and the silence was only disturbed by the singing of birds, striving to rival the musical murmur of the rippling water as it swept windingly through the secluded place.

Of late she had visited this spot more frequently than any other; for, in her approach to it, she had not been encountered by either the Colonel or Vane, nor did she ever within its precincts see living creatures, save the birds darting from the sunlight into the shadowy trees, or the fish leaping out of the stream in pursuit of their prey.

She was, therefore, not a little disturbed and surprised, on making her way to her accustomed seat, to find it occupied by a gentleman, who, with his head resting upon his hand, was seated, gazing upon the ever-moving stream in an attitude of abstracted contemplation.

She would have retreated, if possible, without attracting the observation of the stranger, but the glitter of her flowing garments had attracted his eyes, and he turned towards her, rising up as he did so.

A faint exclamation burst from her lips as the stranger advanced in her direction with something of a hesitating manner, but she eagerly held out both her hands to greet him; her eyes glittered like diamonds, and a rosy flush suddenly spread itself over neck, face and forehead.

“Mr. Vivian!” she exclaimed, “how strange we should meet here. You have come down to pay us a visit—have you not. Heaven! how pale you look—are you ill?”

It was Hal Vivian, certainly, and with a face pale, anxious, and marked with lines of sorrow.

He took her extended hands; he saw how her face lighted up with pleasure at meeting him; it was an expression scarcely to be misunderstood or observed, by him at least, with apathy; he saw, too, the crimson flush upon her cheek, and perhaps his own became of as deep a hue.

“It is strange that we have met here, Miss Wilton,” he replied, trying to clear his voice, and to speak with a firm tone. “I did not foresee that you would visit this retired spot; indeed, I myself found it out yesterday only, and struck by its quiet beauty, revisited it this morning.”

“You have then been in the neighbourhood some days at least,” said Flora, with surprise, and added, in a reproachful tone, “you have not called to see my father or—or myself. What have we done, Mr. Vivian, to occasion on your part such singular conduct; have we offended you? You surely should know we would not lightly do that.”

“No, no—oh, not offended me,” replied Hal, quickly and earnestly. “No, it is not that.”

“Why should you, Mr. Vivian, if not offended, refrain from paying us a visit—if even one of mere ceremony?” she returned, with a slightly pouting lip.

“Because—because—pardon me, Miss Wilton, if I speak with too much plainness. I would not, for my own happiness, pain or wound you, but I feel some explanation of my recent and future conduct is due to you, at least. In offering this explanation I may be inflicting upon you some disquiet; if I should, I ask in anticipation your pardon, for I may not swerve from the truth in what I shall reveal, and you will judge that, whatever may be its effect, it has not been uttered with any intention to displease you.”

He took Flora by the hand, and led her to the spot where he had been reclining, and begged her to be seated there while he addressed her.

She went unresistingly and complied with his request. Her heart beat violently, her ears burned and tingled, and she could see nothing but the green tremulous grass at her feet.

Yet she heard clearly and distinctly; every tone of his rich, musical voice seemed to vibrate upon her heart, and to bury itself therein, and she felt as if she could sit thus and listen to him for ever.

“Miss Wilton,” he said, “I will be brief, for what I have to say should be so: for your sake and for my own, the sooner it is over the better. Our acquaintance has been spread over some years, but it has been limited in its character. The events of the past few months have thrown us into more intimate relation, and have resulted in creating an influence over me which time can never efface. I have come to know this—to know, Miss Wilton, that your gentle nature, no less than your other perfections, have absorbed all of passion, of love, I may ever hope to have: and this at a time when it is forced upon me that your position and birth are far removed above mine. That any hopes I might entertain, or wishes I might form, would be unjust to you, I feel; and that they are improbable of realization I cannot deny to myself. I have probed my heart, my soul, and find that change in my feelings towards you can never come. I could not, therefore, continue to visit you—to have you ever in my eyes, and know that you could never, never be mine. I could not see you often, and look upon your heavenly face, listen to the music of your words, grow faint beneath the soft gaze of your quiet, tender eyes, and content myself with that bliss without seeking to raise in your heart the same love that burned in mine. I tried to induce myself to do this. I tried to believe that I could remain near you, watch over you as a guardian spirit, and be happy in the thought that I could shield you from danger or from sorrow, that I could see calmly another wear the gem I would give almost existence to possess. But, oh! Flora, I am but human, miserably, weakly human. My love is selfish, at least in this. I cannot look upon you in the possession of another. So I have come to the determination to leave this country for ever, and, in some distant land, struggle with my hopeless passion as best I may.”

He paused for a moment, and his lip quivered with the strong emotion which convulsed his frame. He pressed his trembling lip with his teeth, and then went on—

“I had intended to have spared myself the pang of parting with you—for—ever—but it was not to be. I came down here to gaze my last upon the roof that sheltered you; to obtain, if possible, one last look upon your dear form; to breathe a prayer for your eternal happiness——”

“I cannot bear it!” cried Flora, springing to her feet. She burst into a passion of tears, and flung herself upon his neck. “You must not go, Hal!” she cried with intense excitement, “you must not, shall not leave me; I should break my heart! I should die if you were parted from me!”

He pressed her with passionate ardour to his breast His heart wras too full to utter a word.

Nothing disturbed the stillness of the quiet air but the gentle warbling of a lonely bird, the plaintive chant of the running stream, and Flora’s low sobbing.

CHAPTER VII.—MARK WILTON.

Think not I love him, though I ask for him;

’Tis but a peevish boy;—yet he talks well:—

But what care I for words? yet words do well,

When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.

It is a pretty youth;—not very pretty:—

But, sure, he’s proud; and yet his pride becomes him.

Shakspere.

When Helen Grahame opened her eyes, after a somewhat protracted sleep, she looked around her for a minute in unutterable surprise. The morning previously, she had awakened in an agony of sorrow, it is true, but to look upon all the luxurious refinements and comforts which are to be met with in the sleeping chambers of the wealthy alone. Now she beheld herself in a small sitting-room; the bed appointments being evidently supplemental, and not fitly pertaining to the room. Clean they were, but vastly inferior in material and pattern to what she had been accustomed.

A fire was burning clearly in the small grate, and a kettle, steaming and singing cheerfully, stood upon the hob. Upon a table, at the foot of the bed, was spread the breakfast appurtenances; and at the window sat a young girl plying her needle with a rapidity and skill something magical in its character.

A moment more, and Helen Grahame realised her position.

She remembered her terrible conversation with Mrs. Truebody, her nurse, the latter’s charge, and her own fearful conviction of its truth. She remembered the sleepless horrors of that dreadful night; the simulated sleep at dawn, the absence of the nurse, the hasty dressing, the scribbled note, the slinking glide down the servants’ staircase, the swift dash into the garden, and the rapid exit—as it happened, unseen—by the private entrance.

She had a confused recollection of streets crowded with throngs of people, of the roar of carriages, the bewildering turmoil of active daily business life, and then faint and weak, of a long, long, dreamy rest upon a seat in an open park, of wild schemes for the future floating through her brain, without the power to reduce them to practicability, of a sinking foreboding sense of helplessness, a startling perception that she must starve and die.

And she shivered, and her teeth chattered as she remembered the grim water—remembered how, like a magnet, it drew her towards it; how it wooed her with a low dirge, the burden of which was that Hugh was there; how it offered her eternal repose, and stilled its surface so that calmness and peace seemed alone to be found within its placid bosom.

Then she remembered the small voice that rose up and made a claim on life; the agonized struggle that followed; the sudden interposition of a stranger; the deep voice of Lester Vane, being saved from his loathly arms; and on, on, incident by incident, until her eyes and thoughts rested upon the face of the young fair girl who sat at the window, her eyes bent fixedly upon her work, and her hand swiftly and unceasingly moving to and fro.

Then she remembered that she had made her her confidante; that she was now the only friend she had in the wide, wide world; and that, but for her, she would have been at this moment face to face with an offended Creator; that, but for her, she must now even become a wretched outcast.

She began to see that pride was a hollow phantom, powerless to serve at need; that selfishness slaughtered sympathy, and repelled friendship; that true worth and pure human philanthropy were to be found in the humble; that human creatures were human clay alike; and the distinctions of the world proved their shadowy nature by melting away at the first touch of adversity.

She saw that the young girl who had saved her was what the world calls humble; she involuntarily placed her hands before her eyes, and felt how humble she herself was by comparison in the eyes of God.

Presently she felt soft fingers gently drawing her hands from her eyes, and she heard a sweet, low voice.

It said—

“Do not weep, pray, do not, It will make you ill, and me so wretched. Tears are foes when they deter us from doing our duty to ourselves. Will you not rise and dress. We will talk of the future over breakfast. Do you know, miss, I have secured you the dearest little room, next to this, where nobody can intrude upon you, and where I will strive to make you as cheerful and as happy as I can, if you should feel depressed and lonely, as at times I daresay you will—but you know that you have had too much indulgence in grief just now, and so you must dry your eyes and exert yourself. Come, come, you will try to oblige me—will you not?”

Helen caught her hands in her own with a sudden clutch, and pressed them to her burning lips. Then she flung back her dark tresses from her face of marble hue, over which, escaped from their bands, they had straggled.

“I will exert myself,” she said; “I will face my trial; I will be firm, and meet the worst, as becomes a——No—no—no!—not that name; I must breathe that name no more.”

Once again she pressed her hands convulsively over her eyes, but she removed them quickly.

“Bear with me,” she said; “I will not distress you again by giving way to my sorrow; but, with patience and fortitude, I will look back on the past, and await the future.”

Lotte replied in hopeful language, and assisted her to dress. She saw, with an astonishment she could scarcely conceal, how much help her guest required, and how natural it seemed for her to expect it to be afforded her. Helen, on the other hand, could not avoid noticing how unused Lotte was to her task, and said, with a faint smile—

“I must learn to dress myself. It will serve to pave the way for the many changes I shall have to encounter. I shall, no doubt, be troublesome to you at first; but I trust, by persevering efforts, to acquire that selfreliance I now understand to be so essential to my new condition in life.”

And she kept her word, At first she looked upon every feature of her altered position with wonder; the novelty of the circumstances by which she was surrounded helped in some degree to alleviate her anguish, and served to teach her a lesson of life she could scarcely have obtained through any other medium. Everything about her was different to what she had been accustomed. Life itself seemed to be squeezed into such narrow limits. The rooms, the sparse furniture, the appointments at meals, even the meals themselves, with no one to wait at table to hand anything, all seemed small and poverty-stricken, and she kept wondering why the apartments should be so cramped, and why the comforts and the luxuries she had possessed at home were not here.

She even hinted so much to Lotte, who explained to her that the distinction was occasioned by the difference of income. Poor Lotte! she had flattered herself that her little room was a small terrestrial paradise. However, she did not spare herself, but went so much into her own circumstances as to show that, by incessant labour, she realised an income which, when fairly, justly, and economically apportioned, enabled her to accomplish—no more than Helen saw around her.

Helen heard the amount of her weekly earnings with an air of incredulity.

“Can it be possible, that you toil so long and so wearily for a sum so small?” she asked.

“Ah, but I am rather fortunate,” said Lotte, with a cheerful smile, and added with a grave and thoughtful face—“Oh, Miss Grahame, many, many hundred girls and women, some with families, work harder and longer hours than I do, for less than half that sum.”

“And I have, in a moment, squandered thrice that amount on the veriest trifles, upon which I have not looked a second time,” said Helen, with a deep sigh.

Lotte changed the conversation, and perceiving as well as conceiving how much Helen would feel the change from her splendid home to these humble apartments, did all in her power, by cheerfulness of manner and by paying her every attention, to lighten her care and to make her moments pass at least peacefully.

She had to work later at night and to submit to some small privations, of which Helen knew nothing, to accomplish her generous kindness; but she felt rewarded in seeing that Helen was softened by her considerate and thoughtful conduct, in noting too that the dull, settled cloud upon her brow was gradually passing away.

Helen’s nature was of that mixed kind found mostly in women of her class, because its faults are mainly those created by position and false teachers. She was gifted with all the tenderness pertaining to a gentle, loving creature, but she possessed also an indomitable haughtiness which had been fostered and cultivated by her proud mother. Her self-will had been permitted to have its course until it grew into a tyranny, because her weak, proud parent believed it to be a symbol of high breeding. She ruled all beneath her with a lofty domination, taught by those who alone claimed control over her actions that such a line of conduct became the eldest daughter of an ancient house. All the soft and endearing qualities which she possessed were pressed back and allowed few opportunities of appearing; they did now and then peep forth, like a gleam of sunshine from a sky overspread with a cold austere pall, but it was only when nature rebelled, and would make a sign to show that they had not been slain outright by harsh conventional forms.

Helen was at once high-minded, impassioned, and ambitious, but having given her self-will entire control she suffered impulses to govern her. Hence the whole of the circumstances which had transpired between her and Hugh Riversdale. She saw him and was struck with his handsome face and noble bearing, as he was by her beauty. He became the ardent wooer, but in secret. His burning looks, his fervid language, his tender adoration, created a new feeling in her breast. Love and passion sprang up in her soul together, and she suffered them to proceed in their course impetuously, without an attempt to arrest or check their career.

Her mother and her instructors taking their cue from her father, had been more careful to instil into her mind the doctrines and practices of pride, than the precepts of religion or the practice of morality.

She loved Hugh with all the fierceness of an ungovernable passion, and she let it have its way. They had met in secret, and the notion of having a secret pleased her—she kept it as such. It is just to her to say that she had no sense of having committed wrong, or any act of shame or sin. She had been from infancy taught and permitted to exercise her self-will, and she did it in this—with what result we have seen.

A veil had now fallen from before her eyes; she saw whither her faults had hurried her, and she prepared to undergo the penance imposed upon her without shrinking from its rigour, or attempting to evade its obligations. In the hurry of her flight, she had not thought of the means of providing for the future, and save a few pounds which happened to be in her purse, she had brought no money with her. It suggested itself to her now that she would need more when the trifle she possessed was gone, but where was it to come from?

She felt that Lotte would solve that problem for her. Apply to those whom she had quitted, she would not; but she had some skill with her needle, and she hoped to be able to assist her young benefactor at first, in order that ultimately she might be able to produce the means requisite for her own support.

Some two or three days had elapsed ere she had come to comprehend her position in its true light, but when she did, she applied herself to the work before her bravely.

Charles Clinton had called to see his sister, as he promised, upon the following day, and after a few inquiries respecting her companion of the previous evening, which Lotte answered evasively, he gave her a narrative of his rapid voyage to the United States and back, and prolonged it, hoping that her friend who, he understood, resided in the next room, would appear. He guessed that there was some mystery connected with her, and the surmise set him longing to know what it could be; but as Lotte did not volunteer a word about her, and he knew her firmness on certain points, he felt it would be useless to question her. The mysterious lady did not, notwithstanding that he spun his narrative out, present herself to his eyes; and as Lotte told him that he could not stay there all night, and that it was quite time he was at home, he rose laughingly, kissed her affectionately, took his departure, determining to return shortly and abruptly, that he might pop upon the strange lady in his sister’s apartment.

The day succeeding this, a smart ring at the bell conducted Lotte down to the street door, and there she saw Mr. Bantom standing glowing in his best clothes, and smiling over the edges of a tall white shirt-collar.

But he had a most unfavourable looking black eye, and strips of plaster were placed upon his nose, his cheekbone, and his forehead.

Lotte uttered an exclamation of surprise, but immediately welcomed him, and invited him up to her little room, asking, in rather a loud tone, as she ascended the stairs, how Mrs. Bantom and all the little Bantoms were—a signal which was responded to by her finding her room untenanted when she reached it.

She bade Mr. Bantom sit down, and begged him to excuse her working while he talked, for she could listen and stitch too. She had a presentiment that this was not a mere visit of ceremony, but it had reference to the disordered aspect of his visage—perhaps, her help was needed—and if it were so, so far as it was possible, she was ready and anxious to afford it.

But no; it turned out not to be the object of Mr. Bantom’s visit.

He explained that he had called upon her the night before the one preceding, and that, without giving him an opportunity to say who he was, and why he was in this locality, the police had seized upon him in the most tyranical manner, and bore him to the station-house.

“It took five on ’em to do it, miss,” he said, with a cunning and a satisfied smile; “and when I came to ’splain matters to the inspector, he said I ’ad been werry hardly used. He dismissed me at once, and suspended the policeman as first collared me, and I’m going to bring a action agin him, and the lawyer says I shall get swishing damages. But lor, miss, that ain’t no interest to you, that ain’t. Wot I’ve come about is becos it’s a matter consarning your good—a bit of good fortin for you, miss.”

“Good fortune!” echoed Lotte, in surprise. Then she added, with a smile, “Let me hear it Mr. Bantom. It will be very acceptable to me, you know.”

“An’ you deserves it—Lord bless your pretty face, you does. Hem!—I begs your parding, miss, but you knows I allus speaks my mind, p’raps when I shouldn’t.”

“But my good fortune, Mr. Bantom—tell me that, and never find my face,” returned Lotte, laughing, “I have heard you say that ‘handsome is that handsome does.’ You remember that, don’t you?”

“And I sticks to it!” cried Mr. Bantom, slapping his thigh. “You’ve done the thing that’s handsome to me, and to everybody, I’m sure; and you’re, as handsome a young beauty as ever walked, to my thinking; ah! and to others, too, as you’ll see.”

Lotte raised her finger, and, turning her soft, sweet, laughing eyes upon him, she said—

“Oh! Mr. Bantom, if you continue in this praiseful strain, I shall think you have come here only to court me; and what will Mrs. Bantom say to that, when I tell her?”

Mr. Bantom indulged in a short hyena-like howl. For him to court her would have been in his eyes an attempt to be palliated only on the ground of the wildest lunacy.

“I thinks, then,” said he, smoothing the long nap of his new beaver-hat carefully with his coat-sleeve, “that I’d better ’old ’ard on that pint, and at once let you know why I’ve come. You remember that orful night when you went out in the evening, and didn’t come back agin, miss.”

The tears sprang into Lotte’s eyes.

“I do, indeed,” she replied, in a low tone.

“Well,” he continued, “early the next morning a flunkey comes to me, dressed in pupple livery, and brings a fippun note in a letter from you. The Lord bless your thoughtful natur!”

“Pray go on. What of that circumstance?” said Lotte, with an aspect of wonder.

“Well,” said Mr. Bantom, “a few days ago that same pupple flunkey comes to me, and axes me a lot of questions about you.”

“About me!” ejaculated Lotte, astonished. “What could he wish to know about me? Miss Wilton, his mistress, is acquainted with my address, and would write here to me if she wished to see and speak with me.”

“Ah! it ain’t his young missus as wants to know, but his young master, I suxpexs,” observed Mr. Bantom, with a knowing nod.

“His young master,” said Lotte, turning a crimson. “Miss Wilton’s brother!”

“I only suxpexs, mind, jest as much as that. He said a gentleman—”

“What day did he come to you, did you say?”

Mr. Bantom counted on his fingers.

“Four days ago,” he replied; “Monday it vus.”

“It could not have been he,” said Lotte to herself, a sigh unconsciously escaping her lips.

Mr. Bantom proceeded.

“I wouldn’t answer nothin’ until I know’d what he wanted with you,” he observed.

“That was right and kind of you, Mr. Bantom!” responded Lotte, thoughtfully.

“No,” said the simple fellow, “but he told me that a gen’leman as he knew had taken a great interest in your welfare, and he didn’t like to think that such a pretty girl as you—I beg pardon, miss, them was his very words—should be working your eyes out o’ your ’ed when you orter be ridin’ in a carriage of your own, and therefore he wants to see you, and come to a arrangement with you, whereby he will give you a fortun’ and a carriage, and to make a lady on you, so that you should never ’ave to work no more.”

Lotte listened to him in breathless astonishment. Gradually, as he proceeded, she felt her neck, face, and brow burn as if a hectic fever raged there.

In the intensity of her scorn at this proposal, the purpose of which, with a woman’s quickness and penetration, she at once comprehended, her power of speech almost failed her, but, by an effort, she cleared her throat and said—

“Pray did the servant mention the gentleman’s name?”

“Well, no,” replied Mr. Bantom, not perceiving her emotion; “he wouldn’t do that; I axed him; but he said the gentleman ’ud do that hisself when he saw you.”

Lotte drew a long breath, and, fixing her eyes upon Bantom’s face with a steadfast gaze to read all that was passing within his mind, she said, gravely—

“When you heard this extraordinary offer made, Mr. Bantom, what did you think of it? What said you in reply?”

Mr. Bantom’s face brightened up.

“I said,” he answered, earnestly, “that you deserved all the good fortun’ the Lord could shower upon you in this life, and I told him it would be a ‘appy day for me when I know’d that you ’ad a fortun, and was a ridin’ in your own carridge.”

Lotte saw that Bantom, in his simplicity of heart, did not detect the intention disguised in this liberal offer, but that he believed it to be a genuine sample of philanthropy on the part of some wealthy, romantic individual.

“Did you mention my address?” she inquired anxiously.

“Mr. Pupple wanted that badly, he did,” returned Mr. Bantom, smoothing his rough though new beaver hat, “but my wife said no. It ’ud be best to leave all in your ’ands, ’cos she was quite sure you’d act the right down true thing.”

“Oh! Mr. Bantom,” said Lotte, laying her hand gently upon his arm, and looking him sadly in the face, “your wife was right in her suggestion, and you, too, in following it. I know not who the person is who has thus singled me out for cruel insult; but it is right that you should know the nature of the errand upon which you have been sent to me. You have seen at night, in the street, a poor frail creature wearing a hollow smile upon her painted face, daunting in a gaudy dress, shunned by the respectable of her own sex, and frequently harshly repelled of treated as a shameless object by numbers of yours. A being whose position is at once horrifying to the virtuously disposed, and a misery and a curse to herself. But the position of this poor abandoned outcast is less degraded than that of the ‘lady’ which the gentleman of whom you have spoken would make me; because into her sin and shame the first may have been driven by dreadful destitution, while the other voluntarily purchases her pollution by empty phantoms of luxury, but remains still an object of scorn and contumely.”

The truth struck Mr. Bantom now.

His face darkened until it became almost purple, the veins in his throat and forehead swelled like cords; he ground his teeth as if he would reduce them to powder, and he clenched his hands, burying his nails in the palms.

At length a groan burst from his heaving chest. He sprang to his feet, and cried hoarsely and rapidly—“Oh, that I should ha’ been picked out to come with such a object to you. I didn’t know it, miss. Oh! I didn’t know it—by the living Lord, I didn’t. You’ll never forgive me—you can’t—you oughtn’t—I don’t deserve it! But miss, I shall see Mr. Pupplesuit agen. I’ll nip him, I will; I’ll make him tell me who sent him to me about you; and when I’ve squeezed out of him the party’s name, I’ll drag the hound here, and force him on his bended knees to beg parding on you. I will—I will.”

Mr. Bantom, as he concluded, darted out of the room, without a word of farewell, he rushed down stairs into the street, and closed the door behind him with a loud bang, ere she could overtake him.

She followed him to the street, opened the door to look after him, and found herself face to face with Mark Wilton. They recognized each other instantly, and Lotte unconsciously for the moment forgot Mr. Bantom, for Mark smiled agreeably upon her, and she could not, somehow, help smiling pleasantly upon him in return. Mark put out his hand, and she placed hers in it—a commonplace salutation enough, but it did not convey to either in the present instance that impression.

Mark evidently wished to be invited to enter the house and Lotte, blushing like a rose, passed the compliment upon him, not feeling altogether sure that she was acting in accordance with the strict rules of rigid propriety.

However, Mark found himself seated in the little room, admiring its tasteful neatness, and chirruping to the little song bird, who hopped about his perch, laid his head knowingly on one side, and cried “sweet” to him almost as familiarly as it did to Lotte.

“I shall make no stranger of you, Mr. Wilton,” said Lotte, renewing her work. “I am very busy, and my work has to be finished at a stated time.”

“Don’t make a stranger of me, I beg,” responded Mark, somewhat earnestly, for after every inspection of Lotte’s figure and face, he grew more anxious for friendly relations with her. “I will talk, and you can work and listen.”

“And talk, too,” said Lotte, with a laugh. “My sex are not very good listeners, unless they have the power to interpolate frequently, you know; but I will try to be a model of attention and goodness. So commence, if you please, sir.”

“I am acquainted with your merits and your virtues,” returned Mark. “Your brother enlarged upon them as we came across the Atlantic together. I knew a great deal about you before I saw you, but I was not quite prepared, I confess, on meeting you, to find——”

“Him stand convicted of such gross exaggeration, as a result of his blind partiality,” interposed Lotte, quickly.

“There you err, Miss Clinton; what I intended to say——”

“Had reference to your sister and your father. You told me so, you know, Mr. Wilton, when you came in,” again interrupted Lotte; this time her cheek heightened its colour, and her smile gave place to rather a grave look.

Mark Wilton bowed.

“I feel your reproof, Miss Clinton,” he said, hastily; “pray acquit me of having any intention to offend you, and, believe me, I will not again give you cause to complain of the tone of my conversation.”

She turned upon him an expression of such beaming gratefulness, that he was amply repaid for the momentary pang her observation—recalling him to the object of his visit, and the grave look with which it was accompanied—occasioned him.

He saw at once that in her humble, isolated position, she demanded his respect; she perceived by the instant alteration in his manner, that he was ready sincerely to accord it, not but that he had at first involuntarily paid it, and was now only straying from it because he had been led away by the turn of the conversation, and his sense of the prettiness of her face.

As he saw the rising blush upon her clear, transparent cheek, he felt himself become red, too, and he thought it was very ridiculous. It was at this moment their eyes met, and he received her grateful glance with a glow of deep gratification, and she read a language in his gaze, which no words could have framed.

There was an embarrassing silence for a minute, and then Mark dashed abruptly at the subject of his visit.

It appeared from what he stated that, although he had been to his father’s late abode in the Regent’s Park, he had not made himself known there, because his father and sister had quitted for the country, but had contented himself by making a few inquiries, and in ascertaining their present address.

He said, too, that he had endeavoured to see his old friend and companion, Harry Vivian, but had not succeeded, as he, too, was away from home.

Some business he had to transact in London, he added, was likely to detain him about a week, and therefore, he told her that it had struck him that it would be as well if he could obtain some little account of the changes that had occurred during his absence from England to his relatives, that he might be somewhat prepared for the new condition in which he had been assured he should find them, and he looked to Lotte as the person most capable of affording him that information.

Now, ordinarily, there would be nothing of interest or importance likely to grow out of such an interview, and Mark might have put his questions, and Lotte replied to them, without anything arising to move them out of the even tenour of their way; but it happened that Lotte possessed charms of feature and person of a peculiarly attractive kind, and Mark was possessed of discrimination and taste. In addition to this, he was gifted with an extremely handsome face, being a sun-browned likeness of his sister Flora; and, as Lotte had taste and discernment, too, it is not difficult to imagine that during the questioning and the replies, that each should gradually confirm the favourable opinion of the other which they had in the first instance formed.

We are loth to confess it, but at least two hours flew by before Mark or Lotte had a notion of the length to which the interview had extended, and then Mark rose, quite aware that it was time to leave. He was very reluctant to do so, but he obtained permission to come again, if once—if only once, to say good bye to her.

And to convey a message to Flora. Ha! Lotte had forgotten that. He remembered it—that is to say, he conceived the suggestion, because it pointed to an opportunity of calling upon Lotte at some future time with her reply. Lotte was glad he had remembered it, she said she was, and in truth she was, for, without acknowledging so much to herself, she was pleased to think that there would be an opportunity of seeing him again soon.

At last he was gone, and Lotte sat down to her work to think of him, to ply her needle swiftly and mechanically, to have the material upon which she worked every now and then blotted out from her sight, and nothing left in its place but a rich brown face, and deep blue eyes.

Yet she was not so absorbed by her own pleasant thoughts that she wholly forgot one who needed her attention, and who she knew was making a brave effort to struggle with her trial of deep humiliation, to endure it with patience, and to frame herself to meet whatever further mortifications and privations she might have to undergo.

Lotte knew that to keep her in conversation, to look hopefully and in a sanguine spirit to the future, while a dead silence was preserved respecting the past, was the best mode of lifting her out of a killing despondency, and, therefore, much as she was harrassed by the incessant application her work demanded of her, she still, in her pure unselfishness, made the time and opportunity to keep the mind of Helen from dwelling upon the misery of her situation.

Thus, when sitting thinking of Mark Wilton, she remembered that Helen was alone, and though she really, justly, had not an instant to spare from her task, she ran lightly and briskly into her apartment, to tell her that she was again free from visitors, and to persuade her to come and sit with her, and tell her all about the beautiful places she had visited abroad.

She found Helen kneeling by her bedside, her face buried in the coverlet, and her hands clasped in anguish above her head.

She heard her sobs, and, bending over her, she raised her tenderly, and supported her in her arms—

“Come with me,” she said, softly; “come and sit with me. You must not remain alone, dear young lady. It makes you too sad. Come! come!”

She conducted Helen gently to her sitting-room, placed her upon the sofa, and sat by her side. She pillowed her head upon her own soft bosom, and she whispered in her ear—

“Your affliction is sore, indeed, but yet be comforted; for, if all that you have told me be true, and from my heart’s depths I believe you, there is a limit to your selfreproach. Bitter regret and wild despair should be the last emotions of a dying heart. He yet lives, be sure, and living, you are saved. Oh, did he but know that you called to him now with appealing arms, how he would fly to you! Look up, then, dear young lady, in strong conviction that God is merciful, and beneficent. His hand has been laid heavily upon you, but if It has pressed you down, believe that It will raise you up and sustain you in the time to come.”

By unremitting kindness and such generous sentiments, did Lotte seek to win her from the indulgence of her deep sorrow, and at other times, by simple questions about famous cities and spots, of which she had only heard and Helen had visited, she contrived to restore her to something like calmness.

It was while speaking—almost in a state of abstraction—that Helen’s eyes involuntarily fell upon a glass which reflected the door of the apartment; she uttered an exclamation of affrighted surprise, pressed her hands over her face to conceal it, and cowering, as if she should shrink into the place beneath at every step, tottered, rather than ran, out of the room.

At the same moment, Lotte was startled by hearing a voice, whose tones were quite unknown to her, exclaim—

“Beg pardon. Don’t let me disturb anybody. I want to see Miss Clinton.”

She turned round in her seat with the rapidity of lightning, and beheld, standing in the doorway, a young gentleman, who was to her an utter stranger.

CHAPTER VIII.—THE COMPACT.

For ’tis the sport to have the engineer

Hoist with his own petard, and it shall go hard,

But I will delve one yard below their mines,

And blow ’em at the moon.

Shakspere.

Mr. Chewkle, with a tolerably large sum of money in his pocket, felt quite a different man to the Mr. Chewkle hunted, like a fox, by a pack of policemen, or a fugitive slave—according to his own view of the matter—by bloodhounds. He was a cunning fellow was Mr. Chewkle. He had spoken truth when he stated that he had made use of—i.e., embezzled—the money entrusted to him by a benefit society, but he had carefully secreted their books when he left word that he was “gone into the country,” and he was now prepared to “arrive home,” produce his books carefully made up, hand over the balance, and commence actions at law for slander against every person worth sueing whom he could discover to have spoken prejudicially against him.

His place of abode was watched, but not so closely as to prevent his slinking into it, during a violent shower of rain, unobserved, and regaining his room.

Having carefully shut out every possibility of a light breaking through a chink or cranny, in shutter or door, he proceeded to light a lamp, to fetch out his books, to set them in order, and, when that was done, to sneak to bed. He woke with the dawn, and got away without attracting the attention of the man set to watch the premises, inasmuch as that individual was, at the moment, tightly hugged in the arms of Morpheus. Chewkle made his way to the residence of Jukes, who received him with a grin of felicitous surprise, as he knew there was a reward offered for his apprehension, and he instantly resolved to obtain it by handing his dear old pal, Chewk, over to the tender attentions of the police. This hope of aggrandisement was dispelled, however, by Chewkle confessing his knowledge of the charges made against him, and that the police were after him.

“But there’s the books to show all straightforward, Jukes,” he cried, snapping his fingers.

“And the ballence,” suggested Jukes, “you forget the little bal-lence?”

“That’s here,” cried Chewkle, slapping his pocket, “and the money’s here to bring fifty actions again’ them who has been calling me hard names an’ slandering my character, Jukes. I’ll serve every man on ’em with a writ, Jukes. And them as can pay, I’ll foller up; an’ them as is straw. I’ll screw some costs out on—eh, Jukes. There, d’ye see that!”

As he concluded, he produced a fifty pound note, given to him by Grahame.

“There’s lots more where that came from,” he cried, “and I’ll work up that mine until I’ve got a pretty trifle out on it.”

Jukes looked at the note with the eyes of a vulture, and bent towards Chewkle with the manner of a spaniel. He adored money, and reverenced those who possessed it. Being himself a myrmidon of the law, one of its harshest and most brutal, he feared its operation, because he only too well knew its power. He had been suffering his tongue to wag very freely in defamation of Chewkle, and the mention of an action made him sweat with nervous apprehension. He wrung Chewkle’s hand, as though he would twist it from the wrist.

“I am glad of this, old boy,” he said; “I’m precious glad o’ this, old Chewk; I’ve had a precious fight for you, old boy; I said you’d come back to shame ’em all.”

“And here I am,” said Chewkle, with the sternness of assumed innocence. “I’ll serve ’em out, you’ll see. But come, Jukes, I want this flimsy changed, and I want you to take it for me to the old gal in Threadneedle Street.”

“Ha! ha!” laughed Jukes, looking blank, and by no means fascinated with the proposition, “ha! ha! its all re’glar, I s’pose, ha! ha! I say its all right and square, old Chewk, eh?”

“You ain’t one of ’em who ’s been speaking agin’ me behind my back, eh?” asked Chewkle in a very significant tone. Mr. Jukes laughed vacantly, and suggested that such a notion was utterly preposterous.

“Well,” said Chewkle, “then look there,” pointing as he spoke to a name written on the back of the note; “you see that name, ‘Grahame Regent’s Park,’ don’t you? now you can put the name and address of Chewkle on it, that will do, won’t it?”

Mr. Jukes did not think, he said, that half of that was necessary; the word of “old Chewk” was all he required; and he took the note, leaving Chewkle to await his return.

He returned with the money, and Chewkle, in pursuance of a plan he had formed, took some of his best clothes out of pledge, got shaved and scoured, for it required that labour to get his flesh cleaned; had his hair cut and brushed, his whiskers trimmed, and really came out quite smart, and looking very much, as of old—like an individual engaged in the recovery of small debts.

Making a variety of promises, largely interlarded with boasts to Juke, not one of which he intended to redeem, he made his way to his friend Scorper, a lawyer’s clerk, and, having secured his services, proceeded to face his creditors.

For three hours the turmoil was tremendous. He was given into custody, went before a magistrate, was charged with felonious embezzlement, produced his books and the balance, which he declared himself ready to hand over to a properly constituted person appointed by the society itself, satisfied the magistrate that he was a grossly ill-used individual, was discharged, and obtained subsequently, a list of persons, who, having called him with great truth and justice, a rogue and swindler, he instructed Scorper, to proceed against them all, for defaming his precious character.

Mr. Chewkle had a deep motive in all this. He knew sufficient of human nature to be aware that his present triumph, coupled with the actions at law, would cause people who had been busy in talking about him, speculating on his movements, or wondering to their friends what he was up to, to take no further notice of him whatever—to drop him, as he said to himself, “as if he was a hot ’tatur.”

He was going in now for a desperate stake, and he was especially anxious that his future movements should not attract attention.

He was pretty fairly acquainted with the nature of the property Grahame would obtain by the death of Maybee, or of Wilton, provided the latter had no son living. He speculated at first, whether he should gain most by keeping his word with Grahame, or by revealing all he knew to Wilton. But a little reflection soon decided him, that he could obtain more continuous gifts from Grahame than Wilton, because he should be able to put on a screw with the former by constant threats, while with the latter, it would be only by appeals to his gratitude, that he should be able occasionally, to obtain money after the first reward. He knew that men soon grow tired of being grateful when it costs them money—he did himself—so feeling a pretty sure conviction that he should be able by the pressure of threats to draw the largest income from Grahame, he decided upon adhering to his course, even though it laid the crime of murder upon his soul.

The spirit of acquisitiveness was, however, strong within him. It was evident to him that money was to be extracted from Wilton, by holding out the alluring promise of producing the missing evidence, necessary to secure to him the large property now in the clutches of Chancery. He might even go to the length of mentioning the name of Maybee, and other particulars, necessary to prove his ability to perform his promise, before he put the poor old prisoner out of the way of being produced by anybody.

Now he knew from two or three sources, that Nathan

Gomer had interested himself much in Wilton’s affairs no doubt, as Chewkle surmised, at a swinging profit; and it suggested itself to him that he would be the man to apply to in the matter; Nathan would listen to him with a ready ear, because no doubt profit was to be made out of the transaction; and Nathan had the ear of Wilton, so that what he suggested was likely to be carried out.

Accordingly Mr. Chewkle, one evening, directed his steps to the chambers of the remarkable little saffronfaced dwarf.

Mr. Chewkle had no favourable opinion of the individual he was about to visit; he had an uncomfortable sense that the satellites of Satan were, on certain conditions, permitted to visit the earth, to lure men to perdition, and that Nathan was one of the demoniacal crew. He pshaw’d the notion with a grim laugh every time it presented itself, but he could not drive the impression away.

In one of the dreariest bye-lanes in the city of London there is a narrow passage leading into what may be termed a duodecimo square. It contains twelve houses, the floors of which are let out in chambers; that is to say, they would be if tenants were rife; but only a few can boast of being occupied.

To one of the largest, gloomiest and dustiest, Mr. Chewkle advanced. Upon the door-post, in faded black letters, he saw, painted by the hands of a writer in his noviciate, the words—“Second Floor. Mr. N. Gomer.”

The hour was so far advanced, that lamps, in the streets, and in shop windows, were lighted; and, by contrast, the square was dark. Still Chewlde was able to decipher the words upon the door-post; but the staircase was uncomfortably obscure. However, he mounted the stairs.

He went up gently, as though, plunder being his object, he had no wish to arouse the attention of any inmate. He felt, he scarcely knew why, a strange apprehension that one of the closed doors he had to pass would; as he reached it; burst open; and some frantic individual; in a fit of wild frenzy; dash upon him, and seize him by the throat; on the assumption that he, Chewkle; had no business to be anywhere but in the station-house or at Dartmoor.

He paused; without any such event happening; before the door upon the second floor.

It was awfully dark here. He groped for a door, and found an outer one open. The inner door was closed; but it yielded to the pressure of his hand; and opened inwardly.

The room within was intensely dark. Mr. Chewkle gave a short dry cough; but it was not responded to.

“Gomer is out,” he thought to himself; “out; and has forgotten to lock his door.”

Mr. Chewkle paused to take breath; for his thoughts oppressed him.

His ideas, his speculations and impressions; respecting Nathan Gomer were interwoven with bank-notes and sovereigns; with gold-dust and diamonds; with Indian riches; with; in truth; wealth inexhaustible.

Mr. Gomer was an individual; in his estimation; who trusted none of his valuables to other people’s care; save such moneys as he advanced on undeniable security; and; consequently; the room in which he, Mr. Chewkle, was then standing must be the storehouse of fabulous wealth.

This storehouse; in an indiscreet moment; had been left unguarded—unprotected; open to the lustful hand of any lucky individual, like himself, who, dropping in promiscuously, as he had done, could enrich himself and disappear with his prize, swiftly and unobserved, leaving no trace behind him.

Mr. Chewkle broke out into a nervous perspiration, and instantly became active; he groped about for the table, which no doubt had a drawer where the keys of chests containing heaps of gold and notes were deposited.

He found a table, and felt for the coveted drawer.

Then he uttered a roar of fright.

In a corner of the room a light suddenly displayed itself. It shone brightly on the face of Nathan Gomer, grinning hideously at him.

In another moment his eyes were dazzled to blindness by the light being turned full upon his own face.

He heard Nathan, in his strange shrill voice, cry—

“Oh! Chewkle, is it? My good, industrious friend Chewkle come to pay me a visit, to serve me, of course, and himself slightly, perhaps? How do you do, Chewkle?”

Large drops of cold perspiration rolled down that individual’s forehead; he tried to speak, but for the minute he found his voice was gone, and he could only make one or two hoarse sounds in his throat.

Nathan Gomer, who had been lying screwed up in an arm chair, now rose up and lighted a lamp from a bull’s-eye lantern which he had in his hand, and then he motioned to Chewkle to be seated.

“I found the door open,” abruptly observed Chewkle, feeling that an explanation of his peculiar proceedings was due from him.

“I know you did,” said Gomer, with a grin. “I opened it for you—wire and spring simple enough.”

“Ah,” said Chewkle, “I thought you was out, and had left valuable property about.”

“He! he! and you were trying to find it out, so as to secure it, eh?” returned Nathan, with a grin.

“Hem!” coughed Chewkle. “I—I—it was very dark, and I was gropin’ about for—for—for——”

“The lucifer box, I suppose,” suggested Nathan, sarcastically.

“That’s jest it; I thought to myself that you had left——”

“But I never do, Mr. Chewkle; I am not of an absent or forgetful nature; I am a methodical man; and do everything systematically. Well, now we have a light; you are seated, and so am I. You have come to me with some purpose, and minutes are more precious than gold. Mr. Chewkle, to your business at once.”

“Mr. Gomer, that’s jes’ what I likes, and that’s why I preferred comin’ to you to goin’ direct to Mr. Wilton.”

“Mr. Wilton?”

“Yes, sir; he ’as was lately in the Bench, and is now at Harleydale Manor, Devon. A friend of yourn I believe, sir.”

“Your business is directly, then, with him?”

“He is directly affected by it,” returned Chewkle, dropping his eyes, unable to endure the bright gaze of the little golden-hued money-lender.

“And you desire to negociate the matter through me,” continued Gomer, as Chewkle paused.

“I do,” he answered.

“Proceed,” said Gomer, laconically.

“Mr. Wilton is claimant to a large property in Devonshire and elsewhere,” said Chewkle. “As I have been concerned for Mr. Grahame, of course you know I am aware of that.”

Nathan Gomer nodded.

“It is about that property I want to speak to you, sir,” he added.

“Go on,” observed Nathan, drily.

“I have some information about it—some information very important to Mr. Wilton, I can assure you.”

“Ha! hem! Have you had a quarrel with Mr. Grahame?” inquired Nathan, sharply.

“Quarrel, sir? No, sir,” returned Chewkle. “He’s a very good friend to me, he is.”

“How will this information of which you speak affect his interest with regard to his claim to the Devonshire property?” asked Nathan Gomer, regarding Chewkle with a fixed gaze.

“Floor him there, sir,” responded Chewkle; “quite knock him out of time.”

“Yet, my good Chewkle, you suggest that he is your very kind friend—eh?”

“So for the matter o’ that he is, sir. But you, sir, are a man of the world—I says a distinguished man of the world—am I right?”

“I am prepared to concede that point to save time,” responded Nathan Gomer, with a grin.

“Well, sir, the very vallyble information I possess couldn’t make Mr. Grahame inherit that property, though he still prefers a claim to it, but it will actually put Mr. Wilton into possession of it.”

“What?”

“It will completely establish his claim to it!” exclaimed Chewkle, striking the table with his fist, adding, “That’s information worth having, I should think.”

“Clearly,” said Nathan Gomer, coolly. “Mr Wilton has had in his day many such offers, but they turned out moonshine, all of them. How is he to know that your information is any better than that which has already proved worthless?”

“’Cos I’ll explain why, in a very few words,” answered Chewkle.

“Do so,” said Nathan.

“You know, sir, p’raps better than I do, that the marriage of Mr. Wilton’s father and mother is a pint in dispute.”

“I do.”

“That their register of marriage was cut out o’ the parish book, and the cetiffykit has never been found; but it was supposed to be in the possession of a cousin, who has a claim to some part of the property.”

“Very true—very correct,” responded Gomer, still cool, but nevertheless edging his chair a little closer to Chewkle.

“Now this man disappeared many years ago.”

“He did, good Chewkle.”

“And if he can be found and produced, all the property will become Mr. Wilton’s.”

“I don’t quite see the force of that conclusion, friend Chewkle.”

“Don’t you? Look here—this man Maybee——”

“Ha! Maybee—that is his name.”

“Yes, Maybee. This Maybee——”

“John Maybee, I think?”

“No, Joshua Maybee.”

“Oh, Joshua—ah! yes—Joshua.”

“The old fellow, among his pals in Spike Hotel, is called Josh Maybee.”

“To be sure, very probable; go on, good Chewkle,” said Nathan Gomer, with glittering eyes and a glowing face, but just now without a grin upon his features.

“Now if this cousin is brought forward, he can produce, no doubt, the cetiffykit of the marriage of Wilton’s father and mother, and by proving his legitimacy, substantiate his claim to the property.”

“True—true, very feasible. But suppose he can’t produce the certificate, my Chewkle? What then?”

“He was present at the marriage; he can prove that by bringing forward witnesses who were present as well as himself, and, therefore, establish the fact beyond a doubt.”

“Hem! very strong, I confess. But how is it, my good Chewkle, that this man—what is his name——”

“Never mind his name, sir,” said Chewkle, vexed with himself to find he had let it slip out.

“How stupid in me to forget his name!” said Nathan Gomer, tapping his forehead; “but, no matter, how is it that this man does not himself come forward. He must be well aware that in helping Mr. Wilton to obtain his rights, he would be securing his own, eh! Chewkle, how do you explain that?”

“It’s a secret I cannot tell without putting you in the same position as myself, and then you know my claim for giving you the information wouldn’t be worth much, and I want a stiff sum, I do,” responded Chewkle, with a marked emphasis upon the last sentence.

“I suppose I may ask how you came to find this man out, and how you obtained from him the information you have already given to me?” asked Gomer, regarding him with a penetrating glance.

“Yes,” said Chewkle, assuming an indifferent tone, although he was aware he was treading on delicate ground; “I employed the man to carry some messages for me, and other little matters, and one day I treated him to some beer. Over the drink he repeated some of the things as had occurred to him years ago. While he was talking, I found the circumstances he related tallied with what Mr. Grahame and old Wilton wanted to clear up, and then I went quickly to work, and sucked him as dry as a pump that’s given it’s last drop.”

“You hinted to him, of course, that what he was telling to you might turn out of value to both,” suggested Gomer.

“Not a word,” returned Chewkle, with a wink. “No, no; if I’d put him up to that I might have hook’d for my share of the—the——”

“Plunder,” supplied Gomer, with a grin.

Chewkle grinned too.

“Not ’zactly that,” he said, “but the price of producing the man and giving a large fortune to Mr. Wilton.”

“Then he remains still in ignorance of the service he might be to Mr. Wilton,” said Gomer as if thoughtfully. “Strange, that, very strange.”

“Not strange, when you remembers that Wilton’s father and mother were married in disguised names,” said Chewkle.

Nathan Gomer felt greatly disposed to give way to a whistle, but he restrained his feelings, and though he felt astonished he looked composed.

After a minute’s reflection, he said to Chewkle—

“When can you produce Mr.———? What did you say his name was?”

“Don’t flurry yourself about his name,” returned Chewkle; “it’s the man you want. Let me see, Thursday, Friday, Saturday—in ten days from this I can do it.”

“You can?”

“I can.”

“And will?”

“If I am well paid for it.”

“How much does that mean—open your mouth?” exclaimed Nathan, with a grin.

“A hun—two—a—a thousand pounds,” cried Chewkle, with a sudden bound from the sum he purposed at first asking.

“And worth it, I should say,” returned Mr. Nathan

Gomer, with a contortion which was something between a yawn and a horrifying convulsion. “But there is Mr. Wilton’s consent to be obtained to the payment of this large sum,” he added, “and the terms upon which it is to be paid to be arranged.”

“That I admits,” returned Chewkle, with a cunning leer; “but I must have something in hand, you know, before I goes from here to-night, Mr. Gomer.”

“Not a farthing,” returned Nathan Gomer, coolly; I shall not be a shilling the richer, nor a penny-piece the poorer, whether the man is produced or kept perdu. All you have been telling me may be lies, you know, my Chewkle; I don’t mean to insinuate that such is the case, but when one is called to pay down for bare assertion, then it is necessary to be cautious.”

“I’ve told you truth, sir,” replied Chewkle, with earnestness, and then, thoughtlessly, as the forged deed flashed through his mind, he said, “And I could tell you some information about Mr. Grahame as you’d like to have.”

“Not you,” said Nathan Gomer, coolly.

“You have lent him a heap of money, haven’t you?” inquired Chewkle, with a tone as much as to say, “I know you have.”

“I am well secured,” said Gomer, apathetically; “and, therefore, Chewkle, it is of no use your trying it on with me in that quarter.”

“Ain’t it?”

“No.”

“You’re sure o’ that?”

“Quite. Mr. Grahame has borrowed money. Many a prouder man than he has done the same thing, but he has given security for it. There is nothing out of the ordinary routine of worldly circumstances in that. He may be in difficulties now—perhaps he is——”

“No, he ain’t.”

“Well, he might be. There is nothing, however, that Mr. Grahame has done, or is likely to do, but what would be strictly honorable; and, therefore, nothing you can say about him can affect me.”

“Nor Mr. Wilton?”

“Nor Mr. Wilton.”

“There you’re wrong. I could tell you a trifle about a forged deed, as would uncurl your ’air, and make it quiver like that of a ’lectrified cat, if I liked.”

“Pshaw! What could you tell me?”

All! What? That question restored Mr. Chewkle to his equilibrium, which Nathan Gomer’s taunts were fast pulling him out of. He bit his lips, and mentally called himself a fool of great magnitude for having permitted himself to be so far drawn out. So, to prevent further trips of speech, he rose up, and prepared to go.

“If you will not give me anything down, Mr. Gomer,” he said, “the thing’s off. I shan’t come agen. It won’t be worth my while.”

“Perhaps you would like to go to Mr. Wilton and see him. You can ask him if he will put down the large sum you ask upon the mere faith of your promise to produce the man of whom you have spoken. The proposition is so very reasonable.”

Chewkle thought for a moment; then he fixed his eyes upon the face of Nathan inquiringly, and said—“What then is your idea of that matter, to be fair between man and man?”

“My proposition is this;” replied Gomer, “I have no objection to give you a sovereign now, and to meet you to-morrow morning at nine, and then either give you a further sum and enter into an agreement with you, or tell you that I intend to take no further steps in the affair.”

Chewkle reflected for an instant. He should be sure of a pound at least, perhaps he might get more; the offer appeared, also, too reasonable, if he wished it to be thought he intended to act honestly, to refuse; so he intimated his readiness to consent to it, and Nathan gave to him a sovereign, saying to him—

“You must meet me exactly at nine to-morrow morning, at the Paddington Station of the Great Western Railway; I will see you at that hour, or as shortly after as possible, in the waiting-room, for if I decide upon purchasing your information, I shall proceed immediately afterwards, direct to Harleydale Manor, to Mr. Wilton!”

“Mind!” said Chewkle, quietly, “I tell you I can’t produce the man for ten days.”

“Very true, but you will want the money you ask, and I must obtain the authority to give it you. You understand?”

“All right,” replied Chewkle.

“Be punctual. Good night!” exclaimed Nathan Gomer, and laying hold of a button of Chewkle’s coat, he led him to the outer door, nodded and grinned at him with so elfish an expression, that Chewkle was really glad to get away.

He saw Nathan close his outer door, and heard him lock it; he heard him double lock and bolt the inner door, and then he groped his way down into the street.

“He’s a queer little imp of old Nick’s,” he muttered to himself; then he chuckled, “I’ve done him, I think,” he said, “I shall have that money, and he may hook for the evidence, for I shall be off for a little while for the benefit of my health, likewise in the neighbourhood of Harleydale, but not for the benefit of old Wilton’s health. I don’t think he’ll rapidly improve, after I get’s down about his ’ouse.”

He turned into the bye-lane and so on into a crowded thoroughfare.

In the meantime, Nathan Gomer, on returning to his easy chair, drew up his knees to his chin, and went through some extraordinary evolutions. He rubbed his yellow hands with delight, and his golden visage glistened and beamed with felicity.

“Cunning Chewkle!” he cried—“cunning, cunning Chewkle. Ho! ho! ho! such a cunning fellow! Mr. Josh Maybee is the man, eh? Confined in Spike Hotel, which is the Queen’s Prison. I will be closeted with him while Mr. Chewkle is admiring the carpetbags, and longing to secure the heaviest in the waiting-room of the railway. Having settled my business with Mr. Maybee, I shall turn my attention to the forged deed executed, I suppose, by Grahame, and stolen, I suspect, by Chewkle. Ay! on that very morning I watched him to and from his lodgings, and the chambers of Grahame’s solicitors. It will come right at last!—all come right at last! Flora, from your bright abode in heaven, your gentle eyes may witness that I have striven truly and honestly to keep the solemn vow I have made; and though, on earth you regarded me with emotions of distaste, or sad compassionateness only, you may bend on me a smile of tenderness denied to me on earth. Alas! alas!”

He placed his hands over his eyes, and, with a strange shivering convulsion of the frame, sobbed aloud.

CHAPTER IX.—LESTER VANE AND VIVIAN.

Take back the foul reproach, unmanner’d railer!

Nor urge my rage too far, lest thou should’st find

I have as daring spirit in my blood

As thou or any of thy race e’er boasted;

And though no gaudy titles grac’d my birth,

Yet Heaven that made me honest, made me more

Than ever king did when he made a lord.

Insolent villain!

Rowe.

The passionate embrace which had followed Flora Wilton’s adjuration to Harry Vivian not to leave England was but the prelude to fervent acknowledgments of mutual love.

Hal had quickly come to a sense of what constituted his predilection for Flora. He admired her beauty, her sweetness of manner and amiability of disposition. These emotions concentrated produced within him a species of devotional reverence.

Flora, on the contrary, loved him without being conscious of more than this. She was fully sensible of his handsome personal qualifications. She was attached to him by ties of gratitude of the strongest nature; for had he not saved her life? She was instinctively pleased flattered; gratified; by his subdued, and almost reverential manner towards her—by the unfailing homage of his clear, beaming eyes—in truth, by all those small silent attentions, and that gentle deference which are so grateful to the heart of woman.

It has been said that a woman cannot even to herself explain why she loves the being to whom she yields her heart. It is not alone by qualities of person or of mind she is won, but there is a charm that fascinates and enthralls her, which silently defies description, and will not submit to analysis.

This charm Flora discovered in Harry Vivian without knowing truly what was its real effects upon her; it elevated him into the first place in her estimation so gradually and naturally, that she did not detect the truth, although she found herself almost constantly thinking of him, dreaming of him, wishing that he would come again to see her even as soon as he had departed.

But when she met him in the glen in Harleydale Park, saw his saddened countenance, listened to his confession of love and heard his expressed determination of parting with her for ever, then she awakened to a sense of the state of her heart—then she saw that he was essential to her happiness—and that if he went abroad to return no more to her, her future life would be one of blank hopeless desolation.

She found now that she loved him fondly and dearly; and, as she clung to him, she revealed, with words broken by sobs, the truth to him, and extorted from him a promise that he would change his resolve, now that he knew her heart was irrevocably his.

Some hours passed in fond communings. Up to this moment, their relation to each other had, while essentially friendly, not been of a confiding character—it was so now. The time, however, came when they must part, and they did so with mutual expressions of tenderness, but with the understanding that for the present their attachment should be kept as a secret between them, and remain such until a favourable moment presented itself for an avowal.

It was also arranged that no mention should be made by either of their present meeting, but that Hal should return to the inn at which he had put up, and that he should pay his visit to the Manor House as though he had arrived from London on a visit, having taken advantage of the general invitation he had received from her father, to come to his house when he would, with the certainty of always receiving a warm welcome.

They separated. Flora, with a light step, and a strange buoyancy of spirit, hastened towards the house, and, after allowing her, as he believed, time to regain it, Hal left the sequestered glen, for evermore a dear spot in his memory, and struck off by a bye-path through the wood to the inn at which he had stopped on his arrival.

During the morning’s shooting, Lester Vane and Colonel Mires accidentally became separated. The former was an ardent sportsman, and in the excitement of excellent sport, he followed up his game with more celerity and eagerness than the Colonel, whose long residence in India had grafted upon him habits of indolence which he felt little disposition to change.

When the latter found that he was left alone—for he had seated himself beneath the branches of an oak, to rest for a short time—-it abruptly occurred to him that Lester Vane had a motive in being so violently active, and that he purposed distancing him with the object of having somewhere a tête-à-tête with Flora. The fact was that his mind, always dwelling upon her, and being apprehensively jealous of the power of others to win her favour to his disadvantage, he construed circumstances in many instances falsely and absurdly, so as to square with his prevailing impression.

Determined, therefore, not to be jockeyed by Vane, he wended his steps in the direction of the Manor House, taking a somewhat circuitous route, not heeding the occasional, though distant reports of Lester Vane’s gun in the opposite direction, because, eaten up by his jealous suspicions, he regarded the continued discharges as a mere blind, and believed them to be kept up by the gamekeeper, under the instructions of Vane, purposely to deceive him.

Sick, restless with inflamed thoughts, he pursued his course until he found himself emerge into the open park. As he did so, he perceived Flora emerge by a narrow path between two hills, forming a small natural gorge from the glen where she had met Hal.

He watched her proceed to the Manor House, which was in view; he noted the elastic step with which she hastened on, and he felt a painful, burning emotion of wonder as to why her bearing should have, in so brief a period, undergone a change at once evident and to him remarkable.

He had not long to wait in wonder.

Her form was scarcely lost among the shrubs and trees with which the gardens were profusely adorned, when his eyes suddenly lighted upon the form of young Vivian emerging from the same gorge which Flora had so recently left. Hal made unconsciously direct to the spot where the Colonel was standing, but desirous of not being observed by him the latter instantly retreated, and concealed himself in a small brake until the object of his curiosity and wonder passed.

The distance which divided them prevented his recognising at first the person of the stranger, who, he felt convinced, had just terminated an interview with Flora, alone and in a solitary spot.

He trembled with rage and agony; his lips became parched, his hands and forehead burned, as he concluded it must be Vane, and he resolved, upon his arrival near where he lay concealed, to advance and tax him, at any risk of consequences, with the ungentlemanly duplicity of which he believed he had been guilty.

What, however, was his astonishment and fury when he found that Harry Vivian was the hero of the interview, the stranger who had infused into Flora’s manner that apparent happiness, in which, of late especially, it had been so deficient.

His first impulse was to rush from his covert, fasten upon him, and strangle him; but the physical proportions of Hal were such as to compel him to reflect, in spite of his intense vindictiveness, upon the prospect of success in such a step. To be himself overpowered and fail, would be destruction to his hopes; and he paused to rack his brain for the best course for him to adopt.

But Harry Vivian was light of heart and of step, too, and he was abreast of Mires, and had disappeared in the recesses of the wood before the latter had decided upon what step he should take. Nothing was left for him but to retrace his steps, with the endeavour of meeting Lester Vane as he returned from his sport. He threw his gun over his shoulder and moved away with a shadow of gloom settled upon his features.

“Fool,” he muttered, “not to have thought of my gun. A stiff charge in both barrels would have more than sufficed to have dealt him his fate, and who would have suspected me?”

He cast his eyes rapidly in the direction Hal had taken, but no sign of him was visible, not even his receding footstep could be heard in the solemn stillness. He failed to meet Lester Vane in the wood, and when they encountered at dinner he saw that the latter treated him coldly, and with suspicious distrust.

As usual, old Wilton engaged him in conversation, leaving Lester the opportunity of paying undivided attention to Flora. With glaring eyes he watched every movement of both. He perceived that his rival was actuated by no common motive to gain the favourable opinion of Flora, and he observed that she seemed abstracted and inattentive, though her cheek was blooming like a rose, and her eye shining like a star.

But for the circumstance he had witnessed that morning, he would have believed that the low, earnest words, and the deep fervent gaze of Lester Vane had occasioned her heightened colour and the brilliancy of her eye; now he was convinced that her secret interview with young Vivian was the cause, and he cursed him bitterly in his heart.

Flora, pleading a headache, retired early, and Colonel Mires, feeling that conversation after she had gone would be insupportable, alleged fatigue as an excuse to seek his room, leaving Lester Vane and old Wilton alone.

The Colonel was too excited to remain in his room, and he walked upon the terrace, gazing up at the lighted windows of the sleeping apartments, imagining that in which Flora would repose, and groaning in spirit, as he thought that he would not be the chosen object of her thoughts and prayers ere she sank into the fairy land of dreams.

Once or twice he fancied that a shadow flitted past him, although at some little distance, and suddenly remembering the incident in Regent’s Park, it occurred to him that the same watcher at Flora’s window there might be here upon the same errand.

He darted into the deep shadow of a buttress upon the terrace, and, crouching, glided, like a panther stealing after his prey, up to the spot where he had seen the phantom-like object disappear.

He always carried a brace of small pocket pistols with him. It had been his custom in India, when stationed among the hill tribes, and he did so in England. He had never hesitated to shoot one of the natives, even upon a trifling pretext: he would not have hesitated much to do a similar thing in England, but that the law is inconveniently sensitive upon that point.

Now he seemed to feel himself justified in using the deadly weapon, because it would be discharged at some prowler seeking plunder. Such, at least, was the reason he should offer for his murderous act. That he arranged with himself. He drew from his breast pocket a pistol, and, upon observing a man, wrapped in a loose cloak, silently approach from the precincts of a turreted wing of the mansion, he felt convinced, though it was too dark to see his features, that he knew the stranger.

He raised his pistol and took a careful aim.

But himself and purpose were detected, and the stranger sprang hastily forward towards him.

Mires pulled the trigger. A flash of light, and a report followed. At the same instant he felt a heavy blow strike him upon the temple, which hurled him over the balustrade that edged the terrace, and he fell among the flowers beneath, on to the soft earth, and lay there stunned.

When he recovered, the servants were closing up the house. With a brain racking and splitting, he rose up. His hand yet grasped the pistol; his finger still curled round the trigger. Had he slain the man at whom he had fired? He gazed around him, and listened. There was no trace of excitement either within or without the building; no sign that the discharge of the pistol had been heard, or the short violent struggle between himself and the stranger witnessed.

He shook himself, and hastily brushed the evidences of his fall from his attire. He slowly ascended the steps of the terrace, feeling cold and shivering, while his limbs ached as though he had been beaten all over.

He threw a glance at the spot where he had fired at the stranger, but failed to perceive a prostrate human body, although he could not believe that he had missed his aim.

He entered the house, and then retired to his room, to pass the night in profitless speculation and mystified wonder. That he had encountered young Vivian, he felt convinced; but, so far as he knew, only to his own discomfiture: beyond, all was a chaos of doubt, presumption, and ardent but malicious wishes.

In the morning he met at breakfast, Wilton, Flora, and Lester Vane, but not a word transpired in allusion to the event of the preceding night. Flora seemed cheerful and expectant. She frequently gazed out of the window into the park; with what object, Mires very shrewdly guessed, and it was evident both to him and to Vane, that the animation she had displayed on the preceding evening was maintained.

Lester Vane was cold to Mires, but more than ever devoted in his manner to Flora, who appeared to take no notice of his profound attention, her thoughts being engrossed by a subject far more pleasing to her.

While the Colonel, with a heart gnawed by emotions of envy and jealousy, was regarding the only too tender politeness of Vane, a servant entered with a letter addressed to Mr. Wilton. The old gentleman opened it and after running his eye hastily over its contents, he handed it to Flora.

“It is from young Vivian,” he said; “he is in the neighbourhood, and will be here this morning, on a short visit. He shall be welcome, very welcome; I shall be most glad to see him, for, irrespective of the great obligation I owe to him, I like the youth himself. To his manly spirit is allied considerable genius and ability; he possesses rare skill in his art, and is modest withal—a true sign that he is no mere pretender.”

Both Mires and Vane bent their eyes upon Flora, to watch the effect this announcement would have upon her, and to observe the expression of her beautiful features as she perused the note placed in her hands. Their scrutiny was the reverse of “satisfactory”: they saw a roseate glow spring into her cheeks, and mount to her fair white brow; they observed, with disturbed feelings, the glitter of her eye; and the soft smile that gently curled her short upper lip. Mires, with wrathful vindictiveness, interpreted the play of her features; and Lester Vane did so too, but in vexed wonder.

“Who is this person?” the latter mentally asked himself. “He possesses evidently a high place in Miss Wilton’s good opinion! In what relation does he stand to her? What are his claims upon her favour?”

He at once, with considerable artifice, addressed himself to the task of ascertaining, and soon learned from Wilton’s lips, and from Flora’s expressive countenance, all and more than he desired to know.

“A rival,” he thought, and smiled contemptuously. “I scarcely imagine he excels me in personal qualifications,” he mused; “and on all other points I have him at an enormous advantage: I will crush his pretensions, if he have any, at once.”

Harry Vivian was not long behind his note. He was greeted in a warm, friendly manner by old Wilton; and by Flora, with a quiet earnestness, which could not fail to impress—as it was intended—those who witnessed it with a sense of the estimation in which she held him, and it did its work.

With surprise and anger, she observed that Colonel Mires, on Wilton presenting his new guest to him, threw up his head in a manner purposely and offensively insolent, and that Lester Vane drew himself up haughtily, and scarcely moved at the introduction.

She saw the quick flash of Hal’s eyes, and the scarlet flush which spread itself like a band across his forehead. Impulsively she moved towards him, to remove as far as possible by her own marked attention, the wound her father’s guests had inflicted upon him, by their contemptuous mode of receiving him, but her father, who did not appear to have noticed the behaviour of either of her guests, caught her by the hand.

“Flo’, my darling,” he said, “I will avail myself of your arm, to assist me to my library this morning; I have a word to say to you; and as our friends know each other now, they will excuse our short absence, and find amusement in the pleasure of their own society until our return.”

With the air of a patrician he waved his hand to his guests, and turned to leave the room.

On reaching the threshold of the door, Flora looked back to Hal, for she felt grieved, after what she had witnessed, to leave him in a position which must, necessarily be embarrassing to him. His eyes were bent upon her, and it seemed to her with a saddened expression in them.

She gently disengaged her arm from her father’s grip, and said—

“One moment, dear father, I will follow you.”

She returned to the room, and he proceeded towards the library.

She hastened towards Hal with a smiling countenance. She laid her white hand upon his arm, and whispered in his ear. He smiled, and pressed her hands in evident gratefulness, and she quitted the room, looking back upon him to the last.

Not a glance or motion did she vouchsafe to Vane or to Mires, for she, with swelling bosom, seemed to feel that the insult directed at Harry Vivian was levelled at her also, and she resented it accordingly. Of course this was not so construed by either of the suitors, nor did they seem to read her interpretation of their conduct in her bearing towards themselves; they only saw in it a confirmation of their fears, that she had by far too strong a predilection for the youth whose society they had somewhat unexpectedly been called upon to enjoy.

She was gone, and Hal was left alone with the pair. Colonel Mires cast a hurried glance at him; there was no sign of the last night’s encounter upon his person, or in his manner; he doubted, therefore, if he could have been the man he had seen and fired at, but, if not, who could it have been? That was a question to be settled hereafter.

He caught Hal’s bright eye fixed upon him, and he tried with, gloomy, knitted brows, to frown it down, but, as it never wavered in its settled gaze, he deliberately turned his back upon him, and with a formal salute to Lester Vane he strode out of the room.

The latter was thus left alone with Harry Vivian. He looked steadfastly and scrutinisingly at him from head to foot; he could not deny to himself that Hal was eminently handsome, and that he was dressed fashionably—nay, elegantly, and with unexceptionable taste. But he was a parvenu!—a creature in trade, only just out of his apprenticeship. What a rival! Vane’s lip curled as the thought passed through his mind; he even laughed, and aloud.

It was a mocking laugh, and grated on Hal’s ear most harshly. His impetuous blood surged boilingly through his veins, and he trembled in his effort to appear collected and calm. But such an outward aspect he felt in his present position to be imperative to preserve, and by a strong effort he kept his inward indignation from revealing itself.

After his sneering laugh, Vane, with a direct and insolent stare, again scanned Vivian from top to toe. As he smiled, he twirled the points of his moustache between his fingers and thumb, and then turning his back deliberately upon Harry Vivian, walked up to a pier-glass, and arranged his collar. Harry saw now that he was the object of deliberate and studied insult, but he felt that it would not be advisable to create a scene in Mr. Wilton’s house by any impetuous or violent conduct. For the behaviour of Colonel Mires towards him he could make allowance, but this man had no such excuse. In vindication of his position as a young honourable man, he resolved not to submit to the indignity, or to suffer Vane to part from him in the belief that he would endure contumelious rudeness without resenting it. .

He advanced towards him, and said, in a low, but clear, firm voice—

“Mr. Vane!”

Lester Vane turned slowly round and stared at him. A most rude, offensive stare it was; as though his groom had suddenly addressed him on easy and familiar terms.

It failed to add anything to the resentment which Hal felt at the treatment he had already experienced, because it could not exceed in offence the previous contumely directed at him. But he proceeded to say, with the air of one who would be neither put down nor put aside—

“Mr. Lester Vane, we meet here upon an equal footing—that is, as guests of Mr. Wilton. I have the honour of being received by him and Miss Wilton as a friend; let us therefore understand each other. While I am thus received by them, I claim to stand in the same position as any of their guests, and to be regarded by those guests as holding beneath this roof no meaner station. Here, sir, I am your equal, and I request you to distinctly understand that I will not calmly endure unprovoked insult from you or any individual breathing.”

Lester Vane regarded him with a glance of scornful contempt, and replied in a haughty, supercilious tone—“My good man, you forget yourself and presume. Let me give you distinctly to understand that I differ with you in your view of the laws and regulations which govern the position of visitors in this or any house. Mr. Wilton is undoubtedly master in his house and of his own actions, but I am no less the master of mine. Mr. Wilton, in his eccentricity, may choose to invite here some pin-maker’s son or apprentice, it is immaterial which, but I am not bound to entertain violent feelings of friendship for him, or even to associate with him. What is more, I do not choose to do so.”

He was about to leave the room but Hal caught him by the wrist.

“No,” he said, “pardon me: you cannot go this moment.”

Vane tried to fling him off, but Hal held him as if he were in a vice, and said—

“It will be unadvisable to struggle or to raise your voice, because I shall then consider you desire to make the household a witness to our brief discussion, and I shall deem you coward as well as poltroon. Now, sir, mark me, I repeat it—in this house I stand your equal; out of it, your superior—ay, sir, your superior. You may be, as the son of a poor lord, an empty-pocketed Honorable, without deserving even that appellative, for honour is independent of condition. You may possess a town-house, at which the sheriff’s officer is the most frequent visitor; you may drive a carriage obtained upon promise of payment, attended by a groom in arrears of a wages; you may move in fashionable circles, attired in clothes not paid for, or display at times money wrung by hard pleading from usurers at exorbitant interest; you may do worse even than all this, for in your ‘view’ to be honourable is not to be honest, but no item of that foul list entitles you to treat me with scorn, or to reflect upon my birth or position. Nor shall it. I will not permit your very brassy nobility to be flashed in my eyes, and sounded in my ears as pure gold. I know the ring of the true metal too well for that. If I am a pin-maker, I scorn to do a dishonourable action, and, therefore, I may justly, which you cannot, lay a claim to the title of ‘Honorable.’ And now let me warn you, that as I hold myself to be, in all particulars upon which manhood may pride itself, infinitely your superior, any further insult, tacit or direct, will be resented by me in such manner as your courage or your cowardice may determine. Now go.”

He flung him from him; then, turning his back, he walked slowly to the window, which was open, and stepped upon the terrace, strolling with a calm and seemingly imperturbed manner along the tesselated pavement.

Lester Vane was livid with passion. He was obliged to wipe the froth from his mouth. Yet, by no outward extravagance of manner did he betray the emotions seething within his breast. His first impulse was to follow, and commit some act of violence upon his aggressor; his second, to act as though he had come in collision with some low, vulgar personage.

As soon, therefore, as he was released, he shook his wrist, apparently to remove from it visible marks of a dirty hand; he smoothed the wrinkled evidences of the tight grip which had held him, and walked to the pier-glass, to arrange his attire, should it have been disarranged in the little passage which had just taken place.

He was acting. He believed the eye of the “pin-maker” to be upon him; it was not. The performance was therefore, in this instance, thrown away.

The glass told him that his lips were parched, and as white as his face. He bit them sharply to redden them.

“It would not be difficult to incite that fellow to go out with me,” he muttered. “I could put a bullet in his heart at fourteen paces, to a dead certainty.”

He paused for a moment, reflectively; then added—“Pshaw! it would not do to go out with him; I should raise him—insulting vagabond—to my level. No; I’ll ruin him here, and that promptly. The girl is mine! thank the stars! that is settled. It is very clear that Mires bears towards him a mortal hatred. Together we will get up a little plot to blast him in the favour of Wilton; and my skill in exercising an influence over a woman is mean indeed, if I cannot make the simple, single-minded, pretty Flora despise him. Hum! let me see. I will seek out Mires at once, and with his aid fling the scoundrel a harder back-fall than ever he has sustained in his life. When he is disposed of, I must turn my attention to my friend Mires. I don’t like that fellow’s visage. I don’t like his scowl. I must be careful how I handle him; but as for my friend, the pin-maker,’” he concluded with gnashing teeth, “he shall be tossed into a horse-pond before he leaves this, with the pretty Flora as a spectator, looking on and enjoying the sport.”

He cast a glance towards the terrace, but did not observe the object of his spite and envy; he then quitted the room, and proceeded to that of Colonel Mires, where a servant had informed him that he would find him.

He tapped lightly at the door, and entered the chamber. He beheld Colonel Mires leaning forward upon the edge of his chamber-window; yet in such a mariner as to avoid observation, and that he was gazing eagerly down upon the terrace beneath.

His curiosity being aroused, he moved with a noiseless step to Mires’s shoulder, and peered over it. The Colonel’s attention was so riveted upon some object, that he did not perceive his unexpected visitor, and the latter beheld on the terrace young Vivian, who appeared to be somewhat closely examining a particular spot. Presently he stooped down, picked up something, and put it in his pocket. Colonel Mires uttered an oath, as he witnessed the act, and the next moment, stepping back, he came in contact with Vane.

He gazed upon him fiercely, and said—

“How, sir? What is the meaning of this strange intrusion upon my privacy?”

“Your pardon, Colonel!” exclaimed Lester Vane with a quiet smile and a shrug of the shoulders. “I wish to have a few words in private with you, and sought you with that purpose. I knocked at your door, and imagined that I heard your voice bidding me enter. I came, in fact, to confer with you respecting the individual who has this morning obtruded himself in this house. I observed that you did not welcome him with any indication of delight; and as I regard his advent as an infliction and a nuisance, it struck me that together we might rid ourselves and the house of a common enemy by some little arrangement concerted for that purpose.”

Mires listened coldly. He by no means jumped at the proposition, but he motioned Vane to be seated, and they sat down to confer.

CHAPTER X.—THE OLD MAN AND HIS DAUGHTER.

Jul. Good father, I beseech you on my knees,

Hear me with patience but to speak a word.

Cap. Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!

I tell thee what—get thee to church o’ Thursday,

Or never after look me in the face.

Speak not, reply not, do not answer me.

Day, night, late, early,

At home, abroad, alone, in company,

Waking or sleeping, still my care hath been

To have her match’d: and having now provided

A gentleman of princely parentage,

Of fair demesnes, youthful and nobly trained,

Proportion’d as one’s heart would wish a man,—

And then to have a wretched puling fool,

A whining mammet, in her fortunes tender,

To answer—I’ll not wed—I cannot love—

I am too young—I pray you pardon me.

But, an’ you will not wed. Look to’t—think on’t—

I do not use to jest; Thursday is near—

An’ you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend;

An’ you be not, hang, beg, starve, die i’ the streets;

For, by my soul, I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee.

Jul. Is there no pity sitting in the clouds

That sees into the bottom of my grief!

Shakspere.

Wilton did not observe wherefore his daughter quitted his arm, and re-entered the breakfast-room. In all probability, if he had seen the little incident which followed, he would have taken no notice of it. He took again her proffered arm, and together they entered his library.

She arranged his easy chair—her frequent office—while he carefully fastened the door. Then, placing a chair for her, he motioned her to be seated.

She obeyed, gazing upon him with an expression of gradually dawning surprise.

“What can you possibly have to communicate to me in this retired, private manner, dear sir?” she exclaimed, expecting that the interview would result in the information that he had some present to make her—a pleasure he had frequently indulged in since his recent accession to wealth. Still there was an unusual expression in his air and manner that warranted a strange and uneasy foreboding that it would prove of greater importance and less pleasure than a mere present.

The old man gave a loud preparatory hem! to clear his voice, and then said, with a peculiar earnestness of tone—

“Flo’, my sweet one, during the struggling years of poverty to which we were together doomed, neither I nor your sainted mother—a-a-a-hem!—made any allusion, in your presence or in that of your brother, to the past affluence from which we were so harshly and unexpectedly thrust. Nor did we mention, at any time, the names of those with whom we associated or with whom we were on intimate or friendly terms. But there were many. Some are dead; some I do not wish to renew relations with; others I may shortly invite here, that I may have the joy of seeing the old hall brightened up with the loved faces of happier times. To come, however, to the point and purport of this interview, I must tell you that there was one friend to whom I was greatly attached He was the playmate of my childhood, the school companion of my boyhood, and my friend in after years. His name was Montague Vane of Weardale. You heard me, I think, on meeting with the Honorable Lester Vane in London, name him in terms indicating the high esteem in which I held him.”

Flora’s attention began to be riveted, and her wonder at the coming revelation to increase. She could not trust herself to speak. She merely bowed.

“Well,” continued Wilton, “our friendship was so single-hearted and unselfish—as we each many times proved it to he—that we determined, on both contracting alliances, to draw that friendship yet closer by cementing, if Providence permitted us, a union between our families.”

Flora felt the colour stealing from her cheeks, and she could hear the beating of her heart.

She watched, with intense eagerness, the half-thoughtful, half-abstracted expression her father’s features wore while speaking, and she remained wholly silent, awaiting what was yet to come.

Her father went on——-

“Yes, if Heaven blessed us with children of opposite sex, we made a solemn compact, to betroth them, that in due time they might wed each other.”

Flora became paler than marble, and a dizziness seemed to take possession of her so that she could scarcely preserve her equilibrium. Her father did not observe her, but went on, with the same thoughtful manner as before.

“Heaven denied him family,” he continued.

Flora breathed again.

“But I was more blessed—” he proceeded, “you were born. Almost immediately afterwards the wife of Montague Vane breathed her last. Her death was sudden, and the shock to my friend appeared to be irrecoverable. Our compact would thus have fallen through, but that he urged and entreated me to permit him to nominate the son of his elder brother, Lord Colborne, instead of the child he had hoped would have handed down his name. I assented, and each solemnly vowed to visit with our lasting displeasure and irreconcilable hostility, either of the children attempting to frustrate our compact by wilful and obstinate disobedience.”

“Cruel! cruel!” muttered Flora, overwhelmed with agony, at what had just been communicated to her.

Still, her father had not turned his eyes upon her to observe the effect this startling intelligence would naturally have, but continued addressing her.

“It is a singular coincidence,” he said, “that young Grahame—whose father, by the way, has written to propose for your hand for his son—ho! ho! I have declined that honour—I say it is singular that young Grahame should, by accident, introduce to me and to you the son of Lord Colborne, who, as you may surmise, is that young Vane to whom, in your infancy, I contracted you. Yet more singular, for these events generally turn out the reverse of what is intended or desired, Mr. Vane declares himself most strongly and passionately attached to you, and that it will be to him the proudest and happiest event that has happened or can happen in his life, when you bestow your hand upon him. We talked the matter over for some length of time last night, after you had retired. I have no reason to doubt the ardour of his affection for you, or that he will make it the study of his future life to render your happiness perfect and complete. He will be a lord some day, you know, and thus the humble daughter of the poor old gilder will be ‘a lady and ride her Barbary courser yet.’”

It would be wholly impossible to attempt to depict the horror and amazement of Flora, on receiving this announcement of the disposal of her hand and person. She sat utterly aghast. The dreams of the previous night, and at the golden dawn, were at one blow rudely shattered. Her father had always been so gentle in his tenderness to her; so mindful of her wishes and inclinings; so overjoyed to gratify them; so careful not to thwart them, that though a strange, unbidden impression had obtruded itself in her felicitous daydreams that he might object to her love for Hal Vivian, yet she felt that he was so devotedly fond of her, he would not be able to withstand her fond and earnest pleadings in Hal’s favour.

Such a contingency as this which he submitted to her she could not, by any possibility, have surmised; thought was absolutely paralysed. She knew not what to say, how to act, for what to prepare: in short, she was completely confounded, bewildered—ready to die with fright and grief.

Even now, Wilton had not raised his eyes to catch the expression of his daughter’s face. He was not without a consciousness that he was exercising a stretch of parental authority beyond its just limits, and he began to have a perception that it would be a great relief to him if he were to feel his daughter’s white arms entwining his neck, her soft lips pressing upon his forehead, as they uttered, in a low whisper, her assent to do as he wished her. But she made no sign, and he had a distinct sense that she did not.

“I sought this interview with you, Flo’, my darling,” he continued, with a slight cough, “because I thought, before you formed for yourself an attachment, you should know my position and your own, in respect to the disposal of your hand; also, because the young man to whom you are betrothed is in the house; and because, further, he is urgent to plead his own cause, to do which, of course, I have granted him full permission. You must expect to hear from his lips the soft language of affection, to think of him with tenderness, and always to remember that he will be your future husband.”

“Father!” burst from the lips of the unhappy girl. Sobbing hysterically, she flung herself at his feet, and clasped his knees.

Wilton did not expect this display. He had been surprised at her silence, and a feeling crept over him that she did not receive the revelation he made with her usual deference to any expression of his will, but he did not look for a weeping suppliant at his feet.

He started back and cried amazed:

“Flo’—Flo’—my child! why do you act thus?—what is the meaning of this affrighted sorrow?”

“Spare me—in mercy spare me!” she gasped. “Do not let me leave you; pray—pray—do not urge your proposition upon me!”

“My foolish girl,” he replied, soothingly, “we shall not separate. You will still be beneath this roof with me. Oh! believe me, I stipulated for that. There—there, Flo’—dry your tears; you can be a happy wife as well as a fond daughter.”

“No! no! no!” she exclaimed, with shuddering vehemence; “I cannot—I cannot—I dare not!” she half shrieked.

“Dare not!” echoed her father, elevating his eyebrows with wonder, almost with terror. “Your words are a mystery to me—your conduct inexplicable! What is the meaning of it all?”

“I cannot—oh! I cannot receive Mr. Vane’s addresses!” she exclaimed, almost frantically.

“Flora, this is but childish absurdity; unless you have some grave complaint to make to me against Mr. Vane,” said her father, with a slight sternness of manner. “Has he done aught to give you offence?”

“No,” she replied, in a faint tone.

“Is there aught in his appearance or manner to create aversion in your breast?” he inquired.

“It is not that,” she returned—“it is not that!” She paused.

“What is it?” inquired her father. “Rise, Flora; your position does not become the relation in which we stand to each other. Be seated; be composed and calm. Tell me where lies your objection to Mr. Vane?”

She rose up slowly, and stood before her father. She pressed her hand upon her throat to subdue its spasmodic heavings.

“I do not love him!” she ejaculated, almost inaudibly.

“I can well believe that,” returned her father, gently. “Your acquaintance has been short. People don’t, out of romances, and in the actual world, fall in love with each other the instant they meet. It takes time and observation, besides many little nameless charms, to raise love. At present you have not—you cannot have anything to say against the personal appearance of Mr. Lester Vane; he is gentlemanly in his manners, honourable in his sentiments, and in his disposition amiable and kind. I judge so from what I have seen. These are endearing qualities; and when you are thrown more into each other’s society—when he yet more softens his manner in his wooing, and consults your wishes and tastes, makes your will his, and shows to you that he has no greater earthly bliss than that afforded him in seeing you happy; when you come to observe this, and to appreciate it—then, then you will begin to love him.”

“Never,” cried Flora, emphatically.

“I say, yes,” responded Mr. Wilton, with sharp emphasis. “‘Dropping water wears away stone.’ You will receive him on probation; you cannot remain ice-cold to many and constant kindnesses—it is not your nature to do so; and when you find yourself growing grateful, you will find love creeping into your heart to keep it company.”

She had found it.

“I implore you, sir, to spare me from an ordeal agonising to me, and utterly useless and hopeless in its result to the person for whom it is appointed,” she rejoined, with extreme earnestness; “I never can love Mr. Vane.”

“Why not?” cried her father, in a more excited tone than he had yet used; and now regarding the expression on her face with startled wonder. He had never before seen it so aroused, or such a strange gleam flashing from her eye.

She spoke not in answer to this question.

“Why not, I ask?” he cried, loudly and harshly. “I see by your manner that you imply a motive for that assertion. Again, I ask you, why not?”

She struggled passionately with her emotions. She wrung her hands, and looked about her almost piteously for some aid or help by which she might escape from answering this question.

“Speak!” he thundered, animated by a rage she had never yet seen him display. It seemed gradually to change her to stone. She drew herself gently up, crossed her hands over her breast, closed her eyes, and said in a low, but clear, firm voice. “I love already—another!”

Wilton, who in his excitement, had risen angrily from his feet, now staggered back, and sank into his chair, like one smitten with paralysis.

He pressed his hands over his forehead, upon which stood large drops of perspiration. Suddenly he raised his head, and cried hoarsely—

“It is impossible! it is a subterfuge; it is—but if it were true, girl, I have—years, years ago—registered a vow.”

“And I!” she exclaimed, hysterically, “unknowing what you had done, I, too, have registered a vow with Heaven. I may not—cannot—will not—break it.” With a loud sobbing cry, she ran from the room, and sought her own, plunged into a deeper grief than any yet known by her, although she had suffered much.

She saw that she was to be torn from Hal, and her heart clung to him only the more vehemently. Now she knew, indeed, that she loved him; now she experienced in its fullest force how entirely he was enwoven with all her hopes of future happiness; she knew it, too, at the moment that she was to be robbed of him, perhaps for ever.

She gave way to the wildest emotions of sorrow; she flung herself by her bedside upon her knees, and called upon God to help her in her distraction. She pictured Lester Vane approaching her, stealing his arm, snakelike, about her waist, and his hot breath reeking on her cheek. She shuddered, and shrieked.

“How may I help myself?” she gasped. “How! how! how! Oh! I am so alone—so alone—none to counsel me—what am I to do? how save myself from this fate? Oh, Hal! Hal! had you but let me perish in the blistering flames. I shall go mad! I shall go mad!”

She sank, as she in acute agony vehemently ejaculated these words, prostrate upon the floor, in abject despair, and almost senseless.

Wilton remained for some time alone in his library, overwhelmed by the result of his interview with his daughter. A project he had nursed for years, even in his destitution, and especially in his affluence, was destroyed from the quarter in which he least expected to meet with opposition. He was foiled, too, by an event upon which he had not calculated.

Flora in love! With whom?—with whom? ah! that was the point. Who had won her young susceptible heart? Of young Vivian he never thought. It was but the other day he was a mere youth; his figure did not, therefore, now present itself to his inquiring eyes. Was it young Grahame? His father had written to propose the match, but where had they met? Then, too, he was vulgar and foolish. No, no; he gave Flora’s taste more credit. Who was there else? no one—save Mires.

The old man stopped in his walk.

“Can he have taken the opportunity of being my guest, to gain her simple heart?” he muttered, with a fierce and angry gesture. “Can he possibly have done this? He may—he is subtle and insinuating; if he has, he shall never have her—never. It may be that I have hit the truth in this surmise, but I will be sure; I will question him, and from his own lips learn the truth.” He rang his bell violently, and a servant answered him.

“Seek Colonel Mires,” he said, sharply; “say to him that when he is at liberty, I should be glad of a few minutes’ conversation with him here in the library.”

The man disappeared with a bow, and performed his errand.

An hour probably elapsed, during which Wilton was eaten up with anxiety, and a thousand distracting and inexact surmises. He was about again to summon his servant, to request the presence of his guest, when Colonel Mires made his appearance.

Wilton made a sharp and curt remark upon the engagement which had so long detained him from complying with his request for an interview, but he expressed his gratification that it had not wholly prevented him from presenting himself.

The Colonel saw that something had happened, and excused himself by stating that the servant who had conveyed to him the message, had given him no intimation that Wilton desired the interview to be immediate.

“As it is calculated to have a material influence upon my future peace, it is one which cannot commence too early, nor close too soon,” Wilton exclaimed, as he motioned Colonel Mires to a seat, which he accepted. Wilton then proceeded—

“I have a daughter, Colonel Mires, almost at a marriageable age.”

Colonel Mires’ face flushed crimson, as Wilton’s bright eye met his. He only bowed, however, wondering what this observation was to prelude, especially as he could see that the old man was trembling with strong excitement.

“That daughter, as you are aware, Colonel Mires,” continued Wilton, “is my favourite child, the gift of wedded love, the most beautiful among her sex—the ‘Flower of my Flock.’ I had designed a certain position for her. I had bound myself to its fulfilment by a vow. I have through the greatest trials and worst vicissitudes cherished it, and now, when upon the verge of its consummation, I find my purpose retarded, flung back by an event as unlooked for as it is most untoward.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“Yes, sir, indeed. Mark me, Colonel Mires, I am fully acquainted with my daughter’s temperament, her inclinings, every phase of her gentle disposition; I am fully convinced that she has no guile, would not cast about her to find a man to love, to bestow her heart upon, in the ultimate hope of following up the gift with that of her hand. It is not her nature; she must be wooed to be won.”

“That I believe,” exclaimed Colonel Mires, with some little emphasis.

“Of course,” responded Wilton. “Now let me inform you, sir, if you know it not already, she has been wooed, sir, and won; surreptitiously wooed, and stealthily, fraudulently won.”

The face of Colonel Mires changed colour like a chameleon; he knitted his brows, and bent an almost fierce gaze upon Wilton.

“Have you strong reasons, sir, for forming this strange conclusion?” he inquired.

“Oh, Colonel!” rejoined Wilton, with an expressive gesture, “the very best; I have it on the authority of the lady herself.”

An oath escaped the lips of the Colonel. He rose and paced the room in visible agitation. When he had somewhat controlled his emotion, he returned to his seat, and confronting Wilton, he said—

“Will you tell me, sir, who has thus acted?”

“That is what I wish to know,” exclaimed Wilton, striking the palm of his hand with his clenched fist; “the lady omitted that very important item in her confession. I sent for you under an impression that you were the very man who could supply that valuable piece of information.”

Colonel Mires was bursting to ask for the circumstances which led to this confession on the part of Flora. He could easily understand that it must have arisen from a proposition made by her father to her, extremely repugnant to her feelings. He had an instinctive sense that he was not the object of her father’s choice, and he was at least glad that Flora had rejected the proposed husband, whoever he might be.

It was not difficult for him at the same time to form a shrewd guess at the person Flora had acknowledged loving. From the frame of mind in which Wilton was at present, he foresaw that it would be easy to ruin the successful rival in Wilton’s estimation at once, and, as he believed, for ever; he therefore instantly resolved to attempt it.

“Have you formed no surmise identifying the person who has inveigled your daughter’s affections?” he asked. “I have” replied Wilton, drily.

“May I ask who it is?”

“I prefer hearing your communication first,” responded Wilton, in the same hard manner.

“I think I can show him to you, and at this moment,” exclaimed Mires, rising.

“I am afraid that I expect you can,” returned Wilton, growing more stern, severe, and cold in his manner.

“Attend me, if you please,” observed Mires; noticing the distant manner of his host.

He advanced to the centre window, which looked out upon the terrace beneath. He motioned to Wilton to gaze below. He pointed out Hal Vivian, who stood in an attitude of melancholy abstraction, his gaze seemingly fixed upon the beautiful landscape, stretching away to the horizon.

“That is the man,” he exclaimed, emphatically.

Wilton gazed upon him with distended orbs, and then gave utterance to a wild laugh of incredulity.

“Preposterous!” he exclaimed.

“Unquestionably,” remarked Mires; “but it yet is the fact.”

Old Wilton pressed his hands to his temples, and tried to look back upon the past. The effort helped him to no solution of the enigma. That his daughter should have fallen in love with the goldsmith’s apprentice seemed incredible; but when he came to remember that he had saved her life, had been able to pay her many most acceptable attentions when she was in misery and distress, he began to believe that there might be something in it after all.

He staggered rather than walked to his seat, and, pressing his hands again over his brow, once more went over the scenes in which, under his eye, they had taken part together. There was not enough to satisfy him yet that the Colonel’s assertion could be true.

He turned sharply to him.

“Pray inform me, Colonel,” he said, “how you came to alight upon this discovery?”

The Colonel shrugged his shoulders.

“I had a shrewd notion of it from the first,” he returned. “I observed his conduct when visiting you at the Regent’s Park. I detected his artful duplicity immediately after I had been, as your guest, called upon to endure his company. I noticed his obsequious deference to you, his readiness to coincide with your views, and to assent, without reflection, to all you said.”

“I did not observe that,” remarked Wilton, thoughtfully.

“No,” replied Colonel Mires; “nor did you notice his marked, though quiet, attentions to your daughter; his incessant gaze upon her eyes when she was present; his subdued, yet devoted, bearing to her; the cunning manner in which he turned every word from her lips into an acknowledgment of love, or asked for grateful remembrances of an act which the Royal Society’s fire-escape conductor would have done much better, and have expected scarcely scanty thanks for the able performance of his duty. You did not observe how he foisted his society upon her at every turn, because you never dreamed that he would be guilty of such presumption, any more than you could have any conception that he had induced her to consent to clandestine meetings, or of the number of such interviews which have taken place.”

Old Wilton sprang to his feet, with a howl of wounded rage and pride.

“Colonel Mires, this is a most grave charge,” he cried, with foaming lips. “It is one that compromises my daughter’s fair fame, as well as the honour of young Mr. Vivian, of whom, until you have spoken concerning him, I have heard nothing but what redounds to his credit.”

Colonel Mires sneered.

“Praises, in fact,” he said, “which have been prepared for your ears. Do not misapprehend me, Mr. Wilton,” he continued, hastily; “I have no intention or design to compromise the fair fame of Miss Wilton. She is too pure, too ingenuous and artless for any charge having such object, to be sustained. But her simple guileless nature lays her open to the designs of an unprincipled adventurer, who, by adventitious circumstances, has obtained some influence over her, and she might be induced to consent to an interview artfully suggested, and ardently pressed, without having, in her simplicity, any notion that her assent would bear a construction unfavourable to her—to any lady acting in the same manner, under similar influence.”

Mr. Wilton waved his hand sternly.

“Let us keep to facts, Colonel,” he said. “You are now charging upon my daughter and Mr. Vivian the grave impropriety of indulging in clandestine interviews—are you prepared with proofs?”

“I can speak to one having occurred yesterday,” replied Colonel Mires.

“Yesterday!” echoed Wilton. “You are mistaken, you must he. Vivian did not arrive from London until to-day—that is, at least—are you sure of what you assert?”

“I saw him in your park yesterday—let him deny it if he dare.”

“Colonel Mires, I must see this matter to the end. I will send for Mr. Vivian, this moment, and interrogate him—and in your presence.”

“As you will,” returned Mires, coolly.

Mr. Wilton rang the hell sharply, and when the servant answered the summons, he said—

“You will find in the garden my guest, Mr. Vivian, ask him to attend me here immediately. Say that I have something of importance to confer with him upon.” The man disappeared, and, in a few minutes, young Vivian was ushered into the library. He started on seeing Colonel Mires, and he turned his eyes upon the flushed and excited countenance of old Wilton. The scene between himself and Flora, in the glen, on the day preceding, flashed across his mind, and instantly a grim foreshadowing of what was to come passed like a gloomy cloud over his brain.

Wilton’s manner was grave, cold, even harsh. Colonel Mires met him with an insulting but triumphant curl of the lip, which Hal retorted with a glance of scorn and defiance.

“Mr. Vivian,” commenced Wilton, his voice trembling in his eagerness to come at the truth, “I am given to understand that you have designs upon the affections of my daughter, Miss Wilton—that you have prosecuted those designs with secrecy and subtlety, and, by mean artifices, have in some degree succeeded in your unworthy purpose——”

“Mr. Wilton—sir!” interrupted Hal, in a voice which startled him, “are you conscious of the nature of the words you are addressing to me? Mean artifices!—unworthy purpose! This is bitter language, sir, which I do not deserve, and most indignantly repudiate!”

“Listen to me!” rejoined Mr. Wilton, with an imperious manner.

“With respect,” responded Hal; “but at the same time, I must insist, sir, in addressing me you do not employ terms derogatory to my honour!”

Colonel Mires laughed scornfully.

Hal turned fiercely to him.

“Our day of reckoning is to come,” he exclaimed; “it is unnecessary for you to add to your obligations.” Then again turning to Mr. Wilton, he continued—

“I presume, sir, that I have been brought here as a delinquent placed upon his trial—that you will enact the parts of judge and jury, and this man will be the counsel for the prosecution, the witness, and will offer the whole of the evidence. Be it so—proceed with your charges, I will not utter one word until you have both finished, I shall then reply to the allegations; and; of this be assured; sir, that I shall not now, any more than I have ever done, swerve from the truth, be the consequences what they may to myself.”

Hal kept his promise; not a word was extorted from him by the wild suppositions of Wilton, or by the insults, the taunts, or the base insinuations of Colonel Mires; but at last when Wilton called upon him for his answer, he had discovered that, although Flora had confessed to having disposed of her heart, she had not stated to whom; that all that had been produced against himself were the suppositions of the old man, or suggestions of the bitter enemy before him. Even the accidental interview of the day before, so strongly referred to, rested only on Colonel Mires’ statement of having seen Flora and himself emerge successively from the glen; and he perceived that if he chose to keep his mouth sealed, the main features of the charge would hang upon the veracity of the Colonel, respecting which it was certain that Mr. Wilton did not entertain the most exalted notions. He, however, resolved to free Flora from the faintest breath of imputation, and to acknowledge just so much—with regard to their mutual passion—as the turn his own defence and explanations might eliminate, and no more.

Had the course adopted to examine him been what it ought to have been, he would not have concealed an incident; as it was, he determined to reserve as much as he could, from Colonel Mires, at least.

Before, however, he could speak, the library door was flung open, and the servant announced in a loud voice—

“Mr. Mark Wilton.”

CHAPTER XI.—THE UNPLEASANT CONFERENCE.

Sieg. You are charged,

Your own heart may inform you why, with such a crime as—

Gab. Give it utterance, and then

I’ll meet the consequences.

Sieg. You shall do so—

Unless

Gab. First, who accuses me?

Sieg. All things.

If not all men; the universal rumour—

My own presence on the spot—the place, the time,

And every speck of circumstance, unite

To fix the blot on you.

—Byron.

Mr. Chewkle—attired as a traveller about to undertake a long journey—entered the waiting-room of the Great Western Railway Station on the morning following his interview with Nathan Gomer, precisely as the clock pealed the hour of nine. He gazed about him—inspected with unabashed steadfastness the features of the individuals assembled in readiness for the 9.15 train, and then seated himself in a conspicuous situation.

He arranged his hair and his hat: he looked slowly once more at every face, and then, putting the knob of his walking stick to his lips, he fixed his eyes upon a heap of miscellaneous luggage.

He commenced to wait for Nathan Gomer.

At the same hour Nathan presented himself at the gate of the Queen’s Prison, and, in his turn, waited for admission. He took the opportunity of obtaining from one of the officers “on the lock” some particulars respecting Mr. Joshua Maybee, and, immediately the opportunity was afforded him, he made direct for that man’s apartment on the county side of the prison.

Josh Maybee was not afflicted with a mania for early rising; he liked to take out a large share of existence reclining between sheets upon a mattress: he would have preferred a down bed, but that was a luxury unknown to the prison, at least on the county side; he, therefore, went to bed early, and rose late.

He was miserably poor; and, as scarcely anything in the place acknowledged him for master, he had no fear of being robbed—consequently, he slept with his door unlocked. It saved him a trouble night and morning. Nathan Gomer, therefore, entered his room without difficulty, and, closing the door softly behind him, turned the key in the lock. He gazed upon the poor mean prison bed, and upon the pallid old face lying upon the pillow—the eyes closed in sleep. He sighed—for the sallow hue of the man’s features, and the long lines furrowing forehead and cheek, told of long incarceration, and much continued mental suffering.

He drew towards the bed with a noiseless step, and taking off his hat and gloves, he laid them aside with his stick. He then seated himself upon the floor by the bedside, placing his face within a foot of Maybee’s, so that when the latter awoke, he should be promptly alive to the fact that he was honoured with the presence of a visitor.

Without pretending to assert that the eyes of Nathan Gomer possessed magnetic influence, it must be acknowledged that very shortly after Nathan had fixed them upon Joshua Maybee’s sealed orbs, the latter commenced a tremulous vibration, and ultimately the eyeballs appeared to be slowly rotating beneath the lids, increasing their motion until the eyelids seemed forced open, and the eyes of Josh Maybee and Nathan Gomer met.

For an instant there was perfect silence, accompanied by a fixed stare on both sides, Maybee being uncertain whether he was dreaming or awake; then Nathan grinned, whereupon Maybee uttered a roar of fright, and would have leaped out of bed, but that Nathan restrained him, bade him lie down again, and not be terrified. He called upon him to preserve his calmness, as he desired to have a long conversation with him. He also told him that he would have occasion to exercise his memory with patient perseverance, and to communicate the result of the examination to him. He added, that he might expect immediate remuneration for his revelations, equivalent to their value, as well as the prospect of a speedy liberation from the den in which he had so long been incarcerated.

Josh Maybee listened in silent amazement. He looked distrustfully and suspiciously at his mysterious visitor; and, notwithstanding the grand promises of pecuniary recompense and release from imprisonment, he did not seem disposed to entertain the proposition, or to do anything, indeed, to prolong the interview. His flesh crawled as he looked upon the singular features of the strange being before him, who nodded and grinned at him very much after the manner of the gnomes of the Golden Harz, of whom, in his younger days, he had read with awe; and he could hardly help thinking that the awful-looking little stranger was, at least, a native of a lower world, gifted with the power of appearing on earth, adopting, when he availed himself of the advantage he possessed, a form and deportment calculated to fling into hysterics of terror all whom he honoured with his presence.

It was not until Hathan Gomer perceived the alarm his appearance excited, that he more clearly explained the nature of his visit, and displayed his knowledge of the information obtained from Chewkle, then Maybee became more composed, quitted his squalid bed, and dressed himself in his greased and faded habiliments.

By the liberality of Gomer, he was provided with a breakfast the like of which he had not tasted for years; and when he had finished his repast, and emotions stole over him of a right royal and monarchical character, Nathan commenced enlisting his sympathies in favour of Wilton and his daughter, whom he remembered on his attention being drawn to them. He followed up his observations by reverting to the earlier periods of Maybee’s life, extorted from him a complete history of past events, and elicited as he proceeded all that was essential to the establishment of Wilton’s claim to the estates left by old Eglinton.

This done, Nathan Gomer, being beyond a doubt satisfied on all-points, even to the production of documents, entered into a compact with Joshua Maybee, which the latter swore to fulfil. The amber-visaged dwarf, having supplied the poor old prisoner with funds, arranged when he would again see him, and then took his departure.

He jumped into a cab on quitting the prison, and drove to a solicitor’s. The interview between him and his legal adviser was marked by much excitement on the part of Nathan Gomer and evident surprise on that of the lawyer, as well as by the rapid taking of notes. When this interview terminated, Nathan flung himself once more into a cab, and was whirled away at a smart pace for a new destination.

Mr. Chewkle during this period sat in the waiting-room at the railway station patiently for half-an-hour; he was amused by the coming and going of persons, by the diversity of bags and parcels moving to and fro, the contents of which he imagined and coveted, and the general activity and bustle prevailing in such a place. But when ten o’clock struck he began to fancy that he had mistaken the time appointed, and had arrived here an hour before his time.

He sharply examined every person who entered, expecting to see Nathan, but eleven o’clock came and passed, and Gomer had not made his appearance.

Mr. Chewkle now began to grow uneasy—he went carefully over the last night’s interview, but could not alight upon any part of it in which, to use his own language, he had “sold himself;” he, therefore, tried to content himself by assuming that Nathan Gomer had been unexpectedly detained on some important business, and he decided on allowing him the latitude of another hour.

It was striking twelve when, exhausted by the dreary task of enduring three hours’ expectancy, he rose to depart, having fixed his eye upon a lady’s black leather travelling bag, which seemed to be worth taking away He advanced towards it with the air of one who was about to take possession of his own property, and hurry away with it. He had his hand upon the handle, and was in the act of making a plunge at the doorway, when he felt himself seized by the wrist, and a voice said sharply in his ear—

“Put down that bag!”

He dropped it instanter, and turned to apologise for his “mistake,” to as he presumed an officer, but found that he was in the grip of Nathan Gomer.

His jaw dropped, he uttered a kind of hysterical screeching laugh, and gasped out something respecting being made to wait so long without having anything to amuse him, and, at the same time, he felt inwardly convinced that the dwarf had been hiding somewhere ever since nine o’clock to have the opportunity of pouncing upon him in the very act in which he was caught.

Nathan made no allusion to the discrepancy between the hour he had named to meet Chewkle, and that at which he appeared; he merely said—

“Follow me!”

He quitted his hold of Chewkle as he spoke, and made his way out of the station into the street, and Chewkle followed him at the same rapid pace.

Nathan made his way to a small tavern in the vicinity, and diving into a low, dark, room, motioned to Chewkle, who was at his heels—with an unpleasant suspicion that a policeman was bringing up the rear—to take a seat.

He ordered Chewkle a stiff glass of a compound called, by a most elastic stretch of the imagination, brandy and water, and when they were alone, and Chewkle actively engaged in disposing of his powerful beverage, Nathan briefly told him that he had decided to take no steps in the matter, upon which he, Chewkle, had, on the previous evening, visited him.

“You’ve made up your mind to that, eh?” said Chewkle, eyeing him steadfastly.

“Quite: I am resolved,” was the reply.

“You may change your mind?” suggested Chewkle. “No,” said Gomer. “Nothing will make me alter my determination.”

“I can,” observed Chewkle, emphatically.

“No; the same propositions and inducements have been held out before, but proved, after considerable cost, valueless.”

“This won’t,” urged Chewkle.

Nathan Gomer shook his head.

“I tell you it won’t!” cried Chewkle, almost fiercely. “Look a-here!” he exclaimed, in a lower tone, and touching Nathan on the sleeve; “you’d rather Wilton have the property than Grahame, wouldn’t you?” Nathan nodded.

“Well, suppose the man I spoke to you about last night was to die?”

“To die?” echoed Nathan, coldly.

“Yes, was to die all of a sudding, and I was to put into Grahame’s hand a cettifyket of the man’s death? He would push on his claim. Wilton’s only chance would be floored, and Grahame must win.”

“But the man is healthy, and won’t die,” suggested Gomer, with a nonchalant air, which had its effect.

“Healthy men die very suddenly sometimes, you know,” said Chewkle, in a meaning tone; “and its a strornirary fact that men who are wanted out o’ the way goes out of the way jest in the nick o’ time.” Nathan felt the roots of his hair tingle and vibrate. The scoundrel meant murder: he was sure of that.

He made no answer. Chewlde dropped his head suddenly, and hissed in Nathan’s ear.

“S’pose old Wilton hisself was to turn up his toes when he was out a walking, eh? I ’spects Grahame would come in for the swag then, eh? Grahame’s a keen sort, I can tell you.”

Nathan’s face grew a deeper amber than ever; his eyes almost blazed in their brightness; he felt a kind of choking sensation; but he controlled himself.

“Wilton has a son,” he murmured.

“Gone away—not known where, as they says on the enwellops when a lawyer’s letter, with a writ in it, comes back,” replied Chewkle, quickly. “Ah!” he added, “Grahame would have possession of the lot before that young un turned up, and if he ever should show again, he wouldn’t easily get out of the Scotchman’s clutches.”

Nathan Gomer mused; presently he said—

“There is something in your suggestion worth consideration.”

“I knows there is,” chimed in Chewkle.

“I may, therefore, alter my mind in so far as paying Wilton a visit, and consulting with him upon it,” observed Gomer; “but, really, I don’t think anything will come of it in the face of the arrangement now being effected,” he continued.

“Are the dockyments signed by both parties?” inquired Chewkle, rather eagerly.

“No, they are not yet signed,” replied Gomer “but a part of the provisions have been carried out, for I have advanced Grahame a large sum of money.”

“I knows it; on the understanding that if the agreement ain’t completed, he is to return all the money advanced.”

“Exactly.”

“He can’t do it,” returned Chewkle, emphatically. “You came down upon him with that proposal, like a hangel from the sky, and saved him from crunching up like a bit o’ burnt wood—you saved him from wuss—much wuss—but that’s neither here nor there. How-somever, he won’t let a chance slip to get the whole of the estate into his claws. I’ll try a leetle more o’ this brandy, if you please; it’s some o’ the right sort, this is,” subjoined Chewkle, labouring under a delirious delusion on that point.

His glass was replenished, and the interval seemed to give Nathan Gomer time to cogitate, although, actually, his plan had been matured before he sought Chewkle at the railway station.

At length he said—

“I will see Wilton, but I cannot make the journey to Harleydale until three weeks have elapsed.”

“Three weeks,” echoed Chewkle; “say three years. A-hem! Wilton may be dead before three weeks is over.”

“Scoundrel!” thought Gomer. He fixed his eye upon Chewkle, and said—

“That is as Providence directs! For myself, I have important business in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and Dublin, which must be transacted, and I have no one to nominate in my place if I go to Harleydale.”

“Could I do the work?” exclaimed Chewkle, falling plump into the trap.

“You?” exclaimed Gomer, inquiringly.

“Yes; I am used to all sorts of commission work, bill-broking and collecting. I’ll hunt up a man with any officer in the force, and I’ll dun a man out of his account and out of his mind with any collector in the kingdom.”

“What commission?” asked Gomer. “Oh! I’ll leave that to you. I has five per cent on small things, and two and a-half on large, and my expenses, but I’ll leave that to you.”

Gomer sat and mused, and expressed doubts as to whether he could trust him, and played so much and so well with his fish that the latter absolutely gorged himself with the hook. He importuned the dwarf so urgently at last to employ him in the business he spoke of, that the little man consented, on condition that he started to Birmingham by the three o’clock train that day.

To this proposition Chewkle assented readily, and declared himself ready to go home to his lodgings at once, get a few things for his journey, and then depart on his mission. Gomer accompanied him, furnished him with papers, instructions, and money for his travelling expenses, and never left him until he saw the train leave the platform at Euston Square Station, with Chewkle inside, bound for Birmingham.

Nathan Gomer returned to his solicitor’s, and it was late at night before he saw his bed. The following morning, an application was made in the Court of Chancery in the case of Maybee, and an eloquent Counsel dwelt long and forcibly on the terrible punishment inflicted upon a man imprisoned for eighteen years, through an act of negligence on the part of his solicitor.

The Lord Chancellor granted an order for the man to be produced in Court, and on the following day, wan, haggard, and sallow in the face, dirty and tattered in his attire, he was brought before the Lord Chancellor, in the custody of an officer of the Queen’s Prison. The Lord Chancellor interrogated him, and elicited much that excited great commiseration, and his discharge was ordered forthwith.

The necessary legal forms having been complied with, Nathan Gomer conveyed him away from the prison, after settling all claims, and bore him—where Mr. Chewkle was likely to have much trouble to find him.

Nathan had requested Mr. Chewkle to correspond with him at stated intervals, and inform him of the progress he had made in the mission he had undertaken—chiefly a collection of overdue bills. The agent duly kept his engagements, although Nathan Gomer began to have shrewd suspicions that he was keeping as well some of the proceeds. However, the postmarks upon his communications were evidence of his being far from London, and that served the purpose of his employer to perfection.

Having made skilful and satisfactory arrangements in London, Nathan Gomer started from thence to Harleydale Manor, to have an interview with Wilton upon the new and important phase in his situation.

He arrived at his destination at a remarkable moment.

On reaching the manor-house, and entering the hall, he gave his name to the hall-keeper, and was informed that a servant had the moment previously ascended to the library to announce a gentleman who had followed him up.

Nathan Gomer, with a light step, sprang up the stairs, and arrived at the library door as the servant, in a loud tone of voice, announced—“Mr. Mark Wilton.”

For the moment he was astounded, but recovering himself, he raised his finger to the servant, who recognized him and would have announced him too. He glided behind a screen, and awaited the result of a meeting which he knew would prove of a peculiar kind.

He had no conception of the scene enacting at the moment of Mark’s arrival, and he was to be surprised even yet more than he expected.

Old Wilton, upon the name of his son being announced, started and staggered as if he had been smitten a violent blow; then he drew himself up erect. His flushed face became pale, and his brow remained contracted as sternly as before.

Mark Wilton entered with a hasty step, and advanced rapidly to his father, with the intention of embracing him, but he paused upon observing the old man’s attitude and demeanour.

He stretched out his hands.

“Father!” he exclaimed, with emotion.

The old man remained rigid as a statue, and made no sign of taking the proffered hands.

How changed he was since Mark had last seen him! Then in a poor lodging, surrounded by poverty and bowed by care and toil, he seemed the poor haggard slave of want; now, the tenant of a noble mansion, attired as a gentleman, conscious of the position to which he had been born, he looked like a patrician, only to be approached with deference and humility.

But for certain characteristics of feature, Mark would not have known him again.

Wilton regarded his son with a glance which, while it noted the change that time and climate had made in him too, abated none of its sternness.

“Mr. Mark Wilton,” he said, in harsh tones, “years have passed since you flung away your title to address me by the name of father. You quitted my roof by an exercise of your own self-will; you return to me, I presume, under a similar influence, not having during the whole interval communicated with me or any of your relatives. I am therefore to attribute, I suppose, your present visit to the circumstance of a change for the better in my condition reaching your filial ear.” Mark’s face became the hue of crimson. He folded his arms, and looked his father steadfastly in the eyes.

“I left home, sir,” he exclaimed, in a firm tone, “under motives which I had hoped you would have appreciated. I was a burden to you, sir, in your poverty. I absorbed a share of that income which was barely enough to support the family without my addition. I had no means of aiding you, for I knew no trade. I left you, therefore, to fight the world as best I could, so that I relieved you of a tax upon your exertions. I left you in silence, because I would spare myself the entreaties, the urgings and implorings, to me to remain at home. They would have deeply affected and pained me without making me swerve from my purpose. I have remained silent during my absence, because my career has been a chequered one. I would not write to you until I could send some earnest of my love for you all with my communication. It was only at the last moment when almost in a day I became the owner of considerable wealth, that I felt the time had come for you to be made acquainted with my existence, and immediately I hastened to England to share with you what I had obtained; and if it were not enough for all, to leave you once more until I had won from Fortune sufficient for myself. Such, sir, are the facts I cannot beg you to believe them, because you know, sir, as a boy, I respected truth too reverently to give you the right to doubt them. I have no more to say, sir, than this. My bursting heart tells me that had my most fondly loved, my sainted mother have been spared by God to have met me here, my reception would not have been such as you have extended to me.”

Mark pressed his hands over his eyes. There was a convulsive twitching about the mouth of old Wilton, and his eyelids filled with water.

“Mark!” he exclaimed, in a husky voice: “Mark—my son! In the name of her whom you have apostrophised, come to my heart!”

Mark sprang into his father’s arms, and they embraced. They wrung each other’s hands warmly, and the reconciliation was complete.

Harry Vivian would have retired, to leave the father and son to themselves, though Colonel Mires did not offer to move, but old Wilton waved his hand to him to stay.

“You will oblige me by remaining, if you please, Mr. Vivian,” he said, making an effort to clear his voice. “We will settle our little unpleasant conference before you take your departure. You must see that it will be wise to do so—nay, that it will emphatically be necessary to do so.”

“What!” exclaimed young Wilton, suddenly: “is that Mr. Harper’s nephew?”

Old Wilton assented grandly with, his head. The manner was distinctly patronising.

Alas! how easy it is to forget past services, when the remembrance would interfere with present selfish considerations!

Young Wilton advanced rapidly to where Vivian stood, and seized his hand.

“Hal!” he cried.

“Mark!” exclaimed Hal.

The grasp of the hand that followed was not less warm and earnest than that which had taken place between father and son.

Mark knew Hal’s nature well, and prized its worth at its true value.

After a few brief words of congratulation on both sides, Mark said—

“My father speaks of an ‘unpleasant conference.’” He looked sharply at Colonel Mires. “I hope, Hal, there is nothing between you and him”——

“Be silent for the present, Mark,” exclaimed his father, hastily. “You shall know all shortly, and I am sure you will see matters from the same point of view as myself. Mr. Vivian, you were about to speak when my son entered. Will you be kind enough to proceed? My son may as well be present at what is about to take place.”

Hal bowed.

“I have but little to say, Mr. Wilton,” he exclaimed in reply; “but that little, I trust, will be to the pur pose. I have been charged with having surreptitiously and artfully ensnared the affections of your daughter. Miss Wilton. I answer, that this charge has been made to you by one who deliberately preferred it, knowing it to be utterly, shamefully and scandalously false.”

Colonel Mires, with a furious gesture sprang to his feet. Harry Vivian turned to him with a firm, unmoved air, and waved him calmly but contemptuously back to his seat.

“Mr. Wilton,” he said, with dignified appeal, “I remained silent while contumely and base imputations were heaped upon my head. I expect—nay, I demand, that at least justice be rendered to me!”

Mark Wilton appeared thunder-stricken by what was passing, and stood gazing upon his father and his old playmate in mate surprise.

In the meanwhile, Mr. Wilton observed hastily to the accused—

“Certainly, Mr. Vivian, it is your right, and justice shall be meted out to you. But this distinct denial, so unexpected, what does it mean?”

“This, Mr. Wilton,” returned Vivian, unable to control the excitement under which every nerve quivered; “that while acknowledging a deep and passionate love for your daughter, Miss Wilton, I scornfully and indignantly repudiate the infamous charge of having surreptitiously or insidiously attempted to win her heart. I have, sir, so instinctive, so full a perception of her innocence and purity—of the natural delicacy of the direction of her mind—that a purpose so base would never suggest itself to me. Further, sir, I consider the presumption that Miss Wilton would lend an ear to such incitement an insult to her; and, but for your presence, I would have lashed, like a hound, the paltry knave who is the author of the insult and of the lie!”

“Wilton, Wilton, I cannot submit to this outrage!” roared Colonel Mires, once more starting to his feet and making a dash at Hal; but Mark Wilton sprang forward and stayed him. He forced him back to the spot where he had been seated.

“I know not who you are, or under what circumstances you are here,” he said, sternly, to him, “but I do know Mr. Vivian, and I have the fullest faith in his honour. I know, too, by what has just passed, that you have been using the name of my sister too freely and too impertinently for my satisfaction. Now you must not attempt here, by blustering or playing the part of a bully, to seek to escape from your position. You must either prove what you have gone so far as to assert, or you must look to be expelled hence by an operation more summary than dignified.”

“Unhand me,” cried Mires, his lips purple with passion. “Mr. Wilton, as your guest, I claim to be treated with propriety and respect.”

Mr. Wilton called impetuously to his son to return to his side, and suggested to Colonel Mires that his own intemperate movement had caused Mark’s interference. He then turned to Hal, and said—

“Mr. Vivian, you register a denial and make an admission in a breath; are you prepared upon your honour to state that you have had no clandestine meeting with my daughter, at any period of your acquaintance?”

“I am.”

“How?” almost screamed Mires, “will you dare to utter a falsehood so easily and so clearly to be disproved?”

“By whom?” asked Hal, contemptuously.

“By me!” he cried, with furious emphasis.

Hal regarded him with a scornful curl of the lip, and said—

“I have not to learn that you find pleasure in sneaking into shadowy coverts and dark spots to play the spy in order that you may fill well the equally honourable office of informer. I shall prove that one day to your small satisfaction. In this instance, your contemptible manouvres will avail you nothing; they have given you a foundation, and your own vile nature supplied materials for a fabric, but it is a chateau d’Espagne of the dirtiest kind.”

Hal turned from him to Mr. Wilton, and added—

“I reiterate, sir, there is not a shadow of foundation for such a charge. Once in my life I have met Miss Wilton alone, but the rencontre was accidental and unexpected. I have now only to say that, undesirous as I am to recur to the past, I am compelled to call your attention to your knowledge of the circumstances which have drawn us together, and I ask you to remember any act of mine that has given you reason to doubt that I have acted, or should act, in any way unworthily or dishonourably.”

He ceased, and a silence of almost a minute ensued. Mr. Wilton did recur to the past; he remembered the offer of service made by the generous youth in the hour of his frightful distress. He remembered that mainly to his gallantry he was indebted for not only the life of his daughter, but for the preservation of the important document which had restored him to his present position. But he remembered, too, the vow he had made to the friend of his boyhood, and it decided him how to act. He looked upon Vivian’s handsome face, flushed with excitement, and felt that it offered a fair excuse for Flora’s unwished-for predilection. “It will soon wear off,” he mentally exclaimed, “when she no longer meets with or sees him.”

“Mr. Vivian,” he said, addressing him with an assumed calm loftiness, “I am content to believe that you may have conceived an attachment for my daughter, and that you have not acted upon that impression to secretly endeavour to secure her affection in return. Let all that has been said upon that point be at once, and for ever, buried. It, however, becomes a grave duty on my part to counsel you to eradicate that passion, because it can never be recompensed as you may hope. My daughter Flora is another’s. She was promised to that individual when in infancy, even under a vow to ratify it. I cannot recall it. I would not if I could. She never can be yours. Now, Mr. Vivian, I am not unmindful of your past services; I appreciate them warmly, and am most unlikely to forget them by any breach of the laws of hospitality, but you must see this can no longer be a place for you to visit. I must, therefore, take my farewell of you. I shall be happy to hear of your future welfare and of your fame, for I have always entertained an opinion that a high destiny awaits you. At any time that I can be of service”——

Hal made an impatient, indignant gesture. Mr. Wilton bowed.

“I understand the feeling,” he said, “and I honour it. However, I desire not to part in anger with you; be this the proof;” he tendered his hand to Hal, who coldly received it. “But,” concluded Mr. Wilton, impressively, “I desire that we may part at your earliest convenience. With this I terminate this most unpleasant interview, and would crave to be left alone with my son.”

Hal bowed stiffly, and proceeded to retire. Colonel Mires rose to depart also. Mark Wilton stepped before him.

“Stay,” he said, sternly, pointing to the Colonel’s seat. “You may have something more to tell my father; and permit me to suggest to you to make hay while the sun shines. Father,” he said, “I will attend Mr. Vivian, during the remainder of his brief stay, for the honour of the house, and—you understand,” he concluded, hastily, as he ran after young Vivian.

Wilton glanced at the passionate workings of Colonel Mires’ features, as he watched Hal depart, and comprehended his son’s meaning at once. He therefore detained the Colonel with him until Mark’s return informed him of Vivian’s departure.

Immediately after Mark had disappeared, Nathan Gomer glided out of the room too, and pausing in the corridor muttered to himself—

“I don’t like this. What does the old man want? He had enough sorrow and affliction in his poverty; does he want to create a condition of unhappiness in his wealth? He shan’t. I will see Flora and talk with her about this affair—my mission is to see the children all happy, and I will—ay, I will.”

As he concluded, he rapidly made his way to Flora’s chamber, and tapped lightly at the door.

CHAPTER XII.—LESTER VANE AND HELEN.

J. Sh.—Forbear, my lord! here let me rather die,

And end my sorrows and my shame for ever.

East.—Away with this perverseness—‘tis too much.

Nay, if you strive—‘tis monstrous affectation!

J. Sh.—Retire! I beg you leave me—

East.—Thus to coy it!

With one who knows you too.

J. Sh.—Help, oh, gracious Heaven!

Help! Save me! Help!

[Enter Dumont.

East.—Avaunt! base groom—

At distance wait, and know thy office better.

Rowe.

Lotte Clinton, when she beheld a young man dressed in the height of fashion at her room-door, although startled by the sudden fright exhibited by Helen Grahame, felt assured that the smartly attired apparition had made a mistake in the room he intended to visit.

She rose hastily, and advanced towards him, to prevent his entering further into the room, and acquainted him with the conclusion at which she arrived.

He shook his head and laughed.

“No,” he returned, “oh no, my dear madam; I have made no mistake; I came to see you.”

“Me!—I do not know you,” she replied, quietly.

“I suppose not. We have met before, though!” he exclaimed.

“I have no recollection of you,” she said, with an inquiring look at his face.

“I dare say not,” he answered, with an undisguised stare of admiration. “My countenance possesses no such points of attraction as yours. Your charming features struck me forcibly when I first beheld them; I have not been able to get them out of my head since. I have had a great deal of difficulty in discovering you, but I have at last succeeded, and I have now come to improve our friendship, and make you love me if I can.”

It flashed across the mind of Lotte that this was Bantom’s benevolent hero, who was anxious to present her with a fortune. Her face and neck instantly became of the hue of scarlet.

“You have come here to insult me!” she cried, indignantly, “and unless you immediately depart, I will summon assistance. Leave my room, sir!”

She uttered this in a loud tone of voice. The young man, with an alarmed aspect, raised both his hands deprecatingly.

“Hush! hush! don’t make such a noise,” he cried; “I have not come here to insult you; I like you too much for that, upon my honour and soul I do. Now sit down, and let me talk quietly to you. I am wealthy, and——”

Lotte stamped her foot passionately.

“Quit this room, sir! Quit this house this instant, sir, or I’ll scream for help.”

With a hurried gesture, the intruder closed the door, and said, hastily—

“I tell you I don’t want in any way to offend you; I came here, if possible, to make you think well of me, and look kindly upon me, as I do on you. Consider, I am a gentleman born, I don’t mind telling you that; I am a Grahame, I don’t mind telling you that, too.”

Lotte started as she heard the name, and, with distended eyelids, looked again at his face.

“What—what name?” she inquired.

“Grahame,” he answered, “Grahame. We’ve a place in the Regent’s Park and one in Scotland. My name is Malcolm—Malcolm Grahame. I saw you in the garden at Mr. Wilton’s—don’t you recollect?”

Lotte did, indeed.

This, then, was Helen’s brother, all unconscious that a thin partition alone divided him from his missing sister.

Lotte reflected for a moment. He had certainly seen his sister—had he recognised her? This she had to learn. Perhaps he had come with the purpose of endeavouring to discover and take her away. She determined he should not succeed, unless with Helen’s own consent. She felt that she had a difficult task to play, and one likely to be, in all respects, unpleasant. She was, however, equally conscious that she had undertaken, as a duty, the office of protecting and assisting Helen, with the object, if possible, of preserving her fair fame through the present terrible phase of her existence. She would not, therefore, permit the fear of personal insult or threatened dangers of other kinds to make her shrink from the responsibility she had so nobly self-imposed.

“Come, now,” said Malcolm, coaxingly, on observing her muse, “you will let me sit down for a few minutes—won’t you? I do want to set myself right with you.”

Lotte trembled and looked very pale, and then red. She would then and there have ended the interview if she had given way to her natural impulse, but she knew how earnestly Helen wished to learn what had followed her departure from home; and so, for her sake, she said—

“Sir, it may appear strange, after what has just passed, that I should seem to desire to prolong this interview, but I have a question or two to ask of you.”

“I shall be delighted to answer any questions you may put to me, if I can do so.”

She made a brave effort to seem collected, while he was admiring the graceful line from her head to her shoulder, as her face was averted, and then she turned to him and said—

“I have no desire to be improperly inquisitive, sir, nor to wound your feelings by the questions I may put to you; but I have a good motive, and no injury to you or your family can result from your answering me freely.”

“Very nice,” answered Malcolm—“pray go on.”

“You have no member of your family ill, I believe?” commenced Lotte, with a beating heart, for she knew there was another ear beside her own who would greedily drink in all his replies.

“No—no,” he returned, unsuspiciously. “No; I don’t often see the governor, for he is much engaged; and when he is not, he is something like a porcupine—not to be too closely approached. As for ma, I never knew her to be ill. It is undignified, so she don’t condescend to have an ailment; and my sister Margaret thinks as she does—ha! ha! No, they are well enough,” he concluded.

“But,” said Lotte, pursuing her point, “you have other sisters.”

“Ah! yes—oh, ay!” he responded; “there is little Eva. Upon my honour, I had forgotten her, really—how droll! Well, she is not, I think, in good health—she is white-faced; she frets a great deal—goes into corners, and cries; walks into the garden, and cries; wanders over the house, and cries. She’s a regular little pump—a fountain’s nothing to her—ha! ha!”

“Why does she fret?” inquired Lotte, with hesitation.

A slight colour came into Malcolm’s face.

“I can’t tell,” he returned; “nobody can tell. I hardly think she knows herself, excepting that she has lost a pet and favourite, and she is mourning for that. Stupid, isn’t it?”

“There was, I think, an elder sister to those you have named.”

Malcolm coughed, and grew red in the face.

“You have not mentioned Miss Helen Grahame—what of her?”

Malcolm appeared unpleasantly disconcerted; presently he said—

“Dead!”

Lotte started back astounded, and echoed the word in such an incredulous tone that Mr. Malcolm added—

“That is, to us. Excuse me, but you are touching on a tender point—a family matter.”

But Malcolm and Lotte started as he concluded; for, at this instant, a sharp cry of acute pain rang in their ears; it was followed by a low wailing sob, and then all was silent again. Lotte pressed her hand upon her heart, for that burst of agony from the inner room made it ache. She knew whence the sound proceeded, and from whom.

Malcolm was sufficiently well-bred not to make any remark respecting the sound he had heard, but he thought it strange, and wondered much what it meant. Lotte recalled his straying thoughts by asking if his sister Evangeline spoke thus of her sister Helen?

“No,” he returned; “but she is nobody. She is so unlike all the family. Mamma told her that she must consider Helen as dead, and that is why she frets and whines about the place so much. However, the topic is disagreeable; pray let us say no more about it.”

“I have ended, sir,” returned Lotte, quietly, but dreading what was to come.

“No more questions to ask?” he cried.

She shook her head.

“Well, then,” he said, “look here. You are very pretty. I never saw a face I like so much as yours. I am anxious that you should understand that, because it is my wish to have the opportunity of gazing upon it as often as possible. Now you are perpetually drawing that infernal needle backwards and forwards, from morning until night, making your pretty face pale and ‘eyelids weary and worn,’ and all that sort of thing. Now my notion is——”

“To compliment me——” interposed Lotte.

“Yes,” interrupted Malcolm, eagerly, in his turn, “to take you away from this place, throw the needle to the devil, place you in a pretty country house, own servants, brougham——”

“And convert me from a humble, virtuous needlewoman into a shameless and an abandoned outcast,” cried Lotte, firmly, and in clear tones.

“No, upon my honour——” he cried.

“Mr. Grahame, I have not spoken to you previous to this hour; but if I had proposed as soon as we met, that you should become a thief, a degraded and criminal rogue, you would consider that I had inflicted an insulting outrage upon your honour, and you would ask me indignantly, what there was in your conduct and your appearance that called forth so great and undeserved an affront.”

“Yes, clearly, but——”

“May I ask of what I have been guilty, that you should so—so insult me?”

She could not keep down the tears which would spring into her eyes. He perceived them, and said excitedly——

“I don’t want to make you cry. I don’t upon my—upon my—by heaven! I don’t want to insult you.”

“You must quit this place this moment, sir, and return to it no more. I caution you, out of considerations which you cannot surmise, though you may some day know them, not to repeat this visit, for it will be at a risk which, knowingly, you would fly from incurring—go!”

Malcolm took up his hat and stick. He would have spoken, but Lotte walked out of the room and left him, So he descended the stairs, feeling that he had not been anything like so successful as he had hoped.

“I have broken the ice, though,” he muttered, with a half-satisfied nod of the head, “that is something She is very pretty, and very scornful, by Jove! but then, girls are always coy at first. What’s the next step?—capital idea—I’ll go and see Lester Vane, and get his advice. Strange that she should ask about the people at home—odd thing that—what did it mean?”

He had not much brains to puzzle, so he soon gave up speculating upon what he could find no clue to.

He had not long to wait for the return of Lester Vane to town, for, after the incident which had occurred at Harleydale Manor, and which had ended as it were in the expulsion of young Vivian, old Wilton had an interview with him, and suggested that, under existing circumstances, it would be the best policy for him to take his leave, and return when Flora’s mind was more calm, and he would have the field to himself.

Lester Vane the more readily assented to this proposition, as a glance at Mark Wilton’s form, and the sound of his voice, told him he had somewhere met him under disagreeable circumstances, although his memory would not furnish him with the details, and, for the present, is would be politic to avoid him. He, therefore, acted upon the suggestion, and disappeared from Harleydale.

He had not been many days in London before Malcolm Grahame called on him, and after some desultory conversation, in the course of which Helen’s name arose, and he had to repress further questioning by declaring that she was on a visit to a branch of the family in the wilds of Scotland—he stated his own case, his design, and the difficulties which hitherto had prevented him from carrying it into execution.

Vane regarded him with a smile of contempt, even as he pricked up his ears at Malcolm’s glowing description of the beauty of the girl of whom he spoke. Malcolm was cunning enough to conceal that she was the heroine of the adventure in Hyde Park, but all else he knew respecting her he made a clean breast of.

Vane lay back in his chair, and smoked his cigar in deep thought.

He fixed his eyes upon Malcolm, and said, in a decided manner—

“I tell you what, Grahame, you have gone the wrong way to work with this girl. She has got some lofty notions about the church and the ring, and you at once kicked the two out of your offer. I wonder she did not bring in some tall lout of a brother to beat you unmercifully for your cool audacity. I tell you, Grahame, your chance with her is over, unless your proceeding is explained as a mistake. I will see her, assure her that an error or a misconception has sprung up between you, and prevail upon her to give you another hearing.”

“Now, really, this is kind of you,” said Malcolm, shaking his hand heartily.

A few evenings afterwards, Lester Vane presented himself at the door of the house in which Lotte dwelt. A child opened the door, and he, having had a full description from Malcolm of the part of the building in which Lotte was located, ascended the stairs with a noiseless footstep, and paused before her room-door.

He listened; all was quiet within. He opened the door, and entered—to find himself suddenly face to face with Helen Grahame.

Both started, and uttered an exclamation of astonishment.

Perhaps the intensity of surprise was exhibited in a greater degree by Lester Vane than by Helen; yet it flashed through his mind that Malcolm Grahame had appeared fidgetty and uneasy while being questioned respecting his sister, and the place where he said she had gone to pay a visit. A glance at Helen told him that something grave had happened, that she had quitted home under circumstances of an unfavourable kind, though what they could be he was wholly at a loss to divine. He felt, too, that at that moment he was master of the situation, and the revenge he had promised himself was within his reach. How did she feel? She, who had contemplated leading this man on by the small stratagems of a heartless coquette to become her adoring slave, that she might, at an instant, turn on him and crush him with her scorn. Oh! she was humiliated indeed; never did she feel the beauty and the value of truthfulness so much as now.

Vane was the first to speak; he fastened his eye upon her with the insulting gaze of an impudent libertine.

“Miss Grahame,” he said, “this is a pleasure wholly unexpected. My star is indeed in the ascendant.”

Helen drew herself up to her full height. She felt the whole force of the insult conveyed by his eyes, his voice, and his words.

She responded with a stern, haughty gaze.

“Mr Vane,” she replied, “I am at a loss to account for your presence here; it is unbidden and unwished for, no less than it is intrusive. I request that you will retire.”

“Excuse me, Helen——”

“Sir——”

“Well, if you prefer it, Miss Grahame, Has Miss Grahame so soon forgotten the language her eyes have at times addressed to me beneath her father’s roof? Does she expect that she is to spread her wiles with a result satisfactory only to herself, that she is to ensnare the eagle, and that act is to suffice to tame him too? She tried to take captive my poor susceptible heart; and if she has succeeded, should she wonder and feel insulted that I desire some return——”

“You are unmanly—you are contemptibly base. You would not dare thus to insult me, but that you, coward-like, see that I am alone and unprotected. Leave me instantly,” she cried, with a proud, impatient, passionate gesture of her hand.

“No,” he answered, coolly; “not until we have come to a better understanding with each other. It is easy for me to comprehend—indeed, I am partly acquainted with the fact—that you have left home for ever; that you are here residing in humble obscurity, for which you were never destined. In the person of your haughty father and your ridiculously proud mother, the world has turned its back upon you. It is for you to do the same upon it.”

Helen frantically motioned to him to leave the room. Her whole frame was convulsed with violent emotion.

“Go!” she cried, hoarsely; “go, insulting villain, go, or your continued presence will slay me! Oh, is there no help near to save me?”

As if in answer to her appeal, the door opened, and Mr. Bantom, with a slightly excited manner, looked in.

He had visited his friend in “pupple,” who had been the medium of Malcolm Grahame’s offer to Lotte. After shaking the man’s senses almost out of him, he extorted from him that the “gent” who had made a tool of him lived next door to Mr. Wilton’s residence. Bantom went there, and had an interview with Whelks, who, finding that Bantom intended mischief, transferred to Vane’s shoulders the responsibility of having insulted Lotte, believing that Mr. Bantom would never find him, and if he did, he would not dare to touch him. He had mistaken his man. Bantom had hunted Vane down, and had caught him here.

“Beg your pardon, mum,” he said to Helen, with a bow, “but I wants a word with this feller here.”

Lester Vane turned fiercely towards him.

“You dirty ruffian!” he exclaimed, “how dare you intrude here? Leave the room this instant!”

Mr. Bantom knitted his brows.

“Your name’s Mr. Lister Wane, ain’t it?” he said, with a growl that meant mischief.

Lester started.

“If you wish to speak to me, fellow, wait until I leave here,” he answered, hastily.

“But your name is Mr. Lister Wane, ain’t it? I ask you that,” persisted Bantom.

“It is, fool! Go out of the room.”

“I shall, an’ you with me.”

“What do you mean, scoundrel?”

“That I don’t talk to you here, but where you’ll feel every word I sez,” responded Bantom.

With a giant’s grip, he caught Vane by the collar and wrist, and dragged him out of the room with rough violence, but with as much ease as if he had been a child.

Helen Grahame, with hysteric joy, saw herself thus unexpectedly relieved from the presence of the base and heartless villain who had taken advantage of her defenceless position to so basely insult her. But the scene had been too severe in the emotions it occasioned, and she had a gradually fading sense that there was a violent dashing and crashing down the staircase, a terrible disturbance in the street, which died away, leaving her in a swoon.

CHAPTER XIII.—A SISTER’S LOVE

His years but young, but his experience old;

His head unmellow’d, but his judgment ripe,

And in a word (for far behind his worth

Come all the praises that I now bestow),

He is complete in feature and in mind,

With all good grace to grace a gentleman.

—Shakspere.

Lotte Clinton, returning home to her apartment with some fresh work from the persons who employed her, arrived near to her abode at the culminating point of a great disturbance in the immediate vicinity.

With some alarm, she learned that the uproar had commenced in the house in which she resided, and that some low man had grievously maltreated a gentleman, who had been taken to the hospital, while his assailant, aided by a large proportion of the mob—who, it appeared, had espoused his cause—had escaped.

On entering the house, she found the lodgers and the landlady assembled in solemn conclave; and the moment they perceived her, they called upon her for an explanation of such “goings on” in her apartment—a demand she heard with astonishment, and with which she was utterly unable to comply.

Regarding those who addressed her with an affrighted look, she made no reply, but ran upstairs, entered her apartment, and turned the key, for a variety of strange thoughts, connected with Helen, ran through her mind.

She was not surprised to find her pale and motionless, tears still clinging to her pallid cheeks. She threw down the parcel she had brought home with her, and at once applied some simple restoratives to her senseless companion; but it was not until a long and patient perseverance had been exercised that she was rewarded with the signs of returning animation.

When Helen had so far recovered as to be able to speak, and to recollect what had passed, she threw herself into Lotte’s arms, and told her all.

Then followed passionate pleadings and supplications to the humble work-girl to quit her present place of abode, and move to another more obscure and secluded, where they were not likely to be tracked nor disturbed—where not even Lotte’s own brother should, for a time, know how to find them.

Lotte, as she listened to Helen’s urgent appeals, gazed round her neat little room—at her bird, her flowers—all that made it so cheerful, and ministered so much to her happiness. She thought of the brief but delicious visits of her brother; and there were latent impressions, too—most agreeable even to contemplate—of probable morning calls to be made by Mr. Mark Wilton. These anticipated and other actual pleasures she must sacrifice, if she complied with the wish of Helen. Nay, more, she felt that a sudden departure and secret mode of living must fling her own fair character under the shadow of suspicion.

She was progressing now in the world’s favour—she was more prosperous than she had ever been—she was lifted out of a state of the hardest and poorest paid toil; the world seemed to begin to smile in earnest upon her. To go back into a species of obscurity with Helen was to deaden, if not destroy, all those brighter hopes which, without making them known to mortal, she had shaped and fashioned and pressed to her heart—it was, in fact, to renew under yet harder terms her desperate battle with life.

All these considerations struck her with their full force. The sacrifice required was of herself, not for herself.

She gazed thoughtfully—pained thought it was—upon Helen’s beautiful but woe-stricken face. She perceived the lines of acute misery which already had begun to display themselves, and it flashed across her brain at the instant that if she said nay to Helen’s prayer, Helen would go alone into secrecy among strangers, friendless and heart-broken.

Lotte supported the trembling, earnest, agonized suppliant in her arms.

“If I had not found a friend in my extremity,” she whispered to her, “I had perished. We will go away from here together, and let the world say what it may of me, I am innocent of ill-doing. I can justify myself in the eyes of the Almighty, and I need care little for what others may unkindly believe; I may be humble, but you shall find me, Miss Grahame, a true friend. I will sustain you to the last in your terrible affliction to the best of my power: so compose and calm yourself as well as you can, and leave the rest to me.”

“Oh, Lotte, Lotte!” sobbed Helen, kissing her cheek, passionately. “My more than friend, how can I be ever sufficiently grateful to you?”

“Not a word—not a word!” cried Lotte, putting her hand gently before her mouth, and conducting her tenderly to a seat.

By eight o’clock the next evening, Lotte and her companion had removed from their late abode, without leaving behind them a clue to their new address.

Lotte had managed well. She had no debts, so it was not likely that there would be any active inquiries after her when she had left. Her late landlady, who liked all her lodgers to be the patterns of prudence and quietude, was not, after the two appearances of Mr. Bantom, altogether disturbed at losing the two young girls, especially as they had from the first declined her advances, repudiated her familiarity, and had at no time been seduced by her into the sin of gossiping.

She knew nothing about their private affairs, from first to last; she, therefore, did not trouble herself to inquire whither they were going, or why they had left her house. She wished, if anything, for inquirers, if there happened to be any, to conclude that she had herself given them warning.

Lotte wrote a note to her brother Charley, informing him that she had quitted her apartments, but that she had, at present, a motive for concealing the locality to which she had moved. She added, that in due time he would know the occasion for the mystery surrounding her movements; and she called upon him to have the same strong faith in her truth and virtue which he had hitherto entertained, and to which she felt she was, and always would be, justly entitled. She appended a postscript—that of course—it was affectionate, heartily loving in fact, but it was worded so mysteriously as to cause him the pain of forming some horrible surmises and conjectures, and it carried him post-haste to the abandoned residence. But he could learn only that she, together with her companion, her bird, and her flowers, had left the house, without leaving any clue even to the direction which she had taken.

After racking his brain for a motive for his sister’s strange conduct, or a suggestion which might help him to trace her out, it occurred to him that Harry Vivian might be able to furnish him with some intelligence respecting her inexplicable flight.

Lotte, in fervent language, had acquainted him with the services Hal had rendered her in the perilous moment when Wilton’s house was in flames, as well as later, when he suddenly met with her and saved her from destruction.

Charley was quite aware also, from subsequent circumstances, that Vivian had expressed a friendly anxiety for Lotte’s future welfare, and had betrayed an interest in her well being and doing since she had been at her late abode; it was not improbable that, on comparing notes with him, Vivian might be able to bring to light some matter which would enable the brother to follow and to find his sister, and to obtain from her some better reasons for her remarkable conduct than her note to him contained.

The premises at Clerkenwell were closed, and he made his way to Highbury.

Strange events still.

Mr. Harper’s son, the absent and unregretted, had returned home. A wild profligate and outcast he was in years gone by, when he quitted in ignominious flight his father’s roof and the land that gave him birth. He returned a ragged, dirty, discharged soldier from the East India Company’s service—discharged, too, in disgrace.

His sudden appearance, sufficiently in liquor to be brutish in his conduct, his demand to be received, and to make his father’s house his home—a drunken mad orgie on the night of his return, when valuable glass, pictures, ornaments, were wantonly and recklessly destroyed, produced in Mr. Harper a fit of apoplexy, and in two hours he was a corpse.

It was during the outrageous rioting of the prodigal son that Harry Vivian returned home from Harleydale. His efforts to restrain the ruffian from his acts of violence ended in a tremendous struggle between the two, during which the younger Harper swore with fearful oaths to murder his antagonist; but Harry’s strength prevailed, and he succeeded in forcing him to the ground; and there, with Mr. Harper’s help, binding him so firmly, that he could do no further mischief. They then conveyed him to a bed, upon which he was laid to sleep off his drunkenness.

But he continued shouting, howling and blaspheming for a greater portion of the night, until, exhausted by his own ravings and horrible threats, he fell into a deep sleep.

The horrors of that night slew Mr Harper.

As soon as his son Robert, upon returning to a state of consciousness from his drunken sleep, was informed of his father’s death, he insisted upon being relieved from his gyves; and, only partially restored to sobriety, he demanded why he had been thus secured. When it was explained to him by a workman of his father’s, a powerful fellow, who had been placed to watch him, and who related what had taken place in strong and not flattering language, his brow fell; he said not a word, but seemed to feel ashamed of his conduct of the previous night.

He asked to be released, and promised not to be guilty of like conduct, especially as his father at that moment lay dead in the house.

When he descended to his father’s bed-room, and had assured himself the old man was no more, he ascertained from his prostrate, heart-broken, weeping mother, the name of his father’s solicitor and his address, on pretence of making the necessary arrangements consequent upon the unhappy event which had happened.

At an interview with this solicitor, he elicited that, so far as he knew, Mr. Harper had made no will; at least his professional services had not been called in to execute one. In fact, the latter said, he had often urged upon his client the importance and the necessity of making a proper disposition of his worldly affairs, but those urgings had never been attended, to the extent of his knowledge, with the proper success.

Robert Harper thanked him, told him he should send him notice to be present at the funeral, and made his way to the manufactory, where, as he expected, he found Vivian.

In a few brief, bitter words, he informed Hal of the death of his uncle—his generous patron, his unfailing friend. Mr. Harper had been seized with apoplexy, and had expired after Hal had left Highbury at dawn that morning.

Robert gazed with an insolent air of triumph upon the shocked white features of Hal, who stood transfixed like a statue, and he said to him—

“I’m master here now; I suppose you know that. If you don’t, I’ll soon make you know it. The old man’s gone off and left no will behind him. Do you know that? because if you don’t, you will know it from this time, and be made to know it, too. I am the heir and sole master of all here. Now, last night, you assumed some mighty fine airs, and if it wasn’t that a parcel of fools might be talking, I would give you such a thrashing now that you shouldn’t be able to crawl for a month. There is one thing I can do, and that I will do. See, I am master! get out of here! Come, be off at once, or I’ll kick you out, beggar! If you fancy you have any claim upon me, go to law for it—I can stand that. You shan’t have a farthing from me any other way. You’ve been king of the castle here too long, so be off, Mr. Beggarly Upstart!”

He extended his arm to push young Vivian to the door, but the latter turned to him with a glittering eye, and a lip which trembled with intense emotion.

“Do not lay a hand upon me,” he said, in low but emphatic tones, “or I will fell you to the earth. I would not, in memory of the dear and noble man your father, and my constant benefactor, willingly be guilty of such an act at this moment; but the horrible consequence of your last night’s frantic bestiality, coupled with your present barbarous behaviour, almost drives me into a frenzy of desperation; it wants but your touch to thrust me into madness. I warn you to let me pass hence, without another word or gesture.”

Robert Harper had had a too lengthened experience in physiognomy not to be able to interpret the expression which made Hal’s features rigid, as though they were chiselled in marble, and he turned on his heel, without attempting to reply. Harry Vivian seized his hat and cloak, and rushed from the place.

One earnest interview he sought with the solicitor who had so long conducted Mr. Harper’s affairs, in which that gentleman promised to protect the interests of Mrs. Harper, and to place the property under proper seal and authority, so that Robert Harper could not commence to dissipate it in wild debauchery before it was proved, beyond a doubt, that there was no will—and then to Highbury.

We pass over Hal’s passionate grief at the bedside of his deceased relative, to whom he was so fondly and warmly attached, and the equally sorrowful interview between Mrs. Harper and him, during which her agony and incoherence, occasioned by the terrible affliction with which she had been so suddenly visited, prevented him narrating what that morning had taken place at the manufactory, or telling her that he would not fail to watch over her when she should be left alone with her son.

Subsequently he forwarded a claim to Robert Harper, to be present at the funeral of his uncle. His letter was returned to him, torn in two halves.

Yet he was present at the solemn ceremony, prayed fervently during the service, and lingered long after the cortege had gone, that he might stand by the new-made grave, and pay the tribute of his tears and the last sad testimonies of his loving respect for the departed.

When he quitted the graveyard, it was no more to return to the house which had sheltered him from boyhood.

These were the facts which Charley Clinton partially gathered from his inquiries at Highbury; and as no one knew where Harry Vivian was now to be found, he had to turn disappointedly away.

His acute intellect was not, however, to be so easily thwarted. The very nature of his occupation gave a tone of inquiry to his mind; and in the getting up of evidence—on which service he had been frequently employed—he had found so much advantage result from pushing investigation beyond what appeared to be its natural limits, that he resolved not to pause at the point he had now reached.

Often what we seek is to be found in places where we deem it least likely to be situated. Charley knew this, and he cast about for some other acquaintance or friend of Lotte’s who might be able to drop even a hint upon which he could act.

He thought eventually of Miss Wilton, and at once made his way to the Regent’s Park, to see whether the family was in town: if not, he determined to write as soon, as he reached his lodgings.

Having absolutely no claim to insist on seeing Miss Wilton, if she were to be denied to him—presuming that she was at the town house—he determined upon his mode of proceeding.

By an accident, he mistook Mr. Grahame’s residence for Mr. Wilton’s, and commenced those operations upon the porter there which were intended for the functionary next door.

He was skilled and successful. Whelks, being called into the conference and fee’d, it was resolved that Mr. Clinton should see Mr. Grahame’s youngest daughter—the eldest being from home, and the next at the opera with her mamma.

Charley had explained that his business was of importance, and had nothing whatever to do with any charitable institution, or case of urgent distress recommended by the vicar of his parish; therefore, it was considered that a few words with Miss Evangeline—who, after all, was not looked upon as holding any position in the family—could result in nothing likely to turn out unpleasant to the parties paid to effect the interview.

Accordingly, Charles Clinton and Evangeline Grahame were brought face to face.

He was a little embarrassed at first, but when he began to explain that he came to put a few questions to her, which he hoped she would be able to answer, respecting a missing young lady, he at once lost his embarrassment, and grew interested in observing a flush mount to her cheek, and her eyes glisten while in earnestness she rested her small hand upon his arm, and looked up into his face watching his countenance and listening to his words with intense avidity.

She did not notice that he addressed her as Miss Wilton, but when he mentioned that it was his sister who was missing, she turned from him with an air of grievous disappointment.

This movement produced an explanation, and he delicately contrived to elicit from her that she too had lost a sister, under circumstances no less strange and mysterious than those attending the disappearance of Lotte.

While she was speaking, the remembrance of Lotte’s new-made friend, the companion of her flight, flashed across his mind, and when she had ceased speaking, he gave a rapid sketch of her person to Evangeline; it was graphic and truthful.

“It is she!” exclaimed Evangeline, clasping her hands.

Then followed a thousand questions put to him vehemently. The date, the day, the dress, all confirmed her supposition, but his answers were necessarily limited; he could say very little, save that up to a certain time a young lady had resided with his sister, and that they had departed somewhere together—where, he could not conjecture; but was now engaged in endeavouring to ascertain.

Again and again she made him repeat the particulars which assured her that Helen was still living, and though once more hiding away in some mysterious lurking-place, she was, nevertheless, neither beyond the pale of discovery, nor the probability of being communicated with, visited, perhaps restored to her home by her Evangeline.

Oh, that she might be permitted to assist in the search for her! She suggested this very, very earnestly, and seemed sadly disconcerted when he shook his head. Was there no portion of the inquiry in which she could take part!—was there no species of aid she could lend? Ah! if he could only point out in what particular her services would be useful, with what delight she would render them.

He gazed earnestly upon her features.

“Pardon me,” he said, suddenly, while a peculiar expression of surprise stole over his face, “I fear I have committed some mistake. If you are the sister of the young lady lately residing with mine, you can hardly be Miss Wilton, or surely your brother Mark would have recognized her.”

“My name is Grahame. My sister’s name is Helen Grahame; I have no brother named Mark,” responded Evangeline, naively.

“Then I trust you will pardon my intrusion,” he added, moving as if about to retire. “Miss Wilton is a—a—friend of my sister’s, though a stranger to me, and I hoped that I should from her obtain some desirable information.”

“Oh, pray do not apologize!” exclaimed Evangeline, with a half-frightened air, seeming to feel the long-desired clue to her sister slipping through her fingers. “Miss Wilton when in town resides in the next dwelling to this, but that young lady, with her papa, has been for some long time away from London. She cannot possibly know anything about Miss—Miss”—she looked at his card—“Miss Clinton’s sudden departure, I am sure.”

“Or the causes which have led to it?” he asked, with rather a marked emphasis.

She gave an inquiring look into his face and said—

“You told me you had a letter?”

“Ay,” he said, with bitterness, “so written, as to acquaint me with my sister’s purposed departure—to drive me half distracted; and to bid me live upon the shadowy hope that she will some day see me again.”

“She will—she will!”

“She shall—she must. I will not rest until I find her.”

“And Helen with her?”

“To be sure; if, as I suppose, they are yet together.”

“They are surely together—you believe they are together, do you not?”

“Upon my honour, my dear young lady, I do. Indeed I know my sister Lotte so well, that I am inclined to believe that she is plunging into some mysterious course of proceeding to favour her companion and friend, without having a thought or reflection upon the injury it may do herself.”

“Oh! sir,” said Evangeline, tenderly, “do not be angry with your sister—I can so well appreciate and sympathise with conduct such as hers. If it should prove that, for Helen’s sake, she has incurred your displeasure, and the cold world’s censure, I will, love her, and take her to my heart, and be a fond, affectionate friend, if she will permit me to be.”

Charley here very nearly gravely committed himself. He was in the habit—when Lotte gave utterance to sentiments which chimed with his best feelings, to seize her round the waist, press her to his breast, and kiss her forehead. The words which had just fallen from the lips of Evangeline were uttered in such a soft tone, and evinced so much kindness and gentleness of nature, that upon the impulse, he was about to seize her and go through the usual performance, when she spoke again and brought him back to a recollection of the presence in which he stood.

“Let me implore you,” she exclaimed, with much warmth of manner, “to abstain from judging your dear sister unkindly until you are actually in possession of the true facts which have influenced her actions. It is, sir, so easy to conjecture in a defaming spirit—so impossible to make reparation for the wound an unjust accusation inflicts upon an innocent and honest heart. I pray you, therefore, to forbear judging her until you can justly claim the title to do so.”

Charley felt extremely gratified by what fell from Eva’s lips. No more complete illustration of his real feelings could have been given even by himself, and he expressed himself with some fervour in reply. Preparing to take his leave, he promised to relax no effort likely to enable him to discover the secret abode of the two fugitives.

A problem now gravely presented itself. Evangeline was and would be devoured by an intense anxiety to learn any tidings connected with her sister Helen; and a firm conclusion that in future Charles Clinton must be the medium through whom it was to be obtained’ settled itself in her mind.

But how?

Charles Clinton was a stranger to her family. He was unentitled to visit them. If he wrote to her, her letters would be opened before they reached her either by her mamma or by her sister Margaret. As the family, save herself, had, by common consent, forborne to mention her sister Helen’s name, and even to think of her as one dead, she arrived at a conviction that no letter written by Charles Clinton, containing matter connected with Helen, would ever be permitted to reach her.

What was to be done?

To both it appeared the simplest thing in the world to settle the question.

They could meet in some retired spot at periods agreed upon at each meeting. At these interviews Charles would recount his labours and report progress. Evangeline would be able to gratify the wish nearest her heart, by being brought nearer to communion with her sister, and probably to win her back to peace, happiness and her home.

No sense of the impropriety of such clandestine meetings occurred to either. Charles Clinton had no thought of wrong; had Evangeline’s station been far humbler than his own, he would have met her, treated her with the respectful deference due from man to virtue and innocence, would have protected her if she needed his brave defence, and have restored her to her home as pure as when she first put her full trust in his honour.

Evangeline knew so little of evil, she saw none in taking this step. Her relatives were all frigid and harshly repellant to her. Helen had been cold to her, too, but at times she had displayed a passionate fondness for her, and those ebullitions of fondness had appeared when they were and could only be evidences of heart emotions, and it was these evident impulses which made Evangeline know that a fire of affection glowed beneath the icy surface, and to love her therefore. No trouble had been taken to instil and graft upon her innocent nature a full and perfect system of world-proprieties. She, therefore, arranged with Charles Clinton for their first meeting, in the most guileless faith in his honour—in the most implicit trustfulness in the expediency of the step she purposed taking, the end being good and charitable; and in perfect unconsciousness of the consequences likely to result from a series of clandestine meetings between a young and beautiful girl, and a very frank, open-featured, good-looking young fellow.

They were in an apartment upon the ground floor, whose windows opened and gave egress to a lawn, conducting to a gravelled path in the garden.

They had named the place, the day, the hour they were to meet, when Charles was to report to her how far his search was to prove successful. Evangeline had just innocently placed her hand in his, as he was bidding her farewell, when a shadow fell upon the pair.

Both looked up, startled.

They beheld before them a young man, whose form was concealed by a cloak, but whose face was white and haggard.

Evangeline uttered a faint scream, and instinctively drew close to Charles for protection.

The stranger observed the surprise of one, and the affright of the other.

“Be not alarmed,” he cried, in a low, hurried tone; “I have no sinister motive, I swear before Heaven, though I appear thus strangely before you. Miss Gra-hame, I would have one word with you—for mercy sake do not deny me.”

Evangeline shrank still closer to Charles, in evident alarm. The latter instantly said, sharply—

“Explain, sir, who you are, and why you appear here in this abrupt and strange manner.”

The stranger made him no reply, but, clasping his hands, he stretched them towards Evangeline, and said, in tones of suffering and anxiety—

“Where is Helen—tell me only where is Helen? I have heard that she is gone—fled hence in secret. Oh! tell me only whither she has gone, that I may but see her once again! You are young and child-like—your heart cannot be made of adamant. Tell me, in pity tell me, where is Helen!”

A thousand thoughts careered wildly through the brain of Evangeline. Who was this man?—what had he to do with Helen’s flight?—was he the cause?

She turned deathly white and faint. She burst into tears.

The stranger, still with clasped hands, sank upon his knees before her, murmuring with intense excitement. “Is it true that she is gone?”

Evangeline wrung her hands, and could not speak.

“She has fled from home,” said Charles.

“She fled alone?” cried the stranger to him, eagerly. “She did,” replied Charles.

“Where—where?—in mercy tell me that!”

“We have yet to learn. It is my purpose to search for, and, if possible, to find her.”

“Is she in London—think you she is in London?”

“I believe—nay, I am convinced of that,” replied Charles, emphatically.

“God bless you!” cried the stranger, wildly. “Once more I shall see her, for London has no secret spot I will not narrowly examine, until I have found her—the whole world shall not keep her from me.”

With these words he rushed from the room by the way he had entered, with, if possible, increased wildness of manner, leaving Charles astounded, and Evangeline yet frightened and weeping. Charles endeavoured to restore Eva to a degree of composure by suggesting that the remarkable event which had just happened might, perhaps, afford a clue to the sudden flight from home of her sister; but before he could finish his sentence a tremendous knock at the hall-door resounded through the building.

“My father,” faintly cried Evangeline, and like a startled fawn ran from Charles to her own room.

He advanced to the door, feeling his cheek burn fiercely, and wholly at a loss what to say to the haughty owner of the mansion.

The hall-door was flung back wide; he heard the shuffling of feet, a rapid step ascend the stairs, and then a door banged loudly.

The next instant Whelks stood by his side.

“Mr. Grahame” he said in a whisper, and added, with a grin—“Would you like to see ‘im? he’s in the libree.”

Charles shook his head with a degree of energy indicative of the strength of the negative he wished to convey, and slipped a shilling into the hand of Whelks as an additional contribution; it happened to be a new one, felt thick and crisp; Whelks slid it into his pocket under the impression that it was a sovereign.

He laid his finger upon the side of his nose.

“I shall know you when you come again, sir,” he whispered. “If she’s at home, sir, you shall see her. Foller me, sir. Tread lightly. Good night.”

Charley stood once more in the park alone. The stars shone brightly above him. He had certainly met with a remarkable adventure, but where was Lotte.

He was no nearer to the object with which he came there than he was before.

CHAPTER XIV.—REVENGE.

I’ll have my bond; I will not hear thee speak.

I’ll have my bond; and therefore speak no more;

I’ll not be made a soft and dull-eyed fool,

To shake the head, relent, and sigh and yield.

—Shakspere.

Nathan Gomer reached the door of the chamber of Flora Wilton, and paused.

He looked about him, up the corridor and down the corridor, and then, stooping down, he peeped through the keyhole.

He uttered an exclamation—not of joy.

He pressed the palms of his hands together and looked once more up and down the corridor, and then, gently opening Flora’s chamber door, he glided within, closed it after him, and stood for a moment and gazed upon the prostrate girl.

A tear twinkled in both eyes.

He brushed them sharply away.

“Flora—Flora, my child,” he whispered, yet loud enough for her to hear; though his step had been noiseless and her grief was still in its intensity.

He bent over her, and raised her up, with eyes red and swimming in tears; she turned her feeble gaze upon him, and could not in spite of her anguish, repress an exclamation of surprise at seeing the strange looking benefactor of her father before her.

She attempted to efface the traces of her tears, and to speak, but the task was not so easily to be accomplished.

Nathan perceived her intention, and its result, and in a voice agitated and slightly husky, he said to her—“Don’t mind me, pretty one. Don’t mind me—I know all. Make no struggle with your grief on my account—I say don’t make it for me; and when you have exhausted yourself, and feel very ill, as you will if you go on in this fashion—I think I may say that you will—then take for comfort—you can now, if you like—my assurance that you may rely on me as a friend, and all shall yet go well. I say I think you may rely on me. I know whither your heart has travelled and where it resteth; I have vowed to secure your happiness, Flora—I say, your happiness—and it is not wealth that gives happiness. I think—I know that—I believe—I may say I do know that. You shall be happy yet, pretty one, if you will be so.”

Flora turned gratefully towards him. She knew that he possessed inexplicable power, and seemed to be able to produce results according to his pleasure, and she felt that for him to say that in this affair of the heart he would stand her friend, was almost tantamount—considering the extraordinary influence he possessed over her father—to placing her hand in Hal’s before the altar. .

She bent her sweet eyes upon him gratefully.

“How can I thank you?” she said, in a low tone.

“Thank me!” he cried, with a grin, “you must wait before you do that. I say, you should never be premature with thanks; you should always wait until the promise is redeemed, and you are benefited to your wish, then thank. Promises are slippery things—I say promises sometimes are not fulfilled: thank me, my dear child, when you feel supremely happy through my instrumentality.”

He turned his back to her, pressed his two hands together beneath his chin, and gazed heavenwards.

“You shall be,” he murmured—“by God’s providence, you shall be.”

Flora could not help regarding him with a strange mixture of reverence and dread; reverence, for he had been known only to her as a great benefactor to the family; and with dread because he was so singular in his outward form, and appeared at such remarkable moments, and in so strange a manner. He turned again to her. Apparently he read the expression of her features, for a pleased smile lighted up his gold-hued features, and he tapped her gently and pleasantly on the shoulder.

“Come, come,” he said, “dry up those tears and look cheerful; I have said all shall go as you wish it; it shall. I have now an agreeable surprise for you; so you pop on your bonnet and make your way into the garden, and pace by the side of the fountain until my surprise comes and startles you.”

“I pray you to excuse me, sir,” said Flora, faltering, “indeed I have no strength to leave this chamber just now.”

“Nor spirit either, I fancy,” he observed, with his peculiar grin.

She did not reply, and he went on—

“Well, you must have your surprise here, then, I suppose. It wears a hat, a coat, and trousers; it is bronzed with the sun in the face; it went away in years gone by without a word to family or friends, roamed over seas and strange lands”——

“Mark?” almost screamed Flora.

“Come home,” laconically replied Nathan.

Flora staggered to a seat, and looked as if she would faint; her nostrils were inflated, and she breathed short and quick.

“Nonsense!” cried Nathan, growing frightened at her aspect. “Keep up your courage; he is well, hearty, happy, longing to see you. Shall I send him to you?”

“This moment,” gasped Flora. “Oh, my heart aches, and I feel sick and faint, until he again folds his loving arms about me!”

Nathan blew his nose and coughed.

“He shall be here in a—in five minutes,” he said, after two or three efforts to clear his throat. “I’ll send him, never fear—I think I said five minutes—that will give you time to prepare yourself. Remember, no more tears. All will yet go well. I have said it.”

He hurried from the room as he spoke, and though he knew that Mark and Hal were together, he contrived to keep his word. And it was so far well that he did, inasmuch that Mark, after a somewhat lengthened interview with his sister, immediately sought out Hal in the village to which he had retired, and remained with him until he took the train for London, and then he parted with him on the most friendly terms.

During Mark’s absence, Nathan Gomer presented himself before old Wilton, who received him with the same eagerness and respect he had always previously displayed. Colonel Mires, who was having a tete-a-tete with his host, took the opportunity which the coming of Nathan Gomer afforded him to retire, to brood over dark projects for the future.

Nathan looked after him.

“Don’t like him,” he muttered; “mischief in him. He’s got some cut-throat purpose haunting him, and he will try to execute it, too. I say, he will make the attempt. Must look after him.”

“What do you say?” asked Wilton, trying to catch his words.

“Nothing for your ear,” replied Nathan, a little tartly. “I have a bad habit of talking while I am thinking—foolish that; I may venture to say that it is a very foolish habit.”

Wilton responded; and then Nathan Gomer, drawing a chair near to him, sat down and at once proceeded to business.

He circumstantially and clearly related all the incidents which had transpired in connection with Josh Maybee, even to the trick which he had himself played Chewkle, and he assured him that the missing documents were all secured and in safe possession. Arrangements also, he informed him, had been completed with Maybee, who had a rightful share in the property. The only thing he waited for, was to know what course was to be pursued with respect to Grahame, who was now entirely in their power.

Wilton’s features assumed a hard, grim expression. His eyeballs contracted into small glittering circles. He fastened them upon the brilliant orbs of Nathan Gomer.

“No mercy,” he growled through his clenched teeth, “he must be crushed.”

“A-hem!” coughed Nathan Gomer; “revengeful, eh, Wilton?”

“Revengeful!” echoed Wilton, with a hiss. “What! do you think I can forget the years of grinding, torturing poverty he has caused me? Do you think I can wipe out, with a wave of the hand, the recollection of the last effort of his accursed cupidity—the act which tore me from my children, and hurried me to the horrors of a debtor’s prison? Nathan! Nathan?” he cried, clutching at his companion’s wrist, and speaking in a low, guttural tone—an evidence of the depth of the emotion under which he laboured—“can I consign his acts to oblivion when I look round these walls—when I pace these chambers—when I wander in the grounds yonder, among the flowers and the trees, and miss her companionship, her gentle presence, who made this abode a Paradise—whose absence shrouds it in intense gloom?”

“No—no—no!” almost groaned Nathan, shrouding his eyes with his hands. “She reigned here a queen of light, of joy; the music of her voice, the magic of her sweet and tender beaming eyes, made Harleydale a heaven. Was she not thrust from hence?—was she not crammed into a den of wretchedness—into a foul, impure atmosphere?—compelled to endure privation, want, rags? By whom?—by whom?—answer me that.”

“Oh! that I had earlier known whither you had transported yourselves when you quitted this!” moaned Nathan, evidently in anguish at the picture Wilton was placing before his eyes.

“Was it not Grahame!” continued Wilton, fiercely; “did he not juggle me out of my signature to bonds that he might utterly destroy me, when he knew that she—a very flower, cultured only in the tenderest carefulness, sheltered from the ruder atmosphere of human society—had been suddenly hurled where the blasts of poverty and degradation were blighting her, making her pine, fade, droop away out of life. She—my soul, my spirit, the immortal part of my being—who, having gone from me, leaves this frame a machine, this world an expanse of murky mist, penetrated with only one gleam, that bright spot in futurity, When, released from this miserable shackle, this valueless body, I shall join her angel spirit! Did he not slay her?—curse him! Did he not destroy her with his damned impenitent obduracy? Does not her spirit shriek for revenge?”

Wilton flung his arms up in the air, and almost screamed these last words.

Nathan Gomer rose up, and, in a tone of solemnity which thrilled through Wilton’s frame, exclaimed—

“No!”

He paused for a moment, convulsed with emotion.

Then he proceeded—

“Her gentle spirit never harboured such a sentiment. She left to God the exaction of atonement. Your wrongs, which made her a sufferer, did not extort from her a single wish for retribution; you know it, Wilton. She felt the loss of the bright clear air, the waving trees, the open hills, the flowery vales, deeply; but it was because you were thrust from them—because those gentle tributes of her love for you were reared in a sickly atmosphere, instead of the healthy, happy home of which they were unjustly deprived. She sorrowed for them; she pined to see your waning health; she faded, drooped, died; for she had not been gifted with the power to drag out existence in such a sphere as that to which you all were doomed. She hoped, she prayed, for the time when she might see all restored to this fair place again; she knew and felt acutely the wrong which kept you from it; but the wickedness of a bad man never drew from her lips a curse, nor raised within her breast a wish or desire for a remorseless revenge. Her spirit was too angelic, too pure, too good! Oh, Wilton! Wilton! her loss is indeed dreadful!” Nathan pressed his hands over his eyes and hurried to the end of the room, followed by the wondering gaze of Wilton, whose intense and bitter rage against Grahame changed into intense astonishment at what had fallen from his companion’s lips.

What knew he of her who had gone from them to the spirit-land? What entitled him thus to describe and enlarge upon her sweet, unavenging nature? When, where, how had he known her?

Having mastered his feelings, Nathan returned to the table, wearing, to Wilton’s surprise, his usual aspect.

Wilton rapidly put the above questions to him. Nathan waved his hand.

“That explanation, Wilton,” he said, coldly, “will keep until a future day. Let us return to the purpose in hand. Grahame is neck and ankles in your power it is for you to determine what shall be done.”

Again the passion for revenge animated the breast of old Wilton.

“He would not have spared me,” he ejaculated, in a guttural tone. “What right has he to expect mercy at my hands, when he would have shown none to me, had his machinations proved successful?”

“That is beside the question, Wilton, It is in your power now to have an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or, in a spirit of grand magnanimity, to return good for evil. Make your election.”

Wilton leaned over the table, and, in the same fiercely vindictive tone, he growled—

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I will exact all I can”

Nathan paced the room with rather long strides, and returning again, sat down.

“Your plan,” he said, laconically.

“The arrangements with Grahame, in respect to the division of the estates, are not complete.”

“They are not.”

“They shall not be. You hold his promissory notes——”

“I O U’s, capable of being demanded at any moment.”

“The sums you have advanced are large?”

“Very large.”

“If you insist on their being paid instanter, what will be the result to him?”

“Utter and irretrievable ruin.”

“Beggary, Nathan, beggary?”

“The most abject beggary, and imprisonment as well, for the property he once owned is so deeply mortgaged, that not a farthing will be available to pay my new claims upon him.”

Wilton compressed his hands together.

“And his family—his proud, haughty family, Nathan, what of them?”

“They must necessarily be thrown on the world, wholly destitute.”

Wilton rubbed his hands with savage pleasure.

“Who are his mortgagees—do you know their names and addresses?” he asked, in a hissing whisper.

“I am the only mortgagee,” responded Nathan almost proudly, and yet coldly.

“You must transfer all the debts and mortgages to me,” cried Wilton, with an exulting laugh. “Then, then I alone, shall hold complete power over him. Then he shall be made to feel the clanging beating of the brain, the dead booming of the heart, the sickness of hopeless despair, the shrinking cowering of the spirit which they feel who have been hurled from a high estate, with heavy soul, to drink the dregs of poverty. I must have the mortgages, the—I O U’s—all! all! all!”

“No,” said Nathan, with a gloom hanging on his brow; “they are mine, obtained after long, long hard struggles. I shall retain them—I, too, have a purpose to serve, though even in this I act for another;” he raised his eyes upward. Then he added, hastily, “The hard-souled, proud, ambitious man, must be punished, but the mode of his punishment must, after all, I see, be left to me.”

Wilton, with feverish animation, urged his point, but Nathan Gomer was not to be moved, and the result of the conference was, that Wilton, to his deep mortification, was compelled to leave in the hands of Nathan the entire management of the recovery of the estates, and the punishment of his implacable foe.

Incidentally, Nathan alluded to Wilton’s intention with respect to Flora, and listened quietly to a recapitulation of what he had overheard, as well as to Wilton’s renewed expressions of determination that nothing should turn him from the decision at which he had arrived.

Nathan Gomer made no further comment upon it than to advise him to send away Lester Vane for the present, and to let the affair remain in abeyance until he was put into possession of the estates of which he had been so long deprived, to which advice Wilton assented.

It was immediately following this interview that Mr. Grahame received a letter from Nathan Gomer.

It was placed in his hands as he entered his house on the night of Charles Clinton’s interview with Evangeline.

He knew the handwriting at a glance. He snatched it from the hand of Whelks—he forbade him to follow, and he hurried, almost raced, up the staircase to his library.

He locked his door on entering the room, and flung the letter on the table, while he raised the faint light of the lamp to a brilliant glare.

“I do not like the look of that note!” he exclaimed; “I hate the handwriting. It is always the harbinger of intelligence which wrings my heart so that I could shriek with pain. Why is it that I have some spell hanging over me—a species of curse that embitters every joy I try to make my own? It is strange that in my securest moments I should ever have some accursed thing to intervene, and show me the rotten foundation of my assumptions. One fact, however, I am now at least certain of—I shall not die a pauper’s death, and, to confess the truth, it is an end I much feared.”

He took up the letter and held it to the light; he examined the superscription and then the seal; at last with a hasty “Pshaw!” he tore open the envelope and read—

“Sir,—The missing link, which so long prevented Mr. Wilton proving his rightful title to the Eglinton estates, has at length been discovered. Mr. Wilton’s solicitor has, at this moment, in his possession, all the documents essential to the prosecution of his client’s claim; Mr. Wilton has in consequence refused to complete the arrangements which were commenced, for a division of that large property between you and him. You will, therefore, perceive that the immediate return of the sums advanced by me to you, in accordance with our agreement, will be necessary to prevent my commencing an action for the recovery thereof.—I have the honour to remain, Sir, your obedient servant,”

“Nathan Gomer.”

Mr. Grahame read every word in the letter, clearly and distinctly the first time; the second time he perused it, his thoughts of the future thronged in his brain, and mixed themselves up with the words. He tried to read it a third time, but the lines waved up and down, the letters commingled, he threw it from him and sank into his chair.

He pressed his aching temples with his hands: they burned and throbbed violently: and he tried to think what would be the first step to be pursued.

He saw that it would be necessary to write to Nathan Gomer at once, and stave him off for a time with promises. He knew that if he did not answer his letter, he would commence to sue him, without further notice.

His next step was to send for Chewkle, and consult with him. He had quite expected that, according to promise, Maybee had been disposed of, but he felt that it would be a waste of time to speculate when action was essential. Chewkle had given to him necessary information how to communicate with him when he wished to do so, and he adopted the mode with which he had been furnished.

The letter to Gomer was dispatched, and Chewkle was communicated with, but as the latter was not in London, a week elapsed before he made his appearance. By arrangement, he adopted the same mode of entry as before, and made his way into the library by night from the garden. He was not sorry to avail himself of this plan, because it was not his wish, for several reasons that Nathan Gomer should become acquainted with his presence in London.

Mr. Grahame, when assured that they were not likely to be disturbed, laid Nathan’s letter before Chewkle.

The first three lines were enough for Chewkle. He slapped his thigh, and with an oath exclaimed—

“Brimstone’s got the best o’ me!”

“Explain,” said Mr. Grahame anxiously. But Mr. Chewkle could not explain—his double-faced roguery prevented him doing that. He evaded the question by saying—

“Never mind that now; I’ll explain how he’s done me at the proper time.”

He saw at once that Nathan Gomer had extracted from him, in some way, a clue to Josh Maybee, and had honoured him—Chewkle—with a commission to get him out of the way while he obtained possession of the prize.

Possession! He paused at the word. The Queen’s prison had possession of Maybee. Nathan Gomer, with all his cunning and artifice, he believed could not juggle him out of that place, for he had been incarcerated at the order of the Court of Chancery; and he knew that the detainer at the gate was not to be paid off. A long and tedious process in Chancery, he believed, must be gone through before the release of Maybee could be effected.

“Old sulphur phiz couldn’t get him out of there,” he soliloquised, “though he might have been able to get ’old of ’im and gammon a good deal out of ’im. It may not be altogether too late now; Maybee has a weakness for beer, and I knows what to drop in his pewter, to keep him from going into any Court o’ law—anywhere but to six foot by ten of clay.”

Mr. Grahame bent his gaze firmly upon Chewkle’s light gray eyes. He contracted his brows, and spoke only in whispers, but they were painfully audible, and had a strange, harsh sound which was disagreeable and discordant, even to the not oyer-refined ear of Mr. Chewkle.

“Why,” he said, “waste time over the poor wretch in prison? Let him live on; he has given up the documents, his presence in Court will be but of secondary importance. Now my bold and skilful friend Chewkle, if the principal dies—if Wilton was to be found dead—I—as I have before intimated to you—become, beyond all dispute, possessor of the property. Do you not understand?”

Chewkle gave a nod.

“He is an old man; feeble, with no physical strength,” continued Graliame, laying his hand on Chewkle’s rather muscular arm.

Chewkle nodded again.

“You know where he dwells—Harleydale Manor?”

“I know it,” said Chewkle.

“He is fond of walking in the evening, Chewkle. Now an old man may drop down in a wood, and die in an apoplectic fit, or fall over some of the hanging rocks which are on the estate. There are many ways a man may seem to have died a natural death, Chewkle, my friend.”

“I knows a good many ways,” said Chewkle thoughtfully. “It isn’t that: the thing is to manage so as not to be diskivered.”

“I do not think there is much fear of that,” responded Grahame with an affected assumption of its improbability.

“P’rhaps not,” returned Chewkle, “but it’s the danger to number von as I looks at. However, I dessay I can put that right if everything else is squared to make it worth my while.”

Mr. Grahame produced a Bank of England note for fifty pounds.

“Here, my good Chewkle, is an earnest of my future intentions towards you,” he observed, with a furtive glance at the man’s somewhat excited countenance, as he placed the note in the scoundrel’s trembling fingers.

It immediately disappeared like magic in his vest. He turned, with a grin, to his employer, and said——

“It shall be done, sir.”

“At once,” urged Grahame, quickly; “it is essential that no time should be lost. I should go, if I were you, by the earliest train to-morrow morning.”

“All right, sir. You’ll hear of it afore the week’s out in the papers.”

“My best friend. How deeply I shall stand indebted to you.”

“Yes,” thought Chewkle, “rayther deeper than you imagines, I think.”

But he said aloud—

“Let me see: I’m supposed to be at Liverpool, which is a good thing, for even old Gummy won’t suspect my being at Harleydale, and I shall quietly watch for the old man taking his evening walk—the last p’rambulation on earth for ’im, at all events.”

Mr. Grahame shuddered.

He felt anxious to get rid of his villainous companion.

“I think we understand each other now,” he remarked, in a tone which intimated that he wished the interview to terminate.

“Yes,” replied Chewkle, with a very meaning nod, “I think we do understand each other now, and it’s my belief we shall understand one another better by and bye. Good night, sir.”

“Good night—good night,” cried Mr. Grahame, hastily, and added: “Be careful how you descend the staircase, it is narrow, the night is dark, and an accident just now would be unfortunate.”

“To me; but what if I had old Wilton here,” suggested Chewkle, with a savage cackle.

“Hush! hush!” exclaimed Grahame, in a whisper, “not so loud. Mind how you go, do not let the servants discover you, whatever you do, and, above all, be sure to neglect no precaution which may tend to ensure the success of your enterprise.”

Chewkle waved his hand exultingly, and disappeared.

The next morning he was on his way towards Harleydale Manor, bent on executing his murderous mission.

CHAPTER XV.—THE RETURN HOME.

And with a fixed eye scann’d

Her father’s face.

He gaz’d on her, and she on him; ‘twas strange

How like they looked! the expression was the same—

Serenely savage, with a little change

In the large dark eye’s mutual darted flame:

For she, too, was as one who could avenge—

If cause should be—a lioness though tame.

Her father’s blood, before her father’s face

Boil’d up, and prov’d her truly of his race.

—Byron.

A child was born.

In sobbing anguish, in cowering shame, in comparative privation, a little weeping, helpless, weak boy was ushered into life.

Oh! had that proud woman, the parent of the young mother, been present in that close chamber, where lay fainting the “flower of her flock,” her heartless pride must have received a blow which could scarcely have failed to prove beneficial to her humanity! It must surely have roused up some of those better feelings of womanly nature, of which none of the sex are wholly divested, unless they are lost indeed.

Upon a poorly furnished but clean bed lay stretched Helen Grahame, attended only by her ministering angel, Lotte Clinton.

The sudden and wholly unexpected interview with Lester Vane, the subsequent flight, with all its attendant anxieties, and apprehensions, and fatigues, all combined to do their work upon her weak frame.

At the expiration of three weeks, she was, however, so far recovered as to move about again; while Lotte was ill enough—although she would not acknowledge so much—to take her place in the bed Helen had quitted.

She had been Helen’s gentle nurse; and had attended her with patient, unwearying assiduity.

It was during this period that Helen’s little store of money was, for the first time, broken in upon.. Before the birth of the child, Lotte had been enabled to earn enough to support both—but to save nothing. When the time came that her whole attention was absorbed by Helen’s helpless prostration, her labours with her needle were necessarily stopped; but now that Helen had strength to get about again, and the money-hoard was growing very low, it became necessary that she should once more return to her close application in the task of bread-winning.

Was there not another claim, too, now upon her exertion? The little healthy, bright-eyed boy—of whom, unconsciously, she grew so fond, and who was caressed and fondled by its young mother with such passionate devotion that she had no eyes or thought for aught else—seemed to call upon her to redouble her efforts, that he might be spared the fatal consequences of wasting privation.

One night she quietly explained to Helen their position and the necessity there would be for her to again apply to the persons who had last employed her, to furnish her with work.

“I will be careful,” she said, “to avoid the chances of our residence being discovered; but we are not fairies, you know, Helen—we must eat and drink, and pay our way.”

Helen turned her large, dark, eyes upon her face, and fixed them there; she did not reply, for she had made a discovery.

“I shall be sure to obtain as much as I can do,” continued Lotte, thoughtfully, “enough, I am convinced, by sitting close to my work, to support us all, comfortably. You can devote your time to dear little Hugh, so as to keep him smiling and well, and I can do the rest—all the rest.”

The child was sleeping, and previous to Lotte’s commencement of the conversation, Helen was sitting abstracted in deep reflection upon the past. From this she was roused by Lotte’s remarks, and now she sat and gazed in painful wonder upon her face.

It was pinched, haggard and wan; it was as different from that round, sweet, pleasant countenance, she had looked upon with a satisfied assurance that its owner was entitled to her fullest confidence, when first alone with her in her own neat little chamber, as could be conceived.

Lotte’s once well-rounded form was wasted, too; her dress sat loosely upon her, and her white hands looked long and bony.

The words she uttered rang in Helen’s ears. “By sitting close to my work, I can support us all comfortably.” She, weak, wasted, and ill, to devote herself to such a task!

The whole of Lotte’s past services and exertions, and her own unconscious selfishness, suddenly flashed through Helen’s brain. She now arrived at a more clear and complete appreciation of what Lotte had really done for her, what she had sacrificed and what she had suffered.

Then came the question as to motive.

Helen rapidly retraced the events of her past acquaintance with her young companion, and endeavoured in such prospects of the future as might have presented themselves to her, to find an incentive for such tender devotion as she had evinced towards her, from first to last; but she could discover nothing which detracted from her pure womanly sympathy, her unselfish disinterestedness.

How Helen’s heart warmed to her, as she reached the only conclusion it was possible to form.

And Lotte looked so attenuated, so strengthless, so much as though she had overtaxed her powers, and was gradually sinking into the arms of death, that, as Helen gazed upon her, her eyes filled with tears, which shut her out from her sight.

Then she rose up, and moved towards her hastily; she flung her arms about her, and wept passionately upon her neck; making Lotte both surprised and alarmed.

“What have I said?” she ejaculated, quickly; “oh! nothing I hope to pain you, Helen.”

Helen drove back her tears. She raised up her head, seized Lotte’s hands, and kissed them ardently.

“I am pained, dearest Lotte,” she exclaimed, with quivering earnestness, but striving to speak collectedly, “because now I see that while you have been my constant, generous disinterested friend; faithful, self-sacrificing, and unwearied in your kind, very kind services to me, I have been altogether selfish, exacting and inconsiderate——”

“Nay, do not say so,” interposed Lotte.

“My sweet friend, who can judge so well as I?” continued Helen. “What am I to you that you should have done all this for me?”

“I have told you,”—again interrupted Lotte, but Helen would not let her finish.

“Let me speak, Lotte, darling,” she exclaimed; “it is all unnecessary for you to say one word; you cannot weaken the fullness of my conviction nor deter me from a purpose I have determined upon executing. I shall not tell you what that purpose is, beyond that it embraces nothing your pure nature would shrink from. I am resolved to act now. Hitherto, you have done all. I shall do my part in future; it is time. How often, Lotte dear, have I not quietly submitted to your counsel, and acted as you have wished. Henceforward for a time, at least, you must obey me. You must submit for a few days not to think of needlework, but to lay quiet and still in bed, and let me wait upon you.”

“I could not—oh, I could not!” murmured Lotte, touched by this acknowledgment.

But Helen kissed her and silenced her and would not hear her objections, and threatened to do all kind of desperate things unless she assented to her request. Lotte, alternately coaxed and menaced, obeyed, though she was restive and uncomfortable under the knowledge that their store was growing hourly less, while Helen had really no notion of the value of money or its want.

Unable to remain long in bed under such circumstances, Lotte struggled through two days; on the third, she persisted in getting up, declaring she was quite strong, and fit now to undertake anything.

The rest had certainly done her previously exhausted frame good, and Helen could not help perceiving its effects upon her face, and her manner, so she made no great objection to her rising; but that same evening, about six o’clock, she startled Lotte by appearing before her, dressed as when first they met in Hyde Park.

Lotte was dancing the infant in her arms. Helen took it abruptly from her, kissed it passionately many times, and then placed it again in Lotte’s arms.

The latter, overwhelmed with surprise, exclaimed, in a tone of the greatest astonishment—

“Where are you going, Helen? In Heaven’s name, do not be guilty of any rash or unadvised step. Oh! I should break my heart if, out of any mistaken feeling of commiseration or tenderness for me, you should come to harm!”

“Do not fear for me, dear, dear Lotte,” returned Helen, earnestly. “The worst that could have fallen upon me has come to pass, and fate will not persecute me further. I shall return to you and my poor cherub there very soon, be assured.”

“But in pity tell me whither you are going?” cried Lotte, in tears. She had some frightful forebodings.

“To my father’s house!” cried Helen, with a bright eye, and compressed lip.

Before Lotte could recover from the bewilderment into which this announcement flung her, she heard the outer door slam sharply, and she knew that Helen was on her way to fulfil her purpose.

She pressed the little babe to her bosom, and sat down to think about her position, her brother, and, perhaps, Mark Wilton.

While these thoughts were yet passing through Lotte’s brain, Helen Grahame stood before the house from which, in such shame and anguish, she had fled.

She grew sick and faint, and, for a moment, her strength and courage failed her; but she remembered her little child and Lotte’s wan face and thin figure; then her arm was nerved, and she knocked boldly, as of old, at the door.

The porter opened it, but, when he saw who it was who claimed admission, he drew back with an exclamation of surprise. Helen heeded it not, nor did she utter a word to him, but passed through the hall with a proud air, as she had been wont to display when at home, and no shadow rested upon her fair name. As she ascended the staircase, she encountered Whelks, who, upon thus suddenly coming face to face with her, all but fainted. Her step, dignified as it was, made scarcely a sound, and her face, so white and delicate, convinced him that he was confronted by Helen’s apparition.

She fastened her brilliant black eye upon him, and haughtily inquired where the family were.

“In the dinin’ room, Miss,” he gasped.

“At dinner?” she asked.

“Yes, Miss,” he replied, not yet certain that he was not holding converse with a real ghost. “They are all at dinner.”

“My maid, Chayter—where is she?” demanded Helen, in the same imperious tone.

“She ’ave left, Miss,” responded Whelks, with a gulp. “She ’ave gone directly after you—some time ago, Miss.” He knew not how to express himself in his excitement.

“And Miss Evangeline’s maid?” exclaimed Helen, in a tone of inquiry.

“Oh, her, Miss; she—she are in Miss Evangeline’s room, Miss, upstairs.”

“Enough,” returned Helen, in the same cold, haughty voice, and added, sternly—“Mention not my arrival to any one. I will announce myself.”

She passed him, and proceeded direct to her sister’s room.

Within it was seated the young maid who attended Evangeline. She had taken the opportunity, while the family were at dinner, to place herself very close to the light of a lamp and read over—slowly and earnestly—a letter addressed to her by one George Jenkins, wherein he had made statements which made her eyes glitter, and her lips to pucker into a small circle. She laid her letter in her lap to revel in one enchanting sentence, when she became conscious of the presence of some one in the room standing in front of her.

With a slight scream she leaped up, and, crumpling her letter in her hand, crammed it into her pocket, and, with scarlet face and trembling limbs, saw that the eldest Miss Grahame, or her wraith, stood before her.

She was about to make a very lively demonstration, but Helen checked her.

“Be not alarmed,” she said, hastily; “make no noise; do as I direct you, for I shall need your assistance.”

“You are really and truly Miss Grahame come home again?” asked the girl, her eyes almost starting out of their sockets.

Helen almost smiled as she answered in the affirmative, for the features of the inquirer betrayed so singular an expression.

The girl clapped her hands.

“Oh, how happy you will make Miss Eva!” she exclaimed; “she has done nothing but weep and sigh for you since you have been away.”

Helen felt a rush of tears to her eyes, but she made no remark in answer to this observation; she however put some questions to the girl respecting her own room, and finding that it remained precisely as she left it, she went to it, followed by the maid.

In a desk belonging to her—and which in her illness she had hidden, for it contained many of Hugh’s letters—was a store of money, sums the balances of many quarters’ allowances, hoarded under the impression that one day they would collectively be sufficient to buy some coveted jewelled trinket which would exceed in price an amount her father would be likely to approach in the purchase of a gift for her. The gold was needed for a very different purpose now.

She discovered the desk precisely as she had left it, and she made herself at once mistress of what she came to obtain. She went to her wardrobe. Her dresses hung there as she had left them, and after surveying them for a minute, she turned to Evangeline’s maid, and said abruptly—

“Assist me to dress.”

Having selected her most elegant and becoming apparel, she proceeded to make her toilet, and quickly appeared in full evening dress. When the girl had almost completed attiring her, Helen said to her—

“Ascertain whether dinner is over, but not a word that I am here.”

The girl, with an air of mystery stamped on her features, proceeded on tip-toe to the dining-room, and having conferred with the butler, returned, and said—

“Dessert is on the table, Miss.”

“That is well,” muttered Helen, “I will face them now.”

There was a strange expression upon her features. There was no humility: her eye, her brow, her lips were all defiant. Having obtained what she came for, her object in facing her relatives was not altogether clear, even to herself. It was an impulse she could not resist. She knew how little real affection she had experienced from her parents and her sister Margaret; they were all too proud to be fond, and she could not endure the sting of their accusing thoughts or remarks. She had no intention to let them know the truth even now, but at the same time, she wished them to feel that she had acted in a spirit of independent self-will, and that her course in future would be governed by the same influence.

She remembered what she had written in the note she had left behind upon her dressing table, addressed to her mother, when she fled. Its contents she determined to make the ground-work of her action.

It happened that Mr. Grahame had guests that day. There were two very high, very proud, very rich members of the aristocracy, a kinsman of his wife’s, from the north, infinitely more proud than rich, and the young Duke of St. Allborne, who had recently exhibited symptoms of being entangled in the meshes which Margaret Grahame had, with cold calculation and no mean skill, contrived to wind about him.

Helen, perhaps, would have shrunk from encountering this assemblage, had she known that her relatives were not dining en famille. It had not occurred to her to put the question, and she proceeded to the dining-room, expecting only to meet her parents, her brother, and her sisters.

The conversation at the table, when she entered the dining-room, was as animated and lively as might be expected. Mr. Grahame was endeavouring to forget that he stood upon a volcano, which roared, and seethed, and bubbled beneath his feet. He was engaged discussing a political question with his two aristocratic friends. Mrs. Grahame was occupied with her kinsman, and Margaret exclusively with the Duke, alternately flattering him and deferring with the profoundest attention and deference to his observations, so that he felt quite sure that if she did not possess the beauty of many he had seen, she had wonderful discrimination. Malcolm was silently drinking to Lotte, pledging her mentally every time the bottle came round, and Evangeline, still and retiring as ever, was thinking about her sister Helen, and perhaps the young pleasant-faced gentleman, who had lost a sister, too.

The door flew open widely.

“Miss Grahame!” shouted the butler, with extended orbs and inflated nostrils.

Helen, full dressed, pale as marble, but stately as a queen, walked up the room to an unoccupied seat upon the right hand of her mother. She made a slight inclination of her head to those present, and then seated herself, with a self-possession, considering the events which had happened, quite startling.

“Miss Grahame!” was involuntarily repeated by every one present, and naturally all eyes rested upon her.

A strange and, as it were, a solemn stillness followed her appearance.

Her face was so white, so transparent and colourless; her eyes shone with such unearthly brilliancy; her hair lay so black and glossy upon her brow, contrasting powerfully with her snowy temples; she sat so erect, and gazed around her with so haughty and defiant a mien—that if not deemed a phantom by those who were strangers to her, they, at least, suspected that she had risen from a bed of sickness; and, in a fit of temporary derangement, had decked herself out in ball attire and presented herself, thus suddenly and unexpectedly, before them.

The eyes of the guests next sought the face of Mr. Grahame, to learn what effect this apparition had upon him. .

His face had become as white as that of his own child.

He could have screamed with horror when he saw her bend her full dark eye on his, and slowly and calmly seat herself before him.

A thousand thoughts passed through his already tortured mind. Whither had she been?—whence had she come?—and in that dread interval what had happened? How had she come back?—and for why did she now appear, and thus?

She was his own child—there could be no doubt about that; but oh! so changed, so dreadfully changed—a spectral shadow only of her former self was she now!

What was he to do? What could he do? He dare not, for very pride sake, hazard a scene. But how receive her? what could he say? She anticipated him.

In a firm, clear voice, she exclaimed, addressing herself to him—

“I was unaware that you were honoured with the presence of guests, sir, or I should have not joined the circle until you assembled in the drawing-room. I hope they and you will accept my apologies for presenting myself here, either too soon or too late.”

“For coming here at all,” thought Grahame, with an inward groan.

Mrs. Grahame seemed to contract—to shrivel into a thin, old woman—while Margaret let her eyes close, and her brow fall. She sealed her lips, too, and sat like a granite figure, and became almost of the same hue.

Malcolm looked at his sister, and drank another glass of port.

“It appears to me,” he thought, “that by-and-bye there will be a serious disturbance in this house.”

Of all, Evangeline alone recognised her sister as her sister. Retiring by nature, she may have been, but she was bold in this. She rose from her seat, and passing with more display than she was in the habit of making behind those who sat between her and Helen, she heeded not her father’s stern look or her mother’s stony aspect, but she caught her sister’s hands, and pressed them. She bent over, and kissed her cold, cold forehead.

“Welcome home, Helen, dearest!” she said with passionate tenderness; but there her speech left her, and tears thronged into her eyes.

Helen could not now articulate a word, if her life had depended on it. She squeezed Evangeline’s hands, and oh! how she longed to kiss her, but she felt she dare not.

At a glance from Helen, Eva resumed her seat.

The little incident of which Evangeline had been the heroine seemed to assure the guests that they had surmised wrongly, and the two aristocrats at once bent over to Mr. Grahame, and requested, to his dismay, to be introduced to his eldest daughter.

The Duke of St. Allborne sprang to his feet, and cried, with some vivacity—

“Pawmit me, Lindsay and Elsingham, to have that honaw. I have had the vewy gweat playshaw of enjoying the agweeable society of Miss Gwahame on vawious occasions, always with incweasing delight; and in dwawing you together, I feel convinced I shall be confawing on you both a happiness of which at pwesent you have no notion.”

But Mr. Grahame, in a voice scarcely articulate, thanked him, declined his services, and took the office upon himself. He went through the ceremony of introduction with frigid formality, and Helen supported it with a grace and dignity which elevated her in the estimation of the gentlemen to whom she was introduced, although they had yet a misgiving respecting her, from the continued cold silence towards her of every member of her family, save Evangeline.

The Duke began to engage her in conversation, made some remarks respecting the delicate health her appearance betrayed, and was in full career to forget Margaret entirely in his increasing admiration of Helen’s beauty, when once more the door of the room was flung wide, and the butler announced, “The Honorable Lester Vane.”

Helen set her teeth together hard; she drew her form proudly erect, and sat more like a queen than ever.

“Youaw man should have announced the ‘late Honawable Lestaw Vane,’ I think, Gwahame,” exclaimed the young Duke, with a slight laugh.

“I beg your pardon, my lord duke,” returned Vane, calmly, suffering his gaze to wander slowly round the table; “Mr. Grahame was conscious that I should be unable to join until this hour, and kindly consented to waive——”

His eye fell upon Helen Grahame, and he paused.

His face betrayed an aspect of intense amazement; then his eye ran rapidly round upon the countenances of all there. Another instant, and he had recovered his self-possession. He went on speaking.

“To waive the usual observances in my favour, and admit me at any hour I might be able to reach here.”

A few words of vapid nothings, and Lester seated himself before his wine, that he might more quietly and coolly examine the vision before him, and learn, if possible, the cause of her being here, where, after his interview with her at the humble lodgings, he least of all expected to meet her.

He had been soundly thrashed by Bantom; but, though he was confined for a week to his chamber, he had got over it; without, however, as yet discovering the individual who had subjected him to the outrage.

Once his eyes and Helen’s met; but there was an expression in her bright orbs which he could not bear unmoved, and he looked away from her.

Suddenly Mrs. Grahame rose from her seat, and prepared to quit the room. The gentlemen rose up too.

The mother seemed to shrink and totter as she passed the child, at whom only she had looked once since she entered, but to whom she had not uttered a word. Margaret would have haughtily, though hastily, followed her, but that Helen, with an imperial bearing, stood before her, and compelled her to halt while she took her place, as the eldest daughter, next to her mother.

The incident was but momentary, and might have been considered accidental, but for the decisive action and even grand bearing of Helen, whiter still from the insult her sister Margaret would have publicly forced upon her. Every one observed it, and the sympathy of the guests at least was with her.

They passed out of the room. Mrs. Grahame hurrying to her own chamber, and fastening herself within, as if in fear that Helen should seek her there. Margaret copied her example, but Helen went only where she wished to go—to Evangeline’s room—to have a few loving words with her youngest sister, before she took her leave of her home for ever.

She had attained her object—if any she had—and she intended to leave as abruptly as she had entered, caring not to see one of her relatives, save Evangeline, more.

When the door closed, one of the distinguished guests, a peer and a bachelor, known to be enormously wealthy, turned to his half distracted host and said—

“Grahame, your eldest daughter is the most lovely woman I ever beheld; she has the dignity of an empress and the form of a goddess; Cleopatra herself could not have been more grandly beautiful.”

Mr. Grahame bowed, distressed beyond measure. He knew not how to answer.

“Gentlemen,” the peer added, addressing the guests, “pray honour my toast with bumpers—Miss Grahame!” He drained his glass to the dregs, so did all but Grahame. The wine tasted like molten lead in his mouth; he put down his glass scarcely touched.

“Upon my life,” exclaimed the young Duke, with his vacant laugh—“I do believe you aw smitten with Miss Gwahame’s chawms, Elsingham.”

“I accept your tribute to my taste,” he answered, with a seriousness of tone, which there was no mistaking; “a man honoured with the hand of one so beautiful ought to wish for no greater exaltation on earth. Were Miss Grahame heart-free, and would she condescend to turn her eyes upon one who would offer her a waning life’s devotion, I think, upon my faith, your Grace would have good reason to find your suggestion not very wide of the truth.”

The Duke laughed loudly, and was echoed by one or two others. Lester Vane sat grimly silent; so did Grahame. The latter suddenly rose up, and bade his son Malcolm do the honours of the table for him, during a short absence.

He had caught at a straw. He had been long drowning, and everything resembling a straw, approaching the vortex in which he was slowly and surely revolving, he clutched at.

His daughter Helen might yet be a peeress, the idol of a nobleman of vast wealth. She might now be the means of plucking him from destruction, even while the destroying waters were bubbling on his lips.

Helen and Evangeline had but interchanged a few hurried words, when their father suddenly stood before them.

They both rose.

“Helen,” he exclaimed, sternly and coldly, “attend me to my library.”

Not a word more. He made a gesture which was so imperious in character, that she could not but involuntarily obey it, and she went in the direction in which he pointed.

He followed her, and when they were within the room, he locked the door. Evangeline crept after them. She stood at the library door in silence but in tears.

END OF VOL. II.

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Table of Contents

- THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK

- In Three Volumes Vol. II.

- London: W. S. Johnson & Co.

- 1865

- FLOWER OF THE FLOCK

- CHAPTER I.—SUITORS

- CHAPTER II.—THE DREADFUL SECRET.

- CHAPTER III.—THE STRICKEN DEER.

- CHAPTER IV.—THE ASSAULT AND THE RESCUE.

- CHAPTER V.—THE GOLD AND THE ALLOY.

- CHAPTER VI.—THE COVETED HEART BESTOWED.

- CHAPTER VII.—MARK WILTON.

- CHAPTER VIII.—THE COMPACT.

- CHAPTER IX.—LESTER VANE AND VIVIAN.

- CHAPTER X.—THE OLD MAN AND HIS DAUGHTER.

- CHAPTER XI.—THE UNPLEASANT CONFERENCE.

- CHAPTER XII.—LESTER VANE AND HELEN.

- CHAPTER XIII.—A SISTER’S LOVE

- CHAPTER XIV.—REVENGE.

- CHAPTER XV.—THE RETURN HOME.

- END OF VOL. II.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE