1,1 \ ! • 1 ^^^R> h: / '-^- PAEKWATER. MRS. HEXEY WOOD, AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, |3xibitshtrs in ©rbinarg io ^sr ^lajcsto the CQttcen. 1876. (All rights reserved.) Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Dul 2 PARKWATER. May cleaned the offices, made the fires, and scoured the stairs ; and ]\Iiss May -was a damsel of ten years old. She was being brought up — well, we shall see how. Mr. Lyvett, the first partner in the firm, was a wealths man. Apart from the proceeds arising from a long and suc- cessful practice (which had come down to him from his father), his wife, who was of good family, had brought him a large fortune. They lived at the West End, and mixed more in fashionable life than it is usual for most lawyers to do. All ]\Irs. Lyvett's connections lay amidst it ; and Mr. Ly- vett himself Avas of rather good descent. Their family con- sisted of two sons, James and Frederick, and several daugh- ters, James was abeady taken into partnership, and his name was the third in the firm. He was married, and had a house of his own. Frederick, the youngest of the family ,^ was not yet a partner. One night in winter, a clerk chanced to remain at the office beyond the usual hour. When the rest of the clerks departed, he stayed behind. It was young Mr. Jones. He was just articled, had copied a deed carelessly and imperfectly, and so was ordered to remain over-hours and copy it again. A strict disciplinarian was Mr. Eowley, the overlooking clerk of Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett. The porter was out that evening, and Mrs. and Miss May were in the kitchen ; the former washing up the tea-things, the latter seated on a low chair, and devouring by the blaze of the fire the fresh num- ber of Caterpillar'' s Penny JFeekly Picpository of Bomana .- Caterpillar being a popular writer Avith the million. " Anything new there, Sophiar V asked the mother. "Law, ma, yes ! Such a splendid tale ! * The Knight of the Blood-Ked Hand.' It begins beautiful." PARKWATER. 3 " You'll try your eyes, reading by firelight, Sophiar. Come to the candle." " I wish you wouldn't make a fuss," was Miss Sophia's answer. " You'll not read long, I can tell you. As soon as ever I have finished these tea-things, I'm a going to clear the planer, and you'll come and practise." The young lady gave a jerk with her shoulders, and a kick with her feet, both of which movements might be taken as emblematic of rebellion, Mrs. May was a foolish woman. To say the least of it, she was so in regard to her chUd, All her own spare time was devoted to the devouring of a certain kind of pernicious literature, supplied then as extensively to the "million" as it is now; perhaps more so. It served to fill her head with the most ridiculous notions ; and May, her husband, sanctioned them. Mrs. May had resolved that the child, Sophia, should be brought up a " lady ; edicated, and raised above her spere," as she rather often expressed it. In this resolve she was upheld not only by May, but by her own sister, a Miss Foxaby, who was a lady's-maid in a very fine family somewhere up West. Sophia had no objection in the world; she was already an incipient coquette, inordinately vain, and quite as much at home in the intricacies of the Weekly Be^osliory of Romance as was her mother. Poor child ! Poor child ! its pernicious teachings were growing with her growth, and strengthening with her strength. Mrs. ]\Iay was as good as her word. She cleared the square piano, which appeared to be laden with miscellaneous articles of culinary utility, not generally found in association with pianos ; opened it, and put one of the wooden chairs before it. Miss Sophia, however, declined to disturb herself. 1—2 4 PARKWATER. " What was tlie good of your father a "buying of the hin- strument, and what's the good of your having, a genus for music, if you don't practise ?" demanded Mrs. May. " Come, miss, no shuffling. And you have not looked at your book- lessons yet." " Ma, how you do bother !" " Come this minute, I say, or I'll put you to bed : and give them stupid romances to me," added Mrs. May, whisking the leaves out of the child's hand. " You don't call them stupid when you read them your- self ; and you don't like to be disturbed at them, though you disturb me," raved the girl, in a voice between screaming and sobbing. " The other night, when father kept asking for his supper, you were in the thick of the ' Blighted Eose,' and you wouldn't stir from it ; and he had to get out the bread and cheese himself, and fetch the beer !" " Never you mind that, miss. You come to the pianer, as I bid you. It's not your place to reflect on me." Sophia, finding resistance useless, flung a few books on the chair to make it higher, and flung herself upon them, dash- ing into what she called "the scales" and her mother "the jingles." Mrs. May drew a chair before the fire, placed her feet on the iron fender, snufied the candle on the table be- hind her, and opened the publication she had taken from her daughter. Before, however, she was fairly immersed in its beauties, or the first few bars of the jingles had come to an end, a tremendous noise overhead caused them both to start. " Sakes alive !" uttered Mrs. May — a favourite exclama- tion of hers : " what's that ?" A somewhat prolonged noise, as of a stool or chair being PARK WATEM. 5 moved violently about, was now heard. Sophia jumped off the books. " Mother ! suj)pose it should be an apparition !" " Suppose it should be a robber !" was the more practical remark of Mrs. May. " He may have stolen in to kill us, while he walks off with the law papers. I daren't go and see." "I'll go and see," answered Sophia. "I'm not afraid of robbers ; and I don't suppose they'd hurt me." She took the candle from the table, hurried fearlessly up- stairs, and knocked at the front office door. Mr. Jones, the young clerk, not being used to sohtary evening employment, had dropped asleep over his work, with his stool on the balance. Certain musical sounds caused him to awake with a start, when he and his stool went down together. Picking himself and liis stool irascibly up, he in- flicted on the latter sundry bumps on the floor, by way of revenge, and was just settling to his copy again, when the knock came to the door. " Come in," cried he, sullenly. Very much astonished he looked when the" knocker pre- sented herself: a blue-eyed, pretty child, with flaxen hair that curled on her shoulders. Dressed well, she would have been an elegant child : but, dressed as she was, in all the colours of the rainbow, flaunty, dirty, and with a profusion of glass beads glittering about her as necklace and bracelets, she looked like a little itinerant actress at a country fair. " Why ! who and what are you ?" demanded the young gentleman. " If you please, we did not know anybody was left," replied Sophia. " "When the noise came, we thought 6 PARK WATER. it was a robber got in, so I came up to see ; but ma was afraid." " Who on earth's ' ma V " repeated Mr. Jones, unable to take his eyes off the child. " My ma. Downstairs." " Do you live here?" " Yes," said she, drawing herself up. " I am Miss May." " Oh, indeed !" returned the young man. " Was not that a piano tinkling 1 It was the sound of that startled me up, and sent the stool off its legs. The first time I ever heard of a piano in a lawyer's office." " It's mine, sir. Father bought it for me." " Yours ! Where do you keep it ?" " In the kitchen," answered the little girl. " We moved the dresser out into the back place, where the copper is, to make room for it. It's opposite the windows, and I practise at night when I come home from school." " Why don't you give us a serenade in the daytime ?" de- manded young Mr. Jones, delighted at the amusement which appeared to be striking up. " We might get up a waltz when the governors are out." Miss May shook her head. "Father says it must never be opened till everybody's gone ; the gentlemen would not like it. So ma keeps dishes and things atop of it all day, for fear I should forget and un- lock it, when I'm at home from school at twelve o'clock." "Well, this is a rum go !" muttered Mr. Jones to himself. " How many brothers and sisters have you, child ?" "I have not got any of either. And that's why ma says she can afford to spend more upon me. I'm to be a lady when I grow up." P AUK WATER. 7 " Thank you, my little girl, for the information. You look like one. I should say you might be taken for an Arabian- JSTights' princess : only you are too smart." The child took the mocking compliment to be meant in earnest. She bridled her head ; her unoccupied hand stole up to twirl round the ends of her pretty ringlets. In the en- dowment of vanity, Xature has been prodigal to many of us, but she had been remarkably so to Sophia May. " Sophiar !" called out a voice, timid and panting, from the lower regions. " Sophiar ! What is it ?" " Who is that ?" quickly asked ]\Ir, Jones. " That's ma. She " "Sophiar, I say! Who are you talking to? Who u there 1" repeated the voice. " Ma," answered the child, putting her head out at the door to speak, " it's one of the gentlemen, not yet gone." Up raced Mrs. May, flurried and dubious. Mr. Jones recognised her as the lady he had seen on her hands and knees, cleaning the front door-step the first morning he came, when he had misunderstood the clerks' time, and had arrived an hour too early. She knew him as the young clerk recently entered, whose friends were intimate with the Lyvetts. " Bless me, sir ! I should not have took upon myself to send Sophiar in here, but we thought everybodj'- was gone, and was alarmed at the noise. Sophiar, miss " — changing her tone to a very angry one — " when you saw it was all right, why didn't you come away again directly?" " Don't put yourself out, Mrs. May ; she has done no harm. What time do you get this office open in the morn- ing?" he added, as if struck with some sudden thought. " About half-past seven, sir, these dark mornings. I begin 8 PARKWATEE. with this floor first. Ikit I get all my sweeping over and the fires alight before I sit down to my breakfast." "Then I'm blest if I won't knock ofi' for to-night, if I can get in at that hour/' ejaculated Mr. Jones. " I shall have time to finish this beastly tiling before old Rowley comes. But he had best mind, again, how he gives me my day's writing to do over twice, for I won't stand it. Good-night to you, Dame May. Put out the gas." "Sophy," said Mrs. ]\Iay,when they returned to the kitchen, " did he hear the sound of the j)ianer ?" Sophy nodded in the affirmative. '•' What did he say ?' " He asked if the piano was here ; and I told him it was, and was ours." " Then you were a little ape for your pains. You should have told him that it was a sound from the next house ; and stood to it that it was, if he'd disputed it. Your father don't want the Mr. Lyvetts and Mr. Castlerosse to know of the pianer ; they'd make a fuss, perhaps. IS'ever scruple to tell a fib, child, in a necessary cause." " Can I have that paper now f asked Sophia. " jSTo," snapped Mrs. May, " I have hardly begun it. Get on with your jingles." From the above little episode of one evening, the reader may gather somewhat of the manner in which Sophia May was being trained. It need not be enlarged upon. Her parents were making that most reprehensible and fatal mis- take of rearing her to be above her station ; above them. Such mistakes were not so common in those days, for what I am writing of took place many years ago ; but, as the world knows, they are springing into mad fashion now% J^o training for the PARKWATEB. 9 working classes can be more pernicious, or is likely to Lring forth more disastrous fruits. In Sopliia May's case — and hers is a true history — the error was added to by her being allowed the run of those wretched weekly romances. Sophia's parents had married late in life, and were decent, hard-working people ; and if they had had the good sense to make theh child hard-working too, they would have given her comfort and content for her portion. Mrs. May had been an inferior servant in a family of distinction, had j)icked up some exalted ideas, and the pubhcations she had addicted herself to read- ing did not tend to sober them. Undoubtedly the child was a pretty, fairy-looking little thing ; and a fancied resemblance to one of the aristocratic daughters in the family in which j\Irs. May had served, first put ridiculous notions for Sophia into her brain. The father was more sensible ; but he was sO' ardently attached to this only child that he too readily fell in- to the snare, and upon that one point was now as extravagant as his wife. For their station they were in easy circum- stances. The man's wages sufficed for their wants, in the humble way they Avere accustomed to live, ]\Irs. May had saved money, and Miss Foxaby was ever ready to produce funds to be spent on her pretty niece Sophia. She furnished not only funds, but clothes. All the very smart things- Sophia flourished in came from her : cast-off relics of the family she served. Strange that the father and mother could not see the incongruity of what they were doing ! The child, with her flounces and furbelows, her music and dancing, her pernicious romance-reading, and her fostered vanity; and they, with their household drudgery, living amidst their kettles and saucepans and cooking and cleaning ! "What an absurdity it all was ! 10 PARKWATER. Sophia went to a day-school in the neighbourhood, where she mixed with a rather better dass of children as to position : indeed the mistress had refused to take her at first on the score of her parentage. There she picked up some learning, and left off some of her idioms. The way in which the child was dressed out on a Sunday was something wonderful to be- hold. Muslins in summer, satins in mnter, streamers of many colours, gaudy artificial flowers, and snow-white feathers ! JS^early all of them were Miss Foxaby's gifts, and all of them had the first bloom ofi". In the morning of Sunday, the child Avould be, as the mother expressed it, " in her dirt," watching the preparations for dinner, or exercising the piano, and at one o'clock fetching the beer from the public-house ; for May liked to take as mucli rest as he could get on a Sunday, even from beer-fetching. Eut in the afternoon she was turned out in style, and told to '' wallc up and down the street that people might see her ;" her father and mother, who on that day would sit at the windows of Mr. Lyvett's room on the first floor, watching her with looks of love and admiration : the former with his pipe, and his beer in a pewter pot ; the latter with her weekly newspaper, which, however, she could scarcely coax her eyes to read a line of, so absorbed was she with that vision pacing the quiet street in her young vanity, whose long-tailed silken streamers fluttered out behind her, to the amazement of every chance passer-by. They did not go to church ; they did not take her. Kow and then, indeed, Mrs. May would attend evening service with Sophia ; but it was very rarely. They were moral, Avell-behaved people, the father and mother, but religion was not known in their house : that is, religious teaching and religious exercises. What did they promise to themselves would be the end of all this when PARKWATER, 11 the child grew up 1 — that she would be content to continue her abode with them, and live as they did ! "Where else was she to live ? Poor Sophia May ! events that really did happen in after life were not so much her fault as the fault of her most foolish parents. And this is a true picture ; a simple narrative of events that actually occurred. CHAPTEE II. HOME FROM FRANCE. Several years had gone by. One Thursday night in summer, the quiet street already mentioned (and it was the dullest and quietest street imaginable after business hours, when the various lawyers and their clerks had deserted it for the night) was aroused from its silence by the echoes of a cab, which came fast down it, and pulled up at the door of Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett. "V^Tiat could the cab want there at that hour ? Cabs, and carriages too, might be seen before the door in the day, many of them ; but never at night. " Why, if it's not old May !" exclaimed Miss Jenkins, putting her head out at the next-door window ; she and her sister being laundresses to that house, which accommodated several firms. " "Where has he been to in a cab ? Here, Esther, come and have a look at old May in a cab !" Miss Esther Jenkins quickly ran to the window. A young lady in a blue veil was following old May out of the cab. ""Well I never!" cried Miss Esther. "Who can it be, Martha ? There's the gaslight on her face now — what a nice- looking young lady !" " Why ! it must be the daughter come home ! She was 12 PARKWATEB. expected, you know. Oh, it's nobody but her j you may rely upon it, Esther." " I'll go in and see what she's like presently, when they are settled a bit," cried Miss Esther, " It's her, safe enough." " Safe enough " it was. ]\Iiss May, who had been for two years to a school on the French coast, had now completed her education, and returned home for good. When Miss Esther Jenkins entered, she found her sitting in the kitchen with her I)arents. Sophia Avas eighteen now, and certainly very good- looking. The long curls she had worn as a child were now twisted in a peculiar way, " French and fashionable," Miss Jenkins called it, round her head. She was above the middle height, and easy in her movements, very much pinched in about the waist, with fine falling shoulders, an admirably fitting dress, and a prodigious deal of pretension. Miss Jenkins stood, taking it all in at a glance, and noting various items in her mind, especially the young lady's first declaration that she did not know how she should get on in London as she had forgotten her English. Sophia turned to the place of the old piano. It was there still, and she opened it. She struck a few chords and started back with a scream. " Mais, c'est horrible, ce piano-la ! Je ne " " Do try to speak in English, Sophiar," urged Mrs. May, with tears in her eyes, " How ever shall we get along if you don't ? What is it that's the matter ] Did you see anything that frightened you ?" " It is such a — what do you call it in English ? — dreadful piano. I had as soon have touched an electric battery. It has set all my finest musical nerves on the jar : ma tete est percoe. I shall never be able to touch it again : jamais." FARKWATER. 13 " She has not quite forgot her mother tongue," interposed Miss Jenkins. " Which is a consolation worthy of thanks- giving." Sophia turned a sharp look upon her. There was a sarcas- tic ring in the words that she did not like. " Did you have no English girls whatever at the school, Sophia 1" asked Miss Jenkins. " Mais oui." " Did you have no English girls whatever at the school ?" repeated the visitor, apparently determined to persevere till she got a reply she could understand. " Some of the young ladies were English." " And did you never talk together ?" " De temps en temps. ]S"ow and then," more hastily added Sophia, perceiving the question was about to be repeated, as before. " Then it's very singular how you can have forgot it at all," retorted ^Miss Jenkins, significantly, " for when schoolgirls get together they do talk." The tone brought heat into the temper of Miss May. She cast a look of scorn on the offender, and coolly turned her back upon her. '' It is not agreeable to me to be troubled with strangers to- night," she said, more curtly than politely; "I am tired with my sea-voyage. Miss Jenkins, and the company of my father and mamma is as much as my nerves will support." " Then I'll make myself scarce," said Miss Jenkins, Avho was more inclined to laugh than to take offence ; " and come in some other time when you are in company cue, Sophia." Sophia gave only a cold nod in answer. " How can I ever again support the companionship of these wretchedly low 14 PARKWATER. people]" ran her thoughts. Miss Jenkins was inwardly making her comments on her : tit for tat. " I say, Esther," whispered Mrs. May, following Miss Jen- kins upstairs to fasten the door, " she don't mean no offence ; she's only knocked up after the sea-sickness." " Where no offence is meant, none is took/' replied Miss Jenkins. " / know what the little tempers of young folks is. We was young ourselves once." " But ain't she beautiful T pleaded Mrs. May. " And such style ! Nobody could take her to be anything but the real lady." " Thoroughbred," responded Miss Jenkins. " Good- night." " Good-night, Esther. Oh — I say ! I wish you'd tell your Martha to beat her mats of a morning towards the house on your other side, instead of on this. She's later than I am, and her dust makes my steps and pavement in such a mess. One day Mr. Lyvett asked if I had cleaned them. Good- night." " I wish 'em joy of her, Martha," were the first words of Miss Jenkins to her sister. " Such an affected, stuck-out fine lady you never saw. What they'll do witli her in that kitchen, I can't tell. She wants a saloon and a pair of footmen." " What can they do with her !" debated Miss Jenkins. " If they've only a kitchen they can't put her in a parlour." " / don't know. Eely upon it, she'll never reconcile her- self to stay there with them." " She's handsome, is she not, Esther V •' A handsome face, and a handsome figure ; I don't say to the contrary ; but she has got an ugly look, if she's put out. I PARKWATEIL 15- know this : if fortune had blessed me -witli a daughter, I'd rather see her a female travelling tinker, than I'd bring her up to be a fine lady, not being one myself." Before the following day was over, Mrs. May awoke to the same fact that Miss Esther Jenkins had only suspected— Sophia would never stay at home with them. "Was it likely that she would ? She, with her good looks, and her semi-education ; her superficial accomplishments, and her mind formed on Caterpillar's romances ! — could her father and mother expect her to make her home in a kitchen, amidst kettles and sauce- pans ? " Your Aunt Foxaby says she can get you a beautiful place as head lady's-maid, Sophiar," remarked Mrs. May. "Your French tongue " " My Aunt Foxaby says — what T interrupted Sophia,, turning round to face her mother. " Get me a place as lady's- maid! Why, do you suppose, or does she suppose, that I would become a servant V " But you'd live quite the life of a lady, Sophiar," replied poor Mrs. May. " Them ladies'-maids in a good place mostly does." " For goodness' sake don't talk nonsense !" " WeU, my dear, I don't see what else you be to do, if you can't reconcile yourself to stay along of us here." Sunday came. And after dinner Mr. May started to Hyde Park, to fetch his wife's sister, impatient that she should feast her eyes with the improvement in Sophia. Mrs. iNIay began to wash up the dishes, and Sophia ascended to the " Sunday windows," and sat down there. She held in her hand tlie . weekly newspaper, but she glanced at it discontentedly. The fruits of her education were already beginning to show them- 16 PARKWATER. selves. She had been discontented ever since she came home. A slight disjiute, arising out of her own ill-temper, had occurred the previous day with her mother, in which she had said that the home was no fit home for her, and that the vulgar atmosphere of a kitchen would kill her. Her residence in France had not tended to improve the tone of her mind and heart, however it may have helped her French. She had been to one of the cheap seminaries there : twenty pounds a year, paid quarterly in advance, included every- thing, from the first day of January to the thirty-first of December. Shrewd Miss Esther Jenkins might have spoken ■out her opinion of them, had she gone to pass a week in one, as to their eligibility for a girl who was to be "a lady," Sophia May sat at the first-floor window, feeling very miserable, longing for excitement, vowing that she would not long put up with this, and sullenly glancing over the " bete " newspaper. After the beauties of Eugene Sue's novels, which the school had procured en cachette, English literature was tame, even that of a sensational weekly paper. Suddenly she threw it down with a gesture of impatience ; and, dashing open the window, looked from it up the street, wondering how much longer her father and aunt would be. They were not in sight. ISTot a soul was in it, save one ; on a Sunday it was always particularly empty. This one, who was a foppishly-dressed, though not ungentlemanly-looking youug man, was coming down it with a quick step. Ho halted at the door beneath, and knocked ; a thundering knock. Sophia, who had drawn back, peeped out again, and saw a somewhat simple countenance, a moustache that would have been fair had there been enough of it to be seen, light blue eyes, and an eye-glass stuck in one of them. PARKWATER. 17 Slie would not have answered the door for the world ; so poor Mrs. May, who was in the attic with her go"\vn off, had to throw a shawl over her hlack petticoat and hasten down ; but not before a second and third knock had resounded through the house. She dropped a curtsey when she saw who it was. '• Oh, here's somebody at last ! I thought you and May were asleep," was the gentleman's salutation. " I hope you will be so good as to excuse it, sir. May is gone out, and I was up at the top, a cleaning of myseK." " Have you seen my cigar-case ?" demanded the gentleman, entering the front office on the ground-floor. " I must have left it here last night." " I have not been into the rooms, sir. I don't generally go in till Monday morning." " I must find it," he resumed, looking about. " I had put some prime cigars in it, ready lor to-day ; and the shops that keep anything worth smoking shut themselves up on a Sun- day, and be hanged to them ! You need not wait, Mrs. May. I can let myself out." " Shall I look in the rooms upstairs, sir 1" " No, it's not there. It is here if it's anywhere." Mrs. May retreated aloft ; and the gentleman, after an un- successful search, marched upstairs himself, whistling some bars from the last night's opera. But his tune came to au abrupt close ; for, on opening the door of his father's room, he found himself, to his extreme astonishment, face to face with a lady. She had risen at his entrance. A handsome gui with con- fident manners, whose fair hair was braided round her head in elaborate twists and turnings. Young men are not very 18 PARKWATEE. competent judges of attire : the eyes of this one only took in the general effect of the lady's dress, and that was splendid. It had once been an evening dress of Miss Poxaby's mistress. He hastily snatched off his hat and dropped his eye-glass. Who in the world was she 1 As to her having any con- nection with Mrs. May, her dirty shawl and her black petti- coat, such an incongruity never would have occurred to him. Though not usually wanting in fluency of speech, it rather faUed him now, for he was at a loss how to address her. " I beg your pardon," he was beginning, but she spoke at the same moment. " Pardon, monsieur." Oh, she was French, then ! Had she crossed the Channel in a balloon, and been dropped into the offices of Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett by mistake? How else had she come 1 and what did she want there ? He began to recall his French, not a word of which had his tongue ever uttered since leaving school. " Madame, voulez-vous excuser moi ? Je suis — ^je trouve," and there he came to a stand-still — what the dickens was " cigar-case " in French 1 Fortunately she helped him out. " I beg to ask your pardon, a thousand pardons, for ad- dressing you in French. I have been so long accustomed to speak only French, and having but since a day or two returned to England, that I forget myself a chaque instant. I fear I am in your way? ShaU I retire ?" " By no means. I will not distiu-b you for a moment. I am in search of a — a small parcel — which I mislaid yester- day." As he spoke, his eyes fell on the " parcel." It was on the corner of the mantelpiece. At the same moment some vehicle PARKWATER. 19 came rattling down the street, turned round, and drew up at the door. He took a step to the other window and looked from it l^ot the one she was at. It was, as he expected, his own cab : the fashionable vehicle with young men at that day. He had walked from the chambers of a barrister close by, where he had been lounging away an hour, and had ordered his groom to follow him. With an elaborate bow (and cer- tainly a respectful one) to the lady, he quitted her presence, descended the staircase, and departed by the front door. Again Sophia peeped from the window. She saw him open the " parcel," light a cigar, puff away at it, and step into the cab, which bore the Lyvett crest. The groom sprung to his place behind, and the smoke went puffing up the street. She had been at no loss to know him after the first moment. It was, in fact, young Mr. Lyvett. " I wonder who she is, and what she does there V thought he as he drove onwards. "Don't much think my father would like — " The cab stopped. He pulled up the horse so suddenly that its head and fore-legs were jerked into the air. Mr. May and his sister-in-law were just passing down the pavement arm-in- arm, " Hallo, May ! Here." Mr. May touched his hat, and leaving Miss Foxaby on the pavement, approached the cab, and touched his hat again. " May ! who the deuce is that, down yonder?" " Sir V cried Mr. May. *' Who's that lady in my father's private room V " I don't know who's there, sir," answered Mr. May. For .20 PARKWATEE. it really did not occur to him that the gentleman present would not know his daughter. " You don't mean my wife or my " " Your wife !" impetuously interrupted the young man, giving an admonishing touch to his impatient horse. "Who else will you ask me if I know 1 There's a lady there, I tell you. As handsome a girl as ever I saw." EecoUection dawned upon the porter. " With light hair, sir, and coral beads in it, and a green- and-gold-looking dress on ?" " Green- and-gold for all I know. Something dazzling. She speaks French." " It is Sophiar, .sir." " Eh 1 Who ]" " Our daughter, sir. She came home last Thursday. She has been finishing of her edication in France at a French school." The gentleman stared for a few moments at Mr. May, as if unable to understand him. Then returned his cigar to his lips, nodded slightly, shook the reins, and was whirled round the corner on his way to his father's residence at the West- end, where he dwelt. " I'm sure I should think it's the first time any of 'em has come down on a Sunday," observed May to his sister-in-law, as they walked on. " There's Sophiar a-leaning out of the window." Opening the door with his latch-key. Miss Foxaby rushed in and up the stairs, to clasp her niece in her arms. " Oh my goodness heart, Sophia ! how beautiful you do look ! Well, if ever I saw anybody so much improved in all my life." PARKWATER. 21 " I am grown, am I not, Aunt Foxaby !" ** Grown lovely, child. Ah, and somebody else thinks so : I could see it. Only think of his asking May who you were ! Somebody we met in the street with his cab and groom, a- smoking his cigar, all so stylish !" " Who was that gentleman, father 1" inquired Sophia. " I forgot myself as usual, and addressed him in French." " Why, Sophiar, you don't mean to say as you've forgot him as well as your English ?" cried the wondering father, who took all his daughter's airs to be genuine. " It was young Mr. Lyvett." " That it was a Lyvett I could see by the likeness ; but I thought I should have remembered young Lyvett weU. A haughty fellow, with black eyebrows, he used to be, who looked down upon everybody." " Sophiar's thinking of the eldest son," interposed Mrs. May, who was now attired for the afternoon. " This one is Mr. Fred. He was articled to a firm in the country, Sophiar, some house in a different branch of law business, and was never much here until lately. !N'o wonder you didn't remem- ber him. But he is twenty-one now, and has come back for good. They do say he's to have a share in the business by- and-by, the same as his eldest brother have got. Mr. Fred is ten times nicer to speak to than Mr. James. He haven't got that proud way with him. Of course he's a deal younger." " Ten years younger, I should say," remarked Sophia. " Well, and I should think he is. Mr. Fred's not much more than a boy yet. Mr. James seemed older at sixteen than he do at twenty-one." " What did he want down here to-day T asked the porter. 22 PARKWATER. " I don't think I ever kneAv any of 'em to have troubled us on a Sunday afore — as I was a-saying to Aunt Foxaby." " He came after his cigars," said Mrs. May. " He said he left 'em behind him, yesterday. Leastways, the case." " Sophia had better look out," cried Miss Foxaby, with a knowing nod. " Stranger things have happened, j\Iy dear, he said you were the handsomest girl he ever saw. And he took you for a real lady." " Who said I was ?" asked Sophia, quickly. "Mr. FredLyvett." " I could see he v/as struck Avith me," thought Sophia to herself. " But, ma foi, where's the use of that ? He is a Lyvett." ' Eetiring to the kitchen to tea, Sophia's future prospects were discussed. Aunt Foxaby led to it by observing that Sophia, with her figure, and her air, and her French, might command any situation she pleased as lady's own attendant, even to Eoyalty she might almost aspire; and that all she would have to learn now was a little hair-dressing — dress-making would come to her " spontaneous." Sophia's answer to this startled Aunt Foxaby, and nearly sent May off his chair. She meant to be a lady herself, she said, not maid to one ; she was a lady already ; and she asked what they meant by putting so great an indignity upon her, even in idea. It was very unexpected ; and with one tacit consent the subject was allowed to drop. PARKWATER. 23 CHAPTER III. MR. FRED LYVETT. It is possible that even at this early stage, a faint idea of some mistake in the training of their daughter began to dawn upon May and his wife. That Sophia was no longer one of themselves, and never would be again, was easy to be seen. In habits, manners, education and ideas, she was above them ; as Mrs. May might have expressed it, she had been " lifted into a different spear." And what could come of it 1 speaking only of the feelings, l^o thing but cruel disappoint- ment to themselves, and bitter mortification to her. Sophia had been brought up to be ashamed of her parents; or, rather, the shame was the result. They had educated her to be a lady (according to their notions of one), and really poor Sophia was not to be blamed if she responded to the rear- ing. What her future was to be, what they should do with her, and where she was to live, gave concern to Mrs. May. But for the foolish pursuit of that low literature which had warped her mind, she would have been rather a sensible woman; certainly she was a well-meaning one. Sophia plainly told her — and the tears stood in the girl's eyes as she said it — that she could never reconcile herself to sit in the kitchen : she coidd not. Her meals she was obhged to take in it ; but^ after each one she retired to her own room in the attic. When the doors were shut and the shutters closed at night, 24 PARKWATER. she would then come back to the kitchen, sure of not being seen there by the world. " This can't go on," sighed Mrs. May to her husband. " "Whatever will be done with her? The poor child will eat her heart away." A possible solution to it was to dawn. I^ot just at first, but very soon. It came on by degrees ; and even Mrs. May did not dare to dwell upon it — the fortune would be too good for Sophia. Whether the fault was Mr. Frederick Ly vett's, or whether it was Miss May's, whether it arose by accident, or whether by design, certain it is, that in the course of the next week or two, they met and conversed together three or four times, in the street, or on the stairs. By the end of the second week they had become tolerably intimate. So that it probably did not surprise Sophia, though it did her father and mother, when on the following Sunday, early in the afternoon, Mr. Fred appeared to escort IMiss INIay to Westminster Abbey : which he had heard her express a wish to see ; that she "might compare its architecture with that of the Eoman Catholic churches she had been accustomed to admire in France." Had Mr. Frederick Lyvett offered to take her to inspect a Roman Catholic purgatory in the fiery regions, it is certain that Mr. and ]\Irs. May would never have dared to offer an objection, so impressed were they with the honour done to their daughter in going anywhere with a Lyvett. " You don't know how pleased I am that you consented to come with me," began Mr. Lyvett, as they set off. " Did you think I should not ?" asked Miss May. " WeU — our acquaintance has been so short that I thought PARKWATEE. 25 you miglit object on that score. Still, I knew you were a sensible girl, without any stupid nonsense about you." *' Perhaps it is not quite comme il faut, my coming out like this, but it is so grateful to me to get, even for an hour, into congenial society, that I forget appearances. You must be aware that in my home (as I must perforce call it) there is no society for me." "■ Certainly, old May and his — I mean Mr. and Mrs. May are very different from you. When he told me that first Sun- day that you were his daughter, I could not believe it." " I am different," answered Sophia. " And how I shall manage to drag through my days in a place and position so unsuited to me, I cannot tell. I have been miserable ever since I returned. As a child, my social unhappiness did not strike me, but now I feel it deeply. I require refinement, Mr. Lyvett ; it is as necessary to my nature as air ; therefore you may judge what my home is to me. I believe, if I have to stop in it, I shall die of chagrin." ** I am sure I wish I could provide you with a better," said Mr. Lyvett, in an impulse of genuine sympathy. Unfortunately, the young man was abeady falling over head and ears in love. The bright vision which had burst on his astonished senses that Sunday afternoon in his father's private room had made a lasting impression. Every inter- view strengthened the feeling. He had never been in love before ; but now his time to be had come. Frederick Lyvett was of a gentle, yielding nature. He had not the strong, sharp intellect of his brother James, but he was not defi- cient ; his fecKngs were strong and tender ; in all his im- pulses he was strictly honourable, and Sophia was as safe with him as she would have been with a brother. 26 PARKWATER. Wliat with talking, and Avalking slowly, and looking at the fountains at Charing-cross, at the Horse Guards, and other points of interest, all of which he was delighted to show her, they arrived at Westminster Ahhey just as the gates were closing after service. So all they had to do was to find their way back again, which they did with rather more speed ; for Mr. Lyvett called a cab, the best-looking he could see on the stand, and escorted Sophia home in it, lest she should be tired. Thus the acquaintance had begun^ and thus it continued. Continued until the infatuated young man was really and truly in deep love with Sophia May, and had formed a resolve that when his time for marrying came, no other than she should be his wife, Sojahia saw her ends gained, or in a fair way to be so. She did not love Frederick Lyvett : she looked upon him as rather " soft." He certainly was soft in regard to her. But she liked him very well. Apart from any ulterior views, she was grateful for his comiDanionship ; it was pleasant. She had ulterior views, however. The ruling passion of Sophia May's heart was ambition ; with her training and her present drawbacks, it could not be otherwise : a craving for social standing, an intense eager longing to be lifted out of the low rank she was born to, and to live at ease. As the wife of Frederick Lyvett all this would be hers. It may be a matter of marvel to the reader that Mr. Frederick Lyvett, who had been reared in the prejudices of his position, should lower himself to make one in the house of his father's servants as (may we say it V) an equal ; it Avas almost a marvel to Sophia, But that he did so, there was no disputing. The unfortunate fruits Avhich these matters were PARKWATER. 27 to bear in after years, caused their particulars to become well known. In the early stage of their acquaintance, she was his companion only out of doors, as on that expedition to West- minster Abbey, or in Mr. Lyvett's room on a Sunday after- noon. But later, when he was more infatuated, Mr. Frederick condescended to overleap all barriers, and became, as may be said, one with the family. Old May and his wife never for- got their respect : they were the humblest of the humble ; and would sit at the very far corner of the kitchen when ]Mr. Frederick was in it, and hand him his tea — if he chose any — at a table different from theirs. Sophia felt the degradation for him perhaps more than he felt it for himself. Love, as we all know, softens everything ; anomalies bend before it ; in- congruities are not seen. JSTo doubt, at first Frederick Lyvett winced at the kitchen and its surroundings : but his love for Sophia was stronger than he was. And he did look upon her as a very superior being ; refined and cultivated as were his sisters. Love's eyes have generally a bandage over them ; and he had one over his. Sophia had persuaded her parents to part with the worn- out old piano which had so offended her nerves the night of her return, and to hire a better — she might not want one long there, she said — and Mr. Frederick Lyvett, who was passion- ately fond of music, would lean over her, enraptured, when she used it. She played and sang very well now : a thousand times better, Fred declared, than his sisters. Sophia did play and sing well. He was not blinded there. Her voice was sweet, and she had that aptitude for music which is sure to repay cultivation. How long this might have gone on, and what would really have been the upshot, it is impossible to say ; for Frederick Ly- 28 PARKWATER. vett "was too young to marry; neither was he thinking of it yet. It was hardly to be expected that he, used to refinement at home, would continue long to he hail-fellow-well-met with the office kitchen and his father's servants who inhabited it. But to Sophia's dismay and misfortune — yes, her deep, terrible misfortune — it was brought to an abrupt termination. One day Mr. Eowley, the confidential clerk, who had been in the house for five-and-twenty years, and who was a white- haired old gentleman of sixty, and a strict disciplinarian, left his own desk in the front office, gathered up some papers in his hand, and ];)roceeded upstairs to Mr. Lyvett's room. The same room where Frederick and Sophia first met. Mr. Lyvett was alone. He looked up from his table as his clerk entered. " "What papers are those, Eowley 1 Canton's case ? Any- thing arisen ?" " Iso, sir. I want to say a few words to you, apart from business." " "What about ?" asked ]\Ir. Lyvett, in a quick tone. He was a stout man, with a pleasant eye and ready smile. His younger son must now resemble what he was in his youth. " And of course, sir, you will not hint to Mr. Frederick that you obtained your information from me. It would set him against me in a way that would be unpleasant. But I regard liim and Mr. James more like my own sons, having nursed them as boys, and watched them grow up ; and if I do open my mouth now, it is because I think his interests de- mand that I should." " "Why, what is it T' inquired "Rlr. Lyvett, in surprise. " Has Fred been up to anything T "You know that May has got his daughter at home, sir?" PARKWATER. , 29 " May 1 Downstairs 1 I know nothing about it 1 What if he has ?" " She is a woman grown now, and a very handsome one. Plays and sings like a professional, they say, and " ^^ Plays and sings!" echoed Mr. Lyvett, bursting into a laugh. "May's girl f " She does, sir : and that's not one half of the folly. They clubbed together, May and his wife and that Aunt Foxaby, and gave her a boarding-school education ; and finally they sent her to a school in France, to be finished off with French airs and graces. !N"obody would believe now she was old May's daughter : she is really an elegant girl." " More fools they. But what has this to do with Fred- erick T " Why, he has made her acquaintance, sir, and I believe is over head and brains in love : otherwise he would never stand by her at that piano, by the hour together, as he does." " What do you say ?" cried the lawyer, hotly. " Stands by her where 1 What piano 1" " Their piano, sir. They have one here, down in the kitchen." " A piano here !" repeated Mr. Lyvett, growing more aston- ished with each disclosure. " May has 1" " It is true. And there's where Mr. Frederick spends his spare time. He will be in the kitchen night after night listening to that piano." " I'll piano him. I have noticed that he has not often put in an appearance at dinner lately ; but as he is a steady young feUow, I have not particularly questioned him where he got to." 30 PARKWATEE. " Well, sir, that's where. Down below, with May's people." " Donkey ! But if May and his wife bring up their girl in tliis absurd way, what can they expect ? Still, May is oui' servant, faithful and trusty. And Frederick ought to be ashamed of himself And I was thinking him so steady ! sterling and upright as gold." "There's a suspicion that he means to marry the girl." Mr. Lyvett's face flushed red : his tone was haughty. " What are you saying, Eowley T " If I say it, sir, it is in the hope that it may be guarded against. I overheard Jones chaffing Mr. Fred about it a week back : they did not know I was there. Since then I have kept my eyes and ears open ; have waited after hours and been here on Sundays ; and I am sure Mr. Fred means mischief. Mischief for himself, not for her !" Mr. Lyvett sat back in his chair, a frown on his brow. "Last night," continued old Eowley, "I just dined hard by, and took a stroll down this street afterwards, to see if I could see anything going on; and I did. She came out, dressed in white, with chains and bracelets and things, and he handed her into a cab, hat oflF, as respectfully as could be, and got in afterwards. Old j\Iay fetched it from the stand at the top of the street. * Opera, Haymarket,' Mr. Fred called out, and off they went." " But with all this going on, Eowley — operas and cabs, and such like — you cannot pretend to think it is an innocent, platonic sort of affair," said IMr. Lyvett, his mouth curling with scorn. " Innocent, sir, in one sense. I believe Mr. Fred's inten- tions to that girl arc as honourable as ever yours were to Mrs. PARKWATER. 31 Lyvett. Had I though.t it less serious^ I don't know that 1 should have troubled you." Mr. Lyvett sat and played with his watch seals — which he wore in the old-fashioned manner, hanging down from a heavy, straight chain. "Fred was always the fool of the family," he angrily muttered : but at another time he would not have said it. " Well, we must see Avhat can be done. Harsh measures, iu these cases, seldom answer. I am much obliged to you, Eowley." Harsh measures seldom do answer, and Mr. Lyvett was a better diplomatist. "Within a day or two, it was known through- out the house that Mr, Frederick was fixed upon to go to Valparaiso. Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett were the agents for an important house there, and some business had arisen which rendered it expedient that one of the firm should pro- ceed thither. This was actually the case, and Mr. Lyvett had been thinking of despatching his elder son. Frederick Lyvett scarcely knew whether to be pleased or annoyed. When his father called him into his private room and blandly informed him that he and Mr. Castlerosse had come to the decision to despatch him on this important mis- sion, he felt transfixed with wonder. Were there no Sophia May to intrude herself into his thoughts, he would have been gratified beyond measure. But a young man's desire for ad- venture overcame even his love : besides, he often heard So- phia sing the words " Absence makes the heart grow fonder," and believed it. " You win have to be off to-morrow, Frederick." " To-morrow !" repeated the startled young man. " You must catch the outgoing mail packet." 32 PARKWATER. " But — but my traps, father 1 I must have an outfit." " Oh, they are easily got together," said Mr. Lyvett. " You can do all that to-day." And Frederick found it had to be so. He had barely time that night to wish his lady-love farewell and to vow to her eternal fidelity. Away he went in high spirits ; not a care or doubt on his mind as to the future. His only remonstrance to his father had been in regard to his "traps," that there was not time enough to get them to- gether. However the time was made to be sufficient ; and he and his traps were escorted by Mr. Lyvett himself to the port of embarkation, and on to the good ship The Skimmer of the South, then making ready to put to sea. Fred never dreamt that he was sent away with a motive — that his father knew as much about his private affairs as he himself knew. Sophia May was stunned by the blow. A suspicion of the truth— that something had been discovered — lay upon her ; and she fully believed that she had seen Fred Lyvett for the last time. The thought was very bitter. She had no love for Frederick Lyvett ; but she missed his pleasant companion- ship ; and she found all her golden visions, of rising in the world as his wife, suddenly flung to the winds. Yes, it was intensely bitter. Sophia sat down in her attic and cried many tears. " Wliat will become of me, now 1 I ca'n!t live on in this wretched place ! Why was I ever born ?" The next scene in the drama concerned j\Ir. and Mrs. May. On the return of Mr. Lyvett to London they were ordered into the presence of himself and Mr. Castlerosse. May and his wife stood like culprits. Mrs. May attired in her choice PARKWATElt 33 black gown tliat she wore for cleaning, and her rusty black cap. Mr. Lyvett sternly informed them that the fact of their having inveigled his son into a clandestine intimacy with their daughter was now known to him, and that ^It. Fred- erick's voyage to Valparaiso was undertaken to break off the disgrace. Terribly confused and ashamed, they knew not what to say, and in their perplexity they gathered what Mr- Lyvett had not intended to imply, for he was a man of strict veracity — namely, that Mr. Frederick was a party to the scheme, and that it was he, in especial, who wished to go away to rid himself of Sophia. The porter did venture upon a defence, as well as his confusion would allow — that Mr. Frederick had not been " invaydled " at all ; that he had took to come of his own accord, and said he icoukl come, whether or no ; and he, May, humbly hoped the gentlemen would condescend to pardon him and his wife for what warn't no fault of theirn. Mr. Lyvett's pardoning consisted in handing ]May a certain amount of wages in lieu of notice, and ordering them all three to be out of the house by five o'clock that evening. " I thought it was not all sure," sighed poor Mrs. May, when she descended to the kitchen dissolved in grief, '' and I have told Sophiar so ; and she has snapped at me for saying it. If it had been anybody else but a young Lyvett, I might have had faith. When a gentleman, whose family keeps their carriages and footmen in silk stockings, comes to lower himself down to his own servants and sit with them in their kitchen amongst the dirty ashes, as it were, from the upstairs fires, it's not to be expected but what he will take himself away. He admired Sophiar, as was easy to be seen, and I'm 3 34 PARKWATER. sure lie was a well-meaning, honourable gentleman without a ill thought ; and that was all. And I declare I don't know which is the most to blame, him or us." " Don't you ever try it on again, Sophiar," gruffly inter- rupted the father. She was sitting with a pale cheek and dry lips, leaning Iier elbow on the round table, indulging her resentment against Frederick Lyvett. In the face of evidence she could not doubt the truth of what she heard ; she fully believed he had gone away to break with her : she believed that his pro- testations of love were false : that he had been only laughing iit her in his sleeve the whole time. Or, at any rate, if that was not the case, for she remembered how earnest and guile- less he had seemed, that he had yielded to the remonstrances of his father, and given her up. " This is not packing up," suddenly interposed May. "J can't pack up," returned Mrs. May, "I am too much shook. Whatever is to be done with the pianer ?" " They must fetch it away, wife. There ain't nothing else to be done with it." " Oh," groaned Mrs. May, " I wish I was dead !" " Much use it is, wishing that," said the porter. '' I'd re- commend you to turn and pack up instead. If the things hain't in the cart by five o'clock, we shall have 'em thrown in for us. I know our master ; he sticks to his word when he's roused. You'd better begin with them pots and pans. They can go in that empty case." Mrs. May dried her eyes^ and slowly rose. " Come, Sophiar," she said, "you must lend a helping hand to- day." " I !" returned Sophia, sobbing out her contempt, " / lend PARKWATER. 35 a lielping hand with pots and pans ! You couldn't expect me to do it, mother. I will pack my own things : and glad •enough I shall be to do it, and be away from this place ; but I can't touch kettles and saucepans. I've never done any hard work in all my life ; you know I have not." ^Irs. May sighed. True : Sophia had been taught to ■exercise her fingers on the piano, not on domestic work. " Perhaps j'^ou could jjut my clothes up as well as yours, child," she ventured to say. " I'm sure I don't know how in the world we shall get through aU, and be away by live." vSophia sailed out of the kitchen, making no answer. The porter departed to secure two rooms, which, as he chanced to know, were to let in the neighbourhood, and to bring in help to get away their goods in time. Later in the day, when they were engaged in the attics taking down the bedsteads, and Sophia was in the kitchen alone, somebody dashed in at the door. It was Mr. Jones, whom we once saw just after he was articled — and Sophia too. His articles were done with now, but he remained in the office at a good salary, hoping a vague hope that he might sometime see on the doorposts ''Lyvett, Castlerosse, Lyvett, and Jones." Mr. Jones had good private expectations, and his family and the Lyvetts were on friendly terms. " My dear Miss May ! I have so longed for a little con- versation with you ; and now that puppy Fred Lyvett's out of the way, I hope my turn has come." " What T said Sophia, turning on him no pleasant expres- sion. '• I admire you immensely, my dear Miss May, and " " Then take that," answered Sophia, dashing over him the 3-2 36 PARKWATER. contents of a wooden bowl ; an apparent compound of grease and damp coffee grounds. Young Mr. Jonos stepped back amid the debris of thi^ kitchen furniture, now preparing for its removal. Consider- ably more cbap-fallen than lie ever remembered to have been, be retreated up the stairs, wondering bow on eartb be sliould get bis bat out of the office, and bide bis sbirt-front from tbe clerks. At tbe turn of tbe landing be met Mrs. May, Avbo was carrying down some bed-posts. " Sakes alive, sir !" sbe uttered in astonisbment. " What- ever is the matter 1 I never saw anybody in such a pickle in my life." " You may well ask what it is, Dame May I" spluttered Mr. Jones. " It is the work of your daughter. I addressed a polite word to her as civilly as I could speak it, and she flung this poison over me — or whatever it is. It's well for tbe house that it's going to have a clearance : you are all a ({ueer lot." " What did you do that for, Sophiar T demanded Mrs. ]\lay, when she reached the kitchen. "Do what?" " That^to llx. Jones." "Because I pleased to do it." " Whatever shall we do Avith you if you are to behave like this ]" cried poor Mrs. May. " Your temper is upset to-day, Sopbiar." " I have bad enough to upset it," replied Sophia. " Eut I will not trouble you long, mother. I have been thinking of matters, and my mind is made up. Your home and fother's Avill never be any fit home for me, so I must leave it and go out in the world." PARKWATElt 37 " As lady's-maid ?" briefly responded Mrs. ^Nfay. "Xo. As governess." " As governess !" repeated the mother, the word seeming to take her breath away. *' Well, Sophiar, if I don't believe you have just hit it," she added, after a pause of considera- tion. " There's many a respectable tradesman's family would be proud of you to help edicate their girls." " Very likely," remarked Sophia. " But I should not enter a tradesman's family." " Why, what then f ' " A nobleman's. Or a gentleman's." ]Mrs. May was petrified. Her scared senses only allowed her to take in the first word. " A nobleman's family, child ! — what, a lord's ?" " Why not ?" coolly asked Sophia. " Oh, but don't you see," spoke Mrs. May, " how things would be against it? You can never get admittance to a lord's family as governess, Sophiar. They want real ladies for governesses, lords do : leastways, those that have had different beginnings from ours. Why, when the nobleman came for what they call references, and found us what we are, me and your father living in a kitchen, and aU that, no lord would think you good enough to teach his children." *■ Sophia's life was rather a mortified life just then. She re- cognised the doubt at least as forcibly as her mother. " We should never have wanted you to go out at all, child, never ; not as lady's-maid, or anything ; only your Aunt Foxaby got thinking afore you came home that you'd not like to live in these kitchens, brought up so superior. But if you could reconcile yourself to stay with us, Sophiar, why you'd 38 PARKWATElt just be the comfort of me and of your father. "We've got but you." " Now, mother, could you expect it ?" Mrs. May sighed. Had they been making a mistake al'l ah'tng 1 " There seems to be only one course open to me," observed Sophia ; " that of going out as governess. It shall be in a high family, or not at all." " It can never be a lord's, child, I'm afraid." *' You "will see," returned Sophia. And so shall we. CHAPTEIi IV. AT r A 11 K W A T E R . The beams of a September sun, drawing near its setting, were- falling on the mansion pertaining to a well-cultivated estate in one of the better parts of Ireland. The house was not erected in a critical style of architecture, for it was a straggling, in-and-out sort of building, that seemed to have been added to indiscriminately at different times,, a room here, a room there; but the scenery around Avas beautiful. It was called Park- water. At the window of one of the reception-rooms, gazing at an approaching car, stood a pretty, quiet-looking lady, un- assuming in face as in dress. She appeared a simple-hearted, cordial woman quite devoid of pretence and affectation ; and such she was. It was Lady Tennygal. She had dined in the middle of the day with her children.. PARKWATER. 39 She was devoted to them ; and ■when her lord was absent, she was apt to forget pomp and state. Lady Tennygal was expecting the arrival of the new governess to her little girly, and had hospitably thought she would Avait tea for her : no doubt this car contained the lady. The Countess rang the bell. " Eeed, show that lady in to me at once. I think it is the governess." "Yes, my lady." A minute or two, and the same man threw the door open for the governess. A tall, fair girl with a handsome face. The countenance had, however, a peculiar expression ; very determined, and not always pleasing. " Miss May, my lady." ^liss May came forward, her head erect, and her air conse- quential. One might have deemed, indeed, that she was the lady and the other the governess. She dropped a ceremonious curtsey, very low, just as you may have seen from a French- woman. " Have I the honour of addressing Lady Tennygal?" The Countess inclined her head. " An uncompromising- looking young woman," she thought to herself, " but that's all proper, I suppose, for a governess. Allow me to welcome you to Parkwater, ]\Iiss May," she said aloud. " I hope you will find your residence here agreeable." '• Madam, I thank you for your kind wishes. I trust I shall perform my daties to your satisfaction." "And when you have taken off your things, which I dare- say you are anxious to do, we will have tea," said the pleasant little Countess, " and you shall see your pupils. I thought we would take tea together this evening, that we might grow 40 PARK WATER. acquainted with each other. I have the children very much with me when Lord Tennygal is absent." ^liss May was shown to her rooms. When she returned from them she was rather finer than the Countess — taking in the general effect of her appearance ; and her flaxen hair was dressed in elaborate braids. " Too pretentious for a governess," was the idea that crossed Lady Tennygal's mind ; " I wonder whether she is quite a gentlewoman 1" The next moment she took herself to task ; as she was sure to do if her kind heart gave momentary vent to an ill-natured thought. " Here are your two little girls, Miss May ; Lady Laura and Lady Eose. My dear children, I am sure you will wel- come your governess, and tell her you are glad to see her." They advanced and put out their hands : pretty children of nine and ten, very well-behaved. " Mais elles ne sont pas — " began Miss May, and then pulled herself up hastily. " I beg your ladyship's pardon ; I have been so much accustomed to converse in Frencli, that I occasionally run into it when I ouglit not. I was about to ask if these two young ladies were all." "All!" laughed the Countess, " all the children ! There are six more, younger than they are. The last is only three months old — such a little darling ! These are all who will be xinder your care at present. I hope you will bring them on well." " Papa says we are backward," interrupted Laura. " Oh, yes. Lord Tennygal is very clever himself, and he thinks the children ought to be. I tell him there's quite time enough." "He has been away ever so long, papa has," cried little Eose. PARKWATER. 41 " Xearly nine weeks," added the communicative Countess •to Miss ]\Iay. " He has been out yachting with some friends in the ^lediterranean. But he is in Dublin now, and will bo 'home in a day or two." " Uncle Tody is coming with him," said Lady Eose, " and ■he is going to bring me a real live Venetian doll in a gondola. tHe said so." " I have not yet inquired what sort of a journey you have rhad, Miss May," said the Countess. " Was the sea rough ?" Before Miss May could answer, the sound of a carriage was dieard, and the children left their tea and ran to the window ito look at it. "Mamma!" screamed the children "^n delight, "it is Ti^apa !" " !N"ever !" cried the Countess, running also to look. " Oh, .how glad I am ! That's just like him. Miss jMay; he loves ito take us by surprise." The Earl of Tennygal came in. A small, fair man, as good- aiatured as his wife. She met him in the doorway, received Jiis embrace, and then flew upstairs to carry down the baby herself, and tell the other children that papa was come. IMiss May had risen, and the Earl bowed to her, wondering what visitor his wife had staying with her. " !N"ow who is going to be mistress of the ceremonies and introduce me ]" said he to the little girls, as he stood before the stranger, with a genial smile. " ]\ramma seems to have flown away." " She came this evening; she is our new governess." " Hush, Eose," cried the more dignified Laura. " Papa, it lis Miss May." Eose thought that quite enough. She pulled his arm to 42 PARKWATEH. draw his atteutioD. " Papa, Avliy did not Uncle Tody come V' " Uncle Tody is gone to London, liose." " And taken my doll and gondola Avitli liim ?" Eo.s& seemed to think much of this " Uncle Tody." " That lady in the drawing-room took me by surprise, Bessie," remarked the Earl to his Avife, as they strolled out together after tea. " Eose gave me the information that she was a ' new governess.' " " So she is. I sent you word that I had engaged one when I wrote to — where was it 1 — Sicily," " Did you 1 I do not remember it." " Yes, I did. Do you think she looks as if she would suit r " Dear Bessie, that's one of your fallacies — ^judging by * looks.' Did you engage this one for her looks T " I never saw her until this evening. Why ?" added the Countess, with quick apprehension. " Do you not like her looks ?" " Oh, her looks are well enough : if her capabilities equal them, she'll do. She does not think a little of herself, I can see that. Where did you get her from ?" " I wrote to London, to Lady Langtju. She heard of her through an agency, I think. I left it all to Lady Langton. ]\Iiss May's style of playing is good, I am told, and her French that of a native." " Urn !" said the Earl. « What of her English ?" " Oh, Frank ! you speak as if you did not think well of it." "I fancy her tone — her accent, perhaps I should rather say — is not quite as pure and perfect as it might be. PARKWATER. 43 It does not give one the idea that she has mixed in good society." Now Lady Tennygal had a doubt on her mind that she had noticed the same. But she had entire faith in Lady Langton. " Perhaps we may bo mistaken, Frank dear," she said. " I do so hope she will suit us." " So do I, I am sure," assented the good-natured Earl. " Is she a gentlewoman, Bessie ?" '' Oh yes." " Who are her friends 1" " Solicitors ; eminent solicitors. That is, her father Avas. He is dead, I think. I will find Lady Langton's letters for you. I know my letter to Miss May, the one I wrote to ratify the agreement, was addressed to the care of Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett ; a first-rate legal firm of long stand- ing, Lady Langton says, and they strongly recommended her." " Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett !" repeated the Earl. " I know the firm well by reputation : most honourable practi- tioners. If they answer for Miss May, it is all right. Do you give her a high salary, Bessie ?" " Oh no ; very reasonable indeed. Only forty pounds. But she is young, and has not been out before. I think she will suit, Frank : but of course there's no telling without a trial. — So Theodore has not come with you?" " He will be here, I expect, in a few days. He was obliged to go on to London to see about one or two matters there : ])ressinrj ones, Bessie. Tody has been at the old game again. I don't wonder your father is sick and tired of paying his debts for him." " Poor fellow ! He is so "ood-natured." 44 PAHKWATER. " Xot much of that. He is reckless-natured, if you liko. To squander away his money, and leave his just debts un- pkiid, is not being what I call good-natured. From London, Tody goes down to see Sir Archibald : but as to his getting from him Avhat he wants, I am sure he won't ; and Tody knows it." " Papa said, the last time, that he would never set liiiu straight again," observed Lady Tennygal. " The fact is, Bessie, he has said it so frequently, and had to say it so frequently, that it falls on Tody's ears unheeded. But he got a sharp, determined letter from Sir Archibald the day before he left the yacht." " Oh, did he ? What did papa say in it V " It was to the effect that he would advance no more money; and if Tody went to prison, there he might stop. Tody had been writing to Sir Archibald that he was in immi- nent danger of arrest." " What will he do ? How I wish we were rich !" " If we Avere as rich as the Indies, and could hand Tody a blank cheque to be filled up at will, it would be doing him no kindness, for he is only pulled out of one scrape to walk into another. It will take tAvo thousand pounds now to set him only tolerably clear." " Oh, Frank ! Do you know how he is going to man- age]" " I know Avhat he sa3^s : but if Tody says one thing to-day, he says another to-morrow. He means, in the first place, to have a rake at Sir Archibald — that is not my expression, Bessie ; it is his — and get himself freed from one or two things that ha must ^Qi himself freed from. So much, per- haps, Sir Archibald will do ; for they are very bad." PARK WATER. 45 " What are they V hastily inquired Lady Tennygal. " My dear, I cannot explain them to you; you would not understand them. Tody is in a mess ; and that's all you need trouble yourself to know." '• "What has it to do with? — this that is so bad ?" " Oh, it has to do with bills. [N'ever you mind. He has- been in a mess before, and he will be in one again, or else it would not be Tody Devereux. Sir Archibald, no doubt, Avill help him out of that, but no further. And then Tody pro- poses to come over here, and lie ])erclu with us, while he con- .siders how he is to get on his legs again." " I have always thought it a pity he sold out." " He could not keep in — he would have been sent to Coventry. You know it was not once, or twice, or three times, that Tody Avas in for it, but always. And some things got to the colonel's ears — if they did not get to the commander- in-chiefs — and altogether there was no other resource. Be- sides, he was compelled to turn the proceeds into money, and make stop-gaps of it." " Still, if he could have kept his commission " "But he could not," interrupted Lord Tennygal. "Mj dear Bessie, Tody is your brother, and I am sorry to speak harshly of him, but he is just a vagabond, and that's the best that can be said." A few days passed on. IMiss INIay set to her duties with a will. How she had contrived to enter this family was best known to herself; but, being in it, she resolved to try and please. The departure of Frederick Lyvett lay on her still as a bitter blow, a terrible check to the ambitious views she had begun to cherish. However, as she told herself, if she could but continue in these families, she might meet with some one 46 • FARKWATER. as eligible as he who would fall in love with her and raise her by marriage to his own rank. The little girls, Laura and Eose, took to her very kindly; Lady Tennygal was charmed with her playing and singing ; and all parties Avcre satisfied. Miss May perhaps would have been better satisfied had Parkwater been more lively. It might have been a desert, for all the company she saw; and she could not understand a lord and a lady living so quietly in regard to household arrangements. On the first Sunday, as they were walking home across the park after morning service, Lord Tennygal suddenly addressed his wife. " Is that governess of yours an Englishwoman, Bessie ?" " Certainly. Why?" "Eecause she uses a French prayer-book in church." " Xo I" uttered Lady Tennygal, in an accent of disbelief. " She used one this morning. I saw it in her hand. And " " ]\[amma !" cried little Eose, running up, her whole air, eyes, and lips, one picture of admiring awe — " mamma, only think ! Miss May's book is not a common book like ours : it is all in French; every bit. How I wish I was clever enough to have a French prayer-book !" " That's corroborative testimony," laughed Lord Tennygal. " I don't know how you will get over the dilemma," he added to his wife, in an under and more serious tone. " It is a pity the children observed it. You cannot well speak against their governess to them : but you cannot allow their minds to retain the favourable impression that French prayer-book seems to have made." The kind face of Lady Tennygal wore a vexed expression. P AUK WATER 47 " How could Miss ^lay evince so much "bad taste ?" ' ' I don't think ' taste' is quite the right word," remarked Lord Tennygal. "Mark me, Bessie, this proves that the young lady's mind has not been altogether well trained : I doubt whether her talents have. Kobody ever took a French prayer-book to our service but from one motive — display. And a well-educated woman knows that she has no need of that, I should say Miss May is much more superficially acquainted with French than you suspect, or she would not seek to parade it." At this moment they turned an angle of the walk, and came face to face with a gentleman — a tall, dark man, with a profusion of black hair and whiskers, black eyes that seemed to pierce you in a disagreeable manner, and a too free, but at the same time an ill-tempered, cast of countenance. Some people would have shrunk from him instinctively — some might have called him handsome. He was undoubtedly a fine man as to figure, towering a head and shoulders above Lord Tennygal. It was Captain Devereux, brother to Lady Tennygal, but several years older; and no two faces, and no two individuals, could be much less alike. " Theodore !" uttered Lady Tennygal, in an accent of sur- prise, as she held out her hand. " What ! have you arrived V exclaimed the Earl. " How well you kept your promise of writing !" " Aw- — ^I had nothing good to write," said the new-comer, speaking in a very affected and untrue tone of voice. " I got here two hours ago, and saw you all filing off to church. What a thundering long sermon you must have had inflicted on you ! I wonder you could sit it out !" " Do not forget our old bargain, Theodore," hastily inter- 48 PARKWATER. rupted Lady Tennygal. " !N"o irreverent speaking before the children. They are coming up to us. I wish you would break yourself of the habit." "Oh, it's Uncle Tody!" exclaimed Eose, running to him. " Uncle Tody, where's my live doll?" " She died on the voyage." *• It's not true," said Itose. " It is. She was sea-sick." The child looked very hard of belief. She spoke again : " Then, where's the gondola ?" " Oh, that has sailed away." Lady Eose turned away in supreme indignation. " Mamma, did you ever know Uncle Todj'- bring us any- thing that he promised ? It is always the same." "Uncle Tody" was no longer attending to Eose: his notice was given to the handsome girl who was walking with Laura. She wore a lilac silk dress and a showy shawl; and he thought, as Lord Tennygal had first done, that it was a visitor. Having a propensity for admiring all the handsome girls that came in his way, Captain Devereux lifted his hat. Strictly speaking, he was no longer Captain Devereux, as he had sold out ; but habit made the title familiar. Lord Tennygal linked his arm Avithin his brother-in-law's, and drew him on. " Stop a bit, Tennygal Who's that r " K^obody that need concern you — the governess. How have you managed, over yonder T " I have not managed at all," was the reply, accompanied by an oath. In those days swearing was thought fashionable, and Captain Devereux kept the fashion up, " !N^ot managed at all % I suppose you mean with your flitherf PARKWATEE. 49 " The old man stands out ; he won't advance a stiver. I think he would have done something, but my temper got up, and we came to hard words." " Your temper often gets up when it ought to keep down," remarked Lord Tennygal. " Well ?" " There was nothing left for me but to fiiake my escape. And by Jove ! I can't feel sure, Tennygal, that I shall not be followed. Once let the confounded foxes get the scent here, and I'm done for." " And what, I ask, do you mean to do T " I have been turning it over in my mind, and I think a good plan would be, for you to write to the old man " " I will not interfere between you and Sir Archibald," in- terrupted the Earl. " You won't r " I won't. I have no right to do so, and it might make it unpleasant for Bessie." " Then Eessie shall. He'll listen to her, as he would to you. But he won't to me." " Bessie must do as she thinks best, I will not control her. But were she of my opinion, she would remain neuter." " What the plague am I to do ?" was the angry rejoinder. " These confounded matters must be settled, and with speed too; you know that. Why should you put the stopper on Bessie's trying to win over Sir Archibald ?" " I don't put it on. I said I would not control her. But these things are not of a nature that you can explain to my wife : and how else can she do you good with Sir Archibald 1" " Of course I am not going to give the details to her." 50 PARKWA TER. " Eut they must be given to Sir Archibald. It is only the dire necessity that will induce him to listen at all." " You ought to help me Avith him, Tennygal," was the grumbling rejoinder. " Konsense, man ! Write a proper statement to Sir Archi- bald yourself — properly worded, I mean, and apologising for your temper — and crave his assistance, so far as that you can- not do without it. That's the best thing to do. We will' talk it over to-morrow. And, look here — don't call him the ' old man' to Eessie. She does not like it. It savours of disrespect : and your father is not old yet. Come in now, Devereux, and take some luncheon." Eose still harped upon her wrongs, enlightening the gover- ness as to the ever non-fulfilment of the promises as to dolls and gondolas. " Don't you think it is a great shame of Uncle Tody, Miss May?" " Perhaps it was not his fault," suggested the governess. " What is your uncle's name ?" " Why, it's Uncle Tody." " But his other name 1" " Captain Devereux," said Laura. " He is mamma's brother." " He is not a real captain now, you know, because he has no men to command," interposed Eosa. " Grandj^apa was so angry with him." " Who is your grandpapa. Lady Laura V inquired the go- verness. " Sir Archibald Devereux. He is one of the Queen's officers of State, and he makes laAvs." With the last piece of information the children were called PAEKWATEE. 51 to be made ready for tlieir dinner, which they took at the luncheon-table. Miss May did not exchange a word with Captain Devereux, but he glanced at her often with his black eyes. Afterwards, when she was alone in her sitting-room, she unlocked her desk and took out a French book. Sophia did well to keep it, and all such books, locked up : it would have astonished Lady Tennygal had she seen them at Park- water. The governess appeared, however, to derive amuse- ment from it, for she sat reading it till the bells rang out for afternoon service. " Those droning bells again !" was her gTumbling ejacula- tion. " Of course I shall be expected to attend — and not a creature to look at one except parish rustics ! Had I known this was such a wretched, out-of-the-world neighbourhood, I might not have been so eager to get to it." Miss May was right : she was expected to attend. But she appeared with an English prayer-book, the gift of Lady Tennygal : who, in presenting it, had made a special request that the French one might be put away out of sight, and never be taken to church at Parkwater again. Sophia wished the church at Hanover, or as much farther off as it could be induced to go. She foresaw, indeed, that she should lead but a dull life of it at Parkwater. Sober routine was not con- genial to her, she feared. As to this gentleman, Captain Devereux, who had enlivened their dulness to-day, she sup- posed he had but come on a very temporary visit, and that the probabihty was she should not exchange a word with him while he stayed. But she would have liked to well enough. He struck her as being quite a noble-looking man, especially by the side of that shrimp. Lord Tennygal : and she, at least, did not see anything to dislike in his manners or expression. 4—2 52 PARKWATER. I said before that some people did not : rather the contrary and Miss May was one of them. CHAPTEE V. CAPTAIN DEVEREUX. There were signs one evening of a reception at Parkwater. Eooms were lighted, and carriages whirled up, bringing guests. Not many guests, for the locality did not produce them, and they mostly had to come from a distance. Still, when all were assembled, what with old and young, it was a goodly show. Eose was nine years old that day, and they were keeping her birthday : children and parents were equally welcome. The governess's eyes and senses were dazzled. On this occasion she made one with the rest. Inordinately alive to the value of rank, to the pomp and pride of courtly life, the result chiefly of her childhood's researches in the Caterpillar romances, her expectations had been raised to an extraordi- nary pitch when about to enter the Earl of Tennygal's family. Once there, she had found herself immeasurably disappointed. In all, save the titles, it might have been taken for a private "entleman's household. Miss May had anticipated something far more grand ; though precisely what, she could not herself have stated ; whether the carpets were to be of cloth of gold, or the every-day dinner-plates of silver. But; on certain occasions, none knew better how to hold their rank, and to display its appurtenances, than Lord and Lady Tennygal : this was one ; and Sophia Ma}', who had never before wit- PARKWATER. 63 nessecl the social unions of courtly life, forgot that she was only a subordinate, and thought herself in the seventh heaven. She was standing looking at the quadrille in the children's room, when Captain Devereux approached her. " Where is it that you hide yourself, Miss May V he de- manded, his voice drowned by the music. "I have been in this house going on for three weeks, and have hardly met with you as many times. It would have been like three months had you not been in it." The blush of gratified vanity rose to Sophia May's face. Captain Devereux, brother to a Countess, and son to the Eight Honourable Sir Archibald Devereux, her Majesty's Home Secretary, bore to her mind an exalted charm. And besides that, in the very few meetings they had held, she had felt herself irresistibly attracted to him. Her heart had already learned to flutter for him as it had never fluttered for Frede- rick Lyvett. During this stay of Captain Devereux, the children were more in their own aj)artments, except on Sundays they did not dine at the luncheon-table. He was so loose in his ideas, and sometimes also in his expressions, that Lord and Lad} Tennygal kept their little girls out of his society as much as they could. As a matter of course this also kept the gover- ness from it. But they had met oftener than "three times :" that Avas, so to say, a figure of speech. " "What do you suppose makes me linger here, in this re- mote boghole of a sister-kingdom, and in this precious house of it, ever in an uproar with children ?" continued the Captain. " I do not know/' answered Miss May, blushing deeper and deeper. 54 PARKWATER. Captain Devereux thought he had never seen a more lovely face than that one with the blush upon it, and his eyes said it so plainly that the governess cast down hers. " Then you ought to know. It is you. And if you had only listened to what I said the other daj^, instead of darting away, you would have known it then." He spoke in that insinuating tone which none knew how to assume better than Theodore Devereux. It had won its way to many a more experienced head and heart than poor Sophia May's. " I am sorry if you thought me rude," she replied. " Lady Eose was Avith me, and she is " " A quick genius," he interrupted, " and might carry tales. Was that what you were about to say 1 Quickness runs in the Devereux family. I am wanted in Scotland, where I made an engagement to go shooting ; I am wanted at Sir Archibald's ; I am wanted in fifty places ; and I cannot tear myself away from the spot. You alone are keeping me here." Captain Devereux knew he had never told a greater un- truth in his life ; and he knew, also, that if he could have got away. Miss May and her charms, ten times magnified, would not have kept him for a single moment. He went on improving upon his assertion; Sophia's heart fluttering more and more with every word, and believing it religiously. "And I am a fool for my pains : for I cannot aflbrd yet to take a ]\[rs. Devereux. What's the matter T She had turned aside and appeared to be busy, tying the sash of a little girl. Captain Devereux looked round, and saw Lady Tennygal ; who Avas beckoning to him from the door of the room. " I have been searchiug for you," she began. "■ You must PARKWATER. 65 •ask Harriet Ord for the next quadrille. You have neglected her all the evening." " Harriet Ord's a scarecrow." " It is a pity you think so, Theodore," was the answer. ■" I believe, if you chose to ask her, you might have her for your wife to-morrow. I am sure she likes you. And she is so amiable, and " " Oh, I knew long ago I might have her for the asking," carelessly replied Captain Devereux, "but I shall not try that on till everything else has failed. When I am so deep in the Avell that I can sink no lower, I may go to her and her eighty thousand pounds to draw me up." " Theodore, how can you speak so T asked his sister in- dignantly, " Is she worth no more to you than that V "'Sot at present," was the cool rejoinder. "As to her amiability — cela va sans dire. It's the best part about her." " "Well, come and dance with her now." Captain Devereux followed his sister, with a wry face : but, once in the society of Lady Harriet Ord, he became all smiling attention. Slightingly as he had spoken of her to the Countess, there was in his heart a latent conviction that he should sometime be thankful to win her and her coveted money, and he would not mar his chance. In earlier day?, years ago now, they had been thrown a good deal together. Captain Devereux put forth some of his blandishments^ just to pass the time away, and had gained her heart. He knew he gained it — and then, like the knight in the once popular song, he rode away. Lady Harriet was not handsome ; in fact, she was rather remarkably plain ; but she was sweet- tempered and of sterling worth. Heaven help her, said the world, if she linked herself to that Theodore Devereux : 55 PARKWATER. Lord Tennygal said it : but Bessie, blinded by sisterly affec- tion, thought it would be all that Avas Avanted to reform her brother. She on! 3^ knew of a few of his lighter failings. *' I have something of import to say to you," spoke Captain Devereux, seeking out Sophia Avhen he quitted Lady Harriet. " Can you contrive to give me a few minutes' interview to- morrow? — or on any subseqiient dayl" " Were it anything very particular," she began, with her blue eyes cast unconsciously down — " but still, it could not be. I do not see that it could. I am in the schoolroom all day, and the young ladies are with me." " Provoking little reptiles !" he ejaculated. " Do you never go out, Miss May V " IS'ot often, without them." " Well, I must see you. Look here : the day after to- morrow Avill be Sunday. You can stay at home from church." " But I — I shall haA^e no plea for staying at home, Cap- tain Devereux," she urged. " What AA'ould Lady Tennygal think ?' " Let her think Avhat she likes. I suppose you have a headache sometimes % You can have one then. No doubt you will, after this dissipation." Strange to say, on the following Sunday, Miss May's head did ache. It Avas so painful as to preclude her going out ; and an intimation to that effect Avas conveyed to the sj'mpa- thizing Lady Tennygal, Avho carried her some aromatic vinegar with her own hands. When the fiimily Avere departing for church, the Countess knocked at the door of her brother's apartments, which were FARKWATER. b7 on the same floor as her own. " Theodore," slie called out,. " do come to church Avith us for once." " Much obliged for the invitation," he answered, from within. " I shan't be up till you are back again. You and Tennygal can pray for me, you know." Yet Captain Deve- reux was up and dressed then ; and his sister, with a sigh at his mocking tone, joined her husband and children. Surely Sophia May's better angel was away that day ! Otherwise she never would have consented to the clandestine interview. It was sufficiently harmless in itself- but it laid the foundation for much deception, that was destined in time to bring forth terrible fruit. She sat in her sitting-room. Lady Tennygal's vinaigrette on the table by her side, and her handkerchief saturated with eau de cologne in her hand. Captain Devereux stood by the open window, listening to her complaints of the pain her head gave her, and speculating within himself upon whether it ached or not. After all, he Avanted nothing particular. ^Nothing but to pass an idle hour Avith her, and assure her that he cared for nobody but her : that he never had cared for anybody else in the Avorld. The hour passed very quickly. From his- post at the window he soon saAV Lord and Lady Tennygal approaching in the distance, on their Avay from church, Avith their children and servants. Captain Devereux tore himself away from Miss May's fascinating presence, as he styled it, and withdrew to his own room, lingering yet a moment to reiterate his affection for her, and to assert that, now it had set in, it Avould last for ever. Sophia believed him all too readily. "He sighed, he voAved, and she believed him," runs the old song, or to that 58 PARKWATER. effect. But the same old song says, " When men flatter, sigh, and languish, think them false — I found them so." Soj)hia listened, and believed ; her heart beating, her pulses thrilling : her whole being filled with one intense passionate love for Theodore Devereux. For that day, at least, she was sure of seeing him again, for they would pre- sently meet at the dining-room luncheon ; and the bliss the thought brought to her was unspeakable. After to-day — well. Captain Devereux had told her that she must contrive to meet him, or else he should die : he would snatch a con- venient moment to wait upon her in the schoolroom, and she must take a run in the grounds occasionally without those little brats. Sophia tacitly acquiesced. She had no thought of harm in doing so, or that harm would come of it. The only thing presenting itself to her mind, was the necessity of concealing it from the knowledge of Lord and Lady Tennygal. They would be sure not to approve of it. And so, with her eyes open, Sophia May entered volun- tarily on a course of deception, and met Captain Devereux when circumstances permitted. It was a very innocent beginning — as she looked upon it; but it was destined to lead to a most sad and distressing ending, of which the world would hear. And in the depth of her later despair, she could not recall one single point of self-excuse or consolation, for she saw it was but her own self-sophistry that had misled her, and her misplaced faith in Captain Devereux. At pre- vsent all seemed pleasant and easy and innocent ; these first links of the chain were so light, and specious— they generally are so — that she felt them not ; or dreamed that it would coil and coil gradually around her until its later links became PARKWATER. 69 as desperate -weights of iron, that would crush her to death, or worse than death, in their folds. It is not a grateful task to record these histories ; and this — it has been already said — is a true one ; to trace out, or ■even to touch upon, a story of folly and sin and crime. Sophia May met her evil genius when she met Captain Devereux. Whether she was much or little to blame, com- paratively speaking, in these earlier stages of the affair when they were at Parkwater, can never be known. She declared iater that she had been entirely and craftily deceived : but whether she was less deceived than she wished to make ■appear, might be a nice question. At all events, it was one left undecided. At the best, the tale was but the old tale : one that had been enacted over and over again, and will be until time shaU. •cease. A false man and a credulous w^oman : a wedding pro- mised for "to-morrow," and the morrow never came. It is well, oh reader, to tell these stories in the twilight, when the atmosphere is dim, and the voice is lowered to a whisper, and the faces opposite to ours are but imperfectly seen. The world teems with such histories : and though we may profess to ignore them, and shut our eyes to them, there they are never- theless : and perhaps it is best that some one of them more rotable than the rest in its sorrow, or disastrous in its results, may from time to time be recorded, if only in the light of a warning. But in the twilight ; in the twilight. 60 PARKWATER. CHAPTER YI. SUSPICION. The weeks and the months Avent on. Captain Devereux was still an inmate of Parkwater. He could not get away from it. IS^o slave eA^er longed for emancipation more intensely than he longed to escape and be in the world again ; hut he dared not venture to go. Sir Archibald Devereux remained obdurate : one or two dangerous liabilities he did settle ; but he would do no more for his hopeful son. That Miss May's education was superficial, and her culti- vation entirely unsuited to the charge she had undertaken^ would, it is probable, have been long ago discovered, but that chance removed from her the supervision of Lady Ten- nygal. An illness that proved to be a lingering one attacked Lady Tennygal late in the autumn, and confined her for some months to her room. JS'ot until February did she begin to get about again. All this while had Captain Devereux been a fixture in the house, keeping his locality quiet from his creditors, yawning through the dull, dark days, and bemoan- ing his hard fate at being condemned to vegetate in Ireland ; where no diversion of any kind was to be had, save that arising from his snatched conversations with the governess. And of those conversations he had grown tired now, sick to death. Once in a way he Avould ride over to Mrs. Barry's, the aunt of Lady Harriet Ord. Her place Avas some ten miles distant. PAB.KWATER. 61 There he would spend a few hours in her company and Lady- Harriet's, suppressing his weariness as he best coidd. But when the winter had given phace to the early days of spring ; when the hedges were beginning to shoot forth their green, and the glad birds to sing, Captain Devereux resolved on a desperate step ; for indeed it did seem to him that without aid from some source he should be condemned to this fright- ful state of existence all his days. " I have done it at last," he gloomily said one morning at breakfast, soon after his sister appeared amongst them again. " What have you done ?" inquired Lord Tennygal. " Gone and sold myself — bones, body, and flesh — to Harriet Ord." " You don't mean that you are going to marry her 1" ex- claimed the Countess. " It's nothing less," said Captain Devereux. " I could not go on in this mummying way any longer : and one might as well be an embalmed mummy as have one's legs and wings tied as mine have been lately. I should have hung myself, or something equivalent, had it lasted another month. So yesterday, when I was over there, I told her she might take me if she liked ; and she snapped at it." " It is the very best thing you ever did," said Lord Tenny- gal, warmly. " If you choose, you may now become a decent member of society ; Harriet will make you one." " She ought to make me something — sacrificing myself for her !" " Where is the sacrifice V " Sacrifice ! She's forty." " Xonsense ! You are six-and-thirty, Tody." 62 PARKWATER. "[If you look to the peerage, you will see that Harriet is eight-and thirty," interposed Lady Tennygal. " Two years are not so great a difference, my fastidious brother." " Yes they are, when they're on the wrong side. Besides, look at her Chinese eyes, and African mouth !" " For shame, Theodore !" interposed his sister warmly. " She has neither the one nor the other." " Can you call her a beauty f ' " You are no Adonis, Tod," laughed the Earl. " "What has that to do with it ?" was the ex-captain's growling answer. " The uglier a man is, the more the women like him." " Theodore," said his sister gravely, " you have been be- having ill to Harriet Ord for this many a year past, unless you have all along intended to marry her. You have paid her attention : you have kept, I am certain, other suitors away from her: this is the only fit termination, and, for your- self, it is a most fortunate one. Were I you, I should make- the best of it instead of the Avorst." " And a very good ' best' you may make of it," added the Earl. " If Lady Harriet has not beauty, she has money and good temper : somebody whom I know is deficient in both." " It is to bo hoped her temper is good," snapped Captain Devereux. " She will find it put to the test." Lord Tennygal glanced at him, a keen glance, and spoke in a serious tone. " Devereux, mark me : when a man marries, he had better resolve not to try his wife's temper, for his own sake as Avell as for hers. If you cannot bring yourself to endeavour to make Harriet happy, it is your duty not to marry her." PARKWATEE. 6^ " What a row about nothing !" answered Captain Devereux^ as he rose from the breakfast-table. " I am not going to beat her." Lord Tennygal drew in his lips. But for his wife's presence he would have spoken out his indignation. " By the way," said Captain Devereux, halting with the door-handle in his hand. " Be so good as keep what I have told you to yourselves. It is not to be announced yet. There are reasons against it." " Your debts, I suppose," replied his sister. '' So just keep it dark, both of you," concluded the Captain, not giving her a direct answer. On the following day, the Earl departed from Parkwater. Business called him to London. His wife and family would remain where they were until Easter, when he was to return for them. And thus a short Avhile again passed on ; Captain Devereux paying visits to Mrs. Barry's two or three times a week, by way of courting Lady Harriet. It wanted about a fortnight to Easter when there stood one day, in a somewhat remote part of the park, a ladTr and gen- tleman in conversation so earnest, that the approach of a car- riage across the greensward was unnoticed. As it came upon them, however, the gentleman started, and took off his hat in some confusion. The lady walked away. The carriage contained Harriet Ord and Mrs. Barry. Mrs. Barry only had noticed the talkers. *' That looked like the governess," was her thought; but she said nothing. "How earnestly she was talking with Captain Devereux ! and how pale she looked !" Captain Devereux, on his part, gazed with amazement after €4 PARKWATER. the carriage ; for it not only "bore the ladies, lout some luggage also, as if they had come to make a stay. " She has never been asking them ! " was his muttered ex- clamation, as he hastened to the house. The ladies, he heard, were in their dressing-rooms : he sup- posed Lady Tennygal might be in hers. There he found her, with her two eldest children. " What are Harriet Ord and her aunt here to-day for ?" he asked. "Ah !" said the Countess clapping her hands, " I knew I should give you a surprise. I begged Harriet not to tell you. I have invited them to stay with us untU we leave for London." " You have a curious way of doing things. Lady Tenny- ■gal," was his ungracious remark, as he turned on his heel. " Theodore, stop a minute ! Have you been in the park ?" " What if I have T " Did you happen to meet Miss May? It is the children's hour for walking, but Laura says she went out without them. I do not understand it. Did you see anything of her ?" He did not give a flat denial, for Mrs. Barry could have con- tradicted him. Collecting his wits, he answered coolly : " Miss May % Yes, I saw her sitting down near the trees l)y the cross-cut. She looked ill. I went up and inquired if I could do anything for her, but she declined my services, and marched away. It was just as Lady Harriet's carriage drove " I think she is ill," said Laxira, " she looked quite white all study time ; but she did not tell me. "When I asked her what was the matter, she told me to mind my lessons." PARKWATER. 65 " Poor thing !" exclaimed Lady Tennygal. " Perhaps she has one of her bad headaches to-day." !N^o\v the substance of this conversation with her brother was innocently repeated by the Countess in Mrs. Barry's dressing-room, when she ran in to say that Theodore knew of their arrival. It roused some doubt — or suspicion — in INIrs. Barry's mind. Por she felt certain, from the manner of both Captain Devereux and the governess, that it was not a mere inquiry after health which had been passing between them. Why, then, should Captain Devereux say to his sister that it was] "There's something behind this," thought Mrs. Barry. " It looked to me as though they felt they were detected in some way. I will watch a little — for Harriet's sake I will — for oh ! I wish she would break with him ! She is bHndly infatuated with Tody Devereux : but I know he is a bad man, and it will be a bad day's work for her if she marries him." Mrs. Barry was as good as her word. Keen, persevering, and secretive, she was the very one to ferret out a secret. And in this instance she was urged on by self-interest : for Lady Harriet Ord's proposed marriage threatened her with the loss of a good portion of her income ; and she was, besides, anxiously uncertain in regard to Harriet's future happiness. But for several days she saw nothing ; and the matter had nearly passed from her mind, when, one evening, soon after the ladies had left the dining-room, Mrs. Barry, in passing a staircase window, caught sight of Captain Devereux walking quickly towards a grove of trees on that side of the park. 5 66 FARKWATER. Why had he left the dining-room ? — he, who was so fond of his wine? " My dear," she whispered to little Eose, when she went hack to the drawing-room, " where's your governess this evening?" " Oh, she is in the study." " I thought she Avas to have come down with you and Laura." " Mamma did ask her, but she said she had our exercises to correct." Not another word said Mrs. Barry. She glided out, saw that Miss May was not in the study, put on a cloak, covering her head with its hood, like a true Irishwoman, and she also went out into the dusk of the evening. They were walking just Avhere she expected to find them, in the shady path beyond the grove — Captain Devereux and the governess. Mrs. Barry halted amid the big trunks of the budding trees. " Well, don't you do anything so hazardous again," he was saying, in a reproving tone, and Mrs. Barry caught the words distinctly. " Sending a peremptory note to me in the dining- room that I must come out to you here that instant ! Sup- pose it had fallen into the hands of Lady Tennygal ! She had not quitted the room five minutes." " I wish it had," was Miss May's answer, delivered in a passionate tone. " If what I have heard to-day be true, I wish it had." " Now, Sophia, don't give Avay to temiDcr. We can both do that, on occasion, as you and I know, but this must not be one. Just calm yourself, and tell me what you are com- plaining of." PARKWATJER. 67 '•' I Tvant to know tlie truth." " What about V " Have you proposed to Lady Harriet Ord ?" " What in the name of wonder put such a thing as that in your head ?" he asked, in a voice teeming with astonishment ; and little Mrs. Barry leaned forward, and put her sharp re- trousse nose between the trunks of two proximate trees, and brought her sight to bear upon the parties. He was stand- ing with his hands in his pockets, a slouching, favourite mode of his ; and the poor young governess, as Mrs. Barry could not help thinking her, was gazing at him, her blue inquiring eyes starting from their pale lids, as if she would read into his very soul. " One of the little girls said to-day in the schoolroom that Lady Harriet was to be her aunt — your wife," she slowly said, with a catching up of the sobbing breath. " And you believed it ! and must make all this fuss and haste to ask me !" he rejoined, no doubt giving a word in his heart to his sister — for it must have leaked out through some imprudence of hers. " As if you could not have waited a proper opportunity." " 7s it so r " !N"o, it is not. Harriet Ord would like to jump irnto my arms ; and if I tacitly allow her and others to think that it is Avithin the range of possibility I may some time let her take the leap, why do I do it ?" She did not speak : only stared at him still. " And these are the sort of thanks I get !" " The two-faced, diabolical wolf in sheep's clothing !" heartily uttered lilrs. Barry, from between the trees. " Oh, if Harriet were but here !" 5—2 68 PAIiKWATEn. " If they tokl me to my face I was going to many her, or any other -woman, I should not contradict them," he went on. ''A nice taste a man must have to marry Harriet Ord !" " Were I sure you were deceiving me — that yoiu- atten- tions to Lady Harriet ai'e real, I would — I would " " You would what 1" he asked, his manner idly indifferent. " Let us hear." " I would tell all to Lord and Lady Tennygal," she an- swered, bursting into tears. " I would tell Lady Harriet that she must not be your wife, for that you have made a solemn jDromise to marry no one but me. I would tell them that the banns for our marriage " " 8ophy, you'd do nothing of the sort," he interrupted : " you are no simpleton." " If it came to such a pass as that " " Eut it is not coming to it. Lady Tennygal and Mrs. Barry and all the lot of them — she herself included — are possibly deluding themselves into the hope that I shall have tlie old Chinese image ; but don't you put yourself in a fan- tigue over the matter, whatever you may hear. Time enough to call out when you're hurt." He walked away. Mrs. Barry, who did not choose to leave her hiding-place till both had disappeared, peeped at the governess. Miss ]May had seated herself in the rude garden- chair ; her eyes were strained on vacancy, seeing nothing, and her whole attitude bespoke pain and misery. Suddenly lier mood changed : and a frightful expression of anger arose to her face. Mrs. Barry coidd only compare it with that of a demon at the play. Of course there was a dreadful hubbub ; for j\Irs. Barry, PARKWATER. G!) tliougli slic Avaited till the next clay, did uot bring her tale out so cautiously as she might have done. Accusings, and denials, and counter-accusings, and reproaches, and oaths : the latter, of course, from the angry Captain Devereux, Mrs. Barry persisted in her story, and Captain Devereux persisted in his — Avhich was, that jMrs. Barry must" have dropped asleep after dinner and dreamed it. In this he was supported by Miss May : she affirmed that she had been cor- recting exercises in the study at the hour mentioned : had never quitted it; and he swore he had never stirred out of the dining-room. Poor Mrs. Barry was completely dumbfounded ; especially when Lady Harriet Ord expressed her opinion in favour of the dream. CHAPTEE VII. Sophia's desolation. Passion-week arrived, and Lord Tennygal with it. Very much surprised, was he, to find the house in this iiiicomfort- iible and undecided state, one party in it mutually accusing the other. He listened, in his calm matter-of-fact way, to the two sides ■of the case. His wife, when they were alone, actually shed tears. The affair, she told him, had so worried her, between her anxiety to do what was right, and her fear to do what Avas Avrong, that she felt nearly as ill as ever. Lord Tenny- gal took an opportunity of speaking to his brother-in-law. " Devereux," he said, " this is very bad. Lady Tennygal's governess ought to have commanded your respect. "Were it 7a FARKWATER. not for tlie dangerous position your affairs are in, you should not remain in this house another hour." " There's nothing wrong," ansAvered Captain Devereux, '^ nothing at all. It is a delusion altogether. That old mis- chief-making cat fell asleep in her room after dinner and must have had a dream " " Psha, man !" interrupted Lord Tennygal, " don't attempt to palm off your dreams upon me. Mrs. Barry heard Miss May say you could not marry Lady Harriet, because you were under a solemn engagement to marry her. She said something about hanns. If " " Mrs. Barry did not hear her, then. She's a " " Hear me out, Devereux, if you please. If you have been gaining Miss INIay's affections, under the promise of marriage, you are bound in honour to marry her, although she is but a governess. If, on the other hand, you have behaved ill, or in any way compromised the poor girl, I will never forgive it ; and I hope Lady Harriet will not. But, whatever the truth is, I must be made acquainted with it, that I may know how to act." " I have given my word once," sullenly replied Captain Devereux ; " I don't see the use of repeating it ten times over. I deny it altogether ; and I say that Mrs. Barry either in- vented or dreamed it." "You persist in this? — to mef " I do. And to everybody else." " Then I must take another course." "Look here, Tennygal. Mrs. Barry has been dead against my marriage with Harriet from the first ; and I don't believe she'd stand at any invention to put it aside. If she didn't dream the thing, she invented it." PARKWATER. 71 " This is all you have to say to me upon the point, De- vereux T " Every -word." Lord Tennygal next proceeded to hold an interview "with Miss 'Maj. He spoke A'ery kindly and considerately to her ; hut he hegged her to confide in him, to let him know the truth, promising that if she did he would be a friend to her, whatever that truth might he. Miss May, however, Avas just as impervious as the ex-captain. She persisted, as he did, that Mrs. Barry must have invented the story or dreamed it : and Lord Tennygal was puzzled. The Earl was a clear-sighted man, reading people more truly than his wife did ; and in the manner of both Miss May and the Captain there was something he did not hke — a want of sincerity. He had never truly liked Miss May as governess to his children : and he now determined that she should not remain with them. But there was a difference between turning a young lady from his house summarily, and giving her due Avarning. Which course, he wondered, would the real facts, that he coidd not come at, justify 1 Like his wife, he onl}^ desired to act fairly by her and by themselves. If it were but a dream, for instance, of jNIrs. Barry's, they Avould keep ^liss jVfay until she got another situation and help her to get one : if it were not a dream, but fact, why that was another thing. He must try and discover daylight for himself, since nobody seemed able to throw it upon him. " Who were Miss May's references, Bessie 1" asked Lord Tennygal, proceeding to his wife's room. She had to look to Lady Langton's letters before she could answer, and found that Lady Langton spoke of a Mrs. Penryn, 72 PARKWATER. as having written in her favour : hut "who Mrs. Penryn was Lady Langton did not state. " And prohahly did not know," oherved Lord Tennygah " She is tlie laziest woman in the world, is Lady Langton : just the one to he imposed upon with her eyes open." " There was another recommendation from some solicitors ; they wrote most strongly in her favour, Lady Langton said. They were friends of ]\Iiss May's late father's, I rememher ; partners, or something of that. INIiss May was staying with them at the time." " Yes ; let me see — what was the firm 1 Quite a first-class one, I know." The Countess ran her eyes down Lady Langton's letters. " Here it is : Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett !" " I shall write to them," said the Earl. " Do you say Miss May's late father was their partner 1" " I am not sure about that ; he was a solicitor, and they knew him well. I think I had better write to Lady Langtor, Frank." " Do so, Bessie," was Lord Tennygal's reply. The two letters, one to her ladyship, the other to Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett, were despatched on that same day, and reached in due course their destination. Lady Langton read her letter with some concern. She v/as an extremely indolent woman in general, but she did not like the thought of having placed a governess with Lady Tenny- "•al about whom some doubt had arisen ; neither did she like to think she had been herself deceived. For once she bestirred herself; driving first of all to the address that had been given her as ]\Irs. Penryn's. But of Mrs. Penryn she could obtain no tidings whatever. Other PARKWATER. 73 people lived in the house now (which proved, to be a lodgiug- house, sufficiently respectable), and they had never heard Mrs. Penryn's name. She might have had the drawing-room apartments in the last tenant's time, they said ; and that was all Lady Langton could learn. Her doubts growing greater, herself more angry, she ordered her carriage down to Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett's, and ■obtained an interview with Mr. Lyvett himself. " You wrote, unasked, and recommended Miss May to me," urged Lady Langton wrathfully. Conscious that her own carelessness was to blame, she naturally wished to find some- •body else to throw it upon. " We never wrote at all to you, madam," coolly replied INlr. Lyvett, who was not accustomed to be spoken to in this tone, ■even by peeresses. " And so Ave are about to inform Lord Tennygal, from whom we have received a communication." " If you did not Avrite to me, some one of your firm must Iiave written." "Your ladyship is altogether mistaken." " But the letters to Miss May were addressed here, to your care," next urged Lady Langton. " Certainly not, so far as Ave are aware," rejoined Mr. Lyvett. " But jNIay, her father, Avho Avas formerly our porter, may Jiave had letters left here for him Avithout our knoAvledge." " Could that fact be ascertained T Mr. Lyvett rang his bell. Upon incaiiry, it proved that the postman had receiA'^ed instructions to deliver all such letters into the hands of a Miss Jenkins, next door : Avho had for- Avarded them to the Mays. Lady Langton went home in a fury. Without delay she wrote to the Countess of Tennygal, candidly informing her 74 rARKWATER. that Miss May was a dreadful impostor, and had imposed upon her by false pretences. Mr. Lyvett wrote also to the Earl. His letter ran as fol- lows : — " My Lord, — In reply to the communication with which you have favoured us, we beg to acquaint your lordship that we know nothing of the matter you allude to. "We never had a ' partner ' or a ' friend ' of the name of May. Until recently, a man of that name lived at our offices as porter^ but we found cause to discharge him. This occurred last July, and we know nothing of his movements since that period. May had a daughter, and we deem it not impossible that she may be the individual who has imposed upon your lordship by a false recommendation in our name. She was educated above her station, and her Christian name is Sophia. " We have the honour to be, my lord, " Your lordship's obedient servants, "Lyvett, Castlerosse, And Lyvett. " The Right Honourable the Earl of Tennygal." Both these communications reached Parkwater by the same post. Lord Tennygal read Mr. Lyvett 's letter and threw it into his wife's lap. " Take better care in future, Bessie," was all he said. " Miss- May must leave to-day." So the whole plot Avas discovered ; and there remained not a shadow of doubt that Miss May, or her friends for her, had cleverly furnished her own letters of reference. The Countess of Tennygal was in a state of consternation. Easj^-natured as she was, her indignation was aroused now. PARKWATER. T^ She ■would not see the governess, but would depute her house- keeper to pay and discharge her. " I could not have believed such a thing possible," she exclaimed. I have heard of ser- vants obtaining places under false pretences, but for a gover- ness to do so seems incredible." Lord Tennygal smiled a half smile — perhaps at his wife's want of knowledge of the world. " Many a governess has done it ere this," he said, "and many will do it again." " But they can have no principle." " That's another thing." Lord Tennygal was not far wrong. There are governesses- in families, even now, who have entered them under auspices as false as those by which Miss May obtained admittance to his. " But, Frank," resumed Lady Tennygal, her kinder nature reasserting its sway, " this does not prove that Miss May and Tody have been talking and walking together." " Of course, it does not p'orc it," returned the Earl, witlx rather a doubtful stress upon the word. " iS'o ; and we will give her the benefit of the doubt, Bessie. I think I will see her myself." " Oh, Frank, if you woul4 ! It was a very, very wrong thing to do ; but I cannot help being sorry for her. Per- haps she had no friend in the world to help her to a situation." " I will hear no justification of her on that score, Bessie," rather sternly spoke Lord Tennygal. He saw Miss May, quietly told her of his application to ]Mr. Lyvett, and its result, and that she must, in consequence, leave Parkwater as soon as she could conveniently get her things packed — that day, if possible. Xot a word did he 76 FAFiKWATEK. say as to the other matter ; and Miss May thoroughly under- stood that the cause he spoke of was truly the cause of her dismissal. The circumstances would, of course, have justilied him in paying her only to that period ; but Lord Tennygal, generous at heart, handed her a cheque for the running quarter — which was but just entered upon. Sophia received it very meekly. She begged of Lord Tennygal, the scalding tears standing in her blue eyes, not to think of her more hardly than he could help. It was a friend of hers who had done it all, not herself; and her only hope now was that she should yet get on in the world so as to have no need to trouble friends. " I'm sure I hope you will," said his lordship heartih'. " "With regard to references, I fear — I fear Lady Tenny- gal " " I shall not require references, my lord," interrupted Sophia. " It is not my intention to continue to be a gover- ness." " Oh, very well," said he. " That's all right, then." He wished her a civil good-bye, even shaking hands with her, for lie was a man Avho could not be discourteous to anj'- ■one. Eut Sophia keenly felt the fact that she did not see Lady Tennygal. Captain Devereux, contriving to meet her in one of the passages, snatched a parting word. " You will go straight to London, Sopliia " " i*^o," she interruj)ted, " I shall go to Liverjjool. And the ver}"- day you join me there, our marriage can take place. "Which church is it that the banns " " Hush ! here come your pupils. Good-bye, Sophia. Send me your address." PARKWATER. 77 So that was over. And Miss May took her last farewell of Parkwater. But Captain Devereux never joined her. He wrote letters to her instead. They were not so full of sweet phrases as they might have been ; but they were full of pitiful bemoan- ings touching his hard fate, in being obliged to hide his head in that " fearful bog-hole," until his affairs could be so far settled that he might venture out of it, and into the sunny English world. Sophia May believed it all, was partially pacified, and most intensely miserable. Captain Devereux decidedly came off the best. He not only imposed upon her with his idle tales, but he succeeded in persuading another credulous heart that he was not a wolf in sheep's clothing, but a falsely-accused, harmless lamb, the victim of old ladies' after-dinner dreams. And in less than a month after Easter, the public papers recorded the marriage of Theodore Hugh Devereux, third son of the Eight Honourable Sir Archibald Devereux, with the Lady Harriet Ord. CHAPTEE YIIL HARD TIMES. In the first-floor apartments of a house at Brompton, one winter evening, there stood a lady at the fire, holding to it first one foot, then the other. Her shoes were damp and muddy; she had only just come in from the wst streets; and her bonnet and cloak were not yet taken off. 78 PARKWATER. It -was Sophia May. But oh, how was she altered ! Her once blooming, blushing face was pale and thin ; it had, besides, a sharp, Aveary look upon it ; and the eyes were sad, as though she had passed through sorrow. jSTo one could have believed, seeing her now, that less than two years had •elapsed since she quitted Parkwater, She had passed through some experiences since then, and they had not tended to give her cheery views of life. Life, indeed, had been a somewhat hard battle with her ever since. For one thing, she had learned what the faith of man was worth ; more especially the faith of such a man as Theodore Devereux. He and his vows had proved alike false. " How quickly shoes wear out !" she exclaimed, looking ilown at those she was holding to the fire : "these let in the wet already. I must afford myself another pair somehow. Somehow ! It's all very well to say ' somehow,' for I don't know how. If the man won't let me have them on trust, I must wait till the next quarter's accounts come in. And people pay so slowly !" A young servant-girl in a pinafore came upstairs with the candles and tea-tray. " If you please, ma'am," she said, as she put the tray on the table and proceeded to light the candles, "here's a gentleman come to the door; and he says if you are Miss May he should like to see you. He is waiting clas3 ticket for Eaton," he breathlessly exclaimed, throwing down a sovereign. " How much time have I ?" he added, as he took up the change. " None, It is starting now. You can't go by it. The express leaves' at ten." " I must go by it," he said, rushing up to the line of carriages. " Hi ! stop ! stop ! Porter ! stop !" " Too late, sir," said the porter. " Train's on the move." " Open a door, man ! It's a business of life or death. Open a door, I say. Here ! all right ; never be known." Something of a golden colour mysteriously found its way into the porter's hand, and a door, quite as mysteriously, flew open. It belonged to a third-class carriage, the last of the train. Mr. Lyvett scrambled into it. The train steamed up to its destination ; that is, Mr. Ly- vett's destination ; steamed well. It was only forty-one minutes past eight when it reached Eaton. He sprang from the carriage. " This is a first-class ticket," cried the porter, eyeing him suspiciously. " And if I choose to pay for a first-class carriage and sit in a, third, what's that to you 1 How far is the church off?" " HaK a mUe." " Which is the way to it ?" " Out at the back, down the steps, and straight along up the road." " Any carriage to be had ?" " N'o. Payne's fly was here, bringing follis to the train, but it's gone again." Mr. Lyvett rushed madly down the steps. The road was before him, and he could see the church spire rising at a dis- 8 114 PARKWATEE. tance, but it looked more like a mile awaj^ tliaa half one. How could lie get there ? What a shame that no conveyance was in waiting ! The knot might be tied then, and he arrive just too late. As to running, that was beyond him : it was up-hill, and he Avas a fat man. He espied a horse fastened to the palings of a small house close to the egress : a butcher's boy and his tray had just jumped off it : he was taking the station-master's wife, who lived there, some steak for their dinner. Without consideration, Mr. Lyvett unhooked the bridle, mounted on the horse, and urged him to a gallop. The dismayed boy, when he had recovered his astonishment? started in the wake, hallooing, " Stop thief !" with all his stentorian lungs, Avhich only made the horse fly the faster. About half-way to the church the rider came upon Mr. Castlerosse, sitting philosophically on the top of a milestone by the roadside. " Well V cried Mr. Lyvett, pulling up, as speedily as the pace he was going would allow. " Well it is, I think," grunted Mr. Castlerosse. " Why couldn't you come before V " Am I in time V '• No, you are not. They are married and gone. You couldn't expect to be." " Are they really married ?" gasped Mr. Lyvett, his arms dropping powerless with the news. " They are. I stood in the church and saw it done. I strove to prevent it, but was not allowed. / was not his father." Mr. Lyvett slowly descended from the horse. To encounter the panting and abusive butcher-boy, who protested the policeman was a-coming up with the 'ancufls. A short ex- PARKWATEE. 115 planation and another golden piece settled the lad, and sent him riding oflf in wild glee. " You say they are gone. Where ?'' " In that train which I suppose you got out of," was poor ]Mr. Castlerosse's testy reply, as he pointed to the smoking carriages whirling along in the distance. " A more deter- mined, obstinate, pig-headed man than your son has shown himself this day, I never saw. It will come home to him, as sure as his name's Fred Lyvett." " As he has made his bed, so he must lie on it," returned Mr. Lyvett, striving to make light of his bitter grief. But not in their worst anticipations could he and Mr. Castlerosse sus- pect how very hard that bed was to be. And meanwhile Frederick Lyvett and his bride were steam- ing gaily away, having won their stolen march. CHAPTER XIL THE COUNTRYWOMAN. There appeared one day before the gate of a rather handsome house, some little distance north of the Eegent's Park, a countrywoman carrying a child and a bundle. The moment she was inside the gate, she put the child down, and with a movement that bespoke fatigue, led him to the door and rang — a humble peal. " I want to see the missis, please," she said to the maid- servant who answered it^ her accent a very broad one. "What for?' inquired the girl, scanning the applicant, who, however, looked far too respectable for one of the beg- 8—2 116 PARKWATER. ging fraternity". " My mistress is not at liberty to anybody this morning. I can't admit you." " Then I must sit down with the child on this here step, and wait till she can see me," returned the woman, in a per- fectly civil, but determined voice. " It's not of any use your Avaiting. This is the day the new people come in, and the rooms are not ready for them, in consequence of the mistress being called from home last week to stop with her sister, who was taken ill. Me and the cook and missus are all busy, and she can't be interrupted." " I'm sorry to hinder work," returned the stranger, " but it's your missis's own fault, for changing her house and never telling me. If it's not convenient for me to sit down in the kitchen, I'll wait here ; but see her I must, for this is a'most my last day. Perhaps, young woman, you'd be so obleeging as mention that it's Mrs. Thrupp, with little Ean ?" The servant began to think she might be doing wrong to refuse, the more especially as the woman alluded to things which she did not comprehend ; and, leaviDg the visitor standing there, proceeded to inform her mistress. She re- tmned almost immediately. " You are to walk in," she said ; " but my mistress says she does not know anybody of your name." The countrywoman was shown into a well-furnished par- lour, and Mrs. Cooke came to her — a tall, stately widow lady, in a black silk dress that rustled as she walked. She had recently lost her husband, and with him a large portion of her income. Unwilling to vacate her house, Avhich was her own, and by far too large for her reduced means, she had come to the resolution of letting part of it if she could find any friends to come to it. And this she had done. PARKWATER. 117 The countrywoman dropped a curtsey. " I should be glad, mum, if you please, to see the missis." " I am the mistress," answered Mrs. Cooke. The stranger looked confounded. She put the child down, whom she had again taken in her arms, telling him to be stUl : but indeed he seemed to be a quiet, tractable little fellow. Searching in her pocket, she drew forth a piece of paper. " Be so obleeging as to read it, mum," she said. " That's the direction as they give me, and I'm sure I thought I had come right. If not, perhaps you'd be good enough to direct me, for I'm a'most moithered in this great Lunnon town, and half dead a-carrying of the child. There seems to be no end to the streets and roads and turnings." " This is my address, certainly," said the lady, looking at the paper. " Who gave it you 1 What is your business ? I have lived here many years. I am Mrs. Cooke." " The lady I want is not you at all, mum. She is young. They told me she lived here. She used to live there," show- ing the back of a letter, " and that's where I went after her, yesterday. But the people there said she had left them ever so many weeks back, and had got a house of her own, and they wrote down the address for me. They said, mum, that they only knew it by the man as came for her piano telling them where he was going to take it to, for she did not tell them herself." " Now it is explained," said Mrs. Cooke. " The lady you speak of has taken part of my house — Mrs. Lyvett." " That's not the name," quickly observed the woman. "Perhaps not the one you knew her by. She is just married." 118 I^ARKWATER. " Married again, is she! Well, mum, I must see her, if you please." " She is not here yet. They are in the country, and are coming home to-day." " That's bad news for me," said the stranger, after a pause. " What time is she expected V " It is uncertain. Prohably not much before six. They have ordered dinner for that hour." " Good patience ! what am I to do ?" exclaimed the Avoman. "And the ship a-going to sail on Saturday, and not a thing yet got together ! Good lady ! if you'd let me leave them with you !" " Leave what ?" " The child and his bundle of things, and a little matter of money I have got to return." " My good woman," said Mrs. Cooke, " I do not understand you. Leave them for what purpose?" " To hand over to— what did you please to say her name was now 1" " ]\Irs. Lyvett." " Ay, Mrs. Lyvett ! I am a rare bad one at minding names. He's a year and nine months old, and we have had the care of him since he was quite an infant. But now, me and my husband have joined the Land Emigrant Society to Sydney, and I can't keep him no longer." " Whose child is it T inquired the astonished Mrs. Cooke. " Well, ma'am, that has never been told to us quite direct. The lady did not say. His father, poor little fellow, was abroad fighting, she said. He have died since." The woman stopped to wipe her hot face ; Mrs. Cooke lis- tened in a maze of perplexity. PARKWATER. 119 •'A montli or more ago," proceeded the womau, "there came a man down to our country, mum ; a agent, they called him, of the Foreign Land Society, and he persuaded a many of us to go out ; so I wrote to teU the lady of it, and that she must find another place for little Eandy. ISTo answer came, mum, and we wrote again, and then we wrote a third time ; and still no notice was took. Very ill-convenient it was for me to keep him while we sold off our things and journeyed up here ; but what was I to do 1 We got up yesterday, and I went to the place where she used to live, and found she had moved from there, and had come here." "I think there must be some mistake," returned Mrs. Cooke, wondering greatly. " I do not believe we can be speaking of "the same person." " Oh, yes, we are, mum. Leastways, I should think so. I saw our own letters aAvaiting there on the mantel-shelf. She ordered the people to keep all letters safe for her till she sent for them." " What was the lady's name?" " Mrs. Penryn ; the same as the child's. I fancy she is his aunt." " Then we are speaking of different people. This lady, be- fore she became Mrs. Lyvett, was jNIiss May." " It is so, mum. Once, when she got behind in her pay- ments — for it's she that has always i^aid us for the child, though she has not told us who the parents are — my husband journeyed all the Avay to Lunnon to see about it. She was going by her maiden name, he found. Miss May : it was more convenient, she explained to him — for her school and music teaching. The payment has been quicker lately, and some 120 PARKWATER. that's remaining in hand I have brought hack. It's sixteen shilling, mum, which I'd leave, please, with the child." " You cannot leave the child. It is quite impossible that I can receive so extraordinary a charge. I must decline to interfere. Indeed, I am sorry to have been told this," " Dear, good lady, pray be merciful ! ISTot a thing can I set about while I'm saddled with this child ; and we a-going out o' dock on Saturday. He's such a dreadful weight to carry about, and we be a-stopping all down in Eotherhithe. Mrs. Penryn must take him and give him back to his mother," " Perhaps he has no mother." " Oh, yes, he has, mum. She sends messages to him in Mrs. Penryn's letters." . Mrs, Cooke considered. She saw that the person before her was, beyond doubt, a decent and honest countrywoman. The story was a very curious one. Mr, Frederick Lyvett's connections were so highly estimable : could it be that the lady he had married Avas less so 1 She felt perfectly certain that he did not know of his wife's previous marriage ; she knew him very well indeed, and he would be sure to have mentioned it to her. That Miss May was not his equal, and that he had married her against the wish of his family, he had told her freely. If Miss May was indeed Mrs. Penryn, why had she concealed it from him ? " All I can do," she said aloud, " is to allow you to wait here till Mrs. Lyvett returns. You can have some dinner with my servants. But I must request you not to speak of this matter to them, for it would not be prudent." Early in the afternoon, and before the house was well ready to receive them, the travellers arrived. Frederick PARKWATER. 121 Lyvett handed his wife from the carriage, brought her in, introduced her to Mrs. Cooke, and waited while that lady- installed them in their apartments. He then hastened away : there was time for him to run down to the office before dinner. IS'ot a single word had Fred heard from his father or mother, or anybody connected with him, during his absence. He had written, but his letters obtained no answers. The servants carried the luggage upstairs, and Mrs. Lyvett cast scrutinizing glances over her new home. The drawing- rooms were handsome enough to satisfy even her; and she was growing tolerably particular. She then went into the sleeping-room, and told the servants to uncord the boxes. Mrs. Cooke had gone downstairs again. Some instinct had prevented her from speaking of the subject which had troubled her. The better plan, she thought, would be to send the woman up herself. The servants uncorded the boxes and retreated. Mrs. Lyvett knelt down before one of the trunks, near the bed, and was taking out some of the things, when a knock was heard at the door, and the countrywoman entered. She was leading the boy ; who was dressed in a blue cotton frock and pinafore, his light hair dispersed in pretty curls over his little head. She carried the bundle in her hand, and his hat and cape. Mrs. Lyvett stared in amazement. " Mum, you have forgot me, I see ; but sure you have not forgot your Httle ward — the child. I be Mrs. Tlirupp, from Suffolk. Eandy, give your hand to the lady, and hold up your pretty face. Indeed then, mum, I see a likeness in it to yours : we always thought he might be some blood re- lation." 122 PARKWATER. To describe the startling effect this had upon Mrs, Lyvett would be a difficult task. A spasm seized her face ; its colour became livid, as if she were ready for the grave. The child, led up to her by Mrs. Thrupp, held out his hand, but she started from him with a cry of agony. " Why have you come here ? AVhy have you brought him ?" were the first connected words she gasped forth, in a piteous, waihng tone. And the woman explained why : just as she had to Mrs. Cooke. That the lady was shocked, startled, frightened, and in no measured degree, was evident to the countrywoman. But in a few moments Mrs. Lyvett's mood changed : anger replaced her fear. Taking a haughty tone, she refused to receive the child. She was not his mother, she said, and did not at present know where his mother was to be found. But Mrs. Thrupp quietly said she slpuld leave him. Seemingly at her wits' end, and all her hauteur forgotten, Mrs. Lyvett resumed. Entreaties, promises, were in turn resorted to, to induce Mrs. Thrupp to take away the child and keep him ; to take him to Australia ; to put him out to nurse in London ; anywhere, with anybody ; do with him what she would. Mrs. Thrupp steadily refused to comply. Not, she said, that she did not feel the parting with him : she loved him as a child of her own. The boy was frightened, hid his face in his nurse's dress, and cried out aloud. Mrs. Lyvett, rendered uncontrollable by the noise, and hoping to stop it, seized the child and shook him. He screamed out all the louder, for very terror ; and she beat him about the ears, and shook him still till his breath was gone. " Good mercy !" uttered the Suffolk woman, as she tore him from ]Mrs. Lyvett, and folded him in her sheltering arms. PARKWATER. 123 ^' there'll be mischief done next. Why, you have got no kindness o' nature about you, mum ! It's no fault of his, poor child, that I can't keep him." " You must take him with you," Mrs. Fred Lyvett con- tinued to urge, but in a subdued voice, as if fearful it should be heard outside. " You must !" " I have said I cannot," returned the woman ; " where's the good o' my repeating it, mum 1 We have hired ourselves out to do hand-labour over seas, and it's not possible for me to be encumbered with a child." "And yet you would encumber me with him !" " But it's your right to take him, mum. You must know who he is : you've always paid for him. Anyway, I can't ■carry him with me." " Put him out in London then," again frantically urged Mrs. Lyvett. " Find people to take him ; I will pay you well. Look here," she added, opening a purse and pouring out the sovereigns Avith her shaking hands, " you shall have it all. Here's a bank-note as well." " Mum, I thank ye, but I have not a minute of my own, and we don't know a soul in this big city. My husband will be a'most ready to beat me for the time I'm losing to-day. Money is not of so much value to us now as time : and we be going where they say we shall get plenty. And now I must say good-bye to you, Eandy. Lord help ye, child, and raise you up a friend in your need." She tried to unwind his arms, but the child sobbed and moaned, and clung to her. " I haven't got the heart to do it," she said, the tears drop- ping from her eyes on his little face. " I'll get him to sleep 124 PARKWATER. afore I go, and we'll part that way. There, dear: Eandy shall go to sleep with nursey." She untied the strings of her bonnet, leaned her face on the little child's, rocked him in her arms, and began a low, chanting sort of ditty. It wa^ her favourite mode of hushing him to sleep ; and the boy, exhausted by the recent scene, was soon soothed to it. " He's as fast as a church now," she whispered. " I sup- pose I may lay him down on the bed." Mrs. Lyvett offered no opposition. She sat as one stupefied, opposite to the woman and child, looking at them and biting her lips. Mrs. Thrupp cleared a place on the bed amid the articles that had been carelessly thrown on it — shawls, paper, cord — turned down the coverlid, gently laid the child on the blanket, kissed him, and covered him up. " ISTow, mum, I'll wish you good-day," she said, " and good luck in this world if we should never meet again. But,, oh ! think better of the hard things you have said, and be kind to little Eandy, till you give him up to his own people." She had got out of the room, when Mrs. Lyvett, as if a sudden thought struck her, opened the door and called her back. The woman returned, but somewhat reluctantly, for she was indeed pressed for time. " You will oblige me," said Mrs. Lyvett — and she was now as calm as the sky in summer — " by going out of this house at once, without exchanging a word with anyone." " And that's what I mean to do, mum. To-day can't be no day of gossiping for me." " Then go down quietly, so that the household does not hear you, and let yourself out. I wish it. Here is something PARKWATER. 125 to drink Eandolphe's health on his next birthday," she added, putting a sovereign in her hand. " Mum, I thank you, and we'll do it heartily. It's in Sep- tember, you know, and I hope we shall then be nearing the other side. " Mum," she added, the tears rising to her eyes, " you will surely be kind to him as long as he stays with you?" " Of course I shall be kind. But I was put out just now. You ought to have given me notice of bringing hini, and then I would have provided for it. There is no accommodation for him here, and I'm sure I don't know how I shall manage with him until his mother comes back to town. I wish you a safe journey." The woman, obedient to Mrs. Ly vett's wishes, went quietl}'' doAvn the stairs and left the house. The hall door was some- what difficult to shut outside, and as she proceeded along the garden path, she turned round, to make sure she had not left it open. Mrs. Cooke was standing at her parlour window, watching her over the short Venetian blind. It was a warm, June day, and the window was wide open, Mrs. Thrupp dropped a curtsey. " I'm obleeged, mum, for your hospitality, and feel it was kind of you to bestow it on a stranger, such as me," The lady nodded in reply; and the countrywoman passed out at the gate, just as the clocks were chiming four. iSTow we cannot follow the thoughts and acts of Mrs. Lyvett. What reaUy passed in that chamber, after the de- parture of the woman, was seen by none — by none save her- seK and heaven. That she was in a perplexing predicament it would be folly to deny. Any minute between then and six o'clock she might expect home her husband. I^aturally 126 PARKWATER. lie AYOuld be surprised at the new inmate — naturally he would say, Whose is the child ? Sophia might reply, It is the child of a friend of mine. Who is the friend, and where is she ? would be the next question : and she knew her husband quite well enough by this time to make sure he would insist upon the question being satisfactorily answered. Frederick Lyvett might be (as she paid him the compliment to think) rather soft in some matters, but at least he possessed a nice sense of honour, and had the instincts of a gentleman. What if she were not able to find this friend, the mother ? — what if she were out of town, as intimated to the countrywoman, and not to be got at 1 And — putting the poor child aside — in the examination into matters that her husband would inevitably set afloat, what past inconveniences and episodes might not come to light ! Whether she had been married before, or whether she had not been, she had certainly called herself Mrs. Penryn. Who was ISIr. Penryn, and where was he 1 When she had knelt at the altar by Frederick Lyvett's side, and the officiating minister had adjured her to declare whether there was any impediment to her being wedded in holy matri- mony, and to answer as she would answer at the dreadful Day of Judgment, she had held her peace. What if she now avowed a previous marriage to her hus- band 1 Would it avail lier ? She would have to furnish proofs of it, and of Mr. Penryn's death. And it might be that she could do neither the one nor the other. Alas ! alas ! Sitting there opposite the calmly sleeping child, all these thoughts and suggestions passed rapidly through her mind in a wild chaos. We cannot tell how they aff'ected her, Avhat terrible mischief they may have wrought upon her brain. PAEKWATER. 127 She had never gone through an hour's agony such as this, she had never been in a strait so fearful. In one sense of the word, she was not altogether inexperienced in these shoals and quicksands of life ; for the Caterpillar romances and French novels on which she had been nurtured, and on which her mind had been formed — if it was formed on anything — abounded in such. That very fact had probably caxised her path in later years to be more complicated than its events would otherwise have made it. Quite a repository of resorts, to which the various heroines had been driven to fly to from unmerited dilemmas, lay stored in her memory : many and many a time had she, in sympathetic imagination, put herself in their places, and said, I should have done this, or that : and the doing of this or that had all seemed very easy ! Things appear easy in theory to most of us : but when that theory has to be reduced to practice, they assume an aspect altogether different. Sophia hitherto had revelled in the specious trials of romance ; now she was brought face to face with stern reality. She had passed through some straits ; but had never encountered such a one as this. She Avrung her hands ; she would have shed scalding tears, but that her burning eyes dried them ; she shrank from look- ing at the little sleeper on the bed. Ever afterwards she believed, honestly believed, that the trouble bereft her of her senses ; that she was not, in that dreadful hour, responsible for her actions. 128 PARKWATER. CHAPTEE XIII. A PIT OF SHIVERING. Frederick Lyvett proceeded to the office, and entered his own room. Very much surprised was he to see Mr. Jones (now of some consequence in the house) seated at his desk. " How are you, Jones ?" said he, shaking him by the hand. " What's going on, out of the common T " JSTothing," replied Mr. Jones. " Why V " That you are in this room V '* That's the governor's doing," said Mr. Jones confidentially, alluding to the head of the firm. " Wish you joy, Fred. How's Madam ]" " Quite AveU. Let me come there." " I say, it was too bad to steal a march upon us all. 'Twould have been but civil to invite a feUow to the -wed- ding." " Get out of the way, Jones. I want to come to my place. Pretty cool, I think, your usurping it." Mr. Jones laughed. " I dare not get out, Fred. The firm has assigned this place to me, for good and all. I am a member of it now." " Don't talk to me in that strain." " It's true. I signed articles yesterday." Frederick Lyvett looked at him for a few moments, as if unable to take in the information. " You signed articles yesterday ! What on earth do you mean ?" PAEKWATER. 120 " Just that. They have made me a partner. Xot to auv great extent yet awhile ; but still they have made me one of them, and given me a share." " Is my father in his room T "I suppose so. I say, stop a minute. How you wliirl yourself off from one !" "Well?" 3Ir. Jones suddenly took his hand, speaking in a low toue. " If they have put you out, and me in, Fred, believe me, it is no fault of mine. I never should have sought to raise myself on your downfall. You will hear more from ]Mr. Lyvett and James." Frederick Lyvett went upstairs, and opened the door of his father's private room. The latter waved him away, for a client was sitting there in eager converse. He next looked for his brother James. ]\Ir. James Lyvett was not in. He then Avent down to the old confidential clerk, Mr. Eowley. " Eowley, what is all this that's up ? Jones has possession of my desk, and says it is by my father's orders." " Oh, Mr. Frederick, I am as much grieved as if you were my own son," was the old clerk's answer. " I did try td say a word for you to Mr. Lyvett, but he would not hear me. Perhaps time may make things right. I hope and trust it will. You have not seen him ?" " No. Sir Charles Dabymple is there." " Sir Charles will not stay long. I know what he wants to-day. Mr. Frederick, I must say a word of counsel to you. It Avill not be the first I have said, you know." " jSTot by a good many," laughed Frederick. " Your father is very much put out. This has been the 9 130 FARKWATER. ■worst blow lie lias ever had. He feels it for you, not for liimself " " Then he has no caui?e to feel it for me," interrupted Frederick, " for the step I have taken has assured my happi- ness." But Mr. Eowley held up his finger for silence. "I would ask you to he prepared for any ebullition of anger, and to bear it "without retort," he continued to say. " In his vexation he may use hasty words ; but don't you retaliate, INfr. Fred, for that would only make matters worse. AVhen his anger has calmed down — say in a few months— he may set things again on the old footing for you." " But Jones is in." " There's room for you and for him too. The business is large enough. I fancy they always intended to give Jones a small share. See your father, Mr. Fred, and be submissive to him. If There goes somebody. Wells !" " Yes, sir." " Is that Sir Charles Dalrymple who has gone out T " Yes, it is, sir." " Xow's your time, Mr. Frederick, before anybody else comes in," resumed old Eowley, in a whisper. Away tore Frederick up the stairs, a flight at a time, anxi- ous to " stand the firing and get it over." " The firing" was not that anticipated. Mr. Lyvett said little, and that little calmly. It was apparent that his feeling of anger had merged itself into the deeper one of sorrow. He quietly explained to his son that after the marriage he had made — had persisted in making, in express defiance of his mother's wishes and his own commands — he could no longer remain a member of the high-standing firm of Lyvett, Castle- rosse, and Lyvett ; and that he^ Mr. Castlerosse, had exercised rAEKWATEE. 131 the power he held in his hands to dissolve the partnership, so far as his younger son was concerned. But he did not wish to be harsh, more so than the proprieties of the case de- manded, Mr. Lyvett continued to say, and a certain sum of money (£6,000, being a portion of what Frederick would inherit hereafter) he had caused to be placed to Frederick's account at the banker's. The interest of this would supply household exigencies (the wife he had married could not re- quire refinements or luxuries^ not having been reared to them, he added in a parenthesis), and he would recommend Frede- rick to commence practice on his own account. Mr. Frederick Lyvett heard his father to an end, and then spoke. " My marriage," he said, " is an act that concerns only my private life. How can it affect my remaining, or not remain- ing, in the firm ?' " The person you have married is particularly objectionable to us, Frederick, and you were aware of this. As the daugh- ter of the man and his wife who were our servants for many years in these offices — low, common people with nothing whatever to redeem them from their native sphere — it is im- possible that we can ever associate with her. If they gave the girl an accomplished education, though at the best it must have been a superficial one, Avhy it only served to render her miserable and themselves ridiculous. There were other and more weighty objections to her, of which I informed you " " They were not true : she disproved them all,"_, eagerly interrupted Frederick. " They icere tnie. But she is now your wife, and I will not again allude to them. Your brother felt — I felt — your 9—2 132 PARKWATER. mother and sisters felt — Mr. Castlerosse felt — that your giving your name to this person cast a slur upon yourself so great as to render it inexpedient for you to remain a member of this firm ; indeed, it could not be permitted. I can only say I hope you will do well, alone. We can, no doubt, put some odds and ends of practice into your hands, and we Avill do so." Frederick Lyvett did not answer. He Avas reflecting on his father's words, revolving the prospect before him. '• Upon one point, Frederick," jNIr. Lyvett went on, " we must have a thorough understanding. Upon no pretext must you seek to introduce her to the family. Do not attempt it. It would be derogatory to your mother and sisters and to James's wife. ^Neither at present nor in future shall we ever submit to know her " " Do you not think you are harsh, sir, in this T interrupted the son. " i^o. The fact is, Frederick, our feeling towards her is very, very sore. There's no doubt, though you may not see it — I hope, indeed, for your sake that you never may — but there is no doubt that she has shamelessly and cunningly played her cards to draw you in. While you have thought her all that she appears on the surface ; guileless, innocent, inexperienced, generous ; she has in reality been hard at work at her crafty game — that of entrapping you — and she has played it out. IS^o ; we can never consent to know her. Your- self we will receive. Come and see us whenever you please — your mother wishes it — remembering that your wife's name, and all allusion to her, is an interdicted topic. Come and dine with us to-morrow if you will. This evening Ave are goiug out to dinner." FARKWATER. 133 " I will not promise to come," answered Frederick, " Of course, it would cause me great pain to be on estranged terms with you all, and especially with my mother. I think I am treated ill in this affair, but for my mother's sake I will not resent it." " My boy !" cried Mr. Lyvett, the agitation of his voice betraying that his wounds were sharp just then, " I trust that should children be born to you, they may never bring the grief to you that you have brought home to us." Frederick Lyvett met the hand that was held out to him and clasped it warmly, gulping down the heart-ache that rose in his throat. "This estrangement is very bitter, father. I am deeply sorry to have grieved you, but I did not think you would have taken it to heart like this." " Until you shall be a father yourself, Frederick, and your children grown, you can never know what this trouble is." " I shall Hve but in one hope now, father : that in time you may see cause to be reconciled to my wife, and esteem her. In time." Frederick went downstairs ; the old clerk was looking out for him. " How have you sped, Mr. Frederick ?" " Sped 1 Well, not very well; My father has chosen to take it up as — as I never thought he would. And that farce of turning me out ! It is to stand." Mr. Rowley shook his head. " I knew it was- to, when they did it. Mr. Lyvett talks to me of most things. Was he very outrageous T " Cool and calm. The family don't want to break with me. He asked me to dinner to-morrow." 134 PARKWATEB. " That's better than I hoped for," was the hearty response. " Pray go. You will, won't youl" " No, of course I shall not. A pretty compliment to my wife that would be — to go home to dinner and leave her be- hind." " It is the best thing you can do. Conciliation is the chief step at present : much lies in that. All lies in it, for it paves the way for other steps later. You don't know the feuds that time and conciliation have reconciled. Go, Mr. Fred, go ; take old Eowley's advice for once." " I think I have taken it pretty often. I say, Eowley, just look about for what's mine. Here's the key of the pri- vate drawer in the desk Jones has usurped. Put all the things together, and I will send for them. There ought to be a few books of mine somewhere." And thus Frederick Lyvett was turned out of his father's offices. It was the first unpleasant result of his marriage. If it had but been the last ! Calling a cab, he returned home, getting there at six o'clock. The dinner was ready to be served, and he hastily went to Avash his hands. The bed-room and dressing-room looked in much disorder : things were half in, half out of the trunks, the floor was strewed. Fred Lyvett had the bumj) of order, and the sight jarred on that organ's sensitive nerves. He kissed his wife, so young and fair, and said something about her fatigue. She was in the dress she had worn on the journey; quite a noticeable event, for she was so fond of finery. " Sophia !" he suddenly exclaimed, as they were beginning dinner, " are you ill ?" She was attempting to eat her fish, but her face had PARKWATER. 135 turned livid, and a fit of trembling seemed to have seized on her. "It is only the fatigue of the journey," slie said, her teeth chattering as she spoke. " And I exerted myself, unpacking." " You should not have attempted to unpack to-day. I see you have been unable to put anything away." " I felt ill," she murmured. Frederick Lyvett rose and approached his wife. The very chair shook under her. " Once or twice before — when I have been much fatigued — I have been attacked — like this," said Mrs. Lyvett, in disjointed sentences. " Can I bring you anything up, ma'am %" inquu'ed the maid who was in waiting. " Anything warm 1" she added, looking on with compassion. " Yes," cried Mr. Lyvett, hastily seizing on the suggestion, " bring some brandy and water. Did the brandy and wine come, that I ordered in?" " It is placed in your cellar, sir." "Bring up a tumbler directly. Hot and strong. My dearest Sophia, what can this be T "I shall be better soon," she faintly answered. !Mrs. Lyvett drank the brandy and water, and became better ; but she refused her dinner, and leaned back in an arm-chair while Mr. Lyvett finished his. After the things had been removed, the servant again appeared at the door. " Can I speak to you for a moment, if you please, ma'am ?" "To me T asked Mrs. Lyvett. She rose and approached the door, a nervous movement running through her frame. The girl pulled the door to behind ^Mrs. Lyvett before she 136 rARKWATER. spoke, but did not close it. " My mistress wished me to ask, ma'am, if we should make some bread and milk for the baby's supper ?" "The — baby's — supper?" she stammered. " Or is there anything else he would like better?" Mrs. Lyvett made a sudden movement, which brought her back against the door-post. " What buby ?" she asked. *' What are you talking of 1" The maid looked surprised. " The little boy, ma'am, that the countrywoman brought here." "The woman took the child away with her," gDsped ^Mrs. Lyvett. " Took it away Oh, then," added the girl, breaking off her sentence, " my mistress must have been mistaken. She thought it was left." Frederick Lyvett had (juick ears. " What was that consul- tation about a baby, Sophy 1" he said, when his wife returned. Mrs. Lyvett strove to smile, but when her lips were drawn away from her teeth, she could not get them back again. " People do make such stupid mistakes," she attempted to say, but at best it was but a low mutter. "A woman who ■ — knew my mother — called here this afternoon — Avith her baby — and the servant thought she had not gone." The excuse came to her lips on the moment's impulse. But it is jDrobable that had poor Sophia Lyvett known where, in all the Avide world of London, her mother was that day to be found, the great tragedy of her life had never taken place. The words and the matter passed away from Fred Lyvett's mind. His wife threw herself into the easy chair again, and he related to her the substance of what passed at the office. PARKWATEE. ' ]3T suppressing only the stern prohibition as to all future inter- course with lierself. He strove to make light of it, just as though it were a farce. " They are on the corky system just now, Sophy," he concluded, " but they'll come down. Don't be disheartened." She urged his acceptance of the following evening's invita- tion — urged it so strongly, in so agitated and eager a manner, that it turned the scale of his mind in favour of going. He had wished to go. !Not only on the score of policy, as the old clerk urged, but that it Avould be terribly painful to him- self to be estranged from his family. " I would have liked to go," he honestly avowed, " but I don' t like to leave you alone for a whole evening, Sophy» They dine at seven ; I should not get home till ten, or later, for it won't do to run away the minute dinner's over. A dis- graced child must be on its good behaviour." ]\Irs. Lyvett only pressed it the more urgently. She should be happier alone, knowing he was there, than if he remained away for her gratification. "When they retired to rest, Mr. Lyvett saw that the clothes and packages had been put tolerably straight by the servants. In the middle of the night his wife was taken with a second fit of trembling, so violent that it woke him up in alarm. CHAPTER XIV. AN EXPEDITION IX THE DUSK. MoKNiNG dawned. A beautiful, sunny June day. Mrs, Fred Lyvett seemed pretty well — a bright morning is always good' 138 PARKWATER. for the spirits. She got up and was nearly dressed, when she heard a noise, as of shaking, in the dressing-room. She sprang into it with a gesture of fear. ]\rr. Lyvett, with some coats on his arm, had hold of the brass knob of one of the closets, and was shaking it to get it open. " Oh, don't do that !" she uttered, seizing his arm. " Why, what is the matter?" he inquired, for her face was nothing less than a face of iutense terror. " You may break the lock." " Sophy, dear, what ails you ?" he asked, looking at her at- tentively. " Ereak the lock ! Xot I. And if I did, it need not put you out like this. This is a capital closet. I noticed it when I took the rooms. Lots of brass pegs in it; the very place for my clothes, as I and Mrs. Cooke decided. You will want the other one and the wardrobe. Where's the key of this closet f he demanded of the servant, who appeared in answer to his peal at the bell. "I don't know, sir," she replied. "It was in the door Avlien we made the rooms ready yesterday." " It is not in it now." " I have not touched it, sir. I noticed last night that it was out, when I was putting the things straight." " I must have it," said ]\Ir. Lyvett. Mrs. Lyvett interrupted. She had been standing with her back to them, one hand pressed on the dressing-table. " Perhaps I took the key out," she said. " I can't quite remember, but I know I Avas looking in the closet. I will search for it after breakfast." But, even while she spoke these few words, she had turned lier face away again to bury it over a drawer, and they could not see its shivering whiteness. FABKWATER. 139 The maid left the room, and they went in to breakfast. When it was over, Mr. Lyvett rose. " Kow, Sophia, tliis key." " I will look for it by-and-hy." " But I want it now. I want to arrange my things at once. Otherwise you will be troubling yourself to do it." " It will be no trouble." *' My dear, I shall do it myself. Be so good as find me the key." She rose and left the room. But the moment she was in the bedroom, far from searching for tho key, she sank down on a chair, wringing her hands ; her whole appear- ance, her face, her attitude, bespeaking a state of wild alarm. Mr. Lyvett suddenly opened the door, and saw her. " ]My dear Sophia, what is the matter T A fit of trembling, Tiolent as that of the previous evening, was shaking her now. " "What can it possibly be ? You must have medical ad- vice. When was it you experienced these seizures before T " It is nothing — nothing," she panted. " I did have them some years ago. Frederick " "My lover " Do not tease me to look just now for the key. I will get it for you by this evening." " Oh, never mind the key. My things will do any time. Think of yourself. I'll ask Mrs. Cooke to recommend a medical man, and we will have him in at once. She is sure to employ one in the neighbourhood." He was hastening from the room, but Mrs. Lyvett arrested him by a gesture and a groan — for it could not be called a word. 140 PARKWATER. " Call no one," slie murmured. " Let me only be quiet, and it will pass away. It is an attack of the nerves, brought on by fatigue." He stood and watched her : and presently she arose, lan- guid but composed. She took his arm, and they went back to the breakfast-room. Two dark circles were round her eyes, and altogether she looked as her husband had never seen her look. He gently put her into the easy-chaii', and drew a footstool before her. " 'Sow I tell you what, Sophia — you must not stir out of that chair all day. And if the trembling comes on again, take some brandy-and-water immediately. It did yoii good last night. You shall not go travelling again, if this is to be it. Shall I remain at home with you 1" "!N"o, oh, no !" she eagerly answered. "You could do me no good. I only want quiet. You know you have a great deal to arrange to-day, and several people to see. Pray do not neglect anything." " Well, I shall not go home to dine this evening." " You must go — you shall go !" she exclaimed, with a ve- hemence that positively startled Mr. Lyvett. " I tell you, Frederick, any worry would only make me worse, and it would worry me dreadfully to know that you neglected this- first invitation of your father's. It might render the breach irrevocable." " Good-bye, then," he said, stooping to take his farewell. " But I can tell you my going, or not going, depends upon whether you are better. And be sure don't get worrying yourself with the luggage to-day. The things can wait until to-morrow." ]\Ir. Lyvett passed down the stairs, and as he was crossing PARKWATER. 141 ilie hall, met Mrs. Cooke. He had known her many years. Her son, now dead, had been articled to his fatlier's house. He stopped to shake hands, and they turned into the jDarlour. " I am sorry to hear Mrs. Frederick Lyvett is not Avell," she said. '•' 'Sot very. From fatigue of travelling, I believe. She says it will soon jjass off. I wish you Avould go up and see her, Mrs. Cooke. And," he added, dropping his voice to a wliisper, " if you think it anything serious, just send for a doctor, and say nothing about it to my wife until he is here." He took his departure for the day, and in a short time Mrs. Cooke went upstairs. The young wife seemed very well then. She received her landlady haughtily, not to say ungraciously; ■and spoke in a resentful tone of her husband's having thought she needed special inquiry or assistance. Mrs. Cooke perceived the illness was not a welcome toj^ic, and passed to ■another. " Did the countrywoman take away the child yesterday 1" asked she in a friendly tone. " Of course she did," was Mrs. Lyvett's reply, looking steadily at her. And nearly at the same moment she Avas taken with a fit of coughing, and had to put her handkerchief to her face. " So Ann brought me word, when I sent up to ask if you would like some food for him ; but — I do not know how m}' sight could so far have deceived me. I saw her go away, and it seemed to me that she had nothing with her. "Where he was hidden, will, to me, always be a mystery." " He Avas asleep in her arms, under her shawl." ""VVeU, no, that could hardly be. Both her arms were 142 TARKWATER. hanging down. I noticed her hands : she had one brown cotton glove on, and was carrying the other." " She would scarcely leave her child a present for me," re- turned Mrs. Lyvett, with a forced laugh. Mrs. Cooke cleared her throat, and looked another way, speaking hurriedly. " The woman mentioned to me some particulars, and said she had brought the child to leave him with you. I regret much that she should have spoken, for of course it is no business of mine ; but I beg to assure you that I shall never think of mentioning the subject to anyone." " I'm sure I don't know what she said to you," was the answer, delivered in a curt, discourteous tone, " And it is of no consequence. She is a woman who is slightly deranged at times, and is then given to say strange things ; but nobody notices her. I have occasionally given her money in charity,, and that is Avhat she wanted yesterday. The child is her own, her youngest ; but when the mania is upon her, she dis- owns him." Mrs. Cooke said good-morning, and betook herself to her own portion of the house. She found much food for reflec- tion that day. Was she to believe the countrywoman's tale, or Mrs. Frederick Lyvett's"? She inclined to that of the former, who not only appeared perfectly sane and sensible, but had honesty written on her face ; which Mrs. Lyvett had not. Moreover the countrywoman's tale carried probability with it, and the bringing back of the sixteen shillings, which she said she had been overpaid, corroborated it, as did the little bundle of the child's clothes. It was a disagreeable matter altogether ; at least that was the impression left on jMrs. Cooke's mind ; and somewhat PAUKWATER. 143 mysterious. In the first place Mrs. Cooke could have posi- tively affirmed, if necessary, that the" woman had not the child when she departed. Carrying it she certainly was not ; yet where could it have been hidden 1 Under her petticoats 1 Xo. She was of slender make, and her lavender cotton gown hung down, flat and scanty, as peasants' gowns generally do hang. Yet it was equally certain that the child had gone, for Mrs, Lyvett could not have got him hidden in the house. How and when had the child departed 1 Who had taken him aAvay, if not the woman 1 And yet, if Mrs. Cooke could trust the evidence of her own sight and senses, the woman had not taken him. Mrs. Cooke felt intensely mystified. However, as she re- peated to herself, it was no business of hers, so she would not wonder any more about it. But the more she strove to fol- low this resolve, the less was she able to do it. The affair haunted her all day. Frederick Lyvett came home in his cab to dress. How long that cab and horse would be his, he knew not ; he was already making preparations for their sale. He had found a vast deal to do all day, what with one thing and another, and apologized to his wife for his long absence, as he stooped to kiss her, and hurried into the dressing-room. He found the closet open, and his things placed in it. His wife had done it. She appeared to have recovered, and she left her own dinner, just served, to go and talk with him. She begged of him not to leave his family for the sake of hurrying home, saying she would not wish to see liim one moment before eleven. He was elated at her being so well, and descended at half-past six to his cab, which had waited for him. Mrs, Lyvett finished her dinner — with a very poor 144 PARKWATER. appetite, as it .seemed — and had a cup of coffee brouglit to her. The evening went on to dusk. ^Nlrs. Cooke was shut up in her back parlour, which opened to the garden, the servants were in the kitchen, when Sophia Lyvetfc, wearing a large shawl and carrying something cumbersome, passed down the staircase in the gloom. Slowly and cautiously stole she, as if she dreaded even the creaking of a board, across the hall, whose lamp was not yet lighted, and out at the front door. She pulled the door to, but did not close it after her, dreading perhaps the noise it would make ; sjDed through the gate, and turned towards the Eegent's Park. The road lamp flashed on her face. Its features, as seen through her veil, were Avhite as death, and lier mouth opened with every laboured breath she drew. She bore steadily on her road, but with difficulty, for she was not accustomed to heavy burdens. The road is tolerably lonely there ; and every now and then, Avhen not a soul was in sight, she leaned against a dead wall, or a railing, or a stone gate-post, for rest. Once when she was well nigh ex- hausted she sat down on a garden step. She had sat a minute when a policeman appeared, coming round the corner she had passed. She sprang up and darted away, helped on by un- natural strength. She came to the Eegent's Park — it was no great distance — and was entering it, when another policeman appeared, coming from it. She turned short round^ and stood back against a dark wall. Slie knew her way quite well about the locality ; for, before settling at Brompton, she had tried this neighbourhood, and had stayed in it for two months, hoping to pick up pupils. The policeman did not see her ; he turned PARKWATER. 145 off the other way ; and, as the echo of his footsteps died away in the distance, she went on again and entered the Park. When she came out of it her arms were free ; what she had carried was no longer in them. Hailing a cab that chanced to be passing, she got into it, giving the driver only a word of direction ; that of the road in which Mrs. Cooke's was situated. " What part of it T he inquired. " Drive on. Pll tell you when to stop." She sat in it, panting and breathless, shaking as she had been shaking at home on the previous evening. She let the man drive past her house some slight distance, and then ■stopped the cab. The fare was very trifling, but she put half-a-crown into his hand, and walked on, away still from home. Cabmen, as a whole, are suspicious men, remarkably wide awake. This one glanced keenly at her face through her veil, and looked after her. Then he turned his horse round, and drove slowly back, looking out for a fare. When tlie cab was out of sight, Sophia Lyvett turned and approached her home. iN'o lights were in the drawing-room, so her husband had not returned. That was fortunate : she had not felt perfectly sure that he would not come home early, in spite of her injunction ; but another circumstance was less so. The door, which she had hoped to find ajar, as she left it, was closed ; and she could not get in unseen, as she had wished to do. The hour she did not know, but thought it might be half-past ten. What should she do ? She scarcely liked to knock and enter, and face the surprise as to her proceedings, at so late an hour. An idea came over her that if she could go in with her husband it would be thought she had but gone out to 10 146 PAEKWATER. fetch him. Yes, she would wait, and do that. The shutters of Mrs. Cooke's parlour Avindows were closed. So much the Letter ; the prying eyes of that lady could not be upon her. Sophia paced back along the garden path to the gate, and paused there, in the fuU light of the gas lamp. At that mo- ment a cab drove past. She did not recognise it ; but the driver recognised her as the liberal fare he had recently set down. He had met another fare, a cab full, whom he was driving home. He turned round on his box, and noted the house : no fear that he would not know it again. Another cab came up, a private one, and stopped at the gate. Mr. Frederick Lyvett's. Fred jumped from it, and his groom drove off immediately. *' Why, Sophia i" he exclaimed, in the very excess of astonishment, as he entered the gate and encountered her. " Is it you r She laughed loudly. " I put on my great shawl, and came out to walk up and down before the gate, waiting for you. It was hot in-doors, and the night air is pleasant." But he seemed rather cross : seemed to think the i^roceed- ing an extraordinary one ; and, while they waited for admit- tance, recommended her not to do it again. Sophia fancied that the servants stared curiously at her ; nothing in the world is so imaginative as conscience. Both the servants were in the hall : the one opened the door to admit them, the other was speaking to her mistress. Mrs. Cooke was sit- ting in her parlour near the door, which was wide open. " Good-evening," said Mr. Lyvett, halting to speak. " A warm night, is it not V Mrs. Cooke rose and came forward. " Yes ; it is very warm. You gave us a fright, Mrs. Frederick Lyvett," she PARKWATER. 147 added : and Sophia, who was hastening up the stairs, felt at these words compelled to turn. " "When Ann came up to light the hall lamp, she found a beggar hoy in the hall : a young man, indeed ; a great, strong, ill-looking fellow. He pretended to ask for bread ; but it is a mercy she saw him, or we might all have been attacked in our beds to-night." " How did he get in 1" asked Mr. Lyvett. "We could not imagine how," said Mrs. Cooke, "until we found Mrs. Lyvett was out. You must have left the door open," she added, looking at the lady. " If you will kindly take the trouble to ring when you are going out, one of the servants will be at hand to show you out, and close the door after you. Perhaps," she continued, smiling, " Mrs. Lyvett is not accustomed to London, and little thinks that the streets and roads are infested with thieves and vagabonds ever on the watch for plunder." " Oh, Mrs. Lyvett has lived in London all her life," was Fred Lyvett's reply. " Had you much trouble in getting rid of him, Mrs. Cooke T " Xo. I thought it best to conciliate the gentleman, and called the cook to give him some broken victuals. He then asked for old shoes ; and I was obliged to threaten him with a policeman before he would quit the house." " It is the police who are to blame," returned Mr. Lyvett. '^ What right have they to suffer these fellows to be prowling about the roads at eleven o'clock at night T " Oh," said Mrs. Cooke, " it is an hour and a half ago. More, I think." " I hope you will not be troubled again with such a custo- mer," concluded Fred. " Good-night, ma'am." His wife had run upstairs, and he followed her. The ser- 10—2 148 PARKWATER. vaiit had also gone up with lights. " Sophy," he said, as the girl withdrew, " you must have been out a long while. "WTiere can you have been T " Only walking about, watching for you. I told you so.'' " Don't go letting yourself out again, my dear, in that odd sort of clandestine way. And at night, too ! Eing the ser- vants uj^, and let them wait upon you. It is different here from that place you were in at Brompton. INIrs. Cooke is a gentlewoman, you know, and accustomed to proper ways. Besides, you are Mrs. Frederick Ly vett now ; don't be afraid of giving necessary trouble." Mrs. Lyvett turned the conversation off. She was very tired, she said, and should go on to her room and undress. Pred nodded, and said he would follow her presently. She had no further attack of trembling that night. But she tossed and turned from side to side in wakeful restlessness ; and, when she did get to sleep, she moaned and started so repeatedly that her husband obtained no rest. "I am sure," thought he, " that honeymoon journey of ours must have been too much for Sophia ! Travelling does upset some people ; I suppose she's one of them." CHAPTEE XV. THE CHILD. On the following Monday evening there sat in a room at Eotherhithe a small collection of country people, men and women. A discontented expression was on their faces ; and not without cause. They were from Suffolk, intended emi- PARRWATEE. 149 grants to Sidney, who ought to have gone out of dock on the previous Saturday, but from some bad management, which they could not or would not comprehend, the ship was to be detained for another week ; and they rebelled at the delay, " A boxing of us U]d in this here wicked London, as is full of accidents and revellings !" cried a woman, who was spelling over a newspaper. " A poor innocent lamb they have been a drowning of noAv. A pretty little fellow, with flax-coloured hair, it says." " Eead it out, Goody Giles," said some one of the company. Goody Giles preferred to tell it. " He were found in a place they call the Eegent's Park. A gentleman were a-pass- ing along, and his dog jumped into the water and fished up a bundle, which they think had lodged on the side, without sinking. They got it out and opened it, and it were a poor little boy." " When Avas it 1 How big was he ?" inquired one of the men. " It Avere last Friday morning, and he looked to be a-going on of two year," replied Goody Giles. " His frock and pina- fore was of blue cotton." Another Avoman, seated at the Avindow, turned rou.nd her head. "What else do it say"?" she asked, in a quick tone. " Well, I don't mind as it says much else. Tarn, take the neAA's, and look." "Tam" took the newspaper, and ran his eyes over the account. " Yes, it does, mother. It says as there's a reward of £20 offered. And he had got on a shirt and petticoat clumsily marked ' E. P.' in grey Avorsted." 150 PARKWATER. " Hey, Mrs. Thrupp ! what's the matter of you ?" cried a man named Miles. For Mrs. Thrupp had risen from her seat at the window, and stood as if petrified. " Forgive me if I'm wrong !" she breathed, " but it's just the likeness of little Eandy." "Thou foolish woman!" uttered her husband. "Thy thoughts be tied on nought but that little un; night and noon. Thee'll get crazy about him shortly." " Piandy wore his blue frock and pinafore the day I left him." "For the matter of that, Mother Thrupp," interposed Peter Miles, " there be two or three hundred children in blue frocks and pinafores in this town of Lunnon alone." " And that's the very mark of his shirt and petticoat," per- sisted Mrs. Thrupp, paying no attention to the rebuke. " I thought his folks might be fashed at seeing no mark, for ladies is particular, and when I were a-mendin' up Thrupp's stockings, ready for the start, I took the needle and worsted, and marked his three shirts and his two petticoats ; E, for Eandy, and P, for Penryn." " E. P. is but common letters," interposed Eobert Pike, " and stands for many a name. They stands for mine." " Don't take no note of she, Eobin," cried John Thrupp ; " her head's turned with losing the little urchin." Mrs. Thrupj) said no more. But she caught up the paper and read the account for herself. She noted the address of the police-station where application might be made, and the body of the child seen. When she was alone with her hus- band at night, she told him she should go and ask to see it. " Thee'd never be so soft !" " I must satisfy myself. Something keeps whispering me PARKWATER. 151 that it's little Eandy. I told you his mother shook him and hit him, a'most like a dog shaking a rat." " A pretty figure thee'll cut, a-going to own a drownded child, when thee gets sight on't, and find it's one thee never set eyes on afore !" exclaimed John Thrupp. " It's only my time and a walk," remonstrated the woman ; " and my mind '11 be at rest. While we be kept a-waiting here, Ave have got nothing to do, now all our things is aboard." The same evening that these several labourers and their families were conversing together, there appeared at the police-station mentioned in the advertisements a shrewd- looking man, airily attired about the neck and waistcoat. He demanded to see the inspector. " What for ?" inquired an ofiicer in attendance. " Something touching that child that has been found," was the answer. " If I can't see the inspector now, I'll come again." "Go in there," said the policeman. The man went into the room indicated, and stood before the inspector : who heard what his business was, and in- quired his name. " John Eipley." " Who and what are you ?" " I was well-to-do once, but I got down in the world, and I have lately been reduced to drive a night cab. I tried a day one, but I had to pay sixteen shillings to its master every morning before I took it out, and I could not make it answer. I pay six shillings for the night one." " Its number, and the owner ?" continued the inspector. John Ripley satisfied him ; also in various other particulars 152 PARKWATER. relating to himself. Some of his answers were written clown. "And now," said the officer, "what have you to say about this affair 1" " First of all, sir, I want to know whether the reward will be paid to me, if I point out the person who put the child in the water 1 Because that person," shrewdly argued the man, " may not be the one who actually killed it." " If you can indicate to us the individual Avho put the baby where it was found, and through that information the actual guilty party or j)arties be discovered and taken, you will be entitled to the reward." " And receive it V added the man. " And receive it," said the inspector, with a checked attempt at a smile. " Now go on." " Well, sir, last Thursday evening I took out my cab at nine o'clock, and for more than half-an-hour not a fare did I get. Then one hailed me, and I drove him all up to the Eegent's Park, and onwards to the north side beyond it. I set my fare down, and was driving back, when a woman came out of the Park, put up her hand, and made a noise." " How made a noise 1" " "Why, she had tried to speak, but Avas so out of breath she couldn't, and only a noise came from her. I got down, opened the door, and she scrambled in, I have seen many a one make haste over getting into a cab," continued the speaker, " but I never saw one tumble in as quick as she did. ' Agate Road,' she said to me," " ' AVhat part of it V I asked. " ' Drive on,' she said. ' PU tell you when to pull up.' So I did as she told me, and " ' PARKWATER. 15.1 " "What time was this 1" interrupted the officer. " I can't say to a few minutes. Between ten and half-past." "Proceed." " I drove up the Agate Eoad ; and presently she pulled the string, and I jumped off and let her out. I thought I should get a shilling from her, but she puts half-a-crown into my hand, and goes away, on further, up the road." "Is that all?" " ^N'ot quite. I turned back with my cab towards the Park, plying for a fare, and had not gone far when a gentleman, two ladies, and two children hailed me and got in. They told me to drive up the Agate Eoad, and I did so ; when, in passing a house, beyond which I had driven her, I saw the same Avoman — or lady, whichever she was. She was stand- ing inside its gate, looking up and down the road." "WeUr " That is aU." " Did you see more of the woman V " !N"o. My last fare went to the very top of the Agate Eoad ; and as they were getting out I took another, who Avanted to go in quite a different direction." " How do you connect all this with the finding of the child?' " Why, sir, I feel a positive conviction, in my own mind, that it was that very woman who had been placing the baby in the water. She panted and shook as she came from the Park, like one in mortal fright, as I said, and the moment she Avas inside the cab, huddled herself into one corner of it, like a hare run down. And why should she conceal her house from me, and make me drive past it 1 She must have had some motive for that." 154 PARKWATER. " These circumstances amount to very little," said the inspector. " At all events, they look suspicious enough for the police to follow up," quickly retorted the man, " which I suppose you'll do, sir." The inspector kept his own counsel, as inspectors are sure to do. JSTeither eye nor lip moved. " "What house Avas this f he asked. "I cannot describe it as you would understand, and I don't know its number ; but I can point it out when I'm there." " How was the woman dressed 1" " In a big, dark shawl, which nearly covered her, and a silk dress. And she kept a black veil over her face." " Should you know her again ?" " I should know her dress ; I'm sure I should. It was a grey silk, flounces edged Avith bands of black velvet. The shawl was a dark plaid, blue and green. I didn't see much of her features." " What age was she T " Young." "Was she like a lady or a servant?" "Like a lady." The inspector wrote for a few minutes, " Are you always to be found at this address that you have given ?" " Except at night, when I'm out with my cab." He continued to Avrite. "Have you talked about this?" he suddenly demanded. " I have never opened my lips about it till now. It was only to-day, Avhen the account of the finding of the child PARKWATER. 155 came to my notice in the newspapers, that I began to have my suspicions." " Good." The inspector touched a hand-hell, and the policeman came in. " Begbie." It was the only word he spoke, hut the man appeared to understand ; for he withdrew, and another one appeared in plain clothes. The inspector turned to the cabman. " You will go with this officer," he said, " and point out to him the house you have mentioned. Do not linger before it, or turn your head to look at it ; just tell him which it is, and walk past it. You understand 1" " I should be dull if I didn't," returned the driver. " Mark it," was the inspector's brief direction to his subordinate. CHAPTEE XVI. AT MRS. COOKE'S, It is something marvellous — the ways and means employed by the metropolitan police when they are bent upon obtain- ing information. None know how they do it, or when they do it ; save to themselves^ their inquiries are secret as ever were those of the French inquisition. By eleven o'clock the following morning the police knew all about the suspected house, what character it bore, and who lived in it. A widow lady of great respectability was 156 PARKWATER. its occupant, with her two servants : she had lived there for many years. About twelve o'clock on that same day a gentleman stood before the house — a tall, well-dressed, middle-aged, easy- mannered man. He knocked and rang, as though he felt himself to be somebody of consequence. One of the maids opened the door. " Is Mrs. Cooke at home ?" "Yes, sir." Without ceremony or any kind of invitation, he walked at once into the hall. " I wish to sec her." " What name, sir ?" asked the servant, preparing to show him in. " Mr. Smith." Whether Smith was his real name, or not, is no matter to us. It did for the servant, as well as any other. Mrs. Cooke was seated in her parlour ; a handsome, well-appointed room. Mr. Smith saw a tall, stately lady, dressed in rich black silk and a widow's cap. She was looking over some account- books, but rose at the visitor's entrance and laid down her spectacles. Amongst her friends was a gentleman named Smith, and she advanced to shake hands, but drew back at meeting a stranger. " Ma'am," he began, in a low, cautious tone, as soon as the door was closed, drawing, unasked, a chair near to hers, and sitting down, " I have come to seek a little j)rivate informa- tion from }'ou. I am a member of the detective police." Mrs. Cooke was shocked and startled. A detective officer had always been associated, in her mind, with a blunderbuss and two horse-pistols. She nervously began to draw on her PARKWATER. 157 Ijlack lace mittens, ■which, lay on the table, but her trembling fingers could hardly accomplish it. " Don't be alarmed, ma'am," he said, with a voice and smile tending to reassure her. " My visit has nothing formid- able in it. Look upon me as an acquaintance only, Avho has called to sit half-an-hour with you." " Su'," she answered, " I have lived to six-and-fifty years, and never had anything to do Avith the police in my life, or my husband either. He was in Somerset House, and I can assure you we never did anything to bring the notice of the police upon us. AH we have ever done, or said, might be laid open to the world." " Had you fallen under their mark, I should not come to visit you in this private manner," was his composed reply. ''' I only require a little information from you ; which I think you can afford me." " Dear me !" groaned jNIrs. Cooke. "Do you live in this house alone with your two ser- vants f " Until last week I did. I supjoose, su*, I am compelled to ixnswer your questions ?" " Madam, yes. Or you may be called upon to answer them in public : which would be less pleasant to you. Since last week, who has resided in your house ?" The intimation did not tend to reassure Mrs. Cooke. But never a thought crossed her of refusing to answer, and she resigned herself to the situation. " A newly-married gentleman and his wife came to reside with me last week. My house is large for me since my hus- band died, and they have taken part of it. They entered last Wednesday." 158 PARKWATER. " Eespectable people, I conclude 1" " Respectable ! Sir, it is Mr. Frederick Ly vett, a son of the great Lawyer Ly vett ; their firm is one of the highest in Lon- don. The Lyvetts live in the greatest style at the West End." " I know them," nodded the officer. " Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett. Just married, are these parties ?" " About a fortnight ago." "Who was the lady?" " I know very little of her. I believe she was inferior in position to Frederick Lyvett, and his friends were against the match. She was a Miss May, and resided somewhere in Brompton. But, sir," added Mrs. Cooke, Avhile the stranger was making a note of her last words, " I feel there is some- thing mean and dishonourable in thus giving information of the affairs of other people. It is what I have not been accus- tomed to do." " Nevertheless it is necessary," he answered, in a semi-im- patient but very decisive tone, as if ignoring the scruples. "They came in on Wednesday afternoon. Did they bring any children with them f " Oh dear no. I said they were just married." " Did any children, or child, come to visit them that day or the next ? Any young boy — say two years old, or ap- proaching to it V What doubt, what feeling came over Mrs. Cooke at this question, perhaps she could not herself have explained. She did not answer it, but her face grew white, and she sat gazing at the officer. Did the account she had read of the little child in blue, who was found in the Regent's Park, arise un- accountably before her ? He drew his chair closer and his voice took a sound of confidence. PARKWATEE. 159 " jVIts. Cooke," lie said, " by the expression of your face, I think you now begin to suspect the drift of my questions. A sad deed has been committed by some one, and certain facts which have come to our knowledge would seem to point to a suspicion that an inmate of your house may have been con- nected with it. It is your duty to throw upon this matter any and every light that may be in your power ', and the law will demand it of you." " What deed is it 1" ejaculated Mrs. Cooke. " I ask if you saw any child here with your lodgers ?" he continued, passing by her question. " Did you see any child with them r " A woman, evidently a countrywoman, saying she was from Suffolk, did bring a child here on the Wednesday, an hour or two before they came home," replied Mrs. Cooke, unmistak- ably much pained at vouchsafing information, yet afraid to withhold it. " Yes. Well, ma'am 1 Pray proceed." " She said the child Avas one that Mrs. Lyvett had placed at nurse with her, but she could no longer keep it, because she and her husband were going out to Australia. Sir, suppose I decline to furnish these particulars — to answer these ques- tions'? Have you the power to compel me ?" " Yes, madam. At a police-court, before a magistrate." The alternative Avas not palatable, and Mrs. Cooke resigned herself to her fate without further struggle. " The woman wanted to leave the child in my charge," she conthiued. "Did you take it r " Of course not. I alloAved the Avoman to Avait here until they arrived, and she then carried the cliild upstairs to Mrs. Lyvett." 160 PARKWATER. " Was Mr. Lyvett there T " He was gone out. Tlie woman stayed with Mrs. Lyvett in her bedroom, and we heard the child crying. Afterwards, one of my servants, in passing the rooms, heard the woman hushing him to sleep. After that, the woman left the house." *' How long was she with Mrs. Lyvett ?" " About • — I should think, three-c[uarters of an hour. ^Nearly that." "And what became of the child f " I don't know. I wondered what did become of him ; for when the woman left I saw no child with her. I asked JNIrs. Lyvett about him the following morning, and she re- plied that the woman had taken him with her. She had said the same thing the night before to one of my maids, who went up to ask whether anything should be prepared for the baby's supper. It surprised me very much ; for though I saw the woman leave, I did not see the child. Still, I supposed that it must have been so, for we certainly neither saw nor heard traces of the child after her departure." " Neither saw nor heard any ?" repeated the officer. " None whatever." " Did you chance to hear the woman's name?" " She told me it was Thrupp." " Now, madam, bring your thoughts to bear, if you please, on the following evening, Thursday. Did Mr. and INIrs. Lyvett dine at home 1 I presume their dinner-hour is late T " Six o'clock. Only Mrs. Lyvett dined on Thursday evening. Mr. Frederick went to his father's to dine." " She was alone, then V "Yes." PARKWATER. IGl The officer stopped for a minute, considering. When he- resumed, the tone of his voice was low and grave, as if conscious that he was asking a grave question. " Do you happen to know whether Mrs. Frederick Lyvett went out that night V Mrs. Cooke hesitated. She would have given all the world to avoid this. " Madam," said the officer somewhat sternly, " you must speak, and speak freely." " Mrs. Lyvett did go out. She went out without any- body's knowing it, and left the hall-door open. By which means a tramping heggar got inside the house and startled us." "At what hour did she go out?" " It is impossible to say precisely. The servant fetched down her coffee-cup before nine, and it was between half- past nine and ten when we found the tramp in the hall." " What time did she return ?" " She returned with her husband. It was getting on for eleven." "With her husband 1" he repeated quickly, and possibly in surprise, only that the tone of a wary police-officer rarely betrays any. "Yes, with her husband. I was sitting here and heard his cab stop. They came in together." " They may have met at the gate," mused the inspector to himself. " Did you observe how she was dressed, madam V "ISTot particularly. Except that she wore a very large,, dark shawl, which I thought she must be smothered in, so hot a night." " And a veil T " Yes ; for she kept it down. Mr. Lyvett stopped to say 11 1G2 PARKWATER. good-evening, as they passed this door, and I spoke to ]\Irs. Lyvett about the beggar, and requested her in future to ring for a servant to show her out." The detective looked over his note-book. " I have for- gotten one question in its order," he said. " What clothes did the child wear V Mrs. Cooke's voice sank to a whisper. " When his cape was off, I saw he wore a blue frock and pinafore." "Did you perceive anything strange in Mrs. Lyvett's manner between Wednesday, when the countrywoman was here, and Thursday evening ?" " jS^othing strange. She had an attack of illness once or twice, which was attributed to the fatigue of travelling." '^ What sort of illness T " Ann, who saw her, said she shook worse than one in the palsy, and had a cold, white look." The officer coughed a peculiar cough. " The rooms they occupy were open, I suppose, to your servants on the Wed- nesday and Thursday ?" " Quite so. As they are noAv. It is Ann only who waits on them." " Is Ann a discreet girl V " Discreet, sir ! In' what way discreet]" " Can she keeji a silent tongue T " I think she can. She is a very good girl." " Allow me to ring for her," he said. And v/ithout waiting for permission, he rose and rang the bell. Ann herself answered it, and stood with the door in her hand. " Come in," said Mrs. Cooke, and the officer rose and closed the door behind her. She looked surprised, half- PARKWATER. 163 frightened; a short, pale, quiet-mannered young woman. "Ann," began her mistress^ "this gentleman wishes to ask you a question or two. Be particular in replying." She turned to face the stranger, who looked at her keenly as he entered on his inquiries. " You wait upon j\Ir, and Mrs. Lyvett, I am informed by your mistress." " Yes, sir." " Make beds, sweep rooms, and such-like work f " Yes, sir." " Last "Wednesday, after they came here, and the day following, were the rooms quite open to you T " Open, sir T repeated the girl, as if she scarcely under- stood the question. "Yes, they were open." " You saw nothing to induce you to suppose anything was lying hid — any bundle, for example ?" " I never thought anything about it, sir," was Ann's ■answer, wondering to herself what the drift of all this was. " There was nothing hid that I noticed." '•' Closets, cupboards, were all open V " Yes, I think so — except one closet," added the servant, carelessly, as if she thought that of little consequence. "The key of it was mislaid." " Ah !" remarked the officer, briskly, a keen look of in- telligence rising to his countenance and fading again. " When was that ?" " On the Wednesday evening, sir. I was going to hang the dresses up which the lady had left about, and I could not find the key of the closet, the one in the dressing-room, where the pegs are. It was locked, and the key gone." " Did you ask for the key?" 11—2 164 FAEKWATER. " ^0, sir ; on tlie following morning, Mr. Lyvett rang the "bell and asked me for it. And then the lady said she might have taken it out unintentionally and had got it somewhere. She would look and see after breakfast, she said, and I came down again." " Did she speak readily 1 — at once ?" " ]N"o. ]S'ot till Mr. Lyvett pressed for the key, and seemed displeased, telling me I must find it. He seemed to think that I must have taken it out.'.' " Was that closet open, do you remember, during the day, Thursday?" " 1 am sure it was not open, sir, when I made the bed. It may have been when I put the rooms straight at night, but I did not notice. The next morning I saw it was open, and Mr. Lyvett's things were placed in it." " Mrs. Lyvett was ill on one, or botli of those days. What was the matter with her ?" " She said she was tired with the railway journey. She shook a good deal." " Did she look terrified f " Well, she did, sir," was the servant's reply. " At least, so it stru.ck me." The officer asked a few further questions, but she could say no more of import. He rose from his chaii-, drew up his form to its full height, and placed his hands upon her shoulders. " IS«"ow, my girl, do you know what I am ? I am an officer in the detective police force, and you have been under private examination. You must observe strict silence as to what has passed in this room, to your fellow-servant and to everybody else. Shall I swear you to it 1" PARKWATER. 165 Tlie girl gasped, and looked for help to her mistress. He saw his end was gained. Little need to swear her, even had he seriously meant it. A feAv minutes longer with Mrs. Cooke, whom he left with a pale, distressed, uneasy face, and the officer went straight back to the' station. There he found a countrywoman waiting. She also had come about the matter — a Suftblk woman, who gave her name as Thrupp, and said she had nursed a child whom she fancied answered to the description of the one in the advertisement — could she see it 1 Yes ; she was taken to see it. It was lying in its little blue clothes, just as it was found. The woman gave one look, and fell in a passion of grief upon the board. It was indeed the same chUd. Mr. Smith Avaited until her grief had spent itself, and then took her away and inquired par- ticulars. Mrs. Thrupp gave them willingly and eagerly, tell- ing all she knew. Mr. Smith listened, and made notes. " You don't know the mother of this little child, you say?" " We was never told, sir, who his mother was. The lady was in a fine way with me for bringing him up to Lunnon unexpected, as she called it, and said, what was she to do with him till his mother come back to town ? She offered me money to take him with me in the ship, or to get him a place to be at in Lunnon— a handful o' gold she showed me. But I told her how it was with me — that I was put to it myself for time to get things ready for the start ; and I left him there with his little bundle o' clothes." " He was alive then — when you left him ?" " Alive, sir ! Bless him, he Avas alive, and sleeping sweetly ■on the grand hidi bed where I laid him. The tears were wet 166 PARKWATEE. ou his clieeks, though, for the lady had been in a fierce temper with him ; but he'd have forgot it all when he awoke." " Mrs. Lyvett was in a temper, was she T " Yes, sir, she seemed sadly put out at my takmg him back. Like enough, sir, she have a good temper in general ; but the best o' tempers gets ruffled at times." " I must inform you of one thing," said the officer, as a parting word. " You are not the first in the field — as to the reward." " Ay," she mused, " I do mind me that the news sheet spoke of a reward. What did you please to say, sir f " Another has been here before you, and given information which led us on the same scent, so that the reward will be his, not yours." " The reward mine !" uttered the poor woman aghast. " Sir, do you think I would touch a reward for telling out about the killing of little Eandy? 'So, never. Let them take it that has got heart to do it, but it shall never trouble me nor my husband." The officer had done with Mrs. Thruj^p for the present ; she was at liberty to return to Eotherhithe. But the same day she and her husband received an intimation that they could not sail for Australia in the vessel about to quit the docks on Saturday : they must Avait for a later one. The delay, however, would not be at their own cost. PARKWATER. 167 CHAPTEE XVII. THE APPBBIIENSION. The morning above spoken of is not yet done with, or the day either. Ann, Mrs. Cooke's housemaid, allowed Mr. Smith to show himself out of the house. The girl had re- treated to the kitchen, and was leaning against the ironing- board, not quite sure whether she stood on her head or her heels. Her faculties were in a state of utter confusion : it would have been something could she have unburthened her- self to her fellow-servant, at that moment making a tart on the table ; but the reUef was denied her. "Be you asleep?" suddenly demanded the tart-maker. " Because that was the drawing-room bell that rang." Ann started from her reverie and ran upstairs to answer it. Mrs. Lyvett had sat down to the piano and was trying some new music. Ann was kept waiting her pleasure for some minutes, door-handle in hand. That was just Mrs. Sophia Lyvett's way. " Oh," she said, when she condescended to turn round, " in ordering dinner I forgot to say that we shall want it earlier than usual." " At what time would you like it, ma'am 1" " Five o'clock. Who was that gentleman f carelessly added Mrs. Lyvett, striking a few notes as she spoke, and keeping her face turned on the music. " Gentleman T faltered Ann. " The one who has just been here. He paid a pretty long visit." 168 PARKWATER. " It was — it was a gentleman to see my mistress, ma'am," replied Ann, making the best ansAver she could, and intensely- wondering that Mrs, Lyvett should chance to speak on that one subject. " To see your mistress ! What was his business with her?" " I don't know, I'm sure, ma'am." " Oh, it is of no consequence. I saw him come in at the gate, and fancied I knew him — that's all. Dinner at five, mind." ^ow in reality Mrs, Lyvett had not fancied that she knew the gentleman ; but her mind was in a very uneasy state just then, and she suspected an enemy in every bush. Looking from the window, she had seen the stranger come in^ and she watched for his going away, restlessly marvelling all the while what it was he wanted. They were going that night to one of the theatres, Frederick Lyvett had engaged a box the previous day, l^ringiug the tickets home as a little surprise for his wife. The day wore on. In the afternoon Mrs. Lyvett went out. She did a little shopping, bought a shell wreath for the hair — shell wreaths were then in fashion — bought a few other pretty trinkets which took her fancy, ordered home some fine fruit, regardless of the cost, set down her name as a subscriber to a new and expensive work just coming out, and also became a first-class subscriber to one of the large circulating libraries, which had a depot in the neighbourhood, paying for the year in advance : five guineas. She seemed determined to make \ise of her husband's money. She told them she should want books changed ever}"- day, and they must hold themselves in readiness to send to her as often as she required. She looked PARKWATER. 169 out six or eiglit volumes to take with lier then, had a cab called, and went home in it. It was then nearly half-past four. Sophia rushed into her bedroom, intending to dress for the theatre before dinner, sat down to the glass and did her hair, placing in it the ornamen- tal flowers she had bought, and then rang for Ann to help her with her gown. Fred Lyvett came home and dressed also. They kept the dinner waiting. It was nearly half-past five Avhen they sat down to it. When the cloth was removed, Ann placed the wine on the table, then ran downstairs to fetch up the cofiee which had been ordered. She placed the waiter, with the two cups and the silver cotfee-pot, before Mrs. Lyvett. "And now, Ann," Mr. Lyvett said, "you must go to the stand and get a cab. Choose a nice one." The servant did as she was ordered : went to the stand, chose a cab, and returned in it. As she got out of it, a gentleman came up to the gate. Ann recognised him as the one who had given her such a fright in the morning — Mr. Smith. His dress was altered, and he had now an official look. Two policemen were sauntering up behind : the girl thought they belonged to him, and her heart leapt into her mouth with alarm. , "For whom have you fetched that cab^" he inquired. " For j\Ir. and Mrs. Lyvett, sir," she answered, in a tremor. " They are going to the theatre." " Good. We may want it. Consider yourself engaged to me, my man." The driver touched his hat, and looked on with curiosity. He also had noticed the policemen, and knew they were not on ordinary duty : a cabman's instinct is sharp on thoso 170 FARKWATER. points. Ann flew up the path to the door, wliich she opened with her latch-key. It came across her mind to lock and bar it against those dreaded officers : but she did not dare to do it. She held it open for Mr. Smith to enter : it was only he who had as yet passed in at the gate. What could hi& business be, thought Ann, in a flutter : but she had a vague consciousness that it related to Mr. or Mrs. Lyvett. " Don't shut the door," said Mr. Smith to her. " Leave it on the latch." Mrs. Cooke had seen the oflicer's approach from her parlour "window ; the cook, who happened to look up from the kitchen area, saw it also ; the former came out of her room, and the latter came j^eeping up the stairs. Ann had observed *' silence " according to orders ; but it was bej'ond human na- ture not to be a little mysterious as to the visit of the gentle- man in the morning, and the other servant's curiosity had been aroused in regard to him. " Mr. and Mrs. Lyvett are in their sitting-room, I believe, madam ?" he remarked to Mrs. Cooke^ who had stepped for- ward to meet him in the hall. " Yes," she answered, her hands working nervously one over the other. " I believe they are." He turned to Ann. " Step up and announce me : Mr. Smith. I'll follow you." " Oh, sir — if you please— wizis/ I do it 1" she stammered, with a white face and chattering teeth : for she had now become thoroughly frightened. He looked at her. " No. You would do more harm than good. I will announce myself" He went softly up the stairs as he spoke, and the three fricrhtened women clung; to the balustrades and crazed after PAEKWATER. ]7I him. Suddenly the cook caught hold of her mistress, and gave a smothered cry. Standing against the wall by the hall door were the two policemen, who had quietly entered. Mr. Lyvett was still in his place at table. ]\Irs. Lyvett had drawn away from it, and leaned back in an easy-chair. The detective glanced at her with a detective's critical eye. He saw a handsome young woman in a rich evening dress, gold ornaments on her fair neck and arms, and the braids of her fak hair interspersed with a wreath of white flowers. Mr. Lyvett rose in surprise. As well he might, to see a stranger walk coolly in, and close the door after him. His first impression was, that some friend of jMrs. Cooke's had entered their room by mistake. But he was abruptly un- deceived. " I am deeply grieved to come here on my present errand," said the ofiicer, "and apologize for the intrusion; but the law knows no favour. My business is with this lady." "What business"?" haughtily demanded Frederick Lyvett. " I am sorry to say I have a warrant for her apprehension." "What do you. mean?" broke from Mr. Lyvett, after a pause of consternation. " This lady is my wife." " I know it. And I can only say I hope that things, which at present look — look dark, may be satisfactorily cleared up, so that Mrs. Frederick Lyvett may be restored to her friends." Frederick Lyvett, his mind in a state of confusion, spoke a few passionate words. How dared an insolent policeman invade his house — how dared he insult Mrs. Lyvett 1 Then- purport was something to that effect. " I am not an ordinary policeman, Mr. Lyvett," was the calm answer. " There is my card : you will see what I am. 172 PARKWATER. I have the pleasure of being acquainted with your father and Mr. Castlerosse : not that they have any knowledge of the present matter : and I came here myself this evening, instead of despatching my subordinates, that this arrest — which must be made, understand me— should be accomphshed with as little offence to your feelings as is j)ossible." Tlie officer's address and manner were so business-like and temperate, that Frederick Lyvett insensibly calmed down. A sudden thought occurred to him. " Should my wife, as Miss May, have contracted a debt, or debts," he said, " your recourse will be against me noAV : not against her." " It is not an affair of debt," answered the detective. " I wish it was. The warrant sets forth a criminal charge." " jSJ'onsense !" contemptuously rejoined Mr. Lyvett, when he had taken in the sense of the words. " Criminal charge ! I tell you, that you must be labouring under some extraor- dinary delusion. You have mistaken my wife for somebody else." The officer drew a paper from his pocket, and opened it. " The warrant," he said, " is against Sophia Lyvett, other- wise May, otherwise Penryn." Mr. Lyvett, somewhat staggered, turned his eyes on his wife, as she cowered in her chair. He never saw a coun- tenance express so much horror. It was perfectlj^ livid. And the dark circles which he had observed round her eyes once before, but some three or four days ago, had reappeared. " Come, madam," said tlie officer, " the quicker those things arc concluded, the less pain they bring. I pledge you my word that all shall be done as considerately as possible. No one shall go inside the cab but myself, unless you wish PARKWATER. liz your liiisb;ind to go. Allow me to ring for a shawl, or cloak." " I will never go with you," she gasped, while her husband stood spell-bound. "I dare you to arrest me." " Madam, you are already arrested, and it will be well to accompany me quietly. I have policemen at hand, but I do not wish to call for their aid, unless you compel me." She made a movement to rise, probably in resistance, but sank back again, motionless and breathless. " You have killed her !" exclaimed Frederick Lyvett in agitation, quite beside himself with a most horrible perplexity. It was his wife's aspect that confounded him : if ever a face and manner spoke of conscious dread, hers did. But l.e thought still it must be some preposterous error. " Plow dare you come here with your wicked and absurd tales, sir V' he demanded. " Help ! help !" he added, ringing the bell. " Hush-ssh !" quickly interrupted the officer. " Pray don't get the room full ; for her sake ; for yours. Eaise her head up. Only a little water," he called out, darting to the doo^ , and looking down the well of the staircase. " One of you can bring it up." It was Mrs. Cooke who entered Avith it, either from a feel- ing of curiosity or the more considerate one of shielding i\Irs. Lyvett from the gaze of servants. Mr. Smith nodded iu approval, and closed the door the instant she was in the room. "A pretty disgraceful business this is," exclaimed I^Ir. Frederick Lyvett to her. "That police officers should be permitted to enter houses as they please " " I would have given any money ]Mr. Lyvett, rather 174 PARKWATER. than it should have happened here," she interrupted. " It •will be a stain upon my house for ever." The words — nay, it was the tone, rather than the words — struck oddly upon the confused mind of Frederick Lyvett. "What is it you accuse my wife of?" he asked, turning to the officer. " The charge is that of " "What?" cried Frederick Lyvett; for the concluding word was spoken in so low a key that he did not catch it. " Yes," said the man, repeating it in his ear. " That is the charge, Mr. Lyvett. I do not, you understand, take upon myself to say it can be substantiated." The poor young husband staggered back to the seat oppo- ■site his wife, his lips as blanched as her own. " What does it all mean ?"' he gasped. " Well," returned the officer, willing to spare his feelings, ^' the accusing circumstances are not pleasant. I would not advise you to inquire into them to-night, Mr. Lyvett." " But I will inquire into them — ay, and refute them," retorted Fred Lyvett. " It is wild — preposterous. Why don't you arrest me for high treason 1 — or for housebreaking ? — it would be as much in accordance with probability." ;Mr. Smith came to the conclusion that, to avoid further trouble, it might be better, after all, to whisper a few details to the young man ; and he took him aside for the pur- pose. Frederick Lyvett turned hot and cold as he listened, and 1 tassed his handkerchief nervously over his brow ; for, even while the officer spoke, certain little matters connected with the previous Wednesday evening rose up in his memory, and they seemed to confirm the tale. The colloquy be- PARKWATER. 175 tween his wife and the maid outside the drawing-room door : and then those unaccountable shivering fits ! But he would not give in one inch ; and, indeed, his mind was in so be- wildered a state that he did not comprehend half that was said, " Who would be likely to bring a child here, and leave it with my wife ?" he demanded. " I should think Mrs. Cooke €an refute that." " On the contrary, I fear Mrs. Cooke can confirm it," spoke the officer, with suavity. " Madam, I must beg of you to speak." Mrs. Cooke turned round her distressed face. She was bending over the unhappy wdfe, who lay back in her chair, apparently in a state of semi-consciousness. " I am very, very sorry to be obliged to confirm it," she said. " I would give half I am worth not to be able to do it. When you arrived here on Wednesday, Mr. Frederick Lyvett, the woman was waiting with the child." " Whose child was it?" " Sir, I only know what the Avoman said. I think it is very cruel that I should be obliged to relate this." "Madam," interposed Mr. Smith, "you must see that there is no help for it." " There is none," added the young man in his excitement. " What did the woman tell you T " The woman did not precisely know whose child it was — she had never been told, she said. But she believed it to be a ]Mrs. Penryn's — a relation of your wife's." Frederick Lyvett looked from one to the other in per- plexity, and his face grew suddenly hot. Mr. Smith had just whispered to him that Miss May had occasionally given 176 PARKWATER. her name as Mrs. Penryn. Still he did not comprehend the details that were being told to him. " If tlie "woman did bring a child here, she must have taken it away again." " Well, no," said Mrs. Cooke. " I — I beheve she did not." " Go on. Tell all" wailed Frederick Lyvett. " Whether the tale be true or false, it must be grappled with." "When the woman came downstairs from her interview with your wife, Mr. Lyvett, and left the house, I spoke to her from my sitting-room window. So far as I saw, she had certainly not the child witli her, and I assumed that it was left with Mrs. Lyvett. After your dinner, I sent Ann up to ask whether she should make the baby some food. ]\Irs. Lyvett's answer was that the child had left with the woman. It surprised me very much ; for I thought I could have taken upon myself to say most positively that the child did not leave with the woman ; that it had remained upstairs, and was still in the house then." "And — where was the child?" asked Mr. Lyvett. " That is the chief point," said the officer, for Mrs. Cooke seemed determined not to rejjly. "The child appears to have been brought into this house, and never to have loft it — alive. The Avoman tells me — I saAv her this morning • — that she got it to sleep, and placed it on INIrs. Lyvett's bed. When next seen it was in the park, dead, a cord round its neck." The face of Frederick Lyvett was distressing to look upon. Bit by bit, the story was gaining upon him. In her com- passion for him, Mrs. Cooke strove to say a few words — ideas that had occurred to herself — in exculpation of the un- PARKWATER. 177 happy wife. And it was very probable that she hit upon the truth; " The cords from Mrs. Lyvett's boxes were lying on the bed and floor at the time," spoke she, in a low tone. " It is possible that in a moment of temptation — of embarrassment — having a child, she perhaps knew not how to account to you for, thus thrown upon her hands " Frederick Lyvett interrupted the words with a groan. The story was becoming to him all too clear. " Or even the poor baby might himself have got hopelessly entangled with them," added she, putting the point with deprecation, as one that could not be maintained. " But — Mrs. Lyvett was evidently very ill that evening, as you must remember, sir; and I think — I do think — she might not have been accountable for her actions." Frederick Lyvett shook his head. " ^o child coald have been here a night and a day without my knowing it, as you" — turning to the officer — " wish to make out that this one w^as." " Alive, probably not," was the answer. " A dead child could be concealed anywhere. Say in a cupboard — or closet." The tone was significant. EecoUection flashed over Frede- rick Lyvett of the disappearance of the closet key, and his wife's agitation when he inquired for it. Not much less agitated was he now. Point after point seemed clearing itself terribly to his mind; objection after objection seemed to slip from his hands. " But the child you speak of Avas found in the Regent's Park, not here," said he, still somewhat bewildered. " I suppose it was carried thither " — and J^Ir. Smith coughed as he spoke. " A cab-driver has testified that he took a lady 12 178 PARKWATER. up at tlie park gate on Thursday night, and brought her up this way. She appeared to be agitated, he says ; and — and in short, it has been proved that the lady was your wife, sir." Frederick Lyvett suppressed a groan. Had he not seen her outside in that large, hot shawl, when he drove up from dining with his father 1 — and had he not gathered that she had been out for a considerable time 1 Hope did in truth seem to be slipping totally away from him, and he resigned himself to what must be. Poor Sophia Lyvett, more dead than alive herself, was made ready for her departure, Mrs. Cooke assisting to change her gala robes for a dress more suitable. Thus she was con- veyed to a place of detention for the night; Mr. Smith entirely declining to comply with the request urged upon him, that she should be allowed to stay where she was until the morning. He and her husband went inside the cab with her as far as the doors, one of the policemen sitting with the driver. CHAPTER XVIII. AT HOME. Mrs. Lyvett was at home alone. Her husband had gone out to dinner that evening, her daughters were at their brother James's. She sat at the drawing-room window in the twi- ^light, looking rather abstractedly down on the lighted square below. Some entertainment appeared to be taking place at one of the houses close by, for the carriages were bowling up quickly. PARKWATER. 179 A small, pale gentlewoman, Mrs. Lyvett looked younger than her years ; she had been taken more than once for her big son James's sister. She wore a cool muslin gown, its loose sleeves falling from her slender wrist, as her right hand was raised to support her cheek, which pushed back her light hair. In her blue eyes there was quite a touching look of sadness, and she sighed repeatedly. For the past two or three weeks her musings had been all sad. Of all her children, boys and girls, the youngest, Frederick, had been the dearest to her ; she had fondly believed him the one most implicitly obedient and dutiful, and yet he had gone in direct opposition to her, to his father, to them all, and made that low marriage ! It came upon her as a blow, and had left her with a perpetual heartache. It was not so much the unsuitability of the connection for Frederick that distressed her ; it was the girl herself. Had Sophia May been everything that was desirable, why, the fond mother mentally wliispered, they would have looked over her birth and rearing. At least, she would ; yes, and she believed that her husband would also in time. In time. But from all that Mrs. Lyvett had heard of Sophia May, she judged her to be eminently unsuitable to be the wife of an unsuspicious, honourable young man. She had never seen Sophia May, but she had heard of her from her husband and IVIr. Castlerosse and James. She knew of the ridiculously absurd way in which she had been reared, of her airs and graces ; of the concocted letters and recommendations by which she had obtained entrance to Lady Tennygal's house- hold, as governess, and of her being turned from thence on the discovery of the fraud. 12-2 180 PARKWATER. All this (Mrs. Lyvett knew of nothing worse) was sufficient to render her the kind of woman especially to be avoided as a wife. But Frederick had married her, and IMrs. Lyvett felt for him to her heart's core. It seemed to her that the girl was not calculated to make him happy, and that he would probably live a whole life of repentance — and these things try a mother. Mrs. Lyvett was feeling it all very especially and bitterly this evening, she knew not why. Sigh after sigh burst from her. " There's an old saying," she murmured, " and how true it is ! When our children are young they tread upon our toeSy but when they get older they tread upon our hearts. Ah me ! Will my heart ever be light again T A fortnight before, when INIrs. Lyvett's grief was fresh upon her, a lady who had been the companion of her girlhood, and who was about her own age, came to spend the day with her. It was a Miss Champion. Seated together in confiden- tial chat, their minds had opened to one another as they had never opened before ; and JNIrs. Lyvett, her heart aching and her eyes dropping tears for her misguided son's sake, spoke freely. " Lots are more equally balanced in this world than we suspect, Fanny," she observed. " You, I know, have envied me my married life — the great blessing, as you have looked upon it, arising from the companionship of my husband and children. You have secretly rebelled — and bear with me, my dear friend, while I say it — at your own unwedded lot, almost questioning Heaven's judgment in decreeing it. But which fate is the happier, think you, when children bring these dreadful sorrows upon their parents ? Oh ! Fanny, believe me, many a poor wife, smarting under her sea of trouble, PARKWATEIL 181 would be thankful to that same Heaven never ^to have had a husband, to have borne children. She envies you single Avonaen then, and wishes with her whole heart that she could be as you are. Yes ; be assured, Fanny, that there is com- pensation everywhere — that our destinies are pretty exactly equalised. Though you are debarred from this more active life of matrimony, its advantages and pleasures, if you like to call them such, you are free from its troubles and its cares." If Mrs. Ly vett could say that, and feel its truth, a fortnight before, when the comparatively light trouble of Frederick's marriage was alone upon her, how much more earnestly and painfully would she soon have cause^to say it now ! A servant came into the room, and she turned her head. " What is it, Thompson f " I was going to light the gas, ma'am." " Let it be at present. My head aches." So the man shut the door, and left her alone in the twi- light as before. Amid the clash of carriages dashing up to the neighbouring house, she did not hear the quiet wheels of a slow cab, approaching hers. The evening star was begin- ning to twinkle in the western sky. Had Thompson come back 1 Mrs. Lyvett turned quickly to look, for the door had opened again. She could not see very well in the dusk. " Why, Frederick ! Is it you 1" It was he, but he did not answer the question. Shutting the door, he came forward in silence. That all the particulars of the arrest just made — for it was the same ill-fated evening told of when the last chapter broke off — would be in the newspapers on the morrow morning, together with the names in full, and go circulating around the 182 PARKWATER. length and breadth of London, Frederick Lyvett knew quite well. Among other people that they would reach were his own family : liis father, mother, brother, and sisters. Amid aU the terrible anguish that the affair was already costing him, this immediate fact held no light share. After parting with his unhappy wife, when the doors of the place of detention were securely closed on her for the night, he had a long conversation \vith the detective officer, Smith. That individual gave him the details of the affair, so far as they had come to his knowledge, more fully than had been given him before ; and not a shade of doubt could, or did, rest on Frederick Lyvett of his wife's guilt. The exami- nation was^fixed for the following day at Marylebone police court, when she would be committed for trial. As the officer observed, they had the whole facts before them, and there woiild be no need of a remand. The coroner's inquest was also to^be held on the morrow. Mr. Smith left him standing in the street — for they had just paced up and down the pavement while they talked. Frederick Lyvett lifted his hand to his bewildered head, and strove to think what next to do, where next to go. The recollection of his father and mother flashed over him. Ob- viously his present duty was to break it to them, so that the morning newspapers might not be the first to inflict the shock. But oh, what a task it was ! what a task ! no living being would ever know how he recoiled from it. His mother ! his dear, ever loving mother ! AVould to Heaven — he said it as he stood, lifting his hands in bitter anguish — that he had died before he had brought this disgrace upon her and hers ! But it must be done. That duty at least lay imperatively PARKWATER. 183 upon him. He stepped into a passing cab, and directed it to the home dwelling-house. " Is my father at home 1" he asked of Thompson, "when he arrived there. " jSTo, sir. There's nobody at home, but my mistress. The young ladies are out this evening." " Will my father be in soon, do you know ? Where's he gone V "He is dining at ]\Ir. Castlerosse's sir," replied the man. And the answer was a kind of check-mate to Frederick's purpose. For sometimes, when the two partners dined together, they sat very late, talking of business. After all, he should be obliged to make the disclosure to his mother. Mr. Lyvett might not be home on this side midnight. " My mother is alone, you say, Thompson 1" '• Yes, sir ; she's in the drawing-room, with a headache. I went up just now to light the gas, but she told me to leave it alone for a bit." Passing upstairs to the drawing-room, he entered and closed the door. As he went forward, Mrs. Lyvett held out her hand. He took it in silence, drew a chair close to her, and sat down, retaining the slender hand in his. Mrs. Lyvett, gazing at him in the dusk, saw that his face looked strangely pale. " How good of you to come in, Frederick ! just as though you had known I was alone." StOl he never spoke a word. His breath seemed to be a little uncertain, as if he were in some agitation, and his hand, she now felt, was cold as death. " Are you not well, my dear?" she asked, quickly. " I shall never be well again, mother," was the answer he 184 PARKWATER. made, in a tone tliat brought to lier she knew not what of alarm. His agitation increased : there was no mistaking it now, Mrs. Lyvett's temples, already throbbing, began to beat violently. " Something must have happened !" she exclaimed. " What is it? Oh, my dear, don't keep me in suspense." " I have come in to tell you," he answered. " I meant to tell my father, not you, but he is out, I find, and may not be home while I stay. And — mother — had I the choice given me of teUing you, or of having my lips closed for ever, I would choose the latter." " Something has happened," she repeated, in no less agita- tion than himself, holding his hand between both her own. " Something dreadful has happened, mother. Something more than dreadful. I don't know how to find words to re- late it in. Oh, rather than do it, it would seem to me a light task to throw myself from this open windoAV to be crushed to death on that pavement below," Mrs, Lyvett gazed on him. She could not understand. Frederick had sometimes been given to use flowery language, but she had never heard such as this. A sudden idea flashed over her that some accident must have happened to her daugh- ters. Had their carriage " jN"o, no," interrupted Frederick. " What I have to say concerns myseK onlj'-, and — and my lolfe." Mrs. Lyvett dropped his hand and leaned back in her chair. The mention of the latter individual did not bring her pleasure, but it did ease her fears. She remembered to have heard that Miss May's temper was not good. Had she and Frederick been quarrelling'? Eut she was startled out of this thought, and out of her re- PARKWATEE. 185 stored coolness together. Frederick had suddenly bent his face upon her shoulder, and burst into a storm of tears. The strain upon his feelings of what he had that evening been obliged to undergo, had now reached its extreme tension, and unmanned him. Aghast, frightened, Mrs. Lyvett would have risen to call for restoratives, but he held her where she was. " Just a minute or two — mother ! Bear with me a minute or two — and then I'll tell you." And how he accomplished his task and did tell her, he never knew. Looking back at that hour in after life, it never seemed to him but as so many prolonged minutes of horror whose very recollection could only be shuddered at. Mrs. Lyvett grew cold as a stone as she listened. He did not tell her the worst then — namely his own con- viction of the truth of the accusation. Eather he led her to infer that it must be some terrible mistake which investiga- tion would disprove. For his mother's sake he did this ; ay, and perhaps also for his unhappy wife's. But j\Irs. Lyvett seemed to have grasped at the worst aspect, as if by instinct. Whether true or false, whether to be proved or disproved later, it was a fearful disgrace to have fallen upon the family ; one that would make their name a by-word in the mouths of men. jSTo wonder that Frederick Lyvett, prostrate with the - blow, should give vent to his feehngs as does a woman. " Oh, mother," he sobbed, '^ forgive me that I have brought it upon you. In knowing that the wretchedness, the igno- miny, cannot faU solely en myself, lies my chief punishment. It seems to me greater than I can bear." How can a mother, a loving, gentle mother as was Mrs. 186 PARKWATEB. Ly vett, resist her "boy's penitence, his tears 1 She bent down her head and cried with him. " If you would but reproach me ! If you would but blame me, mother !" " My dear, I cannot reproach you ; that I shall never do," she answered, the bitter tears raining from her eyes, " It is for you I feel, for you that my heart is aching. But if you had but listened to your father, when he said that person was not a fit wife for you, how different tilings would have been ! If you had but listened to me when I prayed you to wait the changes that time might bring about ; to have patience ; not to be betrayed into a self-willed and disobedient marriage ! I told you, then, my darling, that a blessing would not attend such. It never does." Frederick Lyvett groaned. His heart was torn with re- morse and anguish, and he hid his face away from his mother. " Where are you going now ?" she asked, when, the inter- view over, but not the distress, he rose to leave. In truth he did not know. To return to his rooms at Mrs. Cooke's, with their attendant remembrances, seemed more than he could that night bear. " Will you stay here to-night, in your own room, Frede- rick r "IS'o, no," he hastily replied. "But thank you all the same, mother." Wringing her hand with a farewell pressure, he quitted the room. It was then nearly eleven. But Frederick Lyvetfc had lingered too long. Thompson was opening the haU door to admit his sisters. He slipped within a small room on one side the hall, that they might pass without seeing him. PARKWATER. 187 But if Mrs. Lyvett was lenient to her son, Mr. Lyvett was not. She gave compassion ; he reproaches. Most frightfully did he feel the blow, and the disgrace it brought with it. "Father," spoke Frederick, in his humility and distress, " I deserve all you can say, and more. The repentance of my whole life will not suffice to atone for it." The examination took place before the magistrates, and certain facts were testified to. Upon wliich Sophia Lyvett, otherwise May, otherwise Penryn, was committed to take her trial. "Why, the very plurality of names would be disgrace enough, let alone anything worse," exclaimed Mr. Lyvett to his friend and partner, Henry Castlerosse. CHAPTER XIX. CONDEMNED. The trial was just over, and the suffocating court began to empty itself. What with the intense heat of the weather, the crowded arena, and the close, tainted atmosphere, even the calm judges themselves thought they shoidd never be cool again. The judges had retired quickly from the scene, the oldest and gravest of them with the tears yet wet upon his cheeks, for he had been moved to no ordinary emotion while passing the awful sentence of death upon the young and lovely woman who stood in the dock before him. It was no common case which had brought the public together that day. 18S PARKWATER. and the prisoner's was no common crime. Sure, never had a •dark deed been committed involving so great an interest, or whose attendant circumstances comprised so mysterious a field of romance. What had been the previous career of the lady (let us call her so : she held that position when arrested), people could not exactly learn. Some told one tale, and some another : in these unhappy cases, the most outrageous stories get promulgated. All they knew for certain was, that she was now found guilty of the great crime for which she had been tried, and was condemned to death. Not a single word was said of recommending her to mercy. The jury had con- sidered that there were no extenuating circumstances. Poor Sophia Lyvett ! Could Mrs. Cooke's theory have been the truth — that she had not been herself when she com- mitted the fatal act ? One would indeed think so. Oh, unhappy, mistaken criminals ! When you do these things in the silence and secrecy of the dark night, and think that there is no eye upon you, that in this world, at least, you are safe from detection, you forget that there is one eye, above, which never slumbers or sleeps ; that the ways of the avenging angel are not as your poor, narrow-sighted Avays, and that what you deemed was a secret between you and the darkness shall speedily be proclaimed upon the house-tops ! So it was here. This one was arrested, committed, and had this day taken her trial ; been found guilty, and condemned to death. Never was guilt more conclusively brought home to man or woman. The deceit she had practised upon him who was now her husband, Frederick Lyvett, also came in for its share of opprobrium. Not one, no not one, had been found to pity or excuse her, in spite of her youth and beauty. PARKWATER. 189 The learned judge had said, in passing sentence, that never had he tried a woman "whose crime, as it seemed to him, was of a deeper dye, or upon whom punishment would he more justly inflicted; and he adjured her — and it was here his feelings gave way — to give her mind wholly to repentance and to prepare for death, for that no mercy whatever would be accorded her in this world. The unfortunate creature was hissed by the idlers outside when she was removed from the court, as she had been hissed at her appearance there, and people gloried in saying to each other that they would gladly walk ten miles to see her hanged. Public indignation spoke out loudly against the miserable Sophia Lyvett. A small knot of men stood talking together, ere they left the court, some of them in barristers' gowns. The counsel engaged in the case had hastened away, but others lingered. Amid them stood young Mr. Jones the lawyer, junior partner in the eminent firm of Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett. Mr. Jones was a lion that day. " Of course," observed Mr. Jones, Avho was uncommonly fond of the sound of his own tongue, " there was no hope from the first that she would get off ; but it will be an awk- ward stain, mind you, to have clinging to the family. James Lyvett — it's true he is the very incarnation of pride — will never hold up his head again." " It's bad enough for him, but what must it be for Ered himself T quoth a grave queen's counsel, who was intimate with the Lyvetts. " Poor fellow !" responded Mr. Jones. " He has never held up his head since she was taken." " Is he disenchanted yet, Jones T demanded Mr. Dunn, a very young man in a wig, who had begun life in the oftice of 190 PARKWATER. Lyvett, Castlerosse, and Lyvett, side by side with. Mr, Jones, but had afterwards gone to the bar. " I should think so. It was an awful piece of duplicity to palm off upon him." " The marriage, you mean." Mr. Jones nodded. " But Fred did play the fool richly, there's no denying it." " Every man does, when he makes a low woman his wife," observed the silk gown. " And Fred has the pleasant consolation of knowing that he plunged into it of his own accord," returned Mr. Jones. *' Mr. Lyvett said the other day, that he must be — what was it ? — a martyr to remorse, or some such poetical sentence. They said all they possibly could to him, Mr. Lyvett and James, and his mother too, I believe, to dissuade him off the girl, and the more they said, the more obstinately Fred was bent on marrying her. They told him she would bring on him a life's disgrace : and she has brought it." "But they could not have known about the — the ante- cedents?" cried Mr. Dunn. " What a dolt you are, Dunn !" was Mr. Jones's answer, its complimentary tone being accounted for by the fact that he and the gentleman had remained close friends. " If they had known anything of them, they would have locked Fred up in a lunatic asylum first ; and Fred himself would have gone to one, rather than have done it. Fred's not deficient in honour ; only in brains." " There's many a one ^vith less brains than Frederick Lyvett who contrives to make a show in the world," remarked the queen's counsel, significantly. PARKWATER. 191 " You know old Castlerosse, most of you," resumed Mr. Jones ; " know how hot-headed he is ?" A general nod from the hearers. " Well, old Castlerosse, by the strangest accident, happened to be down at the country place where Fred went to get mar- ried. Fred thought he should do the job all quietly, in an out-of-the-way, rustic parish, and nobody be any the wiser. The ceremony was on^ and the parson had come to the inter- esting sentence, ' Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wed- ded wife,' when old Castlerosse started forward, like the ghost in the play, and forbid the marriage. Charley Castlerosse says he wished himself up in heaven just then." " Charley Castlerosse !" " He was down there, acting bridegroom. JS'o — what do you call it 1 — groomsman. Charley told me he knew it was all up with him the moment he heard his uncle's voice. And so it has proved ; for old Castlerosse won't do the least earthly thing for him since, and the fact has got about ; and Charley, jjoor fellow, dare not walk through j\Iiddlesex for fear of the writs. But I was going to tell you. Old Castlerosse, in his rage, nearly lifted the church roof off with noise ; and finding that did not do, he calmed down to entreaty, and did all but go prostrate on his knees to Fred, praying him to stop the marriage, or at least to delay it till JMr. Lyvett's appearance, who was speeding down on the telegi'aph wires. It was of no use. Fred was Hke a mule in his obstinacy, and would hear no reason. He ordered the parson to proceed : and the par- son, finding the papers were in order, and both of them of age, had no plea for refusing. So Fred and the girl were made one, old Castlerosse protesting against it, and telling him he was entering on perdition." 192 PARKWATER. " Perdition it has turned out, and no mistake," said Mr. Dunn. " There can only be one thing Avorse than having- your wife hung, and that's your mother. I wonder Fred Lyvett does not hang himself, and get out of it all." " Fred's going on the Continent, there to hide his dimi- nished head," said Mr. Jones. " He was only waiting the result of the trial. Had it been an acquittal " " It never could have been an acquittal," interrupted Ser- jeant Wrangle. " The proofs were too clear." "Well, but there's an 'if in all cases, and the law deals in flaws and miracles," persisted Mr. Jones. " Had an acquittal been pronounced, Fred would have stopped in England until he had rid himself of her by a legal process. If lie could rid himself, that is : my opinion's against it. When you marry a woman you marry her with all her an- tecedents, you see : it is a different thing from anything that may happen afterwards. However, the law will relieve him of her by a more summary act, and Fred starts directly. Fred's travels were finally decided upon in a family conclave, vrhich Mr. James refused to attend. He is awfully incensed against him, is James." " How does he mean to live ?" " He has an income, and the family wall make it more. So he means to vegetate in Poland, or Siberia, or Hungary ; anywhere that the English don't congregate, and there ex- piate his follies." " Will he never come back 1" " Oh, sometime, I suppose, when the remembrance of the affair has died out of men's minds." "Well, it is a terrible calamity to have fallen on him,'' remarked the grave Q.C. " I always liked Fred Lyvett." PARKWATER. 193 " I say, Jones," cried IVIr. Dunn, watching the departure of the elder and higher men of the profession, " did you not know JVIiss May once ? I never saw her that I re- member." " Oh, she was only a child when you were there^ Dunn. Yes, I knew her." "And went in for some spooning, didn't you?" " ^0. I might have gone in for some, but she cured me of the inclination beforehand." " How did she cure you ?" " Threw a lot of poison over me." "Poison!" " In the shape of a basin of coffee-grounds. It ruined my waistcoat. And all because I just spoke a civil word to her : ' How are you. Miss May?' or something of the kind. That's what she did, Dunn." " By Jove ! a nice young lady ! I should think Fred Lyvett will put on mourning for her ! By the way, Jones, is there any truth in the report that she was reaUy married before ?" " I don't know. Some people say she was. It has not been proved. Nothing certain has come out about it." " I wonder if Fred Lyvett knows ? And now I am off, Jones. You may as well give a look in at my chambers to- night." "All right, Dunn." Sophia Lyvett had never attempted to deny her guilt. She may have thought the proofs of it were too overwhelm- ing to admit of dispute. Both before the trial and especially after it, she seemed to be sunk in a state of prostrate apathy, 13 194 PARKWATER. which the authorities set down to the score of sullenuess, but which was probably the effect of despair. Only once, and that was to her husband, did she enter upon any extenuation of herself. It was in one of the interviews he was allowed to hold with her in prisouc In his delicacy of feeling — and of that Frederick Lyvett had a great deal, and was essen- tially a gentleman — he had abstained from questioning her as to the episodes of her past life which she had kept con- cealed from him ; not once did he mention the unfortunate child who had come to light so unexpectedly. He retained for her his tenderness and consideration of manner when with her, and on this day she had broken out into sobs as she spoke with him. ^' Don't think of me worse than you can help," she whis- I)ered softly, lest the words might reach the ears of one of the keepers of the prison, who stood within sight, but was looking the other way. " I was mad when I did it, Frederick. I was quite mad." And he found she was alluding to the deed for which she would have to suffer. " The bringing home of the little boy on that day, when you and I had but just got home ourselves, terrified me nearly to death. Had I known where my mother was to be found, I should have taken him to her, and no ill would have come of it. But I did not know. I had no friend or acquaintance in all the wide wilderness of this great city whom I could trust, or to whom I coidd take him. The woman left him asleep on the bed, and after watching him for some time I ran away into the drawing-room, and sat down with my despair, asking myself what I could do. Once it came into my mind to try and make a friend of j\Irs. PARKWATER. 195 Cooke, and beg her to allow him to be taken care of by her servants in private, until I could make other arrangements for him." " Oh, that you had !" broke from the dry lips of Frederick Lyvett. " But I feared she might refuse — I knew she was an old friend of your family's. The most improbable ideas kept surging through my brain : that I woidd carry him off to the nearest workhoiise, and leave him there on its steps with some gold tied round him ; that I would knock at the door of some poor cottage dwelling, and beg of the people to take care of him for a week or so, and offer them a guinea day for it j that I would go back to the lodgings I had occupied at Brompton, and put him and a bag of money into the land- lady's hands, and say, ' I am in a strait ; keep him for me for a little while.' "While these thoughts were surging through my brain, I heard a double knock at the front door, and thought it was you. I started from my chair in awful terror, and clasped my hands, wondering what I could do. At that self-saroe moment the child burst into a loud cry, and I thought aU was over with me. I rushed into the next room where he was lying, locking the door behind me against you, and ran to the bed, and put my hands on his mouth to deaden his cries. Oh ! Frederick, as truly as that heaven is above me, I believe I was in that moment mad — driven mad by terror and perplexity. I declare that I have no true and clear recollection of what I did. And when I came out of my delirium the little boy was dead ; and you — you had not, I found, come home at all. Oh, the dreadful fear and agony then ! What I was to do I knew not. And when I at last got up, sick and faint, and set about what must be done for 13—2 196 PARKWATER. your sake as ■well as mine, I have no recollection how I did it. Don't you pity me 1 Oh, don't you pity me ?" " With my whole heart," he said, with a wail. " But, Sophia, when matters had come to this pass that day, and the chUd was brought home and left upon your hands, why did you not make a confidant of me'? Who knows but I — might have forgiven even that 1 I had made you my wife." " And who knows but you might have thrust me out into the street ? I should have expected it." " N^o," he answered, '■ I should not have done that. I should, at any rate, have provided for you, and tried to shield you from the frowns of the world — not thrust you upon it." He asked not another question ; he inquired not, then or laterj into matters of the past. The lines in his brow were deep with pain, and perhaps always would be. And that was the only time Sophia Lyvett alluded in any way to the calamity which had brought her where she was. During the other interviews her husband was permitted to hold with her, she was studiously reserved and self- contained, taking little more notice of him than she took of the "aoler. CHAPTEE XX. AT LADY Harriet' s. It wanted but three days to that fixed for the execution, and the wretched prisoner, Sophia Lyvett, was in the condemned PARKWATER. 197 cell. Since the trial she had been remarkably quiet ; was deemed, in fact, morose and sullen by those about her. Whatever her inward anguish might be, it was not betrayed to them. The chaplain could make no impression on her whatever ; his visits, his conversations, were suffered, not welcomed : even her father and mother, who had been al- lowed an interview, were received by her with the same cal- lous demeanour. Poor old broken-down and broken-hearted people, who were convulsed with grief. The shock had reached them through the newspapers ; by that medium alone had they first become acquainted with the position their daughter was placed in. On this day, Friday, the prisoner's mood changed. Whether it was the near approach of the' end that was startling her to feeling, or whether — as may be inferred — it was that a sudden loophole of escape presented itself, most unaccountably over- looked before, cannot be told. Certain it is, that early on this day she grew strangely excited, demanding that her mother should be sent for without an instant's delay. In compliance with her wish, urged in terms that almost startled the authorities, the mother was summoned. It would appear that the prisoner then alluded, but not clearly, to cer- tain matters and people connected with her previous history, not known before. She spoke in an undertone ; and those whose duty it was to be present caught but a word here and there. The prisoner was urging her mother to some step, some exertion in her behalf. " Sophiar," wailed the poor woman, through her tears, " I would go to aU the great folks in the land, I would go to the Queen herself, I would walk my legs off, if I thought it would be of any avail to save or even lengthen your life, poor child !" 198 PARKWATEPi. " Don't I tell you it will save my life ?" feverishly uttered the prisoner ; " it must save it. After all I have now said, do you tliink this gentleman will refuse ? "Why do you stop here, mother, losing time ? It is short enough for what has to be done." " Give me a moment, child. Let me think over what you have said, and see my way clear. It has bewildered me." The prisoner turned impatiently away, and the mother sat thinking, her head down, moving first one hand and then the other, as the various points of what she was deliberating upon presented themselves to her mind. "If your Aunt Foxaby was but with us now, Sophiar!" she suddenly exclaimed, raising her head. " She might help to some purpose in this. Her people was great folks their- selves." " You don't want my Aunt Foxaby or any other help," re- peated Sophia, in her sudden access of excitement, all the more uncontrollable from her previous apathy. "JSTobody can do me any good but he ; and you are enough to go to him. And if you don't, mother, and don't get his promise to act and I suffer on Monday, you will be guilty of my murder." Mrs. May rose, heaving a deep sigh. j\[ost anxious, in- deed, was she to do what she could for her unfortunate daugh- ter : but she did not altogether comprehend what was to be done, or how to set about it. " The first thing I suppose, Sophiar, is to find out where he lives. You say it is near Belgrave Square." " I say it used to be some street or square in that neigh- bourhood. I forget its name and number. I " — the unfortu- PARKWATER. 199 nate prisoner looked round, as if, in a moment of aberration, she forgot her desk and things were not at hand, as in her own drawing-room — " I had the address ; but it is not here. Get a * Court Directory :' you'll find it there." "A what?" asked Mrs. May. " A book called the ' Court Directory,' " explained the pri- soner : and her tone was one of irritation ; for in her pre- sent awakened excitement every moment that was lost seemed of more value than gold. "They will let you look at one in a bookseller's shop : if not, you must go to the expense of buying one. You will not grudge that to save me." " Oh, child !" uttered the mother, with a rush of tears, " how can you say these cruel things 1 I would give my own life thankfully to save yours." " You will not forget the name V said the prisoner. The poor woman shook her head. " I shall remember it only too well. Is he married T " What has that to do with it 1" cried the prisoner, exas- perated at the unnecessary question. " JSTo, he is not." No ! How could she utter so deliberate an untruth ? she, so near the grave ! JNIrs. May waited to ask no more. She departed, and pro- ceeded to her work — which was a task of delicacy. Later in the day, she found herself in the aristocratic regions of Bel- grave Square. She had apparently discovered the address required, for she ascended the steps of a house there without hesitation. A formidable footman, all splendour and powder, threw open the door. " Does Captain Devereux live here ]" " Xo, he don't." 200 PARKWATER. " JSTo !" repeated Mrs. May, with a petrified, scared look. " Where does lie live then f " Colonel Devereux lives here." " Colonel Devereux ! Perhaps it is the same," she added, after a pause. "I'm sure, though, it was Captain Devereux I was told to ask for." Even so. Soj)hia had unwittingly spoken of him by the name most familiar to her mind. " Colonel Devereux was Captain Devereux once," the man condescended to add. " What do you want V " I want to see him," she replied, making as if she would enter. " Not so fast, my good woman. The Colonel is not to be seen." " Oh, but I must see him ! I must see him !" she re- turned, in excitement. " Please, sh ! good sh ! let me enter !" Her tears fell, her voice rose to a wail ; she pressed forward, and the man pushed her back. In the midst of this commo- tion, two ladies, who had alighted from a carriage, came up the steps. "Is anything the matter?" inquired one of them, turning a plain but very kind face upon the applicant. " This person wants to see the Colonel, my lady. I told her he was absent, but she does not believe me." " Oh, ma'am ! oh, my lady !" cried Mrs. May, her ears catch- ing unconsciously at the title, as her equally unconscious hands caught humbly at the arm of Lady Harriet Devereux, " let me see Colonel Devereux, and I will bless you evermore. I come upon an errand of life and death." " Colonel Devereux is not here at present," returned Lady FARKWATEE. 201 Harriet. " But is it anything in which I can aid you 1 Step in ; you seem to be in great distress." She led the way to a room, the other lady entered with her, and the applicant followed. Lady Harriet untied her bonnet, and sat down. Mrs. May stood beyond the table, nervously rubbing one hand over the other. " What is the matter ?' inquired Lady Harriet. " What did you want with Colonel Devereux V " To see him ; to see him. Oh, ma'am, please to let me see him !" " Colonel Devereux is not in England," said Lady Harriet, whose composure of manner presented a very great contrast to the excitement of the unfortunate applicant. " He is ex- pected shortly. He may be home even to-day, or he may not be home until next week." " Xext week !" groaned j\Irs. May, the last words speaking to her a volume of despair. " Then it would be too late, for she would be in her dreadful grave." " Can you not explain your business ?" resumed Lady Har- riet, surprised at the words^ and interested in the stranger's deep and evident tribulation. " You had better sit down. Who are you ?" " My lady, if I tell you who I am, perhaps you will turn from me Avith horror," she answered, the tears dropping from her eyes, and quite ignoring the permission to sit. " You will, maybe, order your servants to fling me down the steps of your house." " I think not," said Lady Harriet. " I can feel for dis- tress, no matter what may have led to it. Sj)eak out." " There's a poor creature — you must have seen it in the newspapers, my lady, for they've been all full of nothing 202 PARKWATER. ■else — now lying in prison, a-waiting to suffer," whispered Mrs. May, putting up her hands to shield her face. " Sophia Lyvett," interrupted Lady Harriet, " formerly Sophia May. Yes, I have read somewhat of it," she added, in slight hesitation. And the other lady, one younger and far prettier, who had stood at the window looking out, glanced hastily round. It was no other than our old acquaintance from Parkwater, the Countess of Tennygal. " I am the prisoner's most unhappy mother," said Mrs. May. " Oh, ma'am ! don't desj)ise me more than you can help. Indeed, we have always lived respectahle till now, and I and her father would have died to save Sophiar from committing such a wicked crime," " I respect your grief, my poor woman," observed Lady Harriet, after a pause of astonishment, " hut what is the pur- port of your appHcation to me — to Colonel Devereux ?" " I brought him a message from her. If I could deliver it to him, it might lead to the saving of her life. She thinks he might speak for her, and save her." " Speak for her to whoml" " Oh, ma'am, I don't much understand ; lie would know, she said. To some high and mighty man, who has great power under the Queen." Lady Harriet caught at the meaning. She supposed that the prisoner wanted the Colonel to intercede with his father, Sir Archibald Devereux — who was the Home Secretary — to spare her life. And this Avas the exact truth. " Indeed, I fear she is altogether mistaken," returned Lady Harriet. " The case is of far too grave a nature for Colonel Devereux to interfere with." " ]\Iy poor child says she knew tlie Colonel once, ma'am — PARKWATEFi. 203 though, indeed, she called him Captain, not Colonel, It was Avhile she was out as governess with a grand family in Ire- land." " Yes, at Lady Tennygal's," interposed the Countess, glancing across at Lady Harriet. Mrs. May turned round ; in her tribulation she had for- gotten that anyone else was present. "Like enough it was, ma'am," she answered. " Sophiar, poor thing, Avas fond of keeping her doings and her places a secret from us. She says the Colonel can save her life if he will, and that he must for their old acquaintance' sake." A pause. Neither of the ladies made any comment. Curious ideas, disagreeable reminiscences, were arising to each of them. Lady Harriet flushed crimson to the roots of her hair. " Let me deal with this, Harriet," somewhat sharply spoke Lady Tennygal, as she turned to the applicant. "It is impossible that Colonel Devereux could help your daughter, though he were here, and his will ever so good. !No one, I fear, can do that. iSTot all the country coidd save her." "Ma'am, perhaps he might," returned poor ]Mrs. May. " She says he can. Oh, let me try him ! let me try him !" she beseechingly added, clasping her hands. " Ladies, if you had a child condemned to death, you would be as anxious as me not to leave a stone unturned to save her. I don't know what you may be to Colonel Devereux — perhaps his sisters — but I ask you, for dear humanity's sake, to let me see him if he comes home in time. She says it is a duty tliat will lie upon him, and that he knows why." " Yes," interposed Lady Harriet, rising from her chair, 204 PARKWATER. " I promise that you sliall. Though I see no possible chance of aid for your daughter, and I think that you must be labouring under a delusion to hope for it; you shall see Colonel Devereux if you will. Poor woman, it is no fault of yours." " Oh, my lady ! Fault of ours ! Will you beheve that till my poor child was taken, me and her father never knew she had been in any misfortune ; and then we did not believe it. It is gospel truth that I am telling you," she sobbed, the hot tears raining from her eyes. " You shall see him," repeated Lady Harriet, in a kind tone. " If Colonel Devereux returns home in time, you shall certainly see him if you will." And the unhappy woman quitted the room, leaving her thanks behind her. " Don't let us think about it, Harriet !" cried Lady Tenny- gal, with impulsive quickness. " Of course one cannot quite help thoughts — they rise unbidden, as I saw they did to you — or quite shut the eyes to the fact that this would seem to bear upon certain old suspicions at Parkwater; but we don't hioiv." Lady Harriet did not immediately answer. " I don't care to defend Tody, as you know, Harriet ; I gave that up long ago. But, as I say, we do not know ; and it is always better to look on the bright side than the dark one. Indeed the dark one in this case would be too horribly dark." A murmur, half assent, half groan, which she could not entu'ely suppress, was the only answer given by Lady Harriet Devereux. She alone knew, or ever would know — for she was one to hide her sufferings away with heaven — how many PARKWATER. 205 wrongs and trials her husband wrought upon her. She bore it all, striving ever to be patient and pleasant, even with him j for the sake of her two little girls, she would not bring about a rupture with their father. And so she bore, as many another gentle wife has to bear. CHAPTEE XXI. A RACE WITH TIME. As if to give the unhappy prisoner the chance of life she was struggling to find. Colonel Devereux landed in England on that self-same day: The yacht, which belonged to a friend of his, Major Courtney, put in at Deal, They, and sundry more friends (choice spirits all, and Colonel Devereux the oldest and the choicest), had come back from a long cruise. The yacht had been for the greater part of the time out at sea, only touching now and again at some foreign port for provisions. Home news was therefore fresh to them. Colonel Devereux and one of the others, Viscount Dooham, purposed getting up to town at once, and, while waiting for a train, solaced themselves with some bitter beer and the news- papers. " Hallo !" cried the Viscount, a very young man, in his teens yet; "here's a woman going to be topped on Monday." " Ah !" carelessly remarked Colonel Devereux, who was glancing over the military news. 206 PARKWATER. " I say, waiter," said the Viscount, halting in his reading, and looking up from the newspaper, " what did she do 1 It says she is young and handsome." " Who, sir T asked the waiter, who had not been attending. " This — what's the name — Sophia Lyvett. She is to be hung on Monday." " It's a lady who killed her child, sir. That is, a child," added the man, striving to be correct. • " Some say she was only its aunt, or a relation of that kind." " A lady !" repeated the Viscount, lifting his eyebrows, and kicking Colonel Devereux's feet, that he might take note of the amusing waiter. " Yes, sir, a lady. Leastways, her husband was a gentle- man. She was just married, and nobody knew anything about this child ; which it was a previous marriage she had made, report says, if it was her child. The child was brought home to her unexpected by the woman who had it at nurse, and the lady got afraid, and took its poor little life. It's said that when the police went to take her she was going to a ball, dressed out in satin and diamonds." " Was she tried in that T asked Colonel Devereux, yawn- ing. The news did not interest him. "In what, sir?" " The satin and the diamonds. Dooham, she must have created a sensation in the court." The waiter shook his head. " I don't think she was, sir, or the papers would have mentioned it. She was remarkably handsome. Educated too : plays and sings beautiful, it's said. It has made a great deal of stir, I assure you, gen- tlemen." PARKWATEB. 207 " Young and handsome !" cried Lord Dooliam. " Perhaps she'll get off." " Oh, no, sir, there's no chance of that. She's to be huug on Monday morning without fail. I know some gents as talk of going up to see it." " What, all the way from here %" " "Well, you see, sir, it's a case quite out of the ordinary." " Devereux," resumed Lord Dooham, as the communicative waiter went away, "did you ever see a turning-offf Colonel Devereux nodded. "I never did," said the Viscount, deprecatingly, almost ashamed to avow the fact. " Suppose we go and see this one r " You can go," said the Colonel, " I shan't. The last I went to was enough for me ; I said then I'd never go to another." " Well, I should like to go." " It's not worth it. I wonder how long this train means to be r The Colonel got up and stretched himself, utterly uncon- scious that the ill-favoured affair under discussion could in any possible manner concern him. " By Jove, I hear the train !" cried Lord Dooham. " Come on, Colonel." Colonel Devereux took his seat in the train, and went steaming up to London. It was growing dusk when he reached his home, A Avoman, who had waited, in her patience, outside that house for many hours, saw the cab drive up, and watched him in. He greeted his wife with cool indifference ; it was the best greeting he ever vouchsafed her. That Lady Harriet received him this night with unusual 208 PARKWATER. coldness, he did not notice, and would not have cared for, if he had noticed it. Ordering lights into the library, he went in, and Lady Harriet let her aching head fall upon her hand. There were moments when her hard lot pressed poignantly upon her : it did this night. I^ot a loving word for her after his many weeks' absence ; not a greeting kiss ! And the unpleasant episode of the day had made her head acbe violently. She was interrupted by the entrance of the footman. He whom we saw at the door in the afternoon. " My lady," he cried, " here's that woman come again. I believe she has been waiting outside all this time. She will not go away, and she says your ladyship promised her she should see the Colonel." " Yes ; I did promise. Show her at once into the library. It is right that she should see him," Lady Harriet added, in a murmur to herself — " right, in justice and in mercy." Mrs. May took Colonel Devereux by surprise. The ser- vant said, as he threw open the door, " A person to see you, sir," for she had refused to give her name, and then he closed it again. The Colonel was standing before two wax-lights, reading letters. Mrs. May looked at him : a dark, repulsive- faced man, who stared at her in astonishment. At least, the heavy frown on his face caused it to be repulsive then. For Colonel Devereux was not in the habit of allowing this kind of impromptu intrusion, and felt wroth both with the intruder and his servant. Mrs. May stood trembling just within the closed door. "Who are you?" he demanded, haughtily. "What do you want ?" " Oh, sir, don't be harsh with me !" she implored, stepping PARKWATER. 209 forward. " If all that I suspect is true, you ought not to be. I have come Avith a message from her" He began to think this woman must have escaped from Bedlam. Truly she looked wUd enough : and trouble was rendering her incoherent. " From her, sir. My poor child, Sophiar Lyvett, who is in Newgate a- waiting for her execution." A recollection of Lord Dooham's conversation with the waiter at Deal recurred to Colonel Devereux. He connected the woman's words with that, as haviug reference to the same subject, but he connected them with nothing else. " Waiting for her execution !" he repeated, when his sur- prise allowed him to speak. " Sophia Lyvett ! — what have I to do with it, if she is ? She is nothing to me." " She ought to be something to you," retorted Mrs. May, indignant at what she thought was his want of humanity. " She was something to you when she was Sophiar May — if 'twas only as an acquaintance living in the same house." " So-phi-a May !" he repeated slowly, his haughty tone changing to a subdued one. " It is not Sophia May who — who is condemned, is it ?" " It is nobody else, sir," answered the mother, bursting into tears. " She had just been married to young Mr. Lyvett." The flush that had suddenly heated the Colonel's face turned cold again. He sat down, and passed his handker- chief across it. " I don't know that I understand," he said. ''I heard — cer- tainly — there was some young person left for execution. The — the crime was the killing of a child, was it not ?" " Yes, sir. A little boy that would have been, it is said, two years old come September. Sophiar says you can save U 210 FARKWATER. her, sir," replied Mrs. May, her voice dropping to somewliat of a confidential tone ; which tone would of itself alone, have roused the Colonel's ire. " She says that you are re- lated to some great man, an ofiicer of state, I think she called him, who can pardon or hang criminals, according to his wiU ; and she bade me say, sir, that you must ask for her pardon from him, and get it." "I cannot do it," returned Colonel Devereux, aghast. " The — the person you allude to would not Ksten to me. I — I don't know any person ; I don't know what you mean," he added, speaking his contradictory words with hesitation. " Oh, sir, she says you can. I believe, from your own manner, that you can : and may you find mercy yourself in your dying hour, as you now — if it be in your power — show mercy for my poor condemned child !" " Don't introduce any of that trash," was the interruption, for any allusions that bore reverence were never acceptable to Colonel Devereux ; and just now he was feeling frightfully annoyed. " It will not weigh with me ; quite the contrary. It is impossible that I can attempt to save her." His tone of irritation, his ajDparent refusal, told harshly on Mrs. May, and she could have found, in her heart, to strike him as he sat. As to himself, his temj^er was always bad, and he had never been driven into such a corner as this. " I can't do it," repeated Colonel Devereux. And he be- lieved that he could not. " Then, sir, am I to go back to the prison to-morrow, to that unfortunate girl, who is beside herself with hope and excitement, and tell her that you refuse to help her 1 That will be a bad finish to my day's work. Sir, I have stood out- PARKWATER. 211 side this house ever since noon, pacing about in the broiling sun and sitting down upon the opposite door-steps, with no comfort but my weary heart." "iS"© one asked you to do it," was the Colonel's re- joinder. "Perhaps not," she resentfully replied. "But the lady gave me hope that you might be home to-night, and I should have waited there all night, and to-morrow, and the next night, if you had not come." " What lady 1" he hastily inquired. " One that came up to the door when the grand footman with the white head would have drove me from it. He called her ' my lady,' and she brought me in, and heard my story, and was sorry for me : and I think, sii-, it was she that gave leave for me to enter to-night. Sophia said you had no wife sir, but it struck me the lady must be your wife, and I took the liberty to ask the man just now, and he said. Yes, it was." Colonel Devereux was frowning ominously. " And now that I know it is your wife, sir, I'm thankful that I did not say all that was in my thoughts, for I am sure she had a kind heart, and it would have troubled it. Truth is, I knew it might do my poor Sophiar no good with such great ladies. There was another lady with her, younger." " You had no business to come to my house at all," he ex- claimed in his great irritation. " I cannot help you. You can go." " Oh sir, pray don't say so !" Colonel Devereux rose and pointed to the room door. " Your coming here has been a mistake," he said, " I feel sorry for your daughter, but I have no power to save her. U— 2 212 PARKWATER. She labours under a delusion in supposing I have. Tell her so." " Sir," cried Mrs. May, preparing to depart, " you best know. But if ever so little power rests with you, and you mean to sit down with your hands afore you and not try to use it, but let her go uncared for to her cruel death, I can only say that you will deserve to suffer as much as she does ; and so the public will say when they come to know the truth. Yes, sir : for I'm sure that what I suspect in my mind is the truth. Sophiar has been silent, and kept your name and the past from the world ; but it is more than me and her father will do if she dies without your bestirring yourself to save her. We " " Will you go ?" sternly interrupted Colonel Devereux, whose hand was still pointing to the door. " We Avill publish the story abroad, sir : it shall be in all the newspapers in this blessed town. I'll tell it out aloud as long as there's a soul left to listen to me." Mrs. INIay dropped a curtsey, for she never forgot her re- spect to her betters, turned, and left the room. Had the natural lines of his face not been so unsympathetic, his black eyes so hard, she would have fallen down prostrate and clasped his knees, and besought him with tears to accord her prayer. But she saw him at his worst ; and she believed that there was neither goodness nor humanity, no, nor a spark of compassionate feeling, to arouse in Colonel Devereux. Colonel Devereux's first movement, on being left alone, was to take a few strides on the library carpet, and give vent to sundry uncomfortable ejaculations. When he had, by these means, a little cooled his wrath and perplexity, he sat down to deliberate. J FARKWATEE. 213 His imagination took him, and would take him, to the next Monday morning, to the sight which Lord Dooham had in- vited him to go and witness. The various points rose up before him, one after another, hke the pictures in a phantasmagoria. Colonel Devereux, in spite of himself, shuddered a little ; what feeling he possessed was for once touched. Self was always prominent with him ; and Mrs. May's concluding words made, perhaps, more impression on him than all the rest — that the truth, if Sophia died, should go forth to the world. At least, what she was pleased to think the truth. That, at any rate, must be stopped, if possible. To have his name bandied about in conjunction with this extra- ordinary and sensational affair would be, to say the best of it, inconvenient. Presently he rose up suddenly, as if some plan of action had occurred to him, and went into the drawing-room. His wife was sitting there. "Do you happen to know whether Sir Archibald is in town ?" he demanded. " He is," answered Lady Harriet. " And complaining of having too much to do to leave it. So your sister said to-day when she came home with me." So ! It was Lady Tennygal, then, who had been the second lady spoken of by Mrs. May ! And he had passed his word to her and Tennygal in those old days at Parkwater . He turned, impatiently, to leave the room. " Are you going out T asked Lady Harriet. " I am. What of that T " I^othing," she sighed. " Shall you be late T " Very possibly. I may not be in at all to-night." 214 PARKWATEK. " To neglect me is nothing new," thougM poor Lady Har- riet ; " but he has never once asked after the children !" Colonel Devereux proceeded to his father's residence, and learnt that Sir Archibald was dining out. Lady Devereux was at home, the servant said. " Alone 1" he inquired. " ]N"o, sir. Lady Tennygal is with her," With a muttered word, Colonel Devereux turned to leave the house again. " Sir Archibald breakfasts early, as usual ?" he looked back to say. " Oh yes, sir." So the Colonel returned home again. He took some re- freshment, which he had not yet done since leaving Deal, passed an hour in the library with his large accumulation of letters, and then went to bed. Early rising was not amid the virtues of Colonel Devereux. Besides, he had passed a remarkably restless night, and to- wards morning he dropped into a heavy sleej). It was past eight when he awoke. "With uncommon speed he dressed, went out without breakfasting, and threw himself into a han- som, desiring to be driven to Sir Archibald Devereux's. The man whipped up his horse that it might go its best, as be- hoved it when taking a fare to the great Sir Archibald's, her Majesty's Secretary of State. Colonel Devereux paid the man, and bounded into the house. " Is Sir Archibald in his breakfast-room V " Sir Archibald has breakfasted and gone out, sir." " Gone out !" "Twenty minutes ago, sir." " Hallo !" called out Colonel Devereux, rushing out again. " Stop the cab." PARKWATER. 215 The man was driving off, but turned his horse round at the call. Colonel Devereux got into the cab. " Where to, your lordship V asked the man, putting on the title at a venture. The question was a poser to Colonel Devereux. The wide world of London was around him, and he knew not in what little spot of it to find Sir Archibald. " Wait," he said to the driver, and went into the house again. His brother Lionel, who acted as Sir Archibald's private secretary, was in the library, opening letters. " Lion, where's the governor ?" " What, is it you !" exclaimed Lionel Devereux, raising his head. " When did you get back T " Last night. Where is he gone, I ask 1" " He did not say. Something troublesome is up, I expect, for he swallowed his breakfast at a mouthful, and was off. My opinion is that the Ministers are on their last legs. Tody. He was with Harebury the best part of yesterday." Colonel Devereux paused to reflect. It was possible — not likely, but just possible— that his mother might know. She was not downstairs, he heard ; so he ascended a flight higher, and knocked at the door of her chamber. " Come in," answered her ladyship, Avho was yet in bed. She supposed it to be her maid, and when the door opened and a black head presented itself, she shrieked out and buried her face under the clothes. "Don't be alarmed," said the Colonel, "it's only L Sir Archibald is out, I find. Do you know Avhere he is gone to ?" " Good gracious, Theodore ! What in the world do you come startling me like this for ?" 2l'6 PARKWATER. " I am in a hurry. I want particularly to see my father, and my business with him will not bear of delay. Have you any idea where he is gone ?" " How should I havel" returned Lady Devereux. "He does not worry me with his business affairs, and his politics." Colonel Devereux went down to the cab again. " Downing Street." Sir Archibald was not in Downing Street — had not been there. From thence he drove to the Premier's, Lord Hare- bury. Lord Harebury had gone out of town the previous afternoon. The cabman had a rare fare, for once. Until past noon he was driving the Colonel about from place to place. All in vain : no tidings could be heard anywhere of the Home Secre- tary. Whether Colonel Devereux's conscience had come to him in his restless night, or that Mrs. May's threat was prey- ing upon him, certain it was he was now feverishly bent upon obtaining the reprieve of that poor unhappy woman left for execution. Hot, jaded, irritated, he drove once more to his father's house. Sir Archibald was in; had been in since ten o'clock ; and Colonel Devereux, when he heard it, gave the cabman his fare, and a hard word or two to the world in general. Sir Archibald was alone, and his table was covered with papers. " Ah, Tody ! So you are back again." " I have been out looking for you all the morning, sir, and a pretty fine hunt I have had of it. Can you spare me five minutes 1" "No," answered Sir Archibald. "I am too busy." " But I must demand it — I mmt," returned the Colonel ; PARKWATER. 217 and Sir Archibald felt some surprise, for his voice had a sound of emotion in it. " It is on a matter of life or death," said the Colonel, abruptly. " Well, two minutes, then. I can't give you more." " There's a girl to be hung on Monday morning at ]S"ew- gate." " Ah, there is," replied Sir Archibald, supposing that his son ignored his injunction, and was entering on a little prefa- tory gossip. " A sad affair ! It is the same young woman who once got into Bessie's house as governess, by means of false certificates. I told you I was busy." " Is she sure to suffer T " Sure ! What do you mean T " She is young to — let the law take its course, as they call it." " Young in years ; I fear old in iniquity. Of course the law will take its course. Theodore," continued Sir Archi- bald, imperatively, " I am short of time. What is your business ?" " Sir, this is my business," answered Colonel Devereux, dashing at once to the point, " I have come to ask you to save her." " Save her I" echoed Sir Archibald. " Yes, sir, to save her." " You cannot know what you are saying. I could not save her life if I would. There has been enough hullaballoo raised lately over this kind of thing, as you must know, and clemency is stopped for a time." Theodore Devereux did know it. It had been the fashion for some time to pardon every prisoner left for execution, no matter of how deep a dye their crime ; the public had cried 218 PARKWATEE. out about it, and the Home Secretary had in consequence found himself in a little hot water. " Why, in the name of wonder, should you make this sense- less application to me ?" he demau.ded of his son, who Avas evidently ill at ease. " What have you to do with the hang- ing or non-hanging of criminals ?" '' I have something to do with this one," returned Colonel Devereux, tending his face, as if to examine some of the papers on the table. " At least I wish to have." " Well T For he really had the grace to hesitate, not at all liking to say to his father what he had to say. "Well?" repeated Sir Archibald. And the other spake a few words in a low tone. Sir Archibald Devereux sat gazing at his hopeful son, and there ensued a dead sUence. " If you never accord me a petition from henceforth, sir, you must accord me this," urged ColoneDDevereux. " She has sent to me, from K"ewgate, to save her life ; to intercede with you to sj)are it. She says I owe so much to her. Per- haps I do." A great scowl had gathered on Sir Archibald's brow. " Have you been cognizant of this all along ? — since the avo- man was first apprehended T " I never heard a syllable of the matter until yesterday Avhen I got home : and then I did not know who the condemned person was. Her mother came to me last night. Sir, you must save her." " The thing is not possible," returned Sir Archibald. " It can be made so, sir. The power rests with you." " The whole country would cry out against it. There would be one universal feeliuiT of indignation raised against me. PARKWATER. 219 The woman is detested for what she has done, and receives no pity. A poor little harmless sleeping child ! say the public. And when they demanded — as they naturally would demand — upon what grounds I had acted, I shoidd have none to give. No, it would damage me too much." " Stand it, stand the damage," pleaded Colonel Devereux, pushing his hair from his brow. " Sir, I dare not let her suffer. Whatever may be the consequences, consent to risk them. At the worst, they can be but trifling — none at all to you personally : a little passing wonder, a little blame from the cursed press." " K this woman get off, every one that has suffered before her was murdered !" emphatically exclaimed Sir Archibald. " What if they were ? But none too many have suffered lately, sir," continued the Colonel. " Let this one be re- prieved after the example of the others : you can begin to draw the line with the next one. If she suffers, I shall have her family upon my back, demanding retribution. It is hard to say Avhat horrible stories will not be concocted and blkzoned forth to the world. I could not remain to face them." " Whom have you to thank for all this ?" harshly demanded Sir Archibald Devereux. " Myself, I suppose you wish me to say," returned the son. " I do. You have been a bad man aU your life, Theodore ; and, unless you change wonderfully, you will die a bad one. You have brought me trouble always : I suppose you will bring it until I am in my grave. What evil possesses you V "Whether good or evil possesses me, it is my own look out," was Tody Devereux's sullen answer, for he had a mortal enmity to being told of his faults ; " and that is not the consideration now. Sir, you icill save her ?" 220 PARKWATER. " Leave me," returned. Sir Archibald. " I will reflect upon it." " It does not need reflection, and there is no space for it," he persisted. " I don't understand the routine of these things ; but, if her Majesty has to be seen, it will be a race with time. To-morrow is Sunday morning, and they are beginning to erect the scaffold." " Theodore !" impulsively repeated Sir Archibald Devereux, " I would sooner have cut off my right hand than have heard this." " Give me your promise, sir, before I leave," the son con- tinued to urge. " It will cost you nothing — ^only the stroke of a pen. You ^vill retain the after consolation of knowing that, if you have erred, it was on the side of humanity." There was a faint tinge of banter in the last sentence, which Sir Archibald Devereux detected not. In a moment of less perplexity he would have caught it fast enough. A few minutes more, and Colonel Devereux went out from his presence. CO^^CLUSIOK At six o'clock on Monday morning IS'ewgate was aroused from its stony propriety by the arrival at its gates of a state messenger. He bore a reprieve for the unhappy woman, Sophia Lyvett ; and when the sheriff's and the other officials reached the prison, in pursuance of their functions, to attend the execution, there was to be no execution to attend. The mob had the worst of it, and those who had hired windows : among whom was probably Viscount Dooham : the one lost PARKWATER. 221 their money, given in liire, and the other enjoyed a few hours' soaking, for the morning had risen pouring wet : not to speak of the disappointment, in which all alike participated. When the later editions of the daily papers reached the country towns, people made a sudden rush for them, eager to read of the last moments of Sophia Lyvett, her dying speech and confession. Instead of which, they had the negative satis- faction of perusing the short fact of her reprieve. The world and his wife rose up in wonder. Eeprieve her ? Why, she really deserved hanging ! What mania was it that had laid hold of Sir Archibald Devereux 1 The newspapers as good as asked him. They got no answer. They never knew. Shrouded in mystery was that unaccountable act (and entirely unaccount- able, save to the three or four behind the scenes, it really was), and would ever remain so. The Lyvetts had the most cause to ask the question, for Frederick was not now legally relieved of the wife he had so hastily and rebelliously wedded. More than ever need did there seem to be for hiding his head in exile. " Keep up your heart, Frederick, my darling," said his mother, as she sobbed her farewell on his breast, the morning of dej)arture. " We know not what blessings the future may hold in store for you. Years bring about wonderful changes : the darkest day may be succeeded by a bright morrow. You never were guilty wilfully but of that one undutiful act, and surely yom' punishment has been heavy ; how heavy Heaven sees — and it is always merciful. We may have you again with us sometime, free and happy." " And at peace," sighed poor Frederick Lyvett, in his in- most heart. 222 PARKWATEE. And the unhappy woman herself] Did the reprieve which she had so feverishly pressed for bring to her the relief she had sought ? Was the life of labour^ to which her sentence was commuted, a more tolerable fate, seen in the vista of the future stretching out before her, with its dreadful remem- brance, its wearing monotony, its hopeless despair 1 We can- not know. She refused to see her father and mother. Before her final departure from Newgate, permission for an interview with her was accorded to them at their earnest prayer ; but she sullenly declined it. " Oh, May," groaned the mother, in the bitterness of her anguish, as she sat on the edge of the bed in their one solitary room^ " I'm afraid it was a frightful mistake." " What was a mistake ?" asked May. " Her bringing up. If we'd not made her into a lady and edicated her according, she'd not have despised us, and all this might never have happened. We stuck her up into a wrong spere, don't you see, May ; and the poor thing seemed to have no right standing of her own. She was neither one thing nor t'other ; she couldn't be one of us, and she couldn't be one of them above us ; and so she had no nat'ral spere in the world to make herself contented iir. It was a fatal mistake." THE END, THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. CHAPTER I. VERNER RABY. It was the height of the London season — not now, but years ago — and a drawing-room, all sun, and light, and heat, looked out on a fashionable square in an exceedingly fashionable locality. At the extreme end of the room, away from the sun's rays, a yet young and very lovely lady reclined in an easy-chair ; a feverish flush was on her cheeks, but otherwise her features were white as the pillow on which they rested. The house was the residence of IMr. Verner Eaby : this lady was his wife, and she was dying. It was said of spinal complaint — of general debility — of a sort of decline : friends and doctors equally differed as to the exact malady. iSTone hinted that care, disappointment, crushed feelings, could have anything to do with her sinking : yet it is probable they had more, by far, than all the other ailments ascribed to her. Somewhat of remorse may have been added also. Once, when very young, she was engaged to be married to a Mr. Mair. She thought she liked him ; she did like him ; but one, higher in the world's favour, came across her path. 224 THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. His dashing appearance dazzled her eyes, as the baron dazzled fair Imogene's, in the old song ; his position dazzled her judgment; and Maria Eaby would have discarded Arthur Mair for him. Her parents said JSTo ; common justice said JS'o ; but Mr. Verner exerted his powers of persuasion, and Maria yielded to her own wiU, and clandestinely left her father's house to become his wife. The private union was followed by a grand marriage, solemnized openly ; and the bridegroom took his wife's name with her fortune, and became Verner Eaby. Very, very soon was her illusion dissolved, and she found she had thrown away the substance to grasp the shadow. Mr. Eaby speedily tired of his new toy, and she lapsed into a neglected, almost a deserted wife. He lived a wild life; dissipating his fortune, dissipating hers, tingeing his character, wasting his talents. Meanwhile, the despised Arthur Mau", through the expected death of a rela- tive younger than himself, had risen to affluence and rank, and was winning his way to the approbation of good men. He had probably forgotten Maria Eaby. It is certain that his marriage had speedily followed upon her own : perhaps he wished to prove to the world that her inexcusable conduct had not told irremediably upon him. Thus, JMrs. Eaby had lived for many years, bearing her wrongs in silence, and battling with her remorseful feelings. But nature gave way at last, and her health left her : a few months of resigned suffering, and the grave drew very near. She was con- scious of it; more conscious this afternoon than she had yet been. Her first child, a girl, had died at its birth ; several years afterwards a boy was born. She was lying now, sadly thinking of him, when her husband entered. He had come home to dress for an early dinner engagement. TEE FOGGY NIGHT AT OF FORD. 225 " How hot you look !" was his remark, his eye carelessly noting the unusual hectic on her cheeks. " Things are troubhng me," she answered, her breathing more laboured than common. " Alfred, I want to talk to you." " Make haste, then," he replied, impatiently pulling out liis watch. " I have not much time to waste." To waste ! On his dying wife ! " Oh yes, you have if you like, Alfred, And, if not, you must make it. Other engagements may give way to me to- day, for I think it will be my last." " Nonsense, Maria ! You are nervous. ' Shake it off. What have you to say ?" " I think it will be," she repeated. " At any rate, it can be but a question of a few days now ; a week or two at the most. Alfred, do you believe you could ever break an oath?" " Break an oath V he echoed in surprise. " You^ are careless as to keeping your word ; promises you forget as soon as made; but an oath imposes a solemn obliga- tion, and must be binding on the conscience. I want you to take one." " That I will not marry again," he responded, in a tone of suppressed mockery. " Calm yoiuself : it is not my intention to do so." " Not so," she sadly uttered ; " that would be an obligation I have no right to lay upon you : my death will leave you free. I want you to undertake to be a good father to the child." " And you would impose such obligation by oath !" cried ]Mr. Eaby. " It is scarcely necessary. Of course I shall be good to him. What is running in your head, Maria? — that 15 226 THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. I shall beat him, or turn him adrift 1 The boy shall go to Eton, and thence to college." She put out her fevered hands, and clasped liis, with the excitable, earnest emotion of a dying spirit. " O Alfred ! when you are as near death as I am, you will know that tliere are other and higher interests than even the better interests of this world. If the knowledge never comes to you before, it will too surely come then. It is for those I wish you to train him." " My dear," he rejoined, the mocking tone returning to his voice, and this time it was not disguised, " I will engage a curate at a yearly stipend, and he shall cram Eaby with religion." A cloud of pain passed across her brow ; then she looked pleadingly up again to urge her wish. " There is no earthly interest can be compared with that ; we live here for a moment, in eternity for ever. I want you to undertake that he shall be trained for it." " So far as my will is good, he is welcome to grow up an angel," observed Mr. Eaby ; " but as to taking an oath that he shall, you must excuse me. We will leave the topic ; it is one that we shall do no good at together. The boy will do well enough ; what is there to hinder it 1 And do you get out of this desponding fit, Maria, and let me find you better when I come home at night." " Stay !" she implored. " I lie here alone with all my pain and trouble ; and Avild thoughts intrude themselves into my mind, somewhat as they come to us in a dream. It ivas a wild thought — an improbable one — the speaking to you of an oath ; perhaps it was a wrong one. "Will you pass your word to me, Alfred, that Eaby shall be reared to good, not to THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. 227 evil 1 And you surely will hold sacred your word to the dying !" " I promise you that the best shall be done for the boy in all ways, Maria, so far as I can do it." He turned impatiently as he spoke, and left the room. She did not caU to him again. And just then her little boy peeped in. He had been christened Eaby. " You may come, dear." Eaby Verner, a child of seven, who had inherited his mother's beauty, drew towards her on tiptoe. He was too in- telligent for his years, too sensitive, too thoughtful. His large and brilliant brown eyes were raised to hers with a sweet, sad expression of inquiry. Then the long, dark eye- lashes fell over them, and he laid his head on her bosom, and threw up his arms lovingly to clasp her neck. " Eaby, I was just thinking of you. I must teU you some- thing." As if he had a dread presentiment of what that something was to be, he did not speak, but bent his face where she could not see it, and slightly shivered. " Eaby, darling, do you know that I am going to leave you — that I am going to heaven ?" The child had known it some time, for he had been alive to the gossiping of the servants, but, true to his shy and sen- sitive nature, he had buried the knowledge and the misery within his poor little heart. True to it now, he would not give vent to his emotion ; but his mother felt that he shivered from head to foot, as his clasp tightened upon her. " I read a pretty book, Eaby, once. It told of the creed of some people, far, far away from our own land, who believe that when they die — if they die in God's love — they are per- 15—2 228 TEE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. mitted to become ministering spirits to those whom they leave here ; to hover invisibly round them, and direct their thoughts and steps away from harm. My dearest, how I should lilce to find this to be reaUy the case ! I would come and watch over you." His sobs could no longer be suppressed, though he strove for it still. They broke out in a wail. " Eaby, dear, you have heard that this is a world of care. All people find it such ; though some more so than others. When care shall fall upon you hereafter — as it is sure to do — remember God sends it only to fit you for a better land." The child looked up, his large eyes swimming. " Mamma, have you had much care ?" "A great deal; more than many have. Eut, Eaby, that care has taken me home ; it has shown me the way to get there. It will show you. I shall be there waiting for you. Carry always with you, through life, the hope to come there^ and you will be sure to come." "What more she would have said is uncertain. Probably much. The child, in mind, was not like a child of seven ; he was more like one of fourteen, and he understood well. It was Mr. Eaby who interrupted them. " Eaby ! crying, sir ! What for 1 Has your mamma been talking gloomy stufl; to you, or saying that she fears that she is worse 1 It is not true, boy, any of it. Dry up that face of yours. Maria, you are not worse : if you were, I should see it. Eun away into the nursery, sir." The boy drew away choking, and Mr. Eaby continued. " It is not judicious of you, Maria, to alarm the boy. I cannot think what has put these ideas into your head. He will be in tears for the rest of the day." THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. 229 " He is so sensitive," she whispered. " Alfred, something seems to tell me he "vvill he destined to sorrow. It is an im- pression I have always felt, but never so forcibly as now. Shield him from it whenever you can. Oh that I could take him with me !" " You are growing fanciful," answered Mr. Eaby. " Des- tined to sorrow, indeed ! Is there anything else you fancy him destined to 1 Whence draw you your deduction 1" " I do not know. But a timid, sensitive, refined nature, such as his, with its unusual gift of genius, is generally des- tined to what the world looks upon as adverse fate. It may be deep sorrow, or it may be an early death." " All mothers think their child a genius," interrupted Mr. Eaby, in his slighting tone. " WeU, if he lives, time will prove," she panted. " I fear you will find my words true. When the mind is about to separate from the body, I believe it sees with unusual clear- ness — that it can sometimes read the future, almost with a spirit of prophecy." " I am not given to metaphysics, Maria," remarked Mr, Eaby, as he again escaped from the room. Mrs. Verner Eaby died. Eaby, in due course, went to Eton, and afterwards to college. A shy, proud young man : at least, his reserved manners and his refined appearance and habits gave a stranger the idea that he was proud. He kept one term at Oxford, and had returned to keep a second, when a telegraphic despatch summoned him to London. Mr. Verner Eaby had died a sudden death. When Eaby went back to Oxford, it was only to take his name off the college books, for his father had eaten up all ho 230 TEE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. possessed, had died in debt, and Eaby must no longer "be a gentleman. A rentier, the French would say, wliich is a much more suitable term : we have no word that answers to it. Mr, Eaby, after the death of his wife, had plunged into worse expense than before ; he had lived a life of boundless extravagance, and his affairs proved to be in a sad state. He had afforded Eaby a home ; ho had educated him in accord- ance with his 'presumed rank ; but he had done no more. He had given him no profession; he had squandered his mother's money, as well as his own ; he had bequeathed him no means to live, or even to complete his education ; he left him to struggle with the world as he best could. And that was how he fulfilled his promise to his dead wife ! Yes ; Eaby must struggle now with the world — fight with it for a living. How was he able to do it ? His mother had said he possessed genius ; and he undoubtedly did — a genius for painting. He had loved the art all his life, but his father had been against his pursuing it, even as an amateur — had obstinately set his face and interposed his veto against it. Eaby determined to turn to it with a will now. CHAPTEE II. DKEAMS OF FAME. A GENTLEMAN stood ouc morning in the studio of a far-famed painter, the great Coram, as the world called him. The visitor was Sir Arthur Saxonbury, one of those warm patrons of art all too few in England. Eich, liberal, and enthusiastic, his name was a welcome sound, not only to the successful, THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. 231 but to the struggling artist. The painter was out ; but, in a second room, seated before an easel, underneath the softened light of the green blind, was a young man, working assidu- ously. Sir Arthur took little notice of him at first ; he supposed him to be a humble assistant, or colour-mixer of the great man's ; but, upon drawing nearer, he was struck with the exceeding and rare beauty of the face that was raised to look at him. But for the remarkable intellect of the high, broad brow, and the flashing light of the luminous eye, the face, in its sweet and delicate symmetry, in its transparency of complexion, might have been taken for a woman's. Sir Arthur, a passionate admirer of beauty, whenever he saw it, forgot the pictures of still life around him, and gazed at the living one : gazed until he heard the painter enter. " Who is that in the other room ?" inquired Sir Arthur, when greetings were over. "Ah, poor fellow, his is a sad history. A very common one, though. When did you return to England, Sir Arthur' T " But last week. Lady Saxonbury is tired of France and Germany, and her health seems to get no better. I must look at your new works. Coram ; I suppose you have many to show me, finished or unfinished." " Ay. It must be three years since you were here, Sir Arthur." " IsTearly." They proceeded round the rooms, when Sir Arthur's eye once more fell on the young man. " He has genius, that young fellow, has he not V he whis- pered. " Very great genius." " I could have told it," returned Sir Arthur. " What a 235 THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFOBD. countenance it is ! Transformed to canvas, its beauty alone would render the painter immortal. His face seems strangel}' familiar to me. Where can I have seen it T Mr. Coram had his eyes bent close to one of his paintings. He saw a speck on it which had no business there. The baronet's remark remained unanswered. " I presume he is an aspirant for fame," continued Sir Arthur. " WiU he get on T " ISTo," said Mr. Coram. Sir Arthur Saxonbury looked surprised. "It is the old tale," proceeded the painter. "Poverty, friendlessness, and overwhelming talent." " Talent has struggled through mountains before now, Coram," significantly observed the baronet. " Yes. But Eaby's enemy lies here" touching his own breast. " He is inclined to consumption, and these ultra- refined natures cannot battle against bodily weakness. His sensitiveness is something marvellous. A rude blow to his feelings would do for him." Sir Arthur had looked up at the sound of the name. " What did you call him % Eaby f " Eaby Verner Eaby is his name. The son of spendthrift Veruer and Maria Eaby the heiress." Eaby Verner Eaby ! Middle-aged though he was, years though it was ago, now, since his dream of love with Maria Eaby had come to an abrupt ending, Sir Arthur Saxonbury, once Arthur Mair, positively felt his cheeks blush through his gray whiskers. As he glanced eagerly at Eaby's face, memory carried him back to its spring-time ; for those were her very eyes, Avith their sweet, melancholy expression, and those were her chiselled features. . THE FOGG J NIGHT AT OF FORD. 233 " I saw Verner Eaby's death in the papers," said Sir Arthur, rousing himself, " two — three years ago, it seems to me. What is the son doing here 1" " Eaby left nothing behind him but debts. The son sold off all, and paid them, leaving himself, I believe, about half sufficient for the bare necessaries of life. So he turned to Avhat he loved best, painting, and has been working hard ever since. He expects to make a good thing of it. I let him come here to copy : for he has no convenience for it at his lodgings. Poor fellow ! better he had been a painter of coach panels." " Why do you say that, Coram V " A man whose genius goes no higher than coach-painting can bear rubs and crosses. We can't. And Eaby is so san- guine ! Thinks he is going to be a second Claude Lorraine. He is great in landscapes." At that moment they were interrupted by Eaby. He came across the room in search of something wanted in his work, and Sir Arthur Saxonbury saw that the beauty of the face did not extend to the form, ^ot more than the middle height, and slender, his long arms and legs looked too long for his body. He stooped in the shoidders, he had a sensitive look of physical weakness, and his gait was uncertain and timid. Coram laid his hand on his shoulder. " This is Sir Arthur Saxonbury, of whom you have heard so much," he said. Eaby was unacquainted with the episode in his mother's early life, therefore the flush that rose to, and dyed his face, was caused only by the greeting of a stranger : with these sensitive natures it is sure to be so, whether they be man or woman. The bright colour only served to render him more 234 THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OF FORD. like Maria Eaby ; and Sir Arthur, in spite of the sore feeling her treatment had left, felt his heart warm to her son. A. wish half crossed his mind that that son was his — his heir ; he had no son, only daughters. Eaby was astonished at the warmth of his greeting. Sir Arthur clasped and held his hand ; he turned with him to inspect the painting he was engaged on. It was a self-created landscape, betraying great imaginative power and genius ; but genius, as yet, only half cultivated. "You have your work cut out for you," observed Sir Arthur, who was an excellent judge of art, and its indispen- sable toil. " I know it, Sir Arthur. I ought to have begun the study earlier ; but during my father's lifetime the opportunity was not afforded me. It is all I have to depend on now, for with him died my wealth and my prospects." " He had great wealth once. How could he have been so reprehensible as to dissipate it all, knowing there was one to come after him T involuntarily spoke Sir Arthur. " These are thoughts that I avoid," replied Eaby. " He was my father." " Do you remember much of your mother V " I remember her very well indeed. She died when I was seven years old, AU the good that is in me I owe to her. I have never forgotten her early lessons or her early love. I seem to see her face as plainly as I saw it then. I see it often in my dreams." " It was a face that the world does not see too often," said Sir Arthur, whose thoughts were buried in the past. " Your own is like it," he added, rousing himself. " Did you know my mother. Sir Arthur ?" " Once ; when she was Miss Eaby," answered the baronet. THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OF FORD. 235 in an indifferent tone, as he turned again to the painting. " Where do you live T he suddenly asked. *' I give my address here," answered the young man. " Mr. Coram allows me to do so : though indeed it is never asked for. I have only a room in an obscure neighboui'hood. I can- not afford anything better." Sir Arthur Saxonbury smiled. " You are not like most people," he said : " they generally strive to hide their fallen fortunes : you make no secret of yours." Eaby shook his head, and a strangely painful flush rose to his face. His poverty was a sore point with him, the sense ■of disgrace it brought ever eating into his very heartstrings. " My fallen fortunes have been a world's talk," he answered. 'M could not keep them secret if I would." . " Have you retained your former fiiends ?" asked 8ir Arthur. " ]^ot one of them. Perhaps it is, in some degree, my OAvn fault, for my entire time is given to painting. Few would care to know or recognise me now : Eaby Verner Eaby, the son and heir of the rich and luxurious Verner Eaby, who made some noise in the London world, and Eaby, the poor art- student, are two people. !None have sought me since the change. Not one has addressed me with the kindness and sympathy that you have now, Sir Arthur." " I shall see you again," remarked Sir Arthur, as he shook him by the hand, and turned away to the great artist and his paintings. , In the evening, Eaby returned to his home — if the garret he occupied could be called such. Coram had spoken accu- rately : not half sufficient for what would generally be called the bare necessaries of life remained from the wreck of his 236 THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OF FORD. father's property. But it was made to suffice for liis wants. It would seem that surely his clothes must take it all, and none could conjecture how he contrived to eke it out. He was often cold, often hungry, always weary; yet his hopeful spirit buoyed him uji, and pictured visions of future greatness. He never for one moment doubted that he was destined to become of world-wide fame : those who possess true genius are invariably conscious of it in their inmost heart : and he would repeat over and over again to himself the words he felt must some time be applied to him — " The great painter — the painter Eaby." He sat down that evening to his dinner-supper of bread and cheese. It tasted less dry than usual, for his thoughts were absorbed by the chief event of the day, the meeting Avith Sir Arthur Saxonbury. He attributed^ in his unconsciousness, the interest which Sir Arthvir had betrayed in him to admi- ration of his genius : he knew how Avarm a supporter of rising artists Sir Arthur was, and he deemed the introduction the very happiest circumstance that could have befallen liim. Could he but have foreseen Avhat that introduction was to bring forth ! CHAPTEE III. MARIA SAXONBURY. The golden light of the setting sun was falling on a golden room. It is scarcely wrong to call it such, for the colour per- vading it was that of gold. Gold-coloured satin curtains and cushioned chairs, gilt cornices, mirrors in gilded frames, gilded consoles Avhose slabs of the richest lapis-lazuli shone THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. 237 ■with costly toys, paintings in rich enclosures, and golden ornaments. Altogether the room, looked a hlaze of gold. The large window opened upon a wide terrace, on which rose an ornamental fountain, its glittering spray dancing in the sunlight : and beyond that terrace was a fair domain, stretched out far and wide ; the domain of Sir Arthur Saxonbmy. Swinging her pretty foot to and fro, and leaning hack in one of the gay chairs, was a lovely girl budding into woman- hood, with bright features and a laugliing eye ; the youngest, the most indulged, and the vainest daughter of Sir Arthur. She was in a white lace evening dress, and wore a pearl neck- lace and pearl bracelets on her fair neck and arms. They had recently come home after the short London season, which had been half over when they returned from the Continent, and were as yet free from visitors. Lady Saxonbury was in ill health, and Mrs. Ashton, the eldest married daughter, was staying with them while her husband was abroad. In a chair, a little behind Miss Saxonbury, as if conscious of the distance between them — for there loas a distance — sat Eaby E,aby. It has been said the house was free from visitors ; but he was scarcely regarded as such. Sir Arthur, in the plenitude of his heart, had invited him to come and stay a couple of months at Saxonbury ; the country air would renovate him 3 be could have the run of the picture-gallery, and copy some of its chefs d'ceuvre. And Eaby came. Sir Arthur's early secret was safe with himself, and he could only explain that his interest in Eaby Eaby was but that which he would take in any rising artist. So the family, even the ser- vants, looked upon him with a patronising eye, as one who had " come to paint." Eaby had accepted Sir Arthxu-'s invi- tation with a glow of gratification — the far-famed Saxonbury 238 THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFF ORB. gallery was anticipation enough for liim. He forgot to think where the funds could come from to make a suitable appear- ance as Sir Arthur Saxonhury's guest ; but these the painter Coram delicately furnished. " It is but a loan," said he : " you can repay me with the first proceeds that your pencil shall receive." Thus Eaby went to Saxonbury. And there had he been now for half his allotted time, drinking in the wondrous beau- ties of the place and scenery — and draughts of other wond- rous beauties which he would have been as well without. The elegance that surrounded him, and to which he had been latterly a stranger — the charms of the society he was thrown amongst once again, as an equal for the time being — the gratification of the eye and mind, and the pomp and pride of courtly life — all this was but too congenial to the exalted taste of Eaby Eaby, and he was in danger of forgetting the stern realities of life to become lost in a false Elysium. He was thrown much with ]\Iaria Saxonbury — far more than he need have been. The fault was hers. A great admirer of beauty, like her father, and possessing a high reverence for genius, the ex(i[uisite face of Eaby Eaby attracted her admiration as it had never yet been attracted ; whilst his eager aspirations and love for the fine arts were perfectly consonant to her own mind. His companionship soon grew excessively pleasing, and she gave her days up to it without restraint, absorbed in the pleasure of the moment, l^othing more : of all people in the world, Maria Saxonbury was the last to think seriously of one beneath her. So, leaving con- sequences to take care of themselves, or be remedied by time, she dwelt only on the present. She would flit about him when he was at work in the picture-gallery, she would linger THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OF FORD. 239 by his side in the gardens, one or other of the little Ashtons generally being their companion : in short, it seemed that the object of Maria's life, just now, was to be with the artist- visitor. Even this night, when her father and sister had gone out to dinner, she had excused herself : she would stay at home -ivith her mother, she said : but Lady Saxonbury was in her chamber, and Maria remained in the drawing-room with Mr. Eaby, It is probable that Lady Saxonbury, if she thought of him at all, believed him to be painting then. "Was it in remembrance of some one else that Sir Arthur had named his youngest child " Maria?" But they sometimes called her by her other name, Elizabeth. " Do you admire this purse ?" she suddenly inquired, hold- ing out one of grass-green silk, with gold beads, tassels, and slides — a marvel of prettiness. Eaby rose and took it from her, and turned it about in his white and slender hands. Those remarkable hands ! feeble to look at, elegant in structure, always restless ; so strongly characteristic of genius, as well as of delicacy of constitution. " It is quite a gem," he said, in answer. " You may have it in place of your ugly one," continued Miss Saxonbury : " that frightful portemonnaie of grim leather which I saw you with the other day. I made this for somebody else, who does not seem in a hurry to come for it • so I will give it to you." A rush of suspicious emotion flew to his face, and her eyes fell beneatb the eloquent gaze of his. " How shall I thank you?" was all he said. "It shall be to me an everlasting remembrance." " That's in return for the pretty sketch you gave me yes- terday," she went on. " One you took at Eome, and filled in from memory." 240 THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OF FORD. " You mistake, Miss Saxonbury. I said I drew it from description. I have never been to Rome. That is a pleasure to come." " As it is for me," observed Maria. " I was there once, when a little girl, but I remember nothing of it. A cross woman, half governess, half maid, who was hired to talk Italian to us, is all my recollection of the place. Last year and the year before, when we were wasting our time in. Paris and at the baths of Germany, doing mamma more harm than good, I urged them to go ou to Eome, but nobody listened to me. I have an idea that I shall be disappointed whenever I do go : we always are, Avhen we expect so much." " Always, always," murmured Eaby. " I long to see some of those features I am familiar with from paintings," added ]\Ess Saxonbury. " The remains of the Csesars' palaces — the real grand St. Peter's — the beautiful Alban Hills — and all Eome's other glories. I grow impatient sometimes, and tell papa there will be nothing left for me to see : that Sallust's garden will be a heap of stinging nettles — I dare say it is nothing else ; and Cecilia Metella's tomb destroyed." And thus they conversed till it grew dark, and the servants -came in. to light the chandeliers. Miss Saxonbury remem- bered her mother then, and rose to go to her, to see why she had not come down. AVhen Maria returned, the room was emj)ty, and she stood in the bow of the window and looked out. It was the custom at Saxonbury House to leave the curtains of this window open on a favourable night ; for the moonlight landscape, outside, was indeed fair to look upon. Mr. Eaby was then walking on the terrace 3 his step was firm and self-possessed, THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. 241 his head raised : it was only in the presence of his fellow- creatures that Eaby Eaby was a shy and awkward man. He saw her, and approached the window. " I have been studying the Folly all this time," he said ; " fancying it must look like those ruined Eoman temples we have been speaking of ; as they must look in the light and shade of the moonlight." "Does it?" she answered, laughingly. "I will go and look, too," Miss Saxonbury stepped on to the terrace, and he gave her his arm. Did she feel the violent beating of his heart, ^s her bracelet lay against it ? They walked, in the shade ■cast by the house, to the railings at the end of the terrace, and there came in view of the fanciful building in question, ^' Lady Saxonbury's Folly." It rose, high and white, on the opposite hills, amidst a grove of dark trees. "I do not like the building by day," he observed; "but, as it looks now, I cannot fancy anything more classically beauti- ful in the Eternal City, even when it was in its zenith." " It does look beautiful," she mused, " And the land- scape, as it lies around, is equally so : look at its different points showing out. You have not seen many scenes more gratifying to the imaginative eye than this, Mr. Eaby." " I shall never see a second Saxonbury," was the impulsive answer. " Take it for all in aU, I shall never see but look at this side," he abruptly broke off, turning in the opposite direction. "Oh, I don't care to look there. It is all dark. I only like the bright side of things." " Has it never struck you that these two aspects, the light and the dark of a moonlight night, are a type of human 16 242 TEE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFF ORB. fortunes'? While some favoured spirits bask in brightness,, others must be cast, and remain, in the depths of shade." " IS"©. I never thought about it. My life has been all brightness." " May it ever remain so !" he whispered with a deep sigh : but Miss Saxonbury had turned to the pleasant side again. " What a fine painting this view would make !" she ex- claimed. " I wonder papa has never had it done. One of your favourite scenes, Mr. Eaby, all poetry and moonlight, interspersed with a dash of melancholy. Some of you artists are too fond of depicting melancholy scenes." " We depict scenes as we find them. You know the eye sees with its own hue. There may be a gangrene over the gladdest sunshine." " Artists ought to be always glad : living, as they do, amidst ideal beauties : nay, creating them." " Ideal ! That Avas a fitting word, Miss Saxonbury. We live in the toil and drudgery of the work ; others, who but see the picture when it is completed, in the ideal. When you stand and admire some favourite painting, do you ever cast a thought to the weary hours of labour which created it 1" " Ko doubt the pursuit of art has its inconveniences. But you great painters must bear within you your own recom- pense." " In a degree, yes," answered Eaby ; the expression " you great painters " echoing gratefully on his ear. " The con- sciousness of possessing that rare gift, genius, is ample recompense — save in moments of despondency." "And yet you talk of melancholy and gangrene, Mr. Eaby, and such like unpleasant topics !" "The lives of great men are frequently marked by un- THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFOED. 243 happiness," observed Eaby. " In saying ' great men,' I mean men inwardly great ; men of genius, of imaginative intellect. Look at some of our dead poets — at what is said of them." " I think their fault lay in looking at the dark side of things, instead of the bright," laughed Maria. "■ Like your- self at present. You will keep turning to that gloomy point, where the scenery is all obscure, nothing bright but the great moon itself; and that shines right in your face." "They could not look otherwise than they did," he argued, his own tone sounding melancholy enough. " Well, well, I suppose it is the fate of genius," returned Maria. " I was reading lately, in a French work, some account of the life of Leonardo da Vinci. He was not a happy man." " He was called Da Vinci the Unhappy. How many of his brethren might also have been called so !" " AVere I you, I should not make up my mind to be one of them; I should be just the contrary," said Maria, gaily. " Fancy goes a great way in this life. And so," she added, after a pause, " you think some of the queer old temples in Italy must look like that T pointing to the Folly. " How I wish I could see them !" " How I wish ive could see them !" he murmured — "that we could see them together !" Perhaps he wondered whether he had said too much. She did not check him, — only turned, and began to move back towards the drawing-room, her arm within his. " We may see them together," she said, at length. " You will, of necessity, visit Italy ; I, of inclination ; and we may meet there. I hope we shall know you in after life, Mr. Eaby ; but of that there wiU be little doubt. Everybody will 16—2 2U THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. know you, for you will be one of England's famous painters." Tliey reached the window, and he took her hand in his, though there was no necessity, to assist her over the low step ; he kept it longer than he need have done. !Not for the first time, by several, had he thus clasped it in the little courtesies of life. Oh, Eaby Eaby ! can you not see that it had been better for your peace of mind had you clasped some poisonous old serpent ! Lady Saxonbury was in the room then in her easy-chair, which had its back to the window. Eaby did not enter, but turned away. The tea was on the table, and Miss Saxonbury began to pour it out. " My dear," cried Lady Saxonbury, a simple-hearted, kind woman, " where's that poor painter ? I dare say he would like some tea." " He was on the terrace just now," replied Maria. " He must feel very dull," resumed Lady Saxonbury. " I fear, child, we neglect him. Send one of the servants to ask him to come in." The " poor painter," lost in anticipations of the time when he should be a rich one, was leaning against the rail- ings, whence he had stood and gazed abroad with Miss Saxon- bury, — the purse she had given him lying in his bosom. In the last few weeks his Avhole existence had changed, for he had learnt to love Maria Saxonbury with a wild, passionate love. To be near her was bliss, even to agitation ; to hear her speak set his frame trembling ; to touch her hand sent his heart's blood thrilling through his veins. It is only these imaginative, unearthly natures, too sensitive and refined for the uses of common life, that can tell of this intense, pure, THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OF FORD. 245 etherealised passion, which certainly partakes more of heaven than of earth. He stood there, indulging a vision of hope — a deceitful, glowing vision. He saw not himself as he was, but as he should be — the glorious painter, to whose genius the whole world would bow. Surely there was no such impassable barrier between that worshipped painter and the daughter of Sir Arthur Saxonbury ! Alas for the improbable dream he was suffering himself to nourish ! alas for its fatal ending ! Three or four weeks more of its sweet delusion, and then it was rudely broken. Mr. Yorke, a relative of Sir Arthur's, and the heir presump- tive to a portion of his estates, arrived at Saxonbury. He had been named Arthur Mair, after Sir Arthur. Eaby Verner recognised him, for they had been at Christ Church together, but he had not recalled him to his memory since, and had never known him as the relative of Sir Arthur Saxonbury. He was a tall, strong, handsome young fellow. But ere Mr. Yorke had been two days at Saxonbury, a rumour, or suspicion (in the agitation of Raby's feelings he hardly knew which), reached the artist that his visit was to Maria, that she was intended for her cousin's wife. The same evening, calm and lovely as the one when they had looked forth together at the Folly, the truth became clear to Eaby. They were seated in the drawing-room, all the family, whe Maria stepped on to the terrace, and the artist followed her. Presently Arthur Yorke saw them pacing it together, Eaby having given her his arm. Mr. Yorke drew down the corners of his lips, and stalked out. " Thank you," he said to Eaby, with freezing politeness, as 246 THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFF ORB. lie authoritatively drew away Maria's arm and placed it within liis own, " I will take charge of Miss Saxonbury if she Avishes to walk." He strode away with her ; and Raby, with a drooping head and sinking heart, descended the middle steps of the terrace. He stole along under cover of its high wall — anywhere to hide himself and his outraged feelings. That action, those words of Mr, Yorke's, had but too surely betrayed his right of interest in Maria. He came to the end of the terrace, and found they had halted there, just above him. He was to hear worse words now, and he could not help himself. " Then you had no business to do it — you had no right to do it," Maria was saying, in a petulant tone. " He was not goingjto eat me, if I did Avalk with him." "Excuse me, Maria, I am the best judge, Eaby held the position of a gentleman once, and might be a desirable acquaintance ; but things have changed with him." " Eubbish !" retorted Miss Saxonbury. " He is papa's guest ; and he is as good as you. A gentleman once, a gentleman always." " I am not saying he is not a gentleman. But he is no longer in the position of one." " He was born and reared one \ he will always be one ; quite as much as you are," persisted Maria, in her tantalising spirit. " Well, I don't care, then, to put my objection on that score. But it is not agreeable to me to see you walking and talking so familiarly Avith him." " Just say you are jealous at once, Arthur. If you think to control me, I can tell you " " Hallo, Arthur ! Step here a moment." THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. 247 The voice was Sir Arthur Saxonbury's. jNIaria paused in her speech, and Mr. Yorke unwillingly retired towards the y a somewhat curious coincidence, the THE FOGGY JS'IGIIT AT OF FORD. 337 surgery boy had had holiday given him that afternoon, and was away. Squire Hipgrave propagated the unsatisfactory dispute be- tween Mr. Yorke and Crane the gardener. The extraordinary fact that the murder should have been known to either of them at that early hour of the evening struck everybody : upon Mr. Maskell, a keen man of the law, it made a strong impression. "Who could have known it, hours before he was found, save those concerned in the deed? argued Mr. Maskell. Very true, said the village, but Crane and his wife are above suspicion, and so — of course — is Mr. Yorke. This must be sifted, concluded Mr. Maskell, and I shall take care that all three are summoned before the coroner. Ere the day, Friday, was over, the murderers of the farmer were in custody — two men, of whose guilt there was not a shadow of doubt. The spoil taken from Mr. Louth was found upon them, and there were other proofs, which need not be entered into, since that is not the murder with which we are most concerned. These two men had been seen lurking about the village in the afternoon with another sus- picious character — a man named King. It was assumed that this third had also been in the mischief, but at present he could not be found. The murder of Mr, Louth and that of Mr. Janson must have taken place about the same time, ren- dering it next to an impossibility that the same parties were guilty of both. . The inquest was fixed for Monday, the coroner being unable to hold it sooner ; and poor Mr. Janson lay in his own house, the outside of which presented a scene of bustle, night and day, inasmuch as it was regularly be- sieged by crowds of the curious, who stood there for hours 22 333 THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. ou the stretch, gazing at its closely-curtained windows. To- wards evening, on the Saturday, their perseverance was grati- fyingly rewarded by witnessing the arrival of Mr. Janson's mother, who had been summoned from a distance. She took up her abode at the sorrowful house, although several neigh- bourly offers to receive her were made, and the delighted crowd of stationary gazers was forthwith doubled. Now the reader cannot fail to perceive that suspicion lay fearfully strong upon Mr. Yorke. His jealousy of his wife and Mr. Janson supplied the motive ; a jealousy for which there was no foundation, save in his own distorted mind. Certain attendant circumstances, known to Mrs. Yorke, were fraught with suspicion. His staying out that night, saying he lost his way in the fog, his stealing upstairs in the dark vrhen he came home, and the complete changing of his clothes, would have been comparatively nothing ; but there was his prematurely-proclaimed knowledge of the murder. Mrs. Yorke heard of the opinion, expressed by the surgeons, that a gun had probably been used to inflict the blows, and she shivered as she listened. Did her husband bring home his gun ? She could not tell. K^either could she arrive at any satisfactory conclusion as to the clothes he wore, whether they were put away in concealment, or whether they were amongst those hanging openly in the closet ; for Mr. Yorke was an extravagant man in the matter of wearing apparel, and possessed several suits for outdoor spoi-ts. The terrible suspicion was eating into her brain. And yet it appeared too monstrous a one to have real foundation. On the Sunday morning, though Mrs. Yorke rose to break- fast, she excused herself from going to church. She said she was not sufiiciently well , perhaps it was no false plea, for TEE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. 339 she looked very ill. Mr. Yorke went, accompanied by INIiss Hardisty and Henry Yorke. When they were gone, Maria entered her bedroom and locked herself in. A desperate determination was on her face, the index to that Avhich had settled on her mind ; her dreadful fears, her uncertainties, were hard to bear, day and night they were as one living agony ; and now that the house was free from interruption she would search and find, or not find, proofs. The gun. That was the point ; had he throAvn it away as he came home that night, stained with his crime, or had he brought it home with him and concealed it ? A gun appeared as usual in the customary place ; but — was it the gun he had taken out with him, or the other one, which he might have reached from his gun-case and put there 1 The gun-case was fast, and she had no means of ascertaining. There was an old-fashioned piece of furniture, half bureau, half chest, in the bedroom, black with age, very long and narrow. Mr. Yorke had laughed when this caught his eye on their taking possession of the house. " Why, it's long enough," said he, in a joking way, " to put a coffin in." He had appropriated it to himself for his private use, and this was the plague-spot of dread to Mrs. Yorke ; if the gun was in the house concealed, it was there. She had been to the box of tools, and by dint of exertion she contrived to bring the bureau from the wall. Her inten- tion was to break in the back, satisfy herself, and then replace the furniture. Knock, knock ! hammer, hammer ! Two ser- vants were at home ; Charlotte in the nursery, the cook in the kitchen ; the rest were at church. Whether they heard the noise, or, hearing it, what they might think, Mrs. Yorke did not stop to inquire ; her resolution was desperate. She per- 340 THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. severed, and at length the wood was stove in. Not space enough yet, but she soon made it so. Alas ! she did not require a second glance. On the very- top of all, quite at the back, lay the gun, broken. How many pieces she did not count, she could not have touched them for the whole world ; they were wet, as if they had been soaked in water for the purpose of washing, and they lay on a suit of wet shooting-clothes. Had he got into a pool, as he came home that night, to wash away traces % Probably. Mrs. Yorke staggered away and sat down, pale and sick. Beyond all doubt, her husband was Edward Janson's murderer. Again she dragged up her shaking limbs, and, leaving everything as she found it, save for the great hole, pushed the bureau back to its place. The first time her husband opened it, he Avould see the hole, and detect what she had done. She cared not ; henceforth, there was little that she woidd care for in Hfe. She took up the heavy hammer and the chisel, and was concealing them under her black silk apron, lest she should be met going downstairs on her way to the tool-box, when a quick knock came to the chamber door right in front of her. It startled her into a scream, which she could not have prevented had her life depended on it. " Please ma'am, it's only me," said the cook's voice. And what Mrs. Yorke answered was a mystery to herself ; but the servant rejoined — "It's a stranger, ma'am, asking to see you directly, and won't take no denial." "With a ghastly face and a frame that shook from head to foot, Mrs. Yorke opened one of her drawers, and shut up the hammer and chisel. Then she unlocked the door, and the cook stepped inside. THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OFFORD. 341 " It's a strange lady who wants to see you ; she Why, ma'am, what's the matter? Are you not well ?" " One of my sick headaches," murmured Mrs. Yorke. " A visitor^ did you say ? I am not well enough to see any one. Go and say so." '' A few minutes' conversation only," interrupted a strange voice close at the door ; and there stood the visitor, who must have silently followed the servant upstairs. Her face, stern and pale, hore the remains of severe beauty ; and Mrs. Yorke grew sick, as unto death, with undefined fears ; for she recog- nised Mr. Janson's mother. She utterly lost her self-possession. She did not say, " Walk down to the drawing-room," or, " Walk in here ;" she only looked up with her ghastly face, the picture of terror and misery. Mrs. Janson stepped in, and closed the bedroom door, fixing her searching eyes full upon Mrs. Yorke. " I have come to ask you who murdered my son." IVIrs. Yorke felt as if her brain were turning. There stood his mother, putting that startling question, and there, at her back, were the hidden pieces of — the — gun ; there, in another spot, were the hammer and chisel. Ominous witnesses all. " Did you kill him T proceeded Mrs. Janson. Mrs. Yorke, in her perplexity and confusion, burst into tears. " I kill him !" she uttered — " / set on, and beat a man to death! It would be physically impossible. Why do you come here with so cruel a thought T " Ever since I heard the details of the crime yesterday," continued Mrs. Janson, " my thoughts have never quitted it, no, not for an hour, for my eyes last night Avere sleepless. I 342 THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OF FORD. have sought in vain for its motives. All tell me that my son had no enemy here, that he was beloved and respected. To-day I heard that you were living here, and I said to my- self, ' There, lies the clue.' You could not kill him yourself, you say ; perhaps not, but you might get it done. Did you ?" Strange to say, j\Irs. Yorke endured such words without indignation. Indignation from her ! — when the wicked instrument of his death was within a few inches ! She answered in a tone of humility, of pitiable depression. " You may spare yourself such thoughts. I would have given my own life to save his." It may be that her words struck jMrs. Janson as being the words of truth, for her voice lost some of its harshness. " Years ago you were my son's bane ; you led him on to love you, and then left him for another : what wonder, then, amidst so complete a dearth of motive for others' committing the crime, that my thoughts should turn to you T " If I did marry another, it was not that I disliked your son," answered Mrs. Yorke, in a low tone ; " it was that cir- cumstances were not favourable to my marrying him. Since we met again, on the occasion of my coming here, we have been excellent friends. Madam, I beg you to understand me — friends ; the past Avas forgotten by both of us ; it was never once recalled or alluded to by. either ; your son has attended my child, and brought him through a dangerous illness. Pray, put away these dreadful ideas," added Mrs. Yorke, with emotion. " Your son was the last person in the world whom I would have injured." " What makes you look so ill T demanded Mrs. Janson, abruptly. " It appears like mental illness, not bodily." " I have no objection to tell you that I have felt ill ever THE FOGGY NIGHT AT OF FORD. 343 «ince tlie news of the horrible crime was brought to our house — as I should do had its victim been any other friend. And to-day," she added, with a faint colour at her invention, " I have a sick headache, which kept me from church, and causes me to look as I do now. Believe me, I knew no more of the crime than you did, Avho were far away." " ;N"or your husband '?" " My husband !" echoed Mrs. Yorke, with well-feigned astonishment. "What motive could my husband have in wishing him ill ! Quite the contrary ; had I not chosen him, when I could have chosen Mr. Janson 1" Ah, poor thing ! was it wrong that she should appear thus brave in his defence, guilty though she believed him to be, in her breaking heart ? He was her husband ; he was the father of her children. Mrs. Janson's keen eyes Avere upon her. Could she bear them, and stand the ordeal ? " Mrs. Janson," said she, rising, and assuming a courageous, open tone, " you must search elsewhere for the guilty parties — not in our house." Mrs. Janson probably thought so. She likewise rose. "Years ago, Maria Saxonbury — I beg your pardon, jNIrs. Yorke — I told you that should your future existence be one of retribution, you had richly earned it. Should it have been so, or should it ever become so, you may remember my words," Ay, she did remember them — remembered them with an awful shudder. Her future existence ! Mrs. Janson walked to the threshold of the chamber, and turned her gaze full lie might sleep, "when driven forth the previous night, he had taken the more sheltered and well-remembered path tlirough the grounds, in preference to the slippery highway. Awk- ward from his lameness, deceived by the snow, he had wandered from the path, missed his footing at the edge of the dyke, and fallen into it. Upon essaying to rise, he found he could not ; he believed his leg was broken. Too far off to attract attention, though he had called at intervals until strength and voice were alike exhausted, there he had lain ever since. jMr. IS'orth was not of a demonstrative nature ; but there may arise moments in all men's lives where emotion has its way more or less. He could not get to Archie in the dyke without stooping down in the most inconvenient fashion, but he held one uplifted hand between his, stroking it tenderly, as a fond mother may stroke her little child's. " If you can find one or two men, uncle, just to carry me to the inn and to get a surgeon?" To the inn, indeed ! ~So, no. Mr. ISTorth bounded along the path to his home at a faster rate than he had tried since his days of youth and slenderness. The tears were raining from his eyes at the wondrous mercy vouchsafed to him ; and in the glad thankfulness that his sin was not irredeemable, his mouth, like unto David's of old, could once more open : " God be merciful to me, a sinner !" They carried Archie in. The surgeon was there and did what was requisite, and said he Avould want good nursing. Mr. North gently answered that he would be tended as his own son. Millicent was admitted then. Their hands met together, their eyes looked straight into each other's, and they knew that the boy and girl love had lasted in all its bright- ness ; that sadness and separation were now over. 396 MR. NORTHS DREAM. " To think that he should have hiin there for eighteen liours with nothing to eat !" hamented Miss Xorth, who was of a practical turn. " But I didn't, Frances," spoke up Archie. " I had by chance a hard biscuit in my pocket, and eat it this morning." " After all, it has been a blessed Christmas-day," mur- mured Mr. North to himself that night in his bed-chamber, as he put up his hands reverently. " Glory to God in tlie highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men !" MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. PAET THE FIEST. I. THE mother's grief. The somewhat cold and yet wintry sun threw its rays on one of earth's fair and busy scenes in the spring afternoon of a year gone by. By the side of, but not close to, a factory, which was giving forth its tokens of life and work, stood a white house, built in the villa style, large enough for a gentleman's residence; pretty enough, with the artistically laid out grounds and gardens in the midst of which it stood, to attract the attention of travellers on the approximate high road. Other factories might be seen, near and distant, most of them considerably larger than this one, and other houses surrounded by their grounds, as well as poorer dwellings, cottages, and huts. This place, situated in the heart of Eng- land, was called Wexmoor, and the factory first mentioned was known as Wexmoor Factory. Not many years before, this was the only factory in the district, and those larger and better ones had sprung uj) since. Its owner was a gentleman of the name of Martyn ; and the white villa, built by himself some thirty years previously, was the residence of himself and his familv. 398 MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. Those cold thin rays are falling on it, and especially on a yonng lady who is standing at its entrance-door, between the pillars, drawing on her gloves. A charming-looking girl of twenty-two, with a thoughtful face — very thoughtful for one so young — and steady, somewhat deeply-set eyes of dark blue. She is attired quite plainly, you see : a violet-coloured merino dress, a warm grey shawl, and a cottage straw bonnet, trimmed with straAV-coloured ribbons to match. It was long ago, I have told you ; before the disfiguring fashions of these later years were invented. Those cottage bonnets of twenty, or thirty years back made a pretty face look aU the prettier. This was Miss Helen Martyn, the second daughter of the manufacturer. He had four daughters — Elizabeth, Helen, Sophia, and a little one of fourteen, much afflicted, named Amy, He never had a son, and his wife had died when Amy was born. Elizabeth, the eldest, acted as mistress of the house, and as a sort of mother to the rest, though she was but two years older than Helen, Helen Martyn drew on her gloves slowly, and then paused and looked thoughtfully out before her, far into the distance. It almost seemed as if she were hesitating whether to go on •or not. At last she descended the white steps, wound round the broad gravel drive which surrounded the lawn before the house, and passed out at the front gate. In turning to the right she nearly ran against a gentleman, who was about to enter it with a hasty step, on his way to the factory. It was Mr. Martyn, a wiry-built man, with a pale, hard face, and cold grey eyes, bearing not the least resemblance to his daughter. " Where are you going, Helen f " For a walk, papa," He went on, saying no more. But ere he had well got JfAETYJV WARE'S TEMPTATION. 399 tlirougli the gate, Helen, ' in her perfect truthfulness, her natural antagonism to anything like deceit, turned and spoke — she was conscious that to take a walk was not the sole ohject of her leaving home this afternoon. In point of fact, it may almost be said that she was going out in disobe- dience ; for the place she thought to visit, if not positively forbidden in words, had been tacitly interdicted to Mr, Martyn's daughters. " Papa, I should like to see Mrs. Eutt once more before she leaves on that long voyage. I thought of calling to say good-bye to her." " You can do as you choose," replied Mr. Martyn. He did not speak in displeasure, but carelessly, as if the point were not worth consideration, and he hastened on towards the house as he spoke. Helen, feeling quite a weight removed from her mind, went away with a light step. Continuing her road past the factory she soon came to a shady green lane. Kearly half a mile down this lane was a low-built cottage. It looked very pretty in summer, with its clematis-covered walls, and its rippling brook purling through its homely garden. Ah ! it was a sad tale ; and Helen Martyn's heart sank as she approached the cottage, with that feeling of " not liking" to enter it, Robert Eutt had been employed by Mr. Martyn for the past six or eight years. He was one of his principal men — a sort of overlooker of the rest — and earned three pounds per week. About four weeks back he had married a widow lady from a distance. The word " lady" is really not misapplied. It was said she was a lady by birth and educa- tion, but had fallen into very poor circumstances. It was said, also, that she had believed Eutt, who was a good-looking 400 MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. and superior-mannered man, occupied a liigher position in Mr. Martyn's works than that which she found he did occupy. Eo this as it might, she had shown outwardly no disappoint- ment, but had accommodated herself to her position, as the wife of a working man, from the first hour Eutt brought her to this cottage at Wexmoor. Mr. Martyn's daughters soon made acquaintance with her ; and Helen, at least, grew to like and respect her, and to like very much her young son, then a boy of about eleven years. Things had gone on smoothly until now ; or, to speak with strict correctness, until a few months ago. Late in the Oc- tober month of the previous autumn, a circumstance had occurred unpleasant in itself and grievously disastrous in the results it vv'as to bring forth. Eobert Eutt, thoroughly well- conducted in general — otherwise he Avould never have been retained in his post by Mr. INIartyn — was betrayed one day into drinking, and went into the factory in a half-mad state. The man was too well aware of the effect drink had upon him ; much worse than it has upon some men ; and it was so rare he transgressed that his sobriety had grown into a proverb. 8till, he had been in this state before — had gone into the factory so — and his master, vexed and angry, had threatened him with dismissal did he ever so forget himself again. As ill-luck would have it, Mr. Martyn met him on this day as he was rolling in, shouting and singing. Some sharp words ensued. The master ordered him off the premises : Eutt, with some dim idea of proving that he was not incap- able, waited his opportunity and stole in afterwards, when !Mr. Martyn's back was turned. He attempted to work ; he n\eddlcd Avith the machiner}^, and the result was that a large 21ARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 401 quantity of work was spoilt and the macliinery almost fatally- injured. It was a loss that Mr. Marty n could not well bear • his business had decreased of late years, and something like ■embarrassed circumstances were beginning to show themselves ; hence, perhaps, his anger was more implacable than it might otherwise have been. In vain Eutt, when he came to his senses, humbly expressed his contrition, begged to be taken on again, promised that he never would again so forget him- self as long as his life should last. Mr. Martyn would not listen. With telling reproaches, with scornful words, he drove the man from him, declaring that, so far from forgiving him, it was his intention to refuse him a character, and to bring him to public punishment for the damage he had done. Before the moon, then at the full, had quite completed her monthly course, Rutt was dead. In going in search of work to a neighbouring town, it was supposed he came in contact with an infectious disorder : at any rate, he was seized with it, and died in delirium. His death did not soften the feeling of j\Ir. Martyn. That gentleman felt the past grievance of his loss as keenly as before, and in this his daughters shared. They sent no sym- pathizing inquiry to the poor wife ; they did not vouchsafe her a kind word. It was not perhaps that they did not feel for Iwr, but the loss their father had sustained left its bitter sting in their hearts. What ^vith the spoilt machinery, the destroyed goods, the waste of time and the incapability to fulfil orders which this entailed, INIr. Martyn's loss could not be estimated at less than a thousand pounds. A formidable sum to the imagination of these young girls, and all the more for- midable because of a dim fear, which had been for some time forcing itself upon their suspicions, that their father could 2G 4U2 MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. not afford it. Helen alone felt deeply for Mrs. Eutt. In Helen Martyn's strict sense of justice, she asked her sisters how hlame could possibly reflect upon the wife : she pointed out that the poor wife was even more deeply injured than they were. But she did not dare to call on her and express this : it Avould have seemed like flying in the face of her father's sense of injury. Yes, in one sense, the disastrous results fell worst on Mrs. Eutt, for she was left without a living or the means of gain- ing one. Eutt was a man who had lived up to every shilling of his wages. He liked to see his wife comfortable, to main- tain a plentiful home : he was attached to her boy, now a fine lad of fifteen, and had yielded to her wish of keeping him at school, a good day grammar-school in the neighbour- hood, not yet putting him out to earn anything. It is a fact scarcely to be believed, only that there are unhappily too many such facts in the world, that when Eutt died, there was not one penny of ready money in the house. Except for the furniture, Mrs. Eutt was left entirely destitute : and the furniture of that small house was not of great value. Many and many a time did Helen Martyn Avonder what that poor woman would do, and how she was getting on, or would get on. Gossip spreads in a small locality, and the young ladies heard news from time to time of Mrs. Eutt. Pirst, it was said she was living by disposing of the lighter trifles of her household ; next, that her son, who had left the school at Christmas, had found a temporary place at the doctor's, to carry out the physic bottles ; by which he earned his food and a shilling or two a week. And last, they heard that Mrs. Eutt and her boy were going to America. This last news, much as it surprised Mr. INIartyn's daughters, MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 403 proved to be correct. Mrs. Eutt had a brother settled near "Washington, a farmer j she had written to him on the occur- rence of her great misfortune, and after the passing backwards and forwards of two or three letters, he had offered her an asylum with him, and to find some employment for her son in the capital. What was perhaps more to the purpose in her temporary strait, he had offered to send the passage money for one of them, hoping she would be able to find the other herself. And this, Mrs. Eutt, as it was known, had contrived to do. The very man who had succeeded to her husband's post at the works made arrangements with her for taking the house off her hands, and as much of the furniture as she could leave in it. That was not much. Her husband had died the first week in ]S"ovember, it was now the end of March, and she had had only that furniture to live upon, parting Avith it piece- meal. Little wonder, then, that it was with difficulty she could save sufficient money for only her own passage, let alone her boy's. She had no friends in the neighbourhood, no advisers : she had never made a friend or sought an acquaintance since she came into it ; and the cause is easily explainable. Her position as Eutt's wife debarred her from associating Avith the superior inhabitants, and her own previous habits of gentility forbade her placing herself on a level with the wives of such men as her husband. It is true the Miss Martyns had often gone to see her, but only as the wife of one of their father's men in whom they took an especial interest. All preliminaries were arranged, and she was to sail from Liverpool at the week's end ; was to quit "Wexmoor on the morrow. The Miss Martyns heard this : heard that the pro- mised letter from her brother, Avhich was to contain the re- 26—2 404 MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. luittance, had come that very morning ; and Helen had de- termined to run down to bid her good-bye. To let her go away for ever "without a God-speed; without a word of kindness to blot out the remembrance of the calamity caused by her husband, and for which she was in no way to blame, struck cruelly on the girl's heart. So Helen told her sisters what she should do, and put her things on ; and when you saw her hesitating on the steps, she was de- liberating whether to go into the factory in passing, and ask her father's consent, or whether she should go first, and confess afterwards that she had been. The meeting him decided it. i\Irs. Eutt, in her widow's cap, was seated in the parlour when she entered ; a pretty room once, but nearly bare now ; and Helen started when she saw her. Helen Martyn had seen grief in her lifetime, but scarcely such grief as this. She sat on a low seat, and was swaying herself to and fro in what looked like the extremity of human sorrow, her head bent for- ward, the tears slowly coursing down her colourless cheeks. It must be confessed that Helen somewhat wondered ; Mrs. Rutt was leaving no ties in the place that she should grieve after them, and she had never pretended to be attached to it. She rose from her low seat at sight of Helen, and dried her eyes as well as she could ; but the look of anguish remained. " Oh, Miss Helen ! Have you indeed come once again 1" " I could not let you go without saying farewell, and giving you our good wishes," was Helen's gentle answer. "Mj^ sisters have charged me to say everything that was kind for them. I hope you and Bob will get safely to your journey's end, and find a happy home there." The words seemed to tell upon her terribly. She burst MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 405 iuto a renewed fit of grief, so violent that Helen was alarmed. In vain Mrs. Eutt essayed to speak ; nothing came forth hut sohs, Helen, feeling shy and uncomfortable, knew not what to say : she came to the conclusion that all this must be for the loss of her husband. At length the sobs grew lighter. " Miss Helen, pray pardon me ! You don't know what it is to part with your only child, to leave him alone to the mercy of the world without guide or protector, to go away from him with scarcely a prospect of ever seeing him again on earth. It is like the parting of death. It has seemed nothing less to me." Helen could not understand. Amidst blinding tears, amidst struggles to suppress the emotion that went weU-nigh to choke her, the explanation was given by Mrs. Eutt. The letter had indeed been delivered to her that morning from. America, but the promised remittance was not in it. Her brother had expressed his sorrow at being unable to send it ; he had a sufficiently abundant home, but ready money was scarce with him ; and he hoped she would manage to find it herself. " It is an impossibility," she gasped. " I have no means of finding it, I have no friend in the world to help me. There wUl be expenses, too, I hear, in embarking, that I had not bargained for, and I shall have to sell some of my clothes to get away myself." Helen felt shocked and grieved. " \'\Tiat will be done 1" she asked. " All that can be done is, that I must abandon my boy — it seems to me like abandoning him," was the sobbing answer. " I must go myseK : I ought to have been out of this house on Lady-day, IMiss Helen, and now it's the twenty-ninth. I must go ; I have not a place to put my head in in the old 406 MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. country^ not a bit or sup to support me : and my boy must stop behind and get a living as lie best can. I'd sacrifice my- self for my boy, if I knew how to sacrifice myself; I would almost rather part with life than part with him." " And how much would it cost to take him V Helen breathlessly asked. '' I had expected ten pounds," she answered. " It was what my brother said he'd send. We could have made it do Miss Helen. Of course we go in the cheapest way : it is some years since I could afford to be fastidious. Once on the other side, I should not mind if we had nothing left. We would find our way on foot to Washington." It was very natural that Helen Martyn's first impulse was to wish she had the money to give : but in the next moment she remembered how entirely futile was the wish. Eeady money had not been very plentiful in their home of late ; and what she and her sister Sophia had been able to get from their father, or Elizabeth supply from her housekeeping necessities, had been expended for a specified purpose, of which you will soon hear further. All that she could do was to express her heartfelt sympathy, her regret that she had not the money to give ; and she did it with a sincere, low voice, her tears standing in her eyes. Mrs. Eutt saw how genuine was the sorrow of that fair young face, how great the pain at heart, and she strove to suppress further signs of her own. But when Helen was taking leave, the sobs burst forth again uncontrolled. " You'U say a kind word to him now and then, Miss Helen, when you get the opportunity. He'U want it, poor lad, for he will soon be motherless. I shall not live long, parted from him." MABTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION'. 407 " Does he stop in 'vVexmoor V asked Helen. " Just at present. I went to tlie doctor this morning, and he will keep him on for a bit, until something turns up for him." "What can turn up for him?" wondered Helen. " ^Nothing — unless God sends it. And where he will get to sleep, or who will give him shelter, I don't know. Miss Helen," she continued in an altered tone, " I'd ask you, if I may dare, when the weddings are to be 1" A soft blush rose to Helen jNIartyn's cheek. " In about a month," she answered. " Towards the end of April." " May heaven bless you both, and the gentlemen you have chosen !" aspirated Mrs. Eutt, in a low tone. Helen was walking slowly towards home, thinking upon the poor widow's grief, upon the many sources of sorrow there seemed to be in the world, when a slim, active boy, with a pleasing face and large intelligent dark eyes, came running round the corner of the lane. It Avas Bob Eutt — as the boy was universally called. He had, of course, no right to the name of Eutt, but he had never been called any thing else since he came into the neighbourhood : his Christian name happening to be the same as that of his step-father, Eobert, had no doubt contributed to the habit. He raised his cap as he came up to Helen, far more as a gentleman would raise it than a working boy. " I have been to see your mother, Bob," she said. " This is sad news." "Was she grieving much. Miss Helen?" he eagerly asked. *' I could bear it for myself; but I can't bear it for her." " But you will be sorry to be separated from her, Bob ?" 408 MAETYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. " Sorry !" lie echoed, swallowing down a lump iu his throat, and turning his face out of sight of Helen's. " When the letter came this morning, it seemed that I coidd have moved heaven and earth to go "with her, and — and . But it's of no use talking of it," he added, after a broken pause. " Thank you for your sympathy, Miss Helen." " Oh, Bob, I am sorry ! Perhaps you Avill get out to her sometime," " Yes, Miss Helen, perhaps so, if she lives. But she's one to take things dreadfully to heart." He raised ^his cap again and went a-way. And Helen Martyn looked after him with misty eyes through the fading light of the evening sky. II. HELEX S KNIGHT-ERRANTRY. "What we should all do without money it is quite impossible to conceive. But one thing appears indisjiutable : that if the ■world could go on without it, a great many of the crosses and heartburnings we are pleased to make our own, and hug to us as if we liked them, would never occur. When Helen Martyn entered her home, the drawing-room was lighted and the tea waited on the table. They generallj'- dined in the middle of the day : it suited Mr. Martyn's business habits, and it suited Amy's health. Elizabeth sat before the tea-tray, ready to make it as soon as her father came in. He often kept it waiting, and she generally pro- vided herself with some little trifle of work, not to waste the MARTY N WARE'S TEMPTATION. 4u^ time, as she had now. She was sewing some lace edging to a strip of thin muslin ; it was for a nightcap border for one of her sisters. She looked older than her age considerably : any one might have taken her to be seven or eight and twenty, with her grave manners and her somewhat old- fashioned style of dress. The young girl, Amy, stood by her side, holding her chair : a stranger might have observed with Avonder a certain peculiar twitching in this child — in her face, her arms, her whole body. She had had in her life, at long extended periods, three attacks of paralysis, the first haviug occurred when she was little more than an infant, and its signs never left her — as you may see by these never- ceasing twitches. A great deal of money had been spent upon her : fresh doctors, sea-side visits ; everything possible to be thought of was tried. She did not get much better ; but the medical men thought if she could go over the next two or three years without another attack, she might possibly recover. Seated opposite Elizabeth, her elbow on the table, and her face wearing a discontented look, was Sophia. She resem- bled Helen much in features, but her eyes had the hard look of her father's. Poor Sophia was apt to make a grievance of trifles ; and she thought she had a very great grievance to be miserable over just now. Helen also shared in it, and deemed herself as hardly used as Soj^hy. To explain this, it must be stated that Helen and Sophia were both engaged to be married. Helen to a gentleman in London, of the name of "Ware ; Sophia to the Eev. John Gazebrook, You heard Helen tell Mrs. Eutt that the wed- dings were to be in about a month. All being well, the two sisters would be married on the same day. Keither match 410 MARTY N WARE'S TEMPTATION. Avas particularly eligible in a pecuniary point of view. Mr. "Ware was the secretary to a public company; liis salary three hundred a year; and the clergyman was incumbent of a small living in Wales, Avorth not much more than half that sum. But Mr. Martyn had not deemed it well to refuse his consent. He believed both the gentlemen, when they repre- sented that their circumstances would be sure to grow better in time ; and he told his daughters that if they chose to risk it, to live quietly until these better circumstances came, they might. Hope is strong in the human heart — very strong in those beginning life. Mr. Gazebrook looked forward to a good fat living ; and Edward Ware to at least a doubled salary. But the weddings, or rather the preparations for them, had brought forth some vexations ; and Sophia was dilating upon these as she sat there with her elbow on the tea-table, and her chin leaning on her hand. The sum which Mr. jNIartyn had allowed his two daughters for purchasing what people call the trousseau, was miserably small ; at least it had proved so in the laying out. When given forth to them — and, not to make a mystery, its amount may as well be stated : thirty pounds each — Elizabeth, somewhat close in her views, pro- nounced it sufficient. In fact, it was Elizabeth who had sug- gested the amount to her father, though she did not choose to confess it : sixty pounds for the two would be ample, she said to him. But Avhether the young ladies had gone randomly to Avork, and bought too expensive things at the onset, or Avhether it AA^as really inadequate to their AA'ants, certain it Avas that the money was gone ; and Avhile necessaries had been laid in, most of the finery remained to be bought. Even Elizabeth had come to the conclusion that more money must MARTYK WARE'S TEMPTATION. 411 be had ; slie helped them a little from her housekeeping allowance, but that did not do much good. They had been permitted to make their own jDurchases, upon the express condition that every article should be paid for when it was bought. " We had better not have been married at all, if this is to be it," grumbled Sophia. " I have not got a single new silk dress yet, except the wedding dress. !N"either has Helen." "You have plenty of old dresses," said Elizabeth, who deemed it policy to make the best of affairs to her sisters. " One or two of them have scarcely been worn at all ; they are equal to new." " Old ones ! what are old ones T retorted Sophia, getting Grosser and more cross. " IS'ever was such a thing heard of, as going to your new home with a heap of old things, and no new ones. Besides, I must have a lace mantle. How am I to get through the summer without a lace mantle ?" Elizabeth went on with her nightcap border, saying nothing. She had a habit of being silent when found fault with by her sisters, Sophia resumed : " It's a perfect disgrace ! Thirty pounds for girls in our station of life ! K mamma had been alive, she would repre- sent things fitly to papa ; I am sure of it. You ought to, Elizabeth. I can't make it out : papa's not a stingy man." " Look at papa's losses of late, Sophy ; at the one caused by Eutt; and his business has been dwindling down and down through want of capital," urged Elizabeth, in a low tone. " "What are we to do for gloves 1" was Sophy's answer. " We can't have less than a dozen pairs altogether, dark and light and white, and we have not the money for a single pair ! 412 MARTYN WARFS TEMPTATION. I wisli you were going to be married yourself, Elizabetli ; you'd know what it is." " You may manage with Avhat things you have," was EUza- beth's answer. " I will do what I can in the matter ; but if the worst comes to the worst, you must " " Be quiet, Elizabeth ! the worst can't come to the worst. Can we be married, Helen, with what we have ?" Helen, who had sat quietly near the fire after taking off her things, looked up with the air of one pre-occupied. In comj^arison with the real need of money brought to her notice that afternoon, the present discussion jarred upon the heart as savouring of folly. " What did you say, Sophy ? Have more things? Yes, I suppose we must have them." " Suppose we must have them ! why you know we must," cried Sophy, angrily. " You were nearly crying over it this morning. You know you were." Quito true. Helen Martyn had nearly cried over her wardrobe in the morning, wondering what her husband and his friends would think of it, upon her going amongst them with so scanty a one. Scanty in comparison with the young lady's ideas, you understand. " Thirty pounds for the wedding outfit of Mr. Martyn's daughters !" repeated Sophy, working herself into a fume. " We ought to have had a hundred, at the very least. When Adelaide Gibson was married her things cost two hundred pounds. Helen, we shan't be able to afford a single evening dress." "And you don't want them," said Elizabeth to this. " Evening dresses you do not want ; you have enough." " They have been worn I don't know how many times," shrieked Sophy. MARTY N WARE'S TEMPTATION. 413 " They look good, and they will be new where you are 'going. For the matter of that, Sophy, it is not to be expected that you will have much evening visiting in that remote and quiet place. Helen may have more in London. Amy, dear, you are shaking my chair." "And I shall want dresses for it," said Helen, rousing her- self from her recollections. " Oh dear ! I wish I was rich !" " I wish Ave could have tea !" interposed Sophy, going to another temporary trouble. " I have fifty things to do after- Avards, and a long letter to write." " Talking of letters, did you know that papa heard from Mr. Ware to-day, Helen?" asked Elizabeth, " x^o ; did he T cried Helen, eagerly. " Papa came in for some books he wanted this afternoon, and told me then ; he forgot to mention it before. Mr. Ware is coming to-morrow for a day or two." The pleasure which the information brought to Helen's face soon changed to pain. This embarrassment about the ward- robe seemed all the worse from the near prospect of the presence of Mr. Ware. Elizabeth suddenly inquired whether she had seen Mrs. Eutt. " Yes," replied Helen. " She was in the greatest trouble ; I never saw distress like it before. She has to leave Bob behind her." " Why r Helen explained. Miss Martyn did not seem to think much of it, and Sophy was too entirely absorbed in her own ill-humour to listen. They did not witness her distress, thought Helen. Just then, Mr. Martyn came in, and tea began. Sophia Avould touch nothing, and upon her father asking the cause, she burst into tears. 414 MAETl'N WARE'S TEMPTATION. " Hey-day !" cried he. " If you would but allow us a little more money for our things, papa," she sobbed. " We went over the list to-day, what we have and what we want. We have got nothing, hardly." " I expect that you have been spending the money fool- ishly," said i\Ir. Martyn. "ISTo, papa. All the things that you* Avould call foolish remain to buy yet. Papa, we ought to leave home a little decent as to clothes." He made no reply then, but when he had finished his tea, he drew out his pocket-book, took from it two bank-notes, and gave one to Helen and one to Sophy. " ]^ow, understand me," said he, " this is all you will have. Had circumstances been with me as they have been, a score of pounds more or less would be of no moment, but that is not the case now. I am doing all I can to retrieve my position, and I believe I should have gone far to retrieve it by this time, but for the conduct of Eutt. That, with what you have had, will make forty pounds each, and if you can- not buy enough finery for a weddiug with forty pounds, all I can say is, that you must keep single." He quitted the room as he spoke, and returned to the factory. Elizabeth took the note out of Helen's hand, and looked at its amount — ten pounds. " I am glad he listened to me," she observed. " Listened to you !" cried Sophy. " Yes. When papa came for those books this afternoon, I spoke to him, asking him to let you have a little more if he could, as it was difficult to spin out the thirty pounds. You may buy the gloves now, Sophy." MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 415 Sophy's eyes were sparkling. Ten pounds certainly would not purchase silk gowns, and evening gowns, and gloves, and lace mantles, and a hundred other things, but it had come unexpectedly, and she was not in the mood just then to make calcidations. And Helen ? Helen took a piece of paper and a pencil, and dotted down the things she would like, and their pro- bable cost. Upon .adding up the sum total, she found it came to just nine-and- twenty pounds. So she turned the paper to the other side, and put down what she most wanted, — what she thought she could not do Avithout, and added i;p that. Fifteen pounds five shillings, this time ; and there was notliing for it but to go over it again Avith fresh sub- traction. While doing this, one sole thought kept presenting itself to her ; it worried her brain, it thumped against her con- science. To do without these things would not be a matter of life or death — and that other matter, to which she might apply the money, almost was such. Presently she put the paper and pencil in her pocket, and went upstairs to her room, and there she sat down seriously to think. Helen Martyn had strong innate consciousness, a powerful sense of the just and the unjust, a keen perception of the precept : Do as you would be done by. Her conscience was aroused, and she could not lull it to rest. Should she use this money upon herself, or shoidd she divert it from its purpose, and give it to Mrs. Eutt 1 For one thing she scarcely saw how she was to manage without the additional clothes, and it would certainly be a very great smart to her vanity to do without tbeni ; for another, she scarcely knew whether the money was so entirely her own 416 MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. property tliat she might give it, or be justified in giving it. On the other hand, tliere was the performing a good action, the helping that poor woman in her strait of need, there might be the changing of the whole current of the boy's future life. If Bob remained here, unguided, unprotected, who was to foresee what mischief he might fall into 1 This poor ten pounds might save him from it. Sorely perplexed^ — -and yet the innate conviction lay upon her that she must and should give the money — Helen Martyn bowed her head upon the bed, and breathed a word for guidance. She had been taught that wonderful truth, that those who consult God need no other guide. A very few minutes, and she went downstairs again. Sophj^ was talking her tongue out about the fresh purchases to be made on the morrow : in that moment all was couleur de rose to Sophy Martyn. " Helen, we must go out the instant breakfast's over, or we shall not be home before Mr. Ware arrives. We may leave the house at nine if we try." " Yes," replied Helen, but her tone was a somewhat hesi- tating one. "Elizabeth, I hope you will go with us. Your judgment is so good, you know. And without jo\x" added Sophy, ingenuously, " I may be spending nearly all my money in waste." " I will go if I can," said Elizabeth. " But you had better make a list to-night of the things you require. Put down the sum you can afford for each ; and do not be tempted, when in the shop, to go beyond it." " I'll do it now," said Sophy, Helen meanwhile waited until her father came in. As was 2fARTYX WARE'S TEMPTATION. 417 ■nearly sure to be the case (do not we all find it so X), because she wanted him to come in earlier than usual, he Avas con- siderably later. The clock had struck nine Avhen she heard him enter, and go into a room that Avas chiefly iised by him- self. She ran down to it. Mr. Martyn was standing with his back to the door, search- ing apparently for something in his bureau, the lid of wliich he held open. Helen advanced and stood near nntil he had leisure to attend to her. In a minute he turned to her with a questioning glance. " That ten-pound note that you have given me, papa*: may I spend it in any way that I please ?" " To be sure you may," replied Mr. Martyn, with a slight look of surprise. " I mean, papa, may I lay it out in any way T she repeated. " Suppose I Avished to appropriate it to something quite different from clothes — may I consider it entirely mine to do sol" " You can do Avhat you like with it," he said. " My private opinion is, that the money I previously gave you was sufficient Avithout this. However, you have got it." Helen Avent upstairs, put on her bonnet and shaAvl, and stole quietly from the house. It was a fine moonlight night, and she had no fear of going alone. She knew that the money, to be of use, must be given that night : Mrs. Eutt had told her that she should be away on her road to Liver- pool with morning light. As she was turning into the lane, she met the boy, Bob. He deemed himself perfectly alone, and he was giving vent to his emotion in loud sobs as he walked : loud and distressing they sounded in the still night. " Bob, is it you ?" 27 418 MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. Ashamed, at being caught so, Bob turned his face away, and pretended to whistle a song. Helen would not appear to have noticed it. " I want to say a few words to your mother, Bob. Is she alone ?" " Yes, she's quite alone. I'll Avalk with you. Miss Helen." They went along side by side ; Helen steadily ; Bob rather noisily. ,The boy was exercising his legs and his tongue, trying to make it appear that such a thing as weep- ing, for a bold young man like himself, was amongst the physical impossibilities. Sirs. Butt was upstairs, but came down when she heard them. She was not crying, but the settled look of despair upon her face would have wrung Helen ]\Iartyn's heart, but for the secret she held within her. She was a shy, timid hand at giving, feeling quite as uncomfortable in it as Bob had felt at being caught weeping : and the explanation was given, and the ten-pound note laid down, more awkwardly than graciously. But to see Mrs. Butt's joy! — to see the changed counten- ance of poor Bob as he stood in a corner, his lips apart, his bright colour fading from his cheeks with emotion ! Helen's eyes Avere wet, as the blessing she had given came home to heart, and I fear Bob in that moment looked upon her as the most real angel he had ever had conception of. But Mrs. Butt had scruples in taking it. She feared ]\Iiss Helen Martyn had procured it at some great sacrifice or in- convenience, " No ; I will tell you the trutii about it," said Helen, can- didly. " It has been no inconvenience to get it, for papa gave it me unexpectedly this evening ; and the parting with it will not entail much sacrifice," she added' in a cheerful jVAETYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 419 tone. " It was given me to buy additional things for my marriage, Mrs. Eutt, but I can do without them. It is better that I should be married with a less extensive Avardrobe than I had deemed necessary, than that Bob should be left behind you here." She had no time to listen to the heartfelt thanks, to the prayers for her own welfare ; she must hasten home again, lest her absence should be discovered, and cause a commotion. Bob Eutt followed her out in silence, to see her home. And in silence they proceeded along the lane. Bob did not speak : his heart was full ; and Helen was feeling, as she had never yet felt it in her life, the truth of that golden pre- cept — It is more blessed to give than to receive. She was asking herself in wonder how she could have put, even for a moment, the question of her own finery against this good work. At the end of the lane they were in the bustle and lights of TVexmoor, and Helen stopped. " You need not come any farther. Bob. I can run on by myself now." " I'll go with you to your door. Miss Helen." " No, I would rather go alone. I am all but there. Good- bye, Bob, I wish you all good wishes." " Miss Helen," he said, clasping the hand that was ofiered him between both of his, and struggling hard to subdue all outward emotion, " I shall never forget what you have done this night. I am sure that my mother will repay you as soon " " ISTo, no, Bob, I don't want to be repaid," she interrupted : *' I shall be going from here almost directly, you know. I hope you will get on in the land you are going to, and that will be my repayment. Fare you well." 420 MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. She hastened on, leaving the boy looking after her, his heart full, his gratitude shining through his face. Bob's first thought was to wish he was a groAvn-up man and a gentleman, that he might marr}^ Miss Helen Martyn, instead of Mr. Ware. He deemed it impossible there could be two Helen Martyns in the world. With the morning, Eeleu had to tell what she had done. It Avas quite impossible that she could suddenly decline to make any more purchases, without confessing the cause — that her money was gone ; and equally impossible not to be obliged to disclose Avhat had become of it. Elizabeth called her foolish ; Sophy opened her cold grey eyes, and wondered whether Helen was mad. '' The whole of it given !" she reiterated, " why, you can't buy one single thing more ! What icill you do T " I shall manage very well with what I have," Avas Helen's answer. " We have a very good stock of things, you know, Sophy ; and I shall contrive sundry changes in my old dresses to make them look like neAv. I lay aAvake last night thinking how it could be done." Yes ; it is wonderful hoAv different things look in contrasted aspects of mind. When Helen, like Sophy, had felt angry and mortified over the small sum allowed them, she regarded her stock of clothes Avith the utmost disparagement ; but now that she unshed to make them do, tliat she put cheerfully the best face upon the matter, they seemed really good enough and extensive enough for anything she could wish. Ah, my friends, half the worry of life Avould be soothed, if A\^e could bring our own rebellious minds into a more accommodating frame. But Helen had to encounter worse than the reflections of MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 421 licr sisters — the astonislied auger of lier fiitlier. Mr. Martyn Avas really displeased : perhaps all the more so because the llutts had been the objects of Helen's bounty. But in any case he would have looked upon it in an absurdly ridiculous light : as we look upon some of the feats of chivalry of the old days of romance, and deem them unsuitable to these. He reproached Helen, telling her that money was not so plentiful with him, and that if she had no need of it she should have given it back to him. " You told me I might use it as I pleased, papa," was Helen's deprecating answer. " I asked you if I might." But the reminder only made Mr. Martyn more angry. In point of fact, he had not given much thought to the matter when Helen applied to him, carelessly supposing that if she did not wish to spend it upon clothes, it was only because she had set her heart upon some other sort of superfluity. Helen felt thankful that the Eutts were really gone, lest in his displeasure he might be for ordering her to reclaim the money from them. Mr. Ware arrived in the course of the day, and the story was told to him. Without openly casting blame on her, Helen could see that, he condemned her at heart, looking upon it in the same light as her father looked, and there was a tone of ridicule in his voice when he spoke of her ^'knight- errantry," which made her cheeks burn. Poor Helen shut lierseK in her chamber, and wept bitterly. In that moment she felt tempted to wish she had not given away the money. 422 MARTYN WARES TEMPTATION, PAET THE SECOND. I. MR, vavasour's promise. The sultry summer's day Avas drawing to its close, and tlie cooler air and slight breeze which came up with the twilight was inexpressibly refreshing. On some of these London suburbs the heat of the crowded and close metropolis seems to reflect its rays, rendering them hotter than country places. In a small but very pretty drawing-room, whose windows looked over the lawn to the high road, sat two ladies on this sultry evening. One of them was not doing anything : unless anxiously watching every omnibus which came past, laden with its freight of gentlemen returning home from their labours in the city, could be called something. She is a very pleasing-looking woman, graceful and lady-lilce ; and her countenance would be even more pleasing, but for the almost iiainfully anxious look which it wears just now. You would guess her to be perhaps eight-and-thirty : in reality she is several years more, but Time has passed lightly over her. On these fair, calm, serene countenances he does not leave his mark as he does on more stormy ones. Do you recognize her ? Her eyes are dark blue, and her silky brown hair is abundant yet. She wears a pretty muslin dress, with a white lace collar, matching the lace in her open sleeves. It is Helen Martyn : or rather, Helen Ware ; for she has been Mr. Ware's wife ever since you saw her last in those old davs. JIAETYN WAEIJ'S TEMPTATION. 423 The lady opposite to her is little and thin, with (|uite a ^rey complexion, and a cap shading her remnant of scanty hair. She looks as much more than her age as Helen looks younger ; in fact, any one would take her to be the older of the two. Only note the contrast in their hands ! Helen's are small, young, delicate hands yet ; those others are pre- maturely old and Avrinkled. It is Amy Martyn. She has partially recovered from the aiffiction of her childhood, iDut it has aged her beforo her time. Time had wrought its changes. "When Mr. j\Iartyn died, and died an impoverished man, leaving nothing behind him, a grave question arose of what was to become of Amy. Elizabeth had died long before, and there was only Amy left. " She must come - to us," Helen had. said to her husband. " Yes," he replied, " I suppose she must : poor Sophy, with her cares and her children, cannot be burdened with her." Poor Sophy, indeed ! Those fond hopes of future greatness, cherished, as you may remember, by the two bridegrooms elect, had turned out but delusive ones. They often do so turn out in common life. The Eeverend Mr, Gazebrook had never been remembered in his remote "Welsh living, but lived there still ; and poor Sophy, in her small parsonage home, with her nine children, had had her temper irre- trievably soured in the struggle to bring them up, and to make both ends meet as she did it. It was clear that she could not give a refuge to Amy. Mr. "Ware had not risen, either ; he held the same situation at the same salary ; the board would have been glad to raise it, as they told him every Christmas, when they made him a present, but they could not afford it, for the company was not a rich one, and though it did not retrograde, it did not advance. Still, with 424 JIAPiTYiV WAGE'S TEMPTATION. Helen's good management they were tolerably at ease ; in luxury, as compared with Sophy; and Amy was welcomed by them. Amy made herself as nsefid as she could ; her hands were pretty steady, and she could manage plain sewing : she is at present, you see, hemming one of a dozen white handkerchiefs which lie neatly folded before her, and which are already marked with ink in full — " Martyn Ware." The orange tinge of the sun in the western sky fell on Helen's features, on the smile of hope which hovered on her j)arted lips, jiarted just then with the eagerness of expecta- tion. A city omnibus had drawn up close to the gate, and a gentleman, Avhom she could not yet see, was getting down from the other side of the roof. " Here he is, Amy." Amy Martyn glanced iip by way of answer, in time to catch the bitterness of disappointment which fell like a dark cloud on her sister's face. The gentleman had come in view, and proved to be not him for whom she was looking. " Is it not ]\Iartyn'?" asked Amy. " ISO. It is Mr. Ware." iSut do not mistake her. jS'ot because it was her husband who had aliglited did her voice fall to faintness, her heart turn to sickness, but because she had expected some one else : some one whom she feared she could not trust to remain late in town as she could her husband. A great fear had lately fallen upon Helen Ware. They had never had but one child, a son, named ]\Iartyn after hi& grandfather; and how she loved him no tongue could tell. It is not Avell ; it is not well for a woman to have one only son, for he is all too apt to become her idol. I am not saying IIARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 425 this with special reference to Mrs. Ware. She did love her hoy — none save God knew how much — but she had never spoiled him, and she was more anxious for his eternal than for his temporal welfare. Only of late had the fear fallen upon her that he was in some way going wrong. A fear that had taken hold of her very being. She dared not breathe it to others, to her husband, to Amy ; she scarcely dared breathe it to her own heart. Hoio Martyn was going wrong, or in what particular manner he was transgressing,, she could not think, did not know ; but the living fear was there. Mr. Ware came in : a tall man, with grey hair and quiet manners. Helen rose. " I thought you expected to be very late to-night, Edward?" " Yes ; but the meeting was put off' to another day. Is Martyn home T Helen answered quite carelessly, as she turned to ring the bell, " Xot yet ; I dare say he won't be long." " It will be diff"erent, then, from what it has been lately," was the remark of Mr. Ware, as he turned to leave the room. Tea came in, and they sat down to it ; Helen making it, as usual. It had grown dusk then, and the lamp was lighted. Afterwards Mr, Ware paid a visit to a friend who lived close by ; a gentleman addicted to scientific pursuits and experi- ments, which Mr. AVare was fond of joining in. But for these frequent evening absences, he might have known more of the general irregularity of INIartyn's return. Helen threw a shawl upon her shoulders, and went out to the lawn. Hot as the day had been, a damp had arisen now. ]S'obody saw her in the dark night, and she laid her head 426 JIARTYA' WAJ?rS TEMPTATION. gently upon the iron spikes of the low gate, her breath hushed to listen for the omnibuses in the distance. With the ap- pearance of each one her heart beat with renewed hope. All in vain. They passed ; they passed in succession, one after the other. Weary and sick, she turned in as the clock struck eleven. Amy had gone to bed ; she scarcely ever sat up later than ten. Her husband, as Helen knew, would not be long, for eleven was the signal for his quitting his friend. Eut not of her husband, not of Amy, did Helen think ; they were in safety. She threw herself into a chair with a sobbing sigh. Just then the roll of another omnibus was heard, and she started up. " ]^o," she said, heart-sick with the past hour and Avhat it brought, " I Avill not go, it will only be another dis- appointment ■" and she sank down again. But it came on slowly and more slowly, and at length stoj)ped. Mrs. Ware went to the door then, and looked from it. Yes ! it was her son at last. He came in at the gate, a gentlemanly young man of twenty-one, with a pale and somewhat gentle face, very much like what hers used to be. Helen waited. " Martyn," she whispered, "you are late again." '' Xot very late, mother. It is only eleven." " Where did you stay ?" " I went home Avith Vavasour, and somehow the time slipped on." "Martyn ! you always say that!" jMartyn laughed. " Yes, I think I do very often go home with him." Eeady as the replies had been, there Avas a nameless some- thing in the tone whicli grated on Helen's ear; a sort of MARTY N WARE'S TEMPTATION. 427 evasion — as if he were not telling the whole trutli. The miserable conviction lay upon her — had been upon her for some time now — that he did not tell her the whole truth ; that there was something to be concealed. lu vain she strove to draw more and more from him ; she never succeeded ; she could come at nothing certain, but she did fear Martyn was going wrong. She might never have suspected it at all, but for the picking up of a bit of paper, a torn note in ]Martyn's handwriting : it appeared to be an urgent appeal to somebody about money — some money which somebody ought to have furnished — and it stated that there was nothing before him but ruin, unless the somebody " came down" Avith it. So much she managed to make out of the torn writing. She showed it to Martyn ; but he laughed it off, and said it only concerned some fellows in their house. ]Mrs. AVare was toler- ably satisfied at the time : but the fear and the suspicion had grown upon her ever since. " Will you take anything ?" she asked him to-night. " jSTo, thank you. I suppose everybody's in bed." He sat down at the table as he spoke, carelessly opening a s. book that was on it : and at that moment Mr. Ware's step was heard outside. Seeing his son seated there, a book before him, it is pro- bable that Mr. Ware supposed he had been home some time. He began describing the fine experiments at which he had been assisting ; he was always full of them after these even- ing visits. Helen listened mechanically : she heard the words ■*' condensed air," " syphon," " electric phenomena," and many others, without the least power of connecting them. Her attention was fixed on Martyn. At first he had responded to his father, made every show of listening eagerly, of being 423 MAllTY.N WARE'S TEMPTATION. po-\veil'allv interested ; but noAv a vacant look Lad fallen on his face, a dim scale seemed to rest on liis eyes ; liis thoughts were lost in themselves, and it looked very much as if those thoughts were troublous ones. A very desirable situation, as was supposed, had been found for Martyn Ware in the house of Hill and Aukland, AVest India merchants ; and he had now been there four years. The fhst two years he earned nothing ; the third year they had given him thirty pounds ; this year he was to have sixty; the next year one hundred. In short, his prospects were sufll- ciently good, and there seemed no reason why he should not in a few years be gaining his five hundred a year salary ; other clerks were doing it. Tlie firm lived in Mincing Lane — that is, their house of business was there. Mr. Hill was the jjartner in England ; Mr. Aukland resided in Jamaica, where they had a corresponding house. A great portion of Martyn's particular duties lay at the custom-house, passing entries for goods, and such like things — but this will not interest the reader. After breakfast on the following morning, Martyn and his father went to town together, as was their general custom : they had to be at business at the same hour, ten o'clock. It was striking ten as Martyn entered the house in Mincing Lane ; he was always punctual, always attentive to his duties. Tlie head clerk of the room in which Martyn sat was already at his desk, and he looked over his spectacles ta see which of the three under him, attached to that room, was coming in. " I thought it was you, Mr. Ware. Don't take your hat oil'. This entry must be passed the first thing." " Very well," replied INIartyn. And it may as well be JLlRTYy WARE'S TEMPTATION. 429 remarked that his civility, gentlemauly mauuers, aud punc- tuality had rendered him of good report in the house. As he stood for a moment, looking at the paper the head clerk handed him, some one else came in. Quite a notable person this last, resplendently grand. He stood six feet high, was of very dark complexion, and might have been pro- nounced remarkably well dressed, but that his ornaments were profuse, and shone too much. His clothes were of the best and newest material, and well made, entirely such as a gentleman might wear. A light kid glove was on one hand, and two rings were on the other ; the cable chain crossing his waistcoat was a double one, several trinkets dangled from it, and a diamond pin glittered in his blue stock. "Good-morning, Mr. Mann," said he, raising his hat in a somewhat affected manner. " Good-morning," replied the clerk. " Be so good as step round to the post-office, Mr. Vavasour, and see if the letters are ready. The mail is in." ]VIi\ Vavasour looked thunderstruck at the order ; a little supercilious also. " / step to the post-office %" he repeated. "If you please," said the clerk, with c^uiet authority. " Young Jones is not here yet this morning, he is ill ; and Mr. Ware must go at once to the custom-house." Mr. Vavasour put on his hat and went out. Martyn, who had preceded him, was waiting at the entrance-door, looking round with an eager, questioning glance. " The West India Mail's in, Vavasour," he whispered. " So Mann says," was the reply; and the careless, drawhngj indifferent tone with which Vavasour spoke, bore a marked contrast to the anxiety of Martyn's — an anxiety that amounted to pain. 430 31 ARTY N WARE'S TEMPTATION. " You have not your letters yet V " Is it likely 1 I shall get them, I suppose, in the course of the day." " Vavasour, I am quite sick with the suspense," was the impassioned rejoinder of Martyn Ware. " I am not fit to go about my business." Mr. Vavasour laughed heartily. " I can't help it. Ware," he said, in a tone of half apology for the laugh. You are such a fidget ! Never was your equal, I should think, under the sun." " Think of the stake," said Martyn. " Stake be ignored !" cried Mr. Vavasour, pleasantly. " My good fellow, it will be all right. Such ' stakes ' are risked and got over every day." They had been walking on together ; but now their roads lay in diff'erent directions. Martyn stayed to say another word. "Will your letters be directed to Mincing Lane this time, or to your rooms f " As if I could tell ! To Mincing Lane most probably." " Well, put me out of suspense, Vavasour, as soon as you can." Vavasour nodded : and the two clerks parted. But it is very probable that Mr. Vavasour Avould fire witlx indignation did he hear himself called a clerk. The son of a wealthy West India planter, he had been sent to Europe for his education, and had received a comprehensive one ; though it may be questioned if he profited by it as greatly as he might have done. A private clergyman's first, King's College next, Germany afterAvards. Then he was placed in the house of Hill and Aukland, by the desire of his father; not with MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 431 any vie'vr of his continuing in it, but simply because Mr. Vavasour the elder deemed it expedient that he should acquire some notion of business before his return to Jamaica. Xo salary was paid to him, and he was not looked upon in the light ofja common clerk ; but he had to do what was required of him. He had entered the house the previous summer, rather more now than twelve months ago. His fame had preceded him. A rich young West Indian, coming into the house as a gentle- man, not as a clerk ! 'So wonder a commotion of expectation was excited among the regular employes ; and the commotion was not lessened when he arrived. His tall and really fine person, his very dark skin, his purple-black hair and whis- kers, his expensive style of dress, his ever perpetual new gloves of the lightest tints, and his glittering ornaments ! Of the clerks, some laughed at him, and called him a foj) ; some envied him ; all stared at him. There are young men in this London world who believe that a ring displayed on their own finger is the grandest sight in life : when Mr. Vava- sour appeared amongst them with two rings, their admiration knew no bounds. They envied him for something else — his apparently unlimited command of money. That he was supplied with money in a reprehensible degree — reprehensible, considering that he was thrown on the world without con- trol — was undoubted. Take him for all-in-all, he was an aifable, pleasant sort of laan. He made himself agreeable enough to the clerks of the house, assuming no airs over them ; but the only one with whom he formed an intimacy was Martyn Ware. Martyn was essentially a gentleman, and it was in Martyn's room that a place was assigned to Mr. Vavasour : hence, perhaps, 432 MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. the inducing causes to the close friendship that sprung up between them. Is the word "friendship" a fit one in such a case ? Scarcely, as it seems to me. That Avord ought to imply an intercourse, good, thoughtful, almost holy : but the intercourse of Mr. Vavasour and Martyn Ware was rather evil than good. Until they met, Martyn had been of unquestionably steady conduct : one of those sons for whom a mother's heart will glow in thankfulness to God, who has kept them from the temptations of the world. ]^ot so after the intimacy was formed. The word fast — so disagreeable a word to my ears, that I cannot bear to write it — might be applied in its worst signification to the manner in which Mr. Vavasour spent his evenings, sometimes his nights ; and that terribly contagious thing, example, drew ]\Iartyn into the vortex. How he hated himself ! Gambling, and money-spending, and singing-rooms, and supper-eating, may be very delightful recreations at the moment, but they do leave their sting upon the conscience of those who have been trained as was Martyn Ware. They leave something else generally — debt. Debt; embarrassment ; despair : and they had left all these on IMartyn. If Mr. Vavasour, with his large allowance, could not keep out of debt — and he did not — how was it possible for Martyn Ware to do so, sharing in the same amusements 1 Mrs. Ware suspected, as you have seen, that all was not as it should be ; she feared that Martyn was spending more than was justifiable; more, in fact, than he had to spend. She feared the habits he might be falling into; she feared the debt. Trifling debt, it may be, that her thoughts strayed to, but yet too great for IMartyn and his limited means: what would she liave done had she known the reality? MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 433 A hundred pounds — no, and a good deal beyond it — Avould not clear Martjm. Nothing weighs down a sensitive mind like debt ; and when the hourly dread of exposure is added to it, the incubus is almost greater than can be borne. With parched lips and fevered brain, Martyn "Ware proceeded to the custom-house on this day : scarcely capable, as he had confessed to Vavasour, of transacting liis work. Vavasour, who was good- natured in the main, had promised to help him out of his difficulties. He wrote home to his father to advance him money in excess of his allowance, and for the last three mails had been expecting the order for it. Some of it was for his own debts, but he intended honourably to keep his promise and help Martyn. Another mail was now in ; and Martyn, mth a sick longing, anticipated the news it had brought. When he returned to the office, which was not until past mid-day, for he had to go to the docks, he threw his fevered eyes around the room ; but Vavasour was not in it. ^Ir. Mann had gone to his dinner, and the junior clerk, Jones, who had now come, but looked pale and ill, was alone. " Is Vavasour out V asked Martyn. "He is gone," replied Jones. " Gone !" repeated Martyn, not understanding what was implied. " Gone already ?" " Gone for good, I mean," said the junior clerk. " He has left : but I suppose he'll come to see us again before sailing. A letter came in for him by the mail, and another that con- cerned him to Mr. Hill. I don't quite know about it ; but Preston thinks Vavasour has been dipping into debt prett}" freely, and that his father has stopped the supplies. The upshot is, that Vavasour has peremptory orders to go home 28 434 MARTYN WAEFS TEMPTATION. by the first packet, and the governor had him up in his room, and gave him. a precious good talking to, and then told him he miglit be off and see to his preparations. Martyn wondered whether he was in a dream. The words " his father had stopped the supplies," fell upon him with a cruel shock, causing his brain to reel. His heart-jiulses stopped, only to bound on with a rush ; his sight partiallj^ lelf him. Young Jones held out a paper. " Mr. Mann told me to give you this, if you came in before he did. You'll see what it is. He said you had better go at once to your dinner, and then come back and go over the accounts it refers to. They must be sent off by the evening's post." What Martj^n answered he never knew ; something to the effect that he did not want dinner. He took the paper, sat down in his place, put it before him on the desk, and cast his . eyes upon it. All mechanically : mechanically as a macliine works : utterly incapable was he just then of seeing or hearing anything. Young Jones was scratching away busily with a pen, and did not observe him. " When docs Vavasour sail T asked Martj'-n, when the silence had lasted some five minutes. " Well, the mail's in before its time, and the other does not go out for three days. Hill told him that if he chose he might get away by that one. Oh, Ware — I forgot to tell you ! Mr. Aukland's come." " Ah," said Martyn, with indifference. " He was expected last time, somebody said." " He is upstairs now with the governor. I have not seen him. Preston says he " The clerk dropped his words. Coming down the stairs liARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 435 then, nay, at the very door of their room, through which they must pass for egress, were Mr. Aukland and J\Ir. Hill, who in the house was irreverently styled " the governor." The junior partner had arrived in town that morning from Southampton, having travelled from Jamaica by the packet which had brought the mails. It was the first visit Mr. Aukland had made to Europe since his connnection with the house : a re- port was afloat in it that he would remain for good, partially superseding Mr. Hill, who Avas growing old and rich, and that another partner would be taken in to reside in Jamaica. Young Jones lifted his eyes with some curiosity ; Martyn AvoLild have done the same, but for the awful news just told to him touching Vavasour. Mr. Hill came in first, a bald- headed man, very fat. Mr. Aukland next ; a tall, thin, gentlemanly man of seven or eight and thirty, with dark eyes and a pleasant look. Mr. Hill halted when he reached the room, and began explaining to his partner the peculiar duties connected with it. " Where's Mr. Mann?" he asked. " Gone to dinner, sir," said j'oung Jones. "Oh — ay. "\Yhat accounts are those, Mr. Ware?" As ]\Ir, Hill put the question he approached Martyn. The stranger followed him, and they stood close to the desk. '• They are Mauresby's, sir," was Martyn's answer — and he thought himself lucky to be collected enough to answer it. " Mauresby's ? They ought to have been sent off yesterday. How is it they were not V Had it been to save Martyn's life, he could not have told why. A dim recollection arose to him that some particular cause hindered it, but memory seemed to fail him. The swinging open of the door saved him an answer. It was the 28 — 2 43G 2IARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. postman Avho entered. He M'alked straight iqj to Martyn's desk and laid down a letter. Mr. Hill had stretched out his hand for it, but the man spoke out its address aloud. " Mr. Martyn Ware." More reeling of the brain for Martyn ; more heart-sickness. He thrust it into his pocket, trying to conceal his -whitened countenance from the notice of his master. Too Avell he guessed what were the contents — a peremptory demand for money, which he had not to give. Mr. Hill suspected nothing — saw nothing. He went out with his partner, and Martyn contrived to drag through the day and its duties. The moment he was released he tore up to Westminster in a hansom cab to Vavasour's lodg- ings. It was all too true. Vavasour, in his good nature, had waited in for Martin, who, as he knew, would be sure to come. But he could not disguise the facts, however he might wish to soften them. Xo money had arrived for him. Mr. Auk- land, a friend of his father's, had come armed with credentials to see Vavasour off without delay, to see his legitimate debts paid : but not a penny-piece, save for unavoidable personal ■expenses, was he to give Vavasour. (Jld Mr. Vavasour had grown frightened and cautious. " If some one has not been writing a confounded long yarn to him about me, I'm not here !" exclaimed young Vavasour. " My asking him for a paltry three hundred extra never could have brought forth this row. Besides, I put it upon back German expenses." " What am I to do T gasped Martyn, sinking in a chair. "Do? Well, the first thing is to come along with me and have a rattling good dinner. I have had nothin"' nil MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 437 day. I shan't dislike tlie change for home, Ware. I have been getting tired lately of this fast London." How sick, how tired of it Martyn had long been, he alone could tell. " Oh, if I were but clear of it — if I were but emancipated from this horror !" had been his inward cry, day and night. Once released, not even Yavasour could have dragged him into the vortex again. But release, it seemed, was not to come, and Vavasour's light tone drove him nearly mad. " Don'tj Vavasour, for Heaven's sake ! Have you no pity for me? The ruin is at hand, and I can't escape. I'd rather throAv myself into the nearest pond than live to face it." " "Ware, look here !" answered Vavasour, with more im- pulsive feeling than he had been ever known to speak. " We are both in the same hole, and perhaps you'd never have got into it but for me. I am being helped out of it, and I swear that you shall be. The first return mail that goes out of Jamaica after my landing in it, shall bring you the money. You may trust me, old fellow, for I swear it." And jVIartyn, believing in the good faith of Yavasour, did trust him. II. THE FALL. It was a fiery temptation. It Avas a temptation that I trust you, my readers, will never be exposed to, in conjunction with its exciting cause, the grievous need of yielding ; and Martyn Ware, honourable though he was by nature, honestly as he had been reared, succumbed to it. The fraud seemed so easy, and the difficulty he was in so 438 21ARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. great ! ^^eaiiy a month after Vavasour sailed, that difficulty reached its climax, and the unhappy young man knew that, ere the morrow's sun should have run its course, all would be known. To be arrested for the debt was inevitable ; he could not hide himself as some can ; he must be at his post whether or no, and the sheriff's officer could choose his own hour for taking him, all leisurely and comfortably. To fall into this disgrace ; to forfeit his place in the house of Hill and Aukland — for that Avould be the inevitable result ; to prove to his good and dearly-loved mother what a worthless, deceitful scoundrel he had been — the thought of all this nearly turned the brain of Martyn Ware. Oh, if the good ship, then bearing the help to him which Vavasour had promised, could but skim, swiftly as a bird, over the waters ! He reposed the blindest trust in the promised help of Vavasour ; he never for a moment would allow him- self to think that it could fail him ; or, if the thought did dart across him, he sprang up from it and plunged into some vortex of daily business, escaping as it Avere from himself, for it Avas a contingency too frightful to think of. Oh, if the fair ship could but make an impossible voyage, and come in before her time ! Two weeks yet, three weeks yet — how did he know 1 — ere she could be in and bring to him salvation. In vain he tossed on his uneasy bed at night ; in vain he flung himself from it, praying that some miracle might save him. The ship could not come in before she was due, and those relentless creditors were merciless. Only a week or so — two weeks it might be — to wait, and all would be smooth, and he not sacrificed ! If he could but run away and hide himself in some cavern for the intervening time ; if he could but drop into a prolonged sleep, as the people do in tlie MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 43!) magic tales, and wake up at the luoment that the sure ship ■vvas touching land, he need not be sacrificed ! But he could not ; he could not ! He had to deal with the hard realities of every-day life, not with imaginative fiction. Let us give Martyn Ware his due. He dreaded the shock to his mother far more than the consequences to himseK. He loved and reverenced his mother as I believe only those chil- dren, who have been brought up rightly, can love and rever- ence her. From his earliest years Helen had striven to lead him to his duty; earnestly, gently, untiringly, had she pointed ■out how God loved him, and how he might live so as to de- serve this love ; she had made the good path to him a pleasant path. My friends, rely upon it, it is only such mothers as these who are loved by their children with a fond love — who ^re reverenced by them more than anything else on earth ever can be reverenced. Yes ; it was the thought of his mother that made the worst trouble to Martyn Ware. If he could but keep the know- ledge from her ! if he could but stave over this short week or two, and get the money, and relieve himself from his em- barrassments, she would never know what a vile, ungrateful castaway he had been. From henceforth he should return to good ways, to sober evenings, to rational pleasures ; and it was no shallow or transient resolve this, but the firm, fixed pur- pose of Martyn's mind. He had had enough of folly and sin ; he had had enough of deceit ; but to leap over the interven- ing weeks, or to soften the hearts of those who had his fate in their hands, was alike impossible. It was at this critical juncture the temptation came. Its precise details I would rather not relate, and you will probably deem the reserve an expedient one ; it is sufficient to say that 440 MAETYN WARWS TEMPTATION. a large sum of money — ninety-two pounds — belonging to the firm, fell into Marty n Ware's hands. It was encompassed about by all the apparent immunity from danger that these temptations often are encompassed by. The circumstances under which the money was paid in were peculiar ; the cir- cumstances altogether attending it Avere unusual ; and it seemed all but an impossibility that discovery could super- vene before Martyn had the opportunity of replacing it by the arrival of the mail. For one thing, Mr. Hill was absent. He was taking a holiday ; and until his return, which would not be until after the coming in of the mail — unless the mail foundered at sea — there would be really little chance of dis- cover^^ Any one else would have said so as well as Martyn. And so — and so — Martyn Ware yielded to the temj>- tation. But do you think it brought him the relief he sought ? Do you think such temptations yielded to evar bring rehef ? Ah, no. From the very hoiir of his taking the money, a horrible fear, like unto nothing he had ever in his life experienced, seized hold of him. By night and by day a yawning gulf seemed before him ; he on its very brink, ready to fall into it, to be annihilated for ever. He almost wished he could be annihilated for ever, as a less terrible fate than this living agony. What had been the pains and perils he had escaped from, compared with those that he had invoked now % The very worst position that debt could have placed him in, was as nothing — as iiothing — by the side of the consequences that might be drawn on his head by crime. With the proceeds of the order (for in point of fact it was not actual money he MARTYK WARE'S TEMPTATION. 441 took, iDut an order for it — ^the same thing wlien cashed) he set himself free from debt ; at least, from pressing debt ; but he had increased his peril, his perplexity, his remorse, a thousand-fold. Martyn Ware had not been constituted by nature for the commission of crime ; he was endowed with a strict love of ju.stice, Avifch lively conscientiousness ; and such, should they unhappily succumb, cannot live under the burden it entails upon them. How willingly, oh how willingly \ would he have undone his work, and gone back to the lighter embarrassment from which he had been so eager to escape ! To be taken by a sheriff's ofl&cer, and civilly marshalled to one of the debtors' houses, would have been enough for his mother to bear ; but to be taken by a different sort of official and confined, withou.t hope or sympathy, within the strong walls of a criminal prison, what would that be ! A groan escaped him as the vision rose before his mind ; rose, as it seemed, with the prevision of fatality. He could not undo his work ; the money was spent, and there were no possible means of recalling it. The wonder to him now was, how he ever could have been so mad and wicked as to have used it. "Wicked he knew he had been, but he did believe that he must have been mad, or he never would have done it. Worse than all, with the taking of the money his confident hope changed, and he began to doubt the faith of Vavasour, as surely as he had believed in it. He tried to hope still ; he tried to do battle with his poor sinking heart ; and thus he lived on as he best could, imtil the West Indian mail came in. It came in, that packet : and you scarcely need to be told, I should think, that it did not bring the relief expected ; for this kind of dependence, of expectation, proves so almost 4i-2 MABTYxV WARE'S TEMPTATION'. invariably a failure, that it seems superfluous to record it in this additional instance. The mail brought a letter from Vavasour, but it brought no money. He had found it difficult to appease his father, he wrote, who accused him of having been doing what he could to " go to the bad," and he found it impossible to draw money from him yet. He would try hard to get it by the departure of the next packet, and he hoped Ware would continue to " rub on " until then. C)f one thing he might rest assured : that the money should come to him earlier or later, for he Avould be faithful to his promise. Martyn Ware sat at his desk, staring at the letter. He tried to read it again deliberately after his first rapid glance at it, but he could not : the characters were dancing before his eyes, sparkling and gleaming as if they were living fire. Discovery was inevitable : long before the next mail was in (but he had no hope now iji that), Mr. Hill would be home, and he would find it out the first day. As he sat thus, his brain throbbing, his pulses beating, his spirit ebbing with a .sick faintness, Mr. Aukland passed through the room on his way upstairs, and turned his head to Martyn. " I want you, Mr. Ware." He crushed the letter in his hand, and followed that gen- tleman to his room. Mr. Aukland, his hat off, was already seated at his desk. The clerks scarcely knew whether they liked Mr. Aukland or not. He was kindly and genial in liis manner to them, but so imperative in matters of business, so entirely a man of business himself, and so compromising in exacting that their duties should be performed to the letter, that (piite a revolution had taken place in the house. ]\Ir. Hill, easy and lenient, rather addicted to dropping asleep at MARTYN WARES TEMPTATION. 443 ]iis desk after his early city dinner, had allowed things to go on very much as they pleased, and the clerks to have an easy life of it ; but all that was changed, now that Mr. Aukland reigned. Mr. Aukland bent his dark eyes on Martyn. " I hear that Lovibond's account has been received and cashed, Mr. "Ware. It was paid, I find, to you, but I don't see it entered." Every drop of blood forsook Martyn's face. His heart stopped still, and then leaped onwards with a bound of agony. This was the money he had received and kept. He strove to answer, any excuse that came uppermost, something to the effect that he "would look," ''would see about it;" but the words came forth in gasps from his trembling and ashy lips. It was utterly impossible but that Mr. Aukland should detect that something was wrong. What questions he would have asked, it was impossible to say, but Martyn was spared for the moment. One of the clerks came up, showing in a stranger, and Mr. Aukland nodded to Martyn to go down. He did not know how he got down. He did not know whether his head was on his shoulders or whether it was off ; it seemed not to be himself, but somebody else — as we may have experienced ourselves in illness, in the attack of a fever- dream. He heard Mr. Mann address him as he was about to sit down to his desk, telling him there were those samples of sugar to be got from the docks, and just time enough left to do it before the gates closed, if he made haste. And Martyn put on his hat and went out. As he walked along amidst the bustle of London, steering his course mechanically, he put his hand into his pocket for the letter ; he had but superficially read it before : had mastered 444 MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. only its broad facts, not its details. But the letter "was not there. He wondered where he had dropped it. He looked back along the narrow and crowded pavement, but could see no sign of it, and a dread came over him that he had dropped it in the office. Dread 1 Why, if he had ; if the letter had been read by Mr. Aukland and every clerk in the place, it could not tell them half as much as must be known in a few hours' time from one end of it to the other. He got home from the docks just before the office closed. The resident porter stood at the door, and Martyn asked him if he had seen or picked up a West Indian letter ; he had lost one : but the man said he had not seen any. " Is Mr, Aukland gone yet T asked Martyn, as he walked in, putting the question as indifferently as he could. " Yes, sir." Mr. Mann was yet at his desk, and he spoke for some little time with Martyn about business matters, quite in his usual tone. It was evident that he had not seen the letter. Martyn looked about for it, but could find no trace of it, and he came to the conclusion that it had been lost in the street. What mattered it where 1 Ere the setting of to-morrow's sun, the whole Avorld would know the guilty fool he had been. He Avent home, and that night all was told to Helen. Believing himself alone, heavy groans had burst from him, which his mother happened to overhear. She stole to him ;. she sat down by him ; she confessed what grievous fears had long been upon her ; she prayed him to have love and confi- dence in her, his mother : and with her arms entwined about his neck, and his cheek drawn against hers, INIartyn told her all. MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 445 "What a niglit it Avas for her ! She reth-ecl to rest as usual, not to excite observation ; but how she lay through it, how she hove to lie through it, her unconscious husband sleeping by her side, none can tell. Her son, whom she had been striving to train for heaven ; her darling son, of fair report in the sight of the world, to have ended thus ! How fully she trusted him, how truly she knew that she might trust him, when he said that could this pitfall be escaped from, he would, with God's help, never fall into another. There appeared to be one little loophole of a chance — that Mr. Aukland would listen to her prayer for mercy, and for- give him. Her prayer ; Helen's : who else was there to offer one up 1 Much as she should dislike the office^ sensitively as she should shrink from it, she must, nevertheless, go through it. She must present herself before that great and dreaded man (great as her son's master, dreaded as his injured accuser), and beseech him to spare that erring son — to conceal his offence in consideration of his strong temptation, his bitter repentance, his inexperienced youth — not to blight his pros- pects at the very threshold of life. She would beseech it in mercy to herself; she would pray to be allowed to repay the money : and though she had it not, she would find it, even if she had to sell her clothes. With this fixed resolution in her mind, Helen rose. She went to Martyn's room and told him. It would be produc- tive of no good, he despairingly said : but she j)ersisted in trying. It was necessary that she should be at the office in time to catch Mr. Aukland on his arrival, and she had to in- vent some plausible excuse of shopping — of wishing to get it over before the heat of the day came on — for going up to town in the omnibus at the same time as her husband. ]\rr. 446 MARTY N WARE'S TEMPTATION. Ware talked half the way to town about Martyn's unusual dilatoriness that morning in not being ready for the omnibus. If he had but known that the dilatoriness -was but assumed^ that he dared not go ! Mr. Aukland was already there. With the West India mail in the jDrevious day, and its load of business for them, he was not a man to be tardy at his post. A Avhole heap of papers, of letters, lay before him on his desk, when a card and a message — that the lady asked to see him upon urgent business — were carried to him. He glanced at the former : "Mrs. Edward Ware." " Desire the lady to walk up," he said in answer. She came up the stairs. She closed the door, and threw back her veil, and disclosed a face white with an agitation it was utterly beyond her to suppress. Mr. Aukland had risen to receive her ; and he courteously, with every manifestation of respect, handed her a chair. But she was too much agitated to avail herself of it. In l^\ct, it may be questioned if she so much as saw the move- ment in her agony of emotion, in the sick feeling of suspense that threatened to overwhelm her. She stood up and grasped the railings of the desk with one hand, and entered upon her prayer. With a rapiditj' of emotion that gave him no opportunity of interrupting, with a wailing tone that betrayed too well the pent-up anguish, she told her tale. She told what she had come for — to beseech pardon for one Avho was a guilty sinner, but dear to her. "It is the turning-point in his life, sir ; tlie crisis of the years that have passed, of those that are to come," she breathed, hardly conscious in her trembling A'ehemence what she did MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 447 say. " Upon your mercy depends his well-being here ; per- haps that hereafter. I hioxv that he Avill never transgress again, and if you will but allow me to refund the money pri- vately to you, it — it — — " She could not go on. Mr. Aukland, still with every token of respect, took her hands in his ; he smiled at her with his pleasant lips, with his friendly eyes. " Do let me speak, Mrs. Ware, Can you suppose that / should betray your son ? Don't you know me T Know him % She looked up at him in surprise. She knew him by hearsay ; she had never seen him. What did he mean % Her silence spoke her bewilderment, and INIr. Aukland smiled. " Have you forgotten Bob Eutt % I am he. Look at me and see if you do not trace my old features. Yours have not altered." Bob Eutt ! Eobert Aukland, that influential West India merchant, the poor Bob Eutt of the days gone by % It could not be. But it was even so: and she knew, she felt, that jMartyn's peril was over. In her revulsion of feeling she sank down on the chair and burst into tears. At that moment there came a knock at the room door. Mr. Aukland drew it open about an inch. Some one wanted him on business, and young Jones had come up to say so. " I am engaged," was jMr. Aukland's short answer, delivered in so sharp, so imperative a tone, that Mr. Jones ahot down the stairs again in consternation. But the interruption did more towards recalling Mrs. Ware to herself than anything else could have done. '' I did not even know that your name was Aukland," she 448 MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. saiclj wiping her pale face. " Or — yes, I suppose I did kuoAv it in the old days, but I had completely forgotten it ; you were so universally called Eutt. Certainly I never once thought to connect you with the Mr. Aukland of this house. I can hardly believe it now. I see the likeness, I recognize your face, and yet — it appears incredible." " I did not stay long in Washington," he observed. " About a year and a half, I think ; and then an opening was found for me in Jamaica, in this firm, which at that time — as perhaps you may know — was Sewell and Hill. I had been in it fifteen years when Mr. Sewell died, and I then succeeded to a share in it. On the whole, I have been very prosperous, Mrs. Ware." "Oh, yes," sobbed Helen. "And Mrs. Ptutt ? Is she alive]" " She died six months ago," he answered, glancing involun- tarily at the crape on his hat. " I was able to make her a good home in Jamaica— a happier , one, I believe, than she had ever enjoyed before. I wrote once to Wexmoor for news •of you, but did not obtain it. The answer received was, that Mr. Martyn Avas dead, and his family had dispersed. The very first day of my arrival here I recognized your son ; the name ' ^lartyn Ware' attracted my attention to him, and I traced in his features the strongest possible resemblance to yours. Yours," he significantly added^ " had not faded from my recollection." " And — you — Avill not refuse to save him T she said in a timid Avhisper. " liefuse to save him ! Him ! j\Irs. AVare, do you forget all I owe to you T he rejoined, his own tones trembling with the earnestness of their eniotiou. " Eat for the sacrifice you MARTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. 44'J made for me, I might be a poor Avorkiug man now, instead of wliat I am ; and my dear mother, Avantiug a home, might have sunk into the grave before her time. Were the whole of my savings — and I have saved something — necessary to extricate Martyn Ware, he shoukl have them." He spoke Avitli quiet dehberation. Helen, wondering ■whether mercy so great had ever been shown to anybody before, asked a few questions. " I can understand how it was," he said, "that he was seduced into the trouble and extravagance by young Vavasour. It came to my knowledge yesterday that Martyn had received this order for money and obtained the cash upon it — not ob- tained the cash in the regular dealings of the house, but in an irregular way. It awoke my suspicion instantly. I called him into this room, intending to get the truth from him, but before I had barely put a question, we Avere interrupted, and he went down. In going out of the room he dropped a crumpled piece of paper, which I found to be a letter just re- ceived from Vavasour. It told me all. That with the remit- tances this letter was to have brought — and did not bring — - he meant to replace the ninety-two pounds taken. Mrs. Ware," he continued, smiling at her, " I made it all right myself yesterday afternoon — at the bankers' and in the books here. It would not have been expedient for Mr. Hill to •come home and find it out — and he is coming back to-day." " How shall I ever thank you !" she murmured. " How can I ever repay you ?' " jSTay — I have been saying that to myself this many a year — ' How can I ever repay Miss Helen Martyn V My mother has echoed it in my hearing many a time." "You will — do you intend to allow him to come back 29 450 MABTYN WARE'S TEMPTATION. here?" she questioned with great hesitation through her tears. " Indeed yes. 8end him up as soon as you get back. I have no fear of such a thing as this being repeated : it will serve as a lesson to him for life. And I will try and push Martyn on in the world ; as your benevolence, my dear lady, was the means of pushing me. I should have come down to your house to see you ere this, but since my landing I have had so much to do, Mr. Hill being away. You will allow me to do so f Allow him to come and see her ! Helen's tears fell faster, and she held his hands in her grateful clasp. The great Eobert Aukland poor Bob Eutt of the former days, who had only presumed to address her as " Miss" Helen. " I shall tell my husband now, and he will welcome and thank you, Mr. Aukland. I had not dared to tell him before ; he would have been so implacable with Martyn. He has a perfect abhorrence of anything that savours of dis- honesty : and if he had known — that Martyn May Heaven bless you, Mr. Aukland, always and always !" Mrs. Ware returned home. It happened that she took the same omnibus- which had brought her. The same conductor stood on the footboard ; the self-same advertisements, pasted up inside, stared her in the face. With what a sick sensation of despair had her eyes rested on those advertisements in. going ! But now, in her changed feeling, they quite inter- ested her : it almost seemed as though she had been suddenly lifted into Paradise. Martyn was not to be found when she got home. Xobody knew where he was. Amy had a faint recollection of having heard the front door slam about an hour before, and she sup- MARTY N WARE'S TEMPTATION. 451 posed he must have gone out. Helen waited : waited with restless, joyous impatience for his return. But he did not come in. Hour after hour passed away ; afternoon succeeded to the morning. Helen grew sick and uneasy with an undefined dread. Still he did not come in ; and the day drew to its close. She stood at the window, stealthily watching, and could have counted the beating of her own heart. Suppose — in his despair — he A wild rush of terror overpowered her and drove away aU consecutive thought. The inert suspense grew unbearable, and she threw on a bonnet and shawl and Avent out in the dusky night, some faint idea upon her of looking for Martyn, however hopeless the search appeared to be. But it did not prove hopeless. She had bent her steps in- stinctively to the most lonely walk near their residence, one running alongside the canal : and there, as she came in sight of it, she saw Martyn looking down at the water. His shoes were dusty, as if he had spent the day in walking. Was he about to do an ill deed? — one that could never be redeemed ? Let us give him the benefit of the doubt. Did his mother fear it ] Who can say 1 She gave a great cry as she sprang to him, and, clasping her arms about his neck, Avept aloud. " Don't, mother; don't ! Your trouble is the worst of all, I can bear anything better than that." "Martyn ! Martyn ! they are tears of joy, not of grief I — I — was fearing I should never find you," she sobbed. " Martyn, I have seen Mr. Aukland. He is the Bob Eutt of my girlhood's days, a dear friend from henceforth. He v/ill be your friend tlu'ough life and will push you on. He paid the money into the bank yesterday and made it all right 29 2 452 MARTY N WARE'S TEMPTATION. in the office. He knew you, and never meant to let it fall upon you. jMartyn, my darling, it is true, it is true !" Martyn grasped hold of a post near him as if for support : he felt sick with suspense lest it should not be true. But not long could he doubt the joy that shone in the wet eyes of his mother ; and a yearning cry Avant up to heaven : to that heaven which had surely intervened to save him. " Lord, be with me from henceforth ! keep me, keejD me from temp- tation !" And Helen knew that her boy was her own once more. She linked her arm within his, and they walked on in silence towards home ; the home that would be again a happy one, as it had been before the ill-omened shadow of Vavasour fell on Martyn's path. ]S"ot a word was si^oken. Helen's thoughts were buried in the past, and her face was turned upwards to the faint crimson light which yet lingered in the western sky. Very, very present to her in that moment Avere the ways of God and His wonderful dealings. That little sacrifice which she had made so many, many years ago ; the poor ten-pound note she had given away from^ her necessities, her superfluities, if you will, had brought forth this. Long and long had the recompense been smouldering — - a recompense for Avliich she had never looked, or thought of looking — and now it had come, and come a thousand- fold. I^ever had that beautiful promise, Avhich you have all read as often perhaps as had Helen Ware, been more directly ex- emplified ; never had it come home Avith so much force to her heart : " Cast thy bread upon the Avaters : for thou shalt find it after many days." FEATHERS AND SPANGLES. The room was small and bright. Window curtains of crimson cloth shut out the cold and twilight, quickly gather- ing over the worn grass, the bare trees of the London square. The fire and the lamp burned clearly ; books lined a portion of the walls ; an easy-chair stood empty on one side the soft hearthrug, inviting to repose when the clergyman should have finished his sermon. He had drawn the table near the fire, and was busy with it. It was a picture of home-comfort and peace, this study ; imparting the notion that its owner must be one of those fortunate men who are secure from the frowns of a bitter world. The Eeverend Septimus Winter liked comfort, and hoped to enjoy a fair share of it to his life's end. He was a tall, good-looking man of thirty-one, hair and eyes dark. Good-looking, in so far as that the features were handsome ; but they had a somewhat severe expression. The house was still and tranquil. His little boy's voice in laughter broke out occasionally in the nursery above ; but INIr. Winter did not count that as disturbance ; it was what he, a doting father, liked to hear. Claude Beckett, a neighbour's son. 454 FEATHERS A^'D SPANGLES. had come in to play with Harry. Mr. Winter wrote on steadily. This was Saturday, and his sermon must be achieved. In a moment this tranquillity became alarmingly inter- rupted. A pistol was fired off, almost — as it seemed — in the very ear of Mr. Winter ; it was followed by a shrill cry from Harry. Almost beside himself with terror, apprehending he knew not what calamity, the clergyman started up and rushed from the room. The first sight his eyes caught was that of the two children half-way up the stairs — Master Claude Beckett with a small pistol in his hand. He was a daring gentleman of six, just double Harry's age. Servants were running up the stairs with affrighted faces. Mrs. Winter came out of her bedroom, whiter than death, a baby clasped in her arms. There was plenty of terror, but no injury ; for the pistol had not been charged. When this much was ascertained, and the first agony of fear had subsided, IMr. Winter got at the particulars. The two boys, left alone temporarily in the nursery, had strolled into Jack Winter's room, and dis- covered the pistol ; upon which Master Claude Beckett was seized with an ixresistible desire to let it off. The bright idea occurred to him that he might combine this pleasure with a fright for the household; and he carried it to the stairs that the report might be better heard. The boy's father was a sportsman ; he knew all about it, and his own fingers were strong. Mr. Winter, a hot man — for clergymen cannot put away their nature any more than other people can — went into a passion. ]N"ot with Claude Beckett — though he had difficulty in keeping his correcting hands off that young offender — but FEATHERS AXD SPANGLES. 455 with his brother Jack. Jack the Scapegrace, For a long while ]Mr. Winter had hardly home with him : this was the climax. A pistol ! A pistol in his bedroom, when there Avere children in the house ! " Mr. Jack have had it there this Aveek past," spoke up a maid-servant amidst the general confusion. " He keeps it in a locked-up case, sir." " It appears he keeps it where my children can get at it, locked up or not locked up," angrily retorted the clergyman, biting his lij)s to keep down harder words. And in that moment he learnt that what he had been gradually suspecting was a fact : namely, that he had grown to hate Jack. Master Claude Beckett was conveyed home in disgrace ; Harry, screaming enough to frighten the London crows (not ■easily frightened, one would imagine), was consigned to an ignominious bed forthwith ; and Mr. Winter went into his ■wife's chamber. She sat by the fire ; a plain sensible-looking woman, in delicate health, hushing the baby in her arms. " I am afraid this disgraceful occurrence has frightened you, Emily." ''■ Well, it did at the time ; but I don't mind it now I know the boys are safe," was Mrs. Winter's answer. " The worst was, it woke up Florence with a start, and I had but just succeeded in getting her off to sleep." She pulled the small square of fine flannel off the child's face, and disclosed a delicate little blossom of five or six months old, Avhich looked as if its short days on earth were abeady numbered. " It is a great pity she was woke up ; sleep is so necessary for her," sighed Mrs. Winter. " The doctor says it is more to her now than food." 456 FEATHERS AND SPANGLES. Yes ; it was a great pity : Mr. Winter echoed the words in his thoughts. His whole heart was set upon the rearing of this frail little girl, Florence ; and, man of peace though he was by profession, his Avill Avas good just then to have pitched Jack and his pistol into the sea, had the sea been handy for it. Going back to his study, he shut the door with a bang, drew the easy -chair in front of the fire, and sat down in it, leaving his sermon to complete itself. If the worst came to the worst, he could preach an old one. A resolution, that had long been seeking an opi^ortunity to get put into practice, grew fixed and firm. And yet, even iu that moment of irritation, when his na- ture was at its hardest, a qualm of hesitation crossed his con- science, and he sought to show himself that his pretext was a right one. Looking into the fire, he recalled the past years ; they seemed to be glowing there as in a painted tableau. He had loved his mother. If Septimus Winter had never loved anything else on earth he had loved her. She was the widow of a poor naval officer, struggling to bring up her two children well on her small means. It was not very difficult in the cheap country village AAdiere thej'' lived. The boys were named Septimus and John (called Jack always) ; there were eleven years between them. Septimus succeeded in getting to college and was ordained a clergyman. He was steady, industrious, persevering. A year or two of hard work, of patient hope, of heavy parish duties, and of semi-starvation, and Septimus was appointed to something better in a London suburb. The charge of a cliurch was given him, whose in- cumbent felt no longer able, through ill-health, to retain it. There was no parish work, no poor to visit, nothing but the FEATHERS AND SPANGLES. AhT Sunday's duty; and Mr. Winter, compared with the past, had an easy life of it. The new fashion of young curates holding daily services had not come in then, or there is no knowing but he would have drifted into it. He began to think that he might turn his weekly leisure to account by setting up a boys' school. He obtained the promise of a few r. but he had neither money, nor furniture, nor housekeeper; and he went down home to consult his mother. The result was, that she had her goods and chattels packed up, and went to London. Jack had just gone indoor apprentice to the village apothecary, and Mrs. Winter was at liberty to dispose of herself. The school flourished tolerably. It was some struggle and hard work, but both mother and sou threw their best energies into it ; and more than a year passed on. Then Mrs. Winter died. While she was full of plans for the future, saying,. " We will do this for the school, we will do that," she died. It does not do to transplant old people from a life's home, and perhaps the change had been imperceptibly killing Mrs. Winter. She seemed to die of a mere nothing : a cold settled on the chest ; three or four days of bed and she Avas gone. Only a few hours before her death did any one suspect the danger. Mr. Winter was correcting some exercises in the school-room, after the boys had gone to rest for the night, when a maid came to tell him his mother seemed worse ; and he hastened up. " I have left my furniture to you, Septimus," she said ; " it is all I have to leave. Of course. Jack has a right to half of it ; but it could not be taken out of your house ; and there's the wear and tear. You'll find my will in one of those drawers. I wrote it out myself ; but I dare say it is 45S FEATHERS AND SPANGLES. legal enough. As a recompense to Jack, you must give liim a home and a bit and a sup when he comes up to walk the hospitals. I think this is the best I can do for both of you : and God bless you always, my dear sons !" She died before the night was over, and there was no time to send for Jack. He did not even come for the funeral. Fever Avas raging in the village, his master was sick, and Jack had to stay where he was. He was of a somewhat careless nature, and did not take it to heart as Septimus would have done. With him, everything he cared for in life seemed to have flown away Avith his mother. The world is made up of changes. Down one day, up the next. In less than a twelvemonth after his mother's death, the Eeverend Septimus Winter had gone up five hundred degrees in the scale of prosperity's ladder. He had married a wife Avith a good fortune ; he had been apj^ointed to the in- cumbency of an excellent living in London; he had disposed of his school profitably. Henceforth he Avas above the frowns of the Avorld, and the chances Avere that the sudden rise to prosperity would sjioil him. Fcav men living had a larger amount of self-esteem than he. He liked to stand well Avith those above him ; he Avas strangely ambitious at heart. ,Could he have been brought to confess all his thoughts and aspira- tions, the talismanic Avord " mitre " would have been found amidst them, glittering in a golden aureole. By the time Jack came up to London, all traces of the old home-life had been done aAvay. Mr. Winter's house Avas a handsome one in a fine square, and Jack felt half afraid to tread on the velvet carpets. The fcAV poor things that Avere their mother's (but Avhich had nevertheless Avell served the turn of the elder brother), Avere lost and hidden amid the FEATHERS AND SPANGLES. 459 more sumptuous furniture. Perhaps a shade of anuoyauce crossed the clergyman's mind at having to welcome Jack as an inmate of his well-appointed home ; but he never thought of going from his bargain. His wife, who was kindly-natured, said she was glad to have him. Jack was nineteen then : a good-tempered, thoughtless, handsome young fellow, swayed by every breath of wind. He fell into very irregular habits : medical students are — what they are ; aud poor Jack Winter Avas thrown amidst a very bad set of them. He took to come home at irregular hours ; he lay a-bed of a morning ; once, when the clergyman and ]\[rs. Winter were entertaining a baronet's widow, a doctor of divinity, and other great ones of the neighbourhood, Jack was seen in the drawing-room corner, blinking like an owl and the worse for drink. " I fear we have neglected him," said Mrs. AVinter thoughtfally, when the party broke up, and her husband felt ready to flay Jack alive. " We have not encouraged him to be with us in an evening, but have let him go his own way. It has been a mistake." Even so. The clergyman, not best pleased to have Jack in his house at all, had winked at his taking to spend his even- ings away from home. A little out of his element in the grand home, and suspecting that his company was not wished for. Jack, in the first instance, went out to relieve them of it; aud so dropped into undesirable company. Mr. Winter, always a steady man himself, made no allowance for his brother, but grew more dissatisfied and bitter day by day. He sat by the fire now, making much of the resolve that had been silently ripening — to turn Jack from the house this self-same night, converting the pistol into a pretext. A re- 4GO FEATHERS AND SPANGLES. probate (it was what he called him in his thoughts), in Ms respectable house ! setting a miserable example to his little son Harry ; liable to be talked of by the irreproachable square, which boasted of ladies of title and divine D.D.'s : Mr. Winter's brow grew hot with shame at the thought. Jack had received an offer, as the clergyman happened to know, from some general practitioner living in Lambeth, to go to him as out-door assistant from nine to nine, and receive fifty pounds a year. Let him take that. Fifty pounds was enough for a single man to live upon. The fire was getting low. As Mr. Winter rose to replenish it, he heard the hall-door open; and Jack came up the stairs, singing softly the refrain of that old disreiiutable song, "Buffalo Girls." 'Sot perhaps that the song is so particu- larly disreputable in itself ; but the Jteverend Mr. Winter, a clergyman and man of correct habits, regarded all such songs as most scandalizing, Avhen heard within his sacred walls. It was sung so low that he had to hold his breath to distinguish either words or tune ; for, to give Jack credit for something, it must be owned that he generally remembered the sick baby when going up or down stairs. " Oh, Buffalo girls, won't you come out to-night. And dance by the light of the moon f Open went the study-door with a fling ; and Jack, arrested in his upward progress, was authoritatively motioned into it. He was now a young man of twenty ; a pleasing likeness of Mr. Winter. Both of them had the same handsome cast of features and bright brown eyes, but Jack's face bore a milder expression. A phrenologist, looking at him, would say he had no strength of mind or will, but was persuadable as a child. He wore a rough coat, out of which the stem of a FEATHERS AND SPANGLES. 461 pipe was stickiug. Eough coats and pipes were especially ob- noxious to Mr. Winter (the latter Jack had never been allowed to set a light to in the house), and the sight of them did not now tend to propitiate him. There had been some cutting reprimands to Jack before ; but never had Mr. "Winter attacked him as he did now. Just ■a sharp short sentence or two, his face white with passion. "■ The pistol was not loaded," said Jack, in his pleasant voice. " There was nothing to load it with, either. It wouldn't do any harm. Might have killed young Harry'? Nonsense, Septimus. What business — if it comes to that — has young Harry to go unlocking the places in my room %" This was adding insult to injury : and Mr. Winter could Ihave struck his brother in his rage. In his superior age and wisdom, the other seemed no better than a boy to him. What he said he hardly knew ; words that in a calmer moment he had certainly never uttered. Jack was told what an unwelcome intruder he had been, nothing but a burthen ; ■and was bid to go forth that same night before he was an hour older, and shift for himself in the future. For a moment Jack stood as one stunned. But, of course, there could be no appeal against the mandate, even had he felt inclined to make any. The house was his brother's ; and he had been, in truth, but an interloper in it. " Yery well, Septimus," he said, calmly acquiescent. '•' I'll just put my things together, and send for them when I knoAV where I shall have a ceiling to put them under." " You need be at no fault for that," retorted Mr. Winter. ■*' The situation you spoke of is open. Had fifty pounds been offered to me when I was your age, I should have thought it a fortune, and saved out of it." 462 FEATHEBS AND SPANGLES. " Ah, yes, no doubt." Jack ■went upstairs, treading softly. It did not take a quarter of an hour to "put his things together." They were bundled into his small portmanteau and the big sea-chest that used to be his father's— Avhich sea-chest had been deemed too shabby for Septimus, the clergyman, to take to, and so it fell to Jack. Jack trampled the things down after the most approved bachelor fashion, and so got both receptacles locked. There was no room for the pistol-case, or for all his books ; he went down carrying some of them in his hands, and stuffing his pockets. When he passed Mrs. Winter's room, the door was open. Seeing her standing there, Jack looked in. " How is dear little Florence to-night 1" he asked, in a whisper : for he saw the child asleep in the cot. " Is it you, Jack 1 I don't see any difference. Come in and look at her." Jack Winter loved this child dearly. With all his failings, he had a tender heart. Leaniag over the cot, he watched it sleeping its calm infant's sleep. That they would never succeed in rearing the child, he felt sure of: his profes- sional eyes saw things clearer than his brother. Bending down, he kissed its little fingers again and again — a last farewell. " I am very sorry about the pistol, Mrs. Winter," he said, joining her as she stood at the fire. " There was no real danger ; of course, I should not have been so carelessly stupid as to risk that ; but I am vexed it should have alarmed you. Good-bye !" " Why, where are you going, Jack ?" she exclaimed, yield- ing her hand to him. FEATHERS AND SPANGLES. 463 "Septimus and I are parting. We have not pulled quite well together, as I dare say you know ; so perhaps it is all for the best. Good-bye ! and thank you very truly for the house-room, and all. else you have given me." He was out of the room and down the stairs before she had recovered her surprise, or could ask further explanation. She Avent to her husband's study to seek it, and found it empty. Mr. Winter had gone out. But the clergyman was back again shortly, for it was the dinner-hour. He had but stepped out to get a mouthful of fresh air after his discomposure, and perhaps to avoid further encounter with that ill-doing youth, his brother. When Mrs, Winter inquired about Jack, he replied that he could not have him in the house any longer. " Oh, Septimus, he is so young to be thrown on this wicked London world !" was her involuntary remonstrance. " Without a home ! What will he do for a home, and for a living f " He has both open to him," curtly returned Mr. Winter ; for no man brooked even the shadow of a reproof less than he. " He will have fifty pounds a year to begin with. Had I gained that at his age, Emily — as I told him — I should have thought Fortune had come to me, and saved out of it. Jack is all right ; and the sooner he feels he must earn his own bread-and-cheese the better." They went in to dinner, Mrs. Winter dismissing the sub- ject Avith the fish. She always supposed her husband knew best, and yielded to his judgment in everything. He thought he did know best ; he said to himself that he had done the proper thing. Jack must be made to find his Ovvn value as a single unit amid the many millions in the 464 FEATHERS AND SPANGLES. world ; to feel the necessity tliat lay on liini to spend his days in work — not in junketing, and smoking, and idleness. And the Eeverend Septimus Winter was so satisfied with the relief of finding his house once more free, that he felt light as a bii'd emancipated from a cage, and took an extra glass of his good wine in very hilarity of heart. And never once, throughout the actual dismissal, had the remembrance of his mother occurred to him, or how she and he, in the old, old days, had both loved Jack. 11. REMORSE. Twelve years elapsed. Twelve years ! A vast period of time to look forward to ; not much to glance back upon, when they present but a wide track of unbroken smoothness, as they did to the retrospect of the Eeverend Septimus Winter. He had done nothing but go up and up in prosperity's scale. He had another living added to his rich one ; he was an honorary canon of some cathedral or other (and a very great honour it appeared to a man of his turn of mind) ; his name stood high with the world, socially and clerically ; he was re- garded as one of the saintly divines of the day, quite a beacon-light. He fully believed he was one ; and was puffed up with vain-glory. There had been one care — one intense disappointment — Mr. and Mrs. Winter were childless. The delicate little blossom, Florence, had faded soon : and strong, troublesome, indulged Harry a couple of years afterwards. How keen the grief to Mr. Winter had been, he alone knew ; how bitter FEATHERS AND SPANGLES. 465 the disappointment at finding, as time went on, that his wifo had no more children, he would have been ashamed to tell of. He had got over it all now ; had ceased almost to regret it ; his affections were set on the substantial good of the world ; and on the ambition growing rife and more rife within him. Men — and women too — must possess an object in life. Mr. Winter sometimes preached from his pulpit the desirability of that object being Heaven : Heaven alone : but he had not made it his full object yet. He thought the bishopric he coveted was advancing nearer, and his heart glowed within him. But he was a good man ; as the world — ay, and as many not of the world — would count goodness. Charitable, humane, active in the service of religion, denouncing sinners, uphold- ing the righteous. What though he was ambitious ? though he saw in dreams that mitre perched right atop of his head 1 — To him it seemed quite a right and legitimate ambition ; shared by at least (under the rose, be it spoken,) quite half the advanced members of the Church. He did his full duty to everybody while he looked patiently oi;t for the mitre, tread- ing his way in spiritual pride, making much of his really good qualities. Had anybody suggested to Mr. Winter that it was just possible he might not be on quite the right track for Heaven — the track taught by Christ — he would have put them down complacently for their impertinence. And Jack 1 Jack had never been seen by Mr. and Mrs. Winter, scarcely been heard of, since the Saturday night that he kissed the baby's hand in farewell (fearing to wake her if he kissed her face), and went out with his books and his pistol. On the Monday following a porter had brought a barrow for the sea-chest and portmanteau. Mr. Winter was out at the time, or he might have asked where 30 466 FEATHERS AND SPANGLES. they were to be taken to ; or he might not. In the elation of heart caused by the riddance of his house from so un- desirable an inmate, Mr. "Winter was quite content to let things be as they were. He was of rather a close nature, and it was a great thing to be relieved of the third at table. Perhaps it may be more correct to say selfish, instead of close; since he grudged nothing that could contribute to his own enjoyment and his wife's. But he grudged the cost of an interloper. It might have been about two months after the little baby had left them, when Harry had become doubly precious, if that were possible, that Mrs. Winter, sitting at her window, and looking out on the budding trees of the square, asked her husband after Jack. In answer, Mr. Winter broke into a tirade against Jack's ingratitude — never to call upon them ; never to have so much as written a line of thanks for hospi- tality shown ! " He thanked me," said Mrs. Winter. " He didn't thank me," said the clergyman. " Where is he ?" she resumed. " Down at that place in Lambeth ; there can't be a doubt of it," confidently asserted Mr. Winter ; " but for keeping that or some other situation, we should have had him sponging back on us." " Septimus," she said, after a pause, " I think I would go and see him if I were you. Perhaps it may be a duty. He has come into my mind so often of late- — I don't know why — that it has made me think a great deal of him. He is but twenty, you know; too young to be left quite without friends or counsel ; go you and see him." Mr. Winter a little resented the advice ; but, after taking plenty of time for consideration, followed it. It was one of spring's brightest mornings, inviting to a walk, when Mr. Winter set out, and perhaps there lay his FEA TREES A ND SPA NGLES. 467 chief inducement to go. Treading the streets -with his usual self-important tread, in his superfine clerical garments, he went inquiring about Lambeth, address in hand. It was in an obscure and very populous part of it, where men and women walked about in tatters, and impudent children tumbled over each other in the gutters, that he came to an anchor. The house was a small surgery and chemist's combined, the proprietor uniting both professions. It crossed the Eeverend INIr. Winter's mind to turn back again, there and then ; he had no wish to claim a brother of his in such company. liut he did go in, and saAV the surgeon himself, making up pills behind the counter, Mr. John Winter? Oh, ay, the young man who had written for particulars of the situation. He made his appear- ance one Saturday night unexpectedly, thinking to enter upon it; but the place was filled up : he had been too long deciding. Such was the substance of the answer. Mr. Winter in- quired if he knew Avhere eJack had gone to, or Avhere he was then ; but the doctor could give him no information whatever. So he went home again and told his wife. Jack had Avith- drawn from the hospital, and was not to be heard of there. " He will come to us fast enough when he wants anything," remarked Mr. Winter, dismissing the subject with lofty sum- mariness, as if it contained some kind of contamination. And from that hour to tliis he had never renewed it, never sought to find Jack : had, in truth, almost forgotten him. It is so easy in prosperity to hold a satisfied conscience. So the clergyman went complacently on his prosperous way, a rising light ; and his once delicate wife had gi'own into established health ; a woman portly and comfortable to look upon. 30—2 468 FEATHERS AND SPANGLES. It was at this period, just twelve years after Jack's depar- ture, that a blow fell on ]\Ir. Winter. In the full zenith of his pride and power, before a silver thread had mingled with his luxuriant brown hair, or a wrinkle crossed his handsome face, he was stricken suddenly all but to death. Driving his spirited horses in the park, amidst the great people of the land (none greater in self-importance than he), his wife by his side, his two servants behind, there arose an accident. In turning by Apsley House, something fretted or frightened the horses : they dashed at the gate, and the carriage was over- turned. Mrs. Winter and the servants were not hurt, to speak of; Mr. Winter lay as he fell. He was conveyed home, and those of the faculty most eminent in name and. skill were speedily gathered round his bed. His right leg was broken ; and, worse still, there was some inward injury. Dangerous symptoms supervened, and Septimus Winter lay face to face with death. Ko one living can realize what such a position must be, imless brought personally into it. For three weeks Mr. Winter's life hovered in the balance ; not knowing one hour, of that time, but that the next he should be called to meet his Maker. The medical men, in obedience to his wish, had informed him of his true state ; and without reluctance. What need, thought they, to hide it from so saintly a pilgrim, whose reputation for holiness and good Avorks at least equalled that of the Archbishop of Canterbury? Mr. Winter listened to the possible fiat ; and he knew that it was God's fiat, not man's. His mind, intellect, passions, judgment, were sound as ever they had been ; the injuries afi'ected not them : nay, perhaps his faculties were but the keener for the quiescence of body. FEATHERS AND SPANGLES. im •" Set thy house in order ; for thou shalt die and not live," was the sentence ever surging in his brain. He had read it ■often to his flock; but now, alas ! it had come home to him — come home to him ; and in letters of fire ! He was not fit to die : he knew it quite well, lying there in his mental agony. There could be no tampering then with conscience ; and it seemed that, for him, there was not any balm invented to heal its stings. He, the morally good and self-righteous man, who had stood on a lofty pinnaclet o teach and guide other souls, saw things now in their true colours. God had shown him his sin. Oh, of what value now was all the prosperity he had put his trust in % The riches he had striven for, the pomp and pride of life, the mitre looming in the distance — he turned from them Avith loathing and abhorrence : the pursuit of them had been but a snare and a delusion, for he could not carry them along with him to the grave. He knew — he knew that his heart had been set on these, and not on Heaven. But the one great weight was his brother. His hardness of heart in regard to Jack was brought home to him in a mar Iced and special manner. Quite at the first there was some slight ecfator. I.OBB OAKBUKN'S DAUGHTERS.—" The story is admirably told." From the Daihj Xetrs. TKE'VIiY2T HO^D. — " We cannot read a page of this work without discover- ing a gi-atiliic orce of delineation which it would not be easy to sui-pass." OPIXIOXS OF THE PRESS (continued). From the Morning Post. aXKS. H:AI.Z.IBUBT01T'S troubles.-" it is long siuoe the novel- I'eadiug world has had reason so thorouglily to congratulate itself upon the appeai-anceof a new work, as in the instance of ' Jlrs. Halliburton's Troubles.' A deep sense of satisfaction accompanies the perusal of this book ; the satis- faction which results from communion with the thoughts and views of a right- minded, clear-headed, tender-hearted, highly-principled person, set forth in- deed in the guise of fiction, but attractmg under, through, and with aU that, by their innate truth, and loving wisdom. . . . ' Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles ' is a novel with a purpose, which it urges better than any sermon could, it is probable : better than most sermons do, it is certain. It is a striking and finely-conceived illustration of the quaint old paraphrase which children learn, and old men remember, and prove, — ' Fear God, ye saints, and you will then Have nothing else to fear ; Make ye His service your delight : Your wants shall he His care.' The serene, yet heartfelt earnestness — the complete incoiijora- tion of herself with the fictitious beings whose trials and deeds are so truth- fully set forth that they tax comjiassion beyond the legitimate tribute due to fiction — with which the author illustrates the eternal verity of God's faith- fulness to the children of men, lend this book dignity and elevation of tone- far beyond any before reached. . . . The character of Jane Halliburton is dra\\ni with a perfection which no noveUst of the day has exceeded, and few indeed have approached. ... A great and artistic picture." From the Athemnun. THE CHAITNINGS. — " It will probably be read over and over again, and it is certain that it can never be read without profit." From the Athenceum. THE SHADOW OP ASHLYDYAT.— " We consider ' The Shadow of Ash- lydyat ' to be the best novel that Mrs. Henry AYood has written. The power to draw minutely and carefully each character with characteristic individuality in word and action is Mi'S. Wood's especial gift. This endows her pages with a vitality which carries the reader to the end, and leaves him with the feeling that the veil which in real life separates man from man has been raised, and that he has for once seen and known certain people as intimately as if he had been their guardian angel. This is a great fascination." From the H'pectator. " THE SHADO'W OF ASHIiYDYAT is very clever and keeps up the con- stant interest of the reader. It has a slight supernatural tinge. . . . This give.* the i-omantic touch to the story which Sir Walter Scott so often used with even greater effect, but it is not explained away at the end as Sir Walter Scott's supernatural touches generally, and very inartistically were. . . . Mrs. Wood shows a great fertility of good dialogue. . . . The results of a fraud on which the story hinges wind up powerfully a tale of which the interest has never flagged." From the Court Journal. THE SHADOW OP ASHLYDYAT,— " The genius of Mrs. Henry Wood shines as bi-ightly as ever. There is a scene or two between Maria Godolphiii and her little girl just before she dies, which absolutely melt the heart. The death-bed scene likemse is exquisitely pathetic." From the Court Journal. VEBNEB'S PRIDE.— " This powerful fiction will be read far and wide by all readers of novels. It will more than satisfy, it will delight the reader, but it will dehght the critic, too. Every chapter contains some point of interest. The style and the dialog-ue are e.xeellent. The plot is a well-contrived maze, full of ingenious inventions. The merits of the book are many and rare. The character of Jan, alone, is one of the largest and most succe.ssful figures that liave been dr-awn in any novel of real life." From the Sun. VERITER'S PRIDE is'a first-rate novel in its breadth of oiitUne and brilliaucv of description. Its exciting events, its spirited scenes, and its vivid details, all contribute to its triumph as a whole. The style is always natural, whoever appears on the scene. Whether the actors are on the \-illage green or in the glided saloon, they are all most apt representations of real life. The interest this work awakens, and the admiration it excites in the mmds of its readers, must iufaUlbly tend to the renown of the writer, whOe they herald the welcome reception of the work wherever skill in construction of no ordinaiy kind, or a ready appreciation of character which few possess, can arouse at- tention or win regard. MRS. HENRY WOOD'S MAGAZINE, THE AEGOSY, Sixpence, Monthly, Illustrafed. " The best and cheapest of our magazines." — Sfandarrl. "Laden with goklen grain." — St. James's Chronicle. "Delightful stories." — Brighton Gazette. "One of the marvels of the day." — London Scotsman. "Bears a rich freight." — Press. " Excellent reading." — Carlisle Patriot. "Ever Avelcome."- — Brighton Observer. "Treasures of capital, light, and interesting reading." — Brighton Examiner. "Unrivalled for its purity, depth of thought, high-mindedness, and felicitousness." — Bolton Guardian. "It is impossible to speak too highly of the Argosy.'''— Mojix Sun. ' ' The speciality of the Argosy is good stories. "—Bristol Mercury. " 'Johnny Liidlow's' stories in the Argosy are almost perfect." — Spectator. "The interest aroused in 'Johnny Ludlow' is considerable." — Saturday Revieir. " 'Johnny Ludlow' shows vigour of description and a strong grasp of character." — Afhena'um. "The author attains to genuine pathos." — Standard. " 'Johnny Ludlow' is full of interest." — Vanity Fair. "Very few have surpassed ' Johnny Ludlow.' " — Globe. "A very pleasant fellow is 'Johnny Ludlow.' " — Morning Post. "'Johnny Ludlow's' stories are charming." — Staffordsliire Sen- tinel. "The gifted 'Johnny Ludlow's' sketches are master-strokes." — Greenock Telegraph. " 'Johnny Ludlow' is ever welcome."— i^'MH. "Thoroughly high in tone, and healthy in character." — Guardian. "The sketches of 'Johnny Ludlow' in the Argosy are each of them perfect." — Litera,ry Churchman. "It is impossible by means of extracts to convey any adequate sense of the humour, the pathos, the dramatic power, and graphic description of 'Johnny Ludlow.' " — Nonc.onforviist. "'Johnny Ludlow' is a singularly pleasant companion." — Spec- tator. RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, S, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, W., {PulilisJters in Ordinari/ to Her Majesty/ tJie Queen.)