'b^ M / J(^ .v^ C^'^ / BIRDS OF PEEY % llobtl BY THE AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET" ETC. ETC. ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. FOURTH EDITION LOKDON WAKD, LOCK, AND TYLER WAEWICK HOUSE, PATERNOSTER ROW 1867 [All righ's reserved] New Novel, by the Author of " Lady Audley's Secret," &c. Fourth Edition, in Three Vols., now ready, RUPERT GODWIN " Incident follows incident with truly surprising rapidity, rich- ness, and eflEect. . . . The interest never flags." — Morning Post. The new Novel, reprinted from "Belgravia." In Two Vols., at aU Libraries, CIRCE BY BABINGTON WHITE. London : Ward, Lock, and Tyler, Paternoster Eow. LONDON : EOBSON AND SON, GREAT KOKTUERN PRINTING WORKS, rAMCRAS ROAIJ, If.W. TO CHAHLES EEADE, D.C.L. AUTHOR OF "IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND," ETC. OF THE writer's sincere ESTEE^il FOR HIS GEXIUS. Oft V i CONTENTS OF YOL. I. • » t 9C ^^ FATAL FEIENDSHIP. CHAP. I. The House in Bloomsbury II. Philip Sheldon eeads the '' Lancet" . III. Me. and Mes. Halliday .... IV. A PERPLEXING ILLNESS .... V. The Lettee from the " Alliance" Office VI. Me. Burkham's Uncertainties PAGE I 43 72 82 96 THE TWO MACAIKES. I. A GOLDEN Temple 123 IL The EASY Descent 139 III. '• Heart baee, Heart hungry, very poor"' . 178 HEAPING UP KICHES. I. A fortunate Marriage 215 II. Charlotte 235 III. George Sheldon's Prospects .... 274 IV. Diana finds a new Home 287 V. At the Lawn 3°^ §00k i\it J[trst. FATAL FEIENDSHIP, lu CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE m BLOOMSBURY. There are some liouses whereof the outward aspect is sealed with the seal of respectability — houses which inspire confidence in the minds of the most sceptical of butchers and bakers — houses at whose area-gates the tradesman delivers his goods undoubtingly, and from whose spotless door-steps the vagabond children of the neigh- bourhood recoil as from a shrine too sacred for their gambols. Such a house made its presence obvious, some years ago, in one of the smaller streets of that west-central region which lies between Holborn and St. Pancras Chm-ch. It is perhaps the nature of ultra-respectability to be disagreeably VOL. I. B 2 BIRDS OF PREY. conspicuous. The imsullied brightness of No. 14 Fitzgeorge-street was a standing reproach to every other house in the dingy thoroughfare. That one spot of cleanliness made the surrounding dirt cruelly palpable. The muslin curtains in the parlour windows of No. 15 would not have ap- peared of such a smoky yelloAV if the curtains of No. 14 had not been of such a pharisaical Avliite- ness. Mrs. Magson, at No. 13, was a humble letter of lodgings, always more or less in arrear with the demands of quarter-day ; and it seemed a hard thing that her door-steps, whereon were expended much labour and hearthstone — not to mention house - flannel, which was in itself no unimportant item in the annual expenses — should be always thrown in the shade by the surpassing purity of the steps before No. 14. Not satisfied with being the very pink and pattern of respectability, the objectionable house even aspired to a kind of prettiness. It was as bright, and pleasant, and rural of aspect as any house within earshot of the roar and rattle of Holborn can be. There were flowers in the THE HOUSE IN BLOOMSBURY. p windows ; gaudy scarlet geraniumSj wliicli seemed to enjoy an immunity from all tlie ills to which geraniums are subject, so impossible was it to discover a faded leaf amongst their greenness, or the presence of blight amidst their wealth of blossom. There were birdcag-es witliin the sha- dow of the muslin curtains, and the colouring of the newly-pointed brickwork was agreeably re- lieved by the vivid green of Venetian blinds. Tlie freshly-varnished street-door bore a brass- plate, on which to look was to be dazzled ; and the eifect produced by this combination of white door-step, scarlet geranium, green blind, and brass-plate was obtrusiA^ely brilliant. Those who had been so privileged as to behold the interior of the house in Fitzo;eoro;e-street brouo;ht away with them a sense of admiration that was the next tiling to envy. The pink and pattern of propriety within, as it was the pink and pattern of propriety without, it excited in every breast alike a wondering awe, as of a habitation tenanted by some mysterious being, infinitely superior to the common order of householders. 4 BIRDS OF PREY. The inscription on the brass-plate informed the neighbourhood that No. 14 was occupied by Mr. Sheldon J surgeon-dentist ; and the dwellers in Fitzo;eor2:e-street amused themselves in their leisure hours by speculative discussions upon the character and pursuits, belongings and surround- ings of this gentleman. Of coui'se he was eminently respectable. On that question no Fitzgeorgian had ever hazarded a doubt. A householder with such a door-step and such muslin curtains could not be other than the most correct of mankind ; for, if there is any external evidence by which a dissolute life or an lU-regulated mind will infallibly betray itself, that evidence is to be found in the yellowness and limpness of muslin window-curtains. The eyes are the windows of the soul, says the poet ; but if a man's eyes are not open to your inspection, the windows of his house will help you to discover his character as an individual, and his solidity as a citizen. At least such was the opinion cherished in Fitzgeorge-street, Russell-square. The person and habits of Mr. Sheldon were in THE HOUSE IN BLOOMSBURY. perfect harmony with the aspect of the house. The unsuUiecl snow of the door-step reproduced itself in the unsullied snow of his shirt-front; the brilliancy of the brass-plate was reflected in the glittering brightness of his gold-studs ; the varnish on the door was equalled by the lustrous surface of liis black-satin waistcoat; the careful pointing of the brickwork was in a manner imitated by the perfect order of his 2:)olislied finger-nails and the irreproachable neatness of his hair and whiskers. No dentist or medical practitioner of any de- nomination had inhabited the house in Fitzgeorge- street before the coming of Philip Sheldon. The house had been unoccupied for upwards of a year, and was in the last stage of shabbiness and decay, when the bills disappeared all at once from the windows, and busy painters and bricklayers set their ladders against the dingy brickwork. Mr. Sheldon took the house on a long lease, and spent two or three hundred pounds in the embellishment of it. Upon the completion of all repairs and decora- tions, two great wagon-loads of furniture, dis- b BIRDS OF PREY. tiiiguisliecl by that old-fasliioiied clumsiness \Yliicli is eminently suggestive of respectability, arrived from the Euston-square Terminus, wliile a young man of meditative aspect might have been seen on his knees, now in one emj^ty chamber, anon in another, performing some species of indoor sur- veying, with a three-foot rule, a loose little oblong memorandum-book, and the merest stump of a square lead-pencil. This was an emissary from the carpet warehouse ; and before nightfall it was known to more than one inhabitant of Fitzo;eoro;e- sti'eet that the stranger was going to lay down new carpets. The new-comer was evidently of an active and energetic temperament, for within tln'ee days of his arrival the brass-plate on his street-door announced his profession, while a neat little glass-case, on a level with the eye of the passing pedestrian, exhibited specimens of his skill in mechanical dentistry, and afforded instruction and amusement to the boys of the neighbour- hood, who criticised the glistening white teeth and impossibly red gums, displayed behind the plate-glass, with a like vigour and freedom of THE HOUSE IN BLOOMSBURY. < lanfrnao'e. Nor did Mr. Sheldon's announcement of liis profession confine itself to the brass-plate and the glass-case. A shabby-genteel young man pervaded the neighbourhood for some dciys after the surgeon-dentist's advent, knocking a post- man's knock, which only lacked the galvanic sharpness of the professional touch, and deliver- ing neatly-printed circulars to the effect that Mr. Sheldon, sm'geon-dentist, of 14 Fitzgeorge -street, had invented some novel method of adjusting false teeth, incomparably superior to any existing method, and that he had, further, patented an improvement on nature in the way of coral gums, the name whereof was an unpronounceable com- pound of Greek and Latin, calculated to awaken an awful reverence in the unprofessional and un- classical mind. The Fitzgeorgians shook their heads with pro- phetic solemnity as they read these circulars. Strucrf]:lincr householders, who find it a hard task to keep the two ends which never have met and never will meet from growing farther and farther asunder every year, are apt to derive a dreary 8 BIEDS OF PREY. kind of satisfaction from the contemplation of another man's impending ruin. Fitzgeorge-street and its neio^hbourhood had existed without the services of a dentist, but it was very doubtful that a dentist would be able to exist on the custom to be obtained in Fitzgeorge-street. Mr. Sheldon may, perhaps, have pitched his tent under the im- pression that wherever there was mankind, there was hkely to be toothache, and that the healer of an ill so common to frail humanity could scarcely fail to earn his bread, let him establish his abode of horror wdiere he mio:ht. For some time after his arrival people watched him and wondered about him, and regarded him a little suspiciously, in spite of the substantial clumsiness ofhisfurni- tm'e and the unwinkino^ briohtness of his windows. His neio'hbours asked one another how loner all that outward semblance of prosj)erity w^ould last ; and there was sinister meaning in the question. Tlie Fitzgeorgians were not a little sm-prised, and were perhaps just a little disappointed, on findine: that the newlv-established dentist did manasre to hold his crround somehow or other, THE HOUSE IN BLOOMSBURY. 9' and that the muslin curtains were renewed again and again in all their spotless purity ; that the supplies of rotten-stone and oil, hearthstone and house-flannel were unfailing as a perennial spring ;, and that the unsullied snow of Mr. Sheldon's shirt- fronts retained its primeval whiteness. Wonder and suspicion gave place to a half-envious respect. Whether much custom came to the dentist no one could decide. There is no trade or profession in which the struggling man will not receive some faint show of encourao:ement. Pedestrians of agonised aspect, with handkerchiefs held con- vulsively before their mouths, were seen to rush wildly towards the dentist's door, then pause for a moment, stricken by a sudden terror, and anon feebly pidl the handle of an inflexible bell. Cabs had been heard to approach that fatal door — gene- rally on w^et days ; for there seems to be a kind of fitness in the choice of damp and dismal weather for the extraction of teeth. Elderly ladies and gentlemen had been known to come many times to the Fitzgeorgian mansion. There was a legend of an old lady who had been seen to arrive in a 10 BIRDS OF PEEY. brougliani, especially weird and nutcrackeiy of aspect, and to dejoart lialf-an-liour afterwai'ds a beautified and renovated creature. One lialf of the Fitzo^eoro^ians declared that Mr. Sheldon had established a very nice little practice, and was savino; monev ; while the other half were still de- spondent, and opined that the dentist had private property, and was eating up his little caj^ital. It transpired in course of time that Mr. Sheldon had left his native town of Little Barlingford, in York- shire, where his father and grandfather had been surgeon-dentists before him, to establish himself in London. He had disposed advantageously of ' nn excellent practice, and had transferred his household goods — the ponderous chairs and tables, the wood whereof had deepened and mellowed in tint under the indefatio-able hand of his ojrand- mother — to the metro2)olis, speculating on the chance that his talents and appearance, address and industry, could scarcely fail to achieve a posi- tion. It was further known that he had a brother, an attorney in Gray's Inn, who visited him very frequently ; that he had few other friends or ac- THE HOUSE IN BLOOMSBUEY. 11 quaintance; that lie was a shining example of steadiness and sobriety ; that he was on the sun- nier side of thirty^ a bachelor, and very good-look- ing; and that his household was comprised of a grim-visaged active old woman imported from Barlingford, a girl who ran errands, and a boy who opened the door, attended to the consulting- room, and did some mysterious work at odd times with a file and sundiy queer lumps of plaster-of- paris, beeswax, and bone, in a dark little shed abutting on the yard at the back of the house. This much had the inhabitants of Fitzgeorge-street dis- covered respecting Mr. Sheldon when he had been amongst them four years ; but they had discovered no more. He had made no local acquaintances, nor had he souo-ht to make anv. Those of his nelo-libours who had seen the Interior of his house had entered it as patients. They left it as much pleased with Mr. Sheldon as one can be with a man at whose hands one has just undergone mar- t}Tdom, and circulated a very flattering report of the dentist's agreeable manners and delicate white handkerchief, fragrant with the odoiu' of eau-de- 12 BIRDS OF PREY. cologne. For the rest, Philip Sheldon lived his own life, and dreamed his own dreams. His op- posite neighbourSj who watched him on sultry summer evenings as he lounged near an open win- dow smoking his cigar, had no more knowledge of his thoughts and fancies 'than they might have had if he had been a Calmuck Tartar or an Abyssinian chief. CHAPTER 11. PHILIP SHELDON READS THE '^ LANCET." FiTZGEOEGE-STREET was cliill and dreary of aspect, under a gray March sky, when Mr. Sheldon re- tm-ned to it after a week's absence from London. He had been to Little Barhngford, and had spent his brief holiday among old friends and acquaint- ance. The weather had not been in favour of that dri\ang hither and thither in dog-carts, or riding rakish horses long distances to beat up old companions, which is accounted pleasure on such occasions. Tlie blustrous winds of an un- usually bitter March had buffeted Mr. Sheldon in the streets of his native town, and had almost blown him off the door-steps of his kindred. So it is scarcely sti-ange if he returned to town looking none the better for his excursion. He looked considerably the worse for his week's ab- 14 BIRDS OF PREY. sence, the old Yorkshire-woman said, as she waited upon him while he ate a chop and drank two large cups of very strong tea. Mr. Sheldon made short work of this im- promptu meal. He seemed anxious to put an end to his housekeeper's affectionate interest in himself and his healthj and to get her out of the room. She had nursed him nearly thirty years before, and the recollection that she had been very familiar with him when he was a handsome black-eyed baby, with a tendency to become suddenly stiff of body and crimson of visage without any obvious provocation, inclined her to take occasional liberties now. She watched him furtively as he sat in a big high-backed arm-chair staring moodily at the struggling fire, and would fain have questioned him a little about Barlingford and Barlingford people. But Philip Sheldon was not a man with whom even a superannuated nurse can venture to take many liberties. He was a good master, paid his servants their wages with unfailing punctu- ality, and gave very little trouble. But ho Avas PHILIP SHELDON READS THE ^^ LANCET." 15 the last person in the world upon whom a gar- rulous woman could venture to inflict her ram- bling discourse ; as Kancj Woolper — by courtesy, Mrs. Woolper — was fain to confess to her next- door neighbour, Mrs. Magson, when her master was the subject of an afternoon gossip. The heads of a household may inhabit a neighbour- hood for years without becoming acquainted even with the outward aspect of their neighbours; but in the lordly servants' halls of the West, or the modest kitchens of Bloomsbmy, there will be interchange of civilities and friendly " drop- pings in" to tea or supper, let the master of the house be never so mio^reo-arious a creature. " You can take the tea-things, IN'ancy," Mr. Sheldon said presently, arousing himself sud- denly from that sombre re^'crie in which he had been absorbed for the last ten minutes ; ^^ I am going to be very busy to-night, and I expect Mr. Georo^e in the course of the evenino;. Mind I am not at home to anybody but him." Tlie old woman arrano-ed the tea-thincrs on her tray, but still kept a furtive watch on her 16 BIRDS OF PREY. master J who sat with his head a httle bent, and liis bright black eyes fixed on the fire, with that intensity of gaze peculiar to eyes which see some- tliing far away from the object they seem to -contemplate. She was in the habit of watching Mr. Sheldon rather curiously at all times, for she had never quite got over a difficulty in real- ising the fact that the black-eyed baby with whom she had been so intimate could have de- veloped into this self-contained inflexible young man, wdiose thoughts were so very far away from her. To-nia;ht she watched him more in- tently than she Avas accustomed to do, for to- niirht there was some chano;e in his face which she was trying, in a dim way, to account for. He looked up from the fire suddenly, and found her eyes fixed upon him. It may be that he had been disturbed by a semi-consciousness of that curious gaze, for he looked at her angrily — " What are you staring at, Nancy ?" It was not the first time he had encountered her watchful eyes and asked the same impatient question. But Mrs. Woolper possessed that north- PHILIP SHELDON EEADS THE " LANCET." 17 couiitiy quiclviiess of intellect which is generally equal to an emergency, and was always ready with some question or suggestion which went to prove that she had just fixed her eyes on her master, inspired by some anxiety about his in- terests. " I was just a-thinking, sir," she said, meet- ing his stern glance unflinchingly with her little sharp gray eyes, " I was just a-thinking— you said not at home to anyone^ except Mr. Georo-e. If it should be a person in a cab wanting their teeth out sudden — and if anything could make toothache more general in this neighbomdiood it would be these March winds— if it should be a patient, sir, in a cab — " The dentist interrupted her with a short bitter lauorh. "Neither March winds nor April showers are likely to bring me patients, Nancy, on foot or in cabs, and you ought to know it. If it's a patient, ask him in, by all means, and give him last Saturday week's Times to read, while I rub the rust off my forceps. There, that will VOL. I. C 18 BIRDS OF TREY. do : take your tray — or, stop ; I've some news to tell you." He rose, and stood witli liis back to the fire and liis eyes bent upon tlie hearth- rug, while Mrs. Yf oolper waited by the table, with the tray packed ready for removal. Her master kept her waiting so for some minutes, and then turned his face half away from her, and contemplated himself absently in the glass while he spoke. " You remember Mrs. Halliday ?" he asked. '^ I should think I did, sir; Miss Georgina Cradock that was — Miss Georgy they called her ; your first sweetheart. And how she could ever marry that big awkward Halliday is more than I can make out. Poor fondy ! I suppose she was took with those great round blue eyes and red whiskers of his." ^^ Her mother and father were ' took' by his comfortable farmhouse, and well-stocked farm, Nancy," answered Mr. Sheldon, still contemplat- ing himself in the glass. " Georgy had very little to do with it. She is one of those women w^ho let other people think for them. However, PHILIP SHELDON READS THE ^^ LAXCET." 19 Tom is an excellent fellow, and Georgy was a lucky girl to catcli sucli a husband. Any little flirtation there may have been between her and me was over and done with long; before she mar- ried Tom. It never was more than a flirtation ; and I've flirted with a good many Barlingford girls in my time, as you know, J^ancy." It was not often that Mr. Sheldon conde- scended to be so communicative to his house- keeper. The old woman nodded and chuckled, delighted by her master's unwonted friendliness. " I drove over to Hyley while I was at home, IN^ancy," continued the dentist — he called Barling- ford home still, though he had broken most of the links that had bound him to it, — " and dined with the Hallidays. Georgy is as pretty as ever, and she and Tom get on capitally." "Any children, sir?" " One girl," answered Mr. Sheldon carelessly. " She's at school in Scarborough, and I didn't see her ; but I hear she's a fine bouncing lass. I had a very pleasant day with the Hallidays. Tom has sold his farm ; that part of the world doesn't suit 20 BIEDS OF PREY. liim, it seems — too cold and bleak for liim. He's one of those big burlj-looking men who seem as if they conld knock you down with a little finger, and who shiyer at eyery puff of wind. I don't think he'll make old bones, Nancy. Bnt that's neither here nor there. I daresay he's good for another ten years ; or I'm sni'e I hope so, on Georgy's account." ^^ It was right down soft of him to sell Hyley Farm, though," said Nancy reflectiyely; ^' I'ye heard tell as it's the best land for forty mile romid Barlingford. But he got a rare good price for it, I'll lay." "0, yes ; he sold the property uncommonly well, he tells me. You know if a north-country- man gets the chance of making a profit, he neyer lets it slip through his fingers." Mrs. Woolper receiyed this compliment to her countrymen with a gratified grin, and Mr. Shel- don went on talking, still looking at the reflection of his handsome face in the glass, and pulling his whiskers meditatiyely. " Now as Tom was made for a farmer and PHILIP SHELDON KEADS THE " LANCET." 21 nothing but a farmer, lie must find land some- where in a climate tliat does suit him ; so his friends have advised him to tiy a place in Devon- sliire or Cornwall, where he may train his myrtles and roses over his roof, and grow green peas for the London markets as late as November. There are such places to be had if he bides his time, and he's coming to town next week to look about him. So, as Georgy and he would be about as capable of taking care of themselves in London as a couple of cliildren, I have recommended them to take up their quarters here. They'll have their lodgings for nothing, and we shall chum together, on the Yorkshire system ; for of course I can't afford to keep a couple of visitors for a month at a stretch. Do you tliink you shall be able to manage for us, Nancy ?" " 0, yes, I'll manage well enough. I'm not one of your lazy London lasses that take half an horn" to wipe a tea-cup. I'll manage easy enough. Mr. and Mrs. Halliday will be having your room, I'll lay." '' Yes ; give them the best room, by all means. 22 BIRDS OF PREY. I can sleep an^^vhere. And now go downstairs and tliink it over, ISTancj. I must get to my work. I've some letters that must be written to- night." Mrs. Woolper departed with her traj, gratified by her master's unwonted familiarity, and not ill pleased by the thought of A^isitors. They would cause a great deal of trouble, certainly ; but the monotony of Nancy's easy life had grown so op- pressive to her as to render the idea of any variety pleasing. And then there would be the pleasure of making that iniquitous creature the London lass bestir herself, and there would be furthermore the advantage of certain little perquisites Avhich a clever manager always secures to herself in a house where there is much eating and drinking. Mr. Sheldon himself had lived like a modern anchorite for the last four years ; and Mrs. Woolper, who was pretty well acquainted with the state of his finances, had pinched and contrived for his benefit, or rather for the benefit of the black-eyed baby she had nursed nine-and-twenty years before. For his sake she had been careful and honest, willing to forego all PHILIP SHELDON READS THE " LANCET." 23 the small profits to wliicli she held herself en- titled; but if well-to-do people were going to share her master's expenses, there would be no longer need for such scrupulous integrity ; and if things were rightly managed, Thomas Halliday might be made to bear the entire cost of the household during his month's visit on the York- shire system. While Mrs. Woolper meditated upon her do- mestic duties, the master of the domicile aban- doned himself to reflections which were ap- parently of a very serious character. He brought a leathern desk from a side-table, unlocked it, and took out a quire of paper; but he made no further advance towards the writing of those letters on account of which he had dismissed his housekeeper. He sat, with his elbows on the table, nibbling the end of a wooden pen- holder, and staring at the oj^posite wall. His face looked pale and haggard in the light of the gas, and the eyes, fixed in that vacant stare, had a feverish brio^htness. Mr. Sheldon was a handsome man — eminently 24 BIRDS OF PREY. handsome, according to the popular notion of mascuHne beauty ; and if the popular ideal has been a little vulgarised by the waxen gentlemen on whose finely-moulded foreheads the wig-maker is wont to display the specimens of his art, that is no discredit to Mr. Sheldon. His features were regular ; the nose a handsome aquiline ; the mouth iirm and well modelled ; the chin and jaw rather heavier than in the waxen ideal of the hair- dresser; the forehead very prominent in the re- gion of the perceptives, but obviously wanting in the higher faculties. Tlie eye of the phreno- logist, miaided by his fingers, must have failed to discover the secrets of Mr. Sheldon's organisa- tion ; for one of the dentist's strong j^oints was his hair, which was very luxuriant, and which he wore in artfully-arranged masses that passed for curls, but which owed their undulating grace rather to a skilful manipulation than to any natural tendency. It has been said that the rulers of the world are straight-haired men ; and Mr. Sheldon might have been a Napoleon III. so far as regards this special attribute. His hair PHILIP SHELDON READS THE '' LAXCET." 25 was of a dense black, and liis whiskers of the same sombre hue. These carefully-arranged whis- kers were another of the dentist's strong points ; and the third strong point was his teeth, the per- fection whereof was a fine advertisement when considered in a professional light. The teeth were rather too large and square for a painter's or a poet's notion of beautj, and were apt to suggest an unpleasant image of some sleek brindled crea- ture crunching human bones in an Indian jungle. But they were handsome teeth notwithstanding, and their flashing whiteness made an effective contrast to the clear sallow tint of the dentist's •complexion. Mr. Sheldon was a man of industrious habits, — fond indeed of work, and distinguished by a j)ersistent activity in the carrying out of any labour he had planned for himself. He was not prone to the indulgence of idle reveries or agree- able day-dreams. Thought with him was labour ; it was the " thinking out" of future work to be done, and it was an operation as precise and mathematical as the actual labour that resulted 26 BIRDS OF PREY. therefrom. The contents of his brain were as well kept as a careful trader's ledger. He had his thono^hts docketed and indexed, and rarely wasted the smallest portion of his time in search- ing for an idea. To-night he sat thinking until he was interrupted by a loud double-knock, which was evidently familiar to him, for he muttered " George !" pushed aside his desk, and took up his stand upon the hearthrug, ready to receiye the expected yisitor. There was the sound of a man's voice below, — very like Philip Sheldon's own voice ; then a quick firm tread on the stairs ; and then the door was opened, and a man, who himself was very like Philip Sheldon, came into the room. This w^as the dentist's brother George, two years his junior. The likeness between the two men was in no way marvellous, but it was nevertheless very obvious. You could scarcely have mistaken one man for the other, but you could hardly have failed to perceive that the two men were brothers.. They resembled each other more closely in form than in face. They were of the same height— PHILIP SHELDON READS THE " LANCET." 27 both tall and strongly built. Both had black eyes with a hard brightness in tliem, black whiskers, black hair, sinewy hands with prominent knuckles, square finger-tops, and bony wrists. Each man seemed the personification of savage health and vigour, smoothed and shapened in accordance with the prejudices of civilised life. Looking at these two men for the first time, you might approve or disapprove their appearance; they might impress you favourably or unfavom'ably ; but you could scarcely fail to be reminded vaguely of strong, bright-eyed, savage creatures, beautiful and grace- ful after their kind, but dangerous and fatal to man. The brothers greeted each other with a friendly nod. They were a great deal too practical to in- dulge in any sentimental display of fraternal af- fection. They liked each other very well, and were useful to each other, and took their pleasure together on those rare occasions when they were weak enough to waste time upon unprofitable pleasure ; but neither of them would have com- prehended the possibility of anything beyond this. 28 BIRDS OF PREY. " WeU, old fellow," said George, " I'm glad you're back again. You're looking rather seedy, though. I suppose you knocked about a good deal down there?" '^ I had a night or two of it with Halliday and the old set. He's going it rather fast." ^' Humph I" muttered Mr. Sheldon the younger; " it's a pity he doesn't go it a little faster, and go off the hooks altogether, so that you might marry Georgy." " How do I know that Georgy would have me, if he did leave her a widow?" asked Philip dubiously. " 0, she'd have you fast enough. She used to be very sweet upon you before she married Tom ; and even if she has forgotten all that, she'd have you if you asked her. She'd be afraid to say no. She was always more or less afraid of you, you know, Phil." " I don't know about that. She was a nice little thing enough ; but she knew how to drop a poor sweetheart and take up with a rich one, in spite of her simplicity." THILIP SHELDON READS THE " LANCET." 29 " 0, that was tlie old parties' doing. Georgy would have jumped into a caldron of boiling oil if her mother and father had told her she must do it. Don't you remember when we were children together how afraid she used to be of spoiling her frocks ? I don't believe she married Tom Halli- day of her own free will, any more than she stood in the comer of her OAvn free will after she'd torn her frock, as I've seen her stand twenty times. She stood in the corner because they told her she must ; and she married Tom for the same reason, and I don't suppose she's been particularly happy with him." " Well, that's her look-out," answered Philip gloomily ; "I know I want a rich w^ife badly enough. Tilings are about as bad with me as they can be." '' I suppose they are rather piscatorial. The elderly dowagers don't come up to time, eh? Very few orders for the complete set at ten-pound-ten?" " I took about seventy pounds last year," said the dentist, " and my expenses are something like five pounds a week. I've been making up the 30 BIRDS OF PEEY. deficiency out of the money I got for the BarKng- ford busmess, thinkmg I should be able to stand out and make a connection ; but the connection gets more disconnected every year. I suppose people came to me at first for the novelty of the thing, for I had a sprinkling of decent patients for the first twelve months, or so. But now I might as well throw my money into the gutter as spend it on circulars or advertisements." '^ And a young woman with twenty thousand pounds and something amiss with her jaw hasn't turned up yet?" '' No, nor an old woman either. I wouldn't stick at the age, if the money was all right," an- swered Mr. Sheldon bitterly. Tlie younger brother slu'ugged his shoulders and plunged his hands into his trousers-pockets with a gesture of serio-comic despair. He was the livelier of the two, and affected a slanginess of di'ess and talk and manner, a certain " horsey" style, very different from his elder brother's studied respectability of costume and bearing. His clothes were of a loose sporting cut, and al- PHILIP SHELDON PEADS THE " LANCET." 31 Avays odorous with stale tobacco. He wore a good deal of finery in tlie shape of studs and pins and dangling lockets and fusee-boxes ; his whis- kers were more obtrusive than his brother's, and he wore a moustache in addition — a thick ra^'g-ed black moustache, which would have become a guerilla chieftain rather than a dweller amidst the quiet courts and squares of Gray's Inn. His position as a lawyer was not much better than that of Philip as a dentist ; but he had his own plans for making a fortune, and hoped to win for him- self a larger fortune than is often made in the law. He was a hunter of genealogies, a grubber-up of forgotten facts, a joiner of broken links, a kind of legal resurrectionist, a digger in the dust and ashes of the past : and he expected in due time to dig up a treasm-e rich enough to reward the labour and patience of half a lifetime. • "I can afford to wait till I'm forty for my good luck," he said to his brother sometimes in moments of expansion, " and then I shall have ten years in which to enjoy myself, and twenty more in which I shah have life enouojh left to eat s-ood 32 BIRDS OF PREY. dinners and drink good wine, and grumble about the deo;eneracv of thino;s in o-eneral, after the manner of elderly human nature." The men stood one on each side of the hearth : George looking at his brother, Philip looking doAvn at the fire, with his eyes shaded by their thick black lashes. The fire had become dull and hollow. George bent down presently and stirred the coals impatiently. " If there's one thing I hate more than another — and I hate a good many things — it's a bad fire," he said. " How's Barlingford — lively as ever, I suppose ?" " Not much livelier than it was when we left it. Things have gone amiss with me in London, and I've been more than once sorely tempted to make an end of my difficulties with a razor or a few drops of prussic acid ; but when I saw the dull gray streets and the square gray houses, and the empty market-place, and the Baptist chaj^el, and the Unitarian chapel, and the big stony church, and heard the dreary bells ding-donging for even- iner service, I wondered how I could ever have PHILIP SHELDON READS THE " LANCET." 33 existed a week in such a place. I had rather sweep a crossing in London than occupy the best house in Barhngford, and I told Tom Halliday so." " And Tom is coming to London I understand by your letter." " Yes, he has sold Hyley, and wants to find a place in the west of England. The north doesn't suit his chest. He and Georgy are coming up to town for a few weeks, so I've asked them to stay here. I may as well make some use of the house, for it's very little good in a professional sense." " Humph !" muttered George ; " I don't see your motive." " I have no particular motive. Tom's a good fellow, and his company w^ll be better than an empty house. The visit won't cost me anything — Halliday is to go shares in the housekeeping." "Well, you may find it answer that w^ay," rephed Mr. Sheldon the younger, who considered that every action of a man's life ought to be made to '• answer" in some way. " But I should tliink you would be rather bored by the arrangement ; Tom's a very good fellow in his way, and a great VOL. L D 34 BIRDS OF PREY. friend of mine, but lie's rather an empty-headed animal." The subject dropped here, and the brothers went on talkino; of Barlino;ford and Barlino-ford people — the few remaining kindred whose exist- ence made a kind of link between the two men and their native town, and the boon companions of their early manhood. The dentist produced the remnant of a bottle of whisky from the side- board, and rang for hot water and sugar, where- with to brew grog, for his own and his brother's refreshment ; but the conversation flagged never- theless. Philip Sheldon was dull and absent, an- swering his companion at random every now and then, much to that gentleman's aggravation ; and he owned at last to being thoroughly tired and worn out. " Tlie journey from Barlingford in a slow train is no joke, you know, George, and I couldn't afford the express," he said apologetically, when his brother upbraided him for his distraction of manner. " Then I should think you'd better go to bed," PHILIP SHELDON BEADS THE " LANCET." 35 answered Mr. Slielclon the younger, wlio had smoked a couple of cigars, and consumed the contents of the whisky-bottle; " so I'll take my- self off. I told you how uncommonly seedy you were looking when I first came in. When do you expect Tom and his wife ?" '^ At the beginning of next week." " So soon ! Well, good -night, old fellow ; I shall see you before they come, I daresay. You might as well drop in upon me at my place to-morrow night. I'm hard at work on a job." " Your old kind of work?" ^' yes. I don't get much work of any other kind." ^^ And I'm afraid you'll never get much good out of that." " I don't know. A man who sits down to whist may have a run of ill-luck before he gets a decent hand; but the good cards are sure to come if he only sits long enough. Every man has his chance, depend upon it, Pliil, if he knows how to watch for it ; but there are so many men who get tired and go to sleep before their chances 36 BIRDS OF PREY. come to them. I've wasted a good deal of time, and a good deal of labom' ; but the ace of trumps is in the pack, and it must turn up sooner or later. Ta-ta." George Sheldon nodded and departed, whist- ling gaily as he walked away from his brother's door. PhiHp heard him, and turned his chair to the fire with a movement of impatience. " You may be uncommonly clever, my dear George," soliloquised the dentist, " but you'll never make a fortune by reading wills and hunt- ing in parish-registers for heirs-at-law. A big lump of money is not very likely to go a-begging while anyone who can fudge up the faintest pretence of a claim to it is above ground. No, no, my lad, you must find a better way than that before you'll make yom' fortune." The fire had burnt low again, and Mr. Shel- don sat staring gloomily at the blackening coals. Things were very bad with him — he had not cared to confess how bad they were, when he had discussed his affairs with his brother. Those neighbours and passers-by who admired the trim PHILIP SHELDON BEADS THE " LANCET." 37 brightness of the dentist's abode had no suspicion that the master of that respectable house was in the hands of the Jews, and that the hearthstone which whitened his door-step was paid for out of Israehtish coifers. The dentist's philosophy was all of tliis world, and he knew that the soldier of fortune, who would fain be a conqueror in the great battle, must needs keep his plumage un- drabbled and the golden facings of liis uniform untarnished, let his wounds be never so des- perate. Having found his attempt to establish a prac- tice in Fitzgeorge-street a failure, the only course open to Mr. Sheldon, as a man of the world, was to transfer his failure to somebody else, with more or less profit to himself. To this end he preserved the spotless purity of his muslin curtains, though the starch that stiffened them and the bleachins:- powder that whitened them were bought with money for which he was to pay sixty per cent. To this end he nm'sed that wan shadow of a practice, and sustained that appearance of re- spectabihty which, in a world where appearance 38 BIRDS OF PREY. stands for so much, is in itself a kind of capital. It certainly was dull di'eaiy work to hold tlie citadel of ISTo. 14 Fitzgeorge-street against the besieger Poverty ; but the dentist stood his ground pertinaciously, knowing that if he only waited long enough, the dupe who was to be his victim would come, and knowing also that there might arrive a day when it would be very useful for him to be able to refer to four years' un- blemished respectability as a Bloomsbmy house- holder. He had his lines set in several shady places for that mihappy fish with a small capital, and he had been tantalised by more than one nibble ; but he made no open show of his desire to sell his business — since a business that is obvi- ously in the market seems scarcely worth any man's pm'chase. Things had of late grown worse with him eveiy day ; for every interval of twenty -fom' hours sinks a man so much the deeper in the mire when renewed accommodation-bills with his name upon them are ripening in the iron safes of Judah. Philip Sheldon found himself sinking PHILIP SHELDON HEADS THE " LANCET." 39 gradually and almost imperceptibly into that bot- tomless pit of difficulty in whose black depths the demon Insolvency holds liis dreary court. While his Httle capital lasted he had kept himself clear of debt J but that being exhausted, and his prac- tice growing worse day by day, he had been fain to seek assistance from money-lenders ; and now even the money-lenders were tired of him. Tlie chair in which he sat, the poker which he swung slowly to and fro, as he bent over his hearth, were not his own. One of his Jewish creditors had a bill of sale on his furnitm'e, and he might come home any day to find the auctioneer's bills plastered against the wall of his house, and the auctioneer's clerk busy with the catalogue of liis possessions. If the expected victim came now to buy his practice, the sacrifice would be made too late to serve his interest. The men who had lent him money would be the sole gainers by the bargain. Seldom does a man find himself face to face with a blacker prospect than that which lay before Philip Sheldon ; and yet his manner to-night was 40 BIRDS OF PKEY. not the dull blank apathy of despair. It ^Yas the manner of a man whose brain is occupied by busy thoughts ; who has some elaborate scheme to map out and arrange before he is called upon to carry his plans into action. " It would be a good business for me," he muttered, '4f I had pluck enough to carry it tln'ouojh." The fire went out as he sat swinging the poker backwards and forwards. The clocks of Bloomsbury and St. Pancras struck twelve, and still Philip Sheldon pondered and plotted by that dreary hearth. Tlie servants had retired at eleven, after a good deal of blundering with bars and shutters, and unnecessary banging of doors. That unearthly silence peculiar to houses after midnight reigned in Mr. Sheldon's domicile, and he could hear the voices of distant roisterers, and the miauling of neighbouring cats, with a painfid distinctness, as he sat brooding in his silent room. The fact that a mahogany cheffonier in a corner gave utterance to a faint groan oc- casionally, as of some feeble creature in pain. PHILIP SHELDON READS THE " LANCET." 41 aiForded liim no annoyance. He was superior to superstitious fancies, and all the rappings and scratcliings of spirit-land would have failed to disturb his equanimity. He was a strictly prac- tical man — one of those men who are always ready, with a stump of lead-pencil and the back of a letter, to reduce everything in creation to figures. " I had better read-up that business before they come," he said, when he had to all appear- ance " thought out" the subject of liis reverie. " No time so good as this for doing it quietly. One never knows who is spying about in the daytime." He looked at his watch, and then went to a cupboard, where there were bundles of wood and matches and old newspapers, — for it was his habit to light his own fire occasionally when he worked unusually late at night or early in the morning. He relighted his fire now as cleverly as any housemaid in Bloomsbury, and stood watcliing it till it bm'ned briskly. Tlien he lit a taper, and went downstairs to the professional torture- chamber. The tall horsehair chair looked un- 42 BIRDS OF PEEY. utterably awful in the dim glimmer of the taper, and a nervous person could almost have fancied it occupied bv the ghost of some patient who had expired under the agony of the forceps. Mr. Sheldon lighted the gas in a movable branch which he was in the habit of turning almost into the mouths of the patients who consulted him at night. Tliere was a cupboard on each side of the mantelpiece, and it was in these two cup- boards that the dentist kept his professional li- brary. His books did not form a very valuable collectioUj but he kept the cupboards constantly locked nevertheless. He took the key from his waistcoat-pocket, opened one of the cupboards, and selected a book from a row of dingy-looking volumes. He carried the book to the room above, where he seated himself under the gas, and opened the volume at a place in which there was a scrap of paper, evidently left there as a mark. The book was a volume of the Lancet^ and in this book he read with close attention until the Bloomsbury clocks struck three. CHAPTER III. , ME. AND MRS. HALLIDAY. •Mr. Sheldon's visitors arrived in clue course. They were provincial people of the middle-class, accounted monstrously genteel in their o^^ii neigh- bourhood, but in no wise resembling Londoners of the same rank. Mr. Tliomas Halliday was a big, loud-spoken, good-tempered Yorkshireman, who had inherited a comfortable httle estate from a plodding, money- making father, and for whom life had been very easy. He was a farmer, and notliing but a farmer; a man for whom the supremest pleasure of existence was a cattle-show or a comitry horse- fair. The farm upon which he had been born and brought up was situated about six miles from Barlingford, and all the delights of his boy- hood and youth were associated with that small 44 BIKDS OF PREY. market-town. He and the two Slieldons had been schoolfellows, and afterAvards boon com- panions, taking such pleasure as was obtainable in Barlingford together ; flirting with the same provincial beauties at prim teaj-parties in the winter, and getting up friendly picnics in the summer, — picnics at which eating and drinking were the leading features of the day's entertain- ment. Mr. Halliday had always regarded George and Philip Sheldon with that reverential admi- ration wliich a stupid man, wdio is conscious of his own mental inferiority, generally feels for a clever friend and companion. But he was also fully aware of the advantage which a rich man possesses over a poor one, and would not have exchanged the fertile acres of Hyley for the in- tellectual gifts of his schoolfellows. He had found the substantial value of his comfortably-furnished house and well-stocked farm when he and his friend Philip Sheldon became suitors for the hand of Georgina Cradock, youngest daughter of a Bar- lingford attorney, who lived next door to the Bar- lingford dentist, Philip Sheldon's father. Philip MR. AKD MRS. HALLIDAY. 45 and the girl had been playfellows in the long walled gardens behind the two houses, and there had been a brotherly and sisterly intimacy be- tween the juvenile members of the two families. But when Philip and Georgina met at the Bar- lingford tea-parties in later years, the parental powers frowned upon any renewal of that childish friendship. Miss Cradock had no portion, and the worthy solicitor her father was a prudent man, who was apt to look for the promise of domestic happiness in the plate-basket and the linen-press, rather than for such superficial quali- fications as black whiskers and white teeth. So poor Philip was ^^ thrown over the bridge" as^ he said himself, and Georgy Cradock married Mr. Halliday, with all attendant ceremony and splendom*, according to the " lights" of Barling- ford gentry. But this pro\ancial bride's story was no passionate record of anguish and tears. The Barlingford Juliet had liked Pomeo as much as she was capable of liking anyone ; but when Papa Capulet insisted on her union with Paris, 46 BIRDS OF PEEY. slie accepted her destiny with decent resignation, andj in the absence of any sympathetic father confessor, was fain to seek consolation from a more mundane individual in the person of the Barlingford milliner. Nor did Philip Sheldon give evidence of any extravagant despair. His father was something of a doctor as well as a dentist ; and there were plenty of dark little phials Im'king on the shelves of his surgery in which the yomig man could have fomid '' mortal drugs," without the aid of the apothecary, had he been, so minded. Happily no such desperate idea ever occurred to him in connection with his grief. He held himself sulkily aloof from Mr. and Mrs. Halliday for some time after their marriage, and allowed people to see that he considered himself very hardly used; but prudence, which had always been Philip Sheldon's counsellor, proved herself also his consoler in this crisis of his life. A careful consideration of his own in- terests led liim to perceive that the successful result of his love-suit w^ould have been about the worst thing that could have happened to him. 3IR. AND MRS. HALLIDAY. 47 Georgina had no money. All was said in that. As the young dentist's worldly wisdom ripened with experience, he discovered that the worldly ease of the best man in Barlingford was something like that of a canary-bird who inhabits a clean cage and is supplied with abmidant seed and water. The cage is eminently comfortable, and the sleepy, respectable, elderly bird sighs for no better abiding-place, no wider prospect than that patch of the universe which he sees between the bars. But now and then there is hatched a wild young fledgling, which beats its wings against the inexorable wires, and would fain soar away into that wide outer world, to prosper or perish in its freedom. Before Georgy had been married a year, her sometime lover had fully resigned himself to the existing state of things, and was on the best pos- sible terms with his friend Tom. He could eat his dinner in the comfortable house at Hyley with an excellent appetite ; for there w^as a gulf between him and his old love far wilder than any that had been dug by that ceremonial in the parish-church 48 BIRDS OF PREY. of Barlingford. Philip Slieldon had awakened to tlie consciousness that Hfe in his native to^vn was httle more than a kind of animal vegetation — the life of some pulpy invertebrate creature, which sprawls helplessly upon the sands whereon the wave has deposited it, and may be cloven in half without feeling itself noticeably worse for the ope- ration. He had awakened to the knowledge that there was a wider and more agreeable world beyond that little provincial borough, and that a handsome face and figm'e and a vigorous intellect were com- modities for which there must be some kind of market. Once convinced of the utter worthlessness of his pros2:)ects in Barlingford, Mr. Sheldon turned his eyes Londonwards ; and his father happening at the same time very conveniently to depart this life, Philip, the son and heir, disposed of the business to an aspiring young practitioner, and came to the metropolis, where he made that futile attempt to establish himself which has been de- scribed. Tlie dentist had wasted four years in London, MR. AND MRS. HALLIDAY. 49 and ten years had gone by since Georgy's wed- ding ; and now for the first time he had an opportunity of witnessing the domestic happiness or the domestic misery of the woman who had jihed him, and the man who had been liis suc- cessful rivaL He set himself to watch them with the cool deliberation of a social anatomist, and he experienced very little difficulty in the perform- ance of this moral dissection. Tliey were estab- lished under his roof, his companions at every meal; and they were the kind of people who discuss their grievances and indulge in their "little diiferences" with perfect freedom in the presence of a third, or a fom'th, or even a fifth party. Mr. Sheldon was wise enough to preserve a strict neutrality. He would take up a newspaper at the beginning of a little difference, and lay it down when the little difference was finished, with the most perfect assumption of unconsciousness ; but it is doubtful whether the matrimonial dis- putants were sufficiently appreciative of this good breeding. They would have liked to have had YOL. I. E 50 BIRDS OF PREY. Mr. Sheldon for a court of appeal ; and a little interference from him would have given zest to their quarrels. Meanwhile Philip watched them sljly from the covert of his newspaper, and formed his own conclusions about them. If he was pleased to see that his false love's path was not entirely rose- bestrewn, or if he rejoiced at beholding the occa- sional annoyance of his rival, he allowed no evidence of his pleasure to appear in his face or manner. Georgina Cradock's rather insipid prettiness had developed into matronly comeliness. Her fair complexion and pink cheeks had lost none of their freslmess. Her smooth aubm-n hair was as soft and bright as it had been when she had braided it preparatory to a Barlingford tea-party in the days of her spinsterhood. She was a pretty, weak little woman, whose education had never gone beyond the routine of a provincial boarding-school, and who believed that she had attained all necessary wisdom in having mastered Pinnock's abridg- ments of Goldsmith's histories and the rudiments of the French language. She was a woman who thought that the perfection of feminine costume MR. AND MRS. HALLIDAY. 51 was a moire-antique dress and a conspicuous gold- cliain. She was a woman who considered a well- funiished house and a horse and gig the highest form of earthly splendour or prosperity. Tliis was the shallow commonplace creature whom Phihp Sheldon had once admired and wooed. He looked at her now, and wondered how he could ever have felt even as much as he had felt on her account. But he had little leism'e to devote to any such abstract and useless consi- deration. He had liis own affairs to think about, and they were very desperate. In the mean time Mr. and Mrs. HaUiday occupied themselves in the pursuit of pleasure or business, as the case might be. Tliey were eager for amusement : went to exhibitions in the day and to theatres at night, and came home to cozy little suppers in Fitzgeorge- street, after which Mr. Halliday was wont to waste the small hom's in friendly conversation with his quondam com- panion, and in the consumption of much brandy- and-water. Unhappily for Georgy, these halcyon days 52 BIRDS OF PREY. were broken by intervals of storm and cloud. The weak little woman was afflicted with that intermittent fever called jealousy; and the stal- wart Thomas was one of those men who can scarcely give the time of day to a feminine ac- quaintance without some ornate and loud-spoken gallantry. Having no intellectual resources where- with to beguile the tedium of his idle prosperous life, he was fain to seek pleasure in the com- panionship of other men ; and had thus become a haunter of tavern -parlours and small race- com'sesj being always ready for any amusement his friends proposed to him. It followed, there- fore, that he was very often absent from his com- monplace, substantial home and his pretty weak- minded wife. And poor Georgy had ample food for her jealous fears and suspicions ; for where might a man not be who was so seldom at home ? She had never been particularly fond of her hus- band, but that was no reason why she should not be particularly jealous about him ; and her jea- lousy betrayed itself in a peevish worrying fashion, which was harder to bear than the vengeful fero- MR. AND MRS. HALLIDAY. 53 city of a Clytemnestra. It was in vain that Tho- mas HaUiclay and those jolly good fellows his fi'iends and companions attested the Arcadian in- nocence of race-courses, and the perfect purity of that smoky atmosphere peculiar to tavern-par- lours. Georgy's suspicions were too vague for refutation ; but they were nevertheless sufficient gromid for all the alternations of temper- — from stolid sulkiness to peevish whining, from mur- mured lamentations to loud hysterics — to which the female temperament is liable. In the mean time poor honest, loud-spoken Tom did all in his power to demonstrate his truth and devotion. He bought his wife as many stiff silk-gowns and gaudy Barlingford bonnets as she chose to sigh for. He made a will, in which she was sole legatee, and insured his life in dif- ferent offices to the amount of five thousand pounds. " I'm the sort of fellow that's likely to go off the hooks suddenly, you know, Georgy," he said, " and your poor dad was always anxious I should make things square for you. I don't suppose 54 BIRDS OF PRET. you're likely to marry again, my lass, so I've no need to tie up Lottie's little fortune. I must trust someone, and I'd better confide in my own little wife than in some canting methodistical fellow of a trustee, who w^ould speculate my daughter's money upon some Stock-Exchange hazard, and levant to Australia when it was all swamped. If you can't trust me, Georgy, I'll let you see that I can trust you," added Tom reproach- folly. Whereupon poor weak little Mrs. Halliday murmured plaintively that she did not want for- tunes or life-insurances, but that she wanted her husband to stay at home, content with the calm and rather sleepy delights of his own fireside. Poor Tom was wont to j)romise amendment, and would keep his promise faithfully so long as no supreme temptation, in the shape of a visit from some friend of the jolly-good-fellow species, arose to vanquish his good resolutions. But a good- tempered, generous-hearted young man who farms his own land, has three or fom* good horses in his stable, a decent cellar of honest port and sherry — MR. A^D MRS. HALLIDAY. 55 " none of your wishy-washy sour stuff in the way of hock or claret," cried Tom Halliday — and a very comfortable balance at his banker's, finds it no easy matter to shake off friends of the jolly- good-fellow fraternity. In London Mr. Halliday found the spirit of jolly-dog-ism rampant. George Sheldon had al- ways been his favourite of the two brothers ; and it was George wdio lured him from the safe shelter of Fitzgeorge-street and took him to mysterious haunts, whence he returned long after midnight, boisterous of manner and unsteady of gait, and with garments reeking of stale tobacco-smoke. He was always good-tempered, even after these diabolical orgies on some unknown Brocken, and j)rotested indistinctly that there was no harm " 'pon m' w^or', ye know, ol' gur' ! Geor' an' me — half-doz' oyst'r — c'gar — botl' p'l ale — str't home," and much more to the same effect. AYhen did any married man ever' take more than half- a-dozen oysters — or take any midomestic pleasure for his oivn satisfaction ? It is always those incor- rigible bachelors, Thomas, Eichard, or Henry, 56 BIRDS OF PREY. who hinder the imwilHng Benedict from return- ing to Ms sacred Lares and Penates. Poor Georgy was not to be pacified by pro- testations about oysters and cigars from the hps of a husband who was thick of utterance, and who betrayed a general imbecihty of mind and un- steadiness of body. This London excursion, which had begun in sunsliine, threatened to end in storm and darkness. George Sheldon and his set had taken possession of the yomig farmer ; and Georgy had no better amusement in the long blustrous March evenings than to sit at her work under the flaming gas in Mr. Sheldon's drawing- room, while that gentleman — who rarely joined in the dissipations of his friend and his brother — oc- cupied himself with mechanical dentistry in the chamber of torture below. Fitzgeorge-street in general, always on the watch to discover evidences of impecuniosity or doubtful morahty on the part of any one citizen in particular, could find no food for scandal in the visit of Mr. and Mrs. HaUiday to their friend and counti-yman. It had been noised abroad, through MR. AND MRS. HALLIDAY. 57 the agency of Mrs. Woolper, that Mr. Sheldon had been a suitor for the lady's hand, and had been jilted by her. The Fitzgeorgians had been, therefore, especially on the alert to detect any sign of backslidino; in the dentist. There would have been much pleasant discussion in kitchens and back-parlours if Mr. Sheldon had been parti- cularly attentive to his fair guest ; but it speedily became known, always by the agency of Mrs. Woolper and that j)henomenon of idleness and iniquity, the London ^'girl," that Mr. Sheldon was not by any means attentive to the pretty yomig woman from Yorkshire — but that he suf- fered her to sit alone hour after hour in her hus- band's absence — with no amusement but her needlework wherewith to " pass the time," while he scraped and filed and polished those fragments of bone which were to assist in the renovation of decayed beauty. The third week of Mr. and Mrs. Halliday's visit was near its close, and as yet the young farmer had arrived at no decision as to the subject which had brought him to London. The sale of 58 BIRDS OF PREY. Hyley Farm was an accomplished fact ; and the purchase-money duly bestowed at Tom's banker's ; but very little had been done towards finding the new property w^hich was to be a substitute for the estate his father and grandfather had farmed before him. He had seen auctioneers, and had brought home plans of estates in Herefordshire and DevonslurCj Cornwall and Somersetshke, all of wliich seemed to be, in their way, the most perfect things imaginable — land of such fertility as one would scarcely expect to find out of Ar- cadia — live stock which seemed beyond all price, to be taken at a valuation — roads and surromid- ing neighboui'hood unparalleled in beauty and convenience — outbuildings that must have been the very archetypes of barns and stables — a house which to inhabit would be to adore. But as yet he had seen none of these peerless domains. He was waiting for decent weather in which to run down to the West and " look about him," as he said to himself. In the mean time the blustrous March weather, which was so misuitcd to long railroad jom'neys, and all that waiting about at MR. AlTD MRS. HALLIDAY. 59 junctions and at little windy stations on branch- lines, incidental to the inspection of estates scattered over a large area of country, served very well for ^^ jolly-dog-ism" — and what with a hand at cards in George Sheldon's chambers, and another hand at cards in somebody else's chambers, and a run down to an early meeting at Ne^vmarket, and an evening at some rooms where there was something to be seen which was as near prize-fighting as the law allowed, and other evenings in unknown regions, Mr. Halliday found time slipping by him, and his domestic peace vanishing away. It was on an evening at the end of this third week that Mr. Sheldon abandoned his mechanical dentistry for once in a way, and ascended to the drawing-room, where poor Georgy sat busy with that eternal needlework, but for which melancholy madness would sm'ely overtake many desolate matrons in houses whose commonj^lace comfort and respectable dulness are more dismal than the picturesque dreariness of a moated gi'ange amid the Lincolnshire fens. To the masculine mind this needlework seems nothing more than a pur- 60 BIRDS OF PREY. poseless stabbing and sewing of strips of calico ; but to lonely womanhood it is the prison-flower of the captive, it is the spider of Latude. IMr. Sheldon brouo-ht his 2:iiest an evening newspaper. '^ There's an account of the opening of Parlia- ment," he said, ^' which you may perhaps like to see. I wish I had a piano, or some female ac- quaintances to drop in upon you. I'm afraid you must be dull in these long evenings when Tom is out of the way." " I am indeed dull," Mrs. Halliday answered peevishly; " and if Tom cared for me, he wouldn't leave me like this evening after evening. But he doesn't care for me." Mr. Sheldon laid down the newspaper, and seated himself opposite his guest. He sat for a few minutes in silence, beating time to some imaginary air with the tips of his fingers on the old-fashioned mahogany table. Then he said, with a half-smile upon his face : " But surely Tom is the best of husbands ! He has been a little wild since his coming to MR. AND MRS. HALLIDAY. 61 London, I know; but then you see he doesn't often come to town." '' He's just as bad in Yorkshire," Georgy answered gloomily ; "he is always going to Bar- lingford with somebody or other, or to meet some of his old friends. I'm sm'e, if I had knoAvn wdiat he was, I would never have married him." " Why, I thought he was such a good hus- band. He was telling me only a few days ago how he had made a will leaving you every six- pence he possesses, without reservation, and how he has insured his life for five thousand pomids." "0 yes, I know that; but I don't call that being a good husband. I don't want him to leave me his money. I don't want him to die. I want him to stay at home." " Poor Tom ! I'm afraid he's not the sort of man for that kind of thing. He likes change and amusement. You married a rich man, Mrs. Hal- liday ; you made yom^ choice, you know, without regard to the feelings of anyone else. You sacri- ficed truth and honour to your own inclination, or your own interest, I do not know, and I do not 62 BIRDS OF PREY. ask wliicli. If the bargain has turned out a bad one, that's your look-out." Philip Sheldon sat with his folded arms rest- ing on the little table and his eyes fixed on Georgy's face. They could be very stern and hard and cruel, those bright black eyes, and Mrs. Halliday grew first red and then pale under their searching gaze. She had seen Mr. Sheldon very often durmg the years of her married life, but this was tlie first time he had ever said anything to her that sounded like a reproach. The dentist's eyes softened a little as he watched her, not with any special tenderness, but with an expression of half- disdainful compassion — such as a strong stern man might feel for a foolish child. He could see that this woman was afraid of liim, and it served his interests that she should fear him. He had a purpose in everything he did, and his purpose to- night was to test the strength of his influence over Georgina Halliday. In the old time before her marriage that influence had been very strong. It was for him to discover now whether it still endured. ^^You made your choice, Mrs. Halhday," he MR. AND MRS. HALLIDAY. 63 went on presently, " and it was a choice whicli all prudent people must have approved. What chance had a man, who was only heir to a practice worth four or five hundred pounds, against the inheritor of Hjlej Farm with its two hundred and fifty acres, and three thousand pomids' worth of five stock, plant, and working capital ? When do the prudent people ever stop to consider truth and honour, or old promises, or an affection that dates from childhood? Tliey calculate everything by pounds, shillings, and pence; and according to their mode of reckoning you were in the right when you jilted me to marry Tom Halliday." Georgy laid down her work and took out her handkerchief. She was one of those women who take refuge in tears when they find themselves at a disadvantage. Tears had always melted honest Tom, was his wrath never so dire, and tears would no doubt subdue Pliilip Sheldon. But Georgy had to discover that the dentist was made of a stuff very different from that softer clay which composed the roUickuig good-tempered farmer. Mr. Sheldon watched her tears with the 64 BIEDS OF PEEY. cold blooded deliberation of a scientific experimen- talist. He was glad to find that lie could make her cry. She was a necessary instrument in the work- ing out of ceiiain plans tliat he had made for him- self, and he was anxious to discover whether she was likely to be a plastic instrument. He knew that her love for him had never been worth much at its best, and that the poor little flickering flame had been utterly extinguished by nine years of commonplace domesticity and petty jealousy. But his purpose was one that would be served as well by her fear as by her love, and he had set himself to-night to gauge his power in relation to this poor weak creatm-e. ^' It's very unkind of you to say such dreadful things, Mr. Sheldon," she whimpered presently ; " you know very well that my marriage with Tom was pa's doing, and not mine. I'm sure if I'd known how he would stay out night after night, and come home in such dreadful states time after time, I never would have consented to marry him." " Wouldn't you ? — yes, you would. If you were a w^idow to-morrow, and free to marry again, MU. AND MRS. HALLIDAY. 65 you would clioose just sucli another man as Tom — a man wlio laughs loud, and pays flourishing com- pliments, and drives a gig with a high-stepping horse. That's the sort of man women like, and that's the sort of man you'd marry." " I'm sure I shouldn't marry at all," answered llrs. Hallidav, in a voice that was broken bv little gasping sobs. ^^ I have seen enough of the misery of married life. But I don't want Tom to die, unkind as he is to me. People are always saying that he won't make old bones — how horrid it is to talk of a person's bones ! — and I'm sm*e I some- times make myself Avretched about him, as he knows, though he doesn't thank me for it." And here Mrs. Halliday's sobs got the better of her utterance, and Mr. Sheldon was fain to say something of a consolatory nature. " Come, come," he said, " I won't tease you any more. That's against the laws of hosj^itality, isn't it ? — only there are some things which you can't expect a man to forget, you know. How- ever, let bygones be bygones. As for poor old Tom, I daresay he'll live to be a hale, hearty old VOL. r. F 66 BIRDS OF PREY. man, in spite of the croakers. People always will croak about something ; and it's a kind of fashion to say that a big, hearty, six-foot man is a fragile blossom likely to be nipped by any wintry blast. Come, come, Mrs. Halliday, your husband mustn't discover that I've been making you cry when he comes home. He may be home early this evening, perhaps ; and if he is, we'll have an oyster supper, and a chat about old times." Mrs. Halliday shook her head dolefully. " It's past ten o'clock already," she said, " and I don't suppose Tom will be home till after twelve. He doesn't like my sitting up for him ; but I won- der ivJiat time he would come home if I didn't sit up for him ?" " Let's hope for the best," exclaimed Mr. Sheldon cheerfully. " I'll go and see about the oysters." " Don't get them for me, or for Tom," pro- tested Mrs. Halliday; ''he will have had his sup- per when he comes home, you may be sm'e, and I couldn't eat a morsel of anything." To this resolution Mrs. Halliday adhered ; so MR. AND MRS. HALLIDAY. 67 the dentist was fain to abandon all jovial ideas in relation to oysters and pale ale. Bnt lie did not go back to his mechanical dentistry. He sat op- posite his visitor, and watched her, silently and thoughtfully, for some time as she worked. She had brushed away her tears, but she looked very peevish and miserable, and took out her watch several times in an hour. Mr. Sheldon made two or three feeble attempts at conversation, but the talk languished and expired on each occasion, and they sat on in silence. Little by little the dentist's attention seemed to wander away from his guest. He wheeled his chair round, and sat looking at the fire, with the same fixed gloom upon his face which had dark- ened it on the night of his retm'n from Yorksliire. Tilings had been so desperate with him of late, that he had lost his old orderly habit of thinking out a business at one sittino^, and inakino; an end of all deliberation and hesitation about it. There were subjects that forced themselves upon his thoughts, and certain ideas which repeated them- selves with a stupid persistence. He was such an 68 BIRDS OF PREY. emineiitlj practical man, that this disorder of his brain troubled him more even than the thoughts that made the disorder. He sat in the same atti- tude for a long while, scarcely conscious of Mrs. Halliday's presence, not at all conscious of the progress of time. Georgy had been right in her gloomy fore- bodings of bad behaviour on the part of Mr. Halliday. It was nearly one o'clock when a loud double knock announced that gentleman's return. The wind had been howling drearily, and a sharp, slanting rain had been pattering against the win- dows for the last half-hour, wliile Mrs. Halliday 's breast had been racked by the contending emo- tions of anxiety and indignation. " I suppose he couldn't get a cab," she ex- claimed, as the knock startled her from her lis- tening attitude; for however intently a midnight watcher may be listening for the returning wan- derer's knock, it is not the less startling when it comes. ^'And he has walked home through the AVet, and now he'll have a violent cold, I daresay," added Georgy peevishly. MR. AND MRS. HALLIDAY. 69 '^ Then it's lucky for liim lie's in a doctor's liouse," answered Mr. Sheldon, with a smile. He Avafs a handsome man no doubt, according to the popular idea of masculine perfection, but he had not a pleasant smile. " I went through the re- gular routine, you know, and am as well able to see a patient safely through a cold or a fever as I am to make him a set of teeth." Mr. Halliday burst into the room at this mo- ment, sino-ino; a frao;ment of the " Cliou2:h and Crow" chorus, very much out of tune. He was in boisterously high spirits, and very little the worse for liquor. He had only walked from Covent Garden, he said, and had taken nothing but a tankard of stout and a Welsh rarebit. He had been hearing the divinest singing — boys witli the voices of angels — and had been taking his supper in a place which duchesses themselves did not disdain to peep at from the sacred recesses of a logs grilleey George Sheldon had told him. But poor country-bred Georgina Halliday w^ould not believe in the duchesses, or the angelic sing- ing boys, or the primitive simplicity of Welsh 70 BIRDS OF PREY. rarebits. She had a vision of beautiful women, and halls of dazzling light; where there was the mad music of perpetual post-horn galops, with a riotous accompaniment of huzzas, and the popping of champagne corks; where the sheen of satin and the glitter of gems bewildered the eye of the be- holder. She had seen such a picture once on the stage, and had vaguely associated it with all Tom's midnight roisterings ever afterwards. The roisterer's garments were very wet, and it was in \'ain that his wife and Philip Sheldon entreated him to change them for dry ones, or to go to bed immediately. He stood before the fire relating his innocent adventures, and trying to dispel the cloud from Georgy's fair young brow; and, when he did at last consent to go to his room, the dentist shook his head ominously. " You'll have a severe cold to-morrow, depend upon it, Tom, and }'ou'll have yourself to thank for it," he said, as he bade the good-tempered reprobate good-night. '^ Never mind, old fellow," answered Tom; ^'if I am ill, you shall nurse me. If one is doomed MR. AND MRS. HALLIDAY. 71 to die by doctor's stuff, it's better to liave a doc- tor one does know than a doctor one doesn't know for one's executioner." After which graceful piece of humour Mr. HalKday went bhuidering up the staircase, fol- lowed by his aggrieved wife. Philip Sheldon stood on the landing looking after his visitors for some minutes. Then he went slowly back to the sitting-room, where he re- plenished the fire, and seated liimself before it with a newspaper in his hand. "" What's the use of going to bed, if I can't sleep?" he muttered, in a discontented tone. CHAPTER lY. A PERPLEXING ILLNESS. Mr. Sheldon's prophecy was fully realised. Tom Hallidav awoke the next dav witli a violent cold in liis head. Like most bio- boisterous men of herculean build, he was the veriest craven in the hour of physical ailment ; so he succumbed at once to the malady which a man obliged to face the world and fio^ht for his dailv bread must needs have made light of. The dentist rallied his invalid friend. ^' Keep your bed, if you like, Tom," he said, "but there's no necessit}' for any such coddling. As your hands are hot, and }'our tongue rather queer, I may as well give you a saline draught. You'll be all right by dinner-time, and I'll gQi George to look round in the evening for a hand at cards." A PERPLEXING ILLNESS. Tom obeyed his professional friend — took liis ?nedicine, read the paper, and slept aAvay the best part of the dull March da}^ At half-past five he got up and dressed for dinner, and the evening passed very pleasantly ; so pleasantly, indeed, that Georgy was half-inclined to wish that her husband might be afflicted with chronic influenza, whereby he would be compelled to stop at home. She sighed when Philip Sheldon slapped his friend's broad shoulder, and told him cheerily that he would be "all right to-morrow." He would be well ao;ain, and there would be more midnight roistering, and she would be again tor- mented by that vision of lighted halls and beau- tiful diabolical creatures revolving madly to the music of the Post-horn Galop. It seemed, however, that poor jealous Mrs. [alliday was to be spared her nightly agony for ifome time to come. Tom's cold lasted lono^er than had expected, and the cold was succeeded by low fever — a bilious fever, Mr. Sheldon said. lere was not the least occasion for alarm, of ccurse. The invalid and the invalid's wife trusted 74 BIRDS OF PREY. implicitly in the friendly doctor, who assured them both that Tom's attack was the most ordi- nary kind of thing ; a little wearing, no doubt, but entirely without danger. He had to repeat this assm-ance very often to Georgy^ whose angry feelings had given place to extreme tenderness and affection now that Tom was an invalid, quite mifitted for the society of jolly-good-fellows, and willino; to receive basins of beef-tea and arrow- root meekly from his wife's hands, instead of those edibles of iniquity, oysters and toasted cheese. Mr. Halliday's illness was very tiresome. It was one of those perplexing complaints which keep the patient himself, and the patient's friends and attendants, in perpetual uncertainty. A little worse one day and a shade better the next ; now gaining a little strength, now losing a trifle mor< than he had gained. The patient declined in s) imperceptible a manner, that he had been il three weeks, and was no longer able to leave lis bed, and had lost alike his appetite and as spirits, before Georgy awoke to the fact that iiis A PERPLEXING ILLNESS. 75 illnesSj liitlierto considered so lightly, must be very serious. '^ I think if — if you have no objection, I should like to see another doctor, Mr. Sheldon," she said, one day, with considerable embarrassment of manner. She feared to offend her host by any •doubt of his skill. ^' You see — you — you are so much employed with teeth — and — of coiu'se you know I am quite assured of your talent — but don't you think that a doctor who had more ex- perience in fever cases might bring Tom round quicker ? He has been ill so long now ; and really he doesn't seem to get any better." Philip Sheldon shrugged his shoulders. ^' As you please, my dear Mrs. Halliday," he said carelessly; ^' I don't wish to press my services upon you. It is quite a matter of friend- ship, you know, and I shall not profit sixpence by my attendance on poor old Tom. Call in another doctor, by all means, if you think fit to do so ; but, of course, in that event, I must withdraw from the case. The man you call in may be clever, or he may be stupid and ignorant. It's 76 BIRDS OF PREY. all a chance, "wlien one doesn't know one's man ; and I realh' can't advise you npon that point, for I know nothing of the London profession." Georgy looked alarmed. Tliis was a new view of the subject. She had fancied that all regular practitioners were clever, and had only doubted Mr. Sheldon because he was not a re- gular practitioner. But how if she were to with- draw her husband from the hands of a clever man to deliver him into the care of an ignorant pre- tender, simply because she was over-anxious for his recovery ? " I always am foolishly anxious about things," she thouo-ht. And then she looked plteously at Mr. Sheldon, and said, " AVhat do you think I ought to do? Pray tell me. He has eaten no breakfast again this morning ; and even the cup of tea which 1 persuaded him to take seemed to disagree with him. And then there is that dreadful sore throat which tor- ments him so. What ought I to do, Mr. Sheldon ?" " Whatever seems best to yourself, Mrs. Halli- day," answered the dentist earnestly. " It is a A PERPLEXING ILLNESS. 77 subject upon wliicli I cannot pretend to advise you. It is a matter of feeling rather than of rea- son, and it is a matter which you yourself must determine. If I knew any man whom I could honestly recommend to you, it would be another affair ; but I don't. Tom's illness is the simplest thing in the world, and I feel myself quite com- petent to pull him through it, without fuss or bother ; but if you think otherwise, pray put me out of the question. There's one fact, however, of which I'm bound to remind you. Like many fine big stalwart fellows of his stamp, your hus- band is as nervous as a hysterical w^oman ; and if you call in a strange doctor, who will pull long- faces, and put on the professional solemnity, the chances are that he'll take alarm, and do himself more mischief in a few hours than your new adviser can undo in as many weeks." There was a little pause after this. Georgy's opinions, and suspicions, and anxieties Avere alike vasne : and this last suo-o-estion of Mr. Sheldon's put things in a new and alarming light. She was really anxious about her husband, but she had * 78 BIRDS OF PREY. been accustomed all her life to accept the opinion of other people in preference to her own. '^ Do you really think that Tom will soon be well and strong again ?" she asked presently. ^^ If I thought otherwise, I should be the first to advise other measures. However, my dear Mrs. Halliday, call in someone else, for your own satisfaction." " No," said Georgy, sighing plaintively, " it might frighten Tom. You are quite right, Mr. Sheldon ; he is very nerv^ous, and the idea that I was alarmed might alarm him. I'll trust in you. Pray try to bring him round again. You w^ill try, won't you ?" she asked, in the childish plead- ing way which was peculiar to her. The dentist was searchino- for somethino- in the drawer of a table, and his back was turned on that anxious questioner. " You may depend upon it. 111 do my best, Mrs. Halliday," he answered, still busy at the drawer. Mr. Sheldon the younger had paid many visits A PERPLEXING ILLNESS. 7^ to FItzo'eoro;e- street durino; Tom Hallidav's ill- ness. Georo;e and Tom had been the Damon and Pjthias of Barlingford ; and George seemed really distressed when he found his friend changed for the worse. The chano^es in the invalid were so puzzling, the alternations from better to worse, and from Avorse to better, so freqnent, that fear could take no hold upon the minds of the patient's friends. It seemed such a very slight affair this low fever, though sufficientlj inconvenient to the patient himself, who suffered a good deal fi'om thirst and sickness, and showed an extreme disincli- nation for food, all which symptoms Mr. Sheldon said were the commonest and simplest features of a very mild attack of bilious fever, which woul leave Tom a better man than it had found him. There had been several pleasant little card- parties during the earlier stages of Mr. Halliday's illness ; but within the last week the patient had been too low and weak for cards ; too weak to read the newspaper, or even to bear having it read to him. When George came to look at his old friend, ^' to cheer you up a little, old fellow, you so BIRDS OF TEEY. know," and so on, lie found. Tom, for tlie time being, past all capability of being cheered, even by the genial society of his favom'ite jolly-good- felloAV, or by tidings of a steeple-chase in York- shire, in which a neighbour had gone to grief over a double fence. ^' That chap , upstairs seems rather queerish," Oeorge had said to his brother, after finding Tom lower and weaker than usual. '^ He's in a bad way, isn't he, Phil ?" '^ No ; there's nothing serious the matter with him. He's rather low to-night, that's all." ^'Eather low!" echoed George Sheldon. ^^He seems to me so very low, that he can't sink much lower without 0:011^2: to the bottom of his m-ave. I'd call someone in, if I were you." The dentist shrugged his shoulders, and made a little contemptuous noise with his lips. " If you knew as much of doctors as I do, you wouldn't be in any hurry to trust a friend to the mercy of one," he said carelessl}^ " Don't you alarm yourself about Tom. He's right enough. He's been in a state of chronic over-eating and A PERPLEXING ILLNESS. 81 over-clrinking for the last ten years, and this bilious fever will be the making of him." "Will it?" said George doubtfully; and then there followed a little pause, during which the bro- thers happened to look at each other furtively, and happened to sm^prise each other in the act. " I don't know about over-eating or drinking," said George presently ; " but something has dis- agreed with Tom Halliday, that's very evident." VOL. L G CHAPTER V. THE LETTER FROM THE ^^ ALLIANCE" OFFICE. Upon the evening of the daj on which Mrs. Hal- liday and the dentist had discussed the propriety of calling in a strange doctor, Greorge Sheldon came again to see his sick friend. He was quicker to perceive the changes in the invalid than the members of the householdj who saw him daily and hom'ly, and he perceived a striking change for the worse to-night. He took care, however, to suffer no evidence of alarm or surprise to appear in the sick chamber. He talked to his friend in the usual clieery way; sat by the bed-side for half-an-hour ; did his best to arouse Tom from a kind of stupid lethargy, and to encoui'age Mrs. Halliday, who shared the task of nursing her husband with brisk Nancy Woolper, an invaluable creature in a sick-room. But he THE LETTER FROM THE '^ ALLIANCE" OFFICE. 83 failed in botli attemj^ts ; the cliill apathy of the invalid was not to be dispelled by the most genial companionship, and Georgy's spirits had been sinking lower and lower all day as her fears increased. She wonld fain have called in a stran o-e doctor : she would fain have sought for comfort and con- solation from some new quarter. But she was afraid of offending Philip Sheldon ; and she was afraid of alarming her husband. So she waited, and watched, and struo-aled ao^ainst that ever- increasing anxiety. Had not Mr. Sheldon made light of his friend's malady, and what motive could he have for deceivino; her ? A breakfast-cup full of beef-tea stood on the little table by the bed-side, and had been standing there for hours untouched. " I did take such pains to make it strong and clear," said Mrs. Woolper regretfully, as she came to the little table during a tidying process, ^^and poor dear Mr. Halhday hasn't taken so much as a spoonful. It won't be fit for him to- morrow, so as I haven't eaten a morsel of dinner, 84 BIRDS OF PKEY. what "with the hurry unci anxiety and one thing and another, I'll warm up the beef-tea for my supper. There's not a blessed thing in the house ; for you don't eat nothing, Mrs. Halhday ; and as to cooking a dinner for Mr. Slieldon, you'd a deal better go and throw your yictuals out into the gutter, for then there'd be a chance of stray dogs profiting by 'em, at any rate." "Phil is off his feed, then; eh, IN^ancy?" said George. " I should rather think he is, Mr. George. I roasted a chicken yesterday for him and Mrs. HaUiday, and I don't think they eat an ounce between them ; and such a lovely tender young thino^ as it was too — done to a turn — witli bread- sauce and a little bit of sea-kale. One invahd makes another, that's certain. I never saw your brother so upset as he is now^ Mr. George, in all his Hfe." "No?" answered Georo-e Sheldon thouo'ht- fully ; " Phil isn't generally one of your sensitive sort." The invalid was sleeping heavily during this THE LETTER FROM THE " ALLIANCE" OFFICE. 85 conversation. George stood by the bed for some minutes looking down at tbe altered face, and then turned to leave the room. "Good-night, Mrs. Halliday," he said; "I hope I shall find poor old Tom a shade better Avhen I look round to-morrow." " I am sure I hope so," Georgy answered mournfully. She was sitting by the window looldng out at the darkening western sky, in which the last lurid glimmer of a stormy smiset w^as fading against a background of iron gray. Tliis quiet figm'e by the window, the stormy sky, and ragged luuTying clouds without, the dusky chamber with all its dismally significant litter of medicine-bottles, made a gloomy pictm^e ; -a picture which the man who looked upon it car- ried in his mind for many years after that night. George Sheldon and Nancy Woolper left the room together, the Yorkshirewoman carrying a tray of empty phials and glasses, and amongst them the cup of beef-tea. " He seems in a bad way to-night, Xancy," SG BIRDS OF PREY. said George, ^vitli a backward jerk of liis head towards the sick-chamber. " He is in a bad war, Mr. George," answered the woman graveh', "let Mr. Phihp think what he win. I don't want to say a word against your brother's knowledo^e, for such a steady studious iientleman as he is had need be clever ; and if I & was ill myself, I'd trust my life to him freely; for I've heard Barlingford folks say that my mas- ter's advice is as good as any regular doctor's, and that there's very little your regular doctors know that he doesn't know as well or better. But for all that, Mr. George, I don't think he understands Mr. HaUiday's case quite as clear as he might." '' Do you think Tom's in any dano^er ?" " I won't say that, Mr. George ; but I think he gets worse instead of getting better." " Humph !" muttered George, " if Halliday were to go off the hooks, Phil would have a good chance of getting a rich wife.'' " Don't say that, Mr. George," exclaimed the Yorkshirewom an reproachfully; "don't even think THE LETTER FROM THE '^ ALLIANCE" OFFICE. 87 of sucli a tiling while tliat poor man lies at death's door. I'm sure Mr. Sheldon hasn't any thoughts of that kind. He told me before Mr. and Mrs. Halliday came to town, that he and Miss Georgy had forgotten all about past times." "0, if Phil said so, that alters the case. Phil is one of your blunt outspoken fellows ; and al- ways says what he means," said George Sheldon. And then he went downstairs, lea^^ng Nancy to fol- low him at her leisure with the tray of jinghng cups and 2:lasses. He went down throuc^h the dusk, smiling to himself, as if he had just given utter- ance to some piece of intense humour. He went to look for his brother, whom he found in the torture-chamber, busied with some mysterious process in connection with a lump of plaster-of- paris, which seemed to be the model of ruined battlements in the Gothic style. The dentist looked up as George entered the room, and did not ap- pear particularly delighted by the appearance of that gentleman. " Well," said Mr. Sheldon the younger, " busy as usual ? Patients seem to be looking ujd." 38 BIRDS OF PKEY. *'^ Patients be toothless to the end of time !" cried Philip, with a savage laugh. " No, I'm not working to order ; I'm only experiment- alisino;." " You're rather fond of experiments, I think, Phil," said George, seating himself near the table tit which his brother was workino; under the orlare of the gas. The dentist looked ygyj pale and haggard in the gas-light, and his eyes had the dull sunken appearance induced by prolonged sleeplessness. George sat watching his brother thoughtfull}' for some time, and then produced his cigar-case. " You don't mind my smoke here ?" he asked, as he lighted a cigar, " Not at all. You are very welcome to sit here, if it amuses you to see me working at the cast of a lower jaw." '^ 0, that's a lower jaw, is it? It looks like the fragment of some castle-keep. 'No, Phil, I don't care about watching you work. I want to talk to you seriousl}-." ^^ What about?" ^' About that fellow upstairs; poor old Tom. THE LETTER FROM THE '' ALLIANCE" OFFICE. 89 He and I were great cronies, you know, at home. He's in a very bad way, Phil." '' Is he ? You seem to be turning physician all at once, George. I shouldn't have thought your grubbing among county histories, and tat- tered old pedigrees, and parish registers had given you so deep an insight into the science of me- dicine !" said the dentist, in a sneering tone. ^' I don't know anything of medicine ; but I know enough to be sure that Tom Halliday is about as bad as he can be. What mystifies me is, that he doesn't seem to have had an}i;hing particular the matter with him. There he lies, getting worse and worse every day, without any specific ailment. It's a strange illness, Philip." " I don't see anvthino; strano-e in it." '^ Don't you? Don't you think the surround- ino- circumstances are strano^e ? Here is this man <3omes to your house hale and hearty ; and all of a sudden he falls ill, and gets lower and loAver every ■day, without anybody being able to say why or wherefore." 90 BIRDS OF PREY. '^ That's not true, George. Everybody in tliis lioiise knows tlie cause of Tom Halliday's illness. He came home in wet clothes, and insisted on keeping them on. He caught a cold ; which re- sulted in low fcA'er. There is the whole history and mystery of the affair." '^ Tliat's simple enough, certainly. But if I were you, Phil, I'd call in another doctor." " Tliat is Mrs. Halliday's business," answered the dentist coolly; "if she doubts my skill, she is free to call in whom she pleases. And now you may as well drop the subject, George. I've had enough anxiety about this man's illness, and I don't want to be worried by you." After this there was a little conversation upon general matters, but the talk dragged and lan- guished drearily, and George Sheldon rose to depart directly he had finished his cigar. " Good-night, Philip !" he said ; "if ever you get a stroke of good luck, I hope you'll stand some- thins: handsome to me." This remark had no particular relevance to anything that had been said that night by the THE LETTER FROM THE '^ ALLIAXCE" OFFICE. 91 two men. Yet Philip Sheldon seemed in no wise astonished by it. " If thinors ever do take a turn for the better with me, you'll find me a good friend, George," he said gravely ; and then Mr. Sheldon the younger bade him good-night, and went out into Fitzo^eoro;e-street. He paused for a moment at the corner of the- street to look back at his brother's house. He could see the lio-hted Avindows of the invalid's chamber, and it was at those he looked. " Poor Tom," he said to himself, " poor Tom ! we were great cronies in the old times, and ha^'e had many a pleasant evening together !" Mr. Sheldon the dentist sat up till the small hours that night, as he had done for many nights lately. He finished his work in the torture-cham- ber, and went up to the common sitting-room, or drawing-room as it was called by courtesy, a little before midnight. The servants had gone to bed, for there was no reo-ular nio-htlv watch in the apartment of the invalid. Mrs. Halliday lay on 92 BIRDS OF PREY. a sofa in her liusbancrs room, and Nancy Wool- per slept in an adjoining apartment, always "wakeful and ready if help of any kind should be wanted. The house was very quiet just now. Philip Sheldon walked up and down the room, thinking ; and the creaking of liis boots sounded unpleasantly loud to his ears. He stopped before the fire-place, after having walked to and fro some time, and began to examine some letters that lay upon the mantelpiece. They were addressed to Mr. Halli- day, and had been forwarded from Yorkshire. The dentist took them up one by one, and delibe- rately examined them. They were all business letters, and most of them bore comitry post-marks. But there was one which had been, in the first instance, posted from London ; and this letter Mr. Sheldon examined with especial attention. It was a big official-looking document, and embossed upon the adhesive envelope appeared the crest and motto of the Alliance Insurance Office. '' I wonder whether that's all square," thought THE LETTER FROM THE " ALLIANCE" OFFICE. 9S Mr. Sheldon, as lie turned tlie envelope about in liis hands, staring at it absently. '' I ought to make sure of that. Tlie London post-mark is nearly three weeks old." He pondered for some moments, and then went to the cupboard in which he kept the materials wherewith to replenish or to make a fire. Here he found a little tin tea- kettle, in which he was in the habit of boiling^ water for occasional friendly glasses of grog. He poured some water from a bottle on the sideboard into this kettle, set fire to a bundle of wood, and put the kettle on the blazing sticks. After having done this he searched for a tea-cup, suc- ceeded in finding one, and then stood watching for the boilino; of the water. He had not lono- to wait ; the water boiled furiously before the wood was bm'nt out, and Mr. Sheldon filled the tea-cup standing on the table. Tlien he put the insm'ance- office letter over the cuj:), with the seal down- wards, and left it so while he resumed his walk. After walking up and down for about ten minutes he went back to the table and took up the letter. The adhesive envelope opened easily, and Mr. ^4 BIRDS OF TREY. Sheldon, by this ingenious stratagem, made him- self master of his friend's business. The " Alliance" letter was nothing more than a notice to the effect that the half-yearly premimn for insuring the sum of three thousand pounds on the life of Thomas Halliday would be due on such a day, after which there would, be twenty-one clays' grace, at the end of which time the policy would become void, unless the premium had been duly paid. Mr. Halliday's letters had been suffered to ac- cumulate dm'ing the last fortnight. The letters forwarded, from Yorkshire had. been detained some time, as they had been sent first to Hyley Farm, now in possession of the new owner, and then to Barlingford, to the house of Georgy's mother, wdio had kept them upwards of a week, in daily expectation of her son-in-law's return. It was only on the receipt of a letter from Georgy, con- taining the tidings of her husband's illness, that Mr. Halliday's letters had been sent to London. Thus it came about that the twenty-one days of grace were within four-and-twenty hours of THE LETTER FROM THE ^^ ALLIANCE" OFFICE. 95 expiring when Pliilip Sheldon opened his friend's letter. " Tliis is serious," muttered the dentist, as he stood deliberating with the open letter in liis hand ; " there are three thousand pounds depend- ing on that man's power to write a cheque !" After a few minutes' reflection, he folded the letter and re sealed it very carefully. '' It wouldn't do to press the matter upon him to-night," he thought; " I must wait till to-mor- row morning, come what may." CHAPTER YI. ME. burkham's uncertainties. The next morning dawned gray and pale and cliill, after the manner of early spring mornings, let them ripen into never such balmy days ; and with the dawn Xancy Woolper came into the in- valid's chamber^ more wan and sickly of asj)ect than the mornino; itself. Mrs. Halliday started from an uneasy slumber. ^^ What's the matter, Nancy?" she asked with considerable alarm. She had known the woman ever since her childhood, and she Avas startled this morning by some indefinable change in her man- ner and appearance. The hearty old woman, whose face had been like a hard rosy apple shrivelled and wrinkled by long keeping, had now a white and ghastly look which struck terror to Georgy's breast. She who was usually so brisk Mil. burkha:\i's uxcertaixties. 97 of manner and sharp of speech, had this morning a strange subdned tone and an unnatui-al cahiiness of demeanour. ^^ What is the matter, Kancy?" Mrs. Hallidaj repeated, getting up from her sofa. ''Don't be frightened, Miss Georgy," an- swered tlie old woman, who was apt to forget that Tom HaHiday's wife had ever ceased to be Georgy Cradock; "don't be frightened, my dear. I haven't been vejy well all night,— and— and— I've been worrying myself about Mr. Halliday. If I were you, I'd call in another doctor. :N"ever mind what Mr. Philip says. He may be mis- taken, you know, clever as he is. There's no telling. Take my advice. Miss Georgy, and call in another doctor— directly — directly," repeated the old woman, seizing Mrs. Halliday's wrist with a passionate energy, as if to give emphasis to her words. Poor timid Georgy shrank from her with terror. '' You frighten me, Nancy," she whispered ; " do you think that Tom is so much worse ? You have not been with him all night; and he has VOL. I. jj 98 BIEDS OF PREY. been sleeping very quietl}'. What makes you sa anxious this mornino:?" "Xever mind that, Miss Georgy. You get another doctor, that's all; get another doctor at once. Mr. Sheldon is a light sleeper. I'll go to his room and tell him you've set your heart upon having fresh advice ; if you'll only bear me out afterwards." " Yes, yes ; go, by all means," exclaimed Mrs. Halliday, only too ready to take alarm under the influence of a stronger mind, and eager to act when supported by another person. Nancy Woolper went to her master's room. He must have been sleeping very lightly, if he w^as sleeping at all ; for he w\as broad awake the next minute after his housekeeper's light knock had sounded on the door. In less than five mi- nutes he came out of his room half-dressed. Nancy told him that Mrs. Halliday had taken fresh alarm about her husband, and wished for further advice. '^ She sent you to tell me that ?" asked Philip. ^^Yes." MR. BURKHAM's UNCERTAmTIES. 99 "And when does she want this new doctor called in?" " Immediately, if possible." It was seven o'clock by this time, and the mornino; was brio-htenino; a little. " Very well," said Mr. Sheldon ; " her wishes shall be attended to directlv. Heaven forbid that I should stand between my old friend and any chance of his sj^eedy recovery ! If a stranger can bring him round quicker than I can, let the strano;er come." Mr. Sheldon was not slow to obey Mrs. Halliday's behest. He was departing on his quest breakfastless, when Kancy Woolper met him in the haU with a cup of tea. He accepted the cup almost mechanically from her hand, and took it into the parlour, whither Nancy followed him. Tlien for the first time he perceived that change in his housekeeper's face which had so startled Georgina Halliday. Tlie change was somewhat modified now; but still the Nancy Woolper of to-day was not the Nancy Woolper of yesterday. 100 BIRDS OF PEEY. "You're looking very queer, Nancy," said tlie dentist, gravely scrutinising the ^Yoman's face with his bright penetrating eyes. " Are you ill ?" " Well, Mr. Philip, I have been rather queer all night, — sicldsh and faintish-Hke." " All, you've been over-fatiguing yourself in the sick-room, I daresay. Take care you don't knock yourself up." " No ; it's not that, ]\Ii\ Philip Tliere's not many can stand hard work better than I can. It's not that as made me ill. I took sometliincr last night that disagreed with me." " More fool you," said Mr. Sheldon cm^tly ; ^' you ought to know better than to ill-use your digestive powers at your age. What was it? Hard cold meat and preternaturally green pickles, I suppose ; or something of that kind.'* " No, sir ; it was only a drop of beef- tea that I made for poor Mr. Halliday. And that oughtn't to have disagreed with a baby, you know, sir." " Oughtn't it?" cried the dentist disdainfully. " That's a little bit of vulgar ignorance, Mrs. ME. BURKHAIU'S UNCERTAINTIES. 101 Woolper. I suppose it was stuff that had been taken up to Mr. Halliday." " Yes J Mr. Philip ; you took it up with your own hands." " Ah, to be sure ; so I did. Yery well, then, Mrs. Woolper, if you knew as much about at- mospheric influences as I do, you'd know that food which has been standino^ for hours in the pestilential air of a fever-patient's room isn't fit for anybody to eat. The stuff made you sick, I suppose." ^^ Yes, sir; sick to my very heart," answered the Yorksliirewoman, with a strange moumful- ness in her voice. " Let that be a warning to you, then. Don't take anything more that comes do"\^ai from the sick-room." " I don't think there'll be any chance of my doing that long, sir." " What do you mean ?" ''' I don't fancy Mx. Halliday is long for this world." " Ah, you women are always ravens." 102 BIEDS OF PREY. '' Unless tlie strano-e doctor can do some- tiling to ciu'e liim. 0, pray bring a clever man who will be able to cm'e that poor helpless creature upstairs. Tliink, J\L\ Philip, how you and him used to be friends and playfellows, — brothers al- most, — when you was both bits of boys. Think how bad it might seem to evil-minded folks if he died under yoiu' roof." Tlie dentist had been standing near the door drinking his tea during tliis conversation; and now for the first time he looked at his house- keeper with an expression of unmitigated astonish- ment. '' What, in the name of all that's ridiculous, do you mean, Xancy ?" he asked impatiently. " What has my roof to do with Tom Halliday's illness — or his death, if it came to that ? And what on earth can people have to say about it if he should die here instead of anj^vhere else ?" "Why, you see, sir, you being his friend, and Miss Georgy's sweetheart that was, and him having no other doctor, folks might take it into their heads he wasn't attended properly." 3IR. burkham's uncertainties. 103 ^^ Because Fm liis friend? That's very good logic! I'll tell you wliat it is, Mrs. Woolper ; if any woman upon earth, except the woman who nursed me when I was a baby, had pre- sumed to talk to me as you have been talking to me just this minute, I should open the door yonder and tell her to walk out of my house. Let that serve as a hint for you, Xancy ; and don't you go out of your way a second time to advise me how I should treat my friend and my patient." He handed her the empty cup, and walked out of the house. Tliere had been no passion in his tone. His accent had been only that of a man who has occasion to reprove an old and trusted servant for an unwarrantable imperti- nence. Nancy Woolper stood at the street-door watching him as he walked away, and then went slowly back to her duties in the lower regions of the house. '^ It can't be true," she muttered to herself; "it can't be true." The dentist returned to Fitzgeorge-street ni 104 BIRDS OF PEEY. less than an hour, bringing with him a surgeon from the neighbourhood, who saw the patient, dis- cussed the treatment, s2:)oke hopefully to Mrs. Hal- lidav, and de2:)arted, after promising to send a saline draught. Poor Gcorgj's spirits, which had revived a little under the influence of the stranger's hojDeful words, sank again when she discovered that the utmost the ncAv doctor could do was to order a saline draught. Her husband had taken so many saline draughts, and had been getting daily worse under their influence. She watched the stranger wistfully as he lin- gered on the threshold to say a few words to Mr. Sheldon. He was a very young man, with a frank boyish face and a rosy colour in his cheeks. He looked like some fresh young neophyte in the awful mysteries of medical science, and by no means the sort of man to whom one would have imagined Philip Sheldon appealing for hel]i, when he found his own skill at fault. But then it must be remembered that Mr. Sheldon had only sum- moned the stranger in compliance with what he considered a womanish whim. MR. burkham's uncertainties. 105 '' He looks very yoimg," Georgina said regret- fullj, after the doctor's departure. '^ So much the better, my dear Mrs. Halh- day," answered the dentist cheerfully; "medical science is eminently progressive, and the youngest men are the best-educated men." Poor Georgy did not understand this; but it sounded convincing ; and she was in the habit of believing what people told her; so she accepted Mr. Sheldon's opinion. How could she doubt that he was wiser than herself in all matters con- nected with the medical profession ? " Tom seems a little better this morning," she said presently. The invalid was asleep, shrouded by the cur- tain of the heavy old-fashioned four-post bedstead. "He is better," answered the dentist; "so much better, that I shall venture to give him a few business letters that have been waiting for him some time, as soon as he wakes." He seated himself by the head of the bed, and waited quietly for the awakening of the patient. " Your breakfast is ready for you downstairs^ 106 BIRDS OF PPvEY. Mrs. Hallidayj*' lie said presently; ^'hadn't you better go down and take it, ^Yllile I keep watcli here? It's nearly ten o'clock." '^ I don't care about any breakfast," Georgina answered piteously. ^' All, but you'd better eat something. You'll make yourself an invalid, if you are not careful ; and then you won't be able to attend upon Tom." This argument prevailed immediately. Georgy went downstairs to the di'awiag-room, and tried bravely to eat and drink, in order that she might be sustained in her attendance upon her husband. She had foro'otten all the tlu'oes and tortm'es of jealousy which she had endured on his account. She had forgotten his late hom's and unholy roisterings. She had forgotten everything ex- cept that he had been very tender and kind throughout the prosperous years of their married life, and that he was lying in the darkened room upstairs sick to death. Mr. Sheldon waited with all outwai'd show of patience for the awakening of the invalid. But MR. burkham's uncertainties. 107 he looked at his watch twice during that half-hour of waitino; ; aiid once he rose and moved softlv about the room, searching for writing materials. He found a little portfolio of Georgina's, and a frivolous-minded inkstand, after the semblance of an apple, with a gilt stalk and leaflet. Tlie dent- ist took the trouble to ascertain that there was a decent supply of ink in the green glass apple, and that the pens were in working order. Then he went quietly back to his seat by the bedside and waited. The invalid opened his eyes presently, and re- cognised his friend with a feeble smile. " Well, Tom, old fellow, how do you feel to- day? — a little better, I hear from Mrs. H.," said the dentist cheerily. " Yes, I think I am a shade better. But, you see, the deuce of it is I never get more than a shade better. It always stops at that. The little woman can't complain of me now, can she, Shel- don? No more late hours, or oyster-suppers, eh?" *^ No, no, not just yet. You'll have to take 108 BIKDS OF PREY. care of yourself for a week or two wlien you get about again." Mr. Halliday smiled faintly as liis friend said tliis. '' I shall be very careful of myself if I ever do get about again, you may depend upon it, old fel- low. But do you know I sometimes fancy I have spent my last jolly evening, and eaten my last oyster-supper, on this earth ? I'm afraid it's time for me to begin to think seriously of a good many things. The little woman is all right, thank God. I made my Avill upwards of a year ago, and in- sured my life pretty heavily soon after my mar- riage. Old Cradock never let me rest till that was done. So Georgy will be all safe. But when a man has led a careless, godless kind of a life, — doing very little harm perhaps, but doing no par- ticular good, — he ought to set about making up his account somehow for a better world, when he feels himself slipping out of this. I asked Georgy for her Bible yesterday, and the poor dear loving little thing was frightened out of her wits. ' 0, don't talk like that, Tom,' she cried ; ' Mr. Shel- ME. burkham's uncertainties. 109 don says you are getting better every lionr,' — by wliicli yon may guess what a rare tiling it is for me to read my Bible. No, Pliil, old fellow, you've done your best for me, I know ; but I'm not made of a very tougli material, and all tlie pliysic you €an pour down tliis poor sore throat of mine won't put any strength into me." " Nonsense, dear boy ; that's just what a man who has not been accustomed to ilhiess is sure to think directly he is laid up for a day or two.*' '^ I've been laid up for three weeks," mur- mm-ed Mr. Halliday rather fretfully. " Well, well, perhaps tliis Mr. Burkham will bring you round in tln'ee days, and then you'll say that your friend Sheldon was an ignoramus." " No, no, I sha'n't, old fellow ; I'm not such a fool as that. I'm not going to blame you when it's my own constitution that's in fault. As to that young man you brought here just now, to please Georgy, I don't suppose he'll be able to do any more for me than you have done." '' We'll contrive to bring you round between us, never fear, Tom," answered Philip Sheldon 110 BIRDS OF PREY. in his most hopeful tone. '^ ^Vhj-, jou are look- ing almost your old self this morning. You are so much imjoroved that I may venture to talk to you about business. There have been some letters lying about for the last few days. I didn't like to bore you while you were so very low. But they look like business letters ; and perhaps it would be as well for you to open them." The sick man contemplated the little packet which the dentist had taken from his breast- pocket ; and then shook his head Avearily. "I'm not up to the mark, Sheldon," he said; " the letters must keep." " 0, come, come, old fellow ! That's giving way, you know. The letters may be important ; and it will do you good if you make an effort to rouse yourself." " I tell you it isn't in me to do it, Philip Shel- don. I'm past making efforts. Can't you see that, man? Open the letters yom'self if you like.'* " No, no, Halliday, I won't do that. Here's one with the seal of the Alliance Lisurancc Office^ I suppose your premium is all right.'* MR. BUEKHAM's UNCEPvTAINTLES. Ill Tom Halliday lifted himself on his elbow for a moment, startled into new life ; but he sank back on the pillows again immediately, with a feeble groan. " I don't know about that," he said anxiously: '^ jou'd better look to that, Phil, for the little woman's sake. A man is apt to think that his insurance is settled and done with when he has been pommelled about by the doctors and approyed by the board. He forgets there's that little matter of the premium. You'd better open the letter, Phil. I neyer Ayas a £^ood hand at remember in «• dates, and this illness has thrown me altogether out of gear." Mr. Sheldon tore open that official document which, in his beneyolent regard for his friend's interest, he had manipulated so cleyerly on the preyious eyening, and read the letter with all show of deliberation. " You're right, Tom," he exclaimed presently. " The twenty -one days' grace expire to-day. You'd better -^^Tite me a check at once, and I'll send it on to the office by hand. Where's your check-book ?" 112 BIRDS OF PREY. " In the pocket of that coat hanging up there." PhiHp Sheldon found the check-book, and brought it to his friend, with Georgy's portfoho, and the frivolous little green glass inkstand in the shape of an apple. He adjusted the writing ma- terials for the sick man's use with womanly gentleness. His arm supported the wasted frame, as Tom Halliday slowly and laboriously filled in the check ; and when the signature was duly ap- pended to that document he drew a long breath, wdiich seemed to express infinite relief of mind. '^ You'll be sm'e it goes on to the Alliance Office, eh, old fellow ?" asked Tom, as he tore out the oblong slip of paper and handed it to his friend. " It was kind of you to jog my memory about this business. I'm such a fellow for pro- crastinatino; matters. And I'm afraid I've been a little off my head during the last week." " Nonsense, Tom; not you." ^' yes, I have. I've had all sorts of queer fancies. Did you come into this room the nicrht before last, when Georgy was asleep ?" MR. burkham's uncertainties. 113 Mi\ Sheldon reflected for a moment before answering:. ^^ No/' lie said J "not tlie night before last." "All, I thought as much," mm-mured the in- A'alid. " I was off my head that night then, Phil, for I fancied I saw you ; and I fancied I heard the bottles and glasses jingling on the little table behind the cm'tain." " Youw^ere dreaming, perhaps." " no, I wasn't dreaming. I was very rest- less and wakeful that night. However, that's neither here nor there. I lie in a stupid state sometimes for hours and houi's, and I feel as weak as a rat, bodily and mentally ; so while I have my wits about me I'd better sav what I've been want- ing to say ever so long. You've been a good and kind friend to me all through this illness, Phil, and I'm not ungrateful for your kindness. If it does come to the worst w^ith me — as I believe it will — Georgy shall give you a handsome mourn- ing ring, or fifty pounds to buy one, if you like it better. And now let me shake hands with you, VOL. I. I 114 BIRDS OF PREY. Philip Sheldon, and say thank you heartily, old fellow, for once and for ever." The invalid stretched out a poor feeble at- tenuated hand, and, after a moment's pause, Philip Sheldon clasped it in his own muscular fingers. He did hesitate for just one instant before taking that hand. He was no student of the gospel ; but when he had left the sick chamber there arose before him suddenly, as if Avritten in letters of fire on the waU opposite to him, one sentence which had been familiar to him in his school-days at Barling- ford : And as soon as he ivas come^ he goeth straight- luay to hwiy and saith. Master, master ; and kissed him. Tlie new doctor came twice a day to see his patient. He seemed rather anxious about the case, and just a little puzzled by the symptoms. Georgy had sufficient penetration to perceive that this new adviser was in some manner at fault ; and she began to think that Philip Sheldon ME. BURKHAM'S UXCERTALN'TIES. 115 was riglit, and that regular practitioners were very stupid creatures. She communicated her doubts to Mr. Sheldon, and suggested the expe- diency of calling in some grave elderly doctor, to supersede Mr. Burkham. But against tliis the dentist protested very strongly. "You asked me to call in a stranger, Mrs, Halhday, and I have done so," he said with the dignity of an offended man. " You must now abide by his treatment, and content your- self with his advice, unless he chooses to smii- mon fm'ther assistance." Georgy was fain to submit. She gave a little plaintive sigh, and went back to her husband's room, where she sat and wept silently behind the bed-curtains. There was a double watch kept in the sick chamber now ; for Nancy Wool- per rarely left it, and rarely closed her eyes. It was altogether a sad time in the dentist's house ; and Tom Halliday apologised to his friend more than once for the trouble he had brouo-ht upon him. If he had been familiar with the details of modern history, he would have quoted 116 BIRDS OF PEEY. Charles Stuart, and begged pardon for being so long a-dying. But anon tliere came a gleam of hope. The patient seemed decidedly better ; and Georgy was prejDared to revere Mr. Burkliam, the Blooms- bmy sm-geon, as the greatest and ablest of men. Those shadows of doubt and perplexity which had at first obscured Mr. Bui'kham's brow cleared away, and he spoke yery cheerfully of the in- valid. Unhappily this state of things did not last long. Tlie young surgeon came one morning, and was obviously alarmed by the appearance of his patient. He told Philip Sheldon as much ; but that gentleman made very light of his fears. As the two men discussed the case, it was very evident that the irregular practitioner was quite a match for the regular one. Mr. Burkham listened deferentially, but departed only half con- vinced. He walked briskly away from the house, but came to a dead stop directly after tm-ning out of Fitzgeorge-street. "What ouo-ht I to do?" he asked himself. MR. burkham's uncertainties. 117 '^^ What coui'se ouglit I to take? If I am riglit, I should be a villain to let tliino;s 2:0 on. If I am wrong, anything like interference would ruin me for life." He had finished his morning round, but he did not cro straight home. He lino-ered at the corners of quiet streets, and walked up and down the unfrequented side of a gloomy square. Once he turned and retraced his steps in the direction of Fitzgeorge-street. But after all this hesita- tion he walked home, and ate his dinner very thoughtfidly, answering his young wife at ran- dom when she talked to him. He was a strug- gling man, who had invested his small fortune in the purchase of a practice which had turned out a very poor one, and he had the battle of life before him. " There's something on your mind to-day, I'm sm-e, Harry," his wife said before the meal was ended. " Well, yes, dear," he answered ; '' I've rather a difficult case in Fitzgeorge-street, and I'm anxious about it." 118 BIEDS OF PREY. The industrious little wife disappeared after dinner, and the young surgeon walked up and down the room alone, brooding over that difficult case in Fitzgeorge-street. After spending nearly an hour thus, he snatched his hat suddenly from the table on which he had set it down, and hiuTied from the house. " I'll have advice and assistance, come what may," he said to himself, as he walked rapidly in the direction of Mr. Sheldon's house. " The case may be straight enough — I certainly can't see that the man has any motive — but I'll have advice." He looked up at the dentist's spotless dwell- ing as he crossed the ^street. Tlie blinds were all down, and the fact that they were so sent a sudden chill to his heart. But the April sun- shine was full upon that side of the street, and there might be no significance in those closely- drawn blinds. The door was opened by a sleepy- looking boy, and in the passage Mr. Bm'kliam met Philij) Sheldon. " I have been rather anxious about my patient MR. buekham's uncertainties. 110 since this morning, Mr. Sheldon," said the sur- geon ; " and I've come to the conchision that I ought to confer with a man of higher standing than myself. Do you think Mrs. Halliday will object to such a com'se ?" '^ I am sure she would not have objected to it," the dentist answered very gravely, " if you had suggested it sooner. I am sorry to say the suggestion comes too late. My poor friend breathed his last half an hour ago." §00h iht Sctnnir, THE TWO MACAIRES. CHAPTER I. A GOLDEN TEMPLE. In the very midst of the Belgian iron country, under the shadow of tall sheltering ridges of pine-clad mountain-land, nestles the fashionable little watering-place called Foretdechene. Two or three handsome hotels; a bright white new pile of building, with vast windows of shining plate-glass, and a stately quadrangular courtyard ; a tiny street, which looks as if a fragment of English Brighton had been dropped into this Belgian valley ; a stunted semi-classic temple, which is at once a post-office and a shrine whereat invalids perform their worship of Hygeia by the consumption of unspeakably disagreeable mineral- waters ; a few tall white villas scattered here and there upon the slopes of pine-clad hills ; and a very uncomfortable railway station — constitute 124 BIRDS OF PREY. tlie chief features of Foretcleeliene. But right and left of that little cluster of shops and hotels there stretch deep sombre avenues of oak, that look like sheltered ways to Paradise — and the