Dr. Wainwright's Patient: A Novel

DR. WAINWRIGHT'S PATIENT.

A Novel

By

EDMUND YATES

AUTHOR OF "BLACK SHEEP."

"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?"

SHAKESPEARE.

LONDON
GEORGE RUTLEDGE AND SONS
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
NEW YORK: 416 BROOME STREET
1878

EDMUND YATES'S NOVELS

RUNNING THE GAUNTLET.
KISSING THE ROD.
A ROCK AHEAD.
BLACK SHEEP.
A RIGHTED WRONG.
THE YELLOW FLAG.
THE IMPENDING SWORD.
A WAITING RACE.
BROKEN TO HARNESS.
TWO BY TRICKS.
A SILENT WITNESS.
NOBODY'S FORTUNE.
DR. WAINWRIGHT'S PATIENT.
WRECKED IN PORT.

DR. WAINWRIGHT'S PATIENT.

[CHAPTER I.]

CAPTAIN DERINZY'S RETREAT.

Beachborough, where, in obedience to the strident voice of the railway porter--voice combining the hardness of the Dorset with the drawl of the Devon dialect--you, if you be so disposed, "Change for Sandington Cove and Waverley," is a very different place from what it was even ten years ago. To be sure the sea is there, and the beach, and the fishing-luggers with the red sails; but in everything else what changes! Now there is, as has been said, a railway-station, a forlorn little oasis of white planking in a desert of sandy heath, inhabited by a clerk--a London young man, who "went too fast" in the metropolis, and has been relegated to Beachborough as a good healthy place where there is no chance of temptation--and a porter, a native of the place, a muscular person great at wrestling, who is always inviting the male passers-by of his acquaintance to "come on," and supplying them, on their doing so, with a very ugly throw known as a "back-fall." There are not many passers-by, for the newly-formed road leads to no where in particular, and those who tramp through its winter slush, or struggle through its summer dust, are generally either tradesmen of the place anxious about overdue parcels, or servants, sent to make inquiries about the trains, from some of the houses on the Esplanade.

The Esplanade! Heavens! if old Miss Gollop, who lived at the Baths, and who used to supply very hot water and very damp towels, and the greatest number of draughts ever known to be got together into one small room, to the half-dozen county families to whom Beachborough was then known as a watering-place--if old Miss Gollop could revisit the glimpses of the moon, and by its light look upon the Esplanade, it would, I am certain, be impossible for that worthy old lady to recognise it as Mussared's Meadow, where she picked cowslips and sucked sorrel when she was a girl, and which was utterly untainted by the merest suspicion of brick and mortar when she died twenty years ago. She would not recognise it any more than in The Dingo Arms--that great white-faced establishment, with its suites of apartments, its coffee-room, wine-office, private bar, and great range of stabling, patronised by, and in its sanctum sanctorum bearing an heraldic emblazonment of the arms of, Sir Hercules Dingo Dingo, Bart., bloody hand, four-quartered shield and all--she would have recognised The Hoy, a tiny "public" where they used to sell the hardest beer and the most stomach-ache-provoking cider, and which in her day was the best tavern in the village. The white-faced terrace has sprung up in Mussared's Meadow; the Esplanade in front of it is a seawall and a delightful promenade for the Misses Gimp's young ladies, who are the admiration of Dingo Terrace, and who have deadly rivals in Madame de Flahault's demoiselles, whose piano-playing is at once the delight and the curse of Powler Square; the cliffs, once so gaunt and barren and forlorn, are dotted over with cottages and villakins, all green porch and plate-glass windows; the old barn-like church has had a fresh tower put on to him, and a fresh minister--one with his ecclesiastical millinery of the newest cut, and up to the latest thing in genuflexions--put into him; there is a Roman Catholic chapel close to the old Wesleyan meeting-house; and they have modernised and spoiled the picturesque tower where Captain Derinzy wore away a portion of his days. Great improvements, no doubt. Pavement and gas, and two policemen, and a railway, and a ritualistic incumbent, and shops with plate-glass windows, where you can get Holloway's pills and Horniman's teas, and all the things without which no gentleman's table is complete. But the events of my story happened ten years ago, when the inhabitants of Beachborough--shopkeepers, fisher-people, villagers, and lace-makers--were like one family, and loved and hated and reviled and back-bit each other as the members of one family only can.

We shall get a little insight into the village politics if we drop in for a few minutes at Mrs. Powler's long one-storied, thatched-roof cottage, standing by itself in the middle of the little High Street. Mrs. Powler is a rich and childless old widow, Powler deceased having done a little in the vending of home-manufactured lace, and a great deal in the importing, duty-free, of French lace and brandy. It was Powler's run when Bill Gollop, the black sheep of the Gollop family, was shot by the revenue-officer down by Wastewater Hole, a matter which Powler is scarcely thought to have compromised by giving a new organ to Bedminster church. However, he has been dead some years, and his widow is very rich and tolerably hospitable; and her little thatched cottage--she never lived in any other house--is the centre and focus of Beachborough gossip.

It is just about Mrs. Powler's supper-time, which is very early in the summer, and she has guests to supper. There is no linen in all Beachborough so white as Mrs. Powler's, no such real silver plate, no such good china or glass. The Beachborough glass generally consists of fat thick goblets on one stump-leg, or dumpy heavy wineglasses with a pattern known as "the pretty" halfway up their middle, which, like the decanters, are heavy and squat, and require a strong wrist to lift them. But Mrs. Powler had thin, blown, delicate glasses, and elegant goblets with curling snakes for their handles, and drinking-cups in amber and green colours, all of which were understood to have come from "abroad," and were prized by her and respected by her neighbours accordingly. There never was a bad lobster known in Beachborough; and it is probable that Mrs. Powler's were no better than her neighbours', but she certainly had a wondrous knack of showing them off to the best advantage, setting-off the milk-white of the inside and the deepred of the shell with layers of crisp curling parsley, as a modern belle sets off her complexion with artfully-arranged bits of tulle and blonde. Nor was her boiled beef to be matched within ten miles round. "I du 'low that other passons' biled beef to Mrs. Fowler's is sallt as brine and soft as butter," Mrs. Jupp would confess; and Mrs. Jupp was a notable housewife, and what the vulgar call "nuts" on her own cooking. There is a splendid proof of it on the table now, cold and firm and solid. Mr. Jupp has just helped himself to a slice, and it is his muttered praise that has called forth the tribute of general admiration from his better-half. Mr. Hallibut, the fish-factor and lace-dealer from Bedminster, is still occupied with the lobster; for he has a ten-mile drive home before him, and any fear of indigestion he laughs to scorn, knowing how he can "settle" that demon with two or three raw "nips" and one or two steaming tumblers of some of that famous brandy which the deceased Powler imported duty-free from abroad, and a bottle of which is always to be found for special friends in the old oak armoire, which stands under the Lord's-Prayer sampler which Mrs. Powler worked when she was a little girl.

Mrs. Powler is in the place of honour opposite the window. A little woman, with a dark-skinned deeply-lined face, and small sparkling black eyes, the fire in which remains undimmed by the seventy years through which they have looked upon the world, though their sight is somewhat failing. She wears a fierce black front, and a closely-fitting white lace cap over it, and an open raspberry-tart-like miniature of her deceased lord--a rather black and steelly-looking daguerreotype--gleams on her chest. Mrs. Powler likes her drinks, as she does not scruple to confess, and has been sipping from a small silver tankard of cider.

"Who was that just went passt the windor, Jupp?" she said, after a short period of tankard abstraction. "My eyes isn't what they was, and I du 'low I couldn't see, though I'm settin' right oppo-site like."

"Heart alive!" struck in Mrs. Jupp, after a moment's silence, and seeing it was perfectly impossible her better-half could sufficiently masticate the piece of cold beef on which he was engaged in anything like time for a reply--"heart alive! to hear you talk of your eyes, Mrs. Powler! Why, there's many a young gal would give anythin' for such a pair in her head, either for show or for use, either!"

"I should think so," said Mr. Jupp, who had by this time cleared his mouth and moistened his palate with the contents of the cider-tankard--"I should think so!" and Mr. Jupp, who was of a convivial turn, began to troll, "Eyes black--as sloes, and--bo-o-oo-som rounded----"

"Mr. Jupp," interrupted Mrs. Jupp, a tall, thin, horse-faced woman, with projecting buck-teeth, and three little sausage curls of iron-gray hair flattened down on either side her forehead, "reck'lect where you are, if you please, and keep your ditties to yourself."

"Well, niver mind my eyes," said Mrs. Powler; she desired to make peace, but she was a rich woman and in her own house, and consequently spoke in a dictatorial way--"niver mind my eyes, nor anything else for the matter of that, but tell who it was that went passt."

"It was the Captain, my dear madam, the Captain," replied Mr. Jupp, freshly attacking the cold beef, and consoling himself for his snubbing with his supper. "You had no great loss in not seeing him, ma'am: it was only the Captain."

"What! Prinsy, Drinsy, what's his name?" said Mr. Hallibut, taking a clean plate, and delicately clearing his lips and fingers from lobster remains on the corner of the tablecloth. "I'll trouble you, Jupp!--Is he still here?"

"His name's Derinzy, Mr. Hollybut," said Mrs. Jupp--"De-rin-zy; it's a French name." Mrs. Jupp had been a lady's-maid once on a time, and prided herself on her manners and education.

"And mine's Hallibut, and not Hollybut, Mrs. Jupp," said the fish-factor jocosely; "and I'll trouble J-u double p--which I take it is an English name--for some of the inside fat--next the marrer-bone there!"

"Dear heart!" interrupted Mrs. Powler, feeling her position as hostess and richest of the company was being made scarcely sufficient of; "how you do jangle, all of you! Not but what," added the old lady, with singular inconsequence--"not but what I'm no scholard, and don't see the use of French names, while English is good enough for me."

"Ah, but some things is better French, as you and I, and one or two more of us could tell," said jocose Mr. Hallibut, feeling it was time for a "nip," and availing himself of the turn in the conversation to point with his elbow to the cellaret, where the special brandy was kept.

"Well, help yourself, and put the bottle on the table," said the old lady, somewhat mollified. "Ah, that was among the spoils of the brave, in the good old times when men was men!" she added, in a half-melancholy tone. She was accustomed to think and speak of her deceased husband as though he had been the boldest of buccaneers, the Captain Kyd of the Dorsetshire coast; whereas he, in his lifetime, was a worthy man in a Welsh wig, who never went to sea, or was present at the "running" of a keg.

"And so the Captain's still here," pursued Hallibut; "living in the same house, and doing much the same as usual, I suppose?"

"Jist exactly the same," replied Mr. Jupp. "Wandering about the village, molloncholly-like, and cussin' all creation."

"Mr. Jupp," broke in his better-half, "reck'lect where you are, if you please, and keep your profane swearin' to yourself."

"I wonder he don't go away," suggested Hallibut.

"He can't," said Mrs. Jupp solemnly.

"What! do you mean to say he's been running in debt here in Beachborough, or over in Bedminster?"

"He don't owe a brass farthing in either place," asserted Mrs. Powler; "if anybody ought to know, I ought;" and to do her justice she ought, for no one heard scandal sooner, or disseminated it more readily.

"Perhaps he hadn't the chance," said Mr. Jupp, stretching out his hand towards the tumbler.

"Mr. Jupp," said his wife, "what cause have you to say that? Was you ever kept waiting for the money for the meal or malt account? Is the rent paid regular for the bit of pastureland for Miss Annette's cow? Well, then, reck'lect where you are, if you please, and who you're speaking of."

"Well, but if he hates the place and cusses--I mean, does what Jupp said he did just now--what does he stop here for? Why don't he go away? He must have some reason."

"Of course he has, Mr. Hallibut," said Mrs. Jupp, with an air of dignity.

"Got the name all right this time, Mrs. Jupp; here's your health," said the jolly man, sipping his tumbler. "Well, what's the reason?"

"It's because of Miss Annette--she that we was speaking of just now."

"Oh, ah!" said Mr. Hallibut; "she's his daughter, isn't she?"

"Niece," said Mrs. Jupp.

"Oh!" said Mr. Hallibut doubtfully.

"You and I have seen the world, Hallibut," broke in Mr. Jupp, who had been paying his attentions to the French brandy. "We've heard of nieces before--priests' nieces and such-like, who----"

"Mr. Jupp, will you reck'lect where you are, if you please?--what I was goin' to say when thus interrupted, Mr. Hallibut, was, that it's on account of his niece Miss Annette that Captain Derinzy remains in this place. She's a dreadful in-val-lid, is Miss Annette, and this Dorsetsheer air suits her better than any other part of England. As to her not bein' his niece----"

"La, la, du be quiet, Harriet!" interrupted Mrs. Powler, who saw that unless she asserted herself with a dash she would be quite forgotten; "this everlastin' click-clackin', I du 'low it goes threw my head like a hot knife threw a pat of fresh butter. Av' course Miss Netty's the Captain's niece; Oh, I don't mind you men--special you, Jupp, sittin' grinnin' there like the mischief! I've lived long in the world, and in different sort of society from this; and I know what you mean fast enough, and I'm not one to pretend I don't, or to be squeamish about it."

This was a hard hit at Mrs. Jupp, who took it accordingly, and said:

"Well, but, Mrs. Powler, if Jupp were not brought up sudden, as it were----"

"Like enough, my dear, like enough; but when you're as old as I am, you'll find it's very hard to have to give up chat for fear of these kind of things, unless indeed there's young girls present, and then--well, of course!" said Mrs. Powler, with a sigh. "But, Lord, you're all wrong about why Captain Derinzy stops at Beachborough."

"Do you know why it is, Mrs. Powler?" asked Mr. Hallibut, feigning intense interest, under cover of which he mixed himself a second tumbler of brandy-and-water.

"Well, I think I do," said the old lady.

"Tell us, by all means," said the fish-factor, looking at his hostess very hard, and dropping two lumps of sugar into his tumbler.

"Well, Harriet's right so far--there's no doubt about Miss Annette being the Captain's niece; at least, there's no question of her being his daughter, as you two owdacious men--and, Jupp, you ought to know better, having been churchwarden, and your name in gold letters in front of the organ-loft, on account of the church being warmed by the hot pipes, which only made a steam and a smell, and no heat at all--as you two owdacious men hinted at. Lor' bless you, you don't know Mrs. Derinzy."

"That's what I tell 'em, Mrs. Powler," chorused Mrs. Jupp; "they don't know the Captain's wife. Why, she's as proud as proud; and he daren't say his soul's his own, let alone introducin' anyone into the house that she didn't know all about, or wish to have there."

"But still you don't know what makes them stay here," said Mrs. Powler, not at all influenced by her friend's partisanship, and determined to press her point home upon her audience.

"Well, if it isn't Miss Netty's illness, I don't," said Mrs. Jupp slowly, and with manifest reluctance at having to acknowledge herself beaten.

"Then I'll tell you," said the old lady triumphantly, smoothing her dress, looking slowly round, and pausing before she spoke. "You know Mrs. Stothard?"

"Miss Annette's servant--yes," said Mrs. Jupp.

"Servant--pouf!" said Mrs. Powler, snapping her fingers, and thereby awaking Mr. Jupp, who had just dropped asleep, and was dreaming that he was in his mill, and dared not stretch out his legs for fear of getting them entangled in the machinery. "Who ever saw her do any servant's work; did you?"

"N-no; I can't say I ever did," replied Mrs. Jupp; "but then, I have never been to the house."

"What does that matter?" asked the old lady, rather illogically; "no one ever did. No one ever saw her do a stroke of servant's work in the house: mend clothes, wash linen, darn stockings, make beds. Dear heart alive! she's no servant."

"What is she then?" asked Mrs. Jupp eagerly.

"A poor relation!" hissed Mrs. Powler, bending over the table; "a poor relation, my dear, of either his or hers, with something about her that prevents them shaking her off, and obliges them to keep her quiet."

"Do you think so--really think so?"

"I'm sure of it, my dear--certain sure."

"Lord, I remember," said Mrs. Jupp, with a sudden affectation of a mincing manner, and a lofty carriage of her head; "I remember once seeing something of the sort at the play-house: but then the poor relation was a man, a man who always went about in a large cloak, and appeared in places where he was least expected and most unwelcome. It was in Covent Garden Theatre."

"Covent Garden Theatre," said Jupp, suddenly waking up. "I remember, in the saloon----"

"Mr. Jupp, reck'lect where you are, if you please, and spare the company your reminiscences."

Here Mr. Hallibut, who, finding himself bored by the conversation about people of whom he knew nothing, had quietly betaken himself to drink, and had got through three tumblers of brandy-and-water unobserved, remarked that, as he had a long drive before him, he thought it was time for him to go; and, after making his adieux, departed to find the ostler at The Hoy, who had his rough old pony in charge. Mrs. Jupp put on her bonnet, and after a word of promise to look in next morning and hear the remainder of her hostess's suspicions about Mrs. Stothard, roused up Mr. Jupp, who, balancing himself on frail and trembling legs, which he still believed to be endangered by the proximity of his mill's machinery, staggered out into the open air, where he was bid to reck'lect himself if he pleased, and to walk steadily, so that the coastguard then passing might not see he was drunk.

[CHAPTER II]

A VISITOR EXPECTED.

It was indeed Captain Derinzy who had passed up the village street. It is needless to say that he had not heard anything of the comments which his appearance had evoked; but had he heard them, they would not have made the smallest difference to him. He was essentially a man of the world, and on persons of his class these things have very little effect. A is irretrievably involved; B has outwritten himself; C is much too intimate with Mrs. D; while D is ruining that wretched young E at écarté--so at least say Y and Z; but the earlier letters of the alphabet do not care much about it. They know that the world must be always full of shaves and cancans, and, like men versed in the great art of living, they know they must have their share of them, and know how to take them. Captain Derinzy passed up the village street without bestowing one single thought upon that street's inhabitants, or indeed upon anything or anybody within a hundred miles of Beachborough. He looked utterly incongruous to the place, and he felt utterly incongruous to it, and if he were recalled to the fact of its existence, or of his existence in it, by his accidentally slipping over one of the round knobbly stones which supplied the place of a footway, or having to step across one of the wide self-made sluices which, coming from the cottages, discharged themselves into the common kennel, all he did was to wish it heartily at the devil; an aspiration which he uttered in good round rich tones, and without any heed to the feelings of such lookers-on as might be present.

See him now, as he steps off the knobbly pavement and strikes across the road, making for the greensward of the cliff, and unconsciously becoming bathed in a halo of sunset glory in his progress. A thin man, of fifty years of age, of middle height, with a neat trim figure, and one of his legs rather lame, with a spare, sallow, fleshless face, high cheek-boned, lantern-jawed, bright black eyes, straight nose, thin lips, not overshadowed, but outlined rather, by a very small crisp black moustache. His hair is blue-black in tint and wiry in substance, so much at least of it as can be seen under a rather heavy brown sombrero hat, which he wears perched on one side of his head in rather a jaunty manner. His dress, a suit of some light-gray material, is well cut, and perfectly adapted for the man and the place; and his boots are excellently made, and fit his small natty feet to perfection. His ungloved hands are lithe and brown; in one of them he carries a crook-headed cane, with which--a noticeable peculiarity--he fences and makes passes at such posts and palings as he encounters on his way. That he was a gentleman born and bred you could have little doubt; little doubt from his carriage of himself, and an indescribable, unmistakable something, that he was, or had been, a military man; no doubt at all that he was entirely out of place in Beachborough, and that he was bored out of his existence.

Captain Derinzy passed the little road, which was ankle-deep in white sandy dust, save where the overflowings of the kennel had worked it into thick flaky mud, hopped nimbly, albeit lamely, over the objectionable parts, and when he reached the other side, and stood upon the short crisp turf leading up to the cliff, looked at the soles of his boots, shook his head, and swore aloud. Considerably relieved by this proceeding, he made his way slowly and gently up the ascent, pausing here and there, less from want of breath than from sheer absolute boredom. Rambling quietly on in his own easy-going fashion, now fencing at a handrail, now making a one, two, three sword-exercise cut, and finally demolishing a sprouting field-flower, he took some time to reach the top of the cliff. When there he looked carefully about him for a clean dry spot, and, having found one, dropped gently down at full length, and comfortably reclining his head on his arm, looked round him.

It was high-tide below, and the calmest and softest of silver summer seas was breaking in the gentlest ripple on the beach, and against the base of the high chalk cliff whereon he lay. The entrance to the little bay was marked by a light line of foam-crested breakers, beyond which lay a broad stretch of heaving ocean; but the bay itself was "oily calm," its breast dotted here and there with fishing-luggers outward-bound for the night's service, their big tan sails gleaming lightly and picturesquely in the red beams of the setting sun. Faintly, very faintly, from below rose the cries of the boatmen--hoarse monotonous calls, which had accompanied such and such acts of labour for centuries, and had been taught by sire to son, and practised from time immemorial. But the silence around the man outstretched on the cliffs top was unbroken save by the occasional cry of the seafowl, wheeling round and round above his head, and swooping down into their habitation holes, with which the chalk-face was honeycombed. As he lay there idly watching, the sun, a great blood-red globe of fire, sank into the sea, leaving behind it a halo of light, in which the strips of puff-cloud hovering over the horizon--here light, thin, and vaporous, there heavy, dense, and opaque--assumed eccentric outlines, and deadened to one gorgeous depth of purple. There were very few men who would have been insensible to the loveliness of the surroundings--very few but would have been impressed under such circumstances with a sense of the beauty of Nature and the beneficence of Providence. Captain Derinzy was one of these few. He saw it all, marked it all, looked at it leisurely and critically through half-shut eyes, as though scanning some clever picture or some scene at the theatre. Then, quietly dropping his head back upon his hand, he gave a prolonged yawn, and said quietly to himself, "Oh, dam!"

"Oh, dam!" Sun and sea and sky, purple clouds, foam-crested breakwaters, tan sails sunset-gilded, yohoing boatmen, nest-seeking curlews, hoary cliff. "Oh, dam!" But that was not all. Lazily lying at full length, lazily picking blades of grass, lazily nibbling them, and lazily spitting them from his mouth, he said in a quaintly querulous tone:

"Beastly place! How I hate it! Beastly sea, and all that kind of thing; and those fellows going away in their beastly boats, smelling of fish and oil and grease, and beastliness, and wearing greasy woollen nightcaps, and smoking beastly strong tobacco in their foul pipes; and then people draw them, and write about them, and call them romantic, and all such cussed twaddle! Why the deuce ain't they clean and neat, and why don't they dance about, and sing like those fellows in Masaniello? And--Oh Lord! Masaniello! I didn't think I should even have remembered the name of anything decent in this infernal place! What's the time now?" looking at his watch. "Nearly eight. Gad! fancy having had a little dinner at the Windham, or, better still, at the Coventry, where they say that fellow--what's his name?--Francatelli, is so good, and then dropping down to the Opera to hear Cruvelli and Lablache, or the new house which Poyntz wrote me about--Covent Garden--where Grisi and Mario and the lot have gone! Fancy my never having seen the new house! Dammy! I shall become a regular fogey if I stop in this infernal hole much longer. And not as if I were stopping for myself either! If I'd been shaking a loose leg, and had outrun the constable, or anything of that sort, I can understand a fellow being compelled to pull up and live quiet for a bit; though there's Boulogne, which is much handier to town, and much jollier with the établissement, and plenty of écarté, and all that sort of thing, to go on with. But this! Pooh! that's the dam folly of a man's marrying what they call a superior woman! I suppose Gertrude's all right; I suppose it will come off all straight; but I don't see the particular pull for me when it does come off. Here am I wastin' the best years of my life--and just at a time when I haven't got too many of 'em to waste, by Jove!--just that another fellow may stand in for a good thing. To be sure, he's my son, and there's fatherly feelings, and all that sort of thing; but he's never done anything for me, and I think it's rather hard he don't come and take a little of this infernal dreariness on his own shoulders. I shall have to cut away--I know I shall; I can't stand it much longer. I shall have to tell Gertrude--and I never can do that, and I haven't got the pluck to cut away without telling her, and I know she won't even let me go to old Dingo's for the shooting in the autumn. What an ass I was ever to let myself be swindled into coming into this beastly place! and how confoundedly I hate it! Oh, dam! Oh, dam!"

As he concluded he raised himself lightly to his feet, and commenced his descent of the hill as easily and jauntily as he had ascended it. His lame leg troubled him a little, and once when he trod on a rolling stone and nearly fell, he stopped and smiled pleasantly at the erring foot, and shook his cane facetiously over it. As he entered the village, he muttered to himself: "Good heavens! du monde, how very interesting!" For the hours of toil were over, and the shopkeepers and the wives of the fishermen, and such of the fisher-boys as had not gone to sea that evening, were standing at their doors and gossiping, or playing in the street. The lace-making girls were there too--very pretty girls for the most part, with big black eyes and swarthy complexions and thick blue-black hair; their birthright these advantages, for in the old days one of the home-flying ships of the Spanish Armada had been wrecked on the Beachborough coast, and the saved mariners had intermarried with the village women, and transmitted their swarthy comeliness to their posterity. As the Captain passed by, hats were lifted and curtsies dropped, courtesy which he duly returned by touching his sombrero with his forefinger in the military style to the men, and by God-blessing the women and chin-chucking the girls with great heartiness.

So on till he arrived at his own house, where he opened the door from the outside, and entering the handsome old dining-room, was surprised to see the table laid for four persons.

"Hallo! what's this?" he said to a woman at the other end of the room with her back towards him. "Who is coming to dinner, Mrs. Stothard?"

"Have you forgotten?" said the woman addressed, without turning her head. "Dr. Wainwright."

"Oh, ah!" growled Captain Derinzy, in a subdued key. "Where's Annette?"

"In her own room."

"Why don't she come down?"

"Because she's heard Dr. Wainwright is expected, and has turned sulky, and won't move."

"Oh, dam!" said Captain Derinzy.

[CHAPTER III.]

DURING OFFICE-HOURS.

The "Office of H.M. Stannaries" is in a small back street in the neighbourhood of Whitehall. What H.M. Stannaries were was known to but very few of the initiated, and to no "externs" at all. Old Mr. Bult, who, from time immemorial had been the chief-clerk of the office, would, on being interrogated as to the meaning of the word or the duties of his position, take a large pinch of snuff, blow the scattered grains off his beautifully got-up shirt-frill, stare his querist straight in the face, and tell him that "there were certain matters of a departmental character, concerning which it was not considered advisable to involve oneself in communication with the public at large." The younger men were equally reticent. To those who tried to pump them, they replied that they "wrote things, you know; letters, and those kind of things," and "kept accounts." What of? Why, of the Stannaries, of course. But what were the Stannaries? Ah, that was going into a matter of detail which they did not feel themselves justified in explaining. Their ribald friends used to say that the men in the Stannaries Office could not tell you what they had to do, because they did nothing at all, or that they did so little that they were sworn to secrecy on receiving their appointments, lest any inquisitive Radical member, burning to distinguish himself before his constituents in the cause of Civil Service reform--a bray with which the dullest donkey can make himself heard--should rise in the House, and demand an inquiry, or a Parliamentary Commission, or some of those other dreadful inquisitions so loathsome to the official mind.

However, no matter what work was or was not done there, the Stannaries Office was a fact, and a fact for which the nation paid, and according to the entries in the Civil Service estimates, paid pretty handsomely. For there was a Lord Commissioner of Stannaries, at two thousand a-year, and a secretary at one thousand, and a private secretary at three hundred, and four-and-twenty clerks at salaries ranging from one to eight hundred, besides messengers and office-keepers. It was a well-thought-of office to; the men engaged in it went into good society, and were recognised as brother officials by the lofty bureaucrats of the Treasury and the Foreign Office--great creatures, who looked upon Somerset House and the Post Office as tenanted by the sons of peers' butlers, and who regarded the Custom House as a damp place somewhere on the Thames, where amphibious persons known as "tide-waiters" searched passengers' baggage. But it was by no means infra dig. to know men in the Stannaries; and that department of the public service annually contributed a by no means small share of the best dancers and amateur performers of the day. "Only give us gentlemen," Mr. Branwhite, the secretary, would say in his first official interview with a newly-appointed Lord Commissioner--for the patronage of his office was vested in the Lord Commissioner of the Stannaries, who was a political functionary, and came in and went out with the Government--"only give us gentlemen; that's all I ask. We don't require much brains in this place, and that's the truth; but we do want birth and breeding." And on these points Mr. Branwhite, who was the son of an auctioneer at Penrith, and who combined the grace of Dr. Johnson with the geniality of Dr. Abernethy, was inexorable. The cry was echoed everywhere throughout the office. "Let's have gentlemen, for God's sake!" little Fitzbinkie, the private secretary, would say, adding, with a look of as much horror as he could throw into his eyeglass--you never saw his eyes--"there was a fellow here the other day, came to see my lord. Worthington--you've heard about him--wonderful fellow at the Admiralty, great gun at figures, and organisation, and that kind of thing; reformed the navy almost, and so on; and--give you my honour--he had on a brown shooting-jacket, and a black-silk waistcoat, give you my word! Frightful, eh? Let's have gentlemen, at any price."

And the prayer of these great creatures was, to a large extent, answered. Most of the men in the Stannaries Office were pleasant, agreeable, sufficiently educated, well-dressed, and gentlemanly-mannered. Within the previous few years there had been a Scotch and an Irish Lord Commissioner, and each of them had left traces of his patronage in the office: the first in the importation of two or three grave men, who, not finding work enough to do, filled up their leisure by reading statistics, or working out mathematical problems; the last, by the appointment of half-a-dozen roistering blades, who did very little of the work there was to do, and required the help of a Maunders' "Treasury of Knowledge," subscribed for amongst them, to enable them to do what they did; but who were such good riders and such first-rate convivialists that they were found in mounts and supper-parties for two-thirds of the year. The Irish element was, however, decidedly unpopular with Mr. Branwhite, the secretary, a cold-blooded, fish-like man, dry and tasteless, like a human captain's biscuit, who had no animal spirits himself, and consequently hated them in others. He was a long, thin, melancholy-looking fiddle-faced sort of a man, who tried to hide his want of manner under an assumed brusquerie and bluntness of speech. He had been originally brought up as a barrister, and owed his present appointment to the fact of his having a very pretty wife, who attracted the senile attentions and won the flagging heart of the Earl of Lechmere, who happened to be Lord Commissioner of the Stannaries when Sir Francis Pongo died, after forty years' tenure of the secretaryship. Lord Lechmere having, when he called at Mrs. Branwhite's pretty villa in the Old Brompton lanes, been frequently embarrassed by the presence of Mr. Branwhite, that gentleman's barristerial practice being not sufficient to take him often to the single chamber which he rented in Quality Court, Chancery Lane, thought this a favourable opportunity to improve the Branwhite finances, in this instance at least without cost to himself, and of assuring himself of Mr. Branwhite's necessitated absence from the Old Brompton villa during certain periods of the day. Hence Mr. Branwhite's appointment as secretary to H.M. Stannaries. There was a row about it, of course. Why did not the promotion "go in the office"? That is what the Stannaries men wanted to know, and what they threatened to get several members of Parliament to inquire of the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who replied on Stannaries matters in the Lower House. The Official Chronicle, that erudite and uncompromising advocate of the Government service, came out with a series of letters signed "Eraser," "Half-margin," and "Nunquam Dormio;" and a leader in which Lord Lechmere was compared to King David, and Mr. Branwhite to Uriah the Hittite, the parallel in the latter case being heightened by the writer's suggestion that each had been selected "for a very warm berth." But the authorities cared neither for official remonstrances nor press sarcasms. They had their answer to the question why the promotion did not go in the office. Who was the next in rotation? Mr. Bult, the chief-clerk. Was Mr. Bult competent in any way for the secretaryship? Would the gentlemen of the Stannaries Office like to see their department represented by Mr. Bult? Certainly not. Very well, then, as it was impossible, after Mr. Bult's lengthened service, during which his character had been stainless, to pass him by, and place any of his juniors over his head, the only course was to seek for Sir Francis's successor in some gentleman unconnected with the place. This was the way in which Mr. Branwhite obtained his appointment. Lord Lechmere's party went out of office soon after, and Lord Lechmere himself has been dead for years; but Mr. Branwhite held on through the régimes of the Duke of M'Tavish and Viscount Ballyscran, and was all-powerful as ever now while Lord Polhill of Pollington was Lord Commissioner. What was thought of him, and, indeed, what was thought and said pretty plainly about most official persons and topics, we shall learn by looking into a large room on the ground-floor of the office known as the Principal Registrar's Room.

The Principal Registrar's Room must by no means be confounded with the Registry, which was a very different, and not a very choice place, where junior clerks got their hands into Stannaries work by stamping papers and covering their fingers with printers'-ink. The Principal Registrar's Room was appropriated to the Principal Registrar, and three of the best-looking assistants he could get hold of. The gentleman seated at the writing-table in the centre of the room, and reading The Morning Post, is the Principal Registrar, Mr. Courtney. He sits habitually with his back to the light, so that you cannot see his features very distinctly--sufficiently, however, to make out that he is an old, in reality, a very old man, made up for a young one. He must have been of fair complexion and good-looking at one time, for his capitally-made wig is red in colour, and though his perfectly-shaven cheeks are mottled and pulpy, his features are well-cut and aristocratic. His throat, exposed to view through his turn-down collar, is old and wrinkled, reminding one of a fowl's neck; and his hands are soft and seemingly boneless. So much as can be seen of his legs under the table reminds one of Punch's legs, exhibited by that "godless old rebel" in front of his show: the knees knock together, and the feet turn inwards towards each other with helpless imbecility. The only time that Mr. Courtney exhibits any great signs of vitality is in the evening at the Portland Club, where he plays an admirable game of whist, and where his hand is always heavily backed. Though he confesses to being "an old fellow," and quotes "Me, nec foemina nec puer," with a deprecating shrug of the shoulders, he likes to hear the adventures of his young companions, and is by no means inconveniently straitlaced in his ideas. He has a comic horror of any "low fellows," or men who do not go into what he calls "sassiety;" he regards the Scotch division of the office as "stoopid," and contemplates the horsiness and loud tone of the Irish with great disfavour. He has, he thinks, a very good set of "boys" under him just now, and is proportionately pleasant and good-tempered. Let us look at his "boys."

That good-looking young man at the desk in the farthest window is Paul Derinzy, only son of our friend the Captain, resident at Beachborough. The likeness to his father is seen in his thin straight-cut features, small lithe figure, and blue-black hair. The beard movement had just been instituted in Government offices, and Paul Derinzy follows it so far as to have grown a thick black moustache and a small pointed beard, both very becoming to his sallow complexion and Velasquez type of face. He is about five-and-twenty years of age, and has an air of birth and breeding which finds him peculiar favour in his Chief's eyes.

In his drooping eyelids, in his pose, in his outstretched arms, and head lying lazily on one side, there was an expression of languor that argued but ill for the amount of work to be gotten out him in any way, and which proclaimed Mr. Paul Derinzy to be one of that popular regiment, "The Queen's Hard Bargains." But what of that? He certainly did his office credit by his appearance; there was very seldom much work to be done, and when there was, Paul was so popular that no one would refuse to undertake his share. That man opposite, for instance, loved Paul as his brother, and would have done anything for him.

The man opposite is George Wainwright. He is four or five years older than Paul, and of considerably longer standing in the office. In personal appearance he differs very much from his friend. George Wainwright stands six feet in height, is squarely and strongly built, has a mass of fair hair curling almost on to his shoulders, and wears a soft, thick, fair beard. His hands are very large and very white, with big blue veins standing out on them, and his broad wrists show immense power. His eyes are large and prominent, hazel in colour, and soft in expression; he has a rather long and thick nose, and a large mouth, with fresh white teeth showing when he smiles. He is smiling now, at some remark made by the third assistant to the Principal Registrar, Mr. Dunlop, commonly called "Billy Dunlop," a pleasant fellow, remarkable for two things, imperturbable good-humour, and never letting anyone know where he lived.

"What are you two fellows grinning at?" asks Paul Derinzy, lazily lifting his head and looking across at them.

"I'm grinning at Billy's last night's adventures," replies George Wainwright. "He went to the Opera, and supped at Dubourg's."

"Horrible profligate! Alone?"

"So likely!" says Billy Dunlop. "All right, though; I mean, quite correct. Only Mick O'Dwyer with me."

"Mick O'Dwyer at the Opera!" says Paul in astonishment. "Why, he always swears he has no dress-clothes."

"No more he has; but I lent him some of mine--a second suit I keep for first nights of Jullien's Concerts, and other places where it is sure to be crammed and stivy. They fitted Mick stunningly, and he looked lovely in them; but he couldn't get my boots on, and he had to go in his own. There were lots of our fellows there, and they looked astonished to see Mick clothed and in his right mind; and at the back of the pit, just by the meat-screen there, you know, we met Lannigan, the M.P. for some Irish place, who's Mick's cousin. He didn't recognise him at first; then when Mick spoke he looked him carefully all over, and said: 'You're lovely, Mick!' Then his eyes fell on the boots; he turned to me with a face of horror, and muttered: 'Ah Billy, the brogues spoil the lot!'"

The two other men laughed so loudly at this story that Mr. Courtney looked up from his newspaper, and requested to know what was the joke. When he heard it he smiled, at the same time shaking his head deprecatingly, and saying:

"For my part, I confess I cannot stand Mr. O'Dwyer. He is a perfect Goth."

"Ah Chief, that's really because you don't know him," said Wainwright. "He's really an excellent fellow; isn't he, Billy?"

"If Mick had only a little money he would be charming," said Dunlop; "but he hasn't any. He's of some use to me, however; I've had no occasion to consult the calendar since Mick's been here. He borrows half-a-crown of me every day, and five shillings on saints'-days, and----"

"Hold on a minute, Billy," said Paul Derinzy; "if you lent Mick your clothes, you must have taken him home--to where you live, I mean; so that somebody has found out your den at last. What did you do? swear Mick to secrecy?"

"Better than that, sir; I brought the clothes down here, and made Mick put 'em on in his own room. No, sir, none of you have yet struck on my trail. Far in a wild, unknown to public view, From youth to age Mr. William Dunlop grew."

"Haven't you boys solved that mystery yet?" asked Mr. Courtney smiling, and showing a set of teeth that did the dentist credit.

"Not yet, Chief; we very nearly had it out last week," replied Paul.

"When was that?"

"After that jolly little dinner you gave us down at Greenwich. You drove home, you know; we came up by rail. I suppose Quartermaine's champagne had worked the charm; but the lord of William's bosom certainly sat very lightly on its throne, and he was, in fact, what the wicked call 'tight.' At the London Bridge Station I hailed a hansom, and Billy got in with me, saying I could set him down. Knowing that Billy is popularly supposed to reside in a cellar in Short's Gardens, Drury Lane, I told the driver to take us a short cut to that pleasant locality. Billy fell asleep, but woke up just as we arrived in Drury Lane, looked round him, shouted: 'This will do!' stopped the cab, and jumped out. Now, I thought, I've got him! I told the cabman to drive slowly on, and I stepped out and dodged behind a lamp. But Billy was too much for me: in the early dawn I saw him looking straight at me, smiting his nose with his forefinger, and muttering defiantly: 'No, you don't!' So eventually I left him."

"Of course you did. No, no, Chief; William is not likely to fall a prey to such small deer. He will dissipate this mystery on one great occasion."

"And that will be----?"

"When he gets his promotion. When the edict is promulgated, elevating William to the senior class, he will bid you all welcome to a most choice, elegant, and, not to put too fine a point on it, classical repast, prepared in his own home."

"Well, if we're to wait till then, you'll enjoy your classic home, or whatever you call it, for a long time unencumbered with our society," said Derinzy. "Who's to have the next vacancy--Barlow's vacancy, I mean; who's to have it, Chief?"

"My dear boy," said Mr. Courtney, with a shoulder-shrug, "you are aware that I can scarcely be considered au mieux with the powers that be--meaning Mrs. Branwhite--and consequently I am not likely to be taken into confidence in such matters. But I understand, I have heard, quite par hazard," and the old gentleman waved his double glasses daintily in the air as he pronounced the French phrase, "that Mr. Dickson is the selected--person."

"D--n Mr. Dickson!" said Paul Derinzy.

"Hear, hear!" said Mr. Dunlop; "my sentiments entirely, well and forcibly put. A job, sir, a beastly job. 'John Branwhite, Jobmaster,' ought to be written on the Secretary's door; 'neat flies' over deserving people's heads, and 'experienced drivers;' those scoundrels that he employs to spy, and sneak, and keep the fellows up to their work. No, sir, no chance for my being put up; as the party in the Psalms remarks, 'promotion cometh neither from the east nor from the west.'"

"No, Billy, from the south-west this time," said Paul Derinzy. "Dickson's people have been having Branwhite and his wife to dine in Belgrave Square; and our sweet Scratchetary was so delighted with Lady Selina, and so fascinated by the swell surroundings, that he has been grovelling ever since: hence Dickson's lift."

"I have noticed," said Mr. Courtney, standing up and looking around him with that benevolent expression which he always assumed when about to give utterance to an intensely-unpleasant remark, "I have noticed that when a--point of fact, a cad--tries to get into sassiety on which he has no claim for admission, he invariably selects the wrong people. What you just said, my dear Paul, bears out my argument entirely. This man Branwhite--worthy person, official position, and that kind of thing; no more knowledge of decent people than a Hottentot--struggles to get into sassiety, and who does he get to introduce him? Dickson, brewer-man, malt and hops and drugs, and blue boards with 'Entire,' and that kind of thing. Worthy person in his way, and married Lady Selina Walkinshaw, sister of Lord Barclay; but as to sassiety--very third-rate, God bless my soul, very third-rate indeed!"

"Well, I don't know any swells," said Billy Dunlop, "and I don't think I want to. From what I've seen of 'em, they're scarcely so convivial as they might be. Not in the drinking line; I don't mean that--they're all there; but in the talking. And talking of talking, Mr. Wainwright, we've not had the pleasure of hearing your charming voice for the last quarter of an hour. Has it come off at last?"

"Has what come off, Billy?" asked George Wainwright.

"The amputation. Has our father the eminent, &c, at last performed the operation and cut off our tongue? and is it then in a choice vial, neatly preserved in spirits-of-wine, covered over with a bit of a kid-glove, tied down with packthread, and placed on a shelf between a stethoscope and a volume of 'Quain's Anatomy': is that it?"

"Funny dog!" said George Wainwright, looking across at him. "I often wonder why you stop here, Billy, at two-forty, rising to three-eighty by annual increments of ten, when there's such a splendid future awaiting you in the ring. That mug of yours is worth a pound a-week alone; and then those charming witticisms, so new, so fresh, so eminently humorous----"

"Will you shut up?"

"How they would fetch the threepenny gallery! Why don't I talk? I do sometimes in your absence; but when you're here, I feel like one of 'those meaner beauties of the night, which poorly satisfy our eyes;' and when you begin I ask myself: 'What are you when the moon shall rise?'"

"Shut up, will you? not merely your mouth, but your inkstand, blotting-book, and all the rest of the paraphernalia by which you wring an existence out of a too-easily-satisfied Government. You seem to have forgotten it's Saturday."

"By Jove, so it is!" said George Wainwright.

"Yes, sir," continued Mr. Dunlop; "like that party in Shakespeare, who drew a dial from his poke, and said it was just ten, and in an hour it would be eleven, I've just looked at my watch and find that in ten minutes it will be one o'clock, at which hour, by express permission of her Majesty's Ministers, signed and sealed at a Cabinet Council, of which Mr. Arthur Helps was clerk, the gentlemen of H.M. Stannaries are permitted on Saturdays to--to cut it. That is the reason, odd as it may seem, why I like Saturday afternoon. Mr. Tennyson, I believe, knew some parties who found out a place where it was always Saturday afternoon. Mr. W. Dunlop presents his compliments to the Laureate, and would be obliged for an introduction to the said place and parties."

"And what are you going to do with yourself to-day, Billy?"

"I am going, sir, if I may so express myself without an appearance of undue vanity, where Glory waits me. But I am prepared to promise, if it will afford any gentleman the smallest amount of satisfaction, that when Fame elates me, I will at once take the opportunity of thinking of THEE!"

"And where is Glory at the present moment on the look-out for you, William?"

"Glory, sir, in the person of Mr. Kemp, the Izaak Walton of the day, will be found awaiting me in a large punt, moored on the silver bosom of the Thames, off the pleasant village of Teddington, a vessel containing, item two rods, item groundbait and worms for fishing, item a stone-jar of--water! A most virtuous and modest way of spending the afternoon, isn't it? I wish I could think it was going to be spent equally profitably by all!" and Billy Dunlop made a comic grimace in the direction of Paul Derinzy, and then assuming a face of intense gravity, took his hat off a peg, nodded, and vanished.

"Well, goodbye, my dear boys," said Mr. Courtney, coming out from behind the partition where the washing-stand was placed--it was a point of honour among the men to ignore his performance of his toilette--with his wig tightly fixed on and poodled up under his glossy hat, with his close-fitting lavender gloves, and with a flower in the button-hole of his coat; "au revoir on Monday. I'm going down to dear Lord Lumbsden's little place at Marlow to blow this confounded dust out of me, and to get a little ozone into me, to keep me up till I get away to Scotland. Au revoir!" and the old boy kissed his fingertips, and shambled away.

"What are you going to do this afternoon, old man?" asked George Wainwright, pulling off his coat preparatory to a wash, of Paul Derinzy, who had been sitting silent for the last ten minutes, now nervously plucking at his moustache, now referring to his watch, and evidently in a highly nervous state.

"I don't know exactly, George," Paul replied, without looking up at his friend. "I haven't quite made up my mind."

"Going to play tennis?"

"No, I think not."

"Going down to the Oval, to have an hour or two with the professionals? Good day to-day, and the ground's in clipping order."

"No, I think not."

"Well, then, look here. Come along with me: we'll go for a spin as far as Hendon; come back and dine at Jack Straw's Castle at Hampstead, where the man has some wonderfully-good dry sherry, which he bought the other day at a sale up there; and then walk quietly in at night. What do you say?"

"No, I think not to-day, old fellow."

"Oh, all right," said George Wainwright, after an instant's pause; "I'm sorry I spoke."

"Don't be angry, George, old boy! You know I'm never so jolly as when I'm with you, and that there's no man on earth I care for like you," said Paul, earnestly; "but I've half-promised myself for this afternoon, and until I hear--and I expect to hear every moment--I don't know whether I'm free or not."

"All right, Paul. I daresay I bore you sometimes, old man. I often think I do. But, you know, I'm five or six years older than you, and I was the first fellow you knew when you came into the service, through your people being acquainted with mine, and so I've a natural interest in you. Besides, you're a young swell in your way, and it does good to me to hear you talk and mark your freshness, and your--well, your youth. After thirty, a London man hasn't much of either."

"At it again, are you, George? Why don't you keep a property tub on the premises? You can't do your old Diogenes business effectively without it. Or do you want no tub so long as you have me for your butt? Sold you there, I think. You intended to say that yourself."

"Mr. Derinzy," said George Wainwright gravely, "you must indeed have lost every particle of respect for me when you could imagine that I would have descended to a low verbal jest of that nature. Well, since you won't come, I'll----"

"I never said I wouldn't yet, though I can't expect you to wait any longer for my decision. I----"

At that moment a messenger entered the room with a letter in his hand.

"For you, sir," he said to Mr. Derinzy; "the boy wouldn't wait to know if there was an answer."

"All right!" said Paul, opening it hurriedly, with a flushed face.

It had an outer and an inner envelope, both sealed.

"And I may be like the boy, I suppose," said George Wainwright, eyeing his friend with a curiously mixed expression of interest and pity; "I needn't wait to know if there's an answer."

"No, dear old George; I can't come with you this afternoon," replied Paul; and then he looked at the letter again.

It was very short; only one line:

"At the usual place, at three to-day.--DAISY."

[CHAPTER IV.]

AFTER OFFICE-HOURS.

Paul Derinzy was left alone in the Principal Registrar's Room, and silence reigned in H.M. Stannaries Office. Snow does not melt away more speedily under the influence of the bright spring sun than do the clerks of that admirable department under the sound of one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. Within ten minutes the place was deserted, the gentlemen had all cleared out, the messengers had closed up desks and lockers, despatched papers, and bolted, and the place was left to Mr. Derinzy and the office-keeper. The latter went to the door with the last departing messenger, looked up the street and down the street, and with something of the soreness of a man who knew he was imprisoned for at least thirty-six hours, said he thought they were going to have some rain; an idea which the messenger--who had an engagement to take the young lady with whom he was keeping company to Gravesend on the Sunday--indignantly pooh-poohed. Not to be put down by this sort of thing, the office-keeper declared that rain was wanted by the country, to which the messenger replied that he thought of himself more than the country; and as the country had done without it for three weeks, it might hold over without much bother till Monday, he should think; and nodded, and went his way. The office-messenger kicked the door viciously to, and proceeded to make his round of the various rooms to see that everything was in order, and to turn the key in each door after his inspection. When he came to the Principal Registrar's Room he went in as usual, but finding Mr. Derinzy there performing on his head with two hairbrushes, he begged pardon and retreated, wondering what the deuce possessed anyone to stop in the Office of H.M. Stannaries when he had the chance of leaving it and going anywhere else. A cynical fellow this office-keeper, only to be humanised by his release on Monday morning.

Mr. Paul Derinzy was in no special hurry, he had plenty of time before him, and he had his toilette to attend to; a business which, though he was no set dandy, he never scamped. He was very particular about the exact parting of his hair, the polish of his nails, and the set of his necktie; and between each act of dressing he went back to his writing-table, and re-read the little note lying upon, it. Once or twice he took the little note up, and whispered "darling!" to it, and kissed it before he put it down again. Poor Paul! he was evidently very hard hit, and just at the time of life, too, when these wounds fester and rankle so confoundedly. Your ci-devant jeune homme, your middle-aged gallant, viveur, coureur des dames, takes a love-affair as easily as his dinner: if it goes well, all right; if it comes to grief, equally all right; the sooner it is over the better he likes it. The great cynical philosopher of the age, whose cynicism it is now the fashion to deny--as though he could help it, or would have been in the least ashamed of it--in one of his ballads calls upon all his coevals of forty to declare:

Did not the fairest of the fair Common grow, and wearisome, ere /Ever a month had passed away?

Middle-aged man has other aims, other resources, other objects. The "court, camp, grove, the vessel and the mart," fame, business, ambition--all of these have claims upon his time, claims which he is compelled to recognise in their proper season; and, worst of all, he has recovered from the attacks of the "cruel madness of love," a youthful disorder, seldom or never taken in middle life; the glamour which steeped all surrounding objects in roseate hues no longer exists, and it is impossible to get up any spurious imitations of it. Time has taught him common sense; he has made friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; and instead of wandering about the grounds begging Maud to come out to him, and singing rapturous nonsense to the flowers, he is indoors dining with the Tory squires. But the young have but one idea in the world. They are entirely of opinion, with Mr. Coleridge's hero, that all thoughts, "all passions, all delights that stir this mortal frame," are "ministers of love," and "feed his sacred flame." Perpetually to play at that sweet game of lips, to alternate between the heights of hope and the depths of despair, to pine for a glance and to be made happy by a word, to have no care for anything else, to ignore the friends in whose society you have hitherto found such delight, to shut your eyes knowingly, wilfully, and resolutely to the sight of everything but one object, and to fall down and persistently adore that object in the face of censure, contempt, and obloquy, is granted to but few men over thirty years of age. Let them not be ashamed of the weakness, rather let them congratulate themselves on its possession: it will give a zest and flavour to their middle life which but few enjoy.

Paul Derinzy, however, was just at that period of his life when everything is rose-coloured. He was even young enough to enjoy looking at himself in the glass, which is indeed a proof of youth; for there is no face or no company a man so soon gets sick of as his own. But Paul stood before the little glass behind the washing-screen settling his hat, and gazing at himself very complacently, even going so far as to fetch another little glass from his drawer, and by aid of the two ascertaining that his back parting was perfectly straight. As he replaced the glass, he took out a yellow rosebud, carefully wrapped in wool, cleared it from its envelope, and sticking it in his buttonhole, took his departure.

Paul looked up at the Horse-Guards clock as he passed by, and finding that he had plenty of time to spare, walked slowly up Whitehall. The muslin-cravated, fresh-coloured, country gentlemen at the Union Club, and the dyed and grizzled veterans at the Senior United, looked out of the window at the young man as he passed, and envied him his youth and his health and his good looks. He strolled up Waterloo Place just as the insurance-offices with which that district abounds were being closed for the half-holiday, and the insurance-clerks, young gentlemen who, for the most part, mould themselves in dress and manners upon Government officials, took mental notes of Paul's clothes, and determined to have them closely imitated so soon as the state of their salaries permitted. Quite unconscious of this sincerest flattery, Paul continued his walk, striking across into Piccadilly, and lounging leisurely along until he came to the Green Park, which he entered, and sat down for a few minutes. It was the dull time of the day--when the lower half of society was at dinner, and the upper half at luncheon--and there was scarcely anyone about. After a short rest, Paul looked at his watch, and muttering to himself, "She can't have started yet; I may just as well have the satisfaction of letting my eyes rest on her as she walks to the Gardens," he rose, and turned his steps back again. He turned up Bond Street, and off through Conduit Street into George Street, Hanover Square, and there, just by St. George's Church, he stopped.

Not to the church, however, was his attention directed, but to the house immediately opposite to it. A big, red-faced, old-fashioned house, fresh painted and pointed, with plate-glass windows in its lower stories, and bronzed knockers, and shining bell-pulls, looking like a portly dowager endeavouring to assume modern airs and graces. Carriages kept driving up, and depositing old and young ladies, and the door, on which was an enormous brass plate with "Madame Clarisse," in letters nearly half a foot long, was perpetually being flung open by a page with a very shiny face, produced by a judicious combination of yellow soap and friction--a page who, in his morning-jacket ruled with red lines, looked like a page of an account-book. Paul Derinzy knew many of these carriage-brought people--for Madame Clarisse was the fashionable milliner of London, and had none but the very greatest of fine ladies in her clientèle--and many of them knew him; but on the present occasion he carefully shrouded himself from observation behind one of the pillars of the church portico. There he remained in an agony of impatience, fidgeting about, looking at his watch, glaring up at the bright-faced house, and anathematising the customers, until the clock in the church-tower above him chimed the half-hour past two. Then he became more fidgety than ever. Before, he had taken short turns up and down the street, always returning sharply to the same spot, and looking round as though he had expected some remarkable alteration to have taken place during his ten seconds' absence; now, he stood behind the pillar, never attempting to move from the spot, but constantly peering across the way at Madame Clarisse's great hall-door.

Within five minutes of the chiming of the clock, the great hall-door was opened so quietly that it was perfectly apparent the demonstrative page was not behind it. A young woman, simply and elegantly dressed in a tight-fitting black silk gown, and a small straw bonnet trimmed with green ribbon, with a black lace shawl thrown loosely across her shoulders and hanging down behind, after a French fashion then in vogue, passed out, closing the door softly behind her, and started off in the direction of the Park. Then Paul Derinzy left his hiding-place, and, at a discreet distance, followed in pursuit.

There must have been something very odd or very attractive in the personal appearance of this young woman, for she undoubtedly attracted a vast deal of attention as she passed through the streets. It would require something special, one would imagine, to intervene between a man and the toothache; and yet a gentleman seated in a dentist's ante-room in George Street, with a face swollen to twice its natural size, and all out of drawing, and vainly endeavouring to solace himself, and to forget the coming wrench, with the pleasant pages of a ten-years'-old Bentleys Miscellany, flung the book aside as he saw the girl go by, and crammed himself into a corner of the window to look after her retreating figure. Two sporting gentlemen standing at the freshly-sanded door of Limmer's Hotel, smoking cigars, and muttering to each other in whispers of forthcoming "events," suspended their conversation and exchanged a rapid wink as she flitted by them. The old boys sunning themselves in Bond Street, pottering into Ebers' for their stalls, or pricing fish at Groves's, were very much fluttered by the girl's transient appearance among them. The little head was carried very erect, and there must have been something in the expression of the face which daunted the veterans, and prevented them from addressing her. One or two gave chase, but soon found out that the gouty feet so neatly incased in varnished boots had no chance with this modern Atalanta, who sailed away without a check, looking neither to the right nor to the left. Nor were men her only admirers; ladies sitting in their carriages at shop-doors would look at her half in wonderment, half in admiration, and whisper to each other: "What a pretty girl!" and these compliments pleased her immensely, and brought the colour to her face, adding to her beauty.

She crossed into the Park through Grosvenor Gate, and taking the path that lay immediately in front of her, went straight ahead about half-way between the Serpentine and the Bayswater Road, then through the little iron gate into Kensington Gardens, and across the turf for some distance until she came in sight of a little avenue of trees, through which glimmered the shining waters of the Round Pond, backed by the rubicund face of stout old Kensington Palace. Then she slackened her pace a little, and began to look around her. There were but few, very few people near: two or three valetudinarians sunning themselves on such of the benches as were in sufficient repair; a few children playing about while their nursemaids joined forces and abused their employers; a shabby-genteel man eating a sandwich of roll-and-sausage--obviously his dinner--in a shamefaced way, and drinking short gulps out of a tin flask under the shadow of his hat; and a vagabond dog or two, delighted at having escaped the vigilance of the park-keeper, and snapping, yelping, and performing acrobatic feats of tumbling, out of what were literally pure animal spirits. Valetudinarians, children, nursemaids, and dogs were evidently not what the girl had come to see, for she stopped, struck the stick-handle of her open parasol against her shoulder, and murmured, "How provoking!" Just at that instant Paul Derinzy, who had been following her tolerably closely, touched her arm. She started, wheeled swiftly round, and her eyes brightened and the flush rose in her cheeks as she cried:

"Oh, Mr. Douglas!"

"'Mr. Douglas,' Daisy!" said Paul Derinzy, with uplifted eyebrows; "'and why this courtesy,' as we say in Sir Walter Scott?"

"I mean Paul," said the girl; "but you startled me so, I scarcely knew what I said."

"Ah, 'Paul' is much better. The idea of your calling me anything else!"

"I don't know, I rather think you're 'Mr. Douglas' just now. You're always 'Mr. Douglas,' recollect, when I'm at all displeased with you, and I've lots of things for you to explain to-day."

"Fire away, child! Let's turn out of the path first, in amongst these trees. So--that is better. Now then, what is the first?--by Jove, pet, how stunning you look to-day!"

A vulgar but expressive term, and one in general acceptance ten years ago. One, too, by no means inexpressive of the girl's beauty, for she was beautiful, and in a style that was then uncommon. She had red hair. Nowadays red hair is by no means uncommon; it may be seen hanging in bunches in the coiffeurs' shops, and, with black roots, on the heads of most of the Dryads of the Wood. Ten years ago, to have red hair was to be subjected to chaff by the street-boys, to be called "carrots" by the vulgar, and to be pitied silently by the polite. Red hair au naturel was almost unknown--it was greased, and pomatumed, and cosmetiqued, and flattened into bandeaux, and twisted into ringlets, and deepened and darkened and disguised in every possible shape and way; it was "auburn," it was "chestnut," it was anything but red. This girl had red hair, and hated it, but was too proud to attempt to disguise it. So she wore it in a thick dry mass, heavy and crisp, and low on the forehead, and it suited her dead-white skin, creamy white, showing the rising blood on the smallest provocation, and her thin cheeks, and her pointed chin, and her gray eyes, and her long, but slightly impertinent, nose. No wonder people in the street turned round and stared at her; they had been educated up to the raven locks, and the short straight noses, and the rounded chin style of beauty, formed on the true classical model, and they could not understand this kind of thing except in a picture of Mr. Dante Rossetti, or young Mr. Millais, or some of those other new-fangled artists who, they supposed, were clever, but who were decidedly "odd."

There was no doubt about her beauty, though, and none about her style. So Paul Derinzy thought, as he looked her up and down on saying the last-recorded words, and marked her tall, svelte, lissom figure; her neatly-shod, neatly-gloved feet and hands; her light walk, so free and yet so stately; and the simple elegance of her dress.

"You are a stunner, pet, and I adore you! There, having delivered myself of those mild observations, I will suffer you to proceed. You had a lot of things to say to me? Fire away!"

"In the first place, why were you not here to meet me, Mr. Douglas?"

"Again that detestable formality! Daisy, I swear, if you call me that again, I'll kiss you,--coram publico, en plein air, here before everybody; and that child, who will not take its eyes off us, will swallow the hoopstick it is now sucking, and its death will lie at your door."

"No, but seriously--where have you been?"

"You want to know? Well, then, I don't mind telling you that I've followed you every foot of the way from George Street. Ah, you may well blush, young woman! I was the heartbroken witness of your flirtation with those youths in Bond Street."

"Horrid old things! No, but, Paul, did you really follow me from Madame's? Were you there to see me come out?"

"My child, I was there for three mortal quarters of an hour before you came out."

"That was very nice of you; bien gentil, as Mdlle. Augustine says. I wish you knew Mdlle. Augustine, she's a very great friend of Madame's."

"I wish I was Mdlle. Augustine. I say, Daisy, doesn't Madame Clarisse want a male hand in the business--something in the light-porter line? I'm sure it would suit me better than that beastly office."

"What office, Paul?"

"Why, my office, darling; where I go every day. Do you mean to say I didn't tell you about that, Daisy?"

"Certainly not; you've told me nothing about yourself."

"Well, you see, I've known you so short a time, and seen so little of you. Oh yes, I go to an office."

"Do you mean to say you're a clerk?"

"Well, yes--not to put too fine a point upon it, I suppose I am."

"What! a lawyer's clerk?"

"No, no! D--n it all, Daisy, not as bad as that, nothing of the kind. Government office, Civil servant of the Crown, and all that kind of thing, don't you understand? Her Majesty's Stannaries--one of the principal departments of the State."

"And do you go there every day, Mr.--I mean, Paul?"

"Well, I'm supposed to, my darling; point of fact, I do go there--generally."

"Why don't you let me write to you there?"

"Write to me there! at the office! My dear child, there are the most stringent rules of the service against it. Any man in the office receiving a letter from a lady at the office would be--would be had up before the House of Commons, and very probably committed to the Tower!"

"What a curious thing! I thought you had nothing to do."

"Nothing to do! My darling Daisy, no galley-slave who tugs at the what-d'ye-call-em--oar--works harder than I do, as, indeed, Lord Palmerston has often acknowledged."

"And you're well paid for it? I mean, you get lots of money?" asked the girl, looking straight up into his face.

"Ye-yes, child. Yes, statecraft is tolerably well remunerated. Besides, men in my position have generally something else to live upon, some private means, some allowances from their people."

"Their people? Oh, you mean their families. Yes, that must be very nice. Have you any--any people?"

"Yes, Daisy, my father and mother are both alive."

"They don't live with you in Hanover Street?"

"Oh no; they live down in the country, a long way off--down in the West of England."

"And they're rich, I suppose?"

"Yes, they're very fairly off."

"And how many brothers and sisters have you, Paul?"

"None, darling; I am the only child; the entire hopes of the family are centred in this charming creature. Have you finished your questions, you inquisitive puss?"

"Quite. Did it sound inquisitive? I daresay it did; I daresay my foolish chatter was boring you."

"My pet Daisy, I'd sooner hear what you call your foolish chatter than anything in the world--much sooner than Tamberlik's ut de poitrine, that all the musical people are raving about just now. See, darling, let us sit down here. Take off your glove--this right glove. No? what nonsense! I may kiss your hand; there's no one looking but that fat child in the brown-holland knickerbockers, and if he doesn't turn his eyes away, I'll make a face at him, and frighten him into convulsions. There; now tell me about yourself."

"About myself? I've nothing to tell, Paul, except that we're horribly busy, and Madame plagues our lives out."

"Had you any difficulty in getting out to-day? You thought you would have when last I saw you."

"Dreadful difficulty; Madame fussed and fumed, and declared that she could not possibly let me go; but I insisted; and as the customers like me, and always ask for me, I suppose I am too valuable for her to say much."

"By the way, Daisy, do any men ever come to your place--with the women, I mean?"

"Sometimes; the husbands or the brothers of the ladies."

"Exactly. I suppose they don't--I mean, I suppose you don't--what a fool I am! No matter. Are you going back there this evening?"

"Yes, Madame would not let me come until I promised to be back by six to see the parcels off. Madame's going to the Opera to-night, and she'll be dressing at the time, and she must have somebody there she can depend upon."

"And you are the somebody, Daisy? How deuced nice to be able to reckon upon finding you anywhere when one wanted you! No, I say; no one can see my arm, it's quite covered by your shawl, and it fits so beautifully round your waist, just as if you had been measured for it at Madame Clarisse's. Well, and what time will you be free?"

"Between eight and nine, I suppose; nearer nine."

"May I meet you when you come away, Daisy? Will you come with me to the theatre?"

"No, Paul; you know perfectly well that I will not. You know it is not of the slightest use proposing such things to me."

"Yes, I know it's of no use; I wish it were; it would be so jolly, and--then you'll go straight back to South Molton Street?"

"Yes; to my garret!" and she laughed, rather a hard laugh, as she said these words.

"Don't say that, Daisy; I hate to hear you say that word."

"It's the right word, Paul, horrid or not. However, I shall get out of it some day, I suppose."

"How?" asked Paul, withdrawing his arm from her waist, and looking fixedly at her.

"How should I know?" said the girl, with the same hard laugh. "Feet foremost, perhaps, in my coffin. Somehow, at all events."

"You're in a curious mood to-day, Daisy."

"Am I? You'll see me in many curious moods, if we continue to know each other long, Paul--which I very much doubt, by the way."

"Daisy, what makes you say that? You've not seen anyone--you've not heard--I mean, you don't intend to break with me, Daisy?"

"There is nothing to break, my poor Paul!"

"Whose fault is that? Whose fault is it that you remain in what you call your garret? Whose fault is it that you are compelled to obey Madame Clarisse, and to dance attendance on her infernal customers? Not mine, you must allow that. You know what is the dearest wish of my heart--you know how often I have proposed that----"

"Stop, sir," said Daisy, laying her ungloved hand upon his mouth; "you know how often I have forbidden you to touch upon that subject, and now you dare to disobey merely because I was foolish enough to be off my guard for a moment, and to let some grumbling escape my lips. No, no, Paul, let us be sensible; it is very well as it is. We enjoy these stolen meetings; at least, I do----"

"And you think I don't, I suppose? Oh no, certainly not!"

"You very rude bear, why do you interrupt me? I don't think anything of the sort. I know you enjoy them too. Then why should we bother ourselves about the future?"

"No; but you don't understand, Daisy. It seems so deuced hard for me to have to see you for such a short time, and then for you to have to go away, and----"

"Don't you think it is quite as hard for me?"

"But then I'm so fond of you, don't you know! I love you so much, Daisy."

"And do you imagine I don't care for you? I don't say how much, but I know it must be more than a little."

"How do you know that, darling?"

"Because my love for you has conquered my pride, Paul. That shows me at once, without anything else, that I must love you. Do you think if I didn't care for you that I would consent to all this subterfuge and mystery which always surrounds us? Do you imagine that I have no eyes and no perception? Do you think I don't notice that you have chosen this place for our meeting because it is quite quiet and secluded? That when anyone having the least appearance of belonging to your world comes near us, you are in an agony, and turn your head aside, or cover your face with your hand, lest you should be recognised? Do you think I haven't noticed all this? And do you think I don't know that all these precautions are taken, and all this fear is undergone, because you are walking with me?"

"My darling Daisy----"

"It's my own fault, Paul. Understand, I quite allow that. I am not in your rank of life. I am Madame Clarisse's show-woman; and I ought to look for my lovers amongst Messrs. Lewis and Allenby's young drapers, or the assistants at Godfrey and Cooke's, the chemists. They would be very proud to be seen with me, and would probably take me out on Sundays, along the Hammersmith Road in a four-wheel chaise. However, I hate chemists and drapers and four-wheel chaises, and prefer walking in this gloomy grove with you, Paul."

"You're a queer child," said Paul, with a sigh of relief at the subject being, as he thought, ended, and with a gratified smile at the pleasant words Daisy had last spoken.

"Yes," she said; "queer enough, Heaven knows! I suppose my dislike to those kind of people is because I was decently born and educated; and I can't forget that even now, when I'm only a milliner's shop-girl. But with all my queerness, I was right in what I said, wasn't I, Paul?"

"Why, my darling, it's a question, don't you see. I don't care for myself; I should be only too proud for people to think that I--that a girl like you would be about with me, and that kind of thing; but it's one's people, don't you know, and all that infernal cant and conventionality."

"Exactly. Now let us take a turn up and down the gloomy grove, and talk about something else."

She rose as she spoke, and passed her arm through his, and they began slowly pacing up and down among the trees. The "something else" which formed the subject of their talk it is not very difficult to divine, and though apparently deeply interesting to them, it would not be worth transcription. It was the old, old subject, which retains its glamour in all countries and in all places, and which was as entrancing in that bit of cockney paradise, with the smoke-discoloured trees waving above them, and the dirty sheep nibbling near them, as it was to OEnone on Ida, or to Desdemona in Venice.

So they strolled about, trying endless variations of the same tune, until it became time for Daisy to think of returning to her place of business. Paul, after a little inward struggle with himself, proposed to walk with her as far as the Marble Arch; there would be no one in that part of the Park, he thought, of whom he need have the slightest fear; and Daisy appearing to be delighted, they started off. Just before they reached the end of the turf by the Marble Arch they stopped to say adieux. These apparently took a long time to get over, for Daisy's delicate little glove was retained in Paul's grasp, her face was upturned, and he was looking into it with love and passion in his eyes. So that they neither of them observed a tall gentleman who had just entered the gates, and was striking across the Park when his eyes fell upon them, and who honoured them, not with a mere cursory glance, but with an intense and a prolonged stare. This gentleman was George Wainwright.

[CHAPTER V.]

FAMILY POLITICS.

"Was I a-dreamin', or did my Ann really tell me that somebody'd come down late last night in a po'-shay and driven to the Tower?" asked Mrs. Powler, the morning after her little supper-party, of Mrs. Jupp, who, whenever she could find a minute to spare from the troubles of housekeeping, was in the habit of "dropping-in" to gossip with her older and less active neighbour.

"You weren't dreamin', dear; at least, I should say not, unless you have dreams like them chief butlers and bakers, and other cur'ous pipple in the Bible one reads of, which had their dreams 'terpreted. It's quite true--not that it's made more so by your Ann having said it; for a more shameful little liar there don't talk in this parish!" said Mrs. Jupp, getting very red in the face.

"You never took kindly to that gell, Mrs. Jupp," said the old lady placidly--she was far too rich to get in a rage--"you never took kindly to that gell from the first, when I took her out of charity, owin' to her father's being throwed out of work on account of Jupp's cousin stoppin' payment."

Though said in Mrs. Fowler's calmest tones, and without a change of expression on the speaker's childish old face, this was meant to be a hard hit, and was received as such by Mrs. Jupp.

"I don't know nothin' 'bout stoppin' payment, nor Jupp's cousins," said that lady, with a redundancy of negatives and a very shrill voice; "my own fam'ly has always paid their way, and Jupp has a 'count at the Devon Bank, where his writin' is as good as gold, and will be so long as I live. But I du know that I've never liked that gell Ann Bradshaw since she told a passil o' lies about my Joey and the hen-roost!"

"Well, well, never mind Ann Bradshaw," said Mrs. Powler, who had had vast experience of Mrs. Jupp's powers of boredom in connection with the subject of her Joey and the hen-roost; "never mind about the gell; I allays kip her out o' your way, and I must ha' been main thoughtless when I let her name slip out just now before you. So someone did come in a po'-shay last night, then, and did drive to the Tower? Do you know who it was?"

"Not of my own knowledge," replied Mrs. Jupp in a softened voice--it would never have done to have quarrelled with Mrs. Powler, from whom she derived much present benefit, and from whom she expected a legacy--"but Groper, who was up there this morning wi' the sallt water for the Captain's bath, says it's the Doctor."

"Lor', now!" said Mrs. Powler, lifting up her hands in astonishment; "I can't fancy why passons go messin' wi' sallt water, and baths, and such-like. They must be main dirty, one would think, to take such a lot o' washin'. I'm sure Powler and I never did such redick'lous nonsense, and we was always well thought of, I believe. Lor', now, I've bin and forgotten who you said it was come down. Who was it, Harriet?"

"The Doctor from London--Wheelwright, or some such name; he that comes down three or four times a-year just to look at Mrs. Derinzy."

"He must be a cliver doctor, I du 'low, if his lookin' at her is enough to do her good," said Mrs. Powler, who was extremely literal in all things; "not but what she's that bad, poor soul, that anything must be a comfort to her."

"Did you ever hear tell what was ezackly the matter wi' the Captain's lady, Mrs. Powler?" asked Mrs. Jupp mysteriously.

"Innards," said the old lady in a hollow voice, laying her hand on the big mother-o'-pearl buckle by which her broad sash was kept together.

"Ah, but what sort of innards?" demanded Mrs. Jupp, who was by no means to be put off with a general answer on such an important subject.

"That I dunno," said Mrs. Powler, unwillingly confessing her ignorance. "Dr. Barton attends her in a or'nary way, but I niver heerd him say."

"It must be one of them obstinit diseases as we women has," said Mrs. Jupp, "as though--not to fly in the face of Providence--but as though child-bearin' wasn't enough to have us let off all the rest!"

"She niver takes no med'cine," said Mrs. Powler, who firmly believed in the virtues of the Pharmacopoeia, and whose pride it was that the deceased Powler, in his last illness, had swallowed "quarts and quarts." "I know that from that fair-haired young chap that mixes Barton's drugs,--his mother was a kind o' c'nexion o' Fowler's, and I had 'im up to tea a Sunday week, and asked him."

"Well, I'd like very much to know what is the matter wi' Mrs. Derinzy," said Mrs. Jupp, harking back. "I ha' my own idea on the subjick; but I'd like to know for sure."

"If you're so cur'ous, you'd better ask Dr. Barton. He's just gone passt the window, and I 'spose he'll look in;" and almost before Mrs. Powler had finished her sentence there came a soft rap at the room-door, the handle was gently turned, and Dr. Barton presented himself.

He was a short, thickset, strongly-built man of about fifty-five, with close curly gray hair, bright eyes, mottled complexion, large hooked nose. He was dressed in a black cut-away coat, stained buff waistcoat, drab riding-breeches, and top-boots. He had a way of laying his head on one side, and altogether reminded one irresistibly of Punch.

"Good-morning, ladies," said the doctor, in a squeaky, throaty little voice, which tended to heighten the resemblance; "I seem to ha' dropped in just in the nick o' time, by the looks of ye. Mayhap you were talking about me. Mrs. Jupp, you don't mean to say that----" and the little man whispered the conclusion of the sentence behind his hat to Mrs. Jupp, while he privately winked at Mrs. Powler.

"Get 'long wi' ye, du!" said Mrs. Jupp, her face suffused with crimson.

"I niver see such a man in all my born days," said old Mrs. Powler, with whom the doctor was a special favourite, laughing until the tears made watercourses of her wrinkles, and were genially irrigating her face. "No; no such luck, I tell her."

"Well, as to luck, that all a matter o' taste," said Mrs. Jupp; "we were talking about something quite different to that."

"What was it?" asked the doctor.

"'Bout Mrs. D'rinzy's health Harriet was asking," explained Mrs. Powler.

"A-h!" said the doctor, shaking his head, and looking very solemn.

"Is she so bad as all that?" asked Mrs. Jupp, who was visibly impressed by the medico's pantomime.

"Great sufferer, great sufferer!" said the little man, with a repetition of the head-shake.

"Well, but she gets about; comes down into t' village, and such-like," argued Mrs. Powler.

"Oh yes; no reason why she shouldn't; more she gets about, indeed, the better," said the doctor.

"It's innards, I suppose?" asked Mrs. Jupp, whose craving for particulars of Mrs. Derinzy's disorder was yet unsatisfied.

"Well, partially, partially," said the doctor, slowly rubbing the side of his nose with the handle of his riding-whip; "it's a complication, a mixture, which it would be difficult to get an unprofessional person to understand."

"Talkin' o' that, Barton," said Mrs. Powler, "I s'pose you know the London doctor came down last night?"

"Dr. Wainwright? Oh yes; I was up at the Tower just now to meet him. As I'm left in charge of Mrs. Derinzy, we always have a consultation whenever he comes down."

"I s'pose he's a raal cliver man, this Wheelwright, or they wouldn't have him come all this way to see her," said Mrs. Powler.

"Clever!" echoed the doctor; "the very first man of the day; the very first!"

"Then why wasn't he sent for to see Sir Herc'les when he was laid up that bad last spring?" asked Mrs. Jupp; "there was another one come down from London then."

"That was quite a different case, my dear madam. Sir Hercules Dingo was laid up with gout; Mrs. Derinzy's complaint is not gout; and Dr. Wainwright is the first man of the day in--well, in such cases as Mrs. Derinzy's."

No more specific information than this could Mrs. Jupp obtain from the doctor, who was "that close when he liked," as his friends said of him, that even the blandishments of Mrs. Barton failed to extract any of his professional secrets. So Mrs. Jupp gave it up in despair, and began talking on general topics. Be sure the conversation did not progress far without the Derinzys again cropping up in it. They were staple subjects of discussion in Beachborough, and the most preposterous stories regarding them and their origin, whence and why they came to the remote Devonshire village, and the reason for their enforced stay there, obtained, if not credence, at least circulation. What their real history was, I now propose to tell.

Five-and-twenty years before the date of this story, the firm of Derinzy and Sons was well known and highly esteemed in the City of London. They were supposed to have been originally of Polish extraction, and their name to have been Derinski; but it had been painted up as Derinzy for years on the door-posts of their warehouse in Gough Square, Fleet Street, and it was so spelt on all the invoices, bill-heads, and other commercial literature of the firm. Warehouses, invoices, and bill-heads? Yes, despite their Polish extraction and distinguished name, the Derinzys were neither more nor less than furriers--wholesale, and on a large scale, it was true, but still furriers. Their business was enormous, and their profits immense. The old father, Peter Derinzy, who had founded the firm, and whose business talent and industry were the main causes of its success, had given up active attendance, and was beginning to take life leisurely. He came down twice a week, perhaps, in a handsome carriage-and-pair, to Gough Square, just glanced over the books, and occasionally looked at some samples of skins, on which his opinion--still the most reliable in the whole trade--was requested by his son, and then went back to his mansion at Muswell Hill, where his connection with business was unknown or ignored, and where he was Squire Derinzy, dwelling in luxury, and passing his time in the superintendence of his graperies and pineries, his forcing-houses and his farm.

The affairs of the house did not suffer by the old gentleman's absence. In his eldest son Paul, on whom the command devolved in his father's absence, the senior partner had a representative possessing all the experience and tact which he had gained, combined with the youth and energy which he had lost. Men of high standing in the City of London, many years his seniors, were glad to know Paul Derinzy, eager to ask his advice, and, what is quite a different matter, frequently not unwilling to take it in regard to the great speculations of the day. The merchants from the North of Europe with whom he transacted business--and to all of whom he spoke in their own language, without the slightest betrayal of foreign accent or lack of idiom--looked upon him as an absolute wonder, more especially when contrasted with his own countrymen, who for the most part spoke nothing but English, and little of that beyond oaths, and spread his renown far and wide. He was a tall, high-shouldered, big-boned man, prematurely bald, and, being very short-sighted, wore a large pair of spectacles, which impelled his younger brother Alexis, then fresh from school, and just received into the counting-house, to be initiated into the mysteries of trade preparatory to being made a partner, to call him "Gig-lamps." Paul Derinzy was not a good-tempered man, and at any time would have disliked this impertinence; but addressed to him as it was, before the clerks, it nettled him exceedingly. He forbade its repetition under pain of summary punishment, and when it was repeated, being a big strong man, he caught his younger brother by the collar, dragged him out of the counting-house to a secluded part of the warehouse, and then and there thrashed him to his heart's content. It was, perhaps, this summary treatment, combined with a dislike for desk-work and indoor confinement, that induced Master Alexis to resign his clerical stool and to suggest to his father the propriety of purchasing for him a commission in the army. Old Derinzy was by no means disposed to act upon this idea, but his wife, who worshipped and spoiled her youngest son, urged it very strongly; and as Paul, who was of course consulted, recommended it as by far the best thing that could be done for his brother, the old gentleman at last gave way, and in a very short time young Alexis was gazetted as cornet in a hussar regiment then on its way home from India, and joined the depot at Canterbury.

After that little episode, Paul Derinzy took small heed of his brother's proceedings, or, indeed, of anything save his business, in which he seemed to be entirely absorbed. He was there early and late, taking his dinner at a tavern, and retiring to chambers in Chancery Lane, where he read philosophical treatises and abstruse foreign philosophical works until bedtime. He had no intimate friends, and never went into society. Even after his mother's death, when he spent most of his leisure time, such as it was, at Muswell Hill, with his father, then become very old and feeble, he shrank from meeting the neighbours, and was looked upon as an oddity and a recluse. In the fulness of time old Peter Derinzy died, leaving, it was said, upwards of a hundred thousand pounds. By his will he bequeathed twenty thousand pounds to his second son, Captain Alexis Derinzy, while the whole of the rest of his fortune went to his son Paul, who was left sole executor.

Captain Alexis Derinzy made use of very strong language when he learned the exact amount of the legacy bequeathed to him by his father's will. He had been always given to understand, he said, that the governor was a hundred-thousand-pound man, and he thought it deuced hard that he shouldn't have had at least a third of what was left, specially considering that he was a married man with a family, whereas that money-grubbing old tradesman, his elder brother, had nobody but himself to look after. The statement of Captain Derinzy's marriage was so far correct. About two years previous to his father's death, the Captain being at the time, like another captain famed in song, "in country quarters," had made the acquaintance of a young lady, the daughter of a clever, ne'er-do-weel, pot-walloping artist, who, when sober, did odd bits of portrait-painting, and, among other jobs, had painted correct likenesses of Captain Derinzy's two chargers. Captain Derinzy's courtship of the artist's daughter, unlike that of his prototype in verse, was carried on with the strictest decorum, not, one is bound to say, from any fault of the Captain's, who wished and intended to assimilate it to scores of other such affairs which he had had under what he considered similar circumstances. But the truth was that he had never met anyone like Miss Gertrude Skrymshire before. A pretty woman, delicate-looking, and thoroughly feminine, she was far more of an old soldier than the Captain, with all his barrack training and his country-garrison experience. Years before, when she was a mere child of fourteen, she had made up her mind, after experience of her father's career and prospects, that Bohemianism, for a woman at least, was a most undesirable state, and she had determined that she would marry either for wealth or position; the latter preferable, she thought, as the former might be afterwards attainable by her own ready wit and cleverness; while if she married a bon bourgeois, she must be content to remain in Bloomsbury, Bedfordshire, or wherever she might be placed, and must abandon all hope of rising. When Captain Derinzy first came fluttering round her, she saw the means to her end, and determined to profit thereby. She was a very pretty young woman of her style, red and white, with black eyes and flattened black hair, altogether very like those Dutch dolls fashionable at that period, who were made of shiny composition down to their busts, but then diverged abruptly into calico and sawdust. She had a trim waist and a neat ankle, and what is called nowadays a very "fetching" style, and she made desperate havoc with Captain Derinzy's heart; so much so, that when she declined with scorn to listen to any of the eccentric--to say the least of them--propositions which he made to her, and forbade him her presence for daring to make them, he, after staying away one day, during which he was intensely wretched, and would have taken to drinking but that he had tried it before without effect, and would have drowned himself but that he did not want to die, came down and made an open declaration of his love to Gertrude, and a formal proposal for her hand to Skrymshire père.

Alick Derinzy had had Luck for his friend several times in his life; he had "pulled off" some good things in sweepstakes, and been fortunate in his speculations on "events;" but he never made such a coup as when he took Gertrude Skrymshire for his wife. She undertook the ménage at once, sold off his unnecessary horses, and paid off outstanding ticks; made him get an invitation for himself and her to Muswell Hill, and spent a week there, during which she ingratiated herself with the old gentleman, and specially with Paul; speedily took the reins of government into her hands, and drove her husband skilfully, without ever letting him feel the bit. When his father died, and Alick was for crying out at the smallness of his legacy, Gertrude stopped his mouth, pointing out that they had a sufficiency to live on, to which the sale of her husband's commission would add; that they could go and live in a small house in a good suburb of town, where they could make it very comfortable for Paul, who would doubtless see a good deal of them, and who, as he was never likely to marry, would most probably leave his enormous fortune to their Paul, their only son, who, of course without any definite views, had been named after his uncle.

It was a notable scheme, well-planned and well-executed, but it failed. Alick sold out, and they took a pleasant little house at Brompton, a suburb then not much known, and principally inhabited, as now, by actors and authors; and they furnished it charmingly, and Gertrude herself went down in her deep mourning into the City, and penetrated to Paul's sanctum in Gough Square, and insisted on his coming to stay a day or two with them, and gained his promise that he would come. On her return she said she had found Paul very much altered, but when her husband asked her in what manner, she could not explain herself. Alick himself explained it in his own peculiar barrack-room and billiard-table phraseology, after he had seen his brother, expressing his opinion that that worthy was "going off his head, by G--!"

No doubt Paul Derinzy was a changed man. It was not that he looked much older than his years--that he had always done; but his skin was discoloured, his eyes lustreless, his head bowed, his spirit gone. He said himself that twenty years' incessant labour without any holiday had told upon him, and that he was determined at last to take some rest. He should start immediately with Herr Schadow, one of their largest customers, for Berlin and St. Petersburg, and should probably be away for some months. Dockress, who had been brought up from boyhood in Gough Square, and who knew every trick and turn of the trade, would manage the business during his absence, and he should go away perfectly satisfied that things would go on just as smoothly as if he were there to overlook them.

Paul Derinzy carried out his intention. He went away to the Continent with Herr Schadow, and Mr. Dockress took charge of the business in Gough Square. He heard several times from his principal within the next few weeks, letters dated from various places, their contents always relating to business. Mrs. Alick had also several letters from her brother-in-law, but to her he wrote on different topics. He seemed to be in wonderful spirits, wrote long descriptions of the places he had visited, and humorous accounts of people he had met; said he felt himself quite a different man, that he had just begun to enjoy life, and looked upon all his earlier years as completely lost to him. He loathed the very name of business, he said, and hated the mere idea of coming back to England. He should certainly go as far as St. Petersburg, and prolong his stay abroad as long as he felt amused by it. He arrived in St. Petersburg. Dockress heard of him from there relative to consignment of some special skins which he had been lucky enough to get hold of, and which his old business instinct, not to be so easily shaken off as he imagined, prompted him to buy. Mrs. Alick also heard from him a fortnight later; he described the place as delightful, the society as charming, said he was "going out a good deal," and was thoroughly enjoying himself. Then nothing was heard of him for weeks by the family in the pretty little house at Brompton, and Mrs. Alick became full of wonderment as to his movements. Dockress could have given her some information. It is true that he had had no letters from his chief, but a nephew of Schadow's, who was a clerk in the Gough Square house, had had a hint dropped to him by his uncle that it was not improbable that the head of the house would, on his return, which would be soon, bring with him a wife, as he was supposed to be very much in love with a young French lady, a governess in a distinguished Russian family where he visited. Schadow junior communicated this intelligence to Dockress junior, who sat at the same desk with him, who communicated it to Dockress senior, who whistled, and, as soon as his son was out of hearing, muttered aloud that it was "a rum go."

"Rum" as it was, though, it was true. A short time afterwards Dockress received official intimation of the fact, and the same post brought the news to Mrs. Alick. Paul's note to his sister-in-law was very short. It simply said that she and Alexis would probably be surprised to hear that he was about to be married to Mdlle. Delille, a young French lady, whom he had met in society at St. Petersburg. They were to be married at once, and would shortly after set out for England, not, however, with the intention of remaining there. He infinitely preferred living abroad, so that he should merely return for the purpose of settling his business, and should then retire to the Continent for the rest of his life.

Alick Derinzy gave a great guffaw as his wife read out this epistle to him, and chaffed her in his ponderous way, referring to the counting of chickens before they were hatched, and the hallooing before you were out of the wood, and other apposite proverbs.

"That's rather a bust-up for your scheme, Gertrude," he said with a loud laugh, "old Paul going to marry; and he's just one of those fellows that have a large family late in life; and a neat chance for our Paul's coming in for any of the old boy's money. That game is u-p, Mrs. Derinzy."

But Mrs. Derinzy, though she looked serious at the news which the letter contained, and shook her head at her husband's speech, said there was no knowing what Time had in store for them, and they must wait and see.

They waited, and in due course they saw--Paul's wife, Mrs. Derinzy: a pretty, slight, fragile little woman, with large black eyes, olive complexion, and odd restless ways. Mrs. Alick set her down as "thoroughly French;" Alick spoke of her as a "rum little party;" but they neither of them saw much of her. Paul brought her to dine two or three times, and the women called upon each other, but the newly-married pair were so thoroughly occupied with theatre-goings, and opera-visitings and society-frequenting, that it was with the greatest difficulty they could be induced to find a free night during the month they stayed in town. London did not seem capable of producing enough pleasure or excitement for Paul Derinzy. He was like a boy in the ardour of his yearning for fresh amusement, he entered into everything with wild delight, and seemed as though he should never tire of taking his pretty little wife about, and what Alexis called "showing her off."

During that month the great house of Derinzy and Sons ceased to exist, and in the next issue of the great red book, the Post-Office Directory, the name which had been so respected and so highly thought of was not to be found. Certainly Paul Derinzy retained a share in its fortunes, but he sold the largest part of the business to Dockress and Schadow, whose friends came forth nobly to help them in the purchase, and it was under their joint names that the house was in future conducted.

Then Paul and his wife went away, and were only occasionally heard of. It had been their intention to travel about, and they were apparently carrying it out, for Paul's letters to Mrs. Alick, with whom he still corresponded, were dated from various places, and he could only give her vague addresses where to reply. They were passing the winter at Florence, when he wrote to his sister-in-law that a little daughter had been born to them, but that his wife had been in great peril, for some time her life had been despaired of, and even then, at the time of writing, she was seriously ill. Alick Derinzy guffawed again at this news, remarking that their Paul's nose was out of joint now, and no mistake. Their Paul, then a stalwart boy of four years old, who was playing about the room at the time, exclaimed, "No, my nose all right!" at the same time grasping that organ with his chubby hand; and Mrs. Derinzy checked her husband's unseemly mirth, and remarked that since his brother had married, it was more to their interest that his child should be a girl than a boy. There was an interval of six months before another letter arrived to say that Mrs. Paul remained very ill, that her constitution had received a shock which it was doubtful whether it would ever recover, but that the little girl was thriving well. Paul added that he was in treaty for a place on the Lake of Geneva of which he had heard, and that if it suited him the family would most probably settle down there. After another six months Mrs. Alick heard from her brother-in-law that they had settled on the Swiss lake, with a repetition of the statement that his wife was helplessly ill, and the little girl thriving apace. During the four succeeding years very nearly the same news reached the Alick Derinzys at the same intervals--Paul was still located in the Swiss chateau, his wife remained in the same state of illness, and his little girl still throve.

"No chance for our Paul," said Alexis Derinzy disconsolately.

"Our Paul" was growing into a fine boy, and his father gave himself much mental exercitation as to whether he could "stand the racket" of educating him at Eton or Harrow.

One evening a cab drove up to the door, and a gentleman alighted and asked for Mrs. Derinzy. Alick was, according to his usual practice, at the club, enjoying that pleasant hour's gossip so dear to married gentlemen who are kept rather tightly in hand at home, and which they relinquish with such looks of envy at the happy bachelors or more courageous Benedicks whom they leave behind. But Mrs. Alick was in her very pretty little boudoir, into which she desired the stranger might be shown.

He came in; a man who had probably been tall, but was now bent double, walking with a stick, and then making but slow progress; a man with snow-white hair and long beard of the same hue, wrapped from head to foot in a huge fur coat of foreign make. Mrs. Derinzy saw that he was a gentleman, but did not recognise him. It was not until he advanced to her and mentioned his name that she knew him for her brother-in-law, Paul. She received him very warmly, and he seemed touched and gratified, so far as lay in him. Where were his wife and his little daughter? she asked. They were--over there, in Switzerland, he said with an effort. He was alone, then, in London? He must come and stay with them. No; he had been in London three or four days. He came over on some special business, and he was about to return to the Continent the next day, but he did not like to go without having seen her. He fidgeted about while he stopped, and seemed nervously anxious to be off; but Mrs. Alick, with a woman's tact, began to ask him questions about his child, and he quieted down, and spoke of her with rapture. She was the joy of his soul, he said, the one bright ray in his life, of which, indeed, he spoke in very melancholy terms. Alick came home from his club in due course, and was as surprised as his wife had been at the alteration in Paul's appearance, and took so little pains to disguise his impressions, that Paul himself made allusion to his white hair and his bowed back, and said he had had trouble enough to have broken a much younger and stronger man. He did not say what the trouble was, and they did not like to ask him. Alick had thought it was pecuniary worry; that his brother had "dropped his money," as he phrased it. Mrs. Alick saw no reason to ascribe it to any such source. But she noticed that her brother-in-law said very little about his wife, and she felt certain that the marriage which had promised so brilliantly had turned out a disappointment, and that the shadow which darkened his life was of home creation.

Paul Derinzy bade adieu to his brother and his sister-in-law that night, and they never saw him again. About a month afterwards he wrote from Switzerland that his wife was dead, that he should give up the château on the lake, and travel for a time, taking the child with him. Ten years passed away, during which news of the travellers came but rarely to the residents in Brompton, who, indeed, thought but little of them. The ex-captain of dragoons had settled down into a quiet, whist-playing, military-club-frequenting fogey; Mrs. Derinzy managed him with as much tact as usual, and with rather a slacker rein; and young Paul, now eighteen years old, was just appointed to the Stannaries Office, when an event occurred which entirely changed the aspect of affairs. This was the elder Paul Derinzy's death, which was communicated to his brother by a telegram from Pau, where it happened. By this telegram Alick was bidden to come to Pau instantly, to take charge of Miss Derinzy, and to be present at the reading of the will. Alick went to Pau, and his wife went with him. They found Annette Derinzy--a tall girl of fourteen, "a little too foreign, and good deal too forward," Mrs. Derinzy pronounced her--prostrated with grief at her recent loss. And they were present at the reading of the will, under which they found themselves constituted guardians of the said Annette Derinzy, who inherited all her father's property, with the exception of a thousand a-year, which was to be paid to them for their trouble during their lives, and five thousand pounds legacy to their son Paul at his father's death. Their authority over Annette was to cease when she came of age at twenty-one, but up to that time they had the power of veto on any marriage engagement she might contract, and any defiance on her part was to be punished by the loss of her fortune, which was to be divided amongst certain charities duly set forth in the will.

"Only five thou. for our poor boy, and that not till we're dead! and Paul must have left over eighty thousand!" said Captain Derinzy to his wife, when they were in their own room at the hotel after the will had been read.

"Our Paul shall have the eighty thousand," said Mrs. Derinzy in reply.

"The devil he shall!" said the Captain. "Who will give it him?"

"The guardians of his wife!" said Mrs. Derinzy.

[CHAPTER VI.]

MRS. STOTHARD.

Mrs. Powler and Mrs. Jupp were by no means the only persons in Beachborough to whom Mrs. Stothard's position in the household at the Tower afforded subject-matter for gossip. It may be safely asserted that there never was a tea-drinking, followed--as was usually the case among the better classes in that hospitable neighbourhood--by a consumption of alcohol "hot with," at which Mrs. Stothard was not served up as a toothsome morsel, and forthwith torn into shreds, if not by the teeth, at least by the tongues of the assembled company. To those simple minds, all social standing was fixed and unalterable--one must either be mistress or servant; the lines of demarcation were strongly defined; they knew of no softening gradations; and they could not understand Mrs. Stothard. "She hev' her dinner by herself, and her own teapot allays brought to her own room--leastways, 'cept when she do fetch it herself, Miss Annette bein' sleepy or out of sorts, and not likin' to be disturbed by the servants." Such was the report which Nancy Wickstead, who had gone to live as nursemaid up at the Tower soon after the arrival of the family, brought down about this redoubtable woman. The villagers only knew her by report, by crumbs and fragments of rumours dropped by Nancy Wickstead when she came down among her old familiars for an "evening out," or by the tradesmen who called at the house, and who drew largely on their own imagination for the stories which they told. They had only caught fleeting glimpses of Mrs. Stothard as she passed along the corridor or crossed from room to room, but even those cursory glances entitled them to swagger before their fellow-villagers who had never seen her at all--never. Many of them tried to think they had, and after renewed descriptions of her firmly believed that they had; but it was all an exercitation of their imagination, for they never went to the Tower, and Mrs. Stothard never left it--never, under any pretence. In the two years during which the family had resided at the Tower, Mrs. Stothard had never passed through the entrance-gate. She took exercise sometimes in the grounds; even that but rarely; but she never left them. Young Dobbs, the grocer, a bright spirit, once took it into his head to chaff about her with the servants, to ask who was the "female hermit," and what duties she performed in the house; a flight of fancy not very humorous in itself, and unfortunate in its result. The next day Mrs. Derinzy called on Dobbs senior, asked him for his bill, paid it, and removed the family custom to Sandwith of Bedminster.

Once seen, a woman not easily to be forgotten, from her physical appearance. About eight-and-forty years of age, tall and very strongly built, with broad shoulders and big wrists, knuckles both of wrists and hands very prominent, great frontal development, but low forehead, a penthouse for deep-set gray eyes. Light hair, thin, dull, and colourless; thin and colourless cheeks; thin lips, closing tightly over rows of small, gleaming dog's-teeth; big, square, massive jaw; cold, taciturn, and watchful, with eyes and ears of wonderful quickness, wits always ready, hands always active and strong. She came to Mrs. Derinzy on Dr. Wainwright's recommendation as "exactly the person to suit her," and she fulfilled her mission most exactly. What that mission was we shall learn; what her previous career had been we will state.

She was the only daughter of one Robert Hall, a verger of Canterbury Cathedral, a clever, drunken dog, whose vergership was in constant peril, but who contrived to hoodwink the cathedral dignitaries as a general rule, and who on special occasions of outbreak invariably found some influential friend to plead his cause. He was a bookbinder as well as a verger, and in his trade showed not merely skilful manipulation, but rare taste, taste which was apparently inherited by his daughter Martha, who, at seventeen years of age, had produced some illuminated work which was pronounced by the cognoscenti in such matters to be very superior indeed. The cathedral dignitaries patronised Martha Hall's illuminations, and displayed them in their drawing-rooms at those pleasant evening gatherings, so decorous and so dull, and where the bearers of the sword mingle with the wearers of the gown, yawn away a couple of hours in looking over photograph-albums and listening to sonatas, and after a sandwich and a glass of sherry, lounge away to begin the night with devilled biscuits, billiards, and brandy-and-soda-water. The military, to whom these illuminations were thus introduced, thought it would be the "correct thing" to buy some of them; they would look "deuced well" in their rooms; so that the front parlour of the verger's little house in the precincts was speedily re-echoing to clanking sabres and jingling spurs, the owners of which were none the less ready to come again because the originator and vendor of the wares was a "doosid nice girl, don't you know?--not exactly pretty, but something doosid nice about her!" Martha Hall's handiwork was seen everywhere in barracks, and "many a holy text around she strewed," and had them hung up in subalterns' rooms between portraits of Mdlle. Joliejambe and the Blisworth Bruiser.

The sabres clanked so often and the spurs jingled so much in the verger's front parlour, that the neighbours--instigated, perhaps, less by their friendly feelings and their virtue than their jealousy--thought it time to speak to Robert Hall about it, and to ask him if he knew what he was doing, and what seed he was sowing, to be reaped in shame and disgrace. Wybrow, the mourning jeweller--who made very tasty little designs of yews and willows out of dead people's hair--declared that his shop was never so full as his neighbour's; but then either the officers had no dead relations, or did not care for such melancholy souvenirs. Heelball, who had compiled a neat little handbook of the cathedral, and who furnished anyone who wanted them with "rubbings" of the crusaders' tombs, declared that the "milingtary" never patronised him; "perhaps," he added, "because I ain't young and pretty," therein decidedly speaking the truth, as he was sixty and deformed. Stothard, the tombstone sculptor, said nothing. He was supposed to be madly in love with Martha Hall, and it was noticed that when the young officers went clanking by his yard he took up his heaviest mallet and punished the stone under treatment fearfully. The hints and remonstrances had but little effect on Robert Hall. Not that he was careless about his daughter. "Happy-go-lucky" in other matters, he would have resented deeply any slight or insult offered to her. But he knew her better than anyone else, knew her passionless, calculating, ambitious nature, and had every confidence in it.

That confidence was not misplaced. Martha was polite to all who visited her as customers; talked and joked with them within bounds, displayed her handiwork, and sold it to the best advantage; taking care always to have ready money before she parted with it ("Can't think how she does it, 'pon my soul I can't!" was the cry in barracks. "Screwed two quid out of me for this d--d thing, down on the nail, by Jove! First thing I've had in the place that hasn't been chalked up, give you my word!") but never allowed any approach to undue familiarity. She was declared by her military customers to be "capital fun;" but it was perfectly understood amongst them that she "wouldn't stand any nonsense." So the shop was filled, and her trade throve, and her enemies and neighbours, however much they might hint and whisper in her detraction, had nothing tangible to narrate against her.

While Martha Hall's popularity was at its fullest height, there came to the depot of the hussar regiment--to which he had just been gazetted as cornet--a young gentleman of prepossessing appearance, pleasant manners, good position, and apparently plenty of money. He was well received by his brother officers, and after being introduced to the various delights which Canterbury affords, he was in due course taken to Martha Hall's shop, and presented to the young lady therein presiding. It was evident to his companions that the susceptibilities of their new comrade were very keenly aroused at the sight of Miss Hall; and it was no less palpable to Miss Hall herself. She laughingly told her father that night that she had made a fresh conquest; and her father grinned, advised her to set to work on some new texts, with which she could "stick" the new-comer, and repeated his never-failing assertion of thorough confidence in her.

The new-comer, whose name was Derinzy, quickly showed that he was not merely influenced by first impressions. He visited the shop constantly, he bought all the illuminations that Martha Hall could produce; and within a very short time he not merely fell violently in love with her, but told her so; and told her that if she would accept him, he would go to her father, and propose to marry her. To such a suggestion from any other of the score of officers in the habit of frequenting the shop, Martha Hall would have replied by a laugh, or, had it been pressed, by a declaration that she was flattered by the compliment, but that she knew the difference between their stations in life was an insuperable barrier, &c. But she said nothing of this kind to Alexis Derinzy. Why? Because she was in love with him. Perhaps her natural keenness of perception had enabled her to judge between the "spooniness" springing from a desire to bridge-over ennui, and to fill up the wearisome hours of a garrison life, which prompted the advances of her other admirers, and the unmistakable passion which this boy betrayed. Perhaps she admired his fair, picturesque face, and well-cut features, and slight form in contradistinction to the more robust and athletic proportions of the other youth then resident in barracks. Perhaps the rumours of the wealth of the Derinzys had reached those calm cloisters, and Martha might have thought that the fact that they were themselves in trade might induce them to overlook what to the scion of any noble house would be an undoubted mésalliance. No one knew, for Martha, reticent in everything, was scarcely likely to gossip of her love-affairs; but the fact remained the same, and she loved him. She told him as much, at the same moment that she suggested that the consideration of the marriage question should be deferred for a few months, until he was of age. Mr. Derinzy agreed to this, as he would have agreed to anything his heart's charmer proposed, but stipulated that Martha should consider herself as engaged to him, and that the flirtations with "the other fellows" should be at once discontinued. Martha consented, and acted up both to the spirit and the letter of the agreement; but flirtation with Martha Hall had become such a habit with the officers quartered at Canterbury that it could not be given up all of a sudden; no matter how little the maiden might respond, the gallant youths still frequented the shop, and still paid their court in their usual clumsy but unmistakably marked manner. Alexis Derinzy, worried at this, and also feeling it uncommonly hard that he should not be able to boast of having secured the heart and the proximate chance of the hand of the most sought-after girl in Canterbury, mentioned his engagement, in the strictest confidence, to three or four of his brother officers, who, under the same seal, mentioned it to three or four more. Thus it happened that in a few days the story came to the ears of the adjutant of the depôt, who was a great friend of the Derinzy family, and at whose instigation it was that Alexis had been placed in the army.

Captain Branscombe was still a young man, but he had had ripe experience of life, and he knew that it would be as truly useless, under the circumstances, to reason with the love-stricken cornet, as to make application anywhere but to the highest domestic authorities. To these, therefore, he represented the state of affairs--the result of his representation being that Mr. Paul Derinzy, the elder brother of the cornet, came down to Canterbury by the coach the next day, and straightway sought an interview with the Dean. Then Robert Hall was summoned to the diaconal presence, out of which he came swearing strange oaths, and looking very flushed and fierce. Later in the afternoon he was waited upon at his own house in the precincts by Mr. Paul Derinzy, who had a very stormy ten minutes with Martha, and then made his way to the barracks. Mr. Paul Derinzy remained in Canterbury for two days, during every hour of which, save those which he passed in bed, he was actively employed. The results of the mission did credit to his diplomatic talents. Alexis Derinzy sent in an application for sick leave, which being promptly granted, he quitted Canterbury without seeing Martha Hall, though he tried hard to do so; and did not rejoin until the regiment, safely arrived from India, was quartered at Hounslow. When Mr. Paul Derinzy was staying in Canterbury, it had been noticed by the neighbours that he had called once or twice on Stothard the stonemason, who has already been described as having been madly in love with Martha Hall; and Stothard had returned the visit at Paul's hotel. In the course of a few weeks after the "London gentleman's" departure, Stothard announced that he had inherited a legacy of a couple of hundred pounds from an old aunt. No one had ever heard any previous mention of this relative, nor did Stothard enter into any particulars whatever; he did not go to her funeral, and the only mourning he assumed was a crape band to his Sunday beaver. But there was no mistake about the two hundred pounds; that sum was paid in to his credit at the County Bank by their London agent, and he took the pass-book up with him when he went to Robert Hall's to propose for Martha. Folks said he was a fool for his pains; the kindest remarked that she would never stoop to him; the unkindest expressed their contempt for anybody as could take anybody else's leaving. But despite of both, Martha Hall accepted Stothard the stonemason, and they were married.

You must not think that all this little drama had been enacted without its due effect on one of the principal performers. You must not think that Martha Hall had lost Alexis Derinzy without fierce heartburning and deep regret, and intense hatred for those who robbed her of him. She knew that it was not the boy's own fault, she guessed what kind of pressure had been brought to bear upon him; but she thought he ought to have made a better fight of it. She had loved him, and if he had only been true to her and to their joint cause, they might have been triumphant. In a few months he would have been of age, and then he could have gone up and seen his mother--he was always her favourite--and she would have persuaded his father, and all would have been straight. He always said he hated his brother Paul--how, then, had he suffered himself to be persuaded by him? Ah, other influences must have been brought to bear by Paul Derinzy! Paul Derinzy--how she hated him! She would register that name in her heart; and if ever she came across his path, let him look to himself. When Stothard came with his proposal, she made her acceptance of him conditional on his leaving Canterbury. The money which he had inherited, and the little sum which she had saved, would enable them to commence business afresh somewhere else--say, in London; but she must leave Canterbury. She could not stand the neighbours' looks and remarks, or, what was worse, their pity, any longer. She must go, she said; she was sick of the place. Robert Hall indorsed his daughter's desire; he was becoming more and more confirmed in his selfishness, and wanted to be allowed to drink himself to death without any ridiculous remonstrances. Stothard agreed--he would have agreed to anything then--and they were married; and Stothard bought a business in a London suburb, and for a time--during which time a daughter was born to them--they flourished.

For a time only; then Stothard took to drinking, and late hours; his hand lost its cunning; his customers dropped off one by one; the garnered money had long since been spent, and things looked bad. Stothard drank harder than before, had delirium tremens, and died. His widow could not go back to her old home, for her father had carried out his intention, and drank himself to death very soon after her marriage; and she was too proud to made her appearance among her old acquaintances under her adverse circumstances. As luck would have it, the doctor who had attended her husband, and who had been much struck by the manner in which she had nursed him in his delirium, was physician to a great hospital. He proposed to Mrs. Stothard that she should become a professional nurse, offering her his patronage and recommendation. She agreed, and at once commenced practice in the hospital; but she soon became famous among the physicians and surgeons, and they were anxious to secure her for their private patients, where her services would be well paid. In a few years she had gotten together quite a large connection, and she was in constant demand. The money which she received she applied to giving her daughter a good education. They met but seldom, Mrs. Stothard being so much engaged; but she perceived in her daughter early signs of worldly wisdom, and a disposition to make use of her fellow-creatures, which gladdened her mother's soured spirit. She should be no weak fool, as her mother had been; she should not be made a puppet to be set up and knocked down at a rich man's caprice; she was sharp, she promised to be pretty, and she should be well-educated. Then, thoroughly warned as to what men were, she should be placed in some good commercial position, and left to see whether she could not contrive to make a rich and respectable marriage for herself.

One day when Mrs. Stothard was at St. Vitus's Hospital, where she was now regarded as a great personage, and where, when she paid an occasional visit, she was taken into the stewards' room, and regaled with the best port wine, Dr. Wainwright--who, though not attached to St. Vitus's, had a very great reputation in London, and was considered the leading man in his line--looked into the room. Seeing Mrs. Stothard, he entered, told her he had come expressly, learning she was there, and that he wanted to know if she would undertake a permanent situation. He entered into detail as to the case, mentioned the remuneration, which was very large, and stated that he knew no one who would be so satisfactory in the position; and added: "Indeed, 'if we do not get Mrs. Stothard, I don't know what we shall do,' were the last words I uttered to Mrs. Derinzy."

Mrs. Stothard, albeit a calm and composed woman in general, literally jumped. A quarter of a century rolled up like a mist, and she saw herself selling illuminated scrolls in the little shop in the precincts of Canterbury, and the slim, handsome little cornet leaning over the counter, and devouring her with his bright black eyes.

"What name did you say, sir?" she asked when she recovered herself.

"Derinzy. Odd name, isn't it? De-rin-zy. The lady's husband is a retired military man, and the family consists of themselves and the young lady I was speaking of just now," said the doctor.

"Is she their daughter?" asked Mrs. Stothard.

"Oh no; they have no daughter, only a son, who lives in London. This young lady is their niece, daughter of--why, God bless my soul! you must have heard of him--Mr. Paul Derinzy, the merchant, the millionaire, who died some time ago. Ah! I forgot, though; millionaires--real ones, I mean--are not much in your line," added Dr. Wainwright, with a laugh. "You see plenty who fancy that----"

"Oh, and so Mr. Paul Derinzy is dead," interrupted Mrs. Stothard; "and this young lady is his daughter? I think, Dr. Wainwright, I must decline the situation."

Decline the situation! Dr. Wainwright had never heard of such a thing, never in the whole course of his professional experience. Decline the situation! Had Mrs. Stothard understood him correctly about the terms? Yes! And she talked of declining the situation after that! And for a permanency, too. And he had thought it would have been exactly the thing to suit her. Well, if she would not accept, she must not decline--at once, that was to say. She must think over it; she must indeed.

She did; and accepted it. Partly out of a desire for revenge. She had a long, long pondering over the past; and all the bitterness of bygone years had revived in her heart. She thought that something--luck she called it (she was little given to ascribe things to Providence)--had placed her enemies in her hands, and that she might use her power over the man who had given her up, and over the daughter of the man who had compelled him to do so. Partly for money. The salary proposed was very large, and her daughter's education was expensive, and the girl would soon have to be apprenticed to a house of business where a heavy premium must be paid. So she accepted. There was no doubt about her getting the place. Dr. Wainwright's recommendation was all-sufficient, and Mrs. Derinzy was only too anxious to secure her services. Captain Derinzy had forgotten all about Stothard the stonemason, and the two hundred pounds which had been paid to him, even if he ever knew of the transaction. He did not recognise the name, and for the first few minutes after he saw her he did not recognise in the hard-featured, cold, impassive, middle-aged woman his bright boyish love of so many years before. When he did recognise her he started, and seemed as though he would have spoken; but she made him a slight sign, and he waited for an opportunity of their being alone. When that came, it was Mrs. Stothard who spoke. She told him there was no necessity for ever referring to the past, it was all forgotten by them both; they would never be brought in contact; she knew the position she held in his house, and she should fulfil it; it was better on all accounts that Mrs. Derinzy should be kept in ignorance of their former acquaintance--did he not think so? He did; and as he left her he grinned quietly.

"What the doose did she think?" he said to himself. "Gad! not likely that I should want to renew the acquaintance of an old horse-godmother like that. What a pretty gal she was, too! and how changed! by George, so that her own mother wouldn't know her! Wonder whether I'm as much changed as all that? Often look in the glass and wonder. Different in a man: he don't wear a cap, and that kind of thing; and my hair's lasted wonderful, considerin'. Martha Hall, eh? and those dam things--text things--that she used to paint in those colours--got some of 'em still, I think, somewhere in my old bullock-trunk; saw 'em the other day. Martha Hall!--Oh Lord!"

So Mrs. Stothard accepted office with the Derinzys, and was with them when, shortly afterwards, they gave up the house at Brompton where they had lived so long, and removed to Beachborough. The change affected Mrs. Stothard but very little; it mattered scarcely at all to her where she was, her time was very much employed in her duties, and what little leisure she found she passed in reading, or in writing to her daughter. She knew perfectly well that she was the subject of an immense amount of curiosity in Beachborough village, and of talk at the village tea-tables; but it did not trouble her one whit. She knew that she was said to be a poor relation of the Derinzy family, and she did not discourage the idea. Thinking over the past, and what might have been, she found a kind of grim humour in the combination which suited her thoroughly. They might say what they liked, she thought, so long as her money was regularly paid, and so long as she found herself able to carry out the one scheme of her life--that of making a good marriage for her daughter Fanny.

Fanny then, under the name of Miss Stafford, was apprenticed to Madame Clarisse, the great court milliner, in London, and lived, when she was at home--and that was not often, poor child! for she slaved like a horse--in one little room in a house in South Molton Street, a lodging-house kept by an old sister-nurse of Mrs. Stothard's at St. Vitus's, a most respectable motherly woman, who would look after Fanny, and would at once let her mother know if there was "anything wrong." Not that there was any chance of that. Fanny Stafford acted up too strictly to her mother's teaching, and remembered too well the doctrine which had been inculcated in her girlhood, ever to make that mistake. She had been told that to marry a man considerably above her in pecuniary and social position was her mission in life; to that end she might use all her charms, all her arts; but that end must be marriage--nothing less. This she understood, and daily experience made her more and more impressed with the wisdom of her mother's determination. She had not much heart, she thought; she did not think she had any passion; and she knew that she had keen discrimination and accurate perception of character; so she thought she ought to succeed. Mrs. Stothard was acquainted with the peculiarities of her daughter's character, and thought so too.

At the very time when Captain Derinzy was lying stretched out on the headland overlooking Beachborough Bay, and making those cynical remarks on the place and its population, Mrs. Stothard was preparing to read a letter from her daughter Fanny. It had arrived in the morning; but Mrs. Stothard had been very busy all day, and it was not until the evening that she found time to read it. Her occupation had confined her to the house, so that now, being for a few minutes free, she was glad to escape into the grounds. She chose that portion of the flower-garden which was farthest removed from the side of the house which she principally inhabited; and as she paced up and down the soft turf path between two rows of espaliers, she took the letter from her pocket and commenced to read it. It was written in a small delicate hand, and Mrs. Stothard had to hold it close to her eyes in the fading light. She read as follows:

"London, Sunday.

MY DEAR MOTHER,--You will have been expecting to hear from me for some time, and, indeed, you ought to have had a letter, but the truth is I am so tired and sleepy when I get back here that I am glad to go straight to bed. We are just now in the height of the season, and are so busy that I scarcely ever have time to sit down. I told you, I think, that I was likely to be in the showroom this season. I was right. Madame asked me if I should like to be there, and when I said 'Yes,' she seemed pleased; and I have been there since April. I think I have made myself even more useful than she expected; for many of the customers know me now, and ask to see me in preference to Madame herself. I suppose she does not quite like that, but it is not my fault. I know I am neat and handy, and that there is no one in the house with so much education or so much manner, and these are both points which are noticed by customers. Nevertheless, I think I am winning my way into Madame's good graces; for when she goes out--and she is now out a great deal, at the French plays, at the Opera, and in private society; you have no notion what an immense amount of reception goes on amongst the French coiffeurs and modistes in London--she invariably leaves me to see the parcels sent off and the business of the day wound up. She has no forewoman, as I have told you, and I think I might aspire to that important post with reasonable hope of success if I wished it, but I don't.

"No, dear mother; it would give me no pleasure to have my name on as big a brass plate as Madame Clarisse's, on as handsome a door in as eligible a situation. I should derive no satisfaction even if I could combine her connection with Madame Augustine's, her great rival. (Augustine's clientèle is richer than ours, I think, but we have by far the best people.) I long sometimes, when I see a wretched old creature nodding under a wreath when she ought to be concealing her bald pate or her gray hairs under an honest mob-cap, or when I am helping a stout middle-aged matron to struggle into a gown of a style and pattern suitable for her youngest daughter, to throw all my chances of success in business to the winds, and tell the people then under my hands plainly and openly what I think of them. I cannot stand--or rather I could not, were it for a permanence; I can well enough for a time--this wretched ko-tooing existence, this perpetual grinning and curtsying and false-compliment paying, this utter abnegation of one's own opinion, one's own feelings, one's own self! You must not be surprised at these expressions, dear mother, recollecting how you have had me brought up, and how you yourself have always inculcated in me a strong desire to better my position, and by a good marriage to raise myself into a class superior to this.

"Mother, I think I'm going to do it. I think that I have a chance of freeing myself from this servitude, which is galling to me, and of winning a station in life such as you yourself would be proud to see me holding. You remember how you used to talk to me about this when I was much younger, and how I used then to laugh at your earnestness, and tell you your hopes and aspirations were but dreams? I declare now I think there is some chance of their being realised.

"Now you are all impatience, and dying to know all I have to tell! I can see you--I suppose you are not much changed since we last parted; I often wonder--I can see you skimming over the paper in your eager anxiety to get at the details. I will not keep you in suspense, dear mother--here they are! A month ago, I was returning to Mrs. Gillott's late at night. We had been hard at work until nearly twelve o'clock, getting out a large wedding order, and Madame thought it important enough to superintend the packing and sending out of the various things. I had remained till the last, and the church-clock opposite struck twelve as the door closed behind me. The streets were almost deserted; but I had not gone far before I perceived that a man was following me. I could not make out what kind of a man he was, as he persistently kept in the shade, walking at first on the opposite side of the way, then crossing behind me, but ever constantly following. I knew this from the sound of his footsteps, which echoed in the stillness of the night. When I crossed Bond Street he came abreast of me, and then I saw that he was a common man in his working dress. I was frightened then, I confess. You don't know what they are sometimes, mother, these working men. I would sooner meet any gentleman, however loose, any what they call 'gent,' than some of those! It isn't their conduct, it's what they say! They seem to delight in using the most awful language, the foulest terms, to unprotected girls; merely, apparently, for the sake of insulting them. This man was a bad specimen of his class. There was no one near, and he stepped up to my side after we had crossed Bond Street, and said to me things--I don't know what, for I hurried on without looking towards him. I knew well enough what he said next, he took care that there should be no mistake about that, for he prefaced his remark with a short laugh of scorn and defiance, and then--he made his speech. I was not surprised; no girl compelled to walk alone in London, and especially at night, could be surprised at anything that might be said to her; but I was disgusted and frightened, and tried to run. The man ran by my side--I saw then that he was drunk--and tried to catch hold of me. I was in a dreadful fright, and I suppose I looked so, for a gentleman who was coming out of the hotel at the corner of South Molton Street stepped hurriedly out, and said, 'I beg your pardon--is this person annoying you?' Before I could reply, the man said something--too horrible--about me and himself, and the next moment he was lying in the road; the gentleman had taken him by the collar and flung him there. He got up, and rushed at the gentleman; but by this time a policeman who had seen it all crossed the street, and made him go away. Then the gentleman took off his hat, and begged leave to see me to my door. I allowed him to do so--it was foolish, I know, mother, but I was all unnerved, and scarcely knew what I did; and when we arrived at Mrs. Gillott's I thanked him, and bade him Goodnight. He took off his hat again, and left me at once.

"He found out who I was--how, I don't know--for next day I had a polite note, hoping I had quite recovered from my alarm, expressed in the most gentlemanly manner, and signed 'Paul Douglas.' I have met him several times since, always in the street, and have walked and talked with him. He is always most polite and respectful, but of course professes himself to be madly in love. Yesterday, for the first time, I found out who he is. He has an appointment in a Government office, the 'Stannaries' they call it, and his family live somewhere in the West of England. They are evidently well off, and he, Paul, is what they call a 'swell.' Very good-looking, slight and dark, about five-and-twenty, and always beautifully dressed.

"You don't fear me, mother? You have sufficient reliance on me to know that I would never discredit your training. You will want to know whether I am in love with this young man. I think I am--so far. And you need not be afraid. He vows--everything, of course; but he is too much of a gentleman, in the first place, to offer to insult me, and in the second--well, to speak plainly, he knows it would be of no use. Is this the chance that you taught me to look for? I think it is. But we shall soon know. Meanwhile believe in the thorough discretion of your loving daughter

FANNY."

Up and down the soft turf path paced Mrs. Stothard in the glorious summer evening, with the open letter in her hand, deep in cogitation. Her head was bent upon her breast, and occasionally raised as she referred to the paper. Suddenly a light gleamed in her face; she hurriedly re-perused the letter, folding it so as only to make herself thorough mistress of a certain portion of its contents, and then she smiled a hard grim smile, and said to herself in a hard bitter voice:

"Of course, of course! What an idiot I was not to see it at once! The mention of the Stannaries Office might have convinced me, if all my senses had not been blunted by my wretched work in this wretched place! Douglas, indeed! Paul Douglas is Paul Derinzy; slight, dark, handsome--none but he! Family in the West of England, too--no doubt of it! And in love with my Fan! Oh, my dear friends, I'll spoil your game yet! I'm so blind. Quiet and seclusion for dear Annette's health; no other reason, oh no! Not to keep her out of the way of fortune-hunters, and save her up for our son, oh dear no! That shall never be! Our son shall marry my Fan! What is it? 'The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children.' I never believed much in that sort of thing; but in this instance it really looks as though there were something in it."

[CHAPTER VII.]

FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.

Those persons to whom London is a home--a place to be lived in all the year round, save on the occasion of the two months' holiday, when one rushes off to the North, or to the sea, or to the Continent, returning with a renewed stock of health, and a pleasurable sense of having enjoyed yourself, but with a still more pleasurable sense of being back again in town--are very much amused at a notion prevalent amongst many worthy people who arrive at their own or at a hired house in the month of March, stay there till the end of the month of June, and go away fancying that they know London. Know London! A lifetime's earnest devotion does not suffice for that study, and those people who talk thus have not even the merest smattering of its topography. Their London used to be bounded on the west by the Knightsbridge Barracks--even now they acknowledge nothing beyond Princes Terrace. On the south-west they have penetrated as far as Onslow Square; the territory beyond that might be full of tiger-lairs and hiding-places for dragons, for all they know about it. Of the suburbs, beyond such knowledge as they derive from an occasional visit to the Star and Garter at Richmond, they know absolutely nothing. They do not know, and it would not make the smallest difference to them if they did, that if, instead of cantering up and down that ghastly, treeless, sun-scorched mile of gravel, the Row, they chose to turn their horses' heads north-westward, they could find shade in the green Willesden lanes and air on the breezy Hendon heights. They do not know that within a very short distance of Hyde Park there are shady lanes half hidden in greenery, dotted here and there with quaint old-fashioned houses standing in the midst of large grounds--some with gardens sloping away towards the river; others with enormous trees overhanging them, blotting out all view or vista; and others again with such an expanse of what the auctioneers are pleased to term "park-like grounds" visible from their windows, that you would have no idea of the immediate proximity of London, save for the never-varying presence of the smoke-wreath hanging over the horizon, and the never-ceasing, save on Sundays, dull rumble of distant traffic, which grinds on the ear like the monotonous surging of the waves upon the shore.

In one of these metropolitan suburbs, no matter which, stood and stands the house which at the period of our story was George Wainwright's home, the residence of his father, Dr. Wainwright. It was a big, long, rambling, red-faced old house, with an enormous number of rooms, some large and some small, standing in the midst of a large garden. Tradition said that it had been a favourite residence of Cromwell's; but it was generally believed, and the belief was not ill-founded, that it had been given by the Lord Protector to the husband of his favourite daughter, and that he himself had frequently been in the habit of staying there. At the end of the first quarter of the present century it had a very different occupant from the grim old Ironsides leader, being rented by the Countess Delia Crusca, the wittiest, the most beautiful, the most extravagant, the most fascinating woman of her day. Old Knaves of Clubs still raffolent about the Delia Crusca, her eyes and her poems, her bust and her repartees. She had a husband?--Oh yes! the Count Delia Crusca, ex-officer of Bersaglieri and one of the first naturalists of his day, corresponding member of all the principal European societies, and perfectly devoted to his favourite pursuit; so devoted, that he was invariably away in some distant foreign country, engaged in hunting for specimens. The Countess was an Englishwoman, daughter of Captain Ramus, half-pay, educated at a convent in Paris, under the guidance of her maternal aunt, Miss Coghlan, of Letterkenney in Ireland. Immediately on issuing from the convent she eloped with Count Della Crusca, whose acquaintance she had made in a casual manner in the coupé of one of the diligences belonging to Messrs. Lafitte, Caillard et Cie. A very short time served to prove to them that they had no tastes in common. Madame la Comtesse did not care for natural history, which the Count loved, and she did care for England, which the Count loathed. So he went his way, in pursuit of specimens, and she went hers to England. She arrived in London, and Marston Moor House being to let, she took it.

Some of us are yet alive who recollect the little saccharine poems, the plaintive little sonnets, the--well, yes, to speak the truth--the washy three-volume novels which were composed in that sturdy old building and dated thence. Sturdy outside, but lovely within. Such furniture: white satin and gold, black satin and red trimming; such pictures, and statues, and busts; such looking-glasses let into the walls at every conceivable place; such hanging baskets and ormolu clocks, and Dresden and Sèvres china; such Chinese fans, and Indian screens, and Turkish yataghans and Malay creeses; such books--at least, such bindings; such a satinwood desk, at which the Countess penned her inspirations; such a solemn-sounding library clock, which had belonged to Marie Antoinette; such lion-skins and leopard-skins for rugs; such despatch-boxes with the Della Cruscan coronet and cipher; such waste-paper baskets always littered with proof-sheets! The garden! never was anything seen like that! It was not much more than half an acre, but Smiff, the great landscape gardener, made it look more like a square mile. Delightfully rustic and English here, quaintly Dutch there, Italian terraced a little lower down, small avenue, vista broken by the fountain; might be a thousand miles away from London, so everyone said. Everyone said so, because everyone came there. Who was everyone? Well, the Grand-Duke of Schweinerei was someone, at all events. Ex-Grand-Duke, I should have said, recollecting that some years before, the people of Schweinerei, although by no means a strait-laced people, grew so disgusted at the "goings-on" of their reigning potentate, that they rose in revolt, and incontinently kicked him out. Then he came to England, where he has remained ever since, dwelling in a big house, and occupying his spare time with fighting newspapers for libelling him in a very blackguard and un-English manner. His highness is an elderly, short, fat man, with admirably-fitting wig and whiskers of the Tyrian purple. He has dull bleary eyes, pendulous cheeks, and a great fat double chin. He is covered all over with diamonds: his studs are diamonds; he wears a butterfly diamond brooch on the knot of his white cravat; his waistcoat-buttons are diamonds; his sleeve-links are diamonds; and he resembles the old woman of Banbury Cross in having (diamond) rings on his fingers, and probably, for all the historian knows to the contrary, on his toes.

Who else came there? A tall, thin, dark man, with a long face like a sheep's head, a full dull eye, a long nose, a very long upper lip, arid a retreating chin. Prince Bernadotte of the Lipari Isles, also an exile, but one who has since been recalled to his kingdom. Nobody thought much of Prince Bernadotte in those days. He lived in cheap chambers in London, and used to play billiards with coiffeurs and agents de change and commis voyageurs from the hotels in Leicester Square; and who went into a very little English society, where he always sat silent and reserved, and where they thought very little of him. He must have been marvellously misunderstood then, or must have grown into quite a different kind of man when he sat smoking his cigar with his feet on the fender in the Elysée, and to all inquiries made but the one reply, "Qu'on exécute mes orders!"--those "ordres" being fulfilled in the massacre of the Boulevards.

Who else? Savans, philosophers, barristers, poets, newspaper-writers, novelists, caricaturists, eminent physicians and surgeons, fiddlers, foreigners, anybody who had done anything which had given him the merest temporary notoriety was welcome, so long as he came at the time. And they never failed to do that. The society was so delightful, the welcome was so warm, the eating and drinking were so good, that there was never any chance of an invitation to Marston Moor House being refused. Thither came Fermez, the opera impresario, driving down a couple of lords in his phaeton; and Tom Gilks, the scene-painter of Covent Garden, who arrived per omnibus; and Whiston, who had just written that tremendous pamphlet on the religious controversy of the day; and Rupert Robinson, who had sat up all the previous night to finish his burlesque, and who was so enchanted with the personal appearance of the Grand-Duke of Schweinerei, that he wanted to carry him off bodily--rings, diamonds, wig, whiskers, and all--to Madame Tussaud's Exhibition. Dinners and balls, conversazioni and fêtes--with the garden illuminated with Italian lamps, and supper served in extemporised pavilions--two royal dukes, in addition to standard celebrities, and foreign princes in town for the season--without end.

Vain transitory splendour! could not all Retain the tott'ring mansion from its fall?

Apparently not. One morning the servants at Marston Moor House got up, to find their mistress had risen before them, or rather had not been to bed at all, having decamped during the night with the plate and all the portable valuables, and left an enormous army of creditors behind her. There was weeping and wailing round the neighbourhood for months; but tears and outcries did not pay the defrauded tradespeople, and they never had any money. Nobody ever knew who received the money realised by the sale of the furniture, &c, though that ought to have been something considerable, for there never was a sale so tremendously attended, or at which things fetched such high prices. All the ladies of high rank who combined frightful stupidity with rigid virtue, and who would as soon have thought of walking into Tophet as of crossing Madame Della Crusca's threshold, rushed to Marston Moor House so soon as its proprietress had fled, and bought eagerly at the sale. The large looking-glass which formed the back of the alcove in which Madame Delia Crusca's bed was placed now figures in the boudoir, or, as it is generally called, the work-room, of the Countess of Textborough, and is scarcely so happy in its reflections as in former days. The satinwood desk fell to the nod of Mrs. Quisby, who used to follow the Queen's hounds in a deep-pink jacket and a short skirt, and who now holds forth on Sunday afternoons at the infant schools in Badger's Buildings, Mayfair, and is especially hard on the Scarlet Woman. Many of the old habitués attended, and bought well-remembered scraps for souvenirs. Finally everything, down to the kitchen pots and pans, the stable buckets and the gardeners' implements, were cleared off, and a big painted board frowned in the great courtyard, informing the British public that that eligible mansion was to let.

Not for long did that black-and-white board blossom in that flinty soil. Within three weeks of the sale a rumour ran through London that an al-fresco place of entertainment on a magnificent scale was about to be opened on what had been the Della-Cruscan property, and that Wuff, the great Wuff, the most enterprising man of his day, was at the back of it. Straightway the board was pulled down, and an army of painters, and decorators, and plumbers, and builders, and Irish gentlemen in flannel jackets, and Italian gentlemen in slouch wideawakes and paint-stained gaberdines, took possession of the place. Big rooms were converted into supper and dining-rooms, and small rooms into cabinets particuliers; a row of supper-boxes on the old Vauxhall pattern sprang up in the grounds, which, moreover, were tastefully planted with gas-lamps, with plaster-of-Paris statues, with two or three sham fountains, and with grottos made of slag and shiny-faced bricks. Then, on an Easter Monday, the place was opened with a ballet, with dancing on the circular platform, with Signor Simioso's performing monkeys, and with a grand display of fireworks. Very good, all this; but somehow it didn't draw. The great Wuff did all he could; sent an enormous power of legs into the ballet; engaged the most excruciatingly funny comic singers, put silver rosettes into the button-holes and silver-gilt wands into the hands of all the masters of the ceremonies on the circular platform; and had Guffino il Diavolo flying from the top of the pasteboard Leaning Tower of Pisa into the canvas Lake of Geneva, down a wire, with a squib in his cap, and one in each of his heels--and yet the public would not come. The great Wuff tried it for two seasons, and then gave it up in despair.

Up went the black-and-white board again; to be taken down at the bidding of Mrs. Trimmer, who, having a very good boarding-school for young ladies at Highgate, thought she might increase her connection by establishing herself in a more eligible neighbourhood. The board had been up so long, that the proprietor of the house was willing, not merely to take a reduced rent, but to pull up the gas-lamps, and pull down the supper-boxes, and restore the garden, not indeed to its original state of beauty, but to decency and order. The rooms were repapered (it must be owned that Wuff's taste in decoration had been loud), and the name of the house changed from Marston Moor to Cornelia. Then Mrs. Trimmer took possession, and brought her young friends with her, and they throve and multiplied exceedingly; and all went well until Mrs. Trimmer died, and there was no one to carry on the business; and the board went up, and remained up longer than ever.

No one knew exactly when or how the house was taken again. The proprietor, hoping to get another school-keeper for a tenant, the house being too large for ordinary domestic purposes, had bought Mrs. Trimmer's furniture--the iron bedsteads and school fittings--for a song, and had placed an old woman in charge. One day this old woman put her luggage, consisting of a blue bundle, and herself into a cab, and went away. A few carpenters had arrived from town in the morning, and had occupied themselves in fitting iron bars to the interior of some of the windows. During the greater portion of that night carriages were heard rolling up the lane in which the back entrance to the house was situated, and the next day smoke was seen issuing from the chimneys; a big brass plate with the name of "Dr. Bulph" was screwed on to the iron gates of the carriage-drive, and two or three strong-built men were noticed going in and out of the premises. Gradually it became known that Dr. Bulph was a physician celebrated for his treatment of the insane, a "mad-doctor," as the neighbours called him; and women and children used to skurry past the old red garden-walls as though they thought the inmates were climbing over to get at them. But the house was so thoroughly well-conducted, so quietly and with such excellent discipline, that people soon thought nothing of it, any more than of any other of the big mansions in the neighbourhood; and when Dr. Bulph retired, and Dr. Wainwright succeeded him, the door-plate had actually been changed for some days before the neighbours noticed it.

Dr. Wainwright made many changes in the establishment. He was a man of great fame for several specialities, and was constantly being called away to patients in the country. He considerably enlarged the old house, and brought to it a better and wealthier class of patients, who were attended, under his supervision, by two resident surgeons. Dr. Wainwright did not live in the house. In addition to his practice he worked very hard with his pen, contributing largely to the principal medical Scientific reviews and journals, and corresponding with many continental savans. For all this work he required solitude and silence; and, as he was a widower, he was able to enjoy both in a set of chambers in the Albany, where he could go in and out as he liked, and where no unwelcome visitor could get at him. He had consulting-rooms in Grosvenor Square; and when in town, was to be found there between ten and one; but after those hours it was impossible to know where to catch him.

But George Wainwright lived at the old house, or rather in an outbuilding in the grounds, sole remainder of Mr. Wuff's erections; which had been converted to his use, and which yielded him a large, high-roofed, roomy studio, and a capital bedroom, both on the ground floor. The studio was no misnomer for the living-room; for, in addition to his Civil-Service work, George followed art with deep and earnest devotion, and was known and recognised as one of the best amateurs of the day. Men whose names stood very high in the art-world were his friends; and on winter nights the studio would be filled with members of that pleasant Bohemian society, discussing their craft and its members and such cognate subjects. George was a great reader also, and had a goodly store of books littering the tables or ranged on common shelves, disputing possession of the walls with choice bits of his friends' painting or half-finished attempts of his own. In the middle of the room stood a quaintly-carved old black-oak desk, ink-blotted and penknife-hacked, with some pages of manuscript and some slips of proof lying on it--for George, who had been educated in Germany, was in the habit of contributing essays on abstruse questions of German philosophy and metaphysics to a monthly review of very portentous weight--and in the corner was a cabinet piano, covered with loose leaves of music, scraps from oratorios, studenten-lieder, bits of Bach and Glück, glees of Purcell and Arne, and even ballads by Claribel. Some of George's painter friends had formed themselves into a singing-club and sang very sweetly; and the greatest treat that could be offered to the inmates of the house was these fellows' musical performances. The young swells of the Stannaries Office wondered why George Wainwright was never seen at casino, singing and supper-houses, or other of those resorts which they specially affected. They looked upon him as somewhat of a fogey, and could not understand what a bright, genial, jolly fellow like Paul Derinzy could see to like in him. He was kind and good-natured and all that, they owned, as indeed they had often proved by loans of "sovs" and "fivers," when the end of the quarter had left them dry; but he was an uncomfortable sort of chap, they said, and was always by himself.

He was by himself the evening of the day after that on which he had seen Paul Derinzy walking with Daisy in Kensington Gardens. He had had a light dinner at his club, and thence walked straight away home, where, on his arrival at his den, he had lit a big pipe and thrown himself into an easy-chair, and sat watching the blue smoke curling above his head, and pondering over the present and the future of his friend. George Wainwright had a stronger feeling than mere liking for Paul; there was a touch of romance in the regard which the good-looking, bright, easy-going young man had aroused in his steady, sober, practical senior. George was too much a man of the world to thrill with horror because he had seen his friend in the company of a pretty girl, and come across what was evidently a lovers' meeting. But his knowledge of Paul's character was large and well-founded; in the mere glance which he had got of the pair as they stood together in the act of saying adieu, he had caught an expression in his friend's face which intuitively led him to feel that the woman who could call up such a look of intense earnest devotion was no mere passing light-o'-love; and as George thought over the scene, and reproduced it, time after time, from the storehouse of his memory, he puffed fiercer blasts from his pipe, and shook his head in an unsettled, not to say desponding manner.

While he was thus occupied he heard steps on the gravel-walk outside, then a tap at the door. Opening it, Paul Derinzy stood before him.

"Just the man I was thinking about, and come exactly in the nick of time! Alma quies optata, veni! Not that you can be called alma quies, you restless bird of the night! What's the matter? what are you making signs about?" asked George.

"That idiot, Billy Dunlop, is with me," replied Paul, grinning; "he is doing some of his pantomime nonsense outside;" and, indeed, George Wainwright, peering out in the darkness, could make out a stout figure approaching with cautious gestures, which, when it emerged into the lamplight, proved to be Mr. Dunlop.

"Hallo, Billy! what are you at? Come in, man; light a pipe, and be happy."

But Mr. Dunlop, true to his character of comic man, did not enter the room quietly, but came in with a little rush, and then, his knees knocking together in simulated abject terror, asked:

"Am I safe? Can none of them get at me?"

"None of whom?"

"None of the patients. I was in such a fright coming up that garden, I could scarcely speak. I thought I saw eyes behind every laurestinus; and--I suppose the staff of keepers is adequate, in case any of 'em should prove rampagious?"

"Oh yes, it's all right. Have you never been here before?"

"Never, sir; and I don't think, provided I get safe away this time, that I'm ever likely to come again."

"You're complimentary; but now you are here, sit down and have a drink. Spirits there in that stand, soda-water here in the window-seat, ice in that refrigerator by the door. Or stay, let me make you the new Yankee drink that has just come up--a cobbler. There are plenty of straws somewhere about."

"I should think so," said Billy, in a stage-whisper to Paul. "He gets 'em out of the patients' heads. Lunatics always stick straws in their heads, vide the drama passim. I say, Wainwright, while you're mixing the grog, may I run out and have a look at the night-watch?"

"The what?" asked George, raising his head.

"The night-watch, you know;" and Mr. Dunlop sat down at the piano, squared his elbows, contorted his face, and with much ludicrous exaggeration burst forth:

"Hush-sh-sh-sh! 'tis the NIGHT-WATCH!! he gy-ards my lonely cell!

"Now don't you say that he doesn't, you know, because I've Mr. Henry Russell's authority that he does. So produce your night-watch!"

"Don't make such a row, Billy!" cried Paul; "there's no night-watch, or anything else of the sort."

"What! do you mean to say that I did not see her dancing in the hall? that I am not cold, bitter cold? that his glimmering lamp no more I see? and that no, no, by hav-vens, I am not ma-a-ad?" With these words, uttered in the wildest tones, Mr. Dunlop cast himself at full length on the sofa, whence arising immediately with a placid countenance, he said: "Gentlemen, if you wish thus to uproot and destroy the tenderest associations of childhood, I shall be happy, when I have finished my drink, to wish you a good-evening, and return home."

"I can't think what the deuce you came for," said Paul, with a smile. "He looked in at the club where I was dining, hoping to meet you, and where I heard you had been and gone, and asked me whether I wasn't going to evening service. When I told him 'yes,' he said he would come with me; and all the way along he has done nothing but growl at the pace I was walking, and the length of the way."

"Don't mind me, Mr. Wainwright," said Billy, politely; "pray let the gentleman go on. I am not the Stannaries Stag, sir, and I never laid claim to the title; consequently it's no degradation to me to avow that I can't keep on heeling and toeing it at the rate of seven miles an hour for long. As it happens, I have a friend in the neighbourhood, a fisherman, who has managed to combine a snack-bend with a Kirby hook in a manner which he assures me--pardon me, dear sirs, those imbecile grins remind me that I am speaking to men who don't know a stone-fly from a gentle; that I have been throwing my--I needn't finish the sentence. I have finished the drink. Mr. Wainwright, have the goodness to see me off the premises, and, in the words of the distraught Ophelia--to whom, by-the-way, I daresay your talented father would have been called in, had he happened to live in Denmark at the time--'let out the maid who'--goodnight!"

When George Wainwright returned, alone, he found Paul, who had lighted a cigar, walking up and down the room, his hands plunged in his pockets, his chin down upon his chest. George went up to him, and putting his hand affectionately on his shoulder, said:

"What brought you down here to-night, young 'un? The last rats must have deserted the sinking ship of Fashion and Season when you clear out of it to come down to Diogenes in his tub. Not but that I'm delighted to see you; all I want to know is why?"

"I was nervous and restless, George; a little tired of fools and frippery, and--and myself. I wanted you to blow a little of the ozone of common sense into me, you know!"

"Oh yes, I know," said George Wainwright; but he uttered the words in such deep solemn tones that Paul turned upon him suddenly, saying:

"You know? Well, what do you know?"

"I know why you could not play tennis, or come to the Oval, or walk to Hendon with me yesterday afternoon."

"The deuce you do! And why?"

"For a very sufficient reason to a young fellow of five-and-twenty!" said George, with a rather melancholy grin. "Look here, Paul; I don't think you'll imagine I'm a spy, or a meddling, impertinent busybody, and I'm sure you'll believe it was by the merest accident that I was crossing Kensington Gardens last evening, and there saw a friend of mine in deep conversation with a very handsome young lady."

"The deuce you did!" cried Paul, turning very red. "What then?"

"Ah!" said George, filling his pipe, "that's exactly the point--what then?"

"What a provoking old beggar you are! Why do you echo me? Why don't you go on?"

"It's for you to go on, my boy! What are your relations--or what are they to be--with this handsome girl?"

"She is handsome, is she not?"

"Beautiful!"

"'Gad! she must be to strike fire out of an old flint like you, George!" cried Paul. "What are my relations with her? Strictly proper, I give you my word."

"And you intend to marry her?"

"How the man jumps at an idea! Well, no; I don't know at all that I intend that."

"Not the--the other thing, Paul? No; you're, to say the least of it, too much of a gentleman. You don't intend that."

"I don't intend anything, I tell you. Can't a man talk to a pretty girl without 'intention'?"

"I don't know, Paul. I'm quite incompetent to pronounce any opinion on such matters; only--only see here: I look on you as on a younger brother, and, prompted by my regard for you, I may say many things which you may dislike."

"Well, say away, old George; you won't offend me."

"Well, then, if this is a good honest girl, and you don't intend to marry her, you ought not to be meeting her, and walking with her, and leading her to believe that she will attain to a position through you which she never would otherwise; and if she isn't an honest girl you ought never to have spoken to her."

Paul Derinzy laughed, the quiet easy chuckle of a man of the world, as he replied to his simple senior:

"She is a good, honest girl, no doubt of that. But suppose the question of marriage had never risen between us, and she still liked to meet me and to walk with me, what then? In the gravel paths of Kensington Gardens, Pamela herself might have strolled with Captain Lovelace himself without fear. Why should not I with--with this young lady?"

"Because, though you don't know it, you're deceiving yourself and deceiving her; because the whole thing is incongruous and won't fit, however you may try to make it do so; because it's wrong, however much you may slur it over. Look here, Paul; suppose, just for the sake of argument, that you wanted to marry this girl--you're as weak as water, and there's no accounting for what you might wish--you know your people would oppose it in the very strongest way, and----"

"Oh, if I chose it, my 'people,' as you call them, must have it, or leave it alone, which would be quite immaterial to me."

"Yes, yes, no doubt; but still----"

"Look here, George; let's bring this question to a practical issue. I'm ten times more a man of the world than you, though you are an old fogey, and clever and sensible and all that. What you are aiming it is that I must give up this girl. Well, then, shortly, I won't!"

"And why won't you?"

"For a reason you can't understand, you old mole, burrowed down here under your paintings, and your fugues, and your dreary old German philosophers--because I love her; because I think of her from morning till night, and from night till morning again; because her bright face and her gay creamy skin come between me and those beastly old minutes and memoranda that we have to write at the shop; and when I'm lying awake in Hanover Street, or even sitting surrounded by a lot of gabbling idiots in the smoking-room of the club, I can see her gray eyes looking at me, and----"

"Oh Lord!" said George Wainwright, with a piteous smile; "I had no idea I'd let myself in for this!"

"You have, my dear old George, and for a lot more at a future time. Just now I came out to you because I was horribly restless, and Billy fastened himself on to me at the club, and I could not shake him off. But I want to talk to you about it seriously, George--seriously, you understand!"

"Whenever you like, Paul; but I expect you'll only get one scrap of advice out of me, repeated, as I fear, ad nauseam."

"And that is?"

"Give her up! give her up! give her up! Cato's powers of iteration in the delenda est Carthago business will prove weak as compared to mine in this."

"You'll find me stubborn, George."

"Buffon gives stubbornness as a characteristic of your class, Paul. Goodnight, old man."

"Goodnight, God bless you! To-morrow as per usual, I suppose?" and he was gone.

Alone once more, George Wainwright threw himself again into the easy-chair and renewed his pipe; but he shook his head more than ever, and when he did speak, it was only to mutter to himself: "Worse than I thought! Don't see the way out of that. Must look into this, and take care that Paul does not make a fool of himself."

When the clock struck midnight he rose, yawned, stretched, and seemed more than half inclined to turn towards his cosy bedroom, which opened from the studio; but he shook himself together, and saying, "Poor dear, she would not sleep if I did not say goodnight to her, I suppose!" lit a lamp, and took his way across the garden to the house.

[CHAPTER VIII.]

CORRIDOR NO. 4.

Across the garden, and through an iron gate which he unlocked, and which itself formed part of a railing shutting off one wing of the house from the rest and from the grounds, George Wainwright walked; then up a short flight of steps, topped by a heavy door, which he also unlocked with a master key which he took from his pocket, and which closed behind him with a heavy clang; through a short stone passage, in a room leading off which, immediately inside the door--a bright, snug, cheerful little room, with a handful of fire alight in the grate, and the gas burning brightly over the mantelpiece, and a tea-tray and appurtenances brightly shining on the table--was a young woman--handsome, black-eyed, and rosy-cheeked, tall, strongly built, and neatly dressed in a close-fitting dark-gray gown--who started up at the sound of the approaching footsteps, and presented herself at the door.

"You on duty, Miss Marshall?" said George, with a smile and a bow.

"Yes, Mr. George, it's my night-turn again; comes round quicker than one thinks for, or than one hopes for, indeed! Going to see your sweetheart as usual, Mr. George?"

"Yes; I don't often miss; never, indeed, when I'm at home."

"Ah, if all other men were as thoughtful and as kind and as true to their sweethearts as you are to yours, there would be less need for these sort of houses in the world, Mr. George," said the young woman, with a somewhat scornful toss of her head.

"Come, come, Miss Marshall," cried George, laughingly, "you've no occasion to talk in that manner, I'm sure. Besides, I might retort, and say that if all women were as kind and as loving and as pleased to see their sweethearts as mine is to see me, if they remained true to them for as many years as mine has remained true to me, if they were as patient and as quiet--yes, and I think as silent--as mine is, they would have a greater chance of retaining men's affections."

"Poor dear Madame!" said Miss Marshall. "Ah, you don't see many like her!"

"I never saw one," said George. "But she will be keeping awake on the chance of my coming to say goodnight to her."

And with another smile and bow he passed on.

First down another and a longer stone passage, the doors leading from either side of which were wide open, showing bathrooms, kitchens, and other domestic penetralia; then up a flight of stairs to a landing covered with cocoa-nut matting, and giving on to a long corridor, on the stone-coloured wall of which was painted in large black letters, "Corridor No. 4." Closed doors here--doors of dormitories, where the inmates were shut in for the night: some tossing on their dream-haunted pillows; some haply--God knows--enjoying a mental rest as soft and sweet as the slumber which enchained them, borne away to the bygone days, when they thought and felt and knew, ere the brain was distraught, and the memory snapped, and the mind either warped or void. All was perfectly quiet as George passed along, stopping at length before a door which was closed but not locked, and at which he tapped lightly. Lightly, but with a sound which was quickly heard, for a soft voice cried immediately "Entrez!" and he opened the door, and went in.

It was a pretty little room, considerably too lofty for its breadth--a long narrow slip of a place, which some people with pleasant development of mortuary tendencies might have rendered unpleasantly like a grave. But it was tricked out with a pretty wall-paper, all rosebuds and green leaves; some good photographs of foreign scenery were framed on the walls; a wooden Swiss peasant with a clock-face let into the centre of his waistcoat, and its works ticking and running and whirring away in the centre of his anatomy, stood on the mantelpiece; the fireplace was filled up with bright-gilded shavings; and the bed, instead of being the mere ordinary iron stump bedstead to be found in other dormitories of the house, was gay with white hangings, and blue bows tastefully disposed here and there.

On it lay a woman, who had risen on her elbow at George's knock, and who remained in the same attitude, awaiting his approach. A woman of small stature evidently, and delicately made, with small well-cut features and small bones. Her hair, as snow-white as the cap under which it was looped up, contrasted oddly with the deep ruddy bronze of her complexion; such bronze as, travelling south, you first begin to notice among the Lyonnaises, and afterwards find so common along the shores of the Mediterranean. But Time, though he had changed the colour of her locks--and to be so very white now, they must necessarily have been raven black before--had failed in dimming the lustre of her marvellous eyes; they remained large, and dark, and appealing, as they must have been in earliest youth. Full of liquid love and kindliness were they too, as they beamed a welcome to George, a welcome seconded by her outstretched hand, which rested on his head as he bent down beside her.

"You are late, George," she said, with the faintest foreign accent; "but I had not given you up."

"No, maman, you know better than that; you know that whenever I am at home I never think of going to bed without saying goodnight to maman. But I am late, dear; I have had friends sitting with me, and they have only just gone."

"Friends, eh? Ah, that must be odd to see friends. And you took them for a promenade on the Lac, and you---- Ah, bah! quelle enfantillage! your friends were men, of course. Some of those who sing so sweetly sometimes? No! but still men? Ah, no one else has ever come here."

"No one else, maman?"

"See, George, come closer. She has not come?"

"No, maman," said the young man, rising, and regarding her with a look of genuine affection and pity. "No, maman, not yet."

"Ah, not yet--always not yet," she said, letting her elbow relax, and falling back in the bed--"always not yet!" And she covered her face with her hands, removing them after a few minutes to say: "But she will come? she will come?"

"Oh yes, dear, let us trust so," said George, quietly.

She looked at him, first earnestly, then wistfully, for several minutes; then she dried the tears which, unseen by him, almost unknown to her, had been trickling down her face, and said in a trembling voice: "Goodnight, my boy."

"Goodnight, maman. God bless you!"

And he bent over her, and kissed her forehead.

"Dieu me bénisse!" she said, with a half-smile. "In time, George, when she comes back! Meantime, Dieu te bénisse, my son!"

He bent his head again, and she encircled it with her arms, brushed each of his cheeks with her lips, and kissed his hand; then murmuring, "Goodnight," sank back on her pillow.

George took up his lamp, and crept silently from the room, and down the corridor, down the stairs, and towards the outer door. As he passed Miss Marshall's room he looked in, and saw her, bright, brisk, and cheerful, sitting at her needlework, an epitome of neatness and propriety. George could not refrain from stopping in his progress, and saying:

"You don't look much like a 'keeper,' Miss Marshall. I had a friend with me to-night, who laughingly asked me to show him the night-watch of such places as these, of whom he had read in songs and novels. I think he would have been rather astonished if I had brought him across the garden and introduced him to you."

"Oh, they're not much 'count, those kind of trash, I think, Mr. George," said Miss Marshall, who was eminently practical. "I read about 'em often enough when I was a nursery-governess, and before I came into the profession. I daresay he expected to see a man with big whiskers, with a sword and a brace of pistols in his belt, and perhaps two big dogs following him up and down the passages! At least, I know that used to be my idea. You found Madame Vaughan all well and quiet and comfortable, Mr. George? And left her so, no doubt?"

"Oh yes. She was just the same as usual, poor dear."

"Oh, poor dear, indeed! If they were all like her, one need not grumble about one's life here. There never was such a sweet creature. I'm sure if one-half of the sane women, the sensible creatures who expect one to possess all the cardinal virtues and to look after four of their brats for sixteen pounds a-year, were anything like as nice, or as sensible, or as sane, for the matter of that, as Madame Vaughan, the world would be a much nicer place to live in. She expected you, I suppose, sir?"

George Wainwright knew perfectly that Miss Marshall was, as the phrase is, "making conversation;" that she cared little about the patient whose state she was discussing; cared probably less about him. But he knew also that in the discharge of her duty she had to sit up all night, until relieved by one of the day-nurses at six o'clock in the morning; that she naturally enough grasped at any chance of making a portion, however small, of this time pass more pleasantly, with somebody to look at and somebody's voice to listen to. And she was a pretty girl and a good girl, and he was not particularly tired and was particularly good-natured; so he thought he would stop and chat with her for a few minutes.

"Oh yes, she expected me," he said; "so I should have been horribly sorry if I had neglected to go to her. One must be selfish indeed to deny anyone so much pleasure when it can be afforded by merely stepping across the garden."

"Did she speak of the usual subject, sir?"

"The child? Oh, yes; asked if anyone had come, as usual; and when I answered her, felt sure that her child would come speedily."

"I suppose there's no foundation for that idea of hers?"

"That the child will come, or, indeed, so far as we know, that she ever had a child, is, I imagine, the merest hallucination. At all events, from the number of years she has been here, her child, if she ever had one, must be a tolerably well-grown young lady, and not likely to be recognisable by, or to recognise her, poor thing!"

"Yes, indeed, Mr. George; and it's odd that of all our ladies, with the exception of poor Mrs. Stoneycroft, who, I imagine, is just kept here out of the Doctor's kindness and charity, Madame is the only one who never has any friends come to see her."

"She has outlived all her friends; that is to say, she has outlived their recollection of her. Nothing so easily forgotten as the trace of people we once knew, but who can no longer be of use to us, or administer to our vanity, our pleasure, or our amusement. I was at a cemetery the other day, and saw there an enormous and magnificent tombstone which a man had ordered to be erected over his wife; but before the order had been executed the man had married again, declined to pay for his extravagance in mortuary sculpture, and contented himself with a simple headstone. And the gardener told me that it is very seldom that the floral graves are kept up beyond the first twelve months. So it is not likely that in this, which, to such poor creatures as Madame Vaughan, is not much better than a living tomb, the occupants should be held in any long remembrance."

"I'm sure it's very kind of the Doctor to take such care of these poor creatures, Mr. George; more especially when he's not paid for it."

"That is not the case with Madame Vaughan. I think--in fact, I'm sure--she was one of the patients of my father's predecessor, and was made over to him on the transfer of the business; but though she has no friends to come and see her, the sum for her maintenance here is regularly discharged by a firm of solicitors who have money in trust for the purpose, and by whom it has been paid from the first."

"And is there nothing known of her history, Mr. George; who were her friends, or where she came from?"

"Nothing now. Dr. Bulph, I suppose, had some sort of information; but he was an odd man, and so long as his half-yearly bills were paid, did not trouble himself much further, I fancy."

"Lord, what a life!" said Miss Marshall, casting a sidelong glance at the little looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and smoothing her hair. "And it will end here, I suppose? The Doctor does not think she will ever be cured, Mr. George?"

"No, indeed!" said George, shaking his head. "And if she were, what would become of her? She has been here for nearly twenty years, and the outer world would be as strange and as impossible to her as it was to the released prisoner of the Bastille, who prayed to be taken back to his dungeon."

"Ah well, I should pray to be taken to my grave," said the practical Miss Marshall, "if I thought no one cared for me----"

"Ah, now you're talking of an impossibility, Miss Marshall," said George, rising. "If ever I have a necessity to expose the absurdity of that saying which advances the necessity for 'beauty sleep,' I shall bring you forward as my example; for you're never in bed by midnight, and are often up all night; and yet I should like to see anyone who could rival you in briskness or freshness. Goodnight, Miss Marshall."

"Goodnight, Mr. George."

As he rose, shook hands, and taking up his lamp made his way across the garden, the nurse looked after him with a pleased expression, and said to herself:

"What a nice young man that is!--so pleasant and kind! Nice-looking too, though a trifle old-fashioned and heavy; not like--ah, well, never mind. But much too good to mope away his life in this wretched old place, anyhow."

And when George reached his rooms he smiled to himself, and said:

"Well, if that little talk, and those little compliments, have the result of making Miss Marshall show any extra amount of kindness to my poor maman, my time will not have been ill bestowed."

George Wainwright was tolerably correct in all he had said regarding Madame Vaughan, though he had but an imperfect knowledge of her history. At the time when her mental malady first rendered it necessary that she should be placed under restraint, the private lunatic asylums of England were in a very different condition from what they are now. They were for the most part held by low-born ignorant men, who derived their entire livelihood from the sums of money paid for the maintenance of the unfortunate wretches confided to their charge, and whose gains were consequently greater in proportion to the manner in which they ignored or refused the requirements of their inmates. A person calling himself a physician, and perhaps in possession of some purchased degree, hired at a small stipend and non-resident, looked in occasionally, asked a few questions, and signed certificates destined to hoodwink official eyes, which in those days never saw too clearly at the best of times. But the staff of keepers, male and female, was always numerous and efficient. Those were the merry days of the iron collar and the broad leather bastinado, of the gag and the cold bath, of the irons and the whipping-post. They did not care much about what the Lunacy Commissioners did, or wrote, or exacted, in those days, and each man did what he thought best for himself. The date of the Commissioners' visits, which then were few and far between, were accurately known long beforehand; the "medical attendant" was on the spot; the patients, such as were visible, were tricked up into a proper state of cleanliness and order; and the others were duly hidden away until the authorities had departed. The licensing was a farce, only to be exceeded in absurdity by the other regulations; and villany, blackguardism, brutality, and chicanery reigned supreme.

For two years after Madame Vaughan was first received into the asylum--God help us!--as it was called, the outer world was mercifully a blank to her. She arrived in a settled state of stupor, in which she remained, cowering in a corner of the room which she shared with other afflicted creatures, but taking no heed of them, of the antics which they played, of the yells and shrieks which they uttered, of the fantastic illusions of which they were the victims, of the punishment which their conduct brought upon them. Her face covered by her hands, her poor body ever rocking to and fro, there she remained for ever in the one spot until nightfall, when she crept to the miserable couch allotted to her, and curling herself up as an animal in its slumber, was unheard, almost unseen, until the next day. The wretched food which they gave her, coarse in quality and meagre in quantity, she ate in silence; in silence she bore the spoken ribaldry, and the practical jokes which in the first few weeks after her admission the guardians of the establishment, and indeed the great proprietor himself, amused themselves by heaping upon her; so that in a little time she was found incapable of administering to their amusement, and was suffered to remain unmolested.

At the end of the time mentioned, a change took place in the condition of the patient under the following circumstances. One of the nurses had had her married sister and niece to visit her; and after tea, by way of a cheerful amusement, the visitors were conducted through the female ward. The child, a little girl of five or six years old, frightened out of her life, hung back as she entered the gloomy room, where women in every stage of mania, some fierce and shrieking, some silent and moody, were collected. But her aunt, the nurse, laughed at the child's fears; and the mother, who through the hospitality of their entertainer had, after the clearing away of the tea-equipage, been provided with a beverage which both cheered and inebriated, bade the girl not to be a fool; and on her still hanging back and evincing an intention of bursting into tears, administered to her a severe thump on the back, which had the effect of causing the little one to break forth at once into a howl.

From the first instant of the child's entrance into the room, Madame Vaughan had roused herself from her usual attitude. The sound of the child's pattering feet seemed to act on her with electrical influence. She raised her head from out her hands; she sat up erect, bright, observant. The corner in which she sat was dark, and no one was in the habit of taking any notice of her. So she sat, watching the shrinking child. She heard the mocking laugh with which the nurse sneered at the little one's terror, she heard the harsh tones in which the mother chid the child, and saw the blow which followed on the words. Then she made two springs forward, and the next minute had the woman on the ground, and was grappling at her throat. The attendants sprang upon her, released the woman from her grasp, and led her shrieking to her cell.

"My child, my child! why did she strike my child?" were the words which she screamed forth; almost the first which those in the asylum had ever heard her utter; so, at least, the nurse told the proprietor, who, with other assistants, male as well as female, was speedily on the spot.

"She used to sit as quiet as quiet, never opening her mouth, as you know very well, sir," said the woman, "and was sittin' just as usual, so far as I know, when my sister here, as I was showing round, fetched her little gal a smack on the head because she wouldn't come on; and then Vaughan springs at her like a wild-beast, and wanted to tear the life out of her, she did, a murderin' wretch!"

"Had she ever said anything about a child before?" asked the proprietor.

"Never said nothing about anybody, and certingly nothing about a child," replied the nurse.

"And it was because she saw this child struck that she burst out, and she's hollerin' about the child now--is that it?"

"Jest so, sir," replied the nurse, looking at a mark of teeth on her hand, and shaking her head viciously in the direction in which the patient had been led away.

"That's it, Agar," said the proprietor; "I thought we should get at it some day. Couldn't get anything out of the cove I first saw, and the lawyers were as tight as wax. 'You'll get your money,' they says. 'We're responsible for that,' they says, 'and that ought to be enough for you.' They wouldn't let on, any of 'em, what it was that had upset her at first; but I knew it would come out sooner or later, and it's come out now, though. She's gone off her head grievin' after a kid, and no two ways about it."

"Ah!" said Mr. Agar, who was a man of few words; "shouldn't wonder. Question is, what's to be done with her now? Mustn't be allowed to kick up these wagaries, you know; we shall have the neighbours complainin' again. Screamed and yelled and bit and fisted away like a good un, she did. We ain't had such a rumpus since the Tiger's time."

"She must be taught manners," said the proprietor, significantly. "Tell your missus to look after her. This woman," indicating the nurse with his elbow, "ain't any good when it comes to a rough and tumble, and I'm doubtful if Vaughan won't give us some trouble yet."

So Madame Vaughan was delivered over to the tender mercies of Mrs. Agar, and underwent some of the tortures which she had seen inflicted upon others. She was punished cruelly for her outbreak; but that done, there was an end of it. The proprietor was wrong in his surmise that she would give them further trouble. She lapsed back into her old silent state, cowering in her old corner, rocking to and fro after her old fashion; and thus she remained, when the proprietor, having made sufficient money, and having had several hints that certain malpractices of his, if further indulged in, would probably bring him to the Old Bailey, handed over his business to Dr. Bulph.

It was during Dr. Bulph's time that the poor lady had a severe bodily illness, during which she was sedulously attended by Dr. Bulph himself--a clever, hard man of the world, not unkind, but probably prompted in his attention to his patient by the feeling that it would be unwise to let a regularly-paid income of three hundred pounds a-year slip through his fingers if a little trouble on his part could save it. When she became convalescent, her mental condition seemed to have altered. Instead of being dull and moping, she was bright and restless, ever asking about her child, who, as it seemed to her poor distraught fancy, had been with her just before her illness. Dr. Bulph had had some idea, that when her bodily ailment left her, there was a chance that her mind might have become at last clearer; but he shook his head when he saw these new symptoms. Her child, her child! what had been done with it? Why had they taken it away? Why was it kept from her? That was the constant, incessant burden of her cry, sometimes asked almost calmly, sometimes with piteous wailings or fierce denunciations of their cruelty. Nothing satisfied her, nothing appeased her. Madame Vaughan's case was evidently a very bad one indeed: and when Dr. Bulph took Dr. Wainwright, who was about purchasing his business, the round of his establishment, he pointed Madame Vaughan out to him, and said: "That will be a noisy one, I'm afraid, until the end."

The doctor was wrong in his prophecy. Dr. Wainwright, with as much skill and far more savoir faire than his predecessor, adopted very different tactics. Although since the departure of the first proprietor of the asylum no cruelty had been inflicted on the patients, all of them who were at all intractable or difficult to govern had been kept in restraint. The first thing that Dr. Wainwright did, when he took possession, was to give them an amount of liberty which they had not previously enjoyed. Poor Madame Vaughan, falling into one of her shrieking-fits of "My child! where's my child?" was surprised on looking up to see the tall figure of the new doctor in the open doorway of her room; and her screams died away as she looked at his handsome smiling face, and heard his voice say in soft tones: "Where is she? Come, let us look for her." Then he took her gently by the arm and led her into the garden, round which they walked together. The new sense of liberty, the air blowing on her cheeks, the fresh smell of the flowers--these unaccustomed delights had a wonderful influence on the poor sufferer. For a time, at least, she forgot the main burden of her misery in the delight she experienced in dwelling on them; and thenceforward, though she recurred constantly, daily indeed, to her one theme of sorrow, it was never with the poignant bitterness of former times. She grew attached to the doctor, whose quiet interested manner suited her wonderfully, and formed a singular attachment for George, then a young man just entering on his office duties, looking forward to his coming with a sweet motherly tenderness, which he seemed to reciprocate in a most filial manner.

From that time forward Madame Vaughan's lot, as far as her melancholy condition permitted, was a happy one. No acute return of mania ever supervened; she remained in a state of harmless quiet; and save for her invariable expectation of the arrival of her child, a hope which she never failed to indulge in, it would have been impossible to think that the quiet, well-dressed, white-haired lady, who tended the flowers, and settled the ornaments of her little room, or paced regularly up and down the garden, sometimes alone, sometimes conversing with Dr. Wainwright, or leaning reliantly on George's arm, was the inmate of a lunatic asylum, and had gone through such tempestuous scenes as fall to her lot in the early days of her residence there. The "noisy one" had indeed come to be the gentlest member of that strange household; and one of the greatest annoyances which Dr. Wainwright ever experienced was when one of the members of the lawyers' firm who paid the annual stipend for the poor lady's care happened to call with the cheque, and on the doctor's wishing him to witness the comparative happy state to which the patient had arrived, said shortly that "he had enough to do in his business with people who were only sane enough to prevent their being shut up, and that he didn't want to have anything to do with those who were a stage further advanced in the disease."

On the morning after the events recorded in the beginning of this chapter, George Wainwright found a small pencil-note placed on the huge can of cold water which was brought to him for his bath. Opening it, he read:

"DEAR MR. GEORGE,--Madame hopes she shall see you before you go into town this morning. She has something special to say to you. I have told her I was sure you would not fail her.--Yours, L. MARSHALL."

In compliance with this wish, George presented himself immediately after breakfast at Madame Vaughan's room. He found her ready dressed, and anxiously expecting him.

"Why, maman," he commenced, "already up and doing! Your bright activity is an actual reproach to a sluggard like myself. But I heard you wanted me, and I'm here."

"Would you mind taking a turn in the garden, George?" she asked. "The morning looks very fine, and I've something to say to you that I think should be said in the sunlight and among the flowers."

"Something pleasant, then, I argue from that," he said. "And you know I'd do a great deal more than give up a few minutes from my dry dull old office to be of any pleasant use to you; besides, work is slack just now--it always is at this time of the year--and I can easily be spared. Come, let us walk."

She threw a shawl over her head and shoulders with, as George could not help remarking, all the innate grace and ease of a Frenchwoman, took his arm, and descended the stairs into the garden. It was indeed a lovely morning, just at that time when Summer makes her last determined fight before gracefully surrendering to Autumn. The turf was yet green and soft, though somewhat faded here and there by the sun's long-continued power, and the air was mild; but the paths were already flecked with leaves, and ruddy tints were visible on the extreme outer foliage of the trees. When they arrived in the grounds, they found several of the patients already there; some chattering to each other, others walking moodily apart. Many of them seemed to treat Madame Vaughan with marked deference, and exhibited that deference in immediately clearing out of the way, and leaving her and her companion unmolested in their walk.

After a few turns up and down, George said:

"Well, maman, and the special business?"

"Ah yes, George, I had forgotten," said Madame, pressing her hand to her head. "I dreamed about her last night, George--about my child."

"Not an uncommon dream for you, surely, maman?" said George kindly. "What you are always thinking of by day will most probably not desert your mind at night."

"No, not at all uncommon; but I have never dreamed of her as I dreamed last night. George, she is coming; you will see her very soon."

"I! But you, maman--you will see her too?"

"I am not so sure of that, George. She was all dim and indistinct in my dream. I think I shall be dead, George; but you will see her; I shall have the comfort of knowing that, and--and of knowing that you will love her, George."

"Why, maman, of course I shall love her, for your sake."

"No, George; for her own. You will love her for her own sake, and you will marry her, my son."

"Maman, maman!" said George, taking her hand, and looking up into her face with a loving smile. "But how do you know that she will consent? You forget I am an old bachelor, and----"

"You will marry her, George," said Madame, her face clouding over at once. "And yet--and yet she is but an infant, poor child!"

"There, there, maman darling----"

"No, no; don't attempt to get out of it. And yet I saw it all--you and she at St. Peter's after Tenebrae, and I--and----"

"Now this is a question for my father to be consulted on," said George. "He is the only man who could help us in this difficulty, and he's away in the country, you know. We must wait till he comes back;" and he drew her quietly towards the house.

"Poor dear maman!" said George Wainwright to himself, as he stood waiting for the omnibus which was to bear him into town. "What a strange idea! Not so far wrong, though! A phantom evolved from a diseased brain, a nothing. A creature without existence is the only wife I'm ever likely to have! I only wish young Paul was as heart-free, and as likely to remain so."

[CHAPTER IX.]

DEAR ANNETTE.

It was a noticeable fact, that though the Beachborough folk were, as they would themselves have expressed it, "main curous" about Mrs. Stothard and her position in the Derinzy household, none of them devoted much time to speculating about Miss Annette, or Miss Netty as she was generally called by them. That she was a "dreadful in-vallid" all knew; that she was sometimes confined to the house for weeks together when labouring under a severe attack of her illness--which was ascribed by some to nerves, by some to weakness, and by others to a curious disorder known as "ricketts"--was also well known. It was understood, moreover, that she did not like her indisposition alluded to; and consequently, when she occasionally appeared in the village, accompanied by her aunt Mrs. Derinzy, it was a point of politeness on the part of the villagers to ignore the fact of their not having seen her for weeks past and the cause of her absence, and to entertain her with gossip about Bessy Fairlight's levity, Giles Croggin's drunkenness, Farmer Hawkers' harvest-home, or such kindred topics. No one ever mentioned illness or doctors before Miss Netty; if they had, Mrs. Derinzy, a woman of strong mind and, when necessary, sharp tongue, would speedily have cut in and changed the conversation.

But although the Beachborough people saw little of Annette Derinzy, that little they liked. Amongst simple folk of this kind a person labouring under illness, more especially chronic illness--not any of your common fevers or anything low of that kind, which nearly everybody has had in their time, and which are for the most part curable by very simple remedies--but mysterious illness, which "comes on when you don't expect it," as though most disorders were heralded and the exact time of their arrival announced by infallible symptoms, and which lasts for weeks together--such a person takes brevet rank with their acquaintance, and is looked up to with the greatest respect. Moreover, Miss Netty had a very pleasant way with her, being always courteous and friendly, sometimes, indeed, a little too friendly; for she would want to go into the fishermen's cottages, and into the lacemakers' rooms, and would ask questions which were not very pertinent, or indeed very wise; until she was brought up very short by her aunt, who would take her by the elbow, and haul her away with scant ceremony. And another great thing in her favour was, that she was very pretty.

Ah, well-meaning, kindly people, who endeavour to cheer your ugly children by repeating the scores of old adages with which the stupidity of our forefathers has enriched our language, telling them that "beauty is only skin deep," that "it is better to be good than beautiful," that "handsome is that handsome does," and a variety of other maxims of the same kind--when will you be honest, and confess that a pretty face is almost the best dowry a young girl can have? It gains her admirers always, and very frequently it gains her friends; it makes easy and pleasant her path in life, and saves her from the bitterest distress, the deepest laceration which can be inflicted on the female heart, in the feeling that she is despised of men, which, being translated, means that she is neglected, while others are appreciated. Miss Netty was pretty decidedly, but she was in that almost incredible position of being unaware of the fact. Save her own family and the people in the village, she saw no one; and though the gossips were inclined not to be reticent of their admiration even in the presence of its object, they were always restrained by a wholesome dread of the wrath of Mrs. Derinzy, which on more than one occasion had been evoked by the compliments paid to her niece.

It was the more extraordinary that such persons as Mrs. Powler and Mrs. Jupp should have admired Annette, as her style was by no means such as generally finds favour with persons in their station in life. Great black staring eyes, snub noses, firm round red cheeks, bright red lips, and jet-black hair, well bandolined and greased so as to lie flat on the head, or corkscrewed into thin ringlets, generally make up their standard of beauty. Country people have a great opinion of strength of limb and firmness of flesh; and "she be that hard," was one of the most delicate tributes which a Beachborough swain could pay. In the agricultural districts those womanly qualities of tenderness, softness, and delicacy, which are so prized amongst more refined circles, are rather held at a discount; they are regarded by the rustic mind as on a level with piano-playing and Berlin-wool working--good enough as extras, but not to be compared with the homely talents of milking and stocking-darning. Personal appearance is regarded in much the same way, elegance of form being less thought of than strength, and a large arm obtaining much more admiration than a small hand. Annette was a tall, but a slight and decidedly delicate-looking girl.

"It isn't after her uncle she takes," Mrs. Powler would say; "a little giggling, flibberty-gibbet of a man, that might be blowed away in a pouf!"

"Well, mum," said little Ann Bradshaw, the "gell" who was specially retained for Mrs. Powler's service, and who, as jackal, purveyed all the gossip on which, after due preparation, her mistress lived--"well, mum, I du 'low Miss Netty's well enow to look at, but nothing like the Captain, who sure-ly is a main handsome man!"

"Eh, dear heart, did one ever hear the like!" cried Mrs. Powler. "Here's chits and chicks like this talkin' about main handsome men! Why, Ann, you was niver in Exeter, or you'd have seen a waxy image just like the Captain, wi' his black hair and his straight nose, and his blue chin, in the barber's shop-window. Handsome, indeed!" said the old lady, with a recollection of the deceased Mr. Fowler's rotund face; "he's but a poor show; a mere skellinton of a chap!"

"Well, mum, it can't be said that Miss Netty favours her aunt Mrs. D'rinzy neither," said Ann, who, seeing her mistress was disposed for a chat, saw her way to at least postponing the execution of a very portentous and elaborate job of darning which had sat heavy on her soul for some days past. "Mrs. D'rinzy is that slight and slim and gen-teel in her make, which Miss Netty do not follow after."

"Slight, and slim, and genteel make!" repeated Mrs. Powler with much indignation, and a downward glance at her own pursy proportions; "ah, straight up and down like a thrashin'-floor door, if that's what ye mean! Lord love us, here's a gal as I took out of charity, and saved from goin' to the workis, a givin' her 'pinions 'bout figgers, and shapes, and makes, and the like, as though she was a milliner, or a middiff! Well, well, on'y to think!"

"I didn't mean no harm, mum, I'm sure," said the worldly-ise handmaiden, "and I don't think much of Mrs. D'rinzy, nor indeed of the Captain neither, since Nancy Bell--as you know is housemaid up at the Tower--told me how she'd found the stick-stuff which he du make his eyebrows of--black, and grease, and muck."

"No?" exclaimed the old lady, her good temper returning at the chance of hearing some spicy retailable talk. "Du he do that? Do'ee tell, Ann!"

Thus invited, Miss Bradshaw launched out into an elaborate story, rendered more elaborate by her anti-darning proclivities, of the mysteries of Captain Derinzy's toilet, as she had learned them from Miss Bell. Mrs. Powler encouraged her to prattle on this point for a long time; and when she had finished, asked her whether Nancy Bell had mentioned anything about the general way of living at the Tower, more especially as Miss Netty and Mrs. Stothard were concerned.

"Not that anything she says isn't as full of lies as a sieve's full of holes," said the old lady. "I mind the time"--a terrible old lady this, with an unexampled memory for bad things against people--"I mind the time when she was quite a little gell, and went and told the vicar a passil o' lies about her uncle, Ned Richards the blacksmith. And the vicar put Ned into his sermin the next Sunday, and preached at un, and everybody knowed who was meant; and Ned stood up in church, and gev it to the vicar back again; and Ned was had up for brawlin', as they called it, and there was a fine to-do, and all through Nancy Bell. But what does she say of Miss Netty, Ann? Are they kind to her like up there?"

"Oh, yes, mum; Nancy thinks so, leastwise. But no one sees Miss Netty often, mum."

"No one sees her?"

"Only Mrs. Stothard, mum. She and Mrs. Stothard has their rooms away from the rest, mum, lest they should disturb the Captain when Miss Netty's ill, mum; and no one sees her but Mrs. Stothard then."

"Ah," said Mrs. Powler, "David or Solomon, or one of 'em, I don't rightly remember which, were not far off when he said that the bread of dependence was bitter, and these great folk don't bake it no more sweet than others for their poor relations, it seems. So they take the board and lodgin' out of Mrs. Stothard by makin' her a nuss, eh, Ann?"

"They du indeed, mum. I du 'low that's why we niver see Mrs. Stothard in the village, being so taken up with Miss Netty, and a nasty temper, not caring to throw a word at a dog, likewise."

"How does Nancy think they git on betwixt themselves?"

"What, the Captain and Mrs. D'rinzy? Oh, they git on all right; leastwise, she's master, Nance says. The Captain isn't much 'count in his own house; but Mrs. D. niver let him see it, bless you; and he du bluster and rave sometimes, Nance say, when he's put out, and thinks she can't hear him."

"What puts 'im out, Ann? He hev an easy life of it, sure-ly: nothin' to do but to kick up his heels about the place."

"That's just it, missus. He wants something more to du. He du hate the place like pison, Nance have heerd 'im say, and ask Mrs. D'rinzy, wi' awful language, what they was waitin' and wastin' their lives here for."

"And what did she say then?"

"Allays the same. 'You know,' says she, 'you know what we're waitin' for; and it'll come, it'll come sure as sure.' 'Wouldn't it come just the same, or easier rather, if we was out of this, up in London, or somewheres?' the Captain says once. 'No,' says Mrs. D., 'it wouldn't. When we've got the prize under lock and key,' she says, 'we know where to look for it, and who to send for it; but when it's open to the world, there's no knowin' who may run off with it,' she says."

"A prize!" said the old lady, looking very much astonished--"got a prize under lock and key? Why, what could she mean by that? You hain't heerd in the village o' anything hevin' been found up at the Tower, hev you, Ann?"

Ann, leaning against the door, withdrew one foot from the floor, and slowly rubbed it up and down her other leg--a gymnastic performance she was in the habit of going through when she taxed her powers of memory. It failed, however, to have any result in the present instance; and Ann was compelled to confess that she had never heard of anything in particular being found at the Tower. She did this with more reluctance, as she foresaw the speedy termination of the gossip, and her consequent relegation to her darning duties.

But Mrs. Powler, who had been much struck with the conversation overheard by Nancy Bell, and repeated to her by her own handmaiden, sat pondering over the words for some time, allowing Ann to remain in the room, and at last bade her go round and ask Mrs. Jupp to step in for a few minutes. When Mrs. Jupp arrived, Mrs. Powler made Ann repeat her story; and when she concluded, the old lady bade her stand away out of earshot, and said to Mrs. Jupp in a hollow whisper:

"What do you think of that?"

"Of what?" asked Mrs. Jupp, in an equally ghostly tone.

"'Bout the prize? Do you think, Harriet, that it can be any of Fowler's 'runs'? They used to hide 'em in the first place as come handy, when the excisers was after 'em; and I've been wondering whether they might ha' stowed away some kegs, or bales, or things, in the lower garden, or thereabouts, and these D'rinzys ha' found 'em. I wonder whether I could claim 'em, Harriet?" said the old lady earnestly. "He left everything he had in the world to his beloved wife, Powler did."

Mrs. Jupp, who had been receiving these last words with many sniffs, denoting her content for her friend's notions, waited patiently until Mrs. Powler had finished, and then said:

"I don't think you need trouble yourself about that. It isn't about runs, or kegs, or bales, or anything of that kind, that Mrs. Derinzy meant, if so be she said anything of the kind, which I main doubt; Nancy Bell and your Ann being regular Anias and Sapphira for lying, or the man as was turned into a white leopard by the prophet for saying he hadn't asked the young man for a change of clothes."

"Du let alone naggin' and girdin' at my Ann for once, Harriet!" interrupted Mrs. Powler. "Let's s'pose Mrs. D'rinzy said it; there's no harm in s'posin', you know. What did she mean 'bout the prize?"

"Mean? What could she mean but Miss Netty?"

"Miss Netty! prize!" cried Mrs. Powler, to whom the combination of these words was hopelessly embarrassing. "Ah, well, I'm becomin' a moithered old 'ooman, I suppose?"

"No, no, dear," said Mrs. Jupp, who never liked to see the old lady put out. "I'm sure there's they as are twenty years younger would like to be able to see as far into a milestone as you can. Only you don't know about this, because you don't get out much now, and you don't know what's goin' on up at the Tower, save from Ann and suchlike. Now my ideer is, that Miss Netty has come into a fortin'."

"No!" cried the old lady.

"Yes," said Mrs. Jupp, nodding her head violently. "Yes, I think she have, and that's what her aunt meant about a prize, I take it. For don't you see, we've asked, all of us, often enough, what kept them livin' down here. 'Tain't that they come down for the shootin', or the yachtin', or that, jest at one season, like Sir 'Erc'les, though he was bred and born down here, and it's his fam'ly place. But there they stick, summer and winter, spring and autumn, never movin', though the Captain's a-wearyin' hisself to death; and there's no call for Mrs. Derinzy to stop here neither."

"Not for her health?"

"Not a bit of it! Between you and me, I think there's a consp---- However, I'll tell you more about that when I know more; meantime, I think Mrs. Derinzy's all right, and I don't think it's for health Miss Annette is kept here."

"The Dorsetsheer air----" Mrs. Powler began; but seeing an incredulous smile on her friend's face, she broke off shortly, and said: "Well, then, what does keep 'em down here?"

"The fortin' that we was speakin' of; the prize that Nancy Bell heard Mrs. D. tell off. Don't you see, my dear? Suppose what I think is right--they've got the poor thing down here in their own hands, to do jest what they like wi'; nobody to say, with your leave, or by your leave; cooped up there wi' them two old people and that termagant Mrs. Stothard. Now if she was away in London, or Exeter, or any other large place o' that sort, why o' course there'd be young men sweetheartin' her--for she's a main pratty gell, though slouchin', and not one to show herself off--and she'd be gettin' married, and her money would go away from them to her husband. That's what Mrs. D. meant about the prize bein' 'open to the world,' and people 'runnin' off with it,' and that like."

Mrs. Powler sat speechless for a few moments, looking at her friend with her sharp little black eyes, and going over what had just been told her in her mind. Her faculties began to be somewhat dimmed by age, and she required time for intellectual digestion. Mrs. Jupp knew her friend's habit, and remained silent likewise, thoughtfully rubbing the side of her nose with a knitting-needle which she had produced from her pocket. At length the old lady said:

"I du 'low you're right, Harriet, though I niver give you credit for so much sharpness before."

And Mrs. Jupp had many pleasant teas, and many succulent suppers, and much pleasant gossip, on the strength of her perspicacity in the matter of the great Derinzy mystery.

Strange to say, the woman's idea was not very far away from the truth. When Mrs. Derinzy told her husband that their son Paul should have a fortune of eighty thousand pounds, which he should receive from his wife's trustees, she made up her mind from that moment to carry her intention into execution, come what might. The girl was so young, that there was plenty of time for the elaboration of her plans--two or three years hence it would do to work out the scheme in detail; all that was necessary to see after was, that so soon as the girl arrived at an impressible age, she should be taken to some very quiet place, where she could see very few people, and that at that time Paul should be thrown in her way, and the result left to favouring chance. Mrs. Derinzy was doubtful whether anything ought to be said to Paul about it; but the Captain spoke up strongly, and declared that any attempt to dispose of "the young man by private contract" would certainly result in prejudicing him against his cousin, and that it would be much better if he were left to "shake a loose leg" for a time, as it would render him much more docile and biddable when they spoke to him afterwards. Mrs. Derinzy, violently objurgating such language on the part of her husband, yet comprehended the soundness of his advice; and Paul, who saw very little of Annette on the occasion of his holidays from school, and then only thought of her as a little orphan cousin to whom his parents acted as guardians, was left to take up his appointment at the Stannaries Office, without having the least idea that, like Mr. Swiveller, "a young lady, who had not only great personal attractions, but great wealth, was at that moment growing up for him."

The young lady who furnished forth all this feast of gossip to the good folks of Beachborough--gossip not so completely unlike the sort of thing which goes on in larger places, and is practised by more important communities--had not the least suspicion that she was an object of curiosity and discussion to her humble neighbours. She knew little of them--that is to say, of the less-poor class among the poor--for to the lowest and most suffering part of the community she was generous with the desultory kindness of an untaught girl; and she had no notion that she differed in circumstances or disposition from other people sufficiently to excite curiosity or induce discussion. Few girls of Annette Derinzy's age, in her position in life, are so ignorant of the world, so completely without the means of instituting comparisons in social matters, or unravelling social problems, as she was. The conventional schoolgirl of real life, though perhaps not the ritualistic innocent of the Daisy-Chain literature, could have beaten Annette Derinzy hollow in comprehension of human aims and motives, and in knowledge of the desirabilities of life. She was passably content with herself and her surroundings, and had not yet been moved by any stronger feeling than irritation, caused by her aunt's troublesome over-solicitude for her health and Mrs. Stothard's watchfulness.

She was not, she believed, so strong as most girls of her age, who lived in comfort, and had nothing to trouble them; but she felt sure the care, the restrictions she had to undergo, were unwarranted by her health; and she sometimes got so far on the path of worldly wisdom as to suspect that her aunt made a great fuss with her, in order to get the credit of self-sacrifice and superlative duty-doing. Annette's perspicacity did not extend to defining the individuals in the narrow and ultra-quiet society of Beachborough, among whom, as Captain Derinzy would have said, they "vegetated," who were to be deluded into giving Mrs. Derinzy a better character than she deserved. Like "the ugly duck," who scrambled through the hedge, and found himself in the wide, wide world, the most insignificant change of position would, to Annette Derinzy, have implied infinite possibilities of enlightenment; but at present she was very securely on the near side of the hedge, and almost ignorant that there was a far side.

The young lady of whom Mrs. Derinzy invariably spoke as "dear Annette," even when she was most annoyed with or about her, as though she had set this formula as a rule and a reminder for herself, was a very pretty girl, belonging to a type of beauty which is rather commonly to be found associated with delicate health. She was rather tall, very slight, with slender hands, and a transparently fair complexion. Her features were not very regular, and but for the deep, dark eyes, and the remarkably sweet, though somewhat rare, smile which lighted them up, she would hardly have been pronounced handsome by casual observers. But she was very handsome, as all would have been ready to acknowledge afterwards who had noticed the extreme refinement of her general appearance and the gracefulness of her figure. Her beauty was marred by no trace of ill-health beyond the uncertainty of the colour--which sometimes tinted her cheeks brightly enough, but at others faded into a waxen paleness--and the occasional restlessness of her movements. Annette was not very striking at first sight; she was one of those women who do not become less interesting by observation, but who rather continue to occupy, to interest, perhaps a little to perplex, the observer. She was graceful, she was even elegant in appearance, but she was not gentle-looking. The dark eyes had no fiery expression, and the well-shaped mouth, not foolishly small or unpleasantly compressed, had decided sweetness in the full fresh lips; and yet the last thing any accurate noter of physiognomy would have said of Miss Derinzy was, that she looked gentle. Impatience, impulse, whether for good or ill to be determined by circumstances--these were plainly to be read in her face. And one more indication was there--not, it may be, legible to indifferent eyes, but which, had there been any to study the girl with the clear-sightedness of affection, would have made itself plain in all its present meaning and future menace--the vacuity of an unoccupied, inactive heart. Annette Derinzy loved no living human being. She knew neither love nor grief, the true civilising influences which need to be exercised in each individual instance, if the human creature is to be elevated above primitive conditions. She had no recollection of her parents, and therefore no standard by which to measure the tenderness which she might covet as a possession, or deplore as a loss--by whose depth and endurance she might test the shallowness and the insufficiency of the conventional observance shown to her by the interested relatives who furnished all her life was destined to know of natural love and care. She had no brother or sister, or familiar girlish friendships, nor had she ever displayed an inclination to contract any of those lesser ties with which genial and sensitive natures endeavour to supplement their deprivation of the greater. Either she was of a reserved, uncommunicative temperament, or she had been so steadily restricted from the society of other young people, that the habit of depending entirely upon herself had been effectually formed; for Annette never complained of the seclusion in which the family lived, and in some cases received with a sufficiently ill grace intelligence that it was about to be broken in upon.

Like most ill-tempered persons, Mrs. Derinzy had a keen perception of faults of temper, and no toleration for them. She declared that of all things she hated selfishness and sulk most; and the recipients of the sentiments were apt to think she had all the justification of it which an intimate knowledge of the vices in question could supply. She accused "dear Annette" at times of both, not altogether unjustly perhaps, but yet not with strict justice. If she was selfish, it was because her life was narrow; its horizon was close upon her; no large interests occupied it, no external responsibility laid its claims upon Annette. There did not exist anyone to whom she could feel herself indispensable, or even "a comfort;" and though she was surrounded with external care and consideration to what she held to be a superfluous and unreasonable extent, her native shrewdness led her to distinguish with unerring accuracy between this perfunctory and organised observance and the spontaneous affectionate guardianship, without effort on the one side or constraint upon the other, which the natural relationship of parent and child secures. She did not love her aunt Mrs. Derinzy, and she positively disliked the Captain, who reciprocated the sentiment; as was not unnatural, seeing that he was paying the price of success in his schemes against her peace and happiness by the unmitigated ennui produced by his life at Beachborough. For what there really was of fine and noble, of amiable and elevated, in the character of Annette Derinzy, her own nature was accountable, and in no degree her training, associations, and surroundings. She had none of the enthusiasm and fancy of girlhood about her--the atmosphere of calculation, worldliness, and discontent in which she lived was too decidedly and fatally unfavourable to their growth--but she did not substitute for them any evil propensities or unworthy ambitions, and her chief faults were those of temper. She was undeniably sulky; her aunt did not traduce her on that point, though she did not fitly understand the origin of the defect, or make any kind or charitable allowance for its manifestation. Anger rarely took the form of passion with Annette; but when aroused, it was very difficult to allay, and her resentment was not easy to eradicate. The individual in the family whom she disliked most--her uncle--was that one who least often excited the girl's temper. She kept clear of him, away from him, as much as she could, and usually regarded him with a degree of contempt which seemed to act as a safeguard to her anger. But the internal life of the house, as shared by the three women, Mrs. Derinzy, her niece, and Mrs. Stothard, was sometimes far from peaceful. Annette was possessed of much better feelings than might have been expected, her antecedents and her present circumstances considered; and she was sometimes successfully appealed to to forego her own will and submit to Mrs. Derinzy's, by a representation of the delicacy of that lady's health, and the ill effect which opposition and the sudden estrangement of her niece would have upon her. Many quarrels were made up in this way, and not the less readily that Annette was curious about the condition of Mrs. Derinzy's health. She never exactly understood the nature of her illness--which did not seem to the girl to interfere with her pursuing the ordinary routine of a lady's life in a secluded country place, and admitted of all the moderate and mildly-flavoured diversions which such conditions of existence could bestow--but which was kept in view constantly by the patient herself and Mrs. Stothard, pleaded in support of the impossibility of any change in the mode of life of the Derinzy family, and substantiated by the periodic visits of Dr. Wainwright. Annette was wholly unconscious that while her own illness was the subject of village gossip, comment, and speculation, no one outside had any notion that Mrs. Derinzy was a chronic sufferer, requiring the expensive and solicitous care of a physician of eminence from London, who was well known in Beachborough to be such, and who was generally supposed to come to see the young lady. She would have been greatly angered had she suspected the existence of such an equivoque; for among the strongest of her feelings were a repugnance to knowing herself to be discussed, and an intense dislike to Dr. Wainwright.

Annette's conduct towards the confidential physician, who was said to be so clever in the treatment of disease, and especially of disease of the nondescript, or at least not described, kind from which Mrs. Derinzy suffered, had frequently been such as to justify her aunt's displeasure, and deserve her reprobation as ill-tempered and ill-bred. His appearance at Beachborough was invariably a signal for Annette's exhibiting herself in her least attractive light, and generally for open revolt against Mrs. Derinzy's wishes and authority. The girl would contrive to get out of the house unnoticed, and remain away for hours; or she would pretend illness and go to bed, and lie there quite silent and refusing food, until she was convinced, by the entrance of Dr. Wainwright into her room, and his accosting her with the calm imperturbable authority of a physician, that the very worst way in which to avoid seeing a doctor was by pretending to be ill. Or she would make her appearance just in time to sit down at dinner, and having returned his greeting with the utmost curtness and reluctance, maintain obstinate silence throughout the meal, and retire immediately on its conclusion. All remonstrances had failed to induce her to behave better in this respect, and even Dr. Wainwright's skilful quizzing of her for this peculiarity--which he told her was very unfashionable, because he was quite a favourite with the ladies--had no effect. She either could not or would not say why she disliked Dr. Wainwright, but she had no hesitation in acknowledging that she did dislike him.

Mrs. Stothard's position in the Derinzy household, however anomalous in the sight of outsiders, was such as to make her perfectly aware of the relations of each of its members to the others, while there was something in her own relation to each respectively unknown to, uncomprehended by, them. She ruled them all in a quiet unobtrusive way, whose absolutism was as complete as it was unmarked, unmarred by any tyranny of manner. We have seen how Captain Derinzy and she were affected towards each other, and this narrative will have to deal with her manipulation of Mrs. Derinzy's "scheme." As for Annette, she seemed to be Mrs. Stothard's chief object in life, as she certainly constituted her principal occupation in every day. But not ostentatiously or oppressively so. If Annette had been called upon to say which of her three associates was least displeasing to her, which she least frequently wished away, she would have replied, "Mrs. Stothard;" but she did not love even her. With Mrs. Stothard, Annette seldom quarrelled; but a visit from Dr. Wainwright always furnished the occasion for one of their rare disagreements; so that when the elder woman came to tell the girl of his arrival one afternoon, while she was lying down to rest after a long ramble, she knew she was bringing her very unwelcome news.

Annette had been restless of late. She was not ill, and there were no symptoms of suffering in her appearance; but she had taken one of her fits of mental weariness, for which her life offered no irrational excuse, and, as her habit was, she had resorted, as a means of wearing it off, to severe bodily exercise, walking such distances as secured her against the danger of a companion, and yet never succeeding in being as tired as she wished to be.

"I should like to sleep for a week, a month, a year," she would say, "and wake up in some new world, with nothing and nobody in it I had ever seen before, and everything one thinks and says and does quite different."

But when Annette was weariest of mind, and tried to be weariest of body, she slept less, and her temper was at its worst. So Mrs. Stothard found her, when she urged her to get up and dress nicely for dinner, because Dr. Wainwright had arrived, more than usually recalcitrant.

"I shan't," said the girl, tossing her handsome arms over her head as she lay at full length upon a sofa in her dressing-room, and ruffling her dark hair with her wilful hands; "I shan't. I detest him; you know I detest him. What is he always watching me, and trying to catch my eye, for? He's a bad cruel man, and he comes here for no good. What's the matter with my aunt? She was very well on Monday."

"I don't know indeed, Miss Annette; the old complaint, I suppose."

"The old complaint! what old complaint? It's all nonsense, in my belief, and he persuades her she's ill for a purpose of his own. At all events, let him see her and be done with it; I shan't go down to dinner."

"Oh yes, you will," said Mrs. Stothard, who had been quietly laying out Annette's dress, pouring hot water into a basin, and disposing combs and brushes on the toilet-table, "Oh yes, you will. You'll never be so foolish as to make a quarrel with your uncle and aunt about such a thing as that, and have the servants talking of it. Come, my dear, get up; you've no time to spare."

She looked steadily at the girl as she spoke, and put one hand under her shoulder, raising her from the pillow. Annette shrunk from her for a moment with a look partly cowed, partly of avoidance; the next she let her feet down to the floor, and stood up passively, but with her sullenest expression of face.

"Where's Mary?" she said.

"Busy with Mrs. Derinzy. She has been very poorly this afternoon. I'll help you to dress."

She did so silently; and Annette did not speak, but, like a froward child, twitched herself about, and made her task as troublesome as possible--a manoeuvre which Mrs. Stothard quietly ignored.

"Where is the odious man?" she asked suddenly, when she stood dressed for dinner before her toilet-glass, into which she did not look.

"In the drawing-room with the Captain; you had better join them."

"No, I won't, not till the bell rings. I'll keep out of his way as long as I can. I'm neither Dr. Wainwright's friend nor Dr. Wainwright's patient."

[CHAPTER X.]

MADAME CLARISSE.

Mrs. Stothard had been lucky in getting her daughter into such an unexceptionable establishment as that presided over by Madame Clarisse; at least, so everybody said who spoke to her on the subject, and, as we well know, what everybody says must be right. It does not detract from the truth of the assertion when it is confessed that very few people knew anything about Mrs. Stothard or her daughter; but the fact remains the same. Madame Clarisse was decidedly the milliner most in vogue during her day with the best--that is to say, the most clothes-wearing and most cachet-giving--section of London society; and any young woman who had the luck to learn her experience in such a school, and, after a few years, had the money to set up in business for herself, might consider her fortune as good as made.

No doubt that Madame Clarisse's position was not ungrudgingly yielded up to her, was not achieved, in fact, without an enormous amount of work, and worry, and industry, and self-negation on her part; without a proportionate quantity of jealousy and heart-burning, and envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, on the part of those engaged in the same occupation. Even in the very heyday of her success, when her workwomen were sitting up for forty-eight hours at a stretch (Madame Clarisse lived, it must be recollected, before the passing of any ridiculous Acts of Parliament limiting the hours for women's labour); when the carriages were in double rows before her door; and when, after a drawing-room or a court-ball, the columns of the fashionable journals were seething with repetitions of her name--there were some people who said that they preferred the Misses Block, and roundly asserted that the Misses Block's "cut" was better than Madame Clarisse's. The Misses Block were attenuated old maids, who lived in Edwards Street, Portman Square, in a house which was as old-fashioned as, Madame Clarisse used to declare, were its occupiers, and who had suddenly blossomed from the steady county connection which their mother bequeathed to them into a whirl of fashionable patronage, notwithstanding that they were "bêtes--Dieu, comme elles sont bêtes!" according to their lively rival's account.

Madame Clarisse was not bête. If she had been, she would never have made the fame or the money which she enjoyed, and which were entirely the result of her own tact, and talent, and industry. No mother had ever left her a snug business with a county connection. All that she recollected of a mother was a snuffy old person with a silk handkerchief tied round her head, who used to live on a fifth floor in a little street debouching from the Cannebière in Marseilles, and who used to whack her little daughter with a long flat bit of wood when she cried from hunger or other causes. When this mother died, which she was good enough to do at a sufficiently early period of the girl's life, Clarisse was taken in hand by her uncle, an épicier and ship-chandler, who apprenticed her to a milliner in the town, and was kind to her in his odd way. The girl was sharp and appreciative, ready with her needle, readier with her tongue--she had a knack of conciliating obstreperous customers whose orders had been unduly delayed in a manner that delighted her mistress, a plain, blunt, stupid woman--readiest of all with her eyes. Not as regards oeillades, though that was a kind of sharpshooting in which she was not unskilled, but in the use of her eyes for business purposes. Mademoiselle Clarisse looked on and listened, and learned the world. No one came in or went out of the work-room or the showroom without being diligently studied and appraised by those sharp eyes and that quick brain. It was from her appreciation of the English character, as learned in the milliner's shop at Marseilles, that Mademoiselle Clarisse determined on seeking her fortune in our favoured land, should the opportunity ever present itself. Marseilles has a population of resident English--ship-owners, ship-captains, naval men connected with the great Peninsular and Oriental Company, many of whose vessels ply from that port--and these worthy people have for the most part wives and daughters, whose principal consolation in their banishment from England is that they are enabled to dress themselves in the French fashion, and at a much cheaper rate than they could were they at home. There is no gainsaying that the prices charged by the Marseilles milliner, even to the English ladies, were less than those which they would have been liable to in their native land; but these prices, which were willingly paid, were still so much in excess of those charged to the townspeople, that Mademoiselle Clarisse clearly saw that a country which produced people at once so rich and so simple was the place for her future action.

She was a clear-headed young woman, with simple tastes and an innate propensity for saving money; so that when her apprenticeship expired she had a sum laid by--small indeed, but still something--with which she determined to try her fortune in England. She had picked up a little of the language, and had obtained a few introductions to compatriots living in London; so that when she arrived, she was not wholly friendless or utterly dependent. Mademoiselle Anatole--born in Lyons, but long resident in London--wanted a partner; and after a very sharp wrangle, conducted by the ladies on each side with great skill and diplomacy, a portion of Mademoiselle Clarisse's savings was transferred to her countrywoman, and a limp and ill-printed circular informed Mademoiselle Anatole's patronesses that she had just received into partnership the celebrated Mademoiselle Clarisse from Paris, and that they hoped henceforth, etc.

Mademoiselle Anatole lived on the first floor of an old house in the Bloomsbury district, which had once been a fashionable mansion, but which was now let out in lodgings. Under the French milliner, a German importer of pipes and pictures and Bohemian glass had his rooms, and his name, "Korb," shone out truculently from the street-door jamb, towering above the milliner's more modest announcement of her residence. The entire neighbourhood had a foreign and Bohemian flavour. In an otherwise modest and British-looking house, Malmédie Frères announced in black-and-gold letters, much too slim and upright, that they kept an hotel "À la Boule d'Or." From the open windows in the summer-time poured forth, mixed with clouds of tobacco-smoke, waitings and roarings of the human voice, and poundings and grindings of pianos. The artists-colourmen had the street on their books (keeping it there as little as possible), canvases and millboards were perpetually arriving at one or other of the houses where the windows looking northward were run up into the next floor, and bearded men smoking short pipes pervaded the neighbourhood night and day.

Even the very house in which the milliners lived was not free from the Bohemian taint. On the second floor, immediately above the magasin des modes, and immediately under the private rooms of Mesdames Anatole and Clarisse, lived Mr. Rupert Robinson. Shortly after her arrival Mademoiselle Clarisse met on the stairs several times a middle-sized, middle-aged, jolly-looking gentleman, with bright roguish eyes and a light-brown beard, who bowed as he passed by, and gave her the inside of the staircase with much politeness, and with a "Pardon, ma'amselle," in a very good accent. Asked who this could be, Mademoiselle Anatole responded that it was probably "ce Robinson:" asked what was ce Robinson, Madamoiselle Anatole further replied that he was "feuilletoniste, littérateur--je ne sais quoi!" And Mademoiselle Anatole was not far out in her guess, to which she had probably been assisted by the constant sight of a grimy-faced printer's-boy peacefully slumbering on a stool specially placed for his accommodation outside Robinson's door. Those were the early days of cheap periodicals, and there were few newspaper-offices or publishers' shops where Mr. Rupert Robinson was unknown or where he was not welcome. He was a bright, genial, jolly fellow, with an inexhaustible stock of animal spirits and good-humour, with a keen appreciation of the ludicrous, and a singular power of hunting-out and levelling lance at small social shams and inflated humbugs of the day; and though he would not have used a bludgeon, and could not have wielded a cutlass, yet he made excellent practice with his foil, and when he chose, as it happened sometimes, to break the button off and set to work in earnest, his adversary always bore the marks of the bout. Generally, however, he kept clear of anything like heavy work, for which his temperament unsuited him, and confined himself to light literature, at which he was one of the smartest hands of the day; and, in addition to his journalistic and periodical work, he was one of the pillars of the Parthenon Theatre.

Those who only know the Parthenon in its present days--when it occasionally remains shut for months, to open for a few nights with "Herr Eselkopfs celebrated impersonation of the 'Jew whom Shakespeare drew,'" vide public advertisement and, published criticism from Berwick-on-Tweed Argus; when it alternates between opera and burlesque or tragedy and breakdowns, but is always dirty, and dingy, and mouldy-smelling, and bankrupt-looking--can have little idea of what it was in the days of which we are writing, when Mr. and Mrs. Momus were its lessees, and when there was more fun to be found within its walls than in any other place in London, even of treble its size. The chiefs of that merry company are both dead; the belles whose bright eyes enthralled us then are portly matrons now, renewing their former beauty in their daughters; the walking gentlemen have walked off entirely or lapsed into heavy fathers; and the authors, who were constantly lounging in the greenroom, and convulsing actors and actresses with their audacious chaff, are some dead, and all who are left sobered and steadied and aged. But all were young, and jolly, and witty, and daring in those days; and foremost amongst them was Mr. Rupert Robinson, who was then just beginning to write burlesques in a style which his successors have spoiled and written out, and was dramatising popular nursery stories, and filling them with the jokes, allusions, and parodies of the day.

Although Mr. Rupert Robinson had been for some time domiciled under the same roof as Mademoiselle Anatole, he had made no attempt to cultivate the acquaintance of that lady, who was in truth a very long, very thin, very flat, very melancholy person, who had not merely les larmes dans sa voix, but seemed to be thoroughly saturated with misery. But soon after Mademoiselle Clarisse was added to the firm, the "littery gent," as Mrs. Mogg the landlady was accustomed to call her second-floor lodger, contrived to get up a bowing acquaintance, which soon ripened into speaking, and afterwards into much greater intimacy. Mademoiselle Anatole at first disapproved of the camaraderie thus established; but she was mollified by the judicious presentation of unlimited orders for the theatres and the opera, and by other kindness which had more satisfactory and more enduring results; for Mr. Rupert Robinson, being of a convivial nature, was in the habit of frequently giving what he called "jolly little suppers" to certain select ladies of the corps de ballet of the Parthenon; cheery little meals, where the male portion of the company was contributed by the Household Brigade, the Legislature, the Bar, and the Press, and where the comestibles were the succulent oyster opened in the room and eaten fresh from the operating knife, the creamy lobster, and hot potato handed from the block-tin repository presided over by a peripatetic provider known to the guests as "Tatur Khan." In his early youth Rupert had been a medical student at the Hôtel Dieu in Paris, and he strove, not unsuccessfully, to imbue these little parties with a spirit of the vie de Bohème which rules the denizens of the Latin Quarter. The viands were very good and very cheap, and though there was plenty of fun and laughter, there was no license.

Soon after the establishment of his acquaintance with Clarisse, Rupert invited her and her partner to one of these banquets, and she soon became popular with the set who were admitted to them. Mademoiselle Anatole they did not think much of; indeed, Miss Bella Montmorency, one of the four leading coryphées who at that time were creating such a sensation in the ballet of Mustapha at the T.R.D.L, said all the use that that thin Frenchwoman could be made of was to replace the skeleton, a relic of Rupert's old surgical life, which he sometimes brought out of its box and seated at the table, crowned with flowers. But with Clarisse they were very different. She was bright and cheery, sang a pretty little song, and laughed a merry little ringing laugh at all the jokes, whether she understood them or not; and the ballet-girls liked her very much, and invited her to come and see them, and tried to help her in the world. They could not do much in that way themselves, for they made their own dresses of course, and when they had a present of a black-silk gown or a shawl, had no chance of recommending any particular vendor; but when they saw that the Frenchwomen were really excellent in their business, they spoke about them in the theatre so loudly, that the rumours of their proficiency reached the ears of Mrs. Lannigan and Miss Calverley, the two "leading ladies" of the theatre, and incited their curiosity. The crimson-slashed jackets and the lovely diaphanous nether garments, the Polish lancer-caps and the red boots with brass heels, which these ladies wore in the burlesques, were provided by the management and prepared by Miss Hirst, the wardrobe woman, a crushed creature with a pock-marked face and a wall-eye, who always had the bosom of her gown studded with pins, and her hair streaked with fluffy ends of thread. But when phases of modern life were to be represented, the ladies chose to find their own dresses; and hearing of the excellent "cut" and "fit" of Mademoiselles Anatole and Clarisse, were persuaded to give those young women a trial. The result was favourable, recommendation followed on recommendation, and the firm had as much work as it could possibly get through.

It was about this period of her life that Mademoiselle Clarisse, in her visits to the theatre, made the acquaintance of M. Pierre. It was not to be doubted that M. Pierre, as well as Mademoiselles Anatole and Clarisse, was in possession of a legitimate surname in addition to the nom de baptême by which he was commonly known; but, following the custom of those of his class, he had suffered it to lapse on coming to England, and though known as "ce cher Lélong" by his compatriots, called himself to his customers M. Pierre, and was so called by them. M. Pierre was a coiffeur by profession--unfortunately, as he thought; for he lived at a time when that profession was rather at a discount. In his early youth, when the great ladies wore their own hair dressed in the most elaborate fashion, the coiffeur was a necessary adjunct to every well-regulated establishment. Had he lived until now, when the great ladies wear other persons' hair dressed in the most preposterous manner, he would have found plenty to do, and would probably have invented various washes, which would have ruined the health of thousands of silly women and made the fortune of their concocter. But when M. Pierre was in the prime of his life, elaborate hair-dressing went out of fashion, and the simplicity of knots, bands, and ringlets, which could be intrusted to the maid or even executed by the fair fingers of the wearer, came in its stead. This was an awful blow to M. Pierre, whose experience was thus restricted to members of the theatrical profession, or to the occasional preparation of wigs and headdresses for a fancy ball; but he had saved a little money, and being a long-headed calculating man, he arranged to invest and reinvest it to great advantage. At the time that he was introduced to Mademoiselle Clarisse he was an elderly man, but he had lost none of his shrewdness and savoir faire. He saw at a glance that his countrywoman was not merely perfect mistress of her art, but generally a clever woman of the world; and after a little time he proposed to her that they should club their means and hunt the rich English in couples. He pointed out to her that his connection formerly lay among the very highest and best classes, many of whom recollected him, and would be glad to give anyone a turn on his recommendation; that he, as a man, had a much greater chance of buying merchandise good and cheap than any woman; finally, that he had capital, without which she could never do anything great, which he would put into the business.

Mademoiselle Clarisse took a week to think over all that Pierre had said to her before coming to any decision. Her ambition had increased with her success, and she had long since ceased to think very highly of the patronage of the theatrical ladies, to obtain which at one time she would have made any sacrifice. For some time she had been in business on her own account; Mademoiselle Anatole, so soon as she realised a sufficiency, having retired to Lyons, there to weep and grizzle and sniff, and make herself as uncomfortable and unpleasant-looking as the vast majority of French old maids. And Clarisse was fully aware of M. Pierre's talent, and believed in his fortune; and verging towards middle age, and having lost sight of Rupert Robinson, and others for whom she had had her caprices after him, and having lost her zest for rollicking suppers and fun of that kind, thought she could not do better than settle herself in life, and accordingly accepted M. Pierre's proposal.

She soon found she had done rightly. Many of her husband's old patronesses consented to give her a trial for his sake, and were so pleased that they recommended her to all their friends. The establishment in George Street was then first opened, and M. Pierre not only did all he promised but a great deal more. For, being always a man of great taste, he turned his attention to the devising of special articles of millinery, then employed his manual dexterity in carrying out his ideas; and not suffering in any way from a sense of the ridiculous, he might be seen hour after hour in his sanctum, with his glasses on his nose and an embroidered skull-cap on his head, singing away some pastoral chanson or drinking couplet, while his nimble fingers were busily engaged in stitching at a novel kind of headdress or in sketching out a design for an artistic bonnet. He was proud of his wife's appearance and pleased with her industry and success, and he enjoyed his married life very much for a couple of years, making a point of going to St. James's Street on drawing-room days, and to the Opera on great nights, to admire the results of his handiwork, but otherwise living very domestically and quietly; and then he died, leaving all his worldly possessions to his widow.

The success which had attended Madame Clarisse during her husband's lifetime continued after his death, and there was scarcely a house in the millinery business holding a higher reputation than hers. It was this reputation which induced Mrs. Stothard, ordinarily so quiet and self-contained, to make a great effort to get her daughter engaged as a member of Madame Clarisse's staff. Many young women of Daisy's position in life would have eagerly accepted such a chance; "From Madame Clarisse's," figuring on a brass door-plate in the future, being an excellent recommendation and an almost certain augury of success. The Frenchwoman was perfectly cognisant of this, and required a large premium with her apprentices. That once paid, the girls were turned into the workroom and left to "take it out" as best they might; unless, indeed, one of them showed exceptional talent and skill--qualities which were immediately recognised by their employer.

Daisy's promotion had, however, not been due to her possession of either of these qualities. She had one, a much rarer, which influenced her removal from the work-room to the showroom, and which led Madame Clarisse and all her customers to take notice of the girl--and that was the exceptional style of her beauty. Ladies young and old would call Madame to them, and in undertones ask her who was the "young person" with that wonderful complexion and that excellent manner. Was she not some one who--they meant to say--not born in that class of life, don't you know; so very bred-looking and distinguée, and that sort of thing? Some women would have been jealous of such compliments paid to their assistants, but Madame was far above anything of that kind. She used to bow and to invent any little nonsense as it occurred to her at the moment, enough to satisfy the querists without leading them to pursue their inquiries, and then would dismiss the subject from her thoughts. The girl was asses gentille, neat, and even elegant in her appearance, and of good address; looked well in the street, wore pretty gloves, Madame had noticed, in contradistinction to most Anglaises--"qui sont ordinairement gantées comme les chats bottes," as she would say with a shrug of horror--and walked well--in Madame's mind another unusual accomplishment in an Englishwoman. Altogether she was a credit to the establishment; and Madame began to take a little more notice of her, talk more confidentially of business matters to her, and leave her in charge of affairs when pleasure engagements, of which she had a great many, summoned her away. Under these different circumstances the girl became a different being in her employer's eyes. Hitherto Madame Clarisse had only seen her as a quiet impassive young woman doing her duty in the showroom; but when she came to know her, and to see how every feeling was reflected in her face--how the gray eyes could flash and the colour would rush into the pale cheek, heightened in its brilliancy by the creamy whiteness surrounding it--she allowed to herself that "Fanfan," as she now called her, was lovely indeed.

And then Madame Clarisse began to have new notions about Fanfan. The French milliner was not an exceptionally good woman, nor, indeed, ever thought of arrogating to herself the title. In the days of her youth she had not permitted any straitlaced notions of morality to interfere with her pleasures; and in her comfortable middle age she never neglected an opportunity of gratifying the two passions by which she was most swayed--money-making and good living. She cared very little as to what her young women might do during the few spare hours of their leisure; but it was a necessity of her business, that the assistants in the showroom should be presentable persons and of a certain staid demeanour. Fanfan's manners were admirably suited for her place--cold, respectful, and intelligent; but when Madame had discovered the existence of the volcano beneath the icy exterior, had learned, as she did quietly and dexterously, that, with all the good schooling she had gone through, and the restraint which she had brought to bear upon herself, the girl was full of feeling and passion, and that there was "a great deal of human nature" in her, she took a special and peculiar interest in Fanfan's future.

"To make herself a modiste here in London without money is impossible," she mused. "To set up in Brighton or Tonbridge, to marry an épicier or an employé--ah, my faith, she is too good for that! Is it that Madame Lobbia, that little dame, mince, and like to a white rabbit, who flies to and from Saint Jean's Woot at the great trot with her beautiful horses, and wears diamonds in full day; is it that Mdlle. Victorine, feu écuyère at Franconi's, who leads Milor Milliken such a dance, throws his money to the winds, and laughs to his nose; is it that they are to be mentioned with Fanfan? And there are other Jews, merchants of diamonds, than M. Lobbia, and other milors as rich and as silly as Milor Milliken. Forward, my Fanfan! why this dull life to you? For me, do you ask, why I give myself so much trouble? Hold, I know nothing! In watching the progress of others one renews one's own youth, and to exploiter so much grace and beauty would be interesting, and might be remunerative. Et du reste----" and Madame Clarisse paused for a moment, reflecting; then shrugged her shoulders slightly, and said, "du reste, à la guerre comme à la guerre!"

But whatever Madame's notions on the subject might have been, she kept them strictly to herself, never making any difference in her manner towards Daisy, save, perhaps, in being a little kinder and showing a little increased confidence in her. It was not until the evening after the day on which Fanny Stothard had written to her mother that Madame made any regular approach to familiarity with her assistant. They had had a long and busy and tiring day, for the end of the season was coming on, as it always does, with a rush, and people had neglected ordering their autumn clothes, as they always do, until the last, and the showrooms had been crammed for six hours with an impatient crowd, every component member of which desired to be served at once. Madame had given up any réunions for that evening, and had taken her fair share of the work and supervised everything, remaining in the showroom until all the girls, except Daisy, had gone. Then she walked up to Daisy, and put one hand on the girl's shoulder, tapping her cheek with the other, and saying:

"Enfin, Mademoiselle Fanfan, this dreadful day has come to an end at last. You look worn and fatigued, my child. It's lucky that the end of the season is close at hand, or you would what you call 'knock-up,' without fail."

"Oh, I shall do very well, Madame, thank you," replied Daisy, a little coldly; "a night's rest will quite set me up again."

"Oh, but you must have something before your night's rest, Fanfan. You are triste and tired; I see it in your eyes. You want a--tiens! what is it that little farceur, the advocate Chose, calls it?--a peg. Ha, ha! that is it! You want a sherry peg or a glass of champagne. We will go up to my room, and have some Lyons saucisson and some champagne."

At any other time Daisy would have declined this invitation; but partly because she really felt low and hipped and overwrought, and imagined that the wine would restore her, partly because she was afraid of appearing ungracious to her employer, whose increased kindness to her of late she had noticed, she now said she should be delighted, and followed Madame up the stairs.

Such a cosy little sitting-room was Madame's--low-ceilinged and odd-shaped, like an ordinary entresol carried up a story; with French furniture in red velvet, with the walls covered with engravings and nicknacks and Danton's statuettes, and the tables littered "with scrofulous French novels" in their yellow paper covers. The room was lit by one large window and a half, the other half giving light to Madame's bedroom, which led out by a door, through which, when open, as it usually was, glimpses could be obtained of the end of a brass bedstead apparently dressed up in blue muslin. There was a cloth on the table, and Madame bustled about, and, assisted by her little French maid--the page-boy retired home after customers' hours--soon produced some sausage and the remains of a Strasbourg pie, bread, butter, and fromage de Brie, and from the cellar (which was a cupboard on the landing with a patent lock, where Madame kept a small stock of remarkably good wine) a bottle of champagne.

Daisy could not eat very much, she was over-tired for that; but the wine did her good, and she talked much more freely than was her wont.

Madame Clarisse was delighted with her; a certain bitterness in the girl's tone being specially appreciated by the Frenchwoman. After some little talk she said to her:

"You still live in the same apartment, Fanfan?"

"Yes, Madame--in the same garret."

"Garret!" echoed Madame Clarisse. "Eh bien, what does it matter? Garret or palace, it makes little difference when one is young.

'Bravant le monde, et les sots et les sages,

Sans avenir, fier de mon printemps,

Leste et joyeux je montais six étages--

Dans un grenier qu'on est bien à vingt ans.'"

And as she trolled out the verse in a rich voice, Madame's eyes looked very wicked, and she chinked her glass against her companion's.

"Perhaps it is because I only live on the third story--though there's nothing above it--but I certainly never feel leste or joyeuse," said the girl.

"No?" said Madame interrogatively. "That's a sad thing to say. And yet you have youth and beauty, Fanfan."

"Youth and beauty!" cried the girl. "If I have them, what good are they to me? Can they drag me out of this life of slavery, take me from that wretched garret, give me gowns and jewels, and horses, and carriages, and a position in life?"

Daisy was full of excitement; the tones of her voice were thrilling, her eyes sparkled, and her cheeks were flushed. Madame Clarisse eyed her curiously.

"Yes," she said, after a minute's pause; "they can do all this, and"--taking Daisy's hand--"some day, Fanfan, perhaps they may."

"Perhaps they may," said Daisy.

She was thinking of the chance of her marrying Paul Derinzy, whom she knew as Mr. Douglas. But Madame Clarisse did not know Mr. Derinzy, so she was not thinking of Daisy's marrying him--or anybody else, as it happened.

[CHAPTER XI.]

BEHIND THE SCENES.

When Mrs. Stothard said, "Oh yes, you will!" as comment upon Annette Derinzy's outspoken declaration that she would not go down to dinner, she probably knew that she had grounds for the assertion. At all events, the result proved her to be right. The dinner-bell clanged out, pealing through the crazy tumble-down Tower, and awaking all the echoes lying in wait in that ramshackle building; and ere the reverberation of the noise had ceased, the door of Miss Derinzy's bedroom was wide open. Annette's back had been turned to it, and when she wheeled round, her attention attracted by the current of air which rushed in and disarranged a muslin scarf which she wore round her shoulders, she saw that Mrs. Stothard was busily engaged at a chest of drawers standing in a somewhat remote corner of the room. Annette was silent, but she glanced stealthily and shiftily out of the corners of her eyes. Mrs. Stothard still remained immersed in her occupation. The girl shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, hesitating, dallying; then shook herself together, as it were, and seeing she was still unnoticed, with a low chuckle silently and swiftly passed through the doorway and descended the stairs.

In seaside places such as Beachborough the evenings in late summer are chilly. There was a handful of fire in the dining-room grate, and while Miss Annette was sulking upstairs, and deliberating whether she should or should not come down, Captain Derinzy was standing on the rug with his back to the grate, and from that post of vantage was haranguing his wife and his guest--Dr. Wainwright--in his own peculiar way. When he was alone with his wife the Captain was silent and submissive; when a third person was present, and he knew that a curtain-lecture was the worst he had to dread, he was loquacious and imperative.

"And again I say to you, Wainwright," said he, in continuance of some previous conversation, "she's got to that pitch now that she isn't to be borne. I can stand a good deal--no man more so; they used to say, when I was on the Committee of the Windham, that I had a--a--what was it?--judicial mind; that was what they called it, a judicial mind--but I can't stand this girl and her tempers, and so something must be done; and there's an end of it, Wainwright!"

There are some men who are never called by any but their christian-names, and those often familiarly abbreviated, by their most promiscuous acquaintance. There are others in whose appearance and manners something forbids their interlocutors ever dispensing with their courtesy titles. Dr. Wainwright, one would have said, undoubtedly belonged to the latter class. He was a tall man, standing over six feet in height, with a high bald forehead, large features, square jaw, and deep piercing gray eyes. His manners were placidly courtly, his naturally sonorous voice was skilfully modulated, and there was an unmistakable air of latent strength about him, a sort of consciousness of the possession of certain power, you could not tell what. He might have been a duke, or a philosopher in easy circumstances, or a "man in authority, having servants under him." Quiet, dignified, and bland, he held his own amongst all sorts and conditions of men, and with the exception of two or three intimates of a quarter of a century's standing, Captain Derinzy was probably the only person living who would have thought of calling him "Wainwright." The Doctor winced a little at the repetition of the familiarity, but beyond that took no notice of it.

"My dear Captain Derinzy," said he, after a moment's pause, "I can perfectly appreciate your feelings. I have not the least doubt that Miss Derinzy's unfortunate illness is the source of great annoyance to you. Still, if you are indisposed to run certain risks, which, as I have explained to Mrs. Derinzy----"

"I thought by this time, Dr. Wainwright," interrupted the lady, "you would have seen the utter futility of paying the least attention to anything which Captain Derinzy may say!"

"My love!" murmured the Captain.

"He is as fully impressed as any of us," continued Mrs. Derinzy, without taking the least notice of her husband, "with the necessity of our pursuing the course we have agreed upon; but he has a passion for hearing his own voice; and as he knows that I never listen to him, he is only too glad to find someone who will."

"No, no! Look here, Wainwright," said the Captain. "It's all very well, you know, but Mrs. Derinzy don't put the thing quite fairly. She's a woman, you know, and it's natural for women to be dull and left alone, and all that; but a man's a different thing. He requires----"

Captain Derinzy did not finish his sentence as to a man's requirements, for Dr. Wainwright's quick ear had caught the sound of an approaching footstep, and he held up his hand and raised his eyebrows in warning, only in time to stop his voluble host as the door opened and Annette appeared.

As she entered the room Dr. Wainwright immediately faced her. There was no mistaking his figure and presence, even if she had not expected to find him there. Nevertheless, her first idea was to close the door and run away. But she would scarcely have had the opportunity of doing this, however much she might have wished it; for the Doctor at once stepped across the room, and had taken her hand in his, and was bowing over it in his old-fashioned courtly way, almost before she was aware of it.

"There is no occasion to ask after your health, Miss Annette," he said in his soft pleasant tone. "One has only to look at you to have one's pleasantest hopes confirmed. You and the Dorsetshire air do credit to each other."

"I am quite well," said Annette shortly, taking her hand from his.

"Here's dinner!" said the Captain. "You see, we don't make a stranger of you, Wainwright--at least, Mrs. Derinzy doesn't. There's a dam prejudice in this house against using the drawing-room; so we sit stiving in this infernal place, 'parlour, and kitchen, and all,' and---- Where will you sit?"

Sentence abruptly concluded in consequence of unmistakable manifestations of his wife's being unable to put up with him any longer.

"Thank you, Captain Derinzy, I'll sit over here, if you please," said the Doctor, with an extra dash of stiffness in his manner; "opposite Miss Annette; and, if you'll permit me, I will move these flowers a little on one side, that I may get a better view of her."

"Why do you always stare at me?" said Annette, with a defiant air.

"Do I stare?" asked Dr. Wainwright. "If I do, I am exceedingly rude, and ought to know better. But haven't you used the wrong word, my dear young lady? I look at you, perhaps; but I hope I don't stare."

"Looking and staring are all the same. I hate to be looked at!"

"You are the very first girl I ever heard give utterance to that sentiment," said the Doctor cheerily; "and you'll soon outgrow such ideas."

"I daresay we shall hear no more of them after her cousin Paul has been staying with us," said Mrs. Derinzy. "We expect Paul soon now, Doctor."

"I have heard a good deal of Mr. Paul from my son, who is in the same office with him. They seem to be great allies, and George speaks in the highest terms of Mr. Paul."

"Is your son's name George?" asked Annette.

"Yes."

"Your own name is not George?"

"No; mine is Philip."

"I'm glad it is not the same as your son's."

The Doctor and Mrs. Derinzy exchanged glances, and were silent; but Captain Derinzy, who all his life had been notorious for his obtuseness in taking a hint, said:

"Why, what a ridick'lous thing you are sayin', Annette! Why are you glad the Doctor's son's name's not the same as his? What on earth difference could it make to you?"

"It could not make any difference to me," said the girl quietly; "only, I don't know why, I think I should wish to like Dr. Wainwright's son, and--and----"

"And the less he is like his father the greater the chance of your doing so; isn't that it, Miss Annette?" asked the Doctor, with his pleasant smile.

"Yes," said Annette, looking him straight in the face, "you're quite right; that is it."

This blunt communication was received by those who heard it after very different fashions. Mrs. Derinzy knit her brows, and, after looking savagely at her niece, shrugged her shoulders at the Doctor, as much as to say, "What could you expect?" Captain Derinzy laid down his knife and fork, and muttered, "Oh, dam!" apparently in confidence to his plate. The Doctor alone maintained his equanimity unimpaired. There was a pause--considering the tremendous character of the last remark--a very short pause--and then he said:

"Now, there's an instance of the injustice which is done by your sex, Mrs. Derinzy, to ours. Miss Netty--with an honesty which is impayable, and which, if there were a little more of it in polite society, would go far to the explosion of what Mr. Carlyle calls 'shams and wind-bags'--says she doesn't like me. She gives no reason, you observe; so that I am relegated to the same position as another member of our profession--Dr. Fell--who also was misliked, and equally without reason alleged."

"I could tell you the reasons for my disliking you," said Annette.

It was extraordinary, the change which had come over her face. The cheeks were full-blooded, the eyes suffused and starting from her head, the hair pushed back, the whole look fierce and defiant.

"Could you?" said the Doctor; then, after looking up at her, adding very quickly, "Ah, but you must not. I don't want to hear a list of my shortcomings, or a catalogue of my faults. I'm too old to make up for the one or get rid of the other; and---- Mrs. Derinzy, I must congratulate you on your cook. It is rare indeed, in what I may be pardoned in calling these out-of-the-way regions, that one comes across anything like this filet de sole."

He turned his face towards his hostess as he said these words, and spoke in her direction, but he scarcely moved his eyes from direct contemplation of Annette. The girl's face, with the same flush on it, was looking down, and she seemed to be working nervously with her hands, rapidly intertwining and then separating them, under the table.

Captain Derinzy, at the Doctor's last remark, had given vent to a very curious sound, half-sigh of self-commiseration, half a grunt of contempt. He had not learned much in the half-century during which he had adorned life--his natural gifts had been small, and he had not taken much trouble to improve upon them--but one thing he had arrived at, and that was an appreciation of good cooking. He not merely knew the difference between good and bad dishes--in itself by no means a common acquirement--but he had a knowledge of the arcana of the art, and great high-priests whose temples were the kitchens of London clubs had taken his opinion on the merits of various plats.

"Well," he said, after a moment, "that's a funny thing! I know you, Wainwright. You're not the kind of fellow to go in for politeness, and all that kind of thing--I mean, of course, flummery, you know, and all that--and yet you say we've got a good cook, and this is nice filet de sole! Why, there are fellows used to tell you about doctors, you know--'Oh yes, it's all very fine,' they used to say, 'for doctors to tell you not to eat this, and not to drink that, and all the time they're regular gourmets, don't you know!' Well, I think that's all stuff, for my part. They may know all very well about broth and beef-tea, and all that sort of beastliness that they give people when they're getting better; but I only knew one of 'em that ever knew anything really about cooking, and he was an old fellow who'd been out in India, and was a C.B., or something of that sort; and he told the cook at Windham how to make a curry--peculiar kind of thing, quite different from what you get mostly--that was delicious, by Jove! As for this stuff," continued the Captain, taking up a portion of the lauded filet on the end of his fork, and eyeing it with great disgust, "it's dry and tough and leathery, and tastes like badly-baked flannel-waistcoat, by Jove!"

During this speech Dr. Wainwright, although his polite attention to it had been obvious, had scarcely removed his glance from Annette. It remained on her as he said, turning his face in the Captain's direction, and laughing heartily:

"I never tasted badly-baked flannel-waistcoat, Captain Derinzy, and I still stand up for the excellence of the filet. However, I'm not going to be led into giving any opinion whether we're good judges of good living, or rather whether we exemplify the well-known exceptions which prove rules by not practising what we preach. But one thing can't be denied--that we hear of very curious stories about fancies in eating and drinking. I heard of one only the other day, of an old gentleman who had had the same breakfast for thirty years; and what do you think, Mrs. Derinzy, were its component parts?"

Mrs. Derinzy, also curiously observant of Annette, roused from her quiet watchfulness, and gave herself up to guessing. Tea, coffee, milk, cream, porridge, toast, ham, eggs, she suggested; while claret, brandy-and-soda, anchovy, devilled anything, and bitter beer in a tankard, were proposed by her husband. The Doctor shook his head at all these items, grimly saying:

"What should you say to Irish stew and hot whisky-and-water?"

"Heavens!" cried Mrs. Derinzy.

"For breakfast?" asked the Captain.

"For breakfast; and eaten in bed every day for thirty years!"

"Oh, dam!" said the Captain. "If you hadn't told the story, Wainwright, I shouldn't have believed it. Of course, if you say so, it is so; but the fellow must have been off his head--mad!"

Before he had uttered the last word Mrs. Derinzy, who seemed to have an idea of what was coming, had stretched out her hand towards her husband in warning, while even Dr. Wainwright moved uncomfortably on his chair. Had Annette heard it? Little doubt of that. She looked up slyly, very slyly, with a half-stealthy, half-searching glance at the Doctor; then raising her head, glared defiantly at her aunt, as though marking whether she were affected by the suggestion. She looked long and earnestly, then finding that Mrs. Derinzy's attention was concentrated on her, she withdrew her glance, and relapsed into her former stolid condition.

So the dinner progressed--pleasantly to Captain Derinzy, as a break in the monotony of his life. Not merely did Mrs. Derinzy, who, in her capacity of housekeeper, kept the keys of the cellar and exercised a rigorous economy in that department--not merely did she increase both the quality and quantity of the wine supplied to the table, but she refrained from joining in the conversation more than was absolutely demanded of her by politeness, and consequently the Captain was able to direct it into those channels which most delighted him. It is needless to say that those channels ran with small-talk and fashionable gossip, and petty details of that London life which he had once so thoroughly enjoyed, and from which he was now so unwillingly exiled. The Captain found his interlocutor perfectly able to converse on these his favourite topics. One might have thought that Dr. Wainwright had nothing better to do than to flutter from club to mess-room, and from mess-room to boudoir, so well was he up in the chronique scandaleuse of the day, adapting his phraseology, his voice, and manner to the fashion of the times. The Captain was delighted; great names, once familiar in his mouth as household words, but the mention of which he had not heard for ages, were once more ringing in his ears; the conversation seemed to possess the old smoking-room and barrack flavour so dear to him once, so dead to him of late; and while under its spell, his manner renewed its ancient swagger and his voice its old roll. He yet asked himself how the man whom he had hitherto only known as the sober sedate physician could have recalled such sentiments or borne so essential a part in their discussion.

At length the Doctor's anecdotes commenced to flag, and the Doctor himself was obviously seeking for an opportunity of breaking off the conversation. Mrs. Derinzy, who had been apparently dropping off to sleep, roused up with the declining voices, and catching a peculiar expression in the Doctor's face, was on the alert in an instant. That peculiar expression was a glance towards Annette, accompanied by a significant elevation of the eyebrows, following immediately upon which Dr. Wainwright said:

"And now I must drop this charming conversation which we have had, my dear Captain Derinzy, and, falling back into my professional character, must declare that it is time for us to adjourn.--Beauty sleep, my dear Miss Netty"--walking quickly round and laying his hand lightly on her shoulder--lightly, though she quivered under the touch, and rose at once from her seat--"beauty sleep is not to be had after twelve, they tell us; and though you don't require it, and though you said you didn't like to be looked at--oh, Miss Netty!--yet I think we're all of us sufficiently tired to wish for it to-night. So goodnight! You don't mind shaking hands with me, though you were cruel enough to say you disliked me; goodnight.--Goodnight, Mrs. Derinzy; you feel stronger to-night? Let me feel your pulse for one moment." Then in a rapid undertone to her, "Do you go with her, while I speak a word to Mrs. Stothard. Don't leave till she returns." Again aloud, "Goodnight."

The Captain was making a final foray among the decanters as Mrs. Derinzy and Annette, closely followed by Dr. Wainwright, passed out of the door, immediately on the other side of which Mrs. Stothard was standing. She was about to follow the ladies, but a sign from the Doctor arrested her, and she let them pass on, remaining behind with him. He said but very few words to her, and those in a muttered undertone, but she understood them apparently, nodded her reply, and hurried away upstairs.

"Now, Miss Derinzy, get to bed; do you hear? This is the last time I shall speak to you; next time I shall make you."

The tone in which these words are said is very unlike Mrs. Stothard's usual tone; but it is Mrs. Stothard's voice and it is Mrs. Stothard herself--equipped in a tight linen jacket fitting her closely and without any superfluity of material, and a short clinging petticoat--who is standing by the bed on which Annette is seated.

"Come, do you hear me?" she repeats, taking the girl by the shoulder; "undress now, and get into bed. We're ever so late as it is."

But the girl sits stolidly gazing before her, and never moving a muscle.

Then Mrs. Stothard bends down and looks into her face--looks long and earnestly, the girl never flinching the while--and comes back to her upright position, with her cheeks a little paler and her mouth a little more set.

"The doctor was right," she mutters between her teeth; "there's one coming on to-night, and a bad one, too, I fancy."

She goes to a drawer, takes out some article, and lays it on the bed hard by. The girl shoots a stealthy glance out from under her eyelids, sees what is done, sees what is fetched, and drops her eyes again on to the floor.

"You won't! you've heard me, you know, Annette! You won't undress! Come, then, you shall!"

Mrs. Stothard, bending over the girl, undoes the top button of her dress, the second button, the third. The fourth is not so easily undone, and Mrs. Stothard shifts her position, comes round, and kneels in front of her. Then, with a low long howl, more like that of a beast at bay than a human creature, the girl dashes at her throat and bears her to the ground. A bad time for the nurse, this. The attack is so sudden, that for one moment she is overpowered; the next her presence of mind returns, and with it her strength of wrist. Her hands are wound in the girl's long hair then floating down her back; she tears at it with all her force, until the distorted face, which had been glaring into hers, is wrenched backward, and under torture the hand-grip on her throat is relaxed. Then she slips herself from underneath her foe and closes with her. They are both on the ground, locked in each other's arms, and struggling furiously, what is more wonderful silently, for, save their deep breathing, neither emits a sound, when the door opens softly and Dr. Wainwright enters. Annette's face is towards him: her eyes meet his, and the wild rage dies out of them, to be succeeded by a glance of fear and horror; and her grasp relaxes and her arms fall helplessly by her sides, and she moans in a low voice.

"It is here again! Oh my God, it is here again!"

"And only here just in time, apparently, Mrs. Stothard," says the doctor, helping the nurse to rise. "This is a very bad attack. Just assist me to put this on her," he added, taking the camisole de force from off the bed, and putting it over Annette's head as she sat rigid on the floor; "and keep it on all night, please. A very bad attack indeed."

"Bad attack!" said Mrs. Stothard; "I'm glad you've seen it, Dr. Wainwright. You never would believe me before. But I've often told you, in all your practice you've got no worse case than that she-devil there. And yet these fools here think she will be cured!"

"Strong language, strong language, Mrs. Stothard," said the doctor deprecatingly. "But I don't think you're far out in what you say; I don't, indeed!"

[CHAPTER XII.]

A CONQUEST.

It is the end of August, and society has gone out of town. Sporting people have gone to Goodwood; and the Lawn, at the period of our story, as yet uninvaded by objectionable persons, promises to present, as it hitherto has always presented, a parterre of aristocratic beauty. There is no "limited mail" in these days; but they could tell you at Euston Square of seats for the North booked many days in advance. And there are no Cook's tourists; and yet it would seem impossible that the boats leaving Dover twice a day for the great continental routes vid Calais and Ostend, could possibly carry more passengers. That was before the contemptible German system of battues was allowed among us, when dreib-jagds were almost unknown in England, and when a day's shooting meant exercise, trouble, and skill, not warm corners and wholesale slaughter; but Purdays and Lancasters, though mere muzzle-loaders, did their work, and Grant's gaiters were to be found on most of the right sort throughout the English counties.

The physicians and the great surgeons have struck work--it is no good remaining in a place where there are no patients--and having delegated their practice pro tem. to some less fortunate brother--who devoutly prays that chance may bring some rich or celebrated person unexpectedly to town, then and there to be stricken with illness, and left in his, the substitute's, hands--they are away shooting in the Highlands, swarming up Swiss mountains, lounging at German Brunnen, but never losing the soft placid manner and the dulcet tone which seem to imbue their every speech and action with a certain professional air, as though they were saying, "Hum! ha! ye-es, certainly; show me the tongue, please--ah!" and wherever they may be, the scent of the hospital is over them still.

Passing through Edinburgh, on his way to his shooting in Aberdeenshire, Mr. Fleem, President of the College of Surgeons, gives up a week of his hard-earned holiday to the society of Sir Annis Thettick, the great Scotch operator, and the pair indulge in many a sanguinary colloquy; little Dr. Payne leaves Mrs. Payne to be escorted up and down the allées of Baden-Baden by trim-waisted Prussian and Austrian officers, or by such of her compatriot acquaintances as she may find there (all of whom are too glad to pay court to so charming a woman), while he is closeted with Herr Doctor Von Glauber, Hof-Arzt to his Effulgency the reigning Duke of Schweinerei, with whom he exchanges the most confidential communications, resulting on both sides in a belief that the real knowledge of either of them is extremely limited.

In those charming courts and groves dedicated to the study and practice of the law there is also tranquillity, not to say stagnation, for the long vacation has commenced, and the Law is out of town.

Read the fact in the closed courts of Westminster Hall--in the Hall itself, no longer filled with the anxious faces of suitors, the flying forms of bewigged barristers, or fragrant with the sprinkled snuff of agitated attorneys, but now given up to marchings and counter-marchings of newly-fledged volunteers, who--it is the first year of the movement--are longing to be taking martial exercise in the wilds of Wimbledon or on the plains of Putney, but, deterred by the rain, are fain to put up with the large area of Westminster Hall, and to undergo the torture of the professional drill-sergeant before the eyes of a gaping and a grinning audience.

Read the fact in the closed oaks of every set of chambers, each door bearing its coffin-plate-like announcement that messages and parcels are to be left at the porter's lodge; in the sounds of revelry that proceed from the attorneys' offices, where the scrubs left in town are amusing themselves with effervescing drinks and negro minstrelsy, oblivious of executors, and administrators, and hereditaments; while the "chief" is at Bognor with his wife and children, the "Chancery" is geologising at Staffa, and the "Common-law" is living up at Laleham Ferry, and washing off all reminiscence of John Doe and Richard Roe in daily matutinal plunges off the bar at Penton Hook.

All the members of the Bar, great and small, are away. Heaven alone knows where the Great Seal may be hidden, but it is certain that the keeper of it and the Sovereign's conscience--a tall, straggling-whiskered, gray-haired gentleman--has been seen, with a wideawake hat on his head and a gun in his hand, "potting" rabbits on a Wiltshire common, and has been pointed out seated in a dog-cart at a little railway-station as the "Lar' Chance'lar" to the wondering bumpkins, who fully expected to see him in full-bottomed wig and gold-fringed robes, and who were consequently wofully disappointed, and thought his lordship of but "little 'count." Tocsin, the great gladiator, who wrestles with his professional opponents and flings them heavily, cross-buttocks the jury, and has been known, metaphorically, to give that peculiar British blow known as "one" to the judge himself--Tocsin, whose arrival at the Old Bailey (never appearing there unless specially retained) arouses interest in the languid ushers and door-porters, used up with constant criminal details, but sure of some excitement when Tocsin leads--Tocsin is at Broadstairs, swimming and walking with his boys during the day, and of an evening very much interested, and not unfrequently affected to tears, by the Minerva-Press novels, obtained from the little library, which he reads aloud to his wife. Mr. Serjeant Slink, leader at the Parliamentary Bar, whose professional life is passed in denouncing the aristocracy of this country as stifling all freedom of political opinion by threats or bribery, is staying with the Duke and Duchess of Potiphar at their villa on the Lake of Como; and Mr. Moss, of Thavies Inn, 'cutest and cleverest of criminal attorneys, is at Venice, occupying the moments which his valet de place allows him to have to himself in working out the outline of the defence in a case of gigantic fraud, the trial of which is coming off next sessions, in his room at Danieli's Hotel.

Lethargy and languor in the public offices, where the chiefs are away on leave, and the juniors left in town appear, from the medical certificates they are sending in, to be suffering from every kind of mortal illness, and where the "immediate attention" promised to your communication becomes more vague and shadowy than ever; in merchants' establishments, where the clerks, finding it impossible to get "regularly away," compromise the matter by taking lodgings at Gravesend or in up-the-river villages, and running to and fro daily; in large shops, where the assistants bless the early-closing movement, and bound away on Saturday afternoon with an agility which argues well for their jumping many other things besides counters.

George Street, Hanover Square, is much too distinguished a quarter not to suffer under the general depression. There has not been a marriage at the church for six weeks; the rector is away at the Lakes; and the clerk has modified his responses, and is saving his voice until the return of those to whom it is worth his while to address himself. The beadle has laid by his gorgeous uniform, on week-days wears mufti, and on Sundays comes out in a kind of compromise, alternately airing the hat and the coat, but never appearing in both together. The pew-openers' untipped palms are grimier than ever, the regular congregation are absent, no strangers ask for seats, and the dust on the pews is an inch thick. No horsey-looking men, chewing toothpicks, and spitting refreshingly around, garnish the portals of Limmer's; the silver sand sprinkled over the doorsteps as usual is untrodden, save by the pumps of the one waiter, who knows no one is likely to come; and as weary as ever was Mariana in her moated grange, he lounges to the door, yawns, and lounges back, to cover his head with his napkin for fly-diverting purposes, and seeks refuge in sleep. The dentist is out of town; and the dentist's man has exchanged his striped jacket and his black trousers for a heather suit, specially recommended by the tailor for deer-stalking or grouse-shooting, clad in which, he sits during the daytime in the dining-room reading Bell's Life, and at night, after delicately scenting himself with camphor procured from his master's drug-drawers, proceeds to some garden of public resort. The paper patterns, marked with mysterious numbers, and inscribed with the names of dukes and marquises, which hang in the shop of Stecknadel the tailor, have a thick coating of dust; for the noble customers whose fair proportions they represent have not had them in requisition for weeks past. Stecknadel is away at Boppard on the Rhine, where he has a very pretty terre, to which, if he could only get in his debts, he would retire, and some day become Baron Stecknadel, and live peacefully and prosperously for the rest of his life.

Equally, of course, the headless dummies in Madame Clarisse's showrooms are stripped of the fairy-like fabrics which cover them during the season, and stand up showing all their wire anatomy, or lie about in corners, unheeded. Madame is at Dieppe, and Daisy reigns temporarily in her stead. The staff is very much reduced, for there is little or nothing to do; and Daisy is enabled, very much to Paul Derinzy's delight, to get out much earlier and much more frequently than she could in the season, and the walks in Kensington Gardens occur pretty constantly, and are much prolonged. Daisy is glad of this too; for not only does her liking for Paul increase, but she knows he is very soon going away for his holiday, "down to his people in the West," and the idea of parting with him is not pleasant to her, and she likes to see as much of him as possible. Daisy has noticed that, with the absence of the great world from London, Paul has grown much bolder: he walks with her without showing any of that dreadful feeling of restraint which at one time galled her so much, is never fearful of being observed, and has more than once asked to be allowed to take her to dinner, to the theatre, or to some public gardens. This request Daisy has always steadily refused, and their meetings are confined to Kensington Gardens as heretofore, though she has permitted him to see her home to the corner of her street on several occasions.

One hot dusty afternoon Daisy is looking out of the showroom window into the deserted street--deserted save by a vagabond dog, with his tongue lolling out of his mouth, who is furtively gliding about from one bit of shade to another, and hopelessly sniffing at those places where he remembers puddles used to be in the bygone time, but where, alas, there are none now--when she hears steps upon the stairs, and turning round, recognises Miss Orpington, one of their best customers. With Miss Orpington is her father, Colonel Orpington; and looking at them as they enter the room, Daisy thinks within herself that a more stylish-looking father and daughter could scarcely be found in England. Both are tall, and slim, and upright; both have regular features, with the same half-haughty, half-weary expression; both have small hands and feet. Miss Orpington is going to be married to a Yorkshire baronet with money. She has been staying in the same house with him in Scotland, and is on her way to a house in Kent, where he is invited. She has stopped a day or two in London on her way through to get "some gowns and things." She is always wanting gowns and things, and spends a very large sum of money yearly.

Colonel Orpington does not very much mind how much she spends. Through his wife, who was the daughter of his family solicitor, and who died in childbirth a year after their marriage, he had a very large income, every farthing of which he carefully spent. He had nothing to do with the turf; hunted but little, and when he did, generally found other men to mount him; never joined in the afternoon rubbers at the club, and only interested himself in them to the extent of an occasional small bet; kept a good but small stud; had no permanent country place; and during the season entertained well, but neither frequently nor lavishly, and yet managed to get through eight thousand a year.

How? Well, the Colonel had his tastes. Though turned fifty years of age, he had not run to flesh; his figure was yet trim and elegant, and his face handsome and eminently "bred"-looking. His hair was still jet-black; and though his moustache, long, sweeping, and carefully trained, was unmistakably grizzled, the colour rather added to the picturesqueness of his appearance. And the Colonel liked to be thought handsome, and elegant, and picturesque; for he was devoted to the sex, and had but little care in life beyond how best to please her who for the time being was the object of his devotion.

And yet Colonel Orpington was never seen in any suspicious solitude à deux, nor even in the loose-talking, easy-going society in which he mixed was his name ever coupled with any woman's. Old comrades and contemporaries might be seen lurking at the back of shady little boxes on the pit-tier of the theatre, and addressing a presumed form in the corner facing the stage, of which nothing could be seen but a white gleaming arm, a fan, and an opera-glass; but when the Colonel patronised the drama, which was very seldom, he always went with a party among whom were his daughter and his sister, who kept house for him. Sons of old comrades, and other young men with whom he had a casual acquaintance, might lounge across the rails of the Row to speak to the "strange women" on horseback who were just beginning to put in an appearance there; but the Colonel, when he passed them, whether Miss Orpington were with him or not, was always looking straight before him between his horse's ears, and never showed the slightest recognition of their presence. Nor, though living in days when to love your neighbour's wife was a rule pretty generally followed, was Colonel Orpington's name ever mixed up with any of those society intrigues the ignoring of which in public, and the discussion of which in private, affords so much delight to well-bred people. Of good appearance, of perfect manners, and with a voice and address which were singularly insinuating, the Colonel might have availed himself of many bonnes fortunes which would not have fallen in the way of men younger and less discreet; but he purposely neglected the opportunities offered, and, while being the intimate and trusted companion of many of his friends' wives, sisters, and daughters, was the lover of none.

And yet he was devoted to the sex, and spent a great deal of money! Yes, and was very frequently absent from his family. Amongst the property which the Colonel inherited from his wife were some slate-quarries and lead-mines in South Wales, which seemed to require a vast amount of personal supervision. If he looked after the rest of his estate with equal fidelity, he must have been a pattern landlord; for he would leave town in the height of the season, or give up any pleasant engagement, when he received one of these summonses. When Miss Orpington was a child, she used to tease her father about "dose 'orrid quarry-mines;" but it was noticed that after she had put away childish things, amongst which might be enumerated innocence, she never referred to the subject. Nobody ever did palpably refer to it, though there was a good deal of sniggering about it in the Colonel's clubs, and Bobus, known as Badger Bobus from his low sporting tastes, was asked out to dinner for a fortnight on the strength of his having said that he couldn't make out how old Orpington always went into South Wales by the Great Northern Railway.

Miss Orpington languidly expresses her pleasure at seeing Daisy.

"You are so fresh, Miss Stafford, and all that kind of thing. Of course I know Madame Clarisse's taste is excellent; but I confess I like a younger person's ideas."

Daisy bows, and says nothing, but applies herself to showing her wares, which the young lady turns over and discourses upon. Colonel Orpington, standing by and caressing his grizzled moustache, says nothing also. Nothing aloud, at least; only someone standing very close might have seen him draw in his breath, and mutter behind his hand,

"Jove! Clarisse was right."

Miss Orpington is large in her notions of autumn costume, and Daisy shows her a vast number of "pretty things" which she would like to order, but is somewhat checked by the paternal presence, in itself a novelty in her negotiations with her milliner. But, deferring to the paternal presence, as to "Should she?" and "Did he think she might?" and receiving nothing but favourable replies, she gives her fancy scope, and makes such of the workwomen as were always retained think that the season had suddenly and capriciously recommenced.

What had induced the Colonel to accompany his daughter? He never had done so before, and on this occasion he says nothing, never looks at the things exhibited, or the patterns after which they are to be made. What does he look at? Miss Orpington knows, perhaps, when, following the earnest gaze of his eyes, she makes a little moue, and slightly shrugs her shoulders, taking no further notice until they are in the street; then she says:

"Do you think that girl pretty, papa?"

The Colonel is in an abstracted state, and pauses for a minute before he replies,

"What girl, Constance?"

"We have not seen so many that you need ask," says Miss Orpington, with a melancholy glance at the deserted streets; "the girl who attended to me just now, at Clarisse's."

"I was thinking of something else at the time, and really did not notice her particularly, my dear," says the Colonel, "but she appeared to me to be a very respectable young person."

Miss Orpington gives her little shoulder-shrug, and looks round curiously at her father; but he is staring straight before him, and they walk on without speaking further, until just as they are passing Limmer's, when he says, half to himself, "That fellow will do!" and then to her,

"I want to send a message to the club, Constance. If you'll walk quietly on, I'll overtake you in an instant. Hi! here!"

The man to whom he calls, and who is hanging about the doorway of the hotel, is one of those Mercuries who have now been superseded by the Commissionaires, but who in those days were the principal media for good and evil communication in the metropolis. In the season this fellow wears a dingy red jacket like the cover of an old Post Office Directory; but in the dead time of year he discards his gaiety of apparel, and dons a seedy long drab waistcoat with black sleeves. He crosses the road at once at the Colonel's call, and stands on the kerb, touching his broken hat, and waiting for his orders.

"Look here," says the Colonel, as soon as his daughter is out of earshot; "go up to Clarisse's--the milliner's, you know, opposite the church--ask to see the young woman who just attended to Miss Orpington, and tell her you have been sent to say she must be certain to send the things at the time promised. Take notice of her, so that you will know her again; then wait about until she comes out, follow her, see whom she speaks to and where she goes, and come to Batt's Hotel in Dover Street and ask for Colonel Orpington. You understand?"

"Right you are, Colonel!" says the man, pocketing the half-crown which the Colonel hands to him; then he touches his shabby hat again, and starts off.

"Left her walking up and down in Kensington Gardens among the trees near the keeper's cottage, did he?" says Colonel Orpington to himself as he strikes into the Park about five o'clock, and hurries off in the direction indicated. "Had not spoken to anyone, but seemed as if she were waiting for somebody, eh? Plainly an assignation! So my young friend is not so innocent as Clarisse would have me believe. What a fool she was to think it, and what a fool I was to believe her! However, I may as well see it through, for the girl is marvellously pretty, and has a something about her which is extraordinarily attractive--even to me!"

As he nears the place to which he has been directed, he slackens his speed, and looks round him from time to time. The first touch of autumn has fallen on the grand old trees, and occasionally some leaves come circling down noiselessly on to the brown turf. Away at the end of yon vista a slight mist is rising, noticing which the Colonel prudently buttons his coat over his chest and shudders slightly. Half-a-dozen children are romping about, rolling among the leaves that have already fallen, and shrieking with delight; but the Colonel takes no heed of them. Just then the figures of a man and woman walking very slowly come in sight. The Colonel looks at them for a moment, using his natty double-eyeglass for the purpose; then stands quietly behind one of the large elm-trees watching the pair as they pass. Her arm is through his, on which she is leaning heavily; their faces are turned towards each other, each wearing a grave earnest expression. As they pass the tree behind which the Colonel stands, their faces approach, and their lips meet for an instant, then they walk on as before.

The Colonel drops the natty double-eyeglass from his nose, and replaces it in his waistcoat-pocket. As he turns to walk away, he says to himself:

"Not a very pleasant position that! However, I've learned what I wanted to know. The girl has a lover, as one might have expected. I think I know the man too. To be sure! we elected him at the Beaufort the other day--Derinzy, son of the man who put the Jew under the pump at Hounslow. A good-looking youngster too, and in some Government office, I think. Well, I suppose it will be the old story--youth against cheque-book. But in this case, from the young lady's general style, I think I should back the latter!"

[CHAPTER XIII.]

ANOTHER CONQUEST.

Town was at its dreariest; the little people in Camden Town and Hackney had followed the great people in Belgravia and Tyburnia, by going away; only they went to Southend or Margate instead of Scotland or Biarritz. It was the last possible time of the year at which one would imagine festivity could take place; and yet from the aspect of No. 20, Adalbert Crescent, Navarino Road, Dalston, it was evident that festivity was intended. The general servant of the establishment had washed the upper half of her face, and hooked the lower half of her gown--an extraordinary occurrence which meant something. The fishmonger had sent in a lobster, and half a newspaper--folded in cornucopia fashion--full of shrimps; the à-la-mode-beef house had been ransacked for the least-stony piece of cold meat which it possessed; and from the greengrocer had been obtained a perfect grove of salad and cress. Looking at these preparations, Miss Augusta Manby might well feel within herself a certain sentiment of pride, and a consciousness that Adalbert Crescent was equal to the occasion.

Miss Augusta Manby had been a workwoman at Madame Clarisse's; but she had long left that patrician establishment, and started on her own account. The name of her late employer figured under her own on the brass plate which adorned her door; and this recommendation, and her own talent in reducing bulging waists, and "fitting" generally obstinate figures, had procured for her a vast amount of patronage in the clerk-inhabited district where she had pitched her tent.

In the fulness of delight at her success, Miss Manby had taken advantage of the occasion of her birthday to summon her friends to rejoice with her at a little festive gathering, and the advent of those friends she was then awaiting.

"I think it will all do very well," she said to herself, after surveying the preparations; "and I am sure it ought to go off nicely. I should have been afraid to ask Fanny Stafford if Bella Merton and her brother had not been coming; but she has quite West End manners, and he is very nice-looking and very well-behaved. It's a pity I could not avoid asking Gus; but he would have been sure to have heard of it; and then, if he had been left out, there would have been a pretty to-do."

A ring at the bell stopped Miss Manby's soliloquy, and she rushed to the glass to "put herself tidy," as she phrased it. There was no need for this performance in Miss Manby's case, as the glass reflected a pretty little face of the snub-nose, black-eyes, white-teeth, and oiled-hair order, and a very pretty little figure, which the owner took care should be well, though not expensively, got up.

The arrivals were Miss Bella Merton--a young lady who officiated as clerk at Mr. Kammerer's, the photographer's in Regent Street, kept the appointment ledger, entered the number of copies ordered, and received the money from the sitters--and her brother, a book-keeper in Repp and Rumfitt's drapery establishment.

"So good of you, Bella dear, to be the first!" said Miss Manby, welcoming a tall dashing-looking young woman, who darted into the room after the half-cleansed servant had broken down in announcing "Miss Merting."--"And you too, Mr. John; I scarcely thought you would have taken the trouble to come from the West End to this outlandish place."

Mr. John, as she called him, who was a tall well-built young man, dressed in a black frock coat, waistcoat, and trousers, relieved by an alarmingly vivid-blue necktie, merely bowed his acknowledgments; but his sister, who had thrown off a coquettish little black-silk cloak, and what was known amongst her friends as a "duck of a bonnet," and who was then smoothing her hair before the one-foot-square looking-glass over the chimney-piece, said:

"My dear Augusta, what nonsense it is! we should be thankful to escape from that hot dusty town to this--well, really, this rural retreat. And as for coming early, there's nothing doing now at the West, so that one can leave when one likes."

Miss Augusta Manby then took upon herself to remark that that was one compensation for her exile from the realms of fashion. All seasons, she remarked, were the same at Dalston, where people had new clothes when the old ones were worn out, and never studied times or seasons.

"And now tell me, dear, who are coming?" said Bella Merton, while her brother John sat in the window-seat, and tried to derive a gleam of satisfaction from the inspection of the fashion-plates in La Belle Assemblée; "of course that dear delightful old Gus--and who else?"

"I have asked Fanny Stafford, and she has promised to come."

"No! that is fun!" said Bella Merton, laughing.

"And Mr. Burgess----"

"No! that's better still!" said Bella, laughing more heartily: "what! our Mr. Burgess?"

"Of course. Did he not tell you?"

"Not one single word, dear. But of course I understand why!" and the young lady relapsed into fits of merriment.

"You have all the joke to yourself at present, Bella," said John Merton, looking up from his fashion-book.

"And you won't have any of it, so far as I can see, during any part of the evening, my poor old John!" said his sister.

"I'm sorry I can't understand your West End wit, Bella dear," said their hostess, with some asperity.

"You will see it all in a minute," said Bella, striving to compose her countenance. "Burgess has been raving-mad in love with Fanny Stafford, whom he has only seen for an instant, ever since Mr. Kammerer gave him her photograph to tint. My brother John, here, of course fell over head and ears directly he saw her; and there's another man of a different kind, with no end of money and position and all that, about whom I must say nothing. So much for Fanny Stafford. But what's to become of you and me, Augusta? There's nobody left for us but old Gus."

"What's that you are saying about old Gus?" said a fat jolly voice, belonging to a fat jolly man, of about forty years of age, who entered the room at the moment.

This was Augustus Manby, the hostess's brother, a tea-taster attached to an establishment in Mincing Lane--a convivial soul, and a thorough vulgarian.

"Saying!" said Bella Merton, whose two hands he was wringing, after having given his sister a smacking kiss; "that we should have no one but you to flirt with, all the other men would be absorbed by Fanny Stafford."

"Well, they are welcome so far as I am concerned," said plain-spoken Gus. "She's a nice girl, Fanny; but I don't like them red, and I do like more of them; and that's the fact."

"Hush! do be quiet," said his sister, as the bell sounded again; and the next minute Fanny Stothard entered the room.

She looked so lovely, that Gus almost audibly recalled his opinion. The exercise had given a colour to her cheeks and a brilliancy to her eyes. Her dress fitted her to perfection, and there was an indefinable something about her which stamped her superiority to those among whom she then was. She was warmly welcomed by all, and had scarcely gone through their greetings when Mr. Burgess joined and completed the little party.

Mr. Burgess was a small consumptive-looking young man, principally remarkable for the length of his hair and the smallness of his cravat. Believing in his destiny as an "arteeste," he had originally entered as a student at the Royal Academy; but after severe objurgations from the authorities there, had subsided into colouring pictures for the photographers, by which he realised a decent income. He entered the room with a bound suggestive of hope and joy; but on seeing Fanny he sighed deeply, and abandoned himself to misery.

Then they all bustled about, and the cloth was laid, and the provisions produced, and the half-cleansed servant appeared periodically, staggering under large pewter vessels containing malt liquor; and the gentlemen pressed the ladies to eat and to drink; and the ladies would not be persuaded without a great deal of pressing on the gentlemen's part; and so the meal was gone through with much giggling and laughter, but without any regular talk.

That began when the hostess had fetched from a cupboard, where they were imbedded in layers of brown-paper patterns and bygone fashion-books, and watched over by an armless papier-mâchè idol, two bottles of spirits; and when the gentlemen had brewed themselves mighty jorums of grog, and helped the ladies to delicate wine-glasses of the same beverage. And thus it commenced:

"Things must be dull with you now at Clarisse's, Fanny dear?" said the hostess.

"Dull!" said Fanny: "I never knew anything like it. I don't mean written orders from the country, of course; but we only had one customer in our place the whole of last week."

"What will you bet me, Fanny," said Bella Merton, "that I don't tell you that customer's name?"

"Why, how can you possibly know it? She----"

"I don't speak of a she! I mean a he," said Bella, laughing.

"Hes ain't milliners' customers," said Mr. Burgess, with a titter.

"Ain't they?" said John Merton, with a savage expression on his good-looking face; "but they are sometimes, worse luck!"

"My customer, at all events, was a lady," said Fanny, rather disapproving of this turn of the conversation.

"Yes; but she was accompanied by a gentleman," said Bella, still laughing; "and, as John says, gentlemen have no right in milliners' showrooms."

"I suppose that even Mr. John Merton would not object to a father's accompanying his daughter to a milliner's showroom?" said Fanny, beginning to be piqued.

"Mr. John Merton merely spoke generally, Miss Stafford," said John, with a bow. "He would not have taken the liberty to apply his observation to any particular case."

"This is perfectly delicious!" cried Bella Merton, clapping her hands. "I knew I should soon set you all by the ears. But we have wandered from my original proposition. Can I, or can I not, tell you the name of the gentleman who came with his daughter, as you say, to your place last week?"

"I daresay you can," said Fanny Stothard, "though how you gained your information it would be impossible for me to say."

"Don't tell her, Miss Stafford," said John Merton; "don't help her in the least degree. It's scarcely a fair subject of conversation; at least, it's one which I'm sure has no interest for me."

"Was he a nice cross old dear?" said his sister; "and didn't he like to hear about the fine gentleman that admired Fanny?"

John Merton looked so black at this remark, that Mr. Burgess thought it best to cut into the conversation. So he said:

"But you haven't yet told us the name of the gentleman. Miss Merton."

"Haven't I?" said Bella; "well, I'll be as good as my word. Colonel Orpington. Am I right, Fanny?"

"I daresay you are. Miss Orpington's father came with her. What his title may be I haven't the least idea."

"But he knows what your title is, dear, and accords it to you quite publicly."

"And what title does he give Miss Stafford, pray?" asked John Merton, angrily.

"That of the prettiest girl in London!"

"I never heard a swell go so near the truth," growled John, half pleased and half annoyed.

"Don't you think it is almost time for you to speak a little more plainly, Bella?" asked Fanny. "How do you know this Colonel Orpington, and what has he been saying about me?"

"This Colonel Orpington, indeed!" cried Miss Merton. "My dear, this Colonel Orpington is simply one of the best men of the day, extremely rich, and--well, you know--one of those nice fellows who are liked by everybody. He came into our place the other day, and when I looked up from my desk in the front room, where I was writing a private letter--for I had nothing else to do--I saw him; and I thought to myself, 'I know you, Colonel Orpington! I've seen you about often. So you've come for a sitting, have you? Won't Mr. Kammerer be wild to think you should have come when he was out of town!' However, he came straight towards me; and he took off his hat, like a gentleman as he is, and he said, 'There is a portrait in a frame outside the door which strikes me as a wonderful example of photography, of which I am a connoisseur.' I knew what he meant at once, bless you; but I said, 'You mean the gentleman in the skull-cap and the long beard--Professor Gilks?' He muttered something about Professor Gilks--I daren't say what--but then said No; he meant the coloured female head--was it for sale? I told him I could not answer him without referring to Mr. Kammerer, who was at Ramsgate. The Colonel begged me to telegraph to him, and he would call next day. He did call next day, took the photograph, and paid twenty guineas for it, which was a good thing for Mr. Kammerer."

"Very likely," burst in John Merton; "but a bad thing for art, and decency, and----"

"Don't distress yourself, John! Very likely it was all you say; but, you see, Mr. Kammerer is not here for you to pitch into, and Fanny couldn't help her portrait being bought by an admirer. Oh, he was an admirer, Fanny; for when I tied it up for him, he said out, 'It's lovely, but it doesn't do justice to the original.' And when I asked him did he know the original, he said he thought he had had that honour. And so it's no good your bursting into virtuous indignation."

Her brother shrugged his shoulders and was silent; but Fanny Stothard said:

"Don't you think this joke has gone far enough? Augusta and Mr. Burgess here are sitting in wild astonishment, as well they may be. Let us change the conversation for the few minutes before we break up."

Late that night Fanny Stothard sat on the side of her bed in her room in South Molton Street, her hands clasped behind her head, her body gently swaying to and fro as she pondered over all she had heard that evening. On the table lay a letter from Paul Derinzy. It was the second she had had, and he had not been away from London five days. The first she had torn at eagerly and devoured its contents at once; this lay unopened.

"Very rich, that woman said," she muttered, "and a great man in his way. Fancy his buying the portrait, and after only seeing me once! That was very nice of him. Not in the least old-looking, and everybody likes him, Bella said. What a funny thing his recognising that photograph, and---- How horrible the journey home was to-night, and what detestable people in the omnibus!--such pushing and tramping on one's feet, and--I had no idea of that! I thought he looked hard at me once or twice, but I never imagined that he took any particular notice. Colonel Orpington! I shall look out his name in the Court Guide to-morrow, when I get to George Street, and see all about him. Had the honour of knowing me, he told Bella Merton! Ugh! how sick I am of this room, and how wearied of this life! Ah well, Paul's letter will keep till to-morrow; I'm sure I know what it's about. That was really very nice about the portrait! I wonder when Colonel Orpington will come back to town?"

Then she frowned a little as she said, "What could have made that young man, Bella's brother, so disagreeable about all that? He couldn't possibly--and yet I don't know. He looked so earnestly at me, and spoke so strongly about that business of the portrait, that I have half an idea he resented it on my behalf. What impertinence! And yet he meant merely to show his regard for me. How dreadfully in earnest he seemed! And Paul too! I shall have a difficulty in managing them all, I see that clearly."

[CHAPTER XIV.]

PAUL AT HOME.

It does not matter much to George Wainwright whether London is empty or full. His books, his work, and his healthful play go on just the same in winter and summer, in spring and autumn. He only knows it is the season by the fact of seeing more people in the streets, more horses and carriages in the Park across which he strides to his home; and when other men go away on leave, he remains at the office without the least desire to change the regular habits of his life. He has a splendid constitution, perfectly sound, and unimpaired by excess of any description; can do any amount of work without its having any influence on him; and never had need to go away "on medical certificate," as is the case with so many of his brethren at the Stannaries Office.

There is a decidedly autumnal touch in the air as it plays round George Wainwright, striding across the Park this October morning. There is sunshine, but it is thin and veneered, and very unlike the glorious summer article; looks as if it had lost strength in its struggle with the fog which preceded it, and as though it would make but a poor fight against the mist which would come creeping up early in the afternoon. But few leaves remain on the trees, and they are yellow and veinous, and swirl dismally round and round in their descent to the moist earth, where their already fallen comrades are being swept into heaps, and pressed down into barrows, and wheeled away by the gardeners. The ordinarily calm waters of the Serpentine are lashed into miniature waves, and the pleasure-boats have vanished from its surface, as have the carriages from the Drive and the horses from the Row. Only one solitary equestrian stands out like a speck in the distance; for it is Long Vacation still, and the judges and the barristers, those unvarying early riders and constant examples of the apparently insurmountable difficulty of combining legal lore with graceful equitation, have not yet returned to town.

Ten o'clock strikes from the Horse Guards clock as George walks under the archway, and makes his way across to the little back street where the Stannaries Office is situated. Always punctual, he is more particular than ever just now, for all the others of any standing are away; and George was perfectly aware, from long experience, that if someone responsible was not there to look after the junior clerks, those young gentlemen would not come at all. As it was, he finds himself the first arrival, and has changed his coat and rung for his letters, for even the messengers get lax and careless at this time of year--when the door opens and Mr. Dunlop enters, bringing with him a very strong flavour of fresh tobacco, and not stopping short in the popular melody which he is humming to say good-day until he has arrived at the end of the verse.

"'And he cut his throat with a pane of glass, and stabbed his donkey ar-ter!'" sings Mr. Dunlop, very much prolonging the last note. "That's what I call an impressive ending to a tragic ballad!--Goodmorning, Mr. Wainwright! I'm glad to see you here in good time for once, sir, at all events."

"Billy, Billy, if you were here a little earlier yourself, you wouldn't be pitched into so constantly."

"Perhaps not, sir, though 'pitched into' is scarcely a phrase to apply to a gentleman in Her Majesty's Civil Service. However, my position is humble, and I must demean myself accordingly. I am a norphan, sir, a norphan, and have no swell parents to stay with in the country like Mr. Derinzy, whose remarkably illegible and insignificant handwriting I recognise on this letter which Hicks has brought in for you."

"Paul's hand, by Jove!" says George, "and this other one is Courtney's, the chief's."

George opens the smaller letter, and emits a short whistle as he glances through its contents. The whistle and the expression of George's face are not lost upon Billy Dunlop, who says:

"Dear old person going to make it three months' leave, this year, instead of two? or perhaps not coming back at all, but sends address where his salary will find him?"

"On the contrary, he's coming back at once; he will be on duty to-morrow."

"By Jove! and he's not been away six weeks yet. The poet was right, sir. 'He stabbed his donkey arter!' There was nothing else left for him to do."

"But," says George, laughing, "he says he thinks he shall go away to Brighton in November, and advises me, if I want any leave, to take it now, that I may be back when he goes."

"What an inexpressible old ruffian! What does he say about my leave?"

"Not a word. What could he say, Billy? You've had all your leave ages ago."

Mr. Dunlop, who has retired into the sanctuary behind the washing-screen, makes a rapid reappearance at these words, and says hurriedly:

"I thought so. I thought that that pleasant month of March would be the only portion of the year allotted to me for recreation. March, by George! Why, Ettrick, Teviotdale, and all the rest of them put together, are not worth speaking about. It seems a year ago. I can only recollect it because it was so beastly cold I was obliged to spend nearly all the time in bed. That's a nice way for a man to enjoy his holiday! While you fellows are cutting about, and---- Hollo! what's the matter with G.W.? He looks as if he were rapidly preparing himself for his father's asylum. Some bad news from P.D., I suppose."

These last remarks of Mr. Dunlop's are based upon his observation of George Wainwright's face, the expression of which is set and serious.

"Hold on with your chaff for a minute, Billy," he says, looking up. "Paul is writing on business, and I want just to get hold of it as I go along."

So Mr. Dunlop thinks he will do a little official work; and having selected a sheet of foolscap with "Office of H.M. Stannaries" lithographed on it, fills in the date in a very bold and flowing hand (the gentlemen of the Stannaries Office always boasted that they were not "mere clerks," and that their penmanship "didn't matter"), then takes out his penknife, and begins adjusting the toilet of his nails.

Meanwhile George Wainwright plods his way with difficulty through Paul's letter where the writing is so small and the lines so close together, and his brows become more contracted and his face more set and stern as he proceeds. This is what he reads:

"The Tower, Beachborough.

"DEAR OLD MAN,--I have so much writing at that confounded shop--don't grin, now: I can see your cynical old under-lip shooting out at the statement--that I thought I'd give my pen a holiday as well as myself; and indeed I should not favour you with a sight of that 'bowld fist' which so disgusts that old beast Branwhite--saw his name in the Post as having been present at the Inverness gathering, hanging on to swells as usual--if there had not been absolute occasion.

"By Jove? what a tremendously long sentence that is! Rather broken-backed and weak in the knees too, eh? Don't seem to hang well together? Rather a 'solution of continuity,' as they call it, isn't there? Never mind, you'll understand what I mean. You see, my dear old George, I don't know whether it is because I'm bored by being in the country--and a fellow who is accustomed to town life must necessarily hate everything else, and find it all horribly slow and dreary--but the fact is, that instead of my leave doing me good, and setting me up, and all that kind of thing, I find myself utterly depressed and wretched, and nothing like half so well or so jolly as when I came down here.

"I thought I should go out boating and swimming and riding, and generally larking; and instead of that I find myself sitting grizzling over my pipe, and wondering what on earth I'm to do until evening, and how I shall get through the time after dark until I can go to bed.

"You would go blazing away at your old books, or your writing, or your music; but I'm not in that line, old boy. I haven't got what people call 'resources'--in any way, by Jove! tin, or anything else. I want to be amused, and I don't get it here, and that's all about it.

"You see, the truth is--and what's the good of having a fellow for your pal, if you can't speak the truth to him, and what people in the play call 'unbosom yourself,' and so on?--the truth is, our household here is most infernally dull. I hadn't seen any of them for so long, that they all came upon me like novelties; and they're so deuced original, that they would be most interesting studies, if they did not happen to be one's own people, don't you see, and that takes all the humour out of the performance. There's my governor, for instance, is the most wonderful party! If he were anybody else's governor he'd be quite good fun enough for me to render the place sufficiently agreeable. I don't think I should want any greater amusement than seeing him go yawning about the house and through the village, bored out of his life, and wishing everything at the devil. He seemed to pluck up a bit when I first came down, and wanted to know all the news about town, and talked about this fellow and that fellow--I knew the names well enough, and had met a good many of the people; but when we came to compare notes, I found that the governor was inquiring about the fathers of the fellows I knew--fellows with the same names, you understand; and when I explained this to him, and told him that most of his pals were dead or gone under, don't you know, and that their sons reigned in their stead, he cut up rather rough, and said he didn't know what the world was coming to, and that young men weren't half as well brought-up nowadays as they were in his time. Funny idea that, wasn't it? As though we could help these old swells going under! Fact is--I don't like to confess it, and would not to anybody but you, George--but since the governor has got off the main line of life they have shunted him into the siding for fogeydom, and there's not much chance of his coming out again.

"I find a great change in my mother too. I've spoken to you so often about all these domesticities, that I don't mind gossiping to you now. It's an immense relief to me. I feel if I had not someone to confide in, I should blow up. Well, you know, my mother was always the best man in our household, and managed everything according to her own will; but then she had a certain tact and savoir faire, a way of ruling us all that no one could find fault with; and though we grumbled inwardly, we never took each other into confidence, or combined against the despotism. I find that's all altered now. Either she has lost tact, or we have lost patience--a little of both, perhaps; but, at all events, her attempts at rule and dictation are very palpable and very pronounced, and our ripeness for revolt is no longer concealed. In point of fact, the one thing which the governor and I have in common is our impatience of the female thrall, and if ever we combine, it will be to pass the Salic law.

"And apropos of that--rather neatly expressed, I find that is--there is another female pretender to power--my cousin Annette; you have heard me speak of her as a ward of my people's, and resident with them. She has grown into a fine young woman, though her manners are decidedly odd. I suppose this is country breeding: said as much to the governor, who made a very odd face and changed the subject. Whether he thought it the height of impudence in me to suppose that anyone who had had the advantage of studying him daily could have country manners, or whether there was any other reason, I don't know.

"One thing there can be no doubt of, and that is, that I am always being thrown tête-à,-tête with this young woman, principally, as I imagine, by my mother's connivance. This might have been amusing under other circumstances, for, as I said before, she is remarkably personable and nice--not in my line, but still a very fine young woman; but, situated as I am, I do not avail myself in the slightest degree of the opportunities offered.

"Nor, I am bound to say, does Annette. She sits silent, and sometimes actually sullen. She is a most extraordinary girl, George; I can't make her out a bit. Sometimes she won't speak for hours, sometimes won't even come down amongst us, and---- There is something deuced odd in all this! I wish I had your clear old head here to scrutinise matters with me, and help me in forming a judgment on them.

"You know what I refer to just above, about 'under other circumstances?' Certain interview in Kensington Gardens, with certain party that you happened to witness. Don't you recollect? Oh Lord, George, if you knew what an utterly gone 'coon I am in that quarter, you would pity me. No, you wouldn't! What's the use of talking to such a dried-up old file as you about such things? I don't believe you were ever in love in your life, ever felt the smallest twinge of what those stupid fools the poets call the 'gentle passion.' Gentle, by Jove! it's anything but gentle with me--upsets me frightfully, takes away all my sleep, and worries me out of my life. I swear to you, that now I am separated from her, I don't know how to live without her, and wonder how I ever got on before I knew her. When I think I'm far away from everybody, on the cliffs or down by the sea, I find myself holloing out aloud, and stamping my foot, for sheer rage at the thought that so much more time must go by before I can see her again. I told you it was a strong case, George, when you spoke to me about it; but I had no idea then that it was so strong as it is, or that my happiness was half so much bound up in her."

There was a space here, and the conclusion of the letter, from the appearance of the ink, had evidently been written at a different time.

"I left off there, George, thinking I might have something else to say to you later; and so I have, but of a very different kind from what I imagined.

"I have had a tremendous scene with my mother. She has given up hinting, and spoken out plainly at last. It appears that her whole soul is set upon my marrying my cousin Annette. This is the whole and sole reason of their living out of town, and of the poor governor being expatriated from the Pall Mall pavement and the gossip he loves so well. It appears that Annette is an heiress--in rather a large way too, will have no end of money--and that my poor dear mother, determined to secure her for me, has been hiding down here in this horrible seclusion, in order that the girl may form no 'detrimental' acquaintance of youths who might be likely to cut me out! Not very flattering to me, is it? But still it was well meant, poor soul!

"Now, you know, George, this won't do at all. If I entered into this plan for a moment, I should have to give up that other little affair at once; and nothing earthly would make me do that! Besides, I do not care for Annette; and as to her money, that would be deuced little good to me, if However, one goes with the other, so we needn't say any more about it.

"Of course, I fought off at once--pleaded Annette's bad state of health--she is ill, often keeps her room, and has to have a nurse entirely given up to her--said we were both very young, and asked for time--but all no good. My mother was very strong on the subject; and the governor, who sees a chance of his jailership being put an end to, and of his getting back to haunts of civilisation, backed her up with all his might, which is not much, poor old boy!

"So all I could do was to say that I never did anything without your advice, and to suggest that you should be asked down here at once. My mother wouldn't have it at first, until I said she feared you were a gay young dog, who would make running with Annette to my detriment; and then I told her what a quiet, solemn, old-fashioned old touch you really were, and then she consented. So, dear old man, you're booked and in for it. I really do want your counsel awfully, though I only thought of making you a scapegoat when I first suggested your visit. But now I am looking forward to it with the greatest anxiety from day to day. Come at once. You can easily arrange about your leave--come, and help me in this fix. But recollect, don't attempt to break off the acquaintance between me and that young lady, for that would be utterly useless! God bless you. Come at once.

"Yours ever, P.D."

George Wainwright reads this letter through twice attentively, and the frown deepens on his forehead. Then he folds it up and places it in his breast-pocket, and remains for ten minutes, slowly stroking his beard with his hand, and pondering the while. Then he looks up, and says:

"Billy, I'm thinking of taking the chief's advice, and going for a little leave."

"Oh, certainly," says Mr. Dunlop; "don't mind me, I beg. Leave the whole work of the department on my shoulders, pray. You'll find I'm equal to the occasion, sir; and perhaps in some future time, when I have 'made by force my merit known'--when the Right Honourable William Dunlop is First Lord of the Treasury, has clutched the golden keys, and shaped the whisper of the Throne into saying in the ear of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 'Put W. D. on the pension list for ten thou.'--I may thank you for having given me the opportunity of distinguishing myself!"

[CHAPTER XV.]

ON THE ALERT.

"Well, George, old man, how are you? No need to ask, though. You're looking as fresh as a daisy, and that after a couple of hundred miles of rail, a long drive in a dog-cart, and a family dinner with people who were strangers to you! And after all that, you're up and out by nine o'clock. I told my people you were the most wonderful fellow in the world, and now I think they'd believe it."

"I haven't done anything yet to assert any claim to such a character, at all events, Paul. I'm always an early riser, and most certainly I wasn't going to loaf away a splendid morning like this between the sheets. Where are the ladies and the Captain?"

"My mother is generally occupied with domestic matters in the morning, and Annette never shows till later in the day. If the governor had had his will, he would have liked to be with us now. He was immensely fetched by you last night, and jabbered away as I have not heard him for years. But a little of the governor goes a long way; and I told him we had business to talk over this morning; so he's off on his own hook somewhere, poor old boy."

"I don't think you appreciate your father quite sufficiently, Master Paul. He made himself remarkably agreeable last night; and there was a kind of Pelham and Tremaine flavour about his conversation which was particularly refreshing in this back-slapping, slangy age."

"And Annette--what did you think of her?"

"I was very much struck with her appearance. I'm not much of a judge in such matters, but surely she is very pretty."

"Ya-as," said Paul with a half-conquering air, caressing his moustache; "ya-as, she is pretty. What did you think of her--of her altogether, you know?"

"I thought her manner very charming. A little timid and nervous, as was natural on being introduced to a stranger. Well, even more than timid: a little weary, as though scarcely recovered from some illness or excitement."

"Ah, that was her illness. She had a bout of it the very day I sent off my letter to you."

"Well, she gave me that idea. But what on earth did you mean, young fellow, by telling me in that letter that your cousin was dull and distraite? I never saw anyone more interested or more interesting; and what she said about Wordsworth's sonnets and his poem of 'Ruth' was really admirably thought out and excellently put."

"Exactly. And yet you demur at my calling you the most wonderful fellow in the world! Why, my dear old George, you are the first person in all our experience of her that has ever yet made Annette talk."

"Perhaps because I am the first person who has listened to her."

"Not at all! We've all of us tried it. The governor's not much, to be sure, and those who don't care to hear perpetually about the Tamburini row, and D'Orsay, and Gore House, and 'glorious Jack Reeve at the Adelphi, sir!' and those kind of interesting anecdotes, soon get bored. And I'm not much, and not often here. But my mother, as you'll soon find out, is a clever woman, capital talker, and all that; and so far as I can learn, Miss Netty has hitherto utterly refused to be interested and amused even by that most fascinating of men to the sex, your father."

"My father! Why, where did he ever see Miss Derinzy?"

"Here, in this very house. Ay, you may well look astonished! It appears that my people knew your father in early years, before he took up his present specialty, and that he attended my mother, who has never had anything like decent health. She grew so accustomed to him that she would never see anyone else; and Dr. Wainwright has been good enough, since they have been here, to come down two or three times a year, and look after her."

"And he has seen Miss Derinzy?"

"Oh yes; unprofessionally, of course--at dinner, and that kind of thing--and, as I understand, has gone in to make himself very agreeable to Annette, but has never succeeded. On the contrary."

"On the contrary?"

"Well, they tell me that she has always snubbed him tremendously; and that must have been a frightful blow to such a society swell as your governor--diner-out, and raconteur, and all that kind of thing. Fact of the matter is, she has a deuced bad provincial style about her."

"Upon my honour I can't see it, can't allow it, even though, as you say, she did snub my father."

"Of course not, you old muff! Antony, no doubt, thought Cleopatra's manners charming; though the 'dull cold-blooded Caesar' who wouldn't be hooked in, and the other gents whom Antony cut out, had not a good word for her. However, look here; this scheme won't do at all. Don't you see that?"

"What scheme?"

"Now, 'pon my word, I call this nice! I fire guns for help, ring an alarm-bell for aid, and when the aid comes I have to explain my case! Don't you recollect what I told you about my mother's plan for my marrying Annette?"

"Oh--yes," said George Wainwright slowly, "I recollect now."

"That's deuced kind of you. So you must see it would never do."

"It would not do?"

"No, of course it wouldn't! What a fellow you are, George!" said Paul, almost testily. "The girl does not suit me in the smallest degree, and--and there's another one that does."

"Ah, I had forgotten about that."

"My good fellow, you seem to have left your wits behind you at the office for Billy Dunlop to take care of. What the deuce are you mooning about?"

"Nothing; I was only a little confused for the moment. And you are still over head and ears in that quarter, my poor Paul?"

"By Jove, you may well say that!"

"You correspond, of course, during your absence?"

"I've heard from her once or twice."

"And you carry the letters there," touching his friend's breast-pocket. "Ah, I heard a responsive crackling of paper, my poor old Paul."

"Oh, it's all deuced fine for you to talk about 'my poor old Paul,' and all that, but you don't know the party, or even you would be warmed into something like life!"

"Hem!" growled Wainwright, "I don't know about that; though, as you say, I am a little more exacting in my requirements than you. Does she spell Paul with a 'w,' or with a little 'p'?"

"She spells and writes like a lady as she is. What an ass I am to get into a rage! Look here, George, I can't stand this much longer. I must get back to her. It's no good my fooling my time away down here. My mother has brought me down to propose for Annette, and I shall have to tell her perfectly plainly that it can't be done."

"That's why you sent for me," said George Wainwright; "to tell me that you had fully made up your mind in the matter on which you brought me down here to consult me, eh?"

"No, not at all. I wanted to consult you, my dear old man, my best and dearest of old boys; but, you see, the scenes have shifted a little since I wrote. I've seen more of Annette, and seen more plainly that she does not like me, and I don't care for her; and I've had a letter from town which makes me think that the sooner I am back with Daisy, the better."

"With Daisy? that's her name, is it?"

"That's her pet name with me, and---- What, mooning again, eh?"

"No, I wasn't. I was merely thinking about---- Who was that elderly woman who came to the drawing-room door last night and told Miss Derinzy it was bed-time?"

"Oh, that was Annette's servant, who is specially devoted to her--Mrs. Stothard."

"Mrs. Stothard--Miss Derinzy's maid?"

"Well, maid, and nurse, and general attendant. Poor Annette, as I wrote you, is very delicate, and requires constant watching. I should not wonder if the excitement of last night and all your insinuating charming talk, you old rascal, were to have a bad effect, and make her lay up."

"Poor young lady, I sincerely hope not. When did you say my father was here last?"

"I didn't say any time; but I believe a few weeks ago. Now let us take a turn, and try and find the governor."

"By all means. I--I suppose Miss Derinzy is not down vet?"

"Villain! you would add to the mischief you caused last night. No. Down! no; not likely to be for hours! Come."

About the time that this conversation was going on in the little breakfast-room, Mrs. Stothard might have been seen leaving the suite of apartments which she and her young mistress occupied, all the doors of which she carefully closed behind her, and making her way to Mrs. Derinzy's room. Arrived there, she gave a short knock--by no means a humble petitioning rap, but a sort of knock which said, "I only do this kind of thing because I am obliged"--and, following close on the sound of her knuckles, entered.

As Mrs. Stothard had previously noticed--for nothing escaped her--Mrs. Derinzy for the last few days had been very much "out o' sorts," in the language of the villagers. Those humble souls anticipated the immediate advent of another attack, and Mrs. Powler had even suggested to Dr. Barton that the "man in Lunnon," as she called Dr. Wainwright, should be sent for. But when the little village medico presented himself at the Tower with the view of making a few preliminary inquiries, he only saw Mrs. Stothard, who told him, with an amount of grimness and acidity unusual even in her, that his services were not required.

The fact was, that Mrs. Derinzy, though to a certain extent a strong-minded woman, had confined herself for many years to diplomacy; and while plotting and scheming, had forgotten the actual art of war as practised by her in early days. Now, when the time had arrived for her to descend again into the arena, her courage failed her. It was now that Paul should be induced--forced, if necessary--to take up that position to the preparation of which for him the best years of his mother's life had been devoted, and at this very moment Mrs. Derinzy felt herself unequal to the task. The fact is, she had been winding herself up for the struggle, and was now rapidly running down before it commenced, although--perhaps because--she had her suspicions as to the result.

"How do you find yourself this morning?" asked Mrs. Stothard, in a loud unsympathetic voice.

"Not at all well, Martha. You might guess that from finding me still in my room at this time; but the fact is, I had scarcely the energy to get up this morning."

"Tired out by the wild dissipation of having a fresh face to look at, a fresh tongue to listen to, last night, I suppose."

"You mean Mr. Wainwright? He certainly is a most agreeable man."

"You are not the only person this morning suffering from his charms," said Mrs. Stothard, with a sniff of depreciation as she pronounced the last words.

"What do you mean? How is Annette? What kind of a night did she have?"

"Bad enough. Oh no, nothing violent, but bad enough for all that. I don't think I ever saw her so excited, so pleasantly excited, before. I could not persuade her to go to bed; and she coaxed me to let her sit up while she talked to me of your visitor. He was so handsome, so charming, so intelligent, she had never seen anyone like him."

"He made himself very agreeable," said Mrs. Derinzy shortly. She was alarmed at the account of these raptures on Annette's part, which boded no good to her favourite project.

"If she were a responsible being, I should say she was in love," said Mrs. Stothard. "Not that anyone is responsible, under those circumstances," she added: a dim remembrance of a cathedral yard, a pile of illuminated drawings, and a cornet in the cavalry, seen through a long vista of intervening years, gave her voice a flat and hollow sound.

"In love! stuff! She sees so few new faces that she's amused for the time, that's all. She will have forgotten the man by this morning."

"She hasn't forgotten him, though you do say 'stuff!' She had a very restless night, tossing and talking in her sleep and laughing to herself. And this morning, directly she woke, she asked me if George Wainwright was still here; and when I told her yes, laughed and kissed my cheek, and fell asleep again quite satisfied."

"George Wainwright, eh?" said Mrs. Derinzy. "She has lost no time in picking up his name."

"She loses no time in picking up anything that interests her. And this Mr. George Wainwright is clever, you say?"

"Very clever, so Paul says; and so he seems."

"And he has come down here on a visit, just to see Mr. Paul?"

"Exactly. Mr. Paul thinks there is nobody like him, and consults him in everything."

"And yet, knowing this," said Mrs. Stothard, drawing nearer and dropping her voice, "you have this man here, and don't seem to see any danger in his coming."

"What do you mean, Martha? I don't comprehend you," said Mrs. Derinzy, showing in her pallid cheeks and wandering hands how she had been taken aback by the suddenness of the question.

"Oh yes, you understand me perfectly, and as you have only chosen to give me half-confidences, I can't speak any plainer. But this I will say, that if you still wish to throw dust in your son's eyes as regards what is the matter with Annette, you have acted with extraordinary folly in permitting this man to come down here. He is no shallow flimsy youth like Mr. Paul--you will excuse my speaking out; it is necessary in such matters--but a clever, shrewd, long-headed man of the world, and one, above all, who is constantly brought into contact with cases such as Annette's. He will see what is the matter with her in the course of the next interview they have, even if he has not discovered it at once, or at all events the first time she has an attack, and--he will tell his friend."

"They must be kept apart; he must not see her any more."

"Pshaw! that would excite suspicion--his, Paul's, every one's. No; we must think it out quietly, and see what can be done for the best. Meantime, Annette's state is greatly in our favour. She is wonderfully good-tempered and docile, and if she does not get too much excited, we may yet pass it off all well."

"Let her console herself with that idea," said Mrs. Stothard, when she found herself alone in her own room, "if she is weak enough to find consolation in it. Nothing will hide the truth from this man. I saw that in the mere momentary glance I had of him last night. He will detect Annette's madness, and will tax his father with the knowledge of it; and the Doctor, hard though he is, won't be able to deceive his son. And then up blows our fine Derinzy castle into the air! Won't it blow up without that? Wait a minute, and let us just see how matters stand--in regard to my plans and my future, I mean, not theirs.

"Paul is still madly in love with Fanny. Since he has been here, he has had two letters from her, addressed to him at the 'Lion,' under his assumed name of 'Douglas.' I saw them when they fell from his pocket, as he changed his coat in the hall the other day. So far, so good. Then--this man Wainwright finds out that Annette is mad, and tells Paul. Of course the young fellow declares off at once, only too glad to do so, and Mrs. Derinzy's of the marriage are at an end.

"Would Paul marry Fanny then? If left to himself he would; but Wainwright, who they say has such immense influence over him, would never permit it; would persuade him that he was disgracing himself, talk about unequal alliances, and all that.

"A dangerous man to have for an enemy! What is to be done? How is he to be won over? Suppose--suppose he were to take a fancy to the girl himself, mad as she is--such things have been, and she is certainly fascinated with him--and I were to prove their friend! How would that work out? I think something might be made of it."

[CHAPTER XVI.]

THE COLONEL'S CORRESPONDENT.

The pleasant house in Kent at which Colonel Orpington and his daughter are staying is filled with agreeable company. Not merely young men who are out shooting all day in the thick steaming coverts well preserved with pheasants; not merely young women who are in the habit of carrying on perpetual flirtation with the afore-named young men in language intelligible to themselves alone, who look upon the Colonel as rather a fogey, and who, as he confesses himself, bore him immensely, and are very much deteriorated from the youth of his time; but several people of his own age--club-hunting men who began life when he did, and have pursued it much after the same fashion; and ladies who take interest in all the talk and scandal and reminiscences of bygone years.

The house is situated at such a little distance from town--some sixty miles or so--that it is traversed in very little more than an hour by the express train, which (the owner of the house is a director of the railway) can be always stopped by signal at the very small station nearest to it; so that the company is constantly changing, and receiving fresh accessions, the coming guests being welcomed, and the parting guests being speeded, after the ordinary recipe.

But throughout the changes, Colonel Orpington and his daughter are among the company who stay on; both of them are voted excellent company, for the nights are beginning to grow long now, and the dinner-hour has been fixed at seven instead of eight; and there is a great talk of and preparation for certain amateur theatricals, of which the Colonel, who is an old hand at such matters, is stage-manager and principal director, and in which Miss Orpington is to take a leading part. Much astonishment has been privately exhibited by certain of the assembled people that that restlessness which generally characterised "old O.," as he was familiarly termed amongst them, seemed to have abated during his visit to Harbledown Hall; more especially has a calm come over those horribly troublesome slate-quarries and lead-mines in South Wales, which usually took the Colonel so frequently away from his daughter and his friends. The matter is discussed in the smoking-room late at night, long after the well-preserved Colonel has retired to his rest; and Badger Bobus, who is come down to stay at Harbledown on the first breath of there being any possibility of club-hunting, thinks that he ought to keep up the reputation which he acquired by his famous saying on the subject; but the Muse is unpropitious, and all that Bobus can find to remark is, that "it is deuced extraordinary."

The long interval which has now elapsed since her father found it necessary to relieve her of his presence does not seem to have had much effect upon Miss Orpington. Truth to tell, whether her revered parent is or is not with her has now become a matter of very small moment with that lady; and when her hostess congratulates herself in supposing that her house must indeed be attractive when that dear Colonel consents to remain there as a fixed star, Miss Orpington merely shrugs her shoulders slightly and expresses no further acquiescence.

Life has gone on in all this Arcadian simplicity for full five weeks, when the appearance of the Colonel at the breakfast-table, blue frock-coated and stiff-collared, instead of in the usual easy garb adopted by him in the country of a morning, shows some intended change in his proceedings. The wags of the household, Badger Bobus and his set, are absent from the breakfast-table; for there was a heavy billiard-match on the night before, and they were yet sleeping off its effects. Nevertheless the change in the Colonel's costume is not unobserved; but before a delicately-contrived question can be put to extract its meaning, the Colonel himself announces that he has to go to town for a day, and may possibly be prevented from returning that night. Modified expressions of horror from the young ladies and gentlemen about to act in the amateur theatricals, then close impending--fears that everything will go wrong during the manager's absence, and profound distrust of themselves without his suggestions and experience. The Colonel takes these compliments very coolly--is pretty nearly certain to be back that night; and his absence will give them a chance of striking-out any new lights which may occur to them, and which can be tendered for his acceptance on his return. Miss Orpington, when appealed to to persuade her father not to be longer away than is absolutely necessary, meets the matter with her usual shoulder-shrug, and a calm declaration that in those matters she never interferes, and papa always pleases himself.

The Yorkshire baronet with money to whom she is engaged, and who does not put in appearance until after the Colonel's announcement has been made (he was one of the most interested in the billiard-match, and ran Badger Bobus very hard at the last), is really delighted at the news. He and the Colonel get on very well together--they are on the best of terms both as regards present and prospective arrangements; but there is, as Sir George Hawker remarks, something about the "old boy" which did not "G" with his, Sir George's, notions of perfect comfort.

Before the last of the dissipated ones has dropped-in to the dry bacon and leathery toast, the remnants of the haddocks, and the débris of the breakfast, the Colonel is driving a dogcart to the station, where the signal for the express to stop is already flying. The equanimity which the old warrior has sustained in the presence of his friends deserts him a little now when there is no one near him save a stolid-faced groom who is gazing vacantly over the adjacent country. His annoyance does not vent itself on the horse--he is too good a whip for that--but he "pishes!" and "pshaws!" and is very short and sharp with the groom demanding orders as he leaves his master at the station; and when he has been sucked-up, as it were, into the train, which is again thundering on its townward way, he takes a letter from his pocket, and daintily adjusting his natty double-eyeglass on his nose, reads it through and through.

"This is the infernal nuisance of having to make women allies in matters of this kind," says he softly to himself, laying down the letter and looking out of the window. "They are always doing too much or too little; anything like a juste milieu seems to be utterly impossible to them; and I cannot make out from this girl's rodomontade nonsense whether she has not just overstepped her instructions, and so spoiled what promised to be a remarkably pretty little plot. And yet it was the only thing I could do, and she was the only available person. It was a thousand pities that Clarisse was away from town at the moment; for she is not merely thoroughly trustworthy, but always has her wits about her."

When the train arrives in London, the Colonel calls a cab, and is driven to the Beaufort Club, which is still empty and deserted, and where he asks the porter whether certain members, whom he names, had been there lately. Among these names is that of Mr. Derinzy; and on being answered in the negative, he brightens up a little and pursues his way. This time the cabman is directed to drive to the Temple; and at the Temple gates he stops and deposits his fare.

There are symptoms of renewing life among the lawyers, for term-time is coming on. As the Colonel steps down Middle Temple Lane, he passes by long ladders, and has to skip out of the way of the shower of whitewash and water which the painters, standing on them, scatter refreshingly about. It is for Selden Buildings that Colonel Orpington is making; and, arrived in that quiet little nook, where the hum of the many-footed passing up and down Fleet Street sounds only like the distant roar of the sea, he stops before the doorway of No. 5, and after a rapid glance upwards, to assure himself that he is right, enters the house, and climbs the dingy staircase. The clerks in the attorney's office on the ground-floor seem to be in full swing; but the oak on the first-floor, guarding the chambers where Tocsin, Q.C., gets himself in training for gladiatorial practice, is closed, Tocsin being still away. Arrived at the second-floor, the Colonel pauses to take breath, the ascent having been a little steep. There are two doors, one on either hand, and both are closed. After a moment's breathing space, the Colonel turns to the one on the right, which bears the name of "Mr. John Wilson," and after a short glance round, to see that he is unobserved--it was scarcely worth the trouble, for he was most certain there would be none there to see him--he takes a neat little Bramah-key from his pocket, opens the oak, and entering, closes it carefully behind him. There is nothing in the little hall but a stone filter and a couple of empty champagne bottles. So the Colonel does not linger there, but quickly passing through, opens the door in front of him, and finds himself in a large room dimly lit, by reason of the window-blinds being all pulled down. When these are raised--and to raise them is the Colonel's first proceeding--he looks round him with a shiver, lights a fire, which is already laid in the grate, and carelessly glances round the apartment. Not like a lawyer's rooms these; not like the office of a hardworking attorney, the chambers of a hard-reading, many-brief-getting barrister; not like the chambers of Tocsin, Q.C.--even though Tocsin notoriously goes in for luxury, and affects to be a swell; no litter of many papers here, no big bundles of briefs, no great sheets of parchment, no tin boxes painted with resonant names (in most cases as fictitious as the drawers of Mr. Bob Sawyer's chemist-shop), no legal library bound in calf, no wig-box, no stuff-gown refreshingly dusted with powder hanging up behind the door. Elegant furniture, more like that found in a Mayfair drawing-room than in the purlieus of the Temple: long looking-glasses from floor to ceiling, velvet-covered mantelpiece, china gimcrackery placed here and there, easy-chairs and sofa; no writing-table, but a little davenport of old black oak, a round dining-table capable of seating six persons, a heavy sideboard also in black oak, and a dumb-waiter. Heavy cloth curtains, relieved by an embroidered border, cover the windows; and on the walls are proofs after Landseer. Thick dust is over all; and as the fire is slow in lighting, the Colonel shivers again as he gives it a vicious poke, and says to himself:

"'Gad! there is a horrible air of banquet-halls deserted, and all that kind of thing, about the place! It must be more than three months since anyone was in it. When was the last time, by-the-way? Oh, when I gave Grenville and Brown and Harriet that supper after the picnic." The fire struggles up a little, but the Colonel still shivers. "I wish I had told that old woman who attends to this place that Mr. Wilson was likely to be here for an hour or two to-day, and wanted his fire lit. I hope my young friend will be punctual. It is better down at Harbledown than at this dreary place; and it wouldn't do for me to show in town--not that there is anybody here to see me, I suppose. Young Derinzy away still--that is good hearing; but what could she have meant by 'things not looking very straight?' Always so confoundedly enigmatical and mysterious in her writing. Perhaps she will be more explicit when we meet face to face." Then, looking at his watch, "Let me see--just two; and I have not time to get any luncheon anywhere; that is to say, if she comes at the hour which I telegraphed to her."

The fire is burning bravely now, and the Colonel is bending over it, rejoicing in its warmth, when he hears a slight tinkling of a bell. He looks up and listens.

"'Gad! I forgot I had closed the oak," he says. "I come here so seldom, that the ways of these places are still strange to me." (Tinkle again.) "That must be my young friend."

He rises leisurely, crosses the hall, and opens the door, and is confronted by a tall young woman, rather flashily dressed, who lifts her veil, and reveals the features of Miss Bella Merton, the clerk at Mr. Kammerer's, the photographer.

"Is Mr. Wilson in, sir?" asked the young lady, with a demure glance.

"He is," said the Colonel; "and delighted to welcome you to his rooms. Come in, my dear young lady; there is no necessity for either of us acting a part now. You are very punctual, and in matters of business--and ours is entirely a matter of business--that is a very excellent sign."

He led her into the room, pulled an arm-chair opposite the fire, and handed her to it.

"I scarcely know whether I am doing right in coming here, Colonel Orpington," said Bella Merton--"by myself, you know, and alone with a gentleman," she added, as if in reply to his wondering look.

"I mentioned just now that there was no necessity for any nonsense between us, Miss Merton," said the Colonel quietly, "and that we are engaged on what is purely a matter of business. Let us understand each other exactly. You are my agent, my paid agent--I don't wish to hurt your feelings, but in business frankness is everything--to make inquiries and act for me in a certain matter, and you have come here to make me your report. There is no mystery about it so far as you are concerned, except that you are to know me in it as Mr. Wilson; but you will find, my dear Miss Merton, as you grow older, that in many of the most important business transactions in the world the name of the principal is not allowed to transpire. Do I make myself clear?"

Miss Merton, though still young, has plenty of savoir faire. She takes her cue at once; lays aside her giggling, demure, and blushing friskiness, and comes to the point.

"Perfectly, Mr. Wilson," she replied. "I received your telegram, and am here obedient to it."

"That is very right, very prompt, and very much to the purpose," says the Colonel. "I ask you to meet me here, because in your note received this morning you seem to intimate that things were not going quite as comfortable as I could wish with our young friend--Fanny, I think you call her. Is not that her name?"

"Yes; Fanny Stafford."

"Very well, then; in future we will always speak of her as Fanny, or Miss Stafford, as occasion may require. Will you be good enough now to enter into farther particulars?"

"Well, you see, Mr. Wilson"--and the girl cannot help smiling as she repeats his name, for Colonel Orpington looks so utterly unlike any possible Mr. Wilson--"Fanny has grown dull and out of sorts lately; and I cannot help thinking, from some words she has occasionally dropped, that she is anxious to leave Madame Clarisse, and settle herself in life."

"I don't know that I should prove any obstacle to that," says the Colonel; "it would depend, of course, on the manner in which she proposed to settle herself."

"Of course," says the girl, looking at him keenly; "that is just it; and, if I may be excused for saying so, I don't think hers was in your way."

"Very likely not. Please understand you are to say everything and anything that comes into your head and you think relates to the business we have in hand. I imagine, from the hint in your letter, that the gentleman of whom we have spoken, Mr. ----, how do you call him?"

"Mr. Douglas--Paul Douglas."

"Ay, Mr. Douglas--had come to town. On inquiry, I find this is not the case."

"No, but she hears from him constantly; and though she never shows me his letters, I can gather from what she says that there has been something in the last one or two of them which has upset her very much."

"You have not the least idea what this something may be? Do you imagine he proposes to break with her?"

"On the contrary, I think she discovers that his love for her is even deeper than she imagined, and I think that her conscience is reproaching her a little in regard to him."

The Colonel looks up astonished.

"Who can have benefited by any lapse or waywardness of which these conscience-stings can be the result?" he asks. "Not I for one."

"I don't think anyone is benefited by them, Colonel Orpington," says the girl, with a shadow on her face; "I am sure no one has in the way you suggested. What I mean is this, that Fanny is naturally discontented with her position, and anxious for riches, and fine clothes, and a pretty home, and all that. Since I have talked to her about you and the strong admiration you have for her, and your coming after her photograph and giving Mr. Kammerer the heavy price he asked for it, and constantly speaking to me about her, she has grown more discontented still, I fancy; and we women can generally read each others minds and guess at each other's ideas, principally from the fact that we are all made use of and played upon in the same way, I imagine. I fancy that Fanny thinks that she has not acted quite fairly towards Paul Douglas since his absence; that all this talk about you has lessened her regard for him, and led her to picture to herself another future than that which she contemplated when he went away, and---- Well, I have rather an idea that there is another disturbing element in the matter."

"'Gad!" says the Colonel, stroking his moustache thoughtfully, "there seems to be quite enough complication as it is. What is it now?"

"I fancy that a young man in her own station of life, bright, active, and industrious, and likely to make a very good position for himself in that station out of which he would never want to move--for he is proud of it, and thoroughly self-reliant--is deeply smitten with Fanny, and that she knows it."

The Colonel looks up relieved.

"I wouldn't give much for this young man's chance, pattern of all the virtues though he may be. I don't think he is much in Miss Stafford's line."

"Perhaps not," says Bella Merton, "nor do I think he would be likely to succeed, if Fanny had not several sides to her character. At all events, whether he succeeds or not, the knowledge that he cares for her, and that he is ready to open a new career for her, has an irritating and upsetting effect upon her just now."

The Colonel lit a cigar during the progress of this dialogue, and sat smoking it thoughtfully.

"Do you happen to know whether Madame Clarisse is in town?" he asks her after a few minutes' pause.

"I think I heard Fanny say that she came back from Paris last week," replies Miss Merton; "yes, I am sure she did; for I recollect Fanny telling me Madame had said that she might have a holiday, and I wanted her to come away with me to get a change somewhere."

"Quite right of you to throw yourself as much with her as possible; but don't take her away just yet. You have given me most admirable aid, Miss Merton, and have managed this affair with a delicacy and discretion which do you infinite credit, and which I shall never forget. Will you add to your favour?"

"Willingly if I can, Colonel--I mean Mr. Wilson," says Bella, with a blush. "How is it to be done?"

"By getting yourself a dress, or mantle, or something of that new brown colour which has just come into fashion, about which all the ladies are raving, and which I am sure would become you admirably, and by wearing it the next time I have the pleasure of receiving a visit from you," says the Colonel, pressing a bank-note into his visitor's hand. "And now goodbye. Not a word of thanks; I told you at the beginning this was a mere matter of business; I am merely carrying out my words."

"You wish me still to see Fanny, and to let you know anything that may transpire?" asks Bella.

"Certainly; though perhaps I may soon---- However, never mind; write always to the same address, and keep me well informed."

Miss Merton goes tripping through the Temple, in great delight at the crisp little contents of her purse that she has just received from the Colonel, and commanding great tribute of admiration from the attorneys' clerks who catch glimpses of her through the grimy windows behind which they are working; and Colonel Orpington, alias Mr. John Wilson, sits with his feet before him on the fender, smoking slowly, and cogitating over all he has heard.

It is dusk in the Temple precincts, though still bright light outside, before he rises from his chair, flings the but-end of his last cigar into the fire, and says to himself:

"Yes, I think that I must now appear on the scene myself, and see how the land lies with my own eyes. I wonder whether young Derinzy has been playing this recent game from forethought or by accident. Deuced clever move of his if he intended it; but I rather think it was all a chance; such knowledge of life does not come to one until after a great deal of experience, and he is a mere boy as yet. I don't think much of what my young friend just now said about the tradesman, artisan, or whatever the fellow may happen to be, though she seemed to have a notion that he would prove dangerous. However, it will all work out in time, I suppose. I won't stop in town to-night, now there is nothing to be done; the house in Hill Street is all upset, and I will go back to my comfortable quarters at Harbledown, and give those acting people the benefit of my society. John Orpington," he says, looking at himself in the glass over the mantelpiece, "you have come to a time of life when rest is absolutely necessary for you, and you have got too much good sense to ignore the fact; and as to Miss Fanny Stafford, well--la nuit forte conseil--I will sleep upon all I have heard, and make up my mind to-morrow morning." And so little excited or flurried is Colonel Orpington by the events of the day, that when the down express is stopped by signal at the little station, the guard, previously charged to look out for him, finds the Colonel deep in slumber over his evening newspaper.

[CHAPTER XVII.]

WELL MET.

In her light and volatile way, Miss Bella Merton had made what was by no means a wrong estimate of Daisy's state of mind; more especially right was she in her conjecture that Paul Derinzy's absence had had the effect of showing to Daisy the true state of her feelings towards him, and that she found her heart much more complicated than she had believed. She had been accustomed to those walks in Kensington Gardens, which had become of almost daily occurrence, and she missed them dreadfully. She had been accustomed to the soft words, the tender speeches, to the little pettings and fondlings and delicate attentions which her lover was always paying to her, and in her solitude she hungered after them. True, his letters were all that a girl in her position could desire--full of the kindest phrases and most affectionate reminiscences, full of delight at the past and of hope for the future; only, after all, they were but letters, and Daisy wearied of his absence and longed for his return.

In the dull dead season of the year, when everything was weary and melancholy, when business was at such a standstill, that she had not even the excitement of her work to carry off her thoughts in another direction, the girl pondered over her lot, and the end of each period of reflection found her heartily sick of it. How long was it to endure? Was this daily slavery to go on for ever? Was she still to live in a garret, to emerge from thence in the early morning to the dull routine of business, to go through the daily toil of showing her employer's wares to the listless customers, of enduring all their vapid impertinences and senseless remarks, to superintend making up the boxes and the sending-off of the parcels, and to return again to the cheerless garret, weary, dispirited, and dead-beat? So that slight glimpse of the promised land which had been accorded to her when she first made up her mind that she would bring Paul's attentions to a definite end, that marriage never to be perfectly realised while he was with her, while she was in the daily habit of meeting him and listening to his impassioned words, that future which she had depicted to herself, seemed now perfectly possible of realisation, although Paul had, as she was compelled to allow to herself, never held out definite hopes of marrying her, but contented himself by dwelling on the impossibility of any decadence in his love, or of his being able to pass his life away from her.

But since his absence in the country, these pleasant visions had gradually faded and grown colourless. Thinking over the past, Daisy was compelled to allow to herself that, though their acquaintance now extended over some months, the great end to which she was looking forward seemed as far off as ever. Who were those people of his, as he called them? this family of whom he apparently stood in such awe? and even if their consent were obtained, would Paul have courage enough to fly in the face of the world by marrying a girl in a station of life inferior to his own? The moral cowardice on this point she was aware of; his weakness she knew. She had seen it in his avoidance of public places when in her company, and the constant fright of detection which he laboured under. She had taxed him with it, and he could not deny it, but laughed it off as best he might. He even in laughing it off had confessed that he stood in wholesome terror of Mrs. Grundy and all the remarks which she and her compeers might make. Was this a feeling likely to be effaced by time? She thought not. The older he grew the less likely was he to care to defy the world's opinion, unsustained as he would be by the first fierce strength of that love which alone could spur him on to what was, in his eyes, a deed of such daring.

And Daisy was in this position, that, however much she might seem to talk and laugh with Bella Merton, she could not take that young person, nor indeed any person of her own age, into her confidence. All the counsel and advice which she had to rely on must come from her mother alone, and Mrs. Stothard's advice was like herself, grim and very hard and very worldly. From the first she had seemed much pleased with Daisy's account of her relations with Paul. She had urged her daughter to persevere in the course on which she had decided, and to lose no opportunity for making the young man declare himself, so that they might have some legal hold upon him. All this was to be done cautiously and without hurry, so long as he continued as attached as he then seemed to be. Daisy was cautioned against doing anything which might alarm him; it was only if she perceived that he was relaxing in his attentions that she was at once to endeavour to bring him to book.

And though Daisy was fully aware that her more recent letters to her mother, written since Paul's absence, had been influenced by the dulness which that event had caused her, and were, in truth, anything but reassuring productions, Mrs. Stothard's had never lost heart. They were cheerful and hopeful; bade her daughter not to give way, as she felt certain that all would be right in the end; and were full of a spirit of gaiety which was little characteristic of the writer.

And there were two other influences at work which tended to disturb Daisy's peace of mind. Her acquaintance, Bella Merton, though sufficiently social and volatile, had a singular knack of persistence in carrying through any plan on which she might be engaged; and since the subject was first mentioned at the little party in Augusta Manby's rooms, she had taken advantage of every opportunity of being in Daisy's company, to enlarge to her on Colonel Orpington's position and generosity, and of the extraordinary admiration which he had professed for Fanny's portrait and herself.

These remarks were listened to by Daisy at first with unconcern, and their perpetual iteration would probably have disgusted her, had not Miss Merton been endowed with an unusual amount of feminine tact, and thus enabled to serve them up in a manner which she thought would be peculiarly palatable to her friend; so that Daisy found herself not merely constantly listening to stories of Colonel Orpington when she was in Miss Merton's company, but thinking a great deal of that distinguished individual when she was alone. She had taken very little notice of him on the day when he called in George Street with his daughter, and could only recollect of his personal appearance that it was gentlemanly and distinguished-looking; but she remembered having noticed the keen way in which he looked at her, and one glance of unmistakable admiration which he levelled at her as he followed his daughter from the room. And he was very rich, was he? and very generous--very generous? Why was Bella Merton always harping on his generosity? why was she always talking in a vague way of hoping some day to be able to introduce him formally?

To Daisy there could be no misunderstanding about the purpose of such an introduction, the girl thought, with flaming cheek; and the recollection of Paul's delicacy came across her, and she felt enraged with herself at ever having permitted Bella Merton to talk to her in that fashion. And yet--and yet what was the remainder of her life to be, Paul making no sign? She knew perfectly well that that little tea-party in Dalston might, in another way, take rank as an epoch in her life. She knew perfectly well that John Merton, who had always admired her, that night had yielded up his heart, and she would not have been surprised any day at receiving an offer of his hand. Was that to be the end of it? Was she to pull down the image of Paul which she worshipped so fondly, and erect that of homely John Merton in its place? Was she to continue in very much the same style of life which she was then leading, merely exchanging her garret for a room a little less high, a little better furnished, but probably in a less desirable part of the town? Was she to remain as a drudge--not indeed to Madame Clarisse or any other employer, for she knew John Merton was too high-spirited to think of allowing her to help towards their mutual maintenance by her own labour--but still as a drudge in domestic duties, in slavery for children and household, never to rise in the social scale, never to know anything of those luxuries which she so longed for? It was a bitter, bitter trial, and the more Daisy thought it over--and the question was constantly present in her mind--the less chance did she see of bringing it to a satisfactory conclusion.

Although the professional people whose duties required their attendance in town were beginning to come back, and bringing with them, of course, their wives and families, the majority of Madame Clarisse's more happily placed-customers yet remained in their country houses, and there was still very little business doing at the establishment in George Street. There were frequently times in the day when Daisy had nothing to do, and she would take advantage of her leisure to go out and get a breath of the bleak autumnal air. Madame Clarisse never objected to these little excursions; indeed, encouraged them. For on her return from France, she had noticed that her favourite Fanfan's cheeks were looking very pale, and that her manner was listless and dispirited, and that she plainly wanted a change. Madame was at first disposed to insist on Fanfan's going away for a time to the country or the seaside, and recruiting herself amid fresh scenes. But a communication which she received about that period altered her views; and she consequently contented herself by giving her assistant as many hours' leisure as she conveniently could, taking care that this leisure was fragmentary, and never to be enjoyed for longer than one afternoon at a time.

Daisy had an odd delight, when thus enabled to absent herself from her duties, in visiting the old spot in Kensington Gardens, which had been the scene of her walks with Paul. They had selected it on account of its seclusion, but now there were fewer people there than ever; it was too damp and cold any longer to be used as a place of recreation by the children who formerly frequented it for its quietude and its shade; and an occasional workman hurrying across the Park, or a keeper, finding his occupation gone in the absence of the boys, gazing wearily down the long vistas at the end of which the thick white fog was already beginning to steam, were the only human creatures whom Daisy encountered.

She was astonished, therefore, one day on arriving at the end of the well-known avenue, and turning to retrace her steps, to find herself face to face with a gentleman who must evidently have made his approach under cover of the trees, and who was close to her before she had heard his footfall.

She recognised him in an instant--Colonel Orpington.

"I must ask your pardon for intruding on you, Miss Stafford," said the Colonel, raising his hat, "and more especially for having come upon you so suddenly, and caused, as I am afraid I see by your startled looks, some annoyance; but though I have never had the pleasure of a personal introduction, we have met before, and I believe you know who I am."

His manner was perfectly easy and gentlemanly, but thoroughly respectful withal; and though, as he had noticed, Daisy's first impulse was to turn aside and leave him without a word, a moment's reflection caused her to bow and say:

"I believe I recognise Colonel Orpington."

"Exactly; and in Colonel Orpington you see an unfortunate man who is compelled, from what the begging-letter writers call in their flowery language, 'circumstances over which he has no control,' to remain in London at this horribly dismal time of year."

Daisy was silent, but she smiled; and the Colonel proceeded:

"I wandered into the Park and strolled up the Row, where there were only three men, who were apparently endeavouring to see which could hold on to their horses longest; and I was comparing the ghastliness of to-day with the glory of last season--I need not quote to you, I am sure, my dear Miss Stafford, that charming notion about a 'sorrow's crown of sorrows,' which Mr. Tennyson so cleverly copied from Mr. Dante, who thought of it first--when at the far end by the Serpentine Bridge I got a glimpse of a form which I thought I recognised, and which, if I may say so, has never been absent from my mind since I first saw it. I made bold to follow it; and just now, on your turning round, I found I was right in my conjectures. It was you.".

He paused; but Daisy did not smile now, merely bowed stiffly, and moved as though she would proceed. The Colonel moved at the same time.

"I hope you are not annoyed at my freedom, Miss Stafford," said he. "Believe me, at the smallest hint from you, I will rid you of my presence this instant; but it does seem rather ridiculous that two persons who, I think we are not flattering in saying, are calculated to amuse one another at a time and in a place where they are as much alone as the grand old gardener and his wife were in Paradise, should avoid each other in an eminently British manner, simply because conventionality does not recognise their meeting."

This time Daisy smiled, almost laughed, as she said: "You will readily understand, Colonel Orpington, that the rules of society have no great hold upon me, who have never been in any position to be bound by them; and I haven't the least objection to your walking part of the way with me on my return to my employer's, if it at all pleases or amuses you to do so."