Kissing the Rod: A Novel. (Vol. 3 of 3)

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https://books.google.com/books?id=5cgBAAAAQAAJ (Oxford University)

KISSING THE ROD.

A Novel.

BY

EDMUND YATES,

AUTHOR OF "BROKEN TO HARNESS," "RUNNING THE GAUNTLET," "LAND AT LAST," ETC.

"The heart knoweth its own bitterness."

IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III.

LONDON:
TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST. STRAND.
1866.

[All rights of translation and reproduction reserved.]

LONDON:
ROBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKS,
PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.

KISSING THE ROD

[CHAPTER I.]

"IN BATTALIONS."

It was perhaps fortunate for Robert Streightley that the pressure of an immediate necessity for exertion was put upon him at the same time that he received his wife's letter. The blow was so frightful that it might have completely crushed him, had he not been forced to rouse himself from its first effect, to put the meaning of the terrible communication aside for a time, while he attended to the stern duties which were his, as the only representative of the dead man. The subdued bustle, the ceaseless coming and going, the people to be seen, the letters to be written, the innumerable demands upon his attention in reference to his deceased father-in-law, to say nothing of the exigencies of his own affairs, from which he had not an hour's respite, controlled him in spite of himself, and by suspending softened the intensity of the knowledge of the punishment that had overtaken him.

The suspense and perplexity into which Katharine's unexplained absence from home had thrown the household on the preceding day had prepared them to expect that some important intelligence was contained in the letter which had reached their master that morning; and the unhappy man comprehended the necessity of making some communication on the subject. He briefly informed Katharine's maid that she had left town for the present; and on being asked whether the woman was to join her mistress at Middlemeads, he said Mrs. Streightley was not there; that she had better wait for orders, and in the mean time ask no more questions. An injudicious answer; but Robert neither knew nor cared what would have been the judicious course to pursue. He knew only that his sin had found him out; that the chastisement had come; and that the woman whom he had so loved and so wronged had left him for ever--left him hating and despising him.

The hours of that dreadful day wore through somehow. Robert had been engaged during many of them in making arrangements consequent upon Mr. Guyon's death; he had been at Queen Anne Street, and at his office in the City, transacting business of different but invariably unpleasant kinds. He had seen several persons, but not any by whom the domestic calamity which had fallen upon him was suspected. He had written to his mother, informing her of Mr. Guyon's death, and requesting that Ellen would not come to Portland Place for the present; but giving no explanation of this request. All the day he had carried about with him the dreadful knowledge of what had befallen him--had been oppressed by its weight, darkened by its shadow; but he had not examined his burden--he had gone his appointed way, and done his relentless task, and the day had been got through somehow. Now he was going to look the truth in the face; he was going to force his mind to understand it, to take it in fully, and to suffer the torture at his leisure.

He shut himself up in his "study," and gave orders that no one was to be admitted. Then, with the door locked and sure of solitude, he read Katharine's letter again,--not that he needed to do so; every one of its few remorseless words seemed to have burned themselves into his brain,--and then he read the letter which hers had enclosed--the letter endorsed "Shown to R. S." He had not looked at it in the morning; it had sufficed him to know that the letter which Mr. Guyon had shown him on the day which had witnessed their disgraceful compact--the letter which they had tacitly agreed to suppress, still existed, for his conviction, for his condemnation, and had reached the hands to which it had been addressed at last: he had put it away with a shudder. But now he read it--steadily, and with utter amazement. There it was; and on the blank side of the sheet, in Mr. Guyon's hand, were the words, "Shown to R.S." But this letter was sill in Mr. Guyon's hand, and Robert had never seen it--had never heard of it; this was not the letter from Gordon Frere to Katharine which her father had shown to him; there was a dreadful mistake somewhere. As Robert read the heartless words in which Mr. Guyon rejected Gordon Frere on his daughter's behalf, he understood for the first time how the conspiracy which had resulted in so sad a success had been carried out. This, then, was the method Mr. Guyon had adopted, and into which Robert had never inquired. He saw it all--he understood it all now; and he honestly recoiled at the baseness by which his triumph had been secured. He even thought he would not have consented, had he known how the thing was to be done; but his conscience was not so deadened as to accept that sophistry, and another moment's thought taught him that he was as guilty as ever.

But how came the letter to be endorsed with words, intended by their writer only as a private memorandum, which were not true? This puzzled Robert, until he guessed, what really was the case, that Mr. Guyon had put Frere's letter and his reply away together, and had mistaken the one for the other. Why had he kept them at all? thought Robert; why had he put such dangerous and useless documents aside, thus running the risk of detection now realised? "He never could have intended to use them as a weapon against me," thought Robert, who had arrived at a tolerably correct appreciation of the character of his deceased father-in-law. "They convict him directly; me, though conclusively to her, only indirectly to others. Why on earth did he keep them?"

Ah, why? Why is half the mischief that is done in the world done by the instrumentality of letters, which ought to have been read and destroyed, being treasured up instead by foolish women, or read and left about by men whom experience has not availed to teach? If Robert Streightley had quite understood Mr. Guyon's character, he would have known, in the first place, that that gentleman had never been in the habit of contemplating the contingency of his own death, or of making any preparation, temporal or spiritual, for that event; in the second, that his vanity was of so ominous a kind that he liked to indulge in the recollection of successful enterprises, no matter what their nature, and treasured up the trophies of his fortunate coups, as other people might keep love-tokens or relics of departed friends,--a ghastly perversion, it is true, but a characteristic trait of Mr. Guyon, as Robert came to learn, when he had to examine all the dead man's papers and personal effects.

After all, it did not matter very much that this mistake had been made. Any one of the papers concerning this transaction, so endorsed, would have equally convicted her husband in Katharine's eyes. For a moment, when Robert perceived the error and recognised how it had occurred, a faint hope had sprung up in his heart that all might be explained, in explaining that he had never seen the draft of Mr. Guyon's letter to Gordon Frere; but it lasted only for a moment, and then left Robert more shame-stricken, more despairing than before.

The bitter remembrance of his resolutions of the day before came to torment him now. How futile they were! made all too late, and useless; how ridiculous they seemed, too! Would he ever have had the courage to tell the woman he had wronged the truth concerning himself and her? Cowering as he was now under the blast of her scorn and anger, he could not believe that he would; he heaped upon himself all the reprobation which the sternest judge could have measured out to him. His sin had found him out indeed, and nothing could save him now from the fullest retribution. It had come in its worst form, complicated with the death of his accomplice, as a double horror. Robert Streightley was not a man who could coldly contemplate such an event as Mr. Guyon's death. He had indeed retained but little personal regard for him; but that fact, the growing knowledge of the man which rendered such regard impossible, invested his death with additional horror to Robert. That such should have been the manner of the detection and the punishment, impressed him with awe. Standing, as he had done that day, by the dead man's bed, he had bowed his head submissively to the tremendous lesson which the scene conveyed. Where was their fine scheme now? Where was the wealth for which the father had sold the daughter? Gone--almost all gone; and if it had remained a million times told, what could it avail to the form of clay which lay there waiting for the coffin and the grave? Where was the beautiful wife whom the father's accomplice had purchased at the price of his honour? Who was to tell that to the wretched husband, who knew nothing but that she had detected them both, and fled from them both,--from the living and the dead?

As he thought these thoughts, and a thousand others which could find no utterance in words, no expression by the pen, the long hours of the night were wearing by. Up and down the room, long after the fire had died out, unnoticed, Robert Streightley walked, buried in his tormenting thoughts, full of horror, remorse, shame, the sense of righteous retribution and torturing grief. She was gone,--his darling, the one treasure of his life, the beautiful idol of his worship: the desolation of that knowledge had not come to him yet; he had had no time to think of the meaning of life without her; the fear, the excitement, the strangeness of the fact were all that he had as yet realised. The awful sorrow, the hopeless bereavement were for the future. The strokes of the rod were beginning to fall upon him; strokes which were to continue, ceaseless and stinging, until the end. Any one who has ever battled, quite alone, with a tremendous sorrow in its first hours of strife, knows how vain is the effort to collect his thoughts at the time, and to recall their order afterwards; knows how the merest trifles will intrude themselves on the attention at times, and at others how the faculties will seem to be suspended, and a kind of dull vacuity will succeed the access of raging pain. The story of Robert's suffering in no way differed from that of any other supreme agony. It had all the caprices, all the fantasies of pain; it had the dreadful vitality, and the intervals of numbness and wandering. Many times in the course of that night Robert sat down in a chair and fell asleep, to wake again--with a start, and an impression that some voice had uttered his name--to the renewed consciousness of his misery.

It was very long before he began to think about the circumstances of Katharine's flight from her home, before he began to speculate upon how she had gone, and whither. From the moment he had read her assurance that in this world he should never see her face again, he had been seized with a horrible conviction that this was literally true: he would seek her, of course; he would find out where she had gone to,--he did not even stop to think whether there would be much, or any difficulty about that--but he should see her face no more. No such wild notion as that Katharine would relent and forgive him ever crossed Robert's mind. He knew how cold and proud she was--how cold and proud when she was ignorant of his sin against her, and when he had lived only in the hope of winning her love some happy day before he died;--he knew how insensate any hope would now be, and he never cherished such a delusion for a moment. She was dead to him, and all the gorgeous fabric of the life he had built up for himself had crumbled away.

The new day was dawning, when Robert Streightley went wearily upstairs, and stopped at the door of his wife's dressing-room. He had hardly courage to enter the deserted chamber,--it was as though she lay dead inside. There had been so strong a likeness to her face in that of the dead man he had stood beside that day, that it had had a double awe for him. When at length he opened the door and went in, the cold dim dawn was there before him, and the orderly emptiness of the splendid chamber struck him to the heart.

No picturesque disarray was there, but the trimness of a swept and garnished apartment. He had not entered this room on the preceding night--he had not thought of looking for any explanation of Katharine's absence there. But now that she had furnished the explanation herself, he remembered the servants had told him she had been some time in her dressing-room after her return from Queen Anne Street. He drew back the curtains and admitted the misty light; he sat down on a sofa and leaned his head wearily upon his hands. Gradually fatigue overcame him, and he fell into a deep sleep, which gave him merciful forgetfulness until late in the morning.

Robert was roused from his slumber by Katharine's maid, who told him that Lady Henmarsh had arrived and was waiting to see him. "There's another lady with her, sir," said the maid,--"Mrs. Frere."

Robert started perceptibly. "I cannot see any one yet," he said. "Say I am not dressed, but will call on Lady Henmarsh as soon as possible."

The woman hesitated. "Lady Henmarsh wants to know what day is fixed for the funeral, sir; and she has been asking about my mistress."

"Just tell her what I have said," returned Robert impatiently, "and say no more."

The maid left him, and Robert went to his own room. His injunction was useless. Lady Henmarsh, who had felt more discomposure when the news of Mr. Guyon's death had reached her than any other intelligence respecting her fellow-creatures could have caused her to experience, had hurried up to town, had gone to Queen Anne Street, and learned from the housekeeper the strange disappearance of Katharine. While her message was being conveyed to Robert, she was engaged in cross-examining the footman; and she had elicited all that any one, save Robert himself, could tell her before she went away, obliged to be contented with the promise of a speedy visit from Mr. Streightley.

The news of Mr. Guyon's death had been received by Mrs. Streightley and her daughter as such news would naturally be received by such persons. They were shocked and sorry; shocked, because they knew Mr. Guyon to be a "worldly" man, and they could not but regard his unprepared death with awe; sorry, because he was Katharine's father, and Ellen at least loved Katharine, and grieved for her grief. Ellen would indeed have gone to her sister-in-law, and sought to soothe her in her simple fashion, had not Robert's note forbade her doing so. This note had excited no fresh alarm; the ladies agreed that Katharine was not able to see any one, not even Ellen, just yet, and were quite content to wait for the subsidence of a feeling so natural. Thus, when Robert made his appearance a little before noon on the day following the receipt of his note, they were wholly unprepared for the intelligence he had to communicate, and they received it with mingled horror and incredulity.

"My wife had grave cause of complaint against me," Robert had said, "and she has left me."

To this plain but not explanatory statement he limited his disclosure, and he left his mother and sister in much perplexity and distress. It did not occur to them that Robert was ignorant of his wife's plans; they accepted the situation as a simple separation; and Mrs. Streightley's comment upon it to her daughter, made after Robert had left them, was:

"I don't care what her cause of complaint may be, nothing can justify her leaving Robert. Don't let us speak of her, my dear; time will bring things right, and at all events will console him."

Thus Ellen had not any information to afford Mrs. Gordon Frere, when she surprised her by a visit that same afternoon. It was Hester who repeated to Ellen the particulars which Lady Henmarsh had extracted from the footman that morning, and Hester who suggested that Robert might find it more difficult than he imagined to open any communication with his wife.

"Lady Henmarsh went to Mr. Guyon's solicitor," said Hester; "and he evidently can tell nothing. Mrs. Streightley had a long interview with him after her father's death, but he declares she never gave him a hint of her intention, and was singularly quiet and composed. He wondered, indeed, at the composure with which she bore her father's death. I believe Mr. Streightley expects her to communicate with him, or you, or some one, by letter?"

"I suppose so. O, of course," said Ellen; "but the whole thing bewilders me. What fault can she have to find with Robert? Surely no woman ever had a better husband."

Mrs. Frere assented to this proposition, and the two talked over the mysterious occurrence. With none the less goût that no amount of talking could render it less mysterious. Hester had a certain degree of knowledge, and a greater degree of suspicion; but she did not confide either to her guileless companion, who was distracted between her admiring affection for Katharine and her absolute belief in Robert's faultlessness.

The interview between Robert and Lady Henmarsh was not more communicative on his part than that which had taken place at the Brixton villa, in so far as the motive of Katharine's flight was concerned. "Cousin Hetty" had so much to say about Mr. Guyon's death, and was so much agitated by it, that Robert's kindness of heart would, under any circumstances, have prevented his telling her any thing derogatory to the memory of the dead man. He therefore confined himself to a general statement of the circumstances. Lady Henmarsh was genuinely astonished, and honestly concerned. She thought in her heart that Katharine was the "greatest fool" in existence. "The other man is married," said she to herself, "and therefore out of her reach. She has not run off with any one else; and unless she was really too well off, and bored to death by having every thing she wished for, I cannot understand her conduct." Her manner was perfect in its sympathy with Mr. Streightley, and in her condemnation of his wife, whose flight she, however, took care to represent as merely a caprice, a little bit of temper,--"she always had an ungovernable temper," said Lady Henmarsh, in a parenthesis,--but of the worst possible taste under the circumstances.

"Did I understand you rightly, that Katharine was with her poor dear father when he died?" she asked.

"Yes, she was with him," said Robert; "she was with him all night, and until near eleven o'clock next day."

"How very extraordinary and how very shocking!" exclaimed Lady Henmarsh. "Well, Mr. Streightley, I am sure, no matter what you and she have quarrelled about, the fault is not yours; and her friend will speedily send her back to you."

"Her friend?" said Robert, interrogatively.

"Yes; Mrs. Stanbourne I mean. Of course she is gone to her. Do not you think so? She does not say so, I suppose, just to keep you in suspense, and make a sensation; but no doubt she is gone to her: she did so in all her troubles formerly; poor Ned and I were not good enough for her," and Lady Henmarsh sniffed spitefully. "My advice to you is to take no notice; she must come off her high horse when she wants money."

Robert started. He had not thought of that; he had not thought of his wife being reduced to any material distress. The mere idea gave him acute pain; and yet what better chance for her communicating with him, and some faint hope arising out of such communication? The divided pain and relief of the thought struggled in his expressive face.

"I have no idea," he replied; "there is no clue, no indication in her letter--nothing but the terrible, bare truth; and I don't know whether she has money with her or not."

"She had a private banking account, I know, among the other luxuries of her vie de princesse," said Lady Henmarsh with a spiteful emphasis; "you had better see to its condition. I have no doubt she has gone to Mrs. Stanbourne. It is unfortunate; and she is foolish to have made such a scandal as, let us all keep the matter as close as we may, it must make, for it will not be easily lived down by her, or forgotten by the world. However, it cannot be helped; she must only come back, and propitiate society more than ever."

Robert hardly heard her; his thoughts were far distant, in pursuit of the beloved fugitive. The trivial talk of the woman of the world passed him by unheeded. He roused himself to tell Lady Henmarsh what were the arrangements for the funeral of Mr. Guyon, and to utter a few sentences of kindness towards the dead man, and concern for her grief. Then he was going away, when he remembered something he had to say, and turned again to speak to her.

"No papers can be removed until after the funeral," he said; "but I have looked over the greater part of poor Mr. Guyon's, and I have set aside a large packet which I consider you are the proper person to dispose of. I will send them to you carefully."

Lady Henmarsh thanked him; but her manner was confused to a degree which did her habitual sang froid a great wrong, and a genuine blush dyed her face from the chin to the forehead. "To think of his being such an idiot as to keep those letters," she said, when Robert had left her. "Who could have believed it? I should not be surprised if he had kept some letter, some memorandum, which has opened Kate's eyes; and if so, knowing what a devil she is when she's roused, I'm not surprised at any thing."

Robert found that Katharine had not drawn on her private banking account for more than a fortnight. More than ever puzzled by this discovery, he questioned her maid, inquiring if she could tell what money her mistress had had in her possession. She had only a few sovereigns in her purse, the maid knew, when she went out that fatal day in the carriage. Katharine had forgotten her purse, and sent her upstairs for it just as she reached the hall-door; so she had seen the purse, and taken particular notice of it, as it lay open on the dressing-table. Robert went with the woman to examine the drawers and wardrobes in Katharine's room. He was intensely anxious now to be assured that she had the equivalent of money with her; for he was far from really sharing Lady Henmarsh's confident anticipations, though he tried to persuade himself that he did so. All Katharine's possessions were in perfect order--not a trinket, not a jewel was missing,--not one, at least, that Robert had given her, or that she had bought since their marriage; nothing but the old-fashioned case containing her dead mother's diamonds, her sole dowry, was gone from its place. Then Robert despaired; then he seemed to understand the terrible and final meaning of this event.

He was standing before the open doors of a cabinet in which Katharine's jewels were symmetrically arranged, and had just satisfied himself that only the case of jewels had been removed, when a servant came to seek him.

"What is it?" said Robert. "I am busy: I cannot see any one."

"It is one of the clerks from the City, sir," returned the man; "and he wants to see you on important business."

Robert went down to the study, and saw the clerk from the City. His business was important, and his news serious. New and heavy loss had fallen on Streightley and Son. Troubles had indeed come to Robert, "not by single spies, but in battalions."

[CHAPTER II.]

DELIBERATION.

It was eleven o'clock in the morning, and Mr. Charles Yeldham was hard at work, his oak rigidly closed, the sleeves of his dressing-gown turned up, his hair in a grand state of "towzle," caused by the frequent passage of his hands through it; a shower of fresh ink-splotches dotting the carpet close by his desk, and other indubitable signs of a hard case of "treadmill." It had occurred to Mr. Yeldham, in the midst of applying a wise saw to a modern instance, that somebody was tapping at his outer door; but entirely engrossed by the vastness of the application, he had given himself to rubbing his hands together under his desk, and had wholly ignored the knocker. In the act of taking a fresh dip of ink, preparatory to the elaboration of a sentence which should utterly confound his adversary the opposition chamber-counsel, Mr. Yeldham paused, and, recognising the peculiar taps at the door as those only known to the affiliated, Charley, with some faint idea that it might be Gordon Frere coming in for a chat and a smoke, laid down his pen, and unbolting the door, admitted Robert Streightley.

Very pale, with a bright hectic flush under the eyes, and with an unnatural brightness in the eyes themselves; with his hat drawn over his brow, and his shoulders far more rounded than when Yeldham had last seen him, Robert Streightley wrung his friend's hand, entered the room, and without invitation flung himself into a chair by the desk. The appearance of the man was so changed, the action was so contrary to his usual custom, that Charles Yeldham looked hard at him, and looking, noticed the restless quivering of his lips, the odd manner in which he plucked at his chin with his hand, the way in which from time to time he pressed his side, as though to check the beating of his heart. Yeldham noticed all these points; but his voice never betrayed him, and he said perfectly calmly,

"Well, Robert, old man, it's not often you venture into my quarters--afraid of the law, eh, old fellow?--think that I shall entangle you into a dispute with Rothschild, or show how easily you could promote a claim against the Barings? However, I'm glad to see you now you are come."

"I'm sure you are, Charley; and I know you'll be more glad to see me--I mean more ready with your sympathy and advice--when you learn that I have come to you--in trouble."

"In trouble? O yes, I recollect; I saw in the papers. Dreadful thing about Mr. Guyon; so sudden, and at such a place! Dreadful for your wife too; I suppose she feels it acutely?"

"I suppose she does. I can't say--I don't know!"

"You can't say--you don't know! Why, Hubert, old fellow, Mr. Guyon's death must--"

"I didn't come here to talk to you about Mr. Guyon's death, Yeldham; I came to speak of my own affairs."

"Why, Robert, how you--what on earth's the matter with you, man?"

"What on earth's the matter with a man whose wife--whom he adores and worships--has left him for ever?"

"Has left him for ever? Good God, Streightley, what's the matter with you; you've not been----"

"No, I'm not drunk, Charley, if you mean that; and grief has not turned my brain yet; at all events I know what I said, and I mean it--read that!" and he handed him Katharine's note.

Yeldham read it through with contracting brows and pursing lips. He read it twice; then Streightley said, "That note was posted to me, and reached me the morning after my wife left her home. You see that it does not give the slightest clue to her whereabouts."

"It does not--it----"

"Why do you hesitate?"

"Well--there was no occasion for you to show me that letter; and you would not have shown it to me, I presume, if you intended your confidence to end there."

"I have come here to ask your advice and help, and with the full intention of concealing nothing from you."

"That is the only condition under which advice, to be worth any thing, can be given. Mrs. Streightley in that letter speaks of some plot or conspiracy of which you were cognisant, by which her whole life was warped and spoiled. I'm not quoting exact words, but that remains upon my mind as the sense of the passage. What does she mean by that?"

"She means that I, whom you have always known as an honourable man, acted on one occasion like a sneak and a scoundrel!--she means that I was so mad in my pursuit of her before we were married, that I descended to the use of foul means to carry my point; that I was base enough to be party to an arrangement which, as she says, warped and spoiled her life, for the sake of getting her for myself."

"This is strong language, Robert! Knowing you as I do, I should think your conduct even in this matter can hardly have been such as to justify this self-condemnation."

"Wait and hear the story before you judge. You know how I loved Katharine Guyon. I told you all about it that first day we went down to Middlemeads; I told you how, the first time in my life, I was passionately, madly in love with her. We spoke, if you recollect, of your friend Gordon Frere; but I did not tell you what I then knew--that he had paid great attention to Miss Guyon; that these attentions had been very well received by her, and that there was a very strong flirtation--if not an understood engagement--between them."

"You did not tell me, but I knew it. I had been told of it by Gordon himself."

"You knew of it, and yet listened to my love-ravings? However, the flirtation, engagement--whatever it was--was gall and wormwood to me. I had seen them together on several occasions, and the recollection of the pleasure which she always showed in his society used to madden me. I made all kinds of excuses to go to her house; I lent her father money whenever he asked for it; each time I saw her I was more madly in love, but she was no nearer to me than before. One morning her father wrote to me to come to him on urgent business. I thought he wanted more money, but he explained that it was to consult me--I who was so calm and clever and far-seeing, God help me!--as to the future of his child. He had that morning had a letter from Mr. Gordon Frere making a formal proposal for Miss Guyon's hand, and enclosing another letter to Miss Guyon herself."

Here Charles Yeldham shifted his position, leaning forward in his chair, and fixing his eyes on Streightley's face.

"I did not read either of these letters," continued Robert; "but Mr. Guyon explained to me their purport, and I knew at once my doom. Mr. Guyon expressed his dislike to the proposed connection, stating that Mr. Frere was too young, too frivolous, and too poor to be intrusted with Miss Guyon's future. In an instant, and almost without knowing what I did, I proposed to Mr. Guyon for his daughter. He accepted me instantly, declared himself delighted, and assured me that he would smooth matters for me with Miss Guyon. But there was Frere's letter. We both knew that she was fond of the young man; we both knew that she would accept his offer; we--yes, we both agreed that the letter should be kept back from her, and that she should never be informed of Frere's proposal."

"Good God!" exclaimed Yeldham, "and that intention was carried out?"

"At once. Frere was answered by Mr. Guyon that his daughter was engaged to me, and--there! I cannot go through the sickening details of that time again, nor describe the manner in which that girl was cheated of her lover and made over to me. Since then the knowledge of my treachery has never left me, I may fairly say I haven't had one happy hour, and--could I only get my wife back, and prove to her how sincere is my desire to atone for my part in this plot, I should not repine at its having come to light. You don't speak, Yeldham; you despise me--you----"

"I don't despise you, Robert; I pity you from the bottom of my soul," said Yeldham in a hard dry voice. "I don't think, much as I have heard it talked of, that I ever believed in what men call the power of passion before. That it made whole idiots of the half-brained people who chose to let it get the mastery of them, I understood; but that under its influence you should have permitted yourself to have your sense of right and wrong warped and degraded--that you should have suffered yourself to become a conspirator with, if not the tool of, such a thorough-paced scoundrel as old Guyon, is to me most marvellous. I confess I thought there was something queer in the case; but I never dreamed of this."

Yeldham stopped speaking for a minute; but as Robert Streightley remained silent, his head buried in his hands, Charley rose to his feet and began striding up and down the room, as was his fashion when very much excited.

"I should be no true friend to you, Streightley, if I did not tell you all I feel in this matter," he said, "though I cannot express in strong enough terms my horror at what has been done. When I recollect how that poor fellow Gordon Frere went away almost heart-broken, and soured in temper, at the way in which he thought he had been treated by Miss Guyon--his visits unacknowledged, his letters unreplied to, his proposal rejected,--when I think how he stormed about her conduct and cursed her--yes, cursed her, poor girl, as a heartless coquette; cursed her for what it now appears she not merely had nothing to do with, but was a fellow-victim in,--when I think of all this, I feel I must be drunk or dreaming when connecting my old friend Robert Streightley with such a deliberate piece of villainy! Don't start, Robert; it was a hard word, but it was the right one. I'm not a friend of yesterday; we've been like brothers since we were boys, and you know I'd give my life for you if it were wanted; but I claim the right to speak out plainly in this matter. Why, it was but the other day that Frere, who, thank God, came home quite cured of all that early romance, was here talking of you and your wife, and saying how lucky she was to have chosen for her helpmate in life such an honest, genuine, sterling good fellow."

"Charley," pleaded Streightley, crossing his hands behind his head, "for heaven's sake spare me this! To know what I was, what I seem to be, and what I am, is too much!"

"There then," said Yeldham, pausing by his friend and laying his hand on Robert's shoulder--"I've done. No talk will mend the matter, and besides, immediate action is needed. You say Mrs. Streightley had left your house?"

"She had; that letter came by the post the day after her father's death--the day on which she went away."

"And at present you have no clue to her whereabouts?"

"Not the slightest."

Charles Yeldham sat down at his desk, and leaning his head on his hands, remained for a minute or two in deep thought. Then he turned to his friend and said:

"Mrs. Streightley was, I should imagine from the little I saw of her, a woman of great force of character, and not likely to do a thing on the spur of the moment without calculating results. You see this letter, by its postmark, must have been written some hours after she left home. During those hours she was deliberating and forming her plan; and whatever that was, she'll hold to it, I'm sure. She has determined that you sha'n't trace her; and it's my opinion you'll have the greatest difficulty in doing it."

"We might employ the detectives, don't you think?" asked Robert.

"Detectives! There's been no detection done by the detectives since they were made the heroes of sensation novels; and, besides, we don't quite want to place your domestic history among the archives of Scotland Yard. No; whatever is to be done--and, as I said before, I fear the chance is small enough--must be done amongst ourselves. Who were her female friends? intimates, I mean; dear and dearest, and all those things that women say and write to each other?"

"I--I scarcely know," said Robert, looking blank. "She never appeared to me to have what one could call an intimate friend. There was Lady Henmarsh, who used to take her about before we were married; but there's not been over much cordiality between them lately, I should say; and Mrs. Stanbourne, who is a relative of Katharine's, and a very charming woman, the kindest and best--so particularly nice to me, made me feel quite at home--but she's not in England, or I would have sent to her at once; and there's my sister Ellen, and Hester Gould--Mrs. Frere, I mean--but of course, under the circumstances, she would not go to either of them."

"Of course not," said Yeldham, rubbing his head. "It's a tremendous knot--a most tremendous knot. I don't see my way in it the least. Motive for leaving plain enough--discovery of this plot. Inducement for her to go any where in particular? none. 'Never will forgive you--never will look on your face again'--that means concealment, or I don't know but she's just the woman whose spirit would induce her to--no, not that either. Too much pride; hates the world's talk and pity--no, no. What does she say about having taken nothing of yours? Hadn't she any money?"

"She had a private banking account of her own, but I find she has not drawn a cheque for weeks. She has only taken with her some jewels which belonged to her mother, and which--ah, my darling! my darling!" and the strong man, who had borne up with such fortitude hitherto, broke down and wept like a child.

"Robert--old fellow--for God's sake, any thing but that! Have some brandy; have some----"

"If she should be in want--she, who never yet knew an ungratified wish--if she--O Charley, I know I'm making a fool of myself, old friend, but I love her so! O Heaven, I love her so!"

There were tears in honest Charley Yeldham's eyes as he sat himself down by his friend, and took his hand and said, "Come, Robert--be a man. I know it's hard to bear, horribly hard, and no preaching, and no attempt at consolation will make it any better. It must be faced and battled with. She's gone, and we must find her. It's one consolation to know that wherever she may be, she'll be certain, by that wonderful something which I have often felt, but which I can't explain, and which is innate in her, to command the respect of those she is thrown among. But the money-test is decidedly an awkward one. She has some jewels, you say; but she'll know nothing of the way to convert them into cash, and she's sure to be awfully done; and I suppose she was like most women, had not the least knowledge of the value of money?"

"Well, no, poor child--not much, I think; you see, she has never had to----"

"Of course not; I know. Look here, Robert; you must take a blunt question from a blunt man, and give a blunt answer if you choose. Is what is beginning to be murmured about you in the City true?"

The colour flushed up into Robert Streightley's pale face at the question. The pride in his wife, in his position, had been things of later days; the pride in his City stability had been born in him, and nurtured in his youth.

"I will answer you, Charley, in all truth," he said, with quivering lips; "but you must tell me first what the report is."

"The report is, that, hit heavily by the failure of Hicks' bank, you have been trying to recover leeway by--well, what they call wild speculation; that you've got some tremendous bills in hand, and that----"

"There; quite enough. Public rumour is, as usual, considerably in advance of the truth. We were hit by Hicks' failure, but you'll find that Streightley and Son will weather the gale yet. Pshaw!" Streightley exclaimed, suddenly changing his tone--"I got relief from one confession, why should not I from another? I won't disguise from you, my dear Charley, that we have been very heavily hit, and that our present situation is--well, what may be called precarious; but I hope, and think, we shall pull through."

"Has this state of things been for long?"

"Well--for some months."

"And Mrs. Streightley knew nothing of it?"

"God forbid! Knowing how she had been purchased, was I to yield up the sole influence I possessed over her by telling her that the gold for which she had been sacrificed was only dross and dead leaves, and that the 'merchant prince' was on the brink of ruin? Not I. And what has it come to now? She is gone, and I am left alone in my misery and desolation." His head fell on his breast as he said this, and the big tears rolled down his cheeks.

"Look here, Robert," said Yeldham, laying his hand heavily on his friend's shoulder; "this won't do at all. You're all unstrung and out of health. Get you home--if you're not absolutely wanted in the City--and rest a bit; you need it, heaven knows. Leave this business to me--you know I'm a capital ferret--and I'll take it in hand at once, and you shall see me to-morrow with my report."

Robert Streightley wrung his friend's hand, and very shortly left the chambers; but Charley Yeldham remained for more than an hour with his chin buried in his hands, and his mind full of all he had heard. At length he put on his hat, and walked into Fleet Street, where, close by the top of Middle Temple Lane, he encountered Mr. Daniel Thacker.

It is scarcely necessary to say that, though they were acquainted, there was very little friendship between Mr. Yeldham and Mr. Thacker. The Hebrew gentleman regarded the lawyer as a plodding snob; the conveyancing barrister regarded the West-end money-lender as an unscrupulous scoundrel; but they had met and been introduced, and were in the habit of stopping to exchange verbal civilities; and they did so on this occasion. After the first compliments had passed, Mr. Thacker expressed his regret at not seeing more of Mr. Yeldham in society, but added that he perfectly well understood how it was; there must be bees as well as drones--and Mr. Yeldham had the credit of being one of the most hardworking as well as one of the most deservedly successful bees in the legal hive. Mr. Yeldham--in his coldly formal politeness one could scarcely have recognised the warm-hearted Charley, Robert Streightley's friend--Mr. Yeldham was compelled to leave society to those who adorned it, like Mr. Thacker; and, "talking of society," said Mr. Yeldham, "this is very sad news about our poor friend Mr. Guyon."

"Sad enough for me," said Mr. Thacker with charming frankness. "Mr. Guyon was a client of mine; a client for whom I--like a soft fool as I was--however, that's neither here nor there--I shall have to stand the racket in that quarter, and be a considerable loser, I can tell you."

Mr. Yeldham expressed his concern, and attempted to terminate the interview; but Mr. Thacker caught him by the lapel of his coat. "And talking of that," said he, "this is a pretty business in Portland Place!"

In Portland Place? You would have gathered from the expression of Mr. Yeldham's face that it was the first time he had ever heard of that locality.

"Yes, yes; you know what I mean," said Mr. Thacker impatiently; "Guyon's son-in-law--Streightley, the City man."

"Streightley, the City man?" repeated Yeldham; "ah, of course, dreadfully cut up at the sudden death."

"Dreadfully cut up at the sudden death! I hope that's the only way in which he'll be cut up dreadfully. Haven't you heard the news?"

By a shoulder-shrug which would have done credit to Frederic Lemaitre, Mr. Yeldham intimated his ignorance.

"Well, then, Mrs. Streightley has gone away from her home--left her husband, sir; and no one knows where she's gone to."

"That's a very awkward statement to make, Mr. Thacker," said Yeldham; "Mrs. Streightley, too, of all persons in the world! I suppose you have--you must have--excellent authority for such a story, or you would scarcely venture, a man of your perspicacity, to repeat it."

"All I know is, that a--well, in point of fact, a client of mine, Mrs. Frere, was with Lady Henmarsh, Mr. Streightley's great friend, and heard it when they called in Portland Place."

"Mrs. Frere--a client of yours? ay, ay! ay, ay! a strange story indeed, but one which we lawyers must take cum grano, as we say. Good morning, Mr. Thacker." And Yeldham bowed to his acquaintance, and passed on.

"A dry stick that," said Thacker, looking after him; "a very dry stick. How much of that story did he know? Every bit; more than any of us are acquainted with, for he was an old friend of Streightley's, and has doubtless been consulted about the business. I've underrated that chap hitherto, I imagine; he did that very neatly, very neatly indeed. Shook me off at the right instant too, at the very moment when I intended to pump him about Streightley's liabilities; a deuced cool, clever hand. I'll remember you, my friend, when I want clear-headed advice."

"'In point of fact, a client of mine,'" said Yeldham to himself as he went his way. "That's it, is it? Mrs. Frere a client of Thacker's! Fishy that--deuced fishy, considering her relations with the Guyon-cum-Streightley case. Something to be made out of that, I fancy. I'll just take a turn round the Regent's Park before going back to head-work, and think that out."

[CHAPTER III.]

HUSBAND AND WIFE.

The return of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Frere to England had been almost simultaneous with the double catastrophe of Mr. Guyon's death and Katharine's flight. They had returned to Hester's house in Palace Gardens, and had no intention of leaving London during the winter. Gordon was excessively tired of Continental life, and had conceded to fashion rather than consulted his own inclination by spending his honeymoon out of England. Hester, who had never seen any foreign country until after her marriage, had been enchanted with every thing, and would have prolonged her stay with much pleasure, but that she had perceived her husband's weariness, and desire to find himself in England again. Gordon was too essentially sweet-tempered and good-humoured to thwart any one, or to press his own wishes unduly; but his wife was as keen of perception as she was devotedly attached to him, and she read him like a book. A glance at the page, on which incipient boredom was written, was enough for her. With admirable tact and grace she discovered a score of good and sufficient reasons for returning to England; and no one would have guessed, who saw her step gaily into the railway-train at the Embarcadère du Nord, that she was experiencing a keen disappointment, and renouncing a pleasure to which she had ardently aspired. Quiet and persistent self-will, which never failed in its object, but rarely hurt other people in attaining it, was a strong characteristic of Hester; but the stronger had come in--Love, the conqueror, the invincible--and self-will had promptly surrendered. There was a good deal of unconscious selfishness in Gordon Frere's nature--the light, airy, pleasant selfishness which is frequently combined with a large capacity for enjoyment and constitutional indolence, but which in his case would have been easily dispelled on any given occasion by a remonstrance, and never made itself offensive. To this quality his wife's excessive love was particularly calculated to minister, detrimentally to his general character; for her devotion knew no bounds. It was not unnatural that, having departed from the rule and practice of her previous life, by allowing a passion to gain possession of her, Hester should have departed from it by the widest possible divergence. It would have been touching as well as curious to watch the subjugation of the proud, calculating, intellectual woman to the love that filled her whole soul and ruled her whole life. From her wedding-day to that which saw her return to London, and her acquisition of the knowledge of Mr. Guyon's death, by a note despatched from Lady Henmarsh's half-dismantled house in Cavendish Square, on the chance of her arrival, she had never bestowed a thought on Middlemeads, on the embarrassments of Robert Streightley, or the equivocal confidence which existed between herself and Daniel Thacker. She had indeed thought much and often of Katharine--thought of her with exultation; occasionally with a touch of pity, when she satisfied her jealous, passionate soul that no remembrance of her, except in the most ordinary casual way, ever cropped up in Gordon Frere's mind. Hester was destined to learn the truth of a certain proverb about "the letting in of water;" for having opened the floodgates for the admittance of love, she had no power to stop the tide, and the tumbling waves of jealousy thundered in the distance. But, as Hester was, above all things, a reasonable woman, the danger was still far off; indeed, its foretaste was sweet. She liked to assure herself that she had no rival with her husband, whose character, in all but one or two points, she really did understand as thoroughly as she believed she understood it on all. She liked to remember that his was a light, gay--if it must be so called, shallow nature; that all traces of a former rule had passed away, and the sceptre of this kingdom was securely in her hand. How safely she would hold it! how tender and watchful her rule should be! She felt, when this great love laid its grasp upon her, as though she grew ever so many years older in its hold. She mentally compared herself with her husband, and smiled at the difference which existed between them, though her years were fewer by many than his. She utterly laid aside, she completely forgot, her hatred of Robert and Katharine--that hatred which had grown on her unperceived, which she had never deliberately fostered, but had acknowledged, nevertheless, with the strange candour in self-judgment which characterised her. She made no mistake in her estimate of her husband's feelings towards her. She did not look for more than he could give; but she knew exactly how much was comprised in that all, and she joyfully and rightly believed that she possessed it. She knew that Gordon could no more give her the same amount and intensity of love that she gave him than he could read the same books which she read, or be moved by the same impulses, the same associations of thought and feeling. She never repined at the knowledge, she never wished him other than he was; his handsome, refined face was a constant delight to her; she sunned herself in the light and warmth of his joyous, kind, careless, life-enjoying disposition; she watched him with an intense secret pride; in short, she loved him in all the depth and strength of that word of inexhaustible meaning. He loved her, in return, honestly, heartily, and after his careless, joyous fashion. He thought her very handsome and "deuced clever," and was fond of mentioning the latter article of his creed. "Knows every thing, my dear old fellow, and reads every thing, and can talk of every thing; not a bit blue, you know--not in the least; can't bear that sort of thing. Not a bit of show-off in her, I assure you, but a first-rate head, and a splendid woman of business."

As Gordon Frere had, in acquiring wealth and its responsibilities, by no means acquired a taste for business of any kind, and had developed no practical talents whatever, except for getting out of life all the enjoyment attainable by large means, youth, high spirits, and a splendid constitution, it was fortunate for the prosperity and good management of the Frere ménage that its mistress merited the commendation he delighted to bestow. They were both singularly free from littleness of character; and there was not the least danger of jarring susceptibilities being disturbed by the fact that Hester owned all the wealth, and kept the management of affairs in her own hands. Gordon Frere was not a man who could understand the petty pride and that kind of egotism which make a man married to a rich woman perpetually uneasy because she is rich, and perpetually desirous of reminding her and the world that he is the legal proprietor of herself and her money. Hester Frere was not the sort of person to understand that, having given him herself, a woman could estimate her money more highly in the transaction, and aim at keeping her husband mindful of the secondary and comparatively insignificant concession. In the case of these two persons, therefore, wealth had fewer snares than it ordinarily spreads to insure the troubling of peace, and the destruction of self-respect, in marriages of this kind.

It was Gordon's happy, pleasant way to like every body, instinctively, and to be difficult to persuade into disliking them, even when he had discovered for himself, or been convinced by others, that certain persons were not estimable or admirable. Thus, he liked Mr. Thacker, and never thought whether he was not just a little vulgar and presumptuous; whether there was not something about him suggestive of a pronounced talent for scheming, and a remarkably low estimate of his fellow-creatures. He liked Ellen Streightley, and never asked himself whether she was not rather silly, and did not border on the tiresome as a companion. The nearest approach he had ever made to such an idea was when he proudly thought of the advantages which Ellen must derive from Hester's society, and concluded that it was "a splendid thing for her, by Jove!" It did not occur to him to remember that his wife's intimate friend was Mrs. Streightley's sister-in-law, and that it was presumable that his once-adored Katharine's influence was also available for her benefit. He did not feel so cordially towards Lady Henmarsh as might have been desired, it is true; but then he had known her in the old times; he had habitually spoken of her as "the old cat;" he had prided himself immensely on detecting under the veneer of fashion the ingrained vulgarity of her mind, and, like all persons when exercising a talent which they possess in an infinitesimal degree, he was very proud of his perspicacity in this instance, and felt that he was bound, in consistency, never to like Lady Henmarsh. "It isn't as if she really cared about Hester," he would say to himself, or to the friend with whom he was almost as confidential; "but she doesn't, you know; she only cares to make Hester give parties for her purposes--parties by which the old cat pays off all her own obligations; and to have the use of Hester's carriage, and the advantage of Hester's popularity--for every one likes my wife.--I understand her. I'm a sharp fellow in some things, dear old boy, though I never could take to pens and parchment, and look wise and bilious, like you." And Charley Yeldham thought what an enviable nature was this young man's, and what a pity it would be to disturb his serenity by any revelations, supposing it ever came within his power to make them. Perhaps it may appear that Yeldham's cogitations were needless, and that Frere's was not the kind of serenity to be disturbed by any discovery which only touched the past; but this was not so. The one or two points on which Hester did not know her husband's character were precisely those on which his old chum and faithful friend understood him best.

No unmanly laziness, no idle abandonment to the mere surface follies of existence, dictated Gordon Frere's ignorance of the details of the management of his wife's fortune. He knew she was, as he said, "a deuced clever woman, and a first-rate hand at business," and he simply acted, having no meanness in him, on his belief. He never thought at all about the nature of the investments in which his wife's money was placed, neither did he ever think about her former relations with the Streightleys; and had he known that Robert was Hester's debtor to the large amount, which she had advanced to him through Thacker, he would not have seen in the transaction any thing beyond the merest ordinary matter of business.

Gordon Frere was excessively shocked by the intelligence of Mr. Guyon's death. Not that he had any regard for him; indeed, rather because he had not, and because he knew him better (though far from thoroughly) than most of Mr. Guyon's friends, who had not had "business" transactions with the departed gentleman, knew him; and such a death, come to after such a fashion, had a grim and painful effect on a mind which was not callous or irreverent, only frivolous and untrained.

Hester had only waited to impart the intelligence conveyed by Lady Henmarsh's note to her husband before she went to offer her condolences to her ci-devant chaperone, who had urgently requested to see her. But in her manner of telling him there was something that jarred upon Gordon's sensibility. Coldness and curiosity were in her tone, and he did not like it. The event was terrible in itself, and had terrible meaning to Lady Henmarsh and to Katharine Streightley. Gordon thought honestly of the latter as his wife's friend, not as the woman he had loved; and he winced at the little touch of unwomanliness which Hester betrayed. He understood her very incompletely; and though he knew she loved him, he did not know that she loved no one in the world but himself--and herself. The good-natured fellow did not get over the novel sense of annoyance with his wife easily; and to divert the pain of it, he thought he would go and look in on Yeldham, and talk over things with him. But he did not succeed in this. When he reached the Temple, he found Yeldham hopelessly immersed in a consultation with an inexorable solicitor; and the fiat went forth, in a whisper at the door, "heavy case, my dear fellow, and quite impossible to spare five minutes; see you to-morrow, any time." So Gordon went away, in sufficient discontent, and less in love with law and hard work than ever; and so it fell out that not from him, but from Robert, did Yeldham hear the news of Mr. Guyon's death, and that the next interview between the friends was destined to be of a painful and memorable nature.

Hester did not see Gordon Frere, after her visit to Lady Henmarsh, until late in the afternoon; and then they were not alone, so that there was no conversation between them on the additional circumstances which had transpired. In the mean time Hester had seen Thacker, and made communications to him of which the result has been shown in the preceding chapter. Of all these circumstances Gordon Frere was profoundly ignorant. He had left a card for Mrs. Streightley during the afternoon, and made the customary inquiry, to which the well-taught servant had made the invariable answer; and Gordon had turned away from the door without learning that a second calamity, infinitely outweighing the first, had fallen upon the household. When he saw his wife again, she was engaged with visitors; and though he remarked that her face was somewhat flushed, and that she was less gracefully easy in her manner than usual, he imputed these uncommon appearances to the agitating nature of her visit to Lady Henmarsh, and he was rather pleased to think she had not taken the dreadful occurrence, which had affected him powerfully, quite so easily as he had at first supposed. They were not alone at dinner, and Aunt Lavinia, in the pleasure of seeing her niece again after her absence, had affectionately accompanied her to her dressing-room; so that she had had many hours in which to think over the events of the day before she had an opportunity of discussing them with Gordon. During these hours Hester's bad angel had surely been in the ascendant; and Hester's good sense had failed her for once, in the temptation of success, in the consciousness of power where she had been powerless and of superiority where she had been dominated. For once she lost sight of that which was generally the first, the greatest object of her attention, her husband's approbation, and made the first false step in a career which had hitherto been marked by circumspection.

Gordon ran lightly up the stairs, after he had carefully consigned Aunt Lavinia to the carriage and the special care of the servants, and found his wife standing by the fire, whose light was shining on the folds of her velvet dress, and on the few well-chosen jewels she wore. There was a flush of excitement in her face, which added to its beauty, but which made Gordon look at her with surprise. Before he could ask her if any thing had happened, she said, in an eager voice:

"Have you heard the news?"

"No; what news? Any thing more about Mr. Guyon?"

"No; there's only one more event possible for him, and it is to take place on Thursday. Have you heard nothing of the Streightleys?"

"No; I called there to-day. What's the matter, Hester? is any thing wrong with Katharine?" His face was pale, and his voice hurried. Hester started at the word. Why did she not remember; why did she not take warning? Who can tell? It was but another illustration of "the letting in of water." In a harsh voice, through her set teeth, she answered him:

"Yes, there is something wrong with 'Katharine,' as you call her--something very wrong. The bubble has burst--she has run away from her husband!"

"Good God!" was Gordon's only answer; but the tone in which he uttered the exclamation angered Hester, and hardened her.

"Yes," she went on, "there is no doubt about it; I have it on the best authority--Mr. Streightley's own. She has left her husband at a nice time, too--on a proper filial occasion--when her father's dead body is unburied."

Gordon looked at her; and had she been wise she would have taken warning, she would have seen the dawning of a suspicion that she was different to that he had believed her, in that look, and paused before she flung into the gulf of a new and cruel passion the gem of all her treasures, whose pricelessness she knew well. But she was not wise, and she mistook the meaning of that look; she did not know that its sorrow and its misgiving were for her; she gave them to another, in her excited fancy, and she rushed upon her ruin.

"You are deeply concerned, Gordon, are you not, and very anxious to learn all the particulars? You shall hear all I know." He was standing close to her as she spoke, and they were looking steadily at one another.

"I am indeed, Hester," he replied mildly. "I trust there is some terrible mistake; tell me what you have heard."

"There is no mistake; Mrs. Streightley has run away from her husband, leaving a letter for him, like the young ladies in the plays, who elope with a lover when 'Gardy' wants to marry them; only in this case there is no lover, I believe, or he is so very well hidden that nobody knows who he is."

Still Gordon looked at her, but now there was relief in his face. "Thank God there is no infamy in this," he said; "though I deserve to be shot for having believed for a moment there could be infamy in any act of Katharine Guyon's."

"Katharine Streightley's, you mean," said Hester with a sneer; "it strikes me there is some little infamy in her conduct as it is, though there may be no lover in the case."

"No," said Gordon Frere, in a tone of manly decision, "there is no such thing. Misery and misunderstanding, possibly mischief, there may, there must be, but no infamy, no disgrace. I will never hear it said or hinted. This will be set right, I am convinced."

"You are as sanguine as you are chivalrous, Gordon," said Hester; "but there is a little difficulty in setting such matters right, either in the private or the public sense. Mr. Streightley is very generous, we all know, and he gave his wife the love she did not marry him for, as well as the money she did; but he may have his wrongs as well as his faults, and----"

"Why are you so hard and bitter, Hester?" said Gordon, in a quick, unsteady voice. "How have these people offended you? They have always been your friends, have they not? I thought you had known them intimately for years, and always received kindness from them--I am sure you have told me so--and now you speak of their trouble in this sneering way. When you told me of poor old Guyon's death, I was shocked at your want of feeling; and now, God forgive me, but I am not able to resist the suspicion there is something horribly like gladness in your heart. How can this be? What is it all? What has Robert Streightley, what has Katharine done, that you should regard their misery as you do?" He took her hand gently; he looked at her with pity in his clear blue eyes. She saw the "pity," and it maddened her; she did not see that he was thinking of her as much as of that other whom she hated. What! he had reproved her, and on Katharine's account; the first cloud that had obscured the glorious light of her wedded happiness, the first ripple on the ocean of her unimaginable bliss, had come through her! In an instant, in one pang of exceeding agony, her fancy transported her to the gay garden where she had first seen this man, who was now hers; this man whom she loved with all the intensity of a nature whose power and passion she herself was only beginning to understand. In one of those terrible spasms of feeling, which, when we think of them afterwards, make us understand the mystery of eternity, she lived through one memorable day again. She saw the sunshine and the flowers; she felt the perfumed air; she heard the strains of music; she saw the flitting crowd, the gay groups, the fluttering dresses, the rich colours, the young faces; she heard the sounds of talking and laughter, and the soft rustling and flapping of the flower-tents; she saw Katharine and her party, Mr. Guyon and Streightley, and Yeldham, and she saw Gordon Frere; he was walking beside Katharine, and looking at her as lovers look: had he ever so looked at her, his wife,--she who loved him with a love in which she now knew there were untold possibilities of suffering, she who lived only to love him? In the instant during which this vision filled her brain, and wrung her heart, Hester Frere lived through hours of anguish; and yet there was not a perceptible pause between her husband's question and her reply. She spoke it with her hand in his, with her eyes on his, with her face growing paler and harder with every word:

"You do well to ask me such questions," she said; "you do well to suspect me of such feelings. This is as it should be; this is what I should have expected. Perhaps you can answer for Mrs. Streightley's purpose in this flight; perhaps you know why she found her home intolerable, and the bondage into which she sold herself for money unendurable. You answer glibly for her, there is no infamy in her flight--indeed, are you sure there was no infamy in her marriage? Are you sure this is the first time she has deceived Robert Streightley?" She loosed her hand from his hold, and sat down, panting for breath. Gordon still stood, and looked at her; but his face had darkened, and an angry look had come into his eyes. He spoke very slowly, and cold fear came upon Hester, as he said,

"Explain yourself, if you please. Such unwomanly, such base insinuations shall have no reply from me. Say what you think,--ask what you wish to know, plainly; but first, let me say this--that I have been utterly mistaken in you; that I believed you a woman incapable of a meanness, and honoured you as such----"

"Yes," said Hester, in a voice so low that it was hardly audible, "honoured me!--I believe you; but you loved her. Yes; don't start and stammer, and seek to deny it," for Gordon, in sheer astonishment, had started, and tried to speak. "It is useless; I know all. I know how she played with you, and jilted you, and threw you over for the rich man, whom she despised. Do you think because I was only a music-teacher, and not 'in society,' I never heard what society talked about, and had no eyes to see? I tell you, I read your secret and hers the first time I ever saw your face; and I read it again, when I, the new heiress, and the 'great prize of the season,' went up the staircase at Mrs. Pendarvis's ball with you, and she came down with the millionnaire for whom she had discarded you. I don't know why this woman has left her husband, but I can guess; perhaps you do know. I don't care."

"Hush, Hester!" said Frere, and his tone forced her into silence. "Beware lest you reveal to me more of your nature than I can endure. Never venture to speak such words to me again. I am ignorant of Katharine's movements, as you know as well as I do; but I would stake my life on her honour, and I trust her motives, as I trust her actions. If there be, as there must be, a serious misunderstanding between her and Streightley, I pity him with all my heart. I know little of him; but as I have come to know that little, I have learned to respect and esteem him. I will help him to the utmost of my power."

"Will you?" said Hester, with a sneer. "Your will and your power are both likely to be taxed. Mrs. Streightley timed her departure well; she had got all there was to be had out of her great marriage. Robert Streightley is a ruined man!"

Gordon Frere turned a shade paler as he said, quietly,

"Is this true, Hester? are you sure?"

"It is perfectly true, and I am perfectly sure," she replied.

"Then how do you know it?"

She laughed a low quiet laugh.

"Ah, that is my secret," she said.

"So be it," he replied. "And now, understand me. You have taunted me with my love for Katharine Guyon, and her rejection of me. I avow both. I loved her dearly, and I believed she loved me. I asked her to be my wife, and she rejected me. I don't question her motives; I only know that I suffered the keenest misery in consequence. But I say to you, as I would say to any other, who dared to accuse me of sullying the purity of Katharine Streightley by an unauthorised word or look or wish, that it is a base and dastardly lie. She has been to me, since her marriage, as distant as a star,--an object of admiration and reverence indeed, but no more, as she never can be less. Now--I would do any thing in the world to prove to her, and to her husband, that I am the warmest of her friends and the most devoted of her servants.--And now, Hester, one word of ourselves. You are not a foolish woman, speaking random words and swayed by every gust of temper. I presume you have not so spoken to-night; and I give all you have said its weight of sober seriousness. I think you would have done better to have left these words unsaid; but remember this, they can never be unsaid now, and the fruit they are likely to bear will be no sweeter to your taste than to mine. I am going to see Yeldham in the morning, and will breakfast with him. Good-night."

So he left her, and she let him go without a word. The time crept on, and still she sat beside the fire, with the flickering light upon her jewels and her velvet dress, with her dark eyes stern and fixed, and her hands clasped and motionless. It was not until a servant came to ask if the lights might be put out, that she roused herself, and went upstairs to her room. There she found her maid, shivering and yawning in the protracted weariness of waiting.

She dismissed the woman at once, who went out of the room, not without having looked sharply at her mistress. Hester caught the look, and when she was alone, went to her dressing-table, and gazed fixedly at the reflection of her face in the glass.

"Yes," she said; "I am to lose that too, I suppose--power over my feelings first, then over my words, lastly over my features,--and become the weak thing I have always despised. Fool! fool!"

[CHAPTER IV.]

WINGED IN FLIGHT.

For many weeks after Mr. Guyon's death the inexorable pressure of business, increased by a commercial crisis long impending and now arrived in full severity, obliged Robert Streightley to put his sorrow as far as possible from his thoughts during business hours, and bring all his intellect to grapple with the conduct of his affairs. That the old house of Streightley and Son was in any thing but a prosperous condition; that its cool, calculating manager had rushed wildly into almost impossibly beneficial speculations,--was now pretty generally talked of, and various reasons were assigned for Robert's conduct. Some people, of course, roundly stated that they had never believed in him at all; that all his previous success had been the result of luck, or "flukes;" and that he was merely finding his proper level. Others lamented that spirit of flunkeydom which had led a sharp fellow like Streightley to marry the daughter of an insolvent West-end swell, who had spent all his money in reckless extravagance, and, it was said, had bolted from him now the money was gone. Few--very few--had a word of pity for him; he had been too successful for that; and though during the long years of his triumph he had always been generous and kindhearted to a degree, in the hour of his fall this was not remembered; and it was not even allowed, by those who knew nothing of his private history, that he "took his punishment" well, or that he exhibited a proper pluck under his defeat and downfall.

It mattered little to Robert Streightley what was thought of him even in the City now. The mainspring of his life was broken; she, for whom up to the very last he had plotted and schemed and speculated, had left him. All his efforts now--and he struggled hard--were made to save the reputation of the house. Hour after hour did he and Mr. Fowler spend in going over the books, looking at lists of outstanding debts, the recovery of which was hopeless, and liabilities which it was impossible to evade. Hour after hour did the result of their work show them the hopelessness of their position, and the fact that the final crash was every day drawing nearer. Poor old Mr. Fowler was a pitiable spectacle; to him the fact that "the house" was in difficulties was infinitely more distressing than the thought that with it would go all the savings of years, from time to time invested with it, and all chance of that comfortable pension on retirement on which he could fairly have reckoned.

After Katharine's departure, Robert Streightley seemed to have struck his flag and given up the battle, so far as his business was concerned; endeavouring only to steer his wrecked fortune safely into port. This, notwithstanding all his losses and the bad position of his affairs, he might have been able to do, but that, within three months of the catastrophe, he was obliged to make a payment of five thousand pounds to Mr. Daniel Thacker, as Robert imagined, but in reality to Mrs. Gordon Frere. Streightley had found Thacker hitherto very kindly disposed towards him, and after some consideration he wrote, stating that the security was as good as at the time of the loan; that he would pay the interest, but that it would be a great convenience to him if the repayment of the capital could be postponed for a few months. To this application he had had a reply from Thacker, stating that he would turn it over in his mind, and write again in a few days.

"Turning it over in his mind" meant, of course, consulting his principal. So, as soon as he had sent his answer to Robert's note, Mr. Thacker drove to Palace Gardens, and had the honour of a private interview with the lady of the mansion, in her boudoir. Hester was looking very handsome, as Mr. Thacker thought, though there was a little too much set intensity about her lips for that gentleman's rather full-flavoured taste. After some ordinary conversation, Hester said:

"And now, Mr. Thacker, state the special business of which you wrote to me, and which has brought you here to-day."

"It is one of Streightley's matters, Mrs. Frere. He had, if you recollect, some five thousand and odd pounds from us some months ago, for which we hold as security the assignment of the house in Portland Place, and one or two other minor deeds. That money is, I see, due on the third of next month--a fortnight hence, that is to say; and I have received a letter from Mr. Streightley--who, of course, only knows me in the matter--asking for a renewal of the loan on payment of the interest, and on the continuance of the same security."

"Have you that letter with you?"

"I have."

"Be good enough to let me see it."

As he handed it to her, Thacker said,

"I know that I have no right even to make a suggestion in this matter; but I think, Mrs. Frere, that unless you have any special objection, you might comply with his prayer. The security is undeniable; and Streightley has been so much knocked about lately, poor fellow, in several ways, you know, that----"

"It is impossible for me to read the letter while you talk, Mr. Thacker," said Hester firmly.

Thacker bowed, and turned very red; and Mrs. Frere, leaning back in her chair, opened the note and applied herself to its perusal. She remembered the bold firm handwriting, which she had first seen,--ah, how long since it seemed!--in little formal notes addressed to herself, or enclosing young-ladyish scraps from Ellen. She recollected how she had lingered over those notes in the old days, weaving little romances of the future, in which their writer played a very different part from the one now filled by him. There was not an atom of tenderness in these recollections; on the contrary, as Mrs. Frere thought of the difference between her day-dreams and what had actually occurred, a bitter smile flitted across her face; and as she read the letter her lips were set tighter than ever.

She read it through twice carefully, then folded it up and handed it to Mr. Thacker, saying very calmly,

"I cannot agree to that proposition." It was Mr. Thacker's rule in life never to betray astonishment at any thing. He did not depart from his rule in the present instance; but he must have involuntarily raised his bushy eyebrows a little higher than usual, for Mrs. Frere said to him,

"Did you expect any other answer?"

This was a home question, and Mr. Thacker objected to being called upon to answer home questions. He had not been exactly sure of the state of Mrs. Frere's feelings towards Streightley (of the feeling with which Miss Hester Gould had regarded the same individual, it will be recollected, he had arrived at a perfect knowledge), and he knew that her reply would be entirely governed by them. So he contented himself with saying:

"It is a mere business question with me. You do not require the money elsewhere,--at least so far as I know,--and the security is undeniable. As to the sentimental view of the matter, I know from the experience of that morning at Middlemeads that you are not likely to be biassed by any silliness of that kind. Only, you see, things have changed since then, and poor Streightley is in a very different position now."

"I don't think we need discuss Mr. Streightley's altered position, except so far as this proposition is concerned; and on that you have my decision, Mr. Thacker," said Mrs. Frere coldly.

"And that decision is final? I shall probably be asked to reverse it, and therefore may as well have my cue," said Thacker.

"Quite final. I prefer not to discuss Mr. Streightley or his affairs for the future."

"As you please," returned Mr. Thacker; and then he excused himself for his abrupt departure on the plea of business, and took his leave.

Mr. Thacker had not felt comfortable in Mrs. Frere's society of late; there was an alteration in her manner towards him--a gradual withdrawal of confidence, as he took it; but which was, in reality, only preoccupation of mind, and which Mr. Thacker could very ill brook. Nor were his relations with Gordon Frere at all of a satisfactory kind; that gentleman being accustomed to speak to his wife of Mr. Thacker as "your Hebraic agent, my dear," and to his friends of the same gentleman as "a Jew fellow, who's my wife's trustee, or something."

As Mr. Thacker lay back in his brougham on his way to the City, he fell into a fit of musing over all that had occurred. He drew poor Robert's letter from his pocket-book and read it through; then laid it down on his lap, and recalled the scene that had taken place--recalled Mrs. Frere's words and looks at certain parts of the interview; and said to himself:

"She's a wonder; she certainly is a wonder. Sticks to what she has made up her mind to like a leech; and as to moving her to pity, you might as well clap a blister on the Monument. I'm certain I'm right in my old opinion that she played for Streightley, and that she was as wild as possible when he did not see it, but married that pretty Miss Guyon instead. She'll never forgive him. And the next thing will be, that he won't be able to pay up the first instalment either; and then she'll have Middlemeads. Yes; and I shall have helped her to it too. Well, it must have come, I suppose, in the long-run, even if he had pulled through for a little; but I fancy this will smash him up at once. He must sell the house; that will get wind, and then--by Jove, poor fellow! I'm afraid it's all u-p!" And Mr. Thacker looked and felt much more sorry than might have been supposed. The next day he found it a very difficult and unpleasant task to write to Messrs. Streightley and Son, telling them that, "owing to circumstances over which he had no control," it would be impossible for him to comply with their request, but that he trusted, &c. However, there was no help for it; so, on the receipt of this note, Robert had an interview with Thacker; and within a week the house in Portland Place was stuck all over with bills, announcing the sale of the furniture and of the lease at an early date.

Perhaps during the whole of his trouble this period immediately antecedent to the sale in Portland Place was the most distressing to Robert Streightley. With the exception of an old woman and her daughter--mysterious people who lived in the kitchens, and were supposed to "do for the good gentleman"--every body had left the house but himself; and he used to roam through the various rooms, thinking of Katharine and of her associations with each. Not merely

"In hanging robe and vacant ornament"

did she present herself to his thoughts, but each article of furniture spoke of her taste; wherever his eye fell he was reminded of her. For many weeks after her departure, he had kept her dressing-room locked, and retained the key in his own possession. This room opened into her boudoir, and there, on her writing-table, long after dust had gathered thick upon its leaves, lay her blotting-book open, as she had left it; on it a note just commenced. He had been requested by Katharine's maid to compare the jewels which she had left behind with the list in his own possession, and he had done so. Then he replaced them all, as they had been when she turned away from all the luxury with which he had surrounded her. Often in the evenings, his dreary task of battling with the rising tide of ruin done, he would visit the forsaken shrine of his idol, and feel the pang of her absence all the more keenly for these mute evidences that it was all real, that she had once been there, where silence and emptiness now dwelt. When the blow fell, and he knew the house and furniture must be sold, his wife's rooms were the last to be dismantled. With his own hands, and alone, he packed up every article of her personal property for safe keeping, wherever he should be. When he entered her dressing-room to commence his task, he caught sight of his own reflection in the looking-glass doors of a large wardrobe, and started to see how worn and pale he looked. Some of her dresses were hanging up in the first wardrobe which he opened, and, obedient to an impulse, he caught hold of one of them and kissed it, and went staggering blindly from the room.

A few days before the time announced for the sale in Portland Place the commercial crisis so long dreaded swooped down upon London. Continental politics, unsettled since '48, had been seething and simmering, and daily the aspect of affairs had become more bellicose. Big German States looked at little German States with longing eyes and watering mouths, and consoled themselves by the reflection that if awkward and powerful neighbours snapped at them and went off with a mouthful, they could revenge themselves on smaller fry. Italy moaned in her sleep, tormented by the old but unfulfilled dream of freedom from the Alps to the Adriatic; and France and Russia were looking on expectant. Things in the City had for some time had what is called "a downward tendency." Consols were at 82, and French Rentes lower than they had been known for years. People shook their heads at Spanish Passives, and Egyptian Scrip was at a discount. One of the great discount houses, the Brotherly Bound--formed out of the old firm of Ready, Rowdy, and Dibbs--had recently failed (partly on account of the old partners having taken all their capital out, partly on account of all the new capital which was brought in having been spent by the managing directors in giving banquets to the aristocracy), and the shareholders in similar concerns were beginning to be seriously alarmed. Under the alarm of shareholders, managers drew in their horns, and talked of limiting their business, refused all questionable paper--in which they had been dealing wholesale--and looked not too well pleased at good bills, such as they had never had before. There was gloom on the Stock Exchange, and Clapham dinner-parties were, if possible, duller than usual. No actual outbreak yet though, and chance of peace, so the papers said. If war could only be averted, the crisis would pass. The crisis! it was on them as they spoke. At that moment the clerks in Lothbury were reading off a telegraphic message, containing the few words spoken by the Emperor to a provincial mayor; and when those words appeared in print, it was known that war was meant, and three of the largest establishments in the City suspended payment that afternoon. Up went the Bank rate of discount, and the panic commenced.

These events happened late in the afternoon of a bright spring day, so immediately before the cessation of business, that they were only known to those actually concerned in the City; and it was not until the next morning that the general public was apprised of all that had happened. The news sprawled over the placards of the newspapers in the biggest typo; the news-boys at the suburban omnibuses and railway stations were "sold out" at once; people rushed to tell their friends what had happened; the panic spread to all stock- and shareholders, and even to the depositors in banks. Then towards noon the City began to be filled with a set of people to whom its ways were strange, and who were unfamiliar with its customs. Elderly maiden ladies and rich widows from prim Peckham paradises; old boys, club bucks and fogies, from Bury Street or St. Alban's Place lodgings, who had little annuities on which they lived; artists and actors hurrying down to see the special stockbrokers in whom they implicitly believed; newspaper reporters on the look-out for matter from which to concoct a sensation article; mooners and loungers of every kind, were blocking up Lombard Street and pouring into Cornhill. The old-established banks never quivered for an instant; wild customers brandishing cheques rushed up to the counter, and felt abashed as they were met by the calmest clerks, who, without a hair of their parting or a fold of their cravat displaced, asked them in the most mellifluous voices "how they would have it?" the copper shovels plunged into the drawers, and came out, as usual, full of sovereigns; the forefinger of the clerks duly moistened counted off rolls of notes with the accustomed precision. "Panic?" they seemed to say; "pooh! it must be something more than panic that can affect us."

But three or four of the smaller houses, which had been battling for months with the exigencies of the times, found it impossible to hold on any longer, and succumbed--amongst them the house of Streightley and Son. No stone had been left unturned, no effort untried; but the state of the money-market was such that it was found impossible to realise the securities which they held; and at length, bowed down with despair, old Mr. Fowler wrote with his own hand the notice, that, "owing to the crisis in the money-market having caused a run on the house, and having failed to procure advances on the securities, or obtain the slightest temporary assistance, we find it necessary to suspend our payments." The notice went on to say that the step had been taken with the view to protect as far as possible the interest of the friends of the firm, whose forbearance was confidently relied on, and added, that the books had been placed in the hands of Messrs. Addison and Tottle, and that the early realisation of a satisfactory dividend was anticipated.

It was not to be expected that such an old-established firm could fail without plenty of comment. They talked over "Streightley's smash" that day at City conferences, on the flags of 'Change, and the Gresham Club; and many and various were the opinions expressed.

"'Protect as far as possible the interest of their friends!'" said an indignant merchant, who, when first starting in commerce, had received the greatest assistance from Robert Streightley's father. "Like their d--d impudence! What do they mean by that?"

"Better have protected their friends' principal, and not minded the interest, eh, Jenkinson?" said the wag of Capel Court.

"I'm afraid that the realisation of the satisfactory dividend is all bunkum," said a third. "Lucky if we get fourpence in seven years, I should say."

"It's a good thing old Streightley can't come out of his grave and see this," said a white-bearded patriarch; "he was of the old school--slow and sure."

"Deuced slow and not very sure," said Ralph Elgood, the Rupert of the Stock Exchange. "Bob Streightley's a thundering good fellow, but has been hitting out wildly of late, and now he feels it."

"Nonsense; hitting out wildly!" said young Porunglow, junior partner (of three weeks' standing) of Shaddock, Porunglow, Quaver, and Porunglow, great West-Indian merchants, who had been three months in business, and who frequented the vortex of West-end society. "Streightley might have gone on all right if he had not married old Guyon's daughter; a splendid gal, who made the tin fly like--like old boots! Thundering fine parties they had, sir. None of the Belgravian nobs did it up browner in the way of foreign singers, and Edgington, and Coote and Tinney, and real flowers, and all that kind of thing. I s'pects it's that that's settled Streightley's hash."

"I shall take deuced good care to attend the meeting of creditors," said the first speaker; "and unless the personal expenses are decidedly moderate, I shall take the opportunity of saying a few words on that subject."

This was the tone in which the matter was talked over in the City, and then the talkers turned to the discussion of other things. Of the firm of Streightley and Son nothing soon remained, save the name on the door-posts in Bullion Lane: the winding-up and the meeting of the creditors were duly reported in the City Intelligence; and shortly afterwards a new firm took the old house, and the erasure of the name from the doors and of the memory of the firm from their friends were almost simultaneous.

So there was a smash in Bullion Lane and a sale at Portland Place, and Robert Streightley, the quondam "City magnate," the merchant-prince, had lost his place among rich men, of consequence to mankind and human affairs; and had returned to his former quiet life in his mother's suburban house (for her income had happily been secured against the vicissitudes of business), and had not even begun to "look about him;" but was stunned and silent under the reiterated shocks of calamity.

His mother and sister had taken the intelligence of his ruin as most women do take the tidings of a calamity in which the affections are not concerned--that is to say, quietly and resignedly. If so many other persons had not also been ruined, it would have been much harder to bear, because then inconsiderate, hasty people might have blamed Robert; but as it was, he was only one of many; and they thought about the matter much as they would have thought about a war in Russia, or a revolution in Venetia, the rinderpest, or a railway accident.

As for Robert, he had little personal feeling in the affair. Poverty or wealth made little difference to him. He could have faced the one with courage and confidence, had Katharine remained with him, and bid him grow rich again for her sake; he had valued the other only because it had won her. And now the money which had enabled him to do the evil he had done was gone, and the wife it had purchased was gone; and days had melted into weeks, and weeks into months, and brought no word or sign of her. No language can tell how Robert suffered during all the time that his attention was externally claimed by his business; with what agony of hope deferred he would ask Yeldham, day after day, if there was any chance of discovering her place of retreat. Foremost in Robert Streightley's memory was the mind-picture of his desolate home; keenest of all his torturing thoughts was the idea of his cherished one, so daintily reared, now perhaps exposed to privation or absolute want. Compared with the horror of this feeling, the disgrace of his failure, the loss of his City position, which at another time would in themselves have been sufficient to crush him, now fell upon him with lightness--the world thought with extraordinary lightness--for such a sensitive man. But Yeldham, who alone was in his confidence, knew what were the secret yearnings of his heart. "O God! if we could only find her, Charley; if I could only see her once again, only hear her say she forgave me, I think I'd be content to die, and slip out of it all."

The inquiries which Yeldham had instituted in every possible quarter had all been without result, and already many weeks had elapsed, when one morning Robert received a letter from Mrs. Stanbourne, to whom he had written immediately on Katharine's departure, but from whom, up to that time, he had received no reply. He had had no exact knowledge of her address, and his inquiries had elicited no more precise indication than "Rome;" so he had no resource but waiting--with little patience indeed, and but poorly rewarded, for the letter ran thus:

"Florence.

"My Dear Mr. Streightley,--Your letter has been following me about for several weeks,--I believe for months, indeed,--and has only just reached me. I cannot--I need not tell you how greatly the news which it conveys has pained and distressed me. I am sure you will understand this without my dwelling upon the point, and that you personally will be assured of my sympathy in this your hour of grief. I am old enough to be allowed to speak plainly in these matters, even to one with whom I have not been very long acquainted, and I may tell you therefore that not merely did I see in you many qualities which any girl might be proud of in a husband, but I took the opportunity of showing to Katharine that I had observed them. I am sure furthermore, not merely from the manner in which those remarks were received, but from the general tenour of her conduct, that she had not one thought which she would have been ashamed of sharing with you, and I therefore am disposed to hope that her departure may have been caused by childish petulance, provoked by some little 'tiff,' which you have not explained to me--that it has been merely temporary, and that now, ere this note reaches you, she has returned to you and her duty. If this be so, you will throw this letter into the fire and think no more of it. But if it be not so; if she is still holding aloof from you through self-will, and which I suppose, as her relative, I may venture to call obstinacy, I think it best to give you all the aid and information in my power. I need scarcely tell you that she is not, that she has not been, with me. I do not know that she would have sought me; but, at any rate, my frequent changes of address would have prevented her finding me. Had I seen her, I should have put aside my own ill-health (which is, I suspect, a great deal laziness, and hatred of England in the dull season), and, starting off at once, never left her until I had restored her to you. But I remember that two or three years ago a great friend and old schoolfellow of hers, Annie Burton--of whom I know Katharine had a very high opinion--went to live at the Convent de St. Etienne, in Paris, and, as I believe, ended in taking the veil there. If all the other inquiries which you have doubtless set on foot have failed, would it not be well to make a search for our poor lost girl at this convent? Such a place would be likely to attract her in her then frame of mind. She would have the solace of the companionship of her old friend; and as boarders are received at the convent, she could command perfect privacy and peace, and, so far as she knows, avoid every chance of discovery. This is rather a vague idea, but it is a foundation upon which pursuit may improve. I sincerely trust it may not be needed, but yet I think it advisable to send it. In any case I shall be most anxious to hear from you again, and to assist you in any way in my power.

"Yours very sincerely,

"Margaret Stanbourne."

The perusal of this letter brought light into Robert Streightley's eyes and comfort to his heart. For the first time since Katharine's departure he felt that there was a chance of recovering her for himself, of seeing her once again, and telling her all he had suffered--all he hoped. His heart beat violently as these thoughts came across him, and he trembled from the intensity of his feelings. He would have gone at once to Yeldham's chambers and shown him the letter; but he felt unable to move, and remained for a few minutes panting and palpitating in his chair. He was weak and dizzy, and had a strange oppressive feeling that he should die before he could get upon the clue just given him. But after a short time these feelings passed away, and he managed to rouse himself and drive to the Temple, where he found Charley, as usual, hard at his 'treadmill.'

As his friend entered the room, Yeldham looked up from his writing, uttered a short cry of alarm, and came hurriedly towards him.

"What's the matter with you, Robert?" he said,--"white as a ghost, dark circles round your eyes--what the deuce is it? No bad news?"

"No, Charley, I'm all right--or shall be in a minute; a little knocked down by what's in this letter. I think there's something in it--some clue at last. Read it, and tell me how it strikes you."

Charles Yeldham took the letter and read it through carefully; then put it down, and looked across at his friend.

"Well?" said Streightley, anxiously.

"Well, Robert, of course it's a new light, and--and there may be something in it; but I'm not very much impressed. I scarcely think--but then I know so little, that I'm not a fair judge--that a convent's exactly the place to which a lady of Mrs. Streightley's temperament would retire. However, of course one can send over and ascertain."

"Send over!" cried Robert; "nothing of the kind. I think far more highly than you seem to do, Yeldham, of this information. I think so highly of it, that I shall start at once for Paris, and pursue the track."

"You? No, Robert, I would not do that. You're not well, my good fellow; you're not strong; any excitement of this kind might knock you up, and that would never do, you know."

"I know that I shall start by the tidal train to-morrow morning, Charley. Now don't argue with me, for my mind is made up."

But Robert Streightley did not start to Paris by the next morning's tidal train. As he sat that night talking over his intended journey with his friend, Yeldham saw the colour fade out of his face, the light out of his eyes,--finally saw him go off in a dead swoon. Yeldham carried him to his own bed, and sent for a doctor, who peremptorily forbade any notion of his being moved for days. "It might cost him his life," he said. And Robert, made acquainted with the veto, after some murmuring, acquiesced in it, and fell back, weak and wavering, to sleep.

"I don't like your friend's symptoms, Mr. Yeldham," said Dr. Mannering to Charley. "Has he had any great mental strain or worry lately? Ah, I thought so. I'm afraid there's very little doubt that his heart's affected."

[CHAPTER V.]

FAILURE.

Robert could not leave Yeldham's chambers for several days after the astute doctor for whom Charley had sent had hazarded his guess about the "mental" sources of his patient's illness; and as the strictest quiet was enjoined, reference to the agitating subject of Katharine and Mrs. Stanbourne's letter had to be strictly avoided. Such avoidance was much less difficult than Yeldham had apprehended it would be; for Robert's exhaustion was extreme, and he readily accepted his friend's assurance that he knew what he wished to have done, and that it should be done without any delay.

"I've sent a line to your mother, Robert, and told her not to frighten herself; and I've had a bed put ready for me in the comer; so you've nothing to do and nothing to think about except getting well."

"And Katharine?" said Robert, with a vague, wan, painful smile.

"Well, and Katharine; but there's nothing to be done until you get well--think of that, my dear fellow, and try--except what I have done, what I did last night when you were asleep."

Robert's hollow eyes questioned him eagerly.

"I wrote to Miss Annie Burton," said Yeldham, sitting down by the bed, "telling her the circumstances briefly, and entreating her to give us any information in her power. I assured her, in case her friend should have reposed any confidence in her, either as to her residence or otherwise, which she might hesitate to violate, that no attempt would be made to control Mrs. Streightley's movements in any way; that the object of the inquiry was to rectify a misapprehension on her part, and to procure some relief of mind for her husband, whom her departure, and his ignorance of what had become of her, had nearly killed. I said that, Bob; I made it strong; and indeed I believe it, old fellow."

Robert covered his face with his hands, and groaned. Yeldham jumped up immediately, at once remembering the doctor's injunctions.

"This will never do," he said; "I must leave you, Robert. The 'demd horrid grind,' you know!"

"We have only to wait, then?" said Robert wearily.

"Yes, to 'wait and hope,' as Monte Christo told his young friends," said Yeldham, with a very poor attempt at gaiety. "I'm off now, to engage in an interesting question about Farmer Shepperton's ten-acre meadow."

During the few following days the grind which Mr. Charles Yeldham had instituted for himself, and had without interruption or question kept up for several years, received many irruptions and incursions at this period of his life, was broken in upon here, and suddenly put a stop to there, in a manner that would have annoyed any but the best-tempered and largest-hearted man in the whole world. While Robert Streightley lay ill in his bed, it was not to be expected that Charley Yeldham could remain quiet, poring over his law-papers, without running in now and then to see how his friend was getting on; whether he wanted any thing; whether the perpetual scratching of the pen disturbed him; whether the preternatural silence did not drive him mad; and other queries, such as men in rude health propose to those whom, being ill, they take to be fanciful. Then there was the doctor's visit, the consultation afterwards, the getting the sick man to acquiesce in all the necessary arrangements, the despatch of Charley's lad for the medicines, and a hundred other little performances, all of which Charley had to take part in; thus giving up his work and withdrawing himself from his desk. He did not mind so very much; for Charles Yeldham's position was now secured, and he knew that the attorneys must await his pleasure. His was no bumptious self-conceit; he had won his spurs in fairest fight and by hardest exertion, by sheer determination and indomitable energy; and he was as incapable of affecting a deprecation of his legitimate success as he would have been of swaggering before that success had been legitimately obtained. So, notwithstanding his innate love of work, he had no hesitation in tearing himself from "treadmill" to attend to his friend, whom he pitied with all his large heart, with a profound pity which had long ago buried blame out of sight.

One morning, when Robert Streightley was sitting in the easy-chair at the open window looking on to the Thames, gazing, with that calm uninterested feeling which comes to us in illness, on the life below--the nursemaids and valetudinarians in the Temple Gardens; the squad of Inns-of-Court volunteers in private clothes, but carrying their rifles, being put through the mysteries of company-drill by the attendant sergeant; the steam-boats on the river, cutting in and out among the heavy barges; the distant bridges crowded with traffic, and the shore immediately in front resonant with the work of the Embankment,--as he sat, very weak in body, very anxious in mind--for no answer had as yet come to Yeldham's letter to Miss Burton--Charley Yeldham opened the door, and coming up to him, laid his hand gently on his shoulder, and asked him how he was.

Robert answered that he was better; "progressing--quietly, he thought he might say."

"That's good hearing, old boy! that's glorious hearing! You certainly have more colour to-day, and your eyes are brighter, and you look more yourself. How do you feel about your nerves?"

"What a wonder you are, Charley! No other man in the world would ask such a question, knowing perfectly that if my nerves were in a queer state, there is nothing so likely to knock them over as being asked after them. However, they're tolerably right, thank God!--Why?"

"Well, I suppose it was a very stupid question; and I'm not about to mend it by what I'm going to say now. I was going to say, if your nerves are tolerably right, and you feel decently strong and able to bear it, there's somebody in the sitting-room--Good God, Robert!"

He might well exclaim, for Robert Streightley had fallen forward on the table, his face ghastly pale, his hand shaking and trembling, his voice, sunk to a whisper, muttering, "Has she come at last? has she come?"

"No, no, my dear fellow; a thousand times no. Compose yourself, for heaven's sake. What a tremendous ass I am in any matter like this--sure to make a mess of it! No, no; there's no 'she' there at all; only an old friend of mine and an acquaintance of yours; and I thought if you were well enough, you might like to see him. I may as well tell you at once it's Gordon Frere."

Streightley started as though he had been cut by a whip, seemed about to speak; hesitated for a moment; and finally said, "I'll come in and see him at once."

"You will?" said Charley Yeldham, overjoyed beyond measure; "you will? That's first-rate. I'm delighted, Robert."

"Why should I not?" said Streightley. "If he were to refuse to see me, I could understand that well enough; but now when I, who--and I'm determined that I won't let slip this opportunity of telling him--"

"Robert, Robert, what nonsense you're talking! Frere, of course, like all the rest of the world, has heard of Mrs. Streightley's departure; and as he has a tolerably clear head, he might be of use in our difficulties; but as for going back into bygones, I forbid it utterly. Now, will you see him or not?"

"Give me your arm, Charley, old fellow, and help me into the other room at once."

The few days' illness, with all the suffering and suspense which had preceded it, had had a grievous effect on Robert Streightley's appearance; so that Gordon Frere--usually impassive, as society required him--gave a great start when he saw him entering the room leaning on Yeldham's arm; and, hastily advancing, took him by the hand and murmured a few words of kindness and sympathy. Robert Streightley was in a very weak state still; his eyes filled with tears, and the pressure with which he endeavoured to return Frere's manual greeting was a very feeble one.

"Now sit down, Gordon, here, close by Streightley--for we mustn't let him exert himself too soon after his illness--and let us have a quiet talk," said Charley Yeldham. "Our friend Frere is an old friend of mine, as you know--and--well--what the world talks of, you know--in fact, he's heard the story of Mrs. Streightley, and--having known her and taken some interest in her--he has come, hearing you were here, to inquire for you, and ask what news we have of her. I've told him what I know--what we all know; but as for particulars, Lord help us, who could give them?"

"Our dear old Charley here," said Gordon Frere, "puts in his own peculiar way--which of course you know, Mr. Streightley, as well as or better than I--the state of affairs. I heard at the time of what had happened; but I, like every one else, I suppose, expected it would all blow over in a few days. I should have liked to have seen you then, and tried to cheer you up, but I thought it better not. However, as my wife sees a good deal of your sister, we have heard that things are not as we hoped they would have been; and yesterday I heard of your illness, so I have come, having long had the pleasure of Mrs. Streightley's acquaintance, and having--if you will permit me to say so--a great esteem for you, to ask Yeldham if I could be of any assistance in the matter."

The old courtly manner; how well Robert remembered it! As Gordon Frere spoke to him, he saw him taking leave of Katharine on horseback in the Park, bending over her in the opera-box, whispering to her at the Botanical Gardens, in that happy time now so far away. He remained perfectly quiet, thinking over this for a minute or two; then he said in a deep voice, and with his eyes cast down:

"No one has a stronger claim to confidence in this matter than Mr. Frere."

Gordon looked astonished, both at the words and the solemn tone in which Streightley spoke; but Charles Yeldham interposed nervously:

"Yes, yes, of course. Gordon is an old friend of the Guyon family--known Miss Guyon--Mrs. Streightley, that is to say--since--ever so long."

"Not merely on that account, but on another----"

"For God's sake, Streightley! You're weak and ill, and not yourself----"

"My dear Charley Yeldham, I'm weak--and ill--and--well, not my former self, at all events; but I cannot see that you are justified in stopping me in what I was about to say."

"But did not you promise me?"

"Certainly not. I came into this room with the full intention of saying what I am now going to say. When Mr. Frere knows that the saying it will have given me relief--and I need relief--I think he will comprehend my anxiety on the point."

Frere glanced from one to the other in mute amazement. He was not what is generally called "quick at taking things," and this dialogue was unintelligible to him. Robert continued:

"You are aware, Mr. Frere, that Mrs. Streightley has long left her home, and that as yet we are unhappily in ignorance where she may be?"

"I had heard so, to my very great regret."

"But you cannot be aware of what is really the fact--that you are to a great extent implicated in her departure."

"I? Mr. Streightley----"

"Hear me out. Our good friend here thinks I am in the wrong in entering into this story to you."

"I don't see the necessity for it," growled Charley Yeldham.

"Very likely not; but then you have not carried the weight about in your bosom for months, or you would hail such a chance of relief with delight. A chance indeed; but I have often contemplated seeking you, and telling you what you are now about to learn. I am fortunate indeed in an opportunity offered by your kindness." He was speaking clearly and steadily now; so he spoke until the end. "Mr. Frere, I owe you an explanation of my last remark to you, and I'm proceeding to give it; but you will have to pardon my feebleness and give me time. You were acquainted with Miss Guyon long before I was introduced to her?"

"I was."

"And--I am speaking to you frankly of yourself; you will see how frankly I shall speak of myself presently--and you admired her very much?"

"I thought--I think," said Frere, after an instant's hesitation, "that there never was a more beautiful woman."

"Nor a more heartless one, I suppose you would add. That woman, as you imagine, fooled you to the top of your heart, gave you every encouragement to seek her hand; and when you did so, frankly and honourably, deliberately threw you over for the richer prize which came in her way."

"Mr. Streightley," said Frere, in an earnest voice, "I'm sure you must have some very strong motive, or you would never touch upon a subject which must be so painful to both of us."

"I have a strong motive, sir, as you will speedily find. Your calls were unnoticed, your letters disregarded, your honourable and manly offer rejected, almost with contempt. Shortly afterwards Miss Guyon was married to me. Now, Mr. Frere, I am coming to my point. Katharine Guyon's rejection of you and her acceptance of me were alike the result of a base conspiracy against you and her. In matters concerning you she was hoodwinked and deceived; your visits were not mentioned to her; your letters were kept back from her. The very offer of your hand she never received, and until the day of her father's death she was in ignorance of its having been made."

Gordon Frere had started back at the beginning of this disclosure, and now sat staring wildly, scarcely able to comprehend what he had heard. After a pause, he said, "Good God, how awful! And by whom was this treachery perpetrated?"

"By two men, one of whom has gone to his account, with all his imperfections on his head; while the other, mercifully spared so far to repent and make such atonement as lies in his power, is before you."

At these words Gordon Frere started from his chair; for an instant remained erect, taking no heed of Yeldham's hands outstretched in warning; then, as his eyes fell on Streightley's worn and haggard face, he sank quietly back into his seat.

"I can fully understand what you must feel, Mr. Frere," said Robert; "and I shall shrink from nothing you may say to me. But there is a little more to be told yet, and I may as well finish it. I said that you were somehow concerned in my wife's flight; and what I meant was this. Her discovery of this plot, the rage and humiliation which she felt at having been made one of its victims, led her to leave her home. I am confident she had no other motive. She----" Robert stopped for a moment, and then continued, "I can't say much more. I'm not strong yet, and--I only wanted you to know that my crime has not been unpunished. God knows my share in that miserable compact has never been absent from my thoughts, and now retribution has overtaken me."

He ceased speaking, and leaned back in his chair, faint and pale. Nor was Gordon Frere much less pallid as he rose and said:

"I'm taken so aback by all this, that I can say nothing at this instant. I want ten minutes by myself to collect my thoughts. Charley, give me your key; I'll go into the Gardens for a few minutes, and then I'll come back to you."

Although the Temple Gardens were Mr. Yeldham's favourite and only exercising ground; and although Gordon Frere, in the old days lazily lounging out of the window with his pipe in his mouth, had often seen his friend tearing round and round them, doing his constitutional in the intervals of "treadmill," it is probable that the young man himself had not been in them more than half-a-dozen times in his life, and knew nothing of their various beauties. Certain it is that he saw nothing of them on the present occasion. He walked among the nursemaids and the town-made children, and the misanthropes and the valetudinarians; but he saw none of them. He saw the staircase at Mrs. Pendarvis's house, and the conservatory and the landing, and Katharine with her head bent down, listening to his soft familiar phrases--which are not, indeed, the language of love, but which form such a pleasant prelude to it. He saw the saucy toss of the head with which she would greet his late arrival in society where they had arranged to meet, and that half-bashful, half-earnest look in her eyes when they were about to part. Gordon Frere's heart beat very rapidly as he thought of these things, and he bit his lip impatiently; but he was a thorough nineteenth-century man, with a horror of giving expression to or even indulging in any strong feelings, and he had long outlived the boyish passion for Katharine which had glorified that past time. His pride was sharply hurt, and the gentlemanly sense of honour, which alone among a man's feelings the nineteenth-century code does not require him to repress, revolted against the story he had just heard from the shattered invalid within there. How right he had been, when he first heard from Hester of Katharine's flight, and had instinctively justified her, even though he then believed she had treated him so badly! So, while he was regarding her as a jilt, she was thinking that he had basely trifled with her. Poor Katharine! he pitied her. Did he pity himself? Well, not much; it was over--the glamour was gone, and he was none the worse; but she, sold to this man--a poor man now--homeless, self-exiled, with burning anger in her proud heart. He never for a moment thought of the possibility that Katharine might love him, Gordon Frere; still something he did not pause to analyse told him she did not--that the dream was over for her as for him. The waking was very different though. Father and husband lost; home and position forfeited; a wanderer, and poor. Katharine Guyon was all this. How bright was his own fate in comparison! Mr. Guyon's part in the transaction galled him. He had so heartily despised the dressy, boasting, foppish, frivolous, false old man, and had so often laughed at his little tricks and cheateries, that to have been so thoroughly, so completely done by him, was, even in such distant retrospect, decidedly humiliating and unpleasant. He had that letter somewhere, with its infernal hypocritical condolence, and its coolly impudent messages from Katharine. All a lie, was it--infernal old scoundrel! Dead though, that must be remembered, even in the utmost scorn and anger. And Streightley--how he pitied him! The man knew so little of the world, and Guyon had made him so completely his tool. He liked Robert, and all the more since Hester had behaved so ill about it all. He wished now he had seen him at once, when this happened; had not been kept back by any fear of Hester's "queerness," as he called it. Things had never been quite comfortable between them since, and he had avoided the subject. But now why should he be angry with this poor broken fellow, who had lost Katharine too, if it came to that? No; he pitied him, and he would help him to the best of his ability; and now he would go and tell him so.

Such is a rapid résumé of Mr. Gordon Frere's thoughts as he walked round the Temple Gardens; and such was the conclusion at which he arrived before he again entered his friend's rooms.

He walked straight up to the chair in which Robert Streightley sat, and taking his thin wan hand, said, "I've thought carefully over all that you have told me, Mr. Streightley, and the result is, that, so far as I am concerned, the matter is put away and buried for ever. It shall never be mentioned by me again, and I think I may say it shall never rise in my mind to your prejudice. The only thing that I will say about it is, that I am glad I have heard this explanation, because by it Miss--Mrs. Streightley is freed from the suspicion of double-dealing and--well, I must say it--heartlessness, which at one time I attached to her. And now," said Gordon, changing the tone of his voice, and laying his hand kindly on Streightley's shoulder--"now we must devote all our energies to finding her and bringing her back. I'm sure, when she hears that I have--I mean when she knows that you've told me all--and--yourself so ill--and--that she'll give in at once--eh, Charley?"

"My dear fellow, I agree with you entirely; I have very little doubt that if we could communicate with Mrs. Streightley, who is a particularly sensible woman, all might be arranged happily at once. But the difficulty is to find her."

"Have you no clue?"

"We had not until quite recently; and even what we now have is very slight indeed." Then Yeldham repeated to Frere all that has been already told respecting Mrs. Stanbourne's letter, and that which he had written to Miss Burton.

"She has not yet answered my letter," he went on to say, with a glance of significant anxiety at Robert, which Gordon understood. "But she may be away from Paris."

"Certainly," said Frere; "nothing more likely. She may have gone home, you know; and the people at the convent may have sent on the letter. We must not be discouraged by a little delay, must we, eh, Charley?"

"O dear, no," said Yeldham; "there is nothing to be discouraged about. We must have patience, and Robert must gain strength. Suppose we got a letter now, and knew where she is, he wouldn't be fit to go to her."

"O yes, I would!" cried Robert. "I should get strength for that. Be sure of me, so far as that goes."