A BANKRUPT HEART.

A BANKRUPT HEART.

BY

FLORENCE MARRYAT,

AUTHOR OF
‘LOVE’S CONFLICT,’ ‘MY OWN CHILD,’ ‘PARSON JONES,’
ETC., ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

LONDON:
F. V. WHITE & CO.,
14 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.

1894.
This story being already dramatised, all rights are reserved.

CONTENTS.

A BANKRUPT HEART.

A BANKRUPT HEART.

——o——

CHAPTER I.

Miss Llewellyn was standing at the window of her own room, in the house of Lord Ilfracombe in Grosvenor Square, gazing at the dust-laden and burnt-up leaves and grass in the gardens before her. It was an afternoon towards the close of July, and all the fashionable world was already out of town. Miss Llewellyn had been reared in the country, and she could not help thinking how that same sun that had burnt up all the verdure of which London could boast, had glorified the vegetation of far-off Wales. How it must have enriched the pasture lands, and ripened the waving corn, and decked the very hedges and ditches with beautiful, fresh flowers, which were to be had for the gathering. Her thoughts went back to rural Usk where King Arthur built a bower for Guinevere, and in fancy she felt the cool air blowing over its fragrant fields and woods. She heaved a deep sigh as she remembered the place of her birth, and, as if in reproach for such heresy to her present condition, she drew a letter from her pocket and opened its pages.

Miss Llewellyn nominally held an inferior position in the house of the Earl of Ilfracombe. She was his housekeeper. Old-fashioned people who associate their ideas of a housekeeper with the image of a staid, middle-aged woman, whose sole business is to guard the morals and regulate the duties of the maidens of the establishment, would have stared at the notion of calling Miss Llewellyn by that name. All the same she was a very fair specimen of the up-to-date housekeeper of a rich bachelor of the present time, with one exception, perhaps. She was handsome beyond the majority of women. Her figure was a model. Tall and graceful without being thin, with a beautiful bust and shoulders, and a skin like white satin, Miss Llewellyn also possessed a face such as is seldom met with, even in these isles of boasted female beauty. Her features would have suited a princess. They were those of a carved Juno. Her abundant rippling hair was of a bright chestnut colour; her eyes dark hazel, like the tawny eyes of the leopardess; her lips full and red; and her complexion naturally as radiant as it usually is with women of her nationality, though London air had toned it down to a pale cream tint. She was quietly, but well-dressed, too well dressed for one in her station of life perhaps, but that would depend on the wages she earned and the appearance she was expected to make. Her gown of some light black material, like mousseline-de-laine, or canvas cloth, was much trimmed with lace, and on her wrists she wore heavy gold bangles. Her beautiful hair was worn in the prevailing fashion, and round her white throat was a velvet band, clasped by a diamond brooch. The room, too, which Miss Llewellyn occupied, and which was exclusively her own, was far beyond what we should associate with the idea of a dependant. It was a species of half study, half boudoir, and on the drawing-room floor, furnished by Liberty, and replete with every comfort and luxury. Yet Miss Llewellyn did not look out of place in it; on the contrary, she would have graced a far handsomer apartment by her presence. To whatever station of life she had been brought up, it was evident that circumstances, or habit, had made her quite familiar with her surroundings. As she perused the letter she drew from her pocket for perhaps the twentieth time she looked rather pale and anxious, as though she did not quite comprehend its meaning. Yet it seemed a very ordinary epistle, and one which anybody might have read over her shoulder with impunity. It was written in rather an irregular and unformed hand for a man of thirty, and showed symptoms of a wavering and unsteadfast character.

‘Dear N.,—I find I may be absent from England longer than I thought, so don’t stay cooped up in town this beastly hot weather, but take a run down to Brighton, or any watering-place you may fancy. Warrender can look after the house. Malta is a deal hotter than London as you may imagine, but I have made several friends here and enjoy the novelty of the place. They won’t let me off, I expect, under another month or two, so I shall miss the grouse this season. However, I’m bound to be back in time for the partridges. Be sure and take a good holiday and freshen yourself up. Have you seen Sterndale yet? If not, you will soon. He has something to tell you. Whatever happens, remember your welfare will always be my first consideration.—Yours truly,

‘Ilfracombe.’

Miss Llewellyn read these words over and over again, without arriving at any conclusion respecting their meaning.

‘What can he mean?’ she thought; ‘why should I see Mr Sterndale, and what can he possibly have to tell me, that I do not already know? I hope Ilfracombe is not going to do anything so stupid as to make a settlement on me, for I will not accept it. I much prefer to go on in the dear old way, and owe all I have to him. Has not my welfare always been his care? Dear Ilfracombe! How I wish I could persuade him to come home and go to Abergeldie instead! I am sure he runs a great risk out in that horrid climate, especially after the attack of fever he had last autumn. If he were to fall sick again, without me to nurse him, what should I do?’

As she spoke thus to herself, she turned involuntarily towards a painted photograph which stood in a silver frame on a side-table. It represented a good-looking young man in a rough shooting suit, with a gun over his shoulder. It was a handsome and aristocratic face, but a weak one, as was evidenced by the prominent blue eyes and the receding chin and mouth, which latter, however, was nearly hidden by a flaxen moustache. It is not difficult to discover with what sort of feeling a woman regards a man if you watch her as she is looking at his likeness. As Miss Llewellyn regarded that of Lord Ilfracombe, her face, so proud in its natural expression, softened until it might have been that of a mother gloating over her first-born. So inextricably is the element of protective love interwoven with the feelings of every true woman for the man who possesses her heart. The tears even rose to Miss Llewellyn’s handsome eyes, as she gazed at Lord Ilfracombe’s picture, but she brushed them away with a nervous laugh.

‘How foolish,’ she said to herself, ‘and when I am the happiest and most fortunate woman in all the world, and would not change my lot with the Queen herself. And so undeserving of it all, too.’

Women who honestly love, invariably think themselves unworthy of their good fortune, when, perhaps, and very often too, the boot (to use a vulgar expression) is on the other foot. But love always makes us humble. If it does not, it is love of ourselves, and not of our lovers.

A sudden impulse seemed to seize Miss Llewellyn, and, sitting down to her pretty writing-table, she drew out pen, ink and paper, and wrote hurriedly,—

‘My Dearest,—Do you think I could enjoy a holiday without you? No! Whilst you are away, my place is here, watching over your interests, and when you return I shall be too happy to leave you. But come back as soon as you can. I don’t want to spoil your pleasure, but I am so afraid for your health. You get so careless when you are alone. Don’t go bathing in cold water when you are hot, nor eating things which you know from experience disagree with you. You will laugh at my cautions, but if you only knew how I love you and miss you, you would sympathise with my anxiety—’

Miss Llewellyn had written thus far, when a tap sounded on the door of her room, and on her giving permission to enter, a servant appeared and addressed her with all the deference usually extended to the mistress of a house.

‘If you please, ma’am, there is a young man and woman from Usk below, who want to speak to you.’

Miss Llewellyn became crimson, and then paled to the tint of a white rose.

‘From Usk, Mary?’ she repeated; ‘are you sure? I don’t expect anybody this evening. What is the name?’

‘Oh, I’m quite sure, ma’am. They said their name was Owen, and they asked particularly for Miss Llewellyn, the housekeeper.’

‘What is the young woman like?’

‘Rather nice-looking, ma’am, that is, for a person from the country. I’m sure they’re not Londoners from the way they speak, though I don’t know where Usk is; but she’s got nice curly hair, much the colour of yours, ma’am.’

‘Well, well, show them into the housekeeper’s room, Mary, or stay, as his lordship is away, you may as well put them in the library, and say I will be with them in a minute.’

As soon as the servant had left her, Miss Llewellyn ran up to her bedroom, with her hand tightly pressed over her heart, and commenced to rapidly pull off her ornaments, and to take a plainer dress out of her wardrobe.

‘If it should be a message from mother,’ she murmured breathlessly, as she stripped off her finery, ‘they mustn’t go back and say they found me like this. Dear, dear mother. She would break her heart to find out the meaning of it all.’

She threw the black lace dress upon the bed, and selecting a quaker-looking fawn cashmere from her wardrobe, put it on instead, and having somewhat smoothed down her rippling hair, she tied on a black silk apron, and took her way down to the library. She opened the door with a beating heart, for she had begun to fear lest the strangers might prove to be the bearers of bad news to her, but the moment she set eyes on the figure of the young woman, she gave vent to an exclamation of surprise and delight, and rushed into her extended arms.

‘Hetty! Hetty!’ she cried hysterically, ‘my own dear sister! Oh, how is it you are in London? Why did you not tell me you were coming? You have not brought bad news, have you? Oh, don’t tell me that mother is ill, for I couldn’t bear it.’

‘No, Nell, no!’ exclaimed the younger sister, ‘they are all as well at home as can be. Mother and father are just beautiful, and the crops first-rate. But we—that is, Will and I—thought we would give you such a grand surprise. We have such news for you! You’d never guess it, Nell! Don’t you see who’s this with me? William Owen, our old play-mate! Well, he’s my husband. We were married the day before yesterday.’

‘Married!’ repeated Miss Llewellyn, incredulously. ‘Little Hester, who was always such a baby compared to me, really married. This is a surprise!’ And to prove how much she thought it so, Miss Llewellyn sat down on a sofa and burst into tears.

‘Oh, Nelly! you are not vexed because we did not tell you sooner, are you?’ cried Hetty, kneeling down beside her sister. ‘We thought you would like the grand surprise, dear, and I made Will promise that the first thing he did was to bring me up to London town to see my beautiful sister Nell! And oh, Nell, you do look such a lady. I’m sure I feel so countrified beside you, I can’t say.’

‘You look too sweet for anything,’ replied Miss Llewellyn kissing her, ‘and I was only crying a little for joy, Hetty, to think you are so happy. But what a child to be married! Why, how old are you? Not more than seventeen, surely!’

‘Oh, yes, Nell; you have not been home for such a time, you forget how it goes on. I was twenty-one last spring, dear; and you are twenty-four! But how different you are from what you used to be. Is it London life that makes you so grand? You look like a queen beside me! You must think I am a bumpkin in my wedding clothes.’

‘Nonsense, dear Hetty. One is obliged to be more particular in town than in the country. Besides, I am filling an important situation, you know, and am expected to dress up to it.’

‘Oh yes, I was telling Will all the way down from Usk, what a fine place you have, and such a rich master. Oh, Nell! is he at home? Lord Ilfracombe I mean. I should love to go back and tell them that I had seen a lord.’

‘No, Hetty, he is away in Malta, and not likely to be back for some time. But I’ve not spoken to my new brother-in-law yet. I suppose you can scarcely remember me, Will. Five years is a long time to be absent from the old home.’

‘Oh! I remember you well enough,’ replied the young man shamefacedly, for he was rather taken aback at encountering such a fine lady, instead of the maid-servant he had expected to see. ‘I and my brother Hugh used to have fine games of cricket with you and my little Hetty here, on the island years and years ago. I suppose you’ve heard that Hugh has been elected to the ministry since you left Usk, Miss Llewellyn?’

‘No, indeed, I do not think that Hetty has ever mentioned it in her letters to me. But I remember your brother quite well. He was a very tall, shy lad, fonder of reading than anything else, even when a little boy.’

‘Yes, that’s Hugh,’ replied the young man, ‘and he hasn’t forgotten you either, I can answer for that.’

‘I suppose it makes you all very proud to have a minister in the family, William?’ said Miss Llewellyn kindly.

‘That it does; and he’s a fine preacher too, as Hetty here can tell you, and draws the people to hear him for miles round, so that the parson up at the church is quite jealous of Hugh’s influence with his parishioners. And that’s something to be proud of, isn’t it?’

‘It is indeed. And what are you, Will?’

‘Oh, he’s a farmer, Nell,’ interposed Hetty, ‘and we are to live with his parents at Dale Farm as soon as we go back. So poor mother will be left alone. Oh, Nell, how I wish you could come back to Panty-cuckoo Farm, and stay with mother, now she’s lost me.’

Miss Llewellyn flushed scarlet at the idea.

‘Hetty, how could I? How could I leave my place where I have been for so many years now, to go back and be a burden on my parents? Besides, dear, I’m used to town life, and don’t think I should know how to get on in the country.’

‘But you care for mother surely?’ said her sister, somewhat reproachfully; ‘and you can’t think how bad she’s been with sciatica this spring, quite doubled-up at times, and Dr Cowell says it’s bound to come back in the autumn. I’m sure I don’t know what she’ll do if it does! You should have heard how she used to cry out for you in the spring, Nell. She’s always wanting her beautiful daughter. I’m nothing to mother, and never have been, compared to you. And I’ve heard her say, dozens of times, that she wished that London town had been burned to the ground before the agency office had persuaded you to take service here. They do seem so hard on servants in this place. Here have you been five years away from home, and never once a holiday! I think Lord Ilfracombe must be very mean not to think that a servant girl would want to see her own people once in a way!’

‘You mustn’t blame Lord Ilfracombe, Hetty!’ said her sister, hastily, ‘for it’s not his fault. He would let me go to Usk if I asked him, I daresay; but I have the charge of all the other servants you see, and where would the house be without me? It is not as if there was a lady at the head of affairs.’

‘Then why doesn’t he marry and get his wife to do all that for him?’ demanded Hetty, with the audacity of ignorance. ‘It does seem strange that a gentleman with such a heap of money should remain a bachelor. What does he do with it all, I wonder? And what is the good of such a big house to a man without a wife? Wouldn’t you rather that he was married, Nell? It must be so funny taking all your orders from a man.’

‘You don’t understand, Hetty,’ said Miss Llewellyn. ‘Lord Ilfracombe does not give me any orders. He never interferes in the household arrangements. It is to save himself all that trouble that he has engaged me. I hardly ever see him—that is, about dinners, or anything of that sort. When he is going to have a party, he tells me the number of people whom he expects, and I prepare for them accordingly. But this is all beyond your comprehension. It is past five o’clock. You and William will be glad of some tea.’

Miss Llewellyn rose and rang the bell as she spoke, and having given her orders to a very magnificent looking footman, at whose servility Hetty stared, she resumed the conversation.

‘Where are you two staying in town?’

‘We have some rooms in Oxford Street,’ replied her sister. ‘Do you remember Mrs Potter, Nell, who took Mrs Upjohn’s cottage when her husband died? Her sister lets lodgings, and when she heard we were coming to London for our honeymoon, she wrote to her sister to take us in, and we are very comfortable there, aren’t we, Will? And it’s such a grand situation, such lots of things to see; and Mrs Potter said, as it might be our last chance for many a day, we ought to see as much as we could whilst we are here.’

‘I think she is quite right,’ replied Miss Llewellyn, smiling; ‘and I should like to add to your pleasure if possible. Will you come out with me and have some dinner after your tea, and go to a theatre in the evening?’

‘Oh, Nell, we had our dinner at one o’clock—roast pork and French beans, and very good it was, I suppose, for London town, though nothing like our pork at Usk. And aren’t the strawberries and cherries dear here? Will gave sixpence this morning for a leaf of fruit that you’d throw over the hedge to a beggar child in Usk. I told the woman in the shop that she ought to come to Panty-cuckoo Farm if she wanted to see strawberries; but she said she had never heard of such a place.’

‘I think you’ll be quite ready for the dinner, Hetty, for you will find our London teas very different from country ones,’ said Miss Llewellyn, as the footman reappeared with a teapot and cups and saucers, and a plate of very thin bread and butter on a silver tray; ‘and the theatre will keep us up rather late. I suppose you have been nowhere yet?’

No, of course they had been nowhere, and Miss Llewellyn selected the Adelphi as the theatre most likely to give them pleasure.

‘Nell,’ whispered Hetty, in a tone of awe as they found themselves once more alone, ‘do you always have a silver tray to eat your tea off?’

Nell coloured. She found a little evasion would be necessary in order to circumvent the sharp eyes of her sister.

‘Not always, Hetty,’ she answered; ‘but as nobody else wants it just now, I suppose John thought we might as well have the advantage of it. When the cat’s away, you know, the mice will play. And we can’t wear it out by using it a little.’

Hetty looked thoughtful.

‘But I think mother would say,’ she answered after a pause, ‘that we ought not to use it unless Lord Ilfracombe knew of it and gave his leave. I remember once when Annie Roberts came to tea with me, and boasted of having brought her mistress’s umbrella because she was away and it looked like rain, mother sent her straight home again, and threatened if Annie did not tell Mrs Carey of what she had done, that she would tell her herself.’

Miss Llewellyn looked just a little vexed. One might have seen that by the way she bit her lip and tapped the carpet with her neat little shoe.

‘But your sister is not in the same position as Annie Roberts, Hetty, my dear,’ interposed William Owen, observing their hostess’s discomfiture.

‘No, that is just it,’ said Miss Llewellyn, recovering herself. ‘I am allowed—all the servants know that they may bring these things up to me when I have friends. Life in London is so different from life in the country—one expects more privileges. But there, Hetty, dear, don’t let us speak of it any more. You don’t quite understand, but you may be sure I would not do anything of which Lord Ilfracombe would not approve.’

‘Oh, no, dear Nell, indeed you need not have told me that. I was only a little surprised. I am not used to such fine things, you know, and I just thought if your master was to walk in, how astonished he would be.’

‘Not at all,’ said Miss Llewellyn gaily. ‘You don’t know how good and kind he is to us all. He would just laugh and tell us to go on enjoying ourselves. But if we are to go to the theatre, I must run up and put on my things. William, will you have a glass of wine before we start? I have a bottle of my own, so Hetty need not think I am going to drink Lord Ilfracombe’s.’

Young Owen refused the wine, but Hetty was eager to accompany her sister to her bedroom. This was just what Miss Llewellyn did not wish her to do. She was in a quandary. But her woman’s wit (some people would say, her woman’s trick of lying) came to her aid, and she answered,—

‘Come upstairs with me by all means, Hetty. I should like you to see the house, but I will take you to one of the spare bedrooms, for mine is not habitable just at present. Plasterers and painters all over that floor. Come in here,’ and she turned as she spoke into a magnificently furnished apartment usually reserved for Lord Ilfracombe’s guests.

Hetty stared with all her eyes at the magnificence surrounding her.

‘Oh, Nell, how I wish mother could see this. It looks fit for a duchess to me.’

‘Well, it was actually a duke who slept in it last, you little goose,’ cried Miss Llewellyn, as she hastily assumed a bonnet and mantle which she had desired a servant to fetch from her own chamber. ‘But I don’t think he was worthy of it. A nasty, bloated little fellow, with a face covered with pimples, and an eyeglass always stuck in his eye.’

‘Doesn’t Lord Ilfracombe wear an eyeglass, Nell?’

‘Oh, no, thank goodness. I wouldn’t—’ But here Miss Llewellyn checked herself suddenly, and added,—‘I mean, he would never do anything so silly. He can see perfectly well, and does not need a glass. But come, Hetty, dear, we are going to walk down to the theatre, so we had better start if we wish to get good seats.’

As they entered the porch of the Adelphi, a sudden thought struck innocent Hetty. She sidled up to her sister and whispered,—

‘You must let William pay for our places, Nell.’

‘Nonsense, child, what are you thinking of? This is my treat. I asked you to come as my guests.’

‘But it isn’t fair,’ continued the little bumpkin, ‘for you to pay for us all out of your wages. Won’t it cramp you for the next quarter, Nell?’

‘No, dear, no; I have plenty for us all,’ returned her sister hastily, as she paid for three places in the dress circle, and conducted her relations to their destination. Here, seated well out of observation of the stalls, as she thought, Miss Llewellyn felt free for the next two hours at least, to remain quiet and think, an operation for which she had had no time since her sister had burst in so unexpectedly upon her. William and Hetty had naturally no eyes except for the play, the like of which they had never seen before. They followed the sensational incidents of one of Sim’s and Buchanan’s melodramas with absorbing interest. The varied scenes; the clap-trap changes; the pretty dresses, all chained them, eyes and ears, to the stage, whilst an occasional breathless exclamation from Hetty, of ‘Oh, Nell, isn’t that beautiful?’ was all the demand they made upon her attention. She had seen the piece before, and if she had not done so, she had no heart to attend to it now. Her memories of home, and the old life she had led there, had all been awakened by the sight of her sister and the manner she had spoken of it; and while Hetty was engrossed by the novel scenes before her, Miss Llewellyn was in fancy back again at Panty-cuckoo Farm, where she had been born and bred. She was wandering down the steep path which led to the farmhouse, bordered on either side by whitened stones to enable the drivers to keep to it in the dark, and which had given the dear old place its fanciful name of ‘The Cuckoo’s Dell.’ She could see the orchard of apple and pear trees, which grew around the house itself, and under which the pigs were digging with their black snouts for such succulent roots as their swinish souls loved. She sat well back in her seat listening to the notes of the cuckoo from the neighbouring thicket, and the woods that skirted the domains of General Sir Archibald Bowmant, who was the principal landowner for many miles around Usk at that period. What a marvellous, magnificent place she had thought the General’s house once, when she had been admitted to view the principal rooms, by especial favour of the housekeeper. And now—why, they were nothing compared to Lord Ilfracombe’s, the man whom little Hetty had called her ‘master.’ ‘And a very good name for him, too,’ thought Miss Llewellyn, as she finished her musings, ‘for he is my master, body and soul.’

CHAPTER II.

At the close of the second act, as she was urging her sister and brother-in-law to take some refreshment, she was disagreeably interrupted by hearing a voice which she recognised as that of Mr Portland, a friend of Lord Ilfracombe’s. Jack Portland (as he was usually called by his own sex) was a man whom Miss Llewellyn particularly disliked, on account of his bad influence over the Earl. He was a well-known betting and sporting man, who lived on the turf, and whose lead Lord Ilfracombe was, unfortunately, but too ready to follow. She shrunk back as she encountered him, but Mr Portland was not easily rebuffed.

‘Ah, Miss Llewellyn,’ he exclaimed, as he scrambled over the vacant seats to reach her side, ‘is this really you? I thought I recognised you from the stalls, but could hardly believe my eyes. What are you doing in the dress circle? I have always seen you in a box before.’

‘I am with friends, Mr Portland,’ replied Miss Llewellyn, with visible annoyance; ‘and one can see a play like this much better from the circle. We have been enjoying it very much.’

‘You must be pretty well sick of it by this time, I should think,’ returned Mr Portland, with his glass stuck in his eye, ‘for I’ve seen you here twice with Ilfracombe already. By the way, how is Ilfracombe? When did you hear from him last?’

Miss Llewellyn was on thorns.

‘Will you excuse me, Mr Portland,’ she said, with a face of crimson, ‘but I and my friends were just going to have some ices at the buffet.’

‘By Jove, but you won’t!’ exclaimed the officious Portland. ‘I will send them to you. How many do you want? Three?’

‘Yes, three if you please,’ answered Miss Llewellyn, who saw no other way of getting rid of her tormentor, and dreaded what he might say before her sister.

‘Who is that gentleman, Nell?’ inquired Hetty as soon as his back was turned.

‘No one in particular,’ said the other, ‘only an acquaintance of Lord Ilfracombe’s. Don’t take any notice of him, Hetty. He talks a lot of nonsense.’

She was praying all the time that Mr Portland, having given his orders to the waiter, might see he was not wanted, and go back to his stall. But he was not the sort of man who gives something for nothing. He meant to be paid for the attention, though in his own coin. The waiter soon appeared bearing the tray of ices and wafers, and in his train came Mr Jack Portland, smiling as if he knew his welcome was assured.

‘I’ve got you Neapolitan, Miss Llewellyn, you see. I remembered that Ilfracombe always orders Neapolitan. By the way, you never told me the contents of his last letter. He’s very gay at Malta I hear. Always with those Abingers. Have you heard of the Abingers? He’s the admiral there. By George, Miss Llewellyn, I’d recall Ilfracombe if I were you. Send him home orders, you know. He’s been out there quite long enough, don’t you think so?’

Miss Llewellyn saw that Hetty and William were listening with open eyes to this discourse, and did not know how to stop Mr Portland’s tongue. She would fain have got rid of him altogether, but of the two evils she chose what seemed to her the least. She lowered her voice, and begged him to cease his remarks on Lord Ilfracombe till they were alone.

‘That’s the way the land lies,’ he replied, with a wink in the direction of Hetty. ‘All right, mum’s the word! How deucedly handsome you are looking to-night,’ he added in a lower voice, as he brought his bloated face in close proximity to hers. ‘Tell you what, Miss Llewellyn, Ilfracombe’s a fool!—a d—d fool, by George! to leave such a face and figure as yours, whilst he goes gallivanting after a set of noodles at Malta!’

At this remark Nell flushed indignantly, and, turning her back on the intruder, directed her attention to her sister, upon which Mr Portland, with a familiar nod, and an easy good-night, took himself away. As soon as he was out of hearing Hetty pestered Nell to tell her his name, and to confess if he was anything to her.

‘I can’t say I think he’s handsome,’ she said, with a little moue, ‘his face is so red, and he stares so; but do tell me the truth, Nell. Is he your young man?’

‘My young man? Gracious, no, child! Why, I hate the fellow! I think he is the most odious, impertinent, presuming person I know! But he is a friend of Lord Ilfracombe’s, so I am obliged to be civil to him.’

‘Ah, well, I wish you had a young man, Nell, all the same. Mother would be so glad to hear you were thinking of getting married. She often says that it is high time you were settled, and that you’re far too handsome to be single in London, for that it’s a dreadful dangerous place for girls, and especially if they’re good looking. She would be pleased to hear you were keeping company with anyone that could keep you like a lady.’

‘But I’m not, Hetty, dear, nor likely to be, so you mustn’t get any ideas of that sort into your head. But let us attend to what is going on. I hope Will and you are enjoying yourselves.’

‘Oh, lovely!’ said Hetty, with a sigh of ineffable content.

But Miss Llewellyn had not got rid of Mr Portland yet. As she was pushing her way out of the corridor when the play was over, she found him again by her side.

‘Will you be at home to-morrow, Miss Llewellyn?’ he asked in a low voice.

‘I believe so. Why?’

‘Because I particularly want to speak to you. May I call about three?’

‘Certainly, if you really wish to speak to me; but I cannot imagine what you can have to say that you cannot say now?’

‘Oh, that would be quite impossible,’ rejoined Mr Portland, looking her straight in the eyes; ‘I couldn’t even explain what my business with you is, but you shall hear all about it if you will be so good as to receive me about three.’

‘I shall be at home,’ replied Miss Llewellyn coldly, as she pushed her way out into the street and entered a passing cab with her companions.

‘I shall call for you both to-morrow about six o’clock, Hetty,’ she said, as she deposited them at the door of their lodgings, ‘and take you to the Alhambra. You’ll see something there more beautiful than you have ever seen before.’

‘Oh, Nell, you are good!’ cried her sister; ‘and what a lot of money you must receive. It makes me wish that I, too, had come up to London town when you did, and gone to service, for then I might have saved some money to help Will furnish our rooms. I brought him nothing, you know, Nell—not even a penny, It seems so sad, doesn’t it?’

‘What nonsense!’ replied Miss Llewellyn. ‘You brought him your true, pure heart and your honest soul, and they are worth all the money in the world, Hetty, and I am sure William thinks the same. Good-night. We shall meet again to-morrow.’

And with a wave of her hand, she drove away to Grosvenor Square.

Her maid was waiting up for her, all consternation to find she had left the house without calling in her assistance.

‘Dear me, ma’am!’ she exclaimed, as she knelt down on the floor of Miss Llewellyn’s bedroom to unbutton her dainty boots, ‘to think you could go out, and me not to dress you. When John told me you had left the house, and not even taken the carriage, you might have knocked me down with a feather. And in this dress and mantle, too! Dear, dear, wherever did you go? Not to the theatre, surely?’

‘Yes, I did,’ responded her mistress. ‘I took some young friends from the country with me to the Adelphi; and you see, Susan, the fact is, they are not used to fashionable dressing, so I thought I would not make them feel uncomfortable by being smarter than themselves.’

‘Many ladies think the same,’ remarked the maid; ‘though I don’t hold with it, for it’s a real pleasure to look at such dresses as yours, even if one can’t have ’em for oneself.’

She spoke rather more familiarly than servants usually do to their mistresses, for she knew perfectly well, though she dared not say so openly, that Miss Llewellyn was not a gentlewoman any more than herself, but it was, she thought, to her profit to appear to think so. The Court favourite is generally the object of adulation and sycophancy until her reign is over. But Ellen Llewellyn had been accustomed to subservience for so long now that she had almost forgotten that it was not hers by right. It was only at times that the truth was borne in upon her that she held the luxuries of life on an uncertain tenure. Her maid undressed her, and put her blue cashmere dressing-gown about her shoulders, and would have hovered around her for an indefinite period, chattering of every bit of news she had heard that day, but Miss Llewellyn was in no mood to indulge her, and dismissed her at last rather abruptly. She wanted to be alone to ponder over the surprise she had had that afternoon—to dream again of Panty-cuckoo Farm; to wonder how the dear old garden looked under the July sun; if her mother had aged much during the last five years; whether her father’s figure was more bent and his steps feebler—above all, she wanted to communicate her thoughts to someone who would sympathise with them. She felt too excited to rest, so she took up her pen again and finished the letter in the writing of which she had been interrupted that afternoon by her sister’s arrival.

‘I had written thus far, my dearest, when I was interrupted by the appearance of my little sister Hetty, from Usk, and her husband, William Owen, when I never even knew that they were married. Oh, Ilfracombe, I was so surprised! They have come up to town for their wedding trip expressly to see me, so I felt compelled to show them some attention. But I was so nervous! I hurried them out of the house as soon as I could, and took them to the Adelphi; and there, who should spy us out but Mr Portland, who would keep on talking to me of you till I was fairly obliged to run away from him. What a fool he must be to speak so openly before strangers. I could have boxed his ears! Oh, I never feel safe or happy except when I am by your side. How very glad I shall be when you come home again. Then you will take me up to Abergeldie with you for the shooting, won’t you? Till then I shall not stir. How could I enjoy myself at a watering-place all alone? I have seen nothing of Mr Sterndale yet, and cannot imagine what he should have to say to me. We never had much in common; indeed, I regularly dislike him. He always looks at me so suspiciously as if he thought I was a wretched harpy, like some women we know of, and cared for nothing but your money and your title. Instead of which I love you so dearly that I could almost wish you were a ruined costermonger, Ilfracombe, instead of the grand gentleman you are, that I might prove my love by working for you and with you. Ah, if I only could do something to return all your goodness to me; but it is hopeless, and will never be. You are too high above me. All I can do is to love you.’

And with much more in this strain the letter ended. The excitement that had been engendered in Nell by seeing friends from home had been continued by writing her feelings to the man she loved; but now that it was over, and she lay down on her bed, the natural reaction set in, and she turned her beautiful face on her pillow and shed a few quiet tears.

‘Oh, how I wish Ilfracombe were here,’ she sobbed. ‘He has been away four months now, and my life is a desert without him. It is hardly bearable. And if Hetty or William should hear—if by chance anyone who knows it, like that officious Jack Portland, should come across them and mention it, and they should tell mother, it would break her heart and mine too. If he would only have the courage to end it, and do what’s right. But it’s too much to expect. I must not think of such a thing. I have always known it was impossible. And I am as certain as I am that there is a heaven that he will never forsake me; he has said it so often. I am as secure as if I were really his wife. Only this world is so hard—so bitterly, bitterly hard!’

And so Nell cried herself to sleep.

But the next morning she was as bright and as gloriously beautiful as ever, and when she descended to breakfast the butler and footman waited on her as assiduously as if she had been a countess, and the coachman sent up to her for orders concerning the carriage, and the cook submitted the menu for that day’s dinner for her approval. As soon as her breakfast was concluded she gave an interview to Lord Ilfracombe’s stud groom, and went with him into the forage and stable accounts, detecting several errors that he had passed over, and consulting him as to whether his master might not, with some benefit to himself, try another corn merchant. So much had she had identified herself with all the earl’s interests that she more than once used the plural pronoun in speaking of the high prices quoted to her.

‘This will never do, Farningham,’ she said once; ‘we cannot afford to go on with Field at this rate. His charges are enough to ruin a millionaire. With four horses here, and eleven down at Thistlemere, we shall have nothing left to feed ourselves soon.’

‘Very well, ma’am,’ replied the man, ‘I’ll get the price list from two or three other corn merchants, and submit them to you. I don’t fancy you’ll find much difference, though, in their prices. You see, with the long drought we have had this season, hay has risen terribly, and oats ain’t much better; they’re so poor I’ve had to increase the feeds. Will his lordship be home for the hunting, ma’am?’

‘Oh, yes, I hope so sincerely, Farningham. He says he shall miss the grouse this year; but I quite expect him for the partridge-shooting. And after that he is sure to go down to Thistlemere for the hunting season. He couldn’t live without his horses for long, Farningham.’

‘No, ma’am, he’s a true nobleman for that is his lordship, and I guessed as much; but I’m glad to hear you say so, for there’s no heart in getting horses in first-rate order if no one’s to see ’em or use ’em. Good morning, ma’am, and I hope we shall see his lordship soon again, for all our sakes,’ which hope Miss Llewellyn heartily echoed.

CHAPTER III.

The morning was beautiful, though very warm, and Miss Llewellyn thought she could not spend it better than in taking a long drive. She felt as if she could not stay in the house. Some intuitive dread or fear, she knew not which, possessed her—as if she had an enemy in ambush, and anticipated an assault. When she tried to analyse this feeling, she laid it to the proximity of her relations and the possibility of their hearing more of her domestic life than she wished them to know.

‘But it is all because Ilfracombe is not at home,’ she said to herself. ‘If he were here, he would laugh me out of such a piece of folly. As if they possibly could hear. Who could tell them, when they know no one in London. I am a silly fool.’

When she entered the open carriage, and the footman attended her orders, she told him to drive as far into the country as possible.

‘Tell Jenkins to go right away from town, up to Hampstead, or out to Barnes. I want all the fresh air I can get.’

So she was carried swiftly towards Wimbledon, and had soon left the hot bricks and mortar behind her, and was revelling in the sight of green hedges and stretches of common.

‘How fresh and sweet it all seems,’ she thought; ‘but not half so fresh and sweet as round Usk and by dear Panty-cuckoo Farm. How luscious the honeysuckle used to smell, that trailed over the porch by the side door. And how thickly it grew. I used to tear off the blossoms by thousands to suck their petals. And the apple orchard, it was a mass of white and pink flowers in spring, like a bridal bouquet. They must have all fallen by this time, and left the little green apples in their stead. What a thief I was in my early days. I can remember lanky Hugh Owen catching me robbing Mr Potter’s plum tree, and the long-winded lecture he gave me on the rights of meum and tuum. I wonder if the sermons he preaches now are as prosy and as long. If so, I pity his congregation. He was always so terribly in earnest. What would he say if he knew all about me now?’

And here Miss Llewellyn’s thoughts took a rather melancholy turn, and she sat in the carriage with folded arms, hardly noticing the rural scenes through which she was passing, as her memory went back to her girlhood’s days and her girlhood’s companions. She did not notice the time either, until a church clock struck two, and reminded her that she had had no luncheon. She gave the order for home then, but it was nearly three before she reached Grosvenor Square, and the first words the footman, who opened the door to her, said, were to the effect that Mr Portland was waiting for her in the drawing-room. Nell started. She had entirely forgotten the appointment of the day before.

‘In the drawing-room, did you say?’ she ejaculated. ‘I will go to him at once.’

‘Luncheon is on the table, madam,’ added the servant; ‘shall I tell them to take it downstairs till you are ready?’

‘It is not worth while,’ replied Miss Llewellyn, ‘I shall only be a few minutes.’

She walked straight up to the drawing-room as she spoke, throwing the hat she had worn on a side table as she entered.

‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr Portland,’ she said as he held out his hand to her, ‘but I have been for a country drive, and quite forgot the time.’

‘That is a very cruel speech, Miss Llewellyn,’ remonstrated her visitor; ‘and when I have been counting the moments till we should meet.’

Jack Portland was always a ‘horsey’ looking man, and it struck Nell that to-day he seemed more horsey than usual. By birth, he was a gentleman; but, like many other gentlemen by birth, he had degraded himself by a life of dissipation, till he had lost nearly all claim to the title. His features, good enough in themselves, were swollen and bloated by indulgence in drink; his manners were forward and repulsive; he had lost all respect for women, and only regarded them as expensive animals who cost, as a rule, much more than they were worth. To Nell he had always been most offensive, not in words, but looks and manners, and she was only decently civil to him for the earl’s sake. Now, as he seemed disposed to approach her side, she got further and further away from him, till she had reached a sofa at the other end of the room. Mr Portland was ‘got-up’ in the flashiest style, but was evidently nervous, though she could not imagine why. His suit was cut in the latest racing fashion, and he wore an enormous ‘buttonhole.’ But his florid face was more flushed than usual, and he kept fidgeting with his watch chain in a curious manner. At last he found his tongue.

‘Were you very much surprised when I asked you for an interview, Miss Llewellyn?’ he commenced.

‘I was, rather. Because I cannot think what you can possibly have to say to me. We have but one subject of interest in common—Ilfracombe—and he is quite well and happy. Else, I might have frightened myself by imagining you had some bad news to tell me concerning him.’

Jack Portland looked at her rather curiously as he replied,—

‘Oh, no, the old chap’s all right. How often do you hear from him now? Every day. Is that the ticket?’

‘I hear constantly,’ replied Miss Llewellyn in a dignified tone. ‘I had a letter yesterday. I was in hopes he might have fixed the date of his return, but he says his friends will not be persuaded to let him go, so that he shall be detained in Malta longer than he expected.’

‘Ah! his friends are the Abingers, of course,’ said Mr Portland, sticking his glass in his eye, the better to observe her features.

‘Perhaps. He did not mention them by name,’ she replied, ‘but I daresay you are right. However, he is sure to be home for the pheasant-shooting.’

‘Doubtless,’ replied Mr Portland, ‘unless his friends persuade him to go somewhere else. But what are you going to do with yourself meanwhile, Miss Llewellyn?’

‘I? Oh, I shall remain in town till his return, and then I suppose we shall go to the Highlands as usual. Ilfracombe wants me to go away at once to some watering-place to recruit, but I should be wretched there by myself. I shall wait for him at home. He is sure to come straight to London, because all his things are here.’

She was looking as handsome as paint that day. The long drive had tinged her face with a soft pink, and her lovely hazel eyes were humid with emotion, engendered by her subject. Her rich hair had become somewhat disordered by the open air and the haste with which she had removed her hat, and was ruffled and untidy. But that only added to her charms. What pretty woman ever looked so well with neatly arranged hair, as when it is rumpled and blown about? She was half sitting, half reclining on the sofa, and her fine figure was shewn to the best advantage. Portland’s eyes glistened as he gazed at her. What a handsome hostess she would make—what a presider over the destinies of his bachelor establishment! How proud he would be to introduce her to his sporting and Bohemian friends—the only friends whom he affected, and be able to tell them that this glorious creature was his own! He became so excited by the idea that he dashed into the subject rather suddenly.

‘Miss Llewellyn,’ he said, ‘you are aware, I think, of my position in life. Ilfracombe, dear old chap, has doubtless told you that I make a very neat little income, and that I am perfectly unencumbered.’

This seemingly vague address made her stare.

‘He has never entered into details with me, Mr Portland; but I have heard him say you are very well off—the luckiest fellow he knows he called you.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not quite that,’ said Mr Portland; ‘but still I am in a position to give any reasonable woman everything she can possibly require. My income is pretty regular, and I would engage to make a handsome allowance to any lady who honoured me with her preference. I tell you this because Ilfracombe has often told me that you have an excellent head for business. By George!’ said Mr Portland, again screwing his glass into his unhappy and long-suffering eye, ‘with such beauty as yours, you have no right to know anything about business; still, if you do—there you are, you see!’

‘But what has all this to do with me, Mr Portland,’ remarked Miss Llewellyn with a puzzled air. ‘I am sure any lady you may choose to marry will be a very lucky woman. Ilfracombe has often called you the best fellow he knows. But why should you tell me this? Are you already engaged to be married?’

‘By Jove! no, and not likely to be. Do I look like a marrying man, Miss Llewellyn? But there!—I can’t beat about the bush any longer! You must have seen my admiration—my worship for you! It is on you my choice has fallen! Say that I have not been too presumptuous; that you will consent to share my fortune; that you will, in fact, look as kindly on me as you have on my fortunate friend, Ilfracombe?’

At first she did not understand his meaning; she did not realise that this farrago of nonsense had been addressed to herself. It was so entirely unexpected, so utterly unthought of. But when she did take in the meaning of his words, when she awoke to the knowledge that Mr Portland, the intimate friend of Lord Ilfracombe, had dared to offer her his protection, Nell sprung from her position on the sofa, and retreated to the back of it. Her tawny eyes were blazing with fire, her hands were clenched, her breast heaved violently, she could hardly speak. Under the indignation of her burning glances, the man before her seemed to shrivel like a dry leaf before the flame.

‘How dare you?’ she panted. ‘How dare you insult me like that? What do you mean? How can I be your friend, or the friend of any man but Ilfracombe? I am his wife; you know I am; and shall be till I die!’

‘His wife? pooh!’ said Jack Portland, ‘don’t talk rubbish to me like that.’

‘Yes, his wife! How can I be more his wife than I am? I love him—he loves me! We are essentially one in heart and word and deed. What could a marriage ceremony have done more for us, than our mutual love has done. And then you, who know all this, who have known us so many years, you dare to come here and insult me, in my own house, and under the pretence of friendship deal the deadliest insult you could possibly have hurled at my head! Oh, how I wish Ilfracombe had been at home to protect me from your insolence! He would not have let you finish your cowardly sentence! You would not have dared utter it had he been standing by! He would have taken you by the collar and spurned you from the door. I have no words in which to tell you how I despise you; how low and mean a thing you seem to me; how I wish I were a man that I might put you out of this room and this house myself! But rest assured that Lord Ilfracombe shall hear of your baseness, and will punish you as you deserve!’

Jack Portland still kept his glass fixed in his eye and stared insolently at her. He had elevated his brows once or twice as she proceeded with her speech, and shrugged his shoulders, as if she were not worth a second thought of his; and as she mentioned her lover’s name he smiled scornfully and waved his hand.

‘Pray don’t take it in this fashion,’ he said, as she concluded. ‘I am sure Ilfracombe would tell you it was not worth making such a fuss about. As for insulting you, that is the last idea in my mind. I admire you far too much. Most ladies would, I flatter myself, have regarded my offer in a totally different light; indeed, no reasonable person could say that it was an insult, especially from a man of my birth and position.’

‘It becomes an insult,’ she answered hotly, ‘when you address your proposals to the wife of another man, and that man your greatest friend.’

‘Perhaps it would, if she were his wife, or ever likely to be so,’ returned Mr Portland, with a sneer.

‘But I am, I am,’ cried Nell passionately, stamping her feet, ‘and each fresh word you say is a fresh affront. People with your low conceptions of life cannot understand the strength of the tie between Ilfracombe and myself, because it has not been ratified by the law. You are not honourable enough to see that that very fact renders it still more binding on a man of honour. Ilfracombe would die sooner than part from me, and I would die a thousand deaths sooner than part from him. Our lives are bound up in each other. And even if it were not so, I could never exchange him for you. Now, do you understand, or must I say it all over again?’

Under the sting of what his proposal had suggested to her, she was blazing away at him with twice her natural ferocity. At that moment she hated him with such a deadly hatred for having presumed to remind her of the real position she held, that she could gladly have killed him.

‘Pray say no more!’ exclaimed Mr Portland, as he prepared to leave her, ‘you’ve said more than enough, my pretty tigress, already; but the day may come when you will regret that you treated my offer with so much disdain. Young men’s fancies do not last for ever, my dear, and a good, sound settlement is worth many vows. If Ilfracombe ever tires of you (or rather let me say when he tires of you), you will remember my words. Meanwhile, luckily for me, there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. So good-bye, my handsome fury. Won’t you give me one kiss before we part, just to show there’s no ill feeling? No? Well, I must try to do without it then, for the present at least, and hope for better luck next time. Remember me to old Ilfracombe when next you write. Ta-ta.’

He lingered near her for a moment, as though expecting she would raise her eyes or put out her hand; but Nell did neither, and, after a while, he turned on his heel, and, insolently humming a tune, went on his way.

As soon as Miss Llewellyn heard the hall door close after him, she rushed up to her own room, and, after locking the door, threw herself on the sofa, face downwards, and sobbed and cried in the strength of her wounded feelings and the terrible doubt which Mr Portland’s words had seemed to imply. The servants came knocking at her door, and worrying her to come down to luncheon, which was getting cold, in the dining-room, but she would not stir nor speak to any of them.

It was the first time since her acquaintance with the Earl of Ilfracombe that the untenability of her illegal position had been brought so forcibly before her, and she felt all the more angry because she had no right to feel angry at all. She believed implicitly in her lover. She had accepted his assurances of fidelity as gospel truth, and she was passionately indignant and sorely outraged because Mr Portland had not considered the tie between her and his friend as inviolable as she did. And yet she was not Lord Ilfracombe’s wife. Beautiful Nell Llewellyn knew this only too well as she lay on the couch, sobbing as if her heart would break. Say what women will in these days of misrule about the charms of liberty, and the horror of being enchained for life, there is a comfortable sense of security in knowing oneself to be honourably united to the man one loves; to have no need of concealment or mis-stating facts; no necessity of avoiding one’s fellow men; no fear of encountering insult from one’s inferiors in birth and morals, because one does not wear a wedding-ring upon one’s finger—that insignia of possession which is so insignificant and yet so powerful. What would poor Nell Llewellyn not have given to have had one upon her finger now?

How terrible is the first dread of the instability of the love on which one has fixed all one’s earthly hopes! Had her lover been within reach, Nell would have rushed to him with the story of her trouble, and received a consolatory reassurance of his affection at once. But she was alone. She could confide in no one, and Mr Portland’s proposal, having made her see in what light men of the world regarded her tie to Lord Ilfracombe, had made her heart question if they could be correct, and he looked on it as they did. Her passionate nature, which was not formed for patience or long-suffering or humility, cried out against the suspense to which it was subjected, and raised such violent emotions in her breast that by the time they were exhausted she was quite ill. When at last she raised herself from her downcast position on the sofa, and tried, with swollen eyes and throbbing brain, to collect her thoughts, she found to her dismay that it was past five o’clock, and she had promised to call for Hetty and her husband at six. Her first thought was to remove the traces of her tears. She could not bear that the servants should see that she had been crying. She would never let them perceive that her position in the house cost her any anxiety or remorse, but bore herself bravely in their presence as their mistress, who had not a thought of ever being otherwise. As soon as she had bathed her eyes and arranged her hair, Miss Llewellyn sat down at a davenport that stood by her sofa and scribbled a note to Hetty, enclosing her the seats for the Alhambra for that evening, and excusing herself from accompanying them on the score of a violent attack of neuralgia. Then she rung the bell for her maid, and desired her to send the letter at once to Oxford Street by hand.

‘One of the grooms can go on horseback,’ she said, ‘or James can take a hansom; but it must be delivered as soon as possible. And then you can bring me a cup of coffee, Susan, for I have such a headache that I can hardly open my eyes.’

‘Lor’! yes, ma’am, you do look bad!’ returned the servant. ‘Your eyes are quite red-like, as if they was inflamed. You must have caught cold last night. I thought you would, staying out so late, and without the carriage.’

‘Well, never mind, go and do as I tell you,’ replied Miss Llewellyn, who felt as if she could not endure her chatter one moment longer.

It was characteristic of this woman that what had occurred had planted far less dread of the insecurity of the position she held in her mind than a deep sense of the insult that had been offered to her love and Lord Ilfracombe’s. She felt it on his account, more than on her own—that anyone should have dared so to question his honour, and suspect his constancy. Hers was so ardent and generous a temperament, that where she gave, she gave all, and without a question if she should gain or lose by the transaction. She loved the man whom she regarded as her husband with the very deepest feelings she possessed; it is not too much to say that she adored him, for he was so much above her, in rank and birth and station, that she looked up to him as a god—the only god, indeed, that poor Nell had learned to acknowledge. He was her world—her all! That they should ever be separated never entered into her calculations. He had been struck with her unusual beauty, three years before, and taken her from a very lowly position as nursemaid to be his housekeeper—then, by degrees, the rest had followed. All Lord Ilfracombe’s friends knew and admired her, and considered him a deuced lucky fellow to have secured such a goddess to preside over his bachelor establishment. Naturally, the elder ones said it was a pity, and it was to be hoped that Lord Ilfracombe’s eyes would be opened before long to the necessity of marriage and an heir to the fine old estate and title. Especially did his father’s old friend and adviser, Mr Sterndale, lament over the connection, and try by every means in his power to persuade Ilfracombe to dissolve it. But the earl was of a careless and frivolous nature—easily led in some things, and very blind as yet to the necessity of marriage. Besides, he loved Nell—not as she loved him by any manner of means, but in an indolent, indulgent fashion, which granted her all her desires, and gave her as much money as she knew what to do with. But had he been asked if he would marry her, he would have answered decidedly, ‘No.’

CHAPTER IV.

Meantime the golden hours were slipping away in a very agreeable manner for Lord Ilfracombe at Malta. He had been accustomed to spend several weeks of each summer yachting with a few chosen companions, and as soon as his little yacht, Débutante, had anchored in view of Valetta, a score of husbands, fathers and brothers had scrambled aboard, carrying a score of invitations for the newcomer from their womankind. A young, good-looking and unmarried earl was not so common a visitor to Malta as to be allowed to consider himself neglected, and before Lord Ilfracombe and his friends had been located a week in Valetta, they were the lions of the place, each family vying with the other to do them honour. Naturally, the earl was pretty well used to that sort of thing, especially as he had enjoyed his title for the last ten years. There is such an ingrained snobbishness in the English nature, that it is only necessary to have a handle to one’s name to get off scot-free, whatever one may do. There was a divorce case, not so very long ago, which was as flagrant as such a case could well be; but where the titled wife came off triumphant, simply because the titled husband had been as immoral as herself. The lady had money and the lady had good looks—how far they went to salve over the little errors of which she had been accused it is impossible to say, but the bulk of the public forgave her, and the parsons prayed over her, and she is to be met everywhere, and usually surrounded by a clique of adoring tuft hunters. Sometimes I have wondered, had she been plain Mrs Brown, instead of Lady Marcus Marengo, if the satellites would have continued to revolve so faithfully. But in sweet, simple Christian England, a title, even a borrowed one, covers a multitude of sins. The Earl of Ilfracombe had naturally not been left to find out this truth for herself, but to give him his due, it had never affected him in the least. He despised servility, though, like most of his sex, he was open to flattery—the flattery of deeds, not words. Amongst the many families who threw wide their doors to him in Malta was that of Admiral Sir Richard Abinger, who had been stationed there for many years. Sir Richard was a regular family man. He had married sons and daughters; a bevy of girls on their promotion; and a nursery of little ones. The Abinger girls, as they were called, were an institution in Valetta. On account of their father’s professional duties, and their mother’s constant occupation with her younger children, they were allowed to go about a great deal alone, and had become frank and fearless, and very well able to take care of themselves in consequence. They personally conducted Lord Ilfracombe and his friends to see everything worth seeing in Malta, and a considerable intimacy was the result. There were three sisters of the respective ages of eighteen, twenty and twenty-two, and it was the middle one of these three, Leonora, or Nora, as she was generally called, who attracted Lord Ilfracombe most. She was not exactly pretty, but graceful and piquant. Her complexion was pale. Her eyes brown and not very large; her nose sharp and inclined to be long; her mouth of an ordinary size, but her teeth ravishingly white and regular. A connoisseur, summing up her perfections, would have totalled them by pronouncing her to have long eyelashes, well-marked eyebrows, good teeth and red lips. But Nora Abinger’s chief charm did not lie in physical attractions. To many it would not have counted as a charm at all. They would have set it down as a decided disqualification. This was her freedom of speech; her quickness of repartee; her sense of the ridiculous; and her power of sustaining a conversation. Young men of the present day, who find their greatest pleasure in associating with women whom they would not dare introduce to their mothers and sisters, are apt to become rather dumb when they find themselves in respectable society. This had been much the case hitherto with the Earl of Ilfracombe. He had assiduously neglected his duties to society (if indeed we do owe any duty to such a mass of corruption and deceit) and had found his pleasure amongst his own sex, and in pursuing the delights of sport, not excepting that of the racing field, on which he had lost, at times, a considerable amount of money. To find that his ignorance of society squibs and fashions, his slowness of speech and ideas, his inability to make jokes, and sometimes even to see them, was no drawback in Nora’s eyes, and that she chatted no less glibly because he was silent, raised him in his own estimation. In fact, Nora was a girl who made conversation for her companions. She rubbed up their wits by friction with her own; and people who had been half an hour in her company felt all the brightness with which she had infused them, and were better pleased with themselves in consequence. Lord Ilfracombe experienced this to the fullest extent. For the first time perhaps in his life he walked and talked with a young lady without feeling himself ill at ease, or with nothing to say. Nora talked with him about Malta and its inhabitants, many of whom she took off to the life for his amusement. She drew him out on the subject of England (which she had not visited since she was a child), and his particular bit of England before all the rest; made him tell her of his favourite pursuits, and found, strange to say, that they all agreed with her own tastes; and lamented often and openly that there was no chance of her father leaving that abominable, stupid island of which she was so sick. Miss Nora Abinger had indeed determined from the very first to secure the earl if possible for herself. Her two sisters, Mabel and Susan, entertained the same aspiration, but they stood no chance against keen-witted Nora, who was as knowing a young lady as the present century can produce. She was tired to death, as she frankly said, of their family life. The admiral would have been well off if he had not had such a large family; but thirteen children are enough to try the resources of any profession. Five of the brothers and sisters were married, and should have been independent, but the many expenses contingent on matrimony, and the numerous grandchildren with which they annually endowed him, often brought them back in forma pauperis on their father’s hands. His nursery offspring, too, would soon be needing education and a return to England, so that Sir Richard had to think twice before he acceded to the requests of his marriageable maidens for ball dresses and pocket-money. All these drawbacks in her domestic life Nora confided, little by little, to her new friend, the earl, until the young man yearned to carry the girl away to England with him and give her all that she desired. He could not help thinking, as he listened to her gay, rattling talk, how splendidly she would do the honours of Thistlemere and Cotswood for him; what a graceful, elegant, witty countess she would make; what an attraction for his bachelor friends; what a hostess to receive the ladies of his family. The upshot was just what might have been expected. Lounging one day on a bench under the shade of the orange-trees which overhang the water’s edge, whilst their companions had wandered along the quay, Lord Ilfracombe asked her if she would go back to England with him. Nora was secretly delighted with the offer, but not at all taken aback.

‘What do you think?’ she inquired, looking up at him archly with her bright eyes. ‘You know I’ve liked you ever since you came here, and if you can manage to pull along with me, I’m sure I can with you.’

‘Pull along with you, my darling!’ cried the young man. ‘Why, I adore you beyond anything. I don’t know how I should get on now without your bright talk and fascinating ways to cheer my life.’

‘Well, you’ll have to talk to papa about it, you know,’ resumed Nora. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll make any objection (he’ll be a great fool if he does), still there’s just the chance of it, so I can’t say anything for certain till you’ve seen him. He’s awfully particular, very religious, you know, and always says he’d rather marry us to parsons without a halfpenny, than dukes who were not all they ought to be. But that may be all talkee-talkee! Though I hope you’re a good boy, all the same, for my own sake!’

‘Oh, I’m an awfully good boy,’ replied Lord Ilfracombe. ‘This is the very first offer I ever made a girl in my life, and if you won’t have me, Nora, it will be the last. Say you like me a little, darling, whatever papa may say.’

‘I do like you ever so much, and I don’t believe there’ll be any hitch in the matter.’

‘But if there were—if your father has any objection to me as a son-in-law—will that make you break with me, Nora?’

‘Of course not. There’s my hand on it! But I don’t see how we are to get married in this poky little place without his consent. But there—don’t let us think of such a thing. He’ll give it fast enough. But we had better go home now and get the matter over at once.’

‘You’ll give me one kiss before we go, Nora,’ pleaded Ilfracombe; ‘no one can see us here. Just one, to prove you love me!’

‘Out in the open!’ cried the girl, with comical dismay. ‘Oh, Lord Ilfracombe, what are you thinking of? You don’t know what a horrid place this is for scandal! Why, if a boatman or beggar came by, it would be all over the town before the evening. Oh, no; you must wait till we are properly engaged before you ask for such a thing.’

‘I’ll take my revenge on you, then,’ said the young man gaily; but he was disappointed, all the same, that Nora had not given in to him.

Sir Richard Abinger was unaffectedly surprised when the earl asked for an interview, and made his wishes known. His daughters had walked about and talked with so many men before, without receiving a proposal. And that Lord Ilfracombe should have fixed on Nora seemed to him the greatest surprise of all.

‘Nora?’ he reiterated, ‘Nora? Are you sure that you mean Nora? I should have thought that Mabel or Susie would have been more likely to take your fancy. People tell me that Susie is the beauty of the family—that she is so very much admired. We have always considered Nora to be the plainest of them all.’

‘I do not consider her so, Sir Richard, I can assure you,’ replied the earl, ‘although, at the same time, I have chosen her much more for her mind than her looks. She is the most charmingly vivacious girl I have ever come across. She is as clever as they’re made.’

‘Oh, yes, yes, very clever,’ said the old man; ‘but now we come to the most important matter—’

‘The settlements? Oh, yes! I hope I shall be able to satisfy you thoroughly with respect to them.’

‘No, Lord Ilfracombe, not the settlements, though, of course, they are necessary; but, in my eyes, quite a minor consideration. My daughter, Nora, is—well, to be frank with you, she is not my favourite daughter. Perhaps it is our own fault (for the poor child has been left a great deal to herself), but she is more heedless, less reliable—how shall I put it? Let me say, more headstrong and inclined to have her own way than her sisters. It will require a strong man, and a sensible man, to guide her through life; ay, more than these, a good man. The position you offer her is a very brilliant one, and I should be proud to see her fill it; but, before I give my consent to her marrying you, I must be assured that the example you set her will be such as to raise instead of debase her.’

‘I do not understand what you mean,’ replied the young man, with a puzzled air. ‘How can you possibly suspect me of setting my wife a bad example?’

‘Not practically, perhaps, but theoretically, Lord Ilfracombe. Forgive me, if I touch upon a delicate subject; but, in the interests of my daughter, I must lay aside all false scruples. I have heard something of your domestic life in England, from the men who have come over here, and I must ascertain for certain that everything of that kind will be put a stop to before you marry Nora.’

Lord Ilfracombe reddened with shame.

‘Of course, of course,’ he said, after a pause. ‘How can you doubt it?’

‘I am aware,’ continued the admiral, ‘that men of the present day think little of such matters—that they believe all that goes on before marriage is of no consequence to anyone but themselves. But it is not so. Some years back, perhaps, our women were kept in such ignorance of the ways of the world, that they only believed what their husbands chose to tell them. Now it is very different. Their eyes seem to have been opened, and they see for themselves, and act for themselves. I am often astonished at the insight given to me by my own daughters to female nature. Where they have learned it in this quiet, little place, I cannot imagine. It seems to me as if they were born wide-awake. And Nora is especially so. She is ready to be anything you choose to make her. And if she found out that you had deceived her, I would not answer for the consequences.’

‘You may rely on my word, sir, that, in the future, I will never deceive her. With regard to the past, I should like to make a clean breast to you, in order that hereafter you may not be able to say I have kept anything back. Others may also have represented my life as worse than it has been, and, as my future father-in-law, I should wish you to think the best of me. Some three years ago, I fell in with a very beautiful young woman, in a humble station of life, whom I took into my household as housekeeper. After a while—there was nothing coarse or vulgar about her, and her beauty was something extraordinary—I succumbed to the temptation of seeing her constantly before my eyes, and raised her to the position of my mistress.’

‘I beg your pardon, Lord Ilfracombe,’ said the admiral, looking up.

‘Well, not raised exactly, perhaps, but you know what I mean. We were mutually attracted, but, of course, it was understood from the beginning that the connection would only last until I thought fit to marry. Now, of course, I shall pension her off, and have already written to my solicitor on the subject. That is really all that any man can say against me, Sir Richard, and it is far less than the generality of young fellows of the present day have to confess to. My life has always been a clean one. I have no debts, my property is unencumbered, and I have no proclivities for low tastes or companions. If you will trust your daughter to my care, I promise that her private rights shall be protected as rigorously as her public ones.’

‘It is a grand position,’ said the father, thoughtfully, ‘and I do not know that I should be justified in refusing it for Nora. Only it seems very terrible to me about this other young woman. How is your marriage likely to affect her? I could have no faith in the stability of my daughter’s happiness if it were built up on the misery of another.’

Lord Ilfracombe looked up astonished.

‘Oh, Sir Richard, you need have no scruples on that account, I assure you. These people do not feel as we do. I should have ended the business any way, for I was getting rather sick of it. To prove what I say is correct, I have already written to my man of business, Mr Sterndale, to draw up a deed settling five thousand pounds upon her, which will secure an ample annuity for a woman in her sphere of life. She was only a country girl somewhere out of Scotland, I believe. She will be all right, and, honestly, I never wish to hear her name again.’

‘Very well, Lord Ilfracombe, of course, under any circumstances, the termination of such a connection is a good thing, and I am glad to hear that the remembrance of it is distasteful to you. You are a man of honour, and, therefore, I accept your assurance that it is all over henceforth, and that you will make my daughter a kind and faithful husband. But be careful of her, and don’t let her have too much of her own way. I’ve seen the bad effects of such a course of behaviour before now.’

So it was a settled thing that Miss Nora Abinger was to become the Countess of Ilfracombe, and she rose in the estimation of the residents of Malta accordingly. She had been a fast, bold, flirting girl as Nora Abinger, but when she was announced as the future Lady Ilfracombe, it was suddenly discovered that she was really excessively clever and witty, and though no one could call her exactly pretty, there was something, a je ne sais quoi, about her manner of holding herself and the way she turned her head that was certainly very fascinating. Her promised husband, who had discovered her fascinations before, and was admitted to the full enjoyments of all her wilful moods and witty sayings, fell more deeply in love with her every day, and had hardly patience to wait till the wedding preparations were completed for the fulfilment of his happiness. If a thought of Nell Llewellyn crossed his mind at this period it was only to hope that her interview with Sterndale had passed off quietly, and that she would have the sense to clear out without any fuss. So intensely selfish does a new passion make a man! The time had been when Nell, who was twice as strong, mentally and physically, as Nora Abinger, was Lord Ilfracombe’s ideal of a woman. Her finely moulded form had seemed to him the perfection of symmetry; her majestic movements, the bearing of a queen; the calm, classic expression of her features, just what that of a well-bred gentlewoman’s should be. Now he was gazing rapturously, day after day, upon Nora’s mobile face, on her slim and lissom figure, which, stripped of its clothing, resembled nothing better than a willow wand, and listening eagerly to her flow of nonsensical chatter, during which she successively ‘cheeked’ her parents and himself, ridiculed her acquaintances, scolded her younger brethren, and took her own way in everything. In truth, she differed as greatly from the loving, submissive woman, who lived but to please him, in England, as she possibly could do, and herein lay her attraction for him. Nell Llewellyn was more beautiful, more obedient and more loving, but Nora was more new. He had become just a little bit tired of Nell, and he had never met a girl who treated him as Nora did, before. She spoke to him exactly as she chose; she didn’t seem to care a pin about his title or his money. She contradicted him freely; refused his wishes whenever they clashed in any degree with her own, and let him fully understand that she intended to do exactly as she chose for the remainder of her life. She was a new experience to Lord Ilfracombe, who had been accustomed to be deferred to in everything. Perhaps she knew this; perhaps she was ‘cute’ enough to guess the likeliest method by which to snare the fish she had set her heart on catching; anyway the bait took and the gudgeon was netted. The Earl of Ilfracombe and Miss Nora Abinger were formally engaged and the wedding-day was fixed. But still the young lady did not relax her discipline, and her lover’s privileges remained few and far between.

‘Paws off Pompey!’ she would cry if he attempted to take any of the familiarities permissible to engaged people. ‘Do you want Vicenzo or Giorgione to make us the jest of Valetta? Don’t you know that “spooning” is out of fashion? We leave all that sort of thing to the oi polloi now-a-days.’

‘Oh, do we?’ the young man would retort, playfully; ‘then I’ll belong to the oi polloi, Nora, if you please! At all events, I’m going to have a kiss!’

‘At all events, you’re going to have no such thing; at least, not now. There’ll be plenty of time for all that kind of nonsense after we’re married, and we’re not there yet, you know. Don’t forget “there’s many a slip ’twixt cup and lip.”’

Then, seeing him frown, she would add coaxingly, twisting her mouth up into the most seductive curves as she spoke,—

‘There, don’t be vexed, you’ll have too much of kissing some day, you know. Come out in the boat with me. You’re the most troublesome boy I ever knew. There’s no keeping you in order in the house.’

So he would follow her obediently, with his longing still ungratified, and always looking forward to a luckier to-morrow. Whoever had been her instructor, Miss Nora Abinger had certainly learnt the art of keeping a man at her feet. Perhaps the same thought struck him also, for one day, when they were alone together, he asked her if he were the only man she had ever loved. Nora looked at him with the keenest appreciation lurking in the corners of her mirthful eyes.

‘Are you the only man I’ve ever loved, Ilfracombe?’ she repeated after him. ‘Well, I don’t think so.’

‘You don’t think so? Good heavens, do you mean to tell me you’ve had lovers beside myself!’ he exclaimed, getting into a sudden fury.

‘My dear boy, do you know how old I am? Twenty, last birthday! What are you dreaming of? Do you suppose all the men in Malta are deaf, dumb, and blind? Of course I’ve had other lovers—scores of them!’

‘But you didn’t love them, Nora; not as you love me,’ Lord Ilfracombe asked anxiously.

‘Well, before I can answer that question, we must decide how much I do love you. Anyway, I didn’t marry any of them, though I might have had a dozen husbands by this time if I had accepted them all. As it is, you see, I chucked them over.’

‘But were you engaged to any of them, Nora?’ he persisted.

She might easily have said ‘no,’ but it was not in this girl’s nature to deceive. She was frankly naughty, defiantly so, some people might have said, and rather glorified in her faults than otherwise. Besides, she dearly loved to tease her lover, and tyrannise over him.

‘Oh, yes I was,’ she replied, ‘that is, I had a kind of a sort of an engagement with several of them. But it amounted to nothing. There was only one of the whole lot I shed a single tear for.’

‘And pray, who may he have been?’ demanded Lord Ilfracombe, with a sudden access of dignity.

‘Find it out for yourself,’ she said pertly. ‘Oh, he was a dear, quite six foot high, with the goldenest golden hair you ever saw; not a bit like yours. I call yours flaxen. It’s too pale, but his had a rich tinge in it, and he had such lovely eyes, just like a summer night, I nearly cried myself blind when he left Malta.’

‘It seems to me,’ said the earl, with the same offended air he had assumed before, ‘that I am de trop here, since the recollection of this fascinating admirer is still so fresh. Perhaps I had better resign in favour of him while there is still time?’

‘Just as you like!’ returned Nora indifferently. ‘I have no wish to bias your movements in any way. But if you did not want an answer, why did you put the question to me?’

‘But, Nora, my darling, you did not mean what you said? You did not waste any of your precious tears on this brute, surely? You said it only to tease me?’

‘Indeed I did not! Do you imagine you are the only nice man I have ever seen—that I have been shut up on this island like poor Miranda and never met a man before? What a simpleton you must be! Of course I was engaged to him, and should have been married to him by this time, only the poor dear had no certain income, and papa would not hear of it! And I cried for weeks afterwards whenever I heard his name mentioned. Would you have had me an insensible block, and not care whether we had to give each other up or no?’

‘No, no, of course not, but it is terrible to me, Nora, to think you could have cared for another man.’

‘Rubbish!’ cried the young lady. ‘How many women have you cared for yourself? Come now, let us have the list?’

The earl blushed uneasily.

‘I have told you already,’ he replied, ‘that you are the first woman I have ever asked to be the Countess of Ilfracombe!’

‘And I didn’t ask you how many women you had proposed to, but how many you had thought you loved. The list can’t be so long that you have forgotten them all? Let’s begin at the end. That will make it easier. Who was the last woman before me?’

‘That is a very silly question, Nora, and I consider that I have already answered it. Besides, I am not a young lady, and that makes all the difference.’

‘In your idea, Ilfracombe, perhaps, but not mine. We women see no difference in the two things at all. And if you cannot produce a clean bill of health in the matter of having loved before, you have no right to expect it of me. Besides, my dear boy,’ she continued in a more soothing voice, ‘do you mean to tell me, in this nineteenth century, that you have reached your present age—what is your present age, Ilfracombe, nine-and-twenty, is it not?—without having made love to heaps of women? Not that I care one jot! I am not such a zany! I think it’s all for the best since “pot will not be able to call kettle black,” eh?’

And she glanced up into his face from under her long eyelashes in so fascinating a manner, that the earl caught her in his arms before she had time to remonstrate, and forgot all about the former lover. So the time wore away, each day more delightful than the last, spent under the orange and myrtle trees, or in sailing round the bay, until the longed-for wedding morning broke, and they were married in the English church at Malta. Their plans were to go to an hotel higher up in the island, for a fortnight’s honeymoon, after which they were to start in the Débutante for the Grecian Isles, before returning to England. A few days after his marriage, Lord Ilfracombe received a letter by the English mail that seemed greatly to disturb him. He was most anxious to conceal it, and his own feelings regarding it, from the observation of his wife, and this he had no difficulty in doing, as she did not appear even to have noticed that he was unlike himself. The letter was from a woman, long and diffusive, and he read it many times. Then he entered the sitting-room and addressed Lady Ilfracombe.

‘Have you torn up the paper that contained the description of our marriage, darling?’ he inquired.

‘What, that local thing? No, I never looked at it a second time. It is somewhere about. What can you possibly want with it, Ilfracombe?’

‘Only to send to one of my English friends, Nora. It is so funnily worded, it will amuse them.’

And then he found it, and put it in a wrapper and directed it to Miss Llewellyn, 999 Grosvenor Square, London.

CHAPTER V.

Miss Llewellyn had almost forgotten that she was to expect a visit from Lord Ilfracombe’s solicitor, Mr Sterndale, when one day, as she was sitting alone, his card was brought in to her. Hetty and William had returned to Usk by this time. Their modest resources could not stand out against more than a week in London, though their sister had helped them as much as they would allow her. So they were gone, taking the fresh smell of the country with them, and leaving Miss Llewellyn more melancholy and depressed than they had found her. For she had not heard again from Lord Ilfracombe since the few lines she had received on the day of their arrival, and she was beginning to dread all sorts of unlikely things, just because the unusual silence frightened her, like a child left alone in the dark. Hetty and Will had been most urgent that she should accompany them back to Usk, and for a moment Nell thought the temptation too great to be resisted. What would she not give for a sight of her dear mother’s face, she thought—for her father’s grave smile; for a night or two spent in the old farmhouse where she had been so careless and so happy; to lie down to sleep with the scent of the climbing roses and honeysuckle in her nostrils, and the lowing of the cattle and twittering of the wild birds in her ears. And Ilfracombe had urged her to take change of air, too. He would be pleased to hear she had left London for awhile! But here came the idea that he might return home any day, perhaps unexpectedly and sooner than he imagined, and then if she were absent what would he think?—what would she suffer? She would not cease to reproach herself. Oh, no, it was useless for Hetty to plead with her. She would come back some day, when she could have a holiday without inconvenience, but just now with the master of the house absent, her mother would understand it was impossible; it would not be right for her, in her position as housekeeper, to leave the servants to look after themselves. So Hetty, having been brought up very strictly with regard to duty, was fain to acquiesce in her sister’s decision, and comfort herself with the hope that she would fulfil her promise some day. But when they had left London, Nell felt as if she had escaped a great danger, and was only just able to breathe freely again. And had she accompanied them to Usk, and gone to stay at Panty-cuckoo Farm, she would have felt almost as bad. To live under the eyes of her parents day after day; to have to submit to their eager questioning; to evade their sharpness—for country people are sometimes very sharp in matters that affect their domestic happiness and very eager for revenge when their family honour is compromised; all this Nell felt she dared not, under present circumstances, undergo. So she was sorry and glad to part with her sister at the same time; but her advent had so put other matters out of her head, that she was quite startled at receiving Mr Sterndale’s card. It revived all the old curiosity, which the first notice of his coming had evoked in her mind. What on earth could he possibly have to say to her? However, that question would soon be put to rest, and she was bound, for Ilfracombe’s sake, to receive him. She happened to be in her boudoir at the time, and told the servant to desire her visitor to walk up there. Nell knew that the lawyer did not like her, and the feeling was reciprocal. Mr Sterndale was a little, old man of sixty, with silver hair. A very cute lawyer, and a firm friend, but uncompromising to a degree—a man from whom a fallen woman might expect no mercy. Miss Llewellyn had said in her letter to her lover, that she knew Mr Sterndale regarded her as a harpy who cared for nothing but his money, and this estimate of his opinion was strictly true. With him, women were divided into only two classes—moral and immoral. The class to which poor Nell belonged was generally mercenary and grasping, and deserted a poor man to join a richer one, and he had no idea that she was any different. She was beautiful, he saw, so much the more dangerous; and all his fear of late years had been lest the earl should have taken it in his head to marry her, as indeed, except for Mr Sterndale’s constant warnings and entreaties, he would have done. Now he rejoiced to think that his client was about to be wedded to a woman in his own sphere of life, for the news of the marriage had not yet reached England, and he had come to Grosvenor Square to fulfil Lord Ilfracombe’s request that he would break the intelligence to Miss Llewellyn, as calmly and deliberately as if he were the bearer of the best of news. She did not rise as he entered, but, bowing rather curtly, begged he would be seated and disclose his business with her. She had been accustomed for so long to be treated by this man as the mistress of the establishment, that she had come to regard him much as Lord Ilfracombe did, in the light of a servant. Mr Sterndale noted the easy familiarity with which she motioned him to take a chair, and chuckled inwardly, to think how soon their relative positions would be reversed.

‘Good morning,’ began Miss Llewellyn. ‘Ilfracombe wrote me word I might expect to see you, Mr Sterndale, but I have no idea for what purpose.’

‘Perhaps not, madam,’ was the reply, ‘but it will soon be explained. Have you heard from his lordship lately?’

Miss Llewellyn raised her head proudly.

‘I hear constantly, as you know. Ilfracombe is well, I am thankful to say, and apparently enjoying himself. He has made some pleasant acquaintances in Valetta, and they are urging him to stay on with them a little longer. Else he would have returned before now. He is longing to get home again, I know.’

‘Ah, perhaps, very likely,’ replied Mr Sterndale, who was fumbling with some papers he held in his hand. ‘Indeed, I have no doubt his lordship will be back before long—when he has completed another little trip he has in contemplation to the Grecian Isles.’

Nell’s face assumed a look of perplexity.

‘Another yachting trip, and not homewards? Oh, I think you must be mistaken, Mr Sterndale, or are you saying it to tease me? He has been gone four months already, ever since the fifth of April, and I am expecting to hear he has started for home by every mail. What has put such an idea into your head?’

‘No one less than his lordship himself, Miss Llewellyn. In a letter from him, dated the beginning of the month, but which, for reasons which I will explain hereafter, I have not thought fit to bring to you till now, he distinctly says that when certain arrangements which he is making in Malta are completed, he intends to sail for the Grecian Isles, and does not expect to be home at Thistlemere till late in the autumn.’

Nell looked fearfully anxious and distressed.

‘I cannot believe it,’ she said incredulously. ‘Why should Ilfracombe make such arrangements without consulting me first? He always has done so. I might have wished to join him in Malta. We have been separated for such a long time now—longer than ever before, and I have told him how sick and weary I am of it—how I long to see him again.’

‘The money has not run short, has it?’ inquired the solicitor; ‘for, if so, you should have applied to me.’

She gave a shrug of impatience.

‘My money has never run short, thank you,’ she replied. ‘Ilfracombe thinks too much of my comfort for that.’

‘It is his prolonged stay abroad, then, that is puzzling you,’ continued Mr Sterndale; ‘but I am in a position to explain that. I have a painful duty before me, Miss Llewellyn, but I don’t know that I shall make it any better by beating about the bush.’

‘A painful task,’ she echoed, with staring eyes. ‘For God’s sake, don’t tell me that my—that Ilfracombe is ill?’

‘No, no, nothing of the sort. But has it never occurred to you, Miss Llewellyn, that circumstances may alter in this life, that a tie like that between you and Lord Ilfracombe, for example, does not, as a rule, last for ever.’

‘No, never,’ she answered firmly, ‘because it is no ordinary tie, and Lord Ilfracombe is a gentleman. I am as sure of him as I am of myself. He would never break his word to me.’

‘There is no question of breaking his word. You knew the conditions under which you took up your residence in this house, and that you have no legal right here.’

‘Have you come here to insult me?’ cried Nell shrilly. ‘How dare you allude to any agreement between Lord Ilfracombe and myself? I am here, that is quite enough for you to know, and the earl has said that I am to remain. I am sure he never desired you to come here and taunt me with my position?’

‘Taunt, my dear lady. That is scarcely the word to use. I was only reminding you, as gently as I knew how, that your position is untenable, and that young men are apt to change their minds.’

‘Lord Ilfracombe will not change his,’ replied Miss Llewellyn proudly. ‘I am aware you have done your best to try and make him do so, Mr Sterndale, but you have not succeeded.’

‘Perhaps not. I have certainly nothing to do with his lordship’s prolonged absence from England. But, since you profess to be much attached to him, Miss Llewellyn, has it never occurred to you what a very disadvantageous thing for the earl this connection between you is?’

‘That is for the earl to decide,’ said Miss Llewellyn.

‘You are right, and he has decided. Lord Ilfracombe is a young man who owes a duty to Society and the exalted station he occupies. His friends and family have been shocked and scandalised for the last three years to witness the outrage he has committed against the world and them, and that he has never considered the importance of founding a family to succeed him, and of leaving an heir to inherit his ancient title.’

Miss Llewellyn’s lip trembled as she replied,—

‘All very true, I daresay, but Lord Ilfracombe prefers the present state of affairs to the opinion of the world.’

‘Happily, I am in a position to inform you, Miss Llewellyn, that he has at last come to his senses, and determined to do his duty in that respect. In this letter,’ said Mr Sterndale, dangling one in his hand as he spoke, ‘Lord Ilfracombe desires me to break the news to you of his approaching marriage with Miss Leonora Abinger, the daughter of Sir Richard Abinger, which is fixed to come off at an early date.’

‘It is a lie!’ cried Miss Llewellyn, as she rose to her feet and drew herself up to her full height, ‘a mean, wicked lie, which you have forged for some purpose of your own. Oh, you need not look at me like that, Mr Sterndale. I have known for long how you hate me, and how glad you would be to get rid of me. I have too much influence over Ilfracombe to suit your book. If you could persuade me to leave this house, and then convince him that I had gone off with some other man it would fit in nicely with your own little plans, wouldn’t it? But you don’t hoodwink me. I know your master too well. He never wished me to leave his protection, nor told you to forge that lie in his name. He has no intention of marrying—if he had he would have told me so himself—and not left it to an attorney to deal the worst blow that life could give me. Leave this house, sir! Till the man whom I regard as my husband returns to it there is no master here but I. Go! and take your lies with you. I will believe your statement on no authority but that of Ilfracombe himself.’

‘And that is just the authority with which I am armed, Miss Llewellyn, if you will but listen to me quietly. What is the use of making all this fuss over the inevitable? You are acquainted with the earl’s handwriting. Will you kindly glance at this, and tell me if you recognise it as his?’

‘Yes, it is his.’

‘Let me read it to you, and pray remember that the servants are near at hand, and ready to make copy out of all they hear. Are you listening to me?’

‘Yes.’

‘This letter is dated 2d of July.

‘“Dear Sterndale,—You will be surprised, and I suppose delighted, to hear that I am engaged to be married to Miss Leonora Abinger, the second daughter of Admiral Sir Richard Abinger, a young lady of twenty. The wedding will take place within six weeks or so. Of course, the only difficulty with me is Miss Llewellyn. The news will be unexpected to her, and I am not quite sure how she will take it. We have been together now for three years, and that is a long time. However, she is a very sensible woman, and must have known from the beginning that it was impossible such a state of things could go on for ever. Will you go, like a good soul, and break it to her? Of course, she must be well provided for. What would be a suitable sum? Five thousand pounds? Draw up a settlement for what you consider best, but I want to be generous to her, for she has been very good to me. I should consider myself a scoundrel if I did not provide for her for life; but she will doubtless marry before long, and a few thousands will form a nice little dot for her. After my marriage I am going to take my wife straight to the Grecian Isles in the Débutante, so that we shall not be home till late in the autumn. You will see, like a good friend, that the coast is quite clear before then. We mean to go to Thistlemere for Christmas, and while the town house is being done up.”

‘There Miss Llewellyn,’ said Mr Sterndale, as he came to a full stop, ‘that is all of the letter that concerns you. The rest consists of directions about draining and decoration, and matters that ladies do not trouble their heads about. You perfectly understand now, I am sure, and will absolve me from attempting to deceive you in the business.’

He glanced at her as he spoke, and observed she was sitting on the couch with her head drooping on her breast.

‘May I see the letter?’ was all she said.

He placed it in her hands, and she perused the portion he had read aloud, mechanically. Then she held it out to him again, and he pocketed it. But he wished she would say something. He did not like her total silence. It was so unlike Miss Llewellyn. With a view to disperse it, he continued,—

‘I told you I had a reason for not having called on you before. It was because I thought it best to have the settlement, which his lordship proposes to make upon you, drawn up, that you may be perfectly convinced of his good intentions towards you. The deed, of course, will not be complete without his signature, but, with a man of Lord Ilfracombe’s honour, you may rest assured of his signing it on the first possible occasion, and meanwhile I am prepared, on my own account, to advance you any sum of money of which you may stand in need.’

Still she did not answer his remarks, but sat silent and immovable, with her features concealed by the drooping of her head.

‘His lordship is sure to be home before the winter, but if you wish to have this sum invested for you at once, I know I shall only be meeting his wishes in helping you to do so. Perhaps you would like me to put the money into the earl’s own coal mines, Miss Llewellyn. They are an excellent investment, and the shares are paying seven per cent., a rate of interest which you are not likely to get elsewhere. And it would have this further advantage, that in case of any unforeseen accident, or depreciation in the market, I feel sure the earl would never hear of your losing your money, whatever the other shareholders might do. The John Penn Mine is yielding wonderfully, so is the Llewellyn, which, if I mistake not, the earl called after yourself.’

‘Are you a man?’ demanded Nell, slowly raising her head, ‘or are you a devil? Cease chattering to me about your coal mines and shareholders! When I want to invest money, I shall not come to you to help or advise me. Do you suppose that I don’t know that if this letter speaks truth—that if my—if the earl contemplates doing what he says, it is not owing in a great measure to your advice and exhortations? You were for ever dinning the necessity of marriage into his ears. We have laughed over it together.’

‘Have you indeed? Well, I don’t deny it. I have done my duty by Lord Ilfracombe, and I’m very glad to find that my advice has had a good effect. You laughed too soon you see, Miss Llewellyn. But whatever influence has been brought to bear upon his lordship, the fact remains, that it has been successful, and he is about to be married—may even be married at the present moment. Nothing now remains to be done but for you to look at this settlement and decide how soon it will be convenient for you to leave Grosvenor Square.’

He laid the paper on her lap as he spoke, but Miss Llewellyn sprang to her feet, and, seizing the document in her strong grasp, tore it across and flung the fragments in the solicitor’s face.

‘Go back to your master!’ she exclaimed, ‘to the man who was good and true and honourable until your crafty advice and insinuations made him forget his nobler nature, and tell him to take his money and spend it on the woman he marries, for I will have none of it! Does he think he can pay me for my love, my faith, my honour? In God’s sight, I am the wife of Lord Ilfracombe, and I will not accept his alms, as if I were a beggar. For three years I have lived by his side, sharing all that was his—his pleasures, his troubles, and his pains. He has had all my love, my devotion, my duty! I have nursed him in sickness, and looked after his interests at all times, and I will not be remunerated for my services as if I were a hireling. Tell him I am his wife, and I throw his money back in his face. He can never pay me for what I have been to him. He will never find another woman to fill my place.’

‘But, my dear madam, this is folly! Let me entreat you to be reasonable,’ said Mr Sterndale, as he picked up the torn settlement. ‘You may have thought all this, but you know it is not tenable. You are not Lord Ilfracombe’s wife, and you never will be! You have been the most excellent of friends and companions, I admit that freely; but the time has come for parting, and the wisest and most sensible thing for you to do is to acquiesce in his lordship’s decision, and effect this little alteration in his domestic arrangements as quietly as possible. It must be, you know! Why not let it pass without scandal?’

‘We have not been only friends and companions,’ she repeated scornfully, ‘we have been the dearest and closest of lovers and confidantes. Oh, why should I speak to you of it? What should you know of such things? It is not in you to love anyone as I have loved Ilfracombe and he has loved me. But I do not believe your story, not even from the letter you showed me. I don’t believe he wrote it. You lawyers are cunning enough for anything. You may have forged his writing. So I reject your news and your settlement and yourself. Leave me at once and don’t come near me again. I will accept this assurance from no one but Ilfracombe, and I shall not quit his house till he tells me to do so. He left me in charge here, and I do not relinquish it till my master bids me go.’

‘He’ll bid you fast enough,’ replied the solicitor, as he gathered up his papers and prepared to leave her; ‘and it will be your own fault, Miss Llewellyn, if your exit is made more unpleasant to you than it need have been. The decorators will be in the house, probably, before you get any answer to your appeal to his lordship.’

‘Then I shall superintend the decorators,’ she said haughtily. ‘As long as anyone sleeps here, I shall sleep here, unless Ilfracombe himself tells me to go.’

‘Very ill-advised—very foolish,’ remarked Mr Sterndale; ‘but don’t blame me if you suffer for your obstinacy.’