BARREN HONOUR:

A NOVEL.

BY GEORGE A. LAWRENCE

BY THE AUTHOR OF "GUY LIVINGSTON," "THE SWORD AND GOWN," &c., &c., &c.

NEW YORK:
DICK & FITZGERALD, PUBLISHERS.
No. 18 ANN STREET.

CONTENTS

[CHAPTER I. NEW AND OLD.]
[CHAPTER II. MEA CULPA.]
[CHAPTER III. A "MOTHER OF ENGLAND."]
[CHAPTER IV. A WAIF FROM A WRECK.]
[CHAPTER V. THE GIFTS OF A GREEK.]
[CHAPTER VI. GOLDEN DREAMS.]
[CHAPTER VII. MATED, NOT MATCHED.]
[CHAPTER VIII. CRŒSUS COMETH.]
[CHAPTER IX. THE LONG ODDS ARE LAID.]
[CHAPTER X.]
[CHAPTER XI. DIAMONDS THAT CUT DIAMONDS.]
[CHAPTER XII. RUMOURS OF WARS.]
[CHAPTER XIII. THE FIRST SHELL.]
[CHAPTER XIV. THE LETTERS OF BELLEROPHON.]
[CHAPTER XV. PAVIA.]
[CHAPTER XVI. MISANTHROPOS.]
[CHAPTER XVII. A WISE MAN IN THE EAST.]
[CHAPTER XVIII. A STAR IN THE WEST.]
[CHAPTER XIX. HOW WOLVES AND FOXES DIE.]
[CHAPTER XX. QUAM DEUS VULT PERDERE.]
[CHAPTER XXI. MAGNA EST VERITAS.]
[CHAPTER XXII. AN OLD SCORE PAID.]
[CHAPTER XXIII. DIPLOMACY AT A DISCOUNT.]
[CHAPTER XXIV. SEMI-AMBUSTUS EVASIT.]
[CHAPTER XXV. VER UBI LONGUM TEPIDASQUE PRÆBET JUPITER BRUMAS.]
[CHAPTER XXVI. IMPLORA PACE.]
[CHAPTER XXVII. MORITURI TE SALUTANT.]
[NEW WORKS IN PRESS.]
[BOOKS RECENTLY PUBLISHED.]

CHAPTER I.

NEW AND OLD.

A very central place is Newmanham, both by local and commercial position—a big, black, busy town, waxing bigger and blacker and busier day by day. For more than a century that Queen of Trade has worn her iron crown right worthily; her pulse beats, now, sonorously with the clang of a myriad of steam-hammers; her veins swell almost to bursting with the ceaseless currents of molten metals; and her breath goes up to heaven, heavy and vaporous with the blasts of many furnaces.

Whenever I pass that way, as a born Briton, an unit of a great mercantile nation, I feel or suppose myself to feel, a certain amount of pride and satisfaction in witnessing so many evidences of my country's wealth and prosperity; they are very palpable indeed, those evidences, and not one of the senses will be inclined to dispute their existence. If I chance to have an exiled Neapolitan prince, or a deposed grand-duke, or any other potentate in difficulties, staying with me (which, of course, happens constantly), I make a point of beguiling the illustrious foreigner into the dingy labyrinth of Newmanham, from which he escapes not till he has done justice to every one of its marvels. Nevertheless, as an individual whose only relations with commerce consist in always wanting to buy more things than one can possibly afford, and in never, by any chance, having anything to sell, except now and then a horse or two, more or less "screwed," or a parcel of ideas, more or less trivial—as such an one, I say, I am free to confess, that my first and abiding emotion, after being ten minutes in that great emporium, is a desolate sense of having no earthly business there, and of being very much in everybody's way—a sentiment which the natives seem perfectly to fathom and coincide with.

It is not that they make themselves in any wise disagreeable, or cast you forth with contumely from their hive. The operative element does not greet the stranger with the "'eave of a arf-brick," after the genial custom of the mining districts; neither is he put to confusion by a broad stare, breaking up into a broader grin, as sometimes occurs in our polite sea-port towns. A quick careless glance, as if the gazer had no time even for curiosity, is the worst ordeal you will have to encounter in passing a group of the inhabitants, whether at work, or by a rare chance, resting from their labours. There are "roughs" to be found there more dangerous, they say, than in most places: but these do not show much in daylight or frequented thoroughfares. They have their own haunts, and when the sun arises they lie down in their dens. In deed, the upper Ten Thousand—the great manufacturers and iron-founders or their representatives—will treat you with no small kindness, especially if you have letters of introduction: they will show you over their vast works and endless factories, adapting their conversation always to your limited capacity, becoming affably explanatory or blandly statistical, as the occasion demands, only indulging in a mild and discreet triumph, as they point out some unutterably hideous combination of steel and iron peculiar to their own establishment, which produces results as unexpected as a conjuring trick. Even so have we seen Mr. Ambrose Arcturus, the stout and intrepid voyager, beguile a Sabbath afternoon in exhibiting to a friend's child—to the officer of the day from the contiguous barracks—to a fair country cousin—or some other equally innocent and inquisitive creature—the treasures of the Zoological Society, not a few of which are the captives of his own bow and spear; lingering, perhaps fondly, for a moment, opposite a gigantic bivalve or mollusca which he is reported to have vanquished in single combat.

But, in spite of all this hospitality, the consciousness of being in a false position, of taking up people's time where time is money—in fact, of being rather a nuisance than otherwise—cannot easily be shaken off: the eye grows weary with seeking a resting-place where everything illustrates perpetual motion, and the brain dizzy with the everlasting tremor and whir of wheels. It is a positive relief when we find ourselves starting on one of the lines that radiate from Newmanham to every point of the compass, like the feelers of a cuttle-fish, always dragging in "raw material" to the voracious centre: it is an absolute luxury, an hour afterwards, to sweep on through the great grazing grounds again, and to see forty acres of sound, undulating pasture stretching away up to the black "bullfinch" that cuts the skyline.

You may easily guess what the political tone of such a borough must be: Liberalism of the most enlightened description flourishes there unchecked and unrivalled; for no Conservative candidate has yet been found so self-sacrificing as to solicit the suffrages of Newmanham. Were such an one to present himself, it is scarcely probable that the free and independent electors would content themselves with such playful missiles as graveolent eggs or decomposed cabbage-stalks: they would be more likely to revive, for his especial benefit, that almost obsolete argumentum a lapide which has silenced, if it did not convince, many obstinate enthusiasts—who, nevertheless, were not far from the truth, after all. In no other town of England are Mr. Bright's harangues received with such favour and sincere sympathy. When the santon-fit is on that meek Man of Peace, and carries him away in a flood of furious diatribe against "those who sit in high places and grind the faces of the poor," it is curious to remark how willingly and completely his audience surrender themselves to the influence of the hour. You may see the ground-swell of passion swaying and surging through the mass of operatives that pack the body of the hall, till every gaunt grimed face becomes picturesque in its savage energy: you have only to look round to be aware that education, and property, and outward respectability, are no safeguards against the contagion: it is spreading fast now through that phalanx of decent broad-clothed burghers on the platform, and—listen—their voices chime in with ominous alacrity in the cheer that rewards a peroration that in old days would have brought the speaker to the pillory.

That same cheer, once heard, is not easily forgotten: there is not the faintest echo of anything joyous, or kindly, or hopeful, in its accent; one feels that it issues from the depths of hearts that are more than dissatisfied—through lips parched with a fiery longing and thirst for something never yet attained. For what? God help them! they could not tell you—if they dared. Go to an agricultural dinner (farmers are the most discontented race alive, you know), mark the tumult among the yeomen when the health of the county favorite has been given, or rather intimated, for they knew what the speaker would say, and before he could finish, the storm of great, healthy voices broke in. Those two acclamations differ from each other more strikingly than does the full round shout of a Highland regiment "doubling" to charge, from the hoarse, cracked "hour-ra" of a squadron of Don Cossacks.

With these dispositions, you may conceive that, albeit Newmanham rather covets land as an investment (they make very fair and not unkindly seigneur, those Novi homines), she cherishes little love or respect for the landed interest, its representatives, and traditions. Yet, when a brother magnate from Tarenton or New Byrsa comes to visit one of these mighty burghers, to what object of interest does the host invariably first direct the attention of his honored guest? Deferring to another day the inspection of his own factory, and of all other town wonders, he orders round the gorgeous barouche, with the high-stepping greys, overlaid with as much precious metal as the Beautiful Gate, and takes the stranger fifteen miles away, to view the demesne which, through the vicissitudes of six centuries, has been the abiding-place of the Vavasours of Dene.

The house is not so ancient, nor does it stand on the site of the old Castle. All that would burn of that crumbled down in a whirlwind of flame, one black winter's night during the Wars of the Roses. There had long been a feud between the Vavasours and a neighboring family nearly as powerful and overbearing. Sir Hugh Mauleverer was a shrewd, provident man, and cool even in his desperation. When he saw signs of the tide turning against Lancaster, he determined to settle one score, at least, before he went to the wall. So, on New-Year's eve, when the drinking was deep, and they kept careless watch at Dene Castle, the Lancastrians came down in force, and made their way almost into the banqueting hall unopposed. Then there was a struggle—short, but very sharp. The retainers of the Vavasour, though taken by surprise, were all fully armed, and, partly from fidelity, partly because they feared their stern master more than any power of heaven or hell, partly because they had no other chance, fought like mad wild cats. However, three to one are heavy odds. All his four sons had gone down before him, and not a dozen men were left at his back, when Simon Vavasour struck his last blow. It was a good, honest, bitter blow, well meant and well delivered, for it went through steel and bone so deep into Hugh Mauleverer's brain that his slayer could not draw out the blade; the grey old wolf never stirred a finger after that to help himself, and never uttered a sound, except one low, savage laugh as they hewed him in pieces on his own hearth-stone. When the slaughter was over, the sack, of course, began, but the young Mauleverer, though heated by the fight, and somewhat discomposed by his father's death, could not forget the courtesy and charity on which he rather prided himself. So, when every living thing that had down on its lip was put out of pain, he would not suffer the women and children to be outraged or tortured, magnanimously dismissing them to wander where they would into the wild weather, with the flames of Dene Castle to light them on their way. Most of them perished before daybreak; but one child, a grandson of the baron's, was saved at the price of its mother's life. She stripped herself of nearly her last garment to cover the heir of her house, and kissed him once as she gave him to the strongest of the women to carry, and then lay down wearily in the snow-drift to die.

When Walter Vavasour came to manhood, the House of York was firm on the throne, and another manor or two rewarded his family for what it had suffered in their cause. He commenced building on the site of the present mansion; but it was reserved for his grandson (who married one of the greatest heiresses at the court of Henry VIII.) to complete the stately edifice as it now stands, at the cost of all his wife's fortune, and a good part of his own.

There are more dangerous follies than a building mania; and perhaps it would have been well for Fulke Vavasour if he had ruined himself more utterly in its indulgence. Poverty might have kept him out of worse scrapes. If he resembled his portrait, his personal beauty must have been very remarkable, though of a character more often found in Southern Europe than in England. The Saxon and Norman races rarely produce those long, dark, languid eyes, and smooth, pale cheeks, contrasted with scarlet lips, and black masses of silky hair. Fair form and face were fatal endowments in those hot-blooded days, when lovers set no bounds to their ambition, and une caprice de grande dame would have its way in spite of—or by means of—poison, cord, and steel. All sorts of vague rumors were current as to the real cause which brought the last Lord Vavasour to the scaffold. The truth can never be known; for, on the same night that he was arrested, a cavalier (whom no one recognized) came to the Dene; he showed the Baron's signet ring, and required to be left alone in his private chamber. The day was breaking when the stranger rode away; and an hour afterwards a pursuivant was in possession of the house, making, as is the fashion of his kind, minute perquisitions, when there was nothing left to search for. Doubtless all clue to the mystery was destroyed or removed before he came. But it may well be, that, if Fulke Vavasour was innocent of the plot for which he died, he was not guiltless of a darker one, with which statecraft had nothing to do. It is certain that his widow—a most excellent and pious young woman, one of the earliest Protestant converts, and a great friend of The Bishops—made little moan over the husband whom she had long wearied with her fondness; she never indeed mentioned his name, except from necessity, and then with a groan of reprobation. They endure neglect like angels, and cruelty like martyrs; but what dévote ever forgot or forgave an infidelity?

Let it be understood, that I quote this fact of the widow's scant regret just for what it is worth—a piece of presumptive evidence bearing upon a particular case, and in no wise illustrating a general principle. I am not prepared to allow, that a fair gauge of any deceased person's moral worth is invariably the depth or duration of the affliction manifested by his nearest and dearest.

The barony of course became extinct with the attainted traitor; but the broad lands remained; for the Tiger, in a fit of ultra-leonine generosity, not only disdained himself to fatten on his victim, but even kept off the jackals. Perhaps, the contracting heart of the unhappy jealous old tyrant was touched by some dim recollection of early chivalrous days, when he took no royal road to win the favor of woman or fortune, but met his rivals frankly and fairly, and either beat them on their merits, or yielded the prize.

The sins of the unlucky reprobate were not visited on his children. The estate gradually shook off the burden he had laid upon it, and during the four succeeding generations the prosperity of the Vavasours rather waxed than waned. Like the rest of the Cavaliers, they had to bear their share of trouble about the time of the Commonwealth; but they were too powerful to be forgotten when the king came to his own again. Indeed, there was a good deal of vitality about the family, though individually its members came curiously often to violent or untimely ends; and the domain had descended in unbroken male succession to its present owner with scarcely diminished acreage. Yet, from a period far beyond the memory of man, there had been no stint or stay in the lavish expense and stately hospitality which had always been maintained at Dene. Twice in the last hundred years the offer had been made of reversing the attainder, and reviving the ancient barony, and each time, from whim or some wiser motive, rejected. No minister had yet been found cool enough to proffer a baronetcy to those princes of the Squire-archy.

It is not worth while describing the house minutely. It was a huge, irregular mass of building, in the Tudor style, with rather an unusual amount of ornamental stonework; well placed near the centre of a very extensive park, and on the verge of an abrupt declivity. The most remarkable features in it were the great hall—fifty feet square, going right up to the vaulted roof, and girdled by two tiers of elaborately-carved galleries in black oak—and the garden-front. The architect had availed himself right well of the advantages of the ground, which (as I have said) sloped steeply down, almost from the windows; so that you looked out upon a succession of terraces—each framed in its setting of curiously-wrought balustrades—connected by broad flights of steps leading down to a quaint stone bridge spanning a clear, shallow stream. Beyond this lay the Plaisance, with its smooth-shaven grass, studded with islets of evergreens, and endless winding walks through shady shrubberies, issuing from which, after crossing a deep sunk-fence, you found yourself again among the great oaks and elms of the deer-park. If there had been no other attraction at Dene, the trees would have been worth going miles to see; indeed, the stanch adherents of the Vavasours always brought the timber forward, as a complete and crushing refutation of any blasphemer who should presume to hint that the family ever had been, or could be, embarrassed. The stables were of comparatively modern date, and quite perfect in their way; they harmonized with the style of the main building, though this was not of much importance, for the belt of firs around them was so dense, that a stranger was only made aware of their existence by a slender spire of delicate stonework shooting over the tree-tops, the pinnacle of a fountain in the centre of the court. The best point of view was from the farther end of the Plaisance.

Looking back from thence, you saw a picture hardly to be matched even amongst the "stately homes of England," and to which the Continent could show no parallel, if you traversed it from Madrid to Moscow. The grand old house, rising, grey and solemn, over the long sloping estrade of bright flowers, reminded one of some aged Eastern king reclining on his divan of purple, and silver, and pearl. No wonder that Dene was a favorite resort of the haute bourgeoisie of Newmanham on Mondays, when the public was admitted to the gardens, the state apartments, and the picture gallery; indeed, on any other day it was easy to gain admission if the Squire was at home, for Hubert Vavasour, from his youth upwards, had always been incapable of refusing anybody anything in reason. If "my lady" happened to be mistress of the position, success was not quite such a certainty.

I think we have done our duty by the mansion; it is almost time to say something about its inmates.

CHAPTER II.

MEA CULPA.

There were all sorts of rooms at Dene, ranging through all degrees of luxury, from magnificence down to comfort. To the last class certainly belonged especial apartment, which, from time immemorial, had been called "the Squire's own." For many generations this had represented the withdrawing-room, the council chamber, the study, and the divan of the easy-going potentates who had ruled the destinies of the House of Vavasour; if their authority over the rest of the mansion was sometimes disputed, here at least they reigned supreme. There was easy access from without, by a door opening on a narrow winding walk that led through thick shrubberies into the stables, so that the Squires were enabled to welcome in their sanctum, unobserved, such modest and retiring comrades as, from the state of their apparel or of their nerves, did not feel equal to the terrors of the grand entrance. Hither also they were wont to resort, as a sure refuge, whenever they chanced to be worsted in any domestic skirmish: though tradition preserves the names of several imperious and powerful Chatelaines, and chronicles their prowess, not one appears to have forced or even assailed these entrenchments. It almost seemed as if provision had been made against a sudden surprise; for, at the extremity of the passage leading to the main part of the building, were two innocent-looking green-baized doors, with great weights, so cunningly adjusted, that one, if not both of them, was sure to escape from weak or unwary hands, and to close with an awful thunderous bang, that went rolling along the vaulted stone roof, till even a Dutch garrison would have been roused from its slumbers. Very, very rarely had the rustle of feminine garments been heard within these sacred precincts; hardly ever, indeed, since the times of wild Philip Vavasour—"The Red Squire"—who, if all tales are true, entertained singularly limited notions as to his own marital duties, and enormously extensive ones as to les droits de seigneurie.

It was a large, square, low-browed room, lined on two sides with presses and book-cases of black walnut wood, that, from their appearance, might have been placed there when it was built. The furniture all matched these, though evidently of quite recent date; the chairs, at least, being constructed to meet every requirement of modern laziness or lassitude. An immense mantelpiece of carved white marble, slightly discolored by wood-smoke, rose nearly to the vaulted ceiling, in the centre of which were the crest and arms of the family, wrought in porphyry. There were two windows, large enough to let in ample light, in spite of heavy stone mullions and armorial shields on every other pane—the south one looking to the garden-front, the west into a quiet, old-fashioned bowling-green, enclosed by yew hedges thick and even as an ancient rampart, and trained at the corners into the shape of pillars crowned with vases. Not a feature of the place seems to have been altered since the times when some stout elderly Cavalier may have smoked a digestive pipe in that centre arbour; or later, when some gallant of Queen Anne's court may have doffed delicately his velvet coat, laying it, like an offering, at Sacharissa's feet, ere he proceeded to win her father's favour by losing any number of games.

A pleasant room at all hours, it is unusually picturesque at the moment we speak of, from the effects of many-colored light and shade. A hot August day is fast drawing to its close; the sun is so level that it only just clears the yews sufficiently to throw into strong relief, against a dark background, the torso of a sitting figure which is well worth a second glance.

You look upon a man past middle age, large-limbed, vast-chested, and evidently of commanding stature, with proportions not yet too massive for activity; indeed, his bearing may well have gained in dignity what it has lost in grace. The face is still more remarkable. Searching through the numberless portraits that line the picture-gallery, you will hardly find a dozen where the personal beauty for which the Vavasours have long been proverbial is more strikingly exemplified than in their present representative. There are lines of silver—not unfrequent—in the abundant chestnut hair and bushy whiskers; but fifty-four years have not traced ten wrinkles on the high white forehead, nor filled the outline of the well-cut aquiline features, nor altered the clearness of the healthy, bright complexion, nor dimmed the pleasant light of the large frank blue eyes. There is a fault, certainly—the want of decision, about the mouth and all the lower part of the face; but even this you are not disposed to cavil much at, after hearing once or twice Hubert Vavasour's ready, ringing laugh, and watching his kindly smile. His manner had that rare blending of gentle courtesy with honest cordiality, that the rudest stoic finds irresistibly attractive: you never could trace in it the faintest shade of condescension, or aggravating affability. Presiding at his own table, talking to a tenant at the cover-side, discussing the last opera with the fair Duchess of Darlington, or smoking the peaceful midnight cigar with an old comrade, the Squire of Dene seemed to be, and really was, equally happy, natural, and at home.

At this particular moment the expression of his pleasant face was unusually grave, and there was a cloud on his open brow, not of anger or vexation, but decidedly betokening perplexity. He was evidently pondering deeply over words that had just been addressed to him by the only other occupant of the "study."

The latter was a tall man, slightly and gracefully built, apparently about thirty; his pale, quiet face had no remarkable points of beauty, except very brilliant dark eyes, looking larger and brighter from the half-circles under them, and a mouth which was simply perfect. You could not glance at him, however, without being reminded of all those stories of unfortunate patricians, foiled in their endeavours to escape because they could not look like the coal-heaver, or rag-merchant, or clerk, whose clothes they wore. If the whim had possessed Sir Alan Wyverne to array himself, for the nonce, in the loudest and worst-assorted colors that ever lent additional vulgarity to the person of a Manchester "tiger," it is probable that the travestie would have been too palpable to be amusing; he would still have looked precisely as he did now and ever—from the crown of his small head to the sole of his slender foot—"thoroughbred all through."

The intelligence which seemed to have involved the Squire in doubt and disquietude was just this. Five minutes ago he had looked upon Wyverne only as his favourite nephew; he had scarcely had time to get accustomed to him in the new light of a possible son-in-law; for the substance of Alan's brief confession was, that in the course of their afternoon's ride he had wooed and (provisionally) won his fair cousin Helen.

Now, when the head of a family has five or six marriageable females to dispose of, forming a beautiful sliding-scale, from 'thirty off' downwards, his feelings, on hearing that one is to be taken off his hands, are generally those of unmixed exhilaration. Under such circumstances, the most prudent of "parents" is apt to look rather hopefully than captiously into the chances of the future ménage: he is fain to cry out, like the "heavy father," "take her, you rascal, and make her happy!" and indeed acts up to every part of the stage direction, with the trifling exception of omitting the hand over the bulky note-case, or the "property" purse of gold. But it is rather a different affair when the damsel in question is an only daughter, fair to look upon, and just in her nineteenth summer. Then it will be seen, how a man of average intellect can approve himself at need, keenly calculating in foresight, unassailable in arguments, and grandiloquent on the duties of paternity. His stern sagacity tramples on the roses with which our romance would surround Love in a Cottage. It is no use trying to put castles in Spain into settlements, when even Irish estates are narrowly scrutinized. Perhaps we never were very sanguine about our expectancies, but till this instant we never regarded them with such utter depression and humility of spirit. Our cheery host of yesternight—he who was so convivially determined on that "other bottle before we join the ladies"—has vanished suddenly. In his stead there sits one filling his arm-chair as though it were a judgment seat, and freezing our guilty hearts with his awful eye. Our hopes are blighted so rapidly, that before the hour is out not one poor leaf is left of the garland that late bloomed so freshly. We have only one aim and object in life now—to flee from that dread presence as quickly as we may, albeit in worse plight than that of Sceva's sons. How sorry we are that we spoke!

But Hubert Vavasour's voice was not angry nor even cold. If there was the faintest accent of reproach there, it surely was unintentional; but in its gravity was something of sadness.

"Alan, would it not have been better to have spoken first to me?"

His own conscience, more than that simple question or the tone in which it was uttered, made Wyverne's cheek flush as he answered it.

"Dear Uncle Hubert, I own it was a grave fault. I am so sorry for not having told you the secret first, that I hardly know how to ask even you to forgive me. But will you believe that there was no malice propense? I swear that when I went out this afternoon, I had no more idea of betraying myself to Helen than I had of proposing to any Princess-Royal. I am sure I have no more right to aspire to one than the other. But we were riding fast and carelessly through Holme Wood; a branch caught Helen's sombrero, and held it fast. I went back for it—we could not pull up for a second or two. When I joined her again, she was trying to put in order some rebellious tresses which had escaped from their net; the light shot down through the leaves on the dark ripples of hair; there was the most delicious flush you can fancy on her cheek, and her lips and eyes were laughing—so merrily! I don't believe that the luck of painters ever let them dream of any thing half so lovely. I suppose I've seen as many fair faces as most men of my age, and I ought to be able to keep my head (if not my heart) by this time. Well—it went, on the instant. I had no more self-control or forethought than a schoolboy in his first love. Before I was aware, I had said words that I ought never to have spoken, but which are very, very hard to unsay. Don't ask me what she answered. I should have been still unworthy of those words if, since my manhood begun, I had never done one ill deed, never thrown one chance away. Uncle Hubert, you can't blame me as much as I despise myself. The idea of a man's having got through a good fortune and the best years of his life, without having learnt—when to hold his tongue."

The clouds had been clearing fast on Vavasour's face while the other was speaking, and the sun broke out, suddenly, in a kind, pleasant smile. Probably more than one feeling was busy within him then, which it would have been hard to separate or analyse. The father's heart swelled with pride and love as he heard of this last crowning triumph of a beauty, that, from childhood upwards, he had held to be peerless. Indeed, he was absurdly fond of Helen, and had spoiled her so consistently, that no one could understand why the demoiselle (who certainly had a will of her own) was not more imperious and wayward. Besides this, the Squire's strong natural sense of humour was gratified. It amused him unspeakably to see his calm, impassible nephew for once so embarrassed as actually to have been betrayed into blushing. More than all, gay memories of his own youth and manhood came trooping up fast, some faint and distant, some so near and brightly-coloured, that they almost seemed tangible—vanishing and reappearing capriciously, as one fair vision chased another from light into shade, like elves holding revel under a midsummer moon.

True, the days of his gipsyhood were past and gone; but the spirit of the Zingaro had tarried with Vavasour longer than with most men, if indeed it was even yet extinct. He could not help owning that, if the same temptation had assailed himself at the same age, he would have yielded quite as easily as Wyverne had done that day, with perhaps rather less of prudent scruple, and with more utter contempt of consequences. Though he had seldom given grounds to Lady Mildred for grave accusation, or even suspicion, gayer gallant never breathed since Sir Gawaine died. A chivalrous delicacy and high sense of honour had borne him (and others) scathless through many fiery trials; yet—not so long ago—hearts had quivered at the sound of his musical voice, like reeds shaken by the wind. Few men had achieved more conquests with less loss to victor and vanquished; for he was satisfied with the surrender of a beleaguered city without giving it up to pillage. Flesh is weak, we know; it would be rash to assert, that in his hot youth, Hubert Vavasour had never regretted a lost opportunity; but perhaps he did not sleep less soundly now, because of all the lost souls who, on either side of the grave, live in torment, not one could lay its ruin at his door. Two or three reputations slightly compromised are surely not an immoderate allowance for a viveur of five-and thirty years' standing, and need scarcely entail indulgence in poppies or mandragora. I think it speaks well for the presiding judge if, when a young offender is brought up before the Council of the Elders, those ancient memories stand forth as witnesses for the defence.

So the Squire's tone was cheery and hearty as ever, when he replied to Alan's rather unsatisfactory explanation, and there was a laugh in his eyes.

"It must have been a terrible temptation, for the mere recollection of it makes you poetical. That period about 'the sunlight on the rippled hair' would have done credit to a laureate in love. Seriously, my dear boy, I'm not angry with you; and I don't feel inclined to blame you much. I only meant that if you had spoken first to me, you would have heard one or two things not pleasant to hear, which must be told you now, and which had better have been said earlier."

"Uncle Hubert," Wyverne said, gently, "don't worry yourself with going through all the objections which make the affair impracticable. I know them so well. It is easy to give up hopes that one never had any right to cherish. Of course it is clear what you and Aunt Mildred ought to say. See, I accept your decision beforehand. I promise you that I won't murmur at it, even to myself, and I shall not like any one of you a bit the worse. It was written that Ellen should be my first serious love, and my last too, I fancy. Kismet—it is my fate; but that is no reason why hers should be bound up with it."

The ruffle of brief emotion had passed away from his quiet face, and it had settled into its wonted calmness; though at that instant the happiness of two lives was swaying in the balance, it betrayed no disquietude by the shadow of a sign.

Hubert Vavasour rose and laid his hand upon the speaker's shoulder. There was nothing of mirth left now in the expression of his features; all their grand outline was softened in a solemn tenderness, and his strong voice was low and tremulous as a woman's.

"I have not deserved to be so misunderstood, and—by you, Alan, you are my only sister's son, and I have loved you all your life long like my own. You were too young when your mother died to remember how I mourned her. You never knew either that, when I said good bye to her, after the last Sacrament, I promised her, as plainly as I could speak for tears, that I would always stand fast by you and Gracie. I wish other promises were as easy to keep faithfully. Do you suppose that my interest in you ceased with my guardianship, though my right of interference did? In spite of everything that has happened, there is no man living to whom I would give Helen so readily as to yourself. I am not going to trifle with you. As far as my consent to your marriage can help you, you have it freely; God's blessing go with it. Now—will you listen patiently while I tell you of difficulties in the way?"

If a life dearer than his own had depended on Alan Wyverne's saying anything intelligible at that moment, he could not have saved it by the utterance of one word; but there was eloquence enough in the long white fingers, which closed round his uncle's with the gripe of a giant.

The Squire sate down again, leaning his forehead on his hand that shook ever so little, keeping his face, so, half shaded. He was a bad dissembler, and the effort to speak cheerfully was painfully apparent.

"Alan, have you any idea how the account stands between the world—taking it as a commercial world—and the Vavasours of Dene? I don't see how you should have; for, besides your aunt, your cousin Max, and myself, not half a dozen people, I believe and hope, know the real state of affairs. There is no bankruptcy court for us, or I should have been in it years ago. There were very, very heavy incumbrances on the property when I came into it, and—see,—I dare not look you in the face—they are nearly doubled now. I can give no account of my stewardship; but I suppose play is about the only extravagance I have not indulged in; and 'my lady'—mind I don't blame her—is not a much better economist. I wonder our family has lasted so long. It has never produced a clever financier, I need hardly say; but, more than that, not one Vavasour for the last seven generations has had the common sense or courage to look his difficulties in the face, and retrench accordingly. Unluckily, rolling debts are not like rolling stones; they do increase in volume, diabolically. Well, it's no use beating about the bush or making half confessions. Here is the truth in six words: a quarter of a million would hardly clear us. They said I gave up the hounds because I had got too heavy to ride up to them; perhaps you will guess if that was the real reason. It was more as a sop to keep my conscience quiet than anything else though; for £3,000 a year saved only keeps a little interest down, and leaves the principal as big and black as ever. When Max came of age, it was absolutely necessary to make some arrangement. We cut off the entail of all property, sold some outlying farms, and replaced the old mortgages by new ones on rather better terms. But—we raised more money. Max owed seven or eight thousand, and I wanted nearly as much to go on with. He behaved very well about it, only binding me down by one stipulation—that I should cut no timber; for it was suggested then that £30,000 worth might be felled and scarcely missed. He had a fancy, that whether Dene stayed with us or passed away to others, it should keep its green wreath unshorn. It looks as if there were some sympathetic link between our fortunes and our forests—we have cherished and spared them so for centuries: if any White Lady (like her of Avenel) watches over our house, I am very sure she is a Dryad. Alan, the worst is still to tell."

He paused for a minute or so, clearing his throat once or twice nervously, all to no purpose, for when he spoke again his voice was strangely husky and uncertain.

"You don't know much of Newmanham? the greatest iron-founder. There is one Schmidt, a German Jew, whose father was naturalized. They say he is worth half a million. When a man of the people has made money up to that mark, he is always mad to invest in land. Only six months ago, I found out that Schmidt had bought up every shilling of mortgage on this property, and—and—by G—d, I believe he means to foreclose."

The Squire stopped again, and then broke out into a harsh unnatural laugh.

"The patriarch knows where to pitch his tent, doesn't he, Alan? His spies have searched out the length and breadth of the land already, and I dare say he knows as much about the woods now as I do. His lines will fall in pleasant places when he has cast out the Hittite. Dene would be no bad spot to found a family in. Twenty quarterings ought to leave savour enough about the grey walls to drown somewhat of the Newmanham fumier. Leah has been prolific, they tell me. The picture gallery will be a nice place for the little Isrealites to disport themselves in in bad weather, and the Crusaders and Cavaliers will look down benevolently on 'the young Caucasians all at play.' Perhaps he will offer something handsome to be allowed to take our name. Faith, he may have it! I don't see why we should keep that to ourselves when all the rest is gone."

The bitter laugh ended in something like a sob, and the lofty head sank down lower still. Looking on Wyverne's colourless face, you would not have guessed that its pallor could deepen so intensely as it did when any strong emotion possessed him. During the last five minutes it had grown whiter by several shades.

"It is punishment enough for all my faults and follies," he said, "to be forced to listen to such words as these, and to feel myself utterly helpless and useless. Uncle Hubert, I remember, when every one thought my ruin was complete, you came the first to offer help, and you never dreamt of taking interest by making me listen to advice or reproaches. Now I hear of your troubles for the first time, and I find that I have come in, seasonably to add another grave embarrassment. What a luxury benevolence must be, when it meets with such a prompt return. If you knew how I hate myself!"

The elasticity of Vavasour's gallant spirit had quite shaken off by this time the momentary depression of which he was already heartily ashamed. He threw back his stately head with a gesture full of haughty grace, as if about to confront a palpable enemy or physical danger, and his voice rang out again, bold and musical and clear.

"Don't speak so despondingly, Alan. My weakness has infected you, I suppose? I don't wonder at it. I am not often so cowardly; indeed it is the first time I have broken down so, and I think it will be long before I disgrace myself so again. Yes, you would help me if you could, just as I would help you. I know you, boy, and the race you come of. Bon sang ne peut mentir. Whatever happens, I shall never repent having given you Helen. But I want you to see your line clearly; it isn't all open country before you. Listen. I am certain 'my lady' has some projects in her head. She thinks her daughter fair enough to be made the pillar and prop of our family edifice. (Poor child! that slender neck would break under half such a burden.) Now, if either of the young ones is to be turned into an Atlas, surely Max ought to take the part. But he is too proud, or too indolent, or too fond of his comforts, to give himself any trouble in the matter. Faith, I like him the better for it. I think I would rather see the old house go to ruin respectably than propped by Manchester money-bags. Que diable! Each one to his taste. I don't imagine that your aunt's visions have assumed shape or substance yet. The coming son-in-law and his millions are still in cloud-land, where I hope for all our sakes they will remain. For my own part, if Crœsus were to woo and win Helen to-morrow, I don't see how it would help us much; besides, it is quite probable that he would have gone away rejected. If you had never spoken, you cannot suppose that I would have seen her sacrificed. Still I warn you that her ladyship has some ideas of the sort floating on her diplomatic brain, so you must not be disappointed if her consent and concurrence are not quite so heartily given as mine."

"I have a great respect for Aunt Mildred's sagacity," Wyverne answered gravely; "whatever policy she might adopt I am sure would be founded on sound principles, and carried out wisely and well. It is very rash to run counter to any plan of hers, even if it be in embryo; I doubt if one ought even to hope for success. My dear uncle, every word you say makes me feel more keenly how wrongly I acted this unlucky afternoon."

The Squire held out his hand again; the strong, honest grasp tingled through every fibre of the other's frame, bringing hope and encouragement with it, like a draught of some rare cordial.

"Alan, I have heard of many rash and wild deeds of yours, never of one that made you unworthy of your blood or mine. It would be rather too good if I were to cast mere extravagance in your teeth. I wont hear any more evil auguries or self-reproaches. My word is passed, and I shall not take it back again till you or Helen ask me to do so. We will talk more of your prospects another time. As long as I live you will do well enough; afterwards—we shall see. Thank God, she is the only child I have to provide for. Don't be downhearted, boy! The Vavasours of Dene are a tough, tenacious race, and die hard, if all tales are true; we are not aux abois yet. 'Vast are the resources of futurity,' as some great and good man observed; perhaps we shall pull through, after all. At any rate, we will not be tormented before our time. The thing which is most on my mind at this moment is—who is to tell this afternoon's work to 'my lady?'"

The Squire's bright blue eyes were glittering with suppressed humour as he said the last words, merrily, as if he had never heard of such things as troubles or mortgages. Alan could not help smiling at his uncle's evident eagerness to be spared the responsibility of ambassador.

"I fancy the worst is known to my poor aunt an hour ago. Helen went straight to the boudoir when we came in; she wished to tell everything herself, and immediately. It is the best way. Poor child! I hope she has had half the success that I have met with; one cannot count on such good fortune, though."

Vavasour's face was radiant with satisfaction, it was an unspeakable relief to him to hear that the official communication had been made.

"What a brave girl that is!" he said, with profound admiration; "she has ten times her father's courage. Alan, confess now, you didn't try to be first—there? Well let us pray for light winds, for we may have to tack more than once before we fetch the haven where we would be. But as the sailors say, 'we can't tell what the weather will be till we get outside,' so—vogue là galère! Hark! there goes the dinner-gong; go and dress directly; of all days in the year this is the last on which to keep her ladyship waiting."

CHAPTER III.

A "MOTHER OF ENGLAND."

If the Squire's study was the most comfortable room in the Dene, the prettiest, and to a refined taste the most attractive, without contradiction, was "my lady's chamber." It was of moderate size, on the first floor, at an angle of the building; two deep oriels to the south and east caught every available gleam of sunshine in winter, while in summer time many cunning devices within and without kept heat and glare at bay. The walls were hung with dark purple silk, each panel set in a frame of polished oak; bright borderings and bouquets of flowers inwoven, prevented the effect from being sombre; the damask of the furniture, as well as the velvet of the portieres and curtains (these last almost hidden now in clouds of muslin and lace), matched the hangings exactly. There was as much of buhl and marqueterie and mosaic in the room as it could well hold—no more; no appearance of crowding or redundance of ornament. On each of the panels was one picture, of the smallest cabinet size, and on three of the tables lay cases of miniatures, priceless from their extreme rarity or intrinsic beauty; and all sorts of costly trifles, jewelled, enamelled, and chased, were scattered about with a studied artistic carelessness. The delicate mignardise pervading every object around you was very agreeable at first, and finished by producing the oppressive, unhealthy effect of an atmosphere overladen with rare perfumes. Such an impression of unreality was left, that you fancied all the pretty vision would vanish, like a scene of fairy-land, at the intrusion of any rude, unauthorized mortal, such as some "mighty hunter," bearing traces of field and flood from cap to spur. That the hallowed precincts had never been profaned by so incongruous an apparition since Lady Mildred Vavasour began to reign, it is unnecessary to say. Her husband came there very seldom; her son, rather often, when he was at home. With these two exceptions, the threshold had remained for years inviolate by masculine footstep, as that of the Taurian Artemis. Few even of her own sex had the entrée; and of these only three or four ventured to penetrate there uninvited. It was a privilege more difficult to obtain than the gold key of the petits appartemens at Trianon.

The whole tone and aspect of the boudoir was marvellously in keeping with the exterior of its mistress. She occupied it on that August evening, alone, if we might except a Maltese lion-dog, sleeping in lazy beatitude, half buried in a purple velvet cushion, like a small snow-ball. It may be as well to say, at once, that this latter personage, though a very important one in his own sphere, gifted with remarkable intelligence, and capable of strong attachments, has nothing on earth to do with the story.

It would be difficult as well as uncourteous to guess at Lady Mildred Vavasour's precise age; her dark hair has lost perhaps somewhat of its luxuriance, but little of its glossy sheen; her pale cheek—tinged with a faint colour (either by nature or art) exactly in the right place—and white brow, are still polished and smooth as Carrara marble; and her small, slight, delicate figure, with which the tiniest of hands and feet harmonize so perfectly, retains its graceful roundness of outline.

Why is it that, after one brief glance—giving the lady credit for all these advantages—we feel sure that she has advanced already far into the maturity of womanhood? Perhaps, when the mind has been restless and the thoughts busy for a certain number of years, those years will not be dissembled, and, however carefully the exterior may have been conserved, traces of toil, sensible, if not visible, remain. There is no short cut to Political Science any more than to Pure Mathematics; not without labour and anxiety, which must tell hereafter, can their crowns be won; and Foresight, though certainly the more useful faculty of the two, is sometimes more wearing than Memory.

Now, in her own line, Lady Mildred Vavasour stood unrivalled; she was the very Talleyrand of domestic diplomacy. I do not mean to infer that she was pre-eminent among those Machiavels in miniature, who glide into supremacy over their own families imperceptibly, and maintain their position by apparent non-resistance, commanding always, while they seem to obey. In her own case such cleverness would have been wasted. She no more dreamt of interfering with any of the Squire's tastes or pursuits than he did with hers; and was perfectly content with complete freedom of action, sure of having every whim gratified. Indeed, up to the present time, her talents had been employed in singularly disinterested ways. Very, very seldom had she acted with her own advantage, or that of any one closely connected with her, in view. The position of the Vavasours was such as never to tempt them to look for aggrandizement; the Squire represented his county, as a matter of course, but there was not a particle of ambition in his nature; and her son had always steadily refused to allow his mother's talents or influence to be exercised on his behalf. But she had a vast circle of acquaintance, both male and female, and when any one of these was in a difficulty, he or she constantly resorted to Lady Mildred, sure of her counsel, if not of her co-operation. She gave one or both, not in the least because she was good-natured, but because she liked it. She liked to hold in her little white hand the threads of a dozen at once of those innocent plots and conspiracies, which are carried on so satisfactorily beneath the smooth, smiling surface of this pleasant world of ours. Granting that the means were trivial, and the end unworthy—it was almost grand to see how her cool calculation, fertile invention, and dauntless courage, rose up to battle with difficulty or danger. She loved a complicated affair, and went into it heart and soul; no one could say how many cases that had been given up as hopeless, she had carried through auspiciously, with an exceptional good fortune. With mere politics she meddled very seldom (though she never sought for a place or promotion for one of her own favourites, or an adopted protégé, without obtaining it), but in her own circle there scarcely was a marriage made or marred, of which the result might not have been traced to the secret police of Lady Mildred's boudoir. If she had a specialité, it was the knack of utterly crushing and abolishing—in a pleasant, noiseless way—a dangerous Detrimental. The victim scarcely ever suspected from what quarter the arrow came, but often entertained, in after days, a great respect and regard for the fatal Atalante.

Yes, the work had told even on that calm, well-regulated nature: Lady Mildred's smile was still perilously fascinating; but a certain covert subtlety, when you looked closer, half neutralized its power; and the bright, dark eyes were now and then disagreeably searching and keen. At such times you could only marvel at the manifest contradiction; with all the outward and visible signs of youth about her, she looked unnaturally older than her age.

In all probability, at no one period of her life had she been more attractive than at the present moment. There was extant a miniature taken before she was twenty, and the resemblance of that portrait to the living original was very striking. One charm she certainly never could have possessed—La beauté du Diable.

Now we are on the subject, I wish some one would explain this paradox or misnomer. Do we take it in a passive sense, and suppose, that if any emotion of love could fall on "the blasted heart"—like water on molten iron—it would be stirred by that especial type of loveliness—seen now so seldom, but remembered so well? It may well be so. Vœ miseris! Every other phase of mortal and immortal beauty has ten thousand representatives in Gehenna, save only this. Surely few lost spirits carry the stamp of innocence on their brows, even so far as the broad gate with the dreary legend over its door: "Leave hope behind you." Seen very seldom—only when across the great Gulf, the souls in torment catch a glimpse of angelic features melting in intense, unavailing pity; but, perchance, well remembered, for where should freshness and innocence be found, if not in the faces of the Cherubim? And his punishment would be incomplete if it were given to the Prince of Hell to forget sights and sounds familiar to the Son of the Morning.

It is worth while to realize how dwarfed, and trivial, and childish, appears all tales of human ruin and shame and sorrow, by the side of the weird primeval tragedy. Well: the brute creation sympathizes with us in our pain; but who are we, that we should presume to pity a fallen archangel? Truly, pious and right-minded men have done so, in all simplicity and sincerity. The story of the Perthshire minister is always quoted among the Traits of Scotch Humour; but I am sure the amiable zealot intended nothing irreverent, and saw nothing grotesque in his prayer. He had exhausted, you know, his memory and imagination in interceding not only for his own species and the lower orders of animals, but for "every green thing upon the earth," beside. He paused at last and took breath; then he went on—rather diffidently, as if conscious of treading on perilous ground, but in an accent plaintively persuasive—

"An' noo, ma freends, let us praigh for the De'il; naebody praighs for the puir De'il!"

That is not a bad digression—taking it as a digression—from the boudoir of a petite maîtresse to the bottomless pit. Whatever connexion may ultimately be established between the two, I am aware that it is neither usual nor justifiable to place them in such close proximity.

But here I make my first and last act of contrition for all such divagations, in season and out of season, past, present, and to come. Reader of mine! you have always the resource (which I would were available in society) of banishing your interlocutor when he bores you, by skipping the paragraph, or throwing the book aside. I may not hope to instruct you; it is quite enough if your interest and yourself are kept awake. Whether this object would be promoted by writing "to order," is more than doubtful. If one's movements are naturally awkward and slow, they will scarcely gain in grace with the fetters on. Let us not force our talent, such as it is. Few qualities are more useful or estimable than that grave pertinacity of purpose which never loses sight for a moment of the end it has had in view all along. But then, one must have a purpose to start with; and up to the present point, this volume is guiltless of any such element of success. It is in the nature of some to be desultory; and there are heretics who think that the prizes of Life—let alone those of authorship—would hardly be worth the winning, if one were bound down under heavy penalties to go on straight to the goal, never turning aside for refreshment by the way.

Peccavimus, et peccabimus. If this literary ship must be shattered on rocks ahead, we will, at least, make no obeisance to the powers that have ordained the wreck. O younger son of Telamon! you have spoken well, if not wisely. The wrath of adverse gods is mighty, and hath prevailed; but let us die as we have lived—impenitent and self-reliant, without benefit of Athéne.

It is nearly time, though, to go back to Lady Mildred. She is still sitting where we left—I am ashamed to say how long ago—in the same attitude of indolent grace; a very refreshing picture to look upon after such a sultry day, the ideal of repose and comfortable coolness. No mortal eye had ever seen "my lady's" cheek unbecomingly flushed, or her lips blue with cold; it must be confessed that she seldom threw a chance away in taking care of herself, and had a wholesome dread of the caprices of our English atmosphere. She had been amusing herself for the last two hours with one of the paper-covered novelettes which flow in a stream (happily) perennial from that modest fountain head in the Burlington Arcade, mollifying our insular manners, and not permitting us to be brutified. The labour of perusing even this unremittingly, seemed to be too much for the fair student, for ever and anon the volume would sink down on her lap, and she would pause for several minutes, musing on its philosophy—or on graver things—with half-closed eyes.

While she was indulging in one of these reveries or semi-siestas, a quick, elastic step came down the long corridor. Lady Mildred could not have been dozing (nobody ever does allow that they have been sleeping—out of their beds), for she recognised the footfall instantly, though it brushed the deep-piled carpet so lightly as to have been to most ears inaudible: simultaneously with the timid knock that seemed to linger on the panel, her clear quiet voice said—

"Come in, my Helen!"

In these prosaic days of Realism, when Oreads and Undines, and other daughters of the elements, have become somewhat coy and unattainable, it would be hard to conjure up a fairer vision than that which now stood hesitating on the threshold. I will try to give you a faint idea of Helen Vavasour as she appeared then, in the spring-tide of her marvellous loveliness.

She had inherited the magnificent stature for which her family had for centuries been remarkable, united to the excessive refinement of contour and delicacy of feature which had made "the Dene Beauties" world-renowned. Her figure, though very slight, betrayed no signs of fragility, and you guessed that the development that three more years must bring would make it quite faultless. Her hair was darker than her mother's by many shades—equally fine and silky, but thrice as luxuriant; its intense black was relieved by a sheen of deep glossy blue, such as Loxias may have worshipped in the tresses of the violet-haired daughter of Pitané. Her complexion is much fairer than is often found where all the other points are so decidedly a brunette's; dazzling from its transparent purity, it was never brilliant, except when some passing emotion deepened the subdued shade of delicate, tender pink into the fuller rose-tint that lines a rare Indian shell. So with her eyes—long, large, and velvet-soft, they stole upon you at first with a languid, dreamy fascination; but you never realized their hidden treasures till amusement, or love, or anger made them glitter like the Southern Cross. It was one of those faces bearing even in childhood the impress of pride and decision, over which half a century may pass without rendering one line in them harsher or harder.

If you have ever taken up a plain photograph, untouched by the miniature-painter, of the form and features (for the moment) deemed fairest of all, you will sympathise with my utter dissatisfaction in reviewing this abortive attempt at portraiture. The stereoscope brings out a certain similitude; but what a cold, colourless parody on glorious reality! That very fixedness of expression—in the original so perpetually varied—makes it an insult to our incarnate idol.

Long and attentive study, for her own or her friends' benefit, had taught Lady Mildred to read very fluently the language of the eyes; the glance of the Expert withdrew their secret from Helen's, during those few seconds while she stood hesitating in the doorway; and a shy, conscious happiness glowing round her like a soft halo, made surmise certainty.

O laughter-loving daughter of Dioné! your divinity is trampled in the dust, and none worship now at the shrines of Aphrodité, Astarte, or Ashtaroth; but one feels tempted at times to turn Pagan again, were it only to believe in your presence and power. Other, and younger, and fairer faces have borne tokens of having met you in the wood, since your breath left a freshness and radiance on the swart features of the false sea-rover, that carried Dido's heart by storm.

Yes, Lady Mildred guessed the truth at once, and all her self control was needed to repress a sigh of vexation and impatience, which very nearly escaped her; it bore her through, though, triumphantly. Nothing could be more placable and propitious than her smile; nothing more playfully than her gesture, as she beckoned Helen to her side:—

"My darling! what has happened in your ride to agitate you so? I can see you are not much hurt. Come and make confession instantly."

This was apparently the young lady's intention, for she had evidently come straight to the boudoir after dismounting; she was still in her riding-dress, and had only taken off her Spanish hat. While her mother was speaking she came near with the swift, springy step which made her inimitable, and knelt down by the low couch, half-concealing her glowing face and sparkling eyes.

If there is any written manual adapted to such rifle-practice, (I mean where a young woman has to fire off at her parent a piece of intelligence particularly important or startling), I fancy, here, it would run thus—"At the word 'three,' sink down at once on the right knee, six inches to the right and twelve inches to the rear of the left heel, and square with the foot, which is to be under the body and upright"—the great difference being, that the fair recruit is "not to fix the eye steadfastly on an object in front."

So far, certainly, Helen acted up to the formula provided for her case; but she had not been much drilled, and was indeed singularly exempt from most of the little weaknesses, conventionalisms, and minauderies which are, justly or unjustly, attributed to modern damosels. Natures like hers affect, as a rule, no more diffidence than they feel, and are seldom unnecessarily demonstrative, however small and select their audience and however dramatic the piece they are playing. So, after a few minutes' silence, she looked up and said, quite quietly and simply—

"Mamma, Alan asked me this afternoon to marry him; and—I love him dearly."

The two voices were strangely alike in their accent and inflexions; but the girl's voice, even when, as now, somewhat tremulous and uncertain, was mellower in its rich cadences, fuller and rounder in its music.

Lady Mildred clasped her daughter's waist, and bent down to kiss her, repeatedly, with passionate tenderness. When the close embrace was ended, she lingered yet for a few seconds with her cheek pillowed on Helen's forehead; during those seconds her features were set, and her lips tense and rigid; that brief interval of self-indulgence lasted just so long as it would have taken her to utter the words—"It shall never be."

Now, mark; the daughter was kneeling at her mother's feet, as she might have knelt to say the first prayer of infancy; she had just told the secret which involved her life's hope of happiness—whether wrongly or rightly founded it matters not; the mother sate there, with a firm, cool resolve at her heart to crush the hope and frustrate the purpose; and yet she kissed her child without shivering or shrinking. To our rough common sense it would seem, that caress more cruel in its falsehood, more base in its deliberate treachery, never was bestowed since that one over which angels wept and devils shouted for joy—the kiss given in the Garden of Gethsemane.

But who are we, that we should criticize the policy of a Mother of England, cavil at her concessions to expediency, or question the rectitude of her intentions? They are white-hot Protestants, many of them, but none the less do they cherish and act upon the good old Jesuit maxim—"The end justifies the means." Unluckily, sometimes even their sagacity and foresight are baffled in guessing what the end of all will be. You have read Aspen Court, of course? Do you remember Cyprian Heywood's definition of a parable?—"A falsehood in illustration of truth." "My lady" affected this convenient figure of speech a good deal; her first words now were decidedly parabolical.

"My dearest child, you have quite taken my breath away. I cannot tell yet whether I am sorry or glad to hear this. It comes so very suddenly!"

"Ah, mamma, say at least that you are not angry—with Alan," the soft voice pleaded.

Lady Mildred did not think it necessary to remain long astounded, being always averse to unnecessary expenditure of time or trouble. So she answered, after drawing one or two deep, agitated breaths (wonderfully well done), with intense gentleness of manner and tone—

"How could I be angry, darling? Next to Max, and yourself, and your father, I think I love Alan better than anything in the world. He has been rash and wild, of course; but I believe he is quite good and steady now. I am sure he will try and make you happy. Every one will exclaim against your imprudence, and mine; but we will not look forward despondently. Only you must not be impatient; you must wait and hope. You don't know as well as I do what difficulties are in the way. Perhaps I ought to have foreseen what was likely to happen, when you and Alan were thrown so much together as you have been lately; but I never dreamt—" she stopped, compressing her lips, as if annoyed that a truth, for once, was escaping them. "Well—never mind; confess, Helen, you did not fear that I should oppose your wishes? You know my first object in life is to see you happy; and I have not often contradicted you, have I, since you were old enough to have a will of your own?"

I fancy that most damsels, under similar circumstances, would have been of Miss Vavasour's opinion—"That there never was such a darling mother." She did not express it very intelligibly, though; and, indeed, it must be confessed, that the conversation from this point was of a somewhat incoherent and irrational nature. Feminine example is miraculously contagious; if the fountain of tears is once unlocked, the gentle influence of the Naïad will be sure to descend on every womanly bosom within the circle of its spray. I do not mean to imply that upon the present occasion there was any profuse weeping; but they got into a sort of caressive and altogether childish frame of mind—a condition very unusual with either mother or daughter. It may be questioned, if the sympathetic weakness displayed by Lady Mildred was altogether assumed. The most accomplished actresses have sometimes so identified themselves with their parts, as to ignore audience and foot-lights, and become natural in real emotion. Five minutes, however, were more than enough to restore one of the parties to her own calm, calculating self. Another yet fonder caress told Helen, as plainly as words could have done, that the audience was ended: as soon as she was alone, Lady Mildred fell back into her old quiet, musing attitude. But the French novel was not taken up again; its late reader had a plot, if not a romance, of her own, to interest her now. Whether the thoughts that chased one another so rapidly through that busy brain were kindly or angry, whether the glimpses of the future were gloomy or hopeful—the smooth, white brow and steady lips betrayed, neither by frown nor smile.

CHAPTER IV.

A WAIF FROM A WRECK.

"Look into a man's Past, if you would understand his Present, or guess at his Future." So spake some sage, name unknown, but probably intermediate in date between the Great King and Mr. M. F. Tupper. The rule is not implicitly to be relied on, but perhaps there is as much of truth in it as in most apophthegms of proverbial philosophy.

So it may save some time and trouble hereafter, if we sketch briefly now some of Alan Wyverne's antecedents; for he is to be the chief character in this story, which has no hero, properly so-called, nor heroine either.

The main facts are very soon told: his twenty-first birthday saw him in possession of a perfectly unencumbered estate of £12,000 a year, and all the accumulations that two paragon guardians had toiled to amass during an unusually long minority; his twenty-eighth dawned on a comparative pauper.

The last score of centuries have taught us many things; amongst others, to go down hill with a certain caution and timidity, if not with sobriety. We never hear now of those great disasters to which the very vastness of their proportions lent a false grandeur; where a colossal fortune foundered suddenly, leaving on the world's surface a vortex of turbulence and terror, such as surrounds the spot where a three-decker has gone down. The Regent and his roués were wild in their generation, but they never quite attained the antique magnificence of recklessness. The expenses of a contested county election fifty years back, would have shown poorly by the Ædile's balance-sheet, A. C. 65, when Cæsar laughed to see his last sestertium vanish in the brilliancy of the Circensian Games. What modern general would carry £20,000 of debt as lightly as he did half-a-million, when he went out to battle with the Lusitanian? If we even hear nowadays of a like liability, it is probably in connexion with a great commercial "smash," involving curious disclosures as to the capabilities of stamped paper, and the extent of public credulity; but the interest of such rarely spreads west of Temple-bar. Truth to say—however moving the tale may be to the unfortunates ruined by the delinquent, there is little romance to be extracted out of mercantile atrocities.

Nevertheless, if you only give him time, and don't hurry him beyond his stride, a dwarf will "go to the dogs" just as easily and surely as a giant. After our mesquine fashion, that journey is performed so constantly, that only some peculiarities in Alan's case make it worth noting at all.

Few men have trodden the road to ruin with such a perfectly smooth and even pace; there was no rush or hurry about it from beginning to end; nothing like a crash to attract notice or scandal. He was known to bet high and play deep; but no one spoke of him at the clubs as having lost an extraordinary stake on any one night, nor did the chroniclers of the Turf ever allude to him amongst those "hit hard" on any single event. One destructive element never showed itself throughout his career. It must have been gratifying to those much-abused Hetæræ to reflect (do they ever reflect at all?) that none could charge any one of the sisterhood with having aided in Wyverne's downfall. Reckless and extravagant as the son of Clinias, he escaped—at least Timandra. More than one scruple, probably, helped him to maintain a continence which soon became so well-known, that the most persevering of feminine fowlers never thought of laying her snares in his way. Something might be ascribed to principles learnt at his dead mother's knee, which all the contagion of Bohemia failed quite to efface—something to a chivalrous reverence for the sex, which withheld him from deliberately abetting in its open degradation—something to the pride of race, with which he was thoroughly imbued. He loved his ancient name too dearly, to see it dragged through the dust past the statue of Achilles, at the chariot-wheels of the fairest Phryne of them all. For once—hearing a story of human folly and frailty, you asked, "Dove la donna?" and waited in vain for a reply.

If the Sirens failed to seduce Wyverne, that was about the only peril or temptation from which he escaped scathless. Profuse hospitality all the year round in London, Leicestershire, and at his home in the north, cost something: a string of ten horses in training (besides yearlings and untried two-year-olds), which only won when their owner had backed something else heavily, cost more: backing other men's bills currente calamo, receiving no substantial considerations for so doing, cost most of all. Alan's bold, careless handwriting was as well known in a certain branch of commerce as the official signature on the Bank of England's notes. There was joy in Israel when they saw his autograph: Ezekiel and Solomon—most cautious of their tribe (those crack bill-discounters are always lineally descended, it would seem, from some prophet or king)—smacked their bulbous lips in satisfaction as they clutched the paper bearing his endorsement: their keen eyes looked three months forward into futurity, and saw the spoil of the Egyptian secure. Alan's own resources, though rapidly diminishing, always sufficed his own wants: but he never tired of paying these disinterested liabilities as long as his friends could furnish him with any decent excuse for his doing so: if the defaulter failed in making out even a shadow of a case, Wyverne still paid, but never consorted with him afterwards. Then the dark side of his character came out. Generous and kind-hearted to a fault, he was at times obstinate to relentlessness: slow to take offence or to suspect intentional injury, he was yet slower in forgiving or forgetting either: he did not trouble himself to detect the falsehood at the bottom of any tale of distress, but against imposture carried with a high hand he set his face as it were a millstone.

Hercules St. Levant (of the Chilian Cuirassiers) would tell you—if he could be brought to speak coherently on the subject—that he dates his ruin from the day when he miscalculated the extent of Sir Alan Wyverne's long-suffering or laziness. Surely some of us can remember that wonderful Copper Captain—the round, ringing tones tempting you with a point over the proper odds—the scarfs and waistcoats blinding in their gorgeousness, so "loud" that you heard them coming all the way up from the distance post—the supernatural whiskers, whose sable volutes shaded his broad shoulders like the leaves of a talipat-palm? Hercules was very successful at first: he must have started with a nominal capital, but he had plenty of courage, some judgment, and more luck; so, by dint of industry, and now and then picking up crumbs from the table of those by whom the "good things" of the turf are shared, he contrived to ruffle it for awhile with the best of them. Men of mark and high estate would meet and hold communion with him—as they have done with deeper and darker villains—on the neutral ground at "The Corner," without caring to inquire too closely what Cacique had signed his commission, or on what foughten-fields the rainbow of his ribbons was won. With common prudence he might have held his own till now. But St. Levant was a buccaneer to the backbone: he spent his winnings as lavishly as any one of the young patricians whom he delighted to honour and imitate; and took his ease in the sunshine, scorning to make the slightest provision for the season of the rains. It came at last, in an Epsom Summer Meeting. The adverse Fates had it all their own way there: several of the Captain's certainties were overturned, and several promising "plants" were withered in their bud. It was the fourth "day of rebuke and blasphemy," and still the battle went hard against the Peruvian plunger. The Oaks dealt him the coup de grace: it was won by an extreme outsider. Hercules saw the number go up, and staggered out of the enclosure like a drunken man, with hardly breath enough left to hiss out a curse between his white lips. "Hecuba" was one of six that Wyverne had taken with him against the field for an even thousand: her name had never been mentioned in the betting at the time, and Alan only selected her because he chanced to know her owner and breeder well.

St. Levant was ruined horse-and-foot, without power or hope of redemption: that one bet would have pulled him through. Some pleasanter engagement had kept Wyverne away from The Corner on the "comparing day," and with his usual carelessness he had even omitted to send his book down by other hands: Hercules saw a last desperate chance, and grasped at it, as drowning men will do. He appeared at the settling with his well-known betting book (gorgeous, like all his other belongings, in green morocco and gold,) but Hecuba's name was replaced by the second favourite's. He chanced to have in his possession a fac-simile of the original volume, and had copied out, in the interim, every bet it contained, with this one trifling alteration. The matter came before the authorities, of course. The discussion that ensued, though stormy (on one side) was very short and decisive: the swindler's foamy asseverations were shivered, like spray, on the granite of the other's calm, contemptuous firmness. The judges did not hesitate long in pronouncing against St. Levant their sentence of perpetual banishment. All his piteous petitions addressed to Wyverne in after days to induce the latter to obtain a mitigation of his punishment, remained absolutely unanswered. There still survives—a pale, blurred shadow of his former self—as it were, the wraith of the Great Captain. We see occasionally a hirsute head rising above the sea of villanous figures and faces that seethe and surge against the rails of the enclosure: we catch glimpses of a meteoric waistcoat flashing through the surrounding seediness; and we hear a voice, thunderous as that of the elder Ajax, dominating the din of the meaner mêlée; but there is no reversal of his doom. The poor lost spirit must ramp and roar among the "welshers" of the outer darkness, for the paradise of the Ring is closed to him for evermore.

Everybody—including the two or three friends who might hope to ride his horses—was sorry for Wyverne when a heavy fall over timber laid him up, quite early in the season, with a broken arm and collar-bone. The only pity was, that the fortunate accident should not have happened three years earlier. The indoor resources of a country-town, where all one's associates hunt five days a-week at least, are limited. One morning Alan felt so bored, that the whim seized him to look into his affairs, and ascertain how he stood with the world: so he went for his solicitor (as much for the sake of having some one to talk to as anything else), and went in at business with great patience and determination. The men who sat with him on the second evening after the lawyer's arrival, thought Wyverne looking paler and graver than usual, but he listened to their account of the run with apparently undiminished interest, and sympathized with his friends' mishaps or successes as cordially as ever. Only once his lips shook a little as he answered in the negative a question—"If he felt in much pain?" Yet that morning had been a sore trial both of brain and nerve. It is not a pleasant time, when you have to call for the reckoning of ten thousand follies and faults, and to pay it too—when the bitter quart d'heure de Rabelais is prolonged through days.

Though they arrived then at a tolerably accurate idea of the state of Alan's finances, it took months to complete the final arrangements. When everything in town and country that could well be sold had been disposed of, Wyverne was left with a life-income of just as many hundreds a-year as he had started with thousands. But all his personal debts, and liabilities incurred for others, were paid in full. The only absolute luxuries that he retained (with the exception of all the presents that he had ever received) were the two best hunters in his stud, and his gray Arab, "Maimouna." That residue might have been nearly doubled, if Alan would have consented to dismantle the Abbey. But he could not help looking upon its antique furniture and fittings in the light of heirlooms. He had added little to them when he came into his inheritance: he took nothing away when he lost it. So the great, grave mansion still retained its old-fashioned and somewhat faded magnificence; and few changes, so far, were to be seen there, except that the grass grew long on the lawns, and the flowers wandered over the parterres at their own sweet will, and instead of thick reeks of unctuous smoke, only a thin blue line stole out modestly from two or three chimneys now and then in the shooting season. The game was still kept up, and the farmers watched it as jealously and zealously as if they had been keepers in their landlord's pay.

The sternest Stoic alive could scarcely have fallen into his new position more naturally, or adapted himself to its requirements more gracefully, than did that gay, careless Epicurean. If he had any regrets for the irrevocable Past, he kept them to himself, and never wearied his friends for their sympathy or compassion; he accused no one with reference to his ruin; I doubt if he even blamed himself very severely. There was no more of recklessness in his conduct, than there was of despondency in his demeanour; but he comported himself exactly as you would expect to see a man do, of good birth and breeding, and average steadiness, born to a modest competency. His experience, brief as it was, might have taught him to be somewhat sceptical as to the virtues of our human nature, more especially having regard to such trifles as truth and honesty; but no amount of punishment will beat wisdom or knowledge into a confirmed dunce or idler. His constitutional indolence may have had something to say to it; but to the last hour of his life Alan Wyverne never learnt to be suspicious, or sullen, or cynical.

To be sure, the world in this case broke through an established rule, and behaved better to him when he was at the bottom of the wheel than it had ever done at the culminating point of his fortunes. There seemed to be a general impression that he had been very badly treated by some "person or persons unknown," and it became the fashion to compassionate Wyverne (in his absence) exceedingly. People who in former days met and parted from him quite indifferently, found out suddenly that they had always been very fond of him, and contended as to who should attract him to their house in the hunting or shooting season. The Marquis of Montserrat, for instance, roused himself from where he lay, surrounded by every delight of a Mussulman's paradise, in his summer palace by the Bosphorus, to send a sort of firmun, giving Alan powers of life and death over the keepers and coverts of all his territory marching with the lands of Wyverne Abbey; an instance of good-nature which was the more remarkable, inasmuch as the great Absentee not only carries laziness and selfishness to a pitch of sublimity, but has of late registered a vow against befriending any one under any circumstances whatever. This last and rather superfluous hardening process was brought about in this wise.

Some years ago there appeared suddenly in the firmament of fashion a little star; no one knew whence it came—though it was supposed to have risen in the East; and when, after twinkling brightly for a brief space, it shot down into utter darkness, no one cared to ask whither it went. Mr. Richardson had advanced just so far in intimacy with the magnates of the land that they began to call him "Tom" (his Christian name was Walter), when the crash came, and he subsided into nothingness. He lived upon that recollection, and little else, for the remainder of his days. Yet one chance was given him. Wandering about the Continent, he met the Marquis of Montserrat. The mighty golden Crater and the poor shattered Amphora had once floated side by side, for a league or two, down the same stream. After a tête-à-tête dinner (the cótelettes à la Pompadour were a success), old recollections, or his own Clos Vougeot, made the peer's heart warm, and he bethought himself how he might serve the unlucky pauper. At last he said,

"Tom, there is a regular establishment at Grandmanoir, and there always will be in my time, though I never mean to see it again. Go and live there; you'll be more comfortable than in lodgings, and save rent and firing besides. Make yourself quite at home; slay the venison; eat the fruit of the vine, and drink the juice thereof (the cellar ought to be well filled); and grow as fat as Jeshurun, if you like. I only insist on one thing. Whether matters are going on well or ill in the house or out of it—don't bother me about them. I don't want to hear a word on the subject. Is it settled so?"

You may fancy Tom Richardson's profuse thanks and his great joy and gladness at finding himself chatelain of Grandmanoir. The valetaille treated him at first with no small kindness (he was a meek little man, averse to giving unnecessary trouble), and for some months all went merrily. But before a year had passed there began to dawn on the stranger's mind suspicions, which soon changed into certainties. There existed at Grandmanoir the most comprehensive and consistent system of robbery that could well be conceived. It would have been harder to find one honest menial there than ten saints in a City of the Plain. Everybody was in it, from the agent and house-steward, who plundered en prince, down to the scullion (fat, but not foolish), who peculated en paysanne. There was commercial blood in Tom Richardson's veins, and the sight of these enormous misdeeds vexed his righteous soul exceedingly. One day he could withhold himself no longer, but sat down in a fury and wrote,

"My dear lord,—In spite of your prohibition, I feel it my duty," &c.

And so went through all the disagreeable details regularly. The reply came by return of post, though not exactly in the shape that he expected. The steward came in with scant ceremony, an evil smile on his face (he probably guessed at the truth), charged with his lord's commands that the visitor should quit Grandmanoir before sunset and never return there. Thus rudely was broken the last of poor Tom's golden dreams. The Great Marquis, when the circumstances were alluded to, never could be brought to see any harshness in his own conduct, but spoke of his protégé's rather plaintively as "an instance of human ingratitude that he was really not prepared for." He did not give the species many chances of surprising him in that way again.

If the chiefs of his tribe were ready to comfort and cherish the disabled "brave," now that he could no longer put on paint and plume, and go forth with them on the "war-trail," be sure that the matrons and maidens were yet more active and demonstrative in sympathy. There must be extraordinarily bad features in the case of distress that fails to secure feminine compassion; except in a matrimonial point of view, our sisters rarely consider a man deteriorated because he is ruined. Though he was a general favourite in his set, Wyverne possessed many more real friends of the other sex than of his own. If there is anything in reciprocity, it was only fair that it should be so. Alan's reverence and affection for Womanhood in the abstract were so intense and sincere, as to be almost independent of individual attributes. His companion for the moment might be the homeliest, humblest, least attractive female you can conceive; but with the first word his tone and manner would change and soften in a way that she could not but perceive, even if she did not appreciate it. Most of them did appreciate it, though, and this was the secret of his invariable and proverbial success. Wyverne could like a woman honestly, and let her know it, without a thought of love, and could always render courtesy where admiration, or even respect, unfortunately, were out of the question. However good the sport might be in other ways, he considered the day comparatively lost in which the feminine element was wanting. While his comrades were resting for an hour before dinner—dead beat with seven hours' hard stalking in the corries of Benmac-Dhui—Alan would be found loitering about the door of the chief keeper's bothy, carrying on, under extreme difficulties of dialect, a flirtation on first principles with his orange-haired daughter. He seemed to derive some refreshment from the process, though the absence of a beard, and the (occasional) presence of a petticoat, were about the only distinctive characteristics of her sex that the robust Oread could boast of. When the season was at the flood, he would spend hours of an afternoon in the quiet twilight of a boudoir in Mayfair, by the side of an invalid's sofa. Sooth to say, that room held no ordinary attractions. Lady Rutherglen had been a famous beauty in the Waterloo year; and though long illness had somewhat sharpened her delicate features, she still retained the low sweet voice and winning manner which had made wild work with the heart of the Great Czar (the imperial wooing was utterly wasted, for the witty, wayward Countess could guard her honour as well as the stupidest of Pamelas); there was hardly a wrinkle on the little white hand, and the lovely silver hair looked softer and silkier now than it had ever done in its golden prime.

Sad and strange shapes of sin and sorrow cross our path sometimes, as we walk home from club or ball through the early morning. Saddest, perhaps, and strangest of all, is the spectacle of one of God's creatures, unsexed and deformed by passion and fiery liquor, struggling in blind undiscriminating rage, and shrieking out defiance alike of friends and foes. The Menad ceased to be romantic when the Great Pan died. Erigone may be magnificent on canvas, but even Béranger failed in making her attractive on paper: in flesh and blood she is simply repellent. Public sympathy would side rather with Pentheus nowadays than with his cruelly convivial mother; and we hold the disguise of drink to be the least becoming of all Myrrha's masquerades. Such a sight affected Wyverne with a disgust and pain that few men could have fully appreciated; but he rarely would pass by without an attempt at mediation. They say that his kind, gentle voice was almost magical in its soothing power. The exasperated guardian of the night would relax the roughness of his grasp; and the "strayed reveller" would subside from shrill fury into murmurs placable and plaintive, yielding, in spite of the devil that possessed her, to the charm of his cordial compassion and invincible courtesy.

All things considered, womankind had rather a better reason for petting Alan than could be given for most of their whims. When his resources were almost unlimited, he was always so perfectly regardless of time and trouble and cost in endeavouring to gratify even their unexpressed wishes, that it was no wonder if, when the positions were reversed, he began to reap his reward, and found out that he had laid up treasure against the time of need.

I have said more than enough to give you some insight into a character in which the elements of hardness and ductility, passionate impulse and consummate coolness, recklessness and self-control, were strangely mingled, like the gold, brass, iron, and clay in the frame of the giant Image that stood beside the prophet in his trance, on the banks of "the great river Hiddekel."

With all his faults and failings, Hubert Vavasour would have chosen him out of broad England for a son-in-law. Lady Mildred thought that such a bridal dress would become her daughter worse than a winding-sheet.

Which of the two was right? Probably neither. There is little wisdom in extremes.

CHAPTER V.

THE GIFTS OF A GREEK.

When Helen came into the cedar drawing-room (the place of assembly before dinner) she found her father alone. His face was rather thoughtful and grave, but it brightened as she came quickly to his side, and nothing but intense love and tenderness remained, when she rested her clasped hands on his shoulder, and looked up at him with a deepened rose colour on her cheek, and a question in her great, earnest eyes. If she had dreaded the meeting, all fear would have vanished even before the strong, true arm circled her waist, and the kind, honest voice that had never yet lied to man or woman murmured "God bless you, my own darling!" Helen felt happier and safer then than when she rose from receiving her mother's more elaborate caress and benediction.

Nothing, surely, can be more natural or justifiable under such circumstances than a paternal embrace; therefore there was no particular reason for those two starting apart, with rather a guilty and conscience-stricken expression of countenance, when the door opened, and Lady Mildred glided in with the even noiseless step and languid grace that all her friends knew so well, and some admired so much. The appearance of things did not greatly please her, neither did it trouble her much. She had a high opinion of her own resources, and a very poor one of the talents against which she meant to contend; so she regarded the signs of coalition before her with the same contemptuous indifference that a minister (with a safe majority) would display, when the opposition threatens a division, or that a consummate billiard-player would feel, when his antagonist (to whom he gives ten points under the proper odds) makes a grand but unproductive fluke.

As a rule, unless her adversary was extraordinarily skilful or vicious, that accomplished duellist preferred taking his fire; so on this occasion Hubert Vavasour had to speak first. He came to time gallantly, though rather nervously.

"You have heard what these foolish children have been doing and saying this afternoon, mamma? I suppose they ought to be scolded or sent to bed supperless, or otherwise chastised; but I cannot play the stern father, and you don't look much like Mother Hubbard. We were foolish and childish once, Mildred; surely you remember?"

If his own life or fortunes had been at stake, there would not have been half such pitiful pleading in his eyes and his tone.

Lady Mildred's memory was unusually retentive, but it did not accuse her of any such weakness. Her imagination must have been tasked before she could have pleaded guilty; nevertheless she called up a little conscious look with admirable success, and smiled with infinite sweetness. Perhaps there was the faintest sarcastic inflexion in the first few words of her reply, but it needed a sharper ear to detect it than either her husband or daughter owned.

"Dear Hubert, you are growing romantic yourself again, or you would scarcely call Alan a child. If he is one he is very wise for his years. But on the principle of love levelling everything, I suppose all ages are the same when people forget to be prudent. Of course it was a great surprise to me. I can hardly realize it yet; but—has not Helen told you? I do approve more than I ought to do, and I hope and pray that good may come of it to both of them. I love Alan nearly as well as I do my own Helen, and she and you know how dearly that is."

She wound her arm round her daughter's waist as she spoke, and drew her close till the two soft cheeks met. It was the prettiest pose you can fancy—nothing theatrical or affected about it—enough of tender abandon to satisfy the most fastidious critic of attitudes—beautifully maternal without being "gushingly" demonstrative; but not a hair in "my lady's" careful braids was ruffled, nor a fold in her perfect dress disarranged. The embrace was still in progress, when the door opened again and Alan Wyverne joined them, only preceding by a few seconds the announcement of dinner. It is just possible that the caress might have ended more abruptly, if one ear in the cedar drawing-room had not been quick enough to distinguish his footsteps from that of the Chief Butler—a portly man, with a grand and goodly presence, in his gait sedate and solemn—who ever bore himself with the decent dignity befitting one long in authority, conscious of virtue, and weighing seventeen stone.

Nevertheless Lady Mildred's knowledge of her nephew's character made her aware that it would not answer to try with him the line of strategy which might succeed with her husband and daughter. It was very unlikely that he would be taken in by the feint of unconditional surrender. Alan had not devoted himself to the society of womankind for so many years without acquiring a certain insight into their charming wiles. It was very easy to persuade, but wonderfully difficult to delude him. She did not like him the worse for that; indeed she only spoke the truth when she said he was one of her chief favourites. Under any other circumstances she would have grudged neither time nor trouble to serve him, either by gratifying his wishes or advancing his fortunes, and perhaps really regretted the stern political necessity which made it an imperative duty to foil him if possible. Her game now was the temporising one—to treat, but under protest. She looked up once in Alan's face as she leant on his arm on their way to the dining-room. That glance was meant to combine affection with a slight tinge of reproach, but a gleam of covert amusement in her eyes almost spoilt the intended effect. Lady Mildred had a strong sense of humour, and, after the first vexation was over, she could not help laughing at her own carelessness and want of prevision. The fact was, she believed Wyverne capable of any amount of flirtation with any creature wearing a kirtle; but, with regard to serious matrimonial intentions, she had held him safe as if he had been vowed to celibacy; in default of a better, she would have allowed him on an emergency to play chaperon to Helen. Lo, the sheep-dog not only proved faithless to his trust, but was trying to make off with the flower of the flock, leaving its mistress to sing—with the "lass of the Cowdenknowes"—

Ere he had taken the lamb he did,
I had lieve he had taken them a'.

They were rather a quiet quartette at dinner. Helen was by no means sentimental, nor did she think it the least necessary to be nervous, even under the peculiar circumstances; her colour, perhaps, deepened occasionally by a shade or two, without any obvious reason, and the long shadowing lashes swept down over her eyes more frequently than usual, as if desirous of veiling their extraordinary brilliancy; beyond these, there were no outward and visible signs of perturbation, past or present; her accomplice's face was a study for its perfect innocence and calmness. Nevertheless, neither was quite equal to the effort of discussing utterly uninteresting subjects quite unconcernedly; both had a good deal to think of, and one had a good deal to prepare for. Hubert Vavasour was cheerful and happy enough, apparently, but he only talked by fits and starts; so that it devolved on "my lady" to defray the expenses of the conversation. She performed her part with infinite tact and delicacy; it was only the fact of her so rarely taking any trouble of the sort in a strictly domestic circle (she thought it quite enough, there, to submit to be amused), that caused the effort to be observable.

It would be just as easy to make a dam-head of sand water-tight, as to prevent the knowledge of an event very interesting to one of its members percolating through a large household within a few hours after it has happened. You may not see the precise spot where the water soaks through, and you may never discover the precise channel by which the intelligence is circulating; but there is the fact, and a very provoking one too, sometimes. It is unnecessary to say that the probable engagement of the cousins formed the prominent subject of discussion that night in the steward's room, though of the circumstances of the fiançailles everybody was profoundly ignorant. Of course, Allan could not be closeted with his uncle, and Helen with her mother, immediately after returning from a tête-à-tête ride, without the domestics drawing their own conclusions—to say nothing of the traces of emotion which, perhaps, even that haughty demoiselle failed to dissemble from the quick-witted Pauline.

The Chief Butler (before alluded to) during a quarter of a century's servitude in the family had acquired, besides a comfortable competence and considerable corpulence, a certain astrological talent with regard to the signs of the times showing themselves within his limited horizon. He was faithful, too, after his fashion; but—loving his master much—honoured his mistress more, and was ever especially careful to ascertain how the wind blew from that quarter. He was wont to preside over his little parliament like Zeus over the Olympian conclave; hearkening to, encouraging, and, if need were, controlling the opinions of the minor deities; on such occasions his words were few, but full of weight and wisdom. He waited now till, after long discussion, the majority decided that, "it would be a very nice match, and suitable everyways" (a feminine voice remarking "What did it matter about fortune? Sir Alan was good enough for a duchess"); then, slowly and solemnly, said the portly Thunderer:

[Greek: ôs ephath', hoi d' ara pantes akên egenonto siôpê
Mython agassamenoi mala gar kraterôs agoreusen.]

"It may be a match, and it mayn't be a match. I've nothing to say against Sir Allan, and I wish him well; but there'll be some curious games up, or I'm mistaken. I doubt my lady ain't altogether pleased about it—she was so uncommon pleasant at dinner!"

According to one proverb, "No man is a hero to his own valet;" another tells us, "Bystanders see most of the game." Combining these two, we may guess how it is that the deepest politicians of private life do not always succeed in blinding the eyes of their own domestics, however great an interest they may have in doing so. Perhaps a rash and quite unfounded contempt for the auricular and mental capacities of a most intelligent class may sometimes help to throw them off their guard; though the proudest lionne of our democratic day would hardly care to emulate the cynicism of that exalted dame (she was nearly allied to the Great Monarch) who, when discovered in her bath receiving her chocolate from the hands of a gigantic lacquey, replied to her friend's remonstrances—"Et tu appelles ça un homme?"

The Squire of Dene was not so clear-sighted as his major-domo: indeed, that pleasant habit of contemplating things in general through roseate medium is apt to lead one into errors with regard to objects distant or near. He thought the aspect of affairs decidedly favourable; so, when they were alone again, he looked across the table at Wyverne with a smile full of hope and intelligence—draining at the same time his first beaker of claret with a gusto not entirely to be ascribed to the flavour of the rare '34.

"I drink to our castle in Spain," he said; "it seems to me the first stone has been laid auspiciously."

The other filled a bumper very slowly and drained it deliberately, before he replied. Surely it was more that curious presentiment of some counterbalancing evil in the dim background, which so often accompanies great and unexpected happiness, than any intuitive knowledge of the real state of things, which prompted the half-sigh—not smothered so soon but that Vavasour's ear caught it 'flying.'

"It is almost too good to be true, Uncle Hubert. I'm modest about my own merits; and I think I know pretty well by this time how much luck I ought to expect. Would it not be wrong to reckon on winning such a prize as that, without some trouble, and toil, and anxiety? I confess I don't like these very 'gay' mornings; the clouds are strangely apt to gather before noon, and one often gets drenched before sunset."

During the short interval that had elapsed since the first confidence was made, the Squire had signed in his own mind a treaty with his nephew, offensive and defensive; he had identified himself so thoroughly with the latter's interests, that it provoked him a good deal now to meet with something like despondency; he had counted on an exhilaration at least equal to his own.

"Your poetical vein fails you, Alan; you are scarcely so happy in your similes as you were three hours ago. That's rather a threadbare one, and certainly not worth of the occasion; it isn't true, either, as you would find if your habits were more matutinal. I don't think you know much about your own merits, or about 'my lady's' intentions; perhaps you do injustice to both. But—simply to gratify you—we will suppose the worst; suppose that she is hostile, and only hiding her game. Well, I believe there is such a thing as paternal authority, though mine has been in abeyance ever since Max was born: I think I should be equal to exercising it if we came to extremities. When all one's other possessions are encumbered, there would be a certain satisfaction in disposing of a daughter. I'm not aware that any one holds a mortgage on Helen."

Now Hubert Vavasour spoke in perfect sincerity and singleness of heart, when he thus purposed to assert a suzerainty quite as unreal as the kingdom of Jerusalem or the bishopric of Westminster. His chances of success in such a reactionary movement would have been about equal to those of a modern French proprietor who, at the marriage of one of his tenants, should attempt to revive those curious seignorial rights, used or abused four centuries ago by Giles de Retz and his compeers. Alan could not but admire the audacity of the resolve; but his sense of the absurd was touched when he reflected on the utter impossibility of its accomplishment. Perhaps this last feeling helped to dispel the gloom which had gathered on his face; at any rate, his smile was gay enough now to satisfy his sanguine confederate.

"I should like to know the man, Uncle Hubert," he said, "who would persist in being suspicious or misanthropical after talking to you for ten minutes. I am not such a natural curiosity. 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof:' that's the only sound and remunerative philosophy, after all. There has been nothing but good in this day; so I don't know what ungracious or ungrateful devil possessed me: but you have fairly exorcised him. Let us do as our fathers did—burn our galleys, advance our gonfalon, and cry—'Dex nous aide!'"

"That's more like the old form," Vavasour replied; "say no more about it now. The claret stands with you; don't linger over it to-night, I fancy we are waited for."

Wyverne's first glance on entering the drawing-room searched for his cousin; he was rather relieved than otherwise at not finding her there; he felt that the difficulties of the next half hour were best encountered alone. Lady Mildred was reclining on her usual sofa; close to it, and just within easy ear-shot of the cushion supporting her head, was placed a very low and luxurious arm-chair. "My lady" was ever considerate as to the personal comfort of her victims, and took especial care that they should not be galled by the ropes that bound them to the stake; acting, I suppose, on the same benevolent principle which prompts the Spaniard to deny nothing to those who must die by the garotte on the morrow.

The proximity was ominous, and far too significant to be unintentional. The instant Alan saw that chair, he guessed for what use it was destined, not without a slight apprehensive thrill. Just so may some forlorn Scottish damsel of the last century, whose flaxen locks snood might never braid again, have shivered in the cold white penance-sheet, recognizing the awful Stool on which she was to "dree her doom." Nevertheless, he accepted the position very gallantly and gracefully, sinking down easily into the causeuse and nestling comfortably into its cushions, without any affectation of eagerness or betrayal of reluctance. As he took up Lady Mildred's little soft hand and kissed it, his natural caressing manner was tempered by a shade of old-fashioned courtesy; and even that calm intrigante for the moment was not exempt from the influence of a dangerous fascination. Do not, however, do her the injustice to suppose that she once relented in her set purpose, or faltered one whit in its execution.

It would savour somewhat of repetition, and simply bore you, if all the conversation that ensued were given in detail. "My lady's" line was perfect frankness and candour. She alluded pleasantly to the great matrimonial fortunes that she had projected for Helen, and confessed—pleasantly, too—her conviction that the alliance now contemplated was perfectly imprudent, and in a worldly point of view altogether undesirable; she dilated rather more at length on the affection for Alan, indulgence to Helen, &c. &c., which induced the parents to overlook all such objections, and to give their conditional consent; but even on this point she was not oratorical or prosy. Nevertheless her hearer was quite aware that there was some more serious obstacle kept in the background; all these preliminary observations were so many shots to try the distance; the battery did not take him by surprise when it opened in earnest.

"Alan, I know it must bore you, now that Helen has come down stairs, to be obliged to listen to Madame Mère; it is very good of you not to show it: be patient a little longer. I must make you look at one side of the question that has escaped you, so far, I think; it is so important to the happiness of both of you that you should see your way clearly. I am not much afraid of your getting into difficulties again, your lesson has been sharp enough to cure you of extravagance; but there are embarrassments worse than any financial ones, which are only tiresome and annoying, after all. My dear nephew—has it occurred to you yet, that in changing your vie de garçon, you will have to economize in more ways than one, and wear some chains, though they may be light and silken?"

"I've hardly had time to realize the position, Aunt Mildred," Wyverne answered, "but I am conscious of a perfect flower-show of good resolutions, budding and blossoming already. While I was dressing, I was considering how I could best get rid of my hunters, and I have almost decided where to place them."

"You are too eager in beginning self-denial," Lady Mildred said; "perhaps it will not be necessary to part with your horses this season. But you must settle your future establishment with Helen and your uncle. I was thinking of some other favourite pursuits of yours—of handsomer and more dangerous creatures than Red Lancer—though I suppose he is a picture of a horse, and it always makes me shiver to see him rear. Yon may be angry with me, and call me prudish or puritanical if you like; but I must say it. Alan—do you know that I consider you the most confirmed and incorrigible flirt of my acquaintance?"

To apply to the speaker either of the two epithets she deprecated would have been simply impossible. Her bright eyes sparkled with a malicious amusement and gay triumph, as she marked the effect of her words in the quaint look of contrition mingled with perplexity which overspread Wyverne's face—usually so imperturbable. For once in his life, he felt fairly at a loss for a reply. Those general accusations are remarkably hard to meet, even when one is conscious of innocence; but woe to the respondent, if the faintest shadow of self-conviction hangs over his guilty head! The adverse advocate sees the weak point in a moment, and bears down on his victim with the full flood of indignant eloquence, exulting in a verdict already secured.

On this occasion, however, Lady Mildred did not seem inclined to press her advantage; she interrupted Alan's attempt at a disclaimer, before his embarrassment could become painful.

"Don't look so dreadfully penitent: you make me laugh when I am quite determined to be grave. I did not mean to impute to you any dark criminality. Up to the present time, perhaps, that general devotion has been rather useful in keeping you out of serious scrapes: you certainly have been singularly fortunate in that way—or wonderfully discreet. Besides, I don't mean to lecture you: it is a peculiarity in Helen's character, not in yours, that makes me give you this warning. I suppose you have guessed that she is capable of strong attachments; but you have no idea how exacting she is of undivided love in return. She has only had friendships (and very few of these) to deal with so far: but I remember her fretting for days, because her favourite governess would not give up corresponding with some school friend whom Helen had never seen, but had magnified into a rival. It is no use disguising the truth from you, when I cannot disguise it from myself, much as I love my pet. You would not like her to be faultless? Helen is not captious or suspicious; but she is absurdly jealous, sometimes. I cannot conceive how she learnt to be so: she certainly did not inherit the weakness from her father or me. I believe she would begin to hate a dog or a horse, if you made it too great a favourite; and words or looks of yours—perhaps quite innocent and meaningless—might make her more miserable than I can bear to think of. Dear Alan, it tires me more to sermonize, than it bores you to be forced to listen; but what would you have? If a mother has any duties at all, it must be one of them to speak when danger threatens her own child and another whom she loves almost as dearly."

A peculiarity of "my lady's" parables was, that not only were they always plausible and probable, but they generally contained an element of truth and a slight foundation of fact: it made the deception more dangerous, because more difficult to detect. Really scientific coiners do not grudge a certain expense of pure silver to mix with the base metal: it adds so much sharpness to the outline and clearness to the ring.

So, though Alan had never till this moment heard of that defect in his fair cousin's character, he was by no means inclined to disbelieve entirely in its existence now; simply because he knew his aunt too well to suppose that she would venture upon an utter fiction which would refute itself in a very short time. Most men would be somewhat disquieted by the revelation of a phase in their fiancée's disposition which is likely to interfere materially with domestic comfort and peace: but it troubled Wyverne wonderfully little. Whatever her mother might say or insinuate, he could not believe that the proud, beautiful eyes would ever condescend to show signs of unworthy or vulgar passions. He knew that Helen was too frank and impetuous to keep a suspicion concealed for half-an-hour; and he felt that he could rely on himself for not giving her serious cause of uneasiness. It was rather a conviction that he was losing ground every moment, slowly but surely, as his adversary's game developed itself, that made his face very grave as he answered, though he was calm and self-possessed again as ever—

"You don't expect me to be so conceited as to allow all you implicate, Aunt Mildred? Still, I fear I cannot deny that I have found many of your sex very charming, and that I have not always refrained from confiding the fact to the parties most interested in hearing it. (I rather pride myself on that circumlocution!) But, you know, I was never bound over to keep the peace till now. I think I can give fair securities, though not very substantial ones. Remember, I pledge all my hopes of happiness—of happiness greater than I ever dreamt would fall in my way. I don't think I should risk them lightly. I cannot tell when I began to love Helen; but I know that for months past the temptation has been growing stronger which vanquished me to-day: for months past it has made me proud to compare her with all the women I have ever admired (you say, Aunt Mildred, their name is legion), and to feel that no one could stand the comparison for an instant. That ought to be a safeguard, surely, against other enchantments? I can hardly fancy Helen playing Zara; yet, if the whim should seize her, I think it would be easy to prove to her that the part did not suit her at all. It is not my way to be prodigal of professions; but I am certain of one thing; there is no imaginable friendship or acquaintance—past, present, or to come—that I would not give up to spare that child ten minutes' unhappiness; and I should not call it a sacrifice. You are right to be distrustful when so much is at stake; but, on my faith and honour, I have no fears."

The clear dark eyes were fastened on Lady Mildred's inscrutable face very earnestly, as if beseeching that at least truth might be answered by truth. The trained glance of that great diplomatist did not care to meet the challenge; it must needs have quailed. I would not affirm that a momentary compunction did not assail her just then, while she did justice, in thought, to the kind, generous nature of the man she had determined to betray. It behoves the historian to be impartial, and not to attribute an ideal perfection even to his pet politician. The Prince of Benevento himself might be pardoned for indulging in a brief self-reproach, after maligning his own daughter and lying to her accepted lover, within the same half-hour. When Lady Mildred spoke again, her voice, always low and musical, was unusually gentle and subdued.

"I am not so unkind or unjust as you seem to think, Alan. I do believe thoroughly in your sincerity now, and I am sure you will try your very utmost at all times to make Helen happy. I don't mean to say that it will be necessary to set a watch on your lips, and measure out the common attentions of civilized life by the phrase: the constraint would be too absurdly evident, if you were to become formal. Nor can I suggest, at this moment, any one acquaintance that it would be better you should sacrifice: your own good sense will tell you when and where to be careful and guarded. But I do wish that both you and Helen should try how far you are suited to each other, before you take the one step in life which cannot be recalled. Remember how very young she is. You cannot call me unreasonable if I ask one year's delay before we fix the day for your marriage?"

It came at last—that cunning thrust under the guard, impossible to evade, difficult to parry, which the fair gladiator had been meditating from the very outset of her graceful sword-play: all the feints of "breaking ground" had no end or object but this. At those last words Wyverne set his lips slightly, and drew himself together with the involuntary movement which is—not shrinking, just as a fencer might do touched sharply in mid chest by his opponent's foil. Twelve months—not a long delay, surely—scarcely more than would be required to complete the settlements, trousseaux, and other preliminaries for some matches that we wot of, especially if a great house is to be swept and garnished, before the bride is brought home. Alan might have thought about some such preparations years ago; now—he only thought that, whatever forces Lady Mildred might have in reserve would all be marshalled in their place before half the probationary year had passed.

But her position was perfectly safe and unassailable. When a prospective mother-in-law consents to ignore a suitor's social and financial disadvantages, he cannot well quarrel with her for endeavouring to make sure that the damsel's affections are not morally misplaced: of course her domestic prospects ought to be bright, in proportion as her worldly ones are gloomy. The aspirant may have a private surmise, amounting almost to a certainty, that he is being unfairly dealt with. He may murmur to himself that, if he had been a marquis or a millionaire, the maternal scruples would have been mute; but it would show sad lack of wisdom to express such feelings aloud. If the case were to come on for trial, no judge or jury in England would give the plaintiff a verdict. He would not only lose his cause, but get "committed for contempt of court," and incur all sorts of vague pains and penalties, besides being held up as a phenomenon of ingratitude, and a warning to his fellows for the remainder of his natural life. Most men who come to grief under such circumstances will find their position disagreeable enough, even without the perpetual punishment of the pillory.

Yes, reason, if not right, was on "my lady's" side; and she was perfectly aware of her advantage; for her eyes met Wyverne's steadily enough now as she waited for his reply.

The latter had reckoned so fully on meeting with opposition somewhere in this quarter, that it is doubtful if he was exactly disappointed at the turn the conversation had lately taken; though perhaps, as a matter of taste, he would have preferred more overt antagonism and obstacles more tangible to grapple with. At any rate, there was not a trace of sullenness or vexation in his manner when he spoke.

"I should have thought it unreasonable if you had made my probation as long as Jacob's, Aunt Mildred; simply because the span of life is greatly contracted since the patriarchal times, and everything ought to go by comparison. It would not so much matter to Helen; for, as you say, she is very young: she will only be in the prime of her beauty when my hair is grey. But I confess, I should like to reap the reward of patience before I pass middle-age. Men seem to appreciate so few things then, that I doubt if one would even enjoy domestic happiness thoroughly. No; I don't think you at all exacting or over-cautious; and I will bide my time with a tranquillity that shall be edifying. I never found a year very long yet, and I shall have so much to do and to think of during the present one that I shall have no time to be discontented."

Lady Mildred smiled on the speaker sweetly and gratefully, but the keen, anxious, business-like look still lingered in her eyes.

"Thank you so very much, dear Alan," she whispered, "you have behaved perfectly throughout, just as I expected you would" (she spoke the truth, there). "You will promise me, then, that the day of your marriage shall not be actually fixed till the year has past? You know your uncle is rather impetuous, and not very prudent; I should not wonder if he were to try to precipitate matters, and that would involve discussions. Now I never could bear discussions, even when my nerves were stronger than they are; I think they grow worse every day. If you promise, I shall have nothing of this sort to fear. You will not refuse me this, because it looks like a selfish request?"

I have the pleasure of knowing very slightly a Companion of the Order of Valour, who carried the colours of his regiment at the Alma—it was his "baptism of fire." At the most critical moment of the day, when the troops were struggling desperately up "the terrible hill side," somewhat disordered by the vineyards and broken ground; when the Guards were reeling and staggering under the deadly hail that beat right in their faces; the man I speak of turned to the comrade nearest to him and remarked:

"Do you suppose they always shoot as fast as this, Charley? I dare say it's the correct thing, though."

They say his manner was as listless and unconcerned as usual, with just a shade of diffidence and doubt, as if he had been consulting a diplomatic friend on some point of etiquette at a foreign court. I have the happiness of knowing very well an officer in the sister service who has received a medal scarcely less glorious, for rescuing a sailor from drowning in the Indian Sea. They had had a continuance of bad weather, and worse was coming up all round; great lead-coloured billows weltered and heaved under the lee—foam-wreaths breaking here and there, to show where the strong ship had cloven a path through the sullen surges; there was the chance, too, of encountering one of two sharks which had been haunting them for days; but I have heard that on Cis Hazelwood's face when he went over the bulwarks, there was the same expression of cheery confidence as it might have worn when he was diving for eggs at The Weirs.

Now it is fair to presume, that both these men were endowed with courage and coolness to an exceptional degree; but I very much doubt if, in perfect exemption from moral and physical fear, and in contempt for danger either in this world or the next (if the said peril stood in her path), Lady Mildred might not have matched the pair. When the Vavasours were travelling in Wales, soon after their marriage, something broke as they were descending a long steep hill, and the horses bolted; it was a very close question between life and death, till they were stopped by a couple of quarrymen just at the spot where the road turned sharp to the left over a high narrow archway; no carriage going that pace could have weathered that corner, and the fall was thirty feet clear. The poor Welshmen certainly earned their rich reward, for they both went down, and were much bruised in the struggle, and one got up with a broken collar-bone. When the horses first broke away, "my lady" deigned to lay aside the book she was reading, but showed no other sign of interest in the proceedings, far less of discomposure. The Squire was once asked "how his wife behaved after it was all over?" (that is generally considered the most trying time). "She looked," was the answer, "precisely as if she had expected the episode all along; as if it had formed part of the programme of our wedding tour that the horses should bolt on that particular hill, and be stopped at that very critical spot by those identical quarrymen. It struck me that she praised and compassionated the poor fellow that was hurt, exactly as one might an acrobat who had met with an accident while performing for our amusement."

You may judge from this fact, whether "my lady's" nerves were as weak and sensitive as she was pleased to represent them. But with all her wile and wariness, she was a thorough woman at heart; and, as such, was not disposed to let a chance slip of turning to account the apparent bodily fragility which dissembled a very good constitution. Seldom, indeed, does maid or matron allow any small capital of the sort to lie long idle or profitless. Throughout all ages, despots have been found, anxious to drape their acts of oppression with a veil of reason and legality just dense enough for decency. In the present case, Lady Mildred brought forward a convenient and colourable pretext for a fresh exaction; she was rather indifferent as to its being received with implicit credit, for she knew that Alan was too kindly and courteous to contradict her.

As it happened, Wyverne was not deceived for a moment; but as the really important points of the hollow treaty were already decided, he did not think it worth while to hesitate over minor details.

"You shall have all you ask without reservation," he said, "and 'thereto I plight my troth.'"

So they locked hands there—faith and falsehood—truth and treachery—the one, harbouring no thought that was not honest and tender; the other, consistent to the last in her dark, pitiless scheming. Yet the woman's fingers were most cordial in their pressure, and they never shrank or trembled.

It is pleasant to read of the retribution that descended on Brian de Bois-Guilbert, or Sir Aldinger; but poetical justice does not always assert itself so conveniently as in the lists at Templestowe. I wonder how often in the ordeal of battle, honour has gone down before dishonour, to the mocking echo of the herald's cry—"God defend the right!"

Lady Mildred lay back on her sofa with a long sigh of weariness which was not altogether feigned.

"I will not keep you another instant," she whispered. "Go to Helen, and be as happy as you like; you have earned that reward."

Miss Vavasour had been sitting all this while close to her father's side. The chair she had chosen was so low that her head could rest against his hand as it lay on the arm of the vast fauteuil. They had been very quiet, those two, while the conference was proceeding, scarcely venturing to glance twice or thrice furtively in the direction of the dread divan; but their whispered confidences were pleasant enough, if one might judge from Helen's beautiful blushes and the Squire's musical laugh breaking in at intervals, discreetly modulated and subdued. Both gazed anxiously in Alan's face as he drew near, trying to augur from its expression how he had sped. It told no tales; for his brow was smooth and his smile serene, as if there were no such things in this world of ours as doubt, or distrust, or despondency. If he could not hope to clear away all troublesome thorns from the path of the fair girl who had promised that day to trust him, he could at least spare her the pains of anticipation; for her sake as well as his own he was determined to make the most of every hour of sunshine. Without going into particulars then, he succeeded in leaving an impression that Lady Mildred had shown herself more favourable to their wishes than could have been hoped for. Helen went to rest on that eventful night, when childhood ended and her womanhood began, in a flutter of happiness which lasted through her dreams.

"While we live let us live." How is this agreeable maxim to be carried out, if we are always looking forward into the Dark? There is little wisdom in the desperate philosophy which teaches men "to eat and drink for to-morrow they die;" but surely there is reason in taking, while we may, such moderate refreshment as may brace us for the perils and labours that the dawning may bring. Do you suppose that Teucer's galleys clove less swiftly through the Egean because their crews had feasted high in Salamis on the eve of exile? I fancy those grim old sea-dogs at their last home revels—cutting deeper into the mighty chines, and dipping their grizzled beards into the black wine with a keener zest, while the cheery voice, clear and sonorous as if its owner had never known defeat or disaster, rings out

——O fortes pejoraque passi
Mecum sæpe viri, nunc vino pellite curas:
Cras ingens iterabimus æquor.

The torches flare and swirl in the wind that is rising gustily; there is a dull sullen booming outside familiar to the wanderers, for they have heard it ere this when every sinew was strained to keep them clear of breakers on their lee; they were met by dark lowering faces when they sailed in through the harbor-mouth; the populace—taught to call them traitors by the savage old childless king—is now raving for their blood. What matters it all? They catch their leader's eye as he stands up in the midst, erect and dauntless, with the great gold crater in his gripe, and they laugh out loud in defiance; remembering storms they have weathered and foes they have tamed, and perils compared to which these are but child's play. Would their prospects have looked better if they had sat down, with folded hands and covered heads, to complain of mortals and immortals, and miserably to make their moan? Truly I think not. Now—when they cast off their moorings to-morrow—in despite of envious Pallas, we need not fear to wish the exiles "good speed."

CHAPTER VI.

GOLDEN DREAMS.

First Love!

Do not they look and sound just as fresh as ever—those two pretty words? And yet, they have been harder worked than the tritest of school-copies, by successive generations of romancists in prose and rhyme, from Anacreon and Sappho down to that more modern and practical enthusiast, who, in a simile that must come home to every maid and matron in Belgravia (about five P.M. daily), exclaims, "A first love is like the first cup of tea—all others like the second." The heresy was worse than Antinomian that would cavil at feelings allowed by common consent to be divinely delicious. Take warning by Tantalus; beware of misbehaviour at the celestial table; when nectar and ambrosia are set before you, accept them gratefully, without discussing too curiously their flavour. Perhaps it is best so; perhaps the children's plan is wisest—"Open your mouth and shut your eyes."

Why is it then that, at this moment, I feel inclined to be hyper critical and disparaging? Truly, there is no accounting for moods, any more than for tastes; the claret last night was undeniable, and the morning weather (for a wonder) is perfect; there is not a shadow of an excuse for evil tempers. Can it be that the pet theme has really been over-rated; and will it turn out that, after all, there's something quite as sweet in life as Love's young dream?

See—we have given the sacerrima verba every chance: they stand in a line by themselves, at the head of the chapter, producing a striking and rather pictorial effect. Pictorial—I wish the word had not been written, for association brings back the feeling with which we have looked on some late acquisitions to our National Gallery, procured at nearly their weight in gold. "A good thing in its way, but—hardly worth the money." It would be very difficult, I suppose, to convince our sisters that it is advantageous for man or woman to go through a certain amount of mild preparatory training, before either is brought out for the last grand match against Time. Shall we suggest to Amoret the bride that Fidelio's affections, since they first gushed out from the remote fountain-head, have rippled and murmured—not unmusically—through a dozen lovelets at least, caressing on the way several fragrant water-lilies and delicate lady-ferns, before they poured a full undivided volume into the one deep channel, through which (let us hope) they will flow on peacefully for evermore? And then, shall we hint that she ought rather to rejoice thereat than chafe or complain? It were boldly—it were rashly done. However respectable our antecedents—if we could bring testimonials to character signed by ten responsible housewives (which I very much doubt if Sir Galahad himself could have obtained)—the lady would infallibly inscribe our name, foremost, on the Black List of those dangerous and detrimental acquaintances who were the bane of the Beloved's life, before she came—another Pucelle—to the rescue; thenceforward we should certainly "have our tea in a mug," whenever these fair hands had to pour it.

Yet, Madonna, if you would deign to look at the subject dispassionately, you could scarcely help perceiving that the very guilelessness and simplicity which make a First Love so charming and romantic, detract somewhat from its actual value. It is a very pleasant and charitable frame of mind, which "hopeth all things and believeth all things;" but it involves a certain deficiency in discrimination and, I think, in appreciative power. The Object may possibly be superlative in beauty, goodness, or talent; but what is our opinion worth, if we have had no practical experience of the other two degrees? Unless the paired doves take flight at once to some uncolonized island in the Pacific,

And there securely build, and there
Securely hatch their young—

each must stand comparison, in aftertime, with other birds, tame and wild, whose plumage glistens with every gorgeous variety of colour, whose notes sink and swell through all the scales of harmony. Then it is the old story over and over again. Madame Ste. Colombe does not care so much for modest merit, and considers meekness rather a tame and insipid virtue, since the keen black eyes of haughty, handsome Count Aquila told her a flattering tale; sober drab and fawn no longer seem a becoming apparel since Prince Percinet (the Duchess's favourite lory) dazzled her with his Court suit of crimson and gold. Her innocent consort never dreams, of course, of repining; but he confesses to an intimate friend that cooing does sometimes sound rather monotonous: he heard a few days ago, for the first time, Lady Philomelle sing. Surely it were better to endure loneliness a little longer—ay, even till "black turns grey"—than to discover that we are unworthily or unsuitably matched, when to change our mate would be a double sin. There are matrimonial mistakes enough, Heaven knows, made as it is; but, if every one were to marry their first love, a decade of Judges more untiring than Sir Cresswell would be insufficient to settle the differences of aspirants to dis-union.

This is the "wrong side of the stuff," of course; it would be easy to quote thousands of opposite instances—of the Anderson type—where no shadow of discontent has clouded a long life of happiness. Still, the danger remains: you can no more ignore it than you can any other disagreeable fact, or public nuisance; but it will probably be lessened if one or both of the contracting parties have had practical experience enough to enable them to know their own minds once for all. The wise old Stagyrite, after discussing different sorts of courage, places high that of [Greek: Empeiria]: shall we not, too, honour and value most the Love which has been matured and educated by a course of preliminary and lighter experiments?

If we have wandered far, through many gardens—finding in each flowers fragrant and beautiful, but never a one worthy to be placed in our breast—do we love her less, when we choose her at last—our own Provence Rose? Was it not well that we should review and admire other fair pictures wrought by the Great Artist, before we bought what we hold to be His masterpiece, at the price of all our life's treasure? Had we not acquired some cunning of the lapidary, by studying the properties of less precious gems, could we value your pure perfections aright, O Margarita, pearl of pearls?

(In spite of that last sentimental sentence, which, I swear, was elaborated solely as a peace-offering to Them, I feel a comfortable conviction of having left the prejudices of every feminine reader in precisely the same state as I found them when we broached the subject.)

If you disagree entirely with these premises, you will hardly allow that Miss Vavasour's frame of mind was either correct or justifiable on this same August morning. It would be difficult to conceive any human being more thoroughly and perfectly happy. Yet it was not the bliss of ignorance, nor even of unconscious innocence. In some things demoiselle was rather advanced for her years: she could form opinions of her own, for instance, and hold to them, pretty decidedly. Some of our maiden-recruits contrive to acquire a tolerable knowledge of their regiment and its proceedings before they actually join: they have probably several friends who have passed their drill; and these are by no means loth to communicate any intelligence likely to instruct or amuse the aspirant. So, though Helen had not yet been presented, few of the historiettes of the last two seasons (fitted for ears polite and virginal) had failed to reach her, directly or circuitously. In more than one of these Alan Wyverne's name had figured prominently. Lady Mildred had not spoken unfairly or untruly when she characterized her daughter's temperament as somewhat jealous and exacting; but the jealousy was not retrospective. Helen decided, very wisely, to bury the past, with its possible peccadilloes, and to accept her present position frankly, without one arrière pensée.

It seemed rather a pleasant position, too, as she sate in the deep, cushioned recess of one of the oriel windows of the picture-gallery; the play of light through the painted panes falling fitfully on the grand masses of her glossy hair, and lending a brighter flush to her fair cheek than even happiness could give it; her clasped hands resting on her cousin's shoulder, as he half reclined on the black-bear skin at her feet—(Alan was decidedly Oriental in his choice of postures)—her head bent forward and low, so as to lose not one of many murmured words. Would it have been better if a suspicion had crossed her mind, just then, that the voice she listened to was indebted possibly to long practice in similar scenes for the dangerous melody of its monotone? I think not; there is no falser principle than judging from results.

The line of demarcation between the cousin and the lover is proverbially faint, so much so, indeed, as sometimes to become quite imaginary. There is one advantage about this, certainly; the transition into the affianced state is not so abrupt as to make either of the parties feel awkward or shy; while on the other hand, their transports are probably more moderate and rational. In the present case there was not much danger of extravagance in this way. Wyverne, as a rule, was the personification of tranquillity, and Helen—though impulsive and quick tempered enough herself—held demonstrative damsels in very great scorn. Still it would be difficult, if not impossible, to transcribe their conversation that morning, up to a certain point.

Fortunately, one is not expected to do anything of the kind. Where the story is meant to be melo-dramatic, it is necessary sometimes to give a good strong scene of passion and temptation, in which either guilt or innocence triumphs tremendously; but the male writers of the present day seem pretty well agreed that it is best to leave domestic love passages (where everything is said and done under parental sanction) quite alone. An odd authoress or so does now and then attempt to give us a sort of expurgated edition, which is about as much like the reality as the midnight sun glimmering faintly over the North Cape resembles that which blazes over Sahara. You will observe, that even those dauntless and unscrupulous French romanciers of the physiological school rather shirk these scenes.

Perhaps occasionally a curious melancholy feeling mingles with this our masculine reserve. It may be that Mnemosynè (she can be stern enough, at times, you know) stands on the threshold of the half-open door and warns us back with uplifted finger; it may be that of all in the book, we should have to draw hardest on our imagination for this particular chapter. In either case it would not be a very attractive one to have to begin. There is something dreary in sitting down to an elaborate description of luxuries or riches that have passed away from us long ago, or which have hitherto eluded us altogether. I am not inclined to laugh much at Mr. Scrivener's enthusiasm (he writes the "high-life" tales for the Dustpan and other penny periodicals) when he dilates on the splendours of Lady Hermegild's boudoir, hung with mauve velvet and silver, or on the glories of the Duke of Devorgoil's banquet, where everything is served on the purest gold profusely embossed with diamonds. He lingers over the details with an extraordinary gusto, and goes into minutiæ which (if they were not grossly incorrect) would imply an intimate personal acquaintance with the scenes he describes. Now, Mr. Scrivener's father is a very meritorious grocer, in the Tottenham Court-road, and the most aristocratic assembly Jack ever attended was a party at Hackney, where (unfortunately for his prudence) he met his pretty little wife. But I know that he composes these gorgeous chapters in a close stifling room, not much bigger or better furnished than that of Hogarth's poet, with the same wail of sickly children in his ears (the walls are like paper in those suburban lodgings) and with the notice lying on the mantelpiece that the acceptance comes due on Monday, which he must mortgage his brains to meet. I think the incongruity is too sad to be absurd.

Do you see the parallel? Velvet and gold are comfortable and costly, but they are not the most precious trifles that a man may lose or win; bills are very stubborn inconveniences but there are debts yet harder to meet, on which we pay heavier usury.

Whether that pair in the picture-gallery made themselves in anywise ridiculous, either by word or deed, in the course of the morning, is a question between themselves and their consciences; for the only witnesses were the members of their ancestry on the walls, who looked down on the proceedings with the polite indifference of well-bred people who have seen a good deal of that sort of business in their time, and have found out that "this, too, is vanity." At the moment when we intrude on the tête-à-tête, its component parts were in a very decorous and rational condition; in fact they had resolved themselves into a sort of committee of supply, and were discussing the financial affairs of the future. It was delightful to observe the perfect gravity and good faith with which they approached the subject; though it would have been difficult to decide which of the two was most hopelessly and absolutely ignorant of all matters pertaining to domestic economy. Wyverne was especially great on the point of retrenchment, as far as his own personal expenses were concerned.

"You have no idea how much I shall save by giving up hunting," he was saying; "I don't care nearly so much for it as I did, so it is hardly a sacrifice" (he really thought he was speaking the truth); "my present stud is too small to be of much use, and I hate being mounted. So that's settled. I shall have no difficulty in getting rid of my horses; Vesey will give me four hundred for Red Lancer any day; and Cuirassier ought to fetch three. Only fancy, Helen, what one will be able to do with seven hundred sovereigns! You must have a brougham to yourself, even if we stay at the great house in town, and it will be useful in the country, for I suppose people will want us to dine with them sometimes. We must have our saddle-horses of course—Maimouna carries you beautifully already—I shall never let you give up riding, if only for the memory of yesterday afternoon; and that will be all, besides the ponies that Uncle Hubert gave you on your last birthday."

"But, dear Alan," his cousin objected, "it seems to me, all those horses will cost more to keep than your hunters do now; for, you know, you always stay somewhere throughout the season, where they get board and lodging."

"Don't entangle yourself in calculations, child," Wyverne answered; "you haven't an idea how expensive hunting from other people's houses is; sending on, costs a fortune. I should like you to see my accounts for last season" (he said this with intense gravity, just as if he had kept them regularly); "I am certain I shall save two hundred a year at the lowest computation. Yes, we can do it easily. I saw Harry Conway the other day (he married that pretty Kate Carlyon two years ago); he began telling me of his rectory in Herefordshire, what a lovely garden his wife had, and how all the country admired the Welsh ponies she drove. Now, I know their income does not touch six hundred pounds. We can double that, at all events, O cousin, cautious beyond your years!"

The part of Dame Prudence was in reality so entirely foreign to Miss Vavasour's nature and habits, that it amused her very much to play it, so she still tried to look solemn, but the laugh would not be dissembled in her eyes.

"An Abbey is a more expensive residence than a rectory, M. le Financier, even if the Lady Abbess should not be enthusiastic about flower-gardens. Have you formed any plans as to our life in the North? I mean to make Mrs. Grant teach me housekeeping; and I shall be so severe about the weekly bills! I can fancy the butchers and bakers trembling when they bring up their little red books to be settled."

"Certainly, il faut vivre; I quite admit the necessity of that. I have no doubt we shall do wonderfully well. I shall slay a good number of creatures, finned, furred, and feathered, and one does not get tired of game easily. We must not have any one to stay with us, except in the shooting-season; though I believe the chief cost of guests is the claret they drink; fortunately there is a Red Sea of that in the cellars. And now, my Helen, prepare to open your great eyes very extensively; I mean to annihilate your scruples with my last idea in economy. When the present stock is exhausted (it's not large) the supply of champagne at the Abbey will be cut off until I come into another inheritance."

He enunciated the words rather sententiously and solemnly, evidently feeling the confidence and self-satisfaction that might be pardonable in a Chancellor of the Exchequer who has thought of a new and productive tax that cannot possibly hurt or offend anybody, or in a calculator who has elaborated a scheme for materially reducing the national debt. This time Miss Vavasour's musical laugh was not repressed.

"Don't go any further, Alan; Prudence owns herself vanquished by that last tremendous retrenchment. I begin to think we shall manage perfectly; perhaps there is no danger of absolute penury. Whenever I find the larder is empty, and that there are no means of filling it, I shall bring in the Spur in the Dish with my own hands; you were born near enough the Border to know, then, that you and your lances must go out on the foray."

"That's right," Wyverne said; "they say nothing stimulates one to exertion like appreciation, and I've got an exertion before me this morning, in the shape of letter-writing, that I don't much fancy. It's a question of Bernard Haldane. (I can never call him and your father 'uncle' in the same breath, but he did marry my aunt, you know.) He must be absurdly rich by this time; and when I did not in the least want it, I believe I was to have been his heir. So I might still have been, they tell me, if I had been utterly and irretrievably ruined, and had come to him in the form of the pauper. But he never forgave the poor little salvage out of the wreck which made me independent of his bounty. Very odd old man, that, and intensely disagreeable, I own; but still I wish, now, you two had met. I do believe you would have melted the misanthrope, and a very trifling thaw in that quarter would be of material advantage to us just at this juncture."

Miss Vavasour's haughty lip curled perceptibly; her face did not care to conceal some aversion and disdain.

"I should certainly spare myself the annoyance of writing that letter, if I were you, Alan. I don't think mendicancy would suit you at any time, and it is rather early to begin the trade. I should hardly succeed better, even if I had the chance of trying. If I have any fascinations, I think I will keep them for some other subjects than odd, disagreeable, old men."

Wyverne was not in the least inclined to chafe at her tone; in truth, admiration left no place for anger; it would have been hard to quarrel with her, she looked so handsome in her scorn. He knew, too, that her pride was only half selfish, and that she would have dreaded humiliation for his sake, more than for her own. So he smiled quite pleasantly, as he answered,

"O Queen, let your imperial mind be set at rest. Your bond-servant had no intention of making obeisance to any other tyrant. Do I look like one of 'the petitioners who will ever pray?' (He certainly did not at that moment.) I only meant to convey a piece of simple intelligence, which perhaps Mr. Haldane is entitled to in courtesy, and leave him to think and act as he would. But I told you I disliked doing even this; and I hesitated till I consulted your mother on the point after breakfast. She decided at once that I ought to do so. I own her look, as she said it, would have puzzled me, if I had not given up long ago trying to decipher 'my lady's' countenance. I imagine she expects not much will result. I'm sure I don't. But if Plutus were only to part with a poor thousand, it would help me to furnish two or three rooms prettily at the Abbey for you and your friends. My pet, you will look like Nell in the Curiosity Shop, in that dismal grey house, with its faded old-fashioned furniture."

Helen was accusing herself already of having been unjust and unkind. Her conscience smote her yet more keenly as her cousin spoke these last words. When she laid her hand on his mouth to stop him, it was half meant as a caress. Wyverne pressed the lithe white fingers against his lips, and made them linger there not unwillingly; but his mood, usually so equable and gay, had become strangely variable since yesterday. The dark hour came on suddenly now. His face seemed to gather anything but light from the bright loveliness on which he gazed. Helen's hand was dropped almost abruptly, and he went on muttering low to himself, as if unconscious of her presence.

"Esau was wiser than I. He sold his birthright at all events: I gave mine away. God help us! Instead of these miserable shifts and subterfuges, I ought at this moment to be talking about the fresh setting of my mother's diamonds. I wonder who wore them at the last drawing-room! I took my own ruin too lightly. I suppose that is why it stands out so black and dismal, when I have brought another down to share it. Ah me! If the struggle and the remorse begin so early, what will the end be?"

She broke in quickly, her fingers trembling as she twined them in his, and her cheeks glowing with her passionate earnestness.

"Alan, how can you speak so? Do you want to make me feel more selfish than I do already? I might have known what it would come to when you proposed selling Red Lancer, and I ought to have resisted then. You would sacrifice all your own pursuits and pleasures to me and my fancies, and you take nothing in return except"—(the word-music could scarcely be heard here)—"except—my my dear love. See, I do not fear or doubt for one instant. Am I to teach you courage—you that I have always heard quoted for daring since I was a little child?"

We have read in the Magic Ring how the draught mixed by Gerda, the sorceress, for Arinbiorn, before the great sea-king went forth to fight, doubled the strength of his arm and the sway of his battle-axe. Glamour more potent yet may be drawn from brilliant dark eyes, whose imperial light is softened, not subdued, by tears that are destined never to fall. A tamer spirit than Wyverne's would have leapt up, ready for any contest, under the influence of Helen's glance, when she finished speaking. Very scanty are the relics that abide with us of the old-time chivalry; but our dames and demoiselles still play their part as gallantly and gracefully as ever. Even "Sir Guy of the Dolorous Blast," when bound to the battle, will scarcely lack a maiden to brace on his armour.

Alan rose to his feet and leant over his cousin where she sate. He forgot to be ashamed of his own weakness; he felt so proud of his beautiful prize, as he wound his arm round her delicate waist and drew her close to his side, till the little head nestled on his shoulder and his lips touched her ear as they whispered,

"My own brave darling! you shall never have to revive me again. The dead past may bury its dead; my last moan is made; henceforward will we not hope, even against hope."

In spite of his newly-born confidence, he scarcely repressed a start and a shiver, as, looking up during the happy silence that ensued, he seemed to be answered by the earnest melancholy eyes of the last Baron Vavasour.

There are certain pictures, you know, whose gaze always follows you, however often you may change your position. This portrait was one of such. It ought to have been excepted from the other ancestors, when we spoke of the unconcern with which they regarded the proceedings of their descendants. It was a very remarkable face, as I have said before, and by far the most peculiar feature in it were those same eyes. Notwithstanding their soft beauty, there was something dark and dangerous about them, as if the devil that lurked in their languid depths would look out sometimes. They were just the eyes from which an Italian would dread the jetta-tura, seeming to threaten not only evil to others, but misfortune to their owner. In Fulke Vavasour's life certainly both promises were amply fulfilled. If those scornful lips could have spoken now, one might have guessed at the import of the words.

"No change since my time. Those old commonplaces about faith and hope and love are not worn out yet; but it amuses me to hear them again now and then—not too often. I could repeat them glibly enough myself once, and perhaps I believed in them a little. I am wiser now, and so will you be, beau cousin, before you have done. I had my romance, of course. You know how that was cut short one cold morning on Tower-hill; but you don't know where yours will end."

Some ideas like these shot across Wyverne's mind, but he had no time to give them form or distinctness, even if he had wished to indulge in such absurdity, for one of the doors of the gallery opened just then, and though the drawing aside of the heavy portière gave them a moment's grace, the cousins had scarcely time to resume an erect and decorous posture before their tête-à-tête was ended.

CHAPTER VII.

MATED, NOT MATCHED.

The new-comer was an elderly man, in a clerical dress. His figure, originally massive and powerful, had thickened and filled out of late years till little of fair proportion or activity remained. In his walk and general bearing there was the same lassitude and want of energy which spoilt his face. The features could never have been regularly handsome; they were too weakly moulded for any style of beauty; but their natural expression was evidently meant to be kindly and genial. This, too, had changed. There was a nervous, worried look about him, as of a man exposed to many vexations and annoyances. It was not grave enough to suggest any great sorrow. Geoffry Knowles's story is very soon told. He was three or four years the Squire's senior; but they had been great friends at college. Few of their old set were left when Geoffry went up to keep his "master's term;" so, unluckily, he was a good deal thrown on his own resources. His evil genius lured him one day to a certain water-party, where he met Laura Harding, the handsome, flashy daughter of an Oxford attorney in large and very sharp practice, who speedily entangled him irretrievably. If Hubert Vavasour had been in the way, it might have been prevented. His thoroughbred instincts would have revolted from the intense vulgarity of the whole family, and the great influence he possessed over his friend's facile mind would all have been exerted to free the latter from a connexion which could only prove disastrous and unhappy. Geoffry Knowles himself, the most indolent and unobservant of men, saw from the first that the fair Laura's entourage was most objectionable; and certain incongruities (to use a mild term) in the lady's own demeanour and dialect struck him now and then painfully, as they would have done any other man well-bred and well-born. But, though conscious of going down hill, he was too idle to try to struggle back again; and when the moment for the final plunge came, he took it resignedly, if not contentedly, expecting no countenance from any of his friends, as he had not sought their counsel. Perhaps, after all, retractation would have been worse than vain. The wily lawyer might have said with the Sultan,

Dwells in my court-yard a falcon unhooded,
And what he once clutches he never lets go.

Though Knowles was of an impoverished family and rather an extravagant turn, Mr. Harding knew he had powerful friends, first and foremost of whom was the Squire of Dene; so far he judged rightly. Hubert Vavasour not only disliked "hitting a man when he was down," but never would let him lie there without trying to help him up. So, in spite of the connexion which he thoroughly disapproved, as soon as the rectory of Dene fell vacant, he did not hesitate to offer it to his ancient comrade: it was one of those great family livings that are almost as valuable as a fat priory or abbey might have been; and thenceforth its rector wanted no comforts that affluence could supply. When this event occurred the Squire had been married about three years: he took the step without consulting his wife, or in all probability Lady Mildred would have interfered to some purpose. It was part of her creed never to waste either lamentations or reproaches on what was irrevocable; so she accepted the fact quite composedly, determining to judge for herself as to the feasibility of associating with the new-comer, and to act accordingly.

Neither the Squire's nor the rector's wife ever forgot the first evening they met. Truth to say, "my lady" had prepared herself for a certain amount of vulgarity; but the reality so far transcended her expectations, that the shock was actually too much for her. She could not repress a slight shiver and shrinking sometimes, as Mrs. Knowles's shrill, highly-pitched voice rattled in her ears, and her trained features did not always conceal wonder and aversion at certain words and gestures that grated horribly on her delicate sensibilities. The other's sharp eyes detected every one of these unflattering signs, and she never forgot them: though long years had passed and a reckoning-day had never come, the debt still remained, written out as legibly in her memory as Foscaro's in Loredano's tablets. That evening, when the visitors had taken their departure, the fair hostess leaned back wearily on her sofa and beckoned her husband to her side. When he came she laid her hand on his arm and looked up into his eyes rather plaintively, but not in the least reproachfully.

"Dear Hubert!" she said, "I fancy Mr. Knowles very much, and I hope he will come here whenever he likes. He may bring his wife four times a year (when you have some of those constituency dinners, you know); but, at any other time or place, I absolutely decline to entertain that fearful woman again!"

There was not a shade of anger, or even disdain, on the placid face, but he must have been a bolder man than Vavasour who would have argued the point with her then. Hubert knew that the fiat just issued by those beautiful lips, ever so little set, was irrevocable.

"She is an awful infliction!" he assented, gravely; "I can't call you unjust, dear Mildred. Indeed, I almost regret having brought her so near you. I must manage it with Geoffry as best I can; I should not like to lose his society. Poor fellow! I was very wroth when I first heard of his derogation—but I can do nothing but pity him now. If she affected us so disagreeably this evening, think what it must be to have to live with her all the year round! It is no use saying, 'He's used to it.' There are some nuisances one never gets indifferent to."

Lady Mildred shrugged her round white shoulders slightly, as though to intimate that Mr. Knowles's domestic Nemesis was essentially his concern; and so the matter ended.

It was not long before that worried, nervous expression, to which I have alluded, became the habitual one of poor Geoffry's face. He never spoke of his troubles, even to Hubert Vavasour; but they must have been heavy, and almost incessant. His wife had captured him simply as a measure of expediency: she would have married him just as readily if he had been elderly and repulsive when she first saw him; she very soon got tired of keeping up affectionate appearances; indeed, that farce scarcely outlasted the honeymoon. The last phantasm of romance had ceased to haunt the dreary fireside, years and years ago. Laura's sharp tongue and acid face were enough to scare away a legion of such sensitive elves. As soon as she found that their income was far more than sufficient for their wants she took severely to parsimony, and "screwed" to an extent scarcely credible. There never breathed a more liberal and openhanded man than Geoffry Knowles—it must have been a poor satisfaction to him to know that about thirty pounds per annum were saved by economy in beer alone, and that his servants'-hall was a byword throughout the county. The wives of the squirearchy had been very kind and civil to her at first, and were not all inclined to follow the lead of the grande dame at Dene; but they couldn't stand her long, and one by one they fell off to a ceremonious distance, doing out their visits and invitations by measure and rule. This did not improve the lady's temper, which was exacting and suspicious to a degree: she never would allow that she ever lost a friend or failed to make one by her own fault; though she had a pleasant habit of abusing people savagely to their nearest neighbours, so that it was about ten to one that every syllable came round to them. They had one child—a son—who might have been some comfort to the Rector if his mother would have let him alone: but she asserted her exclusive right to the child even before he was christened, insisting on calling him by her own family's name—"Harding"—(some one said, "it was to commemorate an incomplete victory over the aspirates"); and maintained her ascendency over his mind by the simple process of abusing her husband to and before the boy, as soon as he was old enough to understand anything; it is needless to say there was always more distrust than sympathy between father and son.

So, you see, Geoffry Knowles had a good deal to fight against, and very little to fall back upon. His one consolation was, his neighbourhood to Dene: he clung fast to this, and would not let it go, in spite of incessant sarcasms levelled at his meanness of spirit for "always hanging about a house where his wife was not thought good enough to be invited:"—(she never missed one of those quarterly dinners, though). It was inexpressibly refreshing to get out of hearing of the shrill dissonant voice—ever querulous when not wrathful, and to share

The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies,

which one could always count on finding at Dene when its mistress or her daughters were to the fore. Those visits had the same effect on the unlucky rector, in calming and bracing his nerves, as change of air will work on an invalid who moves up from the close dank valley to the fresh mountain-side, where the breeze sweeps straight from the sea over crag, and heather, and tarn. Lady Mildred liked him—perhaps pitied him a little—in her own cool way, and the Squire was always glad to see him; so he came and went pretty much as he chose, till it would have been hard to say to which family he really most belonged. Helen was very fond of him; it would have been strange had it been otherwise, for he had petted her ever since he held her in his arms at the font, and, indeed, had lavished on her all the father-love of a kindly nature, which he was debarred from giving to his own child. As her loveliness ripened from bud to blossom under their eyes, no one could have said which was the proudest of their darling—the Rector or the Squire.

It rather spoils the romance of the thing—but, truth to say, there were other and much more material links in the chain that bound Geoffry Knowles so closely to Dene. He had always been of a convivial turn, and, from youth upwards, not averse or indifferent to the enjoyment of old wine and fat venison: of late years he had become ultra-canonical in his devotion to good cheer. I do not mean to imply that he drank hard or carried gourmandise to excess; but certainly not one of Vavasour's guests, whose name was legion, savoured more keenly the precious vintages that never ceased to flow from his cellars, or the master-strokes of the great artist who deigned to superintend the preparation of his banquets. Was it a despicable weakness? At all events, it was not an uncommon one. The world has not grown weary of trying that somewhat sensual anodyne, since Ulysses and his comrades revelled on the island-shore till the going down of the sun—

[Greek: dainymenoi krea t' aspeta kai methy hêdy]

a few hours after he crept out of the Cyclops' cave, leaving the bones of six of his best and bravest behind; many bond-slaves since Sindbad, as the jocund juice rose to their brain, have forgotten for awhile that they carried a burden more hideous and heavy than the horrible Old Man of the Sea.

I have lingered much longer than I intended over the antecedents of the Rector; but as one or two members of his family play rather an important part in the story afterwards, there is some excuse for the interruption.

When Mr. Knowles entered the picture-gallery, he was evidently unaware that it held other occupants; he had advanced half way up its length, before Miss Vavasour's gay dress, looking brighter in the strong sunlight, caught his eye; even then he had to resort to his glasses before he could make out who sat in the deep embrasure.

"This is a new whim, Helen," he said, as he turned towards them; "I never found you here in the morning before. Can you tell me where the Squire is? I want—"

He stopped abruptly, for he was near enough now for the fair face to tell its tale, and, short-sighted as he was, the rector saw the state of things instantly. A few steps—very different from his usual slow, deliberate pace—brought him into the oriel; he stooped and kissed Helen on her forehead, and then griped Wyverne's hand hard, his lips moved twice before he could say, unsteadily and huskily, "I am so very, very glad!"

It was a simple and hearty congratulation enough, but it was the first that the fair fiancée had had to encounter, and it threw her into considerable confusion, coming thus brusquely. To speak the truth, she "arose and fled away swiftly on her feet," covering her retreat with some indistinct murmur about going to find the Squire, and left her ally to bear the brunt of the battle alone. The Rector was not in the least vexed at her flight; he knew his pet too well to think that she could be ungracious; he only looked after her with a smile of pride and fondness as she glided away and disappeared through the curtained door, and then turned again to Alan.

"I have always dreamt of this," he said; "but so few of my good dreams come true that I scarcely hoped there would be an exception here. I am certain you will take all care of her; and how happy she will make you! And how long has this been going on? You have kept your secret well, I own, but I am so blind that it is very easy to keep me in the dark."

There was a faint accent of melancholy, and a half reproach in the last few words, which did not escape Wyverne's quick ear.

"My dear Rector, don't be unjust. What do you mean by suspecting us of keeping secrets from you? You won't give one time to tell you. We were all perfectly sober and sane till yesterday afternoon, when I lost my head riding in the Home Wood; and everybody has been following my lead ever since, for I ought to be crushed on the spot instead of encouraged. You see I'm like other maniacs; they always know their companions are mad, and tell you so—don't they?"

"Imprudent, perhaps, but not insane," the other said, heartily; "and is 'my lady' as bad as the rest of you?"

"Well, not exactly; for, though she refused nothing, she was wise enough to stipulate that the time of our marriage should not be fixed until a year had passed. I believe Aunt Mildred likes me, but I don't think her partiality quite blinds her to my disadvantages."

It would have been hard to decide from Wyverne's face, whether he spoke in earnest or irony; but there was no mistaking the expression of the Rector's; disappointment was written there very legibly.

"You could hardly expect unreserved consent there," he said; "but it is a long delay before anything is actually fixed—too long. Alan, trust me. You don't mind my speaking frankly? Helen comes out next season, you know; and even if your engagement is announced, nothing will prevent half the 'eligibles' in London going wild about her. It will be fearfully tantalizing to 'my lady's' ambition, and I doubt if her good faith will last out the year. If that once fails, you will have a hard battle to fight and a dangerous one; none can say what a day may bring forth, and few of Lady Mildred's are wasted when she has determined to carry anything through. Surely you tried to shorten the probation-time?"

Wyverne bit his lip, frowning slightly.

"My triumph is great, I own, but really I don't require to be reminded that I am mortal. Of course there are risks and perils without end, but I have counted them already, Rector; don't trouble yourself to go through the list again. No, I did not remonstrate or resist, simply because I think it wiser to husband one's strength than to waste it. I might say to you as Oliver said to Sir Henry Lee—'Wearest thou so white a beard, and knowest thou not that to refuse surrendering an indefensible post, by the martial law deserves hanging?' My position at the moment was not quite so strong, numerically, as the Knight of Ditchley's, for he had two 'weak women' in his garrison, and, I fancy, I had only one brave girl. We can count on the Squire's good will to any extent, but he would be the merest reed to lean upon if matters went wrong. It is much the best plan to trust till you are forced to distrust; for it saves trouble, and comes to about the same thing in the end; pondering over your moves don't help you much when your adversary could give you a bishop or a castle. So for the present I believe in Aunt Mildred coûte qui coûte. You are right though—there will be a fair crop of rivals next spring; but I am vain enough to think that, with such a long start, I may hold my own past the post."

Alan threw back his head rather haughtily, as he spoke these last words, and once again encountered the eyes of Fulke Vavasour. He turned quickly to his companion, before the latter could reply.

"An ominous neighbourhood to make love in, is it not? especially considering the resemblance. You have remarked it?"

Geoffry Knowles started visibly, and his countenance fell more than it had yet done.

"I wish you had not asked me. Yes, I have seen it coming out stronger every month for the last year; it was never there before. I have always avoided looking at that picture since I was forced to confess that the family likeness to Helen is far stronger than in her own brother's portrait that hangs there. If the Squire had only some excuse for putting it away! Such coincidences are common enough, of course, but I wish to God the features of the worst of her race had not been reproduced in our darling."

"Not the worst, I think," Wyverne answered, decidedly, "though he was wild and reckless enough in all conscience. It's an odd thing to say, but I've liked him better since I heard how and why he sold himself to Satan. I dare say you don't know that version of the story. Percie Ferrars, who is always hunting out strange family legends, told it me the other day. He found it in some book relating to the black art, written about fifty years after the Baron's death. It seems that he had always been meddling with magic, but he never actually came to terms with the fiend till the night of his arrest. He signed and sealed the contract within an hour after he entered his cell, on the condition that certain papers then at the Dene should be in his hands before the dawn; so he saved a woman's honour from being dragged through the mire of a public trial, and perhaps a delicate neck from the scaffold. This is how the horseman came along at midnight, bearing the Baron's signet-ring, when the arrest was not two hours old; and this is why the pursuivant, who started before the prisoner was in the Tower, and never drew bridle on the way except to change his horses, found nothing but empty drawers and rifled caskets, with a mark here and there, they say, as if hot coals had been dropped on them. The author brings the case forward in a very matter-of-fact way, to show for what a miserably small consideration men will sometimes barter their souls, for he observes that Vavasour could not even obtain for himself safety of life or limb. Perhaps he did not try; he came of the wrong sort to stand chaffering over a bargain when he was in no position to make terms. I don't mean to deny that Fulke was very guilty; I don't mean to assert that a man has any right to sell his soul at all; but I am not prepared to admit the absurd smallness of the value received. The Baron himself, it appears, revealed the infernal contract to one man, his cousin and dearest friend. When the confidant, rather horror-stricken, asked 'if he did not repent?' he only answered—'What is done is well done'—and thenceforward would answer no question, declining to the last the consolations of religion or the visits of a priest. But every one knows, that at his trial and on Tower-hill he bore himself as coolly and bravely as if he had been a martyred bishop. Let him rest in peace if he may! If he erred, he suffered. For the sake of that last wild deed, unselfish at least, I will cast no stone on his grave."

His quiet features lighted up, and his eyes gleamed, just as they would do if he were reading some grand passage in prose or rhyme that chanced to move him strongly. No enthusiasm answered him from the other's face. The Rector evidently could not sympathize.

"It's a dark story," he said, "whichever way you look at it, and your version does not make me dislike that picture the less. But I'm not a fair judge. If I ever had any romance, it has been knocked out of me years ago. I won't argue the point. I'm only sorry that our talk has got into such a melancholy groove. It is my fault entirely. First I spoil your téte-à-téte by blundering in here, where I had no earthly business, and then I spoil your anticipations with my stupid doubts and forebodings. Just like me, isn't it?"

Wyverne's gay laugh broke in before the Rector's penitence could go further.

"Not at all like you," he answered cheerily; "and don't flatter yourself that either prophecy or warning will have the slightest effect. Ecclesiastes himself would fail if he tried to preach prudence to us just now. I told you we had all gone out of our sober minds up here. For my part I don't care how long the Carnival lasts. We must keep the feasts in their order, of course; but, by St. Benedict, we will not anticipate Lent by an hour."

Geoffry Knowles looked wistfully into the speaker's frank, fearless eyes, till his own brow began to clear, and a hearty, genuine admiration shone out in his face.

"I do envy that hopeful geniality of yours, more than I can say, Alan. I have a dim recollection of having been able to 'take things easy,' once upon a time; but the talent slipped away from me, somehow, just when it would have served me best. It was acquired, not natural, with me, I suppose. I doubt if I could translate without blundering, now—Dum spiro, spero. I am glad, after all, that I caught you first, and got rid of my 'blue' fit before I saw the Squire. He would not have taken it so well, perhaps, as you have done."

"I don't know about that," Alan said; "Uncle Hubert is pretty confident, and you would most likely have been carried away helplessly by the stream; he put me to shame last night, I can tell you. You'll find him in his room by this time; and I can't stay here any longer. I've letters to write, and I mean to have Helen in the saddle directly after luncheon. I must make the best use of my chances now, for, unless the gods would

Annihilate both Time and Space
To make two lovers happy,

(as the man in the play wanted them to do), and cut out the shooting season from the calendar, there would be no chance of keeping Dene clear of guests. They will be coming by troops in less than a fortnight. There is no such thing as a comfortable causerie, with keen eyes and quick ears all around you. Ay de mi! one will have to intrigue for interviews as if we were in Seville. I shouldn't wonder if we were driven to act the garden-scene in the Barbière some night. Even if I wanted to monopolize Helen, then (which I don't, for it's the worst possible taste), I know 'my lady' would not stand it. Well, thank you for all you have said—yes, all. I shall see you at luncheon?"

From the Squire's radiant face, when he came in with the Rector, it might be presumed that the latter comported himself during their interview entirely to his friend's satisfaction.

It was no vain boast of Wyverne's when he said that neither omen nor foreboding would affect his spirits materially that afternoon. Few people ever enjoyed a ride more thoroughly than the cousins did their very protracted one. They would not have made a bad picture, if any one could have sketched them during its slow progress. Alan on the Erl-King, a magnificent brown hunter of Vavasour's; Helen on the grey Arab, Maimouna, whom she mounted that day for the fourth time. The one so erect and knightly in his bearing; the other so admirably lithe and graceful—both so palpably at home in the saddle; even as they lounged carelessly along through the broad green glades, apparently lost to everything but their own low, earnest converse, at the first glance one could have recognised the seat and hand of the artist.

If one must be locomotive, when alone with the ladye of our love (not a desirable necessity, some will say), I doubt if we can be better than on horseback. A low pony-carriage, with a very steady animal in the shafts, has its advantages; but I never yet saw the man who could accommodate himself and his limbs to one of these vehicles without looking absurdly out of his place; his bulk seems to increase by some extraordinary process as soon as he has taken his seat, till ten stone loom as large as fourteen would do under ordinary circumstances. The incongruity cannot always escape one's fair companion, and, if her sense of the ridiculous is once moved, our romance is ruined for the day: perhaps the best plan, on turning into a conveniently secluded road (always supposing that "moving on" is obligatory), would be, to get out and walk by her side, leaving the dame or demoiselle unrestricted scope for the expansion of her feelings and—her drapery. On the whole, I think one is most at ease en chevauchant. But then both steeds must be of a pleasant and sociable disposition—not pulling and tearing at the reins, till they work themselves and their riders into a white heat, whenever a level length of greensward tempts one irresistibly to a stretching gallop; nor starting perversely aside at the very moment when, in the earnestness of discourse, your hand rests unconsciously (?) on your companion's pommel; but doing their five miles an hour steadily, with the long, even, springy gait that so few half-breeds ever attain to,—alive, in fact, to the delicacy of the position and to their own responsibilities as sensible beasts of burden. Maimouna was a model in this respect: she could be fiery enough at times, and dangerous if her temper was roused; but she comported herself that afternoon with a courtesy and consideration for others worthy of the royal race from which she sprang—

Who could trace her lineage higher
Than the Bourbon can aspire,
Than the Ghibelline or Guelf,
Or O'Brien's blood itself.

It was pretty to see her, champing the bit and tossing her small proud head playfully, or curving her full, rounded neck to court the caress of Helen's gauntlet; with something more than instinct looking all the while out of her great bright stag's-eyes, as if she understood everything that was going on and approved it thoroughly: indeed, she seemed not indisposed to get up a little mild flirtation on her own account, for ever and anon she would rub her soft cheek against the Erl-King's puissant shoulder, and withdraw it suddenly as he turned his head with a coy, mutine grace, till even that stately steed unbent somewhat of his dignity, and condescended, after a superb and sultanesque fashion, to respond to her cajoleries.

Altogether they made, as I have said, a very attractive picture, suggestive of the gay days when knights and paladins rode in the sweet summer-weather through the forest-tracks of Lyonnesse and Brittany, each with his fair paramour at his side, ready and willing to do battle for her beauty to the death. Wyverne's proportions were far too slight and slender to have filled the mighty harness of Gareth or Geraint; but Helen might well have sat for Iseult in her girlhood before the breath of sin passed over the smooth brow—before the lovely proud face was trained to dissemble—before King Mark's unwilling bride drank the fatal philtre and subtler poison yet from her convoy's eyes, as they sailed together over the Irish Sea.

Yes—no doubt

It was merry in good greenwood,
When mavis and merle were singing;

when silvered bridles and silvery laughs rang out with a low, fitful music: when the dark dells, whenever a sunbeam shot through, grew light with shimmer of gold and jewels, or with sheen of minever and brocade; when ever and anon a bugle sounded—discreetly distant—not to recall the lost or the laggards, but just to remind them that they were supposed to be hunting the deer. Pity that almost all these romances ended so drearily! We might learn a lesson, if we would; but we "hear and do not fear." The modern knight's riding suit is russet or grey—perhaps, at the richest, of sable velvet; a scarlet neck-ribbon or the plumes of a tropical bird are the most gorgeous elements in his companion's amazonian apparel; but I fear the tone of their dress is about the only thing which is really sobered and subdued. People will go on lingering till they lose their party, and looking till they lose their hearts, and whispering till they lose their heads, to the end of time; though all these years have not abated one iota of the retribution allotted those who "love not wisely but too well;" though many miserable men, since Tristram, have dwined away under a wound that would never heal, tended by a wife that they could never like, thirsting for the caress of "white hands beyond the sea," and for a whisper that they heard—never, or only in the death-pang; though many sinners, since Launcelot, have grovelled in vain remorse on the gravestone of their last love or their first and firmest friend.

Certainly, none of these considerations could trouble the cousins' pleasant ride; for every word that passed between them was perfectly innocent and authorized; they had, so to speak, been "blessed by the priest" before they started. When Helen came down (rather late) to dinner, her face was so changed and radiant with happiness that it made "my lady's" for the rest of the evening unusually pensive and grave. Some such ideas shot across her as were in the cruel step-mother's mind, when she stopped those who bore out the seeming corpse to its burial, saying—

Drap the het lead on her breast,
And drap it on her chin;
For mickle will a maiden do,
To her true love to win.