COLVILLE OF THE GUARDS

BY

JAMES GRANT

AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE CAMERONIANS,"
"THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER,"
ETC., ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1885.

All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

I. [The Queen's Shilling]
II. [In London]
III. [No. 60, Park Lane]
IV. ['So Near and Yet So Far!']
V. ['Some Day.']
VI. [Jack Shows His Teeth]
VII. [The Daughter of Nox]
VIII. [Mrs. Deroubigne]
IX. [Was It Not a Dream?]
X. [Going to the Front]
XI. [At Jellalabad]
XII. [The Hadji]
XIII. [A Fight with the Mohmunds]
XIV. [In the Lughman Valley]
XV. [The Fancy Ball]
XVI. [The 10th Hussars]
XVII. [Lost]
XVIII. [The Sequel]
XIX. [The Hakim Abou Ayoub]
XX. [At Cabul]

COLVILLE OF THE GUARDS.

CHAPTER I.
THE QUEEN'S SHILLING.

Robert Wodrow, we have stated, had disappeared from his home.

Ellinor had apparently passed out of his life, and he felt as if he had nothing more to hope for in it; but the influence of her memory hung over him still.

Even the love he bore his poor old mother failed to restrain his wild impulse, his craving, to begone, he cared not where; thus her influence also failed in getting him to resume those medical studies which he once pursued with enthusiasm, but now relinquished with indifference or disgust; and, under the disappointment and mental worry produced by Ellinor's falsehood to himself, he failed to graduate at the expected time.

'My poor boy!' his mother said again and again, while stroking his dark brown hair caressingly with her now shrivelled hand; 'that cold-blooded girl has come between you and your wits.'

'Don't call her so, mother. Perhaps I did not deserve her,' said he, humbly.

'I used to sit and watch you both when children many a time and oft, and think what a winsome couple you would be in the days to come. Ah me, Robert, your one ewe lamb, and that stranger took it from you, to be but a plaything for his idle hours too probably!'

'Mother, you torture me by all this kind of thing!' exclaimed Robert.

'It is perhaps but a sudden girlish fancy hers for that man Sleath. It may pass away and all yet be well.'

'Never for me, mother. And you think so meanly of me as to take that view of the matter? I would not and could not with my knowledge of the present seek to have the past over again, and never more can I look upon Ellinor Wellwood or think of her save as I would of the dead. The charm is broken, the flower has lost its fragrance, and the peach its bloom.'

'Why should the weakness or falsehood of one person—one person only—wreck the whole life of another?' asked his father, with some asperity. 'It should not be so.'

'The old and the young view these matters differently, father,' said Robert, gently.

'True. I have read that "in youth grief is a tempest which makes you ill; in old age it is only like a cold wind which adds a wrinkle to your face and one more white lock to the others. Yet there are people who can feed themselves on their grief till they grow fat on it."'

But arguments proved unavailing. The vicinity of Birkwoodbrae had become intolerable to Robert now, and he resolved that he would go far away from them and the pleasant birks of Invermay; and he openly announced his intention of becoming a soldier, adding that nothing would make him swerve from his purpose, as by that means he would be taken to other scenes and be under other influences.

'Most evil ones, I fear!' exclaimed the doctor, striking his hands together.

'Oh, my poor infatuated boy!' added his mother, while her tears fell hotly and fast, and his father started from the table on which the untasted dinner was spread, tore open his waistcoat as if he was suffocating, and paced about the room with impatient strides, his whole form agitated with a kind of convulsive agony that cut Robert to the soul, but did not make him swerve from his bitter purpose.

'Consider the society and profligacy you have to encounter—yea, such as even our ancestor, in the third volume of his Analecta, details when describing the schools of profanity in 1726.'

Then, after a time, finding that all his opposition was vain, he said, in a very broken voice,

'God bless and protect you, Robert, and may He forgive you for all the sorrow you are causing us, as by such a course you will be lost to us and to yourself, after all our care and affection, after all your painful anxieties at college, and after all your good training and religious education.'

'In three years I shall be an officer,' exclaimed Robert, confidently, 'and won't you and the dear old mother be proud of me then?'

But the minister shook his silver head.

'Your future——' he began, and paused. 'Who can see the future?'

'One above, Robert. And may He give you the grace to think overall this terrible purpose again.'

Robert did think again, as he had thought before, deeply and decidedly, and, to avoid more painful scenes and partings, he quitted his bed next morning while the sky was dark, and no ray of light gilded as yet the Ochil peaks. He dressed himself in haste, took a few necessaries in a handbag, and after kneeling softly and saying a prayer at the door of the room in which his parents were asleep, he tore himself as it were out of the house and set forth on his new path in life, the path by which there might be no returning.

In that time of supreme bitterness little could the poor fellow see all that was before him.

The morning was still dark, but the sky was clear and starry; the great hills and tall silver birches in the foreground stood blackly up against it, and he could hear that sound so familiar to his ears—the rush of the May over its rocky bed.

He gave a lingering farewell glance at the roof of the old house which had been his home since first he saw the light there—the abode, with all its old-fashioned but substantial furniture, to which his mother had come a smiling and blushing bride in the past time—the abode, till now, of so much peace, frugality, and happiness—and with a bitter sigh he turned his eyes resolutely away.

Then, if aught was required to nerve him, it was the next feature in the still and sombre landscape; the smokeless chimneys and darkened windows of Birkwoodbrae—the now empty shrine where so long his idol had been.

'Oh, all I have ever loved!' he exclaimed, and, wringing his hands, set out with all speed upon his way, haunted, however, by the coming grief of those he was leaving behind when his place was found empty; when his mother's eyes would have a vacant chair to contemplate and his father's reverend head was bent with sorrow, as it would be in the separation that was to come; and what is separation to the loving but a living death?

The next day found him among the wide and stately streets of the Modern Athens, willing to enlist in the first regiment any member of which came in his way, for he was drawing a chance in the lottery of life now, and to him all regiments were alike; so, as Fortune had it, he met a hussar, to whom he expressed his wishes, and from whom he soon receiyed, with all due formality, that magic coin the Queen's Shilling, and became what is termed 'a Headquarter Recruit,' enlisting for 'short service'—i.e., six years with the colours.

Six years! In these days of steam the progress of events is so rapid, what might not happen in that brief space?

He had answered all the usual questions by those entitled to make them as to his age, name, parish, and calling, with others that were less pleasant, as to whether he had ever served before, or been marked D. or B.C.; this formality over, and oath of attestation taken before a bailie of the city—the oath to 'be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty, her heirs and successors; obey all orders of Her Majesty, her heirs and successors; and of all the generals and officers, &c.,' set over him—being concluded, a night intervening between enlistment and attestation, nothing remained, as his new friend, Sam Surcingle, said, 'but to have a drink over it.'

This opinion was concurred in by several smart but long-legged fellows in braided trousers, and tight jackets, with caps like scarlet muffins, jangling jack-spurs, and riding switches, who seemed all opportunely at hand, and suffering from chronic thirst, all the more so as the new recruit seemed to have some loose cash; and a suitable tavern (the 'Scots Grey') being at hand, Robert Wodrow soon found himself acting as host to a military circle which made up in heedless jollity and noise what it might lack in rank and distinction.

Yet among the half-dozen or so of his new friends were, at least, two of those ill-starred fellows so frequently to be found in our cavalry regiments at all times, but more especially just now, those who by extravagance and dissipation or failing to achieve the insane 'cramming' of the present day, had lost their chance of commissions, and taken 'the shilling' from sheer love of the service, and the desperate hope of rising in it.

One of these was a mere youth, who, as Sam Surcingle said, 'had a long pedigree behind and a long minority before him;' the other, Toby Chase, the heir to an ancient baronetcy, was older, and drank fast to drown care, shouting, with a laugh,

'To-day—to-day is for me; to-morrow is the paradise of the fool! Your health and promotion, Wodrow, old fellow!'

Glass succeeded glass; toasts and anecdotes—some of the latter not very classical—followed each other fast, till the sharp trumpets blew 'the last post' in the adjoining barrack square of Piershill, and the hussars had to hurry to quarters, and we are sorry to admit that for perhaps the first time in his life—even during his college career—Robert Wodrow had contrived to get disreputably tipsy.

He had no care for the present and no anticipation of the headache and shame of the morrow, with the disgusts of the rough riding and 'barrack fatigue,' such as carrying coals or refilling mattresses with fresh straw; neither was he troubled with the natural reflection of what would be the emotions of his highly-principled and purely-minded old father and mother could they have seen him then, when he had spent the last of his cash on his new comrades, and was voted the king of good fellows, and with one of the before-mentioned scarlet muffins on his head, but cocked very much over the right ear, he flourished a riding-whip, while joining, but with a somewhat 'feathery' voice, in the song,

'How happy's the soldier that lives on his pay,
And spends half-a-crown out of sixpence a day!
Little cares he for the bailiff or bum,
When he pays all his debts with a roll on the drum.'

And so, for a time, Robert Wodrow passes out of our story; but a time only.

CHAPTER II.
IN LONDON.

Ellinor was thinking of Redmond Sleath—when was she not thinking of him!—during all that long, long journey from the North to London, and Mary had been painfully struck by her alternate nervous anxiety and dull, mechanical acceptance of her own attentions and care during its progress. She seemed at times like a somnambulist—one moving in her sleep rather than one to whom the journey should have been an excitement and a novelty after the long years of quiet and seclusion at Birkwoodbrae, hence the strain upon her overwrought nerves was ere long to bring a serious illness upon her.

A cab—a genuine London cab, one of those clumsy four-wheeled 'growlers,' peculiar to the modern Babylon and to no other place—cramped, damp, frowsy, far from sweet-smelling, and sorely perilous for ladies' dresses—had conveyed the sisters, both feeling somewhat scared and disconsolate, from the Northern Railway to the classic region of Paddington by day, and luckily for them not by night.

The long drive westward by the Euston and Mary-le-Bone Roads had seemed apparently interminable, and most weary after a long journey by rail; and then the architecture, construction, and material of the houses—brick, always and for ever brick—looked strange and foreign to their eyes, and so ere long they reached the Terrace, which adjoins Paddington Church. They had read of and heard a deal about the famous old Court suburb of Kensington, and thought the locality to which a chance had taken them might prove something like it.

Mrs. Fubsby, their landlady, whose address had been given to them by her nephew, Joe Fubsby, guard of the northern train (the chance above referred to), and hence their selection of such a singular place, received the weary travellers kindly enough. She seemed a motherly, well-disposed woman, but soured in disposition by past wrongs or sorrows.

She was about forty years of age, had some remains of beauty, and had seen better days and had other hopes (as usual with her class), all of which she was not long in hinting.

The sitting-room into which she ushered them, though scrupulously clean, had a mouldy odour, suggestive of the adjacent hideous churchyard; it looked small, poor, and shabby. Gaudy artificial flowers in vases of Derby spar were on the little mantelpiece, and some highly-coloured prints in Oxford frames were hung upon the walls.

The air felt close and heavy—oh, so heavy, the girls thought, after the fresh, pure breezes of Invermay! In fact, there seemed to be no air at all.

Their sweetness and gentleness of manner, together with their undeniable beauty, attracted and won the—at first suspicious—landlady, who bustled about and prepared tea for them. She, however, put great weight upon an introduction coming through her nephew Joe; and her confidence grew apace when she found Mary scrupulously correct in her weekly payments, and others of every kind, and thus she complacently tolerated the presence of Jack in her household. To have parted with him would have stricken Mary's heart.

Ere the first day of their residence with her was past, they were in full possession of Mrs. Fubsby's personal history, which she thrust upon them with that loquacious communicativeness peculiar to the English lower orders—at least so much of it as she cared to tell—how her maiden name was Seraphina-Mary-Ann—how she had married a gentleman, who, however, did not behave as such in the end, as he had left her years ago, and she was now reduced to have lodgers or boarders, and so forth.

Coming from a secluded country place like their Perthshire parish, Mary and Ellinor had no real idea of the world or of life, as it is called—more than all, the bustling, busy, tearing, selfish, and suspicious life of London, or the mighty and close race for existence there. They knew not yet that without friends and introductions employments in teaching music or drawing were all but unattainable.

A few days passed on. Advertisements were studied daily and replied to sedulously; but no answer came. They could not know that for each of these employments there might be two thousand applicants! So their poor hearts grew hopeless and weary—often sick with alarm as money dwindled away; and day by day they looked out, either on the frowsy churchyard, where not a blade of grass grew between the closely packed tombstones, or the equally frowsy canal, with its barges cleaving the muddy water and oozy slime; and as they were totally ignorant of London, for a time, the poor girls supposed it must be all like their then sordid surroundings.

Paddington, where Francois Thurot, the famous corsair, won the bride in whose arms he died in battle, and where in the last century the Guards coming from Hounslow were wont to halt for the night, prior to marching for the little London of George II., was, some fifty years ago, a kind of suburban village, a rural and pretty place, with its grassy green and the old 'Wheatsheaf' Tavern, where Ben Jonson drank his beer, even after its quaint Gothic church, where the Sheldons were entombed by its solemn yew-tree, was replaced by the present hideous square edifice, with its pillared portico and trumpery cupola starting from amid that veritable stoneyard of graveslabs, among which lie the remains of the beautiful Mrs. Siddons and of the luckless painter Haydon—an odious and festering place, where, Dr. Ashburner tells us in his work on 'The Dynamics,' his nervous patients were wont to see nightly the pale and lambent dead-lights rising from the corrupted soil.

Whether it was the result of all she had undergone of late, or that the atmosphere of the place affected Ellinor, Mary never knew; but her colour faded out—the ruddy tint left her lips, and her dark hazel eyes grew dull as she became prostrated by a nervous illness, which added sorely to the cares, the troubles, and expenses of the latter, for Ellinor required wine and many little luxuries.

Energy seemed to have left her. Ellinor was but twenty, but already her life seemed over and done with!

And now that her secret love affair was apparently a thing completely of the past, Ellinor showed Mary the gift of Sir Redmond, and bursting into a flood of hysterical tears told her all—of the baffled elopement; and then Mary, catching up Jack, covered the dog with kisses.

There were at least two reasons why no letters ever reached Dr. Wodrow, and that, to him, the movements of the sisters seemed involved in painful mystery.

Two letters that Mary wrote to him had miscarried, and, as no answers came to them, with over-sensitiveness and doubt, she misconstrued the silence of her good old friend, and, believing that he resented Ellinor's treatment of his son, would now ignore their existence.

'I shall write no more,' said Mary. 'Can it be that Lady Dunkeld has ruined us among those who knew us? If so, there is one use in adversity—we can tell our friends from our enemies.'

So in sorrowful doubt she did not write again; seeking for employment and nursing Ellinor occupied all the thoughts of Mary, who became almost distracted with a fear that the former might be sent by Mrs. Fubsby to a common hospital. Nothing, perhaps, was further from the good woman's thoughts; but Mary had heard, or read, of such things. Thus, fully occupied, she wrote no more; and, as time went past, the mystery grew at the manse of Kirktoun-Mailler, and in the mind of Colville also. Everything painful, horrible, and disastrous was fancied, and advertisements put by the latter in the Times, however carefully yet pointedly worded, were never seen by Mary. So in these our days of penny post and cheap telegrams, they remained lost, untraced, and undiscovered by those who loved them best.

She had both confidence and patience; and patience is mental strength concentrated. Her religious education had also taught her resignation, and she felt that 'let the sands drop through the glass ever so slowly, there is a time when they end; there is a time for us all; no matter the hour, for God thinks it the best.'

Yet often as she sat, busy with crewel work for sale, by Ellinor's bedside, the notes of the passing bell in the cupola of the adjacent church—a toll unknown in Scotland—smote a gloom upon her heart with every measured stroke.

No pessimist was Mary Wellwood in temper or heart, and no manufacturer of artificial sorrow; yet the idea occurred to her with terror—what if she should lose Ellinor, and be left alone in this bitter world?

As petty trifles, like airs and scraps of frivolous songs, will haunt the mind in times of dire calamity, even of death, Mary's thoughts would run persistently on the feathered pets and flowers she had once at home—even on the sparrows for which she was daily wont to spread crumbs, where they would find none now; and she actually envied her old owl; he, at least, was at home in his ivied ruin, that looked down on Invermay.

Thinking thus, Mary would sit in the evening twilight by the open window, through which came the roar of mighty London; but not the flower-scented air that hovered over their lost home; and while the stars, dimly seen in the smoke-laden sky of London, stole into sight, she thought of the green Ochil peaks, over which the same stars were shining brightly, like vast diamonds set in azure.

Ellinor recovered and gained strength, but still able to do little with her pencil.

Evening walks, as among the green lanes and shady paths in the glen where the May flows, they could have no more now. They seldom saw the sun set; and when evening fell the streets in their vicinity became filled by people whose appearance appalled them. There were vicious-looking men and more vicious-looking women from the adjacent Edgware Road; vendors of carrion on wooden skewers, known as 'cat's-meat;' vendors of roasted potatoes and chestnuts; boiled oranges; of plums, the bloom of which was due to clothes-blue; vendors of milk, the component parts of which made one shudder; of queerly-painted pugs and yellow-painted sparrows; of red pots of earth, with rootless twigs of flowers stuck in them—another London dodge—yet declared by the vendors to be 'all a-growing—all a-blowing.'

With such plants as these Mrs. Fubsby was not to be 'took in,' and so preferred paper flowers.

Ellinor contrived to finish one of her best landscapes—a view on the May—and 'room' was given it by a kind of picture-dealer close by, but it remained in his window unsold, and apparently unnoticed by all—save the flies, who did not improve it.

Mary's confidence at times began to desert her when she felt how hard it would be for them, all unaided as they were, to win their daily bread and add to the little pittance they had, among that vast human tide of busy, cold, careless, and apparently unsympathising people who poured past her in the streets.

Her sweet face began to look anxious, sorrowful, and pale under the ripples of golden brown hair that fell softly over her broad low forehead; and ere long the two sisters began to want many things to which they had been accustomed.

'What is to be the end of it all?' Mary would think, as she came slowly back to tell Ellinor of some fresh disappointment, or that her picture was still unsold. Mary was growing paler, Ellinor could see—yes, she looked older; her figure seemed less round, though graceful as ever. Her street dress was beginning to look poor and even shabby. Oh, how sad and horrible it was!

Mrs. Fubsby pitied the girls for their want of success, while she admired their perseverance. A well-meaning woman, she had some suggestions to 'hoffer,' as she said, which made Mary's blood run cold.

Among these were two—that, as she was 'so 'andsome,' she might get a situation in the mantle department of some great shop, or as a species of lay-figure to show off the goods, and who knew but one of the 'walkers' might take a fancy to her? or to work a sewing-machine in the window in the gaze of all those men and boys who would be certain to crowd thereat, and flatten their noses against the glass while critically surveying her. Another suggestion was to sell poor Jack, whom Joe Fubsby said was well worth 'a ten pun' note;' but Mary would rather have starved than parted with her dog.

With a burning cheek and a beating heart, and feeling certain that she would be viewed with suspicion, and perhaps insulted, she ventured into a shop in the Edgware Road, where an 'honest' dealer gave her less than the third of the value for Sir Redmond's chain and locket. This sum helped them on a little; but again finances began to fall, and, clasping her slim white hands, Mary began to think it was useless attempting to struggle any more.

CHAPTER III.
NO. 60, PARK LANE.

In a work of fiction, says a writer, 'the reader will find a hundred strange meetings and coincidences—old lovers coming face to face after years of separation, friends thought dead rising up at the corners of the streets, and the good characters appearing ad libitum to confound all the bad in the concluding chapters. Critics,' he adds, 'laugh at all these wires which pull the Minerva puppets, but real life has often, more than one imagines, its strange meetings and coincidences too—old lovers and friends do start as from Hades into our presence sometimes, and if a good genius in the shape of a father, or big brother, or a policeman did not come to the rescue at times when the last hope was failing us, what a deal more misery there would be in the world.'

Thus it was, through this doctrine of strange chances, that Mary Wellwood was soon fated to meet Colville on two occasions, and they came to pass as follows.

Mary had clever little hands, and had frequently made up such caps for Mrs. Fubsby, and arranged her ribbons and laces so nicely, that she conceived the idea of obtaining some employment for her needle, as Ellinor still required many little things that were procured for her with difficulty.

With high beating heart she one day entered a millinery establishment, and timidly suggested that she was clever as a worker, at trimming, cap and bonnet-making, and entreated a trial to be given her. Her soft voice and pleading face went for nothing. She was repelled coldly, even superciliously, and the door was pretty plainly indicated to her; so she issued forth into the bustle of the Edgeware Road again with a heavy, bitter, and irrepressible sigh.

It was a dull and depressing day early in October, when what remains to us of foliage and sunshine are held on a precarious tenure indeed, and people become conscious of 'snow in the air;' when the gardener's work consists chiefly of 'sweeping up' the leaves that come rustling down and tidying borders after the blasts of wind. Frost, however, had not come, and the parterres of Hyde Park, the phloxes and the late gladioli, still continued to make a brave show, though the dahlias drooped heavily when the dews fell. Overhead the sky was dull and leaden, of the usual London tint, and no one could tell in what quarter of it the sun was hidden.

Mary peeped into the dealer's window, and another sigh escaped her. Ellinor's landscape was still there, and, of course, unsold; so again she thought to herself, 'what was to be the end of it all?'

As a last effort she sought a music shop, where she had often given specimens of her accomplishments on the piano, and where she had frequently applied, without success, for pupils.

The proprietors liked her voice, but her pale face, with its rare charm of expression, and soft violet-blue eyes, was beginning to have a sad and hunted look. They also (for they were judges) liked her manner—who did not?—so faultless and graceful in its self-possession even yet, and her tones so sweetly modulated and pleasant; thus they were honestly anxious to help her if they could, and had hinted if she took to the stage she might make a fortune in 'the profession.'

They had heard of no pupils yet; but music—a musician—an accomplished pianist was wanted for a dance, to be given on the morrow night—two guineas were the honorarium—would she accept it?

She thought what the sum might get for Ellinor, and accepted the proposal at once.

The money would be paid her at the house.

'Where is it?' she asked.

'No. 60, Park Lane.'

And her informant added that she must go nicely—at least neatly—dressed; and she hurried home with a lighter heart. Distasteful though the position and occupation, it was at least a beginning, and no one knew aught of her or her antecedents.

Next night she attired herself with care, gracefully, and, perhaps, artistically, in a soft and clinging lace-trimmed dress of creamy Indian muslin. It was perhaps rather too much for the rôle she had to play; but it was one of her best costumes, with lace at her white slender throat, and shading her bare and very lovely arms, while her only ornament was a single white rose in her breast. So, gloved, shawled, and with her roll of music, she drove away in a 'growler,' the last words she heard being expressions of admiration at her appearance from Ellinor and Mrs. Fubsby.

On past the Marble Arch, and into that aristocratic line of varied and strange-looking houses, Park Lane, which, in the time of Queen Anne, was generally known as 'the lane leading to Tyburn,' where the gallows bore its ghastly freight.

'Number sixty,' she again told her cabman, when he suddenly pulled up, and she now remembered that she had omitted to ask to whose house she was going. Though she ought to have been there among, or prior to, the first arrivals, the position was so new to her that she was a little late, and already several carriages were on the line before her, 'setting down,' at a lighted portico, duly furnished with a striped canopy and carpeted steps. Thus, during the brief pause that ensued, she was enabled to see that it was a stately house she was bound for. Though October, the night was fine, and the windows were open. She obtained, through them, a glimpse of a splendidly-furnished double drawing-room, with blue silk curtains festooned within an arch; already several guests were gliding to and fro, and the fragrance of flowers and perfumes was wafted outward on the night air.

A painted and partially curtained verandah overhung the garden—a verandah made like a fairy abode by shrubs and flowers, by Chinese lanterns, ottomans, and couches; and she felt a strange, spasmodic tightening of the heart, for there was a figure that seemed familiar to her hanging over a lovely girl, who was flirting languidly with her fan.

As one in a dream, she found herself deposited at the door, and ascending with her music-roll the fast crowding staircase that led to the dancing-room, attended by a footman as a guide; but the lady of the house, whoever she was, did not condescend to receive her. And her pretty bare arms were noticed as she seated herself at the piano-stool. She had too much dress 'for one in her position,' some matrons thought suspiciously, all the more so that many men remarked and admired her; but she adjusted her music and programme, bent her sweet face closely over the former, and played on, and on, and on, till her little fingers ached, oh, so wearily, into the hours of the night and the early hours of the morning.

But ere the latter came one or two episodes occurred.

She discovered, first, that she was in the house of Lord Dunkeld! Parliament was sitting, and his lordship, as one of the precious sixteen called 'Representative Peers,' was consequently in town; but for all the good he ever did Scotland or her interests he might as well have been at the North Pole.

To Mary Wellwood, with her sensitive pride and memories of the past, this was a sickening discovery to make! There was, however, no retreating now. She resolutely kept her face from the guests, and played on as one in a dream, with the soft patter of feet and whirling of skirts in her ear.

Once or twice she thought that the cold, calm eyes of Lady Dunkeld recognised her, and then, flushing deep to the nape of her delicate neck, she bent lower still over her music. If it was so, the pale and handsome peeress made no sign, and gave not the slightest evidence of recognition.

The longing to be gone in Mary's heart was intense, and to her the hours of that night seemed interminable.

Though 'town was empty,' as she heard, she was thankful that the rooms were crowded to excess; that the dancers had scarcely room to move, and thus she had the less chance of recognition.

Mouthing fools with lisping lips, parted hair, and a great display of shirt-front were there, and men of brilliant intellect too, with many stately women and lovely girls such as London alone can boast; and Blanche Galloway moved among them like a bewitching little queen, superbly dressed by all the care of Rosette.

Suddenly Mary had another shock and tightening of the heart when two familiar voices fell on her ear, and she discovered near her Colville—Colville and Sir Redmond Sleath, the latter, as usual in accurate evening costume, with his tawny moustache, insouciant air, and china-blue eyes.

The sense of Colville's presence suffocated her, and memory went back to that last interview in which he suddenly drew her towards him and kissed her so tenderly and hurried away on their being interrupted, leaving unsaid what he was bound in honour to say, but urging her to do nothing rash until 'to-morrow'—the morrow that never came!

'Hah, when did you come to town?' asked Sir Redmond.

'More than a month ago,' replied Colville.

'From Craigmhor?'

'Yes; you left before I did, you remember?'

'Sudden business called me to town. When you left how were our fair friends at Birkwoodbrae?'

It was terrible for Mary to sit there helplessly and overhear this conversation; but there was a buzzing sound in her ears, and she failed to catch Colville's answer; and Sleath spoke again—

'I knew you were deuced spooney on the eldest one. Got over it all now, of course—pour passer le temps.'

'Spooney? I do not choose to have this term applied either to myself or the lady referred to.'

'As you please. But surely you had no more intention of committing yourself seriously with her than I had with her younger sister?'

'What do you mean by talking of these young ladies in this style to me?' asked Colville, in a voice that seemed to have suppressed passion in it, for at that moment he was recalling some of Doctor Wodrow's communications regarding the speaker.

'Why, what on earth are they to you? demanded Sleath, focussing him with his eyeglass.

Mary did not hear the response, but was aware that Sleath started and said,

'What new dodge is this?'

'I am thinking of going to India again,' said Colville, bluntly, to change the subject.

'Again—with all your wealth—what folly!'

'I seem to have neither kith nor kin to care for, or aught to keep me here now.'

'Ah—that red-coat business!'

'What do you mean?'

'As some one says, "We all know that half a man's life is often spent in wanting to put on the red-coat, and the other half in wanting to put it off."'

'No part of your life is likely to be spent in either, Sir Redmond,' said Colville, as he turned on his heel and left him.

'To India again,' whispered Mary in her heart; 'he thinks of going to India! Well—what is he to me—what am I to him?'

Mary observed that he danced little, if at all, and that he certainly looked grave—even sad and preoccupied, as he had never done at Birkwoodbrae.

Colville had never enlightened the Dunkeld family, even before leaving Craigmhor, of his relationship to the missing sisters, or of those views, intentions, and the little romantic plan between himself and Dr. Wodrow, which had proved the cause of so much distress and mischief.

Blanche Galloway, her rival, as Mary began to deem her again, was the gayest of the throng there, and, leaning on Colville's arm clingingly after a long swinging waltz, was fanning herself, and laughing at some remark that was, in her own parlance, 'quite too awfully funny.'

Intent on Colville and on others too, smiling her brightest upon them all, but on him in particular, and bestowing flowers with great empressement from her ample bouquet, as she sat with them in the dimly-lighted conservatory, and flirted with a science born of her partly French blood, she never bestowed a thought on the weary and silent musician, any more than on the aiguletted valets who took about the jellies and ices, etc.

Mary saw that Colville sat out dances, often with pretty companions, over whom his handsome head was bent low in confidential conversation, while he fanned them with gallant assiduity.

'You play most brilliantly, my dear!' said a soft, sweet voice suddenly in Mary's ear.

No one, as yet, had addressed her that night, and she looked up with a startled air to see a very handsome and motherly-looking woman regarding her with kindly interest.

'You have a most exquisite touch,' she continued; 'how I should like my youngest girl to have some lessons from you—even as a permanent musical governess. May I speak to Lady Dunkeld about it?'

'Do not—please do not!' replied Mary, imploringly; 'she knows nothing about me; but I have another reason for declining——'

'Indeed.'

'Yes, madam.'

'A serious one?'

'Very—a sickly sister whom I cannot and would not leave to live alone.'

'A most creditable reason to give,' said the elderly lady, and was about to add something more, when Lady Dunkeld suddenly drew near, and in a hard, metallic voice said,

'Dear Mrs. Deroubigne, a word with you before supper.'

So, as the lady left her side, Mary learned that Deroubigne was her name, and, with gratitude in her heart for the little bit of praise, recognition, and sympathy, Mary thought she would never forget her.

The guests filed off to the supper-room, whence ere long came the murmur of voices, the sounds of laughter, the clink of plates and glasses, and looking round the empty drawing-room, strewed with fragments of flowers, lace, muslin, and so forth, Mary, like a hunted creature, thought only of escape, but was informed that refreshment for her was set apart from all the rest in a private apartment.

It was a pretty place, with carved oak furniture, valuable pictures, and the subdued light of a beautiful lamp was shed on the dainty napery, silver and quaint blue and gold service of the repast set before her; but Mary was incapable of eating—food would have choked her. She held a glass of wine to her tremulous and dry lips, but so tremulous too were her fingers by long playing that she had to set it down untasted.

She then told the valet who attended her that she was too ill to remain longer, to make her apologies to Lady Dunkeld, and to get her shawl and cloak from the women in charge of the cloak-room.

He did so with some surprise, that increased when, on proffering her two guineas on a silver salver as her fee, she said, sharply,

'Thanks. Keep the money, or spend it in the servants' hall,' and hurried away.

'Off her blessed chump, by jingo!' muttered 'Jeames,' as he thrust the money into the pocket of his yellow-plush breeches.

Escaping recognition by Mademoiselle Rosette, who was having a flirtation in the hall with John Gaiters (Sir Redmond's man), Mary, in a tumult of distracting thoughts, cabbed it back to St. Mary's Terrace, so called, though it is a narrow street; but that matters nothing in London, where thoroughfares are called roads, that are streets or squares, terraces or crescents, and even hills, such as Ludgate, or vales, such as Maida, without being the slightest approach to anything of the kind; but such are some of the many idiosyncrasies of Babylon that puzzle the intelligent foreigner.

Mary was a wise girl; she knew that the wounded heart of Ellinor, suffering from certain remorse at her treatment of the loving Robert Wodrow, and mortification at the conduct of Sleath in never attempting to visit or seek an explanation, would not be healed by telling all that she had overheard, and more that she suspected, now only said that she had recognised him and Colville at the ball and nothing more.

But this reticence proved rather a mistake eventually.

CHAPTER IV.
'SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR!'

After that night at Number 60, Park Lane, a terrible sense of humiliation oppressed Mary, and she knew not what to do next. Such rencontres, she thought, were not likely to happen in the mighty world of London; yet the next meeting she had with Colville occurred very soon after, and gave her nearly as great a shock as that at the ball.

It was on a murky October Sunday afternoon when Mary, finding herself near Westminster Abbey, entered the vast building, lured alike by curiosity to see it and hear the service, for which the bells were tolling.

For a moment she looked about her and saw how the mighty cruciform church towered skyward above the dingy houses, shops, and streets that lie so near it on one side, and the handsome, open space, with all its railings and statues, on the other, and, tripping lightly over the flat gravestones, she entered by the gloomy northern door, and, after a little timid doubt and hesitation, proceeded to an empty pew in the north transept.

The vast height of the shafted columns, the darkened roof that sprang from them, the dusky depths and ghostly uncertainties of the edifice, which was of a size and space beyond her conception; the faint, leaden light of the London afternoon that stole through its lancet windows, and the grim aspect of the tombs which crowd and disfigure the long drawn aisles, were all solemn and oppressive to Mary, yet curiosity detained her, and she was glad to see a few persons—but how very few they seemed—gathering to hear the service, while the black-robed vergers glided about, imparting, she thought, something spectral to the vistas of the place; and to her unaccustomed eyes the white floating surplices of the officiating clergymen and of the choir-boys seemed something spectral too.

A great sense of awe came over her as she thought of all the mighty dead who lay there, the dead of ages, beneath her very feet—politicians, warriors, judges, princes, and nobles, philanthropists, actors, and physicians—the Pantheon of all the English great—who in fighting the battle of life have added to the renown of their country. For a time she was drawn from the constant sense of herself, of her own sorrows, and the contemplation of thinking how hard it was to win one's daily bread in a vast city.

Her veil was up, and had any there regarded her face, they would have seen how pale and sad it looked under the edge of her little hat, and the ripples of her golden brown hair that fell over her forehead, and how pathetic was the expression of her long-lashed, violet blue eyes.

The bells had ceased to clash overhead, and a few people were seated or kneeling on hassocks in the chancel seats, while some gas jets began to flicker out as the afternoon light faded from the pointed windows; and then the deep swell of the organ, and the sweet voices of the choristers stirred Mary's heart, and moved her to tears, she knew not why, for the solemnity of the scene soothed, while the music comforted her, and to hide her emotion she drew down her veil closely.

While the psalm was being chanted three ladies entered the pew before her, and as there was not room in it for a gentleman who accompanied them he took his seat behind them, in the pew occupied by Mary, and close to her side.

Her heart stood still, and again the sense of suffocation came with a spasm into her slender throat, for he who sat beside her was Colville, and the ladies were Blanche Galloway, Lady Dunkeld, and Mrs. Deroubigne!

She respired with difficulty, and then her heart beat fast; the service was forgotten—unheard, all save the swelling of the organ, which only seemed an element in the phantasmagoria around her now; and she strove—but that was impossible—to forget who was by her side, and almost touching her.

She wondered if he would recognise her figure; he could scarcely fail to do so, if he looked at her; but he never did so, and seemed wholly intent on looking into the dusky obscurities of the church, or was lost in his own thoughts. He had placed a hand ungloved, with a gold signet ring thereon—a ring the crest of which Mary remembered well—on the edge of the pew in which Blanche was seated; and making a half turn round, with a bright and coquettish smile, she rested her back against his fingers, as much as to say, she felt them there caressingly.

Mary observed this, and also that after a time he withdrew his hand, with an air of unconsciousness, she thought.

Blanche wore a magnificent sealskin paletot, which contrasted powerfully with Mary's somewhat faded jacket and equally faded dress. How happy and bright and well nourished she looked. There was no care, no thought, no anxiety in her sparkling dark eyes. Unlike Mary, she had no dark or dubious future looming far away before her.

Mary remembered—when was she likely to forget?—that he said he had no one to care for, and was going away to India; and yet he seemed to be on remarkably intimate and pleasant terms with these Dunkeld people. She fancied that Blanche had given him a conscious and disappointed glance, when he left her to take his seat behind her, as if she seemed to think his proper place was by her own side; and perhaps Mary might have seen a disappointed look in his face, had she seen it at the time.

They might only be friends, but somehow Blanche gave the silent watcher the bitter conviction that she was certainly something more.

Mary knew that Colville had denied being engaged to Blanche, and ridiculed the rumour as Mrs. Wodrow's gossip. True—but he might be engaged to her now.

'If he still cares for me,' she thought, 'what a different answer would I give him now. If not engaged, why are they thus together, and why does she give him these conscious and confident glances? Was he deceiving me at—at Birkwoodbrae?'

When Mary had taken her seat in that pew, she felt a sense of awful loneliness; but she felt many, many degrees more lonely now. She felt also far, far removed from him, and those whom he accompanied, in her homely life and sordid surroundings at Paddington. A vast gulf seemed thereby to have opened between her and Colville, such as did not exist at Birkwoodbrae; and she thought of the day when they fished together in the May, and other days of delicious walks and rambles under the drooping birches by the sparkling linn, or among the scented pine woods that were overlooked by the lovely green hills, amid the bright sunshine and the odour of the purple heather—of thoughts that came and went—of hopes that dawned, and of words that were uttered, or left unuttered. At last the service was over, and the few people who assembled to hear it—many of them strangers only come to view the church from curiosity—were hastening away.

As Mary rose, Colville did so too that she might pass him.

Still there was no recognition on his part; his eyes were on Blanche Galloway, and Mary quickly glided out of the church. The rain was beginning to fall in the chill October evening, and drawing her shawl close about her she set out on her way homeward, feeling that she would be thankful for a seat in an omnibus.

When she looked back, with an impulse she could not resist, she saw Colville come forth with Blanche, the other two ladies following, as if the arrangement was a tacit one. They all entered the stately Dunkeld carriage, the driver and servants of which wore ample fur tippets. The door was closed with a bang, and they drove off, passing Mary on the way, and bestowing on her a few spots of mud.

'To be so near—and yet so far!' she thought, with a greater bitterness of heart than she ever thought to feel—she was usually so resigned and sweetly patient; but she seemed to know the worst now, and that all was over at last.

The very circumstance of her having to wander alone and unescorted through the streets of London on such an evening seemed to impress upon her still more the difference of position, and the gulf that lay between her and those she had seen whirling away, as she doubted not, to No. 60, Park Lane.

That she had been recognised by some one there on the night of the ball, she thought she had mortifying proof when next she presented herself before the hitherto friendly proprietors of the music-shop in quest of pupils or some employment.

She found their manner curt, changed, and cold.

'You need return no more,' she was told.

'Why?'

'You failed to give satisfaction when we found you employment last.'

'In what way?' asked Mary, in a breathless voice.

'Lady Dunkeld informed us that you left the house abruptly and in a mysterious way.'

Lady Dunkeld! So she in the plentitude of her wealth, power, and position was following up with a vendetta poor Mary Wellwood.

CHAPTER V.
'SOME DAY.'

The sale of Ellinor's landscape for a sum beyond what she had expected for it, came like a gleam of hope to the two lonely girls, and the place in the window where it had hung so long was now empty.

'I wonder who bought it?' said she.

'That matters little,' replied Mary; 'his fancy, however, will give you encouragement, nevertheless.'

Ellinor blushed with pleasure. Her picture was sold, but she little knew to whom.

She was now convalescent, able to go abroad, and, like Mary, she had also the coincidence of a strange and unexpected meeting.

One day, when the weather was clear and sunny for the season, she went to Hyde Park with her sketch-book, encouraged to fresh efforts by her success, to make another drawing. The subject was to be some quaint old trees she had noticed, and which she hoped might find a purchaser in some one who knew the locality.

October had given these old oaks its choicest tints, and, while some of their leaves were russet-green, others were like burnished bronze, and were red of many hues; and, all the better for artistic purposes, the chief of these venerable and gnarled trees had a story, for under it Horace Walpole, as he tells us, was robbed in the winter of 1749 by the fashionable footpad Maclean.

'One night in the beginning of November,' he writes, 'as I was returning from Holland House by moonlight, about ten o'clock, I was attacked by two highwaymen in Hyde Park, and the pistol of one of them, going off accidentally, razed the skin under my eye, left some marks of shot on my face, and stunned me. The ball went through my hat, and, if I had sat an inch nearer to the left side, it must have gone through my head.'

This event occurred within half-a-mile of Piccadilly, and Ellinor, thinking how it would enhance the value of her little landscape, set to work in sketching the group of trees.

So intent was she with her pencil that for some time she was unaware that she was observed, or that anyone was near her in that part of the then usually deserted Park, till she suddenly saw a soldier—a hussar—standing before her.

'Robert—Robert Wodrow!' she exclaimed, in a strange voice all unlike her own, as the pencil dropped from her nerveless hand. 'What does this dress—what does all this mean?'

'Ask yourself, Ellinor.'

Tears started to her eyes at the familiar voice, and so glad was she to see his familiar face that, but for his too probable misconception of her feelings and the eyes of passers-by, she would have thrown her arms round his neck and kissed him.

All unaware that he was so near her, Robert Wodrow had been strolling through the Park, thinking the while of a song that Ellinor had been wont to sing to him often in past days—

'Some day, some day I shall meet you—
Love, I know not when or how—
Only this, only this, that once you loved me:
Only this, I love you now, I love you now!'

The tender and passionate refrain was in his mind, and actually hovering on his lips, when the face and form of Ellinor came suddenly before him.

'So you can amuse yourself thus,' said he, picking up her pencil, 'and in spite of all the misery that has fallen on me.'

'I am working thus for daily bread, Robert; and, oh, I knew not that you had taken this terrible step.'

'Becoming a soldier?'

'Yes.'

Robert Wodrow was again face to face with the girl he loved with a love so unselfish and passionate, and so ungrudgingly given in all its fulness and tenderness, yet he made no attempt to take her hand.

She thought that he never looked so handsome as he did then, in his smart hussar tunic—blue, faced with red and braided with yellow. Club drill and sword exercise had developed every muscle, while setting-up drill and the riding-school had given him that air and bearing our light cavalrymen alone possess.

'Why cast away thus your prospects in life?' she asked, sadly.

'I have none—I lost them with you.'

'What dear friends we might have been—nay, were, if with friendship you would have been content, Robert!'

'A view you only adopted after Sir Redmond Sleath came.'

Her pale face coloured deeply, and perhaps guiltily, at this response, and he regarded her earnestly. She was pale certainly, and her lips had a pathetic little droop in them, though their wonderful sweetness of expression yet remained, but her cheeks had lost some of their girlish roundness and bloom.

The atmosphere of most unclassic Paddington, with its frowsy canal and fœtid churchyard, was truly somewhat different from the breeze that swept the Ochil ranges and down through the Birks of Invermay.

Robert realised at that moment how dear, how inexpressibly dear to him, was the girl he had lost, and between whom and himself he had now opened a complete social gulf, and how their past friendship and love had crept into his heart and settled there, making her still more precious to him than life itself.

When he spoke again his voice was strained and husky, and the tones of it were as those of a man in mortal pain.

'How is dear Mary?'

'Well—very well.'

'From a remark you let fall about daily bread, Ellinor,' said he, playing nervously with the lash of his riding-switch, 'I can gather that you are not married to that man.'

'Most certainly not. I have never seen him since we left home—for to us home is not here.'

'Thank God for your assertion! I have heard a good deal about him among our fellows; he is a deuced bad lot, and may yet find you out. If he does, I beg of you to pause, however brilliant his offers of marriage may be. He dare have no other view; if he had, if he had,' continued Robert Wodrow, with his teeth set under his dark moustache, 'and the grave had me, I would come back to have vengeance on him! Remember my words, I implore you, Ellinor, by memory of the pleasant past, when we were boy and girl together. It is the last favour I can ask of you, and too probably this is the last time we shall meet on earth!'

'What do you mean, Robert?' she said, in an agitated voice.

'I am only here for a day from Hounslow Barracks, and in about a week the regiment embarks for India—for Afghanistan, thank God!'

'How bitterly you speak!'

'I gave up father, mother, home, peace, and profession when I lost you; but, pardon me, I did not mean to upbraid.'

'Forgive me for all I have made you suffer,' said Ellinor, humbly; 'I feel how unworthy I am of all this great regard,' she added, taking his hand caressingly between hers; and then, conscious of how her touch thrilled through him, she withdrew her clasp, and both seemed on the verge of tears, and might perhaps have indulged in them but for the vicinity of one or two observant and inquisitive nursemaids, who marvelled at the interest the young lady evidently took in the handsome hussar.

'And now I must go,' said the latter, but lingered still, and, cut to the heart with sorrow for him, Ellinor pressed her hands upon her breast, as she yielded to her better nature, but felt that now it was impossible to retrace or reverse the past.

'And you leave England for that far-away land so soon?'

'The sooner the better.'

'Won't you come and see Mary ere you go?'

'I should indeed like to see dear Mary once again—she was always true to me,' said Robert.

'Do come, then,' urged Ellinor, heedless of the deduction.

'Not now, for I am almost due at Hounslow; but when I come, I must be—in uniform.'

'That matters nothing; no one here knows us or cares for us. Oh, how happy she will be to see you in one sense, and so sorry in another! The uniform is but a trifle in one way.'

'Moments make the year, and trifles life,' said Robert, with bitter smile, quoting Young's satire.

Ellinor gave him their address—they shook hands like friends, these two who might have been all in the world to each other, though in the world their paths in life would lie far apart now—there was a minute's pause, and in a moment more Ellinor was alone.

Her drawing was effectually marred for the day; her head swam and her hand shook, and forgetting all about Horace Walpole's tree, she slowly quitted the park.

'Poor fellow!' she thought, as the hitherto restrained tears flowed under her veil, 'I have used him ill—and yet how soft and gentle he is with me!'

CHAPTER VI.
JACK SHOWS HIS TEETH.

Fortune seemed to be looking kindly on Mary and Ellinor now, when the former, through an advertisement, got a couple of pupils, little girls, in the neighbourhood of Portman Square, and the latter had actually sold her landscape, and started another.

'The Linn on the May' had caught the eye of Sir Redmond Sleath when passing the shop window, not that he particularly cared about pictures or art of any kind, save the culinary one, but he thought he recognised the subject—even the style and the landscape—and on looking more closely, after adjusting his inevitable eyeglass, an exclamation of surprise or satisfaction, perhaps both, escaped him on discovering the initials 'E.W.' in one of the lower corners, and he entered the shop at once to inspect the landscape more closely.

'I think I know the artist,' said he to the bowing dealer, who was not much accustomed to visitors of Sleath's style and bearing. 'A young lady, is she not?'

'Yes, sir—yes—Miss Ellinor Wellwood.'

'I thought so. I'll take her work.'

'Thank you, sir. Shall I send it to your address, your club, or where, sir?'

'Neither. I'll take it with me.'

Cautious in his plans, Sleath was reluctant to give his address, but the price was soon agreed upon, and the money paid.

'I want a pair, and will order just such another,' said he. 'Perhaps you can give me Miss Ellinor Wellwood's address?'

'Certainly, sir. She lives very near this.'

'Near this! By Jove!'

He obtained the number and the street, and went off with the landscape, and with curious emotions of hope and evil blended exultantly in his heart.

'Paddington?' he muttered, as he walked off towards the Marble Arch. 'D—nme, what a game! Are they so reduced, or so ignorant, as to hang out there? Courage, Redmond, my boy, and that charming bit of muslin may be your own yet.'

Sleath had been told plainly enough, and sternly too, by Colville, at Lady Dunkeld's ball, that Mary and Ellinor were his cousins, who were ignorant of his identity; but the too-knowing baronet did not believe a word of his assertions, and, seeing the matter through the medium of his own evil mind, supposed the story was 'only a red herring drawn across the scent'—a dodge for purposes of the Guardsman's own—so he sought counsel of Mr. John Gaiters, while the latter prepared for him some brandy and seltzer-water.

'I am awfully spoony on a girl, Gaiters,' said he.

'That is nothing new, Sir Redmond; but it won't last.'

'It never does, I fear.'

'Certainly not with you, sir,' was the flippant reply of the valet.

'Here is her name and address. You will know her again when you see her, but she must not know you. Find out all about her—who she is living with, and all the rest of it—and you will do for me that which nothing can repay.'

'By jingo, sir, I would rather do something that could be repaid.'

'Here is a fiver, anyway, and now be off.'

Duly instructed, a couple of days afterwards, and disguised by a false beard and moustache, and clad in a tolerably accurate morning suit, Mr. John Gaiters, turning up his already tip-tilted nose at having to traverse so unaristocratic a locality as Paddington, soon found the terrace and the number, and after an external survey of the house, by means of the knocker brought to the door a little maid-of-all-work, on whose cheeks was the black smudge so usual to her class.

'Is your mistress at home?' he inquired, blandly.

'Yes, sir.'

'Ah, is she handsome? But I need not ask,' he added, insinuatingly.

'Why, sir?'

'Because, unless her beauty were not of a more than ordinary character, she could not afford to have one so excelling as you by her side.'

This high-flown speech, which Gaiters copied from some of his master's, caused the little housemaid to think he was mad or tipsy, and she was about to close the door with some precipitation, when Mrs. Fubsby appeared, and, on inquiring for Miss Ellinor Wellwood, he was informed she was at home.

The dealer had promptly informed Ellinor that a companion was wanted for her landscape, and while intent among the many in her portfolio, she was not surprised when Mrs. Fubsby announced a gentleman visitor, who knew her face instantly, though she failed to recognise the bearer of many gifts of flowers and game when at Birkwoodbrae.

With all his vulgar assurance, the valet felt himself for a little time daunted or abashed by the presence and bearing of Ellinor, to whom with some hesitation he told the object of his visit—he had bought her picture, and a friend of his wished one precisely like it; and while he was speaking, Jack, the terrier, with a dog's strange instincts, maintained a most unpleasant snarling under the sofa, and Gaiters, remembering the episode of his master, felt correspondingly uneasy. For 'though love be proverbially blind, hatred has a sharp sight,' and so had Jack, who showed his white glittering teeth from time to time. 'Human beings have their instinctive likes and dislikes, and why not dogs?' asks a writer. 'We cannot tell what expression of countenance they consider malevolent, or menacing, or murderous; but certain it is that they often exhibit unaccountable antipathy to some individual, while most affectionate and amicable towards all the rest of the world.'

So Jack's antipathy to Sleath now extended to his emissary Gaiters.

The landscape was soon agreed about—money was no object to the visitor, who quickly selected a subject from a rough sketch, which Ellinor perceived with some surprise he held upside-down, a curious fancy in a connoisseur and patron of art, and, in the interests of his knavish master, Gaiters, anxious to learn the entire carte du pays, said,

'Do you live here alone, Miss Wellwood?'

'I am not Miss Wellwood—my sister is,' replied Ellinor, with a little hauteur of manner.

'Is she, too, an artist?'

'No.'

'And you live together—so sorry I had not the pleasure of seeing her.'

Ellinor thought this evinced curiosity; but, thinking she might advance the interests of Mary, she said, as Mr. Gaiters took up his hat,

'At this hour she is usually with her pupils at Portmore Square.'

'Ah—at this hour; we must make a note of that,' thought Mr. John Gaiters, and, forgetting again to refer to the landscape, he bowed himself out, hailed a hansom, and drove away, having obtained all the information his master wanted—to wit, that the sisters were living together, unprotected, in somewhat humble lodgings, and that Ellinor, at the particular time mentioned, was always alone.

'Such a pleasant and haffable gentleman, and with such 'ansome whiskers,' commented Mrs. Fubsby. 'Drat that dog—why did it worrit so about him!'

The report made to Sir Redmond by his subservient emissary piqued and encouraged him in his nefarious schemes.

'Every woman has her price,' thought he, as he sipped his wine that evening after a cosy dinner at his club, and dreamily gazed down the gas-lighted vista of Pall Mall; 'if not to me, this little one will become the prize—the prey of some other fellow; so, with the basis I have for future operations, why not to me? On some pretence or other I snail get her wheedled over to the Continent, and then the game is my own.'

In his instance it could not be said that

'Evil is wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart,'

for he gave his whole thoughts, and his heart too—such as the latter was—to the consideration and perfection of his schemes, and exulted in the idea of outwitting Colville, if he knew—as Sleath scarcely doubted he did—the residence of the sisters.