FAITHFUL MARGARET.

CHAPTER I.

A DYING WOMAN'S COMMAND.

She was dying—good old Ethel Brand, the mistress for half a century of the hoary castle which stood like an ancient cathedral in the midst of the noble estate in Surrey, Seven-Oak Waaste.

No need now of these whispering attendants, and that anxious little physician; she would not trouble them more. No need for these grim medicine vials, marshaled upon the little table near her couch; she was past mortal needs or mortal help; her face, set in cold repose, seemed glistening with supernal light, while waiting for the fatal kiss of death.

And over her bent a woman, breathless, pulseless, motionless, as if carved from stone, listening, with straining ear, for each slow, rattling breath; watching, with great, glistening eyes, for each darkening shadow over the noble face—Margaret Walsingham.

No high-born dame was she; no fortunate next-of-kin, watching with decorous lament for the moment of emancipation from her weary wait for a dead woman's shoes. Only Mrs. Brand's poor companion, Margaret Walsingham.

Four years had she ministered to the whims, the caprices, the erratic impulses of that most erratic of all creations, an eccentric old woman; and exalting the good which she found, and pardoning the frailties she could not blind her eyes to, her presence had become a sweet necessity to the world-weary dowager, who repaid it by unceasing exactions and doting outbursts of gratitude; and there had been much love between these two.

Paler waxed the high patrician face, darker grew the violet circles beneath her heavy eyes.

Margaret clasped her hands convulsively.

"Will she go before seven?" whispered she.

Old Dr. Gay stooped low and listened to the labored inspiration.

"Going—going fast," he said, with faltering lips.

A wail burst from the crowd of servants standing by the door; sobs and tears attested to the love they had borne their dying mistress.

"Hush!" whispered Margaret. "Do not awake her."

"They'll never wake her more," said Dr. Gay, mournfully.

She turned at that with terror in her eyes; she laid a small, strong hand upon the doctor's arm and clung to it convulsively.

"She must live to see St. Udo Brand," said she, in a low, thrilling voice. "She must, I tell you—it is her dearest, her last wish—it is my most earnest prayer. Surely you will not let her die before that wish is fulfilled?"

She gazed with passionate entreaty in the little doctor's face, and her voice rose into a wail at the last words. He regarded her with helpless sympathy and shook his head.

"She can't live half an hour longer," said Dr. Gay. "She'll not see St. Udo Brand."

A fierce shudder seized Margaret Walsingham from head to foot. The blood forsook her lips, the light her eyes—she stood silent, the picture of heart-sick despair.

She had often appealed to Dr. Gay's admiration by her faithfulness, her kindness, her timidly masked self-sacrifices; she appealed straight to his heart now by her patient suffering, unconscious as he was of its cause.

"I will do what I can to keep up her strength," he said, approaching the bed to gaze anxiously again at the slumberer. "I will try another stimulant, if I can only get her to swallow it. Perhaps the London train may be here by that time."

"Thank you! oh, thank you!" murmured Margaret; gratefully. "You little know the desperate need there is for Mrs. Brand seeing her grandson before she dies."

Tears welled to her eloquent eyes, her lips trembled distressfully, she waved the servants from the room and followed them out.

"Symonds, I wish you to hasten immediately to Regis for Mr. Davenport, the lawyer," said she, when she had dismissed the other servants down stairs. "Give him this note and drive him back here as quickly as you can drive."

She dropped her note into the groom's hand, and watched him from the oriel hall window, as he hurried from the court below, out into the deepening twilight, from the road which went to the pretty little village of Regis, some two miles distant.

She stood in the waning light, watching for the lawyer's coming, and her thoughts were wild and bitter.

She had a doom to confront, as terrible to her as unsought martyrdom is to the quailing victim of a blinded hate; a doom from which she fain would court grim death himself if he would open his gates to let her escape; a humiliating and revolting doom from which she recoiled with vehement dislike, every nerve in her high-strung frame quivering with horror.

Ethel Brand had ever been capricious in her life, but of all the mad, impulsive freaks which her lonely heart had led her into, her last caprice was the most ill-advised, the most disastrous.

Margaret Walsingham had answered Mrs. Brand's advertisement for a companion four years previously, when she was a pale, timid girl of twenty, clad in orphan's weeds, and scarce lifting her deep, earnest eyes to the inquisitive gaze of her patroness; but her quiet, grave, soulful character had strangely fascinated the haughty old lady, and from the humble post which she had gone to Castle Brand to fill, she quickly rose to be the prime object of all its mistress' dreams, to be beloved, and indulged, and admired as no living mortal had ever been by that closely-guarded heart, save St. Udo Brand. Margaret Walsingham was a sea-captain's daughter. Up to her twelfth year she had sailed the seas in his ship and looked to him for society; and not till then was she sent on shore to be educated. Still the stout captain had been ambitious for his daughter, and had taken care that her education, when it did commence, should be thorough, comprehensive and elegant in all its branches; so that when after eight years of ceaseless learning on her part, and ceaseless voyaging on his, he proposed going home to England and retiring with his daughter upon a handsome fortune, she was well fitted to adorn the society he intended to surround her with. But the ill-starred captain went down in a Biscay gale when also within sight of home, and with him went his whole life's savings, leaving his Margaret fatherless, homeless and fortuneless.

And that was why she answered Mrs. Brand's advertisement.

St. Udo Brand was an officer in the Coldstream Guards, now in London. He was the only son of Mrs. Brand's only son, Colonel Cathcart Brand, long dead.

Cathcart Brand had been a sad rake, lawless, reckless, and a natural spendthrift. The one act of worldly wisdom which he had ever achieved was his marriage, late in life, with a lady of noble birth, whose ambitious leanings and insatiable vanity had scourged the easy colonel up into the highest social circles, and in some measure covered his blasé reputation with her gilded arms.

St. Udo Brand was said to have inherited his father's determined extravagance united to his mother's magnificent tastes; his father's careless, dashing, unscrupulous character, and his mother's proud, cynical, bitter temperament. At twenty he was the glory and terror of his chums, the idolized of women, and the ideal of his grandmother's fastidious soul. At thirty he was a man to be feared only, a polished gentleman with a questionable history—a universal scoffer, a world-weary atheist, with a subtle, insidiously sweet influence, a sad and embittered soul, and a heart long closed against all holy whisperings of better feelings. And still his grandmother clung to him with a pathetic belief in his nature's nobility, and ignoring his wild and hopeless life, looked forward with love-blinded eyes to a possible future for him of worthy achievements. So, because she loved this man, and trusted in the goodness of Margaret Walsingham, she had elected hers to be the strong, soft hand to lead him back from ruin and to point him a better way. She had vowed St. Udo Brand and Margaret Walsingham should marry.

"You shall lure St. Udo back from the gates of hell," quoth the grandmother, with an inspired enthusiasm. "You are just the woman to impress that high and royal heart with a true sense of your own pure goodness; you can lead him captive by a secret power; you can lead him where you will. You shall dispute with vice and fatal atheism for that magnificent soul, and when you have routed your foes, you shall be rewarded by his life-long gratitude, and his gratitude is more precious far, my girl, than is the languid love of millions of other men. My Margaret, you are twenty-four, strong, buoyant, pure-minded; my grandson is thirty-four, world-weary and careless. Your fresh enthusiasm shall stir his withering heart-strings and wake his slumbering belief—he shall admire you, study you, and love you."

"I dread your grandson, and tremble at the idea of ever meeting him," was Margaret's shuddering answer.

"Yes, I regret not having caused you to meet before," complacently observed Mrs. Brand. "You will soon overcome these childish tremors. Would you not like to be the mistress of Castle Brand, and the owner of Seven-Oak Waaste, my proud Margaret?"

"No, madam," breathed Margaret, fervently; "never as Captain Brand's wife."

"Ah—hem! We shall see, we shall see," quoth the lady, serenely, and dropped the subject.

Soon after that she was smitten with her death sickness, and at the last she called her poor Margaret to her, and with plaintiff affection boasted to her of what she had done for her.

"You shall never be homeless again, sweet soul," murmured she, with glistening eyes. "I have willed this castle to you if St. Udo refuses your hand."

"Madam, for Heaven's sake revoke that will!" prayed Margaret, vehemently. "Do not bequeath such misery to him and to me!"

"Pooh—rubbish! He will deserve to lose all if he refuses the woman I choose for his wife," cried the autocratic dame.

"I thank Heaven that I have no beauty with which to buy his love!" cried Margaret, with proudly flashing eyes. "He will not sue for me. But, madam, you must revoke your will. I cannot live to injure your grandson so deeply."

"You are a foolish girl. I tell you, Margaret," in rising wrath, "that I will not have my estate, the richest in all Surrey, squandered away in gambling, horse-racing, and worse extravagance by St. Udo. I had much rather give it all to you than to his mad associates. He has spent his patrimony, and his mother's fortune went soon after her death. He has only Seven-Oak Waaste to stand between him and penury. So will he not, think you, mend his life, and become a man worthy of Margaret Walsingham, if it was only to come into possession of his own inheritance? Tears, my darling? Come, you give my love a poor return."

"Oh, madam—oh, madam!" sobbed Margaret, "blot my name out of your will, if you value my happiness."

Mrs. Brand watched her in bitter disappointment, then turned her face away and wept a few angry tears.

"Send for St. Udo," said she, curtly. "If he refuses your hand before my face, I shall change the will, but not unless he does so."

Margaret telegraphed to London for Captain Brand, telling him of his grandmother's sudden illness and her desire to see him.

Captain Brand wrote a polite and indifferent reply to Margaret Walsingham, expressing regrets, sympathy, and excuses, and promising to run down to Surrey some day next week.

Margaret wrote an entreating note, setting forth the urgency of the case and the certainty that Mrs. Brand was dying; and Captain Brand telegraphed a dry, "Very well, I will be at Regis to-night."

And all day long the dying woman sank lower, and forgot ere long the things of earth, and hour after hour went past, bringing only wilder grief and anxiety to the hapless Margaret.

So she was still tied to the wehr-wolf of her loathing fancy, and until St. Udo Brand chose to come to his grandmother that tie was indissoluble.

Margaret Walsingham was aroused from her hopeless meditations by the appearance of Symonds driving Mr. Davenport, Mrs. Brand's lawyer, into the court-yard, and she descended swiftly to meet him in the library.

Mr. Davenport entered—a tall, thin, wiry man, with beetling brows and irascible eyes—and cautiously shut the door.

"Is Mrs. Brand conscious yet?" he asked.

"She is asleep," said Margaret. "We fear that she will not live to see the heir. Now, Mr. Davenport, I have asked you to come here that when Captain Brand arrives you may be upon the ground to change the will legally. Dr. Gay hopes that she may awake to consciousness for a few minutes before death. Wait here, if you please, until you are summoned."

Without another word she left the library, followed to the door by the lawyer's keen eyes, and ascended to the death-chamber.

Dr. Gay sat by the dying woman, wiping the death-dews from her brow; her eyes were open and were eagerly fixed upon the door. Margaret entered, they flickered up into a transient brightness, her cold lips faintly smiled.

"You know me, do you not?" murmured Margaret, kneeling beside her and laying her cheek fondly on the pillow beside her friend's.

The cold lips framed an eager "Yes," the groping hand sought hers and pressed it gratefully.

Margaret Walsingham's tears fell fast; she kissed the wan cheek of her dying patroness and smoothed her white tresses back from her clammy brow.

"God be with you, my good Margaret!" muttered the old lady, brokenly, "you have been a good friend to a lonely woman. You shall be rewarded when I am gone."

A wave of anguish swept over Margaret's plain, proud face, her voice grew beautiful with the soul's voiceless eloquence, her soft eyes pleaded wistfully, her shy lips quivered beseechingly. The old dowager's glaring eyes dwelt on her with gloating admiration.

"You will make a noble lady," muttered Mrs. Brand, with a fond smile. "Come, tell me you are satisfied with my arrangements for you?"

"No, no, I cannot meet St. Udo Brand—and I will not stand between him and his own property. I cannot, indeed!" cried Margaret, with a heart-rending sob.

The words rang out sharply in the hushed death-chamber, and the little doctor shifted uneasily in his chair, and stopped stirring the stimulant he was preparing, to gaze from one to the other—the lady and her companion. Twice Mrs. Brand essayed to speak, but her trembling lips refused to articulate a word, and her faint eyes sought Margaret's in dumb appeal.

"Say but one word before Dr. Gay and Mr. Davenport," pleaded Margaret, wildly. "Say that you wish the will to be canceled, and your grandson to come into his inheritance without incumbrance. For the sake of the love we have borne each other, grant my request."

"Unsay those words, my darling," wailed Mrs. Brand. "You give me a parting stab I never thought to receive from you. Oh, my darling, can't you save St. Udo from ruin for my sake?—do you grudge to do something for my sake?"

"No, dear madam, I would be glad to die for your sake," cried Margaret, lifting up a brave, love illumined face; "but not this—oh, Heaven! not this."

Mrs. Brand closed her eyes with a pang of mortal anguish.

"Have I been mistaken in my Margaret?" she uttered, brokenly. "Is she not the high, heroic soul I deemed her?"

Tears rose from the heart that thought never to feel another earthly pang, and rushed from the eyes which she thought to have closed in peace; and Margaret's tender heart accused her sternly for her own self-care in this most pitiful hour.

"Do not fear for your grandson," said she, eagerly, "I shall not suffer him to be defrauded."

Mrs. Brand turned a piercing gaze upon her.

"You must do your best to win St. Udo's love," she whispered, earnestly, "else you will defraud him of his rights, and his ruin will be at your door."

Poor Margaret's head sank on her breast, her heart grew heavy as lead. Her last supplications had been made, and vainly. Death was stealing closer to his feeble victim.

Where, where was St. Udo Brand that he came not in time to save her and himself from this fatal chain which his grandmother's death was to rivet round them both?

The trampling of horses hoofs reached her ear. She started to her feet and listened breathlessly. Yes, through the still April eve stole those welcome sounds, nearer and clearer. An arrival at Castle Brand.

Margaret took her dying friend in her arms and tenderly kissed her cold, trembling mouth, and laid her on her pillow again.

"Captain Brand has arrived," said she, softly. "I shall bring him in at once."

She stepped to the doctor's side—he was still stirring the stimulant with a nervous hand.

"Give it to her quickly," she whispered; "the heir has come."

She left the chamber, her pulses throbbed with a vague sense of evil, her limbs seemed heavy as lead; and as she crept down the great vaulted staircase, lit by pale, flickering tapers, she thought that her own tall shadow writhed and shuddered before her like the phantom of a deadly tear.

The great hall-door stood open, the servants were waiting decorously in the hall to greet the heir, and Purcell, the old steward, stood out on the threshold bare-headed, his silvery locks glistening in the broad moon's light.

Margaret Walsingham stepped beside him and eagerly looked for St. Udo Brand.

Two horsemen were cantering across the Waaste; the night wind bore the fragment of a gay chanson to the doors of Castle Brand. Under the Norman oaks they rode softly over the velvet turf, now snatched from view by the dense hazel coppice, anon seen plainly on the brow of this gentle curve.

Nearer, nearer—home at last to Seven-Oak Waaste. They slackened their pace as they approached, and gazed admiringly at the ancient castle, then observing a lady in the doorway, curved into the court and dismounted.

"Is this St. Udo Brand?" whispered Margaret to the steward.

A tall man had approached to the foot of the granite steps, leaving his companion standing between the pawing horses, holding a bridle of each, and serenely smoking a cigar—a tall man wrapped in a Spanish riding-cloak, who gazed about him with a dark, lowering eye.

"Can't say, Miss Margaret," muttered the steward; "if it is, he's a sight the worse for wear; but I haven't seen him for well nigh onto seven years."

The old man descended stiffly to greet the heir.

"Welcome to the Castle, captain," said he, sourly. "It's well you come at last, you're but just in time to see her alive."

The stranger removed his hat and disclosed a thin, wary face, just now wreathed in courtly smiles.

"I have not the honor to be Captain Brand," he said. "I am merely his messenger."

"What? Heh? Captain Brand didn't come after all?" cried Mr. Purcell, recoiling from the dark, smiling face.

"Yes, he came; he will remain in Regis to-night, and when less fatigued will pay his devoirs to Mrs. Brand. He made me the bearer of a note to Miss Walsingham. Can I see her?"

The steward turned; the man looked up, his black, flashing eyes rested upon her. She stood not three feet away, looking down upon him, her white, electric face startling him in the chill radiance of the summer moon, her long garments sweeping in regal folds about her magnificent person, her blue-black hair curving in rich waves under the lace mantilla she had thrown over her head—a woman to mark, to remember.

She stretched forth a long, white hand, with a vehement gesture.

"Give it to me," she said. "I am Miss Walsingham."

The man forgot his courtly smile and his wary watchfulness; his artificial polish cracked in all directions and exposed a terribly startled man. He gazed at Margaret Walsingham with arrested eye, and his hands strayed unconsciously to his wrists as if they would find spectral shackles there.

The envelope he held dropped to his feet, he stooped with a muttered oath, and recovering it, reached it to her outstretched hand.

She did not retire to read the missive, the moonlight saved her the necessity, and the man stood awaiting an answer, as she tore the note from its crested envelope, and in a moment had mastered its contents.

A blaze of indignation spread over her brow and cheek.

"Heartless trifler!" ejaculated she, bitterly, and read these words aloud to the steward:

"St. Udo Brand presents his compliments to Miss Walsingham, and his thanks for her tearful invitations to join her in the melancholy duties of sick-nurse. Feeling that his vocation does not lie in soothing the nervous sufferings of the aged, he begs Miss Walsingham's disinterested heart to hold him excused; and confidently commends his dear grandmother to the delicate care of her pet and protegee until such time as she can assure him that his presence will not bring on another attack of the vapors upon Madam Brand. Hoping that you will both enjoy a good night's rest, and that you may feel justified in receiving me some time to-morrow, I remain yours,

"St. Udo Brand."

"Captain Brand must come instantly," cried Margaret, and turned sharply upon the quailing ambassador. "Do you hear, sir?"

She paused with a lady's instinct—a lady's aversion to address an unknown man.

"Roland Mortlake, Miss Walsingham," murmured the stranger coming out of his fog.

"Go tell Captain Brand that Mrs. Brand is dying—that she has but a few minutes to live, and that he must come instantly if he would hear her last words. You will remember, Mr. Mortlake? And say the will must be changed, or Captain Brand will be ruined. Tell him that. Now go, for Heaven's sake!"

The stranger turned his wrapt scrutiny of herself into a keen and crafty attention of her words. He repeated them after her, with a significant pause after each clause, as if he longed to wrest the uttermost moiety of a meaning from her scant expressions.

"Symonds shall accompany you with the carriage, and bring Captain Brand," said Margaret. "Send him, Purcell."

The steward trotted away to dispatch the coachman, and the pair were left with each other.

The man on the lowest step and the woman on the highest gazed fixedly in each other's faces. His fierce, envious, and inquisitive; hers cold, distrustful, and unflinching.

In that silent interview their souls stood forth, each revealing to the other, and doomed to future recognition under the most perfect masking which rascality could assume to compass its end, or purity devise to hide from peril.

Then Roland Mortlake bowed to the earth, and, striding back to his horse and his companion, uttered a terrible execration.

The other tossed his cigar over the low stone wall into a tulip bed, and, springing to his horse, followed his angry comrade as he galloped away.

"Gardez-tu, my friend," cried he, breezily. "You English take great news sourly, ma foi! you curse Mademoiselle Fortune herself when she smiles upon you the blandest."

His clipped English rang out gaily on the summer breeze, and those careless words, listened to by Margaret Walsingham on that eventful night with unheeding ears, came back one day through the mists of forgetfulness, and took their place in the wild drama with strange significance.

Once more Margaret returned to her dying patroness, and met her eager, questioning eyes with mute looks of anguish.

Utterly silent now, she held her poor friend's fluttering hand, and wiped the foam from her voiceless lips, and the kind old doctor turned away his brimming eyes, that he might not witness the harrowing spectacle of the woman's love and grief while performing these last gentle ministrations.

The housekeeper sat at the foot of the bed, shaking with her sobs. A few of the old retainers of the household grouped near the door, stifling their lamentations as best they might. But never a word spoke poor Margaret, as she watched her last and only friend sinking from her clinging arms into the mysteries of death.

The minutes sped; the doctor laid his watch upon the table; Margaret's eyes left the pallid face of the dying to watch its swift circling hands, with a tightening of the heart-strings.

"I give them thirty minutes to go and return from Regis," she murmured to the doctor at last. "Will she live thirty minutes?"

Dr. Gay answered nothing; but the vampire Death, fanning the sinking mortal into immortality, answered, by her convulsive face and twitching hands.

"No!"

Ten, fifteen minutes passed, still the shrouded chest rose and fell in intermittent respirations; still the cold fingers sought Margaret's; still the swimming eyes turned on hers with the dumb agony of the last pang. Twenty minutes, twenty-five, twenty-six, the closing eyes flew wide open, the relaxing chin took its comely place once more, the toiling breath ceased in a long, full sigh.

She looked long and tenderly at her poor Margaret Walsingham, then beyond her into the shadowy world she was entering, and a wondering smile broke dazzlingly over her whole countenance.

"Lift me up," she sighed, like a weary child.

Margaret lifted her to her breast.

"Higher," whispered she. "Ah! this is rest—rest!"

And as Margaret lifted the smiling face to her shoulder, the last thrill ran through the kind old heart, stopped, and she entered the everlasting gates.

So she went on her dim, mystic journey, not sped by the hands of her kindred; nor mourned by the hearts of her kindred; uncomforted and alone, save for the love of Margaret Walsingham—good, impulsive, generous Mrs. Brand.

Margaret laid her down and closed her sightless eyes; then arose from her finished watch and turned away.

She looked blankly about; her eyes fell upon the watch still lying upon the table, and noticed the hand resting upon the thirtieth minute, and immediately the clang of horses' hoofs and the roll of the carriage wheels stole to her ear. She put her hand suddenly to her forehead like one in physical pain; it fell to her bosom, and pressed convulsively there. She uttered a piercing cry, flung up her hands, and fell forward like one stabbed to the heart.

St. Udo Brand had come at last, and he was too late.

CHAPTER II.

READING OF THE WILL.

Mrs. Brand, in her lead coffin, in its rosewood shell, was slumbering in the stately vault of her ancestors, and Mr. Davenport held in his hands the last will of her whose will had in her life ever been law, and glanced around to see that all the legatees were there.

St. Udo Brand, the tardy heir, was present, quietly waiting to hear the reading of the will with that decorous gravity with which we wait to bear our honors.

Dr. Gay was there, because his departed friend had requested him to do so.

It was in the library; the walls of books glittered in calf and gilt in the pleasant April sunlight; the glass door was opened upon the perfumed garden walks; and the twitter of the busy birds came sweetly over beds of crocuses and early blossoms to break the silence.

"Where is Miss Walsingham? Shouldn't she be here?" asked the doctor.

"I don't think she'll come down, sir," said the housekeeper.

Mr. Davenport cleared his throat.

"Better send for her, eh?" said he to Captain Brand.

The heir-expectant turned a dark face, disfigured by impatience, upon the lawyer.

"It cant make much difference," he answered, dryly. "She can hear her part of it again. Go on."

"On the contrary, it makes all the difference in the world," retorted the lawyer, with unexpected heat; "and I refuse to break these seals until Margaret Walsingham is present."

"Oh!"

St. Udo Brand raised his level brows and subsided into stolid indifference.

A messenger carried a line from Mr. Davenport to Miss Walsingham's room, and carried down again a message from her, which promised her presence in a few minutes.

Some time passed in irksome silence, during which the captain beat the devil's tatoo on the table, and darted mocking glances at the important Mr. Davenport.

Then the sound of a slippered foot crossing the black and brown hall floor sent the captain sauntering to the remotest window, there to watch the struggles of a sparrow caught in the wire framework which protected the espaliers; so that there was no one to welcome Margaret Walsingham in, save old Dr. Gay, who compassionately pressed her cold band as he led her to a chair, and with his heart pitied the captain's future bride.

She passed, with heavy eyes cast down, to a seat behind a bronze statue of St. George and the dragon, where the deepest shadows lurked, and kept the giant warrior between her and that distant window until the will should be declared.

Then the lawyer cleared his throat, adjusted his spectacles, and read:

"THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF ETHEL BRAND.

"Seven-Oak Waaste, Surrey, 1862."

"To all whom it may concern:—I, Ethel Brand, being on this, the twenty-eighth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, in infirm health, yet in possession of sound mind and memory, and all my natural faculties, hereby declare this to be my last Will and Testament, and that I revoke, rescind, and disannul any and all Wills, Testaments, or Codicils previously made by me.

"To my dear grandson, St. Udo Brand, only son of my late son, Cathcart Brand, all other lawful issue being dead, I bequeath the whole of my personal property, estates, houses, and moneys as held by me and in my name, together with the Seven-Oak Waaste estate and house known as Castle Brand, on one condition:

"That he shall, not sooner than one month, and not later than one year, take to be his wife, and the legal mistress of Castle Brand, my beloved and faithful friend, Margaret Walsingham, who held the cup of love to the lips of an otherwise forsaken old woman, and for four years served her without thought of reward.

"Should my grandson, St. Udo Brand, fail to marry Margaret Walsingham within twelve months after my demise, I bequeath all my property, lands, houses, and moneys as above mentioned, to Margaret Walsingham, to be enjoyed by her until the day of her death, and to descend to her children, or next of kin, forever.

"Should St. Udo Brand or Margaret Walsingham die within the year, the property shall revert to the survivor."

Then followed generous bequests to various charitable schemes, and annuities to the old servants of the castle, the whole concluding in the clause:

"I appoint, and do hereby declare Rufus Gay. M.D., my trustworthy physician, and Andrew Davenport, Esq., my faithful lawyer, to be the executors of this, my Will, bequeathing to each the sum of five thousand pounds, as an humble token of my regard for, and gratitude to them; and adjuring them to see the contents of my Will faithfully carried out.

"All of which I confirm by affixing this my signature, in the presence of these witnesses.

"Ethel Brand.

"Rufus Gay, M.D.

"Andrew Davenport, Attorney-at-Law."

The lawyer laid down the will upon the table again, and turned a searching glance upon each of the principals. Again he cleared his throat, which had grown husky at the last clause referring to himself, and it bore an admonitory, as well as a reproachful import to the ears of Captain Brand.

"Miss Walsingham," blurted Dr. Gay, rising nervously, "no one has presented you to Captain Brand. May I?"

"Sir, be pleased to lend your attention for a moment," cried Mr. Davenport, pugnaciously.

So Captain Brand was pleased to lend his attention. He wheeled from his dark reverie, and marched, with the reckless tread of the desperado going to the cannon's mouth, up to the group, and his flashing eyes boded no tenderness in their first scathing glance towards his future bride.

"Miss Walsingham, my dear, this is Captain Brand."

The doctor stepped back, and the lady glided from her shadowy nook; and the rich gold lights from the tinted panes fell full upon her.

"Ye gods, what a Medusa!" muttered the captain, staring.

"We have met," said Margaret Walsingham, panting and white-lipped, her wild gray eyes burning with red heat, and meeting his sneering gaze with loathing, "we have met, sir, by no will of mine."

A loud, insulting "Ha! ha! ha!" burst from Captain Brand.

The harsh, grating laughter, eloquent with scorn, devilish with malice, incredulity, and fury, turned the girl's outraged protest into speechlessness.

She wrapped her long crape garments about her hands, and the beautiful figure of Margaret Walsingham—her one charm, and a perfection it was—vanished from the incensed eyes of St. Udo Brand.

"Well, what think you of woman's wit after this?" cried he to the executors when the door had closed. "Who says a woman can't scheme, and cleverly, too? What fool ever called hers the softest sex?"

"I must request of you, as the executor of this will," said Mr. Davenport, slapping it loudly, "is bound to do—to apologize to the young lady whom you have just now insulted, for your treatment of her."

The captain's magnificent eyes were blazing with anger, and his brow was contracted with the scowl of a baffled demon, but at the plucky lawyer's proposition, he threw back his head and burst into another shout of laughter that made the ceiling ring again.

"What! trust my unwary heart to the red-hot fingers of a Torquemada? She would dissect it leisurely for its vulnerable spot, and probe that with spiteful blade. It needed not my insults, as you call them, to turn her venom against me. Did I not read it in the loathing eyes and shrinking figure before ever I opened my mouth? Am not I the one obstacle between her and the fortune she has lain in wait for during four years? She can afford to take insults from me; they will not hurt her. They are my tribute to her talent as a fortune-hunter."

"I must disabuse your mind of all unjust suspicions against Miss Walsingham," cried Mr. Davenport, meeting the captain's frowning eyes with as fierce a frown; "she has never schemed for this disposition of your grandmother's property. On the contrary, to my extreme surprise and disapprobation, she vehemently implored that she might be left out of the will altogether, and sent for me an hour before Mrs. Brand's decease, hoping that you might arrive in time to prevail upon Mrs. Brand to revoke the clauses concerning her."

"Save me these rhapsodies, friend," returned the captain; "those heavenly qualities to which you direct my lover-like regards, but whet my appetite like that of the ravening wolf. Let me make a mouthful of my bliss; but I warn all officious fingers to keep out of my pie."

"You mean by that, I suppose, that you will submit to the conditions of the will?"

"I mean nothing of the kind, my good sir. To the infernal shades I consign your scheming adventuress."

He rose from his lounging attitude with another of those bitter and cynical bursts of laughter, and dashing open the glass door, stepped out upon the gravel walk to saunter, his hands behind him, past the old moss-grown fish-pool, into the shrubbery.

The sun shone on the stately form and on his purple black hair. It wavered between leafy banners on his angry face, so dark with ominous clouds, and merciless with the dance of inward passions.

And yet it was a grand picture of desolation, that lofty countenance in its wrath. The fires of a thousand passions had graved these deep curves of bitterness, and marred the once genial mouth with the never absent sneer, and perverted an intellect once pure and stately.

No wonder that the two men, who were watching him in silence as he deliberately slashed down lilies with his cane, shuddered when they thought of the poor girl who stood between him and Castle Brand.

Margaret sat in her room, dumbly enduring the first humiliation of her life. Her humble soul had been outraged—disgraced. That cruel, insulting laugh still rang in her ears. Her cheeks flamed with shame; her eyes were suffused with hot tears. She could do nothing but sit in a trance, and busy-brained, revolve it over and over until she trembled with the agony of wounded pride.

Her sense of womanly honor had been trampled upon; her unapproachable self-respect had been bandied about by impure hands. Margaret felt that she was forever disgraced. To have been thrown at his feet, to suffer his eyes to scorn her, to see the wicked mouth sneer—the reckless head thrown back—to hear the muttered "Ye gods! what a Medusa!" to be stunned by the loud "ha! ha!" to be consorted with a monster of dissipation, such as he was—and to be scorned. Oh, cruel Ethel Brand: to force a friendless girl into such a position! Why had she not rather turned her from these castle doors, four years ago, than reserve her for such a fate as this?

Margaret began to see that she was terribly in Captain Brand's power—that if he were rascal enough to propose to her, she could scarcely in honor refuse him, and keep him out of his property. She also saw, with vague, prophetic eyes, a vision in the distance, of stealthy hands stretching toward her life in either case.

The ruddy sun, slipping down behind the cliffs two hours later, looked in at Margaret, who, with her door securely locked, sped about with motions of nervous energy, packing a small valise of clothes to take with her upon a sudden journey.

She had determined to blot herself by her own act out of Ethel Brand's will, by disappearing alike from friend and enemy, and hiding herself in some far distant corner of England, until Captain Brand had stepped into secure possession of Castle Brand.

She believed her life to be in danger, for she had wit enough to know that there were a thousand ways of quietly putting her out of the way before the twelve months were over, provided that St. Udo Brand was villain enough to avail himself of them, and of that she had little doubt; so she made all haste to leave him master of the field.

At ten o'clock of the night she flitted down the broad oak and walnut stairs, with her valise under her cloak, and stole out of the library glass door, under the very nose of sleepy Symonds, the footman, and under the night shades of the Norman oaks.

A man met her on the broad Waaste, where the somber pines stood one by one like specters, and Margaret sharply screamed when he came close to her and peered into her face.

"I think this is Miss Walsingham?"

"Oh, yes."

He was the letter-carrier from Regis, and held a white missive in his hand.

"Special, it says, miss, so I took it over to-night, instead of waiting for to-morrow's batch, for, says I to myself, 'Young wimmen likes to get their letters.' Night, miss."

"Good-night, Mr. Wells. Thank you for taking so much trouble this dark night."

She stood listening to his retreating footsteps, and fingering the embossed seal of the letter. It seemed to be the Brand coat of arms; and yet who would use this crest when all the Brands were dead but one?

A light still burned in the lodge, down by the great gates, and she hung her valise on the iron railing and lifted the latch.

"Let me come in a moment?" she asked, putting in her pale, disturbed face.

"Lord! is that you, Miss Margaret!" cried the lodge-keeper, pushing his horn glasses upon his forehead to look at her with his watery eyes. "Come in, and welcome."

"I was out walking, and met the letter-carrier, he gave me a letter, which I cannot wait longer to read. Let me read it here?"

She sat down, with the tallow candle between her and these bleared old eyes, and opened her letter. Yes, it bore the Brand crest with its fierce inscription. There was but one surviving Brand in the world, and his name signed Margaret's letter:

"Madam:—Accept, with my profound congratulations, Ethel Brand's bequest of Seven-Oak Waaste, and all acres attached, and my bequest of your own choice of a master to the place mentioned. I have withstood the exquisite temptation of sharing your bliss, lest I should revive the pretty drama of 'Paolo Osini,' who strangled his wife in his first embrace; and with a pious blessing on the manes of poor Madam Brand, who likely enough got choked by a parasite, I depart to a land where oracles do say there are no fortune-hunters.

"Yours, admiringly,

"St. Udo Brand."

With this second bitter insult crushed in her hand, and terrified tears washing her cheeks, Margaret Walsingham went back, in the surging night wind, to Seven-Oak Waaste.

CHAPTER III.

EVIL FOREBODINGS.

Mid-ocean, a steamer was laboring on her way, beneath a sky like glittering pearl, arching over a waste of phosphorescent billows, and with a crispy breeze behind her.

The ladies were in their berths, the gentlemen paced the deck, and beguiled the time by discussions many-themed.

But St. Udo Brand, with his hands behind him and his back to all, gazed over the sea to the distant horizon line.

A grim satisfaction illuminated his eye, though the ever-present sneer still marred his lips, as, deep in unaccustomed reverie, he examined his position on all sides.

"Inscrutable are thy ways, oh, Fortune!" mused the captain. "Thou hast given Seven-Oaks to the humble, and cast the haughty from Castle Brand into outer darkness, where there is grinding and gnashing of teeth. Yet, wherefore, oh, sand-blind Fortune! hast thou rolled the hypocritical saint in my bank-notes, and hung golden offerings upon her Medusa head, while I, the honest scoundrel, am stripped naked to supply the ovation? Well, doubtless, she has worked harder for it than ever I could, poor devil! Now for a name and fame, and may be fortune, in yon republic behind the shoulder of this world of waters! And, who knows, I may be happy yet, with my little white cat, instead of the sorceress of yonder castle."

Back and forth the groups of promenaders passed the solitary man, who thus faced his fortunes with satiric stoicism; but no one thought of interfering with his reverie, for Captain Brand had a name for exclusiveness on board the Bellerophon. He may have had a name for some more interesting quality, too, if one might draw conclusions from the earnest scrutiny which two of his fellow-passengers were just now bestowing on him.

A little gentleman, wrapped in a cloak, lounged upon the deck, regarding the captain through his eye-glass with an air at once inquisitive and complacent; and a little behind him stood a tall, elderly man, in servant's livery, fixedly regarding the captain also.

At last the little gentleman rolled off the bench upon his little legs, which were—low be it whispered—somewhat crooked, which is, to say the least, best adapted to equestrianism, and nimbly tripping up to Captain Brand, accosted him with the sunniest air imaginable:

"Bon jour, monsieur, a ver' good day to you, my friend. Why vill you turn the back upon our merry company? Throw care to the dogs; so"—with a flourish of the hands—"now he is gone! Be happy, my good friend!"

Captain Brand gloomed down upon the little intruder.

"If you want anything of me," said he, ironically, "do me the infinite honor to be plain and brief."

The stranger stepped back, threw up his hands, and became dignified.

"Monsieur, you English are a vulgar people. You English do not know how to treat gentlemen of the world. Par la meese! You know nothing, except to drink and keep silence. No, monsieur, I want nothing of you but courtesy, and since you have it not to give, pardieu! bon jour."

With inimitable grace, he bowed his adieu, and was retreating, when the captain's genial laugh arrested him.

"I beg pardon, sir," cried St. Udo, "for the national want. Pray remain, that I may study you up. With such a model before them, who could remain a boor?"

"Monsieur," cried the little man, delightedly, "you are von wag. I like you, monsieur. I present myself. I am called the Chevalier de Calembours; to you I am Ludovic—at your service mon ami."

"Chevalier," returned the captain, "I return the confidence. I am called Captain Brand, of the Coldstream Guards—have just sold out, and to all I am merely St. Udo Brand—at your service."

They shook hands and lit cigars.

The captain felt irresistibly drawn to the little chevalier; he liked him amazingly from the first.

He was handsome; he had a square brow, brown eyes, ruddy cheeks, firm mouth, enormous nut-brown mustache, and a full, glossy beard. He was attractive; there was intelligence in the bold forehead, penetration in the beaming eye, a purpose in the closely-fitting lips, and withal a playful, airy, insolent, cheery frankness which illumined nearly the whole face.

He stood revealed, brisk, and ready for business, the nimble Chevalier de Calembours.

"You are en route for America? So am I—we will be comrades," quoth the chevalier.

"With all my heart! Yes, I go to join the army. I shall either find fame or death in the American war."

"Bah! I go to court the jade Fortune. She has jilted me of late. I would feed my wrinkled purse with American dollars, ma foi! that purse is famishing just now."

"You are not pure French?" demanded the captain.

"Mon Dieu! no," rasped monsieur, with a shrug. "I am cosmopolite, yes."

"Where is your birthplace?"

"The Hungary, mon ami. Have been in Vienna, in Geneva, in Turin, and for the rest—everywheres."

"You omit England?"

"Ah, I did not live in England. I saw it, no more."

"Yet you speak English well."

"I am flattered. I have the habitude of the languages; they count me an expert. Insisted on giving me the post of Professor of the modern languages in the University of Berlin."

"But it was not as a knight of the ferule that you won this mark of distinction?" laughed the captain, touching a fluttering badge which depended from the chevalier's button-hole.

"Ma foi! non! I am Magyar, and that is to say patriot and warrior in one. I combat under the gaze of our glorious Kossuth; but there are times when even valor himself must fly, and the sword of the brave must change, in the stranger's land, to the plowshare, the pen—anything to keep the wolf from the door. But the ferule, the pen, the pestle, I abhor. I hear the blast of the trumpet, I return to my first loves. I cross to Algiers. I fight my way up till I win my grade, and this bagatelle. Nothing more there to pick. I looked around; the rays of glory are beginning to gild the long slumbering west. I leave the ancient world, and sinking my illustrious personality, I forget that I am Count of the Order of Santo Spirito, Turin; that I wear the ribbon of Legion of Honor, and am to throw myself among these Republican hordes, and to fight knee by knee with the mob. Enough!" he concluded; "to you I shall be but Ludovic, mon ami. Come—do you play?"

"I play, chevalier. I am at your service," answered the captain.

The chevalier preceded his new friend to his state-room, and ushered him in with "effusion."

A man rose stiffly from the table, where he had been reading, and made way for the chevalier and his guest.

A tall, elderly man, in servant's livery, who stooped and slunk softly about, whose sallow, brown face grew white when the captain scanned it curiously, whose thin, gray hair and immense overhanging gray mustache showed traces of cares rather than of years, and whose shifting, shrinking eyeballs ever sought the ground, as if their depths held emotions which the man must hide on peril of his life.

A sudden shudder seized Captain Brand; a thrill ran sickening through his heart, which had never so thrilled before. He turned his back—he knew not why—in hatred upon the chevalier's valet.

Was it a perception of evil, slow creeping toward him from the gloomy future—slow, but sure to come as death himself?

Pshaw! what necromancer's dream was this? The captain, scoffing, threw it from him, and forgot the haggard old servant.

"Thoms, we play ecarte," aspirated the chevalier, in his rough English (he invariably spoke French to the captain). "Bring wine and cards, and wait upon us."

They plunged with zest into the game, and passed many hours in its intricacies. The chevalier protested that he had found an adversary worthy of him, and Captain Brand swore that for want of more piquant sauce a game of euchre every night with Calembours might answer to flavor the insipidity of the voyage out to New York.

But the careless captain might have noted, too, had he considered such a worm worthy of notice, that whatever he did—talk, sing, drink wine, or muse—the secret, shifting eyes of Thoms, the valet, never lost a movement, but hour after hour watched him with the unearthly intentness of a blood-hound.

While the captain slept that night in unconscious security, the Chevalier de Calembours, with a complacent chuckle and a flowing pen, wrote down in his diary, these famous words:

"'I came. I saw, I conquered!' Monsieur Brand promises to be excellent sport though little hope of pigeoning him, en passant. Yes, he has keener scent than monsieur, my patron, gave him credit for—he won't be led altogether by the nose. But pouf! who is it that will not be gulled by Ludovic de Calembours?"

Thoms, too, in secret, and with wary ear pricked for possible interruption, bent, in the seclusion of his own state-room, over a tiny green note-book, jotted down some things he wished to remember, then thrusting away his little book in a secret pocket, he rubbed his long, lean hands together in stealthy triumph, and laughed long and wickedly.

Five days passed; the airy chevalier held his own in the sour captain's esteem, and they mutually approved of each other.

They leaned over the taffrail together, Thoms a step behind, and watched the glittering city of New York, glowing in their eyes, as the steamer plowed its way between green and pleasant shores to gain it.

Crowds waited on the pier—sailors, civilians, and soldiers mixed in frantic confusion.

The chevalier examined them through his glass with smiling nonchalance; but Captain Brand looked over the scene with thoughtful brow.

"What is monsieur's programme?" chirped the chevalier. "Does he dally with Fortune's train, or does he brush by her robes and seize the treasure which she guards? Shall mon ami live the short and merry life of conviviality with me in New York, or shall he choose the short and beastly bad career of a soldier?"

St. Udo Brand laughed bitterly.

"What is my life worth to me without fame to gild it?" growled he. "I have no gold to make it shine."

"Bravissima!" shouted the chevalier, clapping his hands; then, with a smile which just showed his long teeth in a hungry arch, "I, too, will go southward, because, that to me my life is very much worth, and I will do bravely to gild it with—gold. We will be brother colonels, mon ami, and Thoms—what shall you do?"

Thoms' evil face beamed with intelligence.

"I'll follow you masters as long as you live," uttered the smooth voice, humbly.

"We shall fight, by gar, for glory!" cried the chevalier. "At least, we shall say so. But each has his motive pardieu, and a sensible motive is mine. Ah, life is nothing without illusions, as Mendelssohn says."

"Nothing indeed," smiled the silent lips of Thoms, "nothing indeed."

Thus these three chose to walk together the road which had been apportioned them by that secret Power behind the scene, bound close together by Circumstance's chain, yet sundered in soul by walls as deep as dungeon walls, and the dusty banners, and golden rewards, and whistling balls of the battle-field beckoned to each with a separate welcome.

"Here you will win glory," they cried to St. Udo Brand.

"Here you will win gold," they whispered to Calembours.

"We promise you death!" they sighed to Thoms.

So the three men followed the beckoning hand, and entered the contest.

Some weeks passed. It was their last evening in New York. On the morrow they would be en route for the army.

Captain Brand and the Chevalier de Calembours had staid at the same hotel, and were, of course, tolerably confidential with each other.

Thoms divided his attentions, with marked impartiality, between his master and his master's friend, and lost no opportunity of ingratiating himself with the cynical captain.

This evening Captain Brand was writing letters; the chevalier was serenely smoking on the balcony. Thoms silently plodded through the packing of their traveling-bags in a corner.

"One, two—there are three letters," said the captain, throwing down his pen. "Thoms, you dog, post these."

A scornful smile was on his lip. He picked up a photograph from his desk and pored over it eagerly. The cold, superior smile melted from his scornful mouth; the keen raillery vanished from his eyes; he regarded the pictured face almost in despair.

Thoms, creeping behind his chair to reach for the letters, took a keen survey of the card he held.

It was the face of a young and lovely girl which returned St. Udo's yearning, questioning gaze with a sweet, free smile.

Thoms took the letters, and standing for a moment in the hall, greedily scrutinized the envelopes.

"Andrew Davenport, Esq.," "Rufus Gay, M.D.," and "Lady Juliana Ducie," whispered the spy.

He passed into his own room, locked the door, and did not emerge for at least ten minutes; and when he did, he stole out with the letters in his hand, casting startled looks around, as if he fancied he had some cause to fear.

The next morning the two new colonels left New York at the head of their men, and halted not until some three days subsequently they found themselves within one day's march of the grand army.

The way lay through forests of hickory, planer, and tulip trees, between tobacco and cotton plantations, and over deep, yielding morasses, where the giant gourd sprang up to catch the bending cypress branch, and the wild vine barred the way.

St. Udo, chatting carelessly to his inferior officer, turned suddenly in his saddle to look for Thoms, and met his quailing eyes scarce two yards behind.

His head was bent to catch every word uttered by St. Udo; his eyes gleamed like glow worms in the dusk; he was the picture of a man with some dread watch to keep.

"Back, fellow!" cried St. Udo, sternly. "What do you want here?"

Thoms fell back with humility.

"Beg pardon, colonel—I was listening to some sounds ahead," muttered he.

His coolness was manifestly forced—his excuse was manifestly a lie—yet the haughty Englishman only swore at him and turned from him as one avoids the worm in the path.

He resumed his idle conversation with his officer, and passed the time away in light jests and piquant anecdotes of a life neither tame nor simple, and quite ignored the inquisitive Thoms behind him.

But Thoms did not forget to strain every faculty of hearing and seeing while he had the chance. Never did lover drink in love vows of his beautiful betrothed, as did the gray-faced valet his colonel's stories; never did the worshipers of that star of song, Jenny Lind, analyse each tone, each delicate inflection of her voice in the day of her most glorious effulgence, as did Thoms the tones of St. Udo Brand; and when the soldier, weary of speech, sank into mute reverie, the old man's glowing eyes stole over his stately figure, measuring its height, its contour, its carriage, with anxious care, as if but one man lived upon the earth for him, and that night he might be slain.

At midnight the little detachment paused to rest.

The place they chose as favorable to their purpose was the wide-spread grounds of a ruined mansion-house.

Merrily the camp-fires blazed up, paling the shimmer of a myriad of soaring fire-flies, and sparkling through the murk like a broken lava stream.

The chevalier left his company to visit his friend's tent, and the brothers-in-arms exchanged cordial jests and friendly converse, while Thoms, hovering over the camp-fires and boiling the coffee, peered inquisitively at the pocket album which St. Udo was showing his friend.

"How that old wretch listens to our conversation," exclaimed St. Udo, laughing, as the valet retreated for a moment beyond earshot, for another armful of fagots. "He is like Diggory behind his master's chair—every story moves him to laugh or cry."

"Pardieu! he will play eavesdropper, will he?" hissed the chevalier. "We shall see."

"Here he comes, hurrying back to the charmed circle," said St. Udo, "with straining ears and a face which looks 'just like a stratagem,' as Madam Noblet says. Where did you get the sorry rascal, Calembours?"

"A friend sent him to me on the morning we parted for New York," muttered the chevalier. "Peace—he is here."

His nervous tremor did not escape the vigilant eye of Thoms, who grimly took his post near the pair, and handed them their viands with obsequious celerity.

St. Udo amused the chevalier by more anecdotes, and presently in their hilarious enjoyment they forgot the haunting demon in the shadow of the tent, till St. Udo, happening to glance that way over his shoulder, stopped short and stared in speechless amazement.

There sat Thoms, leaning against the tent, as St. Udo leaned against the mossy rock by the fire, throwing back his shaggy head as St. Udo threw back his, gesticulating with his long, brown hand as St. Udo waved his, his lurid eyes fixed in a hound-like gaze upon St. Udo Brand, aping every motion like a haggard shadow of himself.

The Chevalier de Calembours, following St. Udo's stare of astonishment, caught the man's antics mid-air, and burst into a volley of oaths in every known language.

"The man's possessed! My life on it, he is a lunatic!" cried St. Udo, laughing till the tears stood in his eyes. "To see him roll his head, and wave his hand, and mouth after me my very words. Ha! ha! ha!" shouted St. Udo. "Thoms, you dog! are you rehearsing a part? What part?"

Thoms was scrambling to his feet, and standing like a scared hare in act to fly. His cheeks were white, his lips withered, his very hand trembled so that he slipped it into his bosom to hide its shaking.

"Diable! what mean you? Out with your excuses!" screamed the chevalier, passionately.

"I—I am—I have been an actor," stammered the old valet, with chattering teeth and a glare of hatred. "I was doing a Dromio of Ephesus with Colonel Brand for model."

"With me for your Dromio of Syracuse, you varlet?" mocked St. Udo. "Pity we are in truth not twin brothers; you might be less of a paradox to me then."

Thoms suddenly turned his convulsed face away. It was well for him he did not permit the angry chevalier a view of his half-closed, furious eyes, blazing like two corpse lights.

"Away with you to rest," ordered Calembours. "We have had enough of you for to-night, by gar! A little more might be bad for you."

Away sneaked the shivering wretch, and lay down among the soldiers at a neighboring camp-fire, and, apparently, fell fast asleep. The brother colonels abused him with mutual heartiness for a while, and then parted to seek their own slumbers.

Toward the morning a yellow mist drifted from the neighboring cypress swamp and brooded over the camp. St. Udo stirred in his sleep at the touch of its clammy breath, and opened his eyes.

And over him hung a face, its wolfish eyes fastened upon his, a thievish hand creeping into his bosom, almost touching him with his gray hair, almost stifling him with a damp hand held an inch above his nostrils. Thoms knelt beside him!

In a moment St. Udo had sprung to his feet and caught him by the throat. A book fell from the long brown hand—his little pocket-album.

"What the duce do you want, confound you?" thundered St. Udo.

Thoms lifted his weary old face supplicatingly, and held up his shaking hands for mercy.

"Are you a thief, or an assassin?" demanded St. Udo, releasing him as unworthy of his wrath, in his age and weakness.

"I—I thought you were dead, colonel," stammered the wretched old creature. "You lay so still that I—I felt your heart to find if it beat."

"Another lie, you old fool," mocked St. Udo. "What did you want with my private album? Answer me, sir."

The old man's speechless look of mock wonder at the album lying upon the ground, his thin, gray locks damp with perspiration, his abject terror and abject helplessness, all appealed to the haughty St. Udo's forbearance. He pushed him contemptuously away with his foot.

"Get up; you are merely a skulking villain. You are not worth my ire!" exclaimed St. Udo. "And mind that you never approach me again, on peril of your life."

"Don't—don't order me away. Let me stay near to watch—to save you!" whined the miserable Thoms.

"Confound safety! if I am to get it at the hands of a worm like you!" shouted St. Udo. "Why do you haunt me day and night? Why do you run upon my trail like a sleuth-hound? The next time I detect anything like this, by all the gods, I'll shoot you down!"

Away stole the trembling Thoms, and was met and stared at by the little chevalier, coming to have an early breakfast with his friend.

"Another raid into Thoms, mon ami?" questioned he, anxiously.

"Who is that devil?" cried St. Udo, passionately.

"Heaven knows! ma foi. I wish we did," quoth the chevalier.

CHAPTER IV.

A LIFE SAVED.

The letter of St. Udo Brand astonished the executors of Ethel Brand's will; and their chagrin was intense when Miss Walsingham decisively informed them that they must find means to convey the property to the rightful heir, as she would never become mistress of Seven-Oak Waaste. They earnestly tried to combat her "quixotic" resolve. But she remained immovable. She would, she said, become a teacher, a companion in some family, or even a stewardess aboard ship—anything but the mistress of Seven-Oak Waaste.

And so, at an early hour next morning, Margaret Walsingham, with all her worldly possessions in a small valise, and bearing letters of unmeasured recommendation from Dr. Gay and Mr. Davenport, entered a railway carriage. She was on her way to London, in the hope of getting a situation that would take her out of the country.

She sat absorbed in reverie until the train passed at a village station, and a lady, escorted by a young naval officer, entered the car and took the seat opposite Margaret. Then with a shriek the train dashed on again.

Margaret's eyes lingered wistfully on the blooming face, the sylph-like form, the pure golden hair of the beautiful and bright young being before her. How she loved beauty, and for its sake loved this rare creature. She gazed through a mist of admiring tenderness, and forgot her troubles.

And then a piercing shriek of engines filled the air; a few seconds' hard snorting and unsteady jolting, a mighty crash, a sense of being hurled against the sky, utter chaos and oblivion.

A bricklayer, clad in a stained smock, the color of mud, was placidly eating his dinner in the midst of his family, when a scared face appeared at the open door, and a woman in torn black garments beckoned to him.

"Please come immediately," panted the woman at the door. "Life or death depends upon your haste."

She sped away at that, and the bricklayer followed her rapid feet which scarce seemed to stir the dust of the road and breathed as if he carried his load full on his back.

They had a quarter of a mile to go before they reached the scene of disaster, and on the way John Doane elicited the following particulars from his excited guide.

The up train from London and the down express had run into each other by a few seconds on the part of one of the conductors. She knew nothing beyond the crash of the engines meeting, until she found herself upon a bank—some fifty feet upon the upper side of the track uninjured, though at first stunned. In looking for her fellow-passengers she found the carriage in which she had been, lying at the foot of the bank, bottom up, and she supposed the train had hurled on for some distance with the other carriages.

By the time she had explained thus far they had arrived upon the scene. It was melancholy enough to warrant the woman's white looks and faltering tongue.

Here and there a figure half raised itself and sank to the ground again with rolling head and helplessly outstretched hands. Detached pieces of wheels, and windows and twisted frames, and shattered roofs strewed the line. A first-class carriage lay upside down, its wheels idly revolving in the air, and a mass of golden curls were clustered on the broken frame of one of the windows.

"Force open the door if you can; that lady is crushing to death," said the young woman kneeling by the golden mass and raising a heavy head, which they shrouded.

The man found a beam and began methodically to batter in the door. It was done, the strange jumble of crushed and sleeping humanity were unlocked from their prison, and the two succorers made their way in, treading warily upon the gayly-painted ceiling, and both bent over a figure clad in silken draperies of diaphanous sheen.

"Lift that crushing head gently. Ah, it must be too late. There, there she is free. Put her head upon my shoulder—so. Now I will carry her myself; clear a way for me that I may not trip and fall with her. Spread that cloak upon the grass—so. Ah, is she dead?"

The Samaritan under orders assisted to lay the burden down, and then ran for some water, with which he quickly returned, and began to sprinkle copiously the insensible lady.

The young naval officer, who looked rather ghastly, now approached Margaret.

He knelt down and gazed with horror upon her set face.

"Good gracious! I am afraid she's gone, poor girl," he ejaculated. "Julie—Cousin Julie! Do you think she is dead, madam? Oh, Julie, dear, speak to me!"

"She is not dead," answered Margaret. "If we could have her removed to some house, there might be some help for her."

"A poor man's hut ain't for such as her," said the bricklayer, drawing his hand over his heated face; "but she's welcome to the best bed in it."

"Thank you. We shall convey her there at once," replied the young man.

They constructed a hasty litter of branches, and, calling a brawny-armed boy, Doane set off with his burden.

In a few minutes they reached the bricklayer's cottage, and a clean bed was hastily prepared for the victim of the disaster.

The young gentleman waited in the little kitchen until Margaret could give him a report of the lady's state. In a very short space of time she joined him.

"Lady Juliana is still insensible. I fear her injuries are dangerous, but I can only use my best skill until some physician comes," she said, trying to speak cheerfully.

"I will send the best one I can find from Lynthorpe, and telegraph immediately to the Marquis of Ducie. He could reach us to-night, I think. May I ask the name of the lady under whose kind charge I leave Lady Julie?"

Margaret crimsoned, and drew back. Until then it had not struck her that she would stand a better chance of getting rid of the old life by taking an assumed name.

"Margaret Blair," she faltered, at random.

"Miss Blair?"

She bowed.

"I cannot express my admiration of Miss Blair's brave conduct," said the young gentleman, with a return bow. "But my uncle, the Marquis of Ducie, shall hear that it was through you that his daughter is saved, if she should recover. Allow me to introduce myself."

He handed her a daintily embossed card, with a coat of arms upon which was engraved,

"Lieutenant Harry Faulconcourt,
H. M. S. Utopia."

With another profound bow he left her.

It was long before Margaret could hope that her prayer was to be answered; the beautiful face of the lady showed no ripple of consciousness, and the heart beat with muffled and uncertain throbs.

A physician called in on his way to the scene of the accident, but his examination was hurried, and his directions brief, for others were waiting, with broken limbs to be splintered, and gaping wounds to be sewed up. So Margaret and the bricklayer's wife did what they could alone.

And the first beam of the full moon stole through the cracked window pane, and silvered over the pale, set countenance until it gleamed with lustrous purity, and the faint breath of returning life parted the marble lips, and Margaret saw that Heaven had consented to her prayer.

Lady Juliana looked up fixedly, and saw a tender face bending over her, with gray eyes glimmering in the moonlight, through their burden of glad tears. Lady Juliana, in her pain and weakness, wondered what heavenly countenance this was which soared above her, and smiled in answer, thinking at first—poor little soul!—that she was with her mother in heaven.

"How did I come to be here? Tell me about it."

"There was a railway accident, you remember? Everybody was more or less hurt—I excepted—so I am taking care of you. Mr. Faulconcourt has gone to the village of Lynthorpe to telegraph for your papa. He will perhaps be here to-night."

"And who are you?" asked the innocent voice again.

"Margaret Blair," she stammered, turning away.

"Do you belong to Lynthorpe?"

"No. I was on my way to London. You remember the person who sat opposite you in the cars?"

"Oh, yes. When I began to scream and jump up, you held me, didn't you?"

"I was afraid you would dash yourself out at the door. Are you in pain?"

My lady's pretty face was a net-work of petulant lines.

"I have such a weary, crushed feeling," she complained; "and I don't like lying here in this odd place without my maid to take care of me. Of course you will be going away in the morning?"

"Not unless your father arrives to-night to take charge of you."

"Don't then, there's a dear Miss Blair," murmured the lady, coaxingly.

Margaret bent over my lady with a rush of tenderness in her manner. What would she not give to win the sweet girl's love? The innocent blue eyes seemed to hold in their depths such guilelessness; the beauty was so perfect which Heaven had bestowed upon her, that beauty-loving Margaret yearned to have her cling to her thus forever.

"I will stay with you as long as you want me," she whispered, kissing the pellucid brow of Lady Julie.

CHAPTER V.

ATTEMPT AT MURDER.

The fair dawn slid with crimson ray under the yellow mist; the breath of morning stirred the pendant leaves, and on its wings it bore the tramp of a host.

In a moment the loud reveille was sounding, the thundering camp was alive with voices, every man was on his feet.

"A surprise!" shouted St. Udo, marshaling his company. "Be ready to meet them! Form, men!"

The soldiers under Colonel Brand's command had come straight from their pleasant homes among the Green Mountains. Untried and but freshly trained, one might have doubted their stability in a moment like this.

Not so their colonel; he had carefully studied these intelligent faces, and he had read both sense and spirit there. His ringing voice carried confidence and enthusiasm to its utterances, and was met by a cheer from his men which reverberated from the distant forest like an echo of the sea. In a few moments the tents were struck, the baggage vans were loaded, and the small army was in rapid motion toward the point from which the alarm had sounded.

In the midst of the plain they halted; their flashing arms were presented to the wall of foliage behind which lurked the foe. They stood there awaiting the onset, motionless as if they had sprung up from the earth and been petrified in the first instant of their resurrection.

Then a roar of musketry broke from the emerald wall; a storm of lead swept into the human ranks; a wild huzzah burst from the invisible enemy, and the battle had begun. The fight was fierce and long—courage and daring were exhibited on both sides—but when it was over, St. Udo Brand and his brave band were famous forever. They were the victors.

The two colonels were smoking together before St. Udo's tent, enjoying an hour's chat, as usual, before they parted for the night, and in the welcome absence of Thoms, were served by a fine fellow from Vermont, who almost worshiped his colonel.

As the friends joked and laughed with all the reckless abandon of soldiers, a pistol-shot was heard, and simultaneously a pistol ball whistled past their ears and buried itself in the earth at a few feet's distance.

Both sprang to their feet, and rushing round the tent, came upon two men in deadly strife—one in gray, the other in blue. They rolled on the ground; each held the other's throat in a deadly grasp. It seemed impossible to decide upon which side the victory would turn, and their continual writhings and contortions rendered interference impossible. But at last the struggle ended in the Federal soldier succeeding in drawing a dagger from his breast and plunging it into his opponent's side.

The wounded man's hold relaxed from the other's throat; he fell back heavily with a stifled groan, and the victor rose and turned round his haggard, white face to the brother colonels.

"Morbleu! it is Thoms!" cried Calembours, in accents of incredulity.

"Well fought, gray-beard," chimed in St. Udo, in equal amazement. "You deserve promotion. What was this Confederate soldier about?"

Thoms glared at the two colonels like a tiger, then down at his vanquished enemy, from whose side the blood poured hotly.

"He pretended that he wanted to offer himself as a guide to the grand army," muttered Thoms, "and we passed the pickets and came straight to your tent to speak about it. But he tried to pistol you when he came in sight of you, and I had just time to dash his arm up."

"Brave Thoms!" applauded Calembours. "Good Thoms!"

"What is it, Reed?" demanded St. Udo of the soldier, who was kneeling by the fallen Confederate.

"He is trying to speak," answered Reed. "He is saying, 'No, no.'"

Thoms bent eagerly over him, with murderous look in his eyes.

The man was dying; his half-closed eyes were glazing fast, but his bloodless lips moved convulsively, and though his life-blood welled forth at every effort, he still strove to utter some frantic word.

"No!—he—lies!" muttered he, at last.

Thoms' trembling fingers were at his throat in a moment—Thoms' tigerish eyes flashed out their rage.

"Let him alone," expostulated Reed. "Let the poor wretch speak."

"Off, Thoms!" thundered St. Udo, with a terrible frown.

Both colonels stooped over the Confederate soldier. St. Udo put his ear close to the twitching lips.

"He shot the pistol off himself," muttered the man. "Before Heaven, I swear it! He stabbed me to save himself. He did—he did!"

The life-blood oozed into his lungs and choked him; he clasped his hands and threw them up toward Heaven, as if he called on his creator to witness his innocence, and immediately expired.

The two friends rose and looked at Thoms.

Whiter in his grave he would never be. The veins stood out on his damp forehead like whipcord, but he returned their fierce gaze with a dogged firmness.

"What do you say to this charge?" demanded St. Udo.

"I say nothing," mumbled Thoms, showing his long, cruel teeth. "If you're ready to believe a rebel against your own servant, I needn't expect much fair play. What else would he say to revenge his death, I'd like to know? Of course, if you're a-going to shoot me, nothing that I can say will stop you—you're master here, as well as everywhere else."

He ground the last words out through his teeth with a venom, a fury which belonged more to a madman than to a man supposed to be in possession of his ordinary sanity, and he addressed them to St. Udo exclusively.

"You deserve to die," said St. Udo, "if you have attempted our lives."

"By gar! ve vill court-martial the rogue!" cried Calembours. "He shall be shot, the traitor!"

"If you shoot me, you shoot an innocent man," protested the old man. "Surely Colonel Brand will give me fair play? I swear I never attempted your lives!"

St. Udo scrutinized the eager face doubtfully, and frowned.

"You say that the Confederate, not you, fired that pistol-shot?" he demanded.

"I do say so," answered Thoms, firmly.

"Then we give you the benefit of the doubt this time," said St. Udo, "but warn you that you shall be well watched in future. Be off now, and beware of treachery, for you shall not escape a second time."

The haggard face lit up with evil exultation; but Thoms cringed before the haughty colonel, and muttered his gratitude in abject terms.

"No more need be said," cried St. Udo, with a cold sneer, "except this—if either Colonel Calembours or I meet death treacherously, you will be a suspected man, and will not escape, I promise you. Now, go."

Away slunk Thoms, with his head down on his breast, and the friends' eyes met significantly.

"There goes von rascal unhung," said the chevalier.

"He's mad, Calembours—mad as Malvolio," said St. Udo. "Don't annoy yourself over his vagaries. Ugh! how I detest his presence near me."

Reed, the soldier, filled the camp with whisperings against Thoms; over and over the black story was repeated by a thousand camp-fires, and wherever the wretched man slunk, he was met by suspicious looks and loathing hatred.

He saw that everybody believed in his guilt, notwithstanding Colonel Brand's clemency, and he quailed before the terrible position, and shrank into himself in dumb patience.

Some hours later the command was once more on the march, and at the dawn of day it came upon a plantation with a magnificent mansion set in the midst.

A murmur of satisfaction ran through the weary men as a halt was ordered, and ere long the verdant plain was white with tents, and the lambent air was rife with the rattle of the breakfast preparations, and fragrant with the odor of coffee and frying steaks.

Colonels Brand and Calembours looked anxiously at the pretty mansion which peeped from foliage of the jasmine, oleander, and magnolia, and in its spacious rooms they mentally saw their brave boys properly cared for and nursed by the negroes of the plantation.

"We can ask for room for our wounded here until we get a chance to send them to Washington," said St. Udo, "and leave a guard with them. Come, Calembours, let's reconnoiter."

"With all my heart," quoth the chevalier. "I like the outside of the maison better than the inside of my tent, and, by gar! comrade, what then will the inside of the maison be? Come, then."

And with this brief prologue the quaintest performance was ushered in which Colonel Brand had yet witnessed in his acquaintance with the sprightly Chevalier de Calembours.

The two colonels approached through beds of sweetest flowers, and tinkling fountains, and garden houses—the loveliest residence imaginable, swathed in roses and creamy jasmine cups, girdled with balconies in highest tracery, embellished with a row of pillars in front upholding a gilded piazza roof, and entered through an imposing portal of richest design.

There was no sign of life, however, apparent, although the upper windows were opened to their widest extent, and the snowy curtains waved out on the wall among the climbing roses; and St. Udo's peremptory rap upon the door only received an answer from its echo in the sounding hall.

"Encore!" cried the cavalier, "they sleep soundly! Again, mon ami, don't despair."

A shrill cry interrupted the little man, and sent his dilated eyes up to the window above, from which it had proceeded.

"A woman in terror!" whispered he. "Morbleu! I long to greet the owner of such a voice. So clear, so fresh. Sweet madam. I pray you shriek again!"

St. Udo knocked louder.

"Go, go, Vinnie," uttered a frantic voice. "It is a band of Northern soldiers. They will blow up the house if you don't let them in!"

"Milles diables!" muttered the chevalier, in a startled tone. "Who speaks with these accents? Ma foi! I want the eclaircissement."

The door grudgingly opened, and a pretty quadroon girl looked out.

"Bring your mistress," ordered St. Udo.

She fearfully retreated, leaving the door open, and rushed up a broad staircase, down which was wafted the hurried tones of a terrified consultation.

Then she reappeared and conducted the officers into a magnificent drawing-room assuring them that her mistress would see them in a few moments.

"Machere, whose house is this?" demanded the chevalier.

"Colonel Estvan's," whispered the quadroon.

"Where is he?" asked St. Udo, sharply.

She turned pale.

"Pouf! do not affright this pretty one," interposed the gallant chevalier. "Monsieur Estvan is fighting like the devil against the Northerners, is he not, pauvrette?"

"Yes," faltered she; "but madam forbade me to tell it."

"Ouais, madam is shrewd," laughed Calembours. "Now, mon enfant, where is madam?"

"She has not arisen yet," said the trembling maid, "but will come soon to speak with you. Madam asks will you have refreshments?"

"Ten thousand thanks. Yes, yes, machere, and make haste," said the hungry Hun, with alacrity.

No sooner was the girl gone when Calembours turned his attention to the examination of the elegantly embellished apartment, and, with an ejaculation of delight, extolled the pictures, statuettes, and bijouterie which were scattered about with such profusion; and then he burst into a gay old French song.

St. Udo, being seated within view of the hall, which he could see through the half-open door, was the sole witness of what followed, however.

A woman floated down the staircase and approached the door. Her demeanor was expressive of the wildest emotion. She clung to the door-handle, half-fainting, and listened breathlessly to the chevalier's song. She seemed a vision of wonderful grace, with her rich dressing-robe huddled up in her arms, and her long, light tresses sweeping over her shoulders, and, with her soul standing in her passion-darkened eyes, and her scarlet lips apart, she embodied the spirit of a Sabrina listening to the voice of the gods.

Suddenly the fire died out of her face, and a weary change came over it—fear, anger, and doubt struggled for the mastery—and at last she dropped her hand, wrung it in its lovely fellow, and swiftly fled up stairs again.

"Now, who is this woman?" mused St. Udo, "and what does she know of my friend, the chevalier? Shall I interfere? No—I think he would scarcely brook my meddling. In his place, I should not."

He made no remark, therefore; and when the chevalier's song came to an end, Madam Estvan entered the room.

What a transformation!

St. Udo stood in speechless surprise.

A woman with a stout figure, keen, dark face, and pale, green eyes.

Where were the graceful, lissome figure, the dainty complexion, the passion-darkened eyes.

And madam's hair was gray as Thoms' grizzly locks—no waving tresses of serpentine gold saw he. Madam's lips were blue with fright, no longer thin, scarlet beauty-lines with a string of pearls between. Madam was old, awkward, and spoke nothing but French.

Puzzled in the extreme, St. Udo was obliged to content himself by watching the next incident of interest, Madam Estvan's behavior to Colonel Calembours.

They met—he with round, suspicious eyes snapping with eagerness, she with downcast lids and brassy brow, and each performed a charming obeisance.

"Le Chevalier de Calembours," says he.

"Madam Estvan, at your service, messieurs," returns she.

They bow again, retire a pace, their eyes meet—they both smile a little; but Calembours' color fades to a sickly yellow, and madam's face reddens under the brown.

"We are forced to request your house for a temporary hospital," remarks St. Udo, breaking the utter silence.

The spell dissolves—they both turn to him, and both become natural, and that is all St. Udo can discover in the meeting.

Madam Estvan immediately set her house at their disposal. Nothing would give her more gratification than to be of use to the Federal soldiers, for that she was not of the South they both must see.

She led them through the whole house, assisting them with charming graciousness to select the most suitable apartments, and bewailing the meagerness of her domestic force which would compel the soldiers to wait upon themselves. But do what she would, St. Udo could not divest himself of the conviction that she and the fair Sabrina figure were identical.

At last they returned to the lower hall and essayed to depart.

Madam Estvan accompanied them to the door with bland courtesy.

St. Udo was already opening the door, when a rattle of shot against the roof of the piazza startled him, and a cannon-ball immediately followed and crashed in the side of the doorway.

A fearful shriek burst from Madam Estvan; she rushed forward and clung to the little chevalier's arm.

"Mon Dieu! woman, let me go!" hissed he, with an ominous scowl.

"No, no, Ladislaus, save me, your poor Alice, who ever loved you! Don't desert me again!" wailed the woman, frantically.

Her voice rang out pure and flute-like in the English language; her terror tore aside the cunning mask, and plainly revealed to St. Udo the lovely vision he had seen before.

"Sacre! I suspected as much!" swore the chevalier, shaking her roughly off. "Away, traitress!"

He sprang across the piazza, followed by St. Udo, and the wretched woman sank, a helpless heap, upon the floor.

Looking back, each from his post, at the fairy palace, the two colonels saw a stream of fire running along the piazza roof, licking the airy balconies up, creeping serpent-like around the pillars, and so through smoking portico to the senseless woman lying on the hall floor where she had fallen.

CHAPTER VI.

ST. UDO BRAND'S FIANCEE.

The last train from London brought a physician to Lynthorpe, dispatched by the Marquis of Ducie to attend his daughter, who brought a polite message from his lordship to Miss Blair, that an important engagement prevented his accompanying Dr. Trewin, but that he would be at Lynthorpe by the morning train.

The physician examined his patient and pronounced her severely but not dangerously injured, and proceeded to make her as comfortable as circumstances would permit, after which she ate a little, and fell into a placid slumber—Margaret keeping faithful watch, while Dr. Trewin dozed in his chair.

At ten o'clock next morning a carriage and four drew up before John Doane's humble house, and two gentlemen, a man servant, a busy-eyed young woman, a coachman and groom in magnificent liveries of gray and bronze, appeared upon the scene. These were the Marquis of Ducie, an extra physician in case Trewin should not understand his duty, a valet, my lady's maid, and the servants.

His lordship asked where his daughter was stowed, and was forthwith ushered into the bed-closet where she lay, by Margaret Walsingham.

"Haw! By Jove, this is very awkward faux pas! Might have been killed by these rascally railway managers! Confoundedly awkward mistake! Howdo, Julie?"

"Oh! bad enough, papa!" responded the patient, receiving the careless paternal embrace as indifferently as it was given. "I might have died ten times over before you would come. Why didn't you come to me immediately, papa?"

"Couldn't, my dear—was at Millecolonne's to meet Prince Protocoli—a political dinner which could not be avoided—sent Trewin in my place, and brought Sir Maurice Abercroft with me, so you can't complain for want of medical or paternal attention either."

His lordship, after patting her cheek, went out, saying with comfortable imperiousness that she must be ready to start in two hours—Abercroft would set her up for the drive.

Forthwith Sir Maurice Abercroft came in and minutely examined Lady Juliana on her injuries. The result was as might have been expected, considering his lordship's wishes, a decision in favor of the proposed removal; and the lady's maid was sent in to do her mistress' toilet.

Apparently my lady stood in some little awe of her father, for she submitted without further question, though a petulant cloud was on her beautiful face, as she said,

"I would rather stay in this quiet little room, with that solemn Miss Blair, if she would stay, than go home to the Park. This is a new sensation, at the least."

Margaret drew nearer and tenderly smoothed the hair back from my lady's brow.

"Dear me!" cried Lady Juliana, looking at her, "how pale and exhausted you look, Miss Blair. Why, of course you must feel so—you have been up with me all night, and—good gracious!" becoming suddenly filled with compunction, "how coolly I have taken your great service!"

Her ladyship sat upright, flushed by a sudden impulse of gratitude.

"Who are your friends?" she asked, with a bright look.

"I have none, Lady Juliana. I am looking for some situation by which to be independent of friends."

"Oh, how fortunate for me! Would you like—but perhaps you are not qualified. Are you well educated? I think you are."

"I have been eight years at a boarding-school, my lady."

"Good gracious! I suppose you are as learned as Socrates. I never was at school in all my life! I was kept with Aunt Faulconcourt and beasts of governesses. But here comes papa."

The marquis re-entered with a bow, the consolidation of courtly etiquette.

"Papa. I was too stupid before to introduce you to Miss Blair. She is the young lady who saved my life. I wish to do something for her."

His lordship advanced and held out two fingers.

"How can I most suitably thank Miss Blair for her services to my daughter?"

"Papa," interposed Lady Juliana, seeing Margaret stand pale and embarrassed before her pseudo-patron, "may she come to Hautville Park instead of Madam Beneant, whom I am so tired of? She would be a more suitable companion than that chattering widow—I am so sick of her flirtations! And I am sure I should be perfectly happy with the generous creature who saved my life."

"Shall you consider her ladyship's proposal?" asked the marquis, turning again to Margaret. "Madam Beneant has been my daughter's companion for a year and a half, but she is too old. Her salary was two hundred a year. Yon shall have two hundred and fifty if you decide to come. What do you say?"

She stood wavering between conflicting impulses. She longed to go with this dove-like creature whom she had saved from death; her heart clung to her—how could she leave her? But again, would she be concealed from the terrible St. Udo Brand's possible persecutions at the Marquis of Ducie's residence?

Who would think to look for her in Lady Juliana's companion? Her heart pleaded.

"Stay—oh, stay!"

So, all blinded to the future stealing surely on, Margaret flung herself back into the whirlpool which, gradually circling inward, would inevitably bring her face to face with that which she most dreaded.

"I will go with you, Lady Juliana," she said.

When the bricklayer came home to dinner he found the grand people all gone, after showing but meager gratitude for his kindness.

Hautville Park was near Lambeth, within pleasant distance of London; and in due time, in the dying crimson of departed sunlight, the carriage arrived at its stately gates, and Margaret found herself introduced as companion to its spotless mistress, Lady Juliana Ducie.

She had not been there more than three weeks, when one day the maid brought in a letter to my lady's boudoir. My lady was lying a la convalescent on her sofa, and Margaret was reading to her. My lady had taken her time to get over her railway fright, and had taxed her companion's strength considerably, by her exactions, but she professed herself very fond of Miss Blair for all her trouble, and they agreed excellently together thus far.

"Hand me that letter, Bignetta. No, give it to Miss Blair and go away, she can read it to me."

Margaret took the letter, inserted her finger to break the seal; glanced at the seal, and withdrew her finger as if it had been stung, glanced at the writing, and slowly became stern and pale.

"Why don't you open it and read its contents?" cried my lady. "Are you tired of reading all the condolence that comes to me, or do you think it is some insolent bill?"

"Lady Juliana," said Margaret, "I cannot read this letter. I—I know the writer."

She covered her face with her hands.

"Why, what can you mean?" exclaimed my lady, getting upon her elbows to possess herself of the letter, and to look curiously at her companion. "Who is it?"

She looked at her own name on the back, and gave a delighted cry.

"Captain Brand! So he deigns to remember me at last! Ah, won't I make him suffer, for being so derelict in his duty these last three weeks! Careless creature! he never thinks of me, except when he sees me."

She laid down the letter and returned to the charge.

"How came you, Miss Blair, to be so well informed about Captain Brand's writing?" she demanded.

Margaret was eyeing her in speechless consternation.

She had thought at first that this missive was an inquiry from the writer concerning herself; she had feared she was found out. But what darker suspicion was this which was entering her mind.

"Tell me first, dear lady Julie," she exclaimed, "if Captain Brand is a friend of yours?"

"Bring me that casket, if you please."

Margaret brought the casket and placed it before her.

"Do you see this ring," rapidly tossing rare chains, jewel cases and bracelets. "Yes, here it is. I am not superstitious about such things, but I don't like to be labelled 'out of the market,' so I do not wear it often; but it is my engagement ring—is it not magnificent? This ring was given to me by Captain St. Udo Brand six months ago, and some day I shall be mistress of Seven Oak Waaste."

Margaret clasped her hands and gasped.

To think of the hungry kestrel pouncing upon this innocent bird! To fancy the terrible Captain Brand wooing the affections of her Lady Julie!

"I did not know it," was all she could articulate.

"Of course you did not; how should you? But you have not told me how you came to know Captain Brand's writing?" insisted her ladyship.

Margaret saw that exposure was coming; she expected it to be in that letter.

"Read what your fiance says, and then listen to my explanation," she murmured, turning away.

My lady, slightly irritated, tore off the seal and began to skim over the contents.

"Heavens!" she ejaculated, "what is this? He writes from New York, saying that he has left England, he hopes, forever; that he is going to get a commission in the Federal army, and win his spurs, and he gives his reasons: 'At present, my Julie, your fiance is a penniless man, with only a pedigree, and it is to win something more substantial that I have left England. My grandmother has died, and contrary to all expectations, the estate of Seven Oak Waaste has departed out of the family and gone to my grandmother's companion. If I had been obedient to the injunctions of my hood-winked relative, Mrs. Brand, I would have married the clever adventuress, Miss Margaret Walsingham, who I firmly believe plotted to supplant me as she has done, and I would have thus shared the estate. But love, one thing held me back. I have pinned my faith in woman's purity to Juliana Ducie's sleeve, for I think, my child, you are about the best of your sex; and honor forbade me to retract my faith to you. So the future I offer you is this: Will you wait patiently and constantly for the man you swore to be true to forever? Don't say yes, without knowing your own strength. If you can be brave, patient, wise, unselfish, you will be the first woman I ever met who deserves the much travestied title of "woman." My little darling, you know that I love you, and that I would become a good man if your hands cared to beckon me, and I place my future life at your feet. Make it bright and pure by your constancy, or make it black and sullied by the universal peculiarity of your sex—treachery!'"

"What can he be thinking of?" cried the reader, with a burst of angry tears. "Why should he expect such an unheard of thing from me, if he has lost Castle Brand and Seven Oak Waaste?"

Margaret listened as in a dream.

This was a new light upon St. Udo Brand's movements. Did his character suffer by it? He had gone away and given up his lands to one whom he considered a greedy schemer; and he had flung himself into another life, for the sake of her whom he loved. How had she wronged him by her terror of him?

Quick as light her feelings underwent a change, and my lady gazed in astonishment as her quiet companion threw off the guise which she had worn for security.

"Dear Lady Juliana," panted Margaret, "do not blame Captain Brand, who has been honorable to his engagement with you where meaner men have failed. Perhaps—who knows? yours may be the hand which will lead him into a higher way. Oh, my darling, do not hold lightly your power."

"Why should you espouse Captain Brand's cause?" demanded my lady. "What can Miss Blair have to do with Captain Brand?"

Tears burst from the eyes of the quiet companion, and rushed in a volcanic shower down her cheeks, as she answered,

"I am Margaret Walsingham."

"You!" exclaimed my lady, after a stare of unutterable astonishment.

"My darling Lady Julie!" cried Margaret, catching my lady's hands and holding them in her own. "I am that unfortunate, that wretched protegee of Mrs. Brand's unwise affection; but never think that I would accept the Brand estates when obtained in such a way, or that I would willingly defraud St. Udo Brand. I thank Heaven that these hands," proudly holding them out, "are yet unsullied by such sin."

"How is it that you are here under the name of Blair."

"I left Castle Brand to win my bread, and did not wish to be traced."

"How strange! Then the fortune will doubtless revert to the rightful heir if you are sincere in refusing it?"

"I fear not. The executors will hold it for one year: and if by that time Captain Brand and I," with a bitter tide of crimson in her face, "have failed to fulfil the conditions of the will—that is, to get married—and I still refuse the property, Seven Oak Waaste will probably go into chancery."

Lady Julie gave a cry as if after the vanishing estates, and covered her face with her hands, petulantly weeping.

"Then I am done with St. Udo," she cried. "What do I want of a man who is stripped of his position?"

"He has made a great sacrifice of wealth, and that letter says it is for love of you," said Margaret, coming and taking her lady-love in her arms; "and he is a nobler man than I thought. Surely you will be true to him. Will you not, Lady Julie?"

"You are the essence of simplicity, Miss Walsingham. You will laugh at your own folly, when I communicate all this to my father, and when you hear his verdict. Please leave me now, like a dear girl; I am overcome by this sudden change in my prospects, and must give way to my natural feelings for a while."

Margaret left her, as she sorrowfully believed, to the pangs of untoward love, and walked about the gay grounds of Hautville Park, weeping and praying for her sweet Lady Juliana.

Some hours later she returned, to find quite a metamorphosis in my lady's invalid room. My lady, in high spirits, was superintending, with gusto, her own toilet, as it progressed under the skillful hand of her femme de chambre.

"An arrival at Hautville," she cried, turning to Margaret, "and at such an opportune time, when I am so bored. The young duke of Piermont has come from his Irish estates to see papa, and I am going to be introduced. I have heard that his wealth is enormous. His estates in the north of Ireland and west of Scotland are as rich as any in the three kingdoms. He has a rent roll of seventy thousand pounds, independent of a complete square of brick mansions in Cork. How would you like to receive letters from your Julie, sealed with a ducal coronet?"

"I don't expect to see that day," said Margaret, tenderly.

"Heigh ho! I am an unfortunate creature," sighed my lady, plaintively. "But, as I told you, my papa laughed at the idea of a further continuance of that arrangement, and he has written, and so have I, and the letter is sent. I never mentioned you in my note of dismissal."

"Dear Lady Julie, you are deceiving yourself. You think your pride will carry you through this thing, but your heart will break in the attempt."

"I suppose so. Well, it shall never be said that Ducie disobeyed her father. We are a gorgeous race, as you may have observed by the magnificence of this summer residence, so I will bury my pain and cheat my dear papa into believing I am resigned!"

CHAPTER VII.

A DUEL WITH A TRAITOR.

The foe had stolen a march upon the weary encampment in the plantation. Calmly St. Udo Brand faced the coming legions, and bravely retreated in good order upon the main army, which was soon engaged in deadly conflict with Gen. Lee's forces. It is not our intention to dwell on the battles which ensued. They are a part of history now. We have to do with but a few more incidents in St. Udo Brand's career as a soldier.

One night Colonels Brand and Calembours were shivering over their smoky fire; it rained incessantly, the tent was soaked through, their clothing was soaked through, and their wretched provisions were, besides being scanty, almost uneatable with dust and rain.

"Sacre!" swore the chevalier, wiping his moist mustache with a brown, bony hand, whose only remnant of aristocracy was the magnificent solitaire which still glittered upon the little finger. "Sacre! mon comerade, this must end. What for we remain under fortune's ban? Jade! she laughs under the hood at our credulity in hoping for golden favors. I will snap the fingers in the tyrant's face and elope with chance, by gar! I will open the eyes and seek some better position where dollars are more plentiful and blows less!"

"Silence, you rascal! What better life does a brave soldier expect? Do your duty in the field and don't growl in the camp, and when good luck comes you will deserve it," replied St. Udo, laughing.

"Pardieu! I shall be too old to see him when he comes!" grumbled the chevalier. "Three months of glory without gold is enough for me."

"You are a mercenary dog," cried St. Udo; "and I know you are an implacable devil. I have not forgotten Madam Estvan."

"Diable! nor I," hissed Calembours. "Mon ami, let us forget her. La! there she has vanished forever. But, Monsieur St. Udo, I have not been mercenary with you, have I?"

"Never, chevalier."

"Know you why?"

"Not I, indeed."

"I love you, mon ami, by gar! I could not betray you for any sum."

"Generous man. But don't ruin your prospects for the sake of honesty, who is such a lax companion of yours that he is scarce worth such a sacrifice."

"Mon ami, my honor is unimpeachable."

"Doubtless, such as it is. By Jove! here come letters from home. One for you, Calembours, a budget for me. Huzzah!"

Yes, letters had reached the army, and many a poor fellow that night forgot the anguish of his wounds and the gloom of his prospects in glad perusal of his loved one's words of affection.

St. Udo, too, held an envelope in a tight hand, while he hastily scanned the other missives, eager to fling them aside and to devote himself without restraint to it.

He laughed with a kind of uncaring scorn at Mr. Davenport's stiff business letter, and he frowned at good little Gay's warm-hearted persuasions to hasten back to England and settle down in Castle Brand before the year was out. He glanced with abstracted eye over the notes of astonishment, reproach, and regrets which his movements had elicited from his brother officers in the Guards, and then he put them all away, and tenderly broke the seal of the hoarded envelope.

And as his darkening eye took in the meaning of its heartless words, and his heart realized the hollowness, the vanity, the treachery of the woman who had penned them, an awful scowl settled upon his brow, a demoniac sneer curled his fierce lip, and for a moment he lifted his blazing eyes to heaven, as if in derisive question of its existence when such an earth lay below.

"Farewell, doting fantasy!" muttered St. Udo, tearing Lady Juliana's letter in two, and casting the fragments into the flames. "So ends my faith in goodness, truth, purity, as held by women. Once, twice, have I madly laid my life under woman's heel, to be betrayed, my foolish yearning after a better belief to be laughed at, flouted at, scorned. I might have stuck to my only deity, Fate, and let these idle dreams go. I would not then have received this last sting. I was right at first—there is no created being so traitorous, so cold, so cruel and Judas-like as a woman, except the devil who fashioned her."

He scanned the polite dismissal of the Marquis of Ducie and smiled with scoffing indifference, and folding his arms, stared into the hissing embers for a long time.

At sunrise six or seven detachments, among which were those of Colonels Brand and Calembours, received orders to march to the relief of an advanced post, and on their arrival, they were at once hurried into action.

St. Udo, on his maddened horse, was coursing before the serried ranks of his detachment, shouting his commands and cheering on his men to the attack, when a blaze of battery guns opened fire upon the rushing Federals, and, sweeping their lines obliquely, turned the sally into wild confusion.

Colonel Brand galloped along the broken line, calling them on, and waving his sword to the object of attack, the horse and his rider looming like spirits through the murk, and inviting the savage aim of a score of riflemen.

Heedless of the storm of red-hot hail, he pranced onward, inspiriting the quailing men by his fearless example, till his horse staggered under him, sprang wildly upward, then fell, with a crash, upon his side.

The colonel lay face up, stunned by the fall, and pinned to the ground by the limbs under his horse, and a host of the foe rushed down the slope and charged the wavering Vermont boys.

When St. Udo was able to look up, he saw a giant Southerner making toward him with clubbed musket. He was helpless, his men were everywhere grappling with their adversaries, and the colonel gave himself up for lost, when, lo! a tall figure darted from a neighboring thicket, the blue uniform of the Federal crossed the path of the Confederate giant, and with a furious lunge of the bayonet, he attempted to beat him back from his charge upon St. Udo.

The foe met him at first with a scornful cry, but, finding it impossible to escape him, turned and closed in desperate encounter. Hand to hand they struggled, now grappling with the fury of gladiators, now retiring and gazing in each other's faces with determination.

So well matched were they, that this terrible conflict lasted for full three minutes, and many stopped to gaze in wonder upon the desperate encounter; and St. Udo, dragged from under his dead horse and mounted upon another, paused to see the end.

The Federal soldier waited until the rush of a passing sally hampered his adversary's arm, and then, raising his clubbed gun on high, he brought it down with a crashing blow upon his head.

The giant threw up his arms, with a fearful cry, quivered from head to foot for a moment, and then fell backward, like a clod, dead.

The Federal hero turned to St. Udo with a grim smile.

Heavens! it was Thoms.

The next moment he had vanished in the whirl of battle, and was no more to be seen.

"Ye gods! he has saved my life!" cried St. Udo Brand. "Thoms, the despised—Thoms, the sleuth-hound—the old maniac! What can this mean? Have we used him badly?"

St. Udo, lying in his tent, mused deeply on the strange kindness which the man whom he had spurned had done him, when a shadow flitted near—Thoms, with his intent face and wary eye.

"Gad! I was looking for you to come, Thoms," cried St. Udo, getting up and extending his hand frankly. "I cannot express my thanks to you for your gallantry on my behalf to-day, but I am grateful for it, and there's my hand on that."

The long, brown fingers clutched his as if in a vise, and wrung them hard.

"Don't mention it, colonel. You was in danger, and I couldn't abear to have you killed yet," smiled the old man, grimly.

"By Jove! you make me ashamed of my suspicions of you," cried St. Udo, with ingenuous candor. "Let me say now that I am sorry for them."

"I knowed you would change your mind about me some day," muttered Thoms; "so I were contented to wait for the time, colonel."

"I was so sure you owed me some grudge, my good fellow," said St. Udo.

"No, Colonel Brand, I owe you no grudge as long as you trust me and don't treat me like a secret felon," exclaimed Thoms, in a hoarse voice. "And now that you treat me better, I'll never leave you as long as you live—I won't by Heaven!"

His sallow face, more ghastly than ever after the day's bloody toil, whitened in the lurid gloom of twilight, and a terrible smile played about the twitching corners of his mouth.

St. Udo placed a heavy hand upon his shoulder.

"Forgive me, my friend, for all my harshness to you," said he, earnestly. "I will not doubt your good faith again. Faith, man, you almost make me believe in disinterested goodness."

He turned away in deep emotion; he could say no more.

Was it an answering thrill which, stirring the secret heart of the strange old servant, sent his eyes, filled with such an unearthly glare, over the gallant colonel? He had saved him from a certain death, with mad bravery, that day; he had come to listen to his grateful thanks; yet, if ever the fires of Pandemonium blazed in human eyes, they blazed in his in that quiet, murderous look.

Steadily, surely, the man was creeping toward his secret purpose, and if St. Udo's entire trust removed another obstacle from his path, that obstacle was removed to-night, and nothing stood between him and the end.

"Eh bien!" chirped the chevalier, who had been an edified spectator of this scene. "Since we are all once more the happy family, let us be merry, let us sing, talk, and scare the blue devils away. Tell me the little history of your life in England, mon ami."

"England be hanged," returned St. Udo, returning to his gloom. "She gave me no history but the black records of vice, treachery, and disappointment. What do you want with such a history?"

"Amusement, instruction," yawned Calembours. "Something to make gray-bearded time fly quick."

"Very well, I accede for want of other employment. What shall I tell you of? My hours devoted to finding out the world, and presided over by idiot Credulity? Or my hours devoted to revenging my injuries upon the world, and presided over by the great Father of lies? What will you have?"

"Your life," breathed the chevalier, impressively.

St. Udo placed himself in a comfortable position and began with a smile of mockery. Calembours fixed his eager eyes upon him and listened intently; and Thoms crept into the shadow behind the tent, crouched there on his knees, and held his breath patiently.

So the story was told.

Every incident worthy of note in St. Udo's life was correctly narrated, every name connected with the characters involved stated, their portraits distinctly painted, their characteristics faithfully recalled, with many a reference to the pocket-album, between; clear as if he lived it all over again, St. Udo placed his past before the eyes of the Chevalier de Calembours.

And neither the chevalier nor St. Udo Brand saw the slow-match flickering over a tiny note-book behind the tent, or heard the stealthy scrape of a pencil as long, brown fingers took down, in phonetic characters, the words dropping lazily from the unconscious man's lips.

When St. Udo had finished, the chevalier rose and stretched his cramped limbs.

"Morbleu! Time has fled nimbly this night. I forgot everything in your recital, mon ami. Thanks for your amiable complaisance; and now I retire to follow you in dreams. Bon soir."

With a silent chuckle, he stepped from St. Udo's tent and disappeared to seek his own quarters.

Thoms, too, clasped up his tiny note-book, and creeping round the side of the tent, and observing that St. Udo sat absorbed in dark reverie, he wrapped himself in his blanket, and threw himself at St. Udo's feet, and soon fell asleep.

Then the night grew black and late, and silence brooded solemnly above the camp, broken only by the faint moan of the sleepless wanderer, or the picket's hollow tramp.

Twice the devoted preserver of St. Udo's life softly raised his head to look at Colonel Brand, and sank down again, and still the lonely man sat gazing into the lurid embers of the waning watch-fire, thinking his thoughts of gall.

Just before dawn he thought he heard a movement in the camp, a faint, uncertain tripping of a wary foot, a sly whistle, twice repeated.

Through the murky gloom St. Udo peered with languid interest at a spot of fire gently undulating toward his tent.

What could it be? A cannoneer's slow match! But what could bring a battery there—and at that hour?

Unwilling to alarm needlessly his slumbering command, he slid back from the glare of the camp-fire into the shadow of his tent, and rising, bent his steps to the neighborhood of the suspicious object.

A passing breeze, laden with the perfume of the familiar cigar, a brighter glow, revealing the drooping nose and pursed-up lips, declared the identity of the prowler.

"Pshaw, you Calembours again—what sets you prowling about again like a cat on the leads, or, rather a hungry jackal in a graveyard?"

"Mai foi! you wear your tongue passably loose, mon ami. A night cat? No, worse luck. No pretty little kittens to chase round here. A jackal among les cadores? You have too many of that sort down there already, stripping the dead and the living, too. Still, let us not scandalize the profession, the calling of the jackal is a noble one when there is genius and finesse to raise it from the metier to the art. But where the jackal points the lion pounces. You call me the jackal. Eh, bien j'accepte—it is mine to point, but it is for you, Monsieur le Lion, to take the leap."

"A truce to your riddles, and say what you've got to say—though why you can't come out with it openly, I can't conceive."

"Find, then, my little meaning," whispered the chevalier, impressively. "In two words, you shall be au courant with the affair. We have come here to push our fortune, but the jade flouts us, and ranks herself under the standard of the foe. Let us follow her thither. For you and for me there is neither North nor South, Federal nor Confederate. Soldiers of Fortune, we follow wherever glory leads the way, and victory fills the pocket. What of this last bagatelle of a victory to-day? We have escaped with our skins to-day; to-morrow we will loose them. No, mon ami, the South will win the day; so join we the Southern chivalry as becomes chevaliers d'honneur."

"Why, you precious scoundrel! I always thought you somewhat of a puppy, but to propose this to me, an Englishman and a gentleman! Draw, you treacherous hound—draw, and defend yourself!"

And the steel blade glistened like the sword of the avenging angel before the eyes of the astonished Hun.

"Sacre, mon Dieu! Has he gone mad?" was his sole reply, as with the practical skill of an accomplished maitre d'armes his ready rapier was set, and parrying the lunges of his vexed opponent.

Still, with muttered explanations, blaspheming ejaculations and apologies, intermingled with furious rallies, he sought to moderate the just wrath of St. Udo, till at last, hearing loud shouts and footsteps approaching, by a quick turn he evaded St. Udo's pass, and dashed his sword out of his hand high in the air. Ere St. Udo could stoop to recover it, the traitor dealt him a mighty blow over the head, which felled him to the ground, and the last remembrance he had was the taunting "au revoir" of the renegade as he plunged into the thicket and vanished from pursuit.

When St. Udo recovered, he found himself surrounded by eager faces, and Thoms kneeling in the attitude of anxiety beside him, staring at him with intentness.

"What's all this, colonel?" demanded an old officer.

"Ha, by Jove! the rascal has escaped, has he?" cried St. Udo, getting up stiffly by the help of Thoms' shoulder.

"Who—who? A Confederate?" was cried on all sides.

"No, indeed, not a brave foe, but our precious Colonel Calembours himself. He has deserted to Lee's army, and had the audacity to tell his scheme to me. Quick, Thoms, your arm, man! I must communicate with the general and set scouts on his track."

St. Udo hastened to the general's tent as speedily as his reeling head would permit him.

A pursuit was immediately made of the fugitive, and precautions taken to foil his intended treachery; but the pursuit was fruitless—Calembours had dodged misfortune successfully this time.

Lying face down in his tent, St. Udo Brand mused over the fleeting incidents of his late existence, and owned himself at fault.

He looked back upon the friends he had expected fidelity from—which of them had not betrayed his trust? Upon the humble worm he had crushed with scorning heel—his life-preserver—his only friend now.

The deserted man scanned his reckless life, and in its shapeless fragments began to find a plan, and wonderingly, as a child fits together the scattered sections of his little puzzle, St. Udo linked the parted sections of his existence into their possible plan—and lo! he discovered that Providence held the key!

The remorseful man rose, and found Thoms studying him with his uncanny stare.

"My kind fellow," said St. Udo, gently, "Since your master has left you on my hands, and since I can't forget the noble service you have done me, perhaps you had better enter my service and see me through the war?"

"That will I, colonel," answered Thoms, with a keen smile.

"You have been a good friend to me, and Heaven knows I have need of friends," said St. Udo, gratefully.

The glittering eyes watched him as intently as if the old man were learning a lesson.

"If there's anything I could do for you, Thoms, to mark my gratitude, I would like to hear of it," said St. Udo.

"Nothing, colonel, except to let me stay by you."

"You may get shot in battle, my man."

"So may you, colonel, and more likely."

"Well, we won't dispute about that," said St. Udo, sunnily. "But wouldn't you rather go North, out of the scrape?"

"I'll never leave you!"

St. Udo, glancing up gratefully, saw that in his eye, which chilled as with the finger of death, the warm words crowding to his lips; a thrill of mortal dread, a sure premonition of evil seized his soul, and he waited, with the words frozen, regarding the man with stony stare until he turned on his heel and shuffled out of sight.

That night, when Thoms ventured back to sate his gloating eyes again upon St. Udo Brand, he sought for him in vain—his sub-officer occupied his tent.

"Where is the colonel?" asked Thoms, turning sharply on the nearest soldier.

"Gone, two hours ago."

"Gone!"

How white the sallow face blanched. How the tones quavered.

"By Heaven, I have lost him," cried Thoms, vehemently. "Where did he go?"

"On a secret embassy somewhere."

"Without me!" groaned Thoms, with a wild flash of the wolfish eyes. "He has stolen away from me—he has found me out!"

CHAPTER VIII.

MARGARET'S VISION.

Lady Juliana Ducie concealed her disappointed love so well that no one would have suspected, not even simple Margaret Walsingham, that she suffered from its pangs.

As the summer season wore on and she began to get over her "awkward affair" with the rail-cars, she plunged into gayety, and a violent flirtation with the Irish duke, which threatened quite to banish any lingering memories of the soldier who was fighting in other scenes, and Hautville Park became thronged with illustrious visitors.

Margaret Walsingham, in her somber black dress, mingled as rarely as possible with the flippant cavaliers who were forever hanging about my lady's drawing-rooms, or dangling after her in her saunters with her companion. She rarely lifted her eyes when they bowed to the carelessly introduced Miss Walsingham; and never by any chance engaged in conversation with them.

Yet a new world of knowledge was opening to her daily, and filling her mind with absorbing speculations.

How often she heard St. Udo Brand, the young guardsman, discussed by these London fashionables, with appropriate jest or story, they laughed at his withering flashes of wit, admired his brilliant follies, and narrated his erratic generosities, with never a sigh for the heart which, to be so reckless now, must once have been so warm and true.

Day by day, the broken image of a primal god was built up in her heart with here and there a flashing glimpse of virtue, or a suggestion of innate chivalry of soul, or high-minded honor which contrasted sadly with the wild deviltry of a rampant friend.

And each day this simple woman carried some bright gem of goodness with which to deck her demi-god, until the vision seemed so kingly, that she took to defending his defects to herself, and covering them from her own eyes.

Morning and noon, and in the midnight hours, when strains of music and the din of revelry stole dimly up to the companion's remote chamber, she dreamed of the possible angel in this man, and her soul yearned for his welfare, and mourned over the frailty of the moth which he had burdened with his trust.

"A true brave woman might reclaim him yet," she sometimes sighed; "but the last chance most probably is past with Lady Juliana."

"You are to dine with us to-day," said my lady, one morning, turning suddenly to Margaret from under the hands of her maid. "My cousin, Harry Falconcourt, has arrived, and insists on being introduced formally to the heroine who saved me; and as I am bored to death with always saying 'she does not go into society,' I have promised him."

"Dear Lady Julie, I hope you will not insist upon this!" exclaimed Margaret, much startled. "I really have nothing to do with society."

"Well, for all that, I am not going to allow you your privilege of seclusion on this occasion. I don't like leaving you alone so much."

So my lady made her way, though this time it was rather roughly carried through the heart of her companion.

The guests of his lordship's dinner party were the resident gentry, with their portly wives and blooming daughters, come to meet the London visitors of Hautville Park; and a great many bright uniforms mingled among the masses of silken drapery, feathers, jewels, black broadcloth, and tulle.

Lady Juliana kept her small territory at her end of the table in a continual ripple of delight by her quips and coquetries. She was in surprising spirits, for was not his Grace the Duke of Piermont on her right hand, and Sir Akerat Breckinridge, who was a slain subject, on her left?

His Grace, who was an ordinary-looking young man, with a bright, wholesome complexion, and pleasantly sparkling eyes, seemed almost bewitched by my lady's rapid flippancies; and watched her face as one might watch the play of the aurora borealis, shooting and dancing in the midnight sky.

"Who is that lady in the black velvet?" asked the duke. "Strange face! Most unlike any I have ever seen before."

"Where? Oh, with Harry Falconcourt? That is Miss Walsingham, my companion, adviser, censurer, and sheep-dog in general."

"I haven't seen such a face in my life before," continued the young duke, with deepening earnestness; "and it is so wholly stripped of animal beauty that the beauty that bursts from every look and tone is so mysterious. That is a countenance graced by goodness, bravery, candor, devotion. There are faces graced by bright eyes, an arched nostril, a small mouth; a row of white teeth, or a waxen complexion. Which is the greater charm, do you think?"

"I did not know you were such a physiognomist," said Lady Juliana. "Pray read me, my lord."

He looked over the arch face with the plausible smile, the graceful features, the peach-like bloom, and a faint shadow crossed his brow.

"You would be sinking in the first storm, Lady Juliana."

"Cousin Julie has suddenly subsided," said Harry Falconcourt, looking up to the head of the table. "A minute since she was sparkling as champagne, now she is tame as lemonade. What do you suppose has occurred, Miss Walsingham? A mutiny between her subjects?"

"Extraordinary disposition of the Brand estates down in Surrey," said a voice opposite. "They all go to a woman as hideous as one of Macbeth's witches, and the only scion of the race must either marry her or lose them."

"Is not that captain St. Udo Brand, of the Guards?" asked a gentleman in uniform.

"The same, major."

"Fine soldier, brave man. Did you see the gallant mention of him in the latest American War Gazette? Cut his way through three thousand of the enemy with his handful of Vermonters."

"A daring deed, major."

"Nothing when you know the vast nature of the man. He needed such scenes as are described in the sickening records of war to stir up the lion in him, and to bring out the gentleness too. He is the darling of his company—many a cheer, and I'll not be afraid to say a blessing also has greeted him in his tender visits to his suffering boys."

"You knew him at home here?"

"Knew Captain Brand? Like a brother, sir. Sad dog, but a noble man—a noble man."

What bright intelligence was in the deep gray eyes which watched the officer's face. But he did not see them, he was so absorbed by his subject.

A pause occurred in the gossip, for the band was having a rest of forty bars, and the flageolet was weak.

At the request of Lady Juliana, Margaret carried her careladen face to the piano and played a long time, what—she knew not, but gradually, from mechanical measure, the chords grew into solemn pulsations, and a vision rose up before her introverted eyes of a darkened battle-field, where the cannon belched forth its fiery death, the bugle sounded the retreat, the soldiers shouted, and cheered, and fell.

She saw the smoke and dust, the red blood pouring, the brave falling fast; and a shrouded moon, with three black stripes across its disk, was shining weirdly over a man lying on his broken sword, his head upon the mane of his pulseless horse, his dark, dim eyes raised supplicatingly.

And a skulker among the dead was bending over him with demoniac eagerness, and the dastardly dagger was plunged hilt-deep, and the man who had been called a "hero" sank beneath the feet of the dead—and the vision passed away.

"Miss Walsingham." She turned her electric face—her hands fell from the ivory keys.

The gentlemen had entered the drawing-room, and the Duke of Piermont stood beside Lieutenant Falconcourt, waiting to be introduced.

"I have much pleasure in this introduction," said his grace, offering her an arm the instant that their hands met. "I would like much to talk with you, so honor me by promenading with me in the conservatory. In the first place, what was that extraordinary piece which you played?"

"I do not know—was I playing?"

His grace gazed at his companion in amazement. Doubt and terror still struggled for the mastery on her pallid features; the large, mystic eyes were fixed sadly upon vacancy. Miss Walsingham was quite unconscious that she was walking through the centre of the long suite with a man who was coveted from her by half the ladies there. "Is it possible that it was an impromptu?"

"I—pardon me, your grace—I was playing without thinking."

"Do you know what it suggested to me? A battle-field—the retreat of the conquered—darkness—treachery, and murder."

"My lord duke, what day of the month is this?"

She stopped in her sudden waking up to horror, and in her sudden eagerness she trembled as she stood.

"The first of September."

"The first of September. I shall not forget."

"You are certainly distressed by something, Miss Walsingham. Let me be of service to you?"

"You can be of service to me, your grace. You can allow me to retire, and make some apology for me to Lady Julie which will not alarm her."

The young duke bit his lip.

"You will return to me?" he asked.

"Not to-night."

She vanished through a dimly-lighted rotunda, leaving his grace gazing eagerly after her.

Crouching upon her knees by her chamber window, in the cold stream of moonlight, with clasping hands and yearning eyes, Margaret Walsingham questioned the silent heavens through the long hours for the meaning of the vision.

And yet the man had been her enemy!

CHAPTER IX.

A WOMAN'S VENGEANCE.

Through the dark fens, and the yielding morass, and the spicy sycamore grove, and the mossy walnut woods of Virginia, stole a gray-faced man; panting, hunger-smitten, weary; starting at every crash of the rotten underbrush, stopping ever with dilating eye to peer from the top of every hill into the valley beneath.

And a thin, tawny shadow glided before him with his nose upon the ground, and his eyes flaming ferociously—a blood-hound upon the trail.

Thoms had deserted from the army, and was out in search of Colonel Brand, and this dog which he held in chains was guiding him foot by foot along the secret path which St. Udo had traversed to perform his embassy.

How the old man brightened when a blue curl of distant smoke promised him a speedy sight of St. Udo's watch-fire! How his limbs trembled and his haggard face blackened when the blood-hound wavered in his steady run, and sniffed about uneasily for a lost scent! How the wicked, tigerish eyes gleamed when the creature ran on again with eager haste and dripping fangs!

And the long brown fingers were ever straying toward the dagger in the bosom; and the cruel lips ever were sneering out their fell design; and the march seemed only a summer holiday to Thoms hastening to his colonel.

St. Udo Brand had been sent to Washington with dispatches, and was on his way South again to join his command.

Thus much had Thoms discovered, and he was sure of coming up with him in these pathless forests, if he trusted to the unerring instinct of his hideous guide.

It was a lovely day that first of September—so warm, and lambent, and sunny-hued that St. Udo, weary with nights and days of ceaseless exertion, ordered a halt in a cedar grove, and threw himself from his jaded horse to rest a while.

His twenty followers, who were struggling after him on foot, were overjoyed to throw themselves beside him, and soon most of the poor fellows were fast asleep on their arms.

The following day there was a slight skirmish, in which but one, a mere youth, was injured.

St. Udo was talking kindly to this youth, who lay quite still in a corner listening to the whispered words of cheer with a faint and hopeless smile, when a shadow fell across the sweet, dying face, and a woman's gasp of terror fell upon St. Udo's ear. He turned to look upon her, and started involuntarily.

There she drooped, with wild, grief-darkened eyes fastened on the boy, her fair cheeks white with horror, her shapely hands clasped in anguish; her snaky tresses lying low upon her sloping shoulders—a vision of surpassing grace and dumb sorrow—Madam Estvan.

How came she there? Where came she from, who had lain entombed in a holocaust of flame?

A spirit, was she? Ay, truly, a spirit of pity and grief, weeping over a brave boy-soldier's end.

"God bless you, madam!" burst from St. Udo's lips.

She turned her tranced eye from its shocked scrutiny of the boy, and lifted it in mute anguish to the colonel's. She did not recognize him in that supreme moment of her woe.

"Is he dying, do you think?" whispered she, pressing close.

The sweet face turned with a smile of anguish at her voice, the dark eyes opened on her lovely countenance with a far away look already in their depths.

"Yes, yes, madam, I am dying," murmured the boy.

"Oh, Edgar! Edgar!" moaned the woman, in harrowing tones, "must you go? I loved you so dearly, too—my last, my only hope on earth or in Heaven—my son!"

"Ah, madam, you did not treat me as your son."

"Hush!" whispered she, in anguish. "I was not to blame for that. Your father was to blame when he deserted us both, my poor boy. How could I fight against fate? In self-defence I parted from you, but I have loved you truly, Edgar."

"May God, to whom I go, forgive your cold rejection of me many times when I have besought you on my knees to let me call you mother. From place to place you have led me, keeping me at a distance all the while, and now my sad, lonely life must end here. Oh, madam, you have been cruel!"

She wept wildly, she raised him in her arms and kissed him many times, but her lips framed no excuse.

"To think that I should find you here, my boy," moaned she, "when I sent you North expressly for safety's sake. Why—why did you enter the army, Edgar?"

"To find death," said the calm, dying voice.

She laid him down upon the straw, and raised her streaming eyes to St. Udo Brand. They recognized him now, and grew hard and fierce. She rose, and clutched him by the arm.

"Where is that fiend in human shape who calls himself Colonel Calembours?" cried she, vehemently.

"I cannot tell," replied St. Udo. "He has played the traitor to the North; he must be with Lee's army."

"He has played the traitor to me, and to that boy, his son!" she exclaimed, vengefully. "He has deserted us for eighteen years, and now my boy is dying. He threw me back among the flames three months ago in Colonel Estvan's house as soon as he recognized in me his wife. Oh! can such a monster escape justice?"

"Did you come here to-day expecting to find Colonel Calembours?" inquired St. Udo, compassionately.

"I did. I have just come from a sickroom, which my terror drove me to after my servants had rescued me from being consumed in the flames which destroyed my only home. I hear that Monsieur Estvan was killed, and I searched in every hospital in Richmond, and every jail, for some tidings of the monster in case he might have been captured. Now, alas! I find my son in the agonies of death."

She knelt again by the boy and kissed his cold lips, smiling so stilly.

St. Udo left the hapless pair together, and strode to the doorway of the shed for a breath of Heaven's pure air; the despair, the misery behind him were wringing his heart, adamantine as he was wont to call it.

St. Udo suddenly heard the beat of hoofs, and in a moment a Confederate officer dashed in front of the tent and reined up.

"Eh bien! Monsieur, mon ami," chirped a familiar voice. "Well met, my colonel. Par ma foi. I like this extravagantly—yes."

And the Chevalier de Calembours, dismounting from a magnificent war-horse, performed a profound obeisance.

"You unhanged villain!" shouted St. Udo, scornfully.

A white face peered out from behind Colonel Brand. Madam Estvan glided out, and put a nervous hand upon the chevalier's arm.

"Come here," whispered the wan lips, sadly.

He went with her into the tent, and looked at the sweet young face, sealed with the smile of death, of a noble soldier lad.

"Colonel Calembours, look at your son," whispered madam.

The chevalier grew ghastly white. Truly this fair, smiling dead bore his own sin-coarsened lineaments; but the woman! Who was she?

Just then there were heard shouts mingled with firing, and, ere the chevalier's eyes had time to light upon that beautiful face, a random ball struck him down at her feet. Like a bolt of retribution from Heaven, it laid him across the senseless clay of his deserted son.

And, with a shriek that tingled in the shocked St. Udo's ears, the lovely woman sank beside her dead, and the dark blood of her perfidious husband oozed onto her dainty robes, and washed her trembling hands; and, turning to the battle, he saw no more.

In half an hour St. Udo led back his soldiers, and found her still there, with the senseless man's head in her lap, and her soft hands deftly dressing his gaping wound.

"He will live," said she, quite calmly. "I have snatched him back from death; he will live for me."

"Can you forgive such perfidy as his?" asked the wondering St. Udo.

"Yes, if he will take me to his heart again," she said, with a flash of ineffable yearning. "I will forget his indifference to me, his injustice to this dead boy. I will be happy to be his bond slave, if he will own me as his wife evermore, for—I love him."

How passionately she breathed the sublime words, "I love him!" How God-like was the forgiveness of such sins as his for such a plea!

St. Udo forced some drops of brandy into his unfortunate comrade's lips, and in time had the satisfaction to hear a deep sigh escape him.

"Calembours," exclaimed St. Udo, "look up and speak to this noble woman."

The chevalier opened his eyes, and strove to see her through the dim gloom, but vainly.

"My husband!" breathed the lady, with bitter tears, "will you cast me off for the third time? Ah, don't break my heart! My poor Edgar is dead, and I have not a soul but you, and after all these years of separation. Oh, Ladislaus!"

Her face sank on his breast, she clung to him with both eager hands.

He glared about him like some savage animal. He forgot his pain and his capture, in rage at such a proposition, and answered with an insulting laugh.

"Oh—ha, ha!" screamed he, with the enjoyment of a hyena. "This maniac mistakes the Chevalier de Calembours for her husband Ladislaus. Excellent! nom de Dieu! most excellent. Sweet madam, your troubles have crazed your brain. A chance resemblance has deceived you—mon coeur! You have mistaken your man."

She heard him with a gasp of horror.

She extricated herself and stood off, a dark shadow in the gray night.

"You repudiate me once more?" she cried, in a thrilling voice. "Traitor, renegade—spy! You are not worthy of a woman's love; but you shall feel a woman's vengeance!"

She snatched a stiletto from her bosom, and threw herself upon the prostrate rascal, but was caught by St. Udo and disarmed.

"Enough, madam," said he, icily; "the miscreant shall expiate his villainies by death, but not at your hands."

She submitted in silence, and without one backward look upon the man who had been her life's curse, she galloped back with her attendants, to watch over her dead boy, and to keep him from the dews of Heaven and the birds of prey for many a dread day.

There is yet another scene to paint in this series of life-pictures, gentle reader.

It is the last.

On through dim night sped the little force, under a rising moon eclipsed by drifting clouds, and met face to face a regiment in full march.

The leaders anxiously gazed at each other, hoping to encounter friends, but in the gloom their uniforms were undistinguishable.

"What regiment is yours?" demanded St. Udo, at last.

There was a pause, brief and ominous.

"What is yours?" cautiously returned the officer in command.

"The—Vermont," said Udo Brand.

"Then, in heaven's name, take it! Fire!" commanded the other.

A simultaneous flash along; each line distinctly revealed every face, and then the front ranks fell in the windrows under the murderous volley.

"Again!" shouted the Confederate leader.

Again his men stepped forward, aimed at St. Udo's handful, and again the brave Vermonters melted away like smoke before the wind.

Then Colonel Brand gave the orders for retreat, and sullenly took the rear of his diminished band. But the foe pressed close, and a chance shot killed his horse, and a flying pursuer dealt the rider a stunning blow, and left him for dead; and the battle-storm rolled away, and was lost in the distant woods.

And when the shrouded moon was shining (three black stripes across its disk) upon the man lying on his broken sword, with his head upon the neck of his pulseless horse, he heard a rustle in the dewy leaves, and footsteps soft and sure approaching, and he raised his dark, dim eyes supplicatingly, for he thought of faithful friends who might be seeking him.

But a long, lean hound was baying hoarsely, and its red eyes gleamed like chysolites, and it led, step by step, the shuffling feet of a haggard man who long had sought St. Udo.

And the skulker came to his side, and looked in his face with demoniac eagerness, and plunged the dastardly dagger hilt-deep into his breast, and stood erect with a long, wild, triumphant laugh.

So the moon rode on in clearer majesty, and the night-dews dripped upon the slain—for "the dearest tears which heaven sheds are her dews upon the dead hero's face."

CHAPTER X.

MARGARET AGAIN A WANDERER.

Heavily passed the days of Margaret Walsingham, having, as we know, that secret apprehension on her mind which the vision of the battle-field had cast, and waiting with sick anxiety for news from the war, which might explain to her what that vision might mean.

Heavily pass the days, and October's brown era came sighing down to strip the trees.

Lady Juliana was having her last ball at Hautville Park before her visitors should throng back to the city for the opening season, and for the second time she insisted upon her companion being present. She was so determined to have her way that Margaret had perforce to obey, all unconscious of the trap which was making ready for her. The mighty rooms of the chateau glittered with a thousand wax tapers; garlands of richest flowers festooned the walls; bewildering strains of music intoxicated the senses.

My lady, the loveliest being there, shimmered about here and there, the beauty of the ball, the adored of half the gentlemen.

Miss Walsingham, seeing no reason why she should be among the revelers, when her heart was so heavy with cares for the last of the Brands, soon glided into a small Saracenic cloister, which was lighted dimly by a single iron lamp, and from it watched with wistful and still tender interest the fairy-like figure of her Lady Julie.

She had not been there a quarter of an hour, when the Duke of Piermont, passing through hurriedly, as if late for some engagement, caught sight of her, and stopped short before her.

"My dear Miss Walsingham! To see you among us is a pleasure indeed. You'll waltz with me?"

"I am strictly a spectator, your grace—thanks."

"What! Not even walk through the Polonaise with me? Well, I shall forswear the mazes also. Will you come to the conservatory? I think there is some amazing flower of Lady Juliana's out—blooms once in a hundred years or so. Come and see it."

"I think that your presence is expected in the ball-room. Lieutenant Falconcourt has been dispatched to seek for you."

His grace glanced at his tablets and frowned.

"Too late to keep my promise now," he muttered, "so I may as well follow my own inclinations. I shall remain conveniently invisible, with your permission, Miss Walsingham."

"Your grace must not count upon my permission."

"Hulloa!" cried a voice "Cousin Julie is on the tenterhooks of impatience for you, Piermont. You are too late to open the ball with her. Oh, do I see Miss Walsingham?"

Lieutenant Falconcourt joined the pair with looks of curiosity, and rendered his respects to my lady's companion.

"Remain here a few moments, while I see Lady Juliana," said the young duke, hurriedly pressing her hand.

In a moment he was gone, and Harry Falconcourt was in his place by her side.

"My dear Miss Walsingham," he said, half gayly, but with a slight appearance of anxiety in his manner, which did not escape her notice, "do you know that you have cast a spell over our duke, which he seems inclined to wear under the very eyes of my Cousin Julie?"

"You cannot surely mean——"

"He is perfectly bewitched; and as I know you are quite unconscious of it, I fore warn you."

Margaret sat silent for some time, plunged in an uneasy reverie. This thing gave her a disagreeable shock for which she was not prepared. She inwardly reviewed her position at Hautville Park, and a cold chill of disappointment crept into her heart.

Must she leave her giddy darling, Lady Julie?

"I cannot believe it—I will not!" she exclaimed, with momentary fire. "His grace is not so foolish as to intend this thing. You exaggerate his emotions in regard to me."

The fairy-like form of my lady floated past the draperied door on the arm of Piermont, and as she passed, her eyes sought the pair in the cloister with visible triumph; then she turned to his grace again.

"You see," said Margaret, eagerly clinging to the first straw of hope, "they perfectly understand each other, and your warning is superfluous."

Falconcourt smiled, but dropped the subject, and applied himself with considerable relish to the task of entertaining my lady's companion.

As long as she could see his grace, the duke, and Lady Juliana amicably promenading, or revolving in each other's arms, she spoke well and admirably, but the instant that they parted, she became quite distrait, and nervously dreaded the appearance of the duke.

So agitated did she become with this threatened return before her eyes, that her face became white as chalk and her tones husky and indistinct.

"Excuse me if I leave you," she said, at last, desperately.

"I may return, if I overcome this faintness."

She had just sufficient strength to slip through the outer door, of the cloister into the cool hall, and to make her way to a balcony, where night breezes swept crisply over her, and the upper edge of the round, red moon smote her face with the glow of one of Raphael's angels.

There she stood, gazing down upon the dark trees, her heart a chaos of troubled reverie.

"On the first of September, at the battle of Chantilly, it is feared."

Voices of men in eager colloquy; two figures lounging on the terrace steps beneath.

"Where did you see it?"

"In the last War Gazette—Colonel Brand's company almost cut to pieces, and the colonel killed.

"Poor fellow! Do they know it here?"

Margaret turned and walked with a steady step to her own room, stabbed through the heart with this sudden dagger.

On the first of September!

The tidal swell of memory broke over her reeling senses with a dull admonition of something more dreadful than death.

It was not a gallant death in the midst of battle she had to mourn; it was not a brave end to a brilliant day of heroism. No—by the murk of that ghastly vision, by the shadow of the skulker among the dead, it was murder!

Late at night she was disturbed in her chamber by a visit from her Lady Julie.

"I want to say a few words to you, Miss Walsingham."

Margaret looked at the flushed face, the unsmiling lips, with wonder.

"I have been listening to an extraordinary list of your perfections from the Duke of Piermont," she commenced, trembling, "and I find from the intimate terms in which he mentions you, that you are no strangers to each other. As I never anticipated the possibility of being rivaled by my companion, I wish you distinctly to understand that I intend to brook no intermeddling of any one of that class. You came between me and my betrothed before, and drove him to his death; you shall not mar my prospects again for want of a distinct understanding on the subject. If I had known that Miss Blair was the woman who had come into possession of St. Udo Brand's property, no inducement would have betrayed me into taking her as my companion, and thus laying myself open to her machinations a second time."

"Lady Julie," said Margaret, whose face had grown terribly pale, "I am not worthy of these ungenerous imputations. Reconsider what you have said and treat me more justly."

"Did I bring you here to be my mentor?" cried my lady. "Did I ever suppose that you could meddle with my destiny? Here is the Duke of Piermont, who was ready to kiss my foot-prints, openly setting me aside and searching for a woman who acts as my private attendant or companion, and raving over her perfections. Have I employed you here to be my rival, Miss Walsingham? Have I set you over myself?"

She stood confessed at last; her grudging and jealous soul looked forth from her sapphire eyes, and recognized Margaret Walsingham as her mental superior, and consequently her enemy.

No twinges of gratitude deterred her from her jealous rage; no love, begot by her patient Margaret's goodness and devotion, stirred her small, chill heart.

The spiteful blow was struck upon the woman who had saved her life.

"As long as I could be a solace or a help to you, Lady Julie," faltered Margaret, pale as death, "I wished for no greater happiness than to be with you, and to serve you faithfully, faithfully, my lady, whatever you may in your anger say; but now, I see that my influence has passed away, and my duty is to leave you."

"You leave too late," cried my lady, tauntingly. "You have caught your fish and can afford to leave the fish-pond now, I suppose. Really, I think it no bad thing for a sea-captain's daughter to become the Duchess of Piermont and the mistress of Seven-Oak Waaste."

"Lady Julie! Lady Julie!" cried Margaret, turning away with an unutterable heart-pang, "I have loved you well, and should not be treated thus. I desire to be neither the wife of the Duke of Piermont nor the mistress of Seven-Oak Waaste."

She opened her wardrobe and began, with trembling hands, to array herself in her bonnet and cloak, and to arrange a few things in her small travelling-bag, tears dripping slowly all the time.

"What are you going to do?" sneered my lady, watching her movements with incredulity.

"To go away—to find another home, Lady Julie."

"What! so suddenly? Without bidding his grace farewell? How cruel of Miss Walsingham to treat her enamored admirer so."

Margaret took no further notice of my lady, but hastened her movements toward departure.

"Had you not better wait till the morning?" said Lady Juliana, fretfully, "and see my father before you go? Or are you anxious to go in this absurd manner so that you may blason to the whole world how badly I have treated you?"

"This interview is safe with me," said Margaret, turning on the stairs; "and you may smooth over my departure as you please."

"And where is Bignetta to send your boxes, and where is my father to send your salary?"

"To the Lambeth express office until I send for them. Farewell, my lady."

With a sigh in which there was no bitter resentment, though her injuries had not been slight, poor Margaret Walsingham flitted down the silent staircase, and, heedless of the servants, who were putting out the lights, and who stared curiously at her, she went out into the park.

The night wind moaned drearily among the stately trees; a Brazilian bird in my lord's aviary uttered a piercing shriek of warning, as a hoarse baying of a hound broke from the kennels.

Down by the gray stone fountain, where a laughing naiad flung jets of water from her golden comb, Margaret turned back and looked upon my lady's lighted windows as Eve looked upon guarded Paradise.

How she had filled her whole heart and fed her boundless love with this girl.

Was it Heaven's will that all whom she loved should sting her thus? She was a waif sent wandering through a world which shrank from her as if Cain's mark burned upon her brow?

So Margaret Walsingham turned again and drifted down into the world which had never a beating pulse for her, and went to find—she knew not where—a place to work in, a sphere to fill, a duty to perform.

She was friendless, and heart-hungered, and despitefully wronged; but God was her keeper.

Poor Margaret had been travelling about from place to place for the past fortnight, in the vain hope of finding a situation.

Her money had leaked away somewhere—there were plenty who were quite willing to rid her of the scant burden, and now, as she looked into her purse, she found but one silver-piece upon which to exist through as much of the murky future as her anxious eyes could pierce.

The Marquis of Ducie, with the prodigality of a great mind, had been pleased to send the sum of five pounds to the Lambeth express office for Miss Walsingham, with the promise of a payment at some future time of what salary was still due.

The five pounds had weathered fourteen days of traveling, extortion, and inexperience, but it had come to its last shilling now, and Margaret was desperately in earnest as she held the lean purse in her hand and asked herself the question, "What shall I do now?"

She looked about the smoky houses, and down at the broad river, where the forest of masts bristled between her and the dappled horizon.

She wandered down to one of the docks, and seating herself upon a coil of rope, gazed absently at the green-tinged water below. Poor Margaret's heart was so absorbed in her musings, that she did not notice that the man who was stumbling over a length of tarry chain, in his eagerness to reach her, was his grace, the Duke of Piermont.

CHAPTER XI.

UNREQUITED LOVE.

"Good gracious, Miss Walsingham! Is it possible that this can be you?"

He seized her hand with a pressure which told of his delight; his tones were thrilling with glad excitement; his face was beaming with joy at this queer meeting.

He drew her up from her rough seat, and, still retaining her hand, made her walk with him, as if he was determined not to lose her again, and he feasted his eyes upon her face, utterly heedless of the group of gayly-dressed people he had left, and rattled on with a storm of inquiries.

"Where did you disappear to? No one could give me any satisfaction about you, and I sought you in every direction. Come away from this confounded dock. What are you doing here alone? Will you walk with me, and let me have a conversation with you? Don't deny me this time, Miss Walsingham. We're not at Hautville Park."

They walked through the crooked lanes of the town, and took a road which led anon to mown fields, and to furze commons, and to holts of scrawny hazel, where the red clouds of evening could gaze upon their deeper reflections, unbroken by toiling barge, or floating timber, or stationary ships; and where pleasant willows made flickering shadows, and dipped into the rippling current.

"Now," said the young duke, when nothing but the bleating of lambs or the lowing of oxen was likely to interrupt them, "tell me why you left Hautville Park, and what you are doing here?"

"Why do you put me through such an inquisition?" asked Margaret. "When I left Hautville Park I wished to be dropped by Lady Juliana's friends. Your grace will confer an obligation by remembering this."

"I do not aspire to the honor of being Lady Juliana Ducie's friend, therefore beg to be considered exempt from your prohibition."

"On your own behalf, then, your grace, I am compelled to forbid any further interest in my movements. My sphere in life utterly removes me from your attention, and my path will probably never cross yours after to-day."

"Miss Walsingham," cried the young duke, fervently, "I will not let you away this time without hearing me. I want to tell you that I formed an opinion concerning you when my eyes first picked you out at the marquis' dinner-table, which each hurried interview since has only strengthened, and I have wished to tell you ever since that evening what a profound impression your graces of mind have made upon me. Whatever wrongs the world may accuse you of, I have the utmost confidence in you. I know that you will pursue none but a noble, unselfish course—that you are the purest, ay, and the bravest woman whom I ever met."

Margaret was quite silenced by this outburst, and walked on almost frightened by the novelty of her position.

It struck her that the man walking by her side and gazing so eagerly into her face was the only stanch friend she had on earth.

For a brief moment she had a glimpse of the sweetness which gladdens the life of a woman beloved, and then she woke to calmer reality, and put the vision from her firmly.

"I am afraid that you think all this very premature," resumed his grace, again taking up the tale, "and so I suppose it is, to you. But it is not so to me. I could not have a deeper devotion and admiration for you years hence than I have now. Dear Miss Walsingham, will you make me immeasurably happy by bestowing your hand upon me?"

"I am compelled to reject your grace's proposal."

The pair walked mechanically on for some minutes, the young man whirling his cane furiously, Margaret eyeing with tear-laden eyes the dusty turnpike before her.

"I think you had better take a rest for a few minutes," said his grace, when he had whirled the gold top of his cane and had nothing else to do; "we have been walking quite fast, and are at least a mile and a quarter from the village."

He spread his perfumed handkerchief on a flat stone, and Margaret, obeying an impulse the very opposite of that which she intended, sank down wearily upon it.

"I am not surprised that you have refused my offer so decidedly," said the young duke, returning to the attack as he paced restlessly back and forth in front of her "when I remember how utterly unknown my temper and disposition are to you, and how recent our acquaintanceship still is. I am ready to admit my own presumption in addressing you. But Miss Walsingham dear Miss Walsingham, may I hope that when you know me better, when you have studied me long enough, and have completely made up your mind about all that is bad or good in me, you will then permit me to address you as I have done to-night, and say yes or no, with more justice to me."

"Why do you come to me with this request? Have you not been paying court to the Marquis of Ducie's daughter all summer? I ask you this before I can assure myself that your avowal is an honor to me. Your answer cannot influence in the slightest my decision."

"I give you my word of honor, Miss Walsingham, that I have not been paying court to Lady Juliana Ducie; if you wish to know why, I found that her heartless desertion of St. Udo Brand, after he lost his property, outweighed with me her fascination; and, having accidentally become acquainted with the whole story, I naturally preferred to shun the fawning lip and clasping hand, and the craven heart of a Judas in woman's lovely seeming, that I might find her contrast in Margaret Walsingham."

"Do not mention the dead," said Margaret, deeply moved. "I can never, never forget that I was the unwilling cause of his early death."

She was weak and exhausted, though as yet she did not know it, and she bowed her head to weep in an abandonment of grief, which came upon her unawares and would not be set aside.

His grace stopped with folded arms to look at her. Here was the woman who was enriched by the death of a man who had insulted her, mourning his untimely end with bitter tears. A vision of the woman who had plighted him her troth rose up to confront this grief-shaken figure with decorous sighs, and shallow regrets, and heartless unconcern, and he put away the red-lipped siren from his thoughts with an execration of scorn, and clung anew to faithful Margaret.

"Should it be ten years hence that you relent, let me try my fate a second time," he cried, grasping her hand in his increased fervor of admiration.

"Leave me," murmured Margaret. "I have given you my answer—crown your acts of kindness by leaving me."

The wind swept over the flat moors with a bleaker sound; she gathered her mantle closer, and rose to face the east—sad-colored as her own future.

"And where are you going?" asked the Duke of Piermont. "Surely you are not going to hide yourself from all your friends? You will let me know where you purpose residing until you procure the situation you are in search of?"

I wonder what his grace would have said, had he known how utterly destitute she was—that she had but one shilling at that moment in her pocket—that the only friend to whom she could or would apply was her Father in Heaven?

"I cannot answer your questions," said Margaret, holding out her hand to him; "but since you are so generous with your interest, I shall let you into the secret of my future movements, always with the understanding that the Marquis of Ducie and his friends shall not know. Now, my lord, I have nothing more to say to you, except to thank you for the intended honor which it would be ridiculous in me to accept. See, there is a shower coming up, and you will get wet before you can return to the village. Good-by."

"But you—Good Heaven! Miss Walsingham, where are you to go?"

She waved her hand toward a farm-house, and walked swiftly away as if she would seek shelter there.

And the last that he saw of her, was her black garments like a speck on the murky road, seeming to walk in between two great thunderous clouds, and to be swallowed up.

Margaret kept hurrying on, so absorbed in her musings that she passed the farm-house, where she might have found a hospitable shelter for the night, and hurried down the lonely road away from the river, where the rising wind waited for her at sudden corners, and the black clouds descended nearer with the darkening night.

And she hurried on faster, and her eyes pierced the gathering blackness, with the sad and weary gaze of one whose heart carries a secret sorrow, and tears fell slowly from them, which blurred the way, and blotted out the lowering sky.

Where had she wandered to?

There was no friendly light from any cottage window to guide her, no sheep-bell or halloo of herd-boy. Her clothes were heavy with moisture, and she was very tired and very desolate.

How her head ached, and her arms!

Oh! if she could just be so blessed as to sink upon some kind woman's bed this very moment, and sleep!

Perhaps she would fall in some lime-pit, or ditch, or into the slimy lock of some canal, and die miserably.

Who would weep for her if she died? Who cared for Margaret Walsingham?

And the thought of her utter desolation overcome her, as weariness, hunger, and storm had failed to do.

She crouched down beneath a furze-bush, and, resting her hot and beating head upon her hands, wept, poor soul!

And then came unconsciousness and utter oblivion.

"I declare, John, she knows me! Here, take a sup o' this barley-water, my lamb. Dear heart! she's sensible once more. Ain't there another drop than this, John? Mayhap it's plenty." Margaret looked with languid eyes upon the rugged figure of a man, clad in dingy red-dust habiliments, who was standing between her and a small window, with his head sunk in a curious way between his hands.

His brawny shoulders were heaving, and his rough shock of hair trembled like sea-grass in a hurricane, while a gurgling sort of noise issued from him.

Had a fit of laughter seized him, or was the man crying?

Whose bed was she lying in, hung with red calico curtains?

Where had she seen that figure in the clay-colored smock before?

And then Margaret saw a sallow-faced woman of spare figure bending over her, with a tin cup in her hand, and a glistening channel down each cheek.

"Mrs. Doane!" she breathed, in wonder.

"There I knowed it! Hark to that, John!" cried the woman, with an exultant chuckle, which threatened to be strangled by a sob.

"Didn't she call me by name, the blessed lamb?"

She raised the blessed lamb in her arms, who, truth to say, scarcely recognized herself by such an unwonted title, and held the tin cup to her lips.

Sweeter to Margaret than Lusitanian nectar such as Chianti yields was her drink of barley water.

Margaret without working out the queer problem of how she came there, fell into a deep and quiet sleep.

And between sleeping profoundly, eating morsels of food with ravenous enjoyment, lying placidly wakeful and watching without curiosity the movements of her two nurses, Margaret saw the young moon grow into a full, round orb, which glimmered in a halo through the bottle-green glass of the cracked window, and silvered her from head to foot, each long, still night; and at last strength came to her, and with it recollection.

"Did I come to you, Mr. Doane?" she asked, one evening, when that person was sitting by her bedside peacefully smoking his pipe, and listening with pride to the voice of Johnnie in the kitchen chanting his spelling lesson.

"Come to us? No, miss, you didn't but we come to you," replied the bricklayer, stuffing down the ashes further into his pipe.

"I want to know about it, please; I do not understand at all how I am at Lynthorpe."

"Where was you when you was took bad?"

Margaret pondered a long time.

"The last I distinctly remember is of being a mile and a half from Rotherhithe."

"Lor-a-musy! and didn't nobody give ye a seat in their wagon down here? Did you walk all the way, and so light of head like?" She put her thin hand to her forehead again.

"I remember of being lost on a common outside of Rotherhithe," she answered, "and I do not know what became of me after that. I sat down to rest, and I suppose I must have been there all night. Is it long ago?"

"What date was it, dear miss, that you was lost on the moor? Can ye mind that?"

"It was the seventh of October."

"Just think o' that now! It was two days after that when I found you sitting at the foot of a hay-rick in Farmer Bracon's land, a mile from here. You was a sorry sight, but I know'd yer again, and came close to yer. You was neither sleeping nor not sleeping, but whispering to yourself; so I brought you home to the wife, and she and me we've nursed ye through, thank heaven! And here's the papers as was found on ye, miss, by the wife," rising and producing them from a carefully-locked little box in the cupboard; "and here's the purse with a shilling in it, which was all that we saw with ye, and you a sending me a guinea reg'lar every quarter for Johnnie's schooling, for a kind miss, as ye are."

Margaret lay quiet for a while; her deep gray eyes were full of tears, her bleached face tremulous with smiles.

"Heaven is taking great care of me, and I have much to be thankful for. Kind John Doane and his wife, for instance."

The bricklayer puffed hard, and slowly spelled out her meaning, and arrived at it with a snort of surprised pleasure.

"Is it Betsy and me that you want to be thankful for? You as is our guarding angel, what made a man of Johnnie as can read most as well as the curate himself. And haven't every one of the nine of us, down to the babby, felt as if we had a angel under the roof for the last three weeks?"

"Have I been three weeks ill?"

"Three weeks, dear miss; seven days of 'em you wasn't in your head at all, and Dr. Ramsey weren't easy about you—weren't easy at all. It were inflammation of the brain."

"And you out of your pittance—you have nursed me through all this?"

"And proud to do it, miss."

"But if I had died, who would make up to you the doctor's bill, or your own ease?"

"Dear miss, don't!" His hard hand went up to wipe the starting tears. "If you had died, it's not us as would stop our mourning to think of the mite you cost us. You ain't like the rest of the Peerage—you comes down to we; you had a heart, so you had, and felt for we, and we never forgets that."

Faithful Margaret: A Novel

FAITHFUL MARGARET.

A Novel.

ROBERTSON'S CHEAP SERIES

POPULAR READING AT POPULAR PRICES.

BY ANNIE ASHMORE.

TORONTO:
J. Ross Robertson,
Corner King and Bay Streets.

1880.

CONTENTS