THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK

He paced the library for a few minutes. His emotions were terrible, but they were the strugglings of pride, vain, haughty, ambitious pride, not such as he would have been justified in possessing.

Helen stood motionless and faint. She dreaded the demanded explanation, which seemed each instant to draw nearer. Her heart throbbed painfully, so painfully it seemed as though each throb, depriving her of life, would be the last.

At length Mr. Grahame confronted her.

“Helen!” he exclaimed, “what have you to offer in explanation of the degraded and scandalous conduct of which you have been guilty in flying from your home, and the audacious presumption you have exhibited in presenting yourself here again?”

Her bosom heaved, and her throat swelled, but she spoke not.

“I demand to know,” he continued, fiercely, “why you quitted position, family, a wealthy home, in a manner so disgracefully clandestine, so utterly reckless of the honour or the pride of our house; I claim to know what you have been doing during your absence; and why now, like some spectre, you suddenly appear among us to bring further shame and disgrace upon us. Speak!”

Her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth. The events of the last few months raced through her brain. Oh, how was she to acknowledge one incident, at least, to him?

She remained silent.

He bit his lips and seized her wrist harshly.

“You must, you shall speak,” he cried, hoarsely, “or I will find a way to make you, that shall bring you upon your bended knees in supplication to be spared the torture. Tell me, girl, for whom and with whom you fled from home?”

He committed an error when he, thus acting, sought to terrify her into an explanation. He only roused her proud nature. By a sudden motion, she flung his hand from her.

“I acted alone, and without being influenced by any person,” she replied firmly, even haughtily.

“Your motive?”

“You will learn it some day.”

“Now—now; I insist upon hearing it now.”

“No, it would be premature. Nothing is to be gained by the disclosure but pain; it is enough that I did what I have done under the promptings of my own will. I have taken the consequences, and I am prepared to endure them. I ask nothing of you but to be allowed to depart.”

“What language is this? Am I not your father?—have I no title to control your actions. Preposterous notion!—you will find your error and repent it sorely, bitterly.”

“I have done so,” she said, with an earnestness which struck him.

He paused for a moment, and gazed steadfastly at her.

“What means this alteration in you? Why are you so pallid and thin?” he asked, abruptly.

“I have been ill.”

“Ill?”

“Very ill.”

“Tell me,” he asked with a choking utterance; “with whom have you dwelt since you left this house?”

“A young girl.”

“A girl,” he echoed, in surprise.

This was a question he had feared to ask, and he anticipated from her a direct refusal to reply. He was amazed at the readiness with which she responded.

“Humble, sir,” she continued, in a thoughtful voice, which had a singular tone of sadness pervading it; “but a model of purity, innocence, and faithfulness!”

“You have been with her alone, up to the hour you came hither to-night?”

“With her alone.”

“Will you swear this?”

“In the face of Heaven, it is true, sir.”

Mr. Grahame paced the room again.

There was intense relief afforded to him by her replies, for, heartless and selfish, he cared little what she had suffered during what he considered to be her madly capricious act, so that she had not disgraced his name. He would have looked over even her self-degradation, if he had been sure that the crime was confined alone to her breast and that of the partner of her sin, and it would not interfere with his new-formed scheme.

“Helen,” he said, pausing abruptly before her, “you must give me your promise that you will some day explain the mystery which hangs over the interval of your flight from home, if I forbear to urge it now?”

“I do, sir,” she replied, in a low tone.

Again he took several turns across the room before he could bring out his proposition; but at length he stopped, and recommenced speaking.

“Helen,” he said, “you are unmarried.”

Had he struck her a blow upon the temple, it would have had less effect. She staggered and clung o the table.

“You are ill,” he said, hastily.

“No,” she answered, in a hollow tone, “proceed.”

“So far as I know,” he said, “you have had no offer for your hand—no suitor, who has distinctly proposed; many intimations, I know, have been made, but I have always turned a cold face upon them; for I would elevate you in rank and surround you with wealth. Such a chance offers itself for your acceptance now.”

She uttered a faint cry, and recoiled from him.

“Helen,” he said, sternly, “it is for you to repair the past, and the opportunity is within your grasp—beware how you fling it away.”

She tried to speak, but her voice failed her.

“You must not, and shall not now interpose your will between mine and a most important object I have in view,” he cried, sternly. “Listen—it is necessary that you should marry——”

“No—oh! no—no—no!” she gasped.

“I say,” continued her father, “that the necessity is imperious.

“I cannot.”

“You shall.”

“I dare not.”

“Dare not! Listen—hear what there is need for you to dare. Helen, I am a beggar!”

Helen almost shrieked; he uttered those words in a tone so frightful.

“Yes,” he repeated; “I stand on the verge of bankruptcy—beggary—God knows what horrors! you can save me.”

Helen clasped her hands, and sobbed convulsively.

“You, Helen, can, I swear to you, save me—your mother—the house itself, from destruction and disgrace. My Lord Elsingham, whom you met at dinner, is a peer of enormous wealth; he has just expressed himself greatly prepossessed in your favour. It rests with you to follow up this favourable impression, and he is your own—the coronet of a peeress will grace your temples. Your sister will, I trust, win the Duke; and in these two marriages we may defy fate itself. You, Helen, will prove my salvation! Do only but this, and the agony of the past will be compensated by the splendour of the future.”

It is not possible to depict Helen’s intense anguish on hearing this terrible revelation, or her horror to find that, even if prepared to sacrifice her heart to save her father’s credit, it would not now be possible to do so.

She clasped her hands, and fell upon her knees before him.

“Oh, sir! sir!” she moaned, in dire grief; “is there no other way to save you? None? None?”

“Not one loophole to creep out of,” he cried, hoarsely. “Wilton had promised to share with me the estates we both claim. He has recalled that promise, and vast sums are now demanded of me, which I cannot pay. If, however, it is known that you are about to become the bride of one of the wealthiest peers in the kingdom, the harpies will wait, and I shall be rescued.”

“Oh! avenging heaven!” she cried, “and I cannot do this to save them all!”

“Helen!” cried her father, gripping her wrist hard, and hissing in her ear, “you must do this, whatever may have happened! You must marry this peer. I ask you to reveal nothing. Keep your secret, but marry him you must, or ruin—disgrace—death—stares me in the face. Recover yourself—be composed, I leave you for a short time, or my absence will be remarked upon. When I come back, I shall find you cold, and firm, and calm—resolved, at any price to carry out what I demand of you. Not a word! not a word!”

As he spoke he put her from him. She would have clung entreatingly to him, not to exact from her a task so wholly impossible for her to fulfil.

He hurried out of the room, and locked the door without, leaving her a prisoner there.

In an agony of tears she reflected on her position.

“It cannot, must not, shall not be,” she moaned, wringing her hands while she spoke. “No; I will fly to Mr. Wilton. Lotte has spoken of his tenderness of heart. I will appeal to him, on my knees, to save my father; he will not resist my tears, my prayers. Yes, yes, I will go to him—but for this marriage, ugh!” She shuddered violently—“No, death—death rather than that.”

She tottered to the door and turned the handle, but it was fast. She pressed against it, but it would not yield.

She made to the window. She remembered the iron staircase which led into the garden. The window was unfastened, but she, alas, was in full dress. She cast her eyes to the door wistfully, and thought she perceived the handle move; she hurried to it, and, kneeling down, tried to peer through the keyhole.

She heard a soft, low voice breathe her name, and she knew who was without watching for her.

She whispered in a low voice—

“Eva, darling Eva, not a moment is to be lost; hasten with my bonnet and my mantle to the slope beneath the library window.”

“Helen, dearest,” murmured the soft, low voice, “oh, you will not leave us again?”

“Sweet sister Eva, if you love me, do what I ask. I will be more explicit when we are together below,” she urged, almost frantically. “If you love me, Eva—oh, if you love me, sweet Eva.”

“I will do what you wish, dear Helen,” replied her sister, softly. “I will be down on the slope within a few minutes.”

To Helen the very mention of such a time seemed an age. She tied her handkerchief about her neck, and stole softly to the window, which had several times admitted Chewkle to her father’s presence secretly.

She opened it gently and looked out. It seemed very dark, and she instinctively shuddered. She turned, and looked round the library hastily—all was perfectly silent; yet it seemed to her that the door would suddenly fly open, and her father, with angry aspect, appear and pursue her.

She stepped upon the narrow iron staircase, and closed the window after her; then she swiftly and noiselessly descended the steps, and stood shivering upon the grass slope.

She looked up at the house: lights blazed in all the windows; but in the garden, sombre darkness reigned. She listened intensely, for she fancied she heard a footfall upon the gravel path, but the sound was not repeated until she heard a light rustling noise; in another moment after this reached her ear she felt herself encircled in the arms of Evangeline, who had hastily thrown a large shawl over her head to protect herself from the cold.

Helen took from her hand the garments for which she had asked, and hastily attired herself.

“I dare not stay longer with you, my own darling Eva,” she whispered to her; “I have escaped, as you see now, from the library, in which papa had locked.”

“But why, Helen?” asked Evangeline.

“Ask me not now, love,” she returned, quickly; “some day you shall be made acquainted with the reason of my flight, and why I have returned only to leave you once more.”

“Oh! Helen, it seems so dreadful for you, who were the brightest ornament of our house, to become suddenly”—

“Its blot, its stain!” interrupted Helen, passionately.

“No, no, no,” interposed Evangeline, hastily. “I meant not that. Oh! pray, pray, Helen, remain with us now; everything will come bright again. If all the others look cold upon you at first, they will come round to regard you as they did ere you left us, and you know, Helen, that I will ever be fond and loving to you, if you will let me.”

Helen folded her to her heart, and kissed her wildly.

“It is in vain, Eva,” she presently replied, in a low but firm tone, “it cannot be. If I were to remain, my father would attempt to coerce me into an act which; weak and erring as I have been, I would die rather than consent to perform. Farewell! we shall meet again, Eva.”

“May I come to see you, Helen?” she asked, with great earnestness. “I am very sad and lonely at home here, and if I could only come at times to see and speak with you, it would make me so happy.”

“I will write to you, darling,” said Helen, hastily; “run back to your room, Eva, or you will be missed, and you will be suspected of aiding my departure. I would spare you a terrifying cross-examination, and the ill-treatment likely to result from it. Besides, dearest, if I remain longer it may prove the source of the greatest unhappiness to me.”

This latter argument had its full weight with Evangeline: she embraced her sister with ardent weeping tenderness, and, with many oft-repeated kisses, tore herself away.

Helen wept too, and convulsively. She stood motionless until after Evangeline had, with light fleeting step, entered the house, and then she prepared to hastily leave the garden by the servants’ entrance, with the impression that she should never more enter that house which had been her home from childhood.

She glided stealthily for a few paces, until she reached an angle of the walk, upon which a shadow from the house fell darkly. As she entered the gloom hastily, she ran into the arms of a man who had been standing silently there, and whom she had not seen until she found herself pressed vigorously to his breast.

“My dear Miss Grahame, I have been expecting you, and I must have a few delicious words with you,” whispered the voice of Lester Vane in her ear.

“Monster!” she cried, affrightedly; and by a desperate exertion, she broke from him and fled—she knew not where.

He followed her swiftly, and caught her as she reached the thicket, in which he had felt convinced, on his first visit, she met a lover, clandestinely.

He seized her by both wrists, and held her firmly.

“It is useless to struggle with me,” he exclaimed, in an undertone. “You can scream for help, if you will, and bring hither your proud parents; I shall not quit my hold of you until I resign you into the custody of your father, who does not contemplate your departure, as he has just informed Lord Elsingham that you will join us in the drawing-room, when he would have the opportunity of further examining those fascinating attractions which he admired so much at dinner.”

“Unhand me,” she cried, with intense anguish, acutely feeling the painful position in which she stood, and how much the man whom she now hated with an intense loathing had become, for the moment, the master of the situation.

“When you have listened quietly to what I have to propose to you,” he answered, calmly.

“What can you have to propose to me, but insults?” she replied, impatiently.

“I do not offer them as such,” he answered, with a slight shrug of the shoulders; “if you will persist in so considering them, of course I cannot help it.”

“In mercy let me depart; you do not know how desperate may be the consequences of detaining me here,” she cried, entreatingly.

“Listen to me, Miss Grahame,” he returned, in a cold tone, and with slow enunciation. “Listen to what I have to say, and here in this spot, for I could not have selected one more fitting for my present subject.”

She cast her eyes round her, oh heaven! too well she remembered it. She struggled madly to get free, but he held her with a cruel grip, and, half-fainting, she was compelled to pause.

“There is a strange mystery enshrouding your actions at this present moment,” he continued, between his set teeth, “that I know; further, I believe that I have penetrated to its inmost recesses. Helen Gra-hame, before you set eyes upon me, you loved another—-you met him clandestinely in this thicket.”

Again Helen struggled to set herself free, but in vain.

“It was his hand,” continued Vane, sternly, “which felled me to the earth, when I accidentally encountered him on this very spot. Let that pass. Helen Gra-hame, you loved that man. Yet you knowingly and deliberately employed all your stratagems, and turned upon me the full blaze of your charms, to capture my heart.”

She shuddered and cowered down.

“Your eye it was that sought mine, and when it encountered it, rested there. Your voice echoed mine—your smile was set playing for me—your hand rested on my arm, whenever opportunity offered. You were bland and tender to me, and coy by turns. I was never in your presence but you made me conscious of it by those peculiar artifices by which women attract men to their side. Loving another, Helen Grahame, you acted thus to me.”

“It is unmanly to taunt me thus!” she ejaculated, in hoarse, quivering accents.

“Unmanly!” he echoed; “was it not unmaidenly in you, with your heart safely lodged in another’s keeping, to make so desperate a venture for mine——and for what? To make it a toy, to break it, and cast it aside as worthless, even as a child does a bauble!”

He paused.

He could hear her hysteric breathing, but no pity was stirred in his merciless heart.

“Were you not young, beautiful, of proud birth? Ought you to wonder that you succeeded in your design—-that you have won my heart——”

“It is false! it is false! it is basely untrue!” she gasped, vehemently.

“I swear to its truth! or why do I care to see or speak with you again,” he replied with animation. “I repeat it, Helen Grahame—I love you. You exerted yourself to accomplish that achievement, and you succeeded, having no love to give back in return. What atonement have you to offer to me for having destroyed the brightest hope in my life?”

“In the fullness of an arrogant pride I have erred,” she replied, in a choking tone; “I am only too deeply conscious of my failings, and would gladly make reparation for all the wrong I have done, if in my power.”

“It is in your power,” he interrupted, excitedly, “I know you cannot give me a heart that has gone, or a love which has been won by another; but I know that, under peculiar circumstances, you are separated from him, from home, from the enjoyment of the position you once held, and you cannot be happy as you are now circumstanced. I would make you happy—I would surround you with all the luxuries of wealth, I would place in your grasp all the pleasures the world can afford you, and only ask in return, your society.”

“Oh, man! man! you make most barbarous use of your present advantage, to grossly and shamefully insult me,” she hissed, indignantly. “If I, in my wicked pride, have been guilty of the artifices with which you charge me, those artifices were expended upon a barren rock, upon which no flower grew. I tell you, man, you had no heart to lure, and your plea is as false as your present outrage is contemptible. Release me, or I will dare, by my screams, the very consequences you have pictured.”

Lester Vane suddenly started, as though he heard sounds of some one approaching.

“Hark!” he said, in a low tone; “if you would not be discovered, be silent.”

“I am careless now of discovery. Unhand me wretch!”

He still clutched her wrists, and she, exhausted by the scenes she had that night already gone through, together with her recent efforts to liberate herself, was now wholly powerless. He knew it, and availed himself of the advantage it gave him.

Unheeding her words, he listened for further sounds with breathless attention; but, whatever they might have been, they were not repeated, and he went on speaking—

“I have resolved not to leave you, Helen,” he said, with determined emphasis, “until I have your promise to consent to my proposition, and an earnest that you intend to keep your word.”

She sank upon her knees.

“Have mercy upon me; let me depart, or I shall swoon,” she ejaculated, in a feeble voice. “Oh! in mercy let me go.”

“Your promise,” he cried. “Let me give you the best reason to fall in with my arrangements. The name of him you loved was Hugh Riversdale—”

She leaped up.

“If you would not have me fall dead at your feet, let me go!” she exclaimed, frantically.

“Not till you hear from me,” he answered scornfully, “that knowing the fellow to be a beggarly clerk to a merchant, I called at the warehouse to make inquiries respecting him, and in proof of the estimation in which he was held in his own province, was told abruptly that he was dead—had died on his voyage out to India, and was thrown into the sea.”

Helen uttered a faint scream, and fell back lifeless.

The firm grip with which Lester Vane yet held her prevented her receiving injury in her fall.

When she was lifeless upon the green sward, he released her hands, repenting, at the moment, his precipitation.

He had no time for more.

He was suddenly seized by the throat, and dragged from the shadow into the open space, where there was light enough for him to distinguish features he had seen once before.

“Scoundrel!” cried his assailant, “we have met again—once before to your discomfiture; this time to the defeat of your base villany; beware, the third time it will be fatal to you!”

These words, forced between clenched teeth, were growled in his ears, and then it seemed that myriads of flashes of light dashed before his sight; he was hurled to the ground with tremendous violence, and he remembered no more.

The stranger bent tenderly over the prostrate form of Helen, raised her up gently, imprinted a passionate kiss upon her cold lips, and pressed her to his breast.

“Mine, mine only, my wife, let me see who will dare to take her from me now!”

As he muttered these words, he lifted her senseless form carefully and fondly in his arms, just as though she had been a child, and he bore her to the side of the ornamental water, where lay a boat.

In this he laid her gently down, covered her with a boat cloak, and rowed swiftly away with his prize.

CHAPTER II—SUSPICION.

“Who never loved, ne’er suffered; he feels nothing

Who nothing feels but for himself alone;

And when we feel for others, reason reels,

O’erloaded from her path, and man runs mad.

As love alone can exquisitely bless,

Love alone feels the marvellous of pain—

Opens new veins of torture in the soul,

And wakes the nerves where agonies are born.

Young.

Many a weary hour, on the night of Helen’s departure, did Lotte sit watching by her little charge while it slumbered, plying her ever-busy needle in making its clothes, with which it was very scantily provided.

Ever and anon she raised her eyes from her work, to gaze upon the sweet face of the little hapless innocent, or to listen to its breathing, soft and low, fearful that it might awake and weep, and she be unable to pacify it.

After ten o’clock had chimed, she began to find the hours pass slowly and painfully. Still, however, the child slept, and still she worked on. At length the deep tone of the church-clock bell gave forth the hour of one, and she became affrighted at Helen’s absence.

Her eyes ached painfully. She had worked many hours, and had continued to do so, if only to pass away the lone, long vigil she was keeping.

She had been weeping, too, for she was weak in body, and that created a depression of spirits which found relief only in tears. She was harrassed by strange fears and vague doubts. Why, why was Helen so long away? What could have happened?—some dreadful accident, perhaps—she thought of nothing but that; for what else would or could keep a young mother from her first-born in the very commencement of its babyhood. She grew sick at heart; for if her painful foreboding proved only true, what would be the result?

Hour after hour came and went; but though she listened to every footfall as it approached, and believed, until it went past the house, that it must be that of her late companion, she was disappointed in every instance. Helen came not.

Once or twice the little babe awoke and cried, but she knelt down by its side, laid her own soft, innocent cheek close to its little velvet face, and soothed its low, fretful sobbing again into slumber.

During the long night she was conscious of a strange tremulous motion in the room.

It was not that she shivered with the cold, or trembled from nervousness, but the sensation was that of vibration, as though heavy waggons were perpetually passing along the street, but making no sound.

Several times her attention was aroused by a loud clicking repeated at intervals. A peculiar, unusual sound it was, but she heeded it little. She reflected that in the many, many nights she had sat up to work, she had often heard unaccountable noises.

The blue dawn stole into the room through the window curtains, and paling the feeble ray of her solitary candle, found her wan and haggard, alone with the child. And now the little creature, needing nourishment, awoke, and cried piteously, and would not be pacified. Lotte was greatly distressed at first, and wept with the child, for she knew not what to do.

But she remembered that it did not become her in the position of trust in which she was placed to be faint of heart. It was necessary to be calm, composed, and collected, in order that she might deliberate upon the best course to pursue.

She paced the room with the child, and presently remembered that upon an upper floor there dwelt a young married woman, whose husband, a house-painter, was away engaged in his business at a gentleman’s mansion in the country. This young woman, Lotte knew had a child about three months old, and to her she resolved to go for advice and assistance in her almost distracting dilemma.

Strange, when she tried to open her room-door, it resisted her strongest efforts. At first she thought it was locked, but she perceived that at the top it pressed against the casing forcibly.

With a desperate wrench she forced it open, and made her way up the stairs, feeling the strange tremulous vibration more than ever. She found the room-door of the young person she sought much in the same condition as her own, and she perceived, on effecting a forcible entrance, that the tenant of the room was hastily dressing herself. She wore on her features a terrified expression, and when she saw Lotte she hastily inquired what had brought her there.

In a few brief words Lotte explained the condition in which she had been left with the infant. The young woman, with motherly instinct, at once took the child from Lotte, and quickly stilled its cries with nature’s nourishment, but, as she did so, she said with the same alarmed look in her eyes—

“What is the matter with the house?”

“The house!” echoed Lotte, every little incident connected with the sounds she had heard during the night in a moment flashed through her mind.

“Yes,” returned the young woman, “I seemed to have shaken and rocked in my bed all night; I have hardly slept a wink until I could bear it no—hark!”

A low, dull, heavy rumbling crash was plainly heard by both; the house seemed to swing backwards and forwards, both felt a frightful giddiness seize them, the flooring seemed to heave up with them, then followed a dull, heavy boom, and the house seemed to shake to the centre.

Both girls shrieked, for they saw fissures like forked lightning run down the walls, and at the same moment loud shouts rose up in the street, mingled with screams and cries for help, and then the house, though quieter, began again its tremulous motion.

“Merciful Heaven!” gasped Lotte, “a house has fallen down, and this will fall too!”

“Take my child!” cried the woman, hardly able to speak from a faintness which had seized her. “Let us run out into the street!”

It was following a natural impulse which had brought every one of the inmates from their beds, and hurried them into the street too. Lotte, still holding the woman’s child, found time to snatch up her mantle and bonnet, before she followed the example of the young woman.

A large number of persons had already assembled. Bricklayers were speedily at hand, a strong body of police were soon on the spot, and efforts were at once commenced to clear away the débris of the fallen house, under which many poor creatures were presumed to be buried.

The house in which Lotte had resided, and from which she had just escaped, was one of a block of eight. Erected before the Building Act came into operation, the wonder was, not that they should now have come down, but that they had not fallen before. The corner house, in its descent, dragged two others with it, leaving the rest in so tottering a condition, that none of the residents were allowed to return to them; men were however, appointed, under the police surveyor, to remove the most dangerous portions of the quivering walls, and the furniture in the dwellings, as soon as they were sufficiently supported to admit of men entering them with safety.

Lotte was thus once more thrown upon the world, under trying and painful circumstances. Worn out as she was, she did not, however, give way to helpless despair, but nerved herself for the task she saw she should have to undergo.

She returned to the young woman, and recovered Helen’s child, which she pressed to her own gentle bosom, and covered it carefully with her mantle. She then made her way to the police station, gave a general description of her little property to the inspector, told him she would send a person to fetch it, and then made her way at once whither she knew she should be befriended, and where she could obtain all assistance in rearing Helen’s child, until Helen came forward to claim it—if she ever came at all.

Lotte believed that she knew Helen’s true nature; and to know this was to make her convinced that scarcely anything short of death would have detained her from her child—that child born under such strange, mysterious, and unhappy circumstances.

Lotte, it need hardly be said, directed her footsteps to the residence of Mr. Bantom, or that she was there warmly welcomed; but after the first few words of greeting, she suddenly alighted upon a full comprehension of a startling difficulty in her position.

Helen had obtained from her a solemn promise not to disclose that she had become the mother of a child, unless with her sanction.

When Mrs. Bantom, in her fussiness and gladness at seeing Lotte, drew aside her mantle to take it off, she discovered the child.

“Dear heart!” she cried, with wondrous surprise; “what a blessed little babby!”

Then Mrs. Bantom turned her eyes upon Lotte, inquiringly, and on seeing her thin, alabaster face, she gave a gulp, and uttered an ejaculation.

The instant the worthy, humble creature gave vent thus to the suspicion that flashed through her mind, Lotte understood her position. It was impossible to keep down a scarlet flush that covered her neck and face, or to prevent it dying away, and leaving her face of a deathly hue, or to help feeling as if she should sink down upon the earth and die, almost happy in the notion that her spirit should be so released from this world of care and pain.

Mrs. Bantom noticed the spasm which passed over her features and said nothing, though she felt sorely—sorely grieved; but she removed Lotte’s cloak and bonnet, and forced her gently in a chair.

“You are ill, child, and weak,” said the good woman, in a husky voice; “and don’t ought to be out—in—in—-your condition.”

Lotte tried to speak, but her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth.

“Oh, my child—my child!” sobbed out Mrs. Bantom; “my poor motherless girl—what has happened? Tell me, child—all; I—I—won’t think harshly of you, nor speak unkindly to you; and I may help you—I may—with God’s help, I may.”

Poor Lotte! This undeserved suspicion was very hard to hear. She looked back through her past life, and felt that she ought not to have been thus mistrusted; but she recollected that Mrs. Bantom knew little more, of her than that she was a young girl, living quite alone, and was thus open to temptation, or to be led astray. It was natural she should harbour such a thought as that which now evidently possessed her mind; and, however much it might rankle in heart, Lotte forgave her.

As soon as she could speak, she said—

“Mrs. Bantom, you wrong me. This child is not mine. At present a mystery surrounds its birth, which I am not at liberty to explain. I thought, indeed, Mrs. Bantom, that I should not have had even to say so much to you; for, of all who know me, I should suspect you of being the last who could or would think so very ill of me.”

Mrs. Bantom was now all the other way. She was only too delighted to catch at the very smallest assurance of Lotte’s innocence, and she over and over again expressed her readiness and desire to be of service to her, and, in truth, she afforded her assistance she could not have dispensed with, inasmuch as the good lady had recently presented her husband with a tenth blessing, and she was, therefore, able to take the child of Helen Grahame, and nourish it as her own.

At the expiration of a fortnight, Lotte had sufficiently recovered, by care and self-attention, her strength, and, by the aid and help of Bantom, to instal herself once more in an apartment of her own—in a house, which, by the way, she satisfied herself was strongly built, and not likely to tumble down as soon as she took possession. She had, also, so far recovered her position, that the persons by whom (through the instrumentality of Flora Wilton) she had been formerly employed gave her again, upon application, so much work that she was enabled to employ an assistant, who could undertake the part of wet nurse as well, for Lotte would not part with the custody of Helen’s child under any advice, suggestion, or proposal.

She had heard nothing of Helen. She was wholly at a loss to conjecture what had become of her, and she meditated one evening a visit to her house in the Park, with a hope that she might gain some tidings of her.

With her brother as yet she had not communicated, but she had contrived, through Bantom—who, in his homely way, would perform any meed of service for her with the greatest cheerfulness, though he was not altogether a safe agent to employ on secret service—to ascertain that he was well, though perplexed and grieved at her mysterious absence.

All this time, had she thought of Mark Wilton?

Ah, yes! Not with any notion of a love-passage ever occurring between them during the vicissitudes and trials of her patiently endured life of toil, because, whenever such vision presented itself before her, she chased it away, as a mockery, a delusion, and a snare. No; she thought not of him as a lover in anticipation. She did not even think, in her heart, that he looked upon her in any other way than in a spirit of kindness—with perhaps more earnestness than men commonly look upon a pleasant female face. But she thought of him as one whom she would, of all men in the world, have soonest chosen to be her life-companion. Their stations being widely apart, she knew, or thought she knew, that an event so instinct with happiness could never, never come to pass.

She would sometimes squeeze her hands together, and sigh very deeply—some would say bitterly—as she ejaculated—

“How happy I am to think we do not meet! How very happy I ought to be that I do not see him often—I should so love him. And she who wins him, how beneficent will Heaven be to her.”

One evening, alone with the child, as she sat bending over it caressingly, and thinking thus, Mark Wilton stood before her.

She uttered a faint cry and rose to her feet. She knew not whether to welcome him frankly, or to wait until he spoke.

He recognised her embarrassment, and betrayed some confusion also, for he saw the child upon her knee. His colour went and came, and his heart heat violently. He did not look so pleasantly at her as before.

“I must beg to be excused for my intrusion,” he said, in a low grave tone; “I come, however, to prepare you for a visit from your brother. Are you prepared to face him?”

There was something in his tone and manner so harsh and changed from the style in which he had previously addressed her; so different, indeed, from the expression his face wore when, looking up, her eyes suddenly encountered his beaming on her, for no other word would fitly give their expression, that involuntarily she felt hurt and indignant.

A reproach was implied. She felt that she had deserved no reproach—at least from him. His curtness seemed to her out of place, and if she refused to think it impertinent, she felt that it was as unjust as it appeared unkind.

She turned her clear, intelligent eyes upon him, and while a roseate hue spread itself over her face, she responded to his words by the monosyllable, uttered in a tone of inquiry—

“Sir?”

Again he looked at the little laughing, dark-eyed babe which she held so lovingly in her arms, and his blood seemed to freeze in his veins.

“I really,” he said abruptly, “know not how to address you—I suppose by the married appellative.”

Lotte felt her face and forehead burn as if they were on fire. Her usually mild eye glittered like a diamond.

“I really cannot see, Mr. Wilton,” she answered, “the slightest necessity for your afflicting yourself with any supposition concerning one so humble as myself.”

He was nettled by her glance, and by the manner of her speech.

“It is easy to see,” he said, “that you have fled from your brother to form some connection of which you were convinced beforehand he would not approve, and that you still fear to face him by striving to keep your abode secret from him, or you are under the command to do so of the base, the contemptible, the—sneaking, the—the d——d scoundrel who has cajoled you into taking the most unhappy course you have adopted.”

He looked round fiercely, and spoke loudly, as though he anticipated the individual he had loaded with such strong epithets would step forth to answer for himself.

Lotte became as white as a sheet, and trembled in every limb. Her lips quivered so that she could not speak; but she pointed to the door with a frantic gesture, as if bidding him begone.

“No!” he said, with an angry frown on his flushed brow, “I shall not begone until I have seen the rascal who has so grossly deceived you. He shall well explain the motives which have led him to induce you to descend to such unworthy artifices——”

“Hold!” almost shrieked Lotte, as unconsciously she pressed Helen’s child to her bosom; an act he noted almost with fury. “How dare you thus speak to me?—I—I—Mr. Wilton—I would, out of the reverence in which I hold your gentle sister, for the benefits she has conferred on me—speak to you with respect—but this outrage—this attack upon me drives me from myself. I did not expect to be thus cruelly insulted—by—by you.”

A gush of tears checked further utterance, and her voice dropped at the last word.

Truly in her day-dreams she had never pictured his face turned upon her with an expression so harsh as that which now it bore; and when in her imaginings his voice breathed its soft, melodious accents in her ear, it had no such tone as this. Mark felt his breast aflame, when he saw her weep, and heard the acknowledgment implied in the reference to himself. He would have given worlds, even at that moment, to have been enabled to have folded his arms tenderly round her, and kissed away those tears, which he had himself brought into her sweet eyes.

But there was the little child, yet close hugged to her bosom. If she were a wife, he had, he felt, been scandalously cozened out of a priceless treasure; if she dare lay claim to no such title, he could never think of her more—unless to loathe her very name.

He assumed a cold manner, although his breast was as a seething caldron, and recommenced.

“You may place, madam, what interpretation you please upon my language; and I am equally at liberty to interpret your conduct.——”

“I deny your right to do any such thing!” she interrupted, vehemently; “you are here unbidden sir. If you bear a message from my brother to me, I ask of you only to deliver it to me—and to leave me; if you have no such message, I request you to depart at once?”

“But——” exclaimed Mark, as if to explain.

“I will hear from you, sir, nothing more than my brother’s words, if you have been entrusted with them,” persisted Lotte, indignantly.

“You shall have them,” said Mark, in a freezing tone; “still, I imagined, as a friend——

“A friend!” echoed Lotte, bitterly.

“A friend!” roared Mark, with a rather startling emphasis, forgetting his assumed coldness.

“I loved and esteemed your sister, sir, as a friend,” exclaimed Lotte, in a tone of earnest feeling. She bit her lips to repress the sob that gushed up to her throat—-“but you——”

“I am answered!” he exclaimed in a low tone as she paused. “I had a weak and foolish fancy that—but it is dissipated, gone—for ever. I see now I stand but in the light of a meddlesome intruder, and have no title to ask from you any explanation of your mysterious conduct.”

“None whatever!” said Lotte firmly.

“Enough, madam,” he returned in an icy tone. “I have but then to say that your brother having, by means he will himself explain, discovered your abode, will be here to night to see you.”

Lotte bowed, and remained silent.

Mark twisted his hat round and round, looked at the door and gazed wistfully at her, but she stood immoveable, she pressed the infant to her bosom, and she never once raised her eyes to his.

Her face was white as marble, yet he was sure he never saw her look so handsome—so beautifully interesting. Mark lingered. Could she be a guilty creature?

It seemed impossible. Yet that child! coupled with her sudden flight, her continued and inexplicable absence. What other interpretation could he put upon her conduct?

He gave a slight “Hem,” to clear his voice, and then said—

“You will see your brother when he comes, this evening?”

Her eyelids slightly trembled.

“Why do you ask that question?” she asked, sternly.

“Because,” he returned almost fiercely, “he will not come to you if you wish him not to do so, for then he will know that he should not come.”

Lotte seemed to feel that she should fall into an hysterical paroxysm if this interview were to be prolonged. Yet her pride would not suffer her to yield, or to make an observation which would take the form of an admission either for or against herself.

“I shall be at home,” she observed, laconically.

“Which is to imply that he may come or remain away at his own inclining?” said Mark between his teeth.

She bowed her head without reply.

He gave one wild glance at her.

“Guilty and hardened!” he muttered, and rushed from the room.

She sank half-lifeless upon the sofa.

Mark, with furious haste, made his way to the office of Lotte’s brother, and with a kind of incoherent burst of strange remarks, informed him that he had had an interview with his sister.

“Did she say she wished to see me?” inquired Charley, with a full certainty of an affirmative reply.

“No,” returned Mark, shortly.

The Flower of the Flock, Volume 3 (of 3)

THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK

By Pierce Egan

In Theee Volumes

Volume III

London: W. S. Johnson & Co.

1865

FLOWER OF THE FLOCK.

CHAPTER I.—HELEN GRAHAME’s DANGER.

CHAPTER II—SUSPICION.