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SHREWSBURY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF A Tale of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE. A Tale of the Days of Henry of Navarre. THE RED COCKADE. A Tale of the French Revolution.

SHREWSBURY

A Romance

BY

STANLEY J. WEYMAN

AUTHOR OF "A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE," "UNDER THE RED ROBE,"
"THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF," ETC.

WITH 24 ILLUSTRATIONS

BY

CLAUDE A. SHEPPERSON

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1898

Copyright, 1897
By STANLEY J. WEYMAN

All rights reserved

TO MY BROTHER HENRY

IN MEMORY OF A SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN THE YEAR 1877
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[With a gesture between contempt and impatience the duke removed his hat]. Frontispiece.

[She looked directly at me.]

[In an instant I was on the other side of the fence.]

[Stole down the stairs and into the garden.]

[My companion seized my wrist.]

[The constable led me out of the crowd.]

["When my back is turned go through that window."]

[He wore a dingy morning-gown and had laid aside his wig.]

["Damn your King William, and you too!" he cried.]

[He pressed the ring of cold steel.]

[In the great chair sat an elderly lady leaning on an ebony stick.]

[I heard a light foot following me.]

[With a gesture between contempt and impatience the duke removed his hat.]

[I flung my arms round him from behind, and with my right hand jerked up the pistol.]

[A slight gentleman ambled and paced in front of a child.]

["Now we will have that letter, if you please."]

[I saw a man had come to a stand before the door.]

[The place was nothing more than a concealed cupboard.]

[And turning from me, he began to pace the room, his hands clasped behind him.]

[She came a step nearer to me, and peered at me.]

[Sir John ... stared at me a moment.]

[She listened in silence, standing over me with something of the severity of a judge.]

[He shut himself in with his trouble.]

[I stood there at last ... the faces at the table all turned towards me.]

[She was making marks on the turf with a stick.]

SHREWSBURY

[CHAPTER I]

That the untimely death at the age of fifty-eight of that great prince, Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury, my most noble and generous patron, has afflicted me with a sorrow which I may truly call acerbus et ingens, is nothing to the world; which from one in my situation could expect no other, and, on the briefest relation of the benefits I had at his hands, might look for more. Were this all, therefore, or my task confined to such a relation, I should supererogate indeed in making this appearance. But I am informed that my lord Duke's death has revived in certain quarters those rumours to his prejudice which were so industriously put about at the time of his first retirement; and which, refuted as they were at the moment by the express declaration of his Sovereign, and at leisure by his own behaviour, as well as by the support which at two great crises he gave to the Protestant succession, formed always a proof of the malice, as now of the persistence, of his enemies.

Still, such as they are, and though, not these circumstances only, but a thousand others have time after time exposed them, I am instructed that they are again afloat; and find favour in circles where to think ill of public men is held the first test of experience. And this being the case, and my affection for my lord such as is natural, I perceive a clear duty. I do not indeed suppose that anyone can at this time of day effect that which the sense of all good men failed to effect while he lived--I mean the final killing of those rumours; nor is a plain tale likely to persuade those, with whom idle reports, constantly furbished up, of letters seen in France, weigh more than a consistent life. But my lord's case is now, as I take it, removed to the Appeal Court of Posterity; which nevertheless, a lie constantly iterated may mislead. To provide somewhat to correct this, and wherefrom future historians may draw, I who knew him well, and was in his confidence and in a manner in his employment at the time of Sir John Fenwick's case--of which these calumnies were always compact--propose to set down my evidence here; shrinking from no fulness, at times even venturing on prolixity, and always remembering a saying of Lord Somers', that often the most material part of testimony is that on which the witness values himself least. To adventure on this fulness, which in the case of many, and perhaps the bulk of writers, might issue in the surfeit of their readers, I feel myself emboldened by the possession of a brief and concise manner of writing; which, acquired in the first place in the circumstances presently to appear, was later improved by constant practice in the composition of my lord's papers.

And here some will expect me to proceed at once to the events of the year 1696, in which Sir John suffered, or at least 1695. But softly, and a little if you please ab ovo; still the particulars which enabled my lord's enemies to place a sinister interpretation on his conduct in those years had somewhat, and, alas, too much, to do with me. Therefore, before I can clear the matter up from every point of view, I am first to say who I am, and how I came to fall in the way of that great man and gain his approbation; with other preliminary matters, relating to myself, whereof some do not please at this distance, and yet must be set down, if with a wry face.

Of which, I am glad to say, that the worst--with one exception---comes first, or at least early. And with that, to proceed; premising always that, as in all that follows I am no one, and the tale is my lord's, I shall deal very succinctly with my own concerns and chancings, and where I must state them for clearness of narration, will do so currente calamo (as the ancients were wont to say) and so forthwith to those more important matters with which my readers desire to be made acquainted.

Suffice it, then, that I was born near Bishop's Stortford on the borders of Hertfordshire, in that year so truly called the Annus Mirabilis, 1666; my father, a small yeoman, my mother of no better stock, she being the daughter of a poor parson in that neighbourhood. In such a station she was not likely to boast much learning, yet she could read, and having served two years in a great man's still-room, had acquired notions of gentility that went as ill with her station as they were little calculated to increase her contentment. Our house lay not far from the high road between Ware and Bishop's Stortford, which furnished us with frequent opportunities of viewing the King and Court, who were in the habit of passing that way two or three times in the year to Newmarket to see the horse-races. On these occasions we crowded with our neighbours to the side of the road, and gaped on the pageant, which lacked no show of ladies, both masked and unmasked, and gentlemen in all kinds of fripperies, and mettlesome horses that hit the taste of some among us better than either. On these excursions my mother was ever the foremost and the most ready; yet it was not long before I learned to beware of her hand for days after, and expect none but gloomy looks and fretful answers; while my father dared no more spell duty for as much as a week, than refuse the King's taxes.

Nevertheless, and whatever she was as a wife--and it is true she could ding my father's ears, and, for as handsome as she was, there were times when he would have been happier with a plainer woman--I am far from saying that she was a bad mother. Indeed, she was a kind, if fickle, and passionate one, wiser at large and in intention than in practice and in small matters. Yet if for one thing only, and putting aside natural affection--in which I trust I am not deficient--she deserved to be named by me with undying gratitude. For having learned to read, but never to write, beyond, that is, the trifle of her maiden name, she valued scholarship both by that she had, and that she had not; and in the year after I was breeched, prevailed on my father who, for his part, good man, never advanced beyond the Neck Verse, to bind me to the ancient Grammar School at Bishop's Stortford, then kept by a Mr. G----.

I believe that there were some who thought this as much beyond our pretensions, as our small farm fell below the homestead of a man of substance; and for certain, the first lesson I learned at that school was to behave myself lowly and reverently to all my betters, being trounced on arrival by three squires' sons, and afterwards, in due order and gradation, by all who had or affected gentility. To balance this I found that I had the advantage of my master's favour, and that for no greater a thing than the tinge of my father's opinions. For whereas the commonalty in that country, as in all the eastern counties, had been for the Parliament in the late troubles, and still loved a patriot, my father was a King's man; which placed him high in Mr. G----'s estimation, who had been displaced by the Rump and hated all of that side, and not for the loss of his place only, but, and in a far greater degree, for a thing which befell him later, after he had withdrawn to Oxford. For being of St. John's College, and seeing all that rich and loyal foundation at stake, he entered himself in a body of horse which was raised among the younger collegians and servants; and probably if he had been so lucky as to lose an eye or an arm in the field of honour, he would have forgiven Oliver all, and not the King's sufferings only, but his own. But in place of that it was his ill-chance to be one of a troop that, marching at night by the river near Wallingford, took fright at nothing and galloped to Abingdon without drawing rein; for which reason, and because an example was needed, they were disbanded. True, I never heard that the fault on that occasion lay with our master, nor that he was a man of less courage than his neighbours; but he took the matter peculiarly to heart, and never forgave the Roundheads the slur they had unwittingly cast on his honour; on the contrary, and in the event, he regularly celebrated the thirtieth of January by flogging the six boys who stood lowest in each form, and afterwards reading the service of the day over their smarting tails. By some, indeed, it was alleged that the veriest dunces, if of loyal stock, might look to escape on these occasions; but I treat this as a calumny.

That the good man did in truth love and favour loyalty, however, and this without sparing the rod in season, I am myself a bright and excellent example. For though I never attained to the outward flower of scholarship by proceeding to the learned degree of arts at either of the Universities, I gained the root and kernel of the matter at Bishop's Stortford, being able at the age of fourteen to write a fine hand, and read Eutropius, and Cæsar, and teach the horn-book and Christ-Cross to younger boys. These attainments, and the taste for polite learning, which, as these pages will testify, I have never ceased to cultivate, I owe rather to the predilection which he had for me than to my own gifts; which, indeed, though doubtless I was always a boy of parts, I do not remember to have been great at the first. Sub ferula, however, and with encouragement, I so far advanced that he presently began to consider the promoting me to the place of usher, with a cane in commendam; and, doubtless, he would have done it but for a fit that took him at the first news of the Rye House Plot, and the danger his Sacred Majesty had run thereby--which a friend imprudently brought to him when he was merry after dinner--and which caused an illness that at one and the same time carried him off, and deprived me of the best of pedagogues.

After that, and learning that his successor had a son whom he proposed to promote to the place I desired, I returned to the school no more, but began to live at home; at first with pleasure, but after no long interval with growing chagrin and tedium. Our house possessed none of the comforts that are necessary to idleness, and therefore when the east wind drove me indoors from swinging on the gate, or sulking in the stack-yard, I found it neither welcome nor occupation. My younger brother had seized on the place of assistant to my father, and having got thews and experience ambulando, found fresh ground every day for making mock of my uselessness. Did I milk, the cows kicked over the bucket, while I thought of other things; did I plough, my furrows ran crooked; when I thrashed, the flail soon wearied my arms. In the result, therefore, the respect with which my father had at first regarded my learning, wore off, and he grew to hate the sight of me whether I hung over the fire or loafed in the doorway, my sleeves too short for my chapped arms, and my breeches barely to my knees. Though my mother still believed in me, and occasionally, when she was in an ill-humour with my father, made me read to her, her support scarcely balanced the neighbours' sneers. Nor when I chanced to displease her--which, to do her justice, was not often, for I was her favourite--was she above joining in the general cry, and asking me, while she cuffed me, whether I thought the cherries fell into the mouth, and meant to spend all my life with my hands in my pockets.

To make a long story short, at the end of twelve months, whereof every day of the last ten increased my hatred of our home surroundings, the dull strip of common before the door, the duck-pond, the grey horizon, and the twin ash-trees on which I had cut my name so often, I heard through a neighbour that an usher was required in a school at Ware. This was enough for me; while, of my family, who saw me leave with greater relief on their own account than hope on mine, only my mother felt or affected regret. With ten shillings in my pocket, her parting gift, and my scanty library of three volumes packed among my clothes on my back, I plodded the twelve miles to Ware, satisfied the learned Mr. D---- that I had had the small-pox, would sleep three in a bed, and knew more than he did; and the same day was duly engaged to teach in his classical seminary, in return for my board, lodging, washing, and nine guineas a year.

He had trailed a pike in the wars, and was an ignorant, but neither a cruel, nor, save in the pretence of knowledge, a dishonest man; it might be supposed, therefore, that, after the taste of idleness and dependence I had had, I should here find myself tolerably placed, and in the fair way of promotion. But I presently found that I had merely exchanged a desert for a prison, wherein I had not only the shepherding of the boys to do, both by night and day, which in a short time grew inconceivably irksome, so that I had to choose whether I would be tyrant or slave; but also the main weight of teaching, and there no choice at all but to be a drudge. And this without any alleviation from week's end to week's end, either at meals or at any other time! for my employer's wife had high notions, and must keep a separate house, though next door, and with communications; sitting down with us only on Sundays, and then at dinner, when woe betide the boy who gobbled his food or choked over the pudding-balls. Having satisfied herself on my first coming that my father was neither of the Quorum nor of Justice's kin, and, in fact, a mere rustic nobody, she had no more to say to me, but when she was not scolding her husband, addressed herself solely to one of the boys, who by virtue of an uncle who was a Canon, had his seat beside her. Insensibly, her husband, who at first, with an eye to my knowledge and his own deficiencies, had been more civil to me, took the same tone; and not only that, but, finding that I was to be trusted, he came less and less into school, until at last he would only appear for a few minutes in the day, and to carve when we had meat, and to see the lights extinguished at night. This without any added value for me; so that the better I served him--and for a year I managed his school for him--the less he favoured me, and at last thought a nod all the converse he owed me in the day.

Consigned to this solitary life by those above me, it was not likely that I should find compensation in the society of lads to whom I stood in an odious light, and of whom the oldest was no more than fourteen. For what was our life? Such hours as we did not spend in the drudgery of school, or in our beds, we passed in a yard on the dank side of the house, a grassless place, muddy in winter and dusty in summer, overshadowed by one skeleton tree; and wherein, since all violent games and sports were forbidden by the good lady's scruples (who belonged to the fanatical party) as savouring of Popery, we had perforce to occupy ourselves with bickerings and complaints and childish plays. Abutting on the garden of her house, this yard presented on its one open side a near prospect of water-butts, and drying clothes, so that to this day I profess that I hold it in greater horror than any other place or thing at that school.

It is true we walked out in the country at rare intervals; but as three sides of the town were forbidden to us by a great man, whose property lay in that quarter, and who feared for his game, our excursions were always along one road, which afforded neither change nor variety. Moreover, I had a particular reason for liking these excursions as little as possible, which was that they exposed me to frequent meetings with gay young sparks of my own age, whose scornful looks as they rode by, with the contemptuous names they called after me, asking who dressed the boys' hair and the like, I found it difficult to support--even with the aid of those reflections on the dignity of learning and the Latin tongue which I had imbibed from my late master.

Be it remembered (in palliation of that which I shall presently tell) that at this time I was only eighteen, an age at which the passions and ambitions awake, and that this was my life. At a time when youth demands change and excitement and the fringe of ornament, my days and weeks went by in a plain round, as barren of wholesome interests as it was unadorned by any kindly aid or companionship. To rise, to teach, to use the cane, to move always in a dull atmosphere of routine; for diversion to pace the yard I have described, always with shrill quarrellings in my ears--these with the weekly walk made up my life at Ware, and must form my excuse. How the one came to an abrupt end, how I came to have sore need of the other, it is now my business to tell; but of these in the next chapter; wherein also I propose to show, without any moralities, another thing that shall prove them to the purpose, namely, how these early experiences, which I have thus curtly described, led me per viam dolorosam to my late lord, and mingled my fortunes with his, under circumstances not unworthy of examination by those who take mankind for their study.

[CHAPTER II]

To begin, Mrs. D----, my master's better-half, though she seldom condescended to our house, and when engaged in her kitchen premises affected to ignore the proximity of ours, enjoyed in Ware the reputation of a shrewd and capable house-wife. Whether she owed this solely to the possession of a sharp temper and voluble voice, I cannot say; but only that during all the time I was there I scarcely ever passed an hour in our miserable playground without my ears being deafened and my brain irritated by the sound of her chiding. She had the advantage, when I first came to the school, of an elderly servant, who went about her work under an even flow of scolding, and, it may be, had become so accustomed to the infliction as to be neither the better nor worse for it. But about the time of which I am writing, when, as I have said, I had been there twelve months, I remarked a change in Mrs. D----'s voice, and judged from the increased acerbity and rising shrillness of her tone that she had passed from drilling an old servant to informing a new one. To confirm this theory, before long, "Lazy slut!" and "Dirty baggage!" and "Take that, Insolence," were the best of the terms I heard; and these so frequently mingled with blows and slaps, and at times with the sound of sobbing, that my gall rose. I had listened indifferently enough, and if with irritation, without much pain, to the chiding of the old servant; and I knew no more of this one. But by the instinct which draws youth to youth, or by reason of Mrs. D----'s increased severity, I began to feel for her, to pity her, and at last to wonder what she was like, and her age, and so forth.

Nothing more formidable than a low paling separated the garden of Mrs. D----'s house from our yard; but that her eyes might not be offended by the ignoble sight of the trade by which she lived, four great water-butts were ranked along the fence, which, being as tall as a man, and nicely arranged, and strengthened on the inner side by an accumulation of rubbish and so forth, formed a pretty effective screen. The boys indeed had their spyholes, and were in the habit of peeping when I did not check them; but in only one place, at the corner farthest from the house, was it possible to see by accident, as it were, and without stooping or manifest prying, a small patch of the garden. This gap in the corner I had hitherto shunned, for Mrs. D---- had more than once sent me from it with a flea in my ear and hot cheeks: now, however, it became a favourite with me, and as far as I could, without courting the notice of the wretched urchins who whined and squabbled round me, I began to frequent it; sometimes leaning against the abutting fence with my back to the house, as in a fit of abstraction, and then slowly turning--when I did not fail to rake the aforesaid patch with my eyes; and sometimes taking that corner for the limit of a brisk walk to and fro, which made it natural to pause and wheel at that point.

Notwithstanding these ruses, however, and though Mrs. D----'s voice, raised in anger, frequently bore witness to her neighbourhood, it was some time before I caught a glimpse of the person, whose fate, more doleful than mine, yet not dissimilar, had awakened my interest. At length I espied her, slowly crossing the garden, with her back to me and a yoke on her shoulders. Two pails hung from the yoke, I smelled swill; and in a trice seeing in her no more than a wretched drab, in clogs and a coarse sacking-apron, I felt my philanthropy brought to the test; and without a second glance turned away in disgust. And thought no more of her.

After that I took a distaste for the gap, and I do not remember that I visited it for a week or more; when, at length, chance or custom taking me there again, I saw the same woman hanging clothes on the line. She had her back to me as on the former occasion; but this time I lingered watching her, and whether she knew or not that I was there, her work presently brought her towards the place in the fence beside the water-barrels, at which I stood gazing. Still, I could not see her face, in part because she did not turn my way, and more because she wore a dirty limp sun-bonnet, which obscured her features. But I continued to watch; and by-and-by she had finished her hanging, and took up the empty basket to go in again; and thereon, suddenly in the act of rising from stooping, she looked directly at me, not being more than two, or at the most three, paces from me. It was but one look, and it lasted, I suppose, two seconds or so; but it touched something in me that had never been touched before, and to this time of writing, and though I have been long married and have children, my body burns at the remembrance of it. For not only was the face that for those two seconds looked into mine a face of rare beauty, brown and low-browed, with scarlet, laughing lips, and milk-white teeth, and eyes of witchery, brighter than a queen's jewels, but in the look, short as it was and passing, shone a something that I had never seen in a woman's face before, a something, God knows what, appeal or passion or temptation, that on the instant fired my blood. I suppose, nay, I know now, that the face that flashed that look at me from under the dirty sun-bonnet could change to a marvel; and in a minute, and as by a miracle, become dull and almost ugly, or the most beautiful in the world. But then, that and all such things were new to me who knew no women, and had never spoken to a woman in the way of love nor thought of one when her back was turned; so new, that when it was over and she gone without a second glance, I went back to the house another man, my heart thumping in my breast, and my cheeks burning, and my whole being oppressed with desire and bashfulness and wonder and curiosity, and a hundred other emotions that would not permit me to be at ease until I had hidden myself from all eyes.

Well, to be brief, that, in less than the time I have taken to tell it, changed all. I was eighteen; the girl's shining eyes burned me up, as flame burns stubble. In an hour, a week, a day, I can no more say within what time than I can describe what befel me before I was born--for if that was a sleeping, this was a dream, and passed swift and confused as one--I was madly and desperately in love. Her face brilliant, mischievous, alluring, rose before the thumbed grammar by day, and the dim casement of the fetid, crowded bedroom by night, and filled the slow, grey dawnings, now with joy and now with despair. For the time, I thought only of her, lived for her, did my work in dreams of her. I kept no count of time, I gave no heed to what passed round me; but I went through the routine of my miserable life, happy as the slave that, rich in the possession of some beneficent drug, defies the pains of labour and the lash. I say my miserable life; but I say it, so great was the change, in a figure only and in retrospect. Mrs. D---- might scorn me now, and the boys squabble round me, yet that life was no longer miserable nor dull, whereof every morning flattered me with hopes of seeing my mistress, and every third day or so fulfilled the promise.

With all this, and though from the moment her eyes met mine across the fence, her beauty possessed me utterly, a full fortnight elapsed before I spoke with her. In the interval I saw her three times, and always in the wretched guise in which she had first appeared to me; which, so far from checking my passion, now augmented it by the full measure of the mystery with which the sordidness of her dress, in contrast with her beauty, invested her in my mind. But, for speaking with her, that was another matter, and one presenting so many difficulties (whereof, as the boys' constant presence and Mrs. D----'s temper were the greatest, so my bashfulness was not the least) that I think we might have gone another fortnight, and perhaps a third to that, and not come to it, had not a certain privilege on which Mr. D----'s good lady greatly prided herself, come to our aid in the nick of time, and by bringing us into the same room (a thing which had never occurred before, and of itself threw me into a fever) combined with fortune to aid my hopes.

This privilege--so Mrs. D---- invariably styled it--was the solemn gathering of the household on one Sunday in each month to listen to a discourse which, her husband sitting meekly by, she read to us from the works of some Independent divine. On these occasions she delivered herself so sonorously and with so much gusto, that I do not doubt she found compensation in them for the tedium of the sermon on Passive Obedience, or on the fate of the Amalekite, to which, in compliance with the laws against Dissent, she had perforce listened earlier in the day. The master and mistress and the servant sat on one side of the room, I with the boys on the other; and hitherto I am unable to say which of us had suffered more under the infliction. But the appearance of my sweet martyr--so, when Madam's voice rang shrillest and most angrily over the soapsuds, I had come to think of her--in a place behind her master and mistress (being the same in which the old servant had nodded and grunted every sermon evening since my coming), put a new complexion on the matter. For her, she entered, as if unconscious of my presence, and took her seat with downcast eyes and hands folded, and that dull look on her face which, when she chose, veiled three-fourths of its beauty. But my ears flamed, and the blood surged to my head; and I thought that all must read my secret in my face.

With Mrs. D----, however, this was the one hour in the month when the suspicions natural in one of her carping temper, slept, and she tasted a pleasure comparatively pure. Majestically arrayed in a huge pair of spectacles--which on this occasion, and in the character of the family priest, her vanity permitted and even incited her to wear--and provided with a couple of tall tallow candles, which it was her husband's duty to snuff, she would open the dreaded quarto and prop it firmly on the table before her. Then, after giving out her text in a tone that need not have disgraced Hugh Peters or the most famous preacher of her persuasion, it was her custom to lift her eyes and look round to assure herself that all was cringing attention; and this was the trying moment; woe to the boy whose gaze wandered--his back would smart for it before he slept. These preliminaries at an end, however, and the discourse begun, the danger was over for the time; for, in the voluptuous roll of the long wordy sentences, and the elections and damnations, and free wills that plentifully bestrewed them, she speedily forgot all but the sound of her own voice; and, nothing occurring to rouse her, might be trusted to read for the hour and half with pleasure to herself and without risk to others.

So it fell out on this occasion. As soon, therefore, as the steady droning of her voice gave me courage to look up, I had before me the same scene with which a dozen Sunday evenings had made me familiar; the dull circle of yellow light; within it Madam's horn-rimmed glasses shining over the book, while her finger industriously followed the lines; a little behind, her husband, nodding and recovering himself by turns. Not now was this all, however: now I saw also imprimis, a dim oval face, framed in the background behind the two old people; and that, now in shadow now in light, gleamed before my fascinated eyes with unearthly beauty. Once or twice, fearing to be observed, I averted my gaze and looked elsewhere; guiltily and with hot temples. But always I returned to it again. And always, the longer I let my eyes dwell on the vision--for a vision it seemed in the halo of the candles--and the more monotonous hung the silence, broken only by Mrs. D----'s even drone, the more distinctly the beautiful face stood out, and the more bewitching and alluring appeared the red lips and smiling eyes and dark clustering hair, that moment by moment drew my heart from me, and kindled my ripening brain and filled my veins with fever!

"Seventhly, and under this head, of the sin of David!"

So Mrs. D---- booming on, in her deep voice, to all seeming endlessly; while the air of the dingy whitewashed room grew stale, and the candles guttered and burned low, and the boys, poor little wretches, leaned on one another's shoulders and sighed, and it was difficult to say whether Mr. D----'s noddings or his recoveries went nearer to breaking his neck. At last--or was it only my fancy?--I thought I made out a small brown hand gliding within the circle of light. Then--or was I dreaming?--one of the candles began to move; but to move so little and so stealthily, that I could not swear to it; nor ever could have sworn, if Mr. D----'s wig had not a moment later taken fire with a light flame, and a stench, and a frizzling sound, that in a second brought him, still half-asleep, but swearing, to his feet.

Mrs. D----, her mouth open, and the volume lifted, halted in the middle of a word, and glared as if she had been shot; her surprise at the interruption so great--and no wonder--that she could not for a while find words. But the stream of her indignation, so checked, only gathered volume; and in a few seconds broke forth.

"Mr. D----!" she cried, slamming the book down on the table. "You disgusting beast! Do you know that the boys are here?"

"My wig is on fire!" he cried for answer. He had taken it off, and now held it at arm's length, looking at it so ruefully that the boys, though they knew the danger, could scarcely restrain their laughter.

"And serve you right for a weak-kneed member!" his wife answered in a voice that made us quake. "If you had not guzzled at dinner, sir, and swilled small beer you would have remained awake instead of spoiling a good wig, and staining your soul! Ay, and causing these little ones----"

"I never closed my eyes!" he declared, roundly.

"Rubbish!" she answered in a tone that would brook no denial. And then, "Give the wig to Jennie, sir!" she continued, peremptorily. "And put your handkerchief on your head. It is well that good Mr. Nesbit does not know what language has been used during his discourse; it would cut that excellent man to the heart. Do you hear, sir, give the wig to Jennie!" she screamed. "A handkerchief is good enough for profane swearers and filthy talkers! And too good! Too good, sir!"

He went reluctantly to obey, seeing nothing for it; but between his anger and Jennie's clumsiness, the wig, in passing from one to the other, fell under the table. This caused Mrs. D----, who was at the end of her patience, to spring up in a rage, and down went a candle. Nor was this the worst; for the grease in its fall cast a trail of hot drops on her Sunday gown, and in a flash she was on the maid and had smacked her face till the room rang.

"Take that, and that, you clumsy baggage!" she cried in a fury, her face crimson. "And that! And the next time you offer to take a gentleman's wig have better manners. This will cost you a year's wages, my fine madam! and let me hear of your stepping over the doorstep until it is earned, and I will have you jailed and whipped. Do you hear? And you," she continued, turning ferociously on her husband, "swearing on the Lord's day like a drunken, raffling, God-forsaken Tantivy! You are not much better!"

It only remains in my memory now as a coarse outburst of vixenish temper, made prominent by after events. But what I felt at the moment I should in vain try to describe. At one time I was on the point of springing on the woman, and at another all but caught the sobbing girl in my arms and challenged the world to touch her.

Fortunately, Mr. D----, now fully awakened, and the more inclined to remember decency in proportion as his wife forgot it, recalled me to myself by sternly bidding me see the boys to their beds.

Glad to escape, they needed no second order, but flocked to the door, and I with them. In our retreat, it was necessary for me to pass close to the shrinking girl, whom Mrs. D---- was still abusing with all the cruelty imaginable; as I did so I heard, or dreamed that I heard, three words, breathed in the faintest possible whisper. I say, dreamed I heard, for the girl neither looked at me nor removed the apron from her face, nor by abating her sobs or any other sign betrayed that she spoke or that she was conscious of my neighbourhood.

Yet the three words, "Garden, ten minutes," so gently breathed, that I doubted while I heard, could only have come from her; and assured of that, it will be believed that I found the ten minutes I spent seeing the boys to bed by the light of one scanty rushlight the longest and most tumultuous I ever passed. If she had not spoken I should have found it a sorry time, indeed; since the moment the door was closed behind me I discerned a hundred reasons to be dissatisfied with my conduct, thought of a hundred things I should have said, and saw a hundred things I should have done; and stood a coward convicted. Now, however, all was not over; I might explain. I was about to see her, to speak with her, to pour out my indignation and pity, perhaps to touch her hand; and in the delicious throb of fear and hope and excitement with which these anticipations filled my breast, I speedily forgot to regret what was past.

[CHAPTER III]

Doubtless there have been men able to boast, and with truth, that they carried to their first assignation with a woman an even pulse. But as I do not presume to rank myself among these, who have been commonly men of high station (of whom my late Lord Rochester was, I believe, the chief in my time), neither--the unhappy occurrence which I am in the way to relate, notwithstanding---have I, if I may say so without disrespect, so little heart as to crave the reputation. In truth, I experienced that evening, as I crept out of the back door of Mr. D----'s house, and stole into the gloom of the whispering garden, a full share of the guilty feeling that goes with secrecy; and more than my share of the agitation of spirit natural in one who knows (and is new to the thought) that under cover of the darkness a woman stands trembling and waiting for him. A few paces from the house--which I could leave without difficulty, though at the risk of detection--I glanced back to assure myself that all was still: then shivering, as much with excitement as at the chill greeting the night air gave me, I hastened to the gap in the fence, through which I had before seen my mistress.

I felt for the gap with my hand and peered through it, and called her name softly--"Jennie! Jennie!" and listened; and after an interval called again, more boldly. Still hearing nothing, I discovered by the sinking at my heart--which was such that, for all my eighteen years, I could have sat down and cried--how much I had built on her coming. And I called again and again; and still got no answer.

Yet I did not despair. Mrs. D---- might have kept her, or one of a hundred things might have happened to delay her; from one cause or another she might not have been able to slip out as quickly as she had thought. She might come yet; and so, though the more prolonged my absence, the greater risk of detection I ran, I composed myself to wait with what patience I might. The town was quiet; human noise at an end for the day; but Mr. D----'s school stood on the outskirts, with its back to the open country, and between the sighing of the wind among the poplars, and the murmur of a neighbouring brook, and those far-off noises that seem inseparable from the night, I had stood a minute or more before another sound, differing from all these, and having its origin at a spot much nearer to me, caught my ear, and set my heart beating. It was the noise of a woman weeping; and to this day I do not know precisely what I did on hearing it--when I made out what it was, I mean--or how I found courage to do it; only, that in an instant, as it seemed to me, I was on the other side of the fence, and had taken the girl in my arms, with her head on my shoulder, and her wet eyes looking into mine, while I rained kisses on her face.

Doubtless the darkness and her grief and my passion gave me boldness to do this; and to do a hundred other mad things in my ecstasy. For, as I had never spoken to her before, any more than I had ever held a woman in my arms before, so I had not thought, I had not dreamed of this! of her hand, perhaps, but no more. Therefore, and though since Adam's time the stars have looked down on many a lover's raptures, never, I verily believe, have they gazed on transports so perfect, so unlooked for, as were mine at that moment! And all the time not a word passed between us; but after a while she pushed me from her, with a kind of force that would not be resisted, and holding me at arm's length, looked at me strangely; and then thrusting me altogether from her, she bade me, almost roughly, go back.

"What? And leave you?" I cried, astonished and heart-broken.

"No, sir, but go to the other side of the fence," she answered firmly, drying her eyes and recovering something of her usual calmness. "And more, if you love me as you say you do----"

I protested. "If?" I cried. "If! And what then--if I do?"

"You will learn to obey," she answered, coolly, yet with an archness that transported me anew. "I am not one of your boys."

For that word, I would have caught her in my arms again, but with a power that I presently came to know, and whereof that was the first exercise, she waved me back. "Go!" she said, masterfully. "For this time, go. Do you hear me?"

My boldness of a minute before, notwithstanding, I stood in awe of her, and was easily cowed; and I crossed the fence. When I was on my side, she came to the gap, and rewarded me by giving me her hand to kiss. "Understand me," she said. "You are to come to this side, sir, only when I give you leave."

"Oh," I cried. "Can you be so cruel?"

"Or not at all, if you prefer it," she continued, drily. "More, you must go in, now, or I shall be missed and beaten. You do not want that to happen, I suppose?"

"If that hag touches you again!" I cried, boiling with rage at the thought, "I will--I will----"

"What?" she said softly, and her fingers closed on mine, and sent a thrill to my heart.

"I will strangle her!" I cried.

She laughed, a little cruelly. "Fine words," she said.

"But I mean them!" I answered, passionately. And I swore it--I swore it; what will not a boy in love promise?

"Well," she answered, whispering and leaning forward until her breath fanned my cheek, and the intoxicating scent of her hair stole away my senses, "perhaps some day I shall try you. Are you sure that you will not fail me then?"

I swore it, panting, and tried to draw her towards me by her arm; but she held back, laughing softly and as one well pleased; and then, in a moment, snatching her hand from me, she vanished in the darkness of the garden, leaving me in a seventh heaven of delight, my blood fired by her kisses, my fancy dwelling on her beauty; and without one afterthought.

Doubtless had I been less deep in love (wherein I was far over-head), or deeper in experience, I might have noted it for a curious thing that she should be so quickly comforted; and should be able to rise in a few moments, and at the touch of my lips, from passionate despair to perfect control, both of herself and of me. And starting thence, I might have gone on to suspect that she possessed her full share of the finesse, which is always a woman's shield and sometimes her sword. But as such suspicions are foreign to youth, so are they especially foreign to youthful love, which takes nothing lower than perfection for its idol. And this I can say for certain, that they no more entered my brain than did the consequences which were to flow from my passion.

For the time, indeed, I was in an ecstasy, a rapture. Walking a-tip-toe, and troubled by none of the things that trouble common folk; so that to this day--though long married--I look back to that period of innocent folly with a yearning and a regret, the sorer for this, that when I try to analyse the happiness I enjoyed, I fail, and make nothing of it. That all things should be changed for me, and I be changed in my own eyes--so that I walked a head taller and esteemed myself ridiculously--by the fact that a kitchen wench in a drugget petticoat and clogs had let me kiss her, and left me to believe that she loved me, seems incredible now; as incredible as that a daily glimpse of her figure flitting among the water-butts and powdering-tubs had power to transform that miserable back garden into a paradise, and Mr. D----'s school, with its dumplings, and bread and dripping, and inky fingers, into a mansion of tremulous joy!

Yet it was so. Nor did it matter anything to me, so great is the power of love when one is young, that my mistress went in rags, and had coarse hands, and spoke rustically. Touching this last, indeed, I must do her the justice to say that from the first she was as quick to note differences of speech and manner as she was apt to imitate good exemplars; and, moreover, possessed under her rags a species of refinement that matched the witchery of her face, and proved her to be, as she presently showed herself, no common girl.

Of course I, in the state of happy delirium on which I had now entered, and wherein even Mr. D---- and the boys wore an amiable air, and only Mrs. D----, because she persecuted my love, had the semblance of a female Satan, needed no proof of this; or I had had it when my Dorinda--so I christened her, feeling Jennie too low a name for so much beauty and kindness--proposed at our second rendezvous that I should teach her to read. At the first flush of the proposal I found reading a poor thing because she did not possess it; at the second I adored her for the humility that condescended to learn; but at the third I saw the convenience, as well as sense, of a proposal which was as much above the mind of an ordinary maid in love as Dorinda appeared superior to such a creature in all the qualities that render sense amiable.

Yet this much granted, how to teach her, seeing that we seldom met or conversed, and never, save under the kindly shelter of darkness? The obstacle for a time taxed all my ingenuity, but in the end I surmounted it by boldly asking Mr. D----'s leave to hold the afternoon classes in the playground. This, the approach of warm weather giving colour to the petition, was allowed; after which, as Dorinda was engaged in the back premises at that hour, and could listen while she drudged, the rest was easy. Calling up the lowest class, I would find fault with their reading, and after flying out at them in a simulated passion, would remit them again and again to the elements; so that for a fortnight or more, and, indeed, until the noise of the lads repeating the lesson annoyed Mrs. D----'s ears, the playground rang with a-b, ab; e-b, eb; c-a-t, cat; d-o-g, dog, and the like, with the alphabet and the rest of the horn-book. And all this so frequently repeated, that with this assistance, and the help of a spelling-book which I gave her, and which she studied before others awoke, my mistress at the end of two months could read tolerably, and was beginning to essay easy round-hand.

And Heaven knows how delicious were those lessons under the shabby ragged tree that shaded one half of the yard! I spoke to the yawning grubby-fingered boys, who slouched and straddled round me; but I knew to whose ears I applied myself; nor had pupil ever a more diligent master, or master an apter pupil. Once a week I had my fee of kisses, but rarely, very rarely, was permitted to cross the fence; a reserve on my Dorinda's part, that, while it augmented the esteem in which I held her, maintained my passion at a white heat. When, nevertheless, I remonstrated with her, and loverlike, complained of the rigour which in my heart I commended, she chid me for setting a low value on her; and when I persisted, "Go on," she said, drawing away from me with a wonderful air of offence. "Tell me at once, and in so many words, that you think me a low thing! That you really take me for the kitchen drudge I appear!"

Her tone was full of meaning, with a hint of mystery, but as I had never thought her aught else--and yet an angel--I was dumb.

"You did think me that?" she cried, fixing me with her eyes, and speaking in a tone that demanded an answer.

I muttered that I had never heard, had never known, that--that--and so stammered into silence, not at all understanding her.

"Then I think that hitherto we have been under a mistake," she answered, speaking very distantly, and in a voice that sent my heart into my boots. "You were fond--or said you were--of the cook-maid. She does not exist. No, sir, a little farther away, if you please," my mistress continued, haughtily, her head in the air, "and know that I come of better stock than that. If you would have my story I will tell it you. I can remember--it is almost the first thing I can remember--a day when I played, as a little child, with a necklace of gold beads, in the court-yard of a house in a great city; and wandered out, the side gate being open, and the porter not in his seat, into the streets; where," she continued dreamily, and gazing away from me, "there were great crowds, and men firing guns, and people running every way----"

I uttered an exclamation of astonishment. She noticed it only by making a short pause, and then went on in the same thoughtful tone, "As far as I can remember, it was a place where there were booths and stalls crowded together, and among them, it seems to me, a man was being hunted, who ran first one way and then another, while soldiers shot at him. At last he came where I had dropped on the ground in terror, after running child-like where the danger was greatest. He glared at me an instant--he was running, stooping down below the level of the booths, and they had lost him for the time; then he snatched me up in his arms, and darted from his shelter, crying loudly as he held me up, 'Save the child! Save the child!' The crowd raised the same cry, and made a way for him to pass. And then--I do not remember anything, until I found myself shabbily dressed in a little inn, where, I suppose, the man, having made his escape, left me."

[CHAPTER IV]

At that I remember that I cried out in overwhelming excitement and amazement; cried out that I knew the man and his story, and the place whence she had been taken; that I had heard the tale from my father years before. "It was Colonel Porter who picked you up--Colonel Porter, and he saved his life by it!" I cried, quite beside myself at the wonderful discovery I had made. "It was Colonel Porter, in the great riot at Norwich."

"Ah?" she said, slowly; looking away from me, and speaking so coolly and strangely as both to surprise and damp me.

Yet I persisted. "Yes," I said, "the story is well known; at least that part of it. But----" and there and at that word I stopped, dumbfounded and gaping.

"But what?" she asked sharply, and looked at me again; the colour risen in her face.

"But--you are only eighteen," I hazarded timidly, "and the Norwich riot was in the War time. I dare say, thirty years ago."

She turned on me in a sort of passion.

"Well, sir, and what of that?" she cried. "Do you think me thirty?"

"No, indeed," I answered. And at the most she was nineteen.

"Then don't you believe me?"

I cried out too at that; but, boy-like, I was so proud of my knowledge and acuteness that I could not let the point lie. "All I mean," I explained, "is that to have been alive then, and at Norwich, you must be thirty now. And----"

"And was it I?" she answered, flying out at me in a fine fury. "Who said anything about Norwich? Or your dirty riots? Or your Porter, whose name I never heard before! Go away! I hate you! I hate you!" she continued, passionately, waving me off. "You make up things and then put them on me! I never said a word about Norwich."

"I know you did not," I protested.

"Then why did you say I did?" she wailed. "Why did you say I did? You are a wretch! I hate you!"

And with that, dissolving in tears and sobs she at one and the same time showed me another side of love, and reduced me to the utmost depths of despair; whence I was not permitted to emerge, nor reinstated in the least degree of favour until I had a hundred times abased myself before her, and was ready to curse the day when I first heard the name of Porter. Still peace was at last, and with infinite difficulty restored; and so complete was our redintegratio amoris that we presently ventured to recur to her tale and to the strange coincidence that had divided us; which did not seem so very remarkable, on second thought, seeing that she could not now remember that she had said a word about booths or stalls, but would have it I had inserted those particulars; the man in her case having taken refuge--she fancied, but could not at this distance of time remember very clearly--among the seats of a kind of bull-ring or circus erected in the marketplace. Which of course made a good deal of difference.

Notwithstanding this discrepancy, however, and though, taught by experience, I hastened to agree with her that the secret of her birth was not likely to be discovered in a moment, nor by so simple a process as the journey to Norwich, which I had been going to suggest, it was natural that we should often revert to the subject, and to her pretensions, and the hardship of her lot: and my curiosity and questions giving a fillip to her memory, scarcely a day passed but she recovered some new detail from the past; as at one time a service of gold-plate which she perfectly remembered she had seen on her father's sideboard; and at another time an accident that had befell her in her childhood, through her father's coach and six horses being overturned in a slough. Such particulars (and many others as pertinent and romantic, on which I will not linger) gave us a certainty of her past consequence and her future fortune were her parents once known; and while they served to augment the respect in which my love held her, gradually and almost imperceptibly led her to take a higher tone with me, and even on occasions to carry herself towards me with an air of mystery, as if there were still some things which she had not confided to me.

This attitude on her part--which in itself pained me extremely--and still more the fear naturally arising from it, that if she came by her own I should immediately lose her, forced me to make the acquaintance of yet another side of love; by throwing me, I mean, into such a fever of suspicion and jealousy as made me for a period the most unhappy of men. From this plight my mistress, exercising the privilege of her sex, made no haste to relieve me. On the contrary, by affecting an increased reserve and asserting that her movements were watched, she prolonged my doubts; nor when this treatment had wrought the desired end of reducing me to the lowest depths, and she at length consented to meet me, did she entirely relent or abandon her reserve; or if she did so, on rare occasions, it was only to set me some task as the price of her complaisance, or expose me to some trial by which she might prove my devotion.

In a word, while I became hopelessly enslaved, even to the flogging a boy at her word, or procuring a dress far above my station--merely that she might see me by stealth in it, and judge of my air!--which were two of her caprices, she appeared to be farther removed from me every day, and at each meeting granted me fewer privileges. Whether this treatment had its origin in the natural instinct of a woman, or was deliberately chosen as better calculated to increase my subservience, it had the latter effect; and to such an extent that when, after a long absence, she condescended to meet me, and broached a plan that earlier would have raised my hair, I asked no better than to do her bidding, and, instead of pointing out the folly of her proposal, fell in with it with scarcely a murmur.

Her plan, when she communicated it to me, which she did with an air of mystery and the same assumption of a secret withheld that had tormented me before, amounted to nothing less than an evening sally into the town on the occasion of the approaching visit of the Duke of York, who was to lie one night at the Rose at Ware on his way to Newmarket. Mr. D---- had issued the strictest orders that all should keep the house during this visit; not so much out of a proper care for the boys' morality (though the gay crowd that followed the Court served for a pretext) as because, in his character of fanatic and Exclusionist, he held His Highness's religion and person in equal abhorrence. Such a restriction weighed little in the scale against love; but, infatuated as I was, I found something that sensibly shocked me in the proposal coming from Dorinda's lips; nor could I fail to foresee many dangers to which a young girl must expose herself on such an expedition in the town, and at night. But as to a youth in love nothing that his mistress chooses to do seems long amiss, so this proposal scared me for a moment only; after which it cost my mistress no more than a little rallying on my crop-eared manners, and some scolding, to make me see it in its true aspect of an innocent frolic, fraught with as much pleasure to the cavalier as novelty to the escorted.

"You will don your new suit," she said, merrily, "and I shall meet you in the garden at half past nine."

"And if the boys may miss me?" I protested feebly.

"The boys have missed you before!" she answered, mocking my tone. "Were you not here last night? And for a whole hour, sir?"

I confessed with hot cheeks that I had been there; humbly and tamely awaiting her pleasure.

"And did they tell then?" she asked scornfully. "Or are they less afraid of the birch now? But of course--if you don't care to come with me--or are afraid, sir----?"

"I am neither," I said warmly. "Only I do not quite understand, sweet, what you wish."

"They lie at the Rose," she said. "And amongst them, I am told, are the prettiest men and the most lovely women in the world. And jewels, and laces, and such dresses! Oh, I am mad to see them! And music and gaming and dancing! And dishes and plates of gold! And a Popish priest, which is a thing I have never seen, though I have heard of it. And----"

"And do you expect to see all these things through the windows?" I cried in my superior knowledge.

She did not answer at once, but with her hands on my shoulders, swayed to and fro sideways as if she already heard the music; while her gipsy face looked archly into mine, first on this side and then on that, and her hair swung to and fro on her shoulders in a beautiful abandonment which I found it impossible to resist. At last she stopped, and, "Yes," she said demurely, "through the windows, Master Richard Longface! Do you meet me here at half past nine--in your new suit, sir--and you shall see them too--through the windows."

After that, though I made a last effort to dissuade her, there was nothing more to be said. Obedient to her behest, I made my preparations, and at the appointed hour next evening rose softly from the miserable pallet on which I had just laid down; and dressing myself with shaking fingers and in the dark--that my bed-fellows might know as little as possible of my movements--stole down the stairs and into the garden.

Here I found myself first at the rendezvous. The night was dark, but an unusual light hung over the town, and the wind that stirred the poplars brought scraps and sounds of music to the ear. I had some time to wait, and time too to think what I was about to do; to weigh the chances of detection and dismissal, and even to taste the qualms that rawness and timidity mingled with my anticipations of pleasure. But, though I had my fears, no vision of the real future obtruded itself on my mind as I stood there listening: nor any forewarning of the plunge I was about to take. And before I had come to the end of my patience Dorinda stood beside me.

Dark as it was, I fancied that I discerned something strange in her appearance, and I would have investigated it; but she whispered that we were late, and evading as well my questions as the caress I offered, she bade me help her as quickly as I could over the fence. I did so; we crossed a neighbouring garden, and in a twinkling and with the least possible difficulty stood in the road. Here the strains of music came more plainly to the ear, and the glare of light hung lower and shone more brightly. This seemed enough for my mistress; she turned that way without hesitation, and set forward, the outskirts of the town being quickly passed. Between the late hour and the flux of people towards the centre of interest, the streets were vacant; and we met no one until we reached the main thoroughfare, and came upon the edge of the great crowd that moved to and fro before the Rose Inn. Here all the windows, in one of which a band of music was playing some new air, were brilliantly lighted; while below and round the door was such a throng of hurrying waiters and drawers, and such a carrying of meals and drinks, and a shouting of orders as almost turned the brain. A carriage and six that had just set down a grandee, come to pay his devoirs to the Prince, was moving off as we came up, the horses smoking, the footmen panting, and the postilions stooping in their saddles. A little to one side a cask was being staved for the troopers who had come with the Duke; and on all the noisy, moving scene and the flags that streamed from the roofs and windows, and the shifting crowd, poured the ruddy light of a great bon-feu that burned on the farther side of the way.

Nor, rare as were these things, were they the most pertinent or the strangest that the fire revealed to me. I had come for nothing else but to see, clam et furtim, as the classics say, what was to be seen; with no thought of passing beyond the uttermost ring of spectators. But as I hung back shamefacedly my companion seized my wrist and drew me on; and when I turned to her to remonstrate, as Heaven lives, I did not know her! I conceived for a moment that some madam of the court had seized me in a frolic; nor for a perceptible space could I imagine that the fine cloaked lady, whose eyes shone bright as stars through the holes in her mask, and whose raven hair, so cunningly dressed, failed to hide the brilliance of her neck, where the cloak fell loose, was my Dorinda, my mistress, the cook-maid whom I had kissed in the garden! Honestly, for an instant, I recoiled and hung back, afraid of her; nor was I quite assured of the truth, so unprepared was I for the change, until she whispered me sharply to come on.

"Whither?" I said, still hanging back in dismay. The bystanders were beginning to turn and stare, and in a moment would have jeered us.

"Within doors," she urged.

"They will not admit us!"

"They will admit me," she answered proudly, and made as if she would throw my hand from her.

Still I did not believe her, and it was that, and that only, that emboldened me; though, to be sure, I was in love and her slave. Reluctantly, and almost sulkily, I gave way, and sneaked behind her to the door. A man who stood on the steps seemed, at the first glance, minded to stop her; but, looking again, smiled and let us pass; and in a twinkling we stood in the hall among hurrying waiters, and shouting call-boys, and bloods in silk coats, whose scabbards rang as they came down the stairs, and a fair turmoil of pages, and footboys, and gentlemen, and gentlemen's gentlemen.

In such a company, elbowed this way and that by my betters, I knew neither how to carry myself, nor where to look; but Dorinda, with barely a pause, and as if she knew the house, thrust open the nearest door, and led the way into a great room that stood on the right of the hall.

Here, down the spacious floor, and lighted by shaded candles, were ranged several tables, at which a number of persons had seats, while others again stood or moved about the room. The majority of those present were men. I noticed, however, three or four women masked after the fashion of my companion, but more gorgeously dressed, and in my simplicity did not doubt that these were duchesses, the more as they talked and laughed loudly; whereas the general company--save those who sat at one table where the game was at a standstill, and all were crying persistently for a Tallier--spoke low, the rattle of dice and chink of coin, and an occasional oath, taking the place of conversation. I saw piles of guineas and half-guineas on the tables, and gold lace on the men's coats, and the women a dream of silks and furbelows, and gleaming shoulders and flashing eyes; and between awe of my company, and horror at finding myself in such a place, I took all for real that glittered. Where, therefore, a man of experience would have discerned a crowd of dubious rakes and rustic squires tempting fortune for the benefit of the Groom-Porter, whose privilege was ambulatory, I fancied I gazed on earls and barons; saw a garter on every leg, and, blind to the stained walls of the common inn-room, supplied every bully who cried the main or called the trumps with the pedigree of a Howard.

This was a delusion not unnatural, and a prey to it, I expected each moment to be my last in that company. But the fringe of spectators that stood behind the players favouring us, we fell easily into line at one of the tables, and nothing happening, and no one saying us nay, I presently breathed more freely. I could see that my companion's beauty, though hidden in the main by her mask, was the subject of general remark; and that it drew on her looks and regards more or less insolent. But as she took no heed of these, but on the contrary gazed about her unmoved and with indifference, I hoped for the best; and excited by the brilliance and movement of a scene so far above my wildest dreams, that I already anticipated the pride with which I should hereafter describe it, I began to draw a fearful joy from our escapade. Like Æneas and Ulysses, I had seen men and cities! And stood among heroes! And seen the sirens! To which thoughts I was proceeding to add others equally classical, when a gentleman behind me diverted my thoughts by touching my companion on the arm, and very politely requesting, her to lay on the table a guinea which he handed to her.

She did so, and he thanked her with a low-spoken compliment; then added with bent head, but bold eyes, "Fortune, my pretty lady, cannot surely have been unkind to one so fair!"

"I do not play," Dorinda answered, with all the bluntness I could desire.

"And yet I think I have seen you play?" he replied. And affecting to be engaged in identifying her, he let his eyes rove over her figure.

Doubtless Dorinda's mask gave her courage; yet, even this taken into the count, her wit and resource astonished me. "You do not know me, my pretty gentleman," she said, coolly, and with a proud air.

"I know that you have cost me a guinea!" he answered. "See, they have swept it off. And as I staked it for nothing else but to have an excuse to address the handsomest woman in the room----"

"You do not know what I am--behind my mask," she retorted.

"No," he replied, hardily, "and therefore I am going--I am going----"

"So am I!" my mistress answered, with a quickness that both surprised and delighted me. "Good night, good spendthrift! You are going; and I am going."

"Well hit!" he replied, with a grin. "And well content if we go together! Yet I think I know how I could keep you!"

"Yes?" she said, indifferently.

"By deserving the name," he answered. "You called me spendthrift."

On that I do not know whether she thought him too forward, or saw that I was nearly at the end of my patience--which it may be imagined was no little tried by this badinage--but she turned her shoulder to him outright, and spoke a word to me in a low tone. Then: "Give me a guinea, Dick!" she said, pretty loudly. "I think I'll play."

[CHAPTER V]

She spoke confidently and with a grand air, knowing that I had brought a guinea with me; so that I had neither the heart to shame her, nor the courage to displease her. Though it was the ninth part of my income therefore, and it seemed to me sheer madness or worse to stake such a sum on a single card, and win or lose it in a moment, I lugged it out and gave it to her. Even then, knowing her to have no more skill in the game than I had, I was at a stand, wondering what she would do with it; but with the tact which never fails a woman she laid it where the gentleman had placed his. With better luck; for in a twinkling, and before I thought it well begun, the deal was over, the players sat back, and swore, and the banker, giving and taking here and there, thrust a guinea over to our guinea. I was in a sweat to take both up before anyone cheated us; but she nudged me, and said with her finest air, "Let it lie, Dick! Do you hear? Let it lie."

This was almost more than I could bear, to see fortune in my grasp, and not shut my hand upon it, but she was mistress and I let it lie; and in a moment, hey presto, as the Egyptians say, the two guineas were four, and those who played next us, seeing her success, began to pass remarks on her, making nothing of debating who she was, and discussing about her shape and complexion in terms that made my cheeks burn. Whether this open admiration turned her head, or their freedom confused her, she let the money lie again; and when I would have snatched it up, not regarding her, the dealer prevented me, saying that it was too late, while she with an air, as if I had been her servant, turned and rated me sharply for a fool. This caused a little disturbance at which all the company laughed. However, the event proved me no fool, but wiser than most, for in two minutes that pretty sum, which was as much as I had ever possessed at one time in my life, was swept off; and for two guineas the richer, which we had been a moment before, we remained one, and that my only one, the poorer!

For myself, I could have cried at the misadventure, but my mistress carried it off with a shrill laugh, and tossing her head in affected contempt--whereat, I am bound to confess, the company laughed again--turned from the table. I sneaked after her as miserable as you please, and in that order we had got half way to the door, when the gentleman who had addressed her before, stepped up in front of her. "Beauty so reckless," he said, speaking with a grin, and in a tone of greater freedom than he had used previously, "needs someone to care for it! Unless I am mistaken, Mistress, you came on foot?" And with a sneering smile, he dropped his eyes to the hem of her cloak.

Alas, I looked too, and the murder was out. To be sure Dorinda had clothed herself very handsomely above, but coming to her feet had trusted to her cloak to hide the deficiency she had no means to supply. Still, and in spite of this, all might have been well if she had not in her chagrin at losing, forgotten the blot, and, unused to long skirts, raised them so high as to expose a foot, shapely indeed, but stockingless, and shod in an old broken shoe!

Her ears and neck turned crimson at the exposure, and she dropped her cloak as if it burned her hand. I fancied that if the stranger had looked to ingratiate himself by his ill-mannered jest, he had gone the wrong way about it, and I was not surprised when she answered in a voice quivering with mortification, "Yes, on foot. But you may spare your pains. I am in this gentleman's care, I thank you."

"Oh," he said, in a peculiar tone, "this gentleman?" And he looked me up and down.

I knew that it behooved me to ruffle it with him, and let him know by out-staring him that at a word I was ready to pull his nose. But I was a boy in strange company, and utterly cast down by the loss of my guinea; he a Court bully in sword and lace, bred to carry it in such and worse places. Though he seemed to be no more than thirty, he had a long and hard face under his periwig, and eyes both tired and melancholy; and he spoke with a drawl and a curling lip, and by the mere way he looked at me showed that he thought me no better than dirt. To make a long story short, I had not looked at him a moment before my eyes fell.

"Oh, this gentleman?" he said again, in a tone of cutting contempt. "Well, I hope that he has more guineas than one--or your ladyship will soon trudge it, skin to mud. As it is, I fear that I detain you. Kindly carry my compliments to Farmer Grudgen. And the pigs!"

And smiling--not laughing, for a laugh seemed alien from his face--at a jest which was too near the truth not to mortify us exceedingly, my lord--for a lord I thought he was--turned away with an ironical bow; leaving us to get out of the room with what dignity we might, and such temper as remained to us. For myself I was in such a rage, both at the loss of my guinea and at being so flouted, that I could scarcely govern myself; yet in my awe of Dorinda I said nothing, expecting and fearing an outbreak on her part, the consequences of which it was not easy to foretell. I was proportionately pleased therefore, when she made no more ado at the time, but pushing her way through the crowd in the street, turned homeward and took the road without a word.

This was so unlike her that I was at a loss to understand it, and was fain to conclude--from the fact that she two or three times paused to listen and look back--that she feared pursuit. The thought, bringing to my mind the risk of being detected and dismissed, which I ran--a risk that came home to me now that the pleasure was over, and I had only in prospect my squalid bed-room and the morrow's tasks--filled me with uneasiness. But I might have spared myself, for when she spoke I found that her thoughts were on other things.

"Dick," she said, suddenly--and halted abruptly in the road, "you must lend me a guinea."

"A guinea?" I cried, aghast, and speaking, it may be, with a little displeasure. "Why, have you not just----"

"What?" she said.

"Lost my only one."

She laughed with a recklessness that confounded me. "Well, you have got to find another one," she said. "And one to that!"

"Another guinea?" I gasped.

"Yes, another guinea, and another guinea!" she answered, mimicking my tone of consternation. "One for my shoes and stockings--oh, I wish he were dead!" And she stamped her foot passionately. "And one----"

"Yes?" I said, with a poor attempt at irony. "And one----?"

"For me to stake next Friday, when the Duke passes this way on his road home."

"He does not!"

"He does, he does!" she retorted. "And you will do too--what I say, sir! or----"

"Or what?" I cried, calling up a spirit for once.

"Or----" and she raised her voice a little, and sang:

"But alas, when I wake, and no Phyllis I find,
How I sigh to myself all alone!"

"You never loved me!" I cried, in a rage at that and her greed.

"Have it your own way!" she answered, carelessly, and sang it again; and after that there was no more talk, but we walked with all the width of the road between us; I with a sore heart and she titupping along, cool and happy, pleased, I think, that she had visited on me some of the chagrin which the stranger had caused her, and for the rest with God knows what thoughts in her heart. At least I little suspected them; yet, with the little knowledge I had, I was angry and pained; and for the time was so far freed from illusion that I would not make the overture, but hardened myself with the thought of my guinea and her selfishness; and coming to the gap in the first fence helped her over with a cold hand and no embrace such as was usual between us at such junctures.

In a word, we were like naughty children returning after playing truant; and might have parted in that guise, and this the very best thing that could have happened to me--who had no guinea, and knew not where to get one; though I would not go so far as to say that, in the frame of mind in which I then was, it would have saved me. But in the article of parting, and when the garden fence already rose between us, yet each remained plain to the other by the light of the moon which had risen, Dorinda on a sudden raised her hands, and holding her cloak from her, stood and looked at me an instant in the most ravishing fashion--with her head thrown back and her lips parted, and her eyes shining, and the white of her neck and her bare arms, and the swell of her bosom showing. I could have sworn that even the scent of her hair reached me, though that was impossible. But what I saw was enough. I might have known that she did it only to tantalize me: I might have known that she would show me what I risked; but on the instant, oblivious of all else, I owned her beauty, and resentment and my loss alike forgotten, sprang to the fence, my blood on fire, and words bubbling on my lips: Another second, and I should have been at her feet, have kissed her shoes muddy and broken as they were; but she turned, and with a backward glance, that only the more inflamed me, fled up the garden, and to the house, whither, even at my maddest, I dared not follow her.

However, enough had passed to send me to my bed to long and lie awake; enough, the morrow come, to take all colour from the grey tasks and dull drudgery of school-time; insomuch that the hours seemed days, and the days weeks, and Mr. D----'s ignorant prosing and infliction too wearisome to be borne. What my love now lacked of reverence, it made up in passion, and passion's offspring, impatience: on which it is to be supposed my mistress counted, since for three whole days she kept within, and though every evening I flew to the rendezvous, and there cooled my heels for an hour, she never showed herself.

Once, however, I heard her on the other side of the fence, singing:

"But alas, when I wake, and no Phyllis I find,
How I sigh to myself all alone!"

And, sick at heart, I understood the threat and her attitude. Nevertheless, and though the knowledge should have cured me, by convincing me that she was utterly unworthy and had never loved me, I only consumed the more for her, and grovelled the lower in spirit before her and her beauty; and the devil presently putting in my way the means where he had already provided the motive, it was no wonder that I made but a poor resistance, and in a short time fell.

It came about in this way. In the course of the week, and before the Friday on which the Duke was to return that way, Mr. D---- announced an urgent call to London; and as he was too wise to broach such a proposal without a quid pro quo, Mrs. D---- must needs go with him. The stage-wagon, which travelled three days in the week, would serve next morning, and all was hasty preparation; clothes were packed and mails got out; a gossip, one Mrs. Harris, was engaged to take Mrs. D----'s place, and the boys were entrusted to me, with strict instructions to see all lights out at night, and no waste. That these injunctions might be the more deeply impressed on me, I was summoned to Mrs. D----'s parlour to receive them; but unluckily with the instructions given to me were mingled housekeeping directions to Mrs. Harris, who was also present; the result being that when I retired from the room I carried with me the knowledge that in a certain desk, perfectly accessible, my employer left three guineas, to be used in case of emergency, but otherwise not to be touched.

It was an unhappy chance, explaining, as well as accounting for, so much of what follows, that were I to enter into long details of the catastrophe, it would be useless; since the judicious reader will have already informed himself of a result that was never in doubt, from the time that my employer's departure at once provided the means of gratification, and by removing the restraints under which we had before laboured, held out the prospect of pleasure. Nor can I plead that I sinned in ignorance; for as I sat among the boys and mechanically heard their tasks, I called myself, "Thief, thief," a hundred times, and a hundred to that; and once even groaned aloud; yet never flinched or doubted that I should take the money. Which I did--to cut a long story short--before Mr. D---- had been three hours out of the house; and that evening humbly presented the whole of it to my mistress, who rewarded my complaisance with present kisses and future pledges, to be redeemed when she should have once more tasted the pleasures of the great world.

To tell the truth, her craving for these, and to be seen again in those haunts where we had reaped nothing but loss and mortification, was a continual puzzle to me, who asked for nothing better than to enjoy her society and kindness, as far as possible from the world. But as she would go and would play, and made my subservience in this matter the condition of her favour, it was essential she should win; since I could then restore the money I had taken; whereas if she lost, I saw no prospect before me but the hideous one of detection and punishment. Accordingly, when the evening came, and we had effected the same clandestine exodus as before--but this time with less peril, Mrs. Harris being a sleepy, easy-going woman--I could think of nothing but this necessity; and far from experiencing the terrors which had beset me before, when Dorinda would enter the inn, gave no thought to the scene or the crowd through which we pushed, or any other of the preliminaries, but had my soul so set upon the fortune that awaited us, that I was for passing through the door in the hardiest fashion, and would scarcely stand even when a hand gripped my shoulder. However, a rough voice exclaiming in my ear, "Softly, youngster! Who are you that poke in so boldly? I don't know you," brought me to my senses.

"I was in last week," I answered, gasping with eagerness.

"Then you were one too many," the doorkeeper retorted, thrusting me back without mercy. "This is not a tradesman's ordinary. It is for your betters."

"But I was in," I cried, desperately. "I was in last week."

"Well, you will not go in again," he answered coolly. "For the lady, it is different. Pass in, mistress," he continued, withdrawing his arm that she might pass, and looking at her with an impudent leer. "I can never refuse a pretty face. And I will bet a guinea that there is one behind that mask."

On which, to my astonishment, and while I stood agape between rage and shame, my mistress, with a hurried word--that might stand for a farewell, or might have been merely a request to me to wait, for I could not catch it--accepted the invitation; and deserting me without the least sign of remorse, passed in and disappeared. For a moment I could scarcely, thus abandoned, believe my senses or that she had left me; then, the iron of her ingratitude entering into my soul, and a gentleman tapping me imperatively on the shoulder and saying that I blocked the way, I was fain to turn aside, and plunge into the darkness, to hide the sobs I could no longer restrain.

For a time, leaning my forehead against a house in a side alley, I called her all the names in the world; reflecting bitterly at whose expense she was here, and at what a price I had bought her pleasure. Nor, it may be thought, was I likely to find excuses for her soon. But a lover, as he can weave his unhappiness out of the airiest trifles, so from very gossamer can he spin comfort; nor was it long before I considered the necessity under which we lay to play and win, and bethought me that, instead of finding fault with her for entering alone, I should applaud the prudence that at a pinch had borne this steadily in mind. After which, believing what I hoped, I soon ceased to reproach her; and jealousy giving way to suspense--since all for me now depended on the issues of gain or loss--I hastened to return to the door, and hung about it in the hope of seeing her appear.

This she did not do for some time, but the interval and my thoughts were diverted by a rencontre as disagreeable as it was unexpected. In my solitary condition I had made so few acquaintances in Hertford, that I fancied I stood in no fear of being recognised. I was vastly taken aback therefore, when a gentleman plainly dressed, happening to pause an instant on the threshold as he issued from the inn, let his glance rest on me; and after a second look stepped directly to me, and with a sour aspect, asked me what I did in that place.

Then, when it was too late, I took fright; recognising him for a gentleman of a good estate in the neighbourhood, who had two sons at Mr. D----'s school, and enjoyed great influence with my master, he being by far the most important of his patrons. As he belonged to the fanatical party, and in common with most of that sect had been a violent Exclusionist, I as little expected to see him in that company, as he to see me. But whereas he was his own master, and besides was there--this I learned afterwards--to rescue a young relative, while I had no such excuse, he had nothing to fear and I all. I found myself, therefore, ready to sink with confusion; and even when he repeated his challenge could find no words in which to answer.

"Very well," he said, nodding grimly at that. "Perhaps Mr. D---- may be able to answer me. I shall take care to visit him to-morrow, sir, and learn whether he is aware how his usher employs his nights. Good evening."

So saying, he left me horribly startled, and a prey to apprehensions, which were not lessened by the guilt, that already lay on my conscience in another and more serious matter. For such is the common course of ill-doing; to plunge a man, I mean, deeper and deeper in the mire. I now saw not one ridge of trouble only before me, but a second and a third; and no visible way of escape from the consequences of my imprudence. To add to my fears, the gentleman on leaving me joined the same courtier who had spoken to Dorinda on the occasion of our former visit, and who had just come out; so that to my prepossessed mind nothing seemed more probable than that the latter would tell him in whose company he had seen me and the details of our adventure. As a fact, it was from this person's clutches my master's patron was here to rescue his nephew. But I did not know this; and seeking in my panic to be reassured, I asked a servant beside me who the stranger was.

"He?" he said. "Oh, he is a gentleman from the Temple. Been playing with him?" and he looked at me, askance.

"No," I said.

"Oh," he replied, "the better for you."

"But what is his name?" I urged.

"Who does not know Mat. Smith, Esquire, of the Temple, is a country booby--and that is you!" the man retorted quickly; and went off laughing. Still this, seeing that I did not know the name, relieved me a little; and the next moment I was aware of Dorinda waiting for me at the door. Deducing from the smile that played on her countenance the happiest omens of success, I forgot my other troubles in the relief which this promised; and I sprang to meet her. Guiding her as quickly as I could through the crowd, I asked her the instant I could find voice to speak, what luck she had had.

"What luck?" she cried; and then pettishly, "there, clumsy! you are pulling me into that puddle. Have a care of my new shoes, will you? What luck, did you say? Why, none!"

"What? You have not lost?" I exclaimed, standing still in the road; and it seemed to me that my heart stood still also.

"Yes, but I have!" she answered hardily.

"All?" I groaned.

"Yes, all! If you call two guineas all," she replied carelessly. "Why, you are not going to cry for two guineas, baby, are you?"

[CHAPTER VI]

But I was going to cry and did, breaking down like a child; and that not so much at the thought of the desperate strait to which she had brought me--though this was no other than the felon's dock, with the prospect of disgrace, and to be whipped or burned in the hand, at the best, and if I had my benefit--but at the sudden conviction, which came upon me, perfect and overwhelming, that my mistress, for whom I had risked so much, did not love me! In no other way, and on no other theory, could I explain callousness so complete, thoughtlessness so cruel! Nor did her next words tend to heal the mischief, or give me comfort.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, flouncing from me with impatient contempt, and walking on the other side of the way, "if you are going to be a cry-baby, thank you for nothing! I thought you were a man!" And she began to hum an air.

"My God! I don't think you care!" I sobbed, aghast at her insensibility.

"Care?" she retorted indifferently, swinging her visor in her hand. "For what?"

"For me! Or for anything!"

With a coolness that appalled me, she finished the verse she was humming; then, "Your finger hurts, therefore you are going to die!" she said, with a sneer. "You see the fire and therefore you must be burned. Why, you have the courage of a hen! A flea! A mouse! You are not worthy the name of a man."

"I am man enough to be hanged," I answered miserably.

"Hanged?" quoth she, quite cheerfully. "Do you think that man was ever hanged for three guineas?"

"Ay, scores," I said, "and for less!"

"Then they must have been cravens like you!" she retorted, perfectly well satisfied with her answer. "And spun their own ropes. Come, silly, cheer up! A great many things may happen in a week! And if that vixen is back under a week, I will eat her!"

"A week won't make three guineas," I said dolefully.

"No, but a good heart will," she rejoined. "And not three but thirty! Only," she continued, looking askance at me, "you have not the spirit of a man. You are just Tumbledown Dick, as they say, and as well named as nine-pence!"

It seemed inconceivable to me that she could jest so merrily and carry herself so gaily, after such a loss; and I stopped short in sudden hope and new-born expectation; and peered at her, striving to read her thoughts. "I don't believe you have lost them!" I exclaimed at last.

"Every groat, Dick!" she answered, curtly--yet still in the best of spirits. "Never doubt that!"

On which it was not wonderful that my disappointment and her cheerfulness agreed so ill, that we came to bitter words, and beginning by calling one another "Thankless," and "Clutch-penny," rose presently to "Fool," and "Jade"; and eventually parted on the latter at the garden fence; where Dorinda, so far from lingering as on the former night, flounced from me in a passion, and left me without a single word of regret. How miserably after that I stole to bed, and how wakefully I tossed in the close garret, I cannot hope to convey to my readers; suffice it that a hundred times I cursed the folly that had led me to ruin, a hundred times went hot and cold at thought of the dock and the gallows; and yet amid all found in Dorinda's heartlessness the sharpest pain. I felt sure now, and told myself continually, that she had never loved me; therefore--at the time it seemed to follow--I deemed my own love at an end and cast her off; and heaping the sharpest reproaches on her head, found my one sweet consolation--whereat I wept miserably--in composing a last dying speech and confession that should soften at length that obdurate bosom, and break that unfeeling heart.

But with the day, and the rising to imminent terrors and hourly fear of detection, came first regret, then self-reproach--lest I too should be somewhat in fault--then a revival of passion; lastly, a frantic yearning to be reconciled to the only person to whom I could speak freely, or who knew the danger and strait in which I stood. My heart melting like water at the thought, I was ready to do anything or say anything, to abase myself to any depth, in order to regain her favour and have her advice; and the absence of Mr. and Mrs. D----, and Mrs. Harris's easiness rendering it a matter of no difficulty to seek her, in the course of the afternoon I took my courage in my hands and went into the next house. There I found only Mrs. Harris.

"The little slut has stepped out," she said, looking up from the pot over which she was stooping. "She asked leave for half an hour and has been gone an hour. But it is the way of the wenches all the world over. Do you beware of them, Mr. Price," she continued, eyeing me, and laughing jollily.

I made some trifling answer; and returning to my own domain, with all the pangs of loneliness added to those of terror, sat down in the dingy, dreary taskroom and abandoned myself to bitter forebodings. She did not, she never could have loved me! I knew it and felt it now. Yet I must think of her or go mad. I must think of her or of the cart and cord; and so, through the hours that followed, I had only eyes for the next garden, and ears for her voice. The boys and their chattering, and the necessity I was under of playing my part before them, well-nigh mastered me. For, at any hour, on any day, while I sat there among them, Mr. and Mrs. D---- might return, and the loss be discovered; and yet, and though time was everything, all the efforts I made to see Jennie or get speech with her failed; and of myself I seemed to be unable to think out any plan or way of escape.

I am sure that the most ascetic, could he have weighed the tortures of those four days during which I sat surrounded by the boys, and now making frantic efforts to appear myself, now sunk in a staring, pale-faced lethargy of despair, would have deemed them a punishment more than commensurate with my guilt. The unusual air of peace and quietness with which Mrs. D----'s absence invested the school had no more power to soothe me than the presence of Mrs. Harris, nodding over her plain-stitch in the next garden, availed to banish the burning gusts of fear that at times parched my skin. At length, on the fifth day, the immediate warning of coming judgment arrived in the shape of a letter announcing that my employer would return (D.V.) by the night waggon, which in the ordinary course was due to reach Ware about six next morning.

At that I could stand the strain no longer, but flinging appearance and deception to the winds, I rose from the class I was pretending to teach, and in a disorder I made no effort to suppress, followed Mrs. Harris; who, having declared the news, was already waddling back to the next house. She started at sight of me in her train--as she well might, for it was the busiest time of the day; then asked if anything ailed me.

"No," I said. "I want a word with Jennie."

"Do you?" quoth she, looking hard at me. "So, it would seem, do a good many young fellows. She is a nice handful if ever there was one."

"Why?" I stammered.

"Why?" she answered in a tone very sharp for her. "Why, because--but what have you to do with Jennie, young man?"

"Nothing," I said.

"Then have nothing," she answered promptly, and shook her sides at her sharpness. "That is no puzzle! And as it is no more than half-past ten, and I hear your boys rampaging like so many wild Irishmen--suppose you go back to them, young man!"

Shrewsbury: A Romance

SHREWSBURY

SHREWSBURY

A Romance

BY

STANLEY J. WEYMAN

AUTHOR OF "A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE," "UNDER THE RED ROBE,"
"THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF," ETC.

WITH 24 ILLUSTRATIONS

BY

CLAUDE A. SHEPPERSON

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1898

Copyright, 1897
By STANLEY J. WEYMAN

All rights reserved

TO MY BROTHER HENRY

IN MEMORY OF A SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN THE YEAR 1877
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SHREWSBURY

[CHAPTER I]

[CHAPTER II]

[CHAPTER III]

[CHAPTER IV]

[CHAPTER V]

[CHAPTER VI]

Shrewsbury: A Romance

SHREWSBURY

SHREWSBURY

A Romance

BY

STANLEY J. WEYMAN

AUTHOR OF "A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE," "UNDER THE RED ROBE,""THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF," ETC.

WITH 24 ILLUSTRATIONS

BY

CLAUDE A. SHEPPERSON

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDONNEW YORK AND BOMBAY1898

Copyright, 1897By STANLEY J. WEYMAN

All rights reserved

TO MY BROTHER HENRY

IN MEMORY OF A SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN THE YEAR 1877THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

SHREWSBURY

[CHAPTER I]

[CHAPTER II]

[CHAPTER III]

[CHAPTER IV]

[CHAPTER V]

[CHAPTER VI]

AUTHOR OF "A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE," "UNDER THE RED ROBE,"
"THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF," ETC.

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1898

Copyright, 1897
By STANLEY J. WEYMAN

IN MEMORY OF A SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN THE YEAR 1877
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED