The Heart of a Mystery

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(The New York Public Library)

THE HEART OF A MYSTERY

THE HEART OF A MYSTERY

A Novel

BY

T. W. SPEIGHT

AUTHOR OF
"HOODWINKED," "BACK TO LIFE," "BURGO'S ROMANCE,"
ETC., ETC.

"Pluck out the Heart of my Mystery."-- Hamlet

NEW YORK
R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
112 FIFTH AVENUE

Copyright, 1896

F. FENNO & COMPANY

The Heart of a Mystery

THE HEART OF A MYSTERY.

PROLOGUE.

[CHAPTER I.]

IN DECEMBER WEATHER.

On a certain bitter December evening, when the present century was several years younger than it is now, Miss Pengarvon, of Broome, in the shire of Derby, sat in the Green Parlor at the Hall, working by candle-light at some piece of delicate embroidery. The fingers of the old case-clock pointed to half-past ten--an exceptionally late hour in that remote place. Miss Pengarvon was alone. Her sister, Miss Letitia, had been suffering from neuralgic pains in the head, and had retired an hour ago. Barney Dale, the major-domo and, in point of fact, the only male member of the establishment, together with his wife, had gone into the village to visit a sick relative, and there was no knowing at what hour they might return. The solitary housemaid, having nothing to sit up for, had been glad to exchange the chilly gloom of the huge nagged kitchen for the comfort and warmth of bed. Earlier in the evening snow had fallen to the depth of two or three inches, but the sky was clear again by this time and the stars were glittering frostily. Except for the ticking of the clock and the occasional dropping of a cinder, silence the most profound reigned inside the Hall and out. Now and then Miss Pengarvon's needle would come to a stand for a moment while she snuffed the candles, after which the monotonous stitching would go on as before. Be it observed that candlesticks, tray, and snuffers were all of silver, although the candles themselves were of a cheap and common kind.

Miss Pengarvon was desirous of completing the work on which she was engaged before going to bed. Both she and Miss Letitia were remarkably skillful with their needles, and, gentlewomen though they were, were not above seeking payment for their work. But this was a secret known to themselves and Barney Dale alone. Once a month Barney went over to a certain town some score miles away, where he found a ready market for the proceeds of the untiring industry of the two ladies at the Hall, without anybody being the wiser as to whose handiwork it was. The money thus earned formed a welcome addition to the very limited income of Miss Pengarvon and her sister.

At this time Miss Pengarvon was close on her forty-fifth birthday. She was very tall, and grim, and gaunt. The normal expression of her features was harsh and forbidding. She had fine teeth, an aquiline nose, and unsympathetic blue-grey eyes, with a cold, stony gleam in them, deeply set under bushy brows--eyes which looked as though they had never melted with tenderness or softened with tears. The mass of her dark-brown hair, which began to show signs of the flight of time, was coiled round the crown of her head and held in its place by a high comb, while three small puffs or curls, which were generally kept in paper till mid-day, decorated each side of her forehead. When not engaged with her needle, she wore black lace mittens, and she always changed her morning dress of black bombazine for one of black silk before dinner. The dress she was wearing had been both dyed and turned, but was still good for two or three years' longer wear.

Of Miss Letitia it is enough to say that she was a copy, in somewhat less pronounced colors, of her sister as far as one human being can be a copy of any other; indeed, by comparative strangers, she was not infrequently mistaken for Miss Pengarvon. She was two years younger than her sister, whose stronger will dominated hers, and who had still as complete an ascendency over her as when they had been children together. It was noticeable that if any of the servants, or any poor person, wanted a favor granted, or a kindness done them, they went by preference to Miss Letitia rather than to Miss Barbara.

The Green Parlor, although it was traditionally supposed to be haunted, was the favorite sitting-room of the Misses Pengarvon, as it had been of their mother in her time. It was probably owing to the force of early associations that they clung to it as they did, seeing that there were many pleasanter rooms in the old house, some of them looking over the terrace and the garden beyond, or having views across miles of swelling moorland; whereas the two high, narrow windows of the Green Parlor looked into nothing more attractive than a small shaven lawn, shut in by a thick semicircular hedge of evergreens, and without any embellishment beyond such as might be afforded by a dilapidated and moss-grown sun-dial.

Both fingers and eyes were tired, but Miss Pengarvon went on doggedly with her work. She finished her task as the clock was striking eleven. With a sigh of relief she rose from her chair, and began to put away her silks and needles and other materials. While thus engaged she started suddenly; she felt nearly sure that she had heard a knocking at the front door. She waited without stirring for a couple of minutes. Yes, there it was again--the unmistakable sound of some one knocking at the great door of the Hall. Who could be seeking admittance at that late hour? The visitors at the Hall were so few that Miss Pengarvon was utterly nonplussed, Barney Dale and his wife, when they should return, would gain admittance through the back premises, of which they had the key. There might be thieves or tramps abroad, who knew that there was no one but women in the house.

But Miss Pengarvon was a woman of nerve, and not readily frightened. She was still waiting and hesitating when the knocking sounded for the third time, but less loudly than before. At the best it had been a timorous and half-hearted sort of summons, with little or no self-assertion about it.

Miss Pengarvon hesitated no longer. Taking up one of the two candlesticks, for there was no light in any other part of the house, she flung open the door of the Green Parlor and passed into the dark corridor beyond, shading the candle with her hand as she went. From the corridor she passed into the entrance-hall, strange, weird shadows seeming to start into life from wall and ceiling, as though they had been suddenly disturbed in their sleep, as she crossed it with her feeble light. Before her was the great door, iron clamped, and fastened with bolt and chain. Putting down her candle on a side table, Miss Pengarvon went up to the door and laid her hand on one of the bolts. Then she hesitated. She knew not who might be outside, and she was but one lonely woman. Then with a gesture of impatience at her own timidity, she undid the heavy bolts and locks one by one, but was careful to leave the guard chain still up. Then she pulled open the door as far as the chain would allow. A gust of frosty air, that cut almost like a knife, leaped suddenly in, bringing with it a shower of powdered snow and extinguishing the candle.

Miss Pengarvon, peering out into the snowy night, saw a female figure, hooded and cloaked from head to foot, standing on the topmost of the broad, shallow flight of steps which led up to the door. As she looked a dire presentiment shook her from head to foot, as few things else in the world could have shaken her, but her voice was clear and stern when she spoke:

"Who are you, and what is your business here at this untimely hour?" she demanded.

The figure outside came a step nearer.

"I am Isabel--your sister," was uttered in broken accents. "I have been walking till I can walk no longer. I have not tasted food since morning. I want shelter and rest for to-night--only for to-night."

The tone was one of pitiful supplication.

"Neither shelter nor rest is there under this roof for such as you," replied Miss Pengarvon, in her stoniest accents. "You have disgraced the name you bear as it was never disgraced before. This is your home no longer. Go!" and without another word the great door was shut with a crash and the bolts and locks shot one by one.

As Miss Pengarvon put out her hand in the dark to find the candlestick, one short, sharp, anguished cry--the cry of a broken heart--smote her ears. She stood for some moments with a hand pressed to her bosom, listening, but the silence was not broken again. Once more the house seemed a house of the dead. Then Miss Pengarvon turned and made her way through the black entrance-hall and the blacker corridor beyond, till she reached the parlor. Going in, she shut the door and tried to re-light the candle, but her hand trembled so that for some time she could not. Her face looked strangely haggard, but the hard, cold look in her eyes never varied. She drew a knitted shawl round her shoulders and sat down by the smouldering embers. Surely Barney and his wife could not be long now! She felt a strange disinclination for going to bed till they should return, although under ordinary circumstances she would have had no hesitation about doing so. The wind was beginning to rise, and every now and again there were eerie meanings in the wide chimney, while the windows shook and rattled as though some one were trying them from without. There was only one candle alight, and the room seemed full of shadows such as she had never noticed before. The darkest corner was the corner behind her chair. It made her uncomfortable to know this, so she crossed to the opposite side of the hearth, and sat down in her sister's chair. She wished that Letitia had not gone to bed.

She never remembered having felt so nervous before, not even when a child, and she despised herself for the feeling. All this time she was conscious that she was still listening intently. Would that timorous summons at the door make itself heard again? Perhaps she half hoped that it might. She kept telling herself again and again that it was impossible for her to have acted otherwise than as she had acted, that no other course was open to her--and yet she listened for the knocking to come again. By-and-bye she opened the door a little way. This, as she told herself, was only that she might be enabled to hear Barney when he should arrive. How slowly the minutes passed! What strange noises the wind made! Those windows must be seen to in the morning and made to fit more tightly in their frames. It was evident that she would not be troubled with the knocking again. "So much the better--so much the better," she muttered under her breath--and yet she was listening all the time. Thank Heaven! here was Barney Dale at last.

She could hear him unlocking one of the back doors of which he had taken the key with him. But he did not re-lock the door, which was strange; and now he was coming at a great pace in the direction of the Green Parlor; his hobnailed shoes clumping noisily as he came along the stone corridor. He had never before missed giving a preliminary knock at the door, but this time he came in without ceremony. One glance at his affrighted face was enough to tell Miss Pengarvon the news he was bringing her. She rose from her seat as he entered the room.

"Oh! mistress, there's poor Miss Isabel lying outside in the snow, and----"

Miss Pengarvon's tall, thin form drew itself up to its fullest height. "I know it," she said in her deep, harsh tones; "I know it. Let her lie there, or let her go. There is no home for such as she."

"But, mistress, she's dying; or, mebbe, dead already--dead and cold. I lifted up her head, and it fell back like a lump o' lead. You munna leave her lying there to perish. For heaven's sake, mistress, let me and Joanna see to her!"

"Let her go. This is no home for such as she," was all that Miss Pengarvon said.

"But she canna even stand, and, long afore morning, she'll be froze to death. Besides, which----" he bent forward, and whispered a few words in Miss Pengarvon's ear.

A sort of stony horror came into her face as she listened. Then she drew back a pace and clenched her hand, and for a moment Barney thought that she was about to strike him. "It is a lie--an infamous lie!" she whispered back through her thin, dry lips.

"It's gospel truth, mistress, and Joanna will tell you the same. You munna leave her lying there, dead an' cold, poor dear--dead an' cold."

"So be it," said Miss Pengarvon, after a few moments, with an evident effort. "Do you and Joanna bring her in--but not by the front door, not over the threshold she has disgraced. Let her come in by the door at which beggars and vagrants knock."

Barney waited for no further permission, but went at once, closing the door behind him. Miss Pengarvon folded her shawl more closely around her and sank into a chair. She sat and stared at the dying embers, her thin lips moving, but no sound coming from them. All the same, her ears were painfully on the alert. She started as though she half expected to see a ghost, when the door slowly opened, and Miss Letitia entered the room in her grey dressing-robe and frilled night-cap. The latter was trembling violently, and her eyes were full of terror.

"What brings you here?" demanded the elder sister, sternly. "I thought you were in bed hours ago."

"I left the lotion for my face downstairs, and I can get no rest without it. But what are Barney and Joanna about at this time of night? As I came downstairs I saw them bringing something in through the open door." Then she whispered, "Do you know, Barbara, it looked for all the world like a corpse!"

Miss Pengarvon shuddered in spite of herself. "Letitia," she said, "go and bolt the door at the foot of the staircase that leads to Susan's bedroom. She might come down unawares, as you have. When you have done that, come back here, and I will tell you what it was that you saw Barney and Joanna bringing into the house."

[CHAPTER II.]

THE PENGARVON'S OF BROOME.

The Pengarvons had been settled at Broome for three hundred years. They were the younger branch of an ancient Cornish family, which professed to be able to trace back its pedigree to the days when legend and history were so inextricably mixed that it was impossible at this distance of time to draw any nice distinction between the two. For twenty miles round they were known as "The Proud Pengarvons;" but whether this distinctive title had its origin in some mental peculiarity of the family, or in their mode of carrying themselves towards their fellows, or whether the family motto, "Pride I cherish," was responsible for it, it would not be worth while too curiously to inquire. In any case, it was accepted as an indisputable fact that the Pengarvons should be proud, and proud they were accordingly. The present mansion of Broome, which was situate in the extreme north of the county, where the Derbyshire and Yorkshire moors impinge upon each other, dated no further back than the earlier half of the seventeenth century. It was a long, low, two-storied house, built of common grey stone indigenous to that part of the country--the same kind of stone that the rough unmortared walls were built of, which divided one field or stretch of moorland from another (for miles round Broome, hedges were few and far between). It was a house which, as regards design and ornamentation, was severely simple almost to the verge of ugliness, but, in years gone by it had been found spacious enough for all the needs of a large family, with accommodation for a score or more guests into the bargain. Sir Jasper Pengarvon, the last baronet--with whom the title became extinct for lack of heirs male--and the father of the Miss Pengarvons, to whom we have already been introduced, had married for his first wife Maria, niece of Lord Dronfield, who brought him a fortune of ten thousand pounds.

Sir Jasper was not a man to appreciate the delights of the country, or to settle down after marriage into the groove which had contented so many generations of his forefathers. While still little more than a youngster, he had developed a very pretty taste for the gaming-table, which it was impossible to gratify at Broome. So one day, after he had been nearly yawning himself to death for a week, and after a more pronounced tiff than usual with my lady, whose penurious ways were a terrible annoyance to him, he discovered that important business called him to London, and there, a few days later, his yellow posting-chariot deposited him.

After this, Broome saw little of its master except at infrequent intervals. His visits rarely lasted longer than a fortnight at a time, after which he would be off again, either to London, or to the country house of one or another of his many friends. Meanwhile, Lady Pengarvon vegetated from year end to year end in the gloomy old house, seeing scarcely any company and rarely going from home, bringing up her daughters, giving sparingly to the poor, and being exercised in her mind for weeks before she ventured on the extravagance of ordering a new gown. All this time no heir male came to gladden his parents' hearts. Sir Jasper felt himself to be a deeply injured man, while his wife pined in secret and shut herself up from the world more closely than ever.

The Baronet had not been idle all this time. He had been doing his best, with the aid of the gaming-table, to dissipate the broad acres which had come down to him from a dozen generations of thrifty ancestors. It was a pleasant life, but unfortunately it couldn't last for ever. The end came when his eldest daughter was seventeen years old. His own fortune, his wife's fortune, the proceeds of the sale of every acre of land and every foot of timber that he had the power to sell had slipped through his fingers as easily as water through a sieve, till nothing was left save the old house of Broome, with a few acres of sparsely-timbered land about it, together with two small farms of the rental value of eighty pounds a year each, which it was not in the Baronet's power to touch. Beyond that the ruin was complete.

It was when affairs had come to this pass that Lady Pengarvon took it into her head to die. Her husband admitted that, under the circumstances, it was the most sensible thing she could have done. The poor lady was well out of her troubles.

Hardly was the funeral over before the Baronet packed off his daughters to some of their mother's relatives, and shut up the house, after which nothing definite was known as to his movements for nearly three years. At the end of that time information came to hand that Sir Jasper Pengarvon was about to take to himself a second wife, in the person of the daughter of a rich London drysalter, with a fortune of twenty-five thousand pounds.

The new Lady Pengarvon proved to be an unrefined, good-natured woman, who had probably been very pretty when she was a dozen years younger. Between her and the young ladies, her step-daughters, there was a great gulf, which they took care she should never overpass. She was their father's wife, and as such they treated her with civility and a certain amount of respect; but it was with a civility that chilled, and with a respect which seemed ever to imply, "We cannot rid ourselves of you, and consequently must tolerate you, bat don't look to us for anything more."

At the end of half a dozen years the second Lady Pengarvon went the way of her predecessor, fading slowly out of life under the cold, watchful eyes of Miss Barbara and her sister, which seemed to say, "We know you can't last long, and we shall not mourn you over-much when you are gone." She left behind her one little daughter, Isabel by name, who was at once packed off to a sister of her mother, near London; then the two Misses Pengarvon breathed more freely, and felt that Providence had not been unkind to them.

Meanwhile, Sir Jasper had resumed his old career in London as though there had never been a break in it. The young ladies saw little more of their father after the second Lady Pengarvon's death than they had before. He went down to Broome occasionally for a few days at a time, but that was all. He lived five years longer; then one morning he was found dead in his Mayfair lodging with a bullet through his heart. Once more he had come to the end of his resources. It was hopeless to think of marrying a third fortune. There stared him in the face an old age of obscure penury away from the haunts he loved so well, and the prospect daunted him. He died as he had lived, an utter pagan.

A few years later, the aunt with whom Isabel had gone to live died, and Miss Pengarvon found herself under the necessity of sending Barney Dale for the child, there being no other home for her than Broome. Isabel at this time was a blue-eyed, yellow-haired little lady of seven, the very presentment in features and expression of a certain youthful Miss Pengarvon whose portrait by Sir Joshua graced the gallery at Broome. In truth, the drysalter's little grand-daughter had all the traditional beauty of the women of her father's race--a beauty which had so unaccountably lapsed in the case of her elder half-sisters, niece though their mother had been to an earl.

It was in the dusk of an autumn afternoon that Barney Dale and his charge reached Broome. The Misses Pengarvon were awaiting the child in the old oak parlor, which even on the brightest day in summer was gloomy and full of strange shadows. The elder sister came forward a step or two, and taking Isabel by the hand, gazed down in frowning silence on the fair young face, which returned her look with wondering, frightened eyes. A faint momentary color flushed her sallow cheeks. Then she stooped and pressed her thin, cold lips to Isabel's forehead.

"So you are come back to Broome, child. They had better have found you another home," she said in her dry, hard voice, in which not the slightest chord of sympathy ever seemed to vibrate. Miss Letitia, who copied her sister in everything, went through a similar formula.

Isabel gazed from one stern, sad-faced woman to the other, and her lips quivered. She turned and clung to Barney's arm.

"Oh, take me away! take me away! I want to go back!" she cried.

Miss Pengarvon turned away in high displeasure, and Barney led the tearful child from the room.

That first night, and many nights afterwards, Isabel cried herself to sleep in the huge four-poster, with its funereal draperies, in which they put her to bed. All her life she had been used to being petted and made much of, and had hardly known what it was to be alone. But now she was left by herself in a great ghostly room from six o'clock at night till seven next morning. She felt herself to be quite an unconsidered trifle in that huge ocean of bed. She was morally sure that those grim portraits on the walls--dark, frowning gentlemen in perukes and embroidered clothes, and stately ladies in hoops and high-heeled shoes--whispered to each other about her, Isabel Pengarvon; and that after the candle was taken away they stepped down out of their frames, and hastened to join the other ghosts in the long gallery, where they danced and flirted and took snuff with each other, till some watchful cock on a faraway farm sounded the warning note which sent them back to their faded frames, there to attitudinize in silent mockery till another midnight should come round.

But these first fears gradually wore themselves away, and in time Isabel and the portraits became great friends. She would sit up in bed on moonlight nights, and talk to them by the hour together. She invented private histories for many of them--strings of adventures, such as only a child's brain could have imagined. Like other people, she had her favorites. Among such were "my Lady Bluesash" and "Miss Prettyshoes," "Mr. Longcurls" and "Captain Finelace," all people of quality, who were so good-natured as to have no secrets from Isabel.

With that marvellous adaptability which all children possess in a greater or lesser degree, Isabel gradually learned to look upon Broome as her home, and to have few cares or interests that were not bounded by its four grey walls. She lighted up the solitary old house like a ray of sunshine that warms and brightens at the same time. On Sundays she went with her sisters to church, and was shut up with them in the great oaken pew, with its closely-drawn curtains, where the preacher's voice came to her as the voice of one that crieth in the wilderness, he himself being altogether unseen, and from whence nothing was visible to her wandering eyes save a portion of the groined roof and two hideous gargoyles, whose staring eyes seemed to watch her every movement.

When Isabel was fourteen years old she was sent to a school in Nottingham to complete her education. Since her arrival at Broome her only teacher had been Miss Letitia, who, in their long hours together over their lessons, had, in her own cold, formal way, grown to like the bright-eyed, high-spirited girl far better than at one time she believed it possible she ever should do. Isabel was away for three years; at seventeen she came home "finished."

She was quite a young lady by this time--tall, slender, and with all the traditional beauty of her race. She was brimming over with mischief and high spirits, and she looked forward with dread to the dreary, uneventful life before her, with no company save that of her two middle-aged sisters--for Miss Pengarvon was now forty years old, Miss Letitia only two years younger--and to being buried alive, as it were, in that grim old house among the Derbyshire hills. Her life at school had served to show her a little of the world, from which she now felt as if she were about to be shut out forever--just enough, in fact, to make its attractions, known and unknown, all the more alluring to her vivid imagination. She had seen the Nottingham shops, gay with the manifold wares dear to a girl's heart; she had heard the garrison band play delicious waltzes that thrilled her with emotions unknown before, and more than one audacious young officer had turned to look and look again, as she was pacing demurely to church with her school-fellows. She had devoured all the love stories that had been smuggled into the school, and she had heard other girls talking about sweethearts and possible husbands, and she could not help wondering whether anyone would ever fall in love with her. Isabel did what few girls do--she cried bitter tears when the time came for her to bid good-bye to school for ever.

Two year passed without change. Her life of repression and isolation became at times a burden almost too heavy to be borne. Her nature was affectionate, but impulsive; she was warm-hearted, but with something wayward in her disposition, which, under happier circumstances, would doubtless have found a vent in high spirits and innocent fun. The end of the matter was that one morning Isabel was missing. She left behind her a note addressed to Miss Pengarvon, in which she stated that she was about to be married to some one who loved her very dearly, and that she would write further particulars in a few days. For some time past, a young gentleman, name unknown, had been stopping at the King's Arms Hotel, Stavering, ostensibly for fishing and sketching purposes; but as he and Isabel had been seen together more than once, pacing the sheltered walks by the river, and as he disappeared at the same time, there could be little doubt that they had gone away together. After reading the letter, Miss Pengarvon threw it into the fire. Then she caused all Isabel's clothes to be burnt--not that the poor girl had had anything beyond a very meagre wardrobe--and locked the door of the room which had been hers and took away the key.

"She has disgraced the name she bears. Let us never speak of her again," she said in her bitterest tones to Miss Letitia. The latter was crying quietly to herself. Miss Pengarvon regarded her with silent scorn.

Three weeks later there came a second letter from Isabel, bearing the London postmark, and, a month after that, a third which had been stamped at Southampton. Both these letters Miss Pengarvon burned without opening. After that no further letter came, and it seemed as if Isabel were indeed lost to them for ever.

Three years went by, and then came that snowy December night which brought Isabel back, a suppliant, to the door of Broome. It has already been told how Miss Pengarvon refused her admittance, how Barney Dale and his wife found her dying, or dead in the snow; and how a reluctant consent was given to her inanimate body being brought indoors by way of the back entrance. From that hour every trace of her vanished. Morning broke, the housemaid came down stairs and went about her duties, suspecting nothing. Neither inside the house nor out was any sign or token to be seen of her, who living or dead, had been carried in but a few hours before. Where was she? What had become of her? Those were questions which four people alone out of all the world could have answered, had they chosen to speak.

THE STORY.

[CHAPTER I.]

MR. HAZELDINE CHANGES HIS NOTES FOR GOLD.

Twenty years, with all their manifold changes, have come and gone since Isabel Pengarvon was found one December night lying in the snow in front of the great door at Broome; and the course of our narrative now takes us to Ashdown, a thriving town in the Midlands, of some twenty-five to thirty thousand inhabitants.

Everybody in Ashdown knew Avison's Bank, and could have directed a stranger to it. It had been established for nearly three-quarters of a century, and no bank stood higher in the estimation of the manufacturers and tradespeople of the town or of the farmers round about. Mr. Avison, senior, owing to his great age and infirmities, had retired from any active direction of the business some years ago. Mr. Avison, junior, who was himself a middle-aged man, had been abroad, with the exception of a week or two now and then, for the last year or more, in search of the health which his native country denied him. Now, however, he was coming back--was, in fact, expected almost immediately, and was once more going to try a winter at home.

Since the retirement of the elder partner, and during the absence of the younger, the entire management of the business had devolved upon Mr. Hazeldine, the chief cashier, and no one more capable of sustaining the burthen could have been found. He had been with the firm since boyhood, and in process of time had risen from one grade to another till it was impossible for him to rise any higher, unless he were made a partner; a contingency which had been discussed more than once between the two Mr. Avisons. Although of obscure origin, Mr. Hazeldine, early in life, had married a young lady of some standing in Ashdown society, who brought with her a fortune of three thousand pounds, and had thereby at once raised himself considerably in the social scale. Two sons and one daughter had been born of the marriage, all of whom were now grown up. Edward, the elder son, was in business as a brewer at Beecham, which might almost be called a suburb of Ashdown, although it was in another parish. He was a keen, hard-headed business man, eager to push his way in the world, and ambitious after a fashion which no one but himself was aware of.

The younger son, Clement, was in practice as a surgeon. After gaining experience for three or four years as assistant to a popular London doctor, his father had bought for him what remained of the practice of old Doctor Diprose. Clement had thereupon removed his quarters to Ashdown, and was at present fighting the uphill fight of a young doctor in a small provincial town. Fanny, Mr. Hazeldine's daughter, was unmarried, and lived at home with her parents.

It was customary at Avison's Bank for Mr. Hazeldine, or his chief clerk, John Brancker (generally the latter) to go up to London by train every Thursday and there change a thousand or twelve hundred pounds' worth of notes for gold, in order to meet the requirements of the bank's numerous small customers on market-day. On this particular Thursday on which we make his acquaintance, Mr. Hazeldine himself was on his way to London to change the usual amount of notes for gold. In the netting of the carriage overhead was the black bag, now empty, in which he would bring the money back. As he sits there in the train with folded arms and shut eyes, to all appearance asleep, but in reality as wideawake as ever he had been in his life, and with his mind pondering a thousand questions, let us endeavor, with a few touches, to bring him more definitely before the reader.

James Hazeldine at this time was fifty-four years old. He was closely shaven, except for two small side-whiskers, so that there was nothing to hide his square, clear-cut jaw, his thin lips, and firm-set mouth. In color his hair and whiskers, once nearly black, were now an iron-grey. He had a prominent, well-cut nose, and cold, resolute, steel-grey eyes. The predominant expression of his face was determination; you felt that here was a man with a masterful spirit who would not readily be moved from any course, whether for good or evil, which he had once made up his mind to follow. Mingled with this expression was the keen, shrewd look of the experienced man of business--the look of one who in his time had chaffered and bargained with many men. In his dress Mr. Hazeldine was somewhat old-fashioned and precise; possibly it was part of his policy to be so. He wore a black tail-coat and waistcoat, and pepper-and-salt continuations. He wore a starched checked cravat, high-pointed collars and broad-toed shoes with drab gaiters. With the addition of an overcoat in winter, his dress was the same all the year round.

To-day, however, Mr. Hazeldine was not looking in his usual health. There was a worn and anxious expression on his face like that of a man who had been much worried of late. His eyes, too, looked sunken and dull, but his mouth was as firm-set as ever. Only a few days ago his daughter Fanny had said to her mother:

"Have you noticed how fast papa's hair has been turning grey of late?"

But Mrs. Hazeldine, whose eyesight was no longer as good as it had once been, had noticed nothing.

Mr. Hazeldine roused himself from his reverie with a sigh when the train stopped for the collection of tickets. At the terminus he engaged a hansom and was driven direct to the Bank of England. There he exchanged notes to the value of twelve hundred pounds for gold, which sum he locked up in the bag he had brought with him.

On leaving the Bank, he made his way into Throgmorton Street, where he plunged into a maze of narrow and tortuous courts and passages, nearly all of which have been swept away within the last few years.

Threading his way like one who held the clue, he presently dived into the semi-dark entry of one of the oldest houses; the numerous names painted on the door-posts betokening that it was split up into sundry suites of offices. Ascending slowly to the first floor, with feet which seemed weighted with lead, Mr. Hazeldine turned the handle of a certain door, and went in. He found himself in an outer office occupied by two clerks.

"Is Mr. Barker within and disengaged?" he asked.

"What name, sir?" queried one of the clerks, thereby answering the double question.

"Mr. James," was the reply.

The clerk was scarcely gone a moment. Holding open the door of the inner office, he said:

"Mr. Barker will see you, sir."

Mr. James went in, and the door was shut behind him.

At a square table, with his back to the fire, sat Mr. Barker, a stout, bald-headed, foxy-looking man, dressed in a blue frock coat and white waistcoat, with a flower in his buttonhole, and a rather conspicuous display of jewelry. He nodded familiarly to "Mr. James" as to an old acquaintance.

"I rather thought you might call in the course of the day," he said. "Come to settle up, eh?"

"Yes, come to settle up," was the answer, with a faint sigh. "Perhaps you won't mind taking the greater part in gold; your doing so will oblige me."

"I shall have no objection at all, Mr. James. It don't matter to me--ha! ha!--in what form it comes, so long as I get hold of it. What nice weather we have been having of late."

Mr. James opened his bag and drew therefrom twelve small canvas bags containing one hundred sovereigns each. "Be good enough to count these," he said.

Mr. Barker emptied one bag on the table and counted its contents into little piles of twenty sovereigns each.

"I won't detain you, Mr. James, while I count the rest," he said. "I have no doubt I shall find them quite correct."

"There are twelve there," said Mr. James, indicating the bags. Then he drew a roll of notes from his breast-pocket. "These will make up the seventeen."

Mr. Barker took the notes, wetted his forefinger, and counted them one by one.

"Right you are, sir, and I'm very much obliged to you," was his comment when he had done. Then he went to a safe in one corner, and having deposited the notes and gold in it, he drew from a receptacle containing several other documents of a similar kind, a long, narrow strip of bluish paper, which he handed to his visitor. "All ready and prepared, you see," he said, with a smile.

Mr. James just glanced at the document, then he crumpled it up, and flinging it into the fire, watched it till nothing was left of it but ashes.

Mr. Barker laughed.

"Have a glass of sherry. You are not looking over-bright to-day," he said, heartily.

"Thanks; I never drink before dinner," was the answer. "I have been worried a little in business matters lately, that is all," he added. "But I am going to take a long holiday presently."

"Nothing like it when you're fagged out, or when the machinery gets a bit out of gear," responded Mr. Barker. "Can't keep the bow always bent, you know. Sha'n't see you again for some time, then? South of France--Italian Lakes--eh?"

"Well, I hardly know yet where I am bound for," said Mr. James, with a curious, pallid smile. Then he took up his hat and brushed it round with his sleeve in a hesitating way very unusual with him. "Nothing you see or hear ever surprises you, does it, Mr. Barker?" he asked.

"Well, no, Mr. James. I'm rather too old a bird to be surprised at anything."

"Then you won't be surprised at anything you may read in the papers in the course of the next few days."

Mr. Barker winked and laid a finger against one side of his nose. As an action it was vulgar, but expressive.

Mr. James nodded and smiled the same curious smile.

"Good-morning, Mr. Barker," he said. "Good-morning. I'll leave this empty bag till next time I call."

"Which I hope will be before very long, eh, Mr. James? Always happy to accommodate you, you know."

"We shall see what we shall see. And so, once more, good-morning." He went without another word, closing the green baize door behind him. A minute later he found himself in the street.

Mr. James Hazeldine walked on till he was overtaken by an empty cab. This he hailed, and was driven westward. Although he had told Mr. Barker that he never drank before dinner, he now went into a tavern in the Strand, and called for a tumbler of hot brandy and water and then for another, both of which he drank in less than five minutes. In truth, he looked very haggard and ill. During the next half hour he wandered up and down the Strand in a purposeless sort of way, staring into the shop windows, but having no thought or interest in anything he saw there. More than once he took a letter out of the breast pocket of his coat, read the address over to himself, and then put it back again. At length, spying a pillar-box in a side street, he walked slowly up to it and again took out the letter. It was directed as under:

"Edward Hazeldine, Esq.,

"The Brewery,

"Beecham by Ashdown,

"Midlandshire."

He dropped the letter into the box.

"That settles everything," he muttered. "There can be no turning back now. Edward will get it by the first post to-morrow."

Why was Mr. Hazeldine posting a letter to his son, whom he would probably see in the course of the evening?

He turned back into the Strand, and entering a restaurant, called for a basin of soup. He ate about half of it, finished up with a glass of sherry, and then ordered a cab and was driven to the terminus.

Going into the cloak-room at the station, he there redeemed a black bag, precisely similar in size and appearance to the empty bag he had left in Mr. Barker's office. This bag, which apparently contained something heavy, he took with him into the carriage and placed it in the netting over his head.

There were other passengers in the compartment, but he spoke to no one. He pulled up the collar of his coat and shut his eyes, and, to all appearance, went fast asleep. The clocks were striking seven as he walked out of Ashdown station, carrying his bag in one hand and his umbrella in the other.

Mr. Hazeldine's house was not far from the station. He let himself in by means of his latchkey, and walked straight into the drawing-room, where he found his wife and daughter.

"You are late this evening, dear," said Mrs. Hazeldine, languidly, as if his being so were a matter of no moment.

"Yes, I had some special business to transact, and could not get done in time to catch the two o'clock train."

And yet he had spent nearly an hour mooning about the Strand!

He sat down in his easy-chair with an air of weariness.

"We did not wait dinner for you, not knowing how late you would be," resumed his wife. "Will you have a steak cooked, or what shall I order for you?"

"I had some dinner in town; all I want is a cup of tea."

His daughter rang the bell, and presently a tea equipage was brought in.

"You are not looking at all well, papa," said Fanny, as she handed him a cup. "I hope you are not going back to that horrid Bank to-night."

"I am quite well, my dear," he said. "A little tired with my journey; that's all. I must go to the Bank for a couple of hours." He drew her face down to his own and kissed it.

"There now, you have disarranged my collar, you dear old bear," she said, turning to survey herself in the glass over the chimney-piece.

"You scarcely ever spend an evening at home nowadays, James," said Mrs. Hazeldine, in the complaining tone to which her husband was well used. "You seem to care for nothing but the Bank. Instead of taking things easy as you get older, you seem to have to work harder every year that you live."

"I hope we shall see more of you at home when Mr. Avison gets back," remarked Fanny.

Mr. Hazeldine shivered, and then he sipped at his tea.

"Do you know what I am going to do?" he asked, presently. "I am going to take a long, long holiday."

"Oh, papa! when--when?" cried Fanny the excitable.

"Almost immediately."

"You darling old crocodile! I'm languishing to visit Switzerland again. But, of course, one can't go there at this time of year. The Riviera, and then on to Rome, would be delightful. I am dying to see Rome."

"Give me Paris, either in winter or summer," said Mrs. Hazeldine, with the air of a person who knows her own mind. "I care nothing for a parcel of mouldy ruins, but I do love nice shops; and there are no shops in the world equal to those of Paris."

[CHAPTER II.]

"FAREWELL, A LONG FAREWELL."

Mrs. Hazeldine was a lady of fifty, who, in the small circles of Ashdown society, had at one time been accounted a beauty, and who sometimes found it difficult to forget that she was one no longer. On her delicate, clear-cut features there rested habitually a pinched and careworn expression. She was a woman who, never having known any real trouble, made her life a perpetual worry with those small, everyday grievances which we all have to contend against in a greater or lesser degree. To wail over the shortcomings of her servants, to moan over certain fancied ailments, to discuss the last morsel of local gossip with this friend or that, or to immerse herself for the time being with Fanny in preparations for the next ball, or garden party, or flower show, seemed to be the sole objects for which Mrs. Hazeldine existed. And yet there was one more object for which she lived, and that was to see her daughter married to some man of wealth and position--two qualifications which, she persuaded herself, were absolutely indispensable to marital felicity. As yet, she and Fanny were waiting for the coming Prince, who, so far, had not even put in an appearance. But Mrs. Westerton, of Owenscraig, was going to give a fancy-dress ball on the nineteenth, to which Mrs. Hazeldine and her daughter had been invited, and just now expectation ran high in the breasts of both.

Fanny Hazeldine was a pretty blonde who had seen her twenty-second birthday. Her mother, when young, had been noted for her slender and graceful figure, and one of Fanny's chief desires was that she should be noted in the same way. She had been troubled in her mind of late by a suspicion that she was imperceptibly, but surely, increasing in bulk. She laced so tightly that sometimes she felt as if she could scarcely breathe; but even that did not seem to have the desired effect. Unfortunately, Fanny was blessed with a fine, healthy appetite, and a great liking for the good things of the table. It was a pathetic sight at dinner to see the poor girl struggling between her natural inclination for some tempting dish, and the certainty which beset her that by partaking of it she would not be tending to promote the object on which her heart was so firmly fixed. She had been brought up by her mother's side, and had imbibed her mother's notions and prejudices; and, in such a case, unless there was some native strength of character, as the mother is, so to a great extent will the daughter prove to be. Fanny's pretty head was filled with thoughts of sweethearts and possible conquests, and whether this style of dress would suit her, or that mode of hat become her best--and with very little beside.

"Oh, papa," she cried, "Captain Lacie has lent me such a charming Book of Costumes. All the plates are colored. I do wish you would look through it and say which costume you would like me to appear in at Mrs. Westerton's fancy ball."

"Mrs. Westerton's fancy ball!" echoed Mr. Hazeldine, with a strangely dismal laugh. "What should I know about such frivolities? Besides, I'm too tired tonight. Then, again, something may happen to hinder you from going--one never can tell."

"It would have to be something very particular that would keep me away," said Fanny, with a pout. "I'm dying to go--only I can't make up my mind whether to go as a Breton fish-wife, as a Louis-Sèize marquise, or----"

At this moment the door opened, and in marched Edward Hazeldine. He had caught his sister's last sentence.

"If I were you, Fan, I should go as Ophelia, with straws in your hair," he said. "A touch of madness would become you admirably."

"Why don't you keep your rude speeches for your fine lady friends at Seaham Lodge?" asked Fanny, with her nose in the air and a heightened color. But next minute she poured out a cup of tea for her brother and took it to him.

Edward Hazeldine was a robust, strongly-built man of thirty, not unlike what his father had been at the same age. His face was instinct with energy and determination. He had his father's thin lips, and his father's cold, steel-grey eyes. He was brusque in manner and decided in all his movements. He was a man who had an excellent opinion of himself, and a dogged belief that whatever he might choose to say or do must be the right thing to say or do. He was not the sort of man you would ask a favor of without thinking twice before doing so. Children rarely made friends with him, and vagrants of every kind had a rooted aversion to him. His ambition--and it was an ambition which in most men of his position would have seemed of that vaulting kind which Shakespeare has told us about, but, somehow, it did not seem so in his case--was one day to win for himself a seat in Parliament; but it was a secret which he kept locked in his own breast.

"Have you been up to town to-day?" he asked, as he sat down near his father.

"Yes. I had a little business to transact which Brancker could not do for me, so I got the notes changed at the same time."

There was something in his father's tone that struck Edward. He bent his eyes on him more attentively than he had hitherto done, and then he saw how careworn and haggard he looked. He did not, however, make any remark about it, knowing how much his father disliked being noticed; besides which, his thoughts were just then running on a very unpleasant matter which more immediately concerned himself.

"I had a bit of bad news this afternoon," he presently remarked.

"Aye--what was that?" asked Mr. Hazeldine, lifting his eyes from the carpet to his son's face, but betraying no curiosity in the way he put the question.

"One of my customers at Monkshill has let me in for a debt of twenty pounds--the scoundrel."

"I would not call a man a scoundrel for the sake of a paltry twenty pounds," said Fanny, as she peeped into the teapot.

"Yes, you would, Miss, if you had to work for your living as I have," retorted her brother. "How long would it take you to earn a 'paltry twenty pounds,' as you call it, I wonder?"

"I could spend it much more quickly than I could earn it, I have no doubt," retorted Miss Fan, with a saucy smile. "Still, I am quite sure----"

"I am quite sure that you don't know what you are talking about," interrupted her brother, brusquely. "Leave business matters for men to deal with, and attend to your feathers and fal-lals. A paltry sum indeed!" He pushed back his chair in a huff and laid hold of his hat.

"Edward always was short-tempered, and I suppose he always will be," murmured Mrs. Hazeldine, sotto voce, with the air of a martyr.

"Going already?" asked Mr. Hazeldine.

"Yes; I've a couple more calls to make before going home. What a scamp that fellow must be!" Edward could not forget his twenty pounds. Money was very dear to his soul.

Mr. Hazeldine took one of his son's hands in both his. "Good-bye--good-bye, and God bless you!" he said, in a low voice. Edward looked surprised, but said nothing. "I would not let this loss worry you overmuch, if I were you. After all, the sum is not a large one, and there are worse things in life to endure than the loss of a few pounds."

Edward chafed a little. He had expected sympathy, instead of which he was being lectured. "I'll oppose his certificate, for all that," he muttered, viciously. He withdrew his hand abruptly from his father's grasp, and with an all-round "Good-night," not very graciously spoken, he marched out of the room, shaking an imaginary fist in "that scoundrel's" face as he went.

Mr. Hazeldine sank back into his chair without a word more. He had made no mention to his son of the letter which he had posted to his address that afternoon in London.

About five minutes later, there was a tremendous rat-a-tat at the front door.

"Whoever can that be?" cried Fanny, springing up and taking a hasty survey of herself in the glass.

The visitors proved to be Mrs. and Miss Maywood, two fashionable friends of Mrs. Hazeldine and Fanny. After the two young ladies had kissed each other, and the two elder ones had shaken hands, and made one or two mutual inquiries, Mrs. Maywood and her daughter condescended to extend the tips of their fingers to the master of the house. He was the money-making machine, and as such a necessary adjunct of existence; but beyond that point he was a nonentity.

As it turned out, Mrs. Maywood and her daughter were also going to Mrs. Westerton's fancy ball, and they had come to have a quiet gossip with their friends anent that all-important event. How fortunate that Captain Lacie's Book of Costumes was there! It opened up an inexhaustible mine of conversational topics. As they criticised one plate after another, it seemed to them as if they could have gone on talking for a week; and if occasionally they were all talking at once, it did not greatly matter.

Mr. Hazeldine began to feel himself de trop.

Presently he looked at his watch, and then he got up and stood with his back to the fire. There was a grey, earthy look about his face, and a strange glassiness in his eyes. Fanny came up to him.

"Are you going now?" she asked.

"Yes; the sooner I go, the sooner I shall finish what I have to do."

"What a shame that you have to leave home again at this time of night!"

"Not a bit of it. Business is business, and must be attended to."

There was an assumption of gaiety in his tone which his looks belied. He was gazing down with wistful, yearning eyes into the fair young face before him. Suddenly he enfolded Fanny in his arms and pressed her to his heart; then he kissed her three or four times very tenderly on her lips, her forehead, and her hair. This was a proceeding so entirely novel in Fanny's experience of her father, that for a moment or two she was at a loss what to make of it. Then it struck her, in her little mercenary way, that it would be foolish on her part not to take advantage of such an unwonted burst of paternal affection. Surely, when he kissed her in that way, he could not have the heart to refuse her anything!

"Papa, dear," she whispered, "I saw such a lovely pair of earrings in Wilson's window the other day. Turquoises and diamonds. I'm dying to have them."

Mr. Hazeldine looked at her vaguely for a moment or two as though his mind were far away. Then he smiled faintly, and said: "Speak to me about them again to-morrow. Yes--to-morrow."

"You darling old kangaroo!" she exclaimed, and with that she squeezed his face between her hands and kissed him in her impulsive fashion.

"Has Clement been here this evening?" asked Mr. Hazeldine.

"No, papa. He does not call so often of an evening now as he used to do. He is nearly always at John Brancker's. Everybody knows why he goes there so often."

"I for one don't know, unless it be to play the fiddle."

"Oh, that's a mere blind. He goes to see that Hermia Rivers, of course. It's my opinion that he's in love with her."

"In love with Hermia Rivers? Well, he might do worse. I don't know a more charming girl than Miss Rivers."

"Charming, do you call her?" said Miss Fan, with a toss of her head. "Where are your eyes, papa? You really ought to interfere. There's no doubt she's trying to inveigle Clem into a promise of marriage."

"Clement's quite old enough to know his own mind and to judge for himself; and, as I said before, Miss Rivers is a charming girl."

He turned lingeringly away, and went up to his wife.

"Good-night, Maria," he said.

Mrs. Hazeldine was busy discussing some question of chiffons with Mrs. Maywood. She looked up when her husband spoke.

"Why do you say good-night?" she asked.

"Because I shall not be home till late. You had better not sit up for me."

"Very well, dear; you have your latch-key, I suppose. I will have a little gas left on in the hall."

She turned to Mrs. Maywood again, thinking her husband would go; but he suddenly bent down, and taking her face gently between his hands, he turned it up to his and kissed it twice.

"Good gracious, James! what are you about?--and before company, too!" cried Mrs. Hazeldine, quite in a fluster, as she readjusted her cap-strings. But her husband had gone, taking his black bag with him. Miss Maywood, from the opposite side of the table, had seen how white his face was, and how his lips twitched as he turned away; but such matters were no concern of hers.

On leaving the house Mr. Hazeldine did not take the turning which led the nearest way to the Bank, but one which led away from it. After walking for a few minutes he stopped opposite a small, semi-detached house. One window was lighted up, and in it was a wire blind, on which the word "Surgery" was painted. It was the house of Clement Hazeldine. Instead of going up to it, Mr. Hazeldine went across the road and sought the shelter of a dark entry. Here he waited patiently for a full quarter of an hour. At the end of that time the light in the surgery was extinguished, and presently Clement emerged from the house and strode away at a rapid pace, carrying his fiddle-case in one hand. Mr. Hazeldine quitted his hiding-place as his son turned up the street.

"Clement! Clement!" he called, and there was a ring of agony in his voice. But the young man heard him not, and went quickly on his way.

Mr. Hazeldine said no more, but waited till his son was out of sight, and then turned in the direction of the Bank. A few minutes' walking brought him to it. Sweet, the porter, who with his wife lived in the basement and was custodian of the premises, was lowering the gas in the lobby, as Mr. Hazeldine went in.

"There's a light in the general office. Who's at work there?" asked the latter.

"Mr. Brancker and Mr. Judd are there yet, sir," answered Sweet. "I left a little gas on in your office, thinking you might be back, sir."

"All right. Sweet. Mr. Brancker and Judd will be off before long, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir; they told me just now that they intended clearing out in a few minutes."

"Good-night, Sweet."

"Good-night, sir."

Mr. Hazeldine passed into his private office, shut the door, and turned up the gas.

[CHAPTER III.]

TEA, TALK, AND MUSIC.

Avison's Bank had been built about twenty years. It had been erected on the site of a much older building which dated from the period of William and Mary, and, after serving for several generations as the family mansion of the Colvilles, had been converted into a bank. The present structure was a plain but substantial building of red brick with freestone facings. It was entered from the street through large folding inner doors which swung easily to-and-fro on their well-oiled hinges. On the right a glazed swing-door led into the public office, where sundry clerks behind a long counter were prepared to honor your cheques, or to receive at your hands whatsoever sums you might be desirous of entrusting to the safe keeping of the Bank. This outer office was divided from an inner one by a half-glass partition. In the inner office John Brancker and Ephraim Judd were generally to be seen busily engaged on the Bank ledgers; John, as the senior official next to Mr. Hazeldine, being there to be referred to in case of any dispute or doubtful point cropping up in the outer office. This inner office had a second door which opened into the main corridor, and a third door into a fireproof room where books and securities could be safely lodged. On the left, as you entered from the street, were also two doors, both of which bore the word "Private." The first of them opened into Mr. Hazeldine's office, the second into that of Mr. Avison. In the former was the entrance to the strong room in which were the bullion safes, together with other things of scarcely less importance. In this room there was no window, and during business hours the gas was kept constantly alight in it, ventilation being supplied by means of a small grated opening in the outer wall. Finally, there was a door of communication between Mr. Hazeldine's office and that of Mr. Avison.

As Sweet, the night-watchman, had informed Mr. Hazeldine, John Brancker and Ephraim Judd were at work this evening in the inner office. It was no unusual thing for them to work overtime at certain periods of the month. John Brancker had been in the service of the Bank for between sixteen and seventeen years. He was a homely-featured, plainly-dressed man of five-and-forty, with no pretentions to style or fashion. It was this very unpretentiousness, in conjunction with a certain simplicity of character and a cheerfulness of disposition that never varied, which combined to make him such a universal favorite; everybody in the town knew John Brancker and everybody liked him.

Ephraim Judd was twenty years younger than his fellow-clerk. Mr. Avison the elder had brought him to the Bank when a boy, and there he had been ever since. He was lame, the result of an accident in childhood, and he made use of a stout stick when walking to and from business, although he never seemed to need it when passing from one part of the Bank to another, but got over the ground with a sort of hop and skip which had rather a comical effect in the eyes of strangers. He was a tall, narrow-chested young man, with long, straight, black hair, a sallow complexion, and thin, eager, hungry-looking features. His ears were abnormally large and stuck out prominently from his head, and it was a matter of common report among his fellow clerks that Ephraim could move them backward or forward, after the fashion of certain animals, at will. Like John Brancker, he dressed very plainly, almost shabbily, presenting thereby a marked contrast to some of the juniors, with their chains and rings and elaborate display of collar and cuffs. Mr. Judd's chest was delicate, and when the weather was at all bad he wore a respirator, and at other times he generally muffled himself up carefully about the throat in a long, worsted comforter of many colors. It might be for the same reason, perhaps, that he nearly always wore india rubber overshoes; but that could hardly be the reason why his stick should be shod with the same material. By means of his galoshes Ephraim was enabled to move noiselessly about from place to place, and he sometimes quite startled Sweet, who was pursy and scant of breath, by going up behind him and touching him suddenly on the shoulder when he had no idea that anyone was near him.

"Drat that Mr. Judd with his ingy-rubber shoes!" the night-watchman would say to his wife. "I wish he wouldn't shake one's narves so. He steals about the building like a ghost, or--or as if he was going to commit a burglary; and one never knows whether he's behind one, or in front of one, or where he is."

It was somewhat singular that Ephraim should be so little of a favorite among his fellow clerks--but so it was. He was a man not much given to talking; he kept his own counsel, making friends of nobody, giving offence to none, and seemingly trying to efface himself as much as possible; yet everybody seemed to have a vague distrust of him; everybody had the feeling that he was a man who hid more than he showed on the surface--everybody, that is, except simple-hearted John Brancker, who was proud of Ephraim's cleverness at figures, and proud of his handwriting, which was the best of anyone's in the Bank.

Sweet put his head into the office where the two men were at work. "Mr. Hazeldine has come, sir," he said, addressing himself to Mr. Brancker. "I thought you might perhaps have something you wanted to see him about."

"I don't think I shall trouble him to-night," answered John; "he will be tired, and what matters I have to see him about will keep till morning."

Sweet disappeared and shut the door.

"If I were in Mr. H.'s place, I'd take care not to work as hard as he does," remarked Ephraim.

"When a man's heart is in what he does, as Mr. Hazeldine's is, hard work becomes a pleasure."

"What a pretty girl his daughter is!" resumed Ephraim, after a few moments' silence. "Just the sort of young lady I should like to make up to, if I were in a position to do so."

John laughed.

"Yes, Miss Hazeldine is pretty--nobody can deny that; but whether she would make the sort of wife to suit a man like you may be open to doubt."

"Oh, you are a confirmed old bachelor, Mr. B., and are not supposed to know anything about the ladies."

A shadow flitted across John's face for a moment.

"May it not be because we old bachelors know so much about the ladies that we remain bachelors?" he asked, with a smile. "Have you any idea, Ephraim, of making up to Miss Hazeldine?"

"Now you are poking fun at me, Mr. B. As if she would condescend to look at a poor beggar like me!"

John shut up his inkstand and began to put away his books.

"Are you going to stay much longer?" he asked.

"I shall finish this ledger and then be off. I've had about enough of figures for one day."

John presently bade the other good-night, leaving him still perched on his high stool. A sharp walk of ten minutes carried him home. He lived in a pleasant little semi-detached cottage in the suburbs. There was a small garden in front of his house and a larger one behind, with wide-stretching meadows beyond, and a low range of hills crowning the horizon.

John halted for a moment with his hand on the garden gate. A sound of music reached him from the cottage. His niece--Hermia Rivers--and Clement Hazeldine were playing a duet on the piano and violin.

"What capital time they keep!" he said to himself. "They are playing something I've never heard before. I suppose Mr. Clement has been having some new music from London."

John's terrier heard its master's footsteps on the gravel, and began to bark a welcome; the duet ceased in the middle of a bar; Hermia ran to the door, greeted her uncle with a kiss, and relieved him of his hat and coat, the cat came and purred round his legs, its tail erect in the air; his sister met him with that cheery smile without which home would not have seemed like home; and Clement Hazeldine gave him a hearty grip of the hand.

"We were missing your flute sadly," said the latter. "I have brought two or three fresh pieces this evening, and we were trying one of them over."

"You are very late, dear; but I have kept the teapot in the cosy for you," said Miss Brancker.

"And there's a fire which plainly says, 'Why don't you let me toast you some muffins,'" added Hermia.

"Sweet brought me up some tea about six o'clock," said John; "but I daresay I can manage another cup."

"Of course you can, uncle," rejoined Hermia. "Why, I have known you drink four cups many a time, and then ask for more."

"That must have been when I was very thirsty indeed; but little girls should never tell tales out of school."

Presently Hermia was on her knees toasting a couple of muffins at the sitting-room fire, for at Nairn Cottage the kitchen fire was allowed to go out after the early two o'clock dinner, when the girl, who came to do the rough work in the morning, was dismissed for the day.

"I left your father at the office," remarked John to Clement. "He has been to London, and I fancy that he did not get back till the seven o'clock train."

"I wish he would not stay so late, night after night," answered Clement. "Have you not noticed how care-worn he has been looking of late?"

"I can't say that I have remarked much difference in him, but that may be because I see him every day."

Clement shook his head.

"He has certainly aged very much of late. I was quite pained the other day to see him so worn and anxious-looking. I wish he would take a couple of months' rest right away from business."

John smiled.

"I know him better than you do, Mr. Clement. He would be miserable away from the Bank. But when Mr. Avison returns there will be no necessity for him to work so hard; and you must talk to him seriously about his health."

When John had finished his modest cup of tea he took up the poker and gave four loud taps with it on the back of the grate. Presently there came four taps in response, and a few minutes later Mr. Kittaway, John's next door neighbor, came in, followed by a servant girl carrying his violoncello in its case.

Mr. Kittaway was a retired wine merchant. He was a little, high-dried, bald old gentleman, with gold-rimmed spectacles, and an enormously high and stiff white cravat, above which his puckered face peered out as though he were gazing at one over a wall.

"What can have become of Frank?" queried John, presently. "It must be more than a week since he was here last. He's not ill, or I should have missed him from the office."

No one save Clement noticed the vivid blush that dyed Hermia's cheek. Fortunately the question was addressed to Miss Brancker.

"When he was here last he was all agog to join the New Spanish class at the Institute," responded the latter. "He has a great idea about reading 'Don Quixote' in the original."

"Frank is always agog after something new," said John, with a laugh, "which more often than not comes to nothing in the end. He's as changeable as the moon, as I've told him many a time. Still, he might have given us a look-in before now."

"If you were to walk as far as the 'Crown and Cushion'--not that it would be worth anyone's while to do so," remarked Mr. Kittaway, in his dryest manner--"I have no doubt you would find Master Frank at the present moment practising the spot-stroke, with the stump of a cigar between his teeth, and his hat very much at the back of his head."

It was known to all those present that there was no love lost between the ex-wine merchant and Frank Derison.

"There are four of us--just a comfortable quartete," resumed the little man--"which, in my opinion, is much preferable to a quintete; more especially when one of the five happens to keep execrable time."

This was another hit at the absent Frank.

"Come, come, friend Nathan," said John, slapping him lightly on the knee. "Frank's not quite so bad as you try to make out. He may be fond of a game of billiards--nowadays most young men seem to be--but where's the harm? I've often wished I could handle a cue; but I don't think I could if I were to try for a hundred years. And as for the bad time Frank keeps when he plays, I put that down to pure carelessness."

"There ought to be no carelessness where music is in question," interrupted the little man, hotly. "Music calls forth, and will be content with nothing less than the highest faculties of a man's nature; and where those are not given ungrudgingly, the result is a farce, sir--a wretched farce." He emphasized his last words with a vicious twang of one of the strings of his 'cello.

John laughed, but said nothing. He was too accustomed to his friend's tirades to attempt any confutation of them.

And so the little concert began. Hermia sat down to the piano, John brought out his beloved flute, Clement screwed up the strings of his fiddle, while Mr. Kittaway settled his spectacles and gave a preliminary scrape or two on his 'cello. Miss Brancker fixed herself in a corner near the fire with her knitting and a kitten on her lap.

Charlotte Brancker was two years younger than John, and was a feminine copy of him. She had the same homely features, somewhat softened in their outlines, but charged with goodness in one case as in the other. There was the same pleasant smile, the same ever-cheerful manner, the same thoughtfulness for the comfort of others. Two more thoroughly unselfish people than John Brancker and his sister it would have been hard to find.

Hermia Rivers, their orphan niece, had lived with them since she was three years old. She was now turned twenty, and was a very lovely girl. Her hair was the color of ripe corn in sunlight; her eyes were of the hue of violets when they first open their dewy lids to the morn; her face was instinct with thought and refinement.

It is almost needless to say that Clement Hazeldine was very much in love with her, although he had grave reasons for fearing that her heart was already given to Frank Derison. That there was some secret understanding between the two, his eyes, rendered keen by love, had not failed to convince him; and a secret understanding between two young people can, as a rule, have but one termination. Greatly he feared the worst; but there was a stubbornness of disposition about him which would not allow him to give up while a grain of hope was left to sustain him.

Meanwhile, he found it impossible to keep away from Nairn Cottage. Two or three evenings a week found him there, and he was always made welcome. The ostensible object of his visits was to form one in the little musical gatherings which, every Monday and Thursday evenings, wooed "the heavenly maid" in Miss Brancker's sitting-room.

[CHAPTER IV.]

A LAGGARD IN LOVE.

As Hermia sat playing this evening all the attention she was obliged to give to the music could not keep her uncle's words from ringing in her ears: "He is as changeable as the moon, as I have told him many a time." What if Frank had changed towards her, and were never to come and see her more!

She knew, or thought she knew, the reason why Frank Derison had kept away from Nairn Cottage for upwards of a week. On the occasion of his last visit, when she was at the piano, and he was turning over her music, there being no one but themselves in the room, he had suddenly stooped and imprinted a kiss on her cheek. She had started up in a flame of indignation, and the result had been a short but sharp passage of arms between the two. There was a sort of half-engagement between them (of which more hereafter), sufficiently binding, however, in Frank's opinion, to allow of his stealing a kiss "without a fellow being called over the coals for it as if he had committed some awful crime." But Hermia took a totally opposite view, and Frank was made to understand that, on no account, must he attempt to take such a liberty again. Thereupon, the young fellow had flung out of the cottage in a huff, and had not been near since; while Hermia, as a matter of course, had locked herself in her bedroom, and had a good cry all to herself.

The concert this evening went on for upwards of an hour. Then came an interruption. Dr. Hazeldine was wanted in haste by one of his patients.

"My father would fain have made a doctor of me," remarked Mr. Kittaway, parenthetically, "but I said, 'Give me a business that will leave me my own master at night, and that will ensure me from being called out of bed to go tramping through the rain or snow at all sorts of hours.'"

"It's nothing when you are used to it," said Clement, with a laugh.

"It seems to me very inconsiderate of people to be taken ill in the middle of the night," remarked the old gentleman, as he peered into his snuff-box; "matters ought to be arranged differently somehow." Mr. Kittaway stayed about half an hour after Clement's departure. After partaking of a small mug of warm elder wine and a soft biscuit, he, too, took his leave.

"I think I will walk as far as Strong's, and see whether he is likely to turn up on Sunday," said John, a few minutes later.

John was organist at the parish church, and Strong was the man who blew the bellows for him.

"It is rather late for you to go out," observed Miss Brancker.

"The night is fine, and the walk will do me good. Besides, if Strong is no better, I must look out for a substitute to-morrow."

Charlotte followed her brother to the garden gate.

"It seems to blow very like for rain," she said, as she held up her hand to ascertain the way of the wind. "Had you not better take your umbrella?"

But when the umbrella came to be looked for it could not be found.

"I must have left it at the Bank," said John, who was rather absent-minded in small matters; "but I don't think I shall need it to-night."

After a few more words he went his way, humming to himself one of the airs he had been playing. His sister watched him down the street till he was lost in the darkness; then she turned, and was on the point of going indoors, when Frank Derison came hurrying up from the opposite direction.

"Better late than never, Miss Brancker," he said, his thin, careless laugh. "I suppose I'm just about in time to bid you good night."

"Just about," answered the spinster, dryly. "We had some thought of sending the bellman round. We were anxious to know whether you were lost, stolen, or had strayed away of your own accord."

"I daresay you know. Miss Brancker, that I sometimes try to earn a little money by making up tradesmen's books of an evening. Well, I've had a special job of the kind to do during the last week, and that's why I've not been near the Cottage."

This was a little invention on Master Frank's part, made up on the spur of the moment, and he laughed to himself when he found how readily the simple-minded spinster took it in. In reality, his evenings had been spent in the billiard-room of the "Crown and Cushion." While he had offended Hermia at their last meeting, what she had said had been a source of offence to him, and he had stayed away purposely, if only to prove to her, as he said to himself, that he was not going to be tied to any girl's apron-string.

"Won't you come in for a little while?" said Aunt Charlotte; "John is out, and Hermy and I are all alone."

"Not to-night, I think, thanks all the same. My mother is not well, and I promised not to be late home this evening." This latter statement was also a little fiction on Frank's part.

"In that case, of course, I cannot press you to stay."

"Have you had any music to-night?" asked Frank abruptly.

"Yes, both Mr. Kittaway and Clement Hazeldine were here, but Clement was called away to a patient, and the party broke up early."

"Confound that fellow! he's always here!" muttered Frank, between his teeth. Then aloud: "I've brought a late rose for Hermia; perhaps you won't mind giving it her." And with that he proceeded to detach the flower from his button-hole.

"Why not give it her yourself? I'm sure that would be much nicer," said Miss Charlotte, archly. "I wonder she has not come to the gate before now; but perhaps she doesn't know who's here. I'll go and fetch her."

"She knows well enough who's here, the huzzy!" growled Frank under his breath. "It's merely a try-on--that's what it is. They all do it. What simpletons they must take us men for, to think we can't see through their little games. But I suppose there are some born fools who can't."

They had been standing at the wicket of the little garden which divided the house from the road, the front door being wide open all this time. Miss Brancker now hurried up the pathway into the Cottage. Hermia was in none of the lower rooms. She called her by name, and then the girl appeared at the head of the stairs, her hair unbound and flowing over her shoulders.