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The Finger of Fate: A Romance

by Mayne Reid · English · Gutenberg #35912 · 547,312 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Finger of Fate: A Romance

Author: Mayne Reid


        
Release date: April 19, 2011 [eBook #35912]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35912

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FINGER OF FATE: A ROMANCE ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Finger of Fate
A Romance
By Captain Mayne Reid
Published by Chapman and Hall, London.
This edition dated 1872.



CHAPTER ONE.

THE HALF-BROTHERS.

In a wood, within ten miles of Windsor, two youths are seen, gun in
hand, in pursuit of game.  A brace of thoroughbred setters, guarding the
cover in front, and a well-equipped keeper, walking obsequiously in the
rear, precludes any suspicion of poaching; though the personal
appearance of the young sportsmen needs no such testimony.

The wood is only an extensive pheasant-cover, and their father is its
owner.  They are the sons of General Harding, an old Indian officer,
who, with a hundred thousand pounds, garnered during twenty years'
active service in the East, has purchased an estate in the pleasant
shire of Bucks, in the hope of restoring health to a constitution
impaired upon the hot plains of Hindostan.

A fine old Elizabethan mansion, of red brick, now and then visible
through the openings of the cover, tells that the General has laid out
his lacs with considerable taste, while five hundred acres of finely
timbered park, a "home farm," and half-a-dozen others rented out--to say
nothing of the wood-covers and cottage tenements--prove that the
_ci-devant_ soldier has not carefully collected a hundred thousand
pounds in India to be carelessly squandered in England.

The two young sportsmen, already introduced as his sons, are his only
sons; in short, the only members of his family, with the exception of a
maiden sister, who, being sixty years old, and otherwise extremely
uninteresting, will not figure conspicuously in our tale, however true
it is.

Looking at the two youths, as they step through the pheasant-cover, you
perceive there is but slight difference in their size; there is in their
age, and still more in their personal appearance.  Both are what is
termed _dark_; but there is a difference in the degree.  He who is the
elder, and who bears the baptismal name Nigel, has a complexion almost
olive, with straight black hair, that under the sunlight exhibits a
purplish iridescence.

Henry, the younger, with fair skin and ruddier cheek, has hair of an
auburn brown, drooping down his neck like clusters of Spanish chestnuts.

So great is their dissimilarity in personal appearance, that a stranger
would scarce believe the two young sportsmen to be brothers.

Nor are they so in the exact signification of the word.  Both can call
General Harding father; but if the word "mother" be mentioned, their
thoughts would go to two different personages, neither any longer on the
earth.  Nigel's should stray back to Hyderabad, to a tomb in the
environs of that ancient Indian city; Henry's to a grave of later date,
in the quiet precinct of an English country churchyard.

The explanation is easy.  General Harding is not the only man, soldier
or civilian, who has twice submitted his neck to the matrimonial yoke,
though few ever wedded two wives so different in character as were his.
Physically, mentally, morally, the Hindoo lady of Hyderabad was as
unlike her Saxon successor as India is to England.

Looking at Nigel Harding and his half-brother, Henry, one could not help
perceiving that the dissimilarity had in both cases been transmitted
from mother to son, without any great distraction caused by the blood of
a common father.  An incident, occurring in the cover, gives evidence of
this.

Though especially a pheasant preserve, the young sportsmen are not in
pursuit of the bird with strong whirring wings.  The setters search for
smaller game.  It is mid-winter.  A week ago the youths might have been
seen, capped and gowned, loitering along the aisles of Oriel College,
Oxford.  Now home for the holidays, what better than beating the
home-covers?  The frost-bound earth forbids indulgence in the grand
chase; but it gives rare sport by driving the snipes and woodcocks--both
migratory birds among the Chilterns--to the open waters of the running
rivulet.

Up the banks of one--a brook that, defying the frost, gurgles musically
among the trees--the young sportsmen are directing their search.  This,
with the setters, tells that woodcock is their game.  There are two
dogs, a white and a black, both of good breed, but not equally well
trained.  The black sets steady as a rock; the white quarters more
wildly, runs rash, and has twice _flushed_ the game, without _setting_
it.

The white dog belongs to Nigel; the black to his half-brother.

A third time the setter shows his imperfect training, by flushing a cock
before the sportsmen are nigh enough to obtain a fair shot.

The blood sprung from Hyderabad can stand it no longer.  It is hot even
under the shadows of a winter wood in the Chilterns.

"I'll teach the cur a lesson!" cries Nigel, leaning his gun against a
tree, and taking a clasp-knife out of his pocket.  "What you should have
taught him long ago, Doggy Dick, if you'd half done your duty."

"Lor, Muster Nigel," replies the gamekeeper, to whom the apostrophe has
been addressed, "I've whipped the animal till my arms ached.  'Tain't no
use.  The steady ain't in him."

"I'll put it into him, then!" cries the young Anglo-Indian, striding,
knife in hand, towards the spaniel.  "See if I don't!"

"Stay, Nigel!" interposed Henry.  "You are surely not going to do the
dog an injury?"

"And what is it to you, if I am?  He is _mine_--not _yours_."

"Only, that I should think it very cruel of you.  The fault may not be
his, poor dumb brute.  As you say, it may be Dick who is to blame, for
not properly training him."

"Thank'ee, Muster Henry!  'Bleeged to ye for yer compliment.  In coorse
it be all my doin'; tho' not much thanks for doin' my best.  Howsoever,
I'm obleeged to ye, Muster Henry."

Doggy Dick, who, though young, is neither graceful nor good-looking,
accompanies his rejoinder with a glance that bespeaks a mind still more
ungraceful than his person.

"Bother your talk--both!" vociferates the impatient Nigel.  "I'm going
to chastise the cur as he deserves, and not as you may like it, Master
Hal.  I want a twig for him."

The twig, when cut from its parent stem, turns out to be a stick,
three-quarters of an inch in diameter.

With this the peccant animal is brutally belaboured, till the woods for
a mile around re-echo its howlings.

Henry begs his brother to desist.

In vain.  Nigel continues the cudgelling.

"Gi'e it him!" cries the unfeeling keeper.  "Do the beggar good."

"You, Dick," interposes Henry, "I shall report you to my father."

An angry exclamation from the half-brother, and a sullen scowl from the
savage in gaiters, is the only notice taken of Henry's threat.  Nigel,
irritated by it, only strikes more spitefully.

"Shame, Nigel!  Shame!  You've beaten the poor brute enough--more than
enough.  Have done!"

"Not till I've given him a mark to remember me!"

"What are you going to do to him?  What more?" hurriedly asks Henry,
seeing that Nigel has flung away the stick, and stands threateningly
with his knife.  "Surely you don't intend--"

"To split his ear!  That is what I intend doing!"

"For shame!  You shall not!"

"Shall not?  But I shall, and will!"

"You shall split my hand first!" cries the humane youth, flinging
himself on his knees, and with both hands covering the head of the
setter.

"Hands off, Henry!  The dog is my own; I shall do what I please to him.
Hands off, I say!"

"I won't!"

"Then take the consequences."

With his left hand Nigel clutches at the animal's ear, at the same time
lunging out recklessly with the knife blade.  Blood spurts up into the
faces of both, and falls in crimson spray over the flax-like coat of the
setter.

It is not the blood of Nigel's dog, but his brother's--the little finger
of whose left hand shows a deep, longitudinal cut traversing all the way
from knuckle to nail.

"You see what you've got by your interference!" cries Nigel, without the
slightest show of regret.  "Next time you'll keep your claws out of
harm's way."

The unfeeling observation, more than the hurt received, at length stirs
the Saxon blood of the younger brother.

"Coward!" he cries.  "Throw your knife away, and stand up.  Though you
_are_ three years older than I, I don't fear you.  You shall pay for
this."

Nigel, maddened by the challenge from one whom he has hitherto
controlled, drops the knife; and the half-brothers close in a fisticuff,
fight with anger as intense as if no kindred blood ran in their veins.

As already stated, there is but slight difference in their size.  Nigel
the taller, Henry of stouter build.  But in this sort of encounter the
Saxon sinews soon show their superiority over the more flaccid frame of
the Anglo-Indian; and in ten minutes' time the latter appears but too
well pleased, when the keeper interferes to prevent his further
punishment.  Had it gone the other way, Doggy Dick would have allowed
the combat to continue.

There is no thought of further sport.  For that day, the woodcocks are
permitted to remain undisturbed in their shrubby cover.

Henry, binding up his wounded hand in a kerchief, strides direct
homewards, followed by the black setter.  Nigel stalks moodily behind,
with Doggy Dick by his side, and the blood-besprinkled animal skulking
cowed-like at his heels.

General Harding is astonished at the early return of the sportsmen.  Is
the stream frozen up, and the woodcocks gone to more open quarters?

The blood-stained kerchief comes under his eye, and the split finger
requires explanation.  So, too, a purple ring around the eye of his
eldest born.  The truth has to be told, each giving his version.

The younger brother is at a disadvantage: for the testimony is two to
one--the keeper declaring against him.  For all that, truth triumphs in
the mind of the astute old soldier, and although both his sons are
severely reprimanded, Nigel receives the heavier share of the censure.

It is a sad day's sport for all--the black setter alone excepted.

For Doggy Dick does not escape unscathed.  Ere parting from the presence
of the General, the licence is taken from his pocket; the velveteen
shooting jacket stripped from his shoulders; and he receives his
discharge, with a caution never to show himself again in the Beechwood
preserves, under the penalty of being treated as a poacher.



CHAPTER TWO.

DOGGY DICK.

Doggy Dick, on being discharged by General Harding, in a short time
succeeded in obtaining another and similar situation.  It was on an
estate bordering that of the General, whose cover came within a field or
two of meeting with those of his neighbour.  This gentleman was a city
magnate, by name Whibley, who, having accumulated a fortune by sharp
trading on the Stock Exchange, had purchased the estate in question, and
commenced playing squire on an extensive scale.

Between the old officer and the newcomer there was no cordiality; on the
contrary, some coolness.  General Harding had an instinctive contempt
for the vulgar ostentation usually exhibited by these social upstarts,
who must needs ride to the parish church in a carriage and pair, though
their residence be but three hundred yards from the churchyard gate.  Of
this class was the gentleman in question.

In addition to the dissimilarity of tastes between a retired officer and
a retired stockbroker, a dispute had early occurred between them, about
rights of game belonging to a strip of waste that stretched triangularly
between their respective properties.

It was a trifling affair, but well calculated to increase their mutual
coolness; which at length ended in a hostility--silent, but understood.
To this, perhaps, more than any professional merit, was Doggy Dick
indebted for his promotion to be head keeper of the Whibley preserves;
just the course which a _parvenu_ would take for the satisfaction of his
spite.

On that same year, when the shooting season came round, the young
Hardings discovered a scarcity of game in their father's preserves.  The
General did not often go gunning himself, and would not have noticed
this falling off; neither, perhaps, would Nigel; but Henry, who was
passionately fond of field sports, at once perceived that there was a
thinner stock of pheasants than on the preceding season.  All the more
surprising to him, because it was a good year for game generally, and
pheasants in particular.  The Whibley covers were swarming with them;
and they were reported plentiful in the country around.

It became a question whether General Harding's gamekeeper had properly
attended to his trust.  No poaching had been reported, except some
trifling cases of boys, who had been detected stealing eggs in the
hatching season.  But this had not occurred on a scale sufficient to
account for the scarcity of the game.

Besides, the new gamekeeper, who was reported one of the best, had been
provided with a fall set of watchers; and, on the Whibley side, there
was a staff not so strong, with Doggy Dick at their head.

While reflecting on this, it occurred to Mr Henry Harding that
something might have been done to attract the pheasants across to the
Whibley covers.  Perhaps a better lay of feed had been there provided
for them?

He knew that neither Doggy Dick nor his master owed any good-will
towards him or his father; and a trick of this kind would be compatible
with the character of the stockbroker.

Still, there was nothing in it--beyond a certain discourtesy; and it
only made it necessary that some steps should be taken to create a
counter attraction for the game.  Patches of buck wheat were sown here
and there, and other favourite pheasant's food was liberally laid
through the covers.

On the following season the result was the same, or worse--the strong,
whirring wing was sparingly heard among the Harding preserves.  Even
partridges had become scarce in the Swedes and stubble; while on the
Whibley property both were in abundance.

The General's gamekeeper, when taken to task, admitted that, during the
breeding season, he had found several pheasants' nests rifled of their
eggs.  He could not account for it.  There was no one ever seen in the
covers, except occasionally the keepers from the neighbouring estate.
But of course _they_ would not do such a thing as steal eggs.

"Indeed," thought Henry Harding, "I'm not so sure of that.  On the
contrary, it appears to be the only way to account for our scarcity of
game."

He communicated these thoughts to his father; and Whibley's keepers were
forbidden the range.  It was deemed discourteous, and widened the breach
between the _ci-devant_ soldier and the retired stockbroker.

Another breeding season came round, and the young Hardings were at home
for the Easter holidays.  It was at this time of the year that the chief
damage appeared to have been done to the game on the estate.

No amount of winter poaching can cause such havoc in a preserve, as that
arising from the destruction, or abstraction, of the eggs.  A farmer's
boy may do greater damage in one day than the most incorrigible gang of
poachers in a month, with all their nets, traps, guns, and other
appliances to boot.

Knowing this, the Harding covers were this year still more carefully
watched--additional men being employed.  A goodly number of nests was
noted, and a better produce expected.

But although the future seemed fair, Henry Harding was not satisfied
with the past.  He chafed at his disappointment on the two preceding
seasons, and was determined on discovering the cause.  For this purpose
he adopted an expedient.

On a certain day a holiday was given to the keepers on the Harding
estate, which included the watchers as well.  It was fixed for the date
of some races, held about ten miles off.  The General's drag was granted
for taking them to the race-course.  The holiday was promised a week in
advance; so that the fact might become known to the keepers of the
adjoining estate.

The race day came; the drag rattled off, loaded with half a score of men
in coats of velveteen.  They were the keepers and watchers.  For that
day the Harding preserves were left to take care of themselves--a fine
opportunity for poachers.

So a stranger might have thought, but not Henry Harding.  Just before
the drag drove off, he was seen to enter the covers, carrying a Malacca
cane, and take his way towards their farther side, where they were
bounded by the estate of the stockbroker.  He walked quietly, almost
stealthily, through the copses.  A poacher could not have proceeded with
greater caution.  Between the two preserves there was a strip of common
land--the waste already alluded to as having caused contention.  Near
its edge stood an ancient elm, swathed in ivy.  In its first fork,
amidst the green festoons, Henry Harding ensconced himself; took a cigar
out of his case; lit it; and commenced smoking.

The position he had chosen was excellent for his purpose.  On one side
it commanded a view of the waste.  No one could cross from Whibley to
Harding without being seen.  On the other, it overlooked a broad expanse
of the Harding covers--known to be a favourite haunt of pheasants, and
one of their noted places of nesting.

The watcher kept his perch for a considerable time, without discovering
anything to reward him for his vigilance.  He smoked one cigar, then
another, and was half-way through the third.  His patience was becoming
exhausted, to say nothing of the irksomeness of his seat on the
corrugated elm.  He began to think that his suspicions--hitherto
directed against Doggy Dick--were without foundation.  He even reasoned
about their injustice.  After all, Doggy might not be so bad as he had
deemed him.

Speak of the fiend, and he is near; think of him, and he is not far off.
So was it in the case of Doggy Dick.  As the stump of Henry's third
cigar was burnt within an inch of his teeth, Whibley's head keeper hove
in sight.  He was first seen standing on the edge of the Whibley cover,
his ill-favoured face protruding stealthily through a screen of
"witheys."  In this position he stood for some time, reconnoitring the
ground.  Then, stepping out, silent and cat-like, he made his way across
the neutral territory, and plunged into the Harding preserves.

Henry scanned him with the eye of a lynx, or detective.  There was now
the prospect of something to reward him for his long watching, and the
strain of sitting upon the elm.

As was expected, Doggy took his way across the open expanse, where
several nests had been "noted."  He still kept to his cat-like tread--
crouching, and now and then looking suspiciously around him.

This did not hinder him from flushing a pheasant.  One rose with a
sonorous whirr; while another went fluttering along the sward as if both
its wings had been broken.

The hen looked as if Doggy might have covered her with his hat, or
killed her with a stick.  He did not attempt to do either; but, bending
over the forsaken nest, he took out the eggs, and carefully deposited
them in his game-bag!

Out of the same bag he took something, which Henry saw him scatter over
the ground in the neighbourhood of the nest.  This done, he walked on in
search of another.

"Come," thought Henry, "one brood is enough to be sacrificed in this
sort of way--enough for my purpose."

Throwing away the stump of his cigar, he dropped down from the tree, and
rushed after the nest-robber.

Doggy saw him, and attempted to escape to the Whibley covers.  But
before he could cross the fence, the fingers of his pursuer were tightly
clutched upon the collar of his velveteen coat; and he came to the
ground, crushing the eggs within his game-bag.  This being turned inside
out, the spilt yolks and shattered shells gave proof of the plunder he
had committed.

Henry Harding was at this time a strapping youth, with strength and
spirit inherited from his soldier father.  Moreover, he was acting with
right on his side.

The keeper had neither his weight nor his inches, and was further
enfeebled by his sense of wrong-doing.  Under these circumstances, he
saw the absurdity of making resistance.  He made none; but permitted the
irate youth to cudgel him with the Malacca cane until every bone in his
body seemed about to be shattered like the egg-shells late carried in
his game-bag.

"Now, you thief!" cried young Harding, when his passion was nearly
spent.  "You can go back to Mr Whibley's covers, and hatch whatever
plot may suit you and your snob of a master, but no more of my
pheasants' eggs."

Doggy did not dare to make reply, lest it should tempt a fresh
application of the cudgel.  Clambering over the fence, he hobbled back
across the common, and hid himself among the hazels of the Whibley
preserves.

Turning towards the plundered nest, Henry Harding examined the ground in
its proximity.  He discovered a scattering of buckwheat, that had been
steeped in some sweet-smelling liquid.  It was the same he had seen
Doggy distribute over the sward.

He collected a quantity in his kerchief, and carried it home.  On
analysis it proved to be poison!

Though there was no trial instituted, the story, with all its details,
soon became known in the neighbourhood.  Doggy Dick knew better than to
bring an action for assault; and the Hardings were satisfied with the
punishment that had been already administered to their disgraced keeper.

As for the retired stockbroker, he had no alternative but discharge his
ill-conditioned servant, who from that time became notorious as the most
adroit poacher in the parish.

The submissiveness with which he had received the castigation
administered by Henry Harding seemed afterwards to have been a source of
regret to him: for in future encounters of a similar kind he proved
himself a desperate and dangerous assailant--so dangerous that, in a
conflict with one of General Harding's watchers, occurring about a year
from that time, he inflicted a severe wound upon the man, resulting in
his death.  He saved his own neck from the halter by making his escape
out of the country; and though traced to Boulogne, and thence to
Marseilles--in the company of some jockeys who were taking English
horses to Italy--he finally eluded justice by hiding himself in some
corner of that classic land, then covered by a network of petty states;
most of them not only obstructive to justice, but corrupt in their
administration.



CHAPTER THREE.

THE ARCHERY FETE.

Three years had elapsed, and the half-brothers were again home from
college.  They had both passed beyond the boundaries of boyhood.  Nigel
was of age, and Henry full grown.

Nigel had become noted for sedateness of conduct, economy in
expenditure, and close application to his studies.

Henry, on the other hand, had won a very different character.  If not
considered an absolute scapegrace, he was looted upon as a young
gentleman of somewhat loose habits,--hating books, loving all sorts of
jollity, and scorning economy, as if, instead of a virtue, it were the
curse of life.

In reality, Nigel was only restrained by an astute, secretive, and
selfish, nature; while Henry, with a heart of more generous inclinings,
gave way to the seductions of pleasure, with a freedom that would be
tempered by time.  The General, however satisfied with the conduct of
his elder son, was not pleased with the proclivities of the younger;
more especially as his heart, like Jacob's, had a yearning for his last
born.

Although struggling against any preference, he could not help thinking
at times, how much happier it would have made him if Henry would but
imitate the conduct of Nigel--even though their _roles_ should be
reversed!  But it seemed as if this desire was not to be gratified.
During their sojourn within college walls, the rumours of _diableries_,
of which his younger son had been the hero, were scarce compensated by
the reports of scholastic triumphs on the part of the elder.

It is true that Nigel himself had been habitually the herald to proclaim
these mingled insinuations and successes, for Henry was but an
indifferent correspondent.  His letters, when they did come, were but
too confirmatory of the contents of those written by his brother, being
generally solicitations for a little more cash.  The _ci-devant_
soldier, himself generous to a fault, had never failed to forward the
cheque, caring less for the money than the way in which it was spent.

The education of the Harding youths was now considered complete.  They
were enjoying that pleasant interval of idleness, when the chrysalis of
the school or college is about to burst forth into a butterfly, and wing
its way through the world.

If the old rancour existed it showed no outward sign.  A stranger would
have seen nothing between the half-brothers beyond a fair fraternal
friendship.  Henry was frank and outspoken, Nigel reserved and taciturn;
but this was their natural disposition, and no one remarked upon it.  In
all matters of parental respect, the elder brother was the more noticed.
He was implicit in his obedience to the wishes of his father; while
Henry, on the other hand, was prone to neglect this duty--though only in
matters of minor consequence, such as keeping late hours, lavish
expenditure, and the like.  Still, by such acts the father's heart was
often sorely grieved, and his affection terribly tested.

At length came a cause that tried the temper of the half-brothers
towards one another--one before which the strongest fraternal affection
has oft changed into bitter hostility.  It was love.  Both fell in love,
and with the same woman--Belle Mainwaring.

Miss Belle Mainwaring was a young lady, whose fair face and fascinating
manners might have turned wiser heads than those of the two
ex-collegians.  She was older than either; but if not in its first
blush, she was still in the bloom of her beauty.  Like her baptismal
name, she was a belle in her own county, which was that inhabited by the
Hardings.  She was the daughter of an Indian officer, a poor colonel,
who, less fortunate than the General, had left his bones in the Punjaub,
and his widow just sufficient to maintain her in a simple cottage
residence that stood outside, and not far from, the palings of Beechwood
Park.

It was a dangerous proximity for two youths just entering on manhood,
and with very little business before them beyond making love, and
afterwards settling down with a wife.  Both would be amply provided for
without troubling their heads about a profession.  The paternal estate,
under the hammer, would any day have realised a clear hundred thousand;
and he who cannot live upon half of this is not likely to increase it by
a calling.

That the property would be equally divided there was no reason to doubt.
There was no entail; and General Harding was not the man from whom an
act of partiality might be expected.  The old soldier was not without
traits of eccentricity; not exactly crotchets or caprices, but a certain
dogmatism of design, and an unwillingness to be thwarted in his ways,
derived no doubt from his long exercise of military authority.  This,
however, was not likely to influence him in matters of a paternal
character; and, unless some terrible provocation should arise, his sons,
at his death, would no doubt have an equal share in the earnings of his
life.

So thought the social circle in which the Hardings moved, or such part
of it as took this much interest in their movements.  With such fair
presumption of being provided for, what could the young Hardings do but
look out for something to love, and, in looking out, upon whom should
the eyes of both become fixed but on Belle Mainwaring?  They did, with
all the ardent admiration of youth; and as she returned their respective
glances with that speaking reciprocity which only a coquette can give,
both fell in love with her.  The inspiration came on the same day, the
same hour, perhaps in the same instant.

It was at a grand archery _fete_, given by the General himself, to which
Miss Mainwaring and her mother had been invited.  The archer god was
also present at the entertainment, and pierced the hearts of General
Harding's two sons with a single arrow.

There was a remarkable difference in their way of showing it.  To Miss
Mainwaring, Henry was all assiduity, lavish of little attentions, ran to
recover her arrows, handed her her bow, held her sunshade while she bent
it, and stood ready to fling himself at her feet.  Nigel, on the other
hand, kept himself aloof, affected indifference to her presence, tried
to pique her by showing partiality to others, with many like manoeuvres
suggested by a calculating and crafty spirit.  In one thing the elder
brother succeeded--in concealing his new-sprung passion from the
spectators.

The younger was not so fortunate.  Before the archery practice was over,
every guest upon the ground could tell that, at least, one arrow had
been shot home to the mark, and that mark was the heart of young Henry
Harding.



CHAPTER FOUR.

A COQUETTE.

I have often wondered what the world would be without woman: whether, if
it were without her, man would care longer to live in it; or whether he
would then find it just the place he has been all his life longing for,
and would wish never to leave it.  I have wondered and pondered upon
this point, until speculation became lost in obscurity.  It is, perhaps,
the most interesting philosophical question of our existence--its most
important one; and yet no philosopher, as far as I know, has given a
satisfactory answer to it.

I am aware of the two theories that have been propounded--to one another
opposite as are the poles.  One makes woman the sole object of, our
existence--her smile its only blessing.  For her we work and watch, we
dig and delve, we fight and write, we talk and strive.  Without her we
would do none of these things; in short, do nothing, since there would
be no motive for doing.  "What then?" say the advocates of this theory.
"Would existence be tolerable without a motive?  Would it be possible?"
For our part we can only give the interrogative answer of the phlegmatic
Spaniard, "_Quien sabe_?"--no answer at all.  The other theory is, that
woman, instead of being life's object and blessing, is but its
distraction and curse.  The supporters of this hypothesis make no
pretence to gallantry, but simply point to experience.  Without her, say
they, the world would be happy, and they triumphantly add, "what is it?"

Perhaps the only way to reconcile the two theories is to steer midway
between them; to regard both as wrong, and both as right; to hold woman
in this world as being alike a blessing and a bane; or rather that there
are two sorts of women in it, one born to bless, the other to curse--
mankind.

It grieves me to class Belle Mainwaring with the latter: for she was
beautiful, and might have belonged to the former.  I knew her myself--if
not well, at least sufficiently to give her correct classification.
Perhaps I, too, might have fallen under her fascinations, had I not
discovered that she was false, and this discovery protected me.

I made my discovery just in time, though by accident.  It was in a
ball-room.  Belle liked dancing, as do most young ladies of the
attractive kind; and there were but few balls in the county, public or
private, civilian or military, where you might not see her.  I met her
at the hunt ball of B--.  It was the first time I had seen her.  I was
introduced by one of the stewards who chanced to have an impediment in
his speech.  It was of the nasal kind, caused by a split lip.  In
pronouncing the word "captain" the first syllable came out sounding as
"count."  There was then a break, and the second, "ain," might have been
taken, or _mis-taken_, for the prefix "von."  My Christian and baptismal
names, slurred together as they were by the stammering steward, might
have passed muster as Germanic; at all events, for some time
afterwards--before I could find an opportunity to rectify the error--I
was honoured by Miss Mainwaring with a title that did not belong to me.
I was further honoured by having it inscribed upon her dancing card much
oftener than I, in my humility, had any right to expect.  We danced
several measures together, round and square.  I was pleased, flattered--
something more--charmed and delighted.  Who would not, at being so
signalised by one of the belles of the ball-room?  And she was one.

I began to fancy that it was all up with me--that I had found not only
an agreeable partner for the night, but for life.  I was all the better
satisfied to see scowling faces around me, and hear whispered
insinuations, that I was having more than my share of the charming
creature.  It was the pleasantest hunt ball I had ever attended.

So far up to a certain hour.  Then things became less agreeable.  I had
deposited my partner on a couch, alongside a stately dame, introduced to
me as her mother.  I saw that this lady did not take kindly to me; but,
on the contrary, sat stiff, frigid, and uncommunicative.  Failing to
thaw her, I made my bow and sauntered off among the crowd, promising to
return to Miss Mainwaring for still another dance, for which I had
succeeded in engaging her.  Not being able to find any comfort apart
from her, I soon returned, and sat down on a chair close to the couch
occupied by mother and daughter.  As they were engaged in close
conversation, neither of them saw me, and of course I did not intrude.
But, as their voices were above a whisper, I could not help hearing
them; and the mention of my own name made it difficult for me to
withdraw.

"A count!" said the mother; "you are beside yourself, my child."

"But Mr Southwick introduced me to him as such, and he has all the air
of it."

All the air of it!--I liked that.

"Count Fiddlestrings.  Mr Southwick is a fool and an ass.  He's only a
paltry captain--on half-pay at that, without the shadow of an
expectation.  Lady C--has been telling me all about him."

"Indeed!"

I thought there was a sigh, but I could not be sure of it.  I should
have liked it very much; but then what came after would, or should, have
rendered me indifferent to it.

"And you've engaged yourself to him for another dance, while young Lord
P--has been twice here to ask for you--absolutely on his knees for me to
intercede for him!"

"What's to be done?"

"Done! throw him over.  Tell him you forgot that you had a previous
engagement with Lord P--."

"Very well, mamma, if you say so, I'll do that.  I'm so sorry it should
have happened."

There was no sigh this time, else I might have held my peace, and stolen
quietly away.  But I found I could not retreat without being discovered.
In fact, I was at that moment discovered, and determined on making a
clean breast of it.

"I should be sorry, Miss Mainwaring," I said, addressing myself directly
to the daughter, and without heeding the confusion of herself or her
mother, "to stand in the way of a previous engagement, and rather than
Lord P--should get on his knees for the third time, I beg to release you
from that you have made with a paltry captain."

With a bow, which I considered suitable to the circumstances, I parted
from the Mainwarings, and did my best to get rid of my chagrin by
dancing with any girl who would accept for her partner a captain on
half-pay!  Fortunately, before the ball was over, I found one who caused
me to forget my _contretemps_ with Miss Belle Mainwaring.  I often met
this lady afterwards, but never spoke to her, except by that silent
speech of the eyes that may sometimes say a good deal.



CHAPTER FIVE.

TWO STRINGS TO THE BOW.

It might have been well for young Henry Harding, and perhaps his brother
Nigel, too, in their first essay at love-making with Miss Mainwaring,
had they met with a similar mischance to that which had befallen me, and
taken it in the same spirit.  As it was, they were either more or less
fortunate.  Neither was a half-pay captain, without expectations; and,
instead of a discouragement almost amounting to dismissal, for a long
time both were permitted to bask in the smiles of the beautiful Belle.

There was a marked difference in the way the two brothers respectively
pressed their suit.  Henry essayed to carry Belle Mainwaring's heart by
storm.  Nigel, as his nature dictated, preferred making approach by sap
and trenching.  The former made love with the boldness of the lion; the
latter with the insidious stealth of the tiger.  When Henry believed
himself successful he made no attempt to conceal his gratification.
When the chances seemed to go against him, with equal openness did he
exhibit his chagrin.  The reverse with Nigel.  When fortune appeared to
smile upon his suit he showed no sign of being conscious of it.  He
appeared alike impassable under her frown.  So little demonstrative was
he in his affection for Miss Mainwaring that there were few people
believed in it, though among this few was the lady herself.

From what I could learn, and sometimes by the evidence of my own eyes,
she played her cards to perfection--her mother acting as _croupier_ to
the game.  It was not long before she knew that she could take her
choice of the two, though some time before she declared it.  Now one
appeared to be the favourite, anon the other--until the most intimate of
her associates were puzzled as to her partiality, or whether she even
cared for either.  It was at least a question; for the beautiful Belle
did not restrict herself to receiving the admiration of the
half-brothers Harding.  There were other young gentlemen in the
neighbourhood, who at balls and other gatherings were favoured with an
occasional smile; and Miss Mainwaring's heart was considered still
doubtful in its inclinings.  There was a time, however, when it was
supposed to have become decided.  At all events, there was a reason for
its doing so.  An incident occurred in the hunting-field that should
have entitled Henry Harding to the hand of Belle Mainwaring--that is,
supposing it to be true that the brave deserve the fair.  It was an
incident so rare as to be worth recording, irrespective of its bearing
upon our tale.

The hunt was with the staghounds, and the "meet" had taken place close
to a pond of considerable size, upon one of the open commons not rare
among the Chiltern Hills.  As the stag bounded away from the cart, his
eye had caught the gleam of water, and in his hour of distress he
remembered it.  Being a lazy brute, he did not run far; but, guided by
instinct, soon turned back towards the pond.  He arrived at it, before
the carriages that had come to the meet had cleared away from the
ground.  Among them was the pony-phaeton that contained Mrs Mainwaring
and her daughter Belle; the latter looking as roseate on that crisp
winter's morning as if her cheeks had taken their colour from the
scarlet coats of the huntsmen around her.  The _attelage_ to which she
belonged was drawn up close to the edge of the pond, parallel with its
bank.  The stag, on returning, shaved close past the pony's nose, and
plunged into the water.  The consequence was that the latter became
alarmed even to frenzy; and, instead of turning towards the road, it
wheeled round in the opposite direction, and rushed into the pond after
the stag, dragging the phaeton along with it.  It did not stop until the
water was up over the steps of the carriage, and the ladies' feet were
immersed in the chilly flood.  But then the stag had stopped too, at
bay; and, believing the "trap" to be its cruel pursuer, the bayed animal
turned and charged upon the pony carriage and its contents.  The pony
was knocked down in the traces; and then came the boy in buttons, who
was perched conspicuously on the seat behind.  On the antlers of the
enraged animal he was hoisted skyward, and fell with a plunge into the
water.  Next came the turn of the two ladies, or would have come, had
relief not been near.  The smock-frocks had gone away from the ground,
following the chase; and it was not they who rushed to the rescue.  Nor
was it Nigel Harding, who was first by the edge of the pond, having got
there through being last in the field.  But there stayed he, sitting
irresolute in his saddle; and Miss Mainwaring might have had a stag's
antler through her delicate skin, but for Nigel's brother coming up at
the moment.  He, instead of reining up by the water's edge, dashed in
through it, till his horse stood by the side of the carriage.  Next
moment he sprang out of the saddle, and took the stag by the horns.

The struggle that ensued might have ended ill for him; but by this time
a smock-frock, in the shape of a hedger, up to his armpits in the water,
drew his chopper across the throat of the stag, and the conflict came to
an end.

The pony, but slightly injured, was got upon its feet; the page,
half-drowned, was hoisted back to his pinnacle; and the carriage, with
its frightened occupants, conducted safely to the shore.

Everybody left the ground with the belief that Miss Belle Mainwaring
would at some day, not far distant, become Mrs Henry Harding.  More
especially did the country people believe it, and were delighted with
the idea; for with them--as is generally the case--the younger brother
was the favourite.



CHAPTER SIX.

THE GATHERING CLOUD.

At Beechwood Park there was comfort of every kind; but not that perfect
tranquillity which its owner had counted upon, on retiring to this fair
residence to pass the remainder of his days.

With his property all was well.  Since his purchase of the estate--like
other lands around--it had nearly doubled in value; and, so far as
fortune was concerned, there was no source of uneasiness.  But there was
something else--something dearer to him than his houses and lands.
Anxiety had arisen from the conduct of his sons.  Notwithstanding their
apparent cordiality in his presence, on both sides assumed, he had found
reasons for believing there was no fraternal affection, but, instead, a
tacit enmity between them.  This was more openly exhibited on the part
of the younger, but it was deep-rooted in the heart of his first-born.
Henry, of a generous, forgiving nature, could at any time during college
days have been induced to forego it, had his brother met him but
half-way in any measure of reconciliation.  But this Nigel never desired
to do; and the early estrangement had now deepened into hostility--the
cause, of course, being their rivalry in love.

It was a long time before the General knew of the dangerous cloud that
was looming up on the horizon of his tranquil life.  He had taken it for
granted that his sons, like most of the young men so circumstanced,
before thinking of marriage, would want to see something of the world.
It did not occur to him that, in the eyes of an ardent youth, beautiful
Belle Mainwaring was a world in herself, after seeing whom, all earth
besides might present but a dull, prosaic aspect.

It was not this, however, that at first troubled the spirit of the
retired officer, but only the behaviour of his boys.  With Nigel's he
was contented enough.  Than it, nothing could be more satisfactory,
except in the estrangement towards his brother, and an occasional
exhibition of ill-feeling which the father could not fail to perceive.
It was Henry's conduct that formed the chief source of the General's
anxiety--his extravagant habits, his proneness to dissipation, and once
un apparent disobedience of paternal orders, which, though only in some
trivial affair of expenditure, had been exaggerated by the secret
representations of his elder brother into a matter of momentous
importance.  The counsels of the parent, not having been seriously taken
to heart, soon became chidings; and these, in their turn, being alike
unheeded, assumed the form of threats and hints about disinheritance.

Henry, who now deemed himself a man, met such reminders with a spirit of
independence that only irritated his father to a still greater degree.
In this unhappy way were things going on, when the General was made
aware of a matter more affecting the future welfare of his son than all
the dissipations and disobediences of which he had been guilty.  It was
his partiality for Miss Mainwaring.  Of Nigel's inclining toward the
same quarter, he knew nothing; nor, indeed, did others; though almost
everybody in the neighbourhood had long been aware of her conquest over
Henry.

It was shortly after the incident at the stag-hunt that the General
became apprised of it.  That affair had led him to reflect; and,
although proud of the gallantry his son had displayed, the old soldier
saw in it a danger far greater than that of the struggle through which
he had so conspicuously passed.

He was led to make inquiries, which resulted in a discovery giving him
the greatest uneasiness.  This arose from the fact, that he knew the
antecedents of Mrs Mainwaring.  He had known both her husband and
herself in India; and this knowledge, so far from inspiring him with
respect for the relict of his late brother-officer, had impressed him
with the very opposite opinion.  With the character of the daughter, he
was, of course, less acquainted.  The latter had grown up during a long
period of separation; but from what he had seen and heard of her, since
his arrival in England, and from what he was every day seeing and
hearing, he had come to the conclusion, that it was a case of "like
mother, like daughter."

And, if so, it would not suit his views, that she should become
daughter-in-law to him.

The thought filled him with serious alarm; and he at once set about
concocting some scheme to counteract the danger.  How was he to proceed?
Deny his son the privilege of keeping company with her?  Lay an embargo
on his visits to the villa-cottage of the widow, which he now learned
had been of late suspiciously frequent?  It was a question whether his
commands would be submitted to, and this thought still further irritated
him.

Over the widow herself he had no authority, in any way.  Though her
cottage stood close to his park, it was not his property; her landlord
was a lawyer, of little respect in the neighbourhood; and it would have
served no purpose even could he have, himself, given her notice to quit.
Things had already gone too far for such strategy as that.

As for the damsel herself, she was not going to hide her beautiful face
from the gaze of his son, solely to accommodate him.  It might not
appear any more in his own dining, or drawing-room; but there were other
places where it could be seen in all its bewitching beauty--in the
church, or the hunting-field,--in the ball-room, and every day along the
green lanes that encompassed Beechwood Park; there might it be seen,
smiling coquettishly under the rim of a prettily-trimmed hat.

The old soldier was too skilled a tactician to believe, that any benefit
could be obtained from an attack so open to repulses, and these of the
most humiliating character.  Some stratagem must be resorted to; and to
the conception of this he determined to devote all the energies of his
nature.

He had already, in his mind, the glimmering of a scheme that promised
success; and this imparted a ray of comfort, that kept him from going
quite out of his senses.



CHAPTER SEVEN.

PLOTTERS FOR FORTUNE.

The stag-hunt, at which Henry Harding had exhibited such gallant
courage, had been the very last of the season; and, soon after, spring
stole over the shire of Bucks, clothing its beechen forests and grassy
glades in a new livery of the gayest green.  The crake had come into the
cornfield, the cuckoo winged her way across the common, uttering her
soft monotonous notes, and the nightingale had once more taken
possession of the coppice, from whence, through the livelong night,
pealed forth its incomparable song.  It was the month of May--that sweet
season when all nature seems to submit itself to the tender inclinings
of love; when not only the shy birds of the air, but the chased
creatures of the earth--alike tamed and emboldened by its influence--
stray beyond the safety of their coverts in pursuit of those pleasures
at other seasons denied them.

Whether the love-month has any influence on the passions of the human
species, is a disputed question.  Perhaps, in man's primitive state,
such may have been the case, and Nature's suggestiveness may have
extended also to him.  But at whatever season affection may spring up
between two young hearts, surely this is the time of the year that
Nature has designed it to reach maturity.

It seemed so in the case of Henry Harding.  In the month of May his
passion for Belle Mainwaring had reached the point that should end in a
declaration; and upon this he had determined.  With the outside world it
was still a question whether his love was reciprocated, though it was
generally thought that the coquette had been at length captured, and by
Henry Harding.  The eligibility of the match favoured this view of the
case, though, to say the truth, not more than the personal appearance of
the man.

At this time the younger son of General Harding was just entering upon
manhood, and possessed a face and figure alike manly and graceful.  The
only blemish that could be brought against him was of a moral nature--as
already mentioned, a proneness to dissipation.  But time might remedy
this; and even as things stood it did not so materially damage him in
the eyes of his lady acquaintances--more than one of whom would have
been willing to take Miss Mainwaring's chances.  The light in which
Belle regarded him may be best learnt from a conversation that, about
this time, took place.  It was over the breakfast-table in her mother's
cottage, the speakers being her mother and herself.

"And you would marry him?" interrogated Mrs Mainwaring, after some
remark that had introduced the name of Henry Harding.

"I would, mamma; and, with your leave, I will."

"What about _his_ leave?"

"Ha!  Ha!" laughed Belle with a confident air.  "I think I may count
upon that.  He has as good as given it."

"Already!  But has he really declared himself--in words I mean?"

"Not exactly in words.  But, dear ma, since I suppose you will insist
upon knowing my secrets before giving your consent, I may as well tell
you all about it.  He intends to declare himself soon; this very day if
I am not astray in my chronology."

"What reason have you for thinking so?"

"Only his having hinted that he had something important to say to me--
time fixed for a call he is to make this afternoon.  What else could it
be?"

Mrs Mainwaring made no reply, but sat thoughtful, as if not altogether
pleased with the communication her daughter had made.

"I hope, dear mamma, you are contented?"

"With what, my child?"

"With--with--well, to have Henry Harding for your son-in-law.  Does it
satisfy you?"

"My dearest child," answered the Indian officer's widow, with that
cautious air peculiar to her country--she was Scotch.  "It is a serious
question this; very serious, and requires careful consideration.  You
know how very straitened are our circumstances--how your poor dear
father left little to support us--having but little to leave?"

"I should think I do know," peevishly interposed Belle.  "Twice turning
my ball dresses, and then dyeing them into wearing silks, has taught me
all that.  But what has it to do with my marrying Henry Harding?  All
the more reason why I should.  He, at all events, is not likely to be
troubled with straitened circumstances."

"I am not so sure of that, my child."

"Ah! you know something about his expectations then?  Something you have
not told me?  Is it so, mamma?"

"I know very little.  I wish it were otherwise, and I could be sure."

"But his father is rich.  There are but two sons; and you have already
told me that the estate is not entailed, or whatever you call it.  Of
course he will divide it equally between them.  Half would satisfy me."

"And me too, child, if we were sure of half.  But there lies the
difficulty.  It is the fact of the estate not being entailed that makes
it.  Were that done, there would be none."

"Then I could marry Henry?"

"No, Nigel."

"Oh, mamma! what do you mean?"

"The estate would then be Nigel's by the simple law of entail.  As it is
now, it is all uncertain how they will inherit.  It will depend on the
will.  It may go by a caprice of their father--and I know General
Harding well enough to believe him capable of such caprice."

In her turn Belle became silent and thoughtful.

"There is reason to fear," continued the match-making, perhaps
match-spoiling, mother, "that the General may leave Henry nothing, or at
most only a maintenance.  He is certainly very much dissatisfied with
his conduct, and for a long time has been vainly endeavouring to change
it.  I won't say the young man is loose in his habits; if he were, I
would not hear of him for your husband.  No, my child, poor as we are,
it needn't come to that."

As the widow said this she looked half interrogatively towards her
daughter, who replied with a smile of assenting significance.

"Henry Harding," continued the cautious mother, "is too generous--too
profuse in his expenditures."

"But, mamma, would not marriage cure him of that?  He would then have me
to think of, and take better care of his money."

"True, true; supposing him to be possessed of it.  But therein lies the
doubt--the difficulty, I may call it--about the prudence of your
accepting him."

"But I love him; I do indeed!"

"I am sorry for that, my child.  You should have been more cautious,
until better assured about his circumstances.  You must leave it to
time.  You will, if you love me."

"And if, as I have told you--this afternoon--what answer?"

"Evasive, my dear.  Nothing easier.  You have me to fall back upon.  You
are my only child; my consent will be necessary.  Come, Belle! you need
no instructions from me.  You will lose nothing by a little
procrastination.  You have nothing to fear from it, and everything to
gain.  Without it, you may become the wife of one poorer than ever your
father was; and, instead of having to turn your silk dresses, you may
have none to turn.  Be prudent, therefore, in the step you are about to
take."

Belle only answered with a sigh; but it was neither so sad or so deep as
to cause any apprehension to her counsellor; while the sly look that
accompanied it told, that she determined upon being _prudent_.



CHAPTER EIGHT.

FATHER AND SON.

General Harding was accustomed to spend much time in his studio, or
library it might be called--since it contained a goodly number of books.
They were mostly volumes that related to Oriental subjects, more
especially works upon India and its campaigns; but there were also many
devoted to science and natural history, while scattered here and there
upon tables were odd numbers of the _Oriental Magazine_, the
_Transactions of the Asiatic Society_, and the _Calcutta Englishman_.
There were also large pamphlets in blue parliamentary covers, that
related only to the affairs of the Hon. E.I.C.

In poring over these volumes, the retired _militaire_ was accustomed to
pass much of his time.  The subjects, with the descriptions attached,
recalled scenes in his past life, the souvenirs of which gave him
pleasure, enabling him to while away many an hour that, amidst the
seclusion of the Chiltern Hills, might have otherwise hung rather
heavily on his hands.  Each new book about India was sure to find its
way into the General's library, and, though never a very keen sportsman,
he could enjoy the descriptions of hunting scenes to be found in the
pages of "Markham" and the "Old Shikaree," since in both there is
something to interest not only the sportsman but the student of Nature.

On a certain morning he had entered his studio, but with no intention of
devoting himself to the tranquil study of his books.  On the contrary,
he did not even seat himself, but commenced pacing the floor with a
quick step; while his clouded brow denoted agitation of mind.  Every now
and then he would stop, strike his clenched hand against his forehead,
mutter a few words to himself, and then move on again.  Among his
mutterings could be distinguished some words that guided to the subject
of his thoughts.  The names "Nigel" and "Henry" constantly occurring,
told that both his sons had a share in his cogitations, though chiefly
the latter, whose cognomen was most frequently pronounced.

"This boy Henry has half driven me mad with his wild ways.  And now,
worse than all, his affair with this girl.  From what I have heard,
there can be no doubt that she's entangled him; no doubt of its having
become serious.  It won't do; must be broken off, cost what it will.
She's not the stuff to make an honest man's wife out of.  I'd care less
if it were Nigel.  But no, she won't do for either--for no son of mine.
I knew her mother too well.  Poor Mainwaring!  Many a dog's day he spent
with her in India.  Like mother, like daughter.  By heavens, it won't
do; and I shall put a stop to it!  I think I know how," continued he
reflectingly.  "If he's mad, she isn't; and therein I may find my means
for saying the poor lad from the worst of all misfortunes--a wicked
wife."

The General made several turns in silence, as if maturing some plan.

"Yes; that's the way to save him!" he at length joyfully exclaimed;
"perhaps the only way.  And there's no time to be lost about it.  While
I'm thinking he may be acting--may have gone too far for me to get him
out of the scrape.  I shall see him at once--see and question him."

The General stooped over the table; pressed upon a spring-bell; and then
resumed his pacing.

The bell brought up the butler, a portly individual, who so far as could
be judged by appearance, was as respectable as the General himself.

"Williams!  I wish to see my son Henry;--find out if he's upon the
premises."

"He's on the premises, General.  He's down at the stables.  Groom says
he's going to mount the brown filly."

"The brown filly?  Why she's never been ridden before!"

"She never has, General.  I think it very dangerous; but that's just
what Master Henry likes.  I tried to persuade him against it, but then
Master Nigel told me to mind my own business."

"Send quick to the stable; tell him I forbid his riding the filly.  Tell
him to come hither.  Haste, Williams, haste!"

"Ever running into danger, as if he loved it," said the General,
continuing his soliloquy; "so like what I was myself.  The brown filly!
Ah!  I wish this was all.  The Mainwaring damsel's a worse danger than
that."

At this moment Henry made his appearance, breeched, booted, and spurred,
as if for the hunting-field.

"Did you send for me, father?"

"Of course I did.  You were going to mount the brown filly?"

"I am going.  Have you any objection to my doing so?"

"Do you want your neck broken?"

"Ha, ha, ha!  There's not much fear of that.  I think you make light of
my horsemanship, papa."

"You carry too much confidence, sir--far too much.  You mount a vicious
mare without consulting me.  You do other and more important things
without consulting me.  I intend putting a stop to it."

"What other things do you refer to, father?"

"Many other things.  You spend money foolishly--like a madman; and, like
a maniac, you are now rushing upon a danger of a still graver kind--upon
destruction, sir--rank, absolute destruction."

"Of what are you speaking, father?  Do you mean by my mounting the
filly?"

"No, sir.  You may back her, and break your neck, for aught I care.  I'm
speaking of what's far wickeder--a woman."

The word woman caused the youth to turn pale.  He had thought that, to
his father at least, his love for Miss Mainwaring was still a secret.
No other woman could be meant.

"I do not understand you, papa," was his evasive response.

"But you do, sir--perfectly.  If I gave you the name of this woman, you
wouldn't be any the wiser than you are now; you know it too well.  I'll
tell you, for all that.  I refer to Miss Belle Mainwaring."

Henry made no reply, but stood blushing in the presence of his parent.

"And now, sir, about this woman I have only a few words to say--_you
must give her up_."

"Father!"

"I won't listen to any of your love-sick appeals.  Don't make them--
they'll only be wasted on me.  I repeat, sir, you must give Belle
Mainwaring up--at once, absolutely, and for ever!"

"Father," said the youth, in a firm tone, within his breast love
pleading for justice, "you ask me to do what's not in my power.  I
acknowledge that between myself and Miss Mainwaring there is something
more than the affection of friendship.  It has gone further than mere
feeling.  There have been words--I may say promises--between us.  To
break them, requires the consent of both parties; and for me to do so,
without first consulting her, would be a cruel injustice, to which I
cannot lend myself.  No, father; not even with the alternative of
incurring your displeasure."

General Harding stood for a moment silent; pretending to reflect, but
furtively contemplating his son.  A superficial observer could have seen
only anger at this filial defiance, where one clever in reading faces
might have detected something like admiration mingling with the
sentiment.  If there was such, however, in his heart, his speech did not
show it.

"Enough, sir!  You have made up your mind to disobey me?  Very well.
Understand what this disobedience will cost you.  I suppose you know the
meaning of an entailed estate?"

The General paused, as if for an answer.

"I know nothing about it, papa.  Something connected with a will, I
believe."

"The very reverse.  An entailed estate has nothing to do with a will.
Now, my estate is _not_ entailed, and _is_ connected with a will.  It is
about that I am going to talk to you.  I can make one, giving my
property to whomsoever I please; either to your brother Nigel or
yourself.  Marry Miss Mainwaring, and it shall be Nigel's.  Still, to
you I shall leave just enough to carry you out of the country--that is
one thousand pounds sterling.  Now, sir, you hear what I have to say."

"I hear it, father; and with sorrow.  I shall be sorry to lose the
inheritance I had reason to expect, but far more your esteem.  Both,
however, must be parted with, if there be no other consideration for my
retaining them.  Whether I am to marry Miss Mainwaring or not, must
depend upon Miss Mainwaring herself.  I think, father, you understand
me?"

"Too well, sir--too well; and I answer by telling you that I have passed
my word, and it shall be kept.  You may go and mount the filly, and
thank God she don't do with your neck what you are likely to do with
your father's heart--break it.  Begone, sir!"

Without saying a word, Henry walked out of the room, slowly and sadly.

"The image of his mother!  Who could not help liking the lad, in spite
of his rebellious spirit, and with all his wasteful habits?  It won't do
to have such a noble heart sacrificed upon a worthless jade of a woman.
He must be saved."

Once more the General pressed upon the spring-bell, this time more
violently than before.  It brought the butler back in double quick time.

"Williams!"

"General?"

"My carriage, as soon as the horses can be put to?"

Williams disappeared to cause execution of the order.

A few more turns to and fro across the Turkey carpet, a few muttered
soliloquies, and the carriage wheels grated upon the gravel outside.

Williams helped the General to his hat and gloves; saw him down-stairs;
handed him into the carriage; and watched it rolling away, just as
Henry, on the back of the brown filly, was fighting her across the green
sward of the park, endeavouring to keep her head in the opposite
direction.



CHAPTER NINE.

THE CHECKMATE.

Mr Woolet sat in his office, which was separated from that of his
solitary clerk by a thick wall and a narrow doorway between.  But there
was another wall of slighter dimensions, alongside Mr Woolet's room,
partitioning off a kind of cupboard enclosure, into which, when Mr
Woolet required it, the said clerk could introduce himself, and there,
standing cat-like and silent, hear what passed between his employer and
any client whose conversation it was deemed necessary to make note of.

After this it is scarce necessary to add that Mr Woolet was an
attorney; and though the scene of his practice was a quiet country town,
in the shire of Bucks, this practice was carried on with as much
sharpness and trickery, as if it lay among the low courts surrounding
Newgate, or the slums of Clerkenwell.

The great city does not monopolise the plant called _pettifogging_.  It
thrives equally as strong in the county town.  Even the village knows it
to its cost; and the poor cottager, in his leaky shed at three shillings
a week, is too often encompassed by its toils.

Of such small fry Mr Woolet had hooked his hundreds, and had prospered
by their capture to the keeping of a carriage and pair; but, as yet,
none of the big fish had entered his net--the largest being the widow
Mainwaring, who had been caught while taking from him a lease of her
cottage.  The carriage had, therefore, been kept to no purpose, or less
than none: since not being in accord with his position it only brought
him ridicule.  This, however, could not last for ever.  The gentry could
not always hold out against such a glittering attraction.  Some swell
must in time stand in need of Mr Woolet's peculiar services, and enable
him to achieve the much wished-for position.  And so it seemed to turn
out, as one day a carriage much grander than Mr Woolet's own, with a
coachman nearly a quarter of a ton in weight, and a powdered footman
beside him, drove through the street of the little town in which Mr
Woolet lived, and pulled up opposite his office.

Perhaps the lawyer was never more delighted in his life, than when his
clerk protruded his phiz inside the office-door, and announced _sotto
voce_ the arrival of General Harding.  In a moment after the same
individual ushered the General into his presence.  A masonic sign
communicated to the clerk caused his disappearance; and the instant
after that pale-faced familiar was skulking like a ghost within the
cupboard enclosure.

"General Harding, I believe?" said the obsequious attorney, bowing to
the lowest button of his visitor's surtout.

"Yes," bluffly responded the old soldier.  "That is my name.  Yours
is--"

"Woolet, General; E. Woolet, at your service."

"Well, I want some service from you--if you're not otherwise engaged."

"Any engagement, General, must stand aside for you.  What can I do to
oblige you?"

"To oblige me, nothing.  I want your services as an attorney.  You are
one, I believe?"

"My name is in the Law List, General.  You can see it here."

Mr Woolet took up a small volume, and was handing it to the General.

"Never mind about the Law List," bluntly interrupted the soldier, "I see
it on your sign; that's enough for me.  What I'm in search of is an
attorney who can make a will.  I suppose you can do that?"

"Well, General, although I cannot boast of my professional abilities, I
think I can manage the making of a will."

"Enough said; sit down and set about it."

Considering that he kept a carriage himself, Mr Woolet might have felt
a little offended by this brusque behaviour on the part of his new
client.  It was the first time he had ever been so treated in his own
office; but then it was the first time he had ever had a client of such
a class, and he knew better than to show feeling under the infliction.

Without saying another word, he sat down before his table, the General
taking a seat on the opposite side, and waited for the latter to
proceed.

"Write now as I dictate," said the General, without even prefixing the
word "please."

The lawyer, still obsequious, signified assent, at the same time seizing
a pen, and placing a sheet of blue foolscap before him.

"_I hereby will and bequeath to my eldest son, Nigel Harding, all my
real and personal estate, comprising my houses and lands, as also my
stock in personal securities, excepting one thousand pounds, to be sold
out of the last, and paid over to my other and youngest son, Henry
Harding, as his sole legacy left from my estate_."

To this extent the lawyer finished the writing, and waited for his
client to proceed.

"You have done, have you?" asked the General.

"So far as you dictated, General, I have."

"Have you written down the date?"

"Not yet, General."

"Then put it in."

Woolet took up his pen, and complied.

"Have you a witness at hand?  If not, I can bring in my footman."

"You need not do that, General.  My clerk will do for one witness."

"Oh! it wants two, does it?"

"That is the law, General; but I myself can be the second."

"All right, then; let me sign."

And the General rose from his seat, and leaned towards the table.

"But, General," interposed the lawyer, thinking the will a somewhat
short one, "is this all?  You have two sons?"

"Of course I have.  Haven't I said so in my will?"

"But, surely--"

"Surely what?"

"You are not going to--"

"I am going to sign my will, if you will allow me; if not, I must get it
made elsewhere."

Mr Woolet was too much a man of business to offer any further
opposition.  It was no affair of his beyond giving satisfaction to his
new client; and to accomplish this he at once pushed the paper before
the General, at the same time presenting him with the pen.

The General signed; the lawyer and his clerk--summoned from the
cupboard--attested; and the will was complete.

"Now make me a copy of it," demanded the General.  "The original you may
keep till called for."

The copy was made; the General buttoned it up in the breast of his
surtout; and then, without even cautioning the lawyer to secrecy,
stepped back into his carriage, and was soon rolling along the four
miles of road lying between the village and his own residence.

"There's something queer about all this," soliloquised the pettifogger,
when left alone in his office.  "Queer he should come to me, instead of
going to his own solicitor; and queerer still he should disinherit the
younger son--or next thing to it.  His property cannot be worth less
than a cool hundred thousand pounds, and all to go to that half-negro,
while the other, as most people thought, would have a half share of it.
After all, it's not so strange.  He's angry with the younger son; and in
making this will he comes to me instead of going to Lawson, who he knows
might say something to dissuade him from his purpose.  I have no doubt
he will stick to it, unless the young scamp leaves off his idle ways.
General Harding is not a man to be trifled with, even by his own son.
But whether this will is to remain good or not, it's my duty to make it
known to a third party, who for certain reasons will be deeply
interested in its contents; and who, whether she may ever be able to
thank me for communicating them, will, at all events, keep the secret of
my doing so.  She shall hear of it within the hour."

"Mr Robson!"

The pale face of the unarticled clerk appeared within the doorway--
prompt as a stage spirit summoned through a trap.

"Tell the coachman to clap the horses into my carriage--quick as
tinder."

The spirit disappeared without making any reply, and just as his invoker
had finished the folding of the lately attested will, and made a minute
of what had transpired between him and the testator, carriage wheels
were heard outside the door of the office.

In six seconds after Mr Woolet was in his "trap"--as he used
condescendingly to call it--and rattling along a country road, the same
taken ten minutes before by the more ostentatious equipage of the
retired Indian officer.

Although driving the same way, the destination of the two vehicles was
different.  The chariot was bound for Beechwood Park, the "trap" for a
less pretentious residence outside its enclosure--the villa-cottage
occupied by the widow Mainwaring.



CHAPTER TEN.

THE BAIT TAKEN.

The relict of the late colonel, who had left his hones in the Punjaub
and herself with only a slight maintenance, had nevertheless sufficient
to maintain a "turn-out."  True it was but a pony and phaeton; but the
pony was spirited, the phaeton a neat one, and with the charming Belle
in it, hat on head, whip and ribbons in hand, it might have been termed
stylish.  The appearance was improved by a boy in buttons, who sat upon
the back seat, well trained to sustain the dignity of the situation.

This choice little tableau of country life might have been seen at the
gate of Mrs Mainwaring's villa at eleven o'clock of that same day, on
which the conversation already reported had passed between herself and
her daughter in the breakfast-room.

It was an early hour for a drive; but it was to be a journey upon
business to her lawyer.  It was never made; for just as the sprightly
Belle had taken her seat in the phaeton, adjusted her drapery, and
commenced "catching flies" with her whip, what should appear coming up
the road, and at a spanking pace, but the two-horse trap of that lawyer
himself, Mr Woolet.

The trap was evidently _en route_ for the widow's residence, where more
than once it had brought its owner upon matters of business.  Its
approach was a fortunate circumstance; so thought Mrs Mainwaring, so
thought her daughter, neither of whom on that particular day desired to
go to the town.  It was not one that had been set apart for shopping;
more important matters were on the _tapis_, and these could be arranged
with Mr Woolet on the spot.  The phaeton was at once abandoned,
"Buttons" receiving orders to keep the pony by the gate, and the ladies,
followed by the lawyer, returned into the cottage.  The attorney was
received in the drawing-room; but, as the business could have nothing to
do with the beautiful Belle, her presence was excused, and she sauntered
out again, leaving her mother alone with Mr Woolet.

Though there was still a certain obsequiousness about the lawyer's
manner, it was very different from that he had exhibited when dealing
with General Harding.  There was a vast distinction between a live
General, possessed of a clear hundred thousand pounds, and a defunct
colonel's widow, with scarce so many pence.  Still, Mrs Mainwaring was
a lady of acknowledged social position, with a daughter who might at no
distant day have the _control_ of a gentleman who had a hundred thousand
pounds, and who might become a profitable client of whoever chanced at
the time to be her mother's solicitor.  Mr Woolet was a sharp,
far-seeing individual, and this forecast had not escaped him.  If he
showed himself more at ease in the presence of the colonel's widow than
he had done in that of the General, it was simply because he recognised
in the lady a nature like his own--less scrupulous upon points of honour
or etiquette.

"Have you any business with me, Mr Woolet?" asked the lady, without
making known the fact that she was about going on business to him.

"Well, Mrs Mainwaring, scarce enough to make it worth while my calling
on you--at all events, interrupting your drive.  What I have to say may
be of no importance--but five minutes will suffice for saying it."

"Take what time you please, Mr Woolet; our drive had no object--a
little shopping affair of my daughter's, that can be disposed of at any
hour.  Please be seated."

The lawyer took a chair; the lady sank into a couch.

"Something, I suppose, connected with the cottage?" she continued in a
tone of studied indifference.  "I think the rent is paid up to--"

"Oh, nothing of that," interrupted the lawyer.  "You are too punctual in
your payments, Mrs Mainwaring, to need reminding from me.  I have come
upon an affair that, indeed, now that I think of it, may look like
interference on my part.  But it is one that may be of importance, and,
studying your interest as my client, I deem it my duty to interfere.  I
hope, if in error, you will not be offended by my apparent over-zeal."

The widow opened her eyes, once beautiful enough, but now only
expressive of surprise.  The manner of the attorney, his tone of
confidence--of an almost friendly assurance--led her to look for some
pleasant revelation.  What could it be?

"Over-zeal on your part can never be offensive, Mr Woolet--at least,
not to me.  Please let me know what you have to communicate.  Whether it
concern me or not, I promise you it shall have my full consideration,
and such response as I can give."

"First, Mrs Mainwaring, I must ask a question that from any other might
be deemed impertinent.  But you have done me the honour to trust me as
your legal adviser, and that must be my excuse.  There is a rumour
abroad--indeed, I might say, something more than a rumour--that your
daughter is about to be--to contract an alliance with one of the sons of
General Harding.  May I ask if this rumour has any truth in it?"

"Well, Mr Woolet, to you I shall answer frankly: there is some truth in
it."

"May I further ask which of the General's sons is to be the fortunate,
and, I may say, happy individual?"

"Really, Mr Woolet!  But why do you want to know this?"

"I have a reason, madam--a reason that also concerns yourself, if I am
not mistaken."

"In what way?"

"By reading this, you will learn."

A sheet of bluish foolscap, with the ink scarce dried upon it, was
spread out before the eyes of the widow.  It was the will of General
Harding.

She coloured while reading it.  With all the coolness of her Scotch
blood; with all the steadiness of nerve produced by an eventful life--in
long accompaniment of her husband in his campaigns--she could not
conceal the emotion called forth by what she read upon the sheet of
foolscap.  It was like the echo of her own thoughts--a response to the
reflections that, scarce an hour before, had been not only passing
through her mind, but forming the subject of her conversation.

Adroitly as woman could--and Mrs Mainwaring was not the most simple of
her sex--she endeavoured to make light of the knowledge thus
communicated.  She was only sorry that General Harding should so far
forget his duties as a parent, to make such a distinction between his
two sons.  Both were equally of his own blood; and, though the younger
might have been of better behaviour, still he was the younger, and time
might cure him of those habits which appeared to have given offence to
his father.  For herself, Mrs Mainwaring was very sorry indeed; and,
although it did not so essentially concern her, she could not do
otherwise than thank Mr Woolet for his disinterested kindness in
letting her know the terms of this strange testament.  In fine, she
would always feel grateful to him for what he had done.

The last clause of her speech was delivered in a tone not to be
misunderstood by such an astute listener as Mr Woolet; and at its
conclusion he folded up the will, and prepared to take his departure.
To repeat excuses, and say that he had only done what he deemed his
duty, were empty words, and were so understood by both.

A glass of sherry, with a biscuit, and the interview came to an end.
Mr Woolet returned to his trap, and was soon rolling back to the town;
while Buttons was commanded to take back the pony to its stable.  The
sauntering Belle was summoned into the drawing-room.

"What did he want, mamma?" was her inquiry on entering.  "Anything that
concerns me?"

"I should think so.  If you marry Henry Harding you will marry a
_pauper_.  I have seen the will.  His father has disinherited him."

Miss Mainwaring sank upon the couch, with a cry that told rather of
disappointment than despair.



CHAPTER ELEVEN.

AWAITING THE PROPOSAL.

In the afternoon of that day Belle Mainwaring sat upon the couch in a
state of expectation not easily described.  The more difficult, from its
being so rare--that is, the circumstances under which she was placed.
She was in the position of a young lady who expects a proposal of
marriage to be made to her, and who has already determined upon
declining it.  She was strong in this determination; though her strength
came not from her own inclinations.  She was but acting under the
commands of her mother.

She was not without some sinking of spirits as to the course she was
about to take.  In reality she loved the man she was going to reject--
more than she imagined then, more than she knew until long afterwards.
Flirt as she had been, and still was, conqueress of many a heart, she
was not without one herself,--it might not be of the purest and truest;
but, such as it was, Henry Harding appeared to have won it.

For all that, he was not to wear it; unless he could surround her with
all the adornments of wealth, and the costliest luxuries of social life.
She now knew he could not do this; and, though her heart might still be
his, her hand must go to some other.  To his brother Nigel, perhaps, she
may have whispered to herself.  She was a beautiful woman, Belle
Mainwaring--tall, large, and exquisitely moulded--a figure that becomes
the reclining attitude required by a couch; and, as she so reclined upon
ordinary occasions, the coldest observer might well have been excused
for admiring her gracefulness.

On the day in question her attitude was not graceful.  It was not even
easy, nor befitting her figure.  She sat bolt upright, now and then
starting to her feet; pacing the room in quick, hurried strides;
stopping a moment by the window, and scanning the road outside; and then
returning to the couch, and staying upon it for a short time, as if a
prey to terrible unrest and anxiety.

At times she would sit reflecting on the answer she should give; how it
might be shaped, so as to make it least unpalatable to him who was to
receive it.  She had no doubt about its bitterness; for she felt
confident in having the heart of the man about to offer her his hand.
She did not wish to unnecessarily give him pain; and she studied the
style of her intended refusal, until she fancied she had most cunningly
arranged it.  But then would come a spasm of her own heart's pain; for
to say "No!" was costing it an effort; and at this the whole structure
would give way, leaving her intended answer still unshaped.

Once she was on the point of changing her purpose; and, prompted by the
nobility of love, she came near giving way to her better nature.  She
had almost made up her mind to accept Henry Harding spite his adverse
fortune--spite the counsels of her mother.

But the noble resolve remained but one moment in her mind.  It passed
like a flash of lightning, only showing more distinctly the dark clouds
that would surround such a destiny.  Henry disinherited--a thousand
pounds alone left him!  It would scarce be enough to furnish the feast,
with the trousseau she might expect upon the day of her marriage.
Preposterous!  Her mother was right; she would yield to the maternal
will.

There was another thought that held her to this determination.  She felt
confident in her conquest; and if at any future time she might see fit
to give way to her predilection, it would still be possible to do so.
General Harding would repent the disinheritance of his younger son, and
revoke the will he had made, perhaps in a moment of spite or passion.
Neither the lawyer who made it, nor her own mother, had any idea of the
General's doing so.  It was not in keeping with his character.  But
Belle believed differently.  She saw through the eyes of hope, lighted
by the light of love.

In such frame of mind did Miss Mainwaring await the expected visit of
Henry Harding.  Nor was there any change, when the boy in buttons
announced his arrival, and the moment after ushered him into the room.
Perhaps, just at that moment, at the sight of his handsome face and
manly form, her heart may have faltered in its resolution.  But only for
an instant.  A thought of his disinheritance, and it was again firm.

She was right as to the object of his coming.  Indeed, he had all but
declared it at their last interview--all but accomplished it.  Words had
already passed between them, that might have been construed as on his
side a proposal, and on hers an acceptance.  He now came in all the
confident expectation of formally closing the engagement by the terms of
a betrothal.

Frank, loyal, and without thought of trick or deception, he at once
declared his errand.

The answer went like an arrow through his heart--its poison but little
subdued by the fact of its being conditional.  The conditions were "the
consent of mamma."

Henry Harding could not understand this.  She, the imperious belle, who
in his eyes seemed armed with all power and authority, to have her
happiness dependent on the will of a mother, and that mother known to be
at the same time selfish and capricious!  It was a rebuff unexpected,
and filled him with forebodings, as to what might be the decision of
Mrs Mainwaring.  He was not the man long to endure the agony of doubt;
and at once demanded to see her.

His wishes were readily complied with; and, in less than five minutes
after, the couch lately graced by the fair, frivolous daughter, was
occupied by the staid, serious mother--the daughter absenting herself
from the interview.

In the frigid face of the widow Henry Harding read his fate.  His
forebodings were confirmed.  Mrs Mainwaring was sensible of the honour
he would have conferred by becoming her son-in-law, and deeply thankful
for the offer; but the position in which she and her daughter were
placed made such a union impossible.  Mr Harding must know that, by the
sudden death of her late dear husband, she had been left in straitened
circumstances--that Belle would therefore be without fortune; and that
as he, Mr Harding, was in the same position, a union between the two
would not only be impolitic, but absolute insanity.  Though poor, her
child had always been accustomed, if not to the luxuries, at least to
the comforts of a home.  What would be her condition as the mother of a
family, with a husband struggling to maintain them?  Mrs Mainwaring
could not speculate on such a fate for her dear child; and, although Mr
Harding was young, and had the world all before him, he had not been
brought up to any profession promising a maintenance, nor yet to those
habits likely to lead to it.  For these reasons she, Mrs Mainwaring,
must firmly, but respectfully, decline the offered alliance.

Throughout the speech, which partook somewhat of the nature of a
lecture, Henry Harding sat listening in silence, but with astonishment
strongly depicted in his features.  This had reached its climax, long
before the last sentence was delivered.

"Surely, madam," said he, giving vent to his surprise, "you cannot mean
this?"

"Mean what, Mr Harding?"

"What you have said of my inability to support a--your daughter.  I know
nothing of the struggle you speak of.  I admit I have no profession; but
my expectations are not so poor as to make it necessary I should have
one.  Half of my father's estate is sufficient to provide against such a
future as you allude to.  And there are but two of us to share it."

"If that be your belief, Mr Harding," rejoined the widow, in the same
cold, relentless tone, in which she had all along been speaking, "I am
sorry to be the first to disabuse you of it.  The estate you speak of
will not be so equally divided.  Your share in it will be a legacy of a
thousand pounds.  Such a trifling sum would not go far towards the
maintenance of an establishment."

Henry Harding stayed not to answer the last remark, made half
interrogatively.  In those that preceded it he had heard enough to
satisfy him, that he had no longer any business in the drawing-room of
Mrs Mainwaring; and hurriedly recovering his hat and cane, he bade her
an abrupt good morning.

He did not deign to address the same scant courtesy to her daughter.
Between him and Belle Mainwaring was now opened a gulf so wide, that it
could never be bridged over--not even to save him from a broken heart.

As the rejected lover strode away from the cottage that contained what
he so lately looked upon as his _fiancee_, black clouds came rolling
over the sky, as if to symbolise the black thoughts in his heart.

In all his youthful life it was the first great shock he had received; a
shock both to soul and body--for in the announcement made by Mrs
Mainwaring there was a blow aimed at both.  His love blighted, his
fortune gone--both, as it were, in the same instant!  But the bitterest
reflection of all was that the love had gone with the fortune.  The loss
of the latter he could have endured; but to think that the sweet
speeches that had been exchanged between him and Belle, the tender
glances, and the soft, secret pressure of hands that more than once had
been mutually imparted--to think that, on her side, all these had been
false, heartless, and hollow, was enough to wound something more than
the self-esteem of a nature noble as was his.  He could frame no excuse
for her conduct.  He tried, but without success.  It was too clear, the
cause of her refusal; too clear were the conditions on which she would
have accepted his love, and had led him to believe in its acceptance.
Her words and acts had been all pretence--the very essence of coquetry.
It was over now, and with a bitter vow he resolved to expel her from his
heart--from his thoughts, if that were possible.  It was youth entering
upon a hard struggle; but to a nature like his, and under such
temptation to continue it, there was a chance of success.  The woman he
had hitherto looked upon as the type of all that was innocent and
angelic, had proved herself not only capricious, but cunning, selfish,
mean, less deserving of love than contempt.  If he could but bear this
impression upon his mind, there would be a hope of his recovering the
heart he had so inconsiderately sacrificed.  He registered a mental vow
to do this, and then turned his thoughts towards his father.  Against
him he was all anger.  He had no doubt the threat had been carried out;
the will had been made that very morning.  The minuteness of Mrs
Mainwaring's information, even to the exact amount of his own legacy,
left him no room to question its correctness.  How she had obtained it
he neither knew nor cared.  She was sharp-witted enough to have placed
herself in communication with his father's solicitor, whom he supposed
to have made the will.  But he did not stay to speculate upon this.  His
thoughts were all turned upon the testator himself, who by that single
stroke had deprived him at once of his love and his living.

In the agony of his soul he could not see how his father had befriended
him--how he had saved him from a fate far worse than disinheritance.
His contempt for the cruel coquette was not yet decided enough for this.

His father's threat had been only conditional.  He might look forward to
a chance of the will being revoked.  He might not be restored to full
favour.  There would be some punishment for his disobedience, which was
as complete as if his suit had succeeded.  But such a grand penalty
would scarce be exacted.  It was not compatible with the indulgence he
had already experienced.

A meaner spirit would have reasoned thus.  Nigel Harding would have done
so, and sought restoration to the paternal favour he had forfeited.  Not
so Henry.  His pride had been touched--stung to the quick; and in the
midst of his mortification, with his soul suffering from its thwarted
passion, while pursuing the path homeward he resolved that his father's
house should know him no more.

And he kept this resolution.  On reaching the park-gates, instead of
entering, he walked on to the nearest inn, and thence took a fly to the
nearest railway station.

In another hour he was in the midst of the great metropolis, with no
thought of ever again returning to the green Chiltern Hills, or the
shire of Buckingham.



CHAPTER TWELVE.

SELF-EXILED.

On that same evening, as usual, there were four chairs placed at the
dinner-table of General Harding.  One was empty--that which should have
been occupied by his younger son.

"Where is he?" asked the General, drawing the napkin across his breast.

Nigel knew not.  Of course the maiden aunt could not tell.  With her the
scapegrace was not a favourite, and she took no heed of his movements.
The butler was questioned, but did not know where Master Henry had gone.
Nigel could only say he had seen him take the path towards the cottage
of the Mainwarings; and a frown darkened his brow as he imparted the
intelligence.

"He may have stayed for dinner," added the elder brother; "Mrs
Mainwaring makes him so welcome."

"She won't after awhile," said the General, with a smile that to some
extent relieved the frown also visible in his face.

Nigel looked at his father, but forbore asking for an explanation.  He
seemed to divine something that gave him relief, for the shadow upon his
brow became sensibly lighter.

Upon that subject the conversation dropped; nor would it have been
resumed again during dinner, but that before the meal ended a
communication came into the room, through the medium of the butler.  It
was in the shape of a note, evidently scrawled in haste, and upon paper
that could only have come from the _escritoire_ of a cottage or a
country inn.  From the latter it had issued--the "Hare and Hounds," a
hostelry that stood not far from the gates of General Harding's park, on
the high road to London.  There was no postmark--the letter having been
hand-carried.

Hurried as was the scrawl of the superscription, the General recognised
it as the handwriting of his son Henry.  The shadow returned to his
countenance as he tore open the envelope.  It grew darker as he
deciphered the contents of the note enclosed therein.  They were as
follows:--

  "Father,--

  "I say `father,' since I cannot dissimulate my real thoughts by
  prefixing the epithet `dear,'--when this reaches you I shall be on the
  road to London, and thence heaven knows where; but never more to
  return to a house which, by your own decreeing, can no longer be a
  home for me.  I could have borne my disinheritance, for perhaps I
  deserve it; but the consequences to which it has led are too cruel for
  me to think of you otherwise than with anger.  The deed is now done,
  and let that be an end of it.  I write to you only to say that, since
  by the terms of your will I may some day become the fortunate
  recipient of a thousand pounds, perhaps you will have no objection to
  pay it to me now, deducting, if you please, the usual interest--which
  I believe can be calculated according to the rules of the Insurance
  societies.  A thousand pounds at your death--which I hope may be far
  distant--would scarce be worth waiting for.  Now, it would serve my
  purpose, since I am determined to go abroad and seek fortune under
  some more propitious sky than that which extends over the Chiltern
  Hills.  But if I do not find the sum at your London lawyer's within
  three days, subject to my order, I shall make my way abroad all the
  same.  I am not likely ever to ask for it again.  So, father, you may
  choose in this matter, whether to oblige me or not; and perhaps my
  kind brother Nigel, whose counsels you are so ready to take, may help
  you in determining the choice.

  "Henry Harding."

The General sprang from his chair, long before he had finished reading
the letter.  He had read it by fits and starts, while striding about the
room, and stamping his feet upon the floor, until the glasses jingled
upon the table.

"My heavens!" he at length ejaculated, "what is the meaning of this?"

"Of what, dear father?" asked the obsequious Nigel.  "You have received
some unpleasant news?"

"News! news! worse than news!"

"From whom, may I ask?"

"From Henry--the scamp--the ungrateful--Here, read this!"

Nigel took the note and read.  "It is indeed an unpleasant
communication; unfeeling of Henry--insulting, I should say.  But what
does it all mean?"

"No matter what it means.  Enough for _me_ to know that.  Enough to
think that he is gone.  I know the boy well.  He will keep his word.
He's too like myself about that.  Gone!  O God--gone!"

The General groaned as he traversed the Turkey carpet.  The maiden aunt
said nothing, but sat by the table, quietly sipping port wine and
munching walnuts.  The storm raged on.

"After all," put in Nigel, with the pretence of tranquillising it, "he
means nothing with this strange talk.  He's young--foolish--"

"Means nothing!" roared the General in a fresh burst of excitement.
"Does it mean nothing to write such a letter as this--in which every
word is a slight to my authority--a defiance?"

"True enough," said Nigel, "I know not what can have possessed him to
speak as he has done.  He's evidently angry about something--something I
don't understand.  But he'll get over it in time, though one cannot
forgive him so easily."

"Never!  I will never forgive him.  He has tried my temper too often;
but this will be the last time.  Disobedience such as his shall be
overlooked no longer--to say nothing of the levity, the positive
defiance, that accompanies it.  By my faith, he shall be punished for
it!"

"In that regard," interposed the unctuous elder son, "since he has
spoken of my giving you advice, it would be to leave him to himself--at
least for a time.  Perhaps after he has passed some months without the
extravagant support you have hitherto so generously afforded him, he may
feel less independent, and more prone to penitence.  I think the
thousand pounds he speaks of your having promised him, and which I know
nothing about, should be kept back."

"He shan't have a shilling of it--not till my death."

"For your sake, dear father, a long time, I hope; and for his, perhaps,
it may be all the better so."

"Better or worse, he shan't have a shilling of it--not a shilling.  Let
him starve till he comes to his senses."

"The best thing to bring him to his senses," chimed in Nigel; "and take
my word for it, father, it will do that before long--you'll see."

This counsel seemed to tranquillise the perturbed spirit of the irate
General, at least for a time.  He returned to the table and to his port;
over which he sat alone, and to a much later hour than was his usual
custom.  The mellow wine may have made him more merciful; but whether it
was this or not, before going to bed he returned to his studio, and
wrote, in a somewhat unsteady hand, a letter to his London lawyer--
directing the latter to pay to his son Henry, on demand, a cheque for
the sum of 1,000 pounds.

He despatched the letter by a groom, to be in time for the morning post;
and all this he did with an air of caution, as if he intended to do good
by stealth.  But what appears caution to the mind of a man obfuscated
with over a bottle of port, may seem carelessness to those who are
around him.  There was one who looked upon it in this light.  Nigel knew
all about the writing of the letter, guessed its contents, and was privy
to its despatch for the post.  Outside the hall-door it was taken from
the hands of the groom to whom it had been intrusted, and transferred to
the charge of another individual, who was said to be going past the
village post-office.  It was Master Nigel who caused the transference to
be made.  And from him the new messenger received certain instructions,
in consequence of which the letter never reached its destination.



CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

LONDON THUGS.

On arriving in London, Henry Harding put up at a West-end hotel, which
he had allowed his cabman to select, for he knew very little of London
or its life.  He had only paid two or three transient visits to it, and
but few of his father's acquaintances resided in the metropolis.  Upon
these he did not think of calling.  He supposed that the affair with his
father might have become known to them--perhaps his rejection by Belle
Mainwaring--and he had resolved upon keeping out of sight, to avoid the
necessity of concealing his chagrin.  Henry Harding had a proud spirit,
and could neither have brooked ridicule nor accepted sympathy.  For this
reason, instead of hunting out any old college acquaintances he might
have found in London, he rather avoided the chances of meeting them.

Besides the note written to his father, he had addressed one to the
footman, simply directing this individual to pack up his clothes, guns,
canes, and other impedimenta, and send them on to Paddington station,
"till called for."  This was done; and the luggage, in due time, arrived
at the hotel where he was staying.  Some eight or ten pounds of loose
money, that chanced to be in his pocket on leaving home, was all the
cash he commanded; and this was out of his pocket before he had been
half that number of days in London.

For the first time in his life he began to find what an inconvenient
thing it is to be without cash, especially in the streets of a large
city--though he yet only knew it as an inconvenience.  He expected his
father would accede to the request he had made, and send an order for
the payment of the thousand pounds.  To allow time for the transaction,
he kept away from the solicitor's office for nearly a week.  He then
called to make the inquiry.  It was simply whether any communication
relating to him had been received from his father.  In case there had
been none, he did not wish the lawyer to be any wiser about the affair.
None had been--not any.  This was the answer given him.

In three days he called again, and reiterated his former inquiry almost
word for word.  Almost word for word was the answer he had--not from the
solicitor himself, but the head clerk of his office.  General Harding
had written no letter lately to Messrs Lawson and Son (the name of the
firm), either in reference to him or any other matter.  "He's not going,
to send it," bitterly soliloquised Henry as he left the solicitor's
office.  "I suppose I'm not punished enough--so he thinks, with my
precious brother to back him.  Well, he can keep it.  I shall never ask
another shilling from him, if I have to starve."

There is a sort of pleasure in this self-abnegation--at least, during
the incipient stages of it.  But it is a pleasure traceable rather to
revenge than virtue, and often dies out before the passion that has
given it birth.

With Henry Harding it was not so short-lived.  His spirit had been
sorely chafed by the treatment he had received both from his sweetheart
and his father.  He could not separate them in his mind; and his
resentment, directed against both, was strong enough to lead him to
almost any resolution.  He formed that of not going back to the office
of the solicitor, and he kept it.  It cost him a struggle, to which,
perhaps, a less proud spirit would have yielded, for he was soon
suffering from want of cash.  His spendthrift life had suddenly come to
an end, since he had no means of continuing it; and he was forced to the
reflection how he could find the means of a mere living.  He had changed
his quarters to a cheaper hotel, but even this would require cash to pay
for it, so that his circumstances were approaching desperation.  What
was he to do?  Enlist in the army?  Offer himself on board a merchant
ship?  Drive a cab?  Carry a sandwich?  Or sweep a crossing?  None of
these occupations were exactly suited to his taste.  Better than any or
all of them--go abroad.  There, if it come to the worst, he could try
one or the other.

But there were other chances to be found abroad; and abroad he
determined upon going.  Fortunately he had sufficient left to carry him
across the sea, even the great Atlantic Ocean; for, if his coin had been
all spent, he had still something in the shape of a valuable watch,
pins, rings, and other _bijouterie_, that could be converted into
currency.  These would yield enough to pay his passage to any part of
the New World--for he intended going there, or to some distant land, far
away from his father and Belle Mainwaring.

He had converted his chattels into cash--a thing that can be done in
London in an incredibly short space of time, if we are not particular
about the price.  He had made a visit to the West India Docks, for the
purpose of inspecting an advertised ship, and was returning home not
over-satisfied either with himself or his fortunes.  The berth offered
him was shabby, and not cheap, and he had hesitated about accepting it.
He had gone afterwards to Greenwich Park--the Elysian fields of the
humble excursionist--and there, of course, partaken of tea and shrimps.
It was nearly twelve at night as he dismounted from the knife-board of a
Holborn 'bus, and turned down Little Queen Street on the way to his
quarters in Essex Street, Strand.  He had taken a Paddington omnibus as
the only one plying westward at that late hour.

As he stepped into the little street his eye fell upon an oyster-shop,
usually open to the latest hours of the night, and some of the earliest
of the morning.  Not satisfied with the Greenwich diet of tea and
shrimps--long since digested--he entered the oyster-shop, and gave an
order for a dozen of those delicious bivalves to be opened for him.
There was another guest standing before the bar--a young man who having
gone in before him, had given a similar order, and was already engaged
in swallowing the shell-fish.

With the appearance of this young man Henry Harding was strangely
impressed.  He was handsome, of a complexion almost olive, dark curling
hair, a full round eye, and an aquiline nose--features that at once
proclaimed him a foreigner.  The few words to which he gave utterance
confirmed it.  They were spoken in very imperfect English, with an
accent which appeared to be Italian.  Notwithstanding a somewhat
threadbare suit of clothes, his bearing told either of birth or
breeding; in short, one could not have made much of a mistake in
supposing him to have been brought up a gentleman.

If Henry Harding had been asked why the young man interested him, he,
perhaps, could not have told.  But it was his well-bred air, coupled
with garments that scarce corresponded; and, above all, the idea that he
was looking upon a stranger in a strange land, alone, perhaps
friendless--a foreshadowing of his own future.  These were the thoughts
passing in his mind, which at the moment made him look with a friendly
eye upon his fellow oyster-eater at the bar.

He was in the mood to have addressed him; but a certain air of
seriousness in the young man's countenance, coupled with the fact of his
speaking English so imperfectly, with a fear that the intrusion might be
mistaken, hindered the young ex-squire of the Chilterns from taking this
liberty.

The other merely glanced at him, and noticing an aristocratic face, with
a Bond Street style of dress, supposed, no doubt, that he was standing
beside some "swell," who had stepped out of the Casino close by.  Such a
character would be no company for him; and with this reflection he
finished his oysters, paid for them over the counter, and passed out
into the street.

The young Englishman saw him depart with a reflection just bordering on
pain.  There was a face that had strangely interested him.  It was not
likely in the great world of London he would ever see it again.
Besides, he would soon himself be beyond the confines of that world,
still further lessening the chances of a re-encounter.  With this
thought he dismissed the stranger from his mind, paid the reckoning at
the oyster-bar, and made a fresh start for his lodgings in the Strand.

He had cleared Little Queen Street, and entered the sister street of
similar name.  The night was a dark one, and not a soul was to be seen
or met: for he was now outside the meretricious circle of which at that
hour the Holborn Casino is the centre.

He had turned his face towards Lincoln's Inn Fields, as along the
western edge of this square was the shortest route to Essex Street.  The
ponderous arch was before him, and he was proceeding quietly towards it,
when, under the long, low passage, dimly lit, he perceived what appeared
to be the figures of three men.  One of them was apparently tipsy, the
other two taking care of him.

He didn't much relish squeezing past this group; but there was no help
for it, so he kept on.  When close up to them he saw that the drunken
man was absolutely helpless, his legs refusing to do him the slightest
service, and he was only prevented from sinking down on the pavement by
the support of his companions, one on each side of him.  They halted
under the shadow of the archway, and did not show any signs of moving
onward.  Perhaps they had had a long walk since leaving their "public,"
and wanted a little rest.  That was no business of Henry Harding's, and
he was quite contented to pass on without interfering--the more so as
the countenance of one of the sober parties of the trio, turned for a
moment towards him as he came up, clearly counselled the shunning of its
owner.

He was passing on, and had already got beyond the group, when curiosity
prompted him to glance back.  The face of a man so helplessly
intoxicated as the one supported between the other two could not be
other than a curious spectacle.

Henry Harding looked upon it.  There was a lamplight near that enabled
him to do so, and further to distinguish the countenance of the
inebriate.  It was not without an exclamation of surprise that he
recognised the features which had so strangely interested him--those of
the stranger late seen in the oyster-shop!

"What's this?" he exclaimed, suddenly turning upon his heel, and facing
the trio.  "This gentleman drunk?"

"Drunk as Bacchis!" answered one of the men.  "We're tryin' to get 'im
home, an' ha' been at it for the best part o' an hour."

"Indeed!"

"Yis, sir.  He's had a drop too much, as ye see.  He's a friend of ours,
and we don't want the perlice to take him to the station."

"Of course you don't," said the young sprig of Beechwood Park, now fully
comprehending the case.  "Well, that's kind of you both, but, as I am
also a friend of this gentleman, you had better leave him in my charge,
and save yourselves any farther trouble.  Do you agree to it?"

"Agree be blowed!  What do you mean?"

"This!" shouted Henry, who could no longer restrain his indignation.
"This!" he repeated, delivering a blow of his stout Buckinghamshire
stick upon the head of one of the supporters--"and this!" he cried
thrice in rapid succession, as the stick descended on the skull of the
second scoundrel, and all three, garrotters and garrotted, sank together
upon the pavement.

By the merest accident in the world, a policeman appeared upon the spot.
In Lincoln's Inn Fields there are no area safes, and a great scarcity
of rabbit-pie.  As a consequence, the guardians of the night may be seen
occasionally upon their beat; and, as good-luck would have it, one,
sauntering along Great Queen Street, heard the scuffle in the archway,
and hastened towards the spot.

He came up in time to assist Henry Harding in securing the two
garrotters, and stripping them of the spoils they had taken from the
person of the stranger, of which they had already possessed themselves.
All went together to the police-station, the stranger having by this
time partially recovered from his intoxication--_of chloroform_--whence,
in a cab, he was taken by Henry Harding to his own lodgings, and left
there--with a promise on the part of his rescuer to return to him on the
following day.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

TURNED ARTIST.

A slight incident--the dropping of a pin, or the turning of a straw--may
affect the whole current of a man's life.  There may be a fixed fate:
but if so, it often seems to be brought about, or depend upon,
circumstances purely accidental.  Had Henry Harding not gone home by
Holborn Bars; had he not got down at the corner of Little Queen Street;
had he not taken a fancy for shell-fish; had he not that day done a
hundred other things, all of which may have indirectly conducted to the
encounter described;--his after life might have been as different from
what is to be chronicled, as if it were that of some other man.

In a week from that time he might have been on his way to the West
Indies, or some part of the great American continent, perhaps never to
come back; whereas in a week from that time he was sitting in a studio,
with a palette on his left thumb, a brush in his right hand, and an
easel in front of him, while the classic blouse of brown holland and the
embroidered smoking-cap told that he had turned artist.

The change in his life's programme can be easily explained.  The
gentleman he had rescued from the garrotters had become his patron; and,
listening to the counsels of the young Italian artist--for such was he--
he had himself taken to painting as a means of procuring his livelihood.
Nor was it such a despairing adventure.  He had already displayed taste
in his school-drawings, and was, moreover, gifted with that aptitude for
the art that usually leads to success.  Almost from the first day spent
in the studio he was enabled to produce sketches that could be sold; and
these were followed by those "furniture pictures" which have given not
only practice but material support to many a struggling artist
afterwards eminent in his profession, and who otherwise might never have
been heard of.

The young Italian painter--Luigi Torreani by name--was himself but a
beginner; but with that talent both of conception and execution, which
distinguishes the countrymen of Titian, he was rapidly rising in his
profession.  He had got beyond the point of painting for mere bread, and
was receiving a price for his pictures that promised something more than
a subsistence.

It was upon the strength of his own success that he had given counsel to
his new acquaintance.  He had done so, after ascertaining something of
the situation and prospects of the strong, gallant youth who had done
him such an essential service.  Henry at the time had told him but
little of his antecedents.  This was not needed to a mind generous as
that of Luigi Torreani, and a heart at the same time touched with a
sense of gratitude.  On discovering the young Englishman's project of
self-banishment from his native land, he combated the idea with his
counsel, and proposed, in the event of his abandoning it, to instruct
him in his own art.  In fine, his proposal was accepted, and Henry
Harding adopted the profession of painter.

From acquaintances thus strangely introduced to each other, the two
young men, not greatly differing in years, became fast friends, sharing
apartments, table, studio together, and for many months the friendly
association was continued.  It was interrupted only by the advice of
Luigi, who, deeply interested in the success of his brother artist,
became desirous that the latter should spend some time in Rome, to
perfect himself in his art by contemplating those classic forms so
plentiful in the ancient metropolis of the world.  For himself, the
young Italian needed no such suggestive models.  A Roman by birth, he
had commenced his studies in their midst, and had ended by transferring
his practice to that metropolis where the painting of them was sure to
be best paid for.  The education of his pupil, then, was to be the
reverse of his own.  The young English gentleman accepted the advice,
less from any profound love of his art or ambition to excel in it, than
from a longing, such as most youths feel, to look upon Italy.  Italy!
the classic land of our school-boy exercises! the land of bright skies
and soft summer scenes! the land of Tasso, of Ariosto, Byron, Boccaccio,
and the brigands!  Who does not desire to behold such a country,
classically poetical in its past, romantically picturesque in its
present, and, it is hoped, to be free and prosperous in its future?

Henry Harding longed to look upon this land; and mingled with his
longings was a hope he might there find _Lethe_, or at least some solace
for his spirit, still suffering sorely from the cruel treatment he had
received--from a double disappointment to his affection and his love.
So long as he remained in England amid its _souvenirs_ and scenes, these
sad memories would ever remain fresh.  Perhaps in a foreign land, with
strange objects under his eye, strange voices sounding in his ear, he
might be enabled to realise the truth of the oft-quoted adage, "Absence
conquers love."



CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

A SKETCHER SURPRISED.

On the road to Rome, leading out into the Campagna, a young man might
have been seen wending his way towards the hill country where shoot down
the spurs of the Apennines.  At a glance he was not an Italian.  A fine
open face, with cheeks of ruddy hue, curls caressing them, of a rich
auburn colour; but, above all, a frame of strong, almost herculean,
build, borne forward by a free unfettered step, pronounced a son of the
north--a Saxon!  A portfolio under his arm, a palette carried in his
left hand alongside, some half-dozen camel's-brushes, clearly proclaimed
his profession--a painter in search of a subject.

There was nothing in all this to attract the attention of those he met
or passed upon the route--neither the personal appearance of the painter
nor the paraphernalia that declared his calling.  An artist on the roads
around Rome is an entity that may be often encountered--though perhaps
not so often as a bandit.

If any one took notice of the individual in question, it was merely to
remark that he was a stranger--_un Inglese_--and perhaps wonder why he
was trudging out towards the hills, while he might be enjoying himself
ten times better in the cabarets and inns of the Eternal City.

That the artist in question was "_Inglese_," no one who saw him doubted;
nor will the reader, when told that he was no other than Henry Harding.

Why he was upon a Roman instead of an English road is already known.
Flung upon his own resources in the great city of London--too proud to
return to his father's home, stung by what he fancied to have been a
refusal to his last request--he had, under the tutelage of his Italian
friend, now taken to painting as his profession.  He had not stained
canvas without some success--enough to justify him in following the
advice of Luigi Torreani, and completing his studies under the bright
skies of Italy, and amid the classic scenes of the seven-hilled city.
Thither had he found his way, with no other support than the precarious
earnings of his pencil.  This was fully evidenced by his threadbare coat
and chafed _chaussure_, as he trudged afoot along the dusty road of the
Romagna.

Whither was he going?  He was far enough out to have almost lost sight
of the Eternal City, and those classic monuments that only give proof of
its decay.  These, one would think, should have been the objects of his
study--the subjects upon which to perfect it.  And so they had been.  He
had painted them one after another--portal and palace, sculptured figure
and fresco, Capitol and Coliseum--till his head was tired with such art
delineation; and he was now on his way to the hills, to drink from the
pure fountain of Nature--to fling rock and stream and tree upon the
canvas, under the light of an Italian sun, and the canopy of an azure
sky.

It was his first journey to the Campagna; he was going without a guide,
only inquiring now and then for Valdiorno, a small mountain town lying
near the Neapolitan frontier.  To the "_sindico_" of this place he
carried a letter of introduction, obtained from his son, who was the
young Italian artist he had left behind him in London.  But the chief
object of this country excursion was to find some scene _paintable_, and
worthy of being painted.

He had not made many miles along his route before he was tempted to
stop, and this more than once.  Every turn of the road presented him
with a landscape; every peasant would have made a picture.  He resisted
these allurements with the thought, that these landscapes, so near to
the city, might all have been sketched before; while the peasants could
be caught at any time, in the streets of Rome itself, and there painted
in all their picturesqueness.

On towards some shaggy hills he saw looming out in the distance; and on
went he, until near the close of the day he found himself toiling up a
steep ravine, whose every turn gave him a tableau worthy of being
transferred to canvas, framed, and conspicuously suspended against the
walls of the Royal Academy.

After a slight repast drawn from his wallet, and a smoke from his
meerschaum pipe, he set about painting a scene, he had at length
selected.  He fought against the fatigue of his journey, for the sake of
catching a magnificent mellow sunset that had welcomed his approach to
the place.  He had no need to add to the "composition" of his picture.
Rocks, trees, cliffs, torrents foaming over them, points of _chiaro_ and
_oscuro_, abruptly contrasted--all were under his eye.  If there was
aught wanting to give life to the landscape, it was only a few figures--
animal or human--and these he could fill in according to his fancy.

"Ah," he reflected aloud, "just the scene for a band of brigands.  I'd
give something to have a half-dozen of them in the foreground.  I could
then make a picture of these fantastic Turpins drawn from real life--a
thing, I take it, which has never been done before.  That would be
something to hang up in the Royal Academy--something worth wasting
colour and canvas on.  I'd give--"

"How much?" answered a voice that seemed to issue out of the rocks
behind him.  "How much would you give, Master Painter, for that you
speak o'?  If you bid high enough, I dare say I mout find the means o'
accommodatin' you."

Along with the voice came the footsteps of a man--not in soft, stealthy
tread, as of one approaching unawares, but with a quick thump, as the
man himself dropped down from a rock above upon the little platform
where the artist had planted his sticks.  The latter looked up, at first
in surprise, then rather in pleased admiration.  He was thinking only of
his art, and before him stood the very model of his imagination--a man
clad in a complete suit of plush and coloured velvet, breeched,
bandaged, and belted, with a plumed hat upon his head, and a short
carbine across his arms--in costume and caparison the beau-ideal of a
brigand.  Two things alone hindered him from appearing the true heroic
type of stage representation, such as we are accustomed to see in
"Mazzaroni" and the "Devil's Brother."  There was a broad Saxon face,
and a tongue unmistakably from the shire of Somerset.  Both were so
marked, that but for the velveteen knee-breeches, the waist-belt, the
elaborately buttoned vest, and the plumed hat upon his head, Henry
Harding might have thought himself at home, and in the presence of a man
he had met before.

Ere the young artist had sufficiently recovered from his surprise to
respond to the unexpected salutation, the picturesque stranger
continued--

"Want to paint brigands, do ye?  Well, there's a chance for ye now.  The
band's close by.  Jess wait a bit; I'll call 'em down.  Hey, there,
captin!" he cried, changing his English to Italian, "ye may come on.
It's only one o' them poor devils o' daubers from the city.  He wants to
take our likenesses.  I s'pose you've no objection to his doin' it?"

Before the painter could make response, or remove his paraphernalia out
of the way, the ledge he had selected for his "point of view" was
crowded with figures--one and all of them so picturesquely attired, that
had they stood in the Corso, or elsewhere within police protection, he
would have been only too delighted to have painted them with the most
Pre-Raphaelitish detail.  As it was, all thoughts of art were chased out
of his mind.  He saw that he was encircled by banditti!

To attempt to retreat was out of the question.  They were above, below,
on all sides of him.  Even had he been swifter than any of the gang,
their carbines were slung handy _en bandouliere_; and a volley from
these would certainly have checked his flight.  There was no alternative
but to resign himself to his fate--which was now to be made a captive.



CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

EMPTY POCKETS.

If he who had surprised the painter at his task did not present the
exact classic type of the stage bandit, there was one upon the ground
who did.  This man stood a little in advance of the others with that
easy air that betokened authority.  There was no mistaking his position.
He was the chief.  His dress did not differ, in cut or fashion, so
materially from that of his followers; it was only more costly in the
material.  Where their breeches were velveteen, his was of the finest
silk velvet.  Besides, there was a glitter about his arms and a sparkle
on the clasp which held the plume in his Calabrian hat that bespoke real
jewellery.  His face, moreover, was not of the common cast; it was of
the true Roman type, the nose and chin of exceeding prominence, with a
broad oval jaw-bone indicative of determination.  He might have been
deemed handsome but for an expression of ferocity--animal, almost
brutal--that gleamed and sparkled in his coal-black eyes.  If not
handsome, he was sufficiently striking, and Henry Harding might have
fancied himself confronted by the renowned Fra Diavolo.  Had he stepped
from behind the proscenium of the scenic stage, or come bounding from a
"back flat," the Transpontine spectators would have hailed him as the
hero they had come to the theatre to see.

For some seconds there was silence.  The first spokesman had slunk into
the rear of the band; and all stood waiting for the chief to commence
speech or action.  The latter stood looking at the young artist,
scanning him from head to foot.  The scrutiny seemed to give him no
great pleasure.  There was not much booty to be expected in the pockets
of such a threadbare coat; and a grin passed over his dark features as
he pronounced, in a contemptuous tone, the word--

"_Artista_?"

"_Si, Signore_," replied the artist, with as much _sang froid_ as if he
had been answering an ordinary question.  "At your service, if you wish
to sit or stand for your portrait."

"Portrait?  Bah!  What care I for your chalks and ochres, signor
painter?  Better if you'd been a pedlar with a good fat pack.  That's
the sort of toys for such as we.  You're from the _cittada_?  What's
brought you up here?"

"My legs," replied the young Englishman, thinking that a bold front
might be best under the circumstances.

"_Cospetto_!  I can tell that without asking.  Such boots as yours don't
look much like the stirrup.  But come, declare yourself.  What have you
got in your pockets; a scudi or two, I suppose.  How much, signore?"

"Three scudi."

"Hand them over."

"Here they are--you are welcome to them."

The brigand took the three coins, with as much nonchalance as if he had
been receiving them in liquidation for some service rendered.

"This all?" he asked, again surveying the artist from head to foot.

"All I have got upon me."

"But you have more in the _cittada_?"

"A little more."

"How much?"

"About four score scudi."

"_Corpo di Bacco_! a good sum; where is it lying?"

"At my lodgings."

"Your landlord can lay hands upon it?"

"He can by breaking open my box."

"Good! now write out an order giving him authority to break open the box
and send you the money.  Some paper, Giovanni.  Your ink-horn, Giacomo.
Here, signor _artista_, write."

Seeing that it would be useless to make objection, the artist consented.

"Stay!" cried the brigand, arresting his pen; "you have something
besides money at your lodgings?  You Ingleses always carry about a stock
of loose property.  I include them in the requisition."

"There is not much to include.  Another suit of clothes, but a trifle
better than these you see on my back.  A score or two of sketches--
half-finished paintings--which you wouldn't value even if the last touch
had been given them."

"Ha, ha!" laughed the brigand, his comrades joining in the laugh.
"You're a good judge of character, signor _artista_.  You can keep your
sketches and your spare suit too, neither of which commodities would be
likely to suit our market.  Write, then, for the scudi."

Again the artist was about to use the pen.

"Hold!" once more exclaimed the bandit.  "You have friends in the
_cittada_.  What a mistake I was making not to think of them!  They can
give something towards your ransom."

"I have not a friend in Rome; at least not one who would pay five scudi
to rescue me from a rope."

"Bah! you are jesting, signore."

"I am speaking the simple truth."

"If that be so," said the brigand, who seemed to melt a little at
mention of the rope, "If that be so," he added reflectingly, "then--ah,
we shall see.  Hark you, signor painter, if what you say be true, you
may sleep in your own lodgings to-night.  If false, you will spend your
night here in the hills, and perhaps minus your ears, you understand
me!"

"I should be dull not to do so."

"_Buono--buono_!  And now one word of warning.  Let there be no trickery
in what you write--no deception in what you say.  The messenger who
carries your letter to the _cittada_ will learn all about you--even to
the quality of your spare suit and the value of your pictures.  If you
have friends he will find them out.  If not, he will know it.  And, by
the Virgin, if it turn out that you are playing with us, your ears shall
answer for it!"

"So be it.  I accept the conditions."

"Enough!  Write on."

As dictated, the requisition was written.  The sheet of paper was
folded, sealed with a piece of pitch, and directed to the landlord of
the lodgings in which the English artist had set up his studio.

A man, in the garb of a peasant of the Campagna, was selected from the
band; and, charged with the strange missive, at once despatched along
the road that led towards the Eternal City.

After kicking down the temporary easel which our artist had erected, and
pitching his slight sketch into the torrent below, the brigands
commenced their march up the mountain--their captive keeping them
company, with no very pleasant anticipation in regard to the treatment
that might be in store for him.



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

AN UNLUCKY RECOGNITION.

You are astonished at the young Englishman taking things so coolly?  To
be captured by Italian bandits, famed for their ferocity, is not a
trifling affair.  And yet so Henry Harding seemed to consider it.

The explanation is simple, and easily intelligible.  At any other period
he might not only have chafed at his captivity, but felt fear for the
consequences.  Just then he was suffering from two other sorrows, that
made this seem light--to be scarcely considered at all.  His
disinheritance by his father was still fresh in his mind--still bitter;
but far more bitter the rejection by his sweetheart.

Tortured by these cruel memories of the past, he recked less of what
befell him either in the present or the future.  There was even a time
when he would have courted such a distraction--during the first few
weeks after his departure from home.  Twelve months had since elapsed,
and close application to his art had to some extent consoled him.
Perhaps absence had done more than art--of which he was by no means
passionately fond; for he was not one of the thorough enthusiasts who
prate about the divine inspiration of painters.  Chance alone had guided
him to this profession, as the only means he could devise for earning
his daily bread--chance, partly directed by taste, and partly by some
previous study of his school-days.  So far it had served his purpose,
and, enabling him to visit Rome, he had there imbibed a certain ambition
to excel in it--enough to soften, though not obliterate, the memory of
his misfortunes.  This was still keen enough to make him reckless of
what might turn up; hence his cool demeanour in the presence of the
bandits, at which you may have felt surprise.

Up the mountains they marched him, by one of those execrable roads
common in the Papal States, kept, no doubt, in better condition in the
time of the Caesars than at the present day.

He speculated but little on whither he was being taken.  Of course to
some forest lair, some mountain cavern, used as a bandits' den.  He was
not without curiosity to see such a place; and perhaps it was passing
through his thoughts, that at some future day he might avail himself of
his present experience to paint a bivouac of brigands from real life.

He was very much surprised when a good-sized village came in sight;
still more so on seeing the bandits march boldly into it; but his
surprise became astonishment when he saw them unsling their carbines,
rest them against the walls of the houses, and make other preparations
denoting their intention to pass the night in the place!

The villagers appeared to have little dread of them.  On the contrary,
many of the men joined them in their wine-drinking, while some of the
women rather encouraged than resented their rude sallies.  Even the
long-robed priest of the village passed to and fro amongst them,
distributing crosses and benedictions; for all of which the brigands
paid him in coin, that had no doubt been taken from the pockets of some
unfortunate traveller--perhaps one of his own sacred cloth!

It certainly was a scene of sufficient originality to interest the eyes
of a stranger, that stranger an artist; and the young Englishman, as he
gazed upon it, for a time forgot that he was a captive.  Of this he was
reminded as night drew near.  Hitherto his captors had not even taken
the precaution to tie him.  His frank acceptance of the situation, with
his apparent indifference to it, had led the chief to think lightly
about his making an attempt to escape.  Besides, it could not much
matter.  Before he could reach Rome the sham peasant would have been to
his lodgings and rifled the chest of its contents.  The scudi would, at
all events, be safe; and beyond these the brigand had formed no very
sanguine expectations.  It was not likely there were rich friends, or
any chance of a ransom.  The well-worn wardrobe of the painter spoke
against such an hypothesis.

Rather in obedience to habit and usage, than for any other reason, did
his captors determine to tie him up for the night; and just as the sun
was sinking into the Tyrrhenian sea, two men were seen approaching the
place where he had been left, provided with a rope for this purpose.  In
one of these he recognised the man who had first saluted him on the
platform.  He had not forgotten the conversation that had passed between
them, nor the tongue in which it had been carried on.  That being
English, the bandit himself must be an Englishman, as was also evident
from his bright skin, hay-coloured hair, and broad blank face, so unlike
the sharp-featured, dark-visaged gentry who surrounded him.

Though at first not a little astonished at encountering a countryman in
such a place, and especially in such showy guise, so different from the
dull smock-frock the man had once evidently worn, he had ceased for a
time to think of him.  Since their first meeting he had not come in
contact with him.  The fellow appeared to be amongst the least
considered of the band, only permitted prominence when called up by his
chief, and since the capture his services had not been required.  He was
just such a man as one could hardly see without thinking of rope; and
armed with a coil of this, he now approached to execute the order of the
"captin."  So said he as he stopped in front of the prisoner, and
commenced uncoiling the cord.

It was the first time Henry Harding had been threatened with the
degradation of being bound.  To an Englishman, these is something
disagreeable in the very idea of it; but to a young gentleman lately the
presumed heir to 50,000 pounds, and who had never known a more irksome
restriction than the statutes of Eton and Oxford, there was something
repulsive in the prospect.  At first he indignantly refused to submit to
his wrists being corded, protesting that there was no need for it.  He
had no intention of attempting to escape.  He would stay with the
brigands till morning, or the morning after that--any time till the
messenger returned.  Besides, they had promised him liberty, on
conditions that would be kept on his side, and he hoped on theirs.

His remonstrances were in vain.

"Damn conditions," roughly replied the man occupied in getting ready the
rope; "we know nothin' 'bout them.  Our business is to bind ye; them's
the orders of the captin."

And so saying, he proceeded to carry them out.

It looked hopeless enough; but still there might be a chance in an
appeal to the feelings of a countryman.  The captive determined on
making trial of it.

"You are an Englishman?" he said in his most conciliatory tone.

"I've beed one," gruffly answered the bandit.

"I hope you still are."

"I'deed, do ye?  What matters that to you?"

"I am one myself."

"Who the devil says you ain't?  D'ye take me for a fool not to see it in
yer face, and hear it in the cursed lingo that I'd hope never to lissen
to again?"

"Come, my good fellow; it's not often that an Englishman--"

"Stash yer palaver, dang yer! an' don't `good fellow' me!  Spread yer
wrists now, an' get 'em ready for the rope.  Just because you're English
I'll tie 'em all the tighter--daang me if I don't!"

Perceiving that remonstrance was thrown away upon the renegade ruffian,
and that resistance would only lead to ill-treatment, the young
Englishman extended his hands to be tied.  The bandit seized hold of him
by both wrists, and commenced twisting them so as to turn them back to
back.  The moment his eyes rested on the left hand--upon the little
finger showing a red longitudinal scar--he dropped both as if they had
been bars of hot iron, at the same time starting backwards with a cry.
It was a cry that betokened recognition, mingled with malignant joy!

The surprise which this occasioned to the captive was followed by
another springing from a different cause.  He, too, had effected a
recognition.  In the brutal brigand before him, he identified the
ex-gamekeeper, poacher, and murderer--Doggy Dick!

"Ho! ho!" cried the latter, dancing over the ground like one who had
gone frantic from receiving news of some unexpected fortune.  "Ho! ho!
You it be, Muster Henry Hardin'!  Who would 'a expected to find you here
among the mountains o' Italy i'stead o' the Chiltern Hills, where ye
were so snug an' comfortable!  An' wi' such a poor coat upon yer back!
Why, what ha' become o' the old General, an' his big property--the park,
the farms, the woods, the covers, and the pheasants?  Ah! the pheasants!
You remember them, don't ye?  And so do I too.  So do Doggy Dick--
daangd well!"

As the renegade said this, a grin of diabolical significance made itself
perceptible on his otherwise inexpressive features.  Henry Harding
perceived it, but made no remark.  He knew that words would be of no
use.

"I dar' say Nigel, that sweet half-brother o' yours, has got 'em all--
the park, and the farms, and the woods, and the covers, and the
pheasants.  Ah! and I'd take my affedavy o' 't he's got that showy gal--
she you were so sweet upon, Muster Henry.  She warn't likely to cotton
to a man wi' such a coat on his back as you have on yourn.  Why, it look
like it had come out o' a pawn-shop!"

By this time the blood of the Hardings had got up to boiling point.
Despite his stupidity, Doggy Dick perceived it.  He saw that he had gone
too far in his provocation, and regretted having done so, before making
fast the hands of him he had provoked.  He would have retreated, but it
was too late.  Before he could turn, Henry Harding's left hand was upon
his throat, the scarred finger pressing upon his larynx, and with the
right he received a blow on his skull that felled him to the ground,
like an ox under the stroke of a pole-axe.

In an instant the young Englishman was surrounded by the bandits and
their wine-bibbing associates.  Half-a-score flung themselves
simultaneously upon him.  He was soon overpowered, bound hand and foot,
and then beaten in his bonds--some of the village damsels clapping their
hands, and by their cries applauding the conquest of brute strength over
injured innocence.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

A SYMPATHISER.

There was one who witnessed the scene with a sympathising heart.  It is
almost superfluous to say that it was a woman; for no man in that
community would have dared to take side against the brigands.  While in
it, these ruffians were complete masters of the place, and out of it
their authority was little less.  Their den was not distant, and on any
day they could descend upon the unprotected town, and vent it with the
torch of destruction.

The woman who sympathised with the young Englishman was still only a
girl; and although a daughter of the _sindico_, or chief magistrate, of
the place, she could do nothing to rescue him from his persecutors.
Even the intermittent authority exercised by her father would have been
unavailing; and her sympathy for the stranger only existed in the secret
recesses of her heart.

Standing in a balcony of what appeared the best house in the village,
she presented a picture that may be seen only in a town of the Roman
Campagna--a combination of those antique classic graces which we
associate with the days of Lucretia.  Beauty of the most striking type,
innocence of aspect that betokened the most perfect purity, and below, a
street crowded with striding Tarquins!

She looked like a solitary lamb in the midst of a conglomeration of
wolves, feebly shepherded by her father and the village priest--by the
Law and the Church, both on the last legs of a decadent authority.

It was a singular picture to contemplate; nor had it escaped the notice
of the young Englishman.

The girl had been observed in the balcony ever since his arrival; and as
her position was not very far from the place where the brigands had
permitted him to take a seat, he had a fair view of her, and could note
her every action.  He could see that she was not accosted like the
commoner maidens of the village; but, for all this, bold glances were
occasionally given to her, and brutal jests uttered within her hearing.
She had looked towards the captive, and he at her, until more than once
their eyes had met; and he fancied that in hers he could read signs of a
sympathetic nature.  It may have been but pity for his forlorn
situation, but it was pity that expressed itself in a most pleasing way.

While gazing on that dark Italian girl, he thought of Belle Mainwaring;
but never, during the whole period of his self-exile, had he thought of
her with less pain.  As he continued to gaze he felt a strange solace
stealing over his thoughts, and which he could only account for by the
humiliation caused by his captivity--by a sorrow of the present
expelling a sorrow of the past.  Something whispered him that the relief
might be more than temporary, he could not tell why.  He only knew, or
thought, that if he could be permitted to look long enough into the eyes
of that Roman maiden he might think of Belle Mainwaring with a calmer
spirit--perhaps forget her altogether.  In that hour of imprisonment he
was happier than he had been for the past twelve months of free,
unfettered life.  From the contemplation of that fair form, posed in the
balcony above him, he had, in one hour, drawn more inspiration than from
all the statues seen in the Eternal City.

One thing interfered with his newly-sprung happiness.  He observed that
the girl only looked upon him with glances of stealth; that the moment
their eyes met, hers were quickly withdrawn.  This might have gratified
him all the more, but that he had discovered the cause.  He saw that she
was under surveillance.  Had it been her father who was watching her
there would have been nothing to cause him pain.  But it was not.  The
eyes that seemed so vigilantly bent upon, her were those of the bandit
chief; who, wine-cup in hand, sat outside the little inn, with his face
constantly turned towards the house of the _sindico_.

The young girl seemed uneasy under his glances, and at length retired
from the balcony.  She came out again at the noise caused by the binding
of the captive.

In the midst of the _melee_ Henry Harding had his eyes upon her even
after he was bound and beaten.  He bore all this the better from the
glances she gave him.  They seemed to say--

"I would spring down into the street and rush to your rescue, but my
doing so might be the sealing of your doom."

So construed he the expression upon her face--a construction that
imparted pleasure, but was also accompanied by a painful reflection.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The shadows of night descended over the town.  There were no street
lamps, and the graceful shape in the balcony, gradually blending with
the gloom, became lost to Henry Harding's eyes.  The bandits had entered
the inn, where they were joined by the more _bizarre_ of the village
belles.  Soon came forth the sound of stringed instruments, the violin
and the mandolin, mingled with the treading and shuffling of feet.
Occasionally loud talking could be heard, along with the clinking of
cups; then came cursing and quarrels, one of which terminated in a
street-fight and the shedding of blood.

All this the young Englishman heard or saw from the place where he had
been left bound--outside the open window of the inn.  He was not there
alone.  Two bandits stood sentry over him, watching him with a vigilance
in strange contrast with the negligence before displayed.  The captive
took note of this change in the behaviour of the brigands towards him.
Still more when the chief, staggering past at a late hour, addressed
some words to the two men who had him in charge.  He could hear what was
said.  It was in the form of an injunction, terminating in a threat to
the effect, that if he, the prisoner, should not be forthcoming the next
day, they, the sentries, might expect punishment of the severest kind--
in short, they would be shot.  So hiccuped out their intoxicated chief,
as he went reeling away in company of one of the flaunting belles who
had taken part in the bandits' ball.

That it was no empty threat made under the influence of drink became
evident to the captive, in the increased vigilance with which he was
tended.  As soon as their chief was out of sight, the two sentries made
a fresh examination of his fastenings, re-tightened the cords wherever
they had become loose, and added others for greater security.  Skilled
in this peculiar craft by long practice, their prisoner was left but
little chance of releasing himself, had he been ever so much inclined
towards making the attempt.

And now he was, if he had not been before, not only inclined, but
eagerly desirous, of making his escape.  The stringent orders of the
chief, with the elaborate precautions taken by the two sentries, had
naturally awakened within him a degree of apprehension.  Such pains
would scarce have been taken for the sake of merely keeping him all
night and letting him free in the morning.  Moreover, the messenger who
had been sent to the city had already returned.  He had seen the man go
into the inn while the dance was in progress, and no doubt he had
delivered his fourscore scudi to the chief.  It could not be this that
was waited for to obtain his delivery.

There was to be another chapter added to his imprisonment--perhaps some
cruel torture in store for him.  He could easily imagine this after the
incident that had occurred while he was being bound.  The knock-down
blow given to Doggy Dick would be looked upon as an insult to the whole
band, and little as that English renegade might be esteemed by his
Italian comrades, he would still have sufficient influence to instigate
them to hostility against their captive.  This was the cause to which
Henry Harding ascribed the altered treatment he was receiving, and he
now regretted having given it.

Could he have guessed the true reason he might have spared himself all
self-recrimination.  The prolonged imprisonment before him--and such in
reality there was--had for motive a scheme far deeper than the hostility
of Doggy Dick--either on account of the conflict that had occurred
between them, or that of older and earlier date.  It was a scheme likely
for a long time not only to keep the captive from being restored to
liberty, but that might deprive him of his life.

Though apprehensive of receiving some severe castigation at the hands of
the brigands, he still did not believe himself to be in any great
danger; and he was hindered from sleeping less by the prospect of
punishment, than the pain caused by the cords too tightly drawn around
his limbs.  Despite this, despite his hard couch, which was the stone
pavement of the street, he at length fell asleep; and slept on till the
crowing of the village cocks, aided by a kick from one of the brigand
sentries, aroused him once more to a consciousness of his uncomfortable
situation.



CHAPTER NINETEEN.

ON THE MARCH.

At daybreak the brigands were upon the march.  The town where they had
spent the night was not one of their safe places.  They might halt there
for a day, or a night, and refresh or amuse themselves; but a prolonged
stay in it might subject them to a surprise by the Papal troops, when
these chanced to be on the alert.  This was only upon occasions when
some unusual outrage committed by the bandits called the troops forth to
make a _feint_ at chastising them.

Something of the kind was just then reported upon the _tapis_.  He who
had gone to rifle the chest of the poor artist had brought back word of
it.  Hence their quick decampment.

When the villagers made their appearance upon the street, they could
congratulate one another on a happy riddance of their ruffian guests;
though there were some among them to whom this would be no
satisfaction--the keepers of the wine-shops for example.  To them
robbers' gold was as good as any other.

The band proceeded through the hills, evidently making homeward.  They
were already laden with booty, captured before they had fallen in with
the artist.  It was, in fact, the report of this foray that was tempting
the troops to pursue them.

They had no prisoners--only plunder, in the shape of plate, jewellery,
trinkets, and other light personal effects.  The _villa di campagna_ of
some old Roman noble had been the scene of their late raid, and they
were carrying the spoils to their den.

That this was in some secluded part of the country was evident from the
road taken to reach it.  Now it was a rough causeway traversing a ridge;
anon a mere _scorzo_, or cattle-track, zigzagging through the hills, or
following the bed of a rivulet.

Long before reaching the end of their journey, the captive was fatigued
and footsore.  His shoes, none of the strongest, had yielded to the
abrasion of the sharp stones; while the long tramp of the preceding day,
with a half sleepless night on the street pavement, to say nothing of
the beating the brutes had given him, had but ill prepared him for such
an irksome march.  His hands, too, were tied behind his back; and this,
spoiling his balance, made progress still more difficult and
disagreeable.  The terrible depression of his spirits also detracted
from his strength.

He had good reason for being dispirited.  The rigorous watch, kept upon
him all along the route, told him that he was not going to be easily let
off.  Already the brigands had broken faith with him; for he knew that
the courier had come back, and of course brought back the scudi along
with him.

Once only had he an opportunity of talking to the chief, just before
starting away from the village.  He reminded him of his promise.

"You have released me," cried the ruffian, with a savage oath.

"In what way?" innocently asked the young Englishman.

"_Hola_! how simple you are, _Signor Inglese_!  You forget the blow you
gave to one of my band."

"The renegade deserved it."

"I shall be judge of that.  By our laws your life is forfeit.  With us
it is blow for blow."

"In that case I should be absolved.  Your fellows gave me twenty for
one--good measure, as I can tell by my aching ribs."

"Bah!" contemptuously rejoined the bandit, "be satisfied that it is no
worse with you.  Thank the Virgin you're still alive; or perhaps you may
come nearer the mark by thanking that scar upon your little finger."

The look with which these last words were accompanied spoke of some
secret meaning.  The captive could not tell what it was; but it gave him
food for reflection that lasted him for some time after.  Taken in
connection with the close watch kept upon him, he could forbode no good
from it.  On the contrary, there was evil in the innuendo, though of
what sort it was beyond his intelligence to discover.

On the second day from their leaving the town, the march continued on
through a mountainous country, most of it covered with forest.  The
track was rougher and more difficult to travel--at times ascending
slopes almost precipitous, at others winding through clefts of rock so
narrow as only to admit the passage of one at a time.

Both brigands and captive suffered from thirst; which they were at
length enabled to quench with the snow found upon the colder exposure of
the ridges.

Just before sunset a halt was made, and one of the bandits was sent
forward as a scout.  A mountain summit, shaped like a truncated cone,
was seen a short distance in front, and towards this the path appeared
tending.

About twenty minutes after the scout had disappeared from view, the howl
of a wolf came back from the direction in which he had gone, while
another similar cry was heard still farther off.  Following this, there
was the bleating of a goat; on hearing which the brigands once more
resumed their march.

Bounding an angle of rock, the face of the conical hill was seen from
base to top, scarred by a deep ravine that led to its summit.  Up this
lay the path, until the highest point was reached; then a strange
picture lay spread before the eye of the captive.  He was looking down
into a cup-like hollow, nearly circular in shape, with sloping sides,
covered with a thin growth of timber, in places packed into groves.  At
the bottom there was a pond of water, and not far from its edge, through
the trees, some patches of grey wall, with smoke rising above, declared
the presence of human habitation.  It was the rendezvous of the bandits,
which they reached just before the going down of the sun.

Their home, then, was no cave, no mere lair, but something that more
resembled a hamlet or village.  Two or three of the houses were
substantial structures of stone; the rest were simple _pagliatti_, or
straw huts, such as are common in the remote mountain districts of the
Italian peninsula.  A forest of beech trees overshadowed the group,
while the ridges around were covered with a thick growth of ilex and
pine.  A deep, dark tarn glistened in the centre, looking like some
long-extinct crater, that acted as a reservoir for the rain and melted
snow from the surrounding slope.

The stone houses could never have been built by the bandits.  The straw
cabins may have been erected to afford them additional accommodation;
but the more substantial dwellings told of times long gone by, before
the enervating influence of a despotic government had brought decay upon
the territory of Italia.  Some miner, perhaps, who extracted ore from
the neighbouring mountains, had found here a convenient smelting-place
in proximity to the tarn.

Around, the land sloped up into a circular ridge--a sort of
amphitheatre, with apparently two passes leading outward--one to the
north, the other to the south.  By both of these passes was a peak that
rose bald and herbless above the fringe of the forest, and on each of
these, close to the extreme summit, could be seen the figure of a man,
visible only from the valley below.  They were the bandits' pickets upon
their post.  Now and then, as they changed attitude, their accoutrements
and carbine-barrels could be seen glancing in the golden sunset.

The young Englishman noted all this as he stood in the open piazza of
the robber quarters.  It recalled the song of the famed Fra Diavolo, and
a night at Her Majesty's Theatre--his box shared by Belle Mainwaring.

He was not long allowed to indulge in such reminiscences--at least in
the open air.  Acting under orders from the chief, two of his captors
conducted him into a dark chamber in one of the stone houses; and,
giving him a push that almost sent him face forward upon the floor,
closed the door behind him.

There was the harsh grating of a bolt, and then all was silence.  For
the first time in his life, Henry Harding felt the sensation of being
inside a prison!



CHAPTER TWENTY.

WRITING TO DICTATION.

These was at least relief in being left alone.  The captive artist felt
it so much, that his gaolers had scarcely drawn the key from out the
lock, when he stretched himself along the floor and fell fast asleep.
Some fern-leaves strewn over the stones served him for a couch, though
he was too tired to care much for this.

He did not wake until sunlight, shooting in through the window, fell
slanting upon his face.  Then he rose to his feet, and took a survey of
his chamber.  A glance convinced him that he was inside the cell of a
prison; for whatever may have been the original design of the room, its
adaptability to this purpose was at once apparent.  The window was high
above the level of the floor, and so narrow that a cat could barely have
passed through it.  Besides, there was a strong bar set vertically into
the sill, that rendered egress absolutely impossible.  The door was
alike forbidding; and ten minutes' contemplation of the place told the
prisoner there was no chance of escape--save in the corruptibility of
his gaolers.

To Henry Harding there was no hope of this, and he did not even think of
it.  He saw no alternative but to wait the development of events.

He was hungry, and would have eaten anything.  He listened, in hopes of
hearing a footstep--the tread of a brigand bringing him his breakfast.
He could hear a step; but it was that of the sentry outside his door.
It came and went, and came and went again, but no sound of drawing bolt,
or key turning in the lock.  An hour was passed in this hungry
uncertainty, and then the tread of the sentry became commingled with
other footsteps.  A short parley outside, the key was inserted, the bolt
clicked back, and the door stood open.

"Good mornin', Muster Hardin'.  I hope ye ha' passed a pleasant night
o't.  Compliments o' Captin, an' wants ye to come an' see him."

Without further speech Doggy Dick seized the prisoner by the collar.
Then, with a spiteful shake, such as might have been given by an irate
policeman, dragged him out out of the cell, and on toward the quarters
of the bandit chief.  As a matter of course, these were in the best
house of the place; but the young artist was not prepared to witness
such splendour inside.  Not only was the furniture well made, but there
were articles of _luxe_ in abundance--plate, pictures, looking-glasses,
clocks, girandoles, epergnes, and the like, not very artistically
arranged, but plenteous everywhere.  It was a somewhat grotesque
admixture of the ancient and modern, such as may be seen in a
curiosity-shop, or the chambers of a London money-lender.

In the apartment to which the prisoner was introduced, there were two
individuals seated amidst the glittering confusion.  One was the brigand
chief, whose name he now knew for the first time to be "Corvino."  He
knew it from hearing him so addressed by the other occupant of the
chamber, who was a woman, and who in her turn was called by the chief
"Cara Popetta"--the "Cara" being merely a prefix of endearment.

Corvino, the chief, has been already delineated.  Popetta, as being his
spouse, also deserves a word.  She was a large woman, nearly as tall as
Corvino himself, and quite as picturesquely attired.  Her dress was
glittering with beads and bugles; and with her dark, almost
chestnut-coloured skin and crow-black hair, she would have passed muster
among the belles of an Indian encampment.  She had once been beautiful,
and her teeth were still so, when displayed in a smile; otherwise, they
resembled the incisors of a tigress preparing to spring upon her prey.
The beauty that had once shone in her countenance might still to some
extent have remained--for Cara Popetta was scarce turned thirty--but for
a scar of cadaverous hue, that traversed the left cheek.  This turned
what was once a fair face into one disfigured, even to ugliness.  And if
her eyes spoke truth, many a cicatrice had equally deformed her soul,
for as she sat eyeing the prisoner on his entrance, there was that in
her aspect that might have caused him to quail.

Just then he had no opportunity for scanning her very minutely.  On the
instant of his stepping inside the room he was accosted by the chief,
and commanded in a hard tone to take a seat by the table.

"I need not ask you if you can write, signor _artista_," said the
bandit, pointing to the "materials" upon the table.  "Such a skilled
hand as you with the pencil cannot fail to be an adopt with the pen.
Take hold of one of these, and set down what I indite--translating it,
as I know you can, into your native tongue.  Here is a sheet of paper
that will serve for the purpose."

As he said this, the brigand stretched forth his hand, and pointed to
some letter-paper already spread out upon the table.

The prisoner took up the pen, without having the least idea of what was
to be the subject of his first essay at secretaryship.  Apparently it
was to be a letter, but to whom was it to be written?  He was not long
kept in ignorance.

"The address first," commanded the brigand.

"To whom?" asked the young Englishman making ready to write.

"_Al Signor Generale Harding_!" dictated the bandit.

"To General Harding!" translated Henry, dropping the pen and starting up
from his seat.  "My father!  What know you of him?"

"Enough, signor _pittore_, for my purpose.  Sit down again, and write
what I dictate.  That is all I want of you."

Thus commanded, the artist resumed his seat; and once more taking up the
pen, wrote the address thus dictated.  As he did so, he thought of the
last time he had penned the same words, when directing that angry letter
from the roadside inn near to his father's park.  He had no time to give
way to reminiscences, for the bandit exhibited great impatience to have
the letter completed.

"_Padre caro_!" was the next phrase that required translation.

Again the secretary hesitated.  Again went his memory back to the
writing from the English inn, where he had commenced that letter without
the prefix "Dear."  Was he now to use it at the dictation of a brigand?

The command was peremptory.  The bandit, chafing at the delay, repeated
it with a menace.  His captive could only obey, and down went the words
"Dear Father."

"And now," said Corvino, "continue your translation; don't stop again.
Another interruption may cost you your ears."

This was said in a tone that told the speaker was in earnest.  Of
course, in the face of such a terrible alternative, the young artist
could do no less than continue the writing of the letter to its end.
When translated into his own tongue, it ran as follows:--

  "Dear Father,--

  "This is to inform you that I am a prisoner in the mountains of Italy,
  about forty miles from the city of Rome, and upon the borders of the
  Neapolitan territory.  My captors are stern men, and, if I be not
  ransomed, will kill me.  They only wait till I can hear from you; and
  for this purpose they send a messenger to you, _upon whose safety
  while in England my life will depend_.  If you should cause him to be
  arrested, or otherwise hindered from returning here, they will
  retaliate upon me by a torture too horrible to think of.  As the
  amount of my ransom, they demand thirty thousand scudi--about five
  thousand pounds.  If the bearer bring this sum back with him in gold--
  a circular note on the Bank of Rome will do--they promise me my
  liberty; and I know they will keep their promise, for these men,
  although forced to become bandits by cruel persecution on the part of
  their government, have true principles of honesty and honour.  If the
  money be not sent, then, dearest father, I can say with sad certainty,
  that you will never more see your son."

"Now sign your name to it," said the brigand, as the writing was
completed.

Henry Harding once more started from his chair, and stood irresolute,
still holding the pen in his hand.  He had written the letter as
dictated, and, while occupied in translating it into his native tongue,
he had given but little heed to its true signification.  But now he was
called upon to append his name to this piteous appeal to his father.
With the remembrance still vivid in his mind of the defiant epistle he
had last penned to him, he felt something more than reluctance--he felt
shame, and almost a determination to refuse.

"Sign your name!" commanded the brigand, half rising from his seat.
"Sign it, I say!"

The young Englishman still hesitated.

"Lay down the pen again, without putting your _firma_ to that letter,
and, by the Holy Virgin, before the ink become dry, your blood will
redden the floor at your feet.  _Cospetto_! to be crossed by a poor
devil of a _pittore_--a cur of an _Inglese_!"

"O signor," interposed the brigand's wife, who up to that moment had not
spoken a word, "do as he bids you, _buono cavaliere_!  It is only his
way with every one who strays here from the great city.  Sign it _caro_,
and all will be well.  You will be free again, and can return to your
friends."

While delivering this appeal, Popetta had risen up from her chair, and
laid her hand upon the Englishman's shoulder.  The tone in which she
spoke, with a certain expression detectable in her fiery eyes, did not
seem altogether to please her _sposo_, who, rushing round the table,
seized hold of the woman and swung her to the farthest corner of the
room.

"Stay there!" he shouted, "and don't interfere with what's no concern of
yours."

Then suddenly turning upon his prisoner, and drawing a pistol from his
belt, he once more vociferated, "Sign!"

The obstinacy that would have resisted such an appeal could be only true
foolhardiness--a reckless indifference to life.  There could be no
mistaking the intent of the robber, for the click of his cocked pistol
sounded sharp in the captive's ear.  For an instant the young
Englishman, whose hands were for the time untied, thought of flinging
himself upon his fierce antagonist and trying the chances of a struggle.
But then outside there was Doggy Dick, with a score of others, ready to
shoot him down in his first effort to escape.  It was sheer madness to
think of it.  There was no alternative but to sign--at least none except
dying upon the spot.  The young artist was not inclined for this; and,
stooping over the table, he added to what he had already written, the
name "Henry Harding."

Doggy Dick, styled "Signor Ricardo," was called in and asked if he could
read.

"I beant much o' a scholard," replied the renegade, "but I dar' say I
can make out that bit o' scribble."

The letter was slowly spelt over and pronounced "All right."  It was
then enveloped and directed, Doggy Dick giving the correct address.
After which, the next duty this Amphitryon was called upon to perform
was the retying of his captive, and transporting him back to his cell.

That same night the epistle, that had come so near costing Henry Harding
his life, was despatched by the peasant messenger to Rome, thence to be
forwarded by a postman of a different character and kind.



CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

UNDER THE CEDAR.

The world had become just one year older from the day that Belle
Mainwaring "refused" the young son of General Harding.  The crake had
returned to the cornfield, the cuckoo to the grove, and the nightingale
once more filled the dells with its sweet nocturnal music.

As a tourist straying among the Chiltern Hills--with me almost an annual
habit--I could perceive no change in their aspect.  Nor did I find that
much change had taken place in the "society" introduced in the early
chapters of our story.

I met Miss Mainwaring at a private ball, that concluded an out-door
archery meeting.  She was still the reigning belle of the neighbourhood,
though there were two or three young sprouts that promised soon to
dispossess her.  There was less talk of her becoming a bride than had
been twelve months before; though she was followed by a train of
admirers that appeared to have suffered but slight diminution--Henry
Harding being the only one missing from the muster.  I heard that his
place had been supplied by his brother Nigel; though this was only
whispered to me in conjecture by one that was present at the gathering,
where was also Nigel Harding himself.  Knowing somewhat of the nature of
this young gentleman, I did not believe it true, but, strange enough,
before leaving the ground I had convincing evidence that it was so.

These summer fetes, when extended into the night, afford wonderful
opportunities for flirtation--far more than the winter ball-room.  The
promenade which occurs during the intervals of the dance may be extended
out of doors, along the gravelled walks, or over the soft grassy turf of
the shrubbery.  It is pleasant thus to escape from the heated air of the
drawing-room--improvised for the night into a ball-room--especially
pleasant when you take along with you your partner of the dance.

Strolling thus with one of the aforementioned maidens, I had halted by
the side of a grand _Deodara_, whose drooping branches, palmately
spread, swept the grass at our feet, forming around the trunk of the
tree a tentlike canopy by day, by night a shadow of amorphous darkness.
All at once a thought seemed to strike my companion.

"By the way," said she, "I was wondering what I had done with my
sunshade.  Now I remember having left it under this very tree.  You stay
here," she continued, disengaging herself from my arm, "while I go under
and see if I can find it."

"No," said I, "permit me to go for it."

"Nonsense," replied my agile partner--she had proved herself such in the
galop just ended--"I shall go myself.  I know the exact spot where I
laid it--on one of the great roots.  Never mind; you stand here."

Saying this, she disappeared under the shadow of the _Deodara_.

I could not think of such a young creature venturing all alone into such
a dismal-looking place; and, not heeding her remonstrance, I bent under
the branches, and followed her in.

After groping about for some time, we failed to find the parasol.

"Some of the servants may have taken it into the house?" she said.  "No
matter.  I suppose it will turn up along with my hat and cloak."

We were about returning to the open lawn, when we saw coming, through
the same break in the branches under which we had entered, a pair of
promenaders like ourselves.  _Their_ errand we could not guess.  Though
ours had been innocent enough, it occurred to me that it might have a
compromising appearance.

I cannot tell if my companion had the same thought; but, whether or no,
we stood still, as if by a mutual instinct, waiting for the other pair
to pass out again.  We supposed they had stepped under the tree actuated
by curiosity, or some other caprice that would soon be satisfied.

In this we were mistaken.  Instead of immediately returning into the
light, faint as it was, and only springing from the glimmer of a starlit
sky, they stopped and entered into a conversation that promised to be
somewhat protracted.  At the first words, I could tell it was only the
resumption of one that had already made some progress between them.

"I know," said the gentleman, "that you still bear _him_ in your mind.
It's no use telling me you never cared for him.  I know better than
that, Miss Mainwaring."

"Indeed, do you?  What a wonderful knowledge you have, Mr Nigel
Harding!  You know more than I ever did myself, and more than your
brother, did too; else why should I have refused him.  Surely that might
convince you there was nothing between us--at least, on my side there
wasn't."

There was a short pause, as if the suitor was reflecting on what the
lady had just said.  My companion and I were puzzled as to what we
should do.  I knew it by the trembling of her arm, that spoke
irresolution.  By a similar sign I felt that we were agreed upon keeping
silent, and hearing this strange dialogue to its termination.  We had
already heard enough to make discovering ourselves exceedingly awkward--
to say nothing of our own compromising position.  We kept our place
then, standing still like a couple of linked statues.

"If that be true," rejoined Nigel Harding, who appeared to have brought
his reasoning process to a satisfactory conclusion, "and if also true
that no other has your heart, may I ask, Miss Mainwaring, why you do not
accept the offer I have laid before you?  You have told me--I think you
have said as much--that you could like me for a husband.  Why not go
farther, and say you will have me?"

"Because--because--Mr Nigel Harding,--do you really wish to know the
reason?"

"If I did not, I should not have spent twelve months in asking--in
pressing for it."

"If you promise to be a good boy, then I will tell you."

"I will promise anything.  If it be a reason that I can remove, you may
command me, and all the means in my power.  My fortune--I won't speak of
that--my life, my body, my soul, are all at your service."

The suitor spoke with a passionate enthusiasm I had not deemed him
capable of.

"I shall be candid, then," was the response, half-whispered, "and tell
you the exact truth.  Two things stand between you and me, either of
which may prevent us becoming man and wife.  First, there is my mother's
consent to be obtained; and without that I will not marry.  To my dear
mother I have given that promise--sworn it.  Second, there is _your
father's consent_; without it I _cannot_ marry you.  I have equally
sworn to that--my mother exacting the oath.  Much, therefore, as I may
like you, Nigel Harding, you know I cannot perjure myself.  Come! we
have talked of this too often.  Let us return to the dancing, or our
absence may be remarked."

Saying this, she swept out from beneath the branches.

The foiled suitor made no attempt to detain her.  The conditions could
not be answered, at least not then; and with a vague hope of being able
at some future time to obtain better terms, he followed her back into
the ball-room.

My companion and I, as soon as released, sauntered the same way.  Not a
word passed between us, as to what we had heard.  To me it did not throw
much new light either on the ways of the world or the character of Miss
Mainwaring; but I could not help regretting the lesson of deception thus
unavoidably communicated to the young creature on my arm, who might
afterwards think of practising it on her own particular account!



CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

A QUEER TRAVELLER.

The swells who diurnally take their departure for Windsor and the West
were one afternoon, in the year 18--, called upon to use their
eye-glasses upon a somewhat strange-looking traveller, who, coming from
heaven knows where, made his appearance on the platform of the
Paddington Station.

And yet there was nothing so very remarkable about the man--except on
the Paddington platform.  At London Bridge you might there have seen his
like any day in the year: a personage of dark complexion, dressed in
black, with a loose poncho-like garment hanging from his shoulders, and
a hat upon his head, half wide-awake, but tending toward a
steeple-crown--in short, a "Calabrian."

Such was the costume of the individual who had caused the raising of
eye-glasses on the Paddington platform.  In an instant they were down
again, the object of supercilious attention having dissipated scrutiny
by diving into the interior of a second-class carriage.

"Demmed queer-looking fella!" was the remark, and with this he was
forgotten.

At Slough he appeared again upon that gloomiest of platforms, commanded
by a station-master possessing the loudest voice upon all the G.W.R.
line.  The strange traveller did not show himself until the swells, such
of them as stopped, at Slough, had given up their tickets, and passed
through the gate.  Then, tumbling out of the carriage, the queer
traveller, with a small portmanteau in his hand, placed himself in
communication with the great Boanerges who directs the startings and
departures at the Slough Station.

Between the two individuals thus accidentally coming together there was
a contrast so striking that the most careless lounger on the platform
could not have restrained himself from giving them attention.  As they
stood, _en rapport_, the very types of extremes--the negative and
positive--the one a grand colossal form of true Saxon physiognomy, the
other a diminutive specimen of Latinic humanity--for such the cloaked
traveller appeared to be.

At the time, I myself chanced to be on the down platform, waiting for a
down train.  I was so struck with the tableau that I involuntarily drew
nigh, to hear what the little dark man in the _capote_ had to say to the
giant in green frock and gilt buttons.

The first word that fell upon my ears was the name of General Harding!
It was not pronounced in the ordinary way, but with an accent plainly
foreign, and which I could easily tell to be Italian.

Listening a little longer, I could hear that the stranger was inquiring
the direction to General Harding's residence.  I should have myself
volunteered to give it him; but from the station-master's reply I
perceived that this functionary was directing him; and just then the
down train, gliding alongside, admonished me to look out for myself.

Not till then did it occur to me, that I had stupidly forgotten to take
my ticket, and I hastened into the office to procure one.  As I came out
again upon the platform I saw the strange traveller disappear within the
doorway of a hackney coach; the driver of which, giving the whip to his
horse, trundled off from the station.

In ten seconds after, I had taken my seat in the railway-carriage--an
empty one--when an incident occurred that drove the queer traveller as
completely out of my head as if he had never been in it.

The whistle had already screamed, and the train was about to move off,
when the door was opened by the Titanic station-master, who was saying
at the same time--

"This way ladies!"

The rustle of silk, with some hurried exclamation outside, told of the
late arrival of at least two feminine passengers; and, the moment after,
they entered the carriage, and took their seats nearly opposite me.

I had been cutting open the pages of _Punch_, and did not look up into
their faces as they entered.  But on finishing my inspection of the
cartoon, I raised my eyes to see of what style were my two travelling
companions, and beheld--Belle Mainwaring and her mother!

It was just about as awkward a position as I ever remembered occupying
in my life.  But I managed to sustain it, by appealing once more to the
pages of _Punch_.  Not even so much as a nod was exchanged between us;
and had there been a stranger in the carriage he could not have told
that Miss Mainwaring and I had ever met--much less danced together.  I
did _Punch_ from beginning to end; and then, turning my attention to the
advertisements on the back of the title-page, made myself acquainted
with the qualities of "Gosnell's Soap" and the mysteries of the
"Sansflectum Crinoline."  Despite these studies, I found time to give an
occasional side-glance at Miss Mainwaring, which I saw she was returning
by a similar slant.  What she may have seen in my eye I cannot tell, but
in hers I read a light that, had my heart not been of the dulness of
lead, might have set it on fire.  It had at one time come very near
melting under that same glance; but, after the cooling process
experienced, it had become hardened to the temper of steel, and now
passed through the crucible unscathed.  When I had finished reading
_Punch's_ three columns of advertisements, and for the hundredth time
made an examination of Toby, with the procession of nymphs, dancing
buffoons, and bacchantes, the train stopped at Reading.

Here my travelling companions got out.  So did I.  I had been asked to a
park fete to be held at a gentleman's residence in the neighbourhood--
the same mentioned in a previous chapter.  I suspected the Mainwarings
were also bound for the place; and from the direction taken by the fly
in which they drove off, I was made sure of it.

On arriving at my friend's residence I found them upon the lawn; Miss
Belle, as usual, surrounded by simpering swells, among whom, not to my
surprise, I recognised Mr Nigel Harding.  I noticed that, during the
progress of the game of croquet which they were playing, he refrained
from showing her any marked attention, leaving this for the others.  For
all that he was evidently uneasy, and stealthily watched her every
glance and movement.  Once or twice when they were apart, I could hear
him say something to her in a low tone, with the green of jealousy in
his eyes, and its pallor upon his lips.

On leaving the place, which the company did at an early hour, I saw that
he accompanied her and her mother to the railway station.  The three
rode back in the same fly.  We all returned to Slough in the same train;
I going on to London.  From the carriage in which I sat I could see Miss
Mainwaring's pony-phaeton, with the page at the pony's head, and close
by a dog-cart with a groom in the Harding livery.  Before the train
started I saw the ladies step into the phaeton, Nigel Harding climbing
to the seat behind them, while "buttons" was dismissed to take his seat
in the dog-cart.  With their freight thus assorted, the two vehicles
drove off, just as the train was slipping out of the station.

From what I had seen that day, and what I had heard under the great
cedar tree, and, more than all, from what I knew of both parties to the
suit, I had made up my mind before reaching London, that Belle
Mainwaring was booked to be the better-half of Nigel Harding--if
_consent_ could be squeezed out of his father either by fraud or by
force.



CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

DISSIMULATION.

On that same night, as upon almost every other of the year, General
Harding was seated in his dining-room with a decanter of crusted port on
his right hand, a glass a little nearer, and a Phillipine cheroot
between his teeth.  His maiden sister was on his left, round a corner of
the table, upon which stood before her another wine-glass, with an
epergne of flowers, and a hand-dish containing fruit.  It was the hour
after dinner, the cloth had been removed, the dessert decanters set upon
the table, and the butler and footmen had retired.

"It's just nine," said the General, consulting his chronometer-watch,
"Nigel should be back by this.  He wasn't to stop for dinner--only
luncheon--and the train leaves Reading at 7:16.  I wonder if those
Mainwarings were there?"

"Pretty sure to be," replied the ancient spinster, who was shrewd at
conjectures.

"Yes," thoughtfully soliloquised the General, "pretty sure, I suppose.
Well, it don't much matter, I've no fear for Nigel; he's not the sort to
be humbugged by her blandishments, like that hot-headed simpleton, Hal.
By my word, sister! it is very strange we've not heard a word from the
lad since he left us."

"You will, when he's spent the thousand pounds you gave him.  When that
comes to an end, he'll not be so sparing of his correspondence."

"No doubt.  Strange, though--not a scrape of his pen since that nasty
epistle from the inn--not even to acknowledge the receipt of the money.
I suppose he got it all right.  I've not looked into my bank-book since
I don't know when."

"Oh, you may be certain of his having got it.  If he hadn't you'd have
heard from him long ago.  Henry isn't one to go without money, where
money can be had.  You've good reason to know that.  I should say you
needn't trouble about him, brother; he's not been living all this time
upon air."

"I wonder where he is?  He said he was going abroad.  I suppose he has
done so."

"Doubtful enough," rejoined the spinster, with a shake of her head;
"London will be the place for him, so long as his money lasts.  When it
is spent you'll hear from him.  He'll write for a fresh supply.  Of
course, brother, you'll send it?"

The interrogatory was spoken ironically and in a taunting tone, intended
to produce an effect the very opposite to what it might seem to serve.

"Not a shilling!" said the General, determinedly setting his wine-glass
down on the table with an emphatic clink.  "Not a single shilling.  If
within twelve months he has succeeded in dissipating a thousand pounds,
he shall go twelve years before he gets another thousand.  Not a
shilling before my death; and then only enough to keep him from
starvation.  No, Nelly dear, I've made up my mind about that.  Nigel
shall have all except a little something which will be left to yourself.
I gave Hal every chance.  He should have had half.  Now, after what has
happened--There are wheels upon the gravel.  Nigel with the dog-cart, I
suppose."

It was; and in ten seconds more Nigel, without the dog-cart, stepped
softly into the room.

"You're a little late, Nigel?"

"Yes, papa.  The train was behind time."

This was a lie.  The delay was caused by stoppage nearer home--at the
widow Mainwaring's cottage.

"Well, I hope you have had a pleasant party?"

"Passable."

"That all?  And such weather.  Who was there?"

"Oh, for that matter, there was company enough--half of Bucks and
Berkshire, I should think, to say nothing of a score of snobs from
London."

"Any of our neighbours?"

"Well--no--not exactly."

"It's a wonder the widow Mainwaring--"

"Oh, yes, she was there.  I didn't think of her."

"The daughter, of course, along with her?"

"Yes, the daughter was there, too.  By the way, aunt," continued the
young man, with the design of changing the subject, "you haven't asked
me to join you in a glass of wine.  And I'd like to have a morsel of
something to eat.  I feel as if I'd had nothing at all.  I think I could
eat a raw steak if I had it."

"There was a roast duck for dinner," suggested the aunt; "but it is cold
now, dear Nigel, and so is the asparagus.  Will you wait until it is
warmed up, or perhaps you would prefer a slice of the cold boiled beef,
with some West Indian pickles?"

"I don't care what, so long as it's something to eat."

"Have a glass of port wine, Nigel," said the General, while his sister
was directing Williams as to the arrangement of the tray.  "From what
you say, I suppose you don't want a nip of cognac to give you an
appetite?"

"No, indeed.  I've got that already.  How late is it, father?  Their
clocks appear to be all wrong down the road, or else the trains are.
It's always the way with the Great Western.  It's a bad line to depend
on for dining."

"Ah, and a worse for dividends," rejoined the General, the smile at his
own pun being more than neutralised by a grin that told of his being
holder of shares in the G.W.R.

With a laugh Nigel drank off his glass of port; and then sat down to his
cold duck, boiled beef, and pickles.



CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

A STRANGE VISITOR.

General Harding's butler, with the assistance of the footman had just
carried out the supper-tray when there came a ring at the hall-door
bell, succeeded by a double knock.  Neither were of the kind which the
butler would have called "obtropolous," but rather bashful and subdued.
For all that they were heard within the room where the General sat.

"Very odd, at this hour of night," remarked the General.  "Ten o'clock,"
he said, consulting his chronometer.  "Who can it be?"

No one made a reply, as all were engrossed in listening.  They heard the
opening of the door, and then a parley between Williams upon the step,
and somebody outside in the porch.  It lasted some time longer than need
have been necessary for a visitor who was a friend of the family.  The
voice, too, answering the butler's, was evidently that of a stranger,
and, as the occupants of the dining-room thought, one who spoke with a
foreign accent.

The General bethought him, whether it might not be some of his old chums
freshly arrived home from India, and who had come down _sans ceremonie_
by a late train.  But, then, he could think of none of them with a
foreign accent.

"Who is it, Williams?" asked he, as the latter appeared in the doorway
of the dining-room.

"That I can't tell, General.  The gentleman, if I may so call 'im, will
neither give his name nor his card.  He says he has most important
business, and must see you."

"Very odd!  What does he look like?"

"Like a furraner, and a rum 'un at that.  Certain, General, he arn't a
gentleman; that can be seen plain enough."

"Very odd!" again repeated the General.  "Very odd!  Says he must see
me?"

"Sayed it over and over, that it's important more to you than him.
Shall I show him in, General, or will you speak to him at the door?"

"Door be damned!" testily replied the old soldier.  "I'm not going out
there to accommodate a stranger, without either name or card.  May be
some begging-letter impostor.  Tell him I can't see him to-night.  He
may come back in the morning."

"I've told him so, General, already.  He says no; you must see him
to-night."

"Must!  The devil!"

"Well, General, if I'd be allowed to speak my opinion, he looks a good
bit like that same gentleman you've mentioned."

"Who the deuce can it be, Nigel?" said the old soldier, turning to his
son.

"I haven't the slightest idea myself," was Nigel's reply.  "It wouldn't
be that Lawyer Woolet?  He answers very well to the description Williams
gives of his late intruder."

"No, no, Master Nigel, it's not Mr Woolet.  It's an article of
hoomanity even uglier than him; though certain he have got something o'
a lawyer's look about him.  But then he be a furriner; I can swear to
that."

"By Jove!" exclaimed the General, using one of his mildest
asseverations.  "I can't think of any foreigner that can have business
with me; but whether or no, I suppose I must see him.  What say you, my
son?"

"Oh, as for that," answered the latter, "there can be no harm in it.
I'll stay in the room with you; and if he becomes troublesome, I
suppose, with the help of Williams here and the footman, we may be able
to eject him."

"Lor, Master Nigel, he isn't bigger than our page-boy.  I could take him
up in my arms, and swing him hallway across the shrubberies.  You
needn't have no fear 'bout that."

"Come, come, Williams," said the General, "none of this idle talking.
Tell the gentleman I'll see him.  Show him in."

Then, turning to his sister, he added--

"Nelly dear, you may as well go up to the drawing-room.  Nigel and I
will join you as soon as we've given an interview to this unexpected
guest."

The spinster, gathering up some crochet-work that she had made a
commencement on, sailed out of the room--leaving her brother and nephew
to receive the nocturnal caller, who would not be denied.



CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

AN UNCOURTEOUS RECEPTION.

The old soldier and his son stood in silent expectation; for the oddity
of an interview thus authoritatively demanded had summoned both to their
feet.  Outside they could hear the resumed exchange of speech between
Williams and the stranger, and their two sets of footsteps sounding
along the flagged pavement of the hall.  Some seconds after, the
stranger was shown inside the room, and the three were left alone--
Williams retiring at a sign from the General.

A more singular specimen of the _genus homo_, or one less in keeping
with the place, had never made appearance inside the dining-hall of an
English country gentleman.

As Williams had asserted, he was not much bigger than a page-boy; but
for all that, he could not be less than forty years of age.  In
complexion he was dark as a gipsy, with long straight hair of
crow's-wing blackness, and eyes scintillating like chips of fresh-broken
coal.

His face was of the Israelitish type, while his dress, with the
exception of a sort of capote, which he still kept upon his shoulders,
had something of a professional cut about it, such as might be seen
about men of the law in the Latinic countries of Europe.  He might be an
avocato, or notary.  In his hand he held a hat, a sort of wide-awake, or
Calabrian, which on entering the dining-room he had the courtesy to take
off.  Beyond this there was not much politeness shown by him, either in
aspect or action; for notwithstanding his diminutive person, he appeared
the very picture of pluck--of that epitomised kind seen in the terrier
or weasel.  It showed itself not so much in swagger as in an air of
self-reliance, that seemed to say, "I have come here on an errand that
will be its own excuse, and I know you won't send me back without giving
me a satisfactory answer."

"What is it?" asked the General, as if this very thought had just passed
through his own mind.

The stranger looked towards Nigel, as much as to say, "Do you wish this
young gentleman to be present?"

"That is my son," continued the old soldier.  "Anything you have to say
need not be kept secret from him."

"You have _another_ son?" asked the stranger, speaking in a foreign
accent, but in English sufficiently intelligible.  "I think you have
another son, Signor General."

The question caused the General to start, while Nigel turned suddenly
pale.  The significant glance that accompanied the interrogatory told
that the stranger knew something about Henry Harding.

"I have--or should have," replied the General.  "What do you want to say
of him, and why do you speak of him?"

"Do you know where your other son is, Signor General?"

"Well, not exactly, at present.  Do _you_ know where he is?  Who are
you? and whence do you come?"

"Signor General, I shall be most happy to answer all three of your
questions, if you only allow me to do it in the order, inverse to that
in which you have put them."

"Answer them in what order you please; but do it quickly.  The hour is
late, and I've no time to stand here talking to an entire stranger."

"Signor General, I shall not detain you many minutes.  My business is of
a simple nature, and my time, like yours, is precious.  First, then, I
come from the city of Rome, which I need not tell you is in Italy.
Second, I am _un procuratore_--an attorney you call it in English.
Thirdly, and lastly, I _do_ know where your other son is."

The General again started, Nigel growing paler.

"Where is he?"

"This, Signor General, will inform you."

As he spoke, the _procuratore_ drew a letter from under his _capote_,
and presented it to the General.  It was that which had been written by
Henry Harding in the mountains, under the dictation of Corvino, the
bandit chief.

Putting on his spectacles, and drawing the light nearer to him, General
Harding read the letter with a feeling of astonishment, tinctured with
incredulity.

"This is nonsense!" said he, handing the document to Nigel.  "Sheer
nonsense!  Read it, my son."

Nigel did as he was desired.

"What do _you_ make of it?" asked the General, addressing himself in an
undertone to his son.

"That it's just what you say, father--nonsense; or perhaps something
worse.  It looks to me like a trick to extort money."

"Ah!  But do you think, Nigel, that Henry has any hand in it?"

"I hardly know what to think, father," answered Nigel, continuing the
whispered conversation.  "It grieves me to say what I think; but I must
confess it looks against him.  If he has fallen into the hands of
brigands--which I cannot believe, and I hope is not true--how should
they know where to send such a letter?  How could they tell he has a
father capable of paying such a ransom for him, unless he has put them
up to it?  It is probable enough that he's in Rome, where this fellow
says he has come from.  That may all be.  But a captive in the keeping
of brigands!  The thing is too preposterous!"

"Most decidedly it is.  But what am I to make of this application?"

"To my mind," pursued the insinuating councillor, "the explanation is
easy enough.  He's run through his thousand pounds, as might have been
expected, and he now wants more.  I am sorry to believe such a thing,
father, but it looks as if this is a tale got up to work upon your
feelings, and get a fresh remittance of cash.  At all events, he has not
stinted himself in the sum asked for."

"Five thousand pounds!" exclaimed the General, again glancing over the
letter.  "He must think me crazy.  He shall not have as many pence--no,
not if it were even true what he says about being with brigands."

"Of course that part of the story is all stuff--although it's clear he
has written the letter.  It's in his own hand, and that's his
signature."

"Certainly it is.  My God! to think that this is the first I should hear
from him since that other letter.  A pretty way of seeking a
reconciliation with me!  Bah! the trick won't take.  I'm too old a
soldier to be deceived by it."

"I'm sorry he should have tried it.  I fear, papa, he has not yet
repented of his rash disobedience.  But what do you mean to do with this
fellow?"

"Ay, what?" echoed the General, now remembering the man who had been the
bearer of the strange missive.  "What would you advise to be done?  Send
over for the police, and give him in charge."

"I don't know about that," answered Nigel reflectively.  "It seems
hardly worth while, and might lead to some unpleasantness to ourselves.
Better the public should not know about the unfortunate affair of poor
Henry.  A police case would necessarily expose some things that you,
father, I'm sure, don't wish to be made public."

"True--true.  But something should be done to punish this impudent
impostor.  It's too bad to be so bearded--almost bullied in one's own
home; and by a wretch like that."

"Threaten him, then, before dismissing him.  That may bring out some
more information about the scheme.  At all events, it can do no harm to
give him a bit of your mind.  It may do good to Henry, to know how you
have received his petition so cunningly contrived."



CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

AN UNCEREMONIOUS DISMISSAL.

The side conversation between General Harding and his son was at length
suspended by the old soldier facing abruptly towards the stranger, who
all the while had been standing quietly apart.

"You're an impostor, sir!" exclaimed the General.  "An impostor, I say!"

"_Molte grazie_, Signor General!" replied the man, without making other
movement than a mock bow.  "Rather an uncomplimentary epithet to apply
to one who has come all the way from Italy to do you a service, or
rather your son.  Is this all the answer I'm to take back to him?"

"If you take any back to him, that's it," interposed Nigel.  "Do you
know, sir," he continued in a threatening manner; "do you know that
you've placed yourself within the power

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