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A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day

by Charles Reade · English · Gutenberg #7895 · 755,097 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day

Author: Charles Reade


        
Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7895]
                Most recently updated: March 5, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7895

Credits: Produced by James Rusk, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TERRIBLE TEMPTATION: A STORY OF TO-DAY ***




Produced by James Rusk





A TERRIBLE TEMPTATION

A STORY OF TO-DAY


By Charles Reade





CHAPTER I.

THE morning-room of a large house in Portman Square, London.

A gentleman in the prime of life stood with his elbow on the broad
mantel-piece, and made himself agreeable to a young lady, seated a
little way off, playing at work.

To the ear he was only conversing, but his eyes dwelt on her with
loving admiration all the time. Her posture was favorable to this
furtive inspection, for she leaned her fair head over her work with a
pretty, modest, demure air, that seemed to say, “I suspect I am being
admired: I will not look to see: I might have to check it.”

The gentleman's features were ordinary, except his brow--that had power
in it--but he had the beauty of color; his sunburned features glowed
with health, and his eye was bright. On the whole, rather good-looking
when he smiled, but ugly when he frowned; for his frown was a scowl,
and betrayed a remarkable power of hating.

Miss Arabella Bruce was a beauty. She had glorious masses of dark red
hair, and a dazzling white neck to set it off; large, dove-like eyes,
and a blooming oval face, which would have been classical if her lips
had been thin and finely chiseled; but here came in her Anglo-Saxon
breed, and spared society a Minerva by giving her two full and rosy
lips. They made a smallish mouth at rest, but parted ever so wide when
they smiled, and ravished the beholder with long, even rows of dazzling
white teeth.

Her figure was tall and rather slim, but not at all commanding. There
are people whose very bodies express character; and this tall, supple,
graceful frame of Bella Bruce breathed womanly subservience; so did her
gestures. She would take up or put down her own scissors half timidly,
and look around before threading her needle, as if to see whether any
soul objected. Her favorite word was “May I?” with a stress on the
“May,” and she used it where most girls would say “I will,” or nothing,
and do it.

Mr. Richard Bassett was in love with her, and also conscious that her
fifteen thousand pounds would be a fine addition to his present income,
which was small, though his distant expectations were great. As he had
known her but one month, and she seemed rather amiable than
inflammable, he had the prudence to proceed by degrees; and that is
why, though his eyes gloated on her, he merely regaled her with the
gossip of the day, not worth recording here. But when he had actually
taken his hat to go, Bella Bruce put him a question that had been on
her mind the whole time, for which reason she had reserved it to the
very last moment.

“Is Sir Charles Bassett in town?” said she, mighty carelessly, but
bending a little lower over her embroidery.

“Don't know,” said Richard Bassett, with such a sudden brevity and
asperity that Miss Bruce looked up and opened her lovely eyes. Mr.
Richard Bassett replied to this mute inquiry, “We don't speak.” Then,
after a pause, “He has robbed me of my inheritance.”

“Oh, Mr. Bassett!”

“Yes, Miss Bruce, the Bassett and Huntercombe estates were mine by
right of birth. My father was the eldest son, and they were entailed on
him. But Sir Charles's father persuaded my old, doting grandfather to
cut off the entail, and settle the estates on him and his heirs; and so
they robbed me of every acre they could. Luckily my little estate of
Highmore was settled on my mother and her issue too tight for the
villains to undo.”

These harsh expressions, applied to his own kin, and the abruptness and
heat they were uttered with, surprised and repelled his gentle
listener. She shrank a little away from him. He observed it. She
replied not to his words, but to her own thought:

“But, after all, it does seem hard.” She added, with a little fervor,
“But it wasn't poor Sir Charles's doing, after all.”

“He is content to reap the benefit,” said Richard Bassett, sternly.

Then, finding he was making a sorry impression, he tried to get away
from the subject. I say tried, for till a man can double like a hare he
will never get away from his hobby. “Excuse me,” said he; “I ought
never to speak about it. Let us talk of something else. You cannot
enter into my feelings; it makes my blood boil. Oh, Miss Bruce! you
can't conceive what a disinherited man feels--and I live at the very
door: his old trees, that ought to be mine, fling their shadows over my
little flower beds; the sixty chimneys of Huntercombe Hall look down on
my cottage; his acres of lawn run up to my little garden, and nothing
but a ha-ha between us.”

“It _is_ hard,” said Miss Bruce, composedly; not that she entered into
a hardship of this vulgar sort, but it was her nature to soothe and
please people.

“Hard!” cried Richard Bassett, encouraged by even this faint sympathy;
“it would be unendurable but for one thing--I shall have my own some
day.”

“I am glad of that,” said the lady; “but how?”

“By outliving the wrongful heir.”

Miss Bruce turned pale. She had little experience of men's passions.
“Oh, Mr. Bassett!” said she--and there was something pure and holy in
the look of sorrow and alarm she cast on the presumptuous
speaker--“pray do not cherish such thoughts. They will do you harm. And
remember life and death are not in our hands. Besides--”

“Well?”'

“Sir Charles might--”

“Well?”

“Might he not--marry--and have children?” This with more hesitation and
a deeper blush than appeared absolutely necessary.

“Oh, there's no fear of that. Property ill-gotten never descends.
Charles is a worn-out rake. He was fast at Eton--fast at Oxford--fast
in London. Why, he looks ten years older than I, and he is three years
younger. He had a fit two years ago. Besides, he is not a marrying man.
Bassett and Huntercombe will be mine. And oh! Miss Bruce, if ever they
are mine--”

“Sir Charles Bassett!” trumpeted a servant at the door; and then
waited, prudently, to know whether his young lady, whom he had caught
blushing so red with one gentleman, would be at home to another.

“Wait a moment,” said Miss Bruce to him. Then, discreetly ignoring what
Bassett had said last, and lowering her voice almost to a whisper, she
said, hurriedly: “You should not blame him for the faults of others.
There--I have not been long acquainted with either, and am little
entitled to inter--But it is such a pity you are not friends. He is
very good, I assure you, and very nice. Let me reconcile you two. _May_
I?”

This well-meant petition was uttered very sweetly; and, indeed--if I
may be permitted--in a way to dissolve a bear.

But this was not a bear, nor anything else that is placable; it was a
man with a hobby grievance; so he replied in character:

“That is impossible so long as he keeps me out of my own.” He had the
grace, however, to add, half sullenly, “Excuse me; I feel I have been
too vehement.”

Miss Bruce, thus repelled, answered, rather coldly:

“Oh, never mind _that;_ it was very natural.--I am at home, then,” said
she to the servant.

Mr. Bassett took the hint, but turned at the door, and said, with no
little agitation, “I was not aware he visits you. One word--don't let
his ill-gotten acres make you quite forget the disinherited one.” And
so he left her, with an imploring look.

She felt red with all this, so she slipped out at another door, to cool
her cheeks and imprison a stray curl for Sir Charles.

He strolled into the empty room, with the easy, languid air of fashion.
His features were well cut, and had some nobility; but his sickly
complexion and the lines under his eyes told a tale of dissipation. He
appeared ten years older than he was, and thoroughly _blase._

Yet when Miss Bruce entered the room with a smile and a little blush,
he brightened up and looked handsome, and greeted her with momentary
warmth.

After the usual inquiries she asked him if he had met any body.

“Where?”

“Here; just now.”

“No.”

“What, nobody at all?”

“Only my sulky cousin; I don't call him anybody,” drawled Sir Charles,
who was now relapsing into his normal condition of semi-apathy.

“Oh,” said Miss Bruce gayly, “you must expect him to be a little cross.
It is not so very nice to be disinherited, let me tell you.”

“And who has disinherited the fellow?”

“I forget; but you disinherited him among you. Never mind; it can't be
helped now. When did you come back to town? I didn't see you at Lady
d'Arcy's ball, did I?”

“You did not, unfortunately for me; but you would if I had known you
were to be there. But about Richard: he may tell you what he likes, but
he was not disinherited; he was bought out. The fact is, his father was
uncommonly fast. My grandfather paid his debts again and again; but at
last the old gentleman found he was dealing with the Jews for his
reversion. Then there was an awful row. It ended in my grandfather
outbidding the Jews. He bought the reversion of his estate from his own
son for a large sum of money (he had to raise it by mortgages); then
they cut off the entail between them, and he entailed the mortgaged
estate on his other son, and his grandson (that was me), and on my
heir-at-law. Richard's father squandered his thirty thousand pounds
before he died; my father husbanded the estates, got into Parliament,
and they put a tail to his name.”

Sir Charles delivered this version of the facts with a languid
composure that contrasted deliciously with Richard's heat in telling
the story his way (to be sure, Sir Charles had got Huntercombe and
Bassett, and it is easier to be philosophical on the right side of the
boundary hedge), and wound up with a sort of corollary: “Dick Bassett
suffers by his father's vices, and I profit by mine's virtues. Where's
the injustice?”

“Nowhere, and the sooner you are reconciled the better.”

Sir Charles demurred. “Oh, I don't want to quarrel with the fellow: but
he is a regular thorn in my side, with his little trumpery estate, all
in broken patches. He shoots my pheasants in the unfairest way.” Here
the landed proprietor showed real irritation, but only for a moment. He
concluded calmly, “The fact is, he is not quite a gentleman. Fancy his
coming and whining to you about our family affairs, and then telling
you a falsehood!”

“No, no; he did not mean. It was his way of looking at things. You can
afford to forgive him.”

“Yes, but not if he sets you against me.”

“But he cannot do that. The more any one was to speak against you, the
more I--of course.”

This admission fired Sir Charles; he drew nearer, and, thanks to his
cousin's interference, spoke the language of love more warmly and
directly than he had ever done before.

The lady blushed, and defended herself feebly. Sir Charles grew warmer,
and at last elicited from her a timid but tender avowal, that made him
supremely happy.

When he left her this brief ecstasy was succeeded by regrets on account
of the years he had wasted in follies and intrigues.

He smoked five cigars, and pondered the difference between the pure
creature who now honored him with her virgin affections and beauties of
a different character who had played their parts in his luxurious life.

After profound deliberation he sent for his solicitor. They lighted the
inevitable cigars, and the following observations struggled feebly out
along with the smoke.

“Mr. Oldfield, I'm going to be married.”

“Glad to hear it, Sir Charles.” (Vision of settlements.) “It is a high
time you were.” (Puff-puff.)

“Want your advice and assistance first.”

“Certainly.”

“Must put down my pony-carriage now, you know.”

“A very proper retrenchment; but you can do that without my assistance.”

“There would be sure to be a row if I did. I dare say there will be as
it is. At any rate, I want to do the thing like a gentleman.”

“Send 'em to Tattersall's.” (Puff.)

“And the girl that drives them in the park, and draws all the duchesses
and countesses at her tail--am I to send her to Tattersall's?” (Puff.)

“Oh, it is _her_ you want to put down, then?”

“Why, of course.”




CHAPTER II.

SIR CHARLES and Mr. Oldfield settled that lady's retiring pension, and
Mr. Oldfield took the memoranda home, with instructions to prepare a
draft deed for Miss Somerset's approval.

Meantime Sir Charles visited Miss Bruce every day. Her affections for
him grew visibly, for being engaged gave her the courage to love.

Mr. Bassett called pretty often; but one day he met Sir Charles on the
stairs, and scowled.

That scowl cost him dear, for Sir Charles thereupon represented to
Bella that a man with a grievance is a bore to the very eye, and asked
her to receive no more visits from his scowling cousin. The lady
smiled, and said, with soft complacency, “I obey.”

Sir Charles's gallantry was shocked.

“No, don't say 'obey.' It is a little favor I ventured to ask.”

“It is like you to ask what you have a right to command. I shall be out
to him in future, and to every one who is disagreeable to you. What!
does 'obey' frighten you from my lips? To me it is the sweetest in the
language. Oh, please let me 'obey' you! _May_ I?”

Upon this, as vanity is seldom out of call, Sir Charles swelled like a
turkey-cock, and loftily consented to indulge Bella Bruce's strange
propensity. From that hour she was never at home to Mr. Bassett.

He began to suspect; and one day, after he had been kept out with the
loud, stolid “Not at home” of practiced mendacity, he watched, and saw
Sir Charles admitted.

He divined it all in a moment, and turned to wormwood. What! was he to
be robbed of the lady he loved--and her fifteen thousand pounds--by the
very man who had robbed him of his ancestral fields? He dwelt on the
double grievance till it nearly frenzied him. But he could do nothing:
it was his fate. His only hope was that Sir Charles, the arrant flirt,
would desert this beauty after a time, as he had the others.

But one afternoon, in the smoking-room of his club, a gentleman said to
him, “So your cousin Charles is engaged to the Yorkshire beauty, Bell
Bruce?”

“He is flirting with her, I believe,” said Richard.

“No, no,” said the other; “they are engaged. I know it for a fact. They
are to be married next month.”

Mr. Richard Bassett digested this fresh pill in moody silence, while
the gentlemen of the club discussed the engagement with easy levity.
They soon passed to a topic of wider interest, viz., who was to succeed
Sir Charles with La Somerset. Bassett began to listen attentively, and
learned for the first time Sir Charles Bassett's connection with that
lady, and also that she was a woman of a daring nature and furious
temper. At first he was merely surprised; but soon hatred and jealousy
whispered in his ear that with these materials it must be possible to
wound those who had wounded him.

Mr. Marsh, a young gentleman with a receding chin, and a mustache
between hay and straw, had taken great care to let them all know he was
acquainted with Miss Somerset. So Richard got Marsh alone, and sounded
him. Could he call upon the lady without ceremony?

“You won't get in. Her street door is jolly well guarded, I can tell
you.”

“I am very curious to see her in her own house.”

“So are a good many fellows.”

“Could you not give me an introduction?”

Marsh shook his head sapiently for a considerable time, and with all
this shaking, as it appeared, out fell words of wisdom. “Don't see it.
I'm awfully spooney on her myself; and, you know, when a fellow
introduces another fellow, that fellow always cuts the other out.”
 Then, descending from the words of the wise and their dark sayings to a
petty but pertinent fact, he added, _“Besides,_ I'm only let in myself
about once in five times.”

“She gives herself wonderful airs, it seems,” said Bassett, rather
bitterly.

Marsh fired up. “So would any woman that was as beautiful, and as witty
and as much run after as she is. Why she is a leader of fashion. Look
at all the ladies following her round the park. They used to drive on
the north side of the Serpentine. She just held up her finger, and now
they have cut the Serpentine, and followed her to the south drive.”

“Oh, indeed!” said Bassett. “Ah then this is a great lady; a poor
country squire must not venture into her august presence.” He turned
savagely on his heel, and Marsh went and made sickly mirth at his
expense.

By this means the matter soon came to the ears of old Mr. Woodgate, the
father of that club, and a genial gossip. He got hold of Bassett in the
dinner-room and examined him. “So you want an introduction to La
Somerset, and Marsh refuses--Marsh, hitherto celebrated for his weak
head rather than his hard heart?”

Richard Bassett nodded rather sullenly. He had not bargained for this
rapid publicity.

The venerable chief resumed: “We all consider Marsh's conduct
unclubable and a thing to be combined against. Wanted--an
Anti-dog-in-the-manger League. I'll introduce you to the Somerset.”

“What! do _you_ visit her?” asked Bassett, in some astonishment.

The old gentleman held up his hands in droll disclaimer, and chuckled
merrily “No, no; I enjoy from the shore the disasters of my youthful
friends--that sacred pleasure is left me. Do you see that elegant
creature with the little auburn beard and mustache, waiting sweetly for
his dinner. He launched the Somerset.”

“Launched her?”

“Yes; but for him she might have wasted her time breaking hearts and
slapping faces in some country village. He it was set her devastating
society; and with his aid she shall devastate you.--Vandeleur, will you
join Bassett and me?”

Mr. Vandeleur, with ready grace, said he should be delighted, and they
dined together accordingly.

Mr. Vandeleur, six feet high, lank, but graceful as a panther, and the
pink of politeness, was, beneath his varnish, one of the wildest young
men in London--gambler, horse-racer, libertine, what not?--but in
society charming, and his manners singularly elegant and winning. He
never obtruded his vices in good company; in fact, you might dine with
him all your life and not detect him. The young serpent was torpid in
wine; but he came out, a bit at a time, in the sunshine of Cigar.

After a brisk conversation on current topics, the venerable chief told
him plainly they were both curious to know the history of Miss
Somerset, and he must tell it them.

“Oh, with pleasure,” said the obliging youth. “Let us go into the
smoking-room.”



“Let--me--see. I picked her up by the sea-side. She promised well at
first. We put her on my chestnut mare, and she showed lots of courage,
so she soon learned to ride; but she kicked, even down there.”

“Kicked!--whom?”

“Kicked all round; I mean showed temper. And when she got to London,
and had ridden a few times in the park, and swallowed flattery, there
was no holding her. I stood her cheek for a good while, but at last I
told the servants they must not turn her out, but they could keep her
out. They sided with me for once. She had ridden over them, as well.
The first time she went out they bolted the doors, and handed her boxes
up the area steps.”

“How did she take that?”

“Easier than we expected. She said, 'Lucky for you beggars that I'm a
lady, or I'd break every d--d window in the house.'”

This caused a laugh. It subsided. The historian resumed.

“Next day she cooled, and wrote a letter.”

“To you?”

“No, to my groom. Would you like to see it? It is a curiosity.”

He sent one of the club waiters for his servant, and his servant for
his desk, and produced the letter.

“There!” said Vandeleur. “She looks like a queen, and steps like an
empress, and this is how she writes:


“'DEAR JORGE--i have got the sak, an' praps your turn nex. dear jorge
he alwaies promise me the grey oss, which now an oss is life an death
to me. If you was to ast him to lend me the grey he wouldn't refuse
you,

“'Yours respecfully,

“'RHODA SOMERSET.'”



When the letter and the handwriting, which, unfortunately, I cannot
reproduce, had been duly studied and approved, Vandeleur continued--

“Now, you know, she had her good points, after all. If any creature was
ill, she'd sit up all night and nurse them, and she used to go to
church on Sundays, and come back with the sting out of her; only then
she would preach to a fellow, and bore him. She is awfully fond of
preaching. Her dream is to jump on a first-rate hunter, and ride across
country, and preach to the villages. So, when George came grinning to
me with the letter, I told him to buy a new side-saddle for the gray,
and take her the lot, with my compliments. I had noticed a slight
spavin in his near foreleg. She rode him that very day in the park, all
alone, and made such a sensation that next day my gray was standing in
Lord Hailey's stables. But she rode Hailey, like my gray, with a long
spur, and he couldn't stand it. None of 'em could except Sir Charles
Bassett, and he doesn't play fair--never goes near her.”

“And that gives him an unfair advantage over his fascinating
predecessors?” inquired the senior, slyly.

“Of course it does,” said Vandeleur, stoutly. “You ask a girl to dine
at Richmond once a month, and keep out of her way all the rest of the
time, and give her lots of money--she will never quarrel with you.”

“Profit by this information, young man,” said old Woodgate, severely;
“it comes too late for me. In my day there existed no sure method of
pleasing the fair. But now that is invented, along with everything
else. Richmond and--absence, equivalent to 'Richmond and victory!' Now,
Bassett, we have heard the truth from the fountain-head, and it is
rather serious. She swears, she kicks, she preaches. Do you still
desire an introduction? As for me, my manly spirit is beginning to
quake at Vandeleur's revelations, and some lines of Scott recur to my
Gothic memory--

“'From the chafed tiger rend his prey, Bar the fell dragon's blighting
way, But shun that lovely snare.”'

Bassett replied, gravely, that he had no such motive as Mr. Woodgate
gave him credit for, but still desired the introduction.

“With pleasure,” said Vandeleur; “but it will be no use to you. She
hates me like poison; says I have no heart. That is what all
ill-tempered women say.”

Notwithstanding his misgivings the obliging youth called for writing
materials, and produced the following epistle--



“DEAR MISS SOMERSET--Mr. Richard Bassett, a cousin of Sir Charles,
wishes very much to be introduced to you, and has begged me to assist
in an object so laudable. I should hardly venture to present myself,
and, therefore, shall feel surprised as well as flattered if you will
receive Mr. Bassett on my introduction, and my assurance that he is a
respectable country gentleman, and bears no resemblance in character to

“Yours faithfully,

“ARTHUR VANDELEUR.”



Next day Bassett called at Miss Somerset's house in May Fair, and
delivered his introduction.

He was admitted after a short delay and entered the lady's boudoir. It
was Luxury's nest. The walls were rose colored satin, padded and
puckered; the voluminous curtains were pale satin, with floods and
billows of real lace; the chairs embroidered, the tables all buhl and
ormolu, and the sofas felt like little seas. The lady herself, in a
delightful peignoir, sat nestled cozily in a sort of ottoman with arms.
Her finely formed hand, clogged with brilliants, was just conveying
brandy and soda-water to a very handsome mouth when Richard Bassett
entered.

She raised herself superbly, but without leaving her seat, and just
looked at a chair in a way that seemed to say, “I permit you to sit
down;” and that done, she carried the glass to her lips with the same
admirable firmness of hand she showed in driving. Her lofty manner,
coupled with her beautiful but rather haughty features, smacked of
imperial origin. Yet she was the writer to “jorge,” and four years ago
a shrimp-girl, running into the sea with legs as brown as a berry.

So swiftly does merit rise in this world which, nevertheless, some
morose folk pretend is a wicked one.

I ought to explain, however, that this haughty reception was partly
caused by a breach of propriety. Vandeleur ought first to have written
to her and asked permission to present Richard Bassett. He had no
business to send the man and the introduction together. This law a
Parliament of Sirens had passed, and the slightest breach of it was a
bitter offense Equilibrium governs the world. These ladies were bound
to be overstrict in something or other, being just a little lax in
certain things where other ladies are strict.

Now Bassett had pondered well what he should say, but he was
disconcerted by her superb presence and demeanor and her large gray
eyes, that rested steadily upon his face.

However, he began to murmur mellifluously. Said he had often seen her
in public, and admired her, and desired to make her acquaintance, etc.,
etc.

“Then why did you not ask Sir Charles to bring you here?” said Miss
Somerset, abruptly, and searching him with her eyes, that were not to
say bold, but singularly brave, and examiners pointblank.

“I am not on good terms with Sir Charles. He holds the estates that
ought to be mine; and now he has robbed me of my love. He is the last
man in the world I would ask a favor of.”

“You came here to abuse him behind his back, eh?” asked the lady with
undisguised contempt.

Bassett winced, but kept his temper. “No, Miss Somerset; but you seem
to think I ought to have come to you through Sir Charles. I would not
enter your house if I did not feel sure I shall not meet him here.”

Miss Somerset looked rather puzzled. “Sir Charles does not come here
every day, but he comes now and then, and he is always welcome.”

“You surprise me.”

“Thank you. Now some of my gentlemen friends think it is a wonder he
does not come every minute.”

“You mistake me. What surprises me is that you are such good friends
under the circumstances.”

“Circumstances! what circumstances?”

“Oh, you know. You are in his confidence, I presume?”--this rather
satirically. So the lady answered, defiantly:

“Yes, I am; he knows I can hold my tongue, so he tells me things he
tells nobody else.”

“Then, if you are in his confidence, you know he is about to be
married.”

“Married! Sir Charles married!”

“In three weeks.”

“It's a lie! You get out of my house this moment!”

Mr. Bassett colored at this insult. He rose from his seat with some
little dignity, made her a low bow, and retired. But her blood was up:
she made a wonderful rush, sweeping down a chair with her dress as she
went, and caught him at the door, clutched him by the shoulder and half
dragged him back, and made him sit down again, while she stood opposite
him, with the knuckles of one hand resting on the table.

“Now,” said she, panting, “you look me in the face and say that again.”

“Excuse me; you punish me too severely for telling the truth.”

“Well, I beg your pardon--there. Now tell me--this instant. Can't you
speak, man?” And her knuckles drummed the table.

“He is to be married in three weeks.”

“Oh! Who to?”

“A young lady I love.”

“Her name?”

“Miss Arabella Bruce.”

“Where does she live?”

“Portman Square.”

“I'll stop that marriage.”

“How?” asked Richard, eagerly.

“I don't know; that I'll think over. But he shall not marry
her--never!”

Bassett sat and looked up with almost as much awe as complacency at the
fury he had evoked; for this woman was really at times a poetic
impersonation of that fiery passion she was so apt to indulge. She
stood before him, her cheek pale, her eyes glittering and roving
savagely, and her nostrils literally expanding, while her tall body
quivered with wrath, and her clinched knuckles pattered on the table.

“He shall not marry her. I'll kill him first!”




CHAPTER III.

RICHARD BASSETT eagerly offered his services to break off the obnoxious
match. But Miss Somerset was beginning to be mortified at having shown
so much passion before a stranger.

“What have you to do with it?” said she, sharply.

“Everything. I love Miss Bruce.”

“Oh, yes; I forgot that. Anything else? There is, now. I see it in your
eye. What is it?”

 “Sir Charles's estates are mine by right, and they will return to my
line if he does not marry and have issue.”

“Oh, I see. That is so like a man. It's always love, and something more
important, with you. Well, give me your address. I'll write if I want
you.”

“Highly flattered,” said Bassett, ironically-wrote his address and left
her.

Miss Somerset then sat down and wrote:



“DEAR SIR CHARLES--please call here, I want to speak to you.

yours respecfuly,

“RHODA SOMERSET.”



Sir Charles obeyed this missive, and the lady received him with a
gracious and smiling manner, all put on and catlike. She talked with
him of indifferent things for more than an hour, still watching to see
if he would tell her of his own accord.

When she was quite sure he would not, she said,

“Do you know there's a ridiculous report about that you are going to be
married?”

“Indeed!”

“They even tell her name--Miss Bruce. Do you know the girl?”

“Yes.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Very.”

“Modest?”

“As an angel.”

“And are you going to marry her?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are a villain.”

“The deuce I am!”

“You are, to abandon a woman who has sacrificed all for you.”

Sir Charles looked puzzled, and then smiled; but was too polite to give
his thoughts vent. Nor was it necessary; Miss Somerset, whose brave
eyes never left the person she was speaking to, fired up at the smile
alone, and she burst into a torrent of remonstrance, not to say
vituperation. Sir Charles endeavored once or twice to stop it, but it
was not to be stopped; so at last he quietly took up his hat, to go.

He was arrested at the door by a rustle and a fall. He turned round,
and there was Miss Somerset lying on her back, grinding her white teeth
and clutching the air.

He ran to the bell and rang it violently, then knelt down and did his
best to keep her from hurting herself; but, as generally happens in
these cases, his interference made her more violent. He had hard work
to keep her from battering her head against the floor, and her arms
worked like windmills.

Hearing the bell tugged so violently, a pretty page ran headlong into
the room--saw--and; without an instant's diminution of speed, described
a curve, and ran headlong out, screaming “Polly! Polly!”

The next moment the housekeeper, an elderly woman, trotted in at the
door, saw her mistress's condition, and stood stock-still, calling,
“Polly,” but with the most perfect tranquillity the mind can conceive.

In ran a strapping house-maid, with black eyes and brown arms, went
down on her knees, and said, firmly though respectfully, “Give her me,
sir.”

She got behind her struggling mistress, pulled her up into her own lap,
and pinned her by the wrists with a vigorous grasp.

The lady struggled, and ground her teeth audibly, and flung her arms
abroad. The maid applied all her rustic strength and harder muscle to
hold her within bounds. The four arms went to and fro in a magnificent
struggle, and neither could the maid hold the mistress still, nor the
mistress shake off the maid's grasp, nor strike anything to hurt
herself.

Sir Charles, thrust out of the play looked on with pity and anxiety,
and the little page at the door--combining art and nature--stuck
stock-still in a military attitude, and blubbered aloud.

As for the housekeeper, she remained in the middle of the room with
folded arms, and looked down on the struggle with a singular expression
of countenance. There was no agitation whatever, but a sort of
thoughtful examination, half cynical, half admiring.

However, as soon as the boy's sobs reached her ear she wakened up, and
said, tenderly, “What is the child crying for? Run and get a basin of
water, and fling it all over her; that will bring her to in a minute.”

The page departed swiftly on this benevolent errand.

Then the lady gave a deep sigh, and ceased to struggle.

Next she stared in all their faces, and seemed to return to
consciousness.

Next she spoke, but very feebly. “Help me up,” she sighed.

Sir Charles and Polly raised her, and now there was a marvelous change.
The vigorous vixen was utterly weak, and limp as a wet towel--a woman
of jelly. As such they handled her, and deposited her gingerly on the
sofa.

Now the page ran in hastily with the water. Up jumps the poor lax
sufferer, with flashing eyes: “You dare come near me with it!” Then to
the female servants: “Call yourselves women, and water my lilac silk,
not two hours old?” Then to the housekeeper: “You old monster, you
wanted it for your Polly. Get out of my sight, _the lot!”_

Then, suddenly remembering how feeble she was, she sank instantly down,
and turned piteously and languidly to Sir Charles. “They eat my bread,
and rob me, and hate me,” said she, faintly. “I have but one friend on
earth.” She leaned tenderly toward Sir Charles as that friend; but
before she quite reached him she started back, her eyes filled with
sudden horror. “And he forsakes me!” she cried; and so turned away from
him despairingly, and began to cry bitterly, with head averted over the
sofa, and one hand hanging by her side for Sir Charles to take and
comfort her. He tried to take it. It resisted; and, under cover of that
little disturbance, the other hand dexterously whipped two pins out of
her hair. The long brown tresses--all her own--fell over her eyes and
down to her waist, and the picture of distressed beauty was complete.

Even so did the women of antiquity conquer male pity--_“solutis
crinibus.”_

The females interchanged a meaning glance, and retired; then the boy
followed them with his basin, sore perplexed, but learning life in this
admirable school.

Sir Charles then, with the utmost kindness, endeavored to reconcile the
weeping and disheveled fair to that separation which circumstances
rendered necessary. But she was inconsolable, and he left the house,
perplexed and grieved; not but what it gratified his vanity a little to
find himself beloved all in a moment, and the Somerset unvixened. He
could not help thinking how wide must be the circle of his charms,
which had won the affections of two beautiful women so opposite in
character as Bella Bruce and La Somerset.

The passion of this latter seemed to grow. She wrote to him every day,
and begged him to call on her.

She called on him--she who had never called on a man before.

She raged with jealousy; she melted with grief. She played on him with
all a woman's artillery; and at last actually wrung from him what she
called a reprieve.

Richard Bassett called on her, but she would not receive him; so then
he wrote to her, urging co-operation, and she replied, frankly, that
she took no interest in his affairs; but that she was devoted to Sir
Charles, and should keep him for herself. Vanity tempted her to add
that he (Sir Charles) was with her every day, and the wedding
postponed.

This last seemed too good to be true, so Richard Bassett set his
servant to talk to the servants in Portman Square. He learned that the
wedding was now to be on the 15th of June, instead of the 31st of May.

Convinced that this postponement was only a blind, and that the
marriage would never be, he breathed more freely at the news.

But the fact is, although Sir Charles had yielded so far to dread of
scandal, he was ashamed of himself, and his shame became remorse when
he detected a furtive tear in the dove-like eyes of her he really loved
and esteemed.

He went and told his trouble to Mr. Oldfield. “I am afraid she will do
something desperate,” he said.

Mr. Oldfield heard him out, and then asked him had he told Miss
Somerset what he was going to settle on her.

“Not I. She is not in a condition to be influenced by that, at
present.”

“Let me try her. The draft is ready. I'll call on her to-morrow.” He
did call, and was told she did not know him.

“You tell her I am a lawyer, and it is very much to her interest to see
me,” said Mr. Oldfield to the page.

He was admitted, but not to a _tete-a-tete._ Polly was kept in the
room. The Somerset had peeped, and Oldfield was an old fellow, with
white hair; if he had been a young fellow, with black hair, she might
have thought that precaution less necessary.

 “First, madam,” said Oldfield, “I must beg you to accept my apologies
for not coming sooner. Press of business, etc.”

“Why have you come at all? That is the question,” inquired the lady,
bluntly.

“I bring the draft of a deed for your approval. Shall I read it to
you?”

“Yes; if it is not very long.” He began to read it. The lady
interrupted him characteristically.

“It's a beastly rigmarole. What does it mean--in three words?”

“Sir Charles Bassett secures to Rhoda Somerset four hundred pounds a
year, while single; this is reduced to two hundred if you marry. The
deed further assigns to you, without reserve, the beneficial lease of
this house, and all the furniture and effects, plate, linen, wine,
etc.”

“I see--a bribe.”

“Nothing of the kind, madam. When Sir Charles instructed me to prepare
this deed he expected no opposition on your part to his marriage; but
he thought it due to him and to yourself to mark his esteem for you,
and his recollection of the pleasant hours he has spent in your
company.”

Miss Somerset's eyes searched the lawyer's face. He stood the battery
unflinchingly. She altered her tone, and asked, politely and almost
respectfully, whether she might see that paper.

Mr. Oldfield gave it her. She took it, and ran her eye over it; in
doing which, she raised it so that she could think behind it
unobserved. She handed it back at last, with the remark that Sir
Charles was a gentleman and had done the right thing.

“He has; and you will do the right thing too, will you not?”

“I don't know. I am just beginning to fall in love with him myself.”

“Jealousy, madam, not love,” said the old lawyer. “Come, now! I see you
are a young lady of rare good sense; look the thing in the face: Sir
Charles is a landed gentleman; he must marry, and, have heirs. He is
over thirty, and his time has come. He has shown himself your friend;
why not be his? He has given you the means to marry a gentleman of
moderate income, or to marry beneath you, if you prefer it--”

“And most of us do--”

“Then why not make his path smooth? Why distress him with your tears
and remonstrances?”

He continued in this strain for some time, appealing to her good sense
and her better feelings.

When he had done she said, very quietly, “How about the ponies and my
brown mare? Are they down in the deed?”

“I think not; but if you will do your part handsomely I'll guarantee
you shall have them.”

“You are a good soul.” Then, after a pause, “Now just you tell me
exactly what you want me to do for all this.”

Oldfield was pleased with this question. He said, “I wish you to
abstain from writing to Sir Charles, and him to visit you only once
more before his marriage, just to shake hands and part, with mutual
friendship and good wishes.”

“You are right,” said she, softly; “best for us both, and only fair to
the girl.” Then, with sudden and eager curiosity, “Is she very pretty?”

“I don't know.”

“What, hasn't he told you?”

“He says she is lovely, and every way adorable; but then he is in love.
The chances are she is not half so handsome as yourself.”

“And yet he is in love with her?”

“Over head and ears.”

“I don't believe it. If he was really in love with one woman he
couldn't be just to another. _I_ couldn't. He'll be coming back to me
in a few months.”

“God forbid!”

“Thank you, old gentleman.”

Mr. Oldfield began to stammer excuses. She interrupted him: “Oh, bother
all that; I like you none the worse for speaking your mind.” Then,
after a pause, “Now excuse me; but suppose Sir Charles should change
his mind, and never sign this paper?”

“I pledge my professional credit.”

“That is enough, sir; I see I can trust you. Well, then, I consent to
break off with Sir Charles, and only see him once more--as a friend.
Poor Sir Charles! I hope he will be happy” (she squeezed out a tear for
him)--“happier than I am. And when he does come he can sign the deed,
you know.”

Mr. Oldfield left her, and joined Sir Charles at Long's, as had been
previously agreed.

“It is all right, Sir Charles; she is a sensible girl, and will give
you no further trouble.”

“How did you get over the hysterics?”

“We dispensed with them. She saw at once it was to be business, not
sentiment. You are to pay her one more visit, to sign, and part
friends. If you please, I'll make that appointment with both parties,
as soon as the deed is engrossed. Oh, by-the-by, she did shed a tear or
two, but she dried them to ask me for the ponies and the brown mare.”

Sir Charles's vanity was mortified. But he laughed it off, and said she
should have them, of course.

So now his mind was at ease, his conscience was at rest, and he could
give his whole time where he had given his heart.

Richard Bassett learned, through his servant, that the wedding-dresses
were ordered. He called on Miss Somerset. She was out.

Polly opened the door and gave him a look of admiration--due to his
fresh color--that encouraged him to try and enlist her in his service.

He questioned her, and she told him in a general way how matters were
going. “But,” said she, “why not come and talk to her yourself? Ten to
one but she tells you. She is pretty outspoken.”

“My pretty dear,” said Richard, “she never will receive me.”

“Oh, but I'll make her!” said Polly.

And she did exert her influence as follows:

“Lookee here, the cousin's a-coming to-morrow and I've been and
promised he should see you.”

“What did you do that for?”

“Why, he's a well-looking chap, and a beautiful color, fresh from the
country, like me. And he's a gentleman, and got an estate belike; and
why not put yourn to hisn, and so marry him and be a lady? You might
have me about ye all the same, till my turn comes.”

“No, no,” said Rhoda; “that's not the man for me. If ever I marry, it
must be one of my own sort, or else a fool, like Marsh, that I can make
a slave of.”

“Well, any way, you must see him, not to make a fool of _me,_ for I did
promise him; which, now I think on't, 'twas very good of me, for I
could find in my heart to ask him down into the kitchen, instead of
bringing him upstairs to you.”

All this ended, somehow, in Mr. Bassett's being admitted.

To his anxious inquiry how matters stood, she replied coolly that Sir
Charles and herself were parted by mutual consent.

“What! after all your protestations?” said Bassett, bitterly.

But Miss Somerset was not in an irascible humor just then. She shrugged
her shoulders, and said:

“Yes, I remember I put myself in a passion, and said some ridiculous
things. But one can't be always a fool. I have come to my senses. This
sort of thing always does end, you know. Most of them part enemies, but
he and I part friends and well-wishers.”

“And you throw _me_ over as if I was nobody,” said Richard, white with
anger.

“Why, what are you to me?” said the Somerset. “Oh, I see. You thought
to make a cat's-paw of me. Well, you won't, then.”

“In other words, you have been bought off.”

“No, I have not. I am not to be bought by anybody--and I am not to be
insulted by you, you ruffian! How dare you come here and affront a lady
in her own house--a lady whose shoestrings your betters are ready to
tie, you brute? If you want to be a landed proprietor, go and marry
some ugly old hag that's got it, and no eyesight left to see you're no
gentleman. Sir Charles's land you'll never have; a better man has got
it, and means to keep it for him and his. Here, Polly! Polly! Polly!
take this man down to the kitchen, and teach him manners if you can: he
is not fit for my drawing-room, by a long chalk.”

Polly arrived in time to see the flashing eyes, the swelling veins, and
to hear the fair orator's peroration.

“What, you are in your tantrums again!” said she. “Come along, sir.
Needs must when the devil drives. You'll break a blood-vessel some day,
my lady, like your father afore ye.”

And with this homely suggestion, which always sobered Miss Somerset,
and, indeed, frightened her out of her wits, she withdrew the offender.
She did not take him into the kitchen, but into the dining-room, and
there he had a long talk with her, and gave her a sovereign.

She promised to inform him if anything important should occur.

He went away, pondering and scowling deeply.




CHAPTER IV.

SIR CHARLES BASSETT was now living in Elysium. Never was rake more
thoroughly transformed. Every day he sat for hours at the feet of Bella
Bruce, admiring her soft, feminine ways and virgin modesty even more
than her beauty. And her visible blush whenever he appeared suddenly,
and the soft commotion and yielding in her lovely frame whenever he
drew near, betrayed his magnetic influence, and told all but the blind
she adored him.

She would decline all invitations to dine with him and her father--a
strong-minded old admiral, whose authority was unbounded, only, to
Bella's regret, very rarely exerted. Nothing would have pleased her
more than to be forbidden this and commanded that; but no! the admiral
was a lion with an enormous paw, only he could not be got to put it
into every pie.

In this charming society the hours glided, and the wedding-day drew
close. So deeply and sincerely was Sir Charles in love that when Mr.
Oldfield's letter came, appointing the day and hour to sign Miss
Somerset's deed, he was unwilling to go, and wrote back to ask if the
deed could not be sent to his house.

Mr. Oldfield replied that the parties to the deed and the witnesses
must meet, and it would be unadvisable, for several reasons, to
irritate the lady's susceptibility previous to signature; the
appointment having been made at her house, it had better remain so.

That day soon came.

Sir Charles, being due in Mayfair at 2 P.M., compensated himself for
the less agreeable business to come by going earlier than usual to
Portman Square. By this means he caught Miss Bruce and two other young
ladies inspecting bridal dresses. Bella blushed and looked ashamed,
and, to the surprise of her friends, sent the dresses away, and set
herself to talk rationally with Sir Charles--as rationally as lovers
can.

The ladies took the cue, and retired in disgust.

Sir Charles apologized.

“This is too bad of me. I come at an unheard-of hour, and frighten away
your fair friends; but the fact is, I have an appointment at two, and I
don't know how long they will keep me, so I thought I would make sure
of two happy hours at the least.”

And delightful hours they were. Bella Bruce, excited by this little
surprise, leaned softly on his shoulder, and prattled her maiden love
like some warbling fountain.

Sir Charles, transfigured by love, answered her in kind--three months
ago he could not--and they compared pretty little plans of wedded life,
and had small differences, and ended by agreeing.

Complete and prompt accord upon two points: first, they would not have
a single quarrel, like other people; their love should never lose its
delicate bloom; second, they would grow old together, and die the same
day--the same minute if possible; if not, they must be content with the
same day, but, on that, inexorable.

But soon after this came a skirmish. Each wanted to obey t'other.

Sir Charles argued that Bella was better than he, and therefore more
fit to conduct the pair.

Bella, who thought him divinely good, pounced on this reason furiously.
He defended it. He admitted, with exemplary candor, that he was good
now--“awfully good.” But he assured her that he had been anything but
good until he knew her; now she had been always good; therefore, he
argued, as his goodness came originally from her, for her to obey him
would be a little too much like the moon commanding the sun.

“That is too ingenious for me, Charles,” said Bella. “And, for shame!
Nobody was ever so good as you are. I look up to you and--Now I could
stop your mouth in a minute. I have only to remind you that I shall
swear at the altar to obey you, and you will not swear to obey me. But
I will not crush you under the Prayer-book--no, dearest; but, indeed,
to obey is a want of my nature, and I marry you to supply that want:
and that's a story, for I marry you because I love and honor and
worship and adore you to distraction, my own--own--own!” With this she
flung herself passionately, yet modestly on his shoulder, and, being
there, murmured, coaxingly, “You will let me obey you, Charles?”

Thereupon Sir Charles felt highly gelatinous, and lost, for the moment,
all power of resistance or argument.

“Ah, you will; and then you will remind me of my dear mother. She knew
how to command; but as for poor dear papa, he is very disappointing. In
selecting an admiral for my parent, I made sure of being ordered about.
Instead of that--now I'll show you--there he is in the next room,
inventing a new system of signals, poor dear--”

She threw the folding-doors open.

“Papa dear, shall I ask Charles to dinner to-day?”

“As you please, my dear.”

“Do you think I had better walk or ride this afternoon?”

“Whichever you prefer.”

“There,” said Bella, “I told you so. That is always the way. Papa dear,
you used always to be firing guns at sea. Do, please, fire one in this
house--just one--before I leave it, and make the very windows rattle.”

“I beg your pardon, Bella; I never wasted powder at sea. If the convoy
sailed well and steered right I never barked at them. You are a modest,
sensible girl, and have always steered a good course. Why should I
hoist a petticoat and play the small tyrant? Wait till I see you going
to do something wrong or silly.”

“Ah! then you _would_ fire a gun, papa?”

“Ay, a broadside.”

“Well, that is something,” said Bella, as she closed the door softly.

“No, no; it amounts to just nothing,” said Sir Charles; “for you never
will do anything wrong or silly. I'll accommodate you. I have thought
of a way. I shall give you some blank cards; you shall write on them,
'I think I should like to do so and so.' You shall be careless, and
leave them about; I'll find them, and bluster, and say, 'I command you
to do so and so, Bella Bassett'--the very thing on the card, you know.”

Bella colored to the brow with pleasure and modesty. After a pause she
said: “How sweet! The worst of it is, I should get my own way. Now what
I want is to submit my will to yours. A gentle tyrant--that is what you
must be to Bella Bassett. Oh, you sweet, sweet, for calling me that!”

These projects were interrupted by a servant announcing luncheon. This
made Sir Charles look hastily at his watch, and he found it was past
two o'clock.

“How time flies in this house!” said he. “I must go, dearest; I am
behind my appointment already. What do you do this afternoon?”

“Whatever you please, my own.”

“I could get away by four.”

“Then I will stay at home for you.”

He left her reluctantly, and she followed him to the head of the
stairs, and hung over the balusters as if she would like to fly after
him.

He turned at the street-door, saw that radiant and gentle face beaming
after him, and they kissed hands to each other by one impulse, as if
they were parting for ever so long.

He had gone scarcely half an hour when a letter, addressed to her, was
left at the door by a private messenger.

“Any answer?” inquired the servant.

“No.”

The letter was sent up, and delivered to her on a silver salver.

She opened it; it was a thing new to her in her young life--an
anonymous letter.



“MISS BRUCE--I am almost a stranger to you, but I know your character
from others, and cannot bear to see you abused. You are said to be
about to marry Sir Charles Bassett. I think you can hardly be aware
that he is connected with a lady of doubtful repute, called Somerset,
and neither your beauty nor your virtue has prevailed to detach him
from that connection.

“If, on engaging himself to you, he had abandoned her, I should not
have said a word. But the truth is, he visits her constantly, and I
blush to say that when he leaves you this day it will be to spend the
afternoon at her house.

“I inclose you her address, and you can learn in ten minutes whether I
am a slanderer or, what I wish to be,

“A FRIEND OF INJURED INNOCENCE.”




CHAPTER V.

SIR CHARLES was behind his time in Mayfair; but the lawyer and his
clerk had not arrived, and Miss Somerset was not visible.

She appeared, however, at last, in a superb silk dress, the broad
luster of which would have been beautiful, only the effect was broken
and frittered away by six rows of gimp and fringe. But why blame her?
This is a blunder in art as universal as it is amazing, when one
considers the amount of apparent thought her sex devotes to dress. They
might just as well score a fair plot of velvet turf with rows of box,
or tattoo a blooming and downy cheek.

She held out her hand, like a man, and talked to Sir Charles on
indifferent topics, till Mr. Oldfield arrived. She then retired into
the background, and left the gentlemen to discuss the deed. When
appealed to, she evaded direct replies, and put on languid and imperial
indifference. When she signed, it was with the air of some princess
bestowing a favor upon solicitation.

But the business concluded, she thawed all in a moment, and invited the
gentlemen to luncheon with charming cordiality. Indeed, her genuine
_bonhomie_ after her affected indifference was rather comic. Everybody
was content. Champagne flowed. The lady, with her good mother-wit, kept
conversation going till the lawyer was nearly missing his next
appointment. He hurried away; and Sir Charles only lingered, out of
good-breeding, to bid Miss Somerset good-by. In the course of
leave-taking he said he was sorry he left her with people about her of
whom he had a bad opinion. “Those women have no more feeling for you
than stones. When you lay in convulsions, your housekeeper looked on as
philosophically as if you had been two kittens at play--you and Polly.”

“I saw her.”

“Indeed! You appeared hardly in a condition to see anything.”

“I did, though, and heard the old wretch tell the young monkey to water
my lilac dress. That was to get it for her Polly. She knew I'd never
wear it afterward.”

“Then why don't you turn her off?”

“Who'd take such a useless old hag, if I turned her off?”

“You carry a charity a long way.”

“I carry everything. What's the use doing things by halves, good or
bad?”

“Well, but that Polly! She is young enough to get her living elsewhere;
and she is extremely disrespectful to you.”

“That she is. If I wasn't a lady, I'd have given her a good hiding this
very day for her cheek!”

“Then why not turn her off this very day for her cheek?”

“Well, I'll tell you, since you and I are parted forever. No, I don't
like.”

“Oh, come! No secrets between friends.”

“Well, then, the old hag is--my mother.”

“What?”

“And the young jade--is my sister.”

“Good Heavens!”

“And the page--is my little brother.”

“Ha, ha, ha!”

“What, you are not angry?”

“Angry? no. Ha, ha, ha!”

“See what a hornets' nest you have escaped from. My dear friend, those
two women rob me through thick and thin. They steal my handkerchiefs,
and my gloves, and my very linen. They drink my wine like fishes.
They'd take the hair off my head, if it wasn't fast by the roots--for a
wonder.”

“Why not give them a ten-pound note and send them home?”

“They'd pocket the note, and blacken me in our village. That was why I
had them up here. First time I went home, after running about with that
little scamp, Vandeleur--do you know him?”

“I have not the honor.”

“Then your luck beats mine. One thing, he is going to the dogs as fast
as he can. Some day he'll come begging to me for a fiver. You mark my
words now.”

“Well, but you were saying--”

“Yes, I went off about Van. Polly _says_ I've a mind like running
water. Well, then, when I went home the first time--after Van, mother
and Polly raised a virtuous howl. 'All right,' said I--for, of course,
I know how much virtue there is under _their_ skins. Virtue of the
lower orders! Tell that to gentlefolks that don't know them. I do. I've
been one of 'em--'I know all about that,' says I. 'You want to share
the plunder, that is the sense of your virtuous cry.' So I had 'em up
here; and then there was no more virtuous howling, but a deal of
virtuous thieving, and modest drinking, and pure-minded selling of my
street-door to the highest male bidder. And they will corrupt the boy;
and if they do, I'll cuts their black hearts out with my riding-whip.
But I suppose I must keep them on; they are my own flesh and blood; and
if I was to be ill and dying, they'd do all they knew to keep me
alive--for their own sakes. I'm their milch cow, these country
innocents.”

Sir Charles groaned aloud, and said, “My poor girl, you deserve a
better fate than this. Marry some honest fellow, and cut the whole
thing.”

“I'll see about it. You try it first, and let us see how you like it.”

And so they parted gayly.

In the hall, Polly intercepted him, all smiles. He looked at her,
smiled in his sleeve, and gave her a handsome present. “If you please,
sir,” said she, “an old gentleman called for you.”

“When?”

“About an hour ago. Leastways, he asked if Sir Charles Bassett was
there. I said yes, but you wouldn't see no one.”

“Who could it be? Why, surely you never told anybody I was to be here
to-day?”

“La, no, sir! how could I?” said Polly, with a face of brass.

Sir Charles thought this very odd, and felt a little uneasy about it.
All to Portman Square he puzzled over it; and at last he was driven to
the conclusion that Miss Somerset had been weak enough to tell some
person, male or female, of the coming interview, and so somebody had
called there--doubtless to ask him a favor.

At five o'clock he reached Portman Square, and was about to enter, as a
matter of course; but the footman stopped him. “I beg pardon, Sir
Charles,” said the man, looking pale and agitated; “but I have strict
orders. My young lady is very ill.”

“Ill! Let me go to her this instant.”

“I daren't, Sir Charles, I daren't. I know you are a gentleman; pray
don't lose me my place. You would never get to see her. We none of us
know the rights, but there's something up. Sorry to say it, Sir
Charles, but we have strict orders not to admit you. Haven't you the
admiral's letter, sir?”

“No; what letter?”

“He has been after you, sir; and when he came back he sent Roger off to
your house with a letter.”

A cold chill began to run down Sir Charles Bassett. He hailed a passing
hansom, and drove to his own house to get the admiral's letter; and as
he went he asked himself, with chill misgivings, what on earth had
happened.

What had happened shall be told the reader precisely but briefly..

In the first place, Bella had opened the anonymous letter and read its
contents, to which the reader is referred.

There are people who pretend to despise anonymous letters. Pure
delusion! they know they ought to, and so fancy they do; but they
don't. The absence of a signature gives weight, if the letter is ably
written and seems true.

As for poor Bella Bruce, a dove's bosom is no more fit to rebuff a
poisoned arrow than she was to combat that foulest and direst of all a
miscreant's weapons, an anonymous letter. She, in her goodness and
innocence, never dreamed that any person she did not know could
possibly tell a lie to wound her. The letter fell on her like a cruel
revelation from heaven.

The blow was so savage that, at first, it stunned her.

She sat pale and stupefied; but beneath the stupor were the rising
throbs of coming agonies.

After that horrible stupor her anguish grew and grew, till it found
vent in a miserable cry, rising, and rising, and rising, in agony.

“Mamma! mamma! mamma!”

Yes; her mother had been dead these three years, and her father sat in
the next room; yet, in her anguish, she cried to her mother--a cry the
which, if your mother had heard, she would have expected Bella's to
come to her even from the grave.

Admiral Bruce heard this fearful cry--the living calling on the
dead--and burst through the folding-doors in a moment, white as a
ghost.

He found his daughter writhing on the sofa, ghastly, and grinding in
her hand the cursed paper that had poisoned her young life.

“My child! my child!”

“Oh, papa! see! see!” And she tried to open the letter for him, but her
hands trembled so she could not.

He kneeled down by her side, the stout old warrior, and read the
letter, while she clung to him, moaning now, and quivering all over
from head to foot.

“Why, there's no signature! The writer is a coward and, perhaps, a
liar. Stop! he offers a test. I'll put him to it this minute.”

He laid the moaning girl on the sofa, ordered his servants to admit
nobody into the house, and drove at once to Mayfair.

He called at Miss Somerset's house, saw Polly, and questioned her.

He drove home again, and came into the drawing-room looking as he had
been seen to look when fighting his ship; but his daughter had never
seen him so. “My girl,” said he, solemnly, “there's nothing for you to
do but to be brave, and hide your grief as well as you can, for the man
is unworthy of your love. That coward spoke the truth. He is there at
this moment.”

“Oh, papa! papa! let me die! The world is too wicked for me. Let me
die!”

“Die for an unworthy object? For shame! Go to your own room, my girl,
and pray to your God to help you, since your mother has left us. Oh,
how I miss her now! Go and pray, and let no one else know what we
suffer. Be your father's daughter. Fight and pray.”

Poor Bella had no longer to complain that she was not commanded. She
kissed him, and burst into a great passion of weeping; but he led her
to the door, and she tottered to her own room, a blighted girl.

The sight of her was harrowing. Under its influence the admiral dashed
off a letter to Sir Charles, calling him a villain, and inviting him to
go to France and let an indignant father write scoundrel on his
carcass.

But when he had written this his good sense and dignity prevailed over
his fury; he burned the letter, and wrote another. This he sent by hand
to Sir Charles's house, and ordered his servants--but that the reader
knows.

Sir Charles found the admiral's letter in his letter-rack. It ran thus:



“SIR--We have learned your connection with a lady named Somerset, and I
have ascertained that you went from my daughter to her house this very
day.

“Miss Bruce and myself withdraw from all connection with you, and I
must request you to attempt no communication with her of any kind. Such
an attempt would be an additional insult.

“I am, sir, your obedient servant,

“JOHN URQUHART BRUCE.”



At first Sir Charles Bassett was stunned by this blow. Then his mind
resisted the admiral's severity, and he was indignant at being
dismissed for so common an offense. This gave way to deep grief and
shame at the thought of Bella and her lost esteem. But soon all other
feelings merged for a time in fury at the heartless traitor who had
destroyed his happiness, and had dashed the cup of innocent love from
his very lips. Boiling over with mortification and rage, he drove at
once to that traitor's house. Polly opened the door. He rushed past
her, and burst into the dining-room, breathless, and white with
passion.

He found Miss Somerset studying the deed by which he had made her
independent for life. She started at his strange appearance, and
instinctively put both hands flat upon the deed.

“You vile wretch!” cried Sir Charles. “You heartless monster! Enjoy
your work.” And he flung her the admiral's letter. But he did not wait
while she read it; he heaped reproaches on her; and, for the first time
in her life, she did not reply in kind.

“Are you mad?” she faltered. “What have I done?”

“You have told Admiral Bruce.”

“That's false.”

“You told him I was to be here to-day.”

“Charles, I never did. Believe me.”

“You did. Nobody knew it but you. He was here to-day at the very hour.”

“May I never get up alive off this chair if I told a soul. Yes, our
Polly. I'll ring for her.”

“No, you will not. She is your sister. Do you think I'll take the word
of such reptiles against the plain fact? You have parted my love and
me--parted us on the very day I had made you independent for life. An
innocent love was waiting to bless me, and an honest love was in your
power, thanks to me, your kind, forgiving friend and benefactor. I have
heaped kindness on you from the first moment I had the misfortune to
know you. I connived at your infidelities--”

“Charles! Don't say that. I never _was.”_

“I indulged your most expensive whims, and, instead of leaving you with
a curse, as all the rest did that ever knew you, and as you deserve, I
bought your consent to lead a respectable life, and be blessed with a
virtuous love. You took the bribe, but robbed me of the
blessing--viper! You have destroyed me, body and soul--monster! perhaps
blighted her happiness as well; you she-devils hate an angel worse than
Heaven hates you. But you shall suffer with us; not your heart, for you
have none, but your pocket. You have broken faith with me, and sent all
my happiness to hell; I'll send your deed to hell after it!” With this,
he flung himself upon the deed, and was going to throw it into the
fire. Now up to that moment she had been overpowered by this man's
fury, whom she had never seen the least angry before; but when he laid
hands on her property it acted like an electric shock. “No! no!” she
screamed, and sprang at him like a wildcat.

Then ensued a violent and unseemly struggle all about the room; chairs
were upset, and vases broken to pieces; and the man and woman dragged
each other to and fro, one fighting for her property, as if it was her
life, and the other for revenge.

Sir Charles, excited by fury, was stronger than himself, and at last
shook off one of her hands for a moment, and threw the deed into the
fire. She tried to break from him and save it, but he held her like
iron.

Yet not for long. While he was holding her back, and she straining
every nerve to get to the fire, he began to show sudden symptoms of
distress. He gasped loudly, and cried, “Oh! oh! I'm choking!” and then
his clutch relaxed. She tore herself from it, and, plunging forward,
rescued the smoking parchment.

At that moment she heard a great stagger behind her, and a pitiful
moan, and Sir Charles fell heavily, striking his head against the edge
of the sofa. She looked round--as she knelt, and saw him, black in the
face, rolling his eyeballs fearfully, while his teeth gnashed awfully,
and a little jet of foam flew through his lips.

Then she shrieked with terror, and the blackened deed fell from her
hands. At this moment Polly rushed into the room. She saw the fearful
sight, and echoed her sister's scream. But they were neither of them
women to lose their heads and beat the air with their hands. They got
to him, and both of them fought hard with the unconscious sufferer,
whose body, in a fresh convulsion, now bounded away from the sofa, and
bade fair to batter itself against the ground.

They did all they could to hold him with one arm apiece, and to release
his swelling throat with the other. Their nimble fingers whipped off
his neck-tie in a moment; but the distended windpipe pressed so against
the shirt-button they could not undo it. Then they seized the collar,
and, pulling against each other, wrenched the shirt open so powerfully
that the button flew into the air, and tinkled against a mirror a long
way off.

A few more struggles, somewhat less violent, and then the face, from
purple, began to whiten, the eyeballs fixed; the pulse went down; the
man lay still.

“Oh, my God!” cried Rhoda Somerset. “He is dying! To the nearest
doctor! There's one three doors off. No bonnet! It's life and death
this moment. Fly!”

Polly obeyed, and Doctor Andrews was actually in the room within five
minutes.

He looked grave, and kneeled down by the patient, and felt his pulse
anxiously.

Miss Somerset sat down, and, being from the country, though she did not
look it, began to weep bitterly, and rock herself in rustic fashion.

The doctor questioned her kindly, and she told him, between her sobs,
how Sir Charles had been taken.

The doctor, however, instead of being alarmed by those frightful
symptoms she related, took a more cheerful view directly. “Then do not
alarm yourself unnecessarily,” he said. “It was only an epileptic fit.”

“Only!” sobbed Miss Somerset. “Oh, if you had seen him! And he lies
like death.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Andrews; “a severe epileptic fit is really a terrible
thing to look at; but it is not dangerous in proportion. Is he used to
have them?”

“Oh, no, doctor--never had one before.”

Here she was mistaken, I think.

“You must keep him quiet; and give him a moderate stimulant as soon as
he can swallow comfortably; the quietest room in the house; and don't
let him be hungry, night or day. Have food by his bedside, and watch
him for a day or two. I'll come again this evening.”

The doctor went to his dinner--tranquil.

Not so those he left. Miss Somerset resigned her own luxurious bedroom,
and had the patient laid, just as he was, upon her bed. She sent the
page out to her groom and ordered two loads of straw to be laid before
the door; and she watched by the sufferer, with brandy and water by her
side.

Sir Charles now might have seemed to be in a peaceful slumber, but for
his eyes. They were open, and showed more white, and less pupil, than
usual.

However, in time he began to sigh and move, and even mutter; and,
gradually, some little color came back to his pale cheeks.

Then Miss Somerset had the good sense to draw back out of his sight,
and order Polly to take her place by his side. Polly did so, and, some
time afterward, at a fresh order, put a teaspoonful of brandy to his
lips, which were still pale and even bluish.

The doctor returned, and brought his assistant. They put the patient to
bed.

“His life is in no danger,” said he. “I wish I was as sure about his
reason.”



At one o'clock in the morning, as Polly was snoring by the patient's
bedside, a hand was laid on her shoulder. It was Rhoda.

“Go to bed, Polly: you are no use here.”

“You'd be sleepy if you worked as hard as I do.”

“Very likely,” said Rhoda, with a gentleness that struck Polly as very
singular. “Good-night.”

Rhoda spent the night watching, and thinking harder than she had ever
thought before.

Next morning, early, Polly came into the sick-room. There sat her
sister watching the patient, out of sight.

“La, Rhoda! Have you sat there all night?”

“Yes. Don't speak so loud. Come here. You've set your heart on this
lilac silk. I'll give it to you for your black merino.”

“Not you, my lady; you are not so fond of mereeny, nor of me neither.”

“I'm not a liar like you,” said the other, becoming herself for a
moment, “and what I say I'll do. You put out your merino for me in the
dressing-room.”

“All right,” said Polly, joyfully.

“And bring me two buckets of water instead of one. I have never closed
my eyes.”

“Poor soul! and now you be going to sluice yourself all the same.
Whatever you can see in cold water, to run after it so, I can't think.
If I was to flood myself like you, it would soon float me to my long
home.”

“How do you know? _You never gave it a trial._ Come, no more chat. Give
me my bath: and then you may wash yourself in a tea-cup if you
like--only don't wash my spoons in the same water, for _mercy's sake!”_

Thus affectionately stimulated in her duties, Polly brought cold water
galore, and laid out her new merino dress. In this sober suit, with
plain linen collar and cuffs, the Somerset dressed herself, and resumed
her watching by the bedside. She kept more than ever out of sight, for
the patient was now beginning to mutter incoherently, yet in a way that
showed his clouded faculties were dwelling on the calamity which had
befallen him.

About noon the bell was rung sharply, and, on Polly entering, Rhoda
called her to the window and showed her two female figures plodding
down the street. “Look,” said she. “Those are the only women I envy.
Sisters of Charity. Run you after them, and take a good look at those
beastly ugly caps: then come and tell me how to make one.”

“Here's a go!” said Polly; but executed the commission promptly.

It needed no fashionable milliner to turn a yard of linen into one of
those ugly caps, which are beautiful banners of Christian charity and
womanly tenderness to the sick and suffering. The monster cap was made
in an hour, and Miss Somerset put it on, and a thick veil, and then she
no longer thought it necessary to sit out of the patient's sight.

The consequence was that, in the middle of his ramblings, he broke off
and looked at her. The sister puzzled him. At last he called to her in
French.

She made no reply.

“Je suis a l'hopital, n'est ce pas bonne soeur?”

“I am English,” said she, softly.




CHAPTER VI.

“ENGLISH!” said Sir Charles. “Then tell me, how did I come here? Where
am I?”

“You had a fit, and the doctor ordered you to be kept quiet; and I am
here to nurse you.”

“A fit! Ay, I remember. That vile woman!”

“Don't think of her: give your mind to getting well: remember, there is
somebody who would break her heart if you--”

“Oh, my poor Bella! my sweet, timid, modest, loving Bella!” He was so
weakened that he cried like a child.

Miss Somerset rose, and laid her forehead sadly upon the window-sill.

“Why do I cry for her, like a great baby?” muttered Sir Charles. “She
wouldn't cry for me. She has cast me off in a moment.”

“Not she. It is her father's doing. Have a little patience. The whole
thing shall be explained to them; and then she will soon soften the old
man. 'It is not as if you were really to blame.”

“No more I was. It is all that vile woman.”

“Oh, don't! She is so sorry; she has taken it all to heart. She had
once shammed a fit, on the very place; and when you had a real fit
there--on the very spot--oh, it was so fearful--and lay like one dead,
she saw God's finger, and it touched her hard heart. Don't say anything
more against her just now. She is trying so hard to be good. And,
besides, it is all a mistake: she never told that old admiral; she
never breathed a word out of her own house. Her own people have
betrayed her and you. She has made me promise two things: to find out
who told the admiral, and--”

“Well?”

“The second thing I have to do--Well, that is a secret between me and
that unhappy woman. She is bad enough, but not so heartless as you
think.”

Sir Charles shook his head incredulously, but said no more; and soon
after fell asleep.

In the evening he woke, and found the Sister watching.

She now turned her head away from him, and asked him quietly to
describe Miss Bella Bruce to her.

He described her in minute and glowing terms. “But oh, Sister,” said
he, “it is not her beauty only, but the beauty of her mind. So gentle,
so modest, so timid, so docile. She would never have had the heart to
turn me off. But she will obey her father. She looked forward to obey
me, sweet dove.”

“Did she say so?”

“Yes, that is her dream of happiness, to obey.”

The Sister still questioned him with averted head, and he told her what
had passed between Bella and him the last time he saw her, and all
their innocent plans of married happiness. He told her, with the tear
in his eye, and she listened, with the tear in hers. “And then,” said
he, laying his hand on her shoulder, “is it not hard? I just went to
Mayfair, not to please myself, but to do an act of justice--of more
than justice; and then, for that, to have her door shut in my face.
Only two hours between the height of happiness and the depth of
misery.”

The Sister said nothing, but she hid her face in her hands, and
thought.

The next morning, by her order, Polly came into the room, and said,
“You are to go home. The carriage is at the door.” With this she
retired, and Sir Charles's valet entered the room soon after to help
him dress.

“Where am I, James?”

“Miss Somerset's house, Sir Charles.”

“Then get me out of it directly.”

“Yes, Sir Charles. The carriage is at the door.”

“Who told you to come, James?”

“Miss Somerset, Sir Charles.”

“That is odd.”

“Yes, Sir Charles.”



When he got home he found a sofa placed by a fire, with wraps and
pillows; his cigar case laid out, and a bottle of salts, and also a
small glass of old cognac, in case of faintness.

“Which of you had the gumption to do all this?”

“Miss Somerset, Sir Charles.”

“What, has she been _here?”_

“Yes, Sir Charles.”

“Curse her!”

“Yes, Sir Charles.”




CHAPTER VII.

“LOVE LIES BLEEDING.”

BELLA BRUCE was drinking the bitterest cup a young virgin soul can
taste. Illusion gone--the wicked world revealed as it is, how unlike
what she thought it was--love crushed in her, and not crushed out of
her, as it might if she had been either proud or vain.

Frail men and women should see what a passionate but virtuous woman can
suffer, when a revelation, of which they think but little, comes and
blasts her young heart, and bids her dry up in a moment the deep well
of her affection, since it flows for an unworthy object, and flows in
vain. I tell you that the fair head severed from the chaste body is
nothing to her compared with this. The fair body, pierced with heathen
arrows, was nothing to her in the days of old compared with this.

In a word--for nowadays we can but amplify, and so enfeeble, what some
old dead master of language, immortal though obscure, has said in words
of granite--here

         “Love lay bleeding.”

No fainting--no vehement weeping; but oh, such deep desolation; such
weariness of life; such a pitiable restlessness. Appetite gone; the
taste of food almost lost; sleep unwilling to come; and oh, the torture
of waking--for at that horrible moment all rushed back at once, the joy
that had been, the misery that was, the blank that was to come.

She never stirred out, except when ordered, and then went like an
automaton. Pale, sorrow-stricken, and patient, she moved about, the
ghost of herself; and lay down a little, and then tried to work a
little, and then to read a little; and could settle to nothing but
sorrow and deep despondency.

Not that she nursed her grief. She had been told to be brave, and she
tried. But her grief was her master. It came welling through her eyes
in a moment, of its own accord.

She was deeply mortified too. But, in her gentle nature, anger could
play but a secondary part. Her indignation was weak beside her grief,
and did little to bear her up.

Yet her sense of shame was vivid; and she tried hard not to let her
father see how deeply she loved the man who had gone from her to Miss
Somerset. Besides, he had ordered her to fight against a love that now
could only degrade her; he had ordered, and it was for her to obey.

As soon as Sir Charles was better, he wrote her a long, humble letter,
owning that, before he knew her, he had led a free life; but assuring
her that, ever since that happy time, his heart and his time had been
solely hers; as to his visit to Miss Somerset, it had been one of
business merely, and this he could prove, if she would receive him. The
admiral could be present at that interview, and Sir Charles hoped to
convince him he had been somewhat hasty and harsh in his decision.

Now the admiral had foreseen Sir Charles would write to her; so he had
ordered his man to bring all letters to him first.

He recognized Sir Charles's hand, and brought the latter in to Bella.
“Now, my child,” said he, “be brave. Here is a letter from that man.”

“Oh, papa! I thought he would. I knew he would.” And the pale face was
flushed with joy and hope all in a moment.

“Do what?”

“Write and explain.”

“Explain? A thing that is clear as sunshine. He has written to throw
dust in your eyes again. You are evidently in no state to judge. _I_
shall read this letter first.”

“Yes, papa,” said Bella, faintly.

He did read it, and she devoured his countenance all the time.

“There is nothing in it. He offers no real explanation, but only says
he can explain, and asks for an interview--to play upon your weakness.
If I give you this letter, it will only make you cry, and render your
task more difficult. I must be strong for your good, and set you an
example. I loved this young man too; but, now I know him”--then he
actually thrust the letter into the fire.

But this was too much. Bella shrieked at the act, and put her hand to
her heart, and shrieked again. “Ah! you'll kill us, you'll kill us
both!” she cried. “Poor Charles! Poor Bella! You don't love your
child--you have no pity.” And, for the first time, her misery was
violent. She writhed and wept, and at last went into violent hysterics,
and frightened that stout old warrior more than cannon had ever
frightened him; and presently she became quiet, and wept at his knees,
and begged his forgiveness, and said he was wiser than she was, and she
would obey him in everything, only he must not be angry with her if she
could not live.

Then the stout admiral mingled his tears with hers, and began to
realize what deep waters of affliction his girl was wading in.

Yet he saw no way out but firmness. He wrote to Sir Charles to say that
his daughter was too ill to write; but that no explanation was
possible, and no interview could be allowed.

Sir Charles, who, after writing, had conceived the most sanguine hopes,
was now as wretched as Bella. Only, now that he was refused a hearing,
he had wounded pride to support him a little under wounded love.

Admiral Bruce, fearing for his daughter's health, and even for her
life--she pined so visibly--now ordered her to divide her day into
several occupations, and exact divisions of time--an hour for this, an
hour for that; an hour by the clock--and here he showed practical
wisdom. Try it, ye that are very unhappy, and tell me the result.

As a part of this excellent system, she had to walk round the square
from eleven to twelve A. M., but never alone; he was not going to have
Sir Charles surprising her into an interview. He always went with her,
and, as he was too stiff to walk briskly, he sat down, and she had to
walk in sight. He took a stout stick with him--for Sir Charles. But Sir
Charles was proud, and stayed at home with his deep wound.

One day, walking round the square with a step of Mercury and heart of
lead, Bella Bruce met a Sister of Charity pacing slow and thoughtful;
their eyes met and drank, in a moment, every feature of each other.

The Sister, apparently, had seen the settled grief on that fair face;
for the next time they met, she eyed her with a certain sympathy, which
did not escape Bella.

This subtle interchange took place several times and Bella could not
help feeling a little grateful. “Ah!” she thought to herself, “how kind
religious people are! I should like to speak to her.” And the next time
they met she looked wistfully in the Sister's face.

She did not meet her again, for she went and rested on a bench, in
sight of her father, but at some distance from him. Unconsciously to
herself, his refusal even to hear Sir Charles repelled her. That was so
hard on him and her. It looked like throwing away the last chance, the
last little chance of happiness.

By-and-by the Sister came and sat on the same bench.

Bella was hardly surprised, but blushed high, for she felt that her own
eyes had invited the sympathy of a stranger; and now it seemed to be
coming. The timid girl felt uneasy. The Sister saw that, and approached
her with tact. “You look unwell,” said she, gently, but with no
appearance of extravagant interest or curiosity.

“I am--a little,” said Bella, very reservedly.

“Excuse my remarking it. We are professional nurses, and apt to be a
little officious, I fear.”

No reply.

“I saw you were unwell. But I hope it is not serious. I can generally
tell when the sick are in danger.” A peculiar look. “I am glad not to
see it in so young and--good a face.”

“You are young, too; very young, and--” she was going to say
“beautiful,” but she was too shy--“to be a Sister of Charity. But I am
sure you never regret leaving such a world as this is.”

“Never. I have lost the only thing I ever valued in it.”

“I have no right to ask you what that was.”

“You shall know without asking. One I loved proved unworthy.”

The Sister sighed deeply, and then, hiding her face with her hands for
a moment, rose abruptly, and left the square, ashamed, apparently, of
having been betrayed into such a confession.

Bella, when she was twenty yards off, put out a timid hand, as if to
detain her; but she had not the courage to say anything of the kind.

She never told her father a word. She had got somebody now who could
sympathize with her better than he could.

Next day the Sister was there, and Bella bowed to her when she met her.
This time it was the Sister who went and sat on the bench.

Bella continued her walk for some time, but at last could not resist
the temptation. She came and sat down on the bench, and blushed; as
much as to say, “I have the courage to come, but not to speak upon a
certain subject, which shall be nameless.”

The Sister, as may be imagined, was not so shy. She opened a
conversation. “I committed a fault yesterday. I spoke to you of myself,
and of the past: it is discouraged by our rules. We are bound to
inquire the griefs of others; not to tell our own.”

This was a fair opening, but Bella was too delicate to show her wounds
to a fresh acquaintance.

The Sister, having failed at that, tried something very different.

“But I could tell you a pitiful case about another. Some time ago I
nursed a gentleman whom love had laid on a sick-bed.”

“A gentleman! What! can they love as we do?” said Bella, bitterly.

“Not many of them; but this was an exception. But I don't know whether
I ought to tell these secrets to so young a lady.”

“Oh, yes--please--what else is there in this world worth talking about?
Tell me about the poor man who could love as we can.”

The Sister seemed to hesitate, but at last decided to go on.

“Well, he was a man of the world, and he had not always been a good
man; but he was trying to be. He had fallen in love with a young lady,
and seen the beauty of virtue, and was going to marry her and lead a
good life. But he was a man of honor, and there was a lady for whom he
thought it was his duty to provide. He set his lawyer to draw a deed,
and his lawyer appointed a day for signing it at her house. The poor
man came because his lawyer told him. Do you think there was any great
harm in that?”

“No; of course not.”

“Well, then, he lost his love for that.”

Miss Bruce's color began to come and go, and her supple figure to
crouch a little. She said nothing.

The Sister continued: “Some malicious person went and told the young
lady's father the gentleman was in the habit of visiting that lady, and
would be with her at a certain hour. And so he was; but it was the
lawyer's appointment, you know. You seem agitated.”

“No, no; not agitated,” said Bella, “but astonished; it is so like a
story I know. A young lady, a friend of mine, had an anonymous letter,
telling her that one she loved and esteemed was unworthy. But what you
have told me shows me how deceitful appearances may be. What was your
patient's name?”

“It is against our rules to tell that. But you said an 'anonymous
letter.' Was your friend so weak as to believe an anonymous letter? The
writer of such a letter is a coward, and a coward always is a liar.
Show me your friend's anonymous letter. I may, perhaps, be able to
throw a light on it.”

The conversation was interrupted by Admiral Bruce, who had approached
them unobserved. “Excuse me,” said he, “but you ladies seem to have hit
upon a very interesting theme.”

“Yes, papa,” said Bella. “I took the liberty to question this lady as
to her experiences of sick-beds, and she was good enough to give me
some of them.”

Having uttered this with a sudden appearance of calmness that first
amazed the Sister, then made her smile, she took her father's arm,
bowed politely, and a little stiffly, to her new friend, and drew the
admiral away.

“Oh!” thought the Sister. “I am not to speak to the old gentleman. He
is not in her confidence. Yet she is very fond of him. How she hangs on
his arm! Simplicity! Candor! We are all tarred with the same stick--we
women.”

That night Bella was a changed girl--exalted and depressed by turns,
and with no visible reason.

Her father was pleased. Anything better than that deadly languor.

The next day Bella sat by her father's side in the square, longing to
go to the Sister, yet patiently waiting to be ordered.

At last the admiral, finding her dull and listless, said, “Why don't
you go and talk to the Sister? She amuses you. I'll join you when I
have smoked this cigar.”

The obedient Bella rose, and went toward the Sister as if compelled.
But when she got to her her whole manner changed. She took her warmly
by the hand, and said, trembling and blushing, and all on fire, “I have
brought you the anonymous letter.”

The elder actress took it and ran her eye over it--an eye that now
sparkled like a diamond. “Humph!” said she, and flung off all the
dulcet tones of her assumed character with mighty little ceremony.
“This hand is disguised a little, but I think I know it. I am sure I
do! The dirty little rascal!”

“Madam!” cried Bella, aghast with surprise at this language.

“I tell you I know the writer and his rascally motive. You must lend me
this for a day or two.”

“Must I?” said Bella. “Excuse me! Papa would be so angry.”

“Very likely; but you will lend it to me for all that; for with this I
can clear Miss Bruce's lover and defeat his enemies.”

Bella uttered a faint cry, and trembled, and her bosom heaved
violently. She looked this way and that, like a frightened deer. “But
papa? His eye is on us.”

“Never deceive your father!” said the Sister, almost sternly; “but,”
 darting her gray eyes right into those dove-like orbs, “give me five
minutes' start--IF YOU REALLY LOVE SIR CHARLES BASSETT.”

With these words she carried off the letter; and Bella ran, blushing,
panting, trembling, to her father, and clung to him.

He questioned her, but could get nothing from her very intelligible
until the Sister was out of sight, and then she told him all without
reserve.

“I was unworthy of him to doubt him. An anonymous slander. I'll never
trust appearances again. Poor Charles! Oh, my darling! what he must
have suffered if he loves like me.” Then came a shower of happy tears;
then a shower of happy kisses.

The admiral groaned, but for a long time he could not get a word in.
When he did it was chilling. “My poor girl,” said he, “this unhappy
love blinds you. What, don't you see the woman is no nun, but some sly
hussy that man has sent to throw dust in your eyes?”

Nothing she could say prevailed to turn him from this view, and he
acted upon it with resolution: he confined her excursions to a little
garden at the back of the house, and forbade her, on any pretense, to
cross the threshold.

Miss Somerset came to the square in another disguise, armed with
important information. But no Bella Bruce appeared to meet her.



All this time Richard Bassett was happy as a prince.

So besotted was he with egotism, and so blinded by imaginary wrongs,
that he rejoiced in the lovers' separation, rejoiced in his cousin's
attack.

Polly, who now regarded him almost as a lover, told him all about it;
and already in anticipation he saw himself and his line once more lords
of the two manors--Bassett and Huntercombe--on the demise of Sir
Charles Bassett, Bart., deceased without issue.

And, in fact, Sir Charles was utterly defeated. He lay torpid.

But there was a tough opponent in the way--all the more dangerous that
she was not feared.

One fine day Miss Somerset electrified her groom by ordering her pony
carriage to the door at ten A. M.

She took the reins on the pavement, like a man, jumped in light as a
feather, and away rattled the carriage into the City. The ponies were
all alive, the driver's eye keen as a bird's; her courage and her
judgment equal. She wound in and out among the huge vehicles with
perfect composure; and on those occasions when, the traffic being
interrupted, the oratorical powers were useful to fill up the time, she
shone with singular brilliance. The West End is too often in debt to
the City, but, in the matter of chaff, it was not so this day; for
whenever she took a peck she returned a bushel; and so she rattled to
the door of Solomon Oldfield, solicitor, Old Jewry.

She penetrated into the inner office of that worthy, and told him he
must come with her that minute to Portman Square.

“Impossible, madam!” And, as they say in the law reports, gave his
reasons.

“Certain, sir!” And gave no reasons.

He still resisted.

Thereupon she told him she should sit there all day and chaff his
clients one after another, and that his connection with the Bassett and
Huntercombe estates should end.

Then he saw he had to do with a termagant, and consented, with a sigh.

She drove him westward, wincing every now and then at her close
driving, and told him all, and showed him what she was pleased to call
her little game. He told her it was too romantic. Said he, “You ladies
read nothing but novels; but the real world is quite different from the
world of novels.” Having delivered this remonstrance--which was
tolerably just, for she never read anything but novels and sermons--he
submitted like a lamb, and received her instructions.

She drove as fast as she talked, so that by this time they were at
Admiral Bruce's door.

Now Mr. Oldfield took the lead, as per instructions. “Mr. Oldfield,
solicitor, and a lady--on business.”

The porter delivered this to the footman with the accuracy which all
who send verbal messages deserve and may count on. “Mr. Oldfield and
lady.”

The footman, who represented the next step in oral tradition, without
which form of history the Heathen world would never have known that
Hannibal softened the rocks with vinegar, nor the Christian world that
eleven thousand virgins dwelt in a German town the size of Putney,
announced the pair as “Mr. and Mrs. Hautville.”

“I don't know them, I think. Well, I will see them.”

They entered, and the admiral stared a little, and wondered how this
couple came together--the keen but plain old man, with clothes hanging
on him, and the dashing beauty, with her dress in the height of the
fashion, and her gauntleted hands. However, he bowed ceremoniously, and
begged his visitors to be seated.

Now the folding-doors were ajar, and the _soi-disant_ Mrs. Oldfield
peeped. She saw Bella Bruce at some distance, seated by the fire, in a
reverie.

Judge that young lady's astonishment when she looked up and observed a
large white, well-shaped hand, sparkling with diamonds and rubies,
beckoning her furtively.



The owner of that sparkling hand soon heard a soft rustle of silk come
toward the door; the very rustle, somehow, was eloquent, and betrayed
love and timidity, and something innocent yet subtle. The jeweled hand
went in again directly.




CHAPTER VIII.

MEANTIME Mr. Oldfield began to tell the admiral who he was, and that he
was come to remove a false impression about a client of his, Sir
Charles Bassett.

“That, sir,” said the admiral, sternly, “is a name we never mention
here.”

He rose and went to the folding-doors, and deliberately closed them.

The Somerset, thus defeated, bit her lip, and sat all of a heap, like a
cat about to spring, looking sulky and vicious.

Mr. Oldfield persisted, and, as he took the admiral's hint and lowered
his voice, he was interrupted no more, but made a simple statement of
those facts which are known to the reader.

Admiral Bruce heard them, and admitted that the case was not quite so
bad as he had thought.

Then Mr. Oldfield proposed that Sir Charles should be re-admitted.

“No,” said the old admiral, firmly; “turn it how you will, it is too
ugly; the bloom of the thing is gone. Why should my daughter take that
woman's leavings? Why should I give her pure heart to a man about
town?”

“Because you will break it else,” said Miss Somerset, with affected
politeness.

“Give her credit for more dignity, madam, if you please,” replied
Admiral Bruce, with equal politeness.

“Oh, bother dignity!” cried the Somerset.

At this free phrase from so well-dressed a lady Admiral Bruce opened
his eyes, and inquired of Oldfield, rather satirically, who was this
lady that did him the honor to interfere in his family affairs.

Oldfield looked confused; but Somerset, full of mother-wit, was not to
be caught napping. “I'm a by-stander; and they always see clearer than
the folk themselves. You are a man of honor, sir, and you are very
clever at sea, no doubt, and a fighter, and all that; but you are no
match for land-sharks. You are being made a dupe and a tool of. Who do
you think wrote that anonymous letter to your daughter? A friend of
truth? a friend of injured innocence? Nothing of the sort. One Richard
Bassett--Sir Charles's cousin. Here, Mr. Oldfield, please compare these
two handwritings closely, and you will see I am right.” She put down
the anonymous letter and Richard Bassett's letter to herself; but she
could not wait for Mr. Oldfield to compare the documents, now her
tongue was set going. “Yes, gentlemen, this is new to you; but you'll
find that little scheming rascal wrote them both, and with as base a
motive and as black a heart as any other anonymous coward's. His game
is to make Sir Charles Bassett die childless, and so then this dirty
fellow would inherit the estate; and owing to you being so green, and
swallowing an anonymous letter like pure water from the spring, he very
nearly got his way. Sir Charles has been at death's door along of all
this.”

“Hush, madam! not so loud, please,” whispered Admiral Bruce, looking
uneasily toward the folding, doors.

“Why not?” bawled the Somerset. “THE TRUTH MAY BE BLAMED, BUT IT CAN'T
BE SHAMED. I tell you that your precious letter brought Sir Charles
Bassett to the brink of the grave. Soon as ever he got it he came
tearing in his cab to Miss Somerset's house, and accused her of telling
the lie to keep him--and he might have known better, for the jade never
did a sneaking thing in her life. But, any way, he thought it must be
her doing, miscalled her like a dog, and raged at her dreadful, and at
last--what with love and fury and despair--he had the terriblest fit
you ever saw. He fell down as black as your hat, and his eyes rolled,
and his teeth gnashed, and he foamed at the mouth, and took four to
hold him; and presently as white as a ghost, and given up for dead. No
pulse for hours; and when his life came back his reason was gone.”

“Good Heavens, madam!”

“For a time it was. How he did rave! and 'Bella' the only name on his
lips. And now he lies in his own house as weak as water. Come, old
gentleman, don't you be too hard; you are not a child, like your
daughter; take the world as it is. Do you think you will ever find a
man of fortune who has not had a lady friend? Why, every single
gentleman in London that can afford to keep a saddle-horse has an
article of that sort in some corner or other; and if he parts with her
as soon as his banns are cried, that is all you can expect. Do you
think any mother in Belgravia would make a row about that? They are
downier than you are; they would shrug their aristocratic shoulders,
and decline to listen to the _past_ lives of their sons-in-law--unless
it was all in the newspapers, mind you.”

“If Belgravian mothers have mercenary minds, that is no reason why I
should, whose cheeks have bronzed in the service of a virtuous queen,
and whose hairs have whitened in honor.”

On receiving this broadside the Somerset altered her tone directly, and
said, obsequiously: “That is true, sir, and I beg your pardon for
comparing you to the trash. But brave men are pitiful, you know. Then
show your pity here. Pity a gentleman that repented his faults as soon
as your daughter showed him there was a better love within reach, and
now lies stung by an anonymous viper, and almost dying of love and
mortification; and pity your own girl, that will soon lose her health,
and perhaps her life, if you don't give in.”

“She is not so weak, madam. She is in better spirits already.”

“Ay, but then she didn't know what he had suffered for _her._ She does
now, for I heard her moan; and she will die for him now, or else she
will give you twice as many kisses as usual some day, and cry a
bucketful over you, and then run away with her lover. I know women
better than you do; I am one of the precious lot.”

The admiral replied only with a look of superlative scorn. This
incensed the Somerset; and that daring woman, whose ear was nearer to
the door, and had caught sounds that escaped the men, actually turned
the handle, and while her eye flashed defiance, her vigorous foot
spurned the folding-doors wide open in half a moment.

Bella Bruce lay with her head sidewise on the table, and her hands
extended, moaning and sobbing piteously for poor Sir Charles.

“For shame, madam, to expose my child,” cried the admiral, bursting
with indignation and grief. He rushed to her and took her in his arms.

She scarcely noticed him, for the moment he turned her she caught sight
of Miss Somerset, and recognized her face in a moment. “Ah! the Sister
of Charity!” she cried, and stretched out her hands to her, with a look
and a gesture so innocent, confiding, and imploring, that the Somerset,
already much excited by her own eloquence, took a turn not uncommon
with termagants, and began to cry herself.

But she soon stopped that, for she saw her time was come to go, and
avoid unpleasant explanations. She made a dart and secured the two
letters. “Settle it among yourselves,” said she, wheeling round and
bestowing this advice on the whole party; then shot a sharp arrow at
the admiral as she fled: “If you must be a tool of Richard Bassett,
don't be a tool and a dupe by halves. _He_ is in love with her too.
Marry her to the blackguard, and then you will be sure to kill Sir
Charles.” Having delivered this with such volubility that the words
pattered out like a roll of musketry, she flounced out, with red cheeks
and wet eyes, rushed down the stairs, and sprang into her carriage,
whipped the ponies, and away at a pace that made the spectators stare.

Mr. Oldfield muttered some excuses, and retired more sedately.

All this set Bella Bruce trembling and weeping, and her father was some
time before he could bring her to anything like composure. Her first
words, when she could find breath, were, “He is innocent; he is
unhappy. Oh, that I could fly to him!”

“Innocent! What proof?”

“That brave lady said so.”

“Brave lady! A bold hussy. Most likely a friend of the woman Somerset,
and a bird of the same feather. Sir Charles has done himself no good
with me by sending such an emissary.”

“No, papa; it was the lawyer brought her, and then her own good heart
_made her burst out._ Ah! she is not like me: she has courage. What a
noble thing courage is, especially in a woman!”

“Pray did you hear the language of this noble lady?”

“Every word nearly; and I shall never forget them. They were diamonds
and pearls.”

“Of the sort you can pick up at Billingsgate.”

“Ah, papa, she pleaded for _him_ as I cannot plead, and yet I love him.
It was true eloquence. Oh, how she made me shudder! Only think: he had
a fit, and lost his reason, and all for me. What shall I do? What shall
I do?”

This brought on a fit of weeping.

Her father pitied her, and gave her a crumb of sympathy: said he was
sorry for Sir Charles.

“But,” said he, recovering his resolution, “it cannot be helped. He
must expiate his vices, like other men. Do, pray, pluck up a little
spirit and sense. Now try and keep to the point. This woman came from
him; and you say you heard her language, and admire it. Quote me some
of it.”

“She said he fell down as black as his hat, and his eyes rolled, and
his poor teeth gnashed, and--oh, my darling! my darling! oh! oh! oh!”

“There--there--I mean about other things.”

Bella complied, but with a running accompaniment of the sweetest little
sobs.

“She said I must be very green, to swallow an anonymous letter like
spring water. Oh! oh!”

“Green? There was a word!”

“Oh! oh! But it is the right word. You can't mend it. Try, and you will
see you can't. Of course I was green. Oh! And she said every gentleman
who can afford to keep a saddle-horse has a female friend, till his
banns are called in church. Oh! oh!”

“A pretty statement to come to your ears!”

“But if it is the truth! 'THE TRUTH MAY BE BLAMED, BUT IT CAN'T BE
SHAMED.' Ah! I'll not forget that: I'll pray every night I may remember
those words of the brave lady. Oh!”

“Yes, take her for your oracle.”

“I mean to. I always try to profit by my superiors. She has courage: I
have none. I beat about the bush, and talk skim-milk; she uses the very
word. She said we have been the dupe and the tool of a little scheming
rascal, an anonymous coward, with motives as base as his heart is
black--oh! oh! Ay, that is the way to speak of such a man; I can't do
it myself, but I reverence the brave lady who can. And she wasn't
afraid even of you, dear papa. 'Come, old gentleman'--ha! ha!
ha!--'take the world as it is; Belgravian mothers would not break
_both_ their hearts for what is past and gone.' What hard good sense! a
thing I always _did_ admire: because I've got none. But her _heart_ is
not hard; after all her words of fire, that went so straight instead of
beating the bush, she ended by crying for me. Oh! oh! oh! Bless her!
Bless her! If ever there was a good woman in the world, that is one.
She was not born a lady, I am afraid; but that is nothing: she was born
a woman, and I mean to make her acquaintance, and take her for my
example in all things. No, dear papa, women are not so pitiful to women
without cause. She is almost a stranger, yet she cried for me. Can you
be harder to me than she is? No; pity your poor girl, who will lose her
health, and perhaps her life. Pity poor Charles, stung by an anonymous
viper, and laid on a bed of sickness for me. Oh! oh! oh!”

“I do pity you, Bella. When you cry like this, my heart bleeds.”

“I'll try not to cry, papa. Oh! oh!”

“But most of all, I pity your infatuation, your blindness. Poor,
innocent dove, that looks at others by the light of her own goodness,
and so sees all manner of virtues in a brazen hussy. Now answer me one
plain question. You called her 'the Sister!' Is she not the same woman
that played the Sister of Charity?”

Bella blushed to the temples, and said, hesitatingly, she was not quite
sure.

“Come, Bella. I thought you were going to imitate the jade, and not
beat about the bush. Yes or no?”

“The features are very like.”

“Bella, you know it is the same woman. You recognized her in a moment.
That speaks volumes. But she shall find I am not to be made 'a dupe and
a tool of' quite so easily as she thinks. I'll tell you what--this is
some professional actress Sir Charles has hired to waylay you. Little
simpleton!”

He said no more at that time; but after dinner he ruminated, and took a
very serious, indeed almost a maritime, view of the crisis. “I'm
overmatched now,” thought he. “They will cut my sloop out under the
very guns of the flagship if we stay much longer in this port--a lawyer
against me, and a woman too; there's nothing to be done but heave
anchor, hoist sail, and run for it.”

He sent off a foreign telegram, and then went upstairs. “Bella, my
dear,” said he, “pack up your clothes for a journey. We start
to-morrow.”

“A journey, papa! A long one?”

“No. We shan't double the Horn this time.”

“Brighton? Paris?”

“Oh, farther than that.”

“The grave: that is the journey I should like to take.”

 “So you shall, some day; but just now it is a _foreign_ port you are
bound for. Go and pack.”

“I obey.” And she was creeping off, but he called her back and kissed
her, and said, “Now I'll tell you where you are going; but you must
promise me solemnly not to write one line to Sir Charles.”

She promised, but cried as soon as she had promised; whereat the
admiral inferred he had done wisely to exact the promise.

“Well, my dear,” said he, “we are going to Baden. Your aunt Molineux is
there. She is a woman of great delicacy and prudence, and has daughters
of her own all well married, thanks to her motherly care. She will
bring you to your senses better than I can.”

Next evening they left England by the mail; and the day after Richard
Bassett learned this through his servant, and went home triumphant,
and, indeed, wondering at his success. He ascribed it, however, to the
Nemesis which dogs the heels of those who inherit the estate of
another.

Such was the only moral reflection he made, though the business in
general, and particularly his share in it, admitted of several.

 Miss Somerset also heard of it, and told Mr. Oldfield; he told Sir
Charles Bassett.

That gentleman sighed deeply, and said nothing. He had lost all hope.



The whole matter appeared stagnant for about ten days; and then a
delicate hand stirred the dead waters cautiously. Mr. Oldfield, of all
people in the world, received a short letter from Bella Bruce.



“Konigsberg Hotel, BADEN.

“Miss Bruce presents her compliments to Mr. Oldfield, and will feel
much obliged if he will send her the name and address of that brave
lady who accompanied him to her father's house.

“Miss Bruce desires to thank that lady, personally, for her noble
defense of one with whom it would be improper for her to communicate;
but she can never be indifferent to his welfare, nor hear of his
sufferings without deep sorrow.”



“Confound it!” said Solomon Oldfield. “What am I to do? I mustn't tell
her it is Miss Somerset.” So the wary lawyer had a copy of the letter
made, and sent to Miss Somerset for instructions.

Miss Somerset sent for Mr. Marsh, who was now more at her beck and call
than ever, and told him she had a ticklish letter to write. “I can talk
with the best,” said she, “but the moment I sit down and take up a pen
something cold runs up my shoulder, and then down my backbone, and I'm
palsied; now you are always writing, and can't say 'Bo' to a goose in
company. Let us mix ourselves; I'll walk about and speak my mind, and
then you put down the cream, and send it.”

From this ingenious process resulted the following composition:



“She whom Miss Bruce is good enough to call 'the brave lady' happened
to know the truth, and that tempted her to try and baffle an anonymous
slanderer, who was ruining the happiness of a lady and gentleman. Being
a person of warm impulses, she went great lengths; but she now wishes
to retire into the shade. She is flattered by Miss Bruce's desire to
know her, and some day, perhaps, may remind her of it; but at present
she must deny herself that honor. If her reasons were known, Miss Bruce
would not be offended nor hurt; she would entirely approve them.”



Soon after this, as Sir Charles Bassett sat by the fire, disconsolate,
his servant told him a lady wanted to see him.

“Who is it?”

“Don't know, Sir Charles; but it is a kind of a sort of a nun, Sir
Charles.”

“Oh, a Sister of Charity! Perhaps the one that nursed me. Admit her, by
all means.”

The Sister came in. She had a large veil on. Sir Charles received her
with profound respect, and thanked her, with some little hesitation,
for her kind attention to him. She stopped him by saying that was
merely her duty. “But,” said she, softly, “words fell from you, on the
bed of sickness, that touched my heart; and besides I happen to know
the lady.”

“You know my Bella!” cried Sir Charles. “Ah, then no wonder you speak
so kindly; you can feel what I have lost. She has left England to avoid
me.”

“All the better. Where she is the door cannot be closed in your face.
She is at Baden. Follow her there. She has heard the truth from Mr.
Oldfield, and she knows who wrote the anonymous letter.”

“And who did?”

“Mr. Richard Bassett.”

This amazed Sir Charles.

“The scoundrel!” said he, after a long silence.

“Well, then, why let that fellow defeat you, for his own ends? I would
go at once to Baden. Your leaving England would be one more proof to
her that she has no rival. Stick to her like a man, sir, and you will
win her, I tell you.”

These words from a nun amazed and fired him. He rose from his chair,
flushed with sudden hope and ardor. “I'll leave for Baden to-morrow
morning.”

The Sister rose to retire.

“No, no,” cried Sir Charles. “I have not thanked you. I ought to go
down on my knees and bless you for all this. To whom am I so indebted?”

“No matter, sir.”

“But it does matter. You nursed me, and perhaps saved my life, and now
you give me back the hopes that make life sweet. You will not trust me
with your name?”

“We have no name.”

“Your voice at times sounds very like--no, I will not affront you by
such a comparison.”

“I'm her sister,” said she, like lightning.

This announcement quite staggered Sir Charles, and he was silent and
uncomfortable. It gave him a chill.

The Sister watched him keenly, but said nothing.

Sir Charles did not know what to say, so he asked to see her face. “It
must be as beautiful as your heart.”

The Sister shook her head. “My face has been disfigured by a frightful
disorder.”

Sir Charles uttered an ejaculation of regret and pity.

“I could not bear to show it to one who esteems me as you seem to do.
But perhaps it will not always be so.”

“I hope not. You are young, and Heaven is good. Can I do nothing for
you, who have done so much for me?”

“Nothing--unless--” said she, feigning vast timidity, “you could spare
me that ring of yours, as a remembrance of the part I have played in
this affair.”

Sir Charles colored. It was a ruby of the purest water, and had been
two centuries in his family. He colored, but was too fine a gentleman
to hesitate. He said, “By all means. But it is a poor thing to offer
_you.”_

“I shall value it very much.”

“Say no more. I am fortunate in having anything you deign to accept.”

And so the ring changed hands.

The Sister now put it on her middle finger, and held up her hand, and
her bright eyes glanced at it, through her veil, with that delight
which her sex in general feel at the possession of a new bauble. She
recovered herself, however, and told him, soberly, the ring should
return to his family at her death, if not before.

“I will give you a piece of advice for it,” said she. “Miss Bruce has
foxy hair; and she is very timid. Don't you take her advice about
commanding her. She would like to be your slave! Don't let her. Coax
her to speak her mind. Make a friend of her. Don't you put her to
this--that she must displease you, or else deceive you. She might
choose wrong, especially with that colored hair.”

“It is not in her nature to deceive.”

“It is not in her nature to displease. Excuse me; I am too fanciful,
and look at women too close. But I know your happiness depends on her.
All your eggs are in that one basket. Well, I have told you how to
carry the basket. Good-by.”

Sir Charles saw her out, and bowed respectfully to her in the hall,
while his servant opened the street door. He did her this homage as his
benefactress.



When admiral and Miss Bruce reached Baden Mrs. Molineux was away on a
visit; and this disappointed Admiral Bruce, who had counted on her
assistance to manage and comfort Bella. Bella needed the latter very
much. A glance at her pale, pensive, lovely face was enough to show
that sorrow was rooted at her heart. She was subjected to no restraint,
but kept the house of her own accord, thinking, as persons of her age
are apt to do, that her whole history must be written in her face.
Still, of course, she did go out sometimes; and one cold but bright
afternoon she was strolling languidly on the parade, when all in a
moment she met Sir Charles Bassett face to face.

She gave an eloquent scream, and turned pale a moment, and then the hot
blood came rushing, and then it retired, and she stood at bay, with
heaving bosom--and great eyes.

Sir Charles held out both hands pathetically. “Don't you be afraid of
me.”

When she found he was so afraid of offending her she became more
courageous. “How dare you come here?” said she, but with more curiosity
than violence, for it had been her dream of hope he would come.

“How could I keep away, when I heard you were here?”

“You must not speak to me, sir; I am forbidden.”

“Pray do not condemn me unheard.”

“If I listen to you I shall believe you. I won't hear a word. Gentlemen
can do things that ladies cannot even speak about. Talk to my aunt
Molineux; our fate depends on her. This will teach you not to be so
wicked. What business have gentlemen to be so wicked? Ladies are not.
No, it is no use; I will not hear a syllable. I am ashamed to be seen
speaking to you. You are a bad character. Oh, Charles, is it true you
had a fit?”

“Yes.”

“And have you been very ill? You look ill.”

“I am better now, dearest.”

“Dearest! Don't call me names. How dare you keep speaking to me when I
request you not?”

“But I can't excuse myself, and obtain my pardon, and recover your
love, unless I am allowed to speak.”

“Oh, you can speak to my aunt Molineux, and she will read you a fine
lesson.”

“Where is she?”

“Nobody knows. But there is her house, the one with the iron gate. Get
her ear first, if you really love me; and don't you ever waylay me
again. If you do, I shall say something rude to you, sir. Oh, I'm so
happy!”

Having let this out, she hid her face with her hands, and fled like the
very wind.

At dinner-time she was in high spirits.

The admiral congratulated her.

“Brava, Bell! Youth and health and a foreign air will soon cure you of
that folly.”

Bella blushed deeply, and said nothing. The truth struggled within her,
too, but she shrank from giving pain, and receiving expostulation.

She kept the house, though, for two days, partly out of modesty, partly
out of an honest and pious desire to obey her father as much as she
could.

The third day Mrs. Molineux arrived, and sent over to the admiral.

He invited Bella to come with him. She consented eagerly, but was so
long in dressing that he threatened to go without her. She implored him
not to do that; and after a monstrous delay, the motive of which the
reader may perhaps divine, father and daughter called on Mrs. Molineux.
She received them very affectionately. But when the admiral, with some
hesitation, began to enter on the great subject, she said, quietly,
“Bella, my dear, go for a walk, and come back to me in half an hour.”

“Aunt Molineux!” said Bella, extending both her hands imploringly to
that lady.

Mrs. Molineux was proof against this blandishment, and Bella had to go.

When she was gone, this lady, who both as wife and mother was literally
a model, rather astonished her brother the admiral. She said: “I am
sorry to tell you that you have conducted this matter with perfect
impropriety, both you and Bella. She had no business to show you that
anonymous letter; and when she did show it you, you should have taken
it from her, and told her not to believe a word of it.”

“And married my daughter to a libertine! Why, Charlotte, I am ashamed
of you.”

Mrs. Molineux colored high; but she kept her temper, and ignored the
interruption. “Then, if you decided to go into so indelicate a question
at all (and really you were not bound to do so on anonymous
information), why, then, you should have sent for Sir Charles, and
given him the letter, and put him on his honor to tell you the truth.
He would have told you the fact, instead of a garbled version; and the
fact is that before he knew Bella he had a connection, which he
prepared to dissolve, on terms very honorable to himself, as soon as he
engaged himself to your daughter. What is there in that? Why, it is
common, universal, among men of fashion. I am so vexed it ever came to
Bella's knowledge: really it is dreadful to me, as a mother, that such
a thing should have been discussed before that child. Complete
innocence means complete ignorance; and that is how all my girls went
to their husbands. However, what we must do now is to tell her Sir
Charles has satisfied me he was not to blame; and after that the
subject must never be recurred to. Sir Charles has promised me never to
mention it, and no more shall Bella. And now, my dear John, let me
congratulate you. Your daughter has a high-minded lover, who adores
her, with a fine estate: he has been crying to me, poor fellow, as men
will to a woman of my age; and if you have any respect for my
judgment--ask him to dinner.”

She added that it might be as well if, after dinner, he were to take a
little nap.

Admiral Bruce did not fall into these views without discussion. I spare
the reader the dialogue, since he yielded at last; only he stipulated
that his sister should do the dinner, and the subsequent siesta.

Bella returned looking very wistful and anxious.

“Come here, niece,” said Mrs. Molineux. “Kneel you at my knee. Now
look--me in the face. Sir Charles has loved you, and you only, from the
day he first saw you. He loves you now as much as ever. Do you love
him?”

“Oh, aunt! aunt!” A shower of kisses, and a tear or two.

“That is enough. Then dry your eyes, and dress your beautiful hair a
little better than _that;_ for he dines with me to-day!”

Who so bright and happy now as Bella Bruce?



The dreaded aunt did not stop there. She held that after the peep into
real life Bella Bruce had obtained, for want of a mother's vigilance,
she ought to be a wife as soon as possible. So she gave Sir Charles a
hint that Baden was a very good place to be married in; and from that
moment Sir Charles gave Bella and her father no rest till they
consented.

Little did Richard Bassett, in England, dream what was going on at
Baden. He now surveyed the chimneys of Huntercombe Hall with
resignation, and even with growing complacency, as chimneys that would
one day be his, since their owner would not be in a hurry to love
again. He shot Sir Charles's pheasants whenever they strayed into his
hedgerows, and he lived moderately and studied health. In a word,
content with the result of his anonymous letter, he confined himself
now to cannily out-living the wrongful heir--his cousin.

One fine frosty day the chimneys of Huntercombe began to show signs of
life; vertical columns of blue smoke rose in the air, one after
another, till at last there were about forty going.

Old servants flowed down from London. New ones trickled in, with their
boxes, from the country. Carriages were drawn out into the stable-yard,
horses exercised, and a whisper ran that Sir Charles was coming to live
on his estates, and not alone.

Richard Bassett went about inquiring cautiously.

The rumor spread and was confirmed by some little facts.

At last, one fine day, when the chimneys were all smoking, the
church-bells began to peal.

Richard Bassett heard, and went out, scowling deeply. He found the
village all agog with expectation.

Presently there was a loud cheer from the steeple, and a flag floated
from the top of Huntercombe House. Murmurs. Distant cheers. Approaching
cheers. The clatter of horses' feet. The roll of wheels. Huntercombe
gates flung wide open by a cluster of grooms and keepers.

Then on came two outriders, ushered by loud hurrahs, and followed by a
carriage and four that dashed through the village amid peals of delight
from the villagers. The carriage was open, and in it sat Sir Charles
and Bella Bassett. She was lovelier than ever; she dazzled the very air
with her beauty and her glorious hair. The hurrahs of the villagers
made her heart beat; she pressed Sir Charles's hand tenderly, and
literally shone with joy and pride; and so she swept past Richard
Bassett; she saw him directly, shuddered a moment, and half clung to
her husband; then on again, and passed through the open gates amid loud
cheers. She alighted in her own hall, and walked, nodding and smiling
sunnily, through two files of domestics and retainers; and thought no
more of Richard Bassett than some bright bird that has flown over a
rattlesnake and glanced down at him.



But a gorgeous bird cannot always be flying. A snake can sometimes
creep under her perch, and glare, and keep hissing, till she shudders
and droops and lays her plumage in the dust.




CHAPTER IX.

GENERALLY deliberate crimes are followed by some great punishment; but
they are also often attended in their course by briefer
chastisements--single strokes from the whip that holds the round dozen
in reserve. These precursors of the grand expiation are sharp but
kindly lashes, for they tend to whip the man out of the wrong road.

Such a stroke fell on Richard Bassett: he saw Bella Bruce sweep past
him, clinging to her husband, and shuddering at himself. For this,
then, he had plotted and intrigued and written an anonymous letter. The
only woman he had ever loved at all went past him with a look of
aversion, and was his enemy's wife, and would soon be the mother of
that enemy's children, and blot him forever out of the coveted
inheritance.

The man crept home, and sat by his little fireside, crushed. Indeed,
from that hour he disappeared, and drank his bitter cup alone.

After a while it transpired in the village that he was very ill. The
clergyman went to visit him, but was not admitted. The only person who
got to see him was his friend Wheeler, a small but sharp attorney, by
whose advice he acted in country matters. This Wheeler was very fond of
shooting, and could not get a crack at a pheasant except on Highmore;
and that was a bond between him and its proprietor. It was Wheeler who
had first told Bassett not to despair of possessing the estates, since
they had inserted Sir Charles's heir at law in the entail.

This Wheeler found him now so shrunk in body, so pale and haggard in
face, and dejected in mind, that he was really shocked, and asked leave
to send a doctor from a neighboring town.

“What to do?” said Richard, moodily. “It's my mind; it's not my body.
Ah, Wheeler, it is all over. I and mine shall never have Huntercombe
now.”

“I'll tell you what it is,” said Wheeler, almost angrily, “you will
have six feet by two of it before long if you go on this way. Was ever
such folly! to fret yourself out of this jolly world because you can't
get one particular slice of its upper crust. Why, one bit of land is as
good as another; and I'll show you how to get land--in this
neighborhood, too. Ay, right under Sir Charles's nose.”

“Show me that,” said Bassett, gloomily and incredulously.

“Leave off moping, then, and I will. I advise the bank, you know, and
'Splatchett's' farm is mortgaged up to the eyes. It is not the only
one. I go to the village inns, and pick up all the gossip I hear
there.”

“How am I to find money to buy land?”

“I'll put you up to that, too; but you must leave off moping. Hang it,
man, never say die. There are plenty of chances on the cards. Get your
color back, and marry a girl with money, and turn that into land. The
first thing is to leave off grizzling. Why, you are playing the enemy's
game. That can't be right, can it?”

This remark was the first that really roused the sick man.

Wheeler had too few clients to lose one. He now visited Bassett almost
daily, and, being himself full of schemes and inventions, he got
Bassett, by degrees, out of his lethargy, and he emerged into daylight
again; but he looked thin, and yellow as a guinea, and he had turned
miser. He kept but one servant, and fed her and himself at Sir Charles
Bassett's expense. He wired that gentleman's hares and rabbits in his
own hedges. He went out with his gun every sunny afternoon, and shot a
brace or two of pheasants, without disturbing the rest; for he took no
dog with him to run and yelp, but a little boy, who quietly tapped the
hedgerows and walked the sunny banks and shaws. They never came home
empty-handed.

But on those rarer occasions when Sir Charles and his friends beat the
Bassett woods Richard was sure to make a large bag; for he was a cool,
unerring shot, and flushed the birds in hedgerows, slips of underwood,
etc., to which the fairer sportsmen had driven them.

These birds and the surplus hares he always sold in the market-town,
and put the money into a box. The rabbits he ate, and also squirrels,
and, above all, young hedgehogs: a gypsy taught him how to cook them,
viz., by inclosing them in clay, and baking them in wood embers; then
the bristles adhere to the burned clay, and the meat is juicy. He was
his own gardener, and vegetables cost him next to nothing.

So he went on through all the winter months, and by the spring his
health and strength were restored. Then he turned woodman, cut down
every stick of timber in a little wood near his house, and sold it; and
then set to work to grub up the roots for fires, and cleared it for
tillage. The sum he received for the wood was much more than he
expected, and this he made a note of.

He had a strong body, that could work hard all day, a big hate, and a
mania for the possession of land. And so he led a truly Spartan life,
and everybody in the village said he was mad.

While he led this hard life Sir Charles and Lady Bassett were the
gayest of the gay. She was the beauty and the bride. Visits and
invitations poured in from every part of the country. Sir Charles,
flattered by the homage paid to his beloved, made himself younger and
less fastidious to indulge her; and the happy pair often drove twelve
miles to dinner, and twenty to dine and sleep--an excellent custom in
that country, one of whose favorite toasts is worth recording: “MAY YOU
DINE WHERE YOU PLEASE, AND SLEEP WHERE YOU DINE.”

They were at every ball, and gave one or two themselves.

Above all, they enjoyed society in that delightful form which is
confined to large houses. They would have numerous and well-assorted
visitors staying at the house for a week or so, and all dining at a
huge round table. But two o'clock P.M. was the time to see how hosts
and guests enjoyed themselves. The hall door of Huntercombe was
approached by a flight of stone steps, easy of ascent, and about
twenty-four feet wide. At the riding hour the county ladies used to
come, one after another, holding up their riding-habits with one hand,
and perch about this gigantic flight of steps like peacocks, and
chatter like jays, while the servants walked their horses about the
gravel esplanade, and the four-in-hand waited a little in the rear. A
fine champing of bits and fidgeting of thoroughbreds there was, till
all were ready; then the ladies would each put out her little foot,
with charming nonchalance, to the nearest gentleman or groom, with a
slight preference for the grooms, who were more practiced. The man
lifted, the lady sprang at the same time, and into her saddle like a
bird--Lady Bassett on a very quiet pony, or in the carriage to please
some dowager--and away they clattered in high spirits, a regular
cavalcade. It was a hunting county, and the ladies rode well; square
seat, light hand on the snaffle, the curb reserved for cases of
necessity; and, when they had patted the horse on the neck at starting,
as all these coaxing creatures must, they rode him with that well-bred
ease and unconsciousness of being on a horse which distinguishes ladies
who have ridden all their lives from the gawky snobbesses in Hyde Park,
who ride, if riding it can be called, with their elbows uncouthly
fastened to their sides as if by a rope, their hands at the pit of
their stomachs, and both those hands, as heavy as a housemaid's, sawing
the poor horse with curb and snaffle at once, while the whole body
breathes pretension and affectation, and seems to say, “Look at me; I
am on horseback! Be startled at that--as I am! and I have had lessons
from a riding-master. He has taught me how a lady should ride”--in his
opinion, poor devil.

The champing, the pawing, the mounting, and the clattering of these
bright cavalcades, with the music of the women excited by motion,
furnished a picture of wealth and gayety and happy country life that
cheered the whole neighborhood, and contrasted strangely with the stern
Spartan life of him who had persuaded himself he was the rightful owner
of Huntercombe Hall.

Sir Charles Bassett was a magistrate, and soon found himself a bad one.
One day he made a little mistake, which, owing to his popularity, was
very gently handled by the Bench at their weekly meeting; but still Sir
Charles was ashamed and mortified. He wrote directly to Oldfield for
law books, and that gentleman sent him an excellent selection bound in
smooth calf.

Sir Charles now studied three hours every day, except hunting days,
when no squire can work; and as his study was his justice room, he took
care to find an authority before he acted. He was naturally humane, and
rustic offenders, especially poachers and runaway farm servants, used
to think themselves fortunate if they were taken before him and not
before Squire Powys, who was sure to give them the sharp edge of the
law. So now Sir Charles was useful as well as ornamental.

Thus passed fourteen months of happiness, with only one little
cloud--there was no sign yet of a son and heir. But let a man be ever
so powerful, it is an awkward thing to have a bitter, inveterate enemy
at his door watching for a chance. Sir Charles began to realize this in
the sixteenth month of his wedded bliss. A small estate called
“Splatchett's” lay on his north side, and a marginal strip of this
property ran right into a wood of his. This strip was wretched land,
and the owner, unable to raise any wheat crop on it, had planted it
with larches.

Sir Charles had made him a liberal offer for “Splatchett's” about six
years ago; but he had refused point-blank, being then in good
circumstances.

Sir Charles now received a hint from one of his own gamekeepers that
the old farmer was in a bad way, and talked of selling. So Sir Charles
called on him, and asked him if he would sell “Splatchett's” now. “Why,
I can't sell it twice,” said the old man, testily.  “You ha' got it,
han't ye?” It turned out that Richard Bassett had been beforehand. The
bank had pressed for their money, and threatened foreclosure; then
Bassett had stepped in with a good price; and although the conveyance
was not signed, a stamped agreement was, and neither vender nor
purchaser could go back. What made it more galling, the proprietor was
not aware of the feud between the Bassetts, and had thought to please
Sir Charles by selling to one of his name.

Sir Charles Bassett went home seriously vexed. He did not mean to tell
his wife; but love's eye read his face, love's arm went round his neck,
and love's soft voice and wistful eyes soon coaxed it out of him. “Dear
Charles,” said she, “never mind. It is mortifying; but think how much
you have, and how little that wicked man has. Let him have that farm;
he has lost his self-respect, and that is worth a great many farms. For
my part, I pity the poor wretch. Let him try to annoy you; your wife
will try, against him, to make you happy, my own beloved; and I think I
may prove as strong as Mr. Bassett,” said she, with a look of
inspiration.

Her sweet and tender sympathy soon healed so slight a scratch.

But they had not done with “Splatchett's” yet. Just after Christmas Sir
Charles invited three gentlemen to beat his more distant preserves.
Their guns bellowed in quick succession through the woods, and at last
they reached North Wood. Here they expected splendid shooting, as a
great many cock pheasants had already been seen running ahead.

But when they got to the end of the wood they found Lawyer Wheeler
standing against a tree just within “Splatchett's” boundary, and one of
their own beaters reported that two boys were stationed in the road,
each tapping two sticks together to confine the pheasants to that strip
of land, on which the low larches and high grass afforded a strong
covert.

Sir Charles halted on his side of the boundary.

Then Wheeler told his man to beat, and up got the cock pheasants, one
after another. Whenever a pheasant whirred up the man left off beating.

The lawyer knocked down four brace in no time, and those that escaped
him and turned back for the wood were brought down by Bassett, firing
from the hard road. Only those were spared that flew northward into
“Splatchett's.” It was a veritable slaughter, planned with judgment,
and carried out in a most ungentlemanlike and unsportsmanlike manner.

It goaded Sir Charles beyond his patience. After several vain efforts
to restrain himself, he shouldered his gun, and, followed by his
friends, went bursting through the larches to Richard Bassett.

“Mr. Bassett,” said he, “this is most ungentlernanly conduct.”

“What is the matter, sir? Am I on your ground?”

“No, but you are taking a mean advantage of our being out. Who ever
heard of a gentleman beating his boundaries the very day a neighbor was
out shooting, and filling them with his game?”

“Oh, that is it, is it? When justice is against you you can talk of
law, and when law is against you you appeal to justice. Let us be in
one story or the other, please. The Huntercombe estates belong to me by
birth. You have got them by legal trickery. Keep them while you live.
_They will come to me one day, you know._ Meantime, leave me my little
estate of 'Splatchett's.' For shame, sir; you have robbed me of my
inheritance and my sweetheart; do you grudge me a few cock pheasants?
Why, you have made me so poor they are an object to me now.”

“Oh!” said Sir Charles, “if you are stealing my game to keep body and
soul together, I pity you. In that case, perhaps you will let my
friends help you fill your larder.”

Richard Bassett hesitated a moment; but Wheeler, who had drawn near at
the sound of the raised voices, made him a signal to assent.

“By all means,” said he, adroitly. “Mr. Markham, your father often shot
with mine over the Bassett estates. You are welcome to poor little
'Splatchett's.' Keep your men off, Sir Charles; they are noisy
bunglers, and do more harm than good. Here, Tom! Bill! beat for the
gentlemen. They shall have the sport. I only want the birds.”

Sir Charles drew back, and saw pheasant after pheasant thunder and whiz
into the air, then collapse at a report, and fall like lead, followed
by a shower of feathers.

His friends seemed to be deserting him for Richard Bassett. He left
them in charge of his keepers, and went slowly home.

He said nothing to Lady Bassett till night, and then she got it all
from him. She was very indignant at many of the things; but as for Sir
Charles, all his cousin's arrows glided off that high-minded gentleman,
except one, and that quivered in his heart. “Yes, Bella,” said he, “he
told me he should inherit these estates. That is because we are not
blessed with children.”

Lady Bassett sighed. “But we shall be some day. Shall we not?”

“God knows,” said Sir Charles, gloomily. “I wonder whether there was
really anything unfair done on our side when the entail was cut off?”

“Is that likely, dearest? Why?”

“Heaven seems to be on his side.”

“On the side of a wicked man?”

“But he may be the father of innocent children.”

“Why, he is not even married.”

“He will marry. He will not throw a chance away. It makes my head
dizzy, and my heart sick. Bella, now I can understand two enemies
meeting alone in some solitary place, and one killing the other in a
moment of rage; for when this scoundrel insulted me I remembered his
anonymous letter, and all his relentless malice. Bella, I could have
raised my gun and shot him like a weasel.”

Lady Bassett screamed faintly, and flung her arms round his neck. “Oh,
Charles, pray to God against such thoughts. You shall never go near
that man again. Don't think of our one disappointment: think of all the
blessings we enjoy. Never mind that wretched man's hate. Think of your
wife's love. Have I not more power to make you happy than he has to
afflict you, my adored?” These sweet words were accompanied by a wife's
divine caresses; with the honey of her voice, and the liquid sunshine
of her loving eyes. Sir Charles slept peacefully that night, and forgot
his one grief and his one enemy for a time.

Not so Lady Bassett. She lay awake all night and thought deeply of
Richard Bassett and “his unrelenting, impenitent malice.” Women of her
fine fiber, when they think long and earnestly on one thing, have often
divinations. The dark future seems to be lit a moment at a time by
flashes of lightning, and they discern the indistinct form of events to
come, And so it was with Lady Bassett: in the stilly night a terror of
the future and of Richard Bassett crept over her--a terror
disproportioned to his past acts and apparent power. Perhaps she was
oppressed by having an enemy--she, who was born to be loved. At all
events, she was full of feminine divinations and forebodings, and saw,
by flashes, many a poisoned arrow fly from that quiver and strike the
beloved breast. It had already discharged one that had parted them for
a time, and nearly killed Sir Charles.

Daylight cleared away much of this dark terror, but left a sober dread
and a strange resolution. This timid creature, stimulated by love,
determined to watch the foe, and defend her husband with all her little
power. All manner of devices passed through her head, but were
rejected, because, if Love said “Do wonders,” Timidity said “Do nothing
that you have not seen other wives do.” So she remained, scheming, and
longing, and fearing, and passive, all day. But the next day she
conceived a vague idea, and, all in a heat, rang for her maid. While
the maid was coming she fell to blushing at her own boldness, and, just
as the maid opened the door, her thermometer fell so low that--she sent
her upstairs for a piece of work. Oh, lame and impotent conclusion!

Just before luncheon she chanced to look through a window, and to see
the head gamekeeper crossing the park, and coming to the house. Now
this was the very man she wanted to speak to. The sudden temptation
surprised her out of her timidity. She rang the bell again, and sent
for the man.

That Colossus wondered in his mind, and felt uneasy at an invitation so
novel. However, he clattered into the morning-room, in his velveteen
coat, and leathern gaiters up to his thigh, pulled his front hair,
bobbed his head, and then stood firm in body as was he of Rhodes, but
in mind much abashed at finding himself in her ladyship's presence.

The lady, however, did not prove so very terrible. “May I inquire your
name, sir?” said she, very respectfully.

“Moses Moss, my lady.”

“Mr. Moss, I wish to ask you a question or two. _May_ I?”

“That you may, my lady.”

“I want you to explain, if you will be so good, how the proprietor of
'Splatchett's' can shoot all Sir Charles's pheasants.”

“Lord! my lady, we ain't come down to that. But he do shoot more than
his share, that's sure an' sartain. Well, my lady, if you please, game
is just like Christians: it will make for sunny spots. Highmore has got
a many of them there, with good cover; so we breeds for him. As for
'Splatchett's,' that don't hurt we, my lady; it is all arable land and
dead hedges, with no bottom; only there's one little tongue of it runs
into North Wood, and planted with larch; and, if you please, my lady,
there is always a kind of coarse grass grows under young larches, and
makes a strong cover for game. So, beat North Wood which way you will,
them artful old cocks will run ahead of ye, or double back into them
larches. And you see Mr. Bassett is not a gentleman, like Sir Charles;
he is always a-mouching about, and the biggest poacher in the parish;
and so he drops on to 'em out of bounds.”

“Is there no way of stopping all this, sir?”

“We might station a dozen beaters ahead. They would most likely get
shot; but I don't think as they'd mind that much if you had set your
heart on it, my lady. Dall'd if I would, for one.”

“Oh, Mr. Moss! Heaven forbid that any man should be shot for me. No,
not for all the pheasants in the world. I'll try and think of some
other way. I should like to see the place. _May_ I?”

“Yes, my lady, and welcome.”

“How shall I get to it, sir?”

“You can ride to the 'Woodman's Rest,' my lady, and it is scarce a
stone's-throw from there; but 'tis baddish traveling for the likes of
you.”

She appointed an hour, rode with her groom to the public-house, and
thence was conducted through bush, through brier, to the place where
her husband had been so annoyed.

Moss's comments became very intelligible to her the moment she saw the
place. She said very little, however, and rode home.

Next day she blushed high, and asked Sir Charles for a hundred pounds
to spend upon herself.

Sir Charles smiled, well pleased, and gave it her, and a kiss into the
bargain.

“Ah! but,” said she, “that is not all.”

“I am glad of it. You spend too little money on yourself--a great deal
too little.”

“That is a complaint you won't have long to make. I want to cut down a
few trees. _May_ I?”

“Going to build?”

“Don't ask me. It is for myself.”

“That is enough. Cut down every stick on the estate if you like. The
barer it leaves us the better.”

“Ah, Charles, you promised me not. I shall cut with great discretion, I
assure you.”

“As you please,” said Sir Charles. “If you want to make me happy, deny
yourself nothing. Mind, I shall be angry if you do.”

 Soon after this a gaping quidnunc came to Sir Charles and told him
Lady Bassett was felling trees in North Wood.

“And pray who has a better right to fell trees in any wood of mine?”

“But she is building a wall.”

“And who has a better right to build a wall?”

With the delicacy of a gentleman he would not go near the place after
this till she asked him; and that was not long, She came into his
study, all beaming, and invited him to a ride. She took him into North
Wood, and showed him her work. Richard Bassett's plantation, hitherto
divided from North Wood only by a boundary scarcely visible, was now
shut off by a brick wall: on Sir Charles's side of that wall every
stick of timber was felled and removed for a distance of fifty yards,
and about twenty yards from the wall a belt of larches was planted, a
little higher than cabbages.

Sir Charles looked amazed at first, but soon observed how thoroughly
his enemy was defeated. “My poor Bella,” said he, “to think of your
taking all this trouble about such a thing!” He stopped to kiss her
very tenderly, and she shone with joy and innocent pride. “And I never
thought of this! You astonish me, Bella.”

“Ay,” said she, in high spirits now; “and, what is more, I have
astonished Mr. Moss. He said, 'I wish I had your head-piece, my lady.'
I could have told him Love sharpens a woman's wits; but I reserved that
little adage for you.”

“It's all mighty fine, fair lady, but you have told me a fib. You said
it was to be all for yourself, and got a hundred pounds out of me.”

“And so it was for myself, you silly thing. Are you not myself? and the
part of myself I love the best?” And her supple wrist was round his
neck in a moment.

They rode home together, like lovers, and comforted each other.



Richard Bassett, with Wheeler's assistance, had borrowed money on
Highmore to buy “Splatchett's”; he now borrowed money on
“Splatchett's,” and bought Dean's Wood--a wood, with patches of grass,
that lay on the east of Sir Charles's boundary. He gave seventeen
hundred pounds for it, and sold two thousand pounds' worth of timber
off it the first year. This sounds incredible; but, owing to the custom
of felling only ripe trees, landed proprietors had no sure clew to the
value of all the timber on an acre. Richard Bassett had found this out,
and bought Dean's Wood upon the above terms--_i.e.,_ the vender gave
him the soil and three hundred pounds gratis. He grubbed the roots and
sold them for fuel, and planted larches to catch the overflow of Sir
Charles's game. The grass grew beautifully, now the trees were down,
and he let it for pasture.

He then, still under Wheeler's advice, came out into the world again,
improved his dress, and called on several county families, with a view
to marrying money.

Now in the country they do not despise a poor gentleman of good
lineage, and Bassett was one of the oldest names in the county; so
every door was open to him; and, indeed, his late hermit life had
stimulated some curiosity. This he soon turned to sympathy, by telling
them that he was proud but poor. Robbed of the vast estates that
belonged to him by birth, he had been unwilling to take a lower
position. However, Heaven had prospered him; the wrongful heir was
childless; he was the heir at law, and felt he owed it to the estate,
which must return to his line, to assume a little more public
importance than he had done.

Wherever he was received he was sure to enlarge upon his wrongs; and he
was believed; for he was notoriously the direct heir to Bassett and
Huntercombe, but the family arrangement by which his father had been
bought out was known only to a few. He readily obtained sympathy, and
many persons were disgusted at Sir Charles's illiberality in not making
him some compensation. To use the homely expression of Govett, a small
proprietor, the baronet might as well have given him back one pig out
of his own farrow--_i.e.,_ one of the many farms comprised in that
large estate.

Sir Charles learned that Richard was undermining him in the county, but
was too proud to interfere; he told Lady Bassett he should say nothing
until some _gentleman_ should indorse Mr. Bassett's falsehoods.

One day Sir Charles and Lady Bassett were invited to dine and sleep at
Mr. Hardwicke's, distance fifteen miles; they went, and found Richard
Bassett dining there, by Mrs. Hardwicke's invitation, who was one of
those ninnies that fling guests together with no discrimination.

Richard had expected this to happen sooner or later, so he was
comparatively prepared, and bowed stiffly to Sir Charles. Sir Charles
stared at him in return. This was observed. People were uncomfortable,
especially Mrs. Hardwicke, whose thoughtlessness was to blame for it
all.

At a very early hour Sir Charles ordered his carriage, and drove home,
instead of staying all night.

Mrs. Hardwicke, being a fool, must make a little more mischief. She
blubbered to her husband, and he wrote Sir Charles a remonstrance.

Sir Charles replied that he was the only person aggrieved; Mr.
Hardwicke ought not to have invited a blackguard to meet _him._

Mr. Hardwicke replied that he had never heard a Bassett called a
blackguard before, and had seen nothing in Mr. Bassett to justify an
epithet so unusual among gentlemen. “And, to be frank with you, Sir
Charles,” said he, “I think this bitterness against a poor gentleman,
whose estates you are so fortunate as to possess, is not consistent
with your general character, and is, indeed, unworthy of you.”

To this Sir Charles Bassett replied:



“DEAR MR. HARDWICK--You have applied some remarks to me which I will
endeavor to forget, as they were written in entire ignorance of the
truth. But if we are to remain friends, I expect you to believe me when
I tell you that Mr. Richard Bassett has never been wronged by me or
mine, but has wronged me and Lady Bassett deeply. He is a dishonorable
scoundrel, not entitled to be received in society; and if, after this
assurance, you receive him, I shall never darken your doors again. So
please let me know your decision.

“I remain

“Yours truly,

“CHARLES DYKE BASSETT.”



Mr. Hardwicke chafed under this; but Prudence stepped in. He was one of
the county members, and Sir Charles could command three hundred votes.

He wrote back to say he had received Sir Charles's letter with pain,
but, of course, he could not disbelieve him, and therefore he should
invite Mr. Bassett no more till the matter was cleared.

But Mr. Hardwicke, thus brought to book, was nettled at his own
meanness; so he sent Sir Charles's letter to Mr. Richard Bassett.

Bassett foamed with rage, and wrote a long letter, raving with insults,
to Sir Charles.

He was in the act of directing it when Wheeler called on him. Bassett
showed him Sir Charles's letter. Wheeler read it.

“Now read what I say to him in reply.”

Wheeler read Bassett's letter, threw it into the fire, and kept it
there with the poker.

“Lucky I called,” said he, dryly. “Saved you a thousand pounds or so.
You must not write a letter without me.”

“What, am I to sit still and be insulted? You're a pretty friend.”

“I am a wise friend. This is a more serious matter than you seem to
think.”

“Libel?”

“Of course. Why, if Sir Charles had consulted _me,_ I could not have
dictated a better letter. It closes every chink a defendant in libel
can creep out by. Now take your pen and write to Mr. Hardwicke.”



“DEAR SIR--I have received your letter, containing a libel written by
Sir Charles Bassett. My reply will be public.

“Yours very truly,

“RICHARD BASSETT.”



“Is that all?”

“Every syllable. Now mind; you never go to Hardwicke House again; Sir
Charles has got you banished from that house; special damage! There
never was a prettier case for a jury--the rightful heir foully
slandered by the possessor of his hereditary estates.”

This picture excited Bassett, and he walked about raving with malice,
and longing for the time when he should stand in the witness-box and
denounce his enemy.

“No, no,” said Wheeler, “leave that to counsel; you must play the mild
victim in the witness-box. Who is the defendant solicitor? We ought to
serve the writ on him at once.”

“No, no; serve it on himself.”

“What for? Much better proceed like gentlemen.”

Bassett got in a passion at being contradicted in everything. “I tell
you,” said he, “the more I can irritate and exasperate this villain the
better. Besides, he slandered me behind my back; and I'll have the writ
served upon himself. I'll do everything I can to take him down. If a
man wants to be my lawyer he must enter into my feelings a little.”

Wheeler, to whom he was more valuable than ever now, consented somewhat
reluctantly, and called at Huntercombe Hall next day with the writ, and
sent in his card.

Lady Bassett heard of this, and asked if it was Mr. Bassett's friend.

The butler said he thought it was.

Lady Bassett went to Sir Charles in his study. “Oh, my dear,” said she,
“here is Mr. Bassett's lawyer.”

“Well?”

“Why does he come here?”

“I don't know.”

“Don't see him.”

“Why not?”

“I am so afraid of Mr. Bassett. He is our evil genius. Let me see this
person instead of you. _May_ I?”

“Certainly not.”

“Might I see him _first,_ love?”

“You will not see him at all.”

“Charles!”

“No, Bella; I cannot have these animals talking to my wife.”

“But, dear love, I am so full of forebodings. You know, Charles, I
don't often presume to meddle; but I am in torture about this man. If
you receive him, may I be with you? Then we shall be two to one.”

“No, no,” said Sir Charles, testily. Then, seeing her beautiful eyes
fill at the refusal and the unusual tone, he relented. “You may be in
hearing if you like. Open that door, and sit in the little room.”

“Oh, thank you!”

She stepped into the room--a very small sitting-room. She had never
been in it before, and while she was examining it, and thinking how she
could improve its appearance, Mr. Wheeler was shown into the study. Sir
Charles received him standing, to intimate that the interview must be
brief. This, and the time he had been kept waiting in the hall, roused
Wheeler's bile, and he entered on his subject more bruskly than he had
intended.

“Sir Charles Bassett, you wrote a letter to Mr. Hardwicke, reflecting
on my client, Mr. Bassett--a most unjustifiable letter.”

“Keep your opinion to yourself, sir. I wrote a letter, calling him what
he is.”

“No, sir; that letter is a libel.”

“It is the truth.”

“It is a malicious libel, sir; and we shall punish you for it. I hereby
serve you with this copy of a writ. Damages, five thousand pounds.”

A sigh from the next room passed unnoticed by the men, for their voices
were now raised in anger.

“And so that is what you came here for. Why did you not go to my
solicitor? You must be as great a blackguard as your client, to serve
your paltry writs on me in my own house.”

“Not blackguard enough to insult a gentleman in my own house. If you
had been civil I might have accommodated matters; but now I'll make you
smart--ugh!”

Nothing provokes a high-spirited man more than a menace. Sir Charles,
threatened in his wife's hearing, shot out his right arm with
surprising force and rapidity, and knocked Wheeler down in a moment.

In came Lady Bassett, with a scream, and saw the attorney lying doubled
up, and Sir Charles standing over him, blowing like a grampus with rage
and excitement.

But the next moment be staggered and gasped, and she had to support him
to a seat. She rang the bell for aid, then kneeled, and took his
throbbing temples to her wifely bosom.

Wheeler picked himself up, and, seated on his hams, eyed the pair with
concentrated fury.

“Aha! You have hurt yourself more than me. Two suits against you now
instead of one.”

“Conduct this person from the house,” said Lady Bassett to a servant
who entered at that moment.

“All right, my lady,” said Wheeler; “I'll remind you of that word when
this house belongs to us.”




CHAPTER X.

WITH this bitter reply Wheeler retired precipitately; the shaft pierced
but one bosom; for the devoted wife, with the swift ingenuity of
woman's love, had put both her hands right over her husband's ears that
he might hear no more insults.

Sir Charles very nearly had a fit; but his wife loosened his neckcloth,
caressed his throbbing head, and applied eau-de-Cologne to his
nostrils. He got better, but felt dizzy for about an hour. She made him
come into her room and lie down; she hung over him, curling as a vine
and light as a bird, and her kisses lit softly as down upon his eyes,
and her words of love and pity murmured music in his ears till he
slept, and that danger passed.

For a day or two after this both Sir Charles and Lady Bassett avoided
the unpleasant subject. But it had to be faced; so Mr. Oldfield was
summoned to Huntercombe, and all engagements given up for the day, that
he might dine alone with them and talk the matter over.

Sir Charles thought he could justify; but when it came to the point he
could only prove that Richard had done several ungentleman-like things
of a nature a stout jury would consider trifles.

Mr. Oldfield said of course they must enter an appearance; and, this
done, the wisest course would be to let him see Wheeler, and try to
compromise the suit. “It will cost you a thousand pounds, Sir Charles,
I dare say; but if it teaches you never to write of an enemy or to an
enemy without showing your lawyer the letter first, the lesson will be
cheap. Somebody in the Bible says, 'Oh, that mine enemy would write a
book!' I say, 'Oh, that he would write a letter--without consulting his
solicitor.”

It was Lady Bassett's cue now to make light of troubles. “What does it
matter, Mr. Oldfield? All they want is money. Yes, offer them a
thousand pounds to leave him in peace.”

So next day Mr. Oldfield called on Wheeler, all smiles and civility,
and asked him if he did not think it a pity cousins should quarrel
before the whole county.

“A great pity,” said Wheeler. “But my client has no alternative. No
gentleman in the county would speak to him if he sat quiet under such
contumely.”

After beating about the bush the usual time, Oldfield said that Sir
Charles was hungry for litigation, but that Lady Bassett was averse to
it. “In short, Mr. Wheeler, I will try and get Mr. Bassett a thousand
pounds to forego this scandal.”

“I will consult him, and let you know,” said Wheeler. “He happens to be
in the town.”

Oldfield called again in an hour. Wheeler told him a thousand pounds
would be accepted, with a written apology.

Oldfield shook his head. “Sir Charles will never write an apology:
right or wrong, he is too sincere in his conviction.”

“He will never get a jury to share it.”

“You must not be too sure of that. You don't know the defense.”

Oldfield said this with a gravity which did him credit.

“Do you know it yourself?” said the other keen hand.

Mr. Oldfield smiled haughtily, but said nothing. Wheeler had hit the
mark.

“By the by,” said the latter, “there is another little matter. Sir
Charles assaulted me for doing my duty to my client. I mean to sue him.
Here is the writ; will you accept service?”

“Oh, certainly, Mr. Wheeler and I am glad to find you do not make a
habit of serving writs on gentlemen in person.”

“Of course not. I did it on a single occasion, contrary to my own wish,
and went in person--to soften the blow--instead of sending my clerk.”

After this little spar, the two artists in law bade each other farewell
with every demonstration of civility.

Sir Charles would not apologize.

The plaintiff filed his declaration.

The defendant pleaded not guilty, but did not disclose a defense. The
law allows a defendant in libel this advantage.

Plaintiff joined issue, and the trial was set down for the next
assizes.

Sir Charles was irritated, but nothing more. Lady Bassett, with a
woman's natural shrinking from publicity, felt it more deeply. She
would have given thousands of her own money to keep the matter out of
court. But her very terror of Richard Bassett restrained her. She was
always thinking about him, and had convinced herself he was the ablest
villain in the wide world; and she thought to herself, “If, with his
small means, he annoys Charles so, what would he do if I were to enrich
him? He would crush us.”

As the trial drew near she began to hover about Sir Charles in his
study, like an anxious hen. The maternal yearnings were awakened in her
by marriage, and she had no child; so her Charles in trouble was
husband and child.

Sometimes she would come in and just kiss his forehead, and run out
again, casting back a celestial look of love at the door, and, though
it was her husband she had kissed, she blushed divinely. At last one
day she crept in and said, very timidly, “Charles dear, the anonymous
letter--is not that an excuse for libeling him--as they call telling
the truth?”

“Why, of course it is. Have you got it?”

“Dearest, the brave lady took it away.”

“The brave lady! Who is that?”

“Why, the lady that came with Mr. Oldfield and pleaded your cause with
papa--oh, so eloquently! Sometimes when I think of it now I feel almost
jealous. Who is she?”

“From what you have always told me, I think it was the Sister of
Charity who nursed me.”

“You silly thing, she was no Sister of Charity; that was only put on.
Charles, tell me the truth. What does it matter _now?_ It was some lady
who loved you.”

“Loved me, and set her wits to work to marry me to you?”

“Women's love is so disinterested--sometimes.”

“No, no; she told me she was a sister of--, and no doubt that is the
truth.”

“A sister of whom?”

“No matter: don't remind me of the past; it is odious to me; and, on
second thoughts, rather than stir up all that mud, it would be better
not to use the anonymous letter, even if you could get it again.”

Lady Bassett begged him to take advice on that; meantime she would try
to get the letter, and also the evidence that Richard Bassett wrote it.

“I see no harm in that,” said Sir Charles; “only confine your
communication to Mr. Oldfield. I will not have you speaking or writing
to a woman I don't know: and the more I think of her conduct the less I
understand it.”

“There are people who do good by stealth,” suggested Bella timidly.

“Fiddledeedee!” replied Sir Charles; “you are a goose--I mean an
angel.”

Lady Bassett complied with the letter, but, goose or not, evaded the
spirit of Sir Charles's command with considerable dexterity.



“DEAR MR. OLDFIELD--You may guess what trouble I am in. Sir Charles
will soon have to appear in open court, and be talked against by some
great orator. That anonymous letter Mr. Bassett wrote me was very base,
and is surely some justification of the violent epithets my dear
husband, in an unhappy moment of irritation, has applied to him. The
brave lady has it. I am sure she will not refuse to send it me. I wish
I dare ask her to give it me with her own hand; but I must not, I
suppose. Pray tell her how unhappy I am, and perhaps she will favor us
with a word of advice as well as the letter.

“I remain, yours faithfully,

“BELLA BASSETT.”



This letter was written at the brave lady; and Mr. Oldfield did what
was expected, he sent Miss Somerset a copy of Lady Bassett's letter,
and some lines in his own hand, describing Sir Charles's difficulty in
a more businesslike way.

In due course Miss Somerset wrote him back that she was in the country,
hunting, at no very great distance from Huntercombe Hall; she would
sent up to town for her desk; the letter would be there, if she had
kept it at all.

Oldfield groaned at this cool conjecture, and wrote back directly,
urging expedition.

This produced an effect that he had not anticipated.

One morning Lord Harrowdale's foxhounds met at a large covert, about
five miles from Huntercombe, and Sir Charles told Lady Bassett she must
ride to cover.

“Yes, dear. Charles, love, I have no spirit to appear in public. We
shall soon have publicity enough.”

“That is my reason. I have not done nor said anything I am ashamed of,
and you will meet the county on this and on every public occasion.”

“I obey,” said Bella.

“And look your best.”

“I will, dearest.”

“And be in good spirits.”

“Must I?”

“Yes.”

“I will try. Oh!--oh!--oh!”

“Why, you poor-spirited little goose! Dry your eyes this moment.”

“There. Oh!”

“And kiss me.”

“There. Ah! kissing you is a great comfort.”

“It is one you are particularly welcome to. Now run away and put on
your habit. I'll have two grooms out; one with a fresh horse for me,
and one to look after you.”

“Oh, Charles! Pray don't make me hunt.”

“No, no. Not so tyrannical as that; hang it all!”

“Do you know what I do while you are hunting? I pray all the time that
you may not get a fall and be hurt; and I pray God to forgive you and
all the gentlemen for your cruelty in galloping with all those dogs
after one poor little inoffensive thing, to hunt it and kill it--kill
it twice, indeed; once with terror, and then over again with mangling
its poor little body.”

“This is cheerful,” said Sir Charles, rather ruefully. “We cannot all
be angels, like you. It is a glorious excitement. There! you are too
good for this world; I'll let you off going.”

“Oh no, dear. I won't be let off, now I know your wish. Only I beg to
ride home as soon as the poor thing runs away. You wouldn't get me out
of the thick covers if I were a fox. I'd run round and round, and call
on all my acquaintances to set them running.”

As she said this her eyes turned toward each other in a peculiar way,
and she looked extremely foxy; but the look melted away directly.

The hounds met, and Lady Bassett, who was still the beauty of the
county, was surrounded by riders at first; but as the hounds began to
work, and every now and then a young hound uttered a note, they
cantered about, and took up different posts, as experience suggested.

At last a fox was found at the other end of the cover, and away
galloped the hunters in that direction, all but four persons, Lady
Bassett, and her groom, who kept respectfully aloof, and a lady and
gentleman who had reined their horses up on a rising ground about a
furlong distant.

Lady Bassett, thus left alone, happened to look round, and saw the lady
level an opera-glass toward her and look through it.

As a result of this inspection the lady cantered toward her. She was on
a chestnut gelding of great height and bone, and rode him as if they
were one, so smoothly did she move in concert with his easy,
magnificent strides.

When she came near Lady Bassett she made a little sweep and drew up
beside her on the grass.

There was no mistaking that tall figure and commanding face. It was the
brave lady. Her eyes sparkled; her cheek was slightly colored with
excitement; she looked healthier and handsomer than ever, and also more
feminine, for a reason the sagacious reader may perhaps discern if he
attends to the dialogue.

_“So,”_ said she, without bowing or any other ceremony, “that little
rascal is troubling you again.”

Lady Bassett colored and panted, and looked lovingly at her, before she
could speak. At last she said, “Yes; and you have come to help us
again.”

“Well, the lawyer said there was no time to lose; so I have brought you
the anonymous letter.”

“Oh, thank you, madam, thank you.”

“But I'm afraid it will be of no use unless you can prove Mr. Bassett
wrote it. It is in a disguised hand.”

“But you found him out by means of another letter.”

“Yes; but I can't give you that other letter to have it read in a court
of law, because--Do you see that gentleman there?”

“Yes.”

“That is Marsh.”

“Oh, is it?”

“He is a fool; but I am going to marry him. I have been very ill since
I saw you, and poor Marsh nursed me. Talk of women nurses! If ever you
are ill in earnest, as I was, write to me, and I'll send you Marsh. Oh,
I have no words to tell you his patience, his forbearance, his
watchfulness, his tenderness to a sick woman. It is no use--I must
marry him; and I could have no letter published that would give him
pain.”

“Of course not. Oh, madam, do you think I am capable of doing anything
that would give you pain, or dear Mr. Marsh either?”

“No, no; you are a good woman.”

“Not half so good as you are.”

“You don't know what you are saying.”

“Oh yes, I do.”

“Then I say no more; it is rude to contradict. Good-by, Lady Bassett.”

“Must you leave me so soon? Will you not visit us? May I not know the
name of so good a friend?”

“Next week I shall be _Mrs. Marsh.”_

“And you will give me the great pleasure of having you at my house--you
and your husband?”

The lady showed some agitation at this--an unusual thing for her. She
faltered: “Some day, perhaps, if I make him as good a wife as I hope
to. What a lady you are! Vulgar people are ashamed to be grateful; but
you are a born lady. Good-by, before I make a fool of myself; and they
are all coming this way, by the dogs' music.”

“Won't you kiss me, after bringing me this?”

“Kiss you?” and she opened her eyes.

“If you please,” said Lady Bassett, bending toward her, with eyes full
of gratitude and tenderness.

Then the other woman took her by the shoulders, and plunged her great
gray orbs into Bella's.

They kissed each other.

At that contact the stranger seemed to change her character all in a
moment. She strained Bella to her bosom and kissed her passionately,
and sobbed out, wildly, “O God! you are good to sinners. This is the
happiest hour of my life--it is a forerunner. Bless you, sweet dove of
innocence! You will be none the worse, and I am all the better--Ah!
Sir Charles. Not one word about me to him.”

And with these words, uttered with sudden energy, she spurred her great
horse, leaped the ditch, and burst through the dead hedge into the
wood, and winded out of sight among the trees.

Sir Charles came up astonished. “Why, who was that?”

Bella's eyes began to rove, as I have before described; but she replied
pretty promptly, “The brave lady herself; she brought me the anonymous
letter for your defense.”

“Why, how came she to know about it?”

“She did not tell me that. She was in a great hurry. Her fiance was
waiting for her.”

“Was it necessary to kiss her in the hunting-field?” said Sir Charles,
with something very like a frown.

“I'd kiss the whole field, grooms and all, if they did you a great
service, as that dear lady has,” said Bella. The words were brave, but
the accent piteous.

“You are excited, Bella. You had better ride home,” said Sir Charles,
gently enough, but moodily.

“Thank you, Charles,” said Bella, glad to escape further examination
about this mysterious lady. She rode home accordingly. There she found
Mr. Oldfield, and showed him the anonymous letter.

He read it, and said it was a defense, but a disagreeable one. “Suppose
he says he wrote it, and the facts were true?”

“But I don't think he will confess it. He is not a gentleman. He is
very untruthful. Can we not make this a trap to catch him, sir? _He_
has no scruples.”

Oldfield looked at her in some surprise at her depth.

“We must get hold of his handwriting,” said he. “We must ransack the
local banks; find his correspondents.”

“Leave all that to me,” said Lady Bassett, in a low voice.

 Mr. Oldfield thought he might as well please a beautiful and loving
woman, if he could; so he gave her something to do for her husband.
“Very well; collect all the materials of comparison you can--letters,
receipts, etc. Meantime I will retain the two principal experts in
London, and we will submit your materials to them the night before the
trial.”

Lady Bassett, thus instructed, drove to all the banks, but found no
clerk acquainted with Mr. Bassett's handwriting. He did not bank with
anybody in the county.

She called on several persons she thought likely to possess letters or
other writings of Richard Bassett. Not a scrap.

Then she began to fear. The case looked desperate.

Then she began to think. And she thought very hard indeed, especially
at night.

In the dead of night she had an idea. She got up, and stole from her
husband's side, and studied the anonymous letter.

Next day she sat down with the anonymous letter on her desk, and
blushed, and trembled, and looked about like some wild animal scared.
She selected from the anonymous letter several words--“character,
abused, Sir, Charles, Bassett, lady, abandoned, friend, whether, ten,
slanderer” etc.--and wrote them on a slip of paper. Then she locked up
the anonymous letter. Then she locked the door. Then she sat down to a
sheet of paper, and, after some more wild and furtive glances all
around, she gave her whole mind to writing a letter.

And to whom did she write, think you?

To Richard Bassett.




CHAPTER XI.

“MR. BASSETT--I am sure both yourself and my husband will suffer in
public estimation, unless some friend comes between you, and this
unhappy lawsuit is given up.

“Do not think me blind nor presumptuous; Sir Charles, when he wrote
that letter, had reason to believe you had done him a deep injury by
unfair means. Many will share that opinion if this cause is tried. You
are his cousin, and his heir at law. I dread to see an unhappy feud
inflamed by a public trial. Is there no personal sacrifice by which I
can compensate the affront you have received, without compromising Sir
Charles Bassett's veracity, who is the soul of honor?

“I am, yours obediently,

“BELLA BASSETT.”



She posted this letter, and Richard Bassett had no sooner received it
than he mounted his horse and rode to Wheeler's with it.

That worthy's eyes sparkled. “Capital!” said he. “We must draw her on,
and write an answer that will read well in court.”

He concocted an epistle just the opposite of what Richard Bassett, left
to himself, would have written. Bassett copied, and sent it as his own.



“LADY BASSETT--I thank you for writing to me at this moment, when I am
weighed down by slander. Your own character stands so high that you
would not deign to write to me if you believed the abuse that has been
lavished on me. With you I deplore this family feud. It is not of my
seeking; and as for this lawsuit, it is one in which the plaintiff is
really the defendant. Sir Charles has written a defamatory letter,
which has closed every house in this county to his victim. If, as I now
feel sure, you disapprove the libel, pray persuade him to retract it.
The rest our lawyers can settle,

“Yours very respectfully,

“RICHARD BASSETT.”



When Lady Bassett read this, she saw she had an adroit opponent. Yet
she wrote again:



“MR. BASSETT--There are limits to my influence with Sir Charles. I have
no power to make him say one word against his convictions.

“But my lawyer tells me you seek pecuniary compensation for an affront.
I offer you, out of my own means, which are ample, that which you
seek--offer it freely and heartily; and I honestly think you had better
receive it from me than expose yourself to the risks and mortifications
of a public trial.

“I am, yours obediently,

“BELLA BASSETT.”



“LADY BASSETT--You have fallen into a very natural error. It is true I
sue Sir Charles Bassett for money; but that is only because the law
allows me my remedy in no other form. What really brings me into court
is the defense of my injured honor. How do you meet me? You say,
virtually, 'Never mind your character: here is money.' Permit me to
decline it on such terms.

“A public insult cannot be cured in private.

“Strong in my innocence, and my wrongs, I court what you call the risks
of a public trial.

“Whatever the result, _you_ have played the honorable and womanly part
of peacemaker; and it is unfortunate for your husband that your gentle
influence is limited by his vanity, which perseveres in a cruel
slander, instead of retracting it while there is yet time.

“I am, madam, yours obediently,

“RICHARD BASSETT.”



“MR. BASSETT--I retire from a correspondence which appears to be
useless, and might, if prolonged, draw some bitter remark from me, as
it has from you.

“After the trial, which you court and I deprecate, you will perhaps
review my letters with a more friendly eye.

“I am, yours obediently,

“BELLA BASSETT.”



In this fencing-match between a lawyer and a lady each gained an
advantage. The lawyer's letters, as might have been expected, were the
best adapted to be read to a jury; but the lady, subtler in her way,
obtained, at a small sacrifice, what she wanted, and that without
raising the slightest suspicion of her true motive in the
correspondence.

She announced her success to Mr. Oldfield; but, in the midst of it, she
quaked with terror at the thought of what Sir Charles would say to her
for writing to Mr. Bassett at all.

She now, with the changeableness of her sex, hoped and prayed Mr.
Bassett would admit the anonymous letter, and so all her subtlety and
pains prove superfluous.

Quaking secretly, but with a lovely face and serene front, she took her
place at the assizes, before the judge, and got as near him as she
could.

The court was crowded, and many ladies present.

_Bassett v. Bassett_ was called in a loud voice; there was a hum of
excitement, then a silence of expectation, and the plaintiff's counsel
rose to address the jury.




CHAPTER XII.

“MAY it please your Lordship: Gentlemen of the Jury--The plaintiff in
this case is Richard Bassett, Esquire, the direct and lineal
representative of that old and honorable family, whose monuments are to
be seen in several churches in this county, and whose estates are the
largest, I believe, in the county. He would have succeeded, as a matter
of course, to those estates, but for an arrangement made only a year
before he was born, by which, contrary to nature and justice, he was
denuded of those estates, and they passed to the defendant. The
defendant is nowise to blame for that piece of injustice; but he
profits by it, and it might be expected that his good fortune would
soften his heart toward his unfortunate relative. I say that if
uncommon tenderness might be expected to be shown by anybody to this
deserving and unfortunate gentleman, it would be by Sir Charles
Bassett, who enjoys his cousin's ancestral estates, and can so well
appreciate what that cousin has lost by no fault of his own.”

“Hear! hear!”

“Silence in the court!”

_The Judge._--I must request that there may be no manifestation of
feeling.

_Counsel._--I will endeavor to provoke none, my lord. It is a very
simple case, and I shall not occupy you long. Well, gentlemen, Mr.
Bassett is a poor man, by no fault of his; but if he is poor, he is
proud and honorable. He has met the frowns of fortune like a
gentleman--like a man. He has not solicited government for a place. He
has not whined nor lamented. He has dignified unmerited poverty by
prudence and self-denial; and, unable to forget that he is a Bassett,
he has put by a little money every year, and bought a small estate or
two, and had even applied to the Lord-Lieutenant to make him a justice
of the peace, when a most severe and unexpected blow fell upon him.
Among those large proprietors who respected him in spite of his humbler
circumstances was Mr. Hardwicke, one of the county members. Well,
gentlemen, on the 21st of last May Mr. Bassett received a letter from
Mr. Hardwicke inclosing one purporting to be from Sir Charles Bassett--

_The Judge._--Does Sir Charles Bassett admit the letter?

_Defendant's Counsel_ (after a word with Oldfield).--Yes, my lord.

_Plaintiff's Counsel._--A letter admitted to be written by Sir Charles
Bassett. That letter shall be read to you.

The letter was then read.

The counsel resumed: “Conceive, if you can, the effect of this blow,
just as my unhappy and most deserving client was rising a little in the
world. I shall prove that it excluded him from Mr. Hardwicke's house,
and other houses too. He is a man of too much importance to risk
affronts. He has never entered the door of any gentleman in this county
since his powerful relative published this cruel libel. He has drawn
his Spartan cloak around him, and he awaits your verdict to resume that
place among you which is due to him in every way--due to him as the
heir in direct line to the wealth, and, above all, to the honor of the
Bassetts; due to him as Sir Charles Bassett's heir at law; and due to
him on account of the decency and fortitude with which he has borne
adversity, and with which he now repels foul-mouthed slander.”

“Hear! hear!”

“Silence in the court!”

“I have done, gentlemen, for the present. Indeed, eloquence, even if I
possessed it, would be superfluous; the facts speak for
themselves.--Call James Hardwicke, Esq.”

Mr. Hardwicke proved the receipt of the letter from Sir Charles, and
that he had sent it to Mr. Bassett; and that Mr. Bassett had not
entered his house since then, nor had he invited him.

Mr. Bassett was then called, and, being duly trained by Wheeler,
abstained from all heat, and wore an air of dignified dejection. His
counsel examined him, and his replies bore out the opening statement.
Everybody thought him sure of a verdict.

He was then cross-examined. Defendant's counsel pressed him about his
unfair way of shooting. The judge interfered, and said that was
trifling. If there was no substantial defense, why not settle the
matter?

“There is a defense, my lord.”

“Then it is time you disclosed it.”

“Very well, my lord. Mr. Bassett, did you ever write an anonymous
letter?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Oh, that appears to you a trifle. It is not so considered.”

_The Judge._--Be more particular in your question.

“I will, my lord.--Did you ever write an anonymous letter, to make
mischief between Sir Charles and Lady Bassett?”

“Never,” said the witness; but he turned pale.

“Do you mean to say you did not write this letter to Miss Bruce? Look
at the letter, Mr. Bassett, before you reply.”

Bassett cast one swift glance of agony at Wheeler; then braced himself
like iron. He examined the letter attentively, turned it over, lived an
age, and said it was not his writing.

“Do you swear that?”

“Certainly.”

_Defendant's Counsel._--I shall ask your lordship to take down that
reply. If persisted in, my client will indict the witness for perjury.

_Plaintiff's Counsel._--Don't threaten the witness as well as insult
him, please.

_The Judge._--He is an educated man, and knows the duty he owes to God
and the defendant.--Take time, Mr. Bassett, and recollect. Did you
write that letter?”

“No, my lord.”

Counsel waited for the judge to note the reply, then proceeded.

“You have lately corresponded with Lady Bassett, I think?”

“Yes. Her ladyship opened a correspondence with me.”

“It is a lie!” roared Sir Charles Bassett from the door of the grand
jury room.

“Silence in the court!”

_The Judge._--Who made that unseemly remark?

_Sir Charles._--I did, my lord. My wife never corresponded with the
cur.

_The Plaintiff._--It is only one insult more, gentlemen, and as false
as the rest. Permit me, my lord. My own counsel would never have put
the question. I would not, for the world, give Lady Bassett pain; but
Sir Charles and his counsel have extorted the truth from me. Her
ladyship did open a correspondence with me, and a friendly one.

_The Plaintiff's Counsel._--Will your lordship ask whether that was
after the defendant had written the libel?

The question was put, and answered in the affirmative.

Lady Bassett hid her face in her hands. Sir Charles saw the movement,
and groaned aloud.

_The Judge._--I beg the case may not be encumbered with irrelevant
matter.

Counsel replied that the correspondence would be made evidence in the
case. _(To the witness.)_--“You wrote this letter to Lady Bassett?”

“Yes.”

“And every word in it?”

“And every word in it,” faltered Bassett, now ashy pale, for he began
to see the trap.

“Then you wrote this word 'character,' and this word 'injured,' and
this word--”

_The Judge_ (peevishly).--He tells you he wrote every word in those
letters to Lady Bassett.--What more would you have?

_Counsel._--If your lordship will be good enough to examine the
correspondence, and compare those words in it I have underlined with
the same words in the anonymous letter, you will perhaps find I know my
business better than you seem to think. (The counsel who ventured on
this remonstrance was a sergeant.)

“Brother Eitherside,” said the judge, with a charming manner, “you
satisfied me of that, to my cost, long ago, whenever I had you against
me in a case. Please hand me the letters.”

While the judge was making a keen comparison, counsel continued the
cross-examination.

“You are aware that this letter caused a separation between Sir Charles
Bassett and the lady he was engaged to?”

“I know nothing about it.”

“Indeed! Well, were you acquainted with the Miss Somerset mentioned in
this letter?”

“Slightly.”

“You have been at her house?”

“Once or twice.”

“Which? Twice is double as often as once, you know.”

“Twice.”

“No more?”

“Not that I recollect.”

“You wrote to her?”

“I may have.”

“Did you, or did you not?”

“I did.”

“What was the purport of that letter?”

“I can't recollect at this distance of time.”

“On your oath, sir, did you not write urging her to co-operate with you
to keep Sir Charles Bassett from marrying his affianced, Miss Bella
Bruce, to whom that anonymous letter was written with the same object?”

The perspiration now rolled in visible drops down the tortured liar's
face. Yet still, by a gigantic effort, he stood firm, and even planted
a blow.

“I did not write the anonymous letter. But I believe I told Miss
Somerset I loved Miss Bruce, and that _her_ lover was robbing me of
mine, as he had robbed me of everything else.”

“And that was all you said--on your oath?”

“All I can recollect.” With this the strong man, cowed, terrified,
expecting his letter to Somerset to be produced, and so the iron chain
of evidence completed, gasped out, “Man, you tear open all my wounds at
once!” and with this burst out sobbing, and lamenting aloud that he had
ever been born.

Counsel waited calmly till he should be in a condition to receive
another dose.

“Oh, will nobody stop this cruel trial?” said Lady Bassett, with the
tears trickling down her face.

The judge heard this remark without seeming to do so.

He said to defendant's counsel, “Whatever the truth may be, you have
proved enough to show Sir Charles Bassett might well have an honest
conviction that Mr. Bassett had done a dastardly act. Whether a jury
would ever agree on a question of handwriting must always be doubtful.
Looking at the relationship of the parties, is it advisable to carry
this matter further? If I might advise the gentlemen, they would each
consent to withdraw a juror.”

Upon this suggestion the counsel for both parties put their heads
together in animated whispers; and during this the judge made a remark
to the jury, intended for the public: “Since Lady Bassett's name has
been drawn into this, I must say that I have read her letters to Mr.
Bassett, and they are such as she could write without in the least
compromising her husband. Indeed, now the defense is disclosed, they
appear to me to be wise and kindly letters, such as only a good wife, a
high-bred lady, and a true Christian could write in so delicate a
matter.”

_Plaintiff's Counsel._--My lord, we are agreed to withdraw a juror.

_Defendant's Counsel._--Out of respect for your lordship's advice, and
not from any doubt of the result on _our_ part.

_The Crier._--WACE _v._ HALIBURTON!

And so the car of justice rolled on till it came to Wheeler v. Bassett.

This case was soon disposed of.

Sir Charles Bassett was dignified and calm in the witness-box, and
treated the whole matter with high-bred nonchalance, as one unworthy of
the attention the Court was good enough to bestow on it. The judge
disapproved the assault, but said the plaintiff had drawn it on himself
by unprofessional conduct, and by threatening a gentleman in his own
house. Verdict for the plaintiff--40s. The judge refused to certify
for costs.

Lady Bassett, her throat parched with excitement, drove home, and
awaited her husband's return with no little anxiety. As soon as she
heard him in his dressing-room she glided in and went down on her knees
to him. “Pray, pray don't scold me; I couldn't bear you to be defeated,
Charles.”

Sir Charles raised her, but did not kiss her.

“You think only of me,” said he, rather sadly. “It is a sorry victory,
too dearly bought.”

Then she began to cry.

Sir Charles begged her not to cry; but still he did not kiss her, nor
conceal his mortification: he hardly spoke to her for several days.

She accepted her disgrace pensively and patiently. She thought it all
over, and felt her husband was right, and loved her like a man. But she
thought, also, that she was not very wrong to love him in her way.
Wrong or not, she felt she could not sit idle and see his enemy defeat
him.

The coolness died away by degrees, with so much humility on one side
and so much love on both: but the subject was interdicted forever.

A week after the trial Lady Bassett wrote to Mrs. Marsh, under cover to
Mr. Oldfield, and told her how the trial had gone, and, with many
expressions of gratitude, invited her and her husband to Huntercombe
Hall. She told Sir Charles what she had done, and he wore a very
strange look. “Might I suggest that we have them alone?” said he dryly.

“By all means,” said Lady Bassett. “I don't want to share my paragon
with anybody.”

In due course a reply came; Mr. and Mrs. Marsh would avail themselves
some day of Lady Bassett's kindness: at present they were going abroad.
The letter was written by a man's hand.

About this time Oldfield sent Sir Charles Miss Somerset's deed,
canceled, and told him she had married a man of fortune, who was
devoted to her, and preferred to take her without any dowry.



Bassett and Wheeler went home, crestfallen, and dined together. They
discussed the two trials, and each blamed the other. They quarreled and
parted: and Wheeler sent in an enormous bill, extending over five
years. Eighty-five items began thus: “Attending you at your house for
several hours, on which occasion you asked my advice as to whether--”
 etc.

Now as a great many of these attendances had been really to shoot game
and dine on rabbits at Bassett's expense, he thought it hard the
conversation should be charged and the rabbits not.

Disgusted with his defeat, and resolved to evade this bill, he
discharged his servant, and put a retired soldier into his house, armed
him with a blunderbuss, and ordered him to keep all doors closed, and
present the weapon aforesaid at all rate collectors, tax collectors,
debt collectors, and applicants for money to build churches or convert
the heathen; but not to _fire_ at anybody except his friend Wheeler,
nor at him unless he should try to shove a writ in at some chink of the
building.

This done, he went on his travels, third-class, with his eyes always
open, and his heart full of bitterness.

Nothing happened to Richard Bassett on his travels that I need relate
until one evening when he alighted at a small commercial inn in the
city of York, and there met a person whose influence on the events I am
about to relate seems at this moment incredible to me, though it is
simple fact.

He found the commercial room empty, and rang the bell. In came the
waiter, a strapping girl, with coal-black eyes and brows to match, and
a brown skin, but glowing cheeks.

They both started at sight of each other. It was Polly Somerset.

“Why, Polly! How d'ye do? How do you come here?”

“It's along of you I'm here, young man,” said Polly, and began to
whimper. She told him her sister had found out from the page she had
been colloguing with him, and had never treated her like a sister after
that. “And when she married a gentleman she wouldn't have me aside her
for all I could say, but she did pack me off into service, and here I
be.”

The girl was handsome, and had a liking for him. Bassett was idle, and
time hung heavy on his hands: he stayed at the inn a fortnight, more
for Polly's company than anything: and at last offered to put her into
a vacant cottage on his own little estate of Highmore. But the girl was
shrewd, and had seen a great deal of life this last three years; she
liked Richard in her way, but she saw he was all self, and she would
not trust him. “Nay,” said she, “I'll not break with Rhoda for any
young man in Britain. If I leave service she will never own me at all:
she is as hard as iron.”

“Well, but you might come and take service near me, and then we could
often get a word together.”

“Oh, I'm agreeable to that: you find me a good place. I like an inn
best; one sees fresh faces.”

Bassett promised to manage that for her. On reaching home he found a
conciliatory letter from Wheeler, coupled with his permission to tax
the bill according to his own notion of justice. This and other letters
were in an outhouse; the old soldier had not permitted them to
penetrate the fortress. He had entered into the spirit of his
instructions, and to him a letter was a probable hand-grenade.

Bassett sent for Wheeler; the bill was reduced, and a small payment
made; the rest postponed till better times. Wheeler was then consulted
about Polly, and he told his client the landlady of the “Lamb” wanted a
good active waitress; he thought he could arrange that little affair.

In due course, thanks to this artist, Mary Wells, hitherto known as
Polly Somerset, landed with her boxes at the “Lamb “; and with her
quick foot, her black eyes, and ready tongue soon added to the
popularity of the inn. Richard Bassett, Esq., for one, used to sup
there now and then with his friend Wheeler, and even sleep there after
supper.

By-and-by the vicar of Huntercombe wanted a servant, and offered to
engage Mary Wells.

She thought twice about that. She could neither write nor read, and
therefore was dreadfully dull without company; the bustle of an inn,
and people coming and going, amused her. However, it was a temptation
to be near Richard Bassett; so she accepted at last. Unable to write,
she could not consult him; and she made sure he would be delighted.

But when she got into the village the prudent Mr. Bassett drew in his
horns, and avoided her. She was mortified and very angry. She revenged
herself on her employer; broke double her wages. The vicar had never
been able to convert a smasher; so he parted with her very readily to
Lady Bassett, with a hint that she was rather unfortunate in glass and
china.

In that large house her spirits rose, and, having a hearty manner and a
clapper tongue, she became a general favorite.

One day she met Mr. Bassett in the village, and he seemed delighted at
the sight of her, and begged her to meet him that night at a certain
place where Sir Charles's garden was divided from his own by a ha-ha.
It was a very secluded spot, shut out from view, even in daylight, by
the trees and shrubs and the winding nature of the walk that led to it;
yet it was scarcely a hundred yards from Huntercombe Hall.

Mary Wells came to the tryst, but in no amorous mood. She came merely
to tell Mr. Bassett her mind, viz., that he was a shabby fellow, and
she had had her cry, and didn't care a straw for him now. And she did
tell him so, in a loud voice, and with a flushed cheek.

But he set to work, humbly and patiently, to pacify her; he represented
that, in a small house like the vicarage, every thing is known; he
should have ruined her character if he had not held aloof. “But it is
different now,” said he. “You can run out of Huntercombe House, and
meet me here, and nobody be the wiser.”

“Not I,” said Mary Wells, with a toss. “The worse thing a girl can do
is to keep company with a gentleman. She must meet him in holes and
corners, and be flung off, like an old glove, when she has served his
turn.”

“That will never happen to you, Polly dear. We must be prudent for the
present; but I shall be more my own master some day, and then you will
see how I love you.”

“Seeing is believing,” said the girl, sullenly. “You be too fond of
yourself to love the likes o' me.”

Such was the warning her natural shrewdness gave her. But perseverance
undermined it. Bassett so often threw out hints of what he would do
some day, mixed with warm protestations of love, that she began almost
to hope he would marry her. She really liked him; his fine figure and
his color pleased her eye, and he had a plausible tongue to boot.

As for him, her rustic beauty and health pleased his senses; but, for
his heart, she had little place in that. What he courted her for just
now was to keep him informed of all that passed in Huntercombe Hall.
His morbid soul hung about that place, and he listened greedily to Mary
Wells's gossip. He had counted on her volubility; it did not disappoint
him. She never met him without a budget, one-half of it lies or
exaggerations. She was a born liar. One night she came in high spirits,
and greeted him thus: “What d'ye think? I'm riz! Mrs. Eden, that
dresses my lady's hair, she took ill yesterday, and I told the
housekeeper I was used to dress hair, and she told my lady. If you
didn't please our Rhoda at that, 'twas as much as your life was worth.
You mustn't be thinking of your young man with her hair in your hand,
or she'd rouse you with a good crack on the crown with a hair-brush. So
I dressed my lady's hair, and handled it like old chaney; by the same
token, she is so pleased with me you can't think. She is a real lady;
not like our Rhoda. Speaks as civil to me as if I was one of her own
sort; and, says she, 'I should like to have you about me, if I might.

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