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Charlotte's Inheritance

by M. E. Braddon · English · Gutenberg #9259 · 868,817 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Charlotte's Inheritance

Author: M. E. Braddon


        
Release date: November 1, 2005 [eBook #9259]
                Most recently updated: August 10, 2013

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9259

Credits: Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Mary Meehan and Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE ***




Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Mary Meehan and Distributed Proofreaders









                        CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE

                                   By

                             M. E. Braddon




CONTENTS.


Book the First.

DE PROFUNDIS.

   I.  LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE

  II.  IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE

 III.  PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR

  IV.  A DECREE OF BANISHMENT


Book the Second.

DOWNHILL.

   I.  THE FATE OF SUSAN LENOBLE

  II.  FORGIVEN TOO LATE

 III.  GUSTAVE THE SECOND


Book the Third.

THE HORATIAD.

   I.  CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE

  II.  EPISTOLARY

 III.  TOO CLEVER FOR A CATSPAW

  IV.  CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL

   V.  THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR


Book the Fourth.

GUSTAVE IN ENGLAND.

   I.  HALCYON DAYS

  II.  CAPTAIN PAGET AWAKENS TO A SENSE OF HIS DUTY

 III.  WHAT DO WE HERE, MY HEART AND I?

  IV.  SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTH


Book the Fifth.

THE FIRST ACT OF MR. SHELDON'S DRAMA.

   I.  TAKEN BY STORM

  II.  FIRM AS A ROCK

 III.  AGAINST WIND AND TIDE

  IV.  DIANA ASKS FOR A HOLIDAY

   V.  ASSURANCE DOUBLY SURE


Book the Sixth.

DIANA IN NORMANDY.

   I.  AT COTENOIR


Book the Seventh.

A CLOUD OF FEAR.

   I.  THE BEGINNING OF SORROW

  II.  FADING

 III.  MRS. WOOLPER IS ANXIOUS

  IV.  VALENTINE'S SKELETON

   V.  AT HAROLD'S HILL

  VI.  DESPERATE MEASURES


Book the Eighth.

A FIGHT AGAINST TIME.

   I.  A DREAD REVELATION

  II.  PHOENICIANS ARE RISING

 III.  THE SORTES VIRGILIANAE


Book the Ninth.

THROUGH THE FURNACE.

   I.  SOMETHING TOO MUCH

  II.  DR. JEDD'S OPINION

 III.  NON DORMIT JUDAS

  IV.  COUNTING THE COST

   V.  THE BEGINNING OF THE END

  VI.  CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED

 VII.  THERE IS A WORD WILL PRIAM TURN TO STONE


Book the Tenth.

HARBOUR, AFTER MANY SHIPWRECKS.

   I.  OUT OF THE DARK VALLEY

  II.  AFTER THE WEDDING

 III.  GREEK AGAINST GREEK

  IV.  ONLY A DREAM

   V.  BOHEMIAN INDEPENDENCE

  VI.  BEYOND THE VEIL

 VII.  BETTER THAN GOLD

VIII. LOST SIGHT OF

  IX.  ETEOCLES AND POLYNICES

   X.  "ACCORDING TO THEIR DEEDS."




CHARLOTTE'S INHERITANCE



Book the first.



DE PROFUNDIS.



CHAPTER I.


LENOBLE OF BEAUBOCAGE.

In the days when the Bourbon reigned over Gaul, before the "simple,
sensuous, passionate" verse of Alfred de Musset had succeeded the
_debonnaire_ Muse of Beranger in the affections of young France,--in days
when the site of the Trocadero was a remote and undiscovered country, and
the word "exposition" unknown in the Academic dictionary, and the Gallic
Augustus destined to rebuild the city yet an exile,--a young law-student
boarded, in common with other students, in a big dreary-looking house at
the corner of the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, abutting on the Place Lauzun,
and within some ten minutes walk of the Luxembourg. It was a very dingy
quarter, though noble gentlemen and lovely ladies had once occupied the
great ghastly mansions, and disported themselves in the gruesome gardens.
But the young students were in nowise oppressed by the ghastliness of
their abode. They sang their Beranger, and they pledged each other in
cheap Bordeaux, and clinked their glasses noisily in their boisterous
good-fellowship, and ate the messes compounded for them in a darksome
cupboard, known as the kitchen, by old Nanon the cook, purblind,
stone-deaf, and all but imbecile, and popularly supposed to be the
venerable mother of Madame Magnotte. The youngsters grumbled to each
other about the messes when they were unusually mysterious; and it must
be owned that there were _vol-au-vents_ and _fricandeaux_ consumed in
that establishment which were awful and wonderful in their nature; but
they ventured on no complaint to the mistress of the mansion. She was a
grim and terrible personage. Her terms were low, and she treated her
boarders _de haute en bas_. If they were not content with her viands,
they might go and find more agreeable viands elsewhere.

Madame Magnotte was altogether mysterious and inscrutable. Some people
said that she was a countess, and that the wealth and lands of her family
had been confiscated by the committee of public unsafety in '93. Others
declared that she had been a popular actress in a small theatre in the
days of Napoleon. She was tall and thin--nay, of an exceptional
leanness--and her complexion was of a more agreeable yellow than the
butter that appeared on her hospitable board; but she had flashing black
eyes, and a certain stateliness of gait and grandeur of manner that
impressed those young Bohemians, her boarders, with a kind of awe. They
talked of her as the "countess," and by that name she was known to all
inmates of the mansion; but in all their dealings with her they treated
her with unfailing respect.

One of the quietest among the young men who enjoyed the privileges of
Madame Magnotte's abode was a certain Gustave Lenoble, a law-student, the
only son of a very excellent couple who lived on their own estate, near
an obscure village in Normandy. The estate was of the smallest; a
dilapidated old house, known in the immediate neighbourhood as "the
Chateau," and very dear to those who resided therein; a garden, in which
everything seemed to have run to seed; and about forty acres of the
poorest land in Normandy. These possessions constituted the patrimonial
estate of Francois Lenoble, _proprietaire_, of Beaubocage, near
Vevinordin, the department of Eure.

The people amongst whom the good man lived his simple life called him M.
Lenoble de Beaubocage, but he did not insist upon this distinction; and
on sending out his only son to begin the battle of life in the great
world of Paris, he recommended the young man to call himself Lenoble,
_tout court_.

The young man had never cherished any other design. He was of all
creatures the least presuming or pretentious. The father was Legitimist
to the very marrow; the son half Buonapartist, half republican. The
father and son had quarrelled about these differences of opinion
sometimes in a pleasantly disputatious manner; but no political
disagreement could lesser the love between these two. Gustave loved
his parents as only a Frenchman can venture to love his father and
mother--with a devotion for the gentleman that bordered on enthusiasm,
with a fond reverence for the lady that was the very essence of chivalry.
There was a sister, who regarded her brother Gustave as the embodiment of
all that is perfect in youthful mankind; and there were a couple of old
house-servants, a very stupid clumsy lad in the stables, and half a dozen
old mongrel dogs, born and bred on the premises, who seemed to share the
young lady's opinions. There was not a little discussion upon the subject
of Gustave Lenoble's future career; and it was not without difficulty
that the father could be persuaded to approve the choice of a profession
which the young man had made. The seigneur of Beaubocage cherished an
exaggerated pride of race little suspected by those who saw his simple
life, and were pleased by his kindly unaffected manners. The house of
Lenoble, at some remote and almost mythical period of history, had
distinguished itself in divers ways; and those bygone grandeurs, vague
and shadowy in the minds of all others, seemed very real to Monsieur
Lenoble. He assured his son that no Lenoble had ever been a lawyer. They
had been always lords of the soil, living on their own lands, which had
once stretched wide and far in that Norman province; a fact proved by
certain maps in M. Lenoble's possession, the paper whereof was worn and
yellow with age. They had stooped to no profession save that of arms. One
seigneur of Beaubocage had fought under Bayard himself; another had
fallen at Pavia, on that great day when all was lost _hormis l'honneur_;
another had followed the white plume of the Bernais; another--but was
there any need to tell of the glories of that house upon which Gustave
was so eager to inflict the disgrace of a learned profession?

Thus argued the father; but the mother had spent her girlhood amidst the
clamour of the Buonapartist campaigns, and the thought of war was very
terrible to her. The memory of the retreat from Russia was not yet twenty
years old. There were men alive to tell the story, to depict those days
and nights of horror, that mighty march of death. It was she and her
daughter Cydalise who had helped to persuade Gustave that he was born to
distinguish himself in the law. They wanted him to study in Paris--the
young man himself had a wild desire to enjoy the delights of that
wondrous capital--and to return in a few years to set up for himself as
_avocat_ at the town of Vevinord, some half-dozen leagues from the
patrimonial estate. He was created to plead for the innocent, to denounce
the guilty, to be grand and brave and fiery-hot with enthusiasm in
defence of virtuous peasants charged unjustly with the stealing of sheep,
or firing of corn-ricks. It never struck these simple souls that he might
sometimes be called upon to defend the guilty, or to denounce the
innocent.

It was all settled at last. Gustave was to go to Paris, and enter himself
as a student of law. There were plenty of boarding-houses in the
neighbourhood of the Ecole de Droit where a young man might find a home;
and to one of these Gustave was recommended by a friend of his family. It
was the Pension Magnotte to which they had sent him, the big dreary
house, _entre cour et jardin_, which had once been so grand and noble. A
printer now occupied the lower chambers, and a hand painted on the wall
pointed to the _Pension Magnotte, au premier. Tirez le cordon, s.v.p._

Gustave was twenty-one years of age when he came to Paris; tall,
stalwart, broad of shoulders and deep of chest, with a fair frank face,
an auburn moustache, candid, kind blue eyes--a physiognomy rather Saxon
than Celtic. He was a man who made friends quickly, and was soon at home
among the students, roaring their favourite songs, and dancing their
favourite dances at the dancing-places of that day, joining with a
pleasant heartiness in all their innocent dissipations. For guilty
dissipation the young provincial had no taste. Did he not carry the
images of two kind and pure women about with him wherever he went, like
two attendant angels ever protecting his steps; and could he leave them
sorrowing on thresholds _they_ could not pass? Ah, no! He was loud and
boisterous and wild of spirits in those early days, but incapable of
meanness or vice.

"It is a brave heart," Madame Magnotte said of him, "though for the
breaking of glasses a scourge--_un fleau_."

The ladies of the Pension Magnotte were for the most part of mature age
and unattractive appearance--two or three lonely spinsters, eking out
their pitiful little incomes as best they might, by the surreptitious
sale of delicate embroideries, confectioned in their dismal leisure; and
a fat elderly widow, popularly supposed to be enormously rich, but of
miserly propensities. "It is the widow of Harpagon himself," Madame
Magnotte told her gossips--an old woman with two furiously ugly
daughters, who for the last fifteen years had lived a nomadic life in
divers boarding-houses, fondly clinging to the hope that, amongst so many
strange bachelors, husbands for these two solitary ones must at last be
found.

These, with a pale young lady who gave music lessons in the quarter, were
all the feminine inmates of the mansion; and amongst these Gustave
Lenoble was chief favourite. His tender courtesy for these lonely women
seemed in some manner an evidence of that good old blood whereof the
young man's father boasted. Francis the First, who listened with bent
knee and bare head to his mother's discourse, was not more reverential to
that noble Savoyarde than was Gustave to the shabby-genteel maiden ladies
of the Pension Magnotte. In truth, this young man had a heart pitiful and
tender as the heart of woman. To be unfortunate was to possess a sure
claim upon his pity and regard; to be poor and friendless was the best
appeal to his kindness. He spent his evenings sometimes in the great
dreary desert of a salon, and listened respectfully while Mademoiselle
Servin, the young music-teacher, played dismal sonatas of Gluck or Gretry
on a cracked old piano that had been one of the earliest made of those
instruments, and was now attenuated and feeble as the very ghost of
music. He listened to Madame Magnotte's stories of departed splendour. To
him she opened her heart as she never had opened it to those other young
men.

"They mock themselves of everything--even the religion!" she exclaimed,
with horror. "They are Diderots and Holbachs in the bud, less the talent.
But you do not come of that gutter in which they were born. You are of
the old blood of France, M. Lenoble, and I can trust myself to you as I
cannot to them. I, who speak to you--I, too, come of a good old race, and
there is sympathy between we others."

And then, after babbling to him of her lost station, the lady would
entertain him with some dainty little supper with which she was wont to
indulge herself and her lady boarders, when the students--who were
treated something after the manner of school-boys--were out of doors.

For four years the law-student had enjoyed his Parisian life--not
altogether idle, but not altogether industrious--amusing himself a great
deal, and learning very little; moderate in his expenditure, when
compared with his fellow-students, but no small drain upon the funds of
the little family at home. In sooth, this good old Norman family had in a
pecuniary sense sunk very low. There was real poverty in the tumble-down
house at Beaubocage, though it was poverty that wore a cheerful face, and
took things pleasantly. A very humble English farmer would have despised
the income which supported M. Lenoble's household; and it was only the
economy and skill of the matron and her daughter which sustained the
dignity of the small establishment.

There was one great hope cherished alike by the proud simple-minded old
father, the fond mother, the devoted sister, and that was the hope in the
grand things to be done, in the dim future, by Gustave, the son, the
heir, the pole-star of the household.

Out of poverty, out of obscurity, into the broad light of honour and
riches, was the house of Lenoble to be lifted by this young law-student.
On the broad shoulders of this modern Atlas the Lenoble world was to be
sustained. To him they looked, of him they thought, in the long dreary
winter evenings during which the mother nodded over her knitting, the
father slept in his capacious easy-chair, the sister toiled at her
needle-work by her little table of _palissandre_.

He had paid them more than one visit during his two years of study,
bringing with him life and light and gladness, as it seemed to the two
women who adored him; and now, in the winter of 1828, they expected
another visit. He was to be with them on the first day of the new year.
He was to stay with them till his Mother's fete--the 17th of January.

The father looked to this special visit with an unusual anxiety. The
mother too was more than ever anxious. The sister, if she who loved her
brother with a somewhat morbid intensity could be more anxious than
usual, was more so now. A dreadful plot, a dire conspiracy, of which
Gustave was to be the subject and victim, had been concocted beneath that
innocent-seeming roof. Father, mother, and sister, seated round the
family hearth, fatal as some domestic Parcae, had hatched their horrid
scheme, while the helpless lad amused himself yonder in the great city,
happily unconscious of the web that was being woven to enmesh him.

The cord which monsieur unwound, the mesh which madame held, the
needle which dexterous mademoiselle wielded, were employed in the
fabrication of a matrimonial net. These unsophisticated conspirators
were bent upon bringing about the marriage of their victim, a marriage
which should at once elevate and enrich the Lenobles of Beaubocage, in
the person of Gustave.

Francois Lenoble's best friend and nearest neighbour was a certain Baron
Frehlter, of Germanic origin, but for some generations past naturalised
to the Gallic soil. The Baron was proprietor of an estate which could
show ten acres for one of the lands of Beaubocage. The Baron boasted a
family tree which derived its root from a ramification of the
Hohenzollern pedigree; but, less proud and more prudent than the
Lenobles, the Frehlters had not scorned to intermingle their Prussian
blue blood with less pure streams of commercial France. The _epicier_
element had prevailed in the fair brides of the house of Frehlter for the
last three or four generations, and the house of Frehlter had
considerably enriched itself by this sacrifice of its family pride.

The present Baron had married a lady ten years his senior, the widow of a
Rouen merchant, alike wealthy and pious, but famous rather for these
attributes than for any personal charm. One only child, a girl, had
blessed this union. She was now a young person of something under twenty
years of age, newly emerged from her convent, and pining for some share
in the gaieties and delights of a worldly paradise, which had already
been open to many of her schoolfellows.

Mademoiselle Frehlter's companions had, for the most part, left school to
be married. She had heard of the _corbeille_, the wedding dress, the
wedding festivities, and occasionally a word or two about that secondary
consideration the bridegroom. The young lady was therefore somewhat
inclined to take it ill of her father that he had not secured for her the
_eclat_ of an early marriage. Her departure from the convent of the Sacre
Coeur, at Vevinord, was flat and tame to an extreme degree. The future
lay before her, a dreary desert of home life, to be spent with a father
who gorged himself daily at a greasy and savoury banquet, and who slept
away the greater part of his existence; and with a mother who divided her
affections between a disagreeable poodle and a still more disagreeable
priest--a priest who took upon himself to lecture the demoiselle Frehlter
on the smallest provocation.

The chateau of the Frehlters was a very grand abode as compared to the
tumble-down house of Beaubocage; but it was cold and stony to a
depressing degree, and the furniture must have been shabby in the days of
the Fronde. Faithful old servants kept the mansion in a state of spotless
purity, and ruled the Baron and his wife with a rod of iron. Mademoiselle
execrated these devoted retainers, and would have welcomed the sauciest
of modern domestics who would have released her from the bondage of these
servants of the old school.

Mademoiselle had been at home a year--a year of discontent and
ill-humour. She had quarrelled with her father, because he would not take
her to Paris; with her mother, because she would not give her more new
gowns and bonnets and feathers and fur-belows; with the priest, the
poodle, with the autocracy below-stairs, with everybody and everything.
So at last the Baron decided that mademoiselle should marry, whereby he
might be rid of her, and of her complaints, vagaries, ill-tempers, and
general dissatisfaction.

Having once made up his mind as to the wisdom of a matrimonial
arrangement, Baron Frehlter was not slow to fix upon a bridegroom. He was
a very rich man, and Madelon was his only child, and he was furthermore a
very lazy man; so, instead of looking far afield for a wealthy or
distinguished suitor for his daughter, he was inclined to take the first
that came to hand. It is possible that the Baron, who was of a somewhat
cynical turn of mind, may have cherished no very exalted idea of his
daughter's attractions, either personal or mental. However this might be,
it is certain that when the demoiselle had ill-treated the poodle, and
insulted the priest, and quarrelled with the cook--that high-priestess of
the kitchen who alone, in all Normandy, could concoct those messes which
the Baron loved--the master of Cotenoir decided on marrying his heiress
out of hand.

He communicated this design to his old crony, Francois Lenoble, one day
when the Beaubocage family dined at Chateau Cotenoir.

"I think of marrying my daughter," he said to his friend, when the ladies
were safely out of hearing at the other end of the long dreary saloon.
"Now thy son Gustave is a fine fellow--brave, handsome, and of a good
race. It is true he is not as rich as Madelon will be by-and-by; but I am
no huckster, to sell my daughter to the best bidder" ("and I doubt if
there would be many bidders for her, if I were so inclined," thought the
Baron, in parenthesis); "and if thy son should take a fancy to her, and
she to him, it would please me well enough, friend Francois."

Friend Francois pricked up his ears, and in his old eyes flickered a
feeble light. Cotenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his son
Gustave! Lenoble of Beaubocage and Cotenoir--Lenoble of Cotenoir and
Beaubocage! So splendid a vision had never shone before his eyes in all
the dreams that he had dreamed about the only son of whom he was so
proud. He could not have shaped to himself so bold a project as the union
of those two estates. And here was the Baron offering it to him, with his
snuff-box, _en passant_.

"It would be a great marriage," he said, "a very great marriage. For
Gustave I can answer without hesitation. He could not but be charmed by
such a union--so amiable a bride would enchant him."

He looked down the room to the spot where Madelon and Cydalise were
standing, side by side, admiring Madame Frehlter's poodle. Madelon could
afford to be civil to the poodle before company. The contrast between the
two girls was sufficiently striking. Cydalise was fair and
bright-looking--Mademoiselle Frehlter was square and ungainly of figure,
swarthy of complexion, dark of brow.

"He could not but be charmed," repeated the old man, with feeble
gallantry.

He was thinking of the joining together of Beaubocage and Cotenoir; and
it seemed a very small thing to him that such a union of estates would
involve the joining of a man and woman, who were to hold to each other
and love each other until death should part them.

"It shall be no marriage of convenience," said the Baron, in a generous
spirit; "my daughter is somewhat ill-tem--that is to say, my daughter
finds her life somewhat dull with her old father and mother, and I think
she might be happier in the society of a husband. I like your son; and
my wife, too, likes him better than any other young man of our
acquaintance. Madelon has seen a good deal of him when she has been home
from the convent in her holidays, and I have reason to think she does
not dislike him. If he likes her and she likes him, and the idea is
pleasing to you and madame, we will make a match of it. If not, let it
pass; we will say no more."

Again the seigneur of Beaubocage assured his friend that Gustave would be
enchanted with the proposal; and again it was of Cotenoir that he
thought, and not of the heart or the inclinations of his son.

This conversation took place late in autumn, and at the new year Gustave
was to come. Nothing was to be said to him about his intended wife until
he arrived; that was a point upon which the Baron insisted.

"The young man may have fallen in love with some fine young person in
Paris," he said; "and in that case we will say nothing to him of Madelon.
But if we find him with the heart free, and inclined to take to my
daughter, we may give him encouragement."

This was solemnly agreed between the two fathers. Nor was Mademoiselle
Frehlter to be told of the matrimonial scheme until it ripened. But after
this dinner at Cotenoir the household at Beaubocage talked of little else
than of the union of the two families. What grandeur, what wealth, what
happiness! Gustave the lord of Cotenoir! Poor Cydalise had never seen a
finer mansion than the old chateau, with its sugar-loaf towers and stone
terraces, and winding stairs, and tiny inconvenient turret chambers, and
long dreary salon and _salle-a-manger_. She could picture to herself
nothing more splendid. For Gustave to be offered the future possession of
Cotenoir was as if he were suddenly to be offered the succession to a
kingdom. She could not bring herself to consider that Madelon was neither
agreeable nor attractive, and that, after all, the wife must count for
something in every marriage contract. She could see nothing, she could
think of nothing, but Cotenoir. The glory and grandeur of that estate
absorbed every other consideration.

No one of those three conspirators feared any opposition on the part of
their victim. It was just possible that Gustave might have fallen in love
with some Parisian damsel, though his letters gave no hint of any such
calamity. But if such a misfortune had happened, he would, of course,
fall out of love again, return the damsel her troth and obtain the return
of his own, and straightway offer the second-hand commodity to
Mademoiselle Frehlter.

The object of all these cares and hopes and dreams arrived at last, full
of life and spirits, with plenty to tell about Paris in general, and very
little to tell about himself in particular. The women questioned him
unmercifully. They insisted on a graphic description of every female
inmate of the boarding-house, and would scarcely believe that all except
the little music-mistress were elderly and unattractive. Of the
music-mistress herself they were inclined to be very suspicious, and were
not altogether reassured by Gustave's assertion that she was neither
pretty nor fascinating.

"She is a dear, good, industrious little thing," he said, "and works
harder than I do. But she is no miracle of beauty; and her life is so
dreary that I often wonder she does not go into a convent. It would be
gayer and pleasanter for her than to live with those old women at the
Pension Magnotte."

"I suppose there are many beautiful women in Paris?" said Cydalise, bent
upon knowing the worst.

"Well, I dare say there are," Gustave answered frankly; "but we students
don't see much of them in our quarter. One sees a pretty little
milliner's girl now and then, or a washerwoman. In short, there are a
good many grisettes in our part of the world," added the young man,
blushing, but for no sin of his own. "We get a glimpse of a handsome
woman sometimes, rattling past in her carriage; but in Paris handsome
women do not go on foot. I have seen prettier girls at Vevinord than in
Paris."

Cydalise was enchanted with this confession.

"Yes," she exclaimed, "our Normandy is the place for pretty girls.
Madelon Frehlter, for example, is not she a very--amiable girl?"

"I dare say she's amiable enough," answered Gustave; "but if there were
no prettier girls than Mademoiselle Frehlter in this part of the world,
we should have no cause to boast. But there are prettier girls, Cydalise,
and thou art thyself one of them."

After this speech the young man bestowed upon his sister a resounding
kiss. Yes; it was clear that he was heart-whole. These noisy, boisterous
good spirits were not characteristic of a lover. Even innocent Cydalise
knew that to be in love was to be miserable.

From this time mother and sister tormented their victim with the merits
and charms of his predestined bride. Madelon on the piano was miraculous;
Madelon's little songs were enchanting; Madelon's worsted-work was a
thing to worship; Madelon's devotion to her mother and her mother's
poodle was unequalled; Madelon's respectful bearing to the good Abbe St.
Velours--her mother's director--was positively beyond all praise. It was
virtue seraphic, supernal. Such a girl was too good for earth--too good
for anything except Gustave.

The young man heard and wondered.

"How you rave about Madelon Frehlter!" he exclaimed. "She seems to me the
most commonplace young person I ever encountered. She has nothing to say
for herself; she never appears to know where to put her elbows. I never
saw such elbows; they are everywhere at once. And her shoulders!--O
heaven, then, her shoulders!--it ought to be forbidden to wear low
dresses when one has such shoulders."

This was discouraging, but the schemers bore up even against this. The
mother dwelt on the intellectual virtues of Madelon; and what were
shoulders compared to mind, piety, amiability--all the Christian graces?
Cydalise owned that dear Madelon was somewhat _gauche_; Gustave called
her _bete_. The father remonstrated with his son. Was it not frightful to
use a word of the barracks in connection with this charming young lady?

At last the plot revealed itself. After a dinner at Cotenoir and a dinner
at Beaubocage, on both which occasions Gustave had made himself very
agreeable to the ladies of the Baron's household--since, indeed, it was
not in his nature to be otherwise than kind and courteous to the weaker
sex--the mother told her son of the splendid destiny that had been shaped
for him. It was a matter of surprise and grief to her to find that the
revelation gave Gustave no pleasure.

"Marriage was the last thing in my thoughts, dear mother," he said,
gravely; "and Madelon Frehlter is the very last woman I should think of
for a wife. Nevertheless, I am gratified by the honour Monsieur le Baron
has done me. That goes without saying."

"But the two estates!--together they would make you a great proprietor.
You would not surely refuse such fortune?"

Cydalise gave a little scream of horror.

"Cotenoir! to refuse Cotenoir! Ah, surely that would be impossible! But
figure to yourself, then, Gustave--"

"Nay, Cydalise, you forget the young lady goes with the chateau; a
fixture that we cannot dispense with."

"But she, so amiable, so pious--"

"So plain, so stupid--"

"So modest, so charitable--"

"In short, so admirably adapted for a Sister of Charity," replied
Gustave. "But no, dear Cydalise. Cotenoir is a grand old place; but I
would as soon spend my life at Toulon, dragging a cannon-ball at my
heels, as in that dreary salon where Madame Frehlter nurses her maladies
and her poodle, and where the good-humoured, easy-going old Baron snores
away existence. 'Tis very well for those elderly folks, you see, my
sister, and for Madelon--for hers is an elderly mind in a youthful body;
but for a young man full of hope and gaiety and activity--bah! It would
be of all living deaths the worst. From the galleys there is always the
hope of escaping--an underground passage, burrowed out with one's
finger-nails in the dead of the night--a work lasting twenty years or so,
but with a feeble star of hope always glimmering at the end of the
passage. But from the salon, and mamma, and the poodle, and the good,
unctuous, lazy old director, and papa's apoplectic snoring, and the
plaintive little songs and monotonous embroideries of one's wife, there
would be no escape. Ah, bah!"

Gustave shuddered, and the two women shuddered as they heard him. The
prospect was by no means promising; but Madame Lenoble and her daughter
did not utterly despair. Gustave's heart was disengaged. That was a great
point; and for the rest, surely persuasion might do much.

Then came that phenomenon seen very often in this life--a
generous-minded, right-thinking young man talked into a position which of
all others is averse from his own inclinations. The mother persuaded, the
sister pleaded, the father dwelt dismally upon the poverty of Beaubocage,
the wealth of Cotenoir. It was the story of auld Robin Gray reversed.
Gustave perceived that his refusal to avail himself of this splendid
destiny would be a bitter and lasting grief to these people who loved him
so fondly--whom he loved as fondly in return. Must he not be a churl to
disappoint hopes so unselfish, to balk an ambition so innocent? And only
because Madelon was not the most attractive or the prettiest of women!

The young man stood firm against all their arguments, he was unmoved by
all their pleading. It was only when his anxious kindred had given up the
battle for lost that Gustave wavered. Their mute despair moved him more
than the most persuasive eloquence; and the end was submission. He left
Beaubocage the plighted lover of that woman who, of all others, he would
have been the last to choose for his wife. It had all been settled very
pleasantly--the dowry, the union of the two estates, the two names. For
six months Gustave was to enjoy his freedom to finish his studies; and
then he was to return to Normandy for his marriage.

"I have heard very good accounts of you from Paris," said the Baron. "You
are not like some young men, wild, mad-brained. One can confide in your
honour, your steadiness."

The good folks of Beaubocage were in ecstacies. They congratulated
Gustave--they congratulated each other. A match so brilliant would be the
redemption of the family. The young man at last began to fancy himself
the favoured of the gods. What if Madelon seemed a little dull--a little
wanting in that vivacity which is so pleasing to frivolous minds? she was
doubtless so much the more profound, so much the more virtuous. If she
was not bright and varied and beautiful as some limpid fountain dancing
in summer sunlight, she was perhaps changeless and steady as a rock; and
who would not rather have the security of a rock than the summer-day
beauty of a fountain?

Before Gustave departed from his paternal home he had persuaded himself
that he was a very lucky fellow; and he had paid Mademoiselle Frehlter
some pretty little stereotyped compliments, and had listened with sublime
patience to her pretty little stereotyped songs. He left the young lady
profoundly impressed by his merits; he left his own household supremely
happy; and he carried away with him a heart in which Madelon Frehlter's
image had no place.



CHAPTER II.


IN THIS WIDE WORLD I STAND ALONE.

Gustave went back to his old life, and was not much disturbed by the
grandeur of his destiny as future seigneur of Cotenoir and Beaubocage. It
sometimes occurred to him that he had a weight upon his mind; and, on
consideration, he found that the weight was Madelon Frehlter. But he
continued to carry that burden very lightly, and his easy-going student
life went on, unbroken by thoughts of the future. He sent polite messages
to the demoiselle Frehlter in his letters to Cydalise; and he received
from Cydalise much information, more graphic than interesting, upon the
subject of the family at Cotenoir; and so his days went on with pleasant
monotony. This was the brief summer of his youth; but, alas, how near at
hand was the dark and dismal winter that was to freeze this honest joyous
heart! That heart, so compassionate for all suffering, so especially
tender for all womankind, was to be attacked upon its weaker side.

It was Gustave Lenoble's habit to cross the gardens of the Luxembourg
every morning, on his way from the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle to the Ecole
de Droit. Sometimes, when he was earlier than usual, he carried a book
with him, and paced one of the more obscure alleys, reading for an odd
half-hour before he went to the daily mill-grinding in the big building
beyond those quiet gardens.

Walking with his book one morning--it was a volume of Boileau, which
the student knew by heart, and the pages whereof did not altogether
absorb his attention--he passed and repassed a bench on which a lady
sat, pensive and solitary, tracing shapeless figures on the ground with
the point of her parasol. He glanced at her somewhat carelessly the
first time of passing, more curiously on the second occasion, and
the third time with considerable attention. Something in her
attitude--helplessness, hopelessness, nay indeed, despair itself, all
expressed in the drooping head, the listless hand tracing those idle
characters on the gravel--enlisted the sympathies of Gustave Lenoble. He
had pitied her even before his gaze had penetrated the cavernous depths
of the capacious bonnet of those days; but one glimpse of the pale
plaintive face inspired him with compassion unspeakable. Never had he
seen despair more painfully depicted on the human countenance--a despair
that sought no sympathy, a sorrow that separated the sufferer from the
outer world. Never had he seen a face so beautiful, even in despair. He
could have fancied it the face of Andromache, when all that made her
world had been reft from her; or of Antigone, when the dread fiat had
gone forth--that funeral rites or sepulture for the last accursed scion
of an accursed race there were to be none.

He put Boileau into his pocket. That glimpse of a suffering human mind,
which had been unconsciously revealed to him, possessed an interest more
absorbing than the grandest flight of poet and satirist. As he passed for
the fifth time, he looked at the mournful lady still more searchingly,
and this time the sad eyes were lifted, and met his pitying looks. The
beautiful lips moved, and murmured something in tones so tremulous as to
be quite unintelligible.

The student took off his hat, and approached the lady, deferential as
knight-errant of old awaiting the behest of his liege mistress.

"In what can I have the happiness to be agreeable to you, madame?"

"You are very good, monsieur," murmured the lady in very decent French,
but with an accent unmistakably foreign--English, as Gustave opined.
"I--I--am quite a stranger in Paris, and--and--I have heard there are
numerous lodging-houses in this quarter--where one may obtain a
lodging--cheaply. I have asked several nursemaids, and other women, in
the gardens this morning; but they seem very stupid, and can tell me
nothing; and I do not care to ask at the hotel where I am staying."

Gustave pondered. Yes, there were many lodgings, he informed the lady.
And then he thought of Madame Magnotte. Was it not his duty to secure
this stray lodger for that worthy woman, if possible?

"If madame has no objection to a boarding-house--" he began.

Madame shook her head. "A boarding-house would suit me just as well," she
said; "but it must not be expensive. I cannot afford to pay much."

"I know of a boarding-house very near this place, where madame might find
a comfortable home on very reasonable terms. It is, in point of fact, the
house in which I myself reside," added Gustave, with some timidity.

"If you will kindly direct me to the house--" said the lady, looking
straight before her with sad unseeing eyes, and evidently supremely
indifferent as to the residence or non-residence of M. Lenoble in the
habitation referred to.

"Nay, madame, if you will permit me to conduct you there. It is but a
walk of five minutes."

The stranger accepted the courtesy with a gentle indifference that was
not ingratitude, but rather incapacity for any feeling except that one
great sorrow which seemed to absorb her mind.

Gustave wondered what calamity could thus overwhelm one so young and
beautiful.

The lady was quite silent during the little walk from the gardens to the
Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and Gustave observed her attentively as he
walked by her side. She was evidently not more than four-and-twenty years
of age, and she was certainly the prettiest woman he had ever seen. It
was a fair delicate English beauty, a little worn and faded, as if by
care, but idealized and sublimated in the process. At her brightest this
stranger must have been strikingly beautiful; in her sorrow she was
touchingly lovely. It was what Gustave's countrymen call a _beaute
navrante_.

Gustave watched her, and wondered about her. The dress she wore was
sufficiently elegant, but had lost the gloss of newness. Her shawl, which
she carried as gracefully as a Frenchwoman, was darned. Gustave perceived
the neat careful stitches, and divined the poverty of the wearer. That
she should be poor was no subject for surprise; but that she, so
sorrowful, so lonely, should seek a home in a strange city, was an enigma
not easy to solve.

To Madame Magnotte Gustave introduced the stranger. She gave just one
look round the dreary saloon; but to Gustave's fancy that one look seemed
eloquent. "Ah me!" it said; "is this the fairest home I am to find upon
this inhospitable earth?"

"She does not seem to belong to this world," the young man thought, as
he went back to the garden where he had found his fair stranger, having
been very coolly dismissed by Madame Magnotte after his introduction had
been made.

And then M. Lenoble, being of a romantic turn of mind, remembered how a
lady had been found by a student sitting on the lowest steps of the
guillotine, desolate and helpless, at night; and how the student had
taken her home and sheltered her, and had straightway fallen desperately
in love with her, to discover, with unutterable horror, that her head had
been severed from her fair shoulders by the cruel knife twelve hours
before, and that her melancholy loveliness was altogether phantasmal and
delusive.

Was this English stranger whom Gustave had found in the gardens of the
Luxembourg twin sister to that ghostly lady of the familiar legend? Her
despair and her beauty seemed to him greater than earthly sorrow or
earthly beauty; and he was half inclined to wonder whether she could be
of the same race as Madelon Frehlter. And from this hour the sense of a
weight upon his mind, before so vague and intermittent, became an
enduring oppression, not to be shaken off by any effort of his will.

All through that day he found himself thinking more of the unknown
Englishwoman than was consistent with a strict performance of his duties.
He was vexed with himself on account of this foolish distraction of mind.

"What a frivolous fellow I must be," he said to himself, "to dwell upon
such a trifle! This comes of leading such a monotonous life."

At dinner he looked for the lady; but she did not appear at the long
table, where the shrill old ladies, the epicurean old bachelors, the
noisy students, daily devoured and grumbled at the four or five courses
which old Nanon developed out of her inner consciousness and a rather
scantily furnished larder. He questioned Madame Magnotte after dinner,
and was told that the lady was in the house, but was too tired to dine
with the other inmates.

"I have to thank thee for a new boarder, my friend," she said. "Madame
Meynell will not pay largely; but she seems a quiet and respectable
person, and we shall doubtless be well pleased with each other."

"Madame Meynell!" repeated Gustave, congratulating himself on finding
that the Englishwoman was an inhabitant of the house he lived in. "She is
a widow, I suppose?"

"Yes, she is a widow. I asked that question, and she answered, yes.
But she told me nothing of her late husband. She is not at all
communicative."

This was all Gustave could obtain from Madame Magnotte. She was not
communicative. No; she was, indeed, scarcely less silent than that
ghostly lady who had been found sitting at the foot of the guillotine.
There was some kind of mystery involved in her sorrowful face, her silent
apathy. It was possibly the fact of this mystery which interested M.
Lenoble. Certain it is that the young man's interest had been aroused by
this unknown Englishwoman, and that his mind was more occupied by the
image of her whom he had seen but once than by that of his plighted wife.

He waited anxiously for the next day; but on the next day Madame Meynell
still pleaded fatigue and illness. It was only on the third day that she
appeared at the noisy banquet, pale, silent, absent-minded, sheltering
herself under the wing of Madame Magnotte, who was disposed to be kind to
this helpless stranger. To Gustave the young English widow seemed like a
ghost at that crowded board. He looked at her every now and then from his
distant seat, and saw her always with the same hopeless far-away look in
her sad eyes. He himself was silent and _distrait_.

"Of what dost thou dream, my droll one?" said his nearest neighbour.
"Thou art positively insupportable."

M. Lenoble could not become vivacious or entertaining at the behest of
his fellow-student. The consciousness of that strange pale face haunted
and oppressed him. He hoped to have a few minutes' talk with the English
lady after dinner, but she disappeared before the removal of those
recondite preparations which in the Pension Magnotte went by the generic
name of "dessert."

For more than a week she appeared thus at the dinner-table, eating very
little, speaking not at all, except such monosyllabic replies as the
hostess now and then extorted from her pale lips. A creature at once so
beautiful and so profoundly sad became an object of interest to others
besides Gustave; but in no breast was the sympathy which her sadness and
beauty excited so poignant as in his. Her face haunted him. The familiar
pleasures and amusements became distasteful to him. He spent his evenings
at home in the dismal salon, and was content to listen to the chatter of
the old women, the little music-mistress's dreary sonatas, the monotonous
roll of wheels on the distant quay--anything rather than the hackneyed
round of student-life that had once been agreeable to him. He did not
fail to write his weekly letter to Cydalise; but, for some reason or
other, he refrained from any allusion to the English stranger, although
it was his custom to relate all his adventures for the amusement of the
family at Beaubocage.

An evening came at last on which Madame Meynell was persuaded to remain
with the other ladies after dinner.

"It must be very cold and cheerless for you in your bedroom," said
Madame Magnotte; "why not spend your evening with us, in a pleasant and
social manner?"

"You are very good, madame," murmured the Englishwoman, in the slow timid
accents that had so plaintive a sound to Gustave's ear; "if you wish it,
I will stay."

She seemed to submit rather from utter weakness and inability to refuse
anything asked of her than from any hope of finding pleasure in the
society of the Magnotte salon.

It was an evening in March--cold, blustrous, dreary. The east wind blew
clouds of dust athwart the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle, and the few
foot-passengers in that dull thoroughfare looked pinched and wretched.
The old ladies gathered round the great black stove, and gossipped in the
twilight; the music-mistress went to her feeble piano, and played,
unasked, unheeded; for Gustave, who was wont to turn the leaves, or sit
attentive by the piano, seemed this evening unconscious of the music.
Madame Meynell sat in one of the windows, alone, half-hidden by the faded
yellow damask curtains, looking out into the street.

Something--some impulse which he tried to resist, but could not--drew
Gustave towards that lonely figure by the window. He went close up to the
strange lady. This evening, as in the gardens of the Luxembourg, she
seemed to him a living statue of despair. Now, as then, he felt an
interest in her sorrow which he was powerless to combat. He had a vague
idea that even this compassionate sympathy was in some manner an offence
against Madelon Frehlter, the woman to whom he belonged, and yet he
yielded to the fatal weakness.

"Yes, I belong to her," he said to himself; "I belong to Madelon
Frehlter. She is neither pretty nor fascinating; but I have every reason
to believe her very good, very amiable; and she is the only woman, except
those of my own kindred, in whom I have any right to be interested."

He did not say this in so many words; but this was the shape which his
thoughts assumed as he yielded to the tempter, and walked straight to the
distant window by which Madame Meynell had seated herself.

She started slightly as he approached her, and then looked up and
recognized him as her acquaintance of the Luxembourg.

"Good evening, monsieur," she said; "I have to thank you for having
helped me to find a comfortable home."

Having said this in a low gentle voice, she looked out into the street
once more with her mournful unseeing eyes. It was evident that she had no
more to say to M. Lenoble.

The student, however, had no idea of leaving the window just yet,
although he knew--yes, knew--that his presence there was a wrong done to
Madelon Frehlter; but a wrong so small, so infinitesimal, that it was
really not worth consideration.

"I am enchanted to think that I was of some slight service to you,
madame," he said; "but I fear you will find this quarter of Paris
very dull."

She did not take any notice of this remark until Gustave had repeated it,
and then she spoke as if suddenly awakened from a trance.

"Dull?" she said. "No, I have not found it dull. I do not care for
gaiety."

After this M. Lenoble felt that he could say no more. The lady relapsed
into her waking trance. The dust-clouds in the silent street seemed more
interesting to her than M. Lenoble of Beaubocage. He lingered a few
minutes in the neighbourhood of her chair, thoughtfully observant of the
delicate profile, the pale clear tints of a complexion that had lost its
bloom but not its purity, the settled sadness of the perfect mouth, the
dreamy pensiveness of the dark-grey eye, and then was fain to retire.

After this, the English widow lady spent many evenings in Madame
Magnotte's salon. The old Frenchwoman gossipped and wondered about
her; but the most speculative could fashion no story from a page so
blank as this joyless existence. Even slander could scarcely assail
a creature so unobtrusive as the English boarder. The elderly ladies
shrugged their shoulders and pursed up their lips with solemn
significance. There must needs be something--a secret, a mystery, sorrow,
or wrong-doing--somewhere; but of Madame Meynell herself no one could
suspect any harm.

Gustave Lenoble heard little of this gossip about the stranger, but she
filled his thoughts nevertheless. The vision of her face came between him
and his work; and when he thought of the future, and of the damsel who
had been allotted to him for a wife, his thoughts were very bitter.

"Fate is like Laban," he said to himself; "a man works and does his duty
for seven years, and then Fate gives him Leah instead of Rachel. No doubt
Leah is a very good young woman; one has no complaint to make against
her, except that she is not Rachel."

This was not a hopeful manner of looking at things for the destined
master of Cotenoir. M. Lenoble's letters to the anxious folks at
Beaubocage became, about this time, somewhat brief and unsatisfactory. He
no longer gave ample details of his student-life--he no longer wrote in
his accustomed good spirits. His letters seemed stiff and constrained.

"I am afraid he is studying too much," said the mother.

"I daresay the rascal is wasting his time in dissipation," suggested
the father.



CHAPTER III.


"PAST HOPE, AND IN DESPAIR."

Two months had elapsed since the bleak spring morning on which Gustave
Lenoble found the solitary lady under the leafless trees of the
Luxembourg gardens. The inmates of the Pension Magnotte had grown
accustomed to her presence, to her silence, her settled sadness, and
troubled themselves no further respecting herself or her antecedents. The
lapse of time had brought no improvement to her spirits; indeed, Gustave,
who watched her closely, perceived that she had grown paler and thinner
since that March morning when he met her in the public garden. Her life
must have been painfully monotonous. She very rarely went out of doors,
and on no occasion ventured beyond the gardens of the Luxembourg. No one
visited her. She neither wrote nor received any letters. She was wont to
make a pretence of reading as she sat in her retired corner of the salon;
but Gustave had discovered that she gave little attention to her book.
The open volume in her hand seemed no more than an excuse for brooding
upon her sorrows.

If people, prompted by curiosity or by compassion, endeavoured to get
into conversation with this lonely lady, the result was always the same.
She would answer their questions in a low gentle voice, with a quiet
politeness; but she never assisted them in the smallest degree to
interchange thoughts with her. It seemed as if she sought neither friend
nor sympathizer, or as if her case was so entirely hopeless as to admit
of neither. She paid for her board and lodging weekly with a punctilious
exactness, though weekly payments were not the rule of the house.

"My movements are uncertain," she said to Madame Magnotte. "I cannot
tell how long I may be with you. It will therefore be better for me to
pay you weekly."

She had been in the house two months, dining every day at the public
table, spending all her evenings in the public saloon; and during that
time her settled gloom had never been broken by any outburst of grief or
passion. She might have been a creature of ice, a statue of despair
modelled in snow by a Michael Angelo. But one night the ice melted, the
statue of snow became in a moment a passionate, grief-stricken woman.

It was one bright evening late in May. Ah, how near at hand was the
appointed date of those nuptials to which the household of Beaubocage
looked forward with supreme happiness! The old ladies of the Pension
Magnotte were for the most part out of doors. The long saloon was almost
empty. There were only Gustave, Madame Magnotte, and the little
music-mistress, who sat at her piano, with the western sunlight shining
full upon her, rosy-hued and glorious, surrounding her with its soft
radiance until she looked like a humble St. Cecilia.

Madame Meynell had seated herself close to the piano, and was listening
to the music. Gustave hovered near, pretending to be occupied with a limp
little sheet of news published that evening.

Mademoiselle Servin, the teacher of music, upon this occasion deserted
her favourite masters. She seemed in a somewhat dreamy and sentimental
humour, and played tender little melodies and simple plaintive airs, that
were more agreeable to Gustave than those grand examples of the
mathematics of counter-point which she so loved to interpret.

"You like this melody of Gretry's," said the music-mistress, as M.
Lenoble seated himself close to the piano. "I do not think you care for
classic sonatas--the great works of Gluck, or Bach, or Beethoven?"

"No," replied the young man frankly; "I do not care about anything I
can't understand. I like music that goes to one's heart."

"And you, too, Madame Meynell, like simple melodies?" mademoiselle asked
of that lady, who was not wont to come so near the little piano, or to
pay so much attention to Mademoiselle Servin's performance.

"O yes," murmured the Englishwoman, "I like such music as that."

"And you, too, think that Beethoven never composed simple plaintive
airs--for example," exclaimed the pianist, playing softly while she
spoke. "You think he wrote only sonatas, quartettes, fugues, grand
operas, like _Fidelio_. Have you never heard this by your scientific
Beethoven?"

Hereupon she played "Hope told a flattering tale," with much tenderness
and delicacy. Her two hearers listened, mute and deeply moved. And then
from that familiar melody she glided softly into another, most musical,
most melancholy, which has been set to some of the sweetest verses that
Thomas Moore ever composed:

"Those evening bells, those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells
Of youth and home, and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime!"

All the world sang the verses of Ireland's divine bard in those days. The
song was one which the Englishwoman had sung years ago in a happy home.
What recollections, what associations, were evoked by that plaintive
melody, who shall say? The words came back with the music to which they
have been eternally wedded. The words, their mournful meaning, the faces
of the friends amongst whom she had last sung them, the picture of the
peaceful home whose walls had echoed the music,--all these things arose
before her in a vision too painfully vivid; and the lonely boarder at the
Pension Magnotte covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud.

The passion of tears lasted but a minute. Madame Meynell dried her eyes,
and rose to leave the room.

"Do not question me," she said, perceiving that her two companions were
about to offer her their sympathy. "I cannot tell you the memories that
were conjured up by that music. It brought back a home I shall never see
again, and the faces of the dead--worse than dead to me--and the
happiness I have lost, and the hopes and dreams that once were mine. Oh,
I pray God I may never hear that melody again."

There was a passion, a depth of feeling, in her tone quite new to Gustave
Lenoble. He opened the door for her without a word, and she passed out of
the salon quietly, like a ghost--the ghost of that bright young creature
who had once borne her shape, and been called by her name, in a pleasant
farmhouse among the Yorkshire wolds.

"Ah, but how that poor soul must have suffered!" cried the sympathetic
Mademoiselle Servin, as the door closed on the Englishwoman. "I did
not think it was in her to feel so deeply. I thought she was stone, and
now I begin to think it must be of such stone as Niobe--the
petrification of despair."

Upon Gustave Lenoble this scene made a profound impression. He lay awake
during the greater part of that night, thinking of the lonely lady's
tears and anguish. The music of "Those evening bells" pervaded his
dreams. He rose unrefreshed, feverish, forgetful of Cotenoir and Madelon
Frehlter, as if that place and that person had never emerged from the
shapeless substances of chaos. He wanted to see _her_ again, to console
her, if that were possible. Oh, that it might be his privilege to console
her! He pitied her with a compassion so intense, that thus to
compassionate her woes, was himself to suffer a poignant anguish. He
pitied her. Yes, he told himself again and again that this sentiment
which so absorbed his heart and mind was no more than pity. But oh, if
this were pity, what were love? That was a question which also presented
itself to the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, of Beaubocage _in esse_, and
Cotenoir _in posse_.

Madame Meynell rarely appeared at the common breakfast in the grim
dining-room of the Pension Magnotte. Gustave was therefore in nowise
surprised to miss her on this particular morning. He took a cup of
coffee, and hurried off to his daily duties. There was a fever on him
which he could neither understand nor shake off, and he hastened to the
gardens of the Luxembourg, as if there were some special necessity for
speed. So do men often hasten unconsciously to their predestined doom,
defiant of augury. Soothsayers may menace, and wives may dream dreams;
but when his hour comes, Caesar will go to the appointed spot where the
daggers of his assassins await him.

In the alley where he had first looked upon her sad face, beneath
the umbrage of young limes and chestnuts just bursting into bloom,
he saw the Englishwoman to-day, seated on the same bench, almost in
the same attitude.

He went up to her, and bade her good morning; and then, intensely
conscious of his own temerity, seated himself by her side.

"I did not expect to find you here so early."

"No, I seldom come out so soon; but this morning I have to make some
inquiries upon a matter of business, and I am only resting here before
going to make them."

She gave a little weary sigh at the end of this speech. It seemed a
strange manner of transacting business to rest in the Luxembourg gardens,
which were distant but a few hundred yards from her home. Gustave divined
that it was for very forlornness she lingered there, shrinking from some
difficult encounter that lay before her.

"Can I not make the inquiries for you?" he asked. "Pray command me. It
will be my happiness to be useful to you."

"You are very good. I cannot trouble you so much."

"Pray do not talk of trouble. It can be no trouble to me to aid you in
any manner. Ah, madame, you do not know how much I would sacrifice to be
useful to you!"

She must have been dull indeed had she failed to perceive the earnestness
of his tone. She did perceive it, and was vaguely conscious that in this
student of law she had a friend.

"I want to know when the diligence for Calais leaves Paris, and from what
office," she said. "I am going back to England."

She was surprised to see the young man's face blanch as she announced
this simple fact. The young man himself was surprised by the sudden
anguish inflicted by her announcement. It was in this moment that he
first discovered how completely he had given his heart into this strange
woman's keeping.

"You are really going to leave Paris?--for ever?" he exclaimed.

"Yes. I have been here too long already. I have no business here. I ought
to have gone back to England that day when I first met you here, but I
put off the day of my return. I can put it off no longer."

"And you are going back to your friends?" Gustave asked, in a very
mournful tone.

"I am going back to my friends? Yes!" Her lips quivered a little, and the
unbidden tears came to her eyes.

Ah, what was the sorrow that oppressed this beauteous lonely creature?
What agony of grief or self-reproach was this pain which consumed her?
Gustave remembered her passion of tears on the previous night; her talk
of friends that were dead, and happiness lost; and now to-day she talked
of going home to her friends: but O the bitterness of expression with
which she had spoken that word "friends!"

"Are you going alone, Madame Meynell?" he inquired, after a pause. He
could not tear himself from that seat by her side. He could not be manly
or rational where she was concerned. The image of Madelon Frehlter rose
before his mental vision, reproachful, menacing; but a thick fog
intervened to obscure that unwelcome image. His whole life resolved
itself into those thrilling moments in which he sat here, on this common
garden bench, by this stranger's side; the entire universe was contracted
into this leafy walk where they two sat.

"Yes, I am going alone," madame replied, with a little laugh. "Who should
I have to go with me? I am quite alone in the world. I think I had better
make these inquiries myself, M. Lenoble. There is no reason why I should
give you so much trouble."

"There is no such thing as trouble. I will bring you all necessary
information to-day at dinner, if that will be soon enough."

"Quite soon enough, I thank you, monsieur," she answered, with a sigh. "I
must ask you kindly to ascertain for me also the expense of the journey."

"Most certainly, madame."

This request set him wondering whether she were poor, and how poor. But
she had evidently no more to say to him; she had again become
impenetrable. He would fain have stayed, though honour and conscience
were clamorous in their demands for his departure. Happily for honour and
conscience, the lady was silent as death, impervious as marble; so M.
Lenoble presently bowed and departed.

He thought of her all day long. The farce of pity was ended. He knew now
that he loved this Englishwoman with an affection at once foolish and
sinful,--foolish, since he knew not who or what this woman was; sinful,
since the indulgence of this passion involved the forfeiture of his
plighted word, the disappointment of those who loved him.

"No, no, no," he said to himself; "I cannot do this base and wicked
thing. I must marry Madelon. All the hopes of my mother and father rest
on that marriage; and to disappoint them because this stranger's face has
bewitched me? Ah, no, it cannot be. And even if I were willing to trample
my honour in the dust, how do I know that she would value or accept the
sacrifice?"

M. Lenoble made all necessary inquiries at the office of the Messageries,
and carried the intelligence to Madame Meynell. He could see that she
winced a little when he told her the cost of the journey, which in those
days was heavy.

"She must certainly be poor," he said to himself; and it rent his heart
to think that even in this paltry matter he could be of no use to her.
The destined master of Beaubocage and Cotenoir was entirely without ready
money. He had his watch. He put his hand upon that clumsy timekeeper as
he talked to madame.

"_Je te porterai chez ma tante, mon gars_," he said to himself. But he
doubted whether the high priests of the pious mountain--the Dordona of
Pauperism--would advance much upon this antique specimen of the
watchmaker's art.

After this evening he looked forward daily, hourly, to the anguish of her
departure. She would vanish out of his life, intangible as a melted
snow-flake, and only memory would stay behind to tell him he had known
and loved her. Why should this be so hard to bear? If she stayed, he
dared not tell her she was dear to him; he dared not stretch forth his
hand to help her. In all the world there was no creature more utterly
apart from him than she, whether she lived in the same house with him or
was distant as the Antipodes. What did it matter, then, since she was
destined to disappear from his life, whether she vanished to-day or a
year hence? He argued with himself that it could be a question of no
moment to him. There was a death-blow that must descend upon him, cruel,
inevitable. Let it come when it would.

Every day when he came home to dinner, M. Lenoble expected to behold a
vacant place by the side of his hostess; every day he was pleasantly
disappointed. The pale hopeless face was still to be seen, ghost-like, at
that noisy board. The face was more pale, more hopeless, as it seemed to
Gustave, every day he looked upon it.

He asked Madame Magnotte when the English lady was going to leave, but
she could not tell.

"She talks of leaving from day to day," said madame; "it will no doubt be
soon. I am sorry to lose her. She is very gentle, and gives no trouble to
any one. But she is sad--ah, how sad she is! She has suffered, monsieur."

Gustave agreed to this. Yes, she had suffered; but what, and how?

He watched her closely, but she was always the same. She no longer spent
her evenings in the salon, but in her own apartment. He saw her only at
dinner-time, and had no opportunity of speaking to her.

At last the day came upon which he missed her at the usual hour. He sat
through the tedious meal without speaking; eating a little, drinking a
little, mechanically, but with no consciousness of what he ate or drank.
There was a mist before his eyes, a confusion of voices in his ears; but
the faculties of sight and hearing seemed suspended. The agony he
suffered during that miserable hour was bitter as death.

"O, my God, how I love her!" he said to himself, while Raoul's bass roar
brayed in his ear on one side, and Leon's shrill squeal tortured him on
the other.

He made his way to Madame Magnotte directly after dinner.

"She is gone?" he exclaimed.

"But who, my friend? Ah, yes; it is of that poor Madame Meynell you
speak. How you are interested in her! No, she is not gone, poor woman.
She remains always. She has the air of a person who knows not her own
mind. Yet I am sure she thinks of going. To-day, for the first time, she
has been writing letters. Reine came to tell me she had seen her occupied
in her own room for the first time. It is not her habit to occupy
herself."

Gustave's heart gave a great jump. She was not gone; he might see her
again--if it were but a glimpse of her pale face looking out of the
diligence as it drove out of the Cour de Messageries. One look, one
glance; it would be something to carry in his heart all his life. All his
life! He looked forward and shuddered. What a dreary life it must needs
be! Cotenoir, Beaubocage, Madelon, the law; to plead, to read papers, to
study dry as dust books. He shrank appalled from the contemplation of
that dreary desert of existence--a life without her.

She had been writing letters--doubtless letters to her friends to
announce her return. Her departure must be very near at hand.

Gustave refused to go out that evening. His fellow-students were bent on
a night's pleasure at a dancing-garden then in vogue, where there would
be twinkling lamps and merry music under the May moon. The lamp-lit
parterres, the joyous waltzes, had no attractions for Gustave Lenoble. He
haunted the dull salon, dim and dreary in the twilight; for Madame
Magnotte was chary of lamps and candles, and prolonged to its utmost
limits the pensive interval between day and night. He walked softly up
and down the room, unheeded by the ladies clustered in a group by one of
the windows. Restless and unhappy, he could neither go nor stay. She was
not coming down to the salon this evening. He had clung to the faint hope
that she might appear; but the faint hope died away in his breast as the
night deepened. What purpose could be served by his remaining in that
dismal room? He was no nearer her than he would have been in the
remotest wilds of Central America. He would go out--not to the odious
dancing-garden, but to the cool dark streets, where the night wind might
blow this fever from his brain.

He left the room suddenly, and hurried downstairs. At the bottom of the
staircase he almost stumbled against a woman, who turned and looked at
him in the light of a little oil-lamp that hung over the door of the
portress's lodge.

It was the Englishwoman, deadly pale, and with a wild look in her face
that Gustave had never seen there before. She gave him no sign of
recognition, but passed out of the courtyard, and walked rapidly away.
That unusual look in her face, the strangeness of the fact that she
should be leaving the house at this hour, inspired him with a vague
terror, and he followed her, not stealthily, without a thought that he
was doing any wrong by such an act--rather, indeed, with the conviction
that he had a right so to follow her.

She walked very quickly--at a more rapid pace than Gustave would have
supposed possible for so fragile a creature. She chose the lonelier
streets, and Gustave had no difficulty in following her; she never looked
back, but went straight on her course, without pause or slackening of her
pace, as if with a settled purpose.

"Where can she be going?" Gustave asked himself; and an answer, vague,
hideous, terrible, suggested itself to his mind. The idea that occurred
to him was one that would scarcely have occurred to an Englishman under
the same circumstances, but to a Frenchman it was a very familiar idea.

It was dark now--the darkness that reigns between early sunset and late
moonrise. As the lonely woman went farther along the dreary streets
parallel with the quay, the dreadful suspicion grew stronger in Gustave's
mind. From that instant he had but one thought; in that moment he put
away from him for ever all sense of obligation to Madelon Frehlter; he
shook off father, mother, sister, old associations, home ties, ambition,
fortune--he lived alone for this woman, and the purpose of his life was
to save her from despair and death.

They emerged upon the quay at last. The long stretch of pavement was
deserted. Ah, now she looked back--she looked on every side with wild
unseeing eyes--and now there could be little doubt as to the purpose that
brought her here. She crossed the road, and went upon the bridge, Gustave
following close; in the next minute she was standing on the stone bench,
a tremulous, fluttering figure, with arms stretched towards the water; in
a breath she was clasped to Gustave's breast, clasped by arms that meant
to hold her for ever.

The shock of that surprise utterly unnerved the wretched creature. She
shivered violently, and struggled to free herself from those strong arms.

"Let me go!" she cried in English. "Let me go!" And then, finding herself
powerless, she turned and looked at her captor. "M. Lenoble! O, why do
you persecute me? Why do you follow me?"

"Because I want to save you."

"To save me! To snatch me back when I was going to find rest--an end for
my weary life! O yes, I know that it is a sinful end; but my life has
been all sin."

"Your life all sin! Foolish one, I will never believe that."

"It is true," she cried, with passionate self-reproach. "The sin of
selfishness, and pride, and disobedience. There is no fate too hard for
me--but, O, my fate is very hard! Why did you keep me from that river?
You do not know how miserable my life is--you do not know. I paid my
last penny to Madame Magnotte this morning. I have no money to take me
back to England, even if I dared go there--and I dare not. I have prayed
for courage, for strength to go back, but my prayers have not been
heard; and there is nothing for me but to die. What would be the sin of
my throwing myself into that river! I must die; I shall die of
starvation in the streets."

"No, no," cried Gustave passionately; "do you think I have dragged you
back from death to give you to loneliness and despair? My dear one, you
are mine--mine by right of this night. These arms that have kept you
from death shall shelter you,--ah, let them shelter you! These hands
shall work for you. My love, my love! you cannot tell how dear you are
to me. If there must be want or trouble for either of us, it shall come
to me first."

He had placed her on the stone bench, bewildered and unresisting, and had
seated himself by her side. The fragile figure, shivering still, even in
the mild atmosphere of the spring night, was sustained by his encircling
arm. He felt that she was his, irrevocably and entirely--given to him by
the Providence which would have seemed to have abandoned her, but for the
love it had implanted for her in this one faithful heart. His tone had
all the pleading tenderness of a lover's, but it had something more--an
authority, a sense of possession.

"Providence sent me here to save you," he said, with that gentle yet
authoritative tone; "I am your providence, am I not, dearest? Fate made
me love you--fondly, hopelessly, as I thought. Yesterday you seemed as
far away from me as those pale stars, shining up yonder--as
incomprehensible as that faint silvery mist above the rising moon--and
to-night you are my own."

He knew not what ties might be broken by this act. He had indeed a vague
consciousness that the step which he was now taking would cause a
lifelong breach between himself and his father. But the time had gone by
in which he could count the cost.

"Let me go back, M. Lenoble," the Englishwoman said presently. The
faintness of terror was passing away, and she spoke almost calmly. "Let
me go back to the house. It is you that have saved me from a dreadful
sin. I promise you that I will not again think of committing that deadly
sin. I will wait for the end to come. Let me go, my kind friend. Ah, no,
no; do not detain me! Forget that you have ever known me."

"That is not in my power. I will take you back to the Pension Magnotte
directly; but you must first promise to be my wife."

"Your wife! O, no, no, no! That is impossible."

"Because you do not love me," said Gustave, with mournful gravity.

"Because I am not worthy of you."

Humiliation and self-reproach unspeakable were conveyed in those few
words.

"You are worth all the stars to me. If I had them in my hands, those
lamps shining up there, I would throw them away, to hold you," said the
student passionately. "You cannot understand my love, perhaps. I seem a
stranger to you, and all I say sounds wild and foolish. My love, it is
true as the heaven above us--true as life or death--death that was so
near you just now. I have loved you ever since that bleak March morning
on which I saw you sitting under the leafless trees yonder. You held me
from that moment. I was subjugated--possessed--yours at once and for
ever. I would not confess even to myself that my heart had resigned
itself to you; but I know now that it was so from the first. Is there any
hope that you will ever pay me back one tithe of my love?"

"You love me," the Englishwoman repeated slowly, as if the words were
almost beyond her comprehension,--"you love _me_, a creature so lost, so
friendless! Ah, but you do not know my wretched story!"

"I do not ask to know it. I only ask one question--will you be my wife?"

"You must be mad to offer your name, your honour to me."

"Yes, I am mad--madly in love. And I am waiting for your answer. You
will be my wife? My angel, you will say yes! It is not much that I offer
you--a life of uncertainty, perhaps even of poverty; but a fond and
constant heart, and a head and hands that will work for you while God
gives them strength. It is better than the river."

All that was thoughtless and hopeful in his disposition was expressed in
these words. The woman to whom he pleaded was weakened by sorrow, and
the devotion of this brave true heart brought her strength, comfort,
almost hope.

"Will you be my friend?" she said gently. "Your words seem to bring me
back to life. I wanted to die because I was so wretched, so lonely. I
have friends in England--friends who were once all that is dear and kind;
but I dare not go to them. I think a cruel look from one of those friends
would kill me with a pain more bitter than any other death could give.
And I have no right to hope for kind looks from them. Yours are the only
words of friendship I have heard for a long time."

"And you will give me the right to work for you--to protect you? You will
be my wife?"

"I would rather be your servant," she answered, with sad humility. "What
right have I to accept so great a sacrifice? What folly can be so foolish
as your love for me--if it is indeed love, and not a wild fancy of
to-night!"

"It is a fancy that will last my life."

"Ah, you do not know how such fancies change."

"I know nothing except that mine is changeless. Come, my love, it is
growing late and cold. Let me take you home. The portress will wonder.
You must slip past her quietly with your veil down. Did you give old
Margot your key when you came down stairs to-night?"

"No, it is in my pocket. I was not thinking--I--"

She stopped with a sudden shudder. Gustave understood that shudder; he
also shuddered. She had left her room that night possessed by the
suicide's madness; she had left it to come straight to death. Happily his
strong arm had come between her and that cruel grave by which they were
still lingering.

They walked slowly back to the Rue Grande-Mademoiselle under the light of
the newly-risen moon. The Englishwoman's wasted hand rested for the first
time on M. Lenoble's arm. She was his--his by the intervention and by the
decree of Providence! That became a conviction in the young man's mind.
He covered her late return to the house with diplomatic art, engaging the
portress in conversation while the dark figure glided past in the dim
lamplight. On the staircase he paused to bid her good night.

"You will walk with me in the Luxembourg garden to-morrow morning,
dearest," he said. "I have so much to say--so much. Until then, adieu!"

He kissed her hand, and left her on the threshold of her apartment, and
then went to his own humble bachelor's chamber, singing a little drinking
song in his deep manly voice, happy beyond all measure.

They walked together next day in the gardens of the Luxembourg. The poor
lonely creature whom Gustave had rescued seemed already to look up to him
as a friend and protector, if not in the character of a future husband.
It was no longer this fair stranger who held possession of Gustave; it
was Gustave who had taken possession of her. The stronger nature had
subjugated the weaker. So friendless, so utterly destitute--penniless,
helpless, in a strange land, it is little matter for wonder that Susan
Meynell accepted the love that was at once a refuge and a shelter.

"Let me tell you my wretched story," she pleaded, as she walked under the
chestnut-trees by her lover's side. "Let me tell you everything. And if,
when you have heard what an unhappy creature I am, you still wish to give
me your heart, your name, I will be obedient to your wish. I will not
speak to you of gratitude. If you could understand how debased an outcast
I seemed to myself last night when I went to the river, you would know
how I must feel your goodness. But you can never understand--you can
never know what you seem to me."

And then in a low voice, and with infinite shame and hesitation, she told
him her story.

"My father was a tradesman in the city of London," she said. "We were
very well off, and my home ought to have been a happy one. Ah, how happy
such a home would seem to me now! But I was idle and frivolous and
discontented in those days, and was dissatisfied with our life in the
city because it seemed dull and monotonous to me. When I look back now
and remember how poor a return I gave for the love that was given to
me--my mother's anxiety, my father's steady, unpretending kindness--I
feel how well I have deserved the sorrows that have come to me since
then."

She paused here, but Gustave did not interrupt her. His interest was too
profound for any conventional expression. He was listening to the story
of his future wife's youth. That there could be any passage in that
history which would hinder him from claiming this woman as his wife was a
possibility he did not for a moment contemplate. If there were shame
involved in the story, as Madame Meynell's manner led him to suppose
there must be, so much the worse was it for him, since the shame must be
his, as she was his.

"When my father and mother died, I went into Yorkshire to live with my
married sister. I cannot find words to tell you how kind they were to
me--my sister and her husband. I had a little money left me by my father,
and I spent the greater part of it on fine dress, and on foolish presents
to my sister and her children. I was happier in Yorkshire than I had been
in London; for I saw more people, and my life seemed gayer and brighter
than in the city. One day I saw a gentleman, the brother of a nobleman
who lived in the neighbourhood of my sister's house. We met by accident
in a field on my brother-in-law's farm, where the gentleman was shooting;
and after that he came to the house. He had seen my sister before, and
made some excuse for renewing his acquaintance. He came very often, and
before long he asked me to marry him; and I promised to be his wife, with
my sister's knowledge and consent. She loved me so dearly, and was so
proud of me out of her dear love, that she saw nothing wonderful in this
engagement, especially as Mr. Kingdon, the gentleman I am speaking of,
was a younger son, and by no means a rich man."

Again she stopped, and waited a little before continuing her story. Only
by a gentle pressure of the tremulous hand resting on his arm did Gustave
express his sympathy.

"I cannot tell you, how happy I was in those days--so bright, so brief. I
cannot tell you how I loved Montague Kingdon. When I look back to that
time of my life, it seems like a picture standing out against a
background of darkness, with some strange vivid light shining upon it. It
was arranged between Montague and my sister that we should be married as
soon as his brother, Lord Durnsville, had paid his debts. The payment of
the debts was an old promise of Lord Durnsville's, and an imprudent
marriage on his brother's part might have prevented the performance of
it. This is what Montague told my sister Charlotte. She begged him to
confide in her husband, my kind brother-in-law, but this he refused to
do. There came a day very soon after this when James Halliday, my
brother-in-law, was told about Montague Kingdon's visits to the farm. He
came home and found Mr. Kingdon with us; and then there was a dreadful
scene between them. James forbade Mr. Kingdon ever again to set foot in
his house. He scolded my sister, he warned me. It was all no use. I loved
Montague Kingdon as you say you love me--foolishly, recklessly. I could
not disbelieve or doubt him. When he told me of his plans for our
marriage, which was to be kept secret until Lord Durnsville had paid his
debts, I consented to leave Newhall with him to be married in London. If
he had asked me for my life, I must have given it to him. And how should
I disbelieve his promises when I had lived only amongst people who were
truth itself? He knew that I had friends in London, and it was arranged
between us that I was to be married from the house of one of them, who
had been my girlish companion, and who was now well married. I was to
write, telling her of my intended journey to town; and on the following
night I was to leave Newhall secretly with Montague Kingdon. I was to
make my peace with my sister and her husband after my marriage. How shall
I tell you the rest? From the first to last he deceived me. The carriage
that was, as I believed, to have taken us to London, carried us to Hull.
From Hull we crossed to Hamburg. From that time my story is all shame and
misery. I think my heart broke in the hour in which I discovered that I
had been cheated. I loved him, and clung to him long after I knew him to
be selfish and false and cruel. It seemed to be a part of my nature to
love him. My life was not the kind of life one reads of in novels. It was
no existence of splendour and luxury and riot, but one long struggle with
debt and difficulty. We lived abroad--not for our pleasure, but because
Mr. Kingdon could not venture to appear in England. His brother, Lord
Durnsville, had never promised to pay his debts. That was a falsehood
invented to deceive my sister. For seven long weary years I was his
slave, a true and faithful slave; his nurse in illness, his patient
drudge at all times. We had been wandering about France for two years,
when he brought me to Paris; and it was here he first began to neglect
me. O, if you could know the dreary days and nights I have spent at the
hotel on the other side of the river, where we lived, you would pity me."

"My dear love, my heart is all pity for you," said Gustave. "Do not tell
me any more. I can guess the end of the story. There came a day in which
neglect gave place to desertion."

"Yes; Mr. Kingdon left me one day without a warning word to break the
blow. I had been waiting and watching for him through two weary days and
nights, when there came a letter to tell me he was on his way to Vienna
with a West Indian gentleman and his daughter. He was to be married to
the daughter. It was his poverty, he told me, which compelled this step.
He advised me to go back to my friends in Yorkshire. To go back!--as if
he did not know that death would be easier to me. There was a small sum
of money in the letter, on which I have lived since that time. When you
first met me here, I had not long received that letter."

This was the end of her story. In the depth of her humiliation she dared
not lift her eyes to the face of her companion; but she felt his hand
clasp hers, and knew that he was still her friend. This was all she asked
of Providence.

To Gustave Lenoble the story had been unutterably painful. He had hoped
to hear a tragedy untarnished by shame, and the shame was very bitter to
him. This woman whom he loved so fondly was no spotless martyr, the
victim of inevitable fate, beautiful and sublime in her affliction. She
was only a weak vain, village beauty who had suffered herself to be lured
away from her peaceful home by the falsehoods of a commonplace scoundrel.

The story was common, the shame was common, but it seemed to M. Lenoble
that the woman by his side was his destiny; and then, prompt to the
rescue of offended pride, of outraged love--tortured to think that she,
so distant and pure a creature to him, should have been trampled in the
dust by another--came the white-winged angel Pity. By her weakness, by
her humiliation, by the memory of her suffering, Pity conjured him to
love her so much the more dearly.

"My darling," he said softly, "it is a very sad story, and you and I will
never speak of it again. We will bury the memory of Montague Kingdon in
the deepest grave that was ever dug for bitter remembrances; and we will
begin a new life together."

This was the end of M. Lenoble's wooing. He could not speak of his love
any more while the sound of Montague Kingdon's name had but lately died
away on Susan Meynell's lips. He had taken her to himself, with all her
sorrows and sins, in the hour in which he snatched her from death; and
between these two there was no need of passionate protestations or
sentimental rapture.

M. Lenoble speedily discovered that the law had made no provision for the
necessities of a chivalrous young student eager to unite himself with a
friendless foreign woman, who could not produce so much as one of the
thirty witnesses required to establish her identity. A very little
consideration showed Gustave that a marriage between him and Susan
Meynell in France was an impossibility. He explained this, and asked her
if she would trust him as she had trusted Montague Kingdon. In Jersey the
marriage might easily be solemnised. Would she go with him to Jersey, to
stay there so long as the English law required for the solemnization of
their union?

"Why should you take so much trouble about me?" said Susan, in her low
sad voice. "You are too good, too generous. I am not worth so much care
and thought from you."

"Does that mean that you will not trust me, Susan?"

"I would trust you with my life in a desert, thousands of miles from the
rest of mankind--with a happier life than mine. I have no feeling in my
heart but love for you, and faith in you."

After this the rest was easy. The lovers left the Pension Magnotte one
bright summer morning, and journeyed to Jersey, where, after a
fortnight's sojourn, the English Protestant church united them in the
bonds of matrimony.

Susan was a Protestant, Gustave a Catholic, but the difference of
religion divided them no more than the difference of country. They came
back to Paris directly after the marriage, and M. Lenoble took a very
modest lodging for himself and his wife in a narrow street near the
Pantheon--a fourth story, very humbly furnished. M. Lenoble had provided
for himself an opportunity of testing the truth of that adage which
declares that a purse large enough for one is also large enough for two.



CHAPTER IV.


A DECREE OF BANISHMENT.

After those stormy emotions which accompany the doing of a desperate
deed, there comes in the minds of men a dead calm. The still small voice
of Wisdom, unheard while Passion's tempest was raging, whispers grave
counsel or mild reproof; and Folly, who, seen athwart the storm-cloud,
sublime in the glare of the lightning, seemed inspiration, veils her face
in the clear, common light of day.

Let it not for a moment be supposed that with M. Lenoble time and
reflection brought repentance in their train. It was not so. The love
which he felt for his English wife was no capricious emotion; it was a
passion deep and strong as destiny. The worst that afterthought could
reveal to him was the fact that the step he had taken was a very
desperate one. Before him lay an awful necessity--the necessity of going
to Beaubocage to tell those who loved him how their air-built castles had
been shattered by this deed of his.

The letters from Cydalise--nay, indeed, more than one letter from his
mother, with whom letter-writing was an exceptional business--had of late
expressed much anxiety. In less than a month the marriage-contract would
be made ready for his signature. Every hour's delay was a new dishonour.
He told his wife that he must go home for a few days; and she prepared
his travelling gear, with a sweet dutiful care that seemed to him like
the ministration of an angel.

"My darling girl, can I ever repay you for the happiness you have brought
me!" he exclaimed, as he watched the slight girlish figure flitting about
the room, busy with the preparations for his journey.

And then he thought of Madelon Frehlter--commonplace, stiff, and
unimpressionable--the most conventional of school-girls, heavy in face,
in figure, in step, in mind even, as it had seemed to him, despite his
sister's praises.

He had been too generous to tell Susan of his engagement, of the
brilliant prospects he forfeited by his marriage, or the risk which he
ran of offending his father by that rash step. But to-night, when he
thought of Madelon's dulness and commonness, it seemed to him as if Susan
had in manner rescued him from a dreadful fate--as maidens were rescued
from sea-monsters in the days of Perseus and Heracles.

"Madelon is not unlike a whale," he thought. "They tell us that whales
are of a sagacious and amiable temper,--and Cydalise was always talking
of Madelon's good sense and amiablity. I am sure it is quite as easy to
believe in the unparalleled virtues of the whale as in the unparalleled
virtues of Madelon Frehlter."

His valise was packed, and he departed for Beaubocage, after a sad and
tender parting from his wife. The journey was a long one in those days,
when no express train had yet thundered across the winding Seine,
cleaving its iron way through the bosom of fertile Norman valleys. M.
Lenoble had ample time for reflection as he jogged along in the ponderous
diligence; and his heart grew more and more heavy as the lumbering
vehicle approached nearer to the town of Vevinord, whence he was to make
his way to the paternal mansion as best he might.

He walked to Beaubocage, attended by a peasant lad, who carried his
portmanteau. The country was very pleasant in the quiet summer
evening, but conscious guilt oppressed the heart and perplexity
disturbed the mind of M. Gustave Lenoble, and his spirits were in
nowise elevated by the walk.

Lights in the lower chambers gleamed dimly athwart the trim garden at
Beaubocage. One faint twinkling candle shone in a little pepper-castor
turret, his sister's room. The thought of their glad welcome smote his
heart. How could he shape the words that must inform them of their
disappointment? And then he thought of the gentle pensive wife in the
Parisian lodging, so grateful for his devotion, so tender and
submissive,--the wife he had rescued from death and eternal condemnation,
as it seemed to his pious Catholic mind. The thought of this dear one
gave him courage.

"I owe much to my parents," he thought to himself, "but not the privilege
to sell me for money. The marriage they want to bring about would be a
sordid barter of my heart and my honour."

In a few minutes after this he was standing in the little salon at
Beaubocage, with his mother and sister hanging about him and caressing
him, his father standing near, less demonstrative, but evidently well
pleased by this unexpected arrival of the son and heir.

"I heard thy voice in the hall," cried Cydalise, "and flew down from my
room to welcome thee. It seems to me that one can fly on these occasions.
And how thou art looking well, and how thou art handsome, and how I adore
thee!" cries the damsel, more ecstatic than an English sister on a like
occasion. "Dost thou know that we began to alarm ourselves about thee?
Thy letters became so infrequent, so cold. And all the while thou didst
plot this surprise for us. Ah, how it is sweet to see thee again!"

And then the mother took up the strain, and anon was spoken the dreaded
name of Madelon. She too would be glad--she too had been anxious. The
prodigal made no answer. He could not speak, his heart sank within him,
he grew cold and pale; to inflict pain on those who loved him was a
sharper pain than death.

"Gustave!" cried the mother, in sudden alarm, "thou growest pale--thou
art ill! Look then, Francois, thy son is ill!"

"No, mother, I am not ill," the young man replied gravely. He kissed his
mother, and put her gently away from him. In all the years of her
after-life she remembered that kiss, cold as death, for it was the
farewell kiss of her son.

"I wish to speak a few words with you alone, father," said Gustave.

The father was surprised, but in no manner alarmed by this request. He
led the way to his den, a small and dingy chamber, where there were some
dusty editions of the French classics, and where the master of Beaubocage
kept accounts and garden-seeds and horse-medicines.

When they were gone, the mother and sister sat by one of the open
windows, waiting for them. Without all was still. Distant lights
glimmered through the summer twilight, the lighted windows of Cotenoir.

"How pleased Madelon will be," said Cydalise, looking towards those
glimmering windows. She had really taught herself to believe that the
demoiselle Frehlter was a most estimable young person; but she would have
been glad to find more enthusiasm, more brightness and vivacity, in her
future sister-in-law.

The interview between the father and son seemed long to Madame Lenoble
and Cydalise. The two women were curious--nay, indeed, somewhat anxious.

"I fear he has made debts," said the mother, "and is telling thy father
of his follies. I know not how they are to be paid, unless with the dowry
of Madelon, and that would seem a dishonourable use of her money."

It was half an hour before any sound broke the stillness of that quiet
house. Twilight had thickened into night, when there came a banging of
doors and heavy footsteps in the hall. The door of the salon was
opened, and M. Lenoble came in alone. At the same moment the outer door
closed heavily.

M. Lenoble went straight to the open window and closed the Venetian
shutters. He went from thence to the second window, the shutters whereof
he fastened carefully, while the women stared at him wonderingly, for it
was not his habit to perform this office.

"I am shutting out a vagabond," he said, in a cold, cruel voice.

"Where is Gustave?" cried the mother, alarmed.

"He is gone."

"But he is coming back, is he not, directly?"

"Never while I live!" answered M. Lenoble. "He has married an English
adventuress, and is no longer any son of mine."




Book the Second.



DOWNHILL.



CHAPTER I.


THE FATE OF SUSAN LENOBLE.

Seven years after that miserable summer night at Beaubocage on which
Gustave Lenoble was disowned by his father, a man and woman, with a boy
five years of age, were starving in a garret amongst the housetops and
chimneys of Rouen. In the busy city these people lived lonely as in a
forest, and were securely hidden from the eyes of all who had ever
known them. The man--haggard, dying--cherished a pride that had grown
fiercer as the grip of poverty tightened upon him. The woman lived only
for her husband and her child.

The man was Gustave Lenoble. The world had gone ill with him since he
cast his destiny into the lap of the woman he loved. In all these years
no olive-bearing dove had spanned the gulf that yawned between the
prodigal and his father. The seigneur of Beaubocage had been marble. A
narrow-minded old man, living his narrow life, and nursing one idea with
fanatical devotion, was of all men the least likely to forgive. Vain had
been the tears and entreaties of mother and sister. The doors of that
joyless dwelling on the fertile flats beyond Vevinord were sealed against
the offender with a seal not to be broken, even had he come thither to
plead for pardon, which he did not.

"My father would have sold me as negro slaves are sold _la-bas_," he said,
on those rare occasions when he opened his old wounds, which were to the
last unhealed: "I am glad that I escaped the contemptible barter."

He was in very truth glad. Poverty and hardship seemed to him easier to
bear than the dreary prosperity of Cotenoir and a wife he could not have
loved. The distinguishing qualities of this man's mind were courage and
constancy. There are such noble souls born into the world, some to shine
with lustre supernal, many to burn and die in social depths, obscure as
ocean's deepest cavern.

In his love for the woman he had chosen Gustave Lenoble never wavered. He
worked for her, he endured for her, he hoped against hope for her sake;
and it was only when bodily strength failed that this nameless
foot-soldier began to droop and falter in life's bitter battle. Things
had gone ill with him. He had tried his fate as an advocate in Paris, in
Caen, in Rouen--but clients would not come. He had been a clerk, now in
one counting-house, now in another, and Susan and he had existed somehow
during the seven years of their married life.

They clung to each other with affection that seemed to grow with every
new sorrow; nor did love exhibit any inclination to spread his wings and
take flight from the window, though poverty came in every day at the
door, and sat by the hearth, a familiar companion and inevitable guest.

The mother and sister contrived to help this poor castaway with the
veriest scrapings of a miserly household. The old man, soured by his
great disappointment, grew sordid and covetous with increasing years, and
the lives of the women were hard and hopeless. By little cheats, and
petty contrivances, and pitiful falsifications of financial statements,
they managed to scrape together a few louis now and then for the
struggling exile; and to do this was the sole delight of their patient
lives. They contrived also to correspond secretly with Gustave, and were
informed of the birth of his son.

"Ah, if thou couldst see how beautiful he is," wrote the father, "this
child of pure and true love, thou wouldst no longer regret my breach of
faith with Madelon Frehlter. I knew not until now how like infant
children are to angels. I knew not how true to nature are the angels in
the pictures of Raffaelle and Murillo. Thou knowest the print of
Murillo's Assumption; the picture is in the Louvre. If thou canst
remember that picture, dear mother, thou hast but to recall the face of
one of the cherubim about the feet of our Lady, and thou hast the
portrait of my boy. He opens his eyes, and looks at me as I write. Ah!
that he and I and my Susan were with thee in the little salon at
Beaubocage--my sister, Susan, you, and I united round this darling's
cradle. He has been born in poverty, but his birth has made us very
happy."

The sentiment of this letter was no spurious or transient feeling. For
this child Gustave Lenoble evinced an unchanging fondness. It was indeed
no part of his nature to change. The little one was his comfort in
affliction, his joy during every brief interval of prosperity. When the
battle was well nigh fought, and he began to feel himself beaten. His
chief anxieties, his ever-returning fears, were for his wife and child.

To Susan the thought of parting from him was a despair too deep for
tears. She would have been something less than woman if she had not loved
her husband with more than common affection. She watched the change that
illness brought in the frank face, the stalwart figure; and little by
little the awful truth came home to her. The hour was at hand in which
she must lose him.

"If you could have rest, Gustave, better medical advice, more comforts,
you would soon be strong again. I am sure your father would not refuse to
forgive you now. Write to him, dearest. Go back to Beaubocage, and let
your mother and sister nurse you. I will stay here with the little one.
It shall be forgotten that you have a wife and child."

"No, dear one; I will not desert you, even for a day, to buy back my
father's love. I would rather be here with you than in the pleasantest
home without you. But we must face the future, Susan; we must be brave
and wise, for the little one's sake. You are not so strong that you can
afford to trust blindly in your power to protect him by-and-by. I have
written a letter to my father. He has proved himself a hard man to me,
cruel and obdurate beyond all my fears; but I know he is not altogether
heartless. When I am dead, you will take the letter in one hand, the
child in the other, and go to Beaubocage. I believe he will adopt the
boy, and that the little one will give him the comfort and happiness he
hoped from me. He must be very lonely; and I cannot doubt that his heart
will melt when he sees the child's face, and hears that he has no longer
a son. As for yourself, my poor girl, I see for you no hope except in the
old Yorkshire home, and the friends you fear to see again."

"I no longer fear them," said his wife, with unwonted energy, "I could
not go to them seven years ago; but I can go to them as your wife."

"Ah, thank God, the poor name is worth something for you."

"Yes, dear; and I will go back to them--to-morrow."

"To-morrow!"

"To-morrow, Gustave. I have been selfish and cruel to delay so long. The
old dread of seeing my sister's reproachful face has been strong enough
to hold me back, when a little courage might have enabled me to help you.
The burden has been all on you, and I have done nothing. O, what a wretch
I must have been to sit idly by and see you suffer, and make no effort to
help you!"

"But, my darling, you have not been idle. You have been the dearest and
most industrious of wives, and have helped me to bear my burden. You have
done more, dear--you have made my burden pleasant to me."

"I will try to lighten it, Gustave," cried Susan, with excitement. "O,
why, why did I never try before! My sister and her husband are well
off--rich perhaps. If they are still living, if no cruel changes have
come to pass at Newhall, they could help us with a little money. They
might even give us a home. I will start for England to-morrow."

"Nay, my dear, you are not strong enough to travel so far alone. It
seems, indeed, a happy thought this of your rich relations; but you must
not undertake such a journey. You might write."

"No, Gustave, I will trust to no letter; I will go. It will be no pain
for me to humble myself for your sake. I will go straight to my sister. I
know what a tender compassionate heart it is that I shall appeal to."

There was much discussion; but Susan was resolute. To scrape together the
money for the journey she made efforts that were heroic in a nature so
weak as hers. She went to the Monte de Piete with the last of her little
treasures, that one dear trinket to which she had clung even when hunger
was at the door--the gimmal or alliance ring that Gustave had placed upon
her finger before God's altar--the double symbolic circlet which bore on
one side her name, on the other her husband's. This dearest of all her
possessions she surrendered for a few francs, to make up the sum needful
for her journey.

What it cost her to do this, what it cost her to tear herself away
from her sick husband and her only child, who shall say? There are
pangs that cannot be counted, agonies that will come within no
calculation--the infinite of pain. She went. Two kind souls, a labourer
and his wife, lodgers in the same garret-story, promised to care for
and help the invalid and child. There is no desolation in which a child
will not find a friend.

The journey was long and fatiguing; the anguish of her poor aching heart
almost too much for endurance--a heart so heavy that even hope could
scarce flutter it. It was dull damp weather, though in the middle of
summer. The solitary traveller caught cold on the journey, and arrived in
London in a high fever. Ill, faint, and helpless, the great city seemed
to her unspeakably dismal--most stony of all stony-hearted mothers to
this wretched orphan. She could go no farther than the darksome city inn
where the coach from Southampton brought her. She had come _via_ Havre.
Here she sank prostrate, and had barely sufficient strength to write an
incoherent letter to her sister, Mrs. Halliday, of Newhall Farm, near
Huxter's Cross, Yorkshire.

The sister came as fast as the fastest coach on the great northern road
could carry her. There was infinite joy in that honest sisterly heart
over this one sinner's repentance. Fourteen years had gone by since the
young city-bred beauty had fled with that falsest of men, and most
hardened of profligates, Montague Kingdon; and tidings from Susan were
unlooked for and thrilling as a message from the grave.

Alas for the adverse fate of Susan Meynell! The false step of her youth
had set her for ever wrong upon life's highway. When kind Mrs. Halliday
came, Gustave Lenoble's wife was past her help; wandering in her mind; a
girl again, but newly run away from her peaceful home; and with no
thought save of remorse for her misdeeds.

The seven years of her married life seemed to have faded out of her mind.
She raved of Montague Kingdon's baseness, of her own folly, her vain
regret, her yearning for pardon; but of the dying husband in the garret
at Rouen she uttered no word. And so, with her weary head upon her
sister's breast, she passed away, her story untold, no wedding-ring on
her wasted finger to bear witness that she died an honest man's wife; no
letters or papers in her poor little trunk to throw light on the fourteen
years in which she had been a castaway.

Mrs. Halliday stayed in London to see the wanderer laid in the quiet city
churchyard where her family rested, and where for her was chosen an
obscure corner in which she might repose forgotten and unknown.

But not quite nameless. Mrs. Halliday could not leave the grave unmarked
by any record of the sister she had loved. The stone above the grave of
Gustave's wife bore her maiden name, and the comforting familiar text
about the one sinner who repenteth.



CHAPTER II.


FORGIVEN TOO LATE.

For a week of long days and longer nights there was no step sounded on
the stair, no opening or shutting of a door in the old dilapidated house
where he lay languishing on the brink of an open grave, that did not move
Gustave Lenoble with a sudden emotion of hope. But the footsteps came and
went, the doors were opened and shut again and again, and the traveller
so waited, so hoped for did not return.

The boy--the brave bright son, who seemed to inherit all that was noblest
and best in his father's nature--pined for his mother. The man endured a
martyrdom worse than the agony of Damiens, the slow tortures of La Barre.
What had befallen her? That she could desert him or his child was a
possibility that never shaped itself in his mind. _That_ drop of poison
was happily wanting in his cup; and the bitterness of death was sweet
compared to the scorpion-sting of such a supposition.

She did not return. Calamity in some shape had overtaken her--calamity
dire as death; for, with life and reason, she could not have failed to
send some token, some tidings, to those she loved. The sick man waited a
week after the day on which he had begun to expect her return. At the end
of that time he rose, with death in his face, and went out to look for
her--to look for her in Rouen; for her whom the instinct of his heart
told him was far away from that city--as far as death from life. He went
to the Cour de Messageries, and loitered and waited amidst the bustle of
arriving and departing diligences, with a half-imbecile hope that she
would alight from one of them. The travellers came and went, pushing and
hustling him in their selfish haste. When night came he went back to his
garret. All was quiet. The boy slept with the children of his good
neighbour, and was comforted by the warmth of that strange hearth.

Gustave lit his candle, a last remaining morsel.

"You will last my time, friend," he said, with a wan smile.

He seated himself at the little table, pushed aside the medicine-bottles,
searched for a stray sheet of letter-paper, and then began to write.

He wrote to his mother, telling her that death was at hand, and that the
time had come in which she must succour her son's orphan child. With this
he enclosed a letter to his father--that letter of which he had spoken to
his wife, and which had been written in the early days of his illness.
This packet he directed to Madame Lenoble, at Beaubocage. There was no
longer need for secrecy.

"When those letters are delivered I shall be past blame, and past
forgiveness," he thought.

In the morning he was dead.

The neighbours posted the letter. The neighbours comforted and protected
the child for two days; and then there came a lady, very sad, very quiet,
who wept bitterly in the stillness of that attic chamber where Gustave
Lenoble lay; and who afterwards, with a gentle calmness of manner that
was very sweet to see, made all necessary arrangements for a humble, but
not a mean or ignominious, funeral.

"He was my brother," she said to the good friends of the neighbouring
garret. "We did our best to help him, my mother and I; but we little
thought how bitterly he wanted help. The brave heart would not suffer us
to know that."

And then she thanked them with much tenderness for their charity to the
dead man; and with these good people she went on foot through the narrow
streets of the city to see her brother laid in his grave.

Until this was done the mournful lady, who was not yet thirty years of
age, and of a placid nun-like beauty, abandoned herself to no transport
of love for her orphan nephew; but when that last office of affection had
been performed, she took the little one on her knees, and folded him to
her breast, and gave him her heart, as she had given it long ago to his
father; for this gentle unselfish creature was one who must needs have
some shrine at which to offer her daily sacrifice of self. Already she
was beginning to think how the orphan was to be cared for and the widow
also, for whose return she looked daily.

For the return of Susan Lenoble Cydalise waited at Rouen several days
after the funeral. She had, happily, an old school-fellow comfortably
established in the city; and in the house of this old friend she found a
home. No one but her mother and this friend, whom she could trust, knew
of the business that had brought her from Beaubocage. In seven years the
father had never uttered his only son's name; in all the seven years that
name had never been spoken in his hearing.

When three weeks had gone by since the departure of Susan for England,
all hope of her return was abandoned by Mademoiselle Lenoble and the
neighbours who had known the absent woman.

"She had the stamp of death on her face when she went away," said the
labourer's wife, "as surely as it was on him that she left. I told her
she had no strength for the journey; but she would go: there was no
moving her from that. She had rich friends _la-bas_, who might help her
husband. It was for that she went. That thought seemed to give her a kind
of fever, and the strength of fever."

"And there has come no letter--nothing?"

"Nothing, mademoiselle."

On this Cydalise determined to return to Beaubocage. She could not well
leave the child longer on the hands of these friendly people, even by
paying for his maintenance, which she insisted on doing, though they
would fain have shared their humble _pot-a-feu_ and coarse loaf with
him unrecompensed. She determined on a desperate step. She would take
her brother's orphan child back with her, and leave the rest to
Providence--to the chance of some sudden awakening of natural affection
in a heart that had long languished in a kind of torpor that was almost
death.

The little fellow pined sadly for those dear familiar faces, those tender
soothing voices, that had vanished so suddenly from his life. But the
voice of his aunt was very sweet and tender, and had a tone that recalled
the father who was gone. With this kind aunt he left Rouen in the
lumbering old vehicle that plied daily betwixt that city and Vevinord.

"Thou canst call me Cydalise for a while, my little one," she said to
him; for she did not wish the child to proclaim the relationship between
them yet awhile.

Ah, what bitter tears the two women shed over the soft fair curls of that
little head, when they had the boy all to themselves in the turret
chamber at Beaubocage, on whose white walls the eyes of Cydalise had
opened almost every morning of her pure eventless life!

"Why dost thou cry so, madame?" the child asked of his grandmother, as
she held him in her arms, kissing and weeping over him; "and what have
they done with my father--and mamma too? She went away one day, but she
told me that she would come back, so quickly, ah, so quickly! and the
days passed, and they shut papa in his room, and would not let me go to
him; and mamma did not come, though I asked the Blessed Virgin to send
her back to me."

"Dear child, thy father and mother are in a brighter place than this hard
world, where they had so much sorrow," Madame Lenoble answered, gently.

"Yes, they were often sorry," murmured the boy thoughtfully. "It was
because of money; but then, when there was no money, mamma cried and
kissed me, and kissed papa, and the good papa kissed us both, and somehow
it always ended in happiness."

Francois Lenoble was, happily, absent on this day of tribulation. The
women took their fill of sorrow, but it was sorrow mingled with a strange
bitter sweetness that was almost joy. The seigneur of Beaubocage had gone
to dine, as he still often did, with his old friend Baron Frehlter; for
the breach of faith which had caused a lifelong disunion of father and
son had not divided the two proprietors. Nay, indeed the Baron had been
generous enough to plead the cause of the castaway.

"A man cannot dispose at will of his affections, my friend," he urged;
"and it was more generous in your son to break faith with my daughter
before marriage than after."

Mademoiselle Frehlter had not broken her heart on account of her lover's
falsehood. She had been sufficiently indignant on the occasion, and had
been more impatient of her mother's pet priest and pet poodle during the
brief period in which she wore the willow. She had recovered her good
humour, however, on being wooed by a young subaltern in a cavalry
regiment stationed at Vevinord, the offshoot of a grander house than that
of Lenoble, and whose good looks and good lineage had ultimately
prevailed with the Baron. That gentleman had by no means too good an
opinion of the son-in-law thus forced upon him; but peace was the highest
good (with unlimited tobacco) to which his Germanic soul aspired; and for
the sake of peace in the present he was content to hazard his daughter's
happiness in the future.

"_That_ is very brilliant," he said of M. Paul de Nerague, the young
lieutenant of light cavalry; "but it is not solid, like Gustave. Your son
is honest, candid--a brave heart. It is for that I would have given him
Madelon. But it is Providence which disposes of us, as our good father
St. Velours tells us often; and one must be content. Young Nerague
pleases my daughter, and I must swallow him, though for me he smells too
strong of the barracks: _ca flaire la caserne, mon ami_."

That odour of the barracks which distinguished the sub-lieutenant Paul de
Nerague became more odious after his marriage with the virtuous Madelon,
when he was established--_niche_, as he himself called it--in very
comfortable, though somewhat gruesome, apartments at Cotenoir. His
riotous deportment, his hospitable disposition (as displayed in the
frequent entertainment of his brothers-in-arms at the expense of his
father-in-law), his Don Juan-like demeanour in relation to the housemaids
and kitchen-wenches of the chateau--innocent enough in the main, but on
that account so much the more audacious--struck terror to the hearts of
Madame Frehlter and her daughter; and the elder lady was much gratified
by that thirst for foreign territory which carried the greater part of
the French army and the regiment of the vivacious Paul to the distant
wilds of Algeria.

The virtuous Madelon was too stolid to weep for her husband. But even her
stolidity was not proof against the fiery influence of jealousy, and,
waking and sleeping, her visions were of veiled damsels of Orient
assailing the too inflammable heart of Lieutenant de Nerague.

The young officer was yet absent at that period in which Cydalise
returned from Rouen with her brother's child.

The little boy was sleeping peacefully in a cot beside his aunt's bed (it
had been his father's cot thirty years ago) when Francois Lenoble
returned from Cotenoir that night.

It was not till the next day that he saw the child. He had been making
his usual morning's round in the gardens and orchards, when he came into
the salon, and saw the little boy seated near his grandmother's chair,
playing with some dominoes. Something--perhaps the likeness to his dead
son--the boy's black clothes, for Cydalise had contrived to dress him in
decent mourning--struck suddenly on the old man's heart. "Who is that
boy?" he asked, with a strange earnestness.

"Your son Gustave's only child," answered his wife gently,--"his
orphan child."

Francois Lenoble looked at her, and from her to the boy; tried to speak,
but could not; beckoned the child, and then dropped heavily into a chair
and sobbed aloud. Until this moment no one had ever seen him shed a tear
for the son he had put away from his home--and, as it had seemed, from
his heart. Not by one sigh, not by one mournful utterance of the familiar
name, had he betrayed the depth of that wound which he had endured,
silently, obstinately, in all these years.

They suffered him to bemoan his dead son unhindered by stereotyped
consolations. The two women stood by, and pitied him in silence. The
little boy stared wonderingly, and at last crept up to the
sorrow-stricken father. "Why do you cry, poor old man?" he asked. "You
have not lost your papa and mamma, as I have lost mine, have you? I want
to stay with you and be your little boy, please. She told me to say
that," he added, pointing to Cydalise.--"And I have said it right,
haven't I?" he asked of the same lady.--"I think I shall love you,
because you are like my papa, only older and uglier," the little one
concluded, with angelic candour.

The seigneur of Beaubocage dried his tears with an effort.
Beaubocage--Cotenoir. Ah, me! what empty sounds those two once magic
names seemed to him now that his son's life had been sacrificed to so
paltry an ambition, so sordid a passion, so vile and grovelling a desire!
He took the boy on his knee, and kissed him tenderly. His thoughts
bridged over a chasm of five-and-twenty years as his lips pressed
that fair young brow; and it was his own son--the son whom he had
disowned--whose soft hair was mingling itself now with the grey bristles
on his rugged chin.

"My child," he murmured softly, "the fear is that I shall love thee too
well, and be to thee as much too weakly indulgent as I was wickedly stern
to thy father. Anything is easier to humanity than justice."

This was said to himself rather than to the boy.

"Tell me thy name, little one," he asked presently, after a few moments'
pensive meditation.

"I have two names, monsieur."

"Thou must call me grandfather. And the two names?"

"Francois Gustave."

"I shall call thee Gustave."

"But papa always called me Francois, and mamma said it was the name of a
cruel man; but papa said he loved the name--"

"Ah, no more, little one!" cried the lord of Beaubocage suddenly;
"thou knowest not with what dagger-thrusts thou dost pierce this poor
old heart."



CHAPTER III.


GUSTAVE THE SECOND.

The little Gustave grew and flourished. Such love was lavished on him as
rarely falls to the lot of children, though the spring of many lives may
be rich in love's pure white blossom. The existence of this child seemed
all happiness. He brought hope, and a sense of atonement, and all sweet
things, to the quiet family at Beaubocage; and as he grew from childhood
to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood, it seemed to that household as if
the first Gustave of their love had never been taken from them. That
Orphic fable of Zagreus repeats itself in many households. For the one
bright creature lost another is given; and then comes a time when it is
almost difficult to separate the image of the missing one from the dear
substitute who so nearly fills his place.

Francois Lenoble and his wife enjoyed a green old age, and the affection
of their grandson made the cup of life sweet for them to the very dregs.
There are, happily, some natures which indulgence cannot injure; some
luxuriant flowers which attain strength as well as beauty under the
influence of these tropical heats of affection. Gustave the second
possessed all the noble qualities of Gustave the first. Frank, generous,
brave, constant, affectionate, light-hearted, he shone on the failing
eyes of his kindred radiant as a young Apollo, brave as a mortal
Hercules.

Those things which the ignorant heart has at some time so passionately
desired are apt to be granted when the desire has grown somewhat cold and
dead. Thus it was with the ambition of Francois Lenoble. He lived to see
the lands of Cotenoir and Beaubocage united in the person of his
grandson, who married Clarice, the only surviving child of M. and Madame
de Nerague. Two sons and a daughter had been born at Cotenoir; but the
sons withered and faded in early boyhood, and even the daughter, though
considered a flourishing plant in that poor garden of weakling blossoms,
was but a fragile creature.

The old people at Beaubocage survived the seigneur and chatelaine of
Cotenoir by some years, and survived also the fiery lieutenant, who fell
in Algeria without having attained his captaincy, or added any military
renown to the good old name of de Nerague in his own magnificent person.

Francois saw his grandson established at Cotenoir before he died. He
expired with his hand in that of Gustave, whom, in the half-consciousness
of that last hour, he mistook for the son he had disowned.

"What door was that that shut?" he asked, in an eager whisper. "Who said
I turned my son out of doors--my only son? It's false! I couldn't have
done it! Hark! there's the door shutting again! It sounds like the door
of a tomb."

After this he dozed a little, and woke with a smile on his face.

"I have been dreaming of thy father, Gustave," he said calmly. "I thought
that I saw him with a light shining in his face, and that he kissed and
forgave me."

This was the end. The faithful wife was not slow to follow her husband to
the grave, and there was now only a placid maiden lady at Beaubocage,
Mademoiselle Cydalise Lenoble, whom everyone within ten leagues of
Vevinord knew and loved,--a lay abbess, a Sister of Mercy in all save the
robes; a tender creature, who lived only to do good.

Ten years passed, and M. Lenoble of Cotenoir was a widower with two
fair young daughters at a convent school on the outskirts of Vevinord,
and a boisterous son at an academy in Rouen. Gustave had never followed
any profession; the lands of Beaubocage secured him a competence,
so prudently had the small estate been managed by the kindred who
adored him. His marriage had given him fortune. He had no need of
trade or profession. His life was laid out for him like a prim Dutch
flower-garden. He was to live at Cotenoir, and look after his estate, and
smoke his pipe, as Baron Frehlter had done, and be a good husband to his
wife, a kind father to his children. This latter part of his duty came
natural to M. Lenoble. It was not in him to be otherwise than kind to
women and children. His invalid wife praised him as a model of marital
perfection. It was Gustave who wheeled her sofa from one room to another,
Gustave who prepared her medicines, Gustave whose careful hands adjusted
curtains and _portieres_. The poor woman lived and died believing herself
the happiest of wives. She mistook kindness for love.

M. Lenoble bore his wife's demise with Christian calmness. He was sorry
that the fragile creature should have been taken so early from the
pleasant home that was hers by right, but of passionate grief, or dreary
sense of irreparable loss, there was none in that manly heart. There were
times when the widower reproached himself for this want of feeling; but
in very truth Madame Lenoble, _jeune_, had lived and died a nonentity.
Her departure left no empty place; even her children scarcely missed her.
The father was all-in-all.

Gustave had married at twenty years of age. He was twenty-nine when his
wife died. His eldest daughter, Clarice, eight; his second, Madelon,
seven; the boy, a spoilt young dog of five, not yet despatched to the
great school at Rouen.

But in '65 Mademoiselle Clarice was fifteen years of age, and a very
charming performer on the pianoforte, as the good nuns at the Convent of
the Sacred Heart, at Vevinord, told the father. Mademoiselle Madelon was
looking forward to her fourteenth anniversary, and she, too, was a very
pretty pianist, and altogether a young prodigy of learning and goodness,
as the nuns told the master of Cotenoir. The demoiselles of Cotenoir
stood high in the estimation of pupils and mistress; they were a kind of
noblesse; and the simple-minded superioress spoke of these young persons
with some pride when she described her establishment to a stranger. It
was a very comfortable little colony, a small world enclosed by high
walls. The good mothers who taught and cherished the children were for
the greater part ladies of superior and even exalted station; and there
was a gentleness, a tenderness, in their care for these young lambs not
always to be insured by the payment of an annual stipend. It must be
confessed that the young lambs were apt to be troublesome, and required a
good deal of watching. To the eye of the philosopher that convent school
would have afforded scope for curious study; for it is singular to
discover what exceptional vices the youthful mind can develop from its
inner consciousness, in homes as pure as this. There were black sheep
even in the convent of the Sacre Coeur, damsels marked with a sign that
meant "dangerous."

Happily for Gustave Lenoble, his daughters were amongst the brightest and
the purest of those girl-graduates. They gave him no trouble, except when
they asked him for a home.

"It seems so dull and dreary at Cotenoir, papa," they said, "though you
are always so kind. It doesn't seem like home. Beaubocage is more
home-like. At Cotenoir, when you are out, there is no one to talk to; and
we have no little parties, no excursions into the country, none of those
pleasures which the other girls tell us they have during the holidays."

This was the gist of the lamentations of Mademoiselles Clarice and
Madelon; and the father knew not how to supply the mysterious something
which was wanting to make Cotenoir a pleasant home. The girls could
complain of no restraint, or pine for no indulgence, since their father
was always prompt to gratify every whim. But there was some element of
happiness wanting, nevertheless; and M. Lenoble perceived that it was so.
The life at Cotenoir was desultory, straggling; an existence of perpetual
dawdling; a life of shreds and patches, half-formed resolutions, projects
begun and broken off in the middle. The good genius, the household angel,
order, was wanting in that mansion. There was waste, dirt, destruction of
all kinds, in the rambling old chateau; old servants, too weak or too
lazy to work; old tradesmen, presuming on old-established habits of
imposition, unquestioned so long as to have become a right--for the
feudal system of fine and forfeiture has only changed hands. The power
still flourishes, only it is the villein who takes tithe of his lord.

The servants at Cotenoir had gone their own ways with but little
interference since the death of Madame de Nerague, which occurred two
years before that of her daughter, Clarice Lenoble. Poor invalid Clarice
had been quite unable to superintend her household; and since her death
Mademoiselle Cydalise had been too feeble of health to assume any
authority in her nephew's establishment, even if the household of
Cotenoir would have submitted to interference from Beaubocage, which in
all likelihood they would not.

Thus it happened that things had taken their own course at the chateau,
and the course had been somewhat erratic. There is nothing so costly as
muddle, and Gustave Lenoble had of late begun to perceive that he had the
maximum of expense with the minimum of comfort. Meanwhile the kind old
aunt at Beaubocage gave her nieces much valuable advice against the time
when they should be old enough to assume the management of their father's
house. The sweet unselfish lady of Beaubocage had indeed undergone hard
experience in the acquirement of the domestic art. Heaven and her own
memory alone recorded those scrapings and pinchings and nice calculations
of morsels by which she had contrived to save a few pounds for her
outcast brother. Such sordid economics show but poorly on earth; but it
is probable that in the mass of documentary evidence which goes before
the Great Judge, Mademoiselle Lenoble's account-book will be placed on
the right side.




Book the Third.



THE HORATIAD.



CHAPTER I.


CHIEFLY RETROSPECTIVE.

Captain Paget went his way to Rouen in a placid but not an exulting mood,
after parting with his young friend Valentine Hawkehurst at the London
Bridge terminus of the Brighton line. He was setting out upon an
adventure wild and impracticable as the quest of Jason and his Argonauts;
and this gallant captain was a carpet-knight, sufficiently adventurous
and audacious in the diplomatic crusades of society, but in nowise eager
to hazard his life on tented field and in thick press of war. If the
Fates had allowed the accomplished Horatio to choose his own destiny, he
would have elected to live in the immediate neighbourhood of St. James's
Street, from the first day to the last of the London season, and to dine
artistically and discreetly at one of those older and more exclusive
clubs dear and familiar to him from the bright years of his youth. He was
by nature a _flaneur_, a gossip, a lover of expensive luxuries and
frivolous pleasures. He was not only incapable of a high thought himself,
but was an unbeliever in the possibility of high thoughts or noble
principles in the world he lived in. He measured the universe by that
narrow scrap of tape which was the span of his own littleness. To him
Caesar was an imperial brigand, Cicero a hypocritical agitator. To him
all great warriors were greedy time-servers like John Churchill; all
statesmen plausible placemen; all reformers self-seeking pretenders. Nor
did Captain Paget wish that it should be otherwise. In his ideal
republic, unselfishness and earnestness would have rendered a man rather
a nuisance than otherwise. With the vices of his fellow-men the
diplomatic Horatio was fully competent to deal; but some of his most
subtle combinations on the chess-board of life would have been checkmated
by an unexpected encounter with intractable virtue.

The necessity of living was the paramount consideration to which this
gentleman had given his mind from the time when he found himself a
popular subaltern in a crack regiment, admired for his easy manners and
good looks, respected by meaner men for his good blood, and rich in
everything except that vulgar dross without which the life of West-end
London is so hollow a delusion, so bitter a comedy of mean shifts and
lying devices.

That freebooter of civilization, the man who lives by his wits, is
subject to strange fluctuations from prosperity to adversity. He is the
miner or gold-digger of civilized life; and as there are times when his
pickaxe strikes suddenly on a rich lode, so there are dreary intervals in
which his spade turns up nothing but valueless clay, and the end of each
day's work leaves him with no better evidence of his wasted labour than
the aching limbs which he drags at nightfall to his dismal shanty.

For some months Captain Paget had found Philip Sheldon a very useful
acquaintance. The stockbroker had been the secret inaugurator of two or
three joint-stock companies, though figuring to the outer world only as
director; and in the getting-up of these companies Horatio had been a
useful instrument, and had received liberal payment for his labours.
Unhappily, so serene an occupation as promoting cannot go on for ever; or
rather, cannot remain for ever in the same hands. The human mind is
naturally imitative, and the plagiarisms of commerce are infinitely more
audacious than the small larcenies of literature. The joint-stock company
market became day by day more crowded. No sooner did Philip Sheldon float
the Non-destructive Laundry Company, the admirable organization of which
would offer a guarantee against the use of chloride of lime and other
destructive agencies in the wash-tub, than a rival power launched a
colourable imitation thereof, in the Union-is-Strength Domestic Lavatory
Company, with a professor of chemistry specially retained as inspector of
wash-tubs. Thus it was that, after the profitable ripening of three such
schemes, Mr. Sheldon deemed it advisable to retire from the field, and
await a fitter time for the further exercise of his commercial genius.

Captain Paget's relations with the stockbroker did not, however,
terminate with the cessation of his labours as secretary,
jack-of-all-trades, and promoter. Having found him, so far, clever, and
to all appearance trustworthy--and this was an important point, for no
man so much needs honourable service as a rogue--Philip Sheldon
determined upon confiding to Horatio the conduct of a more delicate
business than anything purely commercial. After that discovery of the
telegraphic message sent by his brother George to Valentine Hawkehurst,
and the further discovery of the advertisement relating to the unclaimed
wealth of the lately deceased John Haygarth, Mr. Sheldon lost no time in
organizing his plans for his own aggrandizement at the expense of his
brother.

"George refused to let me in for a share of chances when I showed myself
willing to help him," thought Philip. "He may discover by-and-by that I
have contrived to let myself into his secrets; and that he might have
played a better game by consenting to a partnership."

A life devoted to his own interests, and a consistent habit of
selfishness, had rendered Mr. Sheldon, of the Lawn, Bayswater, and Stags
Court, City, very quick of apprehension in all matters connected,
immediately or remotely, with the making of money. The broken sentences
of the telegram betrayed by the blotting-pad told him a great deal. They
told him that there was a certain Goodge, in the town of Ullerton, who
possessed letters so valuable to George Sheldon, as to be bought by his
agent Valentine Hawkehurst. Letters for which Sheldon was willing to give
money must needs be of considerable importance, since money was a very
scarce commodity with that hunter of unconscious heirs-at-law. Again, a
transaction which required the use of so expensive a medium as the
electric telegraph rather than the penny post, might be fairly supposed a
transaction of some moment. The letters in question might relate to some
other estate than that of John Haygarth, for it was quite possible that
the schemer of Gray's Inn had other irons in the fire. But this was a
question of no moment to Philip Sheldon.

If the letters--or the information contained therein--were likely to be
useful to George, they might be useful to him. If George found it worth
his while to employ an agent at Ullerton, why should not he (Philip) have
his agent in the same town? The pecuniary risk, which might be a serious
affair to George, was child's play for Philip, who had always plenty of
money, or, at any rate, the command of money. The whole business of
heir-at-law hunting seemed to the stockbroker a very vague and shadowy
piece of work, as compared to the kind of speculation that was familiar
to him; but he knew that men had made money in such a manner, and any
business by which money could be made, was interesting to him. Beyond
this, the notion of cutting the ground from under his brother's feet had
a certain attraction for him. George's manner to him had been somewhat
offensive to him on more than one occasion since--well, since Tom
Halliday's death. Mr. Sheldon had borne that offensiveness in mind, with
the determination to "take it out of" his brother on the earliest
opportunity.

It seemed as if the opportunity had arrived, and Philip was not one of
those men who wait shivering on the shore when Fortune's tide is at the
flood. Mr. Sheldon launched his bark upon the rising waters, and within
two hours of his discovery in the telegraph-office was closeted with
Horatio Paget in the little parlour in Omega Street, making arrangements
for the Captain's journey to Ullerton.

That Horatio was the right man for the work he wanted done, Mr. Sheldon
had been quick to perceive.

"He knows Hawkehurst, and will be able to reckon up any manoeuvres of his
better than a stranger; and is, I think, altogether as deep an old
gentleman as one could hope to meet with, barring _the_ traditional
gentleman who did odd jobs for Dr. Faustus," the stockbroker said to
himself, as his hansom sped along Park Lane on its way to Chelsea. The
eagerness with which Captain Paget took up the idea of this business was
very agreeable to his patron.

"This is an affair in which success hinges on time," said Mr. Sheldon;
"so, if you mean to go in for the business, you must start for Ullerton
by the two o'clock express. You'll have just time to throw your razors
and a clean shirt into a carpet-bag while I talk to you. I've got a cab
outside, and a good one, that will take you to Euston Square in half an
hour."

The Captain showed himself prompt in action. His bedchamber was a small
apartment at the back of the parlour, and here he packed his bag while
conversing with his employer.

"If you get upon the ground in time, you may obtain a look at the letters
before they are handed over to Hawkehurst, or you may outbid him for
them," said Mr. Sheldon; "but remember, whatever you do must be so done
as to keep Hawkehurst and George completely in the dark as to our
proceedings. If once they find out we are on their track, our chances
will be gone, for they have got the information and we haven't; and it's
only by following close in their footsteps we can hope to do anything."

"That is understood," replied the Captain, stooping over his bag; "I
shall keep myself as close as possible, you may depend upon it. And it
shan't be my fault if Valentine sees me or hears of me. I shall want
money, by the bye; for one can't stir a step in this sort of affair
without ready cash."

"I am quite aware of that. I stopped at the West-end branch of the Unitas
and cashed a cheque for forty pounds. You can do a good deal in the way
of bribery for forty pounds, in such a place as Ullerton. What you have
to do is to keep your eye on Hawkehurst, and follow up every channel of
information that he opens for you. He has the clue to the labyrinth,
remember, the reel of cotton, or whatever it was, that the young woman
gave that Roman fellow. All you have to do is to get hold of it, and
follow your leader." continued Philip, with his watch in his hand. "This
business of the letters will be sharp work, for the chances are against
us here, as it's more than likely the papers will have changed hands
before you can get to Ullerton. But if you can't buy the letters, you may
buy the information contained in them, and that is the next best thing.
Your first move will be to ferret out this man Goodge. Everybody knows
everybody else in such a place as Ullerton, large and busy as the town
is, and you won't find that difficult. When you see Goodge, you'll know
how to deal with him. The mode and manner of your dealing I leave to
yourself. You are a man of the world, and will know how to manipulate the
gentleman, whoever he may be. And now lock your bag and cut downstairs as
fast as you can. Time's up. Here's your money--three tens, two fives.
Good day."



CHAPTER II.


EPISTOLARY.

_From Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_.

Royal Hotel, Ullerton, Oct. 7, 186--.

My dear sir,--I arrived here last evening just in time to run against
Hawkehurst on the platform, which was rather a provoking encounter at the
outset. He went further north by the same train that brought me from
London. This train only stops at three places after Ullerton--Slowport,
Black Harbour, and Manchester; and I shall take pains to discover which
of these towns was Hawkehurst's destination. There was one satisfaction
in seeing his departure by this train, inasmuch as it assured me that I
had the ground clear for my own operations.

I had no difficulty in discovering the whereabouts of Goodge--_the_
Goodge we want--and at eight o'clock was comfortably seated in that
gentleman's parlour, talking over the affair of the letters. Tolerably
quick work, I think you will allow, my dear sir, for a man whose years
have fallen into the sere and yellow leaf.

Mr. Goodge is a Methodist parson--a class of person I have always
detested. I found him peculiarly amenable to monetary influence. I need
scarcely tell you that I was careful to conceal my identity from this
person. I made so bold as to borrow the cognomen of an old-established
firm of solicitors in the Fields, and took a somewhat high tone
throughout the interview. I informed Mr. Goodge that the young man who
had called on him with reference to certain letters connected with the
affairs of the Haygarth family--and I perceived from Mr. Goodge's face
that we were on the right track--was a person of disreputable character,
engaged in an underhand transaction calculated to injure a respected
client of our house. I saw that the words "house" and "our" were
talismanic in their effect upon the Methodist parson. You see, my dear
sir, there is no one can manage this sort of thing so well as a
gentleman. It comes natural to him. Your vulgar diplomatist seldom knows
how to begin, and never knows when to stop. Here I had this low-bred
Methodist fellow impressed by the idea of my individual and collective
importance after five minutes' conversation. "But this comes too near the
praising of myself; therefore hear other things," as the bard observes.

A very little further conversation rendered Mr. Goodge malleable. I found
that Hawkehurst had approached him in the character of your brother's
articled clerk, but under his own proper name. This is one point gained,
since it assures me that Valentine is not skulking here under a feigned
name; and will enable me to shape my future inquiries about him
accordingly. I also ascertained Hawkehurst's whereabouts when in
Ullerton. He stays at a low commercial house called the Black Swan. It
appears that the man Goodge possesses a packet of letters written by a
certain Mrs. Rebecca Haygarth, wife of one Matthew Haygarth. In what
relationship this Matthew may stand to the intestate is to be discovered.
It is evident he is an important link in the chain, or your brother would
not want the letters. I need not trouble you with our conversation in
detail. In gross it amounted to this: Mr. Goodge had pledged himself to
hand over Mrs. Haygarth's letters, forty or so in number, to Hawkehurst
in consideration of twenty pounds. They would have been already in
Hawkehurst's possession, if Mr. Goodge had not objected to part with them
except for ready money. In consideration of a payment of twenty pounds
from me, he was willing to let me read all the letters, and select any
ten I pleased to take. This bargain was not arrived at without
considerable discussion, but it certainly struck me as a good one.

I opened the packet of papers then and there, and sat up until six
o'clock the next morning, reading Mrs. Haygarth's letters in Mr. Goodge's
parlour. Very fatiguing occupation for a man of my years. Mr. Goodge's
hospitality began and ended in a cup of coffee. Such coffee! and I
remember the mocha I used to get at Arthur's thirty years ago,--a
Promethean beverage, that illumined the dullest smoking-room bore with a
flash of wit or a glimmer of wisdom.

I enclose the ten letters which I have selected. They appear to me to
tell the history of Mrs. Haygarth and her husband pretty plainly; but
there is evidently something mysterious lurking behind the commonplace
existence of the husband. That is a matter for future consideration. All
I have to do in the present is to keep you as well informed as your
brother. It may strike you that the letters I forward herewith, which are
certainly the cream of the correspondence, and the notes I have made from
the remaining letters, are scarcely worth the money paid for them. In
reply to such an objection, I can only say that you get more for _your_
money than your brother George will get for his.

The hotel at which I have taken up my quarters is but a few paces from
the commoner establishment where Hawkehurst is stopping. He is to call on
Goodge for the letters to-day; so his excursion will be of brief
duration. I find that the name of Haygarth is not unknown in this town,
as there are a family of Judsons, some of whom call themselves Haygarth
Judson. I intend inviting my landlord--a very superior person for his
station--to discuss a bottle of wine with me after my chop this evening,
and hope to obtain some information from him. In the meantime I shall
keep myself close. It is of vital consequence that I should remain unseen
by Hawkehurst. I do not believe he saw me on the platform last night,
though we were as close to each other as we well could be.

Let me know what you think of the letters, and believe me to be, my
dear sir, very faithfully yours,

H. N. C. PAGET.

PHILIP SHELDON, Esq., &c. &c. &c.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_.

Bayswater, Oct. 8,186-.

DEAR PAGET,--The letters are mysterious, and I don't see my way to
getting much good out of them, but heartily approve your management of
matters, and give you _carte blanche_ to proceed, according to your own
lights.

Yours truly, P.S.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_.

Royal Hotel, Oct. 9, 186-.

MY DEAR SIR,--The cultivation of my landlord has been very profitable.
The house is the oldest in the town, and the business has descended in a
direct line from father to son since the time of George the Second. This
man's grandfather entertained the officers of William Duke of Cumberland,
honoured by his contemporaries with the soubriquet of Billy the Butcher,
during the "forty-five." I had to listen to and applaud a good many
stories about Billy the Butcher before I could lead my landlord round to
the subject of the Haygarths. But he was not more prosy than many men I
have met at dinner-parties in the days when the highest circles in the
land were open to your humble servant.

The Haygarth family, of which the intestate John Haygarth was the last
male descendant, were for a long period inhabitants of this town, and
obtained their wealth by trading as grocers and general dealers in a shop
not three hundred yards from the room in which I write. The building is
still standing, and a curious, old-fashioned-looking place it is. The
last of the Haygarths who carried on business therein was one Jonathan,
whose son Matthew was the father of that Reverend John Haygarth, lately
deceased, intestate. You will thus perceive that the letters I sent you
are of much importance, as they relate solely to this Matthew, father of
our intestate.

My next inquiries related to the Judson family, who are, it appears,
descended from the issue of a certain Ruth Haygarth's marriage with one
Peter Judson. This Ruth Haygarth was the only sister of the Matthew
alluded to in the letters, and therefore was aunt of the intestate. It
would herefrom appear that in this Judson family we must naturally look
for the rightful claimant to the fortune of the deceased John Haygarth.
Possessed of this conviction, I proceeded to interrogate my landlord very
cautiously as to the status, &c. of the Judson family, and amongst other
questions, asked him with a complete assumption of indifference, whether
he had ever heard that the Judsons expected to inherit property from any
branch of the Haygarth family.

This careless interrogatory produced information of, as I imagine, a very
valuable character. A certain Theodore Judson, attorney of this town,
calls himself heir-at-law to the Haygarth estates; but before he can
establish his claim, this Theodore must produce evidence of the demise,
without heirs, of one Peter Judson, eldest surviving grandson of Ruth
Haygarth's eldest son, a scamp and ne'er-do-well--if living, supposed to
be somewhere in India, where he went, as supercargo to a merchant vessel
about, the year '41--who stands prior to Theodore Judson in the
succession. I conclude that the said Theodore, who, as a lawyer, is
likely to do things _secundum artem_, is doing his _possible_ to obtain
the necessary evidence; but in the meantime he is at a dead lock, and the
whole affair appears to be in a charming condition for speculative
interference. I opine, therefore, that your brother really has hit upon a
good thing this time; and my only wonder is, that instead of allowing his
agent, Hawkehurst, to waste his time hunting up old letters of Matthew
Haygarth's (to all appearance valueless as documentary evidence), he does
not send Valentine to India to hunt for Peter Judson, who, if living, is
the rightful heir to the intestate's fortune, and who, as a reckless
extravagant fellow, would be likely to make very liberal terms with any
one who offered to procure him a large lump of money.

I confess that I am quite at a loss to understand why your brother George
does not take this very obvious course, and why Valentine potters about
in this neighbourhood, when a gold mine is waiting to be _exploite_ on
the other side.

I shall be very glad to have your views upon this subject, for at the
present moment I am fain to acknowledge that I do not see my way to
taking any further steps in this business, unless by commencing a search
for the missing Peter.

I am, my dear Sir, very truly yours,

H. N. C. PAGET.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_.

Bayswater, Oct. 10, 186--.

DEAR PAGET,--When so old a stager as G. S. does not take the obvious
course, the inference is that there is a better course to be taken--_not_
obvious to the uninitiated.

You have done very well so far, but the information you have obtained
from your landlord is only such information as any one else may obtain
from the current gossip of Ullerton. You haven't yet got to the _dessous
des cartes_. Remember what I told you in London. G. S. _has_ the clue to
this labyrinth; and what you have to do is to hold on to the coat-tails
(in a figurative sense) of his agent, V. H.

Don't put your trust in prosy old landlords, but continue to set a watch
upon that young man, and follow up his trail as you did in the matter of
the letters.

If the Peter Judson who went to India three-and-twenty years ago were the
right man to follow, G.S. would scarcely give twenty pounds for the
letters of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth. It appears to me that G. must be
looking for an heir on the Haygarth side of the house; and if so, rely
upon it he has his reasons. Don't bewilder yourself by trying to
theorize, but get to the bottom of G.'s theory.

Yours truly, P. S.

_Horatio Paget to Philip Sheldon_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Royal Hotel, Oct. 12, 186.--

MY DEAR SIR,--Considering the advice contained in your last very good, I
lost no time in acting upon it. I need hardly tell you, that to employ
the services of a hired spy, and to degrade myself in some sort to the
level of a private inquirer, was somewhat revolting to a man, who, in the
decadence of his fortunes, has ever striven to place some limit on the
outrages which that hard taskmaster, poverty, may have from time to time
compelled him to inflict upon his self-respect. But in the furtherance of
a cause which I conclude is in no manner dishonourable, since an
unclaimed heritage must needs be a prize open to all, I submitted to this
temporary degradation of my higher feelings, and I trust that when the
time arrives for the settlement of any pecuniary consideration which
I am to derive from these irksome and uncongenial labours, my wounded
self-respect may not be omitted from the reckoning. The above exordium
may appear to you tedious, but it is only just to myself to remind you
that you are not dealing with a vulgar hireling. My first step, after
duly meditating your suggestions, was to find a fitting watch for the
movements of Hawkehurst. I opined that the best person to play the spy
would be that class of man whose existence seems for the most part
devoted to the lounging at street corners, the chewing of straw, and that
desultory kind of industry known in the _patois_ of this race as
"fetching errands." This is the man, or boy, who starts up from the
pavement (as through a trap-door in the flags) whenever one alights from
or would enter any kind of vehicle. Unbidden, unrequired, and obnoxious,
the creature arises, and opens a door, or lays some rag of his wretched
attire on a muddy wheel, and then whines, piteous, for a copper. Such a
man, or such a boy, I felt convinced must exist among the hangers-on of
the Royal Hotel; nor was I mistaken. On inquiring for a handy lad,
capable of attending upon my needs at all hours in the day, and not a
servant in the hotel, but a person who would be wholly at my own
disposal, I was informed that the Boots had a younger brother who was
skilled in the fetching of errands, and who would be happy to wait upon
me for a very reasonable remuneration, or in the words of the waiter
himself, would be ready to leave it--i.e. the remuneration--to my own
generosity. I know that there are no people who expect so much as those
who leave the assessment of their claims to your own generosity; but
as I wanted good service, I was prepared to pay well. The younger Boots
made his appearance in due course--a sharp young fellow enough--and I
forthwith made him my slave by the promise of five shillings a day for
every day in which I should require his services. I then told him that it
was my misfortune to own--with a strong inclination to disown--a
reprobate nephew, now an inhabitant of that very town. This nephew, I had
reason to believe, was going at a very rapid rate to the dogs; but my
affectionate feelings would not allow him to consummate his own
destruction without one last effort to reclaim him. I had therefore
followed him to Ullerton, whither I believed him to be led by the worst
possible motives; and having done so, my next business was to keep myself
informed of his whereabouts.

Seeing that the younger Boots accepted these statements with
unquestioning faith, I went on to inquire whether he felt himself equal
to the delicate duty of hanging about the yard of the Black Swan, and
watching the doors of exit from that hotel, with a view to following my
recreant nephew wherever he might go, even if considerably beyond the
limits of Ullerton. I saw that the lad's intelligence was likely to be
equal to this transaction, unless there should arise any difficult or
complicated position by reason of the suspicion of Hawkehurst, or other
mischance. "Do you think you can watch the gentleman without being
observed?" I asked. "I'm pretty well sure I can, sir," answered the boy,
who is of an enterprising, and indeed audacious, temper. "Very well,"
said I, "you will go to the Black Swan Inn. Hawkehurst is the name by
which my nephew is known there, and it will be your duty to find him
out." I gave the boy a minute account of Valentine's appearance, and
other instructions with which I need not trouble you. I further furnished
him with money, so that he might be able to follow Hawkehurst by rail, or
any other mode of conveyance, if necessary; and then despatched him, with
an order to come back to me when he had seen our man safely lodged in the
Black Swan after his day's perambulations. "And if he shouldn't go out at
all?" suggested the lad. "In that case you must stick to your post till
nightfall, and pick up all the information you can about my unfortunate
nephew from the hangers-on of the hotel," said I. "I suppose you know
some one at the Black Swan?" The boy informed me, in his untutored
language, that he knew "a'most all of 'em," and thereupon departed.

At nine o'clock at night he again appeared before me, big with the
importance of his day's work. He had seen my nephew issue forth from the
Black Swan within an hour of leaving my presence, and had followed him,
first to Mr. William Judson's in Ferrygate, where he waited and hung
about nearly an hour, keeping himself well out of view round the corner
of Chalkin Street, a turning close to Mr. Judson's house. After leaving
this gentleman's house, my renegade nephew had proceeded--carrying a
letter in his hand, and walking as if in very good spirits (but that
fellow Hawkehurst would walk to the gallows in good spirits)--to the
Lancaster Road, where he was admitted into Lochiel Villa, a house
belonging, as my Mercury ascertained from a passing baker's boy, to Miss
Judson, sister of the William Judson of Ferrygate. You will perceive that
this town appears to teem with the Judson family. My messenger, with
praiseworthy art, contrived to engage in a game of tip-cat (what, I
wonder, _is_ a tip-cat?) with some vagrant boys disporting themselves in
the roadway, within view of Miss Judson's house. Hence, after the lapse
of more than an hour, Boots-Mercury beheld my recreant relative emerge,
and from this point followed him--always with extreme caution--back to
the Black Swan. Here he hung about the yard, favoured by his close
acquaintance with the ostler, until eight o'clock in the evening, no
event of the smallest importance occurring during all those hours. But at
eight there arrived a young woman, with a packet from Miss Judson to Mr.
Hawkehurst. The packet was small, and was sealed with red wax. This was
all my Mercury could ascertain respecting it; but this was something.

I at once divined that this packet must needs contain letters. I asked
myself whether those letters or papers had been sold to Hawkehurst, or
only lent to him, and I immediately concluded that they could only have
been lent. It was all very well for Goodge, the Methodist parson, to
traffic in the epistles of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth, but it was to the last
degree unlikely that a well-to-do maiden lady would part with family
letters or papers for any pecuniary consideration whatever. "No," I said
to myself, "the documents have been lent, and will have to be returned;"
and thereupon I laid my plans for the next day's campaign, with a view to
obtaining a peep at those letters, by fair means or foul. I told the boy
to be at his post in the inn yard early the next morning, and if my
nephew did not leave the inn, my agent was to ascertain what he was
doing, and to bring me word thereof. "I'll tell you what it is, Boots," I
said; "I have reason to believe that sadly disposed nephew of mine has
some wicked intention with regard to Miss Judson, who is nearly related
to a young lady with whom that unprincipled young man is, or pretends to
be, in love; and I very much fear that he means to send her some letters,
written by this foolish niece of hers to my more foolish nephew, and
eminently calculated to wound the good lady's feelings. Now, in order to
prevent this very shameful conduct on his part, I want to intercept any
packet or letter which that mistaken youth may send to Miss Judson. Do
you feel yourself capable of getting hold of such a packet, on
consideration of a bonus of half-a-sovereign in addition to the five
shillings per diem already agreed upon?"

This, in more direct and vulgar phraseology, was what I said to the boy;
and the boy departed, after pledging himself to bring me any packet which
Hawkehurst might despatch from the Swan Inn. The only fear was that
Hawkehurst might carry the packet himself, and this contingency appeared
unpleasantly probable.

Fortune favoured us. My reprobate nephew was too ill to go out. He
intrusted Miss Hudson's packet to his waiter, the waiter confided it to
the Boots, the Boots resigned the responsibility in favour of my boy
Mercury, who kindly offered to save that functionary the trouble of a
walk to the Lancaster Road.

At eleven A.M. the packet was in my hands. I have devoted the best part
of to-day to the contents of this packet. They consist of letters written
by Matthew Haygarth, and distinguished by a most abominable orthography;
but I remember my own father's epistolary composition to have been
somewhat deficient in this respect; nor is it singular that the humble
citizen should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal
personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which would
provoke the laughter of a modern charity-boy. That the pretender to the
crown of England should murder the two languages in which he wrote seems
a small thing; but that Frederick the Great, the most accomplished of
princes, bosom-friend of Voltaire, and sworn patron of the literati,
should not have been able to spell, is a matter for some astonishment. I
could but remember this fact, as I perused the epistles of Matthew
Haygarth. I felt that these letters had in all probability been carefully
numbered by the lady to whom they belong, and that to tamper with them to
any serious extent might be dangerous. I have therefore only ventured to
retain one insignificant scrawl as an example of Matthew Haygarth's
caligraphy and signature. From the rest I have taken copious notes. It
appears to me that these letters relate to some _liaison_ of the
gentleman's youth; though I am fain to confess myself surprised to
discover that, even in a period notorious for looseness of morals, a man
should enter into such details in a correspondence with his sister.
_Autres temps, autres moeurs_. I have selected my extracts with great
care, and hope that you may be able to make more use of them than I can
at present imagine possible. I shall post this letter and enclosure with
my own hands, though in order to do so I must pass the Black Swan. I
shall despatch my messenger to Lochiel Villa, with Miss Judson's packet,
under cover of the darkness.

In much haste, to catch the London mail,

Truly yours, H.N.C.P.

       *       *       *       *       *

_From Philip Sheldon to Horatio Paget_. City, Oct. 12, 186--

Dear Paget,--Come back to town. You are only wasting money, time, and
trouble. Yours, P.S.



CHAPTER III.


TOO CLEVER, FOR A CATSPAW.

Captain Paget returned to town, mystified by that sudden summons from his
patron, and eager to know what new aspect of affairs rendered his further
presence in Ullerton useless or undesirable.

Horatio arrived in the great city half-a-dozen hours before his sometime
protege, and was comfortably installed when Valentine returned to those
lodgings in Omega Street, Chelsea, which the two men occupied in common.

Captain Paget went into the City to see Philip Sheldon on the day of his
return, but did not succeed in finding the stockbroker. The evening's
post brought him a letter from Philip, appointing an interview at
Bayswater, at three o'clock on the following day--the day after
Valentine's return from Ullerton.

Punctual to the moment appointed by this letter, Captain Paget appeared
at the Lawn on the following day. He was ushered into Mr. Sheldon's
study, where he found that gentleman awaiting him, grave and meditative
of mood, but friendly, and indeed cordial, in his manner to the returning
traveller.

"My dear Paget, sit down; I am delighted to see you. Your trip has made
you look five years younger, by Jove! I was sorry to find you had called
while I was out, and had waited for me upwards of an hour yesterday. I
have a good deal of worry on my shoulders just now; commerce is all
worry, you know. The Marquis of Lambeth has come into the market and
bought up two-thirds of the Astrakhan Grand Trunk debenture bonds, just
as our house had speculated for the fall. And since it has got wind that
the Marquis is sweet upon the concern, the bonds are going up like a
skyrocket. Such is life. I thought we had better have our little talk
here; it's quieter than in the City. Have some sherry and soda; you like
that Manzanilla of mine, I know."

And the hospitable Philip rang the bell, without thinking it necessary to
wait for his guest's answer.

There was a cordiality, a conciliating friendliness about the
stockbroker's manner which Horatio Paget did not like.

"He's too civil by half," the Captain said to himself; "he means to do
me."

"And now about this Ullerton business," Mr. Sheldon began, when the wine
and soda-water had been brought, and a tall tumbler of that refreshing
compound filled for the Captain; "you have really managed matters
admirably. I cannot too much applaud your diplomatic tact. You would have
put a what's-his-name--that fellow of Napoleon's--to the blush by your
management of the whole business. But, unfortunately, when it's all done
it comes to nothing; the whole affair is evidently, from beginning to
end, a mare's-nest. It is one of those wild geese which my brother George
has been chasing for the last ten years, and which never have resulted in
profit to him or anybody else; and I should be something worse than a
fool if I were to lend myself any longer to such a folly."

"Humph," muttered the Captain, "here is a change indeed!"

"Well, yes," Mr. Sheldon answered coolly. "I dare say my conduct does
seem rather capricious; but you see George put me out of temper the other
day, and I was determined, if he had got a good thing, to cut the ground
from under his feet. All your communications from Ullerton tend to show
me that he has not got hold of a good thing, and that in any attempt to
circumvent him I should only be circumventing myself, wasting your time,
and my own money. This Judson family seems numberless; and it is evident
to me that the Reverend John Haygarth's fortune will be a bone of
contention amongst the Judsons in the High Court of Chancery for any
indefinite number of years between this and the milennium. So I really
think, my dear Paget, we'd better consider this transaction finished. I
will give you whatever honorarium you think fit to name for your trouble,
and we'll close the affair. I shall find plenty more business as good, or
better, for you to do."

"You are very good," replied the Captain, in nowise satisfied by this
promise. It was all too smooth, too conciliatory. And there was a
suddenness in this change of plan that was altogether mysterious. So
indeed might a capricious man be expected to drop a speculation he had
been eager to inaugurate, but Philip Sheldon was the last of men to be
suspected of caprice.

"You must have taken an immense deal of trouble with those extracts,
now," said the stockbroker carelessly, as Horatio rose to depart,
offended and angry, but anxious to conceal his anger. "What, are you off
so soon? I thought you would stop and take a chop with us."

"No, thanks; I have an engagement elsewhere. Yes, I took an
inordinate trouble with those extracts, and I am sorry to think they
should be useless."

"Well, yes, it is rather provoking to you, I dare say. The extracts would
be very interesting from a social point of view, no doubt, to people who
care about such things; but in a legal sense they are waste-paper. I
can't understand why Hawkehurst was in Ullerton; for, as you yourself
suggested, that Peter Judson who went to India must be the Judson wanted
for this case."

"Your brother may be in league with some other branch of the Judson
family. Or what if he is hunting for an heir on the Haygarth side?" asked
the Captain, with a very close watch upon Mr. Sheldon's face. Let the
stockbroker be never so skilful a navigator of the high seas of life,
there was no undercurrent, no cross trade-wind, no unexplained veering of
the magnetic needle to the west, in the mysteries whereof the Captain was
not also versed. When Columbus wanted to keep his sailors quiet on that
wondrous voyage over an unknown ocean to the Western world, the
diplomatic admiral made so bold as to underrate the length of each day's
sail in an unveracious log, which he kept for the inspection of his crew;
but no doctoring of the social log-book could mislead the acute Horatio.

"How about the Haygarth side of the house?" he asked again; for it had
seemed to him that at his first mention of the name of Haygarth Mr.
Sheldon had winced, ever so little. This time, however, he betrayed not
the faintest concern; but he was doubtless now on his guard.

"Well, I don't see how there can be any claimant on that side of the
house," he said carelessly. "You see, according to your old landlord's
statement--which I take to be correct--Jonathan Haygarth had but one son,
a certain Matthew, who married one Rebecca So-and-so, and had, in his
turn one only son, the intestate John. Now, in that case, where is your
heir to come from, except through Matthew's sister Ruth, who married
Peter Judson?"

"Isn't it just possible that Matthew Haygarth may have married twice, and
had other children? Those letters certainly suggest the idea of a secret
alliance of some kind on Haygarth's part, and the existence of a family,
to whom he appears to have been warmly attached. My first idea of this
affair was that it must have been a low _liaison_; but I could hardly
realize the fact of Matthew's confiding in his sister under any such
circumstances, however lax in his morals that gentleman may have been.
Mrs. Matthew Haygarth's letters hint at some mystery in her husband's
life. Is it not likely that this hidden family was a legitimate one?"

"I can't quite see my way to that idea," Mr. Sheldon answered, in a
meditative tone. "It seems very unlikely that any marriage of Haygarth's
could have remained unknown to his townsmen; and even if it were so, I
doubt the possibility of our tracing the heirs from such a marriage. No,
my dear Paget, I have resolved to wash my hands of the business, and
leave my brother George in undisturbed possession of his ground."

"In that case, perhaps, you will return my notes; they are
interesting to me."

Here again the faintest indication of annoyance in the stockbroker's face
told its tale to Captain Paget. For your accomplished navigator of the
unknown seas there is no ocean bird, no floating weed, that has not a
language and a significance.

"You can have your notes, if you want them," answered Mr. Sheldon; "they
are at my office. I'll hunt them up and send them to you; or you had
better look in upon me in the City early next week, and I can give you a
cheque at the same time."

"Thanks. I will be sure and do so."

"You say the orthography of the original letters was queer. I suppose
your copies were faithful in all matters except the orthography. And in
the names, you of course adhered to the original spelling?"

"Most decidedly," replied Captain Paget, opening the door to depart,
and with a somewhat cynical smile upon his face, which was hidden from
Mr. Sheldon.

"I suppose there is no doubt of your accuracy with regard to the name of
Meynell, now?"

"Not the least. Good afternoon. Ah, there's our young friend Hawkehurst!"
exclaimed the Captain, in his "society" voice, as he looked out into the
hall, where Valentine was parting with Diana.

He came and greeted his young friend, and they left the house together.

This was the occasion upon which Valentine was startled by hearing the
name "Meynell" pronounced by the lips of Philip Sheldon.



CHAPTER IV.


CAPTAIN PAGET IS PATERNAL.

Horatio Paget left the Lawn after the foregoing interview, fully
convinced that Mr. Sheldon was only desirous to throw him off the scent,
in order to follow up the chase alone, for his sole profit and advantage.

"My last letter conveyed some intelligence that altered his whole plan of
action," thought the Captain; "that is perfectly clear. He was somewhat
wanting in tact when he recalled me so suddenly. But I suppose he thought
it would be easy to throw dust in my poor old eyes. What was the
intelligence that made him change his mind? That is the grand question."
Captain Paget dined alone at a West-End restaurant that evening. He dined
well, for he had in hand certain moneys advanced by his patron, and he
was not disposed to be parsimonious. He sat for some time in meditative
mood over his pint bottle of Chambertin, and the subject of his
meditation was Philip Sheldon.

"Yes," he murmured at last, "that is it. The charm is in the name of
Meynell. Why else should he question me about the orthography of that
name? I sent him information about Matthew Haygarth in the wife's
letters, and he took no special notice of that information. It was only
when the name of Meynell cropped up that he changed his tactics and tried
to throw me over. It seems to me that he must have some knowledge of this
Meynell branch, and therefore thinks himself strong enough to act alone,
and to throw me over the bridge. To throw me over," the Captain repeated
to himself slowly. "Well, we'll see about that. We'll see; yes, we'll
see."

At noon on the following day Captain Paget presented himself again at the
Bayswater villa, where his daughter ate the bread of dependence. He
appeared this time in a purely paternal character. He came to call upon
his only child. Before paying this visit the Captain had improved the
shining hour by a careful study of the current and two or three back
volumes of the Post-Office and Trade Directories; but all his researches
in those interesting volumes had failed to reveal to him the existence of
any metropolitan Meynells.

"The Meynells whom Sheldon knows may be in the heart of the country," he
said to himself, after these futile labours.

It was a fine autumnal morning, and as Miss Paget was at home and
disengaged, her affectionate father suggested that she should take a walk
with him in Kensington Gardens. Such a promenade had very little
attraction for the young lady; but she had a vague idea that she owed a
kind of duty to her father not remitted by his neglect of all duties to
her; so she assented with a smile, and went out with him, looking very
handsome and stylish in her simple but fashionable attire, no part of
which had been provided by the parent she accompanied.

The Captain surveyed her with some sense of family pride. "Upon my word,
my dear, you do me credit!" he exclaimed, with a somewhat patronising
kindness of tone and manner; "indeed any man might be proud of such a
daughter. You are every inch a Paget."

"I hope not, papa," said the girl involuntarily; but the Captain's more
delicate instincts had been considerably blunted in the press and jostle
of life, and he did not feel the sting of this remark.

"Well, perhaps you are right, my love," he replied blandly; "the Pagets
_are_ an unlucky family. Like those Grecian people, the Atri--,
what's-his-name--the man who was killed in his bath, you know. His wife,
or the other young person who had come to visit his daughters, made the
water too hot, you know--and that kind of thing. I am not quite clear
about the story, but it's one of those farragos of rubbish they make
young men learn at public schools. Yes, my dear, I really am amazingly
pleased by your improved appearance. Those Sheldon people dress you very
nicely; and I consider your residence in that family a very agreeable
arrangement for all parties. You confer a favour on the girl by your
society, and so on, and the mother provides you with a comfortable home;
All I wonder is that your good looks haven't made their mark before this
with some of Sheldon's rich stockbroking fellows."

"We see very little of the stockbroking fellows, as you call them, at the
Lawn, papa."

"Indeed! I thought Sheldon kept a great deal of company."

"O no. He gives a dinner now and then, a gentleman's dinner usually; and
poor Mrs. Sheldon is very anxious that it should all go off well, as she
says; but I don't think he is a person who cares much for society."

"Really, now?"

"His mind seems completely occupied by his business, you see, papa. That
horrible pursuit of gain seems to require all his thoughts, and all his
time. He is always reading commercial papers, the _Money Market_ and _On
Change_, and the _Stockbrokers' Vade Mecum_, and publications of that
kind. When he is not reading he is thinking; and by his manner one would
fancy his thoughts were always gloomy and unpleasant. What a miserable,
hateful, unholy life to lead! I would not be that man for all the money
in the Bank of England. But it is a kind of treachery to tell these
things. Mr. Sheldon is very good to me. He lets me sit at his table and
share the comforts of his home, and I must be very ungrateful to speak
against him. I do _not_ mean to speak against him, you see, papa--I only
mean that a life devoted to money-making is in itself hateful."

"My dear child, you may be assured that anything you say to _me_ will go
no further," said the Captain, with dignity; "and in whom should you
confide, if not in your father? I have a profound respect for Sheldon and
his family--yes, my love, a profound respect; and I think that girl
Sarah--no, I mean Charlotte--a very charming young person. I need
scarcely tell you that the smallest details of your life in that family
possess a keen interest for me. I am not without a father's feelings,
Diana, though circumstances have never permitted me to perform a father's
duties."

And here the solitary tear which the accomplished Horatio could produce
at will trembled in his eye. This one tear was always at his command. For
the life of him he could not have produced a second; but the single drop
never failed him, and he found one tear as effective as a dozen, in
giving point and finish to a pathetic speech.

Diana looked at him, and wondered, and doubted. Alas, she knew him only
too well! Any other creature in this wide world he might deceive, but not
her. She had lived with him; she had tasted the bitterness of dependence
upon him--ten times more bitter than dependence on strangers. She had
shown him her threadbare garments day after day, and had pleaded for a
little money, to be put off with a lying excuse. She could not forget
this. She had forgiven him long ago, being of too generous a nature to
brood upon past injuries. But she could not forget what manner of man he
was, and thank him for pretty speeches which she knew to be meaningless.

They talked a little more of Mr. Sheldon and his family, but Diana did
not again permit herself to be betrayed into any vehement expressions of
her opinions. She answered all her father's questions without restraint,
for they were very commonplace questions, of a kind that might be
answered without any breach of faith.

"Amongst the Sheldons' acquaintances did you ever hear of any people
called Meynell?" Captain Paget asked at length.

"Yes," Diana replied, after a moment's thought; "the name is certainly
very familiar to me;" and then, after a pause, she exclaimed, "Why, the
Meynells were relations of Charlotte's! Yes, her grandmother was a Miss
Meynell; I perfectly remember hearing Mrs. Sheldon talk about the
Meynells. But I do not think there are any descendants of that family now
living. Why do you ask the question, papa? What interest have you in the
Meynells?"

"Well, my dear, I have my reasons, but they in no manner concern Mr.
Sheldon or his family; and I must beg you to be careful not to mention
the subject in your conversation with those worthy people. I want to know
all about this Meynell family. I have come across some people of that
name, and I want to ascertain the precise relationship existing between
these people and the Sheldons. But the Sheldons must know nothing of this
inquiry for the present. The people I speak of are poor and proud, and
they would perish rather than press a relationship upon a rich man,
unless fully justified by the closeness of family ties. I am sure you
understand all this, Diana?"

"Not very clearly, papa."

"Well, my dear, it is a delicate position, and perhaps somewhat difficult
for the comprehension of a third party. All you need understand is the
one fact, that any information respecting the Meynell family will be
vitally interesting to my friends, and, through them, serviceable to me.
There is, in fact, a legacy which these friends of mine could claim,
under a certain will, if once assured as to the degree of their
relationship to your friend Charlotte's kindred on the Meynell side of
the house. To give them the means of securing this legacy would be to
help the ends of justice; and I am sure, Diana, you would wish to do
that."

"Of course, papa, if I can do so without any breach of faith with my
employers. Can you promise me that no harm will result to the Sheldons,
above all to Charlotte Halliday, from any information I may procure for
you respecting the Meynell family?"

"Certainly, Diana, I can promise you that. I repeat most solemnly,
that by obtaining such information for me you will be aiding the cause
of justice."

If Horatio Paget might ever be betrayed into the inconsistency of a
truthful assertion, it seemed to his daughter that it was likely to be in
this moment. His words sounded like truth; and, on reflection, Diana
failed to perceive that she could by any possibility inflict wrong on her
friends by obliging her father in this small affair.

"Let me think the matter over, papa," she said.

"Nonsense, Diana; what thinking over can be wanted about such a trifle? I
never before asked you a favour. Surely you cannot refuse to grant so
simple a request, after the trouble I have taken to explain my reasons
for making it."

There was some further discussion, which ended in Miss Paget consenting
to oblige her father.

"And you will manage matters with tact?" urged the Captain, at parting.

"There is no especial tact required, papa," replied Diana; "the matter is
easy enough. Mrs. Sheldon is very fond of talking about her own affairs.
I have only to ask her some leading question about the Meynells, and she
will run on for an hour, telling me the minutest details of family
history connected with them. I dare say I have heard the whole story
before, and have not heeded it: I often find my thoughts wandering when
Mrs. Sheldon is talking."

Three days after this Captain Paget called on Mr. Sheldon in the City,
when he received a very handsome recompense for his labours at Ullerton,
and became repossessed of the extracts he had made from Matthew
Haygarth's letters, but not of the same Mr. Haygarth's autograph letter:
that document Mr. Sheldon confessed to having mislaid.

"He has mislaid the original letter, and he has had ample leisure for
copying my extracts; and he thinks I am such a consummate fool as not to
see all that," thought Horatio, as he left the stockbroker's office,
enriched but not satisfied.

In the course of the same day he received a long letter from Diana
containing the whole history of the Meynells, as known to Mrs. Sheldon.
Once set talking, Georgy had told all she could tell, delighted to find
herself listened to with obvious interest by her companion.

"I trust that you have not deceived me, my dear father," Diana concluded,
after setting forth the Meynell history. "The dear good soul was so
candid and confiding, and seemed so pleased by the interest I showed in
her family affairs, that I should feel myself the vilest of wretches if
any harm could result to her, or those she loves, from the information
thus obtained."

The information was very complete. Mrs. Sheldon had a kindly and amiable
nature, but she was not one of those sensitive souls who instinctively
shrink from a story of bitter shame or profound sorrow as from a cureless
wound. She told Diana, with many lamentations, and much second-hand
morality, the sad history of Susan Meynell's elopement, and of the
return, fourteen years afterwards, of the weary wanderer. Even the poor
little trunk, with the name of the Rouen trunk-maker, Mrs. Sheldon dwelt
upon with graphic insistence. A certain womanly delicacy had prevented
her ever telling this story in the presence of her brother-in-law, George
Sheldon, whose hard worldly manner in no way invited any sentimental
revelation. Thus it happened that George had never heard the name of
Meynell in connection with his friend Tom Halliday's family, or had heard
it so seldom as to have entirely forgotten it. To Horatio his daughter's
letter was priceless. It placed him at once in as good a position as
Philip Sheldon, or as George Sheldon and his coadjutor, Valentine
Hawkehurst. There were thus three different interests involved in the
inheritance of the Reverend John Haygarth.

Captain Paget sat late by a comfortable fire, in his own bedchamber, that
night, enjoying an excellent cigar, and meditating the following jottings
from a pedigree:--

CHARLOTTE MEYNELL, married JAMES HALLIDAY.
       |
THOMAS HALLIDAY, only son of above, married GEORGINA, now Mrs. SHELDON;
       |         had issue,
CHARLOTTE HALLIDAY.

SUSAN MEYNELL, only and elder sister of the above-named Charlotte, ran
away from her home, in Yorkshire, with a Mr. Kingdon, brother to Lord
Darnsville. Fate unknown during fourteen years of her life. Died in
London, 1835. Buried under her maiden name; but no positive evidence to
show that she was unmarried.



CHAPTER V.


THE CAPTAIN'S COADJUTOR.

Once in possession of the connection between the intestate John Haygarth
and the Halliday family, Captain Paget's course was an easy one. He
understood now why his investigations had been so suddenly brought to a
standstill. Philip Sheldon had discovered the unexpected connection, and
was eager to put a stop to researches that might lead to a like discovery
on the part of his coadjutor.

"And Sheldon expects to prove his stepdaughter's claim to this fortune?"
thought the Captain. "He will affect ignorance of the whole transaction
until his plans are ripe, and then spring them suddenly upon his brother
George. I wonder if there is anything to be made out of George by letting
him into the secret of his brother's interference? No; I think not.
George is as poor as a church mouse, and Philip must always be the more
profitable acquaintance."

On the broad basis afforded by Diana's letter Captain Paget was able to
build up the whole scheme of the Haygarthian succession. The pedigree of
the Meynells was sufficiently simple, if their legitimate descent from
Matthew Haygarth could be fairly proved. Charlotte Halliday was
heiress-at-law to the fortune of John Haygarth, always provided that her
great-aunt Susan died without legitimate issue.

Here was the one chance which appeared to the adventurous mind of Horatio
Paget worth some trouble in the way of research. Fourteen years of Susan
Meynell's life had been spent away from all who knew her. It was
certainly possible that in that time she might have formed some
legitimate alliance.

This was the problem which Horatio set himself to solve. Your adventurer
is, of all manner of men, the most sanguine. Sir Walter Raleigh sees
visions of gold and glory where grave statesmen see only a fool's
paradise of dreams and fancies. To the hopeful mind of the Captain these
fourteen unrecorded years of Susan Meynell's life seemed a very Golconda.

He did not, however, rest satisfied with the information afforded by
Diana's letter.

"I will have the story of these Meynells at first-hand as well as at
second-hand," he said to himself; and he lost no time in presenting
himself again at the Villa--this time as a visitor to Mrs. Sheldon.

With Georgy he had been always a favourite. His little stories of the
great world--the Prince and Perdita, Brummel and Sheridan--though by no
means novel to those acquainted with that glorious period of British
history, were very agreeable to Georgy. The Captain's florid flatteries
pleased her; and she contrasted the ceremonious manners of that gentleman
with the curt business-like style of her husband, very much to the
Captain's advantage. He came to thank her for her goodness to his child,
and this occasion gave him ample opportunity for sentiment. He had asked
to see Mrs. Sheldon alone, as his daughter's presence would have been
some hindrance to the carrying out of his design.

"There are things I have to say which I should scarcely care to utter
before my daughter, you see, my dear Mrs. Sheldon," he said, with
pathetic earnestness. "I should not wish to remind the dear child of her
desolate position; and I need scarcely tell you that position is _very_
desolate. A father who, at his best, cannot provide a fitting home for a
delicately nurtured girl, and who at any moment may be snatched away, is
but a poor protector. And were it not for your friendship, I know not
what my child's fate might be. The dangers and temptations that beset a
handsome young woman are very terrible, my dear Mrs. Sheldon."

This was intended to lead up to the subject of Susan Meynell, but Georgy
did not rise to the bait. She only shook her head plaintively in assent
to the Captain's proposition.

"Yes, madam; beauty, unallied with strength of mind and high principles,
is apt to be a fatal dower. In every family there are sad histories,"
murmured the sentimental Horatio.

Even this remark did not produce the required result; so the Captain drew
upon his invention for a specimen history from the annals of his own
house, which was a colourable imitation of Susan Meynell's story.

"And what was the end of this lovely Belinda Paget's career, my dear Mrs.
Sheldon?" he concluded. "The gentleman was a man of high rank, but a
scoundrel and a dastard. Sophia's brother, a cornet in the First Life
Guards, called him out, and there was a meeting on Wimbledon Common, in
which Lavinia's seducer was mortally wounded. There was a trial, and the
young captain of Hussars, Amelia's brother, was sentenced to
transportation for life. I need scarcely tell you that the sentence was
never carried out. The young man fell gloriously at Waterloo, at the head
of his own regiment, the Scotch Fusiliers, and Lavinia--I beg pardon,
Amelia; nay, what am I saying? the girl's name was Belinda--embraced the
Roman Catholic faith, and expired from the effects of stigmata inflicted
by her own hands in a paroxysm of remorse for her brother's untimely
death at the hands of her seducer."

This lively little impromptu sketch had the desired effect. Melted by the
woes of Belinda, or Sophia, or Amelia, or Lavinia Paget, Mrs. Sheldon was
moved to relate a sad event in her husband's family; and encouraged by
the almost tearful sympathy of the Captain, she again repeated every
detail of Susan Meynell's life, as known to her kindred. And as this
recital had flowed spontaneously from the good soul's lips, she would be
scarcely likely to allude to it afterwards in conversation with Mr.
Sheldon; more especially as that gentleman was not in the habit of
wasting much of his valuable time in small-talk with the members of his
own household.

Captain Paget had duly calculated this, and every other hazard that
menaced the intricate path he had mapped out for himself.

Satisfied by Mrs. Sheldon's repetition of Susan Meynell's story, and
possessed of all the information he could hope to obtain from that
quarter, Horatio set himself to consider what steps must next be taken.
Much serious reflection convinced even his sanguine mind that the
enterprise was a difficult one, and could scarcely be carried through
successfully without help from some skilled genealogist.

"George Sheldon has given his lifetime to this sort of thing, and is a
skilled lawyer to boot," Captain Paget said to himself. "If I hope to go
in against him, I must have someone at my elbow as well versed in this
sort of business as he is."

Having once admitted this necessity, the Captain set himself to consider
where he was to find the right person. A very brief meditation settled
this question. One among the numerous business transactions of Captain
Paget's life had brought him in contact with a very respectable little
French gentleman called Fleurus, who had begun his career as a notary,
but, finding that profession unprofitable, had become a hunter of
pedigrees and heirs-at-law--for the most part to insignificant legacies,
unclaimed stock, and all other jetsam and flotsam thrown up on the
shadowy shores of the Court of Chancery. M. Fleurus had not often been so
fortunate as to put his industrious fingers into any large pie, but he
had contrived to make a good deal of money out of small affairs, and had
found his clients grateful.

"The man of men," thought Horatio Paget; and he betook himself to the
office of M. Fleurus early next day, provided with all documents relating
to the Haygarthian succession.

His interview with the little Frenchman was long and satisfactory. On
certain conditions as to future reward, said reward to be contingent on
success, M. Fleurus was ready to devote himself heart and soul to the
interests of Captain Paget.

"To begin: we must find legal evidence of this Matthew Haygarth's
marriage to the mother of this child C., who came afterwards to marry the
man Meynell; and after we will go to Susan Meynell. Her box came from
Rouen--that we know. Where her box came from she is likely to have come
from. So it is at Rouen, or near Rouen, we must look for her. Let me see:
she die in 1835! that is long time. To look for the particulars of her
life is like to dive into the ocean for to find the lost cargo of a ship
that is gone down to the bottom, no one knows where. But to a man really
expert in these things there is nothing of impossible. I will find you
your Susan Meynell in less than six months; the evidence of her marriage;
if she was married; her children, if she had children."

In less than six months--the margin seemed a wide one to the impatient
Horatio. But he knew that such an investigation must needs be slow, and
he left the matters in the hands of his new ally with a sense that he had
done the best thing that could be done. Then followed for Horatio Paget
two months of patient attendance upon fortune. He was not idle during
this time; for Mr. Sheldon, who seemed particularly anxious to conciliate
him, threw waifs and strays of business into his way. Before the middle
of November M. Fleurus had found the register of Matthew Haygarth's
marriage, as George Sheldon had found it before him, working in the same
groove, and with the same order of intelligence. After this important
step M. Fleurus departed for his native shores, where he had other
business besides the Meynell affair to claim his attention. Meanwhile the
astute Horatio kept a close eye upon his young friend Valentine. He knew
from Diana that the young man had been in Yorkshire; and he guessed the
motive of his visit to Newhall, not for a moment supposing that his
presence in that farmhouse could have been accidental. The one turn of
affairs that utterly and completely mystified him was Mr. Sheldon's
sanction of the engagement between Valentine and Charlotte. This was a
mystery for which he could for some time find no solution.

"Sheldon will try to establish his stepdaughter's claim to the fortune;
that is clear. But why does he allow her to throw herself away on a
penniless adventurer like Hawkehurst? If she were to marry him before
recovering the Haygarth estate, she would recover it as his 

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