Lucius Davoren; or, Publicans and sinners, vol. 3

While Lucius Davoren was thus occupied at the east end of London, Geoffrey Hossack was making the best of an existence which he had made up his mind to consider utterly joyless, so long as adverse fate denied him the one desire of his heart. For him in vain warm August skies were deeply blue, and the bosky dells and glades of the New Forest still untouched by autumn’s splendid decay. For him vainly ran the bright river between banks perfumed with wild flowers. He beheld these things from the lofty standpoint of discontent, and in his heart called Nature a poor creature.

‘I would rather be mewed up in Whitecross-street prison, or in the Venetian Piombi, with Janet for my wife, than enjoy all that earth can give of natural beauty or artificial splendour without her,’ he said to himself, when his cousins had bored him into a misanthropical mood by their insistence upon the charms of rural life, as exemplified at Hillersdon Grange.

‘I’m afraid you have no soul for Nature,’ said Belle, when she had kept Geoffrey on his feet for an hour in the cramped old-fashioned hot-houses, where she went in desperately for ferns and orchids, and imitated Lady Baker on a small scale.

‘I’m afraid not—for Nature in flower-pots,’ answered Geoffrey, with an unsympathetic yawn. ‘I daresay these Calopogons, and Gymnadenia, and what’s-its-names are very grand, but I’ve seen finer growing wild in the valleys on the southern side of the Rocky Mountains. You English people only get nature in miniature—a poor etiolated creature. You have no notion of the goddess Gea in her Titanic vigour, as she appears on “the other side.”

‘Meaning America?’ said Belle contemptuously, as if that western continent were something too vulgar for her serious consideration.

The sun shone upon Lady Baker’s fête as gaily[Pg 3] as if fine weather had been a matter within her ladyship’s power of provision, like the luncheon from Gunter’s, or the costumes for the tableaux vivants. The lady herself was radiant as the sunlight. Everybody had come—everybody worth receiving, at any rate. She gave Geoffrey a smile of particular cordiality as she shook hands with him, and murmured the conventional ‘How good of you to come early!’

Belle and Jessie were speedily told off for croquet: a sport for which Geoffrey professed an unmitigated dislike, in a most churlish spirit, his cousins thought. Thus released from attendance on these fair ones, he roamed the vast gardens at large, finding solitudes in that spacious domain, even on such a day as this. In these secluded walks—where he only occasionally encountered a stray couple engaged in that sentimental converse which he slangily denominated ‘spooning’—Mr. Hossack indulged his own thoughts, which also were of a spooney character. Here, he thought, Janet Davoren had been happy in the brief summer-tide of her life; here she had felt the first joys and pains of an innocent girlish love; and here, alas, had given that peerless blossom of the soul, a girl’s first love, to a scoundrel. The thought of this filled him with a savage jealousy.

‘I wish I had fired that shot out yonder instead of Lucius,’ he said to himself. ‘Egad, I’d have made sure my ball went through him. There should have been no shilly-shally about my fire.’

Luncheon found Mr. Hossack more attentive to the various Rhine wines than to pâté de foie gras or chicken-salad, or even the wants of the damsel who sat next him. He was out of humour with all the world. His artfully-worded advertisement had appeared several times, and had produced no response. He began to think the Fates were opposed to his happiness.

‘I suppose if a man is pretty well provided for in the way of three-per-cents he must hope for nothing else from Fortune,’ he thought, as he punished her ladyship’s cabinet hocks.

Luncheon over, Mr. Hossack conducted his damsel to the sunny greensward, where enthusiastic archers—seven-and-twenty ladies to five gentlemen—were stringing their Cupid bows for a grand match. Here he shunted her into the care of one of the five male archers, all of whom looked ineffably bored, and anon departed, whither he cared not—anywhere, anywhere out of this world of luncheons, croquet, flirtation, and frivolity.

Wandering at random, he came by and by to an[Pg 5] obscure outskirt of the Mardenholme grounds, given over to the cultivation of huge rhododendrons, where there was a little wicket-gate opening into a green lane. He made his escape from Mardenholme altogether by this gate, glad to get away from the polite world, as represented by the croquet-players and toxopholites, and above all by those exacting first cousins of his, Belle and Jessie.

The green lane was rustic and secluded, well sheltered from the westward sloping sun by spreading boughs of chestnut and sycamore, with here and there the grander bulk of an oak, making an oasis of deep shadow in the afternoon sunlight. Altogether a pleasant lane, even for the indulgence of saddest thoughts.

It was on the side of a hill. Right and left of him stretched undulating meadow-land, small enclosures between those straggling unkempt hedges which make the glory of English landscape, and below, almost at his feet as it were, lay a little village nestling in a cup-shaped valley, so snugly sheltered by those gently-sloping meads, so fenced from north and east by those tall screens of foliage, that one might fancy the bleak winds of winter must roll high above those modest roofs, ruffling no leaf in those simple gardens; that hails and snows and[Pg 6] frosts must waste their fury on the encircling hills, and leave this chosen nook unassailed; that even the tax-gatherer must forget its existence.

There were about half a dozen cottages, the perfection of rusticity—gardens running over with roses, beehives, honeysuckle; a village inn, so innocent and domestic of aspect that one would suppose nothing could be farther from the thoughts of its patrons than strong drink of any kind; a little high-shouldered old church, with a squat square tower and crumbly whitewashed wall; a green burial-ground, all ups and downs like the waves of the sea, overshadowed by two vast yews, whose never-withering foliage canopied those rustic graves from January to December.

There was a little patch of greensward in the midst of the scattered houses, and some feet below the churchyard, no two edifices in this village being on the same level. Here a meditative donkey cropped the soft herbage at leisure, and here on the bosom of a crystalline pool swam half a dozen geese, untroubled by forebodings of Michaelmas.

It was altogether a deliciously rustic picture, and Geoffrey, for the first time since his return to Hampshire, felt reconciled to Nature.

‘This is better than all the tigered orchids in[Pg 7] Lady Baker’s collection,’ he mused, as he perched himself on a stile and took out his cigar-case for a quiet smoke. ‘Why do great ladies cultivate lady’s-slippers and pitcher-plants when for less money they might surround themselves with model villages and happy peasantry? Has the rôle of Lady Bountiful gone quite out of fashion, I wonder?’

He lighted his cigar and meditated upon life in general, dreamily contemplating the cottages and wondering about their inmates, as he had often wondered about the inhabitants of the dull old houses in the dull old country towns. These cottages seemed above the ordinary level, cleaner, brighter, more prosperous-looking. He could not fancy wife-beating or any other iniquity going on within those homely plastered walls. Those twinkling diamond-paned lattices seemed transparent as a good man’s conscience, and in most of these dwellings the outer door stood wide open, as if the inmates invited inspection. He could see an eight-day clock, a dresser decked with many-coloured crockeryware, a little round table spread for tea, a cradle, a snug arm-chair, a wicker birdcage, a row of geranium pots—all the furniture of home. He felt that he had alighted upon a small Arcadia.

While he sat thus musing, slowly smoking, very[Pg 8] loth to go back to the civilised world, pert country cousins, and tableaux vivants, and tepid ices, and classical music, and general inanity, the door of that solitary cottage whose interior did not invite inspection was suddenly opened, and a child came skipping out—a child who wore a broad-brimmed Leghorn hat, with long yellow tresses streaming beneath it, and a pretty holland pinafore, and displayed symmetrical legs clad in blue stockings—a child after the order of Mr. Millais.

Geoffrey made as if he would have fallen off the stile; the half-smoked cigar fell from his hand. For a few moments he sat transfixed and statue-like, and could only stare. Then, with a sudden rush, he darted across the little strip of green, and clasped this butterfly child in his arms.

‘Why, it’s my little Flossie!’ he cried rapturously, smothering the small face with kisses, which the little maiden received without a murmur. Had not Mr. Hossack endeared himself to her by all the arts of bribery and corruption, in the shape of costly French bonbons, éditions de luxe of popular fairy tales and German hobgoblin stories, and mechanical white mice that ran across the floor, and mechanical mail-coaches that, on being wound up, rushed off at breakneck speed to nowhere in particular, and came[Pg 9] to grief after a few headlong journeys? ‘It’s my precious little Flossie! My darling, where’s mamma?’

‘Mamma, mamma!’ screamed the child, looking back towards the cottage. ‘Come out and see who’s come.’ And then, turning to Geoffrey again, she said with childhood’s candid selfishness, ‘Have you brought me some more French bonbons in a box with a picture on the lid, like the last?’

‘My sweet one, I ought to be provided with a box of that very description,’ replied Geoffrey, grasping the little maiden’s hand and dragging her to the cottage; ‘but how could I anticipate such bliss as to find you here in this O-for-ever-to-be-sanctified-village?’ cried the lover, coining a Germanic compound in his rapture. ‘Is mamma in there? O, take me to her, darling, take me!’

Tableaux vivants, pert cousins, Lady Baker, the claims of civilised society, all melted into thin air amidst the delight of this discovery. He was as unsophisticated as if he had been a Blackfoot, brought up in the pathless hunting-grounds of the West.

‘Take me to her, thou dearest child,’ he exclaimed; and the little one led him into the cottage garden, where the bees were humming in the sunset, the air sweet with roses and carnations, happy swallows twittering in the eves.

Here, on the threshold of the cottage door, framed like a picture by the stout black timbers, stood that one woman whom his soul worshipped, tall, slender, lovely, like a goddess who for a little while deigned to walk this lower earth.

She looked at Geoffrey with a tender gladness, a wild surprise, opposite feelings curiously blended in the expression of that eloquent face.

‘O, Janet,’ said he, ‘how could you be so cruel as to run away from me?’

‘I have not followed you. ’Twas chance that led me here this afternoon. There is a providence kind to true lovers, after all. I did not follow you, Janet, but I was heartbroken by the loss of you. I went down to Stillmington to carry you what I dared to think good news.’

‘Come in for a little while,’ she said; ‘we cannot stand here talking of such things. Flossie, run and play on the green, darling; I’ll come to you presently. Now, Mr. Hossack.’

She led the way into the simple cottage room,[Pg 11] spotlessly clean, and with that dainty brightness of furniture and whiteness of drapery which industrious hands can give to the humblest surroundings. It was a small square room, with two of its angles cut off by old-fashioned corner cupboards whose shining glass doors displayed the treasures of glass and china within. A dimity-covered sofa, a couple of basket-work arm-chairs, an ancient bureau of darkest mahogany, and a solid Pembroke table formed the chief furniture of the room. One of Flossie’s fairy-tale books—Geoffrey’s gift—lay open upon the table, the mother’s workbox beside it. A bowl of cut flowers adorned the broad sill of the long low casement, and the afternoon sunlight was filtered through the whitest of dimity curtains. To Geoffrey this old room, with its low ceiling sustained by heavy black beams, was perfectly delightful.

‘Do you mean to tell me that my husband is dead?’ asked Janet, when she had brought her visitor in and shut the door, looking him full in the face with grave earnest eyes.

Geoffrey quailed beneath that searching gaze. In this crisis, which involved the dearest wish of his heart, he had become the veriest child.

‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘he is dead. It is a most extraordinary story, and as I have no evidence to[Pg 12] prove my statement, you may be inclined to doubt me. Yet I pledge my honour—’

‘I shall not doubt your honour,’ said Janet, with a superb smile, ‘but I may doubt your discretion. How do you know that my husband is dead?’

‘I met him in America, and heard of his death there—heard it on the highest possible authority.’

‘Because I had at that time no means of identifying Matchi, the man I met in the West, with Mr. Vandeleur. I have seen your husband’s portrait within the last fortnight, and I can take my oath that Mr. Vandeleur and the man I knew in America are one and the same.’

‘Lady Baker showed me a photograph of a group in which you and Mr. Vandeleur both appear.’

‘Have you no other reason to suppose that this American traveller, whom you call Matchi, and my husband are the same, except the evidence of a photograph?’ asked Janet, somewhat contemptuously. ‘What more common than an accidental resemblance between two men who are utter strangers to each other?’

‘Not such a likeness as that which I am speaking of; nor is a genius for music the commonest thing in the world. The violin-playing of the man in the western pine-forest exactly resembled that which Lady Baker described to me.’

‘What,’ cried Janet, with a wounded air, ‘you have been taking Lady Baker into your confidence?’

‘Forgive me, Janet. I am bent upon bringing this matter to a happy issue. Lady Baker is your true friend. She bitterly reproaches herself for her part in bringing about your unhappy marriage; she went to Melksham in search of you, when she accidentally learned that Mr. Vandeleur had been seen there, and was deeply grieved at arriving too late to find you.’

‘She is very good,’ answered Janet, with a sigh. ‘And now tell me about this man you met in America. Tell me everything, without reserve.’

Without reserve; that would be rather difficult. Not for worlds—no, not even to secure his own happiness—could Geoffrey Hossack betray his friend.

He told his story as best he could; but in his fear of saying too much, stumbled a little over the details. Altogether the story had a garbled air, and before he came to the end he saw plainly enough that Janet was unconvinced.

‘I can trust your truth,’ she said, looking at that frank honest face with her clear eyes, ‘but I cannot trust your judgment. You had but just recovered from a fever, in which your senses had been astray, when you heard of his death. He was shot, you say, in the forest. Who shot him?’

‘See how vague your information is,’ she exclaimed, with an incredulous laugh. ‘You were told that he was shot, but you were not told who shot him; you were not told the motive of the murder. Even in the backwoods I suppose people do not shoot each other quite without motive.’

‘Say no more, Mr. Hossack; this is a subject upon which you and I can hardly agree. When you can bring me direct and legal evidence of Mr. Vandeleur’s death, I will believe it.’

‘And if I ever can do that—and from the manner of his death it is almost impossible—you[Pg 15] will give me some reward for my fidelity—eh, Janet?’

‘I will make no bargains,’ she answered gravely. ‘I beg you to hold yourself entirely free, and for the sake of your own happiness I trust you may speedily get rid of this boyish infatuation.’

‘Boyish!’ echoed Geoffrey, with the proud consciousness of his eight-and-twenty years. ‘Why I am your senior by two years. Lucius told me so.’

‘Sorrow does the work of time in some lives,’ said Janet, with her sad smile; ‘I feel myself very old at six-and-twenty. Come, Mr. Hossack, you have been always very good to me, and for once in a way I will treat you as a friend. Little Flossie is very fond of you, and I know she is dying for a long talk about her new pets, the tame rabbits and the tortoiseshell kitten, whose acquaintance she has made down here. Stop and drink tea with us, and tell me how you happened to find me out in this quiet corner of the earth.’

‘You forget that we are not a mile from one of the gates of Mardenholme,’ said Geoffrey, enchanted at the prospect of drinking tea with his goddess.

‘Didn’t you?’ said this Jesuit, in an artless tone. ‘Why, you see my people live down hereabouts—Hillersdon[Pg 16] Grange—and my cousins and Lady Baker are uncommonly thick.’

Mrs. Bertram called to Flossie through the open window. The child was walking up and down the little path by the beehives, nursing her tortoiseshell kitten. She came bounding in joyfully at this summons, and exhibited this feline treasure to Mr. Hossack, that good-natured individual allowing the small member of the tiger tribe to make a promenade upon his outstretched arm, and pur triumphantly from a lofty perch on his coat-collar.

Mrs. Bertram rang a little tinkling handbell, and a decent old woman—who must surely have been what is called ‘upon the listen,’ or she could hardly have heard that feeble summons—appeared with a tea-tray, and spread the neat little table with the best china teacups, a brown home-baked loaf, the yellowest of butter-pats, the richest of cream in a little glass jug, a great wedge of golden honeycomb, a few ripe apricots nestling in a bed of mulberry leaves,—a repast at once Arcadian and picturesque.

‘But perhaps you may not care for such a womanish beverage as orange pekoe,’ said Janet doubtfully, as Mr. Hossack surveyed the banquet from his altitude of something over six feet, the kitten still promenading his shoulder.

‘Not care for tea! Why, on the shores of the Saskatchewan the teapot was our only comfort,’ exclaimed Geoffrey. ‘We had a cask or two of rum with us, and had no end of trouble in hiding it from the Indians; but they got the most of the fire-water out of us sooner or later, by hook or by crook. We rarely took any of it ourselves, except as a medicine. Travellers are a temperate race, I can assure you, Mrs. Bertram.’

They sat down to tea, the kitten now perambulating the backs of their chairs, now sending forth appealing miaws for milk or other refreshment. Geoffrey, who had been too much out of humour with the world in general to do justice to Lady Baker’s luncheon, was ravenous, and devoured bread-and-honey like the queen in the nursery rhyme, of which Flossie did not fail to remind him. It was the first meal he had ever eaten with the woman he loved. That fragrant tea was more intoxicating than Lady Baker’s choicest Johannisberger or Steinberger.

He forgot that he was perhaps no nearer a happy issue to his suit than he had been that day in the botanical gardens at Stillmington, when he made his first desperate appeal to his inexorable goddess; he forgot everything except the present moment—this innocent rustic interior, the fair-haired child,[Pg 18] whose gay laugh rang out every now and then, the perambulatory kitten, the perfect face of the woman he loved, smiling at him with that proud slow smile he knew so well.

‘So you went back to Stillmington,’ Janet said presently, when Geoffrey had appeased the pangs of hunger with the contents of the honeycomb and the crustiest side of the home-baked loaf, and had consumed three cups of that exquisite tea.

‘Went back!’ repeated Geoffrey; ‘of course I went back. I should have gone back exactly the same if Stillmington had been in the centre of Africa, or on the top of Elburz. How cruel of you to leave no address! They told me you had gone to the seaside.’

‘Well, I did not leave a very definite account of myself, certainly. You see I was so tired of Stillmington and of my pupils; and thanks to concert-singing and pupils, I had contrived to save a little money. So, as my health was not quite so good as it might be—I had been working rather hard for the last few years, you see—I thought I would give myself a month or so of thorough rest. I had a fancy—amounting almost to an irresistible longing—to see my old home once more—the graves of those dear ones my ingratitude had wronged. I knew that[Pg 19] to come back to the scenes of my girlhood would be the keenest suffering, yet I longed to come. I did not want to be very near Wykhamston, as that would be to run the risk of recognition; but I wished to be somewhere within the reach of the dear, dear old place. I thought of this village and of Sally, my kind old nurse, who came to live here in this cottage, which she had bought with her savings, when she left the Rectory. I was only fourteen when she left us; and one of our greatest treats—Lucius’s and mine and the dear sister we lost—was to come here of a summer afternoon and drink tea with dear old Sally. So I said to myself, “If God has spared my old nurse, I will go and ask her to give me a lodging;” and Flossie and I came straight here—to this out-of-the-way corner—to take our holiday. Flossie has been enraptured with the rustic life, the pigs and fowls, and the old gray donkey on the green, with whom she has formed quite a friendship. She feeds him with bread-and-milk every morning, foolish child!’

She said this with the mother’s tender look at the fair-haired damsel, who disposed of the bread-and-honey as fast as if she had laid a wager with Geoffrey as to which of them should devour most.

‘Yes—after the first bitter pain of seeing my lost home, and remembering how I lost it. I have been happier than I had hoped ever to be again. After all, there is some magic in one’s native air.’

‘Yes,’ exclaimed Geoffrey, with an air of conviction, ‘of course there is. I have a place in Hampshire myself, not a stone’s-throw, in a rural point of view—that is to say, five-and-twenty miles or so—from here. No end of arable and meadow-land, and copse and rabbit-warren, and some well-wooded ground about the house, which my father took the liberty to call a park; and a nice old house enough, of the Queen-Anne period; stiffish and squarish and reddish, but by no means a bad kind of barrack. I’ll give the sugar-broker notice—no, I can’t do that—I’ll offer to buy back his lease to-morrow.’

‘Yes, a fellow I was foolish enough to let my place to when I came of age—seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years. He’s keeping it up uncommonly well, I’m told; has put up a good deal of glass in the kitchen-garden, and so on, and improved the farm-buildings. But he shall go. He’s on for his fourteen years; so I can’t give him notice to quit, but I can offer him a tempting price for the lease.[Pg 21] I daresay he’s tired of the place by this time. People always do get tired of their places.’

‘I don’t know. Didn’t you say you were fond of this part of the country?’ asked Geoffrey, in some confusion. Those cups of orange pekoe had proved far more intoxicating than the vintages of Rhineland.

‘O, Mr. Hossack, pray do not let my fancies influence your life!’ said Janet earnestly. ‘Remember we may never be more to each other than we are now,—very good friends, who may meet once in a way, at some chance turn in life’s road.’

Geoffrey pleaded his hardest, but felt that he was pleading in vain. All arguments were futile. Honour counselled Janet to be firm, and she was steadfast as a rock.

‘I will not tell you that you are indifferent to me,’ she said, in her low sweet voice, unembarrassed by the presence of the child, who was absorbed in the antics of her kitten, and troubled herself in no manner about what Mr. Hossack might be saying to her mother, and presently, having eaten to repletion, roamed out into the garden among the clove-carnations and late roses and tall gaudy hollyhocks. ‘That would be too ungrateful, after all the trouble[Pg 22] you have taken for my sake. I can only say that, until I have proof positive of my first husband’s death, I shall continue to consider myself bound to him.’

‘But what stronger proof can you hope for than my assurance of the fact? Remember that Mr. Vandeleur perished in a solitude where there are no registrars to take note of a man’s death, no coroner to hold an inquest on his body, no undertakers to give him decent burial; where a rough-and-ready grave under the pine-trees would be the sole witness of his end.’

‘We will trust in Providence, Mr. Hossack,’ answered Janet, with that steadfast look he knew so well, and which made her seem a creature so far above him—a being exempt from common temptations and human passions. ‘If my husband died as you tell me he died, I do not doubt that in due time there will arise some confirmation of your story.’

‘If the pine-trees or the songless birds of the wilderness could talk, you might receive such confirmation,’ he said; ‘but from any other source it is impossible.’

‘Why, my brother was with you all the time, was he not?’ inquired Janet, with a wondering look.[Pg 23] ‘He at least must be able to vouch for the truth of your story.’

‘Unhappily,’ he faltered, after that awkward pause, ‘Lucius had a bad attack—brain fever, or apoplexy he called it—just at the time of this man’s death. His evidence would therefore hardly satisfy you.’

‘In point of fact, Mr. Hossack, it seems that neither you nor my brother were in a condition to know anything about the event. You could have only hearsay evidence. Who was your informant?’

This question was a home-thrust. To name Lucius would have been almost to betray him; and again, he had just given her to understand that Lucius was unconscious at the time of the event. Again there came a pause, painfully awkward for Geoffrey. He felt that Mrs. Bertram was watching him with gravely questioning eyes. How was he to reply?

‘There was a little German with us,’ he said at last, with a desperate plunge, knowing not how near to his friend’s betrayal this admission might lead him; ‘a sea-captain, a native of Hamburg, called Schanck—Absalom Schanck—a very good fellow,[Pg 24] who was with us—our fellow-traveller. I—I think you must have heard me speak of him. He saw the shot fired.’

‘Yes,’ answered Geoffrey, but not with perfect conviction; ‘I believe so.’

‘And pray, where is Mr. Schanck? His evidence may be worth very little, but it would be as well to hear it.’

‘Upon my word,’ said Geoffrey, crestfallen, ‘I’m afraid that at this present moment Schanck is washing gold in San Francisco, unless he has been made mincemeat of by larger diggers.’

‘We must wait for some other witness then,’ said Janet, in a tone of calm certainty, which made reply seem impossible.

‘So be it,’ he said, with a despairing sigh; ‘but you will let me come to see you sometimes—won’t you, Janet?’ very tenderly, and evidently expecting a reproof; instead of which his devotion was rewarded with a smile. ‘And you’ll receive me just as you have done this afternoon, and give me a cup of that delicious Pekoe?’

‘I may come to tea again, mayn’t I, once in three weeks or so, like a boy who has a Saturday afternoon at home? Flossie likes me, you see,’ pleaded he jesuitically.

‘Well, you may come once a month, or so, if you happen to be in the neighbourhood.’

‘Happen to be in the neighbourhood! I would cross the Balkan range in January to obtain such a privilege.’

‘But remember you come only as my friend. If you talk to me as you have talked this afternoon, I shall ring for Sally, and tell her to show you to the door. It would be only a formula—as the street-door opens out of this room—but I should do it nevertheless.’

‘On that condition you may come; but, believe me, your own happiness would be better secured by your utter forgetfulness of a woman who may never be free to reward your fidelity. There are so many who would be proud of such a lover. Amongst them you might surely find one who would realise your ideal as well as, if not better than, I.’

‘Never!’ protested Geoffrey, with warmth. ‘I never knew what a great love was till I knew you. I will never open my heart to a lesser love.’

Janet gave a little sigh, half regret, half satisfaction. After all, a woman does not easily relinquish such devotion. She has a duty to fulfil, and her little lecture, her few words of wise counsel, to pronounce; and having done that duty, she is hardly sorry if her foolish adorer refuses to hear.

So they parted—not briefly, for little Flossie hung about Geoffrey, and impeded his departure; nay, at his and Flossie’s joint request, Janet walked half the length of the lane with Geoffrey and the child. They only parted within sight of the distant towers of Mardenholme.

‘How pleased Lady Baker would be if she knew you were so near!’ said Geoffrey.

‘Pray, don’t tell her. She was very good to me, and I was fond of her; but she would want me to go to that great house of hers, full of strange faces, and sing to her company, and be made a show of. I have contrived to keep very clear of her pathway so far, near as I am. Pray, do not betray me.’

‘To hear is to obey. But you really do mean to stay here?’ inquired Geoffrey anxiously. ‘When I come a month hence to claim that cup of Pekoe, I sha’n’t find you fled, eh?’

‘I promise that if anything should induce me to leave Foxley—that’s the name of our little village—I[Pg 27] will write you a line to say where I am going. But my present intention is to stay here till November—just long enough for a thorough rest—and then go back to my pupils at Stillmington.’

Geoffrey sighed. The thought of those sol-fa classes, and the hard labour they involved, always smote him to the quick; and he was rioting in the Three per cents, as he told himself.

He took his time in returning to Mardenholme; and the tableaux vivants had begun when he pushed his way in among the crowd of young men standing at the back of the picture-gallery, Lady Baker having naturally invited a good many more guests than could find even standing room. Here he stood patiently enough, and saw as much of the living pictures after Frith, Faed, and Millais as he could conveniently behold above the heads of the crowd in front of him. He was not deeply interested in the performance, his mind indeed being rather occupied with tender recollections of the humble tea-party at which he had lately assisted than by the charms of the graceful young lady who danced with Claude Duval, or of the pretty peasant lassie, with her shepherd’s plaid and neatly-snooded hair, or the damsel in white satin, who took a sad farewell of her Black Brunswicker under the glare of the lime-light. He applauded[Pg 28] mechanically when other people applauded, and felt that he had done all that society could expect of him. His cousins came out presently among the crowd, and straightway pounced upon him, and reproached him with acrimony.

‘I’ve been strolling about the gardens a little,’ replied that arch hypocrite. ‘It’s rather warm in here.’

‘Rather warm!’ exclaimed Jessie, who was evidently out of temper. ‘It’s insufferably hot, and I’m tired to death. These tableaux are a mistake after a garden-party. Lady Baker always tries to do too much. One feels so dowdy, too, in morning-dress when the lamps are lighted. But, pray, how have you managed to keep out of everybody’s way all the afternoon, Geoffrey? I haven’t set eyes on you since luncheon.’

‘I hope you haven’t been looking for me all the time,’ said Geoffrey, with unruffled coolness. ‘I’ve been meandering about the grounds, enjoying nature.’

‘Which I thought was not worth looking at in England,’ remarked Belle. ‘But perhaps, now we have found you,’ with angry emphasis, ‘you’ll be kind enough to get us some refreshment. I daresay[Pg 29] you have had something, but I know I am ready to sink.’

‘O, that’s to say, something in that way. Your sweets and kickshaws are all the same to me—I never know what to call them. Come along, Belle, we’ll fight our way to the refreshment-room. You sha’n’t sink if I can help it.’

He piloted the two damsels through the crowd to a large room, which had been arranged after the model of a railway refreshment-buffet, save that it was liberally furnished with things good to eat. Here Lady Baker’s men and maids dispensed strawberry ices, tea, coffee, Italian confectionery, German wines and German salads, to the famishing crowd; and here Geoffrey, by cramming them with ices, and creamy vanille-flavoured pastry, contrived to restore his cousins’ equanimity. There was some talk of dancing, and a few enthusiastic couples were already revolving in the drawing-room; but Geoffrey pleaded that no man could waltz in gray trousers, and thus escaped the infliction; and having the good fortune to find his uncle, tired of vestry and quarter-session talk and inclined to go home, this heartless[Pg 30] young man had the satisfaction of packing Belle and Jessie into the landau before Lady Baker’s fête was half over, as Jessie said discontentedly.

‘Those huge garden-parties are detestable!’ exclaimed Belle. ‘I know Lady Baker only gives them in order to be civil to a herd of people she doesn’t care a straw about. She gives nice little parties for her real friends. I wonder people can be so slavish as to go to her in droves.’

‘I thought you said Lady Baker’s parties were delightful,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I know you wrote to me rapturously about her.’

‘I’m only just beginning to see through her,’ replied Belle, who couldn’t get over the day’s annoyances. This tiresome Geoffrey had not been the least good to them. He might just as well have been in Norway.

For a few nights, while Lucille’s fever was at the worst, Lucius Davoren took up his abode in Cedar House, and established himself in that little room adjoining Mr. Sivewright’s bedchamber which had been lately occupied by Lucille. Here he felt himself a sure guardian of his patient’s safety. No one could harm the old man while he, Lucius, was on the spot to watch by night, and while Mrs. Milderson, the nurse, in whom he had perfect confidence, was on guard by day. His own days must needs be fully occupied out of doors, whatever private cares might gnaw at his heartstrings; but after introducing the ex-policeman and his wife, who came to him with a kind of warranty from Mr. Otranto, and who seemed honest people, he felt tolerably satisfied as to the safety of property in the old house, as well as about that more valuable possession—life. He had locked the door of the room which contained the chief part[Pg 32] of Mr. Sivewright’s collection, and carried the key about with him in his pocket; but there was still a great deal of very valuable property scattered about the house, as he knew.

One thing troubled him, and that was the existence of the secret staircase, communicating in some manner—which he had been up to this point unable to discover—with Mr. Sivewright’s bedroom. He had sounded Homer Sivewright cautiously upon this subject, and the old man’s answers had led him to believe that he, so long a tenant of the house, knew absolutely nothing of the hidden staircase; or it might be only an exaggerated caution and a strange passion for secrecy which sealed Homer Sivewright’s lips.

Once, when his patient was asleep, Lucius contrived to examine the panelling in front of the masked staircase, but he could discover no means of communication. If there were, as he fully believed, a sliding panel, the trick of it altogether baffled him. This failure worried him exceedingly. He had a morbid horror of that possible entrance to his patient’s room, which it was beyond his power to defend by bolt, lock, or bar, since he knew not the manner of its working. For worlds he would not have alarmed Mr. Sivewright, who was still weak as an infant, although wonderfully improved during the[Pg 33] last few days. He was therefore compelled to be silent, but he felt that here was the one hitch in his scheme of defence from the hidden enemy.

‘After all, there is little need to torment myself about the mystery,’ he thought sometimes. ‘It is clear enough that these Winchers were guilty alike of the robbery and the attempt to murder. The greater crime was but a means of saving themselves from the consequences of the lesser; or they may possibly have supposed that their old master had left them well provided for in his will, and that the way to independence lay across his grave. It is hard to think that human nature can be so vile, but in this case there is scarcely room for doubt.’

He thought of that man whom he had seen in the brief glare of the frequent lightning—the man who had raised himself from his crouching attitude to look up at the lighted window on the topmost story, and had then scaled the wall.

‘The receiver of stolen goods, the medium by which they disposed of their booty, no doubt,’ he said to himself; ‘their crime would have been incomplete without such aid.’

Although all his endeavours to find the key belonging to the door of the staircase leading to the upper story had failed, Lucius had not allowed himself[Pg 34] to be baffled in his determination to explore those unoccupied rooms. Now that Lucille’s prostration and the Winchers’ dismissal had made him in a manner master of the house, he sent for a blacksmith and had the lock picked, and then went up-stairs to explore, accompanied by the man, whom he ordered to open the doors of the rooms as he had opened the door of the staircase. There was little to reward his perseverance in those desolate attic chambers. Most of them were empty; but in one—that room whose door he had seen stealthily opened and stealthily closed on his previous visit to those upper regions—he found some traces of occupation. Two or three articles of battered old furniture—an old stump bedstead of clumsy make, provided with bedding and blankets, which lay huddled upon it as if just as its last occupant had left it—the ashes of a fire in the narrow grate—a table, with an old ink-bottle, a couple of pens, and a sheet of ink-stained blotting-paper—an empty bottle smelling of brandy on the mantelpiece, a bottle which, from its powerful odour, could hardly have been emptied very long ago—a tallow-candle, sorely gnawed by rats or mice, in an old metal candlestick on the window-seat—a scrap of carpet spread before the hearth, a dilapidated arm-chair drawn up close to it: a room which, to Lucius[Pg 35] Davoren’s eye, looked as if it had been the lair of some unclean creature—one of those lost wretches in whom the fashion of humanity has sunk to its lowest and vilest phase.

‘Ay, sir,’ answered the blacksmith, ‘it looks like it; some one who wasn’t over particklar about his quarters, I should think, by the look of the place. But he seems to have had summat to comfort him,’ added the man, with mild jocosity, pointing to the empty bottle on the chimneypiece.

Some one had occupied that room; but who was that occupant? And had Lucille known this fact when she so persistently denied the evidence of her lover’s senses—when she had shown herself so palpably averse to his making any inspection of those rooms?

Who could have been hidden there with her cognisance, with her approval? About whom could she have been thus anxious? For a moment the question confounded him. He could only wonder, in blank dull amazement.

Then, in the next moment, the lover’s firm faith arose in rebuke of that brief suspicion.

‘What, am I going to doubt her again,’ he said[Pg 36] to himself, ‘while she lies ill and helpless, with utmost need of my affection? Of course she was utterly ignorant of the fact that yonder room was occupied, and therefore ridiculed my statement about the open door. Was it strange if her manner seemed flurried or nervous, when she had just been startled by the sight of her father’s portrait? I am a wretch to doubt her, even for a moment.’

He went up to the loft, and thoroughly examined that dusty receptacle, but found no living creature there except the spiders, whose webs festooned the massive timbers that sustained the ponderous tiled roof. This upper portion of the house was vacant enough now; of that there could be no doubt. There was as little doubt that the room yonder had been lately occupied. There could but be one solution of the mystery, Lucius decided, after some anxious thought. Jacob Wincher had accommodated his accomplice with a lodging in that room while the two were planning and carrying out their system of plunder.

This examination duly made, and the doors fastened up again in a permanent manner, by the help of the blacksmith, Lucius felt easier in his mind. There was still that uncomfortable feeling about the secret staircase; but with the upper part of the[Pg 37] house under lock-and-key, and the lower part carefully guarded, no great harm could come from the mere existence of that hidden communication. In any case, Lucius had done his utmost to make all things secure. His most absorbing anxiety now was about Lucille’s illness.

His treatment had been to a considerable extent successful; the delirium had passed away. The sweet eyes recognised him once again; the gentle voice thanked him for his care. But the fever had been followed by extreme weakness. The sick girl lay on her bed from day to day, ministered to by Mrs. Milderson, and had scarcely power to lift her head from the pillow.

This prostration was rendered all the more painful by the patient’s feverish anxiety to recover strength. Again and again, with a piteous air of entreaty, she asked Lucius when she would be well enough to get up, to go about the house, to attend to her grandfather.

‘My dearest,’ he answered gravely, ‘we must not talk about that yet awhile. We have sufficient reason for thankfulness in the improvement that has taken place already. We must wait patiently for the return of strength.’

‘I can’t be patient!’ exclaimed Lucille, in the[Pg 38] feeble voice that had changed so much since her illness. ‘How can I lie here patiently when I know that I am wanted; that—that everything may be going on wrong without me?’

‘Was there ever such ingratitude and distrustfulness,’ cried the comfortable old nurse, with pretended chiding, ‘when she knows I’m that watchful of the poor old gentleman, and give him all he wants to the minute; and that when things was at the worst you slept in the little room next him, Mr. Davoren, so as to keep guard, as you may say, at night?’

‘Forgive me,’ said Lucille, stretching out her wasted hand to the nurse, and then to the doctor, who bent down to press his lips to the poor little feverish hand. ‘I daresay I seem very ungrateful; but it isn’t that—I only want to be well. I feel so helpless lying here; it’s so dreadful to be a prisoner, bound hand and foot, as it were. Can’t you get me well quickly somehow, Lucius? Never mind if I’m ill again by and by; patch me up for a little while.’

‘Nay, dearest, there shall be no half cure, no patching. With God’s help, I hope to restore you to perfect health before very long. But if you are impatient, if you give way to fretfulness, you will lessen your chances of a rapid recovery.’

Lucille gave no answer save a long weary sigh. Tears gathered slowly in her sad eyes, and she turned her face to the wall.

‘Yes, poor dear,’ said Nurse Milderson, looking down at her compassionately; ‘as long as she do fret and werrit herself so, she’ll keep backarding of her recovery.’

Here the nurse beckoned mysteriously to Lucius, and led him out of the room into the corridor, where she unbosomed herself of her cares.

‘It isn’t as I want to alarm you, Dr. Davoren’—Lucius held brevet rank in the Shadrack-road,—‘far from it; but I feel myself in duty bound to tell you that she’s a little wrong in her head still of a night, between sleeping and waking, as you may say, and talks and rambles more than I like to hear. And it’s always “father,” rambling and rambling on about loving her father, and trusting him in spite of the world, and standing by him, and suchlike. And last night—it might have been from half-past one to two—say a quarter to two, or perhaps twenty minutes,’ said Mrs. Milderson, with infinite precision, ‘I’d been taking forty winks, as you may say, in my chair, being a bit worn out, when she turns every drop of my blood to ice-cold water by crying[Pg 40] out sudden, in a voice that pierced me to the marrow—’

‘What, nurse? For goodness’ sake, come to the point,’ cried Lucius, who thought he was never to hear the end of Mrs. Milderson’s personal sensations.

‘I was coming to it, sir,’ replied that lady, with offended dignity, ‘when you interrupted me; I was only anxious to be exack. “O,” she cried out, “not poison! Don’t say that—no, not poison! You wouldn’t do that—you wouldn’t be so wicked as to poison your poor old father.” I think that was enough to freeze anybody’s blood, sir. But, lor, they do take such queer fancies when they’re lightheaded. I’m sure, I nursed a poor dear lady in Stevedor-lane, in purpleoral fever—which her husband was in the coal-and-potato line, and ginger-beer and bloaters, and suchlike—and she used to fancy her poor head was turned into a york-regent, and beg and pray of me ever so pitiful to cut the eyes out of it. I’m proud to say, tho’, as I brought her round, and there isn’t a healthier-looking woman between here and the docks.’

Lucius was silent. His own suggestion of a possible attempt to poison was sufficient to account for these delirious words of Lucille. It was only strange that she should have associated her father’s[Pg 41] name with the idea; that in her distempered dream, he, the father—to whose image she clung with such fond affection—should have appeared to her in the character of a parricide.

‘We must try and get back her strength, nurse,’ said Lucius, after a thoughtful pause; ‘with returning health all these strange fancies will disappear.’

‘Yes, sir, with returning health!’ sighed Mrs. Milderson, whose cheerfulness seemed somewhat to have deserted her.

This sick-nursing was, as she was wont to remark, much more trying than attendance upon matrons and their new-borns. It lacked the lively element afforded by the baby. ‘I feel lonesome and down-hearted-like in a sick-room,’ Mrs. Milderson would remark to her gossips, ‘and the cryingest, peevishest baby that ever was would be a blessing to me after a fever case.’

‘No, sir; but I don’t think her no better,’ answered Mrs. Milderson, with the vagueness of an oracle. ‘She’s that low, there’s no cheering of her up. I’m sure, I’ve sat and told her about some of my reglar patients—Mrs. Binks in the West Inja-road, and Mrs. Turvitt down by the Basin—and done[Pg 42] all I could think of to enliven her, but she always gives the same impatient sigh, and says, “I do so long to get well, nurse.” She must have been very low, Dr. Davoren, before she took to her bed.’

‘Yes,’ said Lucius, remembering that sudden fainting-fit. ‘She had allowed herself too little rest in her attendance upon her grandfather.’

‘She must have worn herself to a shadder, poor dear young creature,’ said Mrs. Milderson. ‘But don’t you be uneasy, sir,’ pursued the matron, having done her best to make him so; ‘if care and constant watchfulness can bring her round, round she shall be brought.’

Thus Lucius Davoren went about his daily work henceforward with a new burden on his mind—the burden of care for that dear patient, for whom, perchance, his uttermost care might be vain.

The glory of the summer had departed from the Shadrack-road. The costermongers no longer bawled their fine fresh ‘Arline’ plums, their ‘gages’ at four-pence per quart; cucumbers had grown too yellow and seedy even for the Shadrackites; green apples were exhibited on the stalls and barrows; the cracking of walnuts was heard at every street-corner; and the great bloater season—which was a kind of minor saturnalia in this district—had been inaugurated by the first triumphal cry of ‘Rale Yarmouths, two for threehalfpence!’ The pork-butchers, whose trade had somewhat slackened during the dog-days—though the Shadrackites were always pork-eaters—now began to find demand growing brisker. In a word, autumn was at hand. Not by wide plains of ripening corn, or the swift flight of the scared covey rising from their nest in the long grass, did the Shadrackites perceive the change of seasons, but by the contents of the costermongers’ barrows. At this time, also,[Pg 44] that raven cry of cholera—generally arising out of the sufferings of those unwary citizens who had indulged too freely in such luxuries as conger-eel and cucumber—dwindled and died away; and the Shadrackites, moved by that gloomy spirit which always beheld clouds upon the horizon, prophesied that the harvest would be a bad one, and bread dear in the coming winter.

Lucius went among them day after day, and ministered to them, and was patient with them, and smiled at the little children, and talked cheerily to the old people, despite that growing anxiety in his own breast. He neglected not a single duty, and spent no more of his day in Cedar House than he had done before he took up his quarters there. He ate his frugal meals in his own house, and only went to Mr. Sivewright’s dreary old mansion at a late hour in the evening. He had carried some of his medical books there, and often sat in his little bedroom reading, long after midnight. His boy had orders to run on to Cedar House should there be any call for his aid in the dead hours of the night.

He brooded much over that small packet of letters which he counted among his richest treasures—those letters from the man who signed himself ‘H. G.,’ and the lady whom he wrote of as Madame Dumarques,[Pg 45] the lady whose own delicate signature appeared in clearest characters upon the smooth foreign paper—written with ink that had paled with the lapse of years—Félicie.

Lucius read these letters again and again; and the result of this repeated perusal was the conviction that the writers of those lines were the parents of Lucille. Why should they have been thus deeply interested in Ferdinand Sivewright’s child, or how should he have been able to put forward a claim for money on that child’s behalf?

Lucius had taken these letters into his custody with the determination to turn them to good account. If it were within the limits of possibility, he would discover the secret to which these letters afforded so slight a clue. That was the resolve he had made when he took the packet from Homer Sivewright’s desk—and time in nowise diminished the force of his intention. But he had no heart to begin his search just yet, while Lucille was dangerously ill.

In the mean time he thought the matter over, repeatedly deliberating as to the best means of beginning a task which promised to be difficult. Should he consult Mr. Otranto—should he commit his chances to the wisdom and experience of that famous private detective?

His own answer to his own question was a decided negative. ‘No,’ he said to himself, ‘I will not vulgarise the woman I love by giving the broken links of the story of her birth to a professional spy, leaving him to put them together after his own fashion. If there should be a blot upon her lineage, his worldly eyes shall not be the first to discover the stain. Heaven has given me brains which are perhaps as good as Mr. Otranto’s; and constancy of purpose shall stand me in the stead of experience. I will do this thing myself. Directly Lucille is in a fair way to recovery, I will begin my task; and it shall go hard with me if I do not succeed.’

The days passed slowly enough for the parish doctor’s hard-worked brain, which felt weary of all things on earth, or of all those things which made up the sum of his monotonous life. September had begun, and a slight improvement had arisen in Lucille’s condition. She was a little stronger, a little more cheerful—had rewarded her doctor’s care with just a faint shadow of her once-familiar smile. She had been lifted out of her bed too one warm afternoon, and wrapped in her dressing-gown and an old faded Indian shawl that had belonged to Homer Sivewright’s Spanish wife, and placed in an easy-chair by the open window to drink[Pg 47] tea with Mrs. Milderson. Whereupon there had been a grand tea-drinking, to which Lucius was admitted, and in which there was some touch of the happiness of bygone days.

‘Do you remember the first time you gave me a cup of tea, Lucille,’ said Lucius, ‘that winter’s night, in the parlour down-stairs?’

The girl’s eyes filled with sudden tears, and she turned her head aside upon the pillow that supported it.

‘Needless cares, believe me, dearest,’ answered her lover. ‘Your grandfather is a great deal better—weak still, but much stronger than you are. He will be down-stairs first, depend upon it. I should have brought him in to take tea with us this afternoon if I had not been afraid of agitating you. I never had such a nervous excitable patient.’

‘Ah, you may well say that, Dr. Davoren,’ said Nurse Milderson, with her good-natured scolding tone. ‘I never see such an eggsitable patient—toss and turn, and worrit her poor dear self, as if she had all the cares of this mortial world upon her blessed shoulders. Why, Mrs. Beck, in Stevedor-square, that has seven children and a chandler’s business to[Pg 48] look after, doesn’t worrit half as much when she keeps her bed, tho’ she knows as everythink is at sixes and sevens down-stairs; those blessed children tumbling down and hurting of themselves at every hand’s turn—and a bit of a girl serving in the shop that don’t know where to lay her hand upon a thing, and hasn’t headpiece to know the difference between best fresh and thirteen-penny Dorset.’

Altogether this tea-drinking had been a happy break in Lucius Davoren’s life, despite those tears of Lucille. He had been with her once more; it had seemed something like old times. He saw a great peril past, and was thankful. After tea he read to her a little—some mild tender lines of Wordsworth’s—and then they sat talking in the dusk.

Many times during her illness Lucille had embarrassed her lover by her anxious inquiries about the Winchers. He had hitherto waived the question; now he told her briefly that they were gone—Mr. Sivewright had dismissed them.

‘They were devoted to my grandfather; they were the best and most faithful servants that ever any one had,’ she said.

‘They might seem so, Lucille, and yet be capable of robbing their old master on the first good opportunity.[Pg 49] Your grandfather’s long illness afforded them that opportunity, and I believe they took it.’

‘Simply because there is no one else who could possibly get at them. Jacob Wincher showed himself very clever throughout the business, acted a little comedy for my edification, and evidently thought to hoodwink me. But I was able to see through him. In point of fact, the evidence against him was conclusive. So at my advice your grandfather dismissed him, without an hour’s warning; and strange to say, his health has been slowly mending ever since his faithful servant’s departure.’

‘What!’ cried Lucille, with a horrified look, ‘you think it possible that Wincher can have—’

‘Tampered with the medicine by your grandfather’s bedside. Yes, Lucille, that is what I do believe; but he is now safe on the outside of this house, and you need not give yourself a moment’s[Pg 50] uneasiness upon the subject. Think of it as something that has never been, and trust in my care for the security of the future. No evil-disposed person shall enter this house while I am here to guard it.’

The girl looked at him with a wild despairing gaze—looked at him without seeing him—looked beyond him, as if in empty space her eyes beheld some hideous vision. She flung her head aside upon the pillow, with a gesture of supreme dejection.

‘A thief and a murderer!’ she said in tones too low to reach the lover’s ear. ‘O, my dream, my dream!’

Lucius had been working a little harder than usual on one of those September afternoons, and was just a shade more weary of Shadrack-Basin and its surroundings than his wont. He looked at the forest of spars visible yonder above the housetops, and wished that he and Lucille could have sailed together in one of those great ships, far out into the wild wide main, to seek some new-made world, where care was not, only love and hope. He had often envied the stalwart young Irishmen, the healthy apple-cheeked girls, the strong hearty wayfarers from north and south and east and west, whom he had seen depart, happy and hopeful, from possible penury here to follow fortune to the other side of the globe, in some monster emigrant-ship, which sailed gaily down the river with her cargo of human life. To-day he had felt more than usually oppressed by the fetid atmosphere of narrow alleys, the dirt-poison which pervaded those scenes in which he had been called to[Pg 52] minister—human dens, many of them, which only he and the pale-faced High-Church curate of St. Winifred’s, Shadrack-road, ever penetrated, excepting always the landlord’s agent, who came as regular as Monday morning itself, with his book and his little ink-bottle in his waistcoat-pocket, ready to make his entry of the money which so very often was not to hand. He gave a great sigh of relief as he came out of the last of the narrow ways to which duty had called him; a lane of tall old houses, in which one hardly saw the sky, and where smallpox had lately appeared—a more hateful visitor than even the agent with his ink-bottle.

‘I must get the taint of that place blown out of me somehow before I go to her,’ thought Lucius. ‘I’ll take a walk down by the docks, and get what air is to be had from the river.’

Air in those narrow streets there was none; life in a diving-bell could hardly have been much worse. The fresh breeze from the water seemed more invigorating than strong wine. Lucius got all he could of it—which was not very much—so completely was the shore occupied by tall warehouses, stores, provision-wharfs, and so on.

He walked as far as St. Katharine’s Wharf, always hugging the river; and here, having some time to[Pg 53] spare before his usual hour for presenting himself at Cedar House, he folded his arms and took his ease, lazily watching the bustle of the scene around him.

He had been here before many times in his rare intervals of leisure—the brief pauses in his long day’s work—and had watched the departing steamers with a keen envy of the travellers they carried—a longing for quiet old German cities—for long tranquil summer days dawdled away in the churches and picture-galleries of quaint old Belgian towns—for idle wanderings in Brittany’s sleepy villages, by the sunlit Rance,—for anything, in short, rather than the dusty beaten track of his own dull life. Of course this was before he knew Lucille; all his aspirations nowadays included her.

On this bright sunny afternoon, a west wind blowing freshly down the river, he lounged with folded arms, and watched the busy life of that silent highway with a sense of supreme relief at having ended his day’s work. The wharf itself was quiet enough at this time. A few porters loitered about; one or two idlers seemed on the look-out, like Lucius, for nothing in particular. He heard the porters say something about the Polestar, from Hamburg—heard without heeding, for his gaze had wandered after a[Pg 54] mighty vessel—an emigrant-ship, he felt assured—which had just emerged from the docks, and was being towed down the broadening river by a diminutive black tug, which made no more of the business than if that floating village had been a cockle-shell. He was still watching this outward-bound vessel, when a loud puffing and panting and snorting arose just below him. A bell rang: the porters seemed to go suddenly mad; a lot of people congregated from nowhere in particular, and the wharf was all life and motion, frantic hurry and eagerness.

The Polestar steamer had just arrived from Hamburg, three hours after her time, as he heard the porters tell each other. Lucius looked down at that vessel, with her cargo of commonplace humanity—looked listlessly, indifferently—while the passengers came scrambling, up the gangway, all more or less dilapidated by the sea voyage.

But presently Lucius gave a great start. Just beneath him, among those newly disembarked voyagers, he beheld a little fat man, with a round comfortable florid face, close shaven—a supremely calm individual, amidst all that turmoil and hurry, carrying a neat little shiny portmanteau, and resolutely refusing all assistance from porters. Lucius had last seen this man on the shores of the Pacific.[Pg 55] That round contented Saxon visage belonged to none other than Absalom Schanck.

The sight of that once-familiar face had a powerful effect upon Lucius. It brought back the memory of those dark days in the forest—the vision of the log-hut—those three quiet figures sitting despondently by the desolate hearth, where the pine-branches flared and crackled in the silence—three men who had no heart for cheerful talk—who had exhausted every argument by which hope might be sustained. And still more vividly came back to him the image of that fourth figure—the haggard face, with its tangled fringe of unkempt hair, the wild eyes and tawny skin, the long claw-like hands. Yes, it came back to him as he had seen it first peering in at the door of the hut—as he had seen it afterwards in the lurid glare of the pine-logs—as he had seen it last of all, distorted with a sudden agony—the death pang—when those bony hands relaxed their clutch upon the shattered casement.

Swiftly did these hated memories flash through his mind. His time for thought was of the briefest, for the little sea-captain had not far to come before he must needs pass his old travelling companion. He looked about him gaily as he mounted, his cheery countenance and bearing offering a marked contrast[Pg 56] to the dishevelled and woebegone air of his fellow passengers. Presently, as his gaze roved here and there among the crowd, his eyes lighted upon Lucius. His face became instantly illuminated. He had been warmly attached to the captain of the small band, yonder in the West.

‘Thank God,’ thought Lucius, seeing that glad eager look, ‘at least he doesn’t think of me as a murderer. The sight of me inspires no horror in his mind.’

‘Yase,’ said the sea-captain, holding out his plump little hand; ‘there is no misdakes—it is my froint Daforen.’

He and his ‘froint Daforen’ grasped hands heartily, and suffered themselves to be pushed against the wooden railing of the wharf, while the crowd surged by them.

‘I thought you were in California,’ said Lucius, after that cordial salutation.

‘Ah, zat is der vay mit von’s froinds. Man goes to a place, and zey tink he is pound to sday there for the ewigkeit. He is gone, zey say, as if he had the bower of logomotion ferlost. Man dalks of him as if he vas dead. Yase, I have to Galifornia gebeen. I have diggit, and golt not gefounden, and have come to England zuruck; and have gone to Hampurg to see my[Pg 57] families; and have found my families for the mosten dead, and am come back to my guddy at Pattersea, vhere my little housegeeper geep all things sdraight vhile I am avay. If I am in the Rocky Moundains, if I am in Galifornia, it is nichts. She geep my place didy. She haf my case-bottle and my bipe bereit vhen I go home. And now, Daforen, come to Pattersea one time, and let us have one long talk.’

‘Yes,’ answered Lucius thoughtfully. ‘I want a long talk with you, my dear old Schanck. The time when we parted company seems to me something like a dream. I can just remember our parting. But when I look back to those days I see them through a mist—like the dim outline of the hills in the cloudy autumn daybreak. Our journey through the forest with those Canadians—our arrival at New Westminster. I know that such things were, but I feel as if they must have happened to some one else, and not to me. Yet all that went before that time is clear enough, God knows. I shall never lose the memory of that.’

‘Ah, you was fery ill—you valked in your head, for long time. If I hat not mate one little hole in your arm, and let the blood spurten, like one fountain, you might have shall died becomen been,’ said the German, somewhat vague in his grasp of English compound tenses, which he was apt to prolong[Pg 58] indefinitely, ‘Yes, you valk in your talk—vat it is you say? ramblen. But come now, shall ve dake a gab—it is long vays to Pattersea—or vait for a steamer at Dowers Varf.’

‘The steamer will be quicker, perhaps,’ said Lucius, ‘and we can talk on board her. There are some questions I want to ask you, Schanck. I shall have to touch upon a hateful subject; but there are some points on which I want to be satisfied.’

‘Stay,’ said Lucius, ‘I am expected somewhere this evening, and the Battersea voyage will take some time. You want to get home at once, I suppose, old fellow?’

‘That want I much. There is the little housewife. I want that she has not run away to see.’

‘Run away to sea,’ cried Lucius, puzzled. ‘Has she any proclivity of that kind?’

‘I want to see she not has run away. Where is it you English put your verb?’

‘Well, just let me send a message, Salom’—Salom was short for Absalom, a pet name bestowed on the little German in the brighter days of their expedition—‘and I’m at your service.’

Lucius scrawled a few lines in pencil on a leaf of[Pg 59] his pocket-book, which he tore out and folded into a little note. This small missive he addressed to Miss Sivewright, Cedar House, and intrusted to a porter, whose general integrity and spotlessness of character were certified by a metal badge, and who promised to deliver the note for the modest sum of sixpence.

The note was only to inform Lucille that Lucius had an unexpected engagement for that evening, and could not be at Cedar House till late. It had become a custom for him to drink tea in the sick room, with Lucille, and Mrs. Milderson, who was overflowing with sympathy.

This small duty accomplished, Lucius accompanied Mr. Schanck to Tower Wharf, where they speedily embarked on a steamer bound for the Temple Pier, where they could transfer themselves to another bark which plied between that pier and Chelsea.

The boat was in no wise crowded, yet Lucius felt it was no place for confidential talk. Who could say what minion of Mr. Otranto’s might be lurking among those seedily-clad passengers, most of whom had a nondescript vagabond look, as if they had neither trade nor profession, and had no motive for being on board that boat save a vague desire to get rid of time?

Influenced by this insecurity Lucius spoke only[Pg 60] of indifferent subjects, till, after stopping at innumerable piers, and lowering their chimney beneath innumerable bridges, as it seemed to Lucius, they came at last to Cadogan Pier, whence it was an easy walk across Battersea-bridge to the sea-captain’s domicile.

This bit of the river-side has an old-world look, or had a few years ago—a look that reminded Mr. Schanck pleasantly of little waterside towns on the shores of the mighty Elbe. The wooden backs of the dilapidated old houses overhung the water; the tower of Chelsea Church rose above the flat; there were a few trees, an old bridge; a generally picturesque effect produced out of the humblest materials.

‘It buts me in mint of my faterlant,’ said Absalom, as they paused on the bridge to look back at the Chelsea shore.

Mr. Schanck’s abode was small and low—on a level with the river; whereby at spring-tide the housewife’s kitchen was apt to be flooded. A flagstaff adorned the little square of garden, which was not floral, its chief decorations being a row of large conk shells, and two ancient figure-heads, which stood on either side of the small street-door, glaring at the visitor, painted a dead white, and ghastly as the spectres of departed vessels.

One was a gigantic Loreley, with flowing hair;[Pg 61] the other was Frederick the Great; and these were the tutelary gods of Mr. Schanck’s home.

Within, the visitor descended a step or two—the steps steep and brassbound, like a companion-ladder—to the small low-ceiled sitting-room which Mr. Schanck called his cuddy. Here he was provided with numerous cupboards with sliding-doors—in fact, the walls were all cupboard—in which were to be found all a ship’s stores on a small scale, from mathematical instruments and case-bottles to tinned provisions and grocery. From these stores Mr. Schanck dealt out the daily rations to his housewife, a little woman of forty-five or so, whose husband had been his first mate, and had died in his service. There was a small cellar, approached by a trap-door, below this parlour or cuddy, where there were more tinned provisions, groceries, ship-biscuit, and case-bottles, and which Mr. Schanck called the lazarette. The galley, or kitchen, was on the other side of a narrow passage, and a stair of the companion-ladder fashion—steep and winding—led to three small staterooms or bedchambers, one of which was furnished with the hammock wherein Mr. Schanck had slept away so many unconscious hours, rocked in the cradle of the deep.

Above these rooms was the well-drained and[Pg 62] leaded roof, which the proprietor of the mansion called the poop-deck—the place where, in fine weather, he loved best to smoke his long pipe and sip his temperate glass of schiedam-and-water.

He produced a case-bottle and a couple of bright little glasses from one of the cupboards, gave the housewife a tin labelled ‘stewed rumpsteak’ out of another, and bade her prepare a speedy dinner. She seemed in no wise disturbed or fluttered by his return, though he had been absent three months, and had sent no intimation of his coming home.

‘Yes, sir, there was three feet of water in the lazarette last spring-tide.’

‘Ah, she is one good ship for all that. Now, Daforen, you will make yourself zu heim, and we will have some dinner presently.’

The dinner appeared in a short space of time, smoking and savoury. Mr. Schanck, in the mean while, had laid the cloth with amazing handiness, and had produced a little loaf of black bread from one of the cupboards, and a sour-smelling cheese of incredible hardness; they may both have been there for[Pg 63] the last three months; and with these hors d’œuvres proceeded to take the edge off his appetite. Notwithstanding which prelude he devoured stewed rumpsteak ravenously; while Lucius, who was in no humour to eat, made a feeble pretence of sharing his meal.

Finally, however, Mr. Schanck’s appetite seemed to be appeased, or he had, at any rate, eaten all there was to eat, and he dismissed his housekeeper with a contented air.

‘Let us go up to the poop for our dalk and krok,’ he said; to which Lucius assented. They would seem more alone there than in close proximity to that busy little housewife, who was washing plates and dishes within earshot.

They ascended the companion-ladder, the host carrying a case-bottle in one hand, and a big brown water-jug in the other, and seated themselves on a wide and comfortable bench, which had once adorned the stern of Mr. Schanck’s honest brig. There was a neat little table for the case-bottle and jug, the glasses and pipes.

‘This is what I gall gomfortable,’ said Mr. Schanck, who got more English in his mode of expression, as he talked with Lucius, and forgot his ‘families’ in Hamburg, with whom he had lately held converse.

The sun was setting behind the western flats out Fulham way; the tide was low; the crimson orb reflected on the bosom of the shining mud, with an almost Turneresque effect.

‘It was to live at Chelsea that made your Turner one great painter,’ said Mr. Schanck, with conviction. ‘Where else out of Holland could he see such landscapes?’

They began to talk presently of those old days in America, but Lucius shrank with a strange dread from that one subject which he was most anxious to speak about. There was one faintest shadow of a doubt which a few words from Absalom Schanck could dispel. That worthy, in talking over past experiences, dwelt more on the physical privations they had undergone—above all, on their empty larder.

‘When I count my tinned provisions—man improves daily in the art of tinned provisions—I can scarcely believe I was one time so near to starve. I sometimes feel as if I could never eat enough to make up for that treatful beriod.’

‘Yes,’ said Lucius gloomily, without the faintest idea of what the other had been saying. ‘I was very ill yonder, wasn’t I, Schanck, when you bled me?’

‘My brain was on fire when I shot that wretch. Yet I think, had I been full master of my senses, which I believe I was not, I should have done just the same. Tell me, Schanck, you who knew all, and were my witness in that trying hour, did I commit a great crime when I killed that man?’

‘I think you gommit no grime at all vhen you did shoot him, and if you had killed him it vould have been one very good job.’

‘If I had killed him!’ cried Lucius, starting up. ‘Is there any doubt of his death?’

‘Sit down, Daforen, be dranguil; the man is not worth that we should be uneasy for him. You asked if there is any doubt of his death? There is this much doubt, das when I saw him last he was alife.’

‘Good God!’ cried Lucius; ‘and I have suffered an agony of remorse about that man, wretch as I knew him to be. I have carried the burden of a great sin on my soul day and night; my dreams have been haunted, my lonely hours miserable.’

He clasped his hands before his face with a passionate gesture, and a hoarse sob broke from that breast, from which a load had been suddenly lifted. The sense of relief, of thankfulness, was keen as the keenest pain.

‘Tell me,’ he cried eagerly—‘tell me all about it, Schanck. Was not that shot fatal? I aimed straight at his heart.’

‘And you hit him zumvare,’ answered the German, ‘for vhen I vent out and looked apout for him an hour aftervarts, there were draces of bloot on the snow; but it couldn’t have been his heart, or he vould hardly have been able to grawl avay. I followed him a little vay by that drack of bloot, and the broken snow through which he had tragged himself along; but I could not go far; I was anxious about you, and I went back to the hut. If the man lay dead in the snow, or if he was shifering under the binedrees, kroaning with the bain of his vounds, I cared not.’

‘Was that the last you saw of him,’ asked Lucius—‘those traces of blood on the snow?’

‘It vas the last for one long time. If you vill be patient I vill tell you all the story.’

Then, with many peculiarities of expression—desperate compound substantives, and more desperate compound tenses of the subjunctive mood, which it were well to leave unrecorded—the little German told all he had to tell of that which followed Lucius Davoren’s fire. How, while Geoffrey slowly mended, Lucius lay in the torments of fever, brain distracted,[Pg 67] body enfeebled, and life and death at odds which should be master of that frail temple.

‘You were still very ill when, by God’s mercy, the Canadian party came our way. Geoffrey met them in the woods, while he was prowling about with his gun on the look-out for a moose, or even a martin, for we were as near starvation as men could be and not starve. We had kept ourselves alive somehow, Geoffrey and I, on the pieces of buffalo you brought home the night before your illness, and when those were gone, on a tin of arrowroot which Geoffrey had the luck to find in his travelling bag. When the Canadians offered to take us on with their party, you were very feeble, helpless as a little child. Geoffrey and I looked at each other; it seemed hard to lose such a chance. They had a spare horse, or at least a horse only laden with a little baggage—their provisions having shrunk on the journey—they offered to put you on this horse, and we accepted the offer. Geoffrey walked beside you and led the horse; we made a kind of bed for you on the animal’s back, and there you lay tied safely to the saddle.’ This was, in brief, what the sea-captain told him.

‘For Heaven’s sake, come to the other part of your story, when you saw that man alive,’ cried Lucius; ‘never mind the journey. I have a faint memory—as[Pg 68] if at best I had been but half conscious—of travelling on and on, under everlasting pine-trees, of perpetual snow that dazzled my aching eyes, of pains in every limb, and a horrible throbbing in my head, and a parching thirst which was the worst torment of all. I am not likely to forget that journey.’

‘And you remember how we parted at New Vestminster? I left you and Geoffrey to gome back to England your own way, while I went to the golt dickens. Your dravels had been for bleasure; I had an eye to pusiness. “Since I can make nothing out of furs,” I said to myself, “let me see what I can do with golt. It can require no great genius to dik for golt.” You puy a spade and pickaxe, and you dik; you get a bail of vater, and you vash; dat is all.’

‘But the man?’ cried Lucius, in an agony of impatience. ‘When and where did you see him?’

‘Dear heaven, how impatient he is!’ exclaimed the little German, puffing stolidly at his pipe, and without the faintest intention of quickening his accustomed jog-trot pace. ‘It was long ways off, it was long times after I wisht you both farewell at New Vestminster. I leaf you, and go off to San Francisco, and then to the dickens. Here I find rough savage men. I have no chance among them; the life is hart. I am knocked about; I am not strong[Pg 69] enough for the work. I wish myself—ach, how I wish myself at home here in my snug little guddy, or sitting to watch the sun go down on my poop-deck! I begin to feel what it is to be olt. One day after I have toiled—all zu nichts—I stretch my veary limbs to rest unter my wretched shelter. At mitternacht I hear a lout voice in a tent near at hant—the voice of a man playing at euchre with other men—a voice I know. My heart beats fast and lout. “It is that teufel,” I say to myself, “who eats his fellow-men!” I grawl out of my tent along the ground, to the tent from which I hear the sound of that voice—a tent which had been set up only that night; they are close together, my own tent and this new one, just a little space between, in which I am hidden, in the dark night. I lift the edge of the canvas and look in. There are men playing cards on the head of a barrel by the light of a candle. The candle shines on the face of one man. He is talking, with loud voice and excited gestures. “If this new claim over here turns out as well as our claim yonder, mates, a month longer I shall go back to England,” he says. “Pack to England,” I say to myself; “you are von vicked liar; for in the log-hut you tell us you have never to England been.” I stopped to listen to no more. Varever your pullet may have hit him—and[Pg 70] it did hit him somevare, for I saw the bloot—there he vas.’

‘You have mistaken some one else for him,’ said Lucius, ‘in that doubtful light.’

‘Mistaken! Den I am’mistaken in myself; dis is not me, but only some von like me. De light vas not toubtful. I see his face blain as I see yours; dis eye-vink, dis moment, de teep-set plack eyes—such eyes, eyes like der teufel’s—and ze little beak of hair on ze forehead. There was no mistakes. No, Daforen, es war der mann.’

‘Nein,’ answered the little man, shaking his head vehemently; ‘ein mal vas enough. I vent back to San Francisco next day, and started for England in the first fessel dat vould confey me. I had had enough of de dickens.’

‘A year!’ repeated Lucius dreamily. ‘And I did not kill that man after all—grazed his shoulder perhaps, instead of shooting him through the heart. The wretch was wriggling in at the window like an eel when I fired, and care and famine may have made my hand unsteady. Thank God—ay, with all my heart and soul—that his blood is not on my head.[Pg 71] He deserved to die; but I am glad he did not die by my hand.’

‘I do not pelieve he vill effer die,’ said Mr. Schanck. ‘He is a deffil, and has more lifes dan a cat.’

‘He had made money,’ mused Lucius, ‘and was coming to England. He is in England at this very moment perhaps, and may claim his daughter, or the girl he called his daughter. It is time that I should solve the mystery of those letters.’

This discovery materially altered the aspect of things. Ferdinand Sivewright living and in England meant danger. Would he leave Cedar House unassailed? Would he fail to discover sooner or later the fact that it contained valuable property? Would he not by some means or other endeavour to possess himself of that property?

He would come back to his old father with pretended affection, would act the part of the remorseful prodigal, would cajole Homer Sivewright into forgetfulness or forgiveness of the past, and thus secure the inheritance of his father’s treasures.

Then a new idea flashed across Lucius Davoren’s brain. What if this spirit of evil, this relentless villain, were at the bottom of the robbery? He remembered that lithe figure seen so briefly in the[Pg 72] glare of the lightning, just such a form as that of the gaunt wanderer in the pine-wood. What more likely than that Ferdinand Sivewright was the thief, and Wincher only the accomplice? The old servant might have been bribed to betray his master by promises of future reward, or by some division of the plunder in the present.

‘In any case, at the worst, I think I have securely shut the door upon this villain now and henceforward,’ thought Lucius.

Yet the idea of Ferdinand Sivewright’s possible presence in England filled him with a vague anxiety. It was an infinite relief to feel himself no longer guilty of this man’s death; but it was a new source of trouble to know that he was alive. Of all men, this man was the most to be feared. His presence—were he indeed the man Lucius had seen enter Cedar House after midnight—would account for the poison. That secret staircase might have given him access to his father’s room. Yet how should he, a stranger to the house, know of the secret staircase?

Here Lucius was at fault. There was now a new element in that mystery, which had so far baffled his penetration.

‘I will see old Wincher, and try to get the truth[Pg 73] out of him,’ he said to himself. ‘If he is, as I now suspect, only an accomplice, he may be willing to inform against his principal.’

After this revelation, so calmly recited by the worthy Schanck, Lucius was eager to be gone. The proprietor of the sea-worthy little dwelling, having said his say, sat placidly contemplating the level Middlesex shore, now wrapped in the mists of evening. He could not sympathise with his friend’s feverish condition.

‘Led us have some subber,’ he remarked presently, as if in that suggestion there was balm for all the ills of life. ‘A gurried rappit vould not pe pad, or a lopster varmed in a zauzeban mit some mateira.’

‘I must get to the City as soon as I can,’ he said. ‘Good-bye, Schanck. I’ll come and see you again some day; or you, who are an idle man, might come to see me. Here’s my card with the address, ever so far eastward of the wharf where you landed this afternoon. I thank Providence for our meeting to-day. It has taken a great load off my mind; but it has also given me a new source of anxiety.’

This was Greek to Mr. Schanck, who only sighed, and murmured something about ‘subber,’ and ‘gurried[Pg 74] rappit,’ strong in his supply of tinned provisions. Lucius bade him a hearty good-night, and departed from the calm flats of Battersea, eager to wend his way back to the Shadrack-road.

Lucius was more than usually solicitous for the security of the old house in the Shadrack-road after his meeting with Absalom Schanck; locks and bolts were adjusted with an almost mathematical precision under his eye, or even by his own hand; and Mr. Magsby, the ex-policeman, remarked to Mrs. Magsby, in the confidence of the domestic hearth, that for a young gentleman, Mr. Davoring was the fidgettiest and worritingest he had ever had dealings with. Whereupon Mrs. Magsby, who entertained a reverential admiration for Lucius, protested that she could see no fidgettiness in taking precautions against thieves in a house which had already been robbed; and that burnt children are apt to be timid of fire; and, in short, that in her opinion, whatever Mr. Davoren did, he was always ‘the gentleman.’

Early on the day following his visit to Battersea, Lucius went in quest of Jacob Wincher at the address which the old servant had given him at departing.

Mrs. Hickett’s, Crown-and-Anchor-alley, was an abode of modest dimensions, the ground floor being comprised by a small square parlour with a corner cut off for the staircase, and an offshoot of an apartment, with a lean-to roof, in the rear, which served as a kitchen.

The parlour, into which the street-door opened directly, was, in the continental sense, Mr. and Mrs. Wincher’s ‘apartment,’ since it constituted their sole and entire abode. That convenient fiction, a sofa-bedstead, with a chintz cover which frequent washing had reduced to a pale pea-soup colour, occupied one side of the apartment; a Pembroke table, a chest of drawers, and three Windsor chairs filled the remaining space, and left limited standing room for the inhabitants.

But if the domain was small, it was, in the eyes of the Crown-and-Anchor world, genteel, if not splendid. There was a looking-glass in a mahogany frame over the mantelpiece, with a pair of black-velvet kittens, and a crockery shepherd and shepherdess in front of it; a pair of fancy bellows hung from a nail on one side of the fireplace, and a fancy hearthbrush adorned the other side. Altogether, Mrs. Wincher felt that in Mrs. Hickett’s ground floor she was sumptuously lodged, and could hold her head[Pg 77] high in the Shadrack-road when, in her own phrase, she ‘fetched her errands,’ with no galling sense of having descended the social ladder.

She felt the strength of her position with peculiar force this morning when she opened the door to Lucius Davoren.

Her first sensation on beholding him was, as she informed Mrs. Hickett in a subsequent conversation, ‘astarickle.’ She fully believed he had come to announce the apprehension of the thief, or the recovery of the stolen property. But in the next moment her native dignity came to her rescue, and she received her guest with a freezing politeness and an assumption of profound indifference.

Some memory of the summer evenings when Mrs. Wincher had played the duenna, the happy talk of a bright future to which she had listened approvingly, came back to Lucius at sight of her familiar countenance. He had once thought her the soul of fidelity; even now he preferred to think her innocent of any complicity in her husband’s guilt.

Jacob Wincher was sitting by the fireless grate in a somewhat despondent attitude. He had found ‘odd jobs’ harder to get than he had supposed they would be, and enforced idleness was uncongenial. Nor was his slender stock of money calculated to[Pg 78] hold out long against the charges of rent and living.

‘Good-morning,’ said Lucius with cold civility. ‘I should be glad to have a few minutes’ talk with you alone, Mr. Wincher, if you’ll allow me.’

‘I have no secrets from my good lady, sir. You can say what you have to say before her. You haven’t found out who took that silver. I can tell as much as that from your manner,’ said Jacob Wincher quietly.

‘I can’t say that I have actually found the thief,’ answered Lucius; ‘but I have made a discovery which may help me to find him.’

‘Mr. Wincher,’ said Lucius, seating himself opposite the old man and leaning across the table to look into his face, ‘who was the man you let into your master’s house, by the brewhouse door, between one and two o’clock on the seventeenth of last month?’

‘Sir,’ said Jacob Wincher, steadily returning the questioner’s steady gaze, ‘as surely as there is a higher Power above us both, that knows and judges what we do and say, I have told you nothing but the truth. I let no one into my master’s house on that night or any other night.’

‘What! You had no light burning long after[Pg 79] midnight—you set no candle in one of the upper rooms for a signal—you never gave your accomplice a lodging in one of the attics? Why, I tell you, man, I found the bed he had slept in—the ashes of the fire that warmed him—his empty brandy bottle! If you want to go scot-free yourself, or to be paid handsomely for your candour, the truth will best serve you, Mr. Wincher. Who was the man you kept hidden in that upstair room at Cedar House?’

‘I can but repeat what I have said, sir. I never admitted any living creature to that house surreptitiously. I never lodged so much as a strange cat in those upstair rooms. How could I? Miss Lucille always kept the key of the upper staircase.’

‘Pshaw! What was to prevent your having a duplicate key?’ exclaimed Lucius impatiently.

This old man’s protestations sounded like truth; but Lucius told himself they could not be truth. After all, when a man has once made things easy with his conscience—settled with himself that he will not attempt to square his life by the right angle of fair dealing—there need be nothing so very difficult in lying. It can only be a matter of invention and self-possession.

‘Come, Mr. Wincher,’ said Lucius, after a pause; ‘believe me, candour will best serve your interests.[Pg 80] I know the name of your accomplice, and I am ready to believe that you were ignorant of the darker purpose which brought him to that house. I am ready to believe that you had no hand in the attempt to poison your old master.’

‘Sir,’ said Jacob Wincher, with another solemn appeal to the Highest of all Judges, ‘all that you say is incomprehensible to me. I admitted no one. I know nothing of any attempt to injure my old master, whom I have served faithfully and with affection for five-and-twenty years. I know no more of the robbery than I told you when I informed you of it. There is some mistake, sir.’

‘What, will you tell me that my own senses have deceived me—that I did not see the door opened and the light in the upper window that night? Who was there in the house to open that door or set that beacon light in the window except you—or Miss Sivewright?’

Or Miss Sivewright! What if it was Lucille who opened the door—Lucille who gave the man shelter in that upper room? Was she not capable of any act, however desperate, for the sake of the father she loved with such a morbid affection? If he came to her as a suppliant, entreating for shelter, pleading perhaps for her influence to bring about a[Pg 81] reconciliation between himself and his father, would this fond confiding daughter refuse to admit him? Would she foresee the danger of his presence in that house; or could her innocent mind conceive so deep a guilt as that of the would-be parricide?

A new light broke in upon Lucius Davoren’s mind. He remembered all that had been strange in Lucille’s manner and conduct since the evening when they went up to the loft and he saw the opening of the attic door. He remembered her anxiety on that occasion—her agitation on every subsequent recurrence to the same subject—her impatient denial of any foundation for his suspicions about the Winchers—how she fell unconscious at his feet when he plainly declared his discovery; and last of all, that fever in which the mind rather than the body had been affected. He recalled her wandering words, in which the name of father had been so often reiterated, and, most significant of all, that strange appeal which Mrs. Milderson had repeated to him, ‘You couldn’t be so wicked as to poison your poor old father.’ To whom but a son could those words have been spoken? And could delirium suggest so deep a horror if it were utterly baseless?

‘No, it was memory, and not a mind distraught, that shaped those fearful words,’ thought Lucius.

He was silent for some time, pondering this new view of the question. Jacob Wincher waited patiently, his poor old head shaking a little from the agitation of the foregoing conversation. Jacob Wincher’s good lady stood with her arms folded, like a statue of female stoicism, as if it were a point of honour with her not to move a muscle.

‘Well, Mr. Wincher,’ said Lucius at last, ‘it is not for me to decide whether you are guilty or innocent. You will hardly deny that circumstances conspired to condemn you. I did what I felt to be my duty when I advised Mr. Sivewright to dismiss you.’

‘After five-and-twenty years, and never a fault to find with neither of us,’ interjected Mrs. Wincher.

‘The result has in a considerable measure justified that act. The attempt to poison a helpless old man has made no further progress.’

‘We could have poisoned him in Bond-street, if we’d wanted to it,’ protested Mrs. Wincher. ‘It would only ’a been to cook his bit of minced weal or Irish stew in a verding-greasy copper saucepan, and all the juries as ever sat couldn’t have brought it home to us.’

‘Now, if you are, as you allege, an innocent man,’ pursued Lucius thoughtfully, ‘you will be glad to give me the utmost assistance. I have made a discovery that may in some measure affect this question. Ferdinand Sivewright is alive, and probably in England!’

‘Then it was he who stole that silver!’ cried the old man, starting up with sudden energy.

‘You would not say so, sir, if you knew that young man as well as I do. He was capable of anything—clever enough for anything in the way of wickedness. The most artful man couldn’t be a match for him. He deceived me; he hoodwinked his father, over and over again. There was no lock that could keep anything from him. He robbed his father in every way that it was possible for a man to rob, and looked in his face all the time, and shammed innocence. His mother had trained him to lie and cheat before he could speak plain. If Ferdinand Sivewright is in England, Ferdinand Sivewright is the thief.’

‘I don’t know! Perhaps. He did not shrink from stupefying his father’s senses with an opiate, when it suited his purpose. He may have grown[Pg 84] more hardened in wickedness since then, and may be capable of trying to poison him.’

‘Mind, I do not say that he is in England,’ said Lucius, ‘only that he may be. Now, there is one thing very clear to me, namely, that whoever put the arsenic in that medicine must have entered your master’s room by the secret staircase. Mr. Sivewright’s door was kept locked at night, and his room was carefully watched by day—especially during the two or three days immediately before my discovery of the poison. Now, you pretend to have been ignorant of the existence of that staircase until I showed it to you.’

‘But if you, who had lived in that house for several years, knew nothing about it, how should a stranger, coming into the house by stealth, discover it?’

‘He may, sir, though he never mentioned it to me. He is a close gentlemen at all times. He chose the room he now sleeps in for his bedroom when we first came to the house. He would have[Pg 85] no painting, or whitewashing, or repairs of any kind done—saying that the place was good enough for him, and he didn’t want to waste money upon it. My wife cleaned up the rooms as well as she could, and that was all that was done. There were no workmen spying about, to find out secret staircases or anything else.’

‘I’ve never heard, sir; but I believe it’s the property of somebody that lives abroad. Mr. Agar always collected the rent half-yearly.’

‘Then, no doubt, Mr. Agar knows all about that staircase,’ said Lucius; ‘I’ll go to him at once.’

‘Heaven grant you may be able to come at the truth, sir; though I can’t see how that staircase can help you.’

‘I don’t know about that, Mr. Wincher,’ returned Lucius; and with a hasty ‘Good-morning,’ he departed.

Lucius went straight to Mr. Agar’s office—a little wedge-shaped box of a place squeezed corner-wise off a larger shop, for space was precious in the Shadrack-road. In this small temple of industry, Mr. Agar professed himself ready to value property, survey estates, sell by auction, let lands, houses, or apartments, collect rents, and even at a push to undertake the conduct of genteel funerals.

Here Lucius found him—a busy little man, with a bald head, and an ear that had been pushed into high relief by having a pen continually stuck behind it.

‘Pray, what can I do for you, sir?’ he asked, with his fingers in his order-book, ready to write an order to view any species of property within a ten-mile radius of the Shadrack-road.

‘As an intending tenant, sir, or purchaser?’ inquired Mr. Agar, turning round upon his high stool, and nursing his leg, in an attitude which was at once easy and inviting to confidence.

‘As a purchaser, then?’ exclaimed Mr. Agar, stimulated by the vision of five per cent. ‘Have we’—a very grand we—‘advertised the property?’

‘But you think that we might negotiate something—make a speculative offer—eh?’ inquired the agent briskly. ‘My dear sir, in any delicate little matter of that kind, you may rely upon my discretion—and I think I may venture to say, upon my diplomatic powers.’

‘I want you to answer two or three plain questions, Mr. Agar—that is all. Some years ago you let Cedar House to my friend and patient, Mr. Sivewright.’

‘Cedar House—dear me, that is really curious; not an attractive property, one would think—no frontage to speak of—house out of repair, and yet—’

‘To two old maiden ladies, who reside in Paris. Their grandfather was a great man in the City—a brassfounder, I believe—and lived at Cedar House in very grand style, but not within the memory of anybody now living. The house has degenerated since his day, but it is still a valuable property. As a public institution, now, it would offer great advantages; or it might be made the nucleus of a large fortune to a medical practitioner in the shape of a private lunatic asylum,’ added the agent, with a sharp glance at Lucius.

‘Mr. Agar, I am bound to inform you that I am not on the look-out for a house for the purpose you suggest. But I am very curious to know all about Cedar House. When you let it to Mr. Sivewright were you aware of a secret staircase, which ascends from an outbuilding at the back to the first floor?’

‘It ascends to one of the rooms on the upper story, sir. A fact you might have discovered for yourself if you had taken the trouble to examine the staircase thoroughly; but it’s an abominably[Pg 89] crooked and dangerous place, and I don’t wonder you left some portion of it unexplored.’

‘To the north-east attic. There is a door at the back of the closet in that room—you’d hardly distinguish it from the rest of the panelling—communicating with that staircase.’

‘Well, no. I doubt if he heard of it; that is to say, I don’t remember mentioning it. You see, to the candid mind,’ continued the agent, taking a high moral tone, ‘there is something peculiarly repellent in secrecy; even a secret staircase is not a pleasant idea. And the house had acquired a queer reputation in the neighbourhood. Noises had been heard—strange cats, no doubt—silly people even pretended to having seen things; in short, the ignorant populace described the house as haunted. Idle boys chalked “Beware of the ghost” on the garden wall; and when a tenant came forward at last in the person of Mr. Sivewright—a somewhat eccentric old gentleman, as you are no doubt aware, but most upright[Pg 90] and honourable in his dealings—I was glad to let him the old place at a ridiculously low rent.’

‘Then I think we may take it for granted that he knows nothing about it. By the way, how does the communication work with the room on the first floor—it’s a sliding panel, I suppose?’

‘Yes; there’s a bit of moulding on one of the panels that looks rather loose; press that inwards, and the panel slides behind the other part of the wainscot. I don’t suppose it works very easily, for it must be a long time since it was used.’

‘No, sir; that end of the house belongs, I believe, to Henry the Eighth’s time. That staircase is built in what was once a great square chimney—the chimney of the old banqueting-hall, in fact; for there was a banqueting-hall in Cedar House in Henry the Eighth’s time, though there’s nothing left of it now; that end is clean gone, except the said chimney. I got an architect to look over the place once for the Miss Chadwicks, my clients, with a view to reparation;[Pg 91] but the reparations mounted up so, that when the elder Miss Chadwick got the specification she wrote and told me she and her sister would sooner have the place pulled down at once, and sold for building materials, than lay out such a lot of money; for they are rather close, are the Miss Chadwicks. The architect didn’t seem to think that old chimney over safe either, on account of their having pulled down the hall, and took away its supports, in a measure. “But it’ll last our time, I daresay,” says he; “and if it falls it’s bound to fall outwards, where it can’t hurt anybody.” For, as I daresay you are aware, there’s only a bit of waste ground—a cat-walk, as you may say—on that side of the house.’

‘Rather a hazardous condition though for a house to be left in,’ said Lucius, thinking that this would give him a new incentive to find a better home for Lucille speedily. ‘Then you don’t know why that staircase was built, nor who built it?’

‘Well, no, sir; I can’t say I do. I’ve often wondered about it. You see, the staircase may not have been a secret one in the first instance, but may have been converted to a means of escape in the troublesome times that came later. There is no allusion to it in any of the deeds belonging to the house.’

‘You spoke just now of my inquiry being curious,’ said Lucius after a pause; ‘why was that?’

‘I thought it rather strange that you should make an inquiry about Cedar House, because some six weeks ago I had another gentleman here who made the same inquiry.’

‘No, he didn’t inquire about the staircase. I told him about that afterwards, in the course of conversation, and he seemed struck by the fact. We had a good bit of talk together, first and last, for he was a very free and open kind of a gentleman, and had just come from Australia, or America, I really forget which, and he insisted on standing a bottle of champagne—a thing I shouldn’t have cared to partake of in the middle of the day, if he hadn’t been so pressing.’

‘Well, a good-looking fellow enough, but rather peculiar-looking with it. Tall and thin, with a sallow complexion, and the blackest eyes and hair I ever saw in a European. The hair grew in a little peak on his forehead, such as I’ve heard some facetious folks call a widower’s peak. It was rather noticeable.’

‘Yes, I think he is a person I know. And pray what inquiries did he make about the house?’

‘More than I can remember,’ answered the agent; ‘there never was such a gentleman for asking questions, and so business-like too. He made me take a sheet of paper and sketch him out a plan of the house in pencil—how all the rooms lay, and the passages and stairs, and so on. That’s how we came to speak of the private staircase. He seemed quite taken aback by the notion. It might be handy, he said, and work into something that he wanted.’

‘They were made with a view to making an offer for the property, which I had reason to think my clients, the Miss Chadwicks, would be not unwilling to part with. The gentleman is trying to get a patent for an invention of his, which will make his fortune when carried out, he says, and he wants good roomy premises within an easy distance of the docks. A thorough man of business, I can assure you, though only just returned from abroad,’ added Mr. Agar, as if England were the only country in which business was properly understood.

‘Has this gentleman made any attempt to forward the transaction?’ asked Lucius. ‘Have you ever seen him since the day when he treated you to champagne?’

‘Treated is hardly the word, sir!’ said Mr. Agar with dignity. ‘The gentleman stood a bottle of Peerer Jewitt. It was as much for his pleasure as for mine.’

‘I have no doubt of that, Mr. Agar. But have you seen any more of this agreeable gentleman?’

‘No, sir, he hasn’t been in here since. I fancy there’s some difficulty about the patent. It isn’t easy to hurry things where you’ve got to deal with Government offices. But I expect to hear from him before very long. He was quite the gentleman.’

‘I doubt if you will ever see him again, Mr. Agar, gentleman or not; if he be the man I take him for.’

‘It is, Mr. Agar; and I am unable just now to substantiate it. I can only thank you for the information[Pg 95] you have kindly given me, and wish you good-morning.’

He left the little office, glad to be in the open air again to have room to breathe, and to be able to contemplate this new aspect of affairs alone.

‘He is here then, and henceforward it must be a hand-to-hand fight between us two.’

One of Lucius Davoren’s first thoughts, after that interview with the house-agent, was of his sister Janet and of Geoffrey Hossack. The discovery, which lifted a load from his conscience, changed the aspect of Geoffrey’s fortunes. The man who had married Janet still lived, and whether the marriage were legal or not—a fact difficult of ascertainment in a life so full of double-dealing—Janet would doubtless count herself bound to him. She had told Lucius, when they met at Stillmington, that she did so consider herself; and he knew that calm proud nature too well not to know that she would be firm, whatever sorrow to herself were involved in such constancy.

Lucius lost no time in writing to Geoffrey, at the Cosmopolitan, the only safe address for that nomadic gentleman. He knew that the people at the Cosmopolitan were generally acquainted with Mr. Hossack’s whereabouts, and had instructions to forward his letters.

‘Dear Geoffrey,—The last week has been full of discoveries. I have seen Absalom Schanck, and learned from him that I am guiltless of that scoundrel’s blood—a surprise which has infinitely relieved my mind, but which has also given me new cause for uneasiness. To you, poor old Geoff, I fear it will be a disappointment to learn that Janet’s husband is still in the land of the living; but I hope that this knowledge may have a beneficial effect, and help to cure you of a foolish passion, which I told you from the first was hopeless. Would to heaven, for your sake and Janet’s, that it were otherwise! But Fate is stronger than man. And, after all, there are plenty of charming women in the world who would be proud to call Geoffrey Hossack husband.

‘I try to write lightly, but I am full of anxiety. This man’s existence means peril for those I love, and I know not what shape the danger may assume. Let me hear of you soon.—Ever yours,

‘Lucius Davoren.’

Ferdinand Sivewright’s existence meant peril for his old father and for the innocent girl who believed herself to be his daughter. Of that fact Lucius had no doubt, and the one question was how to meet the[Pg 98] danger. That the old house was now securely defended, he felt tolerably sure—as sure as one could be about a rambling old place which was all doors and windows, and for aught he knew might still be approachable by some hidden way that had escaped his ken. The great point now would be to prove to Lucille that this man had no claim upon her; that no tie bound her to him, not even the duty of common gratitude for any kindness shown to her in her childhood, since he had made her existence an excuse for extorting money from her father. He, Lucius, must show her that the fancy which her girlish heart had cherished—the fond belief in this father’s love—was more baseless than the dreams of fever, wilder than the fancies of madness. How would he prove this to her? He might show her those letters. But would the evidence of the letters be strong enough to dispel so deep-rooted a belief, so long-cherished a fancy?

No, Lucius told himself. The letters, which told their story plainly enough for him, might fail to convince Lucille.

How to obtain that proof, how to begin the search that was to end in the discovery of Lucille’s parentage,[Pg 99] was the question which now absorbed all his thoughts. He had made up his mind to seek no assistance in this difficult task. Whatever blunders he might make, however awkwardly he might transact a business so foreign to the bent of his life, he would do this work for himself, and succeed or fail unaided.

‘If there is a stain upon her birth, no one but I shall discover it,’ he said to himself.

Homer Sivewright had read those letters as relating to a secret marriage, yet their wording might be taken to indicate a less honourable relation between the gentleman who signed himself H. G. and the lady who called herself Madame Dumarques.

Throughout the letters there was but one positive clue to the identification of the writers. That lay in the address given by the lady, at Rouen. She was staying in that city with friends—relations perhaps. It was just possible that Lucius might be so fortunate as to find some of these people still resident in the same city. The date of the letters was only fourteen years ago, and in some slow tranquil lives fourteen years make but little difference. The hair grows a shade grayer; the favourite old dog or the familiar household cat dies, and is replaced by a younger and less cherished animal; the ancient[Pg 100] asthmatic canary is found dead in his cage; the old Sunday silk gown, which has been worn with honour for a decade, is converted into a petticoat; the old husband takes to stronger spectacles, and shortens his constitutional walk by the length of a couple of streets; the old wife dies perhaps, and is buried and feebly mourned for a little while; and with such faint ripples of change the slow dull river glides on to the eternal ocean.

Lucius was hopeful that, in a quiet by-street in the city of Rouen, he might find things very much as they had been fourteen years ago. He made up his mind to start for that city on the following night. A train leaving London-bridge at dusk would take him to Newhaven; he would reach Dieppe by six o’clock next morning, and Rouen by breakfast time. Once there he knew not how long his researches might detain him; but he could so arrange his affairs, with the help of a good-natured brother-medico in the Shadrack district, as to absent himself for a few days without inconvenience to his numerous patients.

That one dear patient whose safety was so near to his heart was now out of danger. The fever was past, and the only symptom which now gave him cause for anxiety was a deep melancholy, as of a[Pg 101] mind overburdened with care, or weighed down by some painful secret.

‘Could I but dare to speak openly I might dispel some of those apprehensions which now disturb her,’ thought Lucius; ‘but I cannot venture to do that until she is better able to bear the shock of a great surprise, and until I am able to confirm my statements.’

Lucille was now well enough to come down to the old wainscoted parlour, where her lover had first seen her on that dark winter’s night which, when looked back upon, seemed like the beginning of a new life. Mr. Sivewright still kept his room, but had improved considerably, and had relented towards Mrs. Milderson, whom he graciously allowed to minister to his wants, and would even permit to discourse to him occasionally of the domestic annals of those lady patients into whose family circles she was from time to time admitted. He would make no farther protest than an impatient sniff when the worthy nurse stood for a quarter of an hour, cup-and-saucer in hand, relating, with aggravating precision of date and amplitude of detail, the little differences between Mr. Binks the chandler and his good lady on the subject of washing-days, or the ‘stand-further’ between Mrs. Binks and ‘the girl.’

Under the gentle sway of Mrs. Milderson, who was really an honest and sober specimen of her race, demanding only a moderate supply of those creature-comforts which the Gamp tribe are apt to require, life had gone very smoothly at Cedar House. Mrs. Magsby took charge of the lower part of the premises and her own baby (which seemed to absorb the greater part of her attention), and was altogether a mild and harmless person. Mr. Magsby, as guardian of the house, did nothing particular but walk about with a somewhat drowsy air, and smoke his pipe in open doorways, looking up at the sky, and enunciating speculative prophecies about the weather, which, as he never went out of doors, could have been of very little consequence to him.

Thus administered, what citadel could seem more secure than Cedar House? Lucius, after thinking of the subject from every possible point of view, decided that he could run no hazard in absenting himself for a few days. He went at the usual hour that afternoon, when his day’s work was done. Lucille seemed a little brighter and happier than she had been of late, and the change cheered him.

‘My darling,’ he said fondly, as he looked down at the pale face, which had lost something of its care-worn expression, ‘you have almost your old tranquil[Pg 103] look—that calm sweet face which came upon me like a surprise one dark November night, nearly a year ago, when yonder door opened, and you came in, carrying a little tray.’

‘How well you remember things, Lucius! Yes, I have been happier to-day. I have been sitting with grandpapa, and he really seems much better. You do think him improved, don’t you, Lucius?’

‘I think him on the high-road to recovery. We may have him hale and vigorous yet, Lucille—sitting by the hearth in our new home.’

‘Our new home—yes,’ said the girl, looking round her with a perceptible shudder, ‘I shall be glad to leave this dull old house some day. It is full of horrible thoughts. But now that I am well again, I can take care of grandpapa.’

‘I should think she do, indeed,’ said Mrs. Milderson, who came in with the tea-tray, having discreetly allowed the lovers time for greeting; ‘and care she shall have, and her beef-tea reglar, and no liberties took, which invalidses’ mistake is always to think they’re well ever so long before they are. There was Mrs. Binks, only the other day, down in the shop serving the Saturday-night customers, which is no[Pg 104] better nor Injun American savages in the impatience of their ways, before that blessed baby was three weeks old.’

‘I think I can rely upon you to take care of both my patients, nurse, while I am away for a few days.’

‘Yes, dear; but for two or three days only. I think I may venture to leave you in Mrs. Milderson’s care for that time.’

‘I should hope you could, sir,’ exclaimed that matron, ‘after having had two years’ experience of me in all capacities—and even the old gentleman up-stairs, which was inclined to be grumpy and standoffish at first, having took to me as he has.’

‘I shall be quite safe, Lucius,’ said Lucille, ‘but I shall miss you very much.’

‘It shall be only for a few days, dearest. Nothing but important business would tempt me away from you even for that time.’

‘Important business, Lucius! What can that be? Is it another visit to that tiresome friend of yours, Mr. Hossack?’

‘No, dear, it is something which concerns our own future—something which I hope may bring you a new happiness. If I succeed in what I am going[Pg 105] to attempt, you shall know all about it, and quickly. If I fail—’

‘Better that you should never know anything, darling, for then you can feel no disappointment.’

‘O!’ said Lucille, with a little sigh of resignation. ‘I suppose it is something connected with your professional career, some ambitious project which is to make me very proud of you if you succeed in it. Are you going very far?’

‘Rouen!’ cried Lucille; ‘Rouen in France?’ with as much astonishment as if he had said the centre of Africa.

‘To Rouen, in the department of the lower Seine,’ he answered gaily; with assumed gaiety, for it pained him even to leave her for so brief a span.

‘Simply that ambitious project you spoke of just now. My dearest girl, you look as distressed as if I were going to Australia, when my journey is only a question of three or four days. I shall leave London to-morrow evening, and be in Rouen before noon next day. A day, or at most two days, will, I trust, accomplish my business there. I shall travel at night both ways, so as to save time; and on the fourth day I[Pg 106] hope to be back in this dear old parlour drinking tea with you and nurse.’

‘Of course!’ exclaimed Mrs. Milderson, as if she had known all about it from the very beginning. ‘Do you suppose Dr. Davoren would go wasting of his precious time in France or anywheres else, with all his patients fretting and worriting about him—and left to the mercy of a strange doctor, which don’t know the ins and outs of their cases, and the little peculiarities of their constitushuns, no more than a baby?’

After tea Mrs. Milderson retired with the tray, and was absent for some time in attendance on Mr. Sivewright, who took his light repast of dry toast and tea also at this hour. Thus Lucius and Lucille were alone together for a little while. They stood side by side at the open window, which commanded no wider prospect than the bare courtyard or garden, where a few weakly chrysanthemums languished in a neglected bed, and two or three feeble sycamores invited the dust, while one ancient poplar, whose branches had grown thin and ragged with age, straggled up towards the calm evening sky. A high wall bounded this barren domain and shut out the world beyond it.

‘We must go up to grandpapa presently,’ said Lucille; ‘he likes us to sit with him for an hour or two in the evening now that he is so much better.’

‘Yes, dear, we will go; but before we go I want to ask you about something that has often set me wondering, yet which in all our talk we have spoken of very little.’

‘About your earliest memories of childhood, Lucille. The time before you lived in Bond-street with your grandfather.’

To his surprise and distress she turned from him suddenly, and burst into tears.

‘Then never speak to me again of my childhood, Lucius,’ she said with sorrowful earnestness. ‘It is a subject I can never speak of, never think of, without grief. Never again, if you wish me to be happy, mention the name of father.’

‘It is,’ answered Lucille, in a heartbroken voice, ‘and the awakening has been most bitter.’

‘Thank Heaven that awakening has come, Lucille—even at the cost of pain to your true and tender heart,’ replied her lover earnestly. ‘My dearest, I am not going to torture you with questions. The mystery of these last few weeks has been slowly growing clear to me. There has been a great peril[Pg 108] hanging over us; but I believe and hope that it is past. Of your innocent share in bringing that danger beneath this roof, I will say not a word.’

‘I know, or can guess, all, Lucille. How your too faithful affection has been traded upon by a villain.’

‘O, do not speak of him!’ she cried. ‘Remember, how ever dark his guilt may be, I once loved him—once, and O, so long, believed in him; hoped that he was only unfortunate, and not wicked; clung to the thought that he was the victim of circumstances. Lucius, have some pity upon me. Since that night when you first spoke of your dreadful fear—first suggested that some one was trying to poison my poor old grandfather—I have lived in a horrible dream. Nothing has seemed clear to me. Life has been all terror and confusion. Tell me once for all, is it true that some one tried to poison him—is it true?’

‘Lucille, do not speak of these things,’ said Lucius, drawing the too fragile form to his breast, smoothing the loose hair on the pale forehead. ‘Is it not enough to know that the danger is past? That[Pg 109] fatal blindness—the fatal delusion which made you cling to the memory of a bad man—has been dispelled. You will never admit Ferdinand Sivewright to this house again.’

He looked at the pale face resting on his shoulder as he made this straight assertion. There was no indignant denial, not even surprise in the look of those plaintive eyes which were slowly lifted to meet his own—a beseeching look, as of one who asked forgiveness for a great wrong.

‘I have been more than foolish,’ she said, with a shudder, as if at some terrible memory. ‘I have been very wicked. If my grandfather had died, I should have been an unconscious accomplice in his murder. But he is my father; and when he came to me, after so many years of separation, shelterless, hopeless, only pleading for a refuge, and the opportunity to win his father’s pardon—O Lucius, I can never tell you how he pleaded, by the memory of his old love for me—’

‘His love for you! I trust you may soon know, dearest, what that love was worth.’

‘Heaven grant I may never see his face or hear his name again, Lucius. The memory of him is all horror.’

‘You shall not be troubled by him any more if I[Pg 110] can help it,’ answered her lover tenderly. ‘But you will never again keep a secret from me, will you, dearest?’

‘Never, Lucius. I have suffered too much from this one sin against your love. But if you knew how he pleaded, you would forgive me. You would not even wonder that I was so weak. Think, Lucius; a repentant son pleading for admission to his father’s house, without a roof to cover him, and longing for a reconciliation with the father he had offended.’

‘My poor confiding child, you were made the dupe of a villain. Tell me no more than you like to tell; but if it is any relief to you to speak—’

‘It is, Lucius. Yes, it is a relief to trust you. I thought I never could have told you. The burden of this dreadful secret has weighed down my heart. I dared not tell you. I thought you would bitterly reproach me for having kept such a secret from you, and then it is such pain to speak of him—now—now that I know he was never worthy of my love. But you are so kind, and it will relieve my mind to tell you all.’

‘It was while you were away at Stillmington,[Pg 111] Lucius, that this secret first began. I was in the garden alone, at dusk one evening.’

Lucius remembered what Mrs. Wincher had told him about Lucille coming in from the garden with a pale horror-stricken face, and saying that she had seen a ghost.

‘I was low-spirited because of your absence, and a little nervous. The place seemed so dull and lonely. All the common sounds of the day were over, and there was something oppressive in the silence, and the hot smoky atmosphere, and the dim gray sky. I was standing in the old summer-house, looking at the creek, and thinking of you, and trying to have happy thoughts about brighter days to come—only the happy thoughts would not stay with me—when I saw a man come from the wharf on the other side of the water, and step lightly from barge to barge. I was frightened, for the man had a strange look somehow, and was oddly dressed, buttoned to the neck in a shabby greatcoat, and with his face overshadowed by a felt hat that was slouched over his forehead. He came so quickly that I had hardly time to think before he had got upon the low garden wall, and dropped down close to the summer-house. I think I gave a little scream just then, for he came in, and put his hand across my lips. Not roughly,[Pg 112] but so as to prevent my calling out. “Lucille,” he said, “don’t you know me? Am I so changed that my dear little daughter, who loved me so well once, doesn’t know me?” The voice was like the memory of a dream. I had not an instant’s doubt. All fear vanished in that great joy. The sad sweet thought of the past came back to me. The firelit parlour where I had sat at his feet—that strange wild music—his voice—his face—he had taken off his hat now, and was looking down at me with those dark bright eyes. I remembered him as well as if we had been only parted a few days.’

‘And was there nothing in his presence—in the tone of his voice, the expression of his face—from which your better instinct recoiled? Had nature no warning for you? Did you not feel that there was something of the serpent’s charm in the influence which this man had exercised over you?’

Lucille was silent for a few moments, looking thoughtfully downwards, as if questioning her own memory.

‘I can scarcely tell you what I felt in that moment,’ she said. ‘Joy was uppermost in my mind. How could I feel otherwise than happy in the return of the father I had mourned as dead? Then came pity for him. His worn haggard face—his threadbare[Pg 113] clothes—spoke of struggle and hardship. He told me very briefly the story of a life that had been one long failure, and how he found himself at this hour newly returned from America, and cast penniless and shelterless upon the stones of the London streets. “If you can’t give me a hole to lie in somewhere in that big house, I must go out and try to get lodged in the workhouse, or steal a loaf and get rather better fare in a gaol.” That was what he said, Lucius. He told me what difficulties he had encountered in his search after me. “My heart yearned for you, Lucille,” he said; “it was the thought of you and of the poor old father that brought me back from America.”’

‘O no, no; I had no such thought as that,’ answered Lucille quickly. ‘Yet I confess,’ she went on more deliberately, ‘there was a vague feeling of disappointment in my mind. This long-lost father, so unexpectedly restored to me, did not seem quite all that I had dreamed him; there was something wanting to make my joy perfect—there was a doubt or a fear in my mind which took no definite shape. I only felt that my father’s return did not make me so happy as it ought to have done.’

‘I don’t know. But when I hesitated about admitting him to the house—unknown to my grandfather—he reproached me for my want of natural affection. “The world is alike all over,” he said; “and even a daughter has no welcome for a pauper; though he comes three thousand miles to look at the girl who used to sit on his knee and put her soft little arms round his neck, and vow she loved him better than any one else in the world.” I told him how cruel this accusation was, and how I had remembered him and loved him all through these long years, and how the dearest wish of my heart had been for such a meeting as this. But I said that I did not like to keep his return a secret from his father, and I begged him to let me take him straight to my grandfather, and to trust to a father’s natural affection for forgiveness of all that had severed them in the past. My father greeted this suggestion with scornful laughter. “Natural affection!” he exclaimed. “Did he show much natural affection when he turned me out of doors? Did he show natural affection to my mother when his cruelty drove her out of his house? Has he ever spoken of me with natural affection during the last ten years? Answer me that, Lucille!” What answer could I give him, Lucius? You know how my grandfather has always spoken of his only son.’

‘Yes, dear; and I know what your grandfather’s affection concealed from you—the shameful cause of that severance between father and son.’

‘I could give him no hopeful answer. “I see,” he said, “there has been no relenting. Homer Sivewright is made of iron. Come, child, all I want is a shelter. Am I to have it here or in the workhouse, or, in fault of that, a gaol? If I sleep in the street another night I shall be in for a rheumatic fever. I’ve had all manner of aches and pains in my bones for some days past.” “You shall not sleep in the streets,” I said, “while I have power to give you shelter.” I thought of all those empty rooms on the top floor. I had the key of the staircase always in my own charge, and thought it would be easy enough to keep any one up there for weeks, and months even, without my grandfather or the Winchers ever knowing anything about it. Or if the worst came to the worst, I thought I might venture to trust the Winchers with the secret. “Have you made up your mind?” asked my father impatiently. “Yes, papa,” I said—and the old name came back so naturally—“I have made up my mind.” I told him he must wait a little, till Mr. and Mrs. Wincher were safely out of the way, and then I would take him into the house; unless he would make up his mind to trust the Winchers[Pg 116] with his secret. “I will trust not a living creature but yourself,” he said; “and if you tell any one a word about me, I shall have done with you for ever. I come back to my father’s house as an outcast and a reprobate. Fathers don’t kill their fatted calves nowadays for prodigal sons. I want no one’s help, I want no one’s pity but yours, Lucille, for I believe you are the only creature in this world who loves me.” This touched me to the heart. What could I refuse him after that? I told him to wait in the summer-house till all was safe, and that I would come for him as soon as I could venture to do so. I went in and went straight up-stairs to the attic floor, where I dragged that old bedstead into the most comfortable room, and carried up blankets from down-stairs. I lighted a fire, for the room felt damp, and made all as decent as I could. By the time I had done this, the Winchers had gone to bed; and I unbolted the door of the brewery as quietly as I could—but it is a long way from the room where they used to sleep, as you know, so there was very little fear of their hearing me—and went to the summer-house to fetch my father. We crept slowly past the Winchers’ room and up the stairs, for I was afraid of grandpapa’s quick ear, even at that hour. When I showed my father the room I had chosen for him, he[Pg 117] objected to it, and asked to see the other rooms on this floor, which I had told him were entirely unoccupied. He selected the room at the north end of the house.’

‘Of course,’ thought Lucius; ‘he had been informed about the secret staircase!’

‘I told him that this room was exactly over my grandfather’s, and that he couldn’t make a worse choice if he didn’t want to be heard. “I’ll take care,” he said; “I can walk as softly as a cat when I like. The other rooms are all damp.” He carried the bedstead and an old table and chair into this room, lit a fire, taking great care to make no noise, and made himself tolerably comfortable, while I went down-stairs to get what provisions I could out of our scantily-furnished larder. After this he came and went as he liked; sometimes he would sleep away whole days, sometimes he would be absent three or four days at a time. I had to let him out at night or let him in, just as he pleased; sometimes I sat up all night waiting for him. When he was away I had to keep a candle burning in one of the back windows on the top floor, to show that all was safe if he wanted to return. I cannot tell you the anxiety I suffered all through this time. The power of sleep seemed to leave me altogether. Even[Pg 118] when I did not expect my father’s return, I was always listening for his signal—a handful of gravel thrown up against the window of my room. I knew that I was doing wrong, and yet could not feel sorry that I had granted his request. It seemed such a small thing to give my father an empty garret in this great desolate house. So things went on till the day when you and I were in the loft together; and when you saw the door of my father’s room opened and shut. You can guess what I suffered then, Lucius.’

‘And then came the day when you—No, I can’t speak of it any more, Lucius. All that followed that time is too dreadful. I woke up to the knowledge that my father had tried to—murder—’ The words came slowly, stifled with sobs, and once more Lucille broke down altogether.

‘Not another word, darling,’ cried her lover. ‘You have no reason to reproach yourself. When you admitted Ferdinand Sivewright to this house, you only obeyed the natural impulse of a woman’s tender heart. Had the most fatal result followed that man’s baneful presence no blame could have attached to you; and now, dearest, listen to me. Brief as my absence will be, I don’t mean to leave[Pg 119] you here while I am away. You have had enough of this house for the present. This faithful heart has been too much tried—this active brain too severely tasked. As your medical adviser, I order change of air and scene. As your future husband, I insist upon being obeyed.’

‘Poor grandpapa shall be reconciled to your departure. He is going on very well, and is in excellent hands. Nurse Milderson is as true as steel. Besides, you are not going to be absent long, Lucille. I shall take you away to-morrow morning, and bring you back again, God willing, a week hence.’

He had spoken of this sister to his betrothed of late; rarely, but with a quiet affection which Lucille knew to be deep.

‘I am to go to see your sister, Lucius!’ she cried. ‘I should like that of all things.’

‘I thought so, darling. Janet is staying in a little rustic village in my part of the country. I had a letter from her a week ago, telling me of her change of residence. She is with an old woman who was[Pg 120] our nurse when we were little ones; so if you want to hear what an ill-conditioned refractory imp Master Lucius Davoren was in an early stage of his existence, you may receive the information from the fountain-head.’

Lucille smiled through the tears that were hardly dry yet. Everything relating to lovers is interesting—to themselves.

‘I daresay you were a very good boy, Lucius,’ she said, ‘and that your old nurse will do nothing but praise you. I shall be so pleased to see your sister, and the place where you were born—if grandpapa will only let me go.’

‘And do you think your sister will like me—a little? I know I shall love her.’

‘The love will be mutual, depend upon it, darling. And now I think I’d better go up-stairs to Mr. Sivewright and talk to him about your holiday.’

‘My holiday!’ cried Lucille. ‘How strange that sounds! I have not spent a day away from this house since I came home from school three years ago.’

‘No wonder such imprisonment has paled my fair young blossom,’ said her lover tenderly. ‘Hampshire[Pg 121] breezes will bring back the roses to my darling’s cheeks.’

He left her to propose this somewhat daring scheme to Mr. Sivewright, over whom he felt he had acquired some slight influence. In all his talk with Lucille to-night—which had taken a turn he had in no manner anticipated—he had not asked those questions he wished to ask about her life before the Bond-street period. It did not very much matter, he thought. Those questions could stand over till to-morrow. But before he started for Rouen he wanted to fortify his case with all the information Lucille’s memory could afford him.

‘And the recollections of earliest childhood are sometimes very clear,’ he said to himself, as he went up the dark staircase to his interview with Homer Sivewright.

The old man granted his request more readily than Lucius had expected. Lucille’s illness had served as a rousing shock for the selfishness of age. Mr. Sivewright had awakened to the reflection that this gentle girl, who had ministered to him with such patience and tenderness, and had received such small requital for her love, was very necessary to his comfort, and that even his dim gray life would be darkened, were relentless Death to snatch her away, leaving[Pg 122] him to end his journey alone. He had hitherto thought of her as young and strong, and in a manner warranted to live and thrive even under the least favourable circumstances. His eyes were opened now. The change which illness had wrought in her had impressed him painfully. For once in his life he felt the sharp sting of self-reproach.

‘Yes, let her go by all means,’ he said, when Lucius had told him his plan. ‘I daresay your sister’s a very nice person, and of course Lucille ought to make the acquaintance of your relations. She has need of friends, poor child, for it would be difficult to find any one more alone in the world than she is. Yes, let her go. But you’ll not keep her away long, eh, Davoren? I shall miss her sorely. I never knew that her absence could make much difference in my life, seeing how little sympathy there is between us, until the other day when she was ill.’

‘She shall not be away from you more than a week,’ answered Lucius. ‘She was strongly opposed to the idea of leaving you at all, and only yielded to my insistence.’

He then proceeded to inform Mr. Sivewright of his intended journey to Rouen. The old man seemed more than doubtful of success; but did not endeavour to throw cold water on the scheme.

‘It’s a tangled skein,’ he said; ‘if you can straighten it you’ll do a clever thing. I should certainly like to know the history of that child’s birth; yet it will cost me a pang if I find there is no blood of mine in her veins.’

Thus they parted, Homer Sivewright perfectly reconciled to the idea of being left to the care of Mrs. Milderson and the Magsbys. Lucius felt that justice demanded Mr. and Mrs. Wincher should be speedily reinstated, and all stain removed from their escutcheon. Yet, ere he could do this, he must tell Mr. Sivewright the true story of the robbery, and of his son’s return; a story which would be difficult for Lucius to tell, and which might occasion more agitation than the old man, in his present condition, could well bear.

‘Let time and care complete his cure,’ thought Lucius, ‘and then I will tell him all.’

He arranged the hour of starting with Lucille, after due consultation of the South-Western timetable, which Mrs. Magsby fetched for him from the nearest stationer’s. There was a train from Waterloo at a quarter-past nine.

‘I shall come for you in a cab at a quarter-past eight,’ said Lucius decisively.

‘Bless your dear hearts!’ exclaimed Mrs. Milderson,[Pg 124] in a burst of enthusiasm. ‘It seems for all the world as if you was a-planning of your honeymoon; and I do think as how a fortnight in a quiet place in the country, where you can get your new potatoes and summer cabbages fresh out of the garden, and a new-laid egg and a drop of rich cream for your breakfasts, is better than all your rubbiging ‘To Paris and back for five pounds,’ which Mrs. Binks went when she and Binks was married, and was that ill with the cookery at the cheap restorers—everythink fried in ile, and pea-soup that stodgy you could cut it with a knife, and cold sparrowgrass with ile and vinegar—and the smells of them drains, as if everybody in the place had been emptying cabbage-water, as her life was a burding to her.’

‘We’re not quite ready for our honeymoon yet, nurse,’ answered Lucius; ‘but depend upon it, when that happy time does come, we won’t patronise Paris and the cheap restaurants. We’ll find some tranquil corner in this busy world, almost as remote from the haunts of man as the mountains of the moon.’

Mrs. Milderson charged herself with the responsibility of packing Lucille’s portmanteau that night, though the girl declared herself quite equal to the task.

‘I won’t have you worritin’ and stoopin’ over[Pg 125] boxes and pulling out drawers,’ said the nurse; ‘everythink shall be ready to the moment; and if I forget so much as a hairpin, you may say the unkindest things you can to me when you come back.’

Having settled everything entirely to his own satisfaction, Lucius departed, after a tender farewell which was to last only till to-morrow. He looked forward to this first journey with his betrothed with an almost childish delight. Only two or three hours’ swift transit through green fields, and past narrow patches of woodland, chalky hills, rustic villages, nameless streams winding between willow-shaded banks, white high-roads leading heaven knows where: but, with Lucille, such a journey would be two or three hours in paradise. And then what a joy to bring those two together—those two women whom alone, of all earth’s womankind, he fondly loved!

The clocks were striking ten as he left Cedar House, after impressing upon Lucille the necessity for a long night’s rest. His homeward way would take him very near that humble alley in which Mr. and Mrs. Wincher had found a shelter for their troubles. He remembered this, and resolved to pay them a visit to-night, late as it was, in order to tell Mr. Wincher that he stood acquitted of any wrong against his master.

‘I was quick enough to suspect and to accuse them,’ thought Lucius; ‘let me be as quick to acknowledge my error.’

Crown-and-Anchor-court was still astir when Lucius entered its modest shades. It was the hour of supper beer, and small girls in pinafores, who, from a sanitary point of view, ought to have been in bed hours before, were trotting to and fro with large crockeryware jugs, various in colour and design, but bearing a family likeness in dilapidation, not one being intact as to spout and handle. There were farther indications of the evening meal in an appetising odour of fried onions, a floating aroma of bloaters, faint breathings of stewed tripe, and even whispers of pork-chops. The day may have gone ill with the Crown-and-Anchorites, and dinners may have run short, but the heads of the household made it up at night with some toothsome dish when the children—except always the useful errand-going eldest daughter—were snug in bed, and there were fewer mouths to be filled with the choice morsel.

A light twinkled in Mr. Wincher’s parlour, but he and his good lady had sought no consolation from creature-comforts. A fragment of hardest Dutch cheese and the heel of a stale half-quartern alone adorned their melancholy board. Mrs. Wincher[Pg 127] sat with her elbows on the table, in a contemplative mood; Mr. Wincher came to the door chumping his dry fare industriously.

‘My good people,’ said Lucius, coming straight to the point, ‘I have come to beg your forgiveness for a great wrong. I have only this night discovered the actual truth.’

‘You have found the property, sir?’ cried Mr. Wincher, trembling a little from very joy, and making a sudden bolt of his unsavoury mouthful.

Mrs. Wincher gave a shrill scream, followed by a shriller laugh, indicative of that most troublesome of feminine ailments, hysteria. Lucius knew the symptoms but too well. His lady-patients in the Shadrack-road were, as a rule, hysterical. They ‘went off,’ as they called it, on the smallest provocation. Their joys and sorrows expressed themselves in hysteria; their quarrels ended in hysteria; they were hysterical at weddings, christenings, and funerals; and they prided themselves on the weakness.

After having tried all remedies suggested by the highest authorities upon this particular form of disease, Lucius had found that the most efficacious treatment was one ignored by the faculty. This simple mode of cure was to take no notice of the patient. He took no notice of Mrs. Wincher’s premonitory[Pg 128] symptoms; and instead of ‘going off,’ that lady ‘came to.’

‘No, Mr. Wincher,’ he said, in answer to the old man’s eager question, ‘the property has not been recovered—never will be, I should think; but I am tolerably satisfied as to the thief, and I know you are not the man.’

‘Thank God, sir—thank God!’ cried Mr. Wincher devoutly. ‘I am very thankful. I couldn’t have died easy while you and my old master thought me a thief and a liar.’

The tears rolled down Mr. Wincher’s wrinkled cheek. He dropped feebly into his chair, and wiped those joyful tears with a corner of the threadbare tablecloth.

‘I wouldn’t be so wanting to my own self in proper pride, Wincher,’ said his wife, who was not disposed to forgive Lucius at a moment’s warning. Had she not liked and praised him and smiled benignantly on his wooing, and had he not turned upon her like the scorpion? ‘We had the conscientiousness of our own innocence to support us, and with that I could have gone to Newgate without blinching. It’s all very well to come here, Dr. Davory, and demean yourself by astin’ our pardings; but you can’t make up to us for the suffering we’ve gone[Pg 129] through along of your unjust suspicions,’ added Mrs. Wincher, somewhat inconsistently.

‘If ever I am a rich man,’ he said, ‘I will try to atone for my mistake in some more substantial manner. In the mean time you must accept this trifle as a proof of my sincerity.’

He pressed a five-pound note upon Mr. Wincher—a poor solatium for the wrong done, but a large sum for the parish doctor to give away, on the eve of an undertaking which was likely to be expensive.

‘No, sir—not a farthing,’ said Mr. Wincher resolutely. ‘You offered me money before, and it was kindly done, for you thought me a scoundrel, and you didn’t want even a scoundrel to starve. I appreciate the kindness of your offer to-night, but I won’t take a farthing. We shall rub on somehow, I make no doubt, though the world does seem a little overcrowded. You’ve acknowledged the wrong you did me, Mr. Davoren, and that’s more than enough.’

‘Do you find life so prosperous, and work so plentiful, that you refuse a friendly offer?’ he asked at last.

‘Well, not exactly, sir,’ replied Mr. Wincher[Pg 130] with a sigh. ‘I do get an odd job now and then, it’s true, but the now and then are very far apart.’

‘And you find it hard to pay the rent of this room and live without trenching on your little fund?’

‘Sir, our savings are melting day by day; but we are old; and, after all, better people than we are have had to end their days in a workhouse. There’s no reproach in such an end if one has worked one’s hardest all the days of one’s life.’

‘You shall not be reduced to the workhouse if I can help it, Mr. Wincher,’ said Lucius heartily. ‘If you are too proud to take money from me—’

‘If you won’t take my money, Mr. Wincher, I must try to find you a home. Come and live with me. My housekeeper has given me a good deal of trouble lately; in fact, I’m afraid she’s not so temperate in her habits as she ought to be, and I sha’n’t be sorry to get rid of her. I am not in a position to offer you very liberal wages—’

‘Bless your heart, sir, we’ve not been accustomed to wages of late years. “Stay with me if you like,” said Mr. Sivewright, “but I’m too poor to pay wages. I’ll give you a roof to cover you, and a trifle for your[Pg 131] board.” And we contrived to live upon the trifle, sir, by cutting it rather fine.’

‘I’ll give you what I give my present housekeeper,’ answered Lucius, ‘and you must manage to rub on upon it till my prospects improve. I think you’ll be able to make my house comfortable—eh, Mrs. Wincher?—and to get on with its new mistress, when I am happy enough to bring my wife home.’

‘Lor, sir, I can do for you better than I did for Mr. Sivewright, who’s a deal more troublesomer than ever you could be, even if you tried to give trouble; and as to Miss Lucille, why, she knows I’d wear the flesh off my bones to serve her, willing.’

It was all settled satisfactorily. Lucius was to give his housekeeper a week’s notice, as per agreement. She had burnt his chop and smoked his tea continually of late, despite his remonstrances. And Mr. and Mrs. Wincher were to take up their abode with him as soon as he returned from his foreign expedition. They parted on excellent terms with each other.

The sun shone on the lovers’ journey. It was almost the happiest day in the lives of either; certainly the happiest day these two had ever spent together. To Lucille, after perpetual imprisonment in the Shadrack-road, those green fields and autumnal woods seemed unutterably beautiful—the winding river—the changing shadows on the hill-side—the villages nestling in verdant hollows.

‘How can any one live in London!’ she exclaimed, with natural wonder, the only London she knew being so dreary and dingy a scene.

The judicious administration of half-a-crown on Lucius’s part had procured the lovers a compartment to themselves. He was anxious to ask those questions which he had meant to ask last night, when the conversation had taken so unexpected a turn.

‘Lucille,’ he began, plunging at once to the heart of his subject, ‘I want you to grant that request I made last night. I am not going to speak of Ferdinand[Pg 133] Sivewright; put him out of your thoughts altogether, as some one who has no further influence upon your fate. I want you to tell me your first impressions of life, before you went to Bond-street. Forgive me, dearest, if I ask you to recall memories that may pain you. I have a strong reason for wishing you to answer me.’

‘I suppose I must be content with that,’ she said; and then went on thoughtfully, ‘My first memories, my first impressions? I think my first recollection is of the sea.’

‘Yes. I can just remember—almost as faintly as if it were a dream—being lifted up in my nurse’s arms, in an orchard on a hill, to look at the sea. There it lay before us, wide and blue and bright. I wanted to fly to it.’

‘I know she wore a high white cap and no bonnet, and spoke a language that I never heard after I came to Bond-street—a language with a curious twang. I daresay it was some French patois.’

‘No recollection!’ cried the girl, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Why, I have cherished the memory of her face all my life; it was something too sacred to speak of, even to you. She is the sweetest memory of those happy days—a face that bent over my bed every morning when I awoke—a face that watched me every night when I fell asleep; and I never remember falling asleep except in her arms. It is all dim and dreamlike now, but so sweet, so sweet!’

‘Yes, it is the very face!’ she cried, tearfully kissing it. ‘Where did you get this portrait, Lucius?’

‘Yes, I remember his showing me this miniature a long time ago. But of late he has refused to let me see it.’

‘Not yet, dearest. I have a reason for wishing to retain it a little while longer; but I fully recognise your right to possess it.’

‘It is a double miniature,’ said Lucille, turning it round. ‘Whose is the other portrait?’

‘No; I can recall no face but my mother’s—not even my nurse’s. I only remember her tall white cap, and her big rough hands.’

‘Not distinctly. There was some one who was always taking mamma out in a carriage, leaving me to cry for her. That gentleman must have been my father, I suppose, yet my vague recollection of the face seems different. I remember being told to kiss him one night, and refusing because he always took mamma away from me.’

‘O yes, very happy, though I cried when mamma left me. My nurse was kind. I remember long sunny days in the orchard on that hill, with the bright blue sea before us, and a house with a thatched verandah, and a parlour full of all kinds of pretty things—boxes and baskets and picture-books—and mamma’s guitar. She used to sing every night to the accompaniment of the guitar. We lived near the top of a high hill—very high and steep—higher than any hills we have passed to-day.’

‘I think so. The life seemed to melt away like[Pg 136] a dream. I can’t remember the end of it. If my mother died in that house on the hill, I can remember no circumstance connected with her death—no illness, no funeral. My last recollection of her is being clasped in her arms—feeling her tears and kisses on my face. Then came a long, long journey with my father. I was very tired, but he was kind to me, and held me in his arms while I slept; and one morning I woke to find myself in the gloomy-looking bedroom in Bond-street. I began to cry, and Mrs. Wincher came to me; and soon after that some one told me that my mother was dead. I think it was grandpapa.’

‘Not deserted, Lucius. My mother would never have abandoned me while she lived.’

‘Enough, dearest! You have told me much that may help me to a discovery I am anxious to make.’

‘I have had some practice in patience, Lucius, and to-day I am too happy to complain. Do you think your sister will like me?’

‘It is not possible she can do otherwise. I sent her a telegram this morning telling her to expect us.’

‘She will be at the station to meet us, perhaps,’ said Lucille with an alarmed look.

‘O Lucius, I begin to feel nervous. Is your sister a person who takes violent likings and dislikings at first sight?’

‘But she is not dreadfully sensible, I hope; for in that case she might think me foolish and emptyheaded.’

‘Mrs. Bertram is a widow, is she not?’ asked Lucille. ‘Pray don’t think me inquisitive; only you have told me so little, and I might make some awkward mistake in talking to your sister.’

‘She is not a widow; but she is separated from her husband, who is a scoundrel.’

‘Yes, dear; her life, since girlhood, has been a sad one. She made that one fatal mistake by which a woman can mar her existence—an unhappy marriage.’

‘I shall be careful never to mention Mr. Bertram. Indeed, we shall have an inexhaustible subject of conversation in you.’

‘You will soon wear that topic threadbare. After all, there is not often much interest in the childhood of great men. Here we are at the station.’

‘And yet we have been three hours on the road. Think of it as typical of our life journey, dearest, which will seem only too brief if we but travel together.’

The station was the most insignificant place in the world; yet all the great folks who went to Mardenholme had to alight here. Foxley-road was the name of the station, but Foxley itself was a long way off, so far that the designation seemed intended to deceive. There was a stunted omnibus to meet the train, labelled Mardenholme and Foxley—Foxley was the name of that obscure spot where Geoffrey Hossack had found his lost love—but not in the stunted omnibus was Lucille to travel[Pg 139] to her destination. Janet and Janet’s little girl were there to meet her in a wagonette borrowed for the occasion, and driven by an ancient man in knee-breeches, whose garments, though clean and tidy, diffused a faint odour of pigs.

Before Lucille had time to wonder how Janet would receive her, she found herself in Janet’s arms.

‘I am prepared to love you very dearly, for my brother’s sake and for your own,’ said Janet with a calm protecting air, kissing the poor little pale face. ‘I thought you’d like me to be here to meet you and Lucille, Lucius; so I borrowed a neighbour’s wagonette and a neighbour’s coachman.’

The piggy man grinned at the allusion. It was not often society dignified him with the name of coachman; and he knew that his master returned him in the tax-paper as an out-of-door labourer.

Lucille’s portmanteau was deposited by the side of the piggy man, and they all mounted the wagonette, and drove off through lanes still gay with wild flowers and rich with balmy odours even in the very[Pg 140] death of summer. Lucille was delighted with everything.

‘You can’t imagine what a quiet corner of the earth you are coming to,’ said Janet. ‘I’m afraid you’ll find it very dull.’

‘Dull with you! tired of you!’ exclaimed Lucille, putting her little hand into Janet’s, ‘when I have been longing to know you.’

Half-an-hour’s drive in the jolting old wagonette brought them to Foxley, the cluster of thatched cottages in the green hollow where Geoffrey had discovered his lost love. Dahlias now bloomed in gaudy variety to extinguish the few pale roses that lingered behind their mates of the garden, like dissipated young beauties who stay latest at a ball. There were even here and there early blooming china-asters, and the Virginian creeper glowed redly on some cottage walls. Yet, despite these evidences of advancing autumn, the spot was hardly less fair than when Geoffrey had first seen it. There was that air of repose about the scene, that soothing influence of placid dispassionate nature, which is almost sweeter than actual beauty. No wide glory of landscape[Pg 141] made the traveller exclaim, no vast and various amphitheatre of wood and hill startled him into wondering admiration; but the settled peacefulness of the scene crept into his heart, and comforted his griefs.

To the eyes of Lucille, fresh from the grimy barrenness of the Cedar House garden, the spot seemed simply exquisite. What a perfume of clove carnations in the garden! what a sweet scent of lavender in the little white-curtained bedroom! And then how genial the welcome of the old nurse, with her benevolent-looking mob-cap and starched white apron; and what an interesting personage she appeared to Lucille!

‘And you really remember Mr. Davoren when he was quite a little boy?’ said Lucille, as the dame waited on her while she took off her bonnet.

‘Remember him! I should think I did indeed, miss,’ exclaimed the dame. ‘I remember him so well as a boy, that it’s as much as I can do to believe he can have growed into a man. “Can it really be him,” I says to myself when I sees him come in at that gate just now, “him as I remember in holland pinafores, two fresh ones every day, and never clean half an hour after they were put on?”’

‘Did he make his pinafores very dirty?’ asked[Pg 142] Lucille with a slight revulsion of feeling. Lucius ought to have been an ideal boy, and spotless as to his pinafores.

‘There never was such a pickle, miss; but so kind and loving with it all, and so bold and open. Never no fibbing with him. And many a pound he’s sent me since I’ve lived here; though I don’t suppose he’s got too many of ’em for hisself, bless his kind heart.’

‘What a dear good soul you are!’ she said. ‘I’m so happy to have come here.’

‘Yes, you’ll be happy with our Miss Janet, begging her pardon; but, never having seen Mr. Bertram, I haven’t got him in my mind like when I think of her. You’re sure to take to Miss Janet. She’s a little proud and high in her ways to strangers, but she has as good a heart as her brother.’

A nice little dinner had been prepared for the travellers. Lucius would have only just time to dine, and then return to the station, in order to be back in time for the Newhaven train from London-Bridge. It would be a hard day’s work for him altogether; but what was that when weighed against the pleasure of having brought these two together[Pg 143] thus—the sister he loved and had once deemed lost, and the girl who was to be his wife.

The parting cost them all a pang, though he promised to come back in a week, if all went well with him, and fetch Lucille.

‘I could not stay away from my grandfather longer than that, Lucius,’ she said; ‘and,’ in a lower tone, ‘it will seem a very long time to be separated from you.’

It was still quite early in the day when Lucius entered Rouen, but the bustle of commerce had begun upon the quays. Shrill voices bawled to each other among the shipping, and it seemed as if a small slice of the West India Docks had been transferred to this bluer stream. The bustle of business here was a very small matter compared with the press and clamour of the Shadrack-Basin district. Still the town had a prosperous progressive air. Lofty stone-fronted mansions and lofty stone-fronted warehouses glared whitely in the sunshine, some finished and occupied, but more in process of construction. This mushroom growth of modern commerce seemed to have risen all at once, to overshadow the quaint old city where the warrior-maid was martyred. Lucius, who had not seen the place for some years, looked round him aghast. This broad lime-white[Pg 145] boulevard, these tall lime-white buildings, were as new as Aladdin’s palace.

‘What has become of my Rouen?’ he asked himself dejectedly. The city had pleased him five years ago, when he and Geoffrey passed through it during a long-vacation excursion, but the queer old gabled houses, older than the Fronde—nay, many of them ancient as the famous Joan herself—the archways, the curious nooks and corners, the narrow streets and inconvenient footways, in a word, all that had made the city at once delightful to the tourist and unwholesome for its inhabitants, seemed to be extinguished by those new boulevards and huge houses.

A quarter of an hour’s exploration, however, showed Lucius that much that was interesting in his Rouen still remained. There was the narrow street with its famous sweetmeat shops, once the chief thoroughfare; yonder the noble old cathedral; there St. Ouen, that grandest and purest of Gothic churches. Modern improvement had not touched these, save to renovate their olden splendour.

The traveller did not even stop to refresh himself, but went straight to the Rue Jeanne d’Arques, a narrow quiet street in an out-of-the-way corner, behind the Palais de Justice; so quiet, indeed, that it was difficult to imagine, in the gray stillness of[Pg 146] this retreat, that the busy, prosperous, Napoleonised city was near at hand.

The street was as clean as it was dull, and had a peculiar neatness of aspect, which is, as it were, the seal of respectability. A large white Angora cat purred upon one of the doorsteps—a canary chirped in an open window—a pair of mirrors attached to the sides of another casement, in the Belgian fashion, denoted that there were some observing eyes which did not deem even the scanty traffic of the Rue Jeanne d’Arques beneath their notice. Most of the houses were in private occupation, but there were two or three shops—one a lace-shop, another a watchmaker’s, and the watchmaker’s was next door to Number 17.

Lucius crossed to the opposite side of the way and inspected this Number 17—the house from which Madame Dumarques, Lucille’s mother, had written to Ferdinand Sivewright. It had no originality in its physiognomy. Like the rest of the houses in the street, it was dull and clean—like them it looked eminently respectable. It inspired no curiosity in the observer—it suggested no mystery hidden among its inhabitants.

Should he pull that brightly-polished brass knob and summon the porter or portress, and ask to see[Pg 147] the present inmates of Number 17? There might be two or three different families in the house, though it was not large. His eye wandered to the watchmaker’s next door. A shop is neutral ground, and a watchmaker’s trade is leisurely, and inclines its practitioners to a mild indulgence in gossiping. The watchmaker would in all probability know a good deal about Number 17, its occupants past and present.

Lucius recrossed the street and entered the watchmaker’s shop. He was pleased to find that mechanician seated before the window examining the intestines of a chronometer through a magnifying glass, but with no appearance of being pressed for time. He was old and gray and small, with a patient expression which promised good nature even towards a stranger.

Lucius gave a conciliatory cough and wished him good-morning, a salutation which the watchmaker returned with brisk politeness. He gave a sigh of relief and laid down the chronometer; as if he were rather glad to be done with it for a little while.

‘I regret to say that I do not come as a customer,’ said Lucius. The watchmaker shrugged his shoulders and smiled, as who should say, ‘Fate does not always favour me.’ ‘I come rather to ask your kindly assistance in my search for information about some people who may be dead long ago, for anything I[Pg 148] know to the contrary. Have you lived any length of time in this street, sir?’

‘I have lived in this street all the time that I have lived at all, sir,’ replied the watchmaker. ‘I was born in this house, and my father was born here before me. There is a little notch in yonder door which indicates my height at five years old; my father cut it in all the pride of a paternal heart, my mother looking on with maternal love. My aftergrowth did not realise the promise of that period.’

Lucius tried to look interested in this small domestic episode, but failed somewhat in the endeavour; so eager was he to question the watchmaker about the subject he had at heart.

‘Did I ever hear my own name?’ exclaimed the watchmaker. ‘One is not more familiar to me than the other. You mean the Dumarques who lived next door.’

‘They! They are dead. It is not every one who lives to the age of Voltaire.’

‘Are they all dead?’ asked Lucius, disheartened. It seemed strange that an entire family should be swept away within fifteen years.

‘Well, no; I believe Julie Dumarques is still living. But she left Rouen some years ago.’

‘She went to Paris; but as to her address in Paris—no, I do not know that. But if it be vital to you to learn it—’

‘I might possibly put you in the way of obtaining the information, or procure it for you.’

‘I shall be most grateful if you can do me that favour. Any trifling recompense which I can offer you—’

‘Sir, I require no reward beyond the consciousness of having performed a worthy action. I am a disciple of Jean Jacques Rousseau; I live entirely on vegetable diet; and I endeavour to assist my fellow creatures.’

‘I thank you, sir, for your disinterested kindness. And now perhaps you will lay me under a farther obligation by telling me all you can about these neighbours of yours?’

‘Wait a little, sir, and I will tell you everything,’ said Monsieur Gastin, the little watchmaker. He[Pg 150] ushered Lucius into a neat little sitting-room, which was evidently also his bedchamber, installed him in an arm-chair covered with bright yellow-velvet, took a second yellow-velvet chair for himself, clasped his bony hands upon his angular knee, and began his story. Through the half-glass door he commanded an admirable view of his shop, and was ready to spring up at any moment, should a customer invite his attention.

‘Old André Dumarques, the father, had been in the cotton trade, when the cotton trade, like almost every other trade, was a great deal better than it is now. He had made a little money—not very much, but just enough to afford him, when judiciously invested, an income that he could manage to live upon. Another man with a family like his might not have been able to live upon André Dumarques’ income; but he was a man of penurious habits, and could make five-and-twenty centimes go as far as half a franc with most people. He had married late in life, and his wife was a good deal too young and too pretty for him, and the neighbours did not fail to talk, as people do talk amongst our lively nation, about such matters. But Madame Dumarques was a good woman, and though every one knew pretty well that hers wasn’t a happy marriage, still no[Pg 151] name ever came of it. She did her duty, and slaved herself to death to make both ends meet, and keep her house neat and clean. Number seventeen was a model to the rest of the street in those days, I can assure you.’

‘She slaved herself to death, you say, sir? What does that mean?’ inquired Lucius.

‘It means that she became poitrinaire when her youngest daughter—she had three daughters, but no son—was fifteen years old, and as pretty as her mother at the same age. Everybody had seen the poor woman fading gradually for the last six years, except her husband. He saw nothing, till the stamp of death was on her face, and then he went on like a madman. He spent his money freely enough then—had a doctor from Paris even to see her, because he wouldn’t believe the Rouen doctors when they told him his wife was past cure—and would have sacrificed anything to save her; but it was too late. A little rest and a little pleasure might have lengthened her life if she’d had it in time; but nothing could save her now. She died: and I shall never forget old André’s face when I saw him coming out of his house the day after her funeral.’

‘Yes, in his selfish way. He had treated her[Pg 152] like a servant, and worse than any servant in a free country would submit to be treated, and he had expected her to wear like a machine. He had always been hard and tyrannical, and his grief, instead of softening him, changed him for the worse. He made his children’s home so wretched, that two of his daughters—Julie and Félicie—went out to service. Their poor mother had taught them all she could; for André Dumarques vowed he wouldn’t waste his money on paying for his daughters to be made fine ladies. She had been educated at the Sacré Cœur, and was quite a lady. She taught them a good deal; but still people said they weren’t accomplished enough to be governesses, so they got situations as lady’s-maids, or humble companions, or something in that way.’

‘Yes, and the prettiest. She was the image of her mother. The others had too much of the father in them—thin lips, cold gray eyes, sharp noses. She was all life and sparkle and prettiness; too pretty to go out into the world among strangers at sixteen years old.’

‘She did. The neighbours wondered that the father should let her go. I, who knew him, it may[Pg 153] be, better than most people, for he made no friends, ventured to say as much. “That is too pretty a flower to be planted in a stranger’s garden,” said I. André Dumarques shrugged his shoulders. “What would you?” he asked. “My children must work for their living. I am too poor to keep them in idleness.” In effect, since his wife’s death Dumarques had become a miser. He had been always mean. He had now but one desire; and that was to hoard his money.’

‘The poor child!—no, not precisely; not as to name and place. But it was to an English lady she went—I heard as much as that; for, as I said just now, Dumarques spoke more freely to me than to others. An elderly English lady, an invalid, was passing through Rouen with her brother, also elderly and English—she a maiden lady, he a bachelor. The lady’s maid had fallen ill on the journey. They had been travelling in Italy, Switzerland, heaven knows where, and the lady was in sore want of an attendant; but she would have no common person, no peasant girl who talked loud and ate garlic; she must have a young person of some refinement, conversable—in brief, almost a lady. Her brother applied[Pg 154] to the master of the hotel. The master of the hotel knew something of André Dumarques, and knew that he wanted to find situations for his daughters. “I have the very thing at the ends of my fingers,” he said, and sent his porter upon the spot with a note to Monsieur Dumarques, asking him to bring one of his daughters. Félicie had been pining ever since her mother’s death. She was most anxious to leave her home. She accompanied her father to the hotel. The old lady saw her, was delighted with her, and engaged her on the spot. That was how Félicie left Rouen.’

‘Yes, and how sorely changed! It was at least six years afterwards; and I had almost forgotten that poor child’s existence. André Dumarques was dead; he had died leaving a nice little fortune behind him,—the fruit of deprivations that must have rendered his life a burden, poor man,—and his eldest daughter, Hortense, kept the house. Julie had also gone into service soon after Félicie left home. Hortense had kept her father’s house ever since her mother’s death. She kept it still, though there was now no father for whom to keep it. She must have been very lonely, and though the house was a picture of neatness, it had a melancholy air. Mademoiselle[Pg 155] Dumarques kept three or four cats, and one old servant who had been in the family for years; no one ever remembered her being young, not even I, who approach the age of my great countryman, Voltaire.’

‘And she came back—Félicie?’ asked Lucius, somewhat exercised in spirit by the watchmaker’s longueurs.

‘She came back; but, ah, how changed! It was more like the return of a ghost from the grave than of that bright creature I remembered six years before. I have no curiosity about my neighbours; and though I love my fellow creatures in the abstract, I rarely trouble myself about particular members of my race, unless they make some direct appeal to my sympathy. Thus, had I been left to myself, I might have remained for an indefinite period unaware of Félicie’s return. But I have a housekeeper who has the faults as well as the merits of her sex. While I devote my leisure to those classic writers who have rendered my native land illustrious, she, worthy soul, gives her mind to the soup, and the affairs of her neighbours. One morning, after an autumnal night of wind and rain—a night upon which a humanitarian mind would hardly have refused shelter to a strange cur—my housekeeper handed me my omelet and poured out my wine with a more[Pg 156] important air than usual; and I knew that she was bursting to tell me something about my neighbours. The omelet, in the preparation of which she is usually care itself, was even a trifle burned.’

‘Yes, sir; I indulged the simple creature. You may hear her at this moment, in the little court without yonder window, singing as she works, not melodious but cheerful.’

This was in allusion to a monotonous twanging noise, something between the Irish bagpipes and a Jew’s-harp, which broke the placid stillness of the Rue Jeanne d’Arques.

‘“Well, Margot,” I said in my friendly way, “what has happened?” She burst forth at once like a torrent. “Figure to yourself then,” she exclaimed, “that any one—a human being—would travel on such a night as last night. You might have waded ankle deep upon the pavement.” “People must travel in all weathers, my good Margot,” I replied philosophically. I had not been obliged to go out myself during the storm of the preceding evening, and was therefore able to approach the subject in a calmly contemplative frame of mind. Margot shrugged her shoulders, and nodded her head vehemently, till her earrings jingled again. “But[Pg 157] a woman, then!” she cried; “a young and beautiful woman, for instance!” This gave a new interest to the subject. My philanthropy was at once aroused. “A young and beautiful woman out in the storm last night!” I exclaimed. “She applied for shelter here, perhaps, and you accorded her request, and now fear that I shall disapprove. Margot, I forgive you. Let me see this child of misfortune.” I was prepared to administer consolation to the homeless wanderer, in the broadly Christian spirit of the divine Jean Jacques Rousseau; but Margot began to shake her head with incredible energy, and in effect, after much circumlocution on her part, for she is of a loquacious disposition, I obtained the following plain statement of facts.’

Here the little watchmaker, proud of his happy knack of rounding a period, looked at Lucius for admiration; but seeing impatience rather than approval indicated in his visitor’s countenance, he gave a brief sigh, inwardly denounced the unsympathetic temperament of the English generally, coughed, stretched out his neat little legs upon the yellow-velvet footstool, stuck his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and continued thus:

‘Briefly, sir, Félicie Dumarques had returned. She had arrived during that pitiless storm in a fiacre[Pg 158] from the station, with luggage. My housekeeper had heard the vehicle stop, and had run to the door in time to see the traveller alight and enter the next house. She had seen Félicie’s face by the light of the street-lamp, which, as you may have observed, is near my door, and she told me how sadly the poor girl was changed. “She looks as her mother did a year or two before she died,” said Margot. “Her cheeks are thin, and there is a feverish spot of colour on them, and her eyes are too bright. They have made her work too hard in her situation. She was evidently not expected last night, for the servant gave a scream when she saw her, and seemed quite overcome with surprise. Then Mademoiselle Dumarques came down, and I saw the sisters embrace. ‘Félicie!’ said Hortense. ‘Thou art like the dead risen from the grave!’” And then the door shut, and my housekeeper heard no more.’

‘Yes. She passed my door now and then; but rarely, for she seldom went out. Sometimes I used to run out and speak to her. I had known her from her cradle, remember, and she had always seemed to like me in the days when she was bright and gay. Now she had an air that was at once listless and[Pg 159] anxious, as if she had no interest in her present life, but was waiting for something—sometimes hoping, sometimes fearing, and never happy. She would speak to me in the old sweet voice that I knew so well—her mother’s voice; but she rarely smiled, and if ever she did, the smile was almost sadder than tears. Every time I saw her I saw a change for the worse; and I felt that she had begun that journey we must all take some day, even if we live to the age of the immortal Voltaire.’

‘Did any one ever come to see her—a gentleman—an Englishman?’ inquired Lucius.

‘Ah,’ cried the watchmaker, ‘I see you know her history better than I. Yes, an English gentleman did visit her. It was nearly a year after her return that he came, in the middle of summer. He stayed a week at the hotel, the same to which Félicie went to see the English lady with whom she left Rouen. This gentleman used to spend most of his time next door, and he and Félicie Dumarques drove about in a hired carriage together to different places in the neighbourhood, and for the first time since her return I saw Félicie with a happy look on her face. But there was the stamp of death there too, clear and plain enough for any eyes that could read; and I think the Englishman must have seen it as well as[Pg 160] I. Margot contrived to find out all that happened next door. She told me that a grand physician had come from Paris to see Félicie Dumarques, and had ordered a new treatment, which was to cure her. And then I regret to say that Margot, who has a wicked tongue, began to say injurious things about our neighbours. I stopped her at once, forbidding her to utter a word to the discredit of Félicie Dumarques, and a short time after Margot came to me once more full of importance, to say that I was right and Félicie was an honest woman. The old servant next door had told my housekeeper that the English gentleman was Félicie’s husband. They had been married in England, but they were obliged to keep their marriage a secret, on account of the Englishman’s uncle, who would disinherit him if he knew his nephew had married a lady’s-maid; for this gentleman was nephew of the invalid lady who had taken Félicie away.’

‘I begin to understand,’ said Lucius, and then, producing the double miniature, he showed the watchmaker the two portraits.

‘Both of them,’ cried the other. ‘One is a portrait of Félicie Dumarques, in the prime of her[Pg 161] beauty; the other of the Englishman who came to visit her.’

‘Never, though Margot, who does not scruple to push curiosity to impertinence, asked the direct question of the old servant next door. She was repulsed with severity. “I have told you there is a secret,” said the woman, “and it is one that can in no manner concern you. Madame” (meaning Félicie) “is an angel of goodness. And do you think Mademoiselle Hortense would allow the English gentleman to come here if all was not right; she who is so correct in her conduct, and goes to mass every day?” Even Margot was obliged to be satisfied with this. Well, sir, the Englishman went away. I saw Félicie drive home in a voiture de remise; she had been to the station to see him off. Great Heaven, I never beheld so sad a face! “Alas, poor child,” I said to myself, “all the physicians in Paris will never cure you, for you are dying of sorrow!” And I was not far wrong, sir. The poor girl died in less than a month from that day, and was buried on the hill yonder, by the chapel of our Lady of Bons Secours.’

‘Mademoiselle Hortense? She died two years[Pg 162] ago, and lies yonder on the hill with the rest of them.’

‘Yes, there is still Mademoiselle Julie. She went to Paris, to a situation in a magasin des modes, I believe. She was always clever with her needle.’

‘I believe I can, and without much difficulty. The house next door belongs to Mademoiselle Dumarques. The present tenants must know her address.’

‘If you will be kind enough to call again this evening, I will make the inquiry in the mean time.’

‘I thank you, sir, heartily. You have already given me some valuable information, which may assist a most amiable young lady to regain her proper place in the world.’

The disciple of Jean Jacques declared himself enraptured at the idea that he had served a fellow creature.

‘There is one point, however, that I might ascertain before I leave Rouen,’ said Lucius, ‘and that is the name of Félicie’s husband. You say he[Pg 163] stayed at the same hotel at which Félicie had seen the English lady. Which hotel was it?’

‘I cannot say. The years in our quiet life are so much alike. Félicie was away about six years.’

‘And I have a letter written by her after her return—dated. That will give me an approximate date at any rate. I’ll try the Hôtel Britannique.’

Lucius paused in his passage through the shop to select some trifling articles from the watchmaker’s small stock of jewelry which might serve as gifts for Lucille. Slender as his means were he could not leave a service entirely unrequited. He bought a locket and a pair of earrings, at the old man’s own price, and left him delighted with his visitor, and pledged to obtain Mademoiselle Dumarques’ address, even should the tenant of number seventeen prove unwilling to give it.

The Britannique was a handsome hotel on the quay, bright of aspect and many-balconied. The house had a busy look, and early as it was—not long after noon—a long table in the gaily-decorated dining-room was already laid for the table d’hôte. Thereupon Lucius beheld showy pyramids of those woolly peaches and flavourless grapes and wooden pears which seem peculiar to the soil of France—the Deadsea apples of a table d’hôte dessert. Already napkins, spread fan-shape, adorned the glasses, ranged in double line along the vast perspective of tablecloth. Waiters were hurrying to and fro across the hall, chamber-maids bawled to each other—as only French chamber-maids can bawl—on the steep winding staircase. An insupportable odour of dinner—strongly flavoured with garlic—pervaded the atmosphere. Tourists were hurriedly consulting time-tables, as if on the point of departure; other tourists, just arrived and burdened with luggage, were gazing disconsolately[Pg 165] around, as if doubtful of finding accommodation. Habitués of the hotel were calmly smoking their midday cigarettes, and waiting for the dainty little breakfast which the harassed cook was so slow to produce through yonder hatch in the wall, to which hungry eyes glanced impatiently.

In a scene so busy it hardly seemed likely that Lucius would find any one willing to lend an ear, or to sit calmly down and thoughtfully review the past, in order to discover the identity of those English guests who had taken Félicie Dumarques away from her joyless home. He made the attempt notwithstanding, and walked into a neat little parlour to the left, where two disconsolate females—strangers to each other and regardless of each other’s woes—were poring over the mysteries of a couple of railway-guides; and where a calm-looking middle-aged female, with shining black hair and neat little white-lace cap, sat at a desk making out accounts.

The lady shrugged her shoulders dubiously. As a rule, she told Lucius, the proprietor did not permit himself to be seen. He had his servants, who arranged everything.

‘Cannot I afford you any information you may require, monsieur?’ she asked, with an agreeable smile.

‘That, madame, will depend upon circumstances. May I ask how long you have been in your present position?’

‘You must be very tired of them, I should think,’ said Lucius, who saw that the lady was good-natured, and inclined to oblige him.

‘I am accustomed to them, monsieur, and custom endears even the driest duty. I took a week’s holiday at Dieppe last summer, for the benefit of my health, but believe me I missed my books. There was a void. Pleasure is all very well for people who are used to it, but for a woman of business—that fatigues!’

‘The inquiry which I wish to make relates to some English people who were staying for a short[Pg 167] time in this house—about four-and-twenty years ago, and whose names I am anxious to discover.’

‘But, monsieur, four-and-twenty years ago! You imagine that I can recall visitors of four-and-twenty years ago? English visitors—and this hotel is three-parts filled with English visitors every year from May to October. Thirty English visitors will sit down to-day at our table d’hôte, that is to say, English and American, all the same.’

‘It might be impossible to remember them unassisted; yet there are circumstances connected with these people which might recall them to you. But you have books in which visitors write their names?’

‘Yes, if it pleases them. They are even asked to write; but there is no law to compel them; there is no law to prevent them writing a false name. It is a mere formula. And if I can find the names, supposing you to know the exact date, how are we to identify them with the people you want? There are several names signed in the visitors’-book every day in our busy season. People come and go so quickly. It is an impossibility which you ask, monsieur.’

‘I think if I had time for a quiet chat with you[Pg 168] I might bring back the circumstances to your recollection. It is a very important matter—a matter which may seriously affect the happiness of a person very dear to me, or I would not trouble you.’

‘A person very dear to you! Your betrothed perhaps, monsieur?’ inquired Mademoiselle Dolfe, with evident sympathy.

‘Yes, madame,’ he said, ‘my betrothed, whose mother was a native of your city.’

This clenched the matter. Mademoiselle Dolfe was soft-hearted and sentimental. Even the books, and the perpetual adding-up of dinners and breakfasts, service, appartements, bougies, siphons, bouteilles, demi-bouteilles, and those fatal sundries which so fearfully swell an hotel bill—even this hard exercise of an exact science had not extinguished that vital spark of heavenly flame which Mademoiselle Dolfe called her soul. She had been betrothed herself, once upon a time, to the proprietor of a rival establishment, who had blighted her affections by proving inconstant to his affianced, and only too constant to the brandy-bottle. She had not forgotten that springtime of the heart, those halcyon summer evenings when she and her Gustave had walked[Pg 169] hand-in-hand in the shadowy avenues across yonder bridge. She sighed, and looked at Lucius with the glance of compassion.

‘Would it be possible for you to give me half-an-hour’s quiet conversation at any time?’ asked Lucius pleadingly.

‘There is the evening,’ said Mademoiselle Dolfe. ‘My uncle is a severe sufferer from gout, and rarely leaves his room; but I do not think he would object to receive you in the evening for half an hour. He has all the old books of the hotel in his room—they are indeed his only library. When in want of a distraction he compares the receipts of past years with our present returns, or examines our former tariffs, with a view to any modification, the reduction or increase of our present charges. If you will call this evening at nine o’clock, monsieur, I will induce my uncle to receive you. His memory is extraordinary; and he may be able to recall events of which I, in my frivolous girlhood, took little notice.’

‘I shall be eternally obliged to him, and to you, madame,’ said Lucius. ‘In the mean time, if you will kindly send a porter for my bag, which I left at the station, I will take up my abode here. I shall then be on the spot whenever Monsieur Dolfe may be pleased to receive me.’

‘Yes, I will stay to-night. Unhappily I must go on to Paris to-morrow morning.’

‘Show this gentleman to number eleven,’ she said; and then, turning to Lucius, she added graciously, ‘It is an airy chamber, giving upon the river, monsieur, and has but been this instant vacated. I shall have a dozen applications when the next train from Dieppe comes in.’

Lucius thanked Mademoiselle Dolfe for this mark of favour, and went up to number eleven to refresh himself after his journey, with the assistance of as much cold water as can be obtained by hook or by crook in a foreign hotel. His toilet made, he descended to the coffee-room, where he endeavoured to derive entertainment from a flabby Rouen journal while his tardy breakfast was being prepared. This meal dispatched, he went out into the streets of the city, looked for the picturesque old bits he remembered on his last visit, mooned away a pleasant hour in the cathedral, looked in at St. Ouen, and finished his afternoon in the Museum of Arts, contemplating the familiar old pictures, and turning the vellum leaves of a noble missal in the library.

He dined at the table d’hôte, and after dinner returned to the Rue Jeanne d’Arques.

The little watchmaker had a triumphant air, and at once handed him a slip of flimsy paper with an address written on it in a niggling fly-leggish caligraphy.

‘I had a good deal of trouble with my neighbour,’ he said. ‘He is a disagreeable person, and we have embroiled ourselves a little on the subject of our several dustbins. He objects to vegetable matter; I object more strongly to the shells of stale fish, of which he and his lodgers appear to devour an inordinate quantity, judging from the contents of his dustbin. When first I put the question about Mademoiselle Dumarques I found him utterly impracticable. He knew his landlady’s address, certainly, but it was not his business to communicate her address to other people; she might object to have her address made known; it might be a breach of confidence on his part. I was not a little startled when, with a sudden burst of rage, he brought his clenched fist down upon the table. “Sacrebleu!” he cried; “I divine your intention. Traitor! You are going to write to Mademoiselle Dumarques about my dustbin.” I assured him, as soon as I recovered my scattered senses, that nothing was farther from my thoughts than his dustbin. Nay, I suggested that[Pg 172] we should henceforward regulate our dustbins upon a system more in accord with the spirit of the contrat social than had hitherto prevailed between us. In a word, by some judicious quotations from the inimitable Jean Jacques, I finally brought him to a more amiable frame of mind, and induced him to give me the address, and to tell me all he knows about Mademoiselle Dumarques.’

‘Nay, monsieur, I would do much more to serve a fellow creature. The address you have there in your hand. It appears that Mademoiselle Dumarques set up in business for herself some years ago at that address, where she resides alone, or with some pupil to whom she confides the secrets of her art.’

Lucius repeated his acknowledgments, and took his leave of the loquacious watchmaker. But he did not quit the Rue Jeanne d’Arques without pausing once more to contemplate the quiet old house in which Lucille’s fair young mother had drooped and died, divided from her only child, and in a measure deserted by her husband. A shadowed life, with but a brief glimpse of happiness at best.

He reëntered the hotel a few minutes before nine. The little office on the left side of the hall, where[Pg 173] Mademoiselle Dolfe had been visible all day, and always employed, was abandoned. Mademoiselle had doubtless retired into private life, and was ministering to her gouty uncle. Lucius gave his card to a waiter, requesting that it might be taken to Mademoiselle Dolfe without delay. The waiter returned sooner than he could have hoped, and informed him that Monsieur and Mademoiselle would be happy to receive him.

He followed the waiter to a narrow staircase at the back of the house, by which they ascended to the entresol. Here, in a small sitting-room, with a ceiling which a moderate-sized man could easily touch with his hand, Lucius beheld Monsieur Dolfe reposing in a ponderous velvet-cushioned chair, with his leg on a rest; a stout man, with very little hair on his head, but, by way of succedaneum, a gold-embroidered smoking-cap. The small low room looked upon a courtyard like a well, and was altogether a stifling apartment. But it was somewhat luxuriously furnished, Lucius perceived by the subdued light of two pair of wax candles—the unfinished bougies of the establishment were evidently consumed here—and Monsieur Dolfe and his niece appeared eminently satisfied with it, and entirely unaware that it was wanting in airiness and space.

The books of the hotel, bulky business-like volumes, were ranged on a shelf in one corner of the room. Lucius’s eye took that direction immediately; but Monsieur Dolfe was slow and pompous, and sipped his coffee as if in no hurry to satisfy the stranger’s curiosity.

‘I have told my uncle what you wish, Monsieur Davoren,’ said Mademoiselle graciously, and with a pleading glance at the old gentleman in the skull-cap.

‘May I ask your motive in wishing to trace visitors of this hotel—visitors of twenty-four years back?’ asked Monsieur Dolfe, with an important air. ‘Is it a will case, some disputed testament, and are you in the law?’

‘I am a surgeon, as my card will show you,’ said Lucius, ‘and the case in which I am interested has nothing to do with a will. I wish to discover the secret of a young lady’s parentage—a lady who at present bears a name which I believe is not her own.’

‘Humph,’ said Monsieur Dolfe doubtfully; ‘and there is no reward attaching to your inquiries—you gain nothing if successful?’

‘I may gain a father, or at least a father’s name, for the girl I love,’ answered Lucius frankly.

Lucius stated his case plainly. At the name of Dumarques Monsieur Dolfe pricked up his ears. Something akin to emotion agitated his bloated face. A quiver of mental pain convulsed his triple chin.

‘I knew Félicie Dumarques’ mother before she married that old skinflint who murdered her.’

‘Tais-toi, child! I know it was slow murder. It came not within the law. It was an assassination that lasted months and years. How often have I seen that poor child’s pale face! No smile ever brightened it, after her marriage with that vile miser. She did not weep; she did not complain. The angels in heaven are not more spotless than she was as wife and mother. She only ceased to smile, and she died by inches. No matter that she lived twenty years after her marriage—it was gradual death all the same.’

Monsieur Dolfe was profoundly moved. He pushed back his skull-cap, exposing his bald head, which he rubbed despondently with his fat white hand.

‘Did I know her? We were neighbours as children. My parents and hers lived side by side. Her father was a notary—above my father in station; but she and I played together as children—went to the same school together as little ones—for the notary was poor, and Lucille—’

‘Monsieur Valneau, Lucille’s father, was poor, I repeat, and the children—there were several—were brought up anyhow. Thus we saw more of each other than we might have done otherwise. Lucille and my sister were fast friends. She spent many an evening in our house, which was in many ways more comfortable than the wretched troisième occupied by the Valneau family. This continued till I was sixteen, and Lucille about fourteen. No word of love had passed between us, as you may imagine, at that early age; but I had shown my devotion to her as well as a boy can, and I think she must have known that I adored her. Whether she ever cared, even in the smallest degree, for me, is a secret I shall never know.[Pg 177] At sixteen years of age my father sent me to Paris to learn my uncle’s trade—my uncle preceded me, you must know, monsieur, in this house—and I remained there till I was twenty-three. When I came back Lucille had been two years married to André Dumarques. My sister had not had the heart to write me the news. She suffered it to stun me on my return. Valneau’s difficulties had increased. Dumarques had offered to marry Lucille and to help her family; so the poor child was sacrificed.’

‘The young lady in whom I am interested—in a word, my promised wife—is the granddaughter of this very Lucille Dumarques,’ said Lucius, to the profound astonishment of Monsieur Dolfe.

‘I remember both faces,’ said Monsieur Dolfe. ‘Félicie Dumarques, and the Englishman who stayed in this house for a week, and was seen driving about the town with Félicie. Unhappily that set people talking; but the poor child died only a month later, and carried her secret to the grave.’

‘There was no shameful secret,’ said Lucius. ‘That man was Félicie’s husband.’

‘I have it from the best authority. And now, monsieur, you will do me a service if you can recall the name of that Englishman.’

‘But it is difficult,’ exclaimed Monsieur Dolfe. ‘I was never good at remembering names, even of my own nation, and to remember an English name after twenty years—it is impossible.’

‘Not twenty years. It cannot be more than eighteen since that Englishman was in Rouen. But do not trouble yourself, Monsieur Dolfe. Even if you remembered, it might be but wasted labour. This gentleman was especially anxious to keep his marriage a secret. He would therefore most likely come here in an assumed name.’

‘If he troubled himself to give us any name at all,’ said Monsieur Dolfe. ‘Many of our guests are nameless—we know them only as Number 10 or Number 20, as the case may be.’

‘But there is a name which I should be very glad if you could recall, and that is the name of the lady and gentleman—brother and sister—elderly people—who took Félicie Dumarques away with them, as attendant to the lady, when she left Rouen. As you were interested in the Dumarques’ family, that is a circumstance which you may possibly remember.’

‘I recall it perfectly,’ cried Monsieur Dolfe, ‘that is to say, the circumstance, but as for the name, it is gone out of my poor head. But in this case I think the books will show. Tell me the year—four-and-twenty years ago, you say. It was in the autumn, I remember. They had been here before, and were excellent customers. The lady an invalid, small, pale, fragile. The gentleman also small and pale, but apparently in fair health. He had a valet with him. But the lady’s-maid had fallen ill on the road. They had sent her back to her people. But I remember perfectly. It was my idea to recommend Félicie Dumarques. Her father, with whom I kept on civil terms—in my heart of hearts I detested him, but an hotel-keeper must have no opinions—had told me his youngest girl was unhappy at home since her mother’s death, and wanted a situation as useful companion—or even maid—to a lady. The little pale old lady looked as if she would be kind—the little pale old gentleman was evidently rich. There could not be much work to do, and there would doubtless be liberal pay. In a word, the situation seemed made for Félicie. I sent for her—the old lady was delighted, and engaged her on the spot. She was to have twenty-five pounds a year, and to be treated like a lady. There is the whole story, monsieur.’

‘Ah, how you are impatient! We will come to that presently. Think, Florine,’ to Mademoiselle Dolfe, who rejoiced in this euphonious name, ‘you were a girl at the time, but you must have some recollection of the circumstances.’

Florine Dolfe shook her head with a sentimental air; indeed, sentiment seemed to run in the Dolfe family.

‘Alas, I remember but too well,’ she said. ‘It was in the year when—when I believed that there was perfect happiness upon the earth;’ namely, before she had been jilted by the faithless Gustave. ‘It was early in September.’

‘Bring me volume six of the daybook and volume one of the visitors’-book,’ said Monsieur Dolfe, pointing to the shelves.

His niece brought two bulky volumes, and laid them on the table before the proprietor. He turned the leaves with a solemn air, as if he had just completed the purchase of the last of the Sibylline volumes.

‘September ’41,’ said Monsieur Dolfe, running his puny forefinger along the list of names. ‘2d, Binks, Jones, Dulau, Yokes, Stokes, Delphin.’ Lucius listened intently for some good English name with the initial G. ‘3d, Purdon, Green, Vancing,[Pg 181] Thomas, Binoteau, Gaspard, Smith.’ Lucius shook his head despondently. ‘4th, Lomax, Trevor, Dupuis, Glenlyne.’

‘Good name or bad name,’ exclaimed the proprietor, ‘those are the people—Mr. Reginald Glenlyne, Miss Glenlyne, and servant, from Switzerland, en route for London. Those are the people. Yes, I remember perfectly. Now look at the daybook.’

He opened the other Sibylline volume, found the date, and pointed triumphantly to the page headed ‘Numbers 5, 6, and 7,’ beneath which heading appeared formidable entries of recherché dinners, choice wines, bougies, innumerable teas, coffees, soda-waters, baths, voitures, &c. &c.

‘They occupied our principal suite of apartments,’ said Monsieur Dolfe grandly; ‘the apartment we give to ambassadors and foreign potentates. There is no doubt about it—these are the people.’

Monsieur Dolfe might have added, that in this age of economic and universal travelling he did not often get such good customers. Such thought was in his mind, but Monsieur Dolfe respected the dignity[Pg 182] of his proprietorial position, and did not give the thought utterance.

This was a grand discovery. Lucius considered that to have found out the name of these people was a strong point. If the man who signed himself H. G. was this lady’s nephew, his name was in all probability Glenlyne also. The initial being the same, it was hardly too much to conclude that he was a brother’s son, and bore the family name of his maiden aunt. Lucius felt that he could now approach Mademoiselle Dumarques in a strong position. He knew so much already that she would scarcely refuse him any farther information that it was in her power to give.

He had nothing to offer Monsieur and Mademoiselle Dolfe except the expression of his gratitude, and that was tendered heartily.

‘If ever I am happy enough to marry the young lady I have told you about, I will bring my wife here on our wedding tour,’ he said; a declaration at which Mademoiselle Dolfe melted almost to tears.

‘I should be very glad to see Lucille Valneau’s granddaughter,’ said Monsieur Dolfe. He too remembered the halcyon days of youth, when he had loved and dreamed his dream of happiness.

Lucius slept more soundly than he had slept for[Pg 183] many nights on the luxurious spring mattresses of number eleven, lulled by the faint ripple of the river, the occasional voices of belated pedestrians softened by distance, the hollow tramp of footsteps on the pavement. He rose early, breakfasted, and set out for the cemetery on the hill, where, after patient search, he found the Dumarques’ grave. All the family, save Julie, slumbered there. Lucille Dumarques, the faithful and beloved wife of André Dumarques—Priez pour elle—and then André Dumarques, and then Félicie, aged twenty-four; here there was no surname—only ‘Félicie, daughter of the above-named André Dumarques;’ and then Hortense, at the riper age of forty-one. The grave was gaily decked with a little blue-and-gold railing, enclosing a tiny flower-garden, where chrysanthemums and mignonette were blooming in decent order. The sister in Paris doubtless paid to have this family resting-place kept neatly.

Here Lucius lingered a little while, in meditative mood, looking down at the noble curve of the widening river—the green Champagne country on the opposite shore—and thinking of the life that had ended in such deep sadness. Then he gathered a sprig of mignonette for Lucille, put it carefully in his pocket-book, and departed in time to catch the midday train for Paris.

Mademoiselle Dumarques had thriven in a quiet steady-going way. She had not risen to be a court milliner. She did not give fashions to Europe, America, and the colonies, or employ the genius of rising draughtsmen to design her costumes. She was of the bourgeoisie, and lived by the bourgeoisie. Her abode was a second floor in one of the quiet respectable streets in that half-deserted quarter of Paris which lies on the unfashionable side of the Seine; an eminently gloomy street which seemed to lead to nowhere, but was nevertheless the abode of two or three important business firms. Here Mademoiselle Dumarques confectioned gowns and bonnets, caps and mantles, on reasonable terms, and in strict accordance with the fashions of last year.

Lucius ascended a dingy staircase, odorous with that all-pervading smell of stewed vegetables which is prone to distinguish French staircases—an odour[Pg 185] which in some manner counterbalances the advantages of that more savoury cuisine, so often vaunted by the admirers of French institutions to the discredit of British cooks. A long way up the dingy staircase Lucius discovered a dingy door, on which, by the doubtful light, he was just able to make out the name of ‘Mademoiselle Dumarques, Robes et Chapeaux.’ He rang a shrill bell, which summons produced a shrill young person in a rusty-black silk gown, who admitted him with a somewhat dubious air, as if questioning his ability to order a gown or a bonnet. The saloon into which he was ushered had a tawdry faded look. A few flyblown pink tissue-paper models of dresses, life size, denoted the profession of its occupant. A marble-topped commode was surmounted by a bonnet, whose virgin beauties were veiled by yellow gauze. The room was clean and tidily kept, but was spoiled by that cheap finery which is so often found in a third-rate French apartment. A clock which did not go; a pair of lacquered candelabra, green with age, yet modern enough to be commonplace; a sofa of the first empire, originally white and gold, but tarnished and blackened by the passage of time; chairs, velvet-covered, brass-nailed, and clumsy; carpet threadbare; curtains of a gaudy imitation tapestry.

Mademoiselle Dumarques emerged from an inner chamber with a mouthful of pins, which she disposed of in the band of her dress as she came. She was tall, thin, and sallow, might once have been passably good-looking, but was in every respect unlike the portrait of Félicie.

‘I come, madame,’ said Lucius, after the politest possible reception from the lady, who insisted that he should take the trouble to seat himself in one of the uncomfortably square arm-chairs, whose angles were designed in defiance of the first principles of human anatomy—‘I come to speak to you of a subject which I cannot doubt is very near to your heart. I come to speak of the dead.’

‘I come to you on an important matter connected with your sister, Mademoiselle Félicie, afterwards Mrs. Glenlyne.’

He made a bold plunge; for, after all, the name might not have been Glenlyne; and even if it were, Mademoiselle Dumarques might have known nothing about it. But the name elicited no expression of surprise from Mademoiselle Dumarques. She shook her head pensively, sighed, wiped away a tear from her sharp black eyes, and then asked,

‘I come to you to speak of her only child, Lucille; who has been brought up in ignorance of her parents, and whom it is my wish to restore to her rightful position in society.’

‘Her rightful position!’ cried Julie Dumarques, with a scornful look in her hard pinched face; ‘her rightful position in society, as a milliner’s niece! You are vastly mistaken, sir, if you suppose that it is in my power to assist my niece. I find it a hard struggle to support myself by the labour of my hands.’

‘So,’ thought Lucius, ‘Mademoiselle Julie inherits her father’s miserly nature. She has a house in Rouen which must bring her in seventy to a hundred pounds a year, and she has a fairly prosperous business, but repudiates the claims of her niece. Hard world, in which blood is no thicker than water. Thank Heaven, my Lucille needs nothing from her kindred.’

‘I am happy to tell you, madame,’ he said after a little pause, ‘that Miss Glenlyne asks and requires no assistance from you or any other relative.’

‘I am very glad to hear that,’ answered Mademoiselle[Pg 188] Julie. ‘Of course I should be pleased to hear of the poor child’s welfare, though I have never seen her face, and though her mother treated me in no very sisterly spirit, keeping from me the secret of her marriage, while she confided it to my sister Hortense. True that I was here at the time of her return to Rouen, and too busy to go yonder to see her. The tidings of her death took me by surprise. I had no idea of her danger, or I should naturally have gone to see her. But as for Félicie’s marriage or the birth of her child, I knew nothing of either event till after the death of my sister Hortense, when I found some letters and a kind of journal, kept by poor Félicie, among her papers.’

‘Perhaps not; but although a stranger to you, mademoiselle, I have a strong claim upon your kindness in this matter.’

‘No. I have no mercenary interest in this matter. Your niece, Lucille Glenlyne, is my promised wife.’

‘These,’ he said, ‘will show you that I do not come to you unacquainted with the secrets of your sister’s life. My desire is to restore Lucille to her father, if he still lives; or, in the event of his death, to win for her at least a father’s name.’

‘And a father’s fortune!’ exclaimed Mademoiselle Julie hastily; ‘my niece ought not to be deprived of her just rights. This Mr. Glenlyne was likely to inherit a large fortune. I gathered that from his letters to my sister.’

‘Yet in all these years you have made no attempt to seek out your niece, or to assist her in establishing her rights,’ said Lucius, with some reproach in his tone.

‘In the first place, I had no clue that would assist such a search,’ answered Julie Dumarques, ‘and in the second place, I had no money to spend on lawyers. I had still another reason—namely, my horror of crossing the sea. But with you the case is different—as my niece’s affianced husband, you would profit by any good fortune that may befall her.’

‘Believe me, that contingency is very far from my thoughts. I want to do my duty to Lucille; but a life of poverty has no terror for me if it be but shared with her.’

‘The young are apt to take that romantic view of[Pg 190] life,’ said Mademoiselle Dumarques, with a philosophic air; ‘but their ideas are generally modified in after years. A decent competence is the only solace of age;’ and here she sighed, as if that decent competence were not yet achieved.

‘Will you let me see those letters, mademoiselle?’ asked Lucius, coming straight to the point. ‘I have shown you my credentials; those letters in your sister’s hand must prove to you that I have some interest in this case, even should you be inclined to doubt my own word.’

‘I have no objection to your looking over the letters, in my presence,’ she said; ‘and I hope, if by my assistance my niece obtains a fortune, she will not forget her poor aunt Julie.’

‘I doubt not, mademoiselle, that the niece will show more consideration for the aunt than the aunt has hitherto shown for the niece.’

Mademoiselle Dumarques sighed plaintively. ‘What was I to do, monsieur, with narrow means, and an insurmountable terror of crossing the sea?’

Mademoiselle Dumarques took him into her den;[Pg 191] or the laboratory in which she concocted those costumes which were to ravish the Parc Monceau or the Champs Elysées on a Sunday afternoon. It was a small and stifling apartment behind the saloon in which mademoiselle received her customers—a box of a room ten feet by nine, smelling of coffee, garlic, and a suspicion of cognac, and crowded with breadths of stuff and silk, lining, pincushions, yard measures, paper patterns, and all the appliances of the mantuamaker’s art. Here the shrill-voiced young apprentice stitched steadily with a little clicking noise, while Mademoiselle Dumarques opened a brass-inlaid desk, and produced therefrom a small packet of papers.

Lucius seated himself at a little table by the single window, and opened this packet.

There were about a dozen letters, some of them love-letters, written to a person of humbler station than the writer. Vague at first, and expressing only a young man’s passion for a lovely and attractive girl; then plainly and distinctly proposing marriage ‘since my Félicie is inexorable on this point,’ said the writer, ‘but our marriage must be kept a secret for years to come. You must tell my aunt that you are summoned home by your father, and leave abruptly, not giving her or my uncle time for any inquiries. You can let a servant accompany[Pg 192] you to the station, taking your luggage with you, and you can leave by the eight-o’clock train for Newhaven before that servant’s eyes. At Croydon I will meet you, get your luggage out of the van, and bring you back to London in time for our marriage to take place at the church in Piccadilly by half-past eleven that morning. We are both residents in the parish, so there will be no difficulty about the license, only to avoid all questioning I shall have to describe you as an Englishwoman, and of age. I have heard of a cottage near Sidmouth, in Devonshire, which I think will suit us delightfully for our home; an out-of-the-way quiet nook, from which I can run up to London when absolutely necessary. My uncle is anxious that I should take my degree, as you know. So I may have to spend some months of the next two years at Oxford; but even that necessity needn’t part us, as I can get a place somewhere on the river, at Nuneham, for instance, for you. Reading for honours will be a good excuse for continued and close retirement, and will, I think, completely satisfy the dear old uncle—whom, even apart from all considerations about the future, I would not for worlds offend. Would that he could see things with my eyes, dearest; but you know I did once sound him as to a marriage with one in all things my superior[Pg 193] except in worldly position, and he met me with a severity that appalled me. Good as he is in many ways, he is full of prejudice, and believes the Glenlynes are a little more exalted than the Guelphs or the Ghibelines. So we must fain wait, not impatiently but resignedly, till inevitable death cuts the knot of our difficulties. Heaven is my witness that if evil wishes could injure, no wicked desire of mine should hasten my uncle’s end by an hour; but he is past sixty, and has aged a good deal lately, so it is not in nature that his life can long stand between us and the avowal of our union.’

This was the last of the lover’s letters; the next Lucius found in the little packet was from the husband, written some years later—written when Félicie had returned to Rouen.

This letter was despondent, nay, almost despairing, or rather, expressive of that impatience which men call despair.

The writer, who in all these letters signed himself in full, Henry Glenlyne, had failed to get his degree; had been, in his own words, ignominiously plucked; but that was an event of two years ago, to which he referred, retrospectively, as a cause of discontent in his uncle.

‘The fact is, I’ve disappointed him, Félicie, and a[Pg 194] very little more would induce him to throw me over altogether, and leave his estate to the Worcestershire Glenlyne Spaldings—my natural enemies, who have courted him assiduously for the last thirty years. The sons are Cambridge men, models of propriety; senior wranglers, prizemen, and heaven knows what else, and of course have done their best to undermine me. Yet I know the dear old man loves me better than the whole lot of them—to be at once vulgar and emphatic—and that unless I did something to outrage his pet prejudice, he would never dream of altering his will, charm they never so wisely. But to declare our marriage at such a time as this would be simple madness, and is not to be thought of. You must keep up your spirits, my dearest girl. If I can bring the little one over to Rouen, I’ll do it; but I have a shrewd notion that my uncle has spies about him, and that my movements are rather closely watched, no doubt in the interests of the Glenlyne Spaldings; your expectant legatees have generally their paid creature in the testator’s household; so it would be difficult for me to bring her myself, and it is just the last favour I could ask of Sivewright, as he profits by the charge of her. It would be like asking him to surrender the goose that lays golden eggs; and remember, whatever the man may be, he has done us[Pg 195] good service; for had he not passed himself off as your husband when my uncle swooped down upon us that dreadful day at Sidmouth, the whole secret would have been out, and I beggared for life. I had a peep at the little pet the other day; she is growing fast, and growing prettier every day, and seems happy. Strange to say, she is passionately fond of Ferdinand, who, I suppose, spoils her, and she looked at me with the most entire indifference. I felt the sting of this strangeness. But in the days to come I will win her love back again, or it shall go hard with me.’

‘My Darling,—I am inexpressibly grieved to hear of your weak health. I shall come over again directly I can get away from my uncle, and will, at any risk, bring Lucille with me. At this present writing it is absolutely impossible for me to get away. My uncle is breaking fast, and I much fear the G. Spaldings are gaining ground. The senior wrangler is going to make a great marriage; in fact, the very match which my uncle tried to force upon me. This is a blow—for the old man is warmly attached to the young lady in question, and even thinks, entirely without reason, that I have treated her badly. However, I must trust to his long-standing affection for me to[Pg 196] vanquish the artifices of my rivals. I hardly think that he could bring himself to disinherit me after so long allowing me to consider myself his heir. Keep up your spirits, my dear Félicie; the end cannot be far off, and rich or poor, believe in the continued devotion of your faithfully attached husband,

‘Henry Glenlyne.

‘The Albany.’

This was the letter of a man of the world, but hardly the letter of a bad man. The writer of that letter would scarcely repudiate the claim of an only daughter, did he still live to acknowledge her.

The journal, written in a russia-leather covered diary, consisted of only disjointed snatches, all dated at Rouen, in the last year of the writer’s life, and all full of a sadness bordering on despair—not the man’s impatience of vexation and trouble, but the deep and settled sorrow of a patient unselfish woman. Many of the lines were merely the ejaculations of a troubled spirit, brief snatches of prayer, supplications to the Mother of Christ to protect the motherless child; utterances of a broken heart, penitential acknowledgments of an act of deceit, prayers for forgiveness of a wrong done to a kind mistress.

One entry was evidently written after the receipt[Pg 197] of the last letter. It was at the end of the journal, and the hand that inscribed the lines had been weak and tremulous.

‘He cannot come to me, yet there is no unkindness in his refusal. He promises to come soon, to bring the darling whose tender form these arms yearn to embrace, whose fair young head may never more recline on this bosom. O, happy days at Sidmouth, how they come back to me in sweet delusive dreams! I see the garden above the blue smiling sea. I hold my little girl in my arms, or lead her by her soft little hand as she toddles in and out among the old crooked apple-trees in the orchard. Henry has promised to come in a little while; but Death comes faster, Death knows no delays. I did not wish to alarm my husband. I would not let Hortense write, for she would have told him the bitter truth. Yet, I sometimes ask myself sadly, would that truth seem bitter to him? Might not my death bring him a welcome release? I know that he has loved me. I can but remember that we spent four happy years together in beautiful England; but when I think of the difficulties that surround him, the ruin which threatens him, can I doubt that my death will be a relief to him? It will grieve that kind heart, but it will put an end to his troubles. God grant that when[Pg 198] I am gone he may have courage to acknowledge his child! The fear that he may shrink from that sacred duty racks my heart. Blessed Mother, intercede for my orphan child!’

Then came disjointed passages—passages that were little more than prayer. Here and there, mingled with pious hopes, with spiritual aspirations, came the cry of human despair.

‘Death comes faster than my husband. My Henry, I shall see thee no more. Ah, if thou lovest me, my beloved, why dost thou not hasten? It is hard to die without one pitying look from those dear eyes, one tender word from that loved voice. Hast thou forgotten thy Félicie, whom thou didst pursue so ardently five years ago? I wait for thee now, dear one; but the end is near. The hope of seeing thee once again fades fast. Wilt thou have quite forgotten me ere we meet in heaven? A long life lies before thee; thou wilt form new ties, and give to another the love that was once Félicie’s. In that far land where we may meet hereafter thou wilt look on me with unrecognising eyes. O, to see thee once more on earth—to feel thy hand clasping mine as life ebbs away!’

Lucius closed the little book with a sigh. Alas, how many a woman’s life ends thus, with a broken[Pg 199] heart! Happy those finer natures whose fragile clay survives not the shattered lamp of the soul! There are some fashioned of a duller stuff, in whom the mere habit of life survives all that gave life its charm.

This was all that letters or journal could tell the investigator. But Lucius told himself that the rest would be easy to discover. He had name, date, locality. The name, too, was not a common name; Burke’s Landed Gentry or County Families would doubtless help him to identify that Henry Glenlyne who married Félicie Dumarques at the church in Piccadilly. These letters had done much; for they had assured him of Lucille’s legitimacy. This made all clear before him; he need no longer fear to pluck the curtain from the mystery of the past, lest he should reveal a story of dishonour.

He took some brief notes from Mr. Glenlyne’s letter, and thanked Mademoiselle Dumarques for her politeness, promising that if the niece should profit by the use of these documents, the aunt should be amply requited for any assistance they afforded; and then he took a courteous leave of the dressmaker and her apprentice, the monotonous click of whose needle had not ceased during his visit.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon when Lucius[Pg 200] left Mademoiselle Dumarques. He had thought of getting back to Dieppe in time for that evening’s boat, so as to arrive in London by the following morning—he had taken a return ticket by this longer but cheaper route. He found, however, that the strain upon his attention during the last forty-eight hours, the night journey by Newhaven and Dieppe, combined with many an anxious day and night in the past, had completely worn him out.

‘I must have another night’s rest before I travel, or I shall go off my head,’ he said to himself. ‘I am beginning to feel that confused sense of time and place which is the forerunner of mental disturbance. No; it would be of some importance to me to save a day, but I won’t run the risk of knocking myself up. I’ll go back to Dieppe by the next train, and sleep there to-night.’

The passage from Dieppe to Newhaven was of the roughest. Lucius beheld his fellow voyagers in the last stage of prostration, and prescribed for more than one forlorn female on whom the sea malady had fastened with alarming grip. The steamer was one scene of suffering, and Lucius, being happily exempt from the common affliction, did his best to be useful, so far as the limited means of treatment on board the vessel enabled him. The wind was high, and the passengers on board the Newhaven boat, who had never seen the waves that beat against the rock-bound coast of Newfoundland, thought that shipwreck was within the possibilities of the voyage, and asked the captain with doleful countenances if he thought they should ever reach Newhaven.

It was late in the evening when the train from Newhaven deposited Lucius at London-bridge. But late as it was, he took a cab, left his bag at his own door, and then went on to Cedar House. His first[Pg 202] duty, he told himself, was to Homer Sivewright, the old man who had so fully trusted him, and so reluctantly parted with him.

As he drove towards the house, he had that natural feeling of anxiety which is apt to arise after absence from any scene in which the traveller is deeply interested—a vague dread, a lurking fear that although, according to human foresight, all should have gone well, yet some unforeseen calamity, some misfortune unprovided against, may have arisen in the interval.

The night was cloudy and starless, cold too. The wind, which had been rising all day, now blew a gale, and all the dust of the day’s traffic was blown into the traveller’s face as he drove along the broad and busy highway. That north-east wind shrieked shrilly over the housetops of the Shadrack district, and one might prophesy the fall of many a loose slate and the destruction of many a flowerpot, hurled untimely from narrow window-sills, ere the hurricane exhausted its fury. The leaden cowls that surmounted refractory chimneys spun wildly round before the breeze, and in some spots, where tall shafts clustered thickly and cowls were numerous, seemed in their vehement gyrations to be holding a witch’s Sabbath in honour of the storm.

That north-easter had a biting breath, and chilled the blood of the Shadrackites till they were moved to dismal prophecies of a hard winter. ‘We allus gets a hard winter when the heckwinockshalls begins hearly,’ says one gentleman in the coal-and-potato line to another. And the north-easter howls its dreary dirge, as if it said, ‘Cry aloud and lament for the summer that is for ever gone, for southern breezes and sunny days that return no more.’

Cedar House looked more than usually darksome after the brighter skies and gayer colours of a French city. Those dust and smoke laden old trees, lank poplars, which swayed and rocked in the gale, that gloomy wall, those blank-looking windows above it, inspired no cheering thoughts. There was no outward sign to denote that any one lay dead in the house; but it seemed no fitting abode for the living.

As the hansom came aground against the curbstone in front of the tall iron gate, Lucius was surprised to see a stout female with a bundle ring the bell. She clutched her bundle with one hand, and carried a market-basket on the other arm, and that process of ringing the bell was not performed without some slight difficulty. Lucius jumped out of the cab and confronted the stout female.

‘Mrs. Milderson!’ he exclaimed, surprised, as the[Pg 204] woman grasped her burdens and struggled against the wind, which blew her scanty gown round her stout legs, and tore her shawl from her shoulders, and mercilessly buffeted her bonnet.

‘Yes, sir, begging your parding, which I just stepped round to my place to get a change of linen, and a little bit of tea and an odd and end of groshery at Mr. Binks’s in Stevedor-street; for there isn’t a spoonful of decent tea to be got at the grosher’s round about here, which I tell Mrs. Magsby when she offers uncommon kind to fetch any errands I may want. The wind has been that strong that it’s as much as I could do to keep my feet, particklar at the corners. It’s blowin’ a reglar gale. Hard lines for them poor souls at sea, I’m afeard, sir, and no less than three hundred and seventy-two immigrins went out of the Shadrack-basin this very day to Brisbian, which my daughter Mary Ann saw the wessle start—a most moving sight, she says.’

Mrs. Milderson talked rather with the air of a person who wishes to ward off a possible reproof by the interesting nature of her conversation. But Lucius was not to be diverted by Brisbane emigrants.

‘I don’t think it was in our agreement that you were to leave your patient, Mrs. Milderson,’ said he; ‘above all, during my absence.’

‘Lor bless you, Dr. Davoren, I haven’t been away an hour and a half, or from that to two hours at most. I only just stepped round to my own place, and took the grosher’s coming back. I’d scarcely stop to say three words to Mary Ann, which she thought it unkind and unmotherly, poor child, being as she has one leg a little shorter than the other, and was always a mother’s girl, and ‘prenticed to the dressmaking at fourteen year old. Of course if I’d a’ knowed you’d be home to-night, I’d have put off going; but as to the dear old gentleman, I left him as comfortable as could be. He took his bit of dinner down-stairs in the parlour, and eat the best part of as prime a mutton-chop as you could wish to set eyes on; but he felt a little dull-like in that room, he said, without his granddaughter, “though I’m very glad she’s enjoying the fresh country air, poor child,” he says; so he went up to his bedroom again before seven o’clock, and had his cup of tea, and then began amusing of his self, turning over his papers and suchlike. And says I, “Have I your leaf to step round to my place for a hour or so, to get a change of clothes, Mr. Sivewright?” says I; and he says yes most agreeable; and that’s the longs and the shorts of it, Dr. Davoren.’

Lucius said nothing. He was displeased, disquieted[Pg 206] even, by the woman’s desertion of her post, were it only for a couple of hours.

Mrs. Magsby had opened the gate before this, and half Mrs. Milderson’s explanation had taken place in the forecourt. It had been too dark outside the house for Lucius to see Mrs. Magsby’s face; but by the dim lamplight in the hall he saw that she was unusually pale, and that her somewhat vacant countenance had a scared look.

‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ she began at once hurriedly, ‘I hope I haven’t done wrong. I haven’t forgot what you told me and my husband about not admitting nobody in your absence; but—’

‘If you have admitted anybody, you have done very wrong,’ said Lucius decisively. ‘What does it all mean? I find Mrs. Milderson returning from a two-hours’ absence, and you in a state of alarm. What is the matter?’

A straight answer was beyond Mrs. Magsby’s power to give; she always talked in circles, and began at the outermost edge of the centre she wanted to reach.

‘I’m sure, Dr. Davoren, I shouldn’t have dreamt of doing it if it hadn’t been for the order.’

‘Shouldn’t have dreamed of doing what? What order?’ demanded Lucius impatiently.

‘When first he came to the gate—which he rang three times, for my good man was taking a stretch after his tea, and baby was that fractious with the spasms I couldn’t lie him down—I told him it was against my orders, and as much as my place was worth, being put in charge by a gentleman.’

‘Who came to the gate?’ demanded Lucius; but Mrs. Magsby rambled on, and was not to be diverted from her circuitous path by any direct question.

‘If the order hadn’t been reglar, I shouldn’t have give way; but it was perfeckly correck, from Mr. Agar, the house-agent, which has put me into many a house hisself, and his handwriting is well beknown to me. The gentleman wanted to buy the house of the owners, with a view to turnin’ it into a factory, or works of some kind, which he explained hisself quite affable.’

‘That man!’ cried Lucius aghast. ‘You admitted that man—the very man of all others who ought to have been kept out of this house—to prevent whose admittance here I have taken so much trouble? You and your husband were put into this house to defend it from that very man.’

‘Lor, sir, you must be dreaming surely,’ exclaimed Mrs. Magsby. ‘He was quite the gentleman, and comin’ like that with the intention to buy[Pg 208] the house, which I have heard Mr. Agar say as how the owners wanted to get rid of it, and with the border to view in Mr. Agar’s own handwriting, how was I to—’

‘This house belongs to Mr. Sivewright, so long as he occupies it and pays the rent,’ said Lucius indignantly. ‘You had no right to admit any one without his permission.’

‘Which I should have ast his leaf, sir, if the dear old gentleman hadn’t been asleep. Mrs. Milderson had took up his cup of tea not a quarter of a hour before, and she says to me as she goes out of this very hall-door, she says, which Mrs. Milderson herself will bear witness, being too much of a lady to go from her word, she says, “Don’t go for to disturb the old gentleman, as I’ve left him sleepin’ as quiet as an infant.” And as for care of the property, sir, it wasn’t possible to be more careful, for before I showed the gentleman over the place, outbuildins, and suchlike, which he was most anxious to see, bein’ as it was them he wanted for his factory, I calls my husband and whispers to him, “Look sharp after the property, Jim, while I go round the place with this gentleman;” and with that my husband kep in the room where the chaney and things is the whole time I was away.’

‘Well, sir, that’s the puzzling part of it all, and what’s been worritin’ me ever since. I never see him go away. But I make no doubt he went out the back way—down by them barges, as is easy enough, you know, and him as active a gentleman as I ever see.’

‘You did not see him leave? Why, then, he is in the house at this moment,’ cried Lucius. ‘Why should he leave? His object was to remain here in hiding.’

‘I’ve been over every nookt and corner in the house, sir, since he gave me the slip, as you may say, for want of better words to express it, though too much a gentleman, I’m sure, to do anything underhanded, and so has my husband, up-stairs and down-stairs till our legs ached again. The gentleman asks me to show him the back premises first—his object bein’ space for his works, as he says—and so I took him through the kitchen and round by the washhouse and brewhouse, and I opens the door into the back garden and shows him that, and I opens the outside shutters of the half-glass door leadin’ into the back parlour, meanin’ to take him through the house that way, when I looks round,[Pg 210] after openin’ the shutters for him to foller me, and he was gone. There wasn’t a vestige of him—whether he’d gone back to the hall and let hisself out quietly, havin’ seen all as he wanted to see, and p’raps found as the place didn’t meet his views, or whether he’d gone down the garden and got over the wall to the barges, is more than I can tell; but gone he was and gone he is, for me and my husband has exploded every hinch of the ’ouse from garret to cellar.’

‘Lor, no, sir; as if any one callin’ hisself a gentleman and dressed beautiful would go in that hole of a place, among cobwebs and rotten plaster, and dangerous too I should think on such a night as this, with the wind roaring like thunder.’

He pulled off his boots and ran rapidly and lightly up the old staircase and along the corridor. He opened the door of the little dressing-room where Lucille had slept, with a noiseless hand, and crept in. The door of communication between this room and Mr. Sivewright’s bedchamber stood ajar, and Lucius heard a familiar voice speaking in the next[Pg 211] room—speaking quietly enough, in tones so calm that he stopped by the door to listen.

It was a voice which he could not hear without a shudder—a voice which he had last heard in the hut in the American pine-forest, that silent wood where never came the note of song-bird.

‘Father!’ said the voice, with a quiet bitterness keener than the loudest passion. ‘Father! in what have you ever been a father to me? Who taught me to rob you when I was a child? My mother, you say! I say it was you who taught me that lesson—you who denied us a fair share of your wealth—who hid your gains from us—who hoarded and scraped, and refused us every pleasure!’

‘Falsehood—injustice,’ cried the tremulous tones of the old man; ‘falsehood and injustice from first to last. Because I was laborious, you would have it that I must needs be rich. Because I was careful, you put me down as a miser. I tried to build up a fortune for the future—Heaven knows how much more for your sake than for my own. You plotted against me, joined with your mother to deceive and cheat me, squandered in foolish dissipations the money which my care would have quadrupled: and for you, mind—all for you. I never acquired the art of spending money. I could make it, but I couldn’t[Pg 212] spend it. The man who does the first rarely can do the second. You would have inherited everything. I told you that. Not once but many times. I tried to awaken your mind to the expectation of the future. I tried to teach you that by economy and some little self-denial in the present you could help me to lay the foundation of a fortune which should not be contemptible. You, with your consummate artifice, pretended to agree with me, and went on robbing me. This was before you were twelve years old.’

‘The bent of my genius declared itself early,’ said the younger man, with a cynical monosyllabic laugh. The very note Lucius remembered in the log-hut.

‘You lied to me and you robbed me, but I still loved you,’ continued Homer Sivewright, suppressed passion audible in those faltering tones of age. ‘I still loved you—you were the only child that had been born to gladden my lonely heart. I was estranged from your mother, and knew too well that she had never loved me. What had I in the world but you? I made excuses for your wrongdoing. It is his mother’s influence, I said. What child will refuse to do what a mother bids him? She confuses his sense of right and wrong. To serve her he betrays me. I must get him away from his mother.[Pg 213] On the heels of this came a hideous revelation from you. You had quarrelled with your mother—you had taken up a knife to use against her. It was time that I should part this tigress and her cub. I lost no time—spared no expense—gave you the best education that money could buy—I who wore a threadbare coat and grudged the price of a pair of boots, even when my bare feet had made acquaintance with the pavement. Education, and that of the highest kind, made no change in you. It gave you some varnish of manner, but it left you a thief and a liar. I need not pursue the story of your career.’

‘The survey is somewhat tiresome, I admit, sir,’ said the prodigal, carelessly. ‘Suppose we come to the point without farther recrimination on either side. You have your catalogue of wrongs, your bill of indictment; I mine. Let us put one against the other, and consider the account balanced. I am ready to give you a full acquittance. You can hardly refuse the same favour to an only son, whom you once loved, who has passed through the purifying furnace of penury, who comes to you remorseful and yearning for forgiveness—nay, even for some token of affection.’

‘Don’t waste your breath, Ferdinand Sivewright. I know you!’ said the old man, with brief bitterness.

‘Nay, I cannot conceive it possible that you should repulse me,’ replied the son in a tone of infinite persuasion. That power of music and expression which was the man’s chief gift lent a strange magic to his tones; only a deep conviction of his falsehood could arm a father’s heart against him. ‘I have made my way to you with extremest difficulty—indeed only by subterfuge—so closely was your door shut against me—against me, your only son, returned, as if from the grave itself, to plead for pardon.’

‘What opportunity have I had for that? I only arrived at Liverpool from America three days ago. Why should I rob you of what, in the natural course of events, must be my own by and by? Grant that I wronged you in the past, all that I took was at least in some part my own, my own, by your direct admission, in the future, if not mine in the present; and could a boy perceive the nice distinction between actual and prospective possession?’

‘You were not a boy when you drugged me in order to steal the key of my iron safe,’ said the father in a tone that betrayed no wavering of intention. ‘I might have forgiven the robbery. I swore at the time that I would never forgive the opiate. And I mean to[Pg 215] keep my oath. I said then, and I believe now, that a man who would do that would, with as little compunction, poison me.’

Ferdinand Sivewright was standing only a few paces from the half-open door, so near that Lucius heard his quickened breathing at this point, heard even the fierce beating of that wicked heart.

‘From that hour I formed my life on a new plan,’ continued the old man, with a subdued energy that approached the terrible, a concentration of purpose that seemed fierce as the glow of metal at a white heat. ‘From that hour I lived but in the expectation of such a meeting as this. You left me poor. I swore to become rich, only for the sake of such a meeting as this. I toiled and schemed; lent money at usury, and was pitiless to the victims who borrowed; denied myself the common necessities of life, ay, shortened my days; all for such an hour as this. You would come back to me, I told myself, if I grew rich, as you have come; you would crawl, as you have crawled; you would sue for pardon, with hate and scorn in your heart, as you have sued; and I should answer you as I do to-night. Not a sixpence that I have scraped together shall ever be yours; not a penny that I have toiled for shall buy a crust to ward off your[Pg 216] hour of starvation. I have found another son. I have made a will, safe and sure; not a will that your ingenuity can upset when I am mouldering in my grave—a will leaving all I possess away from you, and imposing on those that come after me the condition that no sixpence of mine shall ever reach you. After death, as in life, I will punish you for the iniquity that turned a father’s love to hate.’

‘Madman,’ cried Ferdinand Sivewright, ‘do you think your will shall ever see the light of day, or you survive this night? I did not win my way to this room to be laughed at or defied. You have disinherited me, have you? I’m glad you told me that. You have adopted another man for your son, and made a will in his favour. I’m very glad you told me that. I wish him joy of his inheritance. You have chosen your fate. It might have been life: I came here to give you a fair chance. You choose death.’

There was a hurried movement, the swift flash of a narrow pointed knife, that kind of knife by which Sheffield makes murder easy. But ere that deadly point could reach its mark a door was flung open, there came a hurried tread of feet, and two men were grappling with each other by the bedside, with that shining blade held high above the head of both.[Pg 217] Rapid as Ferdinand’s movement had been towards the bed, Lucius had been quick enough to intercept him. By the bedside of the intended victim the two men struggled, one armed with that keen knife, the other defenceless. The struggle was for mastery of the weapon. Lucius seized the murderer’s right wrist with his left hand, and held it aloft. Not long could he have retained that fierce grip, but here his professional skill assisted him. His right hand was happily free. While they were struggling, he took a lancet from his waistcoat-pocket, and with one rapid movement cut a vein in that uplifted wrist.

The knife dropped like a stone from Ferdinand Sivewright’s relaxing grasp, and a shower of blood came down upon the surgeon and his adversary.

The old man had been pulling a bell-rope with all his might during this brief struggle, and the shrill clang of the bell sounded through the empty house, sounded even above the shrill shriek of the wind in the chimney.

Ferdinand Sivewright looked about him, dazed for an instant by that sudden loss of blood, and with the wild fierce gaze of a trapped animal. So had Lucius seen a wolverine stare at his captors from the imprisonment of a timber trap. He looked round[Pg 218] him, listened to the bell, caught the sound of footsteps in the corridor, then with a sudden rush across the room, threw himself with all the force of his full weight against the oaken panel. The feeble old wood cracked and splintered as that muscular form was flung against it, and that side of the room rocked as the panel fell inwards. Another moment and Ferdinand Sivewright had disappeared—he was on the secret staircase—he had escaped them.

Lucius made for the door. He might still be in time to catch this baffled assassin at the bottom of the staircase; but on the threshold he stopped, arrested by a sound of unspeakable horror. That end of the room by the broken panel still seemed to tremble; the wooden wall swayed inwards. Then came a sound like the roar of cannon; it was the fall of a huge beam that had sustained the wide old chimney shaft. That mighty crash was succeeded by a rushing noise from a shower of loose bricks and plaster; then one deep long groan from below, and all was silent. The room was full of dust, which almost blinded its occupants. There was a yawning gap in the splintered wainscot, where the sliding panel had been. Pharaoh had tumbled from his corner, and sprawled ignominiously on the floor. The huge square chimney, that ponderous relic of mediæval[Pg 219] masonry, which had been the oldest portion of Cedar House, was down; and Ferdinand Sivewright lay at the bottom of the house, buried under the ruins of the secret staircase and the chimney of which it had been a part.

They dug Ferdinand Sivewright out from under that pile of shattered brickwork and fallen timber, after labours that lasted late into the night. Help had not been far to seek amongst the good-natured Shadrackites. Stout navigators and stalwart stevedores had arisen as if by magic, spade and pickaxe had been brought, and the work of rescue had begun, as it seemed, almost before the echo of that thunderous sound of falling beam and brickwork had died out of the air.

When Lucius rushed down-stairs he found the forecourt full of wind-driven lime-dust and crumbled plaster and worm-eaten wood that drifted into his face like powder, and a clamorous crowd at the iron gate eager to know if any one was under the ruins.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there’s a man yonder. Who’ll help me to dig him out?’

‘Come, half a dozen of the strongest of you,’ said Lucius, unlocking the gate, ‘and bring picks and spades.’

The men filed in from among the miscellaneous crowd, women and babies in the foreground. Stray boys, frantic to do something, were sent right and left to fetch spades and picks. The miscellaneous crowd was forced back from the gate, unwilling to the last; the gate opened and the men entered, at once calm and eager, men who had seen peril and faced death in their time.

‘I knowed that end of the house would come down some day,’ said one brawny navvy, looking up at the dilapidated wing. ‘I told the old gent as much when he employed me to fasten some loose slates on one of the outhouses, but he didn’t thank me for my warning. “It’ll last my time,” says he. Is it the old gent that’s under the rubbidge, sir?’

‘Thank God, no. But there is a man there. Lose no time. There’s little hope of getting him out alive, but you can try your best.’

The stray boys reappeared breathless, and handed in spades and picks through the half-open gate, which Lucius guarded. He didn’t want a useless crowd in the forecourt.

‘Now, lads, heave ahead!’ cried a stentorian voice, and the work began; a tedious labour, for the wreck of the old chimney made a mighty pile of ruin.

The labour thus fairly started, Lucius went back to the old man’s room. He found Homer Sivewright sitting half-dressed upon his bed, staring at that gap in the opposite wall, shaken terribly, but calmer than he had hoped to find him.

‘Save him, Lucius,’ cried the old man, clasping Lucius’s hand. ‘He has been an ingrate—a villain. There was bad blood in him, a taint that poisoned his nature—hereditary falsehood. But save him from such a hideous fate. Is there any hope?’

‘None, I fear. The fall alone was enough to kill any man, and that crossbeam may have fallen upon him. There are half a dozen men clearing away the rubbish, but all we can hope to find is the dead body of your son. Better that he should perish thus than by the gallows.’

‘Which must have been his inevitable doom, had he been permitted to finish his course,’ said the old man bitterly.

Lucius helped to remove his patient to Lucille’s vacant chamber, and tried to calm his agitation—a vain effort; for though quiet enough outwardly, Mr.[Pg 223] Sivewright suffered intensely during this interval of uncertainty.

‘Go down and see how they are getting on,’ he said eagerly. ‘They must have cleared all away by this time surely.’

‘I’m going to look for a lantern or two,’ replied Lucius; ‘the night is as black as Erebus, and that strong wind makes the work slower.’

‘Go,’ he cried; ‘don’t waste time here with me. Rescue my son, if you can.’

His son still—by the mere force of habit, perhaps, although ten minutes ago his baffled murderer.

Lucius went out to the end of the house with a couple of lighted lanterns, and remained there moving about among the men as the work slowly progressed—remained giving them such help as he could—sustaining them with counsel—supplying them with beer, which one of the stray boys, retained for the purpose, fetched from a neighbouring publichouse by special license of the policeman, who acknowledged the necessity of the case—remained faithful to his post, until, in the dullest coldest hour of the dark windy night, Ferdinand Sivewright was discovered under a heap of rafters, which had fallen[Pg 224] crosswise and made a kind of penthouse above him.

This accident had just saved him from being smothered by the fallen rubbish. The massive crossbeam of the chimney had fallen under him, and not above him—the long-loosened supports perhaps finally destroyed by that fierce shock which his own mad rush at the sliding panel had given to the fabric, weakened long ago by the injudicious cutting of the timbers when the old banquet-hall was pulled down.

They lifted him out of the wreck, and, to the marvel of all of them, alive, although unconscious. Lucius examined him carefully as he lay upon a heap of the men’s coats and jackets, pallid, and bloodstained. Two of the men held the lanterns as Lucius knelt down beside that awful figure to make his investigation. Both legs were broken, the ribs crushed inwards; in short, the case was fatal, though the man still lived.

‘Come indoors with me,’ cried Lucius, ‘two of you good fellows, and we’ll pull down a door and put a mattress upon it; we must take him to the London Hospital.’

Two men followed him to the house; they selected one of the doors in the back premises, an old washhouse door that hung loosely enough on its[Pg 225] rusty hinges, and proceeded to unscrew this, while Lucius went up-stairs for a mattress. A few minutes afterwards they had laid Ferdinand Sivewright on this extemporary litter, and were carrying him, loosely covered with a couple of coats, to the London Hospital.

There was a surgical examination by two of the best men in London early next morning; but as nothing that surgery could do could have prolonged that wicked life, the consultation ended only in the simple sentence, ‘A fatal case.’

‘Do what you can to make the poor fellow comfortable,’ said the chief surgeon; ‘it would be useless to put him to any pain by trying to set the broken bones; amputation might have answered, but for those injuries to the ribs and chest—those alone would be fatal. I give him about twenty-four hours. The brain is uninjured, and there may be a return of consciousness before the end.’

For this Lucius waited, never leaving his post by the narrow hospital bed. It was important that he should be at hand, to hear whatever this man might have to say—most important that he should receive from these lips the secret of Lucille’s parentage. All that care or skill could do to alleviate Ferdinand Sivewright’s sufferings Lucius did, patiently, kindly,[Pg 226] and waited for the end, strong in his trust in Providence.

‘Better that he should perish thus by the visitation of God than by my hand,’ he said to himself, with deepest thankfulness.

He telegraphed to his sister, asking her to come to London immediately, and to bring Lucille with her. They were to travel by a particular train, and to go straight to his house, where he would meet them.

Painful as the scene would be to both, he deemed it best that both should hear this man’s last words; that Lucille should be told by his own lips that he was not her father; that Janet should hear the truth about her unhappy marriage, from him who alone had power to enlighten her. It was to give to both a bitter memory; but it was to relieve the minds of both from doubt and misconception.

A little before the hour at which Lucius expected the arrival of Janet and Lucille, the dying man awoke to consciousness. Lucius at once resolved not to leave him. He wrote a few lines to Janet, begging her to come on with Lucille to the hospital, and dispatched the note by a messenger.

Ferdinand Sivewright looked about him for a little while with a dull half-conscious wonder. Then[Pg 227] with that bitter smile which Lucius remembered years ago in the log-hut, he said slowly.

‘Another hospital! I thought I’d had enough of them. I’ve been laid by the heels often enough. Once in Mexico; another time in British Columbia, when those Canadian trappers picked me up, half dead with frost-bites and with a bullet through my shoulder, a mile or so from that villanous log-hut, and carried me on to the nearest settlement. Yes, I thought I’d had enough of sick beds and strange faces.’

Presently his eyes turned slowly towards Lucius. He looked at him for a little while with a lazy stare; then with a sudden fierceness in the dark fever-bright eyes.

‘You!’ he cried; ‘you, that sent that bullet into my shoulder! It must be a bad dream that brings you to my bedside.’

‘I am here to help and not to hurt you,’ answered Lucius quietly. ‘The end of your life is so near that there is no time for enmity. I saved you last night from becoming a parricide; and afterwards helped to rescue you from a horrible death under the ruins of the house you had invaded. If it is possible for such a nature as yours to feel remorse for the past or apprehension for the future, give the few remaining hours of your life to penitence and prayer.’

‘Yes, your hours are numbered. Medical skill can do nothing, except to make your end a little easier.’

‘That’s bitter,’ muttered Ferdinand. ‘Just as I saw my grip upon the old man’s hoard. I had schemes enough in this busy brain to occupy twenty years more. Dying! How did I come here? What happened to me? I remember nothing, except that I got into my father’s house last night to have a little peaceable conversation with him. Did I see him? I can’t remember.’

‘Don’t rack your brain to remember. There is no time to think of your life in detail. Repent, even at this last hour, and pray to an all-merciful God to pardon a life that has been all sin.’

‘Let Him answer for the work of His hands,’ cried the sinner. ‘He gave me the passions that ruled my life—the brain that plotted, the heart that knew not compunction. If He has His chosen vessels for good and evil, I suppose I have fulfilled the purpose of my creation.’

‘May God forgive your blasphemous thought! To all His creatures He gives the right of choice between two roads. You, of your own election, chose the evil path. It is not too late even now to cry to Him, “Lord, have mercy upon me a sinner!”’

‘I don’t suppose I should have been a bad fellow,’ he said by and by, ‘if destiny had provided me with a handsome income, say ten thousand a year. The tiger is a decent beast enough till he is hungry. I’ve had a strange life—a chequered fabric—some sunshine; a good deal of shadow. You never heard of me in the United States, I suppose, where I was best known as Señor Ferdinando, the violin improvisatore? I was the rage yonder in my time, I can tell you, and saw the dollars roll in like the golden waters of Pactolus, and had pretty women going mad about me by scores. Ferdinando—yes, I was a great man as Señor Ferdinando.’

‘I had a run of luck at the tables at San Francisco, when I got the better of that accursed bulletwound—your bullet, remember—and I didn’t do badly at the diggings, though I gained more by a lucky partnership with some hard-working fools than by actual work. Then came a turn in the tide, and I landed in this used-up old country without a five-pound note, and nothing to hope for but the chance of getting on the blind side of my old father. But that was difficult.’

The dying eyes looked at him with the old keen gaze, as if taking the measure of his knowledge. But Ferdinand Sivewright did not trouble himself either to deny or admit the justice of this accusation.

‘In England things went badly with me always; though I have played the gentleman here in my time,’ he muttered, and closed his eyes wearily.

Lucius moistened the dry lips with brandy from a bottle that stood by the bedside.

Lucius went down-stairs, leaving a nurse in charge of Ferdinand. He found Janet and Lucille alike pale and anxious. Lucille was the first to speak.

‘Has anything happened to my grandfather?’ she exclaimed. ‘Is he here? O, Lucius, tell me quickly.’

‘No, my darling. Mr. Sivewright is safe, at Cedar House. I have sent for you to see one who has not very long to remain in this world—the man whom you once loved as a father.’

‘No, Lucille, not your father. Ferdinand Sivewright[Pg 231] stole that name, and won your love by a falsehood.’

‘He was kind to me when I was a child,’ said Lucille. ‘But why is he here? What has happened?’

Lucius told her briefly that there had been an accident by which Ferdinand Sivewright had been fatally injured. Of the exact nature of that accident, and the events that immediately preceded it, he told her nothing.

To Janet he spoke more fully, when he had taken her to the other end of the room, out of Lucille’s hearing.

‘What?’ she cried; ‘he is living then; and your friend Mr. Hossack assured me of his death.’

Her first thought was one of regret that Geoffrey should have pledged himself to a falsehood.

‘He is living, and in this place!’ said Janet, with a sigh for the man she had once loved.

‘He is dying, Janet. If you want him to acknowledge any wrong done to you, it is a fitting time to obtain such a confession.’

‘I will not torture him with questions. I am too sorry for his mistaken life. Take me to him, Lucius.’

‘Greater need than you could suppose. Lucille’s pretended father and your husband are one and the same person. Come, both of you. There is no time to lose.’

He led the way to the accident ward, and to the quiet corner where Ferdinand’s bed stood, shaded, and in a manner divided, from the rest of the room by a canvas screen. His was the worst case in that abode of pain.

Lucille drew near the bed, and at a sign from Lucius seated herself quietly in the chair by the dying man’s pillow. Lucius stopped Janet with a warning gesture, as she was advancing towards the screen.

Janet obeyed, and remained hidden by the screen. Ferdinand Sivewright’s eyes wandered to the gentle face bent tearfully over his pillow.

‘Not in the hour of your remorse, father,’ she said; ‘my heart tells me you are sorry for your sins; for that last worst sin of all I know you must[Pg 233] be sorry. It is not in nature that you should be remorseless.’

‘There are anomalies in nature,’ answered Sivewright. ‘I believe I was born without a conscience, or wore it out before I was ten years old. After all I have only sinned against my fellow man when I was desperate; it has been my ultimate expedient. I have not injured anybody upon fanciful grounds, for revenge or jealousy, or any of those incendiary passions which have urged some men to destroy their kind. I have obeyed the stern law of necessity.’

She took his death-cold hands, trying to fold them in prayer. He looked at her, and the cynic’s smile faded. There was even some touch of tenderness in his look.

‘Do you think the God against whom I have shut my mind is very likely to take pity upon me now, at my last gasp, when further sin is impossible?’

‘There is no state too desperate for the hope of His mercy. Christ died for sinners. The penitent thief had briefest time for repentance, none for atonement.’

‘I wonder whether he had been doing evil all his[Pg 234] life; had never done a good action, never truly served a friend,’ murmured Sivewright in a musing tone.

‘Ah, that’s a slight ground for belief in illimitable mercy. Can you forgive me, Lucille—you whom I wronged and deluded, whom I cheated of a birthright?’

‘I do not know what wrong you have done me; but whatever that wrong may be, Heaven knows how freely I forgive it. I loved you dearly once.’

‘Ay, once. Poor parasite, why should you love me, except that it was in your nature to twine your tendrils about something? And I loved you, little one, as much as it was in my nature to love anything. Whatever love I had, I divided between you and the fiddle I used to play to you in that dusky old parlour, when we two sat alone by the fire.’

‘Father, by the memory of that time, when I knew not what sin was—when I thought you good and true, as you were kind—tell me that you repent your sins, that you are sorry for having tried to injure that poor old man.’

‘Repent my sins—sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Well, I’ll say this much, that if I could begin life afresh, with a clean conscience and a fair start, I’d try to be[Pg 235] an honest man. Outlaws have their pleasures; but I think respectability has the best of it in the longrun.’

‘The strongest proof of repentance is the endeavour to atone,’ said Lucius, who dreaded lest the end should come ere he had learned all he wanted to know about Henry Glenlyne. ‘The wrong you did Lucille Glenlyne was a bitter one, for you robbed her of a father.’

‘Lucille Glenlyne!’ cried Ferdinand. ‘How came you by the name of Glenlyne?’

‘Never mind how I learned the name. Your time is short. Remember that, and if you can be the means of restoring Lucille to her father, lose not a moment ere you do that one good act.’

‘An affectionate father,’ said Ferdinand, with the old mocking tone. ‘He was very glad to be comfortably rid of his pretty little daughter. He came to Bond-street a week after his wife’s death, with the merest apology for a hatband, lest people should ask him why he was in mourning, and took the little one on his knee and kissed her, and smoothed her dark curls, but never told her to call him father; and then, finding that she was so fond of me, proposed that I should adopt her altogether, and bring her up as my own.’

‘Yes, he paid me something of course—a sum of money down—very little—but he was always whining about his difficulties, and pretended that he could do no more. After that I lost sight of him altogether. I had left England before he came into his uncle’s fortune, and when I wrote to him from South America, asking him to remember old promises, he did not answer my letters. When I came back to England, with some idea of hunting him up and making him pay me for my discretion, I heard that he was dead. He was a mean cur at the best of times, and was never worthy of his wife.’

‘Tell me at least where I can get most information about him?’ asked Lucius earnestly.

This was something. Lucius had set his heart upon restoring Lucille’s rightful name before she changed it for his own. A somewhat useless labour, it might seem in the abstract; but to an Englishman that question of name is a strong point.

‘Is that all you can tell me—the only help you can give me towards reinstating Lucille in any rights she may have been deprived of through her father’s desertion of her?’ asked Lucius.

‘Ay, that’s a question that might be worth looking into. You’d better look at old Glenlyne’s will. Henry married a second time, I know, but I don’t know whether he had children by that second marriage. I don’t see how I can help you. Henry Glenlyne married Félicie Dumarques at the church in Piccadilly—St. James’s—just twenty years ago. I never had the certificate of the marriage. Hal Glenlyne kept that himself. But you’ll find the register. Lucille’s rights—if she has any under Reginald Glenlyne’s will—may be made out clearly enough; provided you can identify the child I brought home to Bond-street as the daughter of Henry and Félicie Glenlyne. There’s your greatest difficulty.’

The man’s keen intellect, even clouded by pain, dulled by the dark shadow of death, grasped every detail, and saw the weak point in the case.

‘I am no fortune-hunter,’ said Lucius, ‘and were Lucille mistress of a million she could be no dearer to me than she is now; nor her future life happier than, with God’s help, I hope to make it. I desire nothing but that she should have justice—justice to her dead mother—justice to herself.’

‘You cannot get it out of Henry Glenlyne,’ answered Ferdinand Sivewright. ‘He has slipped[Pg 238] comfortably into his grave and escaped all reckoning. He was always a sneak.’

‘Enough. We must look for justice to God, if man withhold it. There is some one here who wishes to see you—some one you have wronged as deeply as you wronged Lucille. Can you bear to see your wife—my sister Janet?’

‘What, is she here too? You come like the ghosts that circled crook-back Richard’s bed at Bosworth.’

Janet came softly to the bed, and knelt beside the man whose influence had once been all-powerful to lead her.

‘Can you forgive me?’ he asked, looking at her with those awful eyes, whose intensity was slowly lessening as the dull shade of death dimmed them. ‘Can you forgive? I wronged you worst of all, for I told you a lie on purpose to break your heart. You are my lawful wife—I had no other—never loved any other woman. I stole you secretly from your home because I knew my character couldn’t stand investigation, and if I had wooed you openly there’d[Pg 239] have been all manner of inquiries. I knew the keen prying ways of your petty provincial gentry. It was easier to make the business a secret, and thus escape all danger.’

‘You gave me a bitter burden to bear in all these years,’ Janet answered gently; ‘but I am grateful even for this tardy justice. May God forgive you as I do!’

She covered her face with her hands, and her head sank on the coverlet of the bed, as she knelt in silent prayer. There could be little to be said between these two. Janet’s wrongs were too deep for many words.

Ferdinand stretched out his hand with a feeble wandering movement, and the tremulous fingers rested on his wife’s bent head—rested there with a light and tender touch, it might be in blessing.

‘No, no, not for me, but for your own sake! God is all goodness; even to those who turn to Him at the eleventh hour. His mercies are infinite.’

Lucille repeated the Lord’s Prayer slowly, the[Pg 240] dying man repeating it after her, in Latin—the words he had learned in his boyhood when he went to mass with his mother at the chapel in Spanish-place.

They stayed with him all that day, Lucille reading, at intervals, words of hope and comfort from the Gospel—words which may have pierced even those dull ears with some faint promise, may have kindled some vague yearning for divine forgiveness even in that hardened heart. The sinner seemed at intervals to listen; there was a grateful look now and then in the tired eyes.

They did not fatigue him, even with these pious ministrations. The soothing words were read to him after pauses of silence, and only when he seemed free from pain. Lucille’s gentle hand bathed the burning forehead. Janet held the reviving cordial to the pale parched lips. Had he lived nobly, and perished in the discharge of some sacred duty, his dying hours could not have been more gently tended. And thus the slow sad day wore on, and at dusk he started up out of a brief slumber, with a sharp cry of pain, and repeated, in a strange husky voice, the words Lucille had read to him a little while before:

He lacked strength to finish that brief sentence; but, conscious to the last, looked round upon them[Pg 241] all, and then, stretching out his arms to Lucille, fell upon her neck, and died there.

He had loved the little girl who sat on his knee in the gloaming, while he played by his father’s fireside, better than the wife he wronged.

Lucius went to Messrs. Pullman and Everill’s office the day after Ferdinand Sivewright’s death. Mr. Pullman, an active-looking elderly man, received him with that stock-in-trade kind of politeness which thriving solicitors keep for unknown clients, heard his story, smiled somewhat incredulously at some of its details, but reserved his opinion until he should have mastered the case.

‘Isn’t it rather strange that we should never have heard of this youthful marriage of Mr. Henry Glenlyne’s,’ he said, with his sceptical smile, when the story was finished, ‘if there had been such a marriage?’

‘Not more strange than that other clandestine marriages should be kept secret,’ said Lucius.

‘Ah, but they so seldom are kept secret for more than a year or two; they always transpire somehow. Facts are like water, Mr. Davoren, and have an odd[Pg 243] way of leaking out. This supposed marriage, according to your showing, is an event of twenty years ago.’

‘There is really no room for speculation upon the subject,’ said Lucius coolly. ‘You can easily verify my statement by a reference to the registries of St. James’s, Piccadilly, where Félicie Dumarques’ marriage is no doubt recorded.’

‘I came here presuming that you, as Mr. Henry Glenlyne’s solicitor, would be naturally desirous to see his daughter righted.’

‘But suppose I should be disinclined to believe in the parentage of this young lady, your protegée?’

‘Ah, I understand,’ returned the lawyer quickly, as much as to say, ‘We are getting to the motive of your conduct, my young gentleman.’

‘I have been engaged to Miss Glenlyne for nearly a year,’ said Lucius, as if answering Mr. Pullman’s degrading supposition, ‘but it is only within the last week that I have discovered the secret of her parentage.’

‘Indeed; then whatever hope you may entertain of future profit from this discovery is a recent hope, and has had no influence in the matter of your regard for this young lady?’

‘None whatever. I do not pretend to be superior to human nature in general, but I think I may safely say that there are few men who set less value on money, in the abstract, than I do. But whatever portion my wife may be entitled to receive I am ready to fight for, and to fight still more resolutely for the name which she is entitled to bear.’

‘But granted that the marriage which I hear of for the first time to-day did actually take place, what is to prove to any legal mind that this young lady whom you put forward is the issue of that marriage?’

Yes, as Ferdinand Sivewright had said, here was the weakness of the case. Lucius now for the first time perceived that he ought to have secured the dying man’s deposition of the facts concerning Lucille. But, standing by that bed of pain, he had hardly been in a condition to consider the case from the lawyer’s standpoint. He had forgotten that Sivewright’s statement was but fleeting breath, and that this single witness of the truth was swiftly passing beyond the jurisdiction of earthly tribunals.

‘For that we must rely on circumstantial evidence,’[Pg 245] he said after a longish pause. ‘The woman who nursed Lucille Glenlyne may be still alive.’

‘You believe!’ echoed Mr. Pullman contemptuously. ‘Before you approached me upon such a subject as this, Mr. Davoren, you might at least have taken the trouble to be certain about your facts. You believe that the child was about four years old when her nurse left her, and you rely upon this nurse, who may or may not be living, to identify the four-year-old child she nursed in the young lady of nineteen whom you put forward.’

‘I do not, however, despair of making Miss Glenlyne’s identity clear even to your legal mind. As I have told you, Mr. and Mrs. Glenlyne occupied a cottage near Sidmouth for the few years of their wedded life. The little girl was born there, nursed there, and conveyed straight from that cottage to the house in Bond-street, where she was brought up in the care of old Mr. Sivewright. Now the date of her removal from Sidmouth will fit into the date of[Pg 246] her arrival in Bond-street, to which Mr. Sivewright can testify; and it will go hard if we cannot find people in Sidmouth—servants, tradesmen, the landlord of the cottage—who will remember the child’s abrupt removal and be able to swear to the date.’

‘Able to swear,’ exclaimed Mr. Pullman, again contemptuous. ‘What fact is there so incredible that legions of unimpeachable witnesses will not sustain it by their testimony? You mentioned the name of Sivewright just now. Is the person you spoke of one Ferdinand Sivewright?’

‘A pretty disreputable set, those Sivewrights, I should think,’ said Mr. Pullman, ‘so far as I can judge from the transactions between Ferdinand Sivewright and my late client, Mr. Henry Glenlyne, which were chiefly of the bill-discounting order.’

‘I have nothing to say in favour of Ferdinand Sivewright, who died yesterday at the London Hospital,’ answered Lucius; ‘but his father is an honest man, and it was his father who brought up Lucille, knowing nothing more of her parentage than the vague idea which he gathered from certain letters written by Mr. Glenlyne.’

‘O, Ferdinand Sivewright is dead, is he?’ retorted[Pg 247] Mr. Pullman, with a suspicious look; ‘and it is only after his death that this claim arises.’

There was such an insolent doubt implied by the lawyer’s words and manner that Lucius rose with an offended look, and was about to leave Mr. Pullman’s office.

‘You have chosen to discredit my statements,’ he said; ‘I can go to some other lawyer who will be more civil and less suspicious.’

‘Stop, sir,’ cried Mr. Pullman, wheeling round in his revolving chair as Lucius approached the door. ‘I don’t say I won’t help you; I don’t say your case is not a sound one; nor do I doubt your good faith. Sit down again, and let us discuss the matter quietly.’

‘I have endeavoured to do that, Mr. Pullman, but you have chosen to adopt an offensive tone, and the discussion is ended.’

‘Come, Mr. Davoren, why be so thin-skinned? You come to me with a story which at the first glance seems altogether incredible, and before I have had time to weigh the facts or to recover my breath after the surprise occasioned by your startling disclosure, you take offence and wish me good-morning. Go to another lawyer if you please; but if your[Pg 248] case is a sound one, there is no one who can help you so well as I.’

‘You are perhaps solicitor to some other branch of the family—to people whose interests would be injuriously affected by the assertion of Lucille Glenlyne’s claims.’

‘No, Mr. Davoren. When Mr. Spalding Glenlyne came into his cousin’s property, he chose to employ another solicitor. My connection with the Glenlyne family then terminated, except as concerns Miss Glenlyne.’

‘Henry Glenlyne’s aunt. The sister of Mr. Reginald Glenlyne, who left him his fortune.’

‘Is it possible that Miss Glenlyne is still living?’ exclaimed Lucius, remembering Monsieur Dolfe’s description of the little elderly lady, thin, pale, and an invalid. And this description had applied to her twenty-two years ago. Miss Glenlyne must surely belong to the Rosicrucians, or to the house of Methuselah.

‘Yes,’ replied Mr. Pullman, ‘Miss Glenlyne is a very old lady; between seventy and eighty, I daresay.’

‘She was; and she has gone on being an invalid[Pg 249] ever since; no more healthy mode of life. She lives on mutton cutlets and sago puddings, dry toast and weak tea, and if she indulges in a second glass of dry sherry thinks it a debauch. She believes in the homœopathists, and experimentalises upon her system with minute doses, which, if they do her no good, can hardly do her much harm. She spends her winters at Nice or Dawlish, knows not the meaning of emotion, and at the rate she lives—expenditure of vital force reduced to the lowest figure—she may go on living twenty-two years longer.’

‘If you have no relations with Mr. Spalding Glenlyne, there is no reason why you should not undertake to protect the interests of your late client’s daughter,’ said Lucius. ‘I am quite ready to believe that your knowledge of the family may render your services better worth having than anybody else’s. I came to you in perfect good faith, and in ignorance of everything except the fact of Mr. Glenlyne’s marriage, and the melancholy fate of his wife, who died away from her husband and her child, as I have already told you.’

‘A sad case for the lady,’ said the lawyer. ‘I should like to see those letters, by the way, of which you spoke a little while ago.’

‘I have brought them with me,’ answered[Pg 250] Lucius, producing the precious packet and the miniature.

‘What, a picture?’ cried Mr. Pullman. ‘Yes; that is my client’s portrait, undoubtedly, and a good likeness. A very handsome young man, Henry Glenlyne, but a weak one. Humph! These are the letters, are they?’

The lawyer read them carefully, and from time to time shook his head over them, with a slow and meditative shake, as who should say, ‘These are poor stuff.’

‘There is very little to help your case here,’ he said, when he had finished this deliberate perusal. ‘The child is spoken of as your little girl, or the little girl, throughout. The most rational conclusion would be that the child was Sivewright’s child.’

‘Yet in that case why should Mr. Glenlyne, a young man about town, be interested in the child? Why should he give money? Why should he supplicate for secrecy?’

‘Matter for philosophical speculation, but hardly a question to submit to a jury, or put in an affidavit,’ replied Mr. Pullman coolly.

‘If there is nothing in those letters to help me, I will find the evidence I want elsewhere,’ said Lucius, inwardly fuming at this graybeard’s impenetrability.[Pg 251] ‘I will go down myself to Sidmouth—hunt out the landlord of that cottage.’

‘Find the servant; advertise for the nurse; discover the doctor who attended Mrs. Glenlyne when that child was born; and link by link forge the chain of evidence which shall reinstate Lucille Glenlyne in the name her cowardly father stole from her.’

‘De mortuis,’ said the lawyer. ‘I admit that if your idea—mind, I fully believe in your own good faith, but you may be mistaken for all that—if your idea is correct, I repeat this girl has been badly treated. But my client is in his grave; let us make what excuses we can for conduct that at first sight appears unmanly.’

‘I can make no excuse for a man who repudiated his child; who suffered his wife to die broken-hearted, lest by a manly avowal of his marriage he should hazard the loss of fortune.’

‘Recollect that Henry Glenlyne was brought up and educated in the expectation of his uncle’s fortune, that he was deeply in debt for some years before his uncle died, and that the forfeiture of that fortune would have been absolute ruin.’

‘It was a fortune that would have been counted large when I was a youngster, but which now might be called mediocre. It was under rather than over a hundred thousand pounds, and chiefly invested in land. Reginald Glenlyne had been in the Indian Civil Service when the pagoda-tree was better worth shaking than it is nowadays, and in a lengthened career had contrived to do pretty well for himself. He belonged to an old family, and a rich one, and had started in life with a competence.’

‘Nearly ten years. He married a year after the old man’s death—married a fashionable woman, handsome, extravagant, and it was whispered a bit of a tartar. She brought him two sons and a daughter, who all died—a taint of consumption in the blood, people said; and the lady herself died of rapid consumption two years before her husband. The loss of wife and children broke him up altogether; and Joseph Spalding Glenlyne, who had watched the estate like a harpy ever since he left Cambridge, had the satisfaction of coming into possession of it after all.’

‘No; he died suddenly, though his constitution had been broken for some time before the end. Joseph Glenlyne inherited under the uncle’s will.’

‘To Henry Glenlyne, and his children after him. Failing such issue, to Joseph Spalding Glenlyne, and his children after him. Mr. Spalding Glenlyne has plenty of children—raw-boned boys, who prowl about Westminster between school-hours with their luncheons in blue bags. A saving man, Mr. Glenlyne. I have seen his boys in the abbey itself munching surreptitious sandwiches.’

‘Then this estate now held by Mr. Spalding Glenlyne actually belongs of right to Lucille.’

‘If you can prove her to be the legitimate daughter of Henry Glenlyne, she is most decidedly entitled to claim it.’

‘If I cannot prove that, I must be unworthy of success in any walk of life,’ said Lucius.

‘Leave the case in my hands, Mr. Davoren, and leave me those letters. My clerk shall make copies of them if you like, and return you the original documents. I’ll think the matter over, and, if I find it ripe enough, take counsel’s opinion.’

‘I should like to see Miss Glenlyne—the lady in[Pg 254] whose service Lucille’s mother came to England,’ said Lucius. ‘Would there be any harm in my endeavouring to obtain an interview with her?’

‘I think not. Old Miss Glenlyne hates the Spalding Glenlynes worse than she hates allopathy. They contrived to offend her in some unpardonable manner while they were courting her brother. She is at Brighton just now. If you would really like to call upon her, I shouldn’t mind giving you a letter of introduction. She and I were always good friends.’

‘I’ll go down to Brighton to-morrow, and take Lucille with me. She is wonderfully like that portrait of Félicie Dumarques, and it will be strange if Miss Glenlyne fails to see the likeness, unless age has darkened “those that look out of the windows.”’

Mr. Pullman, who had now, as it were, taken Lucius under his wing, wrote a letter of introduction, stating Mr. Davoren’s motive for seeking an interview, addressed his note to Miss Glenlyne, Selbrook-place, and handed it to his new client. And thus they parted, on excellent terms with each other, the lawyer promising to send a clerk to inspect the St. James’s registries that afternoon, in quest of that[Pg 255] particular entry which was in a manner the keystone of Lucille’s case.

‘Upon my word, I don’t know why I should be fool enough to take up such a chimerical business,’ Mr. Pullman said to himself, half reproachfully, as he stood upon his hearthrug, and enjoyed the genial warmth of his seacoal fire, after Lucius had left him.

But in his heart of hearts Mr. Pullman was pretty well aware that he took up Lucius and Lucille’s case because he detested Joseph Spalding Glenlyne.

Lord Lytton has written an admirable chapter upon the value of Hate as a motive power, and it was assuredly Hate that prompted Mr. Pullman to undertake the championship of Lucille. Mr. Spalding Glenlyne had removed the Glenlyne estate from Mr. Pullman’s office. The poetry of retribution would be achieved by the return of the estate to the office without the encumbrance of Spalding Glenlyne.

Mr. Pullman polished his spectacles with his oriental handkerchief, and sighed gently to himself as he thought what a nice thing that would be.

Mr. Sivewright received the news of his son’s death like a Roman; yet Lucius felt that beneath this semblance of stoicism there lurked keenest pain. With weak human nature’s inconsistency the old man’s memory now slid back to days long gone, before his son had become a scorpion—when the clever bright-faced child had seemed the one star of hope upon a joyless horizon.

‘He was such a promising child,’ Homer Sivewright said to himself, as he sat by the hearth in the panelled parlour, absorbed in gloomy meditation, ‘and I hoped so much from him. How was it that he went astray? Was it innate wickedness, or his mother’s evil teaching?’

One pang was spared him. He did not know that the son he had once so fondly loved had tried to sap the last dregs of his failing life by slow poison. He knew that Ferdinand was a baffled murderer, for[Pg 257] he had seen the knife pointed at his own breast by that relentless hand. But he might extenuate even this deadly assault by supposing it to be unpremeditated—a sudden access of ungovernable rage. So he sat by his hearth, and brooded upon days so long vanished that it seemed almost as if they belonged to another life; as if the chief figure in those departed scenes—himself—had been a different person, and had died long ago, so utterly had he outgrown and passed away from the Homer Sivewright of that time. He thought with a new and keen regret of a period that had been sorely troubled, yet not without hope. His busy brain had been full of schemes of self-aggrandisement—the dulness of the present brightened by one perpetual day-dream, the vision of accumulated wealth, which he and his only son were to share. The boy’s good looks and talent had promised success. He seemed born to conquer—to trample on the necks of less-gifted mankind. Delusive dreams—baseless calculations! Between that time and this lay the dark world of memory, peopled with the phantoms of dead hopes.

The old man sighed at the thought that he had outlived the possibility of hope. He was too old to look forward, except beyond the grave; and his eyes, so keen for the business of this world, were yet too[Pg 258] dull to pierce the mists that veil Death’s fatal river, and reach the shore that lies upon the other side. What hold had he now upon the things of this earth—toil and profit, and the strong wine of success? He, who had once been whole owner of the good ship Life, was now reduced to a sixty-fourth share in that gallant vessel. What recked it to him where she drifted or against what rock she perished, now his interest in her was so small? To think of the future—that earthly future which alone presented itself to his too mundane mind—was to think of a time in which he must cease to be. He could not easily transfer his hopes to those who were to succeed him; those who might perchance reap the fruit of his unwearying toil. He thought of all the miles—the stony London miles—that he had walked in pursuit of his trade—often with tired feet. He thought of that stern system of deprivation he had imposed on himself, till he had schooled his appetite to habitual self-denial, brought the demon sense into subjection so complete that it was as if he had been created without the longings of other men. How many a time had he passed through the savoury steam of some popular dining-place, while hunger gnawed his entrails! On how many a bitter day he had refused himself the modest portion of strong drink which[Pg 259] might have comforted him after his weary wanderings! He had denied himself all the things that other men deem necessities—had denied himself with money in his pockets—and had amassed his collection. To-day he was unusually disposed to gloomy thought, and began even to doubt whether the collection was worth the life of deprivation it had cost him. He had been gradually recovering health and strength for some time, but with convalescence came a curiously depressed state of mind. He was not strong enough to go about his business—to potter about as of old amidst the chaos of his various treasures, to resume the compilation of an elaborate descriptive catalogue, at which he had been slowly working since his removal to Cedar House. Nor could he think of reinspecting his miscellaneous possessions without a pang, lest, in doing so, he should find even greater loss than he was now aware of. So, powerless to seek consolation from a return to business and activity, he sat by his fireside in the gloomy October weather, and brooded over the past.

‘It is such a happiness to see you looking so much better, dear grandfather,’ she said, as she stood beside him while he ate his noontide mutton-chop, a[Pg 260] simple fare which seemed particularly savoury after that diet of broths and jellies to which he had been kept so long.

‘Looking better am I?’ muttered Mr. Sivewright testily. ‘Then I wonder what kind of a spectre I looked when I was worse—Ugolino in a black-velvet skull-cap, I suppose. I tried to shave myself this morning, and the face I saw in the glass was ghostly enough in all conscience. However, Lucius says I’m better, and you say I’m better; so I suppose I am better.’

‘Lucius thinks we might all go to the country for a little while for change of air,’ said Lucille, ‘that is to say, you and I, and Lucius would be with us part of the time—just for a day or two—it’s so difficult for him to leave his patients. He says change of air would do you so much good.’

‘Does he indeed!’ exclaimed Mr. Sivewright, with an ironical air; ‘and pray who is to take care of my collection if I leave it? It has been robbed enough as it is.’

‘But, dear grandfather,’ remonstrated Lucille, ‘is not your health of more consequence than those things, however valuable they may be?’

‘No, child; for to gather those things together I sacrificed all that other men call ease. Am I to lose[Pg 261] the fruit of a lifetime? It is hard enough to be robbed of any portion of it. Let me keep what remains. I shall have no more rest till I am able to go through my catalogue, and see how much I have lost.’

‘No, Lucille; no one knows the things properly except myself. Wincher knew a good deal, for I was weak enough to trust him fully. He knew what I paid for everything, and the value I set upon it. He was the only man I ever trusted after my son deceived me; and you see my reward. He took advantage of my helplessness to betray me.’

Lucille gave a little choking sigh. She felt that the time had come for her to speak. That poor faithful old servant must no longer appear despicable in the eyes of the master he had served so well. She must make her confession to her grandfather as she had made it to Lucius.

‘I wish Lucius were here to speak for me,’ she thought; and then, ashamed of this moral cowardice, she knelt down beside Homer Sivewright’s chair, and took his hand in hers timidly, hardly knowing how to begin.

‘I’m not angry with you, child,’ he said gently, interpreting that timid clinging touch as a remonstrance. ‘You have been true and faithful. But[Pg 262] women are like dogs in the fidelity of their attachments. One hardly counts them when one considers the baseness of mankind.’

‘O grandfather, I have not been quite faithful. I meant to do what was right—only—only I obeyed my heart, and wavered from the strict line of duty. It was my fault that you were robbed.’

‘Your fault? Nonsense, child! That poor little head of yours isn’t right yet, or you would not talk so.’

‘It is the truth, grandpapa,’ said Lucille, and then told her story—told how the wanderer had pleaded, and how, touched by his houselessness and seeming destitution, she had admitted him in secret to the shelter of his father’s roof.

The old man listened with sublime patience. Another evidence of how vile a thing was this dead son, whom he had mourned with that strange unreasoning tenderness which death will awaken in the coldest hearts.

‘Say no more, child,’ he said gently, when Lucille had pleaded for pardon almost as if the wrong done by Ferdinand Sivewright had been wholly hers. ‘You were foolish and loving, and pitied him and trusted him, although I had often warned you that he was of all men most unworthy of pity or trust. Don’t cry, Lucille; I’m not angry with you. Perhaps[Pg 263] I might have been persuaded to believe in him myself if he had pleaded long enough. That tongue of his was subtle as the serpent’s. And so it was my son who robbed me! He crept into my house in secret, and used his first opportunity to plunder. He is dead; let us forget him. The tenderest mercy God and man could show him would be oblivion.’

Once assured that there was no blot upon Lucille’s parentage, Lucius had no longer any motive for withholding the result of his researches from her whom they most nearly concerned. He spent his evening at Cedar House, as usual, on the day of his interview with Mr. Pullman; and after tea, when Mr. Sivewright had retired, seized the opportunity to show Lucille the little packet of letters, and to relate his adventures at Rouen and in Paris. Lucille wept many tears as that story of the past was slowly unfolded to her—wept for the sorrows of the mother she vaguely remembered watching like a guardian angel beside her little bed.

‘Dear mother! and to think that in your brief life there was so much sorrow!’ she said mournfully.

Her father—as revealed to her by those letters, and by all that Lucius told her—seemed worldly and[Pg 265] even cruel. He had suffered his young wife to fade and die in severance from all she loved. For the sake of what?—his uncle’s fortune. He had acted a lie rather than forego that worldly gain. O foolish dream of a father’s love! From first to last it had been only a delusion for Lucille. She uttered no word of reproach against the dead. But she separated her mother’s letters from the others in the little packet, and asked if she might keep them.

‘These and the miniature are the only memorials of the mother I lost so soon,’ she said. ‘They are very precious to me.’

‘Keep them, dearest, but do not cultivate sad memories. Your life has been too long clouded; but, please God, there shall be less shadow than sunshine henceforward.’

He told Lucille of his idea of taking her to Brighton in a day or two, to see Miss Glenlyne.

‘The lady with whom my mother came to England,’ she said. ‘Yes, I should very much like to see any one who knew my mother.’

‘We will go the day after to-morrow, then, dear, if grandpapa will give us permission. We can come back to town the same evening, and Janet can go with us to play propriety, if you like.’

Mr. Sivewright was consulted when Lucius paid his visit next morning; and, on being told the circumstances of the case fully, was tolerably complaisant. He was still ‘grandpapa’—nobody had any idea of deposing him from the sway and masterdom that went along with that title.

‘I suppose you must take her,’ he said reluctantly, ‘though the house seems miserable without her. Such a quiet little thing as she is too! I couldn’t have believed her absence would make so much difference. But if you’re going to establish her claim to a fine fortune, I suppose I shall soon lose her. Miss Glenlyne will be ashamed of the old bric-à-brac dealer.’

‘Ashamed of you, grandpapa,’ cried Lucille, ‘when you’ve taken care of me all these years, and educated me, and paid for everything I’ve ever had!’

‘Taken care!’ repeated Mr. Sivewright with a sigh. ‘I believe the care has been on the other side. You’ve brightened my home, little girl, and crept into my heart unawares, though I tried my hardest to keep it shut against you.’

Lucille rewarded this unusual burst of tenderness with a kiss, to which the cynic submitted with assumed reluctance.

They went to Brighton by an early train next day,[Pg 267] accompanied by Janet, who had consented to stay for a few days in her brother’s unlovely abode, before going back to Flossie. That idolised damsel had been left to the care of old nurse Sally, who guarded her as the apple of her eye.

It was pleasant weather for a hasty trip to Brighton. The rush and riot of excursion-trains had ended with the ending of summer. Lucius and his two companions left London-bridge terminus comfortably and quietly in a quick train, with a carriage to themselves. The day was bright and sunny; the deepening tints of autumn beautified the peaceful landscape; the air blew fresh and strong across the downs as the train neared Brighton.

Janet sat in her corner of the carriage grave and somewhat silent, while the others talked in low confidential tones of the past and the future. Where love is firm hope is never absent, what shadow soever may obscure life’s horizon. Lucius and Lucille, happy in each other’s society, forgot all the troubles and perplexities of the last few months. But Janet had not yet recovered from the shock of that meeting in the hospital. She was still haunted by the last look of her husband’s dying eyes.

They arrived at Brighton before noon, at too early an hour for a first visit to an elderly lady like[Pg 268] Miss Glenlyne. So they walked up and down the Parade for an hour or so, looking at the sea and talking of all manner of things. Janet brightened a good deal during this walk, and seemed pleased to discuss her brother’s future, though she studiously avoided any allusion to her own.

‘You must not go and bury yourself at Stillmington again, Janet; must she, Lucille?’ Lucius said by and by. ‘The place is nice enough—much nicer than London, I daresay; but we want you to be near us.’

‘Shall I come back to London?’ asked Janet. ‘I daresay I could get some teaching in town. The publishers would recommend me. Yes, it would be nice to be near you, Lucius, to play our old concertante duets again. It would seem like the dear old days when—’ She could not finish the sentence. The thought of the father and mother whose death had perhaps been hastened by her folly was too bitter. Happily for her own peace Janet never knew how deep the wounds she had inflicted on those faithful hearts. She knew that they were lost to her—that she had not been by to ask a blessing from those dying lips. But the full measure of her guilt she knew not.

‘Yes, Janet, you must settle in London. I shall move to the West-end very soon. I feel myself[Pg 269] strong enough to create a practice, if I cannot afford to buy one. And then we can see each other constantly.’

She seemed to have no thought of any other future than that which her own industry was to provide for her.

They left the sea soon after this, and took a light luncheon of tea and cakes at a confectioner’s in the Western-road, prior to descending upon Selbrook-place, to find the abode of Miss Glenlyne. Janet was to sit upon the Parade, or walk about and amuse herself as she liked, while Lucius and Lucille were with Miss Glenlyne, and they were to meet afterwards at a certain seat by the lawn. It was just possible, of course, that there might be some disappointment—that Miss Glenlyne, elderly and invalided though she was, might be out, or that she might refuse to see them in spite of Mr. Pullman’s letter.

‘But I don’t feel as if we were going to be disappointed,’ said Lucius; ‘I have a notion that we shall succeed.’

They left Janet to her own devices, and went arm-in-arm to Selbrook-place. It was an eminently quiet place, consisting of two rows of modern houses, stuccoed, pseudo-classical, and commonplace, with[Pg 270] an ornamental garden between them. The garden was narrow, and the shady side of Selbrook-place was very shady. No intrusive fly or vehemently driven cart could violate the aristocratic seclusion of Selbrook-place. The houses were accessible only in the rear. They turned their backs, as it were, upon the vulgar commerce of life, and in a manner ignored it. That garden, where few flowers flourished, was common to the occupants of Selbrook-place, but shut against the outer world. The inhabitants could descend from their French windows to that sacred parterre, but to the outer world those French windows were impenetrable.

Thus it came to pass that Selbrook-place was for the most part affected by elderly ladies, maiden or widowed, without encumbrance, by spinster sisters of doubtful age, by gouty old gentlemen who over-ate themselves and over-drank themselves in the respectable seclusion of dining-rooms, unexposed to the vulgar gaze. There was much talk about eating and drinking, servants, and wills, in Selbrook-place. Every inhabitant of those six-and-twenty respectable houses knew all about his or her neighbours’ intentions as to the ultimate disposal of their property. That property question was an inexhaustible subject of conversation. Every one in Selbrook-place seemed amply[Pg 271] provided with the goods of this world, and those who lived in the profoundest solitude and spent least money were reputed the richest. Miss Glenlyne was one of these. She never gave a dinner or a cup of tea to neighbour or friend; she wore shabby garments, and went out in a hired bath-chair, attended by a confidential maid or companion, who was just a shade shabbier than herself. The gradation was almost imperceptible, for the maid wore out the mistress’s clothes—clothes that had not been new within the memory of any one in Selbrook-place. Miss Glenlyne had brought a voluminous wardrobe to Brighton twenty years ago, and appeared to have been gradually wearing out that handsome supply of garments, so little concession did she make to the mutations of taste.

A maid-servant opened the door—a maid-servant attired with scrupulous neatness in the lavender cotton gown and frilled muslin cap which have become traditional. To this maid Lucius gave Mr. Pullman’s letter and his own card, saying that he would wait to know if Miss Glenlyne would be so good as to see him.

The maid looked embarrassed, evidently thoughtful of the spoons, which doubtless lurked somewhere in the dim religious light of a small pantry, at the[Pg 272] end of the passage. After a moment’s hesitation she rang a call-bell, and kept her eye on Lucius and Lucille until the summons was answered.

It was answered quickly by an elderly person in a black silk gown, in which time had developed a mellow green tinge and to which friction had given a fine gloss. This person, who wore a bugled black lace cap, rather on one side, was Miss Spilling, once Miss Glenlyne’s maid, now elevated to a middle station, half servant, half companion—servant to be ordered about, companion to sympathise.

‘I have a letter of introduction to Miss Glenlyne, from Mr. Pullman of Lincoln’s-inn,’ said Lucius.

‘Dear me!’ exclaimed Miss Spilling; ‘Mr. Pullman ought to know that Miss Glenlyne objects to receive any one, above all a stranger. She is a great invalid. Mr. Pullman ought to know better than to give letters of introduction without Miss Glenlyne’s permission.’

‘The matter is one of importance,’ said Lucius, ‘or I should not have troubled Miss Glenlyne.’

Miss Spilling surveyed him doubtfully from head to foot. He wore good clothes certainly, and looked like a gentleman. But then appearances are deceptive. He might be a genteel beggar after all. There are so many vicarious beggars, people who beg for[Pg 273] other people, for new churches, and missions, and schools; people who seem to beg for the sake of begging. And Miss Glenlyne, though she subscribed handsomely to a certain number of orthodox old-established charities, hated to be pestered on behalf of novel schemes for the benefit of her fellow creatures.

‘If it’s anything connected with ritualism,’ said Miss Spilling, ‘it isn’t the least use for me to take your letter up to Miss Glenlyne. Her principles are strictly evangelical.’

‘My business has nothing to do with ritualism. Pray let Miss Glenlyne read the letter.’

Miss Spilling sighed doubtfully, looked at the maid as much as to say, ‘Keep your eye on these people,’ and went up-stairs with the letter, leaving Lucius and Lucille standing in the hall.

She returned in about ten minutes with a surprised air, and requested them to walk up to the drawing-room.

They followed her to the first floor, where she ushered them into a room crowded with much unnecessary furniture, darkened by voluminous curtains, and heated like the palm-house in Kew Gardens. Lucius felt a sense of oppression directly he entered the apartment. The windows were all shut, a bright fire burned in a shining steel grate, which reflected[Pg 274] its glow, and a curious Indian perfume filled the room. In a capacious chair by the fire reclined a little old lady, wrapped in an Indian shawl of dingy hues, a little old lady whose elaborate blonde cap was almost as big as all the rest of her person. Her slender hands, on whose waxen skin the blue veins stood out prominently, were embellished with valuable old diamond rings in silver setting, and an ancient diamond brooch in the shape of a feather clasped the shawl across her shrunken shoulders.

This old lady was Miss Glenlyne. She raised her eye-glass with tremulous fingers, and surveyed her visitors with a somewhat parrot-like scrutiny. The contour of her aristocratic features was altogether of the parrot order.

‘Come here,’ she said, addressing Lucille, with kindly command,—‘come here, and sit by my side; and you, sir, pray what is the meaning of this curious story which Mr. Pullman tells me? Spilling, you can go, my dear.’

Miss Spilling had lingered, anxious to know all about these strangers. Every day made Miss Spilling more and more solicitous upon the all-important question of Miss Glenlyne’s will. She had reason to suppose that her interests were cared for in that document. But advancing age did not increase Miss[Pg 275] Glenlyne’s wisdom. Some base intruder, arriving late upon the scene, might undo the slow work of years, and thrust himself between Miss Glenlyne’s legitimate heirs and their heritage. Just as a horse which has been kept well in hand in the early part of a race comes in with a rush as winner at the finish. In the presence of these unknown intruders Miss Spilling scented danger.

She ignored her mistress’s behest, and came over to the easy-chair, moved a little table near it, picked up a fallen newspaper, and hovered over Miss Glenlyne with tenderest solicitude.

‘My chicken broth can wait until I require it,’ replied Miss Glenlyne curtly. ‘You can go, my dear; I want a little private talk with this lady and gentleman.’

Miss Spilling retired meekly, but troubled of heart. There is nothing easier than to alter a will. Yet Miss Spilling felt it was wisest to obey. Surely the patient service of years was not to be set at naught for some new fancy. But age is apt to be capricious, fickle even; and Miss Spilling was not blind to the fact that there were seasons when Miss Glenlyne considered her a bore.

‘You are not so amusing as you were fifteen years ago, Spilling,’ Miss Glenlyne would sometimes remark candidly; and Miss Spilling could but admit that fifteen years of a solitude scarcely less profound than the loneliness of a Carthusian monastery had not tended to enliven her spirits. She had come to Miss Glenlyne charged with all the gossip picked up in a half a dozen previous situations, and little by little she had exhausted her fund of frivolity and slander, and told her servants’-hall stories till they were threadbare.

Who could be sure that Miss Glenlyne would not be beguiled by some new favourite, even at the very end of her career? Sedulously had Miss Spilling striven to guard against this ever-present peril by keeping poor relations, old friends, and strangers alike at bay. But to-day she felt herself worsted, and retired to her own apartment depressed and apprehensive. If the folding-doors had been closed she might have gone into the back drawing-room and listened; but the folding-doors were open. Miss Glenlyne liked a palm-house atmosphere, but she liked space for an occasional constitutional promenade, so the back drawing-room was never shut off. Miss Spilling lingered a little by the landing door, but heard only indistinct murmurs, and feared to loiter long,[Pg 277] lest she should be caught in the act by the parlourmaid Susan, who was fleet of foot.

‘This is a very curious story,’ said Miss Glenlyne, when the door had closed upon her companion; ‘I hardly know how to believe it. A marriage between my nephew Henry and Félicie Dumarques! It seems hardly credible.’

‘The record in the parish register proves it to be a fact nevertheless,’ said Lucius quietly.

‘So Mr. Pullman tells me. Félicie left me to go to Rouen, she said, summoned home by illness in her family. And now it seems she stole away to marry my nephew. She must have been an artful treacherous girl.’

Lucille rose hastily from her seat near Miss Glenlyne. ‘You forget, Miss Glenlyne, that she was my mother,’ she said firmly; ‘I cannot stay to hear her condemned.’

‘Nonsense, child,’ cried the old lady, not unkindly; ‘sit down. The truth must be told even if she was your mother. She treated me very badly. I was so fond of that girl. She was the only person I ever had about me who suited me thoroughly. She would have been amply provided for after my death if she had stayed and been faithful to me. I never treated her as a servant, or thought of her as a servant; indeed it would have been difficult for any one[Pg 278] to do so, for she had the manners and instincts of a lady. Yet she deceived me, and left me with a lie.’

‘Love is a powerful influence,’ said Lucille softly; ‘she was persuaded to that wrong act by one she fondly loved, one for whom she willingly sacrificed her own happiness, and who rewarded her at the last by desertion.’

‘My nephew was always selfish,’ said Miss Glenlyne; ‘he was brought up by a foolish mother, who taught him to count upon inheriting his uncle’s money, and never taught him any higher duty than to seek his own pleasure, so far as he could gratify himself without offending his uncle. She taught him to flatter and tell lies before he could speak plain. He was not altogether bad, and might have been a much better man if he had been differently trained. Well, well, I daresay he was most to blame throughout the business. I’ll say no more against poor Félicie; only it was not kind of her to leave an invalid mistress who had shown her a good deal of affection.’

‘Whatever error she committed she suffered deeply for it,’ said Lucille. ‘The sin was chiefly another’s, but the sorrow was all hers.’

‘Ah, my dear, that’s the usual distribution between[Pg 279] a man and a woman,’ replied Miss Glenlyne, considerably softened by this time.

She turned and scrutinised Lucille’s candid countenance—took the pale interesting face between her hands and held it near her.

‘Yes,’ she said at last, ‘you have Félicie’s eyes and Félicie’s mouth. I can readily believe that you are her daughter. And pray, Mr. Davoren, what is your interest in this young lady?’

‘Indeed! Not in an underhand way, I hope, like Félicie and my nephew, who must have been making love by some secret code before my very face, when I hadn’t a suspicion of any such thing.’

‘We are engaged with the full consent of Lucille’s adopted father—her only friend,’ answered Lucius.

‘Because I thought you might be able to assist Lucille in establishing her claim to any heritage to which she may be entitled.’

‘If she is the legitimate and only child of Henry Glenlyne, she is entitled to a very fine estate, which is now enjoyed by a man my brother never intended[Pg 280] to benefit by it. He was doatingly fond of his brother’s son Henry; and although the young man disappointed him in many things, that love was never seriously diminished. He left Henry the bulk of his fortune, with reversion to any child or children that might be born to him. He knew that I had an income more than enough for my wants, so he left almost all to his nephew. Spalding Glenlyne’s name was put in at the suggestion of Mr. Pullman, but it was never supposed that he would inherit the estate.’

Once set going, Miss Glenlyne was quite willing to relate all she could remember about her brother Reginald, her nephew Henry, and Félicie Dumarques. She spoke of the Spalding Glenlynes with rancour, and declared her readiness to assist Lucille, so far as lay in her power, in the assertion of her claim to the Glenlyne estate, which consisted of various lands and tenements in Norfolk, and though yielding the usual low rate of interest, produced between three and four thousand a year.

Before taking her chicken-broth, Miss Glenlyne ordered an impromptu dinner of mutton-chops to be prepared for her visitors, and, when Lucius mentioned his sister Janet as a reason for declining this proffered hospitality, insisted that he should go instantly[Pg 281] and fetch that young lady. Lucius dutifully obeyed, and while he was gone Miss Glenlyne opened her heart more and more to Lucille, moved by the recollection of that gentle girl who had ministered to her frivolous and innumerable wants with such unwearying solicitude.

‘It makes me feel twenty years younger to have you with me,’ said the old lady. ‘I like young faces and pretty looks and gentle manners. Spilling, my maid, whom you saw just now, is good and devoted, but she is elderly and uncultivated and not pleasant to look at. She knows I like quiet, of course, at my age and with my weak health. I have had bad health all my life, my dear; quiet is essential. But Spilling is over-anxious on this point, and keeps every one away from me. I am shut up in this drawing-room like a jewel that is kept in cotton-wool and never taken out to be worn. Spilling is extremely attentive—never lets my fire get low, or forgets the correct time for my beef-tea and chicken-broth. But I feel the solitude depressing sometimes. A little youthful society, a little music, would be quite cheering. You play and sing now, I daresay?’

‘Very little, though I am fond of music,’ answered Lucille; ‘but Janet, Mr. Davoren’s sister, sings beautifully.’

‘I should like to hear her. Félicie used to sing to me of an evening, while I sat in the dusk to save my poor eyes, such pretty simple French chansons. How I wish you could come here and stay, with me!’

‘You are very kind to think of it, Miss Glenlyne,’ answered Lucille, thinking what a curious life it would be with this old lady, who seemed half a century older than the energetic unconquerable Homer Sivewright, ‘but I’m afraid I couldn’t leave my grandfather.’

‘He is not really my grandfather, though I believed that he was till very lately; but he has been good to me and brought me up. I owe him everything.’

Miss Glenlyne questioned Lucille a good deal about her past life, its early years and so on, and seemed warmly interested. She was not an old lady who poured out her spare affections upon more or less deserving members of the animal kingdom, and she had been of late years almost cut off from communion with humanity. Her heart opened unawares to receive Lucille.

‘If you are my nephew’s daughter, it stands to reason that I am your great-aunt,’ she said; ‘and I shall expect you to pay me some duty. You must[Pg 283] come to stay with me as soon as this adopted grandfather is well enough to do without you.’

‘Dear Miss Glenlyne, I shall be most happy to come. I am more glad than I can tell you to find some one who is really related to me.’

‘Don’t call me Miss Glenlyne, then, but Aunt Glenlyne,’ said the old lady authoritatively.

Miss Spilling felt as if she could have fallen to the ground in a swoon when she came into the drawing-room five minutes afterwards and heard the strange young person call her mistress ‘Aunt Glenlyne.’

‘How you stare, Spilling!’ cried the old lady. ‘This young lady is my grandniece, Miss Lucille Glenlyne.’

‘Lor, Miss Glenlyne, that must be one of your jokes,’ she exclaimed. ‘You wouldn’t call one of the Spalding Glenlynes your niece, and I know you’ve no other.’

‘I never make jokes,’ answered her mistress with dignity; ‘and I beg that you will show Miss Lucille Glenlyne all possible respect, now, and on every other occasion. I have ordered a hurried dinner to be prepared for Miss Lucille and her friends, who, I[Pg 284] am sorry to say, have to return to London this evening. They will dine in the back drawing-room, so that I may take my own simple meal with them.’

Miss Spilling felt as if the universe had suddenly begun to crumble around her. Her hold upon that sense of identity which sustains mankind amidst the mysteries of an unexplainable world seemed to waver. Dinner ordered and without prior consultation with her—a new era of waste and rioting set in while her back was turned! She fumbled in an ancient beaded reticule, produced a green glass bottle of weak salts, and sniffed vehemently.

‘Sit down, and be quiet, Spilling,’ said Miss Glenlyne. ‘I daresay you and my niece will get on very well together. And her arrival won’t make any difference in what I intended to do for you.’

‘What I intended to do,’ sounded vague. Miss Spilling had hoped the intention was long ago set down in black and white—made as much a fact as it could be before Miss Glenlyne’s decease. She gave another sniff at her salts-bottle, and sat down, meek but not hopeful. This liking for youthful faces was one of her employer’s weaknesses, against which she had brought to bear all the art she knew. For fifteen years she had contrived to keep pleasant people and youthful faces for the most part outside any house[Pg 285] occupied by Miss Glenlyne. That lady had descended the vale of years in company with pilgrims almost as travel-worn and as near the end of the journey as herself: no reflected light from the countenances of younger travellers had been permitted to shine upon her. Kensal-green and Doctors’-commons—all images that symbolise approaching death—had been kept rigorously before her. Youth had been represented to her as the period of deceit and ingratitude. If any young person, by some fortuitous means, did ever penetrate her seclusion, Miss Spilling immediately discovered that young person to be a viper in disguise—a reptile which would warm itself at Miss Glenlyne’s hearth, only to sting its benefactress. And Miss Glenlyne, always uncomfortably conscious that she had money to bequeath, and that humanity is sometimes mercenary, had discarded one acquaintance after another, at the counsel of Miss Spilling, until she found herself in extreme old age with no companionship save the somewhat doleful society of her counsellor.

It was wonderful how brisk and light the old lady became in her niece’s company. She made Lucille sit next her, and patted the girl’s hand with her withered fingers, on which the rings rattled loosely, and asked her all manner of questions about her[Pg 286] childhood and her schooldays, her accomplishments, her vague memory of mother and father.

‘I’ve a portrait of your father in the dining-room,’ she said; ‘you shall go down and look at it by and by.’

Lucius returned with Janet, whom Miss Glenlyne welcomed with much cordiality, evidently struck by the beauty of that noble face which had beguiled Geoffrey Hossack into that not-uncommon folly called love at first sight. The little dinner in the back drawing-room was a most cheerful banquet, in spite of Miss Spilling, who presided grimly over the dish of chops, and looked the daggers which she dared not use. Miss Glenlyne even called for a bottle of champagne, whereupon Miss Spilling reluctantly withdrew to fetch that wine from the cellaret in the dining-room. Unwelcome as was the task, she was glad of the opportunity to retire, that she might vent her grief and indignation in a series of sniffs, groans, and snorts, which seemed to afford her burdened spirit some relief.

After dinner Miss Glenlyne asked Janet to sing, and they all sat in the firelight listening to those old Italian airs which seem so full of the memory of youth; and warmed by these familiar melodies—rich and strong as old wine—Miss Glenlyne discoursed[Pg 287] of her girlhood and the singers she had heard at His Majesty’s Theatre.

‘I have heard Pasta, my dear, and Catalani, and I remember Malibran’s début. Ah, those were grand days for opera! You have no such singers nowadays,’ said Miss Glenlyne, with the placid conviction which is sustained by ignorance.

‘You ought to hear some of our modern singers, Miss Glenlyne,’ replied Lucius; ‘all the great people come to Brighton to sing nowadays.’

‘I never go out except for an hour in my bath-chair, and I am sure you have no one like Pasta. Your sister has a lovely voice, Mr. Davoren, and a charming style, quite the old school. She reminds me of Kitty Stephens. But as to your having any opera-singer like those I heard in my youth, I can’t believe it.’

When the time drew near for her guests to depart, Miss Glenlyne grew quite melancholy.

‘You have cheered me up so, my dear,’ she said to Lucille. ‘I can’t bear to lose you so quickly. I never took such a fancy to any one—since I lost your mother,’ she added in a whisper.

‘Lor, Miss Glenlyne,’ exclaimed Miss Spilling, unable to command her indignation, ‘you’re always taking fancies to people.’

‘And you’re always trying to set me against them,’ answered her mistress; ‘but this young lady is my own flesh and blood—I’m not going to be turned against her.’

‘I suppose you have. But it is your duty to respect my niece. I am an old woman, Mr. Davoren, and I don’t often ask favours,’ continued Miss Glenlyne, appealing to Lucius. ‘I think you ought to indulge my fancy, if you can possibly do so without injury to any one else.’

‘I want Lucille to stay with me a little while—till we have learnt to know each other quite well. I am the only near relation she has, and my time cannot be very long now. If she doesn’t gratify her old aunt on this occasion, she may never have the opportunity again. Who can tell how soon I may be called away?’

This from one who was between seventy and eighty was a forcible appeal. Lucius looked at Lucille with an interrogative glance.

‘I should like very much to stay,’ said Lucille, answering the mute question, ‘if you think grandpapa would not be offended or inconvenienced.’

‘I think I could explain everything to Mr. Sivewright, and that he could hardly object to your stopping here for a few days,’ replied Lucius.

‘Then she shall stay!’ exclaimed Miss Glenlyne, delighted. ‘Spilling, tell Mary to get a room ready for Miss Lucille—the room opening out of mine.’

Spilling, with a visage gloomy as Cassandra’s, retired to obey. It was nearly the time for Janet and Lucius to depart, in order to catch a convenient train for their return. Lucille wrote a little note to Mrs. Milderson, asking for a small portmanteau of necessaries to be sent to her; and then with a tender hand-pressure, and a kiss on the landing outside the drawing-room, the lovers parted for a little while, and Lucille was left alone with her great-aunt. It was a strangely sudden business, yet there was something in the old lady’s clinging affectionateness that attached the girl to her already. She seemed like some one who had long pined for some creature to love, and who had found her desire in Lucille.

Miss Spilling retired to the housekeeper’s room—a snug little apartment in the basement—and sat with her feet on the fender, consuming buttered toast and strong tea, and talking over this new state[Pg 290] of affairs with the cook, while Lucille and Miss Glenlyne had the drawing-room all to themselves.

‘Do you really believe as how she is missus’s niece?’ asked the cook, when she had heard Miss Spilling’s recital.

‘No more than you are, Martha,’ answered the indignant Spilling. ‘Only she’s more artful than the common run of impostors, and she’s backed up by that letter of Mr. Pullman’s. We all know what lawyers are, and that they’ll swear to anything.’

‘Who knows? That’s his secret. There’s some plot hatching between ’em all, and Mr. Pullman lends himself to it, and wants Miss Glenlyne to leave her money to this young woman—and he’s to get half of it, I daresay.’

And then Miss Spilling and the cook began to talk of Miss Glenlyne’s will—a subject which they had worn threadbare long ago, but to which they always returned with equal avidity.

Cheered and sustained by the hope of another happy afternoon with Janet in the little cottage parlour, Geoffrey Hossack made himself wonderfully agreeable to his cousins Belle and Jessie, and shot the game on his uncle’s estate, and on the estates of his uncle’s neighbours, with a good will. He was always popular, and in this part of Hampshire he was accepted as a product of the soil, and cherished accordingly. His father had been liked before him, and people expressed their regret that an alien trader should occupy the house where that gentleman had once dispensed what our ancestors were wont to call an elegant hospitality.

‘O, I mean to marry, and turn out the sugar-broker some day,’ Geoffrey would reply in answer to these friendly speeches. Whereat Belle and Jessie would both blush, and look at each other, and then at the carpet. So bright a spot had that rustic tea-drinking[Pg 292] made in the life of this infatuated gentleman, that the sunshine lingered after the event, and the mere memory of that one happy hour with Janet made life pleasant to him for a long time. Belle and Jessie noticed his high spirits, and each flattered herself with the idea that it was her society which gladdened him. And when they ‘talked him over,’ as they called it, at hair-brushing time, they in a manner congratulated each other upon his ‘niceness,’ just as if he were a kind of common property, and could marry both of them. He had still one tiresome trick, and that was a habit of rambling off for long solitary walks, in what the sisters considered a most unsociable spirit.

‘It’s about the only thing I can do on my own hook,’ this unpolite young man answered upon being remonstrated with. ‘If I go out shooting, you go too; if I go on the water, you pull a better stroke than I do; if I play bowls, you play bowls. You don’t smoke, but you are kind enough to come and sit with me in the smoking-room. So my only chance of doing a little thinking is a solitary walk. I suppose you don’t pedestrianise? Twenty miles a day might be too much for you.’

‘O no, it wouldn’t,’ replied these thoroughbred damsels. ‘We’re going for a walking tour in the[Pg 293] Isle of Wight next spring, if papa will take us. It seems absurd that two girls can’t walk alone, but I suppose it might be thought odd if we went by ourselves.’

Geoffrey uttered a faint groan, but spoke no word. He was counting the days that must elapse before he could pay a second visit to Foxley, without stretching the license Mrs. Bertram had accorded him. His lonely walks had taken him through Foxley more than once, and he had lingered a little on the village-green, and looked at the windows of old Sally’s cottage, and had longed in vain for but a glimpse of the face he loved. Fortune did not favour these surreptitious pilgrimages. Just as he began to think that the time had come when he might pay his second visit, and demand that promised cup of orange pekoe, Lucius Davoren’s letter reached him, and he learned that Janet’s husband was alive and in England. The news was a death-blow to his hopes. The man alive whose death he had vouched for! Alive, and with as good a life as his own perhaps!

What would Janet think of him should she come to know this? What could she think, save that he had deliberately attempted to deceive her? His honest heart sank at the thought that she might deem him guilty of such baseness.

What should he do? Go straightway to her, and tell her that he had been deceived; that if her marriage was indeed legal, his love was hopeless. Yes, he would do that. Anything would be better than to hazard being scorned by her. He would go to her, and tell her the bitter truth, so far as the one fact that her husband was alive. The details of the story—all that concerned the villain’s supposed death in the American forest—must remain untold till he had Lucius’s permission to reveal it.

He set off upon his lonely walk to Foxley with a heavy heart—a soul which the varied beauty of autumnal woods, the shifting lights and shadows upon the undulating stubble, could not gladden. His case had seemed hopeless enough a little while ago, so steadfast was Janet’s determination to hear no word of a second marriage till she had convincing proof that Death had cancelled the first; but it seemed ever so much more hopeless now, after this assurance from Lucius that the man was alive. And as a mere basis for speculation, where ages are equal, one man’s life is as good as another.

‘I daresay that beggar’s ten years my senior,’ pondered Geoffrey as he strode along the rustic lanes, where ripening blackberries hung between him and the sharp clear air; ‘but for all that I’ll be bound[Pg 295] he’ll outlive me. If he hadn’t more lives than a cat, he’d hardly have escaped Davoren’s bullet, and the sharp tooth of Jack Frost into the bargain. I suppose he keeps Death at a distance by the awe-inspiring sounds of that fiddle, like Orpheus with his lyre.’

Geoffrey had made up his mind to a desperate step. He would do that which must needs be as bitter as self-inflicted martyrdom. He would tell what he had to tell, and then take a lifelong leave of the woman he loved. Vain, worse than vain, the poor pretence of friendship where his heart was so deeply engaged. Platonism here would be the hollowest falsehood. With heart, soul, and mind he loved her, and for such love as his there was no second name. Better the swift and sudden death of all his joys than that his agonies should be protracted by such occasional meetings as Janet might be disposed to permit—meetings in which he must school his lips to the formal language of polite conversation, while his heart burned to pour out its wealth of passionate love.

Foxley wore its accustomed aspect of utter peacefulness. The same donkey, hampered as to the hind legs, grazed on the village-green; the happy geese[Pg 296] who had escaped the sacrificial spit at fatal Michaelmas hissed their unfriendly salutation to the stranger. Nothing seemed changed, save that the late-lingering roses looked pale and pinched by the frosty breath of autumnal mornings; and even the dahlias had a weedy look, like fashionable beauties at the close of the London season.

Flossie was skipping in the little garden-path, with much exhibition of her scarlet stockings, which flashed gaily from the snow-white drapery of daintily-embroidered petticoats.

‘Well, my little red-legged partridge,’ cried Geoffrey, ‘and where is mamma?’

‘Mamma has gone to London,’ answered Flossie, with the callousness of childhood.

Geoffrey turned pale. He had come on purpose to be miserable—to utter words which must be sharp as Moorish javelins to pierce his own heart. Yet, not finding Janet, he felt as deeply disappointed as if his errand had been the happiest. And Flossie’s calm announcement kindled a spark of jealousy in his breast. ‘To London, and why?’ was his first question. ‘To London, and with whom?’ was his second.

‘A boy brought a nasty wicked letter, in a yellow envelope, from the railway-station,’ said Flossie,[Pg 297] making a face expressive of supreme disgust; ‘and mamma went away directly. Poor mamma was so pale, and trembled as she put on her bonnet, and I cried when she went. But old Sally is ever so kind to me, and I’m happy now.’

Flossie conducted him through the pretty little parlour he remembered so well, across a tiny kitchen—neat as the kitchen of a doll’s house and not much bigger—to the garden behind the cottage, where old Sally stood boldly out on a bit of high ground, cutting winter cabbages, and in a bonnet which she wore like a helmet.

She was not a little surprised and confused by the apparition of a tall young gentleman in her back garden; but on recovering her fluttered spirits, told Geoffrey what he so ardently desired to know.

‘The telegraft was from Mr. Lucius,’ she said, ‘and Miss Janet was to go up to London by the first train that left Foxley-road station. I asked her if Mr. Lucius was ill, and she says No. “But somebody is ill, Sarah,” she says, “and I must go at once.” And she leaves all of a maze like, poor dear young lady! So I ups and runs to Mr. Hind, at the farm, and asks the loan of his wagonette and man; and the[Pg 298] man drove Miss Janet and the other young lady off in time to catch the twelve-o’clock train.’

‘Some one ill,’ thought Geoffrey. ‘Who could that have been? I have heard her say she had no one in the world to care for except Flossie and her brother Lucius.’

‘Lor bless her dear heart, o’ course I have!’ answered the old woman, picking up her greenstuffs, which she had dropped in her embarrassment at Geoffrey’s abrupt appearance. ‘I had a sweet letter telling me as she was going to stop a few days up in London with her brother. A nice change for her, poor dear!’ added Sally, whose rustic idea of London was a scene of perpetual enchantment; ‘and telling me to take care of little missy; and I do take care of her, don’t I, dear?’ she said, looking benevolently down at Flossie, who was hanging affectionately to her apron; ‘and little missy and me are going to have a nice bit of biled bacon and greens and a apple dumpling for our dinner.’

This was quite enough for Geoffrey. He immediately determined to follow Janet to London, see her under her brother’s roof, and there hear from Lucius all that he could tell about Matchi or Vandeleur’s[Pg 299] reappearance. His friend’s letter had told him so little. It would be some satisfaction to know what ground Lucius had for his belief that Matchi still lived.

‘There is an up-train from Foxley-road station at one o’clock, you say?’ he said, looking at his watch. It was now a quarter to twelve.

‘Good, I can walk that easily. I’m going to London to see mamma, Flossie. Have you any message for her?’

Flossie obeyed, and counted out her fifty kisses methodically in the region of Mr. Hossack’s left whisker. Thus furnished, he set out again, directed by Sally, to walk to the Foxley-road station.

It was hardly a polite manner in which to depart from Hillersdon, but Geoffrey relied upon a telegram to set himself right with his uncle and cousins ere they should have time to be inconvenienced or offended by his departure. A telegram from London, stating that important business had summoned him[Pg 300] there, would be ample explanation, he considered. And the leaving behind of his portmanteaus made little difference to him, since he always had a collection of clothes, boots, brushes, and other toilet implements, in his own particular room at the Cosmopolitan, neatly stowed away in drawers inaccessible to less-privileged patrons of that house.

The train which called at Foxley-road was a farmers’ train, stopped at every station, and performed the journey in a provokingly deliberate style. Not till it had passed Guildford did the engine hasten, and when Waterloo did at last loom upon his weary gaze, smoke-veiled and dingy, Mr. Hossack thought the journey one of the longest he had ever endured.

He only stopped long enough to write a plausible and explanatory telegram for the pacification of his cousin Belle before plunging into a hansom, whose charioteer he directed to the Shadrack-road. That cab-ride through the busiest thoroughfares of the City was also tedious; but as the streets and the atmosphere grew duller and smokier hope brightened, and he knew that he was nearing his goal. He was only going, as it were, in search of misery, yet he had a wild longing to see the dear face, even though it was to shine upon him for the last time.

The charioteer was tolerably quick of comprehension, and did not make above three false stoppages before he drew up opposite Lucius Davoren’s gate, with the big brass plate which bore his name and titles. It was growing dusk by this time, so long had been the journey, and the comfortable gleam of firelight shone through the parlour-window. That genial glow seemed to betoken occupation. She was there most likely. Geoffrey’s heart beat strong and fast.

An old woman with a clean white cap—Mrs. Wincher vice Mrs. Babb dismissed—opened the door. Was Mr. Davoren at home? Yes. Was anybody with him? Yes, Mrs. Bertram, his sister. Geoffrey dashed back to the cab, blindly thrust some loose silver into the cabman’s hand, and dismissed him elated, with at least double his fare, and then, this duty done, he walked into the parlour.

The room looked curiously changed since he had seen it last. The furniture was the same, no doubt; the same dull red-and-brown paper lined the narrow walls; yet everything had a brighter look—a look that was even homelike. A fire burned cheerily in the small grate, a tea-tray stood ready on the table; Lucius sat on one side of the hearth, Janet on the other. She wore a black dress, against whose dense[Pg 302] hue her complexion showed pure as marble. They both looked up, somewhat startled by the opening of the door—still more startled when they recognised the intruder. Lucius had a guilty feeling. In the excitement of the last fortnight he had forgotten all about Geoffrey.

‘Dear old Geoff!’ he exclaimed, speedily recovering from that sense of guilt. ‘How good of you to turn up in such an unexpected way! Where have you come from?’

‘Hillersdon—Foxley-road, that is to say. I called at Foxley this morning, Mrs. Bertram, and not finding you, ventured to come on here.’

‘You’ve just come from Foxley?’ cried Lucius; ‘there never was such a fellow for tearing up and down the earth, except that person who must be nameless. You haven’t dined, of course? You shall have some chops. Ring the bell, Janet; that one on your side of the fire does ring, if you give the handle a good jerk. Dear old Geoff, it is so good of you to come, and I’ve so much to tell you.’

‘Yes,’ answered Geoffrey with a gloomy look, ‘I got your letter. It was that which brought me here.’

‘Wonderful things have happened since I wrote[Pg 303] that letter, Geoff. But let me see about your dinner, and we’ll talk seriously afterwards.’

Geoffrey made no objection. He sat in a shadowy corner, silent, stealing a look at the face he loved every now and then, and very despondent in spirit. He was with her once more, and now began to ask himself how he could ever bid her that lifelong farewell he had thought of. No, he could never so sacrifice his own fondest desires. If it were but a crumb she could give him, he would take that crumb and be passably content. He would be like Dives in the place of torment, and if he could not have that nectar-draught for which his soul languished, he would ask for but one drop of water. He would not be self-banished from the light; better even that he should be consumed—annihilated—by its too vivid glory.

These were his thoughts while Lucius, provokingly practical, was giving orders for chops and rashers and poached eggs to Mrs. Wincher, who had made a complete transformation in her personal appearance to do honour to her new situation, and now wore a white cap and a clean linen apron, in place of the crumpled black bonnet and sage-green half-shawl which had been her distinguishing marks in Cedar House.

Jacob Wincher came in, while his good lady was cooking chops and rashers, and laid the cloth neatly, placing the tea-tray on one side of the table. He handled things as deftly as if he had been all his life languishing to be a butler, and only now found his right position in the world. To serve Lucius was a labour of love with both these people. He had wronged them, and generously atoned for the wrong he had done, and it seemed as if the wrong and the atonement had endeared him to them.

Jacob drew the curtains, lighted the candles, and made all snug just as Mrs. Wincher bumped against the door with the dishes. The chops were perfection, the eggs and bacon fit for a picture of still life, the crusty loaf a model for all bakers to imitate who would achieve renown in neighbourhoods where bread is verily the staff of life.

Janet made the tea, and at sight of her seated by the tea-tray Geoffrey’s spirits in some measure revived. He relegated that question of lifelong adieu to the regions of abstract thought. His countenance brightened. He gave Janet Flossie’s message about the fifty kisses; at which the mother smiled and asked many eager questions about her darling.

‘I am going back to my pet to-morrow,’ she said.[Pg 305] ‘It is the first time we were ever parted, and it has been a hard trial for me.’

‘Should I be impertinent if I asked why you came so suddenly to London?’ Geoffrey inquired.

‘I came upon a sorrowful errand,’ she answered; ‘Lucius can tell you about it by and by.’

‘You are in mourning for some one who has died lately,’ hazarded Geoffrey, with a glance at that black dress about which he had been puzzling himself considerably.

‘I am in mourning for my husband, who died only a week ago,’ Janet answered quietly.

The blow was almost too sudden. Great joys are overwhelming as great sorrows. Geoffrey, the strong, manly, joyous-hearted Geoffrey, grew pale to the lips. He got up from his chair, and gave a struggling gasp, as if striving for breath.

‘Janet, is it true?’ he asked, lest he should be the victim of some cruel deception.

‘It is quite true, Mr. Hossack,’ she answered; the coldness of her tone rebuking the ardour of his. ‘My husband is dead. His death was as unhappy as his life was guilty. It pains me to remember either.’

Geoffrey was silent. He scarcely dared open his[Pg 306] lips lest his joy should gush forth in ill-considered words. He could not look sorry, or even sympathetic. As a last resource, in this conflict of emotions, he devoured a mutton-chop, with no more sense of the operation of eating than if he had been a brazen idol whose jaws were worked by machinery.

That tea-party was curiously silent, though Lucius did now and then attempt to promote conversation by a somewhat feeble remark. Directly the meal was over, Geoffrey rose from the table, no longer able to support the intensity of his own feelings, and bursting with impatience to question his friend.

‘Let’s go outside and have a smoke, Lucius,’ he said; ‘that is to say, if Mrs. Bertram will excuse us,’ he added with a deprecating look at Janet.

‘Pray do not consider me,’ she answered. ‘I am going to my room to pack my portmanteau for to-morrow. You can smoke here, if you like. I have become accustomed to the smell of tobacco since I have been staying with Lucius.’

‘Poor Janet. I’ve been rather too bad; but it’s such a treat to have you sitting opposite me while I smoke.’

She smiled at her brother, the first smile Geoffrey had seen on that pale serious face, and left them. Privileged by her permission, they drew their chairs[Pg 307] to the fender. Lucius filled his favourite pipe, and Geoffrey drew a cigar from a well-supplied case.

‘For heaven’s sake tell me all about it,’ said Geoffrey, directly Jacob Wincher had retired, staggering a little under the burden of the tea-tray. ‘Thank God she is free! She is free, and I may hope! I didn’t like to be too grateful to Providence in her presence. A woman’s tender heart will lament even a scoundrel when the grave closes upon him. Tell me everything, Lucius; but first tell me why you did not write me word of this man’s death. You wrote fast enough to tell me he was alive; why not write to announce the blessed fact of his departure?’

‘For the simple reason that I forgot the necessity for such a letter. Janet’s husband died only ten days ago, and his death involved me in a good deal of business. There was the inquest, and then came the funeral. Yesterday I had to go down to Brighton, to-day I had an interview with a lawyer.’

‘An inquest!’ exclaimed Geoffrey. ‘Then that fellow came to a violent end after all.’

‘A violent and a strange end,’ answered his friend, and then proceeded to narrate the circumstances of Ferdinand Sivewright’s death, and to acquaint Geoffrey with the link which had bound Lucille to his sister’s husband. Geoffrey listened[Pg 308] with patient attention. The main fact that this man was dead, and Janet free to marry whomsoever she pleased, was all-sufficient for his contentment. The serenity of disposition which had made him so pleasant a companion in days of hardship and trial once more asserted itself. Geoffrey Hossack was himself again.

‘Do you think there’s any hope for me?’ he asked, when Lucius had told all he had to tell.

‘In due time, I daresay, such a thing may be possible,’ answered Lucius, with provoking deliberation; ‘but you had better refrain from any allusion to such hopes for some time to come.’

‘How long now? What’s the fashionable period of mourning for a young widow whose husband was a scoundrel? Six weeks, is it? or three months? And does society demand as long a period of mourning for its scoundrels as for its most estimable men?’

‘If it were not so near winter, Geoffrey, I should recommend you to do a few months in Norway; or, as you are so near the docks, why not take a run to Shanghai in one of those splendid China steamers—three hundred and fifty feet from stem to stern? You might by that means escape the winter; or, if you[Pg 309] don’t care about Shanghai, you can stop at Port Said, and do a little of Egypt.’

‘I’ve done the Pyramids and Pompey’s Pillar, and all that kind of thing,’ answered Geoffrey with a wry face. ‘Do the laws of society demand my departure?’

‘I think it would be better for you to be away for six months or so, dear old fellow,’ answered Lucius kindly. ‘You are such an impetuous spoiled child of fortune, and I know you will be fretting and fuming, and perhaps injuring your cause with Janet by too hasty a wooing. She is a woman of deep feeling. Give her time to recover from the shock of Sivewright’s death; and be sure that I will guard your interests in the mean time. No other than Geoffrey Hossack shall ever call me brother.’

‘It’s very good of you to say that,’ replied Geoffrey gratefully. ‘But you may be promising too much. Suppose some confoundedly agreeable fellow were to make up to your sister while I was at Shanghai, and the first thing I saw when I came back to England, in the Times, were the announcement of her marriage?’

‘If that were possible, she would not be worthy of you, and you’d be better off without her,’ replied Lucius.

‘Perhaps. But I’d rather have her, even if she were capable of doing that, so long as she hadn’t done it.’

‘There you get metaphysical, and I can barely follow you. But I’ll stake my own chances of happiness upon Janet’s constancy, even though no pledge has ever passed between you. I’ll go so far as to postpone my own marriage for the next six months, so that you may be married on the same day, if you like.’

‘There seems something like assurance in such an offer as that,’ answered Geoffrey, ‘but I won’t fetter you. I shouldn’t like to be a stumbling-block in the way of your happiness. I’ll go straight to Shanghai. I think you’re right; I should fret and fume, and perhaps annoy Janet with my obnoxious presence if I were to remain within reach of her, walk up and down under her windows, and make myself otherwise objectionable. I’d better go to Shanghai. Yet it is hard to leave her without one word of hope from her own dear lips. You’ll let me say good-bye, Lucius?’

Janet reëntered just as this discussion finished. The pale calm face had a tranquilising effect upon[Pg 311] Geoffrey’s excited nerves. He had been pacing the room in a distracted manner, hardly able to smoke; but at sight of Janet he flung his cigar into the fender, and became a reasonable being.

They talked a little, quietly, of indifferent things, and a good deal about Flossie, an ever-delightful subject to the fond mother; and then Geoffrey, feeling that it was growing late and that duty demanded self-sacrifice, rose and said something about going away. Happily there came a reprieve in the shape of an offer of brandy-and-soda from Lucius, who rang the bell for his ancient seneschal; so Geoffrey lingered just a little longer and took heart of grace to tell Janet his intention of a speedy voyage eastward.

‘Lucius seems to think I oughtn’t to idle about London all the winter,’ he said, ‘and suggests a trip to China—a mere bagatelle—fifty days out and fifty days home, and a week or so to look about one while the steamer coals, and so forth. Yet it makes a hole in a year, and it is sad to leave one’s friends even for so short a time.’

‘Are you really going to China?’ asked Janet, opening those splendid eyes of hers in calmest astonishment.

‘Well, Lucius advises me, you see,’ he replied irresolutely; ‘but I don’t know that I care much about China. And as to going about in steamers just because steamers can give you all the comforts you can get at home, why not stay at home at once and enjoy the comforts without the steamer? And as to China—it sounds interesting in the abstract; but really, on second thoughts, I can’t perceive any gratification in visiting a country in which men have pigtails and women crumpled feet. One is brought up with a vague idea of the China Wall and Crim Tartary, which, as one grows to manhood, gives place to another vague idea of the Caucasus, and the river Amoor, and Russian aggression, and some vast uncomfortable territory lying between Russia and India, just as Bloomsbury lies between the West-end and the City, and I daresay almost as impassable. No, I really don’t see why I should go to Shang-kong—I beg your pardon—Honghai,’ faltered Geoffrey, brightening at Janet’s kindly smile; ‘I think a little hunting at Stillmington would do me more good.’

‘Stop at home, then, Geoff,’ said Lucius, laughing at his faithful comrade, ‘and have your season in the shires. Janet shall stay and keep house for me till I marry.’

‘For a little while,’ answered Janet; ‘I don’t think this part of town would do for Flossie very long; but I am going to fetch her to-morrow, and she and I are to keep house for Lucius for a month or two.’

‘And then we are all going to migrate to the West-end together,’ said Lucius.

‘How pleasantly you lay your plans!’ he said; ‘and I stand quite alone in the world and belong to nobody. I think I shall go down to the docks to-morrow morning and pick my berth on board a China steamer.’

‘Don’t,’ said Janet gently. ‘Go to Stillmington and enjoy yourself hunting those unhappy foxes; and then, since you are always restless, you can come up to town sometimes and give us an account of your sport.’

This permission exalted Geoffrey to the seventh circle in the lover’s paradise. It seemed to him like a promise.

Lucius saw Mr. Pullman next day, and told him of the impression Lucille had made on her great-aunt.

‘Upon my word, sir, she’s a very lucky young woman,’ said the lawyer; ‘for Miss Glenlyne has a snug little fortune to dispose of, and has not a near relative to leave it to; for the Spalding Glenlynes are only third or fourth cousins, and she detests them. Now, Mr. Davoren, do you mean to put forward Miss Lucille Glenlyne’s claim to the estate now in the possession of Mr. Spalding Glenlyne?’

‘That will depend on various circumstances, Mr. Pullman,’ answered Lucius. ‘First and foremost, you think the case a weak one.’

‘Lamentably weak. You are able to prove the marriage;—granted. You may be able to prove the birth of a child; but how are you to identify the young lady you put forward with the child born at Sidmouth? How are you to supply the link which will unite the two ends of the chain?’

‘Yes; but let Miss Glenlyne come forward to bear witness to her niece’s identity, and she will be laughed at as a weak old woman—almost an idiot. The only person who could have sworn to the girl’s identity was Ferdinand Sivewright. He is dead, and you did not even take his deposition to the facts within his knowledge. Even had you done so, such a document might have been useless; the man’s notoriously bad character would have vitiated his testimony. Mr. Davoren, I regret to say your case is as weak as it well can be. It is a case which a speculative attorney might take up perhaps, hazarding his not too valuable time and trouble against the remote contingency of success; but no respectable firm would be troubled with such a business, unless you could guarantee their costs at the outset.’

‘I am not greedy for money, Mr. Pullman,’ replied Lucius, in no manner crestfallen at this disheartening opinion. ‘Were my case, or rather Lucille’s case, the strongest, it would still be doubtful with me how far I should do battle for her interests. She has been acknowledged by her great-aunt as a Glenlyne—that is the chief point in my mind. The name so long lost to her has been restored, and she has found a relative whose kindness may in some[Pg 316] measure atone for her father’s cruelty. This Mr. Spalding Glenlyne acquired the estate by no wrongdoing of his own. It would be rather hard to oust him from it.’

‘If you had a leg to stand on, sir, I should be the last to let any consideration of Mr. Spalding Glenlyne’s feelings restrain us from taking action in this matter.’

‘No, Mr. Davoren; therein lies his most objectionable quality. He is a man who at once enforces respect and provokes detestation.’

‘I suppose so; but it is strictly true, nevertheless. Mr. Spalding Glenlyne is a man whom everybody acknowledges to be a useful member of society. He has improved the Glenlyne estate to an almost unprecedented extent. His turnips swell like nobody else’s turnips; his mangolds would have been big enough for the stables of Gargantua. One can only comfort oneself with the reflection that those big turnips are often watery. His cattle thrive as no one else’s cattle thrive. He is like the wicked man in the Psalms, everything flourishes with him. And[Pg 317] when he dies there will be a splendid monument erected in his honour by public subscription. Yes, sir, people who abhorred him living will come down handsomely to pay him posthumous homage.’

‘But a man like that must do some good in his generation,’ said Lucius; ‘he distributes money—he employs labour.’

‘Yes, he is no doubt useful. He builds model cottages. His farm labourers are as sleek as his other cattle. Churches and schools spring up upon his estate. He brags and hectors intolerably, but I daresay he does good.’

‘Let him retain his opportunities of usefulness then, Mr. Pullman. Were my case so strong as to make success almost a certainty, I think I would forego all chance of gaining it as willingly as I forego an attempt which you assure me would be futile. Let Mr. Spalding Glenlyne keep the estate which he is so well able to administer for the advantage of himself and other people. I will not seek to banish him and his children from the roof-tree that has sheltered them for ten prosperous years. The Glenlyne property would be but a white elephant for Lucille and me. My heart is in my profession, and I would infinitely rather succeed in that—even though success fell far short of hopes which may be somewhat[Pg 318] too high—than grow the biggest turnips that ever sprouted from the soil of Norfolk. My dear girl has been acknowledged by her nearest surviving relation. That is enough for me.’

‘Upon my word, Mr. Davoren, you’re a noble fellow,’ exclaimed the lawyer, melted by Lucius’s earnestness, by tones whose absolute truthfulness even an attorney could not doubt; ‘and I only wish your case were a trifle stronger, for it would give me pleasure to protect your interests. However, the case is weak, and I think your decision is as worldly wise as it is generous in spirit, and I can only say, stick to Miss Glenlyne. She’s a very old lady. She began life with seven hundred a year of her own, and has been saving money ever since she was twenty-one.’

‘Neither Lucille nor I belong to the race of toadies,’ said Lucius; ‘but I am grateful to Providence for Miss Glenlyne’s ready acknowledgment of her niece.’

‘I have very little doubt the old lady will act handsomely towards you both,’ replied the lawyer, solacing himself with a comfortable pinch of snuff. He seemed to have taken a wonderful liking to Lucius, and even asked him to dine, an invitation which Lucius was unable to accept.

‘I shall not have a leisure hour this week,’ he[Pg 319] said; ‘and on Sunday I am going down to Brighton to spend the day with Miss Glenlyne.’

From Lincoln’s-inn Lucius went to Cedar House. He was especially anxious that Mr. Sivewright should not think himself neglected during Lucille’s absence. He found the old man friendly, but depressed. His son’s sudden reappearance and awful death had shaken him severely, and, despite his outward stoicism, and that asperity of manner which it was his pride to maintain, the hidden heart of the man bled inwardly.

The wise physician reads the hearts of his patients almost as easily as he divines their physical ailments. Lucius saw that an unspoken grief weighed heavily on the old man’s mind. His first thought was of the simplest remedies—change of scene—occupation. That house was full of bitter associations.

‘You are an annual tenant here, I think,’ he said, when Mr. Sivewright had told him, complainingly, how a jobbing builder was patching the broken panelling of his bedroom, by order of the agent, Mr. Agar.

‘Yes, I only took the place for a year certain, and then from quarter to quarter. I might have had it for ten pounds a year less had I been willing to[Pg 320] take a lease. But I was too wise to saddle myself with the repairs of such a dilapidated barrack.’

‘Then you can leave at any time by the sacrifice of a quarter’s rent, or by giving a quarter’s notice.’

‘Of course I can, but I am not going to leave. The house suits my collection, and it suits me.’

‘I fear that you subordinate yourself to your collection. This house must keep alive painful memories.’

‘Do you think that fire needs any breath to fan it?’ asked Homer Sivewright bitterly. ‘Keep alive! Memory never dies, nor grows weaker in the mind of age. It strengthens with advancing years, until the shadows of things gone by seem to the old more real than reality. The old live in the past as the young live in the future. I have come to the age of backward-going thoughts. And it matters nothing what scenes are round me—what walls shut-in my declining days. Memory makes its own habitation.’

Finding it vain to press the point just now, and trusting to the great healer Time, Lucius began to talk cheerily about Lucille. Mr. Sivewright seemed heartily glad to hear of Miss Glenlyne’s kindness, and the probability of fortune following from that kindness by and by, as the lawyer had suggested.[Pg 321] There was no touch of jealousy in the old man’s half regretful tone when he said:

‘She will not quite forget me, I hope, now that she has this new and wealthy friend. I think I cling more tenderly to the thought of her now that I know there is no bond of kindred between us.’

‘Believe me she loves you, and has loved you always, although you have often wounded her affectionate heart by your coldness.’

‘That heart shall be wounded no more. She has never been ungrateful. She has never striven to trade upon my affection. She has never robbed me, or lied to me. She is worthy of trust as well as of love, and she shall have both, if she does not desert me now that fortune seems to smile upon her.’

‘I will answer for her there. In a very few days she shall be with you again—your nurse and comforter and companion.’

‘Yes, she has been all those, and I have tried to shut my heart against her. I will do so no longer.’

When Lucius paid his next visit upon the following evening he found the old man in a still softer mood. Tender thoughts had visited him in the deep night silence—so long for the sleeplessness of age.

‘I have been thinking a great deal about you both, you and my granddaughter,’ he said to Lucius,[Pg 322] and have come to a determination, which is somewhat foreign to my most cherished ideas, yet which I believe to be wise.’

‘Yes, but it is a resolution deliberately arrived at. True that every year will increase the value of those things, but in the mean time you and Lucille are deprived of all use of the money they would now realise. That money would procure you a West-end practice—would make a fitting home for Lucille. It would open the turnpike-gates on the great high-road to success; a road which is cruelly long for the traveller who has to push his way across ploughed fields and through thorny hedges, and over almost impassable dykes, for want of money to pay the turnpikes. Yes, Lucius, I mean to send two-thirds of my collection to Christie and Hanson’s as soon as I can revise and modify my catalogue. You might give me an hour or so every evening to help me with the task.’

‘I will do anything you wish. But pray do not make this sacrifice on my account.’

‘It is no sacrifice. I bought these things to sell again, only I have clung to them with a weak and foolish affection. The result of that folly has been[Pg 323] that I have lost some of the gems of my collection, I shall set to work upon a new catalogue this evening. The task will amuse me. You need not shake your head so gravely. I promise not to overwork myself. I will take my time, and have the catalogue finished when the winter sales begin at Christie’s. I know the public humour about these things, and the things which will sell best. The residue I shall arrange in a kind of museum; and perhaps, some day, when I am in a particularly good humour, I may be induced to present this remainder to some Mechanics’ Institution at this end of London.’

‘I suppose not. After all, the masses, ignorant of art as they must needs be, must still be capable of some interest in relics which are associated with the past. There is an innate sentiment of beauty in the mind of man—an innate passion for the romantic and the ancient which not the most sordid surroundings can extinguish. I have seen dirty bare-footed children—wanderers from the purlieus of Oxford-market or Cleveland-road—flatten their noses against my window in Bond-street, and gloat over the beauty of Sèvres and Dresden, as if they had the appreciation of the connoisseur.’

Lucius encouraged this idea of the East-end[Pg 324] museum. He saw that this fancy, and the determination to dispose of the more saleable portion of his collection, had already lightened the old man’s spirits. He agreed in the wisdom of turning these hoarded and hidden treasures into the sinews of life’s warfare. He declared himself quite willing to owe advancement to Mr. Sivewright’s generosity.

The catalogue was begun that very evening; for Homer Sivewright, once having taken up this idea, pursued it with extraordinary eagerness. He dictated a new list of his treasures from the old one, and Lucius did all the penmanship; and at this employment they both worked sedulously for two hours, at the end of which time Lucius ordered his patient off to bed, and took leave for the night. This went on for three nights, and on the third, which was Saturday, the catalogue had made considerable progress. All those objects which addressed themselves to the antiquarian rather than to the connoisseur, and all articles of doubtful or secondary value, Mr. Sivewright kept back for his East-end Museum. He knew that the public appreciation of his collection depended upon its being scrupulously weeded of all inferior objects. He had been known to amateurs as an infallible judge; and in this, his final appearance before the public, he wished to maintain his reputation.

Lucius left him on Saturday night wonderfully improved in spirits. That occupation of catalogue-making had been the best possible distraction. Early on Sunday morning Lucius started for Brighton, so early that the hills and downs of Sussex were still wrapped in morning mists as he approached that pleasant watering-place. He was in time to take Lucille to the eleven-o’clock service at the famous St. Paul’s. It was the first time they had ever gone to church together, and to kneel thus side by side in the temple seemed as blissful as it was new to both.

After church they took a stroll by the seaside, walking towards Cliftonville, and avoiding as much as possible the Brightonian throng of well-dressed church-goers, airing their finery on the Parade. They had plenty to say to each other, that fond lover’s talk which wells exhaustless from youthful hearts. Miss Glenlyne rarely left her bedroom—where she muddled through the morning attended by Spilling—until the day was half over, so Lucille felt herself at liberty till two o’clock. As the clock struck two, the lovers reëntered the shades of Selbrook-place.

Miss Glenlyne was in her favourite chair by the drawing-room fire, looking much smarter, and sooth to say even fresher and cleaner, than when Lucius had last beheld her. This improvement was Lucille’s[Pg 326] work. She had found handsome garments in her aunt’s roomy wardrobe,—garments left to the despoiling moth, or discolouring mildew, and had suggested emendations of all kinds in Miss Glenlyne’s toilet. Dressed in a pearl-gray watered silk, and draped with a white china-crape shawl, the old lady looked far more agreeable than in her dingy black silk gown and dirty olive-green cashmere. Spilling had contrived to keep these things out of their owner’s sight and memory, in the pious hope of possessing them herself by and by, very little the worse for wear.

The old lady received Lucius with extreme graciousness. Spilling was invisible, having been relegated to her original position of maid, and banished to the housekeeper’s-room. A nice little luncheon was served in the back drawing-room, at which Miss Glenlyne again produced a bottle of champagne, an unaccustomed libation to the genius of hospitality. The meal was cheerful almost to merriment, and the old lady appeared thoroughly to enjoy the novel pleasure of youthful society. She encouraged the lovers to talk of themselves, their plans and prospects, cordially entered into the discussion of their future, and Lucius perceived, by many a trifling indication, how firm a hold Lucille had already won upon[Pg 327] her aunt’s heart. After luncheon Miss Glenlyne would have dismissed them to walk on the Parade, but Lucille insisted on staying at home to read to her aunt. She read a good deal of the Observer, through which medium Miss Glenlyne took the news of the week, in a dry and compressed form, like Liebig’s Extract. After the Observer the conversation became literary, and Miss Glenlyne gave them her opinion of the Lake poets, Sir Walter Scott, Monk Lewis, Byron, Mrs. Radcliffe, and the minor lights who had illumined the world of letters in her youth. She clung fondly to the belief that ‘Thalaba’ was better than anything that had been done or ever could be done by that young man called Tennyson, with whose name rumour had acquainted her some years back, but whose works she had not yet looked into. And finally, for the gratification of the young folks, she recited, in a quavering voice, Southey’s famous verses upon ‘Lodore.’

Then came afternoon tea, and it was a pretty sight for Lucius to behold his dear one officiating at Miss Glenlyne’s tea-table, whose massive silver equipage glittered in the ruddy firelight; pretty to see her so much at her ease in her kinswoman’s home, and to know that if he had not been able to regain her birthright for her, he had at least given her back[Pg 328] her father’s name. Altogether that quiet Sunday afternoon in Selbrook-place was as pleasant as it was curious. After the early tea Lucius and Lucille went out, at Miss Glenlyne’s special request, for half-an-hour’s walk in the autumn gloaming. Perhaps autumnal evenings at Brighton are better than they are anywhere else. At any rate, this one seemed so to these lovers. There was no sea fog, the newly lighted lamps glimmered with a pale brightness in the clear gray atmosphere, the crimson of the setting sun glowed redly yonder, where the dim outlines of distant headlands showed like vague purple shadows against the western sky.

Never had these two been able to talk so hopefully of the future as they could talk to-night. They arranged everything during that happy half-hour, which, brief as it seemed, did in actual time, as computed by vulgar clocks, stretch itself to nearly an hour-and-a-half. If Mr. Sivewright carried out his plan of selling the bric-à-brac, and did verily endow Lucius with some of the proceeds thereof, he Lucius would assuredly establish himself in some pleasanter quarter of London, where his patients would be more lucrative, yet where he might still be a help and comfort to the poor, whom this hard-working young doctor loved with something of that divine affection[Pg 329] which made Francis of Assisi one of the greatest among saints. He would set up afresh in a more airy and cheerful quarter of the great city, and make a worthy home for his fair young bride.

‘As if I cared what part of town I am to live in with you,’ she said fondly. ‘I should be just as happy in the Shadrack-road as in Cavendish-square, just as proud of my husband as a parish doctor as I should be if he were a famous physician. Think of yourself only, dear Lucius, and of your own power to do good—not of me.’

‘My darling, the more prominent a man’s position is the more good he can do, provided it be in him to do good at all. But depend upon it, Lucille, if I go to the West-end, I shall not turn my back upon the sufferings of the East.’

It is the April of the following year. Mr. Sivewright’s collection has been sold in February, and the sale, happening in a halcyon period for the disposal of bric-à-brac, has justified the collector’s proudest hopes. He has divided the proceeds into two equal portions, one of which he has bestowed upon Lucius as Lucille’s dower; and with a part of this money Lucius has bought a modest practice, with the potentiality of unlimited improvement, in a narrow street, situated in that remote, but not unaristocratic region, beyond Manchester-square.

It is late in April, Lent is just over; there are wallflowers for sale on the greengrocers’ stalls, a perfume of spring in the atmosphere, even at the eastern end of London. The spar-forests yonder in the docks rise gaily against a warm blue sky, whence the smoke clouds have been swept by the brisk westerly breeze.

Bells are ringing gaily from the crocketed finial of the little Gothic church whose services Lucius Davoren[Pg 331] has been wont faithfully to attend on his lonely bachelor Sundays; and Lucius, nevermore a bachelor, leads forth his fair young bride from the same Gothic temple. Not alone doth he issue forth as bridegroom, for behind him follow Geoffrey and Janet, who have also made glad surrender of their individual liberty before the altar in the rose-coloured light of yonder Munich window, a rose glow which these happy people accept as typical of the atmosphere of all their lives to come. Trouble can scarcely approach those whose love and faith are founded on so firm a rock.

Lucius has kept his promise, and waited for the same April sunlight to shine upon Geoffrey’s nuptials and his own. Miss Glenlyne has been one of the foremost figures in the little wedding group, and Mr. Sivewright has stood up before the altar, strong and solid of aspect as one of the various pillars of the church, to bestow his adopted granddaughter upon the man of her choice. Lucille has but one bridesmaid, in the person of Flossie, who looks like a small Titania, in her airy dress and wreath of spring blossoms. Never was there a smaller wedding party at a double marriage, never a simpler wedding.

They go straight from the church to the old house in the Shadrack-road, which no persuasion can induce Mr. Sivewright to abandon. Here, in[Pg 332] the old panelled parlour, endeared to Lucius by the memory of many a happy hour with his betrothed, they find a modest banquet awaiting them, and a serious individual of the waiter-tribe, in respectable black, who has been sent from Birch’s with the banquet. Moselle corks fly merrily. Mr. Sivewright does the honours of the feast as gracefully as if he had been entertaining his friends habitually for the last twenty years. Lucille and Lucius go round the old house for a kind of farewell, but carefully avoid that one locked chamber which was the scene of Ferdinand Sivewright’s dreadful fate, and which has never been occupied since that night.

It is quite late in the afternoon when two carriages bear the two couples off to different railway stations: Lucius and Lucille on their way to Stillmington, where they are to spend their brief honeymoon of a week or ten days before beginning real and earnest life in the neatly-furnished, newly papered and painted house near Manchester-square, where Mr. and Mrs. Wincher and the inevitable Mercury are to compose their modest establishment; Geoffrey and Janet to Dover, whence they are to travel southwards, to climb Swiss mountains and do Rhine and Danube ere they return to take possession of a small but perfect abode in Mayfair, where Mrs.[Pg 333] Hossack is to give musical evenings to her heart’s content, and where Flossie’s nursery is to be a very bower of bliss, full to overflowing of Siraudin’s bonbon boxes and illuminated fairy-tale books.

When Lucius and his bride take leave of Miss Glenlyne, the old lady, who has ‘borne up,’ as she calls it, wonderfully hitherto, melts into tears, and tells them that she means in future to spend the summer months in London, whether Spilling likes it or not, that she will take lodgings near Lucille’s new house, so that her darling may come and make tea for her every day. And then she adds in a whisper, that she has made a new will, and made Lucille her residuary legatee. ‘And except forty pounds a year to Spilling, and a legacy of fifty to each of the other servants, every sixpence I have is left to you, dear,’ she adds confidentially. She squeezes a fifty-pound note into Lucille’s hand just at the last, wrapped in a scrap of paper, on which is written in the old lady’s tremulous hand, ‘For hotel expenses at Stillmington.’

So they depart, happy, to begin that new life whose untrodden path to most of this world’s wayfarers seems somewhat rose-bestrewn. These begin their journey with a fair promise of finding more roses than thorns.

Thus it happens that Mr. Glenlyne Spalding Glenlyne remains in undisputed possession of his lands, tenements, and hereditaments, to grow big turnips, and employ labour, and do good in his generation; while Lucius, unburdened by superfluous wealth, yet amply provided against the hazards of professional income, is left free to pursue that calling which to him is at once exalted and congenial; and every one is content.

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Book the Third
(Continued).
CHAP.		PAGE
XIII.	How Geoffrey enjoyed the Garden-Party	1
XIV.	Lucille has strange Dreams	31
XV.	The Dawn of Hope	43
XVI.	An old Friend reappears	51
XVII.	Lucius seeks Enlightenment	75
XVIII.	Mr. Agar’s Colonial Client	86
XIX.	Lucille’s Confession	96
XX.	Lucille makes a new Friend	132
Book the Last.
I.	At Rouen	144
II.	The Story grows clearer	164
III.	Julie Dumarques	184
IV.	Coming to meet his Doom	201
V.	‘’Tis with us perpetual Night’	220
VI.	Lucius in Quest of Justice	242
VII.	The End of all Delusions	256[Pg iv]
VIII.	Aunt Glenlyne	264
IX.	Geoffrey has Thoughts of Shanghai	291
X.	Lucius surrenders a doubtful Chance	314
	Epilogue	330

pg 64 Changed:	Where else out of Holland could he see such lantsgapes?
to:	Where else out of Holland could he see such landscapes?
pg 124 Changed:	drop of rich cream for your breakfastes
to:	drop of rich cream for your breakfasts
pg 276 Changed:	Miss Glenlyne would smetimes remark candidly
to:	Miss Glenlyne would sometimes remark candidly

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lucius Davoren; or, Publicans and sinners, vol. 3

LUCIUS DAVOREN

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

CHAPTER XIII.
HOW GEOFFREY ENJOYED THE GARDEN-PARTY.

CHAPTER XIV.
LUCILLE HAS STRANGE DREAMS.

CHAPTER XV.
THE DAWN OF HOPE.

CHAPTER XVI.
AN OLD FRIEND REAPPEARS.

CHAPTER XVII.
LUCIUS SEEKS ENLIGHTENMENT.

CHAPTER XVIII.
MR. AGAR’S COLONIAL CLIENT.

CHAPTER XIX.
LUCILLE’S CONFESSION.

CHAPTER XX.
LUCILLE MAKES A NEW FRIEND.

CHAPTER I.
AT ROUEN.

CHAPTER II.
THE STORY GROWS CLEARER.

CHAPTER III.
JULIE DUMARQUES.

CHAPTER IV.
COMING TO MEET HIS DOOM.

CHAPTER V.
‘’TIS WITH US PERPETUAL NIGHT.’

CHAPTER VI.
LUCIUS IN QUEST OF JUSTICE.

CHAPTER VII.
THE END OF ALL DELUSIONS.

CHAPTER VIII.
AUNT GLENLYNE.

CHAPTER IX.
GEOFFREY HAS THOUGHTS OF SHANGHAI.

CHAPTER X.
LUCIUS SURRENDERS A DOUBTFUL CHANCE.

EPILOGUE.

Transcriber’s Notes

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lucius Davoren; or, Publicans and sinners, vol. 3

LUCIUS DAVOREN

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

CHAPTER XIII. HOW GEOFFREY ENJOYED THE GARDEN-PARTY.

CHAPTER XIV. LUCILLE HAS STRANGE DREAMS.

CHAPTER XV. THE DAWN OF HOPE.

CHAPTER XVI. AN OLD FRIEND REAPPEARS.

CHAPTER XVII. LUCIUS SEEKS ENLIGHTENMENT.

CHAPTER XVIII. MR. AGAR’S COLONIAL CLIENT.

CHAPTER XIX. LUCILLE’S CONFESSION.

CHAPTER XX. LUCILLE MAKES A NEW FRIEND.

CHAPTER I. AT ROUEN.

CHAPTER II. THE STORY GROWS CLEARER.

CHAPTER III. JULIE DUMARQUES.

CHAPTER IV. COMING TO MEET HIS DOOM.

CHAPTER V. ‘’TIS WITH US PERPETUAL NIGHT.’

CHAPTER VI. LUCIUS IN QUEST OF JUSTICE.

CHAPTER VII. THE END OF ALL DELUSIONS.

CHAPTER VIII. AUNT GLENLYNE.

CHAPTER IX. GEOFFREY HAS THOUGHTS OF SHANGHAI.

CHAPTER X. LUCIUS SURRENDERS A DOUBTFUL CHANCE.