Title: Two, by Tricks - A Novel.
Author: Yates, Edmund
Language: English
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     (Harvard University Library)  Routledge  1893



TWO, BY TRICKS.



TWO, BY TRICKS


A Novel



By EDMUND YATES
AUTHOR OF
'BROKEN TO HARNESS,' 'BLACK SHEEP,' 'THE YELLOW FLAG,' ETC.



     'Still, for all slips of hers,
      One of Eve's family'



LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, LIMITED
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
MANCHESTER AND NEW YORK



Cordially Inscribed
TO
JOSEPH CHARLES PARKINSON.



CONTENTS.
CHAP
       I. On The Grand Tier.
      II. Lady Forestfield At Home.
     III. Waiting.
      IV. This Lot To Be Sold.
       V. Nouveaux Riches.
      VI. A Little Dinner.
     VII. The Morning After.
    VIII. In Defence.
      IX. The Old Love.
       X. On The Watch.
      XI. An Unexpected Arrival.
     XII. An Odd Friendship.
    XIII. In The Avenue Marigny.
     XIV. Uffington's Bargain.
      XV. Five-o'clock Tea.
     XVI. At Woodburn.
    XVII. Uffington's Errand.
   XVIII. Husband And Wife.
     XIX. Released.
      XX. Coming Up To Time.



TWO, BY TRICKS



CHAPTER I.
ON THE GRAND TIER.


It was the week after Ascot, and town was full. Society, which had
been amusing itself with the cancans of the season--such as how the
Duke of Pimlico, who had been hitherto regarded as the greatest screw
in the world, buying his coats from Hyam's, and his hats from the
peripatetic Israelites in the streets, dining off a fried sole and
half a pint of Hungarian wine, and driving a horse so starved and weak
that even Lord ---- would have spared it, had suddenly taken to giving
splendid banquets to Royalty, and lighting up the ancestral hall with
more wax candles than his grace's father-in-law, the eminent
tallow-chandler, had ever sold in a week; how the slim and
good-looking Charles Bedford, while playing whist at the Tattenham,
had been discovered, not merely with two aces on his lap, but, like
the heathen Chinee, with twenty-four packs secreted on various
portions of his person; how the noble Master of the Buckhounds had
given one of the best boxes at Ascot to pretty Mrs. Delamere, whose
husband was away on a scientific expedition inspecting the Fauna and
Flora of Central Asia,--society had discussed all these matters, and
wanted something new to talk about. It was going to have it.

It was hot everywhere in London that night, but hottest of all at the
Opera. Outside, the air was thick and heavy, tainted by vegetable
refuse from the neighbouring market, laden with fetid odours from the
surrounding coffee-shops, taverns, and crapulous dens; inside, the eye
was distracted by the constant fluttering of the fans in the boxes and
from the area of the stalls, and the ear tortured by the stifled groan
of the obese foreigners who line the outer ring of the pit, sweltering
terribly.

There were many foreigners present that night: slim, olive-skinned,
black-muzzled Spaniards, with close blue-black hair growing low down
on their foreheads, and with their forefingers stained by constant
contact with the cigarette; plethoric pudgy Germans, long-bearded and
bald-headed, beating time with dumpy hands, ring-bedecked, and not too
clean; lively volatile Italians, musical fanatics, who winced at a
false note, and shrieked out 'Sh--sh!' in shrillest anger when any of
their neighbours attempted conversation. Other foreigners in the
boxes--ambassadors these. The Turk, with his crimson fez, in such
contrast with his dead-white face; the Russian, who sits with sated
eyes and palled ears, looking at indeed, but not regarding, what is
going on before him, and thinking of the days when Taglioni danced and
Malibran sang; the Frenchman, smiling and chattering with the full
knowledge that his own recall is imminent, and that the members of the
government which he served might be at any moment displaced, and would
be only too thankful if they escaped massacre. A subscription night
this, with Patti in the _Barbiere_, with royal highnesses and a serene
transparency on a visit for a few weeks, in the royal box; with
Philippa Marchioness of Mont-Serrat, with her luxuriant ringlets,
looking like a vignette from the Book of Beauty of the year '42, on
the grand tier; and with Tom Lydyeard in the fifth row of the stalls,
yawning as though his head were coming off.

This is Tom Lydyeard, the tall well-bred-looking man with the red
beard turning silver at the roots, and the fair hair in which the
parting is rather broader than it used to be. Not so young or so
active as on that cheerless April morning when he marched across
Waterloo-bridge with his regiment on their way to join the troops in
the Crimea; but a handsome fellow yet, with a well-preserved figure
and a keen eye. Tom has preserved his figure better than his temper,
which, on occasions, is apt to be remarkably short; 'Hansom and
Growler' is the nickname which this combination of good looks and bad
temper has obtained for poor Tom from some of the junior members of
the Rag, where he grumbles about the wine and the cooking, snaps at
the waiters, and requires all the cajolery of St. Kevin, pleasantest
of Irish army-doctors, to keep him within bounds.

Tom is evidently not best pleased at the present moment. The man in
the stall next to his is a very stout Italian, with lustreless black
gloves on his hands and a square diamond brooch in the middle of his
plaited shirt-front, who is mopping himself with a purple-silk
handkerchief, and with whom Tom Lydyeard is horribly disgusted.

'Can't think what they let such brutes into the place for!' he says to
himself, looking over rather than at his dripping neighbour. 'Gad,
what a comfort he would have been in the Row this morning when the
dust was blowing! I can't imagine what has come to this place; one
scarcely ever sees a soul one knows--a lot of foreigners and City
people; not like the old stamp of men whom one could always rely upon
finding in the stalls, or in the omnibus-box at the old house when the
curtain for the ballet went up. They were a better style, those
fellows; what they call the "old school,"--_vieille école, bonne
école_,--and that sort of thing. Men go now to that reeking Alhambra,
and think they enjoy it. What a queer thing it is to think that so few
of the old set are left! There is one of them though, by Jove!' he
muttered with a start. 'I haven't seen him for twenty years, but I'd
lay my life that's Uffington.'

The man by whom he was attracted looked up at the same instant, and
their eyes met. The stranger's cheeks flushed, and for a moment he
made as if he would turn away; but when he saw that Tom Lydyeard had
left his stall he stopped, and the next moment they were shaking hands
with more effusion than is usually shown in present society.

He was a man of middle height, with small regular features, keen black
eyes, thick black hair and moustache, small hands and feet, and a
youthful, almost a boyish, figure. At a distance you might have
guessed him five-and-twenty; and it was only when you looked closely
at him that you noticed the lines round the eyes and deep indented
furrows stretching from the nostrils to the corner of the mouth,
which, like the ground-swell on the shore, told of the storms that had
been. In the year '51 Nugent Uffington was looked upon as one of the
likeliest young fellows in town, though he had nothing in the world
beyond his handsome face, some two hundred a year, and his commission
in the Grenadiers. Every one, however, was kind to the cheery
good-looking lad; men lent him money and horses, women smiled upon
him, and manoeuvring mothers, when they had no more daughters of their
own to provide for, enlisted themselves in Nugent's service, and
actually tried to procure for him some of the season's prizes. It was
said at one time that he might have married Miss Amelia M'Craw, the
prettier of the twin Scotch heiresses, who in their marriage gave up
to the peerage what was meant for themselves. Good-natured Mrs.
Waddledot Hepburn gave three dances (at the command of the Marchioness
of Melton) in order that the young people might be thrown together;
and old Waddledot himself used to lean across the railings by
Apsley House regarding them caracoling in the distant Row with a
'Bless-you,-my-children!' kind of aspect. But, as fate would have it,
in the month of June that year Mr. Mudge, whose father and grandfather
had made an enormous fortune by converting old rags into shoddy-cloth
in the village of Batley, Yorkshire, came to town to see the Great
Exhibition, bringing with him his wife and letters of introduction to
the members for the county and several leading spirits among the
commercial magnates who were just beginning to colonise the now
plutocratic region of Tyburnia. The people who asked them out to
dinner did not think much of Mr. Mudge, who was a fat, stupid,
good-looking man of a common type, but they (the male portion at
least) found Mrs. Mudge very charming. She was a Canadian blonde, very
pretty and piquante, whom Alfred Mudge had met when on a business
excursion to Montreal, had a captivating way of saying saucy things
with a tinge of French accent, and was sometimes full of sentiment, at
others full of raillery, but always coquettish in the highest degree.

After Nugent Uffington had seen Julie Mudge once or twice, he left off
thinking about Miss M'Craw and her hundred thousand pounds, though,
indeed, that heavily-ingoted lady had never occupied many of his
thoughts; after he had met Julie half a dozen times, he thought of no
one else. Julie was very much taken by the appearance and manners of
Captain Uffington, who belonged to quite a different world from any
which she had known. She did not care for Alfred Mudge; but she had no
intention of doing him any harm; that was all Nugent Uffington could
get out of her after assailing her with more numerous and more
delicate temptations than ever beset St. Antony. This continued for
three weeks, and Nugent, who had never given so much attention to any
matter before, and who was becoming exhausted, thought of retiring
from the pursuit, when one night after Alfred had started off to dine
with the Bellowsmenders' Company in the City, and Julie had announced
to him her intention of going to bed at eight o'clock as some
compensation for unwonted dissipation, a note came from Lady Rosemount
saying that she had stalls at the French plays, where M. Levassor was
then giving his delightful entertainment, and nothing would so please
her as that her dear Mrs. Mudge should keep her company. Julie
pondered for an instant. She knew that Lady Rosemount was a great
friend of Nugent Uffington's, and would probably arrange for his
attendance; but she wanted to see M. Levassor, and as Alfred had
deserted her for the Bellowsmenders, she could see no reason why she
could not accept such innocent amusement. Lady Rosemount called for
her at half-past eight. They found Nugent Uffington on escort duty at
the theatre-door, and as they walked up the stairs they were stopped
by an altercation between the checktaker and a lady and gentleman
immediately preceding them, as to the number of a certain box. The
lady was gorgeously dressed in a cerise-coloured satin and a
voluminous crinoline, as was the fashion in those days, very much
_decollétée_, with diamonds on her neck and in her ears, and a liberal
allowance of rouge and bismuth on her cheeks and chin. The gentleman
who was with her seemed very angry at not being permitted immediate
access to the theatre; but reference had to be made to another
official, and in the mean time he stepped by to let the Rosemount
party pass; in doing so he presented under the bright flare of the
gaslight his full face, the full face of Mr. Alfred Mudge, who,
instead of carousing with carnival Bellowsmenders, was acting
as escort to the notorious Miss Leggat of the Theatre Royal,
Hatton-garden.

The next day Mrs. Mudge, accompanied by her maid and Captain
Uffington, crossed the Channel and proceeded by long stages to
Switzerland. At the Hôtel Beau Rivage at Ouchy they remained during
the summer and autumn months, and only left it to settle down into a
pretty quaint old châlet in the neighbourhood of Lausanne. There was
the usual three-days' scandal in town, where some laughed, some
shrugged their shoulders, and all had a secret delight that Nugent
Uffington, of whom, as a popular man, they had naturally been envious,
had come to grief. Mr. Alfred Mudge brought an action in the Divorce
Court, which he would probably have gained but for the intervention of
the Queen's Proctor, who had heard of the petitioner's intimacy with
Miss Leggat, an intimacy which had cost Mr. Mudge two or three
thousand pounds, which the lady had duly divided with her complacent
husband, Mr. Tapps, the leader of the orchestra.

For ten years Julie and Nugent lived in the little Swiss châlet, a
guilty life of course, but a thoroughly happy one. They were rich
enough to satisfy all their wants, for, in addition to his small
income and the price of his commission, she had five hundred a year,
and they were devoted to each other. No boy and girl in their first
delicious dream, which is never to be renewed, though its every detail
haunts our latest memories; no sharers of that bliss beyond all which
the minstrel has told; no two who were linked in one heavenly
tie--were more all in all to each other than this pair of sinners. The
ex-Guardsman was never dull; occasionally he had cheery letters from
friends in England telling him of what was going on there; but he knew
that on the day of his flight with Julie he had renounced all his old
life, and his chief amusement was in shooting and in fishing, of which
at most seasons of the year there was abundance in the neighbourhood.

Well-regulated people will be pleased to hear that Nemesis, which is
always supposed to await such evil-doers, came down upon them at last.
One autumn night, as they were crossing the lake after dining at the
Beau Rivage with an American gentleman and his family, a sudden storm
swept down and overset their little boat. Nugent came to the surface
at once, and, being a splendid swimmer, struck out, swimming round and
round in search of Julie. The night was very dark, and it is probable,
encumbered by the weight of her clothing, she never rose; it is
certain that Nugent never saw her again, and that his own life was
only saved by his being dragged on to the bottom of the boat, when
half-dead with exhaustion, by the servant, who had already found a
refuge there.

When Nugent Uffington recovered from the illness consequent upon the
cold and exhaustion, he broke up the little establishment at the
châlet and disappeared, no one knew where. Letters were occasionally
read from men who thought they had seen him, but they were from such
diverse latitudes that no reliance could be placed upon them; and when
his nephew Sir Mark Uffington died, the lawyers did not know where to
write to Nugent to tell him of his succession. That was the key-note
struck by Tom Lydyeard in their conversation.

'Heard you were lost, my dear boy, and scarcely a possible chance of
ever seeing you again; private detectives, and all that kind of thing,
hunting for you all over the globe--been to Australia after you, some
one said, and didn't find you there.'

'No,' said Uffington, with a slight smile. 'I had been in Australia,
but when the agent went out there to search for me I was living in a
little place in Brittany, where there was wonderful sport, but where I
never saw an English newspaper, not even _Galignani_; and even if I
had seen the announcement of poor young Mark's death, I doubt whether
I should have felt any impulse to hurry over here and claim his
place.'

'Do you act upon impulse?' asked Tom Lydyeard.

'Always,' said Langton quickly. 'Three weeks ago the impulse seized
me, and I came over here; and,' he added, shrugging his shoulders
drearily, 'it looks as if in a very short time it would seize me
again, and send me off to the uttermost ends of the earth.'

'You don't know many people here?' said Tom Lydyeard, observing his
friend's eyes wandering round the house.

'Beyond yourself not a soul,' said Uffington; 'tell me who they are.'

'Gad,' said Tom Lydyeard, 'you have given me a pretty difficult task,
though I have scarcely missed a London season since--since you went
away. I haven't much acquaintance with the Jews, Turks, and infidels
of whom this audience seems to be composed.'

'There seems to be an undue proportion of the tribes scattered about
the house,' said Uffington, after another look round, 'and, as you
say, of foreigners generally. Who are these people, and how do they
get here?'

'Who are they?--diamond merchants, owners of newspapers, riggers of
stock, promoters and projectors, which is modern English for swindlers
and thieves. How do they get here?--through the money they have made.
Look round the grand tier, and you will scarcely see half a dozen
English faces, and certainly not two with any high-bred look about
them. Don't you remember how different it was in the old time under
Lumley's management, when you used to wait regularly every night to
see Carlotta and Perrot dance the Truandaise?'

'Don't mention those times!' muttered Uffington, shrinking as though
he had been struck. Then, as though to change the conversation, he
said: 'There is a pretty woman--very pretty and _distinguée_-looking
too--in the fourth box from the stage; who is she?'

'That,' said Tom Lydyeard, after looking through his glass, 'is Lady
Forestfield; she is a daughter of Lord Stortford's, and married
Forestfield about two years ago.'

'I recollect Lady Stortford,' said Uffington; 'she was our
contemporary, a very sweet woman. Is she alive?'

'No; she died last year,' said Tom Lydyeard. Then added under his
breath, 'Thank God!'

Uffington heard the words and looked sharply round, but Tom Lydyeard's
eyes were hidden by his glass, and his uplifted hands covered that
tell-tale of any emotion--the mouth.

Nugent Uffington then made a long inspection of the box, and at its
conclusion said, I can now recognise many traces of her mother in Lady
Forestfield. She is the same [Greek: Boôpis `'Eze], and seems to
have the same splendid hair. What is her husband like?'

'Forestfield is a cool cynical sensualist, the type of a race very
common in the present day, who is always very quiet and apparently
unimpassioned, and yet I believe that a wickeder little wretch does
not walk.'

'He doesn't treat his wife well, then?'

'My dear fellow, no one treats his wife well nowadays; it isn't the
fashion. I suppose, if anything, Forestfield may be looked upon as
rather an exemplary person, as he doesn't care to beat his wife or
_afficher_ his infidelities as many of these youths do; but he is
notoriously unfaithful for all that, and I have sometimes seen my lady
looking very sad indeed.'

'She cares for him, then?'

'She--well, she did; most people would say she does--but I have my own
ideas on that point.'

'Poor child!' said Uffington, with a sigh; then added quickly, 'Who is
that just come into the box?'

Tom Lydyeard looked up, and saw a gentlemanly-looking young man, with
fair curling hair, fresh complexion, blue eyes, and white teeth,
talking to Lady Forestfield's companion, the Duchess of Melrose.

After his inspection, Lydyeard put down his glass, and commencing with
'Gad,' given with a peculiarly rich smack, continued, 'that's Gustave
de Tournefort, a young Frenchman of good birth, who has been over
here, off and on, for the last two years; he sings well, and that sort
of thing, and, what is odd for a Frenchman, rides very straight to
hounds. He had rooms at Leamington last winter near Forestfield's
place, and they say his going was very good indeed.'

'Poor child!' repeated Uffington, with his glasses still upon Lady
Forestfield.

'Yes, quite; isn't he?' said Tom Lydyeard, who only caught the last
word. 'They call him "_l'enfant terrible_," and say, for all that mild
and innocent look of his, that he is the very mischief when he takes a
fancy. See! this is Forestfield coming this way.'

As he spoke there advanced towards them a small slight man, with
delicate effeminate features, sunken eyes, and a hard cruel mouth. He
nodded to Lydyeard and stared rather insolently at Uffington as he
passed.

'I don't like that man's looks,' said Uffington. 'I have studied
physiognomy a good deal in the course of my wanderings, and I scarcely
ever saw a more secretive, untrustworthy face. I should think that
poor girl yonder must sooner or later have a bad time with such a
man.'

     *       *       *       *        *        *

Nugent Uffington would not have said differently had he seen and heard
what was passing in the box on the grand tier. M. de Tournefort
chatted very pleasantly with the Duchess of Melrose, who had been
accustomed to admiration for thirty years, and who still enjoyed it;
but when another gentleman came into the box, the Frenchman ceded the
chair by her grace's side, and, taking advantage of an opportunity
when the duchess and the new-comer were in animated conversation about
the diamonds of the ambassadress opposite, managed to whisper in Lady
Forestfield's ear,

'We have been watched, and Forestfield knows all!'

A bright flush mantled over her neck and mounted to the roots of her
hair; then faded away, leaving her whiter than before. The hand
holding her glass trembled, and her lips twitched convulsively; but
after a minute she managed to regain her self-control, and without
looking at him, she said, in a voice which he alone could hear, the
one word, 'Go!'



CHAPTER II.
LADY FORESTFIELD AT HOME.


'We have been watched, and Forestfield knows all!' Those words seemed
to have crept into Lady Forestfield's heart, deadening its action and
stupefying her brain. She sat perfectly motionless until just before
the curtain fell, then rose, accompanied by the duchess and attended
by the two gentlemen who had subsequently come into the box, and
sought her carriage. While waiting in the crush-room, in reply to a
question put, she scarcely knew by whom, she pleaded a severe
headache, and excused herself from seeing any more of her friends that
night. The after-theatre suppers at Lady Forestfield's house in
Seamore-place were renowned, and the Duchess of Melrose, who had come
to that sensible time of life when eating is regarded as something
more than the mere swallowing of food, and both the attendant sprites
who wanted to fill up a couple of hours before going to Pratt's, were
disappointed; but Lady Forestfield's look was so dazed and colourless
and helpless, that it was evident that her plea was no pretence, and
the duchess took advantage of an opportunity to ask her in a whisper
if anything had happened.

'Nothing,' she replied in a flat tuneless tone, 'nothing.'

'I thought, my dear, from your looks, that a hawk might have dropped
down into the dovecot; but you are very young and very sensitive, my
poor child; in a few years you will learn to treat any little
temporary storms with proper unconcern.' And then the carriages were
signalled, and the ladies took their departure.

On reaching home, Lady Forestfield, with a passing glance into the
dining-room, where the table was set out for supper, went straight to
her room, and dismissing her maid as soon as possible, threw herself
in her peignoir into a low chair near the window overlooking the Park,
and gave herself up to thought.

'Forestfield knows all!' Those words were her social death-knell,
ringing out farewell to friends, to position, to hope, almost to life;
for what would life be to her without the surroundings in which she
had revelled, and which were about to be ruthlessly cut away? Was
there the remotest chance of escape? Could there be any possible
motive by which her husband, cognisant of her crime, would consent to
condone it? Of his own irregularities since their marriage, common and
manifold as they were, she had long since been made aware, and had
suffered them in silence. Might not he, in simplest justice to her, do
likewise? He knew all; but none else, save the creatures in his
employ, whose silence was as easily purchased as their espionage. He
had been with her but five minutes before De Tournefort had told her
the fatal news, and his manner, as ordinarily, was cold and cynically
polite. She had seen him very different at times when she had
unwittingly given him trivial cause for offence, when he had cursed
and sworn, and once seized her arm and wrenched it round so violently
that for weeks she had borne the blue impress of his fingers. Surely
De Tournefort must have been misinformed. Surely, if Richard knew his
disgrace, he would have avoided her in public; and when they met in
private would have wreaked his wrath upon her, as he had done for far
more venial matters.

From thinking of her husband she turned to thinking of herself,
wondering how and why she had fallen; patiently, but in a vague dreamy
kind of manner, analysing her feelings towards the man who had wrought
her ruin, and for whose gratification she had imperilled her social
status and her soul. For _his_ gratification, not for _hers!_ In her
self-examination she did not find one grain of love for Gustave de
Tournefort; she had not even had a caprice, a passion for him, and had
only listened to his oft-urged suit when completely worn out with
solitude, loneliness, and neglect. Love, passion--she had known them
but once, in the early days of her marriage, when she thought that
there had never lived on this earth a man comparable to her husband;
none so handsome, none with such an easy bearing, such biting wit,
such delicious insolence. She had sat down and worshipped him with all
her soul and strength, heedless of her father's good-humoured
raillery, heedless of her mother's tearful entreaties and solemn
warnings; she had set up her idol and bowed down before it, only to
find after a little time that it was a very ordinary kind of fetish
indeed.

Those feelings were played out now, but at one time they had been
all-powerful, and the mere recollection of them had a softening and
humanising effect upon the wretched girl as she sat, her elbows
resting on her knees, the lower part of her face buried in her hands,
looking out across the road dotted with lamps and echoing the rattle
of an occasional carriage, to the park beyond, where the big trees
bent whisperingly to each other, and beckoned solemnly like dim
gigantic spectres.

Suddenly a terror seized her. What Gustave had said must be true;
he would never have dared to trifle with her on such a subject. They
had been watched, and her husband knew all! Her husband would come
home--he was on his way thither at that moment perhaps--and in his
wild ungovernable fury he might murder her. Even if her life were
spared it would be rendered desolate; she would be driven forth from
her home, and left to fight her way in the world alone, without
friends or resources.

Then there arose suddenly in her mind a scene which she had witnessed
during the previous autumn, when she and Lord Forestfield were
travelling in Germany. They were travelling from Ischl to Salzburg,
and at the driver's request halted midway that he might bait his
horses. A kermesse was being held in the little village, and amongst
the numerous carts gathered together before the inn-door was a
travelling-carriage, from which the horses had been removed. It was,
however, still occupied, and nestled into one corner under the hood
May Forestfield had made out the dim outline of a female form. The
courier attached to this carriage, of course making friends and
drinking with the Forestfields' courier, told him that the lady whom
he was taking to Ischl was an Englishwoman, and very ill, so ill that
the baths and waters of Ischl had been prescribed for her as a last
resource. Lady Forestfield, hearing this from her maid, inquired the
name of the lady, which in the courier's mouth was unintelligible; but
May, learning that the invalid was alone, and all but unattended,
acting under the kindly impulsive wish to be of some use, she scarcely
knew how, made her way to the side of the carriage, and in her sweet
tone spoke a few words of sympathy. The invalid, who had been lying
huddled in the corner, turned quickly at the sound of the voice; and
worn and ghastly as was her face, Lady Forestfield recognised her in
an instant as Fanny Erle, an intimate acquaintance, who two years
before had fled from her husband's roof, and had since been divorced.
Some one else had recognised her at the same moment--Lord Forestfield,
who, following his wife, had a look over her shoulder and instantly
divined what had taken place. Mrs. Erle, on whose pale cheeks two
bright red spots suddenly appeared, would have spoken; but Lord
Forestfield, seizing his wife by the shoulder, hurried her away, and
peremptorily insisted on her making no farther attempt to see the
wretched woman again, speaking of her crime with the bitterest
reprobation, and of the punishment which had fallen upon her with
genuine contemptuous approbation.

Before Lady Forestfield's eyes, which were apparently fixed on the dim
and distant park, rose this scene in all its minutest details: she
heard the noisy laughter of the peasants; the jingle of the horses'
bells and the rattle of their rope harness; the shouts and cries of
the vendors in the kermesse; she saw the little square in which the
inn stood, with the quaint gabled houses opposite, the loiterers round
the carriage, the two couriers drinking beer on the steps of the inn;
and above all, she saw the miserable look which Fanny Erle gave when
Lord Forestfield hurried her away, and heard the moan of despair with
which the wretched woman fell back into the corner of the carriage.

Was she to be like that, a leprous object, a pariah, from the
contemplation of which people would turn in disgust? God forbid! And
yet the sin of Fanny Erle was hers; why should she not incur the
penalty?

Wearied and heart-sore, she at last made her way to bed, and fell into
a heavy slumber, from which she did not wake till noon. Her first care
was to inquire after her husband's movements. Her maid learned from
the valet that his lordship had gone out early in a cab which had been
fetched for him; the valet could not recollect the directions given to
the driver, but had an idea it was to somewhere in the City; his
lordship had said nothing as to when he should be back.

There was a respite, then. No man, May Forestfield thought, having
sinister intentions would act in such a manner; he would either have
blazed out at her in a personal interview, when murder might have been
done, or he would have written her a cutting letter, stating the
discovery he had made, and his consequent intention of getting rid of
her. It was plain to Lady Forestfield that Gustave had been
misinformed, and that her husband knew nothing. Though a constant
attendant at afternoon service at All Saints', and quite familiar with
as much of the liturgy as is then and there intoned, May Forestfield
was not in the habit of putting much heart into her supplications; but
in the belief that a great and deserved punishment had been averted
from her, she knelt down and implored the Divine forgiveness for her
past crime, and pledged herself to sin no more.

As usual there was a little luncheon party in Seamore-place, to which
came Mrs. Ingram and Lady Northaw--of course, unaccompanied by their
husbands--and Captain Seaver, of the Blues, and Sir Wolfrey Delapryme.
Kate Ingram was a tiny blonde, with pretty fair hair and blue eyes, a
creamy complexion, and the wee-est imaginable hands and feet. She was
very spirituelle, and better educated than most of her class, spoke
French and German to perfection, and acted and sang admirably. Théo
herself, whom she much resembled, could not have given more
unmistakable point and colour to a _chansonette grivoise_ than did
Mrs. Ingram, who was the daughter of a Church dignitary, and the wife
of a director of the Bank of England. Her father, long since in his
grave, would have been very much astonished at a display of the
accomplishments by which his daughter had made herself attractive in
the highest quarters; but her husband, like Gallio, 'cared for none of
these things.' Lady Northaw was a brunette, with regular features,
sleepy black eyes, and blue-black hair; a tall imperial Juno-like
woman, with full bust and rounded arms, and a grand way of carrying
herself. It is scarcely necessary to say that every rickety little
knock-kneed subaltern in the Guards worshipped her. Both ladies were
intimate friends of May Forestfield, both were very liberal in all
their notions, and both spoke the _argot_ of the day with perfect
fluency.

There were three vacant places at the round table where M. de
Tournefort usually found himself at two o'clock; this day, however, he
was an absentee; but one of the places soon after the meal commenced
was occupied by Lord Forestfield, who came in with a smiling
salutation, which included the company, and an apology for being late,
having been detained on business.

'Business?' growled Sir Wolfrey Delapryme, deep in investigating
the recesses of a pie; 'nice man of business you are! What was
it--horse-chaunting or rigging the market that you have been up to?'

'Don't speak with your mouth full, Wolfrey, and never talk of things
you don't understand,' said Lord Forestfield. 'I assure you I have
been on important business to the City.'

'I wish I had a pal who would put me up to something good in the
City,' murmured Mrs. Ingram plaintively. 'I don't see the good of
having a Bank director for one's husband if he can't help himself to
coin.'

'Plain enough he cannot do that,' said Captain Seaver, 'or he would
get himself a new hat; never saw such a confounded bad hat as Ingram
wears in all my life.'

'He has to have it made large,' growled Sir Wolfrey to Lady Northaw;
'particularly over the forehead.'

'Hush!' said her ladyship with a deprecatory smile; then added aloud:
'Are any of you going to Lady Paribole's? I understand all the smart
people in London are to be there.'

'I lay odds that one who thinks herself very smart won't show up,'
said Mrs. Ingram; 'because I happen to know that a "distinguished
person," as the newspapers say, sent for the list and ran his pen
through her name.'

'Whom do you mean?' asked Lady Forestfield.

'Why, that horrible old Mrs. Van Groot, who, because she is hideous
and common-looking, is always going about saying atrocious things of
everybody nice.'

'I don't care much about Mrs. Van Groot myself,' said Sir Wolfrey;
'but it's enough to make a woman rear and plunge a bit when she has to
run in double harness with such an unmitigated cad as Van Groot. The
little Dutch pug is always getting up in the House, whelping and
snarling at his betters.'

'I don't think it makes much matter what sort of a husband a woman may
happen to have,' said Lord Forestfield, speaking deliberately, and
looking round with his cold cynical smile. 'If she is naturally
wicked, the vice is sure to show itself, no matter what treatment she
may receive.'

May Forestfield struggled hard but ineffectually to repress her rising
colour, and the other ladies bit their lips in silence. Ugly topics
such as crime (when called up for punishment), duty, and death were
habitually testily ignored by them.

Captain Seaver struck in to the rescue. 'I suppose you will be going
away about the beginning of next month, Lady Forestfield?' he said.
'You generally stay at your place in Sussex--I forget its name--first,
don't you?'

'You mean Woodburn?' said May, whose voice exhibited traces of the
emotion under which she was suffering.

'Ay, Woodburn,' said the Captain; 'handy for Goodwood, isn't it,
Dick?'

'Very handy, and a pleasant place,' said Lord Forestfield quietly. 'I
am going down there this afternoon.'

'To tell the people to get it all in readiness,' said Mrs. Ingram.
'What a delightful man to take such trouble off one's hands!'

'I hope you will manage to take Snubs with you, Lady Forestfield,'
said Sir Wolfrey. 'He has always been accustomed to go out of town,
and he would feel it horribly if he were left behind.'

'And the cat, May, your lovely cat,' said Lady Northaw.

'I am afraid she would not stay,' said May.

'Probably not,' said Lord Forestfield; 'cats are like statesmen--they
prefer places to persons. Now I must go to catch my train;' and with a
smile and a general bow he left the room.

There was little reticence in that company, and so, as soon as the
door was closed, Captain Seaver said, 'I wonder what Dick has got in
hand now! I always notice that peculiar expression on his face just
before he is going to land some great _coup_. He looked just like that
when he won at Stockbridge last year.'

'He is uncommonly wide awake,' said Sir Wolfrey; 'though what can he
be going down to Woodburn for just now? Have you any notion, Lady
Forestfield?'

'Not the faintest,' said May, whose courage by this time had pretty
well returned. 'One can never account for Dick or his ways. He has the
habit of running off when one least expects it, and never gives one a
notion of when he will return.'

'That must be very inconvenient,' said Mrs. Ingram.

'I was hearing his praises sung the other night,' said Lady Northaw.
'Mrs. Rouge-croix says there is no man in the world so well able to
put one up to a wrinkle or two.'

'That is not necessary in her case,' growled Sir Wolfrey, 'for she has
quite enough of her own.'

'Well,' said Mrs. Ingram, rising, 'I cannot wait, even to hear the
glorification of Lord Forestfield, as I have some calls to make.
Recollect, May; you come to my box at the French plays, and we can
afterwards go on to Lady Paribole's.'

When her guests were gone, Lady Forestfield went to her boudoir, and
seated herself at her little writing-table. Not that she had any
intention of writing; her hand toyed with the pen, and wandered idly
among the nicknacks with which the table was covered, as she thought
of the occurrences of the morning, and tried to find a clue to the
future in anything her husband had said or done. There had been
nothing extraordinary, she thought; he had been quiet and reticent in
his usual cool cynical way; and though she had winced at his speech
about wifely duties and wifely sins, it was probably merely a
conscience smart, as the observation was not pointedly addressed to
her. Not another word had she heard from Gustave, who, had he found
his suspicions correct, would undoubtedly have found some means of
giving her farther warning. He must have been deceived; a man of Lord
Forestfield's temper, with such knowledge rankling in his breast,
could not have come quietly home, taken his luncheon with her in the
presence of friends, and gone off to the country, as was his frequent
custom, without making any sign. The danger was over, she thought; but
the vow of resistance to temptation which she had made that morning
should be steadfastly kept.

The door opened, and a servant presented her with a card. It bore the
words, 'Mr. Bristow, 96 Bedford-row.' She knew the name to be that of
the family solicitor, a gentleman enjoying an exceptionally
confidential position, and who was in the habit of dining with them
once or twice in the season; and she gave orders for his admission.

Mr. Bristow, a tall, white-haired, white-whiskered man, scrupulously
clean and very neatly attired, appeared in the doorway, and made a
grave bow.

'How do you do, Mr. Bristow?' said Lady Forestfield, rising from her
chair. 'It is seldom you give us the pleasure of a visit, but I am
very glad to see you.'

'I am come, Lady Forestfield,' said Mr. Bristow, 'on peculiarly
painful business.'

'Painful business!' she echoed, with a sudden sinking at her heart.

'Very painful business,' he repeated. 'I have,' he added, drawing a
paper from his pocket, 'to serve this paper upon you.'

'What is it?' she added, shrinking back.

'It is a citation from the Divorce Court,' said Mr. Bristow, 'which I
serve upon you on behalf of Lord Forestfield. Be good enough to sit
down and read it.'

She took the paper tremblingly, and glancing at it saw her name. Then
she let it drop to the ground. 'What does it mean?'

'It means,' said Mr. Bristow, 'that Lord Forestfield is about to
divorce your ladyship on the ground of adultery with Monsieur Gustave
de Tournefort.'

'Good God!' cried May, 'why does Lord Forestfield not come to me?'

'Your ladyship will never see him again,' said Mr. Bristow quietly.

'Never see him again!' she cried. 'Why, he was here an hour ago! He
has only gone down to Woodburn, and he will be back tomorrow.'

'Lord Forestfield has not left town,' said Mr. Bristow; 'nor has he
any intention of leaving it at present.'

'But I must see him!' cried May.

'It is perfectly impossible,' said Mr. Bristow. 'I have now discharged
my very painful duty, and all that is left for me is to express a hope
on Lord Forestfield's part that your ladyship will employ a
respectable solicitor.' Then turning to the door he said, 'You can
come in;' and four persons entered, his own clerks and her servants,
which or what May never clearly knew. 'You are witnesses that I have
served this citation from the Divorce Court upon Lady Forestfield.'
Then with a grave bow he left the room, and in the last glimpse he had
of May Forestfield, she was standing like a statue, dumb, motionless,
with the paper on the ground at her feet.



CHAPTER III.
WAITING.


Podbury-street, a small and narrow street of unimportant houses, in
the south-western postal district of London, has seen various
mutations of fortune. Twenty years ago, it was Podbury-street,
Pimlico, and the unimportant houses were for the most part occupied by
persons who contented themselves with the basement floor, and let the
rest of the rooms in lodgings. The tenants of these lodgings were
generally young men who were engaged in qualifying themselves for the
medical profession by 'walking' the near-lying St. George's Hospital;
young men of convivial temperament, who attended lectures with regular
irregularity, and never thought of giving up to study or sleep the
hours which they apparently imagined should be devoted to comic
singing. It was the perpetual presence of these gentlemen, no doubt,
which caused the private residences of Podbury-street to be dotted
here and there with public-houses and tobacconists' shops. A
procession of slatternly maids-of-all-work, with the door-key in one
hand, and a jug either dependent from the finger or firmly grasped by
the other hand, was perpetually filing through Podbury-street; and the
drivers of the Royal Blue omnibuses, which at that time used it as a
thoroughfare, were, from the altitude of the box, enabled to peer into
the drawing-room floors, or to gaze down into the parlours, in both of
which localities the same spectacle of a table covered with pewter
vessels, and flanked by half-a-dozen gentlemen in their shirt-sleeves,
who, using it as a leg-rest, lay back in their armchairs with clay
pipes in their mouths, invariably presented itself.

The lapse of time, and the enterprise of the late Mr. Cubitt, effected
a wondrous change in the condition of Podbury-street. When its
denizens saw themselves gradually surrounded by squares, terraces, and
crescents of enormous mansions, which were each year springing up, and
converting into a suburb of palaces what had recently been a dismal
swamp, they unerringly perceived that the opportunity had arrived for
changing the scale of their prices and the style of their lodgings.
The medical students packed up their Lares and Penates, their
preparations and tobacco-jars, and moved off with them to more distant
quarters; the omnibuses went round another way; the beer-shops and
tobacconists disappeared as the leases fell in; finally, the name of
Pimlico became unsavoury in the nostrils of the neighbourhood, and the
lodging-house letters had 'Podbury-street, Eaton-square,' imprinted on
their cards; for they let lodgings still, but to a very different
class of tenants. Gentlemen in the government offices, who invariably
put on evening-dress even if they only dined at their club, who stuck
the looking-glass full of the cards of invitation which they received
from great people, and who smoked dainty Russian cigarettes, but would
have fainted at the notion of anything so low as a pipe; managing
mammas, who brought their marriageable daughters to London during the
season; rich valetudinarians, who came up to town to consult famous
physicians,--such were the persons of gentility who now found a
temporary abode in Podbury-street. No slatternly maids-of-all-work
were to be seen now; nearly every house boasted a page, a youth whose
waiting at table would have been more pleasant had he been able to rid
himself of the scent of the blacking which hung around him from his
early domestic duties; and during the season, when some of the
managing mammas gave little dinners or small musical evenings in
return for the hospitality which they had experienced, and in the hope
of making a special _coup_ for their marriageable daughters, the
little passage, called by courtesy the 'hall,' would be so filled up
by two footmen, that the other attendant giants in plush would have to
cool their calves in the open air.

In a drawing-room floor in Podbury-street, Lady Forestfield had taken
up her abode, and was living in seclusion, awaiting the result of her
husband's application to the Divorce Court. After the scene with Mr.
Bristow, and the degradation which she had suffered before her own
servants, she felt it impossible to stay on in Seamore-place, and
accordingly the next day, as soon as she was able to contemplate the
immediate future with some degree of calmness, and to make up her mind
as to the course she should best pursue, she had removed to these
lodgings, accompanied only by a young girl who had been a housemaid at
Seamore-place, had always shown a strong attachment for her mistress,
and now refused to be separated from her. This girl's mother, a
respectable woman, was the landlady of the house in Podbury-street,
and everything was done as far as possible to insure Lady
Forestfield's comfort.

As far as possible indeed, but, under the circumstances, worthy Mrs.
Wilson's possible went but a little way. For the first fortnight of
her tenancy, May Forestfield scarcely tasted food, scarcely lifted her
head from the pillow, but lay there passing the bygone days of her
life in review before her, and silently bemoaning her hard fate. The
loss of wealth and position--the position, that is, which her rank had
given her--affected her but little; she took no heed of them, she had
no time to give them a thought, nor did she trouble herself in regard
to the future; her whole time was occupied in thinking over the
details of her early acquaintance with her husband, and in wondering
at the infatuation which had induced her to prefer the other man to
him. Not that she ignored or attempted to deceive herself in regard to
his heartless cynicism and savage brutality. Every bitter word seemed
burnt into her brain, each cruel deed seemed to rise before her fresh
as at the time of its perpetration; and yet in her present mood she
found excuses for them all, and ascribed to herself the provocation of
epithets which a 'beggar in his drink' would not have fouled his mouth
with.

Do you wonder at this conduct? I take it, it is common enough. May
Forestfield was no peculiar character, and in some things had a
certain clearness of sense and strength of mind; but she was a woman,
and consequently when she found she had been deprived of something
which up to this point she did not value, but which it was impossible
to regain, she set about grieving after and bewailing its loss with
all her strength. Never even in the early days of her acquaintance
with Lord Forestfield, when uncertainty of his regard for her rendered
her doubly keen in the chase, had she felt that worship, that
hungering after him which now beset her.

While she was lying in this state she received the following letter,
dated from Spa:


'You will have been surprised at my silence and apparent desertion of
you, but I waited until I could learn what steps that scoundrel who
calls himself your husband was about to take. I knew him to be too
great a coward to ask satisfaction of me, but I doubted whether,
knowing with what a character he himself must come into court, he
would venture to claim the aid of the law. I learn now that he has
done so, and that in a short time you are likely to be free. His plots
were too skilfully concocted, his spies too carefully trained, to
allow of there being any doubt in the matter; the court will pronounce
for the divorce, and he will be at liberty to carry to its end a
pursuit in which he has been long engaged.

'Blinded by my passion for you, I have done you a grievous wrong, for
which there is but one reparation. That reparation I offer you now.
One line from you will bring me at once to your feet, and I swear on
my honour and my name that so soon as the decree of the court is
pronounced I will make you my wife.

          'GUSTAVE DE TOURNEFORT.'


Two short weeks ago May would have welcomed this letter with
eagerness, and would have accepted the proposal it contained with
avidity; when the blow dealt her by her husband through Mr. Bristow's
agency had fallen upon her with crushing force she would have welcomed
almost any means to free herself from the thraldom which even the
retention of his name seemed to imply. She felt most deeply the
baseness of his conduct in continuing semi-amicable relations with
her, relations such as for a long time had existed between them, up to
the last moment of his leaving her for ever, and when he had planned
and matured the design of casting her forth and holding her up to the
reprobation of the world. Her caprice, passion, call it what you will,
for Gustave de Tournefort had never been sufficiently strong to
ennoble him in her eyes, or to prevent her from recognising him for
what he really was--a careless libertine; but suffering as she had
suffered at first, she would have been glad of any escape from the
tortures of shame, degradation, and abandonment, and would have
accepted his proffered hand, though knowing perfectly that what he
called his heart would have no part in the alliance.

Now, however, all was changed. In the strange reaction which she had
undergone under the revulsion of feeling which made her long to see
her husband once again, she looked upon this letter from De Tournefort
as little less than an insult. It was not a voluntary offer, she
thought on reperusing it; it had been wrung from him by his yet
remaining faint adhesion to that code of honour which even such men as
he were bound to obey, and it was made, not from any love for her, but
in order that he might stand well in the eyes of that world in which
he still doubtless hoped to play many a similar part. He had 'done her
a grievous wrong,' and he offered her 'reparation;' that was the
keynote of the whole affair, his reading of that odious word 'duty,'
which throughout her life she had always found put forward as an
excuse. Had it been otherwise, had this offer been prompted by any
feeling of liking or even of regard for what had occurred, it would
have been made long since. He must have heard, for all that world in
which he moved knew it perfectly, that she had left her home; and had
there been the least spark of chivalrous feeling in him, he would have
come to her at once. Her mind was speedily made up; she would not
demean herself by accepting a proposition which was merely made to her
out of charity, and M. de Tournefort's letter should remain
unanswered.

O, the weary, weary days in Podbury-street! The getting-up, protracted
until a late hour, in order to get over as much of the day as
possible; the wretched little breakfast, with London eggs from fowls
who lived in an area, and London milk from a cow which had not seen a
green field for years; the long mornings, spent in reading in the
newspaper the chronicled doings of that world in which she had once
played so conspicuous a part,--records of dinners, balls, and fetes,
with guest lists containing the names of persons her intimacy with
whom she could scarcely even then imagine to be broken,--gossip of
forthcoming arrangements at Goodwood and Cowes, in both of which
places she had always held her court. The journal would drop from her
hand as memory brought before her the ducal lawn, dotted all over with
loveliest dresses, and ringing with merriest laughter from happily
improvised luncheon parties; or a covered bit of sea-walk in front of
the club-house at Cowes, where on the night of the last regatta-ball
she had met De Tournefort, and listened to his impassioned pleading.
Her thoughts were far away, busy with the memories of these once-happy
times, but her eyes were gazing idly before her on the tradespeople
flitting about from house to house, the flirtations of the stalwart
and greasy young butcher with grinning Molly the cook, the
heavily-laden postmen steadily pursuing their rounds, the loitering
cabmen looking round for fares, and all the panorama of morning life
in the great city.

In the afternoon, when the carriages were rolling about, and the
little street was sonorous with the echoing double-knocks dealt on its
tiny doors by huge footmen, May would sit behind the window-curtain
watching all that was passing, and ever and anon drawing farther back
into the shadow, as though fearful of being recognised. She had little
cause for such anxiety, poor child, though in the course of the day
she would see many of those with whom but a short time ago she used to
be in constant association: the Duchess of Melrose, leaning back in
her luxurious carriage, and surveying mankind superciliously, though
not without interest, through her double glasses; Sir Wolfrey
Delapryme in his mail phaeton, tooling his roan cobs; Captain Seaver
on his neat hack; and Mrs. Ingram in her victoria. Mrs. Ingram had
stopped in Podbury-street, and had come up to see May; it being her
maxim, she said, that 'when any one had come to grief her pals should
stick by her.' Kate Ingram's sympathy, however well meant, was not put
in a very acceptable manner; she said that no doubt May had had a
'facer,' but that it was 'no use crying over spilt milk.' She spoke of
De Tournefort as that 'foreign sportsman,' said she considered him a
'snob' and a 'cad,' and that May had done quite rightly in refusing to
have anything more to say to him. She proposed to make up a little
Sunday river-party of people who 'wouldn't mind, don't you know,' and
to invite May to it, but she was rather pleased than otherwise when
she found May quietly but firmly declined; and shortly after took her
leave, promising to come again soon; a promise which she would not
keep.

Once May saw her husband. Lord Forestfield drove through
Podbury-street in a hansom cab, sitting well back, with his arms
crossed and a pleasant smile upon his face. With her renewed feeling
for him, May would rather not have seen that smile; it showed that he
was happy and careless, while she was suffering such acute misery. In
the eyes of the world she was the guilty one, and had to bear the
consequences of her guilt; but in his own inmost mind he must know
that he had been at least equally criminal, and that if it had not
been for his neglect and desertion of her she would never have
committed the crime for which he was now exacting so fearful a
penalty.

And as she pondered over this a horrible idea flashed across her; a
passage in De Tournefort's letter recurred to her mind, in which,
speaking of Lord Forestfield, he had said, 'he will be at liberty to
carry to its end a pursuit in which he has been long engaged.' What
could that mean? What but that her husband had determined on divorcing
her, with the view of marrying some one else to whom he had been long
attached. Of marrying some one else! The fact that he himself was
married had had no effect in preventing his forming other connections,
but marriage while she lived undivorced was for him impossible; it was
in that view, then, that he had determined on pursuing his vengeance
to the bitter end.

The thought drove her nearly mad. She felt that she could not support
it in silence, that she must go to him at once and make one final
appeal. She rose and looked in the glass. Her beauty had suffered but
little from what she had undergone; she was perhaps a trifle paler
than usual, but Lord Forestfield had always expressed his dislike of
blooming hoydens, and there was no doubt that at one time he admired
her deeply and was greatly influenced by her beauty. Would he be so
again? She would see.

The next day the maid, who had been sent to see her former
fellow-servants in Seamore-place, returned with the information that
Lord Forestfield had gone down to Woodburn. May looked upon this as a
happy chance, and determined on following him there at once. She could
see him more readily, could speak to him more freely, in the seclusion
of Woodburn than if he had remained in town; she would go down there
that very afternoon. In pursuance of this determination she set out,
accompanied only by her maid, and dressed in a common gown and bonnet
in order to escape any recognition. After a two hours' railway journey
they arrived at Crawley, the station from which Lord Forestfield's
seat was reached, and taking a fly were driven over to the gates of
Woodburn Park. There they halted, leaving the vehicle to await their
return. The maid, who was known to the lodge-keeper, went forward; and
after learning that his lordship was there and alone, easily obtained
admission for herself and friend to pass through the gates. Up the
long avenue, the scene of her great reception by her husband's tenants
on her return home after her marriage, May Forestfield now crept with
trembling limbs and a desperate sinking at heart, her humble companion
endeavouring to sustain her by well-meant though ill-chosen
exhortation. Far away in the distance glimmered the house, a long low
stone building, from one window of which a light was shining. So far
as May could make out, this proceeded from the library, a room
immediately on the left hand of the porch, to which access was
perfectly easy. The thought of seeing her husband and completely
humbling herself before him, and of begging, not indeed to be placed
back in her old position in the eyes of the world--that she scarcely
dared to wish, much more to hope--but for restoration to his favour
and his love, for permission at least to pass some portion of her life
in his society,--the thought of this nerved her with fresh strength,
and enabled her to reach the end of the avenue. There she and her
companion halted for a moment and looked around them. So far as they
could make out through the deepening dusk the hall-door was open. It
was May's intention to creep in there, and enter the library
immediately, to throw herself at her husband's feet. By the aid of the
lamp which burned on the writing-table, she could discern through the
open window the dim outline of Lord Forestfield's figure bending over
some papers. From time to time he looked up, and it was necessary for
her to watch the moment of his absorption in order to effect her
entrance unobserved.

The opportunity offered itself, and May stole quietly towards the
porch. Just at that moment Lord Forestfield walked to the window and
peered out into the gloom.

'Who is there?' he cried, as he observed the shrinking figure.

May was silent.

'Who is there?' he repeated. 'I insist upon an answer.'

'Richard,' faltered May, spreading her hands towards him, 'I--'

'I thought it was you,' he said, in a harsh low tone. 'I shall
discharge the lodge-keeper to-morrow for having permitted you to pass
the gate. Now be off!' he cried, waving his hand; 'I should be sorry
to have to ring for the servants to turn you away. Be off, do you
hear?'

But May heard nothing. She had sunk in a fainting state on the steps.

Lord Forestfield then turned to the maid, who was hastening to her
mistress's assistance. 'Take this woman away,' he cried; 'and if you
value your own liberty, never bring her here again.' Then he violently
closed the window and returned to his papers.



CHAPTER IV.
THIS LOT TO BE SOLD.


May Forestfield was brought back to her lodgings in
Podbury-street--how she never knew. The maid, whose devotion had
brought such obloquy upon her, half helped, half carried her mistress
down the avenue, and at the lodge they found the fly which had brought
them from Crawley. All the way to the station, and in the railway
carriage up to town, May lay in a half-comatose, half-hysterical
state; and when she had reached her lodging, and was once more
installed in her clean and pretty, if not luxurious, bedroom, it was
plain to the maid and to Mrs. Wilson that Lady Forestfield was 'in for
an illness' of some kind or other. Their predictions were speedily
verified. When the maid visited her mistress next morning, she found
her in a burning fever, so far advanced that her utterances were
already half delirious. The girl, who was tolerably bright, as well as
thoroughly devoted, remembered that in one or two cases of slight
illness, under which Lady Forestfield had suffered in Seamore-place, a
fashionable physician, Dr. Chenoweth, had been called in to attend
her. By the aid of the Blue-Book his address was obtained, and the
maid started off in a cab to beg an immediate visit from him.

Dr. Chenoweth was something more than a fashionable physician; he was,
like most of his brethren with whom the present writer is acquainted,
a gentleman, kind-hearted, self-sacrificing, and benevolent to a rare
degree. He knew all about the story of Lord and Lady Forestfield.
There were few scandals of any kind which did not come to his ears, to
be listened to generally with a smile and a shrug, to be repeated
sometimes--for there are certain patients to whom gossip is better
than medicine, and to whom the sound of the doctor's cheery voice is
of more service than his learned prescriptions--but never to be
allowed to militate in his mind against those who were the subjects of
them. Dr. Chenoweth thought it not at all improbable that in visiting
Lady Forestfield he might affront some of his most important patients;
for the affair had been much discussed, and it is needless to say that
few partisans ranged themselves on poor May's side. He knew nothing of
the pecuniary circumstances in which Lady Forestfield was then placed,
and would not have been surprised had they been such as possibly to
preclude the payment of his fees; he only recollected May Dunmow, the
pretty child whom he remembered riding with her father Lord Stortford
in the Row, and at whose wedding at St. Andrew's, Wells-street, he, an
old and intimate friend of the family, had been present. Dr. Chenoweth
accordingly bade his servant tell the messenger that his first visit
that day would be to Podbury-street.

May Forestfield had a very sharp attack; indeed, for more than a
fortnight she lay between life and death. Dr. Chenoweth's earliest and
latest visits were paid to her, and two professional nurses, hospital
sisters--skilled and attentive women who have succeeded to the Gamp
and Prig creatures--relieved each other in daily and nightly watch at
her bedside. When, however, one morning in the beginning of the third
week of her illness, May opened her weary eyes, and for the first time
was able to recognise things around her, her glance fell, not upon any
hired attendant, but upon the upturned face of a pretty girl; a
delicate, pensive face surrounded with shining fair hair, a face
which, though half strange to her, seemed to bring back pleasantly
familiar recollections of long ago.

The girl's attention was at once attracted by the movement of the
patient, and she rose from her seat and placed herself quietly by the
bedside.

'It is Eleanor,' murmured May, raising her hand to shade her eyes; 'it
must be Eleanor, and yet how can she be here? My head throbs, and I
feel as though I were yet in a dream. Speak to me and say whether you
are really there.'

'It is Eleanor,' said the girl, bending over the bed and smoothing the
rumpled pillow; 'it is Eleanor, and you are in no dream, dear Lady
Forestfield; but I must implore you not to talk now. Dr. Chenoweth has
left the strictest orders that you should have no excitement, and, for
your own sake, I must see that he is obeyed.'

May made no resistance; the mere effort of speech had completely
exhausted her; and she sank back into a slumber, during which, as her
gentle nurse noted with pleasure, her breathing was regular and her
whole manner devoid of the feverish restlessness which had
characterised her slumbers during her illness. When, after a couple of
hours' peaceful repose, May again opened her eyes, she recognised her
companion in an instant, and in a clearer and firmer voice spoke to
her at once.

'I know you now, Eleanor,' she said, 'but even now I cannot account
for your presence here. I know perfectly well I am at Mrs. Wilson's
lodgings in Podbury-street, but that knowledge does not account for
your presence. My head is heavy and my limbs horribly weak and
languid. I feel as though I had gone through an illness.'

'You have gone through a very severe illness, dear Lady Forestfield,'
said the girl, fanning the patient's face with a huge palm-leaf, on
which she had previously sprinkled some drops of scent, 'and even now,
though I am delighted to see you recognise me, and to hear your own
well-remembered voice once again, I must warn you that you are only in
the very earliest stage of convalescence. It will be brave news for
Dr. Chenoweth when he comes to-night, for though he anticipated your
recovery, he did not think it would commence so soon.'

'Have I, then, been so very ill?' asked May.

'For more than a fortnight you have lain here so completely prostrated
with fever that the doctor would not answer for you from day to day.
Now, however, thank God, we may think that all danger is passed.'

May buried her face in the pillow and was silent for some minutes.
When she looked up again there were traces of tears upon her cheeks.

'And during all that time,' she whispered, stretching out her thin wan
hand, 'you, dear Eleanor, have been my nurse.'

'I have been here off and on for the last ten days,' said the girl. 'I
did not hear of your illness until some little time after you had been
attacked, or, of course, I should have been with you before.'

'And how did you hear of it?' asked May.

'In a very curious way,' said the girl. 'It appears that in
your delirium--you must not mind my mentioning it, dear Lady
Forestfield--you talked about all kinds of curious things, declared
that you were destitute, and that your only means of supporting
yourself would be by painting pictures for your livelihood. In
connection with this you mentioned the name of your old
drawing-master, Mr. Irvine, who, you said, could speak as to your
capability in art. Your frequent repetition of this name attracted the
attention of Dr. Chenoweth, who was an old friend of my poor father,
and who still keeps up his acquaintance with my sister, Mrs. Chadwick.
He knew I was staying at their house, and one day, when he was calling
there, he took me aside before my sister came down, and told me how
very ill you were; told me, moreover, that while you were carefully
and assiduously attended by the good people in this house, he thought
that when you came to yourself--a period which he anticipated, but for
which he could fix no date--it would be a comfort to you if your eyes
could fall upon a face which you had known in--in happier times, and
of which you had nothing but pleasant reminiscences. I understood him
at once. I told him I thought I could say there had been no cloud upon
the friendship with which you had once honoured me; and I came here
that day with a letter from the doctor, which secured me a pleasant
reception from Mrs. Wilson.'

May's heart was too full to speak. She pressed the young girl's hand
and fell back dreamily on the pillow, grateful to the Providence
which, in the midst of her complete abandonment, by those who in her
prosperity she had imagined were devoted to her, had sent her one
friend to prove that the old-fashioned sentiment called gratitude,
mocked at and ignored nowadays, yet existed.

It was a strange history, that of the friendship between these two
young women, so different in birth and surroundings. Eleanor's father,
Angus Irvine, the son of a small Scotch farmer, had at an early age
evinced such artistic talent as to attract the attention of the old
Lord Stortford, the great landowner of the district, who purchased two
or three of the young lad's early sketches, and better still,
furnished him with the means of establishing himself for two or three
years as an art student in Rome. The good which the young man here did
for himself (on his first arrival his tastes and sympathies, quickened
by the ever-present daily surroundings, so fired his eye and nerved
his hand that old Roman colonists, whose judgment had been tempered by
time and experience, predicted the greatest things of him) was not
without a certain counterbalance of evil. The loose life led by many
of his Bohemian companions, the gatherings at the Caffè Greco, the
_soirées intimes_ of men and women at which he was a constant guest,
had a baleful effect on the hitherto strictly-kept Scottish youth, and
his name was scarcely known in the art circles of Rome before a rumour
ran round that Angus Irvine was following in the footsteps of so many
other young men of promise, and was becoming dissipated, not to say
drunken. The rumour was harsh and exaggerated, and it had an
exaggerated and harsh effect. He was a mere boy after all, this gaunt
beardless youth of two or three and twenty, and a few glasses of wine
had unwonted power on one who, in the seclusion of his mountain home,
had been brought up a strict abstainer; and had the censorious left
him in peace, it is probable that, so far as the drink was concerned,
he would soon have got the better of his newly-acquired freedom, and
settled down to a steady plodding life. As it was, when he learned--as
he did speedily--that his conduct had become the subject of
conversation amongst a certain set, he received the news with an
outbreak of wrath, which, cooling down, was supplanted by a sturdy
Scotch obstinacy, under which he determined to 'gang his ain gait,'
and to treat the animadversion of his detractors with contempt. He
laboured fitfully thenceforward, turning out now brilliant work, now
pictures which, though undeniably possessing genius, were hurried and
scamped; his doing of that which he ought not to have done was more
regular, while his drinking was harder than ever.

Suddenly there came a change. Angus Irvine received a letter from Lord
Stortford intimating a desire that he should come to London, it being
the old lord's wish to see his protégé settled and striving for the
honours of the Academy before he died. Irvine was sensible enough to
know that this was the turning-point of his fate, and that if he
neglected such an opportunity he would have no other chance. He was
aware of his lamentable failing, and was determined to seize on and
overcome it there and then; and being a man of great power of will and
determination, he was able to carry out his intention. He started for
England within a few weeks, and immediately on his arrival paid a
visit to his patron. The old nobleman was delighted with the modest
demeanour and brilliant conversational powers of the young artist; he
introduced him to his son, Mr. Dunmow, a young man of about Angus's
own age, who had already made a brilliant figure in Parliament, and
who was about to be married to a charming girl, to whom Angus was also
made known. He presented him to the leading art critics and
connoisseurs of the day, from some of whom the young Scotchman
received valuable commissions; and when, in the course of a couple of
years, Lord Stortford heard from Angus of his approaching marriage
with a young lady, the daughter of a brother artist, the old nobleman
was scarcely less happy than he had been at his own son's wedding,
which had taken place a year previously, and he bestowed a substantial
mark of his regard upon the bride and bridegroom.

Years went on, and after a lapse of some sixteen or seventeen of them,
the two pretty girls who had been born to Mr. and Mrs. Irvine were
growing into young women, and Angus Irvine himself, his constitution
undermined by excesses of all kinds, was rapidly lapsing into a broken
elderly man; for within a very few years of his marriage, so soon as
the joys of domesticity were beginning to pall upon him, he found
delight in the loose and brilliant society only too ready to welcome
him; the old desire for drink came upon him, and he yielded to it with
scarcely a struggle. All the young fellows about town were delighted
to have the company of Angus Irvine, who talked so brilliantly, and
sung the homely Scotch ditties with such exquisite pathos; who could
brew a bowl of punch as quickly and as deftly as he could sketch a
delicious caricature, and who never minded to what hour of the morning
he sat up. Nor did this cheery convivialist confine himself to men's
society, or blush to be seen driving in the carriages or seated in the
opera-boxes of some of the most noted improprieties of the time. Old
Lord Stortford was dead; but his son and his son's wife, and the
friends to whom they had introduced their northern protégé, shook
their heads dismally, prophesied Angus's ruin, and wondered what Mrs.
Irvine would do.

Mrs. Irvine settled that question within a very few months. She was a
meek little woman, devoted to her Angus, with a sweet temper and a bad
constitution; and when she found that she was deserted by her husband,
and that the establishment generally was going to ruin, she thought
the best thing she could do was to die--and she did it off-hand. The
shock of her death sobered the poor wretch for a time. He had long
since given up all hope of selling, or indeed of painting, any more
pictures; his muddled brain and unsteady hand forbade that; but Lord
Stortford and a few other gentlemen who had known him in better times
had engaged him as drawing-master to their children, more for the sake
of bestowing a small annuity on him than from the idea of any good to
be obtained from his instruction, and he now saw his way to a new
method of money-making.

His elder daughter, Fanny, who was eighteen years of age, inherited
from him a remarkably sweet voice, and sung Scotch ballads with all
the taste and pathos which had been so much applauded in her father.
This was a talent which it struck Angus should be cultivated, and
accordingly, by Lord Stortford's aid, he procured her _entrée_ as a
pupil at the Academy of Music, and, after a few years' instruction,
she made her _début_ as a concert-singer with considerable success.
The talent of one daughter having been thus utilised, Angus Irvine
thought it time that the younger, Eleanor, should take her turn at
bread-winning. What to do with her was the crux. Eleanor had a good
speaking voice, but no ear and no musical talent; neither of the
children had inherited her father's artistic ability, and the
education which they had received, though fair enough, was not
sufficient to qualify them to act as governesses in the present day,
when ladies, possessed of every possible accomplishment and willing to
accept next to nothing, are advertising for situations.

What occurred to him as a happy thought at length flashed into Angus
Irvine's brain--he would make his girl an actress! She was really
good-looking--much handsomer than many of those women whom he used to
know in the old time, and who drew large salaries. He could get her
taught to speak by a professional elocutionist, and she would soon be
able to contribute to the household expenses.

When this plan was mooted to Eleanor, her horror was extreme. She
implored her father not to attempt to carry it out, declared her
readiness to undertake any kind of service, no matter how menial, but
spoke in such piteous terms of the degradation she should feel in
having to appear before the public, that the Angus Irvine of a few
years before would not have required her to speak twice on the
subject. Now, however, drink and misfortune had rendered him callous;
he released himself from his daughter's weeping embrace, and bade her
make up her mind to what he had decided. In an agony of terror and
fright, the girl rushed off to the one person in London whom she knew
to be a true and influential friend of her father's, Lord Stortford,
and told him all, imploring his interference on her behalf. Lord
Stortford was greatly touched at the girl's entreaties, and after a
consultation with his wife, he called on Angus Irvine, and, without
hinting at his interview with Eleanor, said that he had a plan to
which he requested Mr. Irvine's sanction. This was that Eleanor should
come to and live in Grosvenor-square as companion to his daughter May.
This proposition suited Angus Irvine very well. He would be rid of the
very moderate expense entailed upon him by Eleanor, who would hand
over to him the liberal salary she was to receive in consideration of
her services; so that he made no objection, and the next week saw
Eleanor installed as May's companion in Grosvenor-square, where, a
great friendship having grown up between the girls, she remained for
eighteen months, until May's marriage with Lord Forestfield.

Later in the afternoon of the first day of her convalescence, May
renewed her conversation with her friend.

'You must have thought it very unkind of me, dear,' she said, placing
her hand in Eleanor's, 'that notwithstanding our great intimacy, and
the love and affection I had from you in Grosvenor-square, I have
scarcely taken any notice of you since my marriage.'

'Not at all, dear Lady Forestfield,' said Eleanor. 'I never imagined
that that intimacy, pleasant as it was to me, could be kept up. You
were not out during the most part of the time I was with you, you must
remember, and after your marriage I knew that you would take up your
position in society, which involved innumerable claims upon you, and
would form your own circle of friends.'

'From which circle,' said May, with a sigh, 'I omitted you, the very
best of them, the only one who has remembered me in my time of
trouble. I think you said you were staying with your sister? Where is
Mr. Irvine?'


'Papa has been dead for nearly a twelvemonth,' said Eleanor, glancing
down at her black dress. 'He was ill, if you recollect, just before
your marriage, and he never recovered, but faded gradually away.'

'I wish my poor papa had been alive to help him,' said May; 'he would
have seen that his old friend wanted for nothing.'

'I am sure of that,' said Eleanor; 'but, fortunately, my sister was
enabled to take care of her father in his last illness. She was
married a few months before his death to a very rich man.'

'Indeed!' said May. 'Who is he?'

'His name is Chadwick,' said Eleanor. 'I suppose he would be called a
tradesman, for he is the senior member of a firm which employs
hundreds of men in making boilers and engines for steam vessels. He
attends to business himself, and is every day at his works, which are
down the river somewhere; but they live in a splendid house in
Fairfax-gardens, and Fanny now receives and goes into a great deal of
what I suppose is called excellent society.'

'I recollect having heard of Mrs. Chadwick's parties, now you mention
the name,' said May, 'and of their having some specialty, but what it
is I cannot remember.'

'They are very grand, very hot, and, I believe, considered very
splendid,' said Eleanor; 'but I do not know that there is anything
particular about them, unless it be the presence of a large number of
artists of different kinds--painters and musical people I mean. Fanny
always takes occasion to say that she never forgets the class of which
she was once a member, but I am bound to say her recognition of them
is something too like patronage for my taste.'

'And you live with Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick, Eleanor? and you are happy?'

'Yes,' said Eleanor, 'I suppose so.'

'That was but a half-hearted answer,' said May. 'Are you really happy?
You, used to speak frankly to me in the old days; are you frank now?'

'I never could be otherwise with you, dear Lady Forestfield, and I
will tell you plainly that just now I have some cause for discomfort.
The general life at Fairfax-gardens is not particularly suited to my
taste; but everybody is especially kind to me, and I should make no
complaint, were it not that recently Fanny seems to have made up her
mind to carry out a project with which I am greatly concerned, and to
which I have a strong objection.'

'This project is, of course, to marry you,' said May, 'to some friend
of her own?'

'Not particularly a friend of hers,' said Eleanor, 'but a man of
fashion, and for the matter of that, a celebrity, a connection with
whom would, she thinks, be advantageous.'

'And you don't care for him?' asked May.

'Not in the faintest degree,' replied Eleanor. 'He is very clever,
very agreeable, and particularly polished and courteous in his manner
towards women; a little too polished perhaps,' she added.

'May I ask his name?' said Lady Forestfield. 'Certainly,' said
Eleanor, with a smile. 'It is a curious one, but his mother or
grandmother--I do not know which--was originally Greek: his name is
Spiridion Pratt.'

Lady Forestfield started. 'Spiridion Pratt!' she echoed; 'I think I
know him; there could not be two men of that name.'

'O, he knows you,' said Eleanor; 'he has been to your house; he was
taken there by Mrs. Hamblin.'

'Exactly,' said Lady Forestfield; 'I remember now.'

'Do you dislike him?' asked Eleanor, looking up astonished at her
friend's evident embarrassment.

'I know--I know very little of Mr. Pratt. And it is to him that your
sister wishes to marry you?'

'Yes,' said Eleanor. 'And from what little you do know of him, you
think I am right in objecting, do you not?'

'I don't say that, dear,' said May, 'but I certainly do not think you
are wrong.'



CHAPTER V.
NOUVEAUX RICHES.


Eleanor Irvine spoke with perfect truth when she said that her
brother-in-law, Mr. Chadwick, was a very rich man. Boiler-making and
engine-supplying, when you have secured almost a monopoly of the
business, are very paying concerns; and very few of the large
steam-shipping companies, not only in England but on the Continent,
did not procure their propelling apparatus from Chadwick and Co. In
the United States, too, the firm was well known and largely employed.
Some of the largest grain elevators in Chicago had been supplied by
them, and the lifts which convey you to your bedroom on the tenth
story at the Jefferson House, Saratoga, or the Great Atlantic Hotel,
Newport, N.J., bear the familiar name. This preëminence in his trade
had all been achieved by Mr. Chadwick himself. He was a very poor boy,
with but a smattering of education, when he first went in as an
apprentice to the drawing-office of the works at Newcastle, the
manager having taken him on out of friendship for his father, then
recently dead; but he went through the whole routine of that
establishment, from the hardest hand-labour to the highest head-work,
until he emerged from it as its owner, and now held it as a kind of
adjunct to his larger and more important establishment on the Thames.
Mr. Chadwick was not a speculative man, and was never tempted to put
out any of his capital with the perspective hope of large interests in
Baratarian loans or investments in the enormous silver mines of Grass
Valley, Colorado. He held a certain number of shares, just sufficient
to make the directors regard it as good policy to keep well with him,
in such steam-shipping companies as he supplied with engines, but he
found that the profits derived from his legitimate undertaking brought
him in income sufficient to satisfy all his wants.

This income enabled him to maintain a handsome residence in
Fairfax-gardens; to entertain company constantly, and with more than
ordinary hospitality; to allow his wife to commit any extravagances
she pleased at the milliner's and the jeweller's, and to have all the
carriages and horses she chose. It gave him a villa on the Thames, and
a shooting-box in Aberdeenshire; and if it did not make him happy,
there were plenty of people who said it ought to have done so, and who
passed their lives in envying him and wishing to be in his place.

On the whole, however, Mr. Chadwick is a happy man. He has an
imperturbably good temper, which no amount of business worry can
upset, and he is very proud of his wife. There were plenty of men of
birth and breeding whom Mr. Chadwick had met in business, and who,
knowing his wealth and the value of a connection with him, would have
been only too glad to introduce the rich boiler-maker to their sisters
and daughters, and to use all their influence to induce those female
members of their family to secure his hand. But Mr. Chadwick, in his
own frank phraseology, 'did not go in for swells;' and though in later
days he was pleased to see a large number of smart people at his
house, and to read their names and titles duly set forth in the next
morning's paper, it was because he knew this gave pleasure to his
wife, whose every wish he delighted in forestalling. When Mr. Chadwick
first saw Miss Irvine, with a rose in her hair and a piece of music in
her hand, in front of the orchestra at the St. James's Hall, and heard
her warble 'Coming through the Rye,' he determined that, if possible,
she should be his wife. The difficulty was not great; the young lady
was ambitious, her father was mercenary; and from the day on which
they were married, 'my Fan' was Mr. Chadwick's first consideration,
ranking even before 'the works,' which up to that time had held
possession of his mind, to the exclusion almost of any other subject.

Mrs. Chadwick was what is called 'an elegant-looking woman,' with dark
complexion, regular features, and a slight figure; her manners were
good, she spoke French and Italian with fluency, had sufficient
shrewdness to catch the pervading tone, and was altogether quite
presentable in society. She had been ambitious when she was only a
concert-singer, and dependent on her own resources. Now that she had a
large income at her command she determined to make her mark; to be
talked of, renowned, the object of curiosity, and the subject of
gossip, was her dearest wish. She could have obtained the notoriety
she wanted in one season, by entering into a desperate flirtation--for
there would have been no lack of men willing to flirt to any extent
with her, some for mere fun, and others in the hope of making a good
thing of it--and there are always plenty of persons ready to spread
scandal and slander. But Mrs. Chadwick had no intention of entering
upon any flirtation, even of the mildest kind; she said she was 'not
naturally given that way,' and moreover she had seen quite enough of
poverty and precarious existence to prevent her from compromising the
very excellent position which fate had assigned her; so she sat
herself calmly down at the foot of the social ladder, determined to
scale it by entertainments given to the best people whom she could
induce to accept her invitations. She began by inviting the wives of
the baronets and members of parliament with whom Mr. Chadwick was
concerned in various business matters; and though these ladies, who
were for the most part intensely respectable, at first hung back,
having heard rumours of Mrs. Chadwick's ante-nuptial professional
experiences, and having a vague idea that she had been 'on the stage,'
their husbands, to whom the business connection with Mr. Chadwick was
valuable, insisted on their not merely accepting the invitation, but
on their behaving themselves without the stiffness and frigidity which
they delighted to display whenever they thought they could safely do
so.

The step thus made was satisfactory, but the society obtained by it
was rather poor. It began to improve when some of the younger members
of the House, and the private secretaries of ministers whom Mr.
Chadwick had now and then occasion to wait upon, found out and
appreciated the excellence of the cuisine and the cellar in
Fairfax-gardens, and not only came themselves when asked, but brought
their friends--guardsmen, Foreign-office clerks, and men about town of
various ages and degrees. So far as the men were concerned, this was
all very well; but Mrs. Chadwick saw with regret that, with the ladies
she had made very little way. The extremely proper and generally
plain-headed wives of the commercial baronets and M.P.s turned up
their eyes at each other in horror at some of the male company, whose
loose living was notorious, and whom they saw dancing attendance in
Fairfax-gardens; dear Lord George never brought dear Lady George, the
Marquis never so much as mentioned the Marchioness, although Mrs.
Chadwick gave him frequent opportunities for doing so; and though
several of the private secretaries chattered volubly enough about
their sisters, no cards from those ladies were ever delivered in
Fairfax-gardens.

Mrs. Chadwick suffered deeply under this social ban; she could not see
the way to fight against it herself, and at last took Charley Ormerod,
one of the private secretaries, and the best leader of a _cotillon_ in
London, into her confidence. Charley was very frank in deed upon the
point. 'If you want to get hold of this sort of people, my dear Mrs.
Chadwick,' said he, 'and 'pon my word I don't see why--you being so
very charming yourself, and all that sort of thing--you will find it
uncommonly difficult. There is so much going on in their own set, that
they won't go anywhere, don't you know, unless it is to meet some
particular person or to see some particular thing. Now your cook is
first class, and Chadwick has some dry champagne that is really A1,
and if there were nothing so good elsewhere in both those ways, they
would come for that; but there is, and so they won't. You will ask how
it is that Madame Schottenberger and Mrs. Stutterheim go into society
when their position is no better than yours, and their houses, I
think, nothing like so nice; but then, you see, both Schottenberger
and Stutterheim are in the City, and they are able, don't you know, to
give these people what one may call a leg-up in the way of making a
little premium on shares. Mr. Chadwick is not in that line; he is the
last man who would think of doing anything of that sort if he were.
Now if you could only give them some specialty. There is that fine
billiard-room at the back; what do you say to turning it into a
theatre, having a stage at the end, and that sort of thing? And there
are lots of amateurs who would be only too delighted to come and act;
or you could get up tableaux, don't you know, with pretty girls, and
have Eardley or some of those fellows to pose them, and then supper,
don't you know, and that sort of thing; if you could do one, and just
get it talked about, everybody would be wild to come to the next.'

Mrs. Chadwick ponders over this idea, but is afraid it will not do, at
least so far as dramatic representation is concerned. The tableaux
might be managed quietly at some future time; but Mr. Chadwick, whose
childhood was passed among strict dissenters in the North, has a
strong objection to theatrical entertainments, and his wife thinks
best to give him no cause for complaint. Nevertheless, the attempt to
secure superior society must be made; and it is first made with
concerts. Mrs. Chadwick drives round to some of those whom she used to
know in her professional days; old Sir Gottlieb Moto, the famous
music-master, who smiles and rubs his hands, and will give her all the
assistance in his power, and Mr. Bluck, the well-known _entrepreneur_
of the Ante-Chamber Concerts, who every year produces such a wonderful
prospectus, and who knows far too much about music to attempt to play
or sing. By the aid of these gentlemen a very excellent concert was
given, at which all the noted singers of the day were present, and
were exceptionally treated in being asked to remain after their
labours were over, and mingle with the company. Mrs. Chadwick made a
great point of this, and went about murmuring to the wives and
daughters of the baronets and M.P.s that she did not forget the time
when she herself was in a similar position, and that she would always
be glad to welcome her brothers and sisters in art; at which the wives
and daughters muttered 'How charming!' to her face, and shrugged their
shoulders and raised their eyebrows to each other when her back was
turned.

All those who were present congratulated Mrs. Chadwick on her
delightful concert, but she was shrewd enough to see that she was no
nearer the end she had proposed to herself--the entertainment of a
better class of society; so Charley Ormerod was again called into
consultation, with the result that the tableaux were determined
upon, and set about in earnest. There was no difficulty in finding
good-looking young people to volunteer for the different characters so
soon as the idea was promulgated, and it was understood that the thing
was to be carried out without reference to expense. The sisters of two
or three of the private secretaries, who knew the fascination of
dishevelled hair and bare arms, and who saw their way to Andromache
lamenting over the dead body of Hector, or Jephtha's daughter in her
solitude amongst the mountain fastnesses, induced their brothers to
propose them at once; and amongst Mr. Chadwick's plutocratic Tyburnian
connection there were many pretty girls only too glad to be utilised.
The committee of management was composed of men of the highest
artistic repute in London. Old Mr. Tabardy, who passed his early
life in writing burlesques, and whose latter days are spent in even a
more comic way in the manufacture of pedigrees and the search for
coats-of-arms for parvenus, came up from the Heralds' College, bearing
two elaborate books of costume pictures; Mr. Eardley, R.A., who looks
like Glaucus the Athenian, was there to superintend the embodiment of
one of his own dreamy sensuous creations; and Mr. Gurth, who would be
Eardley's shadow if he had not a large body and capable brain of his
own, was of course there also. Mogg, R.A., came (of course in his
worsted comforter, though the month was June), and gave excellent
advice and assistance in preparing a tableau of the days of Charles
II.; and Ghoule, the great tragedian, who was never before seen in the
daylight, 'made up' the gentleman who was to portray the dead body of
Hector in the most approved charnel-house fashion. Each tableau was to
be ushered in by music, and the choice of that music and its direction
was left to Mr. Shamus O'Voca, who is as popular in society as he is
clever in his art. Auguste and Nathan were nearly worried out of their
lives; and in addition to them, by favour of the managers, various
theatrical tailors were busily engaged in the preparation of costumes.
All this preparation began to be talked of in those circles amongst
which Mrs. Chadwick most wanted it made known; faint wishes for
invitations were heard, which, after the full-dress rehearsal
carefully arranged for by Charley Ormerod and duly notified in the
newspapers, grew into furious desire. Under Charley's advice, Mrs.
Chadwick at first stood firm, and issued very few cards to persons
whom she had not previously known. 'There would be another
representation later on,' she said to those asking on behalf of their
friends, 'and they could come then.' This reply, of course, fanned the
flame--they must come the first time, nothing could prevent them; and
eventually, by what Charley called 'jockey-ship' And Mrs. Chadwick
'diplomacy,' the boilermaker's wife had the pleasure of receiving one
duchess, two marchionesses, four countesses, and a great number of
lords and ladies at the first representation of her tableaux.

From that time forth Mrs. Chadwick's course was easy. After her second
season, now just concluded, she was honoured by the presence of
royalty at her tableaux, and a garden-party which she gave at the
villa on the Thames was pronounced the most perfect fête seen for many
years; the description of it and of the company assembled filled a
column of the _Sluice_, a journal not generally given to reporting
such matters; and old Lord Quoch wrote a poem about it, which was made
to do duty as letter-press to a fanciful river-side illustration, and
published in the _Albert-gate Magazine_. By this means Mrs. Chadwick
was fully established as one of the personages of the day, and her
movements were duly chronicled among the 'fashionable arrangements'
advertised by the fashionable journal.

With all her frivolity and her hankering after great society, the
woman was kindhearted, as she had proved by her treatment of her
sister. When in the days gone by it was proposed by Mr. Irvine that
Eleanor should be sent upon the stage, the plan was rather approved of
than otherwise by Fanny, who thought it time that her sister should be
earning her own livelihood, and saw nothing to be complained of in the
means by which it was proposed she should do so. After her marriage,
indeed, while enlarging on her own experiences in the concert-rooms,
she would aver it to be a very different arena from the stage, would
shake her head at the mention of ladies of the theatrical profession,
of whom not more than two (who were supposed to have certificates of
character from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Editor of _Punch_)
were admitted into Mrs. Chadwick's society. But formerly, when there
had seemed to be a chance of thirty shillings a week being added to
the general income, Fanny not merely had felt no scruple at Eleanor's
following this despised profession, but had rated her sister soundly
when the girl expressed her horror at the career in store for her; nor
while she was still toiling in concert-rooms was she best pleased that
Eleanor should be leading a comparatively easy life in that very
society to which she, Fanny, had always aspired. After her marriage,
however, all was very different. Mrs. Chadwick then thought it
scarcely right that her sister should be 'dependent on a fine lady,'
more especially a fine lady who could not be induced to take any
notice of Mrs. Chadwick, although that worthy woman had what children
call 'spelled' for it in every possible way; and when Mr. Irvine died,
Fanny took her sister from her father's poor lodging, to which she had
returned after May Dunmow's marriage, and bade her be happy at
Fairfax-gardens until she should possess a home of her own.

At Fairfax-gardens Eleanor lived happily enough until this question of
her marriage arose to cause her annoyance. Occasions of difference
between the sisters had previously been slight and few, for Eleanor
was in the habit of giving way to her sister's whims, and save when
she was requested to give up her black dress at the end of six
months--a period which Mrs. Chadwick thought quite long enough to show
any outward signs of lamentation for her deceased father--she had but
little difficulty in doing so. On that point, however, she was firm;
and as it would have been impossible for her in her mourning attire to
take part in the festivities which commenced so soon as the prescribed
time was over, Eleanor did not mix with the general society, but only
saw those who were intimate friends at the house. Amongst the latter
was Mr. Spiridion Pratt, a dilettante gentleman of five or six and
thirty, who, having an excellent fortune and a cultivated taste, chose
to pass the 'fallow leisure of his life' with painters, sculptors,
writers, musicians, and actors, and to attempt himself to shine a
little in each of those vocations in which his friends were
proficient. Poems signed 'S.P.' were not uncommon in the pages of the
fashionable magazines; the President of the Royal Academy (remembering
a commission which he had received and executed for painting an
equestrian portrait of the late Mr. Pratt for presentation to the
Muffletubbe Hunt, of which he had been M.F.H.) had made a very
graceful allusion at one of the annual banquets to 'an amateur
contribution of great merit which graces our walls,' and all the
R.A.s of Spiridion's acquaintance, who were in the habit of dining
with him very often, tried to catch his downcast eyes, and in their
after-dinner perambulations through the room nudged each other as they
pointed out a rather gloomy canvas representing a Rhenish wineglass, a
bunch of grapes, half a cut orange, and two boiled prawns, which,
under the title of 'Still Life,' had been S.P.'s contribution to the
exhibition. It is needless to say that 'Ballads of the Blighted,'
words and music by Spiridion Pratt, Esq., are on every piano, and that
two of them, 'My Muffineer' and 'Take, O take the toast away,' have
achieved an unparalleled success.

With all these social advantages, and with a certain amount of good
looks of the black-eyed, straight-nosed, hairdresser's-dummy style,
Mr. Pratt was naturally a favourite with the ladies, and certain
_affaires_ with which his name was mixed up had been freely discussed
in society. These _affaires_ Mrs. Chadwick professed to look upon as
mere trifles, though one of them had lasted for a considerable time,
and was supposed to be even then in existence. Any discreditable
connection of the kind, however, could not possibly be known to a lady
of Mrs. Chadwick's virtue, and wholly ignoring it, she laid plans for
making a match between her sister and the accomplished Spiridion.
Eleanor, as we have seen, was by no means pleased at the idea; but Mr.
Pratt was not merely much struck by the girl's beauty, but thought it
would be very delightful to have the moulding of such a young and
ingenuous creature, and to undertake the formation of her character on
a plan peculiarly his own. The already existing connection threatened
to prove an obstacle; but that connection must be broken at some time
or other, and Spiridion thought he would have little chance of finding
a better excuse than Eleanor Irvine.

Such was the state of affairs at the time when Eleanor was paying her
stolen visits to Lady Forestfield; necessarily stolen, because Mrs.
Chadwick imagined that all connection between Eleanor and her quondam
patroness had ceased, and would have been horribly scandalised at the
notion that her sister was in the habit of seeing one 'who had so
painfully forgotten herself.' Fanny had never had any liking for Lord
Stortford's family, and the fact that her younger sister had been
preferred to her for adoption in the Grosvenor-square household had
never ceased to rankle in her mind. When, therefore, the story of Lady
Forestfield's disgrace became known, Mrs. Chadwick made it the theme
of many bitter discourses, with which she improved the occasion, and
inflicted the deepest pain on her sister when kindness was needed.

When she left Podbury-street after the conversation recorded in the
last chapter, Eleanor found herself suffering from unusual depression.
Something in Lady Forestfield's manner when speaking about Spiridion
Pratt convinced the girl that May knew more than she was willing to
tell. So far as Mr. Pratt himself was concerned Eleanor had no feeling
in the matter, and had she regarded him in the light of a common
acquaintance she would have pronounced him to be a gentleman, but
rather a vain and silly man. She knew, however, that Mrs. Chadwick's
project had not been lightly conceived, and would not be easily
departed from, and objectionable as the idea of, marriage with Mr.
Pratt had been before, since she had discussed it with her friend
the vague dread with which May Forestfield's words had inspired
her made her regard it with increased aversion. On her arrival at
Fairfax-gardens she found her sister just returned from her drive, and
looking through the cards which had been left during her absence.

'"P.P.C." on nearly all of them,' said Mrs. Chadwick, looking up.
'There was quite a thin Park, and there is not the smallest doubt that
everybody is leaving town; and it was only this morning that James
told me there was no possibility of our getting away for another
month. That won't matter to you, Eleanor, I suppose,' she said as she
seated herself; 'for you don't seem to me to care whether it is the
season or not--indeed, I think you are rather happier when nobody
comes.'

'I am sure of it,' said Eleanor quietly.

'Well, my dear child, you really must get out of these moping ways,'
said Fanny. 'As I have told you so many times, you should leave off
your mourning and come out with me; a drive in the Park would have
done you infinitely more good than sitting with that invalid
schoolfellow of yours; for I suppose that is where you have been all
the day?'

'Yes,' said Eleanor, with a slight blush; 'that is where I have been.'

'I can't understand it; for my part,' said Mrs. Chadwick, 'I don't
believe I should be alive if I did not have a drive every day, and I
was just looking forward to Scotland to revive me. However, I daresay
we shall do tolerably well; there are sure to be some people left in
town, and we shall be more thrown together with them than is possible
when all the world has to be attended to. It is time to dress now,
dear; and will you please make yourself look particularly nice?'

'Why?' asked Eleanor.

'For my sake,' said Fanny. Then stepping to her sister she said, in
what she intended to be an arch voice, but what was really a somewhat
angular manner, 'Spiridion Pratt is coming to dinner.'



CHAPTER VI.
A LITTLE DINNER.


Mrs. Chadwick was in the drawing-room when Eleanor came down, and
looked up as her sister entered the room to see whether Eleanor had
adopted her suggestion as to her dress. A plain black-silk gown with
simple muslin frilling such as Eleanor wore was not much to Mrs.
Chadwick's taste, for it was her custom to attire herself in bright
colours made in the extremest fashion, and to wear about her head and
shoulders so many flowers and trinkets as to make her look like a
combination of a florist's shop and a jeweller's window. This was done
partly in accordance with her own rather vulgar taste, and partly out
of desire to please Mr. Chadwick, who, all generous as he was, liked
to see what he called 'his money's worth.' For this reason, though a
great patron of art, he never bought specimens of the old masters,
arguing that there was 'nothing to look at in them;' never gave still
champagne; and on the occasion of his entertainments liked to have as
few of the blinds drawn as possible, in order that the outside world
might see what was going on. But Mrs. Chadwick, who was in no way
jealous of her sister, could not help admitting to herself that she
had never seen Eleanor more to advantage; and the gentleman who was
sitting by her roused up at once from the somewhat indolent manner in
which he had been carrying on conversation and awoke to life. A
somewhat romantic-looking gentleman this--rather like a Velasquez
portrait--with long dark hair parted in the middle and taken off
behind the ears, dark eyes, regular features, peaked beard, and sallow
complexion. He wore tiny mosaic studs in his shirt, and a large
antique cameo on his little finger; had the finest line of coral links
for a watch-chain; and during his talk with Mrs. Chadwick had been
engaged in contemplating with great admiration his little feet, which
were incased in black-silk socks and shoes with silver buckles. This
was Mr. Spiridion Pratt, who rose to greet Miss Irvine, and to express
his delight at finding her still in town.

'I was just saying to Mrs. Chadwick,' he murmured, 'that, delighted as
I have always been to find myself a guest at this house, I never found
it so delightful as now, when it is positively an oasis in this desert
of London.'

'We may think ourselves lucky in securing you, Mr. Pratt,' said
Eleanor. 'I should have thought that you, who are so essentially a
portion of the world, would have been with the world.'

'Where should I go to, my dear Miss Irvine?' said Spiridion
plaintively. 'To Goodwood, to sit on the burnt lawn in a broiling sun,
with a hundred wretches bawling their wagers in my ears; to Cowes, to
sit on the damp deck of a yacht with my knees up to my chin, to have
to move perpetually while the men shift their horrible sails, and to
get my fingers covered with pitch and tar? That's what the world is
doing just now, I believe, and I confess it has no attraction in my
eyes.'

'Mrs. Hamblin is still in town, is she not?' asked Mrs. Chadwick,
looking fixedly at him.

'Yes, I believe she is,' said Spiridion, with the faintest trace of
colour appearing in his cheeks; 'Mr. Hamblin's official position
prevents his getting away just yet, and--and--'

'Exactly,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'Where will they go when Mr. Hamblin
can get away?'

'I have no idea for certain,' said Spiridion, who was growing
uncomfortable under Mrs. Chadwick's gaze. 'I don't think, however,
that they will leave town till October, and then I heard something of
their going to Italy.'

'You had yourself some idea of wintering in Rome, had you not?' asked
his unswerving questioner.

'I had at one time, but that was before you--I mean to say that I have
given up that notion, and I am now by no means certain of my plans.'

To relieve him from his confusion, Mr. Spiridion Pratt was only
too glad to welcome the entrance of Mr. Chadwick; a big, burly,
broad-shouldered man of about fifty, with a bald head fringed with
crisp iron-gray hair, clean-shaved ruddy face, merry gray eyes, and a
manner redeemed from vulgarity by its hearty geniality.

'Glad to see you, Mr. Pratt,' said he, seizing Spiridion's little hand
in a tight grip, which printed off an impression of the cameo on his
other finger. 'How d'ye do? Nell, you were off early this morning,
young lady; I thought to see you at breakfast, but they told me you
had gone out.'

'To see her sick schoolfellow, you know,' said Mrs. Chadwick. Then
turning towards Spiridion Pratt, she whispered, 'She has such a tender
heart.'

'Quite right,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'always look after those who are
down on their luck, Nelly. I recollect when I was a youngster being
laid by the heels with typhus fever down at Jarrow, when I would have
given anything for the sight of a kindly woman's face at my bedside;
but I never saw anybody except the pitman's wife who kept the cottage
where I lodged, and the doctor attached to the works, who had to
attend to about two hundred of us for thirty pounds a year. I pulled
through somehow, though.'

'Thanks to our blessed Nature,' said Spiridion, with a side-glance at
Eleanor, to see if she were looking at him. 'What beneficent wonders
does she not work when left to herself!'

'She has worked the beneficent wonder of giving me a rare appetite
this evening,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'not that that is a wonder though,
when I come to think of it, as I have it pretty nigh every day about
this time. My Fan, shall I ring for dinner, or do you expect any more
swells?'

Mrs. Chadwick crimsoned as the objectionable word--of the perpetual
use of which she had tried so hard to break her husband--struck upon
her ear; but seeing that Mr. Pratt, being engaged in conversation with
Eleanor, evidently had not heard it, she merely said, 'I am waiting
for Mr. Eardley, my dear James, and a friend of his whom he has
promised to bring with him.'

'Any friend of his will be welcome,' said Mr. Chadwick. 'I like
Eardley, and I like his pictures, though I don't quite understand
them; but he puts in plenty of colour; and though I wish he wouldn't
paint so many people without their clothes, I--'

'James!' whispered his wife; and at that moment the door was thrown
open, and the butler announced Mr. Eardley and Mr. Huff. It was not,
however, under that name that Mr. Eardley introduced his friend to the
hostess. 'Let me present to you Sir Nugent Uffington, my dear Mrs.
Chadwick,' said he; 'a friend whose acquaintance I made under strange
circumstances in a wild place several years ago, and to whose kindness
and attention I owe my life.'

'Pray don't believe a word of this, Mrs. Chadwick,' said Uffington,
with a somewhat cynical smile; 'our friend Eardley carries that
romantic spirit which is so invaluable to him in his painting into his
daily life, and unconsciously allows it to colour his utterances. His
recovery was due rather to my medicine-chest than to my exertions, and
there was nothing wonderful about it.'

'You say that out of courtesy, Sir Nugent, but I have heard Mr.
Eardley speak of it before,' said Mrs. Chadwick, with her most
gracious smile. 'Let me introduce you to my husband--Sir Nugent
Uffington.'

'Glad to know you, sir,' said Mr. Chadwick, putting out his hand--'glad
to know any friend of Mr. Eardley's. Are you in this line?' pointing
to the pictures on the walls.

'Not I, Mr. Chadwick,' said Uffington, with a laugh. 'I wish I were
anything as useful. I have the misfortune to do nothing, to have been
doing it all my life, and,' he added in rather a lower tone, 'to have
made a singularly bad job of it.'

And then dinner was announced, and the conversation stopped.

Charley Ormerod was quite right when he spoke with such high praise of
the quality of the dinners and the wines in Fairfax-gardens. Mr.
Chadwick looked after these himself. He had a natural taste for good
living, and though in his early days he had been quite content with a
chump of coarse-grained meat broiled by himself over the furnace fire,
and washed down by some cold weak tea out of a soda-water bottle, as
soon as he could provide himself with better fare he took care to have
it. 'A man is like an engine,' he used to say; 'his bearings get hot,
and the whole thing goes crank and stiff, unless his works  have been
properly greased. Half my planning and thinking is done at night,
after a good dinner and a bottle of fizz, when my Fan's in bed, and
all these chattering servants are out of the way, and I sit up in the
library and put down all I have got in my head. It's no good to
attempt to plan anything up in the North, for there they have their
heavy meal in the middle of the day, and after that I am good for
nothing but to go to sleep, or to see what I have ordered is carried
out; but here, after a _filly dy sole_ and a bottle of _Irroy_, I am
as clear as a bell and as fresh as a two-year-old.'

The dinner on this occasion was especially good, for it was the host's
boast that, whatever kudos he might have gained in the world for his
'large spreads,' his 'little feeds,' or, as Mrs. Chadwick called them,
their dinners '_en petit comité_,' were really much better. Spiridion
Pratt, who was a _gourmet_, revelled in the various dishes, and the
rare wines brought a slight flush into Uffington's usually pale
cheeks.

'Like that sherry, Sir Nugent?' cried the host, beaming from his side
of the round table. 'That's some of the Emperor's wine from the
Tooleries. I was in Paris at the time of the sale, and when I tasted,
I determined to have some. This is the real stuff, I know, because I
took care to have it put aside and brought over at once. But, lor
bless you, at some of the houses where my Fan and me dine--you know
the parties I am alluding to, Eardley--they have got some stuff which
passes for the Emperor's wine that old Nap would never have put his
beak into.'

'My dear James!' murmured Mrs. Chadwick.

'Fact, Fan,' said her husband, who misunderstood the gist of the
hint--'never put his beak into; though I daresay the Swassers--what a
fellow I am! there I have been and let the name out!--well, I daresay
the Swassers paid a long figure for it, and believed it was old Nap's
own tipple. Poor old Nap! fancy him gone, and Ujaney left alone!'

'Were you ever at the imperial court?' asked Spiridion.

'O yes,' replied the host. 'We supplied a set of engines for the
imperial yacht Leagle, I think it was called--the Eagle--very like
English, ain't it? And there was some talk about our building a new
vessel for him, and I was sent for to see the Emperor about it. I
shall never forget. Just before I started, I was talking to some funny
fellows I knew then who wrote in the newspapers, and when I told them
I was going to see the Emperor, one of them, named Rupert Robinson,
said, "Well, then, just have the kindness to ask him for the
eighteenpence he owes me." "Eighteenpence!" says I. "How can he owe
you eighteenpence?" "Why," he says, "I often used to see him in the
old days at Lady Blessington's, at Gore House, on a Sunday night; and
one night we came home together in a cab, and he asked me to pay his
share as well as my own, as he had no change, and he would pay me next
time he saw me. Next time I saw him," Robinson said, "he was driving
in his carriage, with an escort riding beside him, and I thought that
was a bad time to ask him for the eighteenpence; so he owes it me
still."'

'I suppose you did not ask the Emperor for it?' said Spiridion.

'Not I,' said Mr. Chadwick, with a laugh. 'I had enough to do to mind
my own business. Our friend Eardley here tells me that you have been a
great traveller, Sir Nugent?'

'Yes, I have knocked about a good deal, Mr. Chadwick,' said Uffington,
turning towards him. 'I have been and done and suffered as much as
most men.'

'Quite like a dear old verb, isn't he?' said Eardley, shaking back his
clustering locks and smiling at Eleanor.

'I had a great notion of travelling once myself,' said Mr. Chadwick.
'When I was first apprentice, at the Jarrow works, I thought I would
like to see the world, and I was very nearly running off to be a
cabin-boy.'

'My dear James!' murmured Mrs. Chadwick. Then turning to Spiridion
with a sweet smile, 'You too, Mr. Pratt, have been a great traveller;
only the other day I was reading to Eleanor that delightful
description of your being stopped by the brigands in Greece.'

'The description, I imagine, was a good deal pleasanter than the
reality,' murmured Eardley. 'They kept dear old Prattikins on very
short commons, and wouldn't let him have a comb to do his back hair
with.'

'Well, I'm a queer kind of John Bull, I suppose, in my notions,' said
Mr. Chadwick; 'but I don't hold much with all this travelling abroad
and intercourse with foreign nations. It's all very well so far as
business is concerned--gives us an outlet for our goods, and enables
us to pick up a good many wrinkles in matters in which these fellows
beat us hollow--but I don't think we have gained much by being so hand
and glove with these chaps, having them at our houses, and that sort
of thing.'

'Ungrateful monster,' laughed Eardley, 'to say such things when the
work of the French stranger within your gates has scarcely left the
table! Could any one but a Frenchman have made that _bonne femme_
soup? Is there a British hand light enough to have turned out that
_soufflet_?'

'I wasn't talking about cooking,' said Mr. Chadwick; 'there they're
A1, and no mistake. When I was a lad we used to think that all
Frenchmen were either cooks or dancing-masters; and I imagined all
French boys were brought up in the belief that Englishmen were either
sailors or grooms. No; what I meant to say,' he continued, looking a
little more serious, 'is, that I don't think we are quite so
respectable since we have mixed so freely with foreigners.'

'You are not alluding to ourselves, James, I suppose,' interposed Mrs.
Chadwick. 'I am sure that--'

'No, no, my dear Fan,' said her husband; 'I mean English people
generally. It don't appear to me that we are so strong in temperance,
soberness, and chastity--those three virtues which the Catechism tells
us to look sharp after--as we were before the days of excursions
abroad and cheap tourists' tickets.'

'I don't see that anything could possibly be more temperate than the
French and the Italian gentlemen who come to this house, James. Some
of the Germans are large eaters, we know, but seem to be even more so
than they are from the manner in which they handle their knives and
forks and swallow their food.'

'I rather think that it is to a falling off in the other virtues named
to which Mr. Chadwick is making special allusion,' said Spiridion
Pratt, with a smile. 'Some of our continental visitors have recently
proved themselves rather destructive to the peace of families.'

'Are you speaking generally, or alluding to any special case?' asked
Uffington.

'I was speaking generally,' said Spiridion; 'but there are doubtless
special cases which would point the--immoral.'

'There is one, a very flagrant case, which quite bears out what my
husband says,' observed Mrs. Chadwick, drawing herself up and looking
as virtuous as the mother of the Gracchi. 'I understand that you have
only just returned to England, Sir Nugent Uffington, and therefore,
perhaps, you have not heard of it--the scandal about Lady
Forestfield.'

Uffington bowed coldly. He had heard some mention of that sad story,
he said.

'A sad story indeed, and a great disgrace to our English nobility, of
which we are naturally so proud,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'Anything worse
than the conduct of Lady Forestfield could not well be imagined.'

Eleanor Irvine, who had been endeavouring to hide her agitation as
this conversation proceeded, could restrain herself no longer. 'Surely
Lady Forestfield is not entirely to blame, Fanny!' she cried. 'Surely
some excuse is to be made for one who was cruelly treated and almost
wholly deserted by her husband, whose sole recognition of her was to
throw dust in the world's eyes!'

'Eleanor,' cried Mrs. Chadwick, bridling up, 'I cannot understand what
you mean.' Then, seeing that the sharpness of her tone had been
remarked by the company, she changed her voice, and said, with
affected gaiety, 'You must allow me, as an old married woman, to be a
much better judge of such matters than you. It is not to be surprised
at,' she said, turning to Spiridion Pratt, 'that Eleanor, who has the
sweetest nature in the world, should feel a strong compassion for Lady
Forestfield, for they were brought up together, and in their childhood
were quite like sisters, though Lady Forestfield is two or three years
the elder of the two. I admire her generosity,' she added, in a lower
tone; 'but of course it is my duty, in my position as elder sister and
married woman, to rebuke the expression of such sentiments.'

'Gad, I don't see that,' returned Spiridion in the same undertone.
'She seems to me perfectly charming, and it is, we are told, the duty
of angels to plead for the fallen.'

'You asked me if I had heard anything of this wretched case,' said
Uffington to Mrs. Chadwick. 'What has been mentioned to me is, that
for some time before their separation Lord Forestfield had been in the
habit of treating his wife with systematic rudeness and even cruelty.
If that be the case, he has himself to thank for all that has
subsequently happened to him.'

'It is as bad a case against him as could possibly be,' said Eardley,
turning to Uffington, who was his neighbour, and speaking quietly.
'Both before and after the birth of her child he worried her so
savagely, that the baby, naturally small and weak, only lived a few
months. She was desperately fond of this infant, and from the time of
its death, which she attributed entirely to her husband's misconduct,
she has been scarcely accountable for her actions.'

'That, I suppose, Mr. Eardley,' said Mrs. Chadwick, who caught the
last words, 'will be the excuse for Lady Forestfield taking up with
such people as Mrs. Ingram and Lady Northaw, and declining to
associate with others who, though they cannot boast of being fast,
have at least a reputation, and are visited by some of the best
people.'

'I don't think,' said Mr. Chadwick, who had been silent for some time,
'that we ought to lay the blame wholly upon one or the other of these
unfortunate young people. I don't quite agree with my Fan that Lady
F.'s the party in fault, though I daresay she was flighty, and didn't
keep herself as strict as she would have done had she lived half a
century two ago; and I don't think Lord F. is to be entirely blamed,
though from what I have seen of him in one or two matters of business
he is a roughish customer. My verdict should be against the third
person in the case; the man who, in the guise of a friend, comes into
a house where, to all outward appearance at least, and for anything
that he could tell, things were going on quite smoothly, and takes
advantage of the opportunities of his intimacy to bring ruin upon one
and misery upon both. Upon both, I say. Don't tell me--whatever sort
of man this Lord Forestfield may be, however glad he may be now to be
freed from his wife, he will not be able to give up all thought of
her. He may get rid of her, as of course he will; and he may marry
again, as they say he wants to; but he cannot get rid of the memory of
her, let him be as happy as he may. Years hence he will find himself
thinking about her, wondering what has become of her, what she may be
like then--thinking of the early days of their courtship, when she was
a pretty girl and he a likely young fellow, when their lines lay in
pleasant places and all that the world held good seemed to be in store
for them. Lord, Lord, they will be wretched enough then! The crime in
a case of this kind belongs to the seducer. Don't you think so, Sir
Nugent Uffington?'

Uffington started for an instant, as did Eardley, to whom his story
was known. Then he said quietly, 'No doubt; but it brings its own
punishment with it sooner or later, as he will find.'

The conversation then turned into another channel, and soon afterwards
the ladies retired.

Uffington, who had been much struck with Eleanor's outburst in defence
of Lady Forestfield, made up his mind to have some farther talk with
her; but when they reached the drawing-room they found Mrs. Chadwick
alone.

'Eleanor had a headache,' the hostess explained to Spiridion Pratt;
'and though I did all I could to persuade her, I found it impossible
to make her await your coming.'

'She was right,' Uffington muttered to himself, pondering over this as
he walked home. 'Headache or no headache, she is far too sensible a
girl to waste her time on such a donkey as that man Pratt. There must
be something more in Lady Forestfield than I imagined to enlist the
sympathies of such a girl as this. For the first time for years I
really begin to feel interested in something.'



CHAPTER VII.
THE MORNING AFTER.


When Sir Nugent Uffington woke the next morning, instead of, according
to his usual custom, yawning and composing himself for another nap, he
roused up at once. It is for a psychologist to explain how it is that
the subject uppermost in our minds invariably flashes across our
thoughts at the first instant of shaking off our slumbers, and that we
go to the pleasure or business of the day with a light or heavy heart,
according to our impressions on waking. That acceptance which has so
nearly run out; that confoundedly incautious letter which, on the spur
of the moment, we wrote to a man who is now doubtless making use of
it; that awkward dilemma in which, without any serious intentions, we
placed ourselves with Smith's wife--all these things rise before us
with as much but not more certainty than the recollections of our
successful after-dinner speech, of thrilling tones and touches at that
special interview on the previous evening, or of the assurance from
our attorney that the long-protracted lawsuit was coming to an end at
last, and that the judgment could not fail to be in our favour.
Through the Gate of Ivory and through the Gate of Horn come dreams and
thoughts to sleeping man, who is acted upon by them in his waking
moments.

Nugent Uffington had been so long unaccustomed to anything like the
smallest excitement, his life for so many years past had gone on
slowly and monotonously, that he could not at first understand what it
was that caused him to rouse up briskly, and with a certain hitherto
unwonted feeling of interest. A little reflection brought before him
the events of the previous evening, and he lay lazily back on his
pillow, thinking them through and making his comments upon them.

'It is a curious thing,' he said to himself 'that a man of my age and
experience should find himself suddenly _intrigué_ about the affairs
of a set of people, some of whom I never saw till Wednesday, and one
of whom I could scarcely be said to have seen at all. And yet
undoubtedly I was much amused, and something more than that, at the
proceedings of those queer people with whom Eardley took me to dine
last night. There was an honesty and a sense of right about that
genial rough fellow, the host, which was to me infinitely pleasanter
and more refreshing than the _fade_ nonsense talked by people who are
far better educated, and who are supposed to be better mannered;
though unintentionally, in his great blundering way, he came down hot
and heavy upon me, and sent his blade through the joints in my
harness. I wonder how I looked under the infliction? I must ask
Eardley, whose glance I caught at the moment; but I have a notion that
to him, at least, I must have shown that the hit had gone home.
Strange that after all these years anything which in the slightest
degree resembles or hinges upon my life with Julie should have such an
effect upon me. All the time that that good honest fellow was droning
away about the impossibility of Forestfield's being able to shake off
the memory of this wife whom he has just deserted--and I think
Chadwick was right there, it is impossible to lay such ghosts--I was
thinking of that day, when I first induced her to meet me at the Great
Exhibition, when we were hidden away in the Machinery Court amongst
all kinds of wonderful engines, as much to ourselves as if we had been
in a palm-grove in Africa. At this instant I can see her in the thin
muslin dress which she wore, the bright gold chain round her neck, the
tiny parasol swinging open over her shoulders; can distinguish that
soft violet perfume, which seemed to be a portion of herself, and--I
imagined I had cured myself even of thinking of these things! "The
crime in a case of this sort belongs to the seducer--don't you think
so, Sir Nugent Uffington?" It was a home thrust. I wonder whether I
turned red or white, or betrayed myself in any way to the rest of the
party? The man never meant to sting me--he hadn't made his money in
those days, and such a story was not likely to penetrate to Newcastle,
though Manchester and its neighbourhood must have heard enough of the
wrongs of the injured husband, and Mrs. Chadwick must have been a mere
child at the time. That man Pratt may have heard something about it,
but, donkey that he is, he is decently behaved, and made no sign. I
don't think I should quite like that young girl, Mrs. Chadwick's
sister, to have Mr. Pratt's version of the affair though, for I don't
think he would make the best case for any one else, and I am rather
interested in Miss Eleanor Irvine; not for her _beaux yeux_, God
knows, for I am past any attraction from that kind of thing; I don't
know what for, unless it is for the manner in which she spoke up for
her friend, Lady Forestfield. How the girl's eyes flashed, and what
ringing scorn and defiance there was in her tone as she defended her
absent friend! Men do not do that sort of thing if any of their
particular acquaintances is attacked; they content themselves with a
very mild protest; but this girl plainly meant to hit hard, and was
all too many for that conventional moralist, her sister, who made a
bad retreat of it. Those two women do not pull well together, it is
impossible they should; for one is all natural fire, and the other all
artificial ice. Mrs. Chadwick is evidently bent upon throwing this
pretty girl at the head of Mr. Pratt, who is graciously condescending
to spread out his palms to catch her; but Miss Eleanor, I imagine,
does not intend to allow herself to be tossed about for her sister's
amusement or advantage, and she will hold to her friend whom the
worldly-wise Mrs. Chadwick so roundly denounces. Both these women,
each in her own way, evidently feel strongly about that matter. There
must have been a further discussion about it in the drawing-room, in
which the married lady must have carried the day and reduced her
sister to tears, or she would not have quitted the room for the mere
sake of shirking a further interview with Spiridion Pratt. I am
actually curious to see more of those people and to watch the progress
of affairs there; for an idle than with all his time to fill up it
will afford at all events occupation, and perhaps amusement. Moreover,
I may in some way or other--one can never tell how--be able to lighten
the burden which this poor deserted woman seems to have brought upon
herself, which, as a voluntary act on the part of the "seducer," may
perhaps be looked upon as some expiation of his "crime."'

And with a shrug, Nugent Uffington rang for his valet and turned out
of bed. He was pretending to eat his breakfast, dallying with his
toast and grumbling over the newsless newspaper, when Mr. Eardley was
announced.

Nothing could be more unlike the conventional idea of an artist than
Mr. Eardley's appearance, so far as dress was concerned. His classical
profile and hyacinthine locks were all that could be looked for in
those Greek heroes whom he loved to paint; indeed, it was said, and
not without truth, that his looking-glass supplied him with the
best models. But in his costume he not merely despised the velvet
shooting-coat and general looseness of garb which are supposed to be
characteristic of his calling, but affected a neatness and precision
which were in strong contrast with the prevailing loudness of taste.
He was a man of excellent education and information, who had taken up
the profession of a painter simply because it was the first that came
to his hand, and who had continued it because he saw his way to large
prices and high social position, but who had talent and pluck enough
to have succeeded in several other callings had he felt so disposed.
Mr. Eardley's talent was, moreover, of a very different kind from that
of Spiridion Pratt, and although the latter was always putting himself
forward, whilst the former never made any public appearance outside
his adopted art, Mr. Eardley's self-contained reticence was regarded
as evidence of much more power than Mr. Pratt's perpetual attempts.
There were few men to whom the world had shown so much of its sunny
side, fewer still who would have been so little spoiled by the
indulgence. Dick Tinto and Jack Whitewash, with their tobacco-smelling
beards, their paint-bedaubed jackets, and their dirty hands, and their
companions of the Palette Club, used to revile Frank Eardley, calling
him swell and stuck-up beast; but when the first lay ill for six weeks
with the fever, it was Frank's purse which induced the doctor to come
in and the broker's man to go out; and when Jack Whitewash swaggered
about the good position awarded to his picture at the Academy, he
little knew that it was owing to Frank's interposition with the
council. Eardley mixed but little with men of his own profession,
though he took much interest in all its charitable and social
institutions at the periodical gatherings, where he spoke with great
readiness and fluency; and though he went a great deal into society he
had but very few intimates. For Nugent Uffington, Eardley entertained
a great liking; the kindness shown to him by Nugent at their first
meeting had touched him very deeply, and there was something in
Uffington's solitude and isolation--which was even more noticeable now
in the midst of the London world than it had been in the wild and
uncivilised regions where they first formed acquaintance--that called
forth his pity and admiration. Since Nugent's return, a day seldom
passed without the friends meeting. Uffington would sit for hours in
Eardley's studio, smoking countless cigarettes and watching his friend
at work; their talk was always of the frankest and most open
character, and Nugent's one wish seemed to be that Frank, with all the
world at his feet, should shun the social snares and pitfalls into
which he himself had fallen at the outset of his career.

'You will wonder what brings me to you at such an early hour,' said
Eardley, 'more especially after our settling that you should come
round and give me your opinion of the Niobe; but when I got home last
night, I found a letter from Dossetor, asking me to look at some blue
Chelsea china at one o'clock. So I thought I would make an idle
morning of it, and inflict my company on you.'

'I am very glad to see you--more glad than I usually should be at this
hour; but to-day I happen to be awake--not a very frequent occurrence
with me--at eleven o'clock.'

'And in Albania you were always ready to start on our excursions at
five,' said Eardley, with a laugh.

'Exactly, my dear Frank; but Albania and the Albany, though almost
synonymous, are very different places. It was worth while getting up
at any absurd hour for the wild-fowl, shooting there; but there is
nothing to shoot at here, unless I were to pot the beadle, or a
fellow-lodger shaving at the opposite window. Recollect, too, the air
and the silence and all the other enjoyable things.'

'Silence!' cried Eardley. 'If you call that enjoyable, you surely have
got enough of it here. I never could understand how people lived in
these chambers, with nothing ever to wake the echoes except the
occasional footfalls in that melancholy long covered walk.'

'You have that idea because you are never here of an evening, my dear
Frank,' said Uffington, 'and have never heard the shrieks of laughter
and the very unbridled mirth which floats out upon the evening air
when the opposite windows are open, and little Mr. Pincushion, of the
Stock Exchange, is entertaining his female friends from the Varieties
and the Parthenon. By the way, that was a very good dinner you took me
to last night.'

'Of course it was; you have known me long enough to trust me in such
matters, have you not? You may be certain that your palate and
digestion are always safe in my charge; not that I could guarantee you
such wines and such cooking as Chadwick's on every occasion, for they
are really first-rate. And the company, what did you think of that?'

'I was amused.'

'Indeed, how very kind of your lordship! We ought all to be deeply
indebted to you for your condescension.'

'Don't be an ass, Frank. I was more than amused, for I was pleased and
interested.'

'I thought you would be pleased with Mr. Chadwick's high-bred
punctiliousness, interested by Mrs. Chadwick's unaffected geniality,'
said Eardley, laughing. 'Chaff apart, they are very pleasant people.
What did you think of the young lady?'

'What little I saw of her I was much pleased with, but I had hardly a
chance of speaking to her.'

'Of course not; Mrs. Chadwick, who is always managing for somebody
else, has taken it into her head that it would be a great thing if she
could catch that tremendous idiot, Spiridion Pratt, and make up a
match between him and her sister; the girl is much too good for that,
don't you think?'

'It is impossible for me to say,' replied Uffington, 'having only seen
Mr. Pratt once; but he does not seem to me to be such a goose as you
rate him. He affects to be romantic, and is unquestionably conceited,
but I don't see much else the matter with him, and he is a gentleman,
which, after all, goes a very long way.'

'What a dear large-hearted old boy it is!' said Eardley, clapping his
friend affectionately on the shoulder. 'But what do you say, then, to
Mr. Chadwick? I am afraid he won't come up to your standard.'

'I don't see why not,' replied Uffington. 'Do you imagine that I
should not consider Mr. Chadwick a gentleman, because his manner is
rather brusque, and he uses odd phrases? I declare to you he seems to
me as perfect a specimen of a real gentleman as I have seen for many a
long day. There are many men, my dear Frank, who drop their _h_'s and
pick up fish-sauce with their knives, who are more truly _preux
chevaliers_ than the purest bred among us.'

'Very likely,' said Eardley, 'but a dropped _h_ grates on the ear, and
knife-swallowing, except at a circus, is not pleasant to look at. Did
you notice--but of course you did--how Miss Irvine blazed out in
defence of her friend, Lady Forestfield?'

'I noticed it with more than astonishment,' said Uffington. 'But from
what little I saw of her I should judge her to be a young lady who
would speak out boldly in favour of any one whom she imagined to be
oppressed, whether a friend of hers or not.'

'Perhaps so,' said Eardley; 'but I know she was particularly fond of
Lady Forestfield.'

'The intimacy has been dropped since the smash, I presume,' said
Uffington. 'Mrs. Chadwick seems far too strict a person to allow it to
continue.'

'Decidedly, if she knew it,' said Eardley; 'but I have some idea that
the worthy woman is slightly hoodwinked in the matter. Mrs. Ingram
told me that Lady Forestfield is lodging in Podbury-street--poor
child, fancy Podbury-street after the lovely luxury of
Seamore-place!--and the other morning I saw Miss Irvine walking down
that very street. I know it was she, though I did not recollect her at
first, and I was thinking what a pretty model she would make for a
certain class of subject, when suddenly it came upon me that she was
the daughter of that raffish old buck Irvine, who used to hang about
Clipstone-street in former days.'

'So Lady Forestfield is lodging in Podbury-street, is she?' said
Uffington musingly. 'Do you know the number?'

'Sixty-eight, I think,' said Eardley, looking at him in surprise; 'but
what on earth does it matter to you?'

'Nothing,' said Uffington with a start, 'not the least in the world; I
was only wondering--'

'My dear old Nugent,' said Eardley, taking him by the arm, and looking
inquiringly into his face, 'what are you thinking about? You are not
going to do anything quixotic, I hope. Lady Forestfield, as every one
will allow who knows anything about the case and speaks fairly, has
been deucedly badly treated; but nothing would warrant any
interference in the matter, and any attempt might probably recoil upon
the poor woman herself.'

'You need not be afraid, Frank,' said Uffington; 'I am not likely to
make any such attempt. I was only thinking--' and again he fell into a
musing fit.

'Exactly; but don't think,' said Eardley, touching him on the
shoulder. 'You have finished your breakfast; come down with me to
Dossetor's, and help me to form an opinion on the blue china. After
that we will go down to Richmond, stroll about the park, and have a
dinner at some quiet place where we shall not have to watch the
melancholy amusement of professedly festive people.'

'Agreed, so far as Richmond, the stroll, and the dinner are concerned;
but I cannot come with you now, I will meet you there. My head aches a
little, and would ache worse if I had to listen to Dossetor's
disquisitions on his china; so I will go and get rid of my trouble by
a canter in the Row.'

'That will be better perhaps,' said Eardley, 'not only for yourself,
but for my china, as it is the one thing in which I require that the
opinions of people I consult should coincide with my own, and you seem
to me to be rather contradictory this morning. I suppose you will
drive me down? Then I will be waiting for you at the club at four.'

'I shall be there to the minute,' said Uffington.

And then Eardley, with an '_Au revoir!'_ took his hat and strolled
leisurely away.

Sir Nugent Uffington was rather more lively and alert after his
friend's departure than he had been in the early morning. He paced up
and down the room, revolving in his mind whether the affection of
Eleanor Irvine for Lady Forestfield was such as would naturally be
felt by her for any other person in so desolate and unfortunate a
position, or whether it was the outcome of some special interest which
Lady Forestfield had awakened in her--if so, what were the sources of
that interest? She must be a peculiar woman, Nugent thought, to arouse
a feeling which, in the fact that it caused Miss Irvine to act in
opposition to the expressed wish of one on whom she was dependent, as
Eardley had hinted, must approach devotion. Lady Forestfield must have
a powerful will of her own to obtain ascendency over a mind like
Eleanor's.

Altogether, Sir Nugent Uffington, who for so many years had been
almost emotionless, was beginning to take a certain amount of interest
in the affairs which were passing round him, and the centre of that
interest, so far as he could judge, was Lady Forestfield.

The ordinary frequenters of the Row, to whom Sir Nugent Uffington had
become a familiar figure, and who were not disposed to regard him as a
lively or agreeable companion, had no occasion to alter their opinion
of him from his behaviour on this particular day. The few who noticed
him mentioned him to each other as 'mooning about as usual;' he nodded
to very few, and only stopped once, and that was to speak to his old
friend Tom Lydyeard, who was leaning over the rails. Their
conversation was common-place and matter-of-fact enough, the usual
platitudes of society talk--for Tom Lydyeard, a really good-natured
fellow, was not much gifted with brains, and even in what he had to
say was a trifle _rococo_ and old-worldly--when a sudden impetus was
given to it by Lydyeard saying, 'Look at this man on the bright bay,
riding outside of the girl with the chestnut; that is the man that
everybody is talking of just now--I pointed him out to you the first
night we met at the Opera--Lord Forestfield.'

Uffington looked quickly round. At that moment the bay horse shied at
a dog which darted from under the railings, and its rider, turning
white with rage, brought his riding-stick down with all his force
between its ears. The horse bucked and lashed out, but its rider never
moved in his seat, and the next moment the little cavalcade had broken
into a gallop and were out of sight.

'Nice lot, isn't he?' muttered Tom Lydyeard between his teeth; 'they
say he treated his wife that way, and yet they tell me that now there
is not a soul in the place, man or woman, to speak a kind word to her,
or to do her a good turn. Queer world, ain't it, Uffington?'

'Very,' said Nugent. 'Good-bye;' and he cantered off in the direction
of Grosvenor-place.

It was not time for luncheon yet, he thought, as he rode out
under the arch, and he might as well ride round and see where
Podbury-street--what a curious name!--where Podbury-street was.
Sixty-eight was the number that Frank Eardley had mentioned; and here
was Podbury-street, and there was sixty-eight, with a handsome
brougham--harness a little too heavily plated, and coachman's livery a
thought too gorgeous--standing at the door. Now the door opened, and a
young lady came out, whom Nugent had no difficulty in recognising as
Miss Irvine--she did not see him, for she darted hastily into the
carriage--saw her, too, sufficiently plainly to notice that tears were
rolling down her cheeks.

What could be the meaning of that? Decidedly Sir Nugent Uffington was
much interested in Miss Eleanor Irvine and Lady Forestfield.



CHAPTER VIII.
IN DEFENCE.


Frank Eardley was punctual to his appointment with Sir Nugent
Uffington, and the friends started at once for their proposed drive to
Richmond.

During this drive, the stroll under the trees and through the fern
which followed it, and the dinner which crowned the day's amusement,
Sir Nugent Uffington was much more companionable, and took far greater
interest in his friend's remarks. The fact was that he had skilfully
led the conversation in the direction of Lady Forestfield, and induced
Eardley to chat to him unreservedly about that lady and the manner of
her life before and after her marriage. On such matters Eardley was
just the man to be the mouthpiece of that portion of the world which
hears everything that is going on in society, and comments upon it in
a broad and genial spirit, untinged by envy or jealousy, but
sufficiently flavoured with that sarcasm which comes natural to
worldlings in this age of cynicism and disbelief. He had known Lord
Stortford; indeed, the worthy peer, who had inherited his father's
love of art of all kinds, had been one of the first to discover early
indications of the talent which had raised the Royal Academician to
his present rank in art, and had given him his earliest commission.
Eardley was received in Grosvenor-square on those pleasant terms of
equality which were always extended by the host to those whose social
manners permitted it, had made May's acquaintance even before she was
presented, and had struck up a pleasant friendship with her. Frank
Eardley knew too well his own position and the girl's destiny to
attempt to convert this friendship into any stronger alliance; and
May, who appreciated the state of affairs with equal correctness, made
the kindly artist the confidant of many of her hopes and fears. Of
Lord Forestfield, who proposed to Miss Dunmow very shortly after his
return from a protracted residence abroad, Frank Eardley knew nothing;
but he saw enough of him during the few weeks previous to the
marriage, to make up his mind that the intended bridegroom was by no
means all that could be looked for in the husband of so charming a
girl. What May required to guide her aright was a man of sound common
sense with a very light hand, who would keep herself sufficiently in
check while never allowing her to feel the curb; a man to whom she
could look up with respect and admiration, and to whom she could defer
even when her wishes were most strongly engaged, knowing that he would
be in the right. To Eardley, Lord Forestfield's character seemed
wholly different from this: he was at the same time narrow-minded and
impetuous, with a strong belief in himself, and an undisguised
contempt for the opinion of others. Moreover, the clubs rang with
rumours of his previous life, and of his ideas as to domestic loyalty;
which argued but ill for the future peace of mind of the girl whose
lot in life he was destined to control. After their marriage, Eardley
had seen but little of them. He paid his duty call, but May's
suggestion that he should be asked to dinner was met with a prompt
negative from her husband, who declared his intention of eliminating
all 'such kind of people' from his house. They met, however, pretty
frequently in society, and though May, in obedience to Lord
Forestfield's wishes, restricted her conversation with her old friend
to ordinary conventionalities, Eardley saw from her manner that she
was unhappy, and soon gathered from general gossip that she was
ill-treated. He had seen so many affairs of this kind, that when the
gossip further informed him that Lady Forestfield was avenging
herself, the kind-hearted artist was thoroughly sorry, but very little
surprised. '_Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin_,' he muttered to himself
with a shrug, as the purveyor of scandal left his studio to proceed
further on his self-imposed generous mission. 'I guessed it would come
to that, and there is no use in my attempting to stop this stream of
poached filth which floods the middle street, which that rascal who
has just left is assiduously helping in its course;' but he did what
he could to stem the current nevertheless, and there were some people
who hesitated to believe the stories whispered against Lady
Forestfield's fair fame, simply because Frank Eardley declared them to
be false.

He told all this in his simple quiet manner to his friend as they sat
over their bottle of claret in the calm evening.

'I have not seen Lady Forestfield since the smash,' he said, 'though,
of course, I would do anything in the world I could to be of service
to her. But,' he added, looking steadily at Uffington, 'I don't
believe, Nugent, in interference in such matters, at all events by
men. I am delighted to think that she has Eleanor Irvine with her. A
straightforward right-thinking girl like that, whatever the Mrs.
Grundys may choose to say, cannot come to any grief herself in keeping
up her old friendship with this poor lady, while she may be the means
of doing her an infinity of good; but a man who sought to take up any
position in the matter would only compromise Lady Forestfield and
himself; and is far better out of the scrape. Don't you think so?'

'Yes,' said Sir Nugent; 'it depends a good deal on the kind of
assistance intended, and upon the manner in which it is proffered; but
I think upon the whole you are right. Now let us go.'

Nevertheless, when he found himself alone in his chambers, thinking
over the occurrences of the previous night, and over all that he had
so recently heard of Lady Forestfield's trials and temptations, the
desire to know something more of her and of the league which bound
Eleanor Irvine to her arose more strongly than ever within him. He had
chosen to express his agreement with what Frank Eardley had said about
interference, partly in order to avoid a further discussion on the
subject, and partly that he might not be suspected of carrying out his
decided intention of moving in the matter. If he had been called upon
to define the impulse which prompted him he could not have done so;
but he had a vague idea that he might be able in some way and at some
future time to be of assistance to this stricken woman; and under that
influence he sat down and wrote the following letter:


          'The Albany, Thursday night.

'Dear Lady Forestfield,--I have just returned to England, after a long
absence, and, as is usually the case with wanderers, find that many of
my familiar friends are no longer here to greet me, and many of the
houses where I once was welcome are now in the hands of strangers. In
my early days in London, when you were a very little child, Lady
Stortford was good enough to distinguish me with her notice and her
friendship, and it is impossible for me ever to forget the kindness
which I received at her hands. Very frequently in my travels I had
looked forward with sincere pleasure to the thought of meeting her
again. As this is not to be, I have ventured to ask my friend Mr.
Eardley for your address, and I write to express a hope that you will
allow me as your mother's old friend to call upon you.--Sincerely
yours,

'NUGENT UFFINGTON.'


'That reference to Eardley,' said Uffington to himself as he folded
the letter, 'will let her know that I am in full possession of the
facts of her story, and am not writing under any misapprehension. Take
this,' he added, giving the note to his servant, 'early in the
morning; and be sure to bring me back an answer.'

The next morning he found a small hand-delivered note lying on his
breakfast table amongst the correspondence which the post had brought
him. He seized upon it at once, and read as follows:


'Lady Forestfield will be happy to receive Sir Nugent Uffington
between the hours of three and five on this or any other afternoon.'


To his own surprise and amusement, Uffington found himself making a
more elaborate toilette than usual, and at the hour named he presented
himself in Podbury-street.

Hitherto he had only had slight opportunity of seeing Lady
Forestfield, and he had no idea she was so beautiful. She was very
simply dressed in a plain muslin morning gown, and her whole
appearance coincided with the neat and modest rooms in which she was
living. Uffington was struck at once with the classical beauty of her
head, with her wavy dark hair, taken off from her forehead and
gathered in a clump behind, with her large lustrous melancholy eyes,
and with her bright fresh colour. She received him kindly, but with
some embarrassment, which he endeavoured at once to dissipate.

'You will probably have been surprised at the receipt of my letter,
Lady Forestfield,' he said; 'but I fear it must be self-explanatory,
as I have very little to add to it in justification of my desire to
see you. I have always had the keenest remembrance of Lady Stortford's
kindness, at a time when her support and countenance were most
valuable to me; have always had a hope of thanking her for it; and
when I found that was beyond my power, I desired to thank her
representative.'

'I am scarcely in that position, Sir Nugent Uffington, I fear,' said
Lady Forestfield, flushing deeply.

'You are her ladyship's daughter, Lady Forestfield,' said Uffington
quickly, 'and as such worthy of all respect from me.'

'I am grateful to Providence that my mother is no longer alive to see
me as I am,' said May with bitter emphasis. 'It would be worse than
useless for me to disguise from myself that you are perfectly well
acquainted with my present position, Sir Nugent Uffington.'

'If I had not been, had your position been other than it is, Lady
Forestfield,' said Nugent, 'I scarcely think I should be here now.
Believe me, my earnest desire is to serve you in any possible way.'

'I am grateful to you for these expressions, Sir Nugent Uffington, but
I do not see how you can aid me. There is nothing to be done,' she
added with a sigh; 'I have taken my own course, and I must abide the
consequences.'

'There is much to be done,' said Uffington gently, 'in mitigating the
severity of your sentence, though the person with whom one has to deal
renders the operation somewhat difficult.'

'I can look for no mercy at Lord Forestfield's hands,' said May,
shaking her head; 'from him I can only expect the worst that could
befall me.'

'Under compulsion a man has to set aside his own wishes and desires,
and one might find means of making even Lord Forestfield do much that
would be naturally disagreeable to him,' said Nugent. 'I know nothing
of him, but from what I have heard, I cannot imagine how Lady
Stortford, with her knowledge of the world, could have permitted you,
child as you were, to make such a marriage.'

'Child as I was, I had a strong will of my own,' said May--'a will
which I was accustomed to indulge, no matter what opposition was made
to it or by whom. My poor mother, who, in this instance at least,
seemed to be endowed with strange foresight, prayed me to reject Lord
Forestfield's advances, urging as a reason that she was sure I was but
temporarily infatuated, and that I should soon repent my
determination. I would not listen to her, I would not hear a word
against him; I had my own way, and--this is the result.'

'Temporarily infatuated. Was Lady Stortford right? were you, then, so
deeply fascinated by this man?'

May paused an instant. 'All that you have ever heard or read of insane
infatuation was nothing to mine,' she said; 'I worshipped him with all
my soul. Brought up strictly as I had been, I believed there was no
position in the world I would not have gladly accepted to insure
always being at his side. I cannot tell,' she said, after another
pause, 'why I am speaking thus freely to you, except that I have had
no one in the world to open my heart to; and though I have never seen
you before, I have instinctive confidence in you.'

'You will find that confidence is not misplaced,' said Uffington
gravely. 'When did you first find your mother's words come true?'

'Not until some little time after she was dead, not until my husband
had begun to weary of his plaything; for that I was, and nothing more.
During the first months of our marriage, my life was one of perfect
happiness; the man whom I adored was constant in his attentions to me;
I was indulged in every whim, and flattered to the top of my bent.
Money was recklessly lavished upon me, and as I had all I wished and
all my pleasures were shared by my husband, my happiness was greater
than even I ever deemed possible.'

'And that happiness lasted?'

'Just as long as pleased Lord Forestfield's fancy, and no longer. He
told me afterwards, with much bitter frankness, that I ought to be
very proud of having kept him in thrall for such a length of time,
adding that he was changeable by nature, and had never before
worshipped so long at one shrine.'

'What an infernal scoundrel!' muttered Uffington, under his breath.
Then aloud: 'Did he break with you at once?'

'O no,' said May. 'So long as he cared for me in his own peculiar way,
he had given me the fullest liberty, knowing that I never had any
thought but for him; but after he wearied of me he began to grow, or
to pretend to grow, absurdly jealous. It has been truly said that
there is no love without jealousy, and could I have persuaded myself
that my husband's passion for me had not changed, I should not have
minded jealousy and suspicion, even misplaced as his were, but should
rather have regarded them as proofs of his attachment; but knowing
what I did, it was easy for me to perceive that this jealousy sprang
from temper, and not from love, and was a degradation instead of what
it would otherwise have been, a tribute.'

'Your sad experience seems to have taught you much,' said Uffington,
looking at her compassionately.

'So I thought myself; and yet it failed me in my direst end,' said
May. 'My sad experience stripped the mask from my demigod, and showed
him to me as he was, simply a libertine, cold, selfish, and exacting.
Having no fault to find with me, save that I had failed any longer to
please or amuse him, he vented his rage on me under the frivolous
pretext of being jealous, when he knew that I had no eyes or voice for
any one in the world but him.'

'To a man of this stamp the possession of such a wife must always be a
matter of congratulation; he must at least have been proud of you,
though you say you no longer pleased his fancy.'

'I suppose so,' said May sadly; 'for though his insults to me in
private were constant and unsparing, he always paraded me in public,
and seemed to look upon me as a portion of his state. There came a
time when these insults were not confined to our private interviews,
when he would not scruple to outrage and humiliate me before our own
acquaintances, and those acquaintances did not hesitate to say that he
wanted to get rid of me. This, of course, I did not know until later.
Up to that time I had suffered silently, hoping, believing that some
change would take place, that what I still fancied had been his
genuine love for me would return, and that all would go on as
in the first days of our marriage; but when I found from looks and
half-dropped hints that I had become a subject of pity for my friends,
my pride stepped in to my assistance, and I revolted.'

'The old story,' muttered Nugent Uffington, shrugging his shoulders,
and speaking more to himself than his companion; 'that was the time
when above all others you wanted some one at hand to help and sustain
you.'

'You are right,' said May. 'And some one was there, though with other
plans and other motives. My pride was outraged, my heart was
lacerated, and there was some one ready if necessary to avenge the one
and to bind up the other, to sympathise, sentimentalise, and console.'

'Always so, always so!' muttered Uffington. 'And you accepted this
sympathy and consolation?'

'Not at first,' said May. 'Stung to madness though I was by mingled
pride and sorrow, I still kept my senses sufficiently to discern the
fatal gulf that lay before me, and to feel hurt and grieved at the
condolence, glossed over as it was in the most specious manner, which
was offered to me. But the man, who for his own purposes had
constituted himself my champion, from long practice knew every trick
and turn of the game he was playing, and was thoroughly well aware of
the advantage of waiting. He waited--and won! That is my story, Sir
Nugent Uffington. I have told it to you--not because I thought you
could in any way assist me, but because I felt it would be a relief to
tell it in my own way to any one who could understand it, and because
you are the only person of what was once my own social standing--save
one, who is even more powerless than yourself--who for weeks has
spoken a kind word to me.'

Uffington bowed his head, but affected not to notice that tears were
streaming down Lady Forestfield's face. He did not choose to speak for
an instant; indeed, he had but little to say--he knew well enough from
his own past experience that in such a wreck as that which she
described all future hope was almost necessarily lost, and that of the
_débris_ which after a time came floating to the surface nothing
serviceable could be made. He knew this, and acknowledged it in his
own mind, but did not choose at once to acknowledge it to her, so
asked her, when he saw that the tears had ceased to flow and that she
was somewhat more composed, 'Can anything be done?'

'Nothing,' she replied quietly--'nothing at all. So far as the world
is concerned my life is ended. When my child was taken from me I
grieved bitterly; now I acknowledge the wisdom of the sentence, and am
grateful to Providence that her life was not spared--better far she
should be dead than that she should have grown up to know me as I am,
and be parted from me, living.' And once more she broke down and
buried her face in her hands.

'I am not sure even now that I cannot be of some service to you, Lady
Forestfield,' said Uffington, after a pause; 'but my plan, if I form
one, will require consideration, and cannot be proceeded with hastily.
In the mean time, you can thoroughly depend on my warm friendship and
readiness to help you in any way suggested. By the way, you alluded to
a friend who has seen you in your trouble. You will not think me
impertinent in asking if you were referring to Miss Eleanor Irvine?'

'Yes,' said Lady Forestfield, 'I alluded to Miss Irvine. I have known
her for years, and am very much attached to her. Have you ever met
her?'

'I dined in her company the night before last, and judged, from
something she said, that she was a warm friend of yours.'

'She comes to see me every day,' said Lady Forestfield; 'that is to
say, she has done so up to this time.'

'And is she going to discontinue her visits?'

'I fear I must insist upon her doing so,' said May.

'And why? You must find them a pleasant break in the monotony of your
life.'

'They are far more than that to me,' said May, 'but when Eleanor was
here last, I discovered quite accidentally that she visits me without
the knowledge of her sister, with whom she lives, and to whom she is
much indebted. Then, for the girl's own sake, I spoke out frankly. I
told her this must not be, and that she must either tell her sister
where she came to daily, or cease seeing me. Did not I do right?'

'Quite right in theory, but in practice I think you were a little too
punctilious towards Mrs. Chadwick, who, though a practical,
well-meaning woman, would scarcely be able to appreciate the delicacy
of your motives.'

'Let all my misery rest on my own head,' said May. 'I am very fond of
Eleanor Irvine, her visits are inexpressibly precious to me, and yet I
have doubted whether I ought to let her come to this house.'

'I have not the slightest doubt in the matter,' said Uffington; 'on
the contrary, I am certain that from you and from your valuable
experience of life, Miss Irvine will learn to avoid much which may be
before her in that curious position in society which she now
occupies.'

And then he took his leave, promising to see Lady Forestfield again
very shortly.



CHAPTER IX.
THE OLD LOVE.


Mr. Eardley lived in St. John's Wood, in a quaint fantastic house
which he had built after his own design, on a plot of land which he
bought because the situation pleased him. There were big elm-trees in
the neighbourhood, peopled by a colony of rooks; and the grounds were
so disposed as to shut out all inquisitorial prying, and give plenty
of space for Mr. Eardley and his friends to wander about in the
eccentric costume which in the privacy of his home the artist rather
encouraged, without leading his neighbours to believe that a private
asylum had been opened on the premises. Mr. Eardley was a great lover
of nature, and even in the height of the season, when the severest
calls upon his time were made by duty and pleasure, he invariably
found leisure to devote some portion of the day to strolling in his
garden, and enjoying the sight and scent of the flowers which had
either been planted by his own hands, or under his direction.

The interior of the house was as quaint and fantastic as the exterior,
and was furnished and painted in a manner which was pronounced
'perfectly charming' by the ladies, and 'deuced odd' by their
husbands. Anything more entirely different from an ordinary mansion
arranged by the upholsterer with an unlimited order it would be
difficult to conceive. The hall, the passages, and most of the rooms
were hung with tapestry, and, where there was wall paper, it was in
the wondrous colours and strange devices which Mr. Eardley and his
friends occupied their leisure in inventing. Ordinary chairs and
tables there were none, but in the course of a stroll through the
rooms you would come upon old carved chests; prie-dieus; stately,
high-backed, black-oak chairs, the spoil of some Elizabethan
manor-house; couches covered with Utrecht velvet, and odd short seats,
like the 'settles' in the porch of a country tavern, only in
elaborately-carved oak. The walls, the tables, the ledges of the
book-cases, were all laden, and throughout the house there seemed to
be no vacant space. Objects of art lay about in extraordinary
confusion and disorder; the light was reflected from steel mirrors,
Venetian glasses, and old looking-glasses with china frames; from
ancient armour, in which the rust was gradually eating away the gold
and silver _niello_ work; from Damascus blades and Persian tulwars and
Albanian yataghans. Here were Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses
smirking painfully at hideous porcelain monsters from China and Japan;
a buhl clock on which Louis Quatorze had been accustomed to look was
flanked on either side by a coffee-coloured pug-dog in china, while
over it was suspended a Japanese paper-lantern; a gauntlet, with the
blood and rust of Naseby field for ever eaten into it, lay on a mosaic
slab in the immediate vicinity of a carved ivory set of chessmen; and
a pair of Moorish slippers had for their supporters on the one side a
fan painted on chicken-skin which had once been the property of a
beauty of the Regency, and on the other a plaster-of-paris caricature
statuette of M. Thiers, by Danton.

At the very time that Frank Eardley was making his way to the Albany,
for the purpose of inducing Sir Nugent Uffington to accompany him to
the china sale at Dossetor's, and to spend the rest of the day with
him, as already recorded, Mr. Spiridion Pratt pulled the loud-sounding
bell of the Villa--for such was the name of the artist's house in St.
John's Wood--and awaited its answer by Eardley's Italian valet, who
was held in high respect by his master's intimates.

'Good-morning, Gaetano,' said he, when the man appeared. 'Is Mr.
Eardley at home?'

'No, signor,' replied the valet; 'he started out about half an hour
ago.'

'Indeed!' said Spiridion, shaking his head with a smile. 'Is this the
way he makes up for the time lost during the season? I am afraid the
master is growing idle again, Gaetano?'

'The master had an idle fit on him this morning, signor,' said
Gaetano; 'but recently he has been wonderfully attentive to his work.
Will not the signor walk in and see what progress has been made with
the Aspasie?'

'Well,' said Spiridion, 'I have nothing to do just now, and I am a
little tired with my walk. I may just as well rest myself for a few
minutes. Mr. Eardley did not say at what time he would return, did he,
Gaetano?'

'No, signor,' replied the valet; 'it is seldom that the master gives
any hint of his movements; he likes to come and go without the
knowledge of his people.'

'He is quite right,' muttered Spiridion to himself as he entered the
house, and, followed by the servant, made his way to the studio, which
was in the rear of the premises.

A splendid room, the walls hung with deep maroon-coloured cloth; on
one side a huge oaken press, with its open doors showing an _omnium
gatherum_ of all kinds of costumes, some of which had overflowed their
receptacle, and were lying on the floor; on the other side a second
oaken cabinet, almost equally huge, and devoted to the reception of
tobacco and cigars: an artistic pipe-rack, consisting of a number of
heads cast in plaster-of-paris, was nailed against the wall, and pipes
of all kinds, from the narghile of the Turk and the painted porcelain
of the German to the humble cutty of the Irish labourer, were to be
found about the room. At the end opposite to that by which Spiridion
Pratt had entered was an open glass door leading into a lovely
circular conservatory, where in the midst of a tesselated pavement a
fountain was plashing, and where sweet singing birds were hanging
amidst the ferns and flowers. In various parts of the room were three
easels of different sizes, on one of which was a half-finished picture
of a woman of great beauty and intellectual expression, but of a large
size and commanding type. The colours on this picture were still wet,
and on the ledge of the easel were the unclean palette and the sheaf
of brushes.

'There is the Aspasie,' said the valet, pointing to the picture; 'and
here,' producing them, 'are the cigarettes. Will not the signor take
something to drink after his walk--a cup of coffee, or some Rhine wine
and seltzer-water? It is here, close at hand.'

'No, thanks, Gaetano,' said Spiridion. 'I have a poor head, you know,
and should never be able to do anything if I drank in the morning, but
I will smoke a cigarette or two with pleasure, and will wait here, at
all events, for half an hour to see if Mr. Eardley returns.'

Then the valet bowed and left the room.

'So this is the Aspasie, is it,' said Spiridion, lighting a cigarette
and seating himself in a chair opposite the easel; 'this is the
picture which next spring is to bring our friend two or three thousand
pounds and a large addition to his fame? I cannot say with Browning,
"I could have painted pictures like this youth's," for everything he
does is immeasurably beyond me. This head, for instance, is remarkably
fine, and there is a certain calm dignity, and sense of power about it
which pleases me very much. Eardley has caught the right idea, no
doubt. One can fancy that being the sort of woman to whom Socrates
would give way, and whom Pericles would adore. A delightful person in
her way,' he murmured, leaning back in his chair and shading his eyes
with his hands, 'but scarcely the kind of person to have always about
with you--to make one's wife, for instance. My idea of a wife is a
little lovable creature like Eleanor Irvine, kind and gentle, but with
plenty of spirit about her, as she showed last night at dinner in her
defence of Lady Forestfield. If I am to marry, I do not see that I
could do better than choose that little girl. She has no money, to be
sure, but I have plenty, and she is quite the sort of person who will
do one credit by her appearance. There is nothing objectionable in her
surroundings either, which is a great point; for though Chadwick is
not polished, every one knows him and he receives the best people, and
there would be no real reason for seeing more of him than we chose.
The question is, whether I ought to marry at all? I am not growing
younger,' said Mr. Pratt, rising and surveying himself in the glass,
'and I have begun to get deuced liney round the mouth and eyes, and if
I intend to do it at all, I had better do it now. It is a mistake, I
believe, to suppose that marriage destroys your prestige with women.
There are a lot of fellows of my acquaintance who seem to have
infinitely more on their hands since their marriage than they had
before--not that I think I should go in for that sort of thing myself.
I should not either object, if I were once married, to settling down
and becoming the most exemplary husband, that is to say, if people
would only let me. When one has a certain amount of good looks and
romantic feeling, and that kind of thing, it is almost impossible to
go straight, and I know I have never had the heart to join in any of
the abuse which I have heard showered upon the Forestfields, and
wretched people of that kind, knowing how deserving I am of it myself.
That is another reason, too, which makes me think it would be
advisable to marry and get out of the way of temptation--the fear of
any _éclaircissement_, and being dragged up before the world and
written about in the newspapers. When a man regularly goes in for
_bonne fortune_, such a thing does him no harm, and the more he is
talked about the better he likes it; but I am not strong, and the mere
worry of the thing would wear me to a shadow. I don't know how I am to
get clear of my present entanglement; and yet if I am to fall in with
Mrs. Chadwick's views, and propose to Eleanor, of course it must be
done somehow. This picture,' he continued, turning back to the easel,
'reminds me uncommonly of Margaret. It has just her broad brow and
queenly air; just her flashing eyes, and they will flash like the
deuce when she hears what I am going to do. I wish I had never made
her acquaintance. I was uncommonly proud of her at first, and used to
like to be seen everywhere with her; but when that kind of thing is
beginning, one never imagines or chooses to think what the end of it
is to be. I have a strong idea, too, that Mrs. Chadwick has her
suspicions in that direction. The persistent way in which she talked
to me about the Hamblins last night--asking why they remained in town,
and what was their probable destination when they left--could not have
been mere chance work. She is, however, too much a woman of the world
to allow an intrigue that was past and dead to interfere with my
marriage with her sister, but would be sure to convince herself that
it was very dead indeed before she sanctioned such a step. She is a
very clear-sighted woman, whom one could not possibly hoodwink about
such a matter, and I must therefore take some very decisive step with
regard to Margaret.'

Mr. Spiridion Pratt's soliloquy was interrupted by the opening of the
door; Gaetano appeared ushering in a lady.

'No, madame,' he said, 'I was mistaken; the master has not returned.
Here is a signor who is still awaiting him--a signor who is, I think,
known to madame.'

And the valet retired at once, closing the door carefully behind him.

'O, how do you do, Mrs. Hamblin?' said Spiridion Pratt, with very
crimson cheeks and a rather shaking hand, rising to greet the lady.

A tall handsome woman of some eight-and-thirty years old, with bold
black eyes and soft creamy complexion, very dark chestnut hair, and
full scarlet lips. A majestic-looking woman, with a splendid figure,
whose walk, without any absurd exaggeration, was stately, and whose
every pose was perfect. She was dressed in a morning-gown of thick
linen, fringed with handsome work, and set off with a blue sash; her
bonnet was very plain, of white straw, with white and blue feathers in
it. A physiognomist looking at her would have told you that she could
experience passion but not love, and that she was an unhappy woman,
proud, scornful, and conscious of being misunderstood.

She put out her hand indeed, but advanced towards Spiridion with
uplifted eyebrows and with something of a pained expression in her
face.

'Why this formality, Tito?' she asked.

'I was not aware that I was guilty of any,' said Mr. Pratt, on whose
cheeks the colour still remained.

'You know my Christian name; why do you not call me by it?'

'Not before the servants, my dear Margaret,' said Spiridion, bending
over her hand. 'Gaetano's ears are remarkably sharp, and he is
peculiarly appreciative in such matters.'

'In such matters,' repeated Mrs. Hamblin scornfully. 'Well, you are
doubtless right. What an age since I have seen you!'

'To my sorrow,' said Spiridion. 'The world believes me to be an idle
man, but you know how really busy I am.'

'I have observed of late that you have had a great deal to do,' said
Mrs. Hamblin, in the same tone. 'We were disappointed in not seeing
you at dinner last night.'

'You are very good to say so. It seems almost ludicrous to have had an
engagement at this time of year, when there is really nothing going
on, but some friends of mine had been kind enough to ask me for last
night, and I had pledged myself to them days before.'

'And was it pleasant at the Chadwicks'? You need not start; I don't
pretend to any powers of divination,' she said, with a short laugh.
'Mr. Chadwick called in to see my husband at breakfast this morning,
and told us you had been dining there.'

'O yes, it was very pleasant,' said Spiridion, on whose cheeks the
flush seemed permanently fixed. 'Mr. Chadwick, you know, always gives
such excellent dinners.'

'And has such pleasant guests. Had you any ladies present?'

'Only the ladies of the family.'

'Ladies of the family,' repeated Mrs. Hamblin. 'I did not know that
there was any one except Mrs. Chadwick.'

'O yes, her sister, Miss Eleanor Irvine, was present,' said Spiridion,
who began to see plainly that his recent determination had not been
taken at all too soon, and to wonder whether he should have pluck
enough to carry it out.

'Mrs. Chadwick's sister,' said Mrs. Hamblin. 'O yes, I remember;
rather a pretty person--pink and white, is she not? I cannot imagine
where I have seen her, for she doesn't go out, I believe.'

'She is in mourning for her father, who is recently dead,' explained
Spiridion.

'And yet if this young lady is Mrs. Chadwick's sister, Mrs. Chadwick's
father must be recently dead too,' said Mrs. Hamblin, looking straight
at him. 'If there is any man in the world who knows what real romance
is, or, at least, can pretend to know sufficiently to deceive others,
it is you. Do you think this girl pretty?'

Two months since Spiridion Pratt would have vowed that he never
thought about the girl at all, or, if the point were pressed to him,
that he considered her downright ugly; but he had made up his mind
now, and perceived that the time to strike had come.

'Yes; I think she is decidedly pretty,' he said.

Mrs. Hamblin was disconcerted; she evidently had not anticipated such
a reply. After a moment's pause she asked:

'Was that your first time of seeing her?

'O no; I have met her several times before.'

'And talked with her?'

'Yes, as one talks with a young girl whom one only meets at dinners
and dances.'

'Ay, as you say, "with a young girl"--you found her rather missish,
then?'

'On the contrary, she is bright and intelligent, and can quite hold
her own in conversation.'

Mrs. Hamblin was silent for a few moments. Then she said, looking up
at him with as much unconcern as she could throw into her glance, 'Do
you remember, Tito, how often we have talked about the time that must
come sooner or later when you would marry and settle down?

'Ye-es,' said Mr. Pratt, beginning to feel very uncomfortable. 'I
think we have mentioned the subject once or twice.'

'O, we have talked of it very often,' said Mrs. Hamblin. 'I recollect
that on the night when Mr. Eardley gave his fancy-dress ball, and when
I was so absurdly jealous of Miss Harrington, we sat in the
conservatory yonder after we had made up our little quarrel, and I
then told you that I knew that there would come a time when our
pleasant intimacy would be at an end, and when you would give up all
your romance and lead an exemplary British married life.'

'Ye-es,' said Spiridion, a little crestfallen, 'I recollect your
saying that now; but why do you refer to it?'

'Because I think the time has come,' said Mrs. Hamblin; 'because,' she
added, with a half-scornful laugh, 'because I think your knell is
sounded, and that you are a doomed man.'

'What makes you think that?' asked Spiridion uncomfortably.

'You yourself give me the clue to the idea--I judge entirely by your
own manners,' said Mrs. Hamblin. 'You never had the power of
concealing your thoughts from me, and I read them now as easily as I
read a book.'

'There are some books that are not very easily read,' said Spiridion,
plucking up a little. 'But what do you read in my thoughts?'

'I read that this new acquaintance of yours, Miss Eleanor Irvine, has
made a great impression on you; not merely a passing impression,
which has been made on you by girls a hundred times since I have known
you, but something which seems to me to be deeper and more lasting. I
never heard you before speak of any young girl's intellect and powers
of conversation with enthusiasm, though I have often heard you admire
their faces; farther, let me say frankly that if Miss Irvine had not
made a deep impression on you, I do not think you would have thrown me
over last night to dine in her company.'

'You don't imagine that--' commenced Spiridion.

'My dear Tito,' said Mrs. Hamblin, lifting up her hand, 'do not
misjudge me--I am not in the least angry. As I told you before, I
always knew that the thing must come, and though of course I regret
it, I am prepared for it. I only hope that the young lady is as
charming as you seem to think her.'

'You have only to know her to prove that,' said Spiridion. 'I am
certain that you even, of all people in the world, would appreciate
her.'

'Very likely,' said Mrs. Hamblin quietly. 'Then you acknowledge that I
was right in all I said--you have been fascinated by this young lady,
and the impression she has produced is likely to be a lasting one?'

'Frankly, yes,' said Spiridion, who was delighted to find matters
going apparently so smoothly. 'I do not think I ever saw a young lady
who pleased me so much.'

'You have not proposed to her?' said Mrs. Hamblin quickly.

'No, O no!'

'But you have let her see that you are very much taken with her?'

'Scarcely even that,' said Spiridion. 'I have merely paid her the
ordinary attentions of society; but her sister--'

'Ah, yes, her sister, Mrs. Chadwick--clever managing woman that; you
have talked with her about it?'

'Not in so many words; but from certain hints which she has given me,
I am led to believe that the alliance would not be disagreeable to
her.'

'I should think not,' said Mrs. Hamblin. 'Well, now that we have had
this frank talk, you must make me acquainted with your idol, and avail
yourself of any help I can give you towards winning her.'

'Margaret,' said Mr. Pratt, springing up and seizing her hand
romantically, 'you were always generous and--'

'Not at all, my dear Tito,' said Mrs. Hamblin, disengaging herself
with a smile; 'however we may be situated, there will always be a
great bond of _camaraderie_ between us.'

There was no smile, however, upon her face when, five minutes
afterwards, she threw herself into the corner of her brougham, and lay
back revolving plans of vengeance.



CHAPTER X
ON TEM WATCH.


Mrs. Hamblin, although she spoke so fairly to Spiridion Pratt, and
seemed to experience so little annoyance at the idea of his proposing
for Eleanor Irvine, was by no means prepared to let the matter run on
smoothly and in an even course. Spiridion himself, who knew the
passionate nature of the woman, and whose vanity induced him to
believe that her existence without his devotion was almost impossible,
had been wonderfully relieved when he found not merely that there was
no necessity for him to break the real facts of the case to her, but
that when he had confirmed her impression she received his candid
declaration with more than calmness, and with the expression of a
desire to help him in the attainment of his wishes. He was too foolish
and too vain to believe that this woman with whom he had been
intriguing would grow tired of him as he had grown tired of her; and
yet such little knowledge of the world had he gained during all his
six-and-thirty years of life as to think it possible that a woman's
affection could be strong enough not only to permit her to give up the
man whom she loved, feeling it was for his good, but actually to help
him in his attempt to win the hand of another.

Mrs. Hamblin's character was not easily to be fathomed by such a
superficial observer as Spiridion Pratt; and when she quitted the
Villa after the interview in which her quondam admirer had suffered
his secret to be so easily extracted from him, however calm she
appeared outwardly, she was inwardly raging with spite and jealousy.
Not that she particularly regretted the loss of Spiridion as an
admirer. She had originally conceived the idea of allowing him to pay
her attention at a time when the publication of his book of poems had
given him a little temporary popularity amongst people in society, and
when, consequently, many women of a certain class would have been glad
to have entangled the lion in their net; and once entangled, Mr. Pratt
was one of those tea-table Lovelaces whose romantic outpourings in
private, and perpetual attentions in public, are so agreeable to some
women. Mrs. Hamblin, however, who in far-seeing appreciation was in
advance of the generality of her sex, had long since become somewhat
weary of her adorer's inanity, and had more than once meditated on the
desirability of giving him his _congé_; when, however, she discovered
that the man of whom she thought it would be difficult to rid herself
had actually transferred his devotion to another shrine, she was
furious; and though she cared nothing at all about him for herself,
she determined as far as possible to thwart his plans with regard to
Eleanor Irvine solely to gratify her revenge.

Whirling away from the Villa, Mrs. Hamblin lay back in her brougham,
pondering how her purpose could best be accomplished.

'Very bright and intelligent, is she?' she muttered. 'That may or may
not be. A man in love not merely finds a Venus in the object of his
admiration, but credits her with innumerable qualities which she never
possessed; and Tito in this respect is worse than the majority of men,
for he allows his folly, which he calls his fancy, completely to run
away with him. The girl is pretty--I remember that distinctly--but I
cannot call to mind anything else about her, and it is just such an
alliance as would please that weak-minded Tito; to have a young girl
sit and worship him all day, and to realise all his romantic
aspirations of love in a cottage, with the cottage left out and a
charming villa with all kinds of luxury instead, would render him
supremely happy. And I am to sit by actually; and when we meet I am to
be specially introduced, and to hear told before my face what a dear
friend I have been, and under what obligations he is to me; and to
imagine her being told behind my back--for the man is vain and weak
and boastful, like most of them--what a conquest he had made of me,
and how I had followed at the wheels of my lord's chariot. No, I do
not think that I can quite brook that from any man. One might put up
with a good deal from a great creature who was obviously one's master,
but from Tito, who was my slave, and whose every thought and action I
have directed since I first knew him, it is too absurd. I always knew
that he would marry, for his romance, like his cynicism, and most of
his other self-asserted characteristics, is a sham, and he would be
far happier in the honest prose of domestic life; but I intended that
his wife should be one of my choosing; and if this young lady really
answers his description, she is by no means what I should have
selected for him. He would be convenient for many reasons, even as a
married man, under one's thumb; and with a wife of any sort of
intelligence that would of course be impossible.

'Very bright and intelligent, and can quite hold her own in
conversation. That I can perfectly understand; her sister, Mrs.
Chadwick, is one of those women who have the superficial knowledge and
the taking manner which would please a man like Tito, and the girl no
doubt has caught it from her. But, in addition to this, Mrs. Chadwick
is a keen woman of the world, who conducted her own marriage on the
cleverest commercial principles, and who wishes to see her sister as
safely and as reputably landed. To such a person Tito is a catch, and
his alliance very desirable; so that I shall have no assistance from
her. The girl may possibly have the same views; but I should have a
better chance with her than with her sister. If she be as described,
it is impossible she can have any real feeling for Tito, but is simply
prepared to accept him from a worldly point of view; and it seems to
me that there are two ways by which I can spoil the plan on which my
faithless Tito has set his heart. To carry out either I must make the
acquaintance of the young lady, and find out all about her. If she
does not care for Tito, it will be easy enough to introduce her to
some one who will soon obliterate any recollection of that romantic
youth; and if she does care for him, it will not be difficult to lead
her into such an entanglement as, once proved to him, will prevent his
having any further thought of her.'

Actuated by these benevolent intentions, Mrs. Hamblin determined upon
calling upon Mrs. Chadwick as soon as possible.

Accordingly, the next day, she made her way to Fairfax-gardens. The
acquaintance between the ladies had up to this time been slight, and
though Mr. and Mrs. Hamblin had been present at the charades and other
entertainments, and Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick had dined once during the
season with the Hamblins, there had been no farther intimacy. When the
servant brought in Mrs. Hamblin's card, Mrs. Chadwick was a little
surprised, as the usual formal visits on either side had been paid,
and she was not looking forward to a renewal of such courtesy until
the ensuing season. Nevertheless she was gratified, for Mrs. Hamblin
stood exceptionally well with society--her husband's official rank,
and her own good looks, wealth, and _savoir faire_, enabling them to
hold their own with the best; while Mrs. Chadwick fancied she had
hitherto been only received by them on sufferance as it were, and that
they had no intention of farther prosecuting the acquaintance. But
Mrs. Chadwick was quite sufficiently clever to know that Mrs. Hamblin
would not have come to see her without some motive, and what that
motive might be--whether it was the filling up of an idle half-hour at
a time when most of her intimates were out of town, or whether it was
dictated by some deeper design--the lady of Fairfax-gardens revolved
in her mind as she descended to the drawing-room to greet her visitor.

Mrs. Hamblin when she chose had a very fascinating manner, and she
used it on this occasion. Mrs. Chadwick could not imagine how she
could ever have suspected her guest of formality or frigidity, so
thoroughly kind, pleasant, and familiar did she now find her.

'I call this for some reasons really the very pleasantest time of the
year in London,' said Mrs. Hamblin, 'for now there is a possibility of
seeing something of those people whose tastes are in accordance with
one's own, and who therefore one is disposed to look upon as one's
friends. In the season, as you know perfectly well, my dear Mrs.
Chadwick, one lives in a perfect whirl from morning till night, and
from May to July we scarcely have more opportunity for a friendly chat
than if we were at opposite poles. Now, however, that all the bustle
and party-giving is over, there is an opportunity for real enjoyment,
and I was really wicked enough to be glad when I heard from our friend
Mr. Pratt that you and Mr. Chadwick were detained in town as well as
ourselves; for I thought we should be glad to get you to come and see
us in an informal manner, and that I should have the chance, which I
have often wished for, of knowing you more intimately.'

Mrs. Chadwick seemed taken aback at this; she nevertheless replied
much in the same strain, expressing her obligations at the compliment,
and the delight which she and her husband would experience in meeting
Mr. and Mrs. Hamblin on the terms suggested. The line taken by her
visitor gave her a chance of magnifying her own importance, and she
expatiated to Mrs. Hamblin on the vast amount of society which during
the season she was compelled to keep up, and on the relief which she,
in her turn, experienced when relieved from so much social pleasure.
But, like an astute sword-player, she kept her wits about her during
all this flourish and preamble, and the mention of Spiridion Pratt's
name had aroused her suspicions. Upon Mrs. Chadwick herself the breath
of scandal had never blown, but there were few virtuous ladies better
posted upon all that was said about their neighbours, and the
relations between Mrs. Hamblin and her romantic Tito had been
frequently discussed at Fairfax-gardens and elsewhere in Mrs.
Chadwick's presence.

'And we hope to have the additional pleasure,' continued Mrs. Hamblin,
all smiles, but with a shrewd perception of what was passing across
her companion's mind, 'of making the acquaintance of your charming
sister. Miss Irvine is quite a stranger to Mr. Hamblin, and though I
have seen her once, it is true, it was for a moment only. I have
constantly looked forward to meeting her again, but I have always been
disappointed. Now you must bring her with you, and I have promised
myself a great treat, for I am sure she must be as agreeable as she is
pretty.'

Mrs. Chadwick was much confused at this move, and could not understand
Mrs. Hamblin's motive for it. Spiridion she knew would naturally be at
the dinner, and she could not define Mrs. Hamblin's object in throwing
Eleanor in his way.

That there was an object, however, she was certain, and it was
accordingly somewhat coldly that she replied, 'I will be the bearer of
your message, of course, with much pleasure, but I can hardly hope
that it will have any satisfactory result, for my sister resolutely
refuses to go into society.'

'That I can perfectly understand,' said Mrs. Hamblin, 'as she is young
and inexperienced, and has not the necessity, like you, to hide her
own griefs and feelings in order to play an important part in the
world; but such a little family gathering as I propose cannot be
called society--there will only be ourselves and Mr. Pratt, and
perhaps two or three unfortunate men who have been left stranded in
town, and whom we can secure at a short notice.'

This frankness was still farther confusing. Spiridion was to be
there--what could be the meaning of it? And then Mrs. Chadwick
recollected having heard Charley Ormerod say that Mrs. Hamblin would
soon get tired of Little Petrarch--the name by which Mr. Pratt was
known in the set--and send him flying like the rest of them. Perhaps
this had come about; perhaps she had grown tired of Little Petrarch
and sent him flying, careless as to who should pick him up.

'I can only repeat that I will give your message to my sister and do
all I can to induce her to come, but I have strong doubts about
success.'

'Would you let me make my application to Miss Irvine in person, my
dear Mrs. Chadwick?' said Mrs. Hamblin. 'Not that I for an instant
doubt your good intentions, or am unaware that what I am about to say
sounds horribly vain, but I candidly confess I have a great belief in
my own powers of persuasion.'

'Such a belief is doubtless merely the result of experience, Mrs.
Hamblin, and in accordance with what all the world says of you,' said
Mrs. Chadwick half spitefully--for except her honest old husband no
one had ever found _her_ particularly fascinating--'and I will take
care that you have the opportunity of seeing Eleanor.'

'At once?' asked Mrs. Hamblin. 'May I try at once? I feel full of
mesmeric influence to-day.'

'I am sorry that you will not have the opportunity of exhibiting your
skill to-day, unless you choose to wait for an hour,' said Mrs.
Chadwick coldly, 'for Eleanor is not in the house just now, and I have
sent the brougham to fetch her.'

'Not in the house,' repeated Mrs. Hamblin; 'O, I am so grieved!'

'She has been very much engaged for the last few weeks,' said Mrs.
Chadwick. 'First, in attendance on an old schoolfellow, who required
care and attention--which she could not possibly have had but for
Eleanor's help--and more recently she has been occupied at the South
Kensington Museum.'

'At the South Kensington Museum!' cried Mrs. Hamblin, whose notions of
that establishment were confined to an occasional languid stroll
through the loan collection, but who had heard of it as a convenient
place of meeting for people who wanted accidentally to encounter each
other. 'At the South Kensington Museum!' she repeated. 'How very
funny! What does she go there for?'

'To study, Mrs. Hamblin,' said Mrs. Chadwick, with virtuous dignity.
'Eleanor has a great idea of independence, and desires to perfect
herself in that art of which poor papa was so admirable a professor.'

'Was Mr. Irvine, the great artist, your father?' said Mrs. Hamblin,
with well-feigned astonishment--she knew perfectly well all about
poor Angus Irvine, to whose assistance she had more than once
contributed--'I had no idea of that. And so your sister, who has
talent of course, is thinking of following in his footsteps. How noble
and courageous of her, and what a reproof to us, who are only fitted
to be burdens upon men! But you surely will not permit her to
persevere in this idea, my dear Mrs. Chadwick; she is far too pretty
and interesting to be doomed to such a life. This is she, is it not?'
she added, taking up a coloured photograph which stood upon the table.
'I thought I recognised those lovely eyes and that charming hair,
though I had only seen her once; the likeness to you is most
remarkable; a girl with a face like that must not be permitted to
"wither on a stalk," as some one has said. There is scarcely any
position which she might not aspire to if she were seen in society.'

'So I have told her,' said Mrs. Chadwick, delighted at the compliment
to herself, 'but it does not seem to be of much use. However, as I
said before, I will do my best to induce her to accept your kind
invitation.'

'And if you succeed you may leave the rest to me,' said Mrs. Hamblin.
'I shall certainly try and dissuade her from this, in her case very
natural, but wholly romantic, idea of becoming an artist, and the best
means to that end is by encouraging her to go into society and become
conscious of the excitement which she will create there. In a small
company such as I propose having on Thursday, dear Mrs. Chadwick,
there will be even a better chance for a beginner than in a larger
assemblage, and you may depend upon my having no detrimentals
present.'

'You include Mr. Pratt in your list?' asked Mrs. Chadwick, with a
forced titter.

'Certainly,' replied Mrs. Hamblin quickly; 'Mr. Pratt will probably be
the most eligible man there.' And soon afterwards she took her leave.

'That woman is decidedly my inferior in every variety of tactics,'
said Mrs. Hamblin to herself, as she drove away. 'She could not hide
her astonishment when I announced that I should have Tito to dinner to
meet this rosebud, and ever since has been turning over in her mind
what I meant without ever arriving at a conclusion. I hope the rosebud
will come, as I am anxious to see her and form my own opinion about
her. I don't choose that these vulgar people should carry all before
them in the way they intend, and I am determined that this match,
which seems to have been arranged with the greatest coolness and
confidence on both sides, shall not take place. It will not require
any very intricate scheming to break it off, I should think--I have
had many a more difficult task, and have carried it through
successfully before now. If the rosebud is not really desperately in
love with my poor Tito, it will be easy to make her like some one
else. If she is very fond of him, then one must work upon him,
depreciate her in his eyes, and finally make him give her up. That
would not be difficult in any case, and fortunately, as a means to
that end, we get the rosebud's artistic tendencies and her habit of
frequenting the South Kensington Museum. What a very weak woman Mrs.
Chadwick must be to put any faith in such rodomontade as that! The
girl goes there, I have no doubt; but I don't imagine that all she has
learnt by the end of the day in the way of art-study would be worth
much; though her knowledge of character, if she have the faculty of
observation, is greatly increased. It might be as well just to see for
oneself whether she really goes there, what she does, and whom she
meets. She would not recognise me, and I might pick up some
information which would be valuable. James,' she said, opening the
front window of the brougham, 'go to the South Kensington Museum.'

The Chadwick brougham, noticeable always for that exaggeration
in every particular which in such matters appears peculiar to
parvenus--the horses a little too much for the carriage, the plating a
little too much for the harness, and the servants' liveries
considerably overdone--was standing before the entrance gate of the
Museum as Mrs. Hamblin drove up.

'That is the carriage, no doubt,' said Mrs. Hamblin to herself; 'one
could recognise it from any distance from its excessive vulgarity. And
what on earth do people mean by having cockades in the servants' hats?
I suppose the man is a deputy-lieutenant, or something of that sort;
but I should have given Mrs. Chadwick credit for better taste than to
ape such a distinction on such grounds. The brougham being there, one
may take it for granted that the young lady is inside. I have a great
mind to go in to see what peculiar form of art-study she may be at
present engaged in. If she really is drawing, I don't suppose I should
have much difficulty in finding her, and if she were not in the
schools, why, that would be a point in my favour. Even were I to see
her she would not recognise me, and I should therefore run no risk. I
will go in and take my chance.'

Mrs. Hamblin called to the servant to open the door, but she had
scarcely placed her foot upon the step before she withdrew it and
resumed her seat, for, on looking round, she had perceived a young
lady, who was no doubt the person she was seeking, advancing hurriedly
from an opposite direction. When this young lady stepped into Mrs.
Chadwick's carriage, and was rapidly driven off, Mrs. Hamblin had no
farther doubt.

'It was she,' she said to herself. 'Even if I hadn't had such a recent
glimpse of the photograph I should have remembered that striking face.
There is no doubt she is exceedingly pretty, and I don't wonder at
that soft-hearted Tito being captivated. There is much more style
about her, too, than I had thought for, and she has quite enough charm
to make her a dangerous rival to any one. So much the more reason for
putting an end to this elaborate plan. And so that is the way she
studies art, is it? How absurd to think that the sister, who fancies
herself a thorough woman of the world, should be completely hoodwinked
by such an apparently ingenuous creature! It is perfectly plain that
the coachman must be in her confidence, and must bring the carriage in
here and wait for her whilst she studies art elsewhere. It would not
be difficult, I imagine, to learn through the servants what time the
carriage is ordered to-morrow, and to see exactly where she goes.
Circumstances seem so far to have played into my hands, and I don't
think it will be very difficult to produce such a chain of evidence as
will tend to render Tito somewhat less confident in the innocence of
his _innamorata_.'

The next morning, at a few minutes before eleven o'clock, a hansom
cab, in which was a lady with a black-lace veil, drew up in the side
street next to Mr. Chadwick's mansion in Fairfax-gardens. Within a
quarter of an hour the family brougham drove round to the door, and
Miss Irvine having entered it, drove quickly off, followed at a little
distance by the cab. After proceeding some way, the coachman changed
his direction, and the cabman did the same. Finally, the brougham
stopped at the door of Lady Forestfield's lodgings in Podbury-street.
Miss Irvine descended and entered the house, the carriage driving
away, but the cab remaining at a convenient distance. A few minutes
afterwards another cab drove up to Lady Forestfield's door, and a
slight good-looking man, with a dark beard, knocked, and was admitted.
Then the veiled lady in the hansom ordered the driver to go to the
South Kensington Museum, and on arrival instructed him to take up his
position close to Mr. Chadwick's brougham, which was duly waiting
there.

Two long hours passed, but the veiled lady showed no sign of
weariness. Her patience was at last rewarded; Miss Irvine appeared
within sight, making her way to the brougham. Just as she was
approaching its door Mrs. Hamblin descended from her cab, and
stretching out her hand, said, with an air of great delight, 'Miss
Irvine, I believe? You will scarcely recollect me. I am Mrs. Hamblin,
and I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you with your sister on
Thursday next.'



CHAPTER XI.
AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL.

Time to Lady Forestfield passed on a leaden wing. From her earliest
youth, from her nursery and governess days, she had always been
accustomed to have amusement and excitement provided for her, and she
was therefore totally unused and unable almost to think for herself,
even when the topics to be thought of were of the vainest and lightest
character. In her happiest days she had been always at the mercy of
others, even for the suggestion of the frivolities in which she
proposed to pass her time; and when these frivolities were at an end
and she had to rely on her own unaided exertions to get through her
day--without the power of squandering money, and with the feeling that
her appearance in public when not absolutely compulsory would be in
bad taste--she was wretched enough indeed. Neither she nor her
companions had ever had any occupation. Their reading was confined to
the trashiest romances which the circulating-library clerk chose to
send to them; as to the meaning of needlework in its good
old-fashioned sense they had not the slightest idea. Some of them
would take up a bit of braiding or embroidery now and then, when it
was thought that slippers or braces would be acceptable offerings to
their 'pals;' a few of them now and then made a helpless mess with
watercolours, under the idea that they were painting; and one, perhaps
the most impudent and fastest of the set, took to illuminating texts,
a work which she performed with great skill and exquisite good taste,
and which added greatly to the attractions of the fashionable church
of St. Boanerges.

But May Forestfield neither braided, nor drew, nor illuminated; and as
the novels of the day principally turned upon various phases of the
sin for the commission of which she was suffering, she had little
pleasure in perusing them. Once or twice, indeed, she tried to take up
some reading of a better and more serious kind, but she found it
impossible to fix her attention; her thoughts wandered away from the
book, which fell idly on her lap, and she was reduced to her old
condition of staring blankly before her and wondering what would be
the result of her 'case.'

That case, or rather the first stage of it, was very shortly to be
brought to trial; the day had been fixed, and the date had been duly
communicated to her by her attorney; for although it was not her
intention to offer any defence to Lord Forestfield's application for a
divorce, it was yet necessary for her to have legal advice. As the
time slowly wore on and that dreadful date approached, May felt that
such little courage as her elimination from society and from all
chance of hearing herself and her past conduct discussed had afforded
her, was virtually ebbing away. So far as publicity was concerned, a
more terrible crisis awaited her than even that through which she had
passed, for the gossip, hard and bitter though it was, had hitherto
been confined to persons of her acquaintance, or who knew of her by
repute; but so soon as the case should be brought into the law-courts,
it must become public property, to serve as a theme of comment for the
newspapers, and all the misery of shame which she had undergone at the
time of the discovery would be renewed a hundredfold.

The sense of degradation which now overwhelmed her, she had to keep
within her breast; for with all her desire to pour out her sorrows to
Eleanor, and with perfect knowledge of the relief which such a course
would afford her, innate delicacy forbade Lady Forestfield's entering
upon such a subject with a young and inexperienced girl. It was bad
enough for her to know that Eleanor was generally acquainted with the
circumstances which had broken up her friend's home, and thrown her
into the position which she was then filling; it was quite impossible
that May could enter into detail, even though certain of the sympathy
and consolation which she would receive. She might, indeed, have
talked the matter fully out with Mrs. Ingram, but that volatile lady
had long since quitted the deserted metropolis, and was the reigning
belle of a select circle of congenial spirits at Hombourg. Moreover,
in her existing state of mind, May would have found no comfort in Kate
Ingram's society; the style of life which she had at one time led, its
interest and its pleasures, nay, its very jargon, seemed to have
passed away and belonged to another portion of her existence. She was
wretched enough now; shunned by those amongst whom she had formerly
queened it, with but two real friends, Eleanor Irvine and Sir Nugent
Uffington, in the whole wide world; and yet she somehow felt that her
condition, desolate and forlorn as it seemed to be, was preferable, as
being more reputable, to that which she had previously enjoyed.

It is probable that the influence which Uffington had quietly and
inexplicably acquired over her contributed a great deal to this
result. That influence, always exercised for her good, without any
special or direct application, without the remotest possibility of
wounding her, even at her most sensitive times, was exerted in
destroying the baleful influence of her bringing-up and her previous
surroundings, and in endeavouring to induce her to take a healthier,
quieter, and broader view of life. The peculiar circumstances which
had overshadowed Uffington's existence at an early period of what
looked to be a very promising career had not indeed made him 'kindly
with his kind,' had not opened any well of gushing sentiment and
rendered him generally philanthropic. On the contrary, among his
friends the fountain of his feelings was supposed to be frozen over,
and it was certain that, towards the majority of his acquaintance--he
never could allow to himself that any one had further intimacy with
him--he maintained a sufficiently icy exterior; but there was
something in May Forestfield which touched him far more deeply than he
would have admitted or than he would have liked to be known.

On the first night of his seeing her, when Tom Lydyeard had pointed
her out at the Opera, he felt an odd kind of interest in her, such as
for years no human being had awakened in him; an interest which was
strengthened when he learned that she was the daughter of the woman
who had patronised his youth and offered to stand by him when the rest
of the world turned their backs. Nor was this interest lessened when
he learnt of the folly and sin which she had committed; crimes
comparatively roughly venial in his eyes, which had seen greater
wrong-doing far less visited. His experience had taught him that the
critical time of all others was when the consequences of discovery
first began to be felt, when all fear of the past or for the future
was merged in the desperation of the present, and when, a fatal
recklessness taking possession of the soul, all chance of restoration
to a healthy tone was in the highest degree imperilled. Nor had the
fact of having made her personal acquaintance in the manner already
shown lessened Uffington's interest in May Forestfield. He found her
mentally much weaker than he had anticipated; a mere child drifting
hither and thither under stress of the winds of circumstance, unstable
and almost purposeless; but he recognised in an instant that it was
owing to this mental weakness, to this indecision and want of force of
character, that she had become what she was--a deserted woman, a
proscribed wife, without even the poor satisfaction of feeling that
she had deeply loved and been deeply loved by the man for whose sake
she had fallen.

It was with no pharisaical idea that Nugent Uffington exerted his
influence without appearing to do so, to prove to May how small and
contemptible had been the life in which she had so long revelled.
There was very little of the repentant sinner about this grim cynic;
but he had heart and brain, and he gave the men and women of the
present generation very little credit for the possession of either.
He, too, had outraged the law which alike is human and divine, but in
his sin there had at least been some condoning element of passion; he
had loved the woman whom he destroyed with his whole soul and
strength, and had sacrificed position and prospects to make and keep
her his. They two had been scouted by the world, but they had been all
and all to each other, and had set the world at defiance; and she--she
was gone now, but she had passed away in the full knowledge of his
devotion; and he had the satisfaction of knowing that, unless it were
for remorse, and of that she had never shown any sign to him, she had
not, from the time they left England together, had an unhappy moment.

'The Giaour was right,' he said to himself one day, as he was
revolving these matters in his mind:


     '"I die, but first I have possess'd;
       And come what may, I have been bless'd."

My now solitary life is not without its constantly recurring bitter
grief, but I have the memory of Julie to fall back upon, and the
knowledge that whatever sacrifice I may have made was made for one who
was doubly, trebly worthy of it. But this poor girl has ruined herself
for a man whom she did not care for, and merely, as it seems to me,
from ignorance and want of proper guidance.'

     *       *       *       *        *        *

When the day came on which Lord Forestfield's petition was to be
heard, May had the uncomfortable feeling of knowing that all round her
were thoroughly aware of what was going on. The first post brought her
a letter from Mrs. Ingram, written in charming spirits and in the most
playful manner, telling her a large circle of her quondam friends who
were at Hombourg often talked of her trouble, and suggesting to her,
under the circumstances, the advisability of 'keeping up her pecker.'
It was plain, too, that the coming event had been duly discussed in
the lower regions; for although the girl who had come with her from
Seamore-place, and had ever since remained in most faithful attendance
on her mistress, actually said nothing, it was evident, by her extra
care and solicitude, that she was endeavouring to show her sympathy
with her mistress. The worthy landlady, however, showed no such
reticence; she speedily found an excuse for making her way into May's
presence, and when there could not refrain from half-direct allusion,
half-soliloquising reference to the important events of the day;
allusion which took the form of a kind of inward prayer that all
things might go right, and references in which a certain 'poor lamb'
played a conspicuous part. A few months since May would have shrunk
from and repelled these intrusions upon her privacy, however well
intentioned they might have been; but now, though they caused her a
certain sense of humiliation, she accepted them as they were meant,
and took care to show no signs of annoyance. The receipt of the letter
from Mrs. Ingram had rather astonished her; she had been so long
removed from the reach of her former companions that she imagined
herself forgotten by them, as indeed she was for all good or
charitable purposes; but the list of cases for hearing in the Divorce
Court is one of the portions of the newspaper which these people read,
and when they found the Forestfield trial among them, being generally
dull and at a loss for conversation, they were glad to revive the
recent scandal.

All that day May sat as though in a dream, thinking over the past and
wondering what was to become of her in the future, which, as it seemed
to her, was to open in complete novelty from the time the judge's
decision was given. Up to the time, however disgraced and degraded she
might be, she was in the eye of the law Lord Forestfield's wife. After
that--nothing; nor maid, nor wife, nor widow. Her lawyer had explained
to her that if the decree were granted it would only be temporary and
provisional, and would need confirmation at a later period; but May
was perfectly well aware that this confirmation was as good as
ratified, and that her new career was virtually to commence from that
date.

What that career was to be she had not the slightest idea; she had not
been able to give it an instant's thought, although Sir Nugent
Uffington had more than once tried to direct her attention to the
necessity of settling her plans. It was a delicate subject to touch
upon, and Uffington could do no more than give a hint, which May
invariably avoided taking; she knew that she had an income of her own,
which would suffice to keep her at least in such comfort as she was
enjoying in Podbury-street, and beyond that she declined to think. It
was all one to her, she felt, how she lived or where, so long only as
she could enter upon an entirely new phase of existence in some place
where she herself, her history, and her troubles were unknown.
Uffington's teaching had had this effect upon her, that she completely
despised the people with whom her youth had been passed, and was
ashamed of herself for having wasted and misused such precious hours.
For the rest, the future was to her a blank, without scheme and
without hope.

Mr. Patten, the worthy old attorney who had the conduct of her case,
and who throughout had treated her with much fatherly consideration,
had promised to come down as soon as the decision had been given by
the court and acquaint her with it. 'Not that there will be any doubt
as to the result, Lady Forestfield,' he had said. 'By your own wish we
do not appear against the application, and therein I think you are
wise, as no demonstration on our part would, I fear, have any effect.
I am given to understand that no defence either will be made on the
part of the co-respondent; but that of course is no affair of yours.
However, I will come down after the sitting of the court, and set your
mind at rest.'

'Set your mind at rest' was the phrase which worthy Mr. Patten used,
though never perhaps was one less applicable. It would have taken more
than lay in the attorney's power to set Lady Forestfield's mind at
rest; for never since the time when she was served with the citation
had she been in so excited a state as on that day. It was not that she
had any doubt; even had it been possible that the law could have been
so strained as to refuse her husband the relief which he sought, it
would have been no satisfaction to her. In her own conscience, which
for the first time began to play some part in the scheme of her life,
she knew herself to be guilty, and felt that retribution was due. All
that she desired ardently was to know that the sentence had been
pronounced, to feel that her doom had been publicly spoken, and that
thenceforward she would be unheard of by the world.

Would the day never pass? Would Mr. Patten never come? The afternoon
was far advanced, and May was still sitting, as she had been sitting
all the morning, buried in the arm-chair which commanded a view of the
street, with a little table at her elbow. On this table were some
memorials of her early girlhood: the jewels which she had worn at her
first ball; a photograph of herself surrounded by her bridesmaids in
the drawing-room in Grosvenor-square; and almost the first present she
had ever received, a double scent-bottle, which Frank Eardley had
given to her years ago. She could not tell why she had brought out
these things at this particular time--their association with that
period of her life, when she was young and innocent, may have had
something to do with it; but there they were, and between her
intervals of looking out of window and listening to the approaching
footsteps, May Forestfield turned them idly over and over, and seemed
to derive satisfaction from looking at them.

There came a ring at the bell, and May, whose attention had been
diverted from the window, started at the sound. It must be Mr. Patten
at last! No, the advancing footstep on the stairs was much lighter
than the solid ponderous tread of the worthy attorney. A man's foot
too, but soft and active--it must be Sir Nugent Uffington, though May
had reason to believe from what he had said on the previous evening
that he would not call there that day. Then the door opened quickly,
and May's expectant glance fell upon Gustave de Tournefort.

He came forward impetuously, but seeing that May shrank back, and held
up her hand as though warning him off, he stopped short. 'You are
surprised to see me?' he said.

May could not answer for a minute. Then she said, 'I am indeed
surprised; I had no idea that I should ever set eyes on you again.'

'That would have been your own fault,' said De Tournefort; 'it is your
own fault that I have not been with you long since. You received my
letter?'

May bowed her head.

'But you sent me no answer.'

'I did not think that there was any necessity for answering such a
letter,' said May firmly.

'No necessity for an answer!' cried De Tournefort. 'Do you recollect
what that letter contained? In it I told you that I had heard that
your husband was about to claim the aid of the law, and that in a
short time you were likely to be free. I told you that I had done you
a grievous wrong, and that I owed you reparation, and I pledged
myself, so soon as the law had given you freedom, to make you my
wife.'

'I have a perfect recollection of every word of that letter, M. de
Tournefort,' said May coldly, 'and you have quoted it quite
correctly.'

'And yet to such a letter as that, in which a man laid himself at your
feet,' said De Tournefort passionately, 'you thought fit to send no
answer.'

'The answer which I should have sent would probably have been even
more objectionable to you than my silence,' said May.

'That is possible,' he cried. 'Ah, who can comprehend the eccentricity
of an English prude, who will give all, yet refuse to answer a letter,
and who insists on addressing her lover as monsieur.'

'Be good enough to leave this house, M. de Tournefort,' said May,
rising with great dignity, though her face was pale and her lips were
trembling. 'You intrude here, uninvited, and have strangely forgotten
yourself since your arrival. I request that you will relieve me of
your presence at once.'

'Ah, May,' cried De Tournefort, clasping his hands, and looking
feelingly towards her, 'do not be so cruel to me! I apologise in the
humblest manner for what I said just now; it was wicked, cruel, and
unmanly, but I did not know what I was saying--I was driven mad by
your harshness.'

'I do not know what kind of reception you could have expected at my
hands,' said May. 'I purposely did not answer your letter, in order
that there might be no chance of any misunderstanding between us. You
talk to me about the offer which you made me in that letter! It was
not a voluntary letter--it did not come until weeks after I had been
thrust from my home, during which time you had maintained absolute
silence; and when it did come, it was made, not from any love for me,
but simply because you felt it due to make it, in order that you might
stand well in the eyes of the world.'

'If you think that,' said De Tournefort quietly, 'I can well
understand both your silence and the manner of your reception of me
to-day. That letter was written in all honesty and good faith, and
prompted simply by my love for you. You ought to know me well enough
to recognise that I am not one of those who care much for the opinion
of the world. By what you call in England respectable society I was
already condemned for the part which I had played with regard to you,
and no _amende_ which I could have made would have set me right with
them had I required their good will. With the social _vauriens_ with
whom I live such a step would have been regarded as a serious blunder,
unworthy of a man with any pretensions to _esprit_. These facts
themselves ought to convince you that I was in earnest, and that in
making the offer I was prompted solely by my love for you; but there
is a yet more potent argument, which must convince you, and that is my
presence here. I told you that when you were free I would claim you
for my wife. You are free now. I made it my business to learn when
this case was coming on, and I came over to England on purpose to
learn the result in person. To-day I have been in the law-court and
heard the decree pronounced. You are no longer Lord Forestfield's
wife; will you be mine?'

He had completely dropped the _dilettante_ tone, the sneering cynicism
which usually characterised him, and spoke with force and heat. So
earnest, so impassioned, was he, that May stood astonished at his
vehemence. Even if she had misread the letter, there could now be no
doubt as to the sincerity of his devotion. No desire for mere
reparation could have so inspired him. Never, even in the earliest
days of their wretched folly, had he spoken so strongly. Would it be
possible for her to accept the future which De Tournefort proposed to
her?

He saw her hesitation, and took it for a favourable sign.

'You will say "yes" to that question?' he said eagerly. 'O May, you
will not refuse me what is now the one hope of my life!'

'A man's life is made up of such hopes,' she replied, after a moment's
reflection, and yours is not likely to be an exception. 'It can never
be, Gustave; you must never see me again!'

'Never see you again, May! Good heavens! what _can_ you mean? Never
see you more, now that the worst which could happen has befallen you,
and there is no one to stand by you but me!'

An odd sort of smile, a smile of more expression than had been common
to May's face, passed slowly over it--a smile which would have wrung
the heart of any woman who loved her and had been there to see it--as
she retreated to a chair by the window, and sank into it wearily.

'No one to stand by me but _you_,' she repeated, not bitterly, but
dreamily, as though she were talking to herself. 'I suppose that is
true; and if so, I have less than no one: I am quite, utterly alone.'

'Only for a little while, only until the law will let me claim you.'

'Now, and then, and always, Gustave.' The expression of her face had
changed; there was no avoidance, no hesitation in her manner now. She
looked at him, she spoke to him steadily, but she looked years older
than she had done when Gustave de Tournefort entered the room. The
sight of him had changed the dream-like impossibility which had been
her prevailing sense during the whole of that day into an overwhelming
and awful reality. And yet in that reality he had no share. Ever since
the crash had come, May Forestfield's better nature had shaken off the
thrall of the guilty infatuation under which she had been held by De
Tournefort, and lured to her ruin; and there had succeeded to it a
bewildering wonderment as to its former existence. For many days
together May never once thought of her 'lover.' Her mind was ever busy
with the past, but not with his brief, terrible, fatal share in it;
busy with her old home, her dead mother, her dead baby, even her
husband as he used to be, with every incident of the every-day life of
her lost past; full of a fond regret, agonised, though dreamy, and
with intervals of incredulousness concerning her own fate--as if this
dreadful thing _could not be_. But she recognised with melancholy
surprise that in these reveries De Tournefort's figure had no place;
and sometimes she abhorred herself as the fact forced itself upon her
recognition. She had sinned before God, and ruined herself for ever in
this world, for a man whom she now never thought of in any sense of
association with her present or her future. What part had he had in
the musings from which his entrance had roused her? Was there a trace
of him among the mementoes of the past which she had collected
together in this supreme hour of her life? This truth, and the full
significance of it, inspired her words, and lent to her voice the calm
tone of conviction as she spoke to him, without the slightest hurry or
emotion, he observing her the while with astonishment, and a growing
conviction that some extraordinary change had passed over her.

'Now, and then, and always. I am not a wise woman even yet, but I am
at least a wiser than when you and I first met; and I know what would
come of putting my fate into your hands for the future.'

'Do you mean to say that I am not to be trusted with it? That I should
treat you ill? That you no longer love me?'

'I mean all these. Do you or do I deserve trust? Who can possibly know
the worthlessness of the other so well as we know it--we two, who are
detected accomplices. Would you ill treat me? Why should you not? What
reverence or respect have I or you shown for the ties and the rights
of marriage that you should observe them towards me, or believe that I
would observe them towards you? No, Gustave; a wife who starts fair
has little chance in what _was_ our world with a man like you. What
chance would a wife have who should face the only world which would
give _us_ admittance with a man like you? At least I have learned to
calculate _those_ odds since I have been an outsider; at least I have
come to know that no loneliness for the future could be so bad as the
tremendous and hopeless misery of a marriage with the man who has a
right to begin by despising me.'

'You--you utterly reject me, then?' said De Tournefort, in a voice
almost inarticulate with anger. 'You think me an utter scoundrel, and
you reject me?'

'Let us use no hard words,' said May gently. 'I am not blaming you, or
reproaching you, or condemning you, or indeed speaking with any
reference to your conduct or character. I am speaking for myself, and
of myself, according to my conviction and my unchangeable resolve.
Gustave, spare me any more argument or contention, and believe me--I
am as firmly determined as ever I was in the days of the self-will
which led me to my fate--when I tell you that I will never voluntarily
see you, and that I will never, under any circumstances, speak to you
again after to-day.'

'I asked you a third question, madam; I asked you whether I am to
understand that you no longer love me.'

She raised her weary eyes, and looked at him mildly.

'I no longer love you,' she said. 'I cannot remember what love means.
You do not understand--no man could understand, I suppose; I don't
blame you--the tremendous meaning of what has befallen me. All is
changed; the whole of the past is lost and dead to me. Don't mistake
me,' she went on earnestly. 'If I did love you, I think I should be
too wise to accept your offer. But it is over for ever. And now I must
beg you to leave me; I am expecting my lawyer, to tell me the news
which you have forestalled him in, and--'

A knock at the street-door interrupted her.

'No doubt this is Mr. Patten. Pray leave me.'

Gustave de Tournefort went close up to her, and spoke low and rapidly,
'I will leave you. But on the day when the decree is made absolute,
you shall receive the same offer from me.'

Without another word, without any farewell from her, he left the room,
and--having passed Mr. Patten on the stairs--the house.



CHAPTER XII.
AN ODD FRIENDSHIP.

It was not in a spirit of idle curiosity that Sir Nugent Uffington
induced May Forestfield to talk to him on the events of her past life,
and to accustom herself to talk to him without the slightest reserve
as to her hopes and fears. That he was deeply interested in her he had
long since allowed to himself; but dreamer and idler as he had been
throughout his life, he began to feel that all this interest was of no
avail unless he could turn it to practical use. How that was to be
done, how he could render any assistance to a woman in such a forlorn
situation, he could not for a long time divine; and when after giving
himself up to much solitude and the smoking of innumerable pipes, he
at length hit upon what he considered was best to be done, he had to
confess to himself with much shame that he had not yet discovered the
way to do it.

For the carrying out of his project it was not merely necessary that
he should make Lord Forestfield's acquaintance, but that he should
cultivate a certain amount of intimacy with that distinguished
nobleman; and when Uffington had got over what seemed to him the
superhuman task of forcing himself to consent to such an intimacy, he
had still to encounter the practical difficulty of finding out where
Lord Forestfield was. The only thing to be learned with any certainty
about him was that he was not in London, having quitted town the day
the decree _nisi_ was pronounced; but neither at his clubs nor from
the columns of those courtly journals in which the movements of
distinguished personages are usually announced could Uffington learn
anything of his whereabouts.

There was no reason why he himself should remain any longer in the
solitude of London; the pleasure of seeing May Forestfield daily,
which had been his principal attraction, no longer remained to him. In
conformity with the confidence which had been established between
them, Lady Forestfield had informed him of Gustave de Tournefort's
unexpected visit, of the renewal of his proposals of marriage, and of
the reply which she had given him. Uffington, who seemed considerably
agitated when she commenced her recital, grew calm as she approached
its conclusion, and told her that she had acted exactly as he would
have advised her.

'I think, however,' he added, 'that if I were you I would not give M.
de Tournefort another chance of going into heroics. By what I gather
from you the man has some sense of decency left in him, and probably
means well; but these Frenchmen are desperate fellows for theatrical
display; and as he seems to have taken his departure in the thorough
conviction that your accepting him was merely a matter of time and
importunity, notwithstanding your very convincing refusal, it would
be, I think, advisable that you should do away with any chance of his
proving of farther annoyance to you by rendering it impossible for him
to find your address. He will doubtless remain in town under the
impression that the next time he presents himself before you, you will
be in a far more complacent humour; and in order to prevent any
possible chance of any such annoyance, I propose that you should leave
London at once for a time.'

May was frightened to take such a step. She had become accustomed to
the lodging and to the landlady, who was exceedingly kind to her; she
would have, she was sure, immense difficulty in finding anything that
would suit her as well. The very fact of London being empty made it
pleasant to her, as she was enabled to walk out or to drive in a
hansom cab in the evenings and get the air without the fear of being
seen. She would much rather remain where she was; she did not think
there was any chance of M. de Tournefort attempting again to see her;
and even if he did she would not have the least difficulty in acting
as she had done on the previous occasion, and letting him see that his
pursuit must be fruitless. But Uffington was equally determined on his
side; he combated all she had to say, told her there were scores of
pretty places in which she could pass a few weeks in the utmost
retirement under an assumed name, without the smallest attempt being
made to penetrate her identity. He acknowledged that she was perfectly
able to cope with any farther attempt on De Tournefort's part; but
added that what gave him the most uneasiness, and in his mind rendered
it imperative that she should at once seek change of scene, was the
fact that she was growing pale and thin. It was evident that,
accustomed as she had been all her life to a vast amount of air and
exercise, the deprivation of both which she had recently undergone was
beginning to tell seriously upon her health, and it was absolutely
necessary that she should at once have some change. When May's
reluctant consent had been obtained, Uffington, determined that she
should have no excuse for delay in carrying out the project, set to
work himself. In a few days he had secured for her some rooms in a
farmhouse, in a river-side village within thirty miles of London, but
far removed from any of the haunts of society; and within a fortnight
the Mrs. Murray who entered upon the occupation of these rooms was
well known by sight to nearly all the villagers, who highly approved
of her pretty appearance and gentle manners, without having the
slightest idea that she and the Lady Forestfield, of whose atrocious
behaviour they had read in the penny weekly journal which had found
its way into some of their homesteads, were identical.

When he had seen her safely off, and felt that with her departure
London had no farther attraction for him, Nugent Uffington thought it
was time for him to make a start. He knew that in his early days Lord
Forestfield had been a great yachting man; and thought, though he no
longer owned a vessel, he might probably be sailing with some
acquaintance, yachtsmen of the present day being peculiarly
susceptible to the charms of titled friends, and being willing to
condone any amount of bad conduct in a member of the peerage; so he
first visited the Isle of Wight, where he found Ryde and Cowes
presenting a very different appearance from that familiar to them at
regatta time, being now given up to stout women in alpaca gowns and
flapping straw hats; their husbands, in serge suits and canvas shoes
out of the slop-sellers' shops; and brown-faced batheable children.

Lord Forestfield was not there. 'Hadn't been there that season,' said
old Mr. Woolsey, whom Uffington found at his usual post in the club,
giving at the same time a very knowing wink, as much as to convey that
he for one had not been sorry at the noble lord's absence. 'I don't
think,' added Mr. Woolsey, 'that he is out sailing at all this year.
People have fought rather shy of Master Forestfield since all that
business about his wife; but if he is sailing with anybody, it will
probably be with Spokeshave; and a nice pair they will make, for
Spokeshave is about as unpopular as Forestfield himself, though from a
very different cause. I heard of him in the west, and I shouldn't be
surprised if you picked him up somewhere round Torquay way.'

It was no matter to Nugent Uffington where he went, and, as he was
told that Torquay was pretty and the Imperial Hotel comfortable, he
started off there at once. But they knew nothing of Lord Forestfield
at the Imperial, for at the cozy little club overlooking the harbour;
and after a stay of two or three days, during which he had enjoyed the
severest idleness, Nugent was consulting Bradshaw with the view of
ascertaining to what place he should next bend his steps, when he felt
a slap on the shoulder, and looking up, saw Tom Lydyeard's grizzled
beard and bronzed face bending over him.

'I thought I was not mistaken, though I could not see your face,' said
Tom, in his great cheery voice. 'What on earth brings you to this
place? You haven't got a yacht here, have you? you are not a
flower-show frequenter, or an archery-fête supporter, or anything of
that kind; and you don't take any interest in the fine new harbour
which Sir Lawrence has built for these Torquay folk? Then what brings
you here?'

'I might ask the same question of you,' said Uffington. 'I don't
suppose you are particularly wedded to any of the wildly-exciting
diversions you have named, and yet here you are, looking as much at
home as if you lived in the place.'

'O, I am staying over at Portslade, shooting with Billy Norreys, who
has got a whole houseful of people there, and I only came over because
I got a confounded twist of tic last night, and have emptied my
neuraline bottle.'

'You must have done a deal of shooting, or the sun must be
considerably more powerful down here than it is in other parts of the
country, to have turned you that colour, Lydyeard,' said Uffington,
with a smile. 'You look like a young brave on the war-path.'

'This is continental painting, sir, not English work,' said Toni
Lydyeard. 'I had an invitation to go North with McDiarmid; man who
used to be in the regiment--you must remember him--and who has since
come into a lot of money, and got the best moor, they tell me, in
Aberdeenshire; but I find I am growing a little too old for that kind
of gunning; I don't walk as lightly as I did, and--well, I suppose the
truth is, I don't care to let the fellows see that I am ageing a bit.
Pheasant-shooting I can manage easily enough; so to fill up the time
between Goodwood and the last of August, when I was due with Billy
Norreys, I went abroad.'

'Where did you go to?' asked Uffington, with an assumption of
interest; for he was rather glad to find some one whom he liked, and
who in his way amused him, to speak to.

'O, Hombourg, Baden, and all that round,' said Lydyeard. 'Never saw
places so altered in my life--just like going into Hurlingham in the
winter, don't you know? There are the places which one knows so well,
the rooms and the gardens and the orchestra where the band plays, and
the hotels and all that kind of thing, but there is nobody there; no
French--not a single Frenchman or Frenchwoman, and you know what
crowds there used to be--and no English to speak of only a few old
boys drinking the waters for gout and that sort of thing. The whole
place is filled up with Germans, sir, fat stuffy men who do nothing
but eat and smoke, and fat fubsy women who do nothing but eat and
knit; horrible people! very domesticated, I daresay, but I hate that
sort of middle-class domesticity.'

'Well, there is one comfort, then, to think that domesticity in the
upper classes doesn't trouble them very much, does it, Lydyeard?' said
Uffington with a smile.

'No, by Jove, not at all,' said Tom Lydyeard. 'By the way, talking of
that, you recollect my showing you Lady Forestfield at the Opera that
night, when that French fellow De Tournefort was in her box paying her
such attention?'

'Certainly,' said Uffington.

'Well, that affair éclatéd soon afterwards, as everybody thought it
would, and Forestfield went in for a divorce, which he got.'

'Not exactly,' said Uffington. 'Lord Forestfield has hitherto only
obtained the first portion of what he seeks--the decree _nisi_.'

'O, you know all about it,' said Lydyeard. 'I thought with your passion
for wandering you might have rushed away immediately after I saw you,
and only just returned. What I was going to say was that I came across
Forestfield the other day.'

'The deuce you did!' said Uffington, now really interested; 'how long
ago?'

'O, just before I came down here, about ten days since. I came home
through Paris, and there I found our young friend. He must be
desperately hard up for some one to speak to, I imagine, as, though I
know very little of him, he seemed to make tremendous advances for my
society.'

'In Paris, was he?' said Uffington. 'Do you think he is there still?'

'O yes,' said Lydyeard. 'He said he should probably remain the winter,
and I should think very likely he would from all I saw and heard.'

'Where is he staying?' asked Uffington.

'Nominally at Meurice's, but he is only to be found there between five
in the morning, when he goes to bed, and three in the afternoon, when
he gets up. I didn't mix myself up with him much, for he isn't quite
my style, as you know; but from what I hear I have an idea that he
must have taken to punting again--he used to be death on that when he
was quite a lad, but I understood he had quite given it up. Now he
seems to have gone at it again with additional vigour. He is a bad lot
anyhow, and will come to a bad end. How long are you going to stay
here? Why don't you come over and see Billy Norreys? He would be
delighted to give you as much shooting as you liked.'

'Thanks. I don't know Mr. Norreys, but I am happy to assume his
kindness, and yours, too, in thinking of me; but I must go to town
this morning by express, as I want to catch the night mail to Paris.'

'You going to Paris? Then perhaps you will come across Forestfield. If
you do, take my advice, and don't play with him. I shouldn't have said
anything more if you hadn't been likely to meet; but I may tell you
now that I heard he was mixed up with a very shady lot.'

'Much obliged for the warning,' said Uffington, with a light laugh,
'but I don't think I have much cause for fear. At games of skill I can
hold my own with most men, and I rarely, if ever, play at games of
chance. And now I must go and give my servant notice to pack; so
good-bye. You don't know how pleased I am to have seen you.' He shook
Lydyeard's hand warmly, and left the room.

'There is something more than I can quite make out in all this,' said
Tom Lydyeard, whose powers of comprehension were somewhat limited. 'It
strikes me that Uffington had no idea of going to Paris when I saw him
ten minutes ago, and now he is off as fast as train and boat can carry
him. I wonder what his motive can be. Let me see; I told him about
Forestfield and his having taken to play. Perhaps Uffington intends to
bleed him. I have heard said, by fellows who have met him abroad, that
he is first rate at picquet and écarté I never heard of his rooking
anybody, and there is no reason why he should, as he has plenty of
money of his own. Perhaps he is smitten with my lady--he seemed to
take great notice of her that night at the Opera--and has gone over to
shoot Forestfield; but that is quite unnecessary, for if he wants to
marry her he has only to wait a little time, and she will be regularly
divorced. Perhaps he wants to "avenge" her, as they say on the stage,
and is going over to call Forestfield out on that account; but that
sort of thing has long died out among Englishmen. I cannot make out
what he is going over for, it quite beats me,' said honest Tom, 'and
after all it's no business of mine;' with which remark he was in the
habit of consoling himself when he found his intelligence at fault.

'Now blessings on that worthy old gentleman at Cowes Castle who was
good enough to send me on to Torquay,' said Uffington to himself, as
he took his seat, an hour after this conversation, in the up express,
'and blessings on the tic or toothache, or whatever it was, that
knocked off a day of Tom Lydyeard's pheasant-shooting, and sent him
into the town for a bottle of medicine. There is probably no other man
in England who could have given me the exact information I wanted.'

He reached London in time to catch the mail, and the next morning at
seven o'clock rang the great bell at Meurice's so loudly as to startle
the porter, who, in his high sabots, was actively engaged with the
flexible hose in drenching the glazed roof of the courtyard.

Meurice's was not a house with which Nugent Uffington was familiar; he
had made a practice during his long sojourn abroad of shunning all
those hotels which were generally patronised by his countrymen. At one
or two old-fashioned establishments on the Quay Voltaire, the whole
household would have rushed to greet his arrival, but to the porter of
Meurice's he was a stranger. So much the better, he thought, as, while
his luggage was being brought in, he asked if Lord Forestfield was
staying in the house.

'Yes, sir,' replied the porter, 'milord has the suite of rooms number
thirty-seven.'

'And milord was in them now?' asked Uffington, with a smile.

'_En effet_,' replied the porter, looking up at the clock, and
perfectly comprehending the joke, 'it was probable that milord had not
yet risen. Shall I give him the gentleman's name when he comes down,
and say that he has been inquired after?'

'On the contrary,' said Uffington, 'you had better forget that I have
ever spoken to you on the subject.'

'Parfaitement,' said the porter, whose knowledge of life was
necessarily so large that he was never astonished at anything.

That day, about two o'clock, as Uffington was lounging in the
courtyard, Lord Forestfield appeared with a cigar in his mouth, for
which he was seeking a light. He searched two of the china match-boxes
standing on the round zinc tables outside the reading-room window
without effect, for they were empty, and he was turning round to curse
the waiter, when Uffington offered him a light from his cigar.

Lord Forestfield took the light, and, after returning the cigar and
touching his hat, was moving away, when Uffington said, 'I think I
have the pleasure of speaking to Lord Forestfield? My name is Sir
Nugent Uffington, and we have no doubt many common friends, among them
Colonel Lydyeard, who happened to mention you were here.'

Lord Forestfield bowed. 'Very happy to make your acquaintance, Sir
Nugent Uffington, I am sure,' he said. 'Heard of you very often,
though you were rather before my time, and have been living abroad a
good deal since, haven't you? Excellent fellow, Toni Lydyeard--liked
by every one who knows him. Are you staying here?'

'Yes,' answered Uffington; 'and, so far as I can see, for some little
time.'

'I shall have the pleasure, then, of seeing you again, I hope. For the
present _au revoir_.' And Lord Forestfield sauntered away into his
brougham, which just then drove up to the door.

He could not tell where he had seen Uffington, and yet he had some
faint recollection of him.  Not a pleasant recollection either, as it
seemed to him, but one to which he could assign no particulars. He was
very much pleased on the whole that he had been addressed, for such an
experience was rare with him nowadays, and Uffington was a man who,
although he had been for a long time away from England, and was looked
upon as somewhat _rococo_ and bygone, was yet a member of some of the
best clubs, and had been in his early days, so Lord Forestfield had
heard, very highly thought of in society.

Uffington saw no more of his newly-formed acquaintance that day, but
strolling in the evening into the Cirque d'Eté in the Champs Elysées,
he saw the British milord in the middle of a large party of French
people in the best seats in the house. There was a flush on Lord
Forestfield's face, and an _empressement_ in his manner towards his
next neighbour, a very handsome woman, which made Uffington suspect
that he had been drinking freely. This was quite a new phase in
Forestfield, whom Uffington had always heard described as of a cold,
phlegmatic, cynical character; but as it chimed in well with his
purpose he was not displeased to remark it. Uffington left the Cirque
before the performance was over, and strolled to his hotel. On
arrival, he received from the porter a note from Lord Forestfield
requesting the pleasure of his company at breakfast at Bignon's the
next day at one o'clock.

He went, and the breakfast was excellent. The other guests were three
Frenchmen, well-dressed, _decorés_, pleasant-mannered, and, so far as
is possible with Frenchmen, convivial persons. No other Englishman was
present. The conversation was of the kind usual when such men are
gathered together. In it Lord Forestfield took the lead, and Uffington
was astonished to find that his host, who in England had the character
of being very reticent, here told stories which were remarkable for
their breadth as well as their length, and seemed to be looked upon by
his _convives_ as a table-wit of the first order. No doubt the
excellency of Bignon's cellar contributed to this result. So much wine
was consumed that if Uffington's head had not been casehardened, he
must have felt its effect. As it was, the deep red flush stood in Lord
Forestfield's cheeks, and there was a thickness in is speech as, at
the close of the repast, while they were finishing their cigars, he
said to his companion, 'You are here _en garçon_, I suppose?'

'O yes,' said Uffington, with a laugh, 'here and everywhere else--I
have no ties.'

'So much the better,' said Forestfield, frowning heavily; 'they are
infernal things, and I, at least, have reason for saying so. However,
that is neither here nor there. I must go now, but if you like to come
to-night to 240 Avenue Marigny, I will introduce you to some friends
of mine, and show you some life.'

'Good,' said Uffington; 'you may depend upon it, I will be there.'



CHAPTER XIII.
IN THE AVENUE MARIGNY.


Between ten and eleven that night Sir Nugent Uffington presented
himself at the house No. 240 Avenue Marigny, and asked, as he had been
instructed, for Madame de Nerval. The porter having told him that it
was _au premier_, Uffington proceeded thither up a broad and
splendidly carpeted staircase, and, touching the plated bell, was
immediately confronted by an immense _huissier_ in gorgeous uniform.
This magnificent creature, whose manners were much milder than his
appearance denoted, bowed the guest into the vestibule, and there
handed him over to the care of the groom of the chambers. On giving
his name, Uffington learned that he was expected, and the servant,
begging him to follow, led the way, along a passage brilliantly
lighted and decorated with stags'-heads and other trophies of the
chase, towards an apartment at the farther end, whence came roars of
laughter intermixed with occasional snatches of singing.

So thick was the tobacco smoke in this apartment that on the first
opening of the door it was almost impossible to ascertain the features
of its denizens; but on hearing the name of the visitor a lady rose
from a low ottoman, on which, in company with two or three of her
friends, she had been seated, and approaching Uffington offered him
welcome, announcing herself at the same time as Madame de Nerval, the
hostess.

'Your friend, Lord Forestfield, told me you had promised to do me this
honour, Sir Nugent,' said she, speaking in excellent English, 'and I
assure you I was quite looking forward to it. I know many of your
acquaintance, and have often heard you spoken of, but always as a
misanthrope; consequently, you see, I value this honour more highly.'

'Those who described me as such knew that I had not yet had the
pleasure of seeing you, madame, and that therefore I hadn't had any
temptation to give up my solitary manner of life.'

'Your language is rather that of a courtier than that of a hermit, Sir
Nugent,' said Madame de Nerval. She was a tall, handsome, large-framed
woman of about five-and-thirty, with bold black eyes, which she
used with great effect. 'But come, let me introduce you to my
friends--Madame Pierotte, Madame Chauvain--Sir Nugent Uffington.'

Two rather pretty women--both with very fair hair; one in
rose-coloured satin, the other in green silk; both very much
_décolletées_, very much powdered, and wearing a vast number of
rings--bowed at the presentation.

'Now for the gentlemen,' said Madame de Nerval, continuing the
introduction. 'The gentleman on the ottoman is M. le Comte de
Gerfuzet; next to him Alexis Eyma, the _feuilletoniste_, who is of
course known to you by repute; and this is,' she added, bending
forward and playfully patting the close-cut silver-white hair
of a big handsome old man, who stooped his massive head for the
purpose,--'this is my grandpapa, the Baron von Höchstadt.'

Each of these gentlemen bowed as his name was pronounced; and when
Madame de Nerval spoke of the Baron as her grandfather, there was a
universal roar of laughter, in which the Baron himself bore the
principal part.

'Zee Count ee eez to me,' said Madame Pierotte, nestling down on the
ottoman, and lighting her cigarette from her friend's cigar; 'ee eez
mai lofe.'

'Tiens, Rosette; oublie-t-on les convenances ici, par exemple?' cried
the Count, elevating his eyebrows, and causing immense delight to his
companions by adding, 'Eet eez shocking!'

'You must erlaub, Sir Nugent Uffington,' said Baron Höchstadt, 'that
mein gross-child is what you call very pretty.'

'I think it will be better,' said Madame de Nerval, smiling, and
administering to the Baron a reproving slap, 'that we should make up
our minds to talk French, which I am sure Sir Nugent Uffington speaks
perfectly. I don't think, from the specimens I have heard, that you
are to be trusted with English any longer.'

'You will do me the justice to say, Mélanie,' said M. Alexis Eyma,
'that during our long acquaintance you have never heard me attempt to
pronounce a word of English except "jockei" and "come up." There is no
language a horse understands so well; but I doubt whether it is of
much use for other purposes.'

'And yet, monsieur, Shakespeare wrote in it,' said Uffington, turning
towards him, 'and Walter Scott; you may possibly have heard of them?'

'As for Shakespeare, monsieur, _je m'en fiche_. I have read him in
translation, and he is very _ennuyeux_; and Walter Scott was merely an
inferior Dumas of the last century.'

'Let us go and find your friend Lord Forestfield, Sir Nugent,' said
Madame de Nerval, interposing; 'he is in the other room, I think. Is
it not curious,' she said, as she passed through the velvet _portière_
into the antechamber, 'that that horrid little man cannot be quiet,
even in the houses of friends, but must endeavour at all risks to make
himself conspicuous? Nothing in the world would please him better than
to force you into a duel, even upon the most ridiculous questions. He
is as brave as a lion, and has been out many times.'

'I think it would be better for his own comfort,' said Uffington, with
a grim smile, 'if he wishes to make an Englishman his victim, to try
his hand on Forestfield rather than on me. I have had a tolerable
amount of practice both with sword and pistol, and my honour would not
find itself satisfied after I had given or received a simple scratch.
I should kill that little man, madame, and that would pain me very
much after having had the pleasure of meeting him at your house.'

Madame de Nerval looked at him with great interest. 'They told me I
should find you very eccentric,' she said, 'and they certainly were
not wrong. Have you been intimate with Lord Forestfield?'

'I am not at all intimate with him,' said Uffington; 'on the contrary,
I never spoke to him until yesterday.'

'I am glad of that,' said Madame de Nerval, 'very glad of that. You
would not have been the man I had always heard of, and, _au reste_,
the man I take you to be, if you had been a friend of milord's.'

'And yet you must be a friend of milord's, as you call him, and a very
intimate friend too,' said Uffington. 'I saw him sitting next to you
at the Cirque d'Eté last night, and paying you the most devoted
attentions, and he is sufficiently at home here to be able to invite
me to your house.'

'Ah,' said Madame de Nerval, with a shrug of her shoulders, 'that is
quite a different thing. A woman is often compelled to be intimate
with a man because it suits her purpose; in many instances we have not
the option of taking or leaving, as is the case with men, and Lord
Forestfield is _tant soit peu_ necessary to me at the present moment.
You are smiling at my frankness, I see. I speak frankly because I had
heard so much of you that I have always had a desire to see you, and
now that we have met, I am not disappointed.'

'It is pleasant to have such a mark of your confidence,' said
Uffington, with a smile; 'though I do not know what people have said
of me, or what I can have done, that I should be so distinguished.'

'One word more before we find milord,' said Madame de Nerval: 'do you
play cards?'

Uffington's face brightened at once, and the look of _insouciance_
which it generally wore passed away; but his voice had lost nothing of
its ordinary tone of weariness as he replied,

'Occasionally, when I am in the company of card-players.'

'Have you skill or luck, or both?' asked Madame de Nerval.

'Or neither? you might have asked,' said Uffington, with a short
laugh, 'for that is often the condition of your inveterate gambler. For
my part, I can hold my own with most men that I play with, and
occasionally I am exceptionally lucky. Why do you ask?'

'Because a considerable amount of play goes on here,' said Madame de
Nerval, 'and if you had objected to it I should have advised your
withdrawing at once, before Lord Forestfield knew of your arrival.'

'You are really very good,' said Uffington, 'and I am more than
grateful for your thoughtful kindness; but the fact is, that I want a
little distraction just now, and I am glad to think that I shall find
it at the card-table.'

'_Allons_, then,' said Madame de Nerval, opening the door as she
spoke.

Uffington found himself in a large room, with several card-tables set
out and occupied.

At one the three Frenchmen whom he had met at Bignon's at breakfast in
the morning were engaged with Forestfield at whist; at another
_baccarat_ was being played, with some ladies, of the same pattern as
those in the other room, looking on and occasionally betting, while
now and then a Russian exclamation which escaped them betrayed the
nationality of the gentlemen. There was a sideboard at one end of the
room, on which were heaped various cold delicacies and tall bottles,
while from time to time a couple of liveried servants walked round the
tables, attending to the wants of the guests.

The rubber at whist was just over, and Lord Forestfield, having won,
was pocketing his gains in great good humour, and leaning back in his
chair with a saucy laugh of triumph, when Madame de Nerval touched him
on the shoulder.

'Hallo, Mélanie, what is it?' he said, looking up. 'I have just
finished my rubber, and was going to look after you. I was thinking--'

'I have brought your friend Sir Nugent Uffington, milord,' said
Mélanie, interrupting him. 'I have introduced myself, and explained to
Sir Nugent how glad I am to see him.'

'Here you are then, my good fellow,' said Forestfield, jumping up; 'I
didn't catch sight of you at first behind Mélanie's ample skirts. So
you have made acquaintance with her already, have you? that's right. I
hate most women--I have reason to; but she is an exception to her
sex--true-hearted, staunch, and if she did not understand English so
well, I would say devilish handsome!'

'There is no woman, I think, who would not understand a compliment, in
whatever language it might be paid to her,' said Mélanie, 'and I don't
pretend to be any stronger-minded than the rest. One could tell that
your friend was an Englishman, milord,' continued Mélanie, with a
touch of coquetry which Uffington had not hitherto remarked in her,
and which he soon saw was assumed, 'for we have been full five minutes
together, and he has not yet said one pretty thing to me.'

'Has he not?' said Lord Forestfield. 'Well, I can understand that. You
said all your sweet things years ago, didn't you, Sir Nugent? and a
pretty mess you got into by saying them, I have heard.'

Uffington's face grew very dark; his nostrils dilated and his nether
lip quivered; but he checked himself sufficiently to say, without any
perceptible tremor in his voice, 'I grieve to hear so bad a character
of myself from Madame de Nerval; and though I must own to having been
silent about her charms, it was not owing to any want of appreciation
of them. There is a proverb in our language, madame, in which it says
that passions are like streams, "the shallow murmur, but the deep are
dumb." I must ask you to think that that is my case, and also that,


          "Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit,
           The charms of beauty I remember yet."'


'That is all rot about your being so old, Sir Nugent,' said Lord
Forestfield gruffly; 'I can guess your age pretty well. I had just gone
to Eton when that affair of yours with Mrs. Moggs, or whatever her
name was, came off; and I recollect quite well all the fellows talking
about it, and I wondered--'

'All the fellows have talked about it rather too much, Lord
Forestfield,' said Uffington, touching him lightly on the arm; 'and I
object to its being further discussed.'

'O, very well; I don't want to say anything more about it,' said Lord
Forestfield, with a forced laugh. 'What will you do now? that is the
thing. Are you fond of a game at cards? You might like to cut in at
this whist-table; I am not going to play any more--these fellows don't
play high enough for me--and you can have my place.'

'Thanks,' said Uffington, 'but I confess when I play I like to have
some excitement. I like to rise up with the knowledge that I have
either won or lost something considerable--not merely a few francs
which will pay for my cab home, or which I shall not miss the next
morning. The man who said that the greatest pleasure in life next to
winning money at cards was losing it, was not far off the truth.'

'Gad, you are full of pluck,' said Lord Forestfield. 'It isn't often
you hear fellows talk like that now.'

'That is because the men of the present day go into card-playing as
they go into everything else,' said Uffington--'horse-racing,
courting, what not, for the mere sordid sake of making money. They
care nothing for the excitement of the game; they merely look to its
pecuniary results--that is the feeling which, carried to an excess,
turns high-bred gentlemen into club sharpers, and destroys the best
elements which constitute society.'

'Yes, I daresay,' said Lord Forestfield, with a yawn, having been
rather bored with this dissertation, 'no doubt what you say is quite
right. By the way, do you play écarté?'

'Yes,' said Uffington, 'I play most games after a fashion.'

'Let us have a turn then,' said Lord Forestfield. 'I rather fancy
myself at écarté, do you know?'

'Then you won't mind the stakes being high,' said Uffington. 'As I
told you before, it seems to me waste of time to give oneself the
trouble of playing with the interchange of a few shillings for the
result.'

'O, I am on,' said Lord Forestfield. 'I don't mind particularly what
the stakes are--let us say fifty pounds a game; you can raise your
interest to what you like by betting on the hand.'

'That will do for me,' said Uffington. Then turning to Madame de
Nerval, he said, 'If I had had the good fortune to make madame's
acquaintance earlier, I should have asked her to wish me success. Now
I have to struggle, not merely against my antagonist's skill, but
against the knowledge that your prayers are being preferred in his
favour.'

'Come, there is a polite speech for you at last, Mélanie,' said Lord
Forestfield. 'Look here, like a good girl; tell one of those fellows
to get us a table, and to bring a bottle of champagne and a tankard. I
am horribly thirsty, and nothing will satisfy me but a big drink.'

The table was found, and the gentlemen seated themselves, Lord
Forestfield having by his side a silver tankard, and at his feet the
champagne-bottle in its cooler. Uffington contented himself with a
glass of lemonade, which provoked much raillery on the part of his
rival.

'You are going in for keeping your head cool, Sir Nugent, I see,' said
Lord Forestfield, as he dealt; 'that sort of thing doesn't do for me.
I have been so confoundedly bored at that game at whist with those
three Frenchmen, though I won their money, that I want something to
pick me up. I mark the king. That is not a bad beginning, Sir Nugent;
champagne against lemonade any day. Come on.'

'That is owing to the presence of your guardian angel,' said
Uffington, pointing to Madame de Nerval, who was standing by Lord
Forestfield's side.

'Another compliment for you, Mélanie,' said Lord Forestfield, who was
at this moment in high good humour. 'This cold Englishman is coming
out--guardian angel, eh? Well, she is a very good girl, I believe,' he
continued, tapping Madame de Nerval's hand familiarly. 'They say,
don't they, that every man has two guardian angels--one good and one
bad--to watch over his life. I have had enough of the bad,' he
muttered between his teeth, 'and it is time the luck turned.'

When they fairly settled down to their play it was thought that they
were very evenly matched, and that there was but little to choose
between them. Lord Forestfield played with some recklessness, but with
considerable skill and no small luck; Sir Nugent Uffington's play was
cautious and guarded throughout; and so much interest was evoked by
the contest, that gradually the other tables were deserted, and the
company formed themselves into a circle round the écarté players. A
good deal of betting was started, and Lord Forestfield seized every
opportunity of backing his own hand to a considerable amount.
Uffington, on the other hand, declined to bet, and concentrated his
attention on the cards.

The result was that about five in the morning the party broke up; Lord
Forestfield rose the conqueror by three games, and the winner of a
great many bets. He was as overjoyed at his success as any neophyte,
and on bidding Uffington good-night expressed his earnest hope that
they should meet again and renew their tournament that evening.
Uffington smiled, and declared his perfect readiness; then sauntered
home to bed.

The sun was just beginning to rise as he reached his room at
Meurice's. He threw open the window and leant out, inhaling the sweet
scent which rose from the turf and trees in the Tuileries gardens, and
watching the rising rays stealing over the cupolas of the old palace,
and bathing them in golden light.

'Strange,' he said to himself; 'how exactly it has all come about as I
could have wished. The meeting with Lydyeard at Torquay with the
information of where this man was to be found; the stumbling upon him
at once in Paris, and the quasi-intimacy that has ensued; then his
newly-developed mania for play, the very means which I had devised for
the end which I will most assuredly bring about. He has won to-night,
and is exulting in his triumph; but I have no more doubt as to the
ultimate result than I have of the right and justice of the cause in
which I am engaged. They used to call me a fatalist in Moscow years
ago, and I suppose they were not far wrong. This I know--that I have
the most perfect faith in my carrying through this project, the most
perfect certainty that luck will favour me; simply because I happen
for once to be doing the right thing--to be fighting the battle for a
woman who is, as I believe, more sinned against than sinning, and who
is unable to help herself. This is the first time since I succeeded
that I have felt thankful to fate for giving me poor young Mark's
inheritance, with power and position and money wherewith to fight this
scoundrel, for without them there would be no doing any good. He has
no idea how much I know of his pecuniary embarrassments, and how
completely he has spoiled his chance of marrying the heiress, as he
hoped, by his conduct of the last three months. I am afraid that his
recklessness and his fondness for drink must be ascribed to his
annoyance at these lost chances. Now if Messrs. Moss only
intelligently carry out my instructions, and secure for me the
mortgage which Richards holds on the Woodburn property, so that I can
foreclose at once, I have my friend in a vice and can screw him up to
my terms. I had better get to bed now, and secure all the rest I can,
for I have some heavy nights' work before me.'

That day week the Comte de Gerfuzet was busily engaged on his breakfast
at the Café Anglais, and had arrived at the  _tranche-de-melon_ stage,
when the portly old Baron Höchstadt entering begged permission to seat
himself at the table. This granted and his own breakfast ordered, the
Baron, who was known among his acquaintance as a _gobemouche_ of the
first order, assumed his interest-provoking expression, and began
to talk.

'You were not at Mélanie's last night, _mon cher_?' quoth he, tucking a
flowing napkin under his pendulous double chin.

'No. We dined at the Moulin Rouge, where it was horribly cold; and
afterwards went to Bullier's, where it was hideously dull,' said the
Count. 'It is getting too late in the season for open-air amusements.
I should have enjoyed myself better at Mélanie's, I daresay. Was
anything going on?'

'Anything! everything!' cried the Baron. 'You know that those two
Englishmen, Milord Froschfeld and Sir Ofton, have been playing écarté
there every night?'

'I know they played one night,' said the Count, 'but I have not been
to Mélanie's since first Sir Ofton arrived. And they have been playing
écarté, _ces gaillards_, have they? Which has been the winner?'

'At first milord; but about the third night fortune changed, and
milord has lost _énormément_--Mélanie herself says _cinq mille livres
sterlings_.'

'That is bad for Mélanie,' said the Count, giving the points of his
moustaches an insinuating twist, 'for Lor' Frosfeel was very devoted
and very generous to her.'

'So I thought, and yet she doesn't seem to feel it much,' said the
Baron. 'However, you must come to-night, for they are going to play
_quitte à quitte_, and there are several wagers, amounting to about as
much, which milord proposes to settle in the same way.'

'Hein!' said the Count; 'they are curious people these English,
certainly the most eccentric nation in the world. I have no great love
for them, and shall certainly be present to see one of them ruin the
other.'

At three o'clock the next morning, though upwards of fifty people
remained in the large room at Madame de Nerval's, standing round a
table at which two players were engaged, not a word was spoken, not a
sound was heard save that made from time to time by the dealing of the
cards. Gradually the interest and expectancy increased; the spectators
ppushed forward with held breath and straining eyes. Then suddenly the
ccrowd fell back, a long 'A-h!' conveying their pent-up feelings, and
Lord Forestfield rose from his seat. He was pale, and had a seared
strained look round the eyes, but otherwise was quite calm.

'You have been fortunate, Sir Nugent Uffington,' he said, with a
slight tremor in his voice, 'and I am in your debt exactly double the
sum for which you hold my acknowledgment. I will do myself the
pleasure of calling on you to-morrow;' and with a stately bow to the
company he walked out of the room.

'_Trés-bien fait!_' whispered the Count to his neighbour. 'It is on
occasions like this that an Englishman's natural _froideur_ is of so
much use to him.'



CHAPTER XIV.
UFFINGTON'S BARGAIN.


The next morning Sir Nugent Uffington, notwithstanding the late hour
at which he had retired to rest, woke early, and stretching out his
hand, gathered up some papers which lay on the table by his bedside.
The first in his grasp was a crumpled green telegraph form, which,
being untwisted and spread out, read as follows:

'Messrs. Moss and Moss, Thavies Inn, London, to Sir Nugent Uffington,
Bart., Hôtel Meurice, Paris. Richards has made over to you Woodburn
mortgage. We hold it on your account. Foreclosure so soon as orders
received.'

'So far so good,' said Uffington, raising himself on his elbow. 'Those
charming people, Messrs. Moss, have obeyed my instructions implicitly,
and that earth is stopped. By which means by friend will be more
readily brought to book, that is all! How right I was years ago to
make a resolution never to read letters which I might find awaiting me
on my return home late at night, and what singular resolution I must
have had to keep to it! It was a sensible thing--the idea of having
oneself upset, and one's valuable night's rest scared away, for
something which could not be remedied! To be sure, I could not resist
a glance at that telegram last night, because I knew it would have
no actual effect on the position of affairs; and if it turned out
right--as has happily proved the case--could only make me a little
more secure in the saddle. But here is something else,' taking up a
twisted scrap, 'this note which Madame de Nerval left in my hand when
I took my leave of her. Now certainly I deserve credit for having left
that unread up to this time. What does it say?

"I have guessed your secret. You _hate_ Lord Forestfield, and have
come here determined to ruin him. There is a woman in this; I know it,
my jealousy tells me so. For he is not the only one whose peace of
mind you have destroyed. Let me see you very soon. _A toi_.--M."

'Exactly so,' said Uffington to himself, laying down the paper with a
cynical smile. 'To him that hath, &c. The vagrant dies of starvation
in the ditch, and the philosopher is too lazy to take his hands from
his pockets, but bites at the peaches as they hang a-ripening on the
wall. I fear I shall not be able to obey your commands, fair lady, for
by this evening I expect my mission will be accomplished and I shall
have left Paris. Everything has succeeded with me exactly as I could
have wished. Forestfield must be on the brink of ruin, and this news
about the mortgage deprives him of his only chance of escape. Will he
face ruin, or accept the alternative I offer? The alternative, without
a doubt. When I show him, as I shall, that he has not the remotest
hope of obtaining that for which he has been playing for the last
twelvemonth; when I point out to him, as I shall, that without my aid
he must be made a bankrupt, and henceforth live, like other bankrupt
peers, on his title and his wits; when I make clear to him how little
I require in proportion to what I give--he will come to my terms. And
such a success will amply repay the trouble and the cost which have
been necessary to secure it. It has been loathsome enough to live once
more in what is called society, and to look on at all the miserable
meanness and petty spite by which those moving in it are governed. It
has been heart-sickening to see this woman shunned, tabooed, and
pointed at by a world which still continues to receive this hound, and
dares not say openly, "You are a scoundrel, whose ill conduct has
driven your wife to do what she has done; and though we must ostracise
her, we decline at the same time to have anything more to say to you."
It has been weary work to listen to all the old lies, to pretend to be
deceived by all the old cajolery, to look on or take part in so-called
pleasure, with which one has been surfeited at five-and-twenty; but it
has all worked out well, and the end--or I am very much mistaken--will
justify the means. Now I will dress myself and prepare for my
visitor!'

At twelve o'clock Lord Forestfield was announced, and entered the
room, looking worn and ill. The seared strained appearance round the
eyes was more marked, and he had lost the self-command which was so
conspicuous on the previous evening. From time to time he kept
moistening his lips, and there was an involuntary fluttering motion of
his hands which he in vain endeavoured to suppress. He fell into a
chair, and at once lay back, covering his face with his hands,
apparently oblivious of where he was; then, rousing himself with a
start, he leant forward, and in an odd abrupt way, totally different
from his usual manner, he said:

'Well, Uffington, I'm here as I said I would be. This is a d--d pretty
business! You didn't think I'd come, I suppose, eh?'

'Because I didn't ask you for any farther acknowledgment than that
which I hold, and which only represents half your debt, is that the
reason?' asked Uffington. 'O no, Lord Forestfield, I was sure you
would come this morning.'

'How could you be sure'? I suppose you mean that you've heard I always
keep my word, and pay my debts, and that kind of thing--is that it?'

'Not exactly. I knew--I felt--you would come; how or why I could
hardly explain; and no explanation is necessary since you are here.'

'Yes, that's all devilish fine!' said Lord Forestfield, rising from
his chair and pacing the room. 'I heard fellows say you're a
fatalist--believe that what will be, will be; and that sort of thing.
I suppose you felt certain beforehand that you would win those
conquering games?'

'I had an inward conviction that I should obtain what I wanted,' said
Uffington quietly.

'What you wanted?' cried Forestfield coarsely. 'What you wanted was my
money I presume? Mine or some one else's--it didn't matter much.
However, the result of all this fatalism is that I owe you ten
thousand pounds, Sir Nugent Uffington.'

'Exactly,' said Uffington, with a cold smile. 'And that being the
result, Lord Forestfield, you can scarcely wonder that I am a
fatalist.'

'Suppose I were to say that I could not pay you--for the present, at
all events,' said Forestfield--'what would you say to that?'


'I should remind you--though I am sure there would be no occasion to
do so--that debts of honour always _must_ be paid. It would be
impossible for you to show your face in society with the rumour that
you had played and lost and repudiated hanging round you. Besides, I
suppose you do not wish to be added to the distinguished list of peers
who have figured in the Bankruptcy Court?'

'Of course not,' said Forestfield, whose pale cheeks were gradually
becoming very red; 'but it's all devilish fine to say "pay"--how are
you to do it when you have no money? The truth is, I have been
disappointed. I've just heard some news which has completely upset my
calculations, and I'm infernally disappointed!' And he threw himself
into the chair.

'I know it,' said Uffington, bending towards him across the table, 'and
I know you! Know you to be as mean a scoundrel, as contemptible a
blackguard, as poor a trickster, as is to be found even in this city!
Bah, don't attempt that!' he cried, catching Forestfield's uplifted
arm by the wrist and holding it. 'I'm a stronger man than you, though
I'm ten years older, and I haven't forgotten the lessons I used to
take from Alec Keene in the old days. You would have no chance
standing up against me; and as for a duel, I could take care of myself
there also if I found--as I very much doubt--that you are in a
position to call any gentleman to account. There,' he said, throwing
Forestfield's arm away from him, 'I tell you I know you and all your
miserable scheming! You say you have been disappointed, and for once
you speak the truth. Months since, when you first began to suspect
that your treatment of your wife had driven her to wrong-doing, you
determined to profit by her sin. You would get her divorced, you said
to yourself; and once free you would form an alliance, not again with
a pretty trusting girl, but with some woman whose wealth would enable
you to indulge in the costly dissipations of play, &c. to which you
had become addicted. You looked round and made your selection, working
the oracle with all that tact which I grant you possess. When your
story became public, and Lady Forestfield was turned from her home,
you carried your bleeding heart to Palace-gardens, there to have it
bound up by Miss Vandervelde, the American heiress. Ha, ha! you see I
am tolerably well informed! They could not show you too much
compassion, those kindhearted people; and even when you were bold
enough to hint that you would shortly be in a position to bestow your
hand and title again, they were not too sensitive to bid you be
silent, for they are true Republicans and dearly love a lord. But then
your common sense failed you; you thought the game secure, and coming
over here, launched out into those pleasures in which alone you have
real enjoyment. The manner of your life in Paris has been made known
in Palace-gardens, and you have received an intimation that you need
show your face there no more.'

'How did you learn that?' said Lord Forestfield, taken off his guard.
'I only got old Vandervelde's letter yesterday morning.'

'I learned it because I made it my business to learn not only that,
but everything about you,' said Uffington, speaking with hard
earnestness. 'Not from any interest in _you_, God knows; for from the
first time I saw you, and heard how you treated your wife, I regarded
you with a loathing and an aversion so great that they can scarcely be
said to have increased now, when we have been thrown so much together.
Lady Forestfield's mother was my kindest friend, and seeing how much
her daughter wanted an outstretched hand to help her in her solitude
and her misery, I determined to repay, so far as I could, the kindness
I had experienced when I stood in need of it.'

'And you stretched out your hand to help a very pretty woman, did
you?' growled Forestfield. 'What a generous, unselfish creature!'

'Less selfish than appears at first sight,' said Uffington; 'for in
carrying out my plan I have had to endure things against which my
sense of decency, to say nothing of my pride, revolted; such as
putting up with your familiarity, Lord Forestfield, and mixing with a
miserable set of Pharisees, who consent to receive you into their
society while they scorn your wife, whose crime has been really the
outcome of your cruelty.'

'You're a pretty kind of fellow to talk in this way!' said
Forestfield, looking up from under his eyebrows and speaking in a
thick voice. 'You're a nice lot to preach virtue, and the necessity
for domestic happiness, and that sort of thing; and you practise what
you preach, don't you, and always did? You never heard of such a thing
as a fellow in the Guards running off with another mans wife, say to
Switzerland now, and living there with her? That wouldn't enter into
your scheme of morality, would it?'

'This is the second time you have dared to make allusion to that event
in my life, Lord Forestfield,' said Uffington, with a strong effort at
self-control, 'and I advise you not to repeat it. In a blundering way,
however, you happen to have hit upon the truth. What promised at the
time to be but a mere episode in my reckless youth had its influence
on my whole career, and made me what I am; a man neither ashamed to
acknowledge his guilt nor professing to be sorry for his misdeeds. If
the lady to whom you have made reference lost caste in the eyes of
that society of which you still continue a flourishing member, she, at
all events, passed the remainder of her life in peace, and was secured
from the outrage to which she had been subjected by one whose duty it
was to love and protect her. God knows, I set myself up as no judge of
my fellow-creatures, but it is from what I knew of that lady's history
and what I saw of her sufferings that I have learned to understand and
pity your wife.'

'My wife! always my wife!' cried Forestfield, choking with rage. 'Is
she to be brought up and thrown in my teeth at every trick and turn?
Am I never to hear the last of her?'

'Never,' said Uffington quietly. 'You imagined that, when driven to
despair by your cruelty and neglect, she fell into the trap, and gave
you the opportunity you had so long sought for, you had got rid of her
for ever, and were free to follow your own devices. It is partly to
show you how mistaken you were in such an idea that I am here to-day.'

'Don't you think you had better sink all this fine tirade of virtuous
indignation, Sir Nugent Uffington?' said Forestfield, with a gleam of
his old insolence returning to his face. 'Let us stick to business,
please--you are neither my confessor nor my executioner, so far as I
know, but merely a gentleman whose hermit-like austerity has not
prevented his winning my money at cards--that's what we have to
discuss; and, as the lawyers say, we will, if you please, not travel
out of the record.'

'I am perfectly willing to confine our discussion to that point,'
said Uffington. 'You owe me 10,000_l_., Lord Forestfield, and you have
at once to pay me that amount, or give me an equivalent.'

'An equivalent!' cried Forestfield; 'you mean a mortgage, or something
of that sort? Well, then, it is best to say frankly at once that I can
do neither. My account at my banker's is overdrawn, and my estate at
Woodburn is mortgaged to the value of every acre. The infernal thief
who holds it talks about foreclosing; but I am in communication with
my lawyers just now, and I am in hopes of getting it held over.'

'I should advise you not to lean on any such rotten reed,' said
Uffington. 'The gentleman who held the mortgage, and whom you are
pleased to style an infernal thief, was a Mr. Richards, I believe?'

'That is his name,' said Forestfield; 'how on earth did you know it?'

'Simply from having had a few business transactions with him myself,'
said Uffington. 'The fact is, Lord Forestfield, that Mr. Richards has
transferred his interest in the Woodburn mortgage to me, and, so far
as that is concerned, you are entirely in my power.'

Lord Forestfield's jaw fell and his face became deadly pale. 'This is
a devilish deep conspiracy you have been hatching for my ruin, Sir
Nugent Uffington,' he said; 'a nice gentlemanly scheme to bring me on
my knees for some purpose of your own. What is it all about? What do
you want?'

'What I intend to have,' said Uffington; 'your money, or the
equivalent. You owe me 10,000_l_., and if you don't pay it I will post
you in every club in London. I hold the mortgage on the Woodburn
estate, and can at any moment telegraph to my lawyers to foreclose,
and thus deprive you of your patrimony. You see, there is no chance of
escape, and that you are completely ruined--unless, indeed, you choose
to accept the equivalent.'

'Damn the equivalent!' cried Lord Forestfield, in an access of rage.
'Why don't you tell me what it is, sir? What is the use of beating
about the bush in this way?'

'It is merely this,' said Uffington. 'I will tear up your notes
of hand which I hold, and will regard the debt as cancelled for
ever,--further, I will give you an undertaking that no steps shall be
taken in regard to the mortgage on the Woodburn property for a number
of years to be agreed upon,--provided that you, take back your wife--'

'What!' cried Lord Forestfield, springing from his seat; 'take back my
wife! Is that the game you have been playing for? Take back my wife
after all that I have gone through; all the exposure which I have
suffered! Not if I know it. You have missed your mark, Sir Nugent
Uffington.'

'The exposure which you have suffered is nothing to that which you
will have to undergo at my hands if you do not accept these terms,'
said Uffington coldly. 'Besides, in your vehemence you interrupted me
before I had sufficiently explained myself. Do not think for an
instant that I am stipulating for any reconciliation between you and
Lady Forestfield. However much you may wish for it at a future
time--and that time will surely come--it would be difficult to induce
your wife to agree to it. I do not even suggest that there should be
any meeting between you, as such a proceeding were much better
avoided.'

'You're uncommonly good, I am sure,' said Forestfield grimly. 'What is
it, then, that you require, may I ask?'

'I require you to abandon the divorce suit which you have instituted,
and to take no further steps for procuring the confirmation of the
decree _nisi_ which you have obtained. Further, I require that Lady
Forestfield be reinstated in her proper position as mistress of your
house.'

'I thought you said there was to be no reconciliation, no meeting?'
cried Forestfield.

'Nor need there be,' said Uffington. 'My notion is that Lady
Forestfield should go to Woodburn and remain there for the
present--your people being, of course, there to attend to her, and she
being received and recognised as their mistress. She desires to live
in the strictest privacy and to interfere with you in no way.'

'And suppose I were to refuse, what then?'

'For you, beggary, outlawry, and exposure--a state of life to which
you have not been accustomed, and which I think would scarcely suit
you.'

There was a pause for a few moments. Then Lord Forestfield said:

'You take advantage of your position to drive a hard bargain, sir; but
I am at your mercy, and I don't see how I can resist. How long will
you give me to think it over?'

'Till this afternoon,' said Uffington. 'I have promised my lawyers
instructions in regard to the mortgage affair, which admits of no
delay. So that I must return to England to-night, and I should be glad
if you would accompany me. If I do not hear from you before, I shall
expect to meet you at the mail train at the Chemin du Nord.'


'Was there ever such a beaten hound?' said Uffington, after his
companion had left him. 'There is no doubt about his accepting my
terms. The thought of a future without money to spend in drink and
gambling was too dreadful for him to contemplate.'



CHAPTER XV.
FIVE-O'CLOCK TEA.


The pleasant intercourse which had sprung up between Mrs. Hamblin and
Mrs. Chadwick lasted throughout the whole of the dead season. For her
own purposes Mrs. Hamblin had affected a great interest in all that
concerned, not merely the mistress of the house in Fairfax-gardens,
but all her family, and Mrs. Chadwick was only too delighted to revel
in the friendship thus offered to her. For she was quick-witted enough
and sufficiently a woman of the world to see plainly that, although
she had secured the attendance of the best people in London at her
parties, and in return was regularly invited to their set and formal
entertainments, she had as yet no intimacy with any members of that
world in which alone she cared to live. Men dropped in to dinner
now and then certainly--there were always plenty to whom the
boiler-maker's capital cuisine and exquisite wine were sufficient
attraction--but there had hitherto been none but the most ceremonious
visiting on the part of the ladies, and none of those pleasant
gatherings _en petit comité_ at which Mrs. Chadwick longed so much to
assist, and from which she bitterly felt her exclusion. Mrs. Hamblin's
house was one at which, as Mrs. Chadwick knew, there was a constant
influx of visitors, and where the coziest little impromptu luncheons,
tea-parties, and suppers were frequently taking place, all the guests
being people of position in society. Mrs. Hamblin herself looking upon
flirtation with a lenient eye, was scarcely likely to disapprove of in
others; and the consequence was that many very pleasant meetings took
place, apparently quite unexpectedly, in the handsome drawing-rooms of
her house in Cumberland-place, or better still in the pretty little
boudoir, all green-silk hangings and Dresden china, which was
approached by double doors on the first landing, and was only
accessible to the initiated. When, therefore, Mrs.. Hamblin was not
merely constantly in Fairfax-gardens, but had received Mrs. Chadwick
in the most friendly manner at Cumberland-place and made her free, as
it were, of the boudoir, the latter lady was surely justified in
thinking that when the season arrived she would be permitted to
associate on a footing of intimacy with Mrs. Hamblin's friends, who,
in their turn, would become intimate friends of her own, and that
after this fashion her highest hopes would be realised.

One morning, when one of those opaque yellow fogs which visit London
in the early days of November had settled down like a pall over the
metropolis, when gas was lighted in the shops, and locomotion rendered
next to impossible, Mrs. Hamblin sat in her boudoir in rather a
dejected frame of mind. The utter ghastliness of the weather would
have been alone sufficient to account for that, but there were other
causes. Mrs. Hamblin had become thoroughly sick of London; the letters
received each morning from her friends spoke of pleasant times in
country houses, where hunting and shooting parties were assembled, and
made her long for escape from the dead dull monotony of empty streets
and deserted houses to which, for the first time in her life during
this season of the year, she had for three months been relegated. She
was, moreover, excessively annoyed at having to confess to herself the
fact that it was wholly her own fault; that she had no one but herself
to blame for the weariness she had undergone. It was true that
circumstances had prevented Mr. Hamblin from taking his official
holiday at the usual time, but that was no reason why she should have
remained in town; they had managed before now to get on very
comfortably without seeing each other for three or four months, and
indeed when domesticated under the same roof they met but seldom; for
Mr. Hamblin, away from his office, was a bibliomaniac, spending most
of his time in hunting up rare editions and curious copies, surrounded
by which musty old tomes he would sit for hours in his library,
perfectly content in looking at his book-treasures, and not taking the
slightest notice of whatever fun or festivity might be going on in
other portions of the house. So that it was not entirely on her
husband's account Mrs. Hamblin had refused the numerous invitations
which she had received to stay with friends, and had given up her
usual visit to Hombourg. If Spiridion Pratt had been an intending
guest at any of the country houses to which she was invited, or had
been going, according to custom, to the German spas, assuredly Mrs.
Hamblin would not have chosen to immure herself in Cumberland-place
during the autumn months; but he, to whom anything like a change was
most welcome, even though it involved flying in the face of all
conventional and set rules, had determined to see whether London was
really habitable in September, and as he had decided upon staying in
town, Mrs. Hamblin had concluded it was better she should remain there
also. Not that the feeling, which had always been rather a caprice
than a passion, which she had at one time entertained for the
dilettante little man had not passed away; but her pride was touched
at the notion of his escaping her so easily, at his attempt to slip
from his bonds without giving her the notice to which she had been
accustomed in such cases, and she thought it would be actually worth
while to attempt to bring him back into slavery. The season of the
year promised well for this project; she would be able to devote all
her time to carrying it out, and there would not, as she thought, be
any one in town likely to divert her quondam admirer's attention.

The discovery which she had made concerning Eleanor Irvine had
entirely dispelled this pleasant idea. Here was a rival on the spot,
one to whom she had never given any heed, and of whom, if she had not
had evidence which it was impossible to set aside, she could never
have had the least fear. To be sure she had done her best to ruin the
girl in Spiridion's opinion; all that she had seen during the
performance of her self-imposed duties of _espionnage_ was not merely
constantly hinted at in Spiridion's presence, but actually formed the
subject of various anonymous letters which Mr. Pratt was in the habit
of receiving, written in an unknown female hand, and posted in the
south-eastern district of London. If these communications were
intended to frighten the little man, and to induce him to neglect
those frequent opportunities of being in Eleanor's society which the
assiduous foresight of Mrs. Chadwick provided for him, they failed in
their effect. Mr. Pratt was greatly pleased to think that the fact of
his paying attention to one woman induced another to resort to such
means for undermining her rival. In matters of this kind he was by no
means a fool, perfectly understanding whence the letters came, and
appreciating the motive which caused them to be sent. He therefore
continued without intermission his pursuit of Eleanor, of whom he day
by day became, after his queer fashion, more and more enamoured, and
made up his mind that he would most certainly propose to her.

Though Mrs. Hamblin was not aware of her former admirer's intention to
carry matters to an such serious pitch, she could not but see that her
own influence over him was at an end; and she was musing over this,
and regretting her misspent autumn, on the foggy morning in November,
when a note was handed to her, which, in addition to the usual
superscription, bore the words 'Private and immediate' and 'Answer.'
Mrs. Hamblin had no difficulty in recognising the rather florid
handwriting of Mrs. Chadwick, and the little excitement consequent
upon the idea that some one might have returned to town and be coming
to see her therefore subsided before she broke the seal. The note ran
thus:


'Dear Mrs. Hamblin,--Will you come round to me this afternoon? I have
something of the most important and confidential character to
communicate to you, on which I require the advice which you, and you
alone, could give. When you hear it you will understand the grief and
consternation into which I am now plunged, and excuse the apparent
incoherence of this note. Pray send me a line to say that I may expect
you, and believe me yours always affectionately,

          'FANNY CHADWICK.'


'This woman always deals in gush and superlatives,' said Mrs. Hamblin
to herself as she glanced over the note; and she contented herself by
writing a line to say that she would call at Fairfax-gardens in the
course of her afternoon's drive. 'It cannot possibly be,' she thought,
'that Mr. Chadwick can have failed in business; but absolute ruin is
the only thing that ought to have called forth such a demonstration.'

When Mrs. Hamblin arrived at Fairfax-gardens, she found Mrs. Chadwick
eagerly expecting her. They talked on light topics until tea--which
had been ordered on the visitor's arrival--was served, and then, as
soon as the servant had closed the door behind him, Mrs. Chadwick
broached the important subject.

'It is quite too kind of you, my dear friend,' said she--for she had
quick eyes and ears, and readily picked up both the manner and the
jargon of those whom she thought proper to imitate--'it is quite too
kind of you to come here and to help me in the midst of my horrible
perplexity. There is no one besides you in the world whom I could
consult, for Mr. Chadwick happens to be away in the North, and I know
also that the view he would take of the matter would not entirely
coincide with mine, and it is no use having people to advise you when
your whole time must be spent in combating their opinion.'

'What is this momentous question, my dear Mrs. Chadwick, which seems
to have given you so much trouble?' said Mrs. Hamblin, with an
appearance of great interest. 'I shall be delighted to give you any
advice, though I can hardly promise that it shall be in accordance
with what you wish; but at all events it shall be honest and
straightforward. Now what is it that has set you so completely
_bouleversée_?'

'I will tell you frankly,' said Mrs. Chadwick; 'it is the conduct of
my sister Eleanor. You know her pretty well, though you have seen but
little of her; for she avoids all my friends, and seems to take refuge
in a narrow circle of her own. You have been able to judge what a home
that girl has here, and how perfectly devoted I am to her.'

As Mrs. Chadwick stopped at this point Mrs. Hamblin bowed, and
murmured something in acquiescence.

'You would think that in return for such advantages she would do her
best to make herself amiable and agreeable to me at all events, even
though she chose to decline the acquaintance of my friends. Nothing of
the sort; for the last few months her conduct has been most
extraordinary; and though I have put up with a great deal, I am not
prepared to bear it any longer now that she has completely set me at
defiance.'

'How has she done that?' asked Mrs. Hamblin.

'By thwarting a project which she knew I particularly wished carried
out, and in which, Heaven knows, I was animated by no selfish feeling,
as it would have been entirely for Eleanor's own benefit.'

'Indeed,' said Mrs. Hamblin, whose interest materially increased as
she heard this last sentence; 'and what may this project have been?'

'Eleanor's marriage,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'Her mother being dead, and I
being the elder and married sister, I look upon myself as responsible
for that girl's future, and that responsibility naturally involves the
choice of a proper husband for her. I thought I had succeeded in
finding such a person, a gentleman of exceptional cultivation and
refinement, and one whose position in society could not be questioned.
The gentleman to whom I allude is well known to you, my dear friend;
and I am sure you will indorse every word I say about him--I mean Mr.
Spiridion Pratt.'

The commencement of the sentence had prepared Mrs. Hamblin for the
announcement of the name, so she said very quietly,

'Mr. Pratt? His would be a most eligible connection, and I don't think
you have extolled his position or his merits at all too highly. And
were his views the same as yours in regard to the matter? Of course as
a known connoisseur he would admire Miss Irvine's beauty; but was he
generally attracted by her?'

'Completely. I never saw a more thorough case of genuine admiration
and affection,' said Mrs. Chadwick, whose manner was a little
intensified by the knowledge that every word she said conveyed a stab
to her dear friend. 'For weeks past he has constantly sought every
opportunity of meeting her, and of paying her the most marked
attention, and yesterday he proposed to her.'

Mrs. Hamblin's face was admirably made up, delicately and most
artistically, but she obviously paled under her rouge.

'Proposed to her!' she repeated in a flat and unnatural tone. 'Miss
Irvine is to be congratulated on having snared so wary a bird.'

'"Snared" is scarcely the term,' said Mrs. Chadwick indignantly; 'it
isn't likely that anything like artifice would have been resorted to
in this house, as the result will prove.'

'The word was inadvertently chosen, but I meant no offence,' said Mrs.
Hamblin. 'Pray tell me what was the result.'

'Eleanor refused him--refused him, my dear friend!' said Mrs.
Chadwick, who was easily mollified. 'When I came home yesterday
afternoon I found her in tears. She told me what had happened, and
hoped she would never again be exposed to such an ordeal.'

'What a very primitive person!' said Mrs. Hamblin, with icy composure.
'Did Miss Irvine state the nature of her objection to the proposition
she had received?'

'She said, generally, that she liked Mr. Pratt, had always found him
gentlemanly, kind, and pleasant; but that she had not, nor ever could
have, any idea of marrying him. I was at first so completely
overwhelmed that I could not give the matter proper thought,' said
Mrs. Chadwick; 'but since writing to you I have come to the conclusion
that Eleanor is acting under advice in what she did.'

'And who do you suspect is her adviser?' asked Mrs. Hamblin.

'A person whose name I have forbidden to be mentioned in this house,'
replied Mrs. Chadwick, 'but with whom Eleanor was very intimate in her
early youth--I mean Lady Forestfield.'

'Does Miss Irvine keep up her acquaintance with Lady Forestfield?'
asked Mrs. Hamblin innocently.

'Not a personal acquaintance,' said Mrs. Chadwick severely. 'I have
forbidden that long ago; but I believe they correspond, and, so far as
I can gather, Lady Forestfield has actually induced Eleanor to send
Mr. Pratt to call upon her.'

'What!' cried Mrs. Hamblin, surprised out of her composure; 'Mr. Pratt
has called upon Lady Forestfield?'

'Exactly; and has had a long conversation with her.'

'Conversation, too! Of what nature, in Heaven's name?'

'Of a very private and confidential nature;' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'If
Lady Forestfield had expressly wanted to thwart my plans, she could
not have laboured more earnestly than she seems to have done. It
appears that she took her own life as the text of the sermon which she
preached to Mr. Pratt, talking to him all sorts of things about the
misery of marriage without love, and the difference between imaginary
and real love, and a great deal more in the same style.'

'And what did Mr. Pratt say to this?' asked Mrs. Hamblin. 'He is
scarcely, I should have thought, the style of man on whom such an
argument would have had much effect.'

'On the contrary, he seems to have been very much impressed by it,'
said Mrs. Chadwick. 'He agrees to all Lady Forestfield says, and there
is quite a ridiculous friendship and confidence between the three.'

'A friendship and confidence between three people never lasts,' said
Mrs. Hamblin; 'for one is always certain to be jealous of the other
two. But I am much surprised at what you tell me; I confess I do not
see the bond of union.'

'O, the bond of union with which they have entrapped that silly little
man,' said Mrs. Chadwick, rather forgetting herself; 'is their common
love of art, and their superiority over the people in society, who are
supposed to be heartless and frivolous, and that sort of thing.'

'And the result of this delightful conference is, then, that Mr. Pratt
has not merely been refused by Miss Irvine, but has been persuaded
that she cannot love him with that pure and holy affection which is so
desirable; but ought to be rather ashamed of his boldness in venturing
to think of her, and quite proud of being permitted to remain her
friend. Lady Forestfield's convincing powers are really very
extraordinary.'

'O, I am quite disgusted with it all,' said Mrs. Chadwick; 'the time
and trouble I have spent in endeavouring to secure a proper position
for that girl no one can tell but myself; but I should not grudge them
one atom if she had shown me the slightest gratitude.'

'The affection you have shown, and the skill you have brought to bear,
have been equally ill rewarded,' said Mrs. Hamblin, who preserved her
outward calmness of demeanour, although inwardly raging at Spiridion's
defection.

'I am tired of it,' said Mrs. Chadwick, not perceiving the least
sarcasm in her friend's tone; 'and the result is certainly enough to
make me give up any farther attempt. Mr. Pratt was, as I have said
before, exactly the man to suit Eleanor; but if she intends to do with
others as she has done with him, and when she finds a man perfectly
devoted to her she won't marry him, but will go in for making a tame
cat of him, she deserves to lose any chance of settling herself.'

With all this, and very much more, Mrs. Chadwick went prosing on, Mrs.
Hamblin from time to time throwing in an interjectional remark which
incited her companion to continue, though it had no value or meaning
in itself; for indeed her thoughts were very far away from the worthy
woman, whose monotonous voice, like the dropping of water, kept
ceaselessly falling on her ear. To her jealous mind the introduction
of Lady Forestfield among the persons of the drama acted as a shock;
for Mrs. Hamblin believed in neither virtue, nor repentance, nor
honesty in friendship. Lady Forestfield had 'gone wrong' once, and
there was every reason to suppose would do so again. What more likely
than that she should adopt Spiridion Pratt as a lover? He was weak
minded, as Mrs. Hamblin well knew, ridiculously romantic, could easily
be persuaded into accepting the position of champion to beauty in
distress, and would feel infinitely flattered at its being known that
he had been selected by a woman of Lady Forestfield's rank to do
battle for her with the world. However much she had endeavoured to
persuade herself to the contrary, Mrs. Hamblin in her secret heart had
never given up the intention of bringing Spiridion back to his
allegiance to her, and she saw at once that any _mésalliance_ such as
that the possibility of which she was then contemplating would bring
entire destruction upon her hopes. She could have looked on at his
marriage with a quiet simple girl like Eleanor Irvine with comparative
equanimity; men, as Mrs. Hamblin knew from experience, and more
especially men of Spiridion Pratt's disposition, very soon tired of
innocence, and it was probable, or at all events possible, that when
the charm of domesticity began to wane she might without much trouble,
had she been so disposed, have regained her old lover. And now all
this has been knocked on the head. Spiridion had kept away from her,
and so she had been left unacquainted with all that was going on. What
she felt most acutely was that Spiridion had so completely ignored
her. If she had had the least inkling of his intention to propose to
Miss Irvine, even if, after he had proposed and had been rejected, he
had come to her and taken her into his confidence, she could have
prevented this horrible introduction to Lady Forestfield, and all that
would probably ensue from it.

While, with rage and fury at her heart, Mrs. Hamblin was revolving
these things in her mind, the servant announced Sir Nugent Uffington,
and Mrs. Chadwick, stopping short in her dreary monologue, at once
rose to the occasion. Here was an opportunity for her to show Mrs.
Hamblin that she too had friends among the aristocracy.

'To say that I am delighted to see you, Sir Nugent, at this dull
season of the year, is not to express half enough,' she chirped. 'I
had an idea that you were still in Paris.'

'I only returned thence two days ago,' said Uffington, as soon as he
could put in a word.

'I assure you I look upon your friendly haste to come and see us as
most flattering,' said Mrs. Chadwick. 'You will excuse me telling you
that you look remarkably well and seem in high spirits. Does not Sir
Nugent seem in high spirits, Mrs. Hamblin?' she continued, appealing
to her friend.

Mrs. Hamblin coincided, wondering all the while what had brought Sir
Nugent there.

'I have cause to be in good spirits, for I am the bearer of very good
news, which I particularly wish your sister to hear,' said Uffington,
turning to Mrs. Chadwick.

'Her sister?' said Mrs. Hamblin to herself. 'Then his visit is
sufficiently accounted for!'

'Eleanor is out, I believe,' said Mrs. Chadwick; 'I have not seen her
for some little time. I will send to inquire if she is in her room,'
she added, ringing the bell; 'but you must not delay your good news. I
am sure both Mrs. Hamblin and myself are equally eager to hear it.
Whom does it concern?'

At that moment the door opened and Eleanor entered the room. She was
rather pale, but looked very pretty, and her face slightly flushed as
she advanced to greet Uffington, which made Mrs. Hamblin tolerably
certain that her suspicions were correct.

'I was just saying that I particularly wished you to be present at
this moment, Miss Irvine,' said Uffington, 'for I have some good news
which will especially interest you. It concerns Lady Forestfield.'

'Lady Forestfield!' cried all three ladies at once, but with different
intonation; Eleanor eagerly, Mrs. Chadwick flatly, and Mrs. Hamblin
savagely.

'I do not see that anything that has happened to Lady Forestfield
could, or at all events ought to, have any interest for a respectable
family like ours,' said Mrs. Chadwick, bridling up and casting a
sidelong glance at her sister.

'Will you please tell us what it is, Sir Nugent?' said Eleanor,
without heeding her. 'You say it is good news--and I know it must be,
or you would not have been so anxious to bring it.'

'It is good news--the best that under the circumstances could be,'
said Uffington. 'The fact is, that all farther proceedings in the
Divorce Court are to be stopped, and Lady Forestfield returns at once
to her husband's protection.'

'O, thank Heaven!' cried Eleanor, 'this is indeed good news;' and her
joy was so great that she found it impossible to restrain her tears.

'Well, indeed,' said Mrs. Chadwick, veering round at once, as she saw
the position vastly improved, 'I am really delighted to hear it. Poor
dear Lady Forestfield! When one imagines all that she must have gone
through, it is quite delightful to think that she will be restored to
her place in society again. I wonder whose influence brought that
about?'

Uffington was silent on this point. He knew by Eleanor's manner that
she recognised his influence in the matter, and that was all he cared
for.

'And so Lady Forestfield is to be received back by her husband,' said
Mrs. Hamblin, with a cold smile, as she rose preparatory to taking her
leave. 'What a very strange world we live in! I confess I cannot join
my voice to your chorus of congratulations, for it appears to me that
Lady Forestfield is no more respectable than she was before, and that
Lord Forestfield has made himself contemptible.'



CHAPTER XVI
AT WOODBURN.


The happy change which had come over Lady Forestfield's life had its
effect in restoring her bodily health and, to a certain degree, her
mental quietude. When Uffington first told her that her husband had
consented to her taking up her abode at Woodburn she had ventured upon
some slight objection. The place, beautiful as it was, had not, in her
most favourable recollection of it, been what, according to her
present idea, a home should be. It had been filled with people whom
she never cared to see again, and had been the scene of many
escapades, in which Mrs. Ingram, Lady Northaw, and their friends had
played the principal characters, and the very memory of which was now
repulsive to May. She had never known the place more than as one
where, though nominally the mistress, she had really left all the
arrangements to the housekeeper, and contented herself with the
leading part in the follies which were perpetrated. And then there was
the recollection of the last time she had visited Woodburn; that fatal
night when, after having been spurned by her husband, she had sunk
senseless on the door-step, and had been carried away, how she knew
not. It was impossible, she thought, that she could go there; but
Uffington firmly, but with great delicacy, urged her to reconsider
this determination, pointing out the necessity of her being in her
husband's house, and promising her, not merely the utmost respect and
the acknowledgment of her proper position from the servants, which was
guaranteed by Lord Forestfield's own written order, but the certainty
of a quiet unmolested life.

So Lady Forestfield came to Woodburn, and a very few days after her
arrival acknowledged to herself the wisdom of Uffington's counsel. The
fresh pure air brought back the roses to her cheeks; and in her daily
wanderings in the park and through the surrounding woods she gradually
acquired the calm happiness and peace of mind which nature can alone
restore to a soul that has been bruised and buffeted in its conflict
with the world. Hitherto, at least since the days of her childhood,
May had had but little appreciation of the beauties of nature; the
park had been merely so much land lying between the house and the
village, and she had only visited the woods for the sake of having
luncheon with a shooting-party. Now all their beauties were gradually
revealed to her. She would sit for hours in an oriel window of a
little room which she had taken for her own, and which overlooked the
park, watching the sun doing battle with the heavy dun autumnal
clouds, and the wide expanse of landscape kindling into light. She
took delight even in gazing on the great bare fields whence the golden
grain had been reaped and carried, and the long ranges of hops
gathered by the busy pickers, their dark poles, piled together in
fantastic shapes, alone remaining to remind one of their recent
existence. She loved to ramble in the home wood, which on her first
arrival had been a sombre mass of dark green, and which now stood out
flecked here and there with tints of yellow, brown, and red. For all
she met she had a kindly greeting and a pleasant word. The husbandman,
tramping over the newly-turned fresh-smelling earth as his furrow made
the never-varying pattern, and the toiling many-childrened women in
the cottages, for the first time began to understand that the 'people
in the 'All' could take any interest in their welfare. When the days
were wet, too, May was never dull or depressed; for the library was
filled with books, and literature, which in her childhood she had
loved so much, but had so long left unheeded, now again became her
constant solace; and in her walks and drives, in her studies and
endeavours to help the poor of the estate, May had a ready and
intelligent companion in Eleanor Irvine, who, at her urgent request,
came to her almost as soon as she was settled at Woodburn, and had
remained with her ever since.

How this happy change in her life had been brought about, how Lord
Forestfield had been induced to forego the further proceedings against
her, and to consent to her being reinstalled in her own proper
position, she had never learned; but she knew generally that it was
Uffington's work, and to him she was proportionately grateful. She had
scarcely seen him since she had been at Woodburn, but had received
several letters written in the common-sense friendly spirit which had
characterised all his communications with her. She found herself
wondering what had led him--whom all the world looked on as a
heartless cynic--to feel such interest in her, and take the trouble
which she knew he must have taken in order to compel her husband to
give up his long-cherished scheme of revenge, and to restore her to
that position from which he imagined he had completely ousted her.

'He cannot be as cynical as people say,' thought May. 'I remember
having heard that he had some great trouble in his early life, and the
effect of that has probably been to make him eschew society and the
pleasures which society affects; and the people whom he has scorned
have repaid him by branding him as a cynic. As to his real goodness of
heart, however, there can be no doubt. It has been sufficiently proved
by the generosity with which, at what trouble to himself I shall never
know, he has advocated my cause. I wonder whether admiration of
Eleanor has anything to do with it? It seems almost ungenerous in me
to suspect such a thing for an instant; and yet there is no doubt that
Eleanor is very good-looking, and that Sir Nugent has always shown the
kindliest feeling towards her. It would be strange indeed if my
misfortune should be the means of bringing together the two persons
who have been kindest to me in my trouble.'

This idea presented itself pretty frequently to May's mind. Since she
had been taken into Eleanor's confidence respecting her rejection of
Spiridion Pratt, and by her counsel had enabled that romantic
gentleman to bear his disappointment with greater fortitude than at
one time he believed would have been possible, Lady Forestfield had
given great consideration to Eleanor's future. The mere fact of having
herself made an unhappy match did not make May think it necessary to
indulge in invective against the matrimonial state, and she allowed to
herself that Eleanor's gentle disposition, patient temper, and clear
common sense eminently fitted her for a wife. She would have been
completely thrown away upon Mr. Pratt, with whom she had not one
single sentiment in common, and whom she had always regarded with a
feeling of contempt softened by pity. The man whom Eleanor should
marry, thought May, must be one whom she could look up to, and who
would expect to find in his wife some more sterling qualities than the
stock-in-trade of those which constitute a frivolous woman of the
world.

Oddly enough the conversation between the two friends, which had
ranged over most topics, had never touched upon this, until one day
when, warmly wrapped up in furs--for the first breath of winter was in
the air--they were driving in May's pony-phaeton in the park; and thus
it came about.

'I have a letter from your sister this morning, Eleanor,' said Lady
Forestfield, 'written in remarkably good spirits, and with many
affectionate messages to you. She seems to have quite forgiven your
_bouleversement_ of her favourite plan for marrying you to Mr.
Spiridion Pratt.'

'I knew that her anger on that account would not last very long,' said
Eleanor. 'You don't know Fanny, dear May; but when you do you will
find that she is the most extraordinary reflection of all that is
passing around her. During the season she saw all her friends, and
those whose example she thinks fit to copy, intent on matrimonial
schemes; Fanny did not like to be out of the fashion, and fortunately
there I was ready to her hand. The next thing was to look round for
the other victim, and she speedily settled upon poor Mr. Pratt, who, I
firmly believe, was never more astonished in his life than when it was
first hinted to him that he was desperately in love with me. This
attempt at match-making served to amuse Fanny during the season, and
having talked of it so much, she had really begun herself to believe
in its possibility, and was therefore vexed when she found I could not
be so easily disposed of. But I knew her annoyance would soon be over,
and therefore I am not surprised at what you tell me.'

'She seems to be a very forgiving person,' said May, with the least
tone of malice in her voice. 'You remember my discovering the
difficulties you had in coming to me in Podbury-street, when you told
me her objections and the strict surveillance in which she kept you.
Her sentiments as regards me must also have undergone a great change,
for she not only writes in the most friendly manner, but says that she
and Mr. Chadwick will be delighted to accept the invitation I sent
them to come and spend a fortnight here.'

'Fanny is very human, dearest May,' said Eleanor, with a blush. 'I was
perfectly certain that so soon as your time of trouble was over, and
you were restored to your old position, she would be quite as much in
your favour as she had been the reverse. And so she, is coming down to
stay here. It was out of kindness for me that you asked her, I know.'

'Not entirely,' said May. 'I don't pretend to say that I thought you
had been dull with me alone, for I know that is not the case, but
still I thought that we had been travelling over each other's minds
long enough, and that a little diversity would be agreeable. Besides,
I very much wanted to see something of Mr. Chadwick. I have heard from
more than one quarter of the kind way in which he was in the habit of
speaking of me at the time when I wanted a friend, and I wished to
thank him in person.'

'Don't do that, or you will offend him for ever,' said Eleanor. 'He is
the kindest, best-hearted man in the world--a little rough, perhaps,
but a thorough gentleman in every thought.'

'You have not yet learned the extent of my company,' said May, looking
maliciously at her friend. 'I have a great idea that perhaps the
_fiasco_ which Mrs. Chadwick so deplored last season was caused by her
own mismanagement; so that in order that she may have another chance
of carrying out that project upon which her heart was at one time set,
and that I may give her the benefit of my assistance, I have invited
Mr. Pratt to stay down here at the same time--and, what is more, he is
coming.'

'How can you be so ridiculous!' said Eleanor. 'You know you have done
nothing of the kind!'

'Most certainly, and in all seriousness, I have, dear; not, of course,
with any such idea as I have just suggested, but simply because he is
a pleasant little man, whose admiration for you has now toned down
into a sincere and genuine regard, and for whom I myself have a real
liking. I wonder,' she said suddenly, after a pause--'I wonder whether
Sir Nugent Uffington would care to come here for a few days?'

Eleanor looked quickly round at her, but seemed reassured by the calm,
though earnest, expression on her friend's face.

'It is impossible to say,' she said; 'but I think he would like it
very much. He seemed on the only occasion on which I saw them together
to be impressed by Mr. Chadwick's honest common sense; and Fanny now
thinks there is nobody like him.'

'That ought to be my opinion,' said May quietly; 'for though the
subject has never been mentioned between us, I am certain that I owe
all the good which has lately happened to me to Sir Nugent Uffington's
interposition with my husband.'

'You think it?' said Eleanor.

'I am sure of it,' replied May; 'though how it was brought about I
have not the least idea. Sir Nugent has a strangely determined manner
with him, and when he first became interested about me he bade me not
to cease hoping for better days. Even then, when everything was at its
worst and blackest, I derived some kind of comfort from his words, and
I feel now that I am indebted to him for what has been my restoration
to life.'

Again Eleanor looked keenly at her friend, and was again satisfied at
May's appearance.

'It is strange that a man like that,' said May, 'should never have
married; so far as one can judge, he has all the qualifications for
making a woman happy.'

'There is, is there not,' said Eleanor, 'some story about him, some
romantic adventure of his youth, which soured his disposition and
brought on him that cynicism which men are always talking of but which
I in vain have tried to discover?'

'He is not, I imagine, so cynical or so hard as he was,' said May.
'Mr. Eardley, who came to see me once or twice, told me he had never
seen a man so much changed, and wondered to what influence the
alteration could be ascribed.'

'Probably to longer life and greater experience,' said Eleanor
demurely.

'I doubt that very much,' said May, with a smile. 'In default of some
more powerful motive, Sir Nugent's nature would remain stubborn to the
last. However, probably longer life has something to do with the other
part of the question which we were discussing. It may be that most
girls would think him too old for a husband.'

'That would not be the verdict of any girl with a particle of common
sense, I should think,' said Eleanor. 'I know comparatively very
little of him, and yet even I have seen him at times when he has
thrown off the air of reserve which he habitually wears, and been as
young as anybody present.'

May marked the eager manner and quick tone in which these words were
said, and at once drew her own conclusions.

'I think, then, I will ask Sir Nugent down,' she said; 'running the
risk of his being bored by us all. If, as it seems, he has taken to
Mr. Chadwick, he can at least always find with him a refuge from
female society.'

Eleanor did not reply to this last sentence. Perhaps she had her own
reasons for thinking, or at all events for hoping, that from certain
female society Nugent Uffington would make no attempt to escape. From
the time of that conversation Eleanor was brighter, and evidently
happier than she had been during the whole of her stay at Woodburn.

She was pleased to think that Uffington was coming to Woodburn, that
she would have constant opportunities of being with him, and of
listening to his best thoughts and aspirations in that voice which she
knew was softer and more musical in its tone when addressed to her
than to any other person, even to May. Even to May? Yes, Eleanor was
very much pleased that she had had that conversation, for it had set
her mind completely at rest on a point which for some time had caused
her much disquietude. There was no question about it now, she thought;
she had looked into May's eyes, and read there what must be the truth.
She could go on very quietly now, and that sinking of the heart which
she felt occasionally when she used to see May Forestfield and Nugent
Uffington much together would come no more.

Two days later Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick and Mr. Pratt, travelling
together, arrived at Woodburn, and were all received with much
cordiality by Lady Forestfield. Mrs. Chadwick professed herself
delighted to see Eleanor again, and congratulated her upon the
improvement in her looks. 'It is all the country air and your sweet
society, dear Lady Forestfield,' she said. 'I am determined, come what
may, that nothing shall keep me in town during the autumn months
again; and if Mr. Chadwick is compelled to remain there to attend to
his business, I shall not stay with him; so I give him fair notice.'

'Halloo, that will never do,' cried Mr. Chadwick. 'I don't mind your
imitating the swells in most ways, Fanny, but that is one of their
plans that I will never have followed. To have and to hold, sickness
and health, richer and poorer, death do us part--that is what we
settled, you know, in St. George's Church, and that is what I mean us
both to stick to.'

'My dear James!' murmured Mrs. Chadwick.

'I can perfectly understand Mr. Chadwick's feelings,' said May, with a
bright blush in her face, 'and I highly applaud his resolution. The
less that husband and wife are parted the better, be sure, for their
domestic happiness.'

'Well, at all events,' said Mr. Pratt, with more than usual tact,
seeing the awkwardness of the situation, 'there is no reason why a
bachelor need stay in town. I have done so this year of my own free
will; and I must say that, all things considered, I have enjoyed
myself very much.'

'Is that really so?' said Mrs. Chadwick, looking at him meaningly.

'Yes, indeed,' said Spiridion, meeting the glance with good-humoured
firmness. 'I daresay that perhaps, physically, I might have been
better if I had gone to Ems or Carlsbad; but, morally, I found the air
of London this autumn quite bracing--very bracing, indeed.'

'You have got a fine place here, Lady Forestfield,' said Mr. Chadwick,
who did not understand any of these side allusions, walking into a bow
window, and looking round upon the prospect. 'This bears out what I
have always said--the North is well enough for business, but give me
the South for pleasure. Now in the North at this time of year, and at
this time of day, you would have a great thick fog looming all over
here, so that you could not see your hand before your face, and there
would be a real taste of coal-dust in your mouth. What's here in front
beautiful turf would be brown or black swampy stuff; and them woods
beyond would have lost all their pretty leaves, and been nowt but a
bundle of sticks.'

'I only hope you will be able to amuse yourself while you are here,
Mr. Chadwick,' said May. 'The head keeper gives plenty of promise of
sport, if you are fond of shooting.'

'Yes, my lady,' answered Mr. Chadwick, in his old-fashioned manner; 'I
have been fond of shooting ever since I was a boy, and used to go out
on Sunday mornings at Jarrow a-birding with an old horse-pistol. I
have had some great times since then, battoos, as they call 'em, and
wholesale slaughter of all kinds; but I doubt if I really enjoyed any
of it so much as those Sunday mornings.'

'You will have a companion in your sport in a day or two,' said May;
'Sir Nugent Uffington has promised to come down on Thursday.'

'Sir Nugent coming?' cried Mrs. Chadwick. 'That is delightful news; he
is a most charming man!'

'Yes, he is a good fellow,' said Mr. Chadwick. 'I took a liking to him
the first time I saw him, because I thought he spoke up so well and
pluckily about--'

And here the fact of its having been Lady Forestfield's case which Sir
Nugent Uffington had so promptly and readily defended came in full
force upon Mr. Chadwick, causing him to stop abruptly and to become
purple in the face.

Fortunately Mr. Pratt was fully equal to the occasion. 'When you tell
Mr. Chadwick that he will not have a companion for a day or two, Lady
Forestfield,' he said, with a smile, 'I see you perfectly appreciate
my performances in the field. To tell the truth, I never could see the
pleasure of tramping about over stubble and furrow, tiring yourself to
death, and rendering your shoulder painful for a week.'

'He is more delightful than ever,' whispered Mrs. Chadwick to her
hostess. 'I was afraid that Eleanor's behaviour to him might have
caused some coolness between us; but he seems to have quite got over
what I cannot help even to you, her great friend, Lady Forestfield,
calling her rather cruel treatment of him; and though I confess I was
disappointed at the failure of a plan which I certainly could not have
espoused if I had not thought it would have been for the good of all,
I am delighted to say it has had one excellent result, which I may
tell you in confidence.' Then, dropping her voice to a tragic whisper,
she said: 'He has completely broken with that person.'

'Indeed!' said Lady Forestfield, who took not the least interest, and
scarcely understood what was said; 'I am glad to hear it.'

'Completely broken with her,' said Mrs. Chadwick; 'and I am sure all
who have any sense of decency and self-respect must be delighted to
hear it.'


The next morning, as they were returning from an early drive round the
park, Lady Forestfield saw a telegraph messenger entering the lodge
gate, and beckoning him to her, received from him a message with which
he was proceeding to the house. It was from Sir Nugent Uffington, and
ran as follows:

'Most important. I am coming down by next train, and must see you, as
I return to town to-night.'

May's heart sank within her with a sense of impending trouble as she
read these words, and Eleanor, to whom she handed the message, turned
pale as death.



CHAPTER XVII.
UFFINGTON'S ERRAND.


The message which the telegraph-boy brought to Woodburn had the effect
of throwing a chill upon the spirits of the party, and caused more
than ordinary consternation in the breasts of two of its members.

As soon as they reached the house Lady Forestfield retired to her
room, not even asking Eleanor to bear her company, so deeply did she
feel the necessity for silence and cogitation. Once there, she turned
the key in the door to prevent any attempt at intrusion; for she knew
Mrs. Chadwick to be one of those persons who are always most inclined
to gossip at inconvenient seasons; and settling herself in her
favourite chair in the oriel window, gave herself up to thinking of
possibilities.

Taking the telegram from her pocket, she reperused it quietly. 'Most
important,'--those were the first words. Sir Nugent Uffington, as she
well knew, was anything but impulsive, and not in the least likely to
use a term stronger than the occasion warranted; nor was it at all
probable that, as he had arranged to visit Woodburn at the latter end
of the week, and to spend some days there, he would come down,
especially for a few hours, unless the business which brought him was
of a pressing and particular nature. What could that business be? The
first idea that occurred to Lady Forestfield's mind was that the
influence, whatever it might have been, which had induced her husband
to restore her to her former position, had waned; that the divorce
action would be proceeded with, and she would again be driven forth an
outcast on the world. The possibility, not the probability, of this
being the explanation of the telegram was all that occurred to her;
but she yet turned it over in her mind as though it were already an
accomplished fact. It would be very terrible, she thought, to have
again to face that wretched solitary life in the dull lodging, with
all its sordid and mean surroundings; to have her miserable story
again publicly commented on, and privately bandied from mouth to
mouth, by those amongst whom her name was no more mentioned, and her
very existence had long since been forgotten; it would be hard to give
up that fresh love of life which, since her residence at Woodburn, had
dawned upon her simultaneously with her appreciation of nature and the
exquisite enjoyment of the country.

If this supposition were correct, she must have been at fault in the
idea that the recent change in Lord Forestfield's conduct had been
produced by Sir Nugent Uffington's agency, for she knew Uffington too
well to suspect for a moment that anything which he had once taken in
hand could be suffered to fail. What, then, could it be? For an
instant a burning flush suffused May's neck as a thought, to which she
had hitherto never dared to give attention, flashed across her mind.
Could it be possible that this close and constant intimacy into which
they had been thrown had led him to think of her with something warmer
than those feelings of friendship which he had never indeed openly
professed, but which by every action he had manifested towards her?
She herself knew that for her own part--No, under other circumstances
it might have been possible, but now it was hopeless; she had hitherto
succeeded in prohibiting such a thought from entering her breast, and
it should find a place there no more.

What could it be, then? Could it be the question of Eleanor's future
that brought Sir Nugent thither in such haste? From the conversation
which she had had with her friend, May was certain that Eleanor was
deeply impressed with Uffington, and that though perhaps her rejection
of Spiridion Pratt was not entirely influenced by that feeling, it was
tolerably certain that, if Uffington had been the suitor, he would
have received a very different reply. The spirit and eagerness with
which Eleanor had combated the idea of his being too old to marry a
young girl had given May a complete insight into her friend's
feelings, and if Uffington's errand were to propose for Eleanor
Irvine, its success was assured. May could not, however, think that
this could be the case; Sir Nugent was to have come down in a few
days, and would then have taken advantage of the opportunity to
propose for the girl's hand if he had any such intention. It was
entirely unlike him to make a special excursion for the purpose, which
would necessarily lead to comment and question; moreover, it was to
herself, Lady Forestfield, that the telegram was addressed, and the
request that she should remain at home was made to her. May gave it up
in despair; she was totally unable to divine the cause of Uffington's
coming unless it related to private affairs of his own, and she could
scarcely think that concerning them it could be necessary to consult
her.

May was not the only one who was brooding over what the message might
portend; Eleanor Irvine, so soon as she could rid herself of the fussy
companionship of Mrs. Chadwick, devoted her energies to its solution.
To her the fact that the writer attached importance to an interview
with Lady Forestfield seemed of alarming significance. More than once
during the last few months Eleanor's heart had been wrung with the
idea that an attachment had innocently, and perhaps without their
knowing it, sprung up between May Forestfield and Sir Nugent
Uffington. It seemed to her impossible that two such persons could be
thrown together without falling in love with each other, for May, in
Eleanor's eyes, was the prettiest, the sweetest, the most lovable of
women; while, as for Uffington, when her own heart told her that she
loved him with all the admiration and affection of which her deep
strong nature was capable, she, of course, thought that every other
woman must be similarly fascinated. May had never given her the
smallest hint to lead her to believe in the existence of such a state
of things, and, indeed, during their last conversation when the merits
of Uffington and the reasons for his having hitherto remained
unmarried had been fully discussed, Eleanor had taken the opportunity
of narrowly watching Lady Forestfield, and was at the time convinced
that no feeling stronger than grateful friendship had dictated her
panegyrics. Of Uffington, however, Eleanor had never been so sure. She
had fancied once or twice that he seemed attached to herself, but in
such matters had had little experience, and thought she might possibly
have been deceived. It seemed almost absurd to think that a man of
such taste and refinement could have been thrown so much as he had
recently been into the society of a woman like May without bowing to
the spell which her beauty and fascination never failed to exercise.
And if such were the case, if Uffington's errand were to implore May
to let the decree _nisi_ be confirmed and to trust her future to him,
Eleanor felt certain that May would not have the power to resist. What
would then become of her?

Mrs. Chadwick, from the sanctity of the connubial bedchamber, screamed
to Mr. Chadwick, who was washing his hands before luncheon in the
adjacent dressing-room, that she thought both Lady Forestfield and
Eleanor were 'behaving very oddly,' but she had little idea what was
going on or what importance was attached both by her sister and her
hostess to the message which had just arrived. Mr. Chadwick, who was
always good-tempered, contented himself by remarking that apparently
something was 'up,' but that it was 'none of their business;' and
adroitly turned the subject by praising the beauty of the place and
the friendly warmth of their reception by Lady Forestfield.

They were all seated at luncheon, when a fly from the station was seen
coming up the avenue, and Lady Forestfield, asking her friends to
excuse her, at once proceeded to her boudoir, to which room she
directed her servants that Sir Nugent Uffington should be conducted.
That sad sinking of the heart,  that painful feeling of impending
danger which she had before experienced, came upon her strongly as she
heard Uffington's footstep on the stairs; and, as the door opened, she
had to summon all her fortitude to avoid fainting.

Uffington was perhaps a thought paler than usual, and looked anxious
and careworn. He advanced towards Lady Forestfield in his usual
earnest manner, and taking her hand, and holding it for an instant in
his grasp, he said: 'You received the telegram?'

'Certainly,' said May, 'and I was fully expecting you. You said that
your business was important--I fear also that your errand is a
melancholy one.'

'What makes you think that?' said Uffington, evading her gaze.

'I do not know--I cannot tell, save that I have a certain inward
consciousness of coming misery. I have been so happy for the last few
weeks that, perhaps, I am more acutely sensitive of even the shadow of
sorrow. But you yourself, Sir Nugent, look tired and worn--will you
not have some luncheon?'

'Not until I have explained my errand, which, as you have correctly
judged, is a melancholy one. You must hear with courage all I have to
say, and then quietly and deliberately make up your mind as to what is
the best course for you to pursue, for by what you do to-day the whole
tenor of your future life will be influenced.'

The burning flush which had suffused May's features during her
self-examination that morning crept over them again, caused by the
same thought; but as quickly as before she east it forth, and said:
'What have you to tell me?'

'I am here to speak to you of your husband; he is very ill.'

'Richard very ill!' cried May. 'Where is he? what is the matter with
him?'

'He is at the house in Seamore-place,' said Uffington. 'He was in an
unsettled, unhealthy state when he arrived there a few days ago from
Paris, where, for the last few weeks, he had been leading a hard life
and drinking to excess. Yesterday I chanced to call upon some
business, and found that during the night he had been attacked with
typhus fever. His recent career has been anything but favourable to
him under the circumstances, and the truth is that he is lying in a
very dangerous state.'

'Good Heavens, how dreadful' said May. 'Is he properly cared for?'

'Yes,' said Uffington. 'I inquired into that. His servant Stephens,
who remained with him in all his various fortunes, sent off at once
for Dr. Whitaker, who, as you know, had attended Forestfield once or
twice before. Whitaker fortunately was in town, and came at once.
Stephens told me that he shook his head when he saw the patient, and,
knowing the confidential position which Stephens occupied, told him
that he thought very badly of the case. And now, dear Lady
Forestfield, I am coming to what more immediately concerns you. From
something Stephens told me, I sent up for the nurse in attendance, and
had a little conversation with her. Afterwards I made a point of
seeing Dr. Whitaker, and from each of them I learned that both during
the time of delirium and in his saner moments Forestfield has made
frequent reference to you.'

'To me?' cried May, trembling from head to foot; 'to me?'

'To you,' said Uffington; 'speaking of you as his wife, calling on you
by your Christian name, and declaring that you are "his _after all_."

'O, thank God! thank God!' cried May, burying her face in her hands
and bursting into tears. 'I knew the time would come when he would say
that of me.'

'Do not excite yourself, for you will have need of your strength,'
said Uffington. 'The question is now, what do you think it right to
do?'

'What do I think it right to do?' repeated May, raising her head. 'Can
there be any question about it? Before you told me that he had
mentioned my name and spoken of me in that manner, I hesitated, simply
because I was afraid that my presence might irritate him and make him
worse; but now that I have heard what you said, I have no longer any
reason for indecision. Will you take me to Seamore-place at once?'

'I imagined that your good heart would prompt that determination,'
said Uffington; 'but, dear Lady Forestfield, it is my duty to lay the
case before you in all its bareness, and you must remember that if you
go to Seamore-place, and install yourself as Forestfield's nurse, as
is no doubt your intention, you run the greatest risk of catching the
fever.'

'I should be but little worth if I allowed such a consideration to
weigh with me for an instant,' said May, with a sad smile. 'My life
has not been so full of happiness that I need be particularly careful
of it, and there can be no doubt that my place at such a time is by my
husband's side. Will you take me with you back to town?'

'Certainly,' said Uffington. 'The express passes at five, and we will
go by that.'

'By that time I will have everything ready,' said Lady Forestfield,
'and in the mean while I will see Eleanor, tell her what has occurred,
and ask her to make my excuses to her sister, who has unfortunately
just arrived on a visit. And now for yourself, Sir Nugent. I am sure
you are sinking from hunger and fatigue, and I will order some fresh
luncheon for you at once.'

Mr. Chadwick, who seldom allowed anything to put him out, had
ensconced himself in a corner of the library, and deep in a volume of
the _Life of Joseph Locke_, was thoroughly enjoying the early
struggles of that celebrated engineer, whose career greatly resembled
his own, when he was startled by the loud tones of his wife's voice,
and looking up, saw that lady in a state of great agitation by his
side.

'O, here you are at last, James,' she said. 'I have been looking for
you all over the house, and never thought you would have hidden
yourself away among these dull, musty, old books. I wonder people of
position do not attend more to their libraries. Now on our shelves
there is not one single volume that is not handsomely bound.'

'Still, I would not mind swopping my book collection for this,' said
the boiler-maker, looking round him with pleased eyes--'there are some
rare works here, my Fan. However, I suppose it was not to talk about
books that you have been "hunting" me, as you say?'

'No, indeed,' said Mrs. Chadwick; 'I have got the most extraordinary
news for you. O, what do you think was the business that brought Sir
Nugent Uffington here today?'

'Well, indeed, I cannot say,' said Mr. Chadwick reflectively, unless
it were to propose for our pretty Eleanor. 'I have fancied ever since
I first saw them together that Sir Nugent had a sneaking kindness for
that girl.'

'Propose for Eleanor, indeed!' cried Mrs. Chadwick; 'nothing of the
sort. No such idea ever entered Sir Nugent Uffington's head.
He has fixed his fancy on some one else; and he is very likely to have
his way.'

'Indeed!' said Mr. Chadwick, who, when the question of Eleanor was
thus disposed of, had no farther interest in Sir Nugent Uffington's
matrimonial project; 'indeed!'

'Yes,' said Mrs. Chadwick; 'and the chance has come about in this way.
Sir Nugent has come down to say that Lord Forestfield is very ill
indeed--almost dying, I believe--and that he wishes to be reconciled
to his wife before his death.

'That's good,' said honest Mr. Chadwick, slapping his great band on
the book to emphasise his declaration; 'that is the best thing I have
ever heard of that chap. And the poor lady, she is going, of course?'

'Of course?' repeated Mrs. Chadwick. 'I really do not see any "of
course" in the matter; considering the manner in which he has treated
her, and the horrible life which, according to Charley Qrmerod's
account, Lord Forestfield has been living for the last few months.
However, she is going, says that nothing in the world will keep her
away from him, and all that sort of thing, and has sent Eleanor to beg
us to accept her excuses for having to leave so hurriedly. Lady
Forestfield said, too, that if we thought the change was doing us
good, she would only be too delighted for us to remain, and Eleanor
would make an excellent hostess; but of course, that is out of the
question. What I am looking at is, what is to be the result of all
this?'

'The result of our not remaining?' asked Mr. Chadwick. 'I don't see
that that requires much foresight. Of course I shall go and take a
house at Brighton, and you will be very happy there till Christmas,
when we will return home.'

'You silly James, I did not mean that at all; I meant the result of
this illness and reconciliation and that--and I see it all. I have a
kind of inward conviction that Lord Forestfield will die, and then the
way will be clear for the others.'

'What others?' asked Mr. Chadwick, who did not follow the thread of
his wife's discourse, and was longing to get back to his _Life of
Locke_.

'Why, Sir Nugent Uffington and Lady Forestfield, of course,' said Mrs.
Chadwick. 'You must have seen--but I declare you have no eyes. It has
been perfectly plain to me for months past that he has been deeply
smitten with her, else why should he have taken all this trouble of
getting her back into her former position, arranging her affairs, and
all that; besides, I have seen them together, and I am a pretty good
judge of such matters. Now, when she is once a widow there will be no
bar to their union, and you may depend upon it that that will be a
match within a very few months.'

'It would seem to me to be a sensible proceeding,' said Mr. Chadwick;
'they are both well suited to each other, and if he is as devoted as
you say, he might make up to her for the hard lines which she has
suffered with her first husband, poor creature.'

'I wonder,' said Mrs. Chadwick, speaking to herself rather than to her
companion--'I wonder what she will be called: whether she will
continue Lady Forestfield, or become Lady Uffington. They are both
"Ladies," of course; but I don't think if I had been a viscountess I
should like descending to be a mere baronet's wife. I don't know how
that is, and I shall have to wait till we get to town before I can
learn, for there is no one here to tell me. I could not ask Lady
Forestfield under the circumstances, and Eleanor is dreadfully
ignorant on such subjects. By the way, I wonder where Eleanor is?'

It was lucky that Mrs. Chadwick did not know; for certainly Eleanor
had no desire to be interrupted by her sister at that moment. After
she had received the news from Lady Forestfield, and broken it to Mrs.
Chadwick, Eleanor, on May's assurance that she could render her no
assistance, had returned to the boudoir, and was standing in a pensive
attitude at the oriel window, musing over what had occurred, when
Uffington, who had finished his luncheon, entered the room. He stole
quietly up behind her and called her by her name.

Eleanor started. 'I had no notion you were here, Sir Nugent,' she said
with a blush.

'Fortune has so far favoured me as to find you alone, Miss Irvine,'
said Uffington, 'for I have something very special to say to you; and
under the present aspect of affairs it seems doubtful whether I may
have another chance. I am a man of few words, but little speech is
necessary to declare my intentions, and I am willing to accept your
decision in a single syllable. Since I first saw you I have been
irresistibly attracted towards you, and have remarked in you qualities
such as I have never noticed in another woman. In short, I have
learned to love you very dearly, and though my life has been neither
an uneventful nor an unclouded one, I think I may say there has been
nothing in it which should prevent me from placing the rest of it at
your disposal if you will honour me by becoming my wife.'

Why stop to record the trembling words of happiness in which Eleanor
accepted this proposal, so oddly and so bluntly made? Nugent Uffington
had been the ideal man of her life, and she now saw him at her feet,
conscious too that love such as his was not transient, but of that
enduring quality which lasts for life.



CHAPTER XVIII
HUSBAND AND WIFE.


Sir Nugent Uffington found his brougham waiting at the Victoria
Station, and as he handed Lady Forestfield into it he gave her a few
words of parting counsel. She was to expect a great physical change in
her husband's condition, he told her, and was not to be frightened;
she was to be prepared to hear many things during the sick man's
ravings which would necessarily pain her, but she must listen to them
with patience; unasked she had declared her intention of doing her
duty, and that must be her consolation. Then, promising to see her the
next day, he took his leave, and the carriage containing her rolled
away.

It was a dismal autumnal night, and the long lines of lamps reflected
in the wet pavement struck May, staring out of the carriage window,
with strange familiarity. It was months now since she had seen London
lighted up by night, for the time of her residence in Podbury-street
had been during the long days and evenings of the summer; and now her
thoughts insensibly reverted to the time when night after night, with
unvarying regularity, she was whirled away to some gay scene of
triumph, where her presence was anxiously expected, and where her
command was law. That was all over now she knew, and save for the time
wasted and the precious opportunities missed, she could think of it
all without regret; in her quiet solitude at Woodburn she had learned
the great secret of happiness, in endeavouring to do her duty, and she
looked back upon her early days of feverish excitement with feelings
of sorrow and disgust. What was before her now she knew not, but in
breaking away from the calm life, and in trying to alleviate the
sufferings of him who, whatever had happened, was her husband 'after
all,' she had obeyed the dictates of her conscience, and knew she had
acted rightly.

But notwithstanding this sense of rectitude, May felt her heart sink
within her as the carriage drew near to Seamore-place, and it needed
all her fortitude to prevent her bursting into tears. Painfully and
vividly rose before her the scene which had occurred when she quitted
the place which had been her home, never, as she thought, to return
again. The agony of shame which she had felt as she passed the
servants, all of whom she could not but know were acquainted with the
cause of her degradation; the terrible heart-sickness which beset her
as she crossed the threshold an outcast and a wanderer--what
humiliation must she go through in meeting these people again! It
would have been almost better, she thought, to have remained in her
solitude, unheard of and uncared for; but she had accepted the issue
and must abide by it.

As the carriage drove up to the well-remembered house, the street-door
opened quietly, and Stephens, Lord Forestfield's valet, assisted his
mistress to alight, a telegram from Sir Nugent Uffington having
apprised him of Lady Forestfield's arrival. May was thankful to learn
that the establishment at Seamore-place had long since been broken up,
and that with the exception of a couple of women servants and the
nurse there was no one there but Stephens, whose manner to her was, as
it always had been, thoroughly respectful.

'His lordship is very bad, my lady,' he said in reply to May's hurried
inquiry; 'I am afraid about as bad as he can be to be alive. He takes
nothing to eat, has a terrible thirst upon him, always crying out for
something to drink; he is as weak as a baby, and quite out of his
mind, not knowing me nor any of us when we come near him. Dr. Whitaker
is in the house, my lady,' he added. 'When he called this afternoon, I
told him I had heard from Sir Nugent Uffington that your ladyship was
expected; and he said he would look in again about this time. Shall I
tell him your ladyship is here?'

'Yes,' said May, after an instant's hesitation; 'I should certainly
like to speak to Dr. Whitaker before I go up-stairs.'

Her first trial was now at hand. In former days Dr. Whitaker would
have been very little more to her than a higher kind of servant; for
the insolent people among whom she had lived were in the habit of
treating all those who were not of their own class, no matter how far
superior to themselves in everything save the accident of birth, as
persons who were necessary to their well-being, but who were in no
wise to be encouraged by familiarity. Among the members of the medical
profession, in which throughout the world are enrolled many of the
kindest, the bravest, and most independent specimens of humanity,
there are, of course, to be found some who, whatever their private
opinion of such treatment as this may be, have not the courage to
resent it. Dr. Whitaker was one of these; the great Pickwickian
sentiment of shouting in accordance with the wishes of the largest
number was carried out by him to its fullest extent, and his horror of
peccant mortality, when it not merely did not interfere with, but
absolutely helped, his professional practice, was formidable in its
sternness. When the scandal about Lady Forestfield had first been made
public, Dr. Whitaker had given many a patient ten minutes of grateful
ease from pain by his admirably graphic account of the whole
transaction, and had stamped himself for ever in their minds as a man
of the finest feelings, by his indignant denunciation of the women who
bring shame and sorrow into the homes of such men as 'my excellent
friend and patient, Lord Forestfield.' Of course Dr. Whitaker's
conduct in this matter had been reported to May--when does any one say
anything derogatory of us that we do not immediately hear of it from
some one else?--and she was consequently somewhat alarmed at the idea
of their meeting. Her knowledge of the world was not sufficient to
suggest to her that the doctor would probably also have heard of the
condonation and quasi-reconciliation that had taken place, and that
more especially as his noble friend and patient was in a dangerous
condition, there could be now no harm, even to a man of his
respectability, in holding out the olive-branch to May.

A short stout man Dr. Whitaker, with a bald head, a red face, and a
small gray whisker; his manner was bustling and self-satisfied, he was
always dressed in solemn black, and invariably wore creaking boots.
Many years before, when, as a young man, he first set up for himself
in practice, having emancipated himself from his father--a worthy man,
who kept a chemist's shop, from which he would not retire, and of whom
in consequence his son was horribly ashamed--Dr. Whitaker's manner had
been very different. He had crept in and out of the smallest and most
modest houses, taking care to make no noise and to give no offence; he
had listened for hours to the monotonous complaints of old women in
little lodgings for the sake of the five shillings a visit which he
was enabled to charge them, and he had been humble, deferential, and
presumably grateful to many upon whom he had long since ceased to look
with anything like a sign of recognition. A man of the world Dr.
Whitaker, whose success in life was assured.

With persons of rank, indeed, his manner remained very much the same
as it had been in bygone days to persons in lodgings, and he
accordingly entered the room as softly as the creaking boots would
permit him, and marched straight up to Lady Forestfield with extended
hand and grave bow.

'Even under these sad circumstances,' he said, 'I cannot omit the
expression of my great pleasure at seeing you once more, Lady
Forestfield, under this roof; which I venture to think, had you been
well advised, you would never have quitted--'

'Pray give me news of Lord Forestfield,' said May, hurriedly
interrupting him; 'you have seen him just now--is there any change in
his condition?'

'No change whatever,' said Dr. Whitaker. 'His lordship is certainly
not better, and I do not think he is worse; but there can be no
denying that he is in a very critical state, as I ventured to inform
your ladyship through the medium of Sir Nugent Uffington.'

'Do you think then, Dr. Whitaker,' said May in low earnest voice,
'that there is hope of his recovery?'

'I do not say that,' replied the doctor; 'your ladyship is aware of
the old proverb which says that there must be hope while there is
life; and though Lord Forestfield is in extreme danger, with human
skill and attention, under Divine Providence' (Whitaker always spoke
of this last as a kind of copartnership) 'we may pull him through.
Your ladyship, I understand, intends to remain in the house, and in
case there should be any sudden change I will give orders to the
nurse, that you are warned in time.'

'I do not understand you,' said May. 'If there were any sudden change
I should see it, I imagine, as soon as the nurse, whose watch I intend
to share.'

'What!' cried Dr. Whitaker, in high key, for he was startled out of
his composure and professional manner; 'you don't mean to tell me that
you are actually thinking of nursing his lordship?'

'With what other object do you think I am here?' asked May simply.

'But do you know that this fever is what vulgar people call
"catching," and that exposing yourself in this way you run the
greatest risk of being attacked by it?'

'I am willing to take my chance,' said May, 'and am prepared to run
all risks.'

'Admirable self-sacrifice,' murmured Dr. Whitaker, in a kind of
stage-aside, which he had found very effective with many people. 'I am
not sure, however,' he added aloud, 'whether I ought not to put my veto
upon this plan.'

'It would be useless, doctor; for my determination is fixed. And now I
will wish you good-night, as I am anxious to get to my work at once.'

Dr. Whitaker bowed over the hand which May extended to him, and
stepped into his brougham in a state of the greatest astonishment. He
had several special 'last visits' to pay that night, and to such of
his patients as were at all in a state to hear it he told the
wonderful story of Lady Forestfield's return to her home, 'where she
is actually engaged, my dear sir, in nursing her husband in fever,
which she is very likely to take herself.'

Meanwhile, May had sought the bedchamber, and had been received by the
nurse, whom Dr. Whitaker had apprised of her coming.

'My lord's asleep now, my lady,' the woman said, pointing to the bed,
'but terribly restless and uneasy; the sleep that he gets does not do
him any real good, for he tosses and tumbles from side to side, and is
scarcely ever done talking. Dr. Whitaker said that you wished to sit
up with my lord, my lady; but I should advise you to think twice about
it, for letting alone your not looking strong yourself, and running
the risk of catching the fever, his lordship from time to time screams
out and raves about all sorts of things, and that it would most likely
frighten you to hear. I would advise your ladyship to think twice
about it--I would indeed.'

May, however, was not to be shaken in her determination.

'I am quite strong,' she said, 'much stronger than you suppose; and
though I have never seen any one in fever, I am not unaccustomed to
nursing, as I watched by the bedside of my father during his last
illness. At all events, I will see how I succeed. There is no
medicine, you say, to be given for the next two hours. Leave me,
please, until then. I shall be better able to know what I have
undertaken by that time.'

As soon as the woman had left the room, May took the candle, and
shading it with her hand, approached the bed. Her husband lay there,
sleeping heavily. May thought him much changed; his cheeks were hollow
and sunken, thus giving greater prominence to the hard cynical
expression which had always detracted from his good looks. His lips
were shut, his brow was contracted, and from time to time he uttered
sounds more like the ebullitions of wrath than the wailings of
despair. As she stood by the bedside gazing at him, he turned round,
and soon afterwards opened his eyes. As soon as she perceived this,
May shrank behind the curtain, but it was too late; Lord Forestfield
had seen her, or, rather, had noticed the fluttering of her robe
without recognising its wearer, and, after one or two inarticulate
efforts, he said, in a low and feeble voice:

'Are you there again, Mélanie? For how many nights now have I seen you
standing there, glaring at me with those bright black eyes, but never
saying a word? What makes me so weak, I wonder? I seem to be tied to
this bed without a possibility of moving from it. Mélanie darling,
have some pity on me Why are you always so cruel now? You were not so
once; recollect the happy days we have passed together. Sing to me,
Mélanie, my loved one; sing what you first sang to me that day at the
Gorge de Franchard--"Pour que je t'aime, ô mon poëte!" Ah, I have
forgotten it like everything else; my memory is all gone now. No,
stay; sing me this verse:


          "L'oiseau qui marche dans l'allée
               S'effraye et part au moindre bruit;
           Ma passion est chose ailée
               Et s'envole quand on la suit."'


As he ceased murmuring these words he made an attempt to touch her
hand, but May hastily drew back.

'This is too much,' she said, as she sank into a chair; 'I had not
looked for anything like this;' and she burst into tears.



CHAPTER XIX.
RELEASED.


Some ten days after May's arrival in Seamore-place, owing principally
to her constant care and watchfulness, and the unremitting attention
with which she devoted herself to him, Lord Forestfield was pronounced
not merely to be out of danger, but well on his way to convalescence.
It had been a desperate trial for May, not only as regards her bodily
strength, which during her long vigils was taxed beyond its powers of
endurance, but to her mind, which, so long at least as her husband's
delirium continued, was kept ever on the rack. When, with his
returning senses, Lord Forestfield recognised his wife, and realised
all that she had done for him during his illness, he seemed, for the
first time in his life, to be profoundly touched, and indeed became so
excited as to give ground for fearing that, in his then weak and
almost prostrate condition, he would suffer a relapse. As his strength
gradually returned to him, he grew more anxious that May should be
constantly in his sight, more exacting in his demands on her time and
attention; and this, not in the usual querulous and complaining tone
of an invalid, which he adopted towards all others, but with that
yearning tenderness of which he had never previously manifested any
sign.

One day, as he was sitting propped up with pillows in an easy-chair,
and she, at his request, was reading to him from the newspaper, he
took her hand between his, still thin and gaunt, but freed now from
the burning fever, and spoke to her as he had never spoken for years,
as he had probably never spoken at all before. In his weak-voice there
was something of the earnest fervour which took her back to the time
of their first acquaintance--all his words then were tinged with the
roseate hue of youth and love--what he said now was spoken
falteringly, and seemed at least to bear the impress of truth. He told
her that he had done her grievous wrong, and that whatever faults she
might have committed he was, in the first instance, to blame for the
manner in which he had neglected her and left her at the mercy of
others. He acknowledged that he had been cruel, harsh, and
unsympathetic, blaming his bringing-up, by which he had never been
taught to bridle his passions or to look for the possibility of the
non-fulfilment of any of his wishes, and he promised her that if, when
his strength was fully recovered, she would remain with him, as
forgiving and as loyal as she had been during his illness, he would
prove to her the alteration that time and trouble had worked in him,
and devote himself for the remainder of his life to secure her
happiness.

Was May to believe in so radical a reformation thus easily worked? The
experience of her past life convinced her to the contrary; and yet the
attempt must be made. She would shut out all those recollections of
insult suffered and misery undergone, which came thronging upon her at
the mere idea of renewing her life with her husband; she would forget
the more recent horror with which the revelations in his ravings had
inspired her; it was her duty to accept his proposition, and she would
do it. Lord Forestfield was exhausted by the fatigue which he had
undergone in speaking to her at such length, and May, telling him that
she had been warned against allowing him to excite himself, promised
to talk to him on the subject to-morrow.

The next morning at an early hour, while Dr. Whitaker was sleeping the
sleep of the just, his bell was rung furiously by a messenger from
Seamore-place, who brought a request from the nurse that the doctor
would come there at once, as Lady Forestfield was very ill. Dr.
Whitaker shook his head when he received this message, and told his
wife he had been all along afraid that her ladyship might contract
typhus from her husband, and that, as in nursing and attendance she
had exhausted the stock of health which she had brought with her from
the country, it was not improbable that it might go hard with her.

After Dr. Whitaker had visited May he shook his head more dolefully
still; and the nurse, who had been relieved of her attendance on Lord
Forestfield owing to his convalescence, and had transferred her care
to the new patient, was observed, after a hurried and whispered talk
with the physician, to have tears in her eyes. That night it became
known throughout the household that her ladyship was in a very bad
way. The attack was a desperate and a malignant one, and, as Dr.
Whitaker had said, such health and strength as she had acquired during
her sojourn at Woodburn were already exhausted by her close
confinement to the sick-room, and she could not make headway against
it.

She had but little delirium, and even when the fever was at its worst
her head was tolerably clear; so that, as she lay during the long day,
and still longer night, she would muse over all that had been, over
what was so shortly to be. For May felt that she was dying; she had an
intuitive perception that for her all was nearly over; that she should
never rise from that couch, to take even so small a part in the
world's affairs as she had hitherto played, again. That thought
brought no sadness with it. There was a time, only a few weeks since,
when in the first flush of her enjoyment of the beauties of nature, of
the freedom from care and calmness of spirits which came upon her
after her arrival at Woodburn, she felt that life had yet a hitherto
unknown charm in store for her; but since her return to Seamore-place
that notion had been entirely put aside. She had remembered once more
that she was Lord Forestfield's wife, and she had heard him express
with his own lips his desire that they should pass the remainder of
their lives together. That desire May had determined should be
fulfilled. She had made up her mind to do her duty, and she would have
done it at any cost; but there were passages in her husband's conduct
during the earlier portions of their married life which she had found
it impossible to forget, and the remembrance of which had been aroused
by his ravings during his delirium. O, how much better 'dark death and
dreamful ease' than a prolongation of the life of sin and shame, of
constant fear of discovery, of frantic search after so-called
pleasure, and sickening disgust so soon as the momentary recklessness
was over! Better, far better, that her name, now almost forgotten,
should never be heard of again, and that her husband--whose contrition
for the part he had played towards her was, May could not help
feeling, a spasmodic result of his recent illness, to be forgotten
when his strength returned--should be freed from the incumbrance which
her presence must necessarily be to him.

This view of Lord Forestfield's character was tolerably correct. So
soon as he had 'turned the corner,' as he phrased it--so soon as he
had recovered his appetite, and convalescence had once set in--his
progress towards recovery was wonderfully rapid. Soon he began to take
carriage airings; and as in passing through the streets he recognised
his friends, and again looked upon the vast panorama of London life,
from which he had been so long excluded, the good impulses which had
recently sprung up within him died away, and the old desires were as
rampant as ever. It was lucky, he thought, that in his weakness he had
a sufficient excuse for going but seldom into his wife's sick-room. He
would look in there in the morning when he first got up, and in the
evening before he went to bed--for his health was not yet sufficiently
reestablished to allow him to keep late hours, or in any way to play
tricks with himself--and, if May were awake, he would say a few words
to her; if her eyes were closed, as was generally the case, he would
content himself with a nod to the nurse and disappear. On the sixth
day of his wife's illness Lord Forestfield met Dr. Whitaker coming
down the stairs with a very solemn face, and, taking him aside, asked
him his impression of the result. There is probably no man without
some spice of good in him; and with all his snobbishness and
garrulity, Dr. Whitaker had a sincere affection, based partly on
regard, partly on the advantageous use which he had been enabled to
make of the three thousand pounds which she brought him as her
marriage portion, for his own wife. He was greatly disgusted at what
he rightly conceived to be Lord Forestfield's motive in making this
inquiry, and referred his lordship to Divine Providence with much
greater asperity than he was accustomed to use in dealing with persons
of title.

One morning the nurse waited upon Lord Forestfield with a message from
May to beg that Sir Nugent Uffington might be sent for to see her, as
she had one or two important matters on which she wished to
communicate with him. Forestfield made no immediate reply; and the
woman, noticing his heavy frown and the angry flush which spread over
his face, said: 'I don't think, if I was you, my lord, I would deny
her anything, poor lamb. She has had a dreadful night--scarcely a
minute's sleep from first to last--and there's no doubt she's
sinking.'

'Do you think so, nurse?' asked Forestfield, with all the colour
fading from his face. 'Do you think she is going from us?'

'If she continues losing strength as fast as she has done during the
last twenty-four hours, she can't be alive to-morrow morning,' said
the woman; 'and it would be a sad thought for you afterwards, my lord,
to think you had acted in any way contrary to the poor dear.'

'Tell them to send a groom down to the Albany at once,' said
Forestfield, 'to say to Sir Nugent Uffington, with my compliments,
that Lady Forestfield is very ill, and would be glad to speak to him
directly.' Then he shut himself up in his room and fell into a
reverie. Hitherto he had only dimly contemplated the idea of losing
his wife; now, if what the woman said was correct, her death must be a
certainty. In the multitude of thoughts which came crowding upon his
brain, regret for the loss of the woman whom he had sworn to love, and
to whom he had quite recently renewed his vow, had no part. What
struck him most forcibly, and remained by him longest, was the
reflection that he would be free to do as he liked, and that she would
be no longer a reproach to him. That thought was still in his mind,
when the messenger returned to say that Sir Nugent Uffington was at
Brighton, but that a telegram had been despatched to him.

Uffington arrived that afternoon. Lord Forestfield was out, the nurse
said, but she had orders to show him at once into the sick-room. Her
ladyship was very bad, the woman said, in answer to his eager inquiry,
'was sinking fast, and could not possibly last through the night, but
was wonderfully calm and composed, and had all her senses about her.'
Uffington set his teeth hard, and followed his guide with a noiseless
footstep.

In the uncertain twilight he saw May lying on the bed, covered with a
light cashmere shawl. She was dreadfully wan and emaciated; but she
knew him as he approached, and welcomed him with something like one of
her old smiles.

'I knew you would come,' she said in a very low voice; 'and I knew you
would be shocked at the change in me, and at the thought that I was
going to die. So I would not send for you--until--until the very
last.'

'You should have let me know sooner of your illness,' said Uffington,
with tears rolling down his cheeks. 'I was at Brighton when your
message arrived.'

'Yes, I know,' said May. 'Mrs. Chadwick and Eleanor are there, are
they not?'

'They are,' said Uffington. 'I came straight from their house.'

'Tell me,' said May, laying her thin burning hand on his. 'I always
thought you liked Eleanor; was I right?'

'You were,' said Uffington. 'I have told her so, and she has agreed to
marry me.'

'Ah, thank God for that!' said May reverently. 'Eleanor's happiness
was all I was anxious for; for I loved her very dearly.'

'And she loves you better than any one on earth--better than she loves
me, I fancy. She wanted me to bring her to you now.'

'No, no; that would never do--she must not run any risk. Besides,'
added May, with a faint sweet smile, 'it is too late now. But I wanted
to see you to say good-bye. I could not have died in peace without
telling you how truly grateful I am to you for all that you did for
me. No brother could have striven harder for his sister than you have
done for me. And I was so happy at Woodburn, all brought about by you.
I once thought I should have liked to remain there; but it is better
as it is--much better as it is.'

She paused for a minute and her eyelids dropped. Then she raised them,
looking up at him, and saying, in a still lower voice:

'You must go now, I think; I feel so strangely weary. Say good-bye to
me, my kindest, my best friend.'

He bent down over her, and murmuring 'God bless you!' touched her
uplifted forehead with his lips; then turned away with a convulsive
sob, burying his face in his hands. When he looked round again the
nurse was bending over the bed. Presently she turned round, nodded her
head slowly, and with her finger pointed upward.

May Forestfield was dead.



CHAPTER XX.
COMING UP TO TIME.


Lord Forestfield had gone out, without seeing his wife, immediately
after he had despatched the summons which brought Sir Nugent Uffington
to her death-bed. He had, however, returned a few minutes before the
close of the friend's interview and of May's life; and when Uffington,
after a few words exchanged with the nurse, left the room where the
woman to whom he had been so true a friend lay dead, happily beyond
the need of all human friendship or reach of blame, he encountered her
worthless husband in the hall. He had hoped to escape from the house
unnoticed; but this hope was vain; and so proved his next idea, that
he might hastily pass Forestfield with a word, and get away before he
knew what had happened. He had not taken his own quivering lips and
agitated look into account in this hope, and it vanished with Lord
Forestfield's first glance at him.

'What--what's the matter? What has she said to you?' Lord Forestfield
stammered, staring blankly at Uffington.

'She has said good-bye,' Uffington began; and then, touched by a
momentary pity for the man who so little deserved it--though of the
reaction in his feelings Uffington knew nothing--he took him by the
arm, led him into the library, and told him the truth.

'Dead!' was all Lord Forestfield replied. 'Dead--so soon!'

'Ay, dead--and so soon. She had not much strength to spare, and she
spent it in--saving your life.'

He went away without another word, and for a few seconds Lord
Forestfield gazed vacantly at the door through which he had passed. A
look of hatred then came into his evil face, still worn and rigid with
the traces of wasting fever, and he muttered:

'D--n him! he's beaten at last, and I've got the Decree Absolute,
after all!'

A minute later the nurse knocked at the library-door, having come to
communicate the melancholy intelligence to his lordship, who received
it with sullen propriety; and the dreary, dreadful bustle which
precedes the awful stillness of a house wherein one lies dead, to last
until the drearier and more dreadful bustle of the funeral,
immediately commenced in that beautiful house in Seamore-place, where
May's short life of joy, folly, guilt, repentance, and reparation had
been lived.

When the night was some hours old, Sir Nugent Uffington, who had
passed the interval in walking for miles straight ahead, he did not
know where, returned to Seamore-place, and from the opposite side of
the roadway looked up at the windows of the room where May Forestfield
was lying. The house was invested with the conventional marks of
mourning, and the useless tan was littered deep across the street.
Lights were burning in the death-room, tall torches which threw their
shadows on the blinds, and flickered in the air which passed in at
that ominously open uppermost six inches of window-sash. Sir Nugent's
imagination was busy with the scene which that room presented. He
could see the sweet young face, set in its marble paleness, with the
dark-veined eyelids, on which an expression of pain and weariness had
sat for so long, sealed over the eyes which were never more to smile
as they had smiled so rarely, or weep as they had wept so often, since
he had seen them first, and, seeing them, been reminded of her
mother's eyes, hidden in the dust. He could see the outline of the
graceful wasted limbs, and the waxen hands laid upon the satin
coverlet in the fulness of everlasting rest. It was well that she had
died there, in her husband's house, with such protection as that
formal circumstance might afford her name, that name which meant
nothing now, save to the few who loved her, and would so soon be
utterly forgotten by those who had been most eager to blacken it with
scandal and cover it with reproach; but his heart was full of
bitterness as he thought of _why_ she had died. For that worse than
worthless creature; for that sensual, cynical, selfish, brutal,
dastardly fellow, whose sins against the marriage vow which she had
broken had been countless and unblushing, as they were unrebuked and
unpunished; who owed the life which had been a curse to her, to his
wife's care, and who was set free by her death to carry out any scheme
which might enter his base mind. Not yet could Uffington rejoice in
her release; not yet could he realise the nothingness to her of what
he could not but regard with bitterness and rage as Forestfield's
triumph; and when he turned away at last from his contemplation of the
silent house, and went home to write to Eleanor, it was with a heart
full of hate towards Forestfield and De Tournefort, the two who had to
answer for the fate just fulfilled within those walls.

Uffington's letter to Eleanor was hard work to write. The intelligence
it had to convey must necessarily be a dreadful shock, as well as a
profound grief, to the girl who had loved May so dearly, and who had
so few besides to love. Eleanor was at Brighton with Mrs. Chadwick,
and though she had been told of May's illness, she had not been
told--because Uffington himself was ignorant of the truth--that a
fatal termination was apprehended. The chill wintry morning had dawned
before his task was completed; but as he wrote, in striving to console
Eleanor consolation came to himself; in endeavouring to convince her
that 'it was better so,' as May herself had said, he came to believe
his own words, to realise that it was indeed well with May; that the
life which she must have faced would have been too hard for her, and
Death, which had taken her definitively out of the hands of man, was
her best friend--a better friend than even he had been, or could be in
the future; a closer friend, shielding her from scorn and unkindness,
from vain regret and self-reproach from external temptation, and from
herself. The memory of the woman whom Uffington had loved, and ruined,
and recompensed for ruin in so far as a man can, was with him as he
wrote to the pure and proud young girl whose love he had won, and won
with a wondering secret exultation; a dead face looked up at him from
beneath the waters of the Swiss lake, as he described that other dead
face, with its fresh set seal of peace. During the hours of that night
something passed into the soul of Nugent Uffington which was the
soundest and safest of guarantees for Eleanor Irvine's happiness and
security as his wife--a message of peace and self-knowledge sent to
him from the dead.

     *       *       *       *        *        *

The heavy days went slowly by, and that on which the mortal remains of
May Forestfield were to be laid in their last resting-place had come.
Her death had been much talked of and the sentiments of 'society' on
the subject were various. After the nine days' wonder of her
restoration to her husband's house had died away, Lady Forestfield had
been suffered to fall into general oblivion. That circumstance was, of
course, much discussed, and many persons were of Mrs. Hamblin's way of
thinking. Those persons were chiefly among the large numbers of the
sinners who have not been found out. Sinners who have been found out
are, as a rule, more charitable, and the _divorcées_ who hover
longingly on the confines of the world in which they once played a
part, and who are perfectly cognisant of the peccadilloes of the women
who, from their own vantage ground of deferred or escaped exposure,
'cut' them, while they eagerly devour every atom of gossip concerning
the new 'milieu' in which their quondam but detected associates live,
were unfeignedly glad of May Forestfield's 'luck.' _They_ knew what
detection and its penalties meant, and they would not wish any one
such 'hard lines.' The undetected were scandalised. They even thought
it very wrong that Lord Forestfield should have been permitted to
sully his 'order' by such an act of misdirected clemency, and a lady
who had been much and deservedly 'talked of' with poor May's husband
was particularly denunciatory of the evil example and the dangerous
precedent. She found consolation only in assuring herself and others
that a restoration of that kind 'meant very little after all,' though
of course Lady Forestfield would be 'kept out of mischief by being
under her husband's roof;' she would be just as much 'out of society'
as if she were not there. All this had concerned May not at all;
indeed she hardly knew or even guessed how any one talked about her,
and never turned her thoughts or her eyes back upon that 'world' which
she had suspected to be a fool's paradise before she had forfeited it.
Very much the same sort of comment was made upon her death; perhaps it
was not in any instance so bitter as that which had attended her
disgrace. Mrs. Hamblin regarded the event as a very good thing indeed
for Lord Forestfield, quite a relief, and spoke of it in a tone which
implied that she considered it the proper thing on the part of
Providence to reward him for his unheard-of generosity by interposing
to prevent his reaping its possibly unpleasant consequences. Mrs.
Hamblin was also 'quite thankful' that the future Lady Uffington would
not be exposed to the risks of association with 'such a person as Lady
Forestfield,' and she added, while discussing the subject with a man
newly _lancé_, who was _en train_ to become the successor in her good
graces of Spiridion Pratt--'resigned'--that of course those risks
would have been doubled by the moral obtuseness of Sir Nugent
Uffington, whose character everybody knew, and whose history had
better not be inquired into. Poor Forestfield had behaved like an
angel--angels are not expected to be worldly-wise--and it was the best
possible thing for him. Mrs. Chadwick was genuinely sorry and pitiful;
she loved life herself, she hated the mere idea of death, and kept it
away from her by every means in her power. In health, wealth,
strength, and the full enjoyment of life, she felt a sort of physical
compassion for the young woman who had had to go down into the
darkness and silence of the grave; and she had liked Lady Forestfield.
But Mrs. Chadwick kept these sentiments to herself when she met Mrs.
Hamblin, and her like; was ready to acknowledge that 'perhaps, after
all, considering her hopeless loss of position,' &c.; and by the end
of the week was impatient with Eleanor for her overwhelming grief; and
inclined to resent its evidence in the girl's tears and seclusion as
an injury to herself.

'What a singular fascination there is for some men in the mere fact of
a woman having lost her character,' said Mrs. Hamblin to Frank Eardley
one morning in the melancholy week. The two had met on the new pier at
Brighton, and the gentleman had failed in an attempt to pass the lady
without stopping to speak.

'I have just seen Mr. Pratt going into Mrs. Chadwick's house, and
looking as melancholy as if he had lost his adoring and adored mamma,
the "madre mia" of that charming sonnet you used to quiz so kindly. I
suppose he's going to the Forestfield funeral.'

'He is, Mrs. Hamblin, and so am I. I must wish you good-morning.'

'You too. It will be quite a demonstration. What a lesson to _nous
autres!_ I Henceforth we shall know exactly what are those virtues
which "smell sweet and blossom in the dust." Good-morning.'

Not in the gloomy mausoleum in the Highland country, where the noble
remains of the Stortfords lie, encased in lead and oak, in velvet and
gilding, did they lay May Forestfield; nor was her grave made with the
men and women of her husband's race. On a bright calm day, when the
wintry air was still, and the sky was high and blue, the little train
of friends followed her coffin to Kensal Green. Lord Forestfield
behaved with perfect propriety on the solemn occasion. His demeanour
was as correct as his dress. When the temporary slab had been laid
upon the grave, Sir Nugent Uffington placed a wreath of violets and a
cross of white camellias upon the stone--they were Eleanor's tribute.
Then he and Frank Eardley regained their carriage in silence, which
was hardly broken until they reached town.

When Lord Forestfield returned to his house in Seamore-place, the
dreary stillness which had brooded over it for a week had disappeared.
Luggage, prepared for travelling, was in the hall, and a couple of
servants in deep mourning were busy with straps, buckles, and rugs. He
passed them quickly, and went into the library. Presently a close
carriage with posters came to the door, and the men, directed by
Stephens, put some of the luggage upon it. Lord Forestfield was going
away--going in this unusual style, to avoid the inconvenience of
railway travelling--on the very day of his wife's funeral. He could
not stay in the house; nothing would have induced him to pass another
night there; its profound solitude appalled him, and there was no one
whom he could ask to break or share that solitude. Lord Forestfield's
friends were not of the sort who are naturally turned to in trouble,
whether it be formal or real. He had suffered tortures in that house
while his wife lay dead in it, tortures which even Stephens had not
guessed at, and which he had utterly failed to deaden with drink. And
yet how hard he had tried! In defiance of every warning, of even the
physical loathing with which it inspired him, of the inability to
drink as he had been accustomed to do, which was a lingering result of
the fever, he had swallowed large quantities of wine during the
endless hours which he passed alone in that horrible room; hours when
he could not make up his mind to go to bed, and could not sleep, and
was ashamed to keep his servant with him; hours when the wine, which
would formerly have turned him into a drunken madman, only made him
more hideously conscious, more horribly wide awake. He was going away;
he did not know whether he should ever come back. He might get over
this feeling in time; it was not grief; he did not attempt to deceive
himself about that. He did not know what it was--only his infernal
nerves, no doubt; and if he did get over it, well and good; at present
his keenest desire was to get away from that room, and never to see it
again.

In an hour after Lord Forestfield had reentered his house, he left it
again. As he was crossing the footway to his travelling-carriage, a
man passed between it and him. A man with a pale face, with a wild
look of disturbance in it, and an unsteady step. A man who  might be
rather mad, or rather drunk, but, being either, had not quite lost his
self-control, and who knew Lord Forestfield. A man whom Lord
Forestfield knew, for he stepped back, as if from a blow, and
stammered out:

'De Tournefort! You!'

'Yes, it is I. Is this _true_? Speak, man! Is it _true_?'

'Is _what_ true?'

'That _she_ is dead?'

'Yes, it is true--she is dead, and buried to-day.'

Lord Forestfield stepped past the questioner, and got into the
carriage; then he leaned forward, and hissed rather than spoke these
words:

'She has escaped _us both_.'

The carriage drove off, and Gustave de Tournefort stood still outside
the door of Lord Forestfield's house, like a man in a bad dream.

He had kept his word. He had fulfilled the pact which he had made with
his own sense of honour. The interval had expired between the Decree
Nisi and the Decree Absolute; and De Tournefort, who knew nothing of
what had occurred during that interval, had returned to England, with
the intention of again offering to May the reparation of marriage. He
had sought her at Podbury-street, and there learned from Mrs. Wilson
the fact, which that good woman had read, with sincere regret, in the
newspapers. An irresistible impulse drove De Tournefort to look upon
the house whence May had been expelled for him, to which she had so
inexplicably returned. And so the two men who had been her ruin--which
of the two was the more guilty in the matter, who shall dare to
say?--came together, face to face, ere yet the sun had set upon her
grave.

The marriage of Sir Nugent Uffington and Eleanor Irvine took the world
somewhat by surprise, when it was solemnised in the early spring of
the following year. Their engagement had been kept quiet, almost
unsuspected by their few common acquaintance, and Mrs. Chadwick had
not talked about it. She liked Sir Nugent very much, but she was just
a little afraid of him; he puzzled her; as she expressed it, she
'could not make him out;' and she would have thought several times
about disobliging him, and then have left it undone. So that when Sir
Nugent explained to her that he and Eleanor disliked the _éclat_ of
announcements, and hoped she would indulge them by keeping their hopes
and projects within the small family circle, she observed his wish;
Eleanor's only might not have been so strictly respected. The events
which had taken place since Sir Nugent Uffington's appearance on the
rapidly expanding stage of Mrs. Chadwick's life had produced a good
deal of effect on that lady; had forced her, to perceive that wealth
and grandeur might possibly have their seamy side, and had restored
her to those sentiments of content with which she had in the first
instance accepted the rise in life effected by her marriage. For a
while Fanny Chadwick had been in danger of 'spoiling;' she had been
tempted to grumble at her husband's want of the superficial elegance
on which she had learned to set undue value, to compare him, to his
disadvantage, with the fops and fools whom she was proud of collecting
in her rooms at Fairfax-gardens. But the experience of the past season
did Mrs. Chadwick a world of good; she gathered good fruit out of that
miserable business of the Forestfields, as the tragedy of May's life
and death was called, while any one remembered either, and she stored
it up. She was never really guilty of feeling ashamed of her husband
again, and from any approach to such a sentiment she recoiled into
being ashamed of herself. It was wonderful how much Mr. Chadwick's
'Fan' refined under the influence of this clearer vision and sounder
judgment; how short a time elapsed before the people who talked their
own slang, and strove for their own vapid and worthless objects, but
strove for them inside, not outside, the indefinable but irresistible
barrier of fashion, came to acknowledge, with some wonder, that Mrs.
Chadwick was 'hardly vulgar at all.' She would not, as a matter of
fact, have been flattered had she been aware of the concession; and
yet she might well have been, considering the victory it endorsed, and
the habitual insolence of the class who made it.

When the time appointed for the marriage drew near, and people began
to know, about it, Mrs. Chadwick was surprised to find that Mrs.
Hamblin, of all people in the world, looked on the arrangement
with cold disapproval. That lady had been too wise to drop her
surface-intimacy with Mrs. Chadwick when her purpose with regard to
Spiridion Pratt was fulfilled. Its fulfilment had not been attended
with any triumph or profit to herself; she was intensely conscious of
her defeat, but she was all the more resolute to hide it. Even when
the replacement of Spiridion was in process of accomplishment, she did
not choose to lose sight of him, and she knew that, unless she
continued to visit Mrs. Chadwick, she must do so; for the little man
had established himself on the tame-cat footing at Fairfax-gardens,
and was imperturbably impervious to remark or ridicule. Eleanor Irvine
had refused to marry him, it was true, and it was even true also that
he had, in a surprisingly short time, arrived at the conclusion that
she had done wisely; but there was no earthly reason why Eleanor, who
suited him, being nice to look at and pleasant to talk to, very
agreeable and not oppressively clever--Spiridion hated _very_ clever
women--should not be the friend of his 'soul.' Eleanor had no
objection, especially as this sentimental arrangement did not impose
any severe demands upon her time and attention, and as it did prevent
the pretty constant presence of Sir Nugent from being unduly remarked
upon before the convenient season.

Spiridion had been admitted to the confidence of the affianced pair,
and had experienced no difficulty worth speaking of in reconciling
himself to the spectacle of his rival's happiness, though he wrote
some sweetly pretty verses expressive of the torments of such a
situation, which Mr. Shamus O'Voca set to music, and a Diva actually
sang at some of the best concerts last season. The torments in
question were, however, of the mildest, and, as a matter of fact,
Spiridion Pratt enjoyed himself immensely under the novel conditions
of his being. How much share in his peaceful serenity his
enfranchisement from Mrs. Hamblin had, it would be ungenerous to
inquire; and, indeed, it is not likely that Spiridion ever asked
himself the question. _She_ did, however, and she hated Eleanor as
Spiridion's friend only a little less bitterly than she hated
Spiridion himself. When the marriage of Miss Irvine with Sir Nugent
Uffington was announced, only a few days before its occurrence, Mrs.
Hamblin saw her way, having saved appearances, to backing out of a
position which had served her purpose, and was fast becoming an
intolerable bore.

She assumed a tone of high and cold morality. 'She ventured, in
consideration of dear Mrs. Chadwick's _comparative_ ignorance of the
world--Mrs. Chadwick must bear in mind that the London world, in which
she was even yet hardly _lancée_, had been Mrs. Hamblin's proper home
and element since her early girlhood--to inquire whether she was
altogether aware of the serious responsibility she was incurring by
intrusting her sister's fortune, its happiness and its credit, to such
a man as Sir Nugent Uffington? Did Mrs. Chadwick know the dreadfully
disgraceful history of his past life? Was she aware that he had never
shown the slightest deference to the opinion of society; that, in
short, the--the _affaire_ Mudge had lasted until the death of the
creature? Mrs. Hamblin could hardly conceive the possibility of a lady
like Mrs. Chadwick, whose former sphere must have accustomed her to
much more serious views on questions of the kind than those prevalent
in the wretched world of fashion, being satisfied to place a young
girl's welfare in such hands. She felt sure that Mrs. Chadwick, and
especially Mr. Chadwick--such a straightforward, honest, good sort of
man as he was--could not be in full possession of the facts; and
though she never offered advice, or interfered in other people's
affairs, she really must depart from her rule in this case, as she
felt a genuine interest in Mrs. Chadwick, and could not bear the idea
that her inexperience of society was possibly being imposed upon.'

All this, delivered with a smooth and smiling countenance, and in
mellifluous tones to whose covert impertinence it would be impossible
to do justice, Mrs. Chadwick listened to, in a state of mind which she
found it difficult to describe when she afterwards repeated it to her
husband. She was astounded at the woman's insolence, and her
irritation was sufficiently complete to enable her to comprehend very
thoroughly its _portée_; but the extraordinary transformation in Mrs.
Hamblin's own way of thinking and talking puzzled her profoundly.

'It is not as if she had any pretensions, you know,' said Mrs.
Chadwick in an aggrieved voice. 'One could put up with it from women
who go in thoroughly for that sort of thing, and won't have anything
to do with anybody who has ever been compromised in any way; but _Mrs.
Hamblin!_'

There was a good deal of untutored eloquence in the tone in which Mrs.
Chadwick pronounced her quondam friend's name. She had never thrown so
much expression into even her most successful song in the old days.

'Fan,' said Mr. Chadwick, with a funny twinkle in his eye and a funny
roll in his voice, 'prepare yourself for a blow! Mrs. Hamblin means to
weed her visiting-list, and "Chadwick, Mrs." will disappear from the
C's. She's in the forties, or very near them, isn't she?'

'I don't know for certain; but Mr. Pratt says so.'

'And Mr. Pratt! Terribly trustworthy authority, he. She's going in for
goody, my dear; that's it, rely upon it; and poor Eleanor will be her
first "example," and Uffington the text of her first sermon. Of course
you'll say nothing to them about her impertinence, and I shall be more
nearly angry with you than I have ever been in my life if you waste a
thought of your own upon it.'

Mrs. Chadwick could not dismiss the matter with all the celerity her
husband prescribed; but she really did not mind it much. Her
fashionable education had made good progress in the direction of
callousness.

The wedding took place, and Sir Nugent and Lady Uffington went abroad.
This was on Eleanor's account. Sir Nugent had seen all that Europe had
to show, but Eleanor had never travelled beyond Paris; and the old
familiar scenes acquired a fresh interest for him in the delight with
which they inspired her. Eleanor was very happy; as happy as she had
expected to be, which, though she was much more sensible than most
girls of her age, and her early life had not been of a kind to nourish
illusions, is saying a great deal. She had perhaps credited Sir Nugent
with some qualities in which she found him wanting; but, on the other
hand, she had prepared herself to discover and bear with faults which
did not exhibit themselves. She had heard him described as a 'devil of
a temper,' but he was not ill-tempered to her; on the contrary, he
treated her always with gentleness and courtesy, and, without
departing entirely from his characteristic undemonstrativeness,
studied her wishes and her welfare with practical steadiness. When
their marriage was several months old, Eleanor ventured to tell him
that he had 'turned out better than she expected in point of
amiability;' and he remarked simply,

'You see, Nell, I have always observed that good women get horribly
snubbed and bullied, where they don't meet with even more active
ill-treatment. There's a better chance for the bad ones, taking life
in the lump, all round. And so I am determined to keep one good woman
from being sorry that she has trusted herself to a man.'

Eleanor feels and expresses a happy security that she shall never be
sorry for having placed such practical confidence in him. And, indeed,
it looks as if her assurance were not unfounded.

They mean to 'settle' in London, but to live their own life there; not
the life of the multitude. Eleanor's home Paradise is imaged upon a
different plan from that of her sister and her sister's friends.
It does not exclude sociability, but it does not include
servility to 'Society;' and if she carries out her ideas, the
Uffingtons' house will be a pleasant one at which to have the
not-too-easily-to-be-obtained _entrée_.

People who have met them abroad report favourably of Sir Nugent and
Lady Uffington. Frank Eardley is enthusiastic about Eleanor's looks,
and her increased appreciation of art and china. He always thought her
bright, you know, but, by Jove, Lady Uffington takes the shine out of
Eleanor Irvine in a surprising way. Lydyeard, whose irascible temper
is generally sent up to white heat by the 'infernal folly,' which is
his mildest term for a friend's marriage, has not once been heard to
growl, and has even deigned to ask when the Uffingtons are coming
home? These small particulars, together with the general news,
domestic and otherwise, in which she and her husband are supposed to
be interested, are communicated to Eleanor by Mrs. Chadwick, who
yields to no born fine lady in existence in fluency of epistolary
composition, and in always having 'an immense number of letters to get
through.' Mrs. Chadwick delights in letters, dearly loves to live in
an avalanche of notes and messages, and never loses an opportunity of
despatching telegrams. She has a notion that it is _chic_ to be
perpetually busy 'with people and things outside her home, and she has
succeeded in accreting to herself a number of fussy little intimacies
which don't really mean anything--which would smash and go to pieces
under the weight of a real trial, a genuine difficulty, either on her
own part or on that of the object of any one of them, but which she
maintains with scrupulous care. One result of this is, that she really
has a good chance of hearing a great deal about every thing that is
'going on' among a certain set, and within a certain limited sphere of
human action and interests, which, however, is quite wide enough for
the taste and the intelligence of Mrs. Chadwick and her friends. To be
beforehand with the _Morning Post_ is a triumph to her and her like;
to be forestalled in its columns of exclusive intelligence concerning
any member of the favoured classes, whose movements only are worth
study, whose histories only are worth tracing from point to points is
a defeat. In such triumphs and such defeats it had always been
desperately difficult to interest Eleanor; and it was with something
approaching to exultation that Mrs. Chadwick commenced one of the
latest of her letters to her sister, previous to Eleanor's return,
with the announcement that she had something to tell her which would
arouse even _her_ curiosity.

'There really is quite a sensation about it, my dear Eleanor,' wrote
Mrs. Chadwick; 'for it appears the Duchess of Matlock used to have a
very bad opinion of Lord Forestfield, and always said he drove our
poor darling friend to all that happened by his brutal neglect. So
that people _do_ think it is a little inconsistent of her to let
Lady Amabel marry him, especially as the Duchess is so very
evangelical,--family prayers, tracts in the kitchen, and lots of 'Low'
curates to luncheon; you know exactly the sort of thing. Mr. Pratt,
who really is wonderfully faithful to you in a reflected kind of
way--for he's constantly here--told me all about it on Sunday. And he
says it's the coal-mine. I don't know whether I told you, by the bye,
that coal has been found in a small place of Lord F.'s in the North,
and he is going to be ever so rich. Of course I don't quite believe
_that_--one can't, you know, believe a thing of that kind about the
dear Duchess--but it is quite certain that Lord F. was never invited
to Matlock Park until the rumour of the coal got about; and in three
weeks Lady Amabel was engaged to him. The Duchess despises all these
rumours; _she_ says it is not coal, but conversion, and that she is
thankful her dear Amabel has been chosen by Providence to confirm a
repentant sinner in grace. I hope it will be all right; but I could
not help thinking of poor Lady Forestfield in her beauty and youth,
and regretting he had not repented in _her_ time. Lady Amabel is
hideous, _I_ think, and they say she has a violent temper. I hope it
is true. The Duchess went to Woodburn the other day, and had every
trace of poor Lady F. removed; all her boudoir furniture and a number
of pictures have been sold by auction, and that good little Mr. Pratt
has bought a lot of both for Sir Nugent; and he declares the Duchess
speaks of the poor thing as "that unhappy person whom, of course, we
cannot name." Lady Amabel will take her name cheerfully enough, and
her place too. James says, "What a blessing the poor thing left no
children, to suffer for her misdeeds after her death at the hands of
so eminent a Christian as Lady Amabel." I daresay she isn't so bad
after all, but James cannot endure that kind of religion. The wedding
is to come off in three weeks, at Matlock, and Mr. Pratt says they are
already getting the Duke into training, in order that he may _look_
sober, or a least _not too drunk_, on the occasion.'



THE END.



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